Take a Break and Watch This.

This video has been making the internet rounds, so you might have already encountered it.  If not, then stop everything, and prepare for a lump in your throat to arrive toute suite.  This is the story of Danny and Annie. Apparently, this group called StoryCorps takes real peoples' real stories and animates them for posterity.  You can't make this shiz up:


Danny and Annie from StoryCorps on Vimeo.

Emptying Out My Mind.

1. Blessed be whoever decided to release Mockingjay on Kindle at the same time as the regular hardcover release.  You are a colon among appendices.
2. Why is Justin Long a star?  
3. Why is Jay Baruchel?
4. I get Malin Ackerman and Emma Stone mixed up.  Somehow, I feel that that's not really a big deal.
5. I am totally Team Valerie on Project Runway.
6. I am totally Team Tiffany on Top Chef.
7. Forgive me, but my current pop culture obsession is My Boys.
8. I totally took his class!  I don't know what to believe anymore!
9. So shameful.  On multiple levels.
10. Liberal elite media is funny.

Recently There Have Been A Slew Of Cute Animal Videos.

Observe:

PENGUINS!



OTTERS!



CORGIS!



I'm keeling over amidst all the cuteness. For reelz.

Fall Movies 2010

The latest EW has the Fall Movie Preview for 2010.  Whoopee!  I love reading about the movies that I won't have time to see in the theaters and then watch on Netflix a year after everyone else has seen it.  Sigh.  Maybe, just maybe, this time will be different.  Upwards and onwards, I can always hope.

September:

1. Never Let Me Go.  Kazuo Ishiguro's Remains of the Day is one of my favorite novels of all time.  I read When We Were Orphans (I think?) and I can't remember a damn thing about it.  So, yeah, as much as I loved ROTD, I'm not a huge Ishiguro fan.  Despite that, I've been hearing amazing things about the book for NLMG (including the spoiler twist, sadly), and the cast looks amazing.  Say what you will, I like Keira Knightley (girl needs to eat some burgers or five though), and Andrew Garfield (the new Spider-Man) was one of the few good things about The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (Colin!).  So I'm looking forward to this little filmy a bit, yessiree.
2. Easy A.  The trailer was awesome.  (Then again, the trailer for Pearl Harbor was, too.)
3. Buried.  I like gimmicky B-movies, and nothing screams that more than this one with Ryan Reynolds stuck in a coffin.  It's a tall order to call it Hitchcockian (at least, insofar as the movie posters are concerned), but maybe it'll be good, in a Phone Booth / Rope kind of way?
4. Devil.  I told you, I like gimmicky B-movies.

October:

1. Hereafter.  This is my obligatory I hear Matt Damon movie!
2. RED.  Come on.  Cocoon with guns!  You can just imagine that that was the pitch, too.  But, man, I'm totally sold.

[Editor's note: Wow, October is looking wee---hhheeeeak this year.]

November:

1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I.  It's sad that this is almost the end of the series.  At the same time, I'm not one of those people that want to drag it out as long as possible.  As much as I like the movies, I love the books way more.  It saddened me when I learned that they were splitting the final book into two.  Yes, it's a huge tome, but at the end of the day, the quality of movie adaptations generally increases the less bound to the original the film is.  The best movies of the serious (Azkaban, Phoenix) heavily edited their sources.  I worry that in an effort to capitalize on one of the last guaranteed moneymakers in Hollywood that the filmmakers will end on the same Christopher Columbus rote-note they began on.
2. Morning Glory.  Rachel McAdams needs to be in more movies.
3. 127 Hours.  I went to law school with Aron Ralston's sister.
4. Burlesque.  Christina Aguilera.  Cher.  Singing.  Dancing.  Kristen Bell (finally in a post-Veronica Mars role that doesn't make me want to punch her in the face).  Cam Gigandet.  Shirtless.  How can I not want to see the gayest movie this year?  

December:

1. Black Swan.  Ooh.  I wonder if Darren Aronovsky thought he was going to make the gayest movie of the year when he started this movie about ballerinas and intrigue.  Sucka.
2. TRON: Legacy.  The original, which I heard is terrible, is on my Netflix queue.  Still, I'm a huge nerd.  So I want to see this.

