Holidays

We are in the middle of Chanukah and Christmas is fast approaching, so why are 
people in such a bad mood? I like all the holidays.  The different foods, 
lights, traditions are really exciting.  But, when you are in a store or 
driving, it seems that people are in too much of a hurry or angry and it's just 
plain dangerous.  We all need to slow down, take a deep breath, be thankful for 
what we have.  Maybe the holidays will be more joyous for all. Just a thought 

Holidays

Why do people get so crazy during the holidays? I understand wanting to find the 
perfect gift for those special someone's, but really? If it was so important, 
then you should have started shopping earlier.  It's not like something amazing 
is magically going to appear only days before Christmas then disappear. For the 
most part, I find people cranky, in too much of a hurry and tired. I think 
everyone needs to slow down, shop on line, eat some guacamole and chips with a 
large burrito, and realize that there is no perfect gift. Get over it.

zelda

Who out there doesn't like the Zelda games? They have been around forever and 
are still going strong.  Rumor has it that when the games first came out all the 
way back in the 80's if you were stuck you had to call, for a fee, an 800 
number, and they would answer one question on how to move you to the next level. 

I find that hysterical.
Anyway, just released is a box set of guides for all the games. It's signed and 
comes in a special box. 
So find someone from the 80's and give them this non-tech gift. I am sure they 
will relate.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Legend-Zelda-Box-Set/dp/0804161380

South Park

I can't say I am a huge South Park fan, but I can't say I am not, either.  South Park is so simplistic in its animation but so intricate in its political and social statements.  A recent "Black Friday" episode (parts 1 and 2 ) pit the South Park kids against each other in their quest to be the first ones at South Park Mall on Black Friday to get video game systems, where, by the end of the 2nd episode. they are 96% off.  All of the kids agree that they should team up to be the first ones to get a gaming system where they can all play together.  The problem arises when they realize that half the kids want Xbox while the others want PlayStation. 

 

Now let me add in that this was all done with a "Game of Thrones" theme.  I have not read all of "GOT" yet, but even I got many of the jokes and references,especially the end sequence with George Martin saying the pizzas are coming (meaning the next book is coming, its coming, really.......... years later....really). 

 

As as aspiring writer, I can't help but admire Parker and Stone.  They are irreverent.  They look at the world and say exactly what they feel about it, whether popular or not.  They are inspired, clever, funny,goofy, silly and simply brilliant.

 

 

Black Friday

While we are on the topic of Black Friday, I will admit that it is one of my favorite days of the year.  Ever since I was little, my dad, bro and I would get up at like 2 am and head over to a particular store for the "holy grail".  Now, the "holy grail" changes from year to year, of course.  When I was 7, for example, it was a Pokemnon game.  When I was 10, it was a Pokemon game.  When I was 15 it was a Pokemon game.  This year......ha!  I already got my Pokemon game! Wow, how I have grown. 

 

The thing I like about Black Friday is getting to a store, waiting on line and then hunting for that special "thing" that you have to have.  Sometimes you get it and sometime you don't.  I was only afraid one time and that was during the infamous "Walmart" stampede.  I was ok not getting the $5 pannini press, and thought that others should be too,

 

Now with the economy so bad and the Internet so popular, there really is no need to get up in the cold, dark, after being stuffed to the point of bursting, Thanksgiving Thursday, but its a bonding adventure. Happy hunting!

snl skit

 Has anyone been following the stories on Rob Ford, the Toronto Mayor?  Apparently admitting one smokes crack cocaine is enough to stay in office, but it is not enough to avoid Saturday Night Live.  You have to check out Bobby Moyniham as Rob Ford.  It is hysterical and to accurate! 

art stuff

   http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303531204579203623843999590

Cornelius Gurlitt will now forever be known as the German man who simply refused to give the art in his possession, to its previous owners, including many pieces stolen from Jews by the Nazi’s during the Holocaust.  Gurlitt has been quoted saying, "I will not speak with them, and I won't freely give anything back, no, no.”  The article states that Gurlitt believes that  losing the pictures is more painful than the death of his father in a 1956 car crash, his mother's death, or his sister becoming ill with cancer. Whata guy!

