Book Review: Trainspotting

Irvine Welsh's first novel, Trainspotting, is a very good book. It is the story of a heroin junkie who is trying to go clean while hanging around his skag using friends. The story takes place in Edinburgh, Scottland, and 99% of the book is written in heavy slang. If you've read A Clockwork Orange, it's kind of like that, but with a lot more slang. The writing style of Welsh is amazingly creative. Every chapter is about 10 or so pages long and has a different name. They are usually from the 1rst person perspective of the main character, Renton, but a lot of the time the chapters are written from the perspective of Renton's friends. Sometimes the chapters are even written in the third person; this is the only time that the heavy accent isn't used. Part of the genius of this book is that each chapter is a short story in itself. Somebody could come along to a library and read only one chapter from the book and, in most cases, it would be a little short story that doesn't require the reader to know the history of the characters or anything. The book seems to be composed of a ton of little short stories (in chronological order) about a group of friends. When you are finished with the book, all of the little short stories come together and form one large story about the friends.
It is a lot like the Catcher In The Rye in the sense that the 1rst person perspective of the character is so realistic that you feel like he is a real person. That is essentially the essence of the Catcher In The Rye. Of course, Catcher is a classic, but I think that I like Welsh's story even more. It is just as realistic and believable, but he has added so many other elements to it. I havn't read any other book like this before. You can find traces of Chuck Palahniuk in this book (as you can in Geek Love or any of the other books that inspired him). I seriously suspect that the idea of the virus clinics that Jack went to in Fight Club came from this book; I speak of the chapter entitled "Bad Blood" in Trainspotting.
In fact, I recomend that everybody reads the "Bad Blood" chapter of Trainspotting next time they are in a book store or library. It is an excelent example of how each chapter can be viewed as a short story, it shows some of Palahniuk's inspiration, and it gives you a good feel of Welsh's writing style and his amazing imagination. Also, the "Bad Blood" is from the perspective of Davie, who doesn't have as thick of an accent as a lot of the other characters, like Renton. Hence, the chapter is easier to read. The book has a slang dictionary in the back in case you get lost, but only about a 3rd of the words are in there. Don't worry though, you'll hardly notice the slang when you start reading it.
Another cool thing about the book is how all the bands they mention are on the level. Ones I can remember are: Iggy Pop (a lot of talk about Iggy), the Clash, the Fall, and the Pogues are some respectable ones I can think of off the top of my head. They also mention the unrespectable: Skrewdriver. They only mention Skrewdriver because they meet some nazi skinhead type though. I wonder if any of these bands are on the soundtracks. I would think so. I'll have to look into that, my dad has one of them, so I prolly will.
Anyways, Trainspotting is a really great book and I consider it one of my favorites now. I am definately going to read more of Welsh's books too, including Porno, which is a sequel to Trainspotting. I'll tell you how those turn out.

PS: For an example of the slang used in this book, I've started working on a slang converter which will translate your text into Trainspotting-esqe slang. Try it here.

Book Review: Dibs In Search Of Self

In my speed reading class we used this book called Dibs In Search Of Self to practice with. I finished it today. On the cover it is labeled as a "Child Therapy Classic". I guess you would find it in the Psychology section of a library. It was about this little 5 year old kid who was all messed up and never talked to anyone or did anything. He yelled at other kids at his preschool and such. The book is written by this doctor who used thearapy on him and cured him. I guess it was kind of interesting because by the end of the book he is completely normal. The best part about the book was the songs that Dibs made up. The were all about killing people with hammers and burning down buildings. That was pretty cool. I think I want to use some of those lyrics for a song of my own one day.

Movie Review: Freaks

Tod Browning's classic 1932 movie Freaks is (to my knowledge) rated X in the UK and banned in Ireland. It's controversial because Browning casted real freaks in to his film about a traveling circus freak act. Among the freaks are midgets, sword swallowers, a man with no bottom half, a man with only a torso and a head, a bearded woman, a half man half woman, a girl with no arms, siamese twins and a bunch of other strange looking characters. It is said by many to be the most disturbing movie ever made. I, however wasn't bothered by it, but it may be different from person to person. The first 45 minutes or so can be kind of slow, but after that it gets pretty interesting until it's just pure awesomeness. The tagline: Can a full grown woman truely love a midget? works, as the plot is of a woman tricking a wealthy midget into loving her and providing her with money. It's not just any midget either. The midget looks like he is about 4 years old, seriously, but he is really a full un-grown adult (not in picture). I would recommend seeing this movie, especially for the awesome ending.
4 stars

Movie Review: Day After Tomorrow (new)

My first words of warning are not to see this movie. It isn't horrible per se, but it isn't worth seeing. The main plot is pretty cheesy and is the same as a lot of other movies: somebody is trapped somewhere and a close friend or family member has to go on an extreme adventure to rescue them. The only good thing about this movie was the special effects. They were really realistic looking, but you can see that just by seeing the trailer for it. It isn't worth wasting money on just for the special effects.
2 1/2 stars

Movie Review: Super Size Me (new*)

Super Size Me is a documentary on McDonald's food's effect on the human body. A man decides to eat McDonalds for each meal everyday for 30 days. Needless to say, this fucks him up. He has 3 different doctors to monitor his changes and he records everything with a camera. Also, he has a few rules, one being that if the workers ask him if he wants to "Super Size That", he has to. The first time he gets a supersized meal, it takes him about 30 minutes of pure eating and he it all up in the end. Of course, by the end of the 30 days, he is fatter (by 25 pounds), but what the doctors didn't expect was all the other problems his body got; such as kidney problems and high blood pressure. It was entertaining, it wasn't the greatest documentary, but it's probably as good as it gets as far as a movie on that simple idea goes.
3 1/2 stars

* Starting now, I am going to write "(new)" next to the movie review titles if they are new movies that are still in theatres.

