THE 300 WORKOUT

Take the above link, it's a short video demonstrating the workout.

When I watched it, I could tell that it would be a great challenge, and that it looked like fun, but I also knew that this video couldn't be all of it. There had to be more to it. There is no way those actors did this same routine everyday, there had to be something else.

Turns out, there is. I did some digging, and I found MARK TWIGHT. He is the guy that built the training plan for those guys. Take this link to see a video of him laying out what he did with these actors and why.

That first routine, released by Men's Health, is just one day. They most definitely performed that workout, but they only did it once. Mr Twight had them do a completely different routine every day they worked, each one more grueling than the last. The idea behind that is they are constantly throwing new challenges at their bodies, so they never stop adapting and growing, they never get into a training rut. Men's Health just labeled that one THE 300 workout, because they're a magazine, and one neat little routine would sell more issues than a big article about Mark Twight's training philosophy. Though, personally, I would have wanted to read that too, but that's just me.

Anyway, so I have put myself on this sort of schedule. I'm always looking to experiment with new training philosophies. If it doesn't work, then cool, I learned another thing NOT to do. If it does work, then I have just added a valuable tool to my bag o' training tricks.

I started with that first routine.

I got through the 25 pull-ups with little difficulty. It took me two sets, one of 13 and one of 12. Then, I trudged through the 50 dead lifts with a moment of rest at about rep 27 I think. Then the push-ups took me three sets to get them all in. I pounded through the box jumps with sheer force of will, and then...

I just knew that any second I was going to throw up. I picked up the bucket that I had brought with me for just that purpose, and paced the room with it until my heart-rate and breathing had eased up a bit, at which point I sat on the gym floor, clutching my bucket to my chest. Somewhere after that, I kinda passed out. Not fainted, but I just kind of lowered myself to the floor and fell asleep. I woke up about twenty minutes later when my girlfriend was standing over me with a near-panicked look on her face. She said she got worried when she stopped hearing grunting noises from the gym.

That was yesterday. Today I hurt SoooOOoooOOOOOooo bad EVERYWHERE. Good lord.

I learned my lesson though. I'm going to spend the next three weeks or so doing high intensity endurance work and lots of cardio and then I'm going to try it again. I just was totally unprepared for the type of workload that this workout is because I've been bad about cardio, and only doing heavy weights with low reps. I'll let you know how next time goes.

Now That I Have Your Attention...

In 2000 the WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION published a list of 191 countries, ranked from the best to the worst health care systems. The list was based on five categories of criteria of the overall health of the citizens of each country.

We ranked 37th.

We're sandwiched in nicely with The Dominican Republic and Costa Rica just above us and Slovenia and Cuba just below.

Wow.

And that's not even the worst bit. Here's the real kick-you-in-the-crotch moment:

On average we spend about two and one half times the amount of money per capita on our healthcare than the next highest paying country.

Let me repeat that. We pay MORE THAN DOUBLE what any other country pays for healthcare.

And yet 36 of them have a higher quality system than we do.

I don't like to cuss on here too much, but WHAT THE FVCK!? For twice the money, shouldn't we have the best? I'm sure many of you are wondering how this disparity could possibly be.

Say what you will about Michael Moore (I have my own issues with his past work as well) but see SICKO. This is a movie (and an issue) that has reached across party lines. Moore is a famous lefty, but even republican politicians have given him tearful thanks on this one. I mean, we all want to be taken care of more effectively and efficiently, right?

If this movie makes you mad. Write a letter. Write an email. Or just GO HERE. The link takes you to a helpful page from Michael Moore himself on how to take some quick action right now.

Just do something about it.

Mmm Mmm, Gluten

Some of you have been probably been hearing a new food watch word lately, and wondered what it was all about.

I am referring to the trend towards "gluten free."

Gluten is a protein that occurs in grasses, and most notably in wheat. It comprises about 80% of the protein in wheat, to be precise. To about 99% of Americans this protein is not only harmless, but quite nutritious. In a very small minority it can create painful and dangerous side effects, but as I said that is only in a small percentage of us. It's estimated to be less than 1% of us. To read more about the science of gluten and this reaction, CLICK HERE.

You may or may not have noticed lately, because most people don't really read the labels of what they eat very closely, but there has been a growing list of products that are bragging about being gluten free in recent years. I had a jar of natural peanut butter the other day that listed on the side "gluten free." I had to laugh out loud because there was never any reason for a person to suspect a jar of peanut butter contained gluten.

