Movie review: Shut Up and Sing

Just saw the Dixie Chicks movie, Shut Up and Sing. It was okay, but for me, not much better than okay. I think I went in expecting something more... I thought there'd be lots of Bush vs. Dixie Chicks politics - there was a bit, but not a lot. I thought it was going to be a great stand-up-and-be-counted battle about deeply-held political opinions, but it came off (for me, at least) as more a case of someone said something off the cuff to get a laugh, and didn't think she ought to have to take it back, which was true. Admirable, definitely, but not the same kind of admirable I was expecting, I suppose. (The one aspect I didn't know about was the reaction of all the radio stations to the statement about Bush. Interesting.)

So I guess the difference between my initial expectations and what was actually in the movie, along with the music (which is obviously of good quality, but not my type of sound), made for a movie which I found disappointing. Not bad, just... not as good as I had hoped for. Meh.

Movie review: Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

[Warning: possible spoilers ahead, although I try to keep them small or out altogether.]


So, I just saw the movie called "Borat", the one that's been getting all the (controversial) press recently. Questions are being asked about this movie all over the place, and I'm going to give you my answers to them, as if they mean anything.

Q: Is it crude?
A: Without a doubt. I'm a fan of South Park *and* Kevin Smith movies, so I've seen/heard a few crude jokes in my time. Borat is right up there.

Q: Is it politically incorrect in the extreme?
A: Absolutely. That's part of the intent, and part of the appeal.

Q: Is it horrendously offensive to various races/sexes/countries?
A: That's a tough one. On the surface, yes. Some nasty things are said about Jewish people, gay people, feminists, people with learning disabilities, etc. and the way he portrays Kazakhstani people as so backwards isn't exactly flattering.

HOWEVER (and this is the crux of the issue, I believe), this movie should absolutely not be taken at face value. If you take it as offensive to , you're missing the point. (Of course, the point has been made that many people (including children) WILL miss the point, and that in that case, the movie will do more harm than good. Perhaps, but does that mean the movie shouldn't have be made and aired? No, I don't think so. Maybe it should have had more than 14A rating, but that's not my call.) Anyway, back to my point, which was about the point of this movie...

Sacha Baron Cohen plays Borat, a Kazakhstani reporter tasked with going to America to learn about the "greatest nation in the world" and bringing some knowledge home to Kazakhstan. While in New York, he falls in love with Pamela Anderson by seeing Baywatch on TV, and decides to travel across country to Hollywood to meet her. Borat is an ignorant, uncultured, centuries-out-of-date guy who clashes with American culture all throughout his Pamela-pilgrimage. (Note: Although Cohen is definitely playing a character, he interacts with real people in his trip across country, making them believe he really as a Kazakhstani reporter, much akin to Canadian Rick Mercer's "Talking To Americans".) In playing such a backwards character (e.g. who grins and says "naughty, naughty" to the 'town rapist'), I think Cohen is poking fun at our (North American) stereotypes of middle-eastern / eastern-European / Asian countries. The really offensive stuff is to be found in the (real) reactions of the (real) Americans, who side with his (fake) bigotry, (fake) sexism, (fake) racism, (fake) everything-else-offensive. Some of these people, now realizing that they exposed themselves as less than admirable people (in a nationwide forum, no less), have sued Cohen. Interesting.

Anyway, I think the point is that Cohen is using his offensive character to set up even more offensive reactions from Americans, and therein lies part of the humour of this film - the disbelief aspect of humour, I guess. And of course, I realize that not all Americans share these views - all the Americans I know are extremely kind and extremely enlightened - I'm hopeful that they had to do a LOT of interviews and a LOT of editing before they found people to say these things. (Although I must admit, there is a cynical little part of me that kind of doubts it, in some of the venues they visited...)

Q: Is it funny beyond belief?
A: For my money, yes. Aside from the disbelief aspect I mentioned above, the humour was the kind of humour I yearn for, the wonderful combination of stupidity and wit and slapstick and clever dialogue that seems so hard to find these days. I laughed harder during this movie than I remember laughing during any movie in the last five or ten years. There were a couple cringe-worthy moments during the film, or jokes that didn't quite hit, but for the most part, it was laugh-out-loud funny. I was howling during the extended fight scene, the brief scene at the playground/park had me in stitches, and I snickered at the subtle jokes which were sprinkled throughout the movie like old jelly beans in the sectional couch of my dreams.

