Some attributions are in order for the last pizzle entry. The first snippet is from my mainest man right now Kanye West. At this point, my life can be summed up in various Kanye West quotes, the man is effin' brilliant.
The next quote is from He Got Game . It is Denzel's character, Jake, giving advice to his son Jesus. The last is from a Blink song.
I realize it reads extremely random to the casual observer, but I wanted to capture the rush of emotions and thoughts in my head at the time, and thats what came out.
Lastly, to give another push to my high spirits, my boy Russ got the job offer from ComScore that he had been hoping for. So big ups to him again.
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"I'm twisted cuz one side of me is tellin' me that I need to move on
On the other side I wanna break down and cry"
----Usher
"and it's okay if you have to go away
just remember the telephone works both ways
and if I never ever hear it ring
if nothing else I'll think the bells inside
have finally found you someone else and that's okay
cause I'll remember everything you sang
you and I both loved what you and I spoke of
and others just read of and if you could see now
well I'm already finally out of words."
----Jason Mraz
"I woke up early this mornin' with a new state of mind
A creative way to rhyme without usin' nines and guns
Keep your nose out the sky, keep your heart to God
And keep your face to the risin' sun"
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Amidst the enveloping embraces and cherry flavored smoke, I fixed it. My universe is in balance again. I rule.
"Let me tell you something son, you get that hatred out your heart, or you'll end up just another nigga, like your father. "
"Don't waste your time on me, you're already, a voice inside my head."
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Congratulations and much love Russ, you deserve this.
One of the recurring debates that Keyur and I had was the Memento vs. Matrix discussion. He hated Memento and loved the Matrix, and I felt the exact opposite. From my perspective, the two movies took two vastly different paths towards the same question, "what is real?". The Matrix was a little too slick and sci-fi for me, but Memento's assertion that memory is the central determinant of someone's reality was much more thought-provoking (I'll leave my comparison of the acting, or lack thereof, out of this discussion). After all, what are we if not a collection of past moments? How we look at ourselves and the world at any moment is necessarily colored by how we react to and evaluate our past.
So what if you could alter that reality? What if you could take away the memories that hurt, erase the people and events you no longer want as a part of your present?
Charlie Kaufman and director Michel Gondry give us their take in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind . The man behind Being John Malkovich and Adaptation (two of my all time favorites, I sometimes wonder if all other writers in Hollywood just feel like giving up after watching a Kaufman movie, he's that damn good), once again reaches an intellectual and emotional level that few other filmmakers can.
Eternal Sunshine is at heart a simple love story. Joel and Clementine (played by Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet who give amazing performances and provide the film with its emotional grounding) fell in love, then fell out and in act of anger and impulse, Clementine visits Lacuna, Inc. to have all memories of Joel erased from her memory. When Joel realizes what happened, he agrees to have Clementine erased from his memory, but along the way, changes his mind. The movie then follows Joel as he tries to perserve Clementine within his memories. Of course, the story is not told in a linear way, and figuring out Kaufman's twists is another little pleasure. Gondry takes us into Joel's head with a wonderful visual flair and the final payoff is chill-moment worthy (see below) in the way Kaufman brings together the threads of his story and hits us in the perfect place right between the head and the heart.
Eternal Sunshine, much like Being John Malkovich, is based on a simple sci-fi premise (without too many scientific details to get bogged down in), but remains grounded in reality and in touch emotionally with the audience. Kaufman's stories are usually so creative and clever, that it would be easy to completely lose the heart of the viewer and become a purely intellectual exercise (a pretty fair criticism of Memento). But Kaufman remains true to his characters and to the essence of the story, and this is probably his most significant achievement as a writer. He gets your mind working to the point where you think you know what's going on, so you think you can figure out what Kaufman is trying to say, but then he throws you off, and you realize that there always things that the mind can never understand. In Eternal Sunshine, we see that love can never be intellectualized (Jim Carrey summed it up in an interview, "You can intellectually walk away from someone, but your heart can't") and that the value of memories, good and bad, can never be quantified. They are all equally an essential part of you.
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Eternal Sunshine had a special resonance with me for personal reasons. Russ and I both watched the movie with our wounds still fresh ( his more than mine), and afterwards we just looked at each other like someone had knocked the wind out of us, but instead of being in pain, we felt light, almost euphoric. What if we could erase a person from our memory? Does it hurt that badly now? Would it be worth the loss all of the good memories? At times it does that hurt bad. One of the things that still really bothers me, is that now whenever I think of her, it feels bad. I can't help but remember the negative. It shouldn't be that way. I should be able hold on to the good, the comfort, the closeness, and be happy. But it still hurts to try.
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Movie Chill-Moment : The "Meet me in Montauk" scene in Eternal Sunshine--This is the aforementioned Kaufman payoff scene. Without giving too much of the surprise away (suprise may not be the best word, more of a revelation, the-story-coming-together light bulb going off), Kaufman ties his story together while at the same time showing us the value of love to our memories and to our lives.
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Big, big props are due to Ram for working behind the scenes and resurrecting the Pizzle. Holla at ya boy, Captain!
"Ooh girl, your breath is harsh
Cover your mouth like you got SARS"
----Kanye West from "The New Workout Plan"
"My favorite girl wanna leave just because I gotta girlfriend
My freak girl say she becoming a Christian,
My white girl wanna move back to Michigan
I'm pulling girls off the bench like a sixth man,"
----Kanye West from "This Way" (can you tell who I've been listening to lately?)
Ay yo....
Two words, Bombay, best friend,
bathroom floor, ain't capable of love no more
New city, new job,
but love cant reach that far
Pain still lingers,
he's up there, somewhere,
woulda hated the tears,
smokin weed, laughing loud
I swear I will never, ever let you down...
Two words,
supposed friends, whirlwinds,
no trust, no respect,
wanna fly away
gotta get away
Two words,
Seventy-one, Freedom fight, dark nights
no graves, long days, pain stays
"so I, rep that,
till I,
fucking die"
Pick two words to live by?
I change it to three,
Honor, Family and Loyalty...
To the beat of "Two Words" produced by K. West