I'd like to extend a warm welcome to the newest member of my extended family, Cooper Berube, who arrived Sunday morning, the first son of my cousin Tim and his lovely wife Robin. Coop, you aren't going to believe the cool stuff we've got for you around here. Two words for ya, little buddy: Pop Rocks.

And for your entertainment, I submit the following links to you (thank you, Mike Witty). Make sure that if you watch these at work, you turn your sound up REALLY loud. Your co-workers will thank you.

Bliss #1

Bliss #2

Last night I took the dogs over to the Beta Apartment in the International District to watch the NFC Championship game. Their apartment is maybe 3-4 blocks away from Qwest Field, home of the Seattle Seahawks, where the game was being played. We opened the door to the balcony while we watched the game on TV - you could hear the cheering of the nearly 68,000 people at the game loud and clear. Watching a game like that was pretty unique in my sports watching experience - I've never been within earshot of the actual sporting event I was watching in real-time on television. It was a hoot. And yay, Seahawks! I'll be rooting for them in the Superbowl. I think they have an excellent shot at winning, it seems the media and public at large are already getting WAY too excited and overrating that Pittsburgh team. They're obviously good, but the Hawks have beaten a lot of good teams this year. I've got a feeling...

We've begun getting some press reviews in for the recently-released remix record. I'll be posting those over at the Wonky Records site as they come in. I'm also working on getting some very-long-overdue commentary up about some of the previous releases in the catalog, including Salve and the Half Zaftig EP. Lizzy wrote up her own commentary for the EP, and so I'll get that posted soon as well. Pete - well, Pete doesn't like typing so much.

I tried to go see Match Point this weekend, but it was sold out. Dang.

Last week I found out that the entirety of the scripts for the 18-episode run of Freaks And Geeks had been released in two volumes. I got them from Amazon and am having a great old time reading them. I guess my obsession with this show is complete. I'm very interested in screenwriting, so reading these scripts over has been really fun - not only are they well-written, but it's very telling to see how what actually ended up in each show differed from what was on the page.

Speaking of screenwriting, I downloaded Final Draft pro this weekend, too. Watch out, Charlie Kaufman.

This is a violent film. This is the kind of cinema violence I can stomach, though, because it's being used to further the story, and because it's not sensationalized. It's also a long movie, but I was engrossed for the entire running time. I'm not going to get into the politics of the movie, or all the stuff that's come up in the press about the movie, that's someone else's job. I can only say that this movie has haunted me in the weeks since I went to see it. That's the kind of movie I love the best, and the kind I can heartily recommend.

So in my zeal for this show, I've been in a full-on Mission Mode to support everyone who had anything to do with making the show so great, and that's largely been manifesting as an immersion in the work of writer/producer Judd Apatow. Turns out that after F&G got pulled by NBC, he created a new present-day show about college life, in which he intended to recruit as many of the F&G actors as he could to participate. The show was called Undeclared, and was also cancelled before it made it through an entire season. The only F&G cast member who was a "regular" on Undeclared was Seth Rogen, but there are several cameos throughout the series from actors Jason Segel, Martin Starr, Samm Levine and many others that definitely brought a smile to my face. Tenacious D's Kyle Gass even had a recurring role. Undeclared isn't anywhere near as good as F&G, but it's still a high-quality show and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Then last week I picked up the DVD of The 40-Year-Old Virgin, written and directed by, you guessed it, the aforementioned Mr. Apatow. I saw the flick in the theater and enjoyed it thoroughly, but I only bought the DVD because of my current F&G mania. It's a funny movie, and actually, this movie was the first time I'd ever seen Seth Rogen in anything, and I remember he really impressed me.

Seriously. Freaks. And. Geeks. You have got to see it if you haven't. OK, I'll shut up now.

P.S. - now I'll sheepishly admit that the main reason I went to see Brokeback Mountain was - I found out Lindsay Weir was in it! This is truly some sort of sickness.

