A Perfectly Cromulent Blog

"Don't Let All That Blood Go To Waste"

The marketing wizards at General Motors are having a contest where people can design their own Chevy Tahoe commercials. Needless to say, it's kinda backfiring on them.

Examples here, here, and here.

Check 'em out while you can, as I doubt they're going to be left online very long.

(via Metafilter)

Best Movie of 2006...so far

Slither.

And I should probably say "best studio release," as I saw several movies at Sundance and SXSW that were better. But anyway...

No offense (well, not much) to my esteemed FT colleague Don, who gave it a mere two stars in his review, but I haven't enjoyed myself at a movie this much in quite a while. Gleefully low budget, and R-rated so as to capture every evisceration and exploding cranium, it's a decidely sleazy good time.

If I had any complaint, it's that it doesn't go crazy enough. Slither felt a lot like the first X-Men movie in that regard, simply because it seemed like Gunn didn't have the budget to do everything he wanted. Still, as remakes go (Night of the Creeps), it's miles ahead of any horror movie released in the last five years.

Of course, the pre-screening margaritas probably didn't hurt.

My review likely won't be up until this weekend. To tide you over, here's:

Inside Man - ***1/2
Ice Age: The Meltdown - **1/2

Git-r-Dumb

So, the really surprising (in a Capt. Renault kind of way) news is that Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector is currently residing at #1 on the Internet Movie Database's Bottom 100 list less than a week after its release.

First of all, I hold no stock whatsoever in IMDB's ratings (including their Top 250), and neither should you. It isn't that I have any special objection to The Godfather being rated #1, or that 143,000 people voted for Return of the King to be ahead of (for which 100,000 fewer people bothered to vote at all)...it's to be expected. People have short attention spans, after all, and after perusing their message boards for a while, let's just say it's a bit much to ask for rational criticism from people who still use "l33t speak" and quote Col. Guile from Street Fighter without irony.

So I don't really have a problem with Larry the Healthy Cable Inspector listed as the Worst Movie Ever. Does it suck? Yeah, probably. Is it one of the 100 worst movies of all time? It wouldn't shock me, but then, I have less of a problem with a one-off film like this, released simply to capitalize on the (hopefully) fleeting fame of the once and future Dan Whitney than I do with hundred million dollar stool samples like Forrest Gump and Pearl Harbor.

Besides, I guarantee you not all of the 1,400+ people (at last count) voting for Larry actually saw it. Sure, it made $7 million at the box office, but those who saw it opening weekened are the kind of people for whom movie criticism might as well be the op-ed page of the San Francisco Chronicle. You could probably count the number of people who consciously shelled out $9 for a ticket and then came home to give it a "1" on IMDB on both hands and one foot.

Besides, I get no end of pleasure at seeing the current #2 movie - Anus Magillicutty - which bills itself on its own DVD cover as "The Worst Movie of All Time," bumped out of the top spot. It was a noble effort fellows, but to paraphrase my grandfather, "There's always someone bigger, smarter, or more offensive aesthetically than you are." I have no doubt the guys at Corporations Unlimited engineered a voting campaign to have Anus perched majestically at #1. And having been forced to sit through it, I'm actually glad "Larry" stole their thunder.

And for the record, this will be most likely be the only area in which I'd ever want that sleeveless hack to succeed.

You can't spell "angst" without "Ang"

Ang Lee, please shut up:

Golden Globe-winning movie Brokeback Mountain was named last year's Best Motion Picture at the 17th annual Gay And Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) Awards in New York City Monday night. Oscar-winning director Ang Lee received a standing ovation when he took to the stage to accept the award on behalf of everyone who worked on the heart-breaking tale of a secret love affair between two cowboys. He told the audience, "Finally, an award that actually means something. (It will probably be) the very last award I will accept for Brokeback Mountain. And to end the journey here tonight is like coming home. The fact is Brokeback Mountain has helped to change the world."

We get it, Ang; you really wanted Brokeback to win Best Picture. Guess what? It didn't. Crash may go down as one of the more, uh, "unexpected" upsets in Academy Award history, but it doesn't rank as high on the "Buh?" scale as: Driving Miss Daisy, Ordinary People over Raging Bull, Rocky over Network and Taxi Driver, or Titanic, period. And those are just the last 20 years.

Nobody likes a sore loser, Ang. Even Quentin Tarantino, who had better reason to bitch after Gump beat Pulp Fiction, shut up after a couple of days. You lost, let it go.

And referring to the GLAAD Award as "meaning something," implying it's somehow less of a popularity contest than the Oscar and is therefore free of politics and hidden agenda, is almost as funny as Keira Knightley getting nominated for Best Actress.

Conclusive proof of a higher power

Though I have yet to figure out which one:

One of the Great Old Ones, most likely. These are right up Azathoth's alley. Regardless, I shall be scanning my grocery shelves in the coming weeks for my first bag spicy fried curtain rings.

[as seen on delicate flower)

But if he's got his nina then you know he's straight trippin'

So much for "cold, dead hands:"

U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay, a gun rights supporter under indictment on charges of laundering campaign money, is fighting to regain his Texas concealed handgun license, which was suspended because he is accused of a felony.

Under a Texas law passed in 1995, a license may be suspended if the holder is charged with a Class A or Class B misdemeanor or indicted on felony charges.

