Saturday, November 22, 2003

Jonathan Brandis

I received some distubing news yesterday. Not the kind that will fundamentally alter your life, but the kind that will definitely put a damper on the morning. I read that an actor who I once adored in the bygone days of junior high school took his own life at the age of 27, and it bummed me out a bit.

For those of you who never committed the filmography of Jonathan Brandis to memory at any point in the last ten years, his most standout role was in the oddly capitalized seaQuest DSV.
This was a show that was basically Star Trek underwater -- with a talking dolphin. It was terrible. I taped every episode. I also had my very benevolent parents schlep me to the Philadelphia Convention Center to stand in line for 2 hours for thirty seconds of contact with Mr. Brandis at the car show. My 13-year-old friends and I had a secret society called the Brandettes. And I've officially said too much.

It's easy to assume that Jonathan Brandis killed himself due to a failure to come to terms with fleeting celebrity, but nobody seems to know (or, sadly, care) what the reason was. It may have been for any one of the other completely retarded reasons that people usually choose to snuff it. Whatever the case, it's a sad story and I figure that if I could devote a good year or two of my pre-pubescent life to this poor guy, I could give him 15 minutes of mention in my post-collegiate website.

Robyn

Saturday, November 8, 2003

Tokyo

I saw the movie Lost in Translation today, and it was very good. It stars Bill Murray as a guy having a midlife crisis in Tokyo, and it features some very nice post-punk, new wave songs from the late 70s and early 80s, which is always a nice thing.

One thing I took away from it was a confirmation of my feelings about Tokyo. I tend to think of Tokyo the same way as a lot of people think of New York. It's the kind of place I'd like to visit for about a day and then want to leave immediately due to sensory overload. Jeffrey said it looked like Times Square on speed, which is fairly accurate. I imagine that living there would be akin to having a syringe of adrenaline injected straight into your brain.

Anyway, Lost in Translation is a fine funny movie. If you can find a place that's still playing it, I'd highly recommend seeing it.

Robyn