- Maybe I’ve been living under a rock, but is “it’s on like Donkey Kong” actually such a popular phrase? I’m going to try to popularize the phrase “This is gonna hurt like Q*bert!”
- I didn’t love what I saw of the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, and it seemed a little like a well-intentioned but disjointed mess. But I’m perfectly willing to accept Jon Stewart’s argument (expressed in this long and compelling interview with Rachel Maddow) that those intentions were entirely apolitical on their part. That they were just trying to put on a comedy show, and whatever “message” the rally had, it was not the same message that so many of his viewers, so many of the left-leaning progressives who attended the rally and are bemoaning its outcome, clearly wanted it to be. I’m perfectly willing to let Stewart pass for falling short of what I hoped the rally would be — a call to arms, groundbreaking satire, something, anything other than a singalong with Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow. I’m willing to let Stewart pass on this, the same way I’m not willing to let Obama pass for falling short on his own call to arms, because when you get right down to it, I buy Stewart’s contention that he’s just a comedian. A comedian with a political bent and sometimes important insight, but one following in pretty well-established treads and with pretty well-established boundaries. It can seem like a cop-out, and I think Stewart acknowledges that, but I think he also does a good job of explaining why it’s not, why his job isn’t drumming up progressive activism (on the left or right) but instead making people laugh.
I think you can argue that the rally wasn’t entirely successful on that front either, but I think it’s important to weigh expectations against intentions.
- On a less serious note, Harry Potter as space opera [via]
- Uwe Boll: he just might make you root for the Nazis.
- And finally, building the perfect zombie safe house.
movies
Second Saturday
If anything, today was perhaps less exciting than yesterday, and that’s saying something. But it was nevertheless a perfectly nice day. The weather, for one, was obscenely nice. Seriously, less than a week ago there were rumors of very light snowfall in New York City, and today you wouldn’t be at all uncomfortable walking around in short sleeves.
This evening, I’m allowed myself to be talked into watching The Human Centipede. But I’ll be joined via Twitter by Heather and Beentsy, so I at least won’t have to suffer alone. I’m not expecting the movie to actually be good or anything like that, but the live-tweeting of it should be amusing.
Update: The movie was about as bad as I expected, but we had a blast riffing on it.
Wednesday various
- Realms of Fantasy back from the grave again…again? Naturally, there’s lots of reason to be dubious.
- Also dubious: this “apology” from Cooks Source. (First mentioned here Monday.) When you’ve been demonstrably proven to have a history of stealing your content from other sources, and your only excuse is an indignant cry of “the internet is public domain and you should be thanking us!” — a bizarrely dumb thing to hear an editor say — then you really don’t get to paint yourself as the wronged party, much less complain that your “issues and photos [were] used without [y]our knowledge or consent.”
- Editing Monty Python & the Holy Grail:
I would like to get back to the Censor and agree to lose the shits, take the odd Jesus Christ out and lose Oh fuck off, but to retain ‘fart in your general direction’, ‘castanets of your testicles’ and ‘oral sex’ and ask him for an ‘A’ rating on that basis.
- Is Stephen King America’s favorite author?
- And finally, from someone else who made that “favorite authors” list, a look at how J.K. Rowling plots. [via]
“You know what?” “What?” “We’re in trouble.”
A boring day at home, which, quite frankly, is exactly what I was hoping for.
This evening I watched The Crazies, the recent remake of George Romero’s 1973 film. As horror remakes go, it was pretty decent — not least of all because most horror remakes aren’t decent at all, and because the original wasn’t all that perfect either. I do think the original maybe did a better job of portraying madness and a town in the grips of it. (As I’ve noted before, it and The Signal, another horror movie with similar themes, make for some interesting companion viewing.) By the end, in the remake, the townsfolk are a little too standard-issue zombie. Still, Timothy Olyphant’s good in it, and the movie offers some efficient scares.
Thursday various
- Alien’s Ellen Ripley almost played by Meryl Streep. Really.
- So apparently there wasn’t a time traveler at the premiere of one of Charlie Chaplin’s movies. This is disappointing on so many levels. [via]
- Harry Potter fans in India have been asked to stop kidnapping owls. That’s good advice, no matter who it’s directed at.
- There are two skating with celebrities shows in the works? Even one seems like overkill.
- And finally, “Hi, I’m a Tea Partier.” I feel like I should have posted this Tuesday night or before, but I only saw it afterward. Still, it should give you a sense of where political discourse is in this country these days. [via]