Below are the 6 most recent journal entries recorded in Kenneth's LiveJournal:

Wednesday, May 7th, 2008
1:46 am	Thoughts on Iron Man EW had an article on Raiders of the Lost Ark recently in which they described the film as nothing but the good stuff. Raiders was one of the first films that abandoned the three act story arc and just had pay off after pay off right from the idol in the beginning to the ark being opened at the end. Other films have tried to live up to this (and most have failed) but after watching Iron Man, I would have to say it is the Raiders of super hero films. The film has pay off after pay off and when the film ends, you are already salivating to see the next film (and if you watched the tag after the spoiler you are even more excited for future films) More than any other super hero movie, Iron Man has a real world feel. Batman Begins is a wonderful film, but how many psychological battered millionaires are going to dress up as a bat and chase criminals in real life? Spider-Man is fun, but radioactive spiders are more likely to kill you than grant you powers and again you have someone in glorified pajamas swinging around New York. Gama radiation for the Hulk is again more likely to kill than grant powers and those purple pants are unbelievable on their own. And good old Super Man is an alien for crying out loud. While it might be far fetched to think one person could build the Iron Man suit by himself, of all the super hero films, you at least have a feel that Tony Stark could live in the real world and the possibility of a golden armored suit could actually exist. Iron Man has wonderful humor. The Spider-Man films are fun (well at least the first two.. the third is just.. well Spider-Man/Peter Parker pelvis thrusts were not a good idea for ANY movie) but the character never had enough wise cracks for me. And while Bruce Wayne pretended to be a playboy and get in a fountain with two loose dates in Batman Begins, it was all an act. Tony Stark, on the other hand IS a millionaire playboy, and they have fun showing this aspect of the character from his smugness with reporters to his jet planes to his cars to his knicknames. You get a feel for where the character has been and then you get to watch the character sculpted and molded into something else. While Batman does ont kill, there is a higher than expected body count in Iron Man as Tony has no problem killing (he is weapons salesman after all) Tony also has an fun supporting cast of helpers from "Jarvis" to a Luxo Jr.-like robotic helper. The actual suits are amazing. It is hard at times to tell which aspects were Stan Winston suits and which were cgi. The film also keeps itself simple. There is no great terrorist threat at the heart of the film, more a personal journey about a weapons dealer... who finds a heart of (red and) gold. (Plus, getting back to Raiders, Iron Man has a killer Indiana Jones trailer that needs to be seen on the big screen ) (Comment on this)
Saturday, May 19th, 2007
10:37 pm	The world needs to change I don't post much, but just in case anyone is looking I have sent this out to as many people as possible... This... well I wish the world was a completely different place where none of this could happen. The world needs to change... And a reminder, there are several Serenity Screenings coming up in June on Joss' birthday (June 23 http://www.cantstoptheserenity.com/ ) and all ticket sales for the Serenity screening go to Equality now, so even if you don't plan on going, perhaps a donation to Equality now is a place to start... Here is Joss' message from http://whedonesque.com/comments/13271#more ******************************************** Let's Watch A Girl Get Beaten To Death This is not my blog, but I don’t have a blog, or a space, and I’d like to be heard for a bit. Last month seventeen year old Dua Khalil was pulled into a crowd of young men, some of them (the instigators) family, who then kicked and stoned her to death. This is an example of the breath-taking oxymoron “honor killing”, in which a family member (almost always female) is murdered for some religious or ethical transgression. Dua Khalil, who was of the Yazidi faith, had been seen in the company of a Sunni Muslim, and possibly suspected of having married him or converted. That she was torturously murdered for this is not, in fact, a particularly uncommon story. But now you can watch the action up close on CNN. Because as the girl was on the ground trying to get up, her face nothing but red, the few in the group of m ore than twenty men who were not busy kicking her and hurling stones at her were filming the event with their camera-phones. There were security officers standing outside the area doing nothing, but the footage of the murder was taken – by more than one phone – from the front row. Which means whoever shot it did so not to record the horror of the event, but to commemorate it. To share it. Because it was cool. I could start a rant about the level to which we have become desensitized to violence, about the evils of the voyeuristic digital world in which everything is shown and everything is game, but honestly, it’s been said. And I certainly have no jingoistic cultural agenda. I like to think that in America this would be considered unbearably appalling, that Kitty Genovese is still remembered, that we are more evolved. But coincidentally, right before I stumbled on this vid I watched the trailer for “Captivity”. A few of you may know that I took public excepti o n to the billboard campaign for this film, which showed a concise narrative of the kidnapping, torture and murder of a sexy young woman. I wanted to see if the film was perhaps more substantial (especially given the fact that it was directed by “The Killing Fields” Roland Joffe) than the exploitive ad campaign had painted it. The trailer resembles nothing so much as the CNN story on Dua Khalil. Pretty much all you learn is that Elisha Cuthbert is beautiful, then kidnapped, inventively, repeatedly and horrifically tortured, and that the first thing she screams is “I’m sorry”. “I’m sorry.” What is wrong with women? I mean wrong. Physically. Spiritually. Something unnatural, something destructive, something that needs to be corrected. How did more than half the people in the world come out incorrectly? I have spent a good part of my life trying to do that math, and I’m no closer to a viable equation. And I have yet to find a culture that doesn’t buy into it . Women’s inferiority – in f act, their malevolence -- is as ingrained in American popular culture as it is anywhere they’re sporting burkhas. I find it in movies, I hear it in the jokes of colleagues, I see it plastered on billboards, and not just the ones for horror movies. Women are weak. Women are manipulative. Women are somehow morally unfinished. (Objectification: another tangential rant avoided.) And the logical extension of this line of thinking is that women are, at the very least, expendable. I try to think how we got here. The theory I developed in college (shared by many I’m sure) is one I have yet to beat: Womb Envy. Biology: women are generally smaller and weaker than men. But they’re also much tougher. Put simply, men are strong enough to overpower a woman and propagate. Women are tough enough to have and nurture children, with or without the aid of a man. Oh, and they’ve also got the equipment to do that, to be part of the life cycle, to create and bond in a way no man ever really will. Somewhere a long time ago a bunch of men got together and said, “If all we do is hunt and gather, let’s make hunting and gathering the awesomest achievement, and let’s make childbirth kinda weak and shameful.” It’s a rather silly simplification, but I believe on a mass, unconscious level, it’s entirely true. How else to explain the fact that cultures who would die to eradicate each other have always agreed on one issue? That every popular religion puts restrictions on women’s behavior that are practically untenable? That the act of being a free, attractive, self-assertive woman is punishable by torture and death? In the case of this upcoming torture-porn, fictional. In the case of Dua Khalil, mundanely, unthinkably real. And both available for your viewing pleasure. It’s safe to say that I’ve snapped. That something broke, like one of those robots you can conquer with a logical conundrum. All my life I’ve looked at this faulty equation, trying to understand, and I’ve shorted out. I don’t pretend to be a great guy; I know really really well about objectification, trust me. And I’m not for a second going down the “women are saints” route – that just leads to more stone-throwing (and occasional Joan-burning). I just think there is the staggering imbalance in the world that we all just take for granted. If we were all told the sky was evil, or at best a little embarrassing, and we ought not look at it, wouldn’t that tradition eventually fall apart? (I was going to use ‘trees’ as my example, but at the rate we’re getting rid of them I’m pretty sure we really do think they’re evil. See how all rants become one?) Now those of you who frequent this site are, in my wildly biased opinion, fairly evolved. You may hear nothing new here. You may be way ahead of me. But I can’t contain my despair, for Dua Khalil, for humanity, for the world we’re shaping. Those of you who have followed the link I set up know that it doesn’t br ing you to a video of a murder. It brings you to a place of sanity, of people who have never stopped asking the question of what is wrong with this world and have set about trying to change the answer. Because it’s no longer enough to be a decent person. It’s no longer enough to shake our heads and make concerned grimaces at the news. True enlightened activism is the only thing that can save humanity from itself. I’ve always had a bent towards apocalyptic fiction, and I’m beginning to understand why. I look and I see the earth in flames. Her face was nothing but red. All I ask is this: Do something. Try something. Speaking out, showing up, writing a letter, a check, a strongly worded e-mail. Pick a cause – there are few unworthy ones. And nudge yourself past the brink of tacit support to action. Once a month, once a year, or just once. If you can’t think of what to do, there is this handy link. Even just learning enough about a subject so you can speak against an opponent el oqu ently makes you an unusual pe rsonage. Start with that. Any one of you would have cried out, would have intervened, had you been in that crowd in Bashiqa. Well thanks to digital technology, you’re all in it now. I have never had any faith in humanity. But I will give us props on this: if we can evolve, invent and theorize our way into the technologically magical, culturally diverse and artistically magnificent race we are and still get people to buy the idiotic idea that half of us are inferior, we’re pretty amazing. Let our next sleight of hand be to make that myth disappear. The sky isn’t evil. Try looking up. joss | 05:35 CET | (Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 29th, 2006
12:22 am	Memories from the past At first all I heard was a small chirp. Now this is not at all unusual. There are plenty of birds at the feeders outside and the screen door was open. Yet this was an awfully loud chirp. My sense of direction is not wonderful (I am deaf in one ear) but the sound seemed peculiar. So I look around and there was something different about the room. And then it hit my, something was a bit off. After all, how many times do you see a robin perched on your couch? Poor little fellow must have been curious and hopped in the open door. And there he was, on the couch. Chirping. So I try to help the little thing find his way outside. Now while my sense of direction may be bad, this poor bird (who was probably quite comfortable before I came into the room, lounging on the couch, chirping away) now seemed to be completely lost. Birds just don't understand the concept of glass. They see the outside, they see other birds, yet no matter how hard the poor thing tried, it could not get to the other birds. It must have been like a magic wall in front of him as he tried to fly up to the window sill and fly outside. And it wasn't working. And now it perceives this big lumbering thing (that would be me first thing in the morning) arms flailing with bizarre noises looming over it. And I did my best, yet it would get up to the window sill, then hide underneath the table when I obstructed the view, back to the window sill and no where near the open door. Eventually, even a little bird can learn to trust me enough to get him outside. It would have made a wonderful animation. Bird sitting on the couch and flying around a room and into windows as a half awake stranger chases him around. The dog off course slept through the whole thing in the front room. (Comment on this)
12:16 am	The stranger in the Dark I sat downstairs, in the dark as the flickering lights and mismatched sounds of the screen filled the room. Suddenly, I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye. Slowly, I tiptoe to the screen door and observe the shadows. Something was out there. Reaching over to turn on the outdoor lights, I am overwhelmed with the pure power and strength of nature. Its symbol, a large buck with its eyes of knowledge and antlers of ages past stares in my direction. Deer are quite common (as I have often quoted) but the buck are seen less and less. This great beast of nature stares at me, almost beckoning me forward. Hesitantly, I open the screen door, and it takes a couple of tentative steps forward. With a gaze of power, knowledge, and strength, the buck evaluates me. We stare at each other for a second before he takes a mighty leap down the hill and into the darkness. I watch as it goes, and wonder what it might have said if it could talk.... (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, July 28th, 2005
1:42 am	Can't sleep, Clowns will eat me... Being 1:45 am and wide awake, I might as well type. On Saturday the 16th, I awoke at 5:15 am. Usually 5:15 am would note even exist to me, nor would I acknowledge the time at all unless I was up all night, and yet I was up at 5:15 am and I was at the San Diego Comic con. And I had a plan. Simple enough, my plan was to get in line to get a good seat in Hall H (a 6500 seat theater at the end of the convention center) The main reason for being Hall H was to see the crew from Serenity as Joss is Boss and the cast are living examples of their characters. On the plus side, if I was in Hall H all day, I could not spend any money, and being an artaholic at the largest comic convention, temptations are far too dangerous. By 5:20 I was ready, checked the other people in the room and grabbed one to come along for the ride. The hotel I was in was not far from the convention center and the walk with the early morning air was invigorating enough to keep me awake (No one sleeps much at a con to begin with, at least not if you are doing the con correctly) As I approached the far end of the convention, my heart started to sink. What good was getting up at an ungodly hour if there is already a line to begin with? And then, as if by magic the line was dispersed and told to combine with a different line. You have to love the stupidity of people and the unorganized nature of volunteers. So as I see the line scatter to join a new line, I turn to my friend, Joe, and tell him to follow them as I keep marching onward towards the end of the convention center and the