So I was watching She's Having a Baby on the Lifetime Movie Network yesterday, and I'm thinking, "I could have sworn there was a synchronized lawnmowing scene in here somewhere," and sure enough, there is (starts at 3:16):
Why would LMN cut that out? That sequence is rich! But LMN trimmed the hell out of the whole film, and just used the time for more commercials about selling your gold.
Also, on the subject of Elizabeth McGovern, man, 20 years ago, I would have drove (drove, drover) that home like a pack of sled dogs (see 3:45 in the clip below):
But now...please, for your own sake, under no circumstances should you look for any current pictures of her.
Ah, you did it, didn't you? Time! It will get you, too!
That Eurotrash DJ knows what he's talkin' about, true believers! Webquips.com is the newest and greatest way to catch up on all your favorite arachknight adventures! So don't be late to the party! Take Tanner's advice, and swing on over to Webquips.com!
Kirk Cameron on acting, kissing, and kissing while acting:
In Kirk Cameron’s new movie, “Fireproof,” he has to kiss the actress playing his wife. That was a problem. Cameron will not kiss any woman who is not his wife.
“I have a commitment not to kiss any other woman,” the former child star of “Growing Pains” told Hoda Kotb and Kathie Lee Gifford Monday on TODAY in New York. "Even in acting, you're still doing it."
To get around the conflict, the filmmakers employed a bit of movie magic, Cameron explained. They dressed his wife, actress Chelsea Noble, like the movie’s female lead and shot the scene in silhouette.
“So when I’m kissing my wife, we’re actually husband and wife honoring marriage behind the scenes."
And Erica Durance, discussing acting, lesbianism, and acting like a lesbian (from an interview in the October 2007 issue of Maxim):
How does [your husband] feel about seeing you swapping spit with other guys on TV?
It doesn't bother him, because he's an actor, too. I'll be like, "Honey, I saw you doing some chick on TV today!" The funniest experience was when I recently went to audition for a pilot about lesbians. I'm making out with this girl, and I go, "I know you from somewhere." Turns out she'd played [my husband's] girlfriend on another series. I went home and said, "Remember Tamara? I made out with her today." He was like, "Ah, what a nice girl."
However, I'm not entirely ready to declare a potential relationship between Durance and Cameron impossible until I can find a quote from Durance on bananas. Wait, no, I'm entirely ready now.
And now, a presentation from Completely Hypothetical Comics:
It's a good thing this "Bill" character is absolutely fabricated from whole cloth and not at all based on anyone's personal life, because I bet that dude's first reaction on hearing about this would have gone something like "Ah, horseshit, like that class isn't bad enough already. I'm tired of being your whipping boy, synchronicity!"
I told John that if he successfully did a flip, I would put it on the internet. Then I told him if he did not successfully do a flip, I would put it on the internet. Then I shotgunned a beer. It was Miller time!
Music by the Ting Tings, all "Shut Up and Let Me Go." You can get it from the Amazon link on the left if that floats your boat.
"Better not let on that this will make it difficult for me to read the screen," I thought to myself, a fraction of a second before, "Fuck it, I can hang, there is no way I'm letting a close-sit get the best of me, I'm going to follow the shit out of this movie!"
So, facing the self-created challenge of absolutely following Wanted and definitely understanding what's going on and just outright getting why ratsplosions are a good idea (in context), I feel I can safely say, without bias or by duress, that Wanted is the greatest film of all time.
You know what really grinds my gears? Awful videos for tracks that are at least alright. Just close your eyes and press play:
I know kissing a girl was a new and interesting experience for Katy Perry, and so it makes sense that she would respond positively to aspects of it that she will, in time, come to criticize. For instance, if I guessed a girl whose lips tasted like cherry Chapstick, I would suggest she try using a brand of lip balm that doesn't feel like rubbing glass shards on your mouth.
Oh shit, maybe I should just call and tell her that! Nah, I'd be really polite on the phone, all "Hey, all the other messages people have left you make me laugh. A lot. Also, your song is tits."
BJ and I watched the pilot for Fastlane last weekend, and he thought the Miami Vice homage with Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight" would make for a good post.
You bet it would, BJ. I mean, You bet it was. I mean, You bet it would.
But while that musical cue being used in two vice cop shows several decades apart is funny, it's not blow-your-mind insane, like, say, both Swingtown and The Venture Bros. using the same party game (having a famous person's name taped to your back and having to guess who it is based on people treating you like that person) in episodes that aired only THREE DAYS APART. Considering the hugely different production schedules that live-action and animated programs are on, that shit is straight-up universally resonant. Point: Coincidence.
So who wants to have a dinner party with that game this weekend, what what?
So, Spider-Man walks into a bar, and has a little run-in with some supervillians therein, until the bartender decides to keep the peace...
Spider-Man is known for his goofing, but is it okay to goof on your friend's drinking problem? If that friend is Tony Stark, then yes, because that guy is a fascist asshole.
Here's a sketch with a title that still gets a lot of play in my father's house. Ask that man for money, and you are likely to hear, "Change...for a dollar? Cch, Tch, Tch, Tkok,tkok..." Is that how you spell that? Anyway, here's Mr. Show's "Change for a Dollar":
Funny, yes. But the funniest sketch of all time? Maybe!
White Ninja Comics + History + Sometimes the character designs look like they could be in The Brave Little Toaster or maybe Davey and Goliath + also some Kyle Baker too = Kate Beaton's comics.
Looks like there's going to be some overtime down at the factory tomorrow, or as we call it, "Time-X." Which is weird, because people keep telling me that we're moving packages of Timex watches, so I can't tell if someone is fucking with me, coincidences abound, or management thought to consolidate purpose and distinction.
Sometimes when people make me a mix CD, I won't listen to it for at least a couple of years, on account of being so set in my ways and crotchety. But then I will listen to it and what do you know it turns out I like Kate Havnevik:
It's probably for the best that I didn't listen to her when I received a mix with Havnevik on it in 2006. On the one hand, I would have been totally up-to-date-at-the-time on my Norwegian electronica*, but on the other, dominant hand, her lyrics would very well have forced me to shoot myself. In 2008, I'm able to set my chin on my palms and wistfully wist to no one in particular, "Oh Kate, you've got it all figured out, don't you?"
*Although I remember this clip being on rotation in Rome when I was there in 2005, and also I remember not really liking it and wanting more George Harrison.**
**"I've Got My Mind Set on You" makes me want to play 13 Dead End Drive.
American Psycho 2: All-American Girl is on TMC, and if the twist is that William Shatner is playing an old Patrick Batemen, it will be awesome. UPDATE: that didn't happen, so I guess the movie was a resounding "not awesome."
Expanding a little on the tardiness of Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk, the whole thing is really a matter of the book at first being so late it's funny, and then so late it's infuriating, and then so late it comes around to being funny again. In some ways, it's kind of like today's sketch, Dane Cook and Will Forte in Saturday Night Live's "Poland Spring Water":
Just make sure you stop it after the water sketch is over, because what comes next is kind of rough.
You know what really grinds my gears? Late comics. Well, not really. I mean, I grew up with Image, late comics are in my blood. But even my generation has its limits, and Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk has demolished that limit. UWvH began as a miniseries in December 2005, and only two issues of a planned six were released. The third issue is now close to two and a half years late. So Bob Gale had some fun with it in the new Amazing Spider-Man:
And it's too bad, really, because what the world needs now is Ultimate She-Hulk.
I went to see a stage production of Jesus Christ Superstar, which was great, even if we did get the understudy Judas. And he was white.
It would be pretty awesome to play Judas, but you sure would have to be up there singing an awful lot over the course of two hours. So it would also be tempting to just play Herod and come in to chew up the scenery for one crowd-pleasing song.
The new Dinosaur Comics is funny and informative, but I have personally always pronounced "$" as "Chonk." And I don't know about ALL dogs, but when Tom sounds like he's about to ralph, the closest that sound comes to is a duck honk. Chonk is not quite honk, but there you go.
Sometimes after it rains, it smells really super-oxygenated (you know...). Other times, it smells like cheese. Yesterday, it smelled like cheese. YMMV.
Also yesterday, my mother's birthday, which apparently fell on the same day that Australia celebrates the Queen's birthday. Except Western Australia.
