A Law and Order Criminal Intent drinking game

Alas, another post related in some capacity to Vincent D'Onofrio. 3 in the span of one week, or something like that. Maybe some day in the future I'll be over that, but anyways...

Drinking games for SVU seem to abound, but for those whose preferred flavor of Law and Order is CI, not so many. So I've taken it upon myself to create one of my own. Drink at your own risk, and as a side note, if you just play the game using water instead of alcoholic beverages, you'll end up less drunk (which could be a good thing, depending on the circumstances) and probably pretty well hydrated (definitely a good thing), so there's a suggestion to keep in mind.

• when Goren pokes at a dead body - at the crime scene or in the morgue
• at scene cards
• when Eames makes a sarcastic/witty remark
• when Goren has a dazzling insight
• when Goren smells something
• when Eames says "You're under arrest... for murder."
• when Goren mentions some obscure piece of knowledge that he just conveniently happens to know
• when Eames is wearing a tank top
• when they flash their badges at someone
• when Goren leans over someone 
• when Goren is writing something down
• when Goren opens up/takes something out of his portfolio
• when Goren is looking up something in one of his books
• when the detectives are looking over files/other documents
• when Goren helps someone they're interviewing with whatever they happen to be doing - carrying groceries, planting flowers, cooking soup, untangling windchimes, you get the idea
• when Goren shouts at someone
• when the detectives are talking to someone over the phone
• when they're discussing what the suspect will be charged with
• when Goren gets interesting in the interrogation room - interesting is up to the viewer's definition 
• when guns are drawn/fired (by anyone)
• when a suspect tries to get physical and Goren has to grab them 

That's all I can think of for now, but if anything else comes to mind I'll try to add it. I really have to try this now.. next up, Criminal Minds? Maybe. Definitely one of the times to drink for that one would be whenever Reid mentions a statistic/obscure trivia fact.

This sort of turned out to be more like a Detective Goren drinking game, but eh, he's the main character of the show, so it's kind of inevitable. 

An actual movie review: Zodiac (2007 - directed by David Fincher)

This is going to be an actual movie review, unlike the last one because this time I actually paid attention to the movie, even though (spoiler, sort of) it ended up being rather boring. There also ended up being a section at the end of this post, after the main review part, explaining why I decided to watch Zodiac, as well as some other things too. 

Now, I think the concept/premise of this movie, a movie about the Zodiac killer could have been made into a good film, but this one just wasn't. It was worse than I expected it to be. It wasn't a particularly compelling movie; I finished it just for the sake of finishing it and not because it was actually interesting past the 2 hour mark or so. In total, it was nearly 3 hours long. 

For some reason, or perhaps reasons plural, the movie came across to me as boring and I just didn't really feel like there was any element in it that would have made it a good movie. The other movie directed by David Fincher that I've seen was really pretty brilliant - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which he directed 4 years later. I think both source materials are pretty interesting in and of themselves, but with one, the movie was a lot better than the other. I had a hard time seeing some of the actors in Zodiac as their characters and not the actors; this might have been because they're pretty recognizable faces even though I haven't seen any other movies that they've been in (at least that I can remember). I wouldn't exactly say it was because their acting was bad. I would assume they just did the best with the script they were given. Maybe because I was already familiar with the events of the Zodiac case, the events of the movie seemed overly predictable. But on the other hand, I'd already read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo before watching that movie and still found that one enjoyable, so perhaps predictability wasn't really the problem. 

Apparently Zodiac got a pretty positive reception when it was released, which I don't really understand... I didn't really think it was particularly good. I'd say it's maybe about a 2 out of 5. Watchable, but not particularly interesting. I was expecting it to be better. Sort of like when I watched The Silence of the Lambs. That one was kind of a letdown too. I didn't really like the portrayal of Hannibal... Mads Mikkelsen did a much better job in the few episodes of NBC Hannibal that I've seen. In Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal almost seemed sort of... caricature like, or something like that. 

And so my not so positive review of a movie that people generally seemed to write positive reviews about is finished, with a bonus not so positive mini review of The Silence of the Lambs for good measure. 

A post-script/addendum explaining my reason for watching Zodiac (and also I end up explaining some other things too, turns out): (incidentally, we are back to the one and only Vincent D'Onofrio. Maybe the next post won't involve him in some capacity. No promises, though.) I watched this movie partly because I had been wanting to watch it for awhile (I thought the subject matter was interesting) and also partly because I wanted to watch the actor Mark Ruffalo acting in a role of some sort, and it turns out that he was in this movie, playing a police officer character investigating the Zodiac killings. I wanted to watch Mark Ruffalo because I wanted to see him acting as well as possibly try to get a feeling for how his voice sounds, which I wanted to know because he sort of looks like Vincent and I was wondering if perhaps they'd end up having similar voices or not (although obviously, looking similar doesn't really have any correlation with having similar sounding voices). I think Mark has a weird sounding voice. For some reason. It just sounds kind of weird to me. Anyways, that was that. It's sort of like how I watched Full Metal Jacket because I wanted to see Vincent in a role other than Detective Goren in Law and Order. Which, incidentally, was... it was a trip. I don't think I really managed to understand the point of that movie. I feel like there probably was one (probably??), but I just can't really seem to figure it out.. suffice to say, it wasn't exactly what I was thinking of when I had the intention of "I want to see Vincent in another role".  A very random addendum to the addendum, but spell check tells me that D'Onofrio and Ruffalo are misspelled words, Interesting, sort of. Italian last names. Both actors are of Italian descent. 

Movie "review": Jurassic World

As with the last post, this one also has a bit (or should I say, a lot) to do with Vincent D'Onofrio. 
If you are going into this expecting an actual, serious movie review, you're in for a surprise. This is a review from the perspective of "I did not actually pay that much attention to the movie", so... you've been warned. Ordinarily, I wouldn't watch movies like this, but the rest of the family wanted to see it and I remembered that it happened to have Vincent D'Onofrio in it, in some capacity, so I figured it was maybe worth a watch. After googling it to get a feeling for how long it was, I noticed that it also had the actor who played the psychiatrist on Law and Order SVU. (all two of your L&O faves in one movie!) 
I didn't really think that Vincent would have a huge role in the movie and I was right. However, I didn't mind half paying attention and trying to see when his character (whose name I did not catch) was on screen. I'm going to write this "review" fresh off of seeing the movie (which as I said, I did not pay much attention to) and before having looked up the summary online so I can see what actually happened. After I do that, I'll write a little bit of my impression after learning what this whole damn thing was actually about. 
Anyways, this definitely was not Law and Order (unsurprisingly), so obviously Vincent's role was different than what I've been used to seeing him as. In this movie, he had some facial hair which I did not like the look of (I'm really not a fan of facial hair, on anyone) and so I kept thinking that I wished his character would shave. From what I gathered, his character was a zookeeper of sorts at the eponymous dinosaur theme park. He said some things here and there, but I was mostly just looking at him and not really paying much attention to the dialogue. Seeing as he was not a main character, there wasn't a ton of him to be seen although there were a few hand-gesturey moments of the kind that we see a lot of in Law and Order. 
I spent a lot of the movie wondering when/if Vincent's character was going to get eaten by the dinosaurs. Towards the end (about 20 mins. before the end) he does seem to get eaten, or at least we see his hand being bitten off by a dinosaur. Since his character does not make an appearance after that, I'm assuming that he may have gotten eaten in full after that. Boo. Poor thing. I kept laughing during this movie because it was just kind of funny, or at least if you don't pay much attention, it is. Also because it was sort of funny to watch Vincent in this role. I kind of would have liked to see him get eaten in full, or perhaps run away from the dinosaur frantically, missing a hand/forearm.. that sounds a little twisted, doesn't it.. in any case. That basically sums up my impression of the movie, having not paid much attention and mostly only looking at Vincent's character. I couldn't really figure out if his character was supposed to be a protagonist or antagonist or something in between. Although he did get punched in the face at one point by the main character. I'm not really sure what that was about (again, going back to the fact that I didn't pay much attention at all...). I probably could have lived without having seen that movie, honestly. Anyways, now to go on and read the summary of what actually happened... the next part of the "review" will be my thoughts after having read said summary. All in all, I thought it was kind of a strange movie (although, that effect can probably be achieved for any movie if you don't pay attention). 

Part 2: post-summary reading...
Apparently Vincent's character was an antagonist. Huh. Maybe that's why he had to get eaten. 
Having now read what actually happened in the movie, I don't really have much to say. Nothing really stuck out to me as anything particularly interesting. Oh well. I'm going to have to watch some other movies that Vincent has been in. Perhaps they'll be more interesting/better. And anyways, there's always Law and Order.. 

Hands: Donald Trump's and others'

Although it has been a little over a year since I've last tended to this blog, I've felt compelled to make a new little post tonight on a topical matter. (even though there are other things I ought to be working on, but no matter..) 

As it's pretty inevitable to be exposed to the... debacle that is the current election season, that's what this about. Recently, people have insulted (although I don't blame them for doing so) Donald Trump's hands. Donald Trump has claimed that his hands are magnificent and not lacking in size, nor is he lacking in size in... other places. He also claims that his hands are beautiful, which I will say they most definitely are not. Really though, what do you expect from an egomaniacal demagogue? (egomanaical I thought of myself, demagogue I got from something I read in the New York Times earlier about him) 

In what world are Donald Trump's hands beautiful?? I'm not sure that they're particularly small, size wise, but they certainly aren't beautiful. His fingers are quite chunky and stubby looking, which is not a characteristic of beautiful hands. Also, his skin is kind of wrinkly and such which doesn't help the appearance of his hands. People who think that his hands are beautiful are deluded (people who support him, I'll venture to say, are also deluded/other similar adjectives). 

