Saturday, August 29, 2009

Chills.

The latest from Saw VI director Kevin Greutert's blog:

The opening of Saw VI hereby challenges the opening of Saw II to a duel.

That's the opening of Saw II.

Greutert continues:

The audio team up here in Canada works on movies that are normally more along the lines of Atom Egoyan’s dramas, so it’s always very special when we get to immerse them in the swirling cyclone of screams that is SAW.


I can't wait...

I've said it before, and sadly, sadly, sadly, I feel the need to say it again

The reason why the Republican Party is still in control--and they are, electoral victories be damned--is because they have accepted, and learnt to use to their advantage, something that Democrats still fight to deny:

Most people in this country are rock-bone-stick-stupid. Now, that's obviously one of my more cynical pronouncements. But, read this (via Think Progress) and tell me you can come up with another explaination.

The Columbian reports today that Raymond Denny, a 64-year old man from La Center, Washington, recieved a thirteen-question survey in the mail from the RNC, and that one of the questions implied that the health care reform bills before Congress would purposely discriminate against people who affiliated with the Republican Party


A spokesman for the RNC has now described the mailing as “inartfully worded.”


Oh, don't sell yourself short, RNC. I'd say it's very arfully worded...if you accepted what I assert you've accepted. And the proof of it is that even though this is being called (and is) "shameful" "fear-mongering"...you're still going to knock any chance we had of meaningful health reform down flat.

Way to go.

Three Transient Tongues in Cheek

...and this morning I got up to a gentle rapping at my door, announcing the arrival of another package of goodies from my Amazon list, this one courtesy of my friend Jen AKA "Jeopardygirl."

She sent me a couple of things, first, Simon Reynolds' lovely book, Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984.

I read a library copy of this a few years ago when it first came out, and reviewed it for Amazon thus:

What more can you ask from a music/pop culture book other than that it tell you things you didn't know about bands you generally consider yourself knowledgeable of?

This one deserves space on the shelf of fans...for that if no other reason.


And now it gets space on mine.

As with Corey and RTD's book yesterday, there's a certain aptness to this, as Jen and I share a fondness for this era musically. I can't speak for Jen, but if you wanted to take a peek at what it's like to live in my head pretty much 24/7 (like some New Romantic looking for a TV sound)...








The second thing she sent is the DVD of one of the great concerts by one of the great comedians, Carlin at Carnegie.



Making me feel all moderately neato...

Friday, August 28, 2009

Quest for the Golden Gate - (a stop-animation w/ dungeons & dragonsfigures, buddhas, owls, and a giraffe)


Four Fascinations (and praise to a pal)



Thanks to Corey Klemow for sending me the Russell T. Davies book off my wish list. For those of you who don't know, Davies is the writer/producer who rebuilt Doctor Who and took it to new heights; he's written (with a journalist) a book about it.

Corey and I are both fairly unrepentant Doctor Who geeks We first "met" a little over ten years ago (god help us both...) on the old rec.arts.drwho message boards and later in person at a con.

I'd say more but as I'm writing I've just come in from a day with the nephew, and want very much to crawl into a Zero Room.

Corey knows what I mean by that, but for those of you who don't, think




It seems very fitting Corey should be the one to send this to me. Thank you, Corey. :)

Somebody Twittered me this morning

Specifically, at least one person from London, England visited the post from yesterday regarding my suspicions about celebrity gossip blog writers, by following a link from an unidentified Twitter page.

I feel so used.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Oh, my head

Damnit, Fox...we just got Winona Ryder to shut up about there being a sequel...

Heathers, the TV series.

Make it stop...make it stop!

Some things should remain untainted...

Or, "The only way in which Michael Richards would ever get to work again."

Senfeld reunion. Woo-hoo.

Ah, crap.

Rob Zombie's Halloween 2 is not being screened for critics...and you know what that means, like 99 times out of 100. Too bad. I had some hopes for it, but I guess, as with his first version, I'll be waiting on the DVD...

Sometimes I begin to suspect that some of those who write celebrity gossip blogs aren't terribly nice people

Case in point:

The latest Batman rumours report that Megan Fox might be tapped to play Catwoman, although Fox's reps deny it. True or not, we're sure that somewhere, Michelle Pfeiffer, Julie Newmar and the ghost of Eartha Kitt are preparing to kick some ass


Now: So far, this is just another "Megan Fox is dumb" story (and I gotta tell ya, I'm starting to suspect jealousy) that in and of itself wouldn't be worthy of comment. But the next line is.

while Sean Young sobs into her seventh glass of wine.


Ha, ha ha, ha! See, it's funny because Young was in rehab...

#5 Fancy Followed

Q & A on SiliconIndia:
Do you think that habit of reading books give a pleasure to you?



Answers (1)
The concentration of mind is towards only the reading book concept, so we feel pleasure for doing that.


I love it.

Sample-sweet Six

What the hell?

Somebody's written a new Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy Book. Somebody who isn't Adams has written a new Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book.

