this freaking drink...

Most water enhancers contain a certain amount of acid, aiding in the dissolving of the powder while providing a tartness of flavor. The A&W Root Beer water enhancer is not one of those. In fact, it's pretty weird. Non-carbonated root beer is fine when it's some old fashioned, down to earth thang. That's not what this is. The A&W Root Beer water enhancer doesn't even have the bite of a regular root beer. It's just sweet and weird.

A Salty Piece of Land by Jimmy Buffett

I see Jimmy Buffett like a tropical Mark Twain who also writes great songs. He knows a lot about a lot of things, like: boats, americana, pirates, business, music business, fishing, geography, and horses. A Salty Piece of Land tells a score of interesting stories surrounding the tropical adventures of a fugitive cowboy named Tully Mars.

Twenty pages in I decided it was time to learn fly fishing, immediately. As of writing this, I haven’t yet taken up any kind of fishing. Instead I kept reading as Tully had some of the best times you can imagine, as well as some pretty bad times. Either way it made me want to see more of the world and plan some adventures of my own.

Vampire's Kiss (feat. Nicolas Cage)

Do you love the 80s and comedy horror films? If the answer's yes, then you will love this film. Awesome in some ways and pretty bad in others, I enjoyed it. Nick Cage was was great. In Vampire's Kiss, he plays an office ass hole with a boujie accent, named Peter; the type of guy who deserves to be a vampire. As legend has it, turning into a vampire can be pretty rough. In this instance, it's okay, because we don't like Peter and we don't mind seeing him suffer. And, of course, what happens to him is scary. It's a fun watch but altogether pretty meh.

1. Raising Arizona
2. Leaving Las Vegas
3. Adaptation
4. City of Angels
5. Gone in 60 Seconds
6. Matchstick Men
7. Vampire's Kiss
8. Honeymoon in Vegas
9. The Family Man
10. The Weather Man
11. The Croods

Zone Under Construction

It will probably be a few days before I work out the new format, and even longer before I get all of my old posts in line with the new style. This is the aesthetic I originally intended for The PJ Zone. Blogger's ugly built-in format was just a place holder. In a few months I'm going to have a page, connected to my blog, where I will sell and promote my music.

If you don't know, I've released a lot of tapes and I've been in a lot of bands who all have music to be heard. And I'd like to make a page for people to go and access all of that work, instead of scouting out different, disconnected bandcamp pages.

The Daughter of Hassan by Penny Jordan

I’d never read a ‘sheikh romance’ before but I knew it needed to happen. This one wasn’t recommended or anything. In fact, I just picked it up at a thrift store. By its worn spine, I could tell it had been read a couple times and must be good. The Daughter of Hassan is the love story of little English Danielle and half-middle eastern, half-French Jourdan. He says French things and Penny Jordan often refers to his chest hair as ‘crisp’.

Jourdan's not really a good dude at all, despite his inherent sexiness, among other romantic qualities. Danielle might enjoy abandoning everything in her life to live as the wife of a sheikh with unlimited wealth. Why not? Love is powerful. 

Adaptation (feat. Nicolas Cage)

Adaptation is a good film, I think. Cage plays Charlie Kaufman, screenwriter famous for writing mind bending films like Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. There are a few things to be said about writers who put themselves in their fictional stories. Kaufman's crippling self-doubt succeeds in transmitting a special, resonating frequency connecting writer, character, and viewer. Making himself a character, I think was also meant to comment on the Writer's inevitable agenda. Every story is inevitably told in a way that flatters its teller and Kaufman reminds us not to fully trust our narrator.

In such ways, Adaptation is kind of deep. It's meta and dishes a little disrespect to its viewers, all in good fun. The premise: Kaufman is writing a film adaptation for a book called The Orchid Thief. It's a serious challenge, so instead Adaptation is about the writing of the adaptation of The Orchid Thief. Clever.

Cage is incredible in this film. Meryl Streep is a pleasure as always. Chris Cooper makes a great Florida Man, feral but irresistible. Adaptation breaks the rules of contemporary Hollywood. It experiments with narrative styles and nested stories. It's clever, but not remarkably so. Adaptation is adequately ambitious and executed to satisfaction.

