Most of the time, I watch movies to try to forget about my life for a while. Other times, I like to see something I can relate to. Then there are movies that I don't want to see or would rather not have seen because they remind me too much of life. I just saw "The Company Men" today, and it was an example of something I could relate to AND enjoy. Granted, the characters in the movie who lost their jobs were way higher on the totem pole than I was, but the hassles were still the same. This past Sunday, I watched "Blue Valentine," which I'll admit I really only watched because I wanted to see what had originally given it an NC-17 (MPAA ratings are a favorite subject of mine), and the fact that Michelle Williams was involved helped (I've kinda had a thing for her since the Dawson's Creek era). It's basically about a marriage falling apart, while also showing how it started. In some respects "Blue Valentine" might be a decent movie, but I've seen too much of that kind of thing in real life, and therefore it's too painful to enjoy. Someone who posted a thread on the imdb.com message board said it best IMO: "So if you've ever watched white trash fighting in the middle of Walmart and wanted to know the backstory, watch this movie. Otherwise, avoid it." As for the rating...eh, I'm not sure. It's definitely not for kids, but I'd rather a teen see a sex scene from this movie than images of somebody getting blown up or burnt to a crisp. There's not really much nudity, but the sex is still pretty explicit. (More on that later on.)
Another movie that I recently watched partially to see why it got its rating was "The King's Speech". Before I saw the movie, I thought, "This doesn't look like an R-rated movie." And when you get right down to it, it's not. It's only rated R because it surpasses the PG-13 F-Bomb quota. All the f-bombs appear in one or two scenes, and in the context of speech therapy, so it's not like they're gratuitous and spread throughout the movie. Interestingly, the British Board Of Film Classification (or BBFC) originally rated it with a "15", then re-rated it "12A" on appeal. I think that was a smart decision. For shits and giggles, I decided to see what the BBFC gave "The Company Men" and "Blue Valentine". "The Company Men" was a pretty mild "R", so I guessed correctly that it was a "15". Surprisingly, "Blue Valentine" also managed a "15". The Extended Classification Information had this to say: "The BBFC's Guidelines at '15' state 'Sexual activity may be portrayed without strong detail'. The film includes three sex scenes of note - two portrayals of sexual intercourse and one of cunnilingus. In terms of sexual mechanics, each scene is strong and approaches the upper limits of what is permitted at '15'. However, nudity is limited and the scenes are otherwise sufficiently lacking in detail to be allowed at that category." I was also surprised that "Black Swan" passed for a "15", but since kids under 15 aren't allowed in to see "15"-certified movies, I guess that's alright.
While I'm on the subject of ratings, I highly recommend the documentary "This Film Is Not Yet Rated". Also, this article does a good job of comparing the MPAA and the BBFC, using Lars von Trier's "Antichrist" as an example.
On my way home from the theater, I stopped by a restaurant that has a big "Taking Applications" sign out front, yet hasn't had any applications in the past three days, to see if they had any applications today. They didn't. But anyway, I saw an ex-coworker there, someone who works in what I'm now calling the "Crackhead Sector". Between my recent angst about getting rejected for a job I used to do and having watched "The Company Men", I thought to myself that if she said "Hi" to me, I would've responded with, "Hey there Jobby McJobberson!" But I don't think she saw me, so I didn't get to say it.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Crud Update
After a few days of using some generic Dayquil/Nyquil Sinus type stuff, I switched over to Mucinex D. I also got a neti pot. Now I'm taking regular Mucinex and using the neti pot occasionally. It's weird, my nose isn't stopped up, but there still seems to be some stuffiness in the very back of my sinuses. The crud in my chest seems to be loosening up pretty good now.
In other cruddy news: I can't remember if I mentioned it before, but I applied for a couple of jobs last month at Main ex-Employer for the department I was in when they laid me off. I finally got a rejection e-mail from them yesterday for one of the jobs, saying that I wasn't a strong enough fit. I'm now waiting to get rejected for the other position. I know that Corporate/HR people follow some odd kind of logic that makes no sense to most regular people, and I'm sure that the Recruiting department of this company are smoking the same proverbial crack that Corporate/HR people do. If it had been up to the people that I actually worked directly with, I would've gotten my old job back about two years ago. Hell, had it been up to them, I wouldn't have gotten laid off, period.
In other cruddy news: I can't remember if I mentioned it before, but I applied for a couple of jobs last month at Main ex-Employer for the department I was in when they laid me off. I finally got a rejection e-mail from them yesterday for one of the jobs, saying that I wasn't a strong enough fit. I'm now waiting to get rejected for the other position. I know that Corporate/HR people follow some odd kind of logic that makes no sense to most regular people, and I'm sure that the Recruiting department of this company are smoking the same proverbial crack that Corporate/HR people do. If it had been up to the people that I actually worked directly with, I would've gotten my old job back about two years ago. Hell, had it been up to them, I wouldn't have gotten laid off, period.
