3-Chord Monday #11
Women's History Month, plus St. Patrick's Day is coming up. I'm sure they exist, but I was unable to find an all-or mostly-female Irish punk/new-wave act, and I wasn't going to go with Sinead O'Connor (and less said about theCranberries, the better). Anyway, The Pogues are a longtime favorite, and they only recorded one song where original bassist Cait O'Riordan sang lead. The great-yet-overplayed "Fairytale of New York" was supposed to be a Shane-Cait duet, but then she ran off and married Elvis Costello. Anyway, here's The Pogues - "I'm A Man You Don't Meet Everyday"
Monday, March 13, 2006
Saturday, March 11, 2006
FLASH: I am too old/ugly/whatever for basic cable!
After passing the written test and having what I thought was a successful team interview, my teammates and I were turned down for the second round of qualifying for a new TV quiz show. I am bound by an NDA not to discuss specifics, as we are still technically eligible for second-season consideration, if there is one.
So that's three straight tests I've taken and passed -- four if you count the special Netflix test at WWTBAM -- without getting a callback. I wonder to what extent the Jeopardy experience or the quizbowl history is a factor. Which is silly, of course -- does anyone scream "ringer!" at the thought that an American Idol contestant might have taken a voice lesson or two, or have made a little money at an open-mic night?
On the upside, I no longer have to fret about being on time to play in the mixed club championship tomorrow.
After passing the written test and having what I thought was a successful team interview, my teammates and I were turned down for the second round of qualifying for a new TV quiz show. I am bound by an NDA not to discuss specifics, as we are still technically eligible for second-season consideration, if there is one.
So that's three straight tests I've taken and passed -- four if you count the special Netflix test at WWTBAM -- without getting a callback. I wonder to what extent the Jeopardy experience or the quizbowl history is a factor. Which is silly, of course -- does anyone scream "ringer!" at the thought that an American Idol contestant might have taken a voice lesson or two, or have made a little money at an open-mic night?
On the upside, I no longer have to fret about being on time to play in the mixed club championship tomorrow.
Monday, March 6, 2006
3-Chord Monday #10
March is Women's History Month. Most people only know Patti Smith through her collaboration with Springsteen, "Because the Night." Here's her (superior) Van Morrison cover.
Patti Smith - "Gloria"
March is Women's History Month. Most people only know Patti Smith through her collaboration with Springsteen, "Because the Night." Here's her (superior) Van Morrison cover.
Patti Smith - "Gloria"
Saturday, March 4, 2006
Movie Log 2006 #21-30: Oscar-Nominated Shorts
I have now seen all but one of the shorts nominated for Oscars this year. The only one not on the Film Center progam was the live-action The Last Farm.
Briefly, starting with docs:
"The Death of Kevin Carter: Casualty of the Bang Bang Club" - Profile of the title figure, a war-zone photographer in late-Apartheid South Africa and later Sudan. Haunted by the images he snapped, including a controversial photo of a starving, crawling Sudanese child stalked by a vulture, he took his own life months after winning a Pulitzer. Interesting, but felt slight.
"God Sleeps in Rwanda" - Easily the best of the bunch, despite flat narration from Rosario Dawson. Profile of several women who survived the Rwandan genocide. One mother raises her daughter, a product of rape, after all her other children were killed. A 12-year-old finds herself the head of the household. Another woman is one of the first female police in the country. It's a safe guess that this subject will become the new Holocaust in the documentary category in coming years.
"The Mushroom Club" - A look at Hiroshima 60 years after the bomb. The Peace Garden is noisy, black trucks drive around spouting nationalist rhetoric, and many of the dwindling number of survivors refuse to attend the official remembrance ceremonies.
"A Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corwin" Interviews with and reminiscence on Corwin, a radio playwright and poet.
PREDICTIONS: Rwanda. Corwin's got Old Hollywood appeal, so it's a dark horse, methinks.
"Badgered" and "The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation" - I saw both of these at last year's Chicago Film Festival. The first is the most crudely rendered, but is funny. Plus I saw the director in October, and she's an adorable Scot who'd be fun to see win an award. So I'm pulling for her. The latter is a tedious exercise in onscreen therapy. I expect student shorts to mostly be about blaming parents for screwing up lives, but this was from a 30-plus-year career animator.
"The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello" Overlong but nifty steampunk tale, told mostly in silhouette.
"9" - hard to describe plotwise, but had a nice look to the CGI. A frontrunner.
"One Man Band" - A Pixar entry that had lush looking backgrounds, but was too reminiscent of Tin Toy, I thought.
PREDIX: "Jasper Morello" or "9".
Live-action:
"Ausreisser (The Runaway)" - apparently this is a frontrunner, but I didn't care for it all that much.
