A part of this view­ing list: Cri­te­rion Col­lec­tion Spine #382: Stu­art Cooper’s Over­lord. I was con­tacted by a NYC mar­ket­ing firm to review Over­lord, which was released on the 17^th. So hey, free DVD. This is the sec­ond time that some­one has hap­pened along my movie reviews and asked me to do one for them. I must […]

Last night was the first real night of sum­mer for me. Filled with music, famil­iar faces and late-​burning eye­balls. Aster­isk Gallery had a fairly impromptu show fea­tur­ing Chiara Gio­vando and Daniel Higgs [lead singer of Lung­fish]. Ha Ha La was the first act, a sort of Daniel John­ston with a dash of Sigur Ros and [when-​used] Jesus and […]

I got an unex­pected free hair­cut today from the ladies who run the Gentlemen’s Bar­ber Shop in Tremont. Appar­ently they’ve got­ten some busi­ness from my Tremon­ter post­ing about the place. I tried to talk them out of it, but there was no dice. They wouldn’t even take a tip. I’m just glad to know that I helped out […]

A part of this view­ing list: Cri­te­rion Col­lec­tion Spine #371: Oscar Micheaux’s Body & Soul and Ken­neth MacPherson’s Bor­der­line. Body & Soul Paul Robe­son and Oscar Micheaux are leg­endary, so I was eager to see what they could do in col­lab­o­ra­tion. Body & Soul is Robeson’s first screen appear­ance, and quite an open­ing act. The story is […]

As I wait for Ama­zon to ship me the lat­est Tolkien release, The Chil­dren of Húrin, I find myself dis­agree­ing with sev­eral reviews I’ve read, in terms of plac­ing this work in con­text with his other stuff. The lede in the Wash­ing­ton Post review: If any­one still labors under the delu­sion that J.R.R. Tolkien was a writer of […]

I went to the Beach­land tonight to see Blk Tygr and ended up with a cart­load of local music. I either know enough peo­ple, or the right peo­ple enough to end up with stuff just get­ting handed to me. Of course, I also stopped by Music Saves and picked up three CDs I’ve been mean­ing to get. All […]

I don’t drive very much any­more, but the last two days I’ve been at the Tri-​C Cor­po­rate Col­lege West tak­ing a class. What I’ve noticed on the drive to West­lake these two days is a pre­pon­der­ance of W04 stick­ers, Kerry-​Edwards stick­ers and now the odd Obama08 sticker. I’m pretty sure I’ve bitched about this before, but I can’t […]

I’d com­pletely for­got­ten that April is National Poetry Month. Usu­ally I throw a con­test and try to write a poem a day, but I’ve been so damn busy lately that it com­pletely slipped my mind. I would offer a poem by way of apol­ogy, but I’ve got to get going to a meeting. Woops.

A part of this view­ing list: Cri­te­rion Col­lec­tion Spine #358: G.W. Pabst’s Pandora’s Box. I said I’d fin­ished watch­ing all of the films that I’d seen before, but Pandora’s Box showed up at the Library recently, and I’ve cur­rently got Bicy­cle Thieves in the queue. Watch­ing Pandora’s Box this time around was much more fulfilling […]

My cur­rent focus is bring­ing my web acces­si­bil­ity, Sec­tion 508, and other usabil­ity guide­lines to a higher level. To that end, The Uni­ver­sity of Washington’s mas­sive and extremely use­ful Acces­si­bil­ity site has been a great help. And I only found it yesterday.

I’d say I’ve smelled some­one smok­ing up in down­town Cleve­land at least six times since I started work that­away. Usu­ally on Ontario right before Pub­lic Square, but once I smelled it oh so briefly, on the bus, on Carnegie Bridge, right above the Cuya­hoga. I think the neigh­bor­hood skunk or one of its prog­eny has made its […]

Club Soda does mir­a­cle work on my pots and pans. When the metal is still spotty after a wash I can pour a lit­tle club soda in the pan, let it sit for a bit and then wash it again and they pretty much dis­ap­pear. Sweet Jesus!

I just down­loaded this awe­some iTunes plu­gin called iCon­cert­Cal. It uses the iTunes index and then searches for artists in your playlist and makes a cal­en­dar show­ing when and where they’ll be in your area. It isn’t fool­proof, since I imag­ine smaller groups aren’t going to be eas­ily found, but it is cer­tainly bet­ter than check­ing every […]

My Dell lap­top is right at two years old and is start­ing to dis­in­te­grate on me. The sound only works if I plug a jack into it, the for­ward slash key only works if you press the top-​right cor­ner and the whole she-​bang is get­ting bogged down because of my inabil­ity to refor­mat the bas­tard. Thank you, […]

US Guys is a book by jour­nal­ist Char­lie LeDuff; a series of vignettes that are mar­keted as an exam­i­na­tion of man­hood and mas­culin­ity in Amer­i­can cul­ture. It starts off well enough, the writ­ing is crisp and the obser­va­tions are fresh and inter­est­ing, but by the end Char­lie seems to have run out of obser­va­tions about mas­culin­ity and […]

I busted out the grill for the first time and cooked some cheapie Spencer steaks on it yes­ter­day. I made a lime and olive oil mari­nade; I stole the idea from Fahren­heit, only I put a lot more lime in mine. Since the steaks were so skinny I made sand­wiches out of them, with just a lit­tle bit of mayo they became […]