7 Grandmasters

Friday night we went to a double feature at the Trylon.  Ming and his wife went to the first movie with us.  Her very first time at the Trylon. I was super excited to see 7 Grandmasters [all about the movie and his Pei Mei style here: https://www.perisphere.org/2023/01/27/7-grandmasters-according-to-the-wisdom-of-shang-kuan-cheng-master-of-the-pei-mei-technique/ as well as at Wikipedia].  I didn't realize it was being hosted by the same Seattle film guy who co-streamed The Mystery of Chessboxing in the earlier days of covid lockdowns.  Jen and I [and for part of it, Aeryn] watched that with live commentary by Rza of Wu Tang Clan and, along with some National Theatre production that streamed at that time, it's actually a fond memory of being somewhat trapped in a non-social / non-in-person environment.

Fun movie, although the translations were a bit unusual.  Ming - who could read both sets of subtitles and understand the speaking, noted that the subtitles were a bit "Shakespearian" in nature which made for exchanges were they argued about who was a 'rascal' and to never trust 'rascals'.  There were probably better word choices.  But if you got in the flow, you knew what they were saying.  It's fun to see the Chinese characters.  There's a TED video where a woman tries to teach some basics of Chinese pictographs in a few minutes.  I remember vaguely that person looks like a little stickman.  So when they said brother and nobody and me [but not you] you could see the little man in conjunction with other characters.

The second show was a series of grindhouse trailers/previews the same collector had pulled together in all his time working with old 35mm movies.  The Grindhouse Trailer Spectacular.  That was fun.  Some truly awful trailers and a lot of breasts.  I think this one in particular - Black Cobra Woman - was the one that seemed to be implying people were sticking snakes in places they didn't belong.  And Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals sort of speaks for itself. Good write up here. Was a great time, although by the end I felt a little exhausted at the grindhouse onslaught.

The Incident

My wife and I watched The Incident the other night.  I really enjoyed it.  My take is that it's about tragedy and how someone reacts to (maybe dwells upon, or dwells within is a better turn of phrase) tragedy whether they're old or young and whether they persevere in the face of that tragedy or succumb to it emotionally.  In the case of The Incident whether one thrives or shrivels seems to be based on age.  

For a while I really hoped it was a dystopia in the vein of The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.  e.g. the noise was a machine of some sort splitting off a very bad dimension/possibility and screwing over some version of yourself, so that an individual could enjoy a probable good turn in the timeline that had the technology.  Personally, I think that's a creepier take on the whole thing.  Confining some version of yourself to hell so that you can enjoy a less painful reality.  How many alternate yous would you be willing to banish to hell to be happy?  Would you justify it with "it's me, so they'd be happy for the happy me?"

Inventive and well worth watching and I agree with Variety, that it's got a smattering of Borges, enough so that when it tries to explain things at the end, it almost screws up the movie.

Alita and Trevor Noah

Those two things are completely unrelated.  Tonight, after spending the last two days digging out of the fourth snowiest February in Minnesota history (the snow banks at the end of the driveway are as tall as I am, even with two toppings by Eryn), we went to a Alita: Battle Angel premier.  The Rosemount theater had a good deal for advance screening tickets and, combined with my gift card and rewards card, there weren't even any additional fees.  Bargain.  The movie itself was perfectly serviceable, but that speaks for itself.  The focus was on the spectacle and it felt like the character interactions were a bit lacking because of it.  I enjoyed it; very reminiscent of Ready Player One in design, but not nearly as good as that movie.

Last Saturday Eryn and I went to see Trevor Noah at the Xcel Center for his Loud and Clear Tour.  I won tickets and parking from work.  We tried to go to the Red Cow before hand, but it was too crowded, so we ended up at the Bohemian sausage place, which makes Eryn a bit nostalgic for the one in Eagan that quit paying their bills and skipped town.

Ming and his family were at the show on the other side of the Xcel from us.  We could barely see them when we squinted.  Eryn loved the show and laughed a lot.  She was somewhat annoyed with the first comedian whose bit was about things millennials didn't know about (but do), but she liked the second guy and his bit about his uncle and micro-airlines, and she loved Trevor Noah.  He did some politics, but focused more on differences in men and women, branding (although that was political, and had a pretty varied set.  Eryn was amused when he was talking about branding and asked all the men to put their hands up then said "put your hand down if you've stopped masturbating", and followed it up with the guys not wanting their wives/spouses to think they were quitters.  We couldn't tell if Ming put his hand down.