The Sugar Land Republican's license was suspended by Fort Bend County Precinct 4 Justice of the Peace Jim Richard in January.
[...]
The author of the original bill, Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, who was a state senator, said the section of law calling for suspension of licenses of people under indictment should probably be removed from the statute.

"It is clearly not rational, not called for, but it was one of those things we did to make somebody say, 'OK, I'll vote for it,' " Patterson said Monday.

And something like that came back to bite you on the ass? Excuse me while I give myself a stroke from laughing.

Patterson said several provisions were put in the bill by backers in order to garner support from other lawmakers who were leery about the law.

Patterson said since the bill's passage more than a decade ago, legislators have amended the statute and removed some of the parts he called "onerous."

"There is a presumption of innocence. Would we take away his First Amendment right to free speech?" Patterson said.

Yeah, well...to paraphrase Frost from Aliens, I don't see a lot of people using "harsh language" to commit crimes (but then, I'm not the FCC). While I see Patterson's belated point, his opinion would carry a lot more weight if it hadn't been sacrificed to political expediency beforehand, and if he wasn't only expressing remorse because of an inconvenience to Delay now.

Hetero lifemates

The Bayou City Arts Festival was this last weekend. It's the first of many outdoor events capitalizing on the few weeks of the year in Houston where standing outside doesn't immediately leech all the moisture from your body.

A friend of ours had called up asking if The Wife and I wanted to go with him and his daughter to the Festival on Sunday. His wife had to work, and his little girl had been cooped up with a cold and could use the fresh air. Unfortunately, The Wife also had work she had brought home from the office, and She Who Shall Not Be Named was about to go down for a nap. Seeing the opportunity for a few outdoor beers, I agreed to go along.

Now, I'm not dense. Two dudes walking a toddler around an art festival gives a certain...impression. Then again, this isn't Kabul, so the worst we'd probably have been subjected to would have been snickers at our curious lack of fashion sense. And if any second glances were cast our way, I most likely wouldn't have noticed.

Mostly because there were a lot of women sans bra at the festival. My attentions were otherwise engaged.

"Homer, that's not God. That's just a waffle that Bart tossed up there."

I didn't realize today was International Waffle Day (in Sweden, anyway).

Waffles have a long and distinguished tradition in my family. In addition to being standard breakfast fare most weekends, my parents originated (as far as I know) the concept of the Waffle Party when I was in high school. The premise is simple: the host provides batter and various beers/liquors, while the guests bring their favorite ice cream or waffle topping. Using a number of waffle irons (they had five or six running at a time), doughy goodness was provided for all as they drank themselves stupid.

These occasions also provided ample opportunity for me and my fellow reprobate friends to steal beers from the cooler in the backyard.

I've thrown a few Waffle Parties myself, but have been grossly remiss in doing so lately. That needs to change.

Happy (belated) Waffle Day, everyone.

via MetaFilter

"Stop a bullet cold, make the Axis fold"

Oh, hell no:

Herbie: Fully Loaded star Lindsay Lohan is desperate to play Wonder Woman in the forthcoming movie version of the comic book superhero. The 19-year-old Freaky Friday actress admits she'd like to showcase her talents outside of kid and teen films, but feels the role would be too fun to turn down. She says, "Wonder Woman would be cool. I'm trying to find roles right now that are different to anything I've done to show my abilities, to show that I have some sort of stretch in me. Because most of the things that I've done so far are aimed at younger girls and are light-hearted."

Yeah, starring in Wonder Woman will really elevate that age demographic.

There have been almost as many actresses rumored to be in the running for this as there were actors for the role of James Bond, among them Salma Hayek, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Sandra Bullock, Jennifer Connelly, and Jennifer Lopez. Lohan would, I think, be a worse choice than just about any of these.

Except maybe Jennifer Lopez.

I sincerely hope Joss Whedon and company don't take her seriously, and not just because she seems to have confused "Amazon" with "Anorexic."

In Texas, there's lots of beer...

But you shouldn't drink it here:

Texas has begun sending undercover agents into bars to arrest drinkers for being drunk, a spokeswoman for the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission said Wednesday.

The first sting operation was conducted recently in a Dallas suburb where agents infiltrated 36 bars and arrested 30 people for public intoxication, said the commission's Carolyn Beck.

Being in a bar does not exempt one from the state laws against public drunkenness, Beck said.

The goal, she said, was to detain drunks before they leave a bar and go do something dangerous like drive a car.
[...]
"There are a lot of dangerous and stupid things people do when they're intoxicated, other than get behind the wheel of a car," Beck said. "People walk out into traffic and get run over, people jump off of balconies trying to reach a swimming pool and miss."

And? People fall asleep on their front porch. People make ill-advised long distance phone calls and break into tears trying to convince ex-girlfriends to give me them "one more chance." People eat a whole bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos and stay up too late playing Halo. I'm glad the TABC is around to protect me from getting fragged by the Covenant.

Apparently some of those busted were in a hotel bar. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't most of these individuals be staying at the hotel in question? What about those planning on calling cabs? I'll be brutally honest with you, I sometimes go out drinking with the express purpose of sloppily forgetting my troubles with extreme prejudice and paying someone to drive me home, is the possibility that I might stumble going up my front steps sufficient to justify the TABC's budget? These guys haven't changed their strategy since I was in high school.

