Amarillo in white

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Should I drink ze pe?

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Just Get Me A Fucking Faith-Based Thing

More liberal media bullshit. Wait, no. Thanks, all you fucking suckers. You probably still ain't learned a goddamn thing.

I've Been Walking The Streets At Night...

I found this interesting article in the New Yorker, written by a recent guest on The Colbert Report, Malcolm Gladwell, about the Flynn Effect, which describes the way I.Q. scores have increased over the past years, and how it seems to say more about the limitations of the test itself rather than the mental retardation of our ancestors that backwards score projections might suggest. Ironically, while trying to emphasize how much smarter we aren't these days, he quoted this sentence from Flynn himself: "If the everyday world is your cognitive home, it is not natural to detach abstractions and logic and the hypothetical from their concrete referents." A painful brainful. And IQ tests apparently measure how "modern" we are, rather than how smart. My problem is, I just don't get the point of pointing this all out. It's very interesting research, but first off, I think he's being a little too apologistic, naive, and P.C. when he assumes that most people would agree with there being some vast difference between the descriptors "more likely to advance, technologically and scientifically" and "intelligent." That smart vs. dumb actually describes a different quality than civilized vs. primitive. Aren't those synonyms? Seems like he should be talking about "clever," or "crafty." And secondly, fuck an IQ test anyway! I live in an arrogant top-notch, so fresh, so clean, modern society, and I've never been required to take one; in my experience they're a fucking joke, some free quiz on the internet that doesn't mean shit anyway! As far as I'm concerned it's disproving astrology, big whoop. Do people actually use these tests for something scientific? It only seems to matter when you're wanting to classify someone as ward of the state or not, technically insane rather than criminally guilty, etc, and if it really comes down to it, I'll give anyone the benefit of the fucking doubt anyway if the result's them being confined to a mental hospital. Committed and jail seems about the same to me: pretty damn horrorshow. If anything, jail should be more like a mental hospital anyway, if the goal is anything more than retribution. Eh, I'm just blathering on at this point. In any case, I don't want to give the impression I didn't enjoy the piece. The Colbert interview started fun but it cut him a little short for a show with supposedly no writing. Last I heard Viacom wasn't making any deals just yet, maybe I'm out of date.

Portishead set a date, don't be late, it's probably going to be something great. Third, though? I mean, I guess they already burned their one self-titled album, but Dummy was such a perfect name to go with the depressed, numbed out sound back when it was fresh.

We finished the first season of Deadwood, very enjoyable. Superior dialogue. Endless sardonic knife fights. The curious, "ad-hoc" process of the town coming together. How suffering is in everyone's faces at all times and the different ways the various characters deal with it. The fates of Kristen Bell's character and her brother, shit! Everytime I'm expecting a cliché they manage to pull crazy ivans. These premium cable networks just pump this shit out, and it just seems like there's an awfully high ratio of quality - there should be more total stinkers per true gem.

Well, the Aussie Open was a little anticlimatic. Jokey put the hurt on Federer, guess I'll start calling him "Chokabitch." My favorite match was Baghdatis-Hewitt, just an awesome struggle to the end, and I was sad Layton didn't make it any further than he did. There was plenty of auxiliary drama. Freakin crazy eastern Europeans.

Noise Revival

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Hack 'Em Up

Speaking of the party, someone, I think it was Will, mentioned how hacky the latest 30 Rock episode had been. I watched it, and maybe I'm slightly biased towards humor centered around Deutscher Übersetzungsfehler, but I thought it was great. OK, Tracy Morgan's singing voice in "Midnight Train to Georgia" was awfully difficult to take at points, but maybe someone simply owed Gladys Knight a gimme cameo. Come on, a "do-do" joke followed up by a self high-five? That's gold, son.

I knocked out the first season of Dexter this week, using teh streaming Netflix. At first some of the cliché supporting characters really turned me off (either the acting or the dialogue, I'm not sure which), but by the end the tension and plot twists had me hooked. Now that I think about it, it was a lot like Dead Like Me and Weeds in that they all have this sort of cheesy veneer, but underneath is a darkness that allows sympathy for even the most absurd archetypes.
I'll definitely watch the second season; hopefully, the chilly final episode means a little less hamfisting for a while.

