There is an article floating around by Thomas L. Day, a 31-year-old man who was a product of Jerry Sandusky's "Second Mile" program. He has given up on looking to his superiors for guidance, pointing out the failures of leadership in all major facets of his life: in education, politics, church, etc. And he ends by saying, "I can’t wait for my parents’ generation’s Joshua any longer. They’ve lost my faith."

The baby boomers, when they were younger, fought passionately for change. They were very politically involved and extremely hopeful. I'm seeing what I imagine feels similar today in the Occupy Wall Street movement, and in some ways, it really does give me hope. I hope that this moment is the beginning of a new generation's legacy. I want this to be the moment where we get our priorities straight and commit to the kind of self-sacrifice and accountability that has been eroded over the last few decades.

I want to ensure that the generations behind us looks to us as a generation of problem-solvers, leaders and people willing to sacrifice. I don't think we have a choice and I see a lot of reasons for hope and optimism.

What I find horrifying in this whole Penn State fiasco are the thousands of students who protested Paterno's firing. I see people who don't seem to have the first idea of what accountability looks like. There is no argument that Joe Paterno did an enormous amount of great things in his life and helped many people. He wasn't fired for being a bad man; he was fired for not doing enough to stop child rape. He was fired because there needs to be accountability.

Real leadership would have looked something like this: Paterno would have claimed responsibility for his inaction and offered to step down. That would have been leadership. Instead, he dodged responsibility and focused on college football at great expense to innocent children.

I wanted to see the Penn State student body mobilize to focus on fixing the problems that led to the cover-up and put plans in place that would prevent this in the future.

I hope this generation ends up to be more like the Wall Street occupiers and less like the Penn State protestors. I want us to get our priorities straight and learn to embrace sacrifice and responsibility with a sense of maturity and pride (not only in response to bad press). I hope we are able to teach the next generation what accountability looks like.

Well it looks like Bonnie and I are on the move again, not very far this time though. We're moving about half an hour outside of Providence to the small coastal town that we both found jobs in. We love our current apartment. It's special. It's by far the most beautiful and spacious place we've ever lived in together. It's an entire floor of a renovated Victorian home, three bedrooms, living room, dining room, kitchen, gorgeous bathroom, chandeliers, walls painted warm colors, wood parquet floors, a fenced in double lot yard surrounded with trees and plants. It's amazing. BUT, we're an ansy kind of people. We like change. We like different experiences and its time for something new.

This was sparked by a winter where finances caught up to us in the form of student loans and increased car payments. So in an effort to save money and satisfy our craving for something new and interesting, we decided to search for a place to live near where we work.

We found it. It's a cottage on the lot of a quite large Victorian home in a rather wealthy area of Tiverton, RI. The neighborhood is surrounded on two sides by water. We'll be living in a cottage that was renovated to be a dance studio, which has since moved onto main street. It has a loft-like feel with high ceilings and a lot of open space, with the cuteness and wood beauty of a nice cottage. We'll gain privacy, still have a lovely yard for Max and outdoor life, and will save money on rent, heat and car gas. It's a good deal. We're pretty happy about all of this.

We found another couple to take up our current apartment, so our landlord is kind enough to let us out of the lease. The new couple seems pretty awesome; I think they'll be a good fit here.

We had an electrician working on the chandelier in our bedroom this morning, so while we were housebound, I put on the film "Alice's Restaurant". It's a movie based on the song by Arlo Guthrie, starring Arlo Guthrie. First of all, I've heard the song a many a times, but I always pictured him to be a middle-aged man singing. In the movie, he looks like he's around 20 years ago. He just has a really unusual voice. It was a fun film to watch, much less about the Vietnam War than I had expected based off of the song. It was funny in parts and then ended up getting more serious near the end as it had started out all "happy hippy 60's" and then showed some troubles that certain characters fell into over time. I'm surprised I've never watched it before. The electrician kept laughing out loud at it quite a bit and talked to us a little bit about how people just traveled all the time with no real destination, that's just how it was then.

The real life Alice is an artist now, living in Provincetown and she has a website.

I recently watched two of German director Fritz Lang's films: Metropolis and M.

Metropolis is a silent film considered to be one of the first sci-fi films ever. One of Bonnie's former bosses had told her it was her favorite movie and Bonnie had to watch it (she had the movie poster hanging on her office wall). The film was pretty political given the fact that it was filmed in Germany during the Weimar Republic and dealt with socialism/class discrepancies. Some of the effects were were pretty awesome and I have no idea how they did some of it (see the Shufftan Process). One thing that is also pretty cool is that it was produced by Studio Babelsberg, still a major German film studio. Recent films it is involved in are Inglorious Basterds, The International, Valkrie, The Bourne Ultimatum, V for Vendetta and so on. Pretty cool. It's logo is based off of the machine from Metropolis.



