Moonrise Kingdom

I am a huge Wes Anderson fan, so I have been excitedly awaiting his latest release, Moonrise Kingdom. It did not disappoint. If you have seen Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore, and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, you know what to expect here. A short simple story with strange characters and amazing art direction.

Moonrise Kingdom is set on a small vacation Island in New England, the year is 1965. A boy and girl meet at a local play, instantly fall in love (or something like it) and run away together. The boy is an orphan, with a lot of issues and the girl has parents, although I am sure she wishes she did not. We spend the next hour or so trying to find the kids with a strange mix of people: a very small town police officer, played by Bruce Willis; a strange scout master played by Ed Norton; two insufferable parents played by Bill Murray and Francis McDormand; and a short but excellently strange appearance by Anderson regular Jason Schwartzman.

The kids, Suzy and Sam, are played by Kara Hayward and Jared Gilman. They are great, but it is hard to call them the stars as you couldn't take out any one of the people I mentioned earlier and still have the same film. And as with all Anderson films, it's the art direction that is the star. Everything is perfectly curated, the house, the Island, the scout camp and the intermediary tours we receive from Bob Balaban as the narrator. If you are an Anderson, you'll love this film.

ParaNorman In-theater Standee

We went to see Moonrise Kingdom this weekend and there was the standee W+K made for ParaNorman sitting front and center in the lobby of the theater. For some reason when you work in advertising, things don't seem real until you actually see them out in the world.

How About I Be Me (and you be you)? by Sinead O'Connor

The news from Sinead O'Connor lately has not been good. A lot of personal blow ups and strangeness that may have lead some of us to forget how great a singer she is. How About I Be Me (and you be you)? is here to remind us what an incredible talent she is and put the focus back on her singing as opposed to her personal life. It's been 25 years since we first heard from her debut, 1987's The Lion And The Cobra and she is still one of the most unique voices in pop music.

My favorite song on this record is "I Had A Baby." It's a little racy, but totally what you expect from O'Connor: powerful and haunting, yet melodic. You will recognize it right away.

Spring Cleaning Goes to New Heights

It's strange to look out your window and see a person there, especially when you are on the side of a mountain and he's almost four stories up in the air. You have to be pretty brave to clean windows in our neighborhood.

If you are looking to freshen up your house, getting your windows cleaned is a great idea. You'll be amazed at how much more light comes in and what a difference it makes. If you are in Portland, call David Valoff at Professional Window Cleaning, (503) 236-8329, and he will set you up.

Spring Cleaning continues

Seems like as soon as you get one thing looking good, the other things around it start to look tired. So it was with the deck. I cleaned it and stained it and then the chairs started to show their wear. Barbara sanded them down to get all the splinters and mold off, then we wiped on the teak oil. They clean up pretty good.

Bob Schneider at the Doug Fir

Last night we stayed up past our bed time to see Bob Schneider at the Doug Fir. It was a great show as he rocked out with a full band, playing a few of the old favorites, like Deep Blue Sea and some new songs we had not heard before. I prefer to see Bob play solo, he is a lot less talkative when he has the band, but there were a few good stories last night. He stroked all our egos by saying Portland and Austin are fighting it out for coolest city in the US, and that Portland is ahead on points. Then he turned around and told us to "shut the f up" during a slow song. You gotta love Bob.

Car Progress

I went to visit my car today. This is something I do every few weeks, just to remind myself that I still own a car. We are making some progress. Most of the dents have been smoothed out and the new grill has been fitted. Still need to get the bumpers fitted and then finally get it repainted. I am hoping to have it back in time for some summer driving.