Hooray! (Kinda)

Currently Listening to: The Tornado Lessons
By: Cloud Cult

Ch’yeah!!! (Cue Tiger Woods-esque fistpump)

So, yes Tiger won the U.S Open AGAIN yesterday, so this is a slight homage to him. However, I definitely did a tiger-esque epic fist pump yesterday when I got my phone call from Ben Popken, Chief Editor over at Consumerist.com, who called to say that I GOT THE INTERNSHIP! (cue the Hallelujah chorus…). I start on Monday, assuming that all of my Comcast Installations go according to plan and free of corporate shenanigans, and that I get my phone charger back sometime within the next week. My entire connection to the outside world has basically been cut off now that my cell phone is dead. I am a baby whose umbilical cord has just been severed from it’s mother and I’m not sure yet where I’m going to get my daily dose of essential nutrients.

I’m pretty excited about this internship, it was all I could do from doing an epic fist pump in the middle of the open studio surrounded by coworkers, but my overflowing enthusiasm resulted in a somewhat awkward conversation with Ben, since I really would just leave long bouts of silence as my mind raced all over the place.  He was as dazed and confused as I was I think. We’ll see how impressive my work in the Gawker Media Network becomes. Maybe I will conquer them.

Oh I will conquer. Yes I will conquer. I will conquer to the point that Gengis Kahn will shit his pants — IN HIS GRAVE.

Okay, now that I finally got that out of my system, I can move on to the meatier stuff. Savage Grace has released in theaters and I am shooting myself in the foot because I don’t know if I have the time to go see it this week and I highly doubt that it’s going to stay in theaters thru next week — you know how the indie film circuit goes. I already missed Mongol when it released and even though there’s a download online it’s harddubbed with Russian (it’s confusing enough to be reading subtitles– I don’t want to be jerked around with two audio sequences). I did, however, get a successful and acceptable (and awesome) download of In Bruges and Charlie Bartlett, and I’m quite excited about those. I apologize about not writing reviews for films lately, it’s just that they’ve all been so lackluster. Besides — I don’t really tell anyone this but I have this small little place in my dark heart for Romantic Comedies, I know, I pretend like I’m a high-and-mighty, holier-than-thou kind of person when it comes to movies. But sometimes a girl really needs to kick back and watch that pornography-for-the-female-mind bullshit that the media is feeding us today. I’m sorry, I know I will likely burn a thousand years in hell for it, but it is a habit I don’t think I can shake. But the jist of it is that I’m far to embarressed to write about THOSE films. Besides, the Great Debators, Dewey Cox, and We Own the Night hardly make up any solid writing material.

So, one little ferret ball of stress has been completely eliminated. Only to be replaced with some other bouncy beings which are constantly rotating about my head like electrons.  There are some personal issues with some specific relationships and friendships, then there’s the whole stress of moving, which has been near to impossible to completely finish with the lack of a car, and the fact that I’m still working full time. I’m angry, frequently tired, and I’ve developed an eye twitch that makes me akin to Mr. DeMartino from Daria.

I’m not kidding.

This stress may just be killing me.

I’m officially addicted, and paranoid.

Currently listening to: Sponsored by Destiny
By: Slagsmalsklubben
(oh how I love Swedish Techno beats)

I just realized that I’ve been negligent and forgot to bring my lunch this morning. I was so looking forward to that bologna and cheese sandwich and the sides of grapes and wheat thins. When you realize that you were expecting something and then it’s something completely different, kind of like when you drink orange juice but OH SHIT it’s actually milk, your entire body cringes with the shock of it and your face squishes into this completely distorted look that makes you look like you just smelled something that had been dead for at least four months, to be only slightly specific. So yep, here I am, sitting at work and realizing that I, like an idiot, left my deliciously scrumptious lunch at home. For shame.

