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October 18th, 2009
11:10 am - THANK YOU, PUBLIC TELEVISION
The Daughter smacked her head into a chair this morning and started crying. Did she cry out for Mommy? For Daddy?
"Elmo!" she wailed. She didn't really calm down until we got her one of her many, many stuffed Elmos.
Current Thought: Maybe we do let her watch too much television.
Current Music: Kid Cudi featuring Ratatat and MGMT - "Pursuit of Happiness"
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October 14th, 2009
07:46 pm - STANDARIZED
The October SAT was held last weekend. It is the most popular test administered by the College Board because it is the final chance many high-school seniors have to take the SAT. I've been very busy for the last month and now, finally, I don't have to think about the SAT every waking non-The-Daughter-moment of the day...now I can think about the LSAT which I take in December. I took a practice LSAT the same day that my students were sweating over the SAT and, man, did I shame my ancestors. I regressed back to my baseline score. Logic Games, which used to be my strong suit (scored an 800 on the logic section of the GRE), is now my achilles' heel. Worse. Achilles' doomed tendon would sadly shake its head and give me a patronizing pat on the shoulder at the pitiful 6 out of 24 Logic Game Questions I got correct during today's timed practice session.
Thank God I still have another month-and-a-half to right this ship.
And I really hope that I didn't teach The Daughter some new words today.
Current Music: Douglas Pipes - Monster House Soundtrack (some people have a bad day and go out and buy a chocolate cake or a dozen doughnuts; I buy movie scores)
Current Mood: Better (I did some more Logic Game questions when I got home and was much improved)
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October 7th, 2009
09:36 pm - EVERY STATE TO A HIGHER STATE
So it's the end of another decade and many people are putting together lists of what they think the best movies of the aughts are -- and I will foist such a list upon you, too -- but first I wanted to mention what I think was the best movie of the 1980s.
The very best films, I think, do three things: they give us visceral thrills (either through spectacle or shocks or laughter), engage our emotions (i.e., make us feel something -- strongly) and inspire us to think potentially deep thoughts about who we are, where we live and what we might be capable of. Very few 80s movies even attempted to accomplish all three of these goals, and fewer still, of course, succeeded. Some were quite thrilling, but also quite shallow intellectually. Some movies made you feel a great deal of longing, but be so boring that you would never want to watch them again. And then there were those rare films that could tickle the cockles of your brain, heart and viscera simultaneously. And there was one movie from that fine decade of cocaine, shoulder-pads and Reaganomics that did it better than all others.
Heathers.
It perfectly dramatizes the permanent and universal insecurities and longings we all feel during our teenage years, but without ever being too arch or on-the-nose (<cough>JohnHughes<cough>). It's funnier than hell, featuring dialogue crisp enough to be quoted nearly a quarter-of-a-century later. And it somehow holds up a mirror to our society so unforgivingly that you can't help but seriously theorize about where things went wrong and how we can possibly improve them.
There's a reason I've seen Heathers so many times since its triumphant premiere at Sundance (where it reportedly received a 20-minute standing ovation) and it's not because The Sister was a Christian Slater-obsessive who held absolute control over the VCR. I bought the laserdisc the day it came out for $65 ($65! In 1990s dollars, no less!) and the only special feature it had was a commentary with the director, screenwriter and producer. I bought it because the movie is good enough to watch repeatedly and still find things in it to either enjoy anew or take satisfaction from yet again.
Current Music: Bruce Springsteen - "Atlantic City"
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September 23rd, 2009
07:59 pm - THIS WEEK IN DEBACLES (CINEMATIC AND OTHERWISE)
Knowing is a bug nuts crazy SF movie of the highest order. Characters achieve dramatic epiphanies not because of any hard work on their part, but because the rather visible hand of the screenwriter pushed them towards those epiphanies in order to advance the plot. The rather visible hand of the director takes over at that point and further nudges the characters to stupidly put themselves in harm's way so that the director has an excuse to satisfy his fetish for disaster porn. When the actors in the film get the rare chance to emote what their characters must be feeling they do so at the TOP OF THEIR VOICES and shout things like, "WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN!?"
And yet.
The movie sticks to its own internal logic and once the story's endgame starts to play out, it's followed through to the end with no weaseling out in the third act. And for that, the movie deserves some props. Watching it was probably the highlight of our weekend. And that tells you all you need to know about our weekend.
