Old Dudes Wear New Balance

In these modern times it’s as important to be well-viewed as well-read. There are 46 films on This List I’ve seen and recall well enough to rank and comment on. Interesting as it contains no definite clunkers, and ignores several genres and acclaimed directors.

1 8 Blade Runner Gorgeous Sci-Noir cinematography.
2 64 The Graduate My favourite comedy. Cringe with a tinge of fremdschämen.
3 13 Godfather Trilogy The Epic Mafia Masterpiece.
4 19 Sideways Dark comedy that glamorizes oenophilia.
5 99 Bourne Trilogy Handily outpaces other action flicks.
6 67 Planet of the Apes Still awesome despite the terrible costumes.
7 21 Rounders Damon just can’t lose. Malkovitch sparkles.
8 17 Truman Show Jim Carry escaped the Dumber with this fine flick.
9 26 Princess Bride Inconceivably sharp family film.
10 112 Matrix Top-notch stop-action film technique. High-bar for cool.
11 35 Napoleon Dynamite Delightful genre bender. Love it or Hate it.
12 42 Pulp Fiction Hello Quentin. Have a Best Screenplay Oscar.
13 87 Goodwill Hunting Damon shines. Screenplay Oscar. R. Williams isn’t Mork.
14 31 Avatar James Cameron goes overboard again.
15 75 Lean on Me Oops. Thought this was the deserving Stand by Me.
16 22 Groundhog Day Quirky déjà vu film manages to embed itself into pop-culture.
17 24 Independence Day Great Theatre Film. Will Smith’s break-out.
18 57 Lord of the Rings Trilogy Epic Tolkien. Hours of middle-earthen slaughter.
19 25 Life of Brian Typical Python irreverence (Meaning of Life, Holy Grail)
20 4 Forrest Gump Never go full retard.
21 30 Rocky I, II, III, V, VI Original won the Oscar but I prefer Mr. T (III)
22 168 Harry Potter Read the Books. See the Films. Ride the…ride I guess.
23 108 The Invention of Lying Ricky Gervais takes it to the big screen.
24 53 Arsenic and Old Lace Carey Grant in screwball comedy.
25 151 Fargo Great but for the woodchipper.
26 44 Scarface Thugs love to emulate this film and lifestyle.
27 72 Searching for Bobby Fischer Genius, Obsession and Madness.
28 14 The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly A classic Eastwood Spaghetti Western.
29 140 Chariots of Fire Soundtrack required for pop-culture in-jokes. Redundant?
30 83 Titanic James Cameron sells the crap out of classic disaster.
31 101 I, Robot Stylish. No idea if I watched it all.
32 68 True Grit Great throwback if you like westerns.
33 104 Saving Private Ryan Brutal opening scene in the theatre
34 103 Karate Kid I & II Everyone who’s seen it has done the Crane-Kick.
35 2 Gone With The Wind Fell asleep as a kid. Awoke to civil war atrocities.
36 158 Gangs of New York Working class old-timey gangs.
37 86 Superman Returns The entire series smells of 80′s cheap.
38 116 My Cousin Vinny Perky Tomei can’t save this court disaster.
39 56 Scent of a Woman Court is the easy way to end a movie.
40 52 It’s a Wonderful Life I’m jaded by this verified classic.
41 91 Up Downer
42 93 The Ten Commandments What Big-Budget used to look like.
44 137 Talladega Nights Lowest-brow on the list satirizes the low fruit of NASCAR.
45 7 Star Trek II, III, and IV Typo? No Star Wars?
46 60 Mask Diaz Gams can’t save shlock.

REWIND

 

A Duck Apology

I’m sorry. This morning I saw a beautiful mallard waiting on the corner by a bus stop. I didn’t digitally document and upload his existence for eternity. I denied comics the opportunity to misspell his thoughts in a meme. I deprived future generations of philosophers and ornithologists from the answer to his motivation, because the question will never be posed.

I failed humanity.

QUARK

 

Got Iodine?

A post compacted into digestable bumper-sticker bites.

The Milk is radioactive. Blame the land-tuna and bio-accumulation. Pregnant ladies are canaries. The panicked dairymen say don’t fear; bananas have been killing you for years. The Governor says a pint is as hazardous as flying to New York City. Ask the flight crew about their cancer. Soy ruins coffee; black is bitter. Stock like a Mormon.

STASH

 

SNL: one bear at a time

Saturday Night Live is a revolving ensemble cast of archetypes. Featured players are auditioned and scythed from the stand-up crop. The repertory players are always a glut of generic Jews, insider Canadians, bawdy women, a black and a lone bear.
john belushi, jon lovits, chris farley, horatio sanz, bobby moynihan, kevin james

Sorry Kevin James; drive faster next time.

