The Greatest Break-Up Video Ever

Today, my sister brought to my attention the most hilarious video I've seen in a while and the greatest break-up video ever.

Justine (username "jpmetz") mostly posts makeup tutorial videos - making yourself look tan, making yourself look like some actress from a movie I didn't see, etc. There are also videos of her ranting and making funny faces. In most of her videos, Justine is pretty angry. But in "how to look like ANGELA," she takes the anger to another level. And there are amusing results.

It's not necessary to be an expert in makeup application in order to understand this video. The sarcasm is delivered well enough to help even the most clueless male get the difference between classy and cheap looks.

I don't feel too bad about laughing at this. Mostly because it's funny, but also because this woman's [I'm hoping ex-]boyfriend sounds like a loser. Enjoy.

A Legalized Form of Torture Worse than Waterboarding

[Whiny southern accent] "I'm a spoiled brat, y'all!"

This Tuesday, I went with a couple friends to Port Washington to watch Hannah Montana: The Movie. We chose that day because one of my friends gets free movie tickets every Tuesday, and there's no way I was paying to see that piece of trash. Actually, trash does not do this movie justice. It's one of those atrocities you have to see to believe. So to help you steer clear of the theater, I'm going to give you as clear a mental image as possible.

First, there's a bratty girl who always has a sour look on her face. Seriously, have you ever actually looked at Miley Cyrus for a prolonged period? She forces a smile, a furrowed brow or a goofy face to badly match her words, but her face's rest state is always a nasty pucker. And her teeth are enormous. Just looking at her for the entire movie alone made it horrifically bad. But she had to make it worse by opening that scowled mouth to yell out some poorly written lines and sing off key.

Then there's a father who is a failed southern version of Danny Tanner on Full House. Billy Ray Cyrus is clearly trapped in a time when he thought his hair and personality were considered cool, but not in the same way as an average father. It's as if he is caught in a time warp, and he becomes more deluded because he mistakes his daughter pulling him to the top for people actually liking him.

And he can't even play himself on screen. I guess the different name of the character really had him struggling, even though it nearly rhymed with his own. Or he is a great actor and just a bad father in real life. In that case, he was dead-on. Miley is a brat, so he has her blow off her responsibilities to go to Tennessee. She acts like a nut at a dinner with the mayor, so he breaks up with his girlfriend. The logic here is hard to follow (a.k.a. ignore) if you're not eight years old.

The rest of the cast is equally as stupid. There's a bumbling English tabloid reporter whose only purpose is cheap laughs similar to what you can find in a Wayans Brothers movie. And don't forget the townspeople who desperately need eyeglasses. Hannah Montana takes off a blonde wig and everyone is shocked that she’s actually Miley. I think I would be more inclined to go along with the Clark Kent-esque disguise if she had superpowers. But everything else is some ridiculous version of reality, so why should it be suspended for that one aspect?

This movie is dreadful. The script, the acting and the music are all horrendous. I realize that I'm looking at this from the perspective of someone older than the target audience, but I don't think that matters. Kids' movies used to make more sense, be mildly entertaining for the adults who were dragged along (check out a Pee Wee movie if you don't believe me. There are jokes aimed at the parents), and have some sort of lesson to be learned. There’s no real lesson in this movie. They push that whole "it's not the destination, it's the journey" garbage down everyone's throats, but that’s less of a moral and more of something they got off an inspirational cubicle poster with a cat on it.

I laughed a lot during those two hours I will never get back, but that was mostly due to my friends and I fighting over a pair of 3D glasses (the movie is not in 3D, we just brought them along) and making jokes amongst ourselves about how stupid a scene was (Miley goes around in a revolving door about 12 times, but it was supposed to be dramatic).

Don't see this movie unless it's free, a funny friend is on hand and you have a high threshold for pain.

He Gone

MTV made its greatest contribution to the world a couple years ago, but the effort went largely unnoticed thanks to the network burying this fantastic content underneath hours upon hours of trash TV.

