Garmonbozia for the soul.

What happens in Abu Ghraib stays in Abu Ghraib.™

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 20:50:25 GMT

Check out the customer reviews of this toy: Playmobil Security Check Point

...because it's never too early to learn about racial profiling and cavity searches.

Advertisement/Warning

Sun, 01 Mar 2009 02:52:58 GMT

To those who might be interested, Barnes & Noble is currently (and propbably for a limited time) selling Blacula, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, and Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo for $4.99.

So, you know, go get your copies while their cheap, or stay the hell away depending on your preference.

B-Fest 2009 Recap

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 04:48:24 GMT

For the last few years I've been attending B-Fest, an annual 24-hour festival of B-movies that runs from 6pm on Friday to 6pm on Saturday of the last weekend in January at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. This is the sort of event that makes my mouth water, although the idea bores a lot of my friends to tears. Ah, well, their loss.

On Friday morning I got a haircut, washed my car, and picked matt_william and evil_jim up and drove to henrietta1's, where we loaded up her car and got on the road to Chicagoland sometime shortly before noon. Out first stop was the Belvedere Oasis where we picked up sandwiches from Subway for a late-night meal. Establishments within the Oasis have captive customers and can pretty much set their own price, so Subway does not sell $5 footlongs there. On the other hand, the food court on campus was closed by 11:00 PM when I finally tore into mine, so I'm not complaining. But uh, I'm getting ahead of myself.

The next stop was Mitsuwa Marketplace, an Asian mini-mall where we met up with the other car (agaysexicon, fuzzyinthehead, r3507, and some guy to whom I wasn't introduced), and with henrietta1's friend Tim. We got lunch and smoothies at the food court, browsed the stores a little, and then headed to the grocery store to stock up. Mitsuwa has been getting smaller and smaller since my first trip there, so I was pleased to see that it hasn't changed much. That's something I was a little worried about, actually. The grocery store is the same as always, however, which means that it's unpredictable. There are a few things I always want to buy there, and usually I can find around 40%, and this trip was no exception. I did manage, however, to grab the necessities that would help me stay awake and stave off hunger. That's code for "I bought tomato Pretz."

Anyway, post Mitsuwa we headed off to the Northwestern Campus, found seats in the lecture hall (hereafter referred to as the theater), and deposited our stuff. Nick, Liz, Kyle, and That Guy sat behind us. Actually, I was hoping to get to talk to them more during the festival, but for some reason it didn't happen. I spotted telstarman and we went over to pick up copies of his annual B-Fest mix CD, which we were actually able to have him sign. Then the staff kicked us out and started taking tickets. I bought a $15 B-Fest shirt which has the same artwork as on the poster:

Once we got back into the theater, it was a matter of minutes before the program got underway. I tried to take a few pictures, but as usual, somebody kept deliberately ruining every picture, so I gave up and waited for the program to start.

6:00(ish) - Welcome

6:05 - Firewalker (1986)
Chuck Norris and Lou Gossett, Jr. star as adventurers for hire in this movie that contains much alcohol consumption and Native American stereotyping, but no actual firewalking or reference to firewalking. I'm not particularly taken with Chuck Norris outside of his internet meme, so I don't really care for his brand of roundhouse-'em-ups*. Not particularly memorable, not something I'd have the patience to watch alone, but it was a good start to the festival once the novelty of shouting in a lecture hall wore off and I could actually hear the hecklers.

8:00 - Frankenstein meets the Wolf Man (1943)
Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney, Jr. in the roles that made Boris Karloff and himself famous, respectively. Not one of the better Universal monster movies, but certainly more fun than Firewalker. Lugosi doesn't have much to do in this picture, other than scowling and lumbering about with outstretched arms, but Chaney has his moments. I'm mostly familiar with the shaky, alcoholic twilight of Chaney's movie career, so pretty much anything where he appears fit and limber impresses me. I'm also still impressed by the Wolfman transformation effect.

9:25 - Mystery Short #1: Takarazuka (1962)
The minimal research I've done (mostly on YouTube) tells me that Takarazuka is an all-female dance theater troupe from Japan. The database on the Em Gee Film Library's website tells me that this was made in 1962. I can tell you that it feels like an all-girl Gilbert & Sullivan revue, only with worse music and no Mikado.

9:45 - Murder in the Air (1940)
Ronald Reagan flexes his meta-acting muscles as a government agent who infiltrates a spy ring in the 1940 thriller that began his half-century battle against the Commies. The only other thing I remember about this movie is that all the bad guys sported the same tattoo, which eventually ended up on several of the paper plates thrown during Plan Nine. Notable for its lack of murder.

10:50 - The Raffle ~~(1994)~~
Two out of work men come up with a money-making promotion to find -- wait, no. This was just the raffle for door prizes. Liz -- who has won the B-Fest raffle once before -- got a DVD of an anime called Gantz. There were a couple of nice prizes, but most of them were the sort of DVDs that don't sell in the Previously Viewed section at Blockbuster.

11:15 - Mystery Short #2: Comics and Kids (198something)
Comics and Kids has been shown before. It concerns a group of adolescent boys who hang out in a treehouse reading war comics while a creepy voiceover whispers things like "die! Get 'em! Get'em! Destroy!" Then the treehouse fills with smoke, and the kids are wearing warpaint. They go out to the local playground, terrorize the 4-year-olds, and blow up sandcastles with small fireworks as the creepy voiceover continues, creepily. Then it's time to go home. You could probably read an anti-violence message into this, but I think the director is just nostalgic for his younger days. I can't remember the names of any of the comics, but I do remember looking them up on Wikipedia last time and deciding that the film must have been shot sometime in the early mid-'80s. Also, the clubhouse is equipped with a clarinet, just so you know.

