Monday, September 05, 2005

one star in the black sky

Despite all the death, destruction, looting, property damage, government inaptitude, murder, lost children, separation anxiety, post traumatic stress, starvation, dehydration, disease ridden water, snipers firing at hospital evacuations, stranded elderly and soaring gas prices one good thing has come in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Radio stations have decided to stop playing "New Orleans is sinking" by the Tragically Hip. A shitty song by a shitty band that would no doubt compound the shittiness of a shitty situation.

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Spirit photography at the NYC Metropolitan

Here are a couple of examples of pictures from "The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult," opening September 27.
"The Ghost of Bernadette Soubirous," circa 1890, by an unknown photographer.

"The Medium Eva C. With a Materialization on Her Head and a Luminous Apparition Between Her Hands," 1912, by Albert von Schrenck-Notzing (German, 1862-1929).

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Saturday, September 03, 2005

Star Wars: Episode 4.5

What I would really like to see is a series of star wars spinoff movies that involve the character's in between the movies. Someone (not george lucas) should make them.

Question: After the first death star blows up and darth vader is flung off into space how long does it take him to get
where he's going? And what happens along the way?

Seeing as he was in a short range fighter that is not capable of light speed I like to assume that it would take him several days to a week to get to the nearest Empire ship or stronghold. Here we have the setting for the ultimate
road movie (but in space). Vader throws on some driving music and cruises for a while, he stops at various gas stations and coffee shops along the way, runs into some strange characters, gets in a bar fight or two and maybe a love interest at some point. There also has to be a scene where the emperor talks to vader over that hologram cell phone thing and is pretty pissed at vader for dickin around, this will probably happen when vader wakes up after a night of drinking tequila and realizes he is broke so he has to get the emperor to wire him some cash.


tags: star wars, movies, entertainment

Friday, September 02, 2005

q without u (or lies my teacher told me)

When I was in grade 3 my English teacher told us that there were NO words that had a q without a u directly after it and challenged us to think of an example. The best anyone could come up with was bbq and the teacher quickly quipped in that it was a abbreviation of barbeque and that it didn't count. For the past 20 years I went about my life believing this lie until recently when playing a game of Scrabble it was revealed (in the documentation provided with said scrabble game) that there are in fact 22 words that contain a q and no u.

# FAQIR - Variation of FAKIR, a Hindu ascetic.
# FAQIRS - Plural of FAQIR.
# QAID - A variation of CAID, a Muslim leader.
# QAIDS - Plural of QAID.
# QANAT - A system of underground tunnels and wells in the Middle East.
# QANATS - Plural of QANAT.
# QAT - Variation of KAT, an evergreen shrub.
# QATS - Plural of QAT.
# QINDAR - Variation of QINTAR, a monetary unit of Albania.
# QINDARS - Plural of QINDAR.
# QINDARKA - Albanian currency.
# QINDARKAS - The plural of QINDARKA.
# QINTAR - See above.
# QINTARS - Plural of QINTAR.
# QOPH - A letter of the Hebrew alphabet.
# QOPHS - Plural of QOPH.
# QWERTY - A standard typewriter keyboard.
# QWERTYS - The plural of QWERTY, see above.
# SHEQEL - An ancient unit of weight and money.
# SHEQALIM - The plural of SHEQEL, see above
# TRANQ - A variation of TRANK (i.e. tranquilizer).
# TRANQS - Plural of TRANQ

I now regard everything I was taught by my third grade teacher as false, especially that you need to learn cursive writing because you will use it later in life. Its a lot later in life for me now and I don't think I need it.

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Thursday, September 01, 2005

Hurricane Grief Porn

It happened after 911 it happened after the Tsunami and its happening again. Everyone is glued to the media to see the latest on the devastation of the post hurricane Katrina world. Things seem to be getting worse and worse and its all anyone can talk about . What is it about human nature that makes us obsess over tragedy and almost get off on feeling bad for the victims. I don't think people really feel better about themselves by seeing people in worse scenarios, I know I certainly don't yet at the same time I cant stop watching CNN to find out what has happened.

tags:hurricane, katrina, news

Wednesday, August 31, 2005

The Downward Spiral of Drug Addiction


These pic's has been floating around for a while now but this is the first I've seen them. They show the downward spiral of a girl from New York over the course of 15 years. I find the pics so haunting becasue you can pretty much see her slowly lose here soul.

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Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Hurricane Katrina: New Orleans gets boned

If you build a coastal city below sea level you're building a city on thin ice and you must know that it's only a matter of time before disaster strikes. That being said it certainly sucks for anyone that lives (lived) there. I really cant imagine what it would be like to all of a sudden be told that you have one day to evacuate the city where you live.

Watching the footage today I do find it funny (funny strange not funny ha ha) that all the people stranded on rooftops who are in dire need of rescue are the same people who ignored the evacuation in the first place. I imagine some of them were saying things like: "Fuck that I'm not going to the Superdome its not going to be that bad", but I'm sure that's not going through their minds when the water is up to the second floor of their house and they had to break a hole in the ceiling to make it to the roof.

New Orleans may never be rebuilt and it may become a bizarre abandoned nautical ghost town. Mardi Gras will become a legend and the only recorded history of the event will be girls gone wild videos, due to this it will be remembered as an even greater city than it was.


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Saturday, August 27, 2005

the poor man's actor

To make it in Hollywood it takes a lot of patience, talent, determination and of course money. As a guide for aspiring film makers I have put together a list of actor alternatives to the big star that you may not be able to afford. I present to you the poor mans actors.


Skeet Ulrich is the poor mans Johnny Depp




Gary Busey is the poor mans Nick Nolte




Burt Reynolds is the poor mans Sean Connery




F. Murray Abraham is the poor mans Ben Kingsley





Christian Slater is the poor mans Jack Nicholson




Leelee Sobieski is the poor mans Helen Hunt





Joey Lauren Adams is the poor mans Renee Zellweger




Kyra Sedwick is the poor mans Julia Roberts




Kd Lang is the poor mans Tobey Maguire




Emilio Estevez is the poor mans Charlie Sheen




Charlie Sheen is the poor mans Martin Sheen




Daniel Baldwin is the poor mans Stephen Baldwin




Stephen Baldwin is the poor mans Billy Baldwin




Billy Baldwin is the poor mans Alec Baldwin




Cuba Gooding Jr. is the poor mans oscar winner




Christopher Walken is the poor mans space alien




Pauly Shore is the poor mans Jar Jar Binks




Ron Perlman is just plain creepy please dont put him in any more movies.



Check:

Poor Man's Actor Part 2

Friday, June 24, 2005

batman breakdown

so with all the talk about the new batman movie, I decided to do a little research in the the history of the big screen batman. The stats are all from Imdb.

as you can see the batman franchise was sinking faster than Joel Schumacher's credibility ( I had to include Catwoman because it is a batman related movie) I was surprised that Catwoman was rated only slightly worse than Batman & Robin. I never saw Catwoman but the way people talked about it it sounded worse than a movie starring Bennifer, Justin & Kelly or Mariah Carey. Anyway I still havent seen Batman Begins but it seems promising.

Friday, June 10, 2005

star wars episode 3

I liked episode 3 but I should also say that I liked episode 2. Of the prequels they have progressively gotten better, obviously they don't stand up to the originals but I think you have to think of them in different terms. My biggest problems with the pre's are CGI (I hate CGI, but I really hate when characters are done purely with CGI) I still think they look better as puppets and that actually locations look better than fanciful alien landscapes. Problem 2 is that the pre's are way too busy, too many characters, too many locations, too much politics, and the battles and fight scenes are too much. The originals followed a fairly simple formula beginning/middle/end (in terms of location). For example Tatooine --> Death Star --> Death Star battle. or Hoth -->Dagoba --> Cloud City. or Tatooine -->Moon of Endor -->2nd Death Star Battle. Anyway it would have been better if kept simpler.

Now that the six are done its time to ask a bunch of pointless questions:

How did Chewbacca go from being a high ranking officer in the Wookie army to the side kick of a two bit smuggler?
or maybe Chewbacca is a common name for a Wookie.

In episode 3 Ob1 says to Luke "Here is your fathers lightsaber, he wanted you to have it when you to have it when you were old enough but your uncle wouldn't allow it"

here's how I imagine it played out.

phone rings

Ob1 - hello
Vader - Is Ob1 there?
Ob1 - speaking
Vader - hey its, Anna- I mean Darth Vader.
Ob1 - oh shit did you live through that lava pit thing?
Vader- yeah but I'm more machine than man now.
Ob1 - ha ha yeah, sorry about that
Vader - anyway I noticed as my legs were melting off that you grabbed my lightsaber, and its cool I don't need it back or anything cause its a blue one and I have a red one now but can you make sure my son gets that when he's old enough.
Ob1 - Uhhhh what do you mean your son?
Vader - come on man, I'm the most powerful jedi in the galaxy I know that my son is alive
Ob1- Ok I'll make sure he gets it
Vader - thanks dude
Ob1- alright talk to ya later.

and then when Ob1 tries to drop it off Lukes uncle basically utters some insult about him being a crazy old wizard and to get off his property before he beats him with a moisture hose.

another question:

in episode 1 when Ob1 brings Anakin before the jedi council they say he is too old to start the training (and he's maybe 7 years old) he then spends years and years training and eventually is still unable to resist the dark side.

Luke doesn't start training until he is about 19 years old and his training consists of a 5 minute lesson on the flight from Tatooine to Aldaran and then about 2 days on the Dagobah. He then falls for the trap that is set for him, but ultimately he doesn't join the dark side even when its his own father tempting him with dreams of ruling the whole galaxy. I found that strange, It should have been easy as hell for the Emperor and Vader to get Luke to join the Dark side.

Luke: "He says he belongs to an Ob1 Kenobi"
Ob1: "I don't recall ever owning a droid before"
but here's the part that got cut out "but these two have the same names and look exactly like a couple of droids I hung out with for about 30 years and went on a shit load of adventures with, actually Luke C3P0 here was built by your Dad that's pretty cool eh?"

anyway I have a million retarded questions like these.....there are more to come