Jul 24 2010
That’s me. On the left. It’s the summer after I finished kindergarten, I think, and I’m enrolled in day camp at the Jewish Community Center. For some reason, going on public access was part of the curriculum.
I look back at this video and realize that being fidgety and being distrustful of lawyers is just part of my nature.
Jun 13 2010
Once again, I’m behind on blog posts. Sorry. It’s just the way things are. Busy busy busy. But, I thought I’d share a new side project I’ve picked up: Writing blog posts for SyFy channel’s SciFiWire.com, which, of course, is a bit of a nerd dream come true.
These aren’t news pieces or even reviews, but just fun lists and format busters involving sci-fi, fantasy and horror television and film. For example, here’s the Periodic Table of The Empire Strikes Back I conceptualized for the 30th anniversary of the Star Wars sequel:
Click to enlarge.
And here’s a piece on all the reasons why I still love Total Recall, two decades after the fact. And, in honor of the monstrous BP oil spill, here’s my list of sci-fi’s greatest (and silliest) grease and petroleum monsters.
More to come, though I might not get around to blogging it. Instead, click this link to see my author page or the new widget I’ve added to the sidebar.
Other than that, well… the CityBeat gig is friggin’ awesome…but I’ll blog about that some other time.
Apr 25 2010
Lynn Morris and Will Lorimer are two of the brightest people I’ve ever worked with–and what they’re doing just makes me beam with pride. It’s a green beam, because it brings out a little bit of envy as well as my inner environmentalist.
They’re following the coast of the Atlantic—from Britain, down through Europe and Africa and back up through the Americas—in order to document the impact of rising ocean levels. It’s called Atlantic Rising and it’s an interactive educational film project.
Right now, they’re more or less half way through the trip and have decided to veer off course to document deforestation in Brazil. In order to make it happen–and ship their jeep 1,000 miles inland–they need to raise $2,000 over the next 40 days.
I’m happy to say they’ve almost collected it all and it’s only been a few days. But they still need the go over the top. Please take a moment to check out their video plea here. If you’ve got $2 to kick in, that’s plenty.
Morris (left) and Lorimer (right) are both alums of the University of Manchester’s Granada Center for Visual Anthropology–which is where I was lucky enough to meet them.
Those of you on the East Coast might have a chance to meet them too: Their map shows it won’t be too long before they start documenting the United States’ Atlantic coast.
Apr 24 2010
What’s a personal blog without a little puppy porn? In this video, Marlowe shows off her circus act, including her latest trick, jumping through hoops.
Apr 08 2010
For Emily Alpert, Voice of San Diego’s virtuoso education reporter:
You get them wrong before you meet them, while you’re anticipating meeting them; you get them wrong while you’re with them; and then you go home to tell somebody else about the meeting and you get them all wrong again … The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It’s getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That’s how we know we’re alive: we’re wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that—well, lucky you.
- Philip Roth, American Pastoral
Apr 06 2010
I admit I was worried. Now I admit I was wrong.
The world has not ended.
Before I go any further, I’ll just go ahead and issue a big, bold SPOILER ALERT. Doctor Who Season Five won’t premiere in the US until April 17, so if you’re planning on watching this on BBC America, you may want to skip this post.
I was worried about how young Matt Smith is. I worried that, as an actor, he just isn’t seasoned enough. I worried that I wouldn’t relate to a younger-looking Time Lord. I worried that the 11th Doctor would be….hormonal.
I called Smith a dough-faced tosser.
And frankly he may be all those things, but it all adds up to a Doctor I can believe in: Goofy, wild-eyed, over-confident, totally oblivious and yet wise beneath his baby-flesh face. What really sold me, though, is how head writer Steven Moffat introduced him in The Eleventh Hour.
Each incarnation of the Doctor has its own history, its own gestation, its own social development. Smith’s Doctor is barely born before he’s hurting people he cares about: Amelia Pond, a young, neglected girl just looking for someone who won’t let her down.
The Doctor crashes into her backyard, promises to help, then vanishes for 12 years, leaving Amelia to become obsessed with her “Raggedy Doctor” and undergo years of therapy for her belief in an imaginary friend. After reentering her life as an adult and saving the planet from incineration, he disappears again for two years. He returns the second time on the eve of her wedding night, a detail Amy (as she now calls herself) doesn’t disclose to the Doctor as she joins him in his T.A.R.D.I.S.
Now that is some dramatic conflict: The Doctor has no clue what devastation he’s caused to this girl and how much more he could do while trying to show her the wonders of the universe. And looking so young only compounds the tension.
Overall, the first episode was wonderfully shot and edited, with an extremely charming opening and, later, some stop-motion photographic effects to illustrate how the Doctor sees space and time (more of that I hope).
The only bones I have to pick with the episode:
- The plot revolves over-zealous prison guards who threaten to incinerate the earth if they can’t finda shape-changing fugitive alien who hides in, among other places, a hospital. This is pretty much the same exact circumstances in which the Doctor met Martha Jones. In Smith and Jones, intergalactic cops move a hospital to the moon in order to find a shape-changing fugitive; the staff and patients running out of air is reasonable collateral damage.
