When somebody gets hit in the nuts in a baseball movie, it is customary to laugh. When the plucky underdog wins in a baseball movie, it is customary to cry. Back in my days as a Real World, Non-Movie Little…
Tom Hanks Is Lying to You
Monthly Archives: January 2008
I bear the weapon Excalibur!
I just got through watching John Boorman’s 1981 film Excalibur (thank you Netflix). What a weird-ass movie. Not least because you get to see young Helen Mirren, Liam Neeson, Patrick Stewart (already bald), Gabriel Byrne, and Ciaran Hinds, most of…
Soulja Boy Up In This Blog
I know that I missed the time when it was socially relevant to talk about Crank Dat by about three months, but whatever. It’s the internet. And I think that the song deserves some digging-into. First, a little refresher course:…
At Least You’re Not Tom Cruise Crazy
I didn’t know about Eugene Mirman before he came through New Haven a couple years ago. His show alternated live bits with videos he had made. One of these, Eugene Mirman: Secret Agent, contained the memorable threat: “I’m gonna kick…
Everything’s coming up Milhouse!
“If you don’t want to exercise too much,” asks Dr. Morten Gronbaek, epidemiologist with Denmark’s National Institute of Public Health, “can you trade it for one to two drinks per day and be fine?” A study Gronbaek and colleagues just…
What We Talk About When We Talk About Overthinking It (Rambo Week Postscript)
No sooner did I finish my weeklong series on Rambo than I came across this little corner of the blogosphere, and I think it, as much as anything else, helps me clarify why I bothered to do a weeklong series…
MarketingBot 349-A Lands the T-1000 Account
Skynet – Really excited to be working on the project! The Terminator line has been a tremendous success since its introduction, inspiring strong feelings of terror and hopelessness in our core demo (humans), and this new model ups the ante…
The Two Faces of Sly
This week, I’ve delved into the True Meaning of Rambo in preparation for his (brief) return from irrelevance. Today, I’ll close the series out with a quick look at two great characters Mr. Stallone originated — one has his own…
overlistening: I Missed The Bus (Kris Kross-1992)
I’ve always appreciated the honesty of this song. Rather than the posturing and posing that characterized much of 1990s hip-hop, I always believed Daddy Mac and Mac Daddy wrote about what they knew on this track- no gangsta posturing, no…
There Will Be Radiohead
So let’s talk about the music. As you probably know, the score is by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood (the musical equivalent of stunt casting) and it’s gotten a lot of press for that reason alone. But Greenwood has serious chops…