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August 29, 2006
Appendix of champions
I got home from the hospital yesterday morning. I was a bit out of it but not too bad. Friday night I had dinner and was feeling stomach cramps afterwards. They were constant but not too bad. I watched a movie with Kris and went to bed. I didn't sleep much since I was in a bit of pain. Woke up Saturday and through the day they continued. I called Kaiser and they said I should come into the ER and get evaluated. I took a bus over to Geary and went into the ER around 8pm. By 3am I had gotten a blood test, had drank a half liter of "Banana Smoothie" with barium sulfate suspension, had a CT scan, was dressed in my shoes, boxerbriefs and a backless gown, had been hooked up to an IV drip, and had been admitted to the hospital in anticipation of a possible appendectomy. I was in that bed, hooked up to an IV until Monday morning over which time I slowly got better (inexplicably). I had my first meal (not including the clear liquid and full liquid "meals" I had in the hospital) last night and feel fine. It couldn't have been worse timing though. I missed Nuala and Adie's birthday weekend extravaganza in Santa Barbara.
Posted by gene_wood at 09:40 AM | Comments (2)
August 07, 2006
Double Feature
I went to see Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and Michael Mann's Miami Vice. I enjoyed Pirates, very similar to the first one I felt. I'd recommend seeing it. It's fun and entertaining. Miami Vice was excellent. Michael Mann seems to be exhibiting his auteur desires more and more with every film. I think that most of these are good things and only a few bad. Miami Vice looks like a Mann film from the first frame. The cinematography is fantastic. The film has Mann's signature style of night time lighting, car interiors, headlights, exterior halogen lighting, and dark naturally lit scenes. Miami Vice was filmed on DV like Mann's most recent film, Collateral.
I think that you can see an arc in Mann's films from Heat through Collateral and now with Miami Vice in regards to realistic violence. Heat, one of my favorite movies of all time, has what I still believe to be the greatest shootout in film history in which Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro, Val Kilmer and Tom Sizemore shoot it out in downtown Los Angeles. The strength of this scene is it's shocking realness. Collateral follows this with a number of scenes that take this to the next level. The ultimate example of this is the scene in which Tom Cruise's character returns to the cab to find Jaimie Foxx's character being beat up by thugs in the alley. Tom Cruise brutally kills them in a frighteningly realistic manor lacking passion or excitement. He takes these mens lives and it's boring, which I think is amazing. Miami Vice continues this trend with a number of scenes of amazing realism. The shootout in the trailer caused, in the audience I was watching the film in, a huge response.
The soundtrack to Miami Vice also continues a theme of very bizarre music selections in Mann's films. I am glad he does it and I think it adds to the films, but I can't say that I like the music (except for all of the Moby tracks).
In summary, if you're looking for a good time and like the first Pirates of the Carribean, see the second one, I enjoyed it. I highly recommend you see Miami Vice in that I think it's an important and beautiful piece of art, in addition to being a very enjoyable experience.
Posted by gene_wood at 09:47 AM | Comments (0)
August 03, 2006
Now chat with the author
I setup this neat new tool called meebo. It's a web based chat client (like trillian or miranda but web based). It unifies all of your disparate chat clients into one (yahoo, msn, aol, gtalk, jabber, icq, etc.) and there's no client since it's web based.
Even cooler than that is the flash client which I've added to my blog in the upper right corner, with which you can chat with someone through their webpage, an idea I've been imagining since 2002 when I started this site. It's still a bit rough, but feel free to try it out.
Posted by gene_wood at 11:09 AM | Comments (0)