Best of the Best

TV ads from around the world vying for awards at Cannes this year.

Cannes Predictions 2007

I haven't watched them all yet, but so far the Altoids Sours "Fruit Pants" takes the case for the weirdest of them all.

Grindhouse

Saw Grindhouse last night. Absolutely loved both movies (it's a double feature of Planet Terror by Robert Rodriguez and Deathproof by Quentin Tarantino), as well as the mock trailers at the beginning and between the movies. The whole experience was a ton of fun. Tarantino and Rodriguez pay homage to old exploitation films, and have a blast doing it. Check out the website when you get a chance, btw, because it's done really well. But some caveats on my recommendation: A) For most women, this wouldn't be your bag; B) The movies are intentionally made to look like old films that have been passed between a thousands hands and theaters, so they're scratched up, there are "missing reels," the coloring gets off... it's all made to emulate the real experience of going to grindhouse or drive-in B-movie double features in the 60s and 70s; C) They ain't for the squeamish. Sound good? Go!

You know, I love Tarantino. I love how he makes movies, I love his dialoge, I love his audacity. But Robert Rodriguez? I damn near worship that guy. He wrote, produced, directed, edited and did the music for Planet Terror. That's one talented dude. If you're interested in film, pick up his book Rebel Without a Crew. It's about his experience making his first film, El Mariachi, for next to nothing. (some of Rodriguez's films include Desperado, Spy Kids and Sin City.

The Departed

Wow. What a movie. Blew me right the fuck away. Best I've seen Jack Nicholson in a loooooong time. Fuckin' Scorsese better win best director for this, and I don't give a shit how good the other movies are. He deserves it. One of the things I appreciated the most was that you knew who everyone was in the movie. There wasn't any real, is he a good guy or a bad guy going on. You knew. You just didn't know what the hell would happen with them. I was tense the ENTIRE MOVIE. Wow. My only question is, how is Mark Wahlberg the only actor to be nominated from that movie? He was great, but EVERYONE was great. Nicholson was epic. But that has nothing to do with my appreciation for the film. Loved it.

And the coolest thing was, I watched it on the plane while flying to... Boston. I'm here for a couple days on business. Love this town.

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Netflix vs. Blockbuster dilemma.

Let me start by saying that I love Netflix, hate Blockbuster.

Ah, if only life decisions were based soley on love and hate.

I've been a Netflix user since its inception in 1998. I've been an evangelist for the online dvd rental site, directing countless friends and family to their awesome service. The benefits were, and still are, fantastic: one monthly fee, no due dates or late charges, quick shipping, online queue, and the best feature of all: IF IT'S AVAILABLE ON DVD, IT'S AVAILABLE ON NETFLIX.

Seriously, they have pretty much any movie you can imagine, from the most recent to the most obscure. The rating system and customized recommendations have introduced me to a plethora of wonderful movies I'd never have known about, let alone seen. Blockbuster, on the other hand, caters primarily to the, well, blockbuster crowd. In other words, they're not real big on the Criterion Collection.

I was on the four-movie-at-a-time plan, unlimited movies per month. When I was living by myself, I'd easily go through 10-12 movies per month. That averaged out at about $1.50 per movie rental. Uh, great deal.

Here's the problem. Now we're a family of five, two of whom are pre-teen girls and one of whom is an 8-month-old boy. So movie watching has become much more of a spur-of-the-moment thing:

Hey, looks like we could watch a movie tonight. What do we have from Netflix? Hmm, don't really feel like that. Let's go to Blockbuster.

See the dilemma? Now, Blockbuster has a new thing called Blockbuster Total Access. It operates like Netflix where you go to their site, fill your queue with movies and they mail them to you. The kicker, though, is that you can either mail back the movie when you're finished, or you can take it to your local Blockbuster store, hand it to them, and get a free in-store rental. They send back the movie for you, and you still get the next movie in your queue mailed to you. Every time you have a movie to return, you can take it to the store for a free rental.

Shit.

I signed up. I had to. For $15 per month we get two movies out at a time, plus the free rentals. Oh, plus we get another free anytime in-store rental (meaning we don't need to return one to get it) every month. It just makes more sense for the family. I'm a sellout.

But I couldn't say goodbye to Netflix. I downgraded my membership to the lowest level: one at a time, max of two per month for $5 per month.

If only Netflix would open a brick & mortar store...

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One of the best albums in the history of rock & roll.

Exile on Main Street by the Rolling Stones. I'm listening to "Sweet Virginia" right now and I'm about to bust out the chorus full-volume at work. I was tempted to list EOMS as THE best album ever, but I can't go that far because I end up arguing with myself. But without a doubt, it blows away 99.9% of what's been put out ever since. And you better goddamn agree with me.

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Buy this book. Now.

Welcome Home is a cookbook that PJ wrote. There are a number of reasons you should buy this book right now by clicking here.

• It's not just a cookbook. It's also a book. It's full of wonderful stories and reminiscing that you want to read whether you're cooking or not.


• The recipe's are for the most wonderfully comfortable of comfort food you could ever make. Seeing how I grew up eating these dishes, my opinion weighs heavily here.


• There are pictures of me in there.


• This isn't some big corporately published cookbook. PJ published this herself. She wrote it, a friend of ours designed it for her, and then she paid 100% of the printing costs herself. If you buy it, you won't just be getting the most unique and stellar cookbook ever written. You'll also be helping out someone who had the cajones to want something done, and then do it herself.

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On comic books.

Me mum, Peej, has a post today about comic books. Well, it's kind of about comic books. It's more about being attacked as a child while reading a comic book. It's uberfunny. Go read it.

I must confess: I'm a comic book geek. Yes, I know, add that to my being a computer geek and a Star Wars geek and a Tolkein geek and a theater geek and that makes me, well, an ubergeek. I'm comfortable with that.

I grew up with comics. My dad read them when he was a kid, so he would give me his old comics. Most of them were the old Marvel superheroes: Spider Man, X-Men, Avengers, Fantastic Four and the like when I was really young. When I got a bit older, I discovered the DC world of Batman, Superman and the link. Then I expanded my horizons beyond superheroes and discovered horror comics. Then funny comics. Then indy comics. I loved the combination of story and art. Still do.

In the early 90s, I discovered Neil Gaiman. Mr. Gaiman doesn't really do comics anymore, as he's become a surefire legitimate author, but he started out in comics. Thing is, unless you really know comics and have read comics by the likes of Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman, you're most likely thinking of funnybooks, as they've been called. Like long-form versions of what you see in the newspaper on Sundays.

Neil Gaiman couldn't be further from that. He writes do intelligently, so thought-provokingly, and so interestingly that you absolutely believe in the fantastic and supernatural stories he's telling. At least, you believe in their plausibility. Gaiman's Sandman series, to me, stands as one of the greatest storylines of all time. It lasted about 75 issues, I think, and turned the world of dreams into a real place with a real master (named Morpheus, btw, well before the Matrix movies ever came out). It blew me away, starting with the cover art and continuing until the last page.



The greatest of the individual story arcs with the Sandmanseries was easily Season of Mists. Basic plotline: Lucifer quits and closes hell. He'd been there 10 million years or so, and was just plain tired of it, so he quit, kicked everyone out, and gave the key to hell to Morpheus. And the comedy ensues. In the world of the Sandman, all deities exist, and many of them pay a visit to Morpheus to plead their case for why they deserve to take over hell. Great shit.

Forget whatever preconceived notions you may have about comics. Check out Neil Gaiman, specifically Sandman. You won't be sorry. Unless you are, in which case I refuse to be held liable.

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(you) essays buttons!

Wanna spread the word about (you) essays? Of course you do! Just copy one of these buttons, put it in your blog template, and direct the link to youessays.com (if you don't know how to do that, send me an email and I'll help you).

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Cool Newness; The Trouble with Boys

I changed my masthead. Got tired of the fire truck (a picture I took way back in the last millennium) and replaced it with this shot of Alcatraz I took in March. The print has such a cool grain that I thought it looked like an old postcard, so I kinda sorta made it postcard-like.

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Esquire magazine had an article recently about why boys are more fucked up now than ever before. It was pretty powerful. Here's a particularly sobering section:

Here's the deal if you are a boy in this country right now: You're twice as likely as a girl to be diagnosed with an attention-deficit or learning disorder. You're more likely to score worse on standardized reading and writing tests. You're more likely to be held back in school. You're more likely to drop out of school. If you do graduate, you're less likely to go to college. If you do go to college, you will get lower grades and, once again, you will be less likely to graduate. You'll be twice as likely to abuse alcohol, and until you are twenty-four, you are five times as likely to kill yourself. You are more than sixteen times as likely to go to prison.

The overall thrust of this article, which I wholeheartedly agree with, is that this is not because "boys will be boys." We've spent the past few decades -- rightfully so -- focusing on elevating girls. Teaching them self-confidence. Opening up to them career and educational opportunities. Telling them it's okay to want a career. And telling them it's okay to want to stay home and raise the children. While there is still most definitely inequality, particularly in the business world, women have made enormous strides. It's as it should be.

The problem is, boys have been neglected, even demeaned, because of what men did before them. See the difference? Men have been sexist and misogynistic, but that's not a boy's fault.

