Bogart

Know what I've watched a lot of this year? Humphrey Bogart films. Here's how I rate what I've watched or rewatched this year:

1930
Up the River - D+

1936
The Petrified Forest - C+

1937
Black Legion - C
Dead End - C+

1938
Angels With Dirty Faces - C
The Oklahoma Kid - C

1939
The Roaring Twenties - B

1940
They Drive By Night - B

1941
High Sierra - B-
The Maltese Falcon - B+

1942
Across the Pacific - B+
Casablanca - A

1943
Sahara - B

1944
To Have and Have Not - A-

1945
Conflict - C+

1946
The Big Sleep - B+

1947
Dead Reckoning - B+
Dark Passage - A-

1948
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre - A+
Key Largo - A

1950
In a Lonely Place - B

1951
The Enforcer - C+
Sirocco - B+
The African Queen - B

1954
The Caine Mutiny - B-
Sabrina - C

I'd like to see the rest of his films and read a good bio.

Someone Twisting a Knife in Your Back

I'm giving Wilco (The Album) my third listen and loving it. My favorite band this decade.

Predictably Irrational

Maybe minimal blogging while in ghost ship mode as I wrap up my teaching (five more weeks).

Here's a great book I listened to, similar to Kluge.



Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions

Stuff

I set up an Amazon Associates account because I realized the only lure to keep me blogging is the vague possibility of money. I don't expect anyone will actually buy anything through the links, but it gives me an excuse to keep better track of what I like. So here's a few more things I've liked lately. I encourage you all to buy crap through the links. I think I get a miniscule percentage even if you buy other crap through the links. Go!

First, I've been getting into John Huston's films. I'd never seen The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and loved it. Humphrey Bogart is dark and kind of dumb, brilliant, the best I've seen with him.



And that made me watch The Maltese Falcon again for the first time this decade. I don't think I ever appreciated it when I was younger. The dialogue was too fast and I couldn't see what the big deal was over some dumb bird. Now I see so much more. Amazing film, the godfather of all noir. Anyone seen the 1931 or 1936 versions?



The One Two Three of God

Pretty good audio from Ken Wilber, one of my favorite thinkers... not for beginners to his ideas though. A Theory of Everything remains the easiest place to start.

Tropic of Cancer

I finally read some Henry Miller. I didn't expect anything so non-traditional. Miller really is the proto-Beat.

The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World

Sort of a travel book as a guy goes around the world looking for happiness.

Kluge

Awesome book I just read, sort of a catalog of the funkiness of the brain with lots about evolutionary psychology. A "kluge" is (wikipedia): an ad hoc engineering solution, inelegant in principle but possibly elegantly pragmatic. Dude begins talking about how things like the eye and spine evolved kind of inferior-like and then takes it up to the brain, the ultimate kluge.



Kluge: The Haphazard Evolution of the Human Mind

The Wrestler

I watched The Wrestler, which isn't what I expected it to be. More naturalistic than Aronofsky's other films, it still held my attention even though it has a lot of obvious wrestling scenes. It avoids the obvious payoffs and has an ambiguous ending. I don't know if it's a great film, but it's a very good film. If Aronofsky keeps going like this he'll have a very diverses oeuvre in ten years.

Also: Marisa Tomei plays a stripper and she's looking hella fine.

By the way, I love that I can download a DVD-quality copy of The Wrestler before it even has wide release in the US.

The Power of Full Engagement

I've read a lot of personal development books, and this one is one of the best I've come across:



The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal

It's given me so many ideas about stress, exercise, recovery periods, habits, and rituals. For anyone who feels they are depleted physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually - check it out!

2009

This year on New Year's eve I became my dad and went to bed before midnight, sleeping through the festivities with earplugs and a headache. And I felt at peace and warm and glad that I didn't go into Seoul or any crowd anywhere. The last week has been rather insane anyways in so many ways, and sometimes I wish I used this blog to record my personal life (I typed 4 pages in my journal yesterday) - basically I'm living at least four lives that I don't allow to intersect.

Before going to sleep I watched Tropic Thunder, which has some really great nuanced humor and Vietnam war cliches to the max... but has kind of a predictable structure that lumbers a bit at times. Still, I like it. And I didn't even recognize Robert Downey Jr. and Tom Cruise at first! That's kind of impressive.

