Whiteout

I've been surrounded by Katrina-related projects lately, reading Zeitoun and now a big analysis regarding post-Katrina asthma for work. So, for whatever reason, the picture of New Orleans (a city that is 2/3rds black) on the front page of the NYT this morning featuding a bunch of peppy white football bandwagoneers bugged me. 

Music for Thursday - Chuck Edition

Chuck's third season is now well underway and it continues to be hands down the most likable show on TV. I really do look forward to every episode. Anyway, the music is part of what makes the show great. Here are a couple of songs from recent episodes.

Coming Soon

5 Albums I'm really looking forward to:

1. The National (May)
2. Frightened Rabbit (March)
   
3. Broken Bells (March)
4. LCD Soundsystem (March)
5. MGMT (Spring?)

Home Cooked Meals (but not really)

Top 5 Restaurants I Miss from NC
1) Carburritos
2) Q-Shack
3) Fosters
4) Sitar India Palace
5) Chick-Fil-A

As you can see, it's not the fancy restaurants I crave; there is plenty of good quality upscale food in Santiago. It's the quick meals and the ethnic food that are lacking here. OK, I just made myself hungry. Time for breakfast.

Comments

Bloggy Housekeeping - So the site I was using for comments (Haloscan, blargh) died. I was annoyed with it anyway since ads had magically appeared in recent months, but was too lazy to do anything. Well, now I don't have much choice, and since there is no way (or at least no easy way) to import those comments to Blogger, we're going to lose all the old comments. Annoying, to be sure, but not the end of the world. Anyway, I'm going back to the standard blogger comments, which I still don't love, but are much better than it used to be. If anyone has any problems commenting, let me know.

Oh, and PS, if anyone wants to follow the comments in their RSS feed. Here is the new link.

Sherlock Holmes - 4.0

Man, what a dud this movie was --- and an unnecessary dud at that. All of the pieces were there for it to be awesome:

• The characters were good. It is freakin' Sherlock Holmes after all.  Not exactly rocket science there.
  
• The casting, for the leads at least, was perfect, and their acting was solid.
  
• The sets from early industrial London looked pretty sweet as well.

So, you tack on a good villain, a few good action scenes and bada-bing, you've got a hit, right? Wrong.

So, what went wrong? Well, the script just plain sucked. The pacing was terrible, the love interests were poorly developed and basically completely unnecessary. The villains were uniformly ho-hum. Also the best two action scenes, the rather awesome sequences where Holmes mentally previews how he is going incapacitate the guys he is fighting, took place in the first 30 minutes which made the following hour and a half of dullness even harder to bare. Oh, and them there was the worm-infested cherry on top: the two minute there-is-no-way-in-hell-you-could've-known-this-at-the-time-but-this-is-how-he-did-it wrap up at the end of the movie which just royally pissed me off.

So, yeah, my advice, save yourself 2 hours and skip the movie. Just watch this instead:


Or even better yet, watch a fight scene from Ritchie's good movie.

Good things about Chile

?

Why is freecell not preinstalled on Macs? Actually installing freecell is just too terrible to consider. It would be taking an proactive interest in my own future demise - like keeping a noose around just in case - but really, what else I am supposed to do when awake at 5:12 am?

Zeitoun

I only have a few minutes before heading down south to escape the heat of the city for a quick weekend trip, but I just wanted to recommend Zeitoun by Dave Eggers, the true story of a Muslim business owner in New Orleans during Katrina. It is one of the saddest, one of the best, and one of the most hopeful books you'll ever read. Highly recommended.

Obsenity

Of course, if Barack isn't an Andrew Shephard fan, maybe he can take some notes from Jay Billington Bulworth and go after yesterday's Supreme Court ruling using something like this:

And this:

Serious Problems

I've been thinking about this speech a lot in the wake of the the Mass. election this week.



"He's interested in 2 things and 2 things only. making you afraid of it and telling you who's to blame for it ... It's time for serious people, Bob, and your 15 minutes are up."

Amen to that. Through all of this, Obama has remained the adult in the room. At some point however, the adult has to lay down the law. Lets just hope he can be as eloquent as Andrew Shepard when he does it, hopefully, in the State of the Union next week.

Music for Thursday

Sleep Talking Man

Yes, I am jacking a link from VSL for the 2nd time this week. No, I don't care, because this dude is hilarious. His wife records stuff he says while he sleeps. Here are my 10 favorite quotes:

1. "Dogs' scrotums. They stretch."
2. "Pork chops are most satisfying. Mmmmmmm. Dangle them from the ceiling."
3. "Oompa loompas don't sing in heaven. They tidy up the clouds."
4. [yelled upon waking] "COCK HUNTER!"
5. "I haven't put on weight. Your eyes are fat."
6. "Elephant trunks should be used for elephant things only. Nothing else."
7. "Well that's just great. Peanut butter in my crack. Goddamnit."
8. "Don't leave the duck there. It's totally irresponsible. Put it on the swing, it'll have much more fun."
9. "Oh, we're going to be late for the pogo ballet, stop it!"
10. "So this is what it feels like to be a gummy bear... I can't walk though, I have to rock... I think i'll call myself BerNARD. Not BERnard. BerNARD. And I'll be a golden gummy bear."

Listless

Wednesday is supposed to be list day here on wildfiring, but I'm a little bit annoyed with politics and busy with work and apparently lists are stupid. In short, I am listless. And list-less. If anyone has a good idea for a topic, go ahead and post it in comments (or on reader) and I'll see if I can come up with something before the end of the day.

The Fantastic Mr. Fox - 6.0

This is probably my 2nd favorite Wes Anderson movie (after Rushmore), and even though I really liked the animation, I'm applying my new rewatchability rule* here and giving it a 6.0. It's basically a comedy and there is pretty much no way I would ever watch it again. Hell, it took me 3 tries to get all the way through it the first time. Maybe, it's just that I'm a not-bitter-enough old man now, but the whole too-cool-(and-depressed)-for-school attitude that pervades every one of his movies just bugs me.

*-"If there is no chance I will re-watch a comedy, action or sports movie, it can't score a 7 or higher."

Things They Keep

Today's posting from VSL links to a set of photo where down-on-their-luck people from Texas show their prized possessions. Reading through the summaries was touching and a little bit sad.

Obama's First Year

I thought I'd promote this from google reader (and the reader sidebar on the blog) before I went to bed. Andrew Sullivan's take on Obama's first year is spot on* and well worth a quick read. 

* - Sullivan is a Brit, thus the term is legal.

Golden Globe Predictions

Because it's more fun than cleaning -- My Golden Globe predictions after the jump. Feel free to post your in comments and see if you can beat me.

"Do situps until you start crying"

This article in the NY Times about when to eat and drink for excercise was ok. My summary: "eat something small before you work out, drink during any exercise longer than an hour." That article was followed by 20 boring agreeable comments and then this, which made me laugh:

I eat when I’m hungry. I drink when I’m thirsty. I eat healthy food, and don’t bother dividing things into carbs, noncarbs etc. I exercise strenuously with both cardiovascular and strength training elements seven days a week, 365 days a year. I rarely cramp and have never been seriously injured.

With all due respect to Leslie Bonci and her peers, this “science” they’re marketing is only being bought because weak people can’t face the fact that there is only one way to achieve strength: pain. Muscle burning, lung ripping pain. You want a six pack? Do 5000 sit ups. Do sit ups until you start crying. You want to be fast? Run. Run until you feel like you’re going to puke. Do these things once a day, every single day, and within a year you will be what you want to be.

Sipping versus glupping. My God, you people are a joke.

All I know is that, if he isn't already, this guy most definitely has a future as either a) a personal trainer or b) a drill seargent.

Kimmeled

I don't really watch any of the late night shows, but the drama Leno-Conan drama has made for some amusing YouTube browsing, if nothing else. While not quite reaching Madonna on Letterman levels of awkwardness, Jimmy Kimmel's appearance on Leno last night was both surprising and impressive in its brutality.