Imagine the reaction if a teenage boy had a "Girls Suck" sticker on his car. Concerned parents would be lining up to tell the principal he should be expelled. Yet I've seen plenty of these:



I know, I know. "Lighten up, Jeff. You men are so sensitive!" Maybe so. But the reality is that there is a crisis among boys, and those boys are going to be men someday.

And looking at some of the horrible fucking things men have done lately, I think we might want to start paying a little more attention to our boys.

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WPOMiP

"Evil and a Heathen" by Franz Ferdinand from their album You Could Have It So Much Better

Franz Ferdinand is such a fun band. They're from Glasgow, Scotland, which is cool because, well, how many Scottish rock bands do you know?

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(you) essays issue 2 is up!

Eleven new (you) essays by 11 very cool people. And one by me.

Here are the fellow bloggers who contributed this time around:

Kim
O'Tim
Mark
Paula
PJ
Nat

Go read them now.

And please spread the word!

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WPOMiP

"Blue 7" by Sonny Rollins from his album Saxophone Colossus

This album was aptly titled, as Sonny Rollins was, and still is, a colossus on the tenor sax. He came onto the bop scene right behind the men credited with inventing this new style of jazz -- Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell -- and recorded and played with all of them. Sonny is still alive and playing today, one of the few remaining true pioneers of jazz from the Blue Note era.

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WPOMiP

"Ted, Just Admit It" by Jane's Addiction from the album Nothing's Shocking

Jane's Addiction had a huge impact on the alt-rock scene of the late-80s/early-90s, even though they had only released two studio albums and one live album (until they reformed and released Strays in 2001). Man, these guys could rock. But they imploded because of rampant drug addiction and general freakiness. Fun fact: Lead singer Perry Farrell started Lollapalooza back in 1991. The bands on the inaugural tour were Jane's Addiction, Siouxsie & the Banshees, Living Colour, Nine Inch Nails, Ice T & Body Count, Butthole Surfers, Rollins Band, and Violent Femmes.

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WPOMiP (2)

I normally don't post this twice in one day, but I had to post this as a contrast to this morning.

"After the Love has Gone" by Earth, Wind & Fire from their I Am album.

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WPOMiP

"Backwater" by the Meat Puppets from their album Too High to Die.

I had a roommate my freshman year of college who turned me on to the Meat Puppets. They started out as a punk band in the early 80s, then gradually shifted their sound to something more melodic and harmonic. Listening to their library of music, it's easy to forget it's all the same band. They achieved some mainstream fame in the early 90s because Kurt Cobain brought them up on stage to play a few of their songs with Nirvana during the recording of Nirvana: Unplugged. It's somewhat ironic that "Backwater" is the MP tune my shuffling iPod chose, as it was the only charting single of the the Puppets' musical careers.

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WPOMiP

"Full on Kev's Mom" by Soundgarden, from their Louder than Love album.

Soundgarden was the first of the "grunge" bands (as they became known) I really got to know. I first heard of them through a friend who moved to Seattle. He sent me an EP from C/Z records called Deep Six. This was in 1987, when the most popular music was either cheesy Genesis/Phil Collins pop, or cheesy hair band metal. I listen to Deep Six and I'm both frightened and amazed. It was this mixture of punk, metal and 70s hard rock, and was completely different from anything I'd heard. Other than Soundgarden, other bands on the EP included Green River (which featured musicians who later went on to create Pearl Jam), The Melvins, Skin Yard (whose drummer went on to drum with Soundgarden), and the U-Men. I liked the other bands, but Soundgarden was in a class of its own. They went on to become one of my favorite hard rock bands of all time.

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The Power of Advertising

From Mr. Show, the greatest sketch comedy of all time.

Do You Pandora?

If you're not familiar with Pandora, and you like music, get familiar right now.

Pandora was the result of the Music Genome Project, which was basically a new way to categorize music.

With Pandora, you simply input musicians you're fond of. Pandora the creates a customized station just for you. It uses the MGP to find other bands you might be interested in, and plays them on your station. The really cool thing is, you can create more than one station.

For you Mac users out there, there's now a standalone freeware version of Pandora called PandoraBoy, so you can use it without having to use your browser. I would assume there's a similar product for the PC.

Give it a try. You just might become addicted like me.

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WPOMiP

"I Put a Spell on You" by Creedence Clearwater Revival, from their Boxed Set 1961 – 1969

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WPOMiP

(what's playing on my ipod)

A Tom Waits shuffle of his albums Alice, Blood Money, Bone Machine, Mule Variations, Rain Dogs and Swordfishtrombone.

This is a new feature here on Boiled Dinner. Every day I'm going to post what I'm listening to in the morning. Except for on the days that I don't. This may bore you to tears, but it will entertain me to no end.

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