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Tag Archives: Movies

What's in a blog

So I finish this big fight with my brother. It was needless and fruitless and it drove me nuts. The cause of all the madness, me trying to help my father.

Go figure.

So I did some good stuff today to unwind. I got to hang out with a very good friend of mine and watch Being John Malkovich.. the kind of friend who I haven't seen enough of and I'd like to see more of. I did some work in the morning and got most of my domains straightened out. I had to use a lot of my skills to get things to move smoothly and I wasn't even trying to do anything hard.

Frank kept asking me; "How is a normal person supposed to deal with this?"

They can't. Thats why I think my business will work well even if its primary goal is small time.

I'm about to hit the sack, I stayed up to watch the season finale of The Sopranos. It was a good ending but a bad season, you won't find any 4 dvd packs of this one. Only 13 episodes and half of them had little to no purpose.

Sarah yelled at me for giving away stuff, she wasn't serious but it's been on TV already so excuse me if missed it. Regardless I'm not going to say much more about the Sopranos, I just hope I don't need to wait another year and a half for another season, they better put it back on normal rotation. (Never mind Alias was put on second half rotation for next year so the 4th season won't happen for a while. I can't say too many good things about the 3rd season though, Sydney doesn't wear her bangs well, she shouldn't be playing the hurt little girl character. And Vaughn doesn't play the raging heart broken lover very well, I like the show and the characters but I was greatly disappointed this season.

So now for the point, what's in a blog?
Do I use this space for random shit in my life? Do I gossip about my feelings for or about people? Do I account for my actions in life? or do I use this space to just vent?

I have no idea, but I'll continue to write what comes to mind, in the mean time I'm starting my business. And apparently I haven't told everybody, I'm moving back to Brooklyn and I'll be here for a while. New Jersey was nice but I wasn't flourishing there. My friends, my family, my work, and my home is here, and this is where I want to be. I'll miss you rowan people but you won't be far away. If we're meant to keep in touch we will.

I'm also not returning to school in the fall, this next spring I plan to. But this fall I want to keep working on my business and my life. In the mean time I've got a list.

1) Get my self together
2) Fix up my apartment — I've put a lot of work into it already but I'm far from finished.
3) Help my parents clean out problem areas. — Currently they've taken enough of my help and I'm done for a while, but I'm a "strapping young man" and I know how to effectively clean and organize.
4) Make sure my business including MS 51 is running smoothly.
5) Do a double check on my self.

And then, once I have all that finished, I'm going and spending 2 weeks in london. I'll have earned my vacation by that point.

I need a disclaimer at the bottom of wizard computing.
"All information is subject to change with out notice and all advice is to be followed at your own precaution."

I'll have to work on that a little, but I think it applies here too.

Good night all, hope your all getting by alright if not wonderfully. It's just being wonderful is hard and is rare, so be happy when it happens but keep in mind it will happen again.

Posted 07 June 2004 § ‡ Comments (1) ° Also tagged: , , , , ,

A Good bye to my favorite character

I just finished watching The Sopranos. Last weeks episode (I've got HBO in-demand — but I download them anyway — the in-demand stuff doesn't work half the time ) Adriana La Cerva died. I… can't even express how sad her story is. I wish I could. It deserves to be told.

–Francis

Posted 29 May 2004 § ‡ Comments (1) ° Also tagged:

Coffee and Cigarettes and Park Slope

Coffe and Cigarettes is a movie thats out now at BAM (probably other odd theaters too). I'd take a look at the trailer if anything. It looks odd yet fun and the cast is so amazing that I'm wondering what the hell is going on. You've got everyone from Roberto Benigni to Bill Murray to The White Stripes each in their own skit in this film.

(Btw I'm hosting that trailer off my own server not apples so if you want a link to show your friends either send them here or send a link to roborooter. I don't mind spending my bandwidth if they bother to read my site, but I want them to bother.)

In other news I'm living in brooklyn. This entire week (I'm checking my calendar — I'm using iCal exclusively now, its keeping me sane.) and some of last week I've been moving. Part driving my stuff up from Glassboro, park moving it in to my new apartment (at Franks) and the last and hardest part putting my stuff into franks and making the place livable.