Remixed

OK, girlie music is for the morning. By the end of the work day, I need this:



Jaydiohead - "Dirt off Your Android" and "Song and Cry"

I have no idea why these don't have 467 gabazillion views on youtube. Anyway, Jaydiohead is G-R-E-A-T running music. Oh and it's free! So good, go forth and download.

Music for Thursday

I generally tend to like guy singers, but today, I think we're going to go with the ladies:



I just listened to the new St. Vincent album from last year and liked it a lot.

Top 10+1 TV Shows from 2009

Here's a ranking of the 11 shows I watched regularly last year

1. Mad Men - The wild swings in pacing and style are a bit much at times, but the quality is never effected. It's still the best around.
2. Battlestar Galactica - Also uneven (like always), but the high points in the last season (the coup especially) were spectacular.
   
3. Chuck - Not at all uneven. Every episode of Chuck is a pleasure.
   
4. Lost - The last season was generally really good, but it has gone pretty deep in to science fiction land and has given up whatever small amount of accessibility it had in the process. Of course, I'm a dork, so I'm ok with that.
5. 30 Rock - Enter the sitcoms ... 30 Rock is the show I watch first every Friday and, therefore, the very likely the best comedy around.  
6. Party Down - I watched the entire run of this show in an afternoon last spring or it might be ranked higher. There are only ten (uniformly hilarious) 30 minute episodes. There is no reason you shouldn't have watched every one of them by this time tomorrow.
7. Modern Family - Best new fall '09 show by an increasingly wide margin.
   
8. The Office -  Everyone used to talk about feeling like they knew the characters in Cheers, so they kept watching even as the show started to suck in the last few years. Well, the Office doesn't suck, but I'm definitely watching more for the characters than for an overwhelming number of laughs at this point.
   
9. How I Met Your Mother - Wildly inconsistent. I love 2 of the cast members (NPH and Jason Segel) and hate all the rest, but the occasional brilliance is enough to keep me coming back.
   
10. Community - An amusing 30 minute pop-culture blast.
    
11. Damages - The second season was actually pretty dismal, imho. Not sure if we'll watch season 3 or not.
    

Where The Wild Things Are - 6.0

Last review of the day, so factoid bullet review-time:

• This movie could never live up to its preview. 
• I watched this today just after dealing with the aftermath of a stolen wallet. grr.
• It took me 15 minutes or so to realize the monster was voiced by James Gandolfini ...
• ... after which I could only think of Tony Soprano when he spoke.
• It was distracting.
  
• I don't think I've ever read the book (Dad?). So minimal sentimentality for me.
  
• I liked the way his imagination (scary) matched his personality (pissed), but ...
  
• ... I was surprised by how dark the tone was.
  
• The puppet monster dudes looked neat. 
  
• It took me 3 sittings to finish the movie.
• The first sitting gave Alexa one of her freaky shaky camera headaches.
  
• Wins the "movie most likely freak your kids the fuck out" superlative. 
• I cried watching The Sword in the Stone at the theater when I was like 5. We left early.
• I've got mixed feelings, but I don't think I'd re-watch WTWTA.
• Still, it's a unique movie that some people would probably really like ...
• ... it just didn't quite work for me for whatever reason.
  

Man on Wire - 7.0

I find writing about documentaries to be nearly impossible for a few reasons:

1. I generally only watch them if they get really good reviews. 
2. I can't criticize a plot that has actually happened. (Otherwise Man On Wire would be borderline unbelievable).
   
3. They are generally equal parts education and entertainment. It's like reviewing a text book or an instruction manual or something. 

Anyway, that is just a preface to say that a) Man on Wire was a pretty good documentary (duh), but not so good that I would re-watch it, and b) this review is going to be boring and, mercifully, short.

