SimpleWeblog

vacation

I am going on vacation for a week or so - updates to here may not be happening for a while. It might be a good thing for me to stay away from the machines for a while...

Full Metal Challenge

I was watching the first episode of Junkyard Wars, and I was horrified to see that Cathy Rogers was no longer hosting! But then I spied a commercial for the new show from the people who make Junkyard Wars, Full Metal Challenge (formerly known as Ultimate Machine Combat). It is going to premiere this fall, and the commercial seems to indicate that not only will Cathy be hosting, so will Henry Rollins. How weird is that???

Special Events

Sometimes you have a special event coming up that you want to look nice for. You go through the little extra things ahead of time just in case - new face washing technology, paying attention to what you eat, paying attention to exercising; whatever little things you think you can do - and you know it won't really make a difference, but you want to at least try. And, of course, it doesn't really make a difference and you begin to question the whole endeavor, and you realize it may be silly anyways, but at least you are trying...

...and then you get hit in the face with a frisbee and have part of your face swell up and think "why do I even try? Maybe I am just being silly..."

Movie Review: Double Happiness (Shum)

The opening monologue of this film talks about how this is a typical kind of family story, except it is about a Chinese family living in Canada. And the story is pretty typical - girl wants to become an actress, parents do not approve, conflict ensues as girl decides how much of her life she should give up to please her parents. It seemed like a pretty by-the-numbers coming of age/quest for independence story, including the failed date with the guy the parents like (he's gay!), the love interest that the parents would never approve of (he's white!), and the scenes where she questions whether she is "really chinese" (she actually gets asked directly!). It wasn't bad, and Sandra Oh is likable as the main character, but there was nothing really surprising in the movie, and the construction of the movie left a little to be desired. The monologue sequences interspersed throughout seemed like a forced ploy to let you in to the character's inner thoughts, and it was weird that the movie did not end with one, since it began with one. Lots of threads were left unresolved - the circumstances of the brother being disowned (did he just decide to move away?) and the situation the uncle was in (maybe I just didn't understand what was being hinted at). I guess, this part of the story seemed pretty obvious from the start - there was a little while where I thought they might go for a unique ending, but they did not. And the scenes with her acting tryouts were pretty obviously set up as well. The love interest was a pretty surprising scene at first, and not much was done with it afterwards. I think the more interesting story might have happened after what we saw - once she decides to try out life on her own, out of the direct control of her parents, how does it feel? How do you know if it was the right decision? How do the parents deal with it? But we don't get that here. So, it was interesting, and very funny at times, but predictable, and it felt a little like a first film from the writer/director (which, it turns out, it was - and, perhaps not surprisingly, it sounds like it could have been an autobiographical story).

words 2

i really enjoy words - that is why i have this silly web site to serve as a storage mechanism for words - so it makes me feel uncomfortable sometimes when i encounter things that i cannot describe in words, other than to say it cannot be described in words.

although lately i have been reminded that being uncomfortable can be a good thing...

Words

Sometimes it seems easier to do things in words than it would be to do them in person.

Movie Review: Fight, Zatoichi, Fight (Zatôichi kesshô-tabi)

Another early Zatoichi movie, where Zatoichi winds up having to take a baby back to its father after the baby's mother is accidentally killed in place of Zatoichi. He befriends a woman who is a criminal to help him take care of the baby, and they attempt to elude the regular types of people that pursue Zatoichi as they make their way to the village where the baby's father is. This reminded me a little of the Lone Wolf and Cub story, with a powerful swordsman taking care of a baby. Zatoichi reveals a much softer side than he normally does here, at one point deciding he would want to give up his lifestyle in order to raise the child. He also tries to reform the woman's behavior so that they don't bring shame to the baby. Is this how he really gives up the gangster lifestyle and begins looking for people to help. Since I am not seeing the movies in the order they were produced it is hard to tell how much character development there really is between the movies. But I liked this one, although some of the humor bits with the baby were a little overdone. It was also kind of interesting to see a little more openness about breastfeeding than I would have expected, especially the scene where Zatoichi tries to let the baby nurse on him while waiting for the woman to return with some rice milk.

