Cannonball Capstone

Reading books takes more time and represents a more significant chunk of your life than a movie-viewing experience does. Movies will take three hours from your life, tops, and they’re solitary activities where generally you’re only watching that movie. But I carry books with me for weeks (even if I’m reading quickly, I tend to read a bunch of things simultaneously), and that book immediately assumes an instant association with the period in my life when I read it.

A movie can be re-watched with little effort, but to re-read a book is very much a commitment. Reviews are thus a much more integral step in the reading process, as I’ve learned during my epic failure of completing the Cannonball Read. A review helps to encapsulate how the book affected me and what I was thus feeling and experiencing during the period in which I read it. Before attempting the Cannonball (read 100 books in a year), I don’t think I’d ever written a book review. Now I have seven snapshots of my reading history since January 1, 2009.

I was simply too ambitious in this task, and I’ll own up to that. Though one of my books was nearly 900 pages in length (the amazing, awesome I Know This Much Is True), two of them were just barely over 200 pages. Though others seemed to glide past the finish line ahead of schedule, I struggled to average one book a month. All told, though, I’m glad I tried. I got to put together a list of books I want to read, which required research and a thirst for good literature, and I probably read more than if I hadn’t at least tried the ambitious task of 100 books in a year. And that alone is a triumph for me.

The Cannonball will be back starting November 1st, and I will be participating again. The challenge has been softened considerably: 52 books in a year. One book a week. Doable, right? Enh, probably not for me. But I will try. I think the caveat I’m going to put on myself is that all 52 books must be books I already own. I have way more books than I’ve actually read, but every book I own (for the most part) is a book that I’ve wanted to read.

All in all, though I failed miserably, I’m still glad I tried at the first round. And with the promise of a monetary donation to charity if you finish 52 books, maybe I’ll actually finish the damn thing this time around.

Or, y’know, fail miserably again.

Bening vs. Swank again?!

I just read an early rave of Mother and Child from Toronto, the viewer saying it’s got Oscar-bait written all over it and that Annette Bening is amazing in it.

So if the film gets picked up for distribution by the end of the year and Hilary Swank’s Amelia turns into the awards-bait it looks like, might we have a Swank/Bening showdown again? Oscar enthusiasts will remember that Swank narrowly beat Bening in 1999 and that Bening was Swank’s close competition in 2004 when Swank won for Million Dollar Baby. It has been five years, so I guess we’re due.

Though my money’s on Carey Mulligan. It has been since her buzz out of Sundance at the beginning of the year.

All texted up with nowhere to go

Throughout high school and a little bit into my first year of college, I kept a pretty regular blog over on Xanga, as did many of my close high school friends.

It’s beyond weird to look back at them and see what I thought were the big issues back then, what everyone else thought were their big issues, etc.

But as I looked over some past entries today, I started to wonder why we blog in the first place. I keep an extensive personal journal on the computer and have amassed nearly 600 pages chock full of tiny text and it’s great that I’ve been as diligent as I have because I can wonder what was going on five years ago and find an entry and read what I was thinking at the time. It’s pretty cool.

But what of this public blogging business? For the Xanga era, it was before any of us had a Facebook (back when Facebook was only for college students) or Myspace (hell, before Twitter even existed) and it was a nice way to get thoughts down on “paper” and get feedback from your friends. Looking back, it’s a time capsule, yes, but it was more of an of-the-moment thing that doesn’t really have all that much meaning.

The purpose of this blog is evolving as I waver between levels of commitment to updating. For the most part, it’s essentially a more informal version of What Ben Watches, a place where if I want to write a two-sentence review of a movie, I can and if I want to talk about music or books I can. It’s just a broader outlet.

Reading through some of my old Xanga, though, I started to wonder about five years from now and if I’ll look back on A Good Talk or Pancakes and think it was a waste of time or if it was useful. Who knows, of course, but for me, I think these sorts of personal blogs are a double-edged sword. They ostensibly keep us in touch with each other more, but at what cost? Twitter, I fear, is the most double-edged of them all. Every time I tweet or get a tweet from friends/family, it makes me feel more connected and up-to-date.

Is this a good thing, though? I’m curious to see what Web 3.0 is gonna look like, because it feels like the Web 2.0 thing is over the hump of relevance and is gonna start petering off soon. We all had our Myspaces, and at least in my social circle, we’ve ditched them. Facebook used to rule all, but I find myself using it less and less and finding it less and less useful, and I’m sure Twitter will run its course in no time and we’ll all stop using those, too.

