Documentary review: Get Me Roger Stone

This came up while I was browsing Netflix and it seemed vaguely interesting and I was bored so I decided to sink 90 or so minutes of my life into it, which was... maybe kind of a mistake. I could've spent those 90 or so minutes watching a Peter Sarsgaard movie and maybe I should've. I think that would've enriched my life much more than having watched this documentary did. I have two prevailing thoughts about this documentary: 1) What the fuck did I just watch? and 2) How repulsive. (that's the tl;dr of this post right there) The documentary itself I guess was alright, but the subject matter was varying degrees of repulsive. As some might say, it offended my delicate liberal sensibilities. (That sentence was supposed to be humorous/satirical/etc)

The documentary is about this one guy who you could say orchestrated Donald Trump's campaign, at least before he got fired (according to Trump)/quit (according to him). Despite no longer working for the campaign, his influence lingered. That's basically the gist of it. This guy, the titular Roger Stone, is a Nixon worshiper and to this end, has a tattoo of Nixon's face on his back. No lie. Watch the documentary (if you can bear to) and you'll see. In addition, his office is plastered in Nixon posters. Anyone who worships Nixon shouldn't be trusted. Despite his claims to the opposite, Nixon was indeed a crook and this Roger Stone guy comes across pretty similar, as does Donald Trump, and all the other people associated with him. 

At one point in the documentary, he claims that there's a difference between his actual self and a character of the same name, in the same way that Colbert Report Stephen Colbert is a character. I'm not sure if I buy his claim about that. 

I thought that this documentary took too much of a dithering tone towards Roger Stone, and I would probably have preferred if it had taken a less objective (fight me) stance and denounced the guy. I can't be the only one who found him repulsive. Here's a nice recap/review to that effect: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/get-me-roger-stone-the-recap_us_594c4d88e4b0c85b96c657fd 

I don't really have much more to say about this... piece of work than I already have (see tl;dr at the beginning), so here is a decent summary/review of the documentary from The Atlantic: 

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/05/get-me-roger-stone-donald-

Warhol/Sedaris writings

Along with Andy Warhol, famous author David Sedaris also keeps/kept a journal of his day to day life, which has recently been published as a book titled Theft by Finding. In my quest to potentially become the next either/both of them, I think I'd better be more scrupulous about attempting to keep a journal as they did.

So, here goes (again).

SUNDAY 
There was a lady at Costco who was wearing a cool looking blue skirt; it was sort of billowy and reminded me of things they wore in the olden days. I wish you could find things like that in stores these days. Another time at Costco, I saw a man who I think may have had plaque psoriasis, like they advertise medicines on television for. I'm glad I don't have plaque psoriasis. We were almost going to buy a new plant at Costco, but it was $20 and we already have house plants. It was called an aglaonema, which is a cool name but sort of sounds like a disease. Aglaonema. Anemia. Leukemia. Algae. 
I like house plants or just indoor plants in general, like in people's offices or something. If it were up to me I'd start a greenhouse probably. If I had my own office, I'd put plants in it. But only plants that aren't too easy to kill. In the event of me going on vacation, I'd make sure to arrange for someone to water the plants during my absence. 
It was less crowded at Costco this time so the conditions weren't as good for doing an observational 'study' of the lengths of men's shorts. 
I had been considering watching the show House of Cards, but it's not filmed on location and it's set in DC, so I think I would notice the little inaccuracies as far as the visual aspect of the outdoor setting goes and it would bug me. So that's out. 

Postsecret review 6

Boy am I late on this one. But at least it's here now. Better late than never. 

"I consider it INCREDIBLY RUDE when someone YAWNS in my presence." It isn't exactly something you can always control, and just because they might possibly be yawning out of boredom, maybe they're just tired. What a ridiculous prejudice to have. I think maybe I'll make a point out of yawning whenever I feel like it in front of people. If they've got a problem with it, that's their own ridiculous fault.

"I always wash my hair BEFORE I go to the salon, because having the girl wash my hair is TOO INTIMATE!" That's... different. I love having someone else wash my hair at the salon. I don't consider it to be 'too intimate.' 

"I left with my head held high. I still wish I'd chosen revenge." This one resonates with me because I consider myself to be a somewhat vengeful person.

"Those traffic lights that count down really, really stress me out." Weird; I don't think it's traffic lights that count down, the walk signal signs do. Maybe that's what this person meant. Unless you walk really slowly and/or start crossing a large intersection when there's, say, 4 seconds left, this shouldn't really be a problem... the thought of people running red lights and therefore hitting pedestrians stresses me out more than the counting down walk signals. To quote the PSAs around here, "You can't fix a pedestrian at a body shop."