But, that brings me to my point. Most of us wouldn't worry if there was gluten in our peanut butter, and most of us don't need to worry about gluten at all, and in fact eat it all the time. It's in wheat bread, it makes bagels chewier, and gives pizza crust it's texture. The only people who need to concern themselves with gluten should be well-informed by their doctor about what foods are dangerous for them, and what ingredients to look for, and they would know better than to suspect peanut butter. When the list of ingredients is "peanuts and salt" it's pretty obvious that it's safe for anyone who doesn't have a peanut alergy.

The reason it's on that label is because of this growing fear of gluten. It's becoming the new "bad guy" in food. We've had many over the years, this one is only the newest. There was a while where fat was our enemy, and then it was sodium for a while, and who can forget the most idiotic one; the Atkins attack on carbs. There was a kernel of truth in those attacks of the past. Yes, in large amounts, those things are bad for you. BUT in the right amounts those things are good for you. Fat is neccassary for healthy skin and hair and joint function, among other things. Too little sodium intake can make you just as sick as too much. And carbs... besides the fact that they are you body's primary fuel source, they are your brain's ONLY fuel source... do I even need to address this one?

So, in the case of food "bad guys" we take a good idea too far in this country, and gluten is the same thing. Yes, some people need to avoid it, and there is a small market there for special foods that are made with gluten free alternatives, just like there is a small market for people who would rather eat a soy alternative to meat. But for most of us, gluten does not need to be the new food watch word.

It's also amazing to me that after Denmark and Canada banned foods containing hydrogenated oils, and health researchers all over the world came to the same conclusion about them, that they have only kind of became a "bad guy." Trans fats are the real monsters in our food, and many of us are shoveling them down our throats with reckless abandon. If you're eating chips, or crackers, or cookies, or snack cakes, then chances are you are eating them. WIKIPEDIA had this to say about it:

Unlike other dietary fats, trans fats are neither required nor beneficial for health. Eating trans fats increases the risk of coronary heart disease. For these reasons, health authorities worldwide recommend that consumption of trans fat be reduced to trace amounts. Trans fats from partially hydrogenated oils are generally considered to be more of a health risk than those occurring naturally. LINK TO FULL TEXT

Anyway, that's a whole different discussion. The point is, gluten is not your enemy... unless it is, but you probably already know that. If not, then you will know soon enough, but more than likely you are one of the overwhelming majority of us who don't need to care.

The New Betas

For those of you who do not remember, in the late 1970's and early 1980's there was a format war between two different types of video cassette. There was BetaMax and VHS. We consumers were offered both types of player, and both types of cassette could be found side-by-side at the rental shops for years. In the end, VHS won and the consumer market never looked back.

Now, for those of you who don't know, it's happening all over again with a new type of DVD. The difference is pretty straightforward. Our standard DVD's are burned with a red laser. Red light has a wider wavelength than blue light, so now they've devised a blue laser that can cram more data into the same-sized disc as your standard DVD. A LOT more. The applications in computers are totally worth the technology there, but I'm skeptical of any need in the video market.

When audio and video made the move from cassettes to CD and DVD respectively, we saw a BIG improvement. Not only better quality, but in the case of video, a navigable multimedia experience with extras became the new standard. It was revolutionary, and most of us can't get enough of it. This newest upgrade, however, is just not worth the trouble.

PC Magazine released a list of "Do Not Buy" items for 2006. At the top of the list was an HD and/or a Blueray player. I say, follow their advice. The difference in picture quality is only incrementally better, and only really enjoyable if you spend a $1000 or more on an HD TV to use it on. Few of us have that money, or even want to drop that kind of cash on a TV and a new video disc player and re-buy an entire movie collection in a new format.

If we're smart, we'll all continue buying standard DVD's and ignore both new formats. Don't forget, supply is driven by demand, and WE are the demand. Vote with your wallet and stick with what is already working just fine. I recognize that it will take millions of people agreeing with me to make this stand work, but I am one of many websites, PC Magazine included, that advocates this. Funny thing is too, I know a couple folks that actually already own HD TV's, snd they agree with me on this. They don't even need to drop the thousands like most of us would, and even they agree; there is just no incentive to want this.

