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"She explained...'I'm happy when I'm with him because he makes me like myself.' Jesus I thought. We've raised a generation of stone desperate cripples. She is twenty-two, a journalism grad from Boston University, and now--six months out of college--she talks so lonely and confused that she is eagerly looking forward to spending a few nights in a frozen chicken coop with some poor bastard who doesn't even know she's coming.

The importance of Liking Yourself is a notion that fell heavily out of favor during the coptic, anti-ego frenzy of the Acid Era--but nobody guessed, back then, that the experiment might churn up this kind of hangover: a whole subculture of frightened illiterates with no faith in anything
." -Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72

pea-colored-glasses

Four eyes.

Posted on 2009.07.22 at 11:30
Mood: hot
Music: Fresh Air interview with Judd Apatow
I got new glasses. I don't need to wear them constantly, but I've been doing pretty much that, just to get my eyes used to them. This just happened to coincide with Ryan crafting a "beauty dish" for his lighting setup, using some double sided tape and a roasting pan. So despite being in my pajamas, I posed in my new specs so he could try out his new equipment.








 


Flipping out to queen

NEVER FORGET.

Posted on 2009.07.08 at 11:35
Mood: exanimate
Music: A Kind of Magic -- Queen
A couple months ago, I got in a major accident and my little rock wagon almost got totaled. I was approaching an intersection on the way to a screening when the person behind me slammed into my bumper, and pushed me into the car in front of me. Everybody was fine, but my front end was so crunched up, I thought for sure that repairs would be more than the value of a '99 Civic.


But it turned out the repairs were just a hair under, so my insurance paid to get my baby back in running order. I thus decided it would be wrong to continue on without immortalizing her.

So Ryan took these pictures, and lost a light umbrella to the unforgiving winds in the process. Now my blue bandit belongs to the annals of history.
 


teamhannah

There can be only one.

Posted on 2009.06.13 at 00:55
Mood: pleased
Music: The Dead Weather -- Horehound
 http://www.facebook.com/cammila

Flipping out to queen

The Asus is dead, long live the Asus.

Posted on 2009.06.09 at 14:10
Mood: excited
Music: Brian Ferry - Boys and Girls
It is with deep grief that I inform you of the death of my beloved Freddie Mercury Edition Asus Eee PC laptop.


 

Last week I managed to crack the LCD with a swift act of clumsiness, making this the second laptop on which I destroyed the screen. I was quite attached to this sturdy little computron, but luckily, I was able to quickly replace it with one of the zillion new Asus netbook models, since the market for them has totally exploded since I first got one, like way before they were cool.


 
The only flaw was that the new model I wanted only comes in glossy black, so the white background of my prized Freddie sticker no longer blends in to look like the lid just came that way. I was, however, able to find a different Freddie image to better compliment my new partner in computing crime.


 
As a bonus, the finish on my new netbook perfectly matches my favorite pair of Minnie Mouse ears. Which is, you know, important.*

*Elaborately stylized Minnie-earied photos originally staged for my style blog. As if that justified it.
 

OH SHIZ LOOKOUT IT'S AN UPDATE!! *&%$#

Posted on 2009.05.19 at 16:36
Mood: Kaiser Sose
Music: Blondie - Parallel Lines
1. I got in a car accident last week, smooshing my little rock wagon pretty good. Offhand, the body shop guy thought she looked totaled, but estimates reveal that it's too close to call, so I await the insurance company's decision.

2. I joined forces with Ryan (who you may remember from my band, my living room, or his photoblog Breathe in Digital) for a kickass post on my style blog. It's basically: one 50's prom dress, one dark apartment courtyard, and one sweet, new off-camera lighting set-up .

3. My cat Tesla likes to lay in a C curve. It doesn't look comfortable but he's clearly happy with it.


















 

Gum snappin' sumbitch

Poor choice of words.

Posted on 2009.04.30 at 18:03
Mood: discontent
Music: high bit pink noise
Condoleezza Rice, in a recent Q&A session with Stanford students on the illegal use of torture during the Bush admin:

"...by definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture."

I know it's a little passe for once busy denizens of the internet to keep right on guffawing about the Bush administration, stuck in a feedback loop of indignant bitching, like the zombies in Dawn of the Dead staggering back to the mall just because they don't know what else to do. But I swear, my aghastness here isn't self righteous -- my beef is rhetorical, and in a Realy!? With Seth and Amy kind of way, I'm actually sort of amazed.

She's well-schooled and experienced  in the realm of providing public statements, and she's proven to be more than proficient at excising content for those purposes. Plus, I don't know for certain, but I'm pretty sure she's not autistic, and has a reasonable level of awareness that when she speaks in front of audiences and cameras, her words are in turn, perceived by other humans. And you've gotta think she knew somebody was going to ask for her take on the legality of water boarding -- if not here, then somewhere else, tomorrow or probably yesterday.

