eateggs

i spend my days thinking of inventive new ways of making myself look good on paper.

and my nights delivering pizza

for example, I’ve now placed 1.5pt white lines between the each of my previous employers in the work experience section, giving each entry a little more presence on the page– like bulleted points, without the bullets. surely, this will give me that competitive edge I’m looking for. so long as my potential employers only take a cursory glance, I’ll easily be heads above the rest.

heh.

This is an excerpt from the book I’m reading right now that I found to be particularly profound:

Internetwork Packet Exchange / Sequenced Packet Exchange
Like TCP/IP and AppleTalk, IPX/SPX is not a single protocol but rather a protocol suite. IPX/SPX was created by Novell for use on Novell Networks. When Novell had a larger presence in the network arena, so too did the IPX/SPX protocol suite. Today, the popularity of IPX/SPX has yielded to TCP/IP although it is still used in some network environments.

Who would have thought? Who would have known? I always thought IPX/SPX was a single protocol, rather than a protocol suite. I would certainly recommend Exam Cram 2: Network+ Second Edition, by erudite authors Mike Harwood and Drew Bird, to anyone and everyone. It has profoundly affected the way I view network protocols, and networks in general. And it’s not entirely devoid of real-life application, either. For example, in social networks, I realize now that non-verbal communication is not a single form of communication, or communication protocol, if you will, but rather a suite of gestures and movements and … and … oh good god…. am I really typing this?

If it’s not interesting, at least I can sarcastic about it. =)

so, I deliver pizzas. Or, more accurately, I drive around listening to music, with pizzas in the back of my car. the money’s aight, but the tunes– ah. the music is solid.

still looking for that full time job. interview with xerox on Monday. gotta be up by 10:30… might be a struggle. amazingly, even after 6 months of disuse, my subconsious still remembers how to hit the mutilated snooze button on my alarm clock without waking me. damn subconscious. i tell ya what…

went down to Breckenridge on Friday with the ‘rents. met the in-laws to be for dinner on Thursday night in Keystone. did I mention? my sister is getting married on May 28th. the skiing was great– lots of fresh powder– but cold. but it’s winter time. I guess it’s supposed to be cold.

that aside, I’m falling behind no whatever else. correspondence… yeah, I’m behind on. I owe someone an email. in a big way. i haven’t finished unpacking. the light in my room is hanging by two wires, waiting for me to do something with it. i still don’t have a (real) job. the journal has fallen into disuse. punctuation has fallen into disuse…

the news is a constant source of despair, although the Sabres are 2nd in their division, and third in the whole NHL. I think they’re going to go far in the playoffs this year.

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is a very well made and informative documentary. Pick it up if you get a chance.

…

Mini review: (2 out of 5 stars)

Hustle and Flow is an insult to the hip-hop community at large. Playing off every hip-hop stereotype and cliché, Hustle and Flow manages to be entertaining, but little more. Terrance Howard plays DJay, the pimp who dreams of being a rapper. In a typical midlife crisis, DJay realizes that dealing marijuana and selling flesh isn’t what he’s cut out for. Instead, DJay wants in to the hip-hop game.

Unfortunately, the whole production is much more of an MTV made-for-television production than the well-researched, socially driven film it could have been. The characters are flat and predictable, and seldom deviate from their clichéd typecasting. Craig Brewer’s direction was plain and uninspired, even during the “jam” sequences that drive the movie. For a movie that attempts to “bring the black experience” to the mainstream public, Hustle and Flow does little more than reify negative stereotypes, downplay the hardships, ignore racism, and create a mediocre soundtrack. If you’re interested in hip-hop, pick up Kanye West’s Late Registration, and skip this movie.

—

More:

Here’s another thought about Hustle and Flow: take a feminist reading of the film, and … eesh.

Normally I’m willing to look the other way, in acknowledgement of the fact that, historically, the Women’s movement and the Civil Rights movement (is there a better work? the Black Movement?) have always been somewhat combative– but here’s the thing: Hustle and Flow does nothing, in my opinion, towards the end of African-American equality. It trivializes, ignores or sensationalizes the problems faced by impoverished, neglected minority groups, while at the same time deligitimizing the hip-hop movement as a whole. The driving force behind hip-hop has never been the beat. It’s always been the injustice and the pain and the frustration, needing an outlet, needing a postive way to come to the surface. That’s what hip-hop is about. It’s about the Dead Prez and Ludacris and Kanye West, not Nelly and Snoop Dogg. Hustle and Flow takes that all away.Listen to Late Registration (Crack raised the murder rate in DC and Maryland / We invested in that it’s like we got Merril-Lynch / And we been hangin from the same tree ever since / Sometimes I feel the music is the only medicine), and then to … “You know it’s hard out here for a pimp / When he tryin to get this money for the rent / For the Cadillacs and gas money spent / Because a whole lot of bitches talkin shit” It doesn’t stack up. I think if you listen to Bigger than Hip-Hop by the Dead Prez (download here user: music pass: music), you’ll find that Hustle and Flow is just the short of “fake hip-hop” that they’re indicting. Just a game of pimps and hoes? All about the bling bling? (heh, I’m way to white to even TYPE that, lol).

It’s still bigger than hip hop hip hop hip hop hip
It’s bigger than hip hop hip hop hip hop hip hop

[verse 1]
Uhh, uhh, uhh
One thing ’bout music when it’s real they get scared
Got us slavin for the welfare
Aint no food, clothes, or healthcare
I’m down for guerilla warfare
All my niggas put your guns in the air if you really don’t care
Skunk in the air, make a nigga wanna buck in the air
For my brother locked up in the jump for a year
Shit is real out here don’t believe these videos
This fake ass industry gotta pay to get a song on the radio
Really though, dp’z gon’ let you know
It’s just a game of pimps and hoes
And it’s all ’bout who you know
Not who we are, or how we grow
I rap ’bout what I know, what I go through
What I been through, not just for no dough
Even though the rent due, what I’m into ain’t for no dough
Or just no fame, everything must change, nothin remains the same
Sick of the same ol’ thang, it’s bigger than bling bling

Hook:
If i, feel it I feel it, if I don’t, I don’t
If it ain’t really real then I probably won’t
Rollin with my soldiers, live soldiers, ready to ride
For this real hip hop y’all I’m ready to die
Uhh, hip what hop what hip what hop what hip what hop what hip what
Hop c’mon, c’mon, my soldiers, live soldiers, ready to ride
For this real hip hop y’all I’m ready to die

[verse 2]
Hip hop means sayin what I want never bite my tongue
Hip hop means teaching the young
If you feelin what I’m feelin then you hearin what I’m sayin
Cause these fake fake records just keep on playin
What you sayin huh dp bringin the funk
Let the bassline rattle your trunk, uhhh!
Punk pig wit a badge wanna handcuff me cuz my pants that’s tend to sag
Hip hop means throw up your rag, soldier flag
Whether ridin on the bus or you stole a jag
M-1 mean freedom, burn the cash
Revolutionary love til the day we pass
Will they play it on the radio
Maybe not, maybe so we gon keep it pumpin though
Everybody know we headed for the whoa, fo sho

[verse 3]
Ay dogg that label is that slave ship
Owners got them whips and rappers is slaves
If you really wanna eat you gotta hear the same thing
With the football, b-ball, or if you slangin that dope
Aint never seen no hope, brainwash video shows be foolin my folk
What the hell a brother gon do though, huh
When the rent due, when the lights and the gas gonna get cut off
Drop them raps or cock them gats
Aint never had shit ever since we came to this bitch
Why I gotta feel pain to get rich
’stead of stackin chips, finna pack them clips

I dunno. I like to think that there’s a power to hip-hop, but, like literature, only if its treated with respect and understanding. It’s a medium for expression. And I wasn’t impressed by anything remotely powerful in Hustle and Flow.

I’ve given up on the Academy– or on democracy, rather. With the exception of the awards for best lead and supporting actors and actresses, I was really disappointed all around.

Crash was not an exceptional movie. If the Academy wants to make penance for the awards American History X didn’t win, it shouldn’t go about that by giving undeserved awards to lesser films.

And, I’m sorry, but how in god’s name did Ang Lee win Best Director? I think, perhaps, the Academy voters were confused, and thought “best director” meant the same thing as “director who chose the most controversial subject matter.” There was nothing supberb and nothing sublime– hell, nothing even noteworthy about Ang Lee’s direction of Brokeback Mountain. ANY studio, B-movie director could have done an equally mediocre job with the same script and supporting cast and crew.

i can’t even give words to my frustration. i don’t know why i take the stupid awards so seriously.

I’m going to watch the Academy Awards tonight. I don’t know why, exactly, because I know that doing so is setting myself up for a lot of disappointment.

Disappointment, because the Film Academy isn’t an impartial, idealist group of film lovers. Disappointment, because the films that win tonight are more likely to win for reasons political rather than for their sublimity and accomplishments in filmmaking.

