» Fringe Blog – Writing on Film, Culture, and Things on the Fringe

Site Wonkiness

jelewis8 — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 05:03:57 +0000

Sorry for the wackiness with the blog. I'm trying to determine why CSS can be so wonderful one minute and so mysterious another, and then evil even later. It's a case of floats, I am sure, but until I can determine the exact issue, please excuse the mess.

Update: Fixed the problem, which was an errant div enclosure. Thanks for your patience.

Hosting Storyblogging 52

jelewis8 — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 20:26:38 +0000

I’ll be hosting the next Storybloging Carnival here next Monday. It’s been a while since I even participated in the Storyblogging Carnival, much less hosted, but I do plan on having a story ready, so if one story is a carnival, then you’re about to have a great night out getting sick on funnel cake and riding the Ferris wheel. If you blog and you write stories, and you post those stories on your blog, and you like attention, then send me your entry (email jeremiah.lewis@gmail.com) by Saturday, August 26, or no later than Sunday at noon with the following information:
* title
* story URL
* author name (optional)
* blog name
* blog URL
* word count
* content rating (like G, PG, R, etc.)
* a short blurb describing the story
Seriously, summer’s almost over, so you have no excuse not to post even a little tiny, tiny story. Then again, I should talk, right?
I look forward to reading all the good stuff.

Stuff and Nonsense

jelewis8 — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 00:49:37 +0000

Light posting this week, though I hope to have a review of M. Night’s Lady In the Water tomorrow, and of course a Fringecast on Wednesday. It’s one of those weeks that has the arms of a Kraken, each one capable of ripping you to shreds if you get in its way. I’ll be finishing up a feature script this week, which I’ve been concentrating since mid last week. Once it’s done, I’ll shelve it for a while and get back to the book, the rest of which will be consumed in an apocryphal thundering of word play and verbal gunslingery; that or you will here a single *plunk* as the quinine intravenous does me in and I kick the vomit bucket that’s sitting at the end of my hospital bed.
Hope you can excuse the general slackness around Fringe of late, but we do have some exciting new things on the way, in regards to a bit of overhauling and adding of a new site dedicated to Fringecast related stuff. It won’t be just Fringecast per se, but will feature extra nifty items that’ll make your pants spin. Eventually, we’ll give the entire site a facelift.
In addition, Piper and I are slowly slouching toward starting up a new site, which we’ve decided to gracefully title The Cultural Imperialist. We’ll be the Francis Fukuyama and David Brooks of cultural nonsensical issues and snarky point-counterpoint arguments over issues both high and low. More on that as it evolves.
See you tomorrow with the world’s funniest review of the world’s most expository film ever.

Waking Up To Grey

jelewis8 — Thu, 04 May 2006 01:57:17 +0000

I did the usually foolhardy thing and stayed up last night until around 4am watching movies. Recently we joined Blockbuster for their free two week mail-in DVD program, which is essentially the evil twin of Netflix, even though Netflix is already the evil twin of self-control; you never seem to reach the end of your queue, and you feel strangely compelled to watch as many DVDs as the postal service efficiency will allow you. Then somehow, with the free two week Blockbuster deal, we were provided with two coupons for a free rental each. John returned with not two, but three DVDs, so at this point we have nine movies. After last night’s amazing coup of good sense and a good night’s rest, we are down to just four films left to consume.
Last night began with Four Brothers, which was basically an excuse to give a bunch of racially diverse men guns and have at it on the streets of Detroit, which is apparently completely devoid of actual cops (or every day average citizens). Everyone in it is either a gangster, a former gangster, or an athlete. I’m not complaining though. It was a movie filled with lots of gunplay and violence, padded by that annoying thing called plot. Not even a good plot–the conclusion was about as predictable as a plate of spaghetti.
Next on the bounce was Eli Roth’s Hostel, which was National Lampoon’s Eurotrip without the Pope jokes. It divurges from the lame teen comedy a bit when the two main characters are kidnapped and slowly tortured to death by people who pay for the privilege of erasing another human being in various grisly ways, but it’s got no more gore than Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It’s certainly not as interesting, though there are a few neat moments. Moral noted: don’t go to Slovakia. Or if you must, don’t go with the intention of sleeping around with every firm-breasted Eurobabe in between getting crunked in rave dives that specialize in blasting spatially distorted bass sound waves through your inner ear.
Then came Downfall, which was a pretty decent depiction of the last days of the war in the bunker with Hitler and his cronies. Bruno Ganz was captivating and utterly convincing as the old softie Adolph, while Alexandra Maria Lara does a wonderful job of playing Hitler’s secretary Traudl Junge with pathos and empathy. The entire film has a sense of realism that matches Saving Private Ryan and Das Boot, showing with good depth the situation both in the bunker with Hitler and in the streets bombarded by Russian artillery. Characters are well drawn and the imagery is amazingly detailed and sensory.
We seem to have hit June Gloom early this year, as evidenced by the four days straight of grey clouds and somewhat floopy weather. This makes for good coffee shop time, but lousy for the sinuses. Breathing lately has been closer to snorting pool water, just not as much fun. Oddly enough, it’s worse during the day than at night, which goes counter to the usual medical maxims. Grey sky in morning, asthmatics take warning, grey sky at night, nasal delight. Slightly bastardized, but it’s the heart that counts. Smog may also play into it as well, though part of me refuses to acknowledge that smog even exists, much less clogs our breathing pathways and settles in like a bronchial squatter. Even when I see smog cloaking the downtown cityscape like an vampyric vapour (spoken in an Anthony Hopkins gutteral growl), I think of it as a blanket of protection against the sun’s evil rays. Blessed are the polluters, for they shall inherit the Pale Yellow Lung.
Though for all I know lungs are supposed to have a pale yellow hue. Might explain the phlegm I’ve…
Hey hey!! /Krusty_the_Clown Greeting

