GoldbergBlog

Last Friday’s Reviews

If you needed to know what to see last weekend, fire up the flux capacitor, crank it to 88 mph and make sure you have 1.21 gigawatts in the tank.  Or you could just see these films this weekend.  Whatever.

Step Brothers (7.6 out of 10)

The Wackness (8.0 out of 10)

I Need Your Help

It’s not easy for me to ask other people for help.  Even last month at that infamous kickball game, I was extremely reluctant to as my teammate if I could have a quick drink from her water bottle.  But my survival instinct overrode my shyness and I asked for the mandatory hydration to which she kindly agreed.  I was slightly embarrassed to ask someone for help but I would have been slightly unconscious had I not.

And now again I’m forced to ask my friends for help because my survival demands it.  I feel ashamed for asking because I am guilty of pretending that I’m more successful than I truly am.  Yes, my job of writing about movies and interviewing celebrities is awesome.  There’s no denying it and I feel that if I didn’t have a self-deprecating sense of humor, I would be even more insufferable than I already am as I deserve a littering fine for all the names I drop.  But the truth is that my job doesn’t pay me a whole lot.  Perhaps in another year or so, I’ll find a way to make enough money to do it full time at which point your jealousy will be wholly warranted.  But for now, film criticism won’t even pay my rent.  I’m on the verge of being homeless and if I were smarter and not so damn proud (damn this pride of mine!), I would have asked for help sooner.

But I’m asking for help now because I don’t want to lose everything I worked so hard to gain over the past seven months.  It pains me to ask for help or really to ask for anything from my friends.  But I feel like I finally became employable over the past year and a half and if I’m unemployed, then it’s a paradox and those can destroy the universe.  If you don’t want to do it for me, do it for the universe.

So the question I need you to ask yourself is this: do I or anyone I know need someone with the following areas of expertise:

- Writing: any tone, any style, done fast, done well.

- Web consulting: this was part of the work I was doing with Georgia Public Broadcasting; it hit a bit of a hiccup when the project changed hands and the software was overhauled to a new content management system.  However, my skill at coming up with the best possible site as pertaining to the project still holds as does my ability to explain that redesign to the non-web savvy crowd.

- Pop culture: this isn’t just trivia fodder but rather understanding current entertainment trends and how to explain and utilize these trends for purposes such as marketing, content development, and public relations.

I know we all have our own lives to keep afloat and trying to help someone else get a job is a pretty big to-do.   Believe me, if my life wasn’t at stake, I wouldn’t ask.  I like spending time with my you guys, not asking you for life-changing favors.  The most I ever want to ask of you is to play drums in Rock Band since being Jewish, I have no rythym.  If you ask someone for a favor then one day, and that day may never come, but one day, you’ll call upon me to do a service for you and then I’ll have to pretty up Sonny Corleone’s corpse.

So if you or anyone you know may want to take a look at my resume or sit down and talk with me to bask in my highly employable glow, please let me know.  I’ll owe you many.

Why So Serious?

It’s not a masterpiece but it’s the film you’re going to see this weekend and that’s money well spent.

The Dark Knight (8.9 out of 10)

Memo to John McCain

Dear Senator McCain,

It has been brought to my attention that twice in the past two days, you’ve referred to Czechoslovakia, a country which hasn’t existed since 1993.  In a gesture of non-partisanship, I would like to provide this handy list of countries that existed during your lifetime, but now no longer exist:

U.S.S.R.
Prussia
Hamburg
Transylvania
Sardinia
Gaul
Saxony
Constantinople
The Holy Roman Empire

Matt Joins THE GOLDEN ARMY

Before it’s completely demolished at the box office next week by The Dark Knight, please see Hellboy II: The Golden Army this weekend.  You don’t need to see have seen the first one.  You don’t need to have read the comics.  Just go see it.  No excuses.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army (9.1 out of 10)

The Cake Is A Lie

Elliott Galloway (1920 - 2008)

A few hours ago, my brother called me and told me that someone he knew from Galloway had just informed him that Mr. Galloway, the founder and headmaster emeritus of my high school alma mater, The Galloway School, had died.  He asked me if I had heard anything and if I could verify this information.  While local Atlanta news and Google searches proved fruitless, seeing the status messages and notes on the Galloway School Facebook page corroborated the story.  I sadly called my brother back and told him that I believed it was true.

That probably seems like a silly story to an outside observer; a tale of Web 2.0 communication and inter-personal relationships in the digital age.  But to me, it speaks to how students and alumni of The Galloway School hold together as a community.  We all came together because we went to the same school; we stay together because of what we learned there.  When you truly believe in that motto to “Play the game of learning and not the game of school,” then it’s not about competing with your fellow students over who has the highest GPA and who’s going to which college.  When no one is allowed to get cut from any team or any theatre production, then it’s about being part of a team rather than creating a hierarchy and separating people into groups.  This community exists because Mr. Galloway had an idea for a different kind of school and a different approach to learning.  For all the amazing people I’ve met through Galloway, I would say it works pretty well.  It’s a community that whole-heartedly believes in the creed of “Behave yourself and try,” and laughs together at the school’s other rule: “Always wear shoes.”

I don’t know if it seems callous or even appropriate to share my thoughts on Mr. Galloway’s passing on my blog.  I never knew him personally.  For me, he was a symbol and his school was a gift that I’ll treasure throughout my life.  It’s painful to think that future students of Galloway will only know him as the name on the school and a couple of paragraphs in a pamphlet.  Despite retiring as headmaster many years ago, Mr. Galloway was never an abstract in the Galloway community.  He came to the musicals and he was still running in Elliott’s Run.  The man was 87 years old and still running marathons.  I just got winded typing the word “marathon”.  That would be embarrassing if it weren’t so inspirational.

