I recently watched two riveting interviews on the Charlie Rose show: Alan Greenspan was one, and Sean Penn and Eddie Vedder was the other.

I used to envy talk show hosts because they were paid to have interesting conversations with celebrities but after watching Charlie Rose, I realize his job is what I’d really want.  He’s not limited to ten minutes of chit chat and he’s not forced to ask silly questions about who’s dating who.  Instead, he gets to develop a wildly intimate conversation with some of the most fascinating people in the world for an uninterrupted hour.

“I believe that there is a place in the spectrum of television for really good conversation, if it is informed, spirited, soulful.” - Charlie Rose

I really wish I had known about Mister Rose and his amazing show earlier.  Did everyone else in the world already know about this show?

Here are some Google Videos of his past interviews.

Good golly, Miss Molly! WeatherBug says it’s 103 degrees outside. Get me out of this heat!

I’ve been avoiding writing this post, but it must be written.

The husband and I know our weaknesses pretty well. Because we know our weakness, we purposely make choices to avoid succumbing to our weaknesses.

For example: one of our biggest weaknesses is video games. Now you must be thinking that it’s a fairly harmless weakness. But it’s not. At least not for us. We are both very competitive people and we have a tendency to get completely engrossed in video games. We once spent an entire Saturday playing James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing (I didn’t know IMDB.com covered video games too!). And by entire I mean from when we woke up to when we went to sleep. I think I wrote about this game awhile back.

And yeah, of course it’s fun. And I honestly do believe it’s good for our relationship. Communication, teamwork, trust– it’s all incorporated into these video games. But it gets ridiculous when you start losing hours and days at a time to a video game.

So we protect ourselves by not getting the best games.

We bought True Crime: New York City instead of buying any of the Grand Theft Auto series.

We also haven’t bought a PS3 yet in fear that a PS3 + NBA 2K7 (or 2K8) will be too powerful of a combination.

Well, after the husband’s knee surgery, I had to chauffeur him to work for a few days. His office is a decent commute so I was pretty much stuck doing nothing at his office. I decided to go to Office Depot and root around and see what I could busy myself with. That’s when I came across Rise of Nations.

We had sworn off getting involved with Starcraft or Warcraft III years ago for fear that we would never see our friends or daylight again.

This game, however, seemed harmless. It was only $19.99 and it was on the shelf next to a SIMS expansion pack and Tetris.

Well folks, as it turns out, it’s actually a lot of fun. A little too much fun. I like that there are so many different races to choose from– from the Germans to the Egyptians to the Koreans. I think there are 20 races in total. We had dinner last night at this little Vietnamese restaurant in Midtown and I caught myself talking game strategy for half of the meal. And you have to be kind of quiet when you discuss game strategy because you certainly wouldn’t want someone to catch only part of your conversation and think you were planning some sort of terrorist attack.

Because of Rise of Nations, the big house cleanup project is developing slower than originally anticipated. Video games are dangerous, kids.

I know I’m late to jump on this one because I’ve been seeing advertisements and reviews for awhile now but we finally got a chance to catch Once at the theaters this past weekend.

It’s as good if not better than all the reviews says it is.  The music is fantastic and the chemistry and heartache feels completely real.  Unbearably real.  Do yourself a favor and go watch it.  It’s a sappy treat.

We left the theaters humming the songs together and when I got home I promptly downloaded the music.  I was going to download the Once OST but decided to download The Swell Season instead.  It’s recorded by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova who both star in the movie and to my delight are dating in real life!  The only song that I wish I had was Marketa’s solo, “The Hill,” which was available only on the OST.  I hate how iTunes has album only restrictions.

I’m not a Michael Moore fan.

I find him mostly obnoxious with a few good arguments. I think that his abrasive personality overshadows his intentions and distracts from his purpose. However, I’ll admit, I’m intrigued by his most recent movie, Sicko. It’s definitely on my to-watch list. Having lived in the United States my whole life, I know no other health care system than the one we currently use. As long as I’ve understood health insurance, I’ve known about in-network providers and out-of-network providers. When I got my first job, I chose the health insurance plan with the highest deductible ($5,000) so that I would have the lowest monthly premium. It is beyond my comprehension that there are some countries in which you can walk into any hospital and receive treatment.

Take Canada for example. Here’s a description from a Canadian Health Care website:

“Canada’s health care system is a group of socialized health insurance plans that provides coverage to all Canadian citizens. It is publicly funded and administered on a provincial or territorial basis, within guidelines set by the federal government.

Under the health care system, individual citizens are provided preventative care and medical treatments from primary care physicians as well as access to hospitals, dental surgery and additional medical services. With a few exceptions, all citizens qualify for health coverage regardless of medical history, personal income, or standard of living.”