This upgrade is not needed. Spread the word, continue to support plain ol' DVD,
and let's make two new Betas.

Morons and @ssholes

The following is a transcript of Dick Cheney in 1994 speaking about our first fracas in Kuwait, and why we didn't take it on the offensive then, like we have now.

Simply put; WTF!?

1994 CSPAN Interview

Question: Do you think the U.S., or U.N. forces, should have moved into Baghdad?

Dick Cheney: No.

Q: Why not?

Dick Cheney: Because if we'd gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone. There wouldn't have been anybody else with us. There would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq.

Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place? That's a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off: part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of it -- eastern Iraq -- the Iranians would like to claim, they fought over it for eight years. In the north you've got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey.

It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.

The other thing was casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had. But for the 146 Americans killed in action, and for their families -- it wasn't a cheap war. And the question for the president, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad, took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth?

Our judgment was, not very many, and I think we got it right.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Joey-Man

I am now an independent contractor on the payroll of Marvel Comics.

Ask me what I will be doing. Go ahead ask.

I will be playing Spiderman for public appearances.

Every time I start thinking about it I start giggling uncontrollably. It's really good money for a completely fun gig. If I do well on my first one, which is the DVD release of the third movie here in town at the end of October, I will be given more assignments, maybe even including out-of-town gigs.

I just watched the training video this morning. The best part is they give you creative suggestions for getting out of the invariably stupid things that people will ask/demand that you do. They require that you ALWAYS stay completely in character, and they give you strategies to do so and avoid upsetting the customers.

Example: Some kid starts demanding a display of powers. He might ask you to climb the wall, or shoot webs. To a request for wall-crawling you simply say that you were doing it earlier in the day, but the owner of the building complained about dirty, ugly footprints in those high, hard-to-reach places, and asked you to stop. If some kid begs you to shoot your webs you can either site the building owner disliking the mess again, or you can say that you need to conserve your precious web fluid. Afterall, if Spidey spends all his webbing showing off, and Doctor Octopus happens to show up, we'll all be in a lot of trouble!

Should be a lot of fun. I'm off to Atomic Comics to go pickup some "character research."

Richard Dawkins Cracks Me Up

What I love about Dawkins, and other secular humanists like him, is that even though they are very much opposed to religion, and are vociferous in their quest against it, they are constantly saying "I could be wrong."

Again and again in several interviews I've seen him say things like "one day, they very well may prove it."

To me, that's the elegant beauty of not subscribing to a "faith." There's a certain flexibility in not putting all your stock in one explanation for the entirety of existence. As tiny as we are we know we can never really hope to know or understand it all, so to me the attempt to know and understand whatever we can through testing and observation is as much explanation as I can hope for, and certainly more explanation than I'd ever need. This to me, is a lack of faith, but it has been put to me that even belief in science is its own faith. The idea being that we can't ever really know anything for certain, so some faith is involved in any belief. I sort of agree, but it's faith with some conditions on it.

I do fully understand that believing in science itself requires it's own kind of faith, especially for a layperson like myself. I mean, I wasn't in the lab, doing the research, performing the tests and gathering the evidence first hand. So, it is a form of faith that I accept what science tells me is true. BUT it is a faith with one caveat. Anyone can test science. If I so choose, I could contact a scientist, go to his lab, read his research and see the evidence he yielded in specific terms to derive the theory I now accept as true. Or better than that, I can repeat his experiments and observe his results firsthand for myself.

So, in that case I am now a scientist myself, not a secondhand believer. Even then, my acceptance of the meaning of those results also requires a certain kind of faith. I have faith that the correlation that I found is actually true. I have faith that what the evidence seems to tell me is correct. BUT there is another caveat. If another scientist comes along with totally new research that completely refutes mine, and it is undeniable, then I will admit that what I thought before was wrong, and move forward.

Because of these reasons I have listed above, I am to the point of being uncomfortable using faith in this context. Faith in science is a logical thing, based on measurable, testable evidence. Whereas faith in anything spiritual is an entirely emotional thing. It somehow "feels" right to a person. Without anything more compelling than a book, one can just decide that something makes sense. One might say science can work the same way to a layperson, in that nothing more compelling than a book can change my mind. But I accept what that book tells me with the aforementioned caveats in mind. Many holy books come with no such support, or even any evidence of original authorship or purity of translation over the years. In many cases we have no way of knowing who actually wrote it, or what the precise meaning of their words was in the beginning. It could have been written by a con artist and/or been distorted by the personal moods or intentions of any number of scribes over the generations, yet the words are accepted and believed, even venerated and applied as law in some cases.