Room 401 was a short-lived "reality" show that can only be described as a cross between Candid Camera and Scare Tactics. Except, instead of Shannen Doherty's messed-up eye hosting the show, Jared Padalecki (who played 'Dean' in Gilmore Girls) delivered terrible one-liners that likely had Mitch Hedberg rolling over in his grave. The series on the whole wasn't very good, although the special effects were amazing for a supposedly live show, and it was canceled after about ten episodes.

But a clip from one of the episodes has defied all odds and remained in circulation on the Internet. It is the only good segment from that entire series. And it is hilarious. Watch this exhumed hilarious clip and laugh your butt off like 'Date My Mom' never happened.

The buildup is a bit slow, but stick with it. You will see later why it was important. And the anticipation only makes the end even more hysterical.

Take note that at the end of this video, nobody informs the victims that it was just an elaborate prank. These people went home thinking that everything they saw actually happened.

Thriller Killers

Great thrillers are great movies. But everybody knows what it's like to sit through a thriller that's so awful it's not even campy. So what makes a good thriller? Is it in the special effects or the story? Is it in the music or the suspense? Well, I'm not entirely sure. But after watching too many of these bad movies, what I do know is what is sure to kill a thriller.

1. Prank phone calls, especially when the villain is just breathing heavily on the other line. Not only is something like this totally overplayed, it's just not scary. If the person on the other end doesn't respond right away, normal people just assume it's a telemarketer and hang up. Nobody stays on the line just to see what will happen, especially if the caller is being creepy. So if there's a prank call in a movie, not only is the audience angry that the actress (because in a movie, it's always a woman who's afraid of a telephone) picked up the phone time and time again, but they are also thinking that she is a total idiot for flipping out.

Also overplayed and not scary: getting the sheriff involved. There's always a point where the actress has had enough and calls the local sheriff, telling him that someone keeps pranking her, probably as an innocent joke. He gets back to her much later in the movie, after she has been terrorized a lot more. And the conversation goes like this:

Ring. Ring.
"Stop calling me, you freak!"
"Jenny! Jenny, I traced the call."
"Sheriff Average?"
"Jenny, I traced the call. It's coming from inside the house."
Jenny drops the phone and backs up. The audience sees the bad guy's shadow behind her.
"Did you hear me? I said it's coming from inside the house. Get out-"

Click. That was the sound of both the phone call ending and my TV turning off. I hope the character dies.

2. Many bad thrillers also have a point in the movie where the stalked person runs into someone they know, screams, and explains what is going on. That person mocks them, only to become the next victim. If your friend Jenny was screaming that somebody was after her and she was crying and worked up, would you really laugh? No, and especially not in today's world. But what really bothers me is the death of the friend.

Jenny thinks the killer is behind her. She runs into another room. She sees the back of Josh (because he always has some playful-sounding name), her friend from before who laughed at her when she cried that she was being stalked. A wave of relief passes through her. She calls his name but he doesn't respond. She reaches out and grabs his arm. When he spins around, she sees that an axe is in his forehead. She screams and runs away.

Wow, talk about irony. The disbeliever gets brutally murdered. Way to be original, Hollywood. This totally justifies your huge salaries.

3. Another classic mistake: Jenny somehow finds her inner strength and defeats the villain. It's one thing if Jenny survives by running away, or locking herself in a room until the police arrive, or finding a gun and shooting him. But it is so ridiculous when this puny girl is wrestling with a humongous man, overpowers him and then hatches a brilliant plan to stop him and get away. I'm not saying that women can't be strong or anything like that, but there's only a certain type of beefy, trained woman who can physically crush a 200-pound man who clearly has a background in disfiguring people with his bare hands.

The stalker has Jenny in a full body lock, but she somehow frees one of her hands and hits him in the face. Even though she could never wind up enough at this distance to make a dent, the stalker is taken aback and lets go of the body lock. He starts choking her, and then she head-butts him or pokes him in the eye just as she is about to suffocate. This throws the stalker completely away from her and she has a chance to get up and run away. He grabs at one of her feet and trips her, and pulls on her leg as she tries to flee. She kicks him off, because he is still on the ground, injured from her fists of fury.