And then what will we be left with? Massive archives of entries and responses on some server in some remote storage facility. I’m sure this is an overly pessimistic view of Web 2.0, but I feel like I’m getting to a point where I just want to throw everything out of my online routine and cease being so damned tied to my computer, y’know? Easier said than done.

I’m sure this was meandering at best, but… well, I’m curious what everyone thinks about this. Is Web 2.0 a permanent fixture in our lives or simply a step in an evolution of communication?

My one worry about American Idol

…is that if Kris Allen wins, the media will latch onto some false notion that Adam lost because he’s (supposedly) gay.

I’m gay. I voted for Kris. Theory debunked. :-)

Seriously, though, the finale was just alright. Everyone’s already fired up about how terrible the Kara-penned “No Boundaries” song was and while I’m not about to defend it, I will say that it came across as a really difficult song to sing, chord-wise and word-wise. So many words to get in and a lot of weird chord modulation stuff going on, so they basically stacked the cards against Adam and Kris (though I thought Kris did marginally better on the song than Adam).

Anyway, that’s about all I want to say about the show. It probably speaks to Glee’s strength that most people are buzzing about that than about Idol. I can’t wait to catch up with it on TiVo.

Gettin’ new digs?

It’s great how your life can kind of turn on a dime and all of a sudden, you realize when you go to bed that something completely different has changed.

Perhaps this is a small example, but in the space of the last, oh, three hours, the possibility of moving became a very real possibility. My current roommate Michelle, our one-time semi-roommate Brendon, and I all got dinner tonight and somehow the idea came up about moving and as I write this now, it’s looking like a very real possibility that we’re gonna move.

The idea is that our location where Michelle and I are now isn’t ideal. It’s in Hollywood, but kind of in the jankier part of the city. Out of curiosity, we looked at a complex that we both were really interested in and it turns out that there are units available that range in price from cheaper than our current place to just a little more expensive than our current place. And Brendon is looking to get out of his current living situation by June 1st, so…

I dunno. It’s very exciting when something like this happens. When you realize that you have it within your power to drastically change an integral part of your existence. I’m remembered of the days when zefrank’s video blog was still around (aw… forgot how much I miss that). He did an episode centering on the conceit of “Bust That Cycle.” I’m paraphrasing, and perhaps incorrectly, but the general conceit was that we become so ingrained in our daily routines and simply accept our surroundings and the constants in our lives as unchanging that we get stuck in that rut. He advocated for busting that cycle. For doing something in your day that completely goes against what you would do in autopilot (not to get kind of a tie in to Click or anything).

Tonight, it feels like we busted that cycle. The possibility presented itself and it feels like something that would be such a fresh change. Our current apartment is totally fine, but we certainly have begun to feel suffocated. Stifled. Hopefully, we’ll get a new place in this complex that we both love – the location’s so much better, the complex is a lot nicer with a lot of included amenities, and it would just be much more freeing to live there. Our current building has seven units and is surrounded by barbed wire. It’s just a very depressing place to have to live.

Anyway, I’m very excited by this development, and on a broader scale, excited for what this development represents. It represents the idea that change is possible, and that change can come when you least expect it.

I’m so bad at this whole blogging thing

I know I know I know, I’m a horrible person. But to those who actually read this: sorry. I’ve been terrible about updating. For some reason, I find it easier to find time to update this when I’m working and bored at work. ::shrugs:: Whoops.

But yes, I have indeed been unemployed for a month now. My post-production gig ended (and the show’s almost done airing, too), and the waters have been stagnant ever since. I’ve been fine financially-speaking for the time-being, so it’s actually been kind of nice having all this free time. Though it’s taken up until now for me to kick it into high gear and actually apply for stuff and try to write and try to power through some reading.

Basically, we always want the opposite of what we have – when I was employed, I would have KILLED for this much free time and now that I have it, I find myself longing for full-time employment just because it adds structure to my day. During these in-between bouts of unemployment, it becomes startlingly clear how bad I can be at time management.

So I’ve been admittedly slacking off for a while with intermittent bursts of productivity, but I’m trying to turn it around. Hopefully I’ll be putting this time to good use.

Onwards! Things I’ve been loving:

This music video:

LOVE LOVE LOVE this song, and the accompanying video is awesome, gorgeous, and all-around tops. I never thought I’d love Lily Allen so much, but this bodes well.

This book:

I’m only a couple dozen pages in, but so much shit goes down in this book! It’s so tense, well-written, and engrossing. And it’s 900 pages long! I have no idea how Wally Lamb can keep up the pace, but I’m excited to see him rise to the challenge.