Soccer: Win (3-2)

And the streak continues, although since it is the last game of the season I guess it also ends. The other team was tough, playing a very physical game right from the start. The guy I was guarding most of the time was particularly hands-on, which is not the easiest thing for me to defend against. The ref wasn't calling anything, including the elbow to the head that caused one of the people on my team's eyes to swell shut. Not cool at all. They wound up scoring a couple of goals in the first half, and controlled the ball most of the time so it did not look good.

Things turned around in the second half, though. Oscar and I switched sides and he was much better at taking care of the pushing and elbowing while I was able to better cover the people making runs on the opposite side. Mark made some good stops, and we started to control more but couldn't finish anything. Then we got a PK for an intentional handball in the box, balancing things out since we had lost someone (a ringer?) to 2 yellows. After the PK things seemed to turn around and we started looking more dangerous. Finally, we had a low shot that made the goalie give a rebound, and we had someone there to clean it up. I thought a tie seemed like a fair result, but towards the end another ringer on our side, who was doing great work distributing from the midfield, got the ball, looked at some people making runs, then caught the goalie by surprise and fired in a shot just under the crossbar for the win. Very nice!

Not the best game to end on, but overall a pretty great season. I think we finished 5-3-1. Not bad at all!

Deniability

I can't deny being at the Wil Wheaton vs. Barney boxing match, since some people have pictures with me hiding somewhere in the background. Eeeek.

Movie Review: The Road Home (Wo de fu qin mu qin) (Yimou Zhang)

Based on a book, this is a love story about a girl in a village in 1950's China who falls in love with the teacher that moves in from the city. The whole movie has a bittersweet tone to it, though, because it is tols as a flashback by their son, who comes back to the village when his father dies to make funeral arrangements. The flashback sequence seems to be the heart of the movie, showing the simple interactions they have where they discover their feelings for each other in very indirect ways. Thinking about it, I'm not sure how people can fall in love with so little interaction, but while watching the movie Ziyi Zhang's performance makes me believe it. I was disappointed when the flashback ended a little abruptly, and we didn't get to really see them as a couple at any point. It turns out, though, that the real heart of the movie comes after the flashback, when his former students come back to help perform the village's tradition funeral march, carrying the casket by hand from the city over the mountain back to the village. It was a very simple but well-told movie, which fit the story excellently. And the look of the movie was extremely well done, with the sets and the costumes and the scenery.

Movie Review: Masseur Ichi Enters Again (Shin Zatoichi monogatari)

Another early Zatoichi movie has the classic elements of thes series, although it does seem like his character is still establishing himself. This time he travels back to his hometown and meets his old master. While staying there he begins to get involved with his master's sister, Yayoi. The standard fight scenes occur from Zatoichi's past catching up with him in the form of people who worked for someone he killed, and when Zatoichi discovers the truth about what his master has been doing since he left. There is only one gambling scene, but it plays out much more differently than usual. And the love interest this time is much deeper, and for a while it seems like Zatoichi will give up the yakuza lifestyle for Yayoi. While there is not as much philosophical depth in this entry in the series, I think it does a good job of building Zatoichi's character and his history, and we really get a good sense of how he became the force of good he is in the later movies. I guess when you have 20 movies in a series it is ok to take your time making your main character a good guy! This movie also had a lot of similar establishing shots through vegetation like the other early movie I saw, which is an interesting technique.

Fair Use Has A Posse

I went and saw the Wil Wheaton vs. Barney celebrity boxing match at the DNA Lounge tonight. Crazy! It was entertaining, though. We got there far too early, though. The early DJ was not so good, and the crowd seemed a little out of place at a dance club. Things picked up after the boxing match, though, although I really wonder what the crowd is like on a "regular" night.

And in case you didn't figure it out already, Wil won. Whooo!

