In Apprehension

Good For Them!

Thank god, someone's taking a stand in New York against noise pollution.  Specifically, drummers who go on and on and on for hours upon hours, making it so you can't even think.

“Everything, after four hours — even if it’s Mozart — is pure, unadulterated noise,” said a resident of a building on the park who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal. “The community is right: The drummers have been doing this for more than 30 years. But no one told me there would be unremitting noise every Saturday for the rest of my life.”

Simple solution: limit the drum circle to about 2 hours in the afternoon, and everyone's happy.

Uberportraits

A bit of a bookmark for myself, but possibly interesting to others: 10 Ways To Take Stunning Portraits:

1. Alter Your Perspective

Most portraits are taken with the camera at (or around) the eye level of the subject. While this is good common sense - completely changing the angle that you shoot from can give your portrait a real WOW factor.

Some of it is just good common sense, but they've chosen some very helpful examples of each suggestion.

New DVD Releases, July 8th, 2008

Quick and dirty:

Batman: Gotham Knight - Direct to video Batman piece, but who cares; Kevin Conroy is back voicing the bat!  That and the clips I've seen look amazing.

Psych: The Complete Second Season - I love this series, one of the more amusing things on TV these days. (Hell, go back and find season one just for a great George Takei appearance as himself).

Stop-Loss - The director of Boys Don't Cry returns for a look at a town being affected by the Iraq Occupation.

Next week: more bat-fun and some British bank robbing.

Cheat and Charmer - Book #51

Cheat and Charmer  - Elizabeth Frank, 2004

An interesting if occasionally veering into melodrama look at a Hollywood family's reaction to the McCarthy Era.  Dina And Jake Lasker are living the dream life; Jake' a successful screenwriter and budding director, Dinah's risen out of poverty and the chorus lines to become a Hollywood housewife, and of course it all falls apart with testimonies, blacklists, ne'er-do-well family members and the like.  A bit soapy at times but worth a glance if you're interested in post-WWII Hollywood and the writing life.

Book #51, putting me on track for 99 in 2008.

"Take The 'A' Train"

I love this NYT essay on a father and his two son's love for the MTA.

New DVD Releases - July 1st, 2008

Not a huge week, but two items of definite interest:

Mad Men: Season One - Easily my pickup of the week.  Everyone raved about this fictional look at ad agencies in the early 60's and it looks right in my wheelhouse (and a damn interesting cast, too).

Mishima - I'm not quite sure if I need this one, but a Criterion collection of this fictionalization of the life and death of one of Japan's greatest but most tortured author is hard to resist.

Next week: a lot of DC animation releases and...nothing else so far.

WALL·E - Movie #38

WALL·E - Andrew Staunton, 2006

I have absolutely nothing to say except: see it.  WALL-E is easily going be the best animated feature of the year (especially considering the dreck in the trailers in front of it) and it would be a damn shame not to see this on a big screen.

Movie #38, putting me on track for 77 in 2008.

And So It Goes

Mayor Daley reacts to DC Vs. Heller:

An angry Mayor Daley, speaking at Navy Pier, called the Supreme Court's overturning of the D.C. gun ban "a very frightening decision" and vowed to fight vigorously any challenges to Chicago's ban.

He said he was sure mayors nationwide, who carry the burden of keeping cities safe, will be outraged by the decision...

The city was expected to publicly respond to the court decision later Thursday. A spokeswoman for the city's Law Department said the decision would need to be reviewed to see how it affects Chicago, since the city was not directly involved in the suit.

Meanwhile, in Joliet, another sterling example of a gun in the home for self-defense:

A 3-year-old Joliet boy died Wednesday afternoon after a loaded handgun he was playing with went off in his home on the city's east side.

The child, Julius Rogers, apparently was alone in the living room playing with a .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun around 12:40 p.m. when it fired a round that hit him in the head, said Joliet Police Chief Fred Hayes.

Good News, Everyone!

The gradual destruction of state-sponsored murder continues apace.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday outlawed executions of people convicted of raping a child.

In a 5-4 vote, the court said the Louisiana law allowing the death penalty to be imposed in such cases violates the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

"The death penalty is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in his majority opinion.