Vball hiatus | SHAUN OF THE DEAD

hoi hoi ball-volleyers---

damn it all if THIS wasn't a freakin beach weekend! frickin frackin sazzafrazzzin...grrrr...

right. pardon me. couldn't control that bit there...

i'm writing out atcha to get everyone on the same page about my vball-playing status this fall and winter...

bottom line -carnsarnit- i'm out.

bleah.

i've been waffling on sending something out about this to y'all, my volleyball roundup-ees. didn't see as how it would be all that helpful to pass along this information. y'know, unlike how my plugs for NAPOLEON DYNAMITE and THE CORPORATION and midnight 70s kung fu at the coolidge corner theater have no doubt enriched your lives.~ =) but, having initially told only a few people - captains and teammates of my fall rosters - i've had questions come back at me from other folks i'd usually catch up with between games or at anna's or white horse and such. so, i figured i'd let "everyone" know whatall's up.

i went and did Something Bad to my shoulder. it felt like i initally tweaked it sometime around the second week of august. it continued to bother me and got more painful, restricting more motion, thru the rest of the summer. and on labor day at the beach i found i couldn't fully extend my right arm without a lot of freakin pain. since labor day i've seen my primary care doc and then doctor zahner (orthopedic surgeon at st. e's in brighton) about it and they inform me that my mri reveals a rotator cuff tear. my visit with doc z was this past tuesday and he told me that if i want to be able to play volleyball again at the level i was playing before the injury, i would need surgery to re-attach my muscle (or is it tendon? frack, i should've taken notes) to bone in my shoulder.

i thought about that a while and then said - gosh, that's super, but isn't there anything they could do so that i could play at a HIGHER level?

heh. actually, he said he was surprised to see this kind of damage in a 32 year-old and wanted to review the mri with another radiologist for a second opinion. i think he was maybe skeptical of just how bad my volleyball problem is. =)

so, i'm supposed to consult w him again in two tuesdays. i'm quite certain that it is a tear - sounds dumb, but i feel like i can FEEL that it's torn, that there's a loose end of something lost and sandwiched and sliding between layers of other muscle - ick! - and once dr. zaius confirms it when i see him next, i'll be opting for surgery. he told me that post-surgery recovery time could run from eight to twelve months. so, at best, back in time for some summer ball, and at not-so-best, back for the fall.

THANKS! to bruno for polling the online vb community for personal experience info on rotator cuff surgery and recovery. if you've got something to share, good, or not-so-good, about shoulder injury, surgery, and recovery, i'd appreciate hearing it.

* today you read an email dealing with a shoulder injury that changed one boy's life. how might such an incident change yours? to find out more about the rotator cuff, surgery, and the human body in general, consult the books at your local community public library! remember, reading is fundamental!

i tried brushing my teeth today only lefty, to see what i'd have to deal with for a chunk of the recovery time while my right arm is useless, y'know?...anyhow, my technique needs a little work. they'll release me from surgery only to have me back at the hospital the next day to have a toothbrush removed from my sinus.

hrmm...thinking maybe i should get my hair cropped down to a quarter inch or so all around to not hafta deal w the washing and drying. whaddyathink?

keep on keepin on,
brian out
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and speaking of ripping arms out of sockets...

go see SHAUN OF THE DEAD! you think it's a movie about zombies, but really, it's about everyday life and relationships. =) if "living dead" isn't typically your favorite genre, i have to recommend this as a great gateway film. and if you're a fan of the living dead, it's a really sweet and clever addition to the existing body of quality work out there.

crazy paik digest armchair thinking - i dunno what hollywood would say about it. the studios may just be unwitting conduits, believing they're just tapping into some odd spike in marketability, figuring out that, "hey, the kids today, they just LOVE zombies!" and a huge bonus for an action flick built around the undead - it opens up all the doors to portraying ridiculous violence on screen, cuz y'know, you can't REALLY hurt them - "they're dead. they're ALL messed up." and c'mon, EVERYONE wants to take a cricket bat to the bobbling heads of their neighbors, right?