Kodu

I spent this morning at Pacer in Bloomington teaching girls how to "code" in Kodu.  It's not exactly coding; more assigning action to objects w/in the framework.  But it gets the idea across and, if you get complicated, aspects of it are pre-Unity.  The girls were great.  They all seemed to be having a great time.  We did a few other activities as well including drawing favorite video game characters and yoga.  Yes.  Yoga.  There's now a picture of me in a yoga pose (Warrior II) with the rest of my coworkers who volunteered.

Two of the girls were excited I knew about Five Nights at Freddy's and Foxy and Bonnie.  One of them drew Foxy as her character and let me take a picture.

Afterwards I went to Poor Richard's Commonhouse for breakfast/lunch.  It was not an optimal breakfast.  No choice of toast type.  Hashbrowns were patties.  Eggs over medium were a little too cooked.  Bacon was good.  I threw a Summit oatmeal stout on top of it and made it a "Guinness" breakfast.  That fixed it.  It was interesting because there were a lot of people there running some sort of Valentine's Day sexy clothing marketplace.  A woman in a red lame' dress - short - was sporting red wings  like an evil angel (fallen angel?) and wandering between the back room and front area encouraging sales.  She had to have  been at least...at least...20 years younger than the average customer.

Later the whole family went to the Uptown to see the Oscar Nominated Short Films 2018 (animated).  Garden Party with the frogs was morbid, but great.  And obviously an attempt to show off computer animation.  Amazing.  I loved Revolting Rhymes, a Roald Dahl story, about Sleeping Beauty and Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf trying to get vengeance.  We agreed that Lou, about a living Lost and Found, will probably win as a Pixar entry.  Damn cute and to the point.

And then...to make it a full day, we topped it off with the copy of Heavy Metal that arrived via Amazon.  Eryn said it was not what she expected, but she enjoyed it.  And she really enjoyed the music.  That's really all you can get/expect out of Heavy Metal if you're not in an altered state.

Horror Shorts

Richard Rowntree pointed me at these shorts on Popcorn Horror: http://popcornhorror.com/films/  Pretty cool.

The second Oats Studios film is out as well, Firebase.  I didn't like it as much as the last one, but there are some really cool visuals.

It Follows

My week of vacation has started.  And I'm going nowhere.  My plan is to get a ton of chores done, a lot of writing, and just generally relax.  Any going somewhere will have to wait for July and October.  But I really do intend to have an interesting week in the context of sticking around, even if it's taxes, making chili, reading, and doing some college phone screens for intern and new grad candidates.  Might not sound exciting, but you'll see.

So I started the whole week off last night by walking over to the 10:25 It Follows.  One of the nice things about my suburban life is that my house is near Target, Cub, and the movie theater.  It used to be near an ice cream shop (I miss Ring Mountain) and there are coffee shops, although they're not my coffee shops of preference.  So walking, even at 10:25 p.m. (and 1:00 a.m. with a stop at Cub for juice) is an option.  Chilly here still, but not so bad it wasn't a nice way to finish the evening.

I liked It Follows.  The teenage boys in the audience didn't seem to given their discussion on the way out.  But the fact that they were having a spirited discussion about what it meant and that it was driven by STD...if it got them talking about the merits of the movie, it couldn't have been that bad.  It felt a little old school.  No seriously creepy monsters (not in the traditional sense).  No slashing.  Just a nice, slow, reveal of more and more about what was following Jay, punctuated with proof that it wasn't in her head - some actual physical interaction with her friends - and some music/sound that was really superb.  At one point the noise from the television blended into the background sound in a way that was impressive.  When I explained it to my wife, I said the music/sound reminded of someone else, the guy who did Ghosts of Mars and Prince of Darkness.  Carpenter.  The sound was reminiscent of Carpenter, but better.

