Dang. The B2E interface is making me wanna switch from Nucleus. It seems pretty slick and functional.

Okay, it looks like things are starting to come together here. I'm posting to b2e using w.bloggar, so that is cool. I'll have instructions for that up in the forums soon. If you're on the blog team and don't have an ID on the forums, I'd encourage you to get one so you can check out our secret blog team forum. Please be patient with us as we get all the kinks worked out. It still might be awhile before things are back to normal, but as Danny told me today, we'll be glad we moved once they are.

Well what do you know? I can post pictures. Thank you to my lovely providers of structure, Brendan and Danny.

Got to check this one out on Friday when the guys spontaneously decided to have a guy's night. It gave me the opportunity to invite my sister out instead of sitting around doing laundry.

The Ballad of Jack and Rose is a movie set in the 1980s, about a man who lives with his daughter on the site of a virtually deserted commune on an island off the shore of northeast America. They are the only people around for miles, living in a home that has been built into the side of a hill, almost like something out of the Shire. Jack, the father, lives alone with his daughter Rose, ever since her mother left several years ago. They do all chores together, spend all their time together, and idolize each other.

When Jack realizes that his health is failing and also that Rose has an almost dangerous attachment to him (saying, "when you die, I die"), Jack invites a woman he has been seeing on the mainland to move in with her two teenage sons. Rose, finding out about the woman for the first time when she's moving in, has a pretty insane reaction, leading to a string of destructive events that would never be believable except in a setting like this one. Even then it's a little bit doubtful.

Daniel Day-Lewis, as always, is amazing. I don't know the exact amount of pounds lost for this role, but there's a scene toward the end when he's getting out of bed that made the entire audience gasp at his emaciated figure, with the entire spine all-too visible through his skin. Beyond his physical transformation, of course, he was perfect in his role. I should stop now before I start raving about how he's a god among actors and that I think he's dreeeeamy.

Camilla Belle, does a good job with Rose's interesting personality. The changes in character she goes through are all pretty convincing. She's crazy, but not, a girl yet a woman, naive but vengeful... It's an odd balance and I think she handled it well.

I was surprised to see Jenna Malone in this movie. She wasn't in any previews or mentioned in any reviews. It was refreshing to see her not playing an innocent girl for once. I almost didn't recognize her.

All in all, I think this movie kept a good balance. The way it moved along, I was afraid it was going to turn into a sick movie about incest, but it wasn't. There are plenty of disturbing things in the movie, but I felt like the relationship between Jack and Rose was an interesting one. While some critics chose to criticize Jack as a bad man, I really thought he was trying his best to set up a good life for his daughter, and I felt touched by his having to face the outside world as it came in and disturbed his island and his life with his daughter.

All of that to say I liked it. Not quite what I expected, but I liked it nonetheless.

During this transition time with the brendoman site, I can't upload any pictures. Booooo. Which means any movie reviews can wait. At least I can post today, unlike yesterday. I shall make up for pictures by posting a lot of links that you won't click.

Well, the weekend was weird in that it was sort of relaxing, but achy. With all of my back issues, I spend a lot of time laying down, which usually requires reading or a movie to entertain me. I've been heavy into the reading lately. I'm about 750 pages into the fourth installment of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. Only a couple of hundred more to go!

I saw the Ballad of Jack and Rose as well as Melinda and Melinda over the weekend. Both positive reviews, which I'll go over later. I got to see TBOJ&R with my sister, which was nice. I hardly ever get to see her now that I'm married. Usually an hour or two on a weekend, if I'm lucky.

I've been having a surge in music appreciation lately. I thought I hated all music that came out recently, but I've been proven wrong, and I'm glad. I'm enjoying Keane's album, Hopes and Fears, which is similar to Travis, but good enough on its own that I'm looking forward to seeing them if they ever come this way.

I'm finally listening to the second CD of Nick Cave's last release, which is The Lyre of Orpheus - I had enjoyed the first CD, Abattoir Blues, so much that I forgot to listen to TLOO. I think Cave is a genius. And I hope to God he tours with a gospel choir the next time he comes around, because the songs on the album where he uses the choir as backup are amazing. Speaking of Nick Cave, I finally found a link to his intro to the Gospel of Mark, which I thought was interesting. When I saw him on tour a couple of albums back, I felt really uncomfortable when he sang "God is in the house", during which practically everyone in the audience seemed to be very comfortably mocking Christianity. It felt dark and I almost decided not to go to his concerts again. But with the release of this double-album, and lyrics about praising God (as well as the link above), I've started to feel a little more comfortable with what Nick Cave is about. He reminds me a lot of Johnny Cash - he can sing songs about gruesome country deaths in one song and somehow manage to smoothly transition to a Christian-themed song right after it...

I'm also been revisiting Coldplay's Rush of Blood to the Head and Morrissey's You Are the Quarry.

Another find was Kasabian's album, Kasabian. Although interfaced with an annoying anti-piracy device that interferes with WMP until you figure it out, the album is very reminiscent of early 1990s British music like the Charlatans. It's got some groovin' songs.

I think that's all I have to talk about for now. Hey Jonathan, what's big in the UK these days, music-wise? Anything I should know about?

I will be the first one (along with the Stone Temple Pilots) to say thank you to Brendan and Danny for making the hosting switch happen.

You guys are great!

The biggest problem right now is that subdomains are totally broken. If you need to get to one of the hosted blogs, then try using the real path. For example, kyle.brendoman.com doesn't work right now, but www.brendoman.com/kyle should work. That means that any stylesheets, images or archive links that use a subdomain url will also be broken. This should be resolving itself as the domain name gets changed over.

We have been very lax as far as posting goes for a month or so. Here is why:Kelly finished her practicum at an elementary school, which sounds like it would free time up, but really it only opened up time to be filled with other things. Kelly studied like mad for the Praxis exam for speech pathology, and rocked the test. Then, it was time to hit her capstone project. She presented her research at the Missouri Speech Hearing Association (MSHA) Conference this past weekend. After much, much work, the cd she was creating is about 97% done. Her presentation also went well, so she tells me. So, Kelly has been busy. I helped some with the cd, but my excuse is laziness I suppose. Although it sure seems like something kept me busy.More news:Most likely, Kelly and I will be headed to Colorado for at least 2 years this summer. I was accepted into the Aerospace Engineering graduate program at the University of Colorado to get a master degree. Two weekends ago we made the trip to Colorado so Kelly could attend a couple of job fairs and I could talk with my advisor and the department grad coordinator. The trip went well. Kelly has a few leads for jobs and is now occupying her time with the employment search. ...Oh! I remember an excuse for me not posting! I had food poisoning the week before going to Colorado. A wave of sickness rolled over on me that Monday night - the most concentrated bout of sickness in my life. I was actually sick for less than a day but missed two days of work and it took a week to feel like eating normal food again. What's worse is that I got sick from something I made. I ate the left overs that were apparently too left over. Yay...Well, that is a glimpse into what's happening. We took some pictures in Colorado, though not a whole lot, and also Kelly has some pictures from MSHA. One note about Colorado - EVERYONE drives a Subaru Outback. Kelly was going to count them in Boulder one afternoon, but in five or so minutes we were over 10, easily, so we gave up. We took some pictures of the beast.

Sorry if the site hasn't been working too well recently. We're getting close to having the site migration done.

As promised, things have been a little odd at brendoman.com for the past few days. We're getting closer to having it all set. If you're reading this, then you're looking at the new site. I hope that by tomorrow we'll be almost finished.