For Your Consideration

Video

This parody ad of Anne Hathaway’s performance in Les Miserables, and subsequent campaign for an Academy award is the work of a Alberto Belli, a 28-year-old graduate student at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. Emma Fitzpatrick spoofs Hathaway’s belting out “I Dreamed a Dream” with new lyrics by Robert Hill. Like Hathaway, Fitzpatrick did it all in one take. The lyric, “Please don’t forget Anne with an ‘E.’” is based on a comment that Hathaway made about a misspelling of her name on a previous trophy. This whole film only cost $100 … bitches!

Video Privacy Protection Act

Posted on January 23, 2013 by RegenAxe

Bixby Bridge

I like to watch movies, I always have. I have watched many of them. When I was young, I would watch movies on TV. When I was in high school, I loved Bill Kennedy’s afternoon movie on WKBD (Channel 50) in Detroit. When I met Anne and had someone to go to the movies with, we would go to a movie theater almost every week. First came love, then came marriage, then came le Marquis pushing a baby carriage. Fortunately, the boys’ arrival coincided with the age of Blockbuster. VHS technology morphed to DVD, which has now been subsumed by online streaming services like Netflix and Amazon. This brings us up to the present, where I find myself watching more movies than ever.

Longtime readers of this blog will know that when I find a particularly noteworthy show, I like to comment on it. I don’t think that I am violating the Video Privacy Protection Act, when I do this. The what, you ask? Please note that I said video privacy and not video piracy. The Video Privacy Protection Act is a general ban on the disclosure of personally identifiable rental information unless the consumer consents specifically and in writing.

It was originally enacted to protect people like me from Blockbuster who wanted to sell our rental information. Netflix is lobbying to change the law, so that it can share viewing history on Facebook. I guess with the idea that if I watch a movie and Netflix/Facebook broadcasts it then they’ll want to watch it too. I figure that I’m OK with my blogging about the movies that I watch, because in these cases I am the consumer and I write about each specific movie. I’m no lawyer, but I watch lawyers in movies.

Last weekend a friend from work, at least I think that we are still friends, wrote on my Facebook wall, “You lie!” He had attempted to watch a movie that I had recommended and had also blogged about, “Iron Sky“. I’ll be the first to admit that this movie is really out there. It is campy and certainly not for everyone, but I thought that it would work for this friend. I guess that I’m just a poor judge of taste, when it comes to Nazis from outer space. Don’t worry; I have no intention to report said person’s violation of the Video Privacy Protection Act.

Moving along, I do have a new movie to recommend, “Man from Earth”. This movie is also in the science fiction genre. Here is a brief synopsis: an impromptu goodbye party for a college professor becomes a mysterious interrogation after the retiring scholar reveals to his colleagues he never ages and has walked the earth for 14,000 years. Another friend from work had recommended it to me and it sounded so good that I watched it that night. It was produced in 2007. It looks like a made for TV movie, but the cast is good; you’ll recognize their faces, if not their names. This movie is a thought piece, there is no action, just dialog. It is the dying work of writer, Jerome Bixby. I wished that I could have somehow worked Bill Bixby, star of the TV series, “My Favorite Martian”, into this post. Oh wait, I just did.

Jerome Bixby’s The Man from Earth

Pesky Rabbet Joints

Posted on January 22, 2013 by RegenAxe

Dan’s Latest Creation

It snowed unexpectedly today. There were flurries in the forecast, but what we ended up with was an inch of fluffy white stuff. An inch might not sound like much to those readers from more northern climes, but it was a big deal for Anne and her first graders today. Even normally staid and reticent engineers were all, “Oh look, it snowed.”

It was probably a good thing that this snowfall came upon us without warning, because when Saint Louis is warned about impending snow, we do not react well to the news. At the first call for snow, everyone jumps into their cars and motors out to the nearest interstate and then parks. At least that is how it appears to me, when I get off work. So, snow days are always synonymous with long sloughing commutes home. As we Saint Louisans eventually worm our way home, there is always one obligatory stop that we must all make. We must all swing by the grocery store and purchase milk and bread, because God forbid, we might be snowbound for days.

Dan sent up this picture of his latest project. It is another commission, a large dining room table (84” x 31.5”). Shown is the clamped table top. It is made of red oak boards that are rabbet joined. This is the impetuous for this post’s title.

In last weekend’s WSJ Magazine there was an article, “Two of a Kind”. It is a feature article about two 28 year-old fraternal twins, living and working in LA and the furniture that they make. The synergy with Dan’s pursuits was obvious, but would mentioning them to him cross some line and make us into the meddling parents. We took the chance, and Dan was genuinely interested, and plans on looking them up.

Bicycling Yosemite Valley Floor

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Bicycling the Yosemite Valley Floor

To Infinity, and Beyond!

Posted on January 2, 2013 by RegenAxe

Yellow Pacific Grove Flower

It seemed that everyone at work must have fallen off of the fiscal cliff last night, because that would have certainly explained the dazed confusion that seemed to prevail all day in the office. It was my first day of work of the New Year and my first workday in over a week.

One co-worker strolled in after ten and promptly announced that his alarm had failed to go off and he had over slept. He also forgot his employee badge and had been issued a temporary one. Our office has more locked doors per capita than most other offices and these locks are all opened with your regular badge. Temporary badges need not apply. Showing up at work without your badge really hampers your mobility around the office and can leave you trapped outside a locked door for many long minutes.

Anne went to school and handed back her fourth grade class back to its regular teacher. Dave left town today for Purdue and made it back to school safely. Dan is flying back to LA tomorrow. It looks like at least on the home front, the holidays are drawing quickly to a close and the expanse of another new year lies ahead of us. I’d done enough looking backwards at the end of last year, what with both a best of 2012 photo compendium and a telling of my WordPress report card. Now it is time to look forward, look into the future and do some prognosticating.

While 2012 was a pretty good year in RegenAxe land, I predict that 2013 will be even better. I don’t have any empirical proof to back this assertion, but I do have optimism. Isn’t that good enough? That’s one positive prediction, now according to form I have to lay a really heavy downer on you now, the Democrats and the Republicans are going to continue to squabble into this New Year. Hey, I know that this is akin to predicting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow, but I thought that I had already gone out there on the limb with my better 2013 prediction. What if the Mayan’s weren’t as good at math as we’ve given them credit for and they forgot to carry a year?

I’ve made a resolution. Actually, I’ve made quite a few. Most of them though are the same old ones that I and everyone else seem to make this time every year. I’ll lose weight. I’ll eat healthier. I’ll drink less. I’ll exercise more. To this list of so far unobtainium, I’ll add a new albeit modest New Year’s resolution; I’ll use fewer emoticons in my blog posts this year. Before you go there, yesterday’s post was so about last year, so it really doesn’t count, thank you very much. I know that foreswearing further use of the emoticon is hardly a lofty goal, but look at it this way, when I eventually lapse and you know that I will, who is going to care, certainly not me. 😳