Russian color photography from 90 years ago. Incredible. Fantastic. (via memepool) I guess I shouldn’t feel so smug anymore venturing out with my fancy digital camera.
Month: May 2001 (Page 6 of 7)
My horoscope for today:
You have lots of things on your mind. Some of them you’ll want to talk about, some you won’t. The best person for you to be with today is someone who can talk, listen and basically just love you.
Hello? Anyone out there? If so, can you come over about 7:30?
When I go, I want to have something like the one on the left, not the one on the right. Keep that in mind, OK? Thanks.
“You do not want to know the feeling of waking up and the first thing you see when you roll over in your bed is Della Reese.”
“And who am I?”
-Truman Burbank, The Truman Show
In a way I’m glad that all the current movies are crap, since it gave me a chance to revisit a real classic, a movie that we will be watching for decades to come. The real genius of the movie, though, is not how it reflects our media-obsessed culture or our love of reality TV. That’s too obvious. It’s how the cast members and the show itself represent all the forces around us that are doing their damnedest to remind us that we have to understand our limitations.
“What are we going to do for money when we get to New Orleans?” says Truman’s wife. “And I’m going to have to call your mother when we get there. I just don’t know how she’s going to take this.”
We need to act, think, and be a certain way, or some bad stuff is going to happen. Everyone around us, every image we see on TV or any other media, everything tells us this. How often do we listen to those voices, rather than doing or thinking or being what we want to? How often do we question, even a little bit, the world that is laid before us? The role we are supposed to play? The pressures to live in lockstep with everyone else are so great – that’s why we celebrate, if guiltily, the tiny group of people who manage to transcend those boundaries. Watch the movie and see for yourself.
Cool detail: Truman has a Magic 8 Ball on his desk.
For any of my fellow non-geek geeks who know Cold Fusion, you might want to check out the Invisible Portable Hydralic Cheese Nozzle. I mostly include this link because I love that phrase.
There are many, many things people do in movies that they just don’t do in real life. Here’s a few of them – feel free to suggest others:
-light candles around the bathtub
-climb up a ladder to someone’s bedroom
-always have a bunch of celery sticking out from their grocery bag
-throw a gun away when it runs out of ammo
-grab the bedsheet to cover their naked body as they get out of bed
-give birth to a six-month-old baby
-outline a dead body in chalk
Societal ethics question:
If they bring you the wrong pizza, so they have to bring you another one free, do you have to tip the delivery guy again when he brings the free pizza? Apparently, according to his reaction, you do. I was absent the day this crucial social behavior was taught.
I used to have a post asking people who their heroes were, and through a series of misadventures it no longer exists. Someone who didn’t sign their name to a comment said it was a “lame topic,” and perhaps that’s true. I’d love to get some conversations started on the comment pages, but I don’t think I have enough readers for that. Still, in usual form, Mike wrote a great comment that I will repeat here, since it’s vanished along with the post:
I don’t have heroes. Don’t believe in ’em. I believe in good people who sometimes do great things, and then screw up as often as the rest of us. Best not to put them up on pedestals.
Well said, Mike.
So I picked the Survivor:DV final two a month ago, which maybe wasn’t too much of a stretch, but I’m pleased. I do owe my Mom $10, since I bet on the more obvious choice for the winner, and lost.
Best moment of the night by far was on Letterman, where the cast did Dave’s “Top 10 Survivor Pickup Lines.” Colby “Conjugal” Donaldson’s was, “Have you ever done it in the back of a Pontiac Aztec?” This from a man whose last companion in the back of his Aztec was his Mom. Ew.
I like Tina, and she played a great game. But it seems to me that Colby was the real Survivor. He sealed his own fate by picking Tina for the final two, rather than going for the easy win against Keith. This “easy win” was confirmed by virtually everyone on the reunion show, hosted by everyone’s least favorite morning anchor Bryant Gumbel.
“He used to be a good-looking guy,” my friend Wendy said of Gumbel. “Now he sort of looks like a grandma.”