After she gets away, she'll set up a trap so the stalker thinks she's in the bedroom, and then when he goes in there, she'll come up from behind and hit him over the head with a frying pan or something. Ludicrous! How can a girl, who can't even learn how to hang up a phone, figure out how to defeat a man twice her size with her own brute strength and a little pizzazz? I guess that’s just the magic of Hollywood.

Please, movie studios, I know it's been awhile, but maybe you should try writing a new story. There are only so many times you can use the same script before people catch on.

More Than Just a Prosthetic Limb

Half-man, half-machine. That's how Bradley Rhodes likes to think of himself.

Rhodes, a computer scientist at MIT at the time this article was written, is one of a small group of people who are pioneering the "smart outfit." This basically means that Rhodes wears a computer and uses it to help navigate his everyday life. People like him tend to call themselves "borgs," a shortening of "cyborgs."

I understand that eventually everyone will be wearing computers and Rhodes is just ahead of the curve. But calling yourself a "borg" and dressing up like a machine is the equivalent of stamping the word "nerd" across your forehead. And these few people wear their computers all day, every day. What must their lives be like?

I imagine this would be a diary entry on an average day:

8:00 a.m. – Wake up. Take a shower. Electrocuted, again.
9:30 a.m. – Weird looks on the subway. A little girl screams.
11:00 a.m. – Boss catches me playing solitaire during a boring board meeting.
12:30 p.m. – Eat lunch alone.
2:00 p.m. – Chat with other borgs online. I hate my life.
3:30 p.m. – Juice box Mom packed me spilled on my hard drive. To the repair shop in the garage! *Superman pose!*
5:00 p.m. – Watch Star Trek and ogle Uhura.
6:30 p.m. – Watch Star Wars and ogle Princess Leia.
8:00 p.m. – Eat dinner with Mom. Talk about a borg meeting next week. She cries.
9:30 p.m. – Try to sleep despite sound from Mom's kegger in the basement.

A True Coward

In the March 11 issue of the Stony Brook Press, the editors ran an anti-Semitic cartoon that calls the New York Times the "Jew York Times" (ha ha very original) and puts symbols of Judaism on its masthead. The two headlines on this cartoon paper are "Kikes Rule, Muslims Drool" and "Ham Sucks," and they are followed by a picture of an orthodox Jew with his eyes censored.

After the shock wears off from seeing this intensely offensive cartoon in print, many questions come to mind. Why would the Press run it? Why are they allowed to print these words and images using money from the school? Using money that each student, including Jews, contributes as part of school fees? And who the hell is John Tucker?

Oh, wait. I know who John Tucker is. He's a character from a movie about a guy who has a lot of girlfriends at once, and then the girls want to get even with him when they find out about each other.

In case this is just a coincidence, I emailed the Press at the address provided at the bottom of the cartoon page. I asked if John Tucker was a normal contributor or if it was a fake name. All they had to say was, "He is a good man." The person who responded did not even bother signing his or her name.

So whoever drew this cartoon is too much of a coward to take credit for his work, and the Press didn't feel it was necessary to make the "artist" stand behind his racist garbage. I guess the editors feel that the theme of accountability, which is drilled into the head of every journalism student, doesn't apply in this case. This issue of the Press is a really sad example of journalism, and I hope that it will come back to bite them.

Some people may say that the creator of the cartoon is just someone trying to make a point using shock value. But that's no excuse. A smart person can work within the system to make their point, without offending others. Whoever this "John Tucker" is, he is not one of those smart people. He is just a Jew-hater. A Jew-hater who is too scared to give his real name and face criticism.

Women Who Don't Need a Man

Erika La Tour Eiffel. Eija-Riitta Berliner-Mauer. Amy Wolfe. If you didn’t know these names before, you’ll never be able to forget them.

La Tour Eiffel, Berliner-Mauer and Wolfe are three of 39 women who are declared objectum sexuals. Each of these women believes she is in a loving relationship with at least one inanimate object. They believe that the objects have souls and love them as much as they love the objects. They visit them and show their affection in public, and have scale models and pictures for intimacy at home.

Now let’s get to the gory details.

The documentary about these women starts out with La Tour Eiffel talking about her love for the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. She has a piece of it- two metal beams in the shape of an “X”- and she carries it with her to the bridge, where she kisses, hugs, fondles, and whispers sweet nothings in its girders. Although this is all shocking and confusing, my main question is this: when she drives to visit her Golden Gate Love, does she put the beams in the passenger seat and strap them in? She obviously can’t put them in the trunk or just toss them in the back seat. That would be rude for a woman to do to her boyfriend.

Later in the documentary we learn that the Berlin Wall is a total chick magnet. Not only is La Tour Eiffel in a relationship with the wall (which makes this her third relationship after the Golden Gate Bridge and her marriage to the Eiffel Tower), but Berliner-Mauer (which literally means ‘Berlin Wall’ in German- she took its name) is also “married” to “him.” The women explain that polygamy is not a big deal to objectum sexuals and they have an understanding with one another. So here’s what I want to know: do they each pick a side, or do they make love to the whole thing? And what happens when someone tags it? Because the Wall is full of graffiti already. Do they ignore it, or are they outraged?

I would think they would mind based upon this statement from Berliner-Mauer about her relationship with the Wall: “Like every married couple, we have our ups and downs. We even made it through the terrible disaster of 9 November 1989, when my husband was subjected to frenzied attacks by a mob,” (credit- The Independent). She is, of course, referring to the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and the unification of East and West Germany.

Although I could not stop laughing when I read that quote, it is not the most disturbing thing about objectum sexuality in the article or the documentary. The unsettling prize actually goes to Amy Wolfe. Among other things such as a rail in a church, Wolfe is in love with a carnival ride called “1001 Nacht.” In the documentary, she goes into painful detail about her thoughts and words while she is being intimate with the machine at her home (by way of pictures) and she talks about the machine’s “fluids.” The viewer is then scarred forever by a clip of Wolfe lying down under the carnival ride in New York and rubbing its filthy grease all over her face.

If you have a strong stomach and a high tolerance for other people's embarrassments, check out the documentary.

Proof That Nobody Reads Anymore: Approval of “Occupation 101”

The Social Justice Alliance at Stony Brook University recently abandoned their commitment to “global justice and human rights” by hosting a screening of the film “Occupation 101.”

This propaganda film is about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict from the point of view of people living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, but it gives the viewer that little something extra by lying the entire time. Whether it’s lying outright or lying by omission of facts, this film has it all.

Out of all the fiction, there are certain points that seemed more blatantly false than others. For example, the speakers in the video said that when Israel was officially made the homeland of the Jews, the land chosen was very large and it was the best in the area. That is not even remotely true. If you look at maps for the UN’s partition plan to separate the area into Palestinian and Israeli states, the land is split into almost equal shares. And as far as the quality of land, in 1948 a lot of Israel was swamp and desert. The hard work of Israel’s residents made that swamp and desert into what it is now, and what people imagine when they think of Israel.

In other parts of the film, facts were thrown in without context so as to paint Israel in a bad light. For instance, there was footage of buildings in the Palestinian territories being demolished, and the only thing the viewer hears is that innocent people were killed or lost their homes for no reason. The speakers don’t explain that before the Israeli Defense Forces destroy anything, whether it be by explosives or wrecking equipment, they give a three hour warning in order to spare the lives of civilians, even if it means giving the terrorist targets time to escape. The speakers don’t mention that these Palestinian civilians are killed because they are being used as human shields. There is also nothing said about why the IDF chose the building to be demolished, such as it being a hiding place of weapons or retaliation for a strike against Israel.

