Jonathan Field - Maker of Random Stuff

Plans

And so begins my last month at Zappos.com… next Monday Brent starts and I will have until March 1st to help him get situated as well as possible. Also by March 1st, I’m hoping to have somehow got rid of everything in my house here, and to have hopefully sold the house as well. That’s a lot to do in as short a month as February. And then the very next day I fly off!

First I’m flying to Boston. But I’ll only be there for a week, visiting with my sister and my dad and their significant others. On March 10th I fly to South Africa for a two month stay. In South Africa, I’ll be helping my uncle set up computers in disadvantaged schools. It’s a cool little program that he and his partner set up a few years ago. They’re just going to give me a bunch of computers and point me at a school. I get to figure out how to approach things. It’s exciting. And scary. But mostlly exciting.

After that, I have decided what I’m going to do. I’m going to drive from Las Vegas to Tampa Florida, and I’m going to live with my Mom and Tim for six months. My mom’s health hasn’t been that great and I want to spend some time with her and see if I can help her out. Also, I’ve been too out of touch with family for too long since I moved out west. While I’m there I’ll hopefully find some inspiration to work on some creative projects, most likely music and maybe related internet ideas.

After that we’ll just about be in 2008 — I hope I’ll have some different perspective by then. If not, I think I’ll just go work at In-n-Out.

Good movies I’ve seen recently: Pan’s Labyrinth & Pursuit of Happiness

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13 Responses to Plans

  1. Be sure to install Counter-Strike for all the disadvantage kids.

    Also you mismisspelled happiness :)

    • Yes, counter-strike is very popular in South Africa as most of the youth want to be ready for the real deal if and when the shitstorm from the horn oozes down, or in case they have to fight the crime epidemic themselves. Good thing I’ve polished up this year… at least I’ll be ready.

      And the spelling! If there’s one message in the movie, it’s that “happyness” is spelled with a “y”. Hmm… should I correct it now in the post? What’s common etiquette?

      Oh: congrats to you and your hot biatch. It’s about time you two stopped sinning.

      • Etiquette dictates that you discreetly correct the error in the original post and then pretend it never happened by replying to my earlier comment with something to the effect of, “What are you talking about? I spelled it right. Maybe you should get your eyes checked. Asshole…”

        • I’m particularly fond of leaving the mistake in but crossing it out and following it by the correction so that everybody knows you are a Professional Blogger and are accountable for your mistakes even though nobody in the world gives a flying fuck.

  2. You neglected to mention Memphis in May!

    Children of Men next week, ya? It’s playing at the $3 Trop!

    • I was trying not to mention it to the masses, so that there would be more barbeque for us!

      Yeah, I very much want see Children of Men. And for $3… hell, I’d even watch Blood Rayne!

  3. Pan’s Labyrinth! You’re so lucky. I’m still trying to get myself in town to see it. You’d think I’d be able to now that it’s playing in Dedham and Randolph, too.

    It sounds like you have an eventful and exciting year ahead of you. I hope you continue to post so we can read all about your adventures.

    • I was pretty worried at first that it wasn’t going to come to Las Vegas at all … so few arthouse films do. But eventually I think they ran out of Wayans Brothers movies and they brought it out here and it really is pretty great. Terribly dark, too.

  4. Pan’s Labyrinth. What are your thoughts? I thought the cinematography was great, the story was solid, and the acting was good but it seems gratuitously violent. Almost enough so to detract from the rest. I mean, they did sell it as a fairy tale for adults and the original fairy tales were damn violent so I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. maybe I’m just getting to be a pansy in my old age.

    • I agree the violence was over the top. Yet I liked it that way… it gave a brutal realism to the story and it made me have a lot more fear for the characters, so I don’t think it was literally gratuitous.

      I remember in “Bound” where they cut the guy’s fingers off, and in the commentary they talk about how the studio wanted them to cut that scene, but they maintained that it wasn’t gratuitous, it was a critical moment for convincing the audience that the antagonist was willing to do such things, to instill real terror, so that later in the film when one of the the protaganists has their fingers in the garden shears, you believe that the filmmakers will go there, that they’re willing to cross the line. An effective technique, says I.

      That’s a good point about fairy tales traditionally being violent too… the Brothers Grimm would be proud.

      • Well, there’s the fact that the main evil guy was so evil and then there’s showing him shoot someone in the head and seeing the entry wound and the blood spurt out. I was just turned off by the graphic visual detail. I think, for me anyhow, the point would have been equally made if they panned the camera up just in time not to see the blood and all.

        I know you’re never one to shy away from the occasional spurt of blood though.

        maybe it’s just in the context of the world right now that it got to me.

        regardless I still really enjoyed the movie as a whole. The special fx and cinematography were spectacular.

        • boom boom boom!

          Jennifer and I saw it a couple of weeks ago. I listened to Del Toro on NPR and he said what you said about the violence – the original fairy tales were really quite violent and so was the spanish civil war and he didn’t want to shy away from that. Or something like that.

          If you’re bored:

          http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7000935

          The spurts of blood were all added later because they weren’t allowed to use any explosives (squibs) in the forest where they were shooting. So the blood spurting was lovingly crafted later, and they chose that color red just to get to you :)

  5. Mmmmmm. In-n-Out. Yessssss…No! Wait. You will come and busker your way around the NYC subway. That is much more… smelly. I mean fun.

    Oooh loved El Laberinto del Fauno too btw. Facists, and mandrakes and…

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