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Written by John Rozewicki
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Wednesday, 09 August 2006 |
My Choice: Juggling
A few months ago I taught myself to juggle. It wasn't particularly hard, it just took some time and a little research. I perservered through the initial stages and after about a week of practicing I was comfortably able to perform a 3-ball cascade; the simplest juggling move.
Juggling is a very dumb, interesting, but also very impressive skill to have. It's not hard to learn, but it feels very impressive to people. Anyone can learn it.
The initial learning curve is what puts people off. Beginners toss the balls up in the air and feel too overwhelmed to follow the pattern and move their hands the right way. It takes about 3 hours of practice before you get anywhere remotely impressive. Another 5 hours are spent getting comfortable and making sure your pattern is as regular as possible.
Unintended Consequences
Juggling was a skill I never really planned to use very much. I just like cool coordination things, and I have some progressed ADD that requires me to keep physically busy while sitting skill.
I twitch my leg incessantly when sitting in chairs. Juggling is a slightly more productive and distracting version of the leg twitching. I can do it while listening to the radio, waiting to meet people for lunch, or watching television(juggling is mostly peripheral vision).
I was at a weekend retreat recently where there was quite a bit of such downtime. I'm not a person that purposefully strolls over to people for the express purpose of striking conversation, and so I opted for juggling. Because of this I ended up talking to a few people I wouldn't have ordinarily talked to.
I get nervous in social situations, but this time around the juggling made me less nervous for 2 key reasons. Firstly, juggling put the social load on other people in that situation. It was up to them to come up to me because I was juggling. I knew that if they came up to me that they were legitimately interested in talking to me.
Secondly, juggling while I talked had a calming effect. I compared juggling before to other nervous habits I exhibit such as the leg twitching. They serve the same function; to blow off steam in stressful situations.
Choosing a Skill
I picked juggling, but you can choose any skill you find interesting. It's important to choose a skill that takes almost no talent, looks impressive, and takes less than 10 hours to learn.
It just so happens that many parlor and carnival tricks fall in this category. There's innumerable little magic tricks you can do with ordinary household objects, and the internet is a great place to learn a nearly infinite number of them.
The reddit response to this trick, here, was the inspiration for this article, and JuggleWiki is the best place to start for juggling information.
Go To It
Go hit up Google. Learn that stupid thing you've been wanting to know how to do since you were 5. Use it as a fallback at parties, dates, etc. You'll look impressive to people around you, and I can guarantee it will make almost any awkward social situation a great deal easier.
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Written by John Rozewicki
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Tuesday, 08 August 2006 |
Religous Jealousy
I grew up as a Catholic. I went to a private Catholic school for 4 years in grade school. I've been to numerous church services and functions. Unfortunately, I've never believed in the one singular anthropomorphic god that is so popular as of late. Sure I have personal spirituality, but I am unable to buy into any of the organized religions.
I don't hold anything inherently against them. I admire their ability to believe so easily. I imagine that having the answers to the fundamental questions in the universe must be the most secure and protected feeling you could ever have. But like I said, I'm an atheist. The part of my brain responsible for believing we're all just puppets being controlled in this magical fairy tale called the universe is not functioning properly.
My being an atheist doesn't stop me from having a religious preference. I shop around for religions like many people would sports teams or indoor carpeting. I weigh all the options and I've made my decision finally; Judaism.
Why Judaism?
Judaism is the original monotheistic religion of persecuted peoples, and I'm a sucker for purity. They have their own language which is essentially a secret handshake; Hebrew. Sure the Catholics have Latin, but Hebrew has been dead longer. That sort of thing is very very important to me.
Judaism has beautiful and elaborate insults involving peoples' heads growing in the ground as onions and teeth growing in as hair. Their sabbath is on Saturday which means I wouldn't miss very much, if any, of the football season provided that I actually had an interest in sporting events.
They follow the rules to the letter. They don't arbitrarily group the commandments into different categories to be misunderstood and rewritten. Each line is a rule to be followed. You have to admire that dedication. All in all it's a very sensible religion.
Finally, I have Jewish heritage. I could probably join up and be counted if I wanted to. Nothing beats actually being able to join the club you're a fan of.
Religion Battle Royale
The pros and cons of each religion can and should be weighed out. Everybody should have a favorite religion just as they do a favorite sports team. There would be some accountability and credibility among the religions. They're already pitted against each other in the middle east. Shouldn't we maybe try to do it in a more peaceful way; throw them all on Survivor?
Most religions are pretty absurd. The most absurd, by far, being scientology. Having a favorite one just sort of stacks absurdity on absurdity to prove the point that it doesn't really matter. We're all people, and we all have to set some differences aside in order to peacefully interact with people in the world.
Something to Be Set Aside
I have to do a little soul searching as it is when I find out someone's a fan of something I consider to be schlocky crap. I can't imagine the soul searching I'd have to do if someone believed something that was not only different from my core belief structure, but specifically at odds with it in many cases.
