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Add one part satire to two parts sincerity. Sprinkle on a couple of rants. Stir liberally.
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Daily Blah FAQ
Who are you?
I'm the newly-appointed Future editor at Business 2.0 and the former San Francisco correspondent for Time Magazine.
Wow, so does this mean everything you write reflects Time Inc's opinion? Or do you perhaps have some sort of standard disclaimer to the effect that it doesn't?
Naturally, the opinions contained in this blog are not those of my employers. In fact, some opinions may be the polar opposite of my employers. Some may be the same, for all I know. Hey, it's not like I ask my employers their opinions about everything in the news, okay? Let's just say that if this were a Venn diagram with one circle marked "my opinions" and the other one marked "my employers' opinions", there would doubtless be some overlap. But neither I nor my employers are able to pinpoint exactly where that overlap is.
What is this Daily Blah thing?
An experiment for a column I wrote about blogging back in December 2001. All these years later, I haven't been able to kick the habit.
If it's called Daily Blah, how come you don't ... hey, wait, you're writing every day!
See? Told you I'd try harder.
Mister, you talk funny. Are you one of them furrners?
Why yes I am, as it happens. I was born, raised and educated in Great Britain. I've been living in the U.S. since 1996 and identify as British.
I say, old chap, you forgot the "u" in "colour."
No I didn't. I may identify as British, but I am also an American journalist writing for an American audience about mostly American issues. These two different sides of me are a constant source of tension. Nevertheless, Daily Blah will adhere to American English grammar and spelling.
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Daily Blah for... Sunday, March 21, 2004
Eternally Memorable
Run, don't walk to your multiplex if you haven't yet seen Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Don't bother reading the rest of this review -- there could be a showing starting within minutes, and I'm just going to gush about it anyway. And you wouldn't want to have it overhyped, would you? Not that such a thing is possible with a film like this, a film that restores your faith in ... whoops, there I go. I'm serious -- stop reading, get running. I'll still be here when you get back, and then we can gush about it together.
[Pause for two hours]
You're back. Wasn't it amazing? Isn't Charlie Kaufman a genius? Aren't you astounded that the guy who wrote Being John Malkovich and Adaptation can keep playing this game of one-upmanship with himself? He keeps banging away at his favorite tropes -- the loser who thinks too much for his own good, the self-doubting internal monologue, the rich landscape of memories and dreams -- and yet always manages to come up with something breathtakingly fresh. A sure sign of this is the way his scripts have become like rehabilitation centers for actors who had gone way too Hollywood, viz. Nicholas Cage in Adaptation, Jim Carrey here. And I don't think anyone who's ever had a serious relationship can fail to have their heart reduced to a warm puddle of Jello by the charmingly imperfect Jim Carrey-Kate Winslet romance. (Now there's a pairing I never imagined myself praising.)
Here's how you know he loves her. For 90% of the movie, she exists purely inside his head. And yet even as a memory, she beats him over the head with the spotty truth of her reality. "I'm not just a concept," she warns him; it was at this point that I realized the movie was essentially a classic dialogue between the head and the heart, told in the least sentimental manner possible. In fact, many moments were more unnerving -- and certainly more likely to give me nightmares -- than the scariest horror movie. Forget 28 Days Later; we've all seen zombies on screen before. But who has ever seen a beloved face so graphically erased from memory, a childhood home eradicated, a bookstore (especially terrifying for bibliophiles like me) slowly deleted? No wonder the shadow of Alzheimer's scares the bejesus out of us. We can see ourselves racing through our own brains at the end of our days, struggling to hold on to our life's love, reminding ourselves over and over that they were, they are, more than just a concept.
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