So I’ve come to realize that I may have developed a slight addiction, maybe it’s to reading, maybe it’s to the internet, maybe it’s to the foolish belief that I am constantly expanding my mind, I don’t really know. I feel that a lot of other people out there like to stay well informed as well, but I don’t know if reading a 10 page New York Times article on shared parenting is really appropriate for a girl who is only 19 and barely making her way in the world. There’s also the media factors, I follow at least two different podcasts — Diggnation for one, iFanboy because I’m just such a comic book whore, and then the other various ones on history and classic novels. Now that I’ve realized that PBS.com has multiple full length presentations on their website I basically shat myself with excitement, if I were to have any clue as to what an orgasm actually feels like I would have sworn that I came when I found out.  Brilliant Broadcsts from Growing Up Online to Fighting Child Prostitution to exposes on childbirth injuries prevalent amongst Ethiopian Women. Cracking the Maya code?! This shit is like crack cocaine to me! I’m a kid in a metaphorical candy shop! I want it all and I’m going to be on the biggest sugar high of my life!

I feel like I’m addicted to information, that I can’t process enough facts and statistics at once, I want to be well informed of the world around me, sure The Onion is fantastic material, their written satire really can’t be beat. But I’m thriving on this real news, these real reports, The New York Times education and film sections should really just IV right into me, I don’t need food. I need this stream of information. It doesn’t help that I’m reading books like Generation Me: Why today’s young Americans are more Confident, Assertive, Entitled — and miserable than ever before,  Class Matters, and Sin No More: From Abortion to Stem Cells. Understanding Crime, Law, and Morality in America . What am I? Fucking…55? I should be off reading the lated book by Chuck Klosterman (though I have read his work) or praising the work of Chuck Palahniuk (God that last names hard to spell).

Here brings in that whole…paranoia business. I’m sitting here devouring all of this information, gorging myself on it really. I find myself reading things about the economy, the possibility of universal healthcare, jobs that pay surprisingly well, and parenting for pete’s sake. I feel like I’m 19 but I’m constantly looking to the future. Looking for the position that I think is best, planning my co-ops a good six months ahead of the game, causing myself to needlessly worry about…well…everything it seems. Planned assets, property prices, the economy, my childrens school districts, parenting methods, job choices. I mean, I could go on and on. My boyfriend frequently chides me for being so quiet when we’re walking places, the real issue is that I just don’t want him to think that I’m some worry wart freak of nature, because as we’re walking I’m considering the cost of living of where we’re walking, approximate taxes, how much of an annual salary I’d devote to a mortgage. Crazy things like that. I’m fully aware that this boy wants to marry me, but what if he stays at the same job? These crazy thoughts are running through my head all the time. Today I was picking apart the article on parents who opted for Shared Parenting. Really? Two parents with part time jobs and still having to pay for daycare? I don’t even know how that would work out for you financially, that leaves you no room for upward movement within the company — you’ve basically just stuck yourself in the same position at your job for the next 10 years. Besides, your company has to be amazing if they’re going to give you benefits and all of that other jazz. Working part time the average family is looking at an average COMBINED income that might (if they’re lucky) graze the 60,000 dollar mark. Combine that with the average home in the US costing 200K (note that that translates to more than 3 times your combined annual income) — that leaves you looking at being in a constant state of debt — with your mortgage approaching 1/2 of your income. I don’t know if  I could live with that kind of stress and pressure.

Gah! I’m thinking again. Damn me. I love McDonalds.

Feeling that time crunch.

For the past week I have been what I can only describe to be a stressball with the energy of a crazed ferret — bouncing around the walls of its cage and searching for an escape when it eventually dies of self-inflicted internal injuries and foaming at the mouth. There has been the recent acquisition of the new apartment, which, due to several epic three-hour long trips to the gleaming beacon of Ikea, has now been somewhat furnished. I’ve been spending this week running about like a crazed madwoman, calling the gas and electric company to transfer service, contacting the devils I know to be Comcast to get my (hopefully) high-speed internet connection set up in my name, rushing about to find the perfect fathers day present (which turned out to be a 1-year netflix subscription and a Roku Box), arranging for the locks to be changed, scheduling plans for the week, and most importantly worrying about my internship application to Consumerist.

Yes, that Consumerist. You know that one that is part of the almighty Gawker Media family, once home to Emily Gould and still a parent of one of my other favorite blogs to read, Gizmodo (they just have that sense of humor that Engadget lacks, and the blogging skills that would make Geekologie writers weep). You know that Consumerist that has an Alexa ranking of 5,316 and was in PC magazines list of top 100 classic websites. Anyways, all of that said, I was more than overjoyed two weeks ago when I saw their posting requesting an intern, nothing too serious, it was simply asking for someone who will basically filter through all of their gmail to find the juicy stuff for their posted stories. I, being the easily excitable person that i am, nearly shit my pants and then proceed to try and write the most witty and memorable e-mail ever while flying by the seat of my pants (after all I only have two to three paragraphs with which to impress Ben Popken).  That said, a copy of the original e-mail is getting pasted below as-is, please ignore any grammatical errors, those are because I was as excited as a fucking chipmunk when he finds out he has musical talent and his name is Alvin. My fingers trip over what my brain is trying to say to them.

“Hey Consumerist!

So I just wanted to tell you what an ideal and awesome intern I would be — I fit into all of your requirements, I suppose I’ll just go through them one by one. Because, you know, that’s the most orderly way to do things.

Requirement Numero Uno : Love The Consumerist.

Okay, so I don’t walk around wearing an “I Heart Consumerist” t-shirt butchering of the original Milton Glaser design. But you guys are on my Speed dial (yes, the Firefox add-on) and I read you with a sort of religious fanatacism. Not so fanatically religious that I’d burn myself or bomb anyone, but you get the drift. I live for your Morning Deals and your eternal bashing of everything that is Dell.

Requirement Two: Can commit 1-3 hours every other weekday, without fail.

I am on the computer at work for nine and a half waking hours of the day, then I return home and after cooking myself a splendid college meal (Ramen Noodles) and then usually turn to the internet for some form of entertainment. It’s either that or me working on my latest Vimeo Video, WordPress entry, or Portfolio update. Once my present fulltime job is over (June 25th) my freetime is bound to just exponentially increase, and 1-3 hours a day on Gmail really isn’t going to slow me down one bit.

Requirement Three: Enjoy asking strangers for followup information.

Of course not everyone is most adept at talking to strangers in social situations, myself included, if you’re asking me to do so via the internet or by phone, I’m 100% there. No Problem.

Requirement Four: Are adept at sniffing out the one good needle in a pile of haystacks.

Okay, so I’m not very adept at “sniffing” and distinguishing a tiny piece metal from a bunch of dead overgrown grass. I will however jump in that haystack from the second story of the barn, roll all around in it and either find the needle and hold it up with an epic stance, or have it get stuck somewhere in my flesh. Either way I found it and I found it with enthusiasm!

Requirement Five: Are a Gmail master.

G-mail master?! More like G-mail guru. Paris Hilton totally considered to hire me to walk next to her so she could appear more “web savvy”. I have multiple accounts, forwarding galore and I have the keyboard shortcuts down pat. Did I mention that I also read through the entire Lifehacker article when it released?

Requirement Six: Live for Labeling

I don’t have a secret stash of label machines laying about (I used to have one on a keychain somewhere) but I did label all THREE of my drawers at work “Pirate Hats”, “Secret Stash” and “Self Defense” respectively. No, there is no alcohol sitting in my secret stash drawer and YES Self-Defense is full of plastic knives from the kitchen.

Requirement Six: Rock Gmail macros

I’m totally rockin’ the Firefox extention for that — I’m a big fan of Quicksilver and this totally saves me time.

So, basically. I’m a hard worker, incredibly enthusiastic, a college student, and a fan of your site. If you wanted something a little more serious I can send that your way. I have a list of references who attest to my completely professional demeanor in the workplace. I only figured that since you guys were after all a part of the Gawker Network — you’d appreciate my fine writing.

Thank you for the opportunity,
Rachel Mercer”

Contact information was redacted

So that was that, I sent that e-mail and a couple of follow-ups. I started being paranoid of being “that annoying overreaching girl” and stopped sending anything at all. I basically sat at my desk at work 10 hours a day incessantly checking my e-mail. The following week I receive a response e-mail from their weekend editor, Carey, who basically says that they’re now reviewing applications. Great, they received my email and now I am crossing my fingers so hard they might break because I really want this job.

