Month: October 2006
-
Tremblor
Saturday morning there was a 5-magnitude earthquake in the ocean east of Japan. It happened around 6:40 AM. The reason I know the time is because I’d gotten up at 6 that morning, then promptly fell back asleep and had the following dream: there’s no snooze button on the alarm clock in my hotel (which…
-
A cup full of warm nuts
Kon-ban wa, minna-san! I’m writing to you from the future! It’s a quarter to eleven pm on Thursday, way past this gaijin’s bedtime. I’m going to watch the rest of Downtown‘s show and share the experience with my internet pals, and then see if I can make one of those little bubble things come out…
-
Bad-touching the Internets
If you missed last Sunday’s “Venture Brothers,” like I did, because DirecTV sucks, and they broke their deal with TiVo to reinvent the wheel and release a buggy-as-hell crippled DVR that you have to use if you want HDTV but it breaks just a few days after you get it and so you have to…
-
We Can Rebuild Her
An entry on the Sci Fi Wire blog says that David Eick, one of the creators of the new “Battlestar Galactica,” is planning a “complete reconceptualization” of the series “The Bionic Woman”. I called some of my contacts in the industry and obtained a top-secret document detailing the proposed story arc for the first season:…
-
Destination: Tokyo! But first… a bit of hell.
This week I’m headed to Tokyo, and boy are my arms tired. I’d probably be more excited about leaving if I weren’t already spent. When I was stuck at the airport back in Orlando, I bought a guide book for Tokyo and read it on the plane. Once I learned that there’s a single district…
-
How not to make “Event Horizon”
As our lives get increasingly hectic and confusing, it becomes dangerously more and more likely that one of us is bound to look up from what he’s been doing and suddenly realize, “Oh, shit. I just made Event Horizon.” Paul W.S. Anderson has lived through this experience, and he’ll tell you the only way that…
-
Little Superstar
It came to my attention last night that there are still people on the internets who haven’t seen the “Little Superstar” video. There’s more details about it online, including the name of the movie and actors, and even the complete movie (which isn’t nearly as good as that one awesome scene). Do a Google search…
-
Bleak House
Tonight I watched hours and hours of two series that have a lot in common: 1) they’re both shown on the SciFi channel, 2) they’re both revamps of notoriously nerd-ridden franchises, and 3) they’re both awesome. Battlestar Galactica Nothing cheers up a Friday like suicide bombings, descriptions of eyes getting plucked out, nighttime death squad…
-
Devils, black sheep, really bad eggs
Here’s a post from the blog of C Martin Croker (TV’s Zorak from “Space Ghost” and “The Brak Show”) from a little over a month ago, about the changes recently made to Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean ride. I haven’t seen Disneyland’s new version yet, but I have ridden Walt Disney World’s, and I agree…
-
On Dharma-tattooed sharks and the metaphorical jumping thereof
If there’s one thing I learned from that lame “Lost Experience” game that ran over the summer, it was this: don’t let marketing guys create content. Actually, it was this: however “Lost” does end, it’s going to be a disappointment. My first reaction after seeing the final wrap-up of the game (youtube is down at…
-
The Blue and the Greying
Several years ago, someone recommended I watch Sherman’s March: a Meditation to the Possibility of Romantic Love in the South During an Era of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation. I’m glad I waited so long to finally see it. The premise of the movie is that filmmaker Ross McElwee received a grant to film a documentary about…
-
Making Comics
Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud has gotten a lot of praise over the years, and it’s justified. It’s well presented, and it has some genuine insight into how art works (not just comics) and how people communicate. And even when you don’t agree with the points he makes, the book itself is an excellent example…