Conclusion: Not a movie everyone will enjoy, but if you have a fairly robust sense of humour and aren't offended easily, pick someone you won't get embarrassed with, and go see it. You might just laugh yourself silly.

Random (stupid) He-Man thoughts

My work is a pretty neat place. There are lots of people who are just big kids - it can be like working with the Lost Boys sometimes. Two aspects of this (that relate to my current incoherent ramblings) are a) a love of toys, and b) a short attention span. If you combine the two, what you end up with is a free toy giveaway every once in a while.

During one of the latest free toy grabs, I ended up with some neat new (to me) toys. Among them was a little working skateboard, and a Skeletor action figure. You might remember Skeletor as the ultimate bad guy from the cartoon show, He-Man. He's basically a guy with a bodybuilder physique, a Roman skirt, high boots, and a sort of bib-cowl combo. Plus, his skin is blue. Plus, his head is a bright yellow skull. Plus, he has a high cackling laugh. Totally evil, as you can imagine. What the heck, I'll include a picture of the very toy I'm talking about...



Anyway, it wasn't long before I discovered that I could balance Skeletor on the skateboard, which is where he currently sits, threatening the world in a very skater punk kind of way. Right on. Very cool, right? This brings me to my actual point (which hardly seems worth it by this time), which is that I got bored at work the other day, and started imagining what He-Man would have been like as a show, if all the characters had also been pro skateboarders. Beast-Man would have fallen over a lot, Trap-Jaw would have laughed at him and maybe eaten his skateboard, but wouldn't have been much better... And for some reason, I figure Mer-Man would be the best skater in Eternia. Dunno why, but it seems like he'd be the most bad-ass of the group.

And needless to say, the good guys would all be cruddy skateboarders, but would be plucky, and would therefore win all the skating contests. Prince Adam would probably have to heft his board (or maybe a magic spraycan?) over his head, yell something dumb, and get hit by lightning, making him an awesome skater.

On second thought, this is perhaps one of the stupidest posts I've ever made, and perhaps one of the stupidest trains of thought I've ever had, so maybe I should just apologize and cut my losses.

Dean out.

Unintentional performance art

I kind of wish I had the corresponding video for this story, but them's the breaks...

So to set the stage, I'm at work. (I work with computers, it's all very technical and clever-sounding work, but it mainly boils down to playing table hockey.) I've been sick for a few days, and I'm not feeling 100% better yet. I'm mainly at work so I can take part in a conference call with one of our remote workers, halfway across the country. He's wanting to show me and another co-worker what he's been working on, and go over the details. To facilitate this, we set up a Skype call on a laptop - so we can hear each other, and we can see him, and he can see us. Specifically, he can see me, because that's who the webcam happened to be pointing at.

So I realized that much of my duty during this conference call was to look the part - nod in the right places, furrow my brows when appropriate, laugh at the jokes, maintain periodic yet meaningful eye contact with the webcam. Fine. We talk for about 45 minutes, going over computer things, looking through code, all that fun stuff. My cold starts to take over, and my mind begins to wander - not bad, just a bit. To keep myself on task, I become more active - I twiddle my goatee, I have a drink of water, I scratch my face with my pen, then back to the goatee, and repeat. It seems to work - I'm able to follow what's going on, and conclude the meeting without missing a beat. Hooray!

However, then I visit the washroom, and as I'm washing my hands, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Turns out that I was expending too much effort concentrating on what was going on in the meeting, and not enough effort noticing whether my pen had its lid on or not. During my 15-30 minutes of face scratching with my pen, I had inadvertedly given myself a rather intricate-looking facial tattoo in blue ink. I looked like a self-decorated Maori warrior with poor motor control.

So now I'm left to wonder... Who saw it? No one said anything... Did I get away Scot-free? Or was the choked-off guffaw from halfway across the country in response to something other than my goofy thumbs-up at one point? I may never know...

Spam, spam, spam, spamity spam

You know how some spam comes with bizarre titles, randomly put together from extensive word lists, in an attempt to avoid junk mail filters? Stuff like "stone marmalade winner green". I mean, who'd delete something like that? It's obviously about something real, maybe I've won some kind of marmalade, you'd think. Anyway, I got one this morning that struck me as pretty darn funny. It was "Better Life, wine butt". I was intrigued. I mean, here's some spam that's not only trying to cozy up to me with the usual promise of goodness ("Better Life"), but is also being distinctly aggressive, with a blatant (and yet completely creative) insult ("wine butt"). If nothing else, it made me smile, before I junked it.

