Ploafmaster General

I found another German animated short film in a very different style (yet still essentially stop-motion), and while it's certainly more light hearted than Balance, it's equally well done and enjoyable.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kj3rT_yYCw8&rel=1&w=425&h=355]

Well now I've finally watched every feature-length Pixar film to date, and I've not been disappointed by a single one.

Tonight I watched A Bug's Life and enjoyed it from start to finish. This movie was definitely farther towards the "kid movie" end of the spectrum, but the story was endearing, the voice acting excellent, the sound editing incredible, and the humor delightful.

Easy 4 stars out of 5, and I can't wait for Wall-E to release next year.

Chiggity-check check this out:



My wife carved this awesome pumpkin because she rocks. Here's hoping this thing causes some smiles from our front porch tonight while the kiddies trick-or-treat in my neighborhood. I find this even more appropriate with the impending VCU Men's Basketball season.

When I want a treat for Halloween, I need only look to my dear McSweeney's.

You'd be amazed at how cheap razorblades are these days.

Recently, my friend Dave has been spamming me with links to choice articles from The Onion, and today was one of the best yet.

Even though this glorious nugget is nearly 11 years old, you could essentially substitute the years and it would be just as relevant.

I wrote about Jessica Hagy's indexed back in February this year, and fortunately for her, so have many others more important than me.

I found out today that she's releasing a book through one of Joel Turnipseed's first posts to Kottke.org - an interview with Ms. Hagy, in fact.

The book is titled, appropriately, Indexed, and releases February 28th of 2008.

I'm pretty sure I've seen this animated short film before (and perhaps some of you have, as well), but I'm certain I've never posted about it.

Wolfgang and Christoph Lauenstein's 1989 (and Oscar-winning) Balance paints a pretty bleak picture for those who's desires overcome the ability to work for the greater good.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJWT3p7uM6Y&rel=1&w=425&h=355]

Last night the Boston Red Sox swept the Colorado Rockies in the World Series. The only reason I knew it was game four was because I saw it in the Comcast program guide on my TV when I was checking why there might be no 8:15 NFL game.

I've never really been in to the Major League Baseball or the sport in general. As a child, I'd not played so much as t-ball, and though my Dad taught my brothers and I to throw, catch, and bat (he loved the sport, and initially went to college for it, I believe), it never stuck with me. I never owned a glove (that I can remember), never traded baseball cards, and didn't even see The Sandlot until I was in college.

Sure, I've been to a Mets game, I've rooted for the Yankees during World Series gone by. I've been to a few Richmond Braves games as well. But I've never been able to get into the game itself because of the tedium.

OH THE TEDIUM, particularly of the professional level. I don't care what psychological games are played between the pitcher and the batter or what-not - it's boring to watch the cold-molasses pace of a game with the batters forever stepping in and out of the box, practice swinging, spitting, chewing, scratching themselves. And the pitchers, too! Looking over their shoulders every now and again to try their hand at sending a potential base stealer back to the dugout. A baseball game can easily last three hours! And this isn't because it needs to. Baseball doesn't really have a clock like American Football, Soccer, Basketball or Hockey, so there's no pressure to do much in a timely fashion. And it shows. And all this for 162 games a year? No thanks.

I understand a televised NFL game runs for around 3 hours as well because of TV time outs, but at least the televised portion of the game primarily shows playing time instead of diddling around with your cleats or taking a fifth practice swing. Soccer is even better, I think, with near non-stop game play and minimal commercial breaks (usually during the half).

I titled this post because I feel that baseball's time has come and gone, and I don't feel bad about it for a second. The chart below shows the results of Gallup polls over the past 14 years:



Gallup has another poll about general sports popularity in the United States which seems to indicate that baseball is at best holding steady behind basketball as America's favorite sport to follow (11%) with football soundly in the lead at 43% as of December last year. Don't get me wrong - I'm not trying to suggest that the quality of the sport is in anyway correlated with its popularity, but it sure does support my feeling that baseball is on its way out.

And as far as I'm concerned, it can go.

I think I've finally hit the point where I'll just update WordPress manually from now on. This means no upgrading at the office, but I suppose I could be doing some WORK instead...