Friday, February 18, 2011
What have I gotten myself into?
I can't believe I did it. I paid for a Lifetime Membership for Louisville Mojo, my former favorite social networking/now dating site. I don't feel like going into the whole story of the rise and fall of Louisville Mojo*, but I will say that the site has been dying a slow, painful death for the past six years. Last April, they decided to become a dating site where you had to pay to be able to see profiles and read or send messages to members. The only thing that non-members could do was post in the Forums, which for a lot of people in my circle was the main attraction of Mojo. Women who were members as of that date got an entire year free, while the men only got two weeks free. I never had a girlfriend during the six years that I had been on Mojo at that point, and I knew my broke ass wasn't getting hooked up anytime soon either, so why bother paying? A friend gave me a month's membership as a gift just a few days after my two weeks expired. As long as I was able to use the forums, I was okay with not paying.
Last September, they decided that non-paying members could read the forums, but not post. In October, they decided that non-paying members couldn't even read the forum threads after the mods and admins spent too much time deleting the fake profiles of some douchebag ex-forum poster and his girlfriend who were stinking up the forums. I was highly pissed off.
In November, some of my friends and forum posters had a get-together. There were a couple of threads that spawned from that event that piqued my interest, and on my birthday I decided to treat myself to a month-long membership. The Lifetime membership is only $25 more than what you'd pay for a month, but I had better things to spend that extra $25 on. For a while, I had been on the fence about whether to bother keeping a profile, but I figured that as long as there were people on there willing to meet up occasionally, I'd stick around. Soon after that month was up, I paid for another month. And another month. My previous membership was set to expire on February 17th, so I had to decide whether I was going to pay up again or not. I was still hesitant to get a lifetime membership since a lifetime membership to a dating site just seems silly, not to mention the Forums have gotten even slower**. But since I just paid $60 to participate for the past three months, I figured that a $45 investment would pay off if Mojo survives another three months. So I took the plunge. And now I'm feeling a bit goofy for it.
*I'll probably just copy and paste one of my "Rise And Fall Of Louisville Mojo" style entries from my old blog to tell the story.
**Honestly, I don't have a lot to say these days, and therefore have nothing to contribute to the forums. And as the old saying goes, "If you're not part of the solution..."
Last September, they decided that non-paying members could read the forums, but not post. In October, they decided that non-paying members couldn't even read the forum threads after the mods and admins spent too much time deleting the fake profiles of some douchebag ex-forum poster and his girlfriend who were stinking up the forums. I was highly pissed off.
In November, some of my friends and forum posters had a get-together. There were a couple of threads that spawned from that event that piqued my interest, and on my birthday I decided to treat myself to a month-long membership. The Lifetime membership is only $25 more than what you'd pay for a month, but I had better things to spend that extra $25 on. For a while, I had been on the fence about whether to bother keeping a profile, but I figured that as long as there were people on there willing to meet up occasionally, I'd stick around. Soon after that month was up, I paid for another month. And another month. My previous membership was set to expire on February 17th, so I had to decide whether I was going to pay up again or not. I was still hesitant to get a lifetime membership since a lifetime membership to a dating site just seems silly, not to mention the Forums have gotten even slower**. But since I just paid $60 to participate for the past three months, I figured that a $45 investment would pay off if Mojo survives another three months. So I took the plunge. And now I'm feeling a bit goofy for it.
*I'll probably just copy and paste one of my "Rise And Fall Of Louisville Mojo" style entries from my old blog to tell the story.
**Honestly, I don't have a lot to say these days, and therefore have nothing to contribute to the forums. And as the old saying goes, "If you're not part of the solution..."
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
The Crud
I haven't gotten majorly sick with anything like the flu or strep throat since 2005, but it seems like I do get a case of "The Crud" at least once a year. I don't know if definitions for The Crud are the same for everybody, but for me it means nasal and chest congestion. I had some major sinus pressure the past couple of days, and didn't feel like doing much of anything, especially not writing. I felt so crappy yesterday that I didn't care one way or the other that it was Valentine's Day, a day that I usually try to ignore anyway. Getting some sinus medicine has definitely made life more bearable.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Recent thoughts about music, Part 2: Formats
For this installment, I've decided to talk about formats, which does factor in the Loudness War somewhat, instead of talking more directly about the Loudness War. A lot of people like to pit CDs against vinyl, or CDs against MP3s/downloads. I'm not really wild about lossy downloads, and prefer just about any physical product over them, whether it's CD, vinyl, or even (*GASP*) cassette tapes. For some reason, downloading just doesn't appeal to me, I'm not sure why. I especially can't condone illegal downloading because I'm all for artists getting paid. The only time I'd really do it anymore is when I want something that is extremely rare and unlikely to get reissued, like Pantera's first four pre-major label albums.