Book Review: Sputnik Sweetheart (Murakami)

I really enjoyed this book. The story it tells, about a man who is in love with a woman that only thinks of him as a friend, the woman she meets and falls in love with, and a strange occurance on a Greek island, isn't particularly significant. I think the book's strength is in its ability to convey so many emotions related to loneliness. The loneliness of being alone, the loneliness of being around people, the loneliness of childhood, the loneliness of travel, the loneliness of being home. This makes a lot of the book have a kind of sad tone, especially with the theme of unrequited love also being present. But I liked the way the characters were drawn, the way the story flowed along with the emotional content. I'm still not sure exactly what it was that made me like it, but his writing style really struck a chord with me, giving me those feelings of wanting to try writing again myself, or at least of wanting to find other good books to read. And I actually did write a fair amount of rather emotional story last night.

James Gleick signing

I went up to Kepler's in Menlo Park to see James Gleick talk about his new book, which was a collection of his essays from the past 10 years or so about the internet. I had really enjoyed his biography of Richard Feynman, Genius, and had read good things about his other books, so I figured I would check it out. He spoke a little about the reports of "the death of the internet" and said he didn't agree but felt silly talking about that in the middle of silicon valley, so he read an excerpt from the book written in 1995 about all the crazy devices people were making available for control through the internet. It was kind of funny - I remembered a lot of those things, and the feeling of the internet at the time, some interesting new thing with a lot of potential that no one seemed to know what to do with just yet. He then opened the floor for questions, but no one really asked anything too exciting. Some of the older people in the audience wanted to complain about the complexity or speed of technology, and he was generally sympathetic but said that was part of what made it unique and worthwhile. He also mentioned blogs at one point, which made the three people in front of me turn and look - did they look familiar to me? like some little cropped photo on some blog I have seen? who knows. One younger woman tried to ask about how things would be different for people growing up with this technology, and he didn't really seem to answer the question. Ah well. It was still fun, but I do sometimes wish authors prepared a little more to talk about and they didn't spend time on the questions. Maybe have a mike up during the signing time, and people can ask their questions there and have other people hear things.

It was also a little weird because CSPAN's BookTV taped it. And I guess his name is pronounced "glick" and not what would be the german pronunciation. Hrmm.

And my final note is that Kepler's is a really nice bookstore.

Breakdancing

Perhaps this breakdancing lesson is my ticket to a career as a professional breakdancer.

Or not.

Loneliness

"Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?"

- Haruki Murakami, in Sputnik Sweetheart

Princess Mononoke

The thing that I like about this movie, on my second (partial) viewing of it is that it is hard to tell who the good guys and bad guys are. The humans? The animal gods? OK, probably not the demons. But most of the characters seem to be doing what they think is best, and usually not just for their individual gain. Which makes it more complicated, but much more realistic.

Freedom and music, together at last?

This Thursday is the EFF benefit at the DNA Lounge. Maybe I will finally use this excuse to see the club which provided so much entertainment to me as it was slowly becoming a reality. But is it worth it to get a ticket for the VIP Party? And who should I try to drag along to this?

Soccer: Win (5-3)

Another win! Now we have a serious streak going - only one more game left with this team, though. We got an amazing goal on a one-touch shot while the ball was in the air after a bounce (does that still count as a volley?) and it hit the top crossbar, hit the ground, and went in. But after our quick goal, instead of going up 2 more, we gave up a goal. I was covering the guy bringing it down, he got a cross off to the top of the box on the other side, they had someone unmarked, and he rocketed it in the top corner. Yikes! It was going to be a game. We came back with another goal (it may have been Derek's goal) and it went back and forth so the half ended 3-3. A close one! I actually had a reasonable header clear from the box, and good position to get a header to knock it out for a corner but preventing the guy who it was passed to from getting it.

The second half started out close again, but as it wore on we started to control the ball more and got two more goals. One was actually on a set play - they put up the wall, we lobbed it to the far post, got a shot that was rejected, then another off the post, then finally someone got it in. Not the prettiest goal, but it worked. They had a few chances, but for the most part we were keeping them from anything too good.

We'll see how next week goes with the small fields... but it has been a good season. I think I have learned some things, and it felt good that our team came together really well.