Movie Review: Mullholand Dr

Mullholand Doctor was one of the weirdest movies I've ever seen. It made no sense at all to me, and I still don't understand where the "doctor" part comes from! It is about an aspiring actress who moves into a Hollywood apartment and meets a woman who doesn't know who she is ever since she got in a car crash. There is also a blue cube and a key they find for it. If that isn't enough, there is also the midget from Twin Peaks as well. There are a lot of random scenes and everything is just thrown together and I don't understand it in the slightest bit really. I saw it on the USA channel, so it was edited. Perhaps if I saw the full version it would make more sense. Either way, I need to see it again sometime. I am not going to rate it on account of not understanding it.

Movie Review: Waking Life

I read the "plot outline" of Waking Life at IMDB; it summed it up so well that I decided to post it here.
A man in a dream state encounters many characters who, one by one, talk about their views on the meaning, perception, and reality of human existence.*
You are probably** thinking, "wait a second, that's pretty much the same plotline as Slacker". Well, you are right. It is pretty much the same plotline as Slacker. This is due to the fact that the director is the same. Waking Life could be viewed as a 'sequel' to Slacker, or an updated version. Because both movies are good and the director, Richard Linklater, is on the level, I don't mind the plotlines being similar. Linklater directed good movies such as Slacker, Waking Life, Tape, and if you like Suburbia(96), he directed that too. He also directed such mediocre movies as Dazed and Confused (which I don't understand why people like so much) and School of Rock. Linklater has also acted in a few movies. He played a small part in both Slacker and Waking Life, as well as Spy Kids and Beavis and Butt-Head Do America.
Waking Life is pretty weird, and sometimes random, but it makes a good emulation of a dream state. The movie is part animation and part real time... technicly it is 100% animated and 100% shot in real time, at the same time. This is because it looks as though the movie was shot, and then filtered and further animated on the computer. It gives the movie a really original realistic dream state look to it. It was pretty weird that the other night as I was starting to play this movie on my computer, I was similtaniously setting up my blog about dreams. This was before I even knew the movie was about dreams. Some parts of the movie were weird and made me feel like I was in a dream because the conversations they were having related so much to exactly what I had been thinking about; lucid dreams and what not. Also, I was impressed at being able to recognize the actors for a handful of the characters (who all played small parts, aside from the main character). The actors I recognized the voices of were: Nicky Katts, Ethan Hawk, Adam Goldberg, and finally, Linklater himself. For those of you playing at home, you can see if you recognize them as well!
4 stars

*This is to remind you to click the link when you are fininshed reading the whole blog. You don't want to click it right now do you!? I mean, that is, if you have only read the first few lines and jumped down here when you saw the footnote asterix thing. But, if you have already read the whole post, well go right ahead, click the link. (This was helpful in reminding you, you probably would have forgotten all about the link at the top by the end of reading the post. You are now officially reminded)

**Not really. Actually you probably havn't seen Slacker, or if you have, you didn't make the same connection.

Movie Review: Fahrenheit 911

The problem I had with this movie was the matter of seeing it. Last night, the opening night, I went there to meet some friends and it was sold out; I bought a ticket for a showing that was a few hours later. I went back home, ate dinner, and drove all the way back out to century 24. I left over an hour before the movie started, drove around forever finding parking and finally got in a huge massive line once I got in the theatre. The line was big and it got much bigger when 45 minutes later when I was still in it. My friends finally arived and said that they had a spot in line about a dozen people ahead of my spot, so we went over there. Later, some kid gave us a balloon for "making it towards the front of the line" or something. A few minutes after that, security forced us to go to the very end of this now massively long line. That asshole kid waved when we walked to the back. He must have gave Jenny the balloon to show the security which people "cut in line". We decided we would never get any decent seats so we refunded our money and left. We tried to see if any other theatres were playing the movies, but only Century theatres were playing it (now that they ran Madstone out of business), and downtown would be even more packed. Eventually we just gave up. This was after spending so much time just trying to see the movie; and a lot of gas money back and forth.
Today, I decided to see a cheap matinea (sp?) showing of the movie so I went with Andrew at 3:15 pm at the century 24. Can you believe they charge full price for seeing a movie that early?? Decent, normal movie theatres only charge full price when its past 5 or 6. I would gladly go to another theatre over terrible century theatres, but they were the only ones playing it. We decided that one of us had to sneak in to even out the ticket price (as I suggest everyone do for all movies at century 24). Unfortunately, the theatre the movie was in was on the west south of the building and I only really knew how to sneak in the north wing. We both ended up paying full price. But at least now I know where to sneak in the south wing.

