so obama has become a symbol for hope and change. don’t believe me? his posters even explicitly state it. i live in seattle, so those are everywhere. the folks here seem to like him a bit. yet today during my daily morning venture on the public transit, i learned that obama can cure cancer. bewilderment.

according to the older bearded fellow sitting a few seats behind me on the bus, this is indeed true. obama cured his cancer. well not obama himself. this gentlemen proclaimed to another passenger that he saw obama in his toast this morn and not only that, but it cured his cancer. i thought he might be joking, yet his vehement passion would argue otherwise.

so note to all doctors out there. things that cure cancer now include: surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, immunotherapy, and toast that resembles barack obama.

some ingenious people imitated the hollywood directors - john woo, kevin smith, and wes anderson - in creating mccain attack ads. the wes anderson one’s right on.

get ready folks, this one is a fun one. i just witnessed a bank robbery!… and consequently, the bank robber successfully getting away!

so today was meant to be boring, wholly and utterly boring. wake up. eat. shower. work, work, work on the huge project whose finish line i am finally nearing. very productive, very boring. i’ve even gotten the hang of the bus lines. as of yesterday - third attempt - i successfully road the bus from point a to point b without getting lost or walking five miles. very exciting, yet other stories for other times.

i boarded the bus and rode towards downtown. there were two stops i was watching for that could lead me to my favorite new coffee shop. it was a pleasant ride and sure enough, as we made it into downtown seattle near the water, i saw the first stop coming up. however, i also saw four seattle police vehicles and a ton of cops carrying their massive cop rifles into a bank of america. apparently there was a bank robbery afoot!

i opted to stay on the bus until the second stop much further down the route, to keep from being in the middle of only God knows what. maybe i should’ve gotten off of the bus. the next stop, one block down, came and went. a couple of people off, a couple of people on. bus driver pulls down to the intersection where another cop swiftly appears from his vehicle.

then we hear him yell, “Stop where you are!”, as he draws his gun.

we look across the intersection to a guy in a green sweater with a very small duffle looking puzzled, yet stops and puts his hands up. a massive swarm of cops yielding their black cop rifles appear and then another cop car speeds into the center of the intersection and stops. all of them are poised on the green-sweater wearing pedestrian. they proceed to have him lie on the ground, cuff him, and place him in the cop car.

now. there are a couple of things wrong in this scenario. they are as follows:

one. if you’re going to rob a bank, you should definitely use a bag big enough to hold to hold a decent amount of money. this guy’s bag was definitely too small to handle a decent robbery.

two. if someone’s running from the direction of a bus to a close bus stop, just because they’re running may not mean they robbed a bank. s/he could be trying to catch a bus.

three. the guy was sitting on the bus behind me when the robbery went down. i really doubt he did it!! wrong place at the wrong time.

as they hand-cuffed him, everyone on the bus was getting upset as we knew that they were letting the actual robber get away. justice, indeed. apparently, bank robberies are all the rave in seattle. geez.

photos of the craziness. dang. these photos do not show the massive amounts of cops with their cops rifles, unfortunately!!

john mccain’s ‘celebrity’ ad

paris hilton’s response to being used in john mccain’s celebrity ad without permission

kathy hilton’s response to her daughter being used in the ad

I’ve been asked again and again for my response to the now infamous McCain celebrity ad. I actually have three responses. It is a complete waste of the money John McCain’s contributors have donated to his campaign. It is a complete waste of the country’s time and attention at the very moment when millions of people are losing their homes and their jobs. And it is a completely frivolous way to choose the next President of the United States. (source).

last week at the garage, robyn and stu decided to make me a list of twenty-eight things i must do when i reach seattle. said list was documented on the front and back of paper napkin. it is as follows.

1. ride a ferry boat
2. go to the space needle
3. visit the original starbucks
4. eat at elliott’s oyster house
5. rock mount rainier
6. VANCOUVER!!
7. walk along alki beach
8. buy cute galoshes
9. drink a local beer
10. go skiing
11. enjoy hot cocoa on a cold night with a cute boy
12. cut my own christmas tree
13. watch sleepless in seattle in seattle
14. instate a weekly ritual involving coffee
15. enjoy organic food
16. embark upon a three day camping extravaganza
17. drive across state
18. swim in the pacific ocean
19. drive u.s. route one up the west coast
20. eat oysters (aka ‘put hair on your chest’)
21. get a henna or temporary tattoo
22. bike the city
23. play frisbee in a park
24. have a picnic in the park: brie, crackers, wine
25. redwood forest
26. adopt a favorite bar and cafe
27. attend a concert
28. embark on a photo safari

bush or batman? interesting.

(sorry i didn’t embed the video, yet i am anti-iframes, and snotr’s embeds were being disagreeable).

read this article today and laughed a lot. children are wonderful reminders that our lives are what we make of them. fabulous!

