Undergraduate Admissions

I haven’t posted in a while. I guess I got out of the habit when school ended. Oh, I got my grades and did well in all of my classes (hooray), and Christmas was alright.

It isn’t too snowy out now, although I took some pictures when there was a storm a few weeks ago.

I watched Escape From New York last night. I think that movie is overrated. It was like I was waiting for the movie to get exciting the whole time, and then it never did. I have seen some cool movies lately though; I saw Charlie Wilson’s War with my family because it was written by Aaron Sorkin, and my mom and my brother are big West Wing fans (which he also wrote) and my brother and I enjoyed Sports Night (which, you guessed it, he also wrote). I’m not crazy about Tom Hanks and even less crazy about Julia Roberts, but I thought it was a really good movie. It was more realistic and less idealistic than West Wing always was; for that reason alone, I liked it a lot and my mom found it a bit disappointing. The same night, I came home and my friends were watching Gangs of New York, so I got in on that too. It’s not a movie I’d buy on DVD, but I thought it was pretty cool. It’s one of those movies, like Training Day, where there’s a character that exudes coolness but is also a horrible person.

My girlfriend and I have been playing Soul Calibur II for the GameCube lately… and she’s better than I am at it (wtf?). I mean, seriously, I don’t know what to think about the fact that my girlfriend is beating me consistently in a fighting game. I’m supposed to be good at fighting games!

Anyway, happy new year!

Wow, seems like I couldn’t have been any more right:

“[It works] in the same way that Godzilla was really a metaphor for its time, and was a sort of movie about the A-bomb and Hiroshima and all of that,” he says. “The idea of it dealing with the anxiety of that time and that’s why it captured so much attention because it tapped right into people’s anxieties… I think that what was really interesting here was knowing that we were going to be dealing with the metaphor of what this was and dealing with the anxieties of our time. We thought that there would be something really sort of powerful about the idea, like in the trailer, having this very naturalistic, realistic vibe, and having you start to say, ‘What is going on? This seems like a horrifying event.’ And then suddenly when you see the head, everything starts to tilt like a prism. And you’re like, ‘Wait a minute. That couldn’t be terrorism because what did they do, take off the head of the Statue of Liberty and throw it at New York? What’s with that?’ It evokes these things and in a way enables us — the fun of it, the idea of it — it enables you to approach those feelings and deal with it in a safer way. So it ends up being a kind of thrill ride and it’s also evocative of those feelings and hopefully has resonance as well. At the end of the day, the movie is this giant monster movie. But there is something in the idea of what monster movies do for us, and how they can deal with our anxieties and our fears, and we really hope that this works in that way.”
- from an interview with the director of the film

This guy really seems like he knows what he’s doing. This movie is going to be awesome.

Yesterday I saw I Am Legend with a bunch of friends from work. It was a really good movie! I often think computer effects in movies look unnatural and find them distracting, but in this movie things were supposed to look unnatural, so the effects were really convincing. I don’t usually like scary movies because they often deal with the supernatural (I can’t take seriously something that doesn’t exist!) but I Am Legend was quite literally science fiction, so I was pretty into it. Beyond that, I’ve really just never seen a movie like this before–I mean, for most of the film, the only characters are Will Smith and his dog. I grew up in the 90s, so Will Smith is alright with me. (Is that a foregone conclusion for everyone? I’m not sure, but between Fresh Prince, Independence Day, and Men In Black, he sure was pretty prominent.) He does a good job of seeming like a real dude.

One thing I noticed about the movie was that there was tons and tons of product placement. I don’t really know how to feel about that. I mean, it was mostly transparent; products were being displayed because they were being used by people in the movie, so it wasn’t gratuitous or anything. I tend to hate advertising, but is adverting that boosts realism something I should dislike? I’m not sure.

There were some awesome trailers, too: Cloverfield and The Dark Knight. Cloverfield looks like a very modern take on a giant monster movie, and if that’s really what it ends up being (it is directed by the guy that does Lost, so who really knows (not that I’ve ever watched that show, but I hear it’s pretty confusing)) then that will be great. With the modern-day extreme fear of war and terrorism, giant monster movies have a clear shot at having social relevance through allegory, the likes of which there hasn’t been since Godzilla movies were still about nuclear proliferation. From the shots of the Statue of Liberty’s head being blown off in the trailer for Cloverfield, I’d say the people making this movie have a good understanding of this idea. And The Dark Knight, well, if it’s half as awesome as Batman Begins was then it’ll still be ten times more awesome than any other Batman movie. (And it looks like it could be more awesome than Batman Begins was.)

There’s something funny about sitting in a room lit only by a candle and a computer monitor, I think. It’s an odd combination. I’m probably not the only person in the world who does it, though. I think I like candles just because they’re the opposite of what I usually immerse myself in. Nothing more than a little flame moving around randomly, casting shadows that move around with it. It seems so simple compared to LCD monitors, HDTVs, and compact fluorescent light bulbs.

The Cribs - Men’s Needs

Since I’ve had some extra time on my hands, I’ve been trying to watch some movies. During the semester I probably had enough time to watch movies, but I rarely wanted to just sit down and watch something for two hours.

I watched that new Futurama DVD movie. I thought it was pretty good. I’m glad there’s a few more coming, too. I was never a huge enough fan of Futurama to buy all the DVDs, but I always liked it when I saw it. In a way, I think I prefer it that way; it means anytime I see Futurama on TV, there’s a chance it could be a new episode to me. Futurama always had a wordy and sometimes subtle humor that I have always enjoyed.

