Xema on the Straight Dope Message Board, asks a questions I've been wondering for a while now: Why are there so many pillows in hotel rooms?. Maybe I'm misremembering, but I remember a time in which a hotel bed had two and only two pillows. It seemed sensible at the time. What happened?
I've always been a big fan of Richard Garriott (aka Lord British, to those of us who played the Ultima series). Looks like he's going into space as a tourist. When I imagine it, I imagine the little Lord British animated icon in a spaceship 10 squares wide by 4 squares tall...
My favorite composer for soundtracks, Ennio Morricone, is coming to New York to play at Radio City Music Hall. Evidently he will also be at the Academy Awards to receive a lifetime achievement award. I'm really happy to here both of these things, Morricone is definitely underappreciated here in the U.S.
The New York Times has an article on Ennio Morricone for the occasion, I highly recommend it.
I've been excited to see Mel Gibson's new movie Apocalypto ever since I heard about the project. I'm not a Mel Gibson fan by any means, and the guy of course has some serious problems. But I've always felt that there are a great number of historical cultures that have been completely neglected by the movies, so when I heard about Mel's movie about the Mayans I was very appreciative of the concept. The movie turned out not to disappoint.
Although almost all reviews I read said that this takes place in the pre-Columbian times, this is not the case. It is really post-Columbian, but pre-first contact with the Mayan, probably in the year 1517. The existence of smallpox on the movie is sort of a giveaway.
The movie itself is good, and does a very good job humanizing those who we would ordinarily think of as primitive forest dwellers. The movie does a good job of showing many aspects of both the Mayan and the forest culture, providing lots of information without taking away from the plot and action of the movie. I'm sure there are historical flaws. One I noticed was the fact that the Mayans were surprised by an eclipse. Actually, they were fairly sophisticated with their astronomical knowledge, and would surely have known about it beforehand.
So, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I don't think it's a great movie, but it is a good and original one, which is fairly rare nowadays. Go forth and see it. And, someone out there, make more movies like it. There are a million fascinating places and times out there, and we've only seen stories of a small fraction of it.
This episode of Colbert's "The New Tek Jansen Adventures" which aired last Wednesday was the funniest thing I've seen in years. Years! It's been quite some time since I laughed so hard. Of course, it might just be me who sees it as so amusing, I'm sure it helps that 2001 is my favorite movie.
Hey, remember that Garfield strip where Jon drinks dog semen? No? Well, it seems that someone remembered it and started a thread on the Straight Dope Message Board about it. Was it an urban legend? A misremembered product of a deviant mind, or what? Well, the amazing thing is that eventually the strip in question was found, pretty much exactly as described. I think this settles any question about the usefulness of the internet, don't you?
I usually don't use this blog for the meme-type stories, but this one is too good to pass over.
So, remember back in February, when Central Park had it's great piece of conceptual arts, the Gates (big saffron colored gates put around paths in the park)? Now, the big piece of conceptual art here is a small park island that is floating around Manhattan.
Yesterday, a group of what can only be described as "art pirates" attempted to put a little saffron-colored gate in the little floating park.
I love this.
This is too good to be just in a comment. Marcus Ronaldi writes in about a Frank Chu-themed pub crawl. If only I lived by San Francisco still...
I'm anxiously awaiting pictures. In fact, I think I'll send this to my friend Eric, who takes pictures of protests in San Francisco.February 05, 2005 - 02:33 PM More on the Frank Chu Pub Crawl
The Frank Chu Pub Crawl and March will be on Saturday February 12th at 12 Noon. We will meet at the Powell Street Cable Car Turnaround.
We will be identified by the group with the Frank Chu signs. The path will be up Powell to a bar in Union Square (the choice will be based on the size of the group) Then we will go to Union Square to hear some speeches.
We will turn at Sutter and then go up Grant and then through Northbeach and end up at Fisherman's Wharf and maybe have some regular beers on Pier 39. It will all be worth it if some perplexed tourist in Fisherman's Wharf goes back and tells that people in San Francisco are protesting some elaborate Intergalactic conspiracy.
Bring either a sign (make your own or buy one from Frank) or a camera
RSVP for those on Tribe Frankchumarch2.notlong.com/
RSVP for those not on Tribe Frankchumarch1.notlong.com
I found an interesting site today about the origins of monotheism. I don't want to turn my blog into a link blog, but this is particularly good. Also, I haven't posted in a while, and I'm sick and need something to do, yet I have nothing particularly interesting to write about.
It's been a long time since the last post. Not much interesting has happened to blog about, but I have been playing a wonderful online game called The Kingdom of Loathing. It's free, it's funny, it's hip. Try it out!
Strange, I just got a comment that was suspiciously off-topic and well-written, from a officer in Iraq detailing how they are helping people, etc. It was posted to my blog entry about Bush lying about the Iraq war. I've deleted the comment. However, I was suspicious about it, and did a search on it, and lo and behold, it appears everywhere! Evidently it is part of an old Republican form letter, that you can see fooled a lot of newspapers. Amazing that this is still going around, now electronically. I don't yet know if this is a new kind of spam, or else someone cut & pasted it after reading my blog.
This blog may be a shoddy work, but at least I can catch Republican form letters better than the average newspaper.
I knew that a film adaptation of Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly was coming out. I did not know, however, that Richard Linklater was directing. I also didn't know that it was going to use an improved version of the effects used in Linklater's Waking Life. The book is excellent, Linklater is incredible, so I cannot fucking wait to see this movie.
