I have a pleasant Frenchman living in my extra room.

Presently listening to: Show me your bones by Land of Talk

So I’m anyone out there has actually heard of Couchsurfing. It’s basically a quasi-social networking site of over 100,000 people that is frequently used for those who are travelling around different countries and would like to 1) meet new and interesting people and 2) can’t really afford to pay for a hotel. Now, I’ve had a couchsurfing experience in the past — when I trekked down to New Haven all by my lonesome because I just really wanted to see Mates of State live. Anyways, it wasn’t a very bad experience — the people that hosted me were very very nice, and I’ve never really hung around anyone within the Gay community before so once I adjusted a bit it really wasn’t a big problem.  He also smoked lots and lots of weed. That just made things a little weird, and then I got lost for about three hours into the wee hours of the morning, yes it was raining and yes, I was tired as hell, and yes I got approached by multiple black men asking me if I wanted a ride in their cars.

ANYWAYS I know that was a bit of a tangent there, but I have my first couchsurfer who is staying with me now. His name is Philippe, he’s a very nice young man from France — amazingly enough he’s travelled to the US and is going to D.C, Montreal, New York, Chicago, Toronto, Cincinnati, Cleveland and Boston all in a month for less than $1K! It’s amazing.  The entire trip is also taking him about a month. Which is kind of ridiculous, I don’t think I’d be able to do that, let alone go by myself.  He’s a very intellectual young man who speaks impeccable English. Sprightly with dark hair and dark eyes, definitely my type — he’s quite cute, really, but I think that a lot of that can be attributed to the accent and overall very European demeanor. Anyways, I spent a majority of my day off yesterday showing him around the city and trying to give him a good tour. The weather was perfect, he couldn’t have asked for better weather and we managed to see a lot of the beautiful sites around the city which was very nice and relaxing for me, albeit tiring. We spoke a lot of the European opinion of America and though we both have our differences I think that we were both sensitive enough to the subject that it didn’t erupt into any arguments, there were definitely some difficult questions regarding the war in Iraq, American’s present view of the Bush administration, and the possibilities of public healthcare. Apparently I also speak French with a bit of a Chinese accent, which I found to be incredibly amusing. It’s been a very good time so far, we’ll see how everything else goes. Also it seemed like he was far too well versed in every single movie made by Michael Moore, which I found to be simply aggravating. I feel that if people who dislike America have a problem with it they should just emigrate, seriously. I would do that if Hillary became president. Not even kidding.

Speaking of American Politics, I read this very interesting essay in the New York Times today regarding the ever-present topic of Abortion. As a woman reading this article I can’t help but have my stomach turn to think of the pain that these women were subjecting themselves to in the pre-Roe times. It’s hard for me to take a stance on abortion, because really I’d never want to go into a doctors office and literally have them scrape or suck the remnants of what was once my child out of me. But then there’s thinking of the consequences that surround the birth, I’m 19, I’m certainly not adequately prepared to be a mother, but is walking around for 9 months, popping the thing out and then giving it up to the state really an option? I don’t think so. I feel that women deserve to have the choice, it is an age old practice that has been distorted by the forced views of religion and men upon us, not meant to be controlled by government.

I have movie reviews for Dewey Cox, The Great Debators, and We Own the Night, which will be written later today.

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.

I need a dream analyst.

So I sincerely need a dream analyst, I had the most disturbing series of dreams last night, all of which were very confusing and terrifying.

I’ve had a sincere lack of sleep of late and decided to hit the hay a little early — 10 pm, I know it’s not THAT early, but considering my work and gym schedule it was fairly well founded. Anyways, here it goes.

The dream sequence one commenced with my family and I waiting in line at what seemed to be Grand Central station, it was around Christmas time as there was a very large Christmas tree in the area, surrounding me were the white marble walls and the typical retractable ropes indicating the queue. There wasn’t really a problem, we were sitting around chatting about meaningless nonsense while standing in line for something — when I first noticed this couple — something made me recall that there was something wrong about them, that I had to stop them in their task , something bad was going to happen. The man was tall and had long brown hair and glasses, he sported a long leather travel coat, well worn. The girl was shorter, had an equally oval face, pale blonde hair that matched her skin tone, opalescent eyes and large glasses. Both stared at me for a few seconds before I suddenly ran after them, trying to stop them (from doing what I didn’t know at the time). They suddenly reach the area near the Christmas tree and there is what looks like a railroad switch there, as there was a train going around the tree this all seemed to make sense, but they had apparently set up a mouse-trap like mechanism, it was a bomb.

Suddenly there was an explosion, blinding white light, the screeching in my ears and pain was all across my body, the brightness flashed across my eyes and it seemed that I had succumbed to the pain — passing out or going into shock. All I remember thinking for that seemingly eternal moment is “is this what it’s like to die? is this the epitome of pain?”. I came to, somehow, still suffering and bleeding profusely, I had stood literally 20 paces from the bomb, my proximity to the blast should have been fatal. However, I was one of the only survivors. I ran out, fleeing, not knowing what else to do. My entire back, shoulders and chest were razed with bits of schrapnel, bleeding profusely. I ran down the street as if a convict, dipping in and out of various hallways so quickly it was all a blur. I talked with one young man while I’d stopped to bandage my woulds and he asked me what happened — interrogating me. The only words that I could muster were a whispered “they almost got me”. This turned into some giant assassination attempt in my mind (not that I’m even that important — but in dreams things tend to transform unknowingly).

Then I find myself in what seems to be an old west town — modernized slightly, but most everything is open air and everything. I’d been hiding out with my grandmother, she was doting on me and the pantry was stocked with an abundance of food. I hadn’t actually experienced it, but I knew that I had been there for months, never going out, always staying in. Today was the day that I was going to leave — escape. My grandmother wasn’t very happy about it. But, you know how it goes. So I go downstairs and down the main drag of the town, to a saloon with the large fake storefront — painted black. Inside, people dressed in the typical costume of the day (or really, think Wild Wild west). I was confronted with people, angry that I was alive, not knowing how I survived the blast, they were angry, and started chasing after me with their guns drawn. This is when the second most terrifying part of the dream happened (after the whole…bomb thing) — as soon as they reached sunlight these men transformed into giant black shadowy beings, mutated muppets one might even say, with large glowing eyes and hugely disproportionate stretched out bodies.

They chased me everywhere, the small  town transformed into a large city, and around each turn there was one of these shadowy figures, gnashing their large pointy teeth and chasing after me (think GENGAR). My heart pounded and my mind raced as I looked desperately for an escape. None could be found — I simply woke up, very suddenly, sweating profusely and only to discover that I was tangled in all three of my blankets and had somehow thrown my tigger across the room.

Strangest dream to date.

I’m a little upset.