I also watched The Simpsons Movie, which I found less convincing than the Futurama one. It seemed like they couldn’t make up their mind if they were trying to make a movie or an episode of the TV show. I didn’t really laugh too much, but by the end I was at least concerned about the characters, which is more than I can say for any episode of the Simpsons from the past eight or so years. I’m glad I saw it, but I wasn’t really too impressed. Also, I think this is really weird, but I thought the animation was too fluid at certain points. It looked weird! Maybe I’ve just spent too many years watching anime and other stuff with a pretty low frames per second, haha.

Finally, I watched the movie Grosse Point Blanke. My dad recommended it to me, and let me borrow the DVD of it. (He also lent me the Simpsons movie. We trade movies all the time. I lent him Borat recently and he loved it so much that my mom wants to watch it now. I’m not sure if that’s a good idea, but my mom does surprise me sometimes.) It’s a movie starring John Cusack, in which he plays a professional killer who returns to his hometown to go to his 10-year high school reunion. It’s basically everything you would expect it to be from that one sentence. I noticed John Cusack has a way of speaking and acting that is very personal, but seemed a bit old fashioned to me. I can see why my dad really likes his movies. I wonder when an actor will materialize who has the same qualities, but acts more like he is of my (our?) generation. I wonder if there’s even anything universal enough about my generation to make such a thing possible.

At the same time, the movie had a certain genuineness to it that movies don’t really have too often nowadays. Nowadays, everything is too grand, too slapstick, too dumb, too flashy. Good movies that are just about people are pretty rare these days, especially comedies. I guess it’s probably a part of everything getting dumber in general. There really aren’t many recent comedies that I like. That being said, I did see Superbad recently, and that movie was pretty awesome. It did seem pretty genuine, and I am definitely of the opinion that the portrayal of most of the dudes in the movie was all too real. Seriously, it was definitely the most accurate portrayal of modern high school dorks I’ve ever seen. And believe me, I know.

Lupe Fiasco - Daydreamin’

So, this weekend’s been pretty interesting. For somebody who’s already “done” for the semester, I was pretty busy.

First, on Thursday, I went to this pretty nice restaurant called Hutch’s. It was my grandpa’s birthday. I used to really hate exceedingly nice restaurants. I don’t really like fancy food, so there would always be at most one or two things on the menu that I’d eat, but that wasn’t really the problem. I just really didn’t like the vibe. Lately though, I don’t really mind, I guess. I can take it. I’d still rather eat at Duffs or a Chinese restaurant or something though. Anyway, the steak I got was really good. (and quite expensive, but my parents were paying for dinner and my dad was the one who convinced me to get it, so I don’t feel guilty.)

Friday was the (annual) CIT holiday party. I can’t believe it was the third one I’ve gone to. This time they had a bunch of videogames set up, so that was really cool. I had to work during the first hour of it, so the pizza was cold when I got there, but free cold pizza is still free pizza, so I can’t really complain.

Yesterday I had dinner at my Japanese teacher’s house. In attendance were the following groups of people:

• All of Japanese 401 (which is six people)
• An Electrical Engineering professor who lived in Japan and speaks Japanese, and his (Japanese) wife and children
• My teacher (obviously) and his wife and kids

It was fun! More fun than I thought it’d be, really. I was concerned that I would say something monumentally stupid since we would be conversing at least partially in Japanese, but it ended up ok. It was interesting; we started out the night speaking almost all Japanese, but towards the end we switched to English. It was nice to see everyone from the class again. Also, my teacher’s family and the other professor’s family were both very nice, and I think it was nice of my teacher to have this party. The food was really good, too. (Even my teacher’s dog Caesar thought so, as evidenced by his two well-planned attempts at eating people’s desserts.) It was a really interesting and immersing experience; coming back to my apartment, I felt like I was coming back to a different world than the one I had just left. I always enjoy experiences like this, but I’m always really hesitant to enter into them.

I’m writing this post in my living room while I play Guitar Hero 3 with my friends. We only have one guitar, so we’re taking turns. I’m writing this between my turns. It feels good to be able ot relax on a Sunday night.

Made it through the week! I had to finish a video and write an eight page paper, and of course I left both things until the last minute possible. All set now though! I just have one exam left, and it’ll be really easy.

Here’s the video I made, called Static:

Let me know what you think of it if you do check it out!

Anamanaguchi - Helix Nebula

The Detroit Airport. (A lot of the following pictures are gonna be of the Detroit Airport… but I’ve been through it so many times, I don’t even think that’s weird.)

They have this neat fountain thing that shoots out streams of water. Probably the coolest thing about it is how there’s no sides to it though. I wonder how that works.

国際空港だから日本語が一杯ある。面白いと思う。

(Because it’s an international airport, there’s a lot of Japanese (language). I think it’s interesting.)

Club? Airport? You decide.

You might still be having trouble deciding.

Ok, so it’s really a tunnel that connects Concourse A with Concourse B and C. My theory is that when they were designing this airport, they decided to make this tunnel look this crazy to distract people from the fact that it’s a really annoying to have to go through some epically long tunnel to get to your flight gate.

Northwest Airlines has this elite club thing with frosted glass doors in the Detroit Airport. You probably need to be some sort of CEO or oil baron to hang out in there. That way you can be safe from having to interact with all of the unwashed masses.

My destination.

This is from after Thanksgiving. Check out the instructions on the bottle of this Belgian beverage that I purchased. Did anybody out there watch Voltron when you were a kid? If so, you will probably understand why that last step in the instructions is hilarious. If not, then…this isn’t the photograph you’re looking for. Move along.