The Good: I caught Juno this weekend and I thought it was a really great movie. Besides being simple broad characteristics such as sweet and funny, it was also an incredibly well put together movie with great dialogue. This movie must have been somewhat golden from the get go because you can tell from watching it that the screenplay must have been great. Diablo Cody wrote it (here’s a little Jezebel information on her - and of course you can find out what you can about her from imdb), and it’s really really good especially considering it was her first screenplay. It’s not just the dialogue, which I’ve already mentioned as great, but the story itself is well rounded. It does a good job of completing the circle of these people’s lives. There were some problems I had with Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman’s story arch (mostly pointed to me by my mother), but it wasn’t anything major that I thought detracted from the movie as a whole, especially when Cody does such a good job of juxtaposing the conclusion of their relationship with our general feelings towards the characters throughout the piece. So good job. Thumbs up. Go see it.

The Bad: The New York fucking Knicks. Not only did the Knicks lose back to back games to the Sixers (THE SIXERS - one of a select few (I believe its only 2-3) teams with a worse record than the Knicks), but James Dolan is standing behind Isiah with his full support. WHAT?!?!?! How does that make any sense? Only one team is worse than the Knicks in the entire Eastern Conference after this weekend. Only three teams in the whole league are worse! And two of those teams are in the midst of intense rebuilding overhauls (Seattle, Minnesota). Uch. Ugh. Mlech. There are no words. Just disgusted sounds.

As I was watching the Knicks suck their way into oblivion this weekend (59 points?  59!?!?!? - that was Thursday I know, but still) and the chorus of “Fire Isiah”s supposedly rained down from on high, I wondered how properly chants Fire Isiah.  Think about it.  Normally its something like “Fire Millen.”  Fi-re.  Mill-en.  Works.  Sylables are fine.  Fi-re I-say-ah?  Not so much.  What does work though would be Fire Thomas.  Fi-re To-mas.  More than the team, I’d be pumped to go to a Knicks game just to see how the fans truly rained down with their fire and brimstone.  Any insight into the issue is welcome.

I’ll start this post by saying that I will not be answering that question.  It is merely the subject line of a spam email I got today.  And I’ll let you know that the spam email was very disappointing.  After opening with that question, it didn’t even come remotely close to answering it.  Instead, it lauded (this is my new word) a stock in one of those inflate and drop schemes no doubt - which interestingly enough work sometimes.  I forget where I heard this but there was one instance of this mass emailing in which the company seemed somewhat legit (or was legit) and the price tripled or some shit and then didn’t completely deflate as one would think it would.  I’ll have to look for that article, because likely my description of it is terrible.

But this is not my thought from the weekend, my thought from the weekend revolves around Sparta (or should I say SPARTA!!!!!).  I don’t know if this happens in other neighborhoods (as I live in a rather Greek oriented one), but I’ve seen a lot of Spartan companies jumping up here and there.  I’m sure this happens more and more now that the movie 300 came out.  So, this weekend while out in Queen, I saw one which I think made very little sense - “Spartan Plumbing.”  Now assuming this is a new business coming post-300, which judging from the newness of the truck and paint job seems likely, then these people picked the worst possible name.  Think about it.  Wasn’t the whole goal of the Spartans to clog the, one might say, pipeline to their city?  Wouldn’t a plumber be more like that armies of Xerxes in this metaphor? I realize there are other Spartans and Spartan tales besides 300, but no doubt that’s the first that comes to mind at this point.  Might want to rethink that name.

Toilet clogged? THIS IS PLUMBING!!!

And I don’t mean that in a vulgar way what so ever. I am, instead, talking about Wynton Marsalis who I had the pleasure of see at Jazz at Lincoln Center (which is in fact at the Time Warner Center). Watching Marsalis play and speak, it made me realize that every breathe this man took, every exhalation was meant to be put through a trumpet. The sheer joy he took from playing music, from being around music and musicians was so evident. You got the feeling that even if he wasn’t able to play in front of audiences in elaborate (and I’ll admit pretty beautiful) concert halls, he would still want to blow on that horn. There was so much passion in what he was doing, and it was interesting watching him amidst the rest of the orchestra. All of the orchestra (group?) were obviously talented musicians or they wouldn’t be there and they all obviously loved music, otherwise, again, they wouldn’t be there, but still it seemed like there was something different about Marsalis. Maybe it was simply that along with playing he was MCing the event, but when he came to the front of the stage to play, it was like the room changed. His playing literally gave me goosebumps at one point.

Now, admittedly, as an artist, this type of passion and commitment to your art and the history of your art and everything is somewhat daunting. Given Marsalis has over 24 years on me, but still, I was awed by his knowledge of jazz and then again, his passion for it. I love writing. I really do love it. But I got the feeling that if I took Marsalis trumpet away he’d be sweating like a junky in no time, and that’s intimidating for someone like me who has, perhaps, not yet found that fire. I know I want to write. I know I can write. And I know that there’s times when I’m writing and I’m on a roll and its the greatest feeling in the world. My heart will be racing, my legs will be twitching, and it takes all my energy just to keep me in my chair and to keep me pounding on the keys. But there’s so much more going on in life, and I suppose that’s where Marsalis and I seem to diverge. It truly seemed to me that he lived, ate, drank, and breathed Jazz and always had. (more…)

I had a long discussion this weekend about continuity in films and on TV.  Basically, I was venting that it pisses me off so much when they fuck it up.  For example, on the new NBC show Life (good show by the way), there was a scene where this guy who was in a car accident and had now recovered but still had a band-aid on his forehead mystically had the band-aid change sides on his forehead between shots.  Now this is bad on its own, but in the next shot, IT CHANGED BACK.  Now, sometimes I think I notice things that other people might miss (for example, in Dirty Sexy Money I noticed a character changed grips on his wine glass from shot to shot) but this one just seemed so blatant.  The character’s head was in the center of the screen and this big band-aid switches sides.  Twice!

