time has come for me to shift my blogging onto our new website: jackandjazz.com/blog

i'm unsure of what i'm going to do with this blog...i still use the links almost every day.

for now, this will be here, telling you where to look for my blog. i hope you are well.

Posted by jack. |

i'm working a lot.

getting paid by many people--they all think it's a little.

take that purse out, it's not mine, she said.

they forced me to upgrade to the new blogger, i did it.

makin' dvds for my beautiful wife.

Posted by jack. |

sorry for the delay of game folks. i'm on a computer all day long usually and i don't always want to spend more time on it when i get home. i've kept pretty busy the past few weeks. working a few different places doing different things. i've come to appreciate my most steady work a little more because i have varied things that i can do. i just worked four days doing exactly the same thing for 120 tapes--pretty boring.

enough about work now. i'm going up to big bear this weekend in search of a hill and a board. jordan and kyle are going too. we are staying with tim. if you know those people then you probably live in la. if you don't, well then you should be visiting more often i say! we started blockbuster online. we've watched two movies so far, Diner and Raising Arizona. They were both pretty good, not great, not horrible. Diner grew on me the more I thought about it and the more special features we watched. Raising Arizona was a little crazy--too crazy maybe. We have Summer of '42 sitting next to the TV and the first season of The Office (england style) on the way. It feels like so long ago when I did netflix the first time. I guess I was a sophmore and junior in college. Taz came and watched apocalypse now redux with me in my dorm room--in north hall! looking back on it that's pretty cool that he came to my dorm room to watch a movie. i can totally understand how that would have been a little awkward for him though.

Herman and Marisa are good. They are being really lazy this morning. I think they might be cold too--they're not used to having 35 degree mornings either?! Man you should have seen them running at the dog park on saturday! they were really going every where. they've begun to fix the drainage problem so hopefully it won't be as muddy in the future.

i hope you're well.

Posted by jack. |

Capturing dogs with a camera is hard. They like to move about. They also don't continue in doing the cute thing their doing long enough to go find the camera, make sure it has batteries that are charged, get back into the room where cuteness is happening, and then take the picture. What is their deal, can't they wait for that to happen?

kingman was fun. We got to see a lot of people that we haven't seen in quite some time. Some new people too. I like visiting, but wouldn't want to stay, even if they have dirt cheap rent. rent is downright annoying. every month you have to pay someone to live in their house? c'mon!

I'm going back to work today. It was a long break. I hope this week is full of things to do.

short blog.

Posted by jack. |

My break for christmas is turning out to be a little longer than expected. I don't mind, except for the fact that I'd like to be making money again. I guess it will even itself out, I'm bound to get busy later. I'm trying to write today, but I'm getting really distracted by facebook. Early on in all this MySpace Facebook stuff I kinda decided without really saying anything that I really didn't want to be a part of it. It was and is nothing personal against those who are into it, I just wasn't going to be one of them. Well. I now have a myspace and a facebook. And I'm happy to have them. It's crazy when you sit down to look at all the people you know across the globe, and another way to keep in touch with them is welcomed in my world.

The dogs are a little stir crazy today. Marisa was whining this morning, so we played a little, which was fun. Herman keeps seeing and smelling the neighbors dog and freaking out. He's a big dog, and I think he could eat Herman in 6 bites, but Herman is always barking at him. Then Marisa joins in, because Herman is barking. It's entertaining in that outside of the situation way. In the situation it's kinda annoying.

We had a fantastic birthday dinner.

Regina Spektor is singing in my speakers. Her friends, Mirah, Iron & Wine, Gorillaz, and Bright Eyes have graced my drums today too.

Hope your days are well.

Posted by jack. |

i've been blogging for two years. when i realized this fact, i read some of my first posts and all of january. It feels narcissistic to read your own blogs for an hour. I don't mind though, it's entertaining to see where I was two years ago.

I hope you had a merry christmas. While we were at target last week the person who was checking our stuff out said, "Happy Holiday" to us. I really liked that she said it in the singular form. I realize that it may not have been on purpose, but I dug it. It's less pluralistic maybe or just different. Why is New Year's a holiday anyway? I mean, I don't mind having the days near it off, but it's just a new month starting right? Am I jaded?

