Candleblog

Emily and I are heading out on Friday for a little vacation in my ancestral homeland (northern Illinois) to hang out, play games and drink like fish with my extended family. This is just a little post to say hi and check in on things me-related before we leave.
It’s worth mentioning that this blog was [...]

I’ve cut my first political campaign video. My friend, Philip Baruth, is running for Vermont State Senate. He approached me last year about doing some video work for the campaign. This four-minute piece is one of the results. We’re “premiering” it tonight at the Main Street Landing Black Box Theater at “Philipalooza,” a fundraiser for [...]

It’s the first officially perfect day of spring here in northern Vermont. Here are some things to cogitate about as you idly meander about today…

Clay Shirky has your must-read future-of-media essay for the week: The Collapse of Complex Business Models.
Speaking of Shirky, he’s one of the respondents to this Pew Research Center survey about the [...]

Chatroulette. I haven’t tried it, but I love that it exists. Here’s a great little documentary about it…

And here’s a ridiculously awesome hack of the idea. I wish I’d thought of this.

I just watched this web video interview with ProBlogger scribe Darren Rowse in which he admonishes new bloggers to blog abut subjects they have some expertise in. This is really good advice — it makes the blog in question not only interesting and entertaining (assuming the blogger has some writing chops and a winning personality) [...]

Like Juno, Sideways and Little Miss Sunshine before it, Up in the Air is a fine, somewhat tepid little Hollywood film with an indy flare that will get the Academy’s panties all up in a bunch at Oscar time, and movie pundits will wonder aloud why more films can’t be made with “heart.” And people [...]

What follows are my next-day thoughts on Avatar. Minor spoilers abound.
Somewhere near the middle of James Cameron’s three-hour long sci-fi spectacle, Avatar, I had to pee. The “medium” Diet Pepsi I’d been nursing was making its presence known in my bladder and the matter was just becoming too urgent to ignore. So I waited until [...]

Back in the early 1990s I was a budding filmmaker and one night I had a conversation with my friend (and fellow budding filmmaker) Alex Woolfson on the phone about a scene that was playing out in my head (these conversations were common and continue to this day). The scene was of a man coming [...]

Nobody tell Emily!
Actually, it’s not so much of a crush as a recognition of this woman’s talent and likability. Jenny Slate got on my radar just last week with the season premiere of SNL. She did a hilarious “biker chick” character who hosts a Wayne’s World-esque TV show in her basement with her frickin’ best [...]

Hey bloggyland… I know it’s been a week since the last Candleblog post. Insert my usual complaints about my busy life, etc. here. I’ll have a big juicy likdump for you tomorrow to make up for it, I promise.
Emily and I just got home from Selene Colburn’s History of the Future Collection dance performance. Neither [...]