Click here to watch this