Summer Movie Season with no Ebert

Here we are, solidly into the summer movie season and nothing but crickets on this blog thus far.

TLD: Here's my note, teacher.  I've been sick since the start of April.  I've had 4 to 5 different viruses and other bugs, 2 of them requiring antibiotics.  I'm even home sick today - I can't tell if all the other things have just worn me down or if I have yet again something new.  Ironically, I remember thinking in March, wow, I've been through the whole winter and haven't caught anything significant.  Fate looks out for those kinds of thoughts, so try to avoid having them. (And I discovered in Mary Roach's wonderful (all of her books are wonderful) Gulp, that you catch viruses by touching your eye or picking your nose with an infected finger, and NOT by drinking after someone, as your digestive tract will nuke about any virus.)

My beloved movie critic, Roger Ebert, died on April 4 (the very day I fell ill, I'm just putting together - cue the creepy music), and I haven't had the drive or time to post about it until now.

Since his health troubles started (in 2006 I note from his bio/eulogy on the Sun-Times), I have been quietly dreading the day that Ebert found eternity. I find I miss him very much.

He loomed larger in my life than practically any other media presence, including actors, authors, comedians, writers of all stripes, and celebrities in the political and religious worlds.

That's because when I was growing in my small town in South Dakota, the only TV stations we got were two of the big three and PBS.  I was likely watching either the International Festival of Animation (which should have been called the Canadian Festival of Animation, since it was produced and paid for by Canadian public TV) or watching Monty Python when they mentioned the "Sneak Previews" movie review show.  Before that time, I had no idea such a thing existed.  I was hooked in one viewing and remained a loyal viewer through all incarnations of the show.  I scheduled my week around it.

From that moment, Ebert became my major touchstone on all things movies.  He completely  influenced - though that's not a strong enough word - my tastes in film. We diverged in opinion only about the specific species of semi-plotless tragic dramas, the kind Paul Thomas Anderson likes to make for example, where it's about "our journey with the characters" and the credits roll seemingly at random. While I encounter the odd flick in that vein that I like, I really prefer verse chorus verse movies. Still, if he recommended it, I'd usually give it a try.

I've noticed his absence every time a new blockbuster or bomb rolls through this summer.  I yearn to know what Roger thought about it.  I still have Peter Travers, and the basic barometer of Rotten Tomatoes, which suffice, but as Travers himself says in his sweet eulogy (one of the few sweet ones from a fellow critic), there was no one else like Roger.

Goodbye, Mr. Ebert.



So, let's rewind the summer movie season and start at the top.

Saw Tom Cruise's new "look ma, I'm saving the world" mashup Oblivion.

Richard Roeper has already perfectly coined the flick, so I'll just use that: “This is the sci-fi movie equivalent of a pretty damn good cover band.” In their reviews, most of the critics played "name that reference!' of all the other sci-fi flicks Oblivion is cobbled together from, because it's just so blatantly a cover band, as Roeper said.  Go surf Rotten Tomatoes and you'll see what I mean.

The (probably unintentional) reference that made me grin the most was the female character* who runs the computer while the male character (Cruise) is out fixing battle drones; she essentially has Sigourney Weaver's job in Galaxy Quest where she repeats what the computer and others say - which Weaver's character justifies thus: "Look! I have one job on this lousy ship, it's stupid, but I'm gonna do it! Okay?" I listened carefully for a line that made a pointed reference to that one, but I didn't hear one. Let me know if you do, if you see it.
*Names are somewhat intentionally unimportant, but that's a bit of a spoiler, so I'll leave it at that. 

In a bit of Alanis Morissette irony, one of the previews prior to the flick was for R.I.P.D., which  obviously takes most of the premise from the Showtime series "Dead Like Me.," so here we had a preview of a recycled premise before a main feature of recycled sci-fi tropes. (Can't wait to see it!)

Iron Man 3 was fun. Better then 2 at least (I even can't recall how 2 ended). However, like most review have mentioned, it felt that Downey was just saying the lines. His PTSD face was much like his "I love you, Pepper" face.  The cute kid angle didn't play well because Stark is a real dick to the kid, which seemed out of character. I like the suit cha-cha at the end - tres clever.  But the fireworks display was the definition of gratuitous and especially tasteless in tough economic times like these.  It puts on somewhat horrific display how clueless the comfortably rich are about how the rest of us are struggling to keep things together.

Gatsby - just no.  I've never really been intrigued with the story, and I recall the novel as readable, but when I saw Jay-Z did the soundtrack, I thought: naw bro, naw.  Perhaps I'll pick up the book again to see if I missed something the first time.

Star Trek Into Darkness was a joy, even though it wandered into the very plot waters all Trekkies hoped it wouldn't. Happily it's inconsequential as the bad guy could have gone by any name; Montalban, say.  I love how Abrams understands each main character has got to have their moment or we feel unfulfilled.  The whole Dick Cheney gets a really big ship and becomes a pain in the ass subplot was delicious. The final chase fight on moving platforms was beyond cliche, but oh well.  My favorite line was (and I paraphrase from memory): "Bones, stop it with the metaphors.  That's an order."  I see Whisky Prajer has a few thoughts about it, too.

I mention the kid's flick Epic only to warn you off somewhat.  It's an abysmal string of hero's journey cliches, with at least 3 different hero journeys going on at once. Even worse, the plots were (probs unintentionally) lifted from the recent string of straight-to-DVD Tinkerbell movies. Since I had a coughing fit that I just couldn't shake, I was in the lobby when it let out (I spent most of the time standing in the hallway leading to the theater so I could dash out when I had to cough), and most of the kids from 3 to 8 really liked it from their reactions as they emerged.  Everyone else had the facial expression of "2 hours. Gone. Forever."  Yeah, it's the longest cartoon ever made, methinks, clocking in at 10ish minutes shy of 2 hours. DVD this one, and make sure you have something else to do while the kids watch.

I had high hopes for Now You See Me given the cast and the preview.  But, shazaam, they pull nothing but disappointment out of the hat after a pretty cool first act.  The big reveal is so anticlimactic that you half expect a trick ending where they come back and go JUST KIDDING! and do a real ending.  The way the end credits start it hints at that, but then the real credits (the legally required ones) start to ascend and it's just over.  Not sure if you wanna waste the time on this one.  Perhaps if you're marooned on the couch and the remote is out of reach, you can endure it to pass the time, but otherwise, no.

This leaves Man of Steel, R.I.P.D., This is the End, The Lone Ranger and The Way, Way Back as movies I'm more or less looking forward to.  I don't include the kids flicks, because as the father of an 8-year-old, I'll see them regardless.  Though I'm going to try to stick my wife with enduring Disney's Planes, if the moppet wants to see it, though the preview did not seem to interest her.

I'm dubious about Man of Steel because it's likely to be precisely what it looks like: a retread of the origin story covered in the first two original Superman movies, but retooled as a Dark-Night, gritty, perpetually blue-hued version, with over the top swat-fu scenes and shit blowing up during 20-minute long action sequences.  I hope it's more than that, but so far it doesn't look promising.

