I’ll post photos of Siren Festival specifically in a day or two… computer access issues. I’ve popped a whole bunch up onto a public Picasa gallery, if’n you’re interested. Linky link link.

Coney Island is just an interesting place to use your rods and cones. People-watching, coupled with the craziness of a boardwalk/carnival… just interesting. So here are some photos.

From /film:

Twitter has become a screaming tea kettle of NYC early adopters who just realized that IMAX tickets are the new iPhone. Not only are more than 1400 of 1600 IMAX screenings sold-out natiowide, but the tickets are starting to hit eBay. They’re going for as high as $350, and Cinematical reports that two tickets to an NYC showing at 10 a.m. just sold for $89 after 20 bids.

I bought mine last week (for a 10 a.m. show) and paid the regular old IMAX rate of $16 per ticket. Too bad I actually want to see this with my friends; otherwise, I could be selling these bitches for mad money.

Well, not really since I have to pick them up at the little machine thing the day of the show.

Still.

The “making of” video…

…for this music video for one of my favorite Radiohead songs off of In Rainbows.

From Mother Jones:

“On the haunting “House of Cards” from last year’s In Rainbows, Thom Yorke seemed to exhort a lover to let her old life dissolve and “get swept under” with him; exploring this theme of dissolution by pointing lasers at a suburban party and using computers to reconstruct the reflected data into a surreal, pointillist 3-D image of the scene may seem a bit on the elaborate side, but remember, this is Radiohead we’re talking about.”

Ghosts of My Friends arrived today - how I love the Royal Mail! I’ve taken a few photos of the interiors, but this is my absolute favorite segment so far… it forms a clear face with arms and shoulders sort of shrugging and going, “What??”

On May 25, 1909. Almost 100 years ago. Crazy.

Here’s a link to the Picasa album where I’ve posted more photos and will continue to post them. I need some help if I’m to take better photos - just someone to hold the book open without letting his/her fingers show too much and so that I can get them in a place with better lighting.

Some of these photos suuuuck for now, but I’ll get there. I’m just too excited NOT to snap them.

I’m feeling a bit mopey, but there’s nothing to be done about it right now.

I had a quiet weekend dog-sitting, going for short walks in the oppressive humidity and heat, watching movies and eating herbed goat cheese on crackers, in salad, with pasta… what can I say? I enjoy goat cheese.

I saw Hellboy 2. It was pretty good. I give them much credit for use of Barry Manilow alongside creepy-ass monsters (oh, Guillermo, Guillermo, Guillermo! such imagination!) and special effects. And I paid a mere $6 to see it since (unbeknownst to me) AMC Cinemas have this “A.M.” Cinema deal where any show before noon on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday is $6. The rest of the week, anything before 4pm is a matinee, but that’s still a hefty $8.

With those perceived savings, I went shopping at Century 21 (not the realtor; the fantastic department store with an unfortunate/annoying web site). While I didn’t find shoes, I did find a work-friendly little black dress (or, LBD) that I can wear tomorrow.

Now I am trying to purchase tickets for The Dark Knight in IMAX. Most regular times are sold out, which is fine. I’m thinking of a 10 a.m. showing on Sunday; it’s not sold out (yet). I’m just waiting to hear back from friends and see if that works for them. It would mean we’d have to meet up at about 8:30 in the morning to allow time to get to the theatre (45 minutes away), get seats and enjoy the film.

And just to provide some balance to this comic book-based movie orgy… well, I can’t even say that. I just watched David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence, starring Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello and Ed Harris. It’s based on a graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke. Yes, I am aware of the differences between a comic book and a graphic novel; it just struck me, though, that a lot of the movies I watched this weekend (Hellboy 2, Tank Girl, A History of Violence) were based on some illustrated story form or another.  The big movie most people are clamoring to see next weekend also fits the bill.

Well, shyeeeet.

I guess I’ll watch something Jane Austen-based, just for the contrast it provides.

I don’t have it yet, but it shipped from the UK earlier today and I will have it in my clutches soon. What is it? Well, I saw this post on design*sponge and got a little giddy.

It’s a book from the early 1900s called The Ghosts of My Friends. The concept behind the book was to provide blank pages where one would have his/her friends pen their signature along the page lengthwise and fold it in half while the ink was wet, thus creating a somewhat smudged mirror image of the signature… sort of like the project I’m sure we all did in elementary school art class where you’d create some type of Rorschach-esque inkblot design.

Here’s a shot from the design*sponge post:

I found my copy through AbeBooks (my preferred source for used/antiquarian books) and a copy has shipped to me from the village of Leamington Spa in Warwickshire (near other charmingly named villages such as Bubbenhall, Cubbington, Leek Wootton, Haseley Knob, Long Itchington and -ahem- Middlemarch).

The bookseller’s description of the copy I ordered follows:

Author: Cecil Henland
Title: The Ghosts of my Friends
Bookseller Book No.: 31352
Book Description: Hardback Green cloth gilt with illustration on front cover and as frontispiece. Unusual autograph book in which wet in forms a ghostly /Skeletal appearance when friends sign their name and the page is folded in two. About half the pages have been filled in dating from 1907 onwards. Some of the results are remarkable. Signatures are of family and friends of the Tomlinson family one of who was Mayor of Grantham. VG condition.

I am enamored of the fact that the pages are about half-filled.
I am enamored of the fact that the signatures date from 1907.
I am enamored of the fact that the family was related to the mayor of Grantham.

Now I’m faced with a large dilemma and I probably won’t have a resolution until several weeks from now when the book actually arrives: do I whip out one of my fountain pens and have some of my friends and family sign their names so that my friends and family here, in 2008, not related to the mayor of Grantham, can have their signatures alongside those of people who were friends and family of the original owner in 1907?

Considering that this was the original and sole purpose of this book, would I be OK with the idea of writing in a 100-year-old book? With anything other book, I wouldn’t think of it - never ever. I don’t have a lot of old books, but the ones I do own have stories behind them and I like to preserve them in their original state (and show them off - I should do that here, sometime). Whether it’s fascinating marginalia (a copy of The Egoist by George Meredith), great illustrations (The Encyclopedia of Modern Sewing) or a terrific concept (Tales from Shakespeare - a sort of CliffsNotes from 1919 which contained prose summaries of all the Bard’s plays), there’s a reason for each one and I don’t mark them up in any way.

But I will definitely be photographing it when it arrives and posting some results here or to my public gallery on Picasa.

Since Friday, I’ve inhaled more dust (and, consequently, experienced more nosebleeds) than ever before. There’s been intensive cleaning - like, down to vacuuming out the insides of the baseboard heaters the tops of books on my shelves, and filling up a box with books I know I’ll never look at again and using the space from those to house newer books I WILL read again.

The first day back at the office after four days off is always hard. But I’m home now, watching “The Simpsons Movie” and about to do my Pilates DVD since I don’t have it in me to go running today. Anyways…

• A fun little piece called, “Five Things I Learned from WALL-E“. Includes the (vary accurate) statement, “CG robots are better at expressing emotion than Lindsay Lohan, Hayden Christensen, and Katie Holmes combined.”
• Ooh! Photos from the upcoming “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” movie!
• An interesting tidbit about how wine stores are organized in relation to pricing. It’s common sense and not surprising at all if you know a bit about retail merchandising or have read Why We Buy by Paco Underhill, but I always like corroborating stories: “They Always Buy the Ten Cent Wine” from Wine Economics.
• One of the best wines I’ve found in recent times was a $15 bottle -Marques de Riscal Rioja Riserva (2003). I brought it to a dinner party along with another well-rated wine (a Shiraz) that was twice the price; everyone enjoyed the Rioja a great deal more. Maybe because the bottle was prettier
• Oooh²! A snazzy infographic about NAPS and NAPPING! I often feel that American workplaces should institute naptime and provide comfortable environs for it, but that’s a pipe dream… for now.
• And another reason I love me some Gmail - they just introduced a super cool security feature that allows you to sign out remotely (if you happen to have logged in at, say, the office and then gone home without turning off your computer). You can read all about it at the Official Gmail Blog.

I went to Target today looking for some shorts and “The Untouchables” on DVD. I succeeded on both counts, and even found an extra pair of shorts, an extra DVD and some new mascara to try. Anyway, back to my story.

Target is currently running a promotion of DVDs tied in to VH1’s “I Love the 80s” for $7.50 each. The wall display included seminal 80s movies like “Airplane!”, “Pretty in Pink”, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”, “Better Off Dead”, “Crocodile Dundee”, and the two I purchased: “The Untouchables” and “The Explorers.” I’d have squealed with joy if “Flight of the Navigator” was also there, but it wasn’t.  There were many more, but I thought two would be enough for today. Other positives: good selection, low price, and each comes with a CD of some 80s music.

What’s very disappointing is what they’re doing with the marketing. I’m not a marketing guru by any means, but it’s what I do for a living (I was actually promoted earlier this week, but that’s work life, so I didn’t blah-blah all about it here - but I must be doing something right). Back to my analysis of their marketing efforts.

The packaging is kind of lame and 80s - and that’s actually fine by me; I get it. They want to tie them together as a series, so each DVD has a similar design treatment framing the actual movie art, as seen below:

If they’re actually supposed to be related to the “I Love the 80s” show (which is what the overly helpful Target clerk said, after practically spitting in excitement over the fact that they included “Friday the 13th”) they should have included a VH1 logo; it would’ve made the artwork seem a bit less cheesy and bit less “some dude designed these to match a pair of swim trunks he owned in 1985.”

Perhaps it’s not actually tied into the show or perhaps Viacom didn’t want to use the VH1 trademark/brand identity in that way. All the movies (at least the ones I could remember and checked on IMDb) are from Paramount (which merged with Viacom not too long ago) so they’re all the same company in the end and I don’t think there would be too much trouble getting that done. Either way, fine - this is just my observation and opinion. I would’ve leveraged that brand and placed the logo somewhere on the package.

In any event, I wanted to look them up and see what other movies were being released in the series, so I went to the website listed on the outside of the DVD case (The80sonDVD.com).

It’s a lame-ass landing page on many accounts. Shot from today, below (I’m HOPING that it will change this week):

Yes, The80sonDVD.com was designed by a 3rd grader using Microsoft FrontPage.

Never mind that it’s July 6th and the awesomeness should’ve started almost a full week ago. Never mind that the site should be about the series, and not just the one DVD. Never mind the retina-searing use of lime green and the lamest headline ever. If you’re going to make the promise of total awesomeness, you’d best deliver on it, my friends.

Lastly, if you click on Matthew Broderick’s youthfully mischievious face, you’re taken to a Facebook page (!!!) where you can become a fan of the movie. That’s it.

Opportunities missed: countless. A simple site with a bit of content would have been a good move; nothing extravagant - say, a list of movies to be included in the series, plot synopses (the usual stuff you’d see on Amazon, etc.) and perhaps some movie trivia.  The wastefulness bothered me enough that I was moved to devote an entire post to it. So there!

Also - that bonus music CD? Four songs, and you get the same CD with every DVD you buy. And I already owned two of the four songs. Boo-hiss.

Still, I’m glad I got these movies. I’m going to watch “The Untouchables” right now for a little Connery/Costner/Pacino fix.

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It is entirely possible to experience nosebleeds and develop a sore throat from over-exposure to dust during cleaning (I’m allergic to dust already, but there’s always more - and there are tons when you move desks and shelves and things away from the wall). I am living proof today. I’m chugging water, doing sinus rinses and hoping that I don’t get any more bloody noses today.

As part of this intensive cleaning process (which I’m getting through only by thinking about how much easier it will make it to move in the fall), I purchased a paper shredder at Staples since most of my waste is paper which I hold onto because it’s related to taxes or expenses of one kind or another, or because I don’t want to throw it out since it contains sensitive information. In the colder months, I use my family’s fireplace since we always need paper for kindling anyway, but it’s too hot to use the fireplace and I seriously doubt any apartments in my price range will have fireplaces of their own. Now, I have a large trash bag filled with shredded paper bits for recycling. It looks pretty cool:

I’ve also got a big bag of clothing to donate to Goodwill, as well as a large box of books, CDs and DVDs. They opened the first Goodwill store in my county of NJ late last year - if you want to find one near you, there is a locator on the site.

One other thing that’s proved invaluable throughout the cleaning process has been Netflix Instant Viewing. I’ve got “Camelot” going… because musicals are so terrifically inane and unrealistic and they remove me from my situation.

This next one has a very “Eye of Sauron” kind of vibe going for it:

The one below reminds me of dandelion fluff:

And here’s what the camera caught as a firetruck raced by during the fireworks: