Moving into the dorm today, exicting stuff. So exciting I couldn't sleep tonight. That was kind of by choice though, felt the need to digest, I guess, I digress.

I watched Tropic Thunder, that movie with Ben Stiller, Jack Black, and Robert Downey Jr as a black guy. By the way, that extra comma before the "and", that's called an Oxford comma, of course all you grammar technocrats already know this, but thanks Vampire Weekend, for educating me on the nuances of the English language. 

Oh about the film.

It was definitely low-brow humor, but it was disgustingly hilarious at times. I'm trying to think of a part that is BEdge approriate but I can't remember anything. 

Well here's a video of one of Portland's favorite sons, Elliott Smith. If you aren't in the mood for something melancholy, well you won't like it. I love his voice though, it's very delicate, and kind of haunting at times. Great lyricist too. This video is the only time I've seen him smile, which is really weird. Maybe the media has really perpetuated this image of him being a constantly depressed, lonely individual. It might because his lyrics are generally so dark. He obviously had his problems, but only poseurs act somber and serious all the time. Art in it's essence, is output of emotional dissonance. Or at least the kind of art I like. To quote Steve Carell who was talking about Proust "Anyway, he uh... he gets down to the end of his life, and he looks back and decides that all those years he suffered, Those were the best years of his life, 'cause they made him who he was. All those years he was happy? You know, total waste. Didn't learn a thing." A lot of people seem to get mix up depressing art with a depressed person, they are not necessarily one in the same. Little Miss Sunshine was a fun movie. And yeah I definitely had to IMDB that quote but I thought of it that instant, I swear.

Oh and why don't you guys talk about all the great times in college or something. I can't think up a poll this minute.

ahhh I don't have fun activities today, so I'll just post this filler, my college statement, a little theatrical no?

Dreams, dreams are the broad shoulders on which the wings of imagination lie. Unsure of what to pursue, I am unshakable in conviction.

While others have languished their greatest aspirations to the cudgels of reality, I shall never surrender my fortitude to normalcy. My greatest fear is to die in anonymity and social antipathy, an epitaph marked “beloved husband, father, and brother”. It’s not enough for me, for me to be normal. I want to be exceptional, I want to be a visionary, I want to bask in the applause of societies greatest circles, I want to part of the cream of my generation.

I believe greatness is a self-fulfilling prophecy, to consider yourself average is to be average. I want to be an inspirator, a leader, who channels his energies into uplifting the condition of the human imagination. I want the opus of my life to be a flame, a cinder that ignites the passion of man into a conflagration of venerability, eradicating injustice, and intolerable sense of averageness. I suppose it’s a bit myopic, but I want to be that ideal, to be great. I wish to imprint myself, as the individual, upon the skin of human permanence.

Fun fact, Dheepan is the short for Kandeepan. The extra H is added for numerologly reasons. With the H, both my shortened name and my full name have the same numeric value. My mother is really into this stuff from some reason. My parents never actually use Kandeepan, so I don't really know why I have it. Kandeepan is the Tamil translation of the Hindi name Arjuna. I think. Not entirely sure, meaning I have absolutely no clue.  Arjuna was the name of one of the prominent characters of the that one long poem the Mahabharata. Had to wiki the spelling. 

If you wanna try out your name calculation and stuff like that click on the red words in this sentence.

My "psychic" number is a 6 since I was born on the 15th. That apparently means I am...

Loving and caring, everybody's friend, charming and charismatic, beauty oriented. Balanced yet paradoxical in their self expression. Good ally and counselor, home-maker, nurturing, sympathetic, service oriented yet independent. Periodical bouts of luxury seeking. Artistic, attractive, admired, adored, posses refined taste, sexual. Suffer when separated from family yet have to endure this occasionally, pleasant personality, excellent taste, open minded and open hearted.

Interesting coincedence though, I'm suppose to be highly compatible with 4s, and my two best friends were born on the 13th of May.

This one is on a different site and has goes into more details about name numbers.

Your psychic number is your primary personality traits. Your destiny number is rather self explanitory, it attempts to predict your destiny (future desires, beahviours, things like that). As a result, it generally doesn't apply to you until you reach age 30 or 35. Having matching numbers, like a 6 as a psychic number and a 6 as a destiny number exacerbates your strengths and weaknesses. So having mixed numbers means that some of the extremes of your number are evened out.

