When I was a kid, I often mashed together elements of various fictional universes in my imagination. Thus, it wasn't uncommon for me to imagine an adventure in which Mr. Spock was hanging out on the Millenium Falcon with Han and Chewie while they were on their way to pick up Aquaman. Apparently, one grown-up fanboy still likes to combine his various interests:
As long as I'm killing time today on silly Internet stuff, here are my Beer Personality, my Muppet Personality, and my inner European...
Well, this is reassuring:
As you can probably guess from the subject line up, I received the following via e-mail. It's somewhat meme-ish, so I thought I'd post it up here, just in case my three loyal readers are feeling voyeuristic and want to know all about me. Plus, it has the added benefit of allowing me to throw up a quick, low-effort entry for y'all:
Oh, good Lord! This pizza thing just keeps getting more and more elaborate. Brian Greenberg has the latest details, but, in a nutshell, these crazy kids are now planning to fly Dave, the owner of Utah's own Este, out to NYC with a chilled pie (not frozen, as that apparently yields unsatisfactory results) which he will bake somewhere in or around Rockefeller Center. Assuming, of course, that Brian can talk a nearby pizzeria into the use of their oven for some dippy Internet stunt. Meanwhile, Este Dave has decided to challenge three top New York pizza-makers and maybe one in Cincinnati. Brian fears this may turn into a full-blown reality-TV show before it's over, and I can't say I blame him. My head-spin is now up to about 45 RPMs; when it reaches 78, I'm going to start talking like Alvin the Chipmunk...
Well, I'm home. The Girlfriend and I had a great time in Vegas, aside from the weather. As previously reported, it was hot. And when I say hot, I mean really hot, hotter than Utah -- which can get pretty uncomfortably warm -- ever thinks about getting. Hot like sticking-your-head-in-a-pizza-oven hot. It was so hot, I saw birds walking around with their beaks open, panting for breath. It was so hot, I think I saw some demons on furlough from the pits of hell lying prostrate on the side of the road, praying for shade. Or maybe those were just some Nevada Department of Transportation guys not doing their jobs -- I was singularly unimpressed by the roads in and around Vegas, and deeply annoyed the couple of times we got stuck dealing with construction. Long story, but basically the NDOT crews gave every indication of having no clue what they were doing, which meant that traffic was at a standstill for much longer than you want to be at a standstill when you're in the middle of a pizza oven.
Hey, kids, just a little FYI: The Girlfriend and I are leaving first thing in the morning for a road trip to Sin City. No, not that Sin City (although I'm sure we could find a spiritual sister to skinny little Nancy Callahan easily enough) -- I'm talking about wonderful Las Vegas here, home of the World Series of Poker and really cheap shrimp cocktail. My good friend Jeremy and his wife, who live down there, are expecting their first child in November, so we thought it'd be good to get together before everything changes. I'm told it's hotter than hell in Vegas right now, but this is the week that worked best for everyone. Besides, it's hotter than hell here in the SLC, too, so it's not like we won't be used to it.
I was hoping I'd find the time tonight to write a good long entry about the events of last weekend, but it'll have to wait, as it's late and I need to get some rest for tomorrow's drive. I intend to remain blissfully unplugged while I'm gone, so no fresh content until next week. Feel free to leave comments if you like, but they'll wait in limbo until I have the chance to review them.
Have a good one, loyal readers, and like the running gag in John Landis films, see you next Wednesday!
Every once in a while something magical comes along, fills me with wonder, and reminds me that the world actually isn't a fetid stinkhole of pain and depression after all. I've encountered two such somethings today. The first was the doe and two fawns that crossed the road in front on me as I drove to the train station this morning (in the middle of suburban South Jordan, Utah, I might add). And the second is the Pratt Museum's BearCam, a live video feed from the McNeil River State Game Sanctuary in Alaska, where bears like to congregate in the summer and feast on salmon. I just heard about this awesome little distraction through an article on Wired and within moments of clicking over there, I was watching a brown bear ambling through rushing waters in search of a tasty snack. Simply fascinating.
The camera operates from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. Alaska Standard Time; between 1 and 5 p.m., an actual human being makes sure the camera is pointed at the action. Better hurry, though: according to the Wired article, the bears wander off in late August, whereupon the cam will be shut off for the season.
It's July 20th, the 37th anniversary of the first time human beings walked on the moon. My opinion that this day ought to be made a national holiday has not yet found any support from the Powers That Be, and, poking around the Interweb today, I'm disappointed to see so little discussion about the anniversary or human spaceflight in general. I did find one op-ed by Buzz Aldrin, who was at Tranquility Base with Neil Armstrong when he took his small step, and Rick N. Tumlinson, the founder of an organization called the Space Frontier Foundation. Their sentiments will no doubt sound corny to some, but they appeal to the idealistic core I keep hidden under my cynical exterior:
On a lighter note, my recent post featuring a gorgeous Manhattan sunset has generated quite a comments-thread discussion. At issue is whether those flat, round food items made of baked dough and covered in tomato sauce and cheese rightfully deserve the name "pizza" when they're made anywhere but in New York.