I could really go on about this forever, but I’ll spare you and jump to the point.  This pisses me off because it means that either the companies producing these shows figure the viewers are too stupid and absent minded to notice or be bothered by such things (which, honestly, they’re probably right about) or it means that an entire department (the continuity department) is slacking on their jobs.  They pay people so that this type of thing doesn’t happen.  So does that mean that these professional continuity people are worse at noticing these things than a common watcher who rarely sleeps?  Yikes.

Mainly though, I just want someone to hire me as a continuity expert.

So, if you’ve been watching any of the MLB playoffs on TBS or if you’ve even once glanced at the channel and caught a commercial break, it is highly likely that you’ve seen one of the many advertisements for Frank TV( he does impersonations, YAY!). We can argue day and night about the legitimacy of this show. First of all, Frank Caliendo or whatever his name is is a decently funny guy. I’ve heard his impressions of Madden before and they’re dead on. Only problem is I heard them like 8 years ago. The guy’s been doing the same shtick for probably longer than that. That’s cool and fine by me I suppose, but this has the potential to have a shorter run than Magic Johnson’s late night show. I’m unsure exactly what he’s gonna do (he’s apparently changing the face of late night), but the ads are really just terrible (especially since they’ve been shoved down my throat so much - don’t get that).

What these promos made me think of though was when Bush is singing the lyrics to Take Me Out to the Ballgame. See I thought, what better way to sum up his time in office than by a little modification of the lyrics to make the line “Buy me some peanuts and let’s go to Iraq. I don’t care if we never come back.” Just a thought. One from the weekend in fact.
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See, normally, I wouldn’t say anything like that, but that problem is that I had a really great thought from the weekend, and I completely forgot it.  Terrible, no?  See, if I was on Real World I could have just blurted it out and watched the tape later and remembered it.  Or, I could just write these things down.  Yeah, I think I’ll just go with that.

Anyway, a not as interesting or perhaps profound thought I had from the weekend was about this new borough specific advertising I’ve been seeing around.  Virgin has been running these ads about neighborhoods basically.  It’s like “Stay you, Queens” or “You’re cool, Manhattan.”  Admittedly, I haven’t taken the time to really sit and read them, but I’m sure they’re somewhat witty or whatever.  Point being, they’re well placed.  And then there’s the Chuck Taylor “Get Chucked” ads which have a lady looking out a window with a “God Save Queens” jacket on.  Borough specific, right?  Only I’ve only seen the ads in Manhattan.  Sooooooo….yeah, kind of wasted.  Interesting though, how companies are getting more and more specific and personal with their advertisements.  It’s not just national or regional or even city specific campaigns, they’re getting down to boroughs and neighborhoods.

This is a thought that has often gone through my head while traveling around the city.  It’s not so much a sense of lostness (apparently this is a word) as it is a sense of “I had no idea such things existed in the city” or such places for that matter.  And maybe its that you did know they existed, they had to exist, but you’ve just never seen them before.  This has been happening to me a lot recently.

New York City has tons of these little enclaves.  Places known to plenty of people but just not necessarily to everyone.  The city is big enough, diverse enough that it’s impossible to know where you are at every moment and to recognize everything.  We each create our own maps of the city that can expand, change shape, and everything like that, but rarely encompass the entire city.  For example, I had never driven on the Cross Bronx before and I loved how it dips under buildings at one point.  New stuff.  Then this weekend I was out on my bike going around Queens, and I saw all sorts of cool stuff as I rode along the river past parks and down what I believe was Vernon Blvd.  It was nice.  And just going down there you experience all these new parts of New York that until now were essentially non-existent.  This is why I love the city.  There will always be a New in New York (do you see what I did there?).

Riding on the subway various times over the weekend, I noticed some graffiti here and there (odd I know).  Now some graffiti is just tags and the likes, some is motivational statements De La Vega style, and some are pushing for certain causes or ideas.  It seems to me that the people who are pushing for certain causes and ideas must be mostly zealots - I’d guess religious from the tone of the messages I saw.  Example - one an ad for safe sex (you’ve probably seen them saying things like “I want a child some day but now I use birthday control) had the words “WHORE” written on it with an arrow pointing to the woman featured in the ad.  Another time, written in whiteout on the “Please” sign asking you not to litter or whatever, there was a big “PRAY” written - though later I saw a “PRAY” scratched somewhere else so that could be someone’s tag that they enjoy placing somewhat ironically.  Point being that the zealots are out there spreading their intellectual seed (WHORE), which makes absolute sense.  It is easier to argue for people to believe in something than to not believe.  Preaching apathy is harder than preaching belief.

Also, is there any type of zealot other than religious?  There can be any type of zealot, right?  But do you ever really hear of it used out of the context of religion?

While walking down 86th street over the weekend, I heard a man mention a staff infection, and being the man of high moral character and intellectual standing that I am, immediately thought to myself, “Does a guy who gets an STD have some sort of staff infection?”

I don’t know how many of you have ridden the new N trains outside of Manhattan and specifically into Queens, but if you had you’d have noticed that Queensboro Plaza is abbreviated as Queensboro Plz.  Do you think whoever came up with that is aware that anyone who texts quite a lot will read that as “Queensboro Please?”