Why I'm White

I finished Christian Lander's new book "Whiter Shade of Pale" A few months ago now and it's taken me a while to write about this a wonderful skewering of elitist liberal culture. An expansion and update of his super-successful Stuff White People Like blog and ensuing book deal, Whiter Shade of Pale takes us across the United States and into the womb-like pockets of true White America.

The amazing part about Stuff White People Like is it is the rare instance of the subject also being the target audience. Those amongst the right and the uncool aren't privy to what makes White America ridiculous so their criticisms lack wit. It is the type of comedy which doesn't come from Us vs. Them but Us vs. Us. As such you laugh at the same time as thinking "Am I really like that?"

Reasons I Am A White Person

1.) My family is Republican and I'm not.

But by "my family" I mean anyone I'm related to over the age of 50. Basically if you are from the generation ahead of mine in my family, they did a really good job providing for their children thru determination and hard work. Now that they've paid for my entire college tuition (all 5 years), I'd appreciate if they'd give back all of the money they earned. Not because they've stopped working hard. Just because I saw the enormous positive influence that money had on my life and can't imagine anyone else would have to go without those advantages either. The irony is fighting to keep it for themselves in the name of dedication and hard work is the same thing as fighting to eventually give most of it to me, someone who didn't earn it. So I'm going to be the unwitting benefactor of a system tipped in my favor while the future George Washington Carvers & Jonas Salks will have to deal with shoddy science books. Meanwhile the future Howard Zinn will just shake his head.

2.) I don't follow ANY religion.

Don't let my grandmother read this. But the last time I went to church when it wasn't a wedding, ordination or funeral was 2005. Not a big deal, you say? The Church isn't for everyone? More spiritual than religious? Yeah, I'm not into that either. Here's a quick rundown of my "religious" beliefs; If you're going to follow a system of values professed by a human, they should be the ones which focus on humanity. Any mythology not relating to life as we know it is irrelevant. I get that it was metaphorical and meant for a less-educated audience. I'm a more-educated audience and for me the holy trinity begins with Freud, Nietzsche & Marx. Our worldly problems have real-world causes and we have the very real capability and responsibility to fix them. Leave the ghosts to Hamlet. Or, even better, leave them to Scooby Doo.

3.) I like a lot of things that are listed in the book.

Including the first book, I'm guilty of liking the following:

Coffee, Barack Obama, Wes Anderson Movies, Having Black Friends, International Travel, David Sedaris, Not Having A TV, Wrigley Field, Architecture, Brunch, Arrested Development, Netflix, Indie Music, Sushi, Plays, Liberal Arts Degrees, Irony, Dogs, Documentaries, Japan, Bicycles, Knowing What's Best For Poor People, Recycling, Standing Still At Concerts, Michel Gondry, Mos Def, Difficult Breakups, Threatening to Move to Canada, The Idea of Soccer, Hating Corporations, T-shirts, Shorts, Having Gay Friends, St. Patrick's Day, San Francisco, Music Piracy, New Balance Shoes, Beards, Noam Chomsky, Self-Deprecating Humor, Integrity, The Criterion Collection, High School English Teachers, Free Health Care, Che Guevarra, Non-American News Sources, Subtitles, The ACLU, Platonic Friendships, Dave Chappelle, Nintendo Wii, The Simpsons, Avoiding Confrontation, Books, Music Festivals, Glasses, McSweeney's, Hardwood Floors, Bakeries, Modern Art Museums, Cheese, Self-Importance, Conan O'Brien, British Slang, Anthony Bourdain, Nannies, Messenger Bags, Punk Rock, Promising To Learn A New Language, The World Cup, Self-Aware Hip-Hop References, Trivia, Whole Wheat, Ugly Sweater Parties, Monty Python, The Onion, Short Stories, Alternative Newspapers, Losing Weight, Trader Joe's, Supporting The Troops But Not The War, Bob Marley, Road Trips, Girls With Bangs, Swimming, Google, Hummus, Olives, Facebook, Cult Movies, The Big Liebowski, Peacoats, Vice Magazine's Dos and Don'ts, Punctuality, Waiting In Line, Taking A Year Off, The Winter Olympics, The Office, Banksy and Being Offended.

Mea Culpa

And in the face of such glaring evidence I have to plea guilty because the truest mark of a White Person is the hypocrisy of believing you aren't when you very clearly are. One of my heroes is George Carlin and one of his funniest stories is of the night he heard a couple talking in the front row of his show. The husband was upset by one of Carlin's jokes and Carlin overheard the wife say to the husband, "It's okay, honey. He isn't talking about us." I laugh at Stuff White People Like because I get to laugh at an unobstructed view of myself.

Why Dan and Smallz Should Like Brandon Jennings

1.) He's From Compton!

On a list of Compton natives from NWA to Coolio, he's slightly cooler than Cedric Ceballos and just behind Krist Novoselic. If he had been in the dunk contest this year, he could've found himself in the company of Mort Sahl.

2.) He's The Greatest Scorer In Oak Hill Academy History.

Not Carmelo Anthony, not Kevin Durant, not Jerry Stackhouse, not Michael Beasley, not Rod Strickland.

Brandon Jennings

P.S. He also won the Naismith Award for Best H.S. Boys Basketball Player in 2008.

3.) He Wore A High-Top Fade To The All-American Game.



Brandon grew his hair out thru his senior year knowing he was going to play in the All-American game and wanted to rock the Gumby look. Let me rephrase. Knowing that there was something important down the line, he prepared and focused on it for months.

4.) And Then He Brought It Back!



If you miss the old Gilbert Arenas, I'd like to introduce you to the new Gilbert Arenas. Brandon was even going to Arizona a la Gilbert before he changed to the Europe plans.

5.) Basketball, more than any other American sport, is a game.

Baseball lends itself to statistics because its parameters are so easily defined. Football is all about team planning and preparation. Hockey is close but bogs itself in last line changes and other unspoken rules. Basketball is harder to pin down. It's parameters are so simple (beat your man) and ambiguous (how DO you beat him?).

You can show me that Brandon does X-Y-Z and that means A-B-C. I have no problem believing that. I'm just hesitant to believe there is a secret formula to basketball in the same way that getting guys on base and scoring them while preserving outs seems to be the winning formula in baseball. There are too many factors which come into the mechanics of basketball to say there's one or two things you can focus on.

What I like to see is the end result of a player beating his man with style. When Jennings goes around his back before he throws an alley-oop to John Wall, I'm titillated. When he leaves a drop pass for Andrew Bogut between his legs, I'm excited. When he crosses Stephen Curry to the ground, my heart makes a small leap. Why do all of our warriors have to be automatons? Isn't the thing that's great about basketball is when it approaches Art?

All of this is subjectivity, yes. But, for me, subjectivity is not a dirty word. When I watch basketball I want it to be entertaining and Brandon Jennings is one of the most consistently entertaining players in the NBA.

Set For Random and Enjoy

I recently had to wipe the hard-drive on my laptop because I'd let my virus protection lapse. (In my defense it was a year and half before anything went wrong.) Not only did it provide me an opportunity to upgrade to Windows 7 but also to reload all my music onto my computer. Which is to say I only put stuff back onto it which I really wanted. I feel very satisfied with the results. Here's the list which would be a perfect cross-section of music I like.

Adriano Celentano - Prisencolinsinainciusol
The Arcade Fire - The Suburbs
Aziz Ansari - Intimate Moments for A Sensual Evening
Blackroc - s/t
Bob Dylen - Greatest Hits Vol. 1&2
Broken Social Scene - Something For All of Us & Spirit If...
Cee-Lo Green - Noone's Going To Love You
Chiddy Bang - Hey London & The Opposite of Adults
Doomtree - False Hopes
Doctor Dog - Shame, Shame
The Flaming Lips - Borderline
Gorillaz - Some Kind of Nature
Green Day - 21st Century Breakdown
GZA - Pro Tools
Jonsi - Time to Pretend
Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Kings of Leon - Sex On Fire
Kraftwerk - I, II, Autobahn & Ralf and Florian
La Roux - s/t
Lil Wayne - Carter III
MGMT - Congratulations
Minutemen - Double Nickels on The Dime
Mos Def - The Ecstatic
Pavement - Terror Twilight
Rick Ross - Ashes to Ashes
Sonic Youth - Antenna
Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks - Pig Lib & Real Emotional Trash
Sufjan Stevens - The Age of Adz
The Talking Heads - More Songs About Buildings and Food
The Tallest Man On Earth - The Wild Hunt
Titus Andronicus - The Monitor
The White Stripes - Under Great White Northern Lights

That's a set of music you can put on shuffle and pretty much count that one song will flow from another to an other.

My Reading List

A friend asked for my reading list. This was the result. Get on GoodReads and you'll get an e-mail every I add or finish a book. Starting with January '09...

Read

No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff
Flesh and Blood by Michael Cunningham
The Genocides by Thomas Disch
Kafka On the Shore by Haruki Murakami
The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
Black Hole by Charles Burns
People Are Unappealing: Even Me by Sara Barron
Rock, Paper, Scissors: Game Theory in Everyday Life by Len Fisher
The Ghost Map... by Steven Johnson
Bonk by Mary Roach
My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientists Personal Journey by Jill Bolte Taylor
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Black Hole War... by Leonard Susskind
Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman!... by Richard Feynman
13 Things That Don't Make Sense by Michael Brooks
Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
Alex and Me... by Irene Pepperberg
Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman
How Proust Can Change Your Life... by Alain de Botton
The Book of Basketball... by Bill Simmons
The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2009 edited by Dave Eggers
City of Thieves by David Benioff
Inventory... by The Writers of The Onion
How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read by Pierre Bayard
Why God Won't Go Away... by Andrew Newberg
Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit by Daniel Quinn
The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly
Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson
How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer
Let The Great World Spin by Colum McCann
Pleasurable Kingdom by Jonathan Balcombe
Big Machine by Victor LaVelle
Professor Stewart's Cupboard of Mathematical Curiosities by Ian Stewart

Reading

Twitterature by Alexander Aciman
Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder
The Magicians by Lev Grossman
Avoid Boring People... by James D. Watson
News, Nudity, Nonsense: The Best of Vice Magazine Vol. 2 (2003-2008)

To Read

The Biology of Belief... by Bruce Lipton
Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut
Speaker for The Dead by Orson Scott Card
House of Tomorrow by Peter Bognanni
Aristotle and Aardvark Go To Washington... by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein
The Tall Book by Arianne Cohen
Wigfield by Amy Sedaris, Stephen Colbert and Paulo Dinello
The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
Professor Stewart's Hoard of Mathematical Treasures by Ian Stewart
Second Nature by Jonathan Blacombe
The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes
Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Supermob by Gus Russo
The Collected What If... edited Robert Cowley

25 Things

I technically did 29 things for my 30 x 30 unrelated to the 25 things craze. But here are 25 random things about me.

1.) Sometimes I just get lazy about shaving and turn it into an opportunity to grow a sweet beard.

2.) I always watch the Onion News Network twice, once with the sound and again without the sound to read the scroll.

3.) When I go on a date I have to listen to three songs as I'm getting ready: "Today" by Smashing Pumpkins, "I Have A Date" by The Vandals and then "First Date" by Blink 182. Then I listen to as much Jay-Z as possible. Do you know how super confident listening to a lot of Jay-Z makes you?

4.) If you and I are going somewhere in a car and we get to our destination, I am out of the car before you have your seatbelt off. Then I'll stand next to the car like it's you who has the problem.

5.) My brother and I have an ongoing competition to see who can shake famous people's hands. Basically the only way to win would be to shake Obama, Jordan or Thom Yorke's hand (and I was close on the first two).

6.) When I go to the movies, I try to sit in the dead center of the theater. I will go to the extent of counting rows and seats in a row if it's a place I've never been before.

7.) Peanut butter + two slices of bread = meal at any time of day

8.) If I had to pick my best year of my life, I'd pick 2005 followed by 1998.

9.) If I had to pick the worst year of my life, I wouldn't pick one. Each year had something going for it.

10.) My archnemesis for my entire life has been the telephone. If I'm ever on the phone with you for more than a minute consider this a show of the strength of our friendship. I'm literally torturing myself on your behalf.

11.) It would be my dream to one day play a game of Risktego, aka a game of Risk with each of the battles being a game of Stratego. And by "one day" I mean the week it would required to play straight through only taking breaks to sleep, to eat, to use the bathroom and to take a walk outside pondering why you wanted to play a game of Risktego.

12.) I don't eat beef. It's partially a consciousness thing but also beef just makes me feel logey.

13.) When I was little I read a lot of comic books. Here's the weird part. They were mostly Archie comics.

14.) I know that in kindergarten I was as tall as an emperor penguin. I know this because I stood up to show the class how tall an emperor penguin was.

15.) In college my friends and I developed a thirty-hours-a-day, four-days-a-week calendar. We're pretty sure you'd go crazy but the idea of twenty hours on and ten hours off appealed to us. I mean, let's be honest. We were already doing the twenty hours on.

16.) I've moved at least once every year since I was 16 except 2004 and 2007. Amazingly I still check and use the very first e-mail account I ever set up.

17.) When the World Cup rolls around, I'll cheer for any team that speaks English or Portuguese.

18.) I have a friend who I always considered a music expert and was intimidated by his knowledge of music. He then told me he considered me a music expert and was intimidated by my knowledge of music. This individual is now one of my best friends.

19.) During high school, I used to run up to people I knew, put my arm around their shoulder and try to swing into their arms. This worked about as often as you would imagine.

20.) If I had to pick between the ability to fly, invisibility or the strength of 10 men, I'd pick flying. People who pick invisibility are creepers and not to be trusted. I don't know anyone who would pick the strength of 10 men.

21.) To date I have yet to incur any credit card debt.

22.) My favorite soft drink is RC Cola.

23.) I believe there are two appropriate responses when someone offers you a piece of pizza: "Yes, thank you. How generous of you." and "No, thank you. I already have my own slice."

24.) I made a decision a few years ago to be more polite. I rethought it as the minimum amount of consideration you can expect from another person and perhaps politeness keeps us from tearing other apart.

25.) I remember what it was like to be the kid who got left out in grade school. For that sole reason, I am always trying to include new people into whatever I'm doing.

Oh, Eight Songs

I was combing through the last year in music and I'm going to do something a little different. The thing to do usually is to make a list of the year's best albums. But let's be honest. Not only are you unlikely to go out and buy those albums, most people don't even consume music via the album anymore. It's all about single songs.

So these are eight songs I chose to represent the music which turned me on in the last year. These were bands and/or songs a regular person wouldn't have stumbled into just by listening to the radio. (Sorry Kanye and Coldplay.) At the same time I also wanted to highlight music that most people could enjoy too. (Sorry Battles and TV On The Radio.) Most of all though these were eight songs I listed to often during the year. When I think back on 2008, these songs will be the soundtrack.

And just for added difficulty, let's make them appear in the same slot as they do on the album from which they come (our first song is first on its respective album, the second song comes second on its album, etc.) and do it in under thirty minutes.

1.) Colin Meloy "Devil's Elbow" - When I think of 2008, I will think of being in Chicago. When I think of being in Chicago, I will think of three things. The first one is obvious. The second is the good times. The third will be riding the train. I rode the CTA everywhere and on the nights when I didn't have a companion I was plugged into my MP3 player.

Colin Meloy's live solo album got a lot of spins on my way to work, going to baseball games, going out to shows and most often when I was going home. I will hear this song or any from this album and forever think of the Clark and Division stop, the stretch between Sheridan and Howard and standing at Main in the morning. Add in that it's a great song and "Devil's Elbow" spells 2008.

2.) Vampire Weekend "Oxford Comma" - Have you ever heard a buzz band that everyone seems to love and they really are that great? It's not hype. It's actually music journalism fulfilling its purpose and bringing good music to light. I had a few of those this year.

Vampire Weekend was one of them. Maybe it's because all of my musical taste is calibrated to The Clash but I always love music that isn't familiar. I like weird sounds and sounds that are presented in a different way than I've heard. Being able to do that within a three minute pop song though is a real feat.

There's something that sounds very close to Jamaican reggae about Vampire Weekend's music. Their influences are actually West African and I think that's something Joe Strummer would be way into if he were still alive. I think that because it's stuff I'm way into myself.

3.) Kings of Leon "Sex On Fire" - One of the great quotes I like to pull from my life is by Gregg Allman. He was talking about the term "Southern rock." He said (and I'm paraphrasing) "All rock comes from The South. So saying 'Southern rock' is a little bit like saying 'rock rock'." Normally when we think of music that rocks, we think of the music which followed and drew influence Led Zepplin with shredding guitars, bombastic drums and soaring vocals. Allman is right though. Even the almighty Zepplin sound draws its roots in The South.

That would mean the purest form of rock made today is the "rock rock" being made by bands like My Morning Jacket and Kings of Leon. I mean what's more sex and drugs and rock and roll than a song called "Sex on Fire"? All the more to the point when you dive into the lyrics about the visceral and raw elements of making sweet love. Wrap it all up in a melody and a beat that makes you want to drive very fast down the open road and you'll be wrapping yourself in the American flag in no time.

4.) MGMT "Electric Feel" - MGMT was another buzz band that lived up to their billing. A lot of music played on synthesizers ends up sounding like its been run through a computer and filtered into bleak dystopia. It's just what happened because Bowie and Eno and their ilk were the first guys to get there and start using these new tools and that's the type of music they make.

What makes MGMT so weird and interesting is they make music about a psychedelic world without technology. They present a conundrum when they use a syntesizer to sound like a "4000 year old Peruvian flute" as Andrew VanWyngarden says in the behind the scenes video to this song. For forever the idea of more authentic and earthy music is that which is played on instruments made of wood. (See: any coffee shop this Friday or Saturday) Yet here are these two guys working with The Flaming Lips' producer to make a song about a girl from The Amazon who can create electricity from her hands. It's the type of music which appeals to your head, your heart and of course your ears.

5.) Broken Social Scene "Churches Under The Stairs" - When I think about concerts I saw this last year I'll think of the peak performances. From Pitchfork Music Festival to Lollapalooza to Rocktober to a set of shows on either side of Snelling on University to a few more great shows at First Ave, I saw a lot of really great live music this year.

Broken Social Scene contributed a large part of that great live music. I saw them not once, not twice but three times this year and each time my love for them deepened even further. Each concert was like a date. On the first date at Lollapalooza I got a quick brush-up on their sound and an introduction to some of the songs I didn't know. The second date later that evening at The Metro was confirmation that first blush wasn't a misread on my part. Then by the excellent concert of a third date at First Ave during Rocktober I had made my decision and I was wearing my good underwear. I fell for this band the way you're supposed to; by seeing them in their peak moment and being rewarded as you do.

6.) Flobots "Handlebars" - This song gives me an opportunity to give shoutouts and for wildly different reasons. First I have to shoutout Willibuster, Ghost and Emily Osby. When I was visiting home during August, we were hanging out with one of Will's high school friends and the night devolved into what most parties usually do with all of us sitting around looking up stuff on YouTube. It was even Will himself who pulled up the video for this song and every time I hear this song or watch the video I think of chilling with those three.

The other person I get to shoutout is K10. Eight years younger than me and full of opinions, K10 is more than willing to tell me my musical taste sucks and that I've gone soft in my older age. Which is exactly the thing I love about him. Ever said that if you had the opportunity to talk to yourself at a younger age you'd probably just argue about stuff? I don't have to imagine what that would be like to argue music with my younger self because of this guy. Except my younger self really likes The Flobots. "As iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens his friend."

Additional shoutouts for additional and different reasons to Dan, Patrick, Noha, Luke, Pete, Peder, Jim, Abby, Stensby, Christian, Nicky, SayRock Brian, Ed, TK and all the people that were at Doomtree Blowout. Thanks for making "going to shows" the new black in '08. Let's go get them swimming pools in '09.

7.) The Black Kids "I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend To Dance With You" - Guess "What?". Yet another buzz band that lived up to their billing was The Black Kids. I got this CD during the month I was subletting in Evanston and it was just a matter of having heard about them a lot on the periphery and finally taking the whole CD plunge. It really is amazing doing that worked out so well for me this year.

Okay, what do The Black Kids sound like? It's like The Cure was brought to the 21st Century and decided to write in the "Just Like Heaven" mode. That mournful quality is still there as are the crazy good synth lines. The difference is Robert Smith is playing with The Revolution and that means really danceable sped-up songs underneath the heartache and loss. It literally is the type of music which can be called 1980s retro and not have that be a derisive term.

8.) The Hold Steady "Stay Positive" - Is there any greater summation of the year of Our Lord two thousand and eight than "You gotta stay positive!"? Yeah, things went into the trash this year. At the same time a new era is dawning. Things are always darkest before the dawn and sometimes things are so bad the only place we have to go is up. In 2008, we all had to stay positive or else we'd lose our minds. But by staying positive we'll see ourselves through.

Now pour that over the type of big anthemic hooks that Springsteen and U2 only stumble upon anymore and you have a song you actually can listen to and come out feeling positive and part of something larger. The song isn't suggesting that we stay positive and then leaving us to figure out how to do that. It is infused with the raw energy and mass needed to sustain and to even see the way through to thriving. It doesn't move you in the usual way of touching your heart. It should swell in you the defiant walking-into-the-wind attitude needed to tough things out. Because, as I said before, this year more than ever you gotta stay positive.

Going To California - Day Five - Bakersfield To San Francisco

Departure Bakersfield - 54 degrees and clear
Arrival San Francisco - 59 degrees and cloudy

Sundown - 4:55 pm
Miles Traveled - 253 miles
States Visited - 1
Major Cities - San Jose, CA; San Francisco, CA
Average Speed - 62 mph



Can you know a city by staying there one night? No, it would be impossible to know the geography let alone the heart and the spirit of a city in an evening.

Can you try to see an entire city in one night? Yes, if you have the proper guides and a willingness to stay up until 4:00 am on your internal clock.

When I knew that my trip was going to be ending in San Francisco it pleased me greatly. It was one of the five Great American Cities I hadn't visited yet and, as someone who had always though himself a little Beat and Boho, it was like the mothership calling me home. Add on the number of Beat/Boho friends I have who are already on the mothership and it was going to be on like Genghis Khan.

The tricky thing is I only had one night. I knew I wasn't going to see everything or even everything I wanted to see. With the right priorities I could get a good taste of San Francisco.

So I got into town, took the BART into the city, met Schwa, saw the circus, had some drinks, met Meg, we all got picked up by Viv, the four of us went to the sushi place, I ate a prawn head in the most digusting way possible, was met by Will, rode over to City Lights, said "Bye" to Meg and Viv, went into the Poetry Room, got my picture taken on the stairs, got drinks at Vesuvio, walked up Russian Hill (to the TOP!), got in the car, talked to Boston, rode to the Golden Gate Bridge, took some blurry photos, rode across the Golden Gate Bridge, took some blurry video, rode to Haight-Ashbury, got my picture in front of the street signs, met up with Jamie, had a beer, walked into Golden Gate Park, saw the outside of a museum I'll need to go into next time, stood and BS-ed in an amphitheater, walked back to the car, dropped off Jamie and Schwa and was dropped at my hotel by Will.

The only thing I know is I need to come back.

Going To California - Day 4 - Flagstaff to Bakersfield

Departure Flagstaff - 35 degrees and clear
Arrival Bakersfield - 82 degrees and clear

Sundown - 4:48 pm
Miles Traveled - 482 miles
States Visited - 2
Major Cities - Ummmm...
Average speed - 70 mph

A Sampling of Gas Prices
$2.11 Kingman, AZ
$3.29 Bullhead City, CA
$2.25 Junction of Hwys. 395 & 58
$1.99 Bakersfield, CA



One of the things that's both neat and frightening about growing up is you start to deal with your parents as adults. Rather you're dealing with them for the first time as an adult yourself. In fact it may be the first time you get to talk with them about grown up stuff at all.

Since thirty is just up around the bend for me I'm actively working on redefining my individual relationships with my parents. I want to reset the structure of our realtionships to accomodate two adults instead of one adult and one "child." More importantly I want to actually know my parents. Neither of them are particularly old and we'll have at least another thirty to forty years together. Up until now they've had to be models from which I might base my behavior. But now that I'm pretty much a fully-formed adult I can look and see them as they are.

More importantly, if your family was nuclear like mine, these are the two people who have ostensibly known you for the longest. They were the ones who can tell you the most about who you were before you remembered and even tell you a lot about the stuff you do remember except from an adult's perspective. They really are the mirror of your experiences and if they are honest and respectful of you they can tell you more about yourself than any other person not walking around in your skin.

So when I was having dinner with my mom last night, we just talked like I normally would with any other adult in my life. We talked about the election, we talked about my sister's wedding, we talked about my upcoming job prospects. But mostly we talked about each other and ourselves. That is to say we talked as adults.

Going To California - Day 3 - Amarillo To Flagstaff

Departure Amarillo - 47 degrees and clear
Arrival Flagstaff - 55 degrees and clear

Sundown - 5:15 pm
Miles Traveled - 608 miles
States Visited - 3
Major cities - Albuquerque, NM
Average speed - 66 mph

A Sampling of Gas Prices
$1.97 San Jon, NM
$2.15 Santa Rosa, NM
$1.95 Albuquerque, NM
$2.99 Allentown, AZ
$2.69 Flagstaff, AZ

Five Words Young Jeezy Shouts In The Background of "Put On"
Aye
Ha Ha
Hey
Whoooo
Yeah (pron. J-eah)



If it isn't completely obvious and exactly what eveyone else is thinking, I'm sure I could do this "driving across the country" thing all the time. There is something deep in my soul that loves the Kerouac idea of just having the open road in front of you. Going, as Sir Edmund Hillary would say, because it's there.

However I don't think I'd want to do it professionally. Putting on this many miles in a day because you have to is hard. I need to keep driving for that next stop on the map, the next spot where I have a hotel reservation. I probably would've made the same stops as scheduled except I would've done them with a little more generous allowances for stopping and seeing the countryside.

As it is, I'm enjoying watching these United States roll by my windshield. I've seen both purple mountains majesty and amber waves of grain. The amazing thing about our country is people spread out all the way across this diverse continent feel they are all involved in the same great thing going forward. As the man himself said, "There are no red states. There are no blue states. There is only the United States." And what's more American than getting out at seeing this country we love.

Going To California - Day 2 - Emporia To Amarillo

Departure Emporia - 37 degrees and clear
Arrival Amarillo - 73 degrees and clear

Sundown - 5:40 pm
Miles Traveled - 495 miles
States Visited - 3
Major Cities - Wichita, Kansas; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Average speed - 63 mph

A Sampling of Gas Prices

$1.95 Wichita
$1.57 Oklahoma City (W00T!)
$1.85 Amarillo, Texas



On April 19, 1995 at 9:02 am domestic terrorists detonated a fertilizer bomb in front of The Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma destroying one third of the building and killing 168 people including 19 children. Two and a half years later in October of 1997 The Oklahoma City National Memorial was established and put under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service. The memorial was dedicated by then-President Clinton on the fifth anniversary of the bombing, April 19th, 2000. I visited the memorial on my way through Oklahoma City today.

See the photos of my visit at this link.

Going to California - Day 1 - Minneapolis to Emporia

Departure Minneapolis - 32 degrees and overcast.
Arrival Emporia - 42 degrees and dark.

Miles traveled - 546
States traveled through - 4
Major cities - Minneapolis, MN; Des Moines, IA; Kansas City, KS/MO
Avg. speed - 61 MPH

A sample of gas prices

Minneapolis, MN - $1.97
Des Moines, IA - $1.92
Converse, MO - $1.73
Kansas City, KS - $ $1.76
Emporia, KS - $1.85



When I was young, my dad and I were much closer than we are now. I was the oldest of my siblings and as such I could go do things that the other kids couldn't. It's just one of the many perks of being first. Mostly it was just a bunch of sporting events that we got to see together including a lot of Twins games from very close. But the crown jewel of father-son time for my dad and I were our roadtrips.

The very first one was just a jaunt down to Lake City when I was about six to see my great-grandmother O'Hara. She was very old and I was very young. It stands out though because it's the only real memory I have of her. She seemed so frail and small. My dad has told me since then his memory of that trip is how she was so happy to spend time with her grandson and her great-grandson.

Most often though we'd base our roadtrips around sports. One year we drove to all of the NFL training camps in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Another we drove to the Field of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa. We even flew one time to Kansas City so we could take a car across Missouri to a Cardinals game in St. Louis.

However the very first roadtrip we took out-of-state was to Kansas City for one of my dad's co-worker's wedding. It was 1990 and I was ten while Erica was 8 and Dan only 6. If my dad was going to take Mom to the wedding, they'd have to find someone to take care of us for the whole weekend. So, sensing an opportunity in a problem, Dad just took me instead of Mom.

There are three really great memories of that roadtrip. First, we stayed at a hotel with two trees involved which had a pool where you could swim between the indoors and outdoors. Second, it was the first time I saw two of the greatest television shows ever; "Saturday Night Live" and "American Gladiators." I can very vividly remember watching The Eliminator on "AG" and watching a "Twin Peaks" parody sketch on "SNL." (Which means Kyle McLachlen was hosting with musical guest... Sinead O'Connor.) The third memory requires a little set-up. At the time Dad had a BMW 3 series with 5-speed manual transmission and an overdrive. Basically, the car was meant to go really fast and it could.

We were peaking over a hill in Iowa already doing north of 80 when Dad noticed there were no other cars visible, there were no police officers sitting in the ditch and, hell, there was this long straight downhill stretch of open road in front of us. So he turns to me and says, "Your mom doesn't need to know about this." He dropped the car into the overdrive and it took off. By the time we got to the bottom of the hill we were doing 120.

I thought about that road trip as I was driving through Kansas City today. I got a chance to think back to when Dad and I would take roadtrips together. I got a chance to think back to when Dad and I were closer. I thought about how things have changed and how things have not. Mostly I got to think about when we would just get in the car and drive.

A List of Items

One winter jacket, red
One sweatshirt, grey (printed)

One gymbag/suitcase, black

-contains-

One swimsuit, black
Two pair shorts, one red/white and other tan khaki
Four t-shirts, two blue (printed) and two white (one printed, one not)
Four pair underwear, patterned
Four pair socks, two pair navy calf cut and two pair white ankle cut
One pair sunglasses, black
One toothpaste tube, half full
One toothbrush, could be replaced
One can bodyspray, full
One stick anti-perspirant, half consumed
One can shaving cream, half consumed
Two safety razors, unused
One phone charger
One package to mail to a friend
Two books to return to a different friend

One green backpack w/ "What Would Elvis Do?" patch

-contains-

One winter hat, navy w/ forest green
One pair winter gloves, navy
One scarf, tan/grey
"Downtown Owl" by Chuck Klosterman
Batman collection "War Drums"
Free Darko's "The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac"
Four DVDs

-"Lost In Translation"
-"Serenity"
-"Live Free or Die Hard: Unrated"
-"Gigantic: A Story of Two Johns" to return to a third friend

Six music CDs

-Catch 22 "Keasby Nights"
-LCD Soundsystem "45:33"
-Aesop Rock "None Shall Pass"
-Bad Religion "New Maps of Hell"
-Of Montreal "Skeletal Lamping", packaging difficult to open
-Atmosphere "When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold"

One Audiobook

-"The Day the Universe Changed" by James Burke

One digital camera, borrowed
One mp3 player w/ headphones
One cellphone, company-provided
One notebook with directions
One composition book, "Story Arcs" written on cover
One laptop (pending deposit in bag)

My Five Favorite Time-Travel Movies of All-Time

Travel through time is suprisingly a common plot device in movies. Army of Darkness, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and of course the Back to the Future trilogy are all movies where the plot centers around a character or characters moving through time. However in each of the cited cases, the time travel is not as important as the characters being a fish out of water. The movie is not about time travel as much as time travel is a mechanism to create the plot.

I like movies that are centered on time travel itself. The time travel needs to be integral to the plot with the additional treat of questions of causality woven into it. The central metaphor is then not a fish out of water but a fish in the current of a river. The current may normally push the fish in a specific direction. But the fish is able to swim in many directions and not just where the current takes them. Since I like these types of movies, I've seen quite a few and these are my favorite five.



Groundhog Day

Probably the most popular movie on this list, it's the one which is 100% centered on time travel and it does it in a very innovative way. The idea is causality is not being something fluid where small changes have large impacts. Instead causality is something that you repeat over and over until you get it "right", a kind of destiny forcing your hand. Free will is out the door but except in your capacity to learn.

Add on to its uniqueness that this story could only have been a movie. If you tried to tell "Groundhog Day" as a short story, it would've been almost unreadable. The consistent hiccups in the The medium of film and the audience's familiarity with film editing makes this movie not only possible but also very enjoyable.



12 Monkeys

I liked this movie because it posits that everything that will happen will happen. It's not just regardless of the involvement of time travelers either but in some cases because of those time travelers. It puts a different spin on causality than the normal "butterfly effect."

According to 12 Monkeys, you can't go back in time and kill your grandfather because you didn't already. At the same time, there are things that happened in the past that are better understood from the perspective of the time-traveler. Once you know X precedes Z but follows Y, the entire story is changed. The time travelers' role is no longer God-like with a prescient knowledge but as a cog in the machine that serves a role in advancing history to where it was going all along anyhow.



Donnie Darko

Donnie Darko is largely indecipherable on its own. Richard Kelly's strength is what is in his head, not putting what's in his head onto the movie screen. Which is why a quick plunge into the extra material on the DVD is important to understanding this movie. This is especially useful if you get your hands on the director's cut.

Once you find out about the tangent universes, artifacts and the living receiver stuff, the movie makes a great deal of sense. One of the assumptions of most time-travel movies is that there is one true time stream and we can make tangential changes in it by traveling through it to another point. This movie is different by positing that making a tangent universe is actually a bad thing.



Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure

Okay, this movie is on here for two reasons really. First, it was a movie I watched as much as any other when I was an adolescent. My mom figured out how to use our video camera to play videotapes we rented from the videostore through the VCR and dub them. So I had a copy of this movie before owning your favorite movies was common.

Second, it's a goofy movie. It's not a heavy-handed "Going back to kill your own grandfather" time travel story. They can and do come both with and without existential dread. Bill and Ted are traveling through time to collect historical figures to come speak at the final history presentation of the school year. Even Camus would've cracked a smile at something as absurd as that.



Primer

There was a brief couple of months in early 2005 where this movie made me lose my mind. I rented it from CinemaRevolution, watched it by myself and then promptly showed it to anyone who I could get to watch it with me. It's not a movie that you can really figure out in the first time through and also gets better with repeated viewings. I was so enthralled I literally watched the movie like an addict.

It was addicting because it has the most believable mechanism for time-travel in any movie I'd seen. Normally it's a device like a flux capacitor and we're asked to suspend our disbelief that this device is the reason time travel is possible. "Primer" used a version of realistic physics to explain how time travel could actually be possible in real physics. Seeing "Primer" was, for me, like having a dream that you wake from and are convinced that it was real.

Don't Hate the Player. Hate the Game.

I finally started watching "Lost" recently after an extended discussion with Gerry about the qualms I had about the show. This is exactly the sort of show which should've appealed to me right out of the gate and I should be square in the show's target demographic.

Yet at the time it first burst onto the scene I didn't get ABC very well on my rabbit ears nor can I really be bothered to sit down at a specific time on a specific night to catch a television program. By the time it made it to DVD, "Lost" was such a huge phenomenon that I was put off by it. Add in my perception of the show's writers favoring obfuscation over plot development and I let the "Lost" ship sail without me.

Which I'm perfectly okay with in the long run. I'm not the sort of person who shows up late to the scene and says, "Oh, wow. I didn't realize how good 'Lost' was and it really is." The moment where it was fully in the cultural eye as something new and fresh and exciting is over and, like I said, I let that moment pass with out involving myself in it. There are advantages like being able to look up answers to the show's questions and being able to knock out a block of episodes in a row.

But I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. It's a good show and one which engenders complete fandom. The producers of the show know this and play up the bulletin board material. It's certainly in their favor to do so because the buzz helps their ratings. Then the fans respond with more obsession and the cycle feeds itself again. All in all, "Lost" is shrouded in an excess of mystique which is unfortunate because it is legitimately good on its own merits.



Instead of banging on a tired drum about how "things are popular based on hype and promotion now" (now being the operative word as though it's something new), I'd like to list things that make me happy which are underrated and underappreciated and need more attention instead of tearing down something else which does get a lot of attention. In no order and indeterminite quantity...

Cultural Studies

When I transferred back from St. Norbert to the University of Minnesota, I took a class in my last full semester from the Cultural Studies and Comparative Literatures Department. I wrote my senior paper in that class when I ran into a problem professor in the English Department capstone class. I ruminated on how if I'd gone to the University first I probably would've been a CSCL major.

And I've taken that into my post-collegiate life. I don't need to have a teacher assigning me books to read them. In fact, that's the point of a liberal arts degree; to foster a diversity of interests (because it's not the money). So I a lot of time in bookstores perusing their cultural studies section.

There I make discoveries like Klosterman's "Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs" or the book I finished this weekend "American Nerd: The Story of My People" by Benjamin Nugent. The title is pretty explanatory of what the topic is but also of the slant.

This isn't like most cultural studies where a subject is examined from a distance. Nugent specifically weaves his own primary experience into the study and is thus able to cut into the "Why?" in much greater depth and detail. It also gives the narrative a definition and understanding a memoir usually doesn't have.

The Stretch of I-94 from Hudson, WI to St. Paul, MN

Driving from Minneapolis to just about any other major metropolitan area takes forever. The distance to Chicago or Milwaukee is about six hours and, unless you consider Duluth, Des Moines, LaCrosse or Eau Claire to be major cities, those are the closest metropolises to the Twin Cities. So if you're driving from the east on I-94 toward Minnesota, the last few hours though the farmland of West Wisconsin can seem interminable.

Then Hudson (on the border of Minnesota and Wisconsin) rolls up and you are attached to a rocket. Quickly buildings, malls and cities grow along the side of the road as you burn through the half hour to St. Paul and then it's across the high-bridge over the Mississippi River and into the heart of Minneapolis. If you've been tired driving through the night from Chicago or points further, that last stretch is like a bolt of energy.

The Re-playability of Certain Videogames

When Mario Kart came out over 15 years ago, could you have predicted we'd still be playing it into our late 20s? I suppose the paradigm has changed as we've grown older (and because we've grown older) where you don't stop playing videogames after college. It also matters that videogames have become less about reflexes and knowing a complex order of buttons to mash (bastions of the young and otherwise unencumbered) and are now much more egalitarian and relating to the realworld. When you're playing Mario Kart now, you only have to rotate your hands right and left like you would an actual steering wheel. Still it's been 15 years and the franchise is still going strong because guys like me still want to play.

Cover Versions of Songs You Love

"Loooove... Love will tear us apart... againnn"

Cover Versions of Songs That Suck (But Are Awesome Themselves)

"Dooooon't Stop... BEE-LEEE-VVIIINNN"

Spending A Long Weekend Doing Nothing

Well, not nothing. After a spending Friday night and into early Saturday morning celebrating a friend and co-worker's birthday party, I drove up to Madison to see my friends here. Since then I've seen the new Indiana Jones movie (if something is magnetic, cover it with fabric and it won't be anymore), played "Race for the Galaxy", had some excellent pork chops, done yoga, went for a really long walk, played some of the aforementioned Mario Kart, had people over for dinner, went to the gym, finished reading the aforementioned "American Nerd" and typed on my blog. As Mary and I were walking over to the gym this morning, we were talking about how great it is to have just spent this weekend with no particular plans. "It's like you're actually on vacation," she said. Which is 100% true and exactly what you need to feel relaxed and not tired going back to work on Tuesday.

2007 - The Year In Film Pt. 3

(Hi, Mom! I already did my taxes.)

Finally, here are the best of the best movies from 2007.

In 2007, The Top Five Movies stood apart from the rest of the bunch. I'll again type a few paragraphs about each which is why you might be reading this in March. In reverse order...



5.) Once

When I was 13, my childhood epilepsy returned for one isolated incident while I was away at summer camp. Chasing down the theory that I had the seizure because of a lack of sleep and exhaustation, I stayed up with my dad overnight the night before I had a CT scan. We watched two movies, "Terminator 2" and, more importantly, "The Commitments". It was the beginning of a family tradition of non-traditional musicals.

Now, more than half my life later, the guitar player from The Commitments is the male lead in a quaint, non-traditional musical. It's a romance through music but not in the way "Moulin Rouge" is, more the way it actually happens in real life. The circumstances aren't ideal. There are things which hold you back. But in the end you find a way to be with that person. "Once" is about what you love in its many forms.



4.) Lars and the Real Girl

"Lars and the Real Girl" is also about love in the real world. It's just about not knowing what you want yet. Though Ryan Gosling's character takes the road otherwise untraveled, it's a different shade of the journey most of us take to find the person for us. In a roundabout way, it's about chasing after the ideal person.

However anyone who has been on the journey knows it's really about finding out what is lovable about you. This movie could've been a freak show about a guy who has a relationship with a RealDoll. It's more about a man out-growing his damaged past and into a full and heathy adult. For him, the journey is about finding where and how he fits in the world.



3.) Hot Fuzz

The best satire comes from deep admiration. When Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg made "Shaun of the Dead" in 2004, it was from a place having seen and loved the old masters of the genre. It was spot on as a zombie movie eventhough, as a comedy, it was meant to also expose the quirks of the genre. It is a case of using the tools of the master to lovingly deconstruct the masters' house.

Then they returned last year to take on a genre even more ripe for satire, American action movies. Yet they took a different tack to lampooning the largest of Hollywood's movies. They made them very small. It's comedy is the comedy of inversion instead of adoption. By scaling down (but not toning down) the violence, the absurd hilarity was increased exponentially.



2.) Michael Clayton

I've been a fan of George Clooney for a long time. My admiration springs from his willingness to do projects which are difficult and on the fringe. Compare to his close friends. Could you see Brad Pitt in "O Brother Where Art Thou"? Or Matt Damon directing "Good Night and Good Luck"? Clooney has attained a level of being able to do the projects he wants and follows through on doing them.

"Michael Clayton" is another project with some teeth. It's part Grisham-esque legal thriller (without the courtroom) and part morality quest for the titular character. What sets the movie apart is the ending. I don't want to give it away. I will say that it was one of the rare times where the ending was set-up well throughout the movie to conclude at a point instead of just ending.



1.) Knocked Up

One year, two excellent movies about unwed pregnancy and in both cases they keep the baby. Hollywood has a liberal bias? Like the other movies I was drawn to this year, I enjoyed this movie because it was a reflection of the contemporary world. There are people who get pregnant out of wedlock and DON'T have their lives descend into ruin (despite what health class teaches us).

I also really like both Seth Rogan and Katherine Heigl. One of my constants of romantic comedies (even of the Apatow variety) is I have to like the girl and see myself in the guy. Now I don't see myself as an adrift stoner trying to set up a celebrity nudity site. But there is something about getting to a point in your life when you have to decide to switch from being someone's child to being an adult. For some people that's when they have a child of their own and, instead of being angsty and mourning their childhood, growing up a lot in a short time.

Finally, as I mentioned, it was an Apatow comedy. As a fan of "Anchorman" and "Forty Year Old Virgin", I'm glad to see the dual success of "Knocked Up" and "Superbad" solidifying the place for movies like this in the market. As I mentioned in my "Hot Rod" blurb, there's a different paradigm in movie comedies now. Ten years ago a comedy was based around a funny concept. You took a swinging 1960s superspy, put him in the post-AIDS 1990s and all of the jokes flowed from the "fish out of water" situation. Now it's sped up, more YouTube-ized where the what matters isn't a concept which can grow stale and wear thin quickly. You have to bring the jokes. This style where the plot is a starting point, not a teether, means there are no throwaway jokes. It's all in there because it's all funny.

2007 - The Year In Movies Pt. 2

Let's resume this little tea party and close it out asap.

Up next are the honorable mentions, aka The Films I Liked Which Didn't Make the Top Tier. I won't say anything about them because really my recommendation is to see them if you're interested in them but not to go too far out of your way if you aren't. Basically, they're enough to justify a rental for someone who is already interested in...

4: Rise of the Silver Surfer, American Gangster, Blades of Glory, The Ex, The Golden Compass, I'm Not There, The Last Mimzy, Music and Lyrics, Ratatouille, Rush Hour 3, Sleuth, Starter for 10, TMNT and Zodiac.

Penultimately, these are The Films In the Lower Half of the Top Tier. They're movies I'd recommend seeing because I really liked them and I think a good number of the people I know would like them too. Here are a few words about each.

300 I already praised the obvious things about "300" above. But it's also interesting to the post B.A. me because I believe in modern myth. Not "am interested in." Believe in. And when the characters talk about their actions resonating through history, I think, "Just like how there's a movie about them now."

Beowulf Same thing about modern myth when it comes to this movie. "Beowulf" is synonymous with "Because you had to" reading and the epic poem has therefore lost why it survived in the first place. Myth should feel present. It should feel like a part of our lives. So when a film like "Beowulf" takes that myth and makes it "available" to a modern audience, it has succeeded.

Breach Based on the real-life Robert Hanssen espionage case, Chris Cooper is the gravity which holds the story together. His portrayal of Hanssen holds the duality of being patriotic and virtious and while being a traitor as well. He basically carries the film all by himself but, like a spy, without being obvious about it.

Charlie Wilson's War I saw this movie after the New Year so consider it bonus coverage to make up for not finishing this list earlier. The Global War on Terror is understandably a delicate subject right now. There really isn't a way that you can approach it without taking a stance on it. So laurels go to the people behind this film for saying something poignant instead of being preachy and for being funny without taking the topic lightly.

Control The saddest part of any movie about Joy Division and their frontman Ian Curtis is when the band finds out they are going to tour America. It's sad because they are all so happy and it appears their career (and lives) are taking off. But, knowing the history, a Joy Division fan knows Ian Curtis hangs himself on the eve of their American tour. It makes the moment sad because you know that their happiness is really just the beginning of the end.

Death at a Funeral This movie was a very dry almost-farce which has a brilliant "Chekov's Gun" and, based upon what I've read of other "End of the Year" lists, I don't know if other people got it in the same way I did. It's comedy is based in situations (but not sitcom) and in manners and in uncomfortable circumstances.

Eagle vs Shark Starring Jemaine of "The Flight of the Conchords", this movie's tagline was a perfect summation. A story about there being someone for everyone apparently, it's also a story about not judging yourself because of what other people think of you.

Hot Rod There is a new paradigm in comedy. Ten years ago you had to have a quirky concept like a 1960s superspy who is out-of-place in contemporary times. Now, in our post-YouTube culture, you just need to have funny jokes like "I needed to think about last night. So I galloped into a wooded glen, and after punch-dancing out my rage and suffering an extremely long and very painful fall, I realized what has to be done." It has become a medium of ideas and unlimited potential.

