Classic comics, rejiggered.

(via MetaFilter)

As determined by the editors of World Literature Today.

To The Lighthouse? Check.
Waiting for Godot? Check.
One Hundred Years of Solitude? Check.
Pale Fire? Check.
Ficciones? Check.
Invisible Man? Check.
Invisible Cities? Check.

It's not a terrible list. Better than the Vintage list, certainly. But still, just a bit male, wouldn't you say?

Also, I thought I was the only person in the world who liked Pale Fire better than Lolita.

Your daily dose of eye-surgery web-comic goodness.

(via MetaFilter)

Jessa Crispin weighs in on the recent Neal Pollack / Dave Eggers brouhaha. (Via Bookslut)

You bastards. It happened a month ago, but I only just heard about it today. The story engineers behind The Matrix Online (described as "the fourth Matrix movie" by developers) killed Morpheus as part of the game's first-year plot.

In other news, I still can't believe how bad The Matrix Revolutions was.

Betterize your vocambulary with the best of 'em.

(Little Fluffy's right -- the Kerry game was lame.)

"There were 16 days in April during which no one seems to know where she was."

What do you mean, you stopped caring about this last week?

Via I-saw-it-someplace-last-night-can't-remember-where.

DIY R2-D2 at astromech.net. Nerd.

A traffic forecasting system capable of predicting traffic conditions seven days in advance will go live to the public in California on Wednesday.

Alongside the weather forecast, viewers of KXTV News 10 in Sacramento can now get 3D animations of their local road network, showing not only where the gridlock is but also where it is likely to be.

Sounds impressive, until you remember that a sign painted "TRAFFIC" predicts California traffic seven days in advance.

(via GeekPress)

What do YOU say, AMERICA?

(via Boing Boing and We Make Money, Not Art)

Scheduled for release between Christmas 2005 and Easter 2006, Left Behind: Eternal Forces will put players in command of the apocalyptic battles raging in the streets of New York City between the angelic Tribulation Forces and the demonic Global Community Peacekeepers during the End of Days. Gamers will participate in events from the Left Behind book series in single player mode and battle to capture territory from other players in the multi-player online game mode.

Here's the game website.

I'm surprised they let you play as Team Anti-Christ. Can the bad guys win? (via Boing Boing)

New 'We Love Katamari' trailer here. Knowledge of Japanese helpful, but not essential. (Direct link to .zip.) The game looks almost identical to the first one, but that's fine with me.

(via Waxy)

In no particular order.

Davey Fosty Wally has some interesting things to say about your brain.

Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe; the realist, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness because it's so socially repulsive. But it's pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.

Please don't worry that I'm getting ready to lecture you about compassion or other-directedness or all the so-called virtues. This is not a matter of virtue. It's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self. People who can adjust their natural default setting this way are often described as being "well-adjusted", which I suggest to you is not an accidental term.

It may just make you a better person. Or not.

But what's his beef with atheists and atheism? It always seems strange to me when people talk about how the only way to care about your neighbor is to worship [some] god. Why not cut out the middle man and try actually caring about your neighbor? Is that so hard?

(via MetaFilter)

After convincing older women that they can find love with a man half their age, best-selling writer Terry McMillan's Tea Cake has run off -- with a man. Jonathan Plummer was 20 years old and McMillan was 43 when they met while she was staying at a Jamaican resort in 1995.

...

Her widely read novel How Stella Got Her Groove Back is based, in part, on the steamy affair between McMillan and Plummer. McMillan is now 53. Plummer is 30 -- and he has come out of the closet. McMillan has filed for a divorce, claiming Plummer "lied about his sexual orientation" and that he married her "only to gain U.S. citizenship."

Snark aside, it sounds like a pretty bad situation.

Hulk Hogan's not only the world's most famous wrestler - he's also a very traditional suburban dad who just so happens to live on a 20,000-square-foot estate in Clearwater, Florida. Daughter Brooke (16) wants to be a pop star, and son Nick (14) wants to be a race car driver. As Hulk and his wife Linda watch their kids grow up before their eyes, they're more committed than ever to protecting them from sex, drugs, and the other evils of modern life.

