About thirty years ago I went through a phase where I read all these wonderfully odd little books meant to change your life and your worldview. Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Dianetics, books on Alexander Technique and Rolfing, the Feldenkrais Method, Super Learning, and The Silva Method of Mind Control. All of these things promise the impossible, but wrap it up in a nice semi-logical sounding package. I recently re-read The Silva Method of Mind Control. Silva starts off with advising that everyone should meditate, morning and night and add the Émile Coué affirmation Everyday, in Every way, I’m getting better and…
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Dallas Arboretum Dollar Days
Article first published as Dollar Days 2010 at The Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Society on Technorati. Celebrate the final days of summer at the Dallas Arboretum where everyone pays $1 admission everyday through the month of August. The 66 acres of gardens at the Dallas Arboretum are filled with winding stone paths, quiet koi filled ponds, and even the occasional rabbit. Among the many interesting items at the Dallas Arboretum are walls of water, views of White Rock Lake, two 19th century cabin replicas, a thatched roof cottage, two stately mansions, outdoor sculptures, misty bridge views, mature trees including oaks,…
Eden Log
A 2007 black and white Sci Fi film with a minimum of dialogue and the feel of an adventure game. Eden Log starts out with a man who doesn’t know who he is or where he is and we follow him around as he makes his way up level by level. Along the way he encounters mutants, security guards, and the seemingly endless roots of a giant tree. This was a stylish film with an interesting look to it-but for me there were a few too many missing elements. We are never told when, where, or what is going on. …
Knight and Day
Like my favorite movie, The Matrix, there is a lot of gun play here and the Hero walks through raining lead without fear of injury. The reason for this is Tom’s totally Bourne Identity mad super spy skills and the fact that Cameron’s Dad wanted a boy. I really enjoyed Knight and Day, for all it’s silliness and it’s superhero story line. Tom does a wonderful job of acting like he’s crazy and this is a great nod to his real life occasional bouts of madness and couch jumping. Tom still has his good looks and this a still a…
The Tudors
Henry VIII was a nasty bit of work who loved women, war, and God-though not necessarily in that order. Thanks to Henry, Protestants and Catholics have been killing each in England for a few hundred years and those funny little people known as Vicars have been popular in comedy skits for a almost as long. Showtime’s The Tudors has played fast and loose with the history, but hey, who really cares? It was great TV-filled with sex, violence, and mad costume skills. I still think Jonathan Rhys Meyers was a little short for the part, but he gave Henry that…
the imaginarium of doctor parnassus
Terry Gilliam is the only American in the Monty Python cast and his vision has always been a bit warped by his early exposure to the British sense of humor. My favorite of his films was Time Bandits, a wonderfully odd bit of business that was funny, sad, and ultimately just weird. Over the years Terry’s films have retained their weirdness, but I have not been too impressed with them. The Brothers Grim and Tideland were just awful. The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus’s claim to fame is that Heath Ledger died during it’s filming. Having just been hailed as a…
LOST
“Cold hearted orb that rules the night Removes the colors from our sight Red is gray and yellow white But we decide which is Right And which is an Illusion” – Moody Blues “Now, now,” Bobby says, comforting her. “It was just a bad dream.” It was pretty much impossible for LOST to have a completely satisfying ending, as the entire series has swung from fun to frustrating to totally impenetrable. But I did like it, for the most part. A wrap up that said, in effect, it’s just a TV Show and none of it really happened anyway. LOST’s…
Watches-Very Expensive Watches
I was flipping through the 2010 Wristwatch Annual and found a wristwatch with a price of just over a million dollars. It’s called a Cat’s Eye Haute Joaillerie and made by the Girard-Perregaux watch company. There is something reassuring about a world in which a million dollar wristwatch exists. My current watch hangs from an aluminum carabiner and cost a bit less than a million dollars-about $15 as I recall-at Wal-Mart. This does not mean that I don’t have plans for owning a very expensive wristwatch one of these days. I have a great fondness for the look of Hublot,…
Hamburgers
The best hamburger I ever had was in a Greek restaurant in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It was a thick burger, a layer of black olives, and a layer of Feta cheese. Just a simple and yet perfect burger, I have recreated it myself from time to time. But most of the time, I just look for the easy fix. I like a Whopper now and them, but I stay away from McDonalds as much as I can. I like Whataburgers, Chapps, Carls Jr, Fuddruckers, Watson Burger, Sonic, Dairy Queen, Braum’s, and pretty much every hamburger I have ever eaten. I used…
The Ricky Gervais Show
What would happen if you animated a podcast of three blokes sitting around BSing about this and that and and sex and monkeys? You might get something like the Ricky Gervais Show-which seems to feature Ricky Gervais making fun of one of is mates and laughing rather a lot. I like the show and find myself laughing out loud from time to time as well. There is a lot of harsh language and a lot of being mean to the fellow who seems to have an amazingly odd life and an even odder set of beliefs. The Ricky Gervais Show…