So I'm sitting in Cold Stone wondering why I paid so much for something that's giving me brain freeze, and I open this letter from AARP and inside are one of those cards of theirs and a letter telling me how I've qualified for membership. I'm 19 years old. How do I get a membership with the American Association of Retired Persons. Furthermore they got my name wrong. The card is for a "MR QUINT HALL." Now I'm sure most of you don't know this but that ain't my real name. My legal name is James Martin Hall V. Makes me sound fancy and regal but really my families just not that creative when it comes to the name department. We were out hunting one Thanksgiving and I swear there were 4 James, 3 Johns, 2 Kellys and a Wyatt. The nickname "Quint" is due to the fact that all five of those James Martin Hall's have all lived in the same town in the middle of Kansas. You end up running out of nicknames to avoid confusion. So my mother being the very clever woman she is nicknamed me Quint which is Latin for 5 as quintuplets.
Any way I'm pretty tempted about the offer. I get a bunch benefits and special discounts and the idea of retirement does sound nice. I'm just not sure I'm ready to accept myself as such an old fart.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Movie: Wild Things
YES!!!! This book was the best. Oh I hope they do a good job with this. It's such a big part of childhood that it would totally break my heart if they messed with it in some way bad. Although I like to think I can trust Spike Jonze with something like this; he's the guy who produce the Jackass series and I'm sure he can understand the spirit. You know. Back when you knew how to have fun. You didn't need crazy drugs or booze to loosen you up and you didn't worry about being chill or acting cool. You know, you just knew. And you would run. You just run and run and didn't matter what time it was or how far away home was because you didn't need to go home to rest you could just collapse there on the grass and look out at the sky and just think about how big and blue it was. And laugh. Sometimes you wouldn't even know what you were laughing about, but it didn't matter because you just felt so happy that you couldn't contain it anymore. And no one told you to straighten up or calm down or be serious or professional because that's what kids do and what do you care. I really hope they do this well.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Movie: Hurt Locker
I wasn't really all that familiar with the film, but the reviews and accrediations for it were impressive enough to catch my eye. TIME calls it "a near-perfect war film" and New York Times says "ferociously suspenseful." It won Best Film at the Venice Film Festival.
The film what I can see is the high adrenaline, suspense mounting, brilliant stimulation of explosion brought to you through the excellance, beauty, and quality of a work of art. The best part a war for the veiwer is when things go boom. This just cuts out all the in between and takes you right to the mayhem.
The film hits national release July 24th but may still be hard to find. I'm probably going to have to see it in KC or something.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Drake Visit
Finally got a chance to get back to Drake to see everyone and man it was freakin' awesome. The place I stayed at called "The Carter" isn't in the best of condition. Hahaha that's an unstatement (the occasionally dose of asbestos can't be that bad though), but no what made it great was that all my best buds were there.
It was just excellant. Plenty of partying and seeing everyone. We ah didn't do a whole lot during the day except I finally got to see some of the movies I wanted to see, Hangover and Public Enemies.
Hangover was just unbelievably funny. I don't think I could ever dream of ever liven up to all that happened there but I would die a happy man if I woke up with a tiger in the bathroom (the baby I could do without).
Public Enemies also great. Alot of the other people who saw it kind of felt that there was more focus on love story than the shoot-'em-up action they expected. Which has some validity. There is a healthy presense of the love story between Dillinger and Billy Frechette but it's not cheesy and kind of beautiful, so it didn't bother me too much. Beside it is not as though there is any lacking with the action. It may have been the theater's sound system but the gun fire (which there is a lot of) just rattles right through you as though you were during the shooting.
Plus it's a great movie for fans of criminal history. This takes place at the peak of crime, when those boys had the cops out-gunned and out-driven with the invention of the V-8 enginee. The bank didn't have fancy alarm systems so you had a good 4-5 minutes to run through the bank before the first police car showed up on the scene. You also get to see a young J. Edgar Hoover and the birth of the FBI. You thought the crap they pulled at GITMO was bad, just wait to see what they got away with before the idea of government transparency was even thought of.
It was just excellant. Plenty of partying and seeing everyone. We ah didn't do a whole lot during the day except I finally got to see some of the movies I wanted to see, Hangover and Public Enemies.
