A part of this viewing list: Criterion Collection Spine #35: Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques. This movie is amazing. I’m not one for horror movies, because I never get scared, but the ending sequence of this film even creeped me out. Pretty much any time you hear anything about this film there will be the inevitable [...]

In other gym-related news, there is this dude who I’ve seen at the gym since I started going there that never lifts weights. He dicks around the entire time, almost always looking at himself in the mirror and going through the motions of lifting weights, setting up the bar, adjusting seat heights, switching out handles [...]

Lou shot me an email today to help him restore his WordPress after his site was hacked, he came over right after I got home and we fixed it fairly quickly. Then he and I met up with Shawn at the Lincoln Park Pub for Taco Tuesday and I ran into my old boss. Found [...]

A part of this viewing list: Criterion Collection Spine #30: Fritz Lang’s M. Fritz Lang always blows my mind. The precise craftmanship in all of his films, the exactly correct framing for a shot, the inspired, slight, understated camera movements, the chiaroscuro and beauty of the black and white would be worth watching in a [...]

A part of this viewing list: Criterion Collection Spine #37: Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits. Woops. This movie totally didn’t do a damn thing for me. And usually I really like Terry Gilliam. I would have preferred something like The Adventures of Baron Munchausen as the Criterion pick, if they were going to go with a [...]

Nifflas’ Games

A part of this viewing list: Criterion Collection Spine #43: Peter Brook’s Lord of the Flies. It is tough getting children to act well; just ask anyone who’s ever had to get children to act well. A vast majority of the cast in Lord of the Flies couldn’t act their way out of a wet paper [...]

Jon Hicks has a show of his concert posters at B-Sides under the Grog Shop. Last night was the opening and a free show by mostly local bands upstairs. Mystery of Two, Paleo, Brian Straw, Chum and Blk Tygr all put on great shows. I really need to get a better low-light camera if I’m [...]

Ill Doctrine

A part of this viewing list: Criterion Collection Spine #46: Irving Pichel, and Ernest B. Schoedsack’s The Most Dangerous Game. As soon as this film kicked in, I realized that it was an adaptation of Richard Connell’s short story that I’d read years ago, loved and lost. So, I was excited to see how it [...]

That’s what I think of TV News

A part of this viewing list: Criterion Collection Spine #32: David Lean’s Oliver Twist. Two years after David Lean’s Great Expectations, Alec Guinness is back in another Dickens adaptation. This time he’s very aged through makeup and a giant prosthetic nose [that got the film denounced as anti-Semitic], but his portrayal of Fagin really shows [...]

The History of the Discovery of Cinematography

A part of this viewing list: Criterion Collection Spine #31: David Lean’s Great Expectations. Upon seeing this version of Great Expectations, I’m fairly sure that I’ve seen it previously. As book-to-movie adaptations go, it suffers from the normal malaise of truncation, but not so much as other stories, since the verbose Dickens is involved. Alec [...]

I made this quick and simple pasta with a bit of a kick last week and made it again because it is so quick and delicious. I highly recommend it and it is also good for the heart, blood and immune system. The meal might not contain any of the 8 foods you should eat [...]

MOBA

A part of this viewing list: Criterion Collection Spine #34: Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev. For a film named after and about a single man, Rublev is remarkably absent. Instead Tarkovsky exposes and lingers on specific events that intertwine and illuminate the life of Russia’s most famous icon painter. A chance encounter with a jester, the [...]

This past Friday was an event that I’d been looking forward to for several months. Tower Control Records’ CD Release Party for The X Bolex and Jerk. 12 bands, $5 cover and free food pre-show. It was super-well organized, no chance to miss a band’s performance and just enough time in between them to snag [...]

$100 Personal Computer

I was talking with an employee at the Steelyard Best Buy over the weekend and was told that they’re doing much worse than corporate had set for them, about $10k-less-than-estimate-per-week it sounded like. I was also told that other businesses down there are hurting too, they’re all waiting for Wal-Mart to open in the hopes [...]

I participated in a thread about male-female communication at one of the community sites I frequent, and have continued thinking about it offline. It kind of bleeds into my ever-evolving thoughts on masculinity, and since I haven’t done much thoughtcrime lately, I figured I’d flesh it out a bit here. One of the commenters is [...]

A part of this viewing list: Criterion Collection Spine #26: John Mackenzie’s The Long Good Friday. The Long Good Friday stars Bob Hoskins and contains a Gayish Pierce Brosnan. It was made before I was born, but having seen it, I believe that Guy Ritchie loves this movie. Maybe because the film is argotful of [...]

Real Climate

Make a Moleskine

My tolerance has been wearing thin lately for unreasonable bullshattery. I’ve got a pepper-pot of rants a-simmer on a fair range of topicality and have for some time. My typical behavior is to only be as salty as necessary when necessary, but I’ve had some visions of using my still camera and making some video [...]

My first mortgage payment was made the other day. Out of the hundreds of dollars I paid, less than $68 actual went to the principal balance, the rest disappeared into the vast realm of interest. It is going to be tough checking my bank account online and watching the balance dink lower. Work on the [...]

Make a Hollow Book

A part of this viewing list: Criterion Collection Spine #29: Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock. Despite the fact that Gheorghe Zamfir smears his panflute are all over the the score for this film, it isn’t a bad movie. It seems to be Weir’s Australian interpretation of the Lady of the Wood mythos, with liberal [...]

Musica Excentrica

A part of this viewing list: Criterion Collection Spine #24: Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low. Almost the entire first hour of High and Low takes place in one room, but there is no lack of activity despite this fact. Just synchronizing the blocking must have taken a ton of work. The room is spacious because [...]

Directory of Open Access Journals

Tips for letting your online friends know that you’ve kicked the bucket.

I thought I just invented a word, a portmanteau of man and answer: manswer. This word would indicate a man-standard response to a given question. Thus, Question: “Honey, do these pants make my ass look big?” Manswer: “Baby, you look great in everything you wear.” or Question: “Want another beer?” Manswer: “BELCH.” Turns out the [...]

101 Simple Meals Ready in 10 Minutes or Less

The Economic Naturalist by Robert H. Frank was a fairly easy read and interesting to me from the standpoint of economic ethnography. I don’t know much about economics in an academic sense, but after reading this book and reflecting it is obvious that I use it on a daily basis. In retrospect this makes sense [...]