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So I've decided to migrate most of my blogging over to my MySpace blog, mainly just to reach a broader audience of friends, to minimize how many different personal websites I waste time on, and because Myspace has the fun and rewarding feature of being able to see how many people have read your blog. This Livejournal will definitely stay up, however, so check back here from time to time to see if I've decided some excessivly nerdy thought could only be displayed here. |
The LA Times has a pretty cool story about the upcoming reality series "Who Wants To Be A Superhero?", which I guess will air on SciFi. The contestants will be judged by none other than Stan Lee. I think his suggestion of a Trump-esque catch phrase -- "Take off your costume!" -- is so lame it's hillarious. Also, for Steve: check out where superhero Big Pappa (superpowers include "the power to enchant the ladies") does for a day job.
And for the record, if I had to pick one superpower it would be invisibility. |
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This article about the hypothetical sex lives of movie critics on Nerve is fascinating. At first glance, I almost dismissed it because of the goofy chart they have up top with apparently arbitrary ratings. But if you read on, the author actually analyzed the critics' movie reviews to divine what sort of fetishes they may have, what type of romance appeals to them, and what their attitudes are about sex in general. It's a cool idea and it turned up some interesting stuff. |
Here's a pretty interesting video of the Montys Python, where they appeared in an interview on the Dallas PBS station that aired the first episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus in the U.S. It was filmed in 1975, I think, before Holy Grail was even released in theatres, and they talk a bit about the show and censorship in Britain and a stuffed armadillo. The most interesting thing to me is how obviously completely wasted Graham Chapman is. His alcoholism eventually killed him in 1989. |
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This is just awesome -- and oddly disconcerting. Harry Shearer and Dan Castenella riff with the voices of Simpson's characters on Conan. Seriously worth watching. |
| » The Neos |
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I shy away from political posts on here, mainly because I'm not sure about where my friends political leanings are and because I'm agressively moderate which just seems to frustrate everyone. But the other night when I went to get my haircut, I read this article in the back of Time magazine. Chances are Time is going to make you pay to read it, so let me paraphrase: Conservative blogger and Iraq war hawk Andrew Sullivan admits that looking back to those heady pre-Iraq invasion days of 2003, he (and other fellow neoconservatives that pushed for this thing) were wrong about pretty much everything. They put waaaaay too much faith in the U.S. government's claims that Iraq had nuclear or chemical weapons (for an interesting take on why the U.S. believed that, read this in Slate), they believed that America was powerful enough to invade and rebuild Iraq while giving the finger to any country who said this was a bad idea, and they believed that they understood Iraqi culture well enough to completely transform it. Which are all, if you remember, the foundation of the counter-arguments to this war from the very beginning. And the reason why they let themselves be so wrong is because Sept. 11 really freaked them out. But then he ends his column by saying, "Well, even though we were wrong, you have to admit that kicking out Saddam Hussein was still a good thing." Hard to argue with that, which is why a genuine anti-war movement in this country will never get much play.
I feel like I've been reading a lot of this kind of thing lately, where pro-war types admit they were wrong about the Iraq adventure. Even Bush gave a wise speech a couple months ago when his approval ratings were at their nadir where he admitted to some mistakes in this war (and ended, of course, by reminding us that Saddam = bad and no Saddam = good). My guess is that this is partly a reaction to the poll numbers that put about 60 percent of the population saying that the Bush administration has not done such a hot job in Iraq. They feel like if they don't take some kind of maybe-we-could-be-doing-better-in-Iraq stance, they feel like the Republicans will lose seats in Congress in this election. That's my guess, anyway.
When I got back from Iraq last year, I returned slightly more optimistic about whether Iraq will be a success. A year later, things haven't improved in the way I was led to believe they were, so now I'm back to thinking that Iraq will continue to be a bloody mess for a long time. But isn't it nice for some of the people who got us into this to admit they were wrong? Yeah, it's not really doing much for me either.
Mar. 13th, 2006 @ 06:16 pm
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| » Excellent A #1 Chinese Take-out Menu! |
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I think I'm going to have the Fragrant Spring Onion Sauce Explodescow Son (#1327), and maybe start with the A West Bean Pays the Fish a Soup. As far as I know, this is a real Chinese takeout menu.