This last weekend at a BBQ, a little girl told me I looked like that guy from Batman.
"Wow, you think I look like Christian Bale? Awesome!" I said. Finally someone saw the uncanny resemblance.
"NO! The OTHER guy! From Red Eye and 28 Days Later," she said.
"Who's letting you watch those movies?" It was time to lose the heat, so I pointed to Patrick. "See that guy over there? Doesn't he look like the kid from Even Stevens?"
"Yeah!"
"Good, go tell him to comb his hair with some Dr. Pepper. And don't come back unless you're bringing me some chicken wings."
Before Akiva and the rest of The Lonely Island transcended awesomeness with their digital shorts, other folks at Saturday Night Live also tried their hand at such, including Adam McKay, as seen in this following sketch (suggested by April):
Rachael Ray was arrested yesterday for terroristic activities, including, but not limited too, wearing a scarf. Wait, is that what happened? All I know is that I've been reading my Marvel Comics more closely...you know...SYMBOLICALLY speaking...
If you see any butlers wearing keffiyehs from here on out, do not approach. They is Skrull terrorists, yo!
Radical Comics is a fairly new publisher, and one of the titles they are putting out is Hercules: The Thracian War, which looks to be getting a cover by John Bolton. Which is just amusingly synchronous to me because I've been reading the Classic X-Men series this last week, the first three dozen or so issues of which feature back-ups illustrated by Bolton.
And there's really no excuse for my brain to go where it did, but when I saw the headline "Bolton draws Radical's Hercules cover," my first thought was of Michael Bolton's single "Go the Distance" from the Disney Hercules movie. But, you know, I just watched that last week, too, so hey.
But I ain't buyin' no dang Hercules comic, anyway. The only thing I'm getting from Radical is this sweet new Yoshitaka Amano art book based on Mozart's The Magic Flute. woot.
Just thinking about Aimee Mann today, and how there was an issue of Savage Dragonwhere Dragon is wearing an Aimee Mann T-shirt. That issue is number 11.
If anyone else ever needs easy reference for what issue of Savage Dragon featured Dragon wearing an Aimee Mann T-shirt, this post is it, brother.
Again, Dragon wears an Aimee Mann T-shirt in Savage Dragon #11.
The new issue of Wizard has an interview with Bill Hader and Seth Meyers where they talk about how awesome comics are (they are right). If I had known that Seth Meyers was such a huge fan of comics when I met him, I probably would have tried to build an entire interview around that, too. That was in 2006, and as it turned out, at his birthday party later that year, he just happened (!!) to run into artist Kevin Maguire at the same bar, who drew him a picture of Blue Beetle on the spot.
And then, for his birthday the next year, Maguire drew Meyers a picture of Meyers as the Blue Beetle! Say whhaaaaaaaaa?! That is the greatest birthday gift I can imagine, and the likeness is spot-on, too. If Maguire ever drew a picture of Hader as Booster Gold, Meyers and Hader would have a pretty solid pitch for a Blue & Gold film.
And from Astonishing X-men #7, Wolverine will also teach you about internal dialogue:
It's probably for the best that Marvel won't let Wolverine smoke anymore because then there would be panels where Wolverine's all "SNIKT" and a ninja's like "OH SHIT!" and then Wolverine would say, "I'm going to smoke you like this great cigar I'm smoking" and I would want to smoke a cigar so bad.
You know what really grinds my gears? Deicide. It just seems disrespectful. Most places don't have a law against it, but the Green Lanterns will police it anyway.
They even have a code for it, 1011. Apparently it doesn't come up a lot.
It would probably be weird enough to discuss on television the differences between sentai and hentai as an adult, but doing it as a 13 year-old? What kind of masochistic planet do you live on, man? P.S. I did that and it was somewhat embarassing.
P.P.S. Nah, I got over it. Here, enjoy an unrelated related link about cartoon boobies.
Has anyone seen that Prince Caspian movie yet? Not me, but I did see the trailer. And speaking of trailers, I was unloading a trailer full of boxes this morning, and the trailer just seemed to keep going and going and going.
"I must be halfway to Narnia by now," I thought to myself, quite cleverly. Then a supervisor came over.
"Yeah, you probably noticed you got the bigger trailer today. It's 20 feet longer."
