How long has it been

Why yes reader, it has been a while. You must be wond'ring what i've been up to. What has happened to Viet? Where has he gone and where has he gone to? Is it a place with hummingbirds? Numerous gorgeous women perhaps. Maybe a llama.


Alas reader, all of the above are erroneous. Though were they, had they, could that they were true it would indeed have made for a wonderful story indeed. A story in fact, to regale you with mirth and humor and make you smile like you did while you were an infant watching Barney, blissfully unaware that the anthropomorphic dinosaur was an unholy creation borne of The Womb of Satan (c). But all is not the case, I have not been on epic travels, I have instead been refurnishing my room in the most extreme manner possible: with paint.

Now Viet, as many an astute reader might note, wouldn't a more extreme form of renovation be to actually BLOW UP your room? Indeed, but reader what you do not understand about this paint is that it is GREEN.

behold, a green room

And not only is this paint green, it is green only on two walls of the room. Two adjacent walls are green, the other two adjacent walls are also green albeit a slightly darker shade. The last touch was the chinese lanterns purchased recently from San Francisco's Chinatown. Together it transforms what was originally an ordinary room into now an ordinary room that bears a striking similarity to a Japanese restaurant. Astute readers may also note at this point that I just mentioned that the depicted lanterns were purchased in Chinatown, therefore there is no possible way that the room could look like a Japanese restaurant. Fortunately those same readers have been told to shut the hell up and read like the rest of us do.

Other than renovating my room, I too have two products to plug to you as strongly as I can. One is Across the Universe, something that i've been harping for quite a while now but have only recently been able to see. And as all the major reviewers have contributed their opines upon the matter, I feel it is only fitting that as a major reviewer (a lie) I contribute my opinion so that I may be paid exorbiant amounts of money for simply observing other people's works and criticizing it (also a lie).

Across the Universe is a muddled mess of a picture. It is at times eye-rollingly melodramatic, the first reel commits to big-screen release some of the same cliches that brought to life the undead amalgam creature that was Bratz: The Movie. It is uneven, poorly-characterized, and at times so banally literal that you could be as unabashedly vulgar as Seth from "Superbad" and still be more subtle than this movie's interpretations of the Beatles songs.

So why am I recommending it?

Because for all its' follies and flaws, its mediocrity portions and uneven execution, and nonexistent plotting, its triumphs are astounding and utterly mind-blowing. Taymor has created the ultimate love song to the Beatles via their own music, doing nothing with the work but thematically linking them all together in the lives of 5 20-somethings in the 60s. It is not an inventive device, but plot hardly matters in a movie where image, interpretation and spectacle are on display so utterly and entirely.

It is where Taymor brings her own work to the table, be it with an acapella arrangement of singing 20-somethings in a field of grass or a mechanical carousel of morphine-injecting salma hayeks, that the work gains its greatest heights of spectacle, wonder, and amazing visual interpretation.

Scenes like the above mentioned, and various others (none of which spring to this reviewer's mind at the moment) are so utterly enjoyable and fantastic in their conception and execution that it almost makes up for the ticket price of awkwardly written college student dialogue and early drama that ring of nothing but page 309 in the writer's guide to movie cliches

much props to asian-american actress T.V. Carpio for getting so much screen time as a asian-american lesbian from ohio turned hippie playing not a caricature but a fairly believeable portrait of an asian-american citizen. Save for the very odd phenomena whereby parents in this movie are either cliched in speech or entirely nonpresent

So in the end Across the Universe should be treated like your children, should you have or ever have them. Forgive its flaws, appreciate it for what it is, and you will enjoy it. You might return to it someday, but enjoy it for what it is, where it is great. Because when it soars, it soars higher than any musical in recent or past history has ever gone before. So enjoy it where it is, where it will be remembered, and where it'll go soaring Across the Universe.

And seeing as how that's such a frigging awesome ending, i'm just going to call this post quits where it is and call her off 'till later reader. I will see you where the sun rises to the west again.

-Viet

From the Wiki article entitled "Loneliness"

American Buddhist monk Ajahn Sumedho taught: "We suffer a lot in our society from loneliness. So much of our life is an attempt to not be lonely: 'Let's talk to each other; let's do things together so we won't be lonely.' And yet inevitably, we are really alone in these human forms. We can pretend; we can entertain each other; but that's about the best we can do. When it comes to the actual experience of life, we're very much alone; and to expect anyone else to take away our loneliness is asking too much."

Harold Weis: The Giant James Broland

In 1932 Harold Weis dreamt of becoming a superstar named James Broland. He dreamt it was 1982, he had black hair and a wide-set mustache that covered his face from side to side. He stepped up to the microphone, spotlights glared down upon him from the rafters above. He stared out into the crowd and beheld a giant stadium of empty seats.