Overall, I gotta say, I'm kinda underwhelmed by the Oscar season offerings this year.  Bet the Academy is wishing it didn't expand the Best Picture field to 10 last year.  Laws, yes (yeah, I just finished reading The Stand, and I don't know yet how I feel about the ending -- I like saying "laws, yes" though).

I Get It. I'm Old. Damn You, Beloit College!

In case you haven't been a faithful reader of my blog for the past two-something odd years, I like linking to the Beloit College Mindset list.  Here's where I commented on the Class of 2012 one, and here are my comments on the Class of 2013.  Again, the idea behind this is to help professors understand the worldview of incoming freshmen.  It matters, peeps, because like it or not, we do have a common cultural vocabulary (that is too often centered around pop culture, not that I'm complaining).  Anyhoos, here's the list for the Class of 2014.  And here's what, again, blows my ever-lovin' aging mind:

 

NOTE: These folks were born in 1992.  Eff me.

 

1. Few in the class know how to write in cursive.  [I HATE YOU, WORLD.]

7. "Caramel macchiato" and "venti half-caf vanilla latte" have always been street corner lingo.

10. A quarter of the class has at least one immigrant parent, and the immigration debate is not a big priority…unless it involves "real" aliens from another planet.  [REALLY?]

11. John McEnroe has never played professional tennis.

15. Colorful lapel ribbons have always been worn to indicate support for a cause.

16. Korean cars have always been a staple on American highways.

19. They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone.

27. Computers have never lacked a CD-ROM disk drive.

32. Czechoslovakia has never existed.

39. Pizza jockeys from Domino's have never killed themselves to get your pizza there in under 30 minutes.

46. Nirvana is on the classic oldies station.

50. Toothpaste tubes have always stood up on their caps.

64. The U.S, Canada, and Mexico have always agreed to trade freely. [ROSS PEROT!!!]

Commenting on Life.

1. Nighthawk's is already melancholy-ful. But this background fact kind of makes it even more so.

2. What idiot goes to college, majors in "Recreation and Leisure," and thinks they are going to be able to get a high-paying job? I pray that the example given of an Art major is what they were thinking of for this. But what else is there? Why not just say Art majors are going to grow up to be destitute? [Via Gawker.]

3. I haven't yet given up on Michael Cera. Especially when he can banter with the best of them:

SCHWARTZMAN: You know what I mean? It’s literally like, “Please be there, idea!” Not to be cheesy, but that is the real power of music, movies, art, or anything—it’s the hope that people will connect to it. And that’s what’s great about your success. You’ve made work that connects to millions of people. You have the rare ability to take something and turn it and flip it and make it into something great. It’s because you have an inquisitive mind and you are endlessly looking for something new. When I watch your work, I feel like I’m getting a philosophical mix tape of all the things that you’re interested in.

CERA: You just lost 80 percent of the people that were reading this article. They all just rolled their eyes and ripped up the page.

[Interview Magazine by way of Vulture.]

4. Despite what people say, I still think The Simpsons is pretty awesome. It's not as awesome as it once was, but it used to be SO awesome that its present-day awesomeness still registers on the awesome scale. To wit, some nerd found this and remembered that Lisa Simpson almost got married recently.

5. Yes, it is. For exactly the reasons stated therein. The counterarguments is rationalization wrapped up in a post-PC red herring cloak. Deal with it, Hollywood, you still treat Asians as a "forgotten" race. (I still love you though!)

Lazy Lazy Lazy.

Here are a couple more videos worth watching.

First, Muppets, OK GO, and Ira Glass, together for the first time:



Second, please tell me I'm not the only one old enough to remember this video.

Third, I kind of have an irrational hatred for Dora the Explorer. It has to do with her name sort of, but not really, rhyming. It just creeps me out. So, while some people thought this clip was "horrifying," I kind of stood up and cheered. Fist pump!

VH1 TV Shows | Music Videos | Celebrity Photos | News & Gossip

Finally, forgive me, but I thought this was frickin' hilarious, and I don't always say that about Funny Or Die:

Puppet High - watch more funny videos

Mankind and Southwest Don't Fail Me Now.

I recently flew on Southwest and accidentally left my iPod Touch in a seatback pocket of the plane.  I've since contacted Southwest in hopes of retrieving it.  I will keep you posted.