As promised here is my yearbook text:

It's easy to say that I never loved you all but I managed to cope. I still have the summer to make this "The Best Four Years Of My Life"...Ralph Waldo Emerson said "Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist" It's true. Otherwise you're just a lamb...I wish to thank Joshua, Jason, and Jeanine for shaping me these last four years. Also thanks to Ryan for joining me late in the games. We're about to enter the real world folks, our first frontier, and I know many of us will not make it. Good Luck. It is a comfort to know I cry as I write this; I'll miss this school, mainly because it is the only one I've got. This is my letter to the world and it is shorter than it should be. 'Later AND SO ON.

It seems awfully melodramtic to me now, but then again high school was a maudlin time for me. My earlier joke was mean-spirited, but for the most part I still feel mean-spirited towards my high school class. All the hypocrites that ragged on me for weird haircuts and combat boots my freshman year, were wearing the same things two years later. Despite its heavy tone, I still am proud that submitted it in lieu of a list of pet peeves and activities.

Sure we can! Why just this morning I was saying to my friend that George W. watched Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon while discussing my righteous yearbook entry with Dick. Actually, once I get someone form home to e-mail my yearbook entry to me, I'll post it here. The year we graduated the "blurb" format was expanded from the classic "Activities, memories, saying, pet peeve, nickname, inocuous drivel" formula to a "whatever you can fit in your allotted space" approach. Everyone continued to use their space as they always had. I decided to write a note to my class (and future self I guess), which included at least one quote, which I do remember: "Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist" - Ralph Waldo Emerson.

heh. the fact that "the road less traveled" is such a well-known poem is sort of ironic, is it not? and you're right, robert frost isn't really that terrible. "birches" is really beautiful, and there are some other ones that aren't bad, either. it's just that ryan's question set us all up for a good hearty round of self-satisfied smirking, and self-satisfied smirking is always a good time.

my yearbook was even sadder than yours, rabi, as we didn't have quotes at all. all we had were blurry, awkward photos of each one of the five hundred of us, with the girls draped in stiff black velvet and the boys in false tuxedo fronts. and for all my quote snobbery, i'm sure that had we been asked for quotes, mine would have been something dumb. it was high school, after all.

also, apparently we are not, in fact, clever enough to multi-task several threads at once. woe is us.

I'm going to take the less-popular (or maybe just more serious) stance here and say who really cares what they write in their yearbooks, and why is that a good indication of anything, much less the content of their character? (oh, quoting mlk, there's a cliche if I ever heard one. especially this time of year. don't let me graduate!) there is simply not enough space in yearbooks -- at least not if you went to a school like mine with a graduating class pushing 500 -- to be profound, so why bother with anything but the most minimal of expectations? or hey, why bother with expectations at all? let them quote donald duck if they want to.

as for the road less traveled, I'm sure it would be less maligned if it were not so well known. so is that a criticism of the poem, or of society, or neither? robert frost is not my favorite poet, but he's accessible, and there's something to be said for accessible poetry. you have to start simple or you will go mad. and it's not all bad; I do think fire and ice is a gem, although not something I would ever put in a yearbook. besides, who knows, maybe that "all the difference" sentiment is useful in some way to those kids who are used to taking the paved, streetlamped, parkingmetered, billboarded roads through life. it is much too easy to step back and say "ugh that is so shallow and hypocritical and they don't even get it and there is no meaning in popular culture" instead of taking a step closer to try and get near enough that you can see the world from someone else's perspective. as long as they aren't hurting anyone or advocating such a thing, I say give everyone who's been apparently brainwashed the benefit of the doubt.

so what was your yearbook quote? mine was nothing. but then my yearbook was so sad that our quotes weren't under our pictures. instead they were printed all together in a four-page compilation, arranged in alphabetical order by last name. so probably no one would have read mine except the people who didn't know me, and the people who did know me certainly knew that I would find the juxtaposition of myself with a few lines of text inadequate in every sense, unworthy of each other.

