..:: Paul Fuhr 2.0 ::..

links i recommend this week

I've gone back to being a bad blogger again. Let's see ... I took part in a parade this past weekend, wherein I volunteered my time to push Elliott and other kids from his daycare around in a six-seat buggy with dozens of balloons dangling above it. I didn't know what to expect and, rolling out of bed at 6 that morning, I wasn't sure how much of my heart was in it. However, I should've known that it would be somewhat life-changing. I had a magnificent time touring our city streets and greeting the throngs of people snapping photos, clapping, and waving flags. Something inside me melted. In short: I can't wait to do stuff like this again.

I'm hoping to post some pictures and maybe some brief video soon.

In the meantime, here are the links I recommend this week:

• As someone who really doesn't watch television, I sometimes catch up on what I've missed at the increasingly amazing Hulu. That said, I don't always feel like watching episodes of NewsRadio on my laptop, hunched over in the dark or something. I haven't tested this, but everyone says Download Hulu works: a program that downloads Hulu videos and clips to your iPhone, iPod, PC, or most any other device.
• I made a virtual "mix tape." Ostensibly, it's about summer. Personally, I think it's just stuff I like with 10% of my attention paid to a warm weather aesthetic. Listen while you read.
• A stranger of an acquaintance of a quasi-friend of a friend made a short movie about clones in 48 hours, went to Cannes, and is now making a web series out of it. It doesn't launch until August, but they need the web traffic. Join the mailing list for Aidan 5 and make them happy. Looks pretty cool.
• If the top 250 movies on IMDB were a subway map, it'd pretty much look like this.
• If you think creepy can be awesome, then you should check out this gallery over at Geekologie dedicated to childhood fears. "Yikes" doesn't do it justice.
• Columbus band Karate Coyote deserves some attention. They're picking up some steam already. Be on the ground floor here.
• If you're too lazy to join Twitter but like to follow every celebrity Tweet on the Web, go here.
• This site creeps me out. It makes decisions for you: Hunch.
• A gallery of fallen princesses. 'Nuff said.
• Somebody literally decided to listen to every R.E.M. song ever and then analyze them, one by one. And then Michael Stipe decided to get involved. Head over to Pop Songs 07-08 for a pretty cool project that turned into a crazy fusion of pop culture, celebrity immediacy, and music theory. (It helps to like R.E.M.)

I have more, but I need content for next week... ;)  Enjoy the weather wherever you are.

no way in hell

artifact or yardstick?

bexley : 69f, chance of showers overnight ... stuffy as hell in my office ...

I don't give high school too much thought. Never have. In fact, giving it any thought sometimes brings an instant shudder in regards to the awkward, geeky, and misguided person I was. (Vestiges of the geek remain, I won't lie.) Anyway, I'm working on several projects right now, right? I was digging into a box of notes, since I recalled writing something back in 1995 (yes, I have a really good memory) and found what I was looking for: a line of dialogue I'd written way back when. It was scribbled into the corner of a notebook, right where I'd left it. Directly beneath the notebook, however, was a gem from the school newspaper.

In the age of Facebook, this might be something of a cracked mirror to some of us while, for others, it might be a challenge. Then again, it's most likely a curiosity. Regardless, I'm wondering how many of us met the expectations of our 18-year-old selves. Or, more to the point: What is the statute of limitations on this ridiculous list?

disaster porn

I've been preoccupied with pain lately.

Last week, I rolled over my left foot. I've broken it before. This time, however, it hurt so much that I couldn't even put a sock over it. It literally took me 15 real minutes to put my jeans on. When I stepped out of the shower, I hit my toes against the side of the tub and my foot was like a tuning fork. Electric pain shot up and down my leg and brought instant tears to my eyes.

Maybe it's because I've been in constant pain that I'm suddenly offended by things that never offended me before.

I used to be an unabashed fan of disaster movies. From The Towering Inferno to Jurassic Park, I was constantly drawn to The Spectacle. Here's the problem: I'm still drawn to cinematic spectacle, but I'm suddenly suffering from disaster burnout. I'm talking about ads for movies that the younger version of me would applaud. Right now, you can't escape commercials for the latest Transformers flick, wherein Big Fucking Robots fight Other Big Fucking Robots. And while everyone marvels over the photorealistic mayhem, I'm already worn out by the movie and I haven't even seen it. (I'm not planning on it, either.) For some reason, I'm simply exhausted by the thought of watching actors running away from machines as they run, jump, collide, outgas, and shudder.