I took a break on monday and hung out with Yana. She's the Jill I never got to know. (few people will understand this) I walked around park slope and we got to talk about many things. It was quite fun. And I've captioned each picture so it tells a little story. As stories go its a short one but its got plenty of pictures.

I also wanted to show you a little of what I was doing at franks. I've got the kitchen almost setup the way I like it, sorta have food in it (I need to go shopping but the food around here isn't as good as the big ShopRight in Glassboro.) and its clean. I've been cleaning a lot.

I figured I'd start from the back and work my way front. So my room and the kitchen first and then the main room. I've got some photos of the process. More when I find my cable for my camera.

You might notice all the milk crates. I love those things, they stack, they're easy to put together and they don't break or crush like boxes. I could make a couch out of them if I wanted to, but I'll stick to night stands and shelves for now. Cleaning them is a bitch though.

I'm still going to be on my mega pace working on things for the next few days. Sunday will be my day of rest, and NOW is the time to sleep.

–Francis

Posted 28 May 2004 § ‡ Comments (2) ° Also tagged: , ,

American Beauty and Troy

Troy was good, Achilles was valiant and could care less about the war and his part was played well. It wasn't Gladiator epic, but It shouldn't have had been.

American Beauty was… beautiful =)

–Franics

PS. Alright you deserve a better update then this. I've been moving, I've got most of my stuff here in ny and I'm trying to not live out of stolen milk crates (I've got sooo many.) I've been spending quality time with old friends but I need to go reach out to other ones I haven't seen in a while.

If I haven't done the folowing in the next 2 weeks I need to be slapped.
1) have wizardcomputing setup and clients being taken
2) Jazz club with Yana, she loves the music as much as I do.
3) Finish cleaning the apartment and have room for a couch. (So many bags of trash I've taken out already!)
4) At least called emily.

Francis
–Good night

Posted 22 May 2004 § ‡ Comments (1) ° Also tagged:

Donie Darko

I should have gone to bed, but I don't regret it. I just got to watch my very own copy of Donie Darko. I got it for my birthday and had lent it to my brother. I'm glad I have it back. It's such a story.

(I've got about 1000 thoughts I want to share inspired from this movie. About love, hate, time travel, alternate dimensions, pre-destiny, self censorship, small town society, beliefs and how then can consume, and some more on love.)

I'm a firm believer that a belief or theory should be used, shared and discarded. Like shucking fresh corn. Except I don't think we'd ever be done believing things, I don't think we'd ever find what ever absolute truth we were looking for.

I think I also miss California. The kind of missing where you haven't actually had the thing you miss, it's almost like I miss the yearning for the mountains and the climate. I wonder how my mother puts up with such a loss.

And while I'm on the topic (whether you know it or not). A Home Test for Parallel Universes I don't actually believe it but it is neat. It really shows diffraction at its best, I'm remembering something about double-slit experiments in physics. Either way, its neat.

–Francis

Posted 14 May 2004 § ‡ Comments (4) ° Also tagged:

La Vita Ë bella

La Vita Ë bella or Life is Beautiful is a wonderful movie. I saw it on sunday which happened to be Holocaust Remembrance Day so it was fitting. The story is about… a boy. He's really a man, a goofy, amazing one named Guido Orefice but he's a boy at heart. Not that he's young and irresponsible but he loves life and he's fun, knows how to make the most out of a situation. He really knows how to make the most out a situation. Watching it made me really happy.

The movie is also about another boy, Guido and Dora's kid GiosuÈ. He's 4 during the movie and doesn't know about Nazis, prison camps, racism all he knows is his father and what he tells him.

So Guido tells his son the whole camp is part of a game to win a tank. They'll need 1000 points to win and they need to do stupid stuff to get points. And since everyone wants to win everyone will try to trick him into thinking its not a game. And for the most part Guido's deception works and his son is saved the horrors of the concentration camp.

This movie made me cry at the end. I'm not one to cry from a movie. It's also worth noting that Roberto Benigni (Guido) is one of two of the the only actors to have directed themselves in Oscar winning performances and that he is the first actor to win a Best Actor Oscar for a non-English speaking role.

The Soundtrack is available at Amazon.com and is "sweet and melodic".

–Francis

(Read on for some screen shots of the movie. Warning — I don't have any obvious spoilers but I tell a little bit of the story.)

