I’m it.


by Jonah

Okay, so I’ve been tagged in what is apparently a game of blog tag by my friend Cara. Hooray for RSS feeds. I have to answer the question

A Novel Idea:
If I could write a novel about any subject, what would it be?

I also have to tag several people to answer the same question on their blogs (and trackback here). If they don’t do so, that means they don’t love me enough to read my blog. I hereby tag Nathan, Ben, Berck, Sydney, and Mom. I would tag other people to whom I’m not related, but then I could hope to only get a response within several months. All of the above mentioned have to tag 5 other people… or… you’ll catch athlete’s foot the next time you use a public restroom.

So. What would I write a novel about? I’ve never understood how someone writes fiction. I love to write… but only about capturing slices of reality. I wouldn’t know what to do creating a world that doesn’t exist.

That isn’t to say that I don’t enjoy reading fiction. I especially love science fiction, where EVERYTHING… setting, species, constellations… are created out of thin air. But I think I lack the ability to lie that easily. I can paint a watercolor of a landscape out my window; I might even be able to paint it from memory. But to just come up with it out of my head? Not so easy.

I’ve tossed around the idea of writing a political thriller about the real power bosses in government. But I’d have to be making all sorts of stuff up, because I haven’t got a clue. I’ve also thought about writing science fiction short stories. (I come up with great ideas all the time, like what really causes Alzheimer’s isn’t a wasting degeneration of brain tissue but a temporal shift. But then I’d have to flesh the idea out with, like, characters and settings and stuff. Sigh.) Dang, I could make a bundle if I churned out cheap romance novels. And most literary intellectuals of the 20th century made their living writing mysteries (minus Lewis and Tolkien, who had the ability to write fantasy).

So I settled on a novel about a non-traditional relationship between a 21 year old and a 14 year old who fall in love but must wait 8 years to get married.

Posted in Nonclassified Nonsense | 9 Comments

Movies… because you asked.


by Berck

After watching Thumbsucker I asked Joanna how she’d rate it. “Ben would like it,” she responded. And I agree, Ben would like it. It’s entertaining and suitably serious without being depressing. It will probably appeal more to a younger audience as ostensibly about a teenage search for truth. Much of the movie tends to focus on age, investigating at what sort of activities are appropriate for a given age and position: all the characters tend to violate our preconceived notion of “normal” parameters. A-.

Happy Endings is worth watching simply because its style is unique. It too is entertaining, and takes an almost comedic look at situations which any other movie would overbearingly treat as hopelessly dramatic. B.

Mona Lisa Smile wasn’t as aimless and hollywoody as I suspected it would be, but it hardly stood out as a great movie. I got it mostly because, well, my queue was empty and I like Julia Roberts. Plus I teased Jonah that it would have lesbian sex scenes, and she insisted that there was no way. No lesbian sex scenes, but the subject was certainly addressed, the movie being about an all girls school. Jonah said simply, “Well, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.” C+.

Same Time Next Year, from 1978, is a bit older than our average Netflix selection, but is well worth watching. It’s adapted from a play, and very much feels like a play. It was quite well made, and despite being about adultery, Jonah enjoyed it as well. I picked it because I was on something of an Alan Alda kick. The premise (a couple meets once a year for 25 years to carry on an affair despite both of them being happily married to other people) certainly has potential and the movie did a reasonable job of telling an entertaining tale of two lives and the changes they go through. B+

I liked Same Time Next Year despite the fact that it showed two people undergoing continuous, dramatic exterior evolution, but still seemed to hold true to my basic understanding of human behavior: After a certain relatively young age, say 16 years or so, people are incapable of a substantial change in basic behavior. Something’s Gotta Give both challenges and simultaneously affirms that idea. Jack Nicholson is suitably entertaining as usual. Furthermore his character made me wish I could be a crazy old dude whose behavior could be simply discounted due to age. B+.

No Direction Home is a two-disc documentary about Bob Dylan. I watched the first disc, and while I didn’t dislike it, I found it less than informative about who Bob Dylan really is. I haven’t rented the second disc yet, but also haven’t decided I’m not going to rent it. C.