Congratulations, Hollywood: At a pricetag undoubtedly north of $300 million, you've achieved photorealism in special effects ... and wisely spent it on Big Fucking Robots.

Now, I'm not knocking this. I write about movies like it's my job here. I like watching planets implode, like in the newest Star Trek movie. I even finished my own script recently, which does a fair amount of damage to cities, forests, and everything inbetween. And yet, in a recent thirty-second ad, I saw a Naval destroyer get ripped in half, meteors take out a few high-rise buildings, and a highway get torn to pieces. It's enough to make Armageddon (both the movie and the real thing) look quaint.

And just when I thought my cerebellum couldn't take anymore, this came out. Seriously. Take 2.5 minutes and watch this. I'm patient. Go ahead. We'll talk after you're done.

Pretty subtle, right?

Even for a disaster film, 2012 isn't satisfied with just destroying, say, L.A. with a volcano. It can't even settle on ravaging San Francisco with an earthquake. No, this film destroys ... well, everything. And in its final seconds, manages to flip the U.S.S. John F. Kennedy onto the White House. WTF? Seriously, in this trailer, I'm pretty sure I saw a continental shelf fall into the ocean, skyscrapers crash into one another, a monastery get washed away, the Sistine Chapel collapse, the Washington Monument crack, highways fall underneath a plane, giant ships overturned, and Oliver Platt sweat profusely. I'm not making any of that up.

I think it's safe to say that movies like Transformers and 2012 have upped the ante so much that they've created their own genre: disaster porn.

There's obviously an audience for this -- and, perhaps, it's you. Are we so jaded of an audience that Titanic looks like an art-house film now? As a society, are our psyches so deeply disturbed by the events of 9/11 that we have to look for something completely and utterly impossible? I don't know about you, but I remember going to Blockbuster Video on September 12 and seeing films like The Siege, Bad Boys 2, The Sum of All Fears, and Armageddon completely out of stock. I think that's pretty telling evidence that we need to reconcile the artificial and the real.

While I'm convinced that disaster movies tap into something primal and might even be cathartic, I'm concerned where the trend is heading. I'm all for spectacle, but I'm worried that there is no stopping an onslaught of soulless movies that make entertainment out of tragedy and spin drama out of spectacular deaths. It's all sound and fury, signifying nothing.

favorite movie credits: catch me if you can

Someone asked me today why I'm not putting my local weather header up here. Quick answer: I forgot. That said, I'll do it again, starting on Monday. A busy weekend awaits. Here's another favorite credit sequence, from Spielberg's underrated Catch Me If You Can:

favorite movie credits: lord of war

I have to admit that posting these movie credits have re-spurred my interest in blogging. Tonight's sequence is from a movie I haven't even seen all the way through: Lord of War, starring Nicolas Cage. (If you're one of my seven devoted readers, you might recall my post celebrating Mr. Cage's worst/most amazing performance ever.) Anyway, I came across this movie on HBO. Needless to say, I made it through about ten minutes of the actual movie, so this might count as one of the best credit sequences ever made for a terrible film.

favorite movie credits: saul bass vs. star wars

So, I'm on my couch right now, injured foot propped up on a pillow, and I'm writing this in a creeping haze of Vicodin. Anyway, this isn't even the real opening crawl to Star Wars. No, it's a fan-made re-imagining of what the credits to Star Wars would look like if Saul Bass had done them. Who's Saul Bass, you ask? (Hey, they almost rhymed.) Bass was a graphic designer from the 1950s and 1960s who did now-classic title sequences for directors like Hitchcock and Kubrick. The result is pretty spot-on: a jazzy bit of retro sci-fi swank that brings a smile to my face every time.

favorite movie credits: kiss kiss, bang bang

I'm cheating with this blog entry. But since I'm busy with work, two writing projects, and some stuff at home, I'll simply make the commitment to start posting regularly again on Monday. I just finished writing a web series, which took up a lot more time than I imagined. (Maybe it's the time I have available that got smaller...) Anyway, I also managed to become semi-hobbled and can barely walk on my left foot. All fun stuff.

In the meantime, leading up to Monday, I'll post a favorite movie/TV credit sequence here every day. Why? Because it's my blog, dammit.

links i recommend this week

bexley : 56f, cloudy ... rain showers overnight ... low near 50f ...