Hangover was just unbelievably funny. I don't think I could ever dream of ever liven up to all that happened there but I would die a happy man if I woke up with a tiger in the bathroom (the baby I could do without).
Public Enemies also great. Alot of the other people who saw it kind of felt that there was more focus on love story than the shoot-'em-up action they expected. Which has some validity. There is a healthy presense of the love story between Dillinger and Billy Frechette but it's not cheesy and kind of beautiful, so it didn't bother me too much. Beside it is not as though there is any lacking with the action. It may have been the theater's sound system but the gun fire (which there is a lot of) just rattles right through you as though you were during the shooting.
Plus it's a great movie for fans of criminal history. This takes place at the peak of crime, when those boys had the cops out-gunned and out-driven with the invention of the V-8 enginee. The bank didn't have fancy alarm systems so you had a good 4-5 minutes to run through the bank before the first police car showed up on the scene. You also get to see a young J. Edgar Hoover and the birth of the FBI. You thought the crap they pulled at GITMO was bad, just wait to see what they got away with before the idea of government transparency was even thought of.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Frustration with Congress
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Barney Frank Pt. 1 | ||||
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| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Barney Frank Extended Interview Pt. 2 | ||||
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This is what I can't stand about congress especially the house. It is backed up with all this political bs and petty bickering between the parties that for any good to get accomplished it is an exhausted process. They just bicker at one another and blame the other party for everything that goes and act as though they are completely innocent to the whole happenings.
Like here Barney Frank if a freakin' liar. Jon is disappointingly timid in the in interview and kind of calls him out on supporting the mortgage bubble, but Frank gets to go off on his whole speech and delude and dodge the question. I mean come on the guy was head of the finance committee while his party was majority in both houses, don't give me a whiny sob story that the whole situation was out of your control. And further more all the legislation he is talking about that deregulated the financial sector that was passed by the republican congress, it was backed, supported, and approved by President Clinton (a democrat).
I'm not saying that one party is more to blame than the other, or even that it is the government to blame. In my opinion all the players are to blame - the government, the people on wall street, the morons who took the loans they knew they could never pay back. So what I wish is that the people with the power to fix the situation would quit all the childish bickering and finger pointing and do their job or get out of office so someone who can will.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Harry Potter Movie
I know this is going to be pretty unpopular for some of you, but the Harry Potter Movies suck. The books are brilliant. Don't get me wrong I am not making any attack on the whole Harry Potter idea, just on the butchered versions of the stories thats' crap wastes film reels of far better potential use.
I know it cliche to attack the movie and rant about how much better the book is but there really is just so much lost.
First off Daniel Radcliffe is a freakin dewb and a horrible, horrible actor. He's one of the those actors that remind you its just a movie and instead of getting into the story for the rest of the film all you can think about is how badly you'd like to punch him in the face but you can't because it's just projected light on a screen which further reminds you it's only a movie. The two who play Ron and Hermione are pretty good but Radcliffe is just awful.
The movies take the stories and cut out the action scenes and string them together in a choppy sequence of nonsequitur tacky cliche blockbuster movie moments crudely into a horrible waste of 2.5 hours. It leaves out the inbetweens; the moments that allow the story to flow for the world to come real in your mind. This is exactly the disgusting effect of the commercialization that is so often ranted against. It takes something beautiful and enriching and makes it cheap and hollow.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Bicycle
My favorite and most effective stress reliever has got to be a good bike ride. Alot of people run, but with running I always feel like what I'm doing is stupid after about 200 yards and just have trouble seeing the point. Plus you feel obligated to keep a steady pass while running; you wouldn't want anyone seeing you sprint for 20 yards, then go into a walk. Whereas with a bike you can just crank it out to your hearts content and then coast off your momentum.
That's the other thing - you go so fast. You can just coast down a hill at top speed and just embarass the cool air across your face and through your hair. You just sit back and soak it in. Then there comes this excitement when you move onto the flat terrain as you just pedal like crazy seeing if you can keep it up.
Sure you'll hit an uphill or slow point every now and again but it's about of the experience. It's a challenge. Man and machine working in unison as you press through the motion is strainuous and forceful yet fluid with the smooth operation of excellant mechanism.
