Wednesday, July 29, 2009

"Heat cannot be separated from fire, or beauty from The Eternal." —Dante Alighieri




Not usually seen in Seattle advertising:


Today we hit 102° in Seattle. [Correction: now they're saying we hit 103°, a Seattle record.] It's only been 4 months since this much more typical (and for me, much more acceptable) forecast:



BTW, I saved that forecast because I loved the slight, almost poetically bored, descriptions of how much rain is expected in those next nine days "...at a Glance":


Showers likely,
chance showers.

Chance showers ...
chance showers.

Chance showers,
rain likely.

Chance rain,
chance rain,
chance rain.

Sign that Pax Americana has finally run its course:



"Smell like there's no tomorrow"



Saturday, July 25, 2009

Welcome to the worst day of the rest of your life:



"Screw it. I'm eating the rest of the Tang
and playing some golf."


Friday, July 24, 2009

"The Wonder of It All"




Just came out on DVD, best documentary I've seen about the moon landings. Told in the voices & words of the men who actually walked on the moon (that still gets to me).


Thursday, July 23, 2009

"Sympathy" by Rare Bird.


According to wikipedia this song came out in the same year I did, 1969. I found it by accident on youtube while looking for a movie trailer (which I still can't find). There are other versions of the 'video' on youtube, this one I like for the pictures chosen (from 'www.morguefile.com ').

I'm surprised I haven't heard this song before. I'm also surprised it hasn't been covered more often.


Wednesday, July 22, 2009

This is what 'hardcore' looks like:


Found on 'Flickr':


"Amblypygi, Phrynidae, Heterophrynus sp."
Title: Verdadero y Falso -- True and false

aka, "whip spiders"; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amblypygi







Terry Gilliam quotes, in no particular order.




There's a side of me that always fell for manic things, frenzied, cartoony performances. I always liked sideshows, freakshows. Jerry Lewis was a freakshow...Absolutely grotesque, awful, tasteless. I like things to be tasteless.

People in Hollywood are not showmen, they're maintenance men, pandering to what they think their audiences want.

All I do is hunt. I want to be thrilled. And I'm not being thrilled at the moment. So I'm being old and bitter and curmudgeonly, because I want sensory buzz and I'm not getting it!

I do want to say things in these films. I want audiences to come out with shards stuck in them. I don't care if people love my films or walk out, as long as they have a strong response.

My problem is I'm like a junkie. I want a good movie fix, and I never get that fix. I want to be taken into some place, some world, some idea that I haven't thought of or imagined. And it doesn't happen.

(on future use of CGI in his films) Nooo! Leave that to George Lucas, he' s really mastered the CGI acting. That scares me! I hate it! Everybody is so pleased and excited by it. Animation is animation. Animation is great. But it's when you're now taking what should be films full of people, living thinking, breathing, flawed creatures and you're controlling every moment of that, it's just death to me. It's death to cinema, I can't watch those Star Wars films, they're dead things.

Everybody has their opinion and some people are wrong. One of the things I enjoy about my films is that children really love them. They are open-minded. As we get older we seem to close in. We limit the size of the world we limit everything about it.

I think there's a side of me that's trying to compete with Lucas and Spielberg - I don't usually admit this publicly - because I tend to think that they only go so far, and their view of the world is rather simplistic. What I want to do is take whatever cinema is considered normal or successful at a particular time and play around with it - to use it as a way of luring audiences in.

It's hard for me to worry about the studios losing money. I'm not very sympathetic to their money problems, because they certainly haven't been sympathetic to mine.

(On news of Heath Ledger's death while filming "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus"):
We were devastated. We spent the whole day - Amy Gilliam, Nicola Pecorini, the director of photography, and myself - lying flat on the floor. Heath Ledger's dead, and you don't quite get over that.
I suppose I'm in an interesting position because while I'm cutting the film I'm basically working with him every day and he's fine; he's in good shape. Ideas are floating around. Then finally we decided, 'OK, let's get three other people to take over the part'. And we were lucky because we have a magic mirror in this movie. Not every movie has a magic mirror.
So you can very genuinely say that these other actors are different aspects of the character that Heath plays. And it works.
The point was, we've got to keep going. It was a bit like half being there, but apparently on autopilot I can still do a few things.

Nobody went to see "Tideland"
! I was hoping people would get angry about it but those that saw it didn't want to talk about it. This is the world we're living in, people don't want to discuss things that are actually worth discussing.

