Scratching my head over my scratching

There is something eating away at me and I don’t know what it is.  I thought it was bed bugs.  I thought it was dry skin.  But it’s not.  I don’t know what it is, but it’s starting to scare me.  It keeps getting worse.  I don’t think I’m contagious, but I’m itching like crazy.  My skin feels like it’s in a pile of fingernails.  And it’s worse at night.  I’m breaking through the skin and the next night there’s another bump.  And another.  And another.  I’m going to call the dermatologist tomorrow.  I have no idea what this could be.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

A while back, my friend Sean told me that his then-fiance’s brother’s roommate just bought/got the rights to the Terminator franchise. This raised alot of questions for me, one being how can a kid younger than me afford the rights to anything when I can’t afford my pizza with extra cheese? Two being, how can the Terminator franchise be on sale after all the success it’s had (Comic books, movies, toys, etc.). And three, what was that connection to this kid again?

I forgot about it and moved on until the previews for the new FOX show started airing. It piqued my interest as I’m a sci-fi fan (despite some cheesy lines and some prodding that it’d suck from friends like Heath) and so finally watched it online just now at Fox.com.

The show’s good. If this first episode is a sign of things to come, this could be a promising new take on the old franchise that can allow for alot of different storylines to take place. They made a very good show here that kept true to alot of things I think the fans should appreciate. For one, the special effects are really good for television, and like Heroes, add to the story and the action, rather than take away from it like that joke of a special Tin Man. Another great thing is that there’s lots of killing, which I like because as we know, terminators are unemotional. So they should have no qualms killing anything in their way and we shouldn’t have any with watching them do that.

There’s also something to be said for a show built around the premise of trying to get away from something. The idea of running is a great metaphor for life and everyone seems, in some way, to be running from something. It’s just a matter of how many times a day we look over our shoulder for that thing (in Sarah Connors case, it’s every two seconds). Also, unlike a Prison Break, where Scofield seems to always be one step ahead, the Terminator crew always seems to be one step behind. And as we saw in the 3rd film (SPOILER) that’s eventually where they’ll end up. I guess I like watching futility.

There are some cheesy lines (I’ll make pancakes), and the new terminator seems to be a new model, which could be good or could be a disaster. I guess we’ll see how they develop it. But for now, Terminator is a good new show to record and fill the zone being left behind by 24 and, soon, Prison Break.

Interesting tidbits:

-The kid playing John Connor -Thomas Dekker- is really pretty good so far. Usually I dislike these heartthrob-in-the-making, Zac Efron types, but this guy was able to hold it together. He should be able to too since it seems he’s been around awhile for a 20yr old. I remember him in that first season of Heroes (man, that show was awesome).

-Fox is about 10x better at reairing shows on the net than NBC. Whenever I tried to watch an episode of Heroes on the net at NBC.com, I’d get too many commercials and the player would always kink out. But at Fox, I had very few of these problems AND NO COMMERCIALS!!!

-I love this promo pic. Why is this chick hanging from the rafters like a kinky sex toy? Does anyone else find this hilarious, or are you all strangely turned on?

Pee Problems

I’ve been pissing on my hands alot lately…

Dry Skin Blues…

 

For a while I thought I had bed bugs. I did everything I could…changed the sheets a dozen times, washed the comforter, left the country (it sorta worked). But now, sitting atop my sheetless bed and following a shower where I itched quite a bit on a damn cold New York City night, I’m beginning to think it’s not bed bugs driving me crazy with itching, but the dry cold air in this shitty apartment, which might be giving me dry, itchy skin. Can my legs be irritated by the dry air. They must be! But surely here in NY I’m supposed to have bed bugs, not dry skin -especially after my roommate told me the bed bug complaints went from 500 to 7000 in one year (I think he read this on gothamist). I’m seeing less bumps and more just plain old itching! I can’t stop! It’s driving me bonkers! And the only thing different I’m doing this year is not wearing my langavesh* as my Great-Uncle Archie did from November 1^st to April 1^st for nearly every winter of his life.

This is another sign of getting older. I can just feel it. These specters (is that the right word) of the future (ie: bad back, not knowing cool words anymore, dry legs) scare me mostly because this is gonna be followed by my decent, haired legs soon going bald and then looking whiter than a pantone color white swatch (such as Pantone 11-0103TPX also known as Egret (what?)).

I have no idea what kind of lotion goes on your legs. So to start I will use some Ahava hand lotion from the holy land. I originally took two bottles from my sisters to give as gifts to girls with the intention of showing off for them my good-grooming knowledge, but instead decided to keep them for myself, which probably ends up saying more about my good grooming skills than the gifts ever would (gosh I sound gay).

But hey, good legs or at least minimally maintained ones are important. Did you know back in the Middle Ages, a mans legs were considered the sexist part of his physique! (Hence the tights everywhere and so on and so forth.) Now I have no link to prove this true, but I assure you I heard it in middle school.

Any suggestions anyone has for conquering dry skin I’m open to. Does a humidifier work?

[*Langavesh -though I know I'm spelling this wrong, I think is a yiddish word for long underwear, though my langavesh are more often just my flannel pajama pants underneath my jeans]

Happy Birthday Kim!

Happy Birthday to one of my favorite readers (and probably only female reader) of abzme.com. Kim likes good music, drinking with friends, mythological creatures, and my roommate. She dislikes thieves in Brooklyn, and PC’s.

Kim also has her own blog that she posts with some college friends called Raining Cats And Blogs (or RCAB). For her birthday present, I’ve added RCAB to the blogroll to your right. Check it out! It’s definitely worth a look, with alotta interesting perspectives on it in an adolescent sorta way (see the Crossfire video and reminisce).

