Burn After Reading Movie Review

I hate being repetitious so suffice to say I loathe movie reviewers. That being said here is a movie review.

Joel and Ethan Coen are all kinds of living legends. These are the guy who made "Raising Arizona", "The Big Lebowski", "No Country for Old Men", "Fargo" and so many more. So of course when they get John Malkovich, Brad Pitt, and Frances McDormand together for a comedy thriller it's going to be great, right? Well, at the very least it will get great reviews.

It doesn't matter if a movie is good or not there will be a crap ton of folks waiting around to get on its jock because every movie reviewer (and music, and anything) in the world wants to have their god forsaken name on a movie poster. So when a new movie comes out by some living legends it's fair to assume that everyone and their mother will be singing its praises in hopes of advancing their career. In a perfect world though a false review would end said career and send them back to writing a barely-read blog where they belong (hey wait a minute...).

A good cast doesn't make up for a lame story line with less closure than a Palahniuk novel. And it certainly doesn't make up for gratuitous violence with little or no discernible purpose (although the crowd would have led you to believe it was for humor - oddly enough not being a fourteen year old boy obsessed with GTA and Eazy-E (when did he get famous again anyways...) I do NOT see the humor in the only likable character being shot point blank in the face or someone being hacked to death with a hatchet). Movies and books don't need to have a nice clean Hollywood ending. They don't need to be flawless. They don't need to explain every little thing that happens in them.

I tell ya what though - when they are this mediocre there are a whole lot of talentless writers out there who need to explain where the hell they get off writing it a glowing review. You know who you are - and this is one proverbial movie poster you won't make it on.

A Three Page Story Is Due. Why? Because...

Being a big fan of old adage's is a wonderful thing. Sometimes seven words does a better job at describing how you are feeling than seven hundred words. With almost a month finished in the school year (really...it's been that long already?) I find myself in a wonderful position to read an amazing number of really terrific stories written by some amazing young writers. I also find myself realizing why so many teachers (and writers) give the advice that more doesn't always equal better. For a long time I thought that the more I wrote the better the story would be. If I wrote a forty page story then I would have accomplished something great. A whole book? Something stellar. Who cares if the forty pages is complete drivel or if the book was sluggish and lost the readers interest in ten pages - I don't see you writing a book.

I was all sorts of wrong.

In the past few months I have become absolutely smitten with Aesop Rock. For those of you unfamiliar with him he is a rapper that most folks will never hear of. His music is wild, his lyrics are mildly insane - he's too smart for mass consumption. Anyhow though he is an absolute lyrical genius (when what he says is at all logical and coherent). He drops metaphor and simile's that make Harper Lee look like a simpleton and he can be more descriptive (and succinct) in ten words than Tolstoy was in ten thousand. And he taught me something invaluable that previously I had absolutely refused to believe.

Less is more.

I can write a hundred pages about just about anything (or nothing) and by the end of the year my students will be able to do the same. Will I be able to teach them though how to write ten words that have more meaning, more depth, and more purpose than that same hundred page book? Hopefully I will - no promises though. I do promise though to stop making arbitrary requirements for story length - from now on it's all about content expectations.

Maybe I'm not changing the world with this but as Aes says; "Everybody's gotta push something / That's why the envelope is where it wasn't"

Consider yourself pushed, envelope of arbitrary requirements in life.

Friends are...

The most important thing in the world to me. To me friends aren’t just friends they are my family. When I care enough about someone to spend time with them I care about them enough to do anything for them. What a friend is to me has changed a great deal over the years (and even more so over the last five months). I used to think a friend was someone who I had something in common with who I would hang out with. Friends were people that I played lacrosse with, people I went to concerts with. Really though all of those people weren’t my friends. My friends were the ones who would meet me an hour early for practice to throw the ball around. Friends are the ones who would see me standing by the goal after practice and know that I didn’t have a ride home and get their folks to bring me. Friends were the ones who introduced me to new music and pushed their way forward through the crowd with me so we could get within arms distance of Nirvana. Friends are the ones who will drive two hours one way to pick you up after you get a flat tire and expect absolutely nothing in return – they are doing it because they hate the idea of you being stranded in life. Friends are the ones who will call in sick to work to come to the hospital when your parent is sick. Friends are the ones who stand up for you when someone else is trying to put you down. Friends are the ones who want nothing in return from you other than your friendship.

Thank you to those people in my life who have been real friends to me and I hope that those people who I value know how much I value them and their friendships. I am still learning but I hope to be as good to you as you have been to me. Thank you.

People Helping People, That's Our Motto.

I am doing the American Cancer Society Making Strides Against Breast Cancer Walk and am reaching out for donations for it. If you are able to spare something, anything, a quarter, a couple bucks, a grand, it would be greatly appreciated as it is a truly worthy cause.

My donation page is at;

http://main.acsevents.org/site/TR/MakingStridesAgainstBreastCancer/MSABCBlueprint?px=7972985&pg=personal&fr_id=11712

I've included a little blurb about the walk from the ACS in case you want to read more (even though it sounds like I wrote it I did in fact not). Thanks so much! Oh and one more thing - be excellent to each other.

This year, more than 250,230 women and men will hear the words, “You have breast cancer,” and there’s a good chance that some of them will be people we know and love. I have chosen to fight back against this disease and help make a difference by participating in the Oct. 19 American Cancer Society Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk in Manchester, and I hope you will join me.

Making Strides Against Breast Cancer is our opportunity to honor and celebrate breast cancer survivors, educate women about early detection and prevention, and raise money to fund lifesaving research and support programs that help ease the burden of patients and their families. But Making Strides is more than just the name of a walk; it describes the amazing progress we can make if we work together to defeat a disease that 1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with in their lifetime.