Treasure!

It's been a while since I watched an old movie, so it was time to pop in one of my favorites, Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Some things have a way of being timeless because they embody genius that will never be equaled. Let's put Monet's Water Lillies, Coppola's The Godfather, and Yankovic's Amish Paradise in that category. Then there are other things that are timeless because they get the first word on a topic that is destined to be rehashed and repeated. Let's put Shakespeare's Rome and Juliet, Pachobel's Cannon in G, and Miyamoto's Super Mario Brothers in that category. Huston's Treasure of the Sierra Madre fits squarely into this second category.

What's it about?

Gold! Oh, and in case you're plagued by literal-mindedness and an AP English syllabus, "gold" is metonymous for greed. But it's also literal. Alright, so it's not exactly Faulkner, but easy-to-understand and thought-provoking can go hand-in-hand.

If I was a native...

I think at this divisive time in our country, it's nice to remember that at one time, apparently, out-of-work Americans tried to make a better life by seeking employment South of the Border. I guess anything's possible. Are you listening, Governor Brewer?

"You know, if I was a native, I'd get me a can of shoe polish and I'd be in business. They'd never let a gringo. You can sit on a bench 'til you're three-quarters starved... you can beg from another gringo... you can even commit burglary. You try shinin' shoes in the street, peddlin' lemonade out of a bucket, and your hash is settled."

I'd take only what I set out to get

Why do athletes hold out for a few million more? Why don't CEOs just retire young? Why the hell didn't I just sign a lease at the first livable apartment that was within my predetermined budget, instead of looking for two weeks and almost thinking I'd found something three times?

Because when you're actually in a situation where doing a little better is a possibility, everything changes.

"You start out to tell yourself you'll be satisfied with twenty-five thousand handsome smackers worth of it, 'so help me Lord and cross my heart.' Fine resolution. After months of sweatin' yourself dizzy and growing short on provisions and findin' nothin', you finally come down to fifteen thousand and then ten, finally you say, 'Lord, let me just find five thousand dollars worth and never ask for anything more the rest of my life.'...Here in this joint, it seems like a lot, but I tell you, if you was to make a real strike, you couldn't be dragged away. Not even the threat of miserable death'd keep you from trying to add ten thousand more. Ten you want to get twenty-five. Twenty-five you want to get fifty. Fifty, a hundred. Like roulette. One more turn, you know, always one more."

You know, the worst ain't so bad when it finally happens.

It's a comforting thought for all us worriers. This is good, old-fashioned cinema. You won't walk away thinking about much else, but then again, you can't walk away not thinking about it.

Not half as bad as you figure it will be before it's happened.

Distant Relatives tour does not disappoint

Summer Breeze: the annual University of Chicago tradition that brings a county fair right onto the quads. I was proud of how my compatriots in Intervarsity Christian fellowship kept their massive line moving along with deep fried twinkies, advertised under the slogan of "Meet Jesus faster."

With all the free stuff to enjoy throughout the afternoon, I've never in years passed opted to shell out for the evening concert. This year was different. This year had Damian Marley.

Apparently, a good number of my closest friends still don't know how much I love reggae and dancehall music. I spent most of the summer talking about a Buju Banton concert that was canceled due to the extreme political incorrectness of his early music, which thankfully saved me from having to decide whether I personally should join the boycott against his performances. I also spend a good amount of my time singing along to my favorite songs until the lyrics make me terribly embarrassed or I admit that I have no idea what anyone is saying. So the fact that nobody thought I would be excited by the concert is a little baffling.

Anyway, people with more concert going experience, give me a normality check on the following items:

Drunk fourteen-year-olds: I guess I'm glad that kids got to see some awesome music. At $15, what better options do you have for an entire Saturday night? But if I have to deal with the crocodile-smile-bearing alpha male, the pseudo-drama-wielding queen bee, or the volume-oblivious nerd, I'd rather it not start out by them being drunk before they get to the gate. Time to dispatch the minjas.

Tables of free food: Did the Major Activities Board have money to burn, or was it a sweet marketing deal? I recognized one tray of deserts from The Big Easy (deserts haven't changed since it used to be Orly's), and Fuze fruit juice was prominently displayed, but I have no idea who provided the unmarked, unwrapped cookies. I'd estimate the snacks consumed at $10 price/$4 cost--not bad on a $15 ticket.

Four opening acts, at least, possibly more, since the people playing before 6 (the officially billed start) were playing really short sets. I think the early acts were local, and the last one, Gold Horse, was actually pretty interesting, particularly for their unique instrumentation (violin, bari sax, bass guitar, drums, and acoustic guitar). Then they were ushered off stage for DJ OCD Automatic. Maybe some people were excited by his electronica dance mixes, but most people were too busy huddling up toward the stage or off getting beer to care. It felt like ambient music, and it went on for over an hour. The Dirty Projectors, who actually shared the concert billing with Damian and Nas, were great, although I certainly didn't know anything about them. And my sense from the audience's reaction (and crowd density) was that not many people were there to see them. In other words, they were another opening act. The best that can be said though is that they made me want to check out studio recordings of their music, because goodness knows their performance could have been helped by a better sound setup (let's just say it was easier to figure out what Damian Marley was saying than what these guys were saying). But they're obviously dripping talent, and if you like the idea of a band somewhere between the B-52s, No Doubt, and The Talking Heads, check them out.

So how was the real show?

Fantastic! For just a minute, think of what might happen that could make a promotional tour for a collaborative CD suck.

None of the classics that you know and love? Nope. There'd hardly be time to do them all, but they were generous with their solo performances. Damian performed almost all of my favorites. I don't know as much Nas, but If I Ruled the World served as a good reminder of why he might team up with a Marley in the first place.

No continuity between the two artists performances? This was the brilliant part of it: they'd perform a few new tracks together, then one would disappear while the other did a few classics, then another would start his part of a new song, and his counterpart would pop back on stage. It was fun waiting for the next phase each time.

The new tracks suck? They don't. As far as I know, their only prior collaboration was Road to Zion, and while that might be my favorite right now because I've heard it the most often, I think some of the tracks might stand a shot at dethroning it. (Tribal War sticks out in my mind, and I haven't even heard K'NAAN's part yet.) If I have to criticize, it's that most of the tracks feel Marley-centric (a good thing from my perspective, as I am way biased toward Damian), often with a more reggae structure and instrumentation, with Nas performing a verse for the bridge. Nas' uniqueness definitely adds, although it's worth noting that the two don't so much flow together as offset one another, and the same counterpoint could get a little tiresome if you're only casually interested.

If you have the chance to see them on this tour, it's worth it. Marley has so much energy on stage, and he forces the crowd to interact with him. That's no joke; he stops the band well into the middle of songs if the crowd isn't responding right. I guess it's no trouble to him; he performs many of his classics so exactly like the recording that you have to wonder whether he could do it in his sleep. Nas is fun too, but I had to laugh when whipped out his blackberry to remind him of the lyrics for the second song. Otherwise, check out Distant Relatives, and maybe buy a few tracks. (Who still buys whole albums, anyway?)

Managing Distractions at Work

It's been a while since my last post. I got caught unexpectedly by the crippling ennui of mere being.

Speaking of ennui, I'm getting a little bored with my otherwise awesome job, and I just haven't found the right diversion to help get me through it. In fact, I've actually been reading a lot these days about being productive and managing distractions at work. Living in a digital age, it is very tempting to spend time that should be used productively on dubious activities, such as reading or writing suggestions for self-managing your ADHD. Given that this blog is all about how to stay perpetually entertained, my recommendations may be a bit unorthodox, but I think I've hit upon two really good ones.

Don't Even Try

By far the most effective option. Goal achievement tends toward 100% as your target tends toward 0. I like this method because it's so easily implemented. Even a child could do it! Leave up those email clients, click through the wikipedia trails, play some youtube on your second monitor, check ze tweets, make sure you don't miss any hilarious bargains, and occasionally think about the task at hand.

There are a lot of assumptions that have to hold in order for this to be a possibility:

1. You can get away with this.

If not all these hold, you might need to pursue a different strategy.

Just because this strategy is possible doesn't make it profitable. We all need to do some soul-searching to decide whether it's appropriate for us. After my own personal reflections, I came up with the following reasons why I don't want to live this way forever:

1. The mind starts to develop a tolerance to distraction. Eventually, one web comic isn't enough for me. I start to figure out how to organized my daily bargains and internet radio into separate tab groups away from my work-related tabs. And then, whenever work presents the slightest complication or inspiration is slightly slow in arriving, I hit ctrl-pgdn like a junkie with a Hamilton. And I kind of feel like that's what I've become.
2. I keep imagining a day in the distance future. I'll have a teenage son then, and we'll be locked in an epic power struggle of identity and ideals. On that day, in order to get the upper hand, I'll need to cash in all the moral collateral I may have amassed. The more I slack off today, the less I'll have to cash in on that day.

Okay, so this isn't 100% accurate. #2 is less the product of recent soul-searching and more the driving focus that animates me. So this brings me to:

Keep a Rigid Relaxation Regimen Religiously

In the fine tradition of finding the one study to support the point you like, this research proves that internet use in moderation can actually increase your productivity! The mumbo jumbo about resetting your concentration after it starts to fade might be true, but I like to look at it differently.

My setup involves setting aside the first ten minutes of every hour as waste time. I let myself do anything from shopping to trolling technical help forums. But I have to get it all done in the space of time I allot myself. How do I enforce this? I use Joe's Goals for a little self-monitoring for now; maybe I'll write something custom for the task in the future.

The beauty of this system is that it totally mashes the working/wallowing switch in my brain; the fact that I need to fit everything into a specific window of time makes the whole process seem task-oriented. I'd like to watch youtube, but this personal email is really important. Don't bother me right now, these rss feeds won't read themselves. Oh, time's up! And I completely forgot to pay my credit card bill! That'll be first up next hour. And then, as I settle back in to work, no matter how daunting or tedious the task at hand seems, it's the only way to make the next fifty minutes go by any faster. That's right; getting actual work done is suddenly like taking a break from all the stupid odds and ends I've filled my free time with.

Really let that sink in.

There's absolutely no way my putative teenage son could possibly deny that this is a well thought out and upright course of action and that I am indeed worthy of being a role model.

Avatar -- Is 3D such a big deal?

Let me get the basics out of the way. Avatar is a great movie. Everyone will tell you that it's worth seeing. Some people will tack on "…if only for special effects." That's the easiest way to tell the reluctant snob: they make apologies for enjoying a movie with a big budget. (If you want to irritate these would-be critics, say something like "I don't know, I hear it has subtitles…)

Assuming you have the capacity to enjoy the occasional Blockbuster, this film won't disappoint. Some people will complain that the plot is predictable. So was Moby Dick. Look up foreshadowing. The truth is, I wouldn't be surprised if this movie, besides inevitably becoming a landmark film for special effects and immersive environment design, ends up becoming a textbook example of effective progressive exposition of a sci-fi world. There's no confusion, the plot is neither delayed nor interrupted to explain what's going on, and the story continues at a rapid but even pace. What else could be as important?

But the biggest question to come out of this is "Is 3D ( or D3D as it seems to be known) that much of an added value? You might think this has already been answered, with previous 3D films, but I would disagree. I likes Beowulf in 3D--but then again I had better; that was the only reason I went to see it. The fact that Gaiman threw together an interesting twist on the classic only proved to be icing on the cake. If you have seen any films so far in 3D, ask yourself, was the 3D really an enhancement, or was I going to see the novelty?"

Don't get me wrong, polarized glasses that don't give you a headache are a real accomplishment. And I certainly enjoyed some of the 3D gimmickry of Avatar. But was it more immersive as a result, or was it just frosting that would have fit on top of any cake? Perhaps I sat a little too close to the screen, but it certainly took while to get comfortable adjusting focus, and even then, action too much in the foreground was not clear. My brother, who sat with me and who has seen from farther back assures me that that is a problem no matter where you sit. His biggest concern was that, sitting so close to the screen, you have some difficulty in following action when it becomes faster and busier--i.e. whenever the money-making action starts going on.

