Barack Brains T Shirt

Posted by aaron cohen Sep 23, 2008 1

Barack Brains T Shirt

This is great. I might get one if my brother didn't already. And Bad Brains is from DC, too.

Nice

Posted by aaron cohen Sep 22, 2008 0

Alternate Bailout Proposals

For bankers/Republicans who say there are no other options besides Paulson's 'clean plan', here are Cuban and Ritholtz's alternate proposals.

Posted by aaron cohen Sep 22, 2008 0

Chuck Klosterman’s Downtown Owl Excerpt

An excerpt from Chuck Klosterman's new book, Downtown Owl - the excerpt is sports related because, well, it is on ESPN.

Posted by matt Sep 21, 2008 0

Well, that was longer than necessary. Chandra seems to have set out not to write a novel, per se, but a sweeping portrait of contemporary Mumbai/Bombay and India in historical context, which means we get chapter-long digressions from the putative main storyline. Still, if you can get past the fact that the primary mystery is solved and resolved essentially as an aside, it's a well-written book.

Posted by aaron cohen Sep 21, 2008 0

Social Traffic Jams

Steven Johnson talks about social traffic jams, the idea of having to budget extra time when going out in your neighborhood because of all the people you're going to run into, especially in Brooklyn.

Kottke's Tweet from a couple weeks before discusses how to deal with this issue. "We passed on the street this morning. I would have stopped to say hi, but we were both elsewhere, you on your phone and me with my thoughts."

Posted by matt Sep 21, 2008 1

Burn Notice

For a show that's objectively not all that good, Burn Notice is highly entertaining. The dialogue and acting can be a bit wooden, but Jeffrey Donovan is good enough as the lead, and there's plenty of eye candy if all else fails. It is pretty hilarious to see Bruce Campbell relegated to the role of the paunchy sidekick who has to deliver all of the exposition lines ("So, you managed to sneak in and steal the files from the vault, Michael?").

Posted by aaron cohen Sep 20, 2008 0

Plastic Bag Ban – Market of Choice

Not a ban, per se, but a decision - a grocery store (following Whole Foods' lead) decides not to offer plastic bags outside of produce and deli.

Posted by matt Sep 20, 2008 0

True Blood

We may not get HBO, but that hasn't stopped me from watching the first two episodes of True Blood. (I won't say how, but it rhymes with Schmitt Schmorrent.) Here are my thoughts so far:

Vampires! Neat!

HBO seems to have contracted out the costume design for Anna Paquin's character to Maxim.

The show definitely seems to be taking advantage of the fact that it's on HBO for some gratuitous nudity—except for the main characters, of course. In fact, I think the only female character to get topless so far is dead. Nice slut shaming, Alan Ball.

The main characters, Sookie and Bill, are both very strange personalities, which makes all of their pipe-laying exposition dialogue less awkward, but still awkward.

True Blood vampires "vamp out" much more delicately than Buffy vampires. After being used to the Buffy game faces, the little fang "snikt!" is kind of hilarious.

Come to think of it, I'm choosing to interpret the introductory fake-out scene as a Buffy homage.

Sookie's brother is such an over-the-top douchebag, it's hilarious. His self-congratulatory mirror-point while having sex with his girlfriend was laugh-out-loud funny. (I LOL'd!)

This show picks up in the middle of the story in a kind of unusual way. It's really refreshing to watch a vampire story that doesn't start with several weeks of the characters all running around in denial about the fact that vampires exist, or having to keep the existence of vampires a secret. In fact, none of the supernatural elements are kept secret, and the discovery of the supernatural isn't part of the plot at all. Bill's the first vampire in town, but everyone knows what to expect. Sookie's friends all know she's psychic. Saves a lot of time.

The two episodes I've seen have been pretty enjoyable. I'm looking forward to seeing how they spell out all of the abilities and weaknesses of the vampires, the history of their going public, and so on. I'll watch more!

Posted by aaron cohen Sep 19, 2008 0

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007)

It may have been that we unintentionally watched the unrated director's cut with about 30 extra minutes, but even though I wanted to love this movie, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story just wasn't very good. I would have rated it as 1 star, but there were some parts of this movie that were hilarious, bumping it up a level. This is not the best work of anyone involved in this movie.

Posted by matt Sep 19, 2008 0

There Goes The Neighborhood

It's never a good sign when your vacation spot makes the New York Times' rich people section. They even mention Moultonborough specifically.

Of course, things like this are just another reminder of how lucky Rachel and I are to have her family's house there.