A few things on my mind recently about various irrelevant topics. Oh, and yes, I type my blogs in pseudo-HTML.


Movies

I haven't seen anything to crack my list anytime recently, but one movie was/is pretty close:

• Casino Royale - 3.5/5 - The best Bond in a very very long time. It makes you wonder what the hell has been going on in this franchise. Better actors, better writing, more serious, and a ton of fun to watch. Chris Cornell's theme song is shallow but catchy.
• The Number 23 - 1/5 - Just hit your foot with a rubber mallet, and do that for a while, until you learn to enjoy it.
• Flightplan - 2/5 - A movie with a strong setup that falls completely off the rails with a preposterous second half. Don't waste any time here.
• 300 - 1.5/5 - I suppose you could spend your movie buck in worse places at the moment, but there's no plot, just waves of computerized deaths.
• Volver - 3/5 - High quality indy material, the good stuff. Subtitled Spanish language; Penelope Cruz, who has done a bunch of garbage (read Vanilla Sky) so far as I have seen, shows her chops in a good film. Kind of a ghost story but really about family.
• Little Miss Sunshine - 4/5 - I don't really have anything bad to say about this movie; it's exactly the kind of dark-humored, character-driven stuff I dig. Still, I haven't yet been tempted to watch it again - yet. This is absolutely a great, great movie, though, and certainly very close to my favorites if not among them.

I still have a lot of the so called Academy Award-types from the past year that I should watch, so I'll add more on this soon.


Mitch Hedburg

What can I say, I was hunting through some wiki and found some of his great one-liners. Enjoy.

• I met the girl who works at the Doubletree front desk; she gave me her phone number. It's zero. I tried to call her from here, some other woman answered. I said, "You sound older!"
• Mr. Pibb is a replica of Dr Pepper, but it's a bullshit replica, 'cause the dude didn't even get his degree. Why'd you have to drop out and start makin' pop so soon?
• I remixed a remix, it was back to normal.
• I was in a casino, I was standing by the door, and a security guard came over and said "You're gonna have to move. You're blocking the fire exit." As though if there was a fire, I wasn't gonna run. If you're flammable and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit... Unless you're a table.
• When you go to a restaurant on the weekends and it's busy so they start a waiting list, they say, "Dufrenes, party of two, table ready for Dufrenes, party of two." And if no one answers they'll say the name again: "Dufrenes, party of two." But then if no one answers, they'll move on to the next name. "Bush, party of three." Yeah, but what happened to the Dufrenes? No one seems to care. Who can eat at a time like this? People are missing. You people are selfish. The Dufrenes are in someone's trunk right now, with duct tape over their mouths. And they're hungry. That's a double whammy. We need help. "Bush, search party of three. You can eat once you find the Dufrenes."
• A severed foot is the ultimate stocking stuffer.
• I wanted to buy a candle holder, but the store didn't have one. So I got a cake.
• My friend asked me if I wanted a frozen banana, but I said "No...but I want a regular banana later, so yeah."
• I was walking by a dry cleaner at three a.m., and it said "Sorry, we're closed." You don't have to be sorry. It's three a.m., and you're a dry cleaner. It would be ridiculous for me to expect you to be open. I'm not gonna walk by at ten and say, "Hey, I walked by at three, you guys were closed. Someone owes me an apology. This jacket would be halfway done!"
• I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too.

Take it from me, I love you!

If you check out my About Me page on the links to the right, you would find that I not only enjoy watching good movies, I like rating them and making sure that I remember my favorites.

This blog entry has nothing to with any of what I just said.

It's sad that I haven't had the desire to watch as many B-/cheese fest horror movies as I used to. Part of it is because these movies think they are better than they actually are (Saw) or try too much to create a psychological component over what should be straight gore and unintentional comedy. You just don't see many Nightmare on Elm Street-types these days.