The point to me is that "faith" is a word that has taken on certain connotations that make it inappropriate with regard to science. Just like the words virginity and molest have completely changed in our modern times. Virginity used to mean purity of body and spirit, and virgin used to be synonymous with nun, and now as long as a girl hasn't had vaginal intercourse, she's a virgin. To molest someone used to be to annoy, to harass, to interfere with, but now we all automatically think about children being sexually abused. Like those words, faith has become more specific than it used to be.

To be clear, this is not an attack on religion, or religious people. This is just my own observations on a certain word. For me, faith is an emotional belief in something without any evidence. I neither condemn nor condone it. I have many friends that are strong in their faith, and that works just fine for them. I take no stance on it, like Mr Dawkins does. I'm just stating, clearly, and mostly for my own purposes what faith means to me.

Being Green Saves You Green

I have become more and more concerned about my energy usage over the past several years. The past several months it has become a bit of a personal obsession. It has actually started to feel more and more like a quest lately. It's as though now that my own personal mental light bulb has turned on, I want to help other people turn on theirs too.

Here's the best part: Most of the strategies I've been employing don't just save energy...

THEY ALSO SAVE MONEY

That's right! Being energy efficient is also being cost efficient. I will admit this doesn't apply to all green strategies, but it does to many. There are some things that will cost you a premium here and there, but consider it a trade off. You save dollars off the power bill and the water bill and at the gas pump, so you spend a little more on local and/or organic produce, or the like.

Here's one little simple one that everybody can do... or not do, as it were, to save:

First, a question: When you use a sink in your home (any sink) to wash your hands or your dishes, which handle do you typically go for? Hot? Cold? Most of you probably use some combination of hot and cold right? Using all hot is too hot, but most of us want some hot in there, I think.

Well, did you ever stop to think why you use the hot water at all? I mean, we all know that to kill any germs at all, the water needs to clear up over 140 degrees Fahrenheit, and you couldn't keep your hands in water that hot, so no use there. If your dishes answer is to soften dried-on food, well you can kill that need by washing your dishes when you use them, or at least rinsing them. For particularly persistent cooked-on crust, you might try letting it soak.

Anyway, when we make it a temperature that our hands can bare, we make it not so much hot, as just very warm. The truth is that in both washing your hands and your dishes, very warm water does no good. It doesn't kill any germs at all. It's the soap and the scrubbing action that does all the work. Now, that water had to be heated somehow. I don't know about your home personally, but my hot water heater is natural gas powered. Whenever I run the hot water in any faucet in my home I can actually here it kick on and begin replenishing the tank, burning natural gas to do so.

So, now we know the hot water is useless for everyday sink use, and we know that (generally) we pay to use energy of some kind to heat it. Then it's not a far leap to figure that using the cold water handle saves us that little bit of money, and doesn't burn that extra little bit of energy.

Also, if you live in a house like mine, where the pipes aren't very deep in the ground, the Arizona sun warms them up plenty, so even the cold water side comes out pretty warm most of the year.

SO, there's a freebie tip. Hope you enjoy it.

Hate Crimes

First, I want to be very clear that I am not any anti-Islam bigot. I also do not enjoy the idea of the destruction or defacement of any book, religious or otherwise.

That said, I think it's $%&@ ridiculous that a guy is being prosecuted for a felony hate crime charge for putting a Qu'ran in a public toilet.

Don't misunderstand, I don't defend the guy's actions at all. I think it's a very tasteless and offensive thing to do. I would never do something like that, and I wouldn't want to be around people who would. But a felony?

My problem is actually with this nebulous idea of "hate crime" itself. It's legislation that speaks to our own personal thoughts and opinions. That makes me very very uncomfortable.

Example: Let's say Jon Doe catches his wife cheating on him, and flies off the handle and beats her to death. He would likely be charged with manslaughter.

If another Jon Doe is a well-known racist and beats a black man to death for the fun of it, his charges will likely be manslaughter and an additional count of "hate crime."

