Zombies and Introverts (but not in that order)

Introverts
Jo shared this great little article with me. It seems I am a member of a misunderstood minority. Read Caring for Your Introvert by Johnathan Rauch if you want to understand the introverts in your life a little better.

Zombie Weekend
I'm not talking about a side project of the band Vampire Weekend. I'm talking about the 2 zombie movies I watched this past weekend. The fact that I was able to watch 2 entire movies is an amazingfeat in itself. Note to future parents who are also movie lovers - your movie watching capacity is inversely proportional to the number of small children in your house. The more small children, the fewer movies you get to watch. But I digress. I enjoy zombie films. I love Shaun of the Dead and 28 Days Later. But like I said, I watched 2 zombies films that past weekend.

Zombieland stars Woody Harrelson. That is enough to make me want to watch it right there. He's been in some of the best films ever - Natural Born Killers and No Country For Old Men to name just two. There are also some vaguely recognizable young actors which are not yet famous enough for me to know their names.

This movie is a comedy. A zombie comedy. Which could be called a zomedy maybe? But don't get it twisted, Like Shaun of the Dead, this is not a spoof movie, but a comedy set in a world overrun by zombies. But the comparison with SOTD pretty much ends there. While SOTD shows the zombie infestation in one neighborhood, Zombieland is more of a zombie road trip that smashes zombies all over America.

Overall Zombieland was good. How good? Good enough for me to watch again online, but maybe not good enough to buy. Good jokes, some good (and also funny) action sequences, and just a good story make for a good time. Well, as good of a time as people can have while being chased by the living dead.

Dawn of the Dead, is Zack Snyder's remake of George Romero's film of the same name. This one is certainly not comedy, although there are some humorous scenes. The premise is the same as any zombie movie - world overrun by the living dead, those left alive rally together to fight off the living dead. A hodgepodge band of non-zombies end up in a mall while just outside is a horde of hungry zombies waiting to eat them.

The thing I like most about this film is that the action starts early and doesn't slow much until the end. I think lots of action movie makers spend too much time trying to develop the characters. Enough of that crap; just get to the action! And getting to the action is something Zack Snyder (director of 300 and Watchmen) seems to do well. This movie has it all - guns, car chases (actually zombies chasing cars), and lots of zombies. I'd give it the same rating as Zombieland - would watch it again, but wouldn't buy it.

Poems

First he was Sharlock Poems, then just Poems, now he's calling himself Sareem Poems. Whatever he calls himself, the dude is talented. So here's to one of my favorite L.A. Symphony dudes...

Will Not Be Sold


Love

Did You Know 4.0

I thought this was interesting. I found it on I Am Bored:

Did You Know 4.0
"An information-packed video of acts & stats focusing on the changing media landscape, including convergence & technology."

Ice Skating

Tonight Jo was waiting for a football game to end because she wanted to watch the following show. Adelle was in the room and wanted to know what it was. Jo was trying to explain a little to Adelle about what was going on. I was in the kitchen eating and this is what I overheard.

Jo: Those men are trying to get the ball into that blue area so they can score. And then there are other men who are trying to knock him down.
Adelle: (thinks for a minute then says) When I grow up I was to do ice skating. Then no one will knock me down.

Adelle cracks me up.

Re-Vamped blog

I change my blog layout. Its called 'Re-Vamping'. That's 'Re' as in to do again. And 'Vamp' as in, well, I'm not sure what that means. But for what its worth (not much) here's my new, Vamped once again blog.

watching, reading, listening, etc

Watching
Big Man Japan - 'Hysterical', 'sad', 'sweet', and 'just plain out all bizarro' are all accurate descriptions of Big Man Japan. This mockumentary introduces us to Japan's answer to its monster problem (think Godzilla type monsters). I'd give it 3.5 out of 5 stars. Its one of Magnet Films' Six Shooter series. I also recommend Let the Right One In and Timescrimes from that series. I DO NOT recommend Eden Log, at all, under any circumstance. Avoid it at all costs!

Painkiller Jane - I read about this show recently, which I'd never seen, and was intrigued by it. I watched the first episode today and it looks very promising. I think it is a show I will get into. I'm a sucker for anything with comic books as its source material. Apparently it was a one season run that played on Sci-Fi (or Syfy or whatever).

Lastly, I watched Wolverine last night. It was awesome, even though it only got 36% on Rotten Tomatos. I love seeing Wolvie in action!

Reading (actually just finished)
I finished Confessor, the 11th book in Terry Goodkind's 11 volume Sword of Truth epic. As with the end of other book series' that I've read, the end was good, but not super duper spectacular. But I'm not disappointed at all. I learned that the reading of the books, the journey as it were, is actually what's important. Getting to know the characters, seeing them develop, and see the situations they get into (and get out of) is what kept me turning the pages.

Related to watching, there is a TV series in syndication based on this book series called Legend of the Seeker. I've tried to watch the first episode twice and have not been able to get all the way through it. Its thoroughly inferior to the books. In other words, it sucks and compared to the books is a waste of time.

Listening
L.A. Symphony - Pretty much that's it. I've just been on a Symph kick and will just have to keep listening to them until I can't take it anymore.

from hill to shining hill

If you're a Matisyahu fan , you may have thought of him when you read this post's title. What I mean by 'from hill to hill' is that in Philly we lived in an area called Drexel Hill but now we live in Chapel Hill. Since we've lived here I've been able to compare the 2 hills and have found some differences.

Garbage Men
The garbage men, or 'sanitation engineers' (the PC term) are thoughtful in Chapel Hill. They always put our trash can back where it was and they always put it right side up. This might seem like a no brainer, unless you had lived in Drexel Hill. There we were lucky if our trash can made it back to the curb once it was emptied. They usually just threw the empty can in the direction of where they picked it up. Half the time I had to either get it out of the street or out of the driveway.

Also, the first week we put our recycling out, I broke down all of our cardboard and put it into one cardboard box. The guys took all the cardboard out of the box and left the box behind. At first I was puzzled, and a little upset that they left it. But then I realized they probably thought that was my 'special box' that I used for putting cardboard out and that I might want to keep this box for this purpose. This went on for several weeks until I finally took that box somewhere else because I actually wanted it to go away.

Waving (Southern Friendliness)
I grew up in the South (Georgia to be exact, the buckle of the Bible belt) but haven't lived in the South for a number of years. So I am not used to the friendliness of people. I am used to the 'cooler' more distant East Coast way of treating people, otherwise know as acting like they don't exist if you don't know them. In our lovely Chapel Hill neighborhood however, people wave at us (and we wave back) whenever we go down the street. Not only that, people actually talk to us. In Drexel Hill, that never happened; People pretty much leave each other alone unless they actually know each other. I kind of like the Chapel Hill way a little better. It makes me feel welcome.

Driving
First of all, thank God for Right on Red!! In Drexel Hill, and the Philly area in general, almost every traffic light had a "No Right Turn on Red" sign. This always frustrated me, especially when no one was coming. I often still made right turns on red just because I thought I should be able to. But in Chapel Hill (and most normal places in the world) you can turn right on red!

Also, in Philly, there is a phenomenon called "The Jersey Left" by some and "The Pittsburgh Left" by others. I guess it depends on where you are from. Basically this particular maneuver happens if you are the first car at a red light with no left turn signal. If the first car wants to turn left, it just turns left as soon as the light turns green, even though they don't have the right of way. I hate this and tried hard not to pick up this driving habit. Since it was something I tried not to do in Philly, if I was ever at the front and wanted to turn left, I would just wait. But then the person across the intersection would wait for me to turn because they expected me to do the quick left. If I didn't, some people would actually honk their horn and wave me through. Even though I didn't want to.

Finally, in Drexel Hill and the surrounding areas, people didn't know what to do with turn lanes. I have seen way too many cars halfway in the turn lane as they were trying to turn across traffic. I would actually look for these people blocking my lane, get right up behind them, stop and lay on the horn. Thankfully, in Chapel Hill, people understand what they are for. Except for the Philly and Jersey transplants!

Anyways, we love this Hill much better then the last Hill. We are glad to call Chapel Hill home.