Documentary: Inside Job

The other day when I was running my English Conversation Class for adults, I was asking a bunch of conversation starter type questions -- like "What's your favorite food?" or "What's your favorite thing to do in the summer?" One of the one's that I asked that -- surprisingly -- made everyone uncomfortable was "What would you do if you have $100,000,000?"

The general consensus was "We don't need that much money."

I thought it was interesting. You ask someone in America that question and they'll ramble on about the cars and houses and things they'd buy, the charities they'd donate to, the bills they paid. But with my conversation students the conversation just came to a grinding halt when I asked that question.

Inside Job is essentially about greed and how very smart people made very risky decisions and put a lot of people in danger so they can make a lot of money. And hands down my favorite part was when they say that when you make money, the same part of your brain is stimulated as when you take cocaine. COCAINE.

So it was all a very nice documentary, but to top it all off, it's narrated by Matt Damon who I think its pretty sexy. I mean c'mon. Have you seen the Jason Borne movies? Of course you have. Matt Damon is a beast and him and that narrator voice can get in my pants.

Album - Kikuuiki by Sakanaction

Song above -- "Ashita Kara"

Have you ever found music that makes it hard to breathe? It's so you good you just want to jump and dance? You know those albums or that band or that song that is EXACTLY what you want to listen to?

I imagine a lot of people will listen to the song above and... well... not really get it, but that song above is just about the weirdest and most perfect combo of techno and pop and rock all put together into some awesome Japanese band. Called Sakanaaction. Fish Action. FISH ACTION.

My friend Gina randomly gave me this CD her coworker made for her, and I just listened to the whole thing kind of amazed.

It's like when you have an itch to find new music, and no matter what you find it's just not right, and then you find exactly what it is you've been looking for...

...and then you spend hours on the computer trying to figure out if you can get down to Tokyo to see them live. If only. ;)

Book - The Name of the Wind (or, Life is too short to finish bad books)

I think there's something satisfying about throwing a book across the room in disgust. You know what I'm talking about. You're reading on your couch, you've hit the 500 page mark of your 700 page book, realizing that nothing has happened for the past 300 pages, you don't like the main character, and it's just been a whole lot of talking, and you're just done. Done! You will have nothing more to do with this book, so you let out a grunt or shriek or chortle of disgust and you toss the damn thing across the room! The thing goes flying, pages splayed everywhere and with any luck you'll give the cover a nasty bend because what a waste of time!

Unless you're reading it on your Kindle. In which case you just delete it's very existence.

But since I actually had a physical copy of this book I got a really satisfying toss out of it. It's hefty, too! 700 pages! You hit someone in the head with that thing and you could do some damage. Angle it just right and BAM -- paper cuts to the face. You're not happy, your friend Steve who just got hit in the face isn't happy, no body's happy.

So if you want that satisfying thunk, read through this thing to about the 500 page mark, and when you realize that it's been nothing but chatting (like, seriously, there's no plot in this book), you let out that "UGH" and you chuck this thing across the room, by golly, because quite frankly that's the most entertainment that I got out of this novel.

To be the fair, the first 150 pages or so was fantastic. I had high hopes for it. But it turns out the character is the graduate of the Mary Sue Academy Of Perfect Perfectness and the ensuing 350 pages can be summed up by saying "Mary Sue goes to school and is awesome at everything."

You see, I'm a slow reader. If I'm going to read a three part trilogy where each book is nearly 1000 pages long, it's gonna take me some time. Like a lot of time. And if I'm not enjoying the book, I refuse to commit any additional time to it. When it comes to books, I'm a commitment-phobe.

Especially when I have another book waiting for me that I've been dying to start.

That's it! Done! Thank you. Moving on.

Movie: Pirates! ...the 3rd one!

I know what you're thinking -- but Bryan! You didn't watch the second one! Yeah... and I think that didn't exactly help me out in my not-having-a-damn-clue while I was watching this movie.

What I can tell you is that this movie is like 3 hours long, and if you're not prepared for a 3 hour long pirates movie, it might test your patience a bit, especially since after an hour and a half of having no recollection at all about what was happening in the movie, my brain called it quits.