I guess I just want to head off the "We're concerned about you" conversations that would ultimately arise if I really unloaded in writing about some of the things that I'm actually thinking about. The problem, of course becomes that the more I censor myself here, the less interesting the .Blog is to read (which you've undoubtedly already figured out). My favorite blogs tend to be the ones that are the bravest, the most honest, and sometimes even the most shocking. None of those terms really apply to what I've been writing here, and it bums me out a little.

In any event, I still owe another movie post, for Munich. I'll try and be briefer with it - the last two movie posts got a little long, and I don't really want to make these things into "reviews." I'm grumbling up here that I still have nowhere in Seattle to go see Match Point or The New World, and actually I don't think there's anything I want to see this weekend.

I won't be watching the Hawks/Redskins game this weekend - too many conflicting feelings about that one. I think the Hawks will win, but I'm rooting for Joe Gibbs.

It is a good movie. It's very sad. Heath Ledger gives a performance that I wouldn't have previously guessed he had in him. It's better than what Philip Seymour Hoffman did in Capote, and I had believed before this that PSH was going to run away with the Oscar this year, but now I don't know.

The movie is beautiful to look at. There's no beating the scenery in the American West. Yes, there are a couple of scenes of man-on-man action, but it's all dark and murky and nobody is naked. I've seen far more explicit stuff in episodes of Six Feet Under or OZ on HBO. Frankly, there are far more scenes of heterosexual goings-on between these guys and their wives - straight guys will be happy to hear that Anne Hathaway looks incredible without her shirt on. Young boys everywhere will be freeze-framing that scene on the DVD for years to come. Ah, technology.

This is a movie about two men who love each other, but can't be together, because of the times, because of the circumstances. But the movie isn't just about these two guys carrying torches for each other - it's also about the other people in their lives who get hurt as a result of their choices. Both of the guys marry women, both of them have children with their wives, even as they carry on with their relationship with each other by getting together a couple of times per year for "hunting trips." Their families are portrayed with compassion, too. It's no picnic for anyone involved. The story doesn't have a happy ending, and how could it? As much as the two men love their families and children, those relationships are based at worst on lies, and at best on settling. And that is a true tragedy.

I can't say I'm in a wild hurry to see this film again (Anne Hathaway's charms be damned), but I'm glad I saw it once.

There's also an important (and sad) underlying plot point that could be construed as something little better than your garden-variety Movie-Of-The-Week bit: but the movie disarms by playing the interactions that arise from it completely honestly, and often in a touching manner. Yes, most of the plot stuff is completely telegraphed and guessable - but the actors uniformly believe it, and frankly, that allows me to let that stuff slide. You like these people in this family, and you start rooting for them. The Family Stone is often really funny, as well - and while you've probably seen some of the really slapsticky stuff in the trailer, it's not really that kind of film. Movies like this that work, work for a reason. This one works. I laughed, I cried, and I didn't feel used at the end. It's a great holiday film, and while I probably wouldn't buy the DVD of it, I wouldn't mind seeing it again. Especially with a group of people I care about, around the holidays.

You know, sort of how I relate to the ladies now.

Band rehearsals are gearing up again this week. I am really looking forward to playing with Pete and Lizzy again. I miss the band when we're not doing anything. We'll be polishing up the set list for the gig at The Central on the 6th.

I'm going to start up a .Blog experiment for 2006: I'm going to make an individual post for every film I see in theaters this year. It may not be a full-blown "review", since I don't even know how qualified I am to write "reviews", but it will at least be a couple of lines, along with a three-tiered "judgement", relating to whether or not I'd want to buy the DVD when it's available. So the movies will either be Keepers, Renters, or a Wouldn't Watch It Again. I guess I should think of a snappier one-word version of that last thing, huh?

I've seen three films so far in the theater in 2006, so I'll start off this little experiment with three posts for those, to follow later this afternoon. And I'll try to make the posts on the same day I actually see the movie, unlike these first three (though the most recent of the three films I saw yesterday). I'm doing this mostly for myself, to sort of catalog how many flicks I get out to, and just to be able to read through the year in movies come next December and remind myself of what I loved. I still catch a lot of flicks (especially in comparison to the "average" consumer, I'll bet), but I've definitely cut back in recent years. I no longer see everything.