The official site of Kelly Sedinger: Reader, writer, photographer, and dreamer
One Gross of these posts. Wow!
:: She seems so tiny and fragile. I’m just about as nervous and worried as a new parent.
:: And this is why people get upset with politics. Wes Clark makes a perfectly legitimate statement and can’t find a single national Democrat to back him up because they’re all a bunch of scared little kittens. (This is the first time the Obama campaign has really disappointed me.)
All for this week.
Well, we now have three outstanding installments that as yet have zero guesses among them. I’m running out of coy hints for these, so it’s time for un-coy hints, I suppose. UI 40 was used as a location for a well-known movie from the 80s. UI 41 is famous for its proximity to a baseball stadium. UI 43, last week’s entry, is a famous place to buy food.
OK, so there are the hints. Time for a new entry:
Where are we? Rot-13 your guesses, if you have any….
Not the usual sorts of weirdness this week, but….
:: It’s weird in the sense that it doesn’t happen often: a baseball team wins (in this case, the LA Dodgers) despite having no hits in the game. Wow.
One oddity here is that official MLB rules indicate that for a game to qualify as an official no-hitter, the team pitching the no-no must pitch nine innings; since the Dodgers were the home team and thus carried a lead into the bottom of the ninth, they didn’t bat at all in the ninth, and therefore the Angels’ pitchers only three eight innings and thus this game is not an official no-hitter. I’ve found this rule silly ever since they imposed it. If the game goes nine innings, it should be a no-hitter. (Now, I’m on board with not considering rain-shortened six-inning games as no-hitters if it happens. But this, to me, is a no-hitter.)
:: I, for one, would love to have “WTF” on my license plate. Maybe I’ll get vanity plates that read “W TEE EFF”.
:: A Star Trek/Monty Python mash-up. What scares me is that I actually know which episodes nearly every one of those Trek clips comes from. I have got to get myself a life.
Boom de yada!
Here at Casa Jaquandor we have not had cable teevee for almost eight years; “rabbit ears” have been sufficient for our needs. Aside from the occasional Food Network show, I’ve really not missed cable all that much.
But then I read this xkcd installment, and, finding it amusing but wondering what it means, follow the link at the top of the page, I find what is surely the greatest commercial in teevee history.
I don’t remember a single commercial that filled me with more desire to buy what’s being sold than this one. I’m serious, I’ve got a MONSTER hankering to sign up for cable right now. Here’s a commercial that has two astronauts doing the “terrorist fist bump” and Stephen Hawking saying “boom de yada”.
Yeah, I love the whole world too. Boom de yada!
(Of course, my lack of cable means that likely every one of my readers has already seen this ad and is now thinking, “Wow, doesn’t our boy Jaquandor need to get out more often.” Guilty as charged, I suppose.)
So Entertainment Weekly has made two lists: one is a list of its Top 100 movies of the last twenty-five years, and the other does the same thing with books. You know the drill: the ones I’ve seen or read are in bold, with occasional comment. (However, a couple of provisos: yes, I’d include the Star Wars prequels, so sod off, haters. And as T & C point out, the list excludes The Shawshank Redemption, which is well-nigh inexplicable.)
1.Pulp Fiction (1994) (Wouldn’t be my best, but I’m not going to quibble.)
2. The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-03)
3. Titanic (1997)
4. Blue Velvet (1986)
5. Toy Story (1995) (Come now. It isn’t even the best Pixar movie; this is absurdly high to put this movie.)
6. Saving Private Ryan (1998) (Again: come on, now. It’s just not that good a movie once the Normandy stuff is past. And with all due respect to T & C, the film’s construction seems to strongly imply that we’re dipping into Ryan’s memories. The whole bit at the beginning with him walking through the graveyard isn’t even necessary; nor is the coda.)
7. Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
8. The Silence of the Lambs (1991) (I consider it a great film; a lot of its atmospherics set the stage for horror filmmaking in the 90s and beyond.)
9. Die Hard (1988) (One of the iconic action movies, obviously. I haven’t seen it in a long time.)
10. Moulin Rouge (2001)
11. This Is Spinal Tap (1984) (I can’t believe this is almost twenty-five years old.)
12. The Matrix (1999) (Meh. It was really cool the first time I saw it, but I liked it less each time I watched it after that. I tried once to watch The Matrix Reloaded and I fell asleep.)
13. GoodFellas (1990) (I really do think this is overrated, and that it wasn’t robbed at the Oscars.)
14. Crumb (1995) (This looks fascinating; I’d love to see it.)
15. Edward Scissorhands (1990) (A sentimental choice for me, since this movie was what The Girl I Thought Was Cute saw on our first date. She would later become The Girlfriend, then The Fiancee, and then The Wife.)
16. Boogie Nights (1997)
17. Jerry Maguire (1996) (I heart Cameron Crowe, as I’ve long established. I may have mentioned this before, but I saw this movie in a theater in Buffalo, and since it came out just a handful of years after the Cowboys beat the Bills in two straight Super Bowls, the shot during the big game at the end of the Cowboys coach glowering actually got a cheer from the audience.)
18. Do the Right Thing (1989)
19. Casino Royale (2006) (This seems a bit quick to anoint as a classic, but it’s such a good movie that I’m not going to complain.)
20. The Lion King (1994) (I know, I just said this the other day, but I’m starting to suspect this movie of being wildly overrated.)
21. Schindler’s List (1993) (Superior to Saving Private Ryan in every way.)
22. Rushmore (1998)
23. Memento (2001)
24. A Room With a View (1986) (I think this is the only Merchant-and-Ivory movie I’ve seen. I watched it during the last week of summer vacation before my junior year of high school, after a guy I’d met at music camp two weeks before had told me that this movie “made him want to fall in love”. And yeah, it did. Haven’t seen it in years, though.)
25. Shrek (2001)
26. Hoop Dreams (1994)
27. Aliens (1986) (Meh. Again, The Abyss is a much better movie.)
28. Wings of Desire (1988)
29. The Bourne Supremacy (2004)
30. When Harry Met Sally… (1989) (A favorite of mine.)
31. Brokeback Mountain (2005)
32. Fight Club (1999) (I don’t like this movie, but I can’t find anything wrong with it. It’s simply not my cup of tea.)
33. The Breakfast Club (1985) (This was a staple in college.)
34. Fargo (1996)
35. The Incredibles (2004) (I don’t grok this as much as some others, but it’s a fine, fine film.)
36. Spider-Man 2 (2004)
37. Pretty Woman (1990) (Really? Last time I watched it, I came away a bit disappointed.)
38. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) (Ah, yes. I need to watch it again.)
39. The Sixth Sense (1999) (I figured out the “twist” halfway through, but mainly I suspect because of an unplanned intermission when the film broke and I had five minutes to think it through.)
40. Speed (1994) (Or The Bus That Couldn’t Slow Down….)
41. Dazed and Confused (1993) (I need to see this.)
42. Clueless (1995)
43. Gladiator (2000) (I want to see this, kinda-sorta. I loved Kingdom of Heaven.)
44. The Player (1992)
45. Rain Man (1988)
46. Children of Men (2006)
47. Men in Black (1997) (Really? It was a clever enough comedy, but was it that good?)
48. Scarface (1983) (I see this on a lot of “great movie” lists, and everyone I’ve met who has watched it tells me it stinks. Odd.)
49. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) (Wow, I need to watch this all the way through one of these days.)
50. The Piano (1993)
51. There Will Be Blood (2007)
52. The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad (1988)
53. The Truman Show (1998)
54. Fatal Attraction (1987)
55. Risky Business (1983)
56. The Lives of Others (2006)
57. There’s Something About Mary (1998)
58. Ghostbusters (1984)
59. L.A. Confidential (1997)
60. Scream (1996) (One of the more disappointing movies I’ve seen. It can’t be taken seriously as horror, and it’s not funny enough to rise to the level of clever spoof.)
61. Beverly Hills Cop (1984)
62. sex, lies and videotape (1989) (Wow, did this movie ever flummox the small-town Lutherans I watched it with in college!)
63. Big (1988) (OK, when did this become a classic? I bet nobody remembers this movie if not for the “Chopsticks” scene.)
64. No Country For Old Men (2007)
65. Dirty Dancing (1987) (I’ve seen parts. Meh.)
66. Natural Born Killers (1994) (I saw this and admired it, but I’m not sure it’s a classic or anything. It’s not even the best Oliver Stone movie from this period, and none of those appear on this list.)
67. Donnie Brasco (1997)
68. Witness (1985) (Should be higher. I hope Harrison Ford finds this level of inspiration again one day.)
69. All About My Mother (1999)
70. Broadcast News (1987) (I haven’t seen this in far too long! I really loved it.)
71. Unforgiven (1992)
72. Thelma & Louise (1991)
73. Office Space (1999) (They said I could play my radio at a reasonable volume.)
74. Drugstore Cowboy (1989)
75. Out of Africa (1985)
76. The Departed (2006)
77. Sid and Nancy (1986)
78. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
79. Waiting for Guffman (1996)
80. Michael Clayton (2007)
81. Moonstruck (1987)
82. Lost in Translation (2003)
83. Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn (1987)
84. Sideways (2004)
85. The 40 Year-Old Virgin (2005) (The Bollywood ending had me on the floor.)
86. Y Tu Mamá También (2002)
87. Swingers (1996)
88. Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997) (A friend at work and I like to express our mutual frustration by quoting this movie. “Come on, people! Throw me a frickin’ bone here!”)
89. Breaking the Waves (1996)
90. Napoleon Dynamite (2004)
91. Back to the Future (1985)
92. Menace II Society (1993)
93. Ed Wood (1994)
94. Full Metal Jacket (1987)
95. In the Mood for Love (2001)
96. Far From Heaven (2002) (I just checked this out of the library, and will report back.)
97. Glory (1989)
98. The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)
99. The Blair Witch Project (1999)
100. South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut (1999)
So, there are the movies. Omissions? I’m not sure what I’d knock off, but I’d include Apollo 13, Braveheart, The Shawshank Redemption, The Karate Kid, The Abyss, The Iron Giant, Stand By Me, Misery, Platoon, JFK, Nixon, and the in-my-opinion-criminally-underrated Dolores Claiborne.
As for the books:
1. The Road , Cormac McCarthy (2006)
2. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling (2000) (Sorry, but Prisoner of Azkaban is the better book.)
3. Beloved, Toni Morrison (1987)
4. The Liars’ Club, Mary Karr (1995)
5. American Pastoral, Philip Roth (1997)
6. Mystic River, Dennis Lehane (2001)
7. Maus, Art Spiegelman (1986/1991) (Sheer genius.)
8. Selected Stories, Alice Munro (1996)
9. Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier (1997)
10. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami (1997)
11. Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer (1997)
12. Blindness, José Saramago (1998)
13. Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (1986-87) (What else is there to say?)
14. Black Water, Joyce Carol Oates (1992)
15. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers (2000) (Liked it but didn’t quite get the fuss.)
16. The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood (1986)
17. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez (1988)
18. Rabbit at Rest, John Updike (1990)
19. On Beauty, Zadie Smith (2005)
20. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding (1998)
21. On Writing, Stephen King (2000) (God, yes. What a book. I’ve worn mine out and need to get a new one.)
22. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz (2007)
23. The Ghost Road, Pat Barker (1996)
24. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry (1985)
25. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan (1989)
26. Neuromancer, William Gibson (1984)
27. Possession, A.S. Byatt (1990)
28. Naked, David Sedaris (1997)
29. Bel Canto, Anne Patchett (2001)
30. Case Histories, Kate Atkinson (2004)
31. The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien (1990)
32. Parting the Waters, Taylor Branch (1988)
33. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion (2005)
34. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (2002)
35. The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst (2004)
36. Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt (1996)
37. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi (2003) (Another wonderful work; I like that EW is open to graphic novels.)
38. Birds of America, Lorrie Moore (1998)
39. Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)
40. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman (1995-2000) (Only the first book; I’m not sure I’ll ever make it a sufficient priority to read the second and third. Nothing against Pullman’s message, but that first book just didn’t excite me to the point that I want to read the rest of the trilogy.)