Now really think about that. In both cases the actions were the same, Mr Doe visited horrible violence on another human being. The end result in each case was also the same, somebody was killed. But in the second case, if convicted of both charges, his record and sentencing will come out much worse. And because of what? Because of his personal thoughts and opinions on the matter. Ugly as the second Mr. Doe's thoughts are, it makes me very uncomfortable that those things come into play at all. Both acts are despicable and both deserve to be severely punished, but neither one more so than the other.

Thoughtcrime sound familiar to anyone? It's a term created by George Orwell in 1984. Big Brother labeled any disapproved thoughts as a criminal offense. I definitely don't like the racist Jon Doe's motivations from my example, and I would never socialize with a person who expressed those kind of views, but I cannot believe I am living in an America that legislated away his right to feel that way. There is a quote often attributed to Voltaire, though he never actually wrote it:

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

Isn't that one of those quotes that we always toss around here in this country? Whatever happened to that idea?

COMMENTS

...seriously? A nice, meaty piece of controversy like this, and nobody that comes by here has anything to say? weird. Joey 08.10.07 - 3:48 am

I'm avoiding discussing controversial topics via the internet as it has lost me a few "friends" in the last few months. But I don't believe this does legislate our thoughts, or our speech, but was meant as a way to reverse things like gay bashers getting misdemeanors after hospitalizing someone. As far as your murder example, even before hate crime legislation, those two crimes would have been judged separately of each other based on the killers' intent, frame of mind, and pre-meditation (the stuff hate crimes are made of). Statistically, judges and juries are pretty easy on guys who kill their wives in rages (especially if infidelity is involved - she should've known better, right?)and have been really relaxed on how they judge things like a black man being killed for being black in the wrong place (he should've known better, right?). The idea of a "hate crime" was supposed to take the whitewashing out of the good ole boy system of justice that exists in most places in america. It was meant to protect people who historically have not been protected by our system of "justice". And that's hard for you and I to understand, because we don't belong to any of those groups. Don't get me wrong, I think the laws are virtually useless and when they are used are used in ridiculous ways, but I respect their intent - which was not supposed to have anything to do with free speech or expression, only violent acts. I'm babbling. AmBam 08.10.07 - 9:55 am

I thank you AmBam, for you words. You make a lot of sense. I also had a private conversation with someone else who shed some light on this subject for me. My post was somewhat misinformed, and a little off the mark, and my examples were irrelevent at best. You both have given me a great deal to think about. I apologize if anyone was offended by the stance I took. But, I also still feel that, while an ugly thing to do, putting any book into a toilet should not be a crime, and definitely NOT a felony. I feel like the specific case that stirred me to write this post is, as you put it Ambam, the law being "used in ridiculous ways." Joey 08.13.07 - 12:01 am Absolutely no offense taken - and I actually totally agree with you on the book thing (I just realized I never said that). There's a line between being an asshole and being a criminal, but our legal system doesn't recognize that line and they just mark everything as criminal. AmBam 08.15.07 - 4:14 pm

Revisionist History

My mind wandered a bit while I was driving this afternoon. I somehow started thinking about the fifties and how dark and cynical a place this world seems to be now, especially when compared to the brighter days of the 1950's.

Then, I thought, wait a minute. The 1950's were right after The Second World War and at the start of The Cold War. There is no reason that those were any brighter times than today. Then I thought that it's just people that are darker and more cynical than they were back then... nope, that can't be it either. People, by and large, haven't changed a whole hell of a lot in hundreds of years. So, what is it then? What is making me see it this way?

AH-HA! It hit me. It's the arts. Or at least the pop art. Or at least the pop art that was pop enough to survive to today. Donna Read. Sock hops. Poodle skirts. Leave It To Beaver. The Hula Hoop. Frankie and Annette. Elvis (before the "gut bombs" and sequin jumpsuits). The list goes on and on. There's this huge list of 1950's pop culture stuff that just seems so friggin' happy. And generally, even in contemporarily made pieces that are set in that era are also pretty "golly gee whiz" cheeseballs. Look at Marty McFly's parents in Back To The Future. Or the kids in SandLot.

For a second I wondered why it all tried so hard to be so idyllic. When you look at it like this, it all seems so saccharine sweet, and a little sickening. But then I remembered an article I read in a film history book, and also a conversation with my grandfather about what he says "movies are supposed to be."