I don't think I feel good about this.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Seven Wonders of the World.

won⋅der  /ˈwÊŒndÉ™r/

–verb (used without object) 1. to think or speculate curiously


And yes, these are all people or things that make or made me do that.

Photobucket

Ah, to be 10 years old again. They're currently remaking this and I'll never know why. I'm sure the SFX now are dated. I'm just as sure I don't care.



The best debut of a Doctor. Ever. And a story that's whispered in the mind of a child.

Especially one with a philosophical bent such as I was, and man as I am.



What more can I say about this at this point? Maybe just that for better or for worse, this is the cover I'll always associate with it...and the drawing of the palm always freaked me out.

Natasha Gregson Wagner.



A Woman My Own Age.



Just a little callback to the 2007 version of this feature.



This is the song I remember best from TD's Underwater Sunlight album.

I also enjoy rock musicals of the ’70s and ’80s...

xanadu..suspended in time




Finally, and you know about me and Godspell. Put simply, it gives me strength.



It's right for me.

Adding injury to insult

Y'know...I was gonna do a joke about how Carmen Electra is, well, drying up. With the exception, of course, of her breasts, which as we all know are made out of reinforced steel. Then I realized she's got enough problems.

In this image, the gentleman laying next to her is about to use her face as an ash tray.

Monday, August 24, 2009

Still.

From an AP Analysis:

After declaring he would rather look forward, President Barack Obama is delving instead into the past to deal with lingering assertions of CIA mistreatment of terror suspects during the Bush administration.


Gee, imagine if they'd done something about this just when it was just the right thing to do; not because they were up against a wall legally.

By "they" I mean not just President Obama or his administration but every Democrat in Congress at least since '06. They left an awfully big mess for him to clean up, which they could've helped take care of if they'd just--ohwhatisthephrase--done their jobs.

Obama's approval of a new elite interrogation unit — to operate within the FBI but under supervision of an interagency group to be chaired by the White House national security adviser — allowed him to get out in front of the decision by Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a government prosecutor and the administration's release of a newly declassified report detailing harsh Bush-era interrogation practices.

According to the material, CIA interrogators conducted mock executions, threatened to kill the children of one detainee and implied that another's mother would be sexually assaulted.


Remember that paragraph as you read this next one.

Some people at the CIA did that. And still:

Obama doesn't want to be portrayed as being soft on suspected terrorists and finds himself under pressure from both the right and the left to do something.


And here, we have another of the things Bush did to us.

Not making people think they're going to be executed, their family members killed and raped is considered being soft on terrorism now.

Gosh, we’re butch.

Heidi Montag needs to be dropped from a high story window

Nothing below the third floor, please.

You may wonder what brought this on. I mean granted, Montag is an annoying "celebrity" with all the apparent wit and taste of shampoo (not the girl group).

But there are certainly other celebrities of whom this is true. However, now...hating Montag has become personal. See, I made the mistake of checking out video of her..."singing" at a beauty pageant.

My defense: Somebody said the song reminded them of a single like from the '80s. Well, there's a reason: It's built around samples from a Yazoo song.

And not just any Yazoo song... "Situation," one of the great electronic dance/pop songs. Sorry about the annoying ad(s) in the below video, but this is still the best version of their song I could find on YouTube.



I'll say it again, slowly. Some studio hack (or hacks) thought butchering a music track by synth pioneer Vince Clarke (only the Keith Richards of techno-pop) would be a good idea.

Someone(s) thought replacing vocals by a singer as soulful and happy as Alison Moyet with Heidi Montag would be a good idea, for crying out loud.

Here is her "song" strictly for illustrative purposes.

I urge you to bail out before Spencer starts his horrible attempt at "rapping" (around 2:20)



As you can see...I have no choice but to kill her.

(Should any police be looking in, let me just say, etc etc etc, that of course I won't be and have no intention of killing her.)

(However, should I ever have the opportunity to vote her into a Tennessee prison*, there's no telling what I might do.)

*(Which really should be a reality show at some point.)

As I sadly shake my head, and try not to type the words "self-destruct."

From an NYT Op-Ed Column:


In reality, the health care wrestling match is less a test of Mr. Obama’s political genius than it is a test of the Democratic Party’s ability to govern. This is not the Reagan era, when power in Washington was divided, and every important vote required the president to leverage his popularity to build trans-party coalitions. Fox News and Sarah Palin have soapboxes, but they don’t have veto power. Mr. Obama could be a cipher, a nonentity, a Millard Fillmore or a Franklin Pierce, and his party would still have the power to pass sweeping legislation without a single Republican vote.


Here's what's weird to me...ok, let me rephrase that, here is one of the things which is weird to me. I remember hearing; I think it was sometime around the inauguration, that one of the things about the President which gave hope was essentially this:

Having received so much money from so many sources, he would be beholden to none.

I wonder whatever happened to that.

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Where the music is loud

Part of me thinks I should save this till tomorrow afternoon, when I'm looking for the latest in this year's "list" meme for the month of August. Certainly it would fit there, being a "Megamix" of one of my favorite bands in one of my favorite genres.

But, wha'th'hell, it's nice to share...



Not bad, izzit?