Moore did an impressive job explaining the Bush administration's crimes and the "war on terror". It starts out by showing the ties to Saudi Arabia that washington has. A lot of this I did not know about. I figured that Saudi Arabia was an allie because they provided American companies to suck up their resources and provide a strategic military base (the reason for many US allies). It turns out that it goes deeper than that. A lot of the movie has a lot of great footage of Bush being an idiot like usual. It's overall a pretty funny movie. I once saw this interview by Matt Lauer (sp? who cares) of Micheal Moore talking about his "controvercial new movie". Matt seemed to not be talking about the movie and what critics say as much as critisizing Moore and his beliefs himself. He was taking everything personaly, it seemed, and kept trying to pull fast ones on Moore. Lauer said "you say this movie isn't for political purposes, but when one watches it, it seems like that's all it is!". Matt doesn't have a difference in his mind about a documentury on the truth and a political trick. Moore, being smarter and more decent then Matt, then said "if I was trying to do something political, I would run for office. I make movies, so that's what I did." Matt, being the clever idiot, said "wait a second though. It appears that a lot of democrats helped market this movie... and here you are saying it isn't for political reasons". Moore then came back and made him look like some sort of idiot that only watches the Today show. Moore replied something like "If you knew anything about me and what I stand for, you'd know that I am vehemenantly against the Democrats because they have no spine and arn't anybody I think could handle a job in the white house." Moore didn't mention anything in the interview about his support of the green party, nor did he mention it in his film. Obviously, if you were making 'biased film' for your political party's gain, you would mention your political party in some way; praise them, show the audience how good they are... anything. But unfortunately for Matt, Moore's movie isn't a biased political trick. It is a comprehensively truthful angle of the Bush administration that has been on everybody's tongue, but nobody has yet come out and said something about it in the scale of Micheal Moore's Fahrenheit 911.
4 1/2 stars

A NEW BLOG! FALITLON

Fear And Loathing In The Land Of Nod, or FALITLON is my new blog I started a couple of days ago. It is made intirely for the purpose of posting dreams for all to read. Initially, this idea came about because I found out that if you write down all your dreams, you will soon be familiar with your dreamstate enough to be able to control them and have lucid dreams. Why not put them on a blog? There is only one dream right now, it is semi-long but it is pretty weird and funny. Also, these posts will not only be my dreams, I am in the process of enlisting just about anyone to be a member of the blog who wants to post dreams of theirs. In time, I hope it will turn out to be a huge archive of dreams.
The website address is www.falitlon.blogspot.com
Note: Since it just started yesterday or so, there is still work to be done on how the outlook of the site will be; it will look better and be organized soon.
(one of these days i'm going to get organazized...)

Tomorrow Is A Big Day

Tomorrow is a good day for people who like the same movies as me. This is because Fahrenhiet 911 comes out in theatres and Tod Browning's Freaks is playing on TCM.

Reagan Is Dead, Who Cares?

Well, I don't, for one. People die every day, people are dying right now - and a lot of those people weren't assholes. Yet, there is no huge all out large festival to mourn their deaths. This man was one of the most ruthlessly capitalist presidents America has seen. Especially for his time. In fact, he is often refered to as creating a new path for the following presidents. You know, the path where you give corporations a ton of breaks and cut down on social programs and welfare. Oh yeah, plenty of military subsidaries, for good measure.
Reagan, no doubt, was big on that whole "trickle down economy" bullshit. I can't even begin to say how ridiculous it is that anybody buys that "trickle down" shit. They should just say "Hey, give us rich people more money! Trust us, it will be good". For those of you not familiar with the idea, it means that when you give the rich larger meals, it will benefit the everyone because the rich will have bigger table scraps they might want to give the poor. Of course, giving the poor larger meals just wouldn't make sense.
Reagan gave the OK to the whole corporate merger movement. Indeed 9 out of 10 of the biggest corporate mergers happened under his presidency. For those of you who don't see why corporate mergers are such a bad thing, well, what can I say but that you are blind and hopeless [;-)]. It would take too long to explain the whole thing.
Mr. Reagan also did cool things like throw away safety regulations and give corporations tax-funded research information. Yes, that means that when you paid taxes for "public research", it was really just going to corporations who didn't want to fund it themselves. The Reagan government was also the only member of the UN to vote against a reform on dumping hazerdous materials. The code was in reaction of studies showing the deaths of millions of 3rd world babies.
He also lead the new "War On Drugs" that we see working so well today... and not to mention how he "saved us" from the international communist conspiracy - The same conspiracy that turned out to be just that - A conspiracy, and a false one too. It's unfortunate that America can now point the finger at any nation in it's way of Imperialist Domination and say "Communist!" and tell the public that "there's still time, these people can still be stopped!". But the more things change, the more they stay the same, and the word "communist" (meaning any thing in the way of the capitalist greed machine) has now changed to "terrorist".
Also, speaking of terrorists, guess what other cool things Reagan did. To help fight the "communist comspiracy", he gave lots of money and weapons to these neat people called "islamic fundamentalists". He also aided this one awesome dude, maybe you've heard of him, "Osama Bin Laden". Needless to say, he was the president, therefore all these things he did were good things, don't question it, it's much more fun to celebrate him! That way you can have some cake and ice cream and forget about the hell he helped create for many people.
I was watching one of the eulogies of some rich old white man speak of Reagan's glorious life and he was talking about the good old times: He shared the memories with the audience that we can look back and laugh about, like the time he funded terrorists that later attacked and killed 3,000 americans on 911 and countless other acts of terrism commited on other parts of the world. HA! That Reagan! What a card! And that one time when he and his wife Nancy were vehemenantly against stem-cell research on moral grounds (even though church and state are seperate... right?) even though stem-cell research could seriously help many sick people such as people with Alzheimers! Man, that was funny. His wife still embraces his amazing sense of NOT being a complete hipocrite, by later doing an about-face and running to her friend Walker Bush because she suddenly realizes how many Americans should have the right to stem-cell reasearch. Of course, this had nothing to do with the fact that ol' Ronny himself developed Alzheimers... nope... purely coincidence.
To sum up, Reagan was a right wing bitch who radically expanded on the idealogy of giving corporations a blank check and sending the American citizens the bill. Given this information, I can't help but feel that he was more of a traitor than any "communist" could ever be.

Movie Review: True Romance

I forgot to rate this movie right after I first saw it, so it's kinda blurry in my mind. As I remember, True Romance was Quinten Terrintino's version of Taxi Driver. I say this because in both movies the main character takes on a pimp to try and free a hooker. True Romance goes farther with it than Taxi Driver did. What I mean is that True Romance is more focused on what happens after the scuffle with the pimp, as opposed to Taxi Driver which is more focused on what happens leading up to it. I'm sure this is Christian Slater's best movie, which would be followed by the Heathers. Brad Pitt was also in this movie in one of his most inspiring roles. He played the roomate who did nothing but constantly lay on the couch and smoke weed. There were about 2 scenes that he was in and neither of them really even required his character to exist. Did I say inspiring? I meant worthless. Aside from Pitt's cameo appearence, which was hyped up on the movie cover to appear as a main character, the movie was good. I would suggest you see it, especially if you are a fan of Terrintino, Taxi Driver or hookers.
4 stars

Movie Review: Eyes Wide Shut

I finally saw Stanley Kubricks last movie, Eyes Wide Shut. I think Kubrick made his point that he started attempting to convey in A Clockwork Orange: He likes to have lots of naked women in his films. It's obvious that Stanley just wanted an excuse to see Nicole Kidman naked; making Eyes Wide Shut was the only possibly answer to his problem. The movie was slow at first, then it got pretty interesting, got slow again, then just rambled off in the movie equivalent of a confused mumble. I think the movie would have been a lot better if it was edited more. Not in a "too many boobies!" type of editing way (although that arguement could be attempted), but in general the film went on for way too long and could have had a lot of scenes taken out to speed things up. Also, it would have been a lot better if I understood why he went back to "Domino's" (the prostitute) house and tried to give her a gift and he met her roomate and a bunch of other stuff that I didn't see adding anything to the plot.
3 1/2 stars

Book Review: Nickel & Dimed

I first read Nickel & Dimed in Mr. Ledoux's English class when I was a 10th grader. We read it as a class, but only read about half of it. I really liked it and this year I noticed it in a used book store so I picked it up. A couple of days ago I started reading it over again, all the way through this time. The book is written by Barbara Ehrenreich, who also wrote the forward for the new "Ralph Nader Reader". In the book, she decides to give herself 1,000$ to start out with as she temporarly throws herself into the entry-level work force. As she does various jobs such as cleaning and working at Wal-Mart in various places of the United States, she discovers that the working class doesn't have it as easy as one might think. One of her rules is to always goe for the cheapest living conditions and the highest paying jobs she can get with her (fake temporary) un-educated past. In doing this she finds that she can barely make ends meet. She is forced to look for further help in the form of shelter and food aid, which she finds aren't as helpful as she had hoped. In a survey, 94% of Americans felt that somebody with a full-time job should be able to provide for a family of 3. Unfortunately, 94% of Americans aren't getting thier wishes fulfilled.
I would recomend reading this book if you are interested in the subject... and I would especially recomend it to anyone who thinks that the minimum wage is enough to live decently on.
I am not rating this book because I have come to the conclusion that books can't be rated on a simple scale.

Canadian Death Squads?

Today I was debating with a friend of mine who seems to view America as a great and noble nation, or something. Let's call her Ms. X. I was telling Ms. X about the various death squads in other nations that are paid for with our tax dollars tonight and she said "You don't see Canada do that though. Doesn't mean they don't". Meaning that Canada, in all likelyhood, commits the same crimes against humanity with their death squads. I view my research on this amusing: I did a Google Fight (a website that tells you which out of two searches finds more pages) between " 'united states' 'death squads' " and "canadian 'death squads' ". The winner was "united states death squads", unsurprisingly, with 44600 hits. "Canada death squads" had 17900 hits. This made me wonder what web pages could possibly come up under "canada death squads". I clicked the first website on the list and this was the heading of the article:
Demonstrators from Canada, Europe and from the many countries where the US Defense Department's “School of Assassins” has ravaged civilian populations demanded this training center to be shut down. People directed much attention to the ongoing civil war in Colombia. U.S. intervention in that country is expanding: billions of dollars in military aid as well as U.S. soldiers in combat operations against the popular forces.
Notice how it says "US Defense Department's “School of Assassins” " and not "Canadian Defense Department's “School of Assassins” ". So I looked on more... A few of the websites on the canadian death squad web page hit list just had plain nothing to do with Canada and sometimes not even with death squads. Indeed, more than any other type of web article in the list was the type of article explaining how terrible US funded death squads are. In no web page could I find any mention of a Canadian funded death squad.