I just updated to 2.3.1, and as I suspected, it replaced the Themes folder and I had to add the JS line for Mint back into the header.php file. It'll be a much smoother transition if I just download the latest version and add in all the sub-folders one by one. At least I hope so :-)

If you're willing to wait for the long load time, you can check out Da Vinci's The Last Supper in 16 BILLION pixels of glory.

The navigation is straight forward enough, and though you can't see a large blown-up image of the complete work, you can zoom in to any section with great detail. The whole thing just became available today, so give it some patience and hopefully the web hosting will be adjusted soon.

Well what a fine cap to the end of a long but not-so-bad day! Val and I recently returned from the annual Maize Maze at the Belvedere Plantation. We hung out with our dear friends the Mansfields and wandered in the dark through...well...a giant maze cut out of a huge corn field, essentially.

The weather was perfect, and it was actually relaxing and entertaining to wander about through the narrow lanes, leaves brushing past our faces. Afterwards, we checked out some of the peripheral farm-like attractions and the little shop, and headed back to the casa.

I'm pretty sure tonight will be one of the finest nights of sleep I've had in ages.

P.S. As an epilogue on my Saturday of work, here's my verdict: Not so bad - at least this time. I didn't really have any daytime plans this weekend, so I don't as if I'd missed out on anything, particularly when the Mrs. would have put me to work in other ways about the house :-) I wouldn't look for this on a regular basis by any stretch of the imagination, but at least this first time was pretty easy on me.

Here's a brief movie review, both because I'm tired, and I have to pee quite badly :-)

4 stars out of 5 - The acting and story were both compelling, and David Fincher's capacity for keeping me on the edge of my seat for most of the 2.5 hours is brilliant. However, it WAS 2.5 hours, which I normally don't mind. Here, though, the length felt a bit excessively plodding at times. Still I was interested to see two very different men's lives descending deeper into their obsessive search for answers (one more so than the other...), and I'd recommend this film.

There were some fantastic shots as well, and I expect nothing less from the man who directed Fight Club and Seven. The long slow tracking shot from inside a car was a great early choice, with the Fourth of July Fireworks exploding in the background.

So tomorrow I'll drop the Netflix envelope in the mail slot when I work my Saturday away, and look forward to the arrival of a dramatically different film...

Tomorrow, for the first time, I'm going to work on a Saturday. And it may be most of a Saturday. Fantastic cap to what must have been one of my worst weeks ever.

I almost busted out laughing when I saw this picture accompanying the BBC's story about Bush's visit to California:



Arnie seriously looks like he's about to snap the President in twain.

Plenty of commercials use popular and recognizable music to help sell wares. UPS' brilliant white board ads use The Postal Service's Such Great Heights. Cadillac abused Led Zeppelin's Rock and Roll before finally switching to Stars by the alternative rock band, Hum.

What drives me up a wall, however, is the lengths companies go to when they can't get the genuine article. Either they won't pony up the coin required to use the real song, or the musicians (for reasons of integrity or otherwise) won't sign off. What do we get instead? We get Heineken's misguided Keg Can ad ripping off of Daft Punk. We get Dodge trying to cop a commercial contact buzz off of Apple by using a bouncy guitar/mandolin tune in their latest Caravan commercial (I can't find a clip as of this writing).

I know why they do it. I don't expect more than 0.05% of ads to be original. I still can't stand it.

Watch. Listen. Enjoy.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6qgBnPUnjU&rel=1&w=425&h=355]

Tomorrow evening, October 26th at 6pm, Apple releases OS X 10.5, "Leopard," to the public. As of this writing, Apple's retail page indicates that the first 500 visitors (to each store, I believe) will receive a free Leopard t-shirt.

As much as I want the new version, I'm not really in a position to upgrade yet (and did that Photoshop issue ever get sorted out?).

I do, however, like free t-shirts, so I think I may be waiting in line tomorrow night.

After a stressful day, nothing makes me smile more than some slapstick comedy. This commercial for the game Flash Focus on the Nintendo DS made my evening so much more jolly:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5RVfai1f9g&rel=1&w=425&h=355]

I'm fortunate enough to have a fair amount of vacation time each year. As much as I enjoy taking the occasional long weekend, there's nothing quite like an extended break to recuperate.

I can tell you after the last several days that I seriously need one of those.

