Current Configuration

  • Happy Halloween!

    I got home late and tired last night, so I belatedly wish you all a happy Halloween. When I arrived at home last night, the porch on our new home (post on that coming soon) was swarming with kids and their parents, all decked out in costumes. What a great way to come home from a long day in New York.

    This year, Alisa worked the door in my absence. She strung our porch with pumpkin and ghost lights, which actually looked quite cool. But next year, we will be taking it up a notch. That I can promise.

  • Eggnog Season Begins!

    Just a reminder, Eggnog Season started a week or two ago. Be sure to start drinking up* now, because after the new year starts, you’re out of luck. It’s a small blessing that the Christmas MindAssault doesn’t start until after Eggnog Season begins. Build up your good will now. It’ll keep you bright and cheery in the face of all that Bright Cheeriness looming over the horizon.

    *Non-alcoholic eggnog. Rum is for pirates.

  • Know Your Rights

    Gather ’round kids, it’s time to Know Your Rights! Check out our handy little model below to understand how your rights are swirling all around you, like sunshine and dust mites!

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  • World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

    The cover to World War Z, which has a weathered but contemporary look.

    Wow. Where do I start? Max Brooks’ World War Z is freakin’ great. I enjoyed literally every page of this book. As I read, I dreaded reaching the end, not in fear of a particular outcome, but because it meant no more delicious zombie war goodness. What sets WWZ apart from most books I’ve read is the unadulterated pleasure I experienced while reading it. The telling is so varied, so deep, and so thorough in its concept (battling an all-out global zombie infestation), that I was compelled by every paragraph, and gripped by every testimonial. I believe Brooks has shown that his Zombie Survival Guide was more than just a toss-off coffee table book riding on the coattails of the Worst-Case Scenarios Survival Handbook, or the work of some Wikipedia-esque obsessive-compulsive, it was the genesis of WWZ.

    Mild Spoilers alert: I reveal elements of the book in this post, but I try not to give away any of the specific plot points that aren’t obvious from the title alone. Anyway, the delivery of the novel is less about plot points and more about individual tales, so it’s easy to discuss elements of the over-arching plot without ruining the experience.

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  • Little Miss Sunshine

    Little Miss Sunshine: A Family on the Verge of a Breakdown, with the family chasing their yellow VW bus

    LIttle Miss Sunshine is a great film. The dialogue, characters, acting, all of it is dead-on and effortlessly poignant, and often hilarious. Go see it now, it’s absolutely worth it.

    MPAA Review: Language, some sex and drug content.
    Ad Exec Reviews: “Where’s Olive?”, “A family on the verge of a breakdown”, “Everyone just pretend to be normal”, “Welcome to Hell”

  • Just Doing My Duty

    City of Philadelphia Juror badge

    Where have I been the last 2 weeks? Finding someone guilty of doing terrible things to a child. It’s been an odd few weeks.

  • Path to What?

    After, for a few days, hearing vague inklings about a furor over an ABC/Disney fictional drama called The Path to 9/11, then seeing it get mentions on some of my favorite sites, I decided to find out what the hubbub was all about.

    Y’know what ABC and Disney? Nobody needs a fictionalized version of the attacks and the events leading up to them, especially when you’re making changes to what actual people did in actual situations that occurred only 5 years ago. And as for the assertion that the film isn’t final, and therefore we can’t comment? Riiiight. I’m sure those scenes were filmed that way for fun so the editors could scramble to change them. Tell me, why is it that Americans can’t comment on your use of their national tragedy to sell advertising slots on its anniversary? I’m curious.

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  • The Illusionist

    Eisenheim's chair sits empty, facing the audience, in the fire-lit theatre as the curtains open.

    Eisenheim the Illusionist’s angular Jugendstil chair sitting on a bare stage is emblematic of this film’s style and is a potent set piece in establishing Eisenheim’s own approach on illusion.

    Alisa and I had been looking forward to seeing The Illusionist for some time, so we made our way downtown to check it out yesterday afternoon. It’s a great rainy-day movie, as it’s based loosely on a short story (Steven Millhauser’s ’Eisenheim the Illusionist’) which contributes to its focused and well-crafted telling. And, like most short stories I read and enjoy, it trims off the fat by creating clear characters and strong tensions to set up the delivery of the closing impact. Unfortunately, I found the closing impact to be lacking in the face of such a well-delivered and intriguing setup (about 98% of the film).

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  • Rumsfeld Called to Task by Olbermann

    I applaud Keith Olbermann for speaking out against the current administration with the force of language that it deserves, taking them to task for dismantling the very values it claims to uphold and protect. He reminds us that our leaders are “transient” and “our employees” and that the freedoms we enjoy are easily lost and easily taken. The video is more than worth the time to watch.

    Thanks to Steve for pointing me to this link.

  • R Design Website Is Live

    In addition to a myriad of other odds and ends, I, with Alisa, run a small design studio called R Design. The reason I mention it is that after wrestling with the dull giant that is Internet Explorer and my own dodgy code, the R Design website is now up.

    Feel free to comment here or email me about it. I’ve placed a big punch link to it here on Current Config in the upper righthand corner. By the way, that big ol’ cap R is from a typeface I’m working on called ’Sulphur Tip’, which is based on some poster lettering by Lucian Bernhard.

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