Movie Review: Slacker

As far as I know, Slacker doesn't have a plot. Oh and by the way, don't confuse this movie with "Slackers" with an 's' at the end. Cos Iv'e seen the cover of that movie and it looks terrible. Slacker is really cool though. I like it cos it's really different. The plot... if there is one... is of a camera following people around who have nothing to do with eachother. If the character being followed, for example, goes into a bar, the camera will end up moving over to somebody leaving the bar and shows what they end up doing until it moves on to another person. There are some really interesting types of people in this film. Mainly the characters are subversive and conspiracy theorist types. I thought it was really good, but if you really like plots, maybe you shouldn't see this one.
4 Stars

Things that should not be in food

Today I went to Dion's with Angelo and Colin. They pitched in 2$ and 3$ and I was left paying the extra 6$ or whatever... but this generousity comes back around you know, because I ended up finding an alien pubic hair on one of my first slice of pizza! That's not a good thing... but what's good is that I told Dion's about it and they gave me 8$. Of course, Angelo and Colin wanted in on the bling bling. And of course they didn't get any cos the pubic hair was on MY pizza! Mine! All mine!
A similar situation happened when I was in San Francisco a couple weeks ago: We were at a Wolf Gang Puck's restruant and my dad was eating his salad. I looked at it and pointed at this long slimy thing and said "is that a worm?" and he looked at it for a second and said "yes". Then he continued eating the salad (not the worm part though). I asked him "doesn't it bother you that there is a worm in your salad?" and he said "it would only bother me if there was half a worm in my salad". He refused to go up and take it back for a refund, so I said that I'd do it if I got to keep the money. I did it and they gave me a refund for all of the food.
Another time this year I was in Hobbs seeing my Grandmother and we ate at Furrs and there was a thing crawling in my jello. The lady who worked there said "it's just a peesh bug"

The Movie Is Called "Ironwood"

I play "Fired Co-Worker #2". It is an independant feature length film, they expect it to be finished by October. They will send me a copy when it is done... I will talk more about it soon, but I don't have much time right now. I've got to pack because I'm going to visit my grandma and will be back on Monday afternoon or so.

Full-Scale Simpsons Home

This is ridiculous. A full-scale exact replica of the Simpsons' house was made in Nevada, of all places. At the website you can take a virtual tour and see just about all the rooms in the house. Also you can watch videos of Matt Groening's reaction to it. I would definately live there.

Movie Review: Koyaanisqatsi

Koyaanisqatsi, pronounced coy-an-is-skot-zee, is a movie that is hard to describe, yet very simple. It is almost more of a piece of art than a movie. The name comes from the Hoppi language and means "life out of balance". I don't want to talk about it too much, because I think that you should just see it sometime to get a feel for what Koyaanisqatsi is. It has excellent photography in it... or would it be cinematography? It's hard to tell because a lot of the shots are still. None the less, the movie is great. A good way to think of it is how aliens would view humanity through quiet observement. The film makes you feel kind of weird at some points, sometimes even anxious, especially the ending which grabs you by the balls (or if you are female, then possibly by the boobs?). But I think the overall underlying message of the movie is clear: things look cooler when sped up.
4 1/2 stars

Funny Sheep

I laughed out loud the first 5 times I watched this.

Movie Review: Dead Presidents

Dead Presidents follows the Hughes brothers' first movie 'Menace II Society'. It is not a sequel to 'Menace', but it is not all that far from it. I thought 'Menace' was much better, but Dead Presidents was a good movie nonetheless. Dead Presidents is about a boy growing up in the sixties in a black slum where he learns street life and works for a criminal who runs billiards. The movie then jumps to him and his friends being sent to Vietnam. I personally had a problem with this part of the movie. It was kind of random and didn't fit in with the rest of the movie. I think the Hughes Brothers just wanted to see if they could direct war footage. The movie would have been better if they were sent to Vietnam, but it didn't show it. Eventually they come back and the boy is ready to start working for his former boss again. This is the part of the movie that everybody sees it for. The two come up with a team of other criminals and plan a heist that will make them rich. I won't tell you where it goes from there, you will just have to see it on your own. To sum up the movie is, as Luis once said, "really three movies in one": the boy grows in the black community, fighting in vietnam, and then the heist. Even with this in mind, the movie is still pretty good, though not nearly as good as 'Menace'.
4 stars

