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Written by John Rozewicki
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Saturday, 03 March 2007 |
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今日は! Over the past few weeks I've been very interested in raising my Japanese listening aptitude. I realized that podcasts were a great way to do it. I had tried to find some before, but was never successful. I finally realized the key, search with Japanese terms. I searched for テレビ、ニュース、and 文化, and these are some of the great podcasts I found.
- 小西克哉 松本ともこ ストリーム
- TBS Radio Stream Podcast
- 3 New Podcasts Every Weekday
- Chat with Shingo, et al.
- News Round-up
- 花道 Opinion Column
- 読売ニュース ポッドキャスト : YOMIURI ONLINE（読売新聞)
- This is a longer news podcast put out by the Yomiuri Online Shimbun. Usually 20mins in length, and is extremely similar to the next podcast, except in Japanese.
- BBC Radio NewsPod
- What's an English podcast doing here? Simple, it is very helpful early on to know what to expect when you're training listening. 例えば、if you hear about the stock market crash effects from China then you know to listen for things like 経済、中国、etc. when you listen to the 日本語のニュースのポッドキャスと。
- 文化系トークラジオ Life
- This is a discussion of Japanese culture. It's usually put out once a day, and they discuss a new topic every week. It's extremely interesting to hear native Japanese talk about Japanese culture and their perceptions of it.
- Japan Talk (Japundit Podcast)
- This is yet another English podcast in my list, but this one is too good to pass up. It's a weekly review of Japanese news with explanation from an American who has lived in Japan for the last 40 years. It's extremely informative, reliable, and interesting.
The best part about all of these is that they're all available on iTunes, and all of them except Japan Talk are every week day. That's more than an hour of new Japanese material everyday to learn from. Go forth, become linguistically aware. Mazel tov.
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Written by John Rozewicki
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Friday, 29 September 2006 |
Fewer Hobbies
I've realized recently that I have fewer and fewer hobbies as I get older. When I was in high school I had a ton of hobbies. School was boring and horrible, and so I needed to make sure I really enjoyed my time off.
I played role playing games at a local store. I listened to talk radio. I watched and discussed countless movies with friends, and read books. I devoted too many hours to video games, and I had a passing interest in the Japanese language.
Now that I am attending university I find that I'm doing the same things I've always done, but fewer and fewer of them are hobbies. I am a Telecommunications (Production Option) and Japanese language double major. I discuss movies, listen to talk radio, watch television, look at Japanese stuff, etc.
The difference is that now I am doing these things within the context of my future. They are no longer worthless. School is fulfilling now because it is geared toward what used to be my hobbies, and this is why the only real hobby I retain is playing video games. And since I've been at school there's been a sharp decrease in the amount of time I spend doing that
Hobbies / Day-to-Day Fulfillment
There is an inverse relationship between hobbies and how fulfilling day to day activities are. There is a balance to be struck. The people who devote as many hours to World of Warcraft each week as they do their job seem to be the unhappiest with their station in life.
The people who are happiest with their station in life, or living their dream, are never too interested in having hobbies. They feel no need to escape. Real success, by this logic, can be defined as the absence of hobbies.
It should be noted that most people fall into a very moderate category. They like what they do in the career for the most part. They enjoy a few things outside of that. It's a very healthy attitude of moderation. But, shouldn't changing hobbies into careers be everyone's goal? This seems to be what successful people do. They chase their dreams. They go full speed ahead on their hobbies and manage to carve themselves a living while loving what they do.
If Applicable
It has been my goal to do exactly this. I came to university and could not make a decision between Japanese or Telecommunications. I took both as majors, but I also wanted to be a writer. Triple majoring is out of the question, and so I started a creative writing minor only to drop it when I later realized the creative writing program at Ball State left a little bit to be desired. At that point I started this website.
The only real hobby I have left is video games, which may remain a hobby unless I land a job on a video game radio show in Japan that also had an online element. I wouldn't have an aversion to that, but it's kind of specific.
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Written by John Rozewicki
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Monday, 25 September 2006 |
Indignancy
Voting is how we decide as a society what we feel should be done, and you’ll never hear more about it than around election season. Those who didn’t seem to care too much about exercising their rights before, suddenly become indignant about their feeling that absolutely everyone should vote. P. Diddy’s Vote or Die campaign comes to mind.
