Monday, February 6, 2017

mtt dmns tth

Try to decipher the title!
Here is a post about (un)important issues like:

"Teeth
Roberts: He does have nice teeth.
Kimmel: I mean, they can't be real, right? They're so perfect. They're obviously something that some Hollywood witch doctor put into his head somewhere along the line, possibly on one of his jaunts to China where he disappears for six months and suddenly has a whole new look. One day he's Jason Bourne. The next day he's Liberace's fiancĂ©.
Damon: True.
Larry Rosenthal, D.D.S., declined to respond to multiple requests for comment."
-GQ

Like a previous post on a different body part, I don't think it's a mystery why this one would be interesting to me. I decided to look up about Matt Damon and this came up. It is from a story in GQ. I just wanted to put that out there. Matt Damon I don't have a negative opinion of like I do of George Clooney, but I haven't watched as many movies of his as I have of Leonardo DiCaprio. In my hierarchy of actors I like/dislike, he's probably somewhere a little bit above Brad Pitt. Definitely above Johnny Depp because he doesn't look creepy like Johnny Depp does. And it goes without saying that he's above George Clooney.

tell ee vision

To preface this, I should begin with the fact that I watched the Super Bowl and it was interesting, which was actually somewhat interesting and that kind of surprised me because I would not consider myself to be interested in football. However, I think that watching the Super Bowl is one of those American things to do, and I would feel like I was missing out if I didn't watch it. So I watched it and I thought that Tom Brady looked like Matt Damon and also that he had nice teeth. From what I saw of him, he seems like a nice person. Something about just.. his manner or something. I don't know. Maybe if I were more familiar with him it oculd turn out that he's actually an idiot. Like I said, I don't know. 

Anywyas, after the Super Bowl there was a premiere of some show. I odn't know if it's a completely new show or if it's just a new season of an already existing show. It started with some violence and murder, so obviously I was intrigued. It continued with some scenes being un-violent and mundane interspersed with others that were violent and suspenseful. The show made use of various split screen shots throughout the episode, which was kind of interesting as that's not commonly used in the shows I've watched. Apparently Requiem for a Dream is notable for its use of split screen shots as well, so there's that little tidbit to consider. From what I gathered, this show is about politics/government/terrorists. I don't think I could watch a show completely about politics in this current day and age, but this show seems to be kind of a mix and not purely a drama/soap opera like Grey's Anatomy. I would consider it to be in the genre of action, somewhat. It reminded me of a combination of James Bond movies (although those are somewhat lighter, to be honest) and a show I watched... the first season of, at least, a couple of years ago, called The Following which was about a serial killer/murderous cult, at least as far as I remember. That show had a decent amount of implausibilities, which also was somewhat prevalent in this show as well. 

And now, on to the little details that I like to focus on so much. Being about politics/government/terrorism, the show is set in/around DC, an area with which I am decently familiar. As such, there were some scenes involving a Metrobus. Said Metrobus was apparently a route 13 and the destination sign said "Wisconsin Avenue." Naturally, I wanted to see if this was an actual route, in addition to looking up designs of Metrobuses because the one in the show did not look like the ones I've seen in my current daily life. It seemed like it was an older model. According to my research so far, there is no such thing nor has there been a route 13, so this was a fictional invention. Many Metrobus routes are named with a number/letter combination, such as "J2." I'm not sure what the letters are supposed to signify, if anything, but I guess it just allows them to have more combinations for route names. From what I can tell, I think the model of buses shown in the show may still be in use somewhere in the Metrobus service area, although around here they have all been replaced by newer models.