Skunk ahoy

We just went out for a walk around the block, and lo and behold, what do we get to see but a skunk? It's funny, I know they live around here, and that they're often found within the confines of the city, but it is (I believe) the first skunk I've seen in this neck of the woods. I have seen a skunk on the opposite coast, but that's way far away, and therefore, doesn't count.

Now, it was twilight, and we only saw it briefly, but this is my impression of how it looked:


Pretty nice find for a random evening stroll, non?

Why I'm happy that my microphone doesn't work

In a nutshell, it's because I'm on Linux. CentOS4, to be precise. For those of you who are out of the loop, Linux is an type of operating system, like Windows. However, Linux differs from Windows in three major areas:

1. It's free. You can download it. I've done this with various flavours of Linux - you just download some files, burn them to CD, and then you have your installation disks! Who makes it? It depends on the flavour of Linux you're getting, but in general - nerds of the world, who believe that (at least some) software should be free.

2. It's open source. This means that you don't just get the binary files to install it, you also get the code behind it all. So, if you find a problem or an opportunity for improvement or customization (and if you happen to be a raging nerd), you can fix it your own damn self. It's an empowering feeling.

3. It's bloody hard to use. There have been great leaps and bounds in making Linux a more user-friendly operating system, like Windows, but it still has a long way to go. For example, installing a printer on Windows: plug it in - if Windows doesn't automatically recognize it, you may have to put in a CD and click Next for a minute or two. Done! I installed a printer on my Linux machine, and it took me (a fairly competent computer nerd) the better part of a weekend. However, to be fair, once it's installed on Linux, you'll have way fewer problems with it than you would on Windows.

Anyway, it's #3 that's causing me grief right now. I have a microphone that I'm trying to get working, and for whatever reason, it's just not working. It's not even a complicated one. No power, no nothing. Just a sound card plug at one end, and a speak-into thingy at the other. I suspect it'll be another weekend or two of heavy research and unintelligible command line work before I can actually use it to record my voice. Which is exactly what I'm looking for in a computer experience, but that's just me. :)

Post the 2nd

In today's adventure, Seagull Boy waited on the phone, on hold, to be taken off a mailing list. You probably know how aggravating this can be, but I think I've figured out a way around it. I believe I have found a way to make waiting on hold fun. (I fully expect a Nobel prize for this.) What you do is, at the start of the wait time, have a few options for the type of music you want to listen to. "For John Tesh, press 1. For Weird Al Yankovic, press 2. For Anthrax, featuring Celine Dion, press 3. etc." So right off the bat, you're listening to something of your own choosing, which helps. Then, if the music gets interrupted by that jerk saying how important your call is to them, you could press buttons to have things happen to that person, and they wouldn't come back. "Your call is important to us. You are an inherently valuable customer to us. We worship the ground you walk on. We'd do anything for you, your highness, except perhaps pick up the phone. We think you're just wonderf..." (Seagull Boy presses 3: 'pack of hyenas'.) "... oh ... oh no ... my god, not the hyenas again! No, please, anything but the..." (Screams, sounds of smarmy individual getting mauled by a couple dozen hyenas, followed by John Tesh coming back on.) That's also how you'd change the music. (Seagull Boy tires of John Tesh, so presses 7: Godzilla attack...)

All that waiting has made me hungry. I go now, to hunt and to gather. Wish me luck.

First post

Hello world!

(That's a hint as to what I do for a living. Sort it out on your own time.)

Anyway, this is my first post. I haven't really grasped the concept of blogging yet, so I'm going to go eat breakfast while I think about what to post. (Initial guess: a description of what I will have had for breakfast.)

Okay, I'm back, and I've officially had Nibs for breakfast. They're leftover from the movies last night, I went to see V For Vendetta, which was rather good. The only thing is, I sat on the opposite side of the theatre from where I usually sit, and it threw off my equilibrium or something. I now have a sore neck. Curses. I guess I'm one of those people who is best looking left. Kind of like someone who doesn't like turning left in a car, and makes all right turns to get where they're going. I tried that in my apartment the other day (without the car), and it makes you pretty dizzy, if you do it quickly. However, I was told it was at least mildly entertaining, so that's all right.

I forget what the point of this post was now, so I'd better quit.