Paul Thomas Anderson

There are many enjoyable moments in Inherent Vice’s drug-addled noir, most of them occurring between Joaquin Phoenix’s hippie P.I. and Josh Brolin’s crooked cop. As a whole, though, the stupor the audience is made to share with the protagonist renders the intricacies of the hardboiled plot largely impenetrable. That bewildering effect is fitting but unsatisfying.

On the Web

• Opening the Windows Vista Box: Because it seriously can’t be done without a fucking tutorial.
• Brown Tape Art: Mark Khaisman creates some stunning images with translucent brown packing tape backlit on plexiglass.
• Bobby Fischer, Chess Master, Dies at 64: He may have been an asshole, but man could he play.
• Lasagna Cat: A wonderfully bizarre collection of videos putting Jim Davis in his place.
• The Amen Break: The history of the world’s… See more →

It is a beautiful January morning in Philadelphia. The Pixelworthy office is incandescent, its twentieth story windows unable to find refuge from the sun. Shaded by a pillar, Stan glares at the iMac on his desk.

“Damn Zeldman. Fucking meme shit.”

A few feet away, Rob snickers into his cinnamon roll.

“Keep laughing. You’re getting tagged next.”

“Come now, Stan. I can’t break over three months of editorial silence by participating in some retarded meme.”

“Tough luck.”… See more →

Halloween was fun. The afternoon was begun with a matinee of P.T. Anderson’s pitch-perfect Punch-Drunk Love, and rounded out by a few hours of my traditional Halloween rock-a-thon, jumping around the house to an exclusively old-school Misfits soundtrack, careful not to expend too much of the energy that would be needed for the evening’s Andrew W.K. show at the Troc. Judging by the way I was able to wring out my shirt afterwards—if not by… See more →