Archive for the 'Cinerama' CategoryPage 5 of 7

Whuzzup?

Published
by
Jake
2 years, 7 months ago
in Blog Meta, Cinerama, Colorado Living, Curiosities, Getting Fit, Homebody, Hooliganimals, Monkey Revolution, Tattoos, Televisio and The Intarweb
. 2 Comments

Just some randomness:

  • Man, it seems like Google has de-listed the BlahStuff (or at least ranked me down a ton). My traffic has dropped by more than half starting last Wednesday. If any of y’all that get regular Google hits felt like mentioning BS in a fresh post in the hopes to re-upping my Google-juice, I’d appreciate it.
  • Hey, look! It’s Mars!
  • Monkey pictures are fun.
  • Started working on a new double desk set-up for our office on Saturday. Got some nice 3/4″ maple veneer plywood and glued some half-inch MDF on the bottom to strengthen it up a bit. Got to use my flush-cutting router bit for the first time, but then it got all cold and snowy. Gonna treat the edges with some strips of this cool laminated oak I have, so it should give a cool effect. Photos when there’s something to see.
  • My tattoo has a few spots that will require touch-up. I wonder if it’s just me, in general, or the forearm location, specifically, or a combo that cause me such problems in healing my tattoos.
  • Saw Murderball on A&E. Good stuff (except for all the Dog the Bounty Hunter commercials). Zupan’s the man.
  • The BU Terriers swept UMass and will meet UNH in the Hockey East semifinals.
  • My friends at the Exchange Tavern managed to shoehorn a dart board into their fine establishment. I’m excited. Now if only they’d update their web site.
  • What with Miracle Ed’s visit and the fresh tattoos, we’ve been out of the hot box for over a month now. Time to get back on the horse real soon. Luckily I haven’t slipped much (yet).
  • The biggest crawdaddy you’ll ever see (thanks Brandon).

The Oscars

Published
by
Jake
2 years, 7 months ago
in Cinerama, Colorado Living and Folx
. 0 Comments

The Wife and I ended up attending a small Oscars get-together last night. While we had a blast (and I won the pool!), I have to say the the event itself was kind of dull.

My thoughts (in no particular order):

  • Charlize looked horrible (but as I pointed out last night - she’s still hot).
  • Salma Hayek hurt me, she looked so good.
  • John Stewart was mostly inoffensive. A couple good chuckles.
  • I thought the fake promo commercials were great.
  • Seems like a lot of folks were more embarassed than entertained by Ben Stiller’s greenscreen suit antics. Personally, I thought it was a hoot.
  • Why were there only three nominations for best song? That seems weird. And why were all the performances except Dolly’s put on like weird high school plays? [Highlight: During the performance of the song from Crash: "Is his hand in her crotch?! What the hell?! Are they reenacting the whole movie?"]
  • George Clooney basically owns Hollywood nowadays, doesn’t he?
  • Reese Witherspoon is sweet, but I just can’t get past her giant forehead and generally triangular face.
  • No Mr. Chicken in the “folks who died this year” montage, eh? Fine.
  • I won the pool (amongst only four people, because others showed up late) thanks to picking oddball categories like cinematography and art direction. I think I only got one or two of the major categories right.
  • The show finished early?! They could probably have afforded to not be such speech Nazis, eh?

Other than that… Meh.

Sideways

Published
by
Jake
2 years, 9 months ago
in Cinerama
. 0 Comments

Finally got around to seeing Sideways last night. Overall, I’d give it a B+ — It certainly wasn’t the best movie EVAR the hype made it seem, but it was definitely was enjoyable.

At first all the wine talk made me desperate for a bottle (and I do think the film would move up to A-/A territory if I had been drinking along), but eventually the characters go through so much wine in a single night that it actually turned me off the idea of a glass of red.

And for those of you who might think Sideways just looks like a story about two miserable schmucks, the end does have some redemption in it.

I’d recommend Sideways as kind of a double date flick — get some friends together, crack a bottle of Pinot Noir (or two), and watch the film early so you can keep the conversation and good times rolling afterward.

Won’t you lend your lungs to me?

Published
by
Jake
2 years, 10 months ago
in Cinerama and TuneStuff
. 0 Comments

“Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world and I’ll stand on Bob Dylan’s coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.” - Steve Earle.

