Monday, April 27, 2009
Monday, April 20, 2009
Sunday, April 19, 2009
I'm not always a negative nancy.
I swear I'm not always hatin' on our culture.
check out Thatcher Keats' work for some insane photographs that seem to put a wooden stake right in the heart of Americana.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Why I hate Flo rida, and other reasons why pop music sucks.
And my personal favorite, why Nickelback just sucks in comparison to itself.
Why Twitter could save the world...
The NYT's support for the website.
It seems to emphasize the value of Twitter's instantaneousness rather than the 140-word format. If the paper is valuing the websites instant updates of information, then surely wouldn't a less limiting format work in everyone's best interest?
It also seems vital that one "tags" your "tweets" (ugh) as you create them. However, these tags seem to be as variable as the writer who creates them.
Moreover, I just refuse to believe that Twitter can really prove to be useful.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Clash of the Technologies
Interesting to think how a cellphone can immediately be seen as something to judge someone by in our day and age...
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
V. I can't get no...
SATISFACTION.
There is something just absolutely insatiable about this show, and Hugh's character seems to be the main reason why. His composed wit paired with his cynical charms gives his audience pangs of jealousy (and sometimes lust) to be in his company. His odd-couple relationship with Dr. Wilson filled with friendly quips and bitchy bickering just makes me want to step right into the frame. Plus, it doesn't hurt that House just might be the most bad-ass doctor out there.
The consistent stereotype of American media is that as an audience we always crave some sort of "happy ending," whether it be our characters falling in love and getting married, the boy being saved from the evil creature, or three friends escaping from poverty only to be blessed with millions of dollars from a TV show and capture a final kiss together. Slumdog Millionaire was the Oscar-laden film of the year, including the undeserved Best Picture. One critic went so far as to call it the "feel good film of the decade." Since when has the only point of a film been to make their audience feel good?
This opposition to creating "likeable" characters and plots that always emotionally satisfy is what makes House stand out from the rest. What is beautiful about each of the carefully crafted characters on the show, House being the epitome of this, is that none of them are perfect, and all of them have their imperfections. They don't solve every case. People die. Yet despite their mistakes or misgivings, audiences still care about what happens to each of them.
Plus, I always enjoy the Baltimore-related Johns Hopkins shout outs.
Kubrick's final masterpiece seems to be, if anything, more of a puzzle than a film. Hotly debated and widely criticized in its initial release, it only seems like a matter of time before people will begin to dig deeper and deeper into the film's possible true meanings. Other than Dr. Strangelove, Kubrick's films never were initially met with a positive response. Rather, like a good wine, they needed to age a few years in the public eye before an audience could even begin to digest it. This doesn't seem surprising, considering the scope of his talent both in choosing material to shoot as well as the visual mastery of his films on their own. Even today, 2001: A Space Odyssey is considered to be relevant in the visual field of Sci-Fi films, which says a lot for an industry that prides itself on the use of latest technology, as well as a film that was made in 1968.
The majority of Kubrick's films, especially in his later years, were drafted from original written works or novels, and Eyes Wide Shut is no different. The themes that Kubrick encompasses within his films alone are so dense that it makes sense that he would crave an original and thought-provoking material that gave more to the reader than a simple screenplay.
I'm not going to lie, I've never been a huge conossieur of classical music. I have the usual Debussy here and Mozart there, but really when it comes down to it, I prefer Girl Talk/Pretty Nice/A-Trak/really anything I can get my hands on that's fairly new. After watching Marie Antoinette, I looked for the composer of the short piano pieces included within the film. A few were by Aphex Twin, a sort of Janus-esque band that specializes in acid techno and ambient music. The rest were by Dustin O'Halloran, and his album entitled Piano Solos does not disappoint. I've never been one to listen to an entire symphony in one sitting, and these little bites of piano-induced melancholy, excitement, urgency, just tug at your heartstrings like nothing else I've ever heard before.
Opus #7 and #36 are my favorites.
You can almost feel the wooden quality of the little hammers hitting strings through the song itself. Most music I enjoy because it makes me feel more energetic, or happier. This just seems to seep through everything. If you ever needed a song to "think" to, you'll find 12 of them on this album.
I went to Searle today to pick up some more cough medicine on the cheap, and as I waited for the kind pharmacist to pick out the best box of generic Sudafed he could find, he offered me the candy dish they generally keep out. I dug through the tiny dish the same way a child cautiously digs through wrapping paper on Christmas morning: Could it be THE gift I've been waiting for? (Apple Jolly Ranchers) Could it be another pair of knit socks from grandma? (Those swirly mints that always get too sharp and cut the roof of your mouth) Coal? No. Worse.
Grape Jolly Ranchers.
It is my first and immediate stance that "grape" flavoring, in popsicles, candy, really anything that isn't created directly from the grape itself and attempts to pose as grape, is really just flavored "purple." It doesn't taste like grape. It doesn't look like the luscious, reddish royal purple that a tasty grape beams. No. It dyes your tongue a hideous purple-black color, embarrassing you and anyone who notices for the rest of the day of the proof of said candy. The taste is just... No. Wow. Battery acid mixed with fruit punch from concentrate is the closest I can get without becoming too vulgar.
That being said, I guess my love for "apple" flavored Jolly Ranchers is just as hypocritical, since I don't really see any relation to the flavor of such a candy and its assumed partner in nature.
At least the color is friendlier.
For a culture that seems to be evolving into more and more of a shortened attention span when it comes to our media, Twitter seems to be the nail in the proverbial coffin. You can't sit through a 30-minute television show? Fine, watch some viral videos on YouTube instead. You don't feel like reading a book all the way through? Cliff Notes work just fine. Or hell, why not read it on your Kindle while you're also multitasking on your Blackberry. Now, finally, there appears to be a solution for those who can't even make it through a lengthy blog post: the "tweet."
Half of my annoyance with Twitter stems from its self-created verbiage: tweeting, twirting, tweeps... My brain can hardly keep up with all the (arguably) cool new Twitter lingo, let alone set one up.
Secondly, there comes with the territory of owning a Twitter of assuming that whoever you are or whatever you're representing is important enough to need to announce to the world at various points in time throughout the day, usually multiple times, what you're up to. I already want to throw my cell phone out the window, the last thing I need is when I'm trying to write an email to get a "tweet" that "Staci is out 2 dinner at nobu! luv their california roll. yum! xo."
Finally, the 140-character limit also seems to encourage some highly questionable grammar, which along with the overly-ecstatic Twitter logo, makes me want to tear out my eyeballs.
What I find most amusing about the Twitter website is its promise in the "How" section:
Twitter puts you in control and becomes a modern antidote to information overload.
Et tu, Twitter?
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