Well I brought this up earlier in a topic about how to view Blazer's games. Supposedly, multiple people can view games online with NBA league pass with one account. If this option is really plausible, and if the whole comcast/dish deal isn't brokered out by the start of the season, do you think we should consider buying a site wide leaguepass? Multiple people would chip in (most likely to a paypal account or something), and then someone would purchase the package and give out the account+password for people to view games online. I'm not sure how viable this is, or recomending it, but I think it might be something to consider.

PS, this is only if it's legal. I'm not sure it would help out the site's credibility if the NBA came knocking.

Wow college in like 3 more weeks, still so many things to do. I just watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall, I felt the trailer was underwhelming, but it was just as cute and funny as the rest of Judd Apatow's movies. I thought it was close to, or better than Superbad, and far superior to 40 year Old Virgin. The characters had a lot of depth, for the most part, and there were some memorable bit roles. Oh and Mila Kunis looked great in that movie. She seems a lot different from That 70's Show. Maybe it's just the personality difference that does it?

Plus the main character really reminded me of James Murphy from LCD Soundsytem. Love that guy, and his music. Sound of Silver was one of my favorite albums last year. You know that he could had a job writing for Seinfeld in the 90s? He turned the offer down to continue making music, guess it worked out, but he missed out on a huge payday. Jerry Seinfeld was actually the highest paid celebrity in 2004, he made like $240 mil.

It's almost been an hour and there isn't a new Trail Mix post? Wow that's disappointing. Anywways, right now I'm listening to Sonata Number 10 in C Major by Motzart. The water drips from a far away faucet in a slow uneasy trickle. The room is dark, light seems to whisper around the corner, it's faint. It's mere prescense taunting the desolate space. The enclosure is tight, the air in the room feels taunt and dry, where am I? That's 75 right ok good.

I need a hair cut. Right now it's long it's like overgrown emo hair. I'm not sure how I want it cut down though. Back to my usual length or a drastic redisign. Rather, should I blow up the team and focus on building young talent or trade for some veterans and hope for the best..you know... I think I get wayyyy too caught up in making basketball analogies now a days. Like I think at this point, I could could describe everyone in the world with NBA draft jargon. Like I would say I'm "high potential, good upside, lacks fundmenetals and carries a bust risk".  I don't this opening lives up to my prior I had designed a few days ago.

PS, Brian Eno is pretty awesome. He made the windows noise.

When reports came out that Love was McHale's man, I was surprised. He's an unathletic, undersized, power forward, I really didn't see that as a good compliment to Al Jefferson (another power forward). I mean if anything it's a little redundant, they aren't radically different in their skilset. Jefferson is the better back to the basket player and Love is by far the better passer, but he (Love) still operates most effectively in the post.  Exacerbating this issue is that both players are below average defensively. I thought logically the Wolves would want to pair Jefferson with an athletic defensive minded center to help anchor the defense, a player like Dalembert, or even Brenden Haywood. I do really like a lot of the things Love brings to the offensive end,  but I'm not sure both he and Jefferson can realize all of their potential paired together.

If Love proves to be the more well rounded player (and I think he is) does this mean that Jefferson will be traded?

I really did like the trade that McHale pulled off though. You managed to get rid of most of a lot of terrible contracts (Antoine Walker?) got Mike Miller (who will really help your outside shooting). I still think Mayo will end up a better player than Love or Miller, but I expect you guys will get another good draft pick this year, maybe get Jennings or Ricky Rubio.

Note: I'm going to try to skim on the actual details of the movie or scenes as much as possible. I'm always annoyed by film reviews that are more like "hey these were my favorite scenes of the movie". Sorry, it's a little too long. I added pictures so it's easier to digest. Also I think using nihilistic where I did is a malapropism, but it's a blog, who cares right?

Intro

I'm not a fan of comic book movies.

Some things look better on paper than in person, I'm a firm believer that men wearing excessively tight leather outfits that seem to cut off circulation to the nether regions, is an example of this idiom. Sure, it looks bad ass when it's ink and marker. In real life, it looks more like glorified sadomasochism. 