Michael Chrichton vs. Donald F. Glut

Everyone should remember Jurassic Park's basic plot: scientists use dinosaur blood encased in amber-trapped insects to clone dinosaurs in modern times. Now, that was written in 1990. What you probably don't know is that this plot is similar to an episode of the G.I. Joe cartoon series from season 1, which aired from 1985 - 1986. Cobra steals dinosaur bones (the series was never much for scientific accuracy, I'm afraid) and kidnaps a scientist that has been researching cloning and accelerated growth so they can create an army of dinosaurs on a remote island to, well, they never say why, but I am sure it would be something nefarious. Sure, the plot includes an attempt to mind-control the dinosaurs, which isn't in JP, but after G.I. Joe stops Cobra, the scientist tries to convinces the Joes to use the dinosaurs to open a museum. But the Joes won't let him, and the dinosaurs are left behind on the island... sound familiar? Hrmmm...

robo-brainworm

if i am going to be called a robot, maybe i need to start calling someone else brainworm...

Today's Big Dumb Media Company Idea

The RIAA and MPAA want to be able to use vigilante tactics to shut down P2P machines and nearby computers because they suspect copyright infringement? Can't someone else use those tactics to shut down their machines? Who knows what their employees have been emailing around!

Concert Report: Area 2 (Moby, David Bowie, Busta Rhymes, Blue Man Group, Ash, Tiesto, Digweed...)

To continue my little trend, we missed Ash and Blue Man Group by the time we got there. Who decides to have shows that start at 3pm on a weekday, anyways? Maybe I am just bothered because I couldn't take off of work. Anyways, we got there just after Blue Man Group had finished, so I decided to go check out the DJ Tent and see what it was like.

From anywhere in the area you could hear the thump-thump-thump-thump of the bass of the tent (officially the "Playstation 2 Dancing Tent", and yes, they did actually have some playstation 2s inside as well) and when we walked in there was some smoke effects by the entrance, and then a huge crowd of people dancing and lights and some screens with flame effects. It seemed like walking into a scene from a movie (although the only one we could think of was the opening scene to Blade) because it just seemed so cool. We made our way through the crowd and actually found our friends that were already there. And so I tried to dance, and it was really fun. I'm not really much of a dancer at all, but there was such a good energy from the crowd and the music that it was just fun going along with it. And Tiesto was doing a good job bringing the crowd up, then letting them cool off a bit before bringing it back up. Very well done. But I felt like I should go and check out some of Busta Rhymes's set, so we snuck out...

And that was probably not the right move. Busta was ok, but I only heard one song where he was doing the really crazyfast rapping, and he had some weird crowd banter in between songs. It seemed almost laughably low-energy after the Tiesto set, though. The crowd was kind of in to it, but you can't generate the same energy at a huge amphitheater. And the final song he did seemed to end a little abruptly - maybe if I had known the song I would have liked it more? And visually, not much was going on, and you could barely see anything from so far back. It wasn't really as bad as I am making it out to be, I think, but it was just not what I needed at that point.

So we waited around for David Bowie. Now, I am not a huge David Bowie fan by any stretch of the imagination, but he has some songs I like and he is something of a "legend", so I figured I should see him before he stops touring. And it turns out that in concert things are not much different than when I listened to his music on CD. He played a couple of songs I knew, and it wasn't very exciting - it seemed like he wasn't very genuine and wasn't trying very hard because he didn't have to be. Maybe I'm biased. Other people seemed to like it. But we all decided to go back and try the DJ tent.

We went back, and it was not as cool. The music wasn't as gripping, the people weren't moving much, and it was much emptier. I think these things all are related. We stuck it out for a while, and things picked up a little, and then John Digweed started his set and things picked up some. We danced for a while, but I didn't really start to feel that understanding of how people could dance like that for so long like I had earlier. I was willing to wait and stay to see if that feeling came back, but everyone else wanted to leave to see Moby's set, so I went with. Peer pressure!