The most amazing part of the husband’s recent ACL and meniscus reconstruction surgery was that we didn’t have to pay a dime. His company’s health insurance plan is absolutely incredible. When we first got married and I switched over to his plan, I didn’t believe him when he said he didn’t pay a monthly premium. When he showed me his paystub, I then quickly assumed that his coverage must be lousy. As it turned out, it was actually a lot better than mine. At the time, this was most evident in prescription medicine. On my health insurance plan, I was paying $30 per pack of birth control pills. On his health insurance plan, I now pay $40 for 3 packs of birth control pills. And they conveniently mail it to my door through Express Scripts.

I don’t think we fully grasped how good the insurance coverage was until we decided to get the ACL and meniscus surgery and started looking at prices.

eMedicine.com says, “The average cost for surgical repair of an ACL tear is approximately $11,500.”

I’ve Googled and looked everywhere for different price quotes and it varies pretty widely because I don’t think there are price controls on ACL surgeries but the quote above is about the median if not a little lower that what I’ve found.

Ever since the night of the surgery, the medical supply companies keep calling to drop off a continuous passive motion (CPM) machine (pictured above). It basically helps keep your knee in motion by bending and unbending your knee continuously. It’s also covered by our insurance plan and it retails as several thousand dollars.

We didn’t even pay a co-pay for the doctor office visits or the hinged knee brace which is also another few hundred dollars or so.

I don’t know what we would do if we didn’t have health insurance. I can’t imagine living in the United States without health insurance. It would be a complete nightmare– which I think is what Michael Moore’s movie is trying to demonstrate.

It’s been awhile since I’ve seen such a funny movie.  Watch the trailer here!  It’s hilarious  (better than the 40-year Old Virgin) and even has the makeup of a good old heartwarming rom-com.

This weekend was a lot of fun– especially with Judy AND Grace in town.  Still no Cancun pictures ready.  This is what happens when we have too much going on.

I have yet to put the moviestream code into my new blog theme but this weekend I finally watched Children of Men.  I’m quite fond of Clive Owen so I had high hopes for this one.  Well, then again he filmed Derailed with Jennifer Aniston which was pretty lame.

It’s a pretty cool movie.  It’s kind of hard to classify because it’s not outright sci-fi.  If anything, I would probably label it as a political thriller.  The movie is set in 2027 so it’s not too far off into the future.  The atmosphere is fascinating: glimpses of super technology and then the banality of the present-day world.  The premise of the movie is that the world has become completely infertile and the youngest person alive, 18 years old, has just recently died.

It’s a dark movie that’s actually quite enjoyable.  The ending was a little weak– but leaves more up to the imagination I suppose.

Watch the trailer here.

We watched a heartbreaking indie movie this weekend named The Italian. In spite of its name, it wasn’t about an Italian. It was about a six-year old Russian orphan and his journey to find his mother.

The kid actor’s name is Kolya Spiridonov and he’s absolutely brilliant in this movie. I can never tell if it’s the brilliance of the actor or the director. From the DVD commentaries I’ve watched, I think sometimes it’s mostly the direction manifesting itself through the actors’ performances.

The movie was funny, fascinating, touching and downright heart-wrenching at times. And for those of you who are concerned about the social welfare aspect, the movie gives a glimpse of Russia’s corrupt adoption system. Adoption industry is what it should be called.

I’d recommend this movie to anyone with a heart.

And for those of you who are wondering, it’s in Russian and subtitled in English.

I sit next to the Planning, Budgeting, and Forecasting senior manager and every now and then he stops by my cubicle to shoot the breeze. Lately the topic of old movies has come up and he’s convinced that I’m missing out on a large part of great American cinema. He has helped me populate a list of movies that I need to watch in order to educate myself. It’s weird because they are all (mostly all) titles that I recognize from working at Blockbuster years ago, but never got around to watching.

Anyway, the list is still a work in progress but here is the latest version:

Lawrence of Arabia
Raising Arizona
Sunset Blvd
MASH
Animal House
Used Cars
Escape from Alcatraz
Hoosiers
Sixteen Candles
Pretty in Pink
Say Anything
Rocky I-V

As you can tell, they are mostly all older movies and not the ones that have come out in the past ten years. I also haven’t seen the Lord of the Rings trilogy (gasp!) but it’s not included on this list.

Do you have any to add?

I’m all caught up and I watched last night’s episode.

Three things:

- Congrats to Little Miss Sunshine star Abigail Breslin for landing a role on the TV show!

- Chris O’Donnell looked a lot better back in the day with short hair circa 1995 in Batman Forever. Not everyone can do shag.

- Scenes from next week make it look like Eric Dane might be joining the Grey’s Anatomy cast permanently. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only person who’s excited.

I saw the following two musicals last week:

Two completely different experiences. The Lion King was in Sarofim Hall. BKLYN was in the Miller Outdoor Theater. The Lion King was what I expected it to be. Well developed costumes and beautiful music. I know The Lion King is known for its costumes but I think the genius of the musical actually lies in its color palette and stage lighting. Similar to my experience with Beauty and the Beast, I wasn’t overly impressed. There, I said it. It was significantly better than Beauty and the Beast, I’ll give you that, but it still was not as good as the non-Disney musicals I’ve seen.

