{ Monthly Archives }
June 2008
- I know that [Warning: I linked to the BBC site. Since the U.S. broadcasts are a few weeks behind, there are spoilers to be found] Dr. Who has never been what most people would call “good,” but between what’s been going on there and the general tone of last season’s Torchwood make me wonder what the hell’s going on with the British zeitgeist. Humanism I get, but the recent absence of Daleks has led to some preachy plotlines and downright indulgent soliloquies. Moreover, the stark contrast between the American Capt. Jack and his left-of-Amnesty International British cohorts leads me to the jarring conclusion that, on some level, our English-speaking brethren across the pond view their American cousins as a cutthroat Hegelian other. Silly redcoats.
- Leaving the lights off when you use the bathroom may help conserve energy, but it’s not always the best idea.
- Review - The Hammer: I wish I’d been more skeptical of the hype. Sure, it’s funny, but it’s not as funny as Bill Simmons and Adam Corolla led me to believe. Altogether, my experience with The Hammer was a lesson in tropes. #1: I find myself disappointed by an independent film for which I had high hopes. #2: Everyman finds direction and obtains a wholly satisfying life en route to achieving his newly rediscovered goal. Perhaps it’s just a reflection of my momentary(?) bitterness that I would’ve preferred something a bit more There Will Be Blood-esque: through single-minded ruthlessness, man achieves his goal to the exclusion of all other facets of life. I’m not saying that trope is exactly fit for a romantic comedy, but the full-on happy ending didn’t sit quite right with me. Besides, flat delivery did the jokes a disservice, and I would’ve rather seen Constance Zimmer exchange roles with Heather Juergensen (believability be damned!).
- Is it just me, or does Kay Bailey Hutchison bring to mind Laura Dern’s portrayal of Katherine Harris in HBO’s Recount for everyone?
- Maybe I’m getting tainted by an abundance of horror. Sure, I’d say I’m predisposed to a darker kind of humor than most (see: Steppenwolf, “Aeroplane” by Red Hot Chili Peppers, Danny DeVito, etc.), but this summer I’ve been required to watch 3-6 hours of horror films per week for class. It’s entirely possible that, somewhere between The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (not Dennis Hopper’s best film) and Hostel (way too easy to see myself getting caught in THAT trap), my sensibilities may have been subverted by a media-imposed expectation of sadism. Between the thought that this may be a microcosm of such films’ effect on the audience-at-large and the sticker pinned to my desk (”What we think, we become” - Buddha), I find myself caught in a conundrum of post-modern reflection.
Maybe dick and fart jokes can save the world, after all.
- Having moments ago viewed The Hills Have Eyes(1977), I can state with some certainty that, though hill-folk may lack a proper dental health plan, their young women can be expected to maintain an extensive waxing regimen. I can’t say whether or not a Brazilian was involved, but there’s certainly as little leg hair as there is clothing.
- Why is every small military dictatorship called a junta? Shouldn’t that term be reserved for post-revolutionary governments in Spanish-speaking countries? Spanish may have been incorporated into tagalog in the Philippines, but you can’t reasonably expect the people of Myanmar or Thailand to know what you’re saying when you tell them they live under a junta.
- Whoa! Until five seconds ago, I was unaware that George Carlin passed away on Sunday. Condolences to his family and the comedic community.
- Condoleezza (two z’s, really?) Rice did Fareed Zakaria’s show on Sunday. Generally, my knee-jerk reaction to our current Secretary of State involves foaming at the mouth, but, in a one-on-one discussion with one of my favorite international affairs pundits, she seemed both intelligent and personable.
What’s that beeping sound? Oh, I think my brain just finished the spin cycle.
- Everyone’s favorite senior Senator from Texas, Kay Bailey Hutchison, made an appearance on This Week on Sunday. Once again, she was espousing the need to lower gas prices by building more nuclear power plants. Once again, I was puzzled as to who in their right mind would burn oil to produce electricity.
I don’t have time at the moment, but you can expect me to post a relatively full energy/environmental platform in the near future.
- I’m an Obamaniac, but the moment Michelle Obama exchanged fist bumps (or “pounds,” if you prefer the Any Given Sunday nomenclature) with the cast of The View marked the demise of that casual greeting. It’s only a matter of time before Ellen DeGeneres is doing the macarena on the fist bump’s metaphorical tombstone.
What now? I think I’ll try knocking forearms, but let’s keep that to ourselves.
- This site would already have a swanky new animated welcome page, but I made the fool mistake of treating ActionScript 3.0 like ActionScript 2.0. Apparently when Steve Jobs’ minions were developing Adobe CS3, they decided it would be a really good idea to make their proprietary language function exactly like Java. Sure, it’s more powerful than Flash 8, but it’s only slightly more user-friendly than trying to do the same things with XHTML and JavaScript, which cost about $1300 less than CS3. Great idea, guys.
- I have a confession to make. Every once in a while, when I’m in an unfriendly mood at work, I think “Heroes” and smile. Hopefully, that will be the corniest thing I write for a long, long time.
- Worn down on Friday morning, I hit some of the more poignant tracks on my iPod: Pink Floyd, “When the Tigers Broke Free”; Outkast, “True Dat”; and Arlo Guthrie, “Alice’s Restaurant: The Massacree Revisited.” When Arlo intimated that “if you want to stop wars and stuff, you gotta learn to sing loud all the time,” I found myself ambivalent. Is that sage advice or merely the residual activism of an unrepentant hippy stoner?
Relatedly, I recently had occasion to encounter a few young women whose opinions I respect, and they openly stated that they’d voted for Hillary. In fact, when I showed my Obamaniac colors, the universal and unprompted response was “You fell for that!?” Uhh, yeah, I guess I did, but I didn’t think I’d been bamboozled so much as I’d chosen leadership over administrative efficacy. Then again, I suppose I must be some kind of sap, if I’m still listening to “Alice’s Restaurant” in 2008.
- The dictionary entry for expletive includes as an example “the word ‘it’ in the sentence It’s raining.” That got me thinking…what is the implicit object of the pronoun “it” in that sentence? Seeing as rain is both a noun and a verb, one could argue that the entire sentence should be one word, right? (Hint: Were something else, such as leopard-print men’s thongs, falling from the sky, you’d probably say, “Banana hammocks are raining upon us!” in either terror or delight.)