two.points.collapsing

watchmen – alan moore – 4 stars

i think i may have read more comics this year than any year since i was in junior high school, but i see that as a positive thing considering what the selections have been (maus, understanding comics, more preacher). the latest, which i finished around two weeks ago, is overdue for review; in fact i’m already almost finished with the next book i picked up after this one.

but backtracking a bit, i can’t forget to recommend this book, despite the fact that anyone into graphic novels at all would probably have read it already. it seems to hold legendary status in the genre, and with pretty good reason. it’s not only a great comic, and a great read, but it’s specifically good as a comic for the way it milks the medium for all its worth.

how the artist and author use juxtaposition of words with images in ways prose or film can’t do really pushes the way you see and feel the story. there are scenes where a boy at a newstand is reading a comic, and that nested narrative is overlayed with the overarching story taking place involving ‘real-life’ comic heroes dealing with the public’s revolt against such masked vigilantes who assumed such roles inspired by the comics those characters themselves read as children… effectively allowing moore to take several pieces of great writing, along with the visuals accompanying each strand, and intertwining them all to create one impressively strong and moving work.

as a novel the story might not have felt like enough, and in many places might not have made sense at all. but i think the greatest enjoyment to be had from this graphic novel, beyond its surface appeal as a good comic story, is a demonstration of what levels of sophistication and complexity comic writers can reach in their craft. and as in this case with moore, they can be attained and surpassed for a very satisfying and mature story that elevates comics as a whole.

in fact, if there were more stories this good, i might go a year reading nothing but comics. preacher may be cooler, and i still like sandman better — the only reasons i give this a four and not five — but this is still an unmissable book.

(plus it’s extremely cool looking — i love the new cover design (the original had a weak-ass shattering window) and there are some panel visuals that cinematographers would envy without question. honestly, what are you waiting for?)

how about today so far?

well, things continue to be a little . . . easygoing . . . here at work, so i was a little sad to see not many people wrote anything new on their websites. what a lame thing to cause me disappointment. since there wasn’t much going on, i didn’t feel altogether bad about being gone closer to an hour and a half getting a pleasant lunch with jen — excellent italian panini sandwiches on a sunny 75 degree afternoon in santa monica. pluse we saw eriq la salle, whom i neglected to tell i admired for his role in coming to america or that one doctor show and let mind his own business.

tonight i think i’m going to stay home and perhaps take in some high fashion with some friends if they decide they’re as classy as i am. i’d say some cheap wine is also in order. aren’t you jealous?

since i think it’s safe to assume that most of my friends or website visitors would never read any articles from a fast company magazine while sitting at work, i thought i might share some fun facts from a happy little piece on wal-mart i read this morning (a condensed version of this article).

• wal-mart is the world’s largest retailer, and largest company. larger than exxonmobil, GM, or GE, selling 244.5 billion in goods last year.
• they sell more in three months what #2 retailer, home depot, sells in a year. they sell more than category-competitors target, sears, kmart, j.c. penny, safeway, and kroger combined.
• last year, 7.5 cents of every dollar spent in any store in the united states (other than auto parts stores) went to the wal-mart.
• as a result of their immense leverage, no one wants to end up in what is known by vendors as the ‘penalty box’ — punished or excluded from store shelves for saying something bad about wal-mart, or failing to meet performance standards. said one consultant, ‘you won’t hear anything negative from people. it’d be committing suicide. if wal-mart takes something the wrong way, it’s like saddam hussein. you just don’t want to piss them off.’
• since proclaiming in the 80’s and 90’s to ‘buy american’, wal-mart has doubled its imports from china in the past five years ($12 billion in 2002). this makes up nearly 10% of all chinese exports to the US.
• huffy bicycles at one point had to give designs for its high-end, more profitable bikes to competitors in order to free up production capacity for the cheap bikes sold at wal-mart. huffy is currently the #3 bike seller in the US despite having lost money 3 out of 5 past years. wal-mart is the number one bike retailer. but 98% of bikes are now imported, and huffy has not made a bike in the US since 1999.
• levi’s jeans, after years of falling sales, began last year to sell a cheaper version of their jeans in wal-mart, who in the same year sold more clothing than any other store, as well as more jeans (their in-house brand sold almost as many as levi’s). five days before announcing a near-doubling of profits, levi also announced it was closing its last two US factories and laying off thousands. the iconic american brand, who 22 years prior had 60 US plants, will import everything by 2004.