Continue Reading »

Posted 19 April 2004 § ‡ Comments (2) ° Also tagged:

Dammit

I just realized that my pack of 25 DVD-R's are actually DVD-RW's and they are teh suck.

On a plus note, I saw Hellboy today. The movie wasn't phenomenal but I defiantly have respect for the Comic. I also discovered Ron Perlman who does the voice and plays for many cartoon characters and evil villains alike. He also played as hellboy.

Sarah lent me her Godhead cd today. Best band I ever forgot that I liked. Read on for the lyrics of "I hate today". I'm not sure I'm going to put lyrics on the main page anymore, I realized that unless you know why I'm doing it you're not going to care about them. So I won't subject anyone to lyrics unless they really want them. (And yes I will probably continue to be cryptic about why I'm posting them.) Don't worry folks I don't hate today, I'm just posting this song because I like it and its been a long time since I last heard it.

Continue Reading »

Posted 03 April 2004 § ‡ Comments (3) ° Also tagged:

Oh man…

So I've been watching some dvds. I just finished disk 1 of Season 4 of the soprano's (link on the right side until I return it), I'm also following with season 5 (every sunday). Its a little odd seeing the two story lines join up.

I still haven't seen the "Jesus" movie. But I'm told the European title is "Jesus Chain Saw Massacre" or maybe that was the Shapiro title… I don't remember. A lot of people have died because of this movie though. Here's one more.

Top Story

I continue to love Mac Hall. Its like they haven't had time to think about girls in the past year or so and now they want to be in love.

You can thank Emily over at Apple Geeks for recommending my latest book purchase. Technically its a graphic novel, and then some may say its a comic. Either way some of the best stories I've read (Preacher comes to mind) have been in graphic novel form.

I got 2 pages in when Sarah stole it. She's going to give it back tomorrow. I don't really mind though, I still have Pattern Recognition by William Gibson to finish. Its a book I've been reading for a while now and I intend on getting around to finish it one of these days. It really is a good book, I even named my cell phone "Cayce" after the heroine.

Speaking of cell phones I have a new one. I can send emails with pictures free, I have plenty of minutes (I hope), it has a camera, bluetooth so I can sync it with my calendar and my address book, and the service is cheeper a month then my old sprint phone. I have a (soon to be unlocked so I can use it with any service anywhere in the world) Sony Ericsson T610. It can run java programs, play midi's, and has full network support. I am quite impressed with it.

I even rigged it to control my computer, my music/movies pause when I get a phone call and I can control almost every aspect of my computer from the phone. Using it as a remote for movies as been the most interesting thing so far but it offers a lot more, I'll let you know if I come up with anything ingenious.

There's more, I just checked my voice mail and I got a happy message from my good friends Ellie and Nina, Ellie who just flew in from the UK. I also just got a phone call from Steff. I'm almost embarrassed to say, the attention makes me grin.

Alas I need sleep.
Good night.

Posted 01 April 2004 § ‡ Comments (5) ° Also tagged:

50 Classic Horror Films

Frank bought me this the other day.

I'm not sure if its a good thing or a bad thing, I love horror films yet there's 50. I can see my self wasting a lot of free time on this.

The back of the box lists all 50, I'm going to have to check them off as I watch them and X them out as they suck too much to finish. Now I'm sure I'm going to love Metropolis and I'm sure I'm going like seeing the original Night of the Living Dead (By the way I recently saw the remake of Dawn of the Dead and I have to say I enjoyed it throughly.) but I can't believe that all 50 of these movies are going to be watchable.

I can't even find some of them on IMDB. "the Terror Doomed to Die" is one of them. I did find a page for "The Giant Gila Monster" but I'm not sure thats going to make the film any better then any of the others.

This should be fun, cheep 1930's horror fun but fun all the same. I can only hope that the lack of special effects makes for a better story. ;-)

Posted 28 March 2004 § ‡ Comments (3) ° Also tagged:

Spring Break

So I'm back. A week later and few dollars richer. I've decided that I can't wake up in the morning while in NYC. I've got an 18 year habbit of not sleeping at night in that city and while I tried quite hard, I could not break it. Thank god I have more luck here. (When I'm not up at this hour.)

