Trinity! Help!

I can’t accept that it has been over 10 years since The Matrix was released.  Bullet time flies when . . . oh never mind.  There have been numerous Matrix-inspired creations, one of my favorites being “The Red Pill” by The Crystal Method.  “Take the red pill.  Take the blue pill.  Take the red pill.  Take the blue pill.”

But this post is about a scene (the rooftop where Trinity and Neo confront an agent, and Neo dodges bullets) filmed in stop motion entirely with Lego pieces.  This article in Gadget Lab gives the details, as well as a YouTube link to the scene.  Brilliant.  According to the article, these guys took 440 hours to film 900 frames for just 44 seconds of animation.  10 hours for each second.  Now that is dedication.

The faithfulness of their reproduction is shown in another YouTube video which places both the stop motion and movie scenes side-by-side.  Un-be-liev-able.

“Dodge this.” <BLAM>

Back In Black

With an appropriate head thrash to Brian, Angus and the boys, it’s been too long.  I’m glad to be back.  To make up for lost time, and on the off chance this is my April post, I’ve decided to treat each of my topics:  books, brewing, movies, music, personal finance, and an other if it occurs to me.  My blogging has been sparse of late, but life goes on.

I have been reading a lot.  Some personal finance stuff:  Automatic Millionaire (Bach), The Smartest Investment Book You’ll Ever Read (Solin), Wise Investing Made Simple (Swedroe) — standard Boglehead stuff.  And for what it is worth, I am following a 50/50 strategy of paying down my mortgage and socking away excess in Vanguard Total Stock Market in a taxable account.  Still, investing for the long haul is fundamentally boring, so my mind has turned to other titles like (nobody knows you’re blushing on the Internet) Goals! (Tracy), How To Get Rich (Dennis), and The 4-Hour Workweek (Ferriss).  The latter has been described as snake oil by some reviewers on Amazon, but parts of it have me intrigued.  It is a new year;  time to try something new, money-wise.  No fear;  no retreat;  nothing to lose.

On the brewing front, I haven’t been lately.  Tonight that all changes — planning a blueberry-pomegranate mead and a pyment (grape mead).  After that, as soon as my primaries clear out, it’s a few extract batches of beer, likely American brown, amber, a porter, and a stout.

I haven’t watched many new movies, except Quantum of Solace, which was excellent.  I watched Serenity (one of my faves) again last night on a new Roku Netflix player.  What a cool way to do on-demand movies and TV without paying the cable co for the privilege.  This is the wave of the future.

So music:  currently loving the latest from A Shoreline Dream and Silversun Pickups.  Also TV on the Radio and Thriving Irony.  And if listening to music weren’t enough, I bought a bass guitar.  Because, well, playing in a rock band is just plain fun, and of the three (bass, drums, guitar), it seemed to be the easiest to pick up.  Not that it’s easy.  As I get older, my patience for repetition has diminished, while my conception of how hard things are has increased.  Not a good combination.  But feh, I will persevere and regale the world (or a basement-sized part of it) with my amplified genius.  Or loud competence.  Anybody know a great guitarist in the Chandler AZ area looking for a bass player?

In personal finance, a lot of getting rich involves saving (particularly pre-tax) and living below one’s means.  There is, particularly at bogleheads.org (link at right –>), a lot of debate about which investing philosophy trumps what, and which investments belong in taxable accounts verses tax-deferred.  This is all well and good, but if one ups their savings rate from 10% to 15% or even 20% it will positively swamp those other considerations.  It is boring;  it is unsatisfying; it is not particularly fun;  BUT it is important.  Save, save, and save.  If you do, you will be rich.  Sooner or later.

Forrest Gumping My Way

Sitting on my couch, pondering my triumphant return to blogging, what should show up on one of the 10 or so HBO channels but Forrest Gump?  Which immediately reminded me of one of my favorite insults, uttered by Julia Roberts to Brad Pitt in The Mexican (2001),

You have managed to Forrest Gump your way through this.

And I was going to riff off of that, but just when I started typing this, the very next movie on the same channel came on, and in a truth-is-stranger-than-fiction moment, the very next movie is . . . you guessed it, The Mexican.  I’m half-watching/listening now.  Totally not making this up:  2-25-2009 HBOSGW 10PM MST — look it up if you’re able.  Or care.