check out the article if my summary doesn’t scare you enough, because there are several more examples. i’m pretty sure if wal-mart were a person they’d be like patrick swayze’s character in donnie darko, who everyone thinks is friendly and good and trying to help out the little guy, but really wants to eat your children or something.

[now hearing this: guided by voices – human amusements…]

if i were a pop star, this would convince me that my totally funny friend virginia was my ticket to extending my super-stardom based only marginally on anything other than hype. or if i were just me, which i am, i would just think virginia was cool.

my weekend was so relaxing i felt charged up for today, but also sort of uneventful.

friday night we got good sandwiches but went to a party that was not worth the drive to newport from LA. not like the tv show at all.

saturday night we got so bored watching the SC game because they were destroying stanford so badly that we had to play xbox instead. crimson skies is awesome.

{edit: apparently we played arizona, not stanford. see what i know about football? although that would explain the tumbleweed blowing across the field…}

sunday we saw the station agent which was okay in that ‘nothing happens, but the people seem nice, but the movie’s not really that exciting’ kind of way. i wouldn’t recommend it, really. i was much more excited finally getting my character, jeff lebowski, to official street ball legend status. nba street 2 is also awesome (i totally killed the rucker park tournament, yo). that and getting zankou chicken for lunch. oh my god that’s a delicious 7 dollars.

now hearing this: hey mercedes. when’s the video gonna be ready, dammit?

it’s friday. it’s pay day. i have a party to go to tonight with some lovely friends, so to kill a few minutes before takeoff, how about a new pay day song?

the remix album: i’ve haven’t bought the d-plan one yet but i like at least two of the tracks (the free ones) and listened to it once streamed and it seemed okay. eventually i will pick it up and decide. it seemed like a novel and interesting experiment for an indie-rock band to do, partaking of a practice normally left to electronic artists like the gorillaz and such. if nothing else they get points for going out on a limb, right?

i didn’t know until just this week though about another such release back in 2001 from a band called kings of convenience, where they took basically their whole previous release quiet is the new loud and ‘reimagined’ it, or whatever you like to say. from that album, i share with you an absolutely killer remix by royksopp of the song i don’t know what i can save you from.

the funny part is, i’ve listened to some regular kings of convenience tracks, and they’re decent but not great (acoustic guitar pop); i’ve listened to some regular royksopp, and they’re just okay techno-groove (but you should check out their animated videos, they are pretty great — especially ‘poor leno’); i’ve even tested several other tracks from this remix album, and they’re alright i guess. but for some reason this one song is just fucking brilliant. maybe it’s the beat that sounds like it’s made from the sounds of pvc piping. have blue man group done a remix album yet?

party on, wayne.

[now hearing this: tracks from the my morning jacket album i ought to buy next time i swing by amoeba.]

i saw lightning last night. in los angeles! several bright flashing bolts, i could hardly believe it. rain and lightning. these people must have been freaking out, and they didn’t even have to deal with loud thunderclaps which were strangely absent. i’ll take what i can get though in terms of interesting weather. maybe it’ll snow this year?

actually that piqued my curiosity so i just looked up the fact that there hasn’t been a single trace of snow in LA county since 1962, or over .3 inches since 1949. but who knows, the world does seem like it’s ending lately. or maybe i’ll just settle for the nice crisp morning air and november sunshine.

yeah, this post pretty much sucks because it was unprovoked. nothing much to share this week except that about schmidt is a really painful movie to watch even though as a movie it’s pretty alright. i’d still advise against it. too realistically bleak and depressing. unless you want to see kathy bates naked.

a high point though is that i’ve talked to my dear old friend shannon four nights in a row on the phone and it’s hard to top that anyway. i hate it when cool girls move away; i only know like 6 of them in the world. she has some hilarious stories though and is just as fun to talk to as ever.

won’t be boring next time, i promise.

