I don't know wheather this is a quote or Elyssa wrote it, but its pretty cool.

Link: lispsugrl: RIP Common Sense.

I'm fully intent on going to this...  who's in?

Link: Ram News.

Bronx, NY - (June 27, 2005) – The Fordham University men’s basketball Rams will open the 2005-06 season in paradise. The Paradise Jam, that is. Six Division I men’s basketball teams are gearing up for a trip to paradise at the sixth annual Paradise Jam Basketball Tournament hosted by the University of the Virgin Islands in St. Thomas.

The year was 1994.  I was a sophomore at Regis.   

I had recently been introduced to the Mecca that was the local all-girls high schools.  When you go to an all-guys high school, getting an "in" to your sister school was like finding the Holy Grail.

So there I was, with some newly minted friends from Marymount and the older Regis guys they hung out with, and they couldn't wait to see Pulp Fiction.  I was largely unaware of what I was going to see.  In fact, I remember being largely unaware of a lot of cool pop cultural stuff at the time, aside from what I heard on Z100 or from my Brooklyn friends.  I remember in freshmen year being told who the Ramones were by this girl Veronica I met at a Regis dance.  The Ramones!   What a sheltered life. 

Anyway, Pulp Fiction was, by far, the coolest thing I'd ever seen on the screen.  It was edgy, creative, and totally unlike anything else.  I must have easily seen it ten times in the movie theater... also because it played FOREVER.  You could always find it playing somewhere in the city. 

Pulp Fiction marked the resurrection of John Travolta's career as well.  He'd just come off the second sequal of "Look Who's Talking"... (yes, they made THREE of those movies) and hadn't done much since... well, since the early 80's. 

Another first.... it was also the first time was saw all this mix and matching with storylines that were out of order and tied back into each other.  When I saw that the diner scene tied back into itself, I was really wowed.

All the characters...   well, they're all just so fantastic and how many lines from this movie just got repeated over and over again?   "Check out the big brain on ______."   From Pumpkin and Honeybunny to Jules to the Wolf, the casting is kind of like watching art. 

And its got a Christopher Walken monologue...  This scene is just hilarious.  "And I hid the watch..."

There isn't one thing I would have done differently with this movie.  I love every character.  Every scene is art.  Every line is so carefully constructed.  It was part of growing up for me.  I owned the soundtrack, too...  great soundtrack.  Everyone my age had it. 

I think of this list like the Hall of Fame, but some of the movies are like Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb.  They're just on another level that would be a list of like 5 or 10 or something and not make for much interesting comparison.  Pulp Fiction is on that list, Shawshank, and few others.  Truly greay.

Quality quotes from Evelyn

Link: Crossroads Dispatches: Friday Thoughts on Art, Brands, Perfection in Blogs and Business.

In large measure becoming an artist consists in learning to accept yourself, which makes your work personal, and in following your own voice, which makes your work distinctive.

What veteran artists know about each other is that they have engaged the issues that matter to them.

To make art is to sing with the human voice. To do this you must first learn that the only voice you need is the voice you already have.

Dogsitting instructions, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Now I know exactly how to handle what comes out of Joy.

My parents are selling their house, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Bensonhurst...well kept 2br.  Finished basement.  I think they're asking 525K.

Maybe we're related..., originally uploaded by ceonyc.

I was biking down Ft. Hamilton Pkwy by Greenwood Cemetery, and this stone caught my eye.



Anna Hines O'Donnell Ross 1811-1875.  She died 130 years ago, but maybe a long lost relative.  Interesting...wonder what this street looked like when she was buried.

So its a couple of days late and I posted Shawshank last week, so now I've got to come up with something to top it or even on par, right?

Nope.

Not even going to try.

This is a pure Charlie's favorite.  I won't vouch for any kind of quality.  No Oscar caliber performances here.

What do you get when you combine Rammstein, hot chics, fast cars and a bald guy?

No, its not my blog...

Its Vin Diesel in "XXX".

"XXX" is just gratuitous entertainment.  Things go fast, things blow up, and there's cool music from Queens of the Stone Age, Orbital, and  Drowning Pool.  Did I mention things blowing up?  Its also got fantastic lines like, "I like anything fast enough to do something stupid in."