 I'm not sure if it's too much to ask that tv shows get all the little local details right. Perhaps there's a position for "local details consultant" that I could fill. It makes me wonder about the show NCIS, which is also set in the DC area. As far as I'm aware, it is not filmed on location in DC. I haven't watched it enough to notice how wrong/right that show gets the little local details. However, it brings to mind an episode (don't remmeber which one) of the show Criminal Minds which I no longer watch because I became bored with it. In any case, said episode had a scene that supposedly took place in a Metro station, yet clearly the station it was filmed at for the show was not a Metro station. I know that show is filmed in LA so I guess they just used a station around there. One of the nice things about the Law and Order shows is that they all were (are in the case of SVU) filmed on location in NYC which lends them an extra little bit of authenticity regarding local details. You know the subway station is going to be a real NYC subway station. I don't know off the top of my head any shows that have taken place in and were filmed in DC. I know the West Wing took place in DC but I don't know where they filmed it. Come to think of it, the new-ish show that Dick Wolf created called Chicago PD is a thing. I wonder where that is filmed. 

Anyways, so far this new show seems to be decently interesting (honestly, it was the violence that drew me in) so I might watch the future episodes if I have time. 

Friday, February 3, 2017

More observations

(in particular, those involving county police officers)

Today I was out and about. Here are some observations that I had today. One observation was when I was on the bus, there was a lady also there who had white colored hair but didn't look that old. It was kind of like Anderson but this lady wasn't good looking like Anderson is. Also, this lady's teeth looked kind of like they weren't securely in her mouth very well. For some reason that's just how I feel like they looked. They didn't quite look right. 

Also, I have taken issue with some people in some of my classes. I am annoyed by the fact that they come across to me as know it alls. Which perhaps is hypocritical of me because I think that in other classes I may have come across that way to other people, but still. Also, it annoys me that the one middle aged man in one of my classes can't type properly. It just gets on my nerves. It can't be that hard to learn how to type properly. If I were the professor, I would mention to this man that he should learn how to type properly. For some reason the fact that he can't annoys me a decent amount. A decent amount, enough so that I have ended up writing about it on here. 

Now, on to a positive observation. Today, I was walking in front of a store and there was a police officer walking in the other direction carrying a bag of stuff he bought. I looked at him and maybe I looked at him a little too long or maybe it was just his natural reaction to passing people on the sidewalk in public, but he smiled at me a little bit and I was pleased and I attempted to smile back at him once I noticed that he had done that. I was quite pleased. I wonder if he usually smiles at people when he's out and about or if he only did it because I was looking at him. It was kind of like the time when I was on vacation and in the hotel getting breakfast and there was a guy who looked like the guy with the eyelashes and because of that I was looking at him and I guess I was looking at him too much and he noticed and he smiled at me. In any case, recently I had been thinking about how there are police officers out there who are bad apples and hopefully I don't have the misfortune to have an unpleasant encounter with one of those officers. The fact that the one I saw today smiled at me gives me the impression/assumption that he's not a bad apple, but who knows. I was pleased about that occurrence. I was looking at his name on his uniform and he had the initials of a singer that I like as well as a different last name. I guess the initials are there to differentiate him from other officers who have the same last name? I'm not sure. I have a little bit of a fascination with law enforcement stuff (probably something to do with the murder/Law and Order/etc interests) so I keep a bit of a mental remembering of the encounters/observations of the county police officers that I have. So far, here is a little list:

  • the school police officer from middle school (so long ago!), Officer Larson (Larsen??) I'm not sure if he's still at that school or if he has gotten a different assignment.
  • the school police officer at the high school I went to, who is still there (and left handed) as I mentioned in a previous post. Also, when I went to school there one day I asked him about all the equipment that he had. 
  • a police officer I encountered directing traffic while I was at a shopping center, whose name I did not see because he had a reflective vest on which covered his name tag, but he was tall and had long legs and gray eyes and I asked him about how he felt about directing traffic (a question I have asked other police officers too in the past, but not in this county). He said that for work sometimes you have to do things that aren't the most enjoyable but you're still getting paid the same, so.. that was the general idea of his answer.
  • a police officer I saw in Chipotle who had a nice figure. He was kind of short but he had a nice figure. I did not see his name. 
  • another police officer I saw in Chipotle who was eating by himself. His name was Officer Berry which I read off of his name tag. I did not talk to him, but I wondered if he was related to another person I knew of with the same last name.
  • other assorted police officers I saw in the same Chipotle, but do not remember specifically - it happens to be right near the police station so it's not surprising to see them there.
  • the police officer from today who smiled at me.
  • police officers I saw at Walmart near the doors during the holiday season. The year before last, when I saw them, the following night I had an unpleasant dream where police officers grabbed me. They were not county police however because the uniforms weren't right.
Those are all the ones that come to mind at the moment. It's probably weird that I keep a mental list of these things, but I do. Also, I think the officer who smiled at me today was a nice contrast to that one time in Ocean City when a police officer on a bike was riding down the street as we were putting things in the car (it was a neighborhood street without a lot of traffic) and he didn't even say hi or wave or anything. I think he should have done something friendly like that for the sake of maintaining a positive relationship/impression with the general public. Regardless. Ooh. I just had a thought. I may in the future be going to NYC. And perhaps then I will see some real life NYPD officers. That would be kind of cool. Apparently some may pose for pictures, because I remember last year my psychology teacher showed us a picture of her with some NYPD officers. It was when she was explaining some concept... attribution theory, I think. Interesting memory, right?? At least to me it is.

Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Observation

I write this as I am waiting for a class to begin and it is about some recent observations. Yesterday, in a different class, there was a man in said class who had some very gross looking fingernails, and also apparently has children and two businesses. He was middle aged and I have no idea exactly why he is taking that class, but whatever. In any case his fingernails were repulsive and next time I think I will try to sit farther away from him so that I don't have to see the fingernails so closely. Yuck. They were very off-putting. In addition, this man could not type very well at all. He used only one or two fingers and poked at the keys on the keyboard. Which I guess maybe could be expected seeing as he seemed to be at least 50 years old, but still, my mother is probably in his same generation and she knows how to type. I think he may have some issues due to his ineptitude with typing seeing as in the class we will probably be using computers and typing a decent amount. 

In other matters, a more positive and pleasing observation. Just earlier, I had to deliver something to be delivered to someone. It was at the local high school which I graduated from last year. So I went into the main office and there was a woman there who presumably was the secretary. There was also the school police officer whose car I saw parked out front as I was entering. I talked to the secretary lady who basically referred me to the police officer and he wrote something down. I did not know that he served as an assistant secretary, but apparently at least today that's what he was doing. And on to the prime observation here. As he wrote, I noticed that he was left handed. I had seen and even talked with him occasionally in the past when I was a student there, but I had never seen him writing anything. In addition, he wrote in all capitals which is a thing that some other men I have known do. Apparently, it supposedly means that the person is trying to hide/obscure something (about their personality, which supposedly can be revealed by handwriting). Which happened to bring to mind a particular teacher that I had had who is also left handed and writes in all capitals. In any case, this of course goes back to the one and only character of Goren from Law and Order. As I would hope people would be aware, I think he is a very interesting character and all that. He (meaning Vincent who played said character) is also left handed although I don't think there are any really decent samples of his handwriting on the show. I wonder what it looks like. I think I'll conclude this post here, because from this point I would just be going on about how law enforcement and crime stuff is interesting to me, which is something I've certainly been over in the past, I believe. 

As an aside, there are no interesting movies on Netflix that I feel like watching which is a shame and they apparently removed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind which I had wanted to watch but didn't get a chance to before it was gone. Alas. 

Monday, January 23, 2017

Critiquing SNL

This post isn't exactly the most serious of things, but regardless.. I happened to be watching videos on YouTube and one came up in the recommendations that was a skit from a recent SNL. In general, I don't watch SNL but sometimes the skits that make it onto YouTube happen to be rather amusing. Although lots of other times the show is just kind of downright weird. I think you have to be very aware of all the pop culture related news that happened that week in order to completely get a full episode of SNL.

