Totally Unrelated Blog-a-Thon: Over!

By S.T. VanAirsdale

As a rookie blog-a-thon administrator, I guess I blew it on the set-up of The Reeler's Totally Unrelated Blog-a-Thon. To wit, a few potential contributors have gotten in touch to say they needed more time, alas, etc. So what the hell -- I'm grateful for the contributions collected thus far, but I know there's got to be more of you out there who need a few minutes' break from film blogging. I'll probably leave the window open until the middle of the month, at which point it'll likely be too cold for that kind of thing; feel free to drop your thoughts over the transom any time. And spread the word!

UPDATE, 11/16: Thanks to all who participated; the Totally Unrelated Blog-a-Thon is now totally over!

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 14

What It Means to Be a Bruce Fan (A Podcast)
By Lily Percy, Short End Magazine

"Earlier this summer I visited Asbury Park for the first time. I walked down Main Street and the Boardwalk. I stood in front of Madame Marie's old haunt, all the while seeing sngs and their stories come alive right before my eyes. So much of being a Spingsteen fan is held in feeling that you are a part of his legendary mythical community, and experiencing these rites of passage was just one way to feel closer to that community."

(L-R) Dominic Dierkes, Donald Glover, DC Pierson and filmmaker Dan Eckman on a recent DERRICK Comedy shoot in New Hampshire (Photo: ShortEnd Magazine)

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 13

A Not-So-Secret Love Affair With DERRICK Comedy
By Noralil Ryan Fores, ShortEnd Magazine

"The laughter in the Syracuse University college crowd kept to a minimum, and then some crazy shit happened. The sketch flooded with black humor, the indication clear that this kid lives in a house rife with domestic violence. A quarter of the crowd burst into laughter and the other three-quarters stared on in numbed shock. There was a palpable sense of tension, particularly coming from the liberal-minded and artsy women in the crowd. It was mostly undergraduate--and yes, juvenile--men laughing, and well--me."

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8

Digression
By Brian, Hell on Frisco Bay

"Our concept was intended to point to hypocrisies and blurred lines between public and private, military and mercenary. And of course an excuse to have fun acting like zombies. I think we were successful in scaring the neighborhood."

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6

Bud Uglly: Back to the Future
By Jim Emerson, Scanners / Chicago Sun-Times

"In the mid- to late-1990s, the heyday of Dan's Gallery of the Grotesque and Justin's Links From the Underground (the infamous proto-blog), one of the funniest and most distressing sites on what was then called the World Wide Web was Bud Uglly. ... [It] captured the look of nearly every post-punk/"new wave" mag, fanzine and album cover (especially on Arista) of the 1980s -- which, in retrospect, far outstrips the 1970s for sheer bud-uglliness. Indeed, Bud Uglly's nihilistic irreverence (and/or irrelevance) virtually exemplified Postmodernist aesthetics."

Faithless
By Tom Hall, The Back Row Manifesto

"I am proud of my atheism, of my refusal to let the conventions of polite company force me to give passes to reason-free thinking, but I have to admit, the 21st century has been a tremendous challenge for me as, day after day, I watch the parade of intellectual dishonesty, emotional pandering and political grandstanding march by without an organized, rational response from free-thinking people in this country."

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 5

Bullshit Bright Lights In Suck City
By John Lichman, Idiot Savant Online

"Oh and definitely go to graduate school. If you don't go to graduate school for journalism, you're going to be a failure at life and no one will hire you since you're clearly retarded for wanting to work. (btw, total disclosure: I am clearly retarded for wanting to work.)."

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 1

American Gigolo
By Lauren Wissot, Beyond the Green Door

"it’s high time for the Constitutional amendment that will allow for Arnold Schwarzenegger to leave the charred ruins of Hollywood and run for Terminator In Chief. Why? America is a land of movers and shakers -– of hustlers -– so who better to represent us in the Oval Office than a former male hustler?"

Gustav Mahler

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 31

Gustav Mahler's Sixth Symphony
By Kenji Fujishima, The House Next Door

"This Halloween, you won’t be hearing old Halloween standbys like Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D minor” or Camille Saint-Saëns’s “Danse macabre”—or, heck, maybe even Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” most likely with the music video—emanating from my speakers. Instead…you’ll be hearing Gustav Mahler’s unsettling Sixth Symphony blasting away."

Halloween (aka, The Scariest Song Ever)
By Michael Tully, Boredom at its Boredest

"What better day than to post about a recent musical revelation ... or as I like to call it, The Most Frightening Song I've Ever Heard In My Life?"

Getting Used to It
By Jeff Ignatius, Culture Snob

"My feelings the day after were muted, as I had a sense they would be. I smiled and chatted with the people who talked to me, but it didn’t feel like my team had just won the World Series."