Big Fan - 4.0

Big Fan was sitting near the top of my unseen 2009 movie list for months, but in retrospect, my enthusiasm was misplaced. Comedian Patton Oswalt plays a thoroughly un-funny NY Giants fan who gets beaten down by his favorite player - not to mention everyone else in his life - and then only has his life get worse from there. I guess the movie is supposed to be a commentary on the overzealous fans in today's world, but I just found it depressing. Even if guys like Oswalt's character exist, they aren't interesting enough to carry a movie. Also, while the twisty ending was definitely tense, it was also a tad manipulative. Boo.

This, by the way, was the third not-very-sporty sports movie I've watched that the Bill Simmons recommended in a recent column. He suggested Big Fan, Sugar, which was good, and The Damned United, which was kind of "meh", as alternatives to Blind Side and Invictus. I haven't seen Invictus, but in my book, Sugar is the only one of the three that approached Blind Side as drama, and none were all that close when it came to the actual depiction of the sport being played. While detailed character profiles of forgotten athletes (Sugar), coaches (Damned) and fans (Big Fan) are well and good, I also come in to a quote-unquote sports movie hoping to see the sport being played. I love the training scenes, the throw-away game footage and talking on the field and in the locker room, and all three of Simmons' picks largely ignored those aspect of the game.

Christmas Pics

Since posting was light today, here are a few pictures from over Christmas:

Christmas with the Wildfire/Bres Clan

Merry Christmas from Nala

Charlie is dreamy

New Logo

Check out my new logo.

Now, anyone know what it is?

Links

A few links for your Sunday evening:

• Nil By Mouth - I am honestly convinced that Ebert is owed a National Book award (or at least a Pulitzer) for his blog this year.
• I find this and this to be equal and opposite in their remarkability.
• Spiffy Posters.
  

True Blood - 2.0

Alexa and I are two episodes in to True Blood (the HBO vampire-porn), and wow, is it bad. Now, please don't think I have anything against Vampire porn. I'm all for it, if done well; I even kind of sort of liked the Twilight movie, but this ... this is no Twilight, and that is certainly saying something. So, the acting is bad -- really bad, and the dialogue is even worse, which is especially surprising considering Alan Ball, whose 6 Feet Under had some of the best, most intelligent dialogue of any show ever, is the creator. The plot line thus far is close to nonexistent (Summary: "So there is this Vampire ...) and the cliff hangers (especially for the 2nd episode) are comically ridiculous/violent, as is randomly injected sex appeal. The only thing more absurd than the Vampire sex is Sookie's wardrobe. I think the two pictures I've posted capture the essence of the show fairly well. If that looks appealing to you, well, by all means watch True Blood.

Not to be totally negative, I love the name Sookie. Sookie Stackhouse. Great name. Also, the world where this terrible show is taking place is kind of cool. Vampires have come out of hiding to live amongst humans, and are demanding equal rights. So far, all they've really been able to do with that idea it is this:

Person 1 (in a very cajun accent): "Vampires?! I hate Vampires!"
Sookie (In booty shorts and a pink polka dot halter top with a camouflage vest over it.): "But Vampires are people too!"
Person 1: "uh ..."

Besides the funny name (Hah, Sookie) and the cool premise that they are wasting, this show is bunk. It is surprisingly and thoroughly bad, and it's made even worse by the fact that it is on HBO and each episode is full hour long. Anyway, Alexa kind of liked the 2nd episode, so we might keep going. I'll report back if I change my mind.

Frightened Rabbit

So good ...



Their other new song is awesome too. The new album can't get here soon enough.

Music for Thursday

Here are 2 Dance-y songs that I'd never heard in the states, but are played quite a lot in Chile. The first is in English, the second Spanish/R2D2.


The Gossip: Listen Up! (MSTRKRFT Remix)


El Sonidito - Can be a little grating, but in a group this puppy is the Chilean equivalent to House of Pain.

As a footnote, Santiago has the best radio station I've ever lived near. I bought a radio just for this station. It has web streaming and is well worth checking out.

Top 10 Albums of 2009

Man, what a ho-hum year for music. I very nearly named this list my "10 least not favorite albums of 2009". Anyway, here it is, 3 albums I really liked and 7 more that range from pretty good to just ok.