I'm very fascinated by memory. Reading all those blogs this morning reminded me of things that I haven't thought about in quite some time. Even the way I wrote suggested that I did almost everything alone, even though I can remember some of the things I wrote about, and I remember what we did less that who I was with. It's like reading a novel when you only know about the main character's feelings or thoughts. Not really though. The memories, sometimes are even shaped by the blogs themselves. Which is weird. For example, I vividly remember one of Jon M's comments on my early blogs. I don't really even remember what I wrote, but when I re-read it, I knew exactly what he commented--so a memory about the memory. Now will I remember this, memory about the memory? The layers are getting murky!

Christmas was good. We didn't do anything but watch movies. I guess we did do other things like eat food, walk dogs, and watch movies. Dog Day Afternoon and City of God. City of God was really good. It was quite violent, but it all supported the story. Sometimes it gets in the way, this wasn't one of those times.

Okay this is a major rabbit trail to follow me down, so feel free to skip this paragraph. When I was at Dordt, I occasionally wrote for the Diamond (school newspaper). It wasn't very often, but I felt like it needed to be well respected, so I often talked about what could be done to make it better. In that light, I offered to write movie reviews for the paper. One of my reviews, of which there were few, on Kill Bill vol. 1 stirred up a little raucous with an unnamed (to you on this public forum, not to me) English professor. He wrote the editor and me a letter explaining what he saw wrong with my review. The review basically said, I liked it, you may not. The violence was the main issue. The movie is really violent. At times, it gets kind of crazy. I am pretty jaded to such things, so I didn't mind watching it, and I felt like it was worth seeing, but I published this saying that the violence may be a problem for some viewers. His main issue with the review was that it was too wishywashy, in that basically I said, I liked it, you may not. What kind of review is that? Well, it's not very good, that's for sure. But the larger issue, the fact that I was okay with the violence, and other members of the community may not be was hard for me to deal with--on many levels. Looking back on it, I think the major issue is does the violence support the story? The underlying question also is, do you have an issue with violence? More broadly, maybe, does violence ruin your movie going experience? It may be a queasy thing, or it may just be a love of human life. If the answer to the initial question, in the review is, yes, the violence supports the story and that story is a story worth hearing and watching, then as a reviewer I can support and suggest that others go view that movie. But as a reader, if you have an issue with violence, I want to let it be known that this movie is violent. If you have that issue, then that should be the grain of salt you eat the review with. Don't willy nilly just obey a reviewer. If you know that violence will ruin the experience, then don't got see it. If you know that unnecessary violence hurts the experience, be knowing if the violence in said movie works for the story, or against it.
This is getting muddy. But the biggest problem with Kill Bill vol. 1 is that I don't know if the violence supported the story. It must have, it's a story about contract killers, but how much violence was necessary? Anyway, all this really is to say that City of God, although it is very violent, it is filmed very economically, and the violent supports the story, in a heartbreaking sort of way.


If you were skipping, you can pick it back up here, if you haven't given up on me already. I hope your time off from work is fantastic, I hope your holiday is good, and I hope your days in between are even better. Merry Christmas and a happy month changing day.

Posted by jack. |

As I walked Herman and Marisa this morning, I noticed a few things that were out of place. Herman, even though he was outside, was whining, like he needed to go outside. A dog howled in the distance, I decided Herman could feel his pain from afar. In the distance I noticed a woman walking in front of a house wearing green. When I first noticed her she was walking towards me. I wondered if I would have to pull the dogs off to the side so she could cross. I looked at the dogs, and back at her, suddenly, she was walking away from me. How strange, I thought, I have had people cross the street to avoid our tangled mess, but never just up and turn around. Back to the dogs, Herman was still whining. I look back to the woman, and she is walking towards me again. I am completely baffled. She seemed to be walking a short loop on the sidewalk in front of one house, back and forth. I considered she might be waiting for something--a bus, a ride, but I decided she was probably brainwashed and had no idea where she was. Herman, was a part of her brain washing, and therefore was whining because he did not want to be near his human atrocity. On the way to the dog park this afternoon I saw a Asian looking woman wearing a face mask like you would wear to paint a room or if the bird flu had arrived. I wonder if i missed something...

When did dogs take over the world?

Posted by jack. |