I just finished reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. It's a book that I've been meaning to read for a while. Recently a few separate people raved about it to me, so I figure I had to read it. And, yes, it was that good. Definitely the best book I've read since Egger's A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.
The bassist for the Dead Milkmen, Dave Blood killed himself last week. This is pretty sad for me, this is the first time a musician I actually like has died. The Dead Milkmen's album Big Lizard in my Backyard was the first tape I ever bought. Most people are ashamed of the crappy first tape they bought just when they are getting into music, but I still listen to mine.
Hey, what do you know. There's a Tom the Dancing Bug blog. Evidently it just started, I'm not sure who is running it, and I have no idea if it will be any good. But it's my favorite comic right now, so if it's good I'll add it to my little blogroll here.
Mojo Nixon is retiring (via Boing Boing). This is a shame. I've seen many good concerts in my day, and Mojo always has the best live show. His music is great, he has something to say, and he doesn't take himself too seriously. I wonder if his tour is swinging by here before it winds up at his final show in Austin?
My friend Adam recently, out of the blue, bought me the DVD of The Tenant. Thanks Adam! I've been re-watching it, and I'm struck again about just how creepy and subtle this movie is.
The first few times I saw it, I just thought of it as a cool psychological horror film. This time, though, I wonder if it's not really about the treatment of immigrants in France (which is notoriously bad). Several times in the movie, the protagonist Trelkovsky is treated with suspicion because he's not French-born, although he is a French citizen. Not only as a tenant, but as a citizen he is obviously expected to not make any noise, and just stay out of sight. Perhaps the way everyone expects him to be like the previous tenant, Simone, is similar to the way everyone expects immigrants to behave like French people, except better.
But I don't want to overanalyze the movie. As for flipping out and imaging people playing soccer with human heads, I can't see any real symbolic significance.
My wife borrowed The DaVinci Code, which is the current fiction bestseller. Everyone seems to be reading it. It was a quick read, a real page turner. But it's not difficult to be a page turner. All you have to do is have fairly short chapters, and end each chapter on a suspensful note.
All in all, I thought the book was fun, but kind of stupid in a lot of ways. Without giving much away, I'd just like to say that I totally disagree with it's theory of the Holy Grail. The Grail is, as far as I've ever read, just an Welsh legend of a horn-of-plenty that got Christianized. This fits with how the grail is portrayed in the ancient Parisifal and Le Morte dArthur.
Other comments made in the book about how things like Disney movies and such are "really" about the Holy Grail make the author seem like a complete loon. And he really seems to take this stuff seriously, as opposed to Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, whose Illuminatus! trilogy took an approach which made fun of conspiracy theories instead of believing in them. And Umbertco Eco's Foucalt's Pendulum is wiser still in the ways of conspiracy.
I don't think 20/20 has been entirely honest. I happened to catch about 10 minutes of 20/20 yesterday, where they were exposing the dangers of Teflon. It was a good report, except for one part, where they fried bacon to show that just by frying bacon a Teflon-coated pan will get up to more than 500 degrees. Perhaps this is true, but I doubt it. From the short video segment I saw of them frying bacon, I think what is more likely is that they just put the pan on high and put bacon in. The pan overheated before the bacon is cooked, which is unsurprising. 20/20 made it sound like this was normal for cooking bacon, however I believe the normal way of cooking bacon is not to put it on high heat, but on medium heat. The pan would not reach 500 degrees with normal cooking. Putting a teflon pan on high heat for minutes on end is not recommended by anyone, and I think 20/20 was fairly dishonest with this test.
Not that I'm trying to defend the Teflon industry. I think they are guilty as hell. But misleading demonstrations by 20/20 should be pointed out.
Ebert has a great new essay on Leone's movie "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly". I'm not sure I agree with all of his points. I don't believe the leadup to the 3-way shootout was supposed draw attention to itself. I just thought it was a great, slow, buildup of tension (although somewhat marred by the audience noticing Lee van Cleef's finger that is missing a joint during this scene). My favorite duel. Or is it a truel?
When I heard that Bob Hope was dead, my first thought was wondering if Kibo's hopelessly outdated website would get updated (he previously had a Bob Hope life detector on the site). The answer: yes, it is updated. But not by much.
And you thought the guy sawing off his own arm was extreme. An Indian man was apparently partially beheaded in a driving accident. He didn't lose his cool, though. He held his head in place with a thin towel, and drove himself to several doctors until he found one willing to treat him.
Wow.
(Found on Plastic.com)
Built St. Louis: A very thorough and interesting site dedicated to historic architecture in St. Louis. I found this link today via Metafilter, I recommend reading the comments to this article as well.
An article on one man's quest to replace his credit card signature with various bizarre doodles is incredibly hilarious. Read it! (via Metafilter)
Hillbillies are a minority, no doubt about that. And it's always been OK to make fun of them as far as I an recall. But a new reality show based on The Beverly Hillbillies has irked a Southern Senator.
Is it OK to make fun of hillbillies? Well, we probably shouldn't make fun of any group. And they are poor and disadvantaged, as much as any minority. And although Southern rural areas are known for racism, it certainly isn't confined to the south (rural Oregon used to be particularly bad), or to rural areas (there were many anti-black riots in old New York). However, I would believe that the rural south is pretty much as bad as it gets. Still, discrimination is discrimination, and this show would be offensive if it was about any other ethnic group. And it basically is just another way for the middle class to laugh at the lower class. So I think the senator has a point.