I may work a pretty standard 40-45 hour work week, but it's the intensity of my workdays recently that have driven me near insane. I feel like I'm being squeezed in a vice between project after project and task after task. Sometimes it seems that every other day ten different people are asking me for ten different things at the same time.

All that whining and moaning aside, I'm essentially keeping focused by counting down my work days left this year. As of this posting, that's 37. I have the day after my birthday off, and two days around my sis-in-law's graduation. In between of course is the 4-day Thanksgiving weekend. But the real good stuff starts on December 21st when my office closes early and I take the entire next week off as well as New Year's Eve (and the office is closed on New Year's Day).

That healthy vacation is where my heart is set now, and I'll be crossing off each coming day with a red permanent marker until I get there.

Today's been a really busy day work-wise, which means it's been a really slow day blog-wise, but I did manage to find this awesome high-speed-camera clip of a lighter striking and burning:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPP7WLuZVUk&rel=1&w=425&h=355]

I just discovered an excellent set of pages on Wikipedia: the entire collection of "...in film" pages.

For example, you can view a page summarizing the awards, events, and theatrical releases (by month and day) for the year 2007. This has already helped me glean films that I missed in theaters which I can add to my Netflix list. Replete with the usual links to nearly everything, these pages are also great springboards into further nerd research about actors, directors, etc.

While the pages are weighted almost exclusively towards American and British releases, they're still capacious resources for me (and many other of my readers, I'm sure) since most of the cinema I watch is American or British.

There's a master list as well for jumping to any decade or year you choose.

It's pretty effortless to laugh at the martial artist and would-be actor Jean-Claude Van Damme, but I don't think I've laughed so much at him as when I read Grady Hendrix's homage in Slate.

Eschatological: having to do with the end of the world.

Scatological: having to do with excrement.

Escatological: when the $#!% hits the fan?

I thought weekends were supposed to be relaxing. At least that's my middle-class-white-collar-American perception.

So last night Valerie and I drove up from Richmond to her mom's house in Northern Virginia. Her sister was arriving at 11:16 last night from Florida, just for the weekend, and we were going to pick her up at National Airport. We took Valerie's Jetta (which is a year older than my Jetta), which had just been serviced and had a fresh oil change.

We arrived last night with no trouble and ate a nice dinner with my mother-in-law. We decided to hold off until close to 11 before leaving to pick up Elizabeth since were were just going to pull up to the terminal when she was ready at the curb. We took Val's car, and I drove. This was both good, and horrible.

I think when I say it was good, I really mean that it was less horrible than it would have been had the same magical adventure occurred on our way back to Richmond.

About ten miles from my in-law's house on I-95 a loud beep issued from the dashboard and a flashing red temperature light began to blink as the temperature gauge quickly climbed all the way to the right. I had to pull over quickly and shut off the engine before doing permanent damage to the car. Within minutes, a highway services vehicle flashed his yellow lights and pulled up behind us. The driver checked the fluids with me and noticed the coolant was a little low, but not empty. He topped it off with water, and we started the engine. No dice; the temperature climbed back up again. This means, most likely (and hopefully), that there's a thermostat issue. Which means we'll be over charged for somebody to examine it and fix the problem.

Hooray.

Additionally, this meant we couldn't pick up Elizabeth on time either. Or at all, really, because we didn't know how long it would be until the tow truck arrived. So Elizabeth took a shuttle home while we took a $127 ride home in a truck cab. We figured Elizabeth would be home shortly after us. Except she had the crappiest ride home ever with a driver who didn't know where he was going and had all the charm of a slime ball.

Now all four of us here are running on a few hours of sleep, crappy happenings, and miffed tempers. That sounds like a recipe for an awesome weekend.

I can't wait to go back to Richmond.

If you don’t have the knowledge of the history of the image you’re looking at then it’s actually nearly impossible to “see” history unless there’s a written reference. For instance, if you look at a picture of a block of wood then to most people it’s a block of wood. If someone tells you that a hundred people have had their heads chopped off on it then it takes on a different meaning completely. I think many Irish people would see their history in these images.

That's Jackie Nickerson as interviewed by The Morning News' Rosecrans Baldwin on her project, Faith. Below is my favorite from the photographs included with the interview: