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“My ambition is handicapped by my laziness.”- Charles Bukowski

It’s 3 A.M. I can shut my eyes and keep them closed without exerting any effort; No coffee was a good plan. I’ve also just finished what should have been only around an hour and a half of homework had I cut out the “breaks” that sum up to be greater than the “non-breaks”. In fact, as I am writing this, I’m taking pauses to give Tim Buckley’s Happy Sad my undivided attention. It could have easily been 8 P.M.

It happens whenever I have a very doable amount of homework. I suddenly get interested in looking up all my favorite people on Wikiquote, and the Flight of the Conchords starts to get funny for no apparent reason. I start my routine of looking through pointless news and taking 3 minute breaks to do my homework. A U.S tour and album scheduled for Byrne & Eno. How delightful.

Wait, why am I writing this? This isn’t homework, I could be sleeping!

Sometime during my freshman year, I started to purchase one or two CD’s everyweek.

I would visit Noize Music on the UC Irvine campus whenever I got the chance, and I considered any weekend that included a trip to Amoeba Music in Hollywood to be an excellent weekend. I love cheap CD’s and since they were only about 7 dollars on average apiece, it was a very affordable hobby.

One thing I really liked about the two stores was the price sticker they put on all of their CD’s. I thought it added character to the package, and it even drove me to prefer used CD’s over new ones because used CD’s meant that I didn’t have to peel off the tag from the plastic coating and transfer it on to the actual jewel case. Now I look back at the 6.99 tag on my Another Green World jewel case and wish I could buy music like that still. But with ridiculous prices and limited selection, moving to Korea has seriously hurt my record buying habits, and I have probably purchased less than a CD per month.

And it’s not even that I am opposed to downloading music. We all know the artists don’t get the money anyways (and if that’s what they want, what bussiness do they have being artists?) and I do use it to download some singles from bands I am not too familiar with. But to get a copy of Tom Verlaine’s Dream Time? Nothing replaces a mom and pop record store there, or when it comes to finding things you didn’t know you wanted.

photo credit therisingstorm.net

That’s what this cover reminds me of.

Maybe I just don’t like writing essays in one night, but since that’s the only way I have written them during my entire high school career thus far, I can only assume that I just don’t like writing essays in general.

For whatever reason, I want this particular essay that I am writing on Huck Finn to be a little special. The actual writing is pretty far from it, so I turned to Wikipedia and clicked on Random Article to find something that would make it so. I figured that a random article that could have been written by rapists and/or incestuous junkies has a greater chance of being interesting than my essay at it’s current state. I got an article about Cuba at the 1928 Olympics, which after a short ponder, I decided I can’t use. I then clicked again for an article and what that came up was an article on Gabriele Ferzetti, who is apparently an Italian actor born in 1925.

I will do my best to make a somewhat relevant reference to him in my essay.

EDIT

Actually, I’m not. Why would I do that?

Photocredit: Wikipedia

He’s got a girly name and a really short Wikipedia article, but Gabriele is a pretty good looking dude.

I can’t remember if it was Time or Newsweek but I read on one of those magazines a couple of years ago that people are a lot less happier today than we used to be in the past because mass media feeds us so much information on people who are better off. Today, I experienced this empirically.

I was watching Arcade Fire videos on Youtube just for background noise (a classic case of watching a movie on TV when you have the same movie on DVD- I just didn’t feel like popping in a CD) and I saw in the related videos section a video of a guy who beats an old arcade game with one quarter. I think that watching this, coupled with the “How to Catch Mew on Poke’mon Red/Blue” video I watched a while back, revealed some kind of a deep unconscious desire to confront my lifetime enemy: The Lion King on SNES.

And it comes as no surprise to me that I find a three part movie of an accomplished gamer flawlessly strolling past the game. But I had absolutely no interest in seeing parts one and three; I just wanted to see him do something I could never do: manage to climb up the waterfall of floating logs.

photo credit lionking.org

He makes it look like child’s play. This is a game I probably got around 1995, gave up on probably a couple of years later, and revisited last year when my friend and I decided to beat Donkey Kong Country over the non-denominational holiday season. I have never come close to achieving that kind of success. This is extra frustrating being that the particular level, “Hakuna Matata” is the last in the game as baby Simba, and so I have never in the dozen years since I first played this game nurtured Simba into adulthood (I did however know all about the cheat code to skip levels. That obviously doesn’t count).