To start with, The Constant Gardener isn’t going to win Best Picture. Just like Saving Private Ryan lost out to American Beauty 1999, The Constant Gardener isn’t going to win because the 6,000+ members of the Association of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences don’t, to be crass, have the balls to vote for a film as strong as The Gardener. And, doubtless, half of the Academy members are invested in various pharmeceutical corporations, or happen to believe very firmly in the mission and purpose of the UN, and are thus unwilling to vote for a film that indicts both for their greed and for their failures. Yeah, it’s a bold film. So was City of God (Cidade de Deus, 2002), which directory Fernando Meirelles also could have / should have won best directory and / or best picture for. But again, it’s too rough. To gritty. Too hard to sit through. Film, like the news, should be pleasant, right?

Like Brokeback Mountain. That was pretty pleasant. I mean, it wasn’t– tortured loves, hate-crimes, poverty– no, not that pleasant, at the same time there’s lot of pretty cinematography of the Canadian Rockies (wait? wasn’t this movie set in Wyoming? why wasn’t this filmed in Wyoming? Meirelles films on location. He didn’t go to Arizona to film his scenes in Kenya…), and happy moments, and an overall hopeful tone to the conclusion of the movie: his little girl’s gettin’ married. Guess they’re going to have to find themselves another cowboy, right?

But the point is this: Brokeback Mountain, subject matter aside, was not an especially well-made movie. The direction was plain and uninspired– even when filming with the Canadian rockies as a backdrop. Ang Lee is not an especially talented directory, and his lack of telent demonstrated itself visibly in Brokeback. Any studio back-lot, B-movie director could have done just as well.

As much as I love Jake Gyllenhaal, his performance as Jack Twist was stilted and forced. Every moment he was on screen, his body language and inconsistent, forced accent belied what he doubtless must have been thinking: “how does a cowboy act? how does a cowboy talk? what does a cowboy think? I don’t know, and I don’t think Lee knows, so I guess I’ll just trust his direction and hope it turns out alright.” Bad move, Jake. Unfortunately, because (I imagine) few, if any, of the Academy members have met or grown up around real cowboys– people who actually rodeo, who have broken bones and nasty scars to prove it– they probably won’t be able to recognize that Gyllenhaal’s portrayal of a cowboy is unseemly as trying to pass off Canada as Wyoming.

Michelle William’s performance as Alma was a good performance, but only mediocre in comparison to Rachel Weisz‘s performance as Tessa Quayle in The Constant Gardener.

Roman Polanski’s Oliver Twist won’t be winning best art direction or best costuming, despite it’s rich and detailed realization of 19th century England. I don’t doubt that Dicken’s would have approved whole-heartedly of Polanski’s adaptation. Unfortunately, the Academy as a whole doens’t seem to approve of Polanski, and probably doesn’t want to suffer the embarrassment of giving an Oscar to a director who can’t come within American borders to receive his prize. Homosexuality is in with the Academy, and molesting children, it seems, is most defiantly out.

Crash was a good film, but in no regard was it a great film. The script and direction were very heavy-handed (perfect for your average American audience, on which subtlety is lost), the performances were over dramatic, and the editor tried too hard to be trendy, at the expense of the film as a whole.

The Academy may not have much love for Roman Polanski, but they do love Stephen Spielberg. THREE nominations for War of the Worlds? Admittedly, the technical aspects (sound and visual effects) that it was nominated for were well done, but the overall movie was so poor that it shouldn’t even be dignified with a single Oscar nomination, let alone three. How many nominations did Oliver Twist garner? And War of the Worlds has THREE? Fortunately, there’s little question that the Visual Effects award will go to Jackson’s King Kong.

Unfortunately, I haven’t seen a good number of the nominated films. Most notably, I haven’t seen Munich.

I’m sad to see that Batman Returns didn’t garner any nominations. The sound editing and special effects were spectacular. And the cinematography was significantly better, in my humble opinion, than Brokeback Mountain.

Capote was the best picture of the year, but of the nominated films, it may have been the best directed. Bennett Miller’s direction shows a maturity and elegance that many of the so-called Hollywood greats fail at, which is especially impressive considering that Capote is Miller’s first major release.

The biggest let-down of this year’s nominations, however, is the conspicuous absence of nominations for Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City. Not only did it warrant a nomination for the best adapted screen play (well, maybe– a nomination, but not a win), and best direction (I have never seen a better screen adaptation of a comic-book– none of the Marvel movies even come close), but it also could have (and probably should have) been nominated for Best Picture. But, again, it’s a rough film. A really rough film. And it’s probably exactly because it managed to leave so many viewers with a sick feeling in their gut that it didn’t get nominated. And its for that exact reason that it should have been nominated.

So, what-ev. I tend to assign far greater importance to the Academy Awards than they’re due. At the end of the day, the Academy Awards are as whimsical, seemingly political, and potentially errant as any American political election, and I must remember that the failure of the Film Academy to recognize a great film is exactly that: a failure of the Academy, not an insult to the film.