Schu-Review

Schu-Review : Echinacea Tea

Life, Randomness

I’ve been drinking tea more at the office. This is partly because I’ve gotten tired of paying 2 bucks for a cup of Starbucks and also because the coffee they make in the office tastes like they made it with pinto beans instead of coffee. Usually I have the regular Lipton tea (there’s a big box of it in the cabinet) but sometimes I find some other kind to try. Today I found a straggler, a single bag of Echinacea Tea that someone must have cleaned out of their desk. I’m no stranger to eating or drinking things that other people have discarded so I thought it would be OK.

At first smell I could tell that something was going to be different about this cup. It had a weird smell of pine or maybe mint. It could have been the mint I was eating… but I wasn’t sure. I let the bag soak for a few minutes to make sure I was getting the full experience. When I finally did drink the tea… it was weird. But not in weird enough for me to stop drinking it, plus I was really tired and needed something. It was like I dipped a mint/pine air freshner into the cup along with the teabag.

I was going to quit drinking it when it hit me. It wasn’t like when you finally wake up after a cup of coffee, it was this weird ‘out there’ feeling. I think it was my chakra opening up, or maybe my third eye, this is yogi tea after all. It was a really pleasant experience. It made drinking this awful liquid worth it. This might be because of the tea, but I did find it in a cabinet at work, so it might have been there for years absorbing all the spiritual energy from hundreds of disgruntled HUD workers.

3/5 Schus

Schu-Review : Across The Universe

Entertainment, Movies

Across The UniverseI went to see the film “Across The Universe” on Saturday. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s the new musical by Julie Taymor, famous for bringing “The Lion King” to Broadway. I am not a professional critic by any means, some people have said that I like everything. But I’d say that I can find something to enjoy in every movie. This movie is good, great actually. But it does have it’s flaws.

First, it’s a little disconnected, it’s like they listened to the catalog of The Beatles songs and found every one that had a name in it, or any ones that were about events of the time and tried to hear a story in them when they were in a certain order. Which isn’t that crazy of an idea, apparently. Also they seem to leave the details up to the songs to fill in, the places in between musical numbers are a little flat. They’re just killing time with exposition while they wait for the music to start up again. In that sense it seems less like a full film than a sequence of music videos.

Secondly, I wasn’t a huge Beatles fan going into it, but I have to say that I have a new found interest in the music. The film uses modernized covers of the songs that I really liked (I got the soundtrack). Everyone always tells me what revolutionary music the Beatles were, but when I hear it on the radio I just think it sounds like every other 1960’s song that I’ve heard. (could be a problem with radio, not the beatles) The versions featured here do I good job of spicing up some of the more traditional songs. I think tonight I’ll do a bit more listening to the original versions too.

Even though the songs are great I think that they’re missing something without the visuals in the film. Not that they don’t stand up on their own, it’s just that they’re tied in my head to the awesome images that the director used. One scene has army recruits in their military issue boxer shorts struggling to carry a 30 foot statue of liberty across a miniature Vietnam while gunfire and explosions happen all around (all while either ‘Helter Skelter’ or ‘Come Together’ is playing, I can’t remember?) I would love for them to adapt this into a live broadway show, I would be there opening night… well maybe not opening night, I’m not rich.

4/5 Schus

‘Knocked Up’ is the best summer movie yet.

Entertainment, Movies

I’ve seen Spiderman… it kind of sucked. I’ve seen Pirates 3… twas ‘aight. But the movie that I told myself not to get that excited for finally came out and it’s easily the best movie I’ve seen all summer and that includes the ones I’ve rented too. It definitely lives up to the bar set by the director’s first movie ‘the 40 year old virgin’. Obviously if you’re a fan of his TV series’ ‘Undeclared’ or ‘Freaks and Geeks’ you will love this movie. But I’m recommending it to anyone else… everyone else!

Geeks of Doom review

Later!

Movie Good…

Entertainment, Movies

I just got back from Reign Over Me. Which I thought was a superb film. It’s really late and I have to get up in about 6 hours. But here’s my review.


WOW

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Another thing I realized is that I really don’t like reading forum posts on the internet. Reading about 2 people arguing about who’s opinion is right makes me want to stab myself in the stomach.

I thought this movie was really good, but there will always be someone who doesn’t like it. I mean come on… I like Pauly Shore.

I like this movie, I hope you do to, then we can talk about it.

Schu-Review : 4 out of 5 Schus

Later!
Mark