So well done.  Obvious avoidance of product placement.  No big name actors to distract.  Some realistic dialogue and behavior on the part of the teens.  A slow reveal without startling, so actually rather creepy.  Great, creepy sounds without an annoying music soundtrack (refer back to product placement).  Just a touch of moralizing.  An ode to cinema I remember from my youth in both style and sound.  It didn't scare me, but I definitely was happy I went.

The Babadook

My wife and I got some time to go to a movie together Saturday night at 10:00 p.m. while Grandpa was around to hang out with Eryn.  So I looked for something interesting and we settled on The Babadook at The St. Anthony Main Theater, next to the recently departed Pracna.  A great movie.  If I was a kid, it would have scared the crap out of me and it was very well done even if you're an adult. Not too fast.  Not all over the jump-in-your-seat shocks.  A solid, building horror.  No idea of why.  And it attacks the single parent family with a semi-special needs child at the heart of the family, turning the mother on her son and making you question what's Babadook and what's a mother frayed to breaking.  It wasn't until we were watching it that we realized we had seen the prototype short, Monster, back when we still had cable and IFC.

Ba, ba, doook, doook, doook.....

The 5,000 Fingers of Doctor T

The family (Eryn, Pooteewheet, my Dad and I) went to The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T at the Trylon tonight. I made reference to the movie in my master's thesis on dystopias as it shares a few features, at least in the mind of a kid and, as a piano-based dystopia, is rather unique.  Lot of laughter in the theater as much of the humor has held up well over time, such as the joke about being paid time and a half, Bart's interactions with the adults in his life and dislike of constant piano practice, and the atomic sound absorber,  While most people I've talked to haven't seen the movie, they don't realize they've seen or heard Dr. T in one of his other guises.  Hans Conried, among many, many other roles was the voice of Snidely Whiplash in the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.

"The moral progression of his choices without using dialogue"

From Kottke via Every Frame a Painting. Spoilers in the video, with warning.  A a very interesting 3 minute analysis of Snowpiercer - on Netflix streaming at the moment and a movie I saw at St. Anthony Main Theatre with Kyle that was good enough to overcome my horrible dinner experience at the Aster - and how to do character choice right.  Much better than the AV Club's (Almost) Every Horror Reference in Cabin in the Woods which Eryn agreed, without prompting, was speculative.  And yes, Eryn has watched the original movie.  Blame Mean Mr. Mustard who I use as a cultural litmus for young women.

Good review

I'm disappointed Ming couldn’t do RAGBRAI this year, because I would have MUCH rather sat through Transformers Age of Extinction than the buddy female cop movie - The Heat - or Grown Ups 2 (there’s going to be a Grown Ups 3, Adam!).  All things equal on Rotten Tomatoes (Transformers is still 10% higher than Grown Ups 2, and despite not liking The Heat, it was magnitudes better than Grown Ups 2), I would have gotten an extra 45 minutes of air conditioning and time for an extra box of popcorn watching Age of Extinction.

My favorite review so far:
http://www.themarysue.com/transformers-age-of-extinction-review/

Sunday Morning Ride

Yesterday, Kyle and I went to Cook in St. Paul to try out their breakfast.  It was raining mightily, so I drove up there instead of pedaling.  I don't do lightning and/or thunder.  Wet is fine.  Electrocuted is not.  Great breakfast.  I had a Frenchcake which was part hashbrown, part pancake, and topped with poached eggs and served with a side of french toast and duroc bacon.  Way better than I expected.  Kyle had the Korean pancakes which set off some Facebook exchange with my sister about things that look like breasts.  Fortunately, before the cops came in to eat, Kyle pointed out to me that I was bleeding.  Not a little, a lot.  I think the barber nicked my neck the day before and I'd scratched it.  The result was blood all the way down the back of my neck and washing across the left front side of my neck.  I looked like Dexter.

So today, I tried to make up for my lack of bicycling breakfast by pedaling to Colossal in south Minneapolis.  Unfortunately, it was perhaps the first time in two years I didn't have cash with me and Colossal only accepts cash or local check.  So that was a no go and I'll have to try again.  The Hot Plate didn't open until 8:00, fully 45 minutes later, and although I started to hoof it up to Longfellow, I changed my mind and decided just to go home instead.  A bowl of Trader Joe's pseudo Cherrios was not a great alternative to breakfast at a new place, but I fixed it by making buckwheat and blueberry pancakes and banana and mango pancakes for lunch and storing a bunch for the week.