Another huge problem with this film is that it is incredibly anti-Semitic. Alex Saiu, the treasurer of the SJA said after the screening that he didn’t think it was at all. Apparently he doesn’t think it’s anti-Semitic to say that Jews in Israel are trying to ethnically cleanse the area of all Palestinians, which is a complete fabrication. Apparently he doesn’t think it’s anti-Semitic to say that all Jews have great living accommodations while people in the Palestinian territories live in poverty. It’s statements like these that led to support for Hitler and the Holocaust. I thought the SJA was established to educate people, not to brainwash them.

After the film the floor was opened for discussion. While Rabbi Topek of Stony Brook Hillel was permitted to clear up some inaccuracies of the film before anyone else spoke, there was nothing stopping people from dispensing false facts during the student debate. One student said that the people in Gaza have no food, clean water or electricity, and that’s why they launch the Qassam rockets into Israel.

This is a ridiculous statement in two ways. First, although Israel no longer occupies Gaza, many international organizations insist that Israel must still provide food, water, electricity and emergency medical care to the people there. Why, if Gaza is now independent from Israel? There is no logical reason, but people in Gaza do actually have access to these things.

The second way that statement is absurd is that the student gave the falsehood as a justification for launching rockets into Israel and killing civilians. Let’s assume that people in Gaza don’t have water or food. Does that give them a license to kill? I don’t think so. If it did, the billions of people in the world living in poverty would be an extreme security threat. Poverty does not justify murder. The money spent on Qassam rockets could be used to buy a better quality of life for civilians. And at the end of the day, Israel does supply people who are not its own citizens with their basic survival needs. So what is the real excuse for the rockets?

The makers of “Occupation 101” call the film a documentary, but I refuse to do that. It is an incredible work of anti-Semitic fiction, and should not be thought of as anything other than that.

Saiu said that the SJA picked the film and just ran with it, despite objections from some students, because they wanted to dive right into this topic. As an organization that is meant to raise awareness, that was a terrible mistake. A group like that should be even more careful than others to present something balanced. I’d say they really messed up on this one, but I doubt the people brainwashed by this movie will agree.

Here's a picture of Tel Aviv before the legal inception of Israel as the Jewish homeland.

The Green Comet Has Arrived

The green streak of Comet Lulin will be bright and visible in the night sky for the next few days. After reaching the point in its orbit closest to the Sun (the perihelion) back in January, Lulin reached its closest to Earth on February 24th. This point is less than half an astronomical unit from us, meaning less than half the average distance from the Earth to the Sun.

Comet Lulin will be moving quickly across the night sky, so if you stand outside long enough you can see its movement. It will be easy to recognize because of its green color, which is caused by the reflection of the Sun's rays off the carbon gases in the comet's Jupiter-sized atmosphere.

Lulin was likely much greener when it was at its perihelion, but at that time it could not be seen with the naked eye. Now, at a position so close to Earth, the comet will likely be able to be seen without a telescope. But if you have trouble, a pair of binoculars or a camera with a good zoom should do the trick.

Check out this video to learn how to find Comet Lulin. The guy's voice reminds me of Ben Stein's character from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," but it's an interesting clip all the same.

U.S. of Whatever

The United States of Tara is a new series on Showtime about a wife and mother who suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder, or multiple personalities. While I am impressed by the Australian Toni Collette in the lead role doing four different kinds of American accents, there's not much else about this show that impresses me.

John Corbett can be found in the same role he usually plays of the loyal, dorky but lovable sidekick. But here's the twist- he does it with short hair. It must be a huge stretch for him professionally.

The rest of the cast has mildly decent acting skill, but it goes to waste on a bad script. A lot of the lines are forced and the scenes drawn out. In one episode, Marshall, played by Keir Gilchrist, suffers an allergic reaction. John Corbett's character gives his son a shot of epinephrine, and the audience has to suffer through hearing him count slowly to ten before the scene ends. The counting was completely irrelevant to the rest of the show, and did not advance the plot in any way whatsoever; it was filler. He might as well have been counting the seconds until I completely tuned out the rest of this series.

