August 13th thru the 18th, 2006

Sunday August 13th, 2006

Weight Watchers
Broke the 200 mark! Weighed in Friday at a lean(ish) 197.8 lbs, a 3.2 lb drop since last week, and 20.2 lbs overall. Weight Watchers says this is too fast, more than 2 lbs per week. But it's only 2.25 lbs per week! It griped at me when I recorded my new weight, and suggested I slow down. Then it went and took two food points away from me per day, since I am under 200 lbs now and need fewer calories. Talk about mixed messages. This is worse than the time I was seduced by the high school nun who used to scourge herself every time we made out.

Do I feel better? Do feel thinner? Do I feel lighter, have more energy? A tiny tiny bit. I let you know again at 190. I still feel too heavy to run for more than a few minutes-- I'd like to get5 back to be able to running at least 3 miles at a stretch. Not that I was ever a runner-- I think if I had been, I'd still be one. Sorta like Ron Jeremy-- he's much more "rotund" then he was in his youth, but the ladies still, uh, let him run on their racetracks so to speak. Yeah, my analogies: 10/10 for the sentiment, but 1/10 for style.

Munich
Rented Munich a long time ago but only got to it Friday. This is an awful film. Not because the production quality was bad, or the acting or directing. It was a very compelling story, with tight performances and excellent pacing. It's just an awful story. At the 1972 Olympics in Munich, a terrorist group called Black September kidnapped and eventually killed 11 Israeli athletes. Israel's intelligence agency, the Moussad, responded by sending a team of assassins to find and kill as publicly as possible the surviving members of the group responsible.

I say awful not because I am anti-Israel. Nor am I anti-Palestinian. I say awful because the movie, even if historical inaccurate, accurately depicts the emotional and spiritual damage these activities do to the people involved. One may make overtures about justice and righteousness, but even zeal can't erase the horror of watching people die at your owns hands. One very telling moment in the film occurs when the main character is talking to a member of the PLO, who does not know he is Moussad. "Everytime you kill a Jew, the world sympathizes with Israel and thinks of you as animals." The response: "Then the world will see that they have driven us to act like animals. And it may take many lifetimes, hundreds of years. But how long did it take the Jews to get a country of their own?"

Three stars because while it was moving, it was, by director Spielberg's own admission, "historical fiction," and therefore is less commentary and more contemplation. Rent and watch it if you want to stop thinking everyone over there is just a zealot and a fanatic. Pass it up if you'd rather spend time getting the real history because you already appreciate that we're all just human beings.

Brick
Wanted to see Brickwhen it hit the theaters, but the limited release and my own poor organizational skills kept me away. But it hit DVD a few days ago, so I grabbed it at the Blockbuster (it was already on my Netflix queue). It's a fairly straightforward story, taken straight from the archives of noir archetypes, but set in a modern highschool as a conceit adding a cohesiveness to the film that New York or Chicago settings sometimes lack. I'm sure old-school and noir-core fans will dismiss this conceit, but by paying careful attention the film at the very least can be assort of primer on David Lynch style noir. And since it is Lynchian and noir, the straightforward story is told in anything but a straightforward matter. The main character gets a note from his ex girlfriend, asking for help, only to have her reject that help hours before she is murdered. Despite an existentialist indifference to everything around him, he finds himself compelled to find out what happened and why. What follows is a series of negotiations, bluffs, power plays, and Machiavellian manipulations leading to out-and-out gang war.

Like other noir, however, all of the characters are one-dimensional, almost cartoonish, and there's little character development. The protagonist finishes as he starts, indifferent, alone, cold, although in the beginning his disposition is an affectation, and at the end, somewhat justified.

I liked it enough that I want to check out other work by writer/director Rian Johnson. Provided he's a style-director and not a vision-director. I liked the style of this film and want to see more. But the vision? Noir's noir, that's all there is to it.

Street of Dreams
Street of Dreams is the event once a year where a handful of developers and builders get a piece of land and put of 4 to 6 dream homes, from 7000 to 11000 square feet, and let people romp through them before they go on the market to be sold. We're talking posh digs. Multiple bedrooms, gigantic kitchens, dining rooms, dens, studies, multi-media rooms, enormous bathrooms, the works. This year was my first visit. There where 6 homes to look at this time, and I spent so much time in the first four I had to sprint through the last two before they closed. It's sort of a see-it-to-believe it kinda thing, but some highlights: two houses had a secret set of stairs behind a bookcase, one to an attic and the other to a basement "cave" den. There was a house with a detached cabana, featuring a plush indoor/outdoor barbecue and seating area. There was the cave-bathroom, one of those showers that is so big it doesn't require a shower curtain. The fixtures in all of the places where pretty swank too: in a children's den, there was the reversible flat-screen TV cabinet, swiveling to act as a bookcase instead. Another movie den featured sound-sensitive chairs that moved you around during the chase scenes.

