About Me

I’m a firm believer in maximizing everything you have. It’s what libraries do (what they must do), and what I’d like to think I do. And after working for seven years in a college library with a hard-nosed budget, I think I’ve become more confident at maximizing strained resources. I’ve become DIY, and I’ve taken on a lot: digital and physical library outreach initiatives, data-driven efforts, all aspects of resource sharing, troubleshot (bloodshot?) software, training staff and students, integrating our interlibrary loan software to our ILS, and just going along with the hardness of a fumbling but eye-opening reference desk interview. It all comes back to sharing for me. Sharing resources but also sharing the technology – that revolving leviathan – all in a way that it becomes an empowering comfort. It’s a lot to take on, but bring it on! All of which brings me to this website. It’s a snapshot of what I’m up to and what I like to share with people important to me. One of my great joys is exposing friends, family and patrons alike to new and exciting art, information, and cuisine. If it can be eaten, viewed, heard, or read, I’m doing it and making sure others are too.

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About Me

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Let's Read

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My reading tends to skew towards non-fiction (film studies is a particular interest). Below are some of the works I've been thumbing through lately. Also included are my annotations on two works of particular interest: John Charles's seminal The Hong Kong Filmography and Donald C. WIllis's exhaustive (and exhausting) fourth edition of his ongoing Horror and Science Fiction Films series.

The Hong Kong Filmography

Veteran Video Watchdog contributor John Charles brings his sharp eye for detail to this most-welcome volume, still the standard reference on the subject. Each entry features a 1-10 star rating, cast and crew details, synopsis and critique and, most graciously, notes on video, DVD and laserdisc availability. Home video has always been a minefield for collectors of Hong Kong cinema who wish to see the most complete version of a film, but Charles’s notes on video quality, runtimes and even subtitle quality are invaluable, even over nearly two decades after publication. And the passage of time has only borne out Charles’s forward thinking: he forgoes pages-long synopses that can now be found on any corner of the internet and instead provides the stuff that really matters: terse but keen critiques and scrupulously fact-checked research. Only question: where’s the second edition?

Horror and Science Fiction Films IV

Donald C. Willis’s groundbreaking “checklist” series of horror and science fiction films gets a major shot in the arm in this fourth volume of his heroic, decades-long attempt to catalog every genre film ever made. Dimensionally speaking, it’s a monster: its 642 pages and 4,000+ reviews add up to a four-pound hardcover willing to take on all comers, including Willis’s earlier volumes which seem positively puny in comparison. You can almost hear the giddy rat-tat-tat of Willis’s keyboard as he gulps down a candy-colored slush of some of the wildest films ever made. And let it be said that before the internet movie database became a go-to resource and before grindhouse became a “thing,” Willis was doin’ it for real in these pages, sneaking in quick wit and pithy insights into every genre film the world over. And another point to drive home: Willis was arguably the first to report on global genre cinema beyond English-speaking territories as early as 1971’s original Horror and Science Fiction Films. Although this volume’s publication date states 1997, you’ll find still-obscure gems like the delirious Taiwanese horror The Witch with the Flying Head. Willis is at his riotous best here, tucking into the film’s near-hallucinatory excesses (“[the witch] can spit little snakes and centipedes, shoot rays, and breathe fire…gore for all.”) while still providing the best information on the film circa 1997 (a VHS release from Hong Kong specialist label Tai Seng is mentioned, along with the lamentable fact that it’s sans subtitles). And for the long-term hangers-on, there’s a welcome index to the films covered in previous volumes so you can easily find that review of Please Don’t Eat My Mother! or Wild Women of Wongo. A must. =======

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Let's Eat

What's cookin'? Chinese mostly, especially Sichuanese. I can't resist the spicy, toasted perfume of Sichuan cooking. Every time I see a dish lolling in hong you (red chili oil) in my favorite Sichuanese restaurant I find inspiration to cook it at home in my trusty well-patina'd wok.

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Let's Eat

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Let's Watch

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