41. The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros (1984)
42. LaBrava, Elmore Leonard (1983)
43. Borrowed Time, Paul Monette (1988)
44. Praying for Sheetrock, Melissa Fay Greene (1991)
45. Eva Luna, Isabel Allende (1988)
46. Sandman, Neil Gaiman (1988-1996) (I haven’t read the entire thing yet.)
47. World’s Fair, E.L. Doctorow (1985)
48. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver (1998)
49. Clockers, Richard Price (1992)
50. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen (2001)
51. The Journalist and the Murderer, Janet Malcom (1990)
52. Waiting to Exhale, Terry McMillan (1992)
53. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon (2000) (I thought this was wondrous from start to finish.)
54. Jimmy Corrigan, Chris Ware (2000) (Gotta read this – I’ve owned it for six years now.)
55. The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls (2006)
56. The Night Manager, John le Carré (1993)
57. The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe (1987)
58. Drop City, TC Boyle (2003)
59. Krik? Krak! Edwidge Danticat (1995)
60. Nickel & Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich (2001) (It told me what I already knew, but too many people don’t know and worse, don’t care.)
61. Money, Martin Amis (1985)
62. Last Train To Memphis, Peter Guralnick (1994)
63. Pastoralia, George Saunders (2000)
64. Underworld, Don DeLillo (1997)
65. The Giver, Lois Lowry (1993)
66. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace (1997)
67. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini (2003)
68. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel (2006)
69. Secret History, Donna Tartt (1992)
70. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell (2004)
71. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Ann Fadiman (1997)
72. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon (2003)
73. A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving (1989)
74. Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger (1990)
75. Cathedral, Raymond Carver (1983)
76. A Sight for Sore Eyes, Ruth Rendell (1998)
77. The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)
78. Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert (2006)
79. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell (2000)
80. Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney (1984)
81. Backlash, Susan Faludi (1991)
82. Atonement, Ian McEwan (2002)
83. The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields (1994)
84. Holes, Louis Sachar (1998)
85. Gilead, Marilynne Robinson (2004)
86. And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts (1987)
87. The Ruins, Scott Smith (2006)
88. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby (1995) (I just read this last week!)
89. Close Range, Annie Proulx (1999) (I’ve read one of the stories within this collection, and I’ll write about that story sometime soon.)
90. Comfort Me With Apples, Ruth Reichl (2001)
91. Random Family, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc (2003)
92. Presumed Innocent, Scott Turow (1987)
93. A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley (1991)
94. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser (2001) (I have a feeling this would also tell me what I already know.)
95. Kaaterskill Falls, Allegra Goodman (1998)
96. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown (2003)
97. Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson (1992)
98. The Predators’ Ball, Connie Bruck (1988)
99. Practical Magic, Alice Hoffman (1995)
100. America (the Book), Jon Stewart/Daily Show (2004)
Not much to say there, I suppose. I need to read more, obviously. But from what I’ve heard, The Da Vinci Code isn’t actually a good book, so why is it here? Just because it was the mega-bestseller of the year back when? I obviously haven’t read enough of these to offer serious criticisms of this list, but one book I’d have in my list is Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon. Come to that, no great SF or fantasy has been written in the last twenty-five years? I think not.
And with that, I think I’m caught up on lists for now. Bring on the quiz-things!
OK. Back when this song was Madonna’s hot new single, MTV had a contest for viewers to make their own videos for the song. I don’t recall what the prize was for the winner, but that winning video was, in my opinion, superior to the “official” video that Madonna eventually made. Unfortunately, all I can find on YouTube of that contest video is this version with cruddy sound and picture, so for my purposes here, it’s the “official” version. And hey, the song is still a piece of bubblegum perfection, in my opinion.
So here’s “True Blue”.
Ah, those wild whacky 80s…how I loved them so….
SamuraiFrog, Tosy and Cosh, and Tom the Dog have both commented on this, and I must, of course, follow suit. Last week was the annual American Film Institute teevee show, when they present a list of Top X Movie Whatever’s. This year they picked several genres and named the top ten movies in each genre. As always, the point of the show isn’t to present some kind of iron-clad canon of film, but just to drum up interest in the movies. If people watching these shows say, “Hmmm, I should watch that again/for the first time”, then the show has done its job. For that reason I never really get mad at the AFI’s selections; the only one that’s ever really bugged me is when the “100 Years, 100 Romances” list omitted Say Anything.
So, here are their lists. I’ve bolded the ones I’ve seen and sprinkled my own comment throughout.
Animation
Well, right off the bat we’ve got a bit of a problem. “Animation” isn’t a genre, really; it’s a film medium. Within the confines of animation you can do SF, romance, fantasy, anything. But we can still talk about the best animated movies, right?
1. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
I won’t quibble with the placement, although I personally wouldn’t call it the best animated movie ever. But it’s just as iconic as this placement suggests, and it’s interesting to watch it now and try to imagine Disney today doing something quite as dark as Snow White. (Yes, it’s a dark film. There’s some very disturbing stuff in there, amongst the funny stuff with dwarves and the Handsome Princes and whatnot.)
2. Pinocchio (1940)
Again, a movie with lots of darkness. (Hardwick’s metamorphosis into a donkey is as horrific a scene as you’ll find in a movie.) I’ve always loved Pinocchio.
3. Bambi (1942)
OK. I love this movie too.
4. The Lion King (1994)
Unlike SamuraiFrog, I like this movie a little bit less each time I see it. Oh, it’s definitely very good, but there are things about it that don’t hold up well for me. I don’t care for Matthew Broderick’s voice work, I find a lot of the climax contrived, and some of the exposition stuff at the beginning is pretty dull. There isn’t a subtle moment in this film, and there are moments that could have benefited from a less heavy hand.
5. Fantasia (1940)
Yes, it’s a mixed bag, but I really do love it. The main weak part is the Beethoven Pastoral Symphony.
6. Toy Story (1995)
Yes, it’s a really good movie. And it launched Pixar as a force to be reckoned with. But still, I don’t think it’s the best Pixar film, so putting it here, ahead of them all?
