My Movie List - Eric Swanson

February 22, 2008

Eric Swanson has been a close friend ever since I let him copy off of my Algebra papers. Now, he runs through blogs like they’re cordwood, starting and killing at least five in the past three years, including “Letters to Keith Law,” “Letters to Famous Nouns,” and countless others that have been lost to the blogosphere dunk tank. He also plays guitar.

I was going to do a list of my ten favorite movie characters, but everybody knows that Walter Sobchak (The Big Lebowski) and Doc Holliday (Tombstone) are sweet. So I’m not doing that. Here’s something I really know and love: my top ten movies that some people think suck, but are actually great (a.k.a. awesomely bad).

These are in no particular order, except for number one.

1. Point Break - Oh man what a great movie. Seriously, I think that the best five dollars I have ever spent was on a copy of this movie at Target. Too many great things to mention and we’ve all seen it, so I won’t add more.

Hard to pick my favorite quote but here goes.
Johnny Utah - “I’M AN FBI AGENT!”

2. Red Dawn - I have often wished that I could watch this movie for the first time again. When the Commies parachute in and start blowing kids and teachers away- pure cinema gold!

The quote was easy for this one.
Various - “WOLVERINES!”

3. National Treasure - I saw this movie in the cheap theater and it is awesome. I don’t know what it is about Nic Cage, but I am willing to watch him go through the most ridiculous situations (see also #s 4 and 7)

Alyson and I laughed out loud in the theater at this quote.
Young Ben Gates - “Are we knights?”

4. Face/Off - This movie would have been an easy pick for number one if not for Point Break. Nic Cage Rulz (when he’s in action movies). I gonna take a break here and watch this movie.

Lots of sweet quotes including Travolta being lame, but I like this one
Dietrich - “Hey Sean, How’s your dead son?”

5. The Rundown - People laugh at me when I tell them this movie is sweet. Then, The Rock takes out a building with his shoulder. ‘Nuff said.

Quote
The Rock’s shoulder - “BOOM!” (building falls down.)

6. Bloodsport - What needs to be said about this movie? Not a lot. Frank Dux enters a fighting tournament called The Kumite and fights a bunch of weird guys.

Quote
Some Weird looking guy - “OK USA”

7. Con Air - Nic Cage is sweet and this movie also has Steve Buscemi, Ving Rhames, John Cusak, John Malkovich and even Dave Chapelle. Plus, the plane totally drags a Corvette through the air and takes out the Hard Rock Cafe. C’mon, you can’t argue with that.

Quote
Cameron Poe - “Put..the bunny…back…in the box”

8. The Running Man - Arnold is forced to enter a future game show where prisoners run from weird gladiator types, including a lite-brite guy! And Richard Dawson is in it!

Quote
Ben Richards - “I’m not into politics, I’m into survival.”

9. The Mummy - I couldn’t decide whether to include this, or Bad Boys 2. I like this one a little better, so I went with this. It’s awesome and it’s funny in a bad movie kind of way. Brendan Fraser: not just Encino Man anymore.

Quote -
Evelyn - You were actually at Hamunaptra?
Rick - Yeah, I was there.
Evelyn - You swear?
Rick - Every damn day.

10. They Live - Rowdy Roddy Piper finds special sunglasses that allow him to see which people are aliens as well as the subliminal messages they have put all around us. What more can I say?

Quote
Nada - I’m giving you a choice: either put on these glasses or start eatin’ that trash can.

Tags: The Top..., Movies, Friends |

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Social (Network) Retardation

January 3, 2008

I just checked my MySpace account. And my Facebook account.

I hadn’t done that in three weeks. Before that, it had been two weeks.

I’m burned out on social networks, and I’m coming around to realizing that they ultimately serve no purpose whatsoever in my life. None. They don’t do anything for me. They don’t improve my life, though they often serve to neglect my life through a virus-like spreading of time wastage.

I signed up for MySpace a while ago, back before the Facebook explosion, because I had friends on MySpace. I customized my page and then started searching. I came into contact with people I hadn’t heard from in years, commented on people’s pages and felt voyeuristic in my search for more and more obscure lives that had at one time passed through my own.

And when I quickly grew tired of the MySpace monster, I switched to Facebook, just a few months after they opened the sluices and took the “organizations and schools only” barrier off of the front door.

Now I can barely tell the two apart. MySpace has added all of Facebook’s best features, while Facebook keeps slipping further and further into the gadget market. Those people I had yearned to rediscover? They’ve been rediscovered. Those voyeuristic natures? They’re commonplace.

When the luster wore off of the social networking sites, they were exposed for what they were - an inefficient system of keeping in contact with your friends, a black hole of non-productivity. It has an allure to some people, I’m sure. But I’m tired of collecting friends like baseball cards, and I’m exhausted with keeping up with 50-75 people. At once. I refuse to add more applications to my Facebook page, and I’m tired of finding seventeen friends replaced by spam monsters through MySpace.

So the sites sit, neglected. Wasting away, comments trickled to nothing, birthdays going ignored, messages thinning and winnowing. They sit, waiting for me to return. But aside from checking for news every few weeks, like an abandoned Hotmail account filled with junk mail, I wouldn’t be surprised if they just fall away all together.

