Some friends of ours recently made a short film (they're officially in IMDb) that got into the Sarasota Film Festival, so Kelly and I had to check it out. It screened with eight other short family-friendly films on a Saturday morning, and there was good turnout for the two locally-made titles in the set. I enjoyed our friends' comedy and laughed along with everyone else, and I was impressed by several of the other movies too. Short films don't get much respect, but there's often so much more originality and experimentation in them. We ran into some other old friends in the audience and shared a long lunch afterwards catching up about old times and mutual friends. What a great start to the weekend. I need to get out to this annual film festival more often.


Logical Operator

The creator of Funeratic, Scott Hardie, blogs about running this site, losing weight, and other passions including his wife Kelly, his friends, movies, gaming, and Florida. Read more »

Survivor Guilty

As a longtime Survivor viewer, I've been bothered by its slow decline. Some of the show's problems are apparent on its surface, like Jeff Probst's appalling gender bias and the show's overemphasis on tacky "themes" for the season. But I got to thinking about what's wrong under the surface, on a conceptual level. Go »

DMV Mystery

My last car, a 1996 Mercury, was registered in my mother's name, so every year in December (the month of her birthday), the registration sticker would be delivered to her at her house and she'd have to pass it to me to put on the license plate. No big deal. A few months ago, I bought a 2007 Dodge in my name, though she co-signed the credit application since I had no credit history. Go »

Kids Again

Kelly is a big Kids in the Hall fan, so I bought her tickets to see them for our first anniversary. And since they were playing at Universal Studios in Orlando, we decided to make a day of it at the theme park, which became a whole weekend getaway. And since I like sharing my opinions at length on the Internet, here's what I thought of each part. Go »

February 10-16

I don't really blog much about my day-to-day existence because it feels too mundane. But life is made up of those little days, and we don't get an accurate picture of each other's lives if we only discuss the big events. Here's a snapshot of my life last week. Go »

Mayhem

Last night I saw Killswitch Engage, Slayer, and Marilyn Manson. This morning I discovered that Walgreens sells a pretty good neck brace for $11.99. Aaron Shurtleff bought my Mayhem Festival ticket in May as a gift, and I'm grateful to have another generous friend. Go »

Trekkers Will Understand

The Netflix summary of Deep Space Nine (Season Two): "Commander Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) heads the crew of Deep Space Nine -- including Odo (Rene Auberjonois), Worf (Michael Dom), Dax (Terry Farrell) and others -- as it travels through space, trying to keep both the ship and the areas it travels safe, secure and free. One of the first (and greatest) challenges the intrepid voyagers face is the violence of the Dominion, a group composed partially of the shape-shifting Changelings." Gee, I wonder why fans call this the most misunderstood of all Star Trek series. Go »