Saturday, December 31, 2005
2005: Thanks for all the water.
Thursday, December 29, 2005
A scenario:
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Listmania: Most Disastrous Band Names
Saturday, December 24, 2005
So why can't I touch it?
posted by Anonymous : 11:38 AM
Nothing makes me happier than when someone begins a straight-faced grassroots operation to launch a religion involving pirates and noodles.
I don't know if anything has made more sense to me in my life than this. Please support the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster now and, if moved enough, show your support by printing off posters/flyers or buying a t-shirt-- particularly this one. The World-Herald newsroom staff got a taste of pirate/global warming stats yesterday, and I couldn't tell whether they were relieved or alarmed. My only objection is that I think we need more pirates, but I also think we need more global warming. When snow becomes obsolete, I think I'll be happy.
Without further ado, things I am thankful for this year:
- a 2% raise at work
- a cute kitten to look at, compliments of our own Rick
- turkey at the table, thanks to the rape and death of Indians (sorry, but thanks for being troopers about it!)
- my new/used orange '04 Mazda 6 with all the frills at an insanely good price
- the untimely death of my '93 Maxima after I slammed into a median while turning left on Dodge St. late at night after a couple of drinks, thinking there were painted lines for the turn lane, when really there was a raise concrete curb (apologies to the girlfriend for the whiplash and the deployed airbag that sent a blinding gunpowdery substance into the cab of the car)
- God's wrath
- this blog that has essentially revitalized the Recoil site, especially with the help of all of you kind blog-posters
- my asinine case of writer's block, rendering me unfunny (maybe it's always been that way?)
- Jen's valid grievance of Sudafed's fall from power attributed to the excessive amount of meth addicts (how can a medication called Sudafed lose the ingredient upon which the medication's name is based? Jesus fucking jawas! I have my benign purposes of curing the pains/voices in my head!!!)
- my overuse of parantheses (sometimes my statement alone needs further explanation or a witty aside to compliment it)
- online shopping, which, if it wasn't for the delay of shipping, would be the absolute only way I would shop
- global warming (YES! I said GLOBAL WARMING!!!)
- my new Norelco cordless shaver-- the other was ruined when the apartment above me flooded and spewed moldy water through the vent above my bathroom sink onto my toothbrush and older "cordful" shaver
- an addition to above: the glass dome on the light fixture in my hallway discretely filling with brown water to the rim with me not noticing until I began to wonder why the glass wasn't clear anymore
- the academy
- gay naked cowboys eating pudding out on the ranch
- a big "no thanks" to the studios for not releasing seasons of Mr. Belvedere on DVD
- newsroom-wide e-mails at work from reporters asking how to make popcorn balls, wondering why the popcorn won't stick together ("Does the syrup need to be hotter or does the popcorn need to be hotter?")
- Rick's indifference toward his confrontation with a burglar that made for a great read ("I don't know... did we have a moment?")
- Geri, for "keeping it real" on this blog
- Paul, for his lack of posts but his ability to deliver gut laugh-inducing deadpan responses to others' posts in the Comments section
- everyone else who has contributed stories/rants/musings/anecdotes
- bullet points
Merry Happy Noodley Holidays everyone!
0 Comments
Friday, December 23, 2005
Happy Festivus
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
STRIKE 1.
posted by RICK : 4:41 AM
Well, it happened. Luckily, as I type this post, I've managed to get a car service to take me home from a very hectic day at work, and have arranged another to pick me up and take me to the airport. Really, I will have made it out of the cursed burg almost completely unscathed. The same can not be said of others. What I'm especially curious about is how many people (at 4:43am) even know that this is happening. The announcement wasn't made until 3am, and by then it was starting to look like things had gone so far outside of the midnight deadline that maybe the TWU was starting to turn. They did not, though apparently, it was close.
In any case, in 12 hours I'll be in Omaha, but many of you won't. You'll be stuck-- walking across the bridge cursing the stubborness of two entities who knew for 3 years that this deadline was approaching and who did nothing about it. Part of me is sad that I'm going to miss it, but that part of me is idiotic. Midwest, here I come.
0 Comments
Monday, December 19, 2005
Here's looking at you.
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Posting for Postsake.
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Just Call Me Erin Brockovich
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
The Maxx!
posted by RICK : 5:45 PM
I had the great pleasure of watching the MTV series "The Maxx" this afternoon in its entirety. For those of you who were not alive in the spring of 1995, or were doing homework or something generally productive instead of watching hours upon hours of MTV, "The Maxx" was a series of 13 15-minute cartoons featured in the "MTV Oddities" block of programming. It was about a giant purple monster/man/super-hero and his friend the "alterna-hot" Julie. While watching the show this morning several things came to mind.
"The Maxx" is heavy. The show is based almost panel for panel on the comic-book series of same name. I've read a bit of the comic and found it quite good, but the tv show was able to find that unique balance between a static, layered, narrative found on the page and the non-stop fluidity of the screen. Regardless, "The Maxx" is some of the most interesting animation you will see anywhere. Its interesting for the same reason really good anime is interesting, and that being the creators had to create movement and action without spending money (i.e. without actually moving a lot of the images). The drawings are as complex as the plot, which, is shockingly dense for a show that aired on MTV in primetime. And really, that's where a lot of the magic from watching "The Maxx" today comes from. The series is pre-9/11-post-feminist-90s existentialism (yeah, that's what I said). It calls back to a particular time in American history where talking about why we're generally unhappy was a national pastime. In '95 there was hardly anything revolutionary about this subject matter, but looking back it seems moderately profound, despite its obvious pretentions. It also brings to mind a type of consciousness that has become a thing of the past. In the current climate, and really, for the foreseeable future, our media has lost a lot of its introspection. And rightly so, I suppose. Its hard to discuss traumatic childhoods with a straight face while people are being blown up all over the globe, but in a pre-Clinton-blow-job society that was JUST on the brink of economic recovery such public insights were a dime a dozen.
I think what's tragic about all of this is how my generation more or less destroyed (for better or worse) pretentious-coffee-house-art. "The Maxx" aired in 1995. Around this time on MTV they were also airing other crazy and noble cartoons: Aeon Flux, Beavis and Butthead, The Head. And let us not forget that the first three seasons of "The Real World" were as much about race, abortion, AIDS and politics as they were about sex, hot people, and whether or not David should have been kicked out of the house for pulling the blanket off Tammi ("It wasn't, NOT, funny!"). But then we had to go and screw it all up by falling in love with TRL and boy bands and general excess. As the dollar signs slowly crushed grunge culture, MTV shifted quite drastically from a network where the programming suits would throw stuff against it and see what sticks to the hyper-slick, reality-crossover-talking-heads-on-fire monolith that it currently is. And maybe I'm being melodramatic, but a lot of good art was destroyed in the process. Of course we'd never know. Maybe the minds behind all of these radical comics and television shows would have dried up as soon as they signed the big contract, but maybe not.
Either way, "The Maxx" is worth taking a look at.
0 Comments
CAN stop a train
posted by RICK : 1:09 AM
I don't know if this news carries much further than the 5 boroughs, but its been claiming much of the news real estate at work: unless a deal is OKed by this Thursday at midnight, New York City will be in the midst of its first TRANSIT STRIKE since 1980. The thing is, a strike is incredibly unlikely. That being said, part of me wants to see it happen. Maybe its easy for me to say this as I'm flying back to Omaha on the 20th and will only have to deal with no public transportation for 4 days and it'll be a cool story to tell. However, the closer we get to the deadline, the more and more I think to myself, "Rick, do you REALLY want to have to walk to work? You do realize that cold weather and an especially large bridge are involved, right?"
Can you imagine? No trains. No busses. Sounds like the logline for a Roland Emmerich movie.
Developing...
0 Comments
Sunday, December 11, 2005
because comments are hard
It's Indie Rock 'N' Roll For Me
Obsessive-Compulsive Media-Freak: me.
posted by RICK : 12:07 PM
Like any all-American media junkie, I love DVDs. Especially TV on DVD. BUT ESPECIALLY, I like how TV DVDs look when they're placed next to each other on a shelf. I like how each season of a show typically has a similar package design but maybe with different colors. When distributors change the package design I find it mildly irritating because my shelf no longer feels whole. Example: Strangers With Candy seasons 1 and 2 both had near identical packages: fold out cases inside a cardboard sleeve. Well when season 3 was finally released they switched to DVD slim-cases inside a cardboard sleeve, making the case about an eighth of an inch bigger than its predecessors. This really pissed me off, and if I hadn't been such a huge fan of the show it may (MAY) have kept me from buying it.
Last August, Fox released The Simpsons season 6. I had purchased seasons 3, 4 and 5 and LOVED the way they looked on my shelf (as for the actual DVDs, well the replay value is a bit diminished when the show is on television 4 times a day). But when season 6 came out, they abandoned the thick, colorful, fold-out cases and went with these ugly, three-dimensional "Simpson heads." Wha-what?! I can't stack that in a row! Those demand to be displayed individually, but then what about the previous seasons? Where's the continuity?
So I sold seasons 3, 4, and 5 and gave up the collection. Like I mentioned, I wasn't going to watch these that often anyway. But damn they looked good.
Today I get the Sunday paper and flip through the Best Buy Ad and what do they advertise? TWO versions of Simpsons 7: One with a crazy 3-D Marge-Head, and one with a classy fold-out purple box. DAMN, that sucks.
0 Comments
Friday, December 09, 2005
Renter's Insurance.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Can't Stop a Train...*
posted by RICK : 9:39 PM
Today, I missed no fewer than 4 subways by a matter of seconds. This sucks. It doesn't suck in the global sense becaue there's always another train 3-8 minutes away. But it seems to have a metaphorical effect on me, and I would guess, many people. It should be noted, however, that this isn't a New York City-specific phenomenon. This happens to everyone in some form or another. You know your own "missed subway." But, for people in New York there just happens to be a lot of trains around, so we'll go with that. Let me explain:
Every day I that I have to go to work, I have to take a train to get there. When I reach the platform, on a normal day I'll look down the track and see a train not too far away. On a fantastic day (yesterday) I reach the platform and a train is just coming to a stop. On a depressing day, as you might have guessed, the trains doors close just as you reach the top (or bottom) of the steps. At this point in time all you can do is stare at the soon-empty train platform and think, "What could I have done in my life to have caught this train?" And the answer is usually plain as day. You could have listened to one fewer song before heading out the door. You could have opted to check your email at work and not at home. You stood motionless for too long in the shower. There are myriad things that could have been done that would have made you arrive at the train platform seconds earlier, and thus caught the train.
But these are fleeting thoughts. The real issues you start to deal with come moments later when you get over the fact that you aren't sitting on a heated subway seat but instead freezing your ass off in the wind. These issues come about when you're left with nothing but your devices, waiting for another train to come and realizing that maybe it wasn't just the subway you had missed. You start going back through your life. Why am I standing here in the cold? What went wrong? Is this the line of work I really thought I'd be doing? What happened to those big ideas I had when I was a teenager. I thought I was going to go out there, in life, and fucking conquer something. Now, I'm standing in the bitter cold, with wet hair, waiting for life to pick me back up.
It's depressing.
Luckily, another train will come along. You get in and since you had the time, you were able to walk to the part of the platform where you know you'll be able to get a seat. It's cold, but its sunny outside, and as you ride over the bridge you treat yourself to an article in GQ about a celebrity or some such nonsense while enjoying the heat coming from right below the bench you're sitting on. Life isn't that torturous and the decisions you made in the past aren't as permanent as they may seem. There's still a future. There always is.
And you pull into the station to make your transfer feeling damn good.
But then you walk down the stairs only to be greeted by the F train pulling out of the station.
Motherfuckers!
Anyway, that was my day in a nutshell. Was it yours?
Now, enjoy this quite humorous essay by Chuck Klosterman on why he enjoys wathing the LA Lakers.
*Coulter sorry for stealing your title technique.
0 Comments
Tuesday's Office
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
"Check out banner, Michael!"
No Shave November: first wave.
posted by RICK : 12:26 PM
Here are the highlights of the first annual No Shave November: New York 1 chapter. You'll notice how different people interpreted the rules in different ways, and how nature interpreted the individual. Also, if you want to get your pictures in, don't forget to mail them to me and I'll post'em ASAP. (Also, pictures of hilarious post-shave facial patterns are greatly appreciated)
0 Comments
Time to join the 21st century...
Monday, December 05, 2005
New Nellie
posted by RICK : 2:10 AM
Treat yourself. I have.
TheBigOne.mp3 [5.7mb]
In other, non-pirated news, Slate ran a great "revisionist" story on the most significant piece of comic-art maybe ever, but definitely of the past 20 years.
Syriana
The NY1 movie-club decided to check out the HOT NEW political thriller "Syriana" this past Thursday. The film, in a word, is almost helplessly confusing. Remember Traffic? Remember how kick ass it was? Remember how there were these three storylines and each had its own visual style and then they would overlap and such. Well, Syriana is just like that only less-so and more-so. It isn't as visually fascinating, but the storylines are there in spades. Just good luck trying to figure out what the hell Jeffrey Wright is suppose to be doing. That being said, when the film comes to a close you'll be pretty confident that something shady was going on, even if you can't pinpoint what it is.
The performances are top-notch, and the maze of a script... well, WOW.
What is Recoil rating? THREE AND 1/2 STARS! (bitch.)
And finally, I'm collecting your pics from NO SHAVE NOVEMBER. Send them to stuffboy@mac.com and I'll repost them on this blog in a convenient collage.
0 Comments
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Shit vs. Crap
Friday, December 02, 2005
Mystery Solved
posted by RICK : 1:34 PM
Remember a few weeks back when I was trying to figure out what song was playing in The Matador trailer? Well, the mystery is solved, and it was WAYYYY too obvious. The track came on while I was at the bar last night, causing me to run to the jukebox to find out what it was, only to have it answered for me the second the lyrics kicked in.
Behold:
PsychoKiller.mp3 [5.0mb]
C'mon Nelly should have had that one...
0 Comments
Missed Connections
Thursday, December 01, 2005
The Artform That Is The Setlist
Welcome to "What Is Recoil?." If you would like to post something on this blog, but don't have a WIR-Blogger login, then send me an e-mail, and I'll make it happen. SHAZAM!
-Rick
(co-creator)
Rick |
Dynamarx |
rus-trick |
ryan |
The Potato |
JDM |
DrNewsie |
Mr. MS |
AK |
Brooke |
Stein |
Moses |
G |
CarrieOkie |
Jen |
Duhn |
M. Moore | Laura |
Mr.T |
kat |
abby | Greg
09/2005 | 10/2005 | 11/2005 | 12/2005 | 01/2006 | 02/2006 | 03/2006 | 04/2006 | 05/2006 | 06/2006 | 07/2006 | 08/2006 | 09/2006 | 10/2006 | 11/2006 | 12/2006 | 01/2007 | 02/2007 | 03/2007 |
A scenario:
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Listmania: Most Disastrous Band Names
Saturday, December 24, 2005
So why can't I touch it?
posted by Anonymous : 11:38 AM
Nothing makes me happier than when someone begins a straight-faced grassroots operation to launch a religion involving pirates and noodles.
I don't know if anything has made more sense to me in my life than this. Please support the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster now and, if moved enough, show your support by printing off posters/flyers or buying a t-shirt-- particularly this one. The World-Herald newsroom staff got a taste of pirate/global warming stats yesterday, and I couldn't tell whether they were relieved or alarmed. My only objection is that I think we need more pirates, but I also think we need more global warming. When snow becomes obsolete, I think I'll be happy.
Without further ado, things I am thankful for this year:
- a 2% raise at work
- a cute kitten to look at, compliments of our own Rick
- turkey at the table, thanks to the rape and death of Indians (sorry, but thanks for being troopers about it!)
- my new/used orange '04 Mazda 6 with all the frills at an insanely good price
- the untimely death of my '93 Maxima after I slammed into a median while turning left on Dodge St. late at night after a couple of drinks, thinking there were painted lines for the turn lane, when really there was a raise concrete curb (apologies to the girlfriend for the whiplash and the deployed airbag that sent a blinding gunpowdery substance into the cab of the car)
- God's wrath
- this blog that has essentially revitalized the Recoil site, especially with the help of all of you kind blog-posters
- my asinine case of writer's block, rendering me unfunny (maybe it's always been that way?)
- Jen's valid grievance of Sudafed's fall from power attributed to the excessive amount of meth addicts (how can a medication called Sudafed lose the ingredient upon which the medication's name is based? Jesus fucking jawas! I have my benign purposes of curing the pains/voices in my head!!!)
- my overuse of parantheses (sometimes my statement alone needs further explanation or a witty aside to compliment it)
- online shopping, which, if it wasn't for the delay of shipping, would be the absolute only way I would shop
- global warming (YES! I said GLOBAL WARMING!!!)
- my new Norelco cordless shaver-- the other was ruined when the apartment above me flooded and spewed moldy water through the vent above my bathroom sink onto my toothbrush and older "cordful" shaver
- an addition to above: the glass dome on the light fixture in my hallway discretely filling with brown water to the rim with me not noticing until I began to wonder why the glass wasn't clear anymore
- the academy
- gay naked cowboys eating pudding out on the ranch
- a big "no thanks" to the studios for not releasing seasons of Mr. Belvedere on DVD
- newsroom-wide e-mails at work from reporters asking how to make popcorn balls, wondering why the popcorn won't stick together ("Does the syrup need to be hotter or does the popcorn need to be hotter?")
- Rick's indifference toward his confrontation with a burglar that made for a great read ("I don't know... did we have a moment?")
- Geri, for "keeping it real" on this blog
- Paul, for his lack of posts but his ability to deliver gut laugh-inducing deadpan responses to others' posts in the Comments section
- everyone else who has contributed stories/rants/musings/anecdotes
- bullet points
Merry Happy Noodley Holidays everyone!
0 Comments
Friday, December 23, 2005
Happy Festivus
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
STRIKE 1.
posted by RICK : 4:41 AM
Well, it happened. Luckily, as I type this post, I've managed to get a car service to take me home from a very hectic day at work, and have arranged another to pick me up and take me to the airport. Really, I will have made it out of the cursed burg almost completely unscathed. The same can not be said of others. What I'm especially curious about is how many people (at 4:43am) even know that this is happening. The announcement wasn't made until 3am, and by then it was starting to look like things had gone so far outside of the midnight deadline that maybe the TWU was starting to turn. They did not, though apparently, it was close.
In any case, in 12 hours I'll be in Omaha, but many of you won't. You'll be stuck-- walking across the bridge cursing the stubborness of two entities who knew for 3 years that this deadline was approaching and who did nothing about it. Part of me is sad that I'm going to miss it, but that part of me is idiotic. Midwest, here I come.
0 Comments
Monday, December 19, 2005
Here's looking at you.
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Posting for Postsake.
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Just Call Me Erin Brockovich
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
The Maxx!
posted by RICK : 5:45 PM
I had the great pleasure of watching the MTV series "The Maxx" this afternoon in its entirety. For those of you who were not alive in the spring of 1995, or were doing homework or something generally productive instead of watching hours upon hours of MTV, "The Maxx" was a series of 13 15-minute cartoons featured in the "MTV Oddities" block of programming. It was about a giant purple monster/man/super-hero and his friend the "alterna-hot" Julie. While watching the show this morning several things came to mind.
"The Maxx" is heavy. The show is based almost panel for panel on the comic-book series of same name. I've read a bit of the comic and found it quite good, but the tv show was able to find that unique balance between a static, layered, narrative found on the page and the non-stop fluidity of the screen. Regardless, "The Maxx" is some of the most interesting animation you will see anywhere. Its interesting for the same reason really good anime is interesting, and that being the creators had to create movement and action without spending money (i.e. without actually moving a lot of the images). The drawings are as complex as the plot, which, is shockingly dense for a show that aired on MTV in primetime. And really, that's where a lot of the magic from watching "The Maxx" today comes from. The series is pre-9/11-post-feminist-90s existentialism (yeah, that's what I said). It calls back to a particular time in American history where talking about why we're generally unhappy was a national pastime. In '95 there was hardly anything revolutionary about this subject matter, but looking back it seems moderately profound, despite its obvious pretentions. It also brings to mind a type of consciousness that has become a thing of the past. In the current climate, and really, for the foreseeable future, our media has lost a lot of its introspection. And rightly so, I suppose. Its hard to discuss traumatic childhoods with a straight face while people are being blown up all over the globe, but in a pre-Clinton-blow-job society that was JUST on the brink of economic recovery such public insights were a dime a dozen.
I think what's tragic about all of this is how my generation more or less destroyed (for better or worse) pretentious-coffee-house-art. "The Maxx" aired in 1995. Around this time on MTV they were also airing other crazy and noble cartoons: Aeon Flux, Beavis and Butthead, The Head. And let us not forget that the first three seasons of "The Real World" were as much about race, abortion, AIDS and politics as they were about sex, hot people, and whether or not David should have been kicked out of the house for pulling the blanket off Tammi ("It wasn't, NOT, funny!"). But then we had to go and screw it all up by falling in love with TRL and boy bands and general excess. As the dollar signs slowly crushed grunge culture, MTV shifted quite drastically from a network where the programming suits would throw stuff against it and see what sticks to the hyper-slick, reality-crossover-talking-heads-on-fire monolith that it currently is. And maybe I'm being melodramatic, but a lot of good art was destroyed in the process. Of course we'd never know. Maybe the minds behind all of these radical comics and television shows would have dried up as soon as they signed the big contract, but maybe not.
Either way, "The Maxx" is worth taking a look at.
0 Comments
CAN stop a train
posted by RICK : 1:09 AM
I don't know if this news carries much further than the 5 boroughs, but its been claiming much of the news real estate at work: unless a deal is OKed by this Thursday at midnight, New York City will be in the midst of its first TRANSIT STRIKE since 1980. The thing is, a strike is incredibly unlikely. That being said, part of me wants to see it happen. Maybe its easy for me to say this as I'm flying back to Omaha on the 20th and will only have to deal with no public transportation for 4 days and it'll be a cool story to tell. However, the closer we get to the deadline, the more and more I think to myself, "Rick, do you REALLY want to have to walk to work? You do realize that cold weather and an especially large bridge are involved, right?"
Can you imagine? No trains. No busses. Sounds like the logline for a Roland Emmerich movie.
Developing...
0 Comments
Sunday, December 11, 2005
because comments are hard
It's Indie Rock 'N' Roll For Me
Obsessive-Compulsive Media-Freak: me.
posted by RICK : 12:07 PM
Like any all-American media junkie, I love DVDs. Especially TV on DVD. BUT ESPECIALLY, I like how TV DVDs look when they're placed next to each other on a shelf. I like how each season of a show typically has a similar package design but maybe with different colors. When distributors change the package design I find it mildly irritating because my shelf no longer feels whole. Example: Strangers With Candy seasons 1 and 2 both had near identical packages: fold out cases inside a cardboard sleeve. Well when season 3 was finally released they switched to DVD slim-cases inside a cardboard sleeve, making the case about an eighth of an inch bigger than its predecessors. This really pissed me off, and if I hadn't been such a huge fan of the show it may (MAY) have kept me from buying it.
Last August, Fox released The Simpsons season 6. I had purchased seasons 3, 4 and 5 and LOVED the way they looked on my shelf (as for the actual DVDs, well the replay value is a bit diminished when the show is on television 4 times a day). But when season 6 came out, they abandoned the thick, colorful, fold-out cases and went with these ugly, three-dimensional "Simpson heads." Wha-what?! I can't stack that in a row! Those demand to be displayed individually, but then what about the previous seasons? Where's the continuity?
So I sold seasons 3, 4, and 5 and gave up the collection. Like I mentioned, I wasn't going to watch these that often anyway. But damn they looked good.
Today I get the Sunday paper and flip through the Best Buy Ad and what do they advertise? TWO versions of Simpsons 7: One with a crazy 3-D Marge-Head, and one with a classy fold-out purple box. DAMN, that sucks.
