Monthly Archives: January 2024

Something in the Dirt

Posted on by Bill Chance

The other day I had a couple of hours to kill, so I looked through the television options to choose something to watch.

For no concrete reason I ended up watching a film called Something in the Dirt.

It was good, maybe really good – but more than that it was unique.

Does a work of art have to make sense? Is it fair for a work to be purposefully ambiguous? Can perplexing be a positive attribute?

Or is life too short for all this?

Something in the Dirt is definitely purposefully ambiguous. It implies that it is a documentary – there are interviews with multiple cameramen, special effects experts, and a string of directors – they talk about making the film that we are watching which may or may not duplicate events that may or may not have actually happened.

It’s fun if you can relax and let it wash over you, if you can embrace the chaos – and I imagine it would be maddening and frustrating if you can’t.

The key is, I think, in the dedication at the end. It is dedicated to friends making movies together. The writers/directors/producers/stars have a long string of odd movies in their history – most with much larger budgets and production budgets than Something in the Dirt. Now I’m going to work through the other films, there is some real creativity going on here.

This one looks like the two of them decided to get some friends together and make a little film while they were in Covid lockdown and see what resulted.

And I guess that’s as much fun as anything else.

Free Quality Streaming Movies

Posted on by Bill Chance

“You’re going to have the tallest, darkest leading man in Hollywood.”

—-Fay Wray, quoting Merian C. Cooper on King Kong.

There was the promise of cable-cutting…

First there was cable TV. I remember in ~1983 stringing cable into a bedroom for a second TV (a rare luxury back then) thinking, “I wish that television could come right out of the air, instead of through a wire, then I wouldn’t have to… wait a minute! It does!”

But over the years, cable became more and more expensive… and then cable-cutting! For a few heady years, that was the cat’s pajamas – until the streaming world became more and more bifurcated and expensive, until you have to have so many paid subscriptions that you forget what you’ve got and the one thing that you want is always on a stream you don’t have and you scroll for hours and can’t find anything to watch anyway.

But I have found a streaming service that has a carefully curated selection of wonderful content, no ads, available on all smart TVs, phones, tablets, and computers, and (with some limitations) is completely free. And a lot of people haven’t heard of it.

It’s called Kanopy.

It has fantastic content. I subscribe to The Criterion Channel – which is great – but certain odd, classic, or foreign films kept showing up on this “Kanopy” thing – so I had to check it out.

One catch is that it is only available through your library, if your library offers it. My local library did not, so I was shit out of luck. Until I discovered the next city out in the string of suburbs did offer it – and they had a deal with my town so I could get a card. It was only a few miles drive and I was signed up. So now I had my Kanopy subscription (and a whole new set of libraries to visit).

The second catch is that you are limited to the number of films per month you can watch. But in this new year, I discovered that my city now offers it too – so I can sign up twice and get twice the monthly limit. And I’ll sign up with my wife’s card (and maybe send her to the neighboring city) and get even more.

This is truly the best of all possible worlds.

2023-1966

Posted on by Bill Chance

I’m sitting in my living room, in my comfy recliner, drinking my morning coffee and trying not to watch any YouTube videos (I’m addicted). So I’m listening to music. Instead of Spotify, I’m listening to my own CDs – ripped into digital format and stored on a server.

I upgraded my desktop – installing Linux on my son’s old gaming PC. Then I took my old Linux machine, wiped it, and installed Ubuntu server on it – using it as a headless server on my home network. The most useful thing I’ve done so far is installed Jellyfin on it. That lets me keep digital movies and music on the server, then consume them from any device in my house.

There are hundreds of music CDs on there – over the years, I ripped most of my collection into MP3s and now store the digital files there. I know that most of these are available on Spotify but there is so much there, like drinking from a firehose, that it is hard to find anything to listen to. These old CDs are pre-curated by myself and arranged in a familiar, useful format. 

So there.

At any rate,  I’m listening right now to an album from Sergio Mendes and Brasil ‘66. I love this shit. It is so much better than ANYTHING being recorded right now. A smooth concoction of latin jazz, just sophisticated enough to transcend elevator music, yet not so challenging to interrupt my morning coffee.

So there.

Brasil ‘66…. I remember them when they first came out – they were on all the TV shows. I was only nine, but I remember. 

2023-1966 = 57. This music is from fifty seven years ago. Since I remember it, it doesn’t seem that long ago. I’m sure some of this music is still being played on the radio – on “oldies” stations – on adult contemporary – maybe even on some cutting-edge independent radio. It’s so good it can still be played for itself – not historically, not ironically… shit, I’m listening to it right now.

Fifty seven years old. I was born in ‘57. Music this old, when I was born, would have been recorded in 1900. The gap between 1966, which I remember, and now is the same as between my birth and two turns of the century ago. 

That doesn’t feel right. Think about 1900 – did they even have recorded music then? What the hell? I mean, in 1966 nobody thought about having music on a computer and streaming through the house, but that’s only a difference in convenience. I could easily have a turntable and listen to a 1966 album – lots of people I know do – I imagine that some Brasil ‘66 albums are still being pressed and still will be fifty seven years from now – at least in some form. 

My mind reels. I feel the flow of time, the death of possibility, the terror of eternity. 

Better finish my coffee and get some errands done.