Random musings from a scattered brain
Daniel
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Homepage: http://www.mentalgraffiti.org
Posts by Daniel
I may not know where I’m going, but I know all too well where I’ve been
Sep 1st
Hey everyone. It’s been good bit since I stopped in here, longer than I expected at any rate. It hasn’t that I’ve not had any thoughts or opinions on matters at hand, its just that I’ve been thinking about a lot of stuff and didn’t know what – if any – of those thoughts I really wanted to make public.
As I recently noted, I’ve been having some health issues. More namely, chest pains and heart palpitations. The last of my series of appointments (with the Cardiologist) was on August 20th and it looks like my entire cardiovascular system checks out OK.
It turns out that a lot of my symptoms, when taken together, quite eerily mimic heart problems but the heart itself is fine.
Still, there were some days in there when I really felt like I might die. I haven’t taken care of myself very well over the last 10 or so years and it’s come back to haunt me.
Many people who know me now might be surprised to find out that before I was this mass of humanity, I was actually quite an athlete in my younger days.
I played 5-set tennis matches, marathon basketball games, street hockey and football just about as often as I could – even in the middle of a Miami summer.
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Culinary Challenge #1: Cooking the “vile weed.”
Aug 18th
Hey guys. A few posts ago, I mentioned that a viewing of The Meryl Streep/Amy Adams film Julie & Julia had inspired me to try a cooking challenge of my own: Once every two weeks, cook a dish containing an ingredient I normally detest. Granted, since I’ve started cooking regularly, that list has shrunk considerably, but there are plenty of candidates out there.
Case in point: the ingredient I chose for my first challenge: The Dreaded Brussels Sprout (*cue eerie music*)
Whenever I ate Brussels sprouts as a kid, they were always served the same way: boiled. The smell was nauseating and the taste, well, there are very few things I’ve literally gagged on while eating them. Brussels sprouts is one of them.
So, when I announced that I’d be attempting to cook something with this evil miniature cabbage, the reaction wasn’t surprising. Oh sure, there were a few people who proclaimed their love, even a couple who gave me great ideas on how to cook them. Most, though, reacted with sheer horror.
One friend told me I was on my own, even refusing my request for a prayer, saying “sorry, you brought this evil upon yourself.”
One said that the only way he’d eat that “vile weed” was deep fried and dipped in chocolate.
Even my dog thought I was crazy.
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Music that needs your attention – The Frames
Aug 14th
Before appearing in the 2006 movie Once with friend Marketa Irglova, Glen Hansard wasn’t too well known on this side of the Atlantic Ocean. Since then, though, his brilliance has slowly been making the rounds. Each month, it seems, I find out someone else I know has been exposed to Glen’s music, either through the film, or because they caught a video of him on YouTube.
I usually don’t make music recommendations, but if you enjoy folk rock at all, or just like listening to musicians who really know what the hell they’re doing, you owe it to yourself to check out Glen’s band The Frames.
The band hasn’t put out an album since before Once came out, and because of that, Hansard is now more associated with Irglova via their collaboration as The Swell Season.
But The Frames are equally good, if not better – especially live. They’ll be together again in early September at Electric Picnic 2010, an Irish music festival. Their appearance has fans – like me – hoping beyond hope that they’ll be getting back into the studio again soon.
That’s all I really wanted to say today, but I wanted to leave you with the lyrics of my favorite of the band’s many incredible songs:
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There’s a panic on the streets of London…
Aug 13th
Panic on the streets of London
Panic on the streets of Birmingham
I wonder to myself
Could life ever be sane again?
—The Smiths
When the sun sets tonight over London’s skyline, the populace will know that there is only one more sleep left before the entire city is dumped headfirst into Opening Day 2010.
The Barclay’s Premier League kicks off its football (the European kind) season tomorrow, and for the first time, I will be paying attention. See, I’ve always watched soccer at a distance. I’ve respected the athletes but found it very hard to become emotionally invested in the sport. It’s kind of hard to do when the best teams in the best league play in Europe and some of the games start before 8AM Eastern Time.
But, with this year’s World Cup I found my interest transformed. I didn’t just watch the games, I absorbed them. The more I watched, the more I began to see why the rest of the world finds so much to love in this crazy, beautiful sport.
Sure, I’ll admit that Landon Donovan’s last minute goal against Algeria helped, but there were games involving teams I didn’t care a lick about that had me nibbling my fingernails in nervousness.
I have some friends who are soccer fanatics. They recognized this change in me and plainly stated that if I really wanted to sink my teeth into the sport and keep myself interested, I needed to pick a team to root for.
Makes sense, really. You’re always more likely to pay attention to something in the long term if you have a rooting interest. So I did my research.
Should our favorite books be turned into films?
Aug 9th
We all have favorites. Favorite movies, favorite songs, favorite foods. And to each of these, we hold a certain amount of fanatical loyalty. We love them, we don’t care who knows and if everyone else doesn’t understand, that’s fine.
But when it comes to books, the intensity of that fanaticism raises to beyond a fever pitch. Avid readers seem to consider their favorite books as akin to parts of their heart and soul. It goes beyond fandom into something much, much more complete: zealotry.
Despite my less than serious tone, I don’t consider this a bad thing at all. Books are easier to become emotionally invested in than songs or movies. Movies are over in a couple of hours, songs in a few minutes.
Books can take days to complete. You have to find time to fit them in. If you work full time, you almost have to schedule your day around them in order to get any reading time in. In these days, especially, reading is a commitment.
So it makes sense that the characters and stories held on pages hold more weight to people than most films do to moviegoers.
Noting this, I have to wonder how often film executives take any of this into account when deciding what books to adapt to film. The answer is pretty clearly never.
There are some books that probably should never be adapted to film. This list varies depending on who you talk to, but its clear – sometimes a literary work is so encompassing or beloved that making a movie out of it will do nothing for it’s legacy, but will only serve as an abridged version of what made the book so great in the first place.
And with some books, that’s akin to a crime against art.
Below, I looked at some of my favorite books and plays (which can be accessed in the menu above, under Books) to determine which of them should be adapted, which should never be attempted, and of the ones that already have been adapted, which succeeded.