How can anyone feel sorry for this man? His father admitted to working for the Nazi’s.  It was not a secret where the paintings came from.  Gurlitt is sad because his treasure trove worth billions now has the potential to go back to families that lost everything, including their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, children, aunts, uncles, and more killed, aside from having their homes and all possessions stolen.

Gurlitt needs to walk a mile in the shoes of anther before stamping his feet, blowing a tantrum and acting like the spoiled, horrible, Nazzi child that he is.  He needs to be forced to do the right thing and return the painting.

art

I noticed that Art Spiegelman is having an exhibit at the Jewish museum  For those of you who are not familiar with him, Spiegelman is a cartoonist and modern day Dada-ist.  He is most famous for his graphic novel Maus, which depicts true stories of the his father a  holocaust survivor, in comic form.  Historically, if Jews cant laugh, we are not true to ourselves.  But with that said, Maus, a mouse, vermin, the jew, persecuted by the cats, the Germans, attempts to present the inconceiable, the horrible, to a vast audience.  Spiegleman's  Zines are inspired!

Stolen Art

So, guess what I found out today? Wait, this is a blog, I forgot, so I will just tell you. I found out that billions of dollars worth of art was found in Munich. This art was originally stolen from the Jews by the Nazi's during the holocaust. The German art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt worked for the Nazi's in the 1930's to sell "degenerate" art.  Fast forward to today, his son, Cornelelius Gurltii, (the coward,like his father) had the stolen art that his father did not sell, including, Liebermann's, Picasso's, Matisses's and more. I am glad that they were found, but disturbed that Gurlitt assisted the Nazi regime to steal, plunder and profit and that his son did the same.  There needs to be repercussions, but more than that, the art needs to be returned to it s rightful owners.  There has to be some form of healing, if it can ever be.  We need to remember to make sure it doesn't happen again.  If a way to do that is locating and returning of art, then so be it.

the truth? part 2

While I am on a rant about truth, I may have been duped by another author, Dave Eggers, who wrote, Zeitoun.   This book is about a man who stayed behind during Hurricane Katrina to watch over his New Orleans house and rental properties.  Using a canoe, he paddled though the streets of New Orleans helping stranded neighbors and abandoned dogs. He was arrested and incarcerated for 23 days because he was thought to be a terrorist. He was later realised.   Great guy, loving wife, awesome family, again, not sure. 

Recenlty, Zeitoun was arrested and jailed for beating his adoring wife and for allegedly paying someone to have her and one of his kids killed.  Ok, so he was acquitted on the attempted murder thing, but he did beat her and they are now divorced.  I now have to question all that I thought was true.  Did he stay behind to help or was there another motive?  Was he  a wife beating, radical, who attempted murder  or the hero of New Orleans? I guess we will have to wait for a book sequel or a movie to find out.

http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2013/07/zeitoun_found_not_guilty_on_bo.html

http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2013/07/kathy_zeitoun_interview.html

ice cream sandwich

So, what exactly are ice cream sandwiches. They are cookies and in the middle is ice cream, right? Wrong! Ice cream sandwiches are life....take notes Joseph Cambell's soup, because I am going to drop some knowledge on you. Ok, so lets go over the process of ice cream sandwiches;  you find the sandwich in the back of the freezer, open the wrapper and then eat it. This sounds all too familar. Finding the ice cream sandwich is like birth, you are found you are alive. Opening the wrapper is like teenage years. You finally broke out of your metaphysical wrapper of awkwardness and into the knowledge of the real world. Eating the sandwich is your adult life, the best part is eating it. And finally you are poop and dead. But then the whole circle of life thing happens and somehow you are a sandwich again....and at the thought of that I am not going to eat ice cream sandwiches again... or at least for a while.

the truth?

I, like everyone else, have read and/or seen a production of the Laramie Project.  For those of you who have not, I say really! The story is a sad one.  In October, 1998, Matthew Shepard, a student a University of Wyoming, in Laramie, Wyomming, was driven from a bar, robbed, brutally beaten, tied to a fence and left to die.  The issue in this case is that Shepard was gay, and his murder was labeled as a hate crime.                 

