31. Fanaticism: The Hunger Games

Let me begin by saying that I read The Hunger Games in a matter of hours. Yes, I caved into pressure from my friends, siblings, and the media, who have been promoting the book and the upcoming movie with a raging hysteria. And I admit, I read it for the sole purpose of expressing my opinion about it, because I want to seem relevant. Hence, I had to be informed.

The book itself is about a middle school reading level, with about as much eloquence as Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series. However, it was a sensational quick read, so I found it difficult to pry myself away from it. In total, it took about 3.5-4 hours to read spread over the course of the evening. Overall: decent story, a little cliché, basic writing. Not bad.

What I don’t understand is the fanaticism associated with it. With the final movie installment of the Twilight Series set for release this year, people need a new obsession to latch onto. But unlike a hobby, books and movies provide a finite amount of enjoyment. Once the series is finished, it’s done. No amount of fan fiction or action figures or t-shirts can reignite an extinguished flame. So is fanaticism worth it? Whether one is a fan of a pop star, television series, or athlete, everything must come to an end at one point or another. Has fanaticism always existed? Or is it a product of our times? Or since the birth of a national popular culture? Why does our culture encourage fanaticism? Do we need fanaticism?

What do you think? Leave a response in the comment section below.

Firsts This Week:

• Read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

23. The Last Week of 2011

Since I had the week off from school between Christmas and New Year’s, I was able to try a lot of new things this week. A summary:

1. Movies: I finished “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”, and watched “To Sir, With Love”, “No Strings Attached”, and “Mean Girls”. I’ve been having a bit of a Sidney Poitier moment since I discovered his films, and I’m excited to watch more.

2. Art: My family and I went to the Museum of Fine Arts to watch Christian Marclay’s “The Clock”. I first read about it in the New York Times a few months ago, and was thrilled that it was coming to Boston. “The Clock” is a 24-hour film that focuses on time. Marclay culled scenes from various films that depict the hour, whether on a wristwatch, grandfather clock, or alarm clock, and edited them together to show a continuum of time, albeit with a broken narrative. What’s interesting is that the time shown on the screen matches the time zone of the place the film is being shown. I watched from 4:12 to 4:45. I was fascinated by the way Marclay edited the pieces together: a shot of a clock as a horse race begins merged into a different scene of galloping horses, which then cut to another scene entirely, such as a person dialing a phone number. In the next scene, someone would answer a telephone, and so on, all while telling the story of time in a frenetic and perfectly disjointed manner. It was well worth the hour-long wait outside the small viewing room.

3. Dining: Today I spent the day in Boston with friends and ended up in California Pizza Kitchen for lunch. We decided to be adventurous and try a Vegetarian Pizza with Japanese Eggplant, as well as Crispy Mac and Cheese. The verdict: the Japanese eggplant pizza was delicious, although I can’t really tell the difference between a Japanese eggplant and a regular one. The Crispy Mac and Cheese was a fried, breaded, gooey mass of mac and cheese that was hailed as “so good, but so bad for you” by the resident mac and cheese expert at our table, while I just thought it was bad.

4. Recreation: In Boston, it is practically a rite of passage to skate on Frog Pond in Boston Common. Bring your gloves, hats, and be prepared to wait in a long line for the opportunity, but it was worth it for the experience. I also did my first exercise of the year by taking a Pilates class at Endurance Pilates and Yoga.

5. Leisure: I completed a 500 piece puzzle. While this may not sound that impressive, this puzzle has had a long history in my family. Every year on Yom Kippur, we pull out this puzzle, which features the Mordillo characters. In our fasting and tired state, we have never finished it, since it boasts a lot of background space that is uniformly colored. This week, with the help of two other friends (who are master puzzle solvers), We finished the puzzle in three hours. Alone, I wouldn’t have been able to finish it, as I don’t have that kind of patience. Then, we played Taboo, which I have discovered is an excellent game.

6. And that other new thing… the new year. Happy 2012!

19. A Long List of Movies I Haven’t Seen, and a few that I have

Though I generally try to be informed, I am hopelessly behind when it comes to movies. However, I can no longer be blissfully ignorant. After missing one too many Star Wars references in conversation, I realized that it is time to fix my movie literacy. Since my parents were not raised in the US, they never introduced me to films widely regarded as classics in America. As a result, my classic movie knowledge only extends as far as the James Bond movies, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Blazing Saddles, The Shawshank Redemption, and The Wizard of Oz. The list below contains movies that I’ve been meaning to see, including classics and films from the past few years. For the past few months, I’ve added movies to the list as I continue to miss pop culture references and silently berate myself for not having caught up with the times.

Movies I Haven’t Seen

• Inception
• The Dark Knight
• The Notebook
• Mean Girls
• Pirates of the Caribbean
• Star Wars
• Lord of the Rings
• The Town
• Citizen Kane
• A Clockwork Orange
• Scarface
• Casablanca
• Rebecca
• The Postman Always Rings Twice
• Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
• No Strings Attached
• Friends With Benefits
• Black Swan
• The Godfather
• Gone With The Wind
• Jaws
• The Blind Side
• Pulp Fiction
• Transformers

Firsts this week:

• Watched The Philadelphia Story, and was thus introduced to Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, and John Stewart.

In the Comments Section:

Tell me, what other classic movies should I add to the list? Do you agree with my choices? Are there any movies that you’ve particularly enjoyed? Do you have a favorite cultural reference that comes from a movie?