January 2010
8 posts
Some Netflix Musings
I’m a pretty huge NetFlix fan. I used to live close enough to Video Americain to rent really good movies, but that was short-lived. I signed up for Netflix around five years ago due to the great selection (I’m pretty happy with their foreign offerings, for example) and good pricing.
Over the years they have continued to grow and yet prices remain stable. That’s a pretty...
bye bye, butterstick :(
Tai Shan is off to China. It strikes me as painfully bittersweet: on the one hand it’s sad that he has to leave DC; on the other hand, he is the National Zoo’s first surviving cub. The latter fact is one that should definitely be celebrated.
FedEx will be flying Tai Shan to the PRC pro bono. So WaPo brought one of their directors online for a Q&A with readers. My favorite...
Steve Jobs on Reading
If you follow tech news as avidly as I do, you’ve probably come across this comment by Steve Jobs:
“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”
I admittedly don’t...
Two Little Red Hens, NYC
My girlfriend just turned 30, and I got her birthday cake from the excellent Two Little Red Hens in NYC. The cake itself was chocolate sour cream; the filling chocolate butter cream; and the frosting was cream cheese. (If that sounds like sweet overload, it actually wasn’t.) It served probably 8-10 medium-sized pieces.
Amazingly, this was $35. And the decorations didn’t cost...
No Need to Lie - I'm Enjoying Spartacus
No, not the Kubrick classic (which I also like). Thew new, cheesy, T&A-fueled, seemingly 300-derived schlock. (I actually haven’t seen 300, so just taking a stab.) We all need our junk food, and I suppose Lucy Lawless is something like an Achilles’ heel for me relative to this fact.
The first two episodes have nothing to say, are cliched and predictable, and yet really fun....
Fish Tank, or How to Avoid Cliches
Hats off to Andrea Arnold, Katie Jarvis, Rebecca Griffiths, and Michael Fassbender in particular. Great directing and performances are here to be had.
However, what I find most interesting is how there can actually be a teen angst movie that avoids cliches with such agility. Spoilers below. These are the things I noted:
It was unclear to me whether Mia and Connor would consummate their...
Coming over from blogger.
I’m going to give Tumblr a shot.