The Streets Get Empty And The Sun Goes Down

7th Avenue Film Series #9

I Lied: Your Summer BBQ Playlist Needs Room For One More Song

Your Summer BBQ Mix Is Now Complete

A Good Song For Summer Gloamings

Six Degrees Of (Creepy) Terror

In bed, Chiara relates to me the content of one of her many nightmares, this one from last night:

"I was in a strange old hospital; one of those creepy ones where bad things happen. Keven Bacon was there.

We were in this room and a creepy old man came in, a cripple of some kind. He made us uncomfortable, so we went to my room in the hospital. Kevin Bacon said he had to give me an injection, but he was acting very strange. He didn't really look like himself and he was creepy.

I told him that I didn't know if I could trust him and he just smiled. He stuck me with a needle in the side and it hurt, but it wasn't too bad. I told Kevin Bacon that it hadn't been so bad.

Then he stuck me with a bigger, longer needle and it HURT.

Then I woke up."

"Kevin Bacon was in your nightmare hospital?" I asked, laughing.

"Weird, huh?"

"I don't know. Not really. That guy is in everything."

The 60s. Stewardesses. Washed Out. (I Believe I've Made My Point)

The Light At the End Of The Booktunnel

These Wheel Of Time books by Robert Jordan (and now by Brandon Sanderson) have caused me more bookshelf grief than any other books I own. I mean, there are thirteen of them now and they just dominate two whole shelves in my library and when I look at them, I feel ashamed and annoyed.

Thirteen (and there will be a fourteenth next year) is far too many books to tell one story. No story needs fourteen books to tell. Not one. It's narratological laziness to so steadfastly refuse to wrap up like that. And something like six of these thirteen books have almost nothing at all happening of import. I have a kind of Stockholm Syndrome for these books, I think. Because I sort of hate them, but I just keep chugging along.

I'm pot committed.

And, when the series' author, Robert Jordan, died before finishing the story that was just perfect; I can't imagine how I expected any other outcome.

Now the good news is that Jordan's replacement, working from his notes, Brandon Sanderson, is clearly motivated to actually wrap it up. It can be almost maddening, the alacrity with which he wraps up the thousands of plot threads, actually, but it is welcome. Mostly, we are left to wonder why these plot threads existed in the first place if they could be so easily tied off. Still, after a half dozen books of noodling, it is deeply satisfying to smell a conclusion, no matter how rushed it ironically feels.

The bad news is that Sanderson, though a writer of obvious ability and prolificacy, is not the writer that Jordan was, nor does he have the grasp of character through dialogue that Jordan did. Sanderson frequently suffers from the amateur's insistence of making characters speak in too many words and explain themselves too thoroughly and, worse, he makes them all sound alike, shuffling off the subtleties of characters we had waaaaay too many books to get to know and replacing them with caricatures of those characters.

I dunno. This series has become like a failed relationship to me. You keep on chugging along because the memories of the good times and of your hope for the success of it burn brightly in your imagination, but the truth is that you are just waiting for the holidays to be over so you can break it off for good. I'll be glad when the last book is out and read and I'll hate the way it looms from my shelf with its thirteen brothers.

Oh, that said, I love those Aelfinn and Eelfinn. Those guys are the best, right? Why didn't that bit take up as much time as the four hundred chapters about Perrin being unsure of himself and the provisioning of an army. Yikes!

An Apotropaic Against Failure (And Wednesdays)

PSA: A Danger Of Daydrinking

An Apotropaic Against Mondays

All Hail The Summerdress!

Part The First.

Part The Second.

At Least We Have These Understudies (Sigh)

Amy Winehouese, R.I.P.

I guess if I had been asked to lay bets on which too young talent was going to die from living too hard, I'd have been pretty likely to choose her, but it's still lame she died.

I really like Frank and I really like Back To Black; they're great albums of neo-soul. I would have liked to have another one. Sigh.

It's A Mad House! A Mad House!

My Favorite Song About Abusive Relationships

This World Famous Mullet Would Like Your Attention For Four Minutes Or So

For Dan, Who Is Moving To Japan

What's Better Than Watching Some Guy's Fingers For Three Minutes?

A proper video, that's what.

Oh, and also, you have a dirty mind.

Whales, Speedos Saved

Road Trip! (Followed By Breaking And Entering And Living The Rest Of Our Lives There Trip!)

You guys, the Tenenbaum's brownstone!

Bruce Springsteen + The Sensational Soul Cruisers + Eddie Floyd + The Memory Of Clarence Clemons = Sublime

Lens Flares : Pretty Girl : Motorcycle : This Song : Sex In Summer

Marriage, Airwolf, Scott Bakula

Last night, at three in the morning, as Chiara and I were getting to sleep, we reminisced about television shows from the 80s. We discovered that we missed Quantum Leap desperately and could, neither of us, understand how they had a plot every week on Webster or Alice. We both definitively agreed that Airwolf was the stupidest show ever. A super helicopter? a helicopter?

This, for us, was a sort of impromptu renewal of our vows.

This Duckling Is Obviously Not A Republican

7th Avenue Film Series #8

Carl Sagan, As Always, Is THE BEST

Computer, Load Up Celery Man, Please.

Consider Yourself Whittled Into Kindling

The Crown Jewel Of Summer

Like An Evil Forrest Gump

Where Does He Get These Wonderful Toys?

The Secret Bookstore

Via The Paris Review

Look, Some Things Are Just FUN, You Guys

Chiara, Her Righteous Anger

An eagle-eyed Chiara spotted that the young boy on the fire escape who has a chance encounter with Batman in Batman Begins is none other than a young(er) Jack Gleeson, Game Of Thrones' Prince Joffrey.

"Kill him! Kill him NOW!" she yelled at the television Batman.

This Is A Great Song For A (Psychopath's) Pool Party

7th Avenue Film Series #7

Let's All Attend The Underwater Anthropologie Grand Opening!

This Friends Video Has Exactly The Right Amount Jennifer Aniston

Please To Enjoy: Fleet Foxes In Concert

If This Is NSFW, Maybe You Should Get A Less Prudish W

This Is Pretty Much What I Prayed For When I Prayed For An Evil Stevie Nicks

You Are Almost Certainly Not Hitting It Right

You guys remember how in the X-Men movie, where Kevin Bacon had the power to absorb your 'splosions and then re-'splode them how he wanted (and to wear ascots)?

Well, that is the exact power The-Dream has, only for haters instead of 'splosions.

Haboob, Simoom, Santa Ana

This haboob in Phoenix is so eerie that I can't get it out of my mind.

The description of the one and only ever simoom recorded to have occurred in North America sounds terrifying.

When I was a kid, the Santa Ana winds were this strange and frightening visitor that came every October. Trees were ripped from the ground (to fall straight through our house - ask me about it sometime), animals seemed to always have their hair up, the skies were orange with dust and smoke, and every evening we'd sit, glued to the tv to make sure the fires hadn't found our neighborhood. And the heat! You'd run the air conditioning all night and, just behind the steady drone of its fans, you'd hear this shrieking, moaning, angry wind clutching at the window frames. Sometimes, the house would make this sudden CRACK sound as it settled from the heat or the wind and you'd feel sure another tree was coming down on your bedroom.

Winds. They are monsters.

Take A Leisurely Flight Around Manhattan With Supersonic Man

Via Buzzfeed.

I Heard You Like The Bad Girls

America: SWAG II

America: SWAG

Know Your American History

Jigglypuff, Thank You For Showing Me This; Greatly Appreciated

7th Avenue Film Series #6