The reason why I don't watch as many as I used to is that I'm not surprised any more. I loved movies because they opened up doors into worlds I never imagined. It seldom happens now.
 
 



Monday, July 20, 2009

'Hyperwall-2' is doubly beautiful.


The pursuit of knowledge is one of the few truly beautiful attributes of humanity. Rarely is that intrinsic beauty visible in our clumsy monkey groping. When the beauty of that search for understanding is matched by its physical interface it overwhelms, the intellectual comprehension of the endeavour spilling over into an emotional response.


"Developed by scientists and engineers in the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at Ames, the 128-screen hyperwall-2, capable of rendering one quarter billion pixel graphics, is the world's highest resolution scientific visualization and data exploration environment".

The original article in National Geographic where I first read of the Hyperwall (the article is nearly poetry, and features the usual stunning NG photos):
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/07/telescopes/ferris-text



Friday, July 17, 2009

This I can do without....





A friend and I got in a discussion about ego surfing, so of course we had to check.
At least the 5th one down was actually about me.




“Sometimes questions are more important than answers.” -Nancy Willard


The problem with having an active imagination is reality rarely trumps it. Or even equals it, for that matter.

This truck has been sitting in the same spot for over a week. I'm surprised it hasn't been reported, cordoned off, hazmated, drug-sniffed, bomb-sniffed, and removed from the premises yet. Does nobody remember 9/11?

But after deciding to check it out myself last night I started wondering about what I hoped to find.

I honestly expected it to be empty, which would have led to some simple jokes and a quick wrap-up to this story. Another obvious joke about Al Capone's Vaults or something lame like "They're digging in the wrong place!"

Maybe empty except for a dead, dried-out crow (they're everywhere around here because of the restaurants). After sitting in 80+ degree weather for a week at least the story would have ended on a nicely gruesome note.

Or, if I'd been lucky, it would have been something harmless but weird. A truck full of manikins, or thousands of empty cigar boxes, or maybe just pallet after pallet of left-handed scissors.

And of course the least favorable, but still interesting, would have been some sort of crime scene. Stolen flat-screen TVs; meth-lab debris; a large brown bloodstain.

The truth turned out to be so boring I considered not even following up with this post. Here then is the photographic evidence from last night's 'adventure', proving once again how boring reality can be:



No lock! I'm way too old for this to still thrill me....



What the? Building materials? A hand truck?



I mean come on, where's the excitement? A box of nails?



sheesh.





And the final reveal; you can't really read it in this picture but I recognized the font used on that sign, and then the name. It's "Varlamos Pizzeria", the Italian restaurant down the block from us. Apparently they've done some remodelling, and this truck is just the temporary overflow. Construction flotsam.

Which explains why nobody's had the truck towed, I'm sure the property managers know what's up.


I've been Geraldo'd.





Thursday, July 16, 2009

"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?"



So in the parking lot of the store I work at there's a white delivery truck that's been sitting in the same spot for about a week.

My coworker Joy left me a note asking if we should report it. I said "No, it's got that cool 'the Cook, the Thief...' vibe going on" knowing she'd get the reference to a horrible event in a Peter Greenaway film from 1989.

Getting out of my car today I decided to check the back door for a lock, thinking I may pop it off with some monster bolt cutters I have. What do ya know? No lock!

Since I happen to have some leather gloves (no prints), a powerful flashlight (no surprises), and a camera (no lack of evidence) with me; I've decided after I close the store tonight (and under cover of darkness) I'm going to check out what's in the truck.

What will I find? Will it be the remains of a mobile meth-lab? The desiccated remains of some undocumented workers? Thousands of discount sunglasses? Or will I be just another Geraldo digging in Al Capone's vaults?

Tune in later to read about my next exciting adventure! With pictures!




wheresmycellphone.com



Misplaced your cellphone? No longer have one of those old-fashioned 'land lines'? Have easy access to the internet? Quick, to wheresmycellphone.com!




This site actually works pretty fast. I have never had a cellphone, so I entered my land line number, hit 'Make it ring!' and within two seconds the phone was ringing. Out of curiousity I answered it, a (surprisingly sensual) recording of a woman's voice says, "Thank you for using 'wheresmycellphone.com'. Goodbye now!"


The whole concept of this website seems odd to me, a weird confluence of social trends and technology.

First, cellphone saturation in America is estimated at about 82%, and roughly 1/4 of American homes no longer have landlines. Then, total broadband connections in American homes is estimated at 57%, with most of those through their cable providers (again, no need for landlines).

