The most frightening part about the "Balloon Boy" saga...

I didn't even blink. A family pretends their son is trapped in an airborne homemade weather balloon in an effort to increase their chances at a reality show. Doesn't faze me in the slightest. That's how far the American culture has sunk.

Much more surprised at this balloon/beach ball incident:

~

Today, as I was reading Salinger and drinking Jamba Juice, with Fleet Foxes playing in the background, I realized I was reading Salinger and drinking Jamba Juice, with Fleet Foxes playing in the background. To maintain this potential stereotype, I decided to blog about said experience.

Moving day...

...consistently the worst day of the year?


Yikes, this is a twitter-esque blog post.

Worthless Story

Today I drove through the most pothole covered parking lot I have ever seen...it was the parking lot for Autozone. Irony? Coincidence? Some sick joke? Genius advertisement?

Madison, Wisconsin...

is quite nice, actually. I realize as a Gopher I am supposed to despise everything affiliated with the University of Wisconsin, but seeing as they gave me a job this summer, I'm going to loosen up on them. At least their Engineering department, and their city. My blood pressure still rises when I see Wisconsin sports memorabilia, and working under the shadow of Camp Randall still gives me occasional flashbacks to watching the Minnesota football team collapse.

Madison, though, is pretty sweet. There is an awesome terrace on campus overlooking one of the lakes. The grad students go out their for lunch on Friday's, getting ethnic food from street carts. The Malaysian is the best. Or is it Indonesian?

There is a second-run movie theater that sells tickets for 2.50. There is a movie theater catered towards indie films. There is a massive theater will long hallways and few staff, allowing me to sneak into different theaters. Yea, I've been seeing a lot of movies. Hey, it's been rainy a fair amount.

The only draw back has been that Madison is under construction. Seriously. The entire city is under construction, no joke. It's a mess, but not enough to stop me from enjoying my time here this past month. I still like the cities better, especially as a living year-round place. More stuff to do, and I guess I've always been a big city boy. But as for a summer place, Madison is just fine.

Tis the season

I seem to affiliate albums with times of the year. I wonder if I'm the only person who does this. Sometimes the reason it simply because I bought the album at a certain time, but most of the time it's because the music just meshes or clashes with the particular season.

Could you listen to Animal Collective in the dead of winter? It's just too colorful. "The Lonesome Crowded West" in summer? I'm having too much fun to listen to something so lonely and deep. Summers are for "OK Computer", especially summer at dusk. I can see myself driving home from work at the parks listening to it. Sometimes I miss those days. Early fall is "Wish You Were Here", late fall "Led Zeppelin III". Bob Dylan is great in fall as well.

I say this because this time of year I always drag out "Abbey Road" for a few listens. It's not spring until I do. It just fits in with Spring perfectly for me, and it's not just because 'Here Comes the Sun' is on that album. The awakening for a cold winter, the optimism of a new year, the playfulness, I get all that from listening. I can't think of anything that matches so well. It's perfect. Try it.

Wild Things + Spike Jonze + Arcade Fire = Goodness

Am I weird, or does this look awesome?

The "Going Dancing" Tuesday Ramblings

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I realize I have made about 3 posts over the last 50-odd days. I chalk this up to a variety of things: many midterms, a packed intramural sport schedule, internship applications, a very bad cold, a good friend visiting, the Gopher basketball and hockey teams closing out their seasons. Point being, I was very busy. It was very good at times, and not so good at others, but very, very busy. So it's nice Spring Break rolled around so I can catch my breath.

Last Sunday was Selection Sunday, usually one of my favorite days of the year, but this year it was filled with nervous tension as the Gophers were on the bubble. When 6 PM rolled around, I was either going to be ecstatic or depressed, and I had no control over what would happen. It's funny how life can give you those situations.

In St. Louis, it is very warm. It felt weird to put on shoes with shorts on. My legs felt so bare. Damn you, winter.

I have returned to find my family obsessed with the food channel. I don't really get the allure, but it's not bad. I started watching with my family, and then before you know it, BAM!, I realized I had just watched three hours of people cooking things I can't even taste. Three hours! It wasn't even that interesting, I just kind of zoned out. It was frightening. Very, very frightening. The Food Network scares me.

My Top 10 Movies of 2008

1. Slumdog Millionaire

I keep a running list of movies I need to see throughout the year. I specifically remember putting Slumdog Millionaire on the list after it won in the Toronto Film Festival, because I didn’t want to forget before it was released on DVD and I could get it on Netflix. Who knew?

There isn’t much left to really be said about this movie. I’m sure most of you have seen it, and if you haven’t, you should.

