October 2011
Month archive / 67 posts
Robtober 2011
A month’s worth of movies to help you stay awake
Every October, I try to watch as many horror films that I haven’t seen before as possible.
Hostel
Three backpackers head to a Slovak city that promises to meet their hedonistic expectations, with no idea of the hell that awaits them.
Saw
Two men awaken to find themselves on the opposite sides of a dead body, each with specific instructions to kill the other or… See more →
Happy Halloween! Wanna hear me pretend to be a baritone and cover a Misfits song? robweychert.com/writing/skulls/
Skulls
Celebrating Halloween with my first Misfits cover.
It is no secret that Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. Is there any other event celebrated on a mass scale whose very purpose is to challenge the tenuous divide between pain and pleasure? Halloween encourages us to enjoy our fear, to find mirth in the macabre, to recognize how death enriches life. On every other day, fear holds us back; on Halloween, it propels us forward. What’s not to love?
And so it… See more →
The Frighteners
Young Frankenstein
My Top 3 #lastfm Artists: Misfits (72), Samhain (53) & Danzig (31) tweekly.fm/twitter/robweycher…
I Dream of Juggalos.
Halloween III: Season of the Witch
A lot of foley artists and sound designers in the ’70s and ’80s seemed to have this fetishistic preoccupation with footsteps. In any scene where people were on the move, the soundtrack focused on footfalls to the exclusion of all else. The foley was produced with what I’m guessing was a maximum of three different kinds of shoes (loafers, heels, tennis shoes) on two different surfaces (asphalt, linoleum-tiled concrete). Despite being thoroughly unconvincing, it dominated… See more →
Some film reviews I wrote from this year’s Halloween horror binge: robweychert.com/writing/horror…
Moving the Edges of Logo Design
I’m curious to see how this will be used in static instances. I love the idea that frames from the animation could be selected at random, per usage. The type anchors the identity, but its ever shifting representation reinforces the concept of “current”. “Now” becomes “then” as soon as you say it. Very cool.
Under the hood of my first foray into responsive web design: robweychert.com/writing/first-…
First Responder
Under the hood of my first foray into responsive web design.
I had only just recently decided to leave the game industry and return to the web when A List Apart published Ethan Marcotte’s pivotal article, “Responsive Web Design”. Since Ethan is a close friend, I assumed and continue to assume that his landmark discovery was specifically timed to validate my decision with firm authority. This was very, very exciting stuff.
This site is my first full-scale attempt at responsive design. It uses one template for… See more →
Young mother and daughter sharing an iPod on the subway, quietly dancing and singing to each other. Really nice moment.
Listen, trumpet busker, it is wayyy too early for “O Little Town of Bethlehem”.
Flashback: In 2003, @pdalkner and @mSutters put me in a TV show they worked on. Here it is, made funnier by German: youtu.be/yOjSx4AYcpI
The Crazies
“Hey Soul Sister” playing in the elevator. Considered just taking the stairs, but the damage was done. And now I want to die.
The Crazies
The Crazies arrived in 1973, five years after George Romero’s auspicious debut (Night of the Living Dead) and five years before his masterpiece (Dawn of the Dead). As a low-budget doomsday thriller, it lands directly between those two films as well, making great use of what he learned from Night’s confined space (paranoia, a winking cynicism, and subtle but devastating irony) while sketching out in long form what he would later condense into Dawn… See more →
Cannibal Holocaust
Danzig IV
My MacBook Pro is much more powerful than my Xbox, yet does not require a huge brick to power it. Please to explain.
The Others
Remember when Nirvana exploded and every major label scrambled to sign any band they could find that was even remotely similar? Well, if The Sixth Sense is Nirvana (and given how quickly M Night Shyamalan squandered whatever goodwill his breakout hit engendered, I hesitate to draw the comparison), then The Others is Bush.
The themes, tone, essential plot points, and even the color palette are all lifted directly. To its credit, this is not immediately… See more →
If I bother to see Paranormal Activity 3, it’ll be hard for me to get past the faked 1988 video technology. Why not just use the real thing?
Perhaps above all else, it is iOS 5’s five-finger pinch to get to the iPad home screen that convinces me I’m living in the future. So great.
A Plea for Civility: robweychert.com/writing/plea-f…
A Plea for Civility
An open letter hoping to resolve a dreamed altercation.