I mean, she clearly had mentally prepped some ingredients for extemporaneous discussion on the matter, with reference to the Convention Against Torture, and yet it never occurred to her to make sure that, in all of this, she didn't end up kind of quoting Nixon? And not just something said by Nixon, but a fairly infamous sound byte -- one that had been been turned up to 11 on the drama-meter this very year in the most climactic moment of a critically acclaimed Oscar-heavyweight major motion picture?

Apparently, not too many agree with the extent of my amazement, since I don't exactly see this story getting bandied about by many outside the inflammatory douchebag set. I guess there have been people in the hot seat over enhanced interrogation for years now pleading "just following orders," so opening oneself up for a Nixon comparison is tame at this point.

Mustachio

The Bet.

Posted on 2009.04.22 at 20:08
Mood: surprised
Music: Foo Fighters - Colour and the Shape
You may recall some time ago when I posted about the first-run syndicated fantasy series Legend of the Seeker, concluding the post with a sarcastic declaration that this was going to become my new favorite show. Well after making this highly ironic and mean-spirited statement, the craziest thing happened. In conjunction with my mocking plan, the show and I started spending time together, and I began getting to know the show as a person. Soon, I was honestly falling in love with the show, but the longer we stayed together under the secret pretext of me making fun of it behind its back to my friends, the more impossible it became to tell the show the truth about why I began our relationship!

I thought maybe I could just leave the awful truth to be buried by time, but just when things were looking really great for our future together, I arrived at the locale for our big date only to discover that one of my spiteful ex-best-friends had just told the show my secret, probably out of bitterness and jealousy over how in love I was with a show that we used to ridicule together! I hadn't been there to explain to the show how, even though I'd started spending time with it as a joke, I'd grown to genuinely know and understand and yes, love it, so the show ran out before I could say anything! Luckily, I caught up with it later and explained everything, telling the show that while I was so sorry for hurting it, I could never really feel completely sorry for agreeing to the plan in the first place, because otherwise I would never have gotten to know what a truly amazing person it is. The show instantly understood and forgave me, and we demurely made out, in symbolic establishment of our new, ever strengthened bond together.

How cliche is that.


blue ruffle

Finally!

Posted on 2009.04.10 at 13:01
Mood: snarky
Music: Queen -- It's Late
It's kind of amazing that it took a band this long to use this as the name for a live recording:  

 

If you missed the pop culture train on this reference, it's from an infamous clip of Bill O'Reilly during his Inside Edition days, completely losing his shit over some problem with the teleprompter.  

 
This clip is also the source material if you say something stupid or inarticulate and Rob says to you "There's no WORDS there!"  

And as long as I'm at it: I'm really weirdly tickled by this video of a costume shop owner behaving insanely while a local news anchor completely fails at trying to interview her. At one point, she's wearing a mask underneath another mask.

 
I think one of the reasons I find it so delightful is that, despite the fact that she is clearly crazy (especially if you look at the actual news story this dumbass reporter was pursuing), the desperately humorless journalist completely loses control of the situation while she dances in a fucking bunny suit.  

Okay and if you're really, really desperate for further entertainment, try and come up with a caption for this picture of Heidi Montag from Jezebel. So many joke possibilities! She looks like she's pooping! She's wearing sneaker wedge highheels!(?)  



Thanks [info]scorseseisgod for the sweet hookup.

pea-colored-glasses

I guess I never posted this.

Posted on 2009.04.02 at 11:45
Mood: weird
Music: Baltimora -- Tarzan Boy


An oldie but a goodie.


smilewichaeyes!

The Burden of Knowing

Posted on 2009.03.20 at 10:37
Mood: anxious
Music: Cardinals tweeting outside
You think you know, but you have no idea.


 
Read my review of Knowing. Before it's too late.


golden hour

Food porn.

Posted on 2009.03.17 at 12:07
Mood: flirty
Music: Digital Short - Please Don't Cut My Testicles
If I posted pics of even half the treats I obsessive-compulsively bake up every week, I'd be spending a lot less time eating those treats. But I snapped some random selections over the past couple months, so let's take a look.



I like making mini layer cakes. This one was made with my 7" pans. I placed it next to some bananas and a scotch jug. You know, for reference.



For Ryan's birthday, I made him smore inspired cupcakes, and topped them with freaky little plastic cats that Margaret gave me for New Years last year. That one giant cathead in the middle is the king. Clearly.