The Wife, The Daughter and I were supposed to go camping with some friends from our parents group. The campsite was only 70 miles away, but it took us four hours to get there thanks to two stops we made (one at the In-Laws, one at the Outlet Stores to buy The Daughter some new clothes) and because I tried to drive us to an on-ramp that didn't exist.
It took The Wife and I another hour to set up our tent, thanks mainly to our heated arguments about how to properly affix the rain fly to the tent's exterior. I'm glad that The Daughter isn't aware of the concept of divorce because she probably would have been peppering us with all sorts of questions about it that day.
Anyway, we eventually got the tent situated, the grill turned on, the pack-and-play erected and settled in for a night of fun under the stars. Except that The Daughter was refusing to settle in.
It was already two hours past her bedtime, she hadn't had an afternoon nap; she should have been exhausted. Instead, she was screaming from inside of our tent at the top of her lungs and refusing to go to sleep. And why should she sleep? Nobody else around her was sleeping as she could clearly ascertain through the microfiber walls of our tent.
At 9:30, the group of older people in the campsite next to us started doing tequila shots and I decided to pull the plug.
"We're going home," I said. "There's no way she's going to go to sleep tonight." The Wife didn't even pretend to protest. She wanted to go home as much I did. However, she did want to break down the tent and the grill and pack everything back into the car. Now, it had taken me nearly two hours to put all of our camping gear into the car that morning and that was when I was bushy-tailed and working in enough light to make things, you know, actually visible.
"No way," I said. "I'm going to pack as much I can in the next fifteen minutes and then we are out of here."
"But what about our tent and the grill?" The Wife reasonably asked me.
"We'll drive back up here for them in the morning."
And so that's what we did. Well, after I stayed up until about midnight unpacking the car so that we could easily fit the tent and grill when we went back to the campsite the following morning. We drove approximately 300 miles for three hours' worth of time in the Great Outdoors, but it was totally worth -- no, it wasn't. If I had to do it all over again I would have feigned some sort of illness that kept me home.
What a pain in the butt. Watching Knowing was more fun. But I mentioned that already, didn't I.
Current Music: Orenda Fink - "High Ground"
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August 30th, 2009
08:21 pm - THERE'S A REASON THEY RIDE AROUND IN LIMOUSINES
Maybe I don't have my ear to the ground in the proper places, but it occurred to me the other day that I haven't heard a lot complaints about politically active Hollywood liberals and how they should just "shut up and sing" (Laura Ingraham's words) because they're "small-minded" (John McCain's). You know why I think I don't hear any of these right wing loonies bashing Hollywood liberals? Because all of those liberals -- particularly the ones like The Dixie Chicks, Michael Moore and Tim Robbins, etc. who took the brunt of the nation's criticism back in the lead-up to the Iraq War -- have more often than not turned out to be right. And you know why they've turned out to be right so often? Because they're smart. They generate billions of dollars in revenue every year by convincing us to spend money on their shoddy products. Is there any other industry that consistently sells products that it knows will not fully satisfy its customers, yet still turns a profit? And actually not just turn a profit, but break new revenue records every year?* It takes a certain amount of genius to pull something like that off and that genius can be extended to other areas of interest outside of show business.
* Maybe defense contractors. But those people are pretty smart, too.
Current Music: Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros - "Home"
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August 19th, 2009
07:53 pm - THIS WEEK IN MOVIES
The Daughter does this thing every morning when I come in to her room to get her. She'll pick up a blanket she's been sleeping with and hold it out. "Daddy! On! Head!" she shouts. I dutifully put the blanket on my head and then she starts spinning in circles in her Pack-and-Play, literally bouncing off the walls of the contraption like a professional wrestler. I've left her to do this for up to 15 minutes before I get bored/concerned for her safety and make her stop.
Speaking of wrestlers, The Wife thought that she was done with sports-themed movies after the Mickey Rourke flick we watched last week. But no, not so much. I picked up the James Toback's documentary about Mike Tyson, which is literally just an hour-and-a-half of Iron Mike talking about his life interspersed here and there with some archival footage. Even if you were already on Tyson's side like I was regarding certain things (e.g., him getting totally exploited by Don King and maybe being falsely accused and convicted of raping that woman in Indiana), you'll come away with an even deeper sympathy for the man. And if you thought Tyson was a monster then this movie will make you accept him as at least a human being. Toback is a good manipulator and he cherry-picks his footage so we get a very one-sided portrait of the boxer, but a very good one nonetheless.