[now hearing this: am i the only one who keeps revisiting interpol and still doesn’t get why so many people think they’re so great? i want to understand but every time it’s just like, ‘ummm… i’m bored here. do something already.’]

the matrix: revolutions – 2 stars

vs.

reservoir dogs – 5 stars

i had the pleasure of seeing both these films on the big screen in the space of a week, and that proximity will make for a great comparison. i see it as huge budget gone wrong versus small budget gone brilliantly right.

first, the matrix. my primary reason for not hating it for falling so short of what it could have been, is that the opinions of everyone who saw it before i did set my revised expectations so low it actually didn’t seem all that bad. still, not a very positive review.

and you know what, it doesn’t deserve one. the primary action scenes were all cartoony fighting robots, and the ones that weren’t were too scarce, too short, or too similar to what they’d done in the past two movies to ever get me honestly excited. if the melodramatic delivery from the whole cast wasn’t making me wince, then a lot of what they were saying made me laugh at them instead of care about them. this is all really harsh i know, but the first one was groundbreaking, the second one was at least entertaining, and this one just fizzled out as far as the series is concerned. i get the sense that after the first flick the wachowskis tried to do so much with this world they created that they lost sight of making a tight sci-fi action movie that really worked not seen through the lenses of matrix fandom. there are so many plot holes and unexplained dialogue i’m wondering if they’re being vague simply so that people will pay to see the next 3 matrix movies hoping to get any clue what the hell they’re talking about. well, nice try guys, but after this i’m done.

it just kills me that they probably spent millions of dollars and hundreds of hours making action scenes with human robots shooting at evil robots and so much CGI you can’t even focus on anything on screen long enough to enjoy it; you can only sit tight and wait for it to be over. whereas you can take a movie like reservoir dogs in which the main scenes of action aren’t even on camera, made with a fraction of the cost, and have a landmark film. heck, i saw this last week on a much smaller screen, in a theatre with less comfortable chairs and much less sophisticated sound, and would still say i enjoyed myself 5 times as much. why? little things like a strong script, original dialogue, and characters that you can’t just throw away (who the hell was that little girl supposed to be? does the frenchman really matter at all? or the train man? where were the twins, or something like the twins, in this movie? do the wachowskis just keep planting seeds just in case they might want to develop them later?).

right. so the real point is that the matrix trilogy could have been incredible if they hadn’t overextended themselves story-wise and just made some creative action movies. i’m not going to say ‘don’t see this’, because you basically have to after seeing the first two. and maybe that was the smartest thing about this movie: we were all committed no matter how it turned out.

if it’s any measure, i would pay to add reservoir dogs to my home collection, whereas i would not even accept a free copy of matrix: revolutions, not wanting it to drag down the integrity of my dvd library. and i own pump up the volume with christian slater, people. think about that one.

highlights from this weekend include buying some new books (!) friday night, which as usual makes me strangely exuberant, spending quality time with jen finally (i wish i had a new sleepover buddy, but she got me there), and having an excellent party at our place saturday night. it was our first major hosting occasion involving liquor, and it was great all around. i remember losing a game of barrel of monkeys in which i only needed ONE more monkey to complete the chain, storming into my room and slamming the door, then climbing from my balcony to the neighboring living room balcony, going back in and knocking on my door from the outside telling myself to come out and not be so hard on myself. is that brilliant or what?

not-so-highlights include seeing the new matrix. i’m sorry but… well, i will write a review here in just a second.

