Max Riffner: Sweet Sassy Linkblogging

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Sweet Sassy Linkblogging

My definition of the modern age is buying the episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip on iTunes that I missed the other night and watching it as I draw a Russian bakery in Brighton Beach with a tablet that plugs into my future machine (aka computer).
What the hell is with the backwards letters in Russian anyway? It doesn’t matter – my signage skills are unstoppable.
Nearly got sucked into watching all of the Hip Hop Honors last night. Damn you, VH1. How dare you put Rakim on right when I’m about to walk away?
Thankfully, I have Microphone Fiend in iTunes, so I could listen to the whole thing and not the sound bite on TV.
I wish I had Christian’s shirt, “Eric B for President.”
Maybe 4 people reading this get the above reference.
Not enough sleep last night because I got sucked into my new book, Pound for Pound. It is by F.X. Toole, who wrote Rope Burns, a collection of short stories which was then re-titled to Million Dollar Baby after the film came out. This was Toole’s first and last full length novel, published post-humously. It’s like Hemingway, except without the super-machismo, and if Hemingway had been a cut man his whole life. Million Dollar Baby (the film) was good, but read the books if you are at all a reader.
Speaking of books, Amazon has done a great job recommending stuff to me – like letting me know that Pound for Pound was coming out and allowed me to pre-order based on my purchase of Rope Burns.
Thinking about the pleasant experience, I went back on Amazon and picked up Lost Girls finally and Silence (awesome cover), which Martin Scorsese is apparently going to make his next movie off of (I read he is only doing low-budget indie films for awhile, and as Silence is historical, we’ll see how this will work).
And finally, speaking of Scorsese, I saw The Departed this weekend with Warren Buffett. I was salting my popcorn and was all like, who is this crazy disheveled old man standing next to me? Oh, it is the second richest man in the world. He was very nice.
If you haven’t seen The Departed yet, it may be my favorite Scorsese movie yet: not as raw as his earlier crime work, but definitely slick with some of the best performances I’ve seen from Damon and DiCaprio. DiCaprio’s slow meltdown is amazing to watch, but somehow Damon makes you feel empathy for his slimeball character. Great film.