Continuing in the classic Michael Caine vein, I watched Alfie for the first time a month or two ago (still hoping these five-minute reviews will help me catch up). Caine still plays a womanizer in this one, but otherwise the movie couldn't possibly be more different from Get Carter. He doesn't like commitment and just wants to have fun, and he's quite picky and critical of the girls he's with. When he has a bit of a health scare, aging, and some of his past flings come back to haunt him, he starts to wonder if there might be something more to life.

I loved this movie. The natural way in which Caine speaks to the camera and directly tells us everything he's thinking is both amusing and an interesting way to get to know his character. The movie certainly wouldn't be as effective without it.

The light-hearted tone is balanced well with the more serious subject matter, but the movie doesn't flinch or feel awkward when the serious scenes do occur. The final act definitely packs a punch that I didn't expect when the movie first began.

It's been so long since I saw the movie that I wish I could reference some more specific scenes and details. I certainly loved Alfie's fling with Ruby, played by Shelly Winters. Overall, Caine has great presence and carries the screenplay perfectly.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the greatest flash game in the history of the Internet: Super Mario Crossover.

In this game, you can work your way through the levels of Super Mario Bros. with the heroes from a variety of classic Nintendo games.

Each character has his own attack abilities. You can shoot bad guys with Bill. You can stun and stab with Link. Furthermore, powerups like mushrooms and flowers bestow on the characters the ability upgrades they receive in their own games.

How awesome!

One movie genre I've always meant to catch up with is the classic Michael Caine movie genre. I thought it best to start off with Get Carter, about a gangster name Jack Carter who returns to his home town for his brother's funeral. As he finds out more about the circumstances of his brother's death, he realizes it was not an accident, and he sets out to find the person responsible.

I had no idea what the movie was about going into it and was surprised by the content. I know movies weren't exactly clandestine in the 1970s, but it was a surprise nonetheless. Caine's character is a gangster through and through. He's controlled and ruthless - an interesting combo to watch. He has sex with whomever he pleases, and some of those scenes are surprising too, since they end up being funny or unpleasant, but certainly not about arousal.

Even though the movie does appear to be filled with action of all kinds, Caine's demeanor and the many scenes of his character running around that don't contain dialog make this a more subtle movie. Actually, Caine as a gangster vaguely reminded me of some of Clive Owen's work nowadays.

It's definitely a memorable movie, although for content's sake, I'm not sure I'm allowed to necessarily recommend it. At any rate, now I'll be able to catch references to this movie when I see them. Caine has definitely moved up on my list of ultimate badasses (is there a good synonym for badasses?).

This weekend I saw The Flaming Lips in concert with my friend Danny. Although they've been one of my favorite bands for years, I haven't actually seen them in concert since 2000. Since then they've developed the kind of wild, celebratory concert performance that has earned them a very strong fan following. While I've seen and read all about their antics, I learned that experiencing it all firsthand is another thing entirely.

After the band took the stage in a bizarre sequence that involved them emerging from the birth canal of the woman projected on-screen behind them (don't ask), Wayne Coyne rolled his space bubble out over the crowd and then returned to stage for the opening number of "Worm Mountain," which just happens to be my favorite song from the new album and the reason I wanted to see them on this tour. The band exploded with the insanely drum- and bass-laden song, lights flashed, smoke and confetti poured out of cannons, giant balloons bounced overhead, and I was in ecstasy. It seemed like the band was unleashing everything in their spectacular repertoire in just the first song. I really felt like I could leave satisfied after that: I had already seen everything I had come for.

(That's not my video, by the way. My thanks and apologies to the fan who uploaded it)

The concert continued with more confetti, balloons, and now a couple of weird inflatable animals on stage. After several more songs things toned down a bit and Wayne took up his bubble-encased acoustic guitar to play a few solo songs, starting with the traditional "She Don't Use Jelly" (he stopped and restarted midway through because the crowd's rhythmic clapping was throwing him off), an "I Can Be A Frog" sing-along, and "Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Part 1." It was nice to see Wayne actually playing some instruments again: in recent years fans began speculating that Wayne doesn't even know how to play guitar because he seemed to only use it as a prop onstage. But his guitar abilities are just fine. Later, he even manned the solo on Powerless (I always assumed that would Stephen's part live).

The Lips closed out their main set with the full band, then came back for the first encore with Stardeath and White Dwarfs for the epic Brain Damage/Eclipse from Dark Side of the Moon. It was a deafening performance with two bands on stage pounding away and the whole crowd wailing along at the tops of their lungs. It would seem like a tough song to top.

