Indra363's New Writeups

War is not healthy for children and other living things (thing)

2003-03-21T07:45:53Z

I always got the feeling that my parents were a little bit sad they missed the summer of love and 1968 in America. They were too old (although they were about the same age I am now) and too Midwestern to get caught up in the movement of the times. My Dad use to like to claim he was a hippy just because his hair was a little long and his sideburns were slightly past his ears. My Mom used to brag about how she carted my brother in our little red Radio Flyer through an anti-Vietnam War protest.

My Mom was so anti-war that it translated into the banning of water guns from our house. In fact, when I finally got a Nintendo (several years after they first came out), I was not allowed to buy games that involved guns or shooting. Except the Star Wars game because according to my mom, Star Wars didn't count. I didn't argue the logic of this when I was 10. I got a game with guns.

Growing up I had a poster that followed me to 3 different bedrooms as I moved…

Were you 18 in the Spring of 1997? (thing)

2003-02-12T06:12:44Z

Were you 18 in the spring of 1997?
weeknight sound track
what came before? Thursday. Start 2 AM. Stop 3 AM. what comes next?

Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, Smashing Pumpkins
Tonight, Tonight, Smashing Pumpkins

I don't stay out this late as much as I use to, only when I go home now. 2 AM is closing time here, when you're left scurrying through the city looking for 24 hour restaurants and $1 pizza slices. Anything to keep from going straight home.

It is the same as it was the spring after I graduated from high school. Then the coffee house closed at 2 and now the bars do.

The remaining ritual of…

Chaos poetry (thing)

2003-01-26T21:32:34Z

Let me start by clearly stating that I don't write poetry. At least not any more. I will admit that there was a time when I did write poetry. Bad poetry. Really bad poetry. This was of course when I was in high school, full of angst and listening to Nirvana. I still have all my notebooks that I filled up with the tripe that I wrote. They're packed away right now, but I am sure some day I will pull them out again and have a good laugh. I wouldn't call the following poetry either. They were, or are,... literary exercises inspired by E2. Maybe some of them are poetic, but just because something turns a lovely phrase does not make it a poem.

In college, I studied the Beats. In fact, every literature course that I took to fulfill my English minor (which wasn't something that I had planned on obtaining, it just happened) related to the Beat writers in one way, shape or form. During the last class…

About Schmidt (thing)

2003-01-26T17:48:28Z

Warren Schmidt is a sad man. He has just retired from his job with an insurance company. Sleeping next to his wife of 42 years is like sleeping next to a stranger. He lives in Nebraska.

Alexander Payne, director of Election, took the book by Louis Begley and turned it in to his own cinematic story. Although I have yet to read the book, looking through the excerpts on Amazon.com, it is clear that Payne liberally re-craft the book with his writing partner Jim Taylor.

Shortly after his retirement, Schmidt and his wife toast to the new chapter in their lives from the breakfast nook in their newly purchased Winnebago. With all sorts of free time on his hands now that Schmidt has left the corporate world for a life of leisure, Schmidt adopts a child through children's aide charity he sees advertised on TV. He heads out one…

One day we realized we were going to need a bigger car (idea)

2003-01-26T09:55:27Z

Before I spent my first summer in Boston, I assumed I would spend every weekend out on a beach somewhere. Not in a "I need a sun tan" sort of way, but rather a "I want to sit and listen to the sound of the ocean because I still find it amazing" sort of way. Unfortunately I only made it to the water's edge twice that summer. Once to sit out on Revere Beach one night specifically because I had not been to the beach since moving, and the second to go boating on the Cape.

The Cape. Only tourists call it Cape Cod.

See, after being from the Midwest all my life, the differences between us and New Englanders fascinates me. I wonder if they are more high strung because they never had time as a kid to ride in the cars for hours on hours without having anything more to look at than the open landscape of the Great Plains. I wonder if they would get…

Empire (thing)

2002-12-07T10:09:18Z

Written and directed by Franc Reyes, Empire is the story of Vic Rosa, a heroin dealer in the South Bronx. After meeting investment banker Jack, he tries to turn his lifestyle legit, but ends up showing us that you can take the drug dealer and put him in an Armani suit but you can't really change his true nature.

The premise of the film is outstanding, however, the execution does not follow the same standard. Granted, this is coming from someone who is clearly not a member of the target audiance. When I first saw the preview (while seeing the film 8 Mile) I thought the bulk of the film would be used to show Vic's character chasing after Jack. But it wasn't.

Had this been my movie, I would have spent the first 15 minutes showing Vic's South Bronx lifestyle, then spent the middle portion of the movie exploring Vic's transition to a "legitimate" lifestyle, and the final third of the…