Fantasies Destroyed

Woke up very early this morning to this terrible scraping sound. I did my best to ignore it and go back to sleep, but it wasn’t going anywhere. I started trying to figure out what the sound was… My first guess was it was some kids who tied our dumpster to their car and were trying to drag it around. But then the car sounds I heard didn’t jive with that theory, so I settled on a drunk person slamming repeatedly into the dumpster with their car. Hitting it, backing up, slamming into it again, each time moving the dumpster just a little bit.

Eventually, I was awake enough to look out the bedroom window. Imagine my disappointment when I saw it was just a snowplow. I prefer imagination.

The Movies I saw in 2005

Here is a list of the movies I saw this year. I saw just about as many movies in the theatre but far less on video as the past few years, which is somewhat counterintuitive given how long I was laid up with my leg. I think the reduced number of videos is a combination of my immobility while laid up with my leg combined with ‘s last semester, where she was sequestered for 3 months straight, in which we didn’t watch anywhere near as many movies as we usually do.

I kept track of movies as I watched them this year, so this list is rather complete. Also, this year I was smart and linkified the films as I added them to the list, which made putting this up very simple. I have no idea if any of you actually care about this list, but I find it personally interesting. If you are curious about my opinions of any of these films, just ask. In addition, in a few hours/days I will put up my picks for the best and worst of the year.

Update: I went through and italicized any film I had seen already.


Theatre:

  1. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
  2. Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst
  3. Million Dollar Baby
  4. The 10th District Court: Moments of Trial
  5. Born Into Brothels
  6. Inside Deep Throat
  7. La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc
  8. Cursed
  9. Sin City
  10. Millions
  11. The Interpreter
  12. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
  13. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
  14. Shane
  15. Unleashed
  16. Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (twice: once analog, once digital)
  17. Double Dare
  18. Brothers
  19. Howl’s Moving Castle
  20. Batman Begins
  21. Land of the Dead
  22. War of the Worlds
  23. Me and You and Everyone We Know
  24. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
  25. The Devil’s Rejects
  26. Murderball
  27. Labyrinth
  28. March of the Penguins
  29. Wedding Crashers
  30. The Aristocrats
  31. The Skeleton Key
  32. The 40 Year-Old Virgin
  33. The Brothers Grimm
  34. Le Monde du Silence (The Silent World)
  35. The Baxter
  36. A History of Violence
  37. Serenity
  38. MirrorMask
  39. Capote
  40. Good Night, and Good Luck.
  41. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
  42. Doom
  43. Jarhead
  44. The Squid and the Whale
  45. Walk the LIne
  46. Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic
  47. The Ice Harvest
  48. Aeon Flux
  49. Syriana
  50. King Kong (2005)
  51. Wolf Creek

Video:

  1. The Last Samurai
  2. West Side Story
  3. Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle
  4. Envy
  5. Rounders
  6. The Last Broadcast
  7. Shaun of the Dead
  8. Garden State
  9. Love Actually
  10. Along Came Polly
  11. Mystic River
  12. Spider-man 2
  13. Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
  14. Deep Throat
  15. Team America: World Police (2 Times)
  16. Little Shop of Horrors (1986)
  17. Jackie Brown
  18. Trainspotting
  19. Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (2004 Special Edition)
  20. The Stepford Wives (2004)
  21. The Life and Death of Peter Sellers
  22. The Pixies
  23. Stand By Me
  24. Ghostbusters
  25. Strange Days
  26. The Bourne Identity
  27. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
  28. Dirty War
  29. The Transporter
  30. The Sound of Music
  31. Mean Girls
  32. Private Parts
  33. The Incredibles
  34. The Big One
  35. Deliverance
  36. The Fugitive
  37. After the Sunset
  38. Revolution OS
  39. Fight Club
  40. And All That Could Have Been
  41. Predator
  42. The Matrix
  43. The Matrix Reloaded
  44. Waxwork
  45. The Matrix Revolutions
  46. Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
  47. Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
  48. Sideways
  49. Z Channel: A Magnificient Obsession
  50. Star Trek: Insurrection
  51. Star Trek: First Contact
  52. Boogie Nights
  53. Hoop Dreams
  54. The Last Shot
  55. In Good Company
  56. Oceans Eleven
  57. Pauly Shore is Dead
  58. The Last Man on Earth
  59. Sonic Outlaws
  60. Napoleon Dynamite
  61. Empire of Dreams: The Story of the Star Wars Trilogy
  62. Wayne’s World 2
  63. Old School
  64. Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
  65. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
  66. Triumph of the Nerds
  67. Fantastic Four (2005)
  68. Primer
  69. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
  70. Die Hard
  71. A Christmas Story
  72. American Psycho
  73. Effects
  74. The Big Lebowski

Christmas Update

I slacked way too long again, so this is going to cover alot of ground.. Sorry if it feels bullet-pointy.