One week later…
SUCCESS! Ben Popken, the editor of the site, e-mailed me back!

from Ben Popken [redacted] to [redacted] date Mon, Jun 9, 2008 at 6:58 PM subject re: Internship. I want it. mailed-by consumerist.com

)

Hi Rachel,

Thanks for your (enthusiastic!) application. I’d like to interview you for the position. Do you have some time to talk over the phone this week?

Hallelujah! It was a complete surprise, I had just worked my third16 hour day in the span of a  week and I was totally bushed, it was 10:30 at night, and I was frantically calling my best friend to tell him and bounce response ideas off of (we kind of have a bet going on as to whether or not I’m going to get the job, his bet is that I will, my bet is against me, after all I’m probably competing with 250+ applicants, all of whom have amazing blogs of their own, he says that I’m going to get it — but has no real argument as to why.) Anyways, I ended up very quickly writing a general response read it aloud to my friend asking if it was funny but not, you know, that “I’m trying hard to be funny” funny, and sent that e-mail through the intertubes.

from Rachel M <redacted> to Ben Popken <redacted> date Mon, Jun 9, 2008 at 10:25 PM subject Re: Internship. I want it. mailed-by gmail.com

Hi Ben!

(that exclamation point indicates the ridiculous amounts of enthusiasm with which I am presently writing this e-mail.)

I am still working my full time job/internship/indentured servantry but I (hopefully) don’t have any late nights ahead of me this week. I am free on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday after 5:30 pm or if you’d rather schedule something during normal business hours I can actually take a lunch break and talk to you sometime in that ambiguous three hour period when people actually take lunch.

Looking forward to speaking with you,

Rachel Mercer

Huzzah! It was sent. There it was, he had e-mailed me at 7pm on a Monday, I responded within 4 hours, I figured I was solid. Now it’s nearing the end of Wednesday and I’m wringing my hands again, I swear I should learn to knit or something constructive so I don’t end up biting my nails to an oblivion. At least work requires me to use both of my hands because I’m using all the shortcuts ever needed in InDesign/Photoshop/Illustrator and the mouse to clickity click everything in sight. Then there are the times when I’m writing these posts, which are borderline ridiculous. Anyways, I finally got approval from Chris to go ahead and call the guy, we’ll see how it goes, I’m probably just going to do the follow-up email, because I don’t want to appear to be a stalker.

In the meantime, I realized that when I’m walking to work, I’m incredibly frustrated that I can’t blog while I do it, or at least have a rapid transfer device to transfer the words in my head somehow to paper or and editable format (wow, that was almost edible…that’d be weird. TOAST …brain… transfers…words on TOAST!…anyways…). I find myself having a lot of thoughts that I really want to write about and I never really get a chance to. I also kind of see different film shots in different places, that very strangely replay in my head. Sometimes I enjoy splicing them together and then adding a soundtrack or Michael Bay-esque special effects, but that’s only when I’m sleeping.

One of my favorite scenes is in the mornings when I am walking from Downtown Crossing towards South Station when I am walking against the flow of a lot of the foot traffic.  I sometime like to walk in the middle and watch the people break apart and walk around me, looking at all of their faces. Then I find myself walking across the bridge with about 15 different thoughts that I really need to have written down.

I came across some really interesting broadcasts which I recently discovered (by that I mean read about on consumerist) from PBS.com, one of the ones that I readily grasped and listened to while I was working was their Frontline piece on Universal Healthcare, which went to 5 different successful Capitalist countries and compared their national healthcare methods to ours. It was really interesting, and I found it incredibly enjoyable and informative — you can find it here. It’s a very large topic in the upcoming presidential elections, so I feel like it’s good to be well informed. I also spoke about this last week with Philippe who is from France, and felt like I didn’t really know what I was talking about.

The other one that I’m listening / watching to presently is Growing up online. It’s really quite interesting considering that I was one of those kids, heck I am one of those kids. You know that whole thing, blogging and having a myspace page, facebook, etc. I was laughing my ass off because to kick off the show they were playing hardcore music and showed some nerds having a LAN party in their basement playing Counterstrike. I’ll have more commentary on this later … probably in conjunction with my completion of reading Generation Me.

