| Tuesday, July 30th, 2002 |
| 2:30 pm |
Last Night (1998)
Last Night (1998) [06/10] ~ Last Night is the feature-film directorial debut of Canadian actor and writer Don McKellar. If you are familiar with Don's work then you'll know that he has played a pretty substantial role in, what I like to call, quirky Canadian cinema. He has co-written and acted in two films by Francois Girard, The Red Violin (1998) and Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould (1993) and co-wrote and starred in one of my favorite films, Highway 61 (1991), directed by semi-famed Canadian director Bruce McDonald. The film follows the lives of a handful of characters in Toronto on the night that the world is supposed to end. The movie has a nice mix of comedic, oddball moments and intense, serious and thought-provoking moments. Everyone in the movie seems to know that the world is ending, and have known for a couple of months, so they've each had time to prepare for how they'd like to spend their last night. To say much more would probably ruin any surprises but let's just say that things don't necessarily work out as everyone has planned. If you're the type of person who likes to have all of their ends neatly tied then this probably isn't the film for you. I think the concept for the movie is quite unique and the filmmakers have done a great job of telling the story of the potential end of the world from a personal scale instead of a global scale, as most filmmakers would tend to do. Why the world is ending in this movie isn't nearly as important as how the characters, who the filmmakers have chosen to focus on, choose to spend their last hours. I feel this film is meant to make the viewer reflect on their own life and not, necessarily, ask themselves "What would I do with my last day on Earth?" (although you'll probably ask yourself just that question), but instead think seriously about what each of us does do with what could be our last day. |
| Tuesday, March 26th, 2002 |
| 12:40 pm |
Must of Got Lost by The J. Geils Band
Stephania and I went to see Iris (2001) at the Arena Grand Theatre last night. It was around 7pm and that whole theater complex was dead, dead, dead as can be. I don't think that place is going to survive for very long at this rate. The ticket prices aren't helping either. It cost us $16 to see that movie. $15 for tickets ($7.50 x 2) and $1 for parking. Now considering I can go to the Lennox and see a movie for $3.75 and park for free those prices seem absurd. Even the regular Drexel Theatres have 1/2 price tickets on Monday. Jeesh. Iris is a good movie but it could've been much, much better. The performances were all good and the direction was interesting (if not innovative) but the film was woefully short, running about 90 minutes, and I left the theater knowing little more than I did about her before I entered the theater. Instead of the story of Iris we get the story of Iris and John (her husband), the months (or was it years? - the movie had such a poor sense of time it was hard to tell) and events surrounding when they first met and the months (or was it years?) leading up to her death. It could've easily used added an additional half hour to it's running time and pared back some John and Iris episodes in favor of the events which influenced her personal philosophy. Perhaps a different, better movie will do the life of Iris Murdoch justice but if you want to learn much about her this isn't the film for you (or me). |
| Thursday, February 28th, 2002 |
| 12:13 pm |
Keilbasa by Tenacious D
So there's a bounty of concerts coming to the Columbus area between now and a few days after my birthday (April 13th) which I am actually interested in seeing. Let's see...we have Ryan Adams on March 16th, They Might Be Giants on April 6th and Tenacious D on April 10th. Those are all in Columbus. And then The Kids In The Hall are going to be in Cleveland on April 17th. Quite a dilemma. Maybe I'll just go see them all! :-) |
| Friday, February 1st, 2002 |
| 9:01 pm |
Godamn, Julian Cope has a great voice... Current Music: East Easy Rider ~ Julian Cope |
| 8:44 pm |
Everybody's Doing The Michigan Rag
Made-Up Band Name Of The Day: FosseSo for Valentine's day I had this great idea. My girlfriend's name is Stephanie and a few weeks back she was complaining about the fact there aren't any songs with the name Stephanie in it. I figured that was just a generalization and told her I'd see what I could find via my devious Internet methods. Needless to say I found some, not alot, but some. Around 20 or so. Not all of them are good but hey it's a start right?! I've downloaded and listened to most of them, figured out which ones are the best, and now I'm going to make a CD for her for Valentine's Day. Since there aren't 72 minutes of worthy Stephanie songs I decided I'd split the CD between Stephanie songs and Dan songs. There's a ton of Dan/Daniel/Danny songs. An absurd amount, really. Tonight when I go to bed I'll have Audiogalaxy get what it can (I tried to mark all of then know good stuff first) and then hopefully when the weekend is done I'll have a shiny new CD, personalized within an inch of it's life, for us to share. I hope it turns out well. :-) Current Mood: Boppy (Blame TMBG)Current Music: Yeh Yeh ~ They Might Be Giants |
| Thursday, January 31st, 2002 |
| 3:48 pm |
Image Surfing
I just had a cool idea. Go to Google Image Search, type in your last name and see what sort of pictures it returns! If you're lucky you might find a picture of yourself that you didn't know about. Or find out what the Geiser's of the world look like, if that's your last name. Me, I've noticed a propensity of the Geiser men to wear a van dyke (including myself) and I've also noticed there's buttload of them in Europe. |
| 2:44 pm |
Moby Knows
Moby on Tenacious D
"Is it just me, or are Jack Black and Tenacious D taking over the world?
