This Side of Lost

Yes, enter this strange, perverse metropolis in southern Indiana, where hookers dish out vigilante justice, where Nancy swings that lasso at Kadie's night after night, and where fine works of architectural beauty mix with classic, small-town Midwestern atmosphere -- no, wait. I'm getting my weekend all confused.

Friday I saw Sin City with Samantha. It was just about exactly what I expected. In hindsight, I'm not even sure why I was so excited about this movie. I've perused a few of Miller's graphic novels (the original, Hell and Back, The Big, Fat Kill) in preparation for the movie, and haven't really found them to my liking. Don't get me wrong, they're amazing -- Miller's art and storytelling is so unique and very striking. But the rampant violence and moral ambiguity mostly just had me unsettled. Naturally, since the movie is such a faithful adaptation of Miller's work, all that transfers right to the screen. Samantha pointed out how the dialogue sounds very different when it's actually being spoken instead of just written on a page -- and not in a good way. I'm not sure I'd recommend the film.

Saturday I went to Columbus, IN, to sing a hymn festival in honor of Paul Manz. This in itself is not unusual, as I am prone to involvement in such things, due to my friendship with a certain member of the Bloomington branch of the American Guild of Organists. What was unusual was the fact that the highway to Columbus was blocked by a major car accident for over an hour. We eventually decided to take a long and windy detour (along with most of the other people going) which ended up getting us to Columbus almost and hour and a half late. To make an already long story less long, it was a very lengthy day punctuated by very little non-sugar-based food, except for a Denny's Grand Slam at about 10:45 pm. Also, the Denny's in Columbus is scary.

Sunday the only thing of great consequence I did was watch the Red Sox get pwned by Randy Johnson. Sigh. In other news:

• Yes, baseball has started. Whee! Go Twins! I'm wearing my Twins cap today. :) I could bitch about their roster decisions like everyone else in blogland, but I won't. I'll just hope Joe Mauer proves himself durable.
• Once again, the end of the semester draws close, like a light at the end of the tunnel... one that proves to be the headlight of a fast approaching train. And once again, I continue to stare and wonder when it'll hit me...
• The weather is definitely looking up. Hooray for spring.
• Registration for summer and fall classes is beginning. So far I have opted to take a couple of seminars for the first summer session -- they look to be of a lower rigor level than the things I've been taking. Which will be nice -- summer is a time for academic rest, right? The fall schedule is still up in the air, pending whether or not I can get an internship worked out.
• I have lots of dreams and wishes about how my life will look next year. They involve more jobs, less class and a bigger apartment. We'll see how this goes...
• I know from experience that deaths frequently come in threes, but it still surprises me when it occurs. Terri Schiavo: her mind has been dead for a decade, thank goodness her body is now too. Mitch Hedberg: a wonderful comedian gone far before he should've. Pope John Paul II: since I'm not Catholic, I really don't mourn this much, but I recognize the indelible mark he left on his church and the way the world saw it. I pray the powers that be can choose a leader that will lead the Catholic Church into the new millenium.

Off to work. Maybe. Peace, all.

I love baseball. The Twins offense looked awesome yesterday. Sadly, John Smoltz's first game as a starting pitcher in years was awful. But I love checking the box scores and seeing the pictures and all that. Whee! And I'm finding baseball fans everywhere I turn around. This dude in my Coll Dev class was walking our way after class got out, and it turns out he was headed to Yogi's to watch the Cards. Awesome.

My Collection Development class is lame. I'm glad I'll be taking Nisonger's other class next spring. Maybe that'll make up for it.

Spring comes at just the right time -- after winter. It's been windy and warm here -- and Samantha and I have been out tossing a frisbee around. My feet are dirty and my arm is sore -- both good feelings.

Nickel Creek is coming to Bloomington. Again. Too much of a good thing. It's in the middle of finals week though... yikes.

My girlfriend is a cutie. And looks great in a skirt.

Viol3 (10:20:25 AM): http://catoftheday.com/archive/2004/June/18.html

wick98 (10:21:06 AM): Wow. What interesting markings.

wick98 (10:21:11 AM): And freakin' huge ears.

Viol3 (10:21:17 AM): it's a savannah

Viol3 (10:21:20 AM): or a bengal

Viol3 (10:21:37 AM): i spend way too much time doing this

wick98 (10:21:47 AM): *chuckle* Looking at cats online?

