A Bowl of Stupid

Steve Jobs had to have seen this one coming a mile away. It sounds like a tampon, for Christ’s sake!!

(A photo from Cosmopolitan Magazine of newly elected Republican Scott Brown, who won the Massachusetts U.S. Senate seat held by the late Democrat Edward M. Kennedy for nearly half a century)

See, its not that the Democrats are playing checkers and the Republicans are playing chess. It’s that the Republicans are playing chess and the Democrats are in the nurse’s office because once again they glued their balls to their thighs.

-John Stewart, on the election of Republican Scott Brown and the resulting (probable) failure of the Democratically controlled White House and Congress to pass health care reform

A photo of Bin Laden from 1998 (left) was digitally altered using elements from an image of Gaspar Llamazares, a Spanish politician who has said he was shocked to find out the FBI had used his photo for a digitally-altered image showing how Osama Bin Laden might look. (click image above for full story)

Dear FBI Profilers, although I am of Middle Easern descent, please don’t “borrow” any of my Facebook and/or Flickr photos to use for a digitally-altered image showing how Osama Bin Laden might look. Thank you and good luck. xoxo

Your friend,
-Bowl

So, needless to say, we’ve been making some minor modifications to the site recently. It’s not that I really wanted to (hell, I’ve barely anything coherent to write about anymore), but due to software incompatibility issues, I was forced to upgrade my version of WordPress.

I’m still checking out the new application, but I’ve already had to make some formatting changes and there may be more. If anyone is conversant in WordPress 2.8 or higher and has any suggestions re: themes, widgets, and any other neat stuff that’s been released over the past … oh, say four (4) years or so, please lemme know. (and for Sasquach, you’ll be happy to know the latest version has an auto-save function, if you’re in the mood to do some guest writing — ‘cha!, as if!).

In the midst of all these formatting and software changes, I somehow managed to fit in a few of the movies that came out back in the States over the last several months. And while I was disappointed with a couple of those flix — Up In The Air & Where The Wild Things Are being the biggest of them — I was absolutely overwhelmed by yet another — 500 Days of Summer.

From what I’ve read, the movie has gone from media darling to industry goat in only a matter of months. I’m no longer back in that scene, so I’ve no idea how or why the hipsters have reacted to this movie, admittedly geared directly towards their dilated pupils.

The reaction, like the audience, is reminiscent of the response following Zach Braff’s Garden State. Each of the two movies do admittedly follow the love lives of a couple of 20-something neo-hipsters, they both make use of absolutely remarkable musical soundtracks, and both feature the locale as much as the characters (New Jersey and Los Angeles, respectfully).

But from there, the comparisons begin to slide — at least in my mind. Whereas Garden State got bogged down in trifling melancholy and predictable plot development, Summer instead plotted a truer course — mostly due to its beautiful screenplay and the charisma of its two leading actors, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel.

Their portrayal of what happens, not what movies tell us should or do happen, but what ACTUALLY happens during the course of a relationship is not something I recall seeing in a movie in recent memory, if ever. I’ve been in situations where each of the two of them were portraying in the movie — and I felt as if it could have been my life being depicted onscreen. That is art. That is talent. That is relating to your audience. That is how to properly tell a story — by letting your audience feel as if it were their own.

For me, there are much bigger forces behind my particular attachment with the movie, which I really don’t feel like going into at the moment. But I feel the need to post at least one more song from (and artfully used in) the movie — Regina Spector’s Hero. Unless something significant comes up in the interim, I’ve no doubt I’ll post more in the coming days.

One of the downsides to shopping your wares in a horrible market — one of the MANY downsides — is that it leaves you with little or no time to pursue your own pet-projects, like say … a travel / surf / entertainment blog with an ever-diminishing readership.

Hell, even with regular full-time work, I was able to stuff in a few 30 minute sectors here and there to put together something almost remotely interesting. Now, all my free time is spent pursuing contacts, going to networking events, or getting a 250 baht foot massage (Hey, it’s an investment!). I sometimes manage to fit in a look at one or two of my favorite “regular” web sites here and there. But it’s not much …

For that reason, I’m basically stealing this latest post directly from Chez — who has managed to remain much better connected (and prolific) than I of late. From the (500) Days of Summer soundtrack — yet another movie I’ve not yet had the chance to see — here’s The Temper Trap’s Sweet Disposition. Awesome track. It’s nice to see music returning to the business of … well, music.