RAWR

 

Beat of Just One Book

My first copy of On the Road was a tattered 25th anniversary edition. I took pocket-book literally. The faded sun setting into of my Levi’s was a clear sign of my offbeat intellectual aesthetic; in case anyone missed the Guevara T-shirt or goatee.

Beat books have a high lift-rate and are usually locked up or shelved behind the counter in used books stores; safe from counter-cuture canibals. It’s rare to spike a heady reader’s rush before a book is even purchased, but illicit anticipation builds as one paws through the Burroughs, grow-guides and sutras under the wary eye of the shop-keep.

My second On the Road was purchased at Barnes & Nobel. It is the hard-cover 50th anniversary edition and cost me the balance of a gift-card. I found it nigh unreadable on the second pass but it looks fantastic sitting by Joyce on the jacketless shelf of pretention.

Jack Kerouac
On the Road, 1957

DRIVE

 

Stuff Grownups Know

 

Dead Square

Dead Square is a WebComic conceived bi-weekly in a transitive hutch office for the amusement of canines.
denvercoder9

 

Books without Borders

Borders Reorganization: Store Closings
For generations, Borders stores have been beacons of enlightenment and education, where readers young and old explore their passions and find those special books that speak to them personally.

However…

I’ve had a Borders Gift Card in my wallet for years. I loiter with my 43 dollar ballance (sometimes I buy a cookie) when my partner is shopping at The Square. I’m not afraid of lice on plastic so I listen to CD’s on their headphones to see if there’s anything new I want to add to my online playlist. I browse the chess section and ponder if it’s worth updating my MCO to the 15 edition, or if I should play busted lines until 16.

What’s wrong with this picture?

All my reference books and atlases are reasonably current but I paw through the sections anyway. I sift for new strategy games among the boxes of social drinking party-disasters (Curses!). I grab a couple 5 dollar magazines to peruse while I eat my cookie. I thumb through the literature section to see if any authors spark my tinder. I print out the embers at a kiosk and use them as bookmarks for library books.

Special essay on the prevention of literature contributed by my good friend and co-blogger f@rmboy84.

In our age the idea of intellectual liberty is under attack. Its immediate, practical enemies are monopoly and bureaucracy.

Any writer or journalist who wants to retain his integrity finds himself thwarted by the general drift of society rather than by active persecution. The sort of things that are working against him are the concentration of the Press in the hands of a few rich men, the grip of monopoly on radio, internet and films, the unwillingness of the public to spend money on books, making it necessary for nearly every writer to earn part of his living by hackwork.

Everything in our age conspires to turn the writer, and every other kind of artist as well, into a minor official working on themes handed to him from above and never telling what seems to him the whole truth.

In the past, the idea of rebellion and the idea of intellectual integrity were mixed up. A heretic – political, moral, religious, or aesthetic- was one who refused to outrage his own conscience.

Of course print will continue to be used, and it is interesting to speculate what kinds of reading matter will survive. Newspapers will presumably continue until communication techniques reach a higher level, but apart from newspapers it is doubtful even now whether the great mass of people in the industrialized countries feel the need for any kind of literature. They are unwilling, at any rate, to spend anywhere near as much on reading matter as they spend on several other recreations.

Probably novels and stories will be completely superseded by film and internet productions. Or perhaps some kind of low-grade sensational fiction will survive, produced by a sort of conveyor-belt process that reduces human initiative to the minimum.

It would probably not be beyond human ingenuity to write books by machinery.

George Orwell
The Prevention of Literature
Polemic, January 1956
[excerpts compiled and Mccarthied by Mr. Salk]

 

Hide

I bought a pair of gloves at Lowe’s. Pigskin requires a bit of hand tooling so I spent a long time sorting and sub-sorting the bin of candidates by size, shade and stitch. I’m a victim of over-choice.
They are a buttery caramel lined with polyester; innocent workers at the end of a shovel.

I took off my belt in the kitchen and coiled a leather mamba. I stroked his head and worried some grit out of my thumbnail with his silver tongue. I tucked him behind the almond milk in the fridge and went to bed.

 

Stone Dulls Iron

As the office Christmas party approaches I am surprised to hear they will be serving whore-devours. I suggest gifts for the exchange should be whimsical and am sternly told that everyone needs to bring one. I tell them the stacked boxes are precarious and am told the values should not exceed 10 dollars each. I offer a clue and say I am a voracious reader and am told they don’t read Stephen King.

REGIFT