The best moment for me, though, was the second encore, when the band came back for "Do You Realize??" As he is wont to do, Wayne preceded the song with some rambling stage chatter. Normally I think he overexplains the songs a bit, but here he talked about a young man that was on tour with them who lost his father recently. At the funeral, he said, they played this song. Wayne talked about how the song addresses death, but is really about embracing life and appreciating our loved ones while they're here. He encouraged the crowd to celebrate in the song on behalf of those in the audience for whom the song may conjure up more somber associations.

Then the song began, and although I've heard it at least 50 times in the last eight years, I experienced the full weight of the song like never before. And when it got the line, "Do you realize that happiness makes you cry?" for the very first time ever the words caused genuine tears of joy to well up in my eyes. It sounds cheesy, but in that moment, surrounded by singing fans and awash in lights and streams of confetti, I felt connected with everyone in the amphitheater that night. But that's just what The Flaming Lips do: through their unself-conscious cheesiness, optimism, and love for spectacle, they give people a communal concert experience that they will never forget.

Sony discontinuing production of floppy disks in Japan

I just want to know who these people are that are still using floppy disks and what they are putting on them. Text files? A couple word documents? A picture? I remember when a friend taught me how to make those annoying AOL disks writable. Free floppies for life!

Sometime around Christmas, I think, we started talking to Daniel about rhyming words. He was interested in the idea, but he really just didn't get it for a long time. That didn't stop him from trying, though. Daniel would frequently come up to us, say, "I have a rhyme!" and then utter two words that in no way resembled each other, like train airplane, bike bathtub, or ceiling pineapple. Each time we had to tell him that no, those words don't rhyme. He showed an undaunted spirit, though, and continually came back to us with, "I have another rhyme!"

With the help of a new game, Daniel moved on to repeating stock rhyming words that we had told him, like dog frog, man fan, etc. When prompted to make his own, though, he still came back to pairs like animal dinosaur.

Then one day he told me, "I have a new rhyme! Boat moat! I was pretty sure no book or game we had contained moat in it, and I praised him for his original rhyme. Since then he's been dazzling us with his rhyming skills. The way I know he's really got the concept is that he's started producing nonsense words with rhyming sounds. Just today he's excitedly informed me that piggy wiggy, train fain, and boing foing are all rhyming pairs.

I present to you... the amazing reusable bag:

In the past year I've definitely become a bit of a crazy lady when it comes to buying environmentally friendly things at the stores. One thing I became obsessed with since my visit to Portland last year was reusable bags. I didn't like any of the ones they sold at the stores here because they were all advertisements for the stores themselves, which prevented me from buying them. In Portland, cool reusable bags are a dime a dozen. When I came back home I was determined to start tracking down good ones. And now I will turn this into a big, fat promotion.

One of the best brands I've found is Flip and Tumble. They sell single- and double-handled shopping bags that are sturdy and pleasant on the eyes.

The 24-7 Bags are available in a rainbow of colors or in some cool prints. Amy and I both have a couple of these. They get compliments all the time, they're easily folded and carried in a purse, and that felt strip on the strap keeps them in place. I like using them for small shopping or carrying things like my workout clothes.

The bag boys at the grocery store weren't fans of the 24-7s, though, because the single handle prevents them from opening the bag wide to stuff items in quickly. So, I recently bought a Shopper Bag, and they were cool with it. By the way, the Shopper Bags can scrunch up into perfect little balls for easy portability. I loooove grocery shopping with these bags. They conserve, they can carry a lot of weight, and they don't break at inconvenient moments like those pesky plastics.

Flip and Tumble also makes reusable Produce Bags. What an awesome idea! I always feel like it's so wasteful to buy produce in a bunch of separate plastic bags and then just throw it all away the instant I get home. These are clear enough for the cashier to make out what's inside.

Of course, now that I've got all these bags, I need to get a regular system going on in my household, so that I remember to have these stored in my car when I go grocery shopping, or have a couple in my purse when I'm out and about town. If that's the hardest thing about having reusable bags, then what's stopping you from giving them a try? Most likely, you'll end up glad you've gone "green" simply because they make life easier on you; the lack of waste is just the icing on the cake.

