David Letterman’s Top Ten Numbers From One to Ten:
For something so stupid, I find this surprisingly funny. Via Maximum Fun.
Month: September 2009
Random 10 9/4
Last week. This week:
- “Out of Tears” by the Rolling Stones, guessed by Kim
And I just can’t pour my heart out to another living thing - “From the Air” by Laurie Anderson, guessed by Occupant
We are about to attempt a crash landing - “Raining Blood” by Tori Amos (orig. Slayer)
Fall into me, the sky’s crimson tears - “My Immortal” by Evanescence, guessed by Kim
You used to captivate me by your resonating light - “No One’s Gonna Love You” by Band of Horses
It’s looking like a limb torn off - “This Hard Land” Bruce Springsteen, guessed by Occupant
We made our bed, sir, from the rock on the mountainside - “War” by the Cardigans, guessed by Occupant
Oh, come crush me now - “Alleluia” by Dar Williams
Ron and Nancy got the house but Sid and Nancy rule - “Son of a Preacher Man” by Dusty Springfield, guessed by Clayton
And when his daddy would visit he’d come along - “Love Song” by Sara Bareilles
And they tell me to breathe easy for a while
Good luck!
Thursday various
- Roger Ebert on trivia:
The fatal flaw in the concept of trivia is that it mistakes information for knowledge. There is no end to information. Some say the entire universe is made from it, when you get right down to the bottom, under the turtles. There is, alas, quite a shortage of knowledge. I think I will recite this paragraph the next time I’m asked a trivia question.
- In all the talk about whether or not Google should be allowed to scan massive numbers of books and make them available in electronic form — a matter that’s still not yet resolved, due to pending litigation — there’s one question I haven’t seen raised a lot: can Google even do this well? There’s some evidence here to suggest not. Certainly, even if Google Book Search goes ahead, it may need some significant work. [via]
- Mad Max fan builds replica Interceptor, moves to Outback. I’d make a Thunderdome joke, but I think we’re all trying to get beyond Thunderdome.
- Police baffled as dozens of “suicidal” cows throw themselves off cliff in the Alps. Warning, there are some images (not terribly graphic or close-up, but potentially distressing) of the dead cows. [via]
- And finally, given that I’m taking tomorrow off, I find it pretty easy to sing the praises of the four-day workweek. I wonder if I could broach the idea of my telecommuting one day a week. Most everything I do is via e-mail, and working on manuscripts that are delivered via e-mail, and there are even some things — most recently checking if a video was on our YouTube channel, which ironically is blocked at the office — that I can only do at home. I don’t have any serious expectations that it could happen, but it’s an interesting thought. [via]
I’ve got issues — 7 in fact!
Wondering about the contents of Kaleidotrope #7? Then wonder no more…
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Fiction “Remember” by Lindsey Duncan “Albatross Ghosts” by Joanne Anderton “How Antkind Lost its Soul” by Bill Ward “The Beekeepers” by J. Alan Pierce “Fortune” by Alberto Chimal “The Vigilant” by Jason Hinchcliffe “Please Share My Umbrella” by Jean Huets “The Clay Men” by C.L. Holland “Lock and Key” by Alyssa Fowers “Chamberlain McLaverty” by Sean Ruane “Duma of the Valley Kifaru” by A. Kiwi Courters “Intuo” by Dale Carothers “What Bear Skull Holder Taught Me” by Jeffrey Meyer “To Put Away Childish Things” by Aaron A. Polson “Star Over Babylon” by John Walters “Horseshoe” by Stacy Sinclair Poetry “Marbles” by David C. Kopaska-Merkel Two Poems by klipshutz “My Friend, the Sculptor” by Terrie Leigh Relf “Sligo” by Oritsegbemi Emmanuel Jakpa “Flickering She” by Berrien C. Henderson “Cower” by Aurelio Rico Lopez III “Speaking to Socrates” by Rhian Waller “Nostalgia” by Marcie Lynn Tentchoff |
With cover art by Kurt Kirchmeier, and short comic art by Erica Hildebrand and Tom Powers & Amanda Banaszewski. That’s 70+ pages of great writing and art, coming October 2009!
Wednesday various
- Patton Oswalt on the joy of failure:
I never want to get to a point where I feel like I’m done. Or like I got it. You always want to have that, “Oh shit, this wall just collapsed, and there’s a whole room behind it to explore.â€
I posted a quote from the interview just the other day, but I think the whole thing’s worth checking out, even if you’re not immediately familiar with Oswalt’s comedy or acting. I also like what he says about the internet:
We haven’t seen it yet, but there’s going to be a generation that comes up where the new trend will be complete anonymity. It’ll be cool to have never posted anything online, never commented, never opened a webpage or a MySpace, never Twittered. I think everyone in the future is going to be allowed to be obscure for 15 minutes. You’ll have 15 minutes where no one is watching you, and then you’ll be shoved back onto your reality show. I think Andy Warhol got it wrong.
I’ve read mixed reviews of Oswalt’s new movie, Big Fan, but I’ve heard a couple of really intelligent interviews with him and director Robert D. Siegel, so I’m eager to check it out.
- Fox rebooting Fantastic Four. This seems to be the new thinking in Hollywood: if your last attempt was a financial or critical failure — and the 2007 Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer movie was arguably a little of both — don’t even wait, just re-boot the whole thing. Studios used to wait a respectable few years, time enough to slink away and let the shame and stink of failure dissipate, but that’s happening less and less. Eight years separate the abject failure of Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin and Christopher Nolan’s reboot of the franchise with Batman Begins, for instance, while only five years separate Ang Lee’s Hulk and Edward Norton’s (not so incredible) version. The gap is narrowing — and with the recently proposed Battlestar Galatica re-reboot and this Fantastic Four news, the gap seems to be disappearing altogether. As Gerry Canavan jokes, “In the future franchises will be rebooted before the first film even comes out.”
Still, I guess one way of looking at this is that Hollywood is now committed to remaking movie franchises over and over again, no matter how many times it takes, until, finally, they don’t suck.
Although, as the AV Club points out, this may just be fallout from the recent Disney acquisition of Marvel:
Before Marvel settled down with Disney, it had tumultuous affairs with several other studios. With Sony, for instance, it had a baby called the Spider-Man series. And Marvel’s time with Fox produced several offspring, including film series based around the X-Men, Daredevil, and the Fantastic Four. By the terms of that arrangement, Fox has the rights to make movies around those characters (plus Fantastic Four hanger-on the Silver Surfer) in perpetuity so long as it doesn’t stop making them.
This too-soon reboot, then, might not go anywhere or even be expected to go anywhere. It may just be a ploy to hold on to some rights that would otherwise revert to the Mouse.
- Speaking of the Disney/Marvel merger, while I think it’s too soon to know for sure what (if anything) this will mean for the future of Marvel, I tend to agree with Mark Evanier’s take:
This isn’t about publishing. Disney didn’t say, “Gee, it would be great to own a comic book company!” They could have started fifty comic book companies for four billion clams. This is about characters and properties which can be exploited in many forms. The publishing of comic books may or may not always be one of them…..[T]he future of Spider-Man has very little to do with the Spider-Man comic book. That hasn’t mattered for a long time.
And while I tried my own hand at some Marvel/Disney mashups two days ago, I think I prefer these more artistic ones. [via]
- I worry that some future journalism students will see this story and wonder, “what’s the big deal with paying your sources?” [via]
- And finally, some terrific photographs of the same spots in New York City, composited into a single shot based on similarity. It’s a neat trick. [via]