7. Beauty and the Beast (1991)
This is the best film of Disney’s Silver Age, in my opinion. It’s far better than The Lion King.
8. Shrek (2001)
Hmmmmm. See, I really like this movie. I also really like its first sequel, and I didn’t hate its second sequel (although that one was, admittedly, a pretty tired film). I guess I’m OK with it being here, with its riffs on fairy tales and legends.
9. Cinderella (1950)
I love this movie; I just love it. The animation is some of the best to ever come out of Disney (the bit where singing Cinderella is mirrored in the soap bubbles is visual invention of the highest order, and to animate those mini-Cinderellas so they’re identical is great). But you know what? I love Peter Pan more.
10. Finding Nemo (2003)
Pixar’s best film, for me. I’m not sure I can name anything wrong with it. (Well, OK, Disney couldn’t pony up to license the Bobby Darin version of “Beyond the Sea”, choosing instead a cover version that’s the same anyway? There, I found fault with Finding Nemo.)
What’s missing, then? Well, the most glaring omission is clearly The Iron Giant. I’ll second SamuraiFrog’s nomination of The Secret of NIMH, and I’ll throw in The Last Unicorn, to boot. And really, I’m not one to completely slag a lot of Disney’s non-Pixar output after The Lion King. Some of it isn’t terribly good, but I still think that The Emperor’s New Groove is an absolute classic.
Fantasy
1. The Wizard of Oz (1939)
I loved this movie as a kid. And then, as a more jaded teenaged dork, I hated it. And then as a college dork getting in touch with my inner kid again, I loved it again. And there I’ve stayed ever since. It really is a terrific film, terribly wise in its outlook and full of humor and imagination. (I quoted one of the Wizard’s lines in my written eulogy for Little Quinn.)
2. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
Now, I have to ask something here. The AFI’s lists salute American films, but by what standard is LOTR an American effort? Because New Line’s an American company? That’s pretty weak tea, if you ask me. If we can consider LOTR, then the entire animation category has to thrown open to Hayao Miyazaki and the rest of the anime geniuses. But fine.
Anyway, why not do the right thing here and consider the trilogy as a whole? (Although, if I have to pick a stand-alone, I’d go with The Two Towers. But I wouldn’t pick a stand-alone.)
3. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
Meh. I’m not a fan of this movie.
4. King Kong (1933)
Yeah, it’s quite good. ‘Nuff said.
5. Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
I’m cheating a bit by including this: the one time I saw it I was in second grade and I don’t remember much about it at all.
6. Field of Dreams (1989)
Oh, hell yes. No explanations for the strange events in Ray Kinsella’s corn field, just total complete faith in it all. It’s a great movie. (By the way, it wasn’t made into a movie, but in a similar vein is W.P. Kinsella’s novel The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, which posits an exhibition game in 1908 between the Chicago Cubs and a semi-pro Iowa team that lasted something like a hundred innings and was the longest baseball game ever played – except that nobody remembers it ever happening.)
7. Harvey (1950)
8. Groundhog Day (1993)
Yes, it’s fantasy. And yes, it’s a terrific movie.
9. The Thief of Bagdad (1924)
I’ve never seen the silent one. The one from the 1940s with Sabu is wonderful, though.
10. Big (1988)
Gahhhh. Didn’t like this movie. I suspect that if you take out the bit with the piano keyboard on the floor, the movie isn’t remembered nearly as well.
So what would I consider for the Fantasy list? Well, since we’re including movies of questionable country of origin (not that the countries are questionable, just the notion of what makes an “American” film or not), I’d include Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The Princess Bride is pure fantasy. And some superhero movies may fall into this category, no? Superman or Spiderman 2 are fantasies, in my book. Excalibur (not American, but then, we’re stretching the definition of an “American” movie already).
Science fiction
Of course, with these two categories, we end up in the classic old debate about what the dividing line is between SF and fantasy. Enough ink, both real and cyber, has been dropped on this topic over the years that I’m not about to add anything earthshaking about it, except to reiterate my view that the best definition of SF is probably “SF is whatever I point at when I say, SF”.
1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
I’d have it on the list. Best ever? For me, that would be…
2. Star Wars (1977)
Oh yeah! Without this movie I wouldn’t be me. (Which might not be the worst thing in the world, but still.) I admit that I’m rather horrified by the notion gradually mustering around this movie — that it stinks too, and that only TESB is any good at all.
3. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
Lots of people these days gripe on Spielberg for “Daddy issues”. I personally don’t care. This is a great movie.
4. A Clockwork Orange (1971)
Meh. It’s not my cup of tea.
5. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
Great stuff, really. I like this movie a lot. I haven’t seen it in a long time – I should rectify that soon.
6. Blade Runner (1982)
As with SamuraiFrog, I say Meh. I wrote about Blade Runner some time ago, if you really want to know my thoughts on the film.
7. Alien (1979)
Sorry, but I hate the Alien franchise. SamuraiFrog makes the interesting point that he sees it more as a horror film than an SF film, but it’s really both. SF’s kind of like “animation”: it’s such a widely defined thing that you can do anything in it at all, really. But as for this movie, I hated it. And its first two sequels. I never bothered with anything Alien related after that.
8. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
I love both Terminator movies, really. (No, there was no third. That’s a ridiculous notion.)
9. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
10. Back to the Future (1985)
I love this movie too, although I’m not sure I’d put it in the Top Ten SF movies. For one thing, I’m not sure it’s SF. Sure, it’s got a mad scientist and lots of made-up technobabble about how the time travel works, but that’s complete BS, isn’t it? The main working definition here seems to be: “It’s fantasy when you wave your hand to make something impossible to happen, and SF if you push a button to make something impossible happen.” (Which still doesn’t help in the case of Star Wars, where both happen.
So what didn’t make the cut here? Close Encounters of the Third Kind is a glaring omission. Twelve Monkeys is great SF. I’d include The Abyss, which always gets unfairly overshadowed by the overrated Aliens. Forbidden Planet and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Total Recall, and, yes, Robocop. (Hell, make it a Peter Weller two-fer and throw in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension.)