Caught up with Django Unchained on video and enjoyed it more than I thought I would, which is typical of Tarantino for me.  I've got a buddy who worships him, so that casts me as the cynical heretic in our crowd. I didn't like the Kill Bill episode where the coma-laden Uma is sold out as a sex doll.  It tossed me out of the movie (too grim for the rest of the general tone), and this perfectly conveys my wife's reaction prior to our leaving the group viewing:

Yet Django stayed within the rough confines of a spaghetti western, so the horrific parts (like Django's wife being pulled out of a punishment box that sits in the hot sun) didn't wreck my suspension of disbelief.  Though had I not seen other movies about the horrors of slavery, the historic TV series Roots being one, I may not have able to get past it.  But because everyone who should get it DOES get it in poetically vengeful means, and the fact that it ends with a classic spaghetti western song from the My Name is Trinity series, it worked for me.

Finally, I streamed the documentary on Kurick's The Shining: Room 237.  Wow, what a turkey.  Read some of the reviews from Amazon to get an idea of how terrible it is.  I stuck it out until the end because in the middle one sensible person (the only woman who opines) points out that Danny's path on his big wheel is impossible, and hoped someone else would drop a cool tidbit like that.  But no, it was mostly conspiracy theory horseshite. The most whacked example is it's Kubrick's attempt to tell us he helped fake the moon landings. Others claim it's his holocaust film, while another says it's about the massacre of the American Indians  There are  a couple ideas floated that are so silly, even the guy saying them tries to justify them by claiming in post-modern criticism, even if the creator/author likely didn't consciously create the symbolism or references, if the critic sees them due to his or her personal experience, they are valid anyway.  (Hence the fake moon landing/indians/Nazi "interpretations.") Which is a great indictment of post-modern criticism and theory unto itself.  Perhaps if you've got a bunch of friends who are liberal arts college professors, this would be a fun diversion while you were trying new wines, merely to enjoy the batshit craziness of it while getting lightly buzzed. Oh, and if any of them try to defend any of the theories (besides the one about the big wheel), you'll have identified those who should no longer have tenure.

I'll leave you with my favorite piece of new trivia.  Kevin Pollak reveals in his new autobio, How I Slept My Way to the Middle, the agony he faced during A Few Good Men because everyone wanted him to do his Jack Nicholson for Jack.  He never did.  However, Nicholson's contract stated he had to work only 3 days, and was gracious enough to stay for an additional half day, but no more even though some reaction shots of other actors hadn't been filmed yet.  After he left, Reiner was going to sit and read Nicholson's lines to the other actors to get their lines back to Nicholson in the can.  Pollak suggested that NOW he pull out his Jack impersonation, because after hearing the lines for 3 days, he had them cold.  So, Pollak stood in for Jack and did the lines.  When Reiner went to edit, he was putting together that scene when he realized that he had actually used a couple voice takes of Pollak's because they were so good it was difficult to tell them apart.  He went back and made sure it was all Nicholson, replacing the couple Pollak lines that had crept in, so don't fire up the moving hoping to ferret out Pollak's lines.  Still, how much validation does a guy need when even the director can barely tell who is who.  Kinda like another movie Pollak was in...

Robot and Frank

I've been a robot fiction devotee since I read Asimov's I, Robot as a kid.  His Robots of Dawn is still in my top 5 novels evar.  Thus, I will see about any movie that has robots in it.

TLD: For example, I tried to watch the Jean Claude Van Dammit flick Cyborg recently, and just couldn't hang with it past 15 minutes.  Oh well. 

Finally carved out the hour and a half to see Robot and Frank.  I ended up enjoying it by the third act because they finally tap into the built-in pathos robot stories seem to have, but it started sloooow.

I mean, the robot arrives about 10 or 15 minutes in so we get to the story quickly enough, but there are quite a few first-time director/film school mistakes like one scene involving a car driving past us, down the road, and around the bend, but with a funky/showy low angle (for what amounts to no reason). Why are such shots ever included in a flick? If you need to pad the run-time, do it with something unique to the movie, or at least with a character doing something.  And, hey, if you have a robot as a character, perhaps watching the robot do things would've been a better way to use up that minute of our lives.  They also telegraph a heavy foreshadowing that does not pay off, which makes me wonder if during a script revision the payoff was removed and no one noticed. 

As I watched, I suspected that the person in the robot suit was a child from the movements, and frankly, the choreography was lacking, or the actor (puppeteer?) did not have enough practice time.  You can actually see the actor move from a typical human resting pose to an Asimo-like stance when he (it's voiced by a man, so we assume "he") prepares to walk.  Come to find out it's a female dancer in there, which surprises me, since most dancers take movement seriously.  An interview with the director reveals that for a couple days of the 20-day shoot, there was in fact a male child in the suit, so perhaps those were his scenes.  But, folks, if you're gonna make a robot movie, the robot's movements have got to be right, or it stands out like a mis-painted frame in an animation.

Outside of the flawed, puppet-like movement, the robot is a charming character. Deeply contrary to Asimov's robot rules, which most fans take as rote, this robot does not have a strict moral compass outside of caring for his charge.  There are hints he wouldn't physically harm anyone, but he has no problems with helping Frank resume his primary occupation as a thief. 

The movie itself is non-committal about the fact that Frank is a career crook. We even learn he was a bad father and his wife left him years ago.  The personality he presents in the film presents no reason to like him, either. 

This greatly diminished the film for me.  If I'm going to watch a movie about criminals, bad guys, anti-heros, etc., the movie needs to somehow let me know that it knows they're the bad guys, too, and none of us are OK with that.  Or the guy has to be so charming, we believe anyone would care about him, etc. etc.  But here we're presented with a grouchy, bland jerk in his decline.  Perhaps that's why the title is Robot and Frank and not the other way around.

Forking Dongles

As an IT guy, the first time I heard the word "dongle" my very first question was: "Is that really what it's called?"

Many things in IT are a euphemism or a verbalization of an acronym.  For example, about a decade or so ago, you'd hear sober women and men say the term "wizzy wig" out loud in meetings with completely straight faces and with not just a little gravity.  It was the (American) verbalization of the acronym WYSIWYG, which means What You See is What You Get.

See, popular software programs (now "applications" or "apps") like WordPerfect presented you with a big expanse of blue screen with a few ASCII (pronounced "ass-key," no kidding) characters (i.e. letters) indicating cursor position status, and the actual words you typed on the screen looked nothing like the final printed document. (For a brief moment in time, the blue screen was good, which is likely why it was villainized by a competitor.) Most office assistants took that in stride and after seeing a couple print-outs had a pretty good idea how it would look on the page.  But most folks were flummoxed by that, having only used typewriters where what you saw was how it would always be.  Thus, in the software world, those who could make the screen match the sheet of paper were considered pretty cool, and WYSIWYG was the acronym that meant your software did that.

So, this guy points at a plasticy metalish nub hanging off a port on the computer and says, "Oh, and make sure you have the dongle when you load that software, because it will only work when it detects the dongle."  So I asked the question in the first paragraph, knowing I would have to ask one of the ladies in the office for the dongle, because it was on most computers, but only the inserter of the dongle could get anywhere ... you see my point.  I hoped it was an acronym, or a euphemism, or something, but no, that was the word, and the only word.  So, for the next couple years, I would walk up to the keeper of the dongle, always a woman, and ask for it, and she would meet my eye when she handed it to me with that special knowing smirk, and eventually I got comfortable enough to return it.

