Autumn

As I mentioned here Labour-day marks the end of Summer and there for the coming of fall. This was mysteriously precise: today I woke up with a steady autumn rain, the warmth had left us and for the first time since I got here it was not painful to wear long trousers. I even donned my rain coat and it felt correct at times. At no point during the day did I sweat like a pig and the rain kept falling. The autumn is here and it is on time. Sadly, for I was not done with my NY summer.

Taco Jesus

Until tonight I have not had any reason accept the very obvious one to visit and eat at Taco Jesus (not a food branch of Swedish "Skiv-Jesus") that is located on my very street. Unfortunately for me Jesus and pretty much the rest of the world at least the ones who can read English and has internet access it was closed when I got there. It looked cozy though, I did not see a single wooden cross or any nails, no Roman legionnaires where lurking with hammers in the shadows that I could discern. No it actually looked pretty much like a home painted, bright colour Latino restaurant in the heart of Harlem. But sadly just closed as I entered. Well no shadow on Jesus tonight I was out late, but when Jesus can not save you there is always Taco Express! The food truck that stands in between Amsterdam and Broadway and makes loud noises, finally useful! I ordered Chicken BBQ and Goat BBQ tachos, hey you need to try it, don't you think? No you are right. It was not pointless but kind of meaningless. It really tasted goat. What did I expect? Well what do you think? Why would anyone want to sell goat tasting tacos in NY that is my question. Anyway I give the tacos a rating of a weak 3 out of 5. They where fresh, well made and did not contain cheese. Could have had some more diversity to the ingredients and both meats where a bit boring.

Labour day

Today is Labour day, and therefore I do not labour. Apparently it marks the end of summer and holliday season, as well as the time to wear white. When do you get to start wearing white? So many questions unanswered.
Clearly this is a national holiday and it all started in the 1880thies with some striking in Canada some ten years before that to get a 58 hour work week. That is interesting: if everyone worked more than 60 hours per week in the olden days what did they actually accomplish? Yes we stand on the shoulders of our predecessors, but what was the efficiency back then? How efficient are we today? I tried a few googles on this matter and all I get is a bunch of tips on how to get more efficient. But I am looking for the hard facts as well as a definition of work efficiency. Somehow you would think that Speedy Fred would have set something like that up when he started... If anyone has input on this please let me know!

Apollo 18

The movie Apollo 18 by Gonzalo López-Gallego just recently premiered, now this is such a movie you do not want to know anything about before you watch it. There for my review will be as short as the attention span of a ten year old boy. You might say the film sorts in to the multigenre of Sci-fi and Horror, it is made in a mocumentary style with very little on the side, much like "I'm still here" by Casey Affleck. I guess it is the thing now and it sometimes works to fool people of it's authenticity. In this case let us just throw that idea out the door. This is a good film. I recommend you to see it. It is well made, interesting and if I could lift two strong points it would be the form which is so nicely executed and the the storytelling gives you both that eerie feeling and is quite far from ordinary Hollywood style.  I don't think you could have made such a movie 10 years ago. There are other marks of it's time to Apollo 18, I have already mentioned the style and the telling. But this I wil leave for the viewer to explore themselves. Happy viewing!

in sickness and in health...

Being sick is about the most meaningless thing ever invented.

the difference

What is the big difference between Sweden and the USA? There are a number of things that could be mentioned in this section, but I am going to boil it down for you dear readers, I have through long studies: 35 years in one of the countries and about 3 months in the other, and add to that countless hours of video studies found the very definition of differences between the royal kingdom of the North, old three crowned Sweden, mythological land of the Vikings on the one hand and the not so democratic republic of the new west, the land of rape and honey, the young and the brave United States of America, mythological land of the now almost extinct proud warriors of the 'injuns.
The difference, and I mean the big difference is... drumroll? No? ok, that the tomato sauce in the baked beans is more red in Sweden?! This is such a big thing. You get the feeling that the more red the tomato sauce is the more strange substances there are in it. Even though tomatoes are red I don't think that they retain that colour after being butchered and boiled to a sauce to put the beans in. And further more my preconceptions are that Swedish food consists of less extras and strange stuff.
The observations made with the baked beans is there fore a most crucial one: it must mean one or more of several things: 1. Tomatoes could actually be more red in another climate. Studies in the vegetable and fruit section contradicts this. 2. There are more extras and strange stuff in Swedish food than in American. If this is true then Sweden is truly lost because the stuff they put in the food here is horrifying. 3. Colour perception could differ in different places of the world, studies from old analogue camera film support this claim. 4. I am dead wrong: tomatoes without extras makes a more red sauce. I would not be all that surprised actually...

Lost memories of films that I never saw...

In 1998 "Dark City" by Alex Proyas was released, or so we are told. It is a story about memories, the film maker would probably even go as far as to say that the film deals with what it is to be human... I would probably not agree if I was forced to make up my mind. The film is a noir sic-fi, but it is much more. Not because of how good it is by it self but rather because it was made in 1998. This film does not deal with what the human souls is. This film is a mixture of Nosferatu vampires, X-files abduction, Gotham City, an imagery boarder lining Aronofskys Requiem for a Dream, only two years before Aronofsky made his mater piece (No, "Black Swan" is not even close) and a plot line with too many touch points to the Wachowski brothers Matrix. Or what do you make of this:
The humans are sleeping. Someone, a force that is unseen can manipulated every detail of every day life. A life that is a lie, in a city that is never ending and more or less just a stage. The agents for the force is keeping the humans as unaware prisoners. With the help of "technology so advanced that it is indistinguishable from magic" to quote Isaac Asimov. One man possess the power to over throw the system and free the humans. This man can even beat the bad guys on their own turf; he has evolved far beyond their control of their force. The extensive use of 3D effects with houses shape shifting and so on and the list goes on and on.
All this in 1998, one year before Matrix, and 2 years before Requiem for a dream.
The interesting part is that I had never heard of the film before I found it by chance, yesterday. Even more fitting considering that the film has the backdrop of lost memories and how these are fabricated. Now there are several other films that have tie ins to this film like the bizarreties of Cronenbergs "Naked lunch" from1991 and that the main character has the same haircut that Paul Reiser sported in Camerons "Aliens" (1986)... and again this film was supposed to be made in 1998! But that is beside the point and those movies where made prior to this one.
This film has so many touch points with Matrix that I have to dub it a proto-Matrix, although it does not come close in quality. Around that time, pre the terrorist-scare of this new millenia there were several films dealing with concepts of humans trapped in fake worlds, interesting to note that Cronenberg also did eXistenZ in 1999 and Natalis Cube in 1997. But still this film or maybe the inferior script for it must have had some impact on Matrix and Requiem for a Dream. This does not just happen.
What I do not get is how I managed not to be aware of this films existence? It has been 13 years since it was made, they tell me...