I will admit that seeing the drifting seeds of that tree of souls (or whatever it is that's supposed to be Pandora's equivalent of the huge chunk of plaster in the middle of Disney's Animal Kingdom them park) did make me feel more like I was in the jungle, so to speak. But the rest, from the long tunnel view of the opening carrier to the ubiquitous flying-lizard-tail-in-the-face of the end battle scene, all made me say "what a cool effect" rather than "what a cool experience." And the latter, which can be correctly said with respect to the seemless integration of computer animation and physical acting, is what you are really trying to say when you want to enshrine a film as a blockbuster classic.

So go ahead, pay the extra $3 to see it in 3D, because it is cool, and you do want to see that, and there aren't many offerings at the moment, and you'll have years to celebrate the 2D experience when you own the Blu-Ray. But if you're friends are running late and it looks like you won't make the 3D showing, or you want to see it a second time in a different way, or the theater is crowded and you'll be forced up front, or all your experience with 3D offerings have left you asking "why bother?" then don't be too hesitant to watch it in 2D. It will still be a special experience.

American Opera

When I first found out that as a software developer I could get away with listening to music while I worked, I was completely elated. Of course, music quickly turned into old time radio plays, which I don't imagine any manager, even of software developers, would encourage, but it worked out fabulously well for me--worked, that is, until my workstation got "upgraded" and realplayer stopped working. (Red Hat, it seems, has a way of making the simplest multi-media tasks nearly impossible.)

So after months of suffering through the monotony of music, mostly via YouTube, I was caught by the advertisement for their feature-length films: A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, collectively referred to as The Man With No Name Trilogy. Only available online until November 30? But I'm busy. I got things to do when I get home. I mean, I could find the time if I made it a priority, but why would I do that when I already own the movies? No. Clearly, the only way for me not to miss out on enjoying these movies as YouTube is offering them is to watch them while doing something else--to watch them at work. The logic was inescapable. At least, I would listen to them. Let the video play in some other browser tab, what difference would it make? I know the plots. I know the characters. Listening to the dialog should be pretty good, right?

Anyone who knows anything about Spaghetti Westerns has got to be raising a cynical eyebrow at this point. For those of you not caught up on this brilliant trans-Atlantic phenomenon, in the mid 1960s, Spanish and Italian film crews cranked out low-budget films in the style of American Westerns of the 30s, 40s, and 50s. It made perfect sense: in the heyday of American Westerns, the films were factory made.

The plots were so formulaic that they wrote themselves. There's a reason why Western television series Gunsmoke, running from 1955 to 1975, is currently tied with Law and Order for longest running television series and (mostly) Western novelist Zane Grey is credited with writing the material for--believe it--110 films. Of course, you have to hand it to a film master who knows when to rip off another film master. A Fistful of Dollars does a great job dressing Akira Kurosawa's samurai Yojimbo in cowboy clothes, which ought to be reason enough to watch, given how well Kurosawa characters stack up in later movie adaptation (cf. Han Solo).

Italy and Spain had the landscapes to get the job done, and done beautifully. My first year of college, I went on a Western kick because I had gotten so tired of being a cosmopolitan citizen of the world, as, apparently, is expected of you when you attend a major American research university, that I just wanted to take some time to be an American. Of course, I eventually wound up watching The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in the common room when an international student from India came in and proclaimed "My God! Your country is beautiful! I can't wait to see more of it!" I needed to hear that, even though he was certainly not looking at my continent. He was looking at picturesque Andalucia, Spain.

Most importantly, Italy and Spain had cheap actors. And this is why anyone who knows the genre has an eyebrow raised right now. To start with, most Spaghetti Westerns were filmed in Italian or Spanish, and subjected to the most horrific dubbing process imaginable. The voice-over actors speak English with an accent, which is completely absurd, and while there are plenty of extras to fill as many parts as necessary, anyone with under twenty lines ends up with the same voice in English. Of course, some of the actors were Americans. It didn't happen all the time, but often enough to make Clint Eastwood a star from this trilogy. Charity bids me hope that whatever languages they were dubbed into were not drowned with English accents. All the minor characters end up with the same voice, except the requisite toothless old man. Worst of all, the voices sound flat and often drowned out by the soundtrack or sound effects. Maybe it just wasn't technologically possible to record a believable voice-over session and dub it onto the film. But hold the phone, people! Wasn't this the same decade that the Beatles were making recording history at Abbey Road? Wasn't Revolver released the same year as The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly? I think a good dubbing should have been possible, if difficult.