So back to the insult:  Forrest Gumping is a pretty snarky thing to say, implying, oh I dunno, an obliviousness (my wife used to call it “lunch boxing” as in acting like a lunch box).  It’s a nice insult, except when you sit down and really watch the movie.  Forrest (brilliantly acted by Tom Hanks) lives life according to his set of morals/scruples and is very aware of his limitations.  Maybe he doesn’t always recognize the gravity of his situation (meeting presidents, giving speech on the Mall, making it big in stock market), but that does not change the purity, the sincerity of his actions and reactions.  His relationships, particularly with his friend/wife and son were poignant enough to make me cry.  Like a weepy William.

All of which is to say:  perhaps Forrest Gumping one’s way through life, work, whatever is not such a bad thing.  Another phrase for it would be “in Zen.”  Either way, and probably both ways several times a day, here I sit Forrest Gumping my way through.

I Wanna Do Bad Things With You

Unapologetically, I cart out the inner fanboi.  HBO’s new series True Blood is the bomb-diggety.  Though this is not technically a movie (at least until Season 1 is available on DVD about 4.3 days after the end of season 1), it deserves to be reviewed like one.  And I have a soft spot for vampire movies.

The series, which is well, well ( “Well well fell in a well” as my grandmother used to say) worth the monthly cost of HBO, deals with vampires having revealed themselves (come “out of the closet”) to humans, and a town in Louisiana where the story and some related friction happens.  The series title is a reference to a fictitious bottled drink, developed “in Japan” that enables vampires to live without the real red stuff from peoples’ necks, but is nonetheless “boring.”  Kudos to whomever chose to call humans who consort with vampires for excitement and/or sex “fang-bangers.”  The characters are written well enough to be real, and are wonderfully and transparently acted.  The hallmark of good fiction (and particularly science fiction) is the ease at which you are swept away into their world.  For True Blood it took me about a minute, and there I’ve been ever since.

I really appreciate the themes of a (fictional) persecuted minority, vampires, and the associated prejudice and intra-minority culture.  This simultaneously allows social commentary on bigotry, and it arouses some measure of empathy.  I mean, vampires are bloodsucking monsters.  (And then the writers introduce humans preying on vampires to extract their blood (the drug “V”) by the expedient of imprisoning them with silver (of course!) to unarouse the empathy.)  All of which reminds me of a joke:

What’s the difference between a lawyer and a catfish?  One is a scum-sucking bottom feeder.  The other one is a fish.

Imagined readers, please tip the imagined wait staff.  For completeness, the title of this post is a reference to the theme song of the series, “Bad Things” by Jace Everett.  So says the WikiVampia.  If you have not, give True Blood a watch.  Vampire reality series!

The Soul Of Wit

We interrupt the usual long rambling for a brief, self-referential post.  On the subject of why this blog is called “Just No Pleasing You.”  Aside from the practical consideration of there already being a blog titled the same as my first five or six choices, I really like the verbal judo behind the phrase.  It is at once aggressively dismissive (saying you are too unreasonable to continue) while also implying that the speaker tried their darnedest to satisfy.  A potent combination.

Of course the speaker may not, in fact, have tried all that hard to please the other guy.  This is illustrated by one of my favorite quotes from Austin Powers in Goldmember, where Goldmember offers Austin various combinations of breakfast pastries and tobacco products:

Shmoke and a pancake? You know, flapjack and a shigarette? No, alright. Cigar and a waffle? No? Pipe and a crepe? Bong and a blintz? No? Then there is no pleasing you.

‘Nuff said.

We’re All Simpsons Now

I made a major change to the blog the other day.  Specifically, I tweaked the About page.  Did I fix the use of first and third person voice in the same paragraph, you may ask?  No way Jose.  I’m trying to think of a way to work in the second person somewhere.  Instead of fixing the glaring writing errors, I inserted a picture of myself, done in the Simpsons animation style.  Got my priorities straight.  If you are wondering, yes it is a pretty accurate likeness.

“Aw man,” you say.  “But I’ve always wanted to be a Simpsons character.  Could you do one of me?”  No need, my friends.  Just point your Flash-enabled browsers to Simpsonizeme.com, and you too can create a Simpsons likeness of yourself.  I think the site was a joint marketing effort between Burger King and The Simpsons Movie.  With anything on the InterWebs, there is no telling how long it will remain.  First you upload a picture of yourself to get a close enough rendering.  Then you can tweak things like glasses, hair, clothes, skin color, etc. to fine tune your image.  Then use it for your chat room avatar, or on Facebook, or wherever.  Have fun with it.

