The Earl of Essence

The End of a Short Era

2008-10-15T23:54:00.002-04:00

Over at EDAP I switched to Wordpress. I'm gonna do the same with this one. New site is http://theearlofessence.wordpress.com/

See you guys there.

I'm Sorry

2008-10-13T14:21:00.003-04:00

It's been nearly a month! I'm sorry I've left you guys all alone here for almost a whole month. I know you need me every day and I just don't give you enough. I apologize profusely.

Since I am nearly done with the first half of the semester and have finally settled in, I'm gonna be updating this blog more regularly. I'm gonna have at least three posts here a week and you can get a daily fix over at EDAP if you really need it. So, get ready. I'm about to get even more awesome.

A New Way

2008-09-18T19:55:00.003-04:00

Alright, it's that time again. I choose to make up a new rating device for my (Thursday)Friday writing. Here it is:

I’d like to talk with you today about something that is very dear to my heart. Ever since I saw Aladdin in the rinky-dink old theater near my house when I was four, I have been fascinated by the art of movies. The gen-pop thinks of movies only as entertainment and the people who are way into film think of them as art. I know both of these factions are wrong. Obviously, film is both art and entertainment. Every movie lies somewhere on the spectrum between the Mona Lisa and Dogs Playing Poker. No, that’s not right either. Let’s use the “horizontal” and “vertical” ideas from class to classify movies better. If entertainment value can be seen as a horizontal scale and the artistic nature as the vertical scale, every movie has a distinct x and y value (this is what happens when you take a former engineering major and turn him into an English major). If the x value is negative, the movie is no fun to watch, but if it’s positive you are gonna get some kind of pleasure out of it. If the y value is negative there is no art to be found, but if it’s positive you’ll see something original or perfectly executed. Allow me to give you some examples.

Recently, there has been a stint of what some people call “comedies” but I like to call “crap”. These are the Date Movie, Superhero Movie, Disaster Movie endless stream of ______ Movie “spoofs”. If I were to assign these films a coordinate on our art/film graph, they would have something like a (-100, -10000). Please take my word for it. I have seen them so you don’t have to.

Let’s now examine a good movie. Last year a French(ish) film called The Diving Bell and the Butterfly was released. It’s the story of the then editor-in-chief of Elle magazine who becomes paralyzed and can only move one of his eyeballs. The first fifteen or so minutes are shot from the point of view of that eye and it is breathtaking. There is a scene where his other eye must be stitched up and we see that from the POV of that eye and it is nerve-wracking. This movie is the perfect example of art and entertainment because not only is it technically marvelous, it is also a touching, funny story. There is a flashback to the main character shaving his father’s beard that made me cry. I would give The Diving Bell and The Butterfly a (80, 99) coordinate on my newly created scale.

Of course, there are films that are extremely well made but horrible to watch. The recently remade Funny Games is a perfect example of this phenomenon. It’s a story about a family on vacation who are basically kidnapped and tortured in their own house by two seemingly nice young men. This isn’t torture-porn of the Saw or Hostel variety, though. None of the violence is onscreen and the movie breaks the fourth wall several times. It is incredibly well made, but made to make you feel bad about wanting to watch movies that are entertaining because of their violence. There is no joy from watching the perfectly executed treatise on violence in movies, but you cannot deny that it is precisely planned to be that way. It would get about a (-50, 80) on the scale ‘o’ artertainment (I made that word up. I’m a regular Dr. Seuss).
I hope you have enjoyed your education. Now you know how to properly view films, or at least how to properly think about a film afterward.

The LHC and Super-Intelligent Rodent Creatures

2008-09-11T21:16:00.002-04:00

My latest Friday (Thursday) writing is about the LHC and what could have happened. Remember, this is for a class.

LHC

Guys That Lack Motor Skills(z)

2008-09-04T19:00:00.003-04:00

It's another Friday (Thursday) writing. Here you go. It's not really fiction so I'm just gonna post it below:

Is there such a thing as being too cool for your own good? It’s a question that has been on my mind as we return to class. I see you, walking in with your hat with the sticker still on and your shirt and your clothes. Some say the clothes make the man but I say the man makes the clothes. Or at least sweatshop workers make the clothes for the man. That’s probably the closest to reality. Anyways, your hat with the stupid sticker. What does the sticker do? Does it signify how much you spent to look stupid? Does it show that you don’t have the motor skills to peel off a sticker? If that’s the case, doesn’t it also show that you shouldn’t be allowed in college?