(SamuraiFrog suggests The Right Stuff, but that’s not SF at all. It’s a historical film about the early days of the American space program.)
Sports
1. Raging Bull (1980)
2. Rocky (1976)
Yes, it’s a great movie. The second one’s OK. It all goes downhill after that. (I never saw the sixth one, though.)
3. The Pride of the Yankees (1942)
4. Hoosiers (1986)
Yes, it’s good. I’m not sure it’s that good, but it’s really good. (Its score is wildly overrated, though — the Goldsmith freaks out there tend to worship this one, but to me, it’s just pleasant Americana.)
5. Bull Durham (1988)
One of my favorite movies ever. I love the dialogue, the humor, the little baseball touches. (And to me, the only acceptable response to hearing someone talk about what they’re going to get someone for a wedding gift is: “Well, candlesticks always make a nice gift. Or we could find out where they’re registered and get ’em a place setting or two. Alright, let’s get two!”)
6. The Hustler (1961)
Didn’t see it, although I did see the sequel (The Color of Money), which I liked. I was never offended that the sequel ends before the big confrontation match; I didn’t think it mattered.
7. Caddyshack (1980)
Well, duh! Great comedy (if only tangentially a sports movie). I got to make a reference to this movie once at The Store: we found a large beehive in the ground underneath one of our shrubs, and a manager suggested that we blow it up with a stick of M-80. I countered, “I am not re-enacting Caddyshack with a bunch of bees!” Luckily, he got the reference.
8. Breaking Away (1979)
I’ve seen it, but not in many years – more than twenty – and I don’t remember much about it at all.
9. National Velvet (1944)
10. Jerry Maguire (1996)
Yes, the movie holds up very well – in fact, with the money and personality cults in sports getting more and more prevalent, it’s even more relevant now.
What else is there? Well, I personally loved Tin Cup, although all the golfers I know are unanimous in their hatred of it. There’s White Men Can’t Jump, which finally clarified for me why I don’t like watching basketball: the game looks better in slow motion. I’ve always found Major League really funny, and I loved how Will Ferrel’s Blades of Glory skewered figure skating. And while it might be stretching the concept of “sport” a bit, Searching for Bobby Fischer is a magnificent film.
Western
1. The Searchers (1956)
Yes, it’s a great movie. But I don’t want to see it again.
2. High Noon (1952)
3. Shane (1953)
4. Unforgiven (1992)
This was when I realized that Clint Eastwood is a genius. It really is a great film.
5. Red River (1948)
6. The Wild Bunch (1969)
7. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
One of the great first hours in movie history. Unfortunately, it’s followed by a second hour that’s pretty much “Meh” until the very last scene.
8. McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971)
9. Stagecoach (1939)
My parents dragged me to see this in a revival when I was in high school. I owe them for that, as I would probably never have seen it otherwise. It’s great.
10. Cat Ballou (1965)
Crikey, I need to see more Westerns. I’m still unapologetic in my love for Dances With Wolves (more here). Silverado‘s good. Legends of the Fall is a Western, isn’t it? I think it is, although that might stretch the definition a bit. And I’m not sure it’s a good movie, but The Quick and the Dead is fun to watch.
Gangster
Well, here’s a genre of films that doesn’t typically excite me. I just don’t care for Mob stories in general.
1. The Godfather (1972)
One of these years I need to watch this all the way through so I can see what the fuss is about. But I keep not making it a big priority. (I like SamuraiFrog’s assertion that the only reason the AFI did a Gangster category was so that they could talk about The Godfather again. It does get mentioned every year, doesn’t it? Maybe next year’s show should be “100 Years, 100 Whackings” and be done with it.)
2. Goodfellas (1990)
One of filmdom’s great Shibboleths of recent years is that this movie got robbed at the Oscars (it lost to Dances With Wolves). Personally, I don’t see it. Yes, it’s a very good movie, but I don’t share the enthusiasm about it that everybody else feels. I watched it once, I liked it a lot, and…we’re done.
3. The Godfather, Part II (1974)
4. White Heat (1949)
5. Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
6. Scarface: The Shame of a Nation (1932)
7. Pulp Fiction (1994)
One of my favorite movies ever. Unlike SamuraiFrog, I do think it’s a gangster movie; the gangsters are different types, that’s all, and the point-of-view is restricted to those who have to carry out the gangster’s bidding.
8. The Public Enemy (1931)
9. Little Caesar (1931)
10. Scarface (1983)
I haven’t even heard of Numbers 8 or 9 above. Is Michael Mann’s Heat a “gangster” movie? Maybe they should call this the “crime” genre? In that case we could include Dirty Harry. I dunno; I’m just not that into this whole genre.
Mystery
1. Vertigo (1958)
It annoys me that I haven’t seen this. The score is amazing, though.
2. Chinatown (1974)
Sure. Terrific movie.
3. Rear Window (1954)
Another one my parents dragged me to in a revival in the 1980s. Another one I owe them. What a movie this is! I watched it on teevee with The Wife last Thanksgiving, if I recall correctly. It’s still awesome.
4. Laura (1944)
5. The Third Man (1949)
On first glance I thought this said The Thin Man, the first in that series of wonderful mystery-comedies featuring Nick and Nora. And then I read the title correctly, and realized, no, I haven’t actually seen this.
6. The Maltese Falcon (1941)
Nothing I can say. Great stuff.
7. North by Northwest (1959)
Almost my favorite Hitchcock movie.
8. Blue Velvet (1986)
9. Dial M for Murder (1954)
This actually is my favorite Hitchcock movie. I think it’s absolutely terrific.
10. The Usual Suspects (1995)
Yuck. I hate this movie. It could have told a fascinating story about interesting criminal characters brought together for a heist and played off those characters in neat ways, but instead, we got the colossally stupid “Who is Keyser Soze?” bullshit. Since I figured out who Soze was within two minutes of first hearing the name mentioned, I spent the rest of the movie glowering at the screen.
Again, what’s a “mystery” and what isn’t? Is The Silence of the Lambs a mystery? Maybe, maybe not. The Fugitive is a mystery, at least in part.