Mar. 10th, 2006 @ 03:27 pm
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| » Garfield is better if Garfield doesn't talk |
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I used to love Garfield. In fact, I met the best friends I had in elementary school because we all wanted to borrow each other's Garfield collections that we bought from the Arrow Book Club. But then I guess I outgrew Garfield and now I read much more mature fare like Astonishing X-men. So when I found this thread of Garfield cartoons with Garfield's thoughts erased it took me back to those heady days of 4th and 5th grade. It turns out that without Garfield's words (which is how Jon actually percieves Garfield, right?) the comic really is bizarre, a little dark, and kind of thoughtful. Compelling, you might even say, except I won't say that because I hate it when critics call stuff compelling. Check it out.
Feb. 24th, 2006 @ 01:23 pm
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| » Chewbacca's blog |
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I'm not sure what I expected when I first checked out Chewbacca's blog but this made me laugh so much my eyes watered. The pictures alone aren't that funny, but his comments are just sublime.
Feb. 24th, 2006 @ 10:43 am
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| » Class of '96 Mix |
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So I was driving back to Allentown from Woodbine last night, and en route I decided that in honor of the fast-encroaching 10-year anniversary of my high school graduation I'm going to make a mix CD of songs from that era. I want to have all the songs that I heard constantly that year (specifically, the ones I enjoyed -- there won't be any Live or Hootie on this disc), the tunes that when I hear them they take me right back to Dietzel parties, Ski Club, and Senior Week. Here's a rough list, in no particular order. Any other suggestions?
Beck: Where It's At
Red Hot Chili Peppers: Aeroplane, Soul to Squeeze
Smashing Pumpkins: Tonight, Tonight, Zero, Bullet With Butterfly Wings
Fugees: Killing Me Softly
No Doubt: Spiderwebs
Garbage: I'm Only Happy When It Rains
Foo Fighters: I'll Stick Around
U2: Even Better Than The Real Thing
Alanis: All I Really Want, You Ougtha Know
Oasis: Wonderwall
Green Day: Welcome To Paradise, When I Come Around
Nine Inch Nails: Closer
Dave Matthews: Ants Marching, What Would You Say, Tripping Billies
White Zombie: More Human Than Human
Feb. 21st, 2006 @ 05:28 pm
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| » Batman vs. Bin Laden? |
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I am deeply dissapointed to find out that no less a comic book heavyweight than Frank Miller (author of Sin City and Dark Knight Returns) is going to write a comic where Batman fights al Qaeda. That is about the lamest thing ever, and here's why: The real strength and appeal of science fiction and other supernatural-based fiction (or, we could even argue all forms of fiction) is its ability to present the problems we face in the real world in a distilled and illuminating form through metaphor. When you skip the metaphor and go straight to the literal problem, especially one as unambiguously bad as al Qaeda, it kind of defeats the purpose, doesn't it? I mean, why write about Spiderman when you can just write about a kid going through the physical changes of puberty? Why have a Batman when you can just have a guy who becomes angry and reclusive after being victimized by a violent crime? The other problem is that unless he's planning on doing the kind of in-depth research that people like Peter Bergen have done, Miller's representation will fall well short of anything resembling the truth and just end up being a caricature.
On one hand, I can see where Miller's idea comes from. Batman is, like I said before, a personification of the rage we feel after being victims of violence. And al Qaeda sounds more like fiction than fact anyway: a shadowy international organization of skilled operatives bent on spreading its singularly unpleasant vision of what society should be across the globe. But will combining the two really help us to understand either better? I think in the end all we'll have is something that resembles a wistful fantasy about how to eliminate a very real threat from the world using a solution that could never actually happen. I will be very surprised if Batman vs al Qaeda winds up being any good.
Furthermore, did anybody understand that line in the SF Chronicle article about how Frank Miller did for comics what Marlon Brando did for movies? Does that make any sense to anyone?
Feb. 15th, 2006 @ 10:18 am
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| » Best Valentine's Day Cards Ever |
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Of course, you'll find these even funnier if you're a Star Wars geek. There's pages and pages of them. This is my favorite:
And this just sounds dirty:
Feb. 14th, 2006 @ 09:54 am
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| » Password Guessing Contest! |
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That's right: This contest is to guess my livejournal password. Every time I make a post on here I get a little note from livejournal saying, "You have to change your password because it is too easy to guess." Well, I happen to think my password is farily unguessable, and to prove it, I'm challenging my readers to try to guess my password. If you figure it out, you will get a to-be-determined prize. I'll even give you some hints:
1) It is not a word
2) It has no numbers in it. I think this is livejournal's primary complaint with my current password
3) It relates to something personal about me
The contest ends one week from today, or perhaps sooner if I feel like it. So guess away!
