Author: Mike P. Lewis

Rita Rudner Quotes

Posted on

Some good quotes by Rita:

  • Before I met my husband, I’d never fallen in love. I’d stepped in it a few times.
  • I love being married. It’s so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.
  • Marriages don’t last. When I meet a guy, the first question I ask myself is: is this the man I want my children to spend their weekends with?
  • My husband and I are either going to buy a dog or have a child. We can’t decide whether to ruin our carpet or ruin our lives.
  • When I eventually met Mr. Right I had no idea that his first name was Always.

TED Presentations, Dean Kamen & Majora Carter

Posted on

I once had the priviledge to go to the TED conference (thanks to Jules) and saw the best speech i had ever seen by Dean Kamen and his quest to fix many of the problems of the world using technology.

Now TED is broadcasting their videos on their site. I recently watched another great speech by Majora Carter who advocates environmental justice through “green” community developments in the South Bronx. Her project is the Sustainable South Bronx and her speech is here and below – it’s worth a viewing.

As for the Kamen speech, i have the DVD and i’ll post it as soon as i get it up.

The Big Green Bus

Posted on

12 Dartmouth students are driving their “Big Green Bus” from California to Hanoverthebus2.JPG (NH) and back on nothing by Vegetable Oil and solar power. Awesome.

This story will tell you more about how these guys will grab vegetable oil from restaurants along the way to power “the bus” and the solar power is keeping the oil from thickening while also powering their laptops and cameras.
Hell ya – go Dartmouth! Check out their site at http://www.thebiggreenbus.org

If you want to show your support, here’s their route

route.jpg

Love, John Cusak, & Woody Allen

Posted on

All according to Chuck Klosterman.

Coldplay and John Cusak are screwing us….

Coldplay songs deliver an amorphous, irrefutable interpretation of how being in love is supposed to feel, and people find themselvesjohncusack.jpg wanted that feeling for real. They want men to adore them like Lloyd Dobbler, and men want women to think like Aimee Mann, and everyone expects all their arguments to sound like Sam Malone and Diane Chambers. They think everything will work out perfectly in the end, and they don’t stop believing, because Journey’s Steve Perry insists we should never do that. In the 19th century, teenagers merely aspired to have a marriage that would be better than that of their parents; personally i would never be satisfied unless my marriage was a good as Cliff and Clair Huxtable’s (or at least as enigmatic as Jack and Meg White)….

depressing. But there’s more, little did we know….

….If we have learned anything from mass media, it’s that only people who can make us happy are those who don’t strike us as particularly desirable. Whether it’s Jerry Maguire or Sixteen Candles or Who’s the Boss or Some Kind of Wonderful or Speed Racer, we are constantly reminded that the unattainable icons of perfection we lust after can never fulfill us like the platonic allies who have been there all along.

Crap – i’ve been barking up the wrong tree for a long time. Maybe there’s some hope. Apparently Woody Allen is a savior, or not….

Woody Allen has made nebbish guys cool; he makes people assumewoody-allen01.jpg there is something profound about having a relationship based on witty conversation and intellectual discourse. There isn’t. It’s just another gimmick, and it’s no different than wanting to be with someone because they’re thin or rich or the former lead singer of Whiskeytown. And, it actually might be worse, because an intellectual relationship isn’t real at all. My witty banter and cerebral discourse is always completely contrived.

Amen, so is mine. But wait. Shit. This is disturbing.

This is all from the first chapter of Chuck Klosterman’s enjoyable read – Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. It reads very similar to a Sports Guy column but discusses popular culture instead of sports.

Monkey-Mind Story Telling

Posted on

8640.jpgJust finished the book “Another Bullshit Night in Suck City” which is a great memoir about a guy who works in a homeless shelter where his dad takes refuge. Their paths cross, the author confesses to doing some pretty crazy things and barely keeps himself from living on the streets as well. The book, written by the poet Nick Flynn, is beautifully written and totally captivating.

One little excerpt that i’m thinking of today:

If one were a a Buddhist, one might say we spend much of our lives in “monkey-mind,” swinging from story to story, our thoughts never quiet. Perhaps it is our fear, that in the silence between stories, in the moment of falling, the fear that we will never find the one story which will save us, and so we lunge for another, and we feel safe again, if only for as long as w are telling it.

Nick Flynn (345)

Graduate II

Posted on

Taken from (here) – thought it was worth reposting…..

There's nothing like an eviction notice to make a man resort to desperate measures. Charles Webb, author of the original novel that was made into The Graduate, was facing homelessness when he decided to sell his unfinished sequel to Random House, which plans to publish the novel next year. The book will revisit Ben Braddock and his now-wife Elaine ten years later, as they home school their two children in upstate New York. The sequel is appropriately titled Home School (unless Random House changes it to simply The Graduate II — I wouldn't be surprised), and Mrs. Robinson is somehow featured in its story. Webb isn't sure whether or not a movie will be made since he doesn't know how the rights will be handled. Originally, he didn't receive a dime for the rights to The Graduate. His last novel, New Cardiff, was adapted into the film Hope Springs.