Metropolis is more famous and probably had a bigger impact on film and culture, but I personally like "M" much better. It was Fritz Lang's first "talkie" and is part film noir/thriller. It was pretty awesome. It was apparently not well received by the Nazi government (who saw themselves in the killers?) and Lang fled the country shortly after its release. His wife, Thea von Harbou, who had produced the film with him, eventually ended up joining the Nazi Party a year before Hitler came into power. They had divorced by that time.

I can't find a trailer that has the english subtitles, but oh well.

Can I just tell everyone how much I love Netflix? I'm reading the movie section of the New York Times and there's an article about a new Coen Brother's movie coming out that stars three of my favorite actors: Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon and Josh Brolin. Well, the first two are definitely among my favorite actors. I haven't seen Josh Brolin is much other than Goonies and W, but he did well in both. Anyways, the Coen brothers are remaking a John Wayne movie, True Grit, which I have heard about a lot but never watched.

Top of the Netflix queue. It bumped "The Enforcer" to number two; it's the third film in the Dirty Harry series. The rest of the series seems to be available on livestream, but I don't like watching things out of order so I need see The Enforcer really soon so that I can watch the rest.

The Coen film is not a remake of the John Wayne film (they said they only vaguely remember watching it as kids and didn't "do their homework". This came out of one of them reading the actual book out loud to one of their kids). It's another adaptation of the same book True Grit by Charles Portis.

Looking forward to this one.

I love moral ambiguity. I've really thought about this. First off, it's just a great phrase, feels good to say ya know? Secondly, it's a really engaging situation. I love it in art and I think it's really profound when situations arise (in real life or in art) where the morality of a situation isn't black and white.

For a Christian to kill a fellow soldier in war who is injured and in excruciating pain, do they "kill" or not? Do they break a commandment and take God's work into their own hands, or do they feel compassion and put an end to their friend's suffering?

In my own life (when I adhered to a more Christian-centered moral compass) I had to question which three options were the most "wrong": Pretend to love a guy (thus lying and being careless with another person's emotions), keep my feelings about girls to myself (which also involves lying and deprives others of knowing that they're loved) or be completely open about my feelings (not lying and letting people I love know about it, but breaking a "supposed" basic tenet of Christianity?) At one time in my life, this felt like a very morally ambiguous situation.

I'm watching an old film called "M" by Fritz Lang, which led me to read the Wikipedia entry about him. He's considered one of the directors to have helped form the film noir genre with its "themes of psychological conflict, paranoia, fate and moral ambiguity." Film swoon.

I've been going through a bunch of movies in my head looking for that morally ambiguous element and it's present in almost all of my favorite movies. It's actually something that is common in almost any decent story. My favorite example is the Godfather. Yes, Don Corleone is involved in so many of societies so-called ills like gambling, murder, bribery, sexism, etc. He is quite capitalist (in the film version at least) which includes many of its own moral issues. Yet, it isn't fair to say he is a downright immoral man. He's an independent spirit who has defined his own code of ethics, but he does live and die by it. He has an incredibly strong moral compass. He seeks justice for people who our own justice system fails. His so-called crimes aren't so different from the actions of our police departments. It's moral ambiguity at its best.

Back to my movie now.

Ugh, there's so much I want to write about! But I don't have all day, so instead, I'll make a list.

Movies/Books that I've either started or are relevant to now that I really need to read/watch ASAP:

A Single Man: (I just watched the movie with Colin Firth a week ago from Netflix and now Bonnie picked up the book by Christopher Isherwood from the library).




The Girl Who Played With Fire: I need to finish the book because I need to see the movie which came out a few weeks ago and I missed.





The Social Network: Looking forward to seeing that with Bonnie and Jay, partly because I'm oddly fascinated with Mark Zuckerberg and partly because Jesse Eisenberg is really adorable. The trailers looks really cool.




Let Me In: I'm looking forward to going to see this film as well. Now, I saw the original Swedish film "Let The Right One In", which was fantastic. I was actually disappointed to hear that America needed to "recreate" an already great film simply because Americans don't do subtitles (or whatever the issue is). However, I did see some trailers that piqued my interest and the cast looks promising. The fact that they changed the title is a bad omen though because first of all, it's just lamer. Secondly, "Let The Right One In" is actually more relevant after you've seen the film. Thirdly, "Let the Right One In" is the title of a Smith's song that played at the beginning of the Swedish version and it just makes sense.

American Version:



Swedish Version:




No Country For Old Men: I started reading the book and it's great. I've never seen the film and it's high time.

Oh hey, I was writing in this for a few days and then I stopped again, big surprise.

I'm not really up to anything in particular that is exciting to mention...except of course that I am one full day away from seeing the second half of Angels in America in New York. I am insanely anxious. Deena just told me that Harper is played by Zoe Kazan, as in Elia Kazan's granddaughter and current girlfriend to Paul Dano. Interesting.

I don't have much to write about right now, sorry. I'm listening to music and surfing the interwebs.

