NOTES & ASIDES
-I went to the dentists today to see about this molar in the back of my mouth, bottom row, 2nd from left, which has this big freaking hole in it. Apparently, since the sides of the hole were smooth and even, it probably was just that I had a filling there and it fell out.. but now the cavity has reached a nerve, and I'll have to get a root canal on the 28th... nasty.
-I tried Ice Sprite on Sunday, the new mint-flavoured Sprite that Coca-Cola is test marketing in Canada (and Belgium). Fears about it tasting like mouthwash were off-base; the mint is very subtle. The taste reminded me of, of all things, a milder version of Schweppes' Bitter Lemon. Wouldn't drink it that often, but I don't drink regular Sprite all that much either.
-Our one-year-old Labrador-mix dog Sam got a hold of my brother's
About A Boy DVD and chewed the case, and disk, to pieces. Fortunately, it was only a used DVD from Blockbuster, so it won't be so expensive to replace. Maybe the dog was giving his opinion on fullscreen-only DVDs?
-Hmm...
The Simpsons lied to me. Contrary to popular belief,
The Coriolis Effect isn't strong enough to cause toilets to drain in the opposite direction (clockwise or counterclockwise) in the southern hemisphere.
-Am I the only person in the world that wishes that, besides the DVD box sets, Paramount would come out with individual-disk DVD releases of
Star Trek: The Next Generation,
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,
Star Trek: Voyager and
Enterprise, because I hate being forced to have to shell out $150 Canadian at a time when I only want to buy a few specific episodes. I know most brick-and-mortar retailers would still prefer to carry only the box sets, but if Paramount could set up somewhere, perhaps through Columbia House, that us fairweather
Trek fans that only want to get the *good* episodes could order the single disks, that would be so sweet.
-Hmm... I should have been at the Montreal Expos game on Sunday: Halle Berry, the Oscar-winning actress who played Storm in
X-Men and is slated to star in both
Catwoman in a
Batman spin-off film and
Jinx in a James Bond-series spin-off film, threw the first pitch because she's in town filming something (don't feel like checking what it is). Come to think of it, the weather's been awfully stormy the past couple of days.
Hmm... I got up at 11:30 a.m. and turned on CNN, hoping to find out a little more about the terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia, except they were giving extensive coverage to the first court appearance of
guilty Texas murder-woman Deanna LaJune Laney. The headline on the screen was "Texas Tragedy"... umm... no, it's not a tragedy, it's a crime. The word "tragedy" implies that no one is to blame for the deaths of her children, like a tornado killed them and not her hands holding a rod. Also, everything I'm finding out about this case is making me more and more unsympathetic, since it's all the same bullshit defense cards that the lawyers for all the other "murder-women" like
Andrea Yates use... She thinks God told her to do it (uh-huh, right... easiest, yet lamest, excuse in the book.). She doesn't understand the seriousness of the charges against her (bullplop... everyone understands "murdering your own children = bad"). She had a lapse of sanity when she did it (obviously anyone that murders had a "lapse of sanity" unless they were 100% sure that they could get away with it... no excuse). She's a deeply religious woman (well, then, she doesn't have to worry about going to Hell whenm they carry out her sentence). And they were showing sob stories from her deluded neighbours (another quick and easy way to burn up what little sympathy I might have had). Basically, what I think they should do is have the chair right there in the courtroom, and, when they find her guilty, strap her in, find out what she wants as a last meal, and then have a fat guy eat it real slowly in front of her. Then have
Lum from Urusei Yatsura pull the switch, and she can zap the switch while she's pulling it to increase the amperage. That would be cool.
After that, CNN had a segment on evil transfatty acids featuring, of all people, Richard Simmons, because of the attempt by a stupid killjoy nanny-state-loving "Nutrition Gestapo" lawyer to get
Oreo cookies banned in California until Kraft stops using hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils to make them. But hydrogeanted oils make food taste oh so much better... well, they can put it that Olestra stuff, but the "Nutrition Gestapo" doesn't like that either because it allegedly has laxative effects with some people.
They didn't talk about
the Saudi Arabia terrorist attacks until the top of the hour... I guess only a single digit number of Americans were killed, so it was worth giving more screen time to Richard Simmons...