Another of my recent watched-it-thens was a collection of 2008 Comedy Sundance Shorts. Some were better than others, but they were all worth checking out. Except the second one.

A summary:

• "A Relationship in Four Days" - A bath of new york hipster love. Makes your teeth hurt. I didn't not enjoy it.


• "By Modern Measure" - Didn't really get this one, or like it at all really.


• "Farewell Packets of Ten" - Ohhh cigarettes. Three minutes with two old yellow-lipped irish ladies chain-smoking and talking about smoking that goes from lovingly nostalgic to sadly grotesque.


• "FCU: Fact Checkers Unit" - Probably the outright chuckliest. Is that a word? It is now. But such a young, admittedly unproven word probably doesn't do this one justice. Hilarious, more specifically, Bill Murray singing along with chopsticks hilarious.


• "Motion Studies: Inertia" - Funny and pretty simple.


• "Sick Sex" - Also funny.


• "The Funeral" - My second favorite. Fucking "Crossroads!" I do love me a good inappropriate hip hop cover.

We also saw Sicko the other day, fairly depressing but not all that shocking. Doom doom doom goes the big ass drum...

Batman Begins has been on FX all week, and I watched it for the second time in bits and pieces mixed in between the great tennis going on at the Austrialian Open. Chokeavich, you can't handle the Fed. Get a grip, as it were. And commentators: if I have to hear the same stupid anecdote about Vitchavitch and his ace brother in a future Davis Cup team I'm going to vomit. We got it. Cute the first time. Enough. Anyway - Begins has me all worked up for Dark Knight. Really too bad about Heath, but at least it looks in the preview like he did a good job as the Joker. In any case, we'll always have "I Love You Baby." They really should have had him rehash that in Brokeback.

Viva Las Mackus

So, before they burn a hole in my hard drive, here are a few more hot, uncensored pictures from Mack's going away party. It was a good send-off, thanks to C&K for hosting.

House party 2

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House party

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Tickets!

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The party begins

Mack's going-away party
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Playing catchphrase in showdown

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Red haired B Randon at showdown

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Got that Greenhouse Gas

We watched 3:10 to Yuma last night. Overall the movie was about a 3 out of 5. The acting, scenery, and action scenes were great but some of the character motivations were a little hard to buy. Bale and Crowe both did a great job, and there were some amusing cameos I wasn't expecting.

I've been devouring the fourth season of The Wire, just an incredible show that gets better with every episode. The stories are so delicious, with awesome sets and scores of addictive characters. All their personal dramas are more amateur and realistic than cliché and gravy boat dramatic (as seen in the nevertheless classic Yawn and Order series). This season you get close up with Marlow's main muscle Snoop and Chris (I fucking love the way those two talk), the mayoral candidate Carcetti, as well as a shitload of more great Omar adventures. Tony told me the first episode of the currently airing final fifth season was excellent and I can't wait to finish up with the fourth and start down the long road into the sunset. It's really too bad it's ending; at least we got as many seasons as we did.

I watched some of Showtime's Dexter, a fairly enjoyable show. Every once in a while it seems too much like a hardcore premium cable variant of Monk, but I did find myself wanting to watch more after finishing the first two episodes. Netflix got me hooked with the watch-it-now and then all of a sudden it was unavailable for further viewing. I have to admit I'm probably too lazy and backlogged to actually rent it for watching on the TV, but maybe that says something about the actual quality of the program, too.

Probando probando

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NYE Tank Battle 2008

2008 Cometh And Right Soon

Here's a few more pictures from the Cecils' new years party. A smaller turnout than last year but still a lot of fun. We shared some 2007 highlights, played a trivia game, blew up a lot of fireworks, and managed to enjoy ourselves quite nicely without too much damage to body or property.



Otto von New Year keeps his thoughts to himself as he ponders the mysteries of time and space.



"And that's why I quit drinking alcoholic beverages entirely."



Tony enjoys the brisk winter wind.



Cecil mans the trivia chest.



Kyle urges Will on as he attempts, unsuccesfully but not fatally, to complete the 30-second double ding dong challenge.



Some ground effects to get the night started.



Tony signals the galactic brethren in for a landing.



Tank Battle 2008: deployment phase. A pity all the tanks' forward engines seized up, but at least the armaments were in fine working order.



Bombs bursting in air.

Challenge: charades

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Physical challenge no 6

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