We should set aside religious preference just as we do musical preferences. The net affect is the same. None of it really matters. It's not real. It's words in some books somewhere. You can be a fan of a religion just as you can be a fan of any other piece of art. Let's all just treat it that way instead of treating it like any of it actually means something to anyone but the people practicing it.
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Written by John Rozewicki
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Monday, 07 August 2006 |
Movie Lust
I love going to the theatre to watch a movie. There's not too many other situations that can cause me to become as excited while spending only $10. It's the waiting that really gets me; the feeling of sitting in the theatre waiting for the movie to start.
I constantly check my watch while nervously twitching my foot. This causes the very loving people I attend movies with to grab my leg so I'll stop making noise and shaking their seat.
Television Love
As much as I love going to the theatre I find myself staying home more often and watching television. Television isn't what it used to be. No longer does the watching of television require the annoyance of commercials. Most of the television I watch comes on DVD. However, the excitement when watching television isn't with the waiting. It is with the knowledge that there's 17.2 hours of content to watch, and I'm only an hour in.
It wasn't always this way. I used to hate television. I could never seem to clear the specific hours each week when the interesting-looking shows aired. And even if I could, at the time there weren't any real compelling shows on television.
Changes
It changed for me about 6 years ago with the show Gilmore Girls. This was one of those touching family shows on the WB network, but the difference was that this WB show actually contained some decent comedy. The scripts were long, tight, and delivered at breakneck speed. That is actually one of the more common criticisms of the show; nobody talks that fast. But I beg to differ, I talk that fast and so do most of my friends.
Speed of delivery aside, it was the show that pulled me in. I was hooked from the first minute I saw and for a long time it was the only show I would watch on television. Nothing could match it for quality. The characters were interesting, the humor was quirky and dark, and the character dynamics were over-the-top but understandable.
The show was well-produced. The actors who have worked on WB series' will tell you that the shooting schedule is closer to how movies are done. The shoots are just as rigorous but with one important difference, the pace has to be kept up for 8 solid months out of the year.
Peak Performance
Last year my television watching hit a peak. It's not that I have more time to spend. I was the busiest I had ever been, but I also watched more television than I ever had before. I followed 4 series last year on the major networks; Gilmore Girls, Grey's Anatomy, Lost, and Veronica Mars. All of them were interesting, stable, funny, well-produced shows.
I don't buy this 'golden age' garbage. Television was ridiculously horrible until a few years ago, but people watched because they didn't have many other options for video entertainment. It wasn't lack of talent or creativity that kept television down for so many years it was lack of budget. Television studios could simply not match the dollar-per-minute ratio of the film studios at a time when such production was very expensive.
Why Television is Better Now
Advances in digital video production have been the reason for the surge in television quality over the past 8 years. Television studios don't need as many film prints laying around, and many don't have need of film at all if they make use of digital video cameras. Digital editing means less money spent on the physical labor of cutting together video allowing more time to be spent on the creative portions.
Television will never be able to match the dollar-per-minute ratio of film, but we're at the point now where they don't need to. There are diminishing returns to video production. The economics for television have finally evened out enough for television studios to create something very close to film for a fraction of the per-minute budget.
When television's bad; nothing's worse. When television's good; nothing's better.
This adage has never been more applicable than right now. Now that television quality is finally able to compete with film we are going to see more and more just how good television can be.
Better than Film?
I hesitate to say that television is better than film. Television and film are different formats. Film is better at telling specific stories or stories that are told in a more experimental way. Not every story needs 17 hours to tell, but the longer format of television allows more intricate stories to be played out and better character development.
Lost is an excellent example. It is one of the first times outside of lengthy novels that we've gotten to intimately know a cast of 10 or 12 characters. They're all so developed that each of them feels like a main character. We really do feel like we know these people.
Cred Confusion
It's foolish to say that across the board one format is better than the other, but it is my opinion that nothing beats good television. As a video production student I feel conflicted. Film gets all the credit, but television is a more rewarding experience for me in every way. I feel like I should really want to work in the movie industry, but I'm unable to feel that way when such stellar programming is available on television.
