Monthly Archive for October, 2002

Sing-Sing at TT’s

We went to TT’s last night to see Sing-​Sing, the new band of Emma Ander­son from Lush.

In all, I have to say it was just OK, due mostly to my own per­sonal tastes. I was a fan of Lush, and most of the other guitar-​based british bands of 10 years ago, so I guess the pri­mary dif­fer­ence here was that it wasn’t guitar-​based at all. Sure, Emma was play­ing guitar, and they had a key­boardist who also played trum­pet, how­ever the bulk of the sonic stuff came from a little iBook sit­ting next to the singer Lisa.

I’m not clear on who wrote the songs, or who even recorded all of that dig­i­tal stuff, but I got the impres­sion that Emma has done the 4-piece guitar thing, and wanted to try some­thing else. It didn’t help that she had a cold, and sniffed her way through the night.

For Lisa’s part, she’s not nec­es­sar­ily my cuppa tea. She posed at the mic stand, look­ing upward with an angu­lar jaw line, as if she was expect­ing to be hit in the face with a sweet breeze. I give her credit for her singing – it was part Chanteuse, and part sexy vamp, but hon­estly – this is TT’s! In Cambridge!

And only few of the usual brit­mop kids showed up – it was mostly 30-somethings who look like they sell insur­ance or teach school. One group of guys looked like they were going to a Bruins game, in their T-shirts and back­ward Sam Adams caps. The girl with them had a DMB (Dave Matthew Band) t-shirt on, which is com­pletely inex­plic­a­ble as to how she found her­self at this show.

So, I guess I give high marks for orig­i­nal­ity and for the nerve to attempt a “big” show, even at a place like TTs. Loved the drummer… he looked like he was enjoy­ing him­self thouroughly, and that eased the cough­ing scowl that was on Emma’s face a bit.

You can’t sit around and whine about the past, so good luck Sing-​Sing.

October 30, 2002 » Tags: . » Closed

Sleep, Interrupted…

So the past week as been hor­ri­bly spent, in the form of all-​nighters, work­ing on my new port­fo­lio site and resume. I really need a job like I need a money tree.

The new iden­tity, web­site and resume are pretty cool, I have to admit… espe­cially the busi­ness cards and letterhead… I wish I could link it here, but I want to always keep work and play seper­ate. Those of you who know me, prob­a­bly know where to look… if you don’t know me and you’re inter­ested in hiring me, christ man! email me.

The cool thing about the resume is that I ditched the MS Word tem­plate, (Gara­mound type, silly columns, hollow bul­lets, tra­di­tional kind of shit), and crafted a modern, clean ver­sion that uses some blue color and one of my favorite type­faces, Bliss.

I’m not much for fin-de-si?cle (that’s the 20th cen­tury, folks), fonts – Fleet Bank uses Rotis, which is such a fuck­ing bad piece of type from the early 90s. I know this because I used it on a cor­po­rate iden­tity in 2000… (of course the client was happy with it).

Anyone else have favorite fonts? Please don’t say Arial…

October 23, 2002 » Tags: , . » 2 Comments

Chess, anyone?

I like play­ing chess just fine, but I haven’t been at all inter­ested in the computer-​human matches of recent years. Some­how the idea of a com­puter beat­ing a human being at chess seemed less than shock­ing to me…

But, one inter­est­ing devel­op­ment is this report that in the recent Deep Fritz / Kram­nik match, Deep Fritz was pro­grammed to heckle Kram­nik with rel­e­vant Shake­spearean quotes. The funny thing is it’s really funny to read what the com­puter said.

October 19, 2002 » Tags: . » Closed

They’ve Got Mail

Someone is start­ing a cam­paign to col­lect and return a mil­lion of those annoy­ing AOL CDs that they send to you in the mail. They claim that they’re going to drive accross the coun­try, and stage a media event at AOL head­quar­ters in No. VA, where they will dump the cds.

I think i’m going to start a collection.

October 18, 2002 » Tags: . » 1 Comment

Who is Modi? Followup…



I just check my refer­rer logs for this Web site, and noticed that my site was one of the top refer­ring sites for the Albright Knox Art Gallery‘s Modigliani exhi­bi­tion (read about it here).

· week one
· week two
· week three

in the second week, I gave them 743 hits, beat­ing out the amount they got from the Buf­falo News, (65 hits).

Now, if only I could go there and see the show. Then I’ll offer a review.

October 18, 2002 » Tags: . » 1 Comment

Punch Drunk Love


Review: A+

This film is being sold in trail­ers as show­ing a rad­i­cally dif­fer­ent Adam San­dler… I believe Roger Ebert said that he couldn’t look at an Adam San­dler movie the same way after this.

Well, I don’t think it’s a totally new char­ac­ter for San­dler, but I agree that Punch Drunk Love both refines and expands on the funny nice-​guy he’s played in the past, while offer­ing a new tar­nished dimension.

Sandler’s char­ac­ter, Barry Egan, is a shy, slightly obsessive-​compulsive, easily-​spooked busi­ness owner, with 7 annoy­ing passive-​aggressive sis­ters who con­stantly pepper him with insults and drive him to vio­lent “freak-outs”, we are told, since child­hood. He’s def­i­nitely got avoidant issues.

Anyway, Barry sells whole­sale bath­room sup­plies out of a ware­house in the Valley east of Los Ange­les, and spends a lot of his time think­ing about how to turn Healthy Choice pud­ding into thou­sands of frequent-​flier miles. Stay with me! It’s odd, yes…

As the story con­tin­ues, one of the sis­ters intro­duces Barry to a friend of hers, played by Emily Watson, and a very strange romance ensues.

