Jun
28
Return of The Furious Romantic
Filed Under Announcements, Life | 3 Comments
Hello. I have returned.
Big Project, while not near to finished, is currently idle, waiting for me, somewhere at the end of a transitional period. For now it has to keep waiting. Eventually I’ll spill the beans (or lay the fart, if I have eaten the beans) on what exactly the damn thing is. Not that you, my four or five readers, don’t already know. Whatever (I’ll do what I want). Just humor the fatalist.
Also, maybe this is just a byproduct of having had the luxury (not that I didn’t pay for it!) of having been able to devote myself full-time to an artistic endeavor for an extended period of time - but for the last few days I have found myself treating my old raw material stomping grounds (real life, and The New York Times) with a mixture of suspicion and caution. Why was I spending so much time reading about shit…watching shit go down? I wonder if I went a little too far in my explorations of y(our) sick little meta-culture…when I could have been…actually doing something.
And now I’ve used the word meta as a prefix. God help us all, if you can spare the time and/or the lost advertising dollars.
Jun
5
Ain’t talking about the magazine…
What’s more pathetic, New Yorker…the fact that you can’t sit here…or the fact that doing so anyway (for five minutes) would probably represent your biggest act of protest for the day?
Americans, for the most part, are wusses, complainers, and poor excuse makers. Kudos to the woman from Montenegro who waited to take that picture.
Go ahead. Prove me wrong!
And/or…
Read.
Jun
3
Too busy to offer my ever-so-insightful commentary…but I leave it to my loyal and intelligent readers to fill in the blanks.
May
30
Another Furious Update: Mailbag Edition
Filed Under Announcements | 1 Comment
An email from one of our (my) international readers:
Dear Mr. Furious,
As a loyal reader of the website/blog, I feel very unsatisfied recently. Every time I go in search of my daily anger catalyst I come out empty. I, and all your readers deserve more posts! We need more reasons to shake our heads at the world and its absurd idiosyncrasies. Start writing more!
Yours truely,
Vadim the Avshalumov Dream
To which I respond…
Thank you, Mr. Dream, for your letter. I have sent you a “The Furious Romantic” T-shirt in the mail as a peace offering. I don’t have your address, though, so I sent it to your cousin Hakeem Olajuwon. I hope that he’ll be able to get it to you sometime soon.
I assure you that I am still angered, everyday, by the idiosyncrasies of the world (particularly the Western World). But Big Project continues to dominate my life and I do not have much time to stew and/or boil over - even in the face of so much silliness. Soon I will return full force, to catalyze and to entertain, but for now…
…just do what I do when you find your temperature rising. Drink and pursue beautiful things.
Until the next time,
The Furious Romantic
Boom.
May
14
Let’s Do It Again
Filed Under Film | 3 Comments
Quick film recommendation and then The Furious Romantic needs to get back to his (active!) yelling.
Was perusing the home page of IMDb for only the fourth time today and I noticed that this film, Reprise, is finally opening in U.S. theaters. I say finally because I saw it in a packed house at the Museum of Modern Art literally a year ago. The director’s name is Joachim Trier, he’s a Norwegian filmmaker, and I have a feeling that we’ll be hearing from him again sometime in the near future.
My lady love and I both came out of this film feeling very much moved. It ain’t big and bold, but it’s one of those pieces of art that just feel…honest. The direction and cinematography and the acting are all very good. It’s funny and energetic and poignant all at once (hooray!).
Go see.
May
3
Peek-A-Boogie
Filed Under Life | 2 Comments
Peek-A-Boogie. I am alive.
Apr
23
Super (Creepy) Mario
Filed Under Entertainment | Leave a Comment
A couple of longer posts will hopefully be coming your way sooner than later, but in the meantime, check out this artist’s representation of what Super Mario might look like if he were a real dude (and not Bob Hoskins). Also included on the artists page are representations of Jessica Rabbit and Homer Simpson.
I don’t have any comments on these images.
Oh…hell. Okay. I’ll say it. They are just too weird. They make me cringe. Give me Jessica the cartoon or give me (1980s) Kathleen Turner. Give me Mario the cartoon or give me Bob Hoskins. But I do not want to see these creepy hybrids ever again.
On the other hand…hitching these representations to some cockamamie B-movie horror movie plot might make for a sweet creepy short film.
Apr
18
A Zillionical Future
Filed Under Life, The Internet | 4 Comments
Here’s another link from Kevin Kelly’s blog - about his thoughts on a term that appears to be of his own creation: zillionics. Basically, the term summarizes Kelly’s thoughts on the qualitative changes that occur in relation to any one scientific or cultural thing or process when the number of parts and pieces that make it up begin increasing exponentially towards the trillions (and on!).
It’s a interesting, if slightly raw in its scientificity, post on the whole…but the little tidbit that caught my eye reads as follows:
The social web runs in the land of zillionics. Artificial intelligence, data mining, and virtual realities all require mastery of zillionics. As we ramp up the number of things we create, especially the ones we create collectively, we are also raising our media and culture into the realm of zillionics. The number of choices we have for music, art, images, words — anything! — is reaching the level of zillionics.
Reminds me a little of The Computerization of Your Human Brain.
Anyway, if you ask me (or if I ask me in your stead), that may be too many choices. Too much of even a good thing too often ends up making that thing bad - or at least less bright. Anyone else have an opinion? How about you, Stinko?
Apr
18
You may think you are cool,
Blasting your hip-hop at full volume at eight o’clock in the morning.
But you are not cool -
It is eight o’clock in the morning.
I am cool,
For still being asleep…or, rather, I would be…would have been…
(Coffee).
Now I have to go to work on time,
Because YOU want to groove ‘longside your breakfast.
Just bogus, man.
Just bogus.
Apr
7
A Great Big Varied Set of Links
Filed Under Computing, Film, Life, The Internet | 2 Comments
Here are several links that I saved to share on the site in the past several weeks, all rolled into one big post. Big Project is keeping me busy, so for today let’s just catch up on anything and everything a furious reader might want or need. It’s better than not sharing at all, and besides, two of the links actually come from sources outside of the NY Times!
An op-ed article about the dumbification of America.
Why do I feel as if I have been reading different and worsening versions of this same article since I was a senior in high school? Anyway, this latest version contains everything you might hope for from the “liberal” media: 1) Bush and Cheney bashing, 2) New data to support obvious information that we already know, and 3) A subtly snooty tone.
Between the three of these, a reader can be sure to receive exactly what we don’t need…more argument. I completely agree that Americans are getting dumber. It’d be a real surprise though, to run into an article (from either side of this bi-partisan struggle) that focuses more on the issue and less on the blame game. As for my contribution to the solution…oh…time for the next link… Read more