Dear Elderly Woman From My Dream,
I can appreciate your frustration. There you were, undertaking a civic duty that was not even yours, trying in vain to remove a massive tree branch from the road so that people like me could pass through your neighborhood unimpeded. You were not expecting some guy to come shrieking around the corner on a bicycle, much like I was not expecting to have my path suddenly and fully obstructed… See more →
Listened to all eighty-seven minutes of Lulu by Lou Reed & Metallica. I do not recommend you do the same.
Metallica is the Stringer Bell of metal. They wanted out of The Game, but couldn’t figure out how to operate on the outside.
Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon Shares Favorite Hip-Hop Lyrics, Pisses Off ?uestlove
Skip the drama and check Questo’s list. I love stuff like this.
Thanks everyone for the kind words! There is a strong possibility of imbibition in my immediate future.
After three years of silence, I just relaunched my web site. robweychert.com
Hello Again
Catching up on three years of silence: what I’ve been doing, what I haven’t been doing, and why I’m glad to be writing again.
Over three years ago, I won my first air guitar competition in Philadelphia. It had more of an impact on my life than I ever would have expected, introducing me to a bizarre and joyful underworld of free spirits who forced me to reevaluate what it means to experience music.
A few months later, and not entirely coincidentally, I accepted a job offer in Boston at what might be described as competitive air guitar’s above-ground… See more →
Gates. Ballmer. Night at the Roxbury.
What.. the... fuck?
Dog Soldiers
Paranormal Activity 2
Apocalyptic Adobe Illustrator CS5 tantrum in 3... 2... 1...
Hostel: Part II
When I recently finally saw the first Hostel, I was surprised by how fun it was. Eli Roth’s first feature, Cabin Fever, had not endeared him to me, and that plus Hostel’s reputation for being a torture porn standard-bearer alongside the idiotic and gimmicky Saw films had done little to persuade me. But I had to admit Hostel was competently made and showed both the reverence Roth has for his influences and the glee… See more →
My Top 3 #lastfm Artists: The Magnetic Fields (51), Minutemen (45) & Scream (30) tweekly.fm/twitter/robweycher…
Best B-boy crew I’ve seen in awhile on the N train after a lovely afternoon with @beep, @drinkerthinker, @essl, and @VictoriaMia.
Brooklyn Beta 2011
Okay, @todd_park is one of the best speakers I have ever seen. #BrooklynBeta
Someone line up the House of Representatives shoulder-to-shoulder, get a running start, and do a massive Three Stooges group slap. Please.
It feels really, really good to be writing again.
Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory
Paradise Lost 3 at NYFF. Amazing to share the room with the West Memphis 3 and so many people who told their story and helped set them free.
Cutting features.
This morning’s peach-banana smoothie attempt was fruitful literally, but not figuratively.
My Top 3 #lastfm Artists: Black Flag (90), Scream (29) & Mahavishnu Orchestra (17) tweekly.fm/twitter/robweycher…
Expert procrastination tip: recreate old mix tapes using the internet. rdio.com/#/people/robwe…
Just discovered that hashbang URLs break my browser history. I disliked them on principle before; now it’s personal.
This Side Up
Still Screaming
If I could, I would play the drums all day, every day. But I never want to hear anyone play a drum solo.
The only update I really want from BBEdit is a logo that isn’t visually exhausting.
Saw 3D
Saw
Rest in peace, Steve. You were one in a billion.
The lone threat to The Simpsons’ immortality is a dispute about who gets to have obscene wealth instead of merely insane wealth. Go America!
Just listened to Astral Weeks for the first time (I know) and I’m confused by its hallowed status in the annals of pop. Where are the hooks?
“The Irish have a talent for suffering.” — Michael Lewis shar.es/bXgL3
Hostel
A 1,000 Piece Popsicle Stick Bomb
Jaw. Slack.
As of tonight, @ChamberMonster has been putting up with me for six years. Everyone should buy her shots.
FUCK. Somehow I fucking forgot about last night’s fucking Shellac show for which I fucking bought a fucking ticket fucking months ago. FUCK.
Today, I am wrangling content for a new robweychert.com, which is scheduled for launch 10/10 or 10/11. It’s going to be a busy week.
My Top 3 #lastfm Artists: Mastodon (37), Bestial Mouths (27) & Danzig (24) tweekly.fm/twitter/robweycher…
As someone disillusioned by counter-productive fundamentalist anarcho-activism, I must admit this is compelling: youtube.com/watch?v=odFygP…