Monthly Archives: April 2011

Jesse Eisenberg and Aziz Ansari?

Umm, yes please.

1. Iron Council – China Miéville

This book was fantastic. How to describe it though… how about: a western that read lots of weird fiction and then did mushrooms.

One character, Judah, is one of my favorite ever. Seriously.

——————————————————————–

2. The Foundation Trilogy – Isaac Asimov

These books were recommended to me in high school by my friend Dave, and they’ve been on my to-read list ever since. Finally, I have read them.

I’m only through the original trilogy, but I’ll read the other four soon enough.

It’s tight, simple prose telling a science fiction story focused more on sociology than space ships, although there are certainly plenty of space ships, too. I’m excited to delve further into the fiction of Isaac Asimov.

——————————————————————–

3. Rendezvous with Rama – Arthur C. Clarke

The hard sci-fi to beget all future hard sci-fi, Clarke unveils the most original and stunning sci-fi civilization as if it’s no big deal. The attention to scientific detail is so engaging. There’s a reason the major British sci-fi award is named after this guy.

——————————————————————–

4. The Complete Stories – Flannery O’Connor

I finally got around to reading O’Connor. It’s really amazing reading a life’s work of short stories because you get to experience their growth as a writer before your eyes, in just 500 pages or so. O’Connor writes of the soul of the arrogant, white, protestant southerner with an honesty, hilarity, compassion, and contempt that are each startling in their turns. She was really great at pulling the rug out from under a reader, or even just punching you in the diaphragm.

——————————————————————–

5. Falconer – John Cheever

Cheever’s most famous work, a prison drama set in New York. Cheever writes unflinchingly of depravity without ceasing to care for his characters. He wrote of the darkness and perversity within the white, wealthy, Connecticut/Westchester County, country club set of the 50’s and 60’s in the same way O’Connor wrote about the south.

The Old Spice guy is still lobbying to become Luke Cage, and apparently he’s even met with Marvel.

That would be awesome on every possible level.

My first Bruce Lee movie. That’s probably hard for some of you to believe, but there it is.

I’ll share some impressions and surprises from my experience watching the film.

1. The dubbing is as hilarious as the parodies make it out to be, which is funny because it’s actually an English language movie. They just had really terrible sound techs or something.

2. Bruce Lee was so fucking fast! I mean, I know that internationally he’s the most famous martial artist in history, but I still had no idea. There were scenes in the film where I thought they must have played with the film speed to make him look faster, but then they’d have a scene with people in the background to show that the film speed was normal. He really was that fast! Uncanny.

3. This film had so much humor, both of the intentional and unintentional variety. It was a perfect storm. I bet it would be a fun movie to watch high.

4. I knew Bruce Lee was an international film star, I knew he was a famous fight/martial arts choreographer, but I didn’t realize what sort of actor he was. Clearly this is tempered by the sort of film it was, this is a very particular genre that I can’t speak of in detail because my journey learning about it is just beginning. Still, this dude was the real deal. Just his facial expressions were enough to indicate that he was wildly intelligent. In a film where most of the dialogue was washed over because of the terrible dubbing, he was able to use eye rolls, random expressions, grins, and glares to make it quite clear to the audience that he was the smartest guy in the room and also a BAMF.

5. No other action star I’ve encountered approaches anything near the sheer animal magnetism of Lee’s personality. Even with all the dated aspects of the film, and there were many, he was still electric onscreen.

6. I’m excited for future Kung-Fu movies, if for no other reason than an excuse to have more exposure to Bruce Lee.

Game of Thrones is finally here! HBO appears to have done it again.

If the first episode is any indication, this show is going to be wonderful. Watching last night made me wish that all my favorite books were going to get their own HBO series, which makes me even more excited that American Gods is potentially on its way to my Home Box Office.

Good lord, I just wish I could have watched the whole series last night.

I look forward to checking in with people who haven’t read the books. I’m pretty sure the show was awesome either way, but I’m aware that for me so much of my joyous nerdgasm came from how brilliantly they were bringing Martin’s world to life. With a few fair exceptions, the casting is absolutely inspired. They made some small changes already to the story, which perhaps will lead to more. Still, the episode was perfect. Perfect, I tell you!

I’m hoping to watch it again tonight with Emily.

Five movies I watched this year, for the first time, that actually help me aspire to be a better person. Perhaps in very different ways, each of these films helped me see something beautiful in being human and helped me toward trying to be a more gracious and loving person.

———————————————————————–

1. 127 Hours (or, for that matter, all Danny Boyle movies)

———————————————————————–

2. Ponyo and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (or, for that matter, all Hayao Miyazaki movies)

———————————————————————–

3. City of God

———————————————————————-

4. Stalker

———————————————————————-

5. The Bicycle Thief 

Stephen Colbert, as everyone now knows, is incredibly awesome.

He is more proof (as if we needed any) …

(couldn’t embed, so here is a link)

Proof. Awesome, awesome proof.

I suppose when you are tossed a big, fat meatball right down the middle of the plate in the form of “not intended to be a factual statement”, it is hard not to hit it out of the park. In this case Colbert absolutely demolished it. Oh, and then there’s the whole Walgreen’s thing. W. T. F. My goodness … do these people hear what comes out of their mouths??? But thank God for them, their stupidity, and thank God more for Stephen Colbert!

People use all sorts of odd search terms to find Roused to Mediocrity, but we finally have one search to rule them all.

Today, someone found the site using the search: ‘what does a girl butt feel like’

I still haven’t discovered what post they visited, but if they added us to their RSS feed, Welcome!!

There’s that huge space above the bed, we haven’t decided on anything to put there yet. Also, in the office we haven’t put anything on our trip map yet, so now it’s just a map of the US on the wall…