1. Raising Arizona
2. Leaving Las Vegas
3. Adaptation
4. City of Angels
5. Gone in 60 Seconds
6. Matchstick Men
7. Honeymoon in Vegas
8. The Family Man
9. The Weather Man
10. The Croods

The Last Days of Socrates by Plato

Sometimes in life I have a hard time solving for Y.* You too? Suppose there is a certain wisdom to admitting you don’t know the answers. Suppose there is evidence of the afterlife in our inherent human forms? The Last Days of Socrates is a collection of Socrates’s most notable and important dialogues. As you might expect, he was a next-level thinker. Thinking was what he was passionate about and why not? If you are really good at thinking, then you can likely rationalize your way out of all suffering.

I probably could have read more about this book before diving in, but philosophy seems like a tough thing to summarize. In his Phaedo argument, Socrates tries to prove reincarnation with the same logic of why two can never be three at the same time. Aside from this last (near death) dialogue, I think the rest of his arguments are quite nice.

Of course I would like to learn some more modern philosophies but it seemed logos to start at the beginning if I am going to co-opt any preexisting worldviews. Should you read The Last Days of Socrates? Sure. Especially if you are pretending to know about philosophy.

*Solving for Y is a reference to an episode Pete and Pete in which Ellen boycotts math because she can’t use algebra to solve for Why.

Welcome to Adulthood, Captain! by Rob Spence

Welcome to Adulthood, Captain!, more of a zine than a book, is collection of poetry by my friend Rob Spence, mostly written when he was a kid. If you don’t know Spence, he’s kind of a sweetheart, moreso than most people. So you might imagine as a kid, he was especially sweet. That’s the kind of poetry you’ll get here, a sort of return to innocence.

If you’re feeling especially jaded about adulthood, or you’re a friend of Spence who doesn’t want to read the free ebook version, I invite you to borrow my copy. It will take you an hour to read it. We can even arrange a pick up and drop off with my porch (not your porch).

Leaving Las Vegas (feat. Nicolas Cage)

Have you ever tried to escape your problems by focusing instead on the problems of your loved ones? Sure, we all do it. Sometimes it helps to get a change of scenery. Have you ever been a sex worker and fallen in love with a suicidal alcoholic? Probably not. But what if? What could go wrong?

I read the little synopsis for this film, provided by my IMDB or whatever, but I don't think anything could have prepared me for Leaving Las Vegas. It goes where you sometimes wish it wouldn't go but it has to. It's that kind of movie. It moves you and when it doesn't move you it's still trying.

In most of his work, Cage is a great actor. His Cagey style doesn't often work but in Leaving Las Vegas, it Does work in a way most directors fail to capture. I could imagine many guys playing H.I. in Leaving Arizona or the dad in The Croods. However, I think Leaving Las Vegas would have been much different without Cage.

Elisabeth Shue, the only co-star, was also stellar. Her character Sera provides short monologues throughout the film as we watch our characters go through their self-destructive beats. It reminds me of that part of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles when April is reflecting at the farm house. In case you are wondering, I do think the 1989 TMNT movie is great.

Back to Leaving Las Vegas. It is austere in a way that is 99% genuine. The moody saxophone jazz music really puts us in it, lending us patience to watch these scenes that are beautiful and horrific. I'm putting this film at number two and I would be surprised if anything could top it. It equals Raising Arizona in aesthetic and story, sure. However, Leaving Las Vegas is not so entertaining. Its story is more of a slow burn and it's so dark. I don't know if I want to invite anyone to watch it with me.

1. Raising Arizona
2. Leaving Las Vegas
3. City of Angels
4. Gone in 60 Seconds
5. Matchstick Men
6. Honeymoon in Vegas
7. The Family Man
8. The Weather Man
9. The Croods

Little Girl Lost by Drew Barrymore with Todd Gold

Little Girl Lost is like a very long magazine article. It's comprised of Barrymore's autobiographical narratives, always followed Todd Gold's tell-all pieces, regarding Drew’s childhood descent into drug and alcohol addiction. I was interested in seeing how children do end up doing drugs and alcohol, since as a kid, I didn’t know where to begin. I remember 6th grade rumors about kids who were druggies and burnouts. How did they manage that?

Sometimes I forget that not all parents are as involved in their kids lives as mine were. I’m lucky my parents were married and my mom was usually home until my younger sisters were old enough to go to daycare. Of course you might argue that Drew Barrymore was lucky, due to being a rich movie star. And I wonder if there are a lot of people who overlook every other factor because they’re mad about not having wealth, as if being rich or famous would make them a better person. Look what happened to Drew. Would we be interested if she were not rich and famous? Maybe. But we’d probably also never find a book of her story.

