The Flaming Lips - The Fearless Freaks

I stinking love this movie. I grew up watching a lot of old movies; Calamity Jane was one of my favorites. I guess what attracted me was that the music was a lot of fun. Doris Day is always great. She's got such a crisp voice, and really knew how to manipulate it perfectly for the mood of each song. I should buy a CD with her music on it. And I just put two and two together and realized that Bill Hickock is played by Howard Keel, and I reeeally like his voice (also heard in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers). There's nothing quite like Howard Keel's laugh. You should go out and rent a Howard Keel movie just to hear his manly voice--except if you see Kiss Me Kate on the shelf, I would urge you to leave it on the shelf. I always liked him because he was a man's man... even though he did a lot of musicals.

I watched this again the other night and realized that I still enjoy myself while watching it as much as I did when I was young. Pretty much any time it's on tv, I can stop and watch it. Tthe songs have been running through my head, ever since I went to South Dakota for David's wedding and started thinking about the Black Hills of Dakota (Calamity Jane takes place in Deadwood).

Favorite songs: Secret Love and The Black Hills of Dakota.

After reading about the history of the Wilhelm Scream, a movie sound effect that has been reused in dozens of films, I found a page about other movie sound cliches. That lead me to some pages about movie cliches in general. I am hereby inventing a game: Movie Cliche Bingo. To make a game card you randomly place some movie cliches from the lists onto a 5 x 5 grid. Put on your favorite movie (or a really cheesy one for faster games) and mark your card as you spot cliches in the flick. I even made the first card for you.

Looks like Disney's doing at least one good thing this summer, and it isn't Herby Fully Loaded, that's for sure. They're opening up a Soda Fountain Store along with a Studio Store. Classic ice cream parlor meets shopping the Disney movie vaults. Right next to the El Capitan. I'll have to stop by after a Nightmare showing in the fall.

I got back from my brother's graduation at UC Berkeley yesterday. The ceremony was good. Mark Danner was the speaker. He gave one of the most motivating, empowering graduation speeches I ever heard. My brother is an English major and you tend to get that question of "What are you going to do with that?" all the time. I get that a lot too. Danner talked about that a lot and how folks like my brother have shucked the pursuit of economic stability and have decided to follow their heart. I know that feeling. He related it to his writing about Sudan, Bosnia, and his current work on Abu Gharib and Iraq very well.

I also got to go to two cast parties with my brother and meet all his theater friends. It was a blast. Since no one had ever met me before, we were successfully able to dupe pretty much everyone into believing that we were non-identical twins. It was awesome. I got to see a piece my brother directed for class on Friday. It was great. Funny and powerful. The guy seriously has talent and I'm excited to see what happens for him in the future.

Berkeley was great. I love the Bay Area. I love being around the ocean. We ate seafood for graduation dinner with all the family and it was delicious. It was great hanging out with my brother again and seeing my family for the first time in a year. Next weekend is going to be a doozy since I have the big job interview. I found a workaround for my not paying for Episode 3 vow since Mike is buying my ticket. We're hitting up the midnight showing. Yep, I'm a sucker.

At the Table #3

http://feeds.feedburner.com/searscast

The official poker podcast of Brendoman.com

I'd be interested in any thoughts about the cast, or my play.

Other links of note:

Card Club on Lord Admiral Radio where they say nice things about At the Table.
Music:

Eddie M and Blueshound - Gambling Blues

Bass Line Vitals - Superhero (For GWB)

Falkazone Bass - Rock on 808 (Special Bass Version)

RODJJAH - Locked Up

All available at Download.com

And just for the sake of comparison, here's the Xbox 360. It looks like they all have wireless controllers and an upright design. Here is a chart comparing the thee consoles.

I don't think there's much known about it yet, but here's a picture. Either it's loading a laserdisc, or it's a very small console. If that's the smaller discs (like the Gamecube uses) then this is a very, very small console. More pictures.