2. The Dark Knight

I was a big fan of Batman Begins. Loved it. But the last scene in that movie, where Lt. Gordon gives Batman the joker card, setting up The Dark Knight, made me really pessimistic. I had loved the realistic tone and the focus on exploring Bruce Wayne, and I felt that going back to a regular Batman villain, especially THE Batman villain, would ruin what Batman Begins created. I was very worried about TDK, until I saw the first trailer, and realized the movie was going to be epic.

Moral of the story: Never doubt Chris Nolan. Which brings me to another point: Chris Nolan should have been nominated for Best Director. I read an article about this, arguing that since TDK was nominated for all of the technical awards, Nolan should be as well, since he is in charge of all of those groups. I’d go even farther. He created an epic movie without losing gritty realism. He and Heath Ledger had the balls to completely alter the most recognizable Batman villain. And it worked. But instead Stephen Daldry gets nominated for The Reader, which was only decent because of a good script and because Kate Winslet is an acting god.

3. In Bruges

Awesome movie, and it’s a shame most people don’t know about it. Funniest movie of the year. The script was clever and witty, and even though it was really funny, it also was very deep and emotional. And the balance worked perfectly. I’d also like to point out that the acting was great in this movie, especially by Colin Farrell. I used to make fun of Farrell constantly, but this movie was so good, I forgive him for any past and future bad acting performances.

4. Man on Wire

“Man on Wire” is a documentary about a French tightrope walker who committed the “artistic crime of the century” by tight-roping (is that a word?) across the World Trade Center. I doesn’t sound like much, but it’s an amazing documentary. It was very interesting that there was absolutely no mention of 9/11 in the documentary, which I think was a good move. Instead of focusing on destruction, they focused solely on something beautiful.

5. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

This is simply a really good story, executed very well. I mean, a man who ages backwards! How cool is that.

6. Milk

Regardless of stance on gay issues, every straight guy watching Milk going to be a little tense and uncomfortable watching Sean Penn and James Franco make out for the first time. I think it was a great move to have a lot of guy on guy action at the beginning of the movie. That way, it’s out of the way, we’re used to it, and we can focus on the point of the movie.

As you know Sean Penn won Best Actor for this movie, but there were great performances all around. Josh Brolin was awesome as Dan White, and it’s nice to see Brolin carry on his No Country success. James Franco is no longer “that guy from Spider-Man” with a great performance in this movie and in Pineapple Express. And Emile Hirsch is no longer “that guy from Girl Next Door” thanks to this movie, and Into the Wild.

7. The Wrestler

This movie depressed me, but was very good. I really wanted Rourke to win Best Actor for this movie. Even though he screws up and does stupid stuff sometimes, it was impossible to not feel really sorry for him.

8. Vicky Christina Barcelona

I’ve always liked Woody Allen. This was definitely an enjoyable movie, but hey, if all we watched were movies like “The Wrestler” we would be pretty depressed. It’s nice to have variety.

Also, Penelope Cruz is not sexy. Sexy is Penelope Cruz.

9. Rachel Getting Married

A very foreign-esque American movie. Each character was really original and was deeply explored in this movie. Most movies are plot-based, and it’s always refreshing to see a movie made solely to explore certain characters. I would have gone with Anne Hathaway for Best Actress, but she was facing the unbeatable Holocaust-nudity-Kate Winslet should already have multiple Oscars combination.

On a related note, Rachel’s fiancé in the movie, Sydney, was a kind of weird black musician, and I remember thinking “This guy looks like he should be in TV on the Radio.” Turns out the guy who played Sydney is actually a member of TV on the Radio! Crazy!

10. Frost/Nixon

I don’t remember the Nixon era (obviously), so I can’t really comment of how accurate the portrayal was of Nixon. I thought the movie was really interesting, there was a lot of fascinating stuff about the interviews I would have never known. It was a good movie, but in the end was probably just a really well acted History Channel feature. That’s not a total insult, because I would have watched it on the History Channel in a heartbeat, but ultimately it wasn’t enough to be a great film.

Movies I haven’t seen yet, that could be in the Top 10 eventually: Wall-E, Che, Synecdoche New York, Let the Right One In, Waltz with Bashir.

Goa Mixed Inspiration

One of my roommates loves to listen to trance music while studying (well all the time, really). I don't know much about the genre, and I always thought his habit was really strange.

Two things happened this weekend. First, said roommate introduced me to Paul Oakenfold's Goa Essential Mix, which (in my slightly influenced state) I thought was one of the coolest things I had ever heard. I quickly stole it and put it on my computer.

