Album Review: 11:11 by Regina Spektor - 3 out of 5

Regina Spektor is a recent pop obsession of mine. I first discovered her from some radio play from her 2004 Soviet Kitsch album. Since then I have amassed all of her albums and remain a dedicated fan. 11:11 is not Regina Spektor’s strongest album, but rarely are first albums the best albums. However, it already demonstrates a strong, quirky songwriting talent and shows off her incredible vocal range. [Read More]

Album Review: 1,039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours by Green Day - 2 out of 5

From a recent favorite album to an album of my ever-increasingly distant youth. I purchased this album in a small record shop in Boston while visiting Harvard for a disastrous debate tournament my senior year of high school. I’m pretty sure that Dookie had probably already hit the airwaves by the time of the trip or I doubt I would have heard of Green Day considering that my musical diet at the time was a strict combination of grunge and rockabilly. [Read More]

Hosting Recommendation

For many years now, I’ve been using webhost4life as the hosting company for my various websites. When I signed up they offered really top notch service and a reasonable price (especially for .NET hosting, which I was primarily using at the time). However, over the last year or so, their service has become increasingly unreliable and even at the best of times, extremely slow. Earlier this week, this site went down unexpectedly. [Read More]

The Perversion of Avatar

I’m having a difficult time remembering a film that has incensed me as much as James Cameron’s latest effort, Avatar. I have never had a great deal of respect for Cameron’s work, the first two Terminator films exempted. In fact, his greatest commercial success, Titanic, has always been one of my most despised films. However, with Avatar, Cameron has truly done something monstrous. I know there have been several complaints about this film that have been floating around, the small controversies about the notions of racial loyalty, the white man’s savior complex and Sigourney Weaver’s incessant smoking. [Read More]