Moby's set turned out to be pretty neat. Much better stage show - modern lighting effects, a lot more energy, more seemingly genuine crowd banter. And the music was more energetic. He played a lot of songs I recognized, but the James Bond Theme cover was maybe my favorite? At least of the ones I could name. He kept teasing us with clips of other cover songs while talking about his desire to play in a wedding cover band. Heh! The set passed quickly, though, and all of a sudden it was time for an encore. We decided to take off, but luckily (and I really admire this) he came back on stage fairly quickly to play the encore. And it was a ramones song! Very cool. Not sure if he played anything else because we began the long trek back to find the car.

Overall, a good show. I enjoyed getting to try out the dj tent experience. And Moby was better than I expected. Busta Rhymes was OK, and I got to see David Bowie. Who would have thought?

Little Luxuries

Sometimes I forget how much I enjoy reading a nicely constructed hardcover book.

Free Mickey

If you have a little time, go listen and watch Larry Lessig's OSCON presentation. He explains the history of copyright, the troubles we face today, and a little about what we should do about it. Creativity is a neat thing, and we should all be trying to make sure we can keep doing it.

Crows

Now it is time for you to go read something nice about crows.

Coincidence

This week's NYTimes magazine cover story about coincidences is a lot better than last weeks about pop star manufacturing. Although that may not be saying much, the article is still a good reminder of how we attach more weight to events that affect us personally.

Someday

I really do intend to swap this site over to use MoveableType someday, but last time I tried I got bogged down in some layout issues, because if I make the move I also want to get rid of the dumb table layouts. Maybe this will help, although I also want a better solution to my sidebar needs. Regenerating pages is silly. Maybe I really should be looking into some of the more advanced weblog tools out there.

Today's Lyric That Caught My Attention

I know that you're only being kind

But kindness is hard enough to find...

- Franklin Bruno, Charlottesville

Concert Report: Cake, The Flaming Lips, De La Soul, Modest Mouse, The Hackensaw Boys, Kinky

OK, we got their too late to see Kinky, which was a little disappointing to me. I expected more opening bands, I guess, but things seemed to start up right away. We got their in the middle of the Modest Mouse set. It was certainly not the best show I've seen them play - Isaac didn't seem to be getting the guitar parts down too well, although he also seemed to be having some equipment difficulties, so who knows. Maybe I have seen them enough times now that it isn't very exciting. Maybe it was because they still haven't figured out how to play larger venues and make it as entertaining. But they did play neverending math equation, so it couldn't be too bad.

I scampered my way down closer to stage in time to see The Hackensaw Boys, who were playing in between some of the sets. They played a bluegrass kind of music, which was actually pretty fun to listen to even though it isn't my favorite kind of music. They may have had some of the best musicians out of any of the bands, I think - their percussionist was doing some crazy stuff on the weird one-man-band setup he had.

Next up was De La Soul, who were really funny, since I think the primarily white college-aged kids from Berkeley are not their usual audience. They had a lot of fun instructing the audience what to do, though, and it seems like it would be really fun to be on stage telling thousands of people what to do and have them actually do it. Their music wasn't the most exciting thing on the planet - how many songs about themselves and parties and "party people" can they have? - but they kept the crowd involved and did a good job. They also had a guest rapper, Black Sheep, that livened things up for a while.

Next up was a lot of stage hands setting up the Flaming Lips stage show, which was easily the craziest of the evening. They had a large screen, four disco balls on stage with light reflecting up onto the screen, smoke machines, and four guys in mascot-like costumes (a frog, a bear, some weird pink thing? who knows what they were) dancing around with flashlights. They also kicked large balloons filled with confetti out into the crowd, and the lead singer would toss confetti out by the handful. All of this served extremely well to keep me entertained since their music alone isn't really my thing. How a band that sings about robots can not be my thing I still do not understand. During one of the robot songs they played clips from some Japanese TV show (I would guess) with schoolgirls poisoning someone and then getting into a bloody gun battle. Very interesting!