Anyways, incidentally, the people whose hands I do think are beautiful are as follows.. (this isn't something I've just thought up today. This is actually something that I've had opinions on for awhile.) 
In no particular order: (I would add pictures but I'm lazy) 

• James D'Arcy (actor)
• Vincent D'Onofrio (actor)
• Anderson Cooper (journalist)
• Brandon Flowers (musician) 

A nice assortment of people, who I also happen to admire for things other than the beauty of their hands. All of these people are decently tall (Anderson is the shortest of the 4, I believe, but not unusually short). James D'Arcy has really nice hands; his fingers are nice and elegant looking and they taper a bit towards the ends which just adds to their appearance. Seriously. Go look up a picture of them. Vincent also has nice hands, which happily appear quite frequently in Law and Order CI, because his character has a tendency to gesture a good amount, so we get to see the hands in action. Really nice. His fingers aren't chunky. His hands are also probably a decent size, not small; he's 6'4". (the aforementioned James D'Arcy is 6'3", so also pretty tall.) I could go on.. Anderson and Flowers I have a little less to say about, since I don't really get as many looks at their hands, but from the pictures I've seen, I can also attest that they have nice hands as well. These are only 4 people here, and I'm sure there are a number of other people who have nicer hands than Donald Trump (honestly, that'd probably be a lot of people), but these 4 people have hands that I've noticed in particular.

This post is probably... a bit out there, I will admit. But hopefully it was amusing, or at the least, vaguely interesting. 

Additional (amusing) reading on this subject:

http://www.vox.com/2016/3/2/11148356/donald-trump-short-fingers-small-hands-vulgarian  

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/03/01/are-donald-trumps-fingers-weirdly-short-an-investigation/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2016/03/04/fine-donald-trump-lets-measure-the-hands/

http://www.vice.com/read/donald-trump-has-small-hands
And, if you really want to look at them closely... http://www.buzzfeed.com/jamiejones/literally-just-pictures-of-donald-trumps-hands#.dqky8nvxy2     

Art. Featuring my rambling ruminations, as usual.

What exactly art is is a question I've been pondering lately. At first, I had been thinking that art is pleasant to look at, but in many cases that doesn't hold true. In addition, 'pleasant' is subjective regarding art and basically everything else in the world. At the moment, I would say that a tentative definition of art is that it makes you think. Perhaps those are thoughts of appreciation for its aesthetic beauty, or thoughts about what is portrayed by the art, or thoughts of distaste with the art, etc. A friend says that art is created to express something, which is also a valid point regarding what exactly it is. Trying to precisely define art is perhaps impossible, but at least some general statements about its nature can be made.
I am not quite sure what exactly got me thinking about the definition of art, but perhaps it has something to do with how I have begun to keep a written log of theoretical art ideas. It is rather unlikely that I'll actually enact most of these ideas as it is, but they're there, just for the sake of making sure I remember them in case I ever feel like actualizing them.
As a final note, some people argue that modern art is not art, but I say that it is art, regardless if other people are disdainful towards it. Some modern art is quite thought provoking despite how it may seem strange and unconventional/unusual, etc. Just because one disapproves of/disdains certain art (such as modern art) does not necessarily mean it isn't art.
The end.
(I do realize I have neglected this blog. Sometimes that happens. It's a character flaw, I suppose. But here is a short selection of my recent thoughts for your perusal.)

Things I appreciate in people - laudable traits

In fancy language we can call these things 'laudable traits.' This is the first in what may be a series of posts. 

• a firm handshake. These are essential in making a good impression on people you meet. 
• not being an awful person (again, use your imagination here). The logic behind this should be obvious.
• if you have or decide to start a band, for the love of god don't name it something ridiculous and laughable. So, bands without ridiculous and laughable names. (I realize this doesn't exactly apply to people, but it's still a laudable trait.)
• fingernails that are clean and even in length. Personally, I think cleanliness is more important but my mother also insists that they should be even in length as well.
• jeans that are rolled up evenly, if they're rolled up. It pains me to see uneven cuffs on people's jeans.
• nice hair: this is subjective. But use your imagination.

This may be quite similar to the sometimes trivial things I complain about, but... I'd like to think that perhaps these suggestions regarding laudable traits can be useful in some way or another. 

Why I hate that horrible thing

Here is the "People I hate" part. Or at least something that fits in that category. Obviously this isn't all of it. There's certainly more. So, on to my reasons...
Have you ever been pursued by an overbearing suitor? If you haven't, trust me, you don't want to be. It's truly awful. At least when this 'suitor' (I hesitate to even grant that title to this horrible thing) is a creepy person. Creepy as in constantly staring, following around the object of his affections, attempting awkward conversations... all the things you don't want to be subjected as you try to go about your daily life. What compounds this is that (and I will say this unabashedly) this horrible thing (as I mentioned before, that's a euphemism. It makes things easier for me and is also a convenient protection of privacy) is... horribly ugly. Before you call me shallow, consider this. Imagine if you had a creepy ugly person after you. I don't think you would enjoy that unless you were truly desperate for attention. Since I'm not truly desperate for attention, I (obviously) don't enjoy having this creepy ugly thing after me. It's not fun. It plagues my existence. 

On the sociology side of things, the concepts of beauty and ugliness are rather fascinating to me. So there'll be some pondering of that as well on this blog. Expect it in the future.