And unfortunately the trend looks irreversible. At this point Hollywood is toiling away, going ever deeper into it's metaphorical comic book cash mine. Green lighting projects that look well, like garbage (lol Cat Woman, Dare Devil, Ghost Rider, Green Lantern). That should make at least a 100mil right? The once fresh concept has been flattened, rounded, and shined into an impeccably produced, consumer friendly, revenue machine.

Note: If you don't care about themes and stuff skip this next section. Nietzsche is disappointed in you for not examining your own psyche.

Themes

Accompanying this shift, is the decreasing amount of actual substance in the films. Sure, comic book movies like their fellow Summer blockbuster brethren will never be heady discourse on the human condition. They shouldn't be. It's just that the film adaptations of comic books often lack key themes that are obvious in the original material. Morality, ethics, self-sacrifice, justice; these are all themes that are conveyed through the comic book medium. Without them these movies are basically guywithrandompowerawesomecgigeneratedfightscenes-de jour. All good stories have a message and that's what makes "Batman: The Dark Knight" superior to any movie that has come out this summer.

What I appreciated most about the philosophy about The Dark Knight, was that it was well, dark. There was an overall very mature and pragmatic take on ethics that goes back to Machiavelli's "Prince", are unethical means justifiable for a good end?

On human nature the film is equally nihilistic. Are victories over the corrupt and evil truly possible when none of us are incorruptible? Who is to judge what is truly right and truly wrong? What keeps us from doing what is wrong, is it just fear? If it is, then what kind of civilization do we truly live in. There is classic role reversal here as well, where the convicted members of society are the ones that act in the moral right, and the "normal" citizens are the ones that bow down to their own want of survival. These are all very deep questions that I was pleasantly surprised about, I never expected these things to ever be addressed in a Batman movie.

Cast

A strong cast of actors, from Christian Bale, to Aaron Eckhart (Thank You for Smoking), Heath Ledger, Morgan Freeman, and ok, Maggie Gylenhall kind of sucks, but whatever she is a little better than Katie Holmes.

All the buzz however, is on Heath Ledger and his portrayal of the Joker. And rightfully so, he deserves an Oscar for this role. He flat acted his ass off. Honestly, it was the most realistic and psychotic take on the character, and he came off as completely believable. What's most remarkable is that he completely unrecognizable. If you were to say that Heath actually faked his death and slashed up his face to form a permanent smile  and is now living out his life as a crime lord in New York, I would believe you. The insanity and whimsical nature of the Joker is what makes him so frightening and endearing at the same time. This character will be the most remembered in 2008, and none of that has to do with Heath Ledger's early demise.

Technical

Beautifully shot, with careful attention to space, many of sets are rather minimal and this adds to the dark, modern nature of the film. The most beautiful and visceral scenes are the cityscapes, the towering heights of the concrete jungle and the bat that flutters through them, it was visual poetry.

The actions scenes were well done, but not over the top. The opening bank heist was clever and an immediate attention grabber. There is more than enough action to sedate those just looking for a popcorn flick.

Lack of CGI was duly noted and appreciated. Probably why the action in this movie far surpasses Iron Man.

Drawbacks:

Too long

The second arc isn't as good as the first. Might have worked better as a sequel.

Overall

In conclusion, the film lends credence to the idea that faith in ones own beliefs and the conviction to follow through on those notions, despite the consequences, is what truly defines courage.  An idea that  we should all strive towards. I think this movie will may well be remembered as the best superhero film.

4.8/5

So I missed the summer league game. I'm sad about that, but it looks like there is an archive, so I get to see more Jerryd awesomness.

Speaking of awesome, I went to go see Batman: The Dark Knight. Although I'm usually one of those haters who say "man you are so dumb for going to opening night at 12:00" this was worth it. I'm even going to write an entire fanpost about it, just because trade diaries are a little boring. So I'll save my deconstruction for later.

Btw, are we allowed to ramble in our post about the junk drawer?

I think I'm over 75 but I'll keep going because I CAN, so if you want to actually post and you are reading this right now, I'm telling you it's in your best interest to skip it.

I ate too much popcorn.

My mouth feels dry and I have drank like 3 bottles of water.

Was it worth it to read that? Oh and it's like 4 am so I'm sorry.