Home...

I'm headed back to Ann Arbor for a week. My parents are selling the house I grew up in and I have to go pack up my room. In my head, I feel like I'm ready for this. I haven't lived there in 10 years and have a house, friends and a life right here in San Francisco. In my heart, things ache. Its the last door closing on my childhood. I'm going to be 29 next month and all this adult stuff, though necessary, scares the wits out of me.

So posts will be occassional, with maybe a few tears. This will not be an easy week. I'm going to need you.

Connections mean nothing:

Turns out San Francisco, despite being the cradle of the Internet revolution, has placed a mere 6th in terms of percentage of wired citizens. This probably has something to do with the bozos at the cable company who have steadfastly refused to offer cable modems in the city ("More business? Nah, we're okay"), the overzealous cretins at the phone company who have spent the last four years advertising DSL service to residents who aren't wired for it (and getting fined millions in the process) and the general infrastructure of San Francisco which is still very old and in need of an upgrade (via Jish).

Let's get it on...Stalin?

Joseph Stalin and Nikita Krushchev having gay sex. You heard it here first.

Goodbye Kvetch

Kvetch is gone. I will miss it and its random jolts of negativity. But when I had lunch with Derek a few weeks ago, he was already thinking about killing it. I guess it was only a matter of time.

Understanding the Chalk:

Does anyone quite understand blog chalking? I'm just getting my arms around the mechanics of it but I don't quite get the point. I get that you can mark you blog with where you're from but untiul someone collects that data and starts mapping it, what difference does it make?

Do you know?

Hi, my name is Kitt and I'm...

So David Hasslehoff has checked himself into the Betty Ford clinic for help with his alcoholism.

How sad.

Look Mom!

It's me interviewed in the South by Southwest Tech Report. Wowee.

Whose going to be there next year?

Defining your terms:

I. Gadfly: Noun

a. A persistent irritating critic; a nuisance.

b. One that acts as a provocative stimulus; a goad.

II. Gadfly Magazine: An arts and culture magazine based in Charlottsville, VA

III. Gadfly Records: A Burlington, VT. independent record label

IV. The psuedonym of columnists in several publications

V. An SQL relational database.

VI. A possible career-path for me.

Back to the Screen:

After hearing Roger Ebert pitch his new book, The Great Movies on City Arts & Lectures, I've decided I must make it mine, even though it's still in hardcover. It's a collection of the essays Ebert has been doing bi-monthly for the Chicago Sun-Times, re-examining Great Movies of the past. It's not a Great Movies of All Time list per se but more movies that have moved Ebert significantly over his 30 year career and giving them another look.

There's also a mission at work here: Ebert claims that, with the demise of late shows on TV, repatory movie theatres and the proliferation of Blockbuster Video, many young film fans think cinematic history began with Star Wars. A valid point perhaps, but it also discounts the growing influence of DVDs and Netflix and the boon I believe obsessing over the minutae of film will be for classic cinema, the success of Turner Classic Movies and American Movie Classics on cable TV and, as uninspired as they are, the extent to which those AFI Top 100 lists have movie fans making lists of movies they "should see."

In the end, really, Roger Eberts is just another advocate, albeit a powerful one, for concerted, intelligent, arms-wide-open movie-watching. And I'm all about that. So on my wall his list goes, along with several others.

I have a lot of watching to do. And I couldn't be happier about it.

"Counting Flags"

Fray.com

This Year's Flag Count:

183, a new record. Even Suzan had fun.

Who's coming next year?

4th of July

Of to go Flag Counting now...

Hey Fray:

My story is this month's at Fray. Like, two years ago, I went to my first Fray Day and said "I'd like to do that someday." And here we are. Thanks Derek for the opportunity. And the faith.

A lesson here...

I just found out that Kevin Fox, whom I see rarely but enjoy his company quite a bit is leaving the Bay Area and going back to school at Carnegie Mellon. Is the take away lesson here that you must must must read someone's weblog if you have a prayer of staying in the loop?

Bilbo the Sequel

The trailer for The Two Towers, the second installment in the Lord of the Rings series is online. Looks to be more of the same but I'm probably the wrong person to ask. I wasn't so found of LOTR myself. Of course, the film doesn't come out until Christmas so I've got some time to change my mind.