Watch as Hulk wrestles with the everyday struggles of Brooke, Nick, and Linda -- and also celebrates their triumphs. Somehow, he and Linda have tapped into the secrets of good parenting. So don't mess with the Hulkster - or his family. Grrrr!

I just died a little inside.

My hometown newspaper kills War of the Worlds dead:

...in "War of the Worlds," Steven Spielberg has not only seized the iconography of that event, he's appropriated it to sell a popcorn entertainment about alien invaders, and encourage our own fears of the strangers among us. It's difficult to know whether to be astounded by the immensity of his audacity or to be merely appalled.

Via my dad.

NEW YORK—Describing it as a "discerning and literary companion" to their flagship entertainment-news magazine, Us Weekly editor-in-chief Janice Min announced on Tuesday the creation of Us Quarterly, a scholarly, four-times-yearly journal dedicated to sizzling-hot celebrity gossip.

The quarterly will feature in-depth essays, investigative pieces, and expert commentary on Hollywood's hottest megastars.

Via Bookslut.

"A professional oboist has lifted the curtain on sex, drugs and nepotism in the world of classical music." From The Times of London. (Via A&L Daily)

It's psychological.

In a study, psychologists showed participants a videotape of a close friend or acquaintance telling a story about an irksome event, such as an incident in which he or she yelled or acted aggressively. The researchers shut off the monitor's sound to force viewers to focus only on nonverbal cues.

The researchers found that subjects often fail to detect concealed anger in their close pals. Such mistakes occur, researchers suggest, because friends misinterpret ambiguous signals of emotion, giving them a positive spin. Acquaintances, however, saw signals of anger and irritation more readily.

The new Hot-or-Notness. (Warning: No pictures, but the words are potentially not-safe-for-work.)

The Bearskinrug Sketchbook. Fun project.

(via Rashomon)

A red-letter day for our red-leaf neighbor to the North, as Canada almost-but-not-quite legalizes same-sex marriage. It'll be official when the legislation passes the Senate, which is expected soon.

So the question is begged: why does Canada hate marriage/the Bible/America/cute little puppies/etc?

(via MetaFilter)

Because there's nothing worse than a stopped drain. [Flash]

(via Little Fluffy)

Man, this is fun to play with. According to the Google blog, it's based on the Keyhole program I mentioned last November. Only this version is free. Ain't progress grand?

Anyone know why there's such poor satellite coverage of Greensboro?

(via MeFi)

Congratulations to our new nemeses: Bat City Review.

From the press release for the not-quite-in-good-faith Lost Liberty Hotel project:

Justice Souter's vote in the "Kelo vs. City of New London" decision allows city governments to take land from one private owner and give it to another if the government will generate greater tax revenue or other economic benefits when the land is developed by the new owner.

On Monday June 27, Logan Darrow Clements faxed a request to Chip Meany the code enforcement officer of the Towne of Weare, New Hampshire seeking to start the application process to build a hotel on 34 Cilley Hill Road. This is the present location of Mr. Souter's home.

In other news, Kelo vs. New London represents the first time I've agreed with Antonin Scalia on anything. (Background)

Which contemporary novels will still be read in 100 years? Calvino's If On A Winter's Night a Traveler (#10), obviously, but what else? Vintage plans to narrow their list of 100 down to 15 "sure-things" by September.

It's a little crummy they're only drawing from their own catalog...but just a little crummy. It's more much troubling that they picked so few women. I think the final count was Men - 74, Women - 26. Didn't they think people would notice?

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to run out and pick up Life, a User's Manual (#78). Calvino-tested, Calvino-approved.

(via Bookslut)

Sounds like somebody needs a Bat-Attorney. (Beware: contains spoilery references to Batman Begins.) Via Linkfilter.

From the mind of AskMen.com.

I really feel like I could stick it out and beat Cal Ripken's record. I just need someone to take a chance on me.

Also via Cynical-C, which also links to the immortal question -- how does one kill a T-Rex?

"The American people of today's Americas want a politician who can speak their language, and speak it badly." Classic, must-watch video from Andy Dick and Comedy Central, via Cynical-C.

That's what Slate wants to know. I'd love to see some people from The State really make it. But I've seen a few very early episodes of Stella, and unless it's changed drastically in the years since those were added to the end of my The State bootlegs, I've got a bad feeling about this.