So our site's 8th birthday was like two weeks ago and I totally forgot. I really need to start putting it on the calendar. I just wanted to take the time to thank all the people who helped get it going and to all the readers. It's amazing to me that something started out of sheer boredom could become what it has. Here's to all of you!

The Songs Of Leonard Cohen by Leonard Cohen

Yes, I think I'll stick to these five-minute reviews until I get caught up. It's been so long since I've seen some of these movies that it's probably best for me to keep it short anyway, since I can't remember specific details.

In the Mood for Love stars Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung as a man and woman with a similar problem - they realize their spouses are having an affair. They spend time with each other, trying to piece together how the affair might have started. As they spend time commiserating with each other, they form a friendship. That friendship develops into deeper feelings, but the two are determined not to be adulterers like their spouses. What results is a movie full of friendship, longing, and sadness.

I know I often complain about movies that gratuitously repeat a musical theme, but somehow the repeating theme in this movie is just so beautiful that it didn't bother me. It evokes emotion at just the right times, and coupled with Wong Kar Wai's visual style, I loved it. I really enjoyed all of the uses of colors and shadows; each scene is perfectly costumed, lit, and staged.

What I really appreciated about this movie was the idea that, while it's easy for the audience to say that these two are free to be with each other because their spouses have essentially already ended their marriages, they won't allow themselves to be with each other. They have a strong connection, but the hurt that their spouses have caused is stronger, and they will not allow themselves to be just like their spouses. I loved that touch to the story; it's a forbidden love story, but it's self-imposed forbidden love, which makes it all the more interesting.

When I watched Chungking Express, I could see the potential for great things from Wong Kar Wai but was ultimately frustrated by some of his stylistic choices, but In the Mood for Love is where he gets everything completely right. It was interesting, expressive, and so lush. I'm so glad I saw it.

After Smiles' wedding, which was really great, my brother and his girlfriend surprised me by taking me on a trip to Astoria, the town where they filmed The Goonies. It was AWESOME! We went to pretty much every major location we found thanks to this site. The majority of the locations are in Astoria but most of the beach locations were filmed at nearby Cannon Beach, which was really beautiful. The last beach shots in the movie were filmed in Sonoma County, California though so I will have to do that trip sometime. Read on for the rest of the pictures.

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Hey gang!

I am back from a conference in San Francisco. I was there from Saturday through Wednesday. It was a special treat that Jon was attending the same conference for his own university and that he happened to book identical flights with us. So Ruth, Megan and I traveled with him into town where we met up with Isaac at our hotel and headed straight out to the town! I'll describe highlights as quickly as possible.

Saturday night we had a magnificent Irish dinner at Johnny Foley's. I plan to make some champ for myself now that I've had a glorious version of it there. We took a crazy cab ride to the Golden Gate Bridge and walked a little over halfway across it, then took a claustrophobic bus ride back to the hotel.

Sunday we checked in at the conference and got a good breakfast at the Moscone Center, which is where we spent many hours in the next week. It's amazing to see thousands of college employees filling a room the size of two football fields. In the afternoon it was pouring, but we were determined to go out, so we took the cable car to the wharf and took a drenched walk down to pier 33 and grabbed the ferry to Alcatraz. We really enjoyed our tour of the prison and loved the gardens, and of course once we were done, the rain let up. When we got back to land we bought new socks on pier 39 and got a warm meal at Boudin before heading back. That evening we went out to dinner at a Greek restaurant that we happened to pass by, and that meal was delicious too. SF was a great place for food.

Monday we had sessions all day long. The highlight was when the power went out at the beginning of my first afternoon session, which turned into a man describing his software without being able to demo it. Boo. That night we got together with all the other employees from our university who attended the conference and had dinner in the Pope room at Buca di Beppo. We weren't all that excited about eating something we could eat at home, but it turned out to be a good time of camaraderie and inter-university networking. Afterward, several of us went to the W hotel to play some games in one of their crazy lobbies, which eventually led to a crazy photo shoot since that place is filled with decorations that just beg for interaction.

Tuesday we had sessions all day again, but managed to go to the Ferry Building for breakfast before the first one. That night my nephew, who goes to school in SF, picked us up to go to North Beach for dinner. We got there early, so we stopped at an Italian cafe for pastries and coffee, then had dinner at the Stinking Rose with my sister and two more nephews. It was good to see the fam! We all went to get gelato as well. After a few of them left, my nephew took us all up to Coit Tower, down Lombard street, and walking around Ghiradelli Square. Unfortunately, that night I started getting sick; it may have been food poisoning. At any rate, I threw up on and off for the next ten hours and missed the rest of the conference.