Wow.

Okay, so I get home yesterday, exhausted from a late bit of work — whip up some dinner (chinese dumplings, yum!), throw the laundry in the washer and rush downstairs with a bit of eagerness to start watching The Other Boleyn Girl. I really am a huge fan of that period in English history — and I read the best selling novel that the movie is based on and enjoyed it despite it’s hugely fictionalized nature, straying from the facts far too often for my own level of comfort. So — I was hoping for something great, something awesome, I mean isn’t Natalie Portman one of the best young actresses of our time (if not one of the most intelligent!?).

There were a LOT of things that bothered me about this movie, so forgive my ranting. I’m not saying that it was absolutely terrible, but for sometone who religiously watches The Tudors and finds it so much more fulfilling visually and intellectually. First off the film immediately starts off with the assertion that Scarlett Johansson is much more “attractive” than her sibling counterpart. Now this can be open to speculation, my male friend and I have Natalie Portman at the top of our respective “top 10″ lists. Subsequently followed by other brown haired beauties such as Jessica Alba and Biel. It’s nothing against Scarlett, she is surely a beautiful woman — and I suppose that the simpleton role is really the one that she deserves in this film. Her performance is coarse but fitting, her abilities on the screen are limited to acting hot and heated in the bedroom and playing the simpleton. Though Match Point was certainly an excellent film, the coarseness of her acting plays a stark contrast to the rest of the characters, the film wasn’t great because of her — there were other factors including the storyline, the performance of Johnathon Rhys Meyers (who actually plays King Henry in The Tudors), and the cinematography.  I hardly consider her work Nanny Diaries as her best film. I much prefer her pre-2004 work in such great films as Ghost World, Lost in Translation, and the Girl with the Pearl Earring. Poor Scarlett just looks awkward and out of place through the entire film, her acting leaves a lot to be desire, and not one ounce of her is very convincing. Natalie Portman, my favorite of the two possibly for her roles in V for Vendetta, Star Wars, Hotel Chevalier and her just generally awesome character in Paris Je T’aime and also possibly for the fact that she’s so hardcore she’s dating Devendra Banhart — they’re the greusome twosome for nerdlings and indie hipsters! Her acting struggles to be to par with that of  Natalie Dormer (who plays a much better albeit less attractive Anne Boleyn in The Tudors), it is clear that she has the basic idea behind it but I feel that she lacks the ability to play what some would call history’s most manipulative little bitch. She’s on half of the time, the other half she’s merely struggling to create the same idea. Queen Catherine reminds me of the ugly nanny from Nanny McPhee, when really I imagine her being something much, much more regal. I mean Catherine of Aragon was known for being a very beautiful woman in her youth — it wasn’t her fault that her husbands younger brother was attracted to her. It is so sad that this is what ended up being her demise.

Jim Sturgess who was in Across the Universe and perhaps better known for his lead role in the shitty book made rendition 21, plays George Boleyn. He flounders abouth throughout the movie looking positively ridiculous in the costuming — interacting well with Scarlett and Natalie but he’s not really given enough face time to have any large influence on the shittiness of the film. They don’t even touch on the fact that he was gay. His interaction with Zoe Kazan is by far some of the better acting in the film. Young Zoe completely emulates the idea of what Jane Parkhill would be like — her face is inquisitive, slightly snobbish and her demeaner completely embodies the role. For that I was happy, it was something that slightly redeemed the movie in my eyes. I’m in such a good mood now that I’m not even going to delve into how terrible it was to watch Eric Bana pass as Henry VIII, or even try to figure out why they cast the movie as they did.

Now for what I’ve been reading.