I seriously hope I’ve mentioned Townes Van Zandt in this space previously. I also seriously hope that any of you who have even the tiniest bit of affinity for country or folk or blues music already know who Townes is and already own (at the very least) Live at the Old Quarter. If you know the song “Pancho and Lefty”, you know Townes’ writing — get to know his music, too.

The reason I bring him up now is that I’ve just found out there is a documentary about him called Be Here to Love Me that just made its debut.

Margaret Brown’s documentary, Be Here To Love Me (premiered at Angelika here in NYC December 2nd) is a long overdue look at his music and life, which was ceaslessly tempestuous. In his 20’s he was administered shock treatment after being committed for falling from a four story window willingly (”to see what it felt like”), and the result erased much of his childhood memories. This inability to cement connections in his life led to a continual wandering, and the film takes a very intimate look at the people, friends, and family who all were affected by this.

That bit about “falling” out of a window is news to me, but matches my perception of the guy. The resulting damage also explains a lot about him. In many ways he was a typical “broken” genius.

—

The post title is the opening lyric to one of my all time favorite TVZ songs, “Lungs“:

Well, won’t you lend your lungs to me?
Mine are collapsing
Plant my feet and bitterly breathe
Up the time that’s passing.
Breath I’ll take and breath I’ll give
Pray the day ain’t poison
Stand among the ones that live
In lonely indecision.

The Resurgence of Chuck

Published
by
Jake
2 years, 10 months ago
in Cinerama, Fight! Fight!, Televisio, The Intarweb and Tidbits
. 4 Comments

Chuck Norris.

I’m sure many of you figured he had faded into a halcyon semi-retirement of Total Gym hucksterism, anti-drug campaigning, and… um… praying after the demise of his Walker, Texas Ranger series. I’m doubly sure you all had figured Chuck had strayed far, far away from his Lone Wolf McQuade martial arts badassedness of yore.

Well, I’m here to set you straight, boys and girls.

Chuck Norris‘ return to glory was first hinted at when he became the subject of one of the most entertaining internet memes of the past ten minutes:

To prove it isn’t that big of a deal to beat cancer. Chuck Norris smoked 15 cartons of cigarettes a day for 2 years and aquired 7 different kinds of cancer only to rid them from his body by flexing for 30 minutes. Beat that, Lance Armstrong.

That was just the beginning, though. Now it has come to light that Chuck Norris is the driving force behind an all new form of ass kicking for entertainment known as the World Combat League:

There is currently no full-contact martial arts team sport in the United States. The WCL will be the only venue to offer the public full-contact martial arts fighting. There is literally no competition for the services and products the WCL will offer to the public. There is a huge demand for martial arts in the United states and the WCL will be the first sports league to offer the excitement and unpredictability of full-contact martial arts fighting.

Sure, Chuck is only a “suit” at the top of the WCL ladder. And yeah, it looks like the fighting is just glorified kick boxing — hands and feet only (stick to the UFC if you enjoy elbows, Muy Thai knees, and grappling). But they have women on the teams (WCL is a “team sport”… kind of like Davis Cup tennis…?), and the whole contest is supposedly set up to encourage action. In fact, there are penalties for being too passive or stalling.

Might be worth checking out.

One is only left to wonder if all of this is happening because of the fact that Chuck Norris is Dubya’s favoritest actor in, like, ever!

Freak of the Week: Vincent Gallo

Published
by
Jake
2 years, 11 months ago
in Cinerama, Curiosities, People Are Dumb and Tidbits
. 3 Comments

I’ve always thought Vinnie Gallo was an odd duck. Consider this bit of drama surrounding his film The Brown Bunny:

Roger Ebert called the film “the worst in the history of Cannes” to which Vincent Gallo responded that Ebert was a “fat pig with the physique of a slave trader”. Ebert paraphrased a remark of Winston Churchill and responded that “although I am fat, one day I will be thin, but Mr. Gallo will still have been the director of ‘Brown Bunny’”. Gallo then put a “hex” on Ebert’s colon, to which Ebert responded that “even my colonoscopy was more entertaining than his film”.

That’s kooky.

Then I saw this: Vincent Gallo’s Sperm $1 Million

If the purchaser of the sperm chooses the option of natural insemination, there is an additional charge of $500,000. However, if after being presented detailed photographs of the purchaser, Mr. Gallo may be willing to waive the natural insemination fee and charge only for the sperm itself.

Good to know Vincent has “no cripples” in his family history.