Synaesthesia

See the New York Times article reporting it.

I’d rather not comment on the circumstances (strange as they seem), but I can say I will really miss Heath Ledger. I remember seeing him in A Knight’s Tale for the first time, and most recently in Brokeback Mountain and I was waiting on the edge of my seat to see him in The Dark Knight (which IMDB says is in post-production now). He was a great actor whom I thought was really on his way to the top, with amazing skills, and I’m really going to miss him.

I just realized something. In Neil Gaiman’s Stardust, one witch helps another, and makes a promise to another, because of their membership in some kind of sisterhood or something…and other characters help the main character because they’re members of a guild or something… Anyway, I don’t remember the names of their organizations, but I just realized what a strange kind of motivation that is for a character – to do something solely out of membership in an organization, not because they felt one way or another about the situation – or DESPITE how they actually felt about the situation. I can’t decide if that’s a cop-out or not, to have a character be motivated by organizational rather than personal ties, but it certainly opens up another world for character motivation, and it certainly could let you get more nuances in motivation.

So, earlier I was under the impression that Peeps didn’t have a sequel, but ah, it does: The Last Days.

To sum up my reaction, I read the book in two days, but I was ultimately kind of disappointed. It shares some similarities with Westerfeld’s other novels (I’m specifically referring to the Uglies series), but those similarities don’t serve this book as well as they did, say, Extras.

For example, The Last Days is basically about a band getting together and trying to make it big, except it’s set against a backdrop of a spreading epidemic that basically turns people into vampires. Similarly, Extras is about our fame-obsessed culture and one girl trying to make it big, except it has a futuristic backdrop and a possible plan to end the world woven into the story. Furthermore, like Extras, The Last Days sort of forgets about the previous main characters and starts afresh, with only a few appearances from Cal, Lace, and others.

This formula (the idea of looking at a teen wish through a new lens and starting with different characters) worked for me in Extras but did not appeal to me in The Last Days, for several reasons. The book switches the first-person narrator with every chapter, and we meet several band members – including Minerva, who’s obviously been infected. This is quite a departure from the engrossing format of Peeps, in which every other chapter talked about parasites; in The Last Days, that technique survives as only a single italicized page before each major section of the book, and they seem much more watered down than the detailed and surprising descriptions of Peeps. In any case, meeting so many characters just for this one book – none of whom are particularly exciting (the smart and rich one, the “fetching” one, the slow and large one…the only different one is a girl with a mental disorder, but even she ends up becoming predictable, neatly summed up as “logical” and “ethical”) – seems like a waste, especially when I as a reader had invested so much in Cal and Lace in Peeps. Furthermore, in the Uglies series, the main battle has been fought by the end of Specials, so it’s easier to let go of the main characters for Extras. The Last Days arrives at the final battle with very different characters, after an unexpected story about making a band during an impending apocalypse, and that final battle doesn’t come until the last chapters of the book, when the main characters don’t even have to fight in it (though they participate), and the so-called apocalypse is basically summarized during the epilogue.

Furthermore, because The Last Days has introduced us to new characters who function outside the Night Watch, we have to go through the whole process of watching them learn about the parasite and the underground enemy again. Maybe it’s just my preference, but though I liked the passages about band practice and band drama, I would have preferred to see the tension mounting among characters involved in the Night Watch as the “apocalypse” approaches, or to even have seen these newcomers worry more about how their city is falling apart.

I won’t say much more, besides that the way characters speak didn’t strike me as authentic as it did in other Westerfeld novels – with words like “fawesome” and “fool” instead of “awesome” and “cool,” I got the impression that either the characters or the author was trying too hard.

But I love Westerfeld, and I highly recommend Peeps and the Uglies series – but feel free to pass on The Last Days.

Also, on a separate note, the book cover is ridiculous. I can understand the image-oriented ones of the Uglies series featuring different phases of Tally’s life and all that, but this cover just doesn’t fit what the book is about.

Maps

by Yeah Yeah Yeahs

I know this song came out a while ago, and I’ve listened to it at least fifty times, but it’s only now that I’ve realized that in the second chorus, Karen O sings “they don’t love me like I love you” instead of “they don’t love you like I love you.” Like Crimson and Clover, which I blogged about earlier, this song has a repetitive chorus and sparse lyrics, but somehow, at least to me, because they repeat so much, they take on more emotional heft, so that I really enjoy it.