When Kim rides the train to work, the guy above is who I picture her riding with. NOTE: THAT IS NOT KIM!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KIM!!! Stay Bueno y Sancho!

“Good TV”

My first unofficial guest writer works in television, likes to drink, and watches How I Met Your Mother. He had some info to share with us (his friends) regarding what we should be watching that I thought was worth sharing. (I don’t know how to change fonts so his stuff is everything but the first (this) and last paragraphs).

~As the writers strike continues, the networks are making contingency plans. And one of those maneuvers (a good thing, actually) is the arrival of Showtime drama Dexter on CBS on Sunday, Feb. 17 at 10 p.m. ET. Sitting in for regularly scheduled occupant Shark (which has run out of original episodes), Dexter’s 12-episode first season will be edited for network television and broadcast on 12 consecutive Sundays.

This won’t be nearly as good edited for regular TV but for those of you without Showtime it is a must see. Dexter is one of the best shows on TV.

I’d also tell you guys to get into The Wire, but being it is a complex show with multiple story arcs and is season 5 you’ll have to wait for on demand or DVDs.~

Hopefully we’ll get some more choice entries from him as his stories are quite entertaining.

There Will Be Blood

What’s that strange feeling you get when you see a film that doesn’t immediately tell you how to feel? That resonates and gurgles like a stomach ache you can’t quite describe (I know about this). When it ends, you walk out thinking alot, sometimes confused, maybe the ending was weird, maybe you missed something, but it’s in your head, talking to you, and it won’t stop. Kubricks films always did that to me. So did a lot of films I saw in my film classes in college (8 1/2, any Ingmar Bergman film). And tonight, There Will Be Blood did that to me.

There Will Be Blood is the new film by director PT Anderson. It’s the story of a self made man at the turn of the (20th) century that goes from rags to riches on the oil boom out west. A real OIL MAN epic. ‘Epic’ being the key word here because PT Anderson has made a film (not a movie) that not just climbs up the tall ladder to that pedestal of great films, but jumps a few more rungs at the top to that of Great American films. And There Will Be Blood is right up there with those stories, perhaps because it takes many of the best elements of its predecessors, but more because it’s so…so…brutally American!

The story of a man -Daniel Plainview- making his riches -making himself- against the backdrop of a country still trying to define itself, while doing it on a material still so important and relevant and common today. One that’s still surrounded by the hopes and promises, greed and demons that Daniel Planview (Daniel Day-Lewis) encounters throughout the film (set so many years ago). The film is shot beautifully. The music, maddening and dramatic, likens to the sound of an epic. And the acting…well, is nothing short of incredible.

The Director

I loved watching PT Anderson make a film this good. Most important here was his editing, what he chose to omit and what he chose not to say was just as (if not more) important as what he did say (something he struggled with in his earlier films (and also the key element that made Magnolia* such crap)). And this was made all the more powerful by the fact that 2 1/2 hours into it, I could watch another hour (this is also owed largely to Daniel Day-Lewis ). I could not believe this is PT Anderson.

Boogie Nights was good (“he’s Chinese!”), and Punch Drunk Love was great in a I won’t watch this again for a long time, but good movie! sorta way. But this….with it’s power and intimidation, ambition and pain, greed and paranoia, and all the uncomfortable truths of men and knowing that there are men like this in the world, but more, the shameful, confusing knowledge that much of our country, our ‘great, free country’ was built by men like Daniel Plainview!

And Anderson wrote the film too! Adapted loosely from book. He followed the formula of The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre in that the most important element is to keep telling the story. He’s grown as a filmmaker and it’s fantastic to witness. Anderson has risen with this film from hopeful American prodigy (he made Boogie Nights at 27yrs old) to Great American Filmmaker.

The Ubermensch of Acting

Daniel Day-Lewis is an ubermensch of acting. He does more than make a role his own. He embeds it. Demonizes it. Humanizes it. And somehow always looks the part. He never looks like Daniel Day-Lewis playing a role, but just simply looks like a role (something Harrison Ford, Sean Connery, Jack Nicholson, etc, can no longer do). I’m not sure any other actor makes me come around more to films that I’d otherwise have less to no interest in watching otherwise (maybe Ed Norton).

Right now, ‘There Will Be Blood’ is my pick for Best Picture. Partially because I don’t remember any other movies from the last year (true, it’s late, but I also have a terrible memory), but more because it made me uncomfortable and entertained and intrigued and disgusted and a plethora of other emotions that add up to the human condition.

*[Magnolia was crap. It came out at the same time of American Beauty and I remember thinking 'this is awfully long and getting nowhere.' American Beauty did in an hour and a half what Magnolia couldn't do in three.]

Some notes and bits:- There Will Be Blood is loosely based on the book ‘OIL!’ by Upton Sinclair. Sinclair (you’ll remember from jr. high social studies) wrote the infamous book ‘The Jungle’ on the malpractices of the meat industry at the start of the 20th.

-Daniel Day-Lewis started creating his portrayal of Daniel Plainview by first working on his voice. He listened to numerous recordings from the late 19th and early 20th century (how, I don’t know).

-There are four other films I want to see right now (No Country For Old Men, Sweeney Todd, Persepolis, and I’m Not There)

-The music was composed by Radiohead’s guitarist Jonny Greenwood. It is a great job, even if it bites off Kubrick a little (see 2001: A Space Odyssey). It’s still the sound of Madness and America.

-Honorable mention: Paul Dano also puts in a great job as the boy-preacher Eli Sunday. Dano you’ll recognize from Little Miss Sunshine, The Girl Next Door, (and something else I can’t remember now).

-’There Will Be Blood’ was originally going to be titled ‘How I Stopped Worrying And Learned To Love The GOP’. Kidding, that’s not true, but I think it could’ve been called that cause it looks like the origins of the Republican party.