As good as Tyson is, though, it's still not as good as Bigger, Faster, Stronger a documentary about steroid use in America. Even The Wife watched this one as she was intrigued by the scientific arguments made in the film. The movie has a very interesting thesis (that steroid use is a symptom of chasing the American dream) and by the end of it I was ready to juice up myself.
Have to add another one to the pantheon of movies that once begun or stumbled across have to be watched until their conclusions. The Ice Storm was on Encore one recent Saturday night and even though we own the Criterion DVD and have seen it countless times, we just sat there and stayed up late and watched it through. The next Saturday night, it was on Indieplex and we stayed up even later than the previous weekend to watch the same movie again.
Donnie Brasco is another one that's really to sit through. We watched with The Parents when they were in town and I'm amazed that the "Fuggedaboudit" scene isn't one of those scenes that is constantly referenced or discussed on film message boards. It holds up really well as does most of the rest of the movie.
Know what movie I've forgotten I've seen already even though it was only two days ago? Push. Combining a superhero movie with a noir thriller is such a cool concept and there are some really neat ideas in the movie (like the screamers who can make, among other things, fish explode), but the film is so obviously put together to attract a teen audience that the filmmakers have no respect for that the whole thing ultimately feels slightly above the level of dumb.
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07:45 pm - BABY STEPS
Ego: Oy, I need to get drunk.
Id: Excellent! (Slurps.) Why?
Egos: Practice LSAT.
Id: Practice LSAT? The hell's an LSAT? Oh, wait. That thing you should have done a decade ago?
Ego: Yeah.
Id: What about it?
Ego: Logical reasoning. Total ass-kicker.
Id: Hmm. Better study, huh?
Ego: You can't study really. Only prepare.
Id: Ah. I see. Well, I think I'm going to go hibernate now.
Ego: Good.
Current Mood: Pulpy (yet hopeful!).
Current Music: Michael Giacchino - "Run And Shoot Offense" - Star Trek Soundtrack
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August 6th, 2009
07:03 pm - THIS WEEK IN MOVIES
When you see and read all of the fawning retrospectives of John Hughes over the next several days, please remember that he wasn't always a highly revered titan of the pop culture landscape -- even at the supposed summit of his powers. Case in point. Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Rodney Dangerfield's Back to School opened on the same week in the summer of 1986 (Ferris came out, I believe, on a Wednesday). These two heavily marketed comedies not only opened against each other, but each also contained a lip synch scene of "Twist and Shout," so comparisons between the two films was inevitable. And you know what? Critics savaged Ferris and heaped tons of love on Back to School. Back to School had a larger opening weekend as well as a bigger domestic gross. Those who remember the movie, do so fondly, but it isn't the recipient of the kind of widespread devotion that Ferris has (although to be fair, a lot of that devotion comes from Ben Stein who owes the entirety of his second career as a TV personality to his two-minute cameo in the movie). Please also remember this week that Weird Science is vastly overrated and that when "Savage" Steve Holland eventually kicks the bucket, he'll be lucky to receive a tenth of the attention that Hughes will get, even though Holland gave us one of the greatest one-two comedy combination punches of the 1980s with Better Off Dead... and One Crazy Summer.
What have The Wife and I been watching?
I felt that it had been long enough since the 2000 election that I could finally watch Election without murdering my flat screen and, wow, it was really good. It captured all of the buggery that occurred to democracy without seeming didactic or one-sided. It was factually accurate (save for one scene that featured Katharine Harris by herself; she refused to speak with screenwriter Danny Strong, who incidentally, played Doyle on Gilmore Girls) while also being dramatically interesting and really well structured.
Surprisingly The Wife and I got through Australia in one sitting. It might have had something to do with Hugh Jackman (I like his acting; The Wife likes his abs), but more likely it was because the bones of the story are really nice. "Yeah. It's just too bad," The Wife said, "that he [meaning Baz Luhrmann] has to do all of the..." and she waved her arms wildly in the air. Exactly.
The Wife had no interest in Watchmen, so I took it in by myself over three nights. It was too reverential to the comic (oh, sorry. Graphic novel) and all of the tiny bad choices Zach Snyder made eventually outweigh the brilliant underlying narrative and the whole movie collapses.