It was fun, but then again, just a wee bit ostentatious. I'll go next year if folks are up for it, though I won't insist on another hour-long drive to the edge of Redmond and a 15 minute bus ride to be jostled by jolly rednecks fresh from the trailer.

Benny Hill
Somehow the subject of Benny Hill came up in conversation a week ago and, recalling the hilarious episodes I saw on PBS in my youth, I Netflixxed a few DVDs. I guess my memory is not so good, or maybe it was the thrill of watching this dirty old man chase young girls, which would be something my parents would not want me watching, that I recall. Now in my old(er) age, its all a bit boring. The same slapstick jokes over and over again, Benny mugging for the camera, and that saxophone music in every other sketch. Don't get me wrong, the guy was probably a real ground-breaker in his day. I just caught myself yawning and/or predicating the punch line every time. So I have to give it two stars, though if someone insisted I go watch some more with them I guess I wouldn't say no too emphatically.

DeVotchKa
Friend of mine got wind of this band called DeVotchKa and talked a bunch of us into going. I'd never been to Neumo's before but I had been to The Elysian Brewery( ) before. I had a Braut roll, and a Dragontooth Stout both of which were very good and very much worth another visit in the near future. Neumo's itself is nearby, and seems like an okay club; the clientele was Shorty's meets Tractor Tavern, that sort of mature-punk or 30's punk or tattoos, piercings, and day-jobs punk that we get here in Seattle because the kids are all listening to Panic! At the Disco and crap like that. There were a few bars, two floors with a (crowded!) balcony overlooking the stage on one side, and a few lounge areas. If bars and clubs weren't always so damn loud, it'd be a groovy place to chill.

The band itself was okay. I couldn't see, and I'm no clubber, so I just sat with my friends, closed my eyes, and listened. Let's call this one Polka-punk or Oompah-core. Accordian/fiddle, drums/trumpet, guitar/bouzouki, stand-up bass/sousaphone. The crowd loved it and they defiantly have a strong fan base in alt-rock music places (any town that has a KEXP type radio station). They're worth checking out if they're in a club you like.

Friday August 14th, 2006

CCNA
Just wanted to say that the class has been going well. That they've been working on the curriculum, for a while now, shows, because the pace is natural without becoming too easy or too difficult: challenging and motivating, I'd call it. Wanna know what I've learned so far? How the internet works, more or less. I am equipped, already with the knowledge to trouble set up and trouble shoot a small-to-medium sized LAN, and if you give me lotsa of time and don’t hassle me, I could probably figure out whats wrong with a campus-wide or even metro network as well. Just for regular internet stuff, mind you-- I'm no expert on VoIP, file sharing, or in fact much layer 7 software-driven functions. Yet. Two semesters yet to go.

Kickball
First game of the new season last night for the 3rd Grade Bad-Asses, and we lost, bad, 11-2. We still had fun, mostly. There was one jerk on the other team, who was having a little too much fun rubbing our noses in it. Nevermind his streaking around the outfield to make amazing catches, way way out of position-- that's okay, ball hog, who needs the other 9 playters, right? No, it was things like taking a pop-fly and volleyball bump-and-setting it before making the catch. We didn't let it get to us too much, since we where able to make awful jokes at his expense in the dugout. The rest of his team was very cool, though, making jokes with everyone and having a good time. So I'll focus on them if we ever see 'em again. We have another game on Sunday, from the previous season, as we made the "loser bowl" for not having one enough games. Ha! Told ya we have the most fun!

Crosswords
Have been getting a bit obsessive with these. I am finishing the Wednesday NYTs, and finished a Thursday as well, nearly. Friday is still next to impossible. On Wednesday, though, flush with success, I did the two in the Seattle Post Intelligencier, the one in the Seattle Times, the one in the King County Journal, and the one in USA Today. All pretty doable. We'll see how long this lasts. Y'all know how I get with these temporary obsessions. Heh, right now, typing this, a song from DDR is playing on the iTunes. Talk about temporary obsessions! I was thinner then, too. Crosswords don't make you skinny, alas. I just hope this lasts until the Puzzlehunt which is coming soon.

Weight Watchers
Weigh-in today, 197 lbs, a .8 lb drop since last week, for 21 lbs over all in 10 weeks. On the one hand a bigger drop woulda been nice. In the other, like I said, WW yelled at me for losing too fast, since I'm supposed to lose 2 or less per week. Also, last weekend I overdid it a bit, and so I am lucky to lose at all. And I really need to go the gym more this week than last. We'll see. Chubby fingers crossed.