Just found out about a sweet aggregator of free online lectures. Listeningtowords is in an early stage of development, but it's a great idea. The talk by Roger Kennedy is particularly awesome. Listen to it, he is a way interesting historian, and politically all over the place (an environmentalist who worked for Reagan).
So the solution for my destroyed powerbook has been to get a new macbook. Upside, beginning school with a new computer. Downside, 13' widescreen is no where near as small as the 12' powerbook. But I'm grateful that I was able to get a deal on one, and all my information from the old hard drive was saved and copied over to the new machine.
On another note, this Books video is very watchable. I saw them at the Unitarian Church in town a couple weeks ago. They have perhaps the most fruitful usage of video in a live performance that I've seen ever. The line between the music and the film is not distinct, and really hits you as a singular experience. Classy.
Saw Spiderman 3 last night. Not a good movie. Inexplicably, Raimi apparently thought the Evil Dead formula/ratio would be a good port to the Spiderman franchise. The Raimi ratio looks like this. Make the first movie one part genre conventions done seriously and well with one part goofy, but winsome humor that everyone can enjoy. Expressed as a fraction this would be 1/1 where the numerator is genre and the denominator is humor. In the sequel multiply the numerator by 2 and the denominator by 4. Creating a ratio of 2/4 or simplified to 1/2. Overall, the sequel is not as serious as the first, but funnier. In the conclusion of the trilogy make the laughs run free without any respect to an even ratio. In the conclusion cut the numerator back to one, and the denominator up to about 10. At 1/10 the genre of the film pretty much disintegrates, and the spectacle takes over.
While this was the formula for Evil Dead. Spiderman did not quite go the same route. The first two films pretty much held the line at the 1/1 ratio. Arguably, Raimi took the genre side of the craft even more seriously in 2. But, as if that effort was just too much. Raimi delivered a film to us that could easily be retitled Spiderman: Army of Darkness 2.
This movie is essentially a series of spectacles that feel more and more contrived as the parade across the screen. I can't say it was the most disappointing moment I've ever had in a cinema, but it's probably close.
About two weeks ago, a bartender spilled a beer on my cellphone, breaking it. This was lame, but also liberating. I couldn't call anyone whenever I wanted, from anywhere. But I also felt free. Never the less, last week when my phone came in was a happy day for me. Today, as I was putting on my clothes, a heavy bookend from on top of a bookcase fell onto my powerbook, damaging it profoundly. Right now it's in the care of repairmen charging me large amounts of money ($280) to attempt to recover the contents of the drive, for about another $600 I can get the laptop fully functional again. This is another, significant blow to my pocketbook, and to my ability to communicate. Upside, I think I'll read more books. Downside, money that I need to move to grad school jumping out of my pocket.
Broken Social Scene member and Peaches roommate Leslie Feist released an album today, the winsomely titled The Reminder. You can watch my favorite music ever, for the albums single 1234 below. Also check out the whole album streaming right now on her myspace account. She's on tour in the states this June too.