Feb. 10th, 2006 @ 03:23 pm
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| » Me, You, and Everyone We Know |
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I did some math just now. Here's what I was thinking: there's something like 50 million profiles on myspace. Granted, some of them are duplicates, some are bands, some are fake TV characters, and some are spam, but still, that's a hell of a lot of people on myspace. The population of the United States is now very near 300 million, so basically there are enough myspace profiles for 1 in 6 of all men, women and children in this country. That's kind of amazing when you think about it. And thinking about it is exactly what I'm doing.
Also, I did watch the movie Me, You and Everyone We Know last week. It was a decent film in a Charlie Kaufman sort of way, but there sure was a lot of underage sexification going on. Kinda creeped me out a little bit.
Feb. 7th, 2006 @ 09:37 am
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| » Insert pithy death metal album/song title here |
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From Wednesday's Wall Street Journal. I kind of love that illustration of Cookie Monster singing death metal. He was always my favorite Sesame Street character.
LEISURE & ARTS
That's Good Enough for Me
Cookie Monsters of death-metal music.
BY JIM FUSILLI
Wednesday, February 1, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST
While the extreme branch of heavy-metal music known as death metal is defined in part by often-vile lyrics about violence, catastrophic destruction, nihilism, anarchy and paranoia, its singing style is associated with a beloved goggle-eyed, fuzzy blue puppet.
Death-metal vocalizing is also known as Cookie Monster singing, if not in tribute to, at least in acknowledgment of, the "Sesame Street" puppet that blurts in a guttural growl, his words discharged so rapidly that they tend to collide with each other.
All this was news to people at Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organization behind "Sesame Street." "We have nothing to do with it," said Ellen Lewis, vice president of corporate communications. "What is it?"
"It's a whole new thing to me," said Frank Oz, who originated the voice of the Cookie Monster. "I've never heard of it."
Most death-metal vocalists don't seem to mind the term. "We think it's funny," said Angela Gussow, lead singer for the Swedish band Arch Enemy and one of the few female death-metal vocalists. "We take ourselves too seriously."
The term is considered derogatory by some metal fans, but it's an apt description. Issued like machine-gun fire, death-metal vocals are low, guttural and aggressive, with no subtlety, no melody and very little modulation. But unlike the garbled sound emanating from the lovable and occasionally frenetic Cookie Monster, death-metal vocals seem to come from a dark spot in a troubled soul, as if they were the narrator's voice on a tour of Dante's seventh circle of hell. Cute and funny they ain't.
It's not easy to determine where and how Cookie Monster singing actually began. Early death-metal bands such as Death and Morbid Angel that emerged from Florida in the mid-'80s helped create the musical template that characterized the blasting sound as well as that of its Satan- and occult-obsessed sibling, black metal: fast, relentless drumming often featuring two bass drums; grinding, rapid-fire chording on guitars; squealing guitar solos; muted electric bass; unexpected sudden tempo changes; and a sense of theatricality that's inevitably threatening--"a horror film put to music" is how Monte Conner, a vice president at Roadrunner Records, sees it.
 But while the vocals in early death metal are low, raspy and aggressive, not unlike the vocals by, say, Lemmy Kilmister of Motörhead, that extreme degree of Cookieness is missing.
To be a true Cookie Monster vocal, said Mr. Conner, who signed some of the subgenre's biggest bands, including Sepultura and Fear Factory, "it's got to be really, really guttural. It should sound like they're gargling glass."
Nic Bullen of Napalm Death can sound remarkably like the Cookie Monster; his performance on the band's 1987 debut "Scum" (Earache)--which contains 28 songs, 11 of which are under one minute in length, including "You Suffer," which clocks in at less than two seconds--is a virtual Cookie Monster tribute. Frank Mullen of Suffocation, whose 1991 album "Effigy of the Forgotten" (Roadrunner) is considered a model of death-metal music, sounds like an especially malevolent Cookie Monster.
The term also signifies a level of incomprehensibility of the lyrics, which in most cases is absolute. Given the subject matter, that's probably for the best. Carcass, a band featuring vocalist Jeff Walker, sings in graphic detail of disembowelment and the mechanics of the autopsy. Bloody annihilation is another popular theme among the groups. For most death-metal bands, the gorier the better, and few gruesome details are spared.
