7" of Separation

Ellyn and I spent a beautiful, 90 degree afternoon in McCarren park watching hipsters and eating ice cream. On the walk home, was stopped for a beer and then we took naps. Today, we fired up the AC for some interior activities: reading, writing and watching the NBA playoffs.

Ellyn and I love the Food Network, and its fantasticly funny Paula Dean. She reminds me of my aunts in a lot of ways.

Shes the perfect guest for Cribs.

Well, it’s not much, and there are some pretty serious technical hang-ups, but here’s my first film project for school. It’s a little documentary about my parent’s recent visit to NYC.

I got an A-, y’all.

(Sorry, there’s a little lag in the movement due to the file being a little large for Youtube.)

This is just too glorious.

Hi. I’m Phil Spector. I’m going to jail. Finally.

He almost pulled an OJ. Almost.

Check out some of Phil’s better days:

Yeah, that’s Jesus with Disney’s Mickey and Communism’s Lenin.

He loves everyone.

Even commies.

I have to admit something up front here. I never liked Tron growing up. And, I respect Jeff Bridges too much these days to go back and look at him in one of those ’80s pre-Internet jump suits. But I’m curious about this new Tron 2 that’s being pumped out right now.

And, with leaked set photos like this one making the rounds on all the movie blogs, how could we be anything but curiously excited.

That’s right, the first representation of Tron 2 in popular media? An extra in a speed suit.

What can really be said about Celebrity Apprentice? It’s amazing reality television, preserving C-lister careers.

Dennis Rodman, who somehow survived to mid-season, was the center of one of the most falsely emotional moments in TV history. The Celebrity Apprentice: Intervention:

If music cues alone could do all the emotional work, this show would let them. What raw power. It’s interesting though, especially when Jesse James talks about celebrities’ social responsibility to live up to civilian expectations.

The problem with reality TV stems from its inability to be profound due to an overindulgence in emotive rhetorical techniques. When editing is used to create narrative from a number of out-of-context clips, the rhetoric has no structure. It relies on hitting the audience over the head with the message to make sure the clips can fit the desired storyline. It breaks. Then the show attempts to cover the holes with sappy music, falsely tense commercial break points and other “magic.” Smoke and mirrors.

Allow me to have a nerd moment. I’ve been reading comic books lately, a phase I seem to go through every few years. I think it’s connected to all the heavy theory I’m reading. I need some escape.

I’m working through Grant Morrison’s run on X-Men right now, and I’d recommend most anything Morrison wites to anyone who wants to get into comics. He’s a character writer, and he’s got a great accent: