Giving up on the Theater

Today I planned to go see Django Unchained at the local theater at our mall. I got in the long line of cars and started looking for a parking space. There were none. As I circled the lot a couple times I thought about how it was actually kind of nice outside and there were 30 other things I could be doing besides sitting in a theater.

By the second loop I had talked myself out of it. If I drove to the back of the lot I could get a spot, but by the time I walked in and got my ticket the movie would almost be started. I left.

I am finding it difficult to find the time or motivation to go to the theater anymore, and this makes me sad. I'll just wait for it to come out on DVD. It is just easier... and cheaper... and cleaner... and more comfortable. I am one of those people now. The cinema is dying and I am not willing to do anything about it.

Cutting the Cable

I've been a subscriber of AT&T's Uverse service for the last 3 years. Back when I signed up, it was an upgrade from Dish Network. It seemed like a good deal at first. We didn't have anything better to do, and we watched a lot of television.

Over the last year we have been watching less and less tv. I turned on the dvr the other day and we had a ton of stuff built up that we had to catch up on. It was starting to feel more like a to-do list than a form of entertainment.

When I looked at our Uverse bill it made me sick. We were paying a lot and not using much of anything the services provided. I decided to cancel. The process was simple. I had our service turned off in a matter of minutes. Instantaneously our dvr was inoperable. All the shows we had built up on there were unwatchable. It was a clean break; a great way to end it.

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High Frame Rates and The Hobbit

I haven’t been all that excited for The Hobbit to come out, but as we get closer to release date I am starting to. I had totally forgotten that Jackson shot it in 48 frames per second. Regardless of whether the content of this film is any good or not, I am looking forward to seeing how it looks on the big screen.

Here is a good article on /Film that talks about what 48fps really means, and what we can expect to see from it.

➡ High Frame Rate and ‘The Hobbit’ | /Film

Narrowing the Scope

A few weeks ago I posted about how this site was going to be more than just a movie blog. I was going to use it for more general purpose blogging. I didn't like it. Pretendcritic has always been about movies and television. It is going to stay that way. No more random technology links.

I have a new web property for that. I am the owner and author of timidbear.com. Yes, I bought another domain name and created yet another site. I wanted to try something out on a different back-end platform and this gave me a good opportunity.

Stay tuned to pretendcritic.com. I will still be posting here. I've been writing about movies since the fall of 2008, and I will continue to do so... assuming the world doesn't end in 11 days.

Thanks for reading!

My New Shave

Ever since I started shaving I have not been a fan. My super-sensitive face skin became irritated by every method I tried. Over the years I’ve had every type of disposable razor out there. I’ve used 2, 3, 4, and 5 blades. I’ve had two different electric razors. Foams, gels, lotions, salves… I’ve tried it all. I’ve never been happy with the results.

Over a year ago my best friend told me about the wet shave. Essentially the wet shave is how a guy used to shave his face back in the 40's and 50's. I get an image of a barber lathering up the clients face. It is like that, but without the straight razor. I was eager to try it, but the initial cost is quite high and I ended up talking myself out of it. I was convinced that all these years of technological advancement would undoubtedly outperform a 70 year old shaving method. I forgot about the wet shave and spent the last 12 months dumping more money into Gillette fusion blades.

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Getting behind on the Internet

I have been extremely busy over the last couple weeks. I finally got a chance to sit down and check my RSS reader yesterday. I was amazed by how much stuff had happened. The Internet never stops. There is no way we can keep up with it.

72 hours of youtube videos are uploaded every minute.

There is no hope. We might as well give up.

It was a very satisfying experience to hit "mark all as read". I was immediately caught up. I missed out on a couple weeks on the Internet, but I will be okay.

“Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

– Thomas A. Edison