EDIT: What The Fat Guy said.

Pity Warren Zevon's dead

But then, "Coyotes of New York" doesn't quite have the same *oomph*.

Meh, we've had these guys in our parks for years:

A wily coyote led sharpshooters armed with tranquilizer guns on a two-day chase through Central Park before it was finally captured Wednesday morning.

At one point, the searchers had the coyote cornered near the park's ice rink, but the clever creature jumped into the water, ducked under a bridge, then scampered through the rink grounds and ran off.

The coyote was captured somewhere north of that area, Parks Department spokesman Ashe Reardon said.

The hunt had been on since Tuesday afternoon when Parks Commissioner
Adrian Benepe, among others, spotted the animal in the southeast corner of the park, not far from the tony Upper East Side. People had reported seeing it in the area since early Sunday.

I'd have left him there. NYC's kind of lost that sense of danger ever since Giuliani killed moved the homeless and Times Square became Disneyland North. Besides, what's a few chihuahuas when they're helping control the rat population?

The coyote, nicknamed Hal by Parks Department staffers, may have wandered into the city from Westchester County, perhaps swimming across a river, Benepe said. Another coyote found its way to Central Park in 1999 and is now kept in the Queens Zoo.

That's one possibility (and would've been a great tangent if the X-Men had a team member named "Coyote"), but if Albert Finney shows up you can all kiss your asses goodbye.

Think what he must've been like before he stopped doing coke

I forget where I first saw this, but apparently Charlie Sheen has decided that being married to a woman who played the nuclear scientist in The World is Not Enough now qualifes him to speak on matters of physics:

Actor Charlie Sheen has joined a growing army of other highly credible public figures in questioning the official story of 9/11 and calling for a new independent investigation of the attack and the circumstances surrounding it.
[...]
Speaking to The Alex Jones Show on the GCN Radio Network, the star of current hit comedy show Two and a Half Men and dozens of movies including Platoon and Young Guns, Sheen elaborated on why he had problems believing the government's version of events.
[...]
"It seems to me like 19 amateurs with box cutters taking over four commercial airliners and hitting 75% of their targets, that feels like a conspiracy theory. It raises a lot of questions."

Thanks for your input, Carlos. Mr. Sheen apparently never had the post-9/11 discussions I had with my friends, when we speculated why nobody resisted the hijackers. I pointed out that, until that day, nobody had any reason to believe they wouldn't release everyone once their demands were met. There existed no precedent for flying a plane into a building until September 11th.

The good news, of course, is that this approach is unlikely ever to work again.

Sheen described his immediate skepticism regarding the official reason for the collapse of the twin towers and building 7 on the day of 9/11.

"I was up early and we were going to do a pre-shoot on Spin City, the show I used to do, I was watching the news and the north tower was burning. I saw the south tower hit live, that famous wide shot where it disappears behind the building and then we see the tremendous fireball."

"There was a feeling, it just didn't look any commercial jetliner I've flown on any time in my life and then when the buildings came down later on that day I said to my brother 'call me insane, but did it sort of look like those buildings came down in a controlled demolition'?"

I don't know much about physics, so maybe someone else can explain how high temperatures cause metal to buckle, which in turn causes floors above the heat source to collapse, and so on, and so on. Wait, I forgot, he was the voice of reason in Platoon (and the vengeful ghost in The Wraith). Carry on.

Sheen then questioned President Bush's actions on 9/11 and his location at the Booker Elementary School in Florida. Once Andy Card had whispered to Bush that America was under attack why didn't the secret service immediately whisk Bush away to a secret location?

By remaining at a location where it was publicly known the President would be before 9/11, he was not only putting his own life in danger, but the lives of hundreds of schoolchildren. That is unless the government knew for sure what the targets were beforehand and that President Bush wasn't one of them.

"It seems to me that upon the revelation of that news that the secret service would grab the President as if he was on fire and remove him from that room," said Sheen.

The question of how Bush saw the first plane hit the north tower, when no live footage of that incident was carried, an assertion that Bush repeated twice, was also put under the spotlight.

"I guess one of the perks of being President is that you get access to TV channels that don't exist in the known universe," said Sheen.

It's possible, I suppose. Bush and Cheney could've completely pulled the wool over my eyes, appearing in public as a half-literate chucklehead who couldn't past the TAAS test and an elderly drunk with bad aim, respectively, when in fact they preside over a cabal as sinister and complex as the Borgias. That still wouldn't explain why our government, which can't even get popular support for its agenda when it controls all three branches, would fashion such a monstrous conspiracy (that no participant has yet come forward to expose) and somehow fail to come up with plausible planted evidence to show that Iraq, the country we're currently at war with in part because of their alleged ties to the WTC attacks, was somehow involved. I think those $2500 a night hookers might've knocked a few synapses loose, Charlie.

And Two and a Half Men is a shitty, shitty show.

"Looks like you blew a seal."

If you were hanging out around the sea lion enclosure at the Houston Zoo on Saturday, you would've heard two things.

The first: a conversation between a group of teenagers (age estimated at 17):
Female Teen 1: "Is that a seal or an otter?"
Male Teen 1: "Do otters get this big?"
Male Teen 2: "I don't know, but I thought seals where white, not brown."
Female Teen 1: "I think these are otters."

