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Tonight was the first night of Dark Knight’s release in Vietnam. I saw it at Vincom in Hanoi, had the best seats in the house, in my opinion. (Thanks Thuy)

As much a Batman fan as I am, I have to side with Kyle “you won’t be disappointed. you just may not think it’s the greatest movie of all time.” it’s not but it is very, very good” and Trench.

John said it was the best movie of all time, something I suggested myself in January, but more jokingly. Emil and Mike really liked it as well.

So, it was very very good. But there was something…missing.

For me, a movie has to hit an emotional edge to really get me to just love it. Batman Begins was excellent but was missing this. The Dark Knight is the same way. I never felt extremely excited, happy, or sad, just not real super strong reaction to the movie. Movies that can make me feel a certain way keep on resonating through time. For me, The Matrix, My Sassy Girl, Heat, Godfather, those are the movies that ultimately rank among my favorite movies of all time.

The story has incredible depth. I can tell it will hold up amazing through multiple viewings, and I think I will end up seeing 3 times with various people within the next 2 weeks. The movie is about constant struggle for balance. An action means a equal reaction. Things that should happen (but usually don’t in movies for the sake of a good or happy ending) do happen here. Things in this world are “fair”, which make not make sense until you watch the movie. Characters have to balance each other, events have to balance. To me, this is the ultimate Joker story regardless of whether you’re talking about the comics, animated series, whatever. This is the true Joker. I just reread The Killing Joke, and some of the interactions between Joker and Batman are similar to those in The Dark Knight.

The movie asks so many questions about the character of humanity, question of sanity, I would use the term “morality play”, but I don’t even know what that word means.

I gave it a 9/10 on IMDB.

Other random notes:

• It’s long. Not that I don’t like long movies, or that maybe this was too long, but I did notice it was long.
• Everything shown in the various trailers, (I think I’ve seen 6 or 7 different ones) only takes you to half of the movie. I was quite surprised, and basically had no idea what was coming. What I assumed what was the end of the movie was just the middle part of it.
• Normally, you see a great movie, and you’d love to see the sequel ASAP. But with this, I feel like it was such a deep story, that you need time before seeing another one. Especially with the movie’s ending, we actually need a good length of real time to transpire so we can be ready for the next story.
• Batman Begins was focused on making a real-life based what-if version of the character, but Dark Knight starts to lose some of that. This is where you get into an extreme of an extreme unlikelihood.
• This is a mature and adult story. Like I said, it will hold up for a long time and repeated viewings.
• “Why so serious” “Let’s put a smile on that face”- I am fairly certain the way they sound in the trailers versus how they sound in the movie is not the same.

As a side note, I’m going to try to buy the Vietnamese version of the Dark Knight movie (Vietnamese text) poster. I’ll put up a picture of it if I’m successful.

There’s two I’ve seen, one’s the motorbike one, and the other is this one, the Joker one. I’ll be wanting the Joker.

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Who over 21 doesn’t know this song? Back in the day, when I was young- I’m not a kid anymore, but some days I wish I was a kid again. And that’s all I know of the song, but it was a damn good song.

This post is for Kyle, who was gracious enough to give me the “Ahmad” album for my iPod before I left for Vietnam.

One thing to note: the article tries to make it sound so hard for someone to get into Stanford by transfer. This is in fact true, but you have to remember, Ahmad is a former music star, and can probably afford the tuition. And black. With all the academic qualifications. Who doesn’t want that story among your alumni?

Rapper turns scholar

HE HAS NEW HOME ON STANFORD CAMPUS

By Larry Gordon
Los Angeles Times

Article Launched: 08/24/2008 01:37:13 AM PDT

LOS ANGELES - Ahmad Ali Lewis made a deal with his mother back when he was a high school student: He would go to college unless he got a recording contract for his upbeat rap music.

It was a big if. But Lewis, 17, an honors student and top football player, skipped the college entrance exams and signed with Giant Records. “I said S.A.T. - whatever. I want to R.A.P.,” he recalls.