entrance to Hall H. Long strides lead me past the gathering mob and I keep walking and wait by what by all logical reason should be the front of the line to Hall H. And I wait alone and only going by gut instinct. Over time a couple people get in line behind me (I would guess it was 6:15 or so, but time had no meaning at this point) Fifteen minutes to a half hour latter, a volunteer comes by and tells the other line that anyone interested in the Superman panel (the first panel of the day in Hall H) should get in "that" line as they point at me. And at this point, I just smile. Three people come up and say they were originally in this line at 4 am so I gladly let them and two wheelchairs join the line right in front of me as the rest of the mob start the endless line for Hall H... (Comment on this)
Thursday, July 7th, 2005
10:41 pm	The Call of the Pantheon I wrote this back in 1999 or 2000... I felt the pull of the Pantheon even before arriving in Italy. While scouting out Rome on the first night, I wandered with a group. We meandered our way around the city, down the Spanish Steps, through alleys and along streets. And I could hear the Pantheon call. We would pass this store and decide to head left and then right. Suddenly, after passing down a narrow alley, there was an opening in front of us. And there it stood. The Pantheon. The temple of the gods. Lit up magnificently like a jewel and standing on the same firm ground as it had for ages. Monstrous columns and gigantic doors beckoned. While the others were trying to find out how to get back to the hotel, I crept up to get a glimpse through the door. The size of the doors loomed over and weighed down on me with a sense of ancient history. As I approached, I noticed the small separation between the doors. The crack was just big enough to play with my imagination. I could almost hear ancient voices beckoning me forward. And as the days went by, I would ask if we were heading for the Pantheon. "Not today Ken" would be Terry's polite response. And I waited. I tried to walk to its sacred doors on a lunch break, but I was pulled into a group and ended up along the river. Yet, I could still hear the whispers. The Pantheon called. And I waited. And waited. Finally, after the amazements of the Vatican, the Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter's Cathedral it was time to be on our way. I willed the group forward as the Pantheon called. Being a student of mythology and loving stories, the Pantheon had a hold o my imagination. 142 feet in diameter with two circles, one vertical one horizontal formed a perfect sphere inside a perfect cube. We walked and we walked. Caravaggio's Calling of St. Matthew was breathtaking, but my mind was elsewhere. Maybe even elsewhen in a time long ago. We rounded a corner, and there it stood. The Pantheon loomed, no less majestic than it was several nights before. The Pantheon called, and I was ready to answer. Dave droned on and on about the history, but I already knew the history. I wanted to know the feeling, the essence of the place. The Pantheon's interior represents the orb of the Earth and the vault was the heavens. Eight massive Corinthian columns stood as silent sentries, on guard to watch over their temple. The immense doorway stood open wide enough for a dinosaur to walk through. I wanted to know what the Romans thought as they entered these gigantic doors. I wanted to see the face of the Visigoths as they saw something so awe-inspiring that they could not destroy it even as they burned down the rest of Rome. I wanted to know more than the history. I wanted to know the legend. Marble floors with patterns of circles and squares glistened in brilliance. The dome floated up towards the heavens. I had a combined perspective of how the Pantheon looked in present day and the imagined splendor of what it must have looked like in 125 AD. The building is preserved as a Christian temple today, but I imagined the original Roman temple with statues of the Roman gods. Each of the coffers in the dome would have glistened with a gilded-bronze rosette center. Statues of the Roman gods would feel alive, representing the Earth and the underworld. Venus, the goddess of love, would stare across at Mars, the god of war. You want to know what it would be like in an ancient wonder of the world? All I can tell you is that I felt like a storyteller looking upon legend. Each step inside the Pantheon, with its harmony of spheres and cubes, cast a mystical spell over me. The columns gave a sense of strength; the doors felt like a portal to another time. From the inside, as I looked up to the oculus, I could imagine the giant bronze eye, long ago melted down to create the baldacchino. The bronze eye would glare down on all inside this sacred temple. I remember every detail and every feeling of my visit. As I close my eyes, I can conjure up images to transport me inside the Pantheon's fabled dome. I can see the heavens come alive in the dome and sense the essence of the Earth around the walls. In the end, the Pantheon made me feel as if I had been transported to a place of magic in a time long ago. Current Mood: artistic (2 Comments |Comment on this)