Erik Emery Hanberg - A Lifestream Experiment

December 9, 2009

"You Missed It"

In 25th Hour Edward Norton gives what is perhaps the best performance of his career in what is easily one of the best movie’s of Spike Lee’s filmography. Norton plays a convicted drug dealer headed to prison for seven years. Before he goes Monty Brogan has twenty-four hours to say goodbye, and he spends most of them coming to grips with his father and friends while venting his anger and frustration at the path he’s taken.

via bspcn.com

This was an interesting list of films that are the "most unfairly overlooked of the last decade."

First, get ready for a lot of decade-long lists. 'Tis the season!

Second, there really are some real gems on the list that are wonderful movies that not many people saw. Mostly they are films that have flaws because they really stretched for something big.

Like Black Snake Moan or The Weatherman.

The 25th Hour is pretty wonderful and just got overlooked. It's a fantastic movie. I highly recommend it. Others on the list ... well. I haven't seen Elisha Cuthbert in The Girl Next Door and even its inclusion on this list doesn't make me want to race out and see it. But some of the others really are quality films. Full list below. I noted some I liked with asterisks.

Black Snake Moan*
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Zack and Miri Make a Porno*
Frailty
The Girl Next Door
City of Ember
Fearless
Below
Choke
Ghost Town*
25th Hour*
Open Range
Spartan*
The Lookout
Eagle vs. Shark
The Woodsman
Grindhouse*
The Weatherman*
The Notorious Bettie Page
Stardust
Open Water*
Death at a Funeral*
The Wackness

(via mattmike)

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Filed under // movies

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December 9, 2009

How much is Google paying for souls these days?

I'm happy to see Google Chrome on my Mac. When in the City Club office on a PC I've moved over to it. But I'm very happy with it on my laptop. It's quick, it's easy, and it's stable.

Downsides: it's still in beta right now. So I can't manage my bookmarks. But I'm probably going to stick with it for regular browsing, with Firefox for development.

The more stuff I use Google for, the happier I am I switched my blog to Posterous, just to have one service I'm using that isn't run by them.

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Filed under // technology

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December 8, 2009

Red and Silver this year!

This year's Christmas tree has a pretty simple theme of red and silver. This is a result of timing mostly--I just didn't have enough time to make the ornaments I wanted to.

Still, a simple theme can be very nice. And the main thing is just having a lot of lights to curl up with.

WEDNESDAY UPDATE: Hmm. After re-reading my post it looks like I'm curling up with the tree. That's not right at all. What I meant to say was that I want to have lots of lights for when I curl up with a book. And this tree has 900 lights on it!

Click here to download:

Red_and_Silver_this_year_tagno.zip (645 KB)

To recap, here are past themes.

2009: Red and Silver
2008: Cat Toys (in honor of Juno)
2007: Office Supplies (Suite133 and Mary's home office)
2006: Poker Tree.
2005: Olympics (for my pending trip to Torino)
2004: Film tree (for the Grand. Still one of my best themes)
2003: Either no tree or no theme. I can't remember. I think no tree since I went to Spain that year.
2002: my first Christmas in my own place. I used old ornaments from when I was a kid.

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Filed under // notes from home

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December 8, 2009

Janine Terrano on hiring in Tacoma.

We have found that it is far easier to move people to Tacoma than it is to convince people to drive from Bellevue to Tacoma. Part of it is there’s still this notion that Tacoma doesn’t have all it needs to have in terms of lifestyle. But when we move people from out of state, they find that it does. It’s a perception, not reality.

via thenewstribune.com

I found this interesting, coming from a local tech company. The rest of the Q&A has good stuff too.

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Filed under // Tacoma technology

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December 8, 2009

"Master and Commander"

I do like a good sea story, and so I picked up Patrick O'Brian's "Master and Commander," the first in a series about Captain Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, ship's doctor and naturalist.

I really enjoyed the movie from a few years ago (adapted from a later book, but with elements from many of them), and the book was pretty good too. It was a pretty slow read, however. It's only 40 years old, but it feels like it was written at the time it's set (late 1700s during the Napoleonic wars). I don't mind it, but it is dense.

I'll pick up the next book in the series soon.

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Filed under // books movies

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December 7, 2009

The Winthrop revisited

So about 18 months ago Shelterforce magazine (the journal of the National Housing Institute, based out of New Jersey) commissioned me to write about the Winthrop. I was only too happy to do so, and jumped into the project, interviewing people all over Tacoma including residents of the Winthrop, the mayor, Prium CEO Ansara, Michael Mirra of the THA, etc. I also called on my own experience attending the early-morning meetings in 2006 when Quiqq was trying to make something happen.

Unfortunately, it was bumped a few times. But it finally went live!

You can read it here on their website.

Happy to finally have it in print.

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Filed under // Tacoma writing

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December 7, 2009

"Up in the Air" and "Mr. Fox"

I really liked this film. There's a lot of great stuff here.

George Clooney is a Cary Grant. He's just good. He's as himself as much as he is whatever character he's inhabiting, but it works.

"The Fantastic Mr. Fox" was also good, but not nearly so much. It was cute, and there's a certain joy of creativity that comes with Wes Anderson's better films. I enjoyed it, but I wouldn't recommend it unless you already knew going in to it that you liked his movies.

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Filed under // movies

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December 6, 2009