I made another mini layer cake with the extra batter, this time using my little 4" pans. I topped that one with the little plastic tree that inexplicably came with the package of plastic cats.



Remembering my affection for making tiny sweets, Rob got me a heart shaped baking tin for Valentine's day. I Christened it with some little vegan cheesecakes.



I topped them with cherry preserves, but that part looks kind of black and mysterious in photographs. In fairness, it was quite tart.


whatever side

Targeted marketing.

Posted on 2009.03.12 at 19:13
Mood: ridiculous
Music: Charlie Feathers - Tear It Up

whatever side

I watch the Watchmen.

Posted on 2009.03.06 at 12:44
Mood: working
Music: Billy Squier -- My Kinda Lover
I got to review Watchmen.

Other things I reviewed recently. Post Oscar season is otherwise pretty bleak.

Friday the 13th
The International
Push
Madea Goes to Jail




i-heart-my-cheekbones

This Just In -- Elusive Mystery of Coolness: Solved! Experts Agree, Still Largely Unattainable.

Posted on 2009.02.17 at 18:21
Mood: contemplative
Music: Brett Smiley -- Breathlessly Brett
Recently, I was wasting lots of time on the internet researching a post I wrote for the AllMovie blog about TVTropes.org, when I ended up in a vortex of ideas about modern hero archetypes in movies, and whether the idea of coolness is as ancient as anything or, in fact, approximately no centuries old. See if you can follow me on this one.

I was thinking about movies that are kind of trope-tributes, like Legends of the Fall. Opinions divide on its quality, but all I'm thinking about is how the story is intentionally made up entirely of themes lifted directly out of the Western Lit playbook, like Cain and Abel, the Prodigal Son and Tristan and Iseult. So details aside, the premise here is a premise you've seen many, many times.

The page from the playbook that got me going is the following. You have two brothers: one is the Awesome Brother, who is sometimes Prodigal, usually rebellious, and tends to be adored by everybody, even though as a matter of type, he rarely has his shit together. Then you have the other brother, who we'll call Not Awesome -- he's what TVTropes would call the Un Favorite, and he's often the victim of Parental Favoritism, even when he stays behind and acts as the Dutiful Son, taking care of the homestead while the Awesome Brother disappears to sew his oats or find himself or whatever.

What stands out about most modern tellings of this story is that even though Not Awesome is given every opportunity to earn our sympathy, even though he spends all his time accomplishing things, endeavoring to gain the approval of his father or girl, even though we know his low-ranking status in the family is totally unfair, he still seems kind of wormy and pathetic. Whereas the Awesome Brother (who TVTropes rightly points out is often Troubled But Cute, a type that also includes the Dylan McKays and Jordan Catalanos of the world) never tries to earn anybody's approval, and yet he oozes wonderfulness and charisma, beloved by both the characters and the audience, even though he's kind of a fuck up. And the lovable bad boy has the same MO in movies without the sibling element -- he doesn't identify with any of his responsibilities or obligations to anyone else and we love him for it.

It's one thing to buck the system like Robbin Hood or Zorro, running around with a cape and a sword, declaring your rapscallion ideals to the world and doing lots of hero-type-things, even though technically, you're on the other side of the law. But literarily speaking, it seems like quite another to buck the system without embracing another one, to endear yourself so effortlessly to the audience by not ascribing to things, by not trying hard or doing right. And then getting all down about it -- often tempering your dispassion towards the structures of the world with a streak of melancholy, and a painful self-awareness about the lack of meaning in everything.

Morose motherfuckers have appeared in plenty of stories, but even Hamlet doesn't elicit this kind of swooning, and his ennui was circumstantial anyway. I could be wrong, but it seems like Troubled But Cute is entirely an invention of the 20th century. Maybe I'm dumb or just reading it all wrong, but I can't think of a major example that predates Holden Caufield when it comes to a character evoking such gut admiration from the audience by way of smirking detachment, with underlying feelings of bitchy, existential angst. In fact, the whole idea of a hero struggling with his identity, rejecting society and somewhat aloofly embracing nothing at all, seems decidedly post Jazz Age American. When else did people have the time and money for this kind of thing?

I'm probably bound to eat my words, but I can't help drawing the ridiculously ambitious conclusion that the emergence of this concept in literature was more or less the invention of cool. James Dean cemented the rebellious but detached character type with East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause, and the flame's been carried by everybody from Fonzie to the emo vampire leading guy from Twilight. Like with anything, the theme gets watered down with each incarnation, but the general sentiment persists that coolness equals not playing by the rules. And more importantly, that coolness doesn't come from what you are, but from what you aren't. It comes from not buying in, not caring, not trying. Cool is supposed to be effortless. It might be cool to have a motorcycle, but having a motorcycle really means not caring if your hair gets messed up or if it's cold out tonight or if you die in a firey Mac truck explosion running from the state cops.

