I try not to think about high school all that much. I didn’t really care for the experience. Sure, it wasn’t as horrible as it could have been, but it didn’t live up to the hype of the Brat Pack movies and Seventeen magazine. I’ve read Odd Girl Out, and I didn’t suffer what those girls did, the rumors and the backstabbing. I didn’t make it high enough on any one’s radar to worry too much about the sudden subtle shifting of the social sands. Instead, I spent those years reading lots of books, waiting for graduation, and ignoring as …
Ian and I have known each other seven years. In that time, we have moved – majorly, like entire lives in boxes, needing storage units and large trucks – five times. Now, I’m packing for Move Number Six. It’s a shorter move, just down the road 10 minutes, not to another state (or country!), but it still means everything goes in boxes and we need to rent a truck. We have many of the boxes from previous moves, some that date all the way back to Santa Barbara, all nicely pre-labeled so I don’t have to think much about what …
It’s official: Global warming, climate change, whatever you want to call it, is in. “Climate Crisis!” “A Threat Graver Than Terrorism!” Wired and Vanity Fair, two popular, mainstream magazines, the kind you see at the market checkout line, are taking the global warming message to Average Joe. About damn time. I suppose there was a time when I didn’t know that global warming was a danger, likely to affect the world within my lifetime, but I can’t remember it. I have fuzzy memories of reading Time magazine exclusives, probably when I was in junior high or my first year of …
Watched Peter Jackson’s King Kong; we got through it in two evenings, but only because Caitlyn went to bed early for one of them. The movie is large and very pretty to look at, but uncomfortable to watch at times (not just for the enormous bugs), and it left me with an unpleasant aftertaste. Jackson has said a number of times, even in an interview on the back of a Kelloggs’ Pops’ box, that he was remaking a film he saw as a child, a film he credits with getting him into the movie business in the first place. King …
Ian pointed me to The Brick Testament this morning… Bible stories lovingly illustrated in LEGO! Which, of course, raises the question: Does LEGO make little Egyptian headpieces for little LEGO people? And if so, what doesn’t LEGO make? The fun thing about The Brick Testament is that by rendering the stories in LEGO tableaux, it reinforces the story nature of them. Nothing quite like being able to pop headgear off and on as Isaac blesses his sons. Humans tell each other stories, to share experiences, to explain things, to answer The Big Questions. We have told stories regardless of culture, …
I’ve just stumbled across the trailer for a documentary coming out this summer. An Inconvenient Truth premiered at Sundance this year, and the buzz is rather impressive. (Sorry. I looked around for a non-Moviefone, non-AOL trailer for the movie, but they appear to have the exclusive at the moment.) It seems a bit odd to get excited about a movie that’s bound to be as depressing as hell, but there it is. Perhaps I’ve yet to give up on the idea that elements of pop culture (movies, for one) can make a critical difference in how ordinary people live and …