movies

“I’m just jazzed about being on the show, man.”

My father wasn’t feeling well last night or this morning — a stomach bug that seems to have only hit him and the dog, both equally, although both are now very much on the mend. So I spent the morning running a few errands for him, picking up dry-cleaning, buying a few groceries, that sort of thing.

Then I sat down for lunch, and wound up watching Galaxy Quest for the I-don’t-know-how-many-th time. Hey, it was on cable, and I wandered in near the very beginning.

After that, it was editing stories for the Fall issue of Kaleidotrope. One of the great pleasures of editing is re-discovering why you accepted a story in the first place. I’ve liked all the issues I’ve put out — three online, free of charge, if you’d like to read them — but I think October’s may be one of the strongest and oddest yet.

And then tonight I watched Shane. I was worried it would be too dated and a little silly, but it was quite good. Not everything about it works — it is a little dated — but it’s deservedly a classic Western.

Thursday various

Wednesday various

  • Warren Ellis on the 2012 Olympics’ closing ceremonies:

    It was as conservative, hidebound and bland as the Opening Ceremony was ambitious, demented and eccentric. It played almost as an attempt to zero out what Danny Boyle and Frank Cottrell Boyce achieved and said in the Opening.

    I have to admit, I didn’t watch it. By that point, my Olympic fever had waned a bit, and I didn’t really feel like putting up with NBC’s ridiculous editing and inane chatter to watch the closing. (“Our viewers may not know this, Meredith, but the Pet Shop Boys are in fact actually now grown men!”)

    But the opening ceremonies were mad and brilliant.

  • It’s bad enough they’re planning an Expendables 3 — shouldn’t last hurrahs, y’know, end? — but now they have to talk about dragging Clint Eastwood and others into it?

    “We’ve already begun reaching out to the bones of Steve McQueen and the John Wayne hologram”—Avi Lerner, The Expendables 4 interview, 2014

    Although, honestly, that might finally get me to watch one of these things.

  • Amazingly enough, a campaign to turn an abandoned Detroit neighborhood into a zombie apocalypse theme park has fallen through. [via]
  • Are young people really using “yo” as a gender-neutral pronoun? Fascinating.
  • And finally, the Best Scenes From Insane Old Star Trek Coloring Books:

Monday various

  • Here’s a question: Who inherits your iTunes library? Maybe a follow-up to that: would you want someone to inherit it?

    There’s a significant difference between shelves of books or stacks of records and folders of e-books or mp3s. There’s no re-sell value to the latter, for instance, either because of the difficulties of transferring the files or because of restrictions inherent in the licensing agreements we sign. So the only reason to bequeath your digital media is if you feel the person receiving it in your will actually will want it.

  • Ass-whooping on NPR.
  • In other news, they were still printing Nintendo Power Magazine?
  • Writing credits in documentaries: apparently a bigger issue than you might think.
  • And finally, Space Stallions!

    More information here.