Movie Review: The Big One

'The Big One' is Micheal Moore's second movie, the first being 'Roger and Me'. I definately liked the Big One more than Roger and Me, mainly because Roger and Me seems very repetative and everything that is said in it is summed up in the Big One. The movie follows Moore on his book tour for his book "Downsize This!". He goes to small unpopular hometowny cities instead of major cities that you would expect on a book tour. Along the way he finds corporate greed and various companies downsizing, shipping their factories to the 3rd world, when they have all time high profits. He goes to different companie headquarters and gives one company of each state the "Downsizer of the Year Award" signed by Micheal Moore. Often, this award comes with one of those huge snazzy checks that you usually see with Ed McMann. The check is for only a few cents and Moore gives it to the businessmen telling them that he is so proud of their business that he is offering to pay for the first hour of work done by the newly hired underpaid 14 year olds of the 3rd world. The movie has a lot of great moments and can be pretty funny at some points. I especially liked the footage in the end credits when Moore speaks with the owner of Nike. The Nike guy says "Well just watch, one of these days one of those people we pay 40 cents an hour in Indonesia will end up being your landlord", to which Moore responds, "...what does that mean?" It also has a really great advertisement for TWA airlines at the end of the movie... but you will just have to see it to know what it is. And I do suggest that you see this movie.
I am also really looking foward to Moore's very newest movie that comes out in theatres on June 25th. It is about the Bush administration, the patriot act, 911 and other bullshit we've been dealing with. His movie is called "Fahrenheit 9/11". Click the link to watch the trailer for it, it looks pretty interesting.
As for 'the Big One', I'll give it 4 stars.

New Essay: Abortion, A 'Moral' Issue

Abortion, A 'Moral' Issue

Maybe it's easier for me to not view them as an equal person because of a few reasons:
1. They have tails! You can't say that they look like us. Have you seen that monstrosity of a tail?
2. Their eyes are huge and dark black. Unless you are the bassist of Limp Bizcuit, this is not something to be proud of.
3. They have gills! GILLS! You know who have gills? FISH! You know who don't have gills? HUMANS!

Homophobes Speak

This is the most ridiculous article. I suggest you read it for it's ridiculousness. It is about how gays should not be married because they are not heterosexuals. It keeps saying such things as "quit denying the truth!" and seems to constantly be saying 'gays are not heterosexuals!'. Which, I think we all can agree with; gays are definately not heterosexuals. It further goes on with a wonderful little paragraph about how "a duck is not a swan no matter how much it wants to be one". After awhile, the real reason why this person is against gay marriage comes out: religion. They say that they agree with the word of God and the bible that marriage is not for gay people. Way to rely on a book that has been scientifically proven wrong many times over. It was written, not by God, but by man. And this was long before people realized the world was actually round. The Bible, or word of God as you may call it, also says something about not eating animals with cloven hooves. But for some reason, you never see these people fighting for a law that bans all McDonalds restruants from being built. In fact, on top of that, McDonalds is just as responsible for "breaking up the family" as gays are. I made the following chart of numbers comparing the two below:

Families Broken Up By McDonalds: 0
Families Broken Up By Gays: 0

Movie Review: The Shining

It was many weeks ago when I saw the Shining, but I haven't remembered to review it till now. I have seen bits and pieces of the movie before, but never the whole thing. My dad told me that it was the scariest movie he could think of, which was one reason I watched it (also, because it's a ridiculously famous movie by Kubrick). I, however, didn't find it all that scary, but there aren't really many movies that you can call 'scary' it seems. It was a great movie none the less.
Like all Stephen King stories that I know of, the main character is a writer and the plot has something to do with childhood. In this case it was the writer's son, who possessed the ability to "shine". "Shining" is explained in the movie as the ability to read other people's thoughts and maybe even subconciously predict things. This may sound good and swell, but in reality it had nothing to do with the movie at all. Indeed, the movie could have rolled on just as graceously without all this business about "shining". Afterall, the movie was about a family living in a hotel when the father goes on a crazy murdorous rampage... not about "shining". I thought about why the story even had this in there in the first place, then I realized that without this special power, the scene where the kid subconciously writes 'Redrum' on the door would not make sense. It seems kind of dumb to have a super power thrown into a movie (and to name the movie after such power) just so you can have this one 'creepy' scene in the story. That was my main problem with it.
The directing, acting, setting and everything was really well done on the other hand. I really liked how the movie was put together. It seemed that it could have easily been directed by somebody else differently and been turned into a terrible movie (which has been done). The overall feeling you get from watching the movie is worth noting. I thought it was a great movie.
4 1/2 stars

Book Review: Fear & Loathing

During my trip to San Francisco, I read another book called "Fear and Loathing". This is not to be confused with the book "Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas", or even "Fear and Loathing on The Campaign Trail", both by Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Instead, this book is by Paul Perry. It is a biography of Hunter S. Thompson.
I don't think you could ask for a better biography of the man. It was very entertaining and very thorough. I told of stories of the likes of Hunter ariving at an airport with a gun and a snake, only to lose the snake and have it killed by the staff. Or when he did massive amounts of drugs with the Hell's Angels and Ken Kessey (author of 'One Flew Over The Cukoos Nest') at one of Kessey's many infamous acid kool-aid parties. However, the most interesting of stories usually involve his 'partner in crime', the amazing british artist Ralph Steadman (who has done art for such books as "Animal Party" by George Orwell).
The book shows the highs, the lows and the 'highs' of the life of Thompson. While I was reading it, I couldn't help but to wonder if there was anybody with a more exciting life. Presently, the Dr. Gonzo lives secluded in a cabin. Free to take some mescaline and shoot his many guns off at various gongs he has set up around the cabin. Or, if he needs to take a piss, he can always go in his outdoor toilet complete with a palm tree growing out of it. If anybody is as interested in the great Doctor as I am, I would definately suggest reading "Fear & Loathing".
9 Stars