So, without further ado, the greatest series of all time:



Some people will tell you that there are actually 6 Leprechaun movies, and that the first one actually starred Jennifer Connelly, but don't be fooled. There are actually only 3 movies worthy of being ranked among the greats. You see, only a great series like this could manage such brilliant new places to set the series: from old Ireland, to Outer Space, to Compton, CA.

Here are some details about these classics.

Leprechaun : IN SPACE

(IMDB)It's the 21st century. A group of U.S. Marines battle in space to destroy a space monster, when they get in the way of the Leprechaun who is in space to marry a princess so he can become ruler of the planet Dominia. They think they have killed the Leprechaun - wrong. The Leprechaun goes on board their space station to find the princess they have taken from him, where he'll kill to get her back.

The marines manage to blow up the Leprechaun, but don't count on the lightning powers he soon develops along with his ability to turn the captain into a monster which also must be stopped, along with the now giant evil Leprechaun. Who will win this epic battle?

Leprechaun in the Hood - Evil is in the house.

Ice-T stars in this modern classic about hip-hop stars and the trials they must overcome.

(IMDB)Three young rap artists are looking for a break and some money to enter a contest. They meet up with a local pimp named Mack Daddy who agrees to "hook them up", but later declines. The angry rappers break into Mack's place and steal his jewelry, gold, and even the medallion off an ugly-looking statue. Shouldn't have done that! Because without the medallion, the statue transforms into the Leprechaun, who goes on a killing spree once again looking for his missing gold, once again!

Quotes:

Leprechaun: A friend with weed is a friend indeed, but a friend with gold is the best I'm told.

Leprechaun: I'll take it from you, homie, you'll see, cause you know the Leprechaun is the real O.G.

Leprechaun : Back 2 Tha Hood

(IMDB)When Emily Woodrow and her friends happen on a treasure chest full of gold coins, they fail to to heed the warnings of a wise old psychic who had foretold that they would encounter trouble with a very nasty and protective Leprechaun.

Quotes:

Leprechaun: What's up, ninjas?

Policeman: [after Leprechaun rips off his leg] Hey! You give that back!

Leprechaun: How tall am I? Uh, about 3 foot 6.
Girl: 3 foot 6?
Leprechaun: Yeah, but, but, I make up for it in other areas, if you know what I mean.

Don't get me wrong, I'd rather be in school, at least attempting to learn something, rather than working for the man, getting a steady diet of dead-end projects that never make sense, managed by either a know-nothing suit or a know-it-all lead with nothing but the most vile disgust for life.

Sometimes, though, graduate school seems like the most bizarre place on earth. Why bother taking a class when the professor would rather hang out at conferences and send his assistants to teach (more like recite) the material? Maybe it's just the teacher in me critiquing the teacher I see, but when you get through 3 sets of slides in 6 weeks, that is just plain rediculous. Nobody seems too worked up about it, though. The worst part is that I know we'll be doing 4 paper reviews, a presentation, and a final crammed into a couple of weeks near the end. It takes me too damn long to read and understand papers to pull that shit. Two columns? No, you seriously can't fit more text in writing in two columns. (Edit: Supposedly it does fit more *if* the text is code segments or proofs that consist of several short lines. I still think it's pretentious crap. And my next point is still valid.) And then you put in figures that stretch across the entire page. Does that go with the stuff on the left or the right? Nobody knows or cares.

Figure 1: This makes the paper MUCH easier to read.

Then, you have the professor who you know needs to retire, who repeats whole lectures (yes), forgets his own schedule, reads directly from the slides, and still can't say anything of value. He repeatedly references people and standards of the 'old days', you know, when people coded on paper, or if they were really lucky, punched cards. Of course, nobody cares, because they actually know how to code on modern projects that actually have the ability to accomplish something, not dividing integers using successive subtraction.

All in all, though, there is something good about having the flexibility to work on something that you want to do. And playing Sodoku during lecture. I don't do that, but the guy sitting next to me does.

What I supposed to do?