Wow, I haven't done this in a while. Still picking up the pieces after my new job. Anyway, I've been saving some of these up over the past few weeks, while others are well-deserved repeats:

• I'm embarrassed to say I visit SecretTweet every day. It's a place where people Tweet their secrets anonymously. I daresay that I feel better about myself after reading some of these.
• Courtesy of my friend Rachel, an awesome site called Texts From Last Night. A new bookmark for sure.
• An entire site devoted to one of my favorite directors, Paul Thomas Anderson.
• 13 alternative search engines to Google that are really specific and, better yet, useful.
• Our latest issue of Paradigm, The Sagan Issue, features a brand-new interview with famed sci-fi writer Peter David.
• Pong. 'nuff said.
• Project Gutenberg has every piece of literature in the public domain. No, seriously.
• This is probably one of the more random links I've ever posted. Well, I discovered recently that I kinda-sorta-don't know how to read a ruler. Thanks to ten minutes and this game, now I do.
• For fans of Demotivators, you can now create your own.
• I'm really interested to see what Pete Yorn and Scarlett Johansson have cooked up with their album, Break Up. In the meantime, the first single is addictive, seductive, and bafflingly cool.
• A video that just gets funnier and funnier every time I see it: the $14 million tourism video for Cleveland.
• Part of me doesn't want to inflate this guy's ego any more than it already is, but John Green is a good writer. He also provides a pretty unnerving transparent glimpse at what writing and publishing fiction in 2009 is all about. Plus, he's funny. (Also, this video is a case study in expert storytelling and essential viewing. Trust me. This is worth your ten minutes.)

• I really have to give it up to Mainstream Isn't So Bad...Is It? again. It's like hanging out at your cool friend's house and listening to their music collection. The music here is carefully chosen, thoughtful, and usually the opposite of mainstream, so I'm starting to think it's a wicked clever/ironic name for a blog.

shifting

I almost feel like re-christening this blog "Paul Fuhr 3.0."

I'm different, somehow. I can't put my finger on it, but the events of the past year have finally caught up with me. Hell, maybe the past five years have finally caught up with me. I've been at home for the past 15 months. Now, the relief of getting a job has settled into the reality of having a job. I think about the world far differently now than I did, say, six months ago. And the grad student version of me on a three-year vacation in Phoenix? I have no idea who that kid is anymore. A proto-Paul, maybe.

There's a reason I haven't written here in over a month. I haven't written anything. Nada. Not one word. Nothing for myself, nothing for anyone else. After spending eight hours in front of a computer screen at work, there's nothing appealing about sitting here at home and doing the same thing -- even if it's for my own career. Instead, I've needed the distance. I've only recently starting doing household chores again and taking care of things here at home. I've been sort of numb to everything else. For some reason, the new job was like a hydrogen bomb went off a few towns over and, while it didn't destroy me, I can feel its presence in my brain and my bones. The fallout is maybe working its dark magic somewhere deep inside me -- dulling me, tempering me, irrevocably changing me. 

I'm trying to get back into the swing of things as well as carve out a new series of routines. But writing, I'm discovering, isn't something I can do at my leisure anymore. I have to schedule time for it, just like anything else. So, some things simply had to go. For one, I quit my job as the Cleveland Weather Examiner. Several reasons contributed to it: I went from getting paid $25-50 an article to 50 cents. For real. And then, the Examiner seems to be on a crusade to become the next About.com or something far more lame, adding Cleveland Grandparents Examiners and Cleveland Fish & Aquariums Examiners. I even saw a Philadelphia in Pictures Examiner. I mean, come on. I don't want to work for a glorified blog collective.

As much as I enjoyed writing about the weather, let someone else do it. (Maybe someone who lives in Cleveland.) I need to focus on what's important to me.

It's Memorial Day weekend and I had some real Grown Up plans: cleaning the house, working on the lawnmower, cleaning my office, going to Asian Fest, and doing some real writing. Instead, I still have an ear infection. A bad one -- it won't go away and it keeps throwing my balance off. Everything around me seems to be on a slow tilt -- like that fifth glass of wine that you suddenly realize you shouldn't have had. Still, it's more than just the hint of drunkenness -- it hurts.

Even in pain, I'm thinking about the changes I'm making. Priorities. Who I socialize with, who I talk to, what I choose to write about, what future I hope to have...