"Oh," I said, choking at the opportunity to share my bon mot. But I guess that's why people have blogs.
Will I catch one? It is possible, since I am on a river in Missouri and polar bears are native to that region as far as my education has led me to believe.
This week's sketch is by request of Nick, who wanted something with Jim Carrey in it. Not specifically this, but go ahead and RIDE THE SNAKE:
That was, of course, from the episode of Saturday Night Live that Carrey hosted. I like Nancy Walls in that sketch, playing the woman who talks about making out with Scott Baio. In real life, she married Steve Carrell, which is a step or two or 100 up. Interestingly enough, SNL just last week went back to the well of "satirical program about losing weight" with host Steve Carrell as Charlie Flitt. Unfortunately, that sketch didn't have Nancy in it, although she did make an appearance during the monologue. And that concludes today's trivial trivia.
It's not that I really like Shia LaBeouf or would even go see a movie he is in, but they keep putting him in movies I was already going to see. Now, Ryan, on the other hand...
Otherwise, I would have complained a lot sooner that when Wolverine's claws are retracted, the sound effect is SNAKT, not TKINS (SNIKT, or the sound of the claws popping out, backwards). Nah, I'm just kidding, I'd never complain about Amazing Spider-Man, it's great!
SOAPnet cycled through the last episode of Melrose Place yesterday, meaning that after twenty-plus weeks of dedicated viewing, I have seen all 227 episodes of 90s America's favorite prime-time soap. If there are two things that helped me through it (besides my incredibly dogged stubbornness), they are TiVo and sobriety. I never could have done it without them. I would also like to thank my mother, my brother, John, and Kevin, all of whom watched at least partial bits of episodes when they were putting off stuff that needed to be done or were too hungover to get away.
So what did I take away from the experience? Well, I learned that the only worthwhile things in life are hooking up and succeeding in advertising, and that if either of those things happens it's really just a harbinger of misfortune to come, usually in the form of an explosion, catfight, or falling in the pool (although that last one also happens for comedic purposes). But more importantly, I learned that unlike the comeuppance delivered in the last episode of Seinfeld, you can be a reprehensible (but entertaining!) person for years and still be rewarded in the end. Which was especially true for Thomas Calabro's character, Dr. Michael Mancini, who lied, cheated, embezzled in at least two separate plotlines, and went through six wives in seven seasons, and still ended up with a million dollars, a hot nurse, and a cushy chief-of-staff position, smug as ever. Which may be a misconstrued version of Seinfeld's line "the best revenge is living well," but, hey, whatever works.
Chris Claremont and Milo Manara have been working on a graphic novel featuring the women of the X-Men for a while now, to be called Women of the X-Men or X-Girls or Girls on the Run or really who knows? But it's coming and some preview art has finally been released.
Claremont has always had a thing for strong women of vision, and Manara's teh awesome at drawing strong visions of women, so this should be a book to look forward to whenever it gets released, even if lesbianism is unlikely.
io9 has had some excellent coverage of Joss Whedon's upcoming show Dollhouse this past week, including the first upfront trailer. It might be too soon to say, but so far this looks to be the only new show I will be watching in the coming season. And I may not keep up with some current shows that are continuing next season, for instance Smallville, especially if that show will no longer feature Laura Vandervoort as Supergirl, who gave me a reason to keep watching among all the threats of kryptonite gum and Bizarro-loving Lana.
But I don't consider Dollhouse to be a replacement for Smallville, even if Eliza Dushku is just as beautiful as Vandervoort. Just...as...wait a second...
Well, it's close enough for government work. These two do not look all that much alike, but makeup, lighting and the possibility of some digital manipulation (maybe, who's to say?) tend to obfuscate the differences between them. Still, there are definitely similarities as well, my favorite being both Dushku's and Vandervoort's arching of the left eyebrow. Neither actress uses that left eyebrow to the degree that, say, Vanessa Williams in Eraser does (I would suggest creating a drinking game out of William's left-eyebrow-arching, but I don't think that eyebrow ever came down, so where would you take a shot?), but there are times when both use it on-screen.