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 30

Politics
By Michael Tully, Boredom at its Boredest

"Is there ever going to be a candidate who transcends party lines and cuts through the politics to address universal human issues that matter to those of us who aren't stubborn conservatives or condescending liberals? ... Ladies and gentlemen, my vote for the next president of the United States of America is this person. No, I'm not kidding."

MONDAY, OCTOBER 29

The Totally Unrelated Power of the Marketing Balloon
By Alan Lopuszynski, Burbanked

"You’re out driving your minivan with your three adorable and playful children sitting in the back. Speeding through a yellow light, you come upon a McDonald’s that has a massively inflated Ronald McDonald sitting on top, beckoning to your children. It’s colorful and fun; it’s corporate branding come to life and your children succumb to it. 'Daddy, look! There’s a big Ronald McDonald balloon! Hee hee! Please buy us a Happy Meal© and we promise we won’t cry and kick and swear and pout and ruin your day off if you please please just buy us some fast food right now or else and are you turning yet and - ' "

From "Why Your Blog Must Die," at Movie City Indie (Photo: Ray Pride)

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 28

Hardball & I
By John Lichman, Idiot Savant Online

"For the sake of future editorial inquires, I will now relate the rest of my personal thoughts on working for Chris Matthews."

Why Your Blog Must Die
By Ray Pride, Movie City Indie

It's an old screed, one that I linked to a couple years ago, but it's still fragrant: ... "You think you know all there is to say about blogging because you understand the concept of HTML and CSS, but the horrible truth is that 40% of you are all using the same shitty default layout. Then you take pictures of yourselves looking pensive or making vague allusions to mythology."

From "The Impact of the Cities," at Movie City Indie (Photo: Ray Pride)

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27

"The Impact of the Cities," after Bertolt Brecht [AN URBAN ADVENTURE IN 18 IMAGES.]
By Ray Pride, Movie City Indie

"I speak to you merely
Like reality itself
(Sober, not to be bribed by your particular nature
Tired of your difficulty)
Which in my view you seem not to recognize."

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26

Music to Run a Marathon By
By Kevin B. Lee, Shooting Down Pictures

"Just 10 days away from my debut at the ING New York City Marathon. As I enter my tapering period (avg. 2 miles per day instead of 5), I’m starting to cast my attention on other preparatory matters, like which $100 pair of running shoes to designate for marathon day (currently leaning towards Nike over Saucony). But the order of this post is to compile my official marathon iPod playlist, four plus hours of music to sustain me over the 26.2 mile jaunt through the five boroughs."

Among the work featured in Matt Seitz's "My Three-Year Old Could Shoot That" (Photo: James Seitz)

My Three-Year Old Could Shoot That
By Matt Zoller Seitz, The House Next Door

"One day my three-year old son, James, saw me opening a new pack of cameras and asked if he could take some pictures. I taught him how to look through the viewfinder, click the button and wind the roll to the next picture. He developed a taste for it. He's gone through about 10 disposable cameras since then."

Me Want Food
By Karina Longworth, Spout Blog

"When I had the chance to write about film for a living, I left the food industry without a second thought, and I definitely have no regrets about that. But there is something almost theoretical that I miss. ... Food is not an emotional experience for me. It’s purely sensual, but sensual in a way that can be concretely qualified (put it this way: anyone who’s using food as a substitute for sex doesn’t know how to eat)."

Music
By Michael Tully, Boredom at its Boredest

"This is my most recent song, which I recorded in Maryland this past weekend at my parents' house, on a cold and rainy Friday night. ... But fear not. That ditty is just the humble precursor to today's majestic main event."

The Armageddon Cooler That is the G+T
By Ray Pride, Movie City Indie

"On a warm day in December 1961, John F. Kennedy drank Gin and Tonics in Bermuda while working out the details of the end of the world."

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 25

A Poem: "Vacation Days"
By Michael Tully, Boredom at its Boredest

"We spoke to no one, and watched nothing,
And promised not to ever wake up."

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24

The Mash-Up and YOUUUUUUUUUUUUU
By John Lichman, Idiot Savant Online

"This is the age of YOU. We are the children of the revolution, moblogging the march and uploading to Flickr while we drink our Aqua Velvas from the skulls of the old media. Or something. A skull isn't much of a glass. Trust me on that one."

The Real Thing
By S.T. VanAirsdale, The Reeler

"Why do loyal fans continue to lay out upwards of $90 a head to hear Warwick sing what, in the hands of lesser artists, have proven to be some of the 20th century's most overwrought ballads? It's not just to see a real survivor in person (even I might argue that Warwick hasn't technically "survived," but more on that later), but rather to hear -- to closely, carefully listen to -- the rare sound and even rarer soul of someone who means it."

Posted at November 16, 2007 3:21 PM