Mike Flacy

- Caught this little indie flick with Morgan Freeman and Paz Vega (the female lead in Spanglish). What a quirky little movie!  Freeman plays an out of work character actor that’s dropped off in an predominantly Hispanic neighborhood to study a grocery store manager for a role in a movie.  He latches onto Paz Vega, the girl running the 10 items or less line.

The whole movie is nothing more than a conversation that continues for about 90 minutes.  Freeman and Vega play off each other in a very human manner.  There are nice bits of comedy interspersed in the film as well.

- The Google / United Airline debacle was an extremely interesting technology screw-up this week.  Basically a single person accessed an article, around 1:30 A.M. last Sunday, about United declaring bankruptcy in 2002.  Since it’s a low traffic time for accessing news, Google bounced it to the Popular Stories section on the main Google News page.  Bloomburg picked up the story as new and the ensuing financial panic caused shareholders to sell a billion dollars worth of stock.  The price on the stock dropped by 75% in a matter of hours.  Yay computers!

- If you haven’t seen it yet, watch the political opening for SNL this week.  The remainder of the show is complete drivel, but the Sarah Palin / Hillary Clinton skit is absolutely hilarious.  Tina Fey nails Palin’s look, mannerisms and accent.

I discovered TweetDeck yesterday.  The design is ridiculously productive, yet the web keyword feature can easily suck away hours of your life.  I watched the iPhone feed and started firing off helpful replies incessantly.  The outcome is another handful of Twitter followers.  It’s a fantastic tool to find Twitter users with similar interests.  It’s not bad for local connections, but Twinkle is still the king in that respect.

I also came across two moderately funny web items today. The first is Where is Bob? It’s supposedly the tale of a absentee IT manager.  It’s likely a viral marketing campaign of some sort as the writing is a bit too good and the stories are just slightly outlandish.  It’s still worth looking at for a laugh.

The second is a Hulu video of a short comedy called The Line. It’s about a group of crazy fanboys that sit in a line 11 days before some sci-fi movie opens.  There are a couple guys from SNL in the mix.  Jason Sudeikis is particularly funny as the movie theater operator.

I’ve been listening to Chopin all day for some reason.  Dead Polish piano players seem to increase my productivity on the writing front.