And, yes, I did switch over to CNN Headline News for a bit, but they were talking with one of the
American Idol contestants...
THE "SPIRITED AWAY IS OVERRATED" WORLD REPORT
My opinion of
Spirited Away is that it's a cute enough (but a little overlong) kids' movie with vague subtexts (of those explanations of what it's "about" that I accept as valid) about greed, acceptance, fitting in, trust, environmental preservation and losing one's identity (personal and cultural), but it's not the "be all and end all" of anime or animated films in general that some people make it out to be, and, from an imagination standpoint, I've seen plenty of anime (as well as some cartoons from other countries besides Japan) that I find to be much more imaginative, but "imaginative" is just subjective opinion. But, for the life of me, I just don't get what it is about this specific film that causes people to write such pretentious things about it.
This past couple of days, an article has been making the rounds of anime message forums that has the dubious distinction of being the absolute most pretentious take on
Spirited Away I've read yet (and it has *tough* competition in that category, trust me):
"Cartoons to Ignite Your Id: Can animated gems like "Spirited Away" save the ravaged American imagination?" by Mark Morford of the San Francisco
Chronicle/
SF Gate.
I know that I liked
Lilo & Stitch a lot more than I liked
Spirited Away personally, but I wish my objections to this article would be limited to the author making snide comments on how Disney animators have no imagination compared to Ghibli, since that would be somewhat on-topic (I view Ghibli films as being "different", not "better" than Disney films, but that is just my opinion). But Morford goes on some tangents so ridiculously unrelated to the topic that I have gotta find out exactly what strain of weed it is that he's smoking so I can get some myself, because it is obviously some seriously strong shit.
There is one cheap shot at Bush early on in the article:
One little girl. One stunning adventure. No clear villains. No simplistic and ham-fisted good vs. evil plot line (sorry, Dubya).One little girl. One stunning adventure. No clear villains. No simplistic and ham-fisted good vs. evil plot line (sorry, Dubya).
But, you know, the writer's from San Francisco, so I guess you get to take one free shot at Bush no matter what it is you're writing about. Well, I don't think Bush is the only one here with "simplistic" views, though. Just take a gander at the sheer and utter contempt this "Left Coast" writer has for, not just Republican politicians, but "Middle Americans" in "flyover country" in general. I'll highlight the insulting bits, even if, by doing so, I feel somewhat like I'm turning into
Berit Kjos:
This is "Monsters, Inc." as blasted through a wry kaleidoscope and blessedly stripped of Billy Crystal and then shot through a Robert Anton Wilson novel. This is "Alice in Wonderland" with better acid, scary and strange and beautiful and warped and deliciously non-Christian, with witches and spirits and dragons and all sorts of wondrous sacrilegious magic the likes of which makes the Kansas state school board shudder and faint.
And oh dear God, how necessary and invaluable this kind of movie is right now.
Look. All signs point to the fact that we are facing a dire failure of imagination in this country. We are clinging like blind bats to dying (dead) myths about who we are and what we stand for and what angry patriarchal war demons we believe in. Our sour leaders frantically clutch crumbling and outdated and jingoistic notions of empire and God and righteousness. You know they do.
Magic and imagination and free thinking are reviled right now, threatened, openly despised as anti-American and unpatriotic and oh my God don't you dare question the prevailing boot-stompin' cowboy-hatted violence-happy ethos of God and guns and might-makes-right or John Ashcroft will come to your house and suck the pith straight outta your soul with a Shop Vac, unnerstand?
Okay, I had to highlight most of that.
In short... anime will save America from the Eeeeeevil conservatives and Christians and Republicans. Never mind that I'm an anime fan and I support Bush and I would vote Republican were it not for the fact that I'm not American. What a stupid non-sequitur.
But, obviously, the only people with any imagination are liberals that vote Democrat... anyone with "traditional" values or politics are troglodytes with no free thought or creativity. Rrrrrriiiiiiigggghhhhtttt.
(Though, I admit, I haven't been feeling that creative in my writing as of late, and reading this article did reinvigorate me somewhat, just not probably in the way Morford intended.)
Hmm... I was writing a review of
X2: X-Men United but it was going nowhere... the film is just so packed, I think I'm going to have to see it again before I can give it the proper treatment. But I give it
****�/*****. Probably I'll see it again on Tuesday afternoon.
