• If I haven’t seen it, the film is listed in red.
• If I saw it but would never watch it again, the film is listed in strikethru.
• If I saw it and loved it, the film is listed in bold. (I own many of these on DVD.)
• If I saw it but have no strong reaction, the film is listed in normal type.

And here’s the list:

1. Pulp Fiction (1994) — I have never understood the lovefest for Quentin Tarantino
2. The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-03) — we all know my love-hate relationship with these films
3. Titanic (1997)
4. Blue Velvet (1986)
5. Toy Story (1995) — though I haven’t seen it, I’ve heard it twice, and think it’s very loud
6. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
7. Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
8. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
9. Die Hard (1988)
10. Moulin Rouge (2001) — the first half hour of this is amazing
11. This Is Spinal Tap (1984) — Kris and I love this film
12. The Matrix (1999)
13. GoodFellas (1990)
14. Crumb (1995) — almost a cross-off; interesting, but not redeeming
15. Edward Scissorhands (1990)
16. Boogie Nights (1997)
17. Jerry Maguire (1996)
18. Do the Right Thing (1989)
19. Casino Royale (2006) — my favorite Bond film; can’t wait for this fall…
20. The Lion King (1994)
21. Schindler’s List (1993)
22. Rushmore (1998) — I love this movie so much I paid like $80 for the Criterion version…
23. Memento (2001)
24. A Room With a View (1986)
25. Shrek (2001)
26. Hoop Dreams (1994)
27. Aliens (1986) — I know everyone loves Aliens, but the first film is one of my favorite movies of all time
28. Wings of Desire (1987)
29. The Bourne Supremacy (2004)
30. When Harry Met Sally… (1989) — hilarious; havne’t watched it in a while
31. Brokeback Mountain (2005)
32. Fight Club (1999)
33. The Breakfast Club (1985)
34. Fargo (1996)
35. The Incredibles (2004)
36. Spider-Man 2 (2004) — one of my favorite superhero movies
37. Pretty Woman (1990)
38. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) — meh
39. The Sixth Sense (1999) — I was surprised by this movie TWICE! (I couldn’t remember the ending the second time around)
40. Speed (1994)
41. Dazed and Confused (1993)
42. Clueless (1995)
43. Gladiator (2000) — t-e-d-i-o-u-s
44. The Player (1992)
45. Rain Man (1988)
46. Children of Men (2006) — an underrated film; loved it
47. Men in Black (1997)
48. Scarface (1983)
49. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) — one of my favorite movies
50. The Piano (1993) — ugh, I hated this movie
51. There Will Be Blood (2007) — sitting on our DVD player, though (and has been since April)
52. The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad (1988)
53. The Truman Show (1998)
54. Fatal Attraction (1987)
55. Risky Business (1983)
56. The Lives of Others (2006)
57. There’s Something About Mary (1998)
58. Ghostbusters (1984)
59. L.A. Confidential (1997) — at one time, I loved this film; haven’t seen it in a while
60. Scream (1996)
61. Beverly Hills Cop (1984)
62. sex, lies and videotape (1989)
63. Big (1988)
64. No Country For Old Men (2007)
65. Dirty Dancing (1987)
66. Natural Born Killers (1994)
67. Donnie Brasco (1997)
68. Witness (1985)
69. All About My Mother (1999)
70. Broadcast News (1987)
71. Unforgiven (1992) — a great film
72. Thelma & Louise (1991)
73. Office Space (1999)
74. Drugstore Cowboy (1989)
75. Out of Africa (1985)
76. The Departed (2006) — how this won Best Picture (even in a weak field) is baffling
77. Sid and Nancy (1986) — no desire to see it
78. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
79. Waiting for Guffman (1996)
80. Michael Clayton (2007)
81. Moonstruck (1987) — saw this on a “date” with Kristin, if I remember right!
82. Lost in Translation (2003)
83. Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn (1987)
84. Sideways (2004)
85. The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005)
86. Y Tu Mama Tambien (2002)
87. Swingers (1996)
88. Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)
89. Breaking the Waves (1996)
90. Napoleon Dynamite (2004) — “do the chickens have large talons?”
91. Back to the Future (1985)
92. Menace II Society (1993)
93. Ed Wood (1994) — this movie was awful
94. Full Metal Jacket (1987)
95. In the Mood for Love (2001) — a gorgeous film
96. Far From Heaven (2002) — a typical example of type of film (like “The Piano”) I hate
97. Glory (1989)
98. The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)
99. The Blair Witch Project (1999)
100. South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut (1999)

I used to watch a lot of movies, but my pace has really slowed over the past eighteen months. (And we all know why, right?) I’m sure I’ll watch many more in the future, however. (Kris told me to remind you all about her list of classic films. After seeing that list and knowing how much work she put into it, I’m going to find a way to port it to Get Rich Slowly…)

When I first heard that Watchmen was being adapted into a film, I was nonplused. How could anyone possibly do it justice. This is one of the best comic book series of all time (from one of the greatest comic book writers). Early production stills didn’t do anything to bolster my enthusiasm.

But this? This is the trailer. And by god, they might actually pull it off:

At the very least, this trailer has ruined my plans for the afternoon. Forget writing. I’m sitting down to read the graphic novel.

Note: This has been pulled from YouTube for the time being, but it’ll surely be back up tomorrow. (It’s officially released tomorrow.) Meanwhile, Gizmodo has a high-quality version…

“How tall am I?” I asked. “I can’t ever get a good measurement.”

“You’re five-eight,” she said.

“Ah,” I said. “I thought I was five-nine.”

She laughed. “You’re like every other guy — always trying to say you’re taller than you really are.”

If I were a cartoon character, a little black cloud would have formed above my head. I don’t give a rat’s ass how tall I am. I’m not trying to be macho by claiming to be five nine. I weigh more than 190 pounds, for goodness sake! If I’m going to lie about something, it’s going to be my weight. I say I’m five-nine because that’s how tall I think I am.

Today I finally went to the sidebar at Get Fit Slowly to change my vital stats. Heaven forbid people believe I’m five-nine when I’m only five-eight!

As I was changing my data, I took a look at the vital stats from the doctor’s visit. I noted that the nurse had indicated my height was 174 centimeters. “That’s strange,” I thought. “Wasn’t I 175 centimeters before?” I checked.

Sure enough, when I measured my own height, I had come up with 175 centimeters. The nurse came up with 174 centimeters. But you know what? Here’s how those numbers convert to Imperial units:

• 174 centimeters == 5 feet, 8.50393704 inches
• 175 centimeters == 5 feet, 8.89763135 inches

So, not only was the nurse quibbling over about one-half of once percent of measurement, but she was also truncating instead of rounding. That is, she was lopping the fraction instead of rounding up to the nearest whole inch. I really am five-nine.

But just so you don’t think I have some sort of macho need to overstate my height, let’s all agree that I’m five-eight-and-a-half.

Our Nintendo Wii died recently, so we’ve had to ship it back for repair ($82.50). She’d become addicted to Wii Fit, particularly the yoga, but for the past week or so, she’s had to improvise.

Meanwhile, my doctor pronounced me “as flexible as a two-by-four”. “You might want to try some yoga,” he told me. Yes, I might. But not on the Wii.

Wii Fit is okay, but its yoga isn’t really yoga. I took a yoga class in college and loved it. Every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, I spread out my brightly colored beach towel to salute the sun and lie like a corpse. You can’t really do that with the Wii.

I considered taking a class at a local gym, but they’re all rather expensive. Instead, I looked online and discovered the perfect DVD: Yoga for Inflexible People ($7.99). For Kris, I ordered Yoga for Beginners ($9.99). Since our DVD player is connected to the television upstairs and not to the Wii TV in the den, I ordered a cheap-ass DVD player ($34.99).

My hope is that Kris and I can each benefit from these yoga videos, continuing to improve our fitness. $52 seems like an acceptable price to pay for this.

But all of the above is just set-up. What this post is really about is how much fun I’m having while tracking the packages. I shipped the Wii back last Wednesday. It’s now in Vernon, California, on its way to who-knows-where? (I didn’t keep the shipping info — only the tracking number.) Once it reaches Nintendo, I’ll apparently be able to track it through the repair process.

Meanwhile, I’m also tracking the shipments from Amazon. The DVDs will arrive on Wednesday, but the DVD player itself is being shipped by a third party in Tempe, Arizona. It’s not scheduled to arrive until Thursday.

Now it’s like yoga contest. Which will reach our doorstep first: the Nintendo Wii or the DVD player? Once or twice a day, I reload the shipping pages just to see if there’s progress.

My money’s on the DVD player. The Wii isn’t even to the repair center yet! Then it’s got to be fixed and re-shipped. The DVD player just has to make its way safely up I-5.

If everything goes as planned, Kris will be able to follow a yoga program on Friday.

But I found I loved the gardens.

In the U.K., what we call a yard is called a garden, and it comprises not just shrubs and flowers, but the lawn as well. In the case of Jane Austen’s house, the garden included a large carefully-maintained lawn, a variety of old trees, and lovely secluded spots. I was entranced by these lovely secluded spots.

“You know,” I said to Kris. “I think we could create a spot like that at Rosings Park.”

“Where?” she said.

“In the front border bed,” I said. She was skeptical.

When we returned in early August, I fought my way through the laurel and azalea to see if I could indeed create a lovely secluded spot. To my surprise, there was a relatively large opening in the midst of the front border bed. Or there could be. When I first looked at it, it was covered with English ivy, and crowded in by laurel, lilac, and holly. The ivy itself was covered with a couple decades of twigs and branches.

Last autumn, I made a half-hearted effort to clear the space. Mostly, I just pruned the big holly by the sidewalk. Then I let the idea lie dormant.

After gestating for nine months, the idea has finally, well…that’s a metaphor that’s been stretched too far. Let’s just say that over the weekend, Kris and I did a lot of yardwork. One of our top tasks was to weed the front border bed, and to do that, I had to climb back into my secluded spot. This time, the possibilities were much clearer.

This afternoon I grabbed a rake and a hoe and my pruners. I spent an hour raking twigs, pulling up ivy, and clearing debris. When I’d finished, my secluded spot had begun to take shape.

The space is roughly circular, maybe fifteen feet in diameter. It is completely enclosed by shrubs and trees. Dappled sunlight filters through the leaves overhead, and all around is a wall of trunks and limbs. At two locations one can see clearly outside The Grove (as I have come to call it):

• We pulled down a laurel limb, granting a view of the house.
• Because I pruned the holly tree last fall, there’s a screened view of the street. (It seemed like a good idea at the time, but how I now regret having pruned those branches!)

I’ve been sitting in The Grove for the past half an hour. It’s wonderful. People pass by on the street, and they do not notice I’m here. Though it’s a warm day, it’s cool beneath the trees. It’s peaceful. The only drawback so far are the goddamn mosquitoes.

Now I have to decide what I want to do with this lovely secluded spot. My first idea was to put down a layer of pea gravel and then install some wrought iron furniture. That seems like the proper English thing to do. But after further thought, I wonder if there might not be other possibilities.

Should I install a fire pit? Should I find some sort of soft surface? (I can imagine how awesome it would be to do daily yoga in The Grove.) Should we opt for a picnic table? Is it best to level the space? (There’s a slight slope.) How can I screen the road from view?

There are many possibilities. I’m not sure where to even begin looking. All I know is that this idea, which seemed a little crazy at first, will come to fruition, and soon. Of all my pipe dreams — Mini Cooper, Stickley furniture — this is the one that will be most satisfying to achieve, and the cheapest to do.

I can’t wait to have a lovely secluded spot to call my own.

Bonus! As I was editing this post, Sammy (or friendly blue jay) fluttered into The Grove and came hopping up beside me. I could have reached out and touched him! He was apparently after a peanut I had unearthed while clearing the space.

Last week, Andy pointed to a series of YouTube videos about a character named Fred, writing:

LA Times on YouTube’s Fred — insanely popular with tweens, he has 242k subscribers and a sponsorship deal; here’s an interview.

Because I follow all of Andy’s links, I followed these. The LA Times article is fascinating because it describes how Fred may portend the arrival of truly egalitarian media. (This is a theme I explored in an interview yesterday with Scott Burns, a long-time newspaper columnist. We discussed how newspapers are dying and the web is allowing a sort of democratization of information providers. Though I interviewed Burns for my personal finance blog, there are vast portions of the conversation that aren’t about money. I may post them here.)

But the amazing thing about Fred isn’t that a random fourteen-year-old from Nebraska (Lucas Cruikshank) can rocket to internet celebrity with no traditional media coverage. No, the amazing thing about Fred is that he clearly illustrates some sort of generational divide. Here’s a recent episode:

Do you think that’s funny? Neither do I. But apparently kids love him. Seriously. They think he’s hilarious.

