Archive for the 'Arts' Category

If you watch The Venture Bros. regularly, you know where the boys came from.

Now, I don’t know whether this silly little pun was intended by the show’s creators, but it occurred to me while watching an old episode tonight that the young Venture brothers could be seen as their father’s Hank-’n'-Dean monster.

Hankandean monster. Get it? Well, laugh it up, kiddo.

Last night, Obama and McCain both spoke at a forum on public service at Columbia University. There weren’t many surprises — both candidates support public service — but there was one exchange between Judy Woodruff and McCain that I found rather interesting. It’s in the video below, from about 5:10 to 6:35.

Woodruff: Senator, at the Republican convention, a couple of speakers, most notably your running mate, vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, made somewhat derisive comments about Senator Obama’s experience as a community organizer. I’ve heard you say… you haven’t taken that tone, so I guess my question is, are you saying to others in your campaign and your supporters that that’s not the kind of language you want to hear… How are you approaching that?

McCain: First of all, this is a tough business. Second of all, I think the tone of this whole campaign would have been very different if Senator Obama had accepted my request for us to appear in town hall meetings all over America, the same way Jack Kennedy and Barry Goldwater had agreed to do so. I know that because I’ve been in enough campaigns. Look — Governor Palin was responding to the criticism of her inexperience in her job as a mayor in a small town. That’s what she was responding to. Of course I respect community organizers. Of course I respect people who serve their community, and Senator Obama’s record there is outstanding. And so, I praise anyone who serves this nation in capacities that frankly we all know that could have been far more financially rewarding to individuals rather than doing what they did.

I can forgive the lack of clarity in that last sentence. I got the gist of it, and I’m a lousy public speaker myself. His excuse for Palin is bogus, but that was to be expected, as was his effusive praise for service in general and specifically Obama’s service.

What pricked up my ears was his claim that the tone of the campaign would have been different had Obama agreed to go on a tour of town hall meetings with McCain. Just what is that supposed to mean? Did the McCain campaign start putting out lies because McCain was angry that Obama didn’t want to do things his way? Is this revenge? Maybe it’s an offer of a bribe: come on tour with me and I’ll behave.

I honestly can’t think of a logical explanation for that statement that doesn’t involve anger or revenge.

Remember when Fox caught Jesse Jackson on an open mic expressing some disappointment with Barack Obama? Well, that ain’t nothing. Make sure you listen all the way through, after the camera cuts away. This apparently went out live on MSNBC today.

Who knew Peggy Noonan, she of the shining city on the hill, even knew the word “bullshit”?

You know how sometimes you get a song stuck in your head, and it just won’t go away? Sure, that happens to everyone. What about situations — something happens, or you notice something about your surroundings, and there’s that damned song. I knew someone long ago who’d find a rock song, usually by the Stones, that she’d find relevant to almost any situation: if your shoelace was untied, Iris would somehow connect it in her head to Waiting on a Friend or Miss You, and she’d break into song with a voice that sounded like she’d never inhaled anything but cigarette smoke since birth — kind of cool considering she was 15 and didn’t smoke.

I find myself in a similar situation whenever I hear Joe Biden’s name. I don’t know for sure yet whether he’s going to be Obama’s running mate, but it’s looking more and more likely, and that means that at least until November, I’m going to be hearing his name a lot, and if Obama becomes president, I’ve got four or even eight years of hearing that name pretty damned often.

What song is it I hear whenever someone says “Joe Biden”? It’s Elvira, by the Oak Ridge Boys. Iris was lucky. She loved the Stones. Me, I can’t stand the Oak Ridge Boys, and I hate that song in particular. But that doesn’t mean I’m throwing my support to Johnny “Lotsa Houses” McCain. I’ll just have to deal with it. It’s my sacrifice for the future of this great land.

I guess I should consider myself lucky it’s not Thank God For Kids.

Eyes that look like heaven, lips like sherry wine
That girl can sure enough make my little light shine
I get a funny feelin’ up and down my spine
‘Cause I know that my Joe Biden’s mine

Oh, what a filthy mind you have. That is not what I meant at all. I just thought it was a good title for this new video from the Jed Report.

This may take a while to load, and it’s of rather low technical quality, but what the hey — give it a try. I tried turning it into a video file, but the supposedly transparent background (with the speckly bits I failed to remove) turned black when I opened it in Camtasia. It seems that once you’ve exported the hundred or so layers you’ve created to ImageReady, it’s too late to fix the background. That meant that I couldn’t add the sound effects I’d been planning (an opening “My friends,” a popcorn pop for each bandage going on, a nice tearing noise for their removal, and maybe some evil cackling for the big surprise ending), but that’s OK, since I’ve already blown the evening on this thing. The “special effects” for the Bottoms Up, Johnny post only took a couple of minutes and came out a hell of a lot better, it seems to me. So, not so long story about as short as I can make it, I’ve just uploaded it as a gif. Enjoy!

A friend of mine wrote to me today asking if I was familiar with Guy Maddin’s film My Winnipeg. He’d seen it on an Air Canada flight, and as he put it, “Just the fact that Air Canada would put such a weird film on their movie list makes me want to immigrate there.” And he’s an immigration attorney. I think I’ve seen three of Maddin’s films — Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary, Cowards Bend the Knee (or The Blue Hands) and The Saddest Music in the World, and it would be fair to say I’m a fan.

My friend told me that the film is available at Netflix, so I popped over there. While I still consider myself a cinephile (cineaste, movie buff, whatever you want to call it), the fact is that I don’t see nearly as many films as I used to. Consequently, I don’t log in to Netflix that often. Before I checked on the Maddin film, I figured I’d look over some of their suggestions for me, based on my ratings — the famed “Movies You’ll ♥” page. I had thought that the recommendations were based on ratings from friends in addition to my own ratings, but apparently it’s all me.

Some of the recommendations and the reasons behind them seemed sensible enough. Samurai Rebellion was recommended because I liked Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, and The Hidden Fortress. No problem there.

Ace in the Hole (also known as The Big Carnival) was recommended because of my positive ratings for 2001: A Space Odyssey, Annie Hall and Blue Velvet. I’ve seen Ace in the Hole, and I recall liking it, but it was a long time ago. It was one of the films we studied in my very first film studies class. The class was an English department elective in my high school, and basically involved memorizing the glossary at the back of Louis Giannetti’s Masters of the American Cinema (a book I ended up buying for a film class in grad school some six years later), and watching films while the teacher, the inimitable Miss Lily Achille, would shout out in her Eleanor Roosevelt/Margaret Dumont voice, “The framing! Look at the framing!”

Where was I? Oh, yes — Ace in the Hole. I appreciated being reminded of it, and may in fact add it to my queue. But I have no idea what it has to do with those three other films.

At the bottom of the recommendation page was a big surprise, with a few surprises attached. Under the heading Sports and Fitness Suggestions were the following three titles:

Now, just for starters, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to recommend anything to me from the Sports and Fitness category, unless you happen to be my doctor. I am, after all, a fat, lazy slob. This just isn’t my thing. But look at the films I liked, which led Netflix, in its infinite wisdom, to offer up these suggestions.

Lost in Transition is recommended because I enjoyed Lost in Translation

What do these two films have in common, apart from the similarity in their titles? Well, here’s the blurb for the recommended film:

Take an unforgettable journey in this action-packed film shot in multiple locations around the world, documenting snowboarding’s top athletes at the peak of performance. Facing off on some of the planet’s steepest slopes, featured boarders include Mark Landvik, Frederik Kalbermatten, Dave Downing, Eero Ettala, John and Eric Jackson, Markku Koski, Jeremy Jones, Mads Jonsson, Dave Downing, Benji Ritchie and more.

It’s just the similarity in the titles.

Crunch: Candlelight Yoga is recommended because I enjoyed Lilya 4-Ever

If you’ve never seen Lilya 4-Ever, you really should, but only if you think you can handle it. It’s very, very unpleasant. For someone in my condition, yoga (by candlelight or not) would also be very, very unpleasant, but I don’t think that’s the connection. I recall that there was a yoga show on PBS when I was a kid, called Lilias! Yoga and You, and the show’s host, Lilias Folan, is still at it. Maybe she’s on the disc, and Netflix made a Lilias/Lilya connection… Nope, that’s not it. The host of the yoga video is one Sara Ivanhoe (yeah, right). Lilya does find herself in a number of uncomfortable positions over the course of the film, but that just couldn’t be the connection. I’m at a loss on this one.

Finally, the most confusing recommendation of them all:

Billy Blanks: Bootcamp: Ultimate Bootcamp is recommended because I enjoyed The Short Films of David Lynch

What? Does Lynch do Tae Bo? Do the Ultimate Bootcamp workouts somehow involve running sores, or fear of sexuality and biology? Maybe during breaks they bring on a couple who bark like dogs while abusing their tuxedo t-shirted child.

Dear Qantas,

I know you’re proud. You’re proud for good reason. You represent a unique part of the world, you’ve got that funky acronym for a name, and even Raymond knows about your pristine safety record.

Charlie: Ray, all airlines have crashed at one time or another, that doesn’t mean that they are not safe.

Raymond: QANTAS. QANTAS never crashed.

Charlie: QANTAS?

Raymond: Never crashed.

Charlie: Oh that’s gonna do me a lot of good because QANTAS doesn’t fly to Los Angeles out of Cincinnati, you have to get to Melbourne! Melbourne, Australia in order to get the plane that flies to Los Angeles!

But I’ve seen your current advert on the eye of hell, and I just wanted to let you know that if you’re going to use an elevator version of “I Come From a Land Down Under” by the thankfully not immortal Men at Work as your jingle, some people are going to be compelled to try to mess up that record of yours.

Hey, Kidz

If the jolly bowler-wearing, enormous-red-umbrella-carrying old man from Travelers should happen to come around when you’re in need…

Run!

We don’t know for certain who this man is, but he is not the magical new nanny who will turn your life into a singing, dancing fantasy with cartoon animals. I know, the English can be very entertaining, with their comical teeth and outrageous accents, but I don’t think they’ve gotten over the loss of their empire. They’re not to be trusted.

Umbrellas don’t fly. It’s as simple as that, little ones. If you and your little friend sit down in his handle with him between the two of you, insisting he hold you tightly so that you don’t fall, and it really does feel to you like you’ve been swept up into the sky, just promise me you’ll tell your parents about it as soon as possible. You may have been drugged.