Archive for August, 2008
« Older Entries | Newer Entries »Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on August 18, 2008 by admin in Popular Media
Monday, August 18th, 2008Buried Lyndon? Full Cardboard Jacket? A Boxwork Orange?
As a rather rabid Kubrick fan and generally mild-mannered obsessive-compulsive myself, I was riveted to the screen by Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes, Jon Ronson’s documentary about the thousands of boxes that Kubrick amassed as he did meticulous research for each film. Originally aired as part of the “True Stories” series that ran on Channel 4 in the UK, there are rumors of a US broadcast coming soon on the Sundance Channel. In the meantime, try watching the entire 49 minutes (Google Video) or in several parts on YouTube. At least, that is, until there’s a takedown notice. By the way, I’d give my left kidney to own a copy of the limited first run of The Stanley Kubrick Archives
Everything That Happens Finally Happened Today
[ Comments Off ]Posted on August 18, 2008 by admin in Music
Monday, August 18th, 2008The new Byrne Eno Release is available with streaming previews
David Byrne sent me an interesting e-mail today. He let me know that the The new Byrne/Eno collaboration Everything That Happens Will Happen Today was happening today. They’ve done some creative things with this release, one of them being the dirty trick of offering a Deluxe Package for $69.99 that includes four bonus songs, a short film about the album, a screensaver app (meh), an “Everything That Happens” miniature hardbound book, and immediate access to download all the songs in various formats. They’ve also cleverly offered the little embedded player seen here. A little advice David: you’re pretty tech savvy; your people could’ve made it resizeable, and they could’ve included a frigging volume control! I’m going to ponder spending the $69.99 after I stream the songs for a bit, a nice option.
A Message of Change and Hope
[ 4 Comments ]Posted on August 17, 2008 by admin in Comics
Sunday, August 17th, 2008And change. And hope and stuff.
How To Get A Head In Life
[ Comments Off ]Posted on August 16, 2008 by admin in Popular Media
Saturday, August 16th, 200818 Ways to Morph Your Photo On Line
You’ve probably seen the Elf Yourself ad campaign or the MyHeritage Celebrity Lookalike gizmo , but Mashable.com shows us 18 Ways to Get Your Head in the Game. Upload a picture of yourself to any of a number of sites, and soon you can be one of the Villlage People, a Wanted Criminal, or see your face on the cover of Rockstar magazine . Before you know it, you will have wasted an afternoon, and want to come back here and kill me for it. The Morphable image on the left is from MyHeritage. It was a little disturbing to find that I look like Bruce Willis and Howard Dean (and who the heck is Stephen Chow, anyway) but Drew Barrymore? If only I looked like Drew…my lesbian friends all adore her, she always gets a great table at restaurants…the only drawback would be being chased by whack jobs like Tom Green…Anyway, feel free to post links to your results in the comments.
Hillary The Undead Rises Again
[ Comments Off ]Posted on August 15, 2008 by admin in Politics
Friday, August 15th, 2008…and again, and again, and again…
Although pitched as a device to promote unity within the Democratic party, Hillary Clinton’s push for a roll call at the convention and Barack Obama’s concession both strike me as more divisive than unifying. At a time when Obama is running literally neck-and-neck (although McCain doesn’t have much neck left) with McCain, it seems to me to be a purely political, brand-building move for the Clintons. The popular news media that so gleefully shapes the election process these days will have a field day ranting about the Clintons at a time when the party’s presumptive candidate could obviously use a boost. It’s precisely this kind of politicking that drives people like me to launch their own campaign. In any case, ABC News’ Jake Tapper had an interesting piece last week – Deconstructing Hillary – that covers the topic in an historical context and also offers the interesting insight that Hillary still (as of August 1) refers to Obama as “my opponent”.