Here at Wriphe.com, I don't actually keep track of every movie I watch, just new-to-me movies. I also frequently rewatch old-to-me movies, and sometimes I spot the Pause that Refreshes. These are some of those I spotted in the past year (in chronological order of release):

Bye Bye Birdie (1963)

A Hard Day's Night (1964)

The Sting (1973)

Ghostbusters (1984)

Pee Wee's Big Adventure (1985)

Waiting for Guffman (1996)

Zoolander (2001)

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010)

Yes, I know that's not a great screenshot of the original black Coke Zero can, especially considering that the product gets a better showcase when Scott intentionally overturns the Coke Zero that Gideon Graves offers him at the Chaos Theater. However, that black can really didn't photograph well in the dim light of the club. So this is what you get. But by all means, go watch Scott Pilgrim vs. The World to see if you think I made the right choice. I love that film, and so should you.

As always, a complete archive of my Coca-Cola movie screenshots can be found here.

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Questions from Hannah, part 2:

Why do you like cemeteries so much?

Because they are awesome. You can keep your forests and "grand" canyons. I'll take a cemetery any day.

Cemeteries are a reminder that the world wasn't built for me, that life only has the meaning we give it, that the journey is always more important than the destination. Memento mori!

When built right, the Victorian way, cemeteries are a delightful combination of storybook and park, usually filled with a bunch of spectacularly crafted art. As a bonus, most living people treat cemeteries with a serene reverence you don't find anywhere else, so cemeteries are simultaneously full of people and very quiet.

Truthfully, I think the idea of burying people in boxes in the ground is kind of ridiculous, but I love, love, love the stone monuments left above ground to mark their territory. If nothing else, those tombstones say "I was here," and that sort of yelling into the void of eternity speaks to me. What is a tombstone but a very succinct and enduring blog post?

And why do you call them cemeteries instead of graveyards?

Because that's what they are.

In the modern Western tradition, a graveyard is a type of cemetery that is on a church grounds while a cemetery is a community's common burial ground not necessarily connected to a specific church. For example, my town's local burial ground (established 1833) is officially Oak Hill Cemetery, though there are plenty of churches around here with their own much smaller graveyards. It's my experience that cemeteries are often more welcoming to visitors (and usually contain more delightfully ostentatious monuments) than graveyards, but I've been in plenty of delightful graveyards, too.

Personally, I can't say as I like the word "graveyard." A yard of graves sounds so very bleak, while there's almost something celebratory in a "cemetery." I like both of those much more than I like the euphemism "memorial park." The government should make you explicitly declare if you have a park full of corpses.

Looking at Online Etymology Dictionary, it would appear that both "graveyard" and "cemetery" have historically referred to more or less the same thing, so their use prior to the 19th century probably derives from whatever languages were spoken by a region's ancestors. And I suppose that maybe you live somewhere where "graveyard" has remained the preferred term, which is fine by me. Regional differences are fun!

You often mention the fact that you work at night and sleep through the morning; is your brain really more alert in the middle of the night?

I do think I do my best coding and most often find myself "in the zone" between 1 and 3AM, but I don't know if I would say that I am especially more alert in the darkness than I am in sunlight — I'm no vampire. I really like the late night because everyone else is asleep. For one thing, it's useful for my work: coding is easier without distractions, and it's easier to update websites, databases, and video game files when they aren't being as widely used. But I chose my occupation, not the other way around. I just like being the only person around. It's like the entire world becomes a cemetery, and you already know how I feel about that.

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Okay, now that I'm rested, let's continue the vacation!

Day 4 (June 30): National Portrait Gallery

20. National Portrait Gallery
21. Smithsonian American Art Museum
22. National Gallery Sculpture Garden

I loved the portrait and American art museums. Loved 'em. I could have spent the whole week in there.

America's Sweetheart, Myrna Loy

Day 5 (July 1): Newseum

23. Newseum
24. United States Capitol
25. Library of Congress
26. Supreme Court

The Newseum is the only museum we paid admission fee for. It was worth it. I must not have been the only person to think so; it was pretty crowded. The one exhibit that was totally empty was the section investigating journalistic ethics. I wish that was a joke.

Library of Congress Great Hall

Day 6 (July 2): Back to Virginia

27. Arlington National Cemetery
28. Steven F Udvar-Hazy Center
29. Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial
30. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial
31. Thomas Jefferson Memorial
32. George Mason Memorial
33. National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial
34. Air Force Memorial
35. US Marine Corps Memorial

Udvar-Hazy is the satellite campus (ha, ha) of the Air and Space Museum located 30 minutes away from DC in Dulles, Virginia. Like all Smithsonian museums, admission is free. Parking will set you back $15. This museum is home to the Enola Gay and the Space Shuttle Discovery. It also has a Concorde and some foreign military aircraft, but otherwise, I didn't find it as impressive as the Warner Robins Museum of Aviation. At least in Warner Robbins, parking is free.

