Okay, coming up for air.

Okay, coming up for air. I think this is the longest I’ve gone between entries. New things coming. New layout. New search functionality. Hopefully, new page navigation.

For those of you waiting for me to carve my name into the moon with a “laser” I was foiled by those meddling kids. Yeah the moon escaped my wrath, THIS TIME.

Go vote at the Anti-Bloggies. You can nominate me for MOST LIKELY TO NEVER POST.

Leia sent me this great

Leia sent me this great link to Cinema Treasures. It’s sort of an online graveyard of movie theaters. It saddens me to think of all these buildings decaying and vanishing. Movies, and a little war, got America through the depression. These theaters have done more to promote social capital and good will than any other building I can think of at the moment.

They are missing about 400 pictures for the US theaters they have listed. I see an extended road trip in my future.

I feel like I've found

I feel like I’ve found a piece of the puzzle that I’ve been missing. This article from John Hasnas about the Myth of the Rule of Law (link via jim) has answered some questions I didn’t even realize I wondered about.

He discusses how the law as it is implemented is subject to the biases of the people who practice it. (This ain’t exactly news, but people have this belief that the law is impartial) He says that law exists for order and justice, and these two goals can be opposed. What he proposes is quite radical, a free market for law. He is reticent to say how it would work but points out how housing communities have their own laws, workers have collective bargaining agreements, and so forth that are outside traditional law. He actually uses a clever allegory about shoes to illustrate his point.

Robert Putnam wrote a cool

Robert Putnam wrote a cool book called Bowling Alone about declines in civic participation in America and has brought his keen observations to post 9/11 America. He has an article in American Prospect called Bowling Together that examines the impact 9/11 has had on civic participation.

In fact, in the wake of the terrorist attacks, more Americans reported having cooperated with their neighbors to resolve common problems. Fewer of us feel completely isolated socially, in the sense of having no one to turn to in a personal crisis. At the same time, we are now less likely to have friends over to visit. Television viewing increased from about 2.9 hours to 3.4 hours a day. In that sense, whether because of fear or because of the recession, Americans are cocooning more now than a year ago. The study that Robert Putnam writes about was conducted by the Saguaro Seminar. They have a press release about the study which includes another table that the Prospect article does not which examines changes by age.

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She was cutting my hair

She was cutting my hair and she asked me, “Why are you so quiet?”

I foolishly tried to assert my brooding silence as deep wisdom and said “I’m thinking, always thinking. I’m just wondering what the point of it all is. I get up, go to work, go to lunch, go to work, go home, see friends, go to sleep, repeat. What do you want to do with your life?”

We know your rental taste

We know your rental taste runs to screwball comedies and spoofs where the action is wild, woolly and wacky. So, why not check out Evolution – it’s a raucous laugh-riot that’ll have you rolling on the floor!

Netflix sent me that this morning. If these were colonial times I’d be all about a pistol duel right now. An email was deployed to them asking them not to shill for movie studio marketing anymore and to get their shit together and stop passing off soft-core porn as Foreign film.

Guilty Plea You ever feel

Guilty Plea

You ever feel like the majority of weblogs are a sycophant’s wet dream? So many people talking at each other. Like some twisted derivation of the Conservation movement, people’s thoughts and words are recycled over and over. Nobody has anything new to say. That’s not necessarily so bad, but they don’t care. No discovery. No exploration. Is it that we have so many bytes of storage and they simply must be used for something? What’s the point?

Discuss Mulholland Drive and Sundance

Discuss Mulholland Drive and Sundance and other independent film topics with Chris Vognar, independent film reporter and columnist for the Dallas Morning News tonight at Roundtable@the Angelika.

Angelika Film Center lower level lobby, at 7:30 p.m..

After the meeting, be our guest for the 9:30 showing of Guillermo Del Toro’s ‘The Devil’s Backbone’.

Woohoo! Free screening of The Devil’s Backbone. I’ve been wanting to see that. I was never a big fan of Del Toro’s Mexican vampire movie Chronos and I was incredibly let down by Mimic, but I’m hoping this is the one. The trailer kicks ass. You know you want to be there.

I was reading an article

I was reading an article about the Popes feelings on the Internet and came across this juicy morsel:

Although the Pope does not have an e-mail address, the Vatican has an active 
Web site (www.vatican.va) and the Church is reportedly searching for a 
patron saint of Internet users.

The vending machine just delivered

The vending machine just delivered my change with so much gusto it squirted out the change chute and onto the floor. I love it when that happens.