A Temporary Revival

It's confession time.

Back in my high school days, my friends and I became enamored with butt rock. It all started when we were at Goodwill shopping for some props for a History class skit. We found some old butt rock concert t-shirts for $0.99 (Def Leppard and Judas Priest were the originals). They were threadbare black tshirts, pictured men with leather pants, big hair, and triangular guitars. We bought them and spent the next two years collecting all the shirts we could find, and, even as a joke, listened to the bands' music...

"Why in the *$@# would you do that??" is a perfectly valid -- albeit a little obscene -- question. It wasn't because we actually liked it, or thought they were talented. I think it's for the same reason that shows like "Ripley's Believe it or Not," or people like that less-than-no-talent Asian guy that appeared on "American Idol" a few years back got famous. It was pure fascination that this genre of music, not to mention the associated culture and lifestyle, dominated the music scene and actually sold albums for a decade.

Did it get to the point where I ordered the "Power Ballads" collection from those infomercials?...almost. But high school ended, and butt rock was left by the wayside, neglected and forgotten...and rightfully so.

Until just recently. This past week I got invited to go to an 80's cover band concert: The Legwarmers. My initial motivation was to people-watch -- these kind of activities, much like medieval gatherings, have the tendency to bring the freaks out of the woodwork -- but as the band started playing, a distant echo from high school came back to me. I think it started when they played "99 Red Balloons", Tiffany's "I Think We're Alone Now" (repressed memories of TME shaking his thang in a towel came flashing back), moved to "Thunderstruck" by AC/DC, then topped it off with that Def Leppard classic: "Pour Some Sugar on Me."

Some other highlights: The drummer coming out in a full Storm Trooper uniform, helmet and all, and playing for a good full hour before he took it off; the keyboardist with wispy blonde hair, wind-swept by a conveniently placed fan under her keyboard; the groupies at the front of the crowd looking to sleep with any band member they could get their hands on.

The concert was great. Do I wish the 80s returned? Hell no. In fact, I'm glad that I was too young to remember any of it. But it sure is fun to have a short, temporary revival every once in a while. Special emphasis on short. And temporary.

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"Who writes this crap?"

Sometimes when I get on a blog-writing roll, I feel like I'm a decent writer. But then I run into stuff like this, and I am truly humbled:

Source: http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/tpa/409930561.html

Survival Of The Fittest

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Date: 2007-08-30, 2:03PM EDT


Whenever I get a package of plain M&Ms, I make it my duty to continue the strength and robustness of the candy as a species. To this end, I hold M&M duels.

Taking two candies between my thumb and forefinger, I apply pressure, squeezing them together until one of them cracks and splinters. That is the "loser," and I eat the inferior one immediately. The winner gets to go another round.

I have found that, in general, the brown and red M&Ms are tougher, and the newer blue ones are genetically inferior. I have hypothesized that the blue M&Ms as a race cannot survive long in the intense theater of competition that is the modern candy and snack-food world.

Occasionally I will get a mutation, a candy that is misshapen, or pointier, or flatter than the rest. Almost invariably this proves to be a weakness, but on very rare occasions it gives the candy extra strength. In this way, the species continues to adapt to its environment.

When I reach the end of the pack, I am left with one M&M, the strongest of the herd. Since it would make no sense to eat this one as well, I pack it neatly in an envelope and send it to M&M Mars, A Division of Mars, Inc., Hackettstown, NJ 17840-1503 U.S.A., along with a 3x5 card reading, "Please use this M&M for breeding purposes."

This week they wrote back to thank me, and sent me a coupon for a free 1/2 pound bag of plain M&Ms. I consider this "grant money." I have set aside the weekend for a grand tournament. From a field of hundreds, we will discover the True Champion.

There can be only one.

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Movie Review, Round Two: Bourne Ultimatum

I know your mom always used positive language with you when you were little and made a point not to use "never" with you regarding what you could or could not do when you grew up.

I have come to clear up any misconceptions about yourself that this kind of optimistic fluff may have caused.

You will never be able to out-think an entire team of CIA agents as quickly as Matt Damon, nor will you be able to physically dismantle them one-by-one (or collectively, for that matter) as he does. You will never be able to drive a motorized vehicle like Matt Damon. You will never be able to track someone down and make them pay for whatever they did to you like Matt Damon. Oh, and you will never be able to do a Matthew McConaughey impression as well as Matt Damon.

Now that we've established reality and dispersed years of disillusionment (and shattered dreams...sorry 'bout that), I want to talk about The Bourne Ultimatum, which I just saw for the second time.

First word that comes to mind: Riveting. The plot does well at wrapping up a lot of the questions raised in the previous movies, but when viewed as a movie separate from the previous two, it unrolls methodically, building momentum until the end, and you are glued in your seat and don't want to miss a second -- even if you've had too much Diet Coke and the world's smallest bladder.*

The characters aren't complicated, but you've spent Identity and Supremacy with Matt Damon as Jason Bourne and you're attached to him. As I mentioned, the plot is solid, and each scene that would normally be considered cliche in a spy movie is given a unique element / twist so that you never think "Oh, this is the same old..." I know some people have complained about the "hand-held camera" shooting of scenes in the previous Bourne movies, but it seemed like this time around the cinematographer had begun drinking around noon when shooting the film as opposed to the usual 9am of his Supremacy-filming days, so this greatly decreases the likelihood of motion sickness.

