March 2011
27 posts
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Now Hear This: Britney And Chris Brown Hit Us One...
Britney & Chris Brown Hit Us One More Time. WTF?
I couldn’t believe my ears. As I was driving home from work the other day, casually flipping through radio stations, I landed upon a familiar voice—an unfamiliar song. Could it be? No, I thought, dismissing my assessment of the saccharine-sweet club ballad’s performer. It couldn’t be.
It was. Britney Spears, to be precise....
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Margin Notes: The Wise Man's Fear
The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss
The Quote:
“The wood was the color of dark coffee, of freshly turned earth. The curve of the bowl was perfect as a woman’s hip. It was hushed echo and bright string and thrum. My tangible soul.”
Margin Notes:
Musical talent runs through my family. There’s a sharp divide, though, between the two sides. My...
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Now Hear This: "VC-Who?" And Our Muslim President
“VC-Who?” And Our Muslim President
There they were, rushing the court to claim the bounty of pride that awaited them in its center before the eyes of shocked sports fans across the country. In every bar, in every city (except for one), busted-to-shit brackets were crumpled and tossed into the trash along with the hopes of the number one ranked Kansas team that would be packing it up for the...
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Now Playing: Sucker Punch
Sucker Punch
I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why this film is stuck hovering at 20% on Rotten Tomatoes. Last night, I saw Sucker Punch and while it isn’t going to be an Oscar nominee, it was nothing less than solid.
The opening montage is a perfect exercise in “show, don’t tell”. Without a single spoken word, we are given the story of the protagonist who loses...
tumblrbot asked: WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE INANIMATE OBJECT?
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Now Hear This: Nip, Tuck. Repeat.
Now Hear This: Nip, Tuck. Repeat.
In 1997 the movie Face/Off asked us to suspend disbelief and soak into a story of a complete facial switcheroo. Back then, it was simply a fantasy, but as of yesterday, the dream has become realized. At Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, a team of thirty surgeons worked tirelessly for over fifteen hours to perform a medical miracle—the first of...
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Now Hear This: The Left Hand Manifesto
The Left Hand Manifesto
During the first quarter of elementary school, I learned a very important lesson. This revelation came during art class, when we were cutting bright orange construction paper into ovals to make paper pumpkins. Looking around, I saw my classmates neatly trimming their paper into smooth circles. For whatever reason, every time I tried, mine came out looking more like...
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On The Menu: The Big Hunt
The Big Hunt Review
Restaurant: The Big Hunt
Cuisine: Bar Fare
Location: 1345 Connecticut Ave (Dupont Circle)
Cost ($-$$$): $ Inexpensive
In a city teeming with congressmen, congestion and couture, finding a decent watering-hole for the average Joe to unwind at can—at times—seem like a Herculean task. You know the kind of bar I’m talking about: a place where the clientele would never...
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Now Hear This: Quarters for Combat
Quarters for Combat
During the summer of 1993, I stood in line to get my ass kicked. Not physically, mind you, but electronically. Much to the chagrin of my parents, Mortal Kombat II had hit the arcades and I was ready to drop something like $50 in quarters during our time at the beach. There were always ten people gathered by each MKII machine, all waiting patiently in line with their...
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Now Hear This: The Sometimes Cookie Monster And...
The Sometimes Cookie Monster And The “Wussification of America”
There was a time whereupon sunny days, I would sweep the clouds away and make my way to 123 Sesame Street, the rundown, urban corridor of my formidable, television watching years. Yet recently, when I tuned-in and took another trip down that familiar street, I couldn’t help but be taken aback about how much it had all...
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Now Hear This: The Cost of Art
The Cost of Art
I’ll start by directing your attention to The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss. Currently, you can get it for your Kindle at a price of $8.99. Your purchase nets you over 700 pages of a breathtaking, poetic fantasy epic about music, magic, murder, and friendship. But it also embodies every moment the man spent writing his book. In Rothfuss’ case, that amount...
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Now Hear This: My (Certainly) Controversial...
My (Certainly) Controversial Thoughts On The Beatles
For the whole of my life, I’ve been harboring a deep-seeded secret—burdened with the same cross of guilt that millions of others quietly carry—but I can’t, in good conscience, hide from this truth any longer. And whether or not you press down a crown of thorns upon my brow for saying it, I have to get the weight of this off my...
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The Mix Tape: Works Progress Administration 4x4 EP
Works Progress Administration 4x4 EP
The idea behind the Works Progress Administration is a great one: take a rotating collective of musicians and, when the mood strikes, put out some music. The original line-up has since changed (as predicted), but two of the primary songwriters who got the group started, Glen Phillips and Sean Watkins, are still in. Their newest release is the 4x4 EP,...
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The Mix Tape: Cyrenic - "Contrast"
The Mix Tape: Cyrenic Contrast Review
As I sit down to write this review, I can’t help but notice the gloom of the weather outside—that glow of grayness that bleeds through the windows, casting haunting shadows all about. Somehow, it’s that mood, that ambiance, that calls for certain albums to be played. Cyrenic’s new album fits the bill perfectly. From track one of Contrast,...
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The Reaction: Bored to Death
The Quote:
It just seems so unfair that we can be turned off like a switch, like we never lived, like we never mattered.
-George (Ted Danson) on Bored To Death
The Reaction:
Bored to Death is the best HBO show you’ve never watched. Ted Danson, Zach Galifianakis, and Jason Schwartzman are three writers (journalist, cartoonist, and novelist, respectively) whose quirky misadventures are...
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Now Hear This: No Charlie Left Behind
No Charlie Left Behind
By now you have inevitably heard of his goddesses, his “tiger blood and Adonis DNA,” the fact that he is a “high priest Vatican assassin warlock.” Water coolers across the country are still hot with the breath of people uttering his name. Every periodical from here to the fucking moon has his picture on its front page. It would seem that Charlie Sheen is—as he astutely...
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Now Hear This: The Great American Food Hoax
The Great American Food Hoax
My waitress said, right after I specified brown rice as my side dish, “I don’t like brown rice, but I switched to eating it because it’s so much healthier than white rice and I’m on a diet.” Let me paint a bit of a picture for you: she was five foot four with platinum blonde curls down past her shoulders and a body that caught my eye...
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The Mix-Tape: Alex Da Kid
Alex Da Kid: Hip Hop’s King Of Mass Appeal Is Ascending To Greatness By Conquering The Industry
Chances are that you’d recognize nearly all of his songs—own a few of them, even—and yet you probably have never heard the name of British hip hop producer and Grammy Award winner Alexander Grant aka “Alex Da Kid.” Alas, that is what it means to be a producer; the man who pulls the puppet...
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The Reaction: Walden
The Quote:
Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, through Church and State, through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in...
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Now Hear This: And The Oscar Goes To: Who Gives A...
And The Oscar Goes To: Who Gives A Shit?
The King’s Speech? You’ve got to be kidding me. A movie about a stuttering British royal who has to make, well, a speech. And while you probably don’t know anyone who saw it, the Academy has decided that it was the top movie of the 2010, picking it out of the likes of The Social Network, Toy Story 3, and Inception.
For anyone who pays...