54%* Don't Vote
However, an interesting fact is that the majority of this country doesn’t vote. Losing the right to not vote (enforced compulsory voting) would affect more people than losing the right to vote. According to population figures from the 2000 US Census and the 2004 Presidential Election Results, about 42% of the country didn’t vote; 87 million people over the age of 18. In the 2002 Mid-Term Election this number shot to 65%; 135 million people over the age of 18. If there were to be a very ironic vote taken concerning compulsory voting, approximately 54% of this country would probably vote against the idea.
Protecting the Right to Not Vote
We talk proudly, and at length, about how great it is that we can vote in this country, but I’m more proud to live in a country where we have the right to not vote. Other people in other countries, such as Australia, do not have this right. That’s garbage. A right is not a right unless the inverse of that right is also a right. More simply, it’s not a right if you’re being forced to do it.
Nobody needs to fight for the right to do popular things. They’re just givens. Nobody needed to fight for the right to wear a helmet while riding a motorcycle. Historically, nobody needed to fight for the right to discuss how great they thought the current king was.
People only need to fight for the right to do stupid, offensive, or unpopular things. In this country, I don’t think we need to continue talking about fighting for the right to vote with every election. Voting is popular. Those who do not vote are publicly admonished or insulted. We’re told that if we don’t vote then we’re not patriotic, or not American. We’re told we shouldn’t complain because we didn’t do anything to change it.
Why I've Not Voted
I say “we,” because I’m one of the Americans that haven’t voted in the past 4 years. I’m not unpatriotic. I’m proud to live here, and not elsewhere. I’m not ignorant. I listen to hours upon hours of talk radio each week. I try not to miss watching The Daily Show and The Colbert Report every night. If anyone should be voting, it’s me.
But I’ve not voted in the past few elections because I’ve not seen a candidate compelling enough for me to bother going to the poll. We can talk at length about what we think other people should be doing, voting, but we’re missing the important question. What does it say about our political system when the majority of the populace chooses not to have a voice in it?
Why Other People Don't Vote
To me, it says that maybe there just might be a problem with our political system. It’s either that or the people in our country just suck. But remember, even if the majority of the populace sucks, they are still the majority. Their viewpoint is relevant, for better or for worse, simply because they make up the majority (more conservatively, something very close to the majority) of what we call our country.
* - A Special Note About Numbers:
The numbers I use in this article are fairly rough, and I wouldn't be comfortable putting them up for scientific scrutiny. However, they do seem to reflect the overall trends. We can quibble over the specific percentage of people, but the fact still remains that a ridiculous percentage of the United States doesn't vote.
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Written by John Rozewicki
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Monday, 25 September 2006 |
Cult Following
Best in Show is a movie that has a crazy following of really dedicated people. I guess it's a cult following, but it's a real cult following. It's not like one of the more recent mainstream cult followings where talk show hosts are telling you something has a cult following.
I question how cult these followings really are if you can flip on the television and hear about it. You won't hear too many people mention this movie, and so Best in Show has a real cult following.
Defending Po-Mo
But if it is ever brought to the surface, you'll see a few people in the group perk up to defend this movie. There doesn't seem to be any outspoken opposition, but nonetheless the tone they take is that of defense. "Best in Show? Yeah, I actually really like that movie."
Best in Show is kind of a postmodern situation comedy about a dog show. You have to be a cynical sort of person to understand why two people, who are fans of L.L. Bean catalogs, playing tag between Starbucks that are across the street from each other is funny. That's probably the reason people take such a defensive tone during discussions of it.
I shudder to imagine trying to explain it to my mother:
Me: "See, it's funny because it's making fun of the suburban American lifestyle."
Mom: "But we don't have two Starbucks that are across the street from each other."
Me: "We don't have a Starbucks at all."
Mom: "So why is it funny then?"
Me: *sigh*
Mom: "And I actually find L.L. Bean to be quite dapper, by the way."
Pedantickery
As I said before, Best in Show takes a kind of person with a cynical sort of mind to enjoy it. I feel like Best in Show should easily become a banner movie for me because cynical people are my people. I respect people who like this movie. But alas, Best in Show has an annoying issue. The bulk of the film is essentially B-movie calibre.