His 1994 album, called “Ahmad,” included a hit single, “Back in the Day,” a nostalgic riff on his south Los Angeles childhood. In it, he rapped:

“I miss those days, and so I pout like a grown jerk

Wishin all I had to do now, was finish homework.

It’s true you don’t realize really what you got til it’s gone

And I’m not gonna sing another sad song, but

Sometimes I do sit and reminisce then

Think about the years I was raised, back in the days.”

Looking back, Lewis said he does not regret his teenage decision, even though his early success was followed by struggles in a music industry he criticized as promoting violence in the black community. Now 32 and the father of a 4-year-old son, he is still recording songs but he is also finishing homework.

Ahmad the first-name-only rapper has become Ahmad Ali Lewis the Stanford-bound scholar.

Lewis enrolled two years ago at Long Beach City College and graduated in May as valedictorian, with a 4.0 grade point average. He was accepted as a transfer student by several universities for this fall and chose Stanford. “When I stepped on campus, something in my gut said, ‘Dude, this is where you belong,’ ” said Lewis, who plans to double major in sociology and African-American studies. He expects to get a doctorate in social work and become a professor.

“I love teaching,” said Lewis, who tutored at an elementary school. “Rapping and teaching are not that far apart. You’re rapping, you’re talking. You’re a professor, you’re talking.”

Compact but broad shouldered at 5-foot-7 and 155 pounds, Lewis still has the build of the running back he was in high school. His head is shaven and he has two tattoos: on his left shoulder, a map of Africa containing a woman’s face and on his right forearm, “4th Avenue Jones,” the name of the soul-rock-rap band he co-founded with his former wife, singer Tena Jones. When he talks, he waves his hands in the open-fingered style of rap performance.

He speaks of his Christian faith and academic ambitions with enthusiasm, humor and what he jokingly concedes is the “egomania” of a well-loved child. His mother, Paulette Holt, inspired him by starting college when she was a divorced mother of three and also “brainwashed me,” he said. “I always thought I was better than average, that I was handsome, smart and talented. It was a trick,” he said. “Being black in America, from the ghetto, you need that extra little bit of confidence. So that’s kind of my mission to give other kids that kind of confidence.”

The odds were against him at Stanford, which accepted just 20 of this year’s 1,200 transfer applicants. But Lewis was admitted and offered a financial aid package that will cover his tuition, room and board, which total more than $47,000 this school year. He’ll also receive funds for books and living costs each year through a highly competitive grant program the Virginia-based Jack Kent Cooke Foundation offers community college students transferring to four-year schools.

“Ahmad was really a standout in all the areas,” said Vance Lancaster, a Cooke foundation spokesman. “He is truly a scholar and a humanitarian who just happens to be a chart-topping rapper.”

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_10290698?source=rss

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I told Kyle that Professor Layton and The Curious Village (Layton) is like being Sherlock Holmes without the cocaine.

That’s not quite true, that was just me trying to be funny. Layton is an adventure game where you take the role of the Professor and his young protege Luke. The pair have been invited to St. Mystere (the curious village) to solve a mystery of inheritance. Once they get to the village, however, many more mysteries (puzzles) are unveiled, and the duo have to solve them all in order to unlock the initial mystery of the inheritance.

Layton is a bit different from a normal point and click adventure game like The Lost Journey or the old LucasArts SCUMM games. The puzzles here are more straight forward. Click on a person or item, and a puzzle prompt will come up, and you’ll be given a chance to solve it.

Contrast this with other games where you may not know what you’re supposed to do, and how you’re supposed to do it, Layton is never confusing, and that’s what I like about it. Over 120 puzzles in all, and I hear you can download more over the DS if you have connect it to the Internet.

The puzzles you see are reminders of IQ tests or MENSA, or the GMAT. Basically, if you do well on these, you feel like you’ve proven something (I told you I was smart, DS! EAT THAT!) For the most part, they’re fair, but there are a few that a worded trickily (to trick you!)