That's why when you get a modern reading of all these tropes in a sort of visible-template type movie like Legends of the Fall, you end up with a story where Brad Pitt spends the whole movie following the whims of his wild, free spirit, fucking up who knows how many lives in the process, but somehow remaining the ooey gooey center of all the other characters' worlds and ours by simple virtue of not giving a shit (except about that third brother dying, but that's just that pesky melancholy streak). Meanwhile, his brother Aiden Quinn (the Not Awesome Un Favorite) spends the whole movie working diligently to make something of himself -- going to college, marrying the girl Brad ditched, getting elected to public office -- and just makes the audience cringe with every new accomplishment, earning only pity and disgust for so flagrantly giving a shit -- namely, about what other people think.

I guess you could easily interpret the Troubled But Cute Awesome Brother Rebel Bad Boy as just a popular, slightly warped manifestation of strength and confidence being rewarded while weakness and doubt aren't. Or even easier, it's just fantasy heroism for modern life, where this weird promise that the non-great could one day become great is just too much pressure, and the deep down, we'd all rather not care than entertain the excruciating hope. Or maybe I'm totally off, and the bad boy dates back as far as man's been able to keep his hair looking disheveled but sexy. You can still run from the state cops on horseback.




winter-is-hilarious

Shoot me with your love gun.

Posted on 2009.01.28 at 15:41
Mood: chipper
Music: Sweet - Desolation Boulevard
This camera gun was featured on Cinematical:



It would appear they made a camera for Quentin Tarantino.



"I have a camera, but it's really a GUN!

But it's really a DICK!"

Thanks [info]scorseseisgod  for the inspirado.


paparazzi

oh no

Posted on 2009.01.23 at 10:50
Mood: thirsty

pea-colored-glasses

Thanks again for everything you did in the 60's and 70's. Could you please stop talking now?

Posted on 2008.12.16 at 11:30
Mood: nauseated
Music: Zolar X - Timeless
[info]scorseseisgod  linked me to the Women Film Critics Circle giving out an award for 2008's Most Offensive Male Characters. This concept is even worse in execution than it sounds in theory, with mentions going to guys like Aaron Eckhart in Towelhead and Sam Rockwell in Choke, where the inexcusable behavior enacted by these deeply flawed characters is the BASIS FOR THE CONFLICT IN THE STORY. What exactly are these women proposing? That screenwriters deal with the male/female power differential by never depicting it on screen?!

Few things alienate Gen X and Gen Y women like second-wave feminists construing the very word "feminism" with "misplaced semantic bitching."



jackdonoughey

Links to my reviews. Click like you missed it.

Posted on 2008.11.27 at 00:18
Mood: productive
Music: Rush -- Moving Pictures
You'd think that of all things, I could probably handle following through on a promise to shamelessly self promote. It turns out my predilection towards blind self importance is trumped by my predilection towards laziness. Who would have guessed.

Opening for Thanksgiving:
Fun fact! The former fell under the ecstatic knife of my unbridled enthusiasm and, once again, landed my name at the top on Metacritic based entirely on the fact that I gave it the highest score, and the latter landed it dead in the middle, but with a totally superkickass pull quote!

Opening last weekend:
  • Super Sparkle Vampire Love Go! I mean Twilight.
Fun Fact! This is actually a talkback, and there are two other responses to the movie after mine.

And before that:


nerd

Winter is for staying in. And watching sword and sorcery television.

Posted on 2008.11.08 at 18:03
Mood: recumbent
Music: Obligatory Ted Rami cameo
I'm watching this insane fantasy TV show right now called The Legend of the Seeker, broadcast in first run syndication on Superstation WGN like Xena or Highlander: The Series. Or, to a lesser extent, Beastmaster. It's produced by Sam Rami, who I guess wanted to get back to his Warrior Princess roots after the last Spiderman movie sucked shadonk and it's BALLS OUT NUTS, full of custom sets and costumes that must give it a crazy production budget. And it's got a powerfully  nerdy, complex backstory about magic swords and shit, and a soundtrack that incorporates bagpipes during action sequences. Oh, and it's based on some books by one of the trash fantasy authors with the name Terry -- one of the ones I may  or may not have read something by when I was a not-yet-vaguely-socialized middle-schooler surfing the Barnes & Nobel shelves, picking up anything with an appropriately kick ass illustration of some bustiered elf woman I wanted to be, or maybe dragons.

I'm going to arbitrarily decide this is my favorite show, DVR every episode, and talk about it to strangers.

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