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Movie: Big Fish
While this movie has some interesting things to say about how our personal histories can disappear and be replaced by the stories we tell, it loses steam beyond that. Too bad, it has some fun moments, but you have to sit through a lot of predictable scenes to enjoy them.
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hobolog Guest Appearance: Rich Shapero
Next week Rich Shapero will make the first guest appearance ever on the hobolog. Rich is exploring alternative ways to promote his new book, WILD ANIMUS. He has started his own publishing company, Too Far, given away thousands of promotional copies of the book (I received one via FedEx), and generally shunned traditional publishing methods.…
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How will we eat it? Recipe 1.
Tonight I resolved to consume one of the more difficult items: a box full of dense, chewy Pemmican bars. There are four flavors to choose from: Carob Cocoa, Fruit ‘N Nut, Almond Coconut, and Sesame Lemon. The Sesame Lemon will require some advanced tactics, I think, so for tonight I selected the less challenging Fruit…
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Phlumf!
We awoke this morning to glorious phlumf in the front yard! We missed it so much in the desert. By the end of the day we had tromped through fields of it and had a game of dog tackle in the yard. Pure joy. (For a definition of phlumf, see phlumf.com.)
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Movie: Lost in Translation
I didn’t plan it, but this movie provides a pretty amazing contrast to The Last Samurai. Here we also have Americans living in the midst of Japanese culture, but in modern-day Tokyo. It’s a pretty stunning comparison. I get the feeling that Sophia Coppola represents a unique phenomenon in Hollywood because her father’s name, connections,…
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Movie: The Last Samurai
I was first facinated by samurai culture as a kid when the SHOGUN miniseries came out on TV. This movie attempts to convey some of the same things, and it does so in a few ways. Most of the time, though, just when I was getting curious about some facet of the main character’s environment,…
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A Page From an Old Notebook
There’s no date anywhere in this book that I pulled out of a box that has been in storage for a long time. I don’t remember writing this, but I think it’s drawn from my first solo backpack trip about 10 years ago: I felt like a great sage descending from the mountains to bring…
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Movie: Sunset Boulevard
An interesting turn in noir films, this 1950 movie focuses on human pathos. The orchestral sountrack is there from its predecessors in the 40’s, and there’s a little snappy dialog, but there’s no glamourous, jaded, unattainable beauty or lone idealistic sojourner wrapped up in an incomprehensible plot. Instead we have a simple story of people…
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Movie: Shaolin Soccer
It’s great to see a Chinese Kung Fu Comedy poke fun at western sports and movies as well as their own beloved Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and Chow Yun Fat flicks. Like Mortal Kombat, computer graphics are used instead of wires to create impossible kung fu action, but all in the context of soccer. They…
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Movie: Super Size Me
What a good documentary. Because it’s so unpretentious and unpreachy, even the arguments presented that I disagree with (for lawsuits against fast food companies) are not offensive or a turnoff. It addresses a genuine curiosity: what would happen to you if you ate nothing but McDonald’s food? That curiosity is satisfied with shocks and laughs…