Remember the Maine

Day 7 (July 3): Lexington, VA

36. Lee Chapel & Museum
37. Stonewall Jackson Memorial Cemetery

Lexington is home to Washington and Lee University and Virginia Military Academy. No surprise it also has the final resting place of General Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. Brian was very excited to stop here because it meant we'd completed our pilgrimage to the graves of all three men on Stone Mountain. (Lee and Jackson's horses, Traveller and Little Sorrel, respectively, are also on Stone Mountain, and both buried in Lexington as well.) Mission accomplished.

We returned home in the wee hours of July 4, and that was all right with me. I enjoyed the trip, but there's no place like home.

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Vacation Day 4: Charleston and Beaufort, SC

By day 4, Brian and I had visited almost everything we knew we wanted to see in Charleston, so we were looking for things a little off the more beaten paths. We decided to start the day by paying a visit to the only thing in Charleston that had lived through the American Revolution.

They estimate at the Angel Oak may be 400 years old. It looks it.

The thing that I wanted to do next was visit Magnolia Cemetery. Newnan's Oak Hill Cemetery is older, but Magnolia is much, much larger and, though I hate to say it, it's also much, much prettier. (What's with naming cemeteries after trees, anyway?)

Magnolia is adjacent to a complex of cemeteries, including St. Lawrence and the Lutheran's Bethany Cemetery filled with tombstones inscribed in German. The area is full of many stunning tributes to the dead.

Naturally, being a cemetery in Charleston, SC, it is chock full of monuments to dead Confederates. The men who died testing and running the world's first submarine to sink a ship, the H.L. Hunley, are all buried here (the ill-fated ship killed more Confederates than Yankees), as are many other C.S.A. officers, soldiers, and officials. There's even a monument to all the Germans who fought for the South.

As you can see, there are many spectacular monuments here, I couldn't stop snapping pictures. I took nearly 200. (Thank you digital camera technology!) Brian gave up trying to follow me and sat in his car playing with his smart phone. I tell you, kids today! Who'd rather look at digital pixels than fine statuary like these?

This cemetery is so big, there are even duplicate monuments. All three of these angels (watching over Patrick Darcy, Ellen Turner, and Micheal Shanahan respectively) are the same statue!

In a cemetery this size, the statuary is only part of the pleasure. There are a nearly endless variety of entertaining monuments. For example, C.S.A. Captain John C. Mitchell, who died during the Yankee siege of Fort Sumter in 1864, has his last words: "I willingly give my life for South Carolina. Oh! That I could have died for Ireland!" The tombstone for Corporal Allan Jackson explains that he survived being shot at the Battle of Fredericksburg only to die of Typhoid Fever in Richmond. And don't forget such great names as Harry Brotherhood and Dr. B.A. Muckenfuss. But my favorite tombstone of all:

After Brian finally dragged me from the cemeteries, we headed into downtown Charleston to visit the Charleston City Hall. Originally built as the Charleston branch of the Bank of the United States, it now houses the mayor's office and an absolutely stunning council chamber containing several original commissions of famous southerners like George Washington, Andrew Jackson, and John C. Calhoun. (Flash photography was prohibited, but I'm sure no pictures could do it justice.)

Looking for one more thing to see before turning in for the night, we drove an hour to Beaufort, SC. We got there just as the sun was setting, and barely had enough time to photograph the Hunting Island Lighthouse before they closed the park gates.

Given how little light there was, I think this picture came out really well.

One more day to document. More to come.

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March movies concluded.

59. An American Werewolf in London (1981)
I generally don't like werewolf films, but since I was planning to watch New Moon, I figured I owed this horror classic the old college try. To my surprise, I hadn't missed anything. To sum up: a boy is bitten by a werewolf but survives, told by his dead friend that he will become a werewolf, turns into a werewolf, and is killed. The SFX are good, but someone really should have tried to squeeze a little plot under all that makeup.

60. The H-Man (1958)
This movie has a significantly better user rating on imdb.com than New Moon, proving the adage that you shouldn't believe everything you read. Even if you hated New Moon, there's nothing here that's remotely better. The special effects of melting people -- every bit as creepy if slightly more mysterious than the melting Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark -- are the highlight of this pedestrian Japanese morality tale of the dangers of the radiation tests. That's two movies in a row where special effects are used to cover weak stories. It's a trend!

63. Die, Monster, Die! (1965)
After H-Man, this horrible movie looks like an award winner. Dialogue is long and pointless, characters are wooden, and sets are cluttered. There is a scene in this film where the protagonists discover a hothouse filled with truly horrific creatures that could be demons or mutants, and they act as though they were seeing something as ordinary as chickens. (The female lead inexplicably saves her screams for far more mundane thunderstorms and locked doors.) At least the film does have a significantly creepy and mysterious atmosphere, which was enough to keep me watching.

64. 30 Minutes or Less (2011)
I am so sick of Jesse Eisenberg and Danny McBride. Fortunately Fred Ward and Aziz Ansari appeared just often enough to keep the timer going on this "comedy."

