A Tale of 100 Movies

AFI's 100 Greatest Movies: The Story You Haven't Heard

It happened one night that Lawrence of Arabia went north by northwest, following Sullivan's travels until he reached Casablanca. Arriving before the last picture show aired on the network, he began to tell a few good fellas the west side story, which goes something like this:

On a dark and stormy night, the general, the graduate — even the godfather! — went singin' in the rain on the waterfront. Entranced by the sound of music under the city lights, the wild bunch opened a swing time cabaret, where they planned to mash the grapes of wrath and drink all night, eat venison delivered by the deer hunter and serve duck soup at two temperatures because some like it hot. But then, in the heat of the night, Tootsie arrived with news of the gold rush in Nashville — and suddenly, they were all gone with the wind.

All was not lost, as the searchers managed to keep Schindler's list up-to-date: according to reports, one flew over the cuckoo's nest when Sophie’s choice meant saving Private Ryan and letting the others go. The midnight cowboy flagged a taxi driver to head over the bridge on the river Kwai. Bonnie and Clyde, still unforgiven, escaped the deafening silence of the lambs and fled to Chinatown. The blade runner, not surprisingly, took the maltese falcon to kill a mockingbird. Shane was last seen riding away on a streetcar named desire, gazing out the rear window at Sunset Blvd. shimmering at sunrise. As for that psycho, Annie Hall — she gathered 12 angry men and a raging bull to go after the treasure of the Sierra Madre.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid spent a night at the opera, hoping for a toy story featuring the Wizard of Oz and the Lord of the Rings. The fellowship of the ring, sadly, turned out just to be some pulp fiction all about eve, so they returned to the apartment, where the African queen was reading the Philadelphia story. She swore the sixth sense let her see Snow White and the seven dwarves, but Dr. Strangelove insists there is no such thing — all she saw was some American graffiti.

Tomorrow at high noon, Mr. Smith goes to Washington to ask "who's afraid of Virginia Woolf bringing up baby?" Going there is just step one, according to the godfather, part 2 is getting double indemnity, so he can ask whatever he wants. Also in our nation’s capitol, all the president's men decided finally to let yankee doodle dandy become a citizen. Kane made the French Connection by reversing his nouns and adjectives and presenting the easy rider with a clockwork, orange. King Kong ate Jaws and apparently ET (the extra terrestrial) sent Rocky back 10 years to fight in the Star Wars. Last we heard he was suffering from vertigo and writing his memoir, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The raiders of the lost ark were going to do the right thing, of course, and take a platoon to save the Titanic, but Spartacus, still stinging from intolerance, announced "these modern times call for an apocalypse, now." Luckily, Ben-hur and Forrest Gump, fresh from the Shawshank Redemption, were able to dissuade him, convincing him it's a wonderful life and these are the best years of our lives.

If you don't believe me, here's a hint: 9, 20, 25, 14, 19, 13.

The things you can do today

Something about this picture tickled my fancy.

I wanted to share it, so I went looking for the original — I saw this one on thecopybot.com (a great blog on writing for the web, by the by)...

...though I have to say the post on which this particular image was included, "How to Read a 291-page Book in Two Hours" isn't one of my faves... I mean a) 291 pages isn't all that long and 2) didn't we graduate from CliffNotes? If you want to read something, READ it... otherwise, go see the movie. Not that I feel strongly about it or anything.

As I was saying, I went looking for the original and found... this (on Flickr).

The same, yet not.

Crazy what the average joe can do to a photo these days. Tilt-shift, anyone?

Don't scratch that iPhone - never mind, you can't

Here's a little bit of personal insight: my sister often calls me "Miss Oblivious." It's not a compliment. Though it is affectionate.

I never really thought about how impervious my iPhone screen is to scratches and dings. In fact, I sort of never noticed it at all. Of course, had my screens become scratched and fuzzy, I have no doubt I would have complained vociferously and often.

Turns out, those screens are not made from ordinary, scratchable, glass. They're made from "gorilla glass."

According to myth, Steve Jobs attended a presentation where a scientist from Corning (yes, the same Corning responsible for those white casserole dishes with the abstract blue floral insignia that every mother has at least one of in her cabinets somewhere) dumped a small square of glass into a bag with a bunch of keys and shook. Hard. Then removed the still pristine and gleaming glass with nary a ding, scratch or scuff. And voila, the smartphone touch screen.

Reading up on it, because knowing all about Gorilla Glass is just the sort of useless information that delights me and renders my brain too full to retain anything useful, like, um, uh... See what I mean? Anyway, turns out Gorilla Glass is also making breakthroughs in the flat panel arena, because not only is it more durable and less scratchable — it is also stronger at thinner thicknesses (well, how would you put it?) than ordinary glass.

Besides, how could you not love a product with a logo of a gorilla doing a down dog?