Viol3 (10:21:50 AM): http://catoftheday.com/archive/2004/May/26.html

Viol3 (10:21:54 AM): yeah


Viol3 (10:32:01 AM): oh my god

Viol3 (10:32:02 AM): http://catoftheday.com/archive/2003/June/15.html

Viol3 (10:32:08 AM): i'm going to explode

This 1956 film by John Ford stars the inscrutable John Wayne as a Confederate veteran with a hatred for Indians on an obsessive search for his niece, who was captured by the Comanche. Jeffrey Hunter and Vera Miles costar.

As we continue our way through this list, it becomes more and more apparent to me that I'm not sure I'm old enough to appreciate the significance of many of the films we've been watching. Take this one, for instance. The websites say that it is John Ford's most revered western -- which is really saying something, considering Ford is apparently one of the best and most prolific western directors ever. It comments on the antiheroicism and moral ambiguity of Wayne's character and the evocative style of Ford's narrative, and how it was embraced by French critics.

All high praise. The problem is, I don't know how to appreciate it. I recognize that the movie is good, but because I was born a mere 25 years ago, I am so used to seeing movies with antiheroes and ambiguous morals, that this doesn't seem that different. Clearly, anyone watching this movie in 1956 would be surprised at Wayne's unsettling and uncompromising character, but in 2005, it is anything but surprising.

The only things that date it as being an older film are the classic western soundtrack and the obviously Technicolor landscapes. It is in these clues, I suppose, that I must begin making my critique. The fact that the movie seems modern a good 50 years after it was made must be appreciated. But that point is so subtle. I guess subtlety is the bread-and-butter of the cinemaphile.

At any rate, I enjoyed this movie much more than Unforgiven. Wayne is hilarious to watch -- he lives up to the stereotype. And I'm sorry, but I don't really think he's a great actor. The film is truly epic in its many plot threads and broad time scale -- a credit to Ford for keeping it all tied together, while still creating sympathetic characters and moving the central plot along. The cinematography is very nice. And the more I think about it, the more details and nuances keep coming out at me. Ford is truly a detail-conscious director.

Good flick. Glad we don't have any more westerns for a while, though.

I watched my first Twins game of the year yesterday -- they were on ESPN, so even the little sports bars in southern Indiana could get it. And I was more than pleased. Even lacking our starting first baseman and shortstop, and with John Corbett playing catcher, the Twins held off the surprisingly decent-looking White Sox squad and won 5-2. And my man, Johan Santana, was in fine form, striking out 11, including three in one inning. It is such a rush to watch this guy when his pitches are working and making everyone look idiotic. Add a Torii Hunter three-run homer and you've got an awesome game.

Thanks to this and Sinden's recent take on baseball, I've got the seventh inning stretch theme song stuck in my head. Sigh. In other news:

• Samantha and I saw The Magic Flute on Friday, the last opera of the season (tear!). It was fabulous, as predicted. Except for it being sung in English. But the undergrad playing Tamino was fantastic, and everyone was certainly up to snuff. My only issue? Trying not to snicker during the Queen of the Night's aria, because Florence Foster Jenkins' version was playing over and over in my head... *cringe*
• Oh, yeah. We got sushi again before the opera. Tradition? I think so. This time, it was at Sushi Bar, which is also an improvement over Asuka. Mmmmmmmmm.
• Beautiful, beautiful weather over the weekend. We just had to get out and play. Wiffleball was a success on Saturday afternoon, and I rollerbladed up to campus yesterday. I can't wait until summer.
• I had a wonderful meal after church on Sunday. This isn't surprising, considering the student lunches at church are always of high quality (especially because they're free), but this one was actually at the cooks' house, south of town. It was perfect -- sitting on their screened-in porch, with a soft breeze, eating baked beans and mashed potatoes, discussing things of a silly and/or serious nature. So, so good.
• I talk about food a lot. Is this normal? Like, I could make three more comments about the food I've eaten in the past four days. But I won't.
• Except, don't get chicken fingers at Yogi's. They were rubbery and tasted burnt.

That is all. Back to checking baseball sites -- err, work. Yeah, that's it. Peace!

Which Colossal Death Robot Are You?
Brought to you by Rum and Monkey

As if anyone's really surprised by this.

Chemical Abstracts Service (known as CAS to those who care) is arguably the most important database provider and vendor in the chemical information field. Conveniently, it's located 4 hours away from Bloomington in Columbus, OH. For my Chem Info Retrieval course, we took a field trip on Tuesday. :) Although it was 8-9 hours round trip, we got a good 3 hours in at their home offices.