The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing. walt disney

(disclaimer: this is not a real article; it’s published by the onion. fyi.)

as i walked up to the theatre last night for the midnight showing of the dark knight, it felt fitting to look up in the sky and see a full moon shining brightly over birmingham. then jack’s voice rolled through my head, “Have you ever danced with the devil by the pale moon light?”, the voice i heard nineteen years ago on a night quite similar to this one.

things the dark knight did insanely well:

• christopher nolan’s directing. with only eight films in his canon of films directed - which include memento, batman begins, and the prestige - one would expect no less than a brilliantly crafted work of art.
• the realism of this film. this is manifest in both the environment and the characters. in batman begins, the environments in the film still had a bit of a cartoon-esque feel to them. yes, the city looked a bit like chicago, yet elements had been changed with computers. last night as we pre-gamed before the midnight showing, watching nolan’s first batman film, this was rather evident. in the new film, the film’s setting is extremely realistic. also unlike the earlier batman films, there are no superhuman powers to the villains and heroes. each is only a man or woman who has developed into the character being portrayed in the film.
• christian bale’s performance as batman. as always, bale was marvelous and built a character whose own conscious was battled with throughout the film. he’s always running the line between stopping the villains he’s up against, without becoming one, which has always been a struggle for batman.
• plot. well-written. well-developed. tennessee williams believed that in order to write a good story, all a writer need do is write strong characters. if one can develop strong characters, the story almost takes care of itself. the character development in this film is well-executed. when joker utters the words to batman, “You complete me,” playing off of cameron crowe’s jerry maguire, the audience laughs, yet it’s accurate and eloquently put. lose one of the main characters in this film and the story will no longer be solid, nor the performances. each of the actors/actresses enables and shines because of the performances of their colleagues, which leads me to…
• the amazing cast. christian bale. michael caine. morgan freeman. gary oldman. heath ledger. maggie gyllenhaal. aaron eckhart. anthony michael hall. cillian murphy. eric roberts. enough said.
• development of harvey dent into two face. when dent utters the words, “You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become a villain,” a chill runs down your spine because you know the fate of dent, “the white knight”. from his father’s coin and his telling rachel, “I make my own destiny,” it’s astounding. i appreciated that the story was written not to make two face out to be a mad man, yet rather a vigilante, much the caliber of batman, yet whose definitions of justice are somewhat confused. at the end of the film, one can easily understand the camaraderie between the joker and two face.
• heath ledger’s performance as the joker. many thought nicholson’s 1989 performance as the joker could not be rivaled. they were right. ledger’s performance is entirely different, and i believe, the better of the two. ledger himself chose to do a darker version of the joker, calling on frank miller’s darker, more sinister joker, a schizophrenic, sadistic clown that makes your skin crawl, yet still manages to make the audience laugh. brilliantly done. alfred sums the joker up in a sentence: Some men just want to watch the world burn.
• the makeup. joker’s makeup is well done, looking much like he coloured his face with sidewalk chalk, then ran around outside in the rain. his clothing was well chosen, and the washed look of his makeup well done. yet it is harvey dent’s transformation into two face that caught my attention most readily. reminiscing something from terminator, the half of his face that burned away is astonishing.
• recasting rachel dawes character. while my sister will not agree, i believe the choice of maggie gyllenhaal to play rachel dawes over katie holmes is brilliant. while holmes did a good job in the first film, i still kept thinking about “dawson’s creek“, waiting for james van der beek or tom cruise to jump out of the shadows and deck batman for kissing holmes. maggie gyllenhaal had a much more sophisticated portrayal of rachel dawes and was less of a distraction to the film’s plot (at least for me; this point is rather subjective).
• the filming. six action sequences in this film were shot with an imax camera. awesome.

things the dark knight could improve on:

• making the setting less recognizable. while i applaud the realism, part of that means that the film must be filmed in an actual city. the city of chicago happened to be the place that housed the filming of the dark knight. as a result, every five minutes i was seeing a building i’d walked past or visited. it’s chicago, not gotham.
• lucius fox. they were unclear at the end of the film if fox’s resignation was tendered. (i am hoping i just misunderstood, as it was almost three o’clock in the am). i love morgan freeman in this film and would like to see him return in the next.
• batman’s grunting voice. in the first film, bale did a good job of changing batman’s voice so that it does not sound like bruce wayne’s. i appreciate that, though in this film, he seemed a bit over the top and too deep.
• the focus on heath ledger’s portrayal of the joker. many are criticizing the marketing of this film as capitalizing on ledger’s death. others are completely focusing on his performance, and completely forgetting the stunning performances of the other actors in this film, namely christian bale and aaron eckhart.
• it’s a long film. two hours and thirty-two minutes is a very long film. i’m not complaining so much about this, as the film was so well done that i barely noticed. however, i have heard a couple of folks who were unhappy with its length.

all in all…

this film is ambitious, astounding, and mesmerizing. it is brilliant and wonderful, yet grotesquely disturbing at the same time. more than ledger’s performance, the entire film is so much darker than any other film in its genre, clearly outdoing even its predecessor. the audience is taken through the development of the characters - the tension of batman battling his own conscious to not become the villains he is fighting to stop. it’s eerie.

what really got under my skin is the message of the film itself, as you see “the white knight” (harvey dent) become two face, and how realistic it all is. dent’s transformation can’t be blamed on insanity. it’s about the depravity of the human condition, and that’s why this film is so potently creepy.

best comic book film of all time? perhaps. any film that can completely silence a sold out theatre of teenagers is inspiring. yet the problem is that the dark knight is in its own category. it can’t be compared, yet it has certainly raised the expectations for future comic book films… and it leaves you wanting more.

other people’s thoughts…

• filmstalker
• newsarama
• new york daily news
• rolling stone
• robyn’s blog
• sears’ facebook note
• gizmodo
• the hollywood reporter
• national post

…and i may never sleep again. wow. aMAZing. wow.