2 + 2 = 5 (Ignoring that it's Election Day Edition).

1 and 2) Jaws (dir: Spielberg) and Jaws (BFI Modern Classics) by Antonia Quirke.

Is there a better scary movie than Jaws? (Well, maybe, but it's way up there...) I must confess, it'd been years since I popped that movie on. I used to be quite obsessed with it, watching and re-watching it, trying to figure out all of Spielberg's little tricks. Then I set it aside, never picking it up again until this Halloween. I've seen it dozens and dozens of times and it never fails to freak me out. After the Sunday viewing, I picked up my never-read copy of the BFI monograph on the film. It's written by British film critic Antonia Quirke in an insightful and (sometimes) catty way. I love her explanation of where Jaws fits in the movie monster concept:

There are two types of monsters. The first is our incarnation of fear. King Kong, Dracula, Godzilla. The other, of which the first sharkless hour of Jaws is a supreme example, is the inflection of the whole of a landscape with fear. Virus horror, the Maryland woods of the Blair Witch, Hanging Rock. In the first type the monster is an irruption of the unnatural into the world. But the second type inverts this. The unnatural presence is us. Incarnated monsters usually punish a specific fault. Inflected landscapes make being a human a fault. We're the guilty ones and we fear any punishment is justified.

Which makes sense to me, as the horror films that get to me are not the ones with a monster, but with that horrible unstoppable virus or the dark and forbeoding woods. The great exception being the Alien cycle, which, in my mind, is just a synthesis of the two monsters-- the horrible, oozing Incarnation that we rarely see, 'cause we're so trapped in the dense and unending tunnels of the spacecraft.
And one more thing: I love this anecdote that Quirke passes on about Herr Direktor. "'I might have become Marty Scorsese,' Spielberg once said, 'but instead the boy scouts cheered and applauded and laughed at what i did, and I really wanted to do that, to please again.'" Telling, no?

3) The Mix Unit.
Thanks to Mr. Catchdubs, I was introduced to the wonderful world of The Mix Unit-- a cheap, online store specializing in hip-hop and DJ mix tapes/CDs. For 40 bucks I got six discs: two huge comps of Neptunes and Timbaland beats, an insane mix of nearly everything Dr. Dre has ever released/produced, and on and on and on. Sick.

4) Harris Savides' cinematography for Birth.

Easily the best-looking film I've seen all year. This guy is an f-ing genius.

5) Chicken Sonora Tacos at Casa Vega, Studio City, CA.
I was a D.D. at my friend Mark's birthday party at the C.V. While I couldn't down dozens of their smashing Margaritas, I did gorge out on the best tacos evs. Highly recommended.