Noiseless Chatter Spotlight
The Noiseless Chatter Spotlight is an ongoing series — originally intended to be monthly but nuts to that — of exploratory essays about various interesting works of art…both good and bad. They may reveal interesting things about the subjects that you never knew, or they might take the first opportunity they can to jump off and make some larger point. Either way, one thing’s for sure: I’ve forgotten to fix some spelling errors and I’d like you to point them out for me.
Double Indemnity (1944) — who we are and who we think we’ve been
The Long Goodbye (1953) — sometimes the mystery is the mystery
Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (1983) — pulling order from chaos, and meaning from the mirthfully meaningless
Rushmore (1998) — on creating worlds with your own two hands
“AWESOM-O,” South Park season 8, episode 5 (2004) — the unpredictable beauty of strict deadlines
“Peekaboo,” Breaking Bad season 2, episode 6 (2009) — on the endless disloyalty of shifting allegiance
The Binding of Isaac (2011) — because censorship is not an inherently awful thing
“Roll On John,” Bob Dylan (2012) — survivor’s guilt set to music
Retro City Rampage (2012) — rediscovering the love beneath the hat-tips
“The Yup Stops Here,” Storage Wars, season 3, episode 14 (2012) — why reality television can never be real, and why that’s alright
20 Questions
An occasional interview series that sees me riding on the coat-tails of those who are far more interesting than I will ever be.
Adam Lore, cartoonist, musician, superman
Hugo Smits, game designer
Andrew Apanov, digital music pioneer, documentarian
$1 Adventures
Do you like Steam? I like Steam. Steam takes a lot of my money, but that’s okay because it only takes it a little at a time. In this ongoing series I take exhaustive looks at the games that train my bank account…by one dollar or less.
Vegas: Make it Big — a tree grows in Vegas
World Basketball Manager 2010 — read about a game in which all you do is read. Yay sports!
Bad Rats: The Rats’ Revenge — a physics puzzler that doubles as a lump of shit
Listomania!
Who likes lists? YOU. YOU LIKES LISTS. So I make them…sometimes. Here are the ones I sometimes made so far!
10 Great Songs We Ruined By Forcing Them to Advertise Bullshit — originally a top 5,000 list, but I trimmed it back for your reading pleasure / abbreviated attention span.
10 Comedians We Aren’t Meant to Find Funny — at least not in the way they want you to find them funny…if we take a metatextual stance and assume them all to be living, breathing individuals with desires of their own and you know what? Fuck it.
The 10 Most Affecting Wes Anderson Moments — written prior to Moonrise Kingdom, this would now include two other scenes…but I won’t tell you what they are because IT’S A SURPRISE.
10 Songs That Share Their Names With Robot Masters — I like Mega Man and I like music.
The 10 Episodes of The Office That Aren’t Shit — This is all 10 of them.
Compare & Contrast
Sometimes things work better than they work other times. You heard it here first!
Cross-Cultural Romance — Bottle Rocket and The Darjeeling Limited each stepped into this territory. One of them handled it better than the other. I won’t tell you which. Even if you read this.
Funny Restaurants — The IT Crowd is a good show. Or was, I guess. For a while. Kinda.
Liveblog
I type what I think as I’m thinking / typing it. And I punish myself with absolute dreck, but what else is new?
The Cleveland Show, 3.4.12 — I still don’t know why this show exists. Does anyone admit to watching it? Besides…me. D’oh.
The Master of Disguise — somehow even worse than its reputation suggests. I hope you like the pictures.
Steve Zissou Saturdays
On the first Saturday of every month I publish a new article about The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. Discussing every single scene, in order, until we finish the movie, it’s like glory’s gate, my darling. We’re like that bloody shark of his, we swam with the… oh, damn it. I had it on the plane.
Part One — The Scientific Purpose of Killing It
Part Two — Right on the Edge
Part Three — A Very Special Opportunity For All of Us
Part Four — A Great Deal of Pain
Part Five — I Guess We’ll Have to Loop That Line
Part Six — Because He Looks Up to Me
Part Seven — Does This Seem Fake?
Part Eight — Let’s Have Some Teamsmanship