I really tried to coerce my ’94 Honda Civic VX into starting again after it died in the parking lot at work. New plugs, rotor blade, distributor cap – words that previously had no meaning to me, until Ricardo explained, and helped me install them (thanks Ricardo!) – but to no avail. Hybrid car shopping commenced. Continue reading “Prius, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways…”
Category: Consumption
9.0 Good Will Hunting
Sorry I missed this the first time around – I guess I avoid hype. My New England homies from across the Hudson were great fun to watch 10 years later – Ben Affleck’s track suits alone make this a must see. It’s good, if you haven’t, see it.
8.5 Tom Petty: Saving Grace
A classic road song from his new Highway Companion CD, produced by Jeff Lynn. Also try “Big Weekend”, Travelling-Wilburys-style fun – takes me back a couple weeks to my trip down to see my brother Dan. We may have arrived at the LAN party place too late, but we saw “The Bodies” exhibit at MOSI in Tampa, fixed his computer (power supply was bad), ate 10 lbs of cookies dropped off by mom, visited Andrea’s dad in the ICU in St. Petersburg (he’s doing much better now), and played entire days of Empire At War.
He and Val and Bailey are in Germany right now, visiting Niki (congratulations, newlywed!), and having even BIGGER adventures. Whoop!
“The Bodies” exhibit was full of real human bodies, displayed right in front of you, a hundred or more, posed and dissected in different ways for better views. They are preserved by replacing water with acetone, then replacing the acetone with silicone. There were whole bodies, bodies made only of muscle or arteries or the nervous system or the digestive system, bodies cross-sectioned into a couple hundred “disks”, fetuses at every stage of development, etc. etc. Amazing AND creepy!
9.0 Dead Man
If I were a rich patron of the arts, Jim Jarmusch would get my money. Kick back and enjoy another of his classics.
9.5 V for Vendetta
Effortlessly the best action movie of the year. You have to pay close attention to hear all the details of V’s pontifications, revealing how much we all lip-read without knowing it, but the quips are often worth a rewind. The best “big” movies have rich tapestries of backstory, introduced through classic novels, supporting short movies, cartoons and pulp fiction, or graphic novels (in The Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, Star Wars, and this one, respectively). And we need more commentary on the subject of terrorism vs. fascism, it’s the most relevant subject of our time.
Boom! There he was…
Scritti is back, Green is on his game, I’m no longer rock-a-boy blue, look at all this goodness! Don’t miss the interview or the preview of the new album – you can hear the whole thing – links are on the blog. Happy day.
- green’s official (minimal) site – lots of shows!
- blog: bibbly-o-tek, the Scritti Politti source
- Flickrfest
I’m actually behind a bit, there was a 1999 album I totally missed, lots of stuff to catch up on…
9.0 Melinda and Melinda
I’ll say it again, Woody Allen has made my life richer. He’s on track again with this one. It springboards off an intellectual discussion around a table at a NYC restaurant with Wallace Shawn proposing that “we run to comedies to hide from our deep dark fears of our mortality”. And takes off. Enough said.
9.5 An Inconvenient Truth
Carcassonne Game Day
The night before last, the girls stayed with Grammy and Andrea and I found ourselves with a Saturday pretty much all to ourselves. We ate up the morning with a massive game of Carcassonne, including the River, Builders and Traders, The Dragon and the Princess, and Inns and Cathedrals expansions. Later that day, Jane and Larry invited us over to see our Scotland photos on their big HDTV, sweet. The kids all played upstairs while we got in another big game, this time with The Count expansion (which is great). It was fitting to play a game set in France, as they faced Italy in the World Cup Final today. Too bad Zidane tainted the whole experience with a tasteless headbutt to the chest of an Italian player. By the time they lost in a penalty shootout, I had lost the urge to cheer for them. Zidane just eclipsed Rooney for the most disappointing World Cup performance. But it was still a great ride, even if it was full of disappointments and surprises.
Shinguard-deep in football
A full soccer weekend for me. World Cup games on at 9am, 12pm, 3pm every day, I’m drowning. Plus I played in Strikers games on Saturday morning, and again on Sunday. The Sunday game was a makeup for a rainout, and we only had 3 on our side. The other team had a full 7 plus subs, and as if to rub it in, they even had a canopy for shade. Well, we recruited 2 players from a team that had a game after ours. It’s a coed league, and you’re supposed to have a female on your side playing at all times, but we had none. The other team had 2, and each of them agreed to play a half on our side, very sporting of them. Even with help, though, we were down 6 to 7, and in the middle of the hot day we ran ourselves to exhaustion. My game is really bad, being out of practice and out of shape, and just about every time I attempted to feed the ball to our main striker I missed the mark. The one good forward pass came a millisecond too late, and offsides was called. It did feel good to give it our all, though, what a great game.
And the World Cup has been a blast. I’ve caught a good deal of most 12pm games over lunch, and downloaded some of the rest. England, Brazil, Germany all looking great, but time will tell…