I can understand why Mickey Rourke lost the Oscar to Sean Penn. Milk is a better movie and I think it's as simple as that. But The Wrestler is damn good and when the credits started rolling, I turned to The Wife and said -- possibly shouted -- "That is how you f______ end a movie!"
Big Trouble In Little China came out on Blu-Ray and it looks beautiful (and speaking of great one-two punches, how about John Carpenter giving us Big Trouble followed by Prince of Darkness; and then as a kind of aperitif, They Live right after that?).
Finally, The Wife and I made it out to the IMAX theater at the Seattle Center to catch Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I liked it, but the decision to put the first 13-minutes in 3D instead of the final 13 minutes (like what they did with Order of the Phoenix) baffled me. Until we got to the final 13 minutes of the movie. Remember how scary the water cave filled with Inferi was in the book? And the wizard battle at the end was full of action and thrills and ultimately heartache? Remember how awesome all of that stuff read? Totally muted in the movie. I don't know if it's because David Yates just can't do action (he's obviously tops with the character driven stuff) or what, but even if they did show the climax in 3D, it still would have been flat.
Okay, later on The Wife will watch Nancy Meyers' The Holiday and a few episodes of Star Trek: TNG that somebody told me I should be familiar with.
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July 30th, 2009
07:57 pm - TYPICAL
Not surprised in the least to see that David Ortiz was one of the players who tested positive for steroids in 2003. I remember our vacation to Boston in 2006 when I was watching an NESN special on Ortiz and they showed footage of him playing for the Twins; he looked like a kid wearing his father's pajamas. Nothing like the familiar menacing teddy bear who could pop A-Rod's head with a simple flex of a bicep. There were two possibilities, I thought. Either the Twins had the worst tailor known to man or Papi was on the juice. Ortiz's drop in production in recent years confirmed my darkest suspicions. So, no. Not surprised at all.
Current Mood: Better -- it's much cooler today. A high of only 95. Hoorah for adapting to global warming!
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July 28th, 2009
08:53 pm - WE HAVE DECLARED WAR ON OUR ENEMY THE SUN
Make no mistake, though. The Sun started this. The low this morning was 71. That was the "highest" low ever recorded up here. Tonight's low is expected to be even warmer. The humidity hovers around 90%. This is what the weather is like 8 months out of the year in the South. No wonder they're so frakking crazy.
In response, we keep our blinds closed, no longer cook meals (it's too much damn work) and have forgone wearing pants -- The Daughter went a step further by also refusing to wear shirts.
I think that The Sun targeted us because it knew it would be an easy fight. Barely any of the houses up here have air conditioning. I mean, why would they? Apparently, it rains all the time in Seattle*.
There is no relief in the forecast. The Sun has scared off all of the low-pressure systems for at least another week which means we'll continue to experience record-breaking heat and that sucks because I really like wearing pants.
*Or only twice in the last 50 days. Whatever.
Current TV: South Park - Season One
Current Comic Book: Star Trek: Countdown - the prequel to this summer's Star Trek movie. But how can it be a prequel when it was released before the movie came out? If the publishers cared at all about proper usage of the English language, shouldn't they have called it a prologue? Anyway, The Wife unexpectedly showed her geek creed again when I told her that at the beginning of the book Spock had become a citizen of Romulus and she got all chagrined, "What? How could he do that? Why?"
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July 24th, 2009
07:40 pm - PLEASE DRINK RESPONSIBLY
The Wife and I took The Daughter to the annual Seafair Parade last night which is held about a block away from our house. I didn't really want to go because last year's parade took forever to get going, it was hotter than hell and The Daughter did not want to be there. I was prepared for another thoroughly miserable experience.
However, the festivities started on time and The Daughter was old enough to actually enjoy being at a parade. It was still hotter than hell, though, so we plied The Daughter with water, more water and lemonade.
During the middle of the night, all of that liquid came screaming out of her bladder.
When a disposable diaper is hit with urine, tiny crystalline chunks are formed. Most of the time these crystals are contained within The Daughter's diaper and wiped off of her backside first thing in the morning.
But not the morning after the parade.
My first thought when I came in to get her was that she had vomited milk all over the place. Of course, that's not what happened. What happened is that her diaper couldn't contain the staggering amount of liquid her body had processed and underwent a massive FAIL. Yellowed crystal chunks had exploded out of the front of her diaper and coated her stomach.
That's not what I had mistaken for milk vomit.
Apparently, the diaper no longer felt comfortable on The Daughter, so she had tried to take it off. Not by unsticking the adhesive straps on either side of the diaper, but by literally trying to tear the diaper apart piece by piece. The floor, the crib, her blankets, her toys, everything was covered by tiny cottony wisps that looked like inflated strands of rice you could order from some ridiculously expensive fusion restaurant in New York City. She somehow even managed to get them stuck in between every single one of her toes.
Once I figured out that I was merely dealing with urine-soaked chunks of super-absorbent cotton instead of regurgitated foodstuffs, my mood quickly turned from terrified to annoyed. I gave her a bath -- which is difficult even when her parents are fully awake, let alone at the crack of dawn -- and then had to figure out the best way to clean up all of the diaper chunks and peestorm crystals (it turned out to be a vacuum cleaner).
Next time we go to a parade I'll just let her suffer from dehydration and let the paramedics take care of her.
Kidding.
Maybe.
Current DVD: Finding Nemo
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July 23rd, 2009
10:19 am - GATES COMMENT
When I read Henry Louis Gates' version of his arrest I thought that he was probably overreacting, but then I recalled that Cambridge, Massachusetts is the only city I've ever been in where I saw a white dude derogatorily direct the n-word toward a black dude (a police officer, no less). So maybe there's a reason the esteemed professor was on such a hair trigger.
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July 16th, 2009
07:37 pm - TOO LONG FOR TWITTER
I was frequently told before The Daughter was born that I would be powerless against the unrequited love that I feel for her. What nobody told me was that "unrequited love" is just be an umbrella term that encompasses a wide spectrum of emotions, the most common of which is "unfounded worry." Following closely behind in second place is "total forgiveness;" that one usually manifests itself in the form of laughter right after she throws some sort of metallic object at my eye.
Current Music: Radiohead - "Backdrifts"
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July 13th, 2009
09:11 pm - MORE CHILDHOOD MOVIES ON BLU-RAY
The Wife and I watched the Blu-Ray of Predator and aside from the stunning image quality of the disc, what I found most striking was the movie's sly political commentary. For decades now I've thought that the film has a very tight script (thank you uncredited screenwriter, onscreen teller of vagina jokes Shane Black), but I was always nagged by the question, "What is the narrative point of these events happening to Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and his men?" And then it hit me. Dutch's elite rescue squad is paying for the sins of U.S. paramilitary incursions into Central America. The idea isn't even presented all that subtly.
Our heroes are tricked into carrying out a CIA-sponsored mini-invasion under the guise of a rescue mission, which is the sole reason that they stumble into the Predator's personal safari grounds. If they had just stayed at home, i.e. kept their noses out of international politics that have no real bearing on their personal lives, they wouldn't find themselves at the receiving end of a tri-pronged laser sight just before their spines are ripped out of their lifeless backs. This point is reinforced at the climax of the movie when Dutch pauses before crushing the Predator's skull with a rock to ask it, "What the hell are you?" The alien killing machine repeats the question, "What the hell are you?" which, along with its human-sounding laughter, effectively denotes itself a mirror image of Schwarzenegger's human killing machine, letting Dutch know that, "the reason for you being hunted...is you."
Okay. Enough watching twenty-five year-old flicks on Blu-Ray -- even though it's a lot of fun seeing these ancient movies look so good. I'll try to have some more contemporary experiences that are worth writing about. Maybe that kid running around the house will provide some inspiration.
Current Music: Girls Aloud - "The Show"
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July 2nd, 2009
07:11 am - VISUAL DATA
A whole bunch of new photos and videos just went up at our Flickr page. Enjoy!
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June 10th, 2009
07:21 pm - CHINESE ANNIVERSARY
I always get nostalgic over summer movies during June, so it is fortuitous that Drew McWeeny over at Hitfix is asking famous people what their all-time favorite summer movies are. Today, Bill Hader shared his thoughts on Tim Burton's Batman, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this month. Hader perfectly captures how a nation of pubescents was affected by that movie. He writes:
"I was 11. I had the T-shirts, a huge poster of the Batmobile, the Prince single -- all before I saw the movie. I was primed. I remember sitting in a packed theater with my dad and the moment the theater went dark my stomach went into knots. "I'm finally going to see this!" The Warner logo comes up with the first strands of Danny Elfman's music and then - BAM we're moving through the Batcave! Titles over one of the best film scores of all time. The sense of excitement and mystery captured simply by music and a camera tracking through dark corridors. Where the hell are we? I was certain we were going to turn a corner and see Batman hopping into his Batmobile. But then, the camera pulls back to reveal we were not in the Batcave, but moving through the bat symbol! Holy shit! The music swells. The theater goes nuts! I started wildly clapping. That's what summer movies are for me."