You can find coins placed in random areas that can be used to buy hints for puzzles you may get stuck on. Kyle said he didn’t use any, which suggests to me he is Sherlock Holmes because I was using coins all the time. That and tremendous help from the girlfriend really helped me get through the game, although I outright cheated (Gamefaqs-style) once.

The cover art (see above) says “Solve brainteasers to crack the case”, and yeah, there you go, that’s right.

Layton is an outstanding game, it oozes (way to pick an uncommon phrase, me) quality. The puzzles are a ton of fun, but there’s also an interesting story that uses well-animated CG cut-scenes and voiceover work that create a deeper level of immersion. For those looking for replay, you can replay any puzzle after you’ve solved it, and while you don’t have to solve every puzzle to finish the game or do them in order, finishing more puzzles will unlock even MORE puzzles, so definitely worth going the extra effort.

I’d recommend this to anyone. Definitely worth a purchase, and worth your time.

Bring me the sequel! (might be coming in November)

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I think I’ve already seen this, I think Kyle showed me this a long time ago, but it was taken down (bootleg camcorder footage in a theater). I think it’s even in a previous post of mine.

Nonetheless, watch this hopefully more legal (have not watched, speed to slow for me at home) version:

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Here is some data I manually pulled for English music in Vietnam, kind of an unofficial ranked (my suggestion is that this is pretty damn accurate) list of the top acts in Vietnam right now (all of these albums are fairly new as well, so I guess the data is reasonably current)

1. High School Musical 2 OST

2. High School Musical: The Concert

3. Avril Lavigne: The Best Damn Thing

4. High School Musical OST

5. Linkin Park: Minutes To Midnight

6. Shayne Ward: No U Hang Up | If That’s OK With You

7. Tata Young: I Believe

8. Ne-Yo: Because of You

9. Justin Timberlake: Future Sex / Love Sounds

10. Rihanna: Good Girl Gone Bad

11. What A Girl Wants OST

12. Akon: Trouble

13. Julio Iglesias: Love Songs

The Long Tail talks about how people started getting away from pop music after the Internet opened up and people really had the tools to be exposed to things that better suited their individual tastes (Amazon, Napster, Rhapsody, mp3 blogs, etc.)

I noticed this happened to me, but I always assumed I just was getting older with growing taste, asking friends (Kyle) for suggestions and so on. I didn’t realize the Internet itself was changing our habits, and there were plenty of people like me learning about the whole different spectrum of music in the world.

This hasn’t happened in Vietnam yet, even with Vietnamese music. People don’t buy music here, nor do they pay for concerts, and they don’t quite have the tools or knowledge yet to go deeper into music catalogues. Thus, most people here are very pop heavy.

Just look above. Julio Iglesias surprises me, but the album name Love Songs reminds me, Vietnamese love nhac tinh yeu (romantic love songs).

Btw, here’s a nice site that shows the top music in countries (US, Japan, Korea, Europe) all over the world: Tokyo Stage (http://tokyostage.haru.tv/)

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It’s taken me awhile to really understand Twitter. I didn’t use it until recently (thanks Kyle) but now I like it.

For a long while, micro-blogging to me was a guy just saying, “I am in the airport” “Bags taking a long time” Taxi is hot”- stupid crap like that.

And it’s true, there are plenty of people who do that.

But as I’ve started to use Twitter and think about my own experiences, I realize Twitter, for bloggers anyway, is for those times you have an idea or thought but you’re either too far from a computer to jot it down or it’s not enough for you to write a blog post about. That happens to me all the time, where I think to myself “That’s a great idea”, or “That’s a great idea for a blog post”, or “Wow, I am so witty”, and I end up forgetting it and it goes unrecorded in the annals of time.