There comes a time when we must all consider our place in life. You may think that comparing yourself to others is the worst way to do this, but I would say that, compared to you, I am a genius. If I had to place myself on the cool scale, I would put myself somewhere between the guy who wears girl jeans and the guy who wears the huge white tee-shirts. Funnily, I have seen both ends of the spectrum keep the sticker on their hats. Must have been a problem with schooling then. They were never taught how to hold on to stickers without having them stick to their fingers. Now they have stickophobia, a word I did not make up. Prove me wrong.

As previously established, there are two ends to the cool spectrum, neither of which is actually cool. The girl jeans guys (to be called from now to eternity Hipsters) and the big white shirt guys (to be called from now to eternity Guys With Big White Shirts On) are so opposite of each other that they are practically the same. You can see this phenomenon demonstrated in anything where there are two distinct sides of the same coin. The real question is whether the Democrats are Hipsters or Guys With Big White Shirts On.

The Man

2008-08-28T16:54:00.004-04:00

I'm back at school and that means back at writing. So here is my first Friday (or Thursday, I guess) post. I need to write one page on anything for one class every Friday. This one is a true-ish story. True in that it happened, -ish in that it happened in a slightly altered state.

I shouldn’t be afraid of this new school. All the same people are going to be there. Including him.

The Man

Top 20: Movies. Number 14

2008-08-17T20:43:00.004-04:00

Here is the first second showing by a director on my list. Confusicated yet?

Zodiac

This is one of the most underrated movies of last year (2007). It got no nominations at the Oscars and was poorly received at the box office. It is, however, a great movie by the great David Fincher. The movie focuses on cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) and his obsession with the Zodiac killer and his letters to San Francisco newspapers in the 1970's. At over two and a half hours long, it becomes a pretty in depth look at both the murders and the obsession that they caused.

Fincher is a director known for crafting beautiful films that also plumb emotional depths that aren't expected from the view that isn't in the know. I can't say that he has taken a wrong step (although I have not seen The Game) and his upcoming The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (with returning collaborator Brad Pitt) looks to continue the stretch of outstanding movies.

Here is the Zodiac trailer (check out Robert Downey Jr.'s swanky threads!)

And a bonus! The Curious Case of Benjamin Button trailer:

Top 20: Movies. Number 15

2008-08-08T19:11:00.004-04:00

We're 1/4th of the way there!

Blade Runner

I'm going to confess something that may shame me for forever and a day. I only saw Blade Runner this year. I know, I'm a 20 year old movie nerd who enjoys sci-fi and I haven't seen what is considered to be one of the best of the genre until I was 20. But I got the four disc DVD at Christmas and it is amazing.

Blade Runner is a noir-ish detective story focusing on a Blade Runner (the ever-awesome Harrison-get off my plane-Ford) who hunts down robots that look and act like humans. It's an age old story. Director Ridley Scott has made a sci-fi movie that still looks good today, a feat not so easy to accomplish. So watch it.

Here is the trailer for those who have not seen it:

and one of the best monologues of all time for those who have (SPOILER)

Top 20: Movies. Number 16

2008-08-06T21:16:00.003-04:00

First of three films from this director to make my list, it's

Punch-Drunk Love

I watched Boogie Nights first, then Magnolia, then this, all in anticipation of There Will Be Blood in the second half of last year. Needless to say, Paul Thomas Anderson (PTA from now on) rocketed into my must-follow list. He is the best director working today.

This movie is like an Adam Sandler film brought down to earth, then spun around a bit and painted by a three year old. It's amazing. Take your typical Sandler character and make him a real person. He is child-like but not immature, at least not in the fart joke way. There is a girl and a harpsichord-thingie and a Phillip Seymour Hoffman. What more could you need. And it's beautiful.

Watch these two if you haven't seen it:

And this one if you have seen it to remember how amazing it is:

Go See It

2008-07-20T22:56:00.001-04:00

Werewolves And Other Things That Scare Me

2008-07-09T19:49:00.004-04:00

Ever since I watched Urban Legend on TNT one summer day, I have been afraid of seeing things while driving. It started just being afraid of driving at night in the rain while listening to Total Eclipse of the Heart by Bonnie Tyler after being stammered at by a guy with Chucky's (the murderous doll) voice. Turns out if all of those things happen to you there will be a guy in your back seat with an axe waiting to chop off your head at the perfect intersection between lightning flashes and the climax of the song.

So I took that song off my iPod. Easy solution, right? Well, then my friend John had to tell me what is perhaps the scariest story I have ever heard. One night he was driving alone down a windy Connecticut back-road at night. He saw something on the side of the road. It looked like a person hunched over. Upon closer inspection it looked more like a wolf-man hunched over on the side of the road. It was blacker than the night and looked very hairy. Then he got closer and it was just a trash bag. Unfortunately, both he and I have over-active imaginations and we forget about the last part and focus on how scary it would be to see a wolf-man on the side of the road in the middle of the night. So now I only drive with the lights off.