When I was 16 years old, my uncle Louie was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, better known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's Disease. ALS is a neurological disease that causes the myelin sheath coating the body's nerve cells to deteriorate. Think of this sheath as insulation around an electrical wire; when the myelin goes, the nerve short-circuits and ceases to function. The victim first loses strength in affected areas of the body, then loses control over them altogether. In time, the effect of the disease spreads throughout the body and, as the muscles receive less and less stimulation from the deteriorating nervous system, it begins to atrophy. The victim essentially wastes away.
Today Lileks applies his usual mixture of insight and off-beat perspective to the late Barnard Hughes. As he always seems to do, he says something I wish I'd thought of for my own write-up on the man:
...He had been 70 years old for the last forty years of his life, it seemed. Perhaps he was cast as an old man long before he was old, and it stuck. Died at the age of 91, which meant he spent half a century as a septugenarian. Happens to some guys. Wilford Brimley, for example, got 15 years shaved off his life at some point; he was a middle-aged guy in “The China Syndrome,” and then he was an Old Coot (with a faint note of Old Fart) with nothing in between except an improbable role as a heavy in “The Firm.” If he ever got an Oscar he’d have to split it with his moustache, which does most of the work.
He also sums up Mickey Spillane, the low-brow mystery/crime writer who died this week, in a single, dead-on-target paragraph. It's worth a look...
There's an interesting interview over at SF Signal with Alan Beatts, the owner of San Francisco's Borderlands Books. Borderlands specializes in science fiction, fantasy, and horror, but Alan's got some provocative thoughts about the book industry in general, especially on the future of brick-and-mortar bookstores both independent and otherwise:
I know it's something of a heretical view, but I must be honest: I'm not much of a Beatles fan. I like many of the band's singles and I freely acknowledge their significance to the history of popular music, but for the most part, I've never understood the deep, almost mystical reverence that so many hold for the boys from Liverpool. They just don't grab me that way. I think it's even arguable as to whether their music qualifies as "rock and roll"; the later stuff, especially, sounds to my ears more like a descendant of the English music-hall than anything related to the blues.
Still, I like them well enough, and I'm always interested in stories about lost-and-found treasures. Which is all my roundabout way of saying that I was very intrigued this afternoon by the news that some 500 tapes from the 1969 "Get Back" sessions have been recovered:
The tapes recorded [The Beatles] performing more than 200 cover versions of work by the artists who had influenced them: Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly. They played their own version of Bob Dylan’s Blowing in the Wind, and Rod Stewart’s Maggie May. They belted out Great Balls of Fire, Hippy Hippy Shake and Lucille in spontaneous bursts of play.
You know that at least some of this stuff will be released on CD -- more likely all of it will in a big old collectible box set -- and, despite my reservations about the orthodoxy of the band's greatness, I'd really like to hear Lennon's take on "Great Balls of Fire..."
I've never seen Sayanora, the film for which Red Buttons won his Oscar in 1958, so I can't say anything about that. In fact, as I've tried to think of a signature Buttons role to hang this tribute on, I find I can't think of him in any specific part or film. He's simply one of the many familiar faces that I grew up recognizing on television and in movies, like Barnard Hughes. However, unlike Hughes, who stands out in my mind because of specific characters (or at least a specific character type) that he played, Buttons was always just... Red Buttons.
It's Friday afternoon at the end of a hectic and horrible week. Time for something a little fun before I head down to the pub to begin my official decompression. I know: how about videos of cats doing silly things?
It's been a while since I encountered any notably bad copy in the course of my day job as a proofreader. I was beginning think I'd jumped the gun by creating a whole blog category for material that seemed to be on the wane. Then this morning I encountered the following gem, which isn't technically "egregious corporate-speak," but certainly does have a problem:
This self-guided overview... focuses on the benefits of reducing re-key of data and order accuracy.
That sounds great, doesn't it? I can certainly see how reducing order accuracy would generate all kinds of benefits...
ADDENDUM: Here's another example from the same document:
The Query Operators section [of this document] is useful in providing guidance on getting better search results; particularly valuable when searching.
Yes, I can see how it would be...
Awesome image courtesy of Astronomy Photo of the Day:
As usual, click the picture to embiggen. Click here to read scientific goodness about what you're looking at. Looking at this makes me wish I was right there, with a big slice of thin, street-vendor pizza folded in my hand and the warm summer evening in front of me. Yeah, that'd be good, the sort of scene that would make me feel young and full of possibilities. Hell, in that kind of mood, I probably wouldn't even gripe about the humidity...
