nocodeforparanoia's New Writeups

Either/Or (review)

2009-09-07T06:57:28Z

ARGUMENT:

I suppose that everyone has their own favorite tragically-dead, beautiful, terrible genius singer-songwriter. There are certainly enough to go around. But if Nazis had my parents and forced me to pick my all-time favorite, I'd have no problem telling them Elliott Smith. And if I had to pick an album, there's no question—I'd pick Either/Or.

I first encountered Elliott Smith through my high school girlfriend. I think Smith would have appreciated that relationship—it was sweet, strange, beautiful, and ultimately, a total mismatch. That was ten years ago, and I'm a very different person now than I was then, particularly as far as my musical taste goes, but Elliott Smith has stuck with me, and I can't imagine ever getting sick of Either/Or.

Those familiar with Elliott Smith's catalogue will (I hope) agree that this album falls neatly into the perfectly…

transcript sections of classroom discussion on literary criticism (idea)

2009-05-27T07:39:15Z

BACKGROUND:

I am currently undergoing New Mexico's poorly-organized intern teaching licensure program. This program ideally gives people with bachelor's degrees in something other than education the opportunity to become fully-licensed teachers quickly without having to go through the touchy-feely process of earning a teaching degree. So I'm trying to get my license in secondary language arts.

Last December, my wife's boss (my wife teaches biology and chemistry), an incredible six-foot lesbian amazon of a woman (think Jane Lynch, but 6'3"), asked if I'd be interested in teaching an advanced literature course. The school is a magnet school for Albuquerque's blossoming film industry, so I suggested a course on advanced story theory, using film as a medium. She told me to write a syllabus. I wrote a syllabus. She loved it. I called it "CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES: THE HOLLYWOOD MODEL." She decided that wasn't sexy enough, so she retitled it The…

My NY i (poetry)

2007-06-14T18:29:58Z

It was a great hazy time
Spent spinning off with
Strangers in a paradise of
Broken glass, trash, citydebris,
Blasted cab commotion, emotion,
And occasional loss of primary motor function.

Do you remember?

It was late-to-class spastic
Sick all-nighter madness,
Gratuitous haywire hormone
Havens of badnasty bliss.

Do you remember?

Paul with paws drawn wide
Cocked black socks pulled up and
Fifty-seven rubber bands on one wrist
Drawing on the other with a
Black…

Pop art (thing)

2006-08-01T19:24:54Z

Pop Art is an artistic movement that began in England in the mid-1950s. Although the movement still thrives today in countries like Japan, most critics would say it peaked sometime in the mid-1960s. The movement is closely philosophically related to Lowbrow art, the Op Art movement, and Dadaism (and was in fact called "Neo-Dada" by some); in Pop Art, the pretension of abstract expressionism is undercut in favor of a juxtoposition of the epic and the common, often making use of familiar images in extreme ways (for example, turning a Campbell's Soup can into an iconic, almost reverential image). Pop art is (in the words of British Pop-Artist Richard Hamilton) "popular, transient, expendable, low-cost, mass-produced, young, witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous, and Big Business."

The term "Pop Art" was coined by Lawrence Alloway in 1958, when he wrote about the artwork of Hamilton and several other London-based artists. Hamilton's collage work …

mirin glazed salmon (recipe)

2006-06-23T17:37:30Z

This is a simple dish that is easy to make and uses relatively few ingredients. It doesn't take too long to make, either, which is a huge help if you're stoopid-busy like me. Here's whatcha do:

STUFF YOU WILL NEED:

Salmon steaks. Four of 'em. I usually buy two big ones and chop them ever so gingerly in half with a large cleaver, leaving me with four steaks, each about 5 oz.

THE GLAZE:

One cup of mirin. This is rice wine. Sushi vinegar also works well. Sushi vinegar is rice vinegar with a little sugar, which is nice in this dish. If you're using straight rice vinegar, I would advise adding a pinch of sugar to it, but you can certainly go without.
Ancho chili powder. Ancho isn't spicy, but has a wonderfully gentle earthy flavor that goes well on pretty much anything. You are going to want AT LEAST 2 tablespoons for this dish, but feel free to add more liberally.
Powdered ginger. Yeah, you could use fresh stuff,

…

Switchblade Romance (review)

2006-04-17T07:38:51Z

Although I must congratulate RalphyK for an excellent writeup, I couldn't really disagree with him more. I was not terribly impressed with this film, and I actually tend to like horror movies.

Wait, wait, wait. That's not all entirely accurate. This is one rare case in which I loved everything about the movie but the plot. Maybe it's because I like plot-driven films, or maybe it's just because I'm an English major. But generally it doesn't matter to me how cool the special effects are, how good the acting is, or how well a movie is shot if the plot is a disaster. And this one is.

The major problem with this film is one that occurs frequently when a writer/director aspires to raise a horror movie above the level of pure hack-and-slash gore: plot flaws. There are many in Switchblade Romance (which did call itself High Tension when I saw it), and they're big enough that any twelve year-old would catch them (please don't take this to mean that I would suggest showing…