But it’s particularly sad for me because I have fond personal memories of the theater, including one of the first dates my husband and I went on together.  (We saw Event Horizon and it was the scariest movie I’d ever seen.) 

In memory, because within in its futuristic sexless scenario, it’s also about nostalgia and drive-ins, I bring you David Bowie’s 1973 “Drive In Saturday:”

I also spent much of tonight looking for a design for it, but ended up liking my current “Filmix” theme in the end

I celebrated a birthday on the first and truly had a monumental weekend.  First my husband, daughter, and I went roller skating (for the 2nd weekend in a row) and I re-discovered how magical it was!

There’s something beautiful and wonderful about the speed of bike riding and now I believe the same has to be said about roller skating.  And when it’s summer and the rink’s A/C is running and disco ball spinning, I choose the rink!

I also spent the weekend playing on my new Korg synthesizer (a gift from my sweetie), buying domains for two new blogs that I’m eager to get writing on (TBA), eating fantastic food, and having a great time with friends and family – it was truly heavenly!

Iz excited!

I’ve always been a fan of Chopin, but didn’t hear this piece until I saw it in the Vietnamese movie “The Scent of Green Papaya,” which was played during a thunderstorm and an emotional storm all happening at once. It was quite effective and I’ll never be quite certain whether I love the song just for the song or because of that scene. But hopefully one day I’ll be able to translate how much I love it when I play it.

The biggest obstacle is some long left hand stretches that have to be played swiftly. My grand piano teacher always said to lightly touch the nearest octave note to be able to measure the distance without looking; hopefully that will work in this case.

Here’s a clip from the movie (not the Chopin, but one of the few clips I could find on YouTube), and may I interject here that Anh Hung Tran is an amazing writer/director, creating seamless movies with amazing visuals and soundtracks.

I have to admit that “Clair de Lune” was part of this movie, too, so yeah, maybe I just really want to play this soundtrack.

While I always enjoyed playing, I never devoted an hour a day to it, so I’m eager to see the results!

This morning I chose the songs that I’d like to start working on (and stumbled through them):

• Debussy’s “Dr. Gradus ad Parnassum”
• Debussy’s “Clair de Lune”
• Chopin’s “Prelude”
• Liszt’s “Hungarian Rhapsody”

I was going to post a before and after of the songs, but the before would just be too annoying.

I also searched for a modern composer and discovered Steve Reich, who wrote a lot of repetitive, layered songs (which I love) like “Different Trains:”

Unfortunately for me, his major piano piece involves two pianos – I may just have to get it anyway and see if I can work some piano/electric keyboard combination out. Here it is, “Piano Phase:”

Glenn Kenny describes The Eastwood Pass:

…certain critics, so thoroughly enamored of Eastwood—not just Eastwood the director, but Eastwood the man, the myth, the legend—are just so thoroughly enamored that they’ll ignore his films’ many, many, many shortcomings. To this accusation I can only personally respond: Okay, you caught me. Red handed, and dead to rights.

I’m a big Clint Eastwood fan, but there are many films that I just can’t make it through.  Hell, my first date was seeing “The Dead Pool.”  But despite that, he still gets a big pass here, as well.

Smashing Magazine showcases “Sweet Chocolate Websites.”

As one would expect, chocolate website often use an appetizing brown dominant color. If you take time to look at the panel of colors associated with it, you will find out that there is a lot of combination working really well. Apart from this component, each site is unique and features an original identity, depending on product presentation and given information.

Despite the grammatical issues with this article, it points out some beautiful design techniques and color combinations.  I love the hoizontal layouts as well (memo to myself, create a horizontally divided WP theme some time.)

See All Eight Arcade Fire Album Covers at Pitchfork.

Maybe the whole thing is a commentary on how similar and interchangeable all these different suburban scenes are? Whatever the case, the album arrives August 2 in the UK/Europe and August 3 in the U.S. via Merge.

Comes out in the U.S. just 2 days after my birthday!!

After watching, I spent a good part of this week thinking about the powerful and incredibly sad movie “The Stoning of Soraya M.”  See the iTunes trailer.

Only time will tell if this work of fiction ever makes it to the public, but if you’re sitting on your hands eagerly awaiting it, soon you may be able to whet your appetite with a choose-your-own-adventure style game loosely based on it and already in the works.  (And when I say “in the works” I mean I’ve bought the domain name.)  As for the book, I’m on chapter eight, over 10,000 words in and have hit my first block… the writing was so fast for chapters one through seven, but I’m eking out the words in eight.  I think this means I need to start reading more again.

Pet peeve alert: notice I didn’t say that I would nip the project in the “proverbial bud?”  That’s because I find it incredibly annoying when one feels the need to use the old “proverbial” article.  I believe my three readers will know that I don’t have an actual bud that I’m taking a pair of scissors to; I believe they will get the gist and can do wihout a pretentious “proverbial.”

Now, with a glass of wine, I’m going to commence chapter 2.