Barry profile picture

Barry

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, ar

About Me

40-something hipster wannabe. Graphic designer/Photoshop savant. Comedy writer. Frustrated guitar player. Burgeoning cartoonist. Caught somewhere between the nice part of nostalgia and the realism of my mortgage.

My Interests

Graphic Design, retro advertising, disc golf, collecting tasty mid 20th century robots, sci-fi (all media), dusty metal lunchboxes, all things apple (mac), photography, googie art/signs, monster movies (the older the better), reading ,writing, gaming. Also less hedonistic: critical thinking, science, the empirical method.

I'd like to meet:

Carl Sagan, Ray Bradbury, Elvis Costello, YOU.

Music:

Beck, Southern Culture on the Skids, Elvis Costello, Steely Dan, Spade Cooley, Robert Johnson, Man or Astroman (ALL kinds of surf), Jonathan Coulton, Chet Baker, and good ol' Beethoven. In no particular order.

Movies:

Five Easy Pieces, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, Bottle Rocket (ok all the Wes Anderson stuff), Forbidden Planet, Godzilla, Ordinary people

Television:

Battlestar Galactica (Yes, I am a geek, and proud of it.), The Office, The IT Crowd (BBC comedy), Extras (Ricky Gervais is a god), ER (my one network soapish drama), Doctor Who (BBC torrents. See above geek explanation.), Doctor Gangrene (local horror host), Lost (for now. getting tired of waiting for answers), IFC channel, Sundance channel, Conan O'Brien

Books:

Alll over the map here. I'm a voracious reader, from escapist genre sci-fi to hard science. On my nightstand now: Freakonomics and Night Masks (part of The Dresden Chronicles). A very slight scratch in the surface of my library would show Hunter S. Thompson, Harlan Ellison, Ray Bradbury, Carl Sagan, Tom Wolfe, Ayn Rand, Bernard Cornwell, Maurice Sendak...and the list goes on. Got any cheap bookshelves for sale?

Heroes:

Darwin, Stephen Hawking, Galileo and Captain Kangaroo.

My Blog

Check your p.c. conventions at the door: A Grindhouse Review

Gather 'round children(especially you fellow boomers) and you shall hear the tale of The Grindhouse Revival.Last night I, along with my movie coterie, wedged into a packed house sneak preview of Rober...
Posted by Barry on Thu, 05 Apr 2007 08:32:00 PST

300 Review

I caught the sneak preview of 300 the other night and thought I would offer my take.I went in expecting a stylish action flick and I was not disappointed. Not by a long shot. But let me back up a bit ...
Posted by Barry on Wed, 07 Mar 2007 08:17:00 PST

Add this one to the weird dreams list

Ok, so I'm awakened from a fitful sleep by the text message alert tone this morning (thank you Brian), and I'm dreaming the following at that exact moment:The setting is a cross between The Waltons an...
Posted by Barry on Sun, 07 Jan 2007 09:42:00 PST

Apocalypto, the Two Mels, and the Demise of Secret Squirrel

WARNING: SPOILER ALERTAs a boy, like many my age, I was obsessed with cartoons, from the great to the very very bad. I spent many happy hours watching Hanna Barbera classics and in particular, one of ...
Posted by Barry on Thu, 30 Nov 2006 08:21:00 PST

Election Day


Posted by Barry on Tue, 07 Nov 2006 07:43:00 PST

On the road

Well, I'm off to Vegas tomorrow in the earrrrrly a.m. I'm going, for my first time, for a quick birthday weekend jaunt with my Dad and bro. Should be fun. I look forward to chintz, neon, endless buffe...
Posted by Barry on Sat, 28 Oct 2006 04:27:00 PST

Greatest Album Cover Ever??

I actually saw this album at The Great Escape, but talked myself out of buying it. Aargh!...
Posted by Barry on Fri, 06 Oct 2006 08:42:00 PST

Oddly enough...

...I had a dream that Johnny-Five was explaining the intricacies of supersymmetry in String Theory to me, last night. I woke up angry.
Posted by Barry on Wed, 19 Jul 2006 09:33:00 PST

Requiem for a heavyweight writer

Last night, just by chance, I stumbled on to AMC's screening of one of my all-time favorite films, Requiem for a Heavyweight. Filmed in 1962, it's Rod Serling's own script based on his 1959 TV version...
Posted by Barry on Thu, 29 Jun 2006 09:06:00 PST

Pet Peeves Part 1

1. Smokers who throw butts out of their car windows, forcing ME to live in the ashtray that is their world.2. People who smack their lips/chew with their mouths open. My ol' Dad used to say, "They sou...
Posted by Barry on Mon, 26 Jun 2006 02:22:00 PST