Obviously if there is a film, the cast of the original would not return (although it would be interesting to have Katherine Ross return as her character's mother), and the Mike Nichols film is such a classic that anybody cast in the iconic roles will spark controversy and protest. Then there's the matter of the soundtrack. Okay, that is easy — a number of artists today are going for that Simon and Garfunkel sound. See the Garden State soundtrack for evidence. The thing I'm most worried about is that now we may get a sequel to Rumor Has It to explain its character's connection to Webb's follow-up.

Klosterman's Thoughts on NY

Posted on

Just finished Chuck Klosterman's "Fargo Rock City" which was great. I love it anytime someone deconstructs or discusses GNR. I found an interview Chuck gave to Spin magazine where he discusses NY city. 

Living in New York makes you younger and older at the same time. It makes you younger because everyone who lives here is a drunk, and everyone stays out late, and everybody goes to shows, and everybody cares about rock bands, and movies, and generally things in America that only young people are interested in. It makes you a little bit older in the sense that everyone is jaded and has a cynical view of the world and is very distrustful.

Chuck Klosterman Interview, Spin Magazine 7/21/2005

Halo Update

Posted on

300px-h3chiefemerges.jpg

Halo is blowing up! I have some news on both the game and the movie.

Arguably the best game (both 1 and 2) in the past 5 years is being made into a movie. Last year Peter Jackson signed on as executive producer for “Halo: The Movie,” and the project was tentatively scheduled for summer 2007. That date now seems to be premature as IMDb has updated its movie listing reflecting Master Chief‘s silver screen debut has been postponed until 2008.

While a simultaneous launch of both the movie and Halo 3 would be beneficial for both parties, Bungie always claimed the two are not connected in terms of release date, so this does not automatically mean that Halo 3 is delayed as well.255px-halo3logo.png

The trailer for Halo 3 is now online and looks fantastic! .

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Genetic Enhancement is Coming

Posted on

There's an interesting article about how the US (but not other countries) allows you choose your child's gender. This is done through "preimplantation genetic diagnosis," in which clinics take sperm and eggs, make embryos in lab dishes, and screen them for genetic flaws. Embryos without flaws are implanted in the mother's womb. THe US now allows you to select the sex, but it's easy to imagine when more customizations would be possible.

There will be a time where you can enhance your unborn child's attributes. It will be possible and it scares the hell out of me. I believe that takes a major toll on society and how people view and interact with each other. It's bad enough now when there's an economic gap between the haves and have-nots. Imagine what it will be like when there's an athletic and intelligence gap too.

Other resources that talk about this:

Great Movie Characters & Prarie Home

Posted on

I'd like to talk about a great movie i saw this weekend. But before i do, i want to look back and mention some of the great movie characters i've seen on the big silver screen…

characters.jpg

  • Lloyd Dobler (Say Anything). The ideal man for women is also a pretty cool guy that guys can admire. He's a free spirit who has the balls to take out the hot smart chick in the class. He's wears a trench coat like he doesn't care, is 18 and isn't intimidated by criminal fathers, and spends his free time kickboxing.
  • Officer Bud White (LA Confidential). A man of action with a straight-as-an-arrow moral compass. Oh, and he kicks everyone's ass. He lands the hot chick, solves the most complex crime scandal I've ever seen, and does it all while taking out every abusive character in LA. He's also a great throwback to all the great old-school characters b/c he's a loner and an island all day but is completely vulerable in the precense of a woman, just like Rick in Casablanca. He's programmed to live and protect the female.
  • Ray, the kid (Jerry McGuire). Never before have i loved such a nerdy kid. He's just a stud. However, i found out later that the human head actually weighs 12 pounds (not eight).
  • Marty (Beautiful Girls). I can only say so much because it just feels weird to love Marty. But she's smart, sassy and just seems like a gal who cuts through all the bs to get to the core. And she's only 14 – which would be a great thing if it wasn't so wrong. As Tim Hutton says in teh movie, "It's not a sexual thing…she's smart, she's funny…this girl is going to be amazing." She definitely was.
  • Stanley Goodspeed (The Rock). Stanley is a kickass bio-chemist FBI agent who rocks at disarming bio-chemical weapons but completely sucks at being an in-the-field agent. He's great at trying and failing to be a badass while exchanging great dialogue with Sean Conner (Mason). A quick view of him.

The latest addition to the great list of characters is one that i witnessed this weekend….garrisonkeillor.jpg

Garrison Keillor (Prarie Home Companion). A great movie with a great cast. Meryl is fantastic as is Kevin Kline and they all provide the many layers of a complex story about a very folksy show in a town "that time forgot and decades could not improve." At the center of everything is Garrison. And he's funny. He was once quoted saying, ""God writes a lot of comedy… the trouble is, he's stuck with so many bad actors who don't know how to play funny." Fortunately, this movie has good actors to deliver his script.

What i love about Garrison is that he represents everything that's right about the Midwest – he's smart, genuine, talented, non-pretentious, and sincere – while at the same time he represents everything that East/West coasters disrespect about the Midwest – he's simple, non-ambitious, non-trendy, and completely content. Watching him on screen mades the film feel incredibly comfortable and made me very nostalgic for MN.