Grrr Raaaaaaar Etc.

Alright, position update. I am currently located in a delightful coffee shop on State St. in Madison, WI, little place called Fair Trade Coffee. Good coffee (or so I would say if I could afford any) and an excellent atmosphere: the walls a are nice warm yellow, the table distribution is calculated and perfect for accommodating everyone from that kid in the yellow and black sweatshirt by himself with the laptop to the small gaggle of peers that I've been dragged along behind.

So that's where I am (and if you could tell me right now I'm sure I'd love to hear where you are) and now that you know we can move onto more interesting things, like films I've seen recently. Let's go with The Incredible Hulk.

So, The Incredible Hulk, pseudo-sequel to Ang Lee's 2003 Hulk or The Hulk or whatever, is actually... not bad? Yes! It is! It is not bad, a worthy film to portray the Hulk-Smashtastic action that fills the comics and should be an easy adaptation to the screen, or so you'd think, and you'd probably be wrong, because the Hulk is another one of those Marvel characters with the wonders of internal conflict that the company might as well patent and slip somewhere into their logo. Unlike Spider-Man and Iron Man and all the rest of those witty bastards, however, Bruce Banner is too busy trying to cure himself of his oddities to bother with much wit, and the eponymous monster is too dumb to do anything but blithely narrate his actions, albeit infrequently. It makes for a strange comic book movie, all of the slam-bang action but none or at least few of the grins. They make it work, somehow, probably thanks to the lovely Liv Tyler, who manages to cement an emotional core into the film that one can actually care about, and even if you can't manage that (for God forbid a movie demand anything more than your ability to wonder slack jawed at CG explosions) than at least you can ogle her until your eyes dry out.

I'd talk more about the weird choice of Tim Blake Nelson for Dr. Stern and the occasionally spotty pick of William Hurt and maybe even how excited I am for the things that Marvel Studios is up to but I'm not getting payed by the word and Lord knows you lost interest somewhere around the word "gaggle."

Hm. Not as good as Iron Man, though.

Found a Job...

...and quit it immediately. Okay, to be fair, I'll be officially quitting it in... about seven hours, but even so, the effect is the same so cut the whining because I am sick of hearing it.

Isn't that a lovely picture? It only half relates; the notion of vegetarian shoes though... pure charm.

It wasn't the worst job, it was just boring and soul crushing and awful. Like customer service, except that people actually want information from you when you're standing around in the middle of Target like a very active coma victim. They're much less appreciative when you jump onto their doorstep begging for money with idealism leaking out of your nostrils. It's worse than them just not wanting it, it's them loathing you, the very fact of your existence about the equivalent of a particularly large and needy mosquito.

Canvassing. Door to door canvassing. The institution, Wisconsin Environment, lovely people really, had me memorize some lines, stuck a badge on me and kicked me out on my own into an upper middle class neighborhood obviously more worried about the length and coloring of it's lawns than the air around it. Now admittedly, global warming is not something the human brain was ever designed to fear but I would like to think that someone would give a damn- exactly the sort of thinking that gets one twenty eight doors in your face.

I don't care if I'm broke as hell. My self-esteem can only take so much, and enough people dislike me already.

No point convincing the whole of suburbia that I'm no good.

yours,
Noah J.

Concerts

So I spent last weekend in Chicago, which was much fun and plenty of ROFLs. Seeing Third Eye Blind in concert was sort of surreal- their sound is about one hundred percent the same and I felt like I was about twelve years old listening to them. They spent a lot of stage time talking about their soon-to-be-recorded fourth album (fourth? how long have they been around?) and displaying questionable fashion and headwear choices. Such is life.

The important part of the Chicago concerts was actually Broken Social Scene, who was pretty much wonderful. Kevin Drew does a great job of being rock n roll awesome without being a dick about it- plucking out the bassline of Shoreline was greatly improved by the addition of jump kicks and pick-held-high type maneuvering. Somewhat of an upsetting concert for me, though. Broken Social Scene is hell of good, but that means it got a lot of play and association- about seventy percent of the songs I know by them are the soundtrack to the various heartbreaks of my life, so the concert was somewhat melancholy in that respect.

The Cool Kids played as well. They were pretty good? They need more material before I can judge them proper, and then judge them I shall.

Overall, a good weekend with good music and fun times. This post wouldn't be quite so terrible if I weren't so tired, so I'll catch some sleep so I read this in the morning before crying, brought to tears by the shame I have brought on my family .

yours,
Noah J.