[now hearing this: various 75 or less recommendations which i am only lukewarm about.]

weak blog week, huh. i hate when this happens. my excuse this time coincides with a recent revelation. my life is really cool and enjoyable right now, but sadly it’s cool and enjoyable in a very consistent way, where i go to my good job and enjoy that, then come home and read good books or hang out with good friends or watch good dvd’s, etc. which is all good, it just doesn’t lend itself to many stories. summation: i’m doing super well and very happy but just nothing worth retelling. i’ll try to change that in the near future.

also, instead of writing posts i succumbed to the requests of my mother and drew up a christmas wish list as well. how else are my parents supposed to know what the kids are in to these days if i don’t specifically tell them? especially weird kids like me. the answer is very apparently ‘geek stuff’.

the best night this week though was probably tuesday. walked to the new beverly cinema to catch reservoir dogs with gino and steff (review/reflection to come later today), then went from there to pinks to get pastrami dogs. heh. i didn’t realize that connection until just now. which gives me an idea for a rival stand called ‘reservoir dogs’ that will feature employees in black ties and jackets. maybe our slogans could be, ‘a real killer dog’ or ‘one delicious shot in the stomach’. and each hot dog can be assigned a color like the movie, with the mr. pink steve buscemi character being a wussy ass tofu dog or something.

why did i write that out, some clown’s gonna steal my great idea now.

anyway, that night was the best because A) that movie is amazing, B) i love that theatre, C) pink’s is delicious, but additionally because D) we did a night in LA all on foot. if you don’t live here you might not realize how rare that is, but it felt so good to be walking in the cool night and actually able to go places within walking distance. it made me feel part of the city and added to my ever-increasing love of my new location. even though it’s not so new any more, i guess, i am still excited about being in the middle of a lot of things, and this was a shining example.

[now hearing this: the hippos. man, that’s old school, what is this, 1997?]

hmm. halloween. as much as it saddens me in light of last year’s excellent halloween party, with decorations and costumes to beat the band and hundreds of people stopping by our grand old robot house, this year was a zero on the halloween scale. i didn’t have a costume. i didn’t even have a costume idea. i kept putting it off til it was too late, then, well, it was too late. you know what i did on halloween? i played video games at my friends’ place, then watched a crappy movie with my roommate and some other kids back here. i blame the fact that it was raining for the first time in months, thus zapping any motivation and spoiling my half-formed plan to go out to west hollywood and take in the freak show. ah well, these things happen. i told myself at the time that the past two weekends were so great, i shouldn’t expect a third in a row to be on that level. i was more or less okay with that.

then, surprise, it’s saturday and what do i end up doing. spencer was going to come up and chill with us, but instead spencer comes up, and we meet up with a friend of ours, mike, whose coworkers have organized a bar tour of hollywood via double decker london busses (yes, for real). so a hundred people on two busses, drinking heavily between and during (there were coolers on each floor of each bus) bus jaunts from one to another bar, and shouting at passersby and generally just having a great, belligerent, somewhat frat-guy seeming time. but i can’t say that it wasn’t a lot of fun, couldn’t say that i wasn’t stinking drunk, and won’t say i wouldn’t do it again. sometimes you have to be a jackass i think just to get it out of your system.

so that was a brilliant night after all and how about that, another good weekend. today it was gorgeous outside and we had breakfast at my favorite restaurant (doughboy’s on 3rd) and even got free dessert from the cool ass waiter named harley. then i went on a bike ride and watched amores perros with josh which was too long and really kinda boring, to be honest. now i’m sitting here relaxing and it’s sunday night and i’m happy.

happy and listening to desaparecidos actually, which for some reason i missed the bus on last year until a coworker of all people loaned me a copy of their cd. that’s some good shit, so try a taste with greater omaha if you’re like me and were just too dumb to get into them back when they were news. so there’s your pay day song. i’m off.