Black and White and Red All Over

Monday, March 25, 2002 - 02:16 p.m. -
I made up a new Oscars-weekend tradition: get really sick and watch movies until I pass out. I think next year I'll try it w/o getting sick.

I found Brother fairly disappointing - a few good moments, but overall pretty weak. The Americans and the Japanese folks didn't work well together on- or off-camera and it felt like oil and water much of the time. Heist, on the other hand, is brilliant. David Mamet can do no wrong, except maybe he should have let Rebecca Pidgeon bust out more. Out of Sight was the opposite of disappointing - Soderbergh channels the divine. I watched Rushmore again to see what I missed, and found it. State and Main brought Ms. Pidgeon out in all her glory, and Mamet should get an award for making Philip Seymour Hoffman a romantic lead and whichever Baldwin it was comic relief. I watched Sexy Beast without understanding much of the dialogue, but the cast conspired to make Ben Kingsley scarier than God, even while drowning in the London mumbles. Finally, I sat through The Funeral again, forgetting I had already seen it. Yeah, sure, Chris Penn is Sicilian - whatever, but it's OK because it's another brilliant Ferrara film, and Annabella Sciorra is just perfect. But I still want to marry Rebecca Pidgeon.

How was your weekend?

Friday, March 22, 2002 - 02:20 p.m. -
I keep coming back to this point, but the Left seriously needs to wake up to its internal problems if it wants to effect change. This article should infuriate everyone who reads it, but it's good medicine, I think. We got problems, people.

Friday, March 22, 2002 - 11:40 a.m. -
Alphabet Synthesis Machine

Friday, March 22, 2002 - 11:38 a.m. -
This shouldn't be news to anyone - at least as a particular case of a general rule.

Friday, March 22, 2002 - 10:43 a.m. -
If you're going to use your cell phone while driving, you should also be drunk.

Thursday, March 21, 2002 - 12:20 p.m. -
Safire can be a jackass sometimes, but this is an engaging analysis of what's good, not so good, and just bad about the Pentagon's modifications of the Bush/Ashcroft military tribunals order. Definitely worth reading.

Wednesday, March 20, 2002 - 02:10 p.m. -
It's dumping snow again. I thought we'd gotten off easy this year, but it turns out the first day of spring is also the first real day of winter. Last night's soccer game - our first outdoors in months - could have been much worse, I guess.

In other news, I had a Monster Island-sized emotional crisis last weekend. Good thing, too, or I might have had to turn in my Scorpio card. Too embarrassing to relate the details, but it did spark a flame of re-evaluation. I'm too pleased with too much of my life to consider a total re-invention, but some little things are changing. It'll be a test for complexity theory - will killing the butterflies in my stomach slow down the monsoons in my head?

Tuesday, March 19, 2002 - 05:06 p.m. -
Spam Radio - porn, business opportunities, and porn run through the text-to-speech engine and backed up with minimal ambient muzak. It's devo!

Monday, March 18, 2002 - 05:39 p.m. -
Yeah! The Comic Book Heroes vs. The Stars of the Old Testament!

Monday, March 18, 2002 - 12:09 p.m. -
The Million Clown March fell a few short. Nice chant, though.

Monday, March 18, 2002 - 12:28 a.m. -
Stupid animals! Yay! Best photo archive ever.

Sunday, March 17, 2002 - 11:51 p.m. -
About time I archived, isn't it?

And maybe it's about time you see what you've missed in the archives.

And maybe it's also about time I looked into labelling the archives.

Very Important Persons