Disappointed, he dreamt he moved time forwards into the few hours of the night ahead where he played on his guitar before a crowd of millions and millions of fans admirers and observers who crowded into the open auditorium where he had just hours before stared and beheld nothing. To him it seemed unreal. Behind him his face projected onto a screen 75 times his height and width, a gigantic explosion of his persona onto a canvas larger than any man had any right being. He dreamt he grew to that size, his persona switching with the screen as the screen became his size and he grew to the size of the screen.

Below him his fans still cheered, the writhing, jumping masses of people enraptured, engaged, enthralled by the sound of his playing; James Broland: The Giant.

That night The Giant played as he never had before and never would again in his life. The songs sprung from his hands and lips to the ears of the crowd below and into the heavens above. Harold Weis lost himself to James Broland, and James Broland sang a quiet anthem to the universe above where it registered nothing, except for the tiny movement of an asteroid that felt the vibration from the earth and shifted a pebble in modest applause.

And back on earth James Broland played in his moment, the man 75 times larger than the other men played on his guitar the size of a starship to the crowd below who crooned their sighs and breaths of thanks.

But as soon as it happened James Broland found himself slowly falling, he began to shrink again as the heavens made their ways away from him and while he had then heard the faint trumpeting of the angels at the gates of heaven when he was The Giant, James Broland the man shrank to the empty stage beneath the gaze of the endless universe above him and once more beheld an empty auditorium. His guitar was still his, as it was, unable to float the tiny island of Palau to safety. He was once more James Broland, the dreamt creation of Harold Weis from 1932.

But for a moment Harold dreamt a moment more and as James Broland he stared off into the heavens and looked to the skies for answers to what it meant.

And the universe answered nothing.




Save for a pebble on an asteroid.

Joint Project

Because this has gotten out of hand of late I've joined together with my good friend Rose to run this project to get myself comfortable in my own skin. We've yet to come up with a title but in lieu of thinking of anything honestly truly serious i think i'll go with Project Positive, which I shall only be referring to as (P.P.) henceforth. Thus begins the first in a hopefully productive ego-boosting sessions because if you know me at all you know that I ain't got shit for self-confidence.

PP

My name is Viet, I am 20 years old and I have never been in a relationship because I am waiting to find the right person or rather I am waiting for the right person to find me

I am smart, I am funny, I am sensitive and kind and romantic. I could be there for you when you're sad, be there with you when you're happy and be charming when you need me to be. I can sing, I can write, I believe in pusuing life and love above all other things and I'm worth having, I'm worth being with, and I'm only single because you haven't found me yet.

I could love you the way you're supposed to be loved, I could be everything you dreamed of, minus Paul Rudd and that odd fetish for feet. I am me, and we deserve each other. And it will happen.

Apologies, reader for you having to read this, but it seems a necessary exercise on my part. We'll see if it bears any fruit. (If it does not, this is all Rose's fault)

Paste

There's paste between my fingernails.

I'm sorry, please don't be mad at me.

Happiness is 80 degrees of magic

I've been happier today than I have been in a long long while and it is for a few reasons (listed below)

- I've been able to play the Guild Wars Expansion Pack: Eye of the North

-The temperature in Irvine has been able to drop below the mind-melting high of x>100 degrees

-I discovered where I'm most comfortable and witty when I'm in Irvine (Best Buy, any time any of y'all want to see me at my A-game, it's there)

-New, glorious foam pillow that makes sleeping on anything literally a breeze and a half. Everyone must have one. Now. So, if you want one, leave me a comment and I shall (maybe) send one your way, I've an extra.

-The Happy Fairie hit me over the head with her Happy Stick(tm)

Day 2: The Madness Begins

It has been roughly 3-quarters of the time that I've spent away from Guild Wars and I am beginning to fall silently, but surely into a spiralling morass of madness and wickedness. Do you hear that sound? That is the sound of a man who is left with no more options, without purpose and reason in his life. Only this time last year did my gaming hard drive crash handily into the ground, taking with it several year's worth of downloaded games, and any means of entertainment outside of online gaming. While at the time this was not a crime, I see now that in depriving myself of an entertainment medium devoid of "Rules of Conduct", I may have exhibited some short-sightedness in making ripe the perfect conditions for this travesty against humanity (i.e., my current situation) to have been instigated.


That sentence prior was not particularly well-made, but what can one do. I know this blog has very few readers, it may even have none. But let me say to you readers, reader, or Nil, the existential stranger that by 12 AM tomorrow morning if I have not flown to Australia to brutally murder Alfred Nolan of Sydney Australia, living at 19533 Almond way in the 13th district by the Nuclear Energy facility across from the bay, I will be playing with rapt fascination, Guild Wars.

And it will be good.


And in the event that it's not up by then, Alfred Nolan, I've a plane ride to Australia.

Heat

The heat in California has since gotten so awful that literally I am only able to operate fully at night. It is so hot I can't even joke about it anymore. Meanwhile I am still suspended from Guild Wars. Life is meaningless. Waiting on roughly 2 days from now. Until then, nothing funny. Without my videogames I am nothing but a shell, sans Ghost.