Saturday, September 27, 2008

Sometimes Nothing Can Be A Pretty Cool Hand

Boy, I got vision, and the rest of the world wears bifocals.

Sad news today: Paul Newman has passed away.

He was a real movie star... turning in classic performances more consistently than most. An artist in the truest sense of the word.

I never met him, but I almost worked at the Hole in the Wall Camp after graduating from college, and did sit a few rows away from him during a play at Wesleyan.

Many of my generation (and younger) think of him as the "Newman's Own Guy." It's sad that we young'uns caren't as familiart with his performances as we should be... But adding a philanthropic, high quality, and good tasting food company to a filmography like his? I have to ask: Is that such a bad legacy to have?

We should be so lucky.

Enjoy a classic scene, in just about the right mood. It's quiet, so crank up the volume.



'Wait a minute - you didn't see Lefors out there did you?'

'Lefors? No, why?'

'Thank God for that. For a moment there I thought we were in trouble.'

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

"Break's Over"

So.

Maureen Dowd calls up Aaron Sorkin. Asks him what he thinks President Josiah Bartlett would have to say to this year's Democratic presidential hopeful.

The results are, simply put, wonderful.

Now, this only really works if you've watched the “The West Wing” – the more of the first four seasons, the better. Because hearing this in the voice of Martin Sheen's thoughtful (but fiery!) economist president is delightfully perfect. Yes, it's written as television, and sounds like it. Sure, it comes off a little smug, a little too “meta.” We get the easy lines like “as a Democrat I was surprised to learn that I don’t like small towns, God, people with jobs or America,” and “the idea of American exceptionalism doesn’t extend to Americans being exceptional.” Shortly put, it's fiction, written by a master of the form, delivering more of a beloved character we're already familiar with.

But damn if it isn't inspiring and well written, a satisfying glimpse at the kind of leadership, the level of statesmanship, so many of us dream of.

And Bartlett's advice? Spot on!

Pants on Fire

John McCain has dropped a few, ah, "untruths" during his campaign so far… but this is one of the stupidest ones yet, and where the Media has let a lot of the past ones slide, this time someone called him out on it.

David Letterman busted McCain's balls but good.

On TV.

Watch the Late Show tonight to see what happens when a presidential candidate uses the biggest US financial crisis since the Great Depression as an excuse to blow off one TV appearance for another, the new one with a cuter interviewer during Prime Time. That link has the full story, and it's ridiculous.

So, Mr. McCain – are you suspending your campaign because the economy is still fundamentally strong a wreck, or because you're scared stiff of the competition?

I love the smell of burning trousers in the evening… it smells like… victory.


[On a side note: I love that the McCain replacement on Letterman was Keith Olbermann; the MSNBC commentator delivers the righteous smackdown to the NeoCons and Right-wingers like no other. Follow the link for some greatest hits… I especially love this and this.]

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Already?

Christ, is it really Sunday night already?

More importantly, is it really late September already?

Yikes, time to try and get productive... this is all happening too quickly...

Not Quite Eminem

Because nothing brings the funny like ironically repurposing something hip and urban, and using it as a context for a geek-chic in-joke, check out the Battle of the search engines.

My favorite part of the whole affair may be the still images used as profiles on either side of the video. Why Yahoo! ends up as a cowboy, I can't say, but that's one hell of a funny pose. Ditto Google hanging out on a Segway.

See here for more in the same vein, id you need it.

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Snuck Past The Censors

Over the years, Bart Simpson has made plenty of crank calls to Moe's Tavern.

But he's never come up with something this perfect, and his have never made it on the news.

Huzzah!

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Anti-Helium

Be warned: the following video will make you want to try something really, really almost immediately.

The MythBusters deomonstrate what happenes when you inhale sulfur hexaflouride.

Pretty please can I do this? Please?

Gun Play

Phil Mellinger takes a look at The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly through the lens of games theory:

Three men in a triangle -- each with a gun, a rock at the center of the three. It is up to each man to evaluate his situation. All are excellent shots. Who do they shoot?

A fun, if simple analysis of this scene. Now, if only someone could prove who shot who in Reservoir Dogs, then we'd be talking.

F5 Autocomplete

Here's a great tip on auto-completing text fields in almost any Mac app.

I've already started using this, and am getting hooked. Helluva solid keyboard shortcut.

McCain ≠ Honest

Andrew Sullivan on John McCain:

For me, this surreal moment - like the entire surrealism of the past ten days - is not really about Sarah Palin or Barack Obama or pigs or fish or lipstick. It's about John McCain. The one thing I always thought I knew about him is that he is a decent and honest person...

