Q-Unit

I have to agree with Apostropher, this 50 cent/Queen mashup is the best I've heard since the Grey album.

The Power Of The Mind

I guess wildfire.koden.org got meditated away. Of course that begs the question, if wishing it didn't exist can actually make my website disappear, how exactly do I still have a website?

Update: I lied, it looks like my IP has just been blocked. You, dear non-Raliegh/Durham-area- Roadrunner-using reader, can still learn the joys of meditation, but I am doomed to non-transcendent life inside my own tortured brain. Is my Tao-Chakra misaligned or what?

Don't Piss Off The Panda

Jon got me this shirt (logo below) for my birthday, and the Penthouse Panda Bear rejoiced.

I'm Behind, But Someday I Won't Be

Coming soon to a Wildfiring near you:

• New Sashaisms
  
• Rome Season 1 Review
  
• Scrubs Season 3 Review
• Jarhead Review
• Shawshank Redemption Review
  

People who know me (that would be all of you,) am I forgetting anything?

Zen Wildfire

My old website is now an ode to meditation, which, appropriately enough, is something you might want to look into if you'd been reading my old website.

Damn the Press

I swear to God. My family gets slandered every freaking day, and it's really starting to piss me off. Sure Aunt Maureen has gained a few pounds, but that doesn't mean you have to put it on the front page of CNN.com :
And a there's a gallery too! I couldn't even look. Soots, Rudy, do one of you want the case?

Blacka-mediocre

I had high expectations before I saw Blackalicious on Tuesday, but a bunch of little things combined to make the show subpar. Here's my list of quibbles:

• Every attempt to psych up the crowd centered around yelling "NORTH CAROLINA" Repetitively. Laura started a tally, and was up to 50+ NC shoutouts.
  
• They had a substitute DJ. Chief Xcel's wife was having a kid.
  
• Sound quality was crappy.
• The white rapper's (The Truthspeaker, I think) performances ranged from decent to bad.
  
• Gift of Gab's fast raps were mostly unintelligible because of the bad sound quality.
• Song selection was average. Mostly stuff from the new album.
  
• Free-styles were weak.
  
• The backup singers' harmonies didn't synch up well with the beats/raps.
  

It was still fun. The slower raps ("Deception", "Sky is Falling") sounded nice. The crowd was pretty good. There were 3 or 4 very spastic 20-something white kids dancing in front of us that made me laugh quite a lot. The opening band was suprisingly good. The dancers were cool. So, it certainly wasn't a waste of time or money, but I'm not sure I'd rush out to see them again at Cat's Cradle.

Strike one ...

Iron and Wine - In My Lady's House

Hm, maybe the amazing powers of Teddy-Bear Jeremy are eroding - Alexa didn't like the first Iron and Wine song. What I considered an "incredibly warm voice" she thought was "just whispering." Here's my second attempt to win her over. It's still a slow song, but not quite as lullaby-y.

Alexa and Her Mom

Alexa and her mom at some big famous house in London

Some Songs

I've recently gotten into some mp3 blogs. Since I'm nothing if not an unoriginal (triple-negative anyone?), I'll occasionally post some songs that I like --- Starting now. Click the song titles for mp3s.

Iron and Wine and Calexico - 16, Maybe Less

This one is for Alexa. Iron and Wine most definitely brings out "Teddy-Bear Jeremy" as my friends would be apt to say. Sam Beam (the singer here) has an incredibly warm voice. It's a voice that was meant to sing sappy love songs and Iron and Wine works best when he does just that. This is always one of the first songs I listen to when I can't sleep. It is simply beautiful and definitely worth checking out.

Blackalicious - Black Diamonds and Pearls

I'm seeing these guys live for the first time tonight! Oh yes, white people dancing. I'll post my thoughts tomorrow maybe. So, the new CD hasn't grabbed me like Blazing Arrow did, but it's still pretty good, and this is one of my favorite tracks.

Good Night and Good Luck - 7.5

Usually, I just go to movies to have fun, but every so often a movie will sneak up and change me in some way. Some times the changes are kind of big (I don't think I've had fast food since I watched Super Size Me,) and sometimes they're small and stupid (no Merlot since Sideways - like I can really tell the difference,) or they can be fairly random (oddly enough, City of God is the inspiration behind my failed picture of the day experiment.) It's a little too early to tell, but Good Night and Good Luck might just be one of those movies that makes a big change. I knew within the first few minutes of the movie, that I wanted to be better informed about the world.

Good Night and Good Luck tells the story of journalist Edward R. Murrow's 1960s confrontation with Senator Joseph McCarthy in a straight forward way. You wouldn't think McCarthy's specter would still be around 40 years later, but you can't help identifying aspects of today's political landscape while watching Good Night. The endless string of half-truths that flows from Washington is not so different from McCarthy's justification for his crusade, and more than a few people have been labeled 'unamerican' for questioning the current administration's policies (at least, we get a nice euphemism for traitor now.)

Director George Clooney keeps things fairly basic and mostly does a fine job. It isn't a flashy movie, and there are a few flaws in the movie-making: a sub-plot fizzles and it's a bit politically biased in some ways, hence the 7.5 instead of something a bit higher. It's a somewhat odd comparison, but Hotel Rwanda came to mind several times as I watched. Both are well-made movies based on true stories, and both have immediate and striking political relevance. Cloony can't quite match the emotional punch of Rwanda, but that doesn't prevent Good Night and Good Luck from succeeding Rwanda as the official "Most Important Movie of the Year."

So, now I'm going to be a good citizen. Since I watched the film on Thursday, I've read through two issues of The Economist and spent a dozen or so hours reading news online. Who knows how long my inspiration will last, but any movie that can change the way people act (and even more so, the way my stubborn ass acts, ) is doing something right. This, like Hotel Rwanda before it, is not only a good movie and well worth seeing; it's an important movie that you should see.

Happy (belated) Birthday

Here's a picture from Ben's 21st (I used one with Mapp picking his nose just for an added little bonus):

Me, You and Everyone We Know - 3.5

Hey look, it's a multiple perspective non-thriller made by, for and about art-school students of all ages! Now, I'm as arty as anyone who has no artistic ability. I listen to weird music that 99% of the general public has never heard of. I've seen every episode of Six Feet Under, and I kind of liked Claire most of the time. Hell, I've got a blog that no-one reads that I update regularly. On a scale of 1-10 in artsy, I've got to be a 7+, and I still couldn't identify with a single person in this movie. Not the run-of-the-mill artsy old-person cab driver Not the guy who lights his hand on fire for no good reason. Not the horny underage bisexuals. Not the kid who gets to judge a blowjob contest between the 2 horny underage bisexuals nor the guy trying to seduce them. Not the little girl who is buying blenders for her dowry. And even though he is freakin' hilarious, I can't even really see where the 7-year old who is obsessed with "pooping back and forth" (don't even ask) is coming from. I don't mind that the movie is weird, some of my favorite movies are extremely weird. I just think that the characters, at their bizarre core, are boring. I was playing sudoku (further proof that I am artsy, I might add) 2/3rds of the way through the movie, and the movie is only an hour and a half long. The movie isn't poorly made or anything; it just didn't do anything for me.

Alexa Pictures

Alexa and Maylynn in Bournemouth

Alexa and Guinness

Capote - 8.5

Ah, movie season. It's always amazing how November arrives and movies magically stop sucking. Capote is a very strong movie. If you've heard anything about it you know the summary judgment is that Phillip Seymour Hoffman turns in an amazing performance as the title character. As contrary as I usually am, I can't disagree here. In fact, I'll just hand out my Best Actor Oscar pick now, and be done with it. There's a non-negligible chance he'll get shafted, but I very much doubt there will be a better performance this year. As good as Hoffman's Capote was, Catherine Keener's Harper Lee absolutely stole 2 or 3 scenes from him. She was amazing and I really hope she at least gets a nomination for best Supporting Actress. So, the acting was great, but that was only possible because the script and directing were both rock solid. All in all, it was just an impressively made film.

I'll close with negatives, but they're mostly details. I really did like the movie a lot. My most substantive gripe is that the pace was a little bit too slow, especially at the beginning. My other complaint --- well, it's more a comment than a real complaint --- is that there probably isn't much rewatchability here. The most obvious reference point for this movie, both content-wise and thematically, is Dead Man Walking, which I consider a great great movie, but I've only seen once and have no plans to watch again. Capote is a deep, depressing movie (I felt like I needed to listen to Alvin and the Chipmunks or something to cheer me up when I left the theatre.) As such, it probably doesn't lend itself to casual viewing.

Capote is easily one of my favorite movies of the year. I'd argue that it and Crash are a substantial step above anything else I've seen. Highly recommended.

On the Bright Side

So, I was leaving class listening to my Ipod which was in my jacket pocket today, and I jogged across the road to beat the oncoming stream of traffic from the traffic light that was about to turn green. About half way across the music stopped. I assumed my headphones had just come out, but as I got to the other side and tried to plug them back in, my Ipod was gone. You can probably see where this is going. I turned around to see the Ipod laying about 2 feet away from the center line just in time to see the traffic arrive. The first car probably saw it fall out of my pocket so they avoided it. I was so lucky with the next 3 vehicles. A large moving van style truck hit it first, squarely with both tires. You could hear a nice soft little crunch. A pickup and a sedan also scored direct hits as stood gaping. When the line of traffic was gone, I went to grab it and this is what I saw:

Well, it wasn't sitting on a table then, but you get the idea, not pretty. As I'm walking the rest of the way home, lamenting the loss of my $300 toy, I try to be positive. It could've been worse, at least I hadn't started deleting music from my laptop, and even better, there wasn't anyone around to see my idiocy. So I'm fiddling with it as I reach my apartment, thinking that at least now I'll get to see what the inside of one of these things looks like when the fucker turns on:

Yes, it still works! Fully functional, just a little hard to read. Hell, I consider it an upgrade. Now instead of having a boring old Ipod like every teenybopper in America, I have an Ipod and a story. Maybe Ipod will put me in a commercial or something... hmm. I can see it now, my silhouette cursing as my ipod gets run over by 3 cars and then me bopping along when I realize it still plays. Steve Jobs, are you listening? It's marketing gold, and all I want in payment is a new Ipod ...

It's Officially Time to Worry

I've pretty much been ignoring all of the apocalyptic bird flu hype, but the headline on CNN.com tonight is just about enough to make me go hijack the first TheraFlu delivery truck I can find:

"Bush to unveil bird flu strategy"

Yep, we're fucked.