The Excuse Is Gone

jelewis8 — Sat, 05 Nov 2005 01:03:52 +0000

Whoa. Two days without posting anything! I feel bad, and I have no excuse. I owe you all a rundown of my weekend on the East Coast, which was a blast. I hope to have that up by tomorrow. Honest and true.
I sort of got sucked into another project that has kept me busy, in addition to getting a lot of work done for one of Essejnet’s clients, Floyd County. It’s been interesting, to say the least.
All this is to say, bear with me, don’t go away, don’t die, and don’t give up on me! I swear I’m still here.
I’ll also have some cool 50 Word Fiction and new poems, and some assorted what not. I’m considering starting a video blog and/or a podcast. I’m still mulling ideas. If you have any, I’d love to hear ‘em.
Oh yeah. Red State is now viewable online. Let me know what you think. It’s a 55mb download. Or you can wait until I post the hi-res Quicktime 7 version. Or you could wait for the sweet DVD, coming out November 27. Whichever.

Blogging In the Time of Cholera

jelewis8 — Wed, 02 Feb 2005 17:26:29 +0000

Please excuse the lack of original posting of late. In my spare time I’ve been pumping out a feature script which I started Sunday afternoon and which I am hoping to finish by Thursday evening. That’s 90-120 pages in five days, which for me is unprecedented. It’s more important for me to write uninterupted than to break the flow I’ve got going with blogging. Sorry.
I know it’s a cardinal sin to inform readers that they’re being given the shaft, but at least it’s only temporary.
I’ll be gone all day Friday, Saturday, and most of Sunday…basically, I’m pretty strapped for time, and blogging just got moved down the priority list for this week. Don’t worry, I’ve still got some good stuff on the way.
I saw Million Dollar Baby the other night, and will try and post a review before the weekend. In addition, I’m nearly done seeing what Oscar nominated pictures I can get to, though I don’t think I’ll be able to view all of them before the 27th. With that in mind, I’ll be doing my Oscar predictions, with the usual colour commentary you’ve come to expect and hopefully love.
Like I said, sorry for the insubstantial posting of late, but I will get back into the groove after this week. In the meantime, I’ve got a few links for you to check out below.
The Christian Carnival is up at Wittenberg Gate.
Carnival of the Vanities #124 is now up at Ken Sain’s place. Bloggy goodness therein.
I got an odd email from Justin Katz, who I haven’t heard from in a while, not since our last online tete a tete, which was more civil and respectable than the word tete a tete implies. Not that we were ever bosom buddies or anything…anyway, it concerned an article of his that I first read back in December in the National Review, that attempts to explain the rationale of Andrew Sullivan, a man who can’t quite define or pinpoint his own political, cultural, social, and theological beliefs. I’ve stopped reading Sullivan since he started lacking focus with the war issue, and since then have kept up only loosely with his politics since going all blue state over the gay marriage issue.
Justin has now posted his article online at Dust In The Light. It’s long, detailed, but worth a read if you’ve ever, like me, tried to figure Andrew Sullivan out and simply failed after a long bout in the ring.
Greg Piper has a good writeup of the launch of the new DC paper, the Washington Examiner. He notes copious copy errors (no stranger here!), but a launch party filled with champagne and an editorial page note to readers that seems to echo his own alt paper’s (PUNCH) philosophy.
Protein Wisdom (a blog I need to read more) has a McSweeney-like list of 9 names the UN would PREFER we give to the “not genocide” in Darfur. (Via Instapundit)
Lauren is travel blogging. Lots of airport and hotel troubles, so you can probably relate.
Philip Johnson, noted American architect, has died. He founded the US international style of glass towers architecture, and compared corporations to Renaissance figures such as the Medicis and the popes of old.
Languagehat links to an article on the future of the modern Irish language. Speaking of the UK, LH also has a BBC article linked that discusses the ways Londoners speak. Cool stuff.
Okay, I really do have to start my day now, so ta ta for now.