0 Comments
Friday, December 09, 2005
Renter's Insurance.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Can't Stop a Train...*
posted by RICK : 9:39 PM
Today, I missed no fewer than 4 subways by a matter of seconds. This sucks. It doesn't suck in the global sense becaue there's always another train 3-8 minutes away. But it seems to have a metaphorical effect on me, and I would guess, many people. It should be noted, however, that this isn't a New York City-specific phenomenon. This happens to everyone in some form or another. You know your own "missed subway." But, for people in New York there just happens to be a lot of trains around, so we'll go with that. Let me explain:
Every day I that I have to go to work, I have to take a train to get there. When I reach the platform, on a normal day I'll look down the track and see a train not too far away. On a fantastic day (yesterday) I reach the platform and a train is just coming to a stop. On a depressing day, as you might have guessed, the trains doors close just as you reach the top (or bottom) of the steps. At this point in time all you can do is stare at the soon-empty train platform and think, "What could I have done in my life to have caught this train?" And the answer is usually plain as day. You could have listened to one fewer song before heading out the door. You could have opted to check your email at work and not at home. You stood motionless for too long in the shower. There are myriad things that could have been done that would have made you arrive at the train platform seconds earlier, and thus caught the train.
But these are fleeting thoughts. The real issues you start to deal with come moments later when you get over the fact that you aren't sitting on a heated subway seat but instead freezing your ass off in the wind. These issues come about when you're left with nothing but your devices, waiting for another train to come and realizing that maybe it wasn't just the subway you had missed. You start going back through your life. Why am I standing here in the cold? What went wrong? Is this the line of work I really thought I'd be doing? What happened to those big ideas I had when I was a teenager. I thought I was going to go out there, in life, and fucking conquer something. Now, I'm standing in the bitter cold, with wet hair, waiting for life to pick me back up.
It's depressing.
Luckily, another train will come along. You get in and since you had the time, you were able to walk to the part of the platform where you know you'll be able to get a seat. It's cold, but its sunny outside, and as you ride over the bridge you treat yourself to an article in GQ about a celebrity or some such nonsense while enjoying the heat coming from right below the bench you're sitting on. Life isn't that torturous and the decisions you made in the past aren't as permanent as they may seem. There's still a future. There always is.
And you pull into the station to make your transfer feeling damn good.
But then you walk down the stairs only to be greeted by the F train pulling out of the station.
Motherfuckers!
Anyway, that was my day in a nutshell. Was it yours?
Now, enjoy this quite humorous essay by Chuck Klosterman on why he enjoys wathing the LA Lakers.
*Coulter sorry for stealing your title technique.
0 Comments
Tuesday's Office
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
"Check out banner, Michael!"
No Shave November: first wave.
posted by RICK : 12:26 PM
Here are the highlights of the first annual No Shave November: New York 1 chapter. You'll notice how different people interpreted the rules in different ways, and how nature interpreted the individual. Also, if you want to get your pictures in, don't forget to mail them to me and I'll post'em ASAP. (Also, pictures of hilarious post-shave facial patterns are greatly appreciated)
0 Comments
Time to join the 21st century...
Monday, December 05, 2005
New Nellie
posted by RICK : 2:10 AM
Treat yourself. I have.
TheBigOne.mp3 [5.7mb]
In other, non-pirated news, Slate ran a great "revisionist" story on the most significant piece of comic-art maybe ever, but definitely of the past 20 years.
Syriana
The NY1 movie-club decided to check out the HOT NEW political thriller "Syriana" this past Thursday. The film, in a word, is almost helplessly confusing. Remember Traffic? Remember how kick ass it was? Remember how there were these three storylines and each had its own visual style and then they would overlap and such. Well, Syriana is just like that only less-so and more-so. It isn't as visually fascinating, but the storylines are there in spades. Just good luck trying to figure out what the hell Jeffrey Wright is suppose to be doing. That being said, when the film comes to a close you'll be pretty confident that something shady was going on, even if you can't pinpoint what it is.
The performances are top-notch, and the maze of a script... well, WOW.
What is Recoil rating? THREE AND 1/2 STARS! (bitch.)
And finally, I'm collecting your pics from NO SHAVE NOVEMBER. Send them to stuffboy@mac.com and I'll repost them on this blog in a convenient collage.
0 Comments
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Shit vs. Crap
Friday, December 02, 2005
Mystery Solved
posted by RICK : 1:34 PM
Remember a few weeks back when I was trying to figure out what song was playing in The Matador trailer? Well, the mystery is solved, and it was WAYYYY too obvious. The track came on while I was at the bar last night, causing me to run to the jukebox to find out what it was, only to have it answered for me the second the lyrics kicked in.
Behold:
PsychoKiller.mp3 [5.0mb]
C'mon Nelly should have had that one...
0 Comments
Missed Connections
Thursday, December 01, 2005
The Artform That Is The Setlist
Welcome to "What Is Recoil?." If you would like to post something on this blog, but don't have a WIR-Blogger login, then send me an e-mail, and I'll make it happen. SHAZAM!
-Rick
(co-creator)
Rick |
Dynamarx |
rus-trick |
ryan |
The Potato |
JDM |
DrNewsie |
Mr. MS |
AK |
Brooke |
Stein |
Moses |
G |
CarrieOkie |
Jen |
Duhn |
M. Moore | Laura |
Mr.T |
kat |
abby | Greg
09/2005 | 10/2005 | 11/2005 | 12/2005 | 01/2006 | 02/2006 | 03/2006 | 04/2006 | 05/2006 | 06/2006 | 07/2006 | 08/2006 | 09/2006 | 10/2006 | 11/2006 | 12/2006 | 01/2007 | 02/2007 | 03/2007 |
Listmania: Most Disastrous Band Names
Saturday, December 24, 2005
So why can't I touch it?
posted by Anonymous : 11:38 AM
Nothing makes me happier than when someone begins a straight-faced grassroots operation to launch a religion involving pirates and noodles.
I don't know if anything has made more sense to me in my life than this. Please support the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster now and, if moved enough, show your support by printing off posters/flyers or buying a t-shirt-- particularly this one. The World-Herald newsroom staff got a taste of pirate/global warming stats yesterday, and I couldn't tell whether they were relieved or alarmed. My only objection is that I think we need more pirates, but I also think we need more global warming. When snow becomes obsolete, I think I'll be happy.
Without further ado, things I am thankful for this year:
- a 2% raise at work
- a cute kitten to look at, compliments of our own Rick
- turkey at the table, thanks to the rape and death of Indians (sorry, but thanks for being troopers about it!)
- my new/used orange '04 Mazda 6 with all the frills at an insanely good price
- the untimely death of my '93 Maxima after I slammed into a median while turning left on Dodge St. late at night after a couple of drinks, thinking there were painted lines for the turn lane, when really there was a raise concrete curb (apologies to the girlfriend for the whiplash and the deployed airbag that sent a blinding gunpowdery substance into the cab of the car)
- God's wrath
- this blog that has essentially revitalized the Recoil site, especially with the help of all of you kind blog-posters
- my asinine case of writer's block, rendering me unfunny (maybe it's always been that way?)
- Jen's valid grievance of Sudafed's fall from power attributed to the excessive amount of meth addicts (how can a medication called Sudafed lose the ingredient upon which the medication's name is based? Jesus fucking jawas! I have my benign purposes of curing the pains/voices in my head!!!)
- my overuse of parantheses (sometimes my statement alone needs further explanation or a witty aside to compliment it)
- online shopping, which, if it wasn't for the delay of shipping, would be the absolute only way I would shop
- global warming (YES! I said GLOBAL WARMING!!!)
- my new Norelco cordless shaver-- the other was ruined when the apartment above me flooded and spewed moldy water through the vent above my bathroom sink onto my toothbrush and older "cordful" shaver
- an addition to above: the glass dome on the light fixture in my hallway discretely filling with brown water to the rim with me not noticing until I began to wonder why the glass wasn't clear anymore
- the academy
- gay naked cowboys eating pudding out on the ranch
- a big "no thanks" to the studios for not releasing seasons of Mr. Belvedere on DVD
- newsroom-wide e-mails at work from reporters asking how to make popcorn balls, wondering why the popcorn won't stick together ("Does the syrup need to be hotter or does the popcorn need to be hotter?")
- Rick's indifference toward his confrontation with a burglar that made for a great read ("I don't know... did we have a moment?")
- Geri, for "keeping it real" on this blog
- Paul, for his lack of posts but his ability to deliver gut laugh-inducing deadpan responses to others' posts in the Comments section
- everyone else who has contributed stories/rants/musings/anecdotes
- bullet points
Merry Happy Noodley Holidays everyone!
0 Comments
Friday, December 23, 2005
Happy Festivus
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
STRIKE 1.
posted by RICK : 4:41 AM
Well, it happened. Luckily, as I type this post, I've managed to get a car service to take me home from a very hectic day at work, and have arranged another to pick me up and take me to the airport. Really, I will have made it out of the cursed burg almost completely unscathed. The same can not be said of others. What I'm especially curious about is how many people (at 4:43am) even know that this is happening. The announcement wasn't made until 3am, and by then it was starting to look like things had gone so far outside of the midnight deadline that maybe the TWU was starting to turn. They did not, though apparently, it was close.
In any case, in 12 hours I'll be in Omaha, but many of you won't. You'll be stuck-- walking across the bridge cursing the stubborness of two entities who knew for 3 years that this deadline was approaching and who did nothing about it. Part of me is sad that I'm going to miss it, but that part of me is idiotic. Midwest, here I come.
0 Comments
Monday, December 19, 2005
Here's looking at you.
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Posting for Postsake.
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Just Call Me Erin Brockovich
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
The Maxx!
posted by RICK : 5:45 PM
I had the great pleasure of watching the MTV series "The Maxx" this afternoon in its entirety. For those of you who were not alive in the spring of 1995, or were doing homework or something generally productive instead of watching hours upon hours of MTV, "The Maxx" was a series of 13 15-minute cartoons featured in the "MTV Oddities" block of programming. It was about a giant purple monster/man/super-hero and his friend the "alterna-hot" Julie. While watching the show this morning several things came to mind.
"The Maxx" is heavy. The show is based almost panel for panel on the comic-book series of same name. I've read a bit of the comic and found it quite good, but the tv show was able to find that unique balance between a static, layered, narrative found on the page and the non-stop fluidity of the screen. Regardless, "The Maxx" is some of the most interesting animation you will see anywhere. Its interesting for the same reason really good anime is interesting, and that being the creators had to create movement and action without spending money (i.e. without actually moving a lot of the images). The drawings are as complex as the plot, which, is shockingly dense for a show that aired on MTV in primetime. And really, that's where a lot of the magic from watching "The Maxx" today comes from. The series is pre-9/11-post-feminist-90s existentialism (yeah, that's what I said). It calls back to a particular time in American history where talking about why we're generally unhappy was a national pastime. In '95 there was hardly anything revolutionary about this subject matter, but looking back it seems moderately profound, despite its obvious pretentions. It also brings to mind a type of consciousness that has become a thing of the past. In the current climate, and really, for the foreseeable future, our media has lost a lot of its introspection. And rightly so, I suppose. Its hard to discuss traumatic childhoods with a straight face while people are being blown up all over the globe, but in a pre-Clinton-blow-job society that was JUST on the brink of economic recovery such public insights were a dime a dozen.
I think what's tragic about all of this is how my generation more or less destroyed (for better or worse) pretentious-coffee-house-art. "The Maxx" aired in 1995. Around this time on MTV they were also airing other crazy and noble cartoons: Aeon Flux, Beavis and Butthead, The Head. And let us not forget that the first three seasons of "The Real World" were as much about race, abortion, AIDS and politics as they were about sex, hot people, and whether or not David should have been kicked out of the house for pulling the blanket off Tammi ("It wasn't, NOT, funny!"). But then we had to go and screw it all up by falling in love with TRL and boy bands and general excess. As the dollar signs slowly crushed grunge culture, MTV shifted quite drastically from a network where the programming suits would throw stuff against it and see what sticks to the hyper-slick, reality-crossover-talking-heads-on-fire monolith that it currently is. And maybe I'm being melodramatic, but a lot of good art was destroyed in the process. Of course we'd never know. Maybe the minds behind all of these radical comics and television shows would have dried up as soon as they signed the big contract, but maybe not.
Either way, "The Maxx" is worth taking a look at.
0 Comments
CAN stop a train
posted by RICK : 1:09 AM
I don't know if this news carries much further than the 5 boroughs, but its been claiming much of the news real estate at work: unless a deal is OKed by this Thursday at midnight, New York City will be in the midst of its first TRANSIT STRIKE since 1980. The thing is, a strike is incredibly unlikely. That being said, part of me wants to see it happen. Maybe its easy for me to say this as I'm flying back to Omaha on the 20th and will only have to deal with no public transportation for 4 days and it'll be a cool story to tell. However, the closer we get to the deadline, the more and more I think to myself, "Rick, do you REALLY want to have to walk to work? You do realize that cold weather and an especially large bridge are involved, right?"
Can you imagine? No trains. No busses. Sounds like the logline for a Roland Emmerich movie.
Developing...
0 Comments
Sunday, December 11, 2005
because comments are hard
It's Indie Rock 'N' Roll For Me
Obsessive-Compulsive Media-Freak: me.
posted by RICK : 12:07 PM
Like any all-American media junkie, I love DVDs. Especially TV on DVD. BUT ESPECIALLY, I like how TV DVDs look when they're placed next to each other on a shelf. I like how each season of a show typically has a similar package design but maybe with different colors. When distributors change the package design I find it mildly irritating because my shelf no longer feels whole. Example: Strangers With Candy seasons 1 and 2 both had near identical packages: fold out cases inside a cardboard sleeve. Well when season 3 was finally released they switched to DVD slim-cases inside a cardboard sleeve, making the case about an eighth of an inch bigger than its predecessors. This really pissed me off, and if I hadn't been such a huge fan of the show it may (MAY) have kept me from buying it.
Last August, Fox released The Simpsons season 6. I had purchased seasons 3, 4 and 5 and LOVED the way they looked on my shelf (as for the actual DVDs, well the replay value is a bit diminished when the show is on television 4 times a day). But when season 6 came out, they abandoned the thick, colorful, fold-out cases and went with these ugly, three-dimensional "Simpson heads." Wha-what?! I can't stack that in a row! Those demand to be displayed individually, but then what about the previous seasons? Where's the continuity?
So I sold seasons 3, 4, and 5 and gave up the collection. Like I mentioned, I wasn't going to watch these that often anyway. But damn they looked good.
Today I get the Sunday paper and flip through the Best Buy Ad and what do they advertise? TWO versions of Simpsons 7: One with a crazy 3-D Marge-Head, and one with a classy fold-out purple box. DAMN, that sucks.
0 Comments
Friday, December 09, 2005
Renter's Insurance.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Can't Stop a Train...*
posted by RICK : 9:39 PM
Today, I missed no fewer than 4 subways by a matter of seconds. This sucks. It doesn't suck in the global sense becaue there's always another train 3-8 minutes away. But it seems to have a metaphorical effect on me, and I would guess, many people. It should be noted, however, that this isn't a New York City-specific phenomenon. This happens to everyone in some form or another. You know your own "missed subway." But, for people in New York there just happens to be a lot of trains around, so we'll go with that. Let me explain:
Every day I that I have to go to work, I have to take a train to get there. When I reach the platform, on a normal day I'll look down the track and see a train not too far away. On a fantastic day (yesterday) I reach the platform and a train is just coming to a stop. On a depressing day, as you might have guessed, the trains doors close just as you reach the top (or bottom) of the steps. At this point in time all you can do is stare at the soon-empty train platform and think, "What could I have done in my life to have caught this train?" And the answer is usually plain as day. You could have listened to one fewer song before heading out the door. You could have opted to check your email at work and not at home. You stood motionless for too long in the shower. There are myriad things that could have been done that would have made you arrive at the train platform seconds earlier, and thus caught the train.
But these are fleeting thoughts. The real issues you start to deal with come moments later when you get over the fact that you aren't sitting on a heated subway seat but instead freezing your ass off in the wind. These issues come about when you're left with nothing but your devices, waiting for another train to come and realizing that maybe it wasn't just the subway you had missed. You start going back through your life. Why am I standing here in the cold? What went wrong? Is this the line of work I really thought I'd be doing? What happened to those big ideas I had when I was a teenager. I thought I was going to go out there, in life, and fucking conquer something. Now, I'm standing in the bitter cold, with wet hair, waiting for life to pick me back up.
It's depressing.
Luckily, another train will come along. You get in and since you had the time, you were able to walk to the part of the platform where you know you'll be able to get a seat. It's cold, but its sunny outside, and as you ride over the bridge you treat yourself to an article in GQ about a celebrity or some such nonsense while enjoying the heat coming from right below the bench you're sitting on. Life isn't that torturous and the decisions you made in the past aren't as permanent as they may seem. There's still a future. There always is.
And you pull into the station to make your transfer feeling damn good.
But then you walk down the stairs only to be greeted by the F train pulling out of the station.
Motherfuckers!
Anyway, that was my day in a nutshell. Was it yours?
Now, enjoy this quite humorous essay by Chuck Klosterman on why he enjoys wathing the LA Lakers.
*Coulter sorry for stealing your title technique.
0 Comments
Tuesday's Office
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
"Check out banner, Michael!"
No Shave November: first wave.
posted by RICK : 12:26 PM
Here are the highlights of the first annual No Shave November: New York 1 chapter. You'll notice how different people interpreted the rules in different ways, and how nature interpreted the individual. Also, if you want to get your pictures in, don't forget to mail them to me and I'll post'em ASAP. (Also, pictures of hilarious post-shave facial patterns are greatly appreciated)
0 Comments
Time to join the 21st century...
Monday, December 05, 2005
New Nellie
posted by RICK : 2:10 AM
Treat yourself. I have.
TheBigOne.mp3 [5.7mb]
In other, non-pirated news, Slate ran a great "revisionist" story on the most significant piece of comic-art maybe ever, but definitely of the past 20 years.
Syriana
The NY1 movie-club decided to check out the HOT NEW political thriller "Syriana" this past Thursday. The film, in a word, is almost helplessly confusing. Remember Traffic? Remember how kick ass it was? Remember how there were these three storylines and each had its own visual style and then they would overlap and such. Well, Syriana is just like that only less-so and more-so. It isn't as visually fascinating, but the storylines are there in spades. Just good luck trying to figure out what the hell Jeffrey Wright is suppose to be doing. That being said, when the film comes to a close you'll be pretty confident that something shady was going on, even if you can't pinpoint what it is.
The performances are top-notch, and the maze of a script... well, WOW.
What is Recoil rating? THREE AND 1/2 STARS! (bitch.)
And finally, I'm collecting your pics from NO SHAVE NOVEMBER. Send them to stuffboy@mac.com and I'll repost them on this blog in a convenient collage.
0 Comments
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Shit vs. Crap
Friday, December 02, 2005
Mystery Solved
posted by RICK : 1:34 PM
Remember a few weeks back when I was trying to figure out what song was playing in The Matador trailer? Well, the mystery is solved, and it was WAYYYY too obvious. The track came on while I was at the bar last night, causing me to run to the jukebox to find out what it was, only to have it answered for me the second the lyrics kicked in.
Behold:
PsychoKiller.mp3 [5.0mb]
C'mon Nelly should have had that one...
0 Comments
Missed Connections
Thursday, December 01, 2005
The Artform That Is The Setlist
Welcome to "What Is Recoil?." If you would like to post something on this blog, but don't have a WIR-Blogger login, then send me an e-mail, and I'll make it happen. SHAZAM!
-Rick
(co-creator)
Rick |
Dynamarx |
rus-trick |
ryan |
The Potato |
JDM |
DrNewsie |
Mr. MS |
AK |
Brooke |
Stein |
Moses |
G |
CarrieOkie |
Jen |
Duhn |
M. Moore | Laura |
Mr.T |
kat |
abby | Greg
09/2005 | 10/2005 | 11/2005 | 12/2005 | 01/2006 | 02/2006 | 03/2006 | 04/2006 | 05/2006 | 06/2006 | 07/2006 | 08/2006 | 09/2006 | 10/2006 | 11/2006 | 12/2006 | 01/2007 | 02/2007 | 03/2007 |
So why can't I touch it?
posted by Anonymous : 11:38 AM
Nothing makes me happier than when someone begins a straight-faced grassroots operation to launch a religion involving pirates and noodles.
I don't know if anything has made more sense to me in my life than this. Please support the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster now and, if moved enough, show your support by printing off posters/flyers or buying a t-shirt-- particularly this one. The World-Herald newsroom staff got a taste of pirate/global warming stats yesterday, and I couldn't tell whether they were relieved or alarmed. My only objection is that I think we need more pirates, but I also think we need more global warming. When snow becomes obsolete, I think I'll be happy.
Without further ado, things I am thankful for this year:
- a 2% raise at work
- a cute kitten to look at, compliments of our own Rick
- turkey at the table, thanks to the rape and death of Indians (sorry, but thanks for being troopers about it!)
- my new/used orange '04 Mazda 6 with all the frills at an insanely good price
- the untimely death of my '93 Maxima after I slammed into a median while turning left on Dodge St. late at night after a couple of drinks, thinking there were painted lines for the turn lane, when really there was a raise concrete curb (apologies to the girlfriend for the whiplash and the deployed airbag that sent a blinding gunpowdery substance into the cab of the car)
- God's wrath
- this blog that has essentially revitalized the Recoil site, especially with the help of all of you kind blog-posters
- my asinine case of writer's block, rendering me unfunny (maybe it's always been that way?)
- Jen's valid grievance of Sudafed's fall from power attributed to the excessive amount of meth addicts (how can a medication called Sudafed lose the ingredient upon which the medication's name is based? Jesus fucking jawas! I have my benign purposes of curing the pains/voices in my head!!!)
- my overuse of parantheses (sometimes my statement alone needs further explanation or a witty aside to compliment it)
- online shopping, which, if it wasn't for the delay of shipping, would be the absolute only way I would shop
- global warming (YES! I said GLOBAL WARMING!!!)
- my new Norelco cordless shaver-- the other was ruined when the apartment above me flooded and spewed moldy water through the vent above my bathroom sink onto my toothbrush and older "cordful" shaver
- an addition to above: the glass dome on the light fixture in my hallway discretely filling with brown water to the rim with me not noticing until I began to wonder why the glass wasn't clear anymore
- the academy
- gay naked cowboys eating pudding out on the ranch
- a big "no thanks" to the studios for not releasing seasons of Mr. Belvedere on DVD
- newsroom-wide e-mails at work from reporters asking how to make popcorn balls, wondering why the popcorn won't stick together ("Does the syrup need to be hotter or does the popcorn need to be hotter?")
- Rick's indifference toward his confrontation with a burglar that made for a great read ("I don't know... did we have a moment?")
- Geri, for "keeping it real" on this blog
- Paul, for his lack of posts but his ability to deliver gut laugh-inducing deadpan responses to others' posts in the Comments section
- everyone else who has contributed stories/rants/musings/anecdotes
- bullet points
Merry Happy Noodley Holidays everyone!
0 Comments
Friday, December 23, 2005
Happy Festivus
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
STRIKE 1.
posted by RICK : 4:41 AM
Well, it happened. Luckily, as I type this post, I've managed to get a car service to take me home from a very hectic day at work, and have arranged another to pick me up and take me to the airport. Really, I will have made it out of the cursed burg almost completely unscathed. The same can not be said of others. What I'm especially curious about is how many people (at 4:43am) even know that this is happening. The announcement wasn't made until 3am, and by then it was starting to look like things had gone so far outside of the midnight deadline that maybe the TWU was starting to turn. They did not, though apparently, it was close.
In any case, in 12 hours I'll be in Omaha, but many of you won't. You'll be stuck-- walking across the bridge cursing the stubborness of two entities who knew for 3 years that this deadline was approaching and who did nothing about it. Part of me is sad that I'm going to miss it, but that part of me is idiotic. Midwest, here I come.
0 Comments
Monday, December 19, 2005
Here's looking at you.
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Posting for Postsake.
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Just Call Me Erin Brockovich
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
The Maxx!
posted by RICK : 5:45 PM
I had the great pleasure of watching the MTV series "The Maxx" this afternoon in its entirety. For those of you who were not alive in the spring of 1995, or were doing homework or something generally productive instead of watching hours upon hours of MTV, "The Maxx" was a series of 13 15-minute cartoons featured in the "MTV Oddities" block of programming. It was about a giant purple monster/man/super-hero and his friend the "alterna-hot" Julie. While watching the show this morning several things came to mind.
"The Maxx" is heavy. The show is based almost panel for panel on the comic-book series of same name. I've read a bit of the comic and found it quite good, but the tv show was able to find that unique balance between a static, layered, narrative found on the page and the non-stop fluidity of the screen. Regardless, "The Maxx" is some of the most interesting animation you will see anywhere. Its interesting for the same reason really good anime is interesting, and that being the creators had to create movement and action without spending money (i.e. without actually moving a lot of the images). The drawings are as complex as the plot, which, is shockingly dense for a show that aired on MTV in primetime. And really, that's where a lot of the magic from watching "The Maxx" today comes from. The series is pre-9/11-post-feminist-90s existentialism (yeah, that's what I said). It calls back to a particular time in American history where talking about why we're generally unhappy was a national pastime. In '95 there was hardly anything revolutionary about this subject matter, but looking back it seems moderately profound, despite its obvious pretentions. It also brings to mind a type of consciousness that has become a thing of the past. In the current climate, and really, for the foreseeable future, our media has lost a lot of its introspection. And rightly so, I suppose. Its hard to discuss traumatic childhoods with a straight face while people are being blown up all over the globe, but in a pre-Clinton-blow-job society that was JUST on the brink of economic recovery such public insights were a dime a dozen.
I think what's tragic about all of this is how my generation more or less destroyed (for better or worse) pretentious-coffee-house-art. "The Maxx" aired in 1995. Around this time on MTV they were also airing other crazy and noble cartoons: Aeon Flux, Beavis and Butthead, The Head. And let us not forget that the first three seasons of "The Real World" were as much about race, abortion, AIDS and politics as they were about sex, hot people, and whether or not David should have been kicked out of the house for pulling the blanket off Tammi ("It wasn't, NOT, funny!"). But then we had to go and screw it all up by falling in love with TRL and boy bands and general excess. As the dollar signs slowly crushed grunge culture, MTV shifted quite drastically from a network where the programming suits would throw stuff against it and see what sticks to the hyper-slick, reality-crossover-talking-heads-on-fire monolith that it currently is. And maybe I'm being melodramatic, but a lot of good art was destroyed in the process. Of course we'd never know. Maybe the minds behind all of these radical comics and television shows would have dried up as soon as they signed the big contract, but maybe not.
Either way, "The Maxx" is worth taking a look at.
0 Comments
CAN stop a train
posted by RICK : 1:09 AM
I don't know if this news carries much further than the 5 boroughs, but its been claiming much of the news real estate at work: unless a deal is OKed by this Thursday at midnight, New York City will be in the midst of its first TRANSIT STRIKE since 1980. The thing is, a strike is incredibly unlikely. That being said, part of me wants to see it happen. Maybe its easy for me to say this as I'm flying back to Omaha on the 20th and will only have to deal with no public transportation for 4 days and it'll be a cool story to tell. However, the closer we get to the deadline, the more and more I think to myself, "Rick, do you REALLY want to have to walk to work? You do realize that cold weather and an especially large bridge are involved, right?"
Can you imagine? No trains. No busses. Sounds like the logline for a Roland Emmerich movie.
Developing...
0 Comments
Sunday, December 11, 2005
because comments are hard
It's Indie Rock 'N' Roll For Me
Obsessive-Compulsive Media-Freak: me.
posted by RICK : 12:07 PM
Like any all-American media junkie, I love DVDs. Especially TV on DVD. BUT ESPECIALLY, I like how TV DVDs look when they're placed next to each other on a shelf. I like how each season of a show typically has a similar package design but maybe with different colors. When distributors change the package design I find it mildly irritating because my shelf no longer feels whole. Example: Strangers With Candy seasons 1 and 2 both had near identical packages: fold out cases inside a cardboard sleeve. Well when season 3 was finally released they switched to DVD slim-cases inside a cardboard sleeve, making the case about an eighth of an inch bigger than its predecessors. This really pissed me off, and if I hadn't been such a huge fan of the show it may (MAY) have kept me from buying it.
Last August, Fox released The Simpsons season 6. I had purchased seasons 3, 4 and 5 and LOVED the way they looked on my shelf (as for the actual DVDs, well the replay value is a bit diminished when the show is on television 4 times a day). But when season 6 came out, they abandoned the thick, colorful, fold-out cases and went with these ugly, three-dimensional "Simpson heads." Wha-what?! I can't stack that in a row! Those demand to be displayed individually, but then what about the previous seasons? Where's the continuity?
So I sold seasons 3, 4, and 5 and gave up the collection. Like I mentioned, I wasn't going to watch these that often anyway. But damn they looked good.
Today I get the Sunday paper and flip through the Best Buy Ad and what do they advertise? TWO versions of Simpsons 7: One with a crazy 3-D Marge-Head, and one with a classy fold-out purple box. DAMN, that sucks.
0 Comments
Friday, December 09, 2005
Renter's Insurance.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Can't Stop a Train...*
posted by RICK : 9:39 PM
Today, I missed no fewer than 4 subways by a matter of seconds. This sucks. It doesn't suck in the global sense becaue there's always another train 3-8 minutes away. But it seems to have a metaphorical effect on me, and I would guess, many people. It should be noted, however, that this isn't a New York City-specific phenomenon. This happens to everyone in some form or another. You know your own "missed subway." But, for people in New York there just happens to be a lot of trains around, so we'll go with that. Let me explain:
Every day I that I have to go to work, I have to take a train to get there. When I reach the platform, on a normal day I'll look down the track and see a train not too far away. On a fantastic day (yesterday) I reach the platform and a train is just coming to a stop. On a depressing day, as you might have guessed, the trains doors close just as you reach the top (or bottom) of the steps. At this point in time all you can do is stare at the soon-empty train platform and think, "What could I have done in my life to have caught this train?" And the answer is usually plain as day. You could have listened to one fewer song before heading out the door. You could have opted to check your email at work and not at home. You stood motionless for too long in the shower. There are myriad things that could have been done that would have made you arrive at the train platform seconds earlier, and thus caught the train.
But these are fleeting thoughts. The real issues you start to deal with come moments later when you get over the fact that you aren't sitting on a heated subway seat but instead freezing your ass off in the wind. These issues come about when you're left with nothing but your devices, waiting for another train to come and realizing that maybe it wasn't just the subway you had missed. You start going back through your life. Why am I standing here in the cold? What went wrong? Is this the line of work I really thought I'd be doing? What happened to those big ideas I had when I was a teenager. I thought I was going to go out there, in life, and fucking conquer something. Now, I'm standing in the bitter cold, with wet hair, waiting for life to pick me back up.
It's depressing.
Luckily, another train will come along. You get in and since you had the time, you were able to walk to the part of the platform where you know you'll be able to get a seat. It's cold, but its sunny outside, and as you ride over the bridge you treat yourself to an article in GQ about a celebrity or some such nonsense while enjoying the heat coming from right below the bench you're sitting on. Life isn't that torturous and the decisions you made in the past aren't as permanent as they may seem. There's still a future. There always is.
And you pull into the station to make your transfer feeling damn good.
But then you walk down the stairs only to be greeted by the F train pulling out of the station.
Motherfuckers!
Anyway, that was my day in a nutshell. Was it yours?
Now, enjoy this quite humorous essay by Chuck Klosterman on why he enjoys wathing the LA Lakers.
*Coulter sorry for stealing your title technique.
0 Comments
Tuesday's Office
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
"Check out banner, Michael!"
No Shave November: first wave.
posted by RICK : 12:26 PM
Here are the highlights of the first annual No Shave November: New York 1 chapter. You'll notice how different people interpreted the rules in different ways, and how nature interpreted the individual. Also, if you want to get your pictures in, don't forget to mail them to me and I'll post'em ASAP. (Also, pictures of hilarious post-shave facial patterns are greatly appreciated)
0 Comments
Time to join the 21st century...
Monday, December 05, 2005
New Nellie
posted by RICK : 2:10 AM
Treat yourself. I have.
TheBigOne.mp3 [5.7mb]
In other, non-pirated news, Slate ran a great "revisionist" story on the most significant piece of comic-art maybe ever, but definitely of the past 20 years.
Syriana
The NY1 movie-club decided to check out the HOT NEW political thriller "Syriana" this past Thursday. The film, in a word, is almost helplessly confusing. Remember Traffic? Remember how kick ass it was? Remember how there were these three storylines and each had its own visual style and then they would overlap and such. Well, Syriana is just like that only less-so and more-so. It isn't as visually fascinating, but the storylines are there in spades. Just good luck trying to figure out what the hell Jeffrey Wright is suppose to be doing. That being said, when the film comes to a close you'll be pretty confident that something shady was going on, even if you can't pinpoint what it is.
The performances are top-notch, and the maze of a script... well, WOW.
What is Recoil rating? THREE AND 1/2 STARS! (bitch.)
And finally, I'm collecting your pics from NO SHAVE NOVEMBER. Send them to stuffboy@mac.com and I'll repost them on this blog in a convenient collage.
0 Comments
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Shit vs. Crap
Friday, December 02, 2005
Mystery Solved
posted by RICK : 1:34 PM
Remember a few weeks back when I was trying to figure out what song was playing in The Matador trailer? Well, the mystery is solved, and it was WAYYYY too obvious. The track came on while I was at the bar last night, causing me to run to the jukebox to find out what it was, only to have it answered for me the second the lyrics kicked in.
Behold:
PsychoKiller.mp3 [5.0mb]
C'mon Nelly should have had that one...
0 Comments
Missed Connections
Thursday, December 01, 2005
The Artform That Is The Setlist
Welcome to "What Is Recoil?." If you would like to post something on this blog, but don't have a WIR-Blogger login, then send me an e-mail, and I'll make it happen. SHAZAM!
-Rick
(co-creator)
Rick |
Dynamarx |
rus-trick |
ryan |
The Potato |
JDM |
DrNewsie |
Mr. MS |
AK |
Brooke |
Stein |
Moses |
G |
CarrieOkie |
Jen |
Duhn |
M. Moore | Laura |
Mr.T |
kat |
abby | Greg
09/2005 | 10/2005 | 11/2005 | 12/2005 | 01/2006 | 02/2006 | 03/2006 | 04/2006 | 05/2006 | 06/2006 | 07/2006 | 08/2006 | 09/2006 | 10/2006 | 11/2006 | 12/2006 | 01/2007 | 02/2007 | 03/2007 |
I don't know if anything has made more sense to me in my life than this. Please support the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster now and, if moved enough, show your support by printing off posters/flyers or buying a t-shirt-- particularly this one. The World-Herald newsroom staff got a taste of pirate/global warming stats yesterday, and I couldn't tell whether they were relieved or alarmed. My only objection is that I think we need more pirates, but I also think we need more global warming. When snow becomes obsolete, I think I'll be happy.
Without further ado, things I am thankful for this year:
- a 2% raise at work
- a cute kitten to look at, compliments of our own Rick
- turkey at the table, thanks to the rape and death of Indians (sorry, but thanks for being troopers about it!)
- my new/used orange '04 Mazda 6 with all the frills at an insanely good price
- the untimely death of my '93 Maxima after I slammed into a median while turning left on Dodge St. late at night after a couple of drinks, thinking there were painted lines for the turn lane, when really there was a raise concrete curb (apologies to the girlfriend for the whiplash and the deployed airbag that sent a blinding gunpowdery substance into the cab of the car)
- God's wrath
- this blog that has essentially revitalized the Recoil site, especially with the help of all of you kind blog-posters
- my asinine case of writer's block, rendering me unfunny (maybe it's always been that way?)
- Jen's valid grievance of Sudafed's fall from power attributed to the excessive amount of meth addicts (how can a medication called Sudafed lose the ingredient upon which the medication's name is based? Jesus fucking jawas! I have my benign purposes of curing the pains/voices in my head!!!)
- my overuse of parantheses (sometimes my statement alone needs further explanation or a witty aside to compliment it)
- online shopping, which, if it wasn't for the delay of shipping, would be the absolute only way I would shop
- global warming (YES! I said GLOBAL WARMING!!!)
- my new Norelco cordless shaver-- the other was ruined when the apartment above me flooded and spewed moldy water through the vent above my bathroom sink onto my toothbrush and older "cordful" shaver
- an addition to above: the glass dome on the light fixture in my hallway discretely filling with brown water to the rim with me not noticing until I began to wonder why the glass wasn't clear anymore
- the academy
- gay naked cowboys eating pudding out on the ranch
- a big "no thanks" to the studios for not releasing seasons of Mr. Belvedere on DVD
- newsroom-wide e-mails at work from reporters asking how to make popcorn balls, wondering why the popcorn won't stick together ("Does the syrup need to be hotter or does the popcorn need to be hotter?")
- Rick's indifference toward his confrontation with a burglar that made for a great read ("I don't know... did we have a moment?")
- Geri, for "keeping it real" on this blog
- Paul, for his lack of posts but his ability to deliver gut laugh-inducing deadpan responses to others' posts in the Comments section
- everyone else who has contributed stories/rants/musings/anecdotes
- bullet points
Merry Happy Noodley Holidays everyone!
0 Comments
Happy Festivus
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
STRIKE 1.
posted by RICK : 4:41 AM
Well, it happened. Luckily, as I type this post, I've managed to get a car service to take me home from a very hectic day at work, and have arranged another to pick me up and take me to the airport. Really, I will have made it out of the cursed burg almost completely unscathed. The same can not be said of others. What I'm especially curious about is how many people (at 4:43am) even know that this is happening. The announcement wasn't made until 3am, and by then it was starting to look like things had gone so far outside of the midnight deadline that maybe the TWU was starting to turn. They did not, though apparently, it was close.
In any case, in 12 hours I'll be in Omaha, but many of you won't. You'll be stuck-- walking across the bridge cursing the stubborness of two entities who knew for 3 years that this deadline was approaching and who did nothing about it. Part of me is sad that I'm going to miss it, but that part of me is idiotic. Midwest, here I come.
0 Comments
Monday, December 19, 2005
Here's looking at you.
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Posting for Postsake.
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Just Call Me Erin Brockovich
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
The Maxx!
posted by RICK : 5:45 PM
I had the great pleasure of watching the MTV series "The Maxx" this afternoon in its entirety. For those of you who were not alive in the spring of 1995, or were doing homework or something generally productive instead of watching hours upon hours of MTV, "The Maxx" was a series of 13 15-minute cartoons featured in the "MTV Oddities" block of programming. It was about a giant purple monster/man/super-hero and his friend the "alterna-hot" Julie. While watching the show this morning several things came to mind.
"The Maxx" is heavy. The show is based almost panel for panel on the comic-book series of same name. I've read a bit of the comic and found it quite good, but the tv show was able to find that unique balance between a static, layered, narrative found on the page and the non-stop fluidity of the screen. Regardless, "The Maxx" is some of the most interesting animation you will see anywhere. Its interesting for the same reason really good anime is interesting, and that being the creators had to create movement and action without spending money (i.e. without actually moving a lot of the images). The drawings are as complex as the plot, which, is shockingly dense for a show that aired on MTV in primetime. And really, that's where a lot of the magic from watching "The Maxx" today comes from. The series is pre-9/11-post-feminist-90s existentialism (yeah, that's what I said). It calls back to a particular time in American history where talking about why we're generally unhappy was a national pastime. In '95 there was hardly anything revolutionary about this subject matter, but looking back it seems moderately profound, despite its obvious pretentions. It also brings to mind a type of consciousness that has become a thing of the past. In the current climate, and really, for the foreseeable future, our media has lost a lot of its introspection. And rightly so, I suppose. Its hard to discuss traumatic childhoods with a straight face while people are being blown up all over the globe, but in a pre-Clinton-blow-job society that was JUST on the brink of economic recovery such public insights were a dime a dozen.
I think what's tragic about all of this is how my generation more or less destroyed (for better or worse) pretentious-coffee-house-art. "The Maxx" aired in 1995. Around this time on MTV they were also airing other crazy and noble cartoons: Aeon Flux, Beavis and Butthead, The Head. And let us not forget that the first three seasons of "The Real World" were as much about race, abortion, AIDS and politics as they were about sex, hot people, and whether or not David should have been kicked out of the house for pulling the blanket off Tammi ("It wasn't, NOT, funny!"). But then we had to go and screw it all up by falling in love with TRL and boy bands and general excess. As the dollar signs slowly crushed grunge culture, MTV shifted quite drastically from a network where the programming suits would throw stuff against it and see what sticks to the hyper-slick, reality-crossover-talking-heads-on-fire monolith that it currently is. And maybe I'm being melodramatic, but a lot of good art was destroyed in the process. Of course we'd never know. Maybe the minds behind all of these radical comics and television shows would have dried up as soon as they signed the big contract, but maybe not.
Either way, "The Maxx" is worth taking a look at.
0 Comments
CAN stop a train
posted by RICK : 1:09 AM
I don't know if this news carries much further than the 5 boroughs, but its been claiming much of the news real estate at work: unless a deal is OKed by this Thursday at midnight, New York City will be in the midst of its first TRANSIT STRIKE since 1980. The thing is, a strike is incredibly unlikely. That being said, part of me wants to see it happen. Maybe its easy for me to say this as I'm flying back to Omaha on the 20th and will only have to deal with no public transportation for 4 days and it'll be a cool story to tell. However, the closer we get to the deadline, the more and more I think to myself, "Rick, do you REALLY want to have to walk to work? You do realize that cold weather and an especially large bridge are involved, right?"
Can you imagine? No trains. No busses. Sounds like the logline for a Roland Emmerich movie.
Developing...
0 Comments
Sunday, December 11, 2005
because comments are hard
It's Indie Rock 'N' Roll For Me
Obsessive-Compulsive Media-Freak: me.
posted by RICK : 12:07 PM
Like any all-American media junkie, I love DVDs. Especially TV on DVD. BUT ESPECIALLY, I like how TV DVDs look when they're placed next to each other on a shelf. I like how each season of a show typically has a similar package design but maybe with different colors. When distributors change the package design I find it mildly irritating because my shelf no longer feels whole. Example: Strangers With Candy seasons 1 and 2 both had near identical packages: fold out cases inside a cardboard sleeve. Well when season 3 was finally released they switched to DVD slim-cases inside a cardboard sleeve, making the case about an eighth of an inch bigger than its predecessors. This really pissed me off, and if I hadn't been such a huge fan of the show it may (MAY) have kept me from buying it.
Last August, Fox released The Simpsons season 6. I had purchased seasons 3, 4 and 5 and LOVED the way they looked on my shelf (as for the actual DVDs, well the replay value is a bit diminished when the show is on television 4 times a day). But when season 6 came out, they abandoned the thick, colorful, fold-out cases and went with these ugly, three-dimensional "Simpson heads." Wha-what?! I can't stack that in a row! Those demand to be displayed individually, but then what about the previous seasons? Where's the continuity?
So I sold seasons 3, 4, and 5 and gave up the collection. Like I mentioned, I wasn't going to watch these that often anyway. But damn they looked good.
Today I get the Sunday paper and flip through the Best Buy Ad and what do they advertise? TWO versions of Simpsons 7: One with a crazy 3-D Marge-Head, and one with a classy fold-out purple box. DAMN, that sucks.
0 Comments
Friday, December 09, 2005
Renter's Insurance.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Can't Stop a Train...*
posted by RICK : 9:39 PM
Today, I missed no fewer than 4 subways by a matter of seconds. This sucks. It doesn't suck in the global sense becaue there's always another train 3-8 minutes away. But it seems to have a metaphorical effect on me, and I would guess, many people. It should be noted, however, that this isn't a New York City-specific phenomenon. This happens to everyone in some form or another. You know your own "missed subway." But, for people in New York there just happens to be a lot of trains around, so we'll go with that. Let me explain:
Every day I that I have to go to work, I have to take a train to get there. When I reach the platform, on a normal day I'll look down the track and see a train not too far away. On a fantastic day (yesterday) I reach the platform and a train is just coming to a stop. On a depressing day, as you might have guessed, the trains doors close just as you reach the top (or bottom) of the steps. At this point in time all you can do is stare at the soon-empty train platform and think, "What could I have done in my life to have caught this train?" And the answer is usually plain as day. You could have listened to one fewer song before heading out the door. You could have opted to check your email at work and not at home. You stood motionless for too long in the shower. There are myriad things that could have been done that would have made you arrive at the train platform seconds earlier, and thus caught the train.
But these are fleeting thoughts. The real issues you start to deal with come moments later when you get over the fact that you aren't sitting on a heated subway seat but instead freezing your ass off in the wind. These issues come about when you're left with nothing but your devices, waiting for another train to come and realizing that maybe it wasn't just the subway you had missed. You start going back through your life. Why am I standing here in the cold? What went wrong? Is this the line of work I really thought I'd be doing? What happened to those big ideas I had when I was a teenager. I thought I was going to go out there, in life, and fucking conquer something. Now, I'm standing in the bitter cold, with wet hair, waiting for life to pick me back up.
It's depressing.
Luckily, another train will come along. You get in and since you had the time, you were able to walk to the part of the platform where you know you'll be able to get a seat. It's cold, but its sunny outside, and as you ride over the bridge you treat yourself to an article in GQ about a celebrity or some such nonsense while enjoying the heat coming from right below the bench you're sitting on. Life isn't that torturous and the decisions you made in the past aren't as permanent as they may seem. There's still a future. There always is.
And you pull into the station to make your transfer feeling damn good.
But then you walk down the stairs only to be greeted by the F train pulling out of the station.
Motherfuckers!
Anyway, that was my day in a nutshell. Was it yours?
Now, enjoy this quite humorous essay by Chuck Klosterman on why he enjoys wathing the LA Lakers.
*Coulter sorry for stealing your title technique.
0 Comments
Tuesday's Office
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
"Check out banner, Michael!"
No Shave November: first wave.
posted by RICK : 12:26 PM
Here are the highlights of the first annual No Shave November: New York 1 chapter. You'll notice how different people interpreted the rules in different ways, and how nature interpreted the individual. Also, if you want to get your pictures in, don't forget to mail them to me and I'll post'em ASAP. (Also, pictures of hilarious post-shave facial patterns are greatly appreciated)
0 Comments
Time to join the 21st century...
Monday, December 05, 2005
New Nellie
posted by RICK : 2:10 AM
Treat yourself. I have.
TheBigOne.mp3 [5.7mb]
In other, non-pirated news, Slate ran a great "revisionist" story on the most significant piece of comic-art maybe ever, but definitely of the past 20 years.
Syriana
The NY1 movie-club decided to check out the HOT NEW political thriller "Syriana" this past Thursday. The film, in a word, is almost helplessly confusing. Remember Traffic? Remember how kick ass it was? Remember how there were these three storylines and each had its own visual style and then they would overlap and such. Well, Syriana is just like that only less-so and more-so. It isn't as visually fascinating, but the storylines are there in spades. Just good luck trying to figure out what the hell Jeffrey Wright is suppose to be doing. That being said, when the film comes to a close you'll be pretty confident that something shady was going on, even if you can't pinpoint what it is.
The performances are top-notch, and the maze of a script... well, WOW.
What is Recoil rating? THREE AND 1/2 STARS! (bitch.)
And finally, I'm collecting your pics from NO SHAVE NOVEMBER. Send them to stuffboy@mac.com and I'll repost them on this blog in a convenient collage.
0 Comments
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Shit vs. Crap
Friday, December 02, 2005
Mystery Solved
posted by RICK : 1:34 PM
Remember a few weeks back when I was trying to figure out what song was playing in The Matador trailer? Well, the mystery is solved, and it was WAYYYY too obvious. The track came on while I was at the bar last night, causing me to run to the jukebox to find out what it was, only to have it answered for me the second the lyrics kicked in.
Behold:
PsychoKiller.mp3 [5.0mb]
C'mon Nelly should have had that one...
0 Comments
Missed Connections
Thursday, December 01, 2005
The Artform That Is The Setlist
Welcome to "What Is Recoil?." If you would like to post something on this blog, but don't have a WIR-Blogger login, then send me an e-mail, and I'll make it happen. SHAZAM!
-Rick
(co-creator)
Rick |
Dynamarx |
rus-trick |
ryan |
The Potato |
JDM |
DrNewsie |
Mr. MS |
AK |
Brooke |
Stein |
Moses |
G |
CarrieOkie |
Jen |
Duhn |
M. Moore | Laura |
Mr.T |
kat |
abby | Greg
09/2005 | 10/2005 | 11/2005 | 12/2005 | 01/2006 | 02/2006 | 03/2006 | 04/2006 | 05/2006 | 06/2006 | 07/2006 | 08/2006 | 09/2006 | 10/2006 | 11/2006 | 12/2006 | 01/2007 | 02/2007 | 03/2007 |
STRIKE 1.
posted by RICK : 4:41 AM
Well, it happened. Luckily, as I type this post, I've managed to get a car service to take me home from a very hectic day at work, and have arranged another to pick me up and take me to the airport. Really, I will have made it out of the cursed burg almost completely unscathed. The same can not be said of others. What I'm especially curious about is how many people (at 4:43am) even know that this is happening. The announcement wasn't made until 3am, and by then it was starting to look like things had gone so far outside of the midnight deadline that maybe the TWU was starting to turn. They did not, though apparently, it was close.
In any case, in 12 hours I'll be in Omaha, but many of you won't. You'll be stuck-- walking across the bridge cursing the stubborness of two entities who knew for 3 years that this deadline was approaching and who did nothing about it. Part of me is sad that I'm going to miss it, but that part of me is idiotic. Midwest, here I come.
0 Comments
Monday, December 19, 2005
Here's looking at you.
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Posting for Postsake.
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Just Call Me Erin Brockovich
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
The Maxx!
posted by RICK : 5:45 PM
I had the great pleasure of watching the MTV series "The Maxx" this afternoon in its entirety. For those of you who were not alive in the spring of 1995, or were doing homework or something generally productive instead of watching hours upon hours of MTV, "The Maxx" was a series of 13 15-minute cartoons featured in the "MTV Oddities" block of programming. It was about a giant purple monster/man/super-hero and his friend the "alterna-hot" Julie. While watching the show this morning several things came to mind.
"The Maxx" is heavy. The show is based almost panel for panel on the comic-book series of same name. I've read a bit of the comic and found it quite good, but the tv show was able to find that unique balance between a static, layered, narrative found on the page and the non-stop fluidity of the screen. Regardless, "The Maxx" is some of the most interesting animation you will see anywhere. Its interesting for the same reason really good anime is interesting, and that being the creators had to create movement and action without spending money (i.e. without actually moving a lot of the images). The drawings are as complex as the plot, which, is shockingly dense for a show that aired on MTV in primetime. And really, that's where a lot of the magic from watching "The Maxx" today comes from. The series is pre-9/11-post-feminist-90s existentialism (yeah, that's what I said). It calls back to a particular time in American history where talking about why we're generally unhappy was a national pastime. In '95 there was hardly anything revolutionary about this subject matter, but looking back it seems moderately profound, despite its obvious pretentions. It also brings to mind a type of consciousness that has become a thing of the past. In the current climate, and really, for the foreseeable future, our media has lost a lot of its introspection. And rightly so, I suppose. Its hard to discuss traumatic childhoods with a straight face while people are being blown up all over the globe, but in a pre-Clinton-blow-job society that was JUST on the brink of economic recovery such public insights were a dime a dozen.
I think what's tragic about all of this is how my generation more or less destroyed (for better or worse) pretentious-coffee-house-art. "The Maxx" aired in 1995. Around this time on MTV they were also airing other crazy and noble cartoons: Aeon Flux, Beavis and Butthead, The Head. And let us not forget that the first three seasons of "The Real World" were as much about race, abortion, AIDS and politics as they were about sex, hot people, and whether or not David should have been kicked out of the house for pulling the blanket off Tammi ("It wasn't, NOT, funny!"). But then we had to go and screw it all up by falling in love with TRL and boy bands and general excess. As the dollar signs slowly crushed grunge culture, MTV shifted quite drastically from a network where the programming suits would throw stuff against it and see what sticks to the hyper-slick, reality-crossover-talking-heads-on-fire monolith that it currently is. And maybe I'm being melodramatic, but a lot of good art was destroyed in the process. Of course we'd never know. Maybe the minds behind all of these radical comics and television shows would have dried up as soon as they signed the big contract, but maybe not.
Either way, "The Maxx" is worth taking a look at.
0 Comments
CAN stop a train
posted by RICK : 1:09 AM
I don't know if this news carries much further than the 5 boroughs, but its been claiming much of the news real estate at work: unless a deal is OKed by this Thursday at midnight, New York City will be in the midst of its first TRANSIT STRIKE since 1980. The thing is, a strike is incredibly unlikely. That being said, part of me wants to see it happen. Maybe its easy for me to say this as I'm flying back to Omaha on the 20th and will only have to deal with no public transportation for 4 days and it'll be a cool story to tell. However, the closer we get to the deadline, the more and more I think to myself, "Rick, do you REALLY want to have to walk to work? You do realize that cold weather and an especially large bridge are involved, right?"
Can you imagine? No trains. No busses. Sounds like the logline for a Roland Emmerich movie.
Developing...
0 Comments
Sunday, December 11, 2005
because comments are hard
It's Indie Rock 'N' Roll For Me
Obsessive-Compulsive Media-Freak: me.
posted by RICK : 12:07 PM
Like any all-American media junkie, I love DVDs. Especially TV on DVD. BUT ESPECIALLY, I like how TV DVDs look when they're placed next to each other on a shelf. I like how each season of a show typically has a similar package design but maybe with different colors. When distributors change the package design I find it mildly irritating because my shelf no longer feels whole. Example: Strangers With Candy seasons 1 and 2 both had near identical packages: fold out cases inside a cardboard sleeve. Well when season 3 was finally released they switched to DVD slim-cases inside a cardboard sleeve, making the case about an eighth of an inch bigger than its predecessors. This really pissed me off, and if I hadn't been such a huge fan of the show it may (MAY) have kept me from buying it.
Last August, Fox released The Simpsons season 6. I had purchased seasons 3, 4 and 5 and LOVED the way they looked on my shelf (as for the actual DVDs, well the replay value is a bit diminished when the show is on television 4 times a day). But when season 6 came out, they abandoned the thick, colorful, fold-out cases and went with these ugly, three-dimensional "Simpson heads." Wha-what?! I can't stack that in a row! Those demand to be displayed individually, but then what about the previous seasons? Where's the continuity?
So I sold seasons 3, 4, and 5 and gave up the collection. Like I mentioned, I wasn't going to watch these that often anyway. But damn they looked good.
Today I get the Sunday paper and flip through the Best Buy Ad and what do they advertise? TWO versions of Simpsons 7: One with a crazy 3-D Marge-Head, and one with a classy fold-out purple box. DAMN, that sucks.
0 Comments
Friday, December 09, 2005
Renter's Insurance.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Can't Stop a Train...*
posted by RICK : 9:39 PM
Today, I missed no fewer than 4 subways by a matter of seconds. This sucks. It doesn't suck in the global sense becaue there's always another train 3-8 minutes away. But it seems to have a metaphorical effect on me, and I would guess, many people. It should be noted, however, that this isn't a New York City-specific phenomenon. This happens to everyone in some form or another. You know your own "missed subway." But, for people in New York there just happens to be a lot of trains around, so we'll go with that. Let me explain:
Every day I that I have to go to work, I have to take a train to get there. When I reach the platform, on a normal day I'll look down the track and see a train not too far away. On a fantastic day (yesterday) I reach the platform and a train is just coming to a stop. On a depressing day, as you might have guessed, the trains doors close just as you reach the top (or bottom) of the steps. At this point in time all you can do is stare at the soon-empty train platform and think, "What could I have done in my life to have caught this train?" And the answer is usually plain as day. You could have listened to one fewer song before heading out the door. You could have opted to check your email at work and not at home. You stood motionless for too long in the shower. There are myriad things that could have been done that would have made you arrive at the train platform seconds earlier, and thus caught the train.
But these are fleeting thoughts. The real issues you start to deal with come moments later when you get over the fact that you aren't sitting on a heated subway seat but instead freezing your ass off in the wind. These issues come about when you're left with nothing but your devices, waiting for another train to come and realizing that maybe it wasn't just the subway you had missed. You start going back through your life. Why am I standing here in the cold? What went wrong? Is this the line of work I really thought I'd be doing? What happened to those big ideas I had when I was a teenager. I thought I was going to go out there, in life, and fucking conquer something. Now, I'm standing in the bitter cold, with wet hair, waiting for life to pick me back up.
It's depressing.
Luckily, another train will come along. You get in and since you had the time, you were able to walk to the part of the platform where you know you'll be able to get a seat. It's cold, but its sunny outside, and as you ride over the bridge you treat yourself to an article in GQ about a celebrity or some such nonsense while enjoying the heat coming from right below the bench you're sitting on. Life isn't that torturous and the decisions you made in the past aren't as permanent as they may seem. There's still a future. There always is.
And you pull into the station to make your transfer feeling damn good.
But then you walk down the stairs only to be greeted by the F train pulling out of the station.
Motherfuckers!
Anyway, that was my day in a nutshell. Was it yours?
Now, enjoy this quite humorous essay by Chuck Klosterman on why he enjoys wathing the LA Lakers.
*Coulter sorry for stealing your title technique.
0 Comments
Tuesday's Office
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
"Check out banner, Michael!"
No Shave November: first wave.
posted by RICK : 12:26 PM
Here are the highlights of the first annual No Shave November: New York 1 chapter. You'll notice how different people interpreted the rules in different ways, and how nature interpreted the individual. Also, if you want to get your pictures in, don't forget to mail them to me and I'll post'em ASAP. (Also, pictures of hilarious post-shave facial patterns are greatly appreciated)
0 Comments
Time to join the 21st century...
Monday, December 05, 2005
New Nellie
posted by RICK : 2:10 AM
Treat yourself. I have.
TheBigOne.mp3 [5.7mb]
In other, non-pirated news, Slate ran a great "revisionist" story on the most significant piece of comic-art maybe ever, but definitely of the past 20 years.
Syriana
The NY1 movie-club decided to check out the HOT NEW political thriller "Syriana" this past Thursday. The film, in a word, is almost helplessly confusing. Remember Traffic? Remember how kick ass it was? Remember how there were these three storylines and each had its own visual style and then they would overlap and such. Well, Syriana is just like that only less-so and more-so. It isn't as visually fascinating, but the storylines are there in spades. Just good luck trying to figure out what the hell Jeffrey Wright is suppose to be doing. That being said, when the film comes to a close you'll be pretty confident that something shady was going on, even if you can't pinpoint what it is.
The performances are top-notch, and the maze of a script... well, WOW.
What is Recoil rating? THREE AND 1/2 STARS! (bitch.)
And finally, I'm collecting your pics from NO SHAVE NOVEMBER. Send them to stuffboy@mac.com and I'll repost them on this blog in a convenient collage.
0 Comments
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Shit vs. Crap
Friday, December 02, 2005
Mystery Solved
posted by RICK : 1:34 PM
Remember a few weeks back when I was trying to figure out what song was playing in The Matador trailer? Well, the mystery is solved, and it was WAYYYY too obvious. The track came on while I was at the bar last night, causing me to run to the jukebox to find out what it was, only to have it answered for me the second the lyrics kicked in.
Behold:
PsychoKiller.mp3 [5.0mb]
C'mon Nelly should have had that one...
0 Comments
Missed Connections
Thursday, December 01, 2005
The Artform That Is The Setlist
Welcome to "What Is Recoil?." If you would like to post something on this blog, but don't have a WIR-Blogger login, then send me an e-mail, and I'll make it happen. SHAZAM!
-Rick
(co-creator)
Rick |
Dynamarx |
rus-trick |
ryan |
The Potato |
JDM |
DrNewsie |
Mr. MS |
AK |
Brooke |
Stein |
Moses |
G |
CarrieOkie |
Jen |
Duhn |
M. Moore | Laura |
Mr.T |
kat |
abby | Greg
09/2005 | 10/2005 | 11/2005 | 12/2005 | 01/2006 | 02/2006 | 03/2006 | 04/2006 | 05/2006 | 06/2006 | 07/2006 | 08/2006 | 09/2006 | 10/2006 | 11/2006 | 12/2006 | 01/2007 | 02/2007 | 03/2007 |
Well, it happened. Luckily, as I type this post, I've managed to get a car service to take me home from a very hectic day at work, and have arranged another to pick me up and take me to the airport. Really, I will have made it out of the cursed burg almost completely unscathed. The same can not be said of others. What I'm especially curious about is how many people (at 4:43am) even know that this is happening. The announcement wasn't made until 3am, and by then it was starting to look like things had gone so far outside of the midnight deadline that maybe the TWU was starting to turn. They did not, though apparently, it was close.
In any case, in 12 hours I'll be in Omaha, but many of you won't. You'll be stuck-- walking across the bridge cursing the stubborness of two entities who knew for 3 years that this deadline was approaching and who did nothing about it. Part of me is sad that I'm going to miss it, but that part of me is idiotic. Midwest, here I come.
0 Comments
Here's looking at you.
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Posting for Postsake.
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Just Call Me Erin Brockovich
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
The Maxx!
posted by RICK : 5:45 PM
I had the great pleasure of watching the MTV series "The Maxx" this afternoon in its entirety. For those of you who were not alive in the spring of 1995, or were doing homework or something generally productive instead of watching hours upon hours of MTV, "The Maxx" was a series of 13 15-minute cartoons featured in the "MTV Oddities" block of programming. It was about a giant purple monster/man/super-hero and his friend the "alterna-hot" Julie. While watching the show this morning several things came to mind.
"The Maxx" is heavy. The show is based almost panel for panel on the comic-book series of same name. I've read a bit of the comic and found it quite good, but the tv show was able to find that unique balance between a static, layered, narrative found on the page and the non-stop fluidity of the screen. Regardless, "The Maxx" is some of the most interesting animation you will see anywhere. Its interesting for the same reason really good anime is interesting, and that being the creators had to create movement and action without spending money (i.e. without actually moving a lot of the images). The drawings are as complex as the plot, which, is shockingly dense for a show that aired on MTV in primetime. And really, that's where a lot of the magic from watching "The Maxx" today comes from. The series is pre-9/11-post-feminist-90s existentialism (yeah, that's what I said). It calls back to a particular time in American history where talking about why we're generally unhappy was a national pastime. In '95 there was hardly anything revolutionary about this subject matter, but looking back it seems moderately profound, despite its obvious pretentions. It also brings to mind a type of consciousness that has become a thing of the past. In the current climate, and really, for the foreseeable future, our media has lost a lot of its introspection. And rightly so, I suppose. Its hard to discuss traumatic childhoods with a straight face while people are being blown up all over the globe, but in a pre-Clinton-blow-job society that was JUST on the brink of economic recovery such public insights were a dime a dozen.
I think what's tragic about all of this is how my generation more or less destroyed (for better or worse) pretentious-coffee-house-art. "The Maxx" aired in 1995. Around this time on MTV they were also airing other crazy and noble cartoons: Aeon Flux, Beavis and Butthead, The Head. And let us not forget that the first three seasons of "The Real World" were as much about race, abortion, AIDS and politics as they were about sex, hot people, and whether or not David should have been kicked out of the house for pulling the blanket off Tammi ("It wasn't, NOT, funny!"). But then we had to go and screw it all up by falling in love with TRL and boy bands and general excess. As the dollar signs slowly crushed grunge culture, MTV shifted quite drastically from a network where the programming suits would throw stuff against it and see what sticks to the hyper-slick, reality-crossover-talking-heads-on-fire monolith that it currently is. And maybe I'm being melodramatic, but a lot of good art was destroyed in the process. Of course we'd never know. Maybe the minds behind all of these radical comics and television shows would have dried up as soon as they signed the big contract, but maybe not.
Either way, "The Maxx" is worth taking a look at.
0 Comments
CAN stop a train
posted by RICK : 1:09 AM
I don't know if this news carries much further than the 5 boroughs, but its been claiming much of the news real estate at work: unless a deal is OKed by this Thursday at midnight, New York City will be in the midst of its first TRANSIT STRIKE since 1980. The thing is, a strike is incredibly unlikely. That being said, part of me wants to see it happen. Maybe its easy for me to say this as I'm flying back to Omaha on the 20th and will only have to deal with no public transportation for 4 days and it'll be a cool story to tell. However, the closer we get to the deadline, the more and more I think to myself, "Rick, do you REALLY want to have to walk to work? You do realize that cold weather and an especially large bridge are involved, right?"
Can you imagine? No trains. No busses. Sounds like the logline for a Roland Emmerich movie.
Developing...
0 Comments
Sunday, December 11, 2005
because comments are hard
It's Indie Rock 'N' Roll For Me
Obsessive-Compulsive Media-Freak: me.
posted by RICK : 12:07 PM
Like any all-American media junkie, I love DVDs. Especially TV on DVD. BUT ESPECIALLY, I like how TV DVDs look when they're placed next to each other on a shelf. I like how each season of a show typically has a similar package design but maybe with different colors. When distributors change the package design I find it mildly irritating because my shelf no longer feels whole. Example: Strangers With Candy seasons 1 and 2 both had near identical packages: fold out cases inside a cardboard sleeve. Well when season 3 was finally released they switched to DVD slim-cases inside a cardboard sleeve, making the case about an eighth of an inch bigger than its predecessors. This really pissed me off, and if I hadn't been such a huge fan of the show it may (MAY) have kept me from buying it.
Last August, Fox released The Simpsons season 6. I had purchased seasons 3, 4 and 5 and LOVED the way they looked on my shelf (as for the actual DVDs, well the replay value is a bit diminished when the show is on television 4 times a day). But when season 6 came out, they abandoned the thick, colorful, fold-out cases and went with these ugly, three-dimensional "Simpson heads." Wha-what?! I can't stack that in a row! Those demand to be displayed individually, but then what about the previous seasons? Where's the continuity?
So I sold seasons 3, 4, and 5 and gave up the collection. Like I mentioned, I wasn't going to watch these that often anyway. But damn they looked good.
Today I get the Sunday paper and flip through the Best Buy Ad and what do they advertise? TWO versions of Simpsons 7: One with a crazy 3-D Marge-Head, and one with a classy fold-out purple box. DAMN, that sucks.
0 Comments
Friday, December 09, 2005
Renter's Insurance.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Can't Stop a Train...*
posted by RICK : 9:39 PM
Today, I missed no fewer than 4 subways by a matter of seconds. This sucks. It doesn't suck in the global sense becaue there's always another train 3-8 minutes away. But it seems to have a metaphorical effect on me, and I would guess, many people. It should be noted, however, that this isn't a New York City-specific phenomenon. This happens to everyone in some form or another. You know your own "missed subway." But, for people in New York there just happens to be a lot of trains around, so we'll go with that. Let me explain:
Every day I that I have to go to work, I have to take a train to get there. When I reach the platform, on a normal day I'll look down the track and see a train not too far away. On a fantastic day (yesterday) I reach the platform and a train is just coming to a stop. On a depressing day, as you might have guessed, the trains doors close just as you reach the top (or bottom) of the steps. At this point in time all you can do is stare at the soon-empty train platform and think, "What could I have done in my life to have caught this train?" And the answer is usually plain as day. You could have listened to one fewer song before heading out the door. You could have opted to check your email at work and not at home. You stood motionless for too long in the shower. There are myriad things that could have been done that would have made you arrive at the train platform seconds earlier, and thus caught the train.
But these are fleeting thoughts. The real issues you start to deal with come moments later when you get over the fact that you aren't sitting on a heated subway seat but instead freezing your ass off in the wind. These issues come about when you're left with nothing but your devices, waiting for another train to come and realizing that maybe it wasn't just the subway you had missed. You start going back through your life. Why am I standing here in the cold? What went wrong? Is this the line of work I really thought I'd be doing? What happened to those big ideas I had when I was a teenager. I thought I was going to go out there, in life, and fucking conquer something. Now, I'm standing in the bitter cold, with wet hair, waiting for life to pick me back up.
It's depressing.
Luckily, another train will come along. You get in and since you had the time, you were able to walk to the part of the platform where you know you'll be able to get a seat. It's cold, but its sunny outside, and as you ride over the bridge you treat yourself to an article in GQ about a celebrity or some such nonsense while enjoying the heat coming from right below the bench you're sitting on. Life isn't that torturous and the decisions you made in the past aren't as permanent as they may seem. There's still a future. There always is.
And you pull into the station to make your transfer feeling damn good.
But then you walk down the stairs only to be greeted by the F train pulling out of the station.
Motherfuckers!
Anyway, that was my day in a nutshell. Was it yours?
Now, enjoy this quite humorous essay by Chuck Klosterman on why he enjoys wathing the LA Lakers.
*Coulter sorry for stealing your title technique.
0 Comments
Tuesday's Office
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
"Check out banner, Michael!"
No Shave November: first wave.
posted by RICK : 12:26 PM
Here are the highlights of the first annual No Shave November: New York 1 chapter. You'll notice how different people interpreted the rules in different ways, and how nature interpreted the individual. Also, if you want to get your pictures in, don't forget to mail them to me and I'll post'em ASAP. (Also, pictures of hilarious post-shave facial patterns are greatly appreciated)
0 Comments
Time to join the 21st century...
Monday, December 05, 2005
New Nellie
posted by RICK : 2:10 AM
Treat yourself. I have.
TheBigOne.mp3 [5.7mb]
In other, non-pirated news, Slate ran a great "revisionist" story on the most significant piece of comic-art maybe ever, but definitely of the past 20 years.
Syriana
The NY1 movie-club decided to check out the HOT NEW political thriller "Syriana" this past Thursday. The film, in a word, is almost helplessly confusing. Remember Traffic? Remember how kick ass it was? Remember how there were these three storylines and each had its own visual style and then they would overlap and such. Well, Syriana is just like that only less-so and more-so. It isn't as visually fascinating, but the storylines are there in spades. Just good luck trying to figure out what the hell Jeffrey Wright is suppose to be doing. That being said, when the film comes to a close you'll be pretty confident that something shady was going on, even if you can't pinpoint what it is.
The performances are top-notch, and the maze of a script... well, WOW.
What is Recoil rating? THREE AND 1/2 STARS! (bitch.)
And finally, I'm collecting your pics from NO SHAVE NOVEMBER. Send them to stuffboy@mac.com and I'll repost them on this blog in a convenient collage.
0 Comments
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Shit vs. Crap
Friday, December 02, 2005
Mystery Solved
posted by RICK : 1:34 PM
Remember a few weeks back when I was trying to figure out what song was playing in The Matador trailer? Well, the mystery is solved, and it was WAYYYY too obvious. The track came on while I was at the bar last night, causing me to run to the jukebox to find out what it was, only to have it answered for me the second the lyrics kicked in.
Behold:
PsychoKiller.mp3 [5.0mb]
C'mon Nelly should have had that one...
0 Comments
Missed Connections
Thursday, December 01, 2005
The Artform That Is The Setlist
Welcome to "What Is Recoil?." If you would like to post something on this blog, but don't have a WIR-Blogger login, then send me an e-mail, and I'll make it happen. SHAZAM!
-Rick
(co-creator)
Rick |
Dynamarx |
rus-trick |
ryan |
The Potato |
JDM |
DrNewsie |
Mr. MS |
AK |
Brooke |
Stein |
Moses |
G |
CarrieOkie |
Jen |
Duhn |
M. Moore | Laura |
Mr.T |
kat |
abby | Greg
09/2005 | 10/2005 | 11/2005 | 12/2005 | 01/2006 | 02/2006 | 03/2006 | 04/2006 | 05/2006 | 06/2006 | 07/2006 | 08/2006 | 09/2006 | 10/2006 | 11/2006 | 12/2006 | 01/2007 | 02/2007 | 03/2007 |
Posting for Postsake.
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Just Call Me Erin Brockovich
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
The Maxx!
posted by RICK : 5:45 PM
I had the great pleasure of watching the MTV series "The Maxx" this afternoon in its entirety. For those of you who were not alive in the spring of 1995, or were doing homework or something generally productive instead of watching hours upon hours of MTV, "The Maxx" was a series of 13 15-minute cartoons featured in the "MTV Oddities" block of programming. It was about a giant purple monster/man/super-hero and his friend the "alterna-hot" Julie. While watching the show this morning several things came to mind.
"The Maxx" is heavy. The show is based almost panel for panel on the comic-book series of same name. I've read a bit of the comic and found it quite good, but the tv show was able to find that unique balance between a static, layered, narrative found on the page and the non-stop fluidity of the screen. Regardless, "The Maxx" is some of the most interesting animation you will see anywhere. Its interesting for the same reason really good anime is interesting, and that being the creators had to create movement and action without spending money (i.e. without actually moving a lot of the images). The drawings are as complex as the plot, which, is shockingly dense for a show that aired on MTV in primetime. And really, that's where a lot of the magic from watching "The Maxx" today comes from. The series is pre-9/11-post-feminist-90s existentialism (yeah, that's what I said). It calls back to a particular time in American history where talking about why we're generally unhappy was a national pastime. In '95 there was hardly anything revolutionary about this subject matter, but looking back it seems moderately profound, despite its obvious pretentions. It also brings to mind a type of consciousness that has become a thing of the past. In the current climate, and really, for the foreseeable future, our media has lost a lot of its introspection. And rightly so, I suppose. Its hard to discuss traumatic childhoods with a straight face while people are being blown up all over the globe, but in a pre-Clinton-blow-job society that was JUST on the brink of economic recovery such public insights were a dime a dozen.
I think what's tragic about all of this is how my generation more or less destroyed (for better or worse) pretentious-coffee-house-art. "The Maxx" aired in 1995. Around this time on MTV they were also airing other crazy and noble cartoons: Aeon Flux, Beavis and Butthead, The Head. And let us not forget that the first three seasons of "The Real World" were as much about race, abortion, AIDS and politics as they were about sex, hot people, and whether or not David should have been kicked out of the house for pulling the blanket off Tammi ("It wasn't, NOT, funny!"). But then we had to go and screw it all up by falling in love with TRL and boy bands and general excess. As the dollar signs slowly crushed grunge culture, MTV shifted quite drastically from a network where the programming suits would throw stuff against it and see what sticks to the hyper-slick, reality-crossover-talking-heads-on-fire monolith that it currently is. And maybe I'm being melodramatic, but a lot of good art was destroyed in the process. Of course we'd never know. Maybe the minds behind all of these radical comics and television shows would have dried up as soon as they signed the big contract, but maybe not.
Either way, "The Maxx" is worth taking a look at.
0 Comments
CAN stop a train
posted by RICK : 1:09 AM
I don't know if this news carries much further than the 5 boroughs, but its been claiming much of the news real estate at work: unless a deal is OKed by this Thursday at midnight, New York City will be in the midst of its first TRANSIT STRIKE since 1980. The thing is, a strike is incredibly unlikely. That being said, part of me wants to see it happen. Maybe its easy for me to say this as I'm flying back to Omaha on the 20th and will only have to deal with no public transportation for 4 days and it'll be a cool story to tell. However, the closer we get to the deadline, the more and more I think to myself, "Rick, do you REALLY want to have to walk to work? You do realize that cold weather and an especially large bridge are involved, right?"
Can you imagine? No trains. No busses. Sounds like the logline for a Roland Emmerich movie.
Developing...
0 Comments
Sunday, December 11, 2005
because comments are hard
It's Indie Rock 'N' Roll For Me
Obsessive-Compulsive Media-Freak: me.
posted by RICK : 12:07 PM
Like any all-American media junkie, I love DVDs. Especially TV on DVD. BUT ESPECIALLY, I like how TV DVDs look when they're placed next to each other on a shelf. I like how each season of a show typically has a similar package design but maybe with different colors. When distributors change the package design I find it mildly irritating because my shelf no longer feels whole. Example: Strangers With Candy seasons 1 and 2 both had near identical packages: fold out cases inside a cardboard sleeve. Well when season 3 was finally released they switched to DVD slim-cases inside a cardboard sleeve, making the case about an eighth of an inch bigger than its predecessors. This really pissed me off, and if I hadn't been such a huge fan of the show it may (MAY) have kept me from buying it.
Last August, Fox released The Simpsons season 6. I had purchased seasons 3, 4 and 5 and LOVED the way they looked on my shelf (as for the actual DVDs, well the replay value is a bit diminished when the show is on television 4 times a day). But when season 6 came out, they abandoned the thick, colorful, fold-out cases and went with these ugly, three-dimensional "Simpson heads." Wha-what?! I can't stack that in a row! Those demand to be displayed individually, but then what about the previous seasons? Where's the continuity?
So I sold seasons 3, 4, and 5 and gave up the collection. Like I mentioned, I wasn't going to watch these that often anyway. But damn they looked good.
Today I get the Sunday paper and flip through the Best Buy Ad and what do they advertise? TWO versions of Simpsons 7: One with a crazy 3-D Marge-Head, and one with a classy fold-out purple box. DAMN, that sucks.
0 Comments
Friday, December 09, 2005
Renter's Insurance.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Can't Stop a Train...*
posted by RICK : 9:39 PM
Today, I missed no fewer than 4 subways by a matter of seconds. This sucks. It doesn't suck in the global sense becaue there's always another train 3-8 minutes away. But it seems to have a metaphorical effect on me, and I would guess, many people. It should be noted, however, that this isn't a New York City-specific phenomenon. This happens to everyone in some form or another. You know your own "missed subway." But, for people in New York there just happens to be a lot of trains around, so we'll go with that. Let me explain:
Every day I that I have to go to work, I have to take a train to get there. When I reach the platform, on a normal day I'll look down the track and see a train not too far away. On a fantastic day (yesterday) I reach the platform and a train is just coming to a stop. On a depressing day, as you might have guessed, the trains doors close just as you reach the top (or bottom) of the steps. At this point in time all you can do is stare at the soon-empty train platform and think, "What could I have done in my life to have caught this train?" And the answer is usually plain as day. You could have listened to one fewer song before heading out the door. You could have opted to check your email at work and not at home. You stood motionless for too long in the shower. There are myriad things that could have been done that would have made you arrive at the train platform seconds earlier, and thus caught the train.
But these are fleeting thoughts. The real issues you start to deal with come moments later when you get over the fact that you aren't sitting on a heated subway seat but instead freezing your ass off in the wind. These issues come about when you're left with nothing but your devices, waiting for another train to come and realizing that maybe it wasn't just the subway you had missed. You start going back through your life. Why am I standing here in the cold? What went wrong? Is this the line of work I really thought I'd be doing? What happened to those big ideas I had when I was a teenager. I thought I was going to go out there, in life, and fucking conquer something. Now, I'm standing in the bitter cold, with wet hair, waiting for life to pick me back up.
It's depressing.
Luckily, another train will come along. You get in and since you had the time, you were able to walk to the part of the platform where you know you'll be able to get a seat. It's cold, but its sunny outside, and as you ride over the bridge you treat yourself to an article in GQ about a celebrity or some such nonsense while enjoying the heat coming from right below the bench you're sitting on. Life isn't that torturous and the decisions you made in the past aren't as permanent as they may seem. There's still a future. There always is.
And you pull into the station to make your transfer feeling damn good.
But then you walk down the stairs only to be greeted by the F train pulling out of the station.
Motherfuckers!
Anyway, that was my day in a nutshell. Was it yours?
Now, enjoy this quite humorous essay by Chuck Klosterman on why he enjoys wathing the LA Lakers.
*Coulter sorry for stealing your title technique.
0 Comments
Tuesday's Office
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
"Check out banner, Michael!"
No Shave November: first wave.
posted by RICK : 12:26 PM
Here are the highlights of the first annual No Shave November: New York 1 chapter. You'll notice how different people interpreted the rules in different ways, and how nature interpreted the individual. Also, if you want to get your pictures in, don't forget to mail them to me and I'll post'em ASAP. (Also, pictures of hilarious post-shave facial patterns are greatly appreciated)
0 Comments
Time to join the 21st century...
Monday, December 05, 2005
New Nellie
posted by RICK : 2:10 AM
Treat yourself. I have.
TheBigOne.mp3 [5.7mb]
In other, non-pirated news, Slate ran a great "revisionist" story on the most significant piece of comic-art maybe ever, but definitely of the past 20 years.
Syriana
The NY1 movie-club decided to check out the HOT NEW political thriller "Syriana" this past Thursday. The film, in a word, is almost helplessly confusing. Remember Traffic? Remember how kick ass it was? Remember how there were these three storylines and each had its own visual style and then they would overlap and such. Well, Syriana is just like that only less-so and more-so. It isn't as visually fascinating, but the storylines are there in spades. Just good luck trying to figure out what the hell Jeffrey Wright is suppose to be doing. That being said, when the film comes to a close you'll be pretty confident that something shady was going on, even if you can't pinpoint what it is.
The performances are top-notch, and the maze of a script... well, WOW.
What is Recoil rating? THREE AND 1/2 STARS! (bitch.)
And finally, I'm collecting your pics from NO SHAVE NOVEMBER. Send them to stuffboy@mac.com and I'll repost them on this blog in a convenient collage.
0 Comments
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Shit vs. Crap
Friday, December 02, 2005
Mystery Solved
posted by RICK : 1:34 PM
Remember a few weeks back when I was trying to figure out what song was playing in The Matador trailer? Well, the mystery is solved, and it was WAYYYY too obvious. The track came on while I was at the bar last night, causing me to run to the jukebox to find out what it was, only to have it answered for me the second the lyrics kicked in.
Behold:
PsychoKiller.mp3 [5.0mb]
C'mon Nelly should have had that one...
0 Comments
Missed Connections
Thursday, December 01, 2005
The Artform That Is The Setlist
Welcome to "What Is Recoil?." If you would like to post something on this blog, but don't have a WIR-Blogger login, then send me an e-mail, and I'll make it happen. SHAZAM!
-Rick
(co-creator)
Rick |
Dynamarx |
rus-trick |
ryan |
The Potato |
JDM |
DrNewsie |
Mr. MS |
AK |
Brooke |
Stein |
Moses |
G |
CarrieOkie |
Jen |
Duhn |
M. Moore | Laura |
Mr.T |
kat |
abby | Greg
09/2005 | 10/2005 | 11/2005 | 12/2005 | 01/2006 | 02/2006 | 03/2006 | 04/2006 | 05/2006 | 06/2006 | 07/2006 | 08/2006 | 09/2006 | 10/2006 | 11/2006 | 12/2006 | 01/2007 | 02/2007 | 03/2007 |
Just Call Me Erin Brockovich
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
The Maxx!
posted by RICK : 5:45 PM
I had the great pleasure of watching the MTV series "The Maxx" this afternoon in its entirety. For those of you who were not alive in the spring of 1995, or were doing homework or something generally productive instead of watching hours upon hours of MTV, "The Maxx" was a series of 13 15-minute cartoons featured in the "MTV Oddities" block of programming. It was about a giant purple monster/man/super-hero and his friend the "alterna-hot" Julie. While watching the show this morning several things came to mind.
"The Maxx" is heavy. The show is based almost panel for panel on the comic-book series of same name. I've read a bit of the comic and found it quite good, but the tv show was able to find that unique balance between a static, layered, narrative found on the page and the non-stop fluidity of the screen. Regardless, "The Maxx" is some of the most interesting animation you will see anywhere. Its interesting for the same reason really good anime is interesting, and that being the creators had to create movement and action without spending money (i.e. without actually moving a lot of the images). The drawings are as complex as the plot, which, is shockingly dense for a show that aired on MTV in primetime. And really, that's where a lot of the magic from watching "The Maxx" today comes from. The series is pre-9/11-post-feminist-90s existentialism (yeah, that's what I said). It calls back to a particular time in American history where talking about why we're generally unhappy was a national pastime. In '95 there was hardly anything revolutionary about this subject matter, but looking back it seems moderately profound, despite its obvious pretentions. It also brings to mind a type of consciousness that has become a thing of the past. In the current climate, and really, for the foreseeable future, our media has lost a lot of its introspection. And rightly so, I suppose. Its hard to discuss traumatic childhoods with a straight face while people are being blown up all over the globe, but in a pre-Clinton-blow-job society that was JUST on the brink of economic recovery such public insights were a dime a dozen.
I think what's tragic about all of this is how my generation more or less destroyed (for better or worse) pretentious-coffee-house-art. "The Maxx" aired in 1995. Around this time on MTV they were also airing other crazy and noble cartoons: Aeon Flux, Beavis and Butthead, The Head. And let us not forget that the first three seasons of "The Real World" were as much about race, abortion, AIDS and politics as they were about sex, hot people, and whether or not David should have been kicked out of the house for pulling the blanket off Tammi ("It wasn't, NOT, funny!"). But then we had to go and screw it all up by falling in love with TRL and boy bands and general excess. As the dollar signs slowly crushed grunge culture, MTV shifted quite drastically from a network where the programming suits would throw stuff against it and see what sticks to the hyper-slick, reality-crossover-talking-heads-on-fire monolith that it currently is. And maybe I'm being melodramatic, but a lot of good art was destroyed in the process. Of course we'd never know. Maybe the minds behind all of these radical comics and television shows would have dried up as soon as they signed the big contract, but maybe not.
Either way, "The Maxx" is worth taking a look at.
0 Comments
CAN stop a train
posted by RICK : 1:09 AM
I don't know if this news carries much further than the 5 boroughs, but its been claiming much of the news real estate at work: unless a deal is OKed by this Thursday at midnight, New York City will be in the midst of its first TRANSIT STRIKE since 1980. The thing is, a strike is incredibly unlikely. That being said, part of me wants to see it happen. Maybe its easy for me to say this as I'm flying back to Omaha on the 20th and will only have to deal with no public transportation for 4 days and it'll be a cool story to tell. However, the closer we get to the deadline, the more and more I think to myself, "Rick, do you REALLY want to have to walk to work? You do realize that cold weather and an especially large bridge are involved, right?"
Can you imagine? No trains. No busses. Sounds like the logline for a Roland Emmerich movie.
Developing...
0 Comments
Sunday, December 11, 2005
because comments are hard
It's Indie Rock 'N' Roll For Me
Obsessive-Compulsive Media-Freak: me.
posted by RICK : 12:07 PM
Like any all-American media junkie, I love DVDs. Especially TV on DVD. BUT ESPECIALLY, I like how TV DVDs look when they're placed next to each other on a shelf. I like how each season of a show typically has a similar package design but maybe with different colors. When distributors change the package design I find it mildly irritating because my shelf no longer feels whole. Example: Strangers With Candy seasons 1 and 2 both had near identical packages: fold out cases inside a cardboard sleeve. Well when season 3 was finally released they switched to DVD slim-cases inside a cardboard sleeve, making the case about an eighth of an inch bigger than its predecessors. This really pissed me off, and if I hadn't been such a huge fan of the show it may (MAY) have kept me from buying it.
Last August, Fox released The Simpsons season 6. I had purchased seasons 3, 4 and 5 and LOVED the way they looked on my shelf (as for the actual DVDs, well the replay value is a bit diminished when the show is on television 4 times a day). But when season 6 came out, they abandoned the thick, colorful, fold-out cases and went with these ugly, three-dimensional "Simpson heads." Wha-what?! I can't stack that in a row! Those demand to be displayed individually, but then what about the previous seasons? Where's the continuity?
So I sold seasons 3, 4, and 5 and gave up the collection. Like I mentioned, I wasn't going to watch these that often anyway. But damn they looked good.
Today I get the Sunday paper and flip through the Best Buy Ad and what do they advertise? TWO versions of Simpsons 7: One with a crazy 3-D Marge-Head, and one with a classy fold-out purple box. DAMN, that sucks.
0 Comments
Friday, December 09, 2005
Renter's Insurance.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Can't Stop a Train...*
posted by RICK : 9:39 PM
Today, I missed no fewer than 4 subways by a matter of seconds. This sucks. It doesn't suck in the global sense becaue there's always another train 3-8 minutes away. But it seems to have a metaphorical effect on me, and I would guess, many people. It should be noted, however, that this isn't a New York City-specific phenomenon. This happens to everyone in some form or another. You know your own "missed subway." But, for people in New York there just happens to be a lot of trains around, so we'll go with that. Let me explain:
Every day I that I have to go to work, I have to take a train to get there. When I reach the platform, on a normal day I'll look down the track and see a train not too far away. On a fantastic day (yesterday) I reach the platform and a train is just coming to a stop. On a depressing day, as you might have guessed, the trains doors close just as you reach the top (or bottom) of the steps. At this point in time all you can do is stare at the soon-empty train platform and think, "What could I have done in my life to have caught this train?" And the answer is usually plain as day. You could have listened to one fewer song before heading out the door. You could have opted to check your email at work and not at home. You stood motionless for too long in the shower. There are myriad things that could have been done that would have made you arrive at the train platform seconds earlier, and thus caught the train.
But these are fleeting thoughts. The real issues you start to deal with come moments later when you get over the fact that you aren't sitting on a heated subway seat but instead freezing your ass off in the wind. These issues come about when you're left with nothing but your devices, waiting for another train to come and realizing that maybe it wasn't just the subway you had missed. You start going back through your life. Why am I standing here in the cold? What went wrong? Is this the line of work I really thought I'd be doing? What happened to those big ideas I had when I was a teenager. I thought I was going to go out there, in life, and fucking conquer something. Now, I'm standing in the bitter cold, with wet hair, waiting for life to pick me back up.
It's depressing.
Luckily, another train will come along. You get in and since you had the time, you were able to walk to the part of the platform where you know you'll be able to get a seat. It's cold, but its sunny outside, and as you ride over the bridge you treat yourself to an article in GQ about a celebrity or some such nonsense while enjoying the heat coming from right below the bench you're sitting on. Life isn't that torturous and the decisions you made in the past aren't as permanent as they may seem. There's still a future. There always is.
And you pull into the station to make your transfer feeling damn good.
But then you walk down the stairs only to be greeted by the F train pulling out of the station.
Motherfuckers!
Anyway, that was my day in a nutshell. Was it yours?
Now, enjoy this quite humorous essay by Chuck Klosterman on why he enjoys wathing the LA Lakers.
*Coulter sorry for stealing your title technique.
0 Comments
Tuesday's Office
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
"Check out banner, Michael!"
No Shave November: first wave.
posted by RICK : 12:26 PM
Here are the highlights of the first annual No Shave November: New York 1 chapter. You'll notice how different people interpreted the rules in different ways, and how nature interpreted the individual. Also, if you want to get your pictures in, don't forget to mail them to me and I'll post'em ASAP. (Also, pictures of hilarious post-shave facial patterns are greatly appreciated)
0 Comments
Time to join the 21st century...
Monday, December 05, 2005
New Nellie
posted by RICK : 2:10 AM
Treat yourself. I have.
TheBigOne.mp3 [5.7mb]
In other, non-pirated news, Slate ran a great "revisionist" story on the most significant piece of comic-art maybe ever, but definitely of the past 20 years.
Syriana
The NY1 movie-club decided to check out the HOT NEW political thriller "Syriana" this past Thursday. The film, in a word, is almost helplessly confusing. Remember Traffic? Remember how kick ass it was? Remember how there were these three storylines and each had its own visual style and then they would overlap and such. Well, Syriana is just like that only less-so and more-so. It isn't as visually fascinating, but the storylines are there in spades. Just good luck trying to figure out what the hell Jeffrey Wright is suppose to be doing. That being said, when the film comes to a close you'll be pretty confident that something shady was going on, even if you can't pinpoint what it is.
The performances are top-notch, and the maze of a script... well, WOW.
What is Recoil rating? THREE AND 1/2 STARS! (bitch.)
And finally, I'm collecting your pics from NO SHAVE NOVEMBER. Send them to stuffboy@mac.com and I'll repost them on this blog in a convenient collage.
0 Comments
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Shit vs. Crap
Friday, December 02, 2005
Mystery Solved
posted by RICK : 1:34 PM
Remember a few weeks back when I was trying to figure out what song was playing in The Matador trailer? Well, the mystery is solved, and it was WAYYYY too obvious. The track came on while I was at the bar last night, causing me to run to the jukebox to find out what it was, only to have it answered for me the second the lyrics kicked in.
Behold:
PsychoKiller.mp3 [5.0mb]
C'mon Nelly should have had that one...
0 Comments
Missed Connections
Thursday, December 01, 2005
The Artform That Is The Setlist
Welcome to "What Is Recoil?." If you would like to post something on this blog, but don't have a WIR-Blogger login, then send me an e-mail, and I'll make it happen. SHAZAM!
-Rick
(co-creator)
Rick |
Dynamarx |
rus-trick |
ryan |
The Potato |
JDM |
DrNewsie |
Mr. MS |
AK |
Brooke |
Stein |
Moses |
G |
CarrieOkie |
Jen |
Duhn |
M. Moore | Laura |
Mr.T |
kat |
abby | Greg
09/2005 | 10/2005 | 11/2005 | 12/2005 | 01/2006 | 02/2006 | 03/2006 | 04/2006 | 05/2006 | 06/2006 | 07/2006 | 08/2006 | 09/2006 | 10/2006 | 11/2006 | 12/2006 | 01/2007 | 02/2007 | 03/2007 |
The Maxx!
posted by RICK : 5:45 PM
I had the great pleasure of watching the MTV series "The Maxx" this afternoon in its entirety. For those of you who were not alive in the spring of 1995, or were doing homework or something generally productive instead of watching hours upon hours of MTV, "The Maxx" was a series of 13 15-minute cartoons featured in the "MTV Oddities" block of programming. It was about a giant purple monster/man/super-hero and his friend the "alterna-hot" Julie. While watching the show this morning several things came to mind.
"The Maxx" is heavy. The show is based almost panel for panel on the comic-book series of same name. I've read a bit of the comic and found it quite good, but the tv show was able to find that unique balance between a static, layered, narrative found on the page and the non-stop fluidity of the screen. Regardless, "The Maxx" is some of the most interesting animation you will see anywhere. Its interesting for the same reason really good anime is interesting, and that being the creators had to create movement and action without spending money (i.e. without actually moving a lot of the images). The drawings are as complex as the plot, which, is shockingly dense for a show that aired on MTV in primetime. And really, that's where a lot of the magic from watching "The Maxx" today comes from. The series is pre-9/11-post-feminist-90s existentialism (yeah, that's what I said). It calls back to a particular time in American history where talking about why we're generally unhappy was a national pastime. In '95 there was hardly anything revolutionary about this subject matter, but looking back it seems moderately profound, despite its obvious pretentions. It also brings to mind a type of consciousness that has become a thing of the past. In the current climate, and really, for the foreseeable future, our media has lost a lot of its introspection. And rightly so, I suppose. Its hard to discuss traumatic childhoods with a straight face while people are being blown up all over the globe, but in a pre-Clinton-blow-job society that was JUST on the brink of economic recovery such public insights were a dime a dozen.
I think what's tragic about all of this is how my generation more or less destroyed (for better or worse) pretentious-coffee-house-art. "The Maxx" aired in 1995. Around this time on MTV they were also airing other crazy and noble cartoons: Aeon Flux, Beavis and Butthead, The Head. And let us not forget that the first three seasons of "The Real World" were as much about race, abortion, AIDS and politics as they were about sex, hot people, and whether or not David should have been kicked out of the house for pulling the blanket off Tammi ("It wasn't, NOT, funny!"). But then we had to go and screw it all up by falling in love with TRL and boy bands and general excess. As the dollar signs slowly crushed grunge culture, MTV shifted quite drastically from a network where the programming suits would throw stuff against it and see what sticks to the hyper-slick, reality-crossover-talking-heads-on-fire monolith that it currently is. And maybe I'm being melodramatic, but a lot of good art was destroyed in the process. Of course we'd never know. Maybe the minds behind all of these radical comics and television shows would have dried up as soon as they signed the big contract, but maybe not.
Either way, "The Maxx" is worth taking a look at.
0 Comments
CAN stop a train
posted by RICK : 1:09 AM
I don't know if this news carries much further than the 5 boroughs, but its been claiming much of the news real estate at work: unless a deal is OKed by this Thursday at midnight, New York City will be in the midst of its first TRANSIT STRIKE since 1980. The thing is, a strike is incredibly unlikely. That being said, part of me wants to see it happen. Maybe its easy for me to say this as I'm flying back to Omaha on the 20th and will only have to deal with no public transportation for 4 days and it'll be a cool story to tell. However, the closer we get to the deadline, the more and more I think to myself, "Rick, do you REALLY want to have to walk to work? You do realize that cold weather and an especially large bridge are involved, right?"
Can you imagine? No trains. No busses. Sounds like the logline for a Roland Emmerich movie.
Developing...
0 Comments
Sunday, December 11, 2005
because comments are hard
It's Indie Rock 'N' Roll For Me
Obsessive-Compulsive Media-Freak: me.
posted by RICK : 12:07 PM
Like any all-American media junkie, I love DVDs. Especially TV on DVD. BUT ESPECIALLY, I like how TV DVDs look when they're placed next to each other on a shelf. I like how each season of a show typically has a similar package design but maybe with different colors. When distributors change the package design I find it mildly irritating because my shelf no longer feels whole. Example: Strangers With Candy seasons 1 and 2 both had near identical packages: fold out cases inside a cardboard sleeve. Well when season 3 was finally released they switched to DVD slim-cases inside a cardboard sleeve, making the case about an eighth of an inch bigger than its predecessors. This really pissed me off, and if I hadn't been such a huge fan of the show it may (MAY) have kept me from buying it.
Last August, Fox released The Simpsons season 6. I had purchased seasons 3, 4 and 5 and LOVED the way they looked on my shelf (as for the actual DVDs, well the replay value is a bit diminished when the show is on television 4 times a day). But when season 6 came out, they abandoned the thick, colorful, fold-out cases and went with these ugly, three-dimensional "Simpson heads." Wha-what?! I can't stack that in a row! Those demand to be displayed individually, but then what about the previous seasons? Where's the continuity?
So I sold seasons 3, 4, and 5 and gave up the collection. Like I mentioned, I wasn't going to watch these that often anyway. But damn they looked good.
Today I get the Sunday paper and flip through the Best Buy Ad and what do they advertise? TWO versions of Simpsons 7: One with a crazy 3-D Marge-Head, and one with a classy fold-out purple box. DAMN, that sucks.
0 Comments
Friday, December 09, 2005
Renter's Insurance.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Can't Stop a Train...*
posted by RICK : 9:39 PM
Today, I missed no fewer than 4 subways by a matter of seconds. This sucks. It doesn't suck in the global sense becaue there's always another train 3-8 minutes away. But it seems to have a metaphorical effect on me, and I would guess, many people. It should be noted, however, that this isn't a New York City-specific phenomenon. This happens to everyone in some form or another. You know your own "missed subway." But, for people in New York there just happens to be a lot of trains around, so we'll go with that. Let me explain:
Every day I that I have to go to work, I have to take a train to get there. When I reach the platform, on a normal day I'll look down the track and see a train not too far away. On a fantastic day (yesterday) I reach the platform and a train is just coming to a stop. On a depressing day, as you might have guessed, the trains doors close just as you reach the top (or bottom) of the steps. At this point in time all you can do is stare at the soon-empty train platform and think, "What could I have done in my life to have caught this train?" And the answer is usually plain as day. You could have listened to one fewer song before heading out the door. You could have opted to check your email at work and not at home. You stood motionless for too long in the shower. There are myriad things that could have been done that would have made you arrive at the train platform seconds earlier, and thus caught the train.
But these are fleeting thoughts. The real issues you start to deal with come moments later when you get over the fact that you aren't sitting on a heated subway seat but instead freezing your ass off in the wind. These issues come about when you're left with nothing but your devices, waiting for another train to come and realizing that maybe it wasn't just the subway you had missed. You start going back through your life. Why am I standing here in the cold? What went wrong? Is this the line of work I really thought I'd be doing? What happened to those big ideas I had when I was a teenager. I thought I was going to go out there, in life, and fucking conquer something. Now, I'm standing in the bitter cold, with wet hair, waiting for life to pick me back up.
It's depressing.
Luckily, another train will come along. You get in and since you had the time, you were able to walk to the part of the platform where you know you'll be able to get a seat. It's cold, but its sunny outside, and as you ride over the bridge you treat yourself to an article in GQ about a celebrity or some such nonsense while enjoying the heat coming from right below the bench you're sitting on. Life isn't that torturous and the decisions you made in the past aren't as permanent as they may seem. There's still a future. There always is.
And you pull into the station to make your transfer feeling damn good.
But then you walk down the stairs only to be greeted by the F train pulling out of the station.
Motherfuckers!
Anyway, that was my day in a nutshell. Was it yours?
Now, enjoy this quite humorous essay by Chuck Klosterman on why he enjoys wathing the LA Lakers.
*Coulter sorry for stealing your title technique.
0 Comments
Tuesday's Office
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
"Check out banner, Michael!"
No Shave November: first wave.
posted by RICK : 12:26 PM
Here are the highlights of the first annual No Shave November: New York 1 chapter. You'll notice how different people interpreted the rules in different ways, and how nature interpreted the individual. Also, if you want to get your pictures in, don't forget to mail them to me and I'll post'em ASAP. (Also, pictures of hilarious post-shave facial patterns are greatly appreciated)
0 Comments
Time to join the 21st century...
Monday, December 05, 2005
New Nellie
posted by RICK : 2:10 AM
Treat yourself. I have.
TheBigOne.mp3 [5.7mb]
In other, non-pirated news, Slate ran a great "revisionist" story on the most significant piece of comic-art maybe ever, but definitely of the past 20 years.
Syriana
The NY1 movie-club decided to check out the HOT NEW political thriller "Syriana" this past Thursday. The film, in a word, is almost helplessly confusing. Remember Traffic? Remember how kick ass it was? Remember how there were these three storylines and each had its own visual style and then they would overlap and such. Well, Syriana is just like that only less-so and more-so. It isn't as visually fascinating, but the storylines are there in spades. Just good luck trying to figure out what the hell Jeffrey Wright is suppose to be doing. That being said, when the film comes to a close you'll be pretty confident that something shady was going on, even if you can't pinpoint what it is.
The performances are top-notch, and the maze of a script... well, WOW.
What is Recoil rating? THREE AND 1/2 STARS! (bitch.)
And finally, I'm collecting your pics from NO SHAVE NOVEMBER. Send them to stuffboy@mac.com and I'll repost them on this blog in a convenient collage.
0 Comments
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Shit vs. Crap
Friday, December 02, 2005
Mystery Solved
posted by RICK : 1:34 PM
Remember a few weeks back when I was trying to figure out what song was playing in The Matador trailer? Well, the mystery is solved, and it was WAYYYY too obvious. The track came on while I was at the bar last night, causing me to run to the jukebox to find out what it was, only to have it answered for me the second the lyrics kicked in.
Behold:
PsychoKiller.mp3 [5.0mb]
C'mon Nelly should have had that one...
0 Comments
Missed Connections
Thursday, December 01, 2005
The Artform That Is The Setlist
Welcome to "What Is Recoil?." If you would like to post something on this blog, but don't have a WIR-Blogger login, then send me an e-mail, and I'll make it happen. SHAZAM!
-Rick
(co-creator)
Rick |
Dynamarx |
rus-trick |
ryan |
The Potato |
JDM |
DrNewsie |
Mr. MS |
AK |
Brooke |
Stein |
Moses |
G |
CarrieOkie |
Jen |
Duhn |
M. Moore | Laura |
Mr.T |
kat |
abby | Greg
09/2005 | 10/2005 | 11/2005 | 12/2005 | 01/2006 | 02/2006 | 03/2006 | 04/2006 | 05/2006 | 06/2006 | 07/2006 | 08/2006 | 09/2006 | 10/2006 | 11/2006 | 12/2006 | 01/2007 | 02/2007 | 03/2007 |
I had the great pleasure of watching the MTV series "The Maxx" this afternoon in its entirety. For those of you who were not alive in the spring of 1995, or were doing homework or something generally productive instead of watching hours upon hours of MTV, "The Maxx" was a series of 13 15-minute cartoons featured in the "MTV Oddities" block of programming. It was about a giant purple monster/man/super-hero and his friend the "alterna-hot" Julie. While watching the show this morning several things came to mind."The Maxx" is heavy. The show is based almost panel for panel on the comic-book series of same name. I've read a bit of the comic and found it quite good, but the tv show was able to find that unique balance between a static, layered, narrative found on the page and the non-stop fluidity of the screen. Regardless, "The Maxx" is some of the most interesting animation you will see anywhere. Its interesting for the same reason really good anime is interesting, and that being the creators had to create movement and action without spending money (i.e. without actually moving a lot of the images). The drawings are as complex as the plot, which, is shockingly dense for a show that aired on MTV in primetime. And really, that's where a lot of the magic from watching "The Maxx" today comes from. The series is pre-9/11-post-feminist-90s existentialism (yeah, that's what I said). It calls back to a particular time in American history where talking about why we're generally unhappy was a national pastime. In '95 there was hardly anything revolutionary about this subject matter, but looking back it seems moderately profound, despite its obvious pretentions. It also brings to mind a type of consciousness that has become a thing of the past. In the current climate, and really, for the foreseeable future, our media has lost a lot of its introspection. And rightly so, I suppose. Its hard to discuss traumatic childhoods with a straight face while people are being blown up all over the globe, but in a pre-Clinton-blow-job society that was JUST on the brink of economic recovery such public insights were a dime a dozen.
I think what's tragic about all of this is how my generation more or less destroyed (for better or worse) pretentious-coffee-house-art. "The Maxx" aired in 1995. Around this time on MTV they were also airing other crazy and noble cartoons: Aeon Flux, Beavis and Butthead, The Head. And let us not forget that the first three seasons of "The Real World" were as much about race, abortion, AIDS and politics as they were about sex, hot people, and whether or not David should have been kicked out of the house for pulling the blanket off Tammi ("It wasn't, NOT, funny!"). But then we had to go and screw it all up by falling in love with TRL and boy bands and general excess. As the dollar signs slowly crushed grunge culture, MTV shifted quite drastically from a network where the programming suits would throw stuff against it and see what sticks to the hyper-slick, reality-crossover-talking-heads-on-fire monolith that it currently is. And maybe I'm being melodramatic, but a lot of good art was destroyed in the process. Of course we'd never know. Maybe the minds behind all of these radical comics and television shows would have dried up as soon as they signed the big contract, but maybe not.
Either way, "The Maxx" is worth taking a look at.
0 Comments
CAN stop a train
posted by RICK : 1:09 AM
I don't know if this news carries much further than the 5 boroughs, but its been claiming much of the news real estate at work: unless a deal is OKed by this Thursday at midnight, New York City will be in the midst of its first TRANSIT STRIKE since 1980. The thing is, a strike is incredibly unlikely. That being said, part of me wants to see it happen. Maybe its easy for me to say this as I'm flying back to Omaha on the 20th and will only have to deal with no public transportation for 4 days and it'll be a cool story to tell. However, the closer we get to the deadline, the more and more I think to myself, "Rick, do you REALLY want to have to walk to work? You do realize that cold weather and an especially large bridge are involved, right?"
Can you imagine? No trains. No busses. Sounds like the logline for a Roland Emmerich movie.
Developing...
0 Comments
Sunday, December 11, 2005
because comments are hard
It's Indie Rock 'N' Roll For Me
Obsessive-Compulsive Media-Freak: me.
posted by RICK : 12:07 PM
Like any all-American media junkie, I love DVDs. Especially TV on DVD. BUT ESPECIALLY, I like how TV DVDs look when they're placed next to each other on a shelf. I like how each season of a show typically has a similar package design but maybe with different colors. When distributors change the package design I find it mildly irritating because my shelf no longer feels whole. Example: Strangers With Candy seasons 1 and 2 both had near identical packages: fold out cases inside a cardboard sleeve. Well when season 3 was finally released they switched to DVD slim-cases inside a cardboard sleeve, making the case about an eighth of an inch bigger than its predecessors. This really pissed me off, and if I hadn't been such a huge fan of the show it may (MAY) have kept me from buying it.
Last August, Fox released The Simpsons season 6. I had purchased seasons 3, 4 and 5 and LOVED the way they looked on my shelf (as for the actual DVDs, well the replay value is a bit diminished when the show is on television 4 times a day). But when season 6 came out, they abandoned the thick, colorful, fold-out cases and went with these ugly, three-dimensional "Simpson heads." Wha-what?! I can't stack that in a row! Those demand to be displayed individually, but then what about the previous seasons? Where's the continuity?
So I sold seasons 3, 4, and 5 and gave up the collection. Like I mentioned, I wasn't going to watch these that often anyway. But damn they looked good.
Today I get the Sunday paper and flip through the Best Buy Ad and what do they advertise? TWO versions of Simpsons 7: One with a crazy 3-D Marge-Head, and one with a classy fold-out purple box. DAMN, that sucks.
0 Comments
Friday, December 09, 2005
Renter's Insurance.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Can't Stop a Train...*
posted by RICK : 9:39 PM
Today, I missed no fewer than 4 subways by a matter of seconds. This sucks. It doesn't suck in the global sense becaue there's always another train 3-8 minutes away. But it seems to have a metaphorical effect on me, and I would guess, many people. It should be noted, however, that this isn't a New York City-specific phenomenon. This happens to everyone in some form or another. You know your own "missed subway." But, for people in New York there just happens to be a lot of trains around, so we'll go with that. Let me explain:
Every day I that I have to go to work, I have to take a train to get there. When I reach the platform, on a normal day I'll look down the track and see a train not too far away. On a fantastic day (yesterday) I reach the platform and a train is just coming to a stop. On a depressing day, as you might have guessed, the trains doors close just as you reach the top (or bottom) of the steps. At this point in time all you can do is stare at the soon-empty train platform and think, "What could I have done in my life to have caught this train?" And the answer is usually plain as day. You could have listened to one fewer song before heading out the door. You could have opted to check your email at work and not at home. You stood motionless for too long in the shower. There are myriad things that could have been done that would have made you arrive at the train platform seconds earlier, and thus caught the train.
But these are fleeting thoughts. The real issues you start to deal with come moments later when you get over the fact that you aren't sitting on a heated subway seat but instead freezing your ass off in the wind. These issues come about when you're left with nothing but your devices, waiting for another train to come and realizing that maybe it wasn't just the subway you had missed. You start going back through your life. Why am I standing here in the cold? What went wrong? Is this the line of work I really thought I'd be doing? What happened to those big ideas I had when I was a teenager. I thought I was going to go out there, in life, and fucking conquer something. Now, I'm standing in the bitter cold, with wet hair, waiting for life to pick me back up.
It's depressing.
Luckily, another train will come along. You get in and since you had the time, you were able to walk to the part of the platform where you know you'll be able to get a seat. It's cold, but its sunny outside, and as you ride over the bridge you treat yourself to an article in GQ about a celebrity or some such nonsense while enjoying the heat coming from right below the bench you're sitting on. Life isn't that torturous and the decisions you made in the past aren't as permanent as they may seem. There's still a future. There always is.
And you pull into the station to make your transfer feeling damn good.
But then you walk down the stairs only to be greeted by the F train pulling out of the station.
Motherfuckers!
Anyway, that was my day in a nutshell. Was it yours?
Now, enjoy this quite humorous essay by Chuck Klosterman on why he enjoys wathing the LA Lakers.
*Coulter sorry for stealing your title technique.
0 Comments
Tuesday's Office
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
"Check out banner, Michael!"
No Shave November: first wave.
posted by RICK : 12:26 PM
Here are the highlights of the first annual No Shave November: New York 1 chapter. You'll notice how different people interpreted the rules in different ways, and how nature interpreted the individual. Also, if you want to get your pictures in, don't forget to mail them to me and I'll post'em ASAP. (Also, pictures of hilarious post-shave facial patterns are greatly appreciated)
0 Comments
Time to join the 21st century...
Monday, December 05, 2005
New Nellie
posted by RICK : 2:10 AM
Treat yourself. I have.
TheBigOne.mp3 [5.7mb]
In other, non-pirated news, Slate ran a great "revisionist" story on the most significant piece of comic-art maybe ever, but definitely of the past 20 years.
Syriana
The NY1 movie-club decided to check out the HOT NEW political thriller "Syriana" this past Thursday. The film, in a word, is almost helplessly confusing. Remember Traffic? Remember how kick ass it was? Remember how there were these three storylines and each had its own visual style and then they would overlap and such. Well, Syriana is just like that only less-so and more-so. It isn't as visually fascinating, but the storylines are there in spades. Just good luck trying to figure out what the hell Jeffrey Wright is suppose to be doing. That being said, when the film comes to a close you'll be pretty confident that something shady was going on, even if you can't pinpoint what it is.
The performances are top-notch, and the maze of a script... well, WOW.
What is Recoil rating? THREE AND 1/2 STARS! (bitch.)
And finally, I'm collecting your pics from NO SHAVE NOVEMBER. Send them to stuffboy@mac.com and I'll repost them on this blog in a convenient collage.
0 Comments
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Shit vs. Crap
Friday, December 02, 2005
Mystery Solved
posted by RICK : 1:34 PM
Remember a few weeks back when I was trying to figure out what song was playing in The Matador trailer? Well, the mystery is solved, and it was WAYYYY too obvious. The track came on while I was at the bar last night, causing me to run to the jukebox to find out what it was, only to have it answered for me the second the lyrics kicked in.
Behold:
PsychoKiller.mp3 [5.0mb]
C'mon Nelly should have had that one...
0 Comments
Missed Connections
Thursday, December 01, 2005
The Artform That Is The Setlist
Welcome to "What Is Recoil?." If you would like to post something on this blog, but don't have a WIR-Blogger login, then send me an e-mail, and I'll make it happen. SHAZAM!
-Rick
(co-creator)
Rick |
Dynamarx |
rus-trick |
ryan |
The Potato |
JDM |
DrNewsie |
Mr. MS |
AK |
Brooke |
Stein |
Moses |
G |
CarrieOkie |
Jen |
Duhn |
M. Moore | Laura |
Mr.T |
kat |
abby | Greg
09/2005 | 10/2005 | 11/2005 | 12/2005 | 01/2006 | 02/2006 | 03/2006 | 04/2006 | 05/2006 | 06/2006 | 07/2006 | 08/2006 | 09/2006 | 10/2006 | 11/2006 | 12/2006 | 01/2007 | 02/2007 | 03/2007 |
I don't know if this news carries much further than the 5 boroughs, but its been claiming much of the news real estate at work: unless a deal is OKed by this Thursday at midnight, New York City will be in the midst of its first TRANSIT STRIKE since 1980. The thing is, a strike is incredibly unlikely. That being said, part of me wants to see it happen. Maybe its easy for me to say this as I'm flying back to Omaha on the 20th and will only have to deal with no public transportation for 4 days and it'll be a cool story to tell. However, the closer we get to the deadline, the more and more I think to myself, "Rick, do you REALLY want to have to walk to work? You do realize that cold weather and an especially large bridge are involved, right?"Can you imagine? No trains. No busses. Sounds like the logline for a Roland Emmerich movie.
Developing...
0 Comments
because comments are hard
It's Indie Rock 'N' Roll For Me
Obsessive-Compulsive Media-Freak: me.
posted by RICK : 12:07 PM
Like any all-American media junkie, I love DVDs. Especially TV on DVD. BUT ESPECIALLY, I like how TV DVDs look when they're placed next to each other on a shelf. I like how each season of a show typically has a similar package design but maybe with different colors. When distributors change the package design I find it mildly irritating because my shelf no longer feels whole. Example: Strangers With Candy seasons 1 and 2 both had near identical packages: fold out cases inside a cardboard sleeve. Well when season 3 was finally released they switched to DVD slim-cases inside a cardboard sleeve, making the case about an eighth of an inch bigger than its predecessors. This really pissed me off, and if I hadn't been such a huge fan of the show it may (MAY) have kept me from buying it.
Last August, Fox released The Simpsons season 6. I had purchased seasons 3, 4 and 5 and LOVED the way they looked on my shelf (as for the actual DVDs, well the replay value is a bit diminished when the show is on television 4 times a day). But when season 6 came out, they abandoned the thick, colorful, fold-out cases and went with these ugly, three-dimensional "Simpson heads." Wha-what?! I can't stack that in a row! Those demand to be displayed individually, but then what about the previous seasons? Where's the continuity?
So I sold seasons 3, 4, and 5 and gave up the collection. Like I mentioned, I wasn't going to watch these that often anyway. But damn they looked good.
Today I get the Sunday paper and flip through the Best Buy Ad and what do they advertise? TWO versions of Simpsons 7: One with a crazy 3-D Marge-Head, and one with a classy fold-out purple box. DAMN, that sucks.
0 Comments
Friday, December 09, 2005
Renter's Insurance.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Can't Stop a Train...*
posted by RICK : 9:39 PM
Today, I missed no fewer than 4 subways by a matter of seconds. This sucks. It doesn't suck in the global sense becaue there's always another train 3-8 minutes away. But it seems to have a metaphorical effect on me, and I would guess, many people. It should be noted, however, that this isn't a New York City-specific phenomenon. This happens to everyone in some form or another. You know your own "missed subway." But, for people in New York there just happens to be a lot of trains around, so we'll go with that. Let me explain:
Every day I that I have to go to work, I have to take a train to get there. When I reach the platform, on a normal day I'll look down the track and see a train not too far away. On a fantastic day (yesterday) I reach the platform and a train is just coming to a stop. On a depressing day, as you might have guessed, the trains doors close just as you reach the top (or bottom) of the steps. At this point in time all you can do is stare at the soon-empty train platform and think, "What could I have done in my life to have caught this train?" And the answer is usually plain as day. You could have listened to one fewer song before heading out the door. You could have opted to check your email at work and not at home. You stood motionless for too long in the shower. There are myriad things that could have been done that would have made you arrive at the train platform seconds earlier, and thus caught the train.
But these are fleeting thoughts. The real issues you start to deal with come moments later when you get over the fact that you aren't sitting on a heated subway seat but instead freezing your ass off in the wind. These issues come about when you're left with nothing but your devices, waiting for another train to come and realizing that maybe it wasn't just the subway you had missed. You start going back through your life. Why am I standing here in the cold? What went wrong? Is this the line of work I really thought I'd be doing? What happened to those big ideas I had when I was a teenager. I thought I was going to go out there, in life, and fucking conquer something. Now, I'm standing in the bitter cold, with wet hair, waiting for life to pick me back up.
It's depressing.
Luckily, another train will come along. You get in and since you had the time, you were able to walk to the part of the platform where you know you'll be able to get a seat. It's cold, but its sunny outside, and as you ride over the bridge you treat yourself to an article in GQ about a celebrity or some such nonsense while enjoying the heat coming from right below the bench you're sitting on. Life isn't that torturous and the decisions you made in the past aren't as permanent as they may seem. There's still a future. There always is.
And you pull into the station to make your transfer feeling damn good.
But then you walk down the stairs only to be greeted by the F train pulling out of the station.
Motherfuckers!
Anyway, that was my day in a nutshell. Was it yours?
Now, enjoy this quite humorous essay by Chuck Klosterman on why he enjoys wathing the LA Lakers.
*Coulter sorry for stealing your title technique.
0 Comments
Tuesday's Office
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
"Check out banner, Michael!"
No Shave November: first wave.
posted by RICK : 12:26 PM
Here are the highlights of the first annual No Shave November: New York 1 chapter. You'll notice how different people interpreted the rules in different ways, and how nature interpreted the individual. Also, if you want to get your pictures in, don't forget to mail them to me and I'll post'em ASAP. (Also, pictures of hilarious post-shave facial patterns are greatly appreciated)
0 Comments
Time to join the 21st century...
Monday, December 05, 2005
New Nellie
posted by RICK : 2:10 AM
Treat yourself. I have.
TheBigOne.mp3 [5.7mb]
In other, non-pirated news, Slate ran a great "revisionist" story on the most significant piece of comic-art maybe ever, but definitely of the past 20 years.
Syriana
The NY1 movie-club decided to check out the HOT NEW political thriller "Syriana" this past Thursday. The film, in a word, is almost helplessly confusing. Remember Traffic? Remember how kick ass it was? Remember how there were these three storylines and each had its own visual style and then they would overlap and such. Well, Syriana is just like that only less-so and more-so. It isn't as visually fascinating, but the storylines are there in spades. Just good luck trying to figure out what the hell Jeffrey Wright is suppose to be doing. That being said, when the film comes to a close you'll be pretty confident that something shady was going on, even if you can't pinpoint what it is.
The performances are top-notch, and the maze of a script... well, WOW.
What is Recoil rating? THREE AND 1/2 STARS! (bitch.)
And finally, I'm collecting your pics from NO SHAVE NOVEMBER. Send them to stuffboy@mac.com and I'll repost them on this blog in a convenient collage.
0 Comments
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Shit vs. Crap
Friday, December 02, 2005
Mystery Solved
posted by RICK : 1:34 PM
Remember a few weeks back when I was trying to figure out what song was playing in The Matador trailer? Well, the mystery is solved, and it was WAYYYY too obvious. The track came on while I was at the bar last night, causing me to run to the jukebox to find out what it was, only to have it answered for me the second the lyrics kicked in.
Behold:
PsychoKiller.mp3 [5.0mb]
C'mon Nelly should have had that one...
0 Comments
Missed Connections
Thursday, December 01, 2005
The Artform That Is The Setlist
Welcome to "What Is Recoil?." If you would like to post something on this blog, but don't have a WIR-Blogger login, then send me an e-mail, and I'll make it happen. SHAZAM!
-Rick
(co-creator)
Rick |
Dynamarx |
rus-trick |
ryan |
The Potato |
JDM |
DrNewsie |
Mr. MS |
AK |
Brooke |
Stein |
Moses |
G |
CarrieOkie |
Jen |
Duhn |
M. Moore | Laura |
Mr.T |
kat |
abby | Greg
09/2005 | 10/2005 | 11/2005 | 12/2005 | 01/2006 | 02/2006 | 03/2006 | 04/2006 | 05/2006 | 06/2006 | 07/2006 | 08/2006 | 09/2006 | 10/2006 | 11/2006 | 12/2006 | 01/2007 | 02/2007 | 03/2007 |
It's Indie Rock 'N' Roll For Me
Obsessive-Compulsive Media-Freak: me.
posted by RICK : 12:07 PM
Like any all-American media junkie, I love DVDs. Especially TV on DVD. BUT ESPECIALLY, I like how TV DVDs look when they're placed next to each other on a shelf. I like how each season of a show typically has a similar package design but maybe with different colors. When distributors change the package design I find it mildly irritating because my shelf no longer feels whole. Example: Strangers With Candy seasons 1 and 2 both had near identical packages: fold out cases inside a cardboard sleeve. Well when season 3 was finally released they switched to DVD slim-cases inside a cardboard sleeve, making the case about an eighth of an inch bigger than its predecessors. This really pissed me off, and if I hadn't been such a huge fan of the show it may (MAY) have kept me from buying it.
Last August, Fox released The Simpsons season 6. I had purchased seasons 3, 4 and 5 and LOVED the way they looked on my shelf (as for the actual DVDs, well the replay value is a bit diminished when the show is on television 4 times a day). But when season 6 came out, they abandoned the thick, colorful, fold-out cases and went with these ugly, three-dimensional "Simpson heads." Wha-what?! I can't stack that in a row! Those demand to be displayed individually, but then what about the previous seasons? Where's the continuity?
So I sold seasons 3, 4, and 5 and gave up the collection. Like I mentioned, I wasn't going to watch these that often anyway. But damn they looked good.
Today I get the Sunday paper and flip through the Best Buy Ad and what do they advertise? TWO versions of Simpsons 7: One with a crazy 3-D Marge-Head, and one with a classy fold-out purple box. DAMN, that sucks.
0 Comments
Friday, December 09, 2005
Renter's Insurance.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Can't Stop a Train...*
posted by RICK : 9:39 PM
Today, I missed no fewer than 4 subways by a matter of seconds. This sucks. It doesn't suck in the global sense becaue there's always another train 3-8 minutes away. But it seems to have a metaphorical effect on me, and I would guess, many people. It should be noted, however, that this isn't a New York City-specific phenomenon. This happens to everyone in some form or another. You know your own "missed subway." But, for people in New York there just happens to be a lot of trains around, so we'll go with that. Let me explain:
Every day I that I have to go to work, I have to take a train to get there. When I reach the platform, on a normal day I'll look down the track and see a train not too far away. On a fantastic day (yesterday) I reach the platform and a train is just coming to a stop. On a depressing day, as you might have guessed, the trains doors close just as you reach the top (or bottom) of the steps. At this point in time all you can do is stare at the soon-empty train platform and think, "What could I have done in my life to have caught this train?" And the answer is usually plain as day. You could have listened to one fewer song before heading out the door. You could have opted to check your email at work and not at home. You stood motionless for too long in the shower. There are myriad things that could have been done that would have made you arrive at the train platform seconds earlier, and thus caught the train.
But these are fleeting thoughts. The real issues you start to deal with come moments later when you get over the fact that you aren't sitting on a heated subway seat but instead freezing your ass off in the wind. These issues come about when you're left with nothing but your devices, waiting for another train to come and realizing that maybe it wasn't just the subway you had missed. You start going back through your life. Why am I standing here in the cold? What went wrong? Is this the line of work I really thought I'd be doing? What happened to those big ideas I had when I was a teenager. I thought I was going to go out there, in life, and fucking conquer something. Now, I'm standing in the bitter cold, with wet hair, waiting for life to pick me back up.
It's depressing.
Luckily, another train will come along. You get in and since you had the time, you were able to walk to the part of the platform where you know you'll be able to get a seat. It's cold, but its sunny outside, and as you ride over the bridge you treat yourself to an article in GQ about a celebrity or some such nonsense while enjoying the heat coming from right below the bench you're sitting on. Life isn't that torturous and the decisions you made in the past aren't as permanent as they may seem. There's still a future. There always is.
And you pull into the station to make your transfer feeling damn good.
But then you walk down the stairs only to be greeted by the F train pulling out of the station.
Motherfuckers!
Anyway, that was my day in a nutshell. Was it yours?
Now, enjoy this quite humorous essay by Chuck Klosterman on why he enjoys wathing the LA Lakers.
*Coulter sorry for stealing your title technique.
0 Comments
Tuesday's Office
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
"Check out banner, Michael!"
No Shave November: first wave.
posted by RICK : 12:26 PM
Here are the highlights of the first annual No Shave November: New York 1 chapter. You'll notice how different people interpreted the rules in different ways, and how nature interpreted the individual. Also, if you want to get your pictures in, don't forget to mail them to me and I'll post'em ASAP. (Also, pictures of hilarious post-shave facial patterns are greatly appreciated)
0 Comments
Time to join the 21st century...
Monday, December 05, 2005
New Nellie
posted by RICK : 2:10 AM
Treat yourself. I have.
TheBigOne.mp3 [5.7mb]
In other, non-pirated news, Slate ran a great "revisionist" story on the most significant piece of comic-art maybe ever, but definitely of the past 20 years.
Syriana
The NY1 movie-club decided to check out the HOT NEW political thriller "Syriana" this past Thursday. The film, in a word, is almost helplessly confusing. Remember Traffic? Remember how kick ass it was? Remember how there were these three storylines and each had its own visual style and then they would overlap and such. Well, Syriana is just like that only less-so and more-so. It isn't as visually fascinating, but the storylines are there in spades. Just good luck trying to figure out what the hell Jeffrey Wright is suppose to be doing. That being said, when the film comes to a close you'll be pretty confident that something shady was going on, even if you can't pinpoint what it is.
The performances are top-notch, and the maze of a script... well, WOW.
What is Recoil rating? THREE AND 1/2 STARS! (bitch.)
And finally, I'm collecting your pics from NO SHAVE NOVEMBER. Send them to stuffboy@mac.com and I'll repost them on this blog in a convenient collage.
0 Comments
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Shit vs. Crap
Friday, December 02, 2005
Mystery Solved
posted by RICK : 1:34 PM
Remember a few weeks back when I was trying to figure out what song was playing in The Matador trailer? Well, the mystery is solved, and it was WAYYYY too obvious. The track came on while I was at the bar last night, causing me to run to the jukebox to find out what it was, only to have it answered for me the second the lyrics kicked in.
Behold:
PsychoKiller.mp3 [5.0mb]
C'mon Nelly should have had that one...
0 Comments
Missed Connections
Thursday, December 01, 2005
The Artform That Is The Setlist
Welcome to "What Is Recoil?." If you would like to post something on this blog, but don't have a WIR-Blogger login, then send me an e-mail, and I'll make it happen. SHAZAM!
-Rick
(co-creator)
Rick |
Dynamarx |
rus-trick |
ryan |
The Potato |
JDM |
DrNewsie |
Mr. MS |
AK |
Brooke |
Stein |
Moses |
G |
CarrieOkie |
Jen |
Duhn |
M. Moore | Laura |
Mr.T |
kat |
abby | Greg
09/2005 | 10/2005 | 11/2005 | 12/2005 | 01/2006 | 02/2006 | 03/2006 | 04/2006 | 05/2006 | 06/2006 | 07/2006 | 08/2006 | 09/2006 | 10/2006 | 11/2006 | 12/2006 | 01/2007 | 02/2007 | 03/2007 |
Obsessive-Compulsive Media-Freak: me.
posted by RICK : 12:07 PM
Like any all-American media junkie, I love DVDs. Especially TV on DVD. BUT ESPECIALLY, I like how TV DVDs look when they're placed next to each other on a shelf. I like how each season of a show typically has a similar package design but maybe with different colors. When distributors change the package design I find it mildly irritating because my shelf no longer feels whole. Example: Strangers With Candy seasons 1 and 2 both had near identical packages: fold out cases inside a cardboard sleeve. Well when season 3 was finally released they switched to DVD slim-cases inside a cardboard sleeve, making the case about an eighth of an inch bigger than its predecessors. This really pissed me off, and if I hadn't been such a huge fan of the show it may (MAY) have kept me from buying it.
Last August, Fox released The Simpsons season 6. I had purchased seasons 3, 4 and 5 and LOVED the way they looked on my shelf (as for the actual DVDs, well the replay value is a bit diminished when the show is on television 4 times a day). But when season 6 came out, they abandoned the thick, colorful, fold-out cases and went with these ugly, three-dimensional "Simpson heads." Wha-what?! I can't stack that in a row! Those demand to be displayed individually, but then what about the previous seasons? Where's the continuity?
So I sold seasons 3, 4, and 5 and gave up the collection. Like I mentioned, I wasn't going to watch these that often anyway. But damn they looked good.
Today I get the Sunday paper and flip through the Best Buy Ad and what do they advertise? TWO versions of Simpsons 7: One with a crazy 3-D Marge-Head, and one with a classy fold-out purple box. DAMN, that sucks.
0 Comments
Friday, December 09, 2005
Renter's Insurance.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Can't Stop a Train...*
posted by RICK : 9:39 PM
Today, I missed no fewer than 4 subways by a matter of seconds. This sucks. It doesn't suck in the global sense becaue there's always another train 3-8 minutes away. But it seems to have a metaphorical effect on me, and I would guess, many people. It should be noted, however, that this isn't a New York City-specific phenomenon. This happens to everyone in some form or another. You know your own "missed subway." But, for people in New York there just happens to be a lot of trains around, so we'll go with that. Let me explain:
Every day I that I have to go to work, I have to take a train to get there. When I reach the platform, on a normal day I'll look down the track and see a train not too far away. On a fantastic day (yesterday) I reach the platform and a train is just coming to a stop. On a depressing day, as you might have guessed, the trains doors close just as you reach the top (or bottom) of the steps. At this point in time all you can do is stare at the soon-empty train platform and think, "What could I have done in my life to have caught this train?" And the answer is usually plain as day. You could have listened to one fewer song before heading out the door. You could have opted to check your email at work and not at home. You stood motionless for too long in the shower. There are myriad things that could have been done that would have made you arrive at the train platform seconds earlier, and thus caught the train.
But these are fleeting thoughts. The real issues you start to deal with come moments later when you get over the fact that you aren't sitting on a heated subway seat but instead freezing your ass off in the wind. These issues come about when you're left with nothing but your devices, waiting for another train to come and realizing that maybe it wasn't just the subway you had missed. You start going back through your life. Why am I standing here in the cold? What went wrong? Is this the line of work I really thought I'd be doing? What happened to those big ideas I had when I was a teenager. I thought I was going to go out there, in life, and fucking conquer something. Now, I'm standing in the bitter cold, with wet hair, waiting for life to pick me back up.
It's depressing.
Luckily, another train will come along. You get in and since you had the time, you were able to walk to the part of the platform where you know you'll be able to get a seat. It's cold, but its sunny outside, and as you ride over the bridge you treat yourself to an article in GQ about a celebrity or some such nonsense while enjoying the heat coming from right below the bench you're sitting on. Life isn't that torturous and the decisions you made in the past aren't as permanent as they may seem. There's still a future. There always is.
And you pull into the station to make your transfer feeling damn good.
But then you walk down the stairs only to be greeted by the F train pulling out of the station.
Motherfuckers!
Anyway, that was my day in a nutshell. Was it yours?
Now, enjoy this quite humorous essay by Chuck Klosterman on why he enjoys wathing the LA Lakers.
*Coulter sorry for stealing your title technique.
0 Comments
Tuesday's Office
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
"Check out banner, Michael!"
No Shave November: first wave.
posted by RICK : 12:26 PM
Here are the highlights of the first annual No Shave November: New York 1 chapter. You'll notice how different people interpreted the rules in different ways, and how nature interpreted the individual. Also, if you want to get your pictures in, don't forget to mail them to me and I'll post'em ASAP. (Also, pictures of hilarious post-shave facial patterns are greatly appreciated)
0 Comments
Time to join the 21st century...
Monday, December 05, 2005
New Nellie
posted by RICK : 2:10 AM
Treat yourself. I have.
TheBigOne.mp3 [5.7mb]
In other, non-pirated news, Slate ran a great "revisionist" story on the most significant piece of comic-art maybe ever, but definitely of the past 20 years.
Syriana
The NY1 movie-club decided to check out the HOT NEW political thriller "Syriana" this past Thursday. The film, in a word, is almost helplessly confusing. Remember Traffic? Remember how kick ass it was? Remember how there were these three storylines and each had its own visual style and then they would overlap and such. Well, Syriana is just like that only less-so and more-so. It isn't as visually fascinating, but the storylines are there in spades. Just good luck trying to figure out what the hell Jeffrey Wright is suppose to be doing. That being said, when the film comes to a close you'll be pretty confident that something shady was going on, even if you can't pinpoint what it is.
The performances are top-notch, and the maze of a script... well, WOW.
What is Recoil rating? THREE AND 1/2 STARS! (bitch.)
And finally, I'm collecting your pics from NO SHAVE NOVEMBER. Send them to stuffboy@mac.com and I'll repost them on this blog in a convenient collage.
0 Comments
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Shit vs. Crap
Friday, December 02, 2005
Mystery Solved
posted by RICK : 1:34 PM
Remember a few weeks back when I was trying to figure out what song was playing in The Matador trailer? Well, the mystery is solved, and it was WAYYYY too obvious. The track came on while I was at the bar last night, causing me to run to the jukebox to find out what it was, only to have it answered for me the second the lyrics kicked in.
Behold:
PsychoKiller.mp3 [5.0mb]
C'mon Nelly should have had that one...
0 Comments
Missed Connections
Thursday, December 01, 2005
The Artform That Is The Setlist
Welcome to "What Is Recoil?." If you would like to post something on this blog, but don't have a WIR-Blogger login, then send me an e-mail, and I'll make it happen. SHAZAM!
-Rick
(co-creator)
Rick |
Dynamarx |
rus-trick |
ryan |
The Potato |
JDM |
DrNewsie |
Mr. MS |
AK |
Brooke |
Stein |
Moses |
G |
CarrieOkie |
Jen |
Duhn |
M. Moore | Laura |
Mr.T |
kat |
abby | Greg
09/2005 | 10/2005 | 11/2005 | 12/2005 | 01/2006 | 02/2006 | 03/2006 | 04/2006 | 05/2006 | 06/2006 | 07/2006 | 08/2006 | 09/2006 | 10/2006 | 11/2006 | 12/2006 | 01/2007 | 02/2007 | 03/2007 |
Like any all-American media junkie, I love DVDs. Especially TV on DVD. BUT ESPECIALLY, I like how TV DVDs look when they're placed next to each other on a shelf. I like how each season of a show typically has a similar package design but maybe with different colors. When distributors change the package design I find it mildly irritating because my shelf no longer feels whole. Example: Strangers With Candy seasons 1 and 2 both had near identical packages: fold out cases inside a cardboard sleeve. Well when season 3 was finally released they switched to DVD slim-cases inside a cardboard sleeve, making the case about an eighth of an inch bigger than its predecessors. This really pissed me off, and if I hadn't been such a huge fan of the show it may (MAY) have kept me from buying it.Last August, Fox released The Simpsons season 6. I had purchased seasons 3, 4 and 5 and LOVED the way they looked on my shelf (as for the actual DVDs, well the replay value is a bit diminished when the show is on television 4 times a day). But when season 6 came out, they abandoned the thick, colorful, fold-out cases and went with these ugly, three-dimensional "Simpson heads." Wha-what?! I can't stack that in a row! Those demand to be displayed individually, but then what about the previous seasons? Where's the continuity?
So I sold seasons 3, 4, and 5 and gave up the collection. Like I mentioned, I wasn't going to watch these that often anyway. But damn they looked good.
Today I get the Sunday paper and flip through the Best Buy Ad and what do they advertise? TWO versions of Simpsons 7: One with a crazy 3-D Marge-Head, and one with a classy fold-out purple box. DAMN, that sucks.
0 Comments
Renter's Insurance.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Can't Stop a Train...*
posted by RICK : 9:39 PM
Today, I missed no fewer than 4 subways by a matter of seconds. This sucks. It doesn't suck in the global sense becaue there's always another train 3-8 minutes away. But it seems to have a metaphorical effect on me, and I would guess, many people. It should be noted, however, that this isn't a New York City-specific phenomenon. This happens to everyone in some form or another. You know your own "missed subway." But, for people in New York there just happens to be a lot of trains around, so we'll go with that. Let me explain:
Every day I that I have to go to work, I have to take a train to get there. When I reach the platform, on a normal day I'll look down the track and see a train not too far away. On a fantastic day (yesterday) I reach the platform and a train is just coming to a stop. On a depressing day, as you might have guessed, the trains doors close just as you reach the top (or bottom) of the steps. At this point in time all you can do is stare at the soon-empty train platform and think, "What could I have done in my life to have caught this train?" And the answer is usually plain as day. You could have listened to one fewer song before heading out the door. You could have opted to check your email at work and not at home. You stood motionless for too long in the shower. There are myriad things that could have been done that would have made you arrive at the train platform seconds earlier, and thus caught the train.
But these are fleeting thoughts. The real issues you start to deal with come moments later when you get over the fact that you aren't sitting on a heated subway seat but instead freezing your ass off in the wind. These issues come about when you're left with nothing but your devices, waiting for another train to come and realizing that maybe it wasn't just the subway you had missed. You start going back through your life. Why am I standing here in the cold? What went wrong? Is this the line of work I really thought I'd be doing? What happened to those big ideas I had when I was a teenager. I thought I was going to go out there, in life, and fucking conquer something. Now, I'm standing in the bitter cold, with wet hair, waiting for life to pick me back up.
It's depressing.
Luckily, another train will come along. You get in and since you had the time, you were able to walk to the part of the platform where you know you'll be able to get a seat. It's cold, but its sunny outside, and as you ride over the bridge you treat yourself to an article in GQ about a celebrity or some such nonsense while enjoying the heat coming from right below the bench you're sitting on. Life isn't that torturous and the decisions you made in the past aren't as permanent as they may seem. There's still a future. There always is.
And you pull into the station to make your transfer feeling damn good.
But then you walk down the stairs only to be greeted by the F train pulling out of the station.
Motherfuckers!
Anyway, that was my day in a nutshell. Was it yours?
Now, enjoy this quite humorous essay by Chuck Klosterman on why he enjoys wathing the LA Lakers.
*Coulter sorry for stealing your title technique.
0 Comments
Tuesday's Office
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
"Check out banner, Michael!"
No Shave November: first wave.
posted by RICK : 12:26 PM
Here are the highlights of the first annual No Shave November: New York 1 chapter. You'll notice how different people interpreted the rules in different ways, and how nature interpreted the individual. Also, if you want to get your pictures in, don't forget to mail them to me and I'll post'em ASAP. (Also, pictures of hilarious post-shave facial patterns are greatly appreciated)
0 Comments
Time to join the 21st century...
Monday, December 05, 2005
New Nellie
posted by RICK : 2:10 AM
Treat yourself. I have.
TheBigOne.mp3 [5.7mb]
In other, non-pirated news, Slate ran a great "revisionist" story on the most significant piece of comic-art maybe ever, but definitely of the past 20 years.
Syriana
The NY1 movie-club decided to check out the HOT NEW political thriller "Syriana" this past Thursday. The film, in a word, is almost helplessly confusing. Remember Traffic? Remember how kick ass it was? Remember how there were these three storylines and each had its own visual style and then they would overlap and such. Well, Syriana is just like that only less-so and more-so. It isn't as visually fascinating, but the storylines are there in spades. Just good luck trying to figure out what the hell Jeffrey Wright is suppose to be doing. That being said, when the film comes to a close you'll be pretty confident that something shady was going on, even if you can't pinpoint what it is.
The performances are top-notch, and the maze of a script... well, WOW.
What is Recoil rating? THREE AND 1/2 STARS! (bitch.)
And finally, I'm collecting your pics from NO SHAVE NOVEMBER. Send them to stuffboy@mac.com and I'll repost them on this blog in a convenient collage.
0 Comments
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Shit vs. Crap
Friday, December 02, 2005
Mystery Solved
posted by RICK : 1:34 PM
Remember a few weeks back when I was trying to figure out what song was playing in The Matador trailer? Well, the mystery is solved, and it was WAYYYY too obvious. The track came on while I was at the bar last night, causing me to run to the jukebox to find out what it was, only to have it answered for me the second the lyrics kicked in.
Behold:
PsychoKiller.mp3 [5.0mb]
C'mon Nelly should have had that one...
0 Comments
Missed Connections
Thursday, December 01, 2005
The Artform That Is The Setlist
Welcome to "What Is Recoil?." If you would like to post something on this blog, but don't have a WIR-Blogger login, then send me an e-mail, and I'll make it happen. SHAZAM!
-Rick
(co-creator)
Rick |
Dynamarx |
rus-trick |
ryan |
The Potato |
JDM |
DrNewsie |
Mr. MS |
AK |
Brooke |
Stein |
Moses |
G |
CarrieOkie |
Jen |
Duhn |
M. Moore | Laura |
Mr.T |
kat |
abby | Greg
09/2005 | 10/2005 | 11/2005 | 12/2005 | 01/2006 | 02/2006 | 03/2006 | 04/2006 | 05/2006 | 06/2006 | 07/2006 | 08/2006 | 09/2006 | 10/2006 | 11/2006 | 12/2006 | 01/2007 | 02/2007 | 03/2007 |
Can't Stop a Train...*
posted by RICK : 9:39 PM
Today, I missed no fewer than 4 subways by a matter of seconds. This sucks. It doesn't suck in the global sense becaue there's always another train 3-8 minutes away. But it seems to have a metaphorical effect on me, and I would guess, many people. It should be noted, however, that this isn't a New York City-specific phenomenon. This happens to everyone in some form or another. You know your own "missed subway." But, for people in New York there just happens to be a lot of trains around, so we'll go with that. Let me explain:
Every day I that I have to go to work, I have to take a train to get there. When I reach the platform, on a normal day I'll look down the track and see a train not too far away. On a fantastic day (yesterday) I reach the platform and a train is just coming to a stop. On a depressing day, as you might have guessed, the trains doors close just as you reach the top (or bottom) of the steps. At this point in time all you can do is stare at the soon-empty train platform and think, "What could I have done in my life to have caught this train?" And the answer is usually plain as day. You could have listened to one fewer song before heading out the door. You could have opted to check your email at work and not at home. You stood motionless for too long in the shower. There are myriad things that could have been done that would have made you arrive at the train platform seconds earlier, and thus caught the train.
But these are fleeting thoughts. The real issues you start to deal with come moments later when you get over the fact that you aren't sitting on a heated subway seat but instead freezing your ass off in the wind. These issues come about when you're left with nothing but your devices, waiting for another train to come and realizing that maybe it wasn't just the subway you had missed. You start going back through your life. Why am I standing here in the cold? What went wrong? Is this the line of work I really thought I'd be doing? What happened to those big ideas I had when I was a teenager. I thought I was going to go out there, in life, and fucking conquer something. Now, I'm standing in the bitter cold, with wet hair, waiting for life to pick me back up.
It's depressing.
Luckily, another train will come along. You get in and since you had the time, you were able to walk to the part of the platform where you know you'll be able to get a seat. It's cold, but its sunny outside, and as you ride over the bridge you treat yourself to an article in GQ about a celebrity or some such nonsense while enjoying the heat coming from right below the bench you're sitting on. Life isn't that torturous and the decisions you made in the past aren't as permanent as they may seem. There's still a future. There always is.
And you pull into the station to make your transfer feeling damn good.
But then you walk down the stairs only to be greeted by the F train pulling out of the station.
Motherfuckers!
Anyway, that was my day in a nutshell. Was it yours?
Now, enjoy this quite humorous essay by Chuck Klosterman on why he enjoys wathing the LA Lakers.
*Coulter sorry for stealing your title technique.
0 Comments
Tuesday's Office
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
"Check out banner, Michael!"
No Shave November: first wave.
posted by RICK : 12:26 PM
Here are the highlights of the first annual No Shave November: New York 1 chapter. You'll notice how different people interpreted the rules in different ways, and how nature interpreted the individual. Also, if you want to get your pictures in, don't forget to mail them to me and I'll post'em ASAP. (Also, pictures of hilarious post-shave facial patterns are greatly appreciated)
0 Comments
Time to join the 21st century...
Monday, December 05, 2005
New Nellie
posted by RICK : 2:10 AM
Treat yourself. I have.
TheBigOne.mp3 [5.7mb]
In other, non-pirated news, Slate ran a great "revisionist" story on the most significant piece of comic-art maybe ever, but definitely of the past 20 years.
Syriana
The NY1 movie-club decided to check out the HOT NEW political thriller "Syriana" this past Thursday. The film, in a word, is almost helplessly confusing. Remember Traffic? Remember how kick ass it was? Remember how there were these three storylines and each had its own visual style and then they would overlap and such. Well, Syriana is just like that only less-so and more-so. It isn't as visually fascinating, but the storylines are there in spades. Just good luck trying to figure out what the hell Jeffrey Wright is suppose to be doing. That being said, when the film comes to a close you'll be pretty confident that something shady was going on, even if you can't pinpoint what it is.
The performances are top-notch, and the maze of a script... well, WOW.
What is Recoil rating? THREE AND 1/2 STARS! (bitch.)
And finally, I'm collecting your pics from NO SHAVE NOVEMBER. Send them to stuffboy@mac.com and I'll repost them on this blog in a convenient collage.
0 Comments
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Shit vs. Crap
Friday, December 02, 2005
Mystery Solved
posted by RICK : 1:34 PM
Remember a few weeks back when I was trying to figure out what song was playing in The Matador trailer? Well, the mystery is solved, and it was WAYYYY too obvious. The track came on while I was at the bar last night, causing me to run to the jukebox to find out what it was, only to have it answered for me the second the lyrics kicked in.
Behold:
PsychoKiller.mp3 [5.0mb]
C'mon Nelly should have had that one...
0 Comments
Missed Connections
Thursday, December 01, 2005
The Artform That Is The Setlist
Welcome to "What Is Recoil?." If you would like to post something on this blog, but don't have a WIR-Blogger login, then send me an e-mail, and I'll make it happen. SHAZAM!
-Rick
(co-creator)
Rick |
Dynamarx |
rus-trick |
ryan |
The Potato |
JDM |
DrNewsie |
Mr. MS |
AK |
Brooke |
Stein |
Moses |
G |
CarrieOkie |
Jen |
Duhn |
M. Moore | Laura |
Mr.T |
kat |
abby | Greg
09/2005 | 10/2005 | 11/2005 | 12/2005 | 01/2006 | 02/2006 | 03/2006 | 04/2006 | 05/2006 | 06/2006 | 07/2006 | 08/2006 | 09/2006 | 10/2006 | 11/2006 | 12/2006 | 01/2007 | 02/2007 | 03/2007 |
Today, I missed no fewer than 4 subways by a matter of seconds. This sucks. It doesn't suck in the global sense becaue there's always another train 3-8 minutes away. But it seems to have a metaphorical effect on me, and I would guess, many people. It should be noted, however, that this isn't a New York City-specific phenomenon. This happens to everyone in some form or another. You know your own "missed subway." But, for people in New York there just happens to be a lot of trains around, so we'll go with that. Let me explain:Every day I that I have to go to work, I have to take a train to get there. When I reach the platform, on a normal day I'll look down the track and see a train not too far away. On a fantastic day (yesterday) I reach the platform and a train is just coming to a stop. On a depressing day, as you might have guessed, the trains doors close just as you reach the top (or bottom) of the steps. At this point in time all you can do is stare at the soon-empty train platform and think, "What could I have done in my life to have caught this train?" And the answer is usually plain as day. You could have listened to one fewer song before heading out the door. You could have opted to check your email at work and not at home. You stood motionless for too long in the shower. There are myriad things that could have been done that would have made you arrive at the train platform seconds earlier, and thus caught the train.
But these are fleeting thoughts. The real issues you start to deal with come moments later when you get over the fact that you aren't sitting on a heated subway seat but instead freezing your ass off in the wind. These issues come about when you're left with nothing but your devices, waiting for another train to come and realizing that maybe it wasn't just the subway you had missed. You start going back through your life. Why am I standing here in the cold? What went wrong? Is this the line of work I really thought I'd be doing? What happened to those big ideas I had when I was a teenager. I thought I was going to go out there, in life, and fucking conquer something. Now, I'm standing in the bitter cold, with wet hair, waiting for life to pick me back up.
It's depressing.
Luckily, another train will come along. You get in and since you had the time, you were able to walk to the part of the platform where you know you'll be able to get a seat. It's cold, but its sunny outside, and as you ride over the bridge you treat yourself to an article in GQ about a celebrity or some such nonsense while enjoying the heat coming from right below the bench you're sitting on. Life isn't that torturous and the decisions you made in the past aren't as permanent as they may seem. There's still a future. There always is.
And you pull into the station to make your transfer feeling damn good.
But then you walk down the stairs only to be greeted by the F train pulling out of the station.
Motherfuckers!
Anyway, that was my day in a nutshell. Was it yours?
Now, enjoy this quite humorous essay by Chuck Klosterman on why he enjoys wathing the LA Lakers.
*Coulter sorry for stealing your title technique.
0 Comments
Tuesday's Office
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
"Check out banner, Michael!"
No Shave November: first wave.
posted by RICK : 12:26 PM
Here are the highlights of the first annual No Shave November: New York 1 chapter. You'll notice how different people interpreted the rules in different ways, and how nature interpreted the individual. Also, if you want to get your pictures in, don't forget to mail them to me and I'll post'em ASAP. (Also, pictures of hilarious post-shave facial patterns are greatly appreciated)
0 Comments
Time to join the 21st century...
Monday, December 05, 2005
New Nellie
posted by RICK : 2:10 AM
Treat yourself. I have.
TheBigOne.mp3 [5.7mb]
In other, non-pirated news, Slate ran a great "revisionist" story on the most significant piece of comic-art maybe ever, but definitely of the past 20 years.
Syriana
The NY1 movie-club decided to check out the HOT NEW political thriller "Syriana" this past Thursday. The film, in a word, is almost helplessly confusing. Remember Traffic? Remember how kick ass it was? Remember how there were these three storylines and each had its own visual style and then they would overlap and such. Well, Syriana is just like that only less-so and more-so. It isn't as visually fascinating, but the storylines are there in spades. Just good luck trying to figure out what the hell Jeffrey Wright is suppose to be doing. That being said, when the film comes to a close you'll be pretty confident that something shady was going on, even if you can't pinpoint what it is.
The performances are top-notch, and the maze of a script... well, WOW.
What is Recoil rating? THREE AND 1/2 STARS! (bitch.)
And finally, I'm collecting your pics from NO SHAVE NOVEMBER. Send them to stuffboy@mac.com and I'll repost them on this blog in a convenient collage.
0 Comments
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Shit vs. Crap
Friday, December 02, 2005
Mystery Solved
posted by RICK : 1:34 PM
Remember a few weeks back when I was trying to figure out what song was playing in The Matador trailer? Well, the mystery is solved, and it was WAYYYY too obvious. The track came on while I was at the bar last night, causing me to run to the jukebox to find out what it was, only to have it answered for me the second the lyrics kicked in.
Behold:
PsychoKiller.mp3 [5.0mb]
C'mon Nelly should have had that one...
0 Comments
Missed Connections
Thursday, December 01, 2005
The Artform That Is The Setlist
Welcome to "What Is Recoil?." If you would like to post something on this blog, but don't have a WIR-Blogger login, then send me an e-mail, and I'll make it happen. SHAZAM!
-Rick
(co-creator)
Rick |
Dynamarx |
rus-trick |
ryan |
The Potato |
JDM |
DrNewsie |
Mr. MS |
AK |
Brooke |
Stein |
Moses |
G |
CarrieOkie |
Jen |
Duhn |
M. Moore | Laura |
Mr.T |
kat |
abby | Greg
09/2005 | 10/2005 | 11/2005 | 12/2005 | 01/2006 | 02/2006 | 03/2006 | 04/2006 | 05/2006 | 06/2006 | 07/2006 | 08/2006 | 09/2006 | 10/2006 | 11/2006 | 12/2006 | 01/2007 | 02/2007 | 03/2007 |
"Check out banner, Michael!"
No Shave November: first wave.
posted by RICK : 12:26 PM
Here are the highlights of the first annual No Shave November: New York 1 chapter. You'll notice how different people interpreted the rules in different ways, and how nature interpreted the individual. Also, if you want to get your pictures in, don't forget to mail them to me and I'll post'em ASAP. (Also, pictures of hilarious post-shave facial patterns are greatly appreciated)
0 Comments
Time to join the 21st century...
Monday, December 05, 2005
New Nellie
posted by RICK : 2:10 AM
Treat yourself. I have.
TheBigOne.mp3 [5.7mb]
In other, non-pirated news, Slate ran a great "revisionist" story on the most significant piece of comic-art maybe ever, but definitely of the past 20 years.
Syriana
The NY1 movie-club decided to check out the HOT NEW political thriller "Syriana" this past Thursday. The film, in a word, is almost helplessly confusing. Remember Traffic? Remember how kick ass it was? Remember how there were these three storylines and each had its own visual style and then they would overlap and such. Well, Syriana is just like that only less-so and more-so. It isn't as visually fascinating, but the storylines are there in spades. Just good luck trying to figure out what the hell Jeffrey Wright is suppose to be doing. That being said, when the film comes to a close you'll be pretty confident that something shady was going on, even if you can't pinpoint what it is.
The performances are top-notch, and the maze of a script... well, WOW.
What is Recoil rating? THREE AND 1/2 STARS! (bitch.)
And finally, I'm collecting your pics from NO SHAVE NOVEMBER. Send them to stuffboy@mac.com and I'll repost them on this blog in a convenient collage.
0 Comments
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Shit vs. Crap
Friday, December 02, 2005
Mystery Solved
posted by RICK : 1:34 PM
Remember a few weeks back when I was trying to figure out what song was playing in The Matador trailer? Well, the mystery is solved, and it was WAYYYY too obvious. The track came on while I was at the bar last night, causing me to run to the jukebox to find out what it was, only to have it answered for me the second the lyrics kicked in.
Behold:
PsychoKiller.mp3 [5.0mb]
C'mon Nelly should have had that one...
0 Comments
Missed Connections
Thursday, December 01, 2005
The Artform That Is The Setlist
Welcome to "What Is Recoil?." If you would like to post something on this blog, but don't have a WIR-Blogger login, then send me an e-mail, and I'll make it happen. SHAZAM!
-Rick
(co-creator)
Rick |
Dynamarx |
rus-trick |
ryan |
The Potato |
JDM |
DrNewsie |
Mr. MS |
AK |
Brooke |
Stein |
Moses |
G |
CarrieOkie |
Jen |
Duhn |
M. Moore | Laura |
Mr.T |
kat |
abby | Greg
09/2005 | 10/2005 | 11/2005 | 12/2005 | 01/2006 | 02/2006 | 03/2006 | 04/2006 | 05/2006 | 06/2006 | 07/2006 | 08/2006 | 09/2006 | 10/2006 | 11/2006 | 12/2006 | 01/2007 | 02/2007 | 03/2007 |
No Shave November: first wave.
posted by RICK : 12:26 PM
Here are the highlights of the first annual No Shave November: New York 1 chapter. You'll notice how different people interpreted the rules in different ways, and how nature interpreted the individual. Also, if you want to get your pictures in, don't forget to mail them to me and I'll post'em ASAP. (Also, pictures of hilarious post-shave facial patterns are greatly appreciated)
0 Comments
Time to join the 21st century...
Monday, December 05, 2005
New Nellie
posted by RICK : 2:10 AM
Treat yourself. I have.
TheBigOne.mp3 [5.7mb]
In other, non-pirated news, Slate ran a great "revisionist" story on the most significant piece of comic-art maybe ever, but definitely of the past 20 years.
Syriana
The NY1 movie-club decided to check out the HOT NEW political thriller "Syriana" this past Thursday. The film, in a word, is almost helplessly confusing. Remember Traffic? Remember how kick ass it was? Remember how there were these three storylines and each had its own visual style and then they would overlap and such. Well, Syriana is just like that only less-so and more-so. It isn't as visually fascinating, but the storylines are there in spades. Just good luck trying to figure out what the hell Jeffrey Wright is suppose to be doing. That being said, when the film comes to a close you'll be pretty confident that something shady was going on, even if you can't pinpoint what it is.
The performances are top-notch, and the maze of a script... well, WOW.
What is Recoil rating? THREE AND 1/2 STARS! (bitch.)
And finally, I'm collecting your pics from NO SHAVE NOVEMBER. Send them to stuffboy@mac.com and I'll repost them on this blog in a convenient collage.
0 Comments
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Shit vs. Crap
Friday, December 02, 2005
Mystery Solved
posted by RICK : 1:34 PM
Remember a few weeks back when I was trying to figure out what song was playing in The Matador trailer? Well, the mystery is solved, and it was WAYYYY too obvious. The track came on while I was at the bar last night, causing me to run to the jukebox to find out what it was, only to have it answered for me the second the lyrics kicked in.
Behold:
PsychoKiller.mp3 [5.0mb]
C'mon Nelly should have had that one...
0 Comments
Missed Connections
Thursday, December 01, 2005
The Artform That Is The Setlist
Welcome to "What Is Recoil?." If you would like to post something on this blog, but don't have a WIR-Blogger login, then send me an e-mail, and I'll make it happen. SHAZAM!
-Rick
(co-creator)
Rick |
Dynamarx |
rus-trick |
ryan |
The Potato |
JDM |
DrNewsie |
Mr. MS |
AK |
Brooke |
Stein |
Moses |
G |
CarrieOkie |
Jen |
Duhn |
M. Moore | Laura |
Mr.T |
kat |
abby | Greg
09/2005 | 10/2005 | 11/2005 | 12/2005 | 01/2006 | 02/2006 | 03/2006 | 04/2006 | 05/2006 | 06/2006 | 07/2006 | 08/2006 | 09/2006 | 10/2006 | 11/2006 | 12/2006 | 01/2007 | 02/2007 | 03/2007 |
0 Comments
Time to join the 21st century...
Monday, December 05, 2005
New Nellie
posted by RICK : 2:10 AM
Treat yourself. I have.
TheBigOne.mp3 [5.7mb]
In other, non-pirated news, Slate ran a great "revisionist" story on the most significant piece of comic-art maybe ever, but definitely of the past 20 years.
Syriana
The NY1 movie-club decided to check out the HOT NEW political thriller "Syriana" this past Thursday. The film, in a word, is almost helplessly confusing. Remember Traffic? Remember how kick ass it was? Remember how there were these three storylines and each had its own visual style and then they would overlap and such. Well, Syriana is just like that only less-so and more-so. It isn't as visually fascinating, but the storylines are there in spades. Just good luck trying to figure out what the hell Jeffrey Wright is suppose to be doing. That being said, when the film comes to a close you'll be pretty confident that something shady was going on, even if you can't pinpoint what it is.
The performances are top-notch, and the maze of a script... well, WOW.
What is Recoil rating? THREE AND 1/2 STARS! (bitch.)
And finally, I'm collecting your pics from NO SHAVE NOVEMBER. Send them to stuffboy@mac.com and I'll repost them on this blog in a convenient collage.
0 Comments
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Shit vs. Crap
Friday, December 02, 2005
Mystery Solved
posted by RICK : 1:34 PM
Remember a few weeks back when I was trying to figure out what song was playing in The Matador trailer? Well, the mystery is solved, and it was WAYYYY too obvious. The track came on while I was at the bar last night, causing me to run to the jukebox to find out what it was, only to have it answered for me the second the lyrics kicked in.
Behold:
PsychoKiller.mp3 [5.0mb]
C'mon Nelly should have had that one...
0 Comments
Missed Connections
Thursday, December 01, 2005
The Artform That Is The Setlist
Welcome to "What Is Recoil?." If you would like to post something on this blog, but don't have a WIR-Blogger login, then send me an e-mail, and I'll make it happen. SHAZAM!
-Rick
(co-creator)
Rick |
Dynamarx |
rus-trick |
ryan |
The Potato |
JDM |
DrNewsie |
Mr. MS |
AK |
Brooke |
Stein |
Moses |
G |
CarrieOkie |
Jen |
Duhn |
M. Moore | Laura |
Mr.T |
kat |
abby | Greg
09/2005 | 10/2005 | 11/2005 | 12/2005 | 01/2006 | 02/2006 | 03/2006 | 04/2006 | 05/2006 | 06/2006 | 07/2006 | 08/2006 | 09/2006 | 10/2006 | 11/2006 | 12/2006 | 01/2007 | 02/2007 | 03/2007 |
New Nellie
posted by RICK : 2:10 AM
Treat yourself. I have.
TheBigOne.mp3 [5.7mb]
In other, non-pirated news, Slate ran a great "revisionist" story on the most significant piece of comic-art maybe ever, but definitely of the past 20 years.
Syriana
The NY1 movie-club decided to check out the HOT NEW political thriller "Syriana" this past Thursday. The film, in a word, is almost helplessly confusing. Remember Traffic? Remember how kick ass it was? Remember how there were these three storylines and each had its own visual style and then they would overlap and such. Well, Syriana is just like that only less-so and more-so. It isn't as visually fascinating, but the storylines are there in spades. Just good luck trying to figure out what the hell Jeffrey Wright is suppose to be doing. That being said, when the film comes to a close you'll be pretty confident that something shady was going on, even if you can't pinpoint what it is.
The performances are top-notch, and the maze of a script... well, WOW.
What is Recoil rating? THREE AND 1/2 STARS! (bitch.)
And finally, I'm collecting your pics from NO SHAVE NOVEMBER. Send them to stuffboy@mac.com and I'll repost them on this blog in a convenient collage.
0 Comments
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Shit vs. Crap
Friday, December 02, 2005
Mystery Solved
posted by RICK : 1:34 PM
Remember a few weeks back when I was trying to figure out what song was playing in The Matador trailer? Well, the mystery is solved, and it was WAYYYY too obvious. The track came on while I was at the bar last night, causing me to run to the jukebox to find out what it was, only to have it answered for me the second the lyrics kicked in.
Behold:
PsychoKiller.mp3 [5.0mb]
C'mon Nelly should have had that one...
0 Comments
Missed Connections
Thursday, December 01, 2005
The Artform That Is The Setlist
Welcome to "What Is Recoil?." If you would like to post something on this blog, but don't have a WIR-Blogger login, then send me an e-mail, and I'll make it happen. SHAZAM!
-Rick
(co-creator)
Rick |
Dynamarx |
rus-trick |
ryan |
The Potato |
JDM |
DrNewsie |
Mr. MS |
AK |
Brooke |
Stein |
Moses |
G |
CarrieOkie |
Jen |
Duhn |
M. Moore | Laura |
Mr.T |
kat |
abby | Greg
09/2005 | 10/2005 | 11/2005 | 12/2005 | 01/2006 | 02/2006 | 03/2006 | 04/2006 | 05/2006 | 06/2006 | 07/2006 | 08/2006 | 09/2006 | 10/2006 | 11/2006 | 12/2006 | 01/2007 | 02/2007 | 03/2007 |
TheBigOne.mp3 [5.7mb]In other, non-pirated news, Slate ran a great "revisionist" story on the most significant piece of comic-art maybe ever, but definitely of the past 20 years.
Syriana
The NY1 movie-club decided to check out the HOT NEW political thriller "Syriana" this past Thursday. The film, in a word, is almost helplessly confusing. Remember Traffic? Remember how kick ass it was? Remember how there were these three storylines and each had its own visual style and then they would overlap and such. Well, Syriana is just like that only less-so and more-so. It isn't as visually fascinating, but the storylines are there in spades. Just good luck trying to figure out what the hell Jeffrey Wright is suppose to be doing. That being said, when the film comes to a close you'll be pretty confident that something shady was going on, even if you can't pinpoint what it is.
The performances are top-notch, and the maze of a script... well, WOW.
What is Recoil rating? THREE AND 1/2 STARS! (bitch.)
And finally, I'm collecting your pics from NO SHAVE NOVEMBER. Send them to stuffboy@mac.com and I'll repost them on this blog in a convenient collage.
0 Comments
Shit vs. Crap
Friday, December 02, 2005
Mystery Solved
posted by RICK : 1:34 PM
Remember a few weeks back when I was trying to figure out what song was playing in The Matador trailer? Well, the mystery is solved, and it was WAYYYY too obvious. The track came on while I was at the bar last night, causing me to run to the jukebox to find out what it was, only to have it answered for me the second the lyrics kicked in.
Behold:
PsychoKiller.mp3 [5.0mb]
C'mon Nelly should have had that one...
0 Comments
Missed Connections
Thursday, December 01, 2005
The Artform That Is The Setlist
Welcome to "What Is Recoil?." If you would like to post something on this blog, but don't have a WIR-Blogger login, then send me an e-mail, and I'll make it happen. SHAZAM!
-Rick
(co-creator)
Rick |
Dynamarx |
rus-trick |
ryan |
The Potato |
JDM |
DrNewsie |
Mr. MS |
AK |
Brooke |
Stein |
Moses |
G |
CarrieOkie |
Jen |
Duhn |
M. Moore | Laura |
Mr.T |
kat |
abby | Greg
09/2005 | 10/2005 | 11/2005 | 12/2005 | 01/2006 | 02/2006 | 03/2006 | 04/2006 | 05/2006 | 06/2006 | 07/2006 | 08/2006 | 09/2006 | 10/2006 | 11/2006 | 12/2006 | 01/2007 | 02/2007 | 03/2007 |
Mystery Solved
posted by RICK : 1:34 PM
Remember a few weeks back when I was trying to figure out what song was playing in The Matador trailer? Well, the mystery is solved, and it was WAYYYY too obvious. The track came on while I was at the bar last night, causing me to run to the jukebox to find out what it was, only to have it answered for me the second the lyrics kicked in.
Behold:
PsychoKiller.mp3 [5.0mb]
C'mon Nelly should have had that one...
0 Comments
Missed Connections
Thursday, December 01, 2005
The Artform That Is The Setlist
Welcome to "What Is Recoil?." If you would like to post something on this blog, but don't have a WIR-Blogger login, then send me an e-mail, and I'll make it happen. SHAZAM!
-Rick
(co-creator)
Rick |
Dynamarx |
rus-trick |
ryan |
The Potato |
JDM |
DrNewsie |
Mr. MS |
AK |
Brooke |
Stein |
Moses |
G |
CarrieOkie |
Jen |
Duhn |
M. Moore | Laura |
Mr.T |
kat |
abby | Greg
09/2005 | 10/2005 | 11/2005 | 12/2005 | 01/2006 | 02/2006 | 03/2006 | 04/2006 | 05/2006 | 06/2006 | 07/2006 | 08/2006 | 09/2006 | 10/2006 | 11/2006 | 12/2006 | 01/2007 | 02/2007 | 03/2007 |
Behold:
PsychoKiller.mp3 [5.0mb]C'mon Nelly should have had that one...
0 Comments
Missed Connections
Thursday, December 01, 2005
The Artform That Is The Setlist
The Artform That Is The Setlist
Welcome to "What Is Recoil?." If you would like to post something on this blog, but don't have a WIR-Blogger login, then send me an e-mail, and I'll make it happen. SHAZAM!
-Rick
(co-creator)
Rick | Dynamarx | rus-trick | ryan | The Potato | JDM | DrNewsie | Mr. MS | AK | Brooke | Stein | Moses | G | CarrieOkie | Jen | Duhn | M. Moore | Laura | Mr.T | kat | abby | Greg
09/2005 | 10/2005 | 11/2005 | 12/2005 | 01/2006 | 02/2006 | 03/2006 | 04/2006 | 05/2006 | 06/2006 | 07/2006 | 08/2006 | 09/2006 | 10/2006 | 11/2006 | 12/2006 | 01/2007 | 02/2007 | 03/2007 |