Romantic comedies
1. City Lights (1931)
2. Annie Hall (1977)
3. It Happened One Night (1934)
4. Roman Holiday (1953)
5. The Philadelphia Story (1940)
There’s something wrong with this movie. I just have no idea at all what it is. Maybe it’s too good? Yeah, that’s it! (Loved it.)
6. When Harry Met Sally… (1989)
One of my favorite movies ever. Crackling dialogue, and it gets its job done in ninety minutes without any filler. (And if you want to see how essential good editing can be, watch the deleted scenes, which are awful.)
7. Adam’s Rib (1949)
8. Moonstruck (1987)
9. Harold and Maude (1971)
10. Sleepless in Seattle (1993)
OK, yeah, I love this movie. I don’t think it belongs on this top ten, though; a really great movie would have figured out a way to have the Bill Pullman character not get, you know, screwed on Valentine’s Day. But still, I don’t think Meg Ryan has ever been more beautiful than she is here. So there.
Odd that I consider romantic comedies to be one of my favorite genres, and yet, I’ve seen so few of the films the AFI listed here. I have my work cut out for me, obviously, but by way of other suggestions, I really love Cousins. Roxanne is wonderful, and they’re probably not eligible because they’re British, but I really adore Four Weddings and a Funeral and Love, Actually.
Courtroom Drama
1. To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
Absolutely. (Note to self: re-read the book.)
2. 12 Angry Men (1957)
Also fine.
3. Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)
4. The Verdict (1982)
5. A Few Good Men (1992)
I love this movie, although I do concede the point that Roger Ebert made that the film shouldn’t have told us right before the big courtroom scene what Tom Cruise’s strategy was for questioning Jack Nicholson.
6. Witness for the Prosecution (1957)
7. Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
8. In Cold Blood (1967)
9. A Cry in the Dark (1988)
10. Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)
SamuraiFrog mentions Inherit the Wind, and I concur. I’d also add in The People vs. Larry Flint and JFK for consideration.
Epic
I’m not sure what an “epic” is; apparently they’re long and have lots of spectacle. That said:
1. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
I really need to get off my arse and watch the entire thing. I’ve seen half of it. Ugh. I suck.
2. Ben-Hur (1959)
Ahhhh! What a great movie. I love this movie. Love love love it.
3. Schindler’s List (1993)
Both SamuraiFrog and Tom the Dog seem to question its epic status, but why not? It tells a pretty big story, involving lots of people, with a good deal of sweep and large set pieces. It’s an epic, in my opinion. (It’s also one of the very greatest films ever made.)
4. Gone with the Wind (1939)
I don’t like it. Sorry, but it’s dull and ponderous; all of the performances are overwrought; I watch the film in utter failure to understand why so many people are hanging on Scarlett’s every word; and I don’t fetishize the South as this movie does.
5. Spartacus (1960)
Another one I need to watch. (By the way, this is probably the single greatest unreleased film score in existence.)
6. Titanic (1997)
If Schindler’s List isn’t an epic, how is this? Its story takes place in less time and in a single location. But yes, it’s an epic. It’s also a great movie. Sod off, Titanic haters.
7. All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
8. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
An amazing sequence (Normandy) that’s followed by two-plus hours of pedestrian crap. Sorry, but I really think the only reason this movie is so beloved is because it happened to come out right when “Greatest Generation” nostalgia was hitting its stride. (William Goldman’s critique is pretty much an exact statement of how I feel about this movie, except that I don’t even think the journey to Private Ryan is great stuff.)
9. Reds (1981)
10. The Ten Commandments (1956)
I’ve never much liked this movie. It’s overlong, overstuffed, overwritten, overwrought, and just plain over.
What “epics” did they miss? Braveheart is an obvious one, I think. And it probably doesn’t merit “Top Ten” status, but I really dig The Vikings.
And, as always, there we have it. Thanks, AFI!
I’ve watched a couple of films of late. Be warned, I make no effort to avoid spoilers!
:: It’s taken me a while to figure out how I feel about Juno, and I’m still not entirely sure what I make of it. Juno is exactly what everybody has already said it is: a feel-good flick about teen pregnancy. I’m not sure what it means that we can now make feel-good movies on that topic, but then, I’m not anywhere near a teenager anymore; twice as many years have now elapsed since I was a teenager than I spent as a teenager, and to my knowledge, there weren’t any teen moms in my school anyway when I was a teenager, so I can’t claim to have any great perspective on this topic. It’s shaped, mostly, by those awful “After School Special” movies we often had to watch on the subject, in which teenage girls who became pregnant somehow became social pariahs who would never again fit in or live any kind of normal life. The topic of teen pregnancy, in my time, was always discussed with a major subtext of “If it happens to you, it’s GAME OVER!”.
So along comes Juno, a movie where a teenage girl gets pregnant by her boyfriend, decides to give the baby up for adoption, spends time with the adoptive parents and gets to know the husband better than she should, fights with her boyfriend a bit, watches as the adoptive family’s marriage collapses, gives the baby up to the mother anyway, makes up with her boyfriend, and then presumably returns to the relatively normal life she’s enjoyed all along. No major dramatic histrionics can be found in Juno. Her boyfriend is not some jerk jock type who is only looking to get in some girl’s pants; in fact, the sex isn’t even completely his idea in the first place. Juno doesn’t lose all of her friends during her pregnancy, nor does she become a miserable waif shunned by her peers. Her best friend sticks by her the whole way. Her parents are supportive and accepting. I watched Juno thinking the film was terribly unrealistic, but then I wondered against myself: how unrealistic is it, anyway?
Parts of the film made me a bit uncomfortable. During the scenes where Juno forms a bond with the father-to-be, I found myself wanting to warn her away from this guy, who is clearly an overgrown child. However, the screenplay (written by Diablo Cody, which is the best name for a screenwriter ever) knows its characters, and in the end, it turns out that Juno has enough insight and awareness to recognize this man for what he is, despite all the ways she is able to connect with him and not with the mother. The other scene that made me wince was when the ultrasound technician makes some kind of judgmental comment about Juno’s pregnancy, and then gets berated by Juno’s stepmother (Alison Janney). This was the only part of the film that felt in any way reminiscent of a “Very Special Episode of Blossom“, and it stood out to me as both contrary to the general tone of the film and to my general experience with people in that line of work in the first place. I found it very hard to believe that any person working in a perinatal field would make such a comment to a pregnant woman, no matter what her circumstance.