But who cares? The audio on these three particular films is absolutely incredible, dialog aside. Two things make it stand out. First, director Sergio Leone is a complete master of dramatic pacing. I'm not sure which is cause and which is effect, but working with actors in different languages demands a vision that uses more than the lines on the page to convey character. And when the characters being portrayed are laconic sociopaths, everything comes down to dramatic build. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly takes upwards of ten minutes to begin the dialog; A Fistful of Dollars is similarly drawn out. It is surprising to realize just how much building is done with the deliberate repetition of footsteps. Not that I would necessarily recommend listening blindly if you aren't familiar with the movie, but it's an interesting exercise if you are, and I certainly enjoyed it.

Even better, though, is the soundtrack. Apparently, the composer Ennio Morricone has had a long, successful career writing scores for hundreds of movies. But I can't seem to pick out his style well when I listen to many of his scores. But when he wrote for Sergio Leone, it was magic. I find it funny that the theme for The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly should have become so familiar, not because it doesn't deserve to be remembered, but because it sounds so horrible whenever we try to hum/whistle it. Yet the original is recorded with whistling, and yodeling, and--arghilofono? I hear tell it's like an ocarina, which we all know was invented in the 90's when the N64 came out. The other two movies are not too much different in terms of instrumentation, although they lack some of the structural complexity of the third movie. But I'm just guessing when I say that, because I know nothing about music, and, well, because I'm listening to this at work, trying to benchmark how much jmx rmi impacts performance in java processes. It is wonderful, though, to listen to how well woven into the narrative the music is. There is much of the story that is told between the lines with brief instrumental flourishes that do so much to fit together the footsteps or gunshots or other sound effects that pace the movie along. It's really a beautiful thing.

Much more subjectively, these scores put across all the grandiosity that should go with an epic with an unsettling, almost elegiac aftertaste. I don't know all that that might possibly say about Morricone's and Leone's vision, but the braggadocious, bittersweet revelry is definitely there. It's there and even more pronounced after some slight scene and instrumentation changes in Leone's later Western, Once Upon a Time in the West, and it's there again after some radical scene and instrumentation changes in Once Upon a Time in America. I don't know entirely what to make of it, but there's something, for lack of a better word--for lack of a clearer thought--so Italian about it. Maybe it's best not to look at these films as Spaghetti Westerns. Maybe this isn't just an American form reproduced (with thorough revisionist criticism) on another continent. Maybe this is just opera, borrowing (or recreating) an American stage.

The blog your friends always tell you they're starting

Maybe you come from a certain class of people: hard-working, simple, only use the internet for the most utilitarian purposes -- perhaps not even at all. Your friends don't try to appear stylish and no one in your circle pretends to be urbane. If you watch television, you watch whatever happens to be on, or whatever you happen to like, and you are blithely unconcerned with what the programming says about contemporary culture, what it says about you that you enjoy it, or how the show fits in with (or stands out from) the grand T.V. milieu. You have never explained any of your musical preferences in more than a single sentence. In fact, if you found out tomorrow that your entire social circle neither liked nor knew of any of your music, it wouldn't bother you one bit. In fact, if you found out tomorrow that your entire social circle completely shared your musical preferences, it wouldn't bother you one bit. Movies, political opinions, and literature all go in the same bag. Even if you cared, you can't see why anyone else would be impressed, or why they would spend much time talking about it, much less writing about it.

If this describes you, you are in good company.

If this sounds extremely pretentious but oddly compelling, then you know exactly what this is about. Another fool has started a blog. You've been down this road before. Your friends have invited you in the past to read their blogs, and you do it, but with apprehension. On the one hand, you will, almost surely, get to know things about this person that would never come up in an entire lifetime of face-to-face friendship. On the other hand, you have to suffer through a Warholian soapbox, which God and nature have, with good reason, endeavored to take away from most people. And, since good sense and sloth usually triumph over even the intoxicating enfranchisement of the internet, you also know that this blog won't even be updated six months from now.

In fact, if you're reading this, there's a good chance it's 2012, this blog is two years out of date, and you only got to this page by accidentally concatenating the wrong string of keywords in a google search.