Keeping Score

I Have No Head

And I must scream.

Oh, the horror. It's almost as if The Headless Horseman was re-written as a basketball allegory.

I'm not sure what's scarier: the basketball head, or the white guy in the lower left hand corner with the black forearm. Michael Jackson's got nothing on that guy.

OMFG!!!!!

NEW MATRIX TRAILER!!!!!!!!!

::glargngaaadrooooooooooool::

You're going to have to do a bit of hunting, but it's worth it. Oh, and in a small world tangent, Tank was on Special Victims Unit last night.

I'm in Matrix heaven.

Which of These Things is Not Unlike the Other?

Tonight MadTV spoofed Fox's current lineup of shows. During the commercial break, Fox aired a commercial for an upcoming show, which I at first thought was a joke, ala SNL's fake commercial that's usually aired immediately after the opening monologue. See if you can spot which one is the real show on this list. Three are from MadTV. One is from Fox.

1). When Snakes Are Thrown at People!
2). Bridezillas!
3). Man vs. Beast: The Defecation Contest!
4). Octagenarian Boxing!

Anyone who's been watching Fox for the past 24 hours is immediately disqualified, because I've seen the commercial four times in the past hour alone.

Good? Bad? Funny?

You decide.

In retrospect, the shimmering lens flare almost lends an air of divine credibility to the whole thing.

'I work seven days a week' -- Al Hirschfeld 1903-2003

I have to admit, that I was never a big fan of his work, although I can easily recognize the enormous talent and craft he had.

What struck me as inspirational about him (and only recently, as in last week), was that I saw a show on aging and the relation of mental and physical prowess with work. They showed a lot of ordinary seniors who were 80 and older working part time at a factory; they proved their point eloquently: people who never retire never slow down. They never get old; the body merely wears out.

The report then went on to cover an old interview with Hirschfeld, and the interviewer was astounded to hear that here's this guy who was 80 (at the time of the interview) and was not only still working, but still a hugely successful artist. When asked why he wasn't retired, Al replied something like "why retire, when I love what I do? This isn't work."

So I guess what I'm trying to get at in my long-winded and verbal sprawl here is that he did affect my life in a positive way, even though I'm not a fan (although I am an appreciator) of his work. He taught me that I don't ever have to retire; that I'm going to continue doing what I love untill the day I die, just like he did.

Namaste, Mr. Hirschfeld.

He's Got the Monks. He's Got the Monks.

Next on my list of potentially horrific B class Hong Kong action epics: Bulletproof Monk

It has yet another trifecta of delicious traits that I strive for in my bad action movies:

1). Chow Yun Fat.
2). Monks.
3). Gratuitous use of dual pistols.

Lest I not learn my Equilibrium lesson, I am not getting pumped for this.

Okay, maybe just a little.*

*Oh who am I kidding? It's gonna suck ass, but at least Chow Yun Fat's in it.

Smaw Transration Plobrem

I'm pretty sure the term BattleRaper means something else entirely in Japanese.

At least I hope it does.

[Update: Evidently, this means exactly what they wanted it to mean. I've heard it described to me as a Mortal Kombatesque finishing move. Only, you ah...get to uh....you know. Rape-ality. Only in Japan, ladies and gentlemen. On the plus side, the demo movies that you have to dig through the site to find are very nicely done, if not sophmoric. Nothing like slo-motion fly-bys of crotches and breasts with cherry-blossom petals drifting by in the soft breeze on a photo-real cinema model of a girl who looks to be all of twelve years old. They don't even bother getting the head in frame.]

Act Now!

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am here to tell you about an amazing new offer. Only recently has the world been exposed to a radical new turn in weight loss. This new scientific discovery, uncovered by a crack team of Swiss and Finnish scientists is going to help millions of people discover their dream of a leaner, more fit and healthy body.

With this amazing new wonder product, there are no pills. No diets. No gimmicks. Eat what you want! You can have French fries and potato chips for dinner if you'd like, and pizza for lunch. There are no carbohydrate blockers, no fat blockers, no shakes, drinks, or gels. It sounds amazing, but with this amazing new program, all you have to do is...

Exercise. For thirty hard minutes a day.

Yeah, I've lost six pounds already...does it show?

Just the Facts, Ma'am

Hey CSI, love the show, but I have a nit to pick.

Last night you showed a shoe imprint of what your detectives deduced as a skateboarder's pair of shoes. Kim Delaney's character pointed out that the left shoe was more worn than the right shoe, from pushing off the ground all the time; the right shoe is up on the skateboard, not the ground. From that assumption she then extrapolated that the skater was goofy, meaning he skates right foot forward (on the board), while the left foot pushes (the opposite is known as regular for you squares). Points on knowing what "goofy" means.