The second: a frantic coughing fit brought on by yours truly choking on my Diet Coke during this exchange.

Did I mention their entire conversation took place not 18 inches from the conveniently placed plaque that read "California sea lion?"

Confession Time: My Irish Heritage

How's everybody feeling this morning?

I'm super, thanks for asking. She Who Shall Not Be Named woke up about 6:45, meaning my decision to go to bed at 11:30 (after a mere three beers) look like sheer genius. It was an uneventful St. Paddy's Day, marked by watching college basketball and talking with my friend JudyCK (no relation to Louis) on the phone for about 90 minutes.

Of course, not celebrating yesterday is more in keeping with my heritage anyway. The awful truth is, while I do have a little Irish in me (it was just a phase in college, I swear), that section of the family migrated to the Emerald Isle from...France. They fled, like all the other Huguenots, after Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685. My direct ancestor settled, improbably, in Scotland for a time, then moved on to County Donegal in Ulster.

It was that or South Africa.

There are a depressing number of "Rev." prefixes in the family histories I have, as they were all heavily involved in the chruch and, here's the rub, teetotalers. They were also fairly wealthy and, my personal favorite, integral in introducing temperance and Protestantism to Ireland. You're welcome.

The Wife says (half jokingly, I'm sure) that my ancestors probably kicked her Roman Catholic ones off their land. I just nod sagely and savor the irony every time she shoves me over to the edge of our bed.

So, needless to say, it's not a holiday I feel I have a lot of personal stake in. Hope you guys had fun, though. And enjoy the lake of fire.

We'll talk again when Oktoberfest rolls around.

"What's this movie about?"

You know you're salivating as much as I am to see Samuel L. Jackson's latest, especially after the juicy preview that hit the internets yesterday. I give you, Snakes on a [Motherfucking] Plane.

Not only does this movie appear to absolutely deliver what it promises, it has a snake eating a cat, and one emerging from a woman's decolletage. And it caters to that lucrative demographic consisting of people who are afraid of flying and terrified of snakes. I may be premature in this, but I'm feeling pretty good about this making my Top 10 of 2006.

Even barring that, this movie is going to be huge.

A murder of reviews

Or whatever a group of reviews is called...a roundup? A windbag?

I was getting confused at these requests in the comments for reviews, until I realized I haven't been posting links to my Film Threat write-ups. My humblest apologies.

V for Vendetta - ***1/2
Shadow Company - *****
Fired! - **1/2
The Hills Have Eyes - **1/2
16 Blocks - ***1/2
Dave Chappelle's Block Party - ****
Date Movie - 0
Freedomland - **
Firewall - **1/2
The Pink Panther - 0
Curious George - ***
When a Stranger Calls - 1/2
Something New - **1/2

There, that should get us caught up on the post-Sundance releases.

Faith and bejeesus

The Wife is over on the Emerald Isle this week, which will - conveniently enough - coincide with St. Patrick's Day. I've been to Ireland twice, once with the missus in 1998, the second time with my mother in 2002. The dichotomy between the way Americans were greeted during the Clinton and Bush administrations was palpable, even if I don't feel much like going into it here.

And why not? Because apparently my father-in-law and his brother, one of The Wife's uncles, are doing their best to alienate themselves on their own terms.

First there's The Father-In-Law, an avowed scotch drinker, who seems unable or unwilling to acknowledge that not every bar in Ireland will carry his preferred booze. I know we expect to be able to drink "Tennessee whiskey" even if we're stuck on a layover in Seattle, but they operate a little differently over there.

Then there's the uncle. When I was informed of his transgressions earlier today, I began fearing for his safety. First, he ordered a Jameson and - horrors - watered it down. When my fine and diplomatic spouse informed him you didn't need to water down Irish whiskey, he promptly approached the bartender and asked if they had any "Irish bourbon."

I'm told everyone managed to exit the place with no bloodshed. Still, it was a near thing.

I hope everyone has a happy and safe St. Patrick's Day. For myself, I'll be picking up a 4-pack of Guinness tomorrow and drinking it while trying to teach She Who Shall Not Be Named how to fight. And all to Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash by the Pogues.

We put the spring in Spring Break

This might be a little later for some of you ladies, but the AMA has some staistics on the dangers dotting the landscape during spring break:

You wouldn't have had any problems with me and my friends in college. Poverty forced us to go camping, and while I can't speak for everybody, I know most of us weren't ambulatory enough to even get out of a hammock to relieve ourselves.

Wouldn't have gotten much of a tan, however.

The Bush Library has its first volume

I don't really have much to say about Houston pastor Joel Osteen's reported $13
million book deal, except that I enjoyed this particular excerpt:

Two other people briefed on Osteen's deal - who also spoke on condition of anonymity because their companies do not allow the disclosure of financial arrangements - said his wife, Victoria, who appears with him at the "inspirational nights of encouragement and worship" that he conducts at arenas across the country, was also planning to publish a book, possibly with Simon & Schuster's children's division.

I can see it now: Davey and Goliath Get Thrown from Flight 1602 to
Denver and Wreak Holy Vengeance Upon Continental Airlines.

Sadly, they can't all be "Hair Nation"

Sirius added five new channels today, none of which will ever taint my receiver presets.

Heh heh..."taint."

Blue Collar Comedy Channel

Featuring the Blue Collar Comedy of Jeff Foxworthy, Larry the Cable Guy, Bill Engvall, Kathleen Madigan, Lisa Lampanelli, Ralphie May and many more, showcasing their enormously successful movies, tours, CDs, TV programs and books.

Madigan is a bit of a stretch, and Lisa Lampanelli certainly hits the racial slur high notes so favored by blue collar comedy fans, but her routine is much more tongue-in-cheek than just that. Guess they needed some females to round out the sausage fest that is the Blue Collar Comedy Tour.

And I notice Ron White is conspicuously absent. Guess he should've developed a catchphrase, something that never gets tiresome, like "Git-R-Done" or "Here's your sign" or "You might be a redneck if..." That, my friend, is comedy.

Now that they've been sequestered in their own little lily white corner of satellite radio, this means I don't have listen to Bill Engvall's unlistenable "family friendly" crap and Ralphie May's whiteboy ebonics shtick on the other comedy channels, right?

Fox News / Fox News Talk

Mmm. My cup runneth over.

Cosmo Radio

Advice on love, sex, and relationships; tips on beauty, fitness and fashion; the latest celebrity gossip; and the news you need to be the most informed girl at the water cooler. Cosmo Radio takes you to the velvet ropes with our editors at special events and lets you listen (if you dare!) to guys giving their uncensored opinions on dating and relationships. Plus, you'll hear extra editions of your favorite columns, like Ask Him Anything, Bedside Astrologer, and Guy Spy.

Heaven forbid you actually read a newspaper or listen to the BBC to become the "most informed girl at the water cooler."

Shit, you don't have to sign up for Sirius to hear "uncensored opinions" on dating and relationships, either. Just pay me for gas and I'll take you to the local SRO Sports Bar. You'll get an earful, believe me.

Playboy Radio

Q. What will be the content on the Playboy channel?

A. Playboy Radio features a full range of new live programming created for SIRIUS, such as a new morning show that will include segments with Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, live call-in shows and broadcasts from the Playboy Mansion. Playboy Radio on SIRIUS will be Playboy's most extensive foray into radio, producing more than four times the content of previous radio ventures to keep listeners entertained morning, noon and night. Aimed at the same mature, sophisticated audience that Playboy Magazine helped to define, Playboy Radio encompasses the entire array of what Playboy is: Hef, The Mansion, The Playmates, The Girls Next Door, the Magazine, and Playboy TV. Care to talk live with a real Playboy Bunny? You can on this channel! From the lifestyle of the sophisticated gentleman, to the inner secrets of an adult star -- if you want it, you'll find it on Playboy Radio.

I hope they can land ace correspondents Scott Baio and Danny Bonaduce to describe in detail all the giant silicone breasts bouncing around them. Nothing is more indicative of Playboy's continued cutting edge grasp of the adult entertainment industry than featuring semi- or fully naked women on a medium where absolutely no one can see them.

That's good radio.

The Aust Weekend

Spent this last weekend in Austin for the beginning of South by Southwest. Several of the Film Threat guys flew in as well, and I spent most of the two days in question either drinking with them or drinking with some friends living in town. The common thread, of course, being drinking, and the inescapable realization that I now require almost a full day of recovery for sessions of this magnitude. Getting old rules.

Unlike Sundance, FT doesn't pay my transportation (I drive) or lodging (assorted couches). As a result, I have less guilt when it comes to spending an entire afternoon sitting in the back of the Ginger Man, drinking Anchor Steam and reading magazines instead of watching movies. I have several screeners that I'll review in the next few days, but this weekend especially was way too nice to lurk in darkened theaters.

Had my requisite celebrity sighting, exchanging pleasantries with Henry Rollins on the escalator at the Convention Center, so the trip wasn't a total waste of time.

Some of you are probably wondering how SXSW differs from Sundance, so I'll offer a few of my observations that I came up with while avoiding eye contact with people at the Film Threat booth during Mark's interviews.

1. SXSW features a lot more rockabilly types. Whether this is a function of movies like Jam and Tales of the Rat Fink playing this year or not, I don't know, but there was a definite glut of guys with flame tattoos on their arms and girls in pigtails sporting wife beaters.

2. Sun. It was 86 degress on Saturday, and I took great pleasure in watching my California brethren struggling to find something comfortable amidst their predominantly black wardrobes.

3. Cheaper and stronger beer, and - by an order of magnitude - more places to drink it. Then again, Austin is a college town with a population of almost 700,000 people, making it nearly 100 times larger than Park City. On a related note, if you get drunk and accidentally pass out in front of your hotel, you're unlikely to die of exposure.

4. SXSW takes itself less seriously than Sundance, which is evident in the kind of films screened. Personally, I think movies like Air Guitar Heroes or Darkon would've killed at Sundance, but there's always an underlying sense that they should stick with more "serious" fare. Their loss.

5. The fact that you can drink in two of the Austin venues (both Alamo Drafthouses) scores a thumbs-up from most of the assembled festival goers, with the flipside being that the seats in the Austin Convention Center are more uncomfortable than even the dread ass manglers of the Yarrow Hotel press rooms.

6. Austin traffic may suck, but I can usually find a place to park within a few blocks of the Convention Center if I hunt around for 10 or 15 minutes (and, unlike some, I don't mind parking near the homeless shelter). I wouldn't even bother bringing a car to Sundance.