What else to say about Juno? Well, I very much doubt that lightning can be caught in the bottle twice, but when the film ended, I genuinely wanted to know what became of these characters and what life held for them. So that helps.
:: A year or so ago I bought a couple of omnibus editions of the stories of Robert E. Howard, having never actually read any Howard before. (I still don’t have them all, missing the tales of Kull the Conqueror and one of the Conan the Barbarian volumes.) Howard is one of those “founding fathers” of modern fantastic fiction, along with E.E. “Doc” Smith (space opera SF), HP Lovecraft (horror), Edgar Rice Burroughs (planetary romance SF), and other very early masters of literal pulp fiction. Howard’s creations loom over epic fantasy and sword-and-sorcery tales, and yet, I still haven’t actually read him (although that will be changing soon). I’ve read lots of stuff based on his creations, and seen the Conan movies, but the actual source material still awaits me.
I do know, however, that Howard was one of those geniuses who burned brightly for a short time and then was extinguished. He committed suicide when he was just thirty years old, never coming close to witnessing his legacy, and he never married. Those things I knew. What I didn’t know is that he had a tumultuous friendship, sometimes crossing the line into romance, with a schoolteacher and aspiring writer named Novalyne Price. The film The Whole Wide World tells this story, and I found the film astonishingly good. How I’ve managed to have never heard of it before a friend sent me a copy of it is beyond me.
Featuring Vincent D’Onofrio as Howard and Renee Zelwegger as Novalyn, the film tightly focuses on their relationship, which begins warmly enough but soon begins to lurch back and forth into pain as Novalyn becomes more and more aware of Howard’s unstable nature. The film is pretty slowly paced, which turns out to be its main virtue; eschewing the standard devices of film romances, The Whole Wide World instead allows us to get to know these characters pretty well, much moreso than in most other films of this type. We see that Novalyn’s attraction to Bob Howard isn’t merely sexual physical attraction; nor is it the hero worship of a neophyte writer for a published professional. Frequently throughout the film Bob becomes borderline – or just plain outright – abusive toward Novalyn, and she never gets weepy or bemoans her fate; she tends to stand right up to Bob and make her displeasure known.
The romance between Bob Howard and Novalyn Price is very complicated; it proceeds in fits and starts and, despite the film’s slow pace, their romance seems over before it begins. Even when they finally kiss, in a moment that almost seems ripped from every romance film under the sun with the kiss taking place at sunset on top of a vista with a gorgeous view of the Texas wilderness, with the score swelling to great passion, the darkness that we’ve come to expect surfaces almost immediately.
In the end, as a matter of record, Bob and Novalyn do not get together, and Novalyn learns of Bob’s suicide via a telegram. Her reaction to this news is one of the more heartbreaking moments I’ve seen in a movie recently: she immediately grabs paper and pen to write Bob an angry letter for having taken such an action. Only after she’s written the salutation does she internalize what’s happen, and that’s when the grief hits her.
I should also make special note of the film’s score, by Harry Gregson-Williams. Gregson-Williams has emerged as one of the more intriguing new voices in film music over the last ten years, and I suspect that he’ll become a very fine composer indeed if we ever get past the current era of rigid adherence to the temp-track. On The Whole Wide World, Gregson-Williams has to provide music that often shifts in mood several times within the same scene, as the film delves from mundane matters into the often dark psyche of Robert Howard and back again. It’s an impressive and powerful score for an impressive film.
:: Finally, a couple of weeks ago we watched Stardust, the 2007 film based on the book by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess. The film was dumped into release late in the summer and vanished from the scene almost immediately, which seems to me a cruel fate for a film that’s full of wit, charm, and good fun.
Stardust is one of those stories one finds often in contemporary fantasy that combines mythic elements that are as old as, well, the hills in ways that are fairly new and interesting, often times in a tongue-in-cheek way. In terms of mood, Stardust is much closer to The Princess Bride than The Lord of the Rings. It’s been a long time since I read Gaiman’s book, so I’d pretty much forgotten most of the story by the time we watched the film. I don’t want to say too much about the plot, since the pleasure from watching it comes in seeing the way things unfold in unexpected ways, but it begins with an English village and the wall that runs through a field nearby, a wall that separates the mundane world from the magical one, and what happens when a curious youngster ventures to journey beyond the wall. What happens then is a terrific mish-mash involving a fallen star played by Claire Danes, a wandering Gypsy sorceress and her slave woman who seems to have powers of her own, a ship that flies through the air harvesting lightning, a group of princes who constantly plot against one another for the crown to their kingdom, a trio of witches (one of whom is played by Michelle Pfeiffer, who looks awfully radiant in the movie – for a while anyway), and of course, as in all such tales, Our Hero, a young lad who is unsure of his place in the world and who his true love actually is.
When Stardust came out, I read a number of reviews that basically said that it was either too light in tone, or not light enough. It’s not a deep film at all, nor does it have a cynical bone in its body. I liked it a lot. (It has a good score, too, by Ilan Eshkeri, a composer I’d never heard of before.)
I’m going to forgo Sentential Links this week, in favor of a brief celebration of George Carlin. I loved his comedy dearly, even when it partially offended me, and even then, my offense was pretty mild anyway. Carlin was all about the language, and I loved him for that. So, here are some fine instances of Carlinia, taken from his book Napalm and Silly Putty. (I can’t find my copy of Brian Droppings at the moment. It was just here a minute ago….)
(UPDATE: It just occurred to me that I now live in a world that has two George Bushes and zero George Carlins. As a state of affairs, I find this deeply disappointing.)
On the human colonization of space: Can’t you just sense how eager the rest of the Universe is for us to show up?
So far, this is the oldest I’ve been.
