A Long Endless Game of Errors Repeated Again and Again

Speaking of Pain, my head sure is killing me. A wedding and a bundle of graduation parties on the same day and I am paying for it today. I sat around on Saturday watching the first hour or so of the NFL Draft, when the City of Detroit had to punch me in the gut again; this time taking Calvin Johnson off the board before my Bucs could snag him. I wish him nothing but the best, but damn, would've liked to have had him on my team.

As promised, here are some more 11 Word Movie Reviews:

Battle Royale (2000):
A Japanese dystopian kill fest with non stop action; mindless entertainment.

The Cannonball Run (1981):
I love caper and race movies. This one is a riot.

Casino (1995):
Deniro and Pesci at their finest. A top tier crime movie.

Children of Men (2006):
Fantastic movie. What happens when the world begins to die? Chaos.

The Fountainhead (1949):
A good adaptation of my all-time favorite book. Howard Roark rules.

The Illusionist (2006):
A mediocre ending, but still a recommendable flick. Prestige was better.

Jackass Number Two (2006):
The first ten minutes had me crying with laughter; genius stuff.

The Last Kiss (2006):
A story of love gone completely wrong. Great characters and dialogue.

Little Children (2006):
An interesting look at the hypocracy of small town American life.

Little Miss Sunshine (2006):
Fantastically hilarious story of a family's trip for a beauty pageant.

Michael Moore Hates America (2004):
It's about time that somebody put that bastard in his place.

Panzer Dragoon OVA (1996):
Worst voice acting ever? Lame cartoon about a great video game.

Reign of the Gargoyles (2007):
Nazis animate stone gargoyles to do their bidding. Yes, it sucked.

Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970):
Best Pearl Harbor movie ever; shown from an interesting view point.

xXx (2002):
Hey, I've been to Prague! A pretty decent mindless action flick.


I've still got plenty of movies to watch, so expect more of these in the next week or so. Also, I've compiled all of them together (only two posting's worth so far, more will come) and put them here. I'll add a link to the sidebar (in "MJ's Albums" style) in the coming days to reference you right to there. It's no Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic, but hey, my opinion counts far more to me than theirs do anyway.

11-Word Movie Reviews

With this post, I'll keep a running list of my 11-Word Movie Reviews. Why 11? Beats me. I know it would be great if there was symbolic rationale for my picking the number eleven, but honestly, I've got nothing.

I'll try to keep these alphabetized, with the year and a link to the IMDB so you can learn more about the movies mentioned, as well as the date I originally posted the review. Don't agree with my opinion? Good! Think I'm repetitive? Probably! Eleven words is tough to work with!

Oh, and if you don't like the look of the list here, you can always check out cataphoresis.flixster.com, which has all the same reviews.

The List:

300 (2007):
Satisfies my bloodlust. Why is every Greek/Roman movie in sepia? [3/11/07]

Battle Royale (2000):
A Japanese dystopian kill fest with non stop action; mindless entertainment. [4/29/07]

Battle Royale II: Requiem (2003):
A steaming pile of anti-American boring propaganda. A real snoozer sequel. [5/27/07]

Blood Diamond (2006):
Really liked this flick. Leo made a despicable hero very believable. [3/11/07]

The Cannonball Run (1981):
I love caper and race movies. This one is a riot. [4/29/07]

Casino (1995):
Deniro and Pesci at their finest. A top tier crime movie. [4/29/07]

Casino Royale (2006):
Good movie. Broke from the formula, but that's not necessarily bad. [3/11/07]

Children of Men (2006):
Fantastic movie. What happens when the world begins to die? Chaos. [4/29/07]

Crank (2006):
Decent mindless action flick. Wouldn't dub this one a "must see." [3/11/07]

The Departed (2006):
As good as promised. Everybody comes through with some solid performances. [3/11/07]

Employee of the Month (2006):
Wouldn't bother seeing this one again. Dane Cook was astoundingly mediocre. [6/19/07]

Eragon (2006):
Probably my least favorite dragon movie to date. It wasn't terrible. [6/19/07]