But I don't want to give the impression that just women are acting with their left eyebrows. Over the last three seasons, Jason Lee's left-eyebrow-arching in My Name is Earl has been downright notorious, to the point where the writers finally brought it up in the show itself:
I have a pet theory that this was something that the writers wanted to address in season one, but no one had the heart to criticize Lee's acting, in jest or not, because it likely would have psyched him out and led to some blatant inconsistencies in his performance, which would have hurt the then-nascent narrative. With a couple of years under the show's belt, now is a more comfortable time for such meta-commentary.
On the other hand, no matter when the joke was used, its use does draw attention to the left-eyebrow-arching, and once you start to notice it, there really is no going back. You are going to notice it until the day you die. Unless, of course, you have the good fortune to be an "Active," in which case, upon the completion of the mission to read this post, you will have your mind wiped and never consider the merits of left-eyebrow-arching again.
You know what really grinds my gears? Massive inflation in food prices. I was reminded of this again yesterday when I noticed that coke machines on campus now charge $1.50 for a 12 oz. bottle of sugar water. That is somewhat of a mixed blessing, because soda is kind of crap, and if it takes a ridiculous amount of price inflation to get people to stop drinking it, that is alright by me. My brother takes an even more hardline stance against high-fructose corn syrup: most people have something they will rant about if you let them, and his soapbox is actually a soda crate that he stands on to tell you how terrible coke is for your health. I say, next time you want a Jack & Coke, just take the whiskey out of your boot, pour it in a glass, add a spoonful of sugar and cut out the middle man.
Most experts agree that what is driving up the price of many foods is not just regular-type inflation or the rising cost of transporting food, but also the government's subsidies for ethanol-based fuels. That's funny, right, that we are diverting attention from using corn as people food and concentrating on making it machine food?
Well, I think it's funny, but not as funny as the fact that in either case, as food for people or cars, corn is a terribly inefficient source of fuel. Excuse my hyperbole for the sake of metaphor, but eating corn is about as energy-efficient as eating gold, and it could end up costing you as much in the not-too-distant future.
Meanwhile, in the bit-more-distant (and highly fictionalized) past of our great nation, when cartoon John Smith told cartoon Pocahontas that his people came to the New World to dig valuable yellow stuff out of the ground, she assumed he was talking about corn (prounounced maize) and not gold (prounounced gold). If only that Smith was (a) real, (b) extremely long-lived, and (c) prudent enough to invest in corn futures (otherwise known as the "Maize Hat-Trick" of investment strategies), he would today be a very wealthy man. Instead, he chose to learn how to paint with all the colors of the wind, which is a fine thing to do but far from a perfect dietary plan. Not that it seemed to matter, because the only character in that movie who ever ate anything was the raccoon.
Bullet points, like music, have a rhythm. This particular song consists of six sharp notes, like deathly drumbeats.
How I Met Your Motherrenewed for fourth season. Urge to kill...fading...
Before the server went down, bids to meet the cast of HIMYM were up to $27,500. Urge to kill...rising...
Shayne won Matt's heart, and also completely eviscerated any theories I might have come up with (cough cough), but a quick change of plans before the finale still netted me a mighty dollar profit in wagers. Fading...Now if only ABC would trim each season by three weeks...
Speaking of trimming, The Real World Hollywood is apparently only 12 episodes, but each one is an hour long. Rising... Also: next up, Brooklyn. Rising...
Deanna is the next The Bachelorette. If you told me a woman was a Greek goddess with a little southern twist, I would say, "Congratulations, you have just described the complete opposite of what I am looking for." Rising...
Speed Racer: Advanced? Wait, what was the definition for advanced again? The good news: Speed Racer is an enjoyable movie with some new party tricks. The bad news: It bombed. The (Joel) silver lining: No possibility of a sequel diminishing the appeal of the first film. Urge to kill...mediated...
And now, the only three minutes of Miami Vice that you ever need to see:
"I need to know something. The way we used to be together. I don't mean lately, but before, it was real, wasn't it?"
A good preventative measure for drunk-dialing would be a timelock on your phone, or maybe a breathalyzer. But even better than that would be a function on your phone that makes it so that if you call an ex after 3 a.m., you don't get connected, but instead your ex just hears that line of dialogue, backed by Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight."