Second, I had a brutal Civil Eng. homework project, which involved me writing an excel code to solve an engineering problem. I had worked on it for a huge portion of the weekend, but had hardly gotten anywhere. By Monday morning I was still trying to figure it out, and trying not to panic. That's when the Goa Mix came on my computer. Within 15 minutes I had the code figured out.

You know how they say listening to Mozart will help you do better on tests? Well, I guess Oakey is the new Mozart. Needless to say, I'm going to be stealing a lot more trance music from my roommate.

My Library

One of the overlooked benefits of going to college is you finally get rid of all the excess stuff you own. When I left for college, my room was cluttered with bits and pieces collected during my 18 years of life. In fact, when I go back, my room still has a ton of stuff. 10% of this stuff has actually monetary value (here's looking at you, binders of baseball cards) or are framed photos or something like that. That means 90% of the stuff in there is completely expendable. It has no value, and I have lived a year and a half without needed any of it (and probably longer).

Yet I have never thrown this stuff away. I guess it's because I am really sentimental. It's actually kind of embarrassing. And I don't mean that I excavate my third grade projects and wistfully think of the "good ole days". No, I'm not that kind of sap. The only time I ever look at a huge majority of this stuff is when I'm trying to decide whether to dispose of it or not. I know it sounds silly, but I can't throw away that stuff. It would just depress me. At one point or another, everything I still own was really important to me, gave me a lot of joy. And throwing it away seems like making that all for naught, admitting to myself that I was invested in things that turned out to have no impact or relevance. It makes me feel like my childhood was wasted, as dumb as that sounds.

Long story short, college forces you to ditch all that garbage. Or rather, leave it behind for your parents to ditch.

Which brings me back to the title of this post, my library. I carefully selected the books I would take with me to college. I was forced to ditch the Redwall series I once loved, and finally had an excuse to get rid of the Boxcar children. My library now consists only of the essentials:

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway (My favorite author)
Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac (My religious book)
A Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (Is this now cliche?)
Chronicles Vol. 1 by Bob Dylan (One of my favorite musicians)
Our Dumb World by The Onion (In case you didn't pick up my liberal, coffee drinking, elitist streak)

The "Not Off to a Good Start" Monday Ramblings

I think I'm going to do this here and there. Ramble, that is. Long topical posts take too much time and thought, which is usually in short supply at the beginning of the semester.

Quick weather update: It's very, very cold in Minnesota. Walking to class has been brutal. The worst part is that it's not going to go away. In St. Louis I could look forward to Spring in early March. It was still snowing on the last week of April last year. By the time shorts were a viable option, I was stuck inside studying for finals. That's pretty much an entire semester of winter. Geez.

But honestly, I love it here.

Remember when beer commercials used to be funny? What happened? I don't know what makes me want to gauge my eyes out more, the Bud Light "drinkability" commercials where the guy draws stuff in the air, or the Miller Lite "football thoughts" or whatever they're called. Honestly, who actually thought those commercials could potentially be funny. It's sad when America has to turn to E-Trade for it's good commercials.

Someone recommended (insisted, really) I listen to Kings of Leon, so I went out and bought an album. I'm not sure whether my life will be the same. I am very impressed so far.

Another quick weather update: It's apparently very, very hot in Melbourne. I just watched Djokovic retire from his quarterfinal match with Roddick because he couldn't handle the heat. That's pathetic. This is the defending champion. This is a professional athlete. This is a man who just quit because it's too hot outside.

Not many things disturb me, but the fact that Paul Blart: Mall Cop has been the #1 movie in America for two weeks in a row has me deeply concerned about society. But then again, this is the populace that came out in droves to see Beverly Hills Chihuahua.

I am excited to be packing the Barn for the Gopher basketball game against Illinois this Thursday. A lot of family pride is on the line...

Regional Jet, the Only Way to Fly

The only one-way flight from St. Louis to Minneapolis is on a regional airline called American Connection, an offshoot of American Airlines. This plane is tiny. The door into the plane has got to be 6 feet high, and that's my most generous estimate. The average adult man is crouching to enter the plane, and for me, well I'm walking down the aisle looking like I'm tying my shoe. You can't have a carry-on larger than a backpack or purse, there simply isn't room. The larger carry-on items are dropped off plane-side, and stored underneath (for no charge, thankfully). There are only two seat to the left of the aisle, one to the right, and only about 18 rows. The seats have no leg room, and are very skinny, so you can't even angle your legs to one side. It is impossible to be comfortable in those seats. Impossible.