I really loved BKLYN. It didn’t hurt that we watched it on a beautiful summer night at the Miller Outdoor Theater, with nachos to munch on and a rowdy crowd to laugh with. It was smart, funny, and did not involve talking animals. Humans trump talking animals every single time. This also explains why I like The Incredibles more than Finding Nemo.

Musicals on the To-See List:

-Les Mis
-RENT
-West Side Story
-Oklahoma
-Cats

What I set out to say in the last post and somehow forgot to say is that the story of X-men is a profound depiction of any minority group. It’s profound because it displays the in-fighting that is almost always found in any minority-majority struggle. In most minorities, there are those who are defiantly proud of their minority status, there are those who desperately wish to be part of the majority, there are those who violently want to protect their stance either way, and there are those who peaceably want to accept everyone. It seems to me that the most difficult struggle is not between the majority and the minority but rather, between the different minority groups. The most complex struggle is between those who are proud, those who are ashamed, those who abuse their privileges, those who try to increase their privileges, those who promote stereotypes, and those who try to break stereotypes. The struggle is complex because even though they strongly disagree with each other, they all have the unsettling awareness that they are the same. For some reason, it is so much easier to disagree with those that are different from us.

The most obvious application is racial, but I don’t think it is necessarily limited to race. Another easy application is to the homosexual population of the world. Google “x-men and homosexuality” and more than a dozen links pop up. Interesting to say the least.

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On a completely unrelated note, when I was exiting the Beltway today, a black Lumina with spinning rims cut me off. I was about to honk when I saw it bust right through the toll arm. It was kind of crazy. The arm bent completely forward rather easily. It was like a scene out of a movie. Whenever I see people drive crazy I always wonder if maybe they’re part of some complicated plot. Maybe someone’s kidnapped their kid and is asking for ransom and they need to drop off fifty million dollars before 8:30 this morning and that’s why they cut me off and didn’t have time to stop and pay the toll. Who knows? All I know is that I don’t want to be responsible for the mess up of a ransom money drop off.

I think I’ve seen too many action flicks lately.

Well, it certainly makes being cut-off on the road easier to swallow when you think of it that way, doesn’t it?

We went to see Russell Peters last Friday at the Verizon Wireless Theater. The theater itself was underwhelming. I was expecting it to be a lot nicer– it being downtown and relatively new. It was pretty dingy with closely packed chairs. It felt like a glorified high school auditorium. I can see how it’d be a great venue for an artist like Aqualung, James Blunt, or Jack Johnson. It was pretty intimate.

I didn’t hype up the show beforehand so I came out okay. In case you haven’t seen his comedy, it’s pretty one dimensional. And if you like that dimension, then it’s really funny. If you don’t, you’re S.O.L. He does a killer Indian and Cantonese accent. 90% of his jokes are about race. 9% is about sex. That 1% is a crapshoot, but he does have a few brilliant moments of comedy.

I think race and sex jokes are pretty easy to do. I think almost every good standup routine has a fair amount of both because they are easy topics that everyone can relate to. I just wish that some comedians would push themselves to venture into comedy that comments on the world outside of race and sex. I believe comical genius is found outside of those topics. I think the funniest people are the ones that talk about regular life in a hilarious way. People like Conan O’Brian, Jon Stewart, and even David Sedaris. But even they fallback on sex/race comedy. It’s understandable.

It really just depends on what you’re in the mood for. It’s pretty easy to make me laugh. I laugh at Jack Black, Adam Sandler, and Will Farrell movies so I’m really in no place to really criticize humor. I just wanted to say that Russell Peters is funny, but not THAT funny.

I want the Clips to beat the Suns so that Elton Brand can get the limelight he deserves.

Do yourself a favor and go watch this movie.

View the trailer.

Like Jim, I just recently watched Karate Kid: Part I all over again. It was great.

The best part (okay, not really, but close) was when Daniel-san lets his girlfriend drive his new car and she goes, “You want me to drive?”

And he goes, “Hey, it’s the 80’s!”

How come that phrase has completely fallen out of our vocabulary? I remember people saying, “Hey, it’s the 90’s!”

Why not: “Hey, it’s the new millenium!” or “Hey, it’s the 21st century!” ?

Too awkward to say?

Maybe it’s because there’s nothing these days that will really shock people anymore. So no one has the chance to respond with that. We are like a generation of unshockable people.

Having my hometown Houston Astros contend in the World Series hasn’t really ignited a burning passion for baseball. In fact, what it has really done is bring to light my apathy for baseball. I mean, I do hope they win. But I don’t plan on losing any sleep if they don’t.

I have a question. Why is it called the World Series? Last time I checked, only American teams were competing. Oh, and of course the few Canadia teams. But it’s still the North American continent. Same goes for basketball. Let’s call it what it is. National Series. National Champions.