A foolproof plan sure to have every ex saying, "You bet it was."
One of my favorite useless trinkets is a piece of candy a raver girl once made for me. We met in class, and it was clear from her attire that she was really into the dance music scene (and also dance music itself, which does not always happen). When she found out that I was also into electronica, she asked what specific kind of stuff I liked. I knew it would be embarrassing to say happycore, so I figured a safer response was just to say I liked trance.
"Fucking Trance!" she said, in a rehearsed tone of spite. She was into jungle, which is alright too. The next day, she brought me this:
I think it was a nice gesture. My knowledge of what makes music belong to a certain sub-genre (and the merits of those sub-genres) is limited, but the trick to presenting knowledge (especially in social situations and especially about music) is to sound authoritative without being condescending. And you have to know your audience. I managed to spend an hour on a road trip once describing the differences between house and trance, because what the other people in the car knew about electronica allowed me heavy wiggling room for descriptive bull plop.
So I always keep the potential level of bull plop in mind when reading ABOUT music (and as they say, writing about music is like dancing about architecture). Further, the level of hyperbole exhibited when discussing anything you like can get kind of nertz real quick, as is the case with Sasha Frere-Jones and his new favorite sound, Lazer Bass.
When I first read about lazer bass, it was in print, so I didn't get around to listening to it until yesterday, and actually spent the entire weekend going around inaccurately describing everything I heard as lazer bass. It turns out lazer bass is really just Squarepusher, only more "dubby," with the sampling technique of good lord can you imagine listening to me yak about that for another hour?
So, while I love the descriptive title of lazer bass, the music itself is not really for me, falling into that ubiquitous category of "things to play to trick people into dancing so we can put on the real dance music," or, "electronica that sneaks in through the side hatch." It's probably just a failing of mine, but I tend to see dance music that's not happycore as a pose, sub-genres that are not being too terribly honest about what's on the agenda. But that's just me, and what do I know anyway? I like fucking trance.
I went to the dentist Thursday, and got rick rolled while there was a drill in my mouth, which is the kind of thing R.L. Stine could get 300 pages out of, but in real life the situation is not so bad, eh? Later, I was assembling an executive chair when this came on the radio:
This week's sketch is a "Celebrity Jeopardy" parody from Saturday Night Live, featuring Ben Stiller as Tom Cruise and Jimmy Fallon as Adam Sandler, with Will Ferrell as Alex Trebek and Darrell Hammond as Sean Connery. This sketch is funny even without the video: my first exposure to it was as an Mp3 in high school, and I listened to it hundreds of times (on minidisc!) before I ever saw the actual sketch on TV. But judge for yourself, by clicking play and closing your eyes:
SNL's "Celebrity Jeopardy" sketches are always good times, but I think this one is my favorite. Another really good one, though, is the one with Norm Macdonald as Burt Reynolds, Darrell Hammond as John Travolta, and Matthew Perry as Michael Keaton. Michael Keaton is probably the funniest person to imitate on the planet. Watch him on screen, he does not care what anyone else is doing, he is just going to be INTENSE and FURROW HIS BROW. And in the sketch, Macdonald put on a giant cowboy hat and made everyone refer to him as "Turd Ferguson." I probably like that sketch so much because we performed it in high school as a one-act play. I was Turd Ferguson.
The Wachowski Bros. really seem to have it in for the number 5, as the erstwhile digit is often cast in an antagonistic light in their movies. To be generous, it is possible to say that 5 as portrayed in their movies is, at best, representative of a life that must be escaped from, and that it is indicative of, if not outright Evil, at least a hive-mind mentality. Put bluntly, the number 5 is anathema to Wachoski-written protagonists, individuals who must separate themselves from the pack (although really, this makes the protagonist anathema to the hive-mind).
This is all pretty clear in the Matrix trilogy, with Neo designated as the sixth integral anomaly, and the world of the matrix downright plastered with 101 designations (addresses, highways), what in binary is 5 decimal. And in V for Vendetta, V's instigation of an anarchic uprising leads to thousands of individuals donning Guy Fawkes masks, as they all symbolically become V (5) in an act of public disobedience that glorifies the hive mind while doing nothing to effect real change (the promise of 6). Of course, in V for Vendetta, they had to radically change the original work to get there (upsetting author Alan Moore), but you could say that 5 didn't come out looking like such a pillar of "right number behavior" in the comic, either.