In the US, I can see why it’s popular because you can just send stuff through text messaging (Kyle on his Sidekick) and a number of other ways. In Vietnam, I only have a desktop Twitter client, but since I’m around my computer so much, it’s not too bad. But it would definitely be bigger if I could use my mobile to text thoughts in and also send pictures directly to my account from my mobile phone camera. Twitter would definitely would be much more entwined in my life if I had a qwerty phone and mobile access to the service.

Kyle does a really good job at showing what makes Twitter worthwhile. I know him pretty well, so his updates tell me a little bit about what’s going on without it be a list of play-by-play, it’s more of a color commentary on his life.

I saw an ad saying Snoop was on Twitter, and his timeline is more of the generic, “At the airport”, “Got to the arena”, uninteresting bs I could care less about.

In Vietnam, you have so many bloggers who are doing it (blogging) because it’s trendy and they think they’re supposed to, the Internet society is definitely too young here to really understand a service like Twitter. I would even claim that they’re overall a very young blogging society, like a year 2002 USA.

Oh yeah, if you’re interested in my Twitter, find me at “genericdude”

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Seriously, one of my favorite Warriors videos ever. Nothing says Warriors more than this video. Plus, I was at this game with Kyle and Midland, the best game I have seen in person in my life. I think this was 2005 at the end of the 04-05 season when Baron had just come and Warriors reeled off 9 straight victories or something.

The song’s One on One by Hall & Oates.

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I love the Warriors. I love watching live basketball. I also live in Vietnam.

That is often a game over. But not on December 28th! I will be back in the US and enjoying my favorite team of all times playing b-ball in Oakland! Merry Christmas to me!

Friday, 7:30 PM. Oakland Arena. (will be taking pics)

The Fans:

• Kyle x 2
• Emil
• Midland
• Me
• My sister Kim
• Daniyel Garcia x 2
• Andrew

The players:

• Baron!
• Steve Jack!
• Matt Barnes!
• Kabuike!
• Andris the Giant!
• TMNT Harrington!
• Ellis to the Rim!
• Air France!
• and….
• AI
• Carmelo
• K-Mart

Hells yeah! I think the photos below describes the fun to be had (take out J-Rich):

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To add insult to injury, Metro writes that other contributors have been receiving “ceiling-high stacks of cash” while studio musicians, who have “supplied the major portion of what makes the game series so enjoyable” are left in the cold with sore throats and pockets turned out. (Editor’s note: can someone at Harmonix, RedOctane or Activision please forward us pics of your cash stack?) I’m fairly certain the argument can be made that there were dozens of programmers, engineers, artists and production staffers supplying the major portion of what makes Guitar Hero so enjoyable, but it’s certainly less fun in black and white terms.

Music Industry: Are Musicians Getting The Shaft From Guitar Hero?
—-

Yes, Kyle, can I check out your stacks of cash?

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3: times having gone to the Snake Village in Hanoi to eat snake.
2: times eating snake heart (still beating when you swallow)

Last night went with coworkers to have some snake and snake wine. It’s a great time out filled with all bits of snake, including penis + bile, and you also get to enjoy a ton of snake + body part + wine as well (ex. snake blood wine, snake penis wine, etc.)

Putting a live (hmmm, maybe it’s not live) beating snake heart into your mouth and then swallowing is much more of a mental task than a physical one.

Imagine a bloody still-beating heart just newly ripped out of a tenacious snake, you taking the heart, putting it in your mouth, and then swallowing it.

What’s worse to me, in terms of the mental image, is what if you chewed on the beating heart instead of swallowing it straight?

I just say, stop thinking about it, and just do it. It’s actually pretty easy. Put it in your mouth, swallow, and then use some wine to wash it done if necessary. This time around I actually didn’t swallow it immediately, but while the imagination of a bleeding, beating heart in your mouth is pretty gruesome, the reality of it is not that big of a deal. I don’t think you can really feel the heart beat in your mouth (it doesn’t beat that fast, and the heart is small).

Kyle says, “Most baller shit ever.”

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