I added Proof to our queue because Jonah told me to. I suspect she told me to simply because she thinks Gwenyth Paltrow is hot. It wasn’t a bad movie, but lacked a worthwhile premise or plot. The characters weren’t boring, but lacked suitable intruigue and seemed to be over-acted in order to make up for the lack of a decent script. C.

Posted in Movie Reviews | 1 Comment

It’s over.


by Jonah

Well, the campaign has ended, and as you probably know, we didn’t win. What you might not know is that we actually did quite well, though not for our campaign.

The election results were right on target with the two polls I conducted, except for one thing: Bentley Rayburn and Duncan Bremer’s percentages were reversed. (For instance, everyone seemed to think that Mayor Rivera had a very good chance of winning, but my polling showed him about where he ended up. See http://coloradopols.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=1542.)

So what happened? Well, we had run a very positive campaign since February. We’d been out on the street smiling and waving almost every day for about a month prior to the primary. And so when people started thinking about voting, they thought about that positive candidate… what was his name again?

And right before the election, Bentley Rayburn’s campaign unleashed a huge media blitz, talking about integrity and how he was the positive candidate. And he had money raised from all over the country to outspend us 10 to 1 those final two weeks. Everyone, even his own campaign, was surprised that he came in third. It was a brilliant move on his campaign to be able to piggyback on what we’d been working toward for months. Congrats, General Rayburn, on running such a successful campaign… we wish you the very best in your next endeavor! (It wouldn’t have mattered if we had all of his votes and all of ours… we still wouldn’t have won.)

So we may not have won the race, but we did make a difference in it. Duncan always brought the debate back to issues instead of slogans. He stressed the utmost importance of integrity in a race that got down and dirty. And most of the other campaigns went out of their way to compliment us on running our campaign with honor and integrity. I hope we made a difference in politics in this part of Colorado for years to come.

Posted in Nonclassified Nonsense | No Comments

Junebug


by Berck

I’ve gone and done it now… watched two good indie movies in a row. Considering that the ratio of bad:good indie movies is about 10:1, I’ve got 20 bad ones in store. And I don’t think I can take it:)

Junebug is hardly one of those movies that I’d tell anyone, “You really should watch this movie,” not because it was bad, but because it’s not the sort of movie I tell people to watch. It’s about a small-town southern family and is an honest portrait. The movie quietly points out how funny these people are without making fun of them while simultaneously showing us their flaws without making us think that life sucks. I don’t always agree with Roger Ebert, but I think he’s right on about this movie. I’d give it an A-, but there was one fake southern accent, so it gets downgraded to a B+. Considering that most movies are full of fake accents, it was refreshing to see a bunch that weren’t. The one fake accent was good enough that Joanna insisted it was real. She finally agreed it was fake after discovering the actress was from Colorado. I’m not sure why I’m better at spotting fake southern accents than Jonah is, perhaps because I’ve spent a much larger portion of my life in the South. And she’s the one who thinks it’s acceptable to say, “I’m fixin’ to leave.”

Posted in Movie Reviews | 3 Comments

Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human


by Berck

For a period of time, I felt compelled to offer movie reviews. Mostly because Nathan acted interested. I stopped mostly because it started to have a shopping list-like quality about it. And who wants to read shopping lists? (Well, if you miss the movie reviews, leave a comment and maybe I’ll bring ’em back.) In any case, we just watched Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human which is definitely one of the better indie movies out there. It’s an absolutely hilarious nature show style documentary on human relationships. We both really enjoyed it– you probably will too. It’s worlds better than Woody Allen’s Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex, and it pays homage to (steals from?) the same.

Course, you probably also have to have Netflix, as I doubt it can be found at Blockbuster or the like.

And, obviously, if you’re inexplicably deluded and think sex doesn’t belong in cinema, you probably shouldn’t watch a movie about the mating habits of humans. But you’d laugh at it if you did.

Posted in Movie Reviews | 2 Comments