11:20 - Mystery Short #2a: Flash Gordon (circa 2400)
Black & white short in which a sparkler-powered model rocket lurches around a cityscape constructed out of recyclables and tin foil. We think it's probably called Flash Gordon because those words appear in the background.

11:45 - The Wizard of Speed and Time (1979) -- Watch it here!
Mike Jittlov's stop-motion masterpiece is always hotly anticipated because it signals the beginning of the late-night block of films, and it provides the adrenaline rush that a lot of us depend on. It always gets shown forwards, then backwards and upside-down as the film is re-wound. This time they did it twice, however, because they needed to kill time before midnight. Come to think of it, none of the movies actually started on time this year, except for...

12:00 - Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959) -- Watch it here!
The other major staple of B-Fest, replete with audience participation on the same level (but not as refined) as Mystery Science Theater 3000 and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. A good time was had by all, and a great many paper plates were hurled whenever a flying saucer was onscreen. I saved mine and have uploaded them to the Flickr account that I never use.

1:30 - Scream Blacula Scream (1973)
The traditional late-night Blaxploitation film. William Marshall (better known as The King of Cartoons from Pee-Wee's Playhouse, the captain of the Video Pirates from Amazon Women on the Moon, and That Guy from Star Trek: The Original Series) reprises his role as Prince Mamuwalde in the sequel to Blacula, which I watched last week in preparation for B-Fest. The verdict? Blacula is a better movie, but Scream Blacula Scream is a lot more fun. I had a hard time deciphering the plot, but the music's good, the fashion is incredibly bad, and it features Pam Grier. Those are all pluses.

3:15 - Don't Knock the Rock (1956)
Have you seen Footloose? Have you seen Pop Rocks? Then you've seen this idea executed in a much more competent fashion. Evidently everybody else liked Don't Knock the Rock, but I'd rather have slept through it. Essentially, a squeaky-clean rock band goes on vacation only to discover that their hometown has banned the Devil's music (as phoned in by Bill Haley and the Comets, Little Richard, and some other band that I've never heard of). Probably not the worst soundtrack ever, but I can't think of one that I enjoyed less. I can picture Satan gritting his teeth and wishing that Black Sabbath would just hurry up and get here so the bat biting could get underway. Not recommended. The movie, either.

5:00 - Donovan's Brain 1953
A millionaire named Donovan is killed in an accident, but a scientist harvests his brain and keeps it alive in a tank. Then the brain develops telepathic powers and starts controlling people. This is as much as I got out of the movie, because I kept falling asleep. Well, that and it co-stars Nancy Davis (later Nancy Reagan) as a Patty Duke-esque housewife/scientist.

6:30 - The Tingler (1959)
Probably the most well-liked movie at the festival, The Tingler stars Vincent Price as a doctor who suspects that the spinal tingling experienced with fear is actually caused by a parasite which he dubs "The Tingler." Bad "science" but good movie with more twists, turns, and red herrings than most modern thrillers. Directed on the cheap by William Castle, the king of theater gimmicks. The Tingler is probably considered his masterwork in that regard -- in one scene, the movie "stops" and Vincent Price announces that The Tingler is loose in this very theater! And that the only way to stay safe is to scream -- scream with all your might! This movie, its bizzare marketing campaign, and its influence over the future of the horror genre actually deserve fairly serious study, though I can only give them a passing nod here. Really trashy. Really fun with a loud audience.

8:00 - Captive Wild Woman (1943)
I accidentally slept through most of this one, but as far as I can tell, a very young John Carradine transplants the glands (not brain, but glands) of a woman into an ape. The ape then transforms into a beautiful woman played by an actress with the unlikely stage name of Acquanetta. Then the film suffers technical difficulties requiring it to be stopped several times, and it still comes in under an hour. IMDB says this one is 61 minutes long, so we must have missed several minutes of footage. I didn't much care, though. Next!

9:10 - Mystery Short: Breathdeath: A Trageede in Masks -- Watch it here!
Guess what? This one is actually well-known and available online! And I'm linking to it here because I DON'T LIKE YOU. No, this is a mostly stop-motion animated film that nobody much liked. Turns out that it's by Stan VanDerBeek, a surrealist filmmaker most active in the '50s and '60s. Personally, I thought it looked like a collaboration between David Lynch and Python-era Terry Gilliam, after both have run out of ideas. I actually really like this sort of thing, but this particular film runs too long and contains too much dead space. Here's a link to an interesting website about Mr.VanDerBeek.

9:30 - American Ninja 2: The Confrontation (1987)
Two Army Rangers are transferred to a base in the pacific where the military is handled more like a boys' club and the commanding officer looks like Arnold Rimmer with a mustache. The local international terrorist is genetically engineering an army of superhuman ninjas, who, presumably, will help him conquer the world. However, before they get started on the conquering, the terrorist demonstrates their strength and agility by assembling them in an arena and ordering his top henchman in to kill most of them. Good thing, because our Ranger friends have already demonstrated that although they're good, they're not that good. Nor, technically, are they ninjas.

11:10 - The Terror of Tiny Town (1938) - Watch it here!
A by-the-books Western featuring an all-midget cast. It might have started a tradition of shortsploitation films at B-Fest, but everybody was pretty disappointed with it. If you've ever seen one of the myriad singing cowboy movies of the '30s and '40s, you seen this in a different aspect ratio. Unfortunate, since it started promisingly; the opening credits say that Nita Krebs plays The Vampire. The Vampire, sadly, is the stage name of the local singing prostitute.

12:15 - Lunch
The original online schedule gave us five minutes for lunch, but by the time everything was finalized, we had half an hour. Headed down to the food court and had a pesto crepe with feta cheese. The food court was not ready for the B-Festers, which is why it took a good 20 minutes before I had my food, and I missed the opening rape scene of the next film.