"I'm an atheist but sometimes it's nice to pray" I... guess this makes sense? Kind of? The only way I can think for it to make sense is in the context of people praying together (for the sense of community) as opposed to an atheist just praying on their own.

"I want to go back and visit his grave. Then I want to visit the drunk driver, and ask if he ended up doing anything worthwhile with his life." The secrets about death tend to be more interesting to me, I think, and this one is no different. 

Movie review: Nightcrawler

I'm at it again. This movie has to do with two subjects I have been trying to branch out from, news and murder/crime. I decided to watch a movie with Jake Gyllenhaal where there weren't any actors (Mark Ruffalo, Peter Sarsgaard, etc) that would distract from his performance. This one fit the criteria and happened to be on Netflix (72% match, which I guess ended up being fairly accurate). 

This was an interesting movie that I think can be taken as a commentary on certain aspects of journalism; the main character engages in various degrees of unethical behavior as he pursues events he can film for shock value. However, it's a different kind of unethical than what Stephen Glass did by making things up. The main character, as played by Jake, seemed somewhat... psychopathic in a way. He could be quite cold and manipulative, and he was always spouting off various mantras about business. It made for an interesting character. This was certainly a respectable acting performance by Jake, so that helps my opinion of him a little bit. 

It was a good movie; I don't want to say too much about it and give all the interesting parts away. I would be up to watching some other movie that Jake Gyllenhaal has been in (although not because I find him particularly beautiful, he's a decent actor but not one of my favorites). 

Other people's blogs

Look what I found! An interesting (I say that gingerly) blog post by someone else, criticizing Mark Ruffalo for his liberal beliefs about feminism. Me personally, I'm glad he has those beliefs. Vincent and Peter are also liberals, from what I can gather. I also don't think that I go on long rants against certain people's political beliefs on this blog akin to this lady's post. Do I? It looks like she put a lot of effort into that post, as it's really quite long. I, on the other hand, put a lot of effort into my posts about a topic that sort of actually matters more/is more respected/less likely for people to read and laugh about the ridiculousness of the post, that of journalistic fraud. Remember those posts? One of my books came but the other still hasn't and I'm impatient. I don't really have too much to say about this lady's post because it's... out there. It's too bad that she felt it was necessary to go on a long rant about the beliefs of some liberal actor. I wonder how many people read that post. I'd be embarrassed to write a post like that. The author of that blog comes across as a backwards jerk. There, I said it.  

You can find a lot of interesting stuff on other people's blogs. This is more the kind of blog post that I would write and not be embarrassed about (at least not embarrassed for having [backwards] conservative beliefs, but perhaps some could consider it embarrassing in a different way to always be blogging about and fawning over actors. I have no regrets. I don't care.) This post as well, from someone else's blog. And this one from yet another person's blog. I really do wonder if anyone has happened to come across one of my blog posts in their googling of the things that I write posts about... I hope that they found my blog to be interesting (in a good way). 

Other actors' interviews: a sequel

As usual, I've been looking for new (to me) movies to watch. Somehow I thought of the movie Brokeback Mountain, which I haven't seen but is decently famous, I think. It's about two men out in the west who have a secret gay relationship in the 1960s. Seems more or less interesting, right? Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger have the main roles in this movie. Jake is Peter Sarsgaard's brother in law, so tangentially he's relevant. I decided to look up what other movies he had been in, to see if there was anything particularly interesting. In the process, I came across an interview... (yes, we're back on this subject) 

It was an interview from The Guardian done earlier this year. He came across somewhat badly in this interview, which may spell disaster for my personal opinion of him (see: George Clooney). Apparently, he's very protective about his personal life and the interviewer dared to ask him a question that touched on the subject of his personal life. I would certainly not consider it to have been a particularly intrusive question. A proper answer to it would not have required a deep discussion of his personal life. But I guess he doesn't even want to even touch on the topic of his personal life one bit. At the end of the interview, he began ranting (maybe that's a bit harsh of a word to use) about politics. To top it off, he also came across as sort of pretentious in the interview. You can read it for yourself and see. In contrast, Peter Sarsgaard comes across as a nice, easygoing and thoughtful kind of person. Vincent seems like a dear. James D'Arcy comes across well in interviews too. So, happening to have read this interview of Jake does not bode too well for my personal opinion of him. At least he isn't as creepy looking as Johnny Depp. 

