How is it that a movie and a TV series coming out within days of one another can have the same (gramatically ugly) name? Well, it’s happened. Tune in tonight for the premiere of the TBS comedy “10 Items or Less,” or wait until Friday and catch the new Morgan Freeman indie… 10 Items or […]

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Last week, I came across

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Robert Altman was one of the first filmmakers whose work I sought out when I was first getting into film. I think I saw Short Cuts at the old Capri in Anchorage and it seemed accessible, yet a whole lot more interesting than the stuff I’d been watching at the Fireweed with friends or renting […]

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Aimee was a TiVo devotee (TiVotee?) long before we started dating, and the TiVo came with her when we got married and pooled our AV equipment. And everything else. Anyway, the original TiVo from her Brookline days began dying in Rochester, starting with a pause or a skip here and there, eventually making it so […]

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I spent Saturday consuming football, more than I usually do but probably less than most fans of college football. I started out in the morning at the Amherst Alumni telecast of the Amherst-Williams game, which started out ok for the Jeffs but we were never able to capitalize and things went downhill quickly in the […]

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We spent last night at the newly-renovated Griffith Observatory , named for the well-named Griffith J. Griffith. After four years of closure for renovation and expansion, the observatory re-opened on Friday, and was expected to attract crowds, so entrance has been limited to those who make timed reservations on shuttle buses for the first few […]

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Two years after my first Muddy Buddy experience, I enlisted the help of the other Brian at work, and without any ‘Brian’-related puns for our team name, we took on the San Dimas Muddy Buddy this weekend as “Tuna Melts” – the entry form didn’t allow enough characters for me to add a “The” at […]

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This week, our little street lost two of its most distinctive features. All week long, we saw the work of a construction crew replacing a set of permanent green pylons in the street a few doors down from us. They seemed to be a sort of speed-impeding device, one that no other streets in the […]

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I feel like my taste in music has remained pretty stagnant over the last few years. Leaving college and the radio station behind didn’t do it, as cd-burning mania struck just after I graduated, and kept new music flowing into my life for the next few years. Maybe I’m just not paying attention as closely […]

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I returned on Tuesday from ten days in Italy, a little sick, a little tired, but happy to have spent time in both small-town Sacile and cosmopolitan Venice. The film festival I attended, eight days of silent films, was just about as obscure but a lot less boring than it might sound. It was great […]

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Even before we moved, I knew that KCRW was just about the best thing about L.A., but now that we’re here, we’re learning first-hand. First and foremost, Morning Becomes Eclectic is about the best radio show out there, and the rest of the lineup is interesting and intriguing as well. Second, the Fringe Benefits card […]

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Living in L.A. still feels a little like a long summer vacation because the weather hasn’t changed at all since we got here (only a slight exaggeration), and it’s nearly October. Alright, so it’s a little colder, but it still hasn’t rained a day in sixty, it was 76° today, and I’m wearing the same […]

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I spent much of my last semester at school looking at films from the 1940s and 1950s frame by frame, looking for damage and decomposition, but also checking out the content of the image, the style and design of rooms and clothes and signs and newspapers. I’ve always been fascinated by newspapers made up for […]

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Not Sinatra at the Hollywood Bowl, and not really Sinatra at all, actually, but this week we enjoyed some strange and interesting musical performances. First, last Sunday, we walked over to the Hollywood Bowl in the afternoon and picnicked on the grounds, with a loaf of bread, some brie, wine, and grapes, which made for […]

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William Randolph Hearst was a man of contradictions, apparently. He thought of his estate in San Simeon as a ‘ranch,’ and wanted his guests to feel at home, so much so that everyone ate with paper napkins and used ketchup and mustard out of their store-bought bottles. All the while, they were sitting in a […]

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