12:45 - The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant (1971)
Bruce Dern and Casey Kasem star as a scientist and just some guy, respectively. Dern plays a scientist who thinks it would be pretty neat to graft two heads onto the same body. The donors? His mentally disabled hired hand and the serial killer who committed the opening scene rape that people tell me I missed. This might sound promising to you, but I got bored, fell asleep, and missed most of it. No big loss.

2:20 - Mystery Short #3: The Concert (1974)
Remember the scene in Big where Tom Hanks plays the giant piano keyboard in the department store? The Concert is basically the same thing, but the piano keyboard is actually the crosswalk outside of the Royal Albert Hall in London, and the musician also conducts birds, dogs, a policeman (sorry, bobby (it's British, after all)). Probably the only short I've ever seen at B-Fest that was roundly enjoyed by everybody. Pretty good. Not in the public domain, otherwise I'd link to it.

2:45 - Megaforce (1982)
Not the best movie at this year's B-Fest, but easily the most fun. Imagine a 1980s paramilitary cartoon ala M.A.S.K. or GI Joe adapted verbatim for live action without a trace of irony. Oh, the terrible one-liners are still there, along with the over-the-top action and more explosions than the Michael Bay's entire oeuvre, but somebody clearly took it seriously. One of the worst movies I've ever seen, yet one of the most fun to sit through. henrietta1 leaned over at the beginning and told me that this was "going to be awesome," and I told her that if I were alone watching it, I'd probably be bored to tears. She was right, I was wrong. Bonus: Main character is played by Barry Bostwick wearing gold spandex that's far (and unpleasantly) more revealing than his near-nudity in Rocky Horror. Features the most unfortunate accidental shadow puppet ever recorded. This would probably pair well as a double feature with Hudson Hawk, The Fifth Element, or Troll 2.

4:30 - Godzilla vs. Megalon (1973)
I can understand the cultural significance of the original Godzilla, but I have never seen the appeal of the Japanese giant monster movies, which puts me into a minority. It also means that the last time B-Fest went out with a bang for me was 2006 when we watched King Kong. Godzilla vs. Megalon is basically the same as any other Godzilla vs. Somebody movie, except that in this one the little boy has two daddies. I spent part of the film trying to sleep, part of it rounding up my possessions, and most of it wondering when it would end.

I realize that my comments may make B-Fest sound like a harrowing experience, but in fact it's a very good time. Any unpleasantness onscreen is offset by sharing the experience with a theaterful of people.

* Think we can make this catch on? No? Oh, well.

After Godzilla vs. Megalon, we started rounding up all of our stuff to leave. The first order of business was to find some real food, so we stopped at a diner close to Tim's apartment and had the next best thing (I shouldn't make fun, actually. Mine was pretty good). After that we went to Tim's place, chatted briefly with his wife, Jessica, and discovered that one of the local TV stations was playing Tarantula -- a B-Fest staple. Sarah and I took showers (separately), and zonked out on the floor. I work early on Sunday morning but didn't bother moving until Matt and Sarah started debating as to whether or not I was asleep. We breakfasted on a delicious egg dish and a coffee cake, both provided by Sarah, and I discovered the the coffee Tim buys from Aldi's tastes better than the coffee for which I pay twice as much. We got on the road quite a bit sooner than we'd planned, and were home really early.

I had a blast.

We oughta do it again.

In a year.

B-Fest, here I come.

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 16:52:30 GMT

Pillow..... check.
Caffeine pills..... check.
Junk food..... check.
Paper Plates..... check.
Sharpie..... check.
Enough stamina to sit through Scream Blacula Scream, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, and some Chuck Norris movie that doesn't look very good..... check.

This is going to be a fantastic time.

Slow news day

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 20:27:54 GMT

"That was the school," says one of my coworkers. "My daughter got caught fooling around with a boy. I haven't even given her The Talk yet."

"Oh, man," says one of my other coworkers. "It was bad enough hearing my mom talk about sex. I could never do that with my daughter. If some dude ever saddles me with a kid, he gets to give the sex talk."

"It's not that it's my daughter," says the first woman, "I get embarrassed talking to anybody about... you-know-what."

Someone else: "What?"

The first woman does what looks to me like the Huuuuge Tracts of Land gesture from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. No one else says anything, so she says, "you know... You know!" More unrelated gesturing, and then she whispers, "sex!"

The embarrassment speech was pretty entertaining, but maybe you had to be there. Less entertaining: The daughter is eight.

Dear Penthouse Forum,

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 22:30:07 GMT

Today I signed my name 1,289 times:

I can't wait to be old

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 20:50:19 GMT

Back In The Day (about this time last year) it was a lot easier to find tea tree oil at the pharmacy. It was on the same shelf as the vitamins and dietary supplements, and they were all arranged alphabetically, so it was easy to find -- right between Taurine and Vitamin U². Not so anymore, though. They've employed a new classification system which seems to have more to do with packaging style than anything else. Whatever. The point of the story wasn't to tell you about my tea tree oil, anyway.

The point was to mention that while I was scanning the shelves, I got to overhear the end of a discussion about sex acts between a loud elderly man and a very uncomfortable pharmacist who was trying to get him out of the store without insulting him. The story was explicit, but the language wasn't terribly offensive. The main character of the story was his brother, but that's all I can tell you because I came in during the middle, and after a minute or so the pharmacist gave up on trying to steer the conversation and simply said, "I'm going back up to the front now. I need to get back to work."

As soon as she walked away, the guy put shopping basket on the floor and walked past me muttering. Then he made a big production of clearing phlegm from his throat as he left without buying anything.

I'm crossing my fingers that I live to be that old, and that I retain enough of my faculties to be deliberately annoying, rather than just confused.

Post election thoughts

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 17:37:15 GMT

I drank all that coffee for nothing. The election was over before I even planned on going to bed. I was prepared for a week's worth of uncertainty and a possibly suspicious result. It feels weird to have voted for a winner.

McCain's loss is unsurprising, but the margin of Obama's victory sure is. The swing voters did it. Charisma counts. That and the fact that the right wing has been coasting for too long on the ominous "you'll be sorry..." rhetoric they've been trotting out for the last eight years. It also doesn't help that he was nearly the Democratic nominee for VP in 2004.

Governor Palin certainly didn't help, either, being an ironic choice after the repeated attacks on Obama's relative inexperience. I asked McCain-supporting coworkers about her qualifications, and the only answer I got was "she's got a cute butt." What about her record as governor? "You're a fault finder. She's got a cute butt." I rest my case. However, her foot is in the door now, and we'll certainly see more of her. As a presidential nominee? Hard to say. Ten years down the road she might have made a serious contender, but they'll have to build her up to recover the respect she lost by being tapped too early in her career. Incidentally, who's making all of these easily discredited choices, anyway? Did they learn nothing from the Jeff Gannon scandal?

Regardless of my misgivings about him, McCain's concession speech was eloquent and humble. Obviously last night was a bitter moment for him, but he said all the right things, even knowing that his career as a presidential hopeful is pretty much over. In 2004 I made comments here that were begrudgingly supportive of a McCain presidency (I won't link them here because they're embarrassing). Then, a couple of weeks later, he got back to work and reminded us all that he's still a member of his party and I started taking back my comments. Still, I think his heart is in the right place, and if he still holds sway over anybody, that's a good thing.

On racial matters: The election of a black president has probably just earned us a fair amount of worldwide respect. That's awesome, but I'm still worried that Obama is an assassination risk. I hope I'm just overreacting to this episode of This American Life (act three at about 26:40, if you're interested), and a couple of very disturbing conversations I overheard on the Amtrak back from Portland. If it does happen, however, the government will not be able to marshal the force required to quell the retaliatory uprising. Then again, we've gotten awfully good at protecting our presidents.

On a more hopeful note, damn did people come out in force to vote yesterday. I've spoken to people who have switched sides, and others who voted for the first time since college. It's gratifying enough that I happen to be on the same side as the majority, but it's impressive and slightly scary that our historically apathetic nation came out in record numbers to demand change. The changes won't happen quickly, and they may not be as broad as we'd like, but this election proves that they're happening.

From the "WTF" Department

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 07:01:21 GMT

It's late. I'm tired. However:

Cannibal Orgy from Spider Baby (MP3, 3.47mb)

*and*

Now is Strange (MP3, 2.72mb)

No explanations.

This video will be more entertaining than you expect it to be.

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 01:29:45 GMT

Ich bin ein Portlander!

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 22:57:31 GMT

Right. So. evil_jim and I are in Portland for the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival & Cthulhucon.

Took the Amtrak here -- two day train ride, lots cheaper than flying, but less comfortable. Smellier, too. Kicked around for a couple hours, had lunch, and visited the saddest pawn shop I've ever seen, simply because it was close by. Relaxing for a couple of hours in the hotel, and then off to the festivities. Have the entire weekend blocked out based on the schedule, which is probably the best-planned convention I've ever attended. Programming starts at 6:00 tonight, and at 1:00 Saturday and Sunday, running until late at night. Still, ample time to sleep, enjoy the hotel's continental breakfast, return to bed, and then have a leisurely morning, and then stumble down to the theater midday (take that, HOPE conference!). Lotta good stuff on the schedule, so I'll be busy the whole time. Everything I'm going to is something I wanted to go to, and I'm not missing anything I was interested in. Bouilla!

Here's my plan, which I know you don't care about:

Friday:	Short Films block 1	Fear of the Unknown
Saturday:	Author's readings	Ask S.T. Joshi	Dark Paradox	Short Films block 3	M.R. James Dramatic Reading
Sunday:	In Search of Lovecraft	Filming the Unfilmable	Before Lovecraft: Poe, Chambers, James & Other Influences	Short Films block 2	Alien Raiders

Key:	Panels	Short Films	Feature Films

...anyway, I'm pretty excited.

More later, but first, we were looking through the phone book for lunch restaurants, and just for the heck of it (no, really), I decided to check out the escort services section, which is always good for a laugh. There are listings for Alumni of Xstacy University, Bored Housewives ("Can you meet me in half an hour?" "Yeah, sure. I guess."), and Buttered Beauties, the latter of which is the title of an early Devo song. General consensus among the people I've mentioned it to is that it's a service which employs chubby girls, but that's not what I'm trying desperately hard not to picture at all.

Major Life Events!

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 14:23:53 GMT

Long-time readers of my livejournal (or long-time glancers-at, for that matter) will have noticed that the frequencies of my posts has dropped from posting every time I get bored at work (20 times a day) to every time I experience a Major Life Event. Major Life Events, therefore, must include things like getting around to reading Fight Club, declining food from McDonald's, and making fun of the late Charleton Heston. Conspicuously absent are the fact that I've moved into a different apartment with crabmoon and my recent amputations. Explanations for these omissions are that 1) I'm lazy, and 2) it's probably not true.

Other Major Life Events that you should probably know about:
<major life events>

Apparently Eoin Colfer is writing And Another Thing..., the sixth book in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, due out next October. Colfer, as only the huffiest Harry Potter fans will know, is the author of the not-that-well-liked-by-adults Artemis Fowl series. No word in the article as to whether the plot of the new book will follow Douglas Adams' plans for Salmon of Doubt, which was working on (read: avoiding) when he died, so I'm assuming it won't. I'm also assuming I'll like it because I'd rather look forward to it than dread it.

