Posts from — October 2004

Derek sent me this interesting column called The Religion of Operating Systems. I found it to be pretty interesting. Whatchoo think?

A quick wine recommendation- Montpellier Syrah. Quite nice, and I think it costs ~ $5 a bottle. Que ganga!

It’s a lazy Saturday in SF today. I’ve got Jacques on the tv, some coffee beans in the roaster, and an espresso in my hand. It’s a bit cool outside and there’s a steady but light rain outside in the park. It’s going to be a nice slow day.

via pridkett


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Which File Extension are You?

LizBorden: that is seriously the last time i ever make a political comment in my journal

LizBorden: i’m gonna stick to fucked up links

eltejano: that’s what I do- f’d up links, movies and stupid ramblings all in one

LizBorden: i mean

LizBorden: i enjoy informed discussions and arguements and all

flats: haha

LizBorden: but typing this much is a lot of work

pridkett: elte: your journal is a little like a teen journal from livejournal, but with wine, and no boyfriends

LizBorden: HAHAHAHA

eltejano: ouch

pridkett: not like mine is much better

I saw Shaun of the Dead the other day. Nice, smart, witty flick. I recommend it. One bit made me laugh out loud – the protagonist and his buddy are drunk and coming out of the pub, and they’re singing White Lines to each other. Cracked me up because, well, I do that. Oh, and there are some Queen songs in the movie too. You can’t beat that.

Liked Shaun of the Dead? Then go watch Versus or Evil Dead.

There are many things I’m a big fan of. In particular I’m a big fan of hot naked women. I’m also a big fan of Schwartzmans being on top of hot naked women. Unfortunately for the movie Spun, those two items are just about all it has in its favor. And to make matters worse, they didn’t use this Schwartzman to get on top of the naked ladies, they used Jason (no relation- that I know of).

Spun failed my 3Day Movie Test ™. It’s a good looking movie, don’t get me wrong, but there’s barely any story. And the story that is there is just dumb. I gave a flying rat’s ass about the characters. By the second half I was wishing them harm.

It was filmed by music director Jonas Akerlund, and it looks like a music video in parts. A long time ago my friend Will gave me a Jonas Akerlund reel- I thought it was pretty cool. It was mostly music videos. Since they were for different artists the video was disjointed as a whole, but hey- the individual vids were great- and it wasn’t a movie. Now, imagine stringing all of those together with a lame plot and lamer characters and you have Spun.

Positive: looks great, cool actors, good cameos

Negative: lame story, waste of time, derivative-

I almost wanted to write a whole rant about the two undercover cops subplot and how lame it was.

Oh one other complaint- since when did drug movies all start using the same fast action clips?

Drugs out |fast cut | drug preparing | fast cut | injection or snort clip | fast cut | Eye Dialation clip

Starts with “C” ryhmes with sashay.

Spun sucks, go rent The Salton Sea instead.

Suriyothai- One of the first movies to fail my three day movie test ™ in quite a while. I’m not sure why it drove me bonkers, but it did. You see, I *wanted* to like this movie. I think it was oversold and was billed as “important” so it’s easy to knock off it’s peg.

Let’s start with the negative first- the movie tells the tale of an important, historically-based legend. It’s a long soap-opera with a lot of plot twists that covers a huge span of time. Okay, so if you have a historical flick, things are gonna get cut out. But that’s problematic with the limitations of a film’s timeframe.

Since the story is based on historical events foreigners like me won’t grasp some subtleties and the historical context, so narration or extra scenes/lines?/backstories? need to be added.

Adding, removing – what’s a director to do? I’m not sure. But what they did here was make a great looking movie that tries to make the best of the long story it tries to tell.

The critical build up was to a final battle/confrontation and that was over and done with in a few minutes. It detracted from the whole effort. The whole story is about this Princess/Queen/Royal Family member who’s going to be making this *huge* sacrifice in a battle for her people. Then when it happens, it’s just, hrm, odd. . . Her actions seem almost hasty and dumb. There must be more to it though- the whole royal blood lines and how royals are supposed to act. . .

Okay, enough (mild)ranting and rambling. There’s a 5 hour version of this flick, but I’m not going to watch it. Supposedly the Coppola team which was involved in the editing of this flick cut a ton of stuff out to make this ponderous tale coherent.

