There's a site that I've become rather fond of -- www.Hulu.com.
I was first turned on to Hulu when I found out that Sons of Anarchy was being shown there. The biggest perk for me is the Films section because they have things like old black and white classics to relatively modern-day releases.
Yes, there are a handful of commercials but each film only has about 5 commercial breaks and each break only has 1 commercial for 15-30 seconds. You can't get that on TV and it's cheaper than going to the video store so a win-win situation as far as I'm concerned.
It's also nice because you browse through the 10 pages listing the current films and check off those to add to your viewing queue. Some films have expiration dates of a few weeks or a few months and others have no expiration date.
Typically, I like to watch one film per night on the nights I'm not doing something and some of the films I've watched recently are:
- The Night of the Hunter
- Waking Ned Devine (GREAT!)
- In The Name of the Father
- Swimming Pool
- The Professional
- Requiem for a Dream
- Wimbeldon
- Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels
- The Fabulous Baker Boys
- Somewhere in Time
- Killing Zoe
- Nobody's Fool (GREAT!)
...anyway, you get the idea. Definitely check out www.Hulu.com.
Call me strange, but I like the Texas winters because of the sheer diversity. Yesterday was Saturday with beautiful blue skies and 80; tomorrow morning it will be 30 with ice. I like the diversity because come August we will have two variations on the same theme: "God, it's hot" and "Fuck it's hot". I think anything below 100 falls into the first category.
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In other amazing developments in my world, I've decided to see if I can go without reading any bad news this year. I already forgo a lot of it by not owning a television. I have admittedly enjoyed the movies on www.Hulu.com because they are free and they offer good diversity. Yet, a lot of what I read is derived from sites like CNN, FoxNews, the local news affiliates, the British papers online, etc.
For the past 4 days I have avoided any stories with negative headlines and it's shocking how few articles that leaves to be read.
I'm a big believer in the philosophical debate on "does art imitate life or does life imitate art". In this day and age, art almost translates to media of all types. So when people are inundated with negative news stories on TV, exposes, bad news on the websites, etc., it's having an impact on their mental being with directly affects the emotional and physical well being. Some people might think I'm sticking my head in the sand, but I'm not buying into that because I am making a conscious choice to have positive elements into my life.
Of all 3 of the major network news sites here in Dallas, there were only 2 stories today that were positive - one had to do with the recovery of a stolen puppy from a pet store and the other was on a woman who won $1 million at the Winstar casino New Year's Eve after she had been laid off after 35 years at Bell Helicopter.
Think about that.....Dallas is the 6th largest media market in the country with a population 4x the population of the entire state of Wyoming and there were only 2 positive stories.
I'm just one person, but I've had enough.