Incidentally, I never mentioned Us Presents: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and it's months too late now, but most of you weren't aware of it anyway. This is an amateur production of the first series of the radio programme (extra 'me' (and single quotes) because it's British), which I was involved with about 8 years ago. Some of you might remember that I posted some excerpts from this version in anticipation of the movie in 2005. This is a chance to hear the radio series if you've never done so before. Episodes 1-10 contain production notes, episodes 11-16 are a repost of the naked radio series sans commentary. Then you should hunt down the actual radio drama, which was expanded to cover all five books a few years back, and which can be considered (until next October, anyway) to be the definitive version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

...and because seanorange was hoping that reviving and finishing Hitchhiker's would spark new projects, I've been thinking a lot about Captain Spleen: The Audio Drama. I say that pretty regularly, don't I? Ah, well.

On a sadder, and much more serious note, it just occurred to me as I was writing this that episodes 5 and 6 of Us Presents: HHG contain performances by Lindsey Plank as the Dish of the Day and the hairdresser, respectively. Lindsey was killed in a car accident last month (news report here). We were not the greatest of friends, but we were trying when she moved to Steven's Point to go to school. We reconnected last summer when she came back to Madison, and we hung out a few times. A mostly comedic livejournal post is not an appropriate place to eulogize someone, but she'd have asked for a mostly comedic eulogy, so I'm stuck. She was one of the most intelligent and humorous people I've ever met, which is what everybody's saying, because it's true. We'll miss her.

Plowing awkwardly along... I saw Burn After Reading last night, and you should all go see it. It's not the best film the Cohen Brothers have made (that honor goes to The Hudsucker Proxy, but you wouldn't believe me if I told you that), but its doubtless the best comedy I've seen in a long time. The dialogue is great, the casting is great (and you'll see Brad Pitt in a role he's never played before), and the pacing reminds me of Arsenic and Old Lace, 'cept with a lot more swearing. Oh, and it's good to see that David Rasche (better known (though not necessarily to you) as The Guy Who Starred In Sledge Hammer!) is still getting work.

crabmoon and I have run out of milk

</major life events>

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 17:52:03 GMT

Back when I started working here, I had a whole bunch of co-workers who were decade-or-longer veterans of the company. They're gone now. All but one. And she doesn't like to pick up lunch.

I've always had coworkers who were willing to pick up lunch. In a given week, I'd have multiple chances to place an order for food from Cool Beans or Noodles or Panera, and other people would ordering delivery from Glass Nickel, Pizza Hut, Milio's, Chang Jiang or Jimmy John's.

None of this happens anymore.

These days if anybody ever offers to make a food run, it's to Rocky Rococo, which is my least favorite pizza*. I can't really explain that; it's popular enough with everybody else, but there's something about their sauce and their crust which just doesn't work for me. Every once in awhile I fork over a few bucks to relearn that lesson.

Anyway, this required that I shuffle my day around somewhat. I get up earlier which allows me time to pack a lunch, and when I don't bring something, I have to make sure that my lunchtime excursions give me time to stop somewhere. I can't work through as many lunch-hours as I used to.

I'm not sure yet if I'm leaving the building during lunch or not. I'd like to get away from my desk, but I don't need to because I brought some heat-and-serve Indian food which I can nuke when I get hungry. And that's a big plus, because I just got today's "Does anybody want anything while I'm out?" e-mail. Apparently someone's picking up food from McDonald's. This is the first time in more than a year that anyone has offered to get food from somewhere other than Rocky Rococo. Seriously. People are actually kind of excited. They're looking at the menu on McDonald's website and discussing the possibility of an Arby's run next week and everything. People like me who are less excited are making quiet jokes about how this is what happens to people's standards when the corporate world destroys their souls. Ten years ago I'd fantasize about how what I was going to do after my fifteen minutes of fame. After a reality check, it sounds like the best I can hope for is that someone else will fetch my Quarter Pounder. I still have to pay for it, of course, and I won't get my change back.

Far be it from me to disparage McDonald's (because let's face it, the bar for disparaging McDonald's was set unrealistically high before I was born), but honestly, McDonald's? There must be ten equally plebeian fast-food restaurants within closer or equal driving distance with comparable prices and menus where the line of cars doesn't stretch around the building and almost into the street. I could get to Wendy's or Subway or hey, even Denny's and back before she's even through the line.

Uh, that's a moot point, though, because I really like this stuff.

* Actually, the absolute worst pizza ever is served at the Pizza Ranch restaurant in Decorah, Iowa, but it's unlikely that I'll get a chance to eat there again.

The Boy with the Tampon In His Ear

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:41:28 GMT

That's what the doctor called it. His exact words: "It's like a little tampon."

I have swimmer's ear, and it sucks (but I repeat myself). I'd been swabbing it with alcohol and vinegar last week, and it was getting better, but I have a bad habit of stopping treatment once it becomes apparent that it's working. Friday night was spent in a smoky bar (which, apparently, is the price you pay for Oingo Boingo and They Might Be Giants karaoke), and Saturday was spent at a smoky wedding reception (which, apparently, is the price you pay for having coworkers who commute from Milton). The doctor says the swabbing would probably have been sufficient, if A) I'd kept it up for a couple more days, and B) I hadn't spent so much time around cigarette smoke.

Of course, he told me that after my ear canal had swollen to the point that swabbing was impossible.

I didn't sleep well on Sunday night, and I left work early on Monday with a fever and dizziness. I lay awake all night on Monday, so I called in on Tuesday, and went to the doctor, and had the tampon inserted. Aural medication tends to drip out and trickle down the side of your head, especially when the ear canal is blocked or swollen, but the tampon absorbs the medication and (presumably) delivers more of it to where it needs to go. Whatever was going on in my ear had taken good advantage of my sleep deprivation, so when the icy medication started making its way into my ear, I became nauseous. I sat down, asked for a glass of water, and could feel myself beginning to hyperventilate.