- Initially, the Doctor believes Amy’s a cop because of her uniform. She later explains that she’s a “Kiss-o-gram,” and also wears nun’s habits and nurse outfits. C’mon! Kiss-o-gram? Do people even do that anymore? And in a small town? I always thought that was a TV-created euphemism for a stripper. Why not just make Pond a stripper? That would be even more dramatic.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. I probably won’t be blogging every episode–but then again, maybe I will.
Mar 28 2010
The trailer makes Season 5 look incredible, though I’m not sold on Matt Smith yet. I’m waiting for the personality to burst through. So far, he just looks dopey. I keep telling myself: Have faith in Steven Moffat. If Smith sucks, he’ll only last a season or two. (Knock on T.A.R.D.I.S.)
Mar 28 2010
I don’t wade into education issues very often for three reasons: 1) I don’t have children, 2) I studied a great deal overseas and 3) I usually find the issue very boring. I also tend to find PBS quite dull, so it’s surprising that I feel strongly that this particular NewsHour segment blogworthy.
In this story (embedded below), some teachers’ unions are opposing the Race to the Top grant competition. Why? Because they don’t like the idea of rewarding teachers based on their results. Here’s the explanation that National Education Association president Dennis Van Roekel, a union leader, gave to astute newsman John Merrow:
JOHN MERROW: You defend the current system?
DENNIS VAN ROEKEL: I believe it works, yes.
JOHN MERROW: I get paid based on how many years I have been teaching and how many graduate credits I have. It has nothing to do with how my students perform?
DENNIS VAN ROEKEL: I think, depending on how you do the — the advancement on the salary schedule, there are a lot of ways to do that.
JOHN MERROW: But some teachers are better than others. They are. I mean, there’s plenty of evidence showing that some teachers actually deliver real performance gains, and some don’t. Should those teachers who deliver those performance gains make more money than the ones who don’t? It’s a yes-or-no question.
DENNIS VAN ROEKEL: Not only — not based just on that factor, no.
You kinda have to watch Van Roekel’s demeanor in the interview to get the full effect (below). This guy gives unions a bad name. The education system is about making our youth smarter, better informed and able to succeed in whatever endeavors they pursue as adults. If the union isn’t on board with that goal, then screw ‘em. The education system’s main function is not to keep teachers employed.
Here’s the video:
Mar 26 2010
Many of you know that I now have a significant other, so to speak, and that her name is Megan and that she’s a filmmaker. Those of you who don’t, well, now you do. Recently, she completed a trailer for her 1-hour-long documentary, Finding Home and uploaded it to YouTube (above). Give it a watch; she’s currently in the process of finding funding in order to host more screenings of the film and to submit it to film festivals. Here’s the synopsis (which I helped write):
“Finding Home” explores the concept of home at the beginning of the 21st century from a working woman’s Do-It-Yourself sensibility.
Megan O’Connor, the San Diego-based filmmaker, takes the viewer to the blizzards of Beatrice, Nebraska, both her hometown and the location of the Homestead National Monument, only to discover that home isn’t necessarily where you were raised. Unfortunately, it isn’t where you live at any given moment either, she learns by polling everyone from her Generation X friends to the homeless of Southern California. O’Connor’s journey unfolds while the concept of “home” takes center stage in politics, as the 2008 election reaches a crescendo and the mortgage crisis slams the nation.
A first-person film that will remind documentary fans of Ross McElwee, Finding Home universally resonates with renters, homeowners, and anyone who feels lost and lonely in contemporary society.
I really like McElwee, so it’s no surprise I really like her film (and just her in general).
Mar 22 2010
America just got the health-care bill it earned and deserved. I won’t be surprised if the media analysts come back and declare the 2009-2010 war over health-care reform the most-watched legislative battle in US history. The people protested in new, outrageous, attention-grabbing ways—and they were heard. As were the corporations, the unions, the churches. Both parties in Congress fought until they nearly broke their teeth and nails. Call it compromise or compromised, you can’t argue that the finished law, assuming it survives the legal challenges, isn’t a tempered reform.
I wish conservatives, of both parties, would seize the positive spin: They were victorious in killing the public option and getting an anti-abortion executive order out of a progressive President. That’s doing the public’s business and they should take credit for pushing and shifting the debate. Maybe one day you’ll regain the majority. We can fight the battle again and see whether you compromise less than the Democrats did and still pass the fucker.
This is an invitation to Republicans: Once the bill is a done deal, we should all work together to make the new health-care system as effective, honest and transparent as possible. We should all watchdog it, barking and biting when it strays off course. That means throwing out ideas at public hearings. That means analyzing the data and proposing fixes. That means you cease hoping it will fail and, instead, join the effort to make it work.
America needed something done. And we, America, did something. Stop calling it Obamacare. For better or worse, America owns it now. Live with it.
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