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Book: The Neon Bible / John Kennedy Toole
It’s a rare depressed 17-year-old that can express that angst in a subtle and compelling novel. John Kennedy Toole was not yet employing his outrageous sense of humor when he wrote this (he later wrote A Confederacy of Dunces), which makes this a bit of a dismal, Salinger-esque read. I’m confident that Holden Caulfield fans…
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Movie: Dark Days (2000)
I can’t think of a worthy complement for this film. It’s like finding a flower growing on the moon. The lives of several homeless people living in railroad tunnels beneath New York are documented without an ounce of hype. It’s a minor miracle that it got made at all. At first I didn’t really believe…
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Movie: Hilary & Jackie (1998)
I recall enjoying this the first time I saw it, and I enjoyed it again, but differently. It’s a true story about musicians, so it hits two of my soft spots. The strange thing is that I’ve been watching so many episodes of Six Feet Under that I’ve completely identified actress Rachel Griffiths with her…
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Live Music: CSO and YuMi Hwang-Williams
This is just a bookmark for myself, rather than a full review, because I have some projects afoot that are demanding my time. I will record my strongest impression. Listening to a 230-year-old Mozart symphony that I’ve heard many times on the radio somehow made me realize that this music was composed not so long…
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Artdobber
I finally meet Artdobber, Bob Gamage, in person at his great little corner studio on West 44th Avenue in Denver. Bob found my review of an Olga Kern concert we both attended, and stayed in touch. His work explores his intuition about shape and color, and draws inspiration from the music of Rachmaninov to the…
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Live Music: Yakov Kasman
Another opportunity to see a world-class pianist play mind-bendingly difficult pieces came our way this Sunday afternoon when Van Cliburn silver medalist Yakov Kasman took to the stage at CSU’s Edna Rizley Griffin concert hall. We chose seats with a view of the pianist’s face rather than his hands this time, and were taken aback…
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TV: Firefly – Serenity (2002)
This didn’t do it for me. I may receive death threats from my friends for saying so, but it seemed to me like it couldn’t decide whether to be satire or drama, and just came off hokey. It’s too bad, because I liked the sci-fi western concept, and was ready to go with it. We…
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Geo Mashup 0.3 WordPress Plugin Released
The 0.3-beta package has been out for a while now, and is in use on a number of sites, so I’m dropping the beta. Check the download page for more. This release includes some minor fixes: Fixed Firefox entity unescaping – those nasty ‖ sequences should be gone. Removed some experimental code. Moved the included…
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Movie: Kung Fu Hustle (2004)
We endure about fifteen minutes before turning it off. The good spirit behind the lowbrow humor in Shaolin Soccer was totally absent, leaving behind a flashy but ultimately ugly and degrading spectacle.
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Flowers Road Snag
Wanting to explore the foothills beyond Lory State Park, I take us up Rist Canyon. We see no public trails anywhere along Rist Canyon road, or a couple of side roads. When it hits Stove Prarie, the road becomes the dirt Flowers Road, and wends through several private ranches, including the hulking stone stables of…