We were talking with Mike and Rhonda last night, and the women were expressing their bafflement over Italian Spider-Man. “It’s funny,” I said. Mike agreed. But Kris and Rhonda were unconvinced. This led to a discussion of humor, and how different people perceive it.

“I can usually see why something might be considered funny, even if I don’t think it is myself,” I said. “But this Fred thing. I don’t get it. There’s nothing funny about it at all.” Because my companions had never seen Fred, they didn’t get my meaning.

From the LA Times article:

If you’re past a certain age, Fred’s appeal is essentially inscrutable. His antics are Kryptonite for grown-ups, repelling any but the most vigorous attempts to watch an entire episode and keeping us in the dark about why kids seem to love him so much.

“They just think he’s the funniest thing ever,” said Valerie Moizel of the L.A.-based WOO ad agency, which found out about Fred after it conducted kid-centered focus groups for its ZipIt instant messaging product — which later showed up in Fred’s videos. “We watched them watch him — they fall on the floor hysterically laughing. They’re just mesmerized.”

And more than just the zaniness, it’s possible that kids are connecting to Fred on other levels too. He has parental, behavior and girl problems, so there’s a little something for everyone.

“The biggest draw is the subject matter,” Moizel added. “He really knows how to touch on things that are current and that teenagers deal with.”

What do I know? I’m just a middle-aged man. I wonder if my father felt the same way about Monty Python and the Holy Grail?

Curiously, I actually like some of the videos from JKL Productions, which features Lucas Cruikshank (a.k.a. Fred) and his twin cousins, John and Katie. This video of the trio dancing and lip-syncing to Hannah Montana is exactly the sort of thing I used to do with my friend Heather when I was in high school. It’s fun.

But Fred? I just don’t get Fred…

Last night was especially bad. It wasn’t just the sound of “gunfire” at 10pm. No, last night we had the boom of “cannons” at three in the morning.

Okay, to be fair, that cacophony wasn’t actually from neighbors with firecrackers. It was from thunder.

The Portland area doesn’t have frequent thunderstorms, but we do get them from time-to-time. All my life, I’ve liked the sound of thunder rolling in the distance. It never occurred to me to think about what it must sound like to have the thunder overhead. Last night, I got to experience it first-hand.

Between 2:30 and 3:30, the thunder and lighting raged all around Rosings Park. It was as if we were in the midst of the Battle of Trafalgar. The lighting sometimes seemed to be a strobe light. And the thunder rolled thick and heavy.

“Crap,” I said when the rain began to fall. “I left the windows down in my car.”

The lightning flashed.

“Well, you’re not going to roll them up now,” Kris said. “But why don’t you go see if you can let Nemo in.” Nemo had been the only cat who refused to come in before bed.

I went downstairs to call for him. All of the other cats were tense. Every time the thunder cracked, Toto froze in fear. Max, his ears back, followed me around, begging to be let outside. But Nemo was nowhere to be found. He wouldn’t come when I called.

If I had been thinking, I would have grabbed my digital camera to record the scene. I don’t know if I’ll ever experience another thunderstorm like that again. But it was 3am and I wasn’t thinking straight.

Now the firecrackers over the next couple nights won’t seem like that a very big deal…

Please let there be an Italian Wonder Woman…

Last weekend, I set out my camera and filmed ten minutes while Toto and I sat at the picnic table, eating fresh strawberries and feeding the jays. I’ve trimmed that down to the following three minutes, which Kris and I think are fun.

Be warned, however, that when Andrew watched this he was unimpressed. “This is boring,” he said. I’m sure most of you will find it so. But I like the way this captures late spring/early summer at Rosings Park — the lazy pace, the birds, the cats.

During our conversation, we discussed the present state of foldedspace. I’m trying to put stuff up here, but it’s sporadic, I know. Craig pointed out the readers of foldespace may not actually read Get Fit Slowly or Get Rich Slowly. He suggested that I could reuse stories from those other sites here.

He has a great point.

For example, have I mentioned that we just had the knob-and-tube wiring replaced at Rosings Park? I don’t think so. Have I obsessed about running? I don’t think so. Have I discussed how I’m hiring contract employees for blogging? Nope.

So, based on feedback from my dinner companions, I’m going to try to extract the best bits from the other blogs and repurpose them here, as well as posting funny cat stories and favorite music videos. Those of you who read the other sites might get some repeats, but everyone else will get a little more to read.