It is WET out there.  Hmm...I think I mushed my pictures a big.  Flickr doesn't link the same way it used to (well, the navigation is different) so I'm still ironing out some news kinks.  Fair trade for it being free.  So here's what I saw on the trail near the Mendota Bridge.  Enough rain that the cliffs are starting to be unstable.  You could hear it yelling about what a bastard the cliff on the other bank was and that it was going to throw all it's shit out the window and that was my sister for f*ucks sake! and more.  I'm sure they're finding it a competent therapist.

It doesn't surprise me it's unstable.  Last time I went down into St. Paul there were a few large rocks next to the trail and one on the trail.  It's obviously getting a bit wet and dangerous.


This is near Lake Nokomis and Lake Hiawatha.  That garbage in the near part of the frame is everywhere along the walking trail.  It's like it cleaned up everywhere, and then dumped it on the tar.


Here's a better picture and you can see all the flotsam and jetsam.  No Ariel though.


And here it is on the trail at Lake Hiawatha.  I went offroad at that point.


I forgot to mention it was darn cold as well.  A nice cold front rolled in on Saturday, so at 5:45 a.m. there was a ton of fog and it was chilly enough to make my hands ache and the dew bead up on my track suit (just the top - I'm not a wise guy).  This was much later; closer to 8:15.  At least at this point I could see the cars coming about the time I heard them.  Earlier I'd hear noise and not see anything until it was on top of the intersection.  I find it difficult to believe anyone drives around in pea soup fog without lights on.


I zoomed in a bit to catch the church on the far side of Mendota Bridge.  Downright Cotswolds in nature.


So a nice ride.  We rounded out our weekend with Edge of Tomorrow: Starship Troopers meets Groundhog Day, which both Eryn and I really enjoyed. Eryn caught The Fault In Our Stars, which I managed to avoid, with mom.  We played Settlers of Catan and Compounded at Ring Mountain (and found a quart of reserved Chocolate Chili Pepper Gelato for me!).  And today, as a graduation gift, I got Eryn Star Trek of Catan which she spent hours mulling over and playing with, despite only having one family game.  I'm getting a reputation as a bit of a pain in the ass when it comes to gaming because I win so much in our family games.  I got lucky in Star Trek of Catan because I used Nurse Chapel to steal a resource from Pooteewheet, which resulted in stealing longest road, and then I couldn't get rid of Nurse Chapel (you have to use it against someone with more points, and that act put me in the lead).  But it worked out well because it locked her down and no one was taking the excellent resource distribution I was getting late in the game.  On the bad side of things, I discovered the drive on my lawnmower isn't working appropriately anymore and I had to push mow the hill that is the back yard.  So I'm feeling fully exercised.

100 Best B Movies

It's hard to say if the blogger is correct about the top 100 best B movies without having seen many of them.  I applaud the inclusion of Deathbed, but I'm pretty sure Hausu, Ice Cream Man, Evilspeak, and Plankton all belong on the list as well.  I have no doubt they'd make a solid showing.  Definitely ahead of Future War at 53, which I found difficult to watch even with bots.

Ideology is Making America Stupid

I enjoyed this article on the XX Committee, Ideology is Making America Stupid.  It reminded me a bit of The Pervert's Guide to Ideology, currently streamable on Netflix.  At one point in the film Slavoj Žižek talks about the UK riots and says the left felt everyone needed to understand the rioters.  The right felt their should be more arrests.  The prime minister was just mad that people were taking things, like that was the biggest crime possible.  Slavoj says consumerism has become an ideology of it's own, so ingrained that the rioters don't even know what they're doing.  They just know they should have stuff.  And then there's video of the rioters all carrying televisions and other items.  It's a very good movie.  Lots to think about if no one is trying to talk to you while you're watching.