I remember the first time that I saw them play it was in Las Vegas, New Mexico (yes, there really is a Las Vegas, New Mexico) in 1982 and there were maybe 3 people in the audience.
But they put on a great show. And a long show. They played for 18 hours straight."
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| Tuesday, January 29th, 2002 |
| 10:16 pm |
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| Monday, January 28th, 2002 |
| 4:00 pm |
Shoehorn With Teeth by They Might Be Giants
You know your weekend was good when the trivialities (nee headaches) of the modern world which can occur on a Monday, e.g. Monday, January 28 2002, haven't dampened your outlook for the upcoming week. It's pretty much official that I did lose my cell phone this weekend. I must have left it at the restaurant Saturday night. I checked with the staff and they haven't seen hide nor hair of it which means the people (thieves) which sat at our table after we left that night have a new addition to their electronics family. I'd say there's about a 5% chance it'll show up in some unexpected place but I've basically written it off. I don't mind getting a new phone, I just want to make sure I get something good for my cell phone buying dollar. Any suggestions? |
| Saturday, December 22nd, 2001 |
| 3:01 am |
The Best Tribute Band Ever
Jason talks about the progression of what he once knew as the Cover Band into something called the Tribute Band. In my opinion Tribute Bands are just a subset of Cover Bands. Cover Bands play only cover songs but from a wide range of artists whereas Tribute Bands play songs by one artist only. In addition they try to emulate the look and style of that band. But I digress. My idea is this... Wouldn't it be kooky if a Tribute Band was created by the members of the original band so they didn't have to deal with the notoriety but could still play the music that they love. Now I know you might immediately say that this doesn't make sense fiscally but suppose they weren't doing it for the money? What if they just wanted to go on some sort of underground, 30-city tour and play for the people who like their music so much that they'd even go to see a Tribute Band doing it. Wouldn't the audience then be composed of mostly hardcore fans? Wouldn't that be a great coup for both the band and their fans? Well, I think so. I'm pretty sure there's the germ of a great idea here. |
| Wednesday, December 19th, 2001 |
| 1:15 pm |
Secret Santa vs. Amazon.com
Well, well, well. Guess what I got in the mail today?! My gift from my Secret Santa! My Secret Santa is Alie. And Alie got me a very thoughtful gift, the new Ryan Adams CD Gold. Even though it was on my Wish List already it's still cool that out of all things on my Wish List she got me that because it shows that she is a woman of good taste. Probably better taste than me. To complicate things though Amazon.com took it upon themselves to NOT send me the item which Alie was kind enough to get for me but instead they decided to send me a gift sent to someone named Jennifer. And guess what Jennifer wanted? The Harry Potter Soundtrack! So even though all the machinations of Secret Santa worked as they should, Amazon.com managed to screw it up. I have no idea where they sent my Ryan Adams CD. Maybe they sent it to Jennifer. Or maybe they sent Jennifer something else entirely screwing yet another persons order up. I've already sent them a nasty gram about this. They are falling (quickly) out of grace with me. They did this last February when they sent my friend Amy's daughter Madeline something completely different than what I ordered for her. It took about 2 weeks before Madeline finally got my original gift. And I just got an e-mail from them today that they finally sent the item which I had purchased for my Secret Santa person even though I had placed the order on December 10th. Today is December 19th! It tooks them 9 days to process my order. The item on their web site says it will be shipped in 3 to 4 days. Aarrghhhh! Amazon.com = BuzzKill. |
| Sunday, December 16th, 2001 |
| 6:02 pm |
Vanishing Girl by The Dukes of Stratosphear
I have a sinking feeling that is going to be a disappointing holiday movie season. So far 2 of the films I was really looking forward to, Ocean's Eleven and Vanilla Sky, have disappointed. They weren't bad films per se. They just didn't live up to their potential. I still have fairly high hopes for The Fellowship of the Ring and The Royal Tenenbaums although I'm trying to keep my anticipation tempered. I guess the 2 other films which are receiving a lot of hype are A Beautiful Mind and The Majestic but both Ron Howard and Frank Darabont have always had a lackluster directing style for me. I guess they aren't edgy enough for me. We'll have to wait and see I guess... |
| Tuesday, December 4th, 2001 |
| 3:14 pm |
The Road by Tenacious D
Sometimes it is very hard to find things on the Internet. And I'm not just talking about not knowing where to go to look. I'm talking about the way things are found on the Internet and what happens when correct or common ways of using words collide with the nature of the Internet. Let me give you an example... On my weblog I wanted to use the phrase "magician cum actor". I've read the phrase " cum " before and I know that at its simplest meaning it basically means "and". Sometimes it is used derogatively as in "actor cum director", i.e. an actor who has become a director but is not necessarily any good at it. But many times I take it to mean a compliment, pointing out the multi-faceted nature of the person.
So I've read it in print but I've never used it and I want to find out what the proper usage is. Can the word just stand by itself like that "magician cum actor" or should it be hyphenated "magician-cum-actor"? I thought I had seen it used both ways. What I wanted to know was which usage was the more accepted?