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007):
Another middle of the line comic book film rendition. Yet again. [7/11/07]

The Fisher King (1991):
Bridges and Williams are incredible. This flick is really a gem. [5/27/07]

The Fountain (2006):
Hauntingly good. One of the saddest, sweetest movies I've ever seen. [6/19/07]

The Fountainhead (1949):
A good adaptation of my all-time favorite book. Howard Roark rules. [4/29/07]

Ghost Rider (2007):
Yet another middle of the line comic book movie. Oh joy. [6/25/07]

Goodfellas (1990):
Another Scorsese masterpiece. A must see for any crime movie fan. [6/25/07]

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007):
This was good, but shrinking eight hundred pages inevitably loses depth. [7/11/07]

Hot Fuzz (2007):
Pretty funny and most definitely worth seeing. It's no "Shaun" though. [6/25/07]

The Illusionist (2006):
A mediocre ending, but still a recommendable flick. Prestige was better. [4/29/07]

The Jackal (1997):
Willis and Gere were great. I would watch this one again. [5/27/07]

Jackass Number Two (2006):
The first ten minutes had me crying with laughter; genius stuff. [4/29/07]

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005):
How did this awesome movie bypass my radar for so long? [5/27/07]

The Last King of Scotland (2006):
Whitaker is fantastic as Amin. Powerful and gripping the whole movie. [3/11/07]

The Last Kiss (2006):
A story of love gone completely wrong. Great characters and dialogue. [4/29/07]

The Last Mimzy (2007):
A great kids' movie, this captures the magic like ET did. [7/11/07]

Layer Cake (2004):
This one came out of nowhere and really pleased me. See it! [6/19/07]

Little Children (2006):
An interesting look at the hypocracy of small town American life. [4/29/07]

Little Miss Sunshine (2006):
Fantastically hilarious story of a family's trip for a beauty pageant. [4/29/07]

Mad Max (1979):
Dubbed from Australian to American? Huh? Wouldn't call it a "classic". [5/27/07]

Man on Fire (2004):
A fantastic performance by Denzel. One of my favorite revenge movies. [5/27/07]

Michael Moore Hates America (2004):
It's about time that somebody put that bastard in his place. [4/29/07]

Music and Lyrics (2006):
Yes, I saw this. Yes, I liked this. I heart Barrymore. [6/25/07]

Pan's Labyrinth (2006):
Fascinating, gripping story. I was proud I could understand the Spanish. [3/11/07]

Panzer Dragoon OVA (1996):
Worst voice acting ever? Lame cartoon about a great video game. [4/29/07]

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007):
An hour too long, odd, but somewhat enjoyable. Keith Richards rocked. [5/27/07]

A Prairie Home Companion (2006):
I loved the old-time radio feel and some great folksy tunes. [3/11/07]

The Prestige (2006):
Very interesting concept - I would recommend this for any magic fans. [3/11/07]

Reign of the Gargoyles (2007):
Nazis animate stone gargoyles to do their bidding. Yes, it sucked. [4/29/07]

Reno 911: Miami (2007):
I love the show, and this is essentially an extended episode. [6/25/07]

School for Scoundrels (2006):
Funnier than I thought it was going to be. Thornton's hilarious. [5/27/07]

The School of Rock (2003):
I have a mancrush on Jack Black - another freaking hilarious movie. [6/19/07]

Shrek the Third (2007):
I love these movies. All the pop culture references kill me. [5/27/07]

SiCKO (2007):
Shockingly, I loved this. Less propaganda, more serious journalism for once. [6/27/07]

Smokin' Aces (2007):
This one's worth skipping. Lame ass plot twist couldn't save it. [5/27/07]

Spider-Man 3 (2007):
Wow, this movie was a turd. Lost the magic, Sam Raimi? [5/27/07]

Stranger than Fiction (2006):
Surprisingly decent movie worth a few good laughs. Ferrell is great. [3/11/07]