TLD: Someday I might tell you the story of the time one of the ladies in the office had placed on her desk a valentine's day gift of a candy encased in a keepsake container, and before I could realize what I was saying, I was already walking away with every Human Services-trained lobe of my brain screaming: did you REALLY just say, "That's a nice box you've got there, [her name]."?!?!! When I looked back in horror, expecting her to already be lifting the receiver to dial HR, she just gave me the most devious, all-knowing smile, and just said, "Why, thank you."  For the rest of the day, my compadres asked me if I was OK, because my face was alarmingly red.  But I don't really want to tell you that story, because I could've been loading a cardboard box with my personal things in front of an armed guard within minutes, and that was the job that launched my career.

This week I was at a big tech. conference, sitting in a huge crowded room on chairs that only grade-schoolers would have thought wide enough, that suffered from this brain-dead design where the metal bar at the top of the seat protruded a solid inch beyond the back padding, so by day two everyone was squirming to find a place on their back that didn't have a horizontal bruise in order to lean back.  Eventually everyone just threw one arm over the chair, or slide so far forward that leaning back was not an option.  But anyway, there we were, trying to hold teeny cups of coffee directly in front of us while someone at the front of the hall tried for an hour to find the sweet spot on a tiny mic so that s/he wouldn't rock the room with shock waves upon hitting a percussive consonant while trying to force the computer to show the correct slide.   A blatant dick joke would've likely been welcome. (Like, "Why do you have all those horizontal bruises on your back?"  "Well, ....[insert dick mark joke here].")

I return from my conference to find out that at another one, some dude lost his job because he used the word "dongle" behind a woman who, even though her job was developer evangelist, thought the snigger in his voice when he said the word was a sexist dick joke. (Every single woman who ever handed me a dongle at work had that snigger in her eyes, I may have mentioned.) So, she took his picture and tweeted it - it's called a "public shaming" in current journalistic nomenclature - and then contacted the conference officials and had him removed.  So, he lost his job, and he's got three kids.  Then she lost hers over the backlash (apologies to the esteemed Franzen over using "then" as a conjunction).  Oh, and much wailing and gnashing of teeth on the internets.  Consensus appears to have settled on this being the best, most level, context-rich one.

On the way home from work that day, I stopped to buy a sixer of beer, and on the counter they had a new product pre-made in shot glasses on the impulse-buy area named "porn shot."  I pointed at it and told the two ladies behind the counter, in about a verbal tweet or two, the story above, and they were aghast. "What's the world coming to?" was their most repeated reaction.  I wisely chose not to riff on or belabor what the most common use of the word "coming" was in popular media these days.  Who knows who's listening?

Bios and Babes

Read Rod Stewart's Rod: The Autobiography and Peter Criss' Makeup to Breakup: My Life In and Out of Kiss.

I've gleaned that my interest in rock bios spawns from a deep curiosity to know what is was like to be the center of a universe, where your songs are absorbed into lives across the globe, (nearly) everyone loves you, everything is free, and obtaining sex with whomever is effortless as a breath.

(Now, mind you, I wouldn't want that kind of life. For honest and true. I much prefer my quiet, middle-class, nearly anonymous life with the grand pleasures it offers through family, friends, pets, and entertainments.)

Rod's autobio can be summed up "yeah, it's great to be a rock star" and Peter's "how I spent most of my moment as a rock star completely pissed off."

Rod surprisingly has a charming, breezy writing style. I laughed hard every chapter, and smiled on nearly every page. Here's one of my favorite quotes (page 184):

Mick Jagger -- speaking, I assume, for and on behalf of Bianca -- made a tentative inquiry about the possibility of a little light partner-swapping with Dee and myself. Well, I suppose it's always nice to be asked, and comforting to know that you are in someone's thoughts, but the answer had to be no.  Partner-swapping wasn't my scene, and it certainly wasn't Dee's.

It's very satisfying, too, because he does not flinch from addressing anything you may have heard about him: the care and feeding of his hair, his relationship with ex band members (think Jeff Beck), the infamous incident where his stomach was supposedly pumped, and the first clear account of how the Plaster Caster gals did/do their work, which all others have glossed over: they fellate the subject.  Rod and Ron Wood both declined immortalization because the Casters reportedly display their more towering works as introduction to entice the proposed member to join the collection. The more modestly endowed Rod and Ron decided they didn't want that fact recorded in the life-size memento that would be dwarfed on the eventual shelf.

The most touching thing in it, though, is his insecurity about his music, and how hard it is to deal with the worry that what he's doing may not be good.  He sometimes had to be alone or with only a couple close confidants to record a vocal.  Since his persona is balls-out confidence, it was surprising that he admits it's just a stance.

Peter Criss has a bit in common with Ringo in that Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley had most of the concept of KISS worked out prior to hiring Peter and Ace Frehley (save for the name and the makeup). He killed in his audition for the band and was hired on the spot.  The original record deal provided an equal 4-way split of the band's earnings, so it had the illusion of a democracy.

Yet, you are rarely hired into a democracy, and when royalties from song writing started coming in, Gene and Paul asserted their leadership of the band, and Criss is still pissed about it.  So, even though he claims happiness today, his anger comes through every other page and it seems to have poisoned his life more than it should have.

Highlights are: the famous soaring guitar solo in "Detroit Rock City" was done by Bob Ezrin, their wiz-kid producer, as Ace just wasn't feeling it that day (which Frehley freely admits in his appropriately spacey but somewhat boring autobio); the aroma of female pudenda that permeated the rooms where groupies would gather while awaiting pleasures with the band, especially Gene who would stay up all night and gather two new girls about every two hours; Paul, while often directly observed dipping into the female groupie pool, was also sometimes so wasted that when his gay groupies would start advances, one of the other band members would intervene and get Paul to his room alone; Ace was very fond of masturbation, and would commence at will, regardless of where he was - a street corner, in a tightly packed band van, and so forth.

I inadvertently listened to the whole book on CD of Neil Young's Waging Heavy Peace. I picked it up because I was waiting for the book and wanted to get a start on it.  A week later I find I've listened to the whole thing.  One realization is I would not have managed to read it because his prose is as meandering as his guitar solos.  While I love his guitar solos, I could only enjoy his prose read aloud.  So that's my recommendation: listen to this one if you're a fan.

While rock fame and the ensuing life fascinate me, so does the flip-side of having tried, and almost making it, but stardom - or at least a long career - did not materialize.

Two artists I discovered after they resumed private lives were the Dance Hall Crashers and Alana Davis.  All their sites and fan sites have begun that weird erosion that takes place on web sites as technologies, web code and browsers upgrade.

Usually, a bit of googling will turn up some bread crumbs, and the two lead singers of the Dance Hall Crashers can be located: one is still singing in local bands while the other one has only a twitter feed, which may not even be hers.   Alana Davis has completely evaporated into the ether, apparently.

So, what must it be like to have had a couple hits, some radio play, a fan base, and then it's just over? I would imagine it's mostly life as usual, with some occasional small twinge, like the one you get when you remember the one who got away.  Carrie Fisher weighs in on that frequently, but she's still kinda famous and her mental illness colors it so much, it's hard to sort out the weltschmerz from the manic and the depressive.

I harbor a secret hope that maybe I'll have the opportunity to ask one of those three ladies that very thing.  If I do, I'll post it here.

Whilst mulling and researching for this post, I came across this article about Steve Perry of Journey.  I see in here echos of all of the above: Rod's insecurity, Criss' anger, Neil's elder statesman-ship, and life after fame:

"I don't want (any new album) to have pressure," Perry told Billboard in a late 2011 interview, "because I'll worry about it sucking, and then what am I gonna do?"

