Lest We Remember

Some 3Ls can't find anything, and some end up like this.

2009-05-01T22:02:37Z

http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/30/news/economy/legal_deferrals/index.htm?postversion=2009050109

This show was clearly genius.

2009-04-02T16:38:40Z

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1NJyxONv5E

Where the Wild Things Are

2009-04-02T01:47:55Z

http://www.hulu.com/watch/64652/movie-trailers-where-the-wild-things-are

Stuff White People Like

2008-04-04T18:35:27Z

If you aren't already familiar with this blog, you should be.

lestweremember @ 2008-03-26T10:20:00

2008-03-26T14:21:48Z

"If you carry the weather with you, then character is determined by the prevailing wind."

The trick is not to carry the weather with you. Harder than it seems.

Come on Spring

2008-03-12T19:07:29Z

Walking to the train this morning I passed clusters of brightly-colored tulip buds, pushing up out of the soil. Spring is coming and there's nothing anyone can do about it!

Beowulf

2007-11-19T19:12:30Z

Beowulf was awesome. Everyone should see it in digital 3D or Imax 3D if possible. Neil Gaiman proves himself a genius yet again.

True, Beowulf is a story almost entirely about heroism; his arrogant promises don't piss you off, they make you side with him more. He is right up there with Ulysses, without the whining. But Gaiman wrote him into this movie also as an incredibly sympathetic, suffering character, who never ends up getting what he wants. We can feel for him or condemn him; that's the beauty of the writing. The script was excellent.

Some people were disturbed enough at the fact that Grendel's mother lives in the end to write off the movie as a poor adaptation. Yes, in the original poem Beowulf is a hero mostly because he kills Grendel and his mother; but in this adaptation, Gaiman successfully grasps onto important themes of Beowulf's personal story, and uses Beowulf's failure to kill Grendel's mother as a device by which he can make his adapted theme clearer; I imagine that this is the best way to make a reasonably good movie out of a poem so epic in length.

In the movie, Beowulf lives his life out as a hero, never quite feeling like one; all of his subjects believe he has killed both Grendel and his demon mother; he is living a lie. The melancholic undertone was engaging cinematically, and it lent credence to his failure to kill Grendel's mother. His final battle with the dragon is charged with obvious parallels between Beowulf in his old age, and Grendel in their battle decades ago; Beowulf is chained to the dragon as Grendel was chained to him, and Beowulf finds he needs to slice his own arm off in order to tear out the dragon's heart, just as Grendel's arm was rent during his battle with Beowulf.

In the end, the non-heroic main theme was evident: we are all the same, all one. We live and die with our own pain, our own failures, and our own hopes and dreams. Beowulf is the monster he killed, and a monster still remains ... he kills the monster of the day, but "his demon" lives on; I thought it was incredibly well done.

On another note, Neil Gaiman has just blogged about the movie and the reviews that it has been getting (Christians seem to like it, English teachers seem to like it, random people don't); bottom line? Go see it. It will bring you closer to God (along with f#&%ing me like an animal).

lestweremember @ 2007-11-16T12:38:00

2007-11-16T17:39:55Z

Yes, a cave will save you ... but wait. Wouldn't suicide defeat your purpose?

The world is beautiful.

2007-11-15T15:22:15Z

Sometimes I will look around and it will break my heart that no matter how long I look, I won't remember exactly everything just the way it is, and that the next moment, if I look again, it will all already be different.

Facebook is pretty cool ...

2007-11-07T16:19:12Z

http://blog.wired.com/business/2007/11/facebook-rolls-.html

In recent news:

2007-10-23T17:11:08Z

http://today.reuters.com/news/articleinvesting.aspx?type=bondsNews&storyID=2007-10-22T225646Z_01_N22151718_RTRIDST_0_IRAQ-USA-SPENDING-UPDATE-2.XML

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/10/17/tyrannosaurus-dinosaur.html?category=dinosaurs&guid=20071017093030&dcitc=w19-502-ak-0000