7. I used to live in Austin, so the comfort level is understandably greater. I know my way around town, and if I want to disengage myself from all the BS going on, I can just walk a mile or two and be pretty much free of my fellow laminate-wearers.

8. Waterloo Records

That was about as far as I got before I actually had to start answering questions.

In MySpace, no one can hear you scream

This would be where I make the emabarrassing confession (for anyone who's graduated high school) that I have a MySpace.com page. Except I don't. Blogging's enough of a waste of time that I'm not going to bother keeping up with a bunch of 15-year olds who have no inclination to leave the warm, loving glow of their monitor.

It appears Fox Searchlight feels differently, however:

Two of News Corp's corporate siblings, Fox Searchlight Films and the newly acquired social-networking site MySpace.com, were due to participate in a bit of synergy today (Thursday), with the film company taking over all advertising on the website for its new movie The Hills Have Eyes, which opens Friday. "The [ad] purchase allows the film unparalleled advertising exposure and helps connect site users to the remake of [the Wes Craven] horror classic," Fox Searchlight said in a statement. In addition to ads, MySpace.com users will be able to listen to portions of the movie's soundtrack, view clips and still photos from the movie, download wallpapers and a screen saver, and play a video game based on the movie.

Okay, first: "synergy?" You guys might need to get a new Dilbert calendar.

Second, isn't MySpace's popularity due in large part to the number of teenagers who hang out there, dooming the rest of the country with their idiotic fashion and music choices? And isn't The Hills Have Eyes rated R? How long will it be before some irate parent decides to bring the pain - litigation-wise - to News Corp for exposing their precious little angels to a movie about cannibalistic nuclear mutants?

Although if recent news stories are any indication, a lot of these parents don't know what their MySpacers are doing in the first place.

Space. The final theater of operations.

"And I, for one, am not going to go to sleep at night by the light of a Communist moon:"

For 16 years, Aviation Week & Space Technology has investigated myriad sightings of a two-stage-to-orbit system that could place a small military spaceplane in orbit. Considerable evidence supports the existence of such a highly classified system, and top Pentagon officials have hinted that it's "out there," but iron-clad confirmation that meets AW&ST standards has remained elusive.

Now facing the possibility that this innovative "Blackstar" system may have been shelved, we elected to share what we've learned about it with our readers, rather than let an intriguing technological breakthrough vanish into "black world" history, known to only a few insiders. U.S. intelligence agencies may have quietly mothballed a highly classified two-stage-to-orbit spaceplane system designed in the 1980s for reconnaissance, satellite-insertion and, possibly, weapons delivery. It could be a victim of shrinking federal budgets strained by war costs, or it may not have met performance or operational goals.

This two-vehicle "Blackstar" carrier/orbiter system may have been declared operational during the 1990s.

And would have been, had the Pentagon not been so worried about the negative repercussions of namng their craft after a crappy '80s Saturday morning cartoon show:

At least they didn't call it the "Jabberjaw."

"He didn't mean to shoot me, he's a good man..."

"There has been a shocking decline in the quality and quantity of your toadying, Waylon. And you will fall into line, now!":

Harry Whittington, the 78-year old Texas lawyer, who was peppered with birdshot by "Dead-Eye" Dick Cheney, apologized for the stress the accident had caused the vice president over the past few days.

"My family and I are deeply sorry for all that Vice President Cheney and his family have had to go through this past week," Whittington told reporters outside Christus Spohn Hospital in Corpus Christi, Texas. "We send our love and respect to them as they deal with situations that are much more serious than what we have had this week."

"We hope that he (Dick Cheney) will continue to come to Texas and seek the relaxation that he deserves."

"And when he does, I'll be only too happy to lurch into his sights again."

Unbelievable.

The Dick Gephardt of Blogdom

Voting has begun for the 2005 Koufax Awards, where yours truly is nominated in two categories (Most Deserving of Wider Recognition and Most Humorous). As I've said before, I appreciate the nods, but seeing as how there are something like 800 nominees in each category, I don't anticipate getting to the semis, much less winning. If you want to vote, vote. If not, then - in the words of Peter Gibbons - that's cool, too.

Look for the results some time around when they announce the nominees for 2006.

Digital Video Discotheque - 3/6/06 - Abridged Version

Short version this week, for the following reason:

While I was minding my own business (read: watching The Simpsons) in the back of the house, our neighbor and her sister-in-law came over to ask if we knew of a babysitter who could be found on short notice. We did, but didn't have her number on hand. Not that it mattered, since The Wife volunteered to watch our neighbor's nephew (he's exactly a month older than She Who Shall Not Be Named). She might be in more trouble if the kid turned out to be a monster, but he was great. I especially liked being called "Man" all night, which is apparently his appellation for all non-father dudes.

Onward.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - Best one yet, in my opinion, though I still think they're going to have to find a new cast, thanks to the "reverse Macchio" effect on display with Rupert Grint and Daniel Radcliffe.

Howl's Moving Castle - Spirited Away is a tough act to follow, and while Castle is a decent enough film, it suffers greatly by comparison. Also releasing this week: My Neighbor Totoro

Jarhead - AKA That Other Vaguely Controversial Movie Jake Gyllenhaal was in Last Year.

