Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in glengarry's LiveJournal:

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Wednesday, July 7th, 2010
12:01 am	14:23 #URU all is forgiven if you beat the Oranje into a bloody pulp! let the Dark Arts commence! # Bite-sized thoughts is better than nuthin, no? (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 25th, 2010
12:07 am	08:59 @SI_PeterKing WC tweets YES PLS. the haters don't deserve the quality NFL intel you supply anyhow. let them sulk. unless u need time off! # Bite-sized thoughts is better than nuthin, no? (Comment on this)
Friday, May 7th, 2010
12:07 am	11:37 bloody tories. today i doublewish i wasn't a yankee #imnotvotingconservative # Bite-sized thoughts is better than nuthin, no? (Comment on this)
Sunday, March 14th, 2010
12:04 am	11:51 @Atrios as a former journo, couldn't agree more. driving around on assignment is integral to 'badass reporter empowerment syndrome' # Bite-sized thoughts is better than nuthin, no? (Comment on this)
Friday, March 5th, 2010
12:04 am	17:30 argh! 'millionaire' 'all-movies' week is so easy! i knew 50k Pacino -> ____ -> K.Bacon answer as E.Barkin before the ABCD popped up even! # Bite-sized thoughts is better than nuthin, no? (Comment on this)
Monday, February 22nd, 2010
12:02 am	22:43 Figure Skating announcers showin AMTRAK some love, that's just one more heart-warming Olympic moment! Back to curling! #olympics # Bite-sized thoughts is better than nuthin, no? (Comment on this)
Thursday, January 21st, 2010
12:02 am	12:39 @samirmathur don't go. # 17:53 @samirmathur Saints are a draw with MK Dons away from a ticket to Wembley! JPT FTW! # Bite-sized thoughts is better than nuthin, no? (Comment on this)
Sunday, January 3rd, 2010
12:03 am	00:59 @thorntonb 31 Flavors of Socialism # Bite-sized thoughts is better than nuthin, no? (Comment on this)
Thursday, December 10th, 2009
12:02 am	11:03 @samirmathur its a triskelion. thats an old sicilian (!) flag # Bite-sized thoughts is better than nuthin, no? (Comment on this)
Saturday, December 5th, 2009
12:02 am	11:19 surprised that Alabamanarchy returns zero hits on google. I know a LOT of strange-os (as James Ellroy would say) in the AL # 12:52 S.Af-staged WC pre-draw festivities are predictably lifeless. all will be forgiven if Charlize Theron fondles those ping-pong balls for us # 13:42 @samirmathur i know, what was that? slovenia mystery. Algeria = just happy to be there, can't travel well? any grp.D teams in r16 = menacing # Bite-sized thoughts is better than nuthin, no? (Comment on this)
Friday, December 4th, 2009
12:03 am	08:38 @gemko wrong sport Mike! makes you look like you weren't paying attention. or does the movie muddle sports metapors too? they're "TRIES" # Bite-sized thoughts is better than nuthin, no? (Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 25th, 2009
12:02 am	04:11 @NoelMu actually he's a right prick. # Bite-sized thoughts is better than nuthin, no? (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 19th, 2009
12:04 am	22:43 @samirmathur you can take the man out of Juventus but you can't take the Juventus out of the man. Cheatin' fuck. Ireland sure are snakebit # Bite-sized thoughts is better than nuthin, no? (Comment on this)
Sunday, November 1st, 2009
12:01 am	12:27 @samirmathur they've got the four basic fashionable indie rocker looks covered there. each so distinct, each so the same. nice togs! # Bite-sized thoughts is better than nuthin, no? (Comment on this)
Sunday, October 18th, 2009
12:03 am	15:51 Vern Lundquist sez 'intercepted' well before the ball got to UF DB, who proceeded to NOT catch it by a good 3 feet. The man has got to go. # 18:29 A thoroughly deserved lead for the Razorbacks. The Redemption of Bobby Petrino? # 18:52 @NoelMu The surrealist commo from Verne L. can't be helping! (re: "so it's an incompletion, then" after the catch-and-run fumbled on the 1!) # Bite-sized thoughts is better than nuthin, no? (Comment on this)
Friday, September 18th, 2009
12:02 am	13:40 thinking about walling myself off from all media outlets for, oh, the next year or so # Bite-sized thoughts is better than nuthin, no? (Comment on this)
Thursday, September 10th, 2009
12:01 am	09:31 what kind of Asian grocery doesn't open on time??? # Bite-sized thoughts is better than nuthin, no? (Comment on this)
Thursday, September 3rd, 2009