Of the most popular physical formats, I like CD the most due to it's convenience, and since a well mastered CD can sound just as good, possibly even better, than vinyl. To get the best out of your vinyl, you need to give them a deep cleaning. With CDs, you just pop them in the player and enjoy! Unfortunately, it seems that the pooch has been screwed in the mastering department, with an assist sometimes coming from the mix. When I first learned about the Loudness War, a lot of people touted vinyl as being an alternative to ultra-compressed CDs. I soon learned though that vinyl has it's mastering issues as well. Vinyl is only as good as the source it is mastered from, and the plant that it's pressed at. Good vinyl editions are usually sourced either from analog master tapes or high resolution (or at least higher than 16/44.1) digital masters. Some vinyl are sourced from CDs, and in that case you're better off just buying the CD! One example: a record from The Who from Universal's "Back To Black" series? Bad*. The same Who record from Classic Records? Good! (*There are very few "Back To Black" series records I know of that aren't sourced from CDs, so I'm assuming that the ones from The Who are CD-sourced as well. But I could be wrong.) Before you get into vinyl, you really want to do some research. A lot of albums are licensed out to other companies, and you'll want to find out which companies are good, and which ones you'll want to avoid. You'll also want to find out about pressing plants.
Another reason that I currently prefer CDs over vinyl is that with my current living arrangement, I have nowhere to put my turntable. It's been boxed up ever since I moved out of my brother-in-law's place two years ago. That makes me a sad panda. Vinyl can be really neat sometimes. In 2008, I bought My Morning Jacket's "Evil Urges" on vinyl since it conveniently came with the CD. The CD was definitely good for car listening. One of the tracks that was getting played on the radio was "I'm Amazed", which never really impressed me. But there was something about listening to that song on vinyl that made it downright magical. Maybe it was the fact that I was sitting down and listening to it, letting it soak in, rather than hearing it on the go. The art of just listening to music is one I hope to rediscover someday, but that's another story for another day.
Cassette tapes aren't really a good format. They're probably better used to make copies of your vinyl or CDs than they are in prerecorded form, but I think I'd still rather listen to a prerecorded tape than to lossy downloads. Cassette copies of other cassettes? UGH! I seriously can't stand those.
My next installment will probably be about mastering and remasters.
Of the most popular physical formats, I like CD the most due to it's convenience, and since a well mastered CD can sound just as good, possibly even better, than vinyl. To get the best out of your vinyl, you need to give them a deep cleaning. With CDs, you just pop them in the player and enjoy! Unfortunately, it seems that the pooch has been screwed in the mastering department, with an assist sometimes coming from the mix. When I first learned about the Loudness War, a lot of people touted vinyl as being an alternative to ultra-compressed CDs. I soon learned though that vinyl has it's mastering issues as well. Vinyl is only as good as the source it is mastered from, and the plant that it's pressed at. Good vinyl editions are usually sourced either from analog master tapes or high resolution (or at least higher than 16/44.1) digital masters. Some vinyl are sourced from CDs, and in that case you're better off just buying the CD! One example: a record from The Who from Universal's "Back To Black" series? Bad*. The same Who record from Classic Records? Good! (*There are very few "Back To Black" series records I know of that aren't sourced from CDs, so I'm assuming that the ones from The Who are CD-sourced as well. But I could be wrong.) Before you get into vinyl, you really want to do some research. A lot of albums are licensed out to other companies, and you'll want to find out which companies are good, and which ones you'll want to avoid. You'll also want to find out about pressing plants.
Another reason that I currently prefer CDs over vinyl is that with my current living arrangement, I have nowhere to put my turntable. It's been boxed up ever since I moved out of my brother-in-law's place two years ago. That makes me a sad panda. Vinyl can be really neat sometimes. In 2008, I bought My Morning Jacket's "Evil Urges" on vinyl since it conveniently came with the CD. The CD was definitely good for car listening. One of the tracks that was getting played on the radio was "I'm Amazed", which never really impressed me. But there was something about listening to that song on vinyl that made it downright magical. Maybe it was the fact that I was sitting down and listening to it, letting it soak in, rather than hearing it on the go. The art of just listening to music is one I hope to rediscover someday, but that's another story for another day.
