:: Friday, June 14, 2002 ::
More movie talk. Dyann and I went to see The Bourne Identity (Flash site) last night. What an intense thriller! To those who love spy/espionage thrillers, I highly recommend this movie.
Sean Meade, who also blogged about the American Film Institute and its top romance movies, notes that AFI also came up with its own list of great comedies. Only two of my top 10 made it on the AFI top-10 list, which ranked Raising Arizona at No. 31! Philistines!
More blog talk. From Martin Roth's weblog, a link to Ellen Hampton, who is trying to explain blogging to her mother, while also pondering the high proportion of reformed sites among the Christian blogs. That's something I've wondered about as well. Where are all the other charismatic/pentecostal bloggers? Do you know, Spudlet? (He can't hear me. He's at the beach. Bleh.)
:: Andrew 09:03 + ::
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A walk around the blog. You never know what you'll find in blogland. Consider this 1987 article from The Atlantic, titled Great Moments in Literary Baseball, which I found at Reenhead.com. An excerpt:
Hit in the shoulder by a pitch during an exhibition game in Key West, Florida, in 1933, Cubs catcher Ernie Hemingway refused to take first base. The next pitch hit Hemingway in the nose. Hemingway stood his ground. The third and fourth pitches hit him in the shin and the ear respectively. He dug in deeper, though in noticeable pain. The fifth pitch felled him. The home-plate umpire allowed the seriously injured Hemingway to be carried to first base on a stretcher.
Rushkoff: Renaissance man? Douglas Rushkoff is talking about some of the same things a lot of us have been talking about for a while, but he articulates it so much better than many of us -- or better than I, at any rate. In his post on open-source culture, Renaissance now?, he describes the Internet revolution as a renaissance. "And I don't just mean renaissance in the way we commonly think about it today (as some historical movement in art and architecture) but as a full-on shift in our experience of dimensionality."
More from Rushkoff:
I prefer to think of the proliferation of interactive media as an opportunity for renaissance: a moment when we have the opportunity to step out of the story, altogether. Renaissances are historical instances of widespread recontextualization. People in a variety of different arts, philosophies, and sciences have the ability to reframe their reality. Quite literally, renaissance means "rebirth." It is the rebirth of old ideas in a new context. A renaissance is a dimensional leap, when our perspective shifts so dramatically that our understanding of the oldest, most fundamental elements of existence changes.
The modest blogger. I hope Aaron won't take offense at my rehashing his thoughts about rehashing thoughts on blogs. He writes: "Why rehash the same ideas out when someone has already expressed them so eloquently? This is the trouble with blogs... no, this the trouble with people: we love to engage in punditry and resist knowledge far more than we love to listen and read. Humility is brilliant. It opens up so many doors to knowledge. Pride, on the other hand, is just another form of retardation." Aaron then goes on to give five very good pointers on blogging humbly.
:: Andrew 15:01 + ::
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:: Thursday, June 13, 2002 ::
The book of blog. Josh Sargent has made the blogging big time with his entry into the Blogicon with the term blogslob. Nice work, Josh, and welcome to the club. This just in: Dean Peters also has a mighty fine Blogicon entry with bloganalia. He writes about it here.
Moron comedies. Um, I mean, more on comedies. Seems there's a move afoot among commenters to my movie post yesterday to promote Tommy Boy and Dumb and Dumber as all-time great comedies. I remain unswayed. I'm sticking with my current top-10 list (although I'd probably include Tommy Boy in my top 20).
:: Andrew 07:41 + ::
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:: Wednesday, June 12, 2002 ::
Top chick flicks. So much serious stuff going on in the world today. Colorado wildfires rage. U.S. Roman Catholic bishops spin and resign. The Shaq and Kobe show, aka the Lakers, threepeat. Meanwhile, on page 3, global turmoil continues unabated. So, let's distract ourselves from these serious matters. Turn to the entertainment section, and let's talk about movies, movies, movies.
Recently the American Film Institute released its list of the 100 greatest romance movies of all time. Topping the list was Casablanca. (Full AP coverage at MovieClub.com.) My friend MH's favorite was all the way down at No. 25. I'm not a hopeless romantic, but was glad to see Doctor Zhivago (No. 7) and Annie Hall (No. 11) make the list.
To be honest, I don't think I could come up with 10 favorite love stories. But I do like comedy, and so I offer you my top 10 all-time favorite comedies:
10. Young Frankenstein. I love Mel Brooks -- a true comic genuis in his day. This is his best. Blazing Saddles is a close second -- probably in my top 15.
9. Being There. Everybody knows that Dr. Strangelove is the greatest Peter Sellers comedy ever, right? Or perhaps The Pink Panther? My vote goes for Being There, a simple tale about a simple man. It's Candide in the '70s.
8. Modern Romance. Okay, maybe I do like romances -- but only funny ones, like this underrated movie from the early '80s. Albert Brooks directs and stars in this comedy about an obsessive-compulsive filmmaker who gets dumped.
7. Eating Raoul. A twisted black comedy, more bizarre than anything the Coen Brothers could cook up. Paul and Mary Bland are nice people, in a Gomez and Morticia Aadams sort of way.
6. National Lampoon's Animal House. A crude and sophomoric vehicle for the comic genius of John Belushi. Still, Animal House is in a class all its own. Directed by John Landis and co-written by Harold Ramis, who was at the top of his game with this one -- even better than his portrayal of Dr. Spengler in Ghostbusters II.
5. A Night at the Opera. I'm crazy about the Marx Brothers. This movie's state room scene alone is worth watching the entire movie.
4. Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The AFI wouldn't allow this on its list, because it's a British flick. But the web is global, and I want to show how broad-minded I am. Ergo, Holy Grail makes my list. (For a lot of other reasons as well, you silly k-niggits!)
3. Airplane! Airplane!? Surely, I can't be serious! I am serious, and (all together now) Don't call me Shirley. This Zucker and Abrahams movie made Leslie Neilsen the international megastar he is today. Airplane! is one of the greatest farces ever created, and spawned an industry of lesser farces. But none can compare to this one.
2. Duck Soup. Mrs. Teasdale: This is a gala day for you. Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho): Well, a gal a day is enough for me. I don't think I could handle any more. *chortle* Did I mention that I'm crazy about the Marx Brothers?
1. Raising Arizona. The best Coen Brothers movie I've ever seen, with the best comedic chase scene ever. Nicholas Cage's best acting, too, and Holly Hunter's best, outside of Broadcast News. John Goodman and William Forsythe, as the excaped cons the Snopes brothers, add much to the comic elements of this terrific movie. Ed McDonnough (Hunter): You mean you busted out of jail. Evelle (Forsythe): We released ourselves on our own recognizance. Gale (Goodman): What Evelle means to say is, we felt that the institution no longer had anything to offer us. Funny, funny stuff.
So, there you have 'em. Feel free to comment on mine, or zap me your own favorites.
:: Andrew 08:49 + ::
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Yeah, for punishment, maybe. While I should have been working, I surfed to Holy Weblog!, where I discovered the Seven Deadly Sins quiz. And here's the result:
Uuuurp! Belch! Mmmm. That was good!
I'm so glad that we evangelical Christians don't take gluttony seriously.
:: Andrew 14:07 + ::
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:: Tuesday, June 11, 2002 ::
Blogs and journalism. More introspective journalism about weblogs and the new media of online journalism from the American Journalism Review:
In "Online Uprising", Catherine Seipp writes that "the blogging revolution" has "rendered obsolete Mark Twain's famous crack about never arguing with a man who buys ink by the barrel -- and that goes for the man who buys bandwidth by the barrel, too. Who needs Slate or Salon when bloggers offer equally fine writing and more diverse viewpoints? Blogging, as (Andrew) Sullivan put it, 'means the universe of permissible opinions will expand, unconstrained by the prejudices, tastes or interests of the old-media elite.'" All the usual suspects are included in this article: Sullivan, InstaPundit's Glenn Reynolds, Virginia Postrel, etc., but it's still a nice in-depth piece on what we do. It would be nice, for a change, if reporters dug a bit deeper to contact a few of the great unwashed in blogdom. Seems it would give a broader view of blogging.
From the is-it-really-newsgathering department comes this hand-wringing about Yahoo! News. Columnist Barb Palser, who is with the journalism think tank The Poynter Institute, notes that Yahoo! News is the third most popular news site on the Net. It is "the ultimate aggregator of online media, republishing the work of about 100 news sources and organizing links to thousands more. Its coverage ranges from world and business news to local headlines and op-ed columns. It boasts breaking news e-mail alerts, message boards, photo galleries, audio and video clips, and mobile delivery. It does everything except the main thing. And visitors don't seem to mind." The irony, to my way of thinking, is that the author's own organization also aggregates news in weblog fashion, borrowing links and headlines from a host of other online news sources. In the end, however, the author concedes that the Yahoo model -- and by extension, the newsblog model -- might be a legitimate form of journalism for our times. "Yahoo! News might be overlooked in roll calls of the nation's top news sites, and it won't win any reporting awards. But its ability to reliably amalgamate and deliver information presents a challenge -- and in some respects an example -- for online journalism."
:: Andrew 07:48 + ::
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Overtaken by lethargy. Maybe it's the fact that I took a week off from my desk jockey PR job to work with my hands, scraping and painting with primitive technologies (scrapers, brushes, brooms, scrubbers). Or maybe it's an early case of the summer doldrums. Maybe it's because I've got so much to do. (Aside from the editing and writing at the day job, I've taken on a couple of freelance jobs that are weighing on my conscience, I've got an emergency-response training session this afternoon, the "check engine" light came on during my drive to work today, and one of these days I need to get a haircut.) Whatever it is, it's got me feeling mighty lethargic this week. I haven't even felt like blogging much.
I was fighting the lethargy this morning, but actually managed to break through and resume my morning run. (The first time in eight days, since last Monday.) But it was a lethargic run.
Thanks to every one of you good, friendly folks who left comments on my blog during my absence.
:: Andrew 13:09 + ::
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Simon Dawes, 