y'know, years ago there was a PC video game called CARMAGEDDON that had the player driving all around town smashing other cars and mowing down pedestrians, all the while running from suped up cop-mobiles. wow, y'know, i forget which way the restriction went now. if the u.s. was harsher or if it was europe...? well, anyhow, let's say it was the u.s. while the game was approved for release in europe, in order for the game to get a teen-OK rating in the states, the creators had to turn all of the pedestrians into zombies. a teen could mow down all the pedestrians s/he wanted to so long as they were green and kind of raggedly dressed! a bold statement on the homeless and panhandling? isn't drawing lines fun! =)

anyhow, it's looking to me like the "living dead" is a genre that's making a bit of a legitimate comeback -in gaming for several years now, and now on the big screen, w remakes of the romero classics, and me being me- i wonder why. look for something in human nature...in these times of "see something? say something!" the need for an obvious evil threat, a true unambiguous enemy...? or the dilemmas that arise from painting someone as such? i mean, you love your grandparents, right? what happens when they come THRILLERing back to life hungry for your grey matter?

or perhaps they are a reflection of ourselves, a commentary on the effect of modern life on actual living - or at least, feeling like you're living, alive?

and now, here's a group of words that have never been put together in this order before...

much like monkeys, the undead really are an excellent device for turning the magnifying glass on ourselves.

*zap*

talk amongst yourselves. discuss.

THE PHILADELPHIA STORY

Recently caught THE PHILADELPHIA STORY at the Brattle again and, Obi-Wan! Why don't they write movies (okay, okay, adapt plays) like this anymore? And for such a brilliant cast — Grant, Hepburn, and Stewart!

*sigh*

A brilliant little back-n-forth between Cary Grant's C.K. Dexter Haven and James Stewart's Macauley Connor. They are both visiting with the family of Philadelphia heiress Tracy Lord (Katherine Hepburn) on the occasion of her second wedding. Dexter is Lord's first husband and Connor is a reporter sent to cover the event...

Dexter:		How bout you Mr. Connor? You drink, don't you? Alcohol, I mean.
Connor:		Oh, a little.
Dexter:		A lit— A little? And you, a writer? Tch tch tch. I thought all writers drank to excess and beat their wives. You know, one time, I think I secretly wanted to be a writer.

THAT is good crack! =)

Keep on keepin on~

Nahant 2002-Are Your Kids Playing Safely?

Here's a little flashback at our first(?) summer weekend at nahant last year =)


Keep on keepin on~

MATRIX French...

"nom de dieu putain bordel salope connard merde nique ta mere!"

Thanks to Paris Jen for the reconstruction. =)

Keep on keepin on~

MATRIX RELOADED thoughts...

Raw rambling on RELOADED. Although some of it's not so complimentary, it didn't stop me from seeing it three times on the big screen. =)
could've done without the BALLY'S ad during the neo/trinity love scene. could've done without that completely. no need to see their skin. i get that this non-matrix real world of humans would be very much about touch and skin and visceral sensation after a minute or two...

whatsherhead from ANGEL (jasmine) and CLEOPATRA2525 and XENA and FIREFLY made a sorta cameo in zion as link's wife's friend. link was a good, altho somewhat movie-formulaic, addition to the neb's crew.

why have the kid new-worshipper up front so much? sort of a movie red-herring? a we'll-make-you-think-he-means-something-but-really-he's-gonna-die setup? or just to show that he's got (unwanted, unasked-for) acolytes...that he's now doing what morpheus did for him... guiding people out of the matrix...? functionally, he saves neo's life from the smith-infected human. i really couldn't tell that that was hugo weaving when he first appeared in the movie. maybe he's morphing into a smith appearance as time goes on? f'd up.

when neo said, "something's different...i can feel them..." i thought for a moment that they never left the matrix. the AI, or maybe smith, had snatched them mid-stream and inserted them into this other construct. or perhaps that the "real world" is another layer of the matrix.