Finally it was time for Cake. No crazy stage show here, just the music to keep the crowd entertained. And it worked! Lots of singing along parts but not much crowd banter overall. They played just about all of their classic songs, along with some obscure ones I didn't know ("Jesus wrote a blank check", although looking back I see it is on their early album, which I thought I had listened to once or twice...). But they played "Stickshifts and Safetybelts", so it was ok. They didn't play "I will survive" but they did cover Black Sabbath's "War Pigs", which I recognized but couldn't place at the time. Crazy!

Overall, it was a nice show, and the Greek Theater in Berkeley is a nice place to see a show. I would have built it turned around so the sun didn't set behind the stage, but they did a great job making it layered so lots of people could see the stage. The cement stuff it is made of also does a good job retaining the heat from the sun, which I did appreciate when I went back up to the seats for Cake's set. I'm still not a huge fan of the big venues like that, though, since it feels like you are so separated from the performers, even if you move close to the stage. It is a little too much like watching something on TV, only slightly more interactive. And with crazier people running around, I guess, which is pretty good to encounter once in a while.

Soccer: Win (4-1)

This is like an actual winning streak! We got an early goal, then kept the pressure up for most of the first half. We won most of the balls in the midfield, and the defense wasn't letting them get shots off, which was really nice. We got a second goal, then had some miscommunicaiton between Mark (playing keeper) and the defender, which let them score. It seemed like a closer game for a while, but after goals 3 and 4 we felt pretty good. They didn't really get many shots off, and none of much quality, which felt really good. I played all right, getting some good clears, only making one real mistake where I started to lose it when I tried to turn the ball up the line. I need to work on my ball control skills, I guess. But it felt really good to have a solid game, have the rest of the team be solid, and keep up our win streak. Only two games left!

Movie Review: Zatôichi monogatari (The Tale of Zatoichi)

I haven't been keeping up with my Zatoichi movies lately, but I finally got around to watching the first Zatoichi movie. It had a little bit different tone to it than the later movies. Here, Zatoichi calls himself a gangster, and agrees to work for a crime boss just to make some money. It is almost like he does not have the confidence in trying to do good works that he gains in later movies. We do have the requisite master swordsman that you know he must face off against by the end, although the tragic way they fall into combat seems more meaningful here. There is also the love interest, which is played up even more here, as if Zatoichi hasn't yet learned to try not to get involved like that. Unfortunately Tivo missed the last couple of minutes of the movie, so I got to see the final battle but not the final wrap-up scenes. Overall, though, I thought it was interesting to see that there was some character growth between the first movie and some of the later movies.

Dijkstra

Edsger Dijkstra died this week. I certainly had no personal connection to him beyond encountering some of his work in my Algorithms textbook and reading about him in various computer history books. I didn't know that I had encountered a lot of his ideas and terminology, like dining philosophers and semaphores and "don't use goto statements" and vector and stack. It is amazing to me to remember that the people who created these things that were just taken for granted during my CS curriculum were just regular people, and that these things were created so recently. I may never do anything that becomes such an important part of some group of people's body of knowledge, so I am always impressed by people who have done that.

happy robots

happy robots make for happy boys...

Video Game Classics

The full text of James Hague's book Halcyon Days, a collection of interviews of video game programmers on classic video game systems, is now available online. And it is highly enjoyable reading if you are in to that sort of thing. I finally got some background on my favorite Atari 800 game, Star Raiders. Ahhh... I wish I enjoyed video games as much as I did as a kid. I don't think the storytelling aspect of games has advanced with the technology - it is either poorly written movie-wannabe stories or they punt the issue entirely and rely on multiplayer environments to create stories.

Bruce Sterling's Open Source Speech

OK, one more: Bruce Sterling's speech about open source. He always has a unique perspective on things, and he is a really entertaining writer, and his speeches make entertaining reading. Someday I should try to see one in person, see if they are even better that way. Maybe I can no longer say I've seen everybody on my list of people I want to see perform or speak or whatever.

The most surprising thing about this speech, though, is that they transcribed the discussion about having to switch rooms. How bizarre.

"I don't think you've been doing a good job on your weblog lately"

Well, I don't think I am going to do any better tonight, since I am going to work on a completely non-computer project. Go me. In the meantime, go read this article about manufacturing pop stars in the US and let me know if I should bother. And, you can read this little article about how Vin Diesel likes to play D&D (must click through an ad first, sorry). And I was embarrassed buying those D&D books as an adult...

