another quick one

Here is some cool mate­r­ial from across the web. Enjoy, while I try and catch up on my life…

• Seems I wasn’t the only one who objected to hear­ing that A Beau­ti­ful Mind won the Best Adapted Screen­play award. Here’s a more artic­u­late argue­ment for why it was a poor choice. Also check out this Salon Arti­cle that pretty accu­rately pre­dicted who would win which Oscar and why. It’s the same type of rea­son­ing I used when fill­ing out my form for Jenny’s party.

• Cap­tion Machine – I got turned onto this site by Ron­in­cy­ber­punk. It’s a cool use of blog­ger tech­nol­ogy. Take a gander, there are some amaz­ing pic­tures up there.
• Mordo the Magi­cian by Steve Martin – yes, that Steve Martin. It’s a funny, morbid tale of stage magic gone wrong. Avail­able in Flash or Quicktime.

Oscars

try not to rant… try note to rant….

Last night I went to Jenny’s Oscar Party. (hold it together Matt, don’t rant) The food was great! Jenny’s ham­ster devolved a taste for Andy’s blood. We had a great time laugh­ing at the speeches.

speeches, speeches umm… ahhh…. Ah screw it, FLAME ON!…

There were so many things last night that were rant worthy. I don’t know where to start. I’ll keep it to four things that really stuck with me and spare you the rest of my venom. (I’ve got to be chan­nel­ing Joel today!)

1. Akiva Golds­man win­ning the best adapted screen play Oscar for A Beau­ti­ful Mind. To quote David Ives it’s “The tri­umph of the utterly mediocre.” I’m not even going to com­ment on the man, other than to say Batman and Robin… his record for writ­ing crap stands for itself. How­ever, One would think that an award for “Best Adapted Screenplay” would take into con­sid­er­a­tion how well the script adapted the source mate­r­ial. A Beau­ti­ful Mind is a good movie, but a white washed ver­sion of the book it is based on. The script left out some of the more offen­sive traits of John Nash that are detailed in the book (beyond the oft talked about Anti-​Semitism, the book doc­u­ments Nash’s infi­delity [which kinda wrecks the love story angle], and pos­si­ble homo­sex­ual ten­den­cies [which also throws a wrench in the love story]). It’s sad that Hol­ly­wood needs to “smooth” out the rough edges of people because we, as a cul­ture, can’t seem to accept fal­li­ble heroes (more on that thought in a future blog). If you con­sider the task of adapt­ing an exist­ing work into a new medium, In The Bed­room, Ghost World, and Fel­low­ship of the Rings were all far more deserving.

2. The trib­ute film for Sidney Poitier – I love Poitier’s work, To Sir With Love is a favorite movie of mine. He’s a fine actor, a class indi­vid­ual and deserves to be hon­ored. But, the more that I think about the trib­ute film to Poitier, the more frus­trated I get. It’s great to hear other actors and actresses talk about how he inspired them. But why no white actors or other minor­ity actors? Poitier should be hon­ored not only because of the color of his skin, but the qual­ity of his talent and drive. And those are things that are inspi­ra­tion to people of all creed and color. But this year’s cer­e­mony seemed to be the Academy’s apol­ogy for years of minor­ity exclu­sion in the awards. The issue of race dwarfed every­thing inclu­ing the trib­ute, both obvi­ously and subtly (did you notice that was the only film of the night where the inter­views were con­ducted on a black back­ground? Also, if Hol­ly­wood has gotten so pro­gres­sive, why was Halle Berry the only actress inter­view for the film? If she wasn’t nom­i­nated I doubt she would have been included). I guess that just shows that for as far as we think we’ve come, we still have miles to go.
3. That BS trib­ute to the movies they started the show with – Salut­ing the movies as a form of escapism and the great quote that “I’d rather see a mediocre movie than a good play” are won­der­ful exam­ples of the over­all dumb­ing down of our cul­ture. Some­times I wonder why I’m spend­ing all my spare time work­ing on a play when the­atre is dying a sad, pathetic death here in the states. Must con­trol fist of death… (this isn’t to say all movies need to be deep or that they are a less artis­tic medium than the­atre. But do we really need to cel­e­brate Ernest goes to Jail?)
4. Last one, and it’s short: Brit­ney Spears talk­ing about Pretty Woman as a pin­na­cle of film and how her cin­tem­atic role model is a prosi­tute says more about her than I can ever hope to. But everyone’s enti­tled to an opin­ion. Or maybe not… A favorite pro­fes­sor of mine in col­lege once pro­claimed that before you could have an opin­ion in his class you first had to prove that you were capa­ble of form­ing an informed opin­ion. I at first I thought that was rather elitist… at first….

Ok, after all that rant­ing, I do have to admit that I won the “guess the Oscars” con­test at Jenny’s party (this is the second year in a row for me). It only makes me feel more cyn­i­cal that the way that the acad­emy votes is so pre­dictable. No wait, it makes me even more cyn­i­cal that I can think just like they do. Sigh… next year I’m voting the way I think it should end up; that should guar­an­tee that I’ll finish last.

As for the past week­end, I’m trying an exper­i­ment. Here are the two hand­writ­ten jour­nal pages about it. Hope­fully they’ll be leg­i­ble. If not I’ll rekey ‘em. I’m just too lazy to do it now:

and with­out fur­ther adeu… the Friday five:

1. What is your favorite time of year?

Fall, then spring, winter and finally summer.

2. What is it about your favorite season that, well, makes it your favorite season?

The chang­ing leaves, the smells, the knowl­edge that soon snow will come and I can ski and snowboard.

3. What is your least favorite time of year? Why?

The end of winter here in Rochester. Wait­ing for the gray to end and the weather to start to warm up. By the last days of winter we’re all really excited about the prospect of spring!

4. Do you do any­thing to cel­e­brate or rec­og­nize the chang­ing of seasons?

We had banana splits on the first day of spring here at work. Soon there will be pic­tures and video to share of inflat­able monkey love that occurred in prepa­ra­tion for that celebration.

5. What’s your favorite thing to do outside?

Here goes (cause I can never pick one): biking, winter sports, sail­ing (which I haven’t done enough of in recent years), rollerblad­ing, hiking, camp­ing (again I haven’t done enough of this in recent years), photography

More of a post will follow soon….

broken record

so it just really occurred to me that my blogs as of late have sounded a bit like a broken record. I think anyone whose kept up with it for even a little while could write an entry:

I’m busy. The play is crazy, but moving for­ward. Mar­tial arts is going well, but not too well. Obsess about Hair and Alyson Hannigan.

actu­ally I haven’t obsessed over her in a while. Note to self: remem­ber to write a stalker worthy blog sometime.…

This rep­e­ti­tion is a pretty good indi­ca­tor that I don’t have much of a life right now. I do have a bunch of stuff that I’m saving to share until I have time to work on the site. Hope­fully that will be soon (if I ever get home before 11.30pm or so).

As the Falcon Flys

the falcon soap opera con­tin­ues. Yes­ter­day the new boy in town (whose been nick­named “mail man” by the folks here at kodak.com) pre­sented a dead bird (read as “food”) to Mariah (our unfaith­ful momma falcon). This is an impor­tant aspect of falcon mating. Basi­cally the male is prov­ing he can pro­vide, as the female can’t hunt while incu­bat­ing the eggs and watch­ing the hatch­lings. Dead­beat dad’s don’t get any in the falcon world. Here’s it happening…

This also offi­cially kicked off the “car­nage cam.” By the end of the nest­ing we’ll have watch lots of pigeons, chick­adees, swal­lows and other small birds con­sumed on camera. Seri­ously, when you go up on the walk, you see bird bones every­where. On the plus side we have a lot less pigeons (winged rats) around Kodak tower.

I remem­ber when I had time to blog

oy. oy. oy.