I spent most of the week sleeping, I was going to say working but I slept through most of it. I did get a good 2 days worth in and got the cash to prove it. The only thing I'm stuck with is not knowing how to properly delete old backups automatically. A little shell script would do what I want but I was to tired to figure it out, and its probably not the best way to do things either.

On tuesday I got to spend a little time with Steff but I had to fight American Idol for it. American Idol is possibly the biggest waste of air time on TV, but I could be wrong that mob of midgets vs. and elephant thing was pretty crappy. I hate Fox more then Matt Groening.

Thursday I got sick because of some ill placed (and by placed I mean in my stomach) olives. But before my almost puking out an ill made hamburger (the burger was fine but it didn't happen to be what I ordered) and a few olives I attended Fat Cat Billards which also happens to be a happening Jazz club.

I loved the musicians. I'm proud to say that the trumpet has become my favorite jazz instrument. The sounds that thing can make is awesome. It wasn't about the sound, jazz never is, its about the emotions that the musician is conveying threw their music. I don't think this bunch would ever be that expressive with anything else, not speech, not body language, nothing.

They also had a guest play with them. I can't remember his name to save my life. But he was a drummer and he played more naturally then he walked or talked. Click for more on Fat Cat Billiards

Friday I drove 40 miles to see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in Scarsdale NY. It was a good movie, I need to see it again under different circumstances when I've got less on my mind but I grasped enough of what Kaufman was thinking when he made it to make this viewing worth my while. If you don't know I've got a thing for his movies. He's probably one of the weirdest writers out there and thats why I think he's one of the best (Reference The Icarus Project to see why being weird is a dangerous gift. Note: deserves a post on its own.) I haven't seen all his movies yet (Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is next in my Netflix Queue.) but Adaptation, Being John Malkovich and Human Nature (which is odd) have all turned out to be worth the $11.50. (Yes folks New York City is a rip off.) I've left each movie feeling confused, dazed, sad, happy, or in love. And each time impressed. As I said I've got a thing for his movies.

After the movie we went to a diner and spouted movie quotes. I had some interesting things I wanted to discuss about the movie. But I was quickly informed that I shouldn't try to have a discussion. (Its been a long time since any of my friends turned down intellectual conversation.) so I joined in on the movie quotes. A few funny ones were said but in the end I was left hung up on wanting to convince people that a gag movie (Jay and Silent Bob Strikes back) wasn't better then a Mislabeled Comedy (Its drama: Chasing Amy). It may have been more funny but it had no story. And being funny, while fun, gets old really fast. I can only laugh at "Cock Knocker" so many times. Which is totally alright because gags aren't meant to last for ever.

I need to watch "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" again so I can figure out what I was thinking the first time I saw it and maybe talk with people about it.

I went home that night in a poor mood, I guess I wasn't looking to drive so much for so little. I had originally planned to see it that morning in a local theater with someone I could talk to, but she couldn't make it.

Saturday I slept a lot (much needed) and then fixed things, packed (forgot a shirt I bought and really liked and a flashlight — hoping to receive them in the mail soon), fixed things at my parents house and then went home. I did get to say hi to my ever interesting aunt who I should visit sometime soon.

As if I needed an excuse to flee to Seattle for a week or two. ;-)

Its 'wayy' past when I wanted to goto sleep, I would have gone to sleep hours ago but a friend I hadn't seen in a while showed up and I went on a diner run with them. (Stupid friends working the night shift and never sleeping EVER.)

I'm glad I'm home. Even if this apartment is only going to be home for a few more months. (We're all moving out if you didn't know.) My most promising new home is a couple's apartment. The couple are friends of Josh's and they have a room mate moving out (going to germany or something odd). I don't know them yet, nor do they know me but I'm told they're nice people. Because I don't know how that will pan out I'm still on the look out for 2–3 bedroom apartments and people who will want to live there. I shouldn't have too much of a problem with that, especially since I plan on living on campus until I meet enough people that I can find 2–3 financially backed, sane room mates. I know its a tall order but I'm feeling hopeful.

I'm sleepy (by far) so I'm sleeping. Good night.

–Francis

Posted 21 March 2004 § ‡ Comments (2) ° Also tagged: , , ,