Shin-ippets

List on the — no, wait. different day, different meme:

* I’m feedburnin’! I’ve finally decided to get on the Feedburner bandwagon. This is my first post since I changed over to it (and redirected my original RSS feed to it), so hopefully everyone who is already subscribed to the old feed is reading this just fine. If not — I’ll need to do some tweaking to figure out what I did wrong.

I know this will sound a whole lot like “Raise your hand if you can’t hear me,” but if you happen to be reading this and you know that something’s not working, please let me know in the comments. Thanks much.

* Obscure Jewish holiday alert! This past week something very trivial to the majority of Jews in the world occurred: we switched to the rainy season from the not-so-rainy season. And the momentous day in the Jewish calendar when this occurred? December 5.

Yes. December 5. This could very well be the only occurrence in the Jewish prayer book where a Gregorian date is used. Everything else is done on the Jewish calendar. In fact, the not-so-rainy season occurs between Passover (whose date varies in the Gregorian calendar) and December 4. This has always interested me — because why did they decide on December 4?

So I looked it up online. And there’s a great justification of it. And by great I mean that there are about twenty-seven steps to derive the date — which went through a major change in the sixteenth century when eleven days magically disappeared from the calendar. And after the year 2300 the prayerbook is going to have to change — as the date in question will be upped to December 6.

And all it means is that during the standard weekday regimen of prayers, three more words are added that have to do with moisture. Whee!

* I just saw Wall*E today for the first time. I’m a fan of the rest of the Disney/Pixar films. Our son is a big fan of Toy Story and Cars. I’ve wanted to see this film since it was in the theater since I had heard truly wonderful things.

This film was very different from the other Pixar feature length films. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that there is no dialogue for the first twenty minutes. And after that? The interaction is so incredibly visual in nature. The creators experiment with sound in a way that hasn’t been done before in a feature length Pixar film.

In fact — I would say that this film ressembles an animated Pixar short film — supersized to feature length.

It’s still very, very, very, very good. I need to watch it again as my first time was with the five-year old. He wasn’t as captivated by it as I was; it was difficult for him to understand the nature of the robots, I guess. But I’ll catch it the next time around to catch the subtle nuances Pixar throws in.

* I really want to win the limited-edition box-set of Heathers – and so do you! Thanks to the generosity of Janelle of 5 Minutes Till Normal, the opportunity is out there for some lucky creature to win this incarnation of the 80s cult-classic film starring Winona Ryder and Christian Slater. Thinking back on it, it’s interesting to think about the vernacular of my high school years which was developed by the student body of Westerberg High. And the notion that someone dare approach the topic of teenage suicide with irony and satire. Not to mention — Winona Ryder as someone other than the goth chick in Beetlejuice? Hello hotness!

Anyhow — as a qualification to enter for a chance to win the limited edition box-set, I need to post a link to her blog entry. You know — to publicize the fact that she’s giving this away to one lucky reader. To increase the pool of interested parties who can win. Come to think of it — don’t go there. Or go there and don’t enter yourself in the raffle. It’s not such a great movie after all, I guess. Come to think of it, it’s a great example of an Ich lüge bad movie. So forget I said anything. 😉
* Anyone watch SNL last night? It was a mixed bag. But some parts of it were so exciting that I jizzed in my pants:

Direct NBC Link

It’s good to see Jorma Taccone in a featured role here. (And I think that’s Akiva Schaffer as well. The three of them form The Lonely Island and are associated with SNL on the writing staff. (Except, of course, for Andy Samberg who is a full-fledged cast-member.) This may not be as strong as “Lazy Sunday” or “Dick in a Box,” but it’s a relief to see something along those same lines…

* I’m watching Leverage tonight on TNT! I even wrote a blog post about it on Snackie TeeVee. It stars Timothy Hutton and a strong supporting cast with an Ocean’s Elevenesque premise. I was able to see the pilot several months back — and it’s been the show I’ve been looking forward to the most this season.

But hey — don’t take my word for it. Wil Wheaton even tweeted about it today — he’s friends with writer John Rogers and was able to read the script. He deems it “AWESOME.” That should be good enough for anyone…

Wow — this was extremely TV heavy, wasn’t it…