Finally, here are some related thoughts from an old post (scroll down to where I start talking about Phil Collins).
_____________________
Update: Cracked has an article on what some rock stars did after.

Merry Christmas

Take it Russ:

Three Pears

I've been pecking away on this post so long that my original opening was, "Ah the post-election relief, with only the warbling cries to secede echoing in the distance to encroach upon the relative calm."  And since, there's been another slaughter at a school, this time involving little children.  You can find the names of the innocents here.  I imagine most parents like myself have been thinking of their little souls since.  May they rest in peace and may their loved ones find solace.

I had tried to watch George Clooney's The Descendants a few times, but finally found the groove last week, and really enjoyed it.  It made me cry (thank God I was alone) when the father leans down and kisses his daughter, who as an adult has had an accident from which she won't recover so they've stopped life support, and says she was a good girl.  In context, that scene IS the movie.  That scene has meshed in my mind with the school tragedy; losing your babies is the worst thing that can happen in this life.

From there I went to see Life of Pi, though I had originally decided to pass as I had read the book, and at the time thought it to be one of those unfilmable books.  I don't like Ang Lee's films in general, as most are tedious.  But the reviewers I respect said that it's great, and beyond great in 3-D, and these guys don't like 3-D.  So I decided if a window opened up when it was cheap, I'd go.

I have to give Ang Lee credit in that he captured the novel perfectly, and dammit the 3-D was fucking spectacular, so I'm glad I was cajoled into it.  See it that way if you can.  If you can't, it'll still be awesome on a HDTV.  But if you've popped for a 3-D TV, definitely buy it in that format.

The thing about Life of Pi, besides the spectacle, is it's a meditation on God, nature, and the meaning of life, set in the rubric of modern thought and sensibility. The actors that play Pi in the various stages of life couldn't be more perfect.  If you need a feel-good movie, take out the financing for some popcorn and see this one.

Kevin Smith once said that Ben Affleck is the smartest man in Hollywood, and would eventually own the place on some level.  Argo makes a strong case for that.  His direction is gripping, flashy in the good way, and Oscar-worthy.  It's always an achievement to make an edge-of-your-seat movie from actual events where most of us know the ending.  The only time I was yanked out of the movie was one sequence where the camera dwells too long on Affleck, and then we're treated to a gratuitous shot of him shirtless, ala Galaxy Quest.  I suspect his lovely wife advised him to keep that shot in, since he was considered prime beefcake once, and we wouldn't want to disappoint those fans, would we?  See this flick.  Just put it on your list.  I have not heard one bad review from those who've seen it.  Stick for the credits to see the real people.

Wreck-it Ralph surprised me because the previews did not give me hope beyond a string of video game references laced with fart jokes.  While there's certainly that, there's also a surprisingly touching story that avoids the maudlin pitfalls of Finding Nemo (loathed by my entire family, save for the seagull's "Mine? Mine?" gag).

One thing movie makers seem to be rediscovering is how to maintain a character's identity with their personal dignity intact, making them believable in a context that should betray that.  For example, in The Avengers, you believed Captain America was still this wholesome WWII dude who is a believable leader to the smart-ass Iron Man and tragic Hulk.  In Wreck-it Ralph, Fix-it Felix is a believable "gee-wiz, gosh darnit" nice guy who suspends disbelief when he falls for and wins a Halo-esque soldier babe who's profanity  pushes the edge of a PG rating (adults mentally fill in the real curses). 

Skyfall was another Bond movie.  If you like them, this'll likely be one of your favs.  If you're ambivalent, like me, it's a decent way to waste 2 1/2 hours.  The villain in this one is my favorite bond villain so far.When he gropes the tied-up James Bond, all the guys including me visibly squirmed.

Saw Seeking a Friend for the End of the World which had some nice moments, but what really made me laugh is that the girl, who's a vinyl junkie, takes some of her treasured records when they run from a mob, and on top of the stack is Herb Alpert's Beat of the Brass, which is one of my mom's favorite albums that she played daily for years, so it's part of my synapses, and I play it regularly, too.  I wonder if the person responsible for choosing her favorite records included that as a joke or if they were sincere. 

Speaking of music, some great albums dropped.
The best, to me, is Dwight Yoakam's Three Pears, which is prolly the best post-Pete Anderson (his former lead guitarist and sometime producer) album of his.  Dwight has always released albums that are listenable all the way through, but more than most artists I'm aware of (outside of the Beatles and Billy Joel), he often makes albums that are mostly great songs.  It'd take less time to list those that had a few average songs than to list the ones that were solid all the way through.


Prince appeared on Jimmy Kimmel a while back and snorted out a fantastic nasty groove rock funk which achieved the proper response from me: hells yeah, I'm buying that!  (You can get it here.)

In the meantime, here's that performance (I love how he prefers lady drummers):


Donald Fagan put out Sunken Condos, which is prime Fagen.  I personally dig Morph the Cat a bit more, specifically because of the title cut and "Security Joan" which still makes me smile every time I hear it.  Fans should get this. Folks looking for some new Steely Dan music should, too.  

My daughter loves Green Day, and their recents Uno!, Dos!, Tre! doth rock, yea verily, they doth also have some delicious power pop. However, you may want to preview them on Grooveshark.com, and compile your favorite cuts for one great album.

That reminds me, I read a book that ended up being way more interesting than I thought it would be:
Still the Greatest: The Essential Songs of The Beatles' Solo Careers by Andrew Grant Jackson.

General Jackson spins a delightful book out of "what if the Beatles never broke up" and assembles the likely Beatles albums from the solo work of each Beatle by year since their breakup.  Each chapter is that year's album, which starts with the history of what each member did that year, and then he lists the songs and gives a brief history of their creation and context. He even concocts the resulting compilation albums, ala The Red Album and The Blue Album.

This is the precise sort of thing I love, and there is a lot to love here.  For example, whether or not Yoko had anything to do with the Beatles breaking up, she certainly stopped them from getting back together.  John was going to go join Paul in New Orleans where he was recording at the time (this was shortly after John's time with Harry Nilsson and while he was separated from Yoko), but Yoko got wind of it and demanded John join her in New York for a short time, claiming she had found a hypnotist to help him stop smoking.  John recalls the time as blurry and he vomited a lot - and never joined Paul.  It would be interesting to know what her fucking motivation was. 

Pounded through the wonderful bio of David Foster Wallace by D. T. Max, Every Love Story is a Ghost Story.  If you're a fan of DFW, you will love this book.  One of the more wonderful aspects is that Max is a damn good writer in his own right, which you'd almost have to be to tackle the bio of one of the best writers in a couple generations.  Bios typically pull you through because you want the details, which this one has, but I stopped a few times to admire a beautifully honed phrase.  I look forward to anything D. T. Max might do in the future. 

And that's what I have for you going into the holiday season.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Grand Festivus, and wondrous non-denominational winter solstice.

What Scares You?

Let's get this clear quickly: this is NOT a political post, even though the title sets it up for that. No, the genesis of this post was the night I discovered that if I ever have a heart attack, it won't be induced by fear. More on that later.

A hilarious thread on the intertubes recently explored things that frightened the contributors as a child - specifically something that was either intended for children, were seemingly innocuous, or was readily available to a youthful audience. The Brave Little Toaster popped up a lot, Jaws, and various incarnations of the Wizard of Oz that were not the one we all know and love.  (In particular, the Disney sequel Return to Oz destroyed a lot of childhood psyches, and I recall at the time when working as a theater usher wondering what in the hell they were thinking when they made this little walk through nightmare planet.  Check it out when the kids aren't around.)

The things that really tweaked my bolts as a kid were the wolf man (1941 original), the mummy (1932 original) which probably wouldn't have even shown up on my radar if our school's weekly reader had not featured a story about x-raying a mummy (which is how the mummy is brought to life in that flick) and freakin' bigfoot.

However, hearkening back to the point of the thread, the thing that scared the ever-loving fuck out of me, and forever turned me into a nightlight junkie, was something that was meant as creepy, but it was an Outer Limits episode, which was just right there on the tube one night at 9 O'clock.  Outer Limits was supposed to be OK because it was supposed to be about freaky sci-fi  stuff, which never really bugged me.  But some bastard found a way to incorporate a ghost story into my sci-fi (and I'm sure there was "you got your chocolate in my peanut butter" commercial on during that episode).

It was called "Wolf 359" (da fak with that name?), where this scientist creates a mini-earth to learn something crucial about evolution or sociology or something, but then THIS FUCKER SHOWS UP:

And it walks on down the hall (figuratively):

And it finds him while he's sleeping:

His girlfriend shows up and saves him, but JUDAS CRISPIES!

I recall having a rather sleepless week.  At one point, I heard a single note in the house (a typical house noise) and the wind whipped up.  My parents room was on the diagonal across the hall from mine, and our stories are all the same: my foot hit the floor at the end of 10-foot span from my bed only to pivot and leap on their bed 12 feet away.  Who says white boys can't jump?

It was nightlights and wide eyes behind the pulled-up blankets for the weeks it took to wear off.

So, that was the childhood thang.

But, a few weeks ago, insomnia had crept down the hall and ... I just put that together ... anyway, there I was, on the 'puter, cruising.  Someone posted a link with some false info, like "check out the shock absorbers on this Chevy!" (but not the actual lure, of course), and I clicked on the link.

I had forgotten that I'd had the new wonderful monster speakers with the thunder-licious sub-woofer that I had cranked to 11 for the girls earlier in the night so they could dance right next to me on the floor. I also had the browser expanded to cover the whole screen (which I never do) so I could see all of some awesome "Astronomy Pic of the Day" thang. 

And this thing popped up. [UPDATE: alas, it's gone.]

BEFORE you click that link, a few provisos, a few quid pro quos....

This is what's known on the intertubes as a "screamer," which means the sound is worse than the image.  Also, please, no children in the immediate area.  Finally, have your sound down, and no headphones.  You can totally decide to not click this link, and maybe you shouldn't.  If you do, you've been warned.

When I clicked it, it came on at top volume at t 3 A.M. in the dark, jumping at me from the screen.  I didn't scream like a little girl, no.  I screamed like an adult male with his nuts caught in the worse part of a Soloflex as it works itself out when its victim has let go out of fatigue.  I lunged for the speaker's volume knob, but in the midst of completely spazzing out, I knocked the whole stack of speakers over.  I was reduced to finding the plug and yanking it out of the wall.  As I emerged from that, the screen was still flashing the BAD THING at me, so I had to locate the mouse, which I had thrown involuntarily, and close the browser.  As I was doing that, my wife - who can literally sleep through thunderstorms that sound like a full-on bombing raid - appeared at the landing and screamed "ARE YOU OK?'  Having shut it all down, I walked over and said, probably quite shakily, "I'm fine. Sorry for waking you."  She said, "*&%#$ the *&%$#@ are you doing?"  I gave a brief, less-damming, description, apologize profusely, and suggested she go back to bed, I'd be right up.  

Thankfully, she did.

I had to walk around for about 10 minutes before my pulse lowered and the goosebumps stopped snaking around my person.  I went and laid down, but stared at the ceiling for a while, happy the nightlight we keep "for the kids" was still on.

I spent the next two weeks hunting for the thing, wanting to see if it was as bad as I thought it was.  When I found it again, it was in broad daylight, but I still jumped and snorted. 

So, what scares you?

Happy Halloween!

Click to Enlarge

Happy Birthday, Barbara

90 Days, 90 Reasons to Re-elect President Obama

I wasn't going to post anything political outside of a single link (the one above) this election season, because any and all subtlety or humor I try to bring to my posts here abandons me like passengers of the Hindenburg when I wax political.  Truly, a good half of the essays on that site are wonderful.

But Samuel Jackson keeps being awesome, and this - probably the best political ad ever - changed my mind:

So, in the spirit of waking the fuck up, I'd like to start with two things I've noticed (or had pointed out to me) about the Republican campaign:
1) The Karl Rove Academy of Projection (KRAP) is an often-used tactic of the Republicans where a Republican accuses a Democratic person, policy, platform, etc. of the very problem or weakness the Republican has.
2) Romney and company speak to all of us as if we were Fox pretend News devotees who will uncritically accept whatever is said, no matter how demonstrably false or batshit it is.

Whereas number 1 works for them a lot of the time, sadly - because it instantly confuses the easily confused - number 2 has proven disastrous for their campaign (yay!) because those of us who weigh the credibility of everything any politician says, or anything the media says about them, will fact check it. That's why Paul Ryan's mostly fraudulent speech at their convention was such a flop outside of Republican circles.

The main theme of their campaign is that the wealthy are the "makers" and everyone else, particularly the poor, are the "takers," which is theme that the right has been developing for a while now, but has finally surfaced in this election in its naked form.

Of all the ways that can be controverted, perhaps the best is to point out the sham of their favorite (and completely debunked) economic theory.  Let me use Robert X. Cringely's words here:

The fundamental error of trickle-down (Supply Side) economics is that it is dependent on rich people spending money which they structurally can’t do fast enough to matter, and philosophically won’t do because their role in the food chain is about growth through accumulation, not through new production.
- Source: Ticked off- How stock market decimalization killed IPOs and ruined our economy ~ I, Cringely

Then we have Romney's infamous accusation that 47% of the nation are lazy bums (those damn "takers").  I won't belabor the incredible, gob-smacking stupidity and brazen callousness of this, as many on the left and right(!) have done that so well. (I could rant over several posts about Romney's crack about people thinking they're entitled to food, but I'm going to spare us both that.)














What I didn't see addressed enough was the composition of that 47%, which you can see in the chart below, and the primary reasons why the low income portion is so large: Bush's tax cuts and people being cast into lower tax brackets (read: poverty for many of them) due to the recession.  There's much more good detail on this here and here.


Even though the Republicans claim they intend to help the middle class in the future (because they can't claim they have in the past), when you explore how they intend to do that, it falls apart. it's not through tax breaks (those will be only for the rich), it's through "growing the economy" through supply-side economics, which doesn't work (see above). So they're lying.  And they hope that, like a good Fox pretend News sucker, you'll buy the lie again.

The bottom line: they honestly believe the poor and even the middle class don't really matter.  And in their world, they don't.

So, I hope that come election day, this will be the look on the Republican ticket's faces:

Finally, I want to make sure you saw this wonderful moment where the token Republitard on "The View" tries to blame the economy on Obama to his face.

Please vote for Obama.  Thank you.

Stay Frosty

"[I'll post] Sooner than a month, at least" I wrote 5 months ago. So much for that goal, eh?

As usual, I've been grinding on a post about this summer's movies, and often didn't get past a list or a half-hearted comment on each.  The short version is my favorite movies this year were 21 Jump Street and The Cabin in the Woods.  The new kid flick (just barely), ParaNorman, had a couple good laughs, but I'd wait for the DVD.  The final witch ghost scene will likely scare the holy hell out of the more sensitive kids (I got goosebumps), so you may want to preview it and judge first. The one I was looking forward to the most, Prometheus (the Alien prequel), was a huge disappointment.  Like most, when two scientists encounter a penis cobra (not my coinage) and the first thing they think of is taking off their spacesuit glove and touching it with their bare hand, I wondered how long the rest of the movie was going to be. Of course, I'll see the sequel they set up at the end and grouse about it here.

The thing I really enjoyed the most though was a cancelled series by Joss Whedon called Dollhouse (and, btw, pronounce his first name ending with "s" as in snake, and not "sh" as in shit, because that's what you'll get if you mispronounce it to a fanboy).  The premise is that a technology exists that  removes your personality (including muscle memory and other goodies), stores it on a hard drive, and then installs another personality into you.  People whose lives have gotten sticky can sell five years to become a "doll" that rich people rent out for whatever, after which you get yourself back and you're a millionaire with no memory of any of the nasty things they made you do.  See if your local library has it; it's a trip.  The pilot starts slow, so soldier on to the end and likely you'll be hooked.

One of my favorite moments IRL in the last couple weeks was during a voyage to Target with my daughters. The eldest has bloomed into quite a teenage beauty, and it’s fun to watch the boys try to be subtle (and failing every time). The 7-year-old wanted to buy a toy with her allowance money, and so brought along her new little blue purse (she used to use a box with a handle meant for recipe cards, Lord knows why). When it came time to pay, I had to do the digging for the correct change because even though she understands currency somewhat, she still wants me to make sure the change is right. Among the contents was a single blue crayon. I held it up with a questioning look and she said that you never know when you’re going to need to color something.  I still smile at the memory.

Musically I've fallen hard for Ska recently.  I've always kinda dug it, but preferred it mixed in with other songs.  Now I can groove to 2 hours of the stuff.  I've always loved myself a good horn section, which is mandatory in Ska.  My most surprising discovery is the now-defunct band called The Dance Hall Crashers.  I've had their great song "Enough" on many mixCDs, but guessed incorrectly that I wouldn't like the rest of their songs (and back then there was no way to listen to other songs without financial commitment).  Well, after a trip to Grooveshark (more on that in a bit), I realized I like nearly everything they've done.  Other current favorites are Mayer Hawthorne's How Do You Do, Joan Osborne's (remember "what if God was one of us"?) Bring It On Home, and the single from the last Van Halen, "Stay Frosty" - another David Lee Roth classic.  Oh, and almost forgot Joe Walsh's Analog Man, produced by Jeff Lynne (of ELO) with members of The Beatles, The Eagles, and Crosby, Stills, and Nash in guest spots. (I don't know why the links take you away from my page. I've set it so it's supposed to spawn a new window, but apparently Amazon grabs the link and forces the page change.  Bad on them.)

I had a Macintosh as my main computer at home for about half a year now (the time I did little writing I now realize), but it's an old hand-me-down, and the video port suddenly forgot what the color red was, so I procured an old hand-me-down laptop with a huge display (but a battery as dead as Rush Limbaugh's conscience), and put Xubuntu on it.  Gad I love that freakin' OS.

However, with having a Mac for a while, and now a Linux box, I had to hunt for software so I could work and play regardless of the computer I happened to be sitting at.

Here's a rundown of the best free software and web sites I've run across in this voyage, with a strong bias towards software that has a package for the 3 main OS's (Vinders, Mork, Linus).

Music and Sound
Grooveshark is a website that allows you to find and que up about any song there is.  If you create a free login, you can save your songlists to replay later.  It also has a radio station feature like Pandora if you want someone else to throw songs atcha.

If you find yourself a good Stream Ripper for your OS (the one I use on Xubuntu is Audio Recorder), you can record the stream and chop out the individual songs if you'd like.  (Of course most of the artists would hate you for that, and typically I do it to test-drive a song, and if I like it, go nab a good copy from Amazon for a buck.)

Another place to grab free (and legally free) music, is the Gorilla vs. Bear site.  This link is a shortcut to their monthly mixes, so make sure you check out the website proper as well.  If you like anything in the mixes, the track listing shows the time the track starts so you can snip it out as a single.

To chop up or edit sound files, Audacity is awesome. Be sure to also grab the "lame" encoder if you're on Windows or Mac.

This, of course, implies that you'll listen to it on some portable device.  The iHome rechargeable mini speaker is the size of a single-serving tin can of veggies and sounds pretty amazing.  I got one for sitting outside and watching the little one play, but my teenager uses it when I'm not. (She just grooved through the room with it dialed to 11 as I was writing this.) It lasts about a week on one charge.  $20 at most Targets, office supplies, etc.

Finally, check out Amazon's MP3 best sellers list.  The one on the right is the freebies, and they have many sampler anthologies that almost always have a good song or two.

Word Processors
By accident, I found this wonderful word processor that's tailored for distraction-free writing: FocusWriter.  When you launch it, it takes up the whole screen and does not allow other apps or OS messages to popup at you and harsh your mellow.  So, if you're gonna have Grooveshark swimming in the background, get it going first.  You can set the screen colors, or even have a groovy picture as the background, and set the font color and size for optimum visibility.  It saves in RTF and ODT format, so all other word processors can open the files for final buffing for presentation, but you'll likely not even need that unless you have to include tables or pictures. I LOVE THIS THING!

AbiWord has finally fulfilled the promise of a nice, stand-alone, fully-featured word processor, and I recommend it if all you want is a solid word processor. It's peppy and does most of what you want.  If you need a page layout app, then there are many good free ones.

By now most folks know of the full-featured word processor in the LibreOffice free office suite, but it's a bit of a hog and takes a while to load, and you have to install just it if you don't want the rest of the office suite sucking up hard drive space better suited for music and pics. (In my experience, not a lot of folks use anything other than the word processor from an office suite at home.  Some use a spreadsheet, but typically at work if they do. If you do use one though, LibreOffice's is very good and I've never seen it have a problem with even complicated Excel spreadsheets.)

Graphic Editing
Only people who make a living at graphic design or photography need to pop for the blindingly expensive Photoshop.  Both Photofiltre and Paint.net provide all of the things you need for typical home or web site editing.  I prefer Photofiltre because it's so simple and intuitive, but Paint.net provides layers, which sometimes is a must.  (Here are two downloads for Photofiltre: the primary download site, the portable apps slice that's a slightly higher version.)  Sadly, both of these are Windows only.

If you need all the power of Photoshop, of course there's the free conteder, the GIMP, but it's really geeky and takes a while to learn how to use the complex features.  But if you want to do Dooce's wonderful "Glow Effect," you'll need the GIMP.  There are several web tutorials on how to use it, as well.  It also has a version for every OS.

Video Viewing
Don't bother with the bloated and bitchy video viewers that come with Windows and Mac.  They're hogs, they don't have half the video format docoders, and they try so hard to help you just watch a freakin video you have to click through much shite just to do that.  And they crash like teenage drivers.  Neither can open the formats used by most smart phones.

Get yourself VLC/VideoLan.  There is not yet a video format I've found it can't open.  It's solid.  It lets you navigate in the timeline easy, and you can tweak the video and audio to perfection.  It's the must-have video viewer.  I have no idea why their icon is a traffic cone, though.

As you can see, I've added some of the recommended sites and software to the menu on the right for easy reference.

You may have noticed that I didn't mention online applications like Google Office, online photo editors and the like.  "The cloud" has many fine offerings, and I use them once in a great while.  The problem is, if something's in the cloud, you have to think of it as postcard - anyone can see it if they try hard enough, and the hosting company certainly will, as will your internet provider because it goes through their network and servers on the way to its storage particle in the cloud. I used Google Office to write the posts for this blog until Google essentially replaced the editor on Blogger with the Google Office editor (which I use now).  Since all posts were destined to be posted online anyway, there was no problem with writing them there in the first place, and it allowed me to do so where-ever I had access to a computer.  Pretty cool.

But, that great novel you're working on, spicy pictures of your spouse - or even innocuous, sweet family photos, wills, financials, and anything that's essentially private should stay on your local computer, and be backed up regularly (once a month at least).  Post only photos you intend to on the web.  Storing all of your photos on a cloud service, like flickr, still makes them available to others. (Think of the creepy bastard neckbeard IT guy at work, because another version of him is managing the site your pictures are on.)  In addition, they've written algorithms to recognize certain content, like nudes.  If you have a pic of your kids in the tub out there, you may get a visit from a cop.  Also, most sites have buried in their terms of use that they essentially own the copy you've placed on their servers so that you can't sue them if they lose it.  Yeah, you still retain "rights" to it, but they have some too.

So, view the cloud as that friend you can't lend anything to that's valuable.  You only lend it to them if you're ok with them losing it, even in a public place, which they've managed by leaving it on the shelf on a store somewhere because they got a call while holding it, set it down then forgot.  Only lend the cloud things you can bear to lose or don't care if your boss sees it.

Cheers.

Ok, Fine

(Found on http://robotindisguise.tumblr.com/)

So, a good friend who reads this blog said to me about a month ago, emphatically, that I needed to post. I was touched, and it obviously prompted me to write something. (Been working on this post for over a month now.)

I don't know if it's what you'd call writer's block, apathy, or what, but I just haven't been motivated to slide thoughts together.  Maybe it's the bad influence of 4Chan.org, which has become my Twitter, since Twitter itself does not intrigue me.  (Standard warning, if you go there, while you'll see some pretty funny stuff, you'll also see - regularly - the worst of what the dark side of the web has to offer.  Talkin' nightmare fuel, here. But it can be funny as hell, too.)  

Anyway, here goes.

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is a movie I can recommend unreservedly as a grand ole time, as long as you're OK with R-rated gore and language.  This is a twist on all those "a group of kids go into the woods and suddenly start disappearing," but here the typical villains are the good guys.  Even better, they're not cliche cardboard standup Hollywood yokels, they're real characters.  I know these guys.  Hell, I am one of these guys at times. I spammed my entire contacts list to demand they watch the movie.  You, too, dammit.  Just watch.  This sucker should've been on of last year's hits.

Saw Drive and it reminded me a lot of Tarantino's True Romance: something a teenage boy with no actual experience with women (and who struggles with amorality) would view as wonderfully heroic and romantic.  Everyone else with a little experience under their belts, literally and figuratively, would see it for the sad anti-fantasy it is.  No one really acts this way, not even criminals.

Now, you may posit that both of these movies are floated as adolescent fantasies and are just that: nothing that's meant to be taken seriously.  I dunno.  The tone of these movies doesn't contain the "just kidding" bluster of The Fast and the Furious and do have realistic elements like children pining for their daddies, which - at least to me - make me think I'm supposed to take them as straight-up dramas, just the same way that sepia-toned sequences are supposed to invoke "this is the past as remembered fondly by our hero."

I thought it was kinda dull, too.  Actually driving a car is more engaging than the flick itself.  I'd say skip it.

This clever visual summary of Drive really hits the mark.
 
Finally saw Thor, too.  I had to give it two tries.  Didn't even get to Thor waking up on earth the first time.  Picked it up a couple weeks later writing off the first time to a bad mood or something (Harry of http://www.aintitcool.com/ always includes his day's activities and mood because he's convinced that an objective review is not possible.)  This time I enjoyed it for what it was: a popcorn movie and setup for the franchise The Avengers, and much better than the sad adventure in cliche that was Captain America.

Saw 21 Jump Street and The Hunger Games in the theatre, a nice treat.  

I laughed hard at 21 Jump Street.  Like the fantastic Hot Fuzz, it's a send-up of the genre while being a legit entry at the same time. It's fun to see an artist hit his stride, and Oscar-nominated Jonah Hill conceptualized, wrote, produced, and starred here, proving he can do it all.  This is one of those that will work as well on DVD as the big screen, so see it at your convenience, but see it.

The Hunger Games was exactly what I thought it would be.  The ladies of the house all tore through the books, so I got enough of the setup to guess at the plot.  Being a sci-fi fan of several decades now, this plot has been done to death, so while I was engaged during the movie, I can't say I enjoyed it.  I had deja-vu, reliving the vague revulsion I felt watching the original Rollerball, which explored the same concept of a deathmatch staged by the powers that be. So, I can see why it's powerful for the young'uns.  

Another movie that was also exactly what I thought it would be was flick Real Steel.  Yup, Rocky meets the rock'em sock'em robot game.  I was assured by many that would not be the case.  Alas.  

A movie I'd love to see that will likely never be released is Star Wars: Episode III.5: The Editor Strikes Back.  (Via Kottke.org) Topher Grace, the actor from "That 70's Show" and the recent movie Preditors, apparently came up with his own edit (for practice) of the Star Wars episodes 1 - 3, that clocks in at 85 minutes.  All attendees say it was great.

My knee-jerk reaction was George Lucas would be a fool to not allow this to be released.  It's free money, most of which he would get, of course.  If they released it as a digital projected movie only, distribution would be nothing.  

However, the mashup of a movie franchise of several full-length movies isn't really equivalent to a four-minute song mashup.  Where I can imagine Bowie or U2 smiling at a mashup of their tunes, I can't imagine George feeling wonderful about a re-edit that may "feel" superior to his films at first blush.

Oh well, maybe after Lucas rakes in another field of cash from the blu-ray releases, maybe he'll not be as concerned about undermining his profits with the release of a fanboy edit.  Yeah, it could happen.

A couple decades ago, someone at work gave me a teeny tiny .avi file of this, the inception of what became the "Tripping the Rift" TV series.  Since it's all on DVD now, I expected this to be included on the extras, as I've always wanted a clear copy, but it's not.  Come to find out it's now on youtube.  Still not in an archival quality version, but better than the old .avi I've kept for years.  By the way, this is NC-17 material.

Fun trivia, Stephen Root voiced the captain, who most of us know as Milton, he of the red stapler and big chunks of salt. 

Oh, and finally, Dooce found this.  


I plan to post again soon.  Sooner than a month, at least.

At the end of 2011

As we head into the final year of the Mayan calendar, I think we find the world somewhat adrift. Protests foam in many countries including the USA, dictators are being dispatched to the void with welcome regularity, the middle east looks like it might give representational government a try, media companies continue to implode because the market has shifted (again) to personal media-consumption devices with a 8 by 6 inch screen, and the killer app is a slingshot. (Oh, I got a Nook for Christmas. Love. It.)