Only she (and your writers) got it wrong. Any skater will tell you that the shoe that's on the board all the time wears out much faster than the foot that pushes. After all, it's standing on sandpaper. If you had to grind a shoe down flat, what would you use? Pavement, or sandpaper? Every time you stop pushing to coast, you shift your front foot sideways on the sandpaper griptape (and simply place your rear foot on the sandpaper), which pretty much sands down the shoe rubber of the front foot. It happens more than you'd think, and after a few years of skating, I had an entire closet full of worn out right Chuck Taylors and brand-new left ones.

So basically, based on the wear patterns you showed in your shoe imprints, the detectives should have been looking for a regular footed skater, not goofy.

I just found it odd that you cared enough to find out what we call right-footed skaters, but didn't care enough to get the facts straight on shoe-wear, which was the job of a Criminal Science Investigation.

Hot Jobs

I just wanted to warn people, lest ye be tempted by the hoards of commercials I've been seeing recently in which Animation is touted as some sort of a Holy Grail for carreers, that you probably should think twice about it.

Going into the field of animation is akin to job suicide. I can't stress enough that there are more kids in school to be animators right now than there are jobs to fill. And the sad thing is, most of those kids in school are wasting their money, based on the look of their demo reels. But I digress.

Becoming an animator is like saying you'd like to spend $30,000 on a shot at finding that needle in a haystack that's on fire and might not be there in the next ten minutes.

Just a friendly warning, folks.

If any of you readers were looking into animation, might I suggest a look into Information Technologies, VCR or gun repair? I hear those are hot.

My PS2 Is Bigger Than Yours Is

I finally got my TOOL at work. So of course I had to photograph it. See how tall it is. Bow before its sky-scraper-like majesty. Fear its mighty power.

Feel your PS2 Envy.

Finally Someone Gets It

And the award goes to Lileks for what Scorcese should have said:

“As a New Yorker, I remember too well the death and destruction that arrived on our doorstep that day in September. As an American, I worry about regimes who possess both the means to kill innocent citizens and the devilish will to do it. As an artist, I value the freedom I have in a pluralistic, secular democracy, and I realize that these traits are not only rare and worthy of defense, but deserve to be extended to people in other nations. As a student of history, I am impressed by how our military - which has the ability to annihilate cities and nations - has spent billions to develop weapons that destroy a single building. Surely this says as much about us as our crass and extroverted culture; what other nation with our abilities would take such care? Presented with enemies who build weapons factories next to kindergartens, we invent missiles that take the former and spare the latter. This may not mean we are right, but it surely means we are are bound by a notion of decency our opposites lack. As a human being, I mourn the loss of innocent life that will surely attend any war - but I must admit, if we could have prevented 9/11 with a military action that cost a dozen innocent lives, I would have supported it with the reluctance that must attend any act of organized violence. And finally, as a filmmaker who lives in a special kind of isolation, surrounded mostly with affluent like-minded people from the arts community, I must admit that when it comes to foreign affairs and military matters I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about."

I'm Walkin' on Air

New Year's Resolution Update:

Not a whole lot to tell for the time being, other than the fact that I've lost three and a half pounds in five days! Woooooooooooooo!. Mind you, I'm well aware that most of that is probably water weight, but still. It feels good to see the scale tip at that number, and it feels even better to pinch myself around the middle and know that there's definitely something missing, and I mean that in the best possible way. After the first day, I had lost a half pound. The very next day, the scale had reported that I had then gained a pound, for a net gain of half a pound. So I started eating smaller portions :D

Oh, and I also ran a mile tonight. For like, the first time in 15 years. Granted, it took me ten minutes, which is a far cry from my personal best of five minutes fifty nine seconds (no, that is not "just six minutes," thankyouverymuch), but then I'm not sixteen years old, either. Maybe I can get it down to within eight or so. I'm really hoping that in a month or two I'll be running two miles in under sixteen minutes, since that's what the military requirement is for making the cut to be a paratrooper.

No, I'm not thinking about joining the Airborne. I just thought that was a good number to shoot for.

More coherent stuff later. I'm working up a strong lather/rant regarding videogames and violence, and I'll probably cross-post it at Game Girl Advance.

Select Pump, Then Press Tart

I don't know what is with me and the pictures of stupid things lately, but I find them amusing. I hope you do as well. This is an abused "start" button on a gasoline pump.

After all, who wouldn't enjoy a fresh tart with their gas?

Boy, did that just sound wrong.

Afortitude?

Found this one in poster form at the Post Office. I can see that they're going for "Fortitude," but the choice of a closed "4" immediately makes my eyes first read and translate it into an "A" in h4x0r 13375p34k (hacker 'leet'speak). And while Lance Armstrong certainly deserves to have some "Attitude" after winning four Tour DeFrances back to back, I don't think that was the first impression they were going for. Besides, it would be spelled wrong.