Odd Obsession

It's been almost 20 years, but I can't open an issue of The New Yorker without a tinge of sadness that Pauline Kae l isn't in it. Not only was her every sentence a joy, but she believed in doing her research whether in high or low culture--reading The Killing Joke before seeing Batman and First Blood before seeing Rambo , relating The Phantom of the Paradise to the state of rock music in the early 70s, etc. (although I can't agree that Alice Cooper is more of a threat to good music than Paul Williams). Nowadays, if a movie critic can name half the influences in Pulp Fiction , they consider themselves highly educated. Though New Yorker movie reviewers have disappointed me greatly since, Anthony Lane 's review of Watchmen* has to be the worst since Daphne Merkin compared Ben Affleck to a young Paul Newman (doesn't the prescience of that statement just send a thrill down your spine?). Lane is what Kael called a "gentlemen critic": sometimes hand

My friend hellbound asked me for an update on what goodies I decided to get with my tax refund . 1. EyeTV . I am enjoying watching my shows when I want and skipping over the commercials (you can edit commercials out, too, but I haven't tried that yet). It's easy to search for shows and schedule weekly recording and exporting to Apple TV. Now I can get all those good movies on TCM & Fox at 6:30 AM! My goal is to never waste time watching mediocre programming. The only drawbacks are keeping my hard drive from filling up (although the device has a buffer, so it will hold a certain amount of TV until you have room) and that I have to drag the cable all the way over from the living room (I'm sure the nice people at the cable company wouldn't charge me for another outlet that I'd be using for a device that will make them zero dollars instead of buying a DVR from them, right?). 2. Logitech Harmony Remote 676 . A similar remote was on my Amazon wishlist, but I didn

A friend on Facebook responded to my request for help in spending my tax refund by saying I should buy an HD radio receiver. I had no idea what he was talking about, but I thought, "Is it some sort of superpowered radio wave that will finally let me listen to something besides "Classic Rock KQRS" over the airwaves? According to these articles, no and not really --the signal's actually weaker . Also, the list of stations available * in my area is not blowing my mind. Right now I have an an all-stoner rock station, all Goa Trance, all Jpop on my computer and AppleTV, but with HD Radio I could have--KQRS Deep Cuts! Woo, all the Lynyrd Skynyrd songs that aren't "Free Bird"! So, in conclusion, this technology bears keeping an eye out, as it could be good in theory, but it's not for me at this time. *And that is a horrible, horrible web site. Apparently, hd radio is for smug jerks with boats who love to hear annoying one-celled organisms sing. Way to