Contrary to the beautiful 16 bit landscapes and characters from the movie of the same name may suggest to the untrained eye, The Lion King is not a children’s game. It to me marked a transitional phase in my life when I realized that everyone that said I could do anything if I put my mind to it was lying.

Up to that point in my life I had survived a hanging on to the side of a bridge for my life, and successfully told my first lie on that same trip to Canada. Life seemed absolutely worry-less and there was nothing that could taint my self confidence. With The Lion King, I learned that I am ultimately and underwhelming human. I now understand that looking at the internet and seeing people who are not as imperfect just adds insult to injury.

I don’t care what anybody says; Neil Young is bad ass.

Rock & Roll doesn’t get more passionate and sincere then Rust Never Sleeps, and I always thought he pulled off the hippy singer-songwriter deal better then anyone not named Joni Mitchell. Some of his wilder experiments (particularly in the 80’s) aren’t too appealing to me but I find his loyalty to his own artistic pursuit, rather than an audience very admirable. (Also, without Young there may not be a Sonic Youth. Without Sonic Youth, there is no Daydream Nation. Is that a world anyone wants to live in?)

So when I found out that there is to be a Woodstock-esque event held in front of the DMZ, I knew I was going. However, I think this concert will fail to achieve the Woodstock spirit for two resons:

1. Rod Stewart

2.Location .

Sure, the most appropriate way to bring attention to the divided peninsula is in Seoul but these accomplished musicians in the concert (Donovan and Young, rest I either have never heard of, or don’t care about) have not a clue about Korean culture.

http://www.rjkoehler.com/2008/03/27/neil-young-rod-stewart-don-mclean-donovan-it-cant-be/

And Korea might not be the absolute worst place in the world to have a Woodstock (after all, there is fascist China - who would think about holding a worldly event there?), but I think it’s definitely top 5.

From my perspective, Korea is way ahead of America in it’s consumerism. Here, trends happen as fast as Firefox can refresh, and the education system takes unhealthy, senseless conformity to a whole new level. A walk on the street makes George Carlin’s metaphor of America-as-a-strip-mall look like the farmer’s market. Hell, even the churches shamelessly advertise themselves in Korea.

Give a Korean kid a Genie and he’ll name you colleges; ask him “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding?” and he just might give you a list (bonus points if you catch the Nick Lowe/Elvis Costello reference). Play for him Joni Mitchell’s “In France They Kiss On Main Street” and it’ll spark no interest - but some Nike sneakers with 5% charity benefit might.

Passionate art doesn’t work in Korea, products do. Woodstock bands like Ten Years After and Jefferson Airplane wouldn’t have been given a chance at this point- these guys weren’t good looking television personalities, and that’s really the only kind of people that matter here.

Businessmen are much better marketers than musicians, and they train us to be moved by them a lot more. The worst part is that really works.

I hope that Neil Young doesn’t get involved in an embarrassing Rod Stewart led pop fest or a sincere performance on deaf ears (although I would definitely prefer the latter) but I think I’ll manage to sit through a Stewart set (especially if he for some reason decides to sing his Jeff Beck era stuff) to get to the good stuff; there are worse ways to get a glimpse of a “Heart of Gold”.

photo credit hubarts.com

At 17, I am currently part of the most overly-documented-by-Hollywood age group there is. When I look back at movies like Sixteen Candles, Breakfast Club, and Fast Times at Ridgemount High, it’s weird to think that Spicoli and the greasers from The Outsiders are at my current age.

But out of all the teenage movies Hollywood puts out, the movie that really strikes a new meaning to me now is The Goofy Movie.

The Goofy Movie documents the relationship between Goofy and his son Max, as they take a road trip across the United States with different destinations in mind. In one scene in particular, the characters sing about the last day of school. It talks about the basic stereotypes of high school that I, until pretty recently, thought were fictional. The “cool kids” of the video sing about the joy of “no more Algebra tests ’till September”, and “no more looking at losers like him” while skinny nonathletic kids rejoice “no more gym”.

Whenever it was that I first saw this movie, I would have never guessed that out of all of the characters in the video, I can most closely relate to the little goth girls who say “no more pep rallies to cut” with a puking gesture.

But it’s so true.

I’ve always detested pep rallies, and as it turns out, watching people throw their shoes in to hula hoops isn’t fun either. When lots of people gather to stand up, sit down and recite things on command, it reminds me of my least favorite child hood memory, regularly attending Catholic Church.

And Comedycentral.com stopped uploading new episodes of Daily Show and Colbert Report. That sucks too.