To my grandpa, and the generation that lived through the depression and the years that followed, going to the movies was about escape. My grandpa looks at a movie like AMERICAN BEAUTY or BABEL and makes a face and/or uses words like "dumb." He couldn't care less about well drawn, realistic characters, or biting social commentary. He wants to see explosions like in a Die Hard film, or monsters and magic like in The Lord of The Rings trilogy. To him the Wizard of Oz is one of the greatest films of all time. Life for him, and for many people in those days, was hard enough, they wanted to watch things that made them forget all that. They didn't want a Neil Labute psycho-drama or a Todd Solondz disturb-fest back then, and they won't enjoy them now either.

To connect back to the beginning; it seems to me that art in the 1950's was sort of coasting along with that escapist idea leftover from before. Gramps' generation that had just been through a huge war and his parents who braved the depression were the ones with the movie-going dollars in the 50's, afterall. Escapists were the biggest market, so they were catered to more. So, people like me have grown up seeing that era through the rose-colored lenses of pop culture leftovers. A sort of multimedia revisionist history.

So what does our art of the late 1990's to the present day reflect about us?. I mean, if a headlong rush into escapism is a reflection of how hard life was then, what does our gritty, cynical art today reflect. Is it that things are easier for us now then they were then, so we're left to our own devices to whine and wrestle with the emotional things that people just didn't fuss much with back in the day? Or is it just a backlash as happens so often in the arts? A reactionary thrust in the opposite direction? Or is it just that we're relaxing a touch away from our puritanical roots and we're allowed to say and do things in the arts that artists in the 1950's couldn't dream of?

Or is it just that I, personally, tend to favor the thinker films over the escapist ones, and I'm completely glossing over the ever-present glut of flashy films with no substance that continue to be released summer after summer?

COMMENTS

Are you familiar with the theory which states that people generally think of the 1950s as "the good ol' days" primarily because of the large social safety net which existed in America at the time, but which has since been largely dismantled? According to this theory, people might say life was "simpler" then, or that there were "values" then which there aren't today, but people really have nostalgia for it because CEOs and celebrities didn't make obscene amounts of money compared to the rest of us and people could actually afford to buy a house and pay off the mortgage before moving somewhere else. ed 08.01.07 - 10:26 pm

And us hip kids could afford ridiculous muscle cars because insurance companies hadn't caught on that all we wanted to do was get drunk and race each other down Dead Man's Curve. Guillermo 08.02.07 - 12:24 pm

The 50s also were only a golden age if you happened to be a middle to upper class white male--though females who enjoyed domestication probably enjoyed it too. But for women who wanted independence and for any minority group, the 50s were hellish and backwards times. While we're on counterintuitive nostalgia, how 'bout dem Victorian-inspired Christmases? Crohn 08.02.07 - 1:09 pm

Well, I would actually agree with your grandpa about American Beauty and Babel. Both movies were terrible. Meanwhile I like to look through my own venetian blind sunglasses and proclaim that movies like Ice Pirates, Cherry 2000, and Weird Science are what movies should be. I for one think that we are long overdue for a cop/dog buddy movie. therealdavid 08.02.07 - 9:57 pm

I understand the Babel sentiment. It's not for everybody. But American Beauty!? Terrible? You can't make a statement like that without backing it up with a little on the "why?" At least not in The Land Of Poop. Joey 08.05.07 - 4:19 am

And by the way, civil rights and feminism and all that were also points that crossed my mind, I just didn't get into them. Joey 08.05.07 - 4:22 am

I could go into a long analysis with respect to all the things I hated about American Beauty, but I feel that this video clip acts as a perfect summary. http://youtube.com/watch?v=cJRMXxqZ8Zs therealdavid 08.08.07 - 5:39 pm

Wow, D. Let me start by saying that you cynicism never ceases to amaze me. I agree that the monologue about the dancing grocery bag was pretty silly, but what struck me about it was not what he was saying, but how real a portrayal of an over-thinking and over-emotional teenager it was. A lot of teenagers write really trite poetry and search for what is "deep." I was that kid, and I know several other people who were that kid. Then you grow up and realize how hormonal you really were, and how TERRIBLE your poetry really was. Anyway, my point is where you saw a cheesey and trite monologue that irritated you, I saw a cheesey and trite monologue that very well might have come out of my own sixteen year-old mouth. It made me chuckle, but I connected with the kernel of truth behind it. Joey 08.10.07 - 3:38 am