I was saddened to learn this morning that the veteran actor Barnard Hughes has died at the age of 90. He had a long career, stretching back to an uncredited role in a 1954 movie I've never heard of, Playgirl, but most people will recognize him from his more recent work playing various crusty old men with soft hearts.
I'm a week or so behind the curve with this item, but these days I seem to be running late all the time anyway, so what's one more item on the overdue list?
It seems that when the space shuttle Discovery lifted off on the Fourth of July, it carried a new feature: webcams attached to the nose and tail of both solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. (For those who aren't up on their spaceflight trivia, the SRBs are the skinny rockets attached to the sides of the thing that provide the initial lift-off boost; they separate a few minutes into the flight, after they've burned out all -- well, most -- of their fuel, and drop into the ocean, where they're recovered to be used again.) While I suspect the cams are part of the post-Columbia paranoia protocol, intended to document any potential damage during the launch phase, they have the positive side-effect of providing some unprecedented and seriously cool video of a process we've all seen 121 times now. Click the image below to see Discovery throttling up its own on-board engines and pulling away as the SRB separates:
Just like a Viper peeling off on the old Battlestar series, isn't it? Makes an old geek's heart swell to see reality reflecting fantasy like this...
Note: more images and videos from the current mission can be found at NASA's Web site. If you're into this sort of thing...
I've found a new blog that belongs to Tom Richmond, an artist for MAD magazine. Like most young boys, I used to be infatuated with slapstick, grossness, and the general disrespect of one's elders, so naturally I mis-spent a lot of my youth reading that silly rag; not surprisingly the movie parodies were always my favorite "articles," and I find I can still remember punchlines from many of them.
A new meme, courtesy of Roberson's Interminable Ramble (Roberson being the author of Paragaea, that wonderful fantasy adventure novel I mentioned recently ). The gimmick is to bold the titles of television series of which you've seen at least three episodes, and bold and italicize those for which I've seen every episode. This should be enlightening... or frightening...
For any who may be interested, I'm continuing to add titles to my LibraryThing catalog, a few at a time as I have the opportunity and whenever the damn thing is working. The site frequently seems to be overwhelmed by server requests; I'm guessing the owners were unprepared for a flood of new memberships resulting from a mention on Boing Boing. I've got 200 books up there now. At the rate I'm going, I should have the entire Bennion Library up for your perusal by this same time next summer...
In the meantime, I've found something rather interesting (and somewhat related), a vast collection of statistics about books and the book industry. Here are some items that grabbed my attention:
Assuming that you're not all sick to death of thinking about Superman and ready to move on to other topics -- like pirates, for instance -- I've found a trio of articles that should give you adequate distraction from work on this Friday morning.
Ah, the wonders of the Internet... here is the complete MTV Cribs segment I mentioned in the previous entry:
I've recently discovered the highly entertaining Secret Fun Blog, an offshoot of a Web site called the Secret Fun Spot; both are dedicated to all the weird and wacky toys, ephemera, and retro crap that strange, overgrown kids like me love.
Yesterday's entry on the Fun Blog is particularly interesting: It features a number of screen grabs from an episode of MTV Cribs that showcased the enviable home of heavy metal/industrial musician Rob Zombie. Why is that interesting to me? Well, Zombie is an afficianado of old horror films, you see, and his house is a treasure trove of collectibles; while my own collecting tastes run more toward science fiction, I definitely identify with his general aesthetic. I especially liked the pirate bar, the built-in, floor-to-ceiling curio cabinets full of toys, and the walk-in video library. Ah, yes, some day I will have a walk-in video library...
One last thought on Superman Returns, which will no doubt brand me once and for all as a nitpicker on the level of The Simpsons' Comic Book Guy:
I hated the new supersuit. The colors were too muted, especially the cape, the textured fabric was weird (reminded me of Aquaman's outfit, actually) and the big plastic S-shield on the chest just looked, well, like a big plastic shield.
I understand that it's hard to make something like tights and a cape look cool, or like something that someone would actually wear in the real world (reference the very funny line in X-Men about "yellow spandex"), but is a dingy wetsuit the best they could do?
Yes, I am a dork...
Forgive me for continuing to blather on about the same subject, but I started thinking on the train home from work tonight and I realized that I've still got a lot to say about this particular movie. I hope you'll bear with me...
First things first: Brandon Routh does not look like Christopher Reeve to me. For the past several weeks, I've heard all kinds of breathless gushing about how much the new kid looks like the late, great Superman of my youth, but I gotta tell you, I just don't see it. Yeah, he's tall and muscular like Chris was in his prime, and they share similar coloring... but aren't those prerequisites for the role? If anything, Routh reminds me of a young Timothy Dalton.
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