The movie at times employs a very entertaining documentary style that's similar in feeling to the movie Drop Dead Gorgeous. It's a fun style that lets the characters breathe a little bit. The script is able to be delivered in a more natural off the cuff fashion. It pulls you in because the characters talk to the camera, to you. It lends an honesty to the film that's important when absurd things are happening, but it is also the root of film's problems.
Unfortunately, unlike Drop Dead Gorgeous, Best in Show jettisons the documentary format after the first 15 minutes only to pick it back up again for the final few minutes. The funniest parts of the movie are in the scenes done in this fashion, but unfortunately those scenes only amount to 20 minutes of a 90 minute movie. What you would be left with if you took those scenes out is a standard B-movie.
It's bait and switch. The documentary style scenes the viewer is teased with are abandoned in favor of this unpolished very base comedy that I am not a fan of. The insightful lampooning of suburbia gets replaced with gay jokes and lisp humor. I guess it depends on the person, but I think that if someone dislikes Best in Show it will be for this reason.
Verdictery
Best in Show is a good movie that's most definitely worth it to watch once. It's smart and funny for the most part, but I just can't imagine myself popping it in the DVD player more than once every 2-3 years or so. The bait and switch in the comedic stylings prevent it from attaining the offical designation of Truly Bitchin'.
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Written by John Rozewicki
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Wednesday, 20 September 2006 |
Promoting Discussion
Ball State University has a program called Freshman Connections that chooses a common reader for the incoming freshman. The books are usually of the type that promote significant discussion and critical thinking. Interestingly, part of this discussion is that Ball State books the author for a presentation at about the 4th week of the fall semester. One of those presentations is the subject of this article.
This is the third, and I would say best, such function I have attended. Fast Food Nation was the common reader for my incoming class, and so we got to enjoy the fun excitement of a reactionary organization called BSYou.net believing Ball State was trying to indoctrinate us into some sort of godless leftist commie way of thinking. Less controversial was last year's Malcolm Gladwell, the author of Blink, who spoke academically about how social trends happen.
A Loung Speech
This year's speaker was Loung Ung; a 36 year old survivor of the Cambodian Khmer Rouge regime. She was 9 at the time her brother was forced to make a decision as to which sibling he would liberate from that hell and bring to the United States. He chose Loung, and since that time she has assimilated well into American culture. However, not well enough to shake off the traumatic past she detailed in her first memoir; First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers.
Loung was an excellent speaker for incoming freshman. She's got attitude, sincerity, and compassion on her side. She seems to understand her audience and her purpose. She is there for her wisdom. To give perspective to students that for the most part have not known such devastating hardships as herself. She knows which important points they want her to hit, and she also knows what she wants to say. She balances both expertly.
Her Truth
You get the feeling while listening that this is her territory, her life. She feels comfortable speaking about it. She sprinkles the tragedy with humor, but she doesn't sugar coat things. There is nothing anyone could ever say that would make her wrong. There is no debate. She has lived it. Any sentence she begins with, "And I saw..." cannot be questioned or judged. It is her experience.
After having heard her speak, I feel I must defend her. Her detractors say that her memory is not credible, and that she's injecting excitement at the expense of truth. However, the most telling example of her honesty is that she chose to write her memoir in the voice of a child. I feel it would have been dishonest of her to write it in the voice of an analytical adult.
The only experience of the events that she knows is the one from her childhood, and so she cannot help but convey exactly how she felt at those times; as a child. To say that she is lying outright is improbable. She was clear as to her motives for writing the book. She wanted attention for her cause; landmines. As a writer I appreciated her honesty.
This is what I was speaking of before when I said she balanced what she wanted to say with the sorts of things the university wanted her to say. The university wanted her to elaborate on the things she wrote about in her memoir. She wanted to talk about landmines. And if she were to fabricate for the purposes of furthering her own motives, wouldn't she then make sure that she had written that her whole family was taken out by landmines while on an outing?
I have trouble believing that a person that honest about her intentions would fabricate parts of her story; especially pieces of the story that don't further her cause as much.
Conclusion
I want to thank Loung Ung for her wisdom and candor. I felt empowered by the things she said as a writer and as a person. I do not know if others in the audience were touched in similar ways by her speech, but I know that what she said affected me deeply.
She has lived through extreme hardship, and it would be foolish for people, especially young persons, to not pay attention to her. Life experience is what makes humans into people. To not better yourself by listening to the experience of others would be a mistake.