"This really all comes down to ideology, meaning the substitution of preset cliches over actual thought. I’m not here to knock down the notion of ideology altogether, since all of us have some sort of one (and if you don’t realize you do, the more powerful a hold over you it has), rather I want to point out the hazards of letting that framework shut down genuine thought, discussion, and debate, because you know the answer already. The German word Weltanschauung (worldview) comes closest to what I’m discussing here, and in 21st century America lots of people get their designer worldview, pre-fab, off TV and the Internet, without ever thinking critically about what it might actually mean. Contrary evidence is ignored, out of hand, as lies or propaganda – which of course only the other side has – and perhaps “hatred.” The problem isn’t that Americans have ideologies, it’s that so many of them have embraced a worldview based on self-deception. Simply put, they devoutly, unshakably believe things that simply are untrue."

Bowling and more...

Monday was daddy/daughter spring break outing day.  We went to Bryant Lake Bowl for breakfast/lunch with Grandpa and the Great Uncle (Eryn's, not mine) and then stayed to bowl two lanes.

We had them all to ourselves for most our time there.  Not a lot of people bringing their kids to bowl at noon, although a mom and her two kids did show up about mid way through our second game.



Eryn was very consistent.  38 both games.  She was a little perturbed that she guttered the last few frames of the second game after tying her score from the first game. But not perturbed enough for a third game.


We did not loft the ball.  It was nothing like the night Kyle and I were there and the hipsters were running wild.


See?  Smooth release.


I scored something like a 125 and a 175.  Not bad - that second score is above my average when I was a league bowler.  I like the Bryant-Lake lanes.  They always seem fairly flat to me - lot a not of deviation ball to ball.  Of course, maybe it's all sorts of deviant and just perfectly offsets my own crappy throws.


Here's at least a little bit of a loft.  I was trying to catch her at it so I could report her to the waitress.


Eryn learned to score, although as you can see, she feels she needs to show her work.


After bowling, we went to Particle Fever.  I took us to the Lagoon instead of the Edina, which wasn't a good plan.  But fortunately, we were 45 minutes early, so we had lots of time to get to Edina.  The movie was excellent - lots of first person interviews with folks who had worked (work) on the Large Hadron Collider and their search for the Higgs Boson and hope that when they found it the boson would be light enough to allow them to pursue super-symmetry rather than a multiverse, as a multiverse can preclude additional particles.  I liked the quote, and I paraphrase, "Moving from failure to failure without a diminishment in enthusiasm is one definition of success."  Our co-watchers were all retired guys catching an afternoon movie.  The pair of them behind us were discussing their own physics work back in the day.

Eryn was impressed with the escalator at the Edina Theater.  I'd forgotten it's so big for what seems like a small (four screen) theater.  It goes up two floors without a break and looks like it's been misplaced from the London Tube.

Here's a big head Eryn wouldn't let me take her picture with from the Lagoon, which isn't where we went.  So nothing at all to do with the events on Monday other than to show we were lost and it cost us $1.50 to be lost in the parking lot.  One good thing is that I saw Origami has a store right there behind the Lagoon.  I'm going to have to figure out hours.


We finished off our popcorn and chocolate with a visit to The Edina Creamery.  So we had sports, fine dining, and brain activities all in the same day.  A good Spring Break day, even if it wasn't traveling someplace warm.

A Dictator's Guide To Urban Design

A fascinating article   I find the comments despairing that America has it equally bad with a suburban layout to be rather strange.  Suburbia is historically driven by economic and social (including discriminatory) reasons, not by plutocrats and fascists controlling our ability to gather.  And it's not that difficult to gather (30,000 of us on RAGBRAI) and it's not even that difficult to live close to work.  You have to be willing and it may come with a cost, but you can certainly make that decision and many of the current generation are doing exactly that.

Reminds me of Kyle asking about the Lego movie and whether it was a dystopia.  Lots of soaring buildings.  Walled off access to other Lego "lands".  All sorts of physical barriers right down to how the Legos are allowed to be put together.  Watch the movie and look for the town square...

"...a way for autocrats to squash dissent through urban design."