"Cashback" - Night-shift supermarket workers kill time. Saw this at the 2004 Chicago Film Festival. It's quite good, but the cheesecake factor might turn off voters.
"Our Time Is Up" - Takes the dying-person-turns-new-leaf trope and applies to psychiatry. Some big laughs, but maybe a little to familiar to win. Nice to see Jorge Garcia from Lost.
"Six Shooter" - dark-comic Irish short. A guy greiving the death of his wife takes the train home and meets a very odd loudmouth passenger. Has a good chance, I think.
PREDIX: "Ausreisser" or "Six Shooter."
I have now seen all but one of the shorts nominated for Oscars this year. The only one not on the Film Center progam was the live-action The Last Farm.
Briefly, starting with docs:
"The Death of Kevin Carter: Casualty of the Bang Bang Club" - Profile of the title figure, a war-zone photographer in late-Apartheid South Africa and later Sudan. Haunted by the images he snapped, including a controversial photo of a starving, crawling Sudanese child stalked by a vulture, he took his own life months after winning a Pulitzer. Interesting, but felt slight.
"God Sleeps in Rwanda" - Easily the best of the bunch, despite flat narration from Rosario Dawson. Profile of several women who survived the Rwandan genocide. One mother raises her daughter, a product of rape, after all her other children were killed. A 12-year-old finds herself the head of the household. Another woman is one of the first female police in the country. It's a safe guess that this subject will become the new Holocaust in the documentary category in coming years.
"The Mushroom Club" - A look at Hiroshima 60 years after the bomb. The Peace Garden is noisy, black trucks drive around spouting nationalist rhetoric, and many of the dwindling number of survivors refuse to attend the official remembrance ceremonies.
"A Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corwin" Interviews with and reminiscence on Corwin, a radio playwright and poet.
PREDICTIONS: Rwanda. Corwin's got Old Hollywood appeal, so it's a dark horse, methinks.
"Badgered" and "The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation" - I saw both of these at last year's Chicago Film Festival. The first is the most crudely rendered, but is funny. Plus I saw the director in October, and she's an adorable Scot who'd be fun to see win an award. So I'm pulling for her. The latter is a tedious exercise in onscreen therapy. I expect student shorts to mostly be about blaming parents for screwing up lives, but this was from a 30-plus-year career animator.
"The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello" Overlong but nifty steampunk tale, told mostly in silhouette.
"9" - hard to describe plotwise, but had a nice look to the CGI. A frontrunner.
"One Man Band" - A Pixar entry that had lush looking backgrounds, but was too reminiscent of Tin Toy, I thought.
PREDIX: "Jasper Morello" or "9".
Live-action:
"Ausreisser (The Runaway)" - apparently this is a frontrunner, but I didn't care for it all that much.
"Cashback" - Night-shift supermarket workers kill time. Saw this at the 2004 Chicago Film Festival. It's quite good, but the cheesecake factor might turn off voters.
"Our Time Is Up" - Takes the dying-person-turns-new-leaf trope and applies to psychiatry. Some big laughs, but maybe a little to familiar to win. Nice to see Jorge Garcia from Lost.
"Six Shooter" - dark-comic Irish short. A guy greiving the death of his wife takes the train home and meets a very odd loudmouth passenger. Has a good chance, I think.
PREDIX: "Ausreisser" or "Six Shooter."
Friday, March 3, 2006
scraps
*The winner of the Oscar pool will win exactly $99, which I find very funny.
*Gee, loading up on those $10, 1-year subscriptions to Spin sure seemed like a good idea at the time. I think we're set for at least another two years of...well, who knows what we're going to get.
* This baseball article, about bible-thumpin' ballplayer Tony Batista, is worth a read. my fave bit:
If coming to Minnesota and spending a season with the Twins is indeed part of "God's divine plan," then I assume that means having Batista make me miserable for a year while hurting my favorite team's playoff chances is also part of the same plan. That's an odd sort of relationship, like saying that someone dropping an anvil off a skyscraper is part of a plan and a person on the sidewalk below being crushed to death by an anvil falling from the sky is within the same plan.
*The winner of the Oscar pool will win exactly $99, which I find very funny.
*Gee, loading up on those $10, 1-year subscriptions to Spin sure seemed like a good idea at the time. I think we're set for at least another two years of...well, who knows what we're going to get.
* This baseball article, about bible-thumpin' ballplayer Tony Batista, is worth a read. my fave bit:
If coming to Minnesota and spending a season with the Twins is indeed part of "God's divine plan," then I assume that means having Batista make me miserable for a year while hurting my favorite team's playoff chances is also part of the same plan. That's an odd sort of relationship, like saying that someone dropping an anvil off a skyscraper is part of a plan and a person on the sidewalk below being crushed to death by an anvil falling from the sky is within the same plan.
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