1. Avett Brothers - I and Love and You
2. Passion Pit - Manners
3. Sunset Rubdown - Dragonslayer
4. Discovery - EP
   
5. Thermals - Now We Can See
6. Florence and the Machine - Lungs
7. Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
8. Girls - Album
9. Andrew Bird - Noble Beast
10. Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
    

An Education - 8.0 (And Others)

OK, it's time for some quick hits after my longish Up In The Air write-up. By the way, check out the comments on that post for a really nice best actor of the decade analysis by Ben. Without further ado:

An Education - 8.0 - A movie that is just chock full of great characters and even better acting. I didn't really like the ending much, but when every single one of the performances in a movie is this good I can forgive an off-key scene or two. Hell, the acting was so good that I didn't see the (painfully obvious in retrospect) twist coming. This would be a top 5 caliber movie in most years, this year it's currently sitting at #6, which is a testament to the strength of 2009.

Sugar - 7.5 -  New rule, if there is no chance I will re-watch a comedy, action or sports movie, it can't score a 7 or higher on my scale (I consider a 7 very good). This rule doesn't apply to dramas and documentaries since they can be too depressing to re-watch even when they are awesome (Precious is a good recent example). Now, Sugar. I'm immediately bending my just-created rule and giving it over a 7 even though I would never re-watch it, because, even though there is a sports facade here, this is really a drama pure and simple, and a pretty sad one at that. It's got more in common with Ramin Bahrani's work (Man Push Cart, Chop Shop) than any sports movie I've ever seen. Recommended.

The Invention of Lying - 5.5 - Ricky Gervais comedy that is amusing enough, but rarely laugh out loud funny. It's telling that a drowsy Alexa took a nap for the 2nd hour instead of finishing the movie (Note that she stayed up to finish An Education, which we started after midnight). I liked Ghost Town (Gervais' movie from last year) more.

The Damned United - 5.0 - Freakin' awesome title for a somewhat underwhelming sports movie (this one actually is a sports movie, btw). The acting was good with Frost (from Frost/Nixon) and Wormtail (from Harry Potter) as the leads, but the pacing was off and the 1970s English bromance at the center of the story was, well ... weird.

Up In The Air - 8.5

So, yeah, Up In The Air is pretty much good as everyone says it is. It's a lock for a boatload of Oscar nominations. I'd say Clooney is a major favorite to win his second Oscar and first as a lead in a weak year for the category, and I wouldn't be at all surprised or disappointed if it won Best Picture as well. It's probably my second or third favorite movie of the year. Funny, timely, a little bit sad, little bit poignant, great ending yadda yadda yadda. Move along. No surprises. Nothing to see here.

What is more surprising is what an impressive actor George Clooney has become. With this performance, I think he edges past Leonardo DiCaprio as the best actor of the 2000s. In fact, since there isn't much more to say about Up in the Air (again, it's great), let's compare Leo and George* head to head, Sports Guy style:

Classic Performances: It's 2 to 2 here. Clooney has Up in the Air and Michael Clayton while Leo has The Departed and The Aviator. Honestly this is damn near a push. I think Clooney's movies are a bit better and he didn't have Scorcese directing him, but the degree of difficulty was so high for Leo in the Aviator that you have to give him an edge here.
Slight Edge: Leo

Other Movies: Clooney had 3 great performances (Syriana, Good Night and Good Luck, Oh, Brother) and 4 decent blockbusters (Oceans movies, the Perfect Storm). Leo had 1 great  (Gangs of New York) and two good (Blood Diamond, Catch Me if You Can) perfomances, plus one well-recieved perfomance in a bad movie (Revolutionary Road). It's Clooney by a mile here.
Big Edge: Clooney.

Film Selection: Clooney seems to pick scripts, while Leo picks directors. I'd say the picking scripts is harder. However, Clooney's been in 2 or 3 bad movies (Leatherheads, Solaris, Oceans 12/13) while Leo has only been in 1 (The Beach), so I'll call it a push. 
Edge: Tie.

Previous Work: ER and 3 Kings vs.  Titanic. Uhm, yeah.
Big Edge: Leo.

Superstar Status: I don't really follow this much, but my uninformed opinion is that Clooney is the new Carey Grant. Smooth as hell and only getting better with age. A true down-to-earth superstar. Leo seems nice enough, but is a tad reclusive.
Edge: Clooney

Final Verdict: Honestly, I think Leo has more upside. He's more likely to turn in a Daniel Day Lewis-esque** performance down the road (Hell, he already did in The Aviator), but that doesn't change the fact that Clooney has been in more good movies in the 2000s. Hell, I'm as surprised as anyone, but:
Edge: George Clooney.


* - For the record, I would probably put Sean Penn (Milk and Mystic River) a fairly distant 3rd, and I have no idea who would come after that. Pitt peaked in the mid-90s (Se7en, Fight Club, 12 Monkeys, Sleepers and Snatch in 2000) and might have an argument in a 15-year time frame I haven't seen a lot of Phillip Seymore Hoffman's latest stuff. Russell Crowe has obviously fallen off the map, but I would've put him up there with Penn if The Insider were made in 2000 instead of 1999. Johnny Depp is good, but can't match up in the "great movie" category.

** - Speaking of DDL, he is probably the most talented actor alive, but doesn't make enough movies to be considered here.

New Years 2010

Pictures from our New Years Trip to Elqui.

(Full Set on Flickr or Facebook)

Resolving

My 2010 New Years resolutions:

1. Read - 2 Books a month. Third try is a charm.
2. Run - 2 marathons this year. I've started training for Santiago on April 11th and then something in the states in the fall. If anyone is interested in joining me for either, let me know.
   
3. Write - On the blog. Every week day, as follows:
   Monday - Pictures
   Tuesday - Reviews
   Wednesday - List
   Thursday - Music
   Friday - Misc
   

Resolved

Time to check in on last year's New Year Resolutions before posting my new ones for 2010.

Resolution #1: Read 2 books a month

I almost freaking made it, but Bill Simmons' damn 4000 page basketball encyclopedia screwed me over. In the end, I read 22.5 books, up from about 13 last year. I'll leave the complete list in the sidebar for a while, but here's a list of my five favorite books I read this year. I strongly recommend all of them.

1. Born To Run - Absolutely fascinating. I've literally told dozens of people about this book since I finished it a few months ago. An absolute must read if you run at all, and highly recommended for everyone. 
2. The Name of the Wind - A fairly simple coming of age story, but the writing was so sharp that it was far and away the best of the 7 fantasy/sci-fi books I read this year. In fact, it was the only fiction that I'm putting in the top 5, which is weird since until this year, I've barely read any non-fiction at all. I'm eagerly awaiting the sequel. 
3. The Lost City of Z -The compelling story of an Amazonian explorer and the cult following he inspired. One of the first non-fiction books that I had trouble putting down. One of several good recommendations from Compton.
   
4. Blood Done Sign My Name -  The pacing was a little slow for me, but the story is undeniably powerful and hard to forget. Nate's favorite book, and another good rec.
5. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind - The story of an African teenager who completely changed his family's life by building a windmill in his yard. It made my recent trip home to Chile feel like the quickest I've ever had. 

Final Grade: I'll give myself an B on this one (I should've sucked it up and finished), up from a D in 2008.

Resolution #2: Do Some Push-ups Every Day. 

I did pretty well on this one for about 10 months, then I got tired of it, did one a day for a month and finally gave up for good in early December. Still, I did lots of push-ups. In fact, I'm a dork; here's a figure (sorry about the ugliness, it's late and I don't feel like messing with it much):

I kept track in a spreadsheet through August (the blue line) and then got slack and stopped (the pink line - which I estimated just now). So, I did 22.8 pushups per day for the year (median = 26) for a grand total of 8326 push-ups.

Final Grade: C+. Not bad considering I am terrible about sticking with routines, not great considering how close I was to making it before getting tied up in traveling towards the end of the year.

Tomorrow, my 3 resolutions for 2010.