Last year I flew to Arizona with my family on one of you typical big airplanes- lots of seats, decent leg room, a drink cart coming by twice, ect.- and I found myself complaining and wishing I was flying on my tiny plane. Despite it's faults, its actually a pretty positive experience. Since it's a small plane, and it's usually never full, getting on and off the plane is practically instantaneous. Also everyone seems to be in a pleasant mood. Maybe because we all feel like clothes folded and jammed into a bursting luggage bag when we get on the plane, and that feeling unites us. Maybe because there are no screaming babies, or large families holding up the line. Even the flight attendant always seems to be happy, and is always cracking jokes. I guess I'd be happy too if I only had to take care of 25 people instead of 150.

So, in a way, what makes the plane miserable makes it enjoyable. I'm never going to be comfortable on a plane, so I might as well be in a good mood. And I don't know how they do it, but every single time I've gotten off the American Connection flight, I've been smiling.

When It Comes to Conversations, Size Matters

Small talk and strangers. Not exactly a milk and cookies combination. In fact, you'll find those two near the top of my list of worst combinations ever, along with "Michael Bay" and "movie", "vodka" and "energy drink", and "lazy fly ball to left" and "Alfonso Soriano".

Let's throw out a hypothetical situation. Say I'm in an elevator and a complete stranger walks in. Most of the time we will give each other a nod of the head, or a verbal greeting, to acknowledge that one another exists, and the rest of elevator ride is held in silence. Is it an awkward silence? Sure a little bit, but not that uncomfortable.

But a number of elevator rides bring about the small talk. "How are you?" You are a complete stranger, do you really care? Also, notice that no matter how shitty you're feeling you will always answer "good" or "not bad". What a worthless question. Another highlight is the sarcastic "Hot/Cold enough for you?" No, I actually wish the wind chill was -50, I'm a little bummed out right now. And of course for me, there is the inevitable:

Stranger: Wow you are tall!
Me: Thanks. (what am I supposed to say?)
Stranger: How tall are you?
Me: 6'7''
Stranger: Wow, that's really tall!
Me: Yep...(No shit Sherlock...)
*awkward silence*
Stranger: I have a nephew who is, uh, 6'5'' I believe. Not quite 6'7'' but...
Me: That's still pretty tall though.
Stranger: Yea...
*increasingly awkward silence*

I know people start small talk to avoid awkward silences, but it always seems to lead to a silence 20 times more awkward than it would be if no conversation had started.

Elevator rides only last a few seconds, so it's not that bad. Thankfully, there are very few times in life where we are alone with strangers for a period long enough to require a conversation. One of these is at the dentist, but you usually have tools in your mouth, so you have an excuse for not talking, and you don't mind the dentist talking, because he is cleaning shit off your teeth and you're grateful. The doctor is one of the rare places where you want small talk, because once the small talk ends, the doctor either starts making inquiries about your health ("How often are you sexually active?") or making you feel guilty about your lifestyle ("I know you want to have fun, but I'd say three more Vodka/Rock Star drinks and you are going to suffer massive heart failure. Please, for your own well-being...).

The place that is the absolute WORST, though, is the hair salon. It is a 15-30 minute symphony of small talk and awkward silences. I never want to ask them questions, because I don't want them getting annoyed or distracted from cutting my hair, but at the same time, they keep asking questions and I feel bad. It's like a dance to create the right balance of chit-chat and silence to keep both parties the least uncomfortable. A dance that usually ends up getting executed so badly it belongs at a 6th grade mixer.

Moral of the rambling: If you run into a stranger on an elevator, either give the basic "Hello" of acknowledgment and nothing else, or just go straight for the jugular, and ask them how they would set up a college football playoff system. Hey, at least it would be different.

Obligatory Post About the New Year

New Years never really did it for me. As a kid, it meant staying up until midnight, and now it's just a good excuse to drink cheap champagne. I've never had that feeling of closure and a new beginning. For me, the year ends in June when school ends, time doesn't really exist for a while, and a new year beings in late August.

In related news, I heard on the radio that the top three New Years resolutions are:
1) Lose Weight
2) Get out of Debt
3) Get Organized

#2 may be a product of the current economy, but I find the other two interesting. Why must we need a certain day to start something we could start everyday. I'm guilty of this to, always telling myself that this semester I'm going to turn it around, and put it all together. And like all New Years resolutions, things starts off great, but after awhile you forget about the resolution and things go back to normal. So why can't we have monthly resolutions, or just decide to change whenever?

I guess those cliches are true; humans are creatures of habit, and old habits die hard.