We headed back home on Wednesday afternoon, and I was so glad to have Jon around, since he took care of my luggage for me going to the BART station and the airport. I ate Tic Tacs for my meals and gradually improved throughout the day. Today I'm still a little wobbly, but definitely on the mend.

It was a good experience to go to the conference and I have a lot of ideas running around in my head right now, but it sure is good to be home. I was blessed to come home to a clean house and the results of Ric's productivity - our office is 100% clean with no more condo-work items left in it!

Now if only they'd include the beaks and feet.

(Picture taken outside the Kirksville KFC)

If you're not using Google Reader to keep up to date on everything, you're missing out. I'm still surprised when I find out folks still check tons of sites every day manually. I don't know what I would do if I still had to do that. Now there is a cool new feature of Reader called Google Reader Play that uses your subscriptions and things you mark as "Like" in Google Reader to present a slide show chock full of pictures, articles, videos, and other assorted awesomeness that you will enjoy. It seems to be an even more intelligent version of Stumbleupon.

Speaking of Stumbleupon, I've been meaning to write about this for awhile, but it has become completely unusable for me thanks to the friend shares feature. In my Stumble heyday, I was adding everyone as a friend who asked since I figured that was a good thing to do and I didn't see any reason not to. Then they added a sharing feature where friends could send articles to their friend's toolbars so that the next time they hit the Stumble button, they get the shared article. I get so many shares now that I can't actually Stumble. Every time I hit the button, I get a shared link from someone that is usually something lame and/or some kind of spam. There is no way to turn this off. As far as I can tell, there isn't even an easy way to remove people from my friends list. Is anyone else experiencing this?

I got invited to a D&D game. I am super excited. I've never played Dungeons and Dragons with other people. I've just read the books and the rules, created characters, longing for that chance to finally let my geek flag fly. When I was a kid my dad was way into Avalon Hill games and some of the serious Milton Bradley games like Shogun and Axis and Allies. We played tons of those games and one Christmas we got a new game called Hero Quest. It's the closest I've come to D&D and I loved it. I just never had the time or the geeky friends to take that next step. Thanks again to Josh for finally making that happen.

There's no way to know what Charles Shulz was thinking when he made this strip in 1963, but it's such a perfect metaphor for the health care debate that if someone made this same joke today there would be no doubt about its intended meaning.

But then, the debate over government-paid health care plans goes back decades, so who knows? Maybe Shulz really did embed a commentary on the paranoia of anti-Socialism in Peanuts.

In my Google Reader rss feeds I saw the Onion headline, "Virginia Governor Declares April Confederate History Month." I thought, "Ha ha, good one, Onion!" and clicked on the link, only to discover that this is not a fake article, but one of their American Voices pieces in which their fictional people-on-the-street make snarky comments about real world news items. Apparently, it's not only real, but has existed for several years.

For some reason I was thinking about how I got to this point in my life on my car ride home yesterday. When you have no stereo due to the fact that it was stolen by savages and you have a 45 minute commute, you tend to do a lot of thinking. At this particular time I was thinking about the first time I saw the World Wide Web. It was 1995. I was attending a small private school at the time and while the facilities had yet to be improved to the impressive structures they are now, we were one of the more technologically advanced schools in the state. This was thanks to the efforts of John Couch, one of the pioneers at Apple who for some reason has no Wikipedia page. He had acquired a lab full of top of the line Macs and we had what was at the time a blazing fast internet connection.

Looking at the page of text, if you had told me this technology would end up putting entire industries out of business, I would have never believed you. But it sparked something, just as years before I had felt it the first time my dad sat me on his lap in front of one of the giant PCs at his office, the first time I made a line in LOGO at school, the first time I logged in to BBS to play LORD, and everything after that.

What are your geek roots?

I don't think I'll be able to listen to "California Dreamin'" for a really long time after watching this movie. It consists of two unrelated (yet similar) stories, and in one of them a girl listens to the song incessantly because she dreams of going to California. The story itself is good, but I did get tired of the song. The girl works at a food counter, which a cop frequents for dinner. The cop is getting over a breakup with his flight attendant girlfriend. When the ex-girlfriend leaves his apartment key at the food counter, the girl starts visiting the cop's house, cleaning it up, listening to music - whatever floats her quirky boat.

