Straight Edge Life

I’ll admit that I was pretty excited to see The Day After Tomorrow. I went and saw it on Friday and was somewhat disappointed. I wasn’t sure if it was just too early in the day, if I was just in a grumpy mood, or if the movie really was as weak as it seemed. So I decided to wait a couple of days before I reviewed it. More than that I decided to rent another movie in the same genre and do a little comparison. Armageddon vs. The Day After Tomorrow.

Let’s begin by looking at the pros and cons of both movies.

There are a few neutrals that I could add to both movies. And it may not really be fair to add Owen Wilson to the Cons list as this was one of his first high-exposure films and at the time of it’s released I wasn’t suffering from the after effects of his subsequent identical acting performances in, like, six other movies. Jake Gyllenhaal for instance neither adds nor detracts from The Day After Tomorrow so I left him out. But considering he’s one of the main characters it’s kind of a bummer that his performance doesn’t wow me.

Obviously after comparing my list of pros and cons for both movies you can tell which one I was more excited about. And considering that I didn’t really even like Armageddon that much you can draw your own conclusions about how I feel about The Day After Tomorrow. B O R I N G. Yet another in the Hollywood trend of sacrificing EVERYTHING in favor of effects. Effects over plot, acting, and everything else that makes a good movie. Don’t bother unless you need a mindless moment away from your workday and don’t mind throwing away a few bucks on a bad film. And if your planning on watching Armageddon on DVD, do it. I watched it again this weekend for comparison and really didn’t mind it at all. It certainly has a nice cast and some good humor. You actually sort of care about some of the characters as well. I mean come on, how can’t you get in to Steve Buscemi on an asteroid with a remote control machine gun, or straddling a nuclear warhead. Ben Affleck being chased by Bruce Willis with a shotgun? Who doesn’t want to see that? But Jake Gyllenhaal chased by animatronic / cgi wolves? Who cares.

I am counting the days until my trip to Montana. I got an email today from the dude I split a room with in Yosemite during my class in October, Dennis. It looks like he’s moving out to Oregon soon with his lady but won’t be out in Montana for any classes this summer. Too bad, he’s a fun dude to hang and shoot with. Yeah, he shoots canon and I’m a nikon guy, and that’s a rift like the grand canyon between two photographers, but he’s a good shooter and I can respect that.

I’m pretty much all geared up for my trip too. I’m doing everything I can to keep my expenses to a minimum. I’m in need of a good new wide-angle lens. I’m in need of more storage capacity. I’m in need of a new sleeping bag and a much smaller tent. None of which I’ll be getting any time soon. I’ve got what I need to stay warm, take photos and stay safe in the desert. Do I need more? Not really. Not at all actually. Not at the expense of going into more debt anyway.

After this trip I plan to get out to Atlanta to visit two of the coolest people in the world (Sara and Johnny), down to the Bay Area to visit my aunt, uncle and cousin (and her common-law husband), and my friend Dave. And in September to mainland China to see another friend and many other things that I’ve never seen before. So, there are a few more reasons not to spend any more money than I need to right now.

I’ve been neglecting my duty as a friend, nephew, cousin and son a bit lately. I’ve been too busy taking care of myself and getting myself back on my feet again to really take care of anyone else. It was necessary for sure, but it’s time to get back to being more than simply an agent of recovery. My whole life has been about survival for a number of years now. Emotional survival. I’m finally closing the book on that part of my life. It’s time to move on.

Ok, so this weekend I learned that Beaverton and Portland are very much NOT the same place. Those who live in Portland, or even those who work in Portland look down on Beaverton and feel sorry for those who have, by unfortunate coincidence or by conscious choice, made their homes there. I never really knew this. Beaverton is very suburban with strip malls galore and areas of sterile apartment complex micro bedroom communities who’s ugliness is only slightly masked by the gorgeousness of the evergreen trees and hillsides. Portland itself has a lot more character and, despite the headaches of living in a city, seems to be the choice place to live. If you can afford it. Anyways… I digress.

Spent the weekend up there visiting a few old and new friends. Had dim sum for the first time, ate some tasty sushi, and shopped for shoes with a couple of girls (never do this). All told, a good weekend.

Oh, you know it’s been a long night when it’s 9 am and you’re just settling down to do some shell scripting simply to help yourself relax. Man, I need to get out more. I need to work less, and I need to get on a more normal sleeping schedule. I can see myself pretty clearly ten years from now, and I don’t like what I see. Translucent pale skin, overweight, lacking all social skills, and with a weird fetish for… I had better not go there. Let us just say I’m a bit worried.

