'Gladiator'

One of the few films I saw twice. Once I guess with some ol' gal and a second time with my brother-in-law.

Realizing what kind of a douchebag Russell Crowe is, the film doesn't hold up very well. Apparently, Crowe was a total asshole during the filming, forcing untold rewrites of the script. Even allegedly stating that he was the greatest actor in the world and he'd make garbage dialogue sound good.

It also features Joaquin Phoenix in the one role that I first remember him in. I thought he was really good even if a lot of the other performances were pretty uninspired.

This film sells for one reason: Violence. The bloodier, the more primitive the better. We love this stuff. You might assume that people of other centuries were more blood thirsty or even more brutal. This may or may not be true.

I do think they did not regard life as highly as we do now. There was a greater gap between the ultra-rich and the sublimely poor. You had Rome sacking everything in sight.

More than anything, death was just too primitive and the way people were killed were no where near as sophisticated. We didn't know how to kill properly. Warfare is the prime example. It was brutal. If it wasn't a bloody mess of a death, but was most certainly bloody and drawn out for possible hours. Whereas a bullet to the head would kill you instantly, that wasn't possible then.

Still, we like gladiators battling each other and tigers. We also like that it was entertainment. Secretly, we'd like the same. It doesn't make Romans in the first century barbarians nor does it modern day humanity. It does make us all kind of weird.

'There's Something About Mary'

I wish I had some historical (relatively speaking, of course) context for There's Something About Mary.

I'm going to be honest, I don't remember what I thought this film was. I did not see it in theaters, which is odd. It was released the summer after I graduated high school.

At the time, I was flush with money and I went to an obscene amount of films. I must have thought this was a chick flick. I wasn't one to read reviews so if I made a very shallow evaluation about the film as being one thing, I never learned it was another. Therefore, I can't place it within the right context.

I do remember it being very popular and making a ton of money. Watching it now, I can't believe there was a comedy such as There's Something About Mary. I can't imagine there being a more irreverent film. Nor do I remember something with so much physical humor.

When Warren goes bananas and attacks Ben Stiller during hte prom scene it is an example of the funniest physical humor in quite a long time.

I also remember it being Cameron Diaz' coming-out party. At least for me, she was in The Mask in addition to some lower-budget films. However, I remember Diaz from There's Something About Mary.

Nowadays, I can't stand her. Does nothing for me. Then, she was one of the hottest women on the planet. With that little haircut and those little outfits. Cripes. She was gorgeous.

'The Dark Side Of The Moon'

The Dark Side of the Moon was Pink Floyd's eighth album and there's a really good chance that most rock and roll fans can name any of the first seven.

Imagine The Beatles becoming famous from Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Pink Floyd had their muse. It was Syd Barrett. They're former frontman, who went crazy and left the band some five years earlier in the late 1960s. Roger Waters and Co. could not get over the loss of their bandmate.

One of the overarching elements of The Dark Side of the Moon are the snippets of spoken word sprinkled throughout the album, over and between the music. They recruited random people, visitors and staff to look at flash cards and answer right off the top of their head and record these answers.

Questions included the person's favorite food, color, their tendency for violence and more. Whatever got the most outrageous or darkest answers.

Generally, the answers should match the mood of the album that mirrored the ramblings and mindsets of a mental patient. Cut intos segments, these answers sounded quite disturbing and literally insane.

'After The Gold Rush'

Three years ago, I made a New Year's resolution: I would understand Neil Young. I had liked rock and roll music and I had liked rock and roll music from the 1960s.

So it was clearly inexplicable why I hadn't delved into the man's catalog before.

I just didn't understand why so many people liked the guy's music so much. Instead of sitting in ignorance, crossing my arms and just saying that he sucks, I made a concerted effort to get to know Neil Young. I started with After the Gold Rush. I don't know why.

I went to the record shop and it was there for a reasonable price. Thus I began my journey with Neil Young.

I don't know if I could have picked a better album. It's so countrified and crisp. The acoustic guitars and piano just rang from the turntable's needle. It was stripped down. His third solo album, he had worked out any kinks into what would become his earnest and bare sound, long before he started adding those obnoxious electric guitars and full band.

This go round, my turntable recently broke. I was forced to find this on compact disc and it does not sound nearly as good as it did on vinyl.