I don't have a rating system, but whatever a "strongly urge in a non-coercive way" translates to in stars, or thumbs up, or percentages, I'm assigning that rating to The Bourne Ultimatum.

Endnote: Given his presence in the Ocean's movies, Saving Private Ryan and others, I realize that I may have a developing non-sexual man-crush on Matt Damon. I am taking stock and will get back to you on it.

*Interesting note on the range of my Japanese lexicon. I know the seemingly random word for 'bladder' because I needed to explain to my Japanese companions why I was going to the bathroom constantly.

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Simple Steps to Great Anime Hair

Sitting in the grocery store, you're almost forced to read the magazines / tabloids because apparently the checkers are all secretly taking part in some sort of competition in which they try to get the most people to leave their line because they are moving so slowly. The majority of the magazines at grocery store checkout stands have covers that read "10 simple steps to great skin!", "5 Easy Ways to Bail Out of Relationship You Don't Want to Be In", or "Great Abs in 8 Days" (the answer to which, at least partially, is do not buy the Snickers bar directly underneath the magazine), or some other such title.

After my obviously frustrating trip to the grocery store today, I picked up some friends from the airport, and when I stepped out of the car, one of them -- who definitely isn't even into this -- said: "Holy crap. You look like one of those anime characters. That's awesome!"

Those two experiences today, coupled with my voiced disdain for JapAnime, are the basis for this entry. I'll admit that whether I like anime or not, the glimpses I've seen of the characters' hair are pretty sweet.

Backtracking the steps that culminated into my hair attaining such unbridled awesomeness, I decided to make the only blog entry in which I disperse fashion advice, knowing full well that there is a less than 1% chance anyone will do this. I call it 7 Simple Steps to great anime hair. Why 7? Probably because it's all I could come up with:

1) Be part-Asian, or at least of an ethnicity that inclines you to having hair that is thick, straight, and doesn't like to move once it's set.
1a) Clarifying the meaning of 'part', this would mean at least 1/4 Asian. Anything less than this, and you can forget about it: You were born a generation too late and should proceed to blame your parents for not marrying into more diversity.
1b) If you are not of Asian descent but have similar hair, you are at a decided disadvantage because even if you go through with the steps and get the hair right, pulling off the entire anime look is going to be much more tough. This is not racial. It is fact.

2) Don't cut your hair for at least three months.

3) I know you're probably guessing "lots of gel." This is only partially true. Your 'gel' has to be so sticky that it is categorized as a borderline adhesive, and can be found in both the Home Repair and Hair Products Departments of the store.

4) The gel needs to have sat overnight, meaning you applied it after you took a shower yesterday morning.

5) Instead of taking your normal morning shower, go and play a sport that requires a lot of running:
5a) preferably soccer;
5b) preferably for at least an hour and a half;
5c) preferably in 90% humidity so that you are drenched with sweat.

6) Be occupied with running errands after playing the sport from (5) that you can't take a shower immediately after.

7) Take useless pictures of your hair and make a blog entry about it.

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Movie Review: "Transformers" at IMAX

That's right. You read the title correctly, and you'd better believe I'm gonna go there.

I decided this past Saturday that I needed a respite from my rigorous college-football-watching schedule and went with a bunch of guy friends to check out "Transformers" on IMAX. Something about throwback movies based on favorite childhood cartoons brings guys together. I can't explain it.

It's cliched, I know, but I guess in some ways we're all still children at heart, and "Transformers" has this inexplicable way of being almost generationally defining -- not in the sense that Vietnam defined a generation...please, I'm not stupid enough to make that poor of an analogy -- in the sense that if the Transformers cartoon gets brought up in a conversation, all guys in the group who watched it as a kid automatically belong to an unspoken brotherhood. Or how about the one kid in intermediate school who inevitably wrote his "My Hero" report on Optimus Prime.

Anyway. Transformers. Important to my generation. Not the point of this entry.

I like to think as I've gotten older and supposedly more mature (that's debatable), I've come to enjoy movies for any of the following reasons: good humor, good dialogue, character development, intricate plot lines, the ability to engage me emotionally...and sure, maybe even the chance to sit around afterwards and talk about it with friends and family.

"Transformers" had none of these, yet I still enjoyed it, because I got exactly what I expected when I walked in: poor dialogue, cheesy lines, zero character development (I walked out of the theater wondering why they couldn't have at least delved into the hidden complexities of Starscream's brooding character a bit more), a plot line that had me continually asking "Wait, couldn't they just have...?" and "How were they able to...?", and characters that could have all died and I could have cared less, with the exception of Optimus Prime. It was 2+ hours of action, explosions, car chases, and CG robots duking it out, and it was awesome. Don't think we weren't cheering periodically throughout the movie. That's really all there was to it.

More than meets the eye? Not even close.

But that's not why I went.

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