Change is hard

But fun is... fun. And according to the folks behind The Fun Theory, fun is the, well, "easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better."

They're turning stairs into piano keys and recycling banks into arcades. And the people? They're playing and... playing.

Hear the music yourself:

(another video - you really should check it out if you can't see it)

The folks behind the fun Fun Theory? Volkswagen and their Swedish ad agency, DDB Stockholm. Funsters wanted.

Balloon high...

This was too good not to steal--I mean share.


Check out the video. No seriously, if you're reading this in your email, you're missing out on the whole point.

Smile...

This is a video you definitely don't want to miss. Click here if you don't see it.
(If there's no link to watch in "higher quality" - click here)

I read about it in the New York Times... then I clicked on it, and started smiling about 15 seconds in, and kept smiling all the way through. Now that's something.

And, for my next computer...

This may make my brother shudder. But my next computer? It's going to be a Mac. You know, that super-cool, super-thin one, the one David Pogue wrote a love letter to just the other day? He did. Seriously, if he could marry the thing... well...

I can't speak for Mr. P, but for me, I might say it's because of the commercials alone - have you seen the new yoga one with Judy Greer? The fantastic, under-rated, Judy Greer? (And MissGuided does not do her justice - though kudos to Ashton Kutcher for trying.) Well, anyway, the commercials rock. They're all of them on Apple's site. Remember Mac from Galaxy Quest (a 90, I'll have you know, on RT)? He was Brandon -- "You wanna take a left and then just straight on through the chompers."

Link to the supercalifragilistic video I posted - you know, in case for some reason you can't, you know, see it?

The commercials do indeed rock, but the truth is, I'm a pure sucker for packaging (ask my friends - it's sad but true). And for design. And well-packaged design? Or well-designed packaging? Fuhgeddaboutit. As they say.

In the meantime, at least I get to watch the commercials. And use my super-cool, super-small, super-designed, nano. Sigh.

Short and sweet

Have I told you guys about the Very Short List? My friend and erstwhile roommate told me about it ages ago...

a free, daily e-mail that points to excellent new (and sometimes vintage) entertainment and media that haven’t been hyped to within an inch of their lives.

I particularly like their "always clickable" Venn diagram - that's nifty. I've never posted one of their finds here before... that seems like cheating, dontcha think? But I can't resist posting this one.

To be fair, I posted the awesome Hema product page weeks before they sent it out. So there.

Show off, do good

The better your vocabulary, the more rice these guys donate through the UN World Food Program.

Don't ask me how or why - but tell all your prolix, sesquipedalian friends about it.

Pandora's box

Funny the things you assume everyone knows about, and then you find out that they don't.
How does that happen?

You think everyone knows that Jiminy Cricket was Pinocchio's conscience, until you're talking to someone one day and casually drop the Jiminy Cricket reference into your conversation, and they look at you like your nose is growing too large for your face.

You think everyone has heard the commercial jingle "Peak Freens are a very serious cookie. Cookie." Until you realize that you can't even find this anywhere on the internet and that anyone who didn't grow up on the east coast thinks you're a freak-teen for thinking this is common knowledge.

You think everyone can sing Conjunction Junction, until you realize you're just damn old and only your friends from 1st grade have a clue what you're talking about.


Which is a real shame, by the by, as Conjunction Junction rocks. And everyone should know it, if only to be able to sing it. Let alone that they should actually know the part of speech the "conjunction."

Regardless, I thought everyone knew about Pandora - an internet site that basically lets you create your own radio station formats. In honor of a good friend, I have a station called "female suicide music" as well as a "mellow to my toes" station (not in honor of anyone - except maybe my toes, which are actually pretty cute, and possibly quite worth honoring).

If you don't know about it, and you like music, it's worth checking out. Create a station, many stations. Add artists, add songs. You know, that you like. Pandora plays music all day long related to your selections. The part I love is that you can give the ol' thumbs up or down to songs as they play. Can't stand that new Plain White Tees song? Thumbs down and it'll NEVER show up again. What radio station can say that?

I see your true colors, shining through

I don't know how this works... but it's pretty cool.

Don't move. Don't say a word.

You can make your point by doing absolutely nothing. And when I say nothing, I mean nothing.

Rube Goldberg was Dutch?

You may not know this, but I was born in Holland. It's just one of the odd things you wouldn't expect to be true of me. But there you have it...it's both true and odd.

So I feel an odd (what else?) sort of pride in this site my dad sent to me - it's the product page of the Dutch department store, HEMA, which was founded over 80 years ago, according to this picture. Once you get to the page, just watch.

(Note - the page is in Dutch, which I can't read. And you can't buy anything on it. Then again, the page is in Dutch, so what do I know?)

(Second note - I have no idea whether or not Rube Goldberg was Dutch. I doubt it.)