Octopushat 2.0

Caught “Grindhouse” over the weekend, and was pretty much floored by all 3-and-a-quarter-hours of it. The film is built around the gimmick of reproducing the 70s double-features of exploitation genre films shown at cut-rate theaters. The film does a remarkably good job at capturing the feel of 70s B-movies and it was very enjoyable. While I was reading about the movie (and how it did so poorly over the weekend) I found (via wikipedia of course,) an interesting quote by Tarantino from a Rollingstone article,

“

CGI for car stunts doesn’t make any sense to me—how is that supposed to be impressive? [...] I don’t think there have been any good car chases since I started making films in ‘92—to me, the last terrific car chase was in Terminator 2. And Final Destination 2 had a magnificent car action piece. In between that, not a lot. Every time a stunt happens, there’s twelve cameras and they use every angle for Avid editing, but I don’t feel it in my stomach. It’s just action.”

Bold words from QT, and I’ve been saying that the Death-Proof case is one of the best car-chases in recent memory, and perhaps it is the best chase since ’92… What else has there been? The only ones that come to mind for me right now are: Frankenheimer’s masterful case in “Ronin,” the finale of Greengrass’s “Bourne Supremacy,” and of course the freeway sequence from “The Matrix Reloaded” (which may have been loaded w/ CG but I certainly felt that in my stomach.)

Hot-linking to this pic of me in my Pauly Shore costume from last year, wearing Phil’s ass-hat.

Portishead live February 2007

Shitty video of an awesome impromptu Portishead performance at a club in February, their first performance together since the Tsumani relief show.

Jules and I caught a showing of David Fincher’s Zodiac over the weekend, and, like Julie says, we had high expectations and it still managed to blow us away. I walked out of the theater thinking about the film and haven’t really stopped since. It has been catching a lot of flak from critics for being too long without a satisfactory resolution. I think that both of those claims are unfounded. It is long, (it runs for just over 160 minutes,) but it never FEELS long. From the first gunshot fired by the Zodiac in the prologue I was hooked; swept up in the films panic and obsession and desperation. The film’s energy and impact, and its greatest strength, comes from its unconventional structure. It is really a great film that goes so far above what we are used to seeing from Hollywood these days. I’d love to write a detailed review, but I really need to see it a 2^nd time before I could do it justice. Fincher really stepped-up his game and focused on storytelling and characters above his personal style. A must-see, and you’d do good to see it in the theaters.

Does “Sift+F7″ mean anything to you?  Chances are if you know it you know it as the shortcut for opening the thesaurus in MS Word.  Something that I do A LOT of.  Years ago, just hours before his wedding, I was helpign Beau put the finishing touches on his vows when he taught me a nifty trick that is one of my favorites to this day:  right-click on a work in MS Word and the contextual menu as a “synonyms” pop-out menu.  This is a fantastic extraordinary way to quickly “punch up” something you are working on in Word after you realize that you’ve used the same descriptor 4 or 5 times.

Hopefully. Today I learned that using Disk-Manager in Windows XP you can attach a (external)drive to a folder on your system drive so that when the external drive is plugged in, it will appear as if all its contents are in this other folder. The poser on this Ask Me-Fi topic says it better:

Provided your internal hard disk is formatted with NTFS, you can create an empty folder on that (say, C:\Backups) and use the Disk Management console to attach the [external drive] to that folder (either instead of or as well as giving it a drive letter). Any time the [external drive] is plugged in, all its files and folders will then appear to be inside C:\Backups regardless of drive letter shenanigans…

How awesome is that? What did YOU learn today?

Welcome to Octopushat 2.o. Poke around and let me know what you think…

I’ve switched over to wordprss because I’d grown really bored w/ Blogger. I think WordPress is pretty nifty. I have no real plans for this incarnation. I enjoy writing in only simple sentences.

It is quite refreshing.

Our First Visit to K1 Speed in Irvine.
Originally uploaded by OctopusHat.

Over the weekend Jules and I visited an indoor go kart track in Irvine. We met up with the Clarks and the Holschers for an afternoon of flinging 20HP electric karts around and had an absolute blast! These karts were more serious beasts than the gas-burners on the slick-track at the put-put course that I was previously familiar with, though I think the helmet-requirement was more marketing than a safety necessity. I was, predictably, the slowest of the boys on the course with the afternoon’s laurels going to Todd. If it wasn’t so expensive (we paid $55/person for 3 14-lap races) I’d be down there again this weekend, but regardless we had a very fun time and were all surprisingly sore on Sunday.

Sunday was, of course, the Academy Awards and I could have FWD the entire show and been plenty happy. I think it is great that Marty FINALLY got his Oscar for Directing. It was long over due. And I’m likewise happy that The Departed (my 2nd favorite film from the year) won the big prize. It is no secret that Hollywood is in trouble, and this year’s dull and lack-luster awards were a symptom of America’s deepening disinterest in theatrical exhibition. I seemed like even the participants were conscious of the downturn this year; they couldn’t muster more than a modest level of self-congratulations.

It hasn’t quite come to that yet, but only because I have such amazing self-control. Well that and I’m under-cafinated because people keep drinking the last of the coffee in the breakroom without making more. I swear, I’ve gotten 3 cups of coffee today and I’ve had to brew FOUR pots of coffee. So this afternoon I sent the following email to the company, subject: “Coffee. It’s like blood, except you drink it:”

That right folks…
Studies in lab rats (and office drones) have shown that caffeine intake is directly proportional to productivity.

Lowell has been gracious enough to supply the means to an unending supply of that sweet, sweet elixir that will keep as all in the happies.

All that is required is 45 seconds of your time.
Only YOU can prevent empty the carafe blues.

If you drink coffee, and after pouring yourself a fresh hot cup, there is only a cup’s worth left in the pot.

PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, CAN YOU MAKE A FRESH POT!?

It isn’t hard: Dump the dregs. Remove the spent grounds from the filter basket. Insert new filter. Measure the proper amount of coffee (use the white ceramic mug on top of the coffee machine. fill it nearly full for regular, and healingly full for high-test.). Replace filter basket. Hit switch.

THAT’S IT.
SIMPLE.

The single easiest way to always be John’s friend.

But it isn’t just for me…
The entertainment industry is America’s most noble industrial pursuit, and the whole industry is fueled by coffee. Like coal to the steel mills or lumber to the uh… lumber jacks, Coffee is Hollywood’s most precious raw material. With out nature’s sweetest nectar, our Clients would be listless zombies.

For the sake of our clients (who pay YOUR bills) it is of the utmost importance that we always have plentiful and fresh coffee.
Happy clients mean happy YOU.

I haven’t had any response yet, but hopefully tomorrow our 3-pot coffee machine will have more than 3 tablespoons of coffee available at any given time.

Crazy whirlwind-weekend that was made more sur/un/hyper-real by my constant consumption of Actifed and related decongestants due to a terribly unpleasant sinus-infucktion. I hate the zombie-under-water feeling that those drugs give me, but I decided it was better than the head-in-a-vise/pressure-cooker feelings without it. Even now I’m struggling through my day-to-day in a fog, unable to think-up interesting diction or even string words together…

Saturday night we saw the insert adjective here Neko Case play the intimate Henry Fonda theater in Hollywood. And even though I was barely on my feet it was an awesome show. I really dig that theater, and if I have to go to a General Admission show the Henry Fonda is a good place to see one thanks to the roof-top bar, mezzanine seating, and well laid-out floor area. It was, unfortunately, about 600 degrees on the floor while we waited for her set, and we had to wait for a LONG time since Neko brought out Country-music legend Porter Wagoner (best know to the Hollywood hipster set as that guy who help Borat write songs on Da Ali G Show) to play a guest-set before she went one. Porter was supported by ex-Johnny Cash band-member Marty Stuart on his set, and Billy Bob Thorton (on drums) and Dwight Yokem (on bass.) A pretty cool Hollywood Easteregg to get the crowd pumped up for Neko’s set.

Neko’s got rolling just before 11 and her performance cut through the uncomfortable environment, technical issues (she was having difficulty with the monitors for the first 1/2 of the set) and her own fatigue (her 9th consecutive night playing a show) and really brought down the house. The set-list was very similar to last time’s and was a good mix of Fox Confessor and her earlier albums and she opened and closed with two of my favorite songs (”Things that Scare Me” and “John Saw That Number.”) Her band is fantastic, and the banjo/pedal-steel player, John Rauhouse can play the hell out of the motherfucking pedal guitar. And the Banjo. That guy rocks. She played a more banjo-heavy version of Maybe Sparrow (a lot like the version they played on Austin City Limits) and other highlights included a very powerful version of “Hold on Hold On” that blew me away. Neko is an amazing performer and a very unique songwriter that doesn’t get nearly the due she deserves.

Sunday I spent most of the day recouping on the couch and in the evening Jules and I finally got around to watching “An Inconvenient Truth” which was powerful and interesting and not nearly as terrifying as I expected (though the Melissa Ethridge-fuled end credits were a bit over-the-top.) If you haven’t seen it yet go watch it because if we don’t start doing something about the way we live we are going to be fucked. There are a couple of times in teh film where Al Gore says that Global Warming isn’t a political issue it is a moral issue and that is really true. It is tragic that it has been made into a political battle-ground when really we shouldn’t have to debate it. I mean there are polar bears who are drowning RIGHT NOW because their ice-floes are too far apart. What more do you need to know? FUCKING Polar Bears who are FUCKING drowning! That is just not right.