In 2000, Stephen Jimenz, an openly gay author, went to Laramie to do research for a screenplay and television movie he wanted to do on Matthew Shepard.  “The Book of Matt”, according to Jimenz, was not the story he intended to write.  Instead of Shepard being the victim, he claims that Shepard was a crystal meth dealer and addicted user. He also claims that the man that beat Shepard, Aaron McKinney, was his drug dealer and sometimes sex partner.  In his book Jimenz claims that McKinney was strung out on methamphetamines and did not beat Shepard to a pulp for being gay but rather to settle a drug score.

The question remains, why all these years later does and should the truth come out?  Shepard was brutally beaten and died.  Whether it because he was a drug dealer does not negate the tragedy of it all. 

Good came out of bad.  A  voice for gay rights was the result of Shepard’s death.  Nothing good would have come from his death if it had been portrayed as a drug fueled killing.  Jimenz may be right on the money, or in it to make money, but no good will come from his book, whether completely accurate or not.

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=277685

The Simpsons

This is the month of pink.  Everywhere I look there is pink.  So, I think, what is the reason? Why is it at this time of season? Who thought of this marketing technique? Who could have been so clever to think?  We see this special color and open our wallets to give money, to research, to help to families, to women who know only to well that it is the opposite of funny, but, perhaps, we will find a cure, so in the future, to be sure, we all, if we are lucky, can laugh together.....

 

I am reminded we all need to find laughter, especially after reading the very sad news that Marcia Wallace, the voice of Edna Krabappel a character on The Simpsons, passed away because of breast cancer. 

 

Lets keep walking, for reaearch, for a cure, so that we can all find......... laughter...........

 

 

do the simpsons link here

 

 

 http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2013/10/26/marcia-wallace-dies-voice-simpsons-edna-krabappel/

sushi

Sushi!! Sushi!!!! I am having sushi for dinner!  I have a lot of school work to get done, and have been neglecting my SAT work, so I am in tonight.  Feeling sorry for myself, I talked my mom into getting any sushi (NO ONE WANTS HER TO MAKE THAT)  What type of sushi should I get? Yellow tail? Dragon roll? Alaska roll? Edamames? Just give me everything on the menu put me in front of my computer and watch me go eat a roll, type a paragraph, eat a roll, annotate a chapter, well you get the point. 

(Luke, this is my first blog about food this year, so cut me a break.  I REALLY do like sushi)

Ok now I am feeling guilty, so, Luke, I added this for you: 

According the to unadulterated full proof, perfect source on everything in the universe, Wiki, sushi started in Japan in the 8th century to preserve fish in fermented rice, bla bla bla, where it is served today everywhere from gas stations to sushi bars and you have to hope that the fish is not radioactive or bad (although bad fish will immedidately feel worse that radioactive fish but later on you may have a lovely sushi "glow").

Does Crime Pay?

I read an article called "10 impressive Art Heists"(ok it was in How Stuff Works, but it was about art so don't judge me).

For example, number 1 was about a guy who worked in the Louve, hid in a closet, and stole the Mona Lisa. A simple, easy, no force or trouble heist.  He was caught, but his excuse was that he was returning it to Italy.

Number 10 was about a few guys who tunneled into the National Fine Arts Museum in Paraguay and stole  paintings by Coubert and Piots.  These clever thieves were never caught.

What is the purpose of this article, I wondered?  Was it to encourage an academic life of figuring out the statistics and odds of locating famous works of art and then figuring out a full proof way to steal them? Perhaps it was about crime sometimes pays? Or is it crime does not pay, unless it does, but it should not?

Whatever the moral of the article is (if there is a moral) it is a fun article that inspires script writing ideas about art and intrigue.