Another transportation based scare is the time I watched the Twilight Zone movie. Johnathan Lithgow (who was in one of my favorite shows of the time, Third Rock From The Sun) took the role of "Paranoid Plane Person Who Sees A Gremlin Tearing The Plane Apart" from William Shatner. This shot still scares me:

And then I watched the original, which scared me even more:
Good luck sleeping tonight!

Top 20: Movies. Number 17

2008-06-28T23:51:00.004-04:00

It's time to get serious.

Se7en.

David Fincher's 1995 detective film is the 17th best movie of all time. It stars 3 of my favorite actors (Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, and Kevin Spacey) and is meticulously directed. Detectives Pitt and Freeman hunt a serial killer who murders his victims in the style of the seven deadly sins. This is Law and Order taken to the extreme. The film starts off dark and gets even darker as we search for the killer. Even though the final sequence takes place in a wide open field on a bright sunny afternoon, it is perhaps one of the darkest sequences comitted to film in the last 20 years.

Check the trailer:

And the incredible title sequence. It sets up the tone of the film perfectly (warning! not for the squeemish):

My Last Girlfriend

2008-06-26T21:39:00.004-04:00

Here comes another one of those awkward personal posts.

When I was in 8th grade, I had a girlfriend. Well, kinda. The story goes like this. It was Valentines Day and they (the nebulous "they") were selling roses for a dollar. This one girl I had a crush on, we'll call her SB cuz I forgot how to spell her name, wanted a rose. I said I would give one to her, but I didn't have any money. So I borrowed a buck from a kid I didn't like, his name was Mike, and bought SB a rose. Then she hugged me and that was it. Or so I thought. I guess she got my home fone number cuz she called me when I got home. She called to ask if I wanted to go to the dance that night. Unfortunately I was an awkward 12 year old and I panicked. I told her I couldn't go because of a "family thing". Here's a hint, I never have a "family thing". Needless to say... well, I'm not gonna say it. Just guess how she reacted.

So the next day she ignored me even though we had several classes together. Then when I got home she called again. I'll transcribe the version of the call that I remember:

Me: Hello.

Her: Hi.

Me: What's up?

Her: I have something to tell you. But I can't tell you. Here is some other guy.

Him: Hi. You Alex?

Me: Uh, yeah.

Him: Well, I'm going out with SB now. She said thanks for the rose though.

Me: Oh.

Him: Ok. Have a good day.

Me: You too.

I actually said "You too." What a lame-o. Of course a second after he hung up I thought of the perfect comeback. Try this one out:

Him: Well, I'm going out with SB now. She said thanks for the rose though.

Me: Good thing I didn't waste a dollar on her. How much did it cost you to date her?
...
BURN!

Man, that would have been great. But I was young and stupid. Now I'm old and slightly less stupid. Unfortunately that was my last girlfriend. It's strange how such a non-event can change everything. Just think, if I didn't go out with her I would be married to Jennifer Garner right now.

Next time on awkward personal post... Prom!

Well, if you won't, I will.

2008-06-24T20:49:00.004-04:00

I can't go a day without hearing somebody prefacing a sentence with "I'm not gonna lie...". In short, I hate this.

In long, I don't expect you to lie a lot. I don't even expect you to lie a little. You don't have to say "I'm not gonna lie..." before everything you say. If you don't know somebody who says this 1. you're lucky and 2. here are some examples.

I'm not gonna lie... I love these shoes.

I'm not gonna lie... I really want to see that.

I'm not gonna lie... I am ambivalent towards the Darfur situation.

I'm not gonna lie... that Rebeka is a bitch.

Now that last one might warrant an "INGL", but when you use it in front of every opinion it starts to lose it's meaning. Where did this phrase come from you may ask? Good question. Let me know when you find out. And look up when "throw ____ under the bus" gained popularity. Who is committing the mass hit-and-runs?

Anyways, I have another question for you. How often do you expect to be lied to? Why does everybody have to make sure the person they are talking to knows that they aren't lying? Have we become so fraudulent that we must insist that our co-conversationalists understand that we are being honest? The answer, it seems, is yes.

So I am hereby instituting a new rule for myself. Feel free to adopt it and help rid the world of "INGL". From now on, if somebody says "INGL" to me twice in one conversation I will assume that the rest of what they say is a lie. Furthermore, I will lie throughout the conversation and not tell a single truth. So be prepared.

Top 20: Movies. Number 18

2008-06-22T22:54:00.004-04:00

Next up...

The Incredibles!
Congrats Basil.
Not only is this the best Pixar movie (until Friday, at least), and one of the best animated movies (there will be one more on the list), it is also the best superhero movie. Better than Batman Begins, better than Iron Man, and better than 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer.

So here it is. A family of undercover superheroes, while trying to live the quiet suburban life, are forced into action to save the world. Awesomeness ensues.

Here, watch this.

It has Sam Jackson in it. So...

Yes, it does work.

2008-06-19T23:42:00.002-04:00

You can actually go uphill both ways. As in: "When I was your age, I had to walk to school ten miles away. I had to dodge lava and dinosaurs. And it was uphill both ways." There it is! "Uphill both ways." This is always tacked on to the end of a "you don't know how good you have it" lesson to make a point. Everybody knows that you can't go uphill both ways, right?

Right?

WRONG!

Picture this. There is a hill. Your house is on this hill. It is a small hill and only your house fits on the top of it. Any way you go from the house it is downhill. Then picture a mile (or ten, and don't forget the lava and dinosaurs) away, another, similar hill. On top of that hill is another house, similar to your own. Now pretend you are walking from your house on top of your hill, past the lava and the dinosaurs, and start walking up the hill to the other house. Now play and have fun. It's late now, and you need to go home to have dinner. Walk down the hill from the house you are at now to the dinosaurs. They are sleeping because it is late, but don't forget about the lava, it never sleeps. Finally, you reach your own house on it's hill. You have to walk up the hill to get in, right. So you walked uphill both ways! TA DA!

Wow, I suck.

2008-06-16T22:02:00.003-04:00

No update since Wednesday?

Using one of the oldest jokes in the book?

Saying "oldest joke(s) in the book"?

Not cleaning up my room?

Sacrificing play for pay?

Religiously watching the Real World, The Paper, Jeopardy, and The Sarah Connor Chronicles?

Wanting to see The Happening?

Giving up my moral high ground and watching an Ed Norton movie?

Having three questions about movies?

Doing a whole post of rhetorical questions?

Wow, I suck.

Top 20: Movies. Number 19

2008-06-11T21:02:00.003-04:00

Well, I was close to what I said on Monday.

#19: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Like Shaun of the Dead, this is a genre movie with a comedy twist. And it focuses on two guys with a girl. And there are dead people, but they aren't zombies. The genre this time is noir with a little bit of the buddy cop dynamics thrown in for good measure.

Harry (Robert Downey Jr.) is a crook who is mistaken for an actor. He teams up with P.I. Gay Perry (Val Kilmer) to learn the ways of the detective. Of course they get wrapped up in a twisting murder plot.

Most importantly, this movie is hilarious. With dialogue like

Perry: Merry Christmas, sorry I fucked you over.
Harry: No problem. Don't quit your gay job.

and...

Perry: Did your dad love you?
Harry: Only when I dressed up like a beer bottle, how about you?
Perry: Well, he used to beat me in Morse code, so it's possible, but he never said the words.

you can't go wrong. You must watch this movie as soon as you possibly can. Here's a scene because the trailer sucks.

New Post!

2008-06-09T22:38:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow! When I'm not angry at being stuck in an office all day long.

Top 20: Movies. Number 20

2008-06-06T21:56:00.003-04:00

A lot of you guys know me from filmspotting, but I don't know if I have ever made a "definitive" top 20 movies list. So I'm gonna do it here. Good luck to me!

#20: SHAUN OF THE DEAD
Directed by Edgar Frost and written by Frost and star Simon Pegg, this 2004 horror comedy is one of the funniest movies I have ever seen. Not only is it insanely quotable (Shaun: As Mr. Sloan always says, there is no "I" in team, but there is an "I" in pie. And there's an "I" in meat pie. Anagram of meat is team... I don't know what he was talking about. ), it is also a damn good zombie movie. Here is the trailer for your enjoyment. Enjoy.

Money money money money... clear throat... MONEY

2008-06-05T23:15:00.004-04:00

I start work tomorrow.

The bad news: 40 hour weeks doing menial office work.

The good news: They let me listen to podcasts and give me money.

I don't know if the benefits outweigh the negatives.

I worked at the same place last year and it kinda sucked. I hope this will suck less as I will be getting paid more and my friend Jason is working down the street so we could meet for lunch and such.

So, yeah. I gotta go to bed because I have to wake up at TOO EARLY in the morning. Good night.

Change of plans

2008-06-05T00:18:00.005-04:00

This was originally going to be a repository for my "serious" writings, but I think it could be a lot more than that. I'm going to turn this into my "regular" blog where I write whatever stuff I feel like and post a story or poem every now and again.