Mr. Bromley

My high school physics teacher died this week. The article does a good job of conveying his attitude about teaching, I think. Some of it sounds a little cheesy in the article, but he really was a good teacher and got everyone in the class to actually think about what we were learning. He was very well-liked by students, and I remember lots of discussion senior year trying to think of senior pranks and Mr. Bromley's name would come up as the person who might be willing to overlook something to assist us. When taking the SAT II Physics test I questioned if it would have been better for our physics class to have spent more time on the topics covered by that test instead of delving into issues about energy production and other topics, but long term I think there was more value in having participated in those discussions since I do still remember parts of them. I never do a good job really getting to know my teachers, but I do appreciate the ones that do a good job, and he was certainly one of them.

Soccer: Win (3-2)

Check that out, another win! And a respectable score, even. We scored three nice goals in the first half. The offense kept up the pressure so the defense looked really good because they weren't getting good chances. We did give up one goal on a penalty kick, but that's not a big deal. Mark had one really good stop where he came out on a one-on-one and the attacker tried to maul him and got called for the foul. The second half was closer, they started playing more aggressively and our midfield started to drift a little. We gave up the one goal on the third corner kick in a row they had. The ball first went in to the guy I was covering, he dropped it off to someone who kicked it and it got redirected in. So I felt partially responsible but not completely. I think I played a pretty decent game, though, forcing them into mistakes and not getting beaten too terribly. Our defense is really starting to come together, and less emphasis on the offsides trap seems to be helping. Only a few more games left and then we are back to B league! We'd better kick butt during B league.

uh oh

Please don't hate me for this, but I finally gave in. A couple of things to work out, but I think I will be officially entering into the 90s now...

please excuse anything that rhymes

what happens when i've learned all the secrets

and i see the real you

do i need to say yes or no

forever or no more

or can we just keep going

and still say that we're unsure

i don't know where we're going

i don't know where to go

i don't know what kind of risks to take

and still keep each other safe

you can never know what'll happen

how things will work out

all you know is any hopes you've had

the dreams that you could see

have always seemed to turn out bad

and that this may be the same

i can't know what you're thinking

i can't know what you will do

i can't know if you are right for me

but so far it seems all good

i know you aren't everything i thought

all i had hoped and dreamed

now i can see the real you

the sunshine and the blue

but that just means it'll hurt even more

every time we say goodbye

i don't know where we're going

but i know i'm gonna try

i don't know if you want to go

with me right at your side

Movie Review: Buffalo '66 (Gallo)

Sometimes a movie is not as good as it thinks it is. This is one of those movies.

The movie tells the story of a man, Billy Brown, just out of prison who kidnaps a girl from a dance class )played by Christina Ricci, who is as cute as ever but doesn't really get to do much here besides gaze at Mr. Gallo) and uses her to try to convince his parents he is leading a succesful life before he goes to kill the man who he feels caused all his problems, former Buffalo Bills kicker Scott Woods. For no reason I can tell, the girl falls for the guy, and we seem to be told this is a good thing since it helps turn him around. The main character, who is also played by Gallo, who also wrote and directed, is completely unlikable to me, and I think we are supposed to use his uncaring parents as an excuse for his bad behavior, but I don't buy it.

The movie itself feels a little too experimental and not very cohesive. Some unneeded split screens and rough cuts and a few flashbacks thrown in here and there - all done OK, I guess, considered alone, but not really flowing into the movie well. The pacing seems off, too deliberate at times and disjointed in others.

My favorite scene was Billy in the donut shop at the end of the movie, but it didn't seem like it fit into what we had seen to that point. I know what I am supposed to think happened, but I didn't feel like they sold it to me. And if the ending doesn't come together, the movie as a whole feels even worse.

Morning

It is not fun to think you don't have to be at work until 9:30 and then find out you actually need to be there at 8:30.

In other news, I think I am getting old because I woke up and my back hurt.