Generation Me: Why today’s young Americans are more confident, assertive, entitled and more miserable than ever before. [ Jean M. Twenge]

My parents are young enough to where they’re not from the peak of the baby boomer generation, they kind of rolled in on the end of that train. But I know that they’re the kind of people that were  surrounded by those stern figures of authority and raised with that entire mentality that “Mom and Dad know what’s best”. Mom was still very young when she married my dad (21) and back then, that was acceptable. Just as acceptable as both of my Grandmothers a generation before getting married even earlier than that.  It’s such a contrast to now when I’m sitting in the middle of my office — I’m surrounded by ladies in their late twenties just now discussing the prospect of marriage — however all of them are well educated, got mostly A’s in school and have both a Bachelors degree and have attended Graduate school. When I first left Texas I thought I was running away from those girls who just wanted to re-live the high school experience in College, get away from the big hair and the drawls, the boots and the denim skirts. But there I also see people that are willing to start their family young, to get married in or right out of college, and part of me thinks that it’s really not that bad. I aggree with Dr. Twenge in that a lot of our society is incredibly Narcissistic (I’m only 1/3 of the way through the book, I can’t draw complete conclusions as of yet) but a lot of me feels like I’m an anomoly according to her statistics.

For example according to Dr. Twenge “The individual has always come first, and feeling good about yourself has always been a primary virtue. Generation Me’s expectations are highly optimistic: they expect to go to college, to make lots of money, and perhaps even to be famous.”

I was raised in an environment where I was treated as an equal and with respect. Not necessarily one that was a self-esteem booster, but one that allowed me to take pride in any accomplishments that I had made and pushed me to strive for greater things. As for the rest, I feel that most have my generation has been raised with the standard that the college degree was the last generations high school diploma equivalent. We have been raised and taught that what we need to succeed in life NOW is a college degree — of course don’t push us all to go to college if you’re going to just accuse us of being overly optimistic about it. If you really wanted to go to college, you can, the question is being driven enough to get there. As for making money, I don’t know about anyone else — but I’m seeing an awful lot of Psychology degrees out there, I have friends left and right English Majors, Environmental Science Majors, Graphic Design & Photography Majors, sociolgogy majors. Do you really believe that these are kids striving to make a mean dollar? I’ve done research and I’m fully aware that in the field I’m in that my starting salary is going to be ~45,000 dollars, or approximately 1/5 of what my dad makes on a yearly basis. Do I expect to be as successful as my father? No, maybe if I had decided to become a business major with a minor in Entrepenurial Studies then I could have that dream but I am fully content to realize that for the next 10 or 20 years I’m going to be struggling, hopefully making ends meet with a husband whose salary is the equivalent or greater than mine. I’m not sitting here expecting to become a famous designer like Paula Scher, Michael Beirut or Stefan Sagmeister, I’m just hoping to get along somehow and maybe do something that I enjoy doing. That is what I had instilled in me from the beginning, my parents basically said “I don’t care what you do, if you wanted to play the bagpipes professionally then go ahead, but do what you love, what you enjoy, and what you do well.” (That’s not a direct quote, but it’s essentially what they said.) They always pushed me to do my best, I know that it surely killed them that I wanted to work in a creative field, but they did their best to help me grow in my work, sent me to programs, and now I’m one of the top in my class. I don’t regret any of it, I’ve worked hard to get where I am today, but I am striving for neither fame, nor fortune. I just want to do my job, do it well, and live my life in a way that is cohesive with society.

“Eighty-one percent of 18- to 25-year-olds surveyed in a Pew Research Center poll released today said getting rich is their generation’s most important or second-most-important life goal; 51% said the same about being famous.”
-USA Today

“Money is by far their most important problem; 30% cite financial concerns. College and education was the second-biggest concern at 18%, and careers and jobs were third at 16%.”

I can understand where the latter statistic is coming from. It’s the natural heirarchy of things, in order to go to college you’re going to need money, and in order to make money, you’re going to need a job, but in order to get a good job, you have to go to college. It’s this never ending black hole that keeps sucking kids in. I was very fortunate to have gotten a scholarship which augmented my parents financial support, allowing them to pay less. I’m going to a school where I can also get real work experience ( a year and a half’s worth ), where I get to make real (not monopoly!) money and that also goes towards my education. It hurts me to think that kids don’t get the best opportunities simply because of the lack of money.