My thoughts and the thoughts of the many lives he and his school touched are with his family tonight.  Rest In Peace, Sir.

Videogame News That Just Made Me Climax a Little

Today it was announced that Square-Enix will release one of the best videogames ever made, Chrono Trigger, on the Nintendo DS.  I still own the original Super Nintendo cartridge which is worth more than you.  While they’re not remaking the game in 3D like they’ve done for Final Fantasy III and IV, it’s Chrono Trigger returned.  If you’ve ever played this game then this game gives you a reason to survive until the holiday season when it will be released.

How Does No One Want To See This With Me?

Blog Shift

For a long time, I’ve tried to make sure that this blog isn’t personal.  I did this for several reasons:

1) I thought my life was boring.  This is still mostly true but my internal life is fascinating.

2) I thought people wanted useful information or a distraction, not to read about my navel-gazing (for those wondering, my navel is great).

3) It’s fun for me to write about me.

Yes, I am my most favorite topic. I blame this narcissism as an inherited trait from my Grandma Edye (Happy Birthday, Grandma Edye!  Seriously, today is her birthday and I’m calling her a narcissist, but she doesn’t have the Internet so it’s okay!) and as such, cannot be held responsible for this self-indulgence.

“But Matt!” I hear you exclaim (deep in your soul; that’s right: I hear souls) “Won’t writing about your personal life endanger both your job prospects and/or personal relationships?”

First, any job that would care about my personal blog would not hire me in the first place.  I’m not qualified enough or tight-ass enough to get past the application.  Second, this blog isn’t about other people.  It’s about me.  Don’t look for any interpersonal drama because I don’t tend to hang out with other people on a regular basis and when I do, it’s mainly drama-free.  Some people live lives of great intrigue and duplicity.  That seems like a lot of work.  I like chilling out, cracking jokes, and trying not to die inside.

I’m a guy with a lot to say but I’m poor at articulating ideas on the fly.  For instance, I was trying to tell a friend about anything interesting in my life recently and my mind was preoccupied with firing off anti-personnel rounds into splicers (not slang).  But even when I’m not playing Bioshock, relating tales of daily events doesn’t go well because I don’t encounter real-world drama.  But without such events, does that make my life uninteresting and unmemorable?  I don’t think so because the way I think about the world is still amusing, despite my inaction on that world.  I try to engage in real-world interactions and activities.  It’s just that when I do, it tends to go…poorly.

For instance, this past Sunday I played my first game of kickball in about fourteen years.  By the end, I learned some very important lessons.  The most important lesson was that friends don’t tell you you’re out of shape.  They invite you to join their kickball league and let you find out for yourself.  As I was on the verge of passing out and having my heart explode, I could feel 10-year-old Matt looking at me in disgust.  “You ruled this game in 4th grade!  You blew it!  You were the kickball king and you blew it!”  It wasn’t just that running to catch the ball was exhausting.  No, I was terrible at just about every aspect: I couldn’t catch the ball.  I couldn’t kick the ball.  I couldn’t throw the ball.  Basically, I was deficient at just about every basic skill you needed to play kickball.

Ironically, I signed on not for the exercise but to get out and meet people.  I don’t go to bars or clubs.  Those are places built on pretense and guile and I don’t have the time, patience, or tolerance for that behavior.  I tried it a few years back and it’s just not me.  It’s all too contrived and it reminds me of dancing in that if you’re good at it, you’ll have a lot of fun, but if you have no rhythm and sense of timing, you’ll be too busy trying to remember the steps to enjoy yourself.  So the alternative is group activities and here was an opportunity that presented itself.  I remembered Stephen Colbert’s advice from his commencement speech at Knox College that it’s good to say “Yes and…” (and yes, I draw my wisdom from the commencement speeches of late night comedians) because it makes for opportunities and new adventures.  I accepted the invitation and prepared for kickball glory.  I didn’t think far enough ahead to “Meeting people is great but first you have to make a good first impression,” Ending a kickball game on the verge of death is not a good first impression.  Manly qualities that chicks dig aren’t conveyed as you gasp for life and have cholesterol oozing out your skin.  Furthermore, never in my life has my athletic prowess been one of my defining characteristics.  Sports don’t get give me the chance to show off my humor, my passion, or my collection of interesting t-shirts.  Sports just irritate my competitive spirit and then put me into a losing battle since I’m 5′7″ and have no muscle mass.

Matters were not helped by the opposing team.  My assumption about the league were that teams were made up of people that just came out to goof off and have some fun on a Sunday afternoon.  Maybe as the season progresses, I’ll encounter such teams.  But we, the Lumberjacks (I’m psyched to be on a team called The Lumberjacks but I think for the $50 a slapped down to join the league, the team name should at least be on the t-shirt instead of the twenty-odd corporate logos), were up against the Five-tool Players who are apparently working to get accepted into the International Kickball Invitational which will be watched the world over on The Ocho.  They had a squadron of players as opposed to the measly seven of us that had to play every inning and would have to kick through every line-up if we didn’t get out so easily.  Of course, it’s hard to get on base when there are nine people covering just 150 square-feet.

But this is my quandry: despite how badly I sucked, I want to be better.  I’m too competitive to just do this for fun, especially if all the other teams are taking this seriously.  I want to compete and not lose 148 to 1.  No one on my team was really able to explain to me how getting beatdown on a Sunday afternoon was a fun time.  Or maybe they did and I just didn’t hear them because my ears were filled with blood.  All I know is that my thighs hurt like hell and my pride’s not much better.  But hey, at least I got to meet some new people and showed off my poor sportsman ship and horrifying physique.  That’s a win in my book.