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May 30, 2007

Coneheads

Coneheads

Long time since I've taken the time to write a review - work keeps me far too busy unfortunately, and even this one has to be short.

Dan Ackroyd plays an alien who crashlands with his wife on Earth and gets stranded. They are quite unusual characters, but manage to fit into society even though they have huge cones for heads. They even have a daughter who grows into an attractive teenager, with a bald conehead of course.

Some government officials get on their trail to try and deport them as illegal aliens. Things come to a head when eventually their race come to take them back to their home planet, and they aren't all sure if they still want to leave Earth.

I thought this was perfectly fine as mindless entertainment. You could make a case for a deeper meaning, about immigration, and how if you work hard in a new country you can have the american dream, but I'm not going to here.

Posted by se71 at 02:19 PM | Comments (0)

May 16, 2007

Background Music

I listen to music a fair amount. During the week I'm either also reading a book/newspaper/magazine because I'm on a train, or I'm doing comnplicated things with computers because that's my job.

Both of these activities require a major portion of my brain's processing power (not all though, creating user ids isn't that hard :-).

I love music, and I love my iPod, it's been a major reason why my music listening has actually increased a lot during the last year. I have discovered new Artists like Joanna Newsom and Muse and Damien Rice, and when I put their songs on I find myself stopping whatever else I'm doing and just listening. Playing them as background seems a betrayal, and impossible in some cases.

So, paradoxically, instead of playing the songs I enjoy most, I listen quite a lot to second tier music. This is music I like, music I would pay good money for, but music that doesn't require rapt attention in the same way as the top tier Kings of Convenience or Tom Waits.

So stand up Paulo Nuttini, Snow Patrol and James Morrison - you're pretty good really, and you get a lot of plays on my iPod, but don't get too cocky, it's just because I don't quite like you enough.

Posted by se71 at 04:09 PM | Comments (0)