Comments on: Brain Games, Famous People, and Christopher Nolan being a Maniac

By: ericka

ericka — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 01:35:50 +0000

I said the same thing about Batman and the French Revolution and my wife told me I was making it up. We spent the whole subway ride home making complaints about the movie and then every now and then one of us would say "Wait, let's say something nice about it." I have read every Neal Stephenson novel and have a LOT of opinions about them, but what I will say about REAMDE is this: It rehashes a lot of things he's clearly been thinking about since Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle (and, in a weird way, might be a companion book to those) but it goes really fast so your actual time-spent-reading investment is pretty small, especially considering it's 1,000+ pages long. I read it in about 8 hours, I think. NB this advice is coming from someone who will gladly finish even books she hates, just so she can complain about them in a totally aware, legit fashion.

By: Yours Truly

Yours Truly — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 04:15:33 +0000

AWESOME

By: Mary R.

Mary R. — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 03:52:06 +0000

*skis not skies. Bob Redford’s skis.

By: Mary R.

Mary R. — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 03:42:07 +0000

I knocked Robert Redford down on his skies when I was learning to snowboard when I was 13. He was seriously pissed. I had a friend who worked at Sundance (his resort) for some years later on, and she said that for the longest time it was a ski only resort because some kid knocked him down. I’m pretty I was that kid.
I used to have neighbors down the street that were a power lesbian couple. We became friendly and started having each other over for dinner a bit. It was at least a month before Barb confessed that she used to be the official White House photographer for the Clinton administration. Then she showed a picture she took of David Bowie leaning against the presidential desk that he had shyly asked her to take during a visit. She was unfazed by all of this but was completely upset that I didn’t know who Cheryl Swoopes was, as she had waited for a couple of hours to get her autograph a couple of nights before.

By: eileen

eileen — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 23:14:05 +0000

My most famous person meeting was Jon Bon Jovi, in a situation I can’t say much of anything about because of client confidentiality. Ugh. Also Andy Griffith once cut me off on the way out of the Barnes & Noble parking lot!! !

We have Reamde just sitting here on the shelf, and it’s been here for months, and no one has read it! And we have both read the entire Baroque Cycle AND Anathem. So there’s THAT.

By: dalas v

dalas v — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 21:21:15 +0000

I read that the thing where you walk into a room and forget why you went there is triggered by doorways. When you walk through a doorway, your brain sort of resets everything to deal with the new scene and forgets to carry over the stuff you were thinking about. So maybe think about what you’re going to do right before you walk into the other room.

One time I was working on a shoot for MTV with Eminem and they told him to look in the direction where I was standing and he was like “I’ll just look at that tall dude.” So I helped out there.

I am very much not intimidated by famous people. I mostly do not care to bother them about their work and prefer to just talk about regular human stuff, so usually things don’t feel weird. Like when I drove all those comedians around at the comedy fest. I talked to Jon Glaser about his bike and it was just normal. I talked to Janeane about history and rare words in the dictionary. I agree that “celebs” are just people and that’s always been the reality for me when I’m around anyone like that. One time I met Pat Morita in Las Vegas.

By: Kim

Kim — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 20:30:50 +0000

It’s okay about Neal Stephenson. We can’t all like the same things. For instance, I do not like Led Zeppelin. Also, everyone needs to stop wearing those straw fedoras. It’s making everyone look like dicks.

Last night I saw Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. It had Tom Hardy in it, which is what reminded me. Apparently if you want to make non-mainstream film these days you are required to weigh the whole thing down with, like, 8 Oscar winners, or else it won’t get made. What an odd film. Gary Oldman is so talented. Every time he’s onscreen I feel like I’m looking at a different person. He is the consummate professional, although if I am being honest, I did not really spend much time noticing his performance in the Harry Potter series, but I don’t think that movie was much about acting, so that’s okay.

By: rch

rch — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 05:15:18 +0000

this is funny

By: ro6ot

ro6ot — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 03:37:19 +0000

OMG I’m so jealous about your comedy showzzzz! I love both those doods’ podcasts but ESP todd glass, & just today he mentioned having PFT in on his show. .. speaking of batman in the same breath as comedy, did you see the funny or die batman badman skits? this guy pete holmes, who ALSO has a pretty good podcast, plays a hilariously DUMM batman.

I don’t know what to tell you re: REAMDE. I just listened to it again & I thought it was quite good! I seriously like all his stuff though (except maybe zodiac? & “… command line” is nonfiction so that hardly counts) but given that you liked snow crash, I’d say yeah, give it a whirl. DID YOU TRY ANATHEM THOUGH?!?!?! I am super curious because that’s kind of my favorite I think; if you haven’t checked it out I HIGHLY recommend you do so, all with it’s monastic theme & [spoiler redacted].