These hands haven’t been idle! If your lifelong dream has been to see me write a book review, all you need for fulfillment is to head over to Murmur.com for 1000 words on Street Gang: A Complete History of Sesame Street by Michael Davis.
See? Still alive.

I try to make an effort to give things the benefit of the doubt, but I recognize that making an effort shouldn’t be necessary in the first place. I don’t think of myself as a particularly open-minded person. That’s especially true when it comes to the People’s art; as I get older, I find myself [...]

Am I reading too much into this, or would the Old Media rather die than give the internet credit for anything?
Snakes on a Plane, a movie that is being regarded as essentially an internet-driven film with a devoted online fanbase, was the top movie in America this weekend. If you look at the wire stories [...]

The teachings of Jesus Christ outlasted the Roman Empire, the Dark Ages, the Crusades, the Enlightenment, and the War on Christmas. They will probably, probably survive Tom Hanks. Even Tom Hanks armed with an Akiva Goldsman script.
Everybody settle down.
Although I do agree that Dan Brown is in league with Satan, he’s more of a contractor [...]

I started to reply here, but then it got too long.
On Spidey, his duds, and his him-ness:
New costumes come and go in comics. When New Coke came out and then quickly went away, conspiracy theorists following the cola wars posited that they screwed with the classic just long enough to get people talking again; that’s [...]

In the next several days, I hope to expend some typing time on things I’m reading/watching that I’m really excited about or have really loved recently, as well as a line or two about why I feel like actively plugging these things. So eager to rave am I that I even came up with a [...]

Short review: The nighttime sniffling- sneezing- coughing- aching- stuffy head- fever- so you can no longer rest soda.
Why don’t I ever just listen? There’s a restaurant in Lafayette Square called Soda Fountain Square; everyone I know who’s eaten there says “it’s not great, so don’t even waste your time”; I can now think of no [...]

“Turning 31″ is a non-starter. I have nothing to say about it except that I’m pleased to have done it, considering the alternative. This is the last time for years that I’ll be a prime number, and while that’s something, it’s also the most interesting thing about the week. Jesus probably had a pretty interesting [...]

Google is toying with modifying their search page. The more they creep away from the idealistic grad student ethos that distinguished them, the more wary I become. We have seen this before; despite their best intentions, web sites with no visible means of income always start out clean and simple and end up breaking your [...]

We saw V For Vendetta last weekend. In an unforeseeable, precedent-setting turn of events, the book was better than the movie. I wish I could say that this disappointed me, but the truth is I’ve actually written quite a lot about this before and made peace with my thoughts on the matter. Also, as much [...]

I am going to see the new Pink Panther tonight. It is going to be great, because I will not pay. Years from now, I will be saying, “I had a great time not paying at that movie.”
This picture will make me laugh every time I see it because looking at it makes me imagine [...]

So, having made its benjamins in theaters for the last five months or so, Star Wars Episode III comes out on DVD Tuesday. Allfather/carrion George Lucas has promised more adventures in the “Expanded Universe,” including a couple of developing TV series, but Epsiode III is the last part of the Star Wars saga I can [...]

I do not especially remember Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. To a certain extent, that can be attributed to the fact that I read it over the 4th of July weekend while visiting the Wisconsin Dells, a trip that also included everything from fireworks to ice cream-covered funnel cakes to rides on [...]

We, as a family, do not heart Huckabee’s.

Unlike the closed captioning system that comes standard with most TVs, DVD closed captioning remains fully functional and legible while your program is on double or quadruple speed. With judicious use of this handy tip, the multitasking viewer can get through a stupid-ass movie in half the time without losing any information.
“We have to inject [...]

Why do I always whine, “We never go to the movies anymore”? Clearly, we totally do:
The 2004 Oscar nominations came out today, and I took a moment upon seeing them to wonder, “Was 2004 so lackluster that it became necessary to nominate Jamie Foxx twice? Did Paul Giamatti poison somebody’s dog?” This in turn prompted [...]

The Passion of the Christ is in theaters now, and the reviews are in!
“That’s not acting; that’s staring.”
-Holly, 24
“Hey, that wasn’t in the book!”
-Peter Jackson
“I cannot accurately review this movie, having given up profanity for Lent.”
-Jimski, 28
Mel Gibson is a carny.
I was really looking forward to this movie, too. I’ve been waiting for this one [...]

After fifteen years of planning to rent it, I finally sat down and watched Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, 1940’s funniest Holocaust comedy as well as the best movie to ever be inspired by someone saying, “You know…? You two sort of have the same moustache.” Though it ended up being nominated for five Oscars, [...]

Combustible Celluloid, “movie reviews for the thoughtful and passionate” by a person who has apparently deemed himself both of those things