Book Review: Busted

While I was in San Francisco I found a book that really interested me. It was called "Rogue State" by William Blum. It was a farely new book, so I didn't figure that I'd be able to find it at a used book store (I however did buy about 7 other books I liked in used stores in the city). I had to go back to the hotel where my parents were to get some money for the book. When I came back to the store I had the book in hand and was ready to buy it when another book caught my eye. The book was called "Busted".
From the first reading of the description on the back and skimming through the insides, I knew I had to read it. I have been looking for a book on drug politics and the drug war for awhile, but gave up pretty much awhile ago. I have read "Why Marijuana Should Be Legal" (by leading Marijuana advocate Ed Rosenthal) and "Reefer Madness" (by Eric Schlosser), but no books I had found had seemed to deal with the big picture of drugs... until 'Busted'.
Busted is an amazingly comprehensive view of the drug war from many different views. It is a collection of dozens of articles and essays on the drug war, drug history, drug politics, drug stories, stories from addicts, police, dealers and so on. It is highly leaning to the critical side, but it manages to give many different views on the subject. It must have seemed obvious to the editor, Mike Gray, that there wasn't much need in telling the stories of why we should have a war on drugs and why drugs are bad, because we are constantly exposed to that side of the story every day by the news media. The book does, however, have such things as an article by the nation's drug czar, McCaffery, explaining how Marijuana is not harmless. Which is followed by an article that was written in spite of the lies and propaganda contained in the McCaffery article.
Anybody who wants to further escape the lies of drugs and the war on drugs, or simply learn more about drugs and drug politics in general, should read this very enlightening book that contridicts everything we are told.
A full 10 stars.

Movie/Book Review: Holes

During school I read and watched 'Holes'. I believed that both were pretty good works. The book, as usual, was better, but the movie did a good job in portraying the story. Mainly, I think that the story was good, not because of the directing, or the book's writing style, but just because it seemed like an original idea to me. All the holes everywhere in the desert, and the group of friends argueing and having to dig all the time was interesting, but it got even better as the different pasts and lives and fates started coming together to form a big picture.
Movie: 3 1/2 stars (out of 5)
Book: 7 1/2 stars (out of 10)

Movie Review: Harry Potter (3) and the Prisoner...

Last night, the opening night, I saw the third Harry Potter movie. In my opinion, it is the best one so far. I like how in the anthology of the Harry Potter movies, the director is different every time. Yet, the overall Harry Potter feeling remains just as good and consistant. "The Prisoner of Azcalan" (or something) was directed really well and had lots of great special effects that were David Fincher-esqe. It is also worth mentioning that part of the movie has some time traveling in it, and I have to say that this movie was the only time-traveling movie that I approve of. Usually in time traveling movies, the plot makes up it's own time traveling laws which don't really make sense, but in this movie they thoroughly made sense and it was hella tyte. I would definately reccomend this movie to anyone, especially if you liked the other Harry Potter movies.
4 1/2 stars

Abortion: A 'Moral' Issue

Abortion: A 'Moral Issue'
by Grayson Kilmer

abortions are fun


article under construction

Movie Review: The Last Party

Robert Downey Jr travels across the country vistiting both Democratic and Republican national conventions. He brings along his sense of humor and political views interviewing many residents of the areas he stops by. On top of that, he interviews such people as Oliver Stone, Spike Lee, Jerry Falwell, Sean Penn, Willie D of the Geto Boys and his own father. I was very impressed by Sean Penn's knowledge of politics and he said some interesting remarks. For example, when Downey asked him what some of the song titles of "the CIA's greatest hits record" would be, he cleverly remarked "well, firt off you would have 'the ballad of the bay of pigs'". The documentary also shows us the most frightening thing I've ever seen in a movie: Republican Conventions. Take a bunch of highly conservatives and christian fundamentalists, throw them in a room and give them all flags and balloons and have a party. It was very scary looking. There was footage of a group of neo-facists (as the Young Republicans are referred to in 'Igby Goes Down) teenagers chanting conservatice slogans and such. One of the teenage girls in the group was yelling "you look at MTV and see how they view politics. they don't show the right and the left! they show the left EVERY TIME!". I couldn't help thinking about how dissasterous of an effect this must have on our country. I know that FOX and CNN and ABC and Times magazine and all of those media sources are continually right-wing focused, but that doesn't mean shit because everybody knows that if you want to get your current political news you turn on MTV. The girl definately had a point.
Another great aspect of this movie is that Robert Downey Jr developes this great hopping technique in which he uses both his legs and his arms to hop off the ground up and down. He shows this talent off at the conventions, but nobody seems to be impressed. A lot of the movie's halarity isn't the type of humor that can be explained, or even makes sense... it's just funny.
The only problem I had was at the end of the movie, Robert Downey Sr (an apparent liberal) seemed to hint at it being a good thing that America had Bill Clinton. But, to be fair, this was only 1993 and the population that voted for Clinton had yet to see how bad he would screw them over and do everything he promised not to.
This movie was a tyte documentary. I wouldn't say it's better than Micheal Moore's style, but I think it was more interesting and probably funnier.
4 Stars

New Essay: The Seperation of Peace and School

I wrote a new essay on my former teacher Geoff Barret and the 'Hannity and Colmes' show.
Here's the new essay!

