If you've felt lost by the recent spate of shoot-'em-up video games (and by "recent," I mean since, like, ever), I highly recommend I Wish I Were the Moon, a charming Flash game inspired by Italo Calvino's "The Distance to the Moon," the first story in Cosmicomics.

(Oh, and in case you got here through a false positive, if you're actually wondering, the distance to the moon is 382,500 kilometers. Sorry about the confusion.)

“'Someone at The New Yorker recently gave me a tip on someone who’s a boxer and a philosopher—that came from a lunch!'”
--Norton editor Bob Weil, in a recent Observer interview about expense-account-lunch cutbacks in the wake of a rapidly declining print market.

Really? Really. Because that's who we needed to be the moral arbiter in this situation. Prince. Because when he's not too busy making velveteen canvas prints of his own face, he's become a Jehovah's Witness and likes to knock on people's doors to talk to them about the rapture. [Via The New Yorker]
Update (11/18/08): Perez Hilton claims Prince was misquoted? Um... it's Prince and Perez Hilton claiming that The New Yorker is sloppy? Whatevs.

Today at The Onion AV Club, Nathan Rabin's review of The Rocketeer just comes completely unraveled, starting at the very beginning:

But The Man couldn't control our daydreams, so filmgoers continued to fantasize in the dark. Moviegoing is simultaneously a communal and anonymous endeavor. Lusting after the same handful of beauties binds filmgoers together. Drooling over Marilyn Monroe united fathers and sons, beatniks and squares, Americans and people who wish they were American on account of America being so awesome. USA! USA! USA! (Sorry 'bout getting jingoistic there. A little-known provision of the Patriot Act dictates that the phrase "USA! USA! USA!" must appear at least twice in all ongoing online columns lasting more than 120 entries.)

And it goes on like that for almost 600 words. Either Nathan Rabin is doing something very, very cool, or else he's bat-fucking insane and is just an imagined thumbs up away from strapping on some dread extensions and doing a one-man show of improvised slam poetry based on interviews with Howard Zinn and Russ Meyer.

[Skip to 23:18 for DFW]
"Crane went sudden as a springboard. The Gulf gave nothing back."
--William Gass, The Doomed in Their Sinking

Got it? Let's get this meme started. I want to see it everywhere, from on the new 90210 show to the Times (London) Book section.

I'm pretty sure this is how language works. Someone travels and hears something and starts using that word or dialect or starts cooking curries or other recipes or something and then everyone uses it. I might be wrong but I think I'm right. Bloggers are the new sailors.

Dear Internet,

Did you know that if you, innocent as a lamb in snow, are looking for sliding doors for your home, and you Google "sliding doors," you are confronted with a page dealing not with doors that slide, but rather Sliding Doors, a 1998 filmic abortion in which Gwyneth Paltrow plays two different characters in a feat of acting echoed only by Lindsay Lohan in The Parent Trap, Jean-Claude Van Damme in Double Impact and Lindsay Lohan in I Know Who Killed Me?

The plot of Sliding Doors, in case you have yet to be blinded by the almost magical amount of failure that this film exudes on a TBS Saturday afternoon, is this: Gwyneth Paltrow is for some reason in London. Why? Because it's classy, like the Queen, Earl Grey tea and Pete Doherty. Here the plot splits and in one version of the story, Paltrow catches her train (called the "tube" because Londoners have speech impediments) and catches her boyfriend cheating on her with Jeanne Tripplehorne because Tripplehorne is a talented actress who has never had anything to do with Coldplay. In the other version, the tube doors close and Paltrow misses her train and misses catching her boyfriend in coitus with Jeanne Tripplehorne-- hence the stabbingly obvious title, Sliding Doors. Anyway, the plots are separated because in one Paltrow is a brunette and in the other she's blonde, which is the most subtle distinction since evil Spock had a goatee. This film has all the romance and mystery of a frat keg laced with roofies.

Thus, I propose this to you, the internet, my angel of justice-- we make actual sliding doors outrank the movie Sliding Doors. If you blog at all, please sign this petition and add a post to your blog linking http://www.foldingslidingdoors.com/ to the key words "Sliding Doors." Why have I chosen Spaceslide? Because like the film, it's based in London, but unlike the film, it never dated Ben Affleck or wore the most offensive fucking fat suit this side of Martin Lawrence for Shallow Hal.


Plus, unlike the film, http://www.foldingslidingdoors.com/ does not make me want to blind myself and Oedipus-like, wander the countryside rather than experience the circumstances the world has thrust upon me, hoping for a violent death for which only the fates may be held accountable. Please make this happen for the sake of accuracy and aesthetics everywhere. Films like this are the reason I drink.

Finally, you can sign my petition here.

Sincerely,
Christian