Today I was overjoyed to find that I had received my first comment to one of my posts on this weblog. And then I looked at it. "Make love, not war?" What the hell is that supposed to mean? Wh.. whhwhhwhat? (pronounced: "wuh wuh what?") Oh, (this is me thinking out loud) it's spam! Ok, now it makes sense, somebody in Russia wants me to buy drugs. Lots of drugs, apparently. Gee, I haven’t thought about amaryls in ages.
So now I have to change the settings on who I allow to post comments and feedback in my weblog entries. I guess I should have expected that from the beginning, but I was so much younger and more naïve then, all of one month ago. Bah, whatever. This actually comes at a good time, because it gives me a reasonable lead in to an announcement that I have been wanting to put up.
Well, two things really. I guess the first would be that from this point onward I will be referring to this particular "newsletter" as "The Compound." In the back of my mind, that's always been how I've secretly referred to my studio. It still is Upstream Studios, but that's really an abstract term. "The Compound" is where it's at, where my studio resides in the physical world. I've thought about that for a little while, and I guess I feel it's about time that my studio exist in the physical (or "real") world.
Number 2: I have done much debating with myself over this, but I have decided to go ahead and do it. I'm going to become a self-important asshole with a blog. Sorry world, I've got the web space and just enough free time on my hands. But it’s ok. Nobody actually has to read this. I'll just imagine that everybody is.
Being a self-important asshole with a blog, I'll take it upon myself to write a movie review. A couple days ago I saw Paul Thomas Anderson's "There Will Be Blood." It is awesome. I give it a gajillion stars, several Oscars, a Big Bird, Linda (that deaf girl) and a Snuffleupagus. Boy, I'm a little bastard. Sorry, let me start that over again.
"There Will Be Blood" is a truly mesmerizing film (clichéd critic's buzzwords). The lead role (played by Daniel Day-Lewis) is both the villain and the protagonist of the story. An evil hero that you find yourself rooting for as he beats, kills and intimidates a world full of people who are seemingly good but really just as false, selfish and evil as he is. I'll stop there, because I don't really want to put a spoiler warning in this entry. That and I don't really want to keep talking about it. It's a great movie, but you all don't really need to be told what to do, do you?
I will say a thing or two about the soundtrack. It’s one of the best (if not the best) pairings of music and mood in recent memory. The original music was done by Radiohead guitarist and composer Johnny Greenfield (he won a freakin' award already, the Critics Choice Award for best composer). There is also work by Brahms, and a piece by one of my favorites, Arvo Pärt. It’s not just the sounds, but also the open spaces. The sparse instrumentation and the rich textures which combine to give the movie a life of its own.
That's all I've got to write right now, so I'll be signing off. Have a rich and full bodied day.
cassidy