This is also just a perfect time of year for it. The suns out for like every, so almost any time you get the feeling you can head out. I ride along the dike and on one side are all the ticky-tacky, cookie cutter houses but on the other are the wheat fields. They just cut it about a week ago so there are these open spaces of freshly trimmed crop with that rich golden orange harvest color. This is then complimented by the fair blue of the sky divided by the lush green of the tree lines that divide the fields. There's a golf course on my way back so if I'm lucky the sprinkler system will be running and I run out there real quick and get a little cool down before the groundskeeper sees me.
Come back but on some good music, take a shower, and I'm good to go man.
That's the other thing - you go so fast. You can just coast down a hill at top speed and just embarass the cool air across your face and through your hair. You just sit back and soak it in. Then there comes this excitement when you move onto the flat terrain as you just pedal like crazy seeing if you can keep it up.
Sure you'll hit an uphill or slow point every now and again but it's about of the experience. It's a challenge. Man and machine working in unison as you press through the motion is strainuous and forceful yet fluid with the smooth operation of excellant mechanism.
This is also just a perfect time of year for it. The suns out for like every, so almost any time you get the feeling you can head out. I ride along the dike and on one side are all the ticky-tacky, cookie cutter houses but on the other are the wheat fields. They just cut it about a week ago so there are these open spaces of freshly trimmed crop with that rich golden orange harvest color. This is then complimented by the fair blue of the sky divided by the lush green of the tree lines that divide the fields. There's a golf course on my way back so if I'm lucky the sprinkler system will be running and I run out there real quick and get a little cool down before the groundskeeper sees me.
Come back but on some good music, take a shower, and I'm good to go man.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Pat Kuhn Across the US
My good buddy Patrick Kuhn is biking across the United States, and I don't mean motorcycle, I mean actual pedaling. He's already in Massachusetts in an apparently rough biker town, Pittsfield. I always think of the whole biker gang thing as more of a West Coast thing but what the hell do I know. Pat says so I'm going to believe the guy.
Anyway Patrick is a beautiful writer, just stunning use of imagery. The philosophy he may include may not be very appealing to most, but it's the quality of the writing I want you to notice. Not only will he allow you to see the environment, he will allow you to see it with a poetry and elegant poise that I am sure that seeing it in person could never hold a candle to it, the way an excellant photographer captures the world we would never see.
He's going to keep us updated with this twitter site below, and I hope you'll check it out. He'll be seeing some cool stuff.
http://twitter.com/patingrid
Anyway Patrick is a beautiful writer, just stunning use of imagery. The philosophy he may include may not be very appealing to most, but it's the quality of the writing I want you to notice. Not only will he allow you to see the environment, he will allow you to see it with a poetry and elegant poise that I am sure that seeing it in person could never hold a candle to it, the way an excellant photographer captures the world we would never see.
He's going to keep us updated with this twitter site below, and I hope you'll check it out. He'll be seeing some cool stuff.
http://twitter.com/patingrid
Saturday, July 4, 2009
4th of July !!!
You got to love the 4th of July. The summer time is at its best. Just the smell of the air. It's filled with the reminents of burned powder from all the fireworks and grilled meats. We had this big get together with all the people in the neighborhood. We had the necessary summer food - fried chicken, watermellon, potatoe salad, homemade cookies. Awesome. They had some games for the kids like leap-frog relays, egg tosses, tricycle races.
Then they had the big show. Gawd it was amazing. They launched them about 80 yards away from where we were sitting, so if you laid back it was right above your head. So intense.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
FIREWORKS!!!
Whoooaaaa!!! Time to celebrate this country's independence by blowing up a small piece of it. Fireworks went on sell here the other and I went out and blew $20 bucks on the closest legal equivalents to explosives a person can possess without a permit.
Gawd, 4th of July is a great holiday. The day is so long and the weather is nearly always perfect so there is plenty of time for barbequeing, swimming, games, and just sitting outside and marveling at how beautiful everthing is. I mean part of that is having come back from Africa and just be amazed at how wonderful it is here. The lawns are lush and green, thick pearl clouds spread across just the purest blue sky. Comparatively any problems most of us may be having here are just so insignificant as to back there. There's no worries, man.
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