WRITINGS & NEWS
I don't post much about work, since no one really cares about someone else's job, unless you're a government agent who trains rodents how to disarm robots in the event that they rise up against us. Still, I've been working on a 3-D horror spoof film here at the church for several months, and it plays tomorrow (God willing). I'll let everyone know how it went.
Here's the trailer:
I didn't even eat Chinese food this time, someone just stopped by with a leftover cookie since they knew of my talent with fortunes. This one was a weird one, though:
"Alas! The onion you are eating is someone else's water lily."I don't really know what that means, but I'm pretty sure it's a bad sign. Of course, it's usually a bad sign if your fortune starts out with "alas!"
I was asked to make a list of my favorite blogs, so that everyone can learn where my good taste comes from. I don't need to point you to the friends that I have already linked to on the side; though if you haven't checked them out, make sure to do so, particularly my dad's, Assistant Village Idiot, which continues to improve daily in quality and depth.
In all honesty, I don't troll that many blogs - I keep up with the ones that my friends update, and then I've got maybe a dozen or so more that I subscribe to, some of which never really update all that often.
Still, I'm awfully fond of the ones that I do frequent. Here are my top 5 blogs, in no particular order:
1000 Tiny Things I Hate - A comedy writer at the BBC1 decided to begin cataloguing, day by day, all the things that got on his nerves. It started with the way the man sitting in front of him was eating his carrots ("If Satan has a ringtone, this is it"), and continued on through Glastonbury, the 'hey everyone, I got that intellectual joke' laugh, tall grandmothers, shower radios, people who live next door to serial killers, goths who go to Disneyland then act all miserable, and the sentence "you should write a sitcom about this!"
Here's a link to #80, Photos of Girls With Their Friends. Oh, and just for fun, #95, 'Wogging.'
Stuff Christians Like - I'm a much bigger fan of the original, Stuff White People Like, but as soon as Christian Lander snagged that book deal, the site declined precipitously, and new material is rare these days. Still, of all the Stuff ____ Like sites out there: Stuff Educated Black People Like, Stuff Jewish People Like (check out "Remembering The Holocaust." Wow.), Stuff Nobody Likes, and Stuff God Hates - I'm fondest of SCL, probably because it hits closer to home for me. Jon Acuff's toned down his frantic overposting habit that was clogging the site - an audio-minded friend of mine noted "the signal-to-noise ratio's not so good" - and the site's finally fully hit its stride. Plus, Acuff seems to be an overall nice guy - he adores his readers and loves giving credit on items sent in. I emailed him with a small critique early on in the site's history, and he wrote me back immediately in cheery agreement with a "thanks for the help!" I've posted from the site a coupla times before, so I'll just link to one of my new favorites, #394, Dressing up for Sunday lunch in college so it looks like you went to church (Yeah, I've totally been there), as well as his self-deprecating post after his SCL meet-and-greet failed completely.
Surviving Grady - As a Sox fan, I'm fortunate to a) have a team that's suddenly consistently competitive, and not just competitive enough to break my heart in September and b) support a team that has hordes of fans across the whole country. But it doesn't hurt to have a good Sox blog to help one through the tough times, like tonight's shellacking. Yeck. Between liveblogging important games, waxing nostalgic over Sox teams of old (even bad ones), inventing new Pedroia-themed drinking games, and proposing wacky sitcoms starring various Sox members, Surviving Grady chronicles daily the obsessive live of a pair of die-hard Sox fans. Read their post-mortem on the Manny years from the night we shipped Ramirez out west.
Pajiba - The tagline is "Scathing Reviews For Bitchy People," and it passionately strives to live up to its word. A collective of outrageously insulting and extremely well-educated film snobs who know exactly the debts modern-day horror directors owe to Jean-Luc Godard and hate them for not knowing it too, yet spend a good portion of their day trolling the web for any news item that demonizes Katherine Heigl. In a sentence, brilliant and maddening all at the same time. Urban dictionary defined the site as such:
A pretentious movie site that looks down upon places like Ain't It Cool even as they steal news from them. Reeks desperately of writers wishing they had the talent and/or the determination to write movies themselves, alternating with lazy douches content to make snarky, obvious jokes in the hopes of eventually getting paid by Gawker, the Onion AV Club, or Entertainment Weekly. Visitors consist primarily of liberal, Obama-loving, Weezer-glasses (or Lisa Loeb) using, sweater wearing, office dwelling, coffee drinking, iPod listening, twee expression using hipsters that are the downfall of society. You know, the type of people who type thing like "I heart Jim from the Office", "Christian Bale is teh sexy" and *reads about new Judd Apatow/Joss Whedon/Wes Anderson project* *squees* *hides in office giggling*. |
The site is the best place to find buzz on smaller, underground or web-based projects by some of your favorite actors or directors, plus purely random pop-culture tidbits. Check out the daily "Pajiba Love" for the choicest bits, though it's gotten Palin-bashing obsessed these days. So here's the review of this weekend's Quarantine, the first paragraph of which the reviewer uses it to explain how the film refutes Marshall McLuhan's most famous proclamation (he's wrong, but I do give him credit for trying).
Animal Review - The guy reviews animals. He looks at a platypus, gives it a score on a scale of one to ten and then explains his decision. That's all it is. I love it.
I have a rule that I only buy DVDs when they're $7 or cheaper - I can Netflix whatever I want, and all DVDs end up in the bargain bin at some point, so whatever it is, it's always worth waiting on.
I bought a $5 Titanic DVD a coupla weeks ago and watched it tonight. Can we finally agree that Titanic is no longer the most overrated movie of all time and may now be one of its most underrated?