Think I have to go to the English bookstore in Itaewon in a day or two to get supplies for my English program. I haven't done any planning. The truth is out... I'm a horrible teacher. Well, I am when I don't have a plan. When I do, I'm OK.

I once heard someone compare Itaewon (the foreigner neighborhood in Seoul) to Mos Eisley in the first Star Wars, and that's kind of accurate. Everything feels stupider, gaudier, grosser, louder, drunker. Too many cultures in too small a space - too much American military - too many prostitute bars - too much English and too many people speaking broken English.

But there's an English bookstore there so I go from time to time.

You know, as much as there are times when I truly enjoy Korea, I was probably ready to leave after two or three months. It's been great for me financially, and my living situation is pretty sweet, but unless I'm fluent in the language (which ain't gonna happen) I'll always be this waygook (foreigner) here. Even if I spoke perfect Korean I would be that outsider, because Korea is all about homogeneity. I watched Korean TV (a rare occasion for me) tonight and I saw more clearly than ever how much Korean fashion is all about uniforms. You have your work clothes, your casual clothes, your formal casual clothes, your sports clothes, your hiking clothes, your very formal clothes etc, and you know within one second of looking at someone what they are doing based on their clothes. All art and dance has a factory quality to it. It's all about togetherness, group spirit, no boundary between corporation and government.

Seriously, the US has some huge corporations, but it has a lot of huge corporations and a lot of medium-sized corporations and a lot of small corporations. In Korea you have a few big corporations. Period. And they own the baseball teams, the department stores, the manufacturing, everything! And nobody has any problem with that. In fact, they like it. Because it's not just SK Telecom, the evil corporation that has mutant sex with the government... it's SK Telecom, the company five of your friends and family work for.

A Korean friend of mine was looking for a job. I told him if I was a Korean citizen I'd start my own business because there are so many opportunities for goods and services not available in Korea, so many needs of foreigners that aren't being meet, so much room for innovation. I told him a few of my ideas just about getting better English teachers, for instance, and he agreed that they made sense. I asked him if he would like to start his own business - wouldn't that be great, I asked? "No!" he shook his head.

To strike out alone? To leave the security of the vast corporate group? Koreans have such independent tendencies beaten out of them at an early age. I was on the subway once talking with a Korean-American teacher from California. An old man said something to my friend in Korean. "What did he say?" I asked.

"He said to shut up," he said.

Yes, a stranger told us not to talk on the subway! We ignored him, of course, but that's very typically Korean.

Okay, I don't mean to sound cranky. This is the type of entry I usually write and don't post. But I haven't posted much lately.

I don't think I'm homesick, because I don't feel any great desire to be back in America, but I would like to go to some other places now. I think I'm just bad at staying anywhere for too long.

Top Ten of Albums ?2008?

2008 is like gone, solid gone, daddy-o.

Instead. Here's my top 10 albums I've heard in the past few days. At least three of them are crap. You're probably better just staring at the cover and humming your own tunes based on the art.



Canned garagey beats and Mr. Lif-esque peasant rap.





This is like a happy version of Kid A... It's like Phileas Fogg vs. Helen Keller.





Arguably the best album cover of the past 200 years. The album is like The Neverending Story if Prince had played the little boy instead of Mikey from the Wheaties box.

Energy Monkey

Guess I'll blog - it's been a while.

I was trying to find something to blog about that isn't complaining . . . which is strange because I'm out of sickness feeling good feeling great how are you? My students were gone Monday thru Wednesday at work so it's been slow. I don't like doing class prep. I do like being in the classroom . I'm an energy vampire for the young. They help stabilize my mood. When I'm sick I get dark and depressed and I know it's only because I'm sick that I feel that way... but that doesn't make it go away. Feel great now though.

Here's something I've been listening to.



It's a 17-CD set of music from Muslim countries. Some of it's crap boring - I'd say about 80% is good. I see a connection with Native American music I never heard before. Give it to your terrorist friends.

I Presume

I was trying to hold off reviewing Martin Dugard's Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley and Livingston until I finished it, but I can't wait. It's so good. It makes me want to read biographies of all the main characters, and then read all the books those guys wrote themselves about their travel.



