One Friday A Month Is List Day

Apparently I only ever really find time to do a Friday is List Day post once a month. In any case, here you go:

Random Ten:

• Guster – “One Man Wrecking Machine”
• Pink Floyd – “Fearless”
• KMFDM – “Brute”
• Beastie Boys – “Song for the Man”
• The Chemical Brothers – “Let Forever Be”
• Handsome Boy Modeling School (DJ Quest/DJ Shadow) – “Holy Calamity (Bear Witness II)”
• Mike Oldfield – “Ommadawn On Horseback”
• Eels – “Somebody Loves You”
• UNKLE – “The Knock (Drums Of Death Part 2)”
• Isaac Hayes – “Run Fay Run”

5 Unread Books I Own

• The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon: Just purchased this and want to read it based mostly on the awesome title. I like Chabon too. And the book is getting good reviews.
• Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell: This has been out for a while, so I’m behind the trend, but I just picked it up recently. I like Gladwell a lot. Even if I don’t agree with something, he’s usually pretty interesting and thought provoking.
• Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War by Robert Coram: Based on what I’ve read of OODA loops, I decided to check out this biography. Boyd seems to have lead an interesting life, not to mention that his ideas appear to be playing a major role in current world conflicts.
• Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace: This one takes the award for longest on shelf without being read. I’ve had this book for at least 5 years, but can’t bring myself to open it up. Firstly, it’s around 1,000 pages, and from what I’ve heard, it’s one of those Pynchon-like post-modern footnotes-within-footnotes type of book. After finishing Gravity’s Rainbow, my interest in such works has waned considerably.
• The Marble Mask by Archer Mayor: My uncle gave me several of Mayor’s detective/mystery books for Christmas last year. I’ve read a couple of them and while I haven’t read much in the genre, he seems to be pretty decent (if not especially brilliant). I think this would have made good airplane reading, if I hadn’t been engrossed by Neal Stephenson’s Interface.

5 Upcoming Movies I Want To See Even Though I Know They’ll Suck

• Hitman (October 2007): After some initial distaste, I’ve grown to love the video game and even considered just writing a script myself based on the concepts (just for fun). Movies based on video games don’t exactly have a good track record though, and I can’t say that the no-name makers of this film inspire confidence. Also, there’s this quote from IMDB: “he’s being groomed as the … I don’t know … the next Paul Walker?” Still, the trailer is pretty decent and they’ve retained one of my favorite parts of the game: the Ave Maria.
• Transformers: God help me.
• The Simpsons Movie: I stopped watching the show a while ago, as I found myself watching an entire episode without laughing even once. Maybe they’ll reignite for the movie, but it will probably suck.
• I Am Legend: I loved the book (well, the book is a bit of a downer, but it was good), but I’m not too confident that we’ll see a good translation here. The book’s study of isolation and grim irony doesn’t appear to have made it to the screen. I guess there’s hope, but previous attempts to bring it to the screen have meddled with the story significantly (infamously and inexplicably, a recent script made no references to Vampires, instead using the term Hemocytes. At least the upcoming release avoided that trap…)
• The Bourne Ultimatum: This one’s cheating, I guess, as I think Greengrass is awesome and I’m pretty sure it won’t suck. But the #3 movie in a series is a tough one, as evidenced by other summer sequels, and I’m pretty sure this will disappoint.