1989 was the first summer that I actively went out of my way to attend every big movie on opening day. Like everyone else of my generation, I was pretty obsessed with the Star Wars and Indiana Jones films, but I was also painfully aware that I had missed out on the communal euphoria of seeing those movies with huge crowds on opening weekend. In '89 -- which had an incredible slate of product -- I was determined to make-up for that. Last Crusade, Star Trek V, Ghostbusters II were all memorable experiences (even when the movies downright sucked), but they were just the undercard to the movie that had been making salivate for over a year.
We drove out to theater on opening day and were greeted by a line of at least 400 people that wrapped around the entire block. My dad didn't even slow down. Just kept driving by because there was no way we were going to get in. I was crestfallen. The first show the next morning was at 11:15 am. I made sure that everybody was out of the house by 9:30.
Now, we were spending that summer out in Berkeley and was a much different place to see a movie than Salt Lake City. Berkeley was a real city --- with college kids! -- that vocally reacted to what they saw on screen. And their reaction to the opening of the film is exactly how Hader describes it -- except my audience applauded the Warner Bros. logo, Jack Nicholson's credit, the main title, the "Songs by Prince" credit and the reveal of the Batman logo at the end of the sequence.
And things just escalated from there.
Neither before nor since have I been part of such a receptive audience* and it definitely made the movie better by a factor of thousands. We cheered when Batman punched that guy and threw him into a garbage can, roared when we saw the television news anchors who weren't allowed to wear make-up, screamed (well, I did) when Nicholson removed that mask from Jerry Hall's face. Hell, we even applauded at the line "Where does he get those wonderful toys?" which everybody in the audience must have already seen at least fifty times in the trailers and TV spots. And during the parade sequence when the Batwing bursts through the clouds and hangs motionless in the sky for just a second, perfectly silhouetted by the moon? The roof came off of that place. Why that moment? No idea. And I don't want to analyze it too much.
Okay, it's because we were preconditioned by the hype, but it was still funner than hell and I'm glad I got to experience it.
* With the possible exception of a Sundance screening of Run, Lola, Run (which I stupidly omitted in my list of great films of 1999).
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June 9th, 2009
03:52 pm - A FEW CANS SHORT
Here is how The Daughter counts: "1...2...6...7...8...9...10!"
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June 7th, 2009
10:08 am - SILVER ANNIVERSARY
Perhaps in an effort to feel even older than we already do, The Wife and I watched Ghostbusters last night to celebrate the film's 25th anniversary. We've seen the movie more times than we can count, literally quote it every day and, when necessary, use it in place of comfort food (the one and only time we did acid, we watched it to help us come down). Despite the multiple viewings and my queasiness with the film's right-wing politics (oooh, the scary government regulators aren't just stifling entrepreneurship, they're bringing about the apocalypse!) I still haven't tired of watching it and still find things in it that make me laugh out loud (last night: the way Rick Moranis -- possessed by Vince Clortho -- keeps mimicking the people around him just like a toddler would).
What is also mind blowing is that we could have also celebrated the 25th anniversary of Gremlins. It's not surprising that Gremlins is that old (by the way, I watched it again last summer and it still holds up), but it is surprising when you realize that it opened on the same day as Ghostbusters. Who would think that you could have two giant, effects-driven behemoths that target the same demographic come out on the same day and that they would both open huge ($13.6 million for Ghostbusters vs. $12.5 million for Gremlins). That just doesn't happen anymore and when studios try to replicate it, well, you wind up with movies like Terminator: Salvation or Land of the Lost getting their throats cut.
Current Music: Bob Dylan - "Dreamin' Of You" from Vloume 8 of his Bootleg Series
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June 6th, 2009
02:41 pm - SUMMER BBQ PLAYLIST
Last week we hosted a barbecue for our PEPS Group (which is for new parents, even though we aren't exactly new parents anymore). Because I am me, I put together a playlist of appropriate BBQ music for the gathering. It's an eclectic mix. Some old rock 'n roll, some indie stuff, even some French pop. Almost all of it is upbeat and bouncy, but nothing too hard. Lot of songs specifically about summer, sunshine, the beach (oh, and parenting).