Juno This year's "Little Miss Sunshine" down to its quirky dialogue and the way it snuck from the fringe to the mainstream on the strength of its word-of-mouth. Here's the thing. I think it's a better movie and is even more deserving of the attention.

The King of Kong: A Fistfull of Quarters This movie was the perfect set of circumstances. Profiling something with as much drama already as the obsessive world of competitive arcade-game-playing, the filmmakers lucked into a situation which also injected some dark green-eyed jealosy.

Live Free or Die Hard One of my favorite moments of the year came when Susie and I saw "Hot Fuzz" in Madison with CJ and Elaine amongst others. We were all hyped up and talking about what we thought of the film (more on that later). Then CJ turned his head to see the poster for this film. "Oh, no," he said. "Oh, yes," said I. The movie promptly lived up to the moment.

Ocean's Thirteen As much as I liked "Oceans 12" at the time, later viewings have worn thin pretty quickly. In opposition to that is "Oceans 13", a movie I saw multiple times in the theater and enjoyed each time. The movie needs a strong villian to wash out the moral ambiguity of the heist and Pacino's character really deserves what happens to him.

The Simpsons Movie It says something about the vitality of "The Simpsons" that the series is still going while the movie came out over the summer. It says even more that the movie was so good proving that they aren't entirely out of ideas. Whether you thought it was a glorified episode or not, you couldn't deny it was made of what it is that makes The Simpsons great.

Spider-man 3 This was a different kind of Spider-man movie. Action was eschewed for emotion. I don't know if I would've liked this movie as much if I weren't in a relationship. But I liked the ending when Peter comes back Mary Jane, she goes to meet him and they are just back together.

Stardust Well, Neil Gaiman wrote it so you know the story will be good. And DeNiro is in it. And Claire Danes. And Ricky Gervais too. Then something awful happens to Rupert Everett's character and you say, "Oh, it's silly fantasy. I get it."

Superbad How great was this movie? That the phrase "I am McLovin'," didn't become annoying along the lines of "Yeah, baby!" is a testament to how many good jokes it had to spare. This movie almost snaked its way into the top flight of my favorite movies this year just on its quotability and rewatchability.

The Ten Now that the Apatow crew has gone above ground, The State/Stella/Wet Hot American Summer group is the best thing in the fringe. I was even willing to see this movie all by myself because of my love for their last movie, "The Baxter." Yet another which fits in the paradigm of having the jokes and "The Ten" has them in spades.

There Will Be Blood Another movie I saw after the New Year and I was going to write an entire entry about it. Instead I'll just summarize here.

Seeing a Paul Thomas Anderson movie can be like eating a salad. You get it in your head to eat right and so you order a salad. At first, you feel great because you're eating all of the croutons and cherry tomatos. Then it seems like there is too much fucking lettuce to eat in your whole life. Somehow though you stick out the lettuce and you finish the salad. You aren't particularly full and think maybe you should've ordered a steak. Then two days later you're still thinking about how good you were by ordering a salad. You even congratulate yourself for having the salad.

Ladies and gentlemen, I feel good about seeing "There Will Be Blood" in the same way I feel good about eating a salad.

Walk Hard After a few consecutive years of Oscar-baiting musician biographies, it was about time for someone to parody the genre. That it feel to Judd Apatow and his compatriots is comedy gold. The best part is that, since John C. Reilly can actually sing, it's actually able to be a good movie in the genre it simultaneously lampoons. If it were based on actual events, that is.

2007 - The Year in Film, Part 1

Since the year is over, by default it's time for my column about my favorite movies of the last year. (Happy New Year by the way and sorry for not posting in December.) I saw 55 different movies this year which is a prodigious number and still 30% fewer than I saw in 2006. Maybe the less I say about 2006 from now on the better.

First are the special categories.

The Worst Movie of the Year - 30 Days of Night

It was tough being the worst movie this year with films like "The Darjeeling Limited", "Across the Universe", "Transformers" and "The Invasion" all finding their ways into multiplexes. But somehow "30 Days of Night" eclipsed them all.

It took an interesting twist on vampire movies by isolating their victims in the endless night above the Arctic Circle and then wrapping a flaccid plot around it. There really is no reason to see this movie if you think the concept is novel because it's the only redeeming quality of the film. Once you grasp its uniqueness, the movie you imagine will be much better than the one which made it onto the screen. In that regard, it's this year's "Hellboy" (even down to being based on an independent comic book).

The Best Movie from Last Year That I Saw This Year - Ehhhh...

There weren't a lot of movies I didn't see last year that I ended up seeing this year. Based on what CJ and Elaine tell me, "Air Guitar Nation" would've been that movie if it had ever been at the video store when Susie and I went to rent a movie. So instead I'll use this space to talk about my growing interest in the Harry Potter movies.

First, let me qualify a little bit. I read about 100 pages into the first Potter book and decided, "No thanks. Not for me." So I did give them a try and, like I said, it wasn't for me. Second, I'd always heard from people who had read the books, "Oh, you have to get to the third book and then it picks up." As though I want to plow through 600 pages and then find out if it really does pick up. But the last two movies, "Goblet of Fire" from two years ago and "Order of the Phoenix" from this year, caught my fancy as Susie (the real reason I ended up seeing them) will watch them at home.

I like "Goblet" and "Phoenix" because they have Voldemort in it. The world construction and character introduction and the behaviors and rituals of the world J.K. Rowling is imagining isn't really that interesting to me. I'm not into that kind of stuff and thus that rules out 95% of fantasy novels for me. Yet these two movies (and, I guess, novels) are when things start to go bad. The fit is hitting the shan, people are freaking out and there's actually something at stake.

Without that apocalyptic presence of Voldemort, the stories are too sitcom-esque for me. If you just wait 90 minutes, the world will be okay and everyone one can go one living their happy lives. At the end of "Goblet" and "Phoenix", the world is much worse off after 90 minutes and not everyone even made it out alive. It follows the "end times" archetype perfectly and it breathed something into the Harry Potter franchise which was never there for me before. Perhaps that's what people meant about waiting until the third book.

The "14 Year Old Boy Inside Me" Award - 300

This award goes each year to the movie I guilty enjoyed because it had all of the things someone half my age wants in a movie. I was going to give this to the Rob Zombie "Halloween" remake because of the amount of nakedness in the movie. However I didn't want to encourage anyone to actually see the Rob Zombie "Halloween" remake.

Instead I'll give this award over to "300" without hesitation. The movie was instantly quotable, the action sequences were the best of the year, there was a solid enough plot to the movie to pull it all together and it didn't skimp on the testosterone. Hey, there's even some well-placed nakedness in this movie too.

So eventhough the contemporary Mike liked "300" for different reasons (see my following entry), I'm sure the Mike who is half his age would've really dug it too.