Index of Movie Posts -- from Sept. 2008 to present!
IT'S A SOMY -- the blog for those who love dumb fake products in their anime
- Created By Shinmaru
I shot one person, but he's still alive.
So, Monster is still quite wonderful. Who knows if I will get tired of repeating that before I finish the series? I hope not. I'm through episode 57 now (the one with the flashback to the night Johan killed his foster parents, and it's revealed the Lieberts were visited by someone that evening). My favorite thing about this series is how it makes such simple things resonate so well. There are plenty of batshit insane things here (WTF @ Johan dressing like Anna), but the stuff that hits hardest are the moments like Grimmer experiencing love for the first time - I'll admit to shedding a tear or two here and Dr. Tenma setting up his sniping area in the library. That sent more than a few chills up my spine; there had to be at least some inspiration from The Dead Zone there.
BTW, Lunge still creeps the shit out of me more than almost any other character. If that guy came to my house asking questions, I'd have a heart attack. At least he seems to have dropped his uber-retarded ZOMG TENMA HAS MULTIPLE PERSONALITIES~ theory.
Um, what else? My fellow editors at the school newspaper and myself will be participating in a dodgeball tournament on campus Friday. The best photographer we have will be on hand to document our miserable slaughter our glorious victory, so there shall be pictures-a-plenty. Unfortunately, I get to dodgeball for an hour only, because I have internship work to do that day. LAME. :(
But, yes, it will be fun. I haven't played dodgeball since elementary school, and now I feel quite old after having typed that sentence. God. That is not a problem, however, because I'm sure I'll be slamming fools left and right. It'll be like if Jackie Chan took on a kindergarten class by himself. No prisoners.
Random thing: There's this one bus driver who sometimes drives the route I take home in the afternoon. I've dubbed him Crazy Taxi, because the man drives like he's got a bag of spare quarters in case he fucks up. Gotta say, though, lately he has actually been driving like a sane man, which has me suspicious. He has made up for this, though, by becoming at least 1000 times more intimidating to people entering the bus. First off, you can never see his eyes - he always wears sunglasses. Second, he's got a permanent crease in his forehead like you ran over his dog, or something, and he's just waiting for the chance to cut you up. Third, he always seems to be looking in the rearview mirror straight at me. It is creepy.
I'm not sure if Crazy Taxi bus driver or Charles Bronson bus driver makes me more nervous. It's an ongoing investigation that I hope remains ongoing for quite a while.
That is all.
EDIT: My site just came up on the random member updates. WHY THANKS, I THINK I WILL VISIT MY WEB PAGE LOL
Prolix! Prolix! Nothing a pair of scissors can't fix!
Nick Cave: Best mustache going in the world today? I'm thinking yes. *brought on because he bought Nick Cave's new album Tuesday, and it rules, and Nick Cave actually does have a kickass 'stache*
Anyway.
Today's topic that will allow me post quickly is - guilty pleasures. We all have them. What are some of yours? I will start.
- Synthpop: Any of it, even the really horrible shit that's used as the theme song to 1) Every TV show in the 1980s and 2) Every movie on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Something about synthpop just gets me giddy. I don't know what it is. Obviously the best of it (New Order, Depeche Mode, Eurhythmics, etc.) is good, but I enjoy even the bad in some bizarre way. I probably would have died of joy had I actually paid attention to anything in the '80s.
- Pro Wrestling: Always been a fan, and I probably always will be, although I don't watch WWE very often these days, mainly because it's on at a bad time for me. For a while now, I've turned to Japanese wrestling to get my fix. (This is actually what I was going to write about a while back before I realized it would take hours of my life, which I don't have available, before I would be able to restrain myself.) It's definitely different, and there's obviously a culture gap because I have no clue what anyone is talking about, but there are a few things that make up for this:
1) Random sprinklings of Engrish. There is nothing more enjoyable than an overexcited announcer shouting out the names of moves. "LARIATO~~~" is the classic example. When I watch WWE now, I find myself wishing Jim Ross were a Japanese announcer. How great would that be? It would have been incredible during the Attitude era. Can you imagine him screaming about Stone Cold Steve Austin? I'm getting goosebumps.
2) Storylines are relatively simple to understand. They basically boil down to Wrestler A wants to beat the shit out of Wrestler B because he wants to move up in rank and prove how awesome he is. There will be different themes and varying levels of hatred involved, of course, but that's essentially how it is. Kind of nice to be able to jump in and get the gist of the story through the interactions of the wrestlers without having to wonder if one of them killed the other's dog or snatched his baby or something.
3) Grumpy old bastards vs. cocky youngsters. Probably my favorite story type in Japanese wrestling. Nothing beats an old, grizzled veteran with obvious disdain for the new generation licking his chops at the opportunity to beat some respect into some young punk. It's even better when the young'un is an utter prick to the old guy and treats him with no respect whatsoever, humiliating him every chance he gets. I could watch these matches all day and never get bored.
4) Hiroshi Tanahashi. He's my favorite young punk in wrestling today. Everything about him rules. He looks and carries himself like a rock star (he even poses arrogantly before every match just to remind people how much better he is than them, which is wonderful), he can be such a fantastic douche when he wants to be, and he is great at taking an ass kicking. Plus, who else could rock an ascot like that? Nobody, that's who. I'm going to stop myself right now before this gets any creepier.
*works to regain the 95% of his audience he lost during all that*
- Absurdly soapy stories. Fruits Basket, I'm looking in your direction. Seriously, though, the last, like, third of the manga is completely ridiculous, and I enjoyed every second of it. Kyo was at the crosswalk when Tohru's mom was run over, and he didn't save her so he put himself through years of mental anguish? Count me in! The logical part of me says, "None of this makes sense! You shouldn't be enjoying this!" while the trashy, emotional part of me says, "ME LIKE CRAZY PLOT TWISTS WANT MORE." What can I say - I am easy to please.