The playlist runs for nearly three hours, but somehow our party lasted longer than that, so The Wife had to plug her iPhone into the stereo and turn on Pandora. And that's when one of our guests says, "Wow, you've got some good music going. Is this off your iPod?" The Wife turned to me and smirked. "No," she told our guest, "It's Pandora. Internet radio."
"Yeah? I like it. Playing some Death Cab For Cutie. Belle & Sebastian."
Ha! Now it was my time to smirk. Pandora hadn't played any Belle & Sebastian, but they were on my playlist. So somebody had been listening and appreciated the hours minutes I had spent cobbling the music together.
Here's the music from the playlist if you need some background for your own BBQ. Keep what you want, delete what you don't. The best thing to do is put on shuffle and then go off and enjoy yourself.
The track listing to give you an idea of what you're downloading follows:
SUMMER BBQ PLAYLIST - 55 tracks - 2 hours 52 minutes
Air France - "Beach Party"
Belle and Sebastian - "Me and the Major (Live)"
Bob Dylan - "Summer Days"
Bob Marley vs. Funkstar Deluxe - "Sun Is Shining (ATB Airplay Mix)"
The Boswell Sisters - "We've Got To Put That Sun Back In The Sky"
The Boy Least Likely To - "When Life Gives Me Lemons I Make Lemonade"
Buddy Johnson - "Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball?"
The Champs - "Tequila"
Chuck Berry - "Havana Moon"
The Clash - "Train In Vain"
Coldplay - "Sleeping Sun"
The Contours - "Do You Love Me (Now That I Can Dance)?"
The Coup DeVilles - "Big Trouble In Little China"
Digable Planets - "Rebirth Of Slick (Cool Like Dat)"
The Ditty Bops - "Summer Rains"
The Ditty Bops - "Interlude For Ten Strings"
Duke Ellington - "Mood Indigo"
Eddie Cochran - "Summertime Blues"
Elvis Presley - "That's Alright Mama"
Foghat - "Slow Ride"
Gene Vincent - "Be Bop A Lua"
Gillian Welch - "Summer Evening"
The Go-Gos - "Vacation"
Gorillaz - "19-2000 (Soulchild Remix)"
The Hollywood Flames - "Buzz, Buzz, Buzz"
Jesse Rose - "Well Now"
Julien Doré - "Les Limites"
Jurassic 5 - "Canto De Ossanha"
The Kingsmen - "Louie Louie"
The Kinks - "Sunny Afternoon"
Langhorne Slim - "Set Em Up"
Len - "Steal My Sunshine"
Leo Kottke - "Cripple Creek"
Little Richard - "Baby"
Los Lobos - "Si Yo Quisiera"
Marlena Shaw - "California Soul (Diplo Remix)"
Mary Z Cox - "Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss"
Matt Costa - "Sunshine (Live)"
Mint Royale Featuring Pos from De La Soul - "Show Me"
Morrissey - "Pregnant For The Last Time"
Mungo Jerry - "In The Summer Time"
Mustard Plug - "Summertime"
The Pearly Gatecrashers - "In The Summer"
Polaris - "Hey Sandy (The Adventures of Pete & Pete Edit)"
The Raconteurs - "Old Enough (Live)"
Radiohead - "I Am A Wicked Child"
Raffi - "Mr. Sun"
The Ramones - "Rockaway Beach"
Raphael Saadiq - "100 Yard Dash"
Sarah Vaughan - "Summertime (UFO Remix)"
The Scofflaws - "William Shatner"
Three Dog Night - "Summer In The City"
A Tribe Called Quest - "The Jam"
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "Hysteric (Acoustic Version)"
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June 3rd, 2009
08:47 pm - WHAT A TRAILER IS SUPPOSED TO DO
Earlier this summer The Wife and I were all gung-ho to see the new Star Trek movie, but then we got a $9000 credit card bill and realized that we had to cut back on our discretionary spending, meaning that excursions to the nearest IMAX theater were no longer on-the-table.
So, we've been staying home and watching all of the old Trek movies which have just been re-released on Blu-Ray and at the start of each one is this trailer and every single time we see it either she or I will turn to the other and say, "Okay, we have to see that."
Current Mood: Highly anticipating our trip to Salt Lake in three weeks...so we can see Trek at Brewvies
Current Music: Jesse Rose - "Well Now" (my song of the Summer)
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