I haven’t finished the book yet but it has caused me to do a great amount of reflection upon myself and the way I was raised. My parents I feel did a good job of raising me, mostly because I feel like I don’t fit into a majority of the statistics presented in the book. Sure I have self-confidence issues, and sure I have high-reaching goals, but I feel that that is a problem that many teenagers face, especially those who view themselves as even somewhat intellectual. It also causes me to look at the people around me, analyze the situation a little bit better. Sometimes I don’t understand how some people don’t strive to do better, when they have so much potential, or I’m astonished at just how lazy some of the people around me are. I don’t really know, I’m hoping that Dr. Twenge’s book will answer a few of my questions for me. But we’ll see.

A couple of reviews & what I’m looking forward to.

So, last night on my typical 5:30 walk home from work whilst I was winding my way through ridiculously crowded pedestrian ways apparently the T caught on fire. Yes, FIRE. So I get to my destination (usually the Downtown Crossing T stop) only to find what can only be described as a platoon of policemen and an army of firetrucks which insisted on barraging my ears with their terribly high pitched and loud sirens. Of course there was smoke everywhere billowing out and everyone around me was pondering the possibility of a Terrorist Attack. Oh Boston, you think you’re so important. Anywho, I meander down to the next nearest T stop (Park Street) thinking “Well I’m sure the Green Line is running if the Orange line isn’t” — of course there’s an even more ridiculous amount of people, I don’t even know how they all squeezed into the minimal amount of space that was surrounding the Park Street Stop — but it happened, and I was stuck in the middle of all of it. Now, cashless and without a Bank of America in sight, I decide “why the heck not, I’ll just walk”. It’s really not that far back to my dorm from the common, maybe a 20-30 minute walk down Boylston, but you don’t just do that kind of shit voluntarily. Of course, because all of the Gods were conspiring against me that day, by the time I get to Copley Square it is raining so hard that I can’t see where I’m going (this might also be the water-on-glasses effect) and shivering from the cold. I drop into the Prudential Center, wet, cranky and searching for warmth. The only thing that effectively cheers me up is a purchase from Barnes & Noble (I’ve had a  book I’ve been meaning to buy) and a slice from Pizzeria Regina. I sit and wait for the storm to subside a bit, enjoying my book, and then walk that final stretch.

Needless to say when I got home I was NOT in the mood to go to the gym. Let alone do Laundry. So of course the next viable option was to PJ it up, curl into bed, and scour my Media folder for a downloaded movie that I haven’t watched yet.

So guess what I watched? OH YEAH. Untraceable.

I’m sure you’re just like “Untraceable?! that sounds vaguely familiar…” That’s right kids, this is the “cybercrime” thriller where Diane Lane fancies herself an investigator. The plot is okay at best, it’s interesting but they reveal the killer far too soon and remove all the suspense — you spend the rest of your time watching the film just being like “oh snap, I saw that coming, oh well”. The upside is you get to hear Diane Lane refer to a backdoor trojan multiple times, as if she actually knows what it means — and actual computer  geeks will get a kick out of it when they see The Dummies guide to MySQL sitting on her desk. I guarantee you that the interns in charge of getting props were also looking at Ruby on Rails books thinking that it would make the set so much more “Legit”.  The problem that I really had with this movie was that there was no real explanation for why the killer just randomly decides to start kidnapping FBI agents (come on people, don’t expect spoiler alerts here), why they decide to bring into the plot that she’s a single mother, or bring in a half love interest and never really pursue it. I was hoping that the whole thing was going to be really fucked up and it was actually some guy on their TEAM. That would have been so much better.  Also the geeky guy who plays her partner, he’s pretty cute, and desperately searching online for love. That’s just so damn cute.

Now for some other movies/books that I’ve seen recently and have been meaning to Review. Hopefully you’re okay with that.

This is England [2007]

I don’t personally know a lot about English history — particularly anything post WWII but this is a  stunning look into the 1980s lifestyle followed by impoverished kids. When I first started watching this I was thinking it was a much more harrowing example than that presented to the Weirs in Freaks and Geeks. But it covers some of the blanket ideas — the rolling in of the Punk area, a struggle for identity, bullying and fighting, a gang of friends. It all starts out with Shaun, now he’s a bit of a loner, off on his own all the time and struggling for some acceptance, he’s picked on consistently at school mostly because of his trousers (he was wearing Flares — eew, so 70’s) on his way back home from a bad day he runs in to a bit of a gang, and they take pity on him. You’ve seen these kids before, black doc’s and white shirts, tight whitewashed jeans, and surrounded by funny looking or freakishly dressed girls. They take him into their gang, and he’s simply happy because he has a group of friends, there’s nothing else that he wants. Fun ensues until the Skinhead Combo barges in.