before seeing the movie, i realized that it was a near-death experience, basically, coming back from the dead, that got neo to believe/gave neo/activated his matrix abilities. apparently, smith doing the same, by example? by infection? did the same for him. he can't fly tho, heh.

the smith mob fight scene got to be a bit disappointing once the numbers got beyond 12 to 20 smiths...too obviously CG...too much like a virtual fight game. i've seen jet li in his movies fight engage and fight off hordes. granted, the hordes weren't composed of all equals or near-equals...that DOES make something of a difference.

smith - pinnochio?

was hoping for some kind of gratitude from smith, for setting him free from the AI. perhaps he's become something that he hated, and for whatever reason, still hates. he IS still trapped within the matrix...altho one of him has sort of gotten out. infected a human psyche...he was cutting his hand before making a go of killing neo...a struggle for control.

CONTROL.
SYSTEMS OF CONTROL.

too much exposition. too much talking. the first movie integrated the action and information. this one seemed to compartmentalize action and information, not mesh them. the ideas behind everything ARE pretty big...did they NEED to be? that there were other ONEs...that the architect planned for them, counted on them, to draw out the anomalies...outside of the matrix, into a zion/city...within the matrix, within the ONE. morpheus talked about fighting the war for 100 years. that means that the human calendar is at least 500 years off. does the matrix need to be RESTARTED when the ONE joins the SOURCE? or does it just keep on going and 30 new batteries plugged into the matrix just happen to become much more likely to wake up and go start zion again...?

i guess a restart would take care of the "era issue" within the matrix. restarting/replaying the 20th century within the matrix over and over again for everyone...sort of DARK CITY that way. gotta give people who are older than zero fake memories/history/knowledge....

why didn't DURACELL get a deal w THE MATRIX...?
JK says all GM cars on the road in the freeway scene...
didn't see any powerade, but spotted a heineken lighted sign in the blade runner/hong kong market...

how did they get the audience to like the keymaker so quickly? to feel so sad when he passed away? old asian guy. i was sad. it's a bit surprising. he doesn't fight, but he has no problem jumping on the back of a motorcycle, hanging out on top of a tractor trailer, jumping off and being snatched away by neo, opening one backdoor to come out another and avoid all the smiths.

what's smith's motivation? "i'm going to take away from you what you tried to take away from me...PURPOSE." odd. so he's rogue, but he still has his purpose...? and what IS his purpose? the destruction of zion? he's still an agent of the AI by programming...altho as an anomaly, an exile, he would be hunted by other agents...he overrides one when it arrives on the scene of the melee...

WEREWOLVES, VAMPIRES, GHOSTS!! did they exist as lore in the real world before the matrix?

i wondered to myself about ghosts within the matrix. if there ARE spirits, can they visit the matrix and the real world? what can they influence? just reminded now of virtu and verite, from...frack...the zelazny book about future virtual reality...frack. i should find that - it was GOOD. and ghosts and spirits, their world, their existence, sort of BORDERED the virtual world...the environment was similar enough that they could live/pass/exist there...a border realm...

the neo-trinity relationship was a bit too wordy and whiney. neo in general was very luke skywalker... a few steps back and down from where he ended in the first movie. i can understand doubts about being a prophet and all, but to hear him whine about it was annoying. and having trinity confront him in like four different scenes about whatever's bothering him..."you can tell me..." "you don't have to tell me..." "i'm never letting go..."

neo bringing trinity back from the dead was...i dunno...it was right, i guess, but maybe she didn't have to die...? having him do two airborne/superman saves within one movie was a little much. altho while watching, both were pretty satisfying when they came.

what about the level of tech outside of the matrix. how do humans pick up/build/create/maintain that...? the counselor maybe gives some hints about needing tech, but not knowing how it works...?

chocolate orgasm - totally unnecessary - as an example of causality?!

then again... monica belluci!

Keep on keepin on~