Truly an award winning performance from Vin Diesel--he actually got nominated for Best Male Performance at the MTV Movie Awards. 

At 5.5 stars, its got one of the lowest movie ratings I've seen on IMDB.... but to be honest, how could you dislike this movie if you went to go see it?  You knew it had Vin Diesel in it.  What did you expect?  Where there not enough things exploding?  Should the music have been louder? 

This ain't no Shawshank, folks.  Its the guy who did Riddick.

On September 11, 2001, after the first tower fell, it was time to go home.  I watched it live from the trading room television at GM, and we were all kind of dumbstruck until then.  I don't remember standing there for as long as I did, but I remember watching the smoke clear and realizing the building wasn't there anymore. 

Time to go home.

I had only been in my apartment for a little over two months.  Many of my friends were still up at Fordham, and there wasn't really any getting up there.  The subway and Metro North was shut down.  So, when I arrived, there wasn't much to do but watch...   and when I turned on the television, there was Peter Jennings. 

He came on and he stayed on.

I distinctly remember IMing with Brian saying how unbelievable it was how much time he was on the air.  It just seemed like anytime you turned the television on, there was Peter Jennings.  Amazing.  Comforting.  I watched.  I checked the internet every now and then, but for the most part, I was watching TV.  I needed to see it and I needed to hear someone talking to me... and not just some talking head.  This was someone we all knew. 

The disaggregation of media and television probably means that there will never be another bigtime network news anchor.  Brian Williams?  Charles Gibson?  Not quite so much.  Good, but not great.  I'm glad, though, that for what I hope to be the most dramatic and tragic moment in my life, I had one of these guys to sit down to and watch.

When I was a freshman at Fordham, I had, three days a week, an 8:30AM class and a 12:30PM class.  The 8:30 was 50 minutes long, which gave me a solid 2 1/2 hour window of time  until my next class.

What unfolded was the careful and intricate development of something that I would later term, "the Nap."

That idea would be improved upon and get replaced by "The Power Nap". 

You knew it was truly a Power Nap if there was drool on the pillow when I woke up.  I would walk in from the 8:30, drop my bookbag, take my shoes off and just fall onto the bed.  This would lead to a debate between me and my roommate Kevin as to why I wouldn't take clothes off and/or get under the covers.  Of course, that's the difference between a nap and actual sleeping, but we would debate the semantics of sleeping for some time. 

The Power Nap was a freshman year institution.  I felt so refreshed by it, but schedules changed, I'd have three roommates in sophomore year and the Power Nap fell by the wayside.  But, for a semester, like clockwork, I was King of the Nap and it was wonderful.

I bring this up, because I just played softball on Brian's team (which is why I wasn't at the boathouse) and I was tired from the sun and yesterday's long day.  I found myself with the inclination to return to the nap, proceeded to follow up on this inclination.  Clothes on.  Above the covers.  Drool on the pillow.  Like the eldar Ted Williams at the All-Star game, the Power Nap has reemerged to come out and see the fans one more time.

So, I now have direct evidence that a Kryptonite lock is so crappy, that thieves will cut it in broad daylight at 5PM in the afternoon on 20th and Broadway, right across the street from a busy restaurant.

I might as well have locked it up with tinker toys and some bendy straws.  At least the thief would have hesitated for a moment out of sheer confusion. 

Yes, my bike got stolen.  So, you can add that to the list of things I've had stolen in the past two and a half months...     digital camera, wallet, and now, bike.

The funny thing is that I kinda wanted a new one and didn't want to go through the hassle of selling it.  I should start looking on Craigslist right now for my bike,  no?  Where else would thieves sell it?   

While Googling "bike lojack" I found the following idea on a comment page.  Pure humor and not such a bad idea:

Link: Halfbakery: Bike LoJack.

How about if the bike is pedalled away without entering the secret code (rear brakes twice, backpedal one revolution, then front brakes once) a spike shoots up out of the seat. Wouldn't have to go very far at all to retrieve your bike then...

I will be at the Downtown Boathouse all day on Saturday...  from 9AM to 6PM.  Last boat goes out at 5:30PM...    come stop by, say hello, and go kayaking for free.   

