What We Talk About When We're Alone

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Location: Montana, United States

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Even the Logos Have an Agenda.

Since it's no secret I (sort of) hated the Transformers movie, I think taking a closer look at the aliens' logos points to the Reasons Why.
Decepticon's Logo.


Autobot's Logo.


I don't even think I need to have commentary. Just let the images speak for themselves.

PS Shia LeBeouf is very funny even when he doesn't have a script to back him up.

Monday, October 15, 2007

Andy Sandberg Gets Me.

Newest Digital Short.

Monday, October 08, 2007

Concurrently Maudlin and Deprecating Thought of the Day

From Death Cab:



You'll be loved you'll be loved
Like you never have known
The memories of me
Will seem more like bad dreams
Just a series of blurs
Like I never occurred
Someday you will be loved



You may feel alone when you're falling asleep
And everytime tears roll down your cheeks
But I know your heart belongs to someone you've yet to meet
Someday you will be loved



You'll be loved you'll be loved
Like you never have known
The memories of me
Will seem more like bad dreams
Just a series of blurs
Like I never occurred
Someday you will be loved



Lyric-writing has always fascinated me, since the time I was about 6 and my mother and I sat in front of our family's beat-up casette player rewinding and fastforwarding to get all the lyrics to Nena's 99 Luftballons down on paper. The lyricist's attempt to say something "original" (even though you have to use rhymes that have been around for about an eternity of pop music), the fact that when ppl blog about lyrics it never really looks that great bc the music (which probably made the lyrics cool in the first place) is missing. :) There was a time when I wanted to be the next Tim Rice (It was listening to the AIDA soundtrack over and over again that did it to me.), but I think that came from my need to validate writing as a profession: an actual concrete one, with a name better than just "writer." ("Oh, I'm a writer!" sounded slightly less impressive than "I'm a lyricist!" back then.) Worst case scenario, the lyricist thing gave me a funny thing to write on my Senior Goals Card that got read aloud at my high school's Spring Chorus Concert. There were three of us that swore we were going to adapt Disney's Mulan to the stage.




Ah the eighties. Here's the English music video for 99 Luftballons. It's a bit more upbeat from the German one.

Sunday, October 07, 2007

WORST Bumper Sticker of the Day Goes To. . .

As it says in the title. WORST. Bumper. Sticker. that I passed on the way home from work, after walking by the parade of skaters using the National Education Association's building groundwork to grind, right next to the side door into my apartment building. Under the cut, since I don't want to propagate what it's trying to espouse even a little.

Or, if you look at it another way, this is the best bumper sticker of the day, since it does everything a bumper sticker is supposed to do: piss off with the least effort possible. Right? Am I missing something here?

Thursday, October 04, 2007

The Truth About Pushing Daisies and Private Practice

The series premiere of Pushing Daisies seems to be just what the critics have been saying. It was so cute, so innovative, so beautiful (not just because it's infused with hyper-real colors).

It's Tim Burton-style. And heaven forbid a television show actually have a style, equipped with narration and angles. And it's brought to us by Bryan Fuller, part of the same creative team behind Dead Like Me (which I haven't seen really at all) and Wonderfalls. And to be honest, I've been noticing the Wonderfalls vibe from more than a few shows this season. (When watching Reaper this week, I had a moment of realizing the ever-changing "vessel" is a lot like Jaye's "inanimate talking object of the week." Except Sam's vessels don't keep hanging around and talking him into a frenzy, but you know. . . same kitsch.) And Lee Pace (Jaye's older brother) is with us as the main character Ned.

Things to love:
1. Kristin Chenowith, Tony nominee and going strong
2. Quirky background music.
3. When you throw death and whimsical tones together, great things transpire.
4. A dog and a love interest the main character can't touch, and it's done without over-the-top dramatics!? Gasp!
5. It's first episode was titled "Pie-Lette"--Ned owns a pie shop called The Pie Hole.
6. It's pretty.

And, about an hour later if you stick around on ABC, you get to see the Grey's Anatomy spin-off Private Practice. Now, I don't watch Grey's Anatomy in general. No real reason other than I wasn't impressed and did have a long-standing crush on any of the cast members. Lucky for PP, though--they have Chris Lowell.

I've previously posted loads on Chris, so I won't go into it here, but he makes me go "yay!" with pretty much everything he does. Granted, he's really periphery in this show, but there's time for his guy (William "Dell" Cooper) to grow. Just this week he awkwardly asked Naomi to speak at one of his midwifery classes.

But though Chris is the reason I started, he most likely won't be the reason I stay. (Because eye candy can only trick you into a show commitment for a few months at best.) The last two episodes have really "gotten" to me, as in Yes, I really did--I cried. Both times.

Maybe it's the intertwining love stories, the high call of practicing private medicine, or the vulnerable characterization of some of these people.

Or it could just be the babies. The cute, glorious, precious babies.

But I'm down for the count. It's not like--sobbing--but it's the same crying that Bones did to me all last year. That moment of, Oh, this is life--I remember. And when art does that, it's awesome. (No other word really fits there, IMO.)

So we'll see how this ABC block sets up in the ratings game. (I worry for the future of the show at times. It's touching.) I'm just glad (for once) that they moved Bones to Tuesday, or I would have missed out.




Monday, October 01, 2007

Chuck Just Got Way Cooler

I wonder if by tomorrow morning the world's blogosphere will be bursting with similar posts to this one. I was just sitting at home, minding my own business, trying out the second episode of Chuck when I experienced an idea-crossover event.

The scene was Chuck sitting in a converted "Buy More" Home Theater Showroom, watching images that were supposed to trigger the government's secrets that are lodged in Chuck's head post the pilot-episode. As Chuck's running down the list of some of the government's biggest secrets, we hear him give a tease of this one:

"Oceanic Flight 815 was shot down by. . ."

And for anyone with a TV IQ, we know that Oceanic Flight 815 is same flight that the Losties were on before they got abandoned on the island du terror. The screenwriter must be a TV geek. I love it.

It was also great when Adam Baldwin's character threatened Chuck with the price scanner. I can't tell you how many times we've done that at the Borders cafe.