October 2011
1 post
Planet Money: How Money Got Weird →
In the 1980s, Satyajit Das worked for a finance company that owned a large stake in an airline. But in the long run, Das says on today’s show, this was part of a much larger shift in the global economy — and that shift turned out to be a disaster. Das got the airline to start making speculative bets on the price of oil. That decision was good for the bottom line: One year, the company made...
August 2011
8 posts
1 tag
Wise Words
12 tags
Style is Substance
If you love movies and you don’t know Matt Zoller Seitz and/or the Museum of the Moving Image, you’re doing it wrong.
Sway
When marimba rhythms start to play Dance with me, make me sway Like the lazy ocean hugs the shore Hold me close, sway me more Like a flower bending in the breeze Bend with me, sway with ease When we dance you have a way with me Stay with me, sway with me
#internalrhymeFTW
Feeling sort of jealous of this woman
“In my 30s, I found that I was often coming and going at the same time. Nothing...”
– Stephen Tobolowsky
July 2011
2 posts
New job: Day 1
And so begins my slow transformation into Dr. Linus.
“All right, I know I sound like a broken record, but how many times do we have to go over this? If you have the last cup of coffee, you remove the filter and throw it away. Fear not! I will make a fresh pot.”
June 2011
3 posts
4 tags
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou: Top 9 Quotes
A lovely movie, possibly written by Max Fischer.
In chronological order …
==
STEVE: “Oseary, this is, uh, probably my son, Ned. We just met.”
==
NED: “What happened to Jacqueline?” STEVE: “She didn’t really love me.”
==
STEVE: “Please don’t make fun of me. I just wanted to flirt with you.”
==
NED: “Are those...
Manhattan in Motion
Sometimes I miss it.
By Josh Owens
(h/t Andrew Sullivan)
2 tags
Kirsten Dunst's Crazy Parents
Mom: “What was it like working with Tom Cruise?”
Kirsten: “Uh, I thought he was kind of weird.”
Dad: “Honey, you can’t say that about Tom Cruise, OK? You can’t say that Tom Cruise is weird.”
Kirsten: “But it’s the truth!”
May 2011
6 posts
Michael Emerson's 1992 Prison Training Video
Why are all the prison employees dressed like flight attendants?
“The human angle! That’s what sells papers! We need a front page with a...”
– Chief Editor, The Manhattan Argus
(500) Days of Britta
A.O. Scott on "Thor" →
When something like “Thor” comes to town, there is really no refuge to be found in drink, death or subtitles. … Mr. Branagh has not failed to make an interesting, lively, emotionally satisfying superhero movie, because there is no evidence that he (or the gaggle of credited screenwriters, or Paramount, the sponsoring studio) ever intended to make any such thing. On the contrary,...
“OK, everyone. Shut up! And look at me! Welcome to Visions of Nature. This room...”
– Ron Swanson, “Parks and Recreation”
April 2011
6 posts
Dramatic push-in on a bulldog
Look for Fred at the 0:16 mark.
Andrew Sullivan: World's best blogger? →
So be warned: Sullivan sometimes posts dozens of times a day. If you’ve never read him, it might be better not to start. A curiosity can lead to a habit, and a habit to an addiction. And then, without quite knowing how it happened, you may find yourself beginning a sentence with, “As Andrew said….”
Carter Beauford on the drums
“[O]ur nation has had a hard time distinguishing between “better” and...”
– David Roth
Live together, die alone
Ana Lucia gets a lot of crap from Lost fans, but as awful and aggravating as her character is, her story is also hugely compelling as the purest example of a crash survivor who failed in her second chance on the island, defeated by the emotional issues that brought her there.
March 2011
6 posts
Digital first?
Was scheduled to cover a Chicago sporting event for a major metro back East … until they realized the game would end way too late to get a story in the print edition … and decided not to commission a story at all.
Maybe their website is broken.
It's not unusual
3 tags
“He was given to fits of rage, Jewish liberal paranoia, male chauvinism,...”
– Manhattan
Hello? Is it me you're looking for?
Yes, it’s one of my periodic spasms of interest in having a Tumblr presence. Just forget all the crap I wrote before this.
December 2010
1 post
4 tags
Today’s shocking Eagles-Giants finish will be remembered first for DeSean Jackson’s game-winning touchdown, scoring on a punt return as time expired, but there was a lot more drama than that.
Herewith, a Twitter retrospective (written with 20-20 hindsight):
#Giants punt it away, leading 24-10, 13:00 left. Joe Buck says their inability to run more clock might hurt them.
Trailing...
November 2009
1 post
Movies I’ve Seen — No. 21 — Ratatouille — brad bird, pixar
“In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that in the grand scheme of things, the...
3 tags
“In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a...”
– Ratatouille
September 2009
3 posts
Come mothers and fathers throughout the land And don’t criticize what you can’t understand Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command Your old road is rapidly aging Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend a hand For the times, they are a changin’
Peter, Paul & Mary are hard to beat.
You can see it in that performance of “Early in the...
I don’t follow Virginia football as closely as I once did, so I have little idea whether Al Groh is truly “on the hot seat.” Certainly the media and fans say he is.
My feeling now and my feeling when he was hired is that UVa would need to sacrifice something too dear to be a top-notch football program. I think Groh did a fantastic job his first several years. Those nine-win...
August 2009
1 post
July 2009
1 post
1 tag
June 2009
5 posts
1 tag
1 tag
Good Lord are these Orlando Magic frustrating. At their best, they play beautiful basketball. At their worst, they make me curse the injury gods for depriving the Celtics of so many key players.
Last night down the stretch Orlando did its very best to give away Game 4 — a game that was, from their perspective, a must-win home game. Let’s review, shall we?
Up five in the closing...
1 tag
Sullivan astutely taps MLK in explaining the Fierce Urgency of Now as regards gay marriage:
“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is...
1 tag
1 tag
Hahahahahaha … sigh
“It’s a hard time to make a buck in journalism today. Circulation and ratings are down. People are getting news online for free. Our benefactors in the auto industry are going through bankruptcy. We’re praying that people will pay $359 and up for a gadget from Amazon so they can pay even more to read the publications they’re not paying for...
May 2009
7 posts
Reason No. 3,488 why I can’t stand most people who talk on television for a living …
Not two minutes into Saturday night’s Magic-Cavs game, TNT play-by-play man Marv Albert mentioned Dwight Howard’s foul trouble in recent games, sparking this exchange with broadcast partner Reggie Miller:
REGGIE: How the officials officiate Dwight Howard is going to be key in this game. He...
1 tag
Even with a black guy running the country …
Nailed it:
We are still in a “war” against a method of violence, which means there is no possible end and which means that the government can capture and imprison anyone they determine to be “the enemy” forever.
—snip
There is no such thing as a terrorist suspect who is too dangerous to be set free. They are a dime...
1 tag
Hip-hop ain’t dead cuz the pulse is in us I got the Everclear flow, they mimosa with it We are the hope of the culture, they ‘posed to listen And I’m ‘posed to pivot like I’m a forward in the league, I’m Oden with it Yet don’t owe them niggas nothing but potent lyrics But if you ain’t got the dance they revoke your spinning So good rappers ain’t eating, they Olsen twinning
Rising Up, The...
1 tag
1 tag
Mark Cuban, unsurprisingly, has some good ideas about newspapers getting you to spend in tiny increments on their websites.