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Written by John Rozewicki
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Thursday, 03 August 2006 |
A Strange Film I <3 Huckabees is a strange and beautiful experience. The first time you watch it you might feel a little uneasy, or out of control. It's not a movie for the masses. Not often is there a movie that requires a short primer on existentialist philosophy to understand the comedy. An Honest Film I <3 Huckabees is an honest comedy movie. There aren't really any punch lines, and there are definitely not pauses for laughter. It's a tough movie to watch for the first time, because it's difficult to know where to feel confident in laughing. In many comedies the dramatic elements are pitted against the comedic elements as if they're on opposite ends of a spectrum. Movies like I <3 Huckabees show that this simply isn't true. Why You Can Laugh I think the magical part is that you really grow to love each of the characters in their own way. Dustin Hoffman is a very likeable cute older man who has a lot of wisdom. Lily Tomlin is a more harsh and overbearing version of the Dustin Hoffman character. Jason Schwartzman plays an abrasive environmentalist that is very similar to, but less over the top than Mark Wahlberg's character. Jude Law is the vacant salesman. The movie really shines on the second viewing because you know the characters, and you feel comfortable laughing at Tommy yelling that people who drive SUV's are murderers even though it might seem like a serious situation. Divisive Quirkiness I <3 Huckabees is a quirky movie. It falls right in line with Wes Anderson movies like The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic. It takes serious situations and tweaks them to give a sense of hyper-realism and absurdity. I've noticed that the people who have seen movies done in this style break down into two camps. The one camp becomes distracted by some of the quirkier things in the movie, and so discounts it as being completely unreal; the costumes in The Royal Tenenbaums and the fact that existentialist detectives don't actually exist in the case of I <3 Huckabees. The other camp believes that all the quirks serve to make the movie feel closer to reality than most other movies they have seen. I am in this other camp. I think that the people who take issue with the the subtle comedic elements in I <3 Huckabees have succumbed to a Hollywood tradition similar to the 24 frames per second phenomenon*. Conclusion I <3 Huckabees is a magical movie that is ridiculously hard to explain to someone that hasn't seen it. There's something beautiful about the experience of watching it that is difficult to pinpoint. When it's over you feel like you've learned a little bit more about the fundamental mysteries of the world. If you have liked movies done by Wes Anderson then you will most certainly like I <3 Huckabees. *Audiences are used to film running at 24 frames per second. When audiences are shown film running at 60 frames per second they perceive it to of be lower quality even though it is actually of a higher quality than the more traditional 24 frames per second. |
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Written by John Rozewicki
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Tuesday, 01 August 2006 |
Worst Dinner Party Guest Ever
I get into arguments a lot. Not angry ones, but passionate ones about politics. Politics is a very broad term for me. I define it as anything concerning how a society decides what's important and affects change. So, for me, nearly every argument I have is about politics in some way.
I don't tend to hang around with very many people my age. I would like to think it's because I'm smarter and more mature than they are. More likely is that it's because I'm more than a little cynical. The majority of the arguments I get into are with people who are older than I am.
Cyclical Trump Cards
I've noticed recently that when all logical, rational discussion has been exhausted the person I'm arguing with plays their trump card.
You're young. You'll wake up sooner or later. I did.
In the times that card has been played recently I've was taken aback by the fact that someone who had been engaging in a logical discussion 5 minutes ago could switch so fast to a style of discussion that is not only irrelevant but also very insulting. When this trump card is played the argument ceases to be about the subject of the argument and becomes more about the people having the argument.
There is an answer to the statement quoted above.
Well, you're just older. How do you know I'm not part of a new wave of thinking?
Neither are logical in any way. They can't be tested and they do not concern the subject of the argument. But, both could be true and are interesting to think about in terms of how society changes over time. Looking back through just this past century we can break down the things each generation did differently.
An Illustrated Example
With people of my generation oral, for example, oral sex is quite common. If you talk to anybody older than about 40 they'll tell you that when they were growing up it was not seen as a common behavior. They'll be able to talk about when exactly they first heard about people doing it and how it was perceived.
When it was coming into vogue it was seen as being more intimate than anything else. It was seen as something people who were already very close to each other did instead of the more common thinking today that it is a part of foreplay.
Now imagine the argument between 2 people of different generations. The older side would say that it's a fad; that there have always been fads, and that a person will settle on more normal sexual behavior as they get older. The younger side will say that it's the new way; that after the older people are gone the majority of the population will believe the same things they do.
Time is on My Side
I think things like gay rights are similar issues. People of my generation who have more experience around people who are gay see them as equal people who deserve the same treatment. People of past generations see them as a marginal angry segment of society who don't deserve anything. Time will bear it out.
The Generation Gap
When we look back on how society used to be we always talk as if there was some significant consensus. Maybe there wasn't. I think it's highly likely there wasn't. If you could take a snapshot of society at any point in time you would see a de facto compromise between people of different generations. That's the definition of the generation gap.
Society changes not because people become better across the board. People rarely stop believing things they've believed their whole lives. The mechanism for change in society is the literal death of the old and the literal birth of new. We should keep this in mind when discussing things with someone from a different generation. |
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Written by John Rozewicki
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Thursday, 27 July 2006 |
Nothin' Special
The Ice Harvest is nothing special. It's in the same genre as other movies like Wild Things, Confidence, and A Simple Plan. There's some money, a few people want sole control of this money, and the situation quickly escalates.
Typecasting
Cusack and Thornton play the roles you expect them to play. Billy Bob's character is a fast-talking untrustworthy southern-type guy. John Cusack plays a very likeable protagonist. Even though he has done a bad thing and is awful to his kids, you feel for him.
It's Not Bad...
I would like to write more about this movie, but there's really nothing to say. It's entertaining. The acting is good. It's shot well. The story keeps you guessing. If you like the movies I outlined above then you'll like The Ice Harvest.
Tiny Market
There's no reason not to watch it, but on the other hand everyone has already seen similar movies before. So it's really only going to attract the type of people who are fans of specific actors in the movie or fans of the genre. That's really the most damning thing I can say about The Ice Harvest.
I would file this under the heading of liking it while I was watching it, but ultimately being disappointed that it wasn't really a new experience in any way.
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