Funny thing, I wound up getting all of his album on vinyl and I love a vast, vast majority of them.

Amazing things happen when you open yourself up to them.

'Natty Dread' & 'Catch A Fire'

I'm reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the fifth book of the famous teens with magic book series.

In it, the bumbling best friend Ron Weasley is named the prefect during their fifth year at the magic school. This perplexes everyong, especially Harry. During one scene, he battles his inner thoughts of jealousy because it was assumed that Harry would be named the prefect due to his previous histrionics at the school and battling evildoers.

He was the one that battled all of these powerful wizards and powers. Not Ron. Why is Ron the prefect?

This is interesting because for the first four books, Potter battles endlessly and to little avail to prevent his reputation from preceding him and downplaying his own celebrity.

Finally, he realizes that Ron is no better than him and that Ron didn't ask for the prefect's badge and didn't really want it. So, why be mad at him?

I feel this way about Bob Marley: Marley being Ron. I'm still not a huge fan of Marley's by any means. However, I can listen to his records and feeling pretty good about. And who was I to judge an artist based almost solely on his fandom -- the ussless, dumb public and the college kids that align him with marijuana.

Thanks to Harry Potter, I know understand Bob Marley.

'Born In The U.S.A.'

The great money grab. When Bruce Springsteen became the boss. The album that overshadowed every good to great album Springsteen had done the previous decade.

I have nothing against someone making a living even if that "living" is a lot of money that allows them to never really work again.

So, Springsteen going from Nebraska (his previous album that wouldn't have a radio single if it tried) to Born in the U.S.A. that teemed with pop overtures and radio-friendly hooks seems like his payday.

But it also seems like selling out. Now, Springsteen has a very faithful following and I doubt anyone's really took him to task for this blatant lunge for more money. At the time, it was heralded as an album that "spoke to the people." It's a darker album without the jingoist lean as you might guess from the album cover and singles.

Springsteen wrote his songs with the intention on selling a lot of records. To do this, he had to incorporate the hand-clap snare intros and the synthesizers. Ultimately, I think this did more harm to his album than anything else. I feels dated and very "1980s." Whereas, Darkness on the Edge of Town and Born to Run feel no more 1970s than they do 2000s.

Although his themes didn't change, the sound did and I think it did a lot more harm than good, even if more people listened to it.

'Slaughterhouse-Five' & 'Cat's Cradle'

Kurt Vonnegut -- like jazz and baseball -- was something America got right.

The difference being Vonnegut was a pest, an itch that couldn't be scratched. He was the irritable underbelly of the United States. A ballsy and heady midwesterner, with all the common sense and know-how of a pig farmer and the worldly knowledge and jaded view of someone who has seen a ghost.

Vonnegut, in short, was everything that America was not when he was publishing his mix of science fiction, absurdity and black comedy. He had the sensibilities and the hope. However, he was not deluded enough to think this world, this life was a rosy and sweet as most everyone wishes it was.

Vonnegut was our Jiminy Cricket. He was our conscience. He had fought on World War II and witnessed one of the greatest tragedies in modern warfare (the fire bombing of Dresden). Vonnegut had seen all the hardships and death that any one human could take. He put them into his stories. These crazy characters are all apart of Vonnegut's past, the ghosts in his closet. Some are real and others imagined. Either way, they represent all of the irrational, violent and insane thoughts and actions that course through our veins and throughout our lives.

Vonnegut was beauty. Despite all the darkness and seeming lack of faith in humanity, he actually had an undying and relenting faith that people could be good and that we could all get along, if we really tried. I may not feel the same. And in some dark recess of Vonnegut's heart he might have had some mixed feelings ... because that was kind of the point. Vonnegut doesn't want us turn our back on one another. He also doesn't want us to just blindly walk down the dark alley or follow without raising some objections or questions. He wanted us all -- if nothing else to be skeptics.

My copy of Slaughterhouse-Five I received from a professor in college. I was taking a class with the man. He also taught an entire course on Vonnegut. I went to his office and as I was leaving, he gave me a copy from his shelves.

My copy of Cat's Cradle I got when my wife was cleaning out her deceased grandmother's house. In it were shelves and shelves of old science fiction, textbooks, Boy Scout manuals and an old copy of Cat's Cradle.