The act of trying to get through this book:

Man, what a tome of a book this is. Snow Crash is a justifiable modern-day classic, but Anathem is an ungodly beast of a project to read. But I like the challenge. It’s one of those alternate-worlds books with a huge glossary in the back that you have to keep flipping to, but the alternate world that Stephenson creates is one where mathematicians (I think) sequester themselves from the outside world in convents. They’re like monks, but monks who do math and have philosophical discussions. Long philosophical discussions. But it’s kind of a fun project (for me, at least) to try and get through the novel. It’s another big book: over 900 pages, but there’s something oddly engrossing about the whole thing. It’s like just by writing it, Stephenson has challenged the reader to actually finish it, and I kind of want to play his game and finish the book. At least so I can say that the longest book I’ve read isn’t Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

So yeah, Cannonball hasn’t been forgotten, but um, it’s been… not a top priority, though I have absolutely no excuse with all this free time. My style of reading is to have like, ten books in progress at a time, which is how it is right now, so I’ve probably read the equivalent of a couple more books, but it’s spread out over 50-70 pages each in ten books. Whoops.

And hopefully I’ll be better about updating in here, for those who have been paying attention. :-)

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun

Of course today’s inauguration of Barack Obama as our nation’s 44th President is all kinds of historical.  That’s a given.

This morning I had to drive about an hour to do a drop-off for work in Santa Monica, so I caught pretty much everything in the car, listening to NPR.  And as I drove down Santa Monica Blvd., I couldn’t help but cry.  Like, literally cry at the magnitude of today’s significance.  And for some reason, the ensemble classical piece by John Williams seemed incredibly fitting in tone.  When Itzhak Perlman started getting all virtuosic on his violin, there was such a freeing sense in the music.  All the disparate instruments (and how disparate were they?  I mean honestly: piano, violin, cello, and barely-there clarinet?) seemed to be going nuts with their own lines but were still playing together as a unified whole and I started crying.  I cried in my car because I had no other way of expressing my immense joy.

For what feels like the first time, I am absolutely 100% proud to be an American.  I wear the badge with honor now and feel as though the country is finally headed in a direction that I can get on board with.  And I think that sentiment is true for most of my generation, so if nothing else, Obama has been successful thus far instilling a sense of patriotism back into the population at large.  I felt today that I wanted to pursue a career in politics.  Like I wanted to enact change.  Like I wanted to become an active citizen and stop being passive about issues I care about.  And this is from someone who isn’t generally moved to do such things.

I also found Elizabeth Alexander’s poem to be quite fitting as well.  (Whomever programmed this thing did a top-notch job.)

But on an even more serious note:

That hat? Honey, no.  That is a bedazzled bow.  HSN would turn that away with the note “too tacky.”  Love you, Aretha.

Obligatory update where I explain why there haven’t been too terribly many updates around here in the recent weeks.

I got my paycheck for last week’s work-week today.  Here’s a breakdown of my week:

Regular rate: 40 hours
Regular overtime (1.5 rate): 20 hours
Doubletime: 10.5 hours
6th day rate: 12 hours

So I guess I even topped out on overtime hours, pushing me into doubletime.  This is a roundabout way of explaining my total consumption by work right now…  Alas, not a lot of reading has been accomplished, and general upkeep of this site has been sparse, but it seems that things are a little less crazy ’round these office parts.  (Though I am thoroughly pleased with the robust check I was cut for this week.)

I have managed to watch some good TV, though, so hopefully I’ll be getting some thoughts up about the current season of Damages (loving it), the current season of Real World (FINALLY loving it again) and hopefully you’ll be seeing a Breaking Dawn review up here soon.  My weekend is clear, so it’s time to detox, catch up on missed reading, and generally regenerate some forward motion.  :-)

Trying to be good about updating.

I wish I had my first Cannonball book review for you, but I’m still slogging through the final hundredish pages of Eclipse at the moment.  Hopefully I can finish tonight and have my thoughts for you soon (spoiler: they won’t be the kindest words I’ve ever written), but for now I’m at the office, waiting for the clock to strike seven so I can head home to Chinese food that Michelle will have hopefully ordered.  We’re so married – God.

Workin’ hard for the money

I’m currently working in a post-production house working for a Reality TV show.  And they have a list of approved songs that need to be downloaded.

Guess who gets to download them?

I’m a fairly intelligent person.  I got two kinds of honors from college (two kinds!) and I am totally qualified.

But you gotta work your way up from the bottom, right?

And right now, the bottom means spending my Saturday trolling LimeWire.

If anyone has any ideas about what to do to pass the time in between searches and downloads, I’m all ears.