It's no longer considered proletarian to admire Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, frankly, it probably just means that you now watch a lot of indie movies. Winslet's been nominated for 5 Academy Awards, for chrissakes, DiCaprio's been nominated for three. And James Cameron hasn't made an ass of himself for a full decade now. He even showed enough humor to mockingly play himself on "Entourage" as the director of an Aquaman movie (and if James Cameron actually made an Aquaman movie, I would totally see it, and so would you). And it was the last time we ever saw Billy Zane? Remember Billy Zane? I miss that guy.
There just aren't that many really epic movies crafted with such loving care anymore, even Peter Jackson and Ridley Scott can be hit or miss these days. But Cameron weaves a love story around through a disaster film chock full of excellent turns by dozens of character actors, giving a sense of both the scope and the heartbreak of the sinking. Remember the musicians playing as the boat sank? The officer accidentally shooting a passenger, then committing suicide? The gentlemen asking for brandy as they waited in the parlor room for the end to come? The captain standing alone at the tiller as the water shattered the windows? Remember Billy Zane using a kid as leverage to find his way onto a lifeboat? Man, you wanted to smack him so hard (by the way, count the amount of times someone is suckerpunched in Titanic sometime. It's well over a dozen).
If Titanic came out for the first time tomorrow, you would be remiss if you didn't go out and see it. It's an event movie, and we don't have enough.
Though you would still be wise to leave before Celine Dion started singing over the end credits.
There is a multitude of music out there for free or for very cheap, and most of it is pretty bad. But when you can find a truly great record for $2 or less, you'd be a fool not to jump on it. All of these records fit that description. I'll give you links for guidance.
Matthew Perryman Jones
Throwing Punches In The Dark
Cost: Free
This record is unbelievable - one of those albums that whenever you talk to someone who has it, they immediately start gushing with you, thrilled to find somone else who enjoys it. Jones an introspective singer-songwriter who's accented some fairly soul-bearing tunes with crunchy electric guitars and anthemic choruses. It's available on Noisetrade, a site a lot of indie Christian acts are using these days, where you can either pay what you want or email five friends about it. I emailed five friends, but now I feel that's not enough. I might go back and send along some cash. The album's worth it.
Download: 'Emily's Song,' 'Breaking Out The Windows,' and 'Waiting On The Light to Change.'
The Glass Passenger
Cost: $1.62
Immediately after recording their debut record, Jack's Mannequin vocalist Andrew McMahon went to the hospital to check out some throat problems he'd been having, and was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. He started chemo immediately and the band sat and waited to see the results. Three years and a clean bill of health later, The Glass Passenger finally arrives, and it's hear-wrenchingly sweet to hear it. McMahon's always been a singer prone to desperation and bravado, but hearing him sing it through waves of honest doubts of his mortality brings it closer to the bone. "Even if your voice comes back again," he ponders on 'Crashin,' "maybe there'll be no one listening." With songs as rawly emotional as this, that shouldn't be a concern.
Download: 'Caves,' 'Crashin,' 'Annie Use Your Telescope,' and 'Hammers and Strings.'
The Killers
Sawdust
Cost: $2.43
Killers fans seem to divide into two camps: people who think that that their first indie rock record was brilliant and their second album was nothing more than overwrought Springsteen worship, and people who think that Sam's Town was the first time big, anthemic rock has sounded alive in a very long time. I belong in the later camp, but whichever side you pick, Sawdust has something for you. One of those B-sides records where it's more of a lost tracks collection, the record is a bit hit-and-miss, but the highlights are some of the Killer's finest tracks.
Download: "Tranquilize" (featuring Lou Reed), "Under The Gun," and "Show You How."
Seeing Things
Cost: $1.35
I want to live where Jakob Dylan lives. I'm not sure exactly where that is, but it seems to be some combination of the South and Middle America in the 1920's. Everyone seems to be a coal miner sipping three-day old coffee or farmhand unwrapping cornbread from wax paper with their feet propped up on a potbellied stove. Considering his parentage, it's unsurprising Dylan grew up in a way where that's considered a normal way of life, but there's something authentic about Dylan's songs, as if maybe this perfect untouched America exists somewhere else other than his own mind. I hope so. I'd like to see it sometime.
Download: 'Everybody Pays As They Go,' 'Something Good This Way Comes,' and 'This End Of The Telescope.'
The Ringing Bell
Cost: Free
Webb's always been a consistently good singer-songwriter, though he had a long stretch where he considered the sound of his speaking a more appealing sound than his singing, and so his concerts got a little self-aggrandizing. Still, Webb's always been a unique voice in the Christian world, cutting and insightful, demanding to be heard. The Ringing Bell is well named, an album that calls the listener to action, a battle cry of Christian love and peace, with previously untapped pop hooks bouncing underneath Webb's plaintive vocals. Of all the recordings of Webb's short but prolific solo career, this album may be his finest piece of work.
Download: 'Name,' 'I Want To Marry You All Over Again,' and 'This Too Shall Be Made Right.'
Sixpence None The Richer
My Dear Machine EP
Cost: Free
Sixpence broke up about four years ago, figuring that the time had come and it was time to follow other musical pursuits. Everyone went off and did their own thing for a little while before they all realized that the whole band was much greater than the sum of its parts, and got back together again. Good choice - Leigh Nash never sounds quite as good as when she's singing Matt Slocum's earthy, melancholy tunes. The EP will fill you with hope for the band's triumphant return.
Download: The album. It's only four songs long.
Total Cost: $5.40. Really, you can afford that.