WHAT SAY YOU, GOOD READER.
Life Is Soooooooo Wonderful
How can I have only two classes and yet still have no time to do anything?? How???
This quarter is going to be a lot of fun ... I have no idea yet whether I am being sarcastic with that, but for now, I am leaning toward yes. On the one hand, Advanced Broadcast Journalism might turn out to be a bit easier than I thought it would be. At the very least, I have an idea for a feature to do in the middle of the quarter.
On the other hand, I'm pretty sure Reporting III is going to kill me. Our main assignment is to cover a town - municipal government, education, crime, etc. Involved with that is a few stories we have to write, including a big investigative feature we're doing (which kind of makes me nervous because the most investigating I've ever done is by proxy through Sherlock Holmes). By itself that wouldn't be TOO bad since reporters are required to have absolutely no life, and I guess this simulates that pretty well, but combined with my internship and my work on the newspaper?
If you never see me again, well, you'll have that to blame.
In other news, I can't stop watching Monster, although my pace has slowed considerably. I'm on episode 28 right now. For me, the most interesting conflict is Dr. Tenma vs. his inner nature. He won't let other people kill - he even stopped Anna from killing that scummy Neo Nazi douche who was going to light up the Turkish town - yet he expects to be able to kill Johan. I'm looking forward to how that will be reconciled. Also, Inspector Lunge is almost as creepy as Johan. When his wife and daughter leave him and he has NO reaction whatsoever? Creeeeeeepy. His voice is also quite unsettling. Everything about the guy weirds me out.
*vanishes in a puff of smoke*
Work = No Yay
Man, it only took a week for me to forget how much work our newspaper requires every time we put it out. Internship + newspaper = yikes already, and I'm not even in school yet lol. This had better not be a bad omen, or someone is going to pay. Maybe Desbreko when I whip his ass in the Smash Bros. Brawl tournament!! Not likely.
Maybe I would've helped myself a bit had I not spent five hours getting distracted by the groaning black hole of the Internet. How can something help make work and research so much more efficient, yet also completely destroy any chance of work getting done on time? It is a cruel paradox, indeed. Or it would be if it weren't so much fun to be distracted.
Anyway, uh, I'll add a new post to the Library of Loons on Monday, probably. Don't know what book I'll write about - but it will be good because my literary taste is amazing. *hides all the Goosebumps books cluttering his closet* Next time on here I'll write about a mini-obsession of mine that I don't think I've ever written about on one of the five trillion blogs I've started and abandoned over the years. I'd tell you what it is, but I'd rather leave you all wondering. Hahaha! Go ahead and wonder!
Actually, if I were any of you, I'd probably wonder for approximately two seconds before going back to not caring. But feel free to wonder!
LOCK ON
Things went well at the ol' internship yesterday. Notetaking was kind of rough since I'm not as familiar with the team as a lot of the people there, so I have to learn the players, their numbers and their position in the team hierarchy pretty quickly. I'll have that down by tomorrow, though. The biggest thing I did yesterday was tape interviews with a couple of players and one of the coaches on the team. The interviewer, Erica Bardin, has some solid experience in broadcasting and she helped me out with some of the basics of camerawork. Yay for learning new things!!
Random topic change! Later on tonight: My first experience with fantasy baseball. Probably zero people care about this, but I am writing about it anyway. My first experience with the league was sort of negative because my first choice of team name (The Fighting Mongooses, of course) was taken. I'm happy to share the league with Futurama fans but NOT when they take my team name, damn it!! With that option gone, I then went with The Doomsday Machines. It doesn't have quite the same ring to it (sigh) but I'll have to deal with it. :(
Should still be fun though. Three of the guys in the league were co-workers of mine last year on the paper, so there will be much trash talking week in and week out - much of it at my expense, I'm guessing. This whole fantasy team thing is completely new to me, and doing research for it is a bit intimidating. I think it's when you do one of these teams that you realize just how many baseball players there are. Good lord. I have no idea how people have the time to keep up with this.
Speaking of not having time to keep up with things: Me = amazingly behind on anime. I'm not even keeping up with that many series and I'm absurdly backed up. Blah. Today I finished Clannad. Is it just me or did it seem kind of rushed near the end of the series? I liked the last episode, but to me it didn't feel like a series-ending episode (or even a season-ending episode), although it presumably brought the Nagisa+Tomoya storyline to a close. There's still the bonus summer vacation episode, I guess ... don't know whether that will just be an epilogue episode or actually be used to set up a second season. Any word on a second season for Clannad?
And then there's Shugo Chara!, which I'm still enjoying immensely. Today I watched the 17th and 18th episodes. No. 17 was especially fun, with the Guardians totally owning Nikaidou after Kukai and Tadase fooled him with their fake fight. That was awesome; I'm glad Kukai didn't fall for such a stupid ass letter. It was pretty obvious that was entirely out of character for Tadase lol. Amu's weekly freak out was great as usual, as was her speech at the speech contest. Saaya Yamabuki is starting to grow on me, too. It's going to take a ton of overexposure for her arrogant jerk act to get old, haha.
The other show I've been keeping up with is Zoku Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei, but I haven't watched it for a while for reasons that are beyond me. I'll probably catch up with that after I'm finally up to date with Shugo Chara! Eventually I think I'll give Spice and Wolf and Shigofumi a try, too, since people seem to be enjoying them and they're both relatively short series.
All this on top of books I want to read, movies I want to watch, more Smash Bros. Brawl, some TV, and schoolwork ... ah, the curse of liking too much stuff. :(