Music, Movies, Microcode & High Speed Pizza Delivery

These are the four things at which America still excels in the not too distant future of Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson.  I am on my fourth or fifth time through this book (reading and audiobook), and it continues to sweep me away.  Snow Crash is a representative example of the cyberpunk genre, that Wikipedia says:

Cyberpunk plots often center on a conflict among hackers, artificial intelligences, and megacorporations. They tend to be set in a near-future Earth, rather than . . . far-future settings or galactic vistas . . . The settings are usually post-industrial dystopias but tend to be marked by extraordinary cultural ferment and the use of technology in ways never anticipated by its creators

Other cyberpunk books include Neuromancer and Count Zero by William Gibson.  Notable cyberpunk films include Blade Runner and the Japanese anime film Akira. 

In Snow Crash, Hiro Protagonist (kid you not), a sword fighter and freelance hacker, and YT (stands for Yours Truly), a teenage skateboard courier, become entangled in a stuggle for world control among the future powers that be:  the Mafia (in the form of Cosa Nostra Pizza, Inc.), Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong, a bandwidth baron, and a religious franchise operation (Reverend Wayne’s Pearly Gates).  In an ironic twist, an ancient clay tablet from Sumeria holds a linguistic virus that enables hacking/controlling the very brains of the techno-elite computer hackers.  The struggle spans both reality and the virtual world, the metaverse.

Neal Stephenson coins some vividly descriptive terms to describe his world, such as burbclaves — the sovereign fortified suburban developments of the future that have their own security forces, treaties, corporate branding, etc.  The mini-vans that occupy the future streets are bimbo boxes.  And most everything else is corporatised and franchised, such as the future jails of differing levels of service, the Hoosegow and the Clink where you may be put after a trial at Judge Bob’s Judicial System.  

Snow Crash is original in content and presentation.  Over a decade and a half after publication, it holds up well.  Do yourself a favor and check this one out.  Bonus recommendation:  Cryptonomicon also by Neal Stephenson.

And I Feel Fine

It is not the end of the world as we know it, but you couldn’t tell by reading the financial press lately.  Which is why you should avoid it.  If it bleeds it leads, and I have seen enough blood in my life.  Rather than add to all that tonight, let’s talk movies instead.

Some people like romances or comedies or dramas or horror films — I prefer science fiction films or escpaist action, preferably with vampires, werewolves and a lot of gunplay.  Most movies I consume once, but there are several that I can, and have thanks to cable TV, watch over and over again.  Here are some of my faves, and an attempt to explain why.

The Matrix because everybody wears black and speaks in low voices.  This movie drew attention for its groundbreaking effects, but the story overshadows these.  There are a lot of scenes that stand on their own — it is almost like the directors tried to make each and every one the best it could possibly be — best pursuit by amorphous evil, best rescue in gritty ship, best virtual training fight, best sneering banter by bad guys, et cetera.  There are a lot of gems here, and the cast delivers in drawing us yet again into this quest for the One to deliver humanity from the machines.

The Fifth Element because, well, Milla Jovovich.  This future good versus evil romp has just enough dystopia to rate as good sci-fi, but also enough realism to be plausible.  Bruce Willis is just exceptional as the wise-cracking former military, turned cabbie, turned lovestruck savior of the world.  This is another film where the details take you away, from the uniform stewardesses to the circles in which your hands go when assuming the position.  And the music is superb — bordering at times on music video, but without detracting from the show.  Gary Oldman and Chris Tucker also deliver great performances and add their own distinct notes to the song.

Serenity because it is a near canonical example of a Space Western.  A rag-tag band of mercenaries with their own code of the space-west, increasingly at odds with and out of place in the regimented Alliance of planets.  The action sequences are sublime, the characters are wonderfully acted, and the dialogue . . .  Oh the dialogue.  This is one movie that you about need to watch again, because you surely missed a good zinger or two delivered in rapid-fire deadpan.  And the visuals and effects are gorgeous.  For being a dusty, getting-by type of universe, it is certainly a good looking one.  A slack-jawed nod to Nathan Fillion for holding it all together as Mal and to Summer Glau as the dangerously elven River.

The Fight Club because it is a violent, life-questioning, revolution mystery.  Edward Norton is the impossibly tough anti-hero seemingly along for the ride.  Brad Pitt plays the too-cool fighting buddy Tyler Durden to a tee.  Helena Bonham Carter as the hot(!) and slightly crazy girlfriend. Don’t get me started on Meat Loaf and his man-breasts.  This movie is great the first time through, and wild enough for multiple watches after you know the twist.

Matrix is on, and Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne are fighting.  Gotta go.