Comic Con Withdrawl ep 1

It has been about a week since I last dressed up like a goofus and pranced around with other gufusses (goofuss, goofi?) getting over priced stuff I do not need and waving to Stan Lee, who does his classic move, where am I again and how much am I getting paid? I am currently rocking back and forth with my comics in hand chanting only 355 days till the next Comic Con. The comics which own I already have read about as many times as there are days left until Comic Con. I have not eaten anything else except my Comic Con diet of fiber bars and Elmo juice boxes which has made my immune and digestive system grow muscles and improve 500%. Why you ask?  I need muscles to hurdle over nerds to find Stan Lee and overcome the virus nerditus. Is it Comic Con yet?

oreos

 I feel like a lab rat.  I read an article (you see what I get for reading) about Oreo's.  Oreo's, simply, are the best cookie ever (well, maybe not next to Mallomars, but that is not the debate here).  The article is about a study that claims that Oreo's are addicting.  Great!  We needed scientists to do an actual study on this?  "Our goal was to design a study to explore the hypothesis that high-fat, high-sugar foods have the same addictive potential as drugs or abuse".  No offense to these "scientists" but instead of wasting these delicious treats on rats, all they needed to do was bring in a few boxes of the Oreo goodness into our high school cafeteria and watch the "scientific magic" happen.  Have I found my calling?

 

article

 I read an article about Amelda Marcos's (you remember her- the wife of Ferdinand Marcus, ruler of the Philippines forced into exile-- the lady with a lot of shoes) ex aid who is on trial for selling A Monet "Water Lilies" series painting. Obviously, the painting was not hers, but was stolen  by the Marcoses as they looted the Philippines of treasures worth billions.  Art, intrigue, deception, trial, error, ....STAC!

 

 

http://www.newsday.com/news/region-state/ex-marcos-aide-on-trial-in-nyc-case-of-monet-work-1.6265912

 

 

blog

What exactly is a blog? Wikipedia, the leading, extremely reliable, leading source on everything there is to know on the planet, no, in the universe, states, ” A blog is a discussion or informational site published on the World Wide Web and consisting of discrete entries (“posts”) typically in reverse chronological  order….”

I thought you should know……..

blog

Ok, I left you hanging on my last “blog”, but it was to prove a point.  A blog does not really have to be about anything at all.  Blogging about blogging counts as blogging, but is it really a blog?  Until my next blog…….

Here is a link  (it is a Wiki one by the way, and if information is on Wiki, how can it ever be wrong) on how to make money blogging.  Need I say more?

http://www.wikihow.com/Start-Making-Money-Blogging

Breaking Bad

I recently started watching Breaking Bad, or at least experiencing it, considering I am already on season 2. Breaking Bad is about an overqualified high school chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. He partners up with his ex student to sell meth and support his family. Walter White the main character, is pretty much a rebel considering all of the trouble that he causes and all of the secrets he hides from his family and best of all his brother- in- law who is a DEA agent. Breaking Bad is one of the highest critically acclaimed series of all time between winning and  being nominated for 151 awards. The lead actor has won most of these awards for his portrayal of Walter White. The series finale is tonight, and even through I cannot watch it because of spoilers, I will blog about it when I do.

HIMYM

I am writing this post before I see the first episode of the last season of How I Met Your Mother. The series was supposed to end last season but got renewed at the very last second so most of last seasons episodes are random,  just like this clip that was played at comic con.

I think the writers have explored every avenue of ideas and zany antics and, of course, showed the "Mother" so there is not much left to write about, but  here is what I think will happen this season....

Ted, the main character, will whine a lot, as usual, and this will probably take up about a quarter of the season, until he finally lets go,  meets the mother and dates her until the series finale.

Marshall and Lilly will either have another baby or go through some other major drama like getting another job or moving back to the suburbs until it all resolves itself in the series finale.

Robin will get a new job and leave Barney until the series finale, where they reunite.

Barney will still be awesome....period.

Cool Art

Peter Paul Biro has to be one of the coolest people in the art world. He is not an artist, sculptor, or writer but, rather, authenticates paintings based upon fingerprints.  Yes, artist fingerprints.  Biro has created a special camera and technique where he looks into the layers of paint and searches for the artists actual fingers print, as artist leave their fingerprints in the paint.  He has done to the art world what Sherlock Holmes did to murders- they figured out who done it.