- Christine O’Donnell isn’t a witch. She’s also not a qualified candidate.
- Is the bacon bubble about to burst? [via] The zombie bubble? The Singularity? [via]
- The Anatomical Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man [via]
- It’s things like this that make me love Community. [via]
- And finally, Tea Party takes over the comics page. [via]
movies
That’s one way of putting it
I don’t know about a fad. I think it’s a step along the way. You know, maybe movies will get to be pitiful for a while.
True Gritterday
A quiet Saturday. I bought some books, I did some writing, I went for a walk. And this evening I watched True Grit, which, while maybe a little dated at times, has John Wayne at his best and most John Wayney. I particularly liked this exchange:
“When’s the last time you saw Ned Pepper?”
“I don’t remember any Ned Pepper.”
“Short feisty fella, nervous and quick, got a messed-up lower lip.”
“That don’t bring nobody to mind. A funny lip?”
“Wasn’t always like that, I shot him in it.”
“In the lower lip? What was you aiming at?”
“His upper lip.”
I’m interested to see what the Coen Brothers do in their upcoming version.
Thursday various
- Just what is a documentary these days?
So the salient question might not be, “What is a documentary?†— an abstract, theoretical approach to a form that is grounded in the concrete facts of life. Instead it might make sense to ask what (or whom) a given documentary is for? Is it a goad to awareness, an incitement to action, a spur to further thought? A window? A mirror? The more you think about it, the less obvious the truth appears to be.
- I think somewhere, in the back of my brain, I knew that Eric Stoltz had originally been cast as Marty McFly in Back to the Future — had, in fact, filmed for several weeks — but it’s still weird and kind of amazing to see the footage.
- The Wire Monopoly? Sometimes parody edges up right up against the things we wish were real. [via]
- Children’s picture books are apparently a dying art, thanks to parents starting kids on chapter books earlier and earlier:
Picture books are so unpopular these days at the Children’s Book Shop in Brookline, Mass., that employees there are used to placing new copies on the shelves, watching them languish and then returning them to the publisher. [via]
- And finally, The Doctor is now immortal. Or always was. Or whatever. I’m still a Doctor Who neophyte compared to some, but even I know “continuity” is a very slippery slope in that universe.
Wednesday various
- A vexation of zombies! Supernatural Collective Nouns. [via]
- Wow, H.G. Wells would hate American journalism today!
- Swanky new Vegas hotel’s ‘death ray’ proves inconvenient for some guests. Imagine that. [via]
- That Johnny Depp, what a mensch! (I still don’t want to see the next Pirates movie, though.) [via]
- And finally, via Reuters: “A man carries a shark through the streets of Mogadishu September 23, 2010.”
I love how there is absolutely no context given for this.