We've faced probably the most evil group of elected officials in a century who actually want America's economy in the crapper because they think they can foster political gain from it. Let's go over that again: elected officials are actively working against the average American and making sure the government accomplishes nothing because they think it will help them on election day a year from now. On a tiny positive note, even the most thick-headed partisans seem to be grasping this, so the next election will be interesting.

On a side-note, politics-wise, I've been wondering why some pundits attack the first lady. The vitriol and nastiness directed at Michelle Obama, and Hillary Clinton back in the day, puzzles me. Heck, even when Nancy Regan got grief for updating the White House china I thought it was a bit much. What could possibly be the goal besides looking like an ass? I guess I'll leave it to wiser people.

Oh, and after years of joking that we'd see it someday (and always hoping it would remain a joke), I actually saw some poltroon with a "Jesus is a Republican" sticker on the back of his car. When I brought this up to a conservative I work with, he attempted to spin it as a joke the driver was in on, but all the other stickers were just as out there, so I think the guy means it. I got a look at him and his wife at the stoplight, and his whole demeanor was one of rage and bitterness. Methinks a lot of these assholes are gonna be surprised when they finally get to heaven (assuming) and Jesus straightens them out in the issue. (FWIW, as He did when on earth, He would likely eschew any political stance.)

Well, enough of that political shite.

I haven't seen all the 2011 movies I intend to, but of those I've seen, the ones I've dug (in no particular order) are:
- Paul
- Source Code
- Super 8 (my family's fave for the year)
- American: The Bill Hicks Story
- Bridesmaids
The Harry Potter saga ending, part II, we mean it this time, flick
- Crazy, Stupid, Love
- Rise of the Planet of the Apes
- Our Idiot Brother
- Contagion (scariest flick I've seen in a while)
- Red State
- The Thing (how could I not like a well-done prequel to my favorite movie?)
- A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas
- The Change-up

To my surprise, my wife loved Harold and Kumar as much as I did. You don't need to see the first two prior to seeing this one, but it does enhance some of the jokes.

I was thrilled that the folks behind The Thing prequel did such a fine job of making a nearly seamless prequel with nary a whiff of retcon, even preserving the look and feel of the movie even though they had to conform to the look of the special effects from 1982. And, my God, Mary Elizabeth Winstead is a babe. The silver screen certainly has a lot of new eye candy these days, what with Ms. Winstead and the almost-too-pretty Emma Stone. I can see why Jim Carrey lost his shit and posted a video confession that will haunt him for the rest of his days.

The other big surprise for me was The Change-up, which I watched as part of my ongoing Ryan Reynolds festival to see if he's one of those guys who picks enough interesting scripts to always check him out. (The current short list includes Jeff Bridges, the late M. Emmet Walsh, Kurt Russell, Sandra Bullock, and Meryl Streep. Though Emma Stone may join, it's too early to tell.) So far the verdict is yes, The Green Lantern notwithstanding.

Anyway, except for the epic misfire of of a set-piece where toddlers are put in major harm's way, The Change-up is funny, which was part of the surprise because the reviews were scathing, but other surprise for me was the nudity, meaning the actresses (save for one) weren't ones I would expect to expose their pink parts. (Which came with the realization that I have some murky categorization in my head of those who will get nekkid and those who won't.) This lead me to pause the flick and imdb.com the actress to see what else she's been in (to test my "not the kind who gets nekkid" theory), which then lead me to the trivia that all of the nudity in the movie is CGI. Upon re-review of the scenes (a few times), I have to say the uncanny valley has been conquered, at least as far as breasts are concerned.

For a guy, can you imagine having the job of creating CGI nudity? Would it be the greatest job ever, or would you get to the point where you only surf the web for articles? I heard/read the actresses got to choose the appearance of their CGI parts. Imagine being the animator sitting there with some gorgeous actress, which would be intimidating (and fun) anyway, but then your task was to page through big screens full of animated boobs and discussing which ones she wanted as hers. At least my mind would boggle. (Conversely, for a woman, I can't imagine a more tedious assignment. I doubt CGI dicks will catch on, and if they did, the conversations would center around, "[Male star's name], I'm sorry, but if I make it that big, it will look fake.")

Two of my favorite albums - U2's Actung Baby and Nirvana's Nevermind - have finally gotten the deluxe remastered treatment, but alas the window of interest has closed for me. Both were released when CDs were well established, so they sounded good in the first place. All the reviews claim the upgrades in sound are minimal or a step backwards, to boot. And, like Stephen King has pointed out, you can only listen to a song so many times. I've spun both of those so many times that if they were vinyl I'd have the clicks and pops memorized, too.

Besides, a lot of rock dinosaurs put out decent albums this year. Really. There are at least three keepers on the latest from Blondie, Steve Miller (two albums worth!), Cheap Trick, Paul Simon, Stevie Nicks, and Lenny Kravitz. (One funny footnote to the year is Elvis Costello warned fans away from buying his latest box set because the label egregiously overpriced it.)

My favorite albums from new(er) bands are Foster the People - Torches (which is my eldest's favorite of the year), Givers - In Light, Foo Fighters - Wasting Light, and Maroon 5 - Hands All Over. My favorite singles are ColdPlay - "Hurts Like Heaven", Panic at the Disco - "The Ballad of Mona Lisa", and D. Gookin - "Stealing Sun Chips" which reminds me of The Go! Team but a bit more stoned and drunk (the song is FREE, btw).

I discovered an interesting trick which works most of the time (90% roughly) if you want to preview an album before buying it. Yes, this is immoral and probably illegal if you don't eventually pay for it, but if you want to download an album for free, you need a newer browser that allows you to enter search terms in the URL wherein you enter the name of the band, a dash, the name of the album, followed by "site:mediafire.com". Like this:
foo fighters - wasting light site:mediafire.com
steve miller band - bingo! site:mediafire.com

The books I've enjoyed are Stephen King's latest about time travel, the Dave Grohl bio This is a Call (wow, even though Courtney Love probably didn't pull the trigger, she couldn't be more implicated in Cobain's death, imho), and a wonderful installment in the 33 ⅓ series: Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste (33 1/3) by Carl Wilson. It's definitely something readers of this blog should seek out. The premise is brilliant: Wilson admits he HATED HATED HATED Ms. Dion, especially at the time when you couldn't get away from that ubiquitous song that everyone eventually wished would hit an iceberg and sink out of sight, too; so he uses that to frame a discussion of musical taste. It is one of the most cogent breakdowns of what constitutes taste and how we can be more tolerant of other's horrible preferences. Especially since we appear to be headed for a time when the music market is more stratified than ever. (I mean, Judas Crispies, Doris Day even has a new album out.)

I've read a few articles recently that mourn for the day when most of the top 20 albums were bought by most music lovers, and we all had the same thing spinning on our turntables or in the tape decks of our cars. I think the last time I recall everyone embracing an album that we all had to have was Nirvana's Nevermind, with honorable mention to Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill (which sold more copies than Nirvana did, actually). According to this Wiki article, the chanteuse triumvirate (Britney, Shania, and Celine) and the boy bands of the 90s are the only other pretenders to the throne of celestial sales numbers, but I believe they are actually examples of when the market splintered.

So, see you in the new year. I trust there will be a few fine entertainments in store.