But on the brighter side of things, I’m Boba Fett!! WOOHOOO

Photo Credit Walmart

Like all male pre-teen suburban kids from the greater Los Angeles area, I too once had a Led Zeppelin phase. During this phase, I learned to always find a way to wear one of my two Led Zeppelin t-shirts at least every other day of the week, and Houses of the Holy seldom saw light outside of my CD player. I even read a biography on the band, and watching Jimmy Page wield his Telecaster encouraged me to by one of my own.

Back when “I hate math class” meant “I hate Algebra 1″, Robert Plant’s vain and over-the-top fantasy sequence in The Song Remains the Same wasn’t so corny, and I could tolerate listening to a 4 minute drum solo just for the sake of listening to Led Zeppelin II from beginning to end. But as time went on, I eventually migrated to another rite of passage, The Velvet Underground phase (I’ll tell you when it’s over).

So it was on a whim that I decided to listen to Houses of the Holy again today, and it comes apparent to me my old obsession wasn’t completely unjustified. And while I’m not much of a fan of the opening track, “The Song Remains the Same” because it reminds me too much of that old Hansen song where the little sisters sing ” DOO DADA DO DA DOO DADA DOO DA DOO DA DA”, I absolutely adore “Rain Song” which follows as track 2. “Rain Song” to me is what “Stairway to Heaven” should have sounded like: a guitar riff that you don’t grow weary of in the 6 minutes it is played, and an exciting vocal delivery at the end that doesn’t suck. No guitar solo needed.

The album does have it’s very tacky moments (like when Plant sings “When I read the letter you wrote me it made me sad sad sad” in “Dyer Makr”) and I have been known to unintentionally fall asleep listening to “No Quarter”, but at least I wasn’t listening to pop-punk.

Photo Credit http://www.filmreference.com

Arthur C. Clarke was announced as dead today.

I am not going to claim that I am a huge fan of (nor very familiar with) his body of work, but I do consider 2001: A Space Odyssey to be one of my favorite films ever, along with Rocky Horror Picture Show, Elephant Man, and Dr. Strangelove.

I didn’t even make it all the way at first. Seeing Clockwork Orange in my freshman year inspired me to watch every Kubrick movies as soon as I could. 2001 was the only one I initially thought was unwatchable (although I still don’t think that Full Metal Jacket is on the same level as his other films). Having seen only Dr. Strangelove, Clockwork, and probably The Shining at the time, I did not expect to see such an unconventional method of storytelling that’s employed in 2001 and Barry Lyndon.

I imagine the first viewing was what listening to Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music or seeing The Star Wars Holiday Special for the first time would have felt like had I not known what to expect. I made it about 15 minutes in and turned it off.

Photo Credit http://amazon.com

I guess I was just impatient. The long start of the film took me by surprise and had I seen it in a theater, I probably would have stayed just to be stingy, but in the many viewings that have followed since then, I have come to appreciate 2001 as one of the most imaginative and captivating films I have ever seen.

Wikipedia is my favorite part of the internet. I have spent countless hours on it studying, doing my homework, and most of all, feeding my self with useless information. This is a documentation of a wiki-journey I take on a typical day.

3-15-2008

It all started here:

Stephen Colbert Interview with Sudhir Ventkatesh

Then I thought “too dangerous for the police? that sounds like a good Wikipedia read”.

Skip to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crips

“The Crips are a primarily, but not exclusively, African American gang founded in Los Angeles, California in 1969 by 15-year-old Raymond Washington and Stanley Tookie Williams III .”

“Stanley Tookie Williams III? what a great name”

click on:

Stanley Tooie Williams III

” . . . executed by lethal injection after clemency was rejected by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, amidst . . . “

“I don’t care what anybody says. Terminator 2 was a great movie”

fast forward to:

Arnold Schwarzenegger

“. . . more recently “The Governator” (a portmanteau of Governor and Terminator, referring to . . . ”

“what a great word”

Off to:

portmanteau

“This usage of the word was coined by Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871)”

“Lewis Carroll? psychedeliccccccccc”

Lewis Carroll

” . . . the poems “The Hunting of the Snark” and “Jabberwocky“, all considered to be within the genre of literary nonsense“

“literary nonsense? I can get behind that”

literary nonsense

“Literary nonsense refers to a genre of literature, whether poetry or prose, that plays with conventions of language and logic through a careful balance of sense and non-sense elements.”

“That sounds like Talking Heads!”