Hogan's Heroes - The Complete Third Season - I'm glad the miracle of syndication and video technology are around to convice me this show wasn't a figment of my oft-fevered imagination. You can understand my confusion as a youngser, since the idea of a wacky comedy set in a Nazi prison camp seems like something only a person in the grip of a complete psychotic break could come up with.

Curse, Death, and Spirit - Three horror shorts from pre-Ringu Hideo Nakata.

The Shaggy Dog/Shaggy DA - Coinciding with this week's release of the Tim Allen Dog remake, which I am not seeing, so don't ask.

The Ape - Spider-Man's James Franco directed and stars in this inexplicable story of an aspiring writer who movies in to a house and ends up with a "trash-talking ape with an affinity for Hawaiian shirts" as a roommate. I must see this.

Another crisis averted

Get those "1836" jerseys up on eBay, stat:

The franchise officially gave its 1836 name the boot. It will build its brand around the name Dynamo, instead.

That’s right. Not Dynamos, as in the short-lived USL semi-professional team that roamed the pitch at Butler Stadium briefly in 1984. It’s Dynamo, as in full of energy, a tribute to the city’s ties to the oil, gas and other energy industries.

“Dynamo is a word to describe someone who never fatigues, never gives up,” franchise president Oliver Luck said. “The new name is symbolic of Houston as an energetic, hard-working, risk-taking kind of town.”
[...]
The nixing of 1836 was expected after the name was deemed offensive by some in the Hispanic community shortly after its unveiling Jan. 25.

Which is all well and good for the Hispanic community, but what about the thousands terrorized by this guy?

Back to the drawing board, fellas.

Sunday Offspring Blogging

If your parents were like mine, you were probably taught fairly early on that it was impolite to stare. I grant you, there's a wide world of interesting people out there, some of whom deserve a good 30 seconds to a minute of intense scrutiny. But we're adults, who can maturely hide our gaze behind sunglasses or a strategically placed newspaper. Children are incapable of such discretion. They'll just gape, slack-jawed, until a responsible adult grabs their head and swivels it in another direction or swats them on the ass.

Why do I bring this up? Funny you should ask. On Friday, we were in a Family Dollar store for reasons I can't recall right now. She Who Shall Not Be Named had her head wrapped almost completely in gauze (it's a long story, but no - she isn't hurt or anything). She was her normal chatty self, but did have the look of someone with major head trauma.

Enter a woman and four of her seven kids. How do I know she had seven? Because she conveniently offered this information to the cashier after making a half-assed attempt to discipline one of them. Her rationale for allowing the child to knock over a display of potato chips was that, since she had seven, it was hard to keep tabs on all of them.

I had a few thoughts on that, as you can imagine, but kept my mouth shut. I was outnumbered, after all.

Owing to my general sense of paranoia, I knew these little darlings would, at some point, notice the giant head wrapping on SWSNBN. I was counting on it, in fact.

Sure enough, as we were walking out the door, around which the four future meth addicts had stationed themselves, the youngest girl shouted out to me, "What's wrong with her?" I stopped, smiling inwardly to myself, and turned to them. Giving my daughter a nervous glance, I said, "She can start fires with her brain."

We left quickly, so I missed the uproar that followed. The Wife, stuck in line, helpfully clued me in that the girl immediately reported this earth-shattering scientific news to her mother, for which she was apparently rewarded with a thorough dressing down (not for being nosy, mind you, but for telling lies), and a - you guessed it - swat on the ass.

I almost felt bad when SWSNBN set fire to their car.

"Hey you, get that steel drum out of the, uh, mayor's office."

From the BBC comes this shocking news that Americans might be more interested in pop culture than their own government:

Americans know more about The Simpsons TV show than the US Constitution's First Amendment, an opinion poll says.

Only one in four could name more than one of the five freedoms it upholds but more than half could name at least two members of the cartoon family.

About one in five thought the right to own a pet was one of the freedoms.
[...]
Another finding from the poll, a telephone survey of 1,000 random adults with an error margin of 3%, was that 22% of Americans could name all five Simpson characters.

By comparison, just one in 1,000 people could name all five First Amendment freedoms.

I blame myself, really. I fear that by placing so much emphasis on Simpsons trivia - even going so far as to use the word "cromulent" in the title of this blog - I have led my countrymen down a hard road, away from a place where honest, hard working Americans might otherwise have spent their leisure hours reading civics books, engaging in serious dialogue about government, and eschewing mundane pursuits like watching television.

And I'll get right to rectifying the situation, just as soon as this Jaws marathon on TNT is over.

Man, that Lance Guest is one tall drink of water.

Dereliction of duty

I'm working on a project that required - among other things - my looking up some stuff about the original Terminator. Specifically, the scene where Reese appears in the alley and swipes a bum's trousers, resulting in what is still one of my favorite lines in movie history: "That son of a bitch took my pants!"