Compared to the rest of the album Fever to Tell, this song sounds lighter and looser and dreamier. The other ones are harder and louder. I recommend Y Control.

Today the New York Times had an article called Thumbs Race as Japan’s Best Sellers Go Cellular. To summarize, in Japan, online services have allowed people to write novels using text messages, and some of those novels have been published in book form and gone on to be best sellers. One has even become a movie and manga and has been adapted for TV.

What I enjoyed about this article was the discussion of how prose is different when it’s written on a cell phone. I was also impressed that there should already be talk about cellphone purists and discussion over whether a book written on a computer could still be considered a cellphone novel (I’d side with the purists, just as I wouldn’t call an American comic in manga-style “manga” – because manga specifically refers to Japanese comics when used in English).

I agree that this type of literature dilutes literary style, but I don’t know if it’d do any permanent damage. Crap novels gets sold in the US all the time and yet people still have the vision to write remarkable literary works. But, this does put me in mind of something a teacher of mine noted when we were admiring the details on the gutters on an old mansion (they had like…lions…or something); he mentioned that the art of doing that has probably been lost. Just like we’ve lost the technology to build a road as perfectly as the Romans did, or a wall as fine as the Incas’, or build a pyramid without electrical machinery. As I mentioned, I don’t think Japan would lose too much in a literary sense because there will always be those who want to learn the more refined art of writing, but I could also imagine a world far in the future, where forming a long, complex, and nuanced sentence is a lost art.

Wikipedia provides a link to another article, entitled Cell Phones Put to Novel Use. In this one, author Yoshi points out how he uses online hits to determine whether his plots are working. I think that’s a very clever method that defines this new cellphone novel – something made for mass consumption (and even in response to the masses), something very light and fluffy (despite the dark subject matter Yoshi wrote about in Deep Love), something that if you have pretty decent taste you might enjoy out of guilty pleasure but you wouldn’t want to emulate. More power to these writers for entertaining people and hopefully their readers will expand to more literary novels after the cellphone ones.

Today I met up with a bunch of college friends in NYC, and I thought a blog was in order since it’s the first time in a while that I’ve done so many different things in a single day and had so many adventures…

I got up relatively early, with only 5 hours of sleep, and took the bus into the city, getting there around 11 am. I met up with my friend, who was staying on the upper east side at a nice place with a doorman even. The plan was to go to Brooklyn and get on the Barge Music to listen to classical music at 1 pm. It was something our other friends had heard about, though none of us had much info on it. To get to Brooklyn, we had to take the green line downtown to Broadway-Lafayette and switch to the F line. But for some reason that I have yet to understand, the train skipped our stop and the PA system announced that we were headed for Brooklyn Bridge instead of Lafayette. My friend realized that we’d have to change trains NOW, and she darted off with me a half-step behind her – only for the doors to close between us. While some guys chuckled good-naturedly behind us, we mouthed Lafayette to each other, and I stayed aboard the train. At Brooklyn Bridge, I took the local train back to Spring St., since I was afraid of against missing the Lafayette stop, and decided to walk the way above ground. Unfortunately, I walked one block in the wrong direction, only to remember that Broadway runs DOWN, not UP, so I had to turn around and run three blocks (run not walk…) to the Lafayette-Broadway station, while my friend called me to tell me she’d wait for me at the front of the F train. I got there, swiped my card just as the train came in. I had to run down the train, searching desperately for my friend, until I finally saw her and we got into the train, running into another friend we had to meet in that car, as the doors closed a minute later. If this wasn’t some weird destiny…wow… I mean, the chances of our taking the wrong train, then somehow meeting up at the SAME car on the F train…

We got to Brooklyn around 12:50 pm maybe and found the barge around 1:20 pm. We’d been worried that it would leave and return to dock later, but it didn’t. It looked shady from the outside but the inside was very nice. There were no seats left, so we hung around near the coat rack for a bit, until we really started to feel the barge swaying in the water, and then we left. It was interesting; most of the audience members were senior citizens, I’d say, though the performers were young and very skilled. The 1 pm performance was free, apparently, but the 4 pm wasn’t.

Later we went to the Museum of Natural History, which brought back a lot of memories, and I grabbed some desperately needed food at its cafeteria (including a delicious oatmeal raisin cookie and a fresh Granny Smith apple).