It just said "Nope, Bryan. I'm not gonna do it. It's been a long week and there's quite frankly too much Orlando Bloom in this movie for me to tolerate any more than 10 minutes of this at a time."

So eventually my brain switched itself off and started thinking about kittens and muffins and how much I miss orange soda from back home.

How pathetic is that? My brain couldn't handle watching a pirates movie and had to give up.

Okay I'm going to just admit it. I didn't really get the third Pirates movie. I remember liking the second one pretty well, but in the third one where they get to the part where Jack is stuck in Davy Jone's Locker, it just loses me because... I don't get it.

I liked the little stone crab things though. I also like it when they get to the giant pirates hide out where all the pirate lords convene. But let me tell you, if you watch an hour and a half of this movie and spend the entire time waiting for that scene, you're going to be disappointed. Because it doesn't happen in the first half.

There's a lot of talking. Like a looooot of talking. More talking than is warranted in a movie about pirates (I think any dialogue other than "Arrrr!" is a bit superfluous).

And Kiera does a lot of mouth breathing. And Orlando Bloom looks annoyed at Keira. And Jack is weird. And Barbosa is awesome.

...But there's a lot of talking in this movie. Needless to say, I'm treating the first three movies as if they were four, and am only devoting my attention to half of this movie per sitting!

Documentary: Grass - The History of Marijuana

This is one of my favorite documentaries. I find the topic of marijuana interesting mostly because I don't think the government should be able to do what I can put in my body. There's a ton of studies showing that marijuana's a pretty harmless drug, but what this shows is some of the reasons it was made illegal in the first place.

It takes you over the course of the past 100 years of America's marijuana history, showing how much money we've spent on the war on drugs, all the different propaganda the government has tried to push, and the racism behind the drug.

AND it's narrated by Woody Harrelson. I love that guy!

Documentary: Taken For A Ride

Any time I hear Europeans complaining on the internet about the cost of their gas, I like to show them this image:

I don't think you can really consider yourself having gone on a road trip until you've been on one where it takes 20 some hours just to go two States north.

In any case, it's a bummer there's not more feasible public transportation in the States. It's unreliable, it can't really take you any where, and after living in Japan and Spain where the public transportation is pretty top notch, it really is kind of a bummer when you have to take your car everywhere. Granted, cities in Europe and Japan are pretty walkable. The ones in America... not so much.

This documentary starts off talking about cable cars and the people who came in and gutted the system and moves on to the building of the interstates, the the rich few who always seemed to be spending their money pushing the policies that would give them even more.

My personal favorite moment was at about 30:00 when theres a propaganda bit showing some teacher basically saying "WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!?" which also happens to be my least favorite argument for just about anything ever.

I don't think any time soon we'll see any good advancement in the public transportation in the States... but it's nice to imagine...

Book: A Song of Fire and Ice -- Clash of Kings

Okay look, here's the deal. If I'm going to devote myself to a 5 part series of books, each one ranging from 700 to 1100 pages long, I better damn well be entertained and you better damn well tell a story. None of this standing around business while characters chat when things should be happening. I like books that are plot driven, and if there's not enough plot to carry me through 1000 pages of text, I'm gonna give up on it.

George R. R. Martin has an insane fan base. His books are good. They're well written, I think, the characters well developed along with the world. And I thought the first book was maybe one of the best fantasy books I've ever read.

The second one though. My god. People just mill about for pages and pages, talking about battles that are going on around them.

"Oh yeah, we won that battle down south. How'd you guys do up north?"
"Oh we did okay. Still kickin', you know! Things are all right."
"Well where should we go from here? East?"
"Yeah, east sounds good!"

No! I want beheadings and limbs getting chopped off and carnage and violence, not tea time with the queen!

You don't get to see any of these battles (and I know Martin can write them, because they were in the first book), instead you just get to hear about who won and who lost and whose army is moving where... for 1000 pages. After 500 pages I had to give up on it and read the spoilers where I learned that people get beheaded and someone comes back to life as a zombie, at which point I tossed the book across the room in a fit.

When you've got giant wolves and scary monsters and witches and dragons and kings killing each other you'd think something would happen in the span of so many pages, but not much did. Wah. Oh well, just gotta move on to whatever I read next and hope it's better.