So my life has been just a shade of nuts recently. The play is going like gang busters (we’re less than four weeks away from curtain… of course that would be if we had a cur­tain). Long Ago and Far Away is in good shape. Ok… better shape, everyone’s just about off book. Ancient His­tory needs a lot more work. But I trust my actors. So I’m not uber con­cerned yet. I just want this to be a good show. A cut above stan­dard area com­mu­nity the­atre (no crack on those the­atres, it’s just this is the goal we set for our­selves). Some­thing that I feel good about putting infront of an audi­ence. Now, if I could only just find a gun! More on that tomorrow.

The play and some other projects are just eating up my life right now and pro­vid­ing a lot of drama. Speak­ing of drama, some is going on on top of Kodak tower. A male falcon has finally arrived to mate with our female falcon. But, surprise… he ain’t the usual male. The lack of band­ing on his legs shows that the new boy in town is a wild falcon, not Cabot-​Sirocco who has “ruled” the nest since the birds first started nest­ing. This would indi­cate that Cabot has left the area (or left the earth). It’s pos­si­ble that our Mr X knocked off Cabot (as fal­cons are known to do) and took his mate. You can follow As The Falcon Flys here.

In other news, Mar­tial Arts con­tin­ues to go well. I had a good class last night. Basi­cally I threw every­thing and the kitchen sink while spar­ring. I’m spin­ning more reg­u­larly now (which is good), but my stance work still sucks (which is bad). As Sifu put’s it, I’m chop­ping away at a brick wall that is hin­der­ing my for­ward progress. Last night I was knock­ing bigger peices out of it. Soon I should be able to see to the other side. And when that day comes I’ll be able to open up a whole new can of whoop ass!

bits & pieces

I don’t have much time to blog, but I thought I’d sneak a quick note. I’ve added ron­in­cy­ber­punk to my list of blogs of note. Other than being named after a mas­ter­less samu­rai, being a fellow Eagle Scout, and work­ing in a theme park, Ronin keeps a pretty inter­est­ing blog. Check it out.

If I have time tonight I’ll put up a new MP3, survey and some more quotes. But the way things are going that might not occur until tomorrow.

follow up on the post on God and Creativity

heather posted the fol­low­ing com­ment after my God and Cre­ativ­ity post:

So… would those with more cre­ative types of minds be closer to “God”? Some people out there just aren’t creative… are they less divine?

Inter­est­ing point, but I’d have to dis­agree with the notion that some people are not cre­ative. I’ve yet to find some­one who isn’t cre­ative in some aspect of their lives. Or rather who doesn’t have the poten­tial to be cre­ative. Cre­ativ­ity is a very broad expe­ri­ence. Last night was a great exam­ple. An old mar­tial arts friend is leav­ing town and so as part of saying good­bye, we had a huge open class/sparring night. Most of the people there were not nec­es­sar­ily what you would con­sider cre­ative. Or at least in the tra­di­tional artis­tic sense. How­ever once each of them started moving and fight­ing there were flashes of bril­liance and cre­ativ­ity that were inspir­ing. Those moments were not that much dif­fer­ent from Artie Shaw’s moments of bril­liant cre­ativ­ity on the clar­inet (though I don’t want to sug­gest that we were on a common level when it came to mas­tery of our chosen instru­ments). This also relates back to the theory of Opti­mal Expe­ri­ence that Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi puts forth in books like Flow: moments when you are in a state of flow/rhythm/balance inter­nally and with your sur­round­ings. I can’t think of a better descrip­tion of a pseudo divine state than that.

Of course, if a person chooses not to embrace their cre­ative aspects then they are poten­tially cut­ting them­selves off from this type of expe­ri­ence. And there are people, who for rea­sons I can’t under­stand, do choose to do that.

in other news

- I finally got a flying scis­sors take down off yes­ter­day. Thanks to Aaron for being such a great spar­ring part­ner! Now if I could have gotten the roll-over-the-other-person’s-back-sacrifice-throw I tried I would have been ready for my career as a low budget action star.

- The­ater: Uggg… just found out that our set designer will not be able to over­see the set con­struc­tion. Crap! I don’t have time to find some­one else. I knew things were going too well there.