So somebody noticed a tiny little need and created this website to fill the niche.

Since nobody could be expected to pay for the service it's provided free; the only way to profit then is by selling adspace, which 'wheresmycellphone' does in spades. Seriously, the page is basically one box of service surrounded by a sea of ads (and a lonely 'Donate' button).

I'm reminded, oddly, of the Pony Express, the trans-American mail service from back in the 'Old West' days. I guess because the Pony Express filled a niche, as does 'wheresmycellphone.com'.

However, even though the Pony Express has entered out cultural folklore it only ran for about a year, closing two days after the First Transcontinental Telegraph reached Salt Lake City and connected Omaha, Nebraska and Sacramento, California.

I doubt 'wheresmycellphone' will ever earn a spot in American cultural history. It's sort of the inverse of the Pony Express; extremely limited demand, but doesn't really cost anything to provide (and nothing to use). And with the unlimited amount of 'space' available in cyberspace this site can sit there forever, like a sort of 'Historic Trail' marker for one of the weird little backwaters of web 1.0.


Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Y Wii Kant Reed Gud



SCI FI Channel changes its name to 'Syfy'.

http://scifiwire.com/2009/03/sci-fi-channel-to-become.php



"By changing the name to Syfy, which remains phonetically identical, the new brand broadens perceptions and embraces a wider range of current and future imagination-based entertainment beyond just the traditional sci-fi genre, including fantasy, supernatural, paranormal, reality, mystery, action and adventure. It also positions the brand for future growth by creating an ownable trademark that can travel easily with consumers across new media and nonlinear digital platforms, new international channels and extend into new business ventures."


Oh where to begin? First there's the painfully outdated market-speak; "new brand broadens perceptions", "imagination-based entertainment", "positions the brand", "ownable trademark", "travel easily with consumers", "nonlinear digital platforms". Christ, there isn't a single phrase in this paragraph that doesn't piss me off.

I guess my biggest issue with this "rebranding", though, is the claim "...Syfy, which remains phonetically identical...". Really?

Within a word the 'y' sound is the soft 'i', and at the end of a word it's usually a hard 'e'. Just look at the word 'mystery', used in the first sentence. M-'i'-ster-'E'. Not M'I'-str-'I'. In standard usage this new spelling of Sci-fi (a contraction that bugs me anyways, is it really too strenuous to say 'Science fiction'?) would be pronounced 'S-'i'-ff-'E', or 'Siffy'.

So in order to 'move forward' with 'positioning the brand' they choose a silly respelling that reads like a lisper saying 'sissy'.

Good choice. Way to 'invite both consumers and advertisers into a new era of unlimited imagination, exceptional experiences and greater entertainment', by making up a new spelling for a contraction and then mispronouncing it.

Bunch of siffies. Think I'd rather go read a book.



Saturday, July 11, 2009

Dear Asshole, thanks for picking my plate to steal.





My one day off this week, when I decide to treat myself to a film I want to see in the theatre instead of waiting for the video like I normally do.

Thanks for taking the plate off my car. My beat-up; 24-year-old; not-insured; I-only-own-because-my-friend-Jason-hooked-me-up-&-it-only-cost-$290; motherfucking-clunker-but-I-love-to-drive-her-&-SHE's-MINE piece of shit car.

Obviously, out of all the other cars on Capitol Hill tonight I'm the guy with all the free time & all the extra cash to deal with this kind of hassle.

Do me one favor? Before you strap that plate on your car & start doing drug runs with my number (the #1 reason plates are stolen in Seattle) give me enough time to wait for the cop to show & take my statement reporting it stolen? That extra kinda noise I can do without.


7/12 update: To get new plates in Washington State you have to fill out a form (Affidavit of Loss/Release of Interest "TD-420-040"), get it Notarized, and then take it to your nearest Dept. of Licensing with picture ID, your Registration, and money. This is going to end up costing me 50+ bucks and the better part of a day driving around Seattle.


Friday, July 10, 2009

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

The power of context.


I stole this from my friend Mike's blog because it's some of the finest comedy writing I've seen in ages. Just brilliant.


Friday, July 3, 2009

I was just flashmobbed by zombies in my vidstore...

...they tried to kidnap me and take me to the Zombiewalk & "Thriller Re-enactment" Guinness World Record attempt, but there's no-body to cover for me, natch.