We saw one of their editors at work, doing what CAS does -- indexing and abstracting chemical information. We saw the tools they use to go through a document, create the links and the indexing and the associations. This was super cool to see (because I'm a huge nerd). We had a couple of guys who seemed to exude "sales staff" give us presentations on STN Express and SciFinder Scholar, two of their most popular access products. Too bad we already knew everything they were telling us. Then we saw the Data Center. Picture a command room in some sort of James Bond movie, complete with big screen computer displays showing intricate network diagrams and clocks showing time in cities around the world. Yeah. Also, we saw the server room. You know how CAS has a file (called REGISTRY) that contains data on over 25 million chemical compounds and 50 million biological sequences (DNA and protein)? Yeah, I saw the servers that that file is stored on. Crazy.

So that was cool. Also fun to talk to Alison Rollins for most of the trip and foist my music tastes on various people in the car. Hee. In other news:

• Some bike race is this weekend. I don't know.
• The Twins r0x0red the Tigers last night -- 5 runs in the first inning. Nice.
• I have a lot of stuff to do. I may not be posting again for a while.

Yay weekend! Too bad it will be busy with homework... sigh. That's the end of the semester for you. Peace, friends.

Apparently the Little 500 is the occasion for Public Intoxication Weekend at this school. Those of you from St. Olaf, think of Arbstrock. Or Cornstock at Concordia. I think there's one of these at every school? Feel free to comment with yours. For example, my driveway was blocked last night by a pickup truck and two squad cars, and three officers milling around with shirts that said Excise Police on the back.

Other observations:

• My roommate Chris is playing his guitar outside while listening to rugby games on the Internet on his Wi-Fi laptop. Technology rules.
• Paid rent yesterday -- only four months until I've been here for a year. Wild.
• Twins have won five in a row. Awesome.
• A card I received from my mother yesterday: A man sits at a desk and tells the man standing in front of him, "Down the fall, third door to your left. And I'm wearing women's underwear." Caption: The Too-Much-Information Desk.

Finally, a short bit of conversation as Chris and Dustin leave for the afternoon:

Chris: I think my Top Gun hat would be the best attire for the day.
Dustin: *nods solemnly*

"Why do things have to be hard?" - Me
"Because life would be boring otherwise." - Samantha

Samantha and I have casted an all-SLIS production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. You probably won't enjoy the rest of this post if you are not also a SLISzard.

Sometimes I'll hear something that speaks to my sensibilites about faith and belief. Usually it's not the standard stuff that people throw out there when talking about their faith -- usually it's something more abstract, more non-specific... usually something that doesn't actually mention God.

Here's one of those things. For full effect, find a recording of Ralph Vaughn-Williams' setting of it.

Quentin Tarantino's 1994 blockbuster probably needs no introduction for the demographic that will probably be reading this. But for those of you who have been living under a cinematic rock, Pulp Fiction stars John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman and Bruce Willis in a number of out-of-order vignettes that twist together to form a bizarre, hyper-violent and -satirical film.

Samantha probably won't like this. But I have to say that this is probably my favorite of the six films we've watched so far. She has several problems with the film, which I completely understand and respect. But I think the pros far outweigh the cons.

The film is fantastically violent. I don't enjoy violent films either. Samantha says the violence is unnecessary and meaningless. I don't think so. Tarantino is making a movie about violence -- it has to be. If the movie was also lacking the satire and intelligence with which the violence is presented (something that the scores of imitators of this movie are missing), it would be a problem. Thankfully, it's not. The movie never takes itself seriously enough for the violence to truly be disturbing to me. If Jackson's character mowed down those characters at the beginning of the film and didn't soliliquize and crack wise about anything and everything before and after, and didn't have his moment of redemption at the end, it would disturb me. But in context -- I can understand why it's there. I'm not a man given to profanity either, but it fits somehow.

I love the way this movie unfolds. It just kills me. Something about Tarantino's sense of humor and irony does it for me. Travolta cursing a blue streak about a five dollar milkshake. Harvey Keitel showing up in the 'burbs at 8:30 am in a tuxedo. The situations these characters are in and the way they continue to act given the extreme violence, depravity and lawlessness that surrounds them is so non-sequitur and fascinating. The movie dissects the genre it's in.

Add the cinematographic detail (long takes, gorgeous shots with framing and perspective) and the fantastic acting (especially by Jackson and Maria de Medeiros, playing Willis' girlfriend) and you have what is understandably one of the most influential films of the 1990's.

Will you enjoy this film? If you see the violence and language the same way Tarantino does, then yes. I can. I'm not sure what kind of person that makes me though.

(See this post if you're confused why I'm reviewing movies.)

EDIT - I'm rethinking this... stay tuned...