I can’t be the only one already letting go of 2.0. Can I?

Tags: Annoyances, Friends |

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Trying to pull a phoenix?

November 6, 2007

I’m sitting at home. Sick, but getting better.

While stumbling around on the Internet, I decided to revisit my old blog, Misc.Asst.

The idea of Misc.Asst. was to get a group of my friends - all people who are funny and smart and have different interests and all of that - together as a community to create a multi-headed blog that, while maybe not a trailblazing venture, could at least keep us occupied for a few hours a week.

It went well to begin with, actually. It was fun. I enjoyed reading through it.

It lasted all of a month, but there was promise. Of the seven people that posted, one switched jobs (that was me - I found myself with less time to dedicate to it), two are without Internet and one no longer posts blog entries on his own blog.

I still think it could work, though. And I’m willing to try it again. I miss it, actually.

With that said - anyone who wishes to post random blog posts without having to worry about running your own site (and I mean random - anything you want) let me know.

Misc. Asst. may be up and running in a few weeks. Long live Misc. Asst.!

Tags: Misc.Asst., Blogging, Friends |

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A decade of love

June 21, 2007

Ten years ago today, Kerrie and I started a journey – nay, an adventure – in life. We entered into a relationship, one stretched taut by long distance and by light communication and by youthful ignorance, both of us fully in love with the idea of being fully in love.

We built a life together through dorm rooms and pints of beer and travel and laughs and, yes, finally, a love that we truly understood. So eventually, it was bound to happen.

Four years ago today – the same day, six years later – we entered into the next part of life. As our pastor said, the two of us joined together as one in order to make a stronger two.

We know this because we watched our wedding video today. It was beautiful, not just because we were married and we love each other and all of that, but because of how idyllic it all was. The doves, the dinner and the escape, us driving away from the hubbub as fast as we could while our friends, family and peripheral attendees all celebrated our new life together.

It’s amazing to think back ten years ago. Did I ever think Kerrie and I would last through the summer, let alone through two colleges, several career changes and a grasping group of relatives. Did I ever think that we would be living back in Sioux Falls, loving life, enjoying every step of the way, living our dreams. Did I ever think we’d be getting ready to expand the family, by one, maybe more?

Who knows what I thought. It was so long ago. I was a different person, as was Kerrie. We’ve changed, helping each other through tough times and difficulties in order to mesh. To become that stronger two that was promised to us just four years ago.

Four years have passed since we locked hands and hearts and lips in front of a congregation of well-wishers. The numbers have decreased, but the love hasn’t. Our friends and family made the promise then to support us through everything, and they’re still going strong today. For that we thank them. Each and every one.

Especially those who didn’t make it past those four years, for whom life was tough, for whom time caught up, but not before allowing us to welcome them into our lives for just a slice of one of our greatest days. My grandfather was one of them; Kerrie’s father and aunt, as well. We’ve seen a parent of a friend leave us. And we’ve seen a friend of our parents go as well.

We miss them. We celebrate them. In fact, we celebrate everyone that was there, and those who weren’t, not yet in our lives or no longer close, but still instrumental in building the two bodies that came together just four years ago.

Ten years ago, I had no idea what was going to happen in my life.

Ten years ago, I had no idea things could be this good.

Tags: Vilhauer, Friends |

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On being nomadic

May 7, 2007

I have friends who have severed all roots and taken the ultimate sacrifice. They’ve driven off, left home, left behind friends, family, familiarity. Safety. They’ve bucked safety – looked it in the face and said goodbye, thanks, but no thanks. They’ve gone town to town without a home, moving along, finding jobs as they need them, dropping jobs without a care. They’ve traveled. They’ve done it recklessly – excitingly, living the life Jack Kerouac would have; that Rabbit Angstrom dreamed of.

As someone who loves to travel, I glance warily at these rouges – these intrepid risk-takers, men and women whose only structure is their feet and their mind. I follow behind, jealously, knowing I’d never sever those roots – have no longing to, actually – but would love to follow in their boot steps, scrounging around the nation without any sort of strings.

That’s the difference. I have been brought up carefully, needing structure, becoming filled with anxiety the second that structure is broken, the moment I can’t see the end of the tunnel. I’d love to go from city to city in search for my soul, but I also love growing up and growing old in the town I always have – lured by the romanticism of familiar streets, of the memories they hold. I’m too nostalgic to ever want to leave. And I’m too much of a subdued wanderlust-filled dreamer to ever stop dreaming of leaving.

I have great respect for those who decide, regardless of connections, to build a raft and float down the Mississippi, conjuring up images of Huck and Tom. I greatly envy my friends who have traveled overseas with only their mind to lead them down the right path. I have dreams that can’t be followed, not without hurting those I love. I have too many ties. I love too many people. I need them near me. It’s not a weakness. It’s a personality. Leaving, abandoning one way of life for another, is so foreign to me that I still can’t understand it.

What I’m trying to say is that I’m a traveler stuck in a non-traveler’s body. Without the ties I’ve strengthened myself with, I’d be nowhere. And, realistically, I could be anywhere. The line is thin. When the ropes strain taut, when the relationships are brilliantly strong, there’s no need to run.

And for those who don’t have those ties, what ever would keep them at bay?

Tags: Travel, Friends, On... |