In any case, this particular skit was about a guy who disliked a movie that many people enjoyed, so he gets attacked for that in the form of getting arrested and interrogated. By some officers (as they are called by a character in the skit), or rather probably detectives as these characters semi resembled the characters of Elliot Stabler and Olivia Benson from the long running show Law and Order SVU. Semi resembled in that their style of dress was reminiscent of Elliot and Olivia respectively (although not Elliot’s hairstyle, or rather, lack of hair; however the female character in the skit had a hairstyle reminiscent of, say, season 4 (this is off the top of my head, I may be wrong) Olivia) in that the guy had rolled up sleeves and the woman was wearing the kind of jacket that Olivia has worn on the show. However, the personalities of the skit characters were a little off - the guy did do some of the intimidating that Elliot has done but in other occasions in the skit, the guy acted too mellow while the woman was shoutier than Olivia tends to be. The skit also happened to include a part where the female character throws a chair through/at the mirrored glass which then breaks, which was sort of amusing in that I know a similar thing happened in a CI episode although in this skit again, it was a little off. In the Law and Order episode, it was the criminal who did the glass breaking although it wasn't with a chair, he smashed it with his fists and the final scene was of the detectives seen through the shattered glass. I think maybe something like that has happened in SVU but I don't remember the specifics.

Anyways, that was my pointless little critique of a recent SNL skit. I suppose it's not that surprising coming from a Law and Order fiend like myself.

Monday, January 16, 2017

Sctl pltcl rmrks

Try to guess what the title is supposed to say!

Eyelashes guy was on CNN tonight and he said things. He commentated. Basically, the gist of what he said when I was paying attention was that people need to get over the possibility of Russian interference in the election and that the country needs more unity. He also said that two wrongs don't make a right, regarding how people disrespected Obama when he was elected and how similar things are sort of happening now. Which... I don't particularly agree with, but these opinions aren't horribly abhorrent. There's some solace there. While ideally becoming more united would be a good thing, Donald Trump is not a normal politician, so I don't think we can necessarily acquiesce and become complacent (I'm not sure those words are the most accurate to express my sentiments, but I wanted to use some big fancy words).

In other matters, sort of, I have decided to begin watching a commentary by Noam Chomsky called Requiem for the American Dream. Partly because of the title but also partly because of Noam Chomsky being a famous linguist. This is sort of related to the whole Donald Trump mess in that it's apparently about how wealth has become concentrated in a very small amount of people. I will write a review when I finish watching it.

Sunday, January 15, 2017

Sexiest men alive

(no, despite the title, this post is not a list of sexiest men alive as chosen by me)

For some reason, I felt like googling "sexiest man alive" although at first my keyboard suggestions suggested "in" after man, as in "sexiest man in Denmark" as in Mads Mikkelsen. Regardless. Eventually I made it to "sexiest man alive" as in the feature that People magazine runs every year in the fall. For one thing, I think it's a good thing that we have this pillar of male objectification because women certainly are objectified quite a lot in today's society, and this does the same thing to men. I looked through a list of the men who have won the honor, such as (this is not a complete list)
  • George Clooney (twice!), 
  • Johnny Depp (twice)
  • Brad Pitt (also twice)
  • Chris Hemsworth 
  • Adam Levine 
  • Dwayne Johnson (most recently)
  • Mark Harmon (of NCIS fame which apparently [apparently meaning to my recollection of what I've read in passing around the internets about this show] is quite popular with middle aged women. I guess he is to NCIS as Patrick Dempsey is to Grey's Anatomy). 
  • Tom Cruise (back in 1990! I wonder if he was better looking then than he is now. I guess there's not a huge difference, unlike some other people who I could mention.)
  • Harrison Ford
  • Bradley Cooper
  • Hugh Jackman (there are a number of actors named Hugh - Hugh Laurie [House MD], Hugh Dancy [Hannibal] as well as this Hugh)
  • Ben Affleck
  • David Beckham
  • Matt Damon
I am kind of surprised that Leonardo DiCaprio never won the title, especially perhaps in the year, say 2002 or 2003 or even more recently, like 2011. I can understand not doing it in 1997 because he was still quite young and boyish looking rather than manly looking (hence why he got that role in Titanic, probably) even though he was like 23 or something. I'm also surprised at the omission of Patrick Dempsey, who could have won in say the year 2008 or something, a few years after his debut on Grey's Anatomy. However, both these people got honorable mentions as some of the sexiest men alive, although not the ultimate sexiest man alive of the year as indicated by their presence on some of the covers of these issues, just not as the main event, and rather, as "more sexy men" or something along those lines. Also maybe Colin Firth could've won one year in the past. Apparently he was quite popular at one point at least as far as I'm aware (I may be wrong). People magazine's website has a gallery of all the Sexiest Man Alive covers if you'd like to take a look for yourself. I'm curious about the other men who got honorable mentions in these issues, aside from Leo and Patrick. I wonder if Vincent ever got an honorable mention (which would probably have been in the early 2000s, if at all) or if Chris Meloni (Elliot in SVU) did. Or maybe Jared Leto, one of those years. Maybe not for the way he looked in Requiem for a Dream, since that was not exactly a stereotypical 'sexy man' look. It was something more along the lines of this quote which I have mentioned before: "I don't like good looking guys; I like them skinny and pale like they're dying." But maybe when he didn't look like that. Maybe Tom Hanks too perhaps may have gotten an honorable mention years ago. 

