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 [...]

Much too exhausted to blog effectively. Instead here’s a brief list of things that happened today.

Chatted with Amanda Congdon about Chuck Olsen’s relative awesomeness.
Commiserated with the director of American: The Bill Hicks Story over SXSW’s lackluster business center. Seriously? They don’t take cash for 25 cent printing purchases?
Said some shite to a room full of [...]

Today was actually kind of nice and relaxing. I was up early enough to catch the first sessions (at the crack of eleven). I went to the What is Open Video panel and halfway through, I realized that I was missing the Clay Shirky talk that was happening simultaneously. Shirky is one of the interactive [...]

Long day today. I slept in (wow, I needed it) and then got lunch with Andy and Todd at the Iron Works BBQ place. I attended a film panel on “cause-driven” filmmaking that was pretty good. Then I saw Ze Frank’s talk, which was awesome in its Ze Frankness. A beer in the park followed [...]

Okay, it’s after 2:30 AM so this is gonna be brief.
Tim Blake Nelson and I made eye contact at JFK this morning. He was on my flight to Austin. I passed his row on my way to the lavatory and noticed he was watching a 1970s Roy Scheider movie on his laptop that may or [...]

I’m heading out for SXSW first thing tomorrow morning. This is the fourth time I’ve attended the film and interactive festival and conference and it’s always a logistical nightmare figuring out what panels and sessions I want to get to and what films I want to see, but this year is especially complicated and exciting [...]

I was totally thrashed by the flu last week. I taught class a week ago Monday, despite feeling under the weather (mistake) and then for the next five days I couldn’t stand up for more than a few minutes at a time and had a very bad chest/head situation. There was no high fever, which [...]

One of the things that amuses me about all of the end-of-the-decade reflections and lists going on around the web is that after ten years of living in this decade, we as a culture have utterly failed at agreeing on what to call it. I’ve seen aughts, oughts, oughties, naughts, naughties, 2000s, ’00s, double-0s, zips, [...]

We take Thanksgiving fairly seriously at the Stoneking/Simmon household. We take it so seriously in fact, that when I just tweeted about how I’d gotten a 13 lb. pre-turkey for making stock that I’m going to brine and roast on Saturday, I got a direct message from a friend who said, “You really don’t mess [...]

Last night I finally hooked up the 50″ Panasonic G10 plasma display and got to see some results. We watched the Star Trek Blu-ray (released yesterday) and it looked pretty sweet. The TiVo and the Mac look great too, and the SD shows don’t even look too bad. Emily is a bit freaked out by [...]