The Bullet Journal Method by Ryder Carroll

The Bullet Journal Method is really cool. Did I need to read a whole book on it? No. In fact, the supplemental book to the popular method is mostly compiled of self-helpy analogies while intermittently telling you how to BuJo. The BuJo method is, however, very cool. I consider it a solid 3rd party supplement to my functionality.

Are you one of those people who wants to do things but ends up instead not doing things? Do you think it would be helpful to keep track of your activities and experiences? The Bullet Journal Method is designed to keep us on track with our goals while living intentionally. I think it’s great and you should try it out. There doesn’t need to be a book about it unless you’re assigning a book to your team of corporate underlings who still don’t know how to properly manage themselves.

Honeymoon in Vegas (feat. Nicolas Cage)

In this 1992 film, Nicolas Cage starts to get really Cagey. He plays a private detective named Jack Singer who, on his mother's death bed, swears never to get married or to love anyone as much as he loves her. Eventually he does agree to get married in Vegas, to his girlfriend Betsy (played by Sarah Jessica Parker). All sorts of strange things can go wrong in Vegas, especially with Jack, who has a personal interest in poker.

I think gambling makes a great story device. It keeps us on the edge and gives us a clear view of stakes and odds. It's cool that this film gives us a view of Las Vegas during the daytime, outside of the packed strip. Sarah Jessica Park made a very loveable girl-next-door. In fact, I wish she'd had more roles like this. James Caan (the dad character in Elf with Will Farrell) plays a great antagonist, one you can sympathize with. Honeymoon in Vegas had all of the makings of a truly great film.

However... it failed me in a lot of ways. Jack does go on a crazy adventure with its pitfalls and glimmers of hope. There are a lot of Elvis Presley impersonators, which is fine. I guess they are a very important part of Las Vegas culture? I don't know. While it's cool to see children and black men impersonating The King. IMH, if you don't think Elvis impersonators are the funniest thing in the world, then you will not think this movie is funny.

James Caan's character is a professional gambler, but I don't think his negative traits stick well. He may be a little scummy, but why? What caused it? He's a family man and his family loves him. What is it that causes him to be so severely scummy for no reason aside from greed and lust? Is that just the Vegas Effect? Cage's character is a private eye but his investigative skills have no impact on the adventure. Shouldn't they?

While Honeymoon in Vegas had all the makings of a truly great film, I think it really failed to deliver. For huge fans, there's a Broadway musical based on the film, also called Honeymoon in Vegas. Tony Danza plays the bad guy. With great luck, I'll see it someday and write a comparison.

1. Raising Arizona
2. City of Angels
3. Gone in Sixty Seconds
4. Matchstick Men
5. Honeymoon in Vegas
6. The Family Man
7. The Weather Man
8. The Croods

Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny

Here I’ve found a fantasy series that is entirely my thing. Nine Princes in Amber skips everything boring and jumps right into conflict and tension. Zelazny’s violent scenes tell you just enough to make them exciting. Every piece of his world is delivered with reckless fun, leaving you still with a sense of wonder.

There is a certain hard-boiled pragmatism in Amber that I wish was present in more fantasy writing. Perhaps Zelazy's take was a sign of the times, when most high fantasy was pulp-oriented and the novels were shorter. I loved this book and I love 70s fantasy. Expect me to post more about this kind of stuff.

On the Edges of Elfland by David Russel Mosley

This book was written and published by my old friend David Mosley. In high school, we were in a band together called December In Rome. He used to wear plaid pants. Now he wears a bow tie. With a degree in theology and a focus on writing about things that are either Christian or magical, I think David has secured himself as a C.S. Lewis type. Which is a pretty cool novelty for me, if only I got to see David once in a while.

On the Edges of Elfland self-stylized as a fairy tale for grown-ups. Our protagonist is an adult, more specifically a young man who just recently finished college. Aside from the adulthood of our protagonist this book may be more of a bedtime story. Good and well told, I find the story lacking in allegory beside the suggestion that you should do things that are helpful instead of harmful because good is good and bad is bad. Adult readers know better than that, perhaps from the first time a yin yang made its way into their visage.

Mosley’s goblins are the antagonists because they are goblins and goblins are bad. They're not special, not like his gnomes. Mosley's gnomes are wonderful and fresh, and I always like gnomes in general. Kudos to the mention of brownies, conjuring folklore beyond standard high fantasy Tolkienisms.

There are a few things about On the Edges of Elfland which I could nit-pick about and attribute to why I think self-publishing is not always the way to go. However, I’m stoked about Mosley getting his feet wet and I can’t wait to read his next (fictional) thing.