So, you'll notice a few changes on the blog...  I finally got around to making all the menus work, which explains some of the weird posts you just saw.  Basically, I created a post that's going to act like a guestbook, so you can click the top menu and "Sign My Guestbook."  The second is that I have a Flickr badge now, so I'll have  a section/post for pictures.  I'll also be adding some to the Picture "Hall of Fame" or something like that.

More importantly, though, is that the Tag Team has linkrolls up and running.  The first one I've created is for my blogroll, which a lot of people have asked for.  If you'll notice, its in alpha order.  I don't think that's a feature yet, but Tim's working on it.  He coded that one for me on the fly when I realized that chronological order makes absolutely no sense when you're just creating a "Blogs I read" list.

Do you want a link roll?   Go here.

Then you can insert the little piece of javascript on your sidebar.

If the cops want to look at my sweaty gym socks, they're more than welcome...   It doesn't make me feel "violated" at all.  Bombs, however, make me feel violated.

Link: New York City: NYCLU sues city over subway searches.

The New York Civil Liberties Union today filed suit against the city to keep police from searching the bags of passengers entering the subway, organization lawyers said.

Now you can see what I see...

Sounds like they should just set up a blog and get alumni and students blogging on it.  I mean, why hire just one personto "invent" their own version of Fordham's identity versus just setting up a blog and letting the community broadcast its own message on what Fordham is to them in a very honest and sincere way.  It would be a lot cheaper, too.

Link: The New York Times Job Market: Marketing - New York, NY.

ADVANCEMENT COMMUNICATIONS SPECIALIST A rare and rewarding challenge: play a central role in the transformation of an excellent university into a world-class university. The right person for this job will be able to understand and communicate what makes Fordham University so special and-crucially-be able to make others understand as well. In this role you will liaise with marketing, communications and advancement leaders to incorporate our institutional identity into every aspect of our advancement communications across print and online media, from collateral for the Office of Development to copy for University publications. You'll be able to do so in the voice appropriate to the varied audiences addressed. Finally, you'll need to be able to manage internal client and vendor relations to ensure a finished product on time, within budget and on target. You should have significant, direct experience as a strategic writer in advancement communications in an academic, marketing or non-profit environment. And you should be as strong and creative a thinker

Carvel Due Diligence with Brad and Fred, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

VCs scream for ice cream.

Union Square Ventures Outing to Shea, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Mets losing 6-4...Wright's up.

Its 3:49PM on Tuesday, which means its time for my regular Monday movie post. 

Sorry, its been busy around here...

Aren't all of you supposed to be on vacation, so I can go, too??  Instead we've got all these great deals to work on.  Damn you!

Anyway, I asked someone over the weekend what my movie should be this week... without even saying what movies I had seen or liked or giving her a choice.  Her response was exactly why I agreed to post it, because its something we've all seen and I've never met anyone that didn't think it was a great movie.

"Get busy livin' or get busy dyin'."

Now you know... and everyone knows.  Its just a fantastic movie all the way around.  Its a difficult, but beautiful story of friendship in the harshest of circumstances, and an interesting commentary of the world "out there" versus the world "in here" and what it means to be innocent.  Shawshank Redemption may very well be the best movie of my generation...  and Morgan Freeman is definitely one of the top 5 actors of my generation.  What's amazing was that Shawshank went a complete 0-fer in the Oscars, because it was up against Forrest Gump, which cleaned up, and Pulp Fiction. 

I've only seen the movie twice.  Its not the kind of movie to see over and over again... its just too much to take.  Either way, its truly a great piece of work.  Tim Robbins also does a great job, but I think his charactor gives him a little wind at his back.  His charactor is just in the right situation to really result in a great performance, whereas I think Freeman does a little more to get Red there, but now I'm being picky. 

Link: del.icio.us/toby/toby:blog.

I love when I get links and I'm like, "What the hell is this?  ooooooh.... I get it."

So Toby from MusicMobs has built himself a blog in del.icio.us... well... sort of.

He's tagged and grouped his posts so that the front page has a group of four links... a link to del.icio.us links about stuff he likes, a link to outgoing links of interest, his linkroll, and his "blog", which is essentially a link to other things with a short comment in the extended field.

hmm...  Is del.icio.us going to give Typepad a run for its money?   Doubtful, but this is cool nonetheless.