Someone I know from a ways back was just in Taipei for a couple days in her January travels of Asia. I took her around to a few places to get a taste of Taipei. Unfortunately, it's been cold and wet and on both days she didn't contact me until we could only meet in the fading remnants of what barely could be called daylight.

We're not friends. We're both from New Jersey. We met in San Francisco through mutual connections online, but the only times we met were one-offs. We never hung out like friends do. We never casually called each other and asked how we're doing. She wasn't like Delphine who I randomly met waiting for a show to begin at Bottom of the Hill and became what I'd call good friends.

Then I left San Francisco and returned to New Jersey. Then she left San Francisco and settled in New York. And we still had one-off meet ups and still never hung out. This time was more of the same.

And we never really connected. The reason we never hung out is because there was never a connection. Just polite acquaintance conversation and I don't mean to be harsh and don't think I am when I say that after a few hours, we were bored of each other. Not that I didn't try, but she just seemed bored of me, and that naturally bored me. But she got bored with me first.

I have almost no contact with personal relations these days, and when I do have one, this is what I get. It's part of what I call the "big joke" that is my life. Also part of the big joke is that I moved to Asia and the only person that objectively may be categorized as a "friend" is a white guy with yellow fever; only into Asian chicks. I wouldn't associate with him at all in the U.S. 

The big joke is God telling me to die already. My life isn't worth living, and as long as I continue to insist on living it, He'll play with me like a ball of yarn. Touché Big Guy.

I, of course, am this God.

I saw Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005) on TV tonight. It's a mainstream Hollywood film several years old, so it's not worth saying too much about it. I enjoyed it enough. It was cute. It was a cute assassin action movie. It's a subtle comedy. Not a bust-out-laughing comedy, but when you do bust out laughing, it's at the oddest and quirkiest things.

No, it's not a great film. You don't watch a movie like this for its plot or whether everything makes sense or not. It's to watch two of Hollywood's A-list actors work their mojo. And Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie had terrific chemistry. I'm not saying anything good about how the relationship is portrayed, because that would be insisting on something making sense. It was just enjoyable watching them play off each other, and on a subtler level, playing off knowing what we, the audience, are supposed to know.

I generally look down on Hollywood films, which usually means I look down on Hollywood actors, but with maybe the exception of Keanu Reeves, the vast majority of them are either really good actors who put a lot of attention and effort in their craft, or are just very magnetic and charismatic like "personality" actors of old.

I give it a high fresh 8 out of 10 tomatoes for what it is: a light, tasty treat of Hollywood confectionery.

I also recently watched classics All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) and Citizen Kane (1941). Both are incredible, amazing films that each get honorary 10 out of 10 fresh tomatoes, but only for a more cultured and sophisticated audience, one with a sense of history, both actual and film.

The title All Quiet on the Western Front has entered the English lexicon as something profound and poetic, calm between storms perhaps, but in the film there was nothing quiet about the Western Front. That title is a rendering from the original German title, which was a much more prosaic and mundane, "No News on the Western Front", which I think referred to the lack of information German soldiers in the trenches received about what was actually going on during World War I. The bulletins they received cynically told them nothing.

I think the film still remains one of the all-time great antiwar war films, the likes of which hadn't been seen since 1930 until Das Boot in the 1980s. I thought there would be aspects of the film that would be dated, and there were especially early on (there weren't, they were accurate depictions of what it was like in European cities leading up to WWI -future ed.), but overall, the impact of the film withstands the test of time.

The term "post traumatic stress disorder" was coined fairly recently in modern times, I think in the 70s or 80s, but this film, from the novel, documents it in German WWI soldiers in 1930! By the end of the film, I stopped thinking there were dated elements in the film because the emotional depths it probes are as sophisticated as anything that came afterwards.

Citizen Kane is considered a masterpiece in cinematography. In the TV series Northern Exposure, aspiring filmmaker Ed Chigliak refers to Citizen Kane as the film where Orson Welles taught filmmakers how to make films. And certainly the brilliance in the film is in how the camera and lights are used to say something substantial about the characters.

About wealth and greatness, Orson Welles himself called the "Rosebud" red herring a "tawdry" trick. Still, I think the values the film explores is relevant to modern times or to any humanity. The film was released in 1941, which makes me think the creation of the story was influenced by the 1929 stock crash and what in our lives is really of value. We chase wealth, we chase fame, but what are we missing in that relentless pursuit?

The impact of finding what "Rosebud" was when the film was first released was certainly greater and more profound back then. I knew what Rosebud was through cultural references long before I saw this film, so that part of the mystery was gone, but I still appreciated what the film was doing and why it is considered one of the greatest films of all time