Procrastinating further, I checked the IMDb listing for the actor listed as "Derelict in alley." Talk about typecasting...the guy's name is Stan Yale, and here are some highlights from his 25 movie and television appearances:

2. "Nikki"
    - Through Thick and Thin (2002) TV Episode .... Homeless Man
3. "Black Scorpion"
... aka Roger Corman Presents Black Scorpion (Canada: English title)
    - Love Burns (2001) TV Episode .... Homeless Man
    - Home Sweet Homeless (2001) TV Episode .... Squeegee Guy
4. "The Pretender"
    - Risque Business (1999) TV Episode .... Homeless Guy
5. "Sabrina, the Teenage Witch"
... aka Sabrina (USA: promotional abbreviation)
... aka Sabrina Goes to College (USA: promotional title)
    - Sabrina the Sandman (1999) TV Episode .... Stinky's Friend
7. Persons Unknown (1996) .... Homeless Man
9. The Force (1994) .... Homeless Man
10. Monolith (1993) .... Bum
... aka Monolith (Germany)
11. Save Me (1993) .... Homeless Man
12. Trancers III (1992) (V) .... Alley Bum
... aka Death Lives
... aka Future Cop III
13. Watchers II (1990) .... Wino #1
14. "L.A. Law"
    - America the Beautiful (1989) TV Episode .... First Homeless Man
17. "Moonlighting"
    - Tale in Two Cities (1987) TV Episode .... Bum
18. Terminal Exposure (1987) .... White Wino
... aka Double Exposure
19. P.I. Private Investigations (1987) .... Bum
... aka Private Investigations (USA: short title)
22. The Terminator (1984) .... Derelict in Alley
23. Rhinestone (1984) .... Street Player

He had other, named roles, but it's impossible to tell from those if he was also playing a bum, so I had to go strictly with the ones referencing his severe lack of income.

If I'm reading that right, he played two different homeless characters in the series Black Scorpion. And I'm assuming the character of "Stinky's friend" from Sabrina was also in some way associated with the street life.

You gotta admire a man with that much dedication to his craft.

Bring out the Gimp

It's not too far off.

Seventeen years ago last week I shattered my ankle in a rock climbing accident, an incident that has been referred to by some as "an act of supreme idiocy/insanity" and earned me many plaudits for being one of the luckiest SOBs on the planet. That I didn't end up paralyzed or taking a dirt nap is a credit to my my lifelong love of milk as well as having time - I fell about 50 feet, after all - to twist my body around in midair, thereby avoiding landing on my back. I only broke one bone, the talus (which forms the juncture between the leg, heel, and foot), but it was in three pieces.

One major surgrey, many fun-filled hours of physical therapy, and several years later, you can't really tell anything was wrong. If I'm feeling flirtatious, I might try to show you my scars, but I've been fortunate that my mobility - aside from having roughly 45 total degrees of flexion in the joint in question - hasn't been too impaired.

That's going to change soon, I'm afraid.

It's the little things, like having to favor my leg after getting out of bed in the morning (or after sitting down for extended periods of time), or the way it stiffens up when the weather changes. Sure, walking like a pirate is fun every so often, but the day is coming where I'm going to be seeking some sort of assistance in walking.

Frankly, I'm surprised I made it this long. My surgeon told me - before he screwed my ankle back together - that I'd most likely have a permanent limp after the operation. That didn't happen, thanks in large part to his mad skillz, but more and more it's looking like the inevitable was merely delayed, and I'll be doing some cane shopping in the coming decade. Maybe I can find something with a sword in it.

I just hope House is off the air by then.

I'd like to &*#$ the Academy

Finally, an Oscar-related article we can use:

It's up for several honors at Sunday's Academy Awards ceremony, but Crash already has taken first prize for the most curse words in a film nominated for best picture.

FamilyMediaGuide.com, which tracks incidents of profanity, sex, violence and tobacco use in films, reported Tuesday that Crash had 182 expletives, including 99 utterances of the F-word.
[...]
Brokeback Mountain ranked second among best picture nominees with 92 curse words, followed by Munich with 22, according to FamilyMediaGuide.com.

Truly a helpful resource, considering all three of the nominess highlighted in the article were rated 'R' to begin with.

The record for most profanities in a film to win the best picture Oscar is held by the Vietnam War drama Platoon, with 329. The Vietnam War drama The Deer Hunter is second with 208.

The Deer Hunter, of course, only barely edged out the 206 profanities featured in 1964 Best Picture winner My Fair Lady, including the oft-forgotten scene where Eliza Doolittle refers to Col. Pickering and Henry Higgins as "a shit-smeared ass pony" and "a goddamned fuckbag," respectively.

FamilyMediaGuide says it makes no judgment on a movie's value, but simply tracks instances of profanity, sex, violence and tobacco use as a guide to parents.

I'll admit, I was prepared to mosey on over to the web site and find it populated with so-called experts boasting credentials as impressive as "Dr." Laura's. To my surprise, everyone on their board holds a doctorate or a medical degree, and from actual universities like USC and Cornell (not, as I feared, Oral Roberts University or the Nathan Bedford Forrest School of Race Medicine).

Unfortunately, I see fewer and fewer parents giving much thought to what their kids are exposed to on screen. I saw both Crash and Munich in the theater, and there were kids under the age of 12 at both. For thoughtful parents, this seems like a decent resource. For others, I doubt it'll have much effect.

Except, as with those "Parental Advisory" stickers on your Dead Prez CDs and the ESRB labels on the latest incarnation of Grand Theft Auto, for making these movies that miuch more attractive to consumers, especially those who still find the f-word chortle-worthy. Somewhere in his cavernous Florida manse, Luther Campbell is laughing until the crunk juice spews from his nostrils.