Albums

I've been on a music download binge for the past 2 days. And I'm still not even to 3gigs on my ipod yet. I don't think I'll ever get to 8, so I'm glad I didn't get some 128 gig massive ipod. I realized that the problem is that I hardly ever like an entire album. I've been going through lots of albums on amazon to remember which songs I want to download. There are about 10 albums that I might ever listen to in their entirety (or need to have all the songs to).

Both of Girl Talk's good albums, Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, Sublime's 40 oz. to Freedom, Outkast's ATLiens, Dr. Dre's Chronic 2001, and Justice's Cross. That's 7. I also have all of Buddy Holly's greatest hits album, but that doesn't really count.

Also, I never hear anything new that I like. I probably complain about it all the time. I really want to find new music I can get excited about, but I can't. The only current music I download is rap because it's entertaining, not because it's good. Maybe being into music was just a young thing for me and I'm growing out of it. That would be sad.

I'm feeling a little weird. Probably just because I'm tired and I worked on some mind-numbing editing for about 5 hours. I feel crazy, kind of similar to how I used to feel when I did stupid things all the time. This might have been caused by the one beer I had last week.

This also happens to me whenever I don't have any money and I'm incredibly stressed about life. For some reason our loans have not been disbursed. So, my classes started on Monday and I owe OSU about 6700 and....no loans. And everyone is in that situation. I'm seriously in debt up to my eyeballs, and if my professor tells me tomorrow that I have to be work-study eligible to be his RA I'll probably cry. It's a nothing to lose kind of situation I'm in right now, which always leads to me doing irresponsible things. I'll probably end up drinking instead of working on my writing and editing.

I have class at 10am but I'm still up at 1 doing some stupid internet shit. Goodnight forever.

Chinese Movies

Yesterday I watched "Raise the Red Lantern," a Zhang Yimou directed movie starring Gong Li when she was really young. I thought it was pretty good. It was based on a book which I could tell was much more involved than the movie. At the end they make some references to a dead person haunting the house. Knowing Chinese movies and literature, I'm sure there was an overriding ghost theme throughout the book, but it only showed up in one scene in the movie, so it seemed pointless.

I realized that if I had seen that movie before seeing a lot of other Chinese movies I would probably think it was much better. Once you get to know a director's style though, their usage of certain devices becomes a little boring. Old Chinese architecture is really grand and simple and makes a shot really beautiful. After you do it enough it's a little played out. I think it's Zhang Yimou in particular; Wong Kar-Wai mostly focuses on how emo people can look while smoking a cigarette.

I also watched "The Visitor" which is about a man who lives in CT and comes into NY for a conference, only to find a couple squatting in his apartment. They are illegals, and long story short, he gets caught up in their lives because he hates his own life. Other than being fairly predictable, it was really good. All the acting was good and the ending didn't try to be too perfect or cheesy. 4/5 stars.

Exams almost over

I am done with 2 exams, only one left. It is available to take now, but once we download it we only have 28 hours to complete it, so I'm waiting until 28 hours before it's due. My exam on Monday was an 8 hour exam that I took at home. I spent 7.5 hours on it. It really sucked, to the point that I had migraines for 2 days afterward. I think I got an A though.

My exam yesterday didn't go quite as well because I second guessed myself. I will probably get a B+ but considering I taught myself the entire subject in a week, that's not bad. I really don't want my ranking to slip but I'm pretty sure it will. My attitude at the beginning of the semester has ended up really biting me in the ass. That and having the worst property professor of all time coupled with a legal writing class that required 30 hours of work per week.

I have a new obsession with Netflix so it's a good thing the semester is almost over. All I want to do is watch every movie it suggests to me. I first received Gosford Park which I've been wanting to see for years but it's never at the video store. It was just ok. I was partially not paying attention while watching it because I was wearing my glasses which make me unable to differentiate between similar looking characters (seriously, my eyes are that bad). Ryan Philippe was playing this valet who was supposedly Scottish. He had the worst Scottish accent of all time. *Spoiler* Later in the movie you find out he was just pretending to be Scottish because he's an actor from America who is going to play a valet in a movie. So I guess he is good at doing a shitty Scottish accent, I underestimated his talents. The next movie I'm watching is Let the Right One In, which is about vampires. Ryan and I went to see it but were tricked by the shady Drexel theater by an early start time. We'll see if it's better than Twilight. I doubt it, unless the main actress is able to close her mouth, and that's a really high standard.

So this blog might turn into more of a movie journal during the summer while I'm only taking one class. Most of the super annoying people in my class are going to Oxford for the summer so I luckily won't have to deal with them. I'm looking forward to a peaceful summer full of not-tanning.