1:01 pm	Hooray for Bollywood  So we watched Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham last night.  I loved loved loved it.  A few movie club regulars didn't or couldn't make it and I wanted to put down some thoughts about Bollywood movies in general to try and explain their appeal. K3G is, it must be said, 3 hours and 30 minutes long, and simply cannot be related to without accepting that glaring fact.  On top of that, it has a plot that you could truthfully distill into a single paragraph, or three paragraphs, to do it real justice.  In the west, we don't even make movies this long any more, and our two-hour movies will typically still be wall-to-wall unexpected twists, shifts in tone, etc.  So how is it that the Bollywood movies aren't lethally dull with 'so little going on' ?    What I've finally decided is that Bollywood scripts and directors are working in a frankly different medium than 'western cinema' and they just cannot be compared or weighed against one another in any appreciable way -- because of their different understanding of the simple concept of 'how long a movie should be and how do we fill out the time' ?  It's just that big of an issue. So, to come back to K3G.  It is a family melodrama.  We don't even have these anymore, really, in the west, and if we did, there would have to be some indie-hook quirk to make the thing sell to a distributor.  (It's about a guy who is in love... with a blow up doll!)  And we certainly couldn't make it at that length.   So what does K3G do to fill out this long running time?  Well, the first answer is 'the song-and-dance numbers'.  Yes, these are often incredible, and entertaining -- sometimes vital to the plot, sometimes tangential -- and they might take up to an hour of the running time in K3G.  Even so, it's best to enjoy them for what they are, breaks in the main plot.  I'm sure entire film theses have been written about how the musical numbers are spaced out, but it seems to me to be a very careful process indeed.  They really lighten the melodramatic proceedings, remind you that you're supposed to be having fun, etc -- look at all the gorgeous people, sets, clothes, etc... -- and to be honest, you need a few breaks from a movie with the emotional punch of Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham. But even without the songs... there is still a LOT of movie to cope with, and 'less happens' to be sure than in a western romance (or western anything really).  Instead, we get very calculated scenes so that we feel 'lived-in' with the characters.  In almost every Bollywood movie i've seen, there are scenes with families eating.  Every time!  And, hey, what could be more universal?  Everyone eats, every day.  Even though the characters are so often larger than life (corporate moguls, underworld kingpins, fashion models, movie stars, cricket heroes) and typically fabulously wealthy, the repetitive weight of 'family life' scenes, in the end, provides an *invaluable* amount of emotional weight once the matters of the 'plot' come to a head.   And as patently ridiculous as so many Bollywood plots are, with the good movies, the ones that work, i am not remotely bored.  Furthermore, I am completely emotionally involved with the characters, to an extent that I virtually never am in any western movie with similar themes or stories.  Because the extra time *adds* not subtracts from the bond.  The mistaken- or assumed-identity plots and other ridiculous devices work because they HAVE to work, the movies' length sort of beats you down into accepting it, internalizing it.   Kabhi Khushi is all about family.  So are a lot of Bollywood films, and even when they more or less are not, they really are, because they exist in a world where famiily still means something.  I am starting to watch Bollywood with a different mental lens... i used to think the family melodrama was a bit silly, especially when the characters generally come from such outlandishly 'awesome' families.  Now, I'm seeing all the minor and incidental characters as part of other, unseen awesome families, just ones that the movie doesn't have time for.  But that it's all implied, all this extra drama, a world of drama.  Which is another thing that the whole 'running time / sprawling epic feel' really plays into.   So what if it takes three hours to tell the story?  Should we really resent that it takes half again as much time to tell a story the way they want to tell it, than it would for a western film?  How did we ever arrive at the 'generic two hour running time' ?  Are the reasons really about aesthetics, and not a business-person's convenience in the form of TV running times, more screenings per evening, cost of film!, etc?   (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 26th, 2009
12:03 am	17:28 Basterds: compleat triumph for QT... humanity and real purpose married to tried-and-true techniques. wicked fun. also: score of the decade. # Bite-sized thoughts is better than nuthin, no? (Comment on this)
Saturday, August 22nd, 2009
12:01 am	10:04 @thorntonb believe it or not, i'd hoped B.O.B. would be #1. hate to be in lockstep with P4k (or anyone) but list is pretty canonical & great # Bite-sized thoughts is better than nuthin, no? (Comment on this)