Anyway, it was with those examples in mind that I wondered how the Wachowski Bros. would deal with the presence of the Mach 5 in their new film, Speed Racer, opening today. I mean, that's Speed's car. And what about the delightful pun of "go" meaning 5 in Japanese? Surely the protagonist's car isn't a symbol of the hive mind?
Well, okay then. If you want to break away from the pack, I guess you're gonna need a Mach 6. Roku, Speed, Roku!
Checking in on the global economy, it looks like the word is "gold," which must mean the global economy has been watching the same soap opera reruns I have, and has thus been bombarded with advertisements demanding that they send for their FREE GOLD KIT NOW.* If you are not familiar with them, the companies running these ads helpfully want to buy your old gold jewelry, and they are willing to give you cash for that gold and you keep the gold!**
I didn't pay attention to the national spots on the subject of FREEGOLDKITS, because really, sending gold through the mail is cumbersome, who's got the time? Which is why I was thrilled when I started seeing ads for local operations that were in business strictly to buy my old gold. Imagine, I could bring my gold right to the store and walk out with paper currency, something that can be exchanged for goods and services. Try doing THAT with gold! What kind of crackpot business even buys gold? A crackpot business, that's what kind.
Unless, of course, the Fed has been trying to keep economic markets calm through suppressing the price of gold by selling more than half of the nation's supply. Which really makes gold a buyer's market now, but also guarantees that it becomes a seller's market as soon as (A) the Fed stops selling all the gold or (B) the Fed sells all the gold. Who's the crackpot business now?
My favorite part of that article, though, is when the author begins what can only be called the Pizza Metaphor Imperative (or PMI):
...all I want is just to make a lot of money so that I can move into a nice house in a gated community that has armed guards, a nice golf course and completely surrounded by sleazy strip clubs and pizza parlors where you can get any kind of pizza you ever heard of at discount prices.
Obviously, the man is talking about sex pizza, but why he felt the need to be so coy about it is beyond me. He leaves no time to dwell on it though, because immediately after that the PMI continues:
...as to the notion that the Fed has sold half of our nation's gold... I see no reason why the Fed would stop at only half, sort of like when I am starving and I sit down with a whole delicious pizza in front of me, and my wife thinks I am just going to eat half and leave the other half for her, and then she acts all surprised when I see no reason to stop at half, either!
Yeah, what's that broad thinking? Really, though, I don't believe it's fair when what is initially a well-reasoned article on the global economy so quickly turns to madness with no warning. So, here is my warning to you, I am about to do the same thing with a new metaphor ready go:
Trying to regulate market prices of finite materials is like regulating a woman's menstrual cycle with hormones for an indefinite period of time. There is no profit*** in it, and when you run out of hormones, there's going to be hell to pay.
So, why is "Annuale" a funnier Saturday Night Live sketch than "Monex"? Because the writers at SNL (as well as everyone else) know what would happen if you fucked with a girl's period for a year, so everyone can relate to the catastrophic/hilarious results. But nobody at SNL (or really anyone else) knows what's up with gold, so they see the commercials and write a parody where Kristen Wiig moans "Gooooold" for three minutes.
But, just like the rest of us, the writers at SNL do better when dealing with paper currency.
*FREE GOLD KIT includes 4 lbs. lead, whiskey boot and VHS tape with instructions on constructing your own philosopher's stone out of common household items.
This clip from The Real World: Hollywood is an uncut version of a fight between Kimberly and Brianna that was aired a couple of weeks ago, and is superior to the edited version in every way except that it excises Kimberly's best racist line: "I don't care if you're from the most inner-city...BLACKVILLE, you do not act like that." Still, there are some choice A #1 racist comments up in this mug:
The best part about alcohol-fueled blow ups peppered with racists barbs is the opportunity for make up racism later that week. Make up racism is a lot like make up sex, only way more racist.