Democracy In Iraq?

The United States 'War On Terrorism' is such bullshit, of course, but I feel like talking about it even though everybody already knows it's wrong. They make it sound like every troop going over there is armed with a "Democracy for Dummies" book and all the Iraqis are like "what is this strange thing? Democracy? we don't understand! this is too advanced for our simple minds!". Then the news will have pundits basicly say "Iraqi people are like little children that need shots. They don't want to get them, but it's for their own good. We're going to take them through the process of democracy kicking and screaming, but in the end, they'll thank us." It's amazing how simple the news can wrap things up to be. Iraqi people are just as smart as Americans (they often attend our colleges), and if they don't want our form of democracy (aka another colony of ours where all our business' have control and the resources go straight to our country), then back off! Don't try to 'help' them if they don't even want help. It's also ridiculous that they say the purpose of intervention is for 'democracy'. If you have any knowledge of military interventions, you'll know that the United States is very opposed to democratic states. Actually, I take that back. It's alright to have a democracy, as long as it's capitalist and doesn't make any attempts to raise the bar on social reform, and the right leaders are in power... that is the definition of democracy to US planners: a capitalist system that heads to the United States, the IMF, the WTO, the World Bank and the overall capitalist order. Shit, you can have an oppressively violent dictator and they'll be referred to as 'democratic reformers' in the quest for democracy... as long as they meet the requirement for the 'new' definition of democracy. Now, if your democratic country does something evil and crazy like elect a leader that will spend more time and devotion to the people of the country than he does sucking up to the global capitalist system... well, he just might be assassinated. But it's only called assassination if you get caught*. Actually, not even then is it called assassination, it's usually called things like "great strides for democracy".

*Believe it or not, but the CIA doesn't try to be an well known violent connection of groups that kill innocent people with your tax dollars. They ARE obviosly all those things mentioned, but they don't try to be. The CIA manuals specifically explain that it's always best to make it look like an accident.

Cds From San Francisco

I bought a TON of cds while I was in Sanfrancisco. I took advantage of the fact that they have way cheaper used cds and way larger selections and tons of used cds stores. I bought a grand total of 30 cds exactly. It cost me a lot, but it's worth it in the long run since they were only like 7$ each or so, as compared to a new one which is like 17$. Here are all the cds I got:

999 - Punk Singles 77-80
999 - S/T
Adverts - Crossing The Red Sea With
Alice Donut - Mule
Beastie Boys - Ill Communication
Birthday Party - Prayers On Fire
Jello Biafra - Machine Gun In The Clown's Hand
Chris Rock - Roll With The New
Chris Rock - Bigger and Blacker
Clash - Give' Em Enough Rope
Damned - Grave Disorder (Advance Copy)
Gang Of Four - A Brief History Of The Twentieth Century
Magazine -
Mission Of Burma - On Off On (Advance Copy)
Mission Of Burma - Vs.
Primus - Tales From The Punch Bowl
Primus - Frizzle Fry
Primus - Antipop
Rudimentary Peni - Cacophony
Subhumans - Live In A Dive
Subhumans - 29:29 Split Vision
Stiff Little Fingers - Nobody's Heroes
That Dog - S/T
Television - Marquee Moon
Vibrators - Pure Mania
Von Bondies - Pawn Shoppe Heart
Wire - Chairs Missing
Various Artists - DRI Tribute
Various Artists - Kings Of Swing
Various Artists - Roots Of Swing N' Jive

I hate PCs

I hate PCs! Windows type computers. They suck. You can never just play a game you installed from a year ago, for example, because... well, I dunno why, but for some reason the only way you can play a computer game on Windows is if the game and the computer just purchased that same day. It will work for about a week or so, but if you don't pay close attention to it, something will get messed up in Windows and you'll never be able to play it again. It happens so many times!! Macs never pull shit like that.

Movie Review: Tank Girl

I think 'Tank Girl' is easily one of the worst movies I've ever seen. It has the feeling of a made for TV Disney channel movie, but it's not nearly as good. It's about this girl who is a rebel in a future earth where water is scarce. She is the stupidest girl and is very very annoying. She is like this tiny weird little girl thats all excited and ditzy and dumb about everything and won't shut up! The acting and plot and set and... everything in the movie is off the level. A perfect way to describe the movie would be a cheesy porno flick with all the sex scenes cut out and pictures of comic book strips shown in their place. Another way to describe it would be a cheesy 'No Doubt' music video that is drawn out for a whole hour and 15 minutes or whatever. I really can't understand why this is even a movie. I'm giving it the lowest possible rating of 1 lonely star out of 5.

Iraqi Beastie Boys Song

I did some thorough digging on the internet and downloaded that 2004 released left wing Beastie Boys song that isn't on any cd. The song is about Iraq and the war on terrorism. Sounds like a cool song huh? Well it isn't... it was pretty shitty. It's lyrics are about Iraq and they aren't bad, but the song just was off the level. Not nearly as good as the Beastie Boys we all know and love. Maybe political songs and Beastie Boys just don't mix... maybe they are only good in their normal goofy mode. The only good politicaly influenced song I know by them wasn't even hardly about politics and was more just random and goofy. I speak of 'Sabotage', which was about the Watergate scandal. Didn't know that?... well I told you it was hardly about politics.