It goes twenty levels beyond "Livingstone was missing in Africa and Stanley found him... 'Dr. Livingstone, I presume?' "

It's also got subject matter that makes me wonder: is Dugard a really good writer or are the characters so off-the-map that it's guaranteed to be a good narrative? Okay, a bad writer could ruin it - I'm saying that Dugard didn't. This book sucked me in.

It also works as a travel book. I'm now both curious and repulsed by "darkest Africa", thanks no doubt to the lurid imagery and detail of the book. I wish I could write this well. I listened to it as read by John Lee, and it's one of the rare times I'm like, "Damn, I want to read this again with my eyes." I also want some more true adventure books like these.

Speaking of true adventure, I'm traveling across Korea tomorrow for an 11-hour hike at Seoraksan. I'm taking a vehicle, so it's not exactly Livingstone walking from one side of Africa to the other. But if I don't blog for a while, assume that I'm lost like Livingstone and come get me (après Stanley). But you can't say, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" You need to come up with your own catchy line.

I'm Not There

I finally watched I'm Not There, the quasi-pseudo-faux documentary of a bunch of alternate universe Bob Dylans.

If you don't really know Bob Dylan's life and work it won't make a lot of sense. If you do know Bob Dylan well it rehashes his most famous incidents in multifarious dreamy styles.

Either way it's really long, and generally boring.

Albums

I heard Mitch Hedberg's last album, Do You Believe in Gosh? - slow start but pretty good:



Also heard Demetri Martin's These Are Jokes, which I like even more, but he certainly owes something to Hedberg:



And they both owe something to Steven Wright, even though I don't find Wright very funny.



And here's a music album I've been listening to: LP3 by Ratatat.

Made to Stick

Fascinating book I just finished called Made to Stick by Dan & Chip Heath.



It explains (among other things) why deer kill more people each year than sharks.

The Ulm-blog

I haven't yet linked to John Glomer's new, new blog (forget the old new blog - that shit's for pussies):
http://www.addictivethoughts.com/

Those in the "inner circle" call it the Glom-blog.

John, I hope my massive blog readership doesn't overwhelm the tubes and wires of your site.

"The Dark Knight" Review - REAL THIS TIME! **SPOILERS**

Last night I dreamt I saw The Dark Knight. Here's my review.

For the latest version of Batman, the dark knight battles not one but three villains: the Joker, the Penguin, and the Riddler. Dialogue is minimal; in fact, I don't remember anyone talking in the whole film. Christian Bale was virtually unrecognizable. He looks so old now, and I don't know why they decided to give him a skinhead look.

The climactic scene came when Batman met the three villains in a swamp. Batman pressed a remote control, the Batmobile fired something at his antagonists, and they succumbed. There wasn't much conflict, and absolutely no hand-to-hand fighting. WEAK!

So honestly, I don't see what all the big hoo-ha is about. People talk about Heath Ledger's tragic final performance blah blah blah... but I don't even remember it!

I'm just glad the film didn't drag on like so many Hollywood epics these days. I don't think it could've been more than a few minutes, all told.

So I'll be the first one to say it: The Dark Knight: THUMBS DOWN!!!

The Night of the Hunter

I'm on vacation the next two weeks and my body decided now would be a great time to get a cold. Ugh.

Last night I watched The Night of the Hunter. The IMDB has it at #158, and I'm dumbfounded as to why this is. This movie's so boring! It's got Shelley Winters as a mother who gets killed by an evil stepfather, and she would reprise this role in Lolita.



What I hated most about this movie was the weird Christian ending. And the child actors. Horrible performances all around.

The other day I also watched Ricky Gervais' "Animals" - a standup comedy performance. It's uneven and has several weak points, but when it's good it's hilarious.

Review of "The Dark Knight" (by popular demand) **SPOILERS**

I have not seen it.

3 Things I've Learned About Moving & 3 Movie Reviews

3 Things I've Learned About Moving

1. It always takes longer to pack than you think.
2. You always have more shit than you think.
3. You never have as much room in your luggage/boxes/moving van as you thought.

But because I'm familiar with these rules I did okay this time.


3 Movie Reviews

Juno - crap
Dan in Real Life - crap
Superbad - pretty good


Alright San Francisco, good bye, I'll never see you again!

(until I come back in a few days to do some paperwork)