The Remake Dream Cast:

Scout: new unknown actress
Atticus: Jeff Bridges
Calpurnia: Viola Davis
Boo Radley: Michael Stipe, Michael Pitt, or Paul Dano
Nathan Radley: John Waters
Dill: Kieran Culkin circa "Father of the Bride" (really, any young Culkin brother)
Jem: Wil Wheaton circa "Stand By Me"
Miss Maudie: Kathy Bates
Aunt Alexandra: Meryl Streep
Tom Robinson: new unknown actor
Walter Cunningham Sr.: Steve Buscemi
Bob Ewell: Chris Cooper
Heck Tate (the sheriff): Nathan Fillion or Ethan Hawke
The Judge: Phillip Seymour Hoffman or John Lithgow


Bonnie and I have this thing that started back in the days of new Harry Potter book releases/movie premieres where we'd re-read the books (or at least the book right before whatever new release was about to happen). Bonnie was suffering some pretty bad bouts of insomnia and reading out loud to her would help her fall asleep, so that's what we did. It started a reading out loud kick that never went away and the most recent book I read out loud was To Kill A Mockingbird.

Re-reading To Kill A Mockingbird outside of a school assignment was awesome, so great. I knew I liked reading it in school, but all I really remembered was Scout and her brother being really curious about their shut-in neighbor Boo Radley and something about a trial where her dad Atticus represented a black man in court.

You wouldn't know it if you only watched the crappy movie version, but To Kill A Mockingbird first and foremost is a story told from Scout's perspective as an adult. She's telling the story of her own growing up and confronting her own childhood ignorance, largely based on Harper Lee's own childhood.

You watch these kids go from naive acceptance of the way things are (including themselves) where they make up scary assumptions about a shut-in they have never even seen to understanding and confronting their own ignorance.

And through all of the serious elements, one of the best parts of the whole book is the humor! It was so funny at times! There's a certain southern sense of humor that I really love, a way of telling a funny story that says so much in a simple way.

After re-reading the book, we watched the movie from Netflix and holy cow does the world need a remake and that's all I have to say about that. It would need to focus way more on the kids perspectives and would definitely need to include a lot more of the funny elements. The book was funny, cute, serious, smart. The original movie wasn't funny or cute at all and only had fleeting moments of smart. It definitely had serious down though, blah.

One of my favorite songs in my early teens was "Tomorrow Wendy" as sung my Johnette Napolitano on her live Concrete Blonde Album "Still In Hollywood". In the intro to the song, she talked about the song's meaning a bit and mentioned that it was about a woman with AIDS written by her friend Andy Prieboy of the band "All of Voodoo".

I recently did a youtube search for the video and actually found two really interesting videos, one was a more recent live version of her singing it where she elaborated on the song's meaning. Basically, it's about a friend of Andy's named Wendy who contracted AIDS and instead of suffering the pain, isolation and intense stigma associated with the disease (at that time especially, people were afraid of knowing someone with AIDS), she chose to commit suicide. This really shifted my understanding of the song. It's so much more about taking control of the only thing left she had control over, when and where she was going to die. Ugh.

The second video was the original music video of Andy Prieboy singing it, which I didn't even know existed, and it's amazing. Johnette is also featured on it.:


Even growing up in the 80's, I was very young and had to make an effort on my own to try to grasp the magnitude of the impact AIDS had on everyone and how it changed so much about life.

For a while, my idea of AIDS was a montage of images and news-bites: Magic Johnson stating publicly that he was HIV , Pedro Zamora from the Real World cast educating people about the disease, the Ryan White Story made for tv movie. Fight AIDS Not People With AIDS. The AIDS quilt.

Yes, I knew about it. Yes I knew it was horrible. But it wasn't until I read the book "And the Band Played On" by Randy Shilts that I began to understand how devastating this disease was at that time. NOTE: I know it still is. And as an epidemic in many parts of the world. I'm specifically thinking about American lives around the 1970's through the early 90's when the questions and ignorance about the disease was at an all time high.

It was just so many layers of devastation. It was viewed as a death sentence (for most it was). It was an ugly and inhumane way to die. People were scared of people with AIDS. AIDS patients were actively shunned by society, by our government, and by our "health system". I know it's a huge book and a difficult subject matter, but "And the Band Played On" should be required reading for everyone at some point in their life. And if you don't read the book, then at least rent the movie from Netflix. I didn't understand how much crap people with AIDS had to experience even beyond the physical consequences of the disease itself.

I wonder how much different our culture would be if AIDS hadn't happened. How would dating/relationships be different? How much more art would have been created by artists/actors/writers/etc who died of AIDS?

I just watched "To Kill a Mockingbird" and looked up the adorable kid who played Dill, actor John Megna. Died of AIDS in 1995.

Keith Haring, Freddy Mercury, GIA, Robert Mapplethorpe...