Is there anything good about the movie? Sure- it looks great. The tales of the royal court are intriguing. But the best thing? HUGE ASS ELEPHANT BATTLES!! How cool is that?

It’s cool- but not enough to recommend this movie. Go watch Ong Bak instead.

By the way- I know some people who watch any movie that was nominated for the Academy Awards. I think this was nominated for best foreign language flick, but I need to look that up.

Luddition Through Economics, some feedback


from: Jeff P

to: Kenneth


luddition through economics..reminds me of better off dead*

“so why are you guys here at the gas n’ sip on a saturday night with no
women in sight?!”

“choice, man. yeah, choice”

* editor’s note: I think this was Say Anything

Update: Marisa emailed the correct passage:

Say Anything-

LLOYD I got a question. If you guys know so much about women, how come
you’re here at like the Gas ‘n’ sip on a Saturday night completely alone, drinking beers, no women anywhere?

Silence.

JOE By choice, man!

GUY 2 Yeah man, conscious choice.

They all agree.

GUY 1 I’m choosing it.

So I recently went to Pak’s for a wine tasting event. More specifically- domestic bubbles under $30. Everyone brought a bottle, immeditately wrapped it numbered it, and prepped it for the blind taste testing. There were 13 bottles in all. The results are below.

Pak’s email and notes:

Here’s the tally (the tie for first relfects the misnumbering of the bottles vs. the cards and is noone’s fault but my own; I was too tipsy at the time of the mistake being discovered [thanks regs] to realize the tie was between two different winemakers):

Place – Wine
• 1 Roederer Estate Anderson Valley Brut ($20 @ D&M wine, Kenneth)
• 1 Schramsberg Mirabelle Brut ($21 @1st st winery, Billiam/Julie)
• 2 Roederer Estate Anderson Valley Brut ($18 @ wine club, Cara)
• 3 Roederer Estate Anderson Valley Brut ($17 @ Costco, daNobles)
• 4 1998 J Russian River Valley($27 @ wineclub, kenois)
• 5 Domaine Chandon Blanc de Noirs ($19 @ andronicos, Jamie)
• 6 Barefoot Chardonnay Bubbly xtra dry ($6 @TJs, daNobles)
• 7 Kenwood Cuvee Natural Russian River ($23 D&M wine, kenneth)[edit: actually bought this at Kenwood]
• 8 Roederer Estate Anderson Valley Brut ($22@1st winery
  livermore, Billiam/Julie)

• 9 Buena Vista Blanc de Blanc Carneros ($13 @ winery, Nic&Gary)
• 10 Domain Carneros Tattinger ($23 @ wine impressions, Dave)
• 11 Coppola Sofia Blanc de Blanc ($18 @ andronicos, javier)
• 12 Schramsberg Blanc de Noir ($30 @ Andronicos, Nic&Gary)

Some interesting notes from the cards I have in my possession:

wine’s place – comment

• 1 oooh….chocowine
• 9 oooh….butter champagne
• 5 ass light
• 1(roed) breathtakingly pedestrian*
• 1(schram) smells funky, but not like george clinton*
• 9 tastes alcoholy, like grandma*
• 10 what i imagine a generic champagne to be, in Iowa*
• 6 did this come out of a box?
• 1(schram) kind of like wet socks
• 11 weird slightly chemically under taste that leaves
  a slight slick on the tounge

• 1(schram) nose like wet dog food
• 10 acridness that crawls down the throat
• 12 newark manure…too carbonated
• 7 smells disgusting
• 8 my favorite so far, exotic, bacon
• 9 kind of exciting…a little like liquor
• 12 smells like green onions-ewh!

An interesting tidbit that’s not listed in Pak’s email/notes above is that all night there was a spit cup/pour off vessel on the table. Apparently after Marisa and I left and the partying and imbibing continued, someone decided to compare the derided Sophia to the Spit Bucket! Guess what, THE SPITBUCKET WON. And from what I hear – there was more than one judge to verify that ranking.

Quick note: I claimed my quotes above w/ an * and edited the locale where I got the Kenwood.