Odds and Ends #15

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-I wonder how many people who list “French” on Facebook as one of their languages can actually speak French – a couple years in high school usually doesn’t count.

-Can’t wait for December 2012 to come and go so the tired end of the world jokes will end. 90% of them aren’t even a little funny.

Big Audio Dynamite live at Beautiful Days Festival: review
Big Audio Dynamite was one of my most anticipated acts at Outside Lands last year. This is a great review of one of their concerts that pretty much sums up what I’d say about my experience, if I could express it this well.

This makes me feels so inadequate:

Classic Yao Ming:

Old but still relevant:

“Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.” – Oscar Wilde

There Will Be Blood

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I wrote this paper last quarter for a film music class.

“If I Say I Am an Oil Man, You Will Agree” – The Abortive Self-Deification of Daniel Plainview

“If I say I am an oil man, you will agree.” At first glance, it seems like nothing more than a harmless and matter-of-fact, though strangely constructed, statement of purpose and summary of personal identity. Daniel Plainview (played by Daniel Day-Lewis) is a fast-rising oil magnate in turn-of-the-century California with ambitious aspirations of expanding his operation to new territories. But in this key early moment in Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, Plainview subtly plots the course of the rest of the film’s gradual, exploratory descent into Daniel’s fundamental drives and urges.

One would normally say “you would agree”, using the conditional form of the verb, but as the narrative progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that this usage of the declarative form was no accident. Daniel is revealed as a manipulative, paranoid, and ruthlessly ambitious man who struggles savagely to demolish any perceived competitor. Plainview, in his ironically animalistic quest for apotheosis, reveals most evidently the true essence of his sociopathic megalomania in his relationship with his adopted son H.W. and his false half-brother Henry, who are at different points in the film the two most important people in Plainview’s life. There are two particularly crucial scenes depicting Daniel’s interactions with these companions that are aided by deliberate musical and cinematic choices, furthering the audience’s understanding of Daniel’s psychology that fuels his ruthless ambitions and ultimately, his bitter downfall.