I was also getting a tetanus shot, and the doctor thought I was reacting to the needle, but I'm okay with needles. No, this was some inner-ear thing brought on by the ear drops and the tampon. Anyway, I got the shot and I got the tampon and I drove myself home, which was safer than I'm making it sound.

I should probably mention at this point that it's not really called a tampon. I don't know what it's called. The doctor didn't tell me. But he did ask me who I trust. I told him I didn't understand why he was asking.

"Well, do you have a roommate or a wife? Girlfriend? Boyfriend? See your parents on a regular basis?"

"I have a girlfriend," I said.

"Good. You need her to root around in your ear with a tweezers."

The tampon comes out on Sunday, and crabmoon's probably stuck with that exciting job. There shouldn't be a lot of rooting around, since I can touch it with my finger without inserting it into the ear canal.

Meanwhile, I can't hear a damn thing. That's not true. My other ear still works, but the affected one is plugged, which is occasionally disorienting. Every step I take sounds to me like I'm stomping, and I can't tell what volume I'm speaking at because I sound loud to myself all the time. On the plus side, I feel pretty good now, other than my ear. Two days of tiredness and fatigue were not fun, but I slept well last night, and I'm doing fine at work today. Well, my ear itches.

The point of this story is that I told a bunch of people I'd hang out this week, but between two lost days and the fact that I have to pack to move in slightly less than two weeks, I'm thinking I should concentrate my free time on other things.

I hope they can convince Julie Andrews to sign on...

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 16:12:58 GMT

No, I have not seen The Dark Knight yet. Soon, probably. But in the wake everybody else's Dark Knight posts, I'd like to express my appreciation of the the resurrection of the Batman franchise, now solidified by all the positive things I'm hearing about this second chapter.

I'd also like to express my sincere hope that when they make a sequel involving The Penguin, they do it right. None of this flipper-moses-raised-by-inexplicable-New-England-penguins nonsense. I want the real story, as portrayed in The Penguin Goes A Courtin' (MP3, 1.74mb).

Taken from this episode of This American Life.

The first rule of loaning books to Colin is Don't Loan Books to Colin

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 22:03:37 GMT

Awhile ago it occurred to me that the best way to motivate myself to cross the essential books off my to-read list is to borrow other books and promise to read them. evil_jim loaned me a book of John Shirley stories which sat, unread for two years, while plowed through The King in Yellow, a bunch of Fritz Leiber, most of Bruce Sterling's novels, Neuromancer by William Gibson, Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, and a couple of books from the Church of the Subgenius. Same thing goes for movies. I don't know when I'm going to watch koriandrkitten's copy of Hostel 2, but since borrowing it, I've seen a whole mess of other movies that you probably think I should have seen earlier.

One of these was Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, which I with r3507, agaysexicon, and fuzzyinthehead, who reminded me that I've been borrowing her copy Fight Club since February. Uh, first, The Birds: I had never seen The Birds before. It's a long shot from being Hitchcock's best film, but worth its notariety. We all found the first hour of the movie to be laughably campy, possibly to the annoyance of the people sitting around us. Then the mood changed abruptly and we got really quiet for the second hour. For those unfamiliar with the film, it's basically Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, sans musical numbers and with better special effects. Actually, the special effects are impressive to the point of being distracting, given that it was made in 1963. And if you're the sort of person who cares about that sort of thing. I am, apparently.

Anyway, Liz reminded me that I've had her copy of Fight Club since February, and I promised to try to give it a go sometime this week. Well, it turns out that it's a remarkably quick read, and between two ten-minute breaks and my lunch, I've gotten through the first 191 pages. That's a pretty serious record for me, and it's a 224-page book, so I don't think I'm in danger of not finishing this week.

Problem is, while I was ignoring Liz's book, I got through a whole bunch of William Gibson novels, two David Sedaris books, parts of that funny Amy Sedaris book on entertaining, three Arthur C. Clarke novels, both of the Lifehacker books, the interesting parts of I Hated, Hated, Hated this Movie by Roger Ebert, Profoundly Disturbing by Joe Bob Briggs, and everything I could find for free online by Arthur Machen. I've also listened to a bunch of audiobooks.

That's not as much reading as it probably looks like at first glance.

Tomorrow I'll be done with Fight Club, and without something to ignore, I won't have any motivation to read all of the other stuff I was planning to touch but haven't. That's a pretty big stack, because I just decided to commit myself to the whole of Liberty Meadows, Bone, and Hellboy (probably not big time investments), a bunch of Neil Gaiman novels, and all of the Neal Stephenson I haven't read, which is most of it. But nothing makes me get started on reading faster than having something else that I can put off.

I need to borrow a book from somebody.

What are YOU doing on Friday night?

Fri, 30 May 2008 19:17:56 GMT

If you're free, you should come to the What's Brewin' coffee shop in Sun Prairie (3140 Edmonton Drive, to be exact) to see offBeat Acappella. 7:00 PM, no cover charge, but the coffee, ice cream, and sandwiches are excellent.

If you're not free, you should cancel whatever you're doing and come to Sun Prairie.

Painful Typos

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 18:55:21 GMT

Piece of correspondence misrouted to my desk:

Pels chean my adrees:

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Tank you!

Discounting the name and address, only the two shortest words are spelled right. That's like, a 33% success rate.

The worst thing is that this guy (who, judging by his penmanship, is probably quite literate in some other language) could've avoided looking like an idiot if he'd simply filled out a standard Chean of Adrees form.

Bore Your Son or Daughter At Work!