So far, he has let us all down. My guess is he will continue to do so. And that decision, for my part, ends whatever respect I once had for him. On core moral issues, where this man knew what the right thing was, and had to pick between good and evil, he chose evil.

HD Waterproofing

There's something about the image in this article that's kind of... hot.

The late-80's styling with the modern waterproofing is a cool combo. Excessive and unnecessary, but fun.

Monday, September 15, 2008

Buses on Screen

There is some strange stuff out there on the Internet.

Quite randomly, while searching for some typeface identification, I stumbled across this site, which catalogues the appearances of buses in film and television.

Let me say that again: it's a website dedicated to listing what buses appear in specific scenes in movies and TV shows.

Awesome.

Somewhere out there, a thesis student is excitedly comparing bus models across some subset or genre, and getting a degree as a result. Kind of reminds me of this scene from P.C.U.

Ahhh, college, film school, and Wesleyan.

GOB Would Be Proud

This one goes out to that Segway-riding Bluth brother, as well as AHB.

Watch some Syracuse boys bring out the funny with some "classic" eighties rock.

Sweetest air-synth ever. And isn't the guitarist cheating?

Saturday, September 13, 2008

My Secret Identity

A while back, Will found a questionnaire that calculated which superhero you're most like. He turned out to be, of course, Spider-Man. Peter Parker is the guy most geeky boys like to imagine they really are. Sure, we fantasize about being all-powerful or dark and brooding, but when we look deep down inside, we like to believe we're smart, funny, and would do the right thing, all on top of being a total geek.

So, naturally, when I took the quiz, I thought I'd be Spider-Man, too. But, to my surprise, it turned out differently.

I am...

Superman!



You are mild-mannered, good,
strong and you love to help others.
























Superman
80%
Spider-Man
60%
Green Lantern
60%
Batman
50%
Robin
47%
Supergirl
45%
Hulk
45%
Wonder Woman
40%
The Flash
40%
Iron Man
40%
Catwoman
35%



I would like to point out that the Marvel hero I most resemble is, indeed, Spider-Man. But it's hard to argue with 80%.

In terms of storytelling, Superman is pretty boring, since he'll always be invincible unless he leaves the planet or encounters kryptonite (or magic). But as an ideal, hey, I guess I could do a lot worse than be an optimistic, helpful, cheerful and self-sacrificig guy.

Just keep the green rocks away.

High Enough For Ya?

Burj Dubai is the tallest structure every made by humankind, currently clocking in at 700.9 meters.

And it isn't even finished yet.

Plans call for the skyscraper (sky-puncturer? sky-piercer? sky-stabber? Babel?) to reach a maximum height of 800-950 meters. That range alone (150 meters) is over twice the height of the tallest building in Maine (good 'ole Franklin Towers), and about as tall as the tallest buildings in Arizona and Virgina.

It's peak will be twice as high as the roof of the World Trade Center. If it reaches its maximum height (I assume that will include antennae), the Statue of Liberty (sans podium) could be stacked 5 times between where construction is currently and where Burj Dubai will end.

That's one big mother.

The main site has several pictures, but I have yet to see one that brings on the awe, the amazement, the vertigo as much as this picture.

No way am I working in one of those cranes. No way.

Friday, September 12, 2008

Politics: The Lighter Side

Here are a couple of attempts by one Hutson Hayward to lighten the eff up regarding the current US presidential election.



It may not be much, but it's a start.

Ha ha ha.

About Friggin' Time!

My dad popped me a message the other day, with the good news:

Tomorrow, after seven years and 197 locations, Apple is finally opening an Apple Store in Maine!

The Maine Mall gets the goods; anyone with time should swing by the opening (starts at 9:30) and try and score me a free T-shirt.

Wish I were there!

An Alternate Campaign

This one goes out for Brett and Will: now this is change I can believe in!

Phallic Slide

Follow the link for some truly bad creative decision making.

I mean, really?

Helium & Sulfur Hexafluoride

Quite possibly, the coolest thing ever.

EVER.

Check it out!!

Birthday Revisited

Today, I have been 27 for one month.

And so, a couple of birthday notes.

A big thank you to Brett and Trina, who took me out to Ahi Sushi on the night of Friday the 8th... with pretty much everyone else (and Tracy) out of town, it was a really wonderful birthday dinner.

Birthday Dinner 2


Trina got a saki sampler, including one type served in a wooden box. Who knew?

Boxed Saki


Kevin and Sarah got me a wonderful lasagna pan and makings; he talked these guys up earlier in the year, and I was excited to check it out.

Birthday Present


I have since made the recipe it came with, a chicken/tomato lasagna. No sauce, lots of cheese – including smoked gouda. It was awesome, and I substituted chicken sausage for some of the chicken.

Tracy, although out of town, grabbed me a snazzy new suitcase. The old one tipped over and was, well, old, so I was pretty psyched. Plus, it's orange, and that makes me happy.

I got some wonderful books from my parents, and the new Bowdoinham T-shirt. My grandparents sent me a wonderful card and a check. Tracy's folks got me a book, as well as some homemade Gak, which was fun.

I flew out of LA on my birthday proper, taking the redeye home to Maine. Will was kind enough to give me a ride, getting me there right on time. Waiting for the plane, I completed the following in about 40 minutes.

Birthday Crossword


Made me feel good before getting on an 8-hour flying adventure.

The following morning, my dad picked me up, ready with Standard Baking morning rolls – possibly the greatest thing in the world. With some cupcakes from Two Fat Cats for dessert, we had a nice quiet post-birthday dinner, just my mom, my dad, and me.

The next day, the 14th, we had a big barbeque to celebrate no juts my birthday, but being in town, and John's being in town for a vacation from Guatemala. The Fisher-Baums came over, Jim and Cynthia, Tracy's folks, the Englers (including brother Dan), my bro, sis, and nephew, the Barry's, we all got together, ate some great food (including Hutson-style grilled burgers), ran out of the rain, made hand-cranked ice cream, and enjoyed some more Fat Cats cake.

All in all, it was a wonderful birthday. Over the course of a few days, I got to connect, one way or another, with most of the people I love, and I had a good time all the way through. So thanks to everyone who helped ring in 27 years with me.

Until next August!

Dueling Tax Cuts

Show this chart to everyone you know. Hang it up at work, put it by the coffee maker or water cooler, e-mail it to your brother and your college roommate.

The Washington Post should be ashamed for their biased, misleading chart. We must undo the damage they have done.

2d80b048fbc5c1a626b17a921ce9c9ef.jpg


[graphic c/o Viveka Weiley at chartjunk.]

Anger Management

[PREFACE]


[This post is, in all likelihood, too long. It's been festering for a while, and needed to get out. So if it seems like it changes gears suddenly, or tries to cover too much, that's why. It is, however, a decent view into what's been in my head the last seven days, and says things I think need saying. I may change my mind about parts of it, and have certainly failed to adequately think some of this through or explain my thoughts. But that is for later posts – and comments – to determine.]


- - -


Regarding the lack of posts... aside form the general writer's malaise I've had for a long while now, I've had something else coming between me and the blog.


Rage.


This whole Sarah Palin thing rubs me the wrong way. I try my best to laugh about it – and trust me, there's plenty to laugh about – but whenever I try to put some serious thought into the matter, finding an article or fact, insight or thought I want to share here, I start getting a little angry. That makes me think harder about the situation, so I get even more angry. And then I start to brood, getting madder and madder, until...


Dammit, I'll huff and I'll puff, and I'll BLOW YOUR HOUSE IN.


It's one hell of a vicious circle.


McCain was bad enough – out of touch, unfamiliar with the internet, almost unquestioningly loyal to the current administration. But we're not even talking about him any more. Nope, he's let himself be overshadowed by his running mate; something that was looking pretty negative to the Democrats is now suddenly an asset to the GOP. Small wonder, when McCain is boring, prickly, and old, while Palin gets people talking.


So many reasons to be furious:



Sarah Palin is no different from our current president. She's George W. Bush with a fertile womb. She flaunts her ignorance and inexperience, claiming that this makes her "real," using the blanket of small town America to disguise her extreme right-wing agenda. This woman is the poster child for pork barrel reform, sex education, a woman's right to chose, and tighter control (and higher accountability) of corporate interests – not as a maverick champion from the Heartland, but as the worst kind of offender. She is the reason we need to fix things, along with plenty of others (I guess). Bush is currently enjoying the lowest presidential approval rating in the history of the Gallup poll, but along comes his female doppelgänger, and suddenly she's the hot new thing.


This is John McCain's trial run at executive power, and an example of the kind of decisions he'll make if elected. What a doozy of a forecast, what an ominous start.


Sarah Palin (via the empowerment of John McCain and the ratings-hungry media) has turned an already contentious election into something much, much worse. She started up the "us-versus-them" rhetoric all over again, after Barack Obama had made some genuinely positive strides towards reaching a common point of view in many Americans. Now, on the side of patriotism and family, we have the Small-Town Mavericks. In the other corner, wanting to tax us and let the terrorists rape our babies, the Big-City Elite. The genius of this is any intelligent, researched, valid criticism on the McCain/Palin Palin/McCain ticket can be dismissed as elitist attempts to undermine real American values. The better the point, the deeper the hole dug. We can't win for losing.