I decided to read a few other interviews of his to get a more filled out idea of what he's like. He didn't come across quite as badly as in the aforementioned one, but he also didn't come across as lovely either. Eh. I think he still came across as a little stuck up in these other interviews too. http://iheartjake.com/2017/03/jake-gyllenhaal-covers-esquire-uk-magazine-april-issue/#more-13616

I have seen two movies with Jake in them in the past, but he didn't particularly stand out -he was overshadowed by other actors. One was Zodiac, in which I was more focused on Mark Ruffalo, I think because he somewhat reminded me of Vincent. It wasn't a particularly good movie anyways, so the other actors didn't make much of an impression on me because they didn't resemble Vincent, even though they're pretty famous (Jake and Robert Downey Jr). As for the other one, I was paying more attention to Peter Sarsgaard for reasons that should be obvious. I'm going to give Brokeback Mountain and Nightcrawler a shot, and if I'm not impressed, Jake Gyllenhaal goes into my overrated pile as well. Maybe if he were more my type in terms of looks I'd be more enthused about him. But alas, he's not. He's kind of weird looking.   

Anyways, while we're at it... some choice tweets:
"Jake Gyllenhaal & Johnny Depp are the BEST actors out there. Don't @ me on this." I beg to differ. A lot.
"Jake Gyllenhaal's voice is either the nicest or creepiest one ever depending on the context" In relation to this tweet, I had to find an example of how he talks. I found an interview from Jon Stewart's Daily Show, which was actually pretty good although maybe it's just because it was Jon Stewart and you can't go wrong with Jon Stewart. Jake's voice is surprisingly... light and high pitched. I expected he'd have a more intimidating/forceful voice. I wouldn't consider it to be particularly creepy or nice, just... regular, but not what I was expecting. Now as for Peter Sarsgaard... (no, I will probably not shut up about him anytime soon) http://www.cc.com/video-clips/3jbfst/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-jake-gyllenhaal
"My memoir is coming out next month! It's called "Jake Gyllenhaal, I Love You"" Imagine what my memoir would be called..
"I love Jake Gyllenhaal so much. He is so pretty. I love him" He is... okay looking. Better looking than Johnny Depp by a little bit, but not as good looking as (insert favorite actors here).

As it stands, Mark Ruffalo > Jake Gyllenhaal in my book. And I don't even like Mark Ruffalo a huge amount. Not that I dislike him. I have a mildly positive opinion of him. Also, Peter Sarsgaard > Jake Gyllenhaal. Fight me. 

Postsecret review 5

This is for the online secrets; the ones that I thought were notable in the Postal Museum will be reviewed in a separate blog post. I'm pretty late on this but I was on vacation earlier this week, hence the lack of blog posts. 

"I found the man I'm supposed to marry on match.com... ... but I can't contact him because I refuse to pay the membership fee." Well, there are a few possible solutions to this. One, google his name. Two, reverse search his profile picture and see what comes up; maybe his social media would come up and you could contact him through there. And honestly, if it's really the man you think you're supposed to marry, I'd think you should be willing to forfeit some money for the membership fee to contact him. It seems silly to abstain from paying the fee to contact someone you think you're supposed to marry. Unless you somehow know that you're only going to be married to him for a short time and then get divorced. 

"People think I've stopped lying...  but I've just gotten better at it." This one is... interesting. Lying is sometimes a useful skill to have, but I don't completely condone it. It definitely depends on the circumstances - if you're lying to awful people that you hate, then that's not so bad. But lying to decent/good people in order to say, maliciously manipulate them, that's not good. 

"I tell everyone you're an artist because I'm too embarrassed to tell them what you really do for a living." I certainly wonder what this person really does for a living. Maybe they're a porn star. 

"Drugs damaged my brain. I wish I could know the man I would've been without them." Two questions: what drugs caused this brain damage, and how severe is it? I'm very curious. Maybe it was methamphetamine, or perhaps cocaine. Or heroin. 

"I crop the people that piss me off out of the company newsletter, for I'm the graphic designer." Well, that's pretty passive aggressive. 

"The only reason I'm an 'avid gardener' is... so when I retire I'll have the... skills to grow 'the most amazing' herb!!" (over pictures of marijuana plants) I guess this person thought that by the time they retired, it would be legal to grow marijuana plants? 

"Visit Ruby Falls - where tour guides want to kill your stupid kids!!" That's an interesting sentiment to have towards one's job.. 

"I comb my heavily shedding dog outside when my asshole neighbors have cookouts. They cannot see me doing it but I can see them freaking out Bon Appetit" Another passive aggressive one. I wonder if they have or will eventually find out where the hair is coming from. I don't think it would be that hard to put two and two together.