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AC has left the world of Rock (management) behind for a career in careerism. He lives with his beautiful and charming wife in Cranston, RI. AC Chillin’ is AC’s successful rap alter ego.

How to Not Bang a Prostitute - Eliot Spitzer Flow Chart

How difficult is it not to hire four thousand dollar prostitutes? I saw this question and wanted to try to answer it, especially coming from the mindset of a politician. You never know, it’s tempting. That damn Emperor’s Club VIP makes it so easy. So I made a flow chart! Every politician should print out the full flow chart and use it in everyday prostitution related decision making. It would be best if no more golden boys were beset by faulty logic, so in the future, I hope they use the Eliot Spitzer Flow Chart.

Spitzer Small
(Click image to enlarge) (Thanks to Eric and Mike for image help, to Brian for prostitutional knowledge)

2008 03 14 Politics Comments (8)

Friday Night Lights Season 2

Rating: 4 stars

****

Although Friday Night Lights Season 2 unabashedly started with a transparent audience grab in the first couple episodes, the season calmed down to deliver enough of what I like about it to keep me loyal and hoping for a satelite savior. In Season 2, football became less of a focus as the series continued it’s “issues based” writing: one week it’s teen sex/pregnancy, one week it’s race, one week it’s stealing from a meth dealer, even the mortgage crisis impacted Riggins this year. I’m hoping for a couple more seasons, if only to see how the creators deal with the problem facing every high school drama - graduation - though, admittedly, keeping a high school football player back a year, and in the series another season, isn’t even that big of a stretch.

2008 03 10 Television Comments (0)

Be Kind Rewind (2008)

Rating: 2 stars

**

I still don’t know exactly what Be Kind Rewind was trying to do, but I also am not totally sold on the idea that a movie (or a work of art in general) can’t just be about entertainment without needing a message. In Be Kind Rewind, you always knew what was going to happen, which didn’t reduce it’s enjoyment that much. It’s just, what did end up happening wasn’t THAT great, you know?

2008 03 08 Movies Comments (0)

Water for Elephants: A Novel by Sara Gruen

Rating: 1 star

*

Simple and lazy writing, crap dialogue, headache and fury-inducing narrative, and neon-lit plot twist telegraphing. All of these and so much more tripe leaves this book undesserving of my typical three sentence review.

2008 03 08 Books Comments (1)

Charts and Graphs

Scientific RickRolling.

2008 03 03 Internet Frippery Comments (2)

Margot at the Wedding (2007)

Rating: 2 stars

**

I don’t know what to say about Margot at the Wedding. Unremarkable in many ways and then a sudden and strange ending. What exactly was the point?

2008 03 02 Blog
Movies Comments (1)

Geek Love: A Novel by Katherine Dunn

Rating: 5 stars

*****

As I mentioned first in my review of Stardust, there’s a genre of fantasy where the reality is just a click off of the reality that we know. For the reader this means it’s not so much a suspension of disbelief that is required as a questioning of what we consider real. Katherine Dunn understates practically every shocking turn, making each that much more shocking.

(Google searches provide evidence that the idea of “geeks” or “geeking” as used in the book is actually true. Woah. Geeking is real.)

2008 03 02 Blog
Books Comments (0)

Atwoods Tavern Bacon Eating Contest

Atwoods Tavern had a bacon eating contest yesterday. I briefly mentioned last bacon post how my friends have decided to make me their bacon guy. In keeping with that, 6 different people wished me luck in the contest on Friday. Maybe I’ll take part next year.

2008 03 02 Food Comments (1)

Tell Me You Love Me Season 1

Rating: 4 stars

****

After you get past the pilot episode’s bang-a-minute pace, Tell Me You Love Me calms down a bit and shows it is less soft-core porn and more dramatic couples’ therapy. There are archetypal relationships - the strong older relationship forged by past indiscretions, the too firey hot for it’s own good relationship, the couple trying to conceive relationship, and the ‘how did we get here’ mid-life relationship - so pick a favorite and follow along! The season’s climax (I couldn’t resist), is not so much a surprise as a release, a full release (and again!).

2008 03 01 Television Comments (0)

Heat by Bill Buford

Rating: 3 stars

***

I don’t watch enough of the Cooking Channel, so except for having heard the name, I didn’t know anything about Mario Batali. In Heat Bill Buford goes to work in Batali’s kitchen (among other similar apprenticeships) and I don’t know how he survived. The food history parts were alternately boring and illustrative, but overall an inspiring read.

2008 02 26 Books Comments (0)

Feeding the Monster by Seth Mnookin

Rating: 2 stars

**

The thing about sports books, especially those from the recent past, is if you’re a fan of the team, you’re already going to know most of what’s in the book. Feeding the Monster reads like a long form magazine article, mostly interminable, except for the beginning documenting the sale of the Red Sox and the end about Theo Epstein leaving and then coming back. The 250 pages in the middle detail the 2003, 2004 and 2005 season, seemingly and unnecessarily game by game.

2008 02 25 Books Comments (0)

Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir by Nick Flynn

Rating: 4 stars

****

People with amazing lives must be somewhat gun shy after James Frey cornered the market on fantastical (and ultimately made up) memoirs a couple years ago (and let’s be honest, Frey’s “A Million Little Pieces” really was just a drawn out and exaggerated “Oh my God, I was so wasted last night…” bar tale). Another Bullshit Night in Suck City doesn’t reach that level, though Nick Flynn doesn’t meet his father for real until the man walks into his life as a client at Boston’s Pine Street Inn. Just like I enjoy movies that look like where I live (and thus applaud Boston’s emergence as the new Toronto), I also enjoy books that sound like where I live.

2008 02 24 Books Comments (0)

The Savages (2007)

Rating: 2 stars

**

Laura Linney’s character in The Savages was a playwright who kept wondering if her work was some sort of boring middle-class complaining. I had the sense that this was a question the writer of the movie had about the movie, and not unreasonably, because it was. Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman were great, but in a bad movie.

2008 02 23 Movies Comments (0)

“Arrested Development” (2003)

I had only watched a bit of Arrested Development when it was on a couple years ago, but thoroughly enjoyed watching all three seasons at once. I enjoyed David Cross’ character, Will Arnett’s, “But still, where’d that lighter fluid come from”, Michael Cerra’s general brilliance, and the fake “Scenes From Next Week” device. Watching it all at once, it was clear the writers had about 6 different story lines they recycled over and over and over again, though usually successfully.

2008 02 23 Television Comments (1)

The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006)

Normally Cillian Murphy’s eyes are freakishly too wet and his cheeks freakishly too red. In The Wind That Shakes the Barley, I only had to contend with his cheeks for some reason, and his bloody accent. I swear, subtitles were warranted for most of this informative and well-made movie.

2008 02 22 Movies Comments (0)

28 Weeks Later (2007)

Rating: 4 stars

****

28 Weeks Later had me wondering why the force working to repatriate Britain (very clearly US forces and not NATO forces) had some semblance of a plan, but no sense of a back up plan if it didn’t work. I remember when the movie came out and critics claim echoes of Iraq and this might be what they were talking. I don’t think there’s very many things scarier than Rage Virus.

2008 02 22 Movies Comments (0)

Barcelona (1994)

Rating: 5 stars

*****

I still don’t know why I loved Barcelona, though the delivery on my favorite line, “Well, I wasn’t using prig pejoratively” was impeccably timed. Unfortunately, no one I know has seen the movie, so it falls on deaf ears when I reference that line. I’d say, “Before ‘Bottle Rocket’, there was ‘Barcelona’,” but they came out the same year, so…

2008 02 21 Movies Comments (2)

Bacon Bloody (Mary)

The latest in a long string of bacon related links sent to me by my friends. The Bacon Bloody Mary. At this point (or until Matt throws me out), I say, ‘why fight it’?
Bring it on, people, let’s see your bacon related links.

2008 02 19 Food Comments (2)

We Own the Night (2007)

Rating: 1 star

*

Joaquin Phoenix’s terrible follow-up to the spectacular Walk the Line, We Own the Night should claim the record for most mailed-in performances by name actors. The basic idea of the story was OK, but everything else was for shit, which might explain why Sony paid $11M for it after Warner Brothers and Universal were involved. Wait, no, it doesn’t explain why anyone spend $11 let alone $11M.

2008 02 17 Movies Comments (0)

Michael Clayton (2007)

Rating: 4 stars

****

Michael Clayton was a great movie, though indicative of a weak movie year, because it wasn’t THAT great of a movie. Tilda Swinton’s (that is Best Supporting Actress Tilda Swinton) performance was stellar, but only 3rd best in the film. This movie was different, though besides the closing scene, I couldn’t tell you why.

2008 02 15 Movies Comments (0)