65. Suddenly (1954)
I told my friend Chris that he was probably the only person I knew who would be even slightly interested in the fact that I had just watched a b-movie in which hired assassin Frank Sinatra kills a television repairman. Without hesitation Chris replied, "hey, I own Suddenly!"

66. Priest (2011)
In a past life, my brother worked in Hollywood where he developed a mancrush on actor Paul Bettany. Since then, Trey insists that I watch all things Bettany does. Trey was quite pissed to learn that I had watched Twilight despite my aversion to vampire-themed fiction and demanded that I finally watch Bettany's vampire-themed Priest. Don't tell Trey, but this movie co-stars Cam Gigandet, the villain from Twilight. (And he's delightful!)

68. Superheroes (2011)
A documentary about the people who dress up like superheroes and fight "crime," by which they typically mean homelessness.

69. Zero Hour! (1957)
I watched this knowing that it is the film that Airplane! is based on. What I did not know was that the two movies share the same script: Zero Hour! is Airplane! without the punchlines. Save yourself the trouble and just watch Airplane!.

70. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)
A fantastic movie. Sometimes, casting does make all the difference, but it really helps when they have a great script to work with.

71. The Big Sleep (1946)
This bit of film noir provided several scenes for Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, but fails to be anything more than a vehicle for Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. For die-hard film noir (or Bogart) fans only.

72. Friends with Benefits (2011)
Why try so hard to convince the audience that you aren't just another romantic comedy while being just another romantic comedy? I liked it despite this flaw, mostly because Justin Timberlake is so willing to make a fool of himself for my entertainment.

73. Dirigible (1931)
Frank Capra directed this film, but I watched it because it of its subject matter (the dirigibles, not the cliche polar expedition disaster). I marvel that Ralph Graves had a career as a romantic leading man: his kisses look like assaults. After he "assaulted" Fay Wray early in the movie, I kept cheering for him to die. However, Frank Capra provides the expected saccharin ending, more disappointing than ever when the wrong boy gets the girl in the end.

74. Game Change (2012)
Again, I almost didn't watch this because it was a biopic, but the allure of Woody Harrelson proved too great. Yes, the film is a hit job on Sarah Palin (the woman simply can't be that demented in real life), but it has the side effect of making John McCain look like a modern Teddy Roosevelt. I'm voting for Ed Harris in 2012!

75. The Mechanic (2011)
The sex scenes in this remake seem to define "gratuitous nudity" and left me wondering if the original film showed Charlie Bronson having vigorous sex with topless girls half his age. I guess I need to see the 1972 original and find out.

After watching 75 new-to-me movies by the end of March, I'm already halfway to my goal of 150 on the year. I think I'll take it easy in April. It sure can be hard work trying to watch a movie every day. I'm sacrificing considerable video game time.

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One month ago today, my mother sprung into my room at the crack of noon and announced, "wake up! we're going someplace I've wanted to visit for years: Oakland Cemetery!" You can only imagine my delight.

An hour later we were standing in Atlanta's historic Oakland Cemetery, surrounded by dead people. The woman working the welcome center was wearing a sea foam green, Victorian-era crinoline dress as she discussed Civil War battlefields with a uniformed Atlanta police officer. It was a little surreal, like walking through a Tim Burton movie. I wasn't entirely sure I wasn't still dreaming.

Mom and I entertained ourselves with the $4 self-guided walking tour map. I initially made an effort to seek out all of the numbered "points of interest" on the map, but I soon discovered that the highlights on the map were easily noticeable without referencing the pamphlet. For example, the Confederate Obelisk, once the highest structure in the city, hardly needs to be on a map for it to be noticed.

The cemetery is chock full of interesting monuments in a stunningly diverse mixture of styles. I've been in a lot of cemeteries, but few are populated with so many distinctly unique monuments. Below is the Jewish section of the cemetery, where to no one's surprise, they don't waste much space. That's my mother, pondering whether the oldest graves are near the middle. We both hope so.

In some ways the cemetery feels more like a sculpture garden than a field full of corpses. These dead people had great taste, and I doubt that many people alive today would design such good looking final resting places. Certainly none of these statues were wearing wife-beaters and flip flops.

I should mention that shortly after we entered the cemetery, mother and I were passing the plot of former Georgia Governor Joseph E. Brown when we encountered an aged, well-dressed mourner. The polite man had traveled from Scotland to lay flowers at the grave of his wife who had passed away a year earlier. He and my mother struck up a conversation about her family's Scottish ancestry (clan Napier) and accidentally discovered that one of my mother's relatives from Newnan had delivered the eulogy at the woman's funeral. Even without the internet, it's a small world after all.

Besides Governor Brown, the cemetery holds the remains of many notables, including Bobby Jones, Margaret Mitchell, and Maynard Jackson, among many others. But you don't have to have been famous to be buried here. In the South, we're so gracious we'll let in whoever wants in....

Even those damn Yankeys.

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