Forget Blogspot

Once again, I decided to skip off to a new site.

rainer

BACK TO BLOGSPOT!!!

After a short hiatus with Tumblr, I am returning my posts to Blogspot. The reason why I'm doing this is because Tumblr, for all it's chic features and cool templates, sucks when it comes to customizing. There was no comment ability and it was difficult to find other blogs. I'll repost some of the stuff I put up over there so you can read it. Some of it's actually pretty good.

And yes, this is a famous painting...not just the cover of Coldplay's new CD. Although the album is pretty incredible. Go buy it.

New blog site

So I found a new website called Tumblr.com and decided that I am going to be posting there from now on.

It's a lot easier to use and I think it looks cooler. I can upload stuff from my cell phone or AIM. 

Blogspot has been good to me, but not good enough. I'm leaving.

NEW SITE:  http://jprainer.tumblr.com

My Business Card

For the summer job, here it is.

MGMT - The Weirdest Band to Ever Be Cool

During my average 8-5 workday, I like to take breaks from the grinding "intern work" to do some hardcore blog monitoring (via my account with Google Reader...a program whose value is beyond measure.) I subscribe to an RSS feed from Paste Magazine. If you've never heard of this magazine, check it out. They do some pretty kickin' writing. http://www.pastemagazine.com

Anyways, it was just the other day that I ran across an article from Paste announcing the release of a new music video from one of my favorite bands, MGMT. Now I should have blogged about these guys a while ago (like I did with Vampire Weekend), but with finals, traveling across the country, and beginning a busy summer internship, I never got around to it. Apathy kills, but I'll worry about that tomorrow.

The name of the song is "Electric Feel". The video starts of innocently enough. A dude with long hair is walking through a forest, nothing too special. Then all of a sudden he meets up with a bunch of other long haired people and everything breaks loose into a hobbit rave. Yeah. A freakin hardcore mythical dance party in the middle of the forest. And what music video would be complete without an animatronic band of forest creatures that is straight out of Chuck. E. Cheese?

During this mythical kegger, the hobbit creatures shoot the moon with harpoons and pull it down to earth. What happens next is weird. They slice open the moon and some kind of psychedelic blood pours out. The hobbits fill a bowl with this stuff and pour it all over themselves. The video just gets weirder and weirder.

As soon as I got done watching the video, I thought "Wow. That's pretty weird." Then I realized: This is the coolest video I've ever seen!

Electric Feel video (hi-res): http://court13.com/electricfeel.mov

The Dumbest Generation?

Mark Bauerlein, a professor of English at Emory University in Atlanta, GA has written a book entitled The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jepordizes our Future (Or, Don't Trust Anyone Under 30).

I would repeat that unnecessarily long title for you, but since I'm so stupid (because of technology induced ADD of course), I can't remeber it. I have a few problems with the basic premise of this book, but I also agree with some of the finer points Bauerlein makes.

Some of the main reasons for alarm that this books points out are the incredible statistics of actual stupidity that come out of America's high schools and universities. Kids believe that the most defended border in the world is the one dividing America and Mexico. Graduates do not have high enough literacy levels. Employers spend $1.3 billion teaching people how to write. And somehow, all of the blame falls upon this "dumbest generation". Apparently, I am the downfall of civilization.

Seriously though, these are awful statistics. I am ashamed that my generation has not been more academically succesful. However, I don't believe we are the ones who are at fault. I believe Mark Bauerline is part of the problem himself.

Here is a man writing about this awful future where Americans are fat, lazy slobs who do nothing but sit in fron of the computer and drool. We can't read. We can't write. Well, at least some of us can't read or write. The pied piper is blaming the rats for following him to their deaths! I blame this Professor of English and the entire generation preceeding us. In the 60's and 70's they were massively irresponsible and fried their brains on drugs. After recovering and coming of age in the Reagan era, they spent the mid to late 80's and the enitre 1990's raising us and discovering their identities as parents. Now they realize we don't know as much as they did when they were our age. And whose fault is it? It's theirs. The Baby Boomers pioneered strip clubs, hardcore pornography, casual divorce, ultra-violent outlets of entertainment for their children, and recreational drug use. Now they are blaming us for learning from their bad example. Their awful management of America's moral and political landscape has raped the nation's education system, leaving us dumb and illiterate. Instead of handing us a book, they handed us the remote control and the computer to shut us up. So where did we learn? The boob tube and the world wide web.

And instead of teaching us about our own geography, about one of the most beautiful and expansive nations on the planet, they decided that it was more important for us to focus on our feelings and fingerpainting. How dare Mark Bauerlein blame us for how we turned out? According to the Emory University website, he spent over two years as the Director for the Office of Research and Analysis for the National Endowment for the Arts. This is the same National Endowment for the Arts gave a highly coveted award to a picture of a crucifix immersed in human urine. And this man bemoans our stupidity? He wants us to learn who wrote the oratorio "Messiah" but will call this "Piss Christ" a work of art worthy of a $15,000 award?! That is how much the two "artists" who created the photograph received from the National Endowment of the Arts.

I guess that if I ever have trouble paying for my useless education, I'll just take a picture a picture of myself sticking the Bible into a used bedpan and send it to Mr. Bauerlein. The $15,000 still wouldn't be enough to cover just one year of tutelage under learned beings such as the author of this crummy book.

Fact Checking made easy!

http://www.newsweek.com/id/138536 <-- Newsweek article that turned me onto the book

http://www.english.emory.edu/people/faculty/bauerlein.htm <-- Emory University's faculty profile of Mark Bauerlein

http://www.dumbestgeneration.com/welcome.html <-- Promotional website for the book

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piss_Christ <-- Wikipedia article for the "Piss Christ"

Indiana Jones and the X-Files Skull

SPOILER ALERT:  THIS BLOG CONTAINS PLOT INFORMATION FROM THE NEW INDIANA JONES MOVIE!

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was released nationwide on May 22, 2008. Audiences around the nation waited in excitement as they counted down the days. 

You know exactly what everybody was thinking when they saw the posters and previews go up (most likely because you thought it yourself). "Wow! A new Indiana Jones movie! I hope it doesn't suck...but it probably will. Oh well, I'll still go see it anyways."

The last sentence there addresses an ongoing problem with the American movie-goer, but that is a rant that I will save for another time and place. The other part, however, is why I enjoyed this movie so much. I went into it with the mentality that BLOCKBUSTER MOVIES, BY THEIR VERY NATURE, SUCK. Again, that is a topic I will probably write about later.

I decided I would give this movie a chance, but expected the worst. Turns out that not only did Indy come back in style, but he got to meet some pretty interesting creatures on the way!

The film retained most of the elements I loved about the older movies. Indiana Jones was tough as nails and wouldn't take anything from anyone. They added more scenes of him as a professor (something I think the Temple of Doom movie lacked.) They also did a great job conveying his wild sense of adventure.

On top of the traditional elements, Spielberg added something new. ALIENS! Technically, I guess they were "inter-dimensional beings." But really, they were aliens. Some people have said that this takes away from the movie, that it makes the plot less believable. Not to me. I watched the X-Files religiously while it was still on television. I guess that means there is no such thing as a far-fetched story about extra-terrestrials.

Indiana Jones knows what Fox Mulder knew: The truth is out there. And Indy found it.