Christmas, as always, was awesome. Dropped off at the airport very early on Friday, and after some shitty poker at Foxwoods, I rolled into Jersey in the late afternoon. Hung out Friday night with the Fam, Saturday we went to the Grandparents’ house to celebrate with them, but had to leave early because had to work until midnight. When we got back , , , and I buckled down for our traditional Christmas movies:

We all managed to stay up until Mom got home from work, and after some last minute wrapping we all retired to our beds. Everyone seemed to wake up around 9:30am or so, and we proceeded to open our gifts. A strange occurrence: We were tearing off wrapping paper when the doorbell rang. I stood up to look through the window, thinking “Who the hell would ring our bell on Christmas morning?” when I saw a mail truck! They were delivering mail on Christmas morning, which was also a sunday, one would presume that they were behind schedule, but I hope that fella got some good overtime pay for that shift. Amusingly enough, he was delivering a package for Larissa that contained gifts for me, so instead of wrapping it she just handed it to me and I ripped open the Amazon box. =)

Dad and my sisters all got different species of iPods, and I didn’t do too badly myself, not only scoring tons of great books and DVDs, but also a Blade CP Micro R/C Helicopter. I’ve operated R/C cars and was way into boats for awhile, but I’ve always wanted a Helicopter. Recently, my boss at Goodrich, Brian, got a Blade CP and all his talk about it re-lit that fire. It’s definitely going to be a long time before I’m comfortable flying it, but I’m already learning how to hover it and getting better at it every time I spin ‘er up. I nicked a set of blades pretty quickly, but I knew going into this that there would be some sacrificial trips to the hobby store when learning to fly.

I chilled at home for a few days, tried to meet up with everyone but there’s never enough time, so I did what I could… I spent the bulk of my time with the Family and Chuck, but also found time to catch up with Johnny, , and Amy.. I hauled ass back to Boston Wednesday afternoon and and came over for some Burnout Revenge and Scotch. Thursday morning I picked up Corinna from the Airport and we just chilled out the rest of the day.

Today we met up with Audra at the Kendall and caught Wolf Creek, a movie that really wanted to be The Texas Chain Saw Massacre but didn’t quite make it. It wasn’t bad, imho, but could have been better. Tonight we watched The Big Lebowski (another Christmas gift) which I hadn’t seen in ages and Corinna had never seen!

Interesting Short Documentary on Sampling

pointed me towards this short documentary on a breakbeat that is the a huge part of the history of hiphop, jungle, and even modern glitch and IDM. If you are into hiphop or other sampled or electronic music you owe it to yourself to check it out.

Can I Get An Amen? is an audio installation that unfolds a critical perspective of perhaps the most sampled drums beat in the history of recorded music, the Amen Break. It begins with the pop track Amen Brother by 60’s soul band The Winstons, and traces the transformation of their drum solo from its original context as part of a ‘B’ side vinyl single into its use as a key aural ingredient in contemporary cultural expression. The work attempts to bring into scrutiny the techno-utopian notion that ‘information wants to be free’- it questions its effectiveness as a democratizing agent. This as well as other issues are foregrounded through a history of the Amen Break and its peculiar relationship to current copyright law.

Shred

and I bought a paper shredder last Sunday. I had always thought one would be a good idea, but never got around to getting one. She had been talking about getting one more and more and finally took the inititiave, which is good, because I would have probably put it off again and again. Anyway, when we got home it was late, and she wanted to get ready for bed, so I opened the box and set it up so we could try it out. After I set it up (a.k.a. plugged it in) I was compelled to take the instruction manual for the shredder, which I hadn’t even opened yet, and shred it. I thought this was hilarious, but I didn’t tell Corinna for a few days because I thought she’d think I was batshit crazy. I am.

Today is my last day of work before an 11 day break. This day is gonna crawl…

Spam Poetry

Avarice is the sphincter of the heart.
Gray hair is God’s graffiti.
Most religions do not make men better, only warier.
If I hadn’t started painting, I would have raised chickens.
Never lie when the truth is more profitable.
Money is always there, but the pockets change.

Weird

This post from a few months ago has been getting lots of anonymous fanboy/girl comments in the past week or so.. They’ve been totally teeny-bopper incomprehensible, so I’ve just been blowing them away.. But they’ve been coming from different IP addresses, so I wonder if it got posted somewhere..