"If you want to make music that's terrifying, you have to sing about ripping people's heads off," Mr. Conner of Roadrunner Records told me. "Singing about puppies and kittens isn't too cool."
Death-metal singing takes a toll on vocalists, according to Ms. Gussow, who joined Arch Enemy in 2001. She says that despite the characteristic rock-salt-and-razors growl, the sound doesn't originate in the throat. It gets pushed up from the abdomen.
"If you use the right abdomen muscles, you get a lot of power," she says. "It's a primal form of vocalizing, but it's also a very controlled style of singing. You can get weak if you don't have muscle power."
She does vocal exercises to keep fit, some of which she learned from Melissa Cross, a New York-based voice teacher whose instructional DVD "The Zen of Screaming" is a favorite of extreme vocalists.
"We're on tour, sometimes, for 2 1/2 months," the German-born Ms. Gussow said. "I can't miss even a day."
Mr. Oz agrees that making Cookie Monster sounds is an arduous occupation. "I never trained for it and I blew my pipes out," he told me. "It's completely unnatural, an explosion of force that comes from the belly through the throat. I would do a day of it and my normal voice would be a half an octave lower." (During our conversation, Mr. Oz demonstrated the Cookie Monster voice. The sudden force was startling and the volume so loud, I had to pull the phone from my ear.)
Alas, the Cookie Monster school of death metal is dying, says Mr. Conner. In the late '80s, popular death-metal bands like Sepultura, Obituary and Deicide sold about 100,000 CDs, not a bad total for bands on the musical fringe. Today's bands that play only old-school death metal are lucky to sell 15% to 20% of that figure. "I stopped signing death-metal bands in '93 or '94," Mr. Conner told me. "The glory days have long ago passed."
Part of the reason is a reaction to a natural instinct among pop musicians: a desire to expand the audience. Death-metal pioneers Entombed now leapfrog between the sound of their classic '89 album "Left Hand Path" (Earache) and more traditional heavy metal. Fear Factory's singer Burton C. Bell modified his Cookie Monster vocals that were prominent on the band's early work in time for its '99 release "Obsolete" (Roadrunner), which incorporates melodic or "clean" vocals, rap and metal singing without the Cookie Monster edge. The lyrics, clearly decipherable, tell the story of the war between man and machines. "Obsolete" sold more than 500,000 copies, significantly more than any of the band's previous albums.
Led by 20-year-old vocalist Matthew K. Heafy, who counts Metallica and Pantera as major influences, Trivium also blends almost-Cookie Monster guttural singing with melodic vocals. The music of the Orlando, Fla.-based group echoes classic death metal, but has elements of other heavy-metal schools. Mr. Heafy says: "I can't even do Cookie Monster vocals. It's kind of a limited style. You can convey much more emotion with other types of singing."
Mr. Fusilli, a novelist and critic, covers rock and pop music for the Journal.
Feb. 3rd, 2006 @ 01:13 pm
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| » My So-Called Life |
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In case you missed the trailers showing every 22 seconds on TV, the movie about my life starts on Friday. That's me played by James Franco: the tough dockworker who dreams of becoming a Marine and eventually defeats his brigade commander in a boxing tournament. Yep, just like my life. Actually, I have no plans to see the movie, and not just because it's horribly inaccurate. My primary reason for dodging it is that, dramatic license aside, it looks like it will be one of the worst movies of the year, possibly one of the worst movies ever made. But that's just what I'm assuming from watching the trailer.
I'm a little surprised to find out from that article that the Navy was such a pain in the ass about micromanaging the script. After all, Ridley Scott made a movie that's even gayer than Brokeback Mountain but I think that to this day almost every naval aviation student will give "Well, when I was a kid I saw Top Gun..." as their primary reason for wanting to be a pilot. The Naval Academy could certainly use some good promotional materials these days (and a better tagline than "Unlike West Point, we can give you a 60 % chance you won't go to Iraq.") But really what kind of excitement could possibly come out of anything approaching an accurate story about the Naval Academy? Midshipman Grant has six classes on Wednesday, close-order drill practice, and a Forrestal Lecutre to attend -- but can he shine his shoes in time for uniform inspection? Yeah, now that sounds more like my life.
I think that people who have high-adrenalin jobs like police and law enforcement want to see their occupations portrayed accurately in fiction because they feel that their lives are already exciting enough without an added romantic interest, a smart-aleck child, or whatever gimmick the writers have come up with. But I have to admit that I'm a little dissapointed that Annapolis will be a bad movie. I would think that out of all the talented writers in Hollywood (and, I hear, there's a small clique of Naval Academy graduates out there) somebody could to put together a decent script about military school. I mean, Taps was an okay film -- right?
Jan. 26th, 2006 @ 09:55 pm
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| » Webshots |
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So I got an e-mail today from webshots (I think they send them about once a week) and apparently there have been 822 views of the pictures from my thanksgiving party. Now, I don't know 822 people, and I can't imagine that even the people I know have looked at those pics enough to accumulate 822 sepearate viewings (and I'm not even sure if that's individual picture views or unique hits on the main page or what). So that makes a couple questions come into my head. First of all, how did all these people even find those pictures? What were they hoping to see? And what did they think when they came across this?
Jan. 19th, 2006 @ 09:50 am
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| » Skeletor and Friends |
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I freaking love this . And I'm a little miffed that I didn't do it first. My favorite part is the Decepticon costume.
Jan. 11th, 2006 @ 01:59 pm
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| » Joss Whedon on the Future of TV |
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I can't wait until Apple releases the iHole:
"Many people have asked me, “Joss, what is the future of television? What will we watch? And how will we watch it? Surely you must know, for you are wise, and slender.” I usually smile and say nothing, because I wasn’t actually listening to the question. But it’s a good one, and I think it’s time I let you in on a few highlights of Television-to-Be.
The networks will all be creating exciting, innovative new spin-offs of today’s shows. Approximately 67 percent of all television will be CSI-based, including CSI: Des Moines, CSI: New York but a Different Part than Gary Sinise Is In and NCSI: SVU WKRP, which covers every possible gruesome crime with a groovin’ ’70s beat. (Jerry Bruckheimer will also have conquered Broadway with the CSI musical “FOLLICLE!” starring Nathan Lane as a frenetic but lovable blood spatter and Matthew Broderick as lint.)
Lost has that one-of-a-kind alchemy that really can’t be copied. Therefore, look for the original series Misplaced, as well as Unfound, Not So Much with the Whereabouts and Just Pull Over and Ask!
In a stunningly cost-effective move, CBS will air How I Met Your Biological Mother, That Bitch, which is just old episodes of How I Met Your Mother with snarkier narration. HBO’s Westminster will continue the trend pioneered by Deadwood and Rome by making 19th-century England really dirty and weird, like Jane Austen with Tourette’s. (Actually, I can’t wait for that one.) Also, the constant slew of cable mergers will result in the creation of CinePax, a channel that’s just very confused about its morals.
Every year another film actress gets “too old” for film leads and finds a (sometimes much better) home on TV. This trend will continue a few years hence when the aging but feisty Dakota Fanning headlines CSI: Vancouver Made to Look Like Chicago.
Obviously, we’ll see advances in technology. TiVo, iPods, streaming video — the way we watch TV is changing dramatically. It’s on our phones, in our cars — even projected on specialized eyeglasses. But don’t listen to the talk about having shows beamed directly into your brain. That’s science-fiction nonsense. Shows will be stored in the pancreas and will enter the brain through the bloodstream after being downloaded into your iHole.
And what of me? My short-lived series Firefly was the basis for the epic action film Serenity (now available on DVD! I have little or no shame), and the future will see even more incarnations of this visionary work, as it returns to TV as Serenity: The Firefly Years, then back to film as Firefly: Serenity’s Sequel, back to TV as SereniFly, and finally end as the direct-to-eyeglasses series Choose a Damn Name Already. I promise it’ll be as heartwarming and exciting as the original Serenity, now available on DVD. (Explain again this thing you call shame….)
That's all I can tell you, except for one last thing: Veronica Mars will still be on. Veronica Mars will still be on. We clear about that?
Bye-ee!"
Jan. 10th, 2006 @ 03:34 pm
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| » We miss you, Mitch |
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It's really no big surprise to find out that Mitch Hedberg died of a drug overdose, but it's still sad. I truly regret never seeing his act live. Also, note the writer's little reference to the Mitch All Together CD at the very end of the story, where he notes how Mitch smoked fake pot with Peter Frampton for Almost Famous. (The rest of the joke is that it's even better than smoking real pot with a guy who looks like Peter Frampton, which Mitch had also done. But who hasn't?)
Dec. 28th, 2005 @ 02:17 pm
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themoviegoer's journal