Turner Classic Movies (TCM), always releases their end of year remembrance a couple weeks early. Then they update it in case someone passes near the end of the year. I don’t care. I watch both versions. Even if you don’t recognize everyone, there’s always plenty to make you wistful… and remind you that a certain film or three is worth re-watching. Verklempt, right? And of course, they nailed the landing.
100 years ago today, in a small town in England, Arthur Clarke was born. Perhaps he’ll always be best known by the public at large for 2001: A Space Odyssey, which is certainly how I was first introduced to his work. Later, when I had a chance to delve deeper into my Dad’s collection of 50s paperbacks, I came across Childhood’s End and later still, “The Star” — a very short story that nevertheless haunts…
Growing up near Washington, DC during the Cold War left an impression on me. It could be that my dad, a physicist, had explained how the U.S. and Soviet nuclear arsenals were large enough to reduce the world to dust and have nukes left over to shake up the dust. Okay, that’s a bit of hyperbolae. My dad would probably qualify my sentence by pointing out that the nukes wouldn’t obliterate the entire surface of the earth……
They say all good things come to an end. In the case of podcasts and online video series, I suppose you don’t know how good a thing is until it’s gone. So it was with some sadness that I took the time to read the postmortem by Taylor Ramos and Tony Zhou explaining how their YouTube series, Every Frame a Painting had come to an end. A friend and fellow fan of the series sent the essay to me and…
As the year draws to a close, people invariably muse aloud about how fast the year has gone. Strangely, November was far longer for me than October. I’m not sure yet how December will shape up. I decided to do some Internet digging about time and how people perceive it. I suppose I could go ahead and read some Marcel Proust since no one can properly summarize his masterwork, but I wanted something more on the…
I am overdue in continuing the “Monday Motivation” posts, so I thought it’d be an opportune time to note that sometimes it’s good to just do what you’re doing and keep on doing it. Especially for those of you in the middle of the slog that is NaNoWriMo: just keep truckin’. Don’t edit, write! As “they” say, the first draft is always garbage anyway and editing is another month. One thing I thought of in…
Look, we all know it’s decorative gourd season. Pumpkins and, especially, “pumpkin spice” items are everywhere. However, in the interest of sharing information and –let’s be honest– giving you a Halloween scare, you should know: You live in a world where clear pumpkin pie is a thing. In this world, pumpkins may not actually be pumpkins! I mean, if you thought David S. Pumpkins gave you unsatisfying answers, wait ’til you get in the weeds on…
Really, I had to post something for Halloween, didn’t I? Jean Twenge’s longform article in the Atlantic about the damage of smartphones has been making the rounds on my social media channels since it came out in September. It’s stayed with me perhaps because it’s another parenting conundrum to keep one up at night. I was reminded of the article as well because of a recent piece in the Independent that pointed out how Bill Gates…
Life in the offline world has been demanding much of my attention this past month, so I haven’t been posting as much. I feel somewhat remiss in my Internet duties to pass along useful information and interesting things to read. With that in mind, I direct you to 50 screenplays made available for free from some darn fine movies, from “Alien” to “Up in the Air.” Happy reading!
Okay, this is old news for most of you. It should be noted that –despite what I’m sure at some point were Adobe’s (and Macromedia’s) intentions– Flash was never going to be the savior of the Internet universe. Nevertheless, if you need some good news this Friday, be reminded that Flash is will be, as of 2020, not just merely dead, but really most sincerely dead.