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 18:33:59 GMT

Yesterday was Take Your Son or Daughter To Work Day.

My coworkers generally do not participate in TYSoDTWD. Occasionally someone will do it to save on childcare, but usually it's to prevent the kid from skipping school. Rarely has anybody brought their son or daughter to work to observe the world of full-time employment, because the world of full-time employment usually looks very, very boring.

Where I work, there are exactly three different approaches to having your child at your desk.

You can tell them to sit quietly and watch you work, and if you're in a good mood, you might explain a little of what you're doing.

You can directly engage the kid in your work, explaining it to them in detail, and letting them do some of it.

You can attempt #2, but choose entirely the wrong kinds of hands-on activities, and then get angry when it doesn't work.

Yesterday the woman in the cubicle next to me brought her daughter. Guess which approach she took?

First, her daughter -- who is somewhere in the vicinity of 9 -- wanted to look at the toys in my cube, and the stuff over there, and who's the fat lady? and what does this do and why do you have so many books at your desk and mommy, why do you need four yellow highlighters? and so on. After she calmed down, her mother tried to explain the software we use.

Computer literate people take a couple of days to get kinda-sorta-more-or-less comfortable with the system. People who are already used working on a remote system through a terminal are quicker, but it definitely takes more than a couple of minutes, which is how long it took before my neighbor started saying things like "No! No! Dammit! That little guy in the corner of the screen means you can't type anymore! Press escape and now don't touch anything. Okay, now. This is the TPQ screen. I think that stands for The Pending Queue. That's where things go when they have to pend, which means you have to wait for something. Now this is the TRQ screen. That's The Representative Queue, but it has nothing to do with representments, which are the documents in the blue folder in my in-box. And this... is the TMM screen, which is the memo screen. M is W upside-down, so think of it as The Whiteboard with a W instead of two Ms, and that's where you put notes..."

This went on for a couple of hours. The little girl can't possibly have learned anything except that her mother is impatient and presumptuous, which I suppose she already knew since, y'know, it's her mom. Her mother also made her answer the phone every time it rang, which always sounded tentative and uncomfortable, and there was one call where my neighbor had to defend her professionalism against someone who was offended by the child's voice on the other end of the phone.

They took an early lunch just as I was starting to get annoyed with the occasional squeals of "mom! That guy has twelve million dollars!" and "This person buys from GGW Video. I know what that is -- it's Girls Gone Wild." The little girl didn't come back to work. Lunch might have been even earlier if my boss weren't on vacation.

Anyway, it's not the kid's fault. This is a job for adults, and while I definitely think there's value in letting your child observe you at work, there are definitely right ways and wrong ways to do it.

On the other hand, one of my other coworkers brought in her preschooler, who, though too young to appreciate any of what we do here, was able to tell me a delightful knock-knock joke:

Knock knock.
Who's there?
I'm a frog.
I'm a frog who?
Get that noisy frog out of here!

I hate to admit to stealing material, but I plan to get a lot of mileage out of that one when I go on the club circuit.

Charlton Heston, RIP

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 21:39:33 GMT

I call shotgun.

Things to be proud of at 1:15 AM

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 06:20:12 GMT

Guess who stuck around and got Stuart Gordon's autograph when he was trying to leave for a drink with Zorba Paster?

Booya.

I'd've thought Dr. Paster would have better taste in movies than Stuck, but um, evil_jim and I absolutely loved it, so I should probably rethink this sentence.

April what now?

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 02:45:25 GMT

See if you can spot the April Fool's Day prank cleverly woven into this list of recent developments in my life:

I am temporarily living away from home, as my apartment is being substantially remodeled.
I am about a month into a new position at work which I didn't bother mentioning on my livejournal.
I spent most of the last weekend feeling sick.
A podcast about the kink community is using some of my music, and (soon) my voice.
I am (probably) doing a commentary track for a soon-to-be-released DVD, but will not reveal any details until the arrangements are set in stone.
I can has stylophone!

PLEASE stop posting to livejournal.

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 03:26:42 GMT

There's only about an hour and a half left of today, and all of you who are still posting to LJ are ruining our incredibly ill-conceived content strike.

Who's up for a Dunkin' Donuts run?

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 17:43:06 GMT

So here's a question:

It's not uncommon for me to get excited and post a link when a certain band that I like gives a particularly good interview on NHPR, or ends up contributing a song to The Sims. I realize that there are only four of you who ever click those links. That's fine.

But what happens when John Linnell gets interviewed by Parenting Magazine? Is that even worth it? Do the TMBG fans in my readership actually want to read his sheepish feelings about bribing your child? Probably not. But there you go: TMBG, having won their Grammy, collaborated with The Daily Show and McSweeny's Magazine, and spent a few months at the top of the Amazon sales charts, are running out of media outlets to infiltrate. What's next? Field and Stream? The WWE? Neil Gaiman?

Wait, you can scratch that last one off the list. They're doing the soundtrack to Henry Selick's adaptation of Coraline.

Also, this ad campaign makes me want to make a road trip to Janesville (especially that last one).

Puzzlin' Evidence

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 21:54:38 GMT

Holy cow, I'm posting twice in one day!

matchstyx's recent post about the movie Equinox reminds me: I recently (and very accidentally) found a movie I'd been trying to locate for a long time.

Years and years ago -- let's say when I was in middle school, or just the end of elementary school -- I found the tail end of a movie on TV, and it fascinated me. I sat through the credits hoping that the title of the movie would be shown at the end, but instead the movie ended with a message: "If you can imagine it, it exists somewhere."

And that was it.

Eventually, I forgot what even appealed to me about the movie, I just remembered that line from the end of the credits. This was before the Internet was widely available, so I didn't really have any way of tracking the movie down. Every once in a great while I would remember the quote, but there was no easy way to search for it, and search engines (once they did show up) weren't any help, either.

So then, a couple of months ago, I was perusing matt_william's DVDs, and saw the title True Stories. It was a pretty boring DVD spine; white with black, sans serif block lettering, and a nondescript title. Matt has a pretty big collection of movies I'd like to see, so I'm not sure what made me pick True Stories up, but I was intrigued when I did. The DVD case features a picture of David Byrne, formerly of Talking Heads, reading a tabloid newspaper. The back of the DVD had a quote from Time Magazine comparing True Stores to A Hard Day's Night, and the kind of vague blurb that normally gets reserved for self-important independent films that are trying to make recoup their budget via home video, but it did mention that the movie was directed by and stars Byrne.

David Byrne is a strange guy with an unusual disregard for the accepted conventions of entertainment media. He's the sort of person who, in the middle of an interview, will casually announce that he is bored and wants to talk about something else. His band, Talking Heads emerged from the same late '70s/early '80s New England art school traditions that later spawned Klaus Nomi, They Might Be Giants, and Blondie, and sometimes it really shows.

Anyway, I borrowed and watched the movie, and I can't think of a single person to whom I can wholeheartedly recommend it, but I absolutely loved it. I'm happy to see that it has a fervent cult following, despite its limited theatrical release, and the fact that the critics generally dismissed it as being pretentious, plotless, and overly artistic. I dunno, I'm going to defer to Roger Ebert, a self-proclaimed fellow Talking Heads fan, who gave the movie 3 1/2 stars and began his review like this:

"There are more than 50 sets of twins in David Byrne's 'True Stories,' I learned by studying the press notes, and perhaps we should pause here for a moment to meditate upon that fact. A hundred twins are not going to make or break a movie, and the average audience is not going to notice more than a fraction of them.

"Consider the state of mind of the person who decided the film should have 50 sets of twins."

For the most part, the twins aren't noticeable. Attention is not called to them, except in a shot or two where a set of twins is shown sharing a table in a restaurant. What's the point of deliberately casting a bunch of twins if they're not going to be part of the plot? I don't know, either.

As True Stories opens, David Byrne, dressed in a suit and cowboy hat, addresses the camera directly. He relates the history of Texas, beginning with its geological formation, the dinosaurs, and the early humans, and takes us through the history of the state, the battles fought there, the arrival of industry, and, eventually, the advent of the microprocessor. He finishes by explaining that 1986 is the sesquicentennial of the state of Texas, and that we'll be spending the next 90 minutes in the small town of Virgil, which is celebrating 150 Years of Specialness (pronounced "special ness").

The plot of the film, such as it is, introduces a number of the town's residents and just sort of... follows them around. That's it. We meet Earl and Kay Culver, a wealthy couple who are happily married but haven't spoken directly to one another in ten years. We meet The Lying Woman, who, predictably, tells nothing but lies. The local minster preaches out of the Book of the Subgenius, and the richest woman in the world spends all day in bed watching TV just because she can. Oh, and there's Radio Head, who has a radio in his head (and yes, the band lifted their name from the name of this character). The only thing resembling a real story arc here is Louis Fyne (played by a young John Goodman), who is so desperate to marry somebody that he produces a commercial: "I'm six foot, three inches tall, and maintain a very consistent panda bear shape."

Life in the peaceful town of Virgil, which plays out like a collaboration between David Lynch and Norman Rockwell, revised by Garrison Keillor. In real life, Byrne has claimed that the people in True Stories are inspired by tabloid headlines. He interacts with all of these characters, but mostly he talks to the camera. If you've ever seen David Byrne speak, you'll know that he always seems to be on the same page as those around him, but he's not reading the same book. Consider this conversation from the movie:

Louis Fyne: How 'bout them line dancers?

David Byrne: They wouldn't fit in my house.

This is the same persona David Byrne projects in real life. Who thinks like that?

True Stories isn't weird and inaccessible, though. Mostly it's folky and comfortable, and it looks like a less garish version of Shock Treatment (though that may just be the fact that it was made in the '80s). Oh, and yes, this is a musical, but not the kind of musical where the exposition is carried out in song (after all, it's hard to have exposition when your story doesn't contain a story). Most of the musical numbers in this film are like rock videos inserted into the action, though not out of an appropriate context. The song Wild, Wild Life accompanies a lip sync contest, and Love For Sale is presented as a channel surfing montage. For the most part, these songs are sung by members of the cast rather than by David Byrne, and there are a couple of gems in the soundtrack, particularly John Goodman's performance of People Like Us.

There is, as I said, a vague narrative thread involving John Goodman's character, but True Stories probably falls into the category of experimental cinema. There are events in the film, and the events form a picture, but there's no real conflict and nothing much to get excited about. I guess that True Stories is a feature film that accomplishes the work of a pastoral poem or a landscape painting or a photograph. If it has a message it is something along the lines of "stuff is interesting," and it takes 90 minutes to deliver that message. Whether or not the 90 minutes is worthwhile sort of depends on whether you're interested in this particular stuff. Apparently I was, and as if to hammer the point home, just as the credits were finishing and I was about the eject the DVD, the message I'd been chasing for years appeared, worded very slightly differently than I'd remembered: "IF YOU CAN THINK OF IT, IT EXISTS SOMEWHERE."

crabmoon walked in about 20 minutes before the end and thought it was depressing, but she did miss out on meeting all of the characters, and most of the happy songs.

At any rate, the soundtrack is pretty excellent, but the album features all of the songs performed by the band. I wanted copies of the songs performed by the cast, so I had to rip them from the DVD myself. I imagine that matt_william will be more interested than anybody else, but hey, if you read this whole entry, you deserve something:

True Stories Soundtrack (DVD Rip)