I’m not go any­more into the plot or story, so if you’re inclined to learn more, check out A.O Scott’s review in the Times.

What I’m inter­ested is this thrown-​about idea that this is a totally new Adam San­dler – I don’t think it is. Barry’s life, from the begin­ning, is one of strange unease. San­dler is quite good at com­mu­ni­cat­ing the dread of social and pro­fes­sional rela­tion­ships in Barry’s life, and that feel­ing is under­scored by a creep­ing cin­e­matog­ra­phy and beau­ti­fully dis­ori­ent­ing sound design. You get the sense that his co-​workers don’t know quite what to make of him, and his sis­ters and brother-in-laws are fre­quently vio­lat­ing his pri­vacy, dig­nity and confidence.

Again and again, Barry is pushed so far that he schiz­o­phreni­cally explodes from his usual shy with­drawal, to vio­lent out­bursts – just the kind of bipo­lar out­bursts that San­dler employed in his less-than-intelligent out­ings (Billy Madi­son, Happy Gilmore, the Wed­ding Singer… kind of inter­change­able, no?).

Punch Drunk Love’s hero is the same kind of lik­able nice-​guy the girls can feel good about, yet the slap­stick vio­lence usu­ally found in his movies is far more psy­chi­cally charged here, and in the end I’m not left won­der­ing Isn’t Adam San­dler an odd choice for that role?… he’s perfect.

Emily Watson plays Lena, the adorable woman who, for some unknown reason, falls in love with Barry. Lena is inter­est­ing as well, because she too vac­il­lates in a slight schiz­o­phrenic manner from a shy sweet­heart, into a woman who aggres­sively goes after the man she wants. Unfor­tu­nately, she is one of the less devel­oped char­ac­ters – I really don’t under­stand why she wanted to meet Barry in the first place. Lone­li­ness? But Watson is amaz­ing on screen.

There is a tor­tured and sen­ti­men­tal nature to Barry, but San­dler and P.T. Ander­son never make it seem con­trived or false – have you seen Robin Williams or Chris Rock in dra­matic roles? I mean, seriously.

Simply put, this is a very good film.

October 18, 2002 » Tags: . » Closed

Updates 10/17/2002

I refreshed this rel­a­tively new site, because I haven’t liked it much… seemed a little dorky… Not that I’m not a dork, cos I am, but I mean the kind of dorky you don’t want to even look at.

So, gone are the long hor­i­zon­tal images of free­ways and pedes­trian crowds — and wel­come back yours truly. I’ll be adding some more pics for your ran­dom­iz­ing pleasure.

I also added little icons for each of the topic head­ings, (fea­tures, movies, etc.) Not sure if I like them.

Finally, a new Iden­tity! Those are sup­posed to be fish. Read into them as you will. Katya likes to eat fish… maybe that has some­thing to do with it.

October 17, 2002 » Tags: , . » 1 Comment

Relevance

It seems pretty funny having this site, these days. Nobody seems to stop by any­more. Granted, I haven’t been post­ing all that much…

So, here’s an update:

  • An old friend IM’ed me today- a friend from col­lege that i haven’t seen in a year-&-a-half, when we stopped talk­ing. Not sure if I should reach out, or rebuff…
  • My unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits have exhausted themselves.
  • I have a cold. Fuck­ing Pres­ley definetely gave it to me.
  • We are host­ing a little Suck­ahs reunion this week­end, here at our new digs, in Cam­bridge. AND, Albany Dan was fool­ish enough to buy MacyMe a plane ticket from Indi­ana, so she could attend. Can’t wait to see them, 666, and maybe EvilMonkey???

So that’s the shit.

October 7, 2002 » Tags: . » 2 Comments

Red Dragon

Quick review: B+

Red Dragon is enjoy­able, even though Anthony Hopkins’ per­for­mance is ridicu­lously irrel­e­vant and even caricatured.

Edward Norton, Emily Watson and Ralph Fiennes all turn in their usual excel­lent per­for­mances. Watson shines as a blind love-​interest for the crazy serial killer, creep­ily played by Ralph Fiennes, who shows off his uncut member on film for the thou­sandth time…

Norton does the laid-​back inten­sity thing so well – whereas fear almost seethed from Jodie Foster in her encoun­ters with Han­ni­bal, Norton looks almost bored by the old man.

And who wouldn’t be by now? Hop­kins him­self seems to be phon­ing in per­for­mances recently – he’s plainly awful in this past summer’s bomb Bad Com­pany, where even Chris Rock couldn’t keep me from want­ing to BOOOO.

Maybe they should let some­one else play Hannibal?

October 7, 2002 » Tags: . » Closed

Who is Modi?


The Albright Knox is begin­ning a new exhi­bi­tion on the Ital­ian artist Amedeo Modigliani, one of the painters at Montparnasse… His con­tem­po­raries there included Picasso and Diego Rivera.

Inter­est­ing stuff. Check it out. Here is the text from the Exhi­bi­tion:

The Albright-​Knox Art Gallery has orga­nized this major exhi­bi­tion, gath­er­ing mas­ter­works from world-​renowned muse­ums and col­lec­tions through­out North Amer­ica, Europe, and Japan. Fifty-​six of Modigliani’s paint­ings, sculp­tures, and works on paper are fea­tured, includ­ing impor­tant works from the Albright-​Knox Art gallery’s dis­tin­guished col­lec­tion. The exhi­bi­tion is accom­pa­nied by a schol­arly 240-page cat­a­logue illus­trated with eighty-​seven plates in full color and 102 in duo­tone, pub­lished by Harry N. Abrams, Inc. in asso­ci­a­tion with the Albright-​Knox Art Gallery.

October 5, 2002 » Tags: . » Closed