Scientists have created eerie zombie dogs, reanimating the canines after several hours of clinical death in attempts to develop suspended animation for humans.

US scientists have succeeded in reviving the dogs after three hours of clinical death, paving the way for trials on humans within years.

And here's the best part:

Plans to test the technique on humans should be realised within a year, according to the Safar Centre.

Via Gravity Lens.

Slate has a slide-show tour of Toothpaste for Dinner, which it calls "the most addictive comic on the Web."

Jordin Isip
Toby's Monitor
Aquarel Watercolor Blog
Joshua Ellingson



(via Rashomon and Drawn!)

Because you just can't wait to find out what happens on Joey next season. They've got Alias, Lost, Smallville, and Arrested Development spoilers, too (among others). And just for Casey, The O.C.

They used to cover 24, but now you have to go to Ryan's Report. They've already got some details on episode 5.1.

Space.com has an article up about what the space tourism industry will have to be able to provide. As with all things, the #1 concern seems to be removing odors quickly.

(via GeekPress and Gravity Lens)

GameSpy has a more detailed preview of the latest addition to my brother's (and my) favorite gaming franchise.

With all the recent hubbub surrounding Scientology ever since Tom Cruise went crazy (here he is killing Oprah), it seems like a good time to link to Operation Clambake.

(The Oprah link via Cynical-C, which also links to Wikipedia's entry on Xenu, Scientology's Satan.)

Jonathan Lethem's debut novel -- a near-future noir romp through a drug-laden America where the printed word is outlawed, you need a license to ask questions, and anthropomorphised animals fill the landscape (one antagonist is a superevolved kangaroo) -- is pretty freaking excellent. If you're into that sort of thing.

I wonder if Lethem (assuming his career doesn't completely tank) will write any more pure science fiction, like this book or his other early work. It's a tough move getting promoted from Science Fiction to the Fiction & Literature; not many people do, and those that do rarely ever go back.

P.S.: While getting the Amazon links I found a link to this book, Kafka Americana, which I'd never heard of before. It's a collaboration between Lethem and another writer named Carter Scholz. Here's the Amazon blurb:

Kafka is not only an icon of disquiet, but a symbol of writerly dedication, the patron saint of tortured scribes everywhere. Thus, the very funny spoofs and "alternate" Kafkas presented in this short collection by Lethem and Scholz are inspired by affection. Perhaps the funniest of the group is Lethem (Motherless Brooklyn) and Scholz's collaboration, "Receding Horizons," in which Kafka comes to America, changes his name to Jack Dawson and writes screenplays. After his death, one of the directors he worked for, Frank Capra, wants to make Dawson's "The Judgment" into a film. Capra hires Clifford Odets, who believes that the hero's name, Aussenhof, won't go over for an American audience. Aussenhof means outer court, which is what the English call a bailey, so the character is called "George Bailey," and suddenly, a Kafka short story is transformed, with mad logic, into It's a Wonderful Life. In the "Notebooks of Bob K.," Lethem turns Batman into a Kafka hero, and mutates various of Kafka's famous aphorisms into Batman-related sayings. Orson Welles makes an appearance in Lethem's "K for Fake," which riffs on The Trial and features a man, like Joseph K in the novel, who gets a phone call informing him that charges have been prepared against him. This K being American, however, he immediately ascribes the call to a mixup with the credit card company, because he knows he isn't over his charge limit. The story follows the outlines of The Trial at a culturally dissonant distance. These stories are fluff, but extremely witty and intelligent fluffAmaking them a lot more solid than some more ostensibly serious writing.

That's a pretty funny idea.

tracking the copious consumption of alcohol on the classic TV series Bewitched.

My favorite factoid: Note: Dick York, as Darrin, got drunk several times, while Dick Sargent, as Darrin, was never shown drunk.

(via Gravity Lens)

If you even think about reading this, you hate America.

(via A&L Daily)

Talking Chimp Gives His First Press Conference.

Good movie.

I had some structural questions, particularly about the second act, and the presence of (spoiler)Scarecrow(end spoiler) feels a little tacked on -- as a villain he just can't compete with (spoiler)Ra's Al Ghul(end spoiler).

Christian Bale's Michael Keaton impression really annoyed me. Whenever he's in the Batsuit, he's painful to watch. (Gary Oldman and Michael Caine, on the other hand, are entirely excellent. EDIT: I forgot Liam Neeson, maybe the best actor and almost certainly the best character in the movie.)

The last major action set-piece has some serious logical problems, particularly in the logistics of the clean-up.

But all in all Batman Begins easily surpasses any of the earlier Batman film adaptations, including the Burton film, and it's definitely worth seeing for anyone who grew up on this myth.

The cartoons have still got 'em all beat, though.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 12:07 AM  |

Great photos of the Boston That Was.

(via MeFi)

The Magazine for Adult Fans of LEGO.

(also via Boing Boing)

Lost malls of America.

There's a few new bunny re-enactments up at Angry Alien, including Pulp Fiction. It's not their best work, but it's something.

I hope the Star Wars one comes online soon.

Is it possible we're reaching the limits of what the thirty-second-bunny-re-enactment genre can offer us?

"Dock," she said. "You're supposed to pitch today."

Ellis focused his mind. No. Friday. He wasn't pitching until Friday. He was sure.

"Baby," she replied. "It is Friday. You slept through Thursday."

Ellis remained calm. The game would start late. Ample time for the acid to wear off. Then it struck him: doubleheader. The Pirates had a doubleheader. And he was pitching the first game. He had four hours to get to San Diego, warm up and pitch. If something didn't happen in the interim, Dock Philip Ellis, age 25, was about to enter a 50,000-seat stadium and throw a very small ball, very hard, for a very long time, without the benefit of being able to, you know, feel the thing.

Which, it turns out, was one of the least crazy things that happened to him on that particular day.

Wow.

"...every page of every issue of America's leading magazine—from full-color covers to spot drawings, from poetry to Profiles, from cartoons to advertisements—on reader friendly and highly searchable DVDs."

I want this. (via Boing Boing)

"Night" evoked Vietnam-era bloodshed and, with its black male lead trapped in a farmhouse, echoed civil rights hysteria. "Dawn" poked fun at soul-deadening consumerism. And "Day" addressed ethics in science. With "Land," Romero tackles issues of safety and boundaries, showing a community fortifying itself against a murderous horde while its wealthiest keep alive class divisions separating them from the powerless.

The Los Angeles Times profiles zombie guru George Romero. (via Boing Boing)

The Philip K. Dick Android Project, for all your life-sized-replica-of-Philip-K.-Dick android needs. Now with blog.

Predict what word comes next in a random news story. (via MetaFilter)

Six million lights years beyond believability, it's the staggeringly long trailer for InfraMan, the ultimate man, starring in the ultimate science fiction movie.



(Via We Make Money, Not Art)

Some good videoblogging from the writers of Superman Returns at www.bluetights.net.

The extent to which Warner Brothers messed up the Superman films has always been astounding to me -- they managed to spin a hilariously marketable commody into complete crap.

Maybe this one can get the franchise back on track.

(via AICN)

School? Already? How is this possible?

Here's the syllabus I'll be working from this summer.

Doctors are being warned about a bizarre but threatening phenomenon - that patients under anesthesia can experience vivid sexual dreams they believe are real.

Seinfeld 106: The Jimmy: "Jerry feels the dentist and his hygienist may have lived out a fantasy during his time in the chair, the type of thing you might read in Penthouse."

(via MetaFilter)

Honey, brown sugar, nail-polish remover, unopened mayonaisse, antifreeze. Expiration dates for various household products.

Move over Hapland, now there's a Hapland 2.

This week's Onion hits us from 2056.

Flog!

A Visual Record. Amazing, very comphrensive site. Via Cynical-C.

One good thing about going to Europe (if you're a big dork) is all the train/plane travel gives you a lot of time to read.

Dan Chaon, You Remind Me of Me: already discussed here. I finished it before our plane left Greensboro.

Nabokov, Speak, Memory: This book should depress the hell out of you, because you're not Nabokov, and you never will be. Fortunately it's very good, which almost makes up for it.

Bob Dylan, Chronicles, Volume I: If you're not a Dylan fan, you can safely pass on this. If you are a Dylan fan, by god, what are you waiting for?

The Anchor Book of New American Short Stores: Recommended here. Man, that Wells Tower story was good.

Herman Melville, Moby Dick: I was told this is a good book to read while backpacking through Europe. Oddly enough, it is. Buy the Norton Edition so you can read Harrison Hayford's amazing "Unnecessary Duplicates" essay afterwards, which postulates fairly convincingly that Melville's revision style consisted solely of adding words, never removing or rewriting.

Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead: A baldly nihilistic story of combat in World War II that, bizarrely, is my very liberal friend Casey's favorite book. She's a vegetarian, for Christ's sake, but she loves Dead. Written when Mailer was 23, the passages of true genius easily outweigh the awkward moments.

At this point the trip was halfway over and I'd already read all the books I brought from America. It was English-language bookstores in Paris and Rome from here on out.

Graham Greene, The Quiet American: A microcosm of the Vietnam War that should be required reading for every American of voting age. "I've never met someone with such good intentions for all the trouble he causes."

Don DeLillo, Endzone: A college football player becomes obsessed with thoughts of nuclear holocaust. A DeLillo novel ensues.

The Complete Prose of Woody Allen: No explanation necessary.

Telling Tales (EDIT: Forgot this one last night): A short story collection of great short story writers brought together by a book whose publishers donated all the proceeds to charity. The winner? Incredibly, it's John Updike, whose "The Journey to the Dead" is, well, incredible.

Nicholson Baker, Room Temperature: Just like Baker's very underrated novel The Mezzanine, which was great, only this time the character is married and has a kid.

Milan Kundera, Ignorance: A terrific novel about the homecoming of Czech emigres to Prague after the fall of the Communistic regime in 1989, interwoven with thoughts on Odysseus, poetry, memory, and language. I think it's my favorite Kundera. Incredibly highly recommended.

DFW, Oblivion: Out in paperback in Italy already, though not in the states. This is the book I'm on now. You already know whether you'll dig this or not. I do.

Shoutout to Frommer's Italy and Paris guides, as well as Fodor's Italian for Travelers, which were all tremendously useful. Also Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore, my favorite novel, which I bought in the original Italian as a keepsake, though I can't read it. Between Jaimee's Italian and my memory of it in English, we were able to read the first chapter.

Margaret Atwood on why we need science fiction.

(Via Gravity Lens, which also points us to An Episode of Star Trek Tediously Written for an Audience Entirely Composed of Remote Amazon Tribesmen, at a little website you may have heard of called McSweeney's Internet Tendency.)

Neal Stephenson had some interesting things to say about the Star Wars sextet in The New York Times over the weekend. Nerd.

Gruel, S.C., is the setting for the short-story writer's first novel, "Novel." It's about an educated snake-handler named Novel who has two adopted Irish siblings named James and Joyce.

The Seattle Times reviews Greensboro's favorite son, George Singleton, and his new novel, Novel. I'm looking forward to reading this. Via Bookslut.

For women, it seems, sex is a big turn-off, reveals a brain scanning study. It shows that many areas of the brain switch off during the female orgasm - including those involved with emotion.

“At the moment of orgasm, women do not have any emotional feelings,” says Gert Holstege of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

At New Scientist.

If you bought a first-, second-, or third-generation iPod and the battery failed, there's a class-action-lawsuit settlement with your name on it.

I think I might. I've been up since 4:30 in the morning, and I've been amazingly productive. It's highly underrated.

And I'm going to bed.

Thanks to Neil/ootsocsid for filling in for me while I was away. He'll now be granted all the rights and privileges accorded to a BCR Blogger Emeritus (none).

I've seen a few websites of abandoned buildings, but I never realized just how many there were. Some of the best I've found:

• Forgotten Detroit


• Dead malls


• Abandoned Missle Silo


• Abandoned Soviet Buildings


• Various Abandoned Buildings (including Randolph, New Jersey's own Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital)


• Abandoned Cincinnati Subway System

If you Google around, you'll find dozens more websites just like these. Infiltration.org has some more good links too.

How much would famous TV dads throughout history make in 2005 dollars? salary.com tells you. CNN.com also has it in a nice chart form here.

The good folks at Angry Alien are back with another movie reenacted in 30 seconds by bunnies. This time it's Pulp Fiction. They also seem to have inked a deal with Starz, so The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Highlander, The Big Chill, The War of the Worlds (1953), Star Wars, Scarface, Rocky, King Kong (1933), and Night of the Living Dead are all apparently either available or soon to be available on the teevee to anyone with Starz or Stars on Demand. The rest of us will have to wait for them to make it to the website, I guess. (The Shining is *still* the best one).

The Design Trust for Public Space, the New York Taxi and Limousine Commission, and the Parsons School of Design held a workshop last Thursday to help design the next generation of New York City's famous yellow taxicabs. New York Newsday has a good column about the results, as well as a slideshow showing some of the results of the workshop. I hope the yellow, checkered Fez makes the final cut.

(Via Gothamist)

Pulitzer-prize winning journalist George Weller snuck into Nagasaki and wrote a series of articles on the devastation in that city just a month after we dropped the atom bomb. The articles were never published, and Army censors never even returned the originals to Weller, but Weller's son found carbon copies of the articles last summer. Now Japanese daily Mainichi is running excerpts from those stories. What an awful weapon. A little more background on Weller is in this article at CNN.com.

Maybe Gerry has already linked to this, but either way, it's pretty entertaining. Superdickery. They've got examples of Supreman being a dick, Superman being weird, Superman with monkeys, Superman killing his chances to seek political office later in life, and much, much more. Check it out.

(Via This Modern World)

We spent our last day in Venice poking around the modern art scene. First was the 51st La Biennale, which was pretty excellent, not least of all because we finally understood one obscure joke from The Big Lebowski. The highlight for us was the exhibit from the excellent Guerilla Girls, who you may have read about in a recent New Yorker. (Here's a page specifically devoted to their work at Biennale.)

Then we headed over to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, which alongside Paris's Museu Picasso earned Rockingest Museum honors 2005. That a traveling Jackson Pollack exhibit just happened to be there was icing on the cake.

I used to want to be a rock star, but now I just wish I could paint.

Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go.
--Truman Capote

Live-action Tetris. Kind of neat.

And in other news - Remember Darth Tater?
Now there's SpudTrooper. You can pre-order at Super-Inflated Starwars.com, or wait till September. Look what his blaster is firing! Get it? Get it?



What's really important, though, is www.mrpotatohead.net. Ignore the initial bad design and check out the archives. It offers a decade by decade history of the "regular" old Mr. Potato Head. Some cool exerpts follow:
1950's :

During the World War 2 era, George Lerner enjoyed success as a well known inventor and designer. Just before 1950, he designed and produced a first generation set of plastic face pieces. The push pin shaped noses, ears, eyes and mouth parts could be pushed into fruits or vegetables to transform the food into an endless array of magical anthropomorphic playmates.
The toy wasn't an immediate hit however. There was still a World War 2 mentality to conserve resources. Toy companies didn't think that customers would accept the idea of wasting a piece of food as a child's toy.

1960's: I can't find a great txt exerpt, but this pic should say enough:


1970's:

The early 1970’s did however see the release of a few bizarre Mr. Potato Head toys. The world at this time was being painted with crazy psychedelic attitudes and expressions, and Mr. Potato Head wasn’t immune to the times. The very strange Potato Head Bird, Potato Head Fish and Potato Head Bug playsets made their debut. These sets apparently weren’t very popular...

Like Kevin Smith's Clerks? Like Stormtroopers? How about the two combined? A shot-by-shot remake of the Clerks Trailer, but with Stormtroopers: very cool. (Old hat to most folks - it was made before the failed Clerks animated tv show, but I was glad to find it anyway)

Via this site, which goes way too in-depth on how to make your own 'trooper armor.

So all I will say is: (1) Paris is the greatest city in the world; (2) the French language sounds more like gibberish to me than any other major (taught in American high schools) European language. Italian, German, Spanish, I can usually make out a word or two, maybe the overall topic; but French just sounds like birdsong.

Simpsons movie now in preproduction. More here. But will it be any good?

(Also via Boing Boing)

Neat house carved out of wood and made to look entirely like it's made out of books. Even the furniture is wood carvings. I'm most impressed with the wooden suit hanging up in the closet.

(Via Boing Boing)

This is a two part post left over from yesterday when my internet was futzing around with itself. Anyhow, for those that don't know me, I think Stormtroopers are the bomb. As Gerry has said, they are the most iconic thing Lucas has managed to create with Starwars. What I like about them is how abstract they are, and thus how much we are able to identify and impose our own imaginations on them. Just look to the 501st Legion.


From ToyNewsI, a heads up on what is probably going to be the coolest Stormtrooper Toy ever made. Look how SHINY it is. And at an estimated retail price of $209 bucks, it had better be, no? It's from a toy line I hadn't heard of, being made by Medicom. They're the Japanese toy company responsible for Kubricks, those LEGO-like figures that sort of exploded the "blocky-toy" trend. This expensive StormTrooper is one of Medicom's "Real Action Hero" line. The figures are based on this body, usually, and the materials for clothing and gear are typically top quality.

They've got a Luke, a Vader, and some figures you might not have thought of, like Andy Warhol, Twiggy, (Twiggy's home page - scroll down) and Jean Michel Basquiat.

Link to MEDICOM page. Flash and in Japanese. Fun to browse, but hard to find what you are looking for.

And if you're a stickler for the old-school 3 3/4" figures, you'll enjoy this review/history/take on the latest Stormtrooper to come out, the Original Trilogy Collection figure - hard to find, but can be scored for about $15 bucks on eBay. (And if you're looking for the newest Episode III figures, the ones to look for are #41 (Super Articulated Clone Trooper) and #39 (AT-TE Tank Gunner). They offer the best articulation, with least weird accesories and baggage. Score for about 10bucks each on Ebay, or find them (with great luck) at a local toystore.

Back to the Future... the rough draft. Jennifer is named Suzy Parker, Lorraine is named Eileen, Einstein the Dog is Shemp the Monkey, 1.21 gigawatts is 4200 rads, no Twin Pines Mall, no clock tower, no Mayor Goldie Wilson, no Libyan terrorists, the "Enchantment under the Sea" dance is the "Springtime in Paris" dance, Martys' parent's song is "Turn Back the Hands of Time" instead of "Earth Angel," no Mr. Strickland, no "you are my density," no "roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads," no Darth Vader, no Uncle Jailbird Joey, no Huey Lewis and the News, Marty never meets Chuck Berry's cousin Marvin Berry, and Biff crashes into a police car instead of a truck full of horse manure. Worst of all, the Delorean is a freaking refrigerator. Terrible ending too.

More movie scripts, including early drafts, here.

...smells more than a little like sewer in places, but generally it rocked. It turns out it's actually worth any amount of time waiting in line to get in to see Michelangelo's David. I was completely blown away by how out-of-control incredible it actually is. Of all the artistic representations of it, only one has come close to expressing its majesty:



La Specula was wicked awesome, too.

We're in Milan now, trying to figure out how best to get in to see The Last Supper without a reservation. Tomorrow afternoon it's the train to Paris. Il peace-o.

Sure. All this is old and dated, but it is surely all new to me. C505, never heard of them. But they're evidently some art group that is happy with the quote on their website, "C505, their art projects are big elaborated jokes."
But these jokes are compelling. Short movies in quicktime of Lite-Brite Rendered images.

The ASCII Bush Project - filter/ascii movies of George Bush Jr. and George Bush Sr. speeches. Like watching the snow on the TV for ghosts.

And where you may have accidentally seen some of their work before - The Beck video, Black Tamborine. (link goes right to the qt video)

A new game that looks to be way way way fun, and probably great for our little gaming circle is Days of Wonder's Shadows Over Camelot. Up to 7 people play cooperatively to beat the game itself. The only catch is that one player MIGHT be a traitor looking to undo all the good the Knights of the Round Table accomplish. Might or Might not. Anyway, if you're into wicked cool board games, or are thinking you might be, click on this well-written review of the game on BoardGame Geek.

This site has more of this:

(discovered on this thread from MetaFilter.)

That's Edvard Munch, jerkface. They discovered one hidden behind another canvas. Click the picture to see it a bit better. Also note how the restorers look very much like the faces in the painting. Also beware the mortgage ad that pops up in the article. What is that thing, a peacock?

Via SlashDot:
Guardian's gameblog has a weird piece talking about the ability/want the games industry has in presenting sexual content. The article itself is pretty boring, with standard topics being raised, but does have a couple interesting tidbits - they give the odd bit of information that Peter Moleneux, who stunningly dissapointed the world last year with FABLE, is working on a new project in which gamers "relive their teenage years." (I am totally putting that KISS poster up about five years sooner this go around.) The article also gives a shout out to Golgo 13, a NES title I remember as being the first time I ever used a sniper's rifle.

The article - barely titilating. The comments on it start to get into Uncanny Valley stuff though. Maybe you can help them out.

The Vatican is a surprisingly cool place to visit. Apologies to Michelangelo, but I think my favorite room was the Gallery of Modern Religious Art. Not a lot of pictures online (EDIT: Mama mia, oh yes there is, including this van Gogh. Who even knew van Gogh did religious art? Not me), and my time is short, but I can link to this image of the crazy Death Star-like giant metal ball that sits in the middle of the Vatican Museum. Definitely take the long route to the Sistine Chapel or you will miss a hella cool room.

Castel Sant'Angelo is pretty excellent too, and I get the impression not as many people go there as you'd expect. It's so close to the Vatican, and it's definitely worth seeing.

These aren't my pictures, by the way. I stole them all from the internets.

As for ruins, my brother's favorite ruin was the Domus Aurea (the Golden Palace of Nero), but I was partial to Hadrian's Villa near Tivoli. (This was about 20 miles north of Rome, so maybe he didn't get out there.) Hadrian was just about Rome's only good emperor, an artist, architect, and engineer who presided over 21 years of peace (the record for the Romans); you can read all about him here.

Onward to Florence and the Don's top Italian museum, La Specula. Arrivederci.

This is why I can never save money. Lego keeps making, despite my rancor with many of the new ones, great sets. Finally we get some pictures of the newest one - the Jawa Sandcrawler. Check it out at From Bricks to Bothans.

Did you know Uncle Orson has a video game? I didn't either. Here's a review, and here's a link to see a video interview of Orson Scott Card talking about the work.

Here's his take on Revenge of the Sith.

I'm going to go make a Boca Burger.

Gerry may well have blogged this already. But this kid has illustrated every page of Pynchon's, Gravity's Rainbow. Here's the Link. There's about a billion, one picture for every page. I like this one, although I admit I've only yet looked at about five. Which ones are better?

Haven't read the book? Buy here.

Update: Yup. Gerry beat me to it. Still worth checking out if you haven't already.

I hadn't heard of it until now. $25K a year, to spy while studying abroad? Hook me up. (Although...doesn't it sound like a "scholarship" you can never leave?)

Here's Stanley Kurtz defending the program against "leftist professors." (Link goes to National Review, sorry)

And a semi-sprawling, but well thought out rebuttal by David Price at counterpunch.org.

To be a James Bond at a Keg Party in Nepal....think about the power-trips THOSE undergrad ding-dongs are having right now. Don't even let me start ranting about this.

I recently saw a poet perform by opening his reading with a catapult. He launched t-shirts printed with his poems into the audience. The catapult was not that great, and had a small range. Maybe he should have used one of these plans. Or maybe he'd seen this show by PBS/NOVA (c. 2000) Or maybe he's saying...a catapult is not a trebuchet! Whatever.

Donnie Darko? Frank the Bunny? Sure you probably have already (or are going to right NOW) bought the Special Edition Directors Cut of Donnie Darko, and sure you dressed up as Frank for Halloween, but do you have a schizophrenic, time travelling bunny for your desk or bookshelf? NECA toys is set to give you one.

Woke up this morning thinking about Garbage Pail Kids. You remember, don't you? You can look at most of them via the Garbage Pail Archives. Our editors:


Wait...can't find Gerry, Jaimee, or Ezra? See if I failed. This ugly site has a "find your name" listing. (Scroll down the bad design) Or try making one of your own on the "new" Garbage Pail Kids site. Here's mine.

The real reason all this is poignant? The opening of a cool cool cool art exhibit in NY called, "I Pity the Dolls." 150 handmade Mr. T dolls. Check it out. The Wooster Collective has more.