Cassette tapes aren't really a good format. They're probably better used to make copies of your vinyl or CDs than they are in prerecorded form, but I think I'd still rather listen to a prerecorded tape than to lossy downloads. Cassette copies of other cassettes? UGH! I seriously can't stand those.
My next installment will probably be about mastering and remasters.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Recent thoughts about music, Part 1: "New" Music
I've been having a bad case of Writer's Block lately. I'll start on an entry, realize it's too ambitious for me to try to finish in one sitting, and save it in hopes of finishing it another day. I've had lots of thoughts about music, and have decided that the best way to go about it is to do it in separate parts. In this installment, I'll be focusing on what I think of new music. In my case, "new" could mean in the past ten years.
Back when I was really starting to get into music in the early 1990s, my main source of discovering music outside of radio and whatever my brother brought back with him from college was magazines. I've bought tapes and CDs just on the strength of what was said about them in magazines like Rolling Stone, Spin, or various Metal mags, Rip being my favorite one. The Telecoms Act of 1996 virtually killed radio, making formats and playlists narrower and narrower. But with the rise of satellite radio and music on the internet in the early 2000s, you didn't really need radio, and you could actually sample the bands you were reading about before you bought their music. Only one problem though: there is way too much music out there! I realized in the early 1990s that for every good/great band in a particular sub-genre, there were about a thousand mediocre/bad ones. The internet seems to have expanded that ratio to at least 10,000:1. I do hear a lot of music that is pleasant enough, yet doesn't really move me. It's stuff that I would probably enjoy more if I didn't have 55 years of Pop/Rock music history filling my head as it is. I feel like I've heard it all, and heard it done better. And on that note, why bother with new music when there's still so much good old music to catch up on, especially since the older CDs or vinyl are probably mastered better than the newer stuff. But that's a topic that I'll save for another time. Extreme forms of Metal are probably the best example. I can only take so many blast beats and Cookie Monster vocals before it just gets boring, and not many bands are really doing anything that hasn't really been done before.
Here were my favorite albums released between the years 2000-2010, in mostly alphabetical order and excluding local stuff.
Anthrax - We've Come For You All
At The Drive In - Relationship Of Command
Beastie Boys - To The 5 Boroughs
Black Kids - Party Traumatic
Bleeding Through - The Truth
Cannibal Corpse - The Wretched Spawn, Worm Infested (EP)
Danzig - 777: I Luciferi
Eagles Of Death Metal - Death By Sexy
Exodus - Shovel Headed Kill Machine
Fear Factory - Digimortal
Flight Of The Conchords - self-titled, I Told You I Was Freaky, The Distant Future (EP)
Franz Ferdinand - self titled
Gnarls Barkley - St. Elsewhere
Metallica - Death Magnetic
Metalocalypse:Dethklok - The Dethalbum, The Dethalbum II
Ministry - The Last Sucker
Outkast - Stankonia, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
Pantera - Reinventing The Steel
Queens Of The Stone Age - Rated R, Songs For The Deaf
Rage Against The Machine - Renegades
R.E.M. - Accelerate
Slayer - Christ Illusion
Static-X - Cannibal Killers Live
Superjoint Ritual - A Lethal Dose Of American Hatred
System Of A Down - Toxicity, Mezmerize, Hypnotize
Tenacious D - self titled
U2 - All That You Can't Leave Behind, No Line On The Horizon
Kanye West - Late Registration, Graduation, 808s And Heartbreak, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
To some, that might seem like a relatively lengthy list, but it's probably a fraction of most music freaks' "favorites of the decade" lists. And did you notice that there aren't a whole lot of new artists? Kanye West was one of the few to come out in the past decade that really grabbed me. Seeing as that I consider myself a "rocker" and am not really all that into recent Pop or Hip Hop, that probably says something about the sad state of Rock music. To paraphrase what I said earlier, I find a lot of newer Indie Rock fairly pleasant, but as for Hard Rock, if I had kids, I'd almost rather they listen to Justin Bieber or Lady Gaga than Shinedown or Nickelback.
My next installment will most likely be about The Loudness War. If you don't know much about it, there's a good entry on it on Wikipedia, which includes lots of entertaining links for further reading.