Additionally, I wonder how the sexiest man alive of the year is chosen. I only could find a little bit about this from someone who worked for People magazine, in which they said that they considered who the readers wanted to be in the magazine and also who had a big year. Interestingly enough, last year would have been as good of a year as any to give Leo the title, because he finally won an Oscar so why not give him the honor of being sexiest man alive as well? I would consider that to have been a big accomplishment especially since it was a long time coming.

I am surprised that Johnny Depp won in 2009 (just take a look at the cover) because he did not, based on the magazine cover, look particularly good. In fact he looked kind of seedy and creepy like someone who you would try to avoid in a bar. I am not super surprised that George Clooney won (twice) because he is good looking. Although on the other hand I have a personal aversion to him as a person due to some unsavory things about Leonardo DiCaprio that he happened to say in a magazine interview that I happened to read in a grocery store years ago. So he is good looking but I don't like him. Vincent, on the other hand, looked better 15 years or so ago, but despite his current appearance (that sounds rather mean...) I think he's a nice person (and a good actor) and that's what counts. ("I like you way better than George Clooney!" is a thing that I could theoretically say to Vincent)

[an aside: as I write this post, I looked up Jude Law who won the title in 2004, 12 years ago and some pictures of him more recently came up and he doesn't exactly look as good as he used to, which is causing me to laugh and screech in the middle of the night. Alas. Time is kind to some but not others. I don't understand why it had to be kind to George Clooney and not Vincent.] 

[also: another thing causing me to laugh and screech is having watched this video of Chris Hemsworth (the sexiest man alive a few years back) reading various things as he is Australian and Americans - me included - love foreign (particularly British and Australian) accents. I don't know why I expected his voice to sound the exact same as Jesse Spencer who is also Australian but in any case it doesn't which really shouldn't be that surprising because, let's see, Vincent and eyelashes guy (or, Anderson Cooper) are both American with a neutral accent yet their voices do not sound similar. Incidentally, the thought of Jesse Spencer made me think of House MD and the time when House said "That is exactly why you can't touch my markers" to Chase which then made me think of the time in the S1 episode "Poison" where Chase had to impersonate a CDC worker on the phone and said something along the lines of "The CDC is not available..." in a bad American accent.]

A good part of this blog post could be aptly titled "A stream of consciousness from yours truly."

During the process of looking at all the stuff regarding the sexiest men alive, I had the idea of an "ugliest man alive" as a contrast to the sexiest man alive. If that were a thing I would eagerly nominate that horrible thing who I think would have no problem winning the title. Also a good source for other people as runner ups would be... the online dating website. This is actually a thing that I sort of am considering doing on my blog here, but it would be quite mean... and I can be mean, but I'm not sure if I want to be that mean. Plus, if someone found this blog and traced it back to me, I doubt a post like that would reflect positively on me. I've said too much already.