Chez Pazienza isn't far off when he calls this "civil war;" the tone of the campaign, at least from the Conservative side, is one of intentional disenfranchisement. Like Bush's (false) "mandate" following the 2004 election, Palin is essentially telling half of this country to bugger off, because we don't deserve a say. We flower-fucking hippy elitists don't know anything about "real" Americans, and it's time for them to finally have a say!


Because lord knows we didn't hear about this eight years ago – the liberals have been in charge all along, and man have they botched it up!


RAGE.


It's time for the liberals, the progressives, the Democrats, the Lefties, to get pissed. Not annoyed, not dissatisfied, not upset. Epic, Moses-breaks-the-ten-commandments, Valkyries-riding-down-from-Valhalla fury. We've been rationally whiny for too long now, and no sooner do we find a nominee with the power to articulate our hopes and needs but we cut him of at the knees when seven tough days (which include the RNC!) and the 24-hour news cycle scare us a little.


Take back patriotism. The Right doesn't have a monopoly on being American, unless we let them.


Cool Rationality hasn't worked. Flip the equation, not to the insanity of the extreme Right, but to Burning Rationality. Believe in people and ideas not just with your brain, but with your hearts. Channel your inner Jimmy Stewart and rail against injustice. Looking smugly down our noses hasn't seemed to have accomplished much so far.


Go out and do something, don't just read and stew. Let it out. Volunteer at a calling center, try and talk to people, give them the straight-up facts, but passionately. Show them the lengths the Republican ticket will go to screw them, and what being liberal really means.


Because we can't afford to keep letting ourselves be dragged down this path. We all, each of us, Left, Right, and Center alike, deserve better.




- - -

[AFTERWORD]


[Yes, I can see that I linked to about eight-thousand different pages in here. I know it's a lot, and it makes it look like throwaway thoughts. The thing is, each and every one of these is worth reading. I encourage you to look at all of the videos, check out the transcripts, read the articles and op-eds. Take your time, bookmark this page, check them out over a few days. But there's a lot of good (and infuriating) information out there, and you owe it to yourself to keep informed. So follow those links!]

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Still Here

No, I don't just mean myself, I'm talking about all of us.

So I guess that means that last night's inaugural proton circuits on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN didn't create a black hole and destroy the Earth.

So much for the "Doomsday Machine" some people were afraid of.

Although, so far, no collisions have occured; they've sent proton beams in both directions, but not simultaneously. So we may still yet wake up to find ourselves sucked into a black hole that popped up in Switzerland. Or worse, as this article points out:

Besides, the random nature of quantum physics means that there is always a minuscule, but nonzero, chance of anything occurring, including that the new collider could spit out man-eating dragons.


Remember, kids, science is scary, scientists are amoral, and the Devil will use it to blow up the world, or at the very least, unleash dragons. So we need Sarah Palin and John McCain – in that order! – to protect us!
</sarcasm>

On that note, these poll results (courtesy of Pharyngula) show the kind of numbers that would make Karl Rove smile; between the extreme and wooden-headed anti-science fiscal reasoning in the top response, to the Christian fundamentalist lunacy of the next top two answers, the far-right Republican demographic is almost fully represented.

Sigh.

Friday, September 05, 2008

Base Jumping [Updated]

I have some friends going skydiving this weekend, so I thought I'd share a cautionary tale to set the mood.

Remember kids, always check your parachute.

[UPDATE - Turns out it's NEXT weekend... but I still figure it's good advice...]

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

One Of The Voices Is Gone

Yesterday, we all lost a long-standing friend; Don LaFontaine, the Voice of a thousand trailers, has died, at the age of 68.

Don was one of a handful of men who do the majority of the trailer voice-over in the US. I've had the pleasure of working with a few of these gentlemen, and they're all a bunch of pros, who can do this is their sleep. You may recognize Don's voice from the trailers for Terminator 2, Batman Returns, or Shrek. The intro to his website should seem awfully familiar, and Ain't It Cool News has a fine assortment of his greatest hits, including a nice featurette at the end of their YouTube links.

We still have Hal Douglas, among others, so we'll continue to hear great VO like this; yet Don will be missed; he is the voice of the movies, and will continue to be for some time yet.

Seeing that Hal is 84 years old (!), I'm starting to wonder... what will the next generation of Trailer Voices be like? Who will it be? I suspect they'll look for a near-identicle replacement, but those are some tough shoes to fill.

Thanks for the good times, Don. See you in another life.