I think someone could make a lot of money if they set up a little stand at the Grand Canyon and sold Yo-Yos with 500-foot strings.
Road rage, air rage. Why should I be forced to divide my rage into separate categories? To me, it’s just one big, all-around, everyday rage. I don’t have time for fine distinctions. I’m busy screaming at people.
Sometimes they say the winds are calm. Well if they’re calm, they’re not really winds, are they?
I think a good title for a travel book would be Doorway to Norway.
When Britain returned Hong Kong to China there was a long, formal ceremony. The whole thing looked well-rehearsed, and I wondered how everyone knew exactly where to stand and what to do. After all, the event had never taken place before; how could there be a set of procedures? Do the British have a manual on returning colonies? If so, they won’t be needing it much longer.
Sometimes people say, “Do you have the time?” And I say, “No, I don’t believe I do. I certainly didn’t have it this morning when I left the house. Could you possibly have left it somewhere? You know, now that you mention it, I believe the Navy has the time. In Washington. They keep it in an observatory or something, and they let a little of it out each day. Not too much, of course. Just enough. They wouldn’t want to give us too much time; we might not use it wisely.” Sometimes, in a playful mood, when asked if I have the time, I’ll say, “Yes,” and simply walk away.
On expressions he didn’t like: “Fine and Dandy”. That’s an old-fashioned one, isn’t it? You say to a guy, “How are ya?” He says, “Fine and dandy.” Not me. I never say that. You know why? Because I’m never both of those things at the same time. Sometimes I’m fine, but I’m not dandy. I might be close to dandy. I might be approaching dandy. I might even be in the general vicinity of dandyhood. But not quite fully dandy. Other times, though, I might indeed be highly dandy – but not fine. One time, 1978, August. For about an hour, I was both fine and dandy at the same time. But nobody asked me how I was!
And “In your own words”. You hear this in classrooms and courtrooms: “Tell us in your own words.” Do you have your own words? Personally, I’m using the same ones everybody else is using! Next time they tell you to say something in your own words, say “Nigflot blorny quando floon!”
By the way, next time you shop at a supermarket in a neighborhood that has a higher than average marijuana use, take a look at the cookie section. Combat zone. Half the packages have been opened, and all the really good cookies are gone.
“Where the hell are the Mallomars?”
“Oh, we can’t get Mallomars into the store. Folks line up at the back dock for Mallomars.”
There are always plenty of crappy cookies. You ever notice that? Shitty, low-priced cookies? Like “Jim’s Home-style Cookies. Twenty-six varieties.” I say, “Damn, Jim, if you can’t make cookies in twenty-five tries, leave me out.”
Who decides when the applause should die down? It seems like it’s a group decision; everyone begins to say to themselves at the same time, “Well, okay, that’s enough of that.”
Geologists claim that although the world is running out of oil, there is still a two-hundred year supply of brake fluid.
The Nobel Prize in mathematics was awarded yesterday to a California professor who has discovered a new number. The number is “bleen”, which he says belongs between six and seven.
According to astronomers, next week Wednesday will occur twice. They say such a thing happens only once every 60,000 years and although they don’t know why it occurs, they’re glad they have an extra day to figure it out.
I never take any personal precautions against germs. I don’t shy away from people who sneeze and cough, I don’t wipe off the telephone, I don’t cover the toilet seat, and if I drop food on the floor, I pick it up and eat it.
Even if I’m at a sidewalk cafe.
In Calcutta.
The poor section.
On New Year’s Eve during a soccer riot.
If a centipede wants to kick another centipede in the shins, does he do it one leg at a time? Or does he stand on fifty of his legs and kick with the other fifty?
Just for fun: call one of those How Am I Driving 800 numbers and complain about a particular driver. Tell them he was driving on the sidewalk, vomiting, giving the finger to old women, and dangling a baby out the window.
In restaurants where they serve frog’s legs, what do they do with the rest of the frog? Do they just throw it away? You never see “frog torsos” on the menu. Is there actually a garbage can full of frog bodies in the alley? I wouldn’t want to be the homeless guy looking for an unfinished cheeseburger and open the lid on that.
I never worry that all hell will break loose. My concern is that only part of hell will break loose and be much harder to detect.
Cats are very tactile; they love to rub against your leg. If you own a cat, and you have a leg, you’ve got a happy cat.
“Oh boy oh boy! I’m rubbing against his leg! How I love his leg!”
If you have two legs, you’ve got yourself a party.
“Oh boy oh boy, two legs! Now I can do the figure eight.”
They love to do the figure eight: around one leg, in between, and then around the other.
“Oh boy oh boy, I’m doing the figure eight.”
He’ll rub against your legs even if you’re not there yet. You might be twenty feet down the hall. As soon as he sees you coming he starts walking sideways. He doesn’t want to miss a shot at your legs.
“Oh boy oh boy! Here he comes! Soon I’ll be doing the figure eight!”
Why is it that when the two main characters in an action movie have their big climactic fight it always turns out that both of them are really good fighters? Just once, wouldn’t you like to see a fight between two leading male characters where one of them gets the shit completely beat out of him in about eight seconds? Especially the hero.
All music is the blues. All of it.
Do you realize that somewhere in the world there exists a person who qualifies as the worst doctor? If you took the time, by process of elimination you could actually determine the worst doctor in the world. And the funny part is knowing that someone has an appointment to see him tomorrow.
I don’t worry about the little things. Bees, threes, whales, snails: I don’t worry about them. I think we’re part of a much greater wisdom, greater than we will ever understand. A higher order. Call it what you like. I call it The Big Electron.
Whoaaaa….
The Big Electron.
It doesn’t punish, it doesn’t reward, and it doesn’t judge. It just is. And so are we, for a little while.
Thanks for the memories, George.
Just a couple this week:
:: I don’t remember where I got this, but it’s a steampunk recumbent bicycle.
:: Aaron sent me this: a guy playing the Star Wars theme on bagpipes. Funny thing is, he’s a pretty good piper.
:: Now you can make your own Star Wars crawl. (Via.) Have I made a few already? Yes. Am I posting them here? No. So there. If any of you want to make one and disseminate it, feel free to drop the link into comments.
