What is Best in Life

Now I like a good old fashioned battle of the sexes comedy as much as anyone, but it never really sits right with me that the woman always seems to end up “learning her place” at the end of any movie made before 1968. Now I know that times were different and all that, but when so many otherwise good movies end with the female lead returning to the patriarchy the whole thing just feels like a major cop out.

The whole point of these movies are to show the hilarity that ensues when two people with opposing viewpoints who think they are right refuse to back down.  This foundation is scuppered when you set one side up to fail, for the comedic possibilities of an “I told you so” plot are nowhere near as great.

So today I’d like to take a look at a two specific examples of all this with Katherine Hepburn’s Woman of the Year and Doris Day’s The Thrill of it All.  In both movies the central conflict arises from the woman getting a career that (spoiler alert) the woman is forced to abandon by the end in order to be a “dutiful wife” to her husband.  Was it all just a product of the time?  And even if it was, isn’t there a better way to end these movies?  And finally, Doris Day, hot, or not? (more…)

For those who are unfamiliar with the website www.postsecret.com, it is ostensibly a website where people can write secrets that have been weighing on them onto a post card to be posted in a daily blog.  What it really is is a way for marginally talented college design students to make dramatic, yet trite pictures in illustrator to try to make it into the next www.postsecret.com book.

Well, I don’t have illustrator, but I do have photoshop and a whole lot of secrets.  This actually isn’t the first time the internets have been filled with Isley secrets.  A little while ago there was a very short lived second party website located at http://udontknowisley.livejournal.com/ that was full of all kinds of malicious misinformation.  But, since every item on the “Things you may not know about Isley” blog was patently untrue (except for the brief postings after my repeated successes at hacking the planet–or blog) I thought I’d set the record straight here.

So, without further ado, here are a few of my deepest, darkest secrets!  And since these are coming from the source, you can be sure they are all at least halfway true! (more…)

My friend Chris (mfc) once commented on how the first question a lot of people ask when they find out you like comics is “what is your favorite superhero” and yet most comic fans don’t actually have an immediate answer.  I mean, Daredevil has been one of my favorite series for a long time running, but Daredevil is kind of an asshole when I think about it, I wouldn’t call him my favorite superhero. 

I mean, in the case of Daredevil it’s a very well written series despite being about a guy who is kind of a douche.  But even in the case of those series about superheroes that I actually think are pretty cool it’s hard for me to pick one as my absolute favorite character.  But this post is about picking just one, and when I really think about it I have to go with Dr. Strange as my all time favorite superhero. (more…)

The internet is full of free flash based games that can be played entirely in your web browser without any kind of download or registration.  Unfortunately as is the case with anything, there are a lot of rubbish games out there.  The vast majority will usually solely involve a test of one’s reaction time to visual cues or even simply seeing if you can push the space bar faster than the computer.  Luckily (for everyone who wants their productivity sucked away), I have taken it upon myself to do a massive amount of research in the area of online browser based free flash games and have come up with my personal favorite top ten so far!

Now, I personally love puzzle games (think Myst if you have ever played that) where you are presented with a bunch of items, rooms, clues, whatever and have to logically figure out how to put them together to finish the game.  So, if that isn’t really your thing, you might be safe from getting sucked into most of the games in this post.  Also, an excellent website for finding quality online games is www.jayisgames.com which is a daily blog of game reviews.  I stole the pictures for this post from that site, and they cover a lot more than just puzzle games, so take a look around if you want to see just what kind of stuff the internet has to offer.  Also, head over there and search for the name of the game you are playing if you get stuck on any of the puzzle games I have listed below.  After the review of each game, jayisgames offers a handy spoiler tagged walkthrough.  Though in most cases you’ll regret clicking on it as you will slap your head and say “oooh, I could have figured that out!!!”

Finally, if you think Myst-like puzzle games are at all down your alley and are short on free time I’d say stop reading right here!  If you choose to read on, don’t say I didn’t warn you: it’s going to be about 100 hours of your life you’ll never get back… (more…)

Here are some two sentence reviews of the movies I watched in January, 2009.

Stats

• Movies watched – 27ish (missing data from the first week of the month)
• Movies that were new to me – 11
• Silent comedies about backstage hijinx on the set of a play – 6
• Monthly Masterpieces – Le Deuxième Souffle

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