We went for dinner at Franchia since two of the people traveling with us were vegans, and – believe it or not – Franchia is a vegetarian Korean restaurant and tea house. When we got there, they told us we’d have to wait until 7:30 pm for a seat (it’s kind of a small place and you generally need a reservation), and we couldn’t wait that long for food. Then the waiter told us we COULD eat there if we didn’t mind sitting on the floor. We wondered if he was joking (how strange!) but it turned out that what he meant was they had a tea room, and if we wanted, we could eat dinner there. Hell yeah!! The food at Franchia was yummy. My friends shared so I don’t know how what they ordered tasted, but they seemed pretty happy. I had the Dumpling Noodle Soup and it was delicious. I also got a Green Tea Latte ($6) and that was also delicious. This place is yum but super expensive, which is why my friends shared (I had my heart set on the soup so I opted out family style). Also, we’re almost positive that André 3000 was eating there, too.

For dessert, we hopped down to Rice to Riches on Spring St. One serving there seems HUGE, no matter how you think about it, but it’s delicious, and they let you try various rice pudding flavors. It’s kind of expensive (think pinkberry) but great, and the place has humorous signs posted all over. They also give you special tupperware for your rice pudding that you can take home. I definitely want to go back and eat there again.

The last destiny thing that happened was that after I grabbed the shuttle from Grand Central to Port Authority, I hadn’t been walking for a minute before some friends – who’d also been in the city at the time, just not with me – found me. Life is full of such crazy happenings.

Mixed reviews on this one. The New York Times hated it, whereas Entertainment Weekly gave it a B+.

My visceral reaction? I was scared. Really scared. Even after the movie I was still kinda shaky. Everyone laughed at the ending though, and generally had kind of a “What the hell? That’s it?” attitude. Because the theater lights didn’t come on right away, a bunch of people stayed behind to see if there’d be more after the credits. I don’t think there was (they were so long, I didn’t want to wait). So, on an entertainment level, very good. Really scary. A little predictable (I’m a whiz at this foreshadowing thing now) but very good.

The shaky cam took some getting used to, but the opening party scene (lasts around twenty minutes?) helped get me used to it, to the point that maybe you did kinda feel like you were there.

I’ve been sort of following the huge viral marketing campaign, which is why I saw this movie on opening day, and I guessed right – you don’t need to have followed any of it to get this movie, and if you have followed it, don’t expect any answers (except to questions concerning what the monster looks like – the camera loves him). All in all, I think the viral marketing is more interesting than the movie.

Now to the substance of the movie. EW seems to think it was blissful in its critique of its selfish, gorgeous characters – each forgettable (except Marlena, at least for me). The NYT believes the movie lacks “Freudian complexity or political critique,” comparing it to the classic Alien. I might have bought EW’s perception if the movie hadn’t seemed to be trying so hard to make me care about the characters, what with their love stories, and hadn’t so willingly thrown eye candy at the viewer. Because of how two-dimensional they are, they should be forgettable, but their love stories keep them from representing just regular New Yorkers trying to survive, a situation I would have preferred (i.e. if they’d been at ground zero of the monster attack – Midtown – and they’d just been concerned with getting out of the city alive, not going back for someone). Thus by the end of the movie, you can’t sympathize with them as everymen, and you haven’t managed to care enough about them as individuals to not laugh at the ending.

I also agree with the NYT that the movie even fails to capitalize on the fact that the cameraman seems overly concerned with documenting events, to the point that he risks his life several times – although if you think about it, the movie is memorable in that these characters, stuck in a potentially fatal situation, become immortal because of the cameraman.

However, I agree with Josh Bell at Las Vegas Weekly, who wrote, “At times Cloverfield seems less like a movie than a theme-park motion simulator, but that’s not a complaint; like those rides, it puts you square in the middle of the action, only able to see what’s right in front of your face.” Even before the movie started, I was imagining myself on a ride.

This isn’t 28 Days Later, which had depth beyond the scares. But this does have scares, which is why I truly enjoyed this movie. I found myself covering my mouth and praying for characters to make it, at the beginning especially, and pretty much up until the last ten minutes, when I realized how the movie would end. Only afterward, when you wonder what this movie is about, do you start to see its flaws. Maybe it won’t have much replay value, I don’t know, but it’s fun the first time around.