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Written by John Rozewicki
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Thursday, 07 September 2006 |
Didn't Like It
I admit, before my third viewing, I did not like Shaun of the Dead. I was disappointed by it the first time I saw it. I was expecting this really hysterical parody of zombie cinema, and it felt like it was refusing to deliver the main attraction, zombies, for a significant portion of the movie.
I couldn't get past the feeling I had about the beginning of the movie well enough to give it my seal of approval as a Grade A good movie that deserves a spot in my library. I had my head up my arse, and so I feel I must apologize to this film before I do anything else.
I'm sorry Shaun of the Dead, will you still be my friend?
It's Crafty
Shaun of the Dead has a quality to it that is present in every one of my favorite films. When you are watching it, every single frame of film and sample of audio feels like it has been specially crafted. It doesn't feel as if any moment was accidental or without purpose. It feels concrete, specific, and especially planned to evoke an also planned reaction.
It's a movie you feel safe with like a big quilt you could wrap around yourself. It's not random. It surprises you, but also comforts you afterward. It breathes when it's supposed to breathe, and gives you a sense of closure upon its conclusion.
Other movies feel sloppy like the people in charge of the creation process had a kind of utilitarian attitude. A lot of the Vince Vaughn/Ben Stiller/Owen Wilson troupe movies feel this way. I get the sense they're created on shoe-string budgets by people who don't care so much about how well the pieces of the project come together as long as they assemble into something resembling a whole.
The scripts, to me, feel vacant of wit, subtlety, plot, etc. The only acting achievement present is how they found so many people who are able to act while winking at the camera and planting their tongue in their cheek without it being too obvious.
A Fork in the Approach
It could just be a difference in the approaches they took to making comedy. On the one hand you have these movies where it feels, like I said, as if the people onscreen are winking at you the whole time. Then you have Shaun of the Dead and the Wes Anderson stuff where it feels like the characters exist and do take the situations very seriously.
Laughing with people is easy. They prompt you to laugh through their own laughter. Laughing at sincere people seems to be a tougher task for most people. They don't know when to laugh or feel bad for laughing at parts that might not have been intended to be laughed at.
I find all the laugh tracks and tongue-in-cheekness distracting. It pulls me out of the movie, and I find myself not paying attention to the comedy because I'm too busy paying attention to things about the movie I don't like.
My Head Up My Arse
I didn't like Shaun of the Dead at first because it felt sloppy. But after the first viewing I knew what to expect. I knew that the movie was going to deliver. I could sit back and enjoy the thought that went in to the movie. Shaun of the Dead rewards viewers who watch closely and notice things. There's obvious foreshadowing and preloading of jokes, but they cover it with more immediate jokes and plot development.
It also helps that the movie is impressively edited. The opening scene literally unfolds the characters in front of you with the way the camera hinges on Shaun and reveals more of the surrounding characters as they get brought into the conversation.
The scene where Shaun quite literally falls to sleep in a chair in his kitchen is exhilarating to watch. Shaun falls down, and it appears as if a gigantic spotlight turns on in the window in the background the moment he hits the chair. That is, until you realize that that gigantic spotlight is the sun, and what you have just witnessed is a masterful way to jump ahead in the plot without fading to black and then back in with Shaun waking up.
And these examples are only 2 such moments in the movie. There's numerous other smaller examples that I could list here, but I think at that point I would consider this article as having stalled.
Casting
The cast is an endlessly compelling group of nice actors from across the pond. It is a very nice mixture of people who are obviously lead-types with people who are flavorful character actors. It seems as if all the actors sort of knew their place. The main cast feels confident as fleshed out characters while the supporting cast feels confident just being background color.
I've loved watching Dylan Moran since I first saw him a few years ago on Black Books, and it was cool to see Tamsin Greig make a cameo as one of the people who make up the bizarro troupe of post-apocalyptic warriors whose styles accurately mirror those of the main characters. Bill Nighy, as usual, does a stand up job playing the undead.
Suffice to Say
Shaun of the Dead is a great, sincere, movie. It doesn't feel like it was crafted by a huge studio to sell tickets. The people who you see in the movie had lots of creative input to the extent that Shaun, Simon Pegg, is listed as co-writer of the screenplay. Pick it up. Watch it. See it. Show your friends. Appreciate.
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