While the subject matter has potential to make a really dramatic, gripping show, it is ruined because the stories go from realistic and intense to comedic clichés, extreme cheese and unrealistic situations. A little versatility is good in a TV program, but this is just indecision. The writers don't know what kind of show they want, so they give it multiple personalities also. Here's some advice: find another job before you go down with this ship.

Stop What You're Doing

Do you take the same route to and from school or work every day? Do you rush through your walk because you find it old and boring? Are you impatient to reach your destination? If you answered 'yes' to any of these questions, then Michel de Certeau could be for you.

Since the city itself is stationary, it is the movement of people that defines it. As we walk through the city, our paths cross those of others and create an intangible fabric. If we go the same way every day, the threads of the fabric are reinforced and become more permanent.

De Certeau believes that we have to break away from this everyday reinforcement of our city's fabric. When you are walking somewhere routine, take a new path. Make a turn instead of crossing the street. Go in the opposite direction and see where you find yourself. This enables us to see the city from a new perspective, and discover things we didn't know we were missing. Things that were so close all along, but we were so focused on reaching our destination that we couldn't see them.

This idea goes back to philosopher Guy Debord's idea of altering our everyday life in order to change our perspective and realize potential in what is seen as the mundane. When we take a new route to class, we alter our everyday. This allows us to see the beauty in our surroundings, and the beauty in our everyday.

If you are looking to learn more, read de Certeau's chapter on walking in the city from his book "The Practice of Everyday Life." Although it was written in almost 30 years ago, the primary principles are not out of date.

Strand, Will You Marry Me?

For the past handful of years I have had a love affair with the Strand bookstore. Eighteen miles of books means that I spend a lot of time getting lost in there.

When I walk in, the first thing I notice is the aroma of pages. It calls out to me, this smell of paper and ink into which someone had poured out their heart. Old or new, there is nothing like the scent of a book. If it is used, you can get a whiff of the previous owners and imagine them with a cup of green tea in their kitchen, or a dirty water dog in the park, getting lost in the pages. If the book is new, the smell is less musky and more fresh. It is the smell of potential.

Once I inhale deeply, I make my way over to the classics section. It has its own nook in the store, almost like a time capsule. I like to scope it out first, because it tends to have some of the best bargains. Two of my greatest conquests were a copy of The Jungle Books for $3.50 and a compilation of the first two Sherlock Holmes mysteries for $2.95. I almost always find something in this section that I want to add to my collection. Then it’s on to fiction, with stacks that reach up to the ceiling and snake around the back of the first floor.

In the beginning, the sheer volume of volumes can be overwhelming, but I always revert to the same strategy: I find an author with whom I am currently obsessed and then browse the nearby titles. This means looking on neighboring shelves, but it also means spinning around and searching the entire area. More times than not something will grab my attention. I am often too plagued by indecision to make a purchase this way, but it still expands my literary horizons. For instance, it was through gravitating to the Chuck Palahniuk shelf that I saw "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel. A friend had previously recommended it to me, and I had forgotten all about it until the bright orange and blue cover jumped out at me. (I later got a copy, and it was amazing.)

After this point of spinning and discovery, my official mission has ended and I usually wander around the store reading random book jackets for a while. I try to mix it up with a more obscure genre such as books written in German or the very back corner of the basement's science section.

The experience is pleasant in both the heavily crowded areas and the low-traffic areas because the entire store has such a relaxed atmosphere. Honestly, I have sat down on the floor in front of the same narrow wooden bookcase every time I've visited the Strand and just read the descriptions of each book on the lower shelves (I'm not just being ridiculous- the books are different every time). Of course I move my ten-foot spider legs when someone passes, but nobody seems to mind either way. We are all there for the same reason: to be swallowed up.

If you're looking for a yellowed book that has a history, a new book that has never been opened, or a place to sell back your own, the Strand is the place for you. The people are friendly, the prices are low, and the energy is addictive.

Everyday Life Bumming You Out? Blame the Upper Class

Everyday life is boring because people don't fully understand it, and they are spending too much of their lives trying to get out of the ordinary and into the extraordinary. Guy Debord's essay "Perspectives for Conscious Alterations in Everyday Life" offers this opinion, and also puts the majority of the blame on the upper class. (Yes! Finally a win for us plebes.) Don’t let the title scare you. This essay is actually very easy to read, and it will give you some insight into your own activities and views on the world, whether you think you need it or not.

It all started with upper class social thinkers wrongfully believing that everyday life is nothing and therefore that specialized activities are the only way a person can truly live his life. The idea eventually became widespread because of the condescending attitude of these upper class thinkers, who believed that they were outside everyday life, and that everyday life only belonged to the common people, the lower class.

The upper class began to look to only have extraordinary experiences fill their time, and so they alienated themselves from everyday life. This is why they cannot understand and enjoy it. The lower class, on the other hand, is constantly told that their common lives are not special, and so they aim to have the life of the upper class. This alienates them from their own everyday life, and that is why they cannot understand and enjoy it.

Debord's essay goes into much more detail and gives many interesting examples, such as the prison of new technology, the future according to science fiction, and the reinforcement of the above ideas through capitalism. If you have a few minutes, you should check it out. It’s only seven pages long, and it will definitely keep your interest.

Just Another Reason I Don’t Like Zach Braff

My roommate is sitting behind me right now watching The Last Kiss, the Zach Braff movie that came out in 2006. And all I can think about is how awful that movie was, and how much I loved the original. I saw the original version, an Italian film called L’ultimo bacio, a year and a half ago in a course on sex and politics in Italian cinema at Stony Brook University.

The only words I know in Italian, other than various swear words, are the ones that are the same in Spanish. So I don’t speak Italian even remotely, much less the rapid-fire Italian that is in some of the scenes. Normally this would create a problem for me because I hate reading subtitles. I find myself so busy reading about what is going on in the movie that I barely have time to see it, which ruins the viewing experience. But for some reason, that didn’t happen to me when I watched L’ultimo bacio. It probably had something to do with the pacing, or maybe I was just really on top of my game.

Either way, I thoroughly enjoyed this film. The characters are well developed to the point where the viewer even feels a connection to those who aren’t the stereotypically “good” characters. And assuming the subtitles are true to the Italian script, the story was written very well. That, in conjunction with the great acting on the part of the entire cast, made the pivotal scenes of the film even more intense, and it made the lines delivered even more powerful.

After I watched L’ultimo bacio that first time, I was dying to see it again. I later looked for it in Blockbuster, and another video rental place near my home in Queens, but nobody carried it. Finally, after waiting an excruciatingly long time for another student to return it to the university library, I borrowed the DVD. I was afraid that my excitement would make the movie fall below my expectations. But no! L’ultimo bacio came through for me once again. I loved it just as much as the first time, and I honestly think I could watch this movie over and over again.

Rent it! You will not regret it.

Listening to the Annuals is 'Such Fun'

You may have to listen to this band two separate times before you really appreciate them. The first time I encountered Annuals, the sound just didn’t hit my ear the right way. But I decided to give them another chance some time later and I have never looked back. The only way I could explain this is that when I first listened to them, I had been used to a lower caliber of music and I just wasn’t ready.

What’s best about Annuals is probably the fact that they aren’t afraid to take chances. The way they mix their tracks is brilliant, adding sound effects and layers of vocals, blending acoustic and electric guitar, constantly changing it up.

I loved their first album and EPs so much that when I heard they were coming out with their sophomore album, I didn’t think it would be possible to top what they had already done. Oh, how wrong I was.

Every song on the new album, Such Fun, is a winner. I don’t want to say too much about it, so I’ll just suggest that you check it out and then you can decide whether you want to buy the CD.

If you like them right off the bat, great. If you don’t, at least give them the benefit of two listens.