Wired has an interview with Stan Lee about his cameos in Marvel movies, the most recent of which is his appearance in Iron Man. In the movie, Tony Stark only sees Lee's character, surrounded by beautiful women, from behind while on the red carpet, and says hi to "Hef," quickly moving on before Lee turns around. It creates an interesting ambiguity, leaving the audience to decide if Lee is playing Hugh Hefner or an alternate-universe Stan Lee who has a lifestyle very similar to Hugh Hefner. Or, most unlikely, an alternate-universe Stan Lee who spends much of his free time emulating the lifestyle of Hugh Hefner, renting smoking jackets and hiring expensive call girls to accompany him to premieres and parties.
While we may never get closure on that point, Marvel's announcement of an Iron Man sequel to be released in 2010, as well as three other Avengers movies to take place in the same shared movie universe as Iron Man, points towards plenty of future cameo opportunities for Lee.
Comics Review Quarterly is the result of an exercise I did in designing a dummy copy of a new magazine; in this case, a magazine about comic books.
Click here to see a gallery of the 12 pages I put together, but keep in mind that because this was only an exercise in design, all the text is place-holding gibberish, and not Bulgarian, as Ryan originally thought when I showed him the finished product. However, my letter from the editor is an actual letter from the editor, but that personal paean to Gareb Shamus' ghostwriter is just slightly less gibberish than the rest of the issue.
I saw There Will Be Blood last night. I heard it was long, and it turns out it was quite long (somewhere between 30 and 400 hours). I also heard there was a line about milkshakes in there, and that is true too, but they put it at the end, so you have to watch the whole movie to hear it. Or you can just watch this clip from Saturday Night Live, and BOOM! You just drank that movie's milkshake!
YOU DRANK IT UP!
If you don't have five minutes, I can just tell you that it is funny when you shout "I Drink Your Milkshake!" at the top of your lungs like you have a thick moustache, and there you just drank SNL's milkshake. If there's a way to cut it down further I do not want to hear about it because that's my milkshake.* *metaphor falls apart here
"Run With Us," performed by Lisa Lougheed, and used as the end credit theme to The Raccoons.
Watching this video satisifies 400% of your recommended daily value of 80s synthpop, so viewing this playlist in one sitting will most likely kill you.
I spent the last few years building up an immunity to iocaine powder the 80s.
After almost two decades out of print, Marvel is once again collecting the Longshot miniseries from 1985 by Ann Nocenti and Art Adams, this time in a premiere hardcover. Not that it's all that difficult to still find original copies, but a slick reprint never hurt anyone. What will hurt, though, is a blah cover like the one on Amazon's pre-order page. Compare it with the cover to the Longshot TPB from 1989:
Of course, the new version won't be out until July, so there is a great chance that most of the book's design has not been finalized yet. Anything would be better than Longshot placed over a blue background, but here's an option: how about a new Art Adams piece re-imagining the cover to Longshot #4? Here's the original cover to refresh your memory:
That's actually a little too small, you can hardly see what's going on there. Here's a larger version:
Awesome. Yeah, that Longshot sure is a great character, with that mullet and the bandoleer and the what-not...which brings me to my next point: the 80s were a decade of give-and-take for fashion. For every picture of She-Hulk wearing leg warmers, there were a hundred pictures of a mutant with a hockey haircut and eight fingers, and the pages of Longshot were no exception. But you wouldn't know it from this post because look out here's another shot of She-Hulk:
If only we lived in a world where the flawless aesthetics of 80s workout gear were properly regarded. If...only...
Eric Prydz' "Call On Me" samples Steve Winwood's "Valerie" (and Winwood even rerecorded the vocals, which was swell of him), and it is the bee's knees. And as you can see from the playlist, those dancers would go on to put out an exercise video, "Pump It Up: The Ultimate Dance Workout," and would reunite again for the video to the Hughes Corporation's "What A Feeling." Not as great as "Call On Me," but Deanna Barry licks Juan's face, which brought to mind Kate Nauta (who has a birthday tomorrow) licking Jason Statham's face in The Transporter 2, and so you can just skip ahead in the fourth clip to 1:33 if you want to see that (and I think you do).
So, what have we learned today? Well, I learned that you can get what you want and still be happy, that the Australian accent truly is the funniest of the accents, and most importantly, that even if your mutant power is being incredibly lucky, it cannot save you from the fickle nature of what is fashionable.
