Category: Arts & Entertainment
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On Dharma-tattooed sharks and the metaphorical jumping thereof
If there’s one thing I learned from that lame “Lost Experience” game that ran over the summer, it was this: don’t let marketing guys create content. Actually, it was this: however “Lost” does end, it’s going to be a disappointment. My first reaction after seeing the final wrap-up of the game (youtube is down at…
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The Blue and the Greying
Several years ago, someone recommended I watch Sherman’s March: a Meditation to the Possibility of Romantic Love in the South During an Era of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation. I’m glad I waited so long to finally see it. The premise of the movie is that filmmaker Ross McElwee received a grant to film a documentary about…
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Making Comics
Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud has gotten a lot of praise over the years, and it’s justified. It’s well presented, and it has some genuine insight into how art works (not just comics) and how people communicate. And even when you don’t agree with the points he makes, the book itself is an excellent example…
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I could watch “Heroes” for just one day
Entertainment Weekly just ran an article about Rosario Dawson in which Kevin Smith calls her a “hot geek.”. Which to me is like saying “compassionate conservative;” it just doesn’t exist. The terms are mutually exclusive. For those of us who were nerds back when being a nerd meant something (mostly it meant rejection and shame),…
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PS: Boners!
I was thinking more about those Hummer ads, and something just occurred to me: For decades, we’ve had hundreds of ads for dozens of products where the underlying message has been the same: Buy this product and you’ll get a huge boner. In the past few years, advertisers have been able to run commercials for…
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Walt Disney’s Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass
I must be all kinds of dense, because I’m having a hell of a time making it through The Odyssey. I was meaning to be reading it for pleasure but I can’t tell one name from the next and it just feels like homework. So I switched to The Once and Future King. And it…
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Restore the Balance (you impotent, self-indulgent little stain of a person)
Car commercials are getting a lot more aggressive lately. Used to be the worst was that Mistubishi ad with the creepy woman in the beret pop-locking in somebody’s passenger seat like she was having an event. Now it’s hard to watch commercial TV for too long without feeling like you’ve been assaulted. VW has been…
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Vast Wasteland
It’s counter-intuitive, but having a TiVo encourages a healthier relationship with the television box. You’re always hearing from TiVotees who go on about how they watch less TV than they did before they got one, but now I’ve got proof. Over the past month I’ve been subjected to more TV at my parents’ house and…
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Decompression
The day after crunch mode ends on a project is like a bullet train hitting a concrete mammoth. “Brick wall” seemed too mundane. You’d think I’d be used to it by now, instead of finding myself sitting in a hotel room with nothing to do and too bored even to nap. There’s still plenty to…
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Blur
Hard to believe I’ve been in LA for a week already. On one level it feels like it’s just been a day or two. On another level, it feels like I’ve been here for months. That would be a side effect of the wicked crazy crunch we’ve been in. Any notion that I’m no longer…
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R.I.P. Hank and Dean
The rest of this post is a spoiler for the season 2 premier of The Venture Brothers:
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I Have Opinions About Things
One of the advantages to spending so much time in waiting rooms and on planes (all right, the only advantage) is that it gives me a chance to get caught up on my readin’ and watchin’. And now, bloggin’. Nacho Libre I’m baffled as to why this one is getting walloped in the reviews. It’s…