Clubbing Ettiquette

So my lovely wife and I went clubbing last night at the Matrix down at Station Square in Pittsburgh. Clubbing is quite the experience and I suggest that everybody do it at least once, except for maybe Redhurt because we know of his distaste for dancing in a public place. So anyway, while we were at this club the large amount of the pre-thirty, hormone driven mass didn't seem to know the proper clubbing ettiquette. When you are going to get a drink at the bar, you are not to cut across the biggest, most dense section of the dance floor. Instead, you are to make your way to the closest edge and skirt around the outside (where there is a phenomenom known as the "walking aisle") and make your way to the bar. Then, when you obtain your liquor induced drinks, you do NOT cut through the middle attempting to hold the overly full drinks above your head and nodding at every attractive person. For the people who are dancing, and for the greater good of the clothing wearing public, please do heed these rules of clubbing ettiquette.

Aural Fixations

Unlike those that have a single musical genre that they love and stick to, I find that my musical tastes change like the shifting sands of time. Ok, I don't really know what that means, but it almost seems that my music tendencies change from week to week. Over the last several days I have been hooked on music that is best described as what you might hear in an upscale fashion store. For lack of a better term I lump this category into something called "BCBG Music" or BCBGM for the rest of you. I stumbled upon a site the other day while applying for fashion jobs that had a link to the person that does the music for this particular company's site. The site is http://www.aural-fixations.com/mixed.htm and what you do is just click on one of the mixes and then you have the ability to listen to an hour or so of pre-mixed music. It is a great *cheap* way to get a, as Charles Pierce would say, "chill" atmosphere in your house/apartment.

American Psyco: Patrick Bateman

The other evening, Sarah and I watched the movie American Psycho, starring Christian Bale as the 80's yuppie-turned psycho, Patrick Bateman. The movie was very well done and did a great job getting the point of the movie across. What I got out of it was the general idea seeing what dispair and lifelessness there is within the upper echelons of society. Basically, Patrick Bateman's entire existence was living to look good and talk about things that are fruitless to human existence. The empty, self-centered world he lived it caused him to become increasingly isolated and almost distant from true human ration and existence. So, he turns killer to (in a sense) get back in touch with humans. The problem is that he is (in my opinion) doing the entire thing just to get caught and noticed...BUT because everyone is so self-centered, his blatent calls for help fall on deaf ears. He is more or less a walking shadow in a world of shadows. Half the people in the movie don't even know the correct name for the other characters. In my opinion, it was a very well done movie...not a movie that is designed to be someone's favorite movie...but powerful non-the-less. I liken it to Saving Private Ryan in the sense that you shouldn't want to watch it over and over again...but instead sit and think about the point that the movie is trying to make. Christian Bale (although surrounded with a star-studded cast) steals the movie. He is an amazingly talented actor and conveys the inner turmoil beneath the chiseled, emotionless exterioir. My recommendation is to go and rent it, but make sure that you know what you are in for. The movie is extremely graphic and disturbing at times...but if you are able to not get all hung-up on that, you will see the movie for what it is intended to be. After seeing it, I am up for other interpretations of the movie, so please comment.

Jeremy Piven, Tom Ford, Jim Brickman: Brothers?

So, over the past several weeks I have come to realize that the up and coming star, Jeremy Piven (seen on shows like Entourage), seem to be channeling other famous celebrities. The first person that comes to mind when I look at Jeremy Piven and his style is the former Chief Designer for Gucci, Tom Ford. Tom Ford, has been ranked year after year as one of the most attractive and well dressed men in the world. Not only has he mastered the art of physical sexiness, he has developed quite and empire businessly speaking. When he took over Gucci, it was on the brink of bankruptcy. Almost single-handedly he has turned Gucci (over a 14 year period) into the world-recognized name that it is today. Regardless of his sexual preference, that is quite an accomplishment.

The other person that I find that Jeremy Piven seems to emulate is the famous pianist, Jim Brickman. When you really stop and take a look at these pictures, he could easily be mistaken for either of them. Although he does not have the musical talent, of Jim, or the designer mastermind of Tom, Jeremy seems to be doing just fine for himself. I think that secretly, he is part of some Goverment cloning experiment...very similar to the movie: "Boys from Brazil"...except that they are not cloning Hitler.

In Reference: The Island

The brain is an amazingly complicated thing and constantly amazes me. Having said that, let's begin. The brain basically consists of lots of different cells and molecules, ect. that are arranged in a particular fashion. And it is the arrangment of those chemicals that contributes to many of the things that you do. For example, if you were to break a memory down into its simplest form, it is nothing more than neurons arranged in a certain way and the way that your brain accesses them. Now the way that your brain accesses them is coded somewhere else in your brain. So basically, the entire coding for a humans conscious existence is within the layout of the grey-matter cells. Now, having said that, I am theorizing that it would be possible (if we had the technology) to create and exact replica of a human with all of the same memories. All we would have to do would be to take a normal clone and then at some point drastically rearrange this structure of the mind...my guess is that the host person would have to take some sort of a radical neural imaging, multi-layering CATscan of sorts. Now they would be the same person for an instant, but then at that point they would begin to deviate and have different experience, but if everything was done correctly, they should react exactly the same to similar circumstances. The other question that I pose (which goes along with this) is whether or not the clone would have a soul. Now technically it would be an exact replica of the original person in all forms of the word...BUT from that point on they would be two separate humans.