Given that the majority of folk who quote "The Road Less Traveled" have, in fact, walked solely down the road so traveled it's paved with billboards, I'd say withhold graduation and administer beatings.

Well, at least they're not quoting like, Eminem or Fred Durst. That puts them ahead of a goodly percentage of our nation's youth at this point. Frost may be kind of cloyingly sentimental and trite at times, but, at least he's like, litriture and stuff. Totally! Fersher. So, I say we let them graduate, but make sure to put something on the dreaded permanent record about the unfortunate incident in question.

well, is the robert frost quote from "the road less traveled"? if so, graduation should be unequivocally prohibited, as i think we've all heard enough of that "two roads diverged in a wood" nonsense. if the quote is not from "the road less traveled", then it depends on what frost poem it is from, and which quote.

but, generally, no.

I walked into the Coolidge Corner Theatre to see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon without knowing much at all about the film. As such, I had a little trouble getting into the movie at first, and that threw me off. ("Oh, it's, like, subtitled.... oh... people in this world can sort of, like, fly around.") But once I climbed into the movie a bit, I really enjoyed it, despite a distracting girl who was sleeping in a nearby seat. The sets, the crazy-ass action choreography, the camera work, the simple intensity of the characters... all of this gave the movie an other-worldy quality that I found really appealing. If the plot was predictable, it's because classic tales of folklore are usually predictable, since we've heard them so many times. But good stories should still be retold anyway. Particularly if the retelling involves pretty colors and many fast moving limbs.

I figure we're all clever enough to multi-task several threads at once, so let me raise an off-topic question: Should students who quote Robert Frost in their senior yearbook blurb be allowed to graduate? Why or why not?

Unfortunately, I can't really get in on the whole movie discussion, as I haven't been to see anything in the theatre since like X-Men this summer. I'm just always so busy in the evenings and way too apathetic when it comes to catching movies whilst they are still in theatres. I rent quite a few, and watch anything good that happens to come on HBO / Cinemax / Etc, but that leaves me permanently around 6 months behind in any discussion of such things. Anyway, from what I have heard from others I really do want to catch CT, HD, Traffic, Quills, Yi Yi, and several others that I can't think of at the moment. I'm sure I'll get around to all of them eventually. Mmmyep.

See now, I went to the theatre expecting tight action sequences (choreographed by the near-legendary Yuen Wo Ping), and I was surprised to find such a nicely acted, subtle romance between Yeoh and Fat. The cinematography looked great, especially the establishing shots of the different landscapes, almost a live version of Princess Mononoke's forests. I did not expect great dialogue because translations never work correctly, especially from an Asian language into English. Though I must assert, I think CT, HD is more than just eye candy. It is a technically superior re-telling of a classic Chinese story, that simply looks flawless.

i went to see crouching tiger, hidden dragon last week and fell asleep through most of it, due more to sheer exhaustion than sheer boredom. however, i wasn't as impressed with the parts that i did see as others have been. as a moviegoer (oh, ick), i tend more towards dialogue-driven stuff than action as a general rule, so i suppose i should have expected to tire of the fight scenes after only a few seconds, and to think that the general premise was kind of dumb and predictable, and that the dialogue was stilted (subtitles aside). there's no question it was visually stunning, and the acting was good and the sword fighting was well-choreographed and wirework and blah blah blah, but whatever. eye candy dissolves quickly.

All right then, let's get this thing back in full swing shall we? I finally saw Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon last Thursday and, though I've only viewed it once, I am fully comfortable with this proclaimation: "Holy Fuck! My life has meaning again!"

True, that may be inappropriate and utterly false, but this movie is not only visually astonishing, the script (at least the translation) is tight and well-acted by Chow-Yun Fat, Michelle Yeoh, and especially Zhang Ziyi. Basically, Ang Lee (who impressed me with the cool blues of The Ice Storm) has made a generation-defining epic that will outsell any DVD to date when released, and stay on top until the Star Wars trilogy gets that treatment. For those of you who haven't seen it, obviously I urge you to run out to your nearest art house immediately. Those who have, don't you agree?