Kpop Devils

broderic on July 6, 2011

Let’s have a little Girls Generation in the morning. This is somewhat better than coffee as pretty girls are always better than coffee. No idea if this song means anything as I don’t speak Korean.

Larry Crowne

broderic on July 6, 2011

If I had to pick between the bad teacher in Larry Crowne and the eponymous bad teacher of Bad Teacher, I’m picking Julia Roberts. I can learn from her and not from Cameron Diaz.

Roberts’ character cared that her students learned. She just didn’t like herself. It took Tom Hanks to make her care for herself.

Tom Hanks is Larry Crowne or, as the girl who stole the show called him, Lance Coronona. It’s Hanks being Hanks. He directs, writes, and stars in this movie.

And it’s the girl, Talia, that makes it all worthwhile. Gugu Mbatha-Raw breathes some life into a somewhat stale movie. Her character is vibrant living the life carefree, but always thinking about others. She invites Larry into the scooter club and forces change on him that makes him approach life with more confidence. Not that Tom Hanks lacks confidence, but the terrible luck preceding him seems to go away once he meets Talia.

And that scooter club with Wilmer Valderrama was hilarious. Where has Wilmer been? He was funny in this.

While this one was somewhat boring, can you ever find fault with Tom Hanks?

3 of 5 stars.

UPDATE: I forgot. Are community colleges the hip happening place? And all throughout the film, I was hoping that the study group from Greendale CC would show up and we’d have a CC throw down: scooter club versus the study group. Here’s where I put up the obligatory, “Go, Annie!”

Flat and Flats

broderic on July 4, 2011

On the Fourth of July ride on the flat NCR trail, I flatted. Once again I am forced to ride back to the car on a flatted tire. No idea why it keeps flatting, but I have to avoid this as biking on a flat tire plain sucks.

Physically I felt good. Not as bad as the other days this past week. Maybe fitness is coming around. Need to go out again.

Quote of the Day [7.03.11]

broderic on July 3, 2011

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

President Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address (Nov 17, 1863)

Sensual Love Song

broderic on July 1, 2011

Of course, the slow tempo hardly makes this ska, but the backing horns section and the syncopation hints towards it.

Whine and grind. A cool, cool stroker.