The other story, which is actually the first in the movie, is also about a cop who has recently experienced a breakup. He wants his girlfriend back. He fixates on her and his impending birthday, and for a month eats only canned pineapple that expires on his birthday, determined to let her go if she doesn't contact him by that date.

I like the idea of these similar stories and the quirkiness within them. I know this movie made a big splash back in the day, but I have to say that it's a bit dated when one views it for the first time sixteen years after it was released. The camera action in the first segment is irritating, and the music is terrible. I like the writing, visual, and musical style of the second story quite a bit more. The movie does speak to the promise that writer/director Wong Kar Wai would show in the future. Overall, I liked it well enough, but was slightly disappointed from all the hype I had heard about it.

The results are in:

I win again! Thanks to all for playing.

I got so sidetracked in researching the costuming for this movie! In more than one instance, there are duplicate costumes between this movie and Pee Wee's Big Adventure. I wanted to know the meaning behind it, but I think it may just be a costume designer's decision, since the same costume designer worked on both movies; although Pee-Wee's outfit came first in the 1970s, I think the cowboy outfit was first worn by Jeff Goldblum in Buckaroo Bonzai. Strange.

Anyway, we saw this a whiiiile back when Ryan chose it as his movie pick for a PriDoni movie night. It was a family favorite for him as he grew up, and I can see why. It has the same crazy quality to draw in an audience that something like Labyrinth might.

I like that it jumps right in with its hero and his band of friends. Unlike the hero/adventure movies of today, which spend a full movie introducing us to the main character and what makes him special, this one just dives into the world of Buckaroo, who has created the oscillation overthruster, with which he can travel through solid matter using the eighth dimension. When some crazy characters from said dimension threaten humanity, Buckaroo and his buds have to stop them.

Right after we watched it, it was featured as the number one aborted franchise movie on the Rotten Tomatoes Show. Just thought I'd share.

I did enjoy the movie, and can tell that I would enjoy it more with each repeat viewing. There are some crazy performances from the likes of John Lithgow and Christopher Lloyd, but there are all sorts of other interesting actors as well. It's the epitome of fun, crazy 80s movies with bizarre plots, quirky characters, and interesting costumes. And holding it all together is the calm but cool persona of Buckaroo himself, played by Peter Weller. Thanks for sharing it, Ryan!

In addition to Brax, Phil has another comic called Kids With Gas Eat Free that he has been doing just for fun. It's actually pretty funny. He hit his 50th strip today so I just wanted to give him props for that. Great job!

Hey kids!

How's every little thing?!

Ric and I just got back from a vacation to the Pacific Northwest and I'm living the post-vacation blues right now. But at least I scheduled lots of things into my day so I wouldn't have to sit behind my desk the entire day.

We had a good time visiting with Erika and Justin, who were awesome hosts. We got to walk around Portland, Lacamas Lake, and Justin's parents' 10-acre property in Oregon City. I ate all sorts of goodies, from a cookies 'n' cream doughnut to croque portabello to gorgonzola fries to a red velvet cake/raspberries/cream cheese blended frozen custard. Heck yeah, I'll be hitting up the track hard this week! Ric got to go fishing, and we all made sure to check out the local brews. It rained a little too much, but that's not unexpected for the territory. It was just nice to have some time off work.

As for updates, I'll have you know I've had bloodwork done several times lately, none of which has shown an excess of sugars in my blood. Turns out I may have a slight resistance to insulin, but overall I'm doing fine. I think I'm going to cancel on the pre-diabetes classes that they made me sign up for. Meanwhile I've got to take some medication that will hopefully help my system out a bit. I had all sorts of thyroid tests done and those all look okay, which was a relief!

Hm, well, I want to get out of work now, so I'm going to leave it at that. More movie reviews and other stuff to come!

As you may know, Beck has been involved with a project called Record Club, in which he and various guest musicians cover a classic album in one day. The first three selections were more or less what I'd expect from the genre-bending folk rocker, but I was surprised to learn that the fourth album (recorded with members of Liars, St. Vincent, and Os Mutantes) is Kick by INXS. I don't have any particular complaints against the album, but it's definitely not what I generally associate with Beck.

The first two tracks are up on Beck.com, and while the first is pretty straightforward and faithful version of "Guns In The Sky," Beck and Friends' reinterpretation of "New Sensation" is really something else entirely.

Holy crap. If you've ever been a fan of action films, I think you'll enjoy this. I still wish they had managed to sign Van Damme. That would have been pretty epic.