Go for Broke.

Ok places to see before I die. Pretty easy. pretty self explanatory.

(in no particular order)

1. Australia
2. Italy
3. Antarctica
4. Alaska
5. Great Wall+Himalayas
6. Kilimanjaro
7. Fiji
8. Brazil
9. New Zealand
10. Machu Pichu

(honorable mention)-The Pyramids in Egypt

Things to do before I die.

1. Drive a Ferrari
2. Learn to Surf
3. Bungee off that Bridge in West Virginia
4. Base jump off of something
5. Raft the Snake River
6. Shark Dive
7. African Safari
8. Write a Book.
9. Catch a Marlin.
10. Run (or at least watch) the running of the Bulls in Spain.


they might be cliched. but they are my wishes.

Was everything better back when everything was worse?

America is about freedom. freedom means choice. the more choices we have, the more freedom we have. but the question is, are we happier with all these choices, or do they actually subtract from our happiness even if they make our lives better? I am not going to argue that freedom is a bad thing. I am only going to attempt to analyze how the MASSIVE amount of choices we have in today's society might be harder to deal with.

There are 285 kinds of cookies at wal-mart. 75 Iced teas. 230 soups. 175 salad dressing. and 40 toothpastes. This explosion of choice is everywhere from cars to electronics to health care. 50 years ago there were less things to have choices about. Was it better that way?

All of this choice seems to have negative effects on people. One is paralysis rather than liberation. with so many options to choose from, people find it difficult to choose ONE. so instead they do nothing.

another problem is that even if we overcome the paralysis and make a choice, we are less satisfied with the result than we would've been if we had had fewer options. why? because with so many salad dressings, if you buy one and it's not perfect, it's easy to imagine a better one out there. and what happens is this imagined alternative makes you regret the choice you DID make. this regret detracts from the satisfaction of the choice, even if it was a good one. the more options there are the easier it is to regret anything that is wrong with the choice that you made. with 31 flavors I should be able to find something BETTER than vanilla, chocolate or strawberry. this is an escalation of expectations. this hit me when I went to buy a pair of jeans. i have a favorite pair of jeans I bought back when there were only a couple choices. they fit ok, but soon enough they fit perfectly. with a big hole growing in the back I needed to find a new pair. but now i have to decide, slim fit, easy fit, relaxed fit, button fly or zipper fly, stone washed or acid washed, boot cut, wide cut or tapered. i just want the kind that used to by my only kind. so I spent an hour trying on jeans and walked out with a good pair of fitting jeans. I did good. all this choice made it possible for me to do good. but I felt worse. why? maybe with all of these options available my expectations went up. to the point where I expected the perfect jeans. when they weren't perfect i was disappointed. more choice brings higher expectations, when you compare what you get to what you expected the difference brings disappointment, not satisfaction. even with good results! sheesh.

when there is only ONE choice of blue jeans and they don't fit right, who is responsible? the makers of those blue jeans. but when there are hundreds of choices of jeans and they don't fit, who is responsible? you are. you could have done better. clinical depression has exploded in the industrial world. people blame themselves for being disappointed even when the choice is a good one, but their expectations were to high. because they have to explain why they are disappointed so they blame themselves.


but the scariest conclusion to all of this insane rambling is that the key to happiness becomes lowered expectations!

I don't know if I even believe what I just said.

My 10 Favorite Movies of all Time.

My last top 10 rumination came out good. So I've decided to take a crack at another one. This time it's movies. Notice I've said "My" favorite. not top 10 "best" movies, or "greatest" movies. in a recent discussion with a friend i realized that in ranking art you're dealing with subjective opinions. So how can i objectively measure a movies "greatness"? Box office earnings? Social impact? It was all to complicated, so i basically just checked out my DVD collection and ranked em. Some of it took a bit of thought, but let me be clear, there was never and will never be any doubt as to my Number 1 favorite movie of all time.




10. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.
This is a perfect example of the type of movies I like. Bill Murray is a genius of comedy. He can be zany as hell, or so subtle you don't know if he's kidding. This is a Wes Anderson movie and stars Owen Wilson as Murray's possible son (they don't know). The characters are exaggerated to the perfect pitch so as to be funny, and the island sequence is intense, and hilarious. If it wasn't for the weird animal CGI it would have ranked higher.

09. Miller's Crossing
This movie is richly dense and complicated. It takes one viewing just to understand what everybody is even saying! It's an Irish gangster movie, but it also addresses deeper issues such as loyalty, ethics, randomness, and violence. The plot is very complex, but you're never board because the characters are interesting as hell. The cinematography is superb. I should probably rank this one higher, it's a classic, waiting to be discovered.

08. Cool Hand Luke
"What we have here is a failure to communicate!" Uhm. classic. I like it because it addresses themes of rebellion, rejection of authority and freedom. plus Paul Newman is smooth as hell playing cards, eating hard boiled eggs, or diggin' a ditch and fillin it back in. and just when you think the system has broke him, he fools em all. Note: Luke was arrested for public intoxication and public vandalism (he was cutting the heads off of parking meters).

07. Out of Site
I can't believe a movie starring Jenifer Lopez is in my top 10, but this is another crime movie. It is kind of the predecessor to Ocean's 11. It stars George Clooney and directed by Steven Soderbergh.

06. Tron
An amazing mix of Alice in Wonderland, Star Wars, Ben-Hur and German expressionism, the most amazing thing is that it was made by Disney. One of the coolest sci-fi flix. I almost owned a Tron video game, and now that the remake is due in 2010, they're even harder to find.

05. Bad Santa
Billy Bob Thornton is an alcoholic safe robbing santa clause, that pisses himself on santa's throne. He and a black midget-elf rob the department stores that they work at. Also there is an awkward chubby kid named Herman Merman that teaches them the true meaning of Christmas. A tasteless, vulgar, savage assault against everything that is good and decent in the Christmas season. I loved it.

04. The Departed
Martin Scorcese finally made the perfect crime film and finally got his Oscar. Irish mafia again this time led by Jack Nicholson. Leo DiCaprio is walking the tightrope as undercover cop. I've never seen such an intense movie with such an intense ending. The moment I walked out of the theatre, I said if this doesn't win best picture, I am never watching the Oscars again. it won.

03. The Big Lebowski
Slacker Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski (Jeff Bridges) gets involved in a gargantuan mess of events when he's mistaken for another man named Lebowski, whose wife has been kidnapped and is being held for ransom. All the while, Dude's friend, Walter (John Goodman) makes insane choices based on a mild case of post traumatic stress disorder. It's zany, wild funny, quirky and trippy. It's a cult classic by the Coen Brothers. I could watch this one again and again.

02.Stardust Memories
Ok now we are getting serious about comedy. I love Woody Allen and this is my favorite of his films. There is so much packed in the first 20 minutes it feels like an hour. It's highly philosophical, and intellectual, and filmed in black & white, but it doesn't feel pretentious. It's about modern love, and celebrity, and the timeless struggles of man. Woody is hilarious, and the movie is rich with culture along the edges of the film (music, background artwork). It is so dense that it can be viewed on so many levels. He actually pulls off cubism on film. The conversations alone make you sad when you're stuck at a party where your choices of conversation are baseball, vacation destinations and SUVs.

01. Groundhog's Day
"What if there is no tomorrow? There wasn't one today".From the very first time I saw this movie, I knew it would always be my favorite. Not only is this one of the funniest films ever made, but it's unique format opens it up to all kinds of interesting interpretations. You can theorise endlessly on the cosmic nature of Murray's predicament: for instance as a metaphor for the growth stages of man(from confusion to belief in his invincibility to learning about mortality to love and fulfilment). There is also a Buddhist take, or it can be seen as a divine prank by God. I have watched it every February 2nd since. And usually a couple times in between. It is much deeper than it gets credit for. But that is because Bill Murray is a ham and demands that you laugh at him. "This is one time where television really fails to capture the true excitement of a large squirrel predicting the weather."