The Loudness War Wikipedia entry
Back when I was really starting to get into music in the early 1990s, my main source of discovering music outside of radio and whatever my brother brought back with him from college was magazines. I've bought tapes and CDs just on the strength of what was said about them in magazines like Rolling Stone, Spin, or various Metal mags, Rip being my favorite one. The Telecoms Act of 1996 virtually killed radio, making formats and playlists narrower and narrower. But with the rise of satellite radio and music on the internet in the early 2000s, you didn't really need radio, and you could actually sample the bands you were reading about before you bought their music. Only one problem though: there is way too much music out there! I realized in the early 1990s that for every good/great band in a particular sub-genre, there were about a thousand mediocre/bad ones. The internet seems to have expanded that ratio to at least 10,000:1. I do hear a lot of music that is pleasant enough, yet doesn't really move me. It's stuff that I would probably enjoy more if I didn't have 55 years of Pop/Rock music history filling my head as it is. I feel like I've heard it all, and heard it done better. And on that note, why bother with new music when there's still so much good old music to catch up on, especially since the older CDs or vinyl are probably mastered better than the newer stuff. But that's a topic that I'll save for another time. Extreme forms of Metal are probably the best example. I can only take so many blast beats and Cookie Monster vocals before it just gets boring, and not many bands are really doing anything that hasn't really been done before.
Here were my favorite albums released between the years 2000-2010, in mostly alphabetical order and excluding local stuff.
Anthrax - We've Come For You All
At The Drive In - Relationship Of Command
Beastie Boys - To The 5 Boroughs
Black Kids - Party Traumatic
Bleeding Through - The Truth
Cannibal Corpse - The Wretched Spawn, Worm Infested (EP)
Danzig - 777: I Luciferi
Eagles Of Death Metal - Death By Sexy
Exodus - Shovel Headed Kill Machine
Fear Factory - Digimortal
Flight Of The Conchords - self-titled, I Told You I Was Freaky, The Distant Future (EP)
Franz Ferdinand - self titled
Gnarls Barkley - St. Elsewhere
Metallica - Death Magnetic
Metalocalypse:Dethklok - The Dethalbum, The Dethalbum II
Ministry - The Last Sucker
Outkast - Stankonia, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
Pantera - Reinventing The Steel
Queens Of The Stone Age - Rated R, Songs For The Deaf
Rage Against The Machine - Renegades
R.E.M. - Accelerate
Slayer - Christ Illusion
Static-X - Cannibal Killers Live
Superjoint Ritual - A Lethal Dose Of American Hatred
System Of A Down - Toxicity, Mezmerize, Hypnotize
Tenacious D - self titled
U2 - All That You Can't Leave Behind, No Line On The Horizon
Kanye West - Late Registration, Graduation, 808s And Heartbreak, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
To some, that might seem like a relatively lengthy list, but it's probably a fraction of most music freaks' "favorites of the decade" lists. And did you notice that there aren't a whole lot of new artists? Kanye West was one of the few to come out in the past decade that really grabbed me. Seeing as that I consider myself a "rocker" and am not really all that into recent Pop or Hip Hop, that probably says something about the sad state of Rock music. To paraphrase what I said earlier, I find a lot of newer Indie Rock fairly pleasant, but as for Hard Rock, if I had kids, I'd almost rather they listen to Justin Bieber or Lady Gaga than Shinedown or Nickelback.
My next installment will most likely be about The Loudness War. If you don't know much about it, there's a good entry on it on Wikipedia, which includes lots of entertaining links for further reading.
The Loudness War Wikipedia entry
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
January is already over.
January came and went pretty quickly. Maybe not as quickly as I'd like, but still pretty quick. With the exception of the weather, the year hasn't been totally horrible yet. But I'm starting to run low on the money that I saved up in December. I am honestly glad that I haven't had to worry about driving to work in the weather we've had, but I could use the income. Hell, the weather really hasn't been as bad around here as it has been up north, especially in the northeast, but I'd still rather be living someplace warmer. On the upside, the days are starting to get longer, and Daylight Saving Time will be here before we know it.
I'm still housesitting. The dog hasn't peed or pooped since I closed off the guest room from the animals, but the cat is still not pooping in the litter box enough. While it's a pain to clean up, I've been lucky in that the cat has mostly kept the pooping confined to the storage room where the litter box is, and has only pooped outside of there a couple of times. I was hoping to be more productive with my blogging while I'm here, but usually by the time I get here after checking status updates on Facebook and whatnot, the dog is already at the door whining.
I'm still housesitting. The dog hasn't peed or pooped since I closed off the guest room from the animals, but the cat is still not pooping in the litter box enough. While it's a pain to clean up, I've been lucky in that the cat has mostly kept the pooping confined to the storage room where the litter box is, and has only pooped outside of there a couple of times. I was hoping to be more productive with my blogging while I'm here, but usually by the time I get here after checking status updates on Facebook and whatnot, the dog is already at the door whining.
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