An explanation of what Biodiesel is and where it comes from. Pretty cool stuff. It’s nice to know that a non-petroleum-based fuel can almost act as a stand in replacement for petroleum-based fuels.

Welcome to my travel journal. This area of the site will eventually take over Straight Edge Life as I spend more and more time on the road taking photos and living a less sedentary life.

A great way to blow off a bit of steam. You are not alone if you deal with idiots all day long.

Sorta old but fitting considering it’s getting on election time.

There she is. 5′11″, ash blond hair, blue green eyes. Knockout figure. She looks absolutely stunning. Perfect skin. Etc. When I ran into Nichole the last time I looked great. New clothes, new haircut, freshly shaven, car just washed and cleaned out. I probably even had a little color in my skin as I had been out biking all that week. And I had just lost 10 lbs. When I ran into Alex today I looked like shit. Scruffy chin, dirty car, eating sloppy wet tacos with my bare hands wearing yesterday’s t-shirt and shorts which shamelessly revealed my stunningly pale legs.

It’s not at all hard to remember how much Alex and I brought out the very worst in each other. The very worst. Neither is it hard to remember how horrible then end of the relationship was. But you always want to look your best when you see each other years after the breakup. It’s the Romy (sp?) and Michelle syndrome, where you’re willing to do whatever you have to do to appear as an absolute success to your peers. And it’s hard as hell to do that when you’re caught completely off guard with a couple of tacos in your hands.

And I thought about this after leaving Burrito Boy totally frustrated and flustered; why in the hell does Alex still get to me? Why do I care? Why, man why? Because she was the first one who ever really broke my heart. She’s the one who so efficiently encouraged me to feed the worst in myself that I haven’t yet fully recovered. The kind of girl who mixed so electrically with me that my level of experience was far too low to handle it or keep it alive. It’s THE relationship that I can look back on and name 57 things that could have been done to save the relationship. Some by me, some by her. But it wasn’t hard to understand what exactly happened.

Of course that drives me totally nuts. I HATE having a failure on my record. I hate that. With Nichole it was pretty much out of my hands. I don’t and won’t ever know what’s going on with my ex-wife. As I’ve said, she never let me in. I don’t think she’s ever let herself in to be honest. But with Alex, whom I also loved, perhaps more deeply than Nichole even, I was as much at fault as she was for everything that happened. And I can look back with full awareness that I hurt someone that I cared about very deeply.

That’s probably what bugs me the most. Not the loss of the relationship, but the fact that I doubt that I could ever call her up and tell her that I’m sorry for what happened. That I actually did care about her and that I didn’t WANT to hurt her. To tell her that I’m not that person. That I am a good guy. Forget love, forget any of that. I just don’t want to be remembered as something that I’m not, and never really was. And it sucks to know that she might still be hurt by some of what I said and did when that relationship ended. I don’t want to hurt anyone.

Seeing her again today… it’s just too many memories. And I can’t help but get all emotional about it. So what do I do? I go take photos of bugs.

I pushed my digital camera to the extreme range of it’s sensitivity the other day while taking photos on Mt. Pisgah. The results weren’t spectacular as I wasn’t spending much time on composition, the light was low (although colorful) and I wasn’t working with a tripod. But the results were promising enough to make me want to head back to play around with it again. Grainy, gritty and full of a short range kind of contrast that I actually quite like.

I think I have to put myself though some self assignments and get out of my journalistic straight-shooting frame of mind. I’ve always been a straight shooter; sharp, clear, good exposure. When I’ve made deviations from straight shots it’s always been so extreme that it’s obvious that it’s a “illustration”. Maybe now it’s time to just play around and have a bit of fun, give my camera a workout and see what it (an myself) can do. To see what kind of IMAGES I can create or find. You know, pay a little more attention to things like form, line, texture, contrast, color rather than content. I guess even in my drawing I’ve been very much a realist. Or when not a realist my drawings have been very idea driven. And maybe my range has been limited in that I haven’t developed my sense of pure form. Hmmm.

Anyways. I had fun shooting the other day, and for the first time in a while I came home and was actually surprised a bit by what I found in the images. So that’s good and I think I’m just going to roll with that for a bit.

The image with this entry isn’t really all that clear because of the conversion process I use for this site when I upload images. I’ll post more and better conversions soon.