The word sounded latin to me. Well, I can't exactly go to a search engine and type 'cum usage' or 'latin cum'. Well, I can...I'm just not going to get the answer I'm looking for. Eventually i settled on the phrase 'english usage cum' which didn't do much. I switched to 'english usage discussion' hoping to find a place where people were discussing the proper usage of the English language and I could just post my question on there.
I typed in my search on Google which brought up a few links related to English language usage discussion. At the top of the page they had a link to the Style Guides portion of the Google Directory. Clicking on that I spotted the online version of Strunk's Elements of Style. Finally we're getting someplace.
I typed in the word hoping to find anything about it in any way. Nothing doing. I went clicked up to the search portion and tried doing a search on all sections of all of the reference sites which were made available through that interface. Bingo! The Columbia Guide to Standard English had something for me...
"cum
is a Latin preposition long adopted by Standard English as a preposition meaning something like ?combined with, together with? or even ?plus?: She served us a sort of brunner?a brunch cum dinner. Its other considerable use in American English is in hyphenated series: His latest book is a novel-cum-sermon that I found quite dull. Pronounce it KUM or KOOM."
Now...I really think that if it wasn't for my persistence and familiarity with how the Internet works I never would have been able to find that. I want someone to explain to me how the Internet is ever going to be able to overcome hurdles like the one I describe above. |
| Friday, November 23rd, 2001 |
| 1:42 pm |
Wonderboy by Tenacious D
The title of this entry is the song that's playing in my head right now. Since I always have a song playing in my head most of my entries will be named that way. So today is supposebly the busiest shopping day of the year. Normally I wouldn't buy anything today but Sega has dropped the price of their Dreamcast consoles to $50 and Best Buy is selling them at that price today and tomorrow. My friend Heath is definitely buying one and I am considering buying one. Either way I am going shopping with him for his. We also ordered NFL 2K1 for the Dreamcast yesterday from Amazon.com for $8 brand new. Now that's a good deal. |
| Saturday, November 17th, 2001 |
| 10:26 pm |
It's Time To Play The Feud
If you're like me (and hopefully you aren't, thank god) you're probably thinking to yourself...is Richard Dawson still alive? Especially if you've been watching an infomercial for a Johnny Carson (Tonight Show) retrospective and saw a skit where Mr. Dawson hosted a Feud between the Reagans and the Royals (Queen Elizabeth, Prince Charles, et. al.). Well, according to the IMDb...Richard Dawson is still alive! And he's not even that old. 69 or 70 tops, only 2 years older than my Dad. I've always wondered what it would be like to look up (as in meet) famous people in their older years and see what they are like as people. Who knows...maybe some of them are looking for a friend or just someone to talk to. Probably be best to send them a fan letter just to get started. |
| 6:55 pm |
Sleeping With Your Devil Mask by Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians
OK, the above song has been running through my head for about 10 minutes now and I haven't heard it in probably 10 years. That is very weird. Today has been uneventful. Got up very late and watched the Ohio State football game. They lost to Illinois. They suck. I moved a bunch of stuff out of my room and into the basement so I could bring up my big box of computer goodies in route to setting up my computer. I'm going to be using a KVM (Keyboard Video Mouse) switch to share the peripherals on my dad's computer with mine. Then once I get my computer set up in tandem with his I am going to copy all of the important stuff off my computer and on to a Zip Disk. And then reformat my computer and install Windows 2000 Professional from scratch. Sounds exciting doesn't it? You're right...it doesn't. |
| Friday, November 16th, 2001 |
| 11:39 pm |
Golden Boys by Res
I heard this really cool song on the radio ( World Cafe on NPR) last night called Golden Boys by an artist that David Dye referred to as Reese. After doing some digging today I found out that the artist is pronounced like the peanut butter cup but spelled differently. (See Subject) |
| 11:26 pm |
Scary Interview Psychoses for $100, Alex
Today seems like it's been a really long day although if I add up the hours it really hasn't been. Maybe it's because I've done more today than I have all week. I got a call about a job interview next week. Tuesday at 3:30pm to be exact. The thing that was disconcerting about it was that as soon as I started talking to the potential interviewer on the phone I immediately broke into a sweat. I have no idea why that happens. I hate it. It's like everything comes slamming down on me at once... What will the interviewer be like? What will the interview be like? What if he offers me the job? What if he doesn't offer me the job? What if I accept the job offer and the job sucks? What if the job is OK but it's not what I want to be doing? Sometimes I think I just need to chill out! |
| 11:09 pm |
First Post!
tap tap tap...hello?...check, check...hello? is this thing on? squawk...testing, testing, 1, 2, 3...sibilance...sibilance...phew... ok, after much hoo-hah it appears that i'm finally up and running. yes, there was a mix-up with livejournal customer service and, yes, i was getting very frustrated, but they have been very gracious and given me four months on my paid account status instead of two which is very cool! don't know exactly how the whole paid account system works, yet, but i'm sure i'll get it figured out. so without further adieu...on with the show!!! |
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