Thank You For Smoking (2005):
A hysterical mockumentary. Aaron Eckhart was an incredibly despicable, likeable villain. [6/25/07]

Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970):
Best Pearl Harbor movie ever; shown from an interesting view point. [4/29/07]

Transformers (2007):
It's giant robots wrecking stuff! Michael Bay didn't ruin my memories! [7/3/07]

Wild Hogs (2007):
There wasn't anything special about this, but nothing too terrible either. [7/3/07]

xXx (2002):
Hey, I've been to Prague! A pretty decent mindless action flick. [4/29/07]

Dispatches from Tallahassee

First off, I really feel for the friends and families of the victims of last week's shootings in Blacksburg, and to the entire Virginia Tech community. As somebody who knows and has worked with quite a few Hokies, I really feel for them all. Unfortunately, it seems like in the wake of any tragedy (such as this one) in the United States, that the news networks and newspapers - those that profit and thrive off of incidents such as these - are desperate to fill their time and end up putting complete and total assholes on the air.

These assholes get on TV mere hours after a brutal incident and spout their partisan garbage, always trying to promote whatever agenda they're big on. Gun control, anti-gun control, stricter privacy laws, video game violence, television violence - each one of those was purported to be the cause of these killings by some asshole who's trying to push across their personal agenda. The killer can't be an evil, twisted being - no, that would be too simple. TV made him do it. Or Playstation. Or the "lax" gun control laws in Virginia.

All of which, of course, is complete and total bullshit.

Over on the spectacular BoingBoing.net, they brought up a post-9/11 article entitled "Why the Bombings Mean That We Must Support My Politics" from Adequacy.org; a fitting article for the crap that filled the airwaves in the hours and days after what happened in Virginia. Using the pain and suffering of others as a catalyst to promote your own agenda - it's just so incredibly scummy. I've got no insult terrible enough to be appropriate for these assholes.

In other news, if you want something to smile about (and you like beer), then you should try Samuel Adams' new Cherry Wheat beer. It's sweet, it's light, and it tastes incredible. In a very short amount of time it has become my favorite beer, even if it is a pain in the ass finding it in Tallahassee.

From a nerd standpoint, I recently did some (financial) damage at one of FSU's surplus auctions, buying 5 laptops, 4 Apple PowerBooks (G3) and 1 old Sony Vaio. The Vaio was a somewhat curious buy for me - it's a Pentium II (366MHz) - a nine-year-old laptop that is considered a dinosaur by today's computing standards. So why buy it? Because it is one of the tiniest laptops I've ever seen - a 12" subnotebook with a scant 3.5lb weight. Per FSU requirements, these systems do not come pre-loaded with an operating system; this proved to be quite a pain in the ass for me as the notebook didn't come with a CD-ROM or a Floppy drive, and these are the two easiest ways to load an operating system. So what did I do? I disassembled the laptop, put its hard drive in one of my desktop towers, installed an operating system (Xubuntu Linux 7.04), put the hard drive back in the laptop, and booted it up. I don't know how it worked, but it did. This ancient laptop had no problem getting online with an old wireless card, opened applications (Firefox and OpenOffice.org to name a couple) pretty quickly, and even had no trouble playing music (Last.FM or local/network MP3s) or movies (streamed XviD files), something that wouldn't be possible if I had installed Windows 98 on the machine.

In case you mentally checked out when I went into geek mode there, I apologize. This week is finals week at FSU, where I'm wrapping up the next-to-last undergraduate semester in my 2nd degree. This week will be chock full of studying and tutoring my students for their finals, but next week I've got a whole lot of nothing to do. Look for the return of more 11-Word Movie Reviews and hopefully a recap of my favorite albums of the year so far.