But no mention of David Bryne, the writer of of lyrics like,

” Ev’rything is divided
Nothing is complete
Ev’rything looks impressive
Do not be deceived
You don’t have to wait for more instructions
No one makes a monkey out of me
We lie on our backs, feet in the air
Rest and relaxation, rocket to my brain

We are born without eyesight
We are born without sin
And our mama protects us
From the cold and the rain
We’re in no hurry
sugar and spice
We sing in the darkness
We open our eyes (open up)”

Really? that doesn’t count?
This gives me no choice but to add the underlined

“Other media

In the field of art, the Dada movement resembles nonsense in certain ways, but is also quite distinct from it. As a genre, nonsense has no particular agenda, though it may imply a kind of subversion in various ways. Dada was more directed, creating an expression of disaffection with art and a society that seemed unavoidably addicted to the insanity of war.

David Byrne, front man of the art rock group Talking Heads, employs a similar technique in songwriting. With Talking Heads, Byrne often combined coherent yet unrelated phrases to make up nonsensical lyrics in songs such as: “Burning Down the House“, “Making Flippy Floppy” and “Girlfriend Is Better”.

In comic strips, Glen Baxter’s work is often nonsensical, relying on the baffling interplay between word and image.”

Since I said “similiar” I think I am relatively safe from being wrong.

Space travel may not be as practical or routine as Arthur Clarke and Stanley Kubrick predicted it would be in 2001: A Space Odyssey, but I think we have so much more.
It captures my imagination that thousands, if not millions(?) of people have united under one common goal of creating the definitive collection of all human knowledge.

It’s like 60 minutes on acid!

_{China Photos/Getty Images}

Björk’s chanting of “Tibet! Tibet!” at the end of her “Declare Independence” performance in Shanghai has been well documented in the past couple of weeks. What was never really adequately addressed to me, however, was the history of Tibet and the arguments for and against it’s sovereignty (or more precisely, the lack thereof).

Sure, I have always seen “Free Tibet” merchandise and known that Tibet was a territory of China. Having taken AP World History, I also knew a little bit about the Dali Lama and his reincarnation cycle. I had also seen that BradPitt movie for which the actor got a life time ban for China for, but that was in fifth grade and I only remember the part where a white person (presumably Pitt) trick some native Asian people (presumably Tibetans) into thinking that the instruction sheet on his first aid kit was a legal document (presumably to do something he wasn’t supposed to). But when addressed with the issue at hand, I was a little bit disappointed at myself for not having an opinion on the subject matter, when in fact it might be thousand of human deaths that I am being apathetic for.

I was wrong. It is estimated that Tibetan 1.2 million Tibetan deaths have been related to violence since the Great Leap Forward in the 1950’s. Knowing this, I could see it was a big issue, but I wasn’t quite satisfied.

So of course, I went to Youtube and searched “Tibet”. What I found was a 55 minute video called Tibet The Story of a Tragedy and I decided to watch it. The Documentary was no Ken Burns production nor was it anything that could be called the Loose Change of Tibet documentaries. It has extremely slow moments and it’s poor quality footage is worsened by Youtube. It also restricts itself to history fairly well, which in the era of Loose Change, This Film is Not Yet Rated, and Who Killed the Electric Car? left me thinking “when are the experts going to come in and tell me my future opinions?”*. The documentary manages to be semi-compelling in the least expected of ways: by simply telling a story. Nonetheless, I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. It’s boring as hell and as I later found out, all of the information is better presented in text.

*note sarcasm. I also want to say that unlike Charlie Sheen, I do not believe the theories in Loose Change.

I am still confused on how I would have it. It seems apparent to me that the situation is a direct violation of human rights and oppression, but I am also skeptic on Tibet’s ability to function by itself without being the next Israel because as I learned from the Björk incident, a lot of people are strongly against the independence movement.But although I would not call myself an expert on the topic (I only looked into it on Sunday), I feel my confusion is better informed than before.

EDIT: After looking into it and thinking about it a little more, I think that Tibet’s independence is both achievable and neccesary. I don’t think people react the way they do to Israel unless an ancient religous text indirectly instructs them to do so, and the human rights issues were more severe than I thought. I wish they would publish more statements from the other side of the argument, but all I find on the internet is random hacks going “fuck you, why doesn’t America give it’s land back to the Indians first?”. I’m sure there is more to it than that, but I guess there is no need to argue when you have it your way.

And they say our false idols should never bring up their political views.