The next part of my review is SPOILER-ific, so read on at your own peril.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS START HERE
This movie could have been even more subversive, as EW calls it, if it had done away with the good-looking hero-type guy. It’s because of him that so many characters get killed. I would much have preferred a story that suddenly switched to being about Marlena and Hud, rather than about Robert and Beth, the stereotypical pretty ones (isn’t there something wrong with having so many anorexically pretty people?). Who CARES about Beth? With such insubstantial characters, I cared about the funny guy (Hud) and the girl played by the actress in Mean Girls (Marlena).

Also, the ending could have used a news reel running after it, to explain what the monster was (or could have followed what happened to the surviving character). Someone mentioned that it left the way open for a sequel, but frankly, I don’t need one. I just want to know what the hell the monster is, because I’m convinced that it’s a person that drank waaaaay too much Slusho – or it’s the monster that’s been creating/protecting Slusho’s secret ingredient at the bottom of the ocean – or it’s just something creepy down there that the Chuai oil drilling expedition woke up.

Funny thing is, I feel almost like I ended up too smart for this movie. So many people were merely speculating on what was happening in the trailer when the silhouette of a character is shown against a tent and she’s bloating up incredibly – and I KNEW she’d explode. I was like, DUH!

Edit 1/21/08: I just realized that the major plot failing of this movie is that characters put other things before survival. Another person would go for survival, and probably only think about heroism in terms of saving the people physically close to him or her (like, the person standing next to him/her), not someone way far away. Putting romance before survival, that’s where this movie failed.

After spending a while complaining to my friends about this anime, I thought I’d blog a bit about it so I can shut up about it.

Due to a cool thing on my school server, I was able to watch Afro Samurai recently. I’d heard some great things about it, and the visual style seemed cool, as did the fact that Samuel L. Jackson did some voice acting for it. There are only six episodes, so I was able to watch it in one sitting.

The show is about a young boy whose father is killed because he carries the #1 Headband – the headband that goes to the strongest fighter. Only the person with the #2 Headband can challenge the #1, meaning that the #2 is always fighting battles with those who want to take his headband away from him, while the #1 only has to fight with #2. This orphaned young boy tries to hunt down the #2 Headband, and then the #1, becoming Afro Samurai in the process. I liked the lack of morality in the show, in which Afro seemed to be for the continuous cycle of #1 vs. #2, whereas the #1 was determined to gain both headbands and then unlock a godlike power to, I think, bring peace or something to the world.

Nice concept, but I hated watching this show. Afro is accompanied by a stereotypical black guy who doesn’t know when to shut up, who’s always yelling at Afro not to get into fights. Though they explain why he’s tagging along by the end of the anime, I’d already begun to suspect it, and it wasn’t worth putting up with him just for that twist. He clutters up everything, when maybe the show would have been more fun if there was NO ONE accompanying Afro, and Afro wouldn’t even have to talk; it’d be like Samurai Jack. Afro himself isn’t a very likable character, always telling others to shut up or acting oh-so-cool. I just couldn’t sympathize with him unless he was a kid and getting the shit kicked out of him.

I didn’t care for the music, maybe because it’s just not my style. Or the sex, maybe because it was contrived and RIDICULOUS. That whole reverse Nightingale syndrome is quite an overdone cliché; caring for someone does not equal loving them, please. I felt like the anime thought it could get away with stupid things around me.

In short, this was a bit of a nightmare for me, and I only watched it the whole way through just to make sure I could give it a fair chance, because so many had been praising it. I recommend that if you’re interested in action anime, you look somewhere else, because though this has action, it’ll leave a bad taste in your mouth, and you’ll wonder if you could have gotten some kick-ass fighting AND some likable characters.

The article is in Spanish and the title is Operan a dos estudiantes chinos para sacarles micrófonos que usaron en un examen. If you can’t read Spanish, here’s the gist of it:

Two students in China used miniature microphones that they placed in their ears to cheat on an English exam. Normally, they said, you use a tiny magnet to remove the microphones afterward, but that didn’t work, so they ended up having to go to the hospital. According to them, this practice is very common among their peers.

How ridiculous is that? Wouldn’t studying be preferable? It might take longer, but then they’d end up with useful skills rather than ear aches.