I'll try to do one a day to keep honest, but I can't promise anything.

So, for today's post I figure I'll give you guys some recent history. About 2 years ago I went to the doctor for a regular checkup. It turns out that I had a pilonidal cyst (DO NOT GOOGLE) right below my tailbone. The doctor said it wasn't a serious medical condition, more of a quality of life situation. He gave me antibiotics and a method of keeping it under control. It didn't hurt or anything, it was just kind of awkward.

I developed a routine. Take a shower, get dressed, stuff paper towels down my pants to catch any "drainage" (again, DO NOT GOOGLE), go on with my day, take a shower, flush paper towels down the toilet, rinse, repeat (not really rinse, that would be gross {although I suppose I should be judging, what with the paper towels down my pants} [I really should stop making parenthetical jokes, but I can't. You'll have to deal with it]) For two years I did this. The first two years of my college life, no less. And it's not like you couldn't tell what was going on. I don't know if you could see it through my pants, but by the end of the day you could definitely smell it. It's a unique smell. I can't describe it. Sorry to everybody who had to smell it.

Towards the end of this school year it started to get worse. It became painful to sit down and the "drainage" got worse. Finally, a week before final exams, I had to go to the emergency room. They said it was one of the worst cases they had ever seen, but were surprised at the amount of pain I felt, or didn't feel. They said normally the patients they saw with a case half as bad as mine were crying and on pain killers.

I should back up a bit. I had been to a specialist a couple of times throughout the two years, but he didn't want to operate on me because the procedure he knew was painful and took two months to recover from. I was alright with this as long as it didn't hurt. Then, over winter break this year he told me about a new experimental procedure by a new doctor -- Matino -- that would have a recovery time of a week or so and didn't involve excising any skin. I made an appointment for the week after school got out in the spring. Back to the ER a month ago...

They put a bunch of gauze back there so I didn't bleed through my pants and told me to make an appointment with a doctor so I could get it fixed. I guess it got pretty severe. I also got to have a guy shove his finger up my butt for the first (and, for the foreseeable future, last) time that night. Not so fun.

I went to Matino, the new doctor, later that week and he took a peek. He exclaimed that I was one of the most severe cases he, a guy who worked solely on this kind of stuff, had ever seen. Great. He said he would like to try out his procedure on me. He explained that he would basically cut open a small flap of skin on my butt and clean it up. He would then inject some kind of dead person fluid (minus everything except some protein or something) into the flap and sew it back up. I wasn't too excited about this, but he said it had a higher success rate and a quicker recovery time than the old procedure, which was pretty much just digging out all of the area around the cyst, leaving you with a big whole at the top of your butt crack.

I scheduled the surgery for a week later and went home to watch movies.

Friday, the tenth of April, I went in to St. Joseph's in Manchester to get surgered. They thankfully gave me the option to get put all the way under, which I graciously accepted. I woke up about two hours later, laying on my back. I gather that they explained to me how the surgery went, but I don't remember much from that day.

Fast forwarding a bit to today. I went to see Dr. Matino for him to check up on me. He said that I was "infinitely better. Amazingly healed." I don't think he expected it to go as well as it did. Yay for me and him, right? So here I am, sitting (!) at my computer at nearly 1 in the morning and telling the whole internet how I had surgery on my butt. Gotta love the blog.

If you liked my take on whatever the hell I just wrote, please, come back the next time I write something. It probably won't be as gross, but I'm not going to make any promises.

The Time I Was God

2008-04-22T22:07:00.000-04:00

A sleepy God is almost as bad as an absent one.

Story number two is also a true story, or an mostly true story.

The Time I Was God

Brown And White

2008-04-22T20:58:00.000-04:00

One was brown and the other was white with a black hood.

The first story on this website is the latest story I have written. It is a scene that I witnessed just this afternoon. I hope you enjoy it.

Brown And White

Welcome

2008-04-22T20:43:00.000-04:00

Hello everybody! Nice to have you here. This will be my writing repository. Every time I finish a story or a draft of a story or have something writing related to say, I'll put it here. I welcome your feedback and hope you enjoy my writing.

A little about me. I am an English(?) major at the University of Connecticut. Other than writing, my time is spent taking pictures and watching movies. I have another blog, Ever Day A Photo where I post a new photo every day. It's pretty self explanatory. My favorite book is Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth. It was given to me by my aunt at a young age and ever since I first read it I fell in love. There are stories that change the way you look at life and The Phantom Tollbooth was my first experience. It even gave this blog it's name!

Alright, enough about me. Have a peek around and leave me some feedback, if you please.