Oh, and if you haven't seen it, check out this PSA created by the Cliff Freeman agency for the Youth AIDS foundation. I think this does an incredible job of expressing a message in a way that catches your attention:

[Image gratuitously stolen from stirlingmclaughlin.com]

Do you use Twitter, Digg, or del.icio.us? Let me know! I'm always looking for people to add to my friend list on those websites. If you haven't heard of OpenID, it's an interesting concept. Theoretically you'll be able to log into multiple websites by using only one login/password, solving the age-old problem of trying to manage having tons and tons of usernames and passwords. The problem with having so many usernames is that most people tend to just pick a password and use it for everything, making them somewhat prone to identity theft if somebody can get a hold of your usernames. What I like to do is use the wonderful open source KeePass, (also available in a portable version) which stores and maintains an encrypted list of passwords. If you're using Firefox, the built-in password manager in Firefox is a great alternative, but please go to Tools -> Options -> Security -> Password and select "Use Master Password" - if not, whenever somebody has physical access to your computer they'd have complete access to any account with a stored password. If you want to see my OpenID site, head over to http://claimid.com/cataphoresis and see.

In the world of sports, I've enjoyed the Red Sox winning this weekend's series against the Bronx Bombers; especially lighting up Mariano Rivera on Friday and the 4 HR in back-to-back-to-back-to-back fashion in tonight's game. Last night's fight (UFC 70) was pretty tame with exception being the main event, where Mirko "Cro Cop" was obliterated by a high kick to the temple by Gonzaga. What a ridiculously surprising ending to that fight; some gave the guy a chance, but nobody thought it would end like that.

Summer Plans

So a few words to update things are probably in order - it has been a while since I last posted.

The most pertinent news regarding me and my future is that I've been offered a place in the Lake Erie class of 2011, and I've accepted. So I was wrong about what I predicted before: it won't be M.D. Jordan, M.D.; it'll be M.D. Jordan D.O. If you're unfamiliar with osteopathic medicine, the related Wikipedia article is a decent starting point, though it can be a bit biased (as the article was likely written by allopathic med students). I think as of right this second I'm thinking about Emergency medicine, but I don't know yet. I plan on going in with an open mind and figuring out during 3rd and 4th year rotations exactly what interests me the most. The way that LECOM works is that for the first two years you're in Bradenton, following their "Problem Based Learning (PBL) Pathway" where you are put in small groups and proceed to work (over 2 years) on a couple hundred cases, each of which requires you to go and learn on your own. I think such an individualistic approach will work pretty well for me - I'm certainly motivated.

Speaking of motivation, I should be lacking it right now - at least from a school standpoint. Lake Erie starts in June or July (I don't know which), which means that I won't end up finishing my Chemistry degree at FSU. At the end of this semester I'll be two classes short of the degree - Advanced Analytical Chemistry and Spanish III. So that means right now I'm taking classes for a degree I won't get. Realistically there's no reason I should care about doing well, but I guess I'm not wired like that. For starters, in the case that I might someday come back and finish this degree it'd be dumb to do anything but put in my best effort. Also, I'm doing well enough in these classes that there's no reason to give up now.

Shifting to the social side, working two jobs and going to school full time has pretty much swallowed up all my time. I think that I probably won't see much of a difference in my day-to-day free time when I get to med school - I'd just switch my current work hours for study hours. I really can't wait to get started. Playing "hurry up and wait" for the last two years got old about a year and a half ago, so the mere prospect of finally getting to do what I want to do will be a welcomed change.

Since classes end for me at the end of April and I'll likely start med school in June (or July, I don't know yet) that leaves me some time to hopefully travel and see some friends before I'm stuck with my nose to the med-school grindstone for the next two years. If you're game for a visit, let me know.

In a more humorous note, if after med school I ever decided to further my engineering licensing, I could attain the illustrious title "Matthew Jordan, D.O. P.E." which is probably the greatest title ever. I'd be a professional D.O.P.E.


[Update: 4/8/2007]

So, I got a letter from LECOM the other day stating that I needed to be there on July 30th for the first day of orientation (school starts a few days later); this falls on the last week of classes for the Summer semester at FSU. What does that mean? Well, since all I need to do to get this degree is simply pass these classes, I might be able to swing this 2nd degree after all. That's great news to me, as getting 95% through with a degree only to fall short is none-too-appealing. Now I've just got to see if this will actually work.