He’s fresh out of jail, returning to the gang and eager to take over the reins and lead them on a nationalistic battle to get rid of the immigrants who are stealing their jobs and to defend England to the death. This made me recall a lot of the lectures from when I was in Sociology of Violence — the mentality behind the skinhead and Aryan movements here in America — I’d never realized that such happenings were in England as well. Shaun, whose father died in the Falklands, must choose between staying with Woody and his friends or joining Combo on his violent quest to protect the homeland. Combo then leads Shaun down a trail of violence and hate that is completely unimaginable — it makes one worry and understand just how impressionable children can be. Combo is a character that keeps you on the edge of your seat — he is so unstable you don’t really know what to do next and when he finally explodes in the tear-jerking heart-wrenching end scene you simply don’t know how to react. It leaves your body feeling heavy, you feel weighed down will guilt. This movie is an excellent social commentary on society, and a good look back on what England was.

The Bank Job [2008]

Films that are based on true stories are by and large tough to take, as the line between fiction and reality is blurred to the extent that one wonders why it exists in the first place. The producers of The Bank Job suggest that the real facts about the 1971 robbery of a bank in Baker Street that had officials in Britain issuing a D-Notice (a gag order, essentially) and set off rumors about members of the Royal Family. I went back and read the wikipedia articles on most of the characters in the film are fairly accurate. According to the Wiki article on the movie “this movie is intended to reveal the truth for the first time,^[5] although it includes significant elements of fiction and the extent to which it represents historical fact is difficult to determine.”

Overall, though, I enjoyed the movie, it’s not one of those “OMG I’ll watch it again and again” but I’d certainly reccommend it. Think Guy Ritchie-lite, and that’s never a bad thing (Except Revolver, that was weird) In fact, Jason Statham’s even in it as the lead.

Jason Statham has an old childhood friend who conveniently stops by because she knows that he’s always strapped for some cash. He of course trusts her implicitly, who wouldn’t trust a beautiful woman? She enlists him to rob a bank. The snare is that she’s setting him up while the plus is that he’ll get to keep the money. Terry comes up with a rough and ready crew in a matter of a few carefully concocted but usual scenes and the heist is on (Think Ocean’s 11 Remake).

The Bank Job has a very linear plot — predictable, my only complaint is that the entire film is moving at a snails pace, though the movie is only 111 minutes.

Another problem here is that the back-story is very exciting and the film captures to hone in on it in just about every way. While we’ll probably never know the real story behind this heist, the conjecture is a hell of a good time. Take this portion from a February 2008 article from The Daily Mail: “Speculation quickly arose that compromising sexual photographs of the queen’s sister, the late Princess Margaret, had been uncovered in the bank vault. It was rumoured they had been stashed away by well-known underworld figure Michael X. A drug dealer and Black Power leader, he was convicted of murder and hanged in Trinidad in 1975. A government file on him will remain closed until 2054. The Mirror can for the first time reveal that Fleet Street editors of the day were approached directly by senior government officials and told to drop the story.”

Awesome.

Some movies that I’m looking forward to are Mongol and Bagheads to be released later this month — hopefully I can find the time to go to the theater. Maybe after I facilitate my move.

Things that I DID download while perusing the top 100 Movies list on TPB — Prince Caspian (ch’yeah!) and The Other Boleyn Girl (reviews coming soon). Tonight I’m going out with Jason and we’re going to go see Son of Rambow — terribly cute movie, hopefully he finds it hilarious and doesn’t hate me for being like “aw, but I love  indie films!” and grumble to himself about how he was hoping for something in Spanish and hopefully with a lot of sex scenes, A LOT.

More posts to come on some comics that I’m reading as well as books. I’m just tired of typing right now.