10 Most Offensive Board Games and Many Other Things

• Good list of the ten most offensive board games from io9.
• The best science fiction and fantasy of 2013. - a lot of things I haven't read, although MaddAdam is in my library pile on the counter and Ancillary Justice is in my iPad.
• 5 films the Dallas Observer thought were worth streaming on Netflix.  I saw 237 and enjoyed it.  I'll have to stream the rest when I'm done with my latest Bollywood film while cycling (Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola)
• Learn to Play 16 Easy Guitar Riffs from Music Radar - I have got to learn to play Supermassive Black Hole.  I'll be set if any exotic dancers want to suddenly dance in  my space.
• A very stately and organized flash mob by the USAF at the National Air and Space Museum courtesy of Larry (the father in law Larry, not the other one).  Not exactly flash mobby when it involves violins, cellos, and everyone in dress uniform.  But still neat.
• Ten Things You Didn't Know About Voodoo from Listverse - primarily for Eryn who's very interested in Voodoo, although she's still not allowed to watch Coven.
• The Scientific Seven Minute Workout - it's become my laptop wallpaper.  I intend to make it part of my new year's resolutions.
• How To Motivate Yourself at Any Time - I do almost all of these.  I'm naturally a fairly non-motivated person.  But I tend to just do things because I know there's a domino effect to getting more done and, in the end, I'll expend less energy by not worrying about something more than once.

47 Ronin and Bored Game

My dad, daughter, and I (three generations) just got back from 47 Ronin at the local theater.  Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 12%.  I'm not sure it deserved a 12%, as in it probably deserved something better.  It was a pretty run of the mill adventure movie.  The critiques seem to point out that it was slow paced for its length.  I'm surprised.  I thought the bad reviews would be more around the fact that all 47 of them kill themselves at the end.  That's not a spoiler.  At least not if you're not so Western you've never read anything about them.  What it didn't do, in my opinion, is really showcase more of the Ronin - particularly given all the famous Japanese actors in the movie.  That would seem to warrant a bit more personality and interaction between the ronin rather than so much of the chatter being between the bad guy and his witchy girlfriend and between Keanu and Oishi (Hiroyuki Sanada).

I recommend this article from Laughing Squid about the 80's style Bored Game and accompanying video.  Very amusing.


BORED GAME™ from Dark Igloo on Vimeo.

Postpourri

The ten most ridiculous metal album covers of 2013 - I like Power Frost by Persekutor.  Strikes me as trying to be a bit tongue in cheek 70s album cover.

The 50 ugliest and worst album covers of 2013 - I wonder if Ming will tell his wife that Bon Jovi made the list.  I like the album called Donkey Punch the Night.  Nice.  Darwin Deez's Songs for Imaginative People is rather oxymoronic.  I think my Heavy Heavy Duty cover would make a good showing.

Ten underappreciated movies from 2013 - I've seen two of them.  More of a reminder that Escape From Tomorrow is coming to the Trylon soon.

19 awesomely designed books - beautiful design

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

The Mary Sue says the people who made Saw will be making Scary Tales to Tell in the Dark, the movie.  Ack!  Eryn and I still talk about the time we read that book and the Harold the Scarecrow story.  She was about five, and the story ends with Harold the Scarecrow skinning one of the two farmers.  It was the first story we read where I realized perhaps I should have read the whole book to myself before sharing.  That will make a damn scary movie.

Hunger Games: Catching Fire

We made a last minute decision to catch Hunger Games: Catching Fire tonight.  With all the rental property work going on during the weekends, I've been trying to make sure we do something fun to make up for all the time I'm gone.  It was packed.  Primarily with teenage girls.  Coincidentally, we ended up in the same row, about four rows from the front because of the crowd, as The Boss and his wife.  He started reporting to me on Monday, so it was particularly coincidental.  He texted me from the end of the row to tell me to stop working (I was...looking at a charges issue one of the developers is investigating).

The movie was better than the first, in my opinion.  Somewhat cleaner in storyline with an increasing pace throughout.  I liked Thor (II) better, but Hunger Games is definitely a young adult movie with a teenage girl focus.  Eryn loved it.  Go figure.  During the scene with the killer monkeys (that's not a spoiler - read the book), however, I found myself almost laughing.  It's The Cookie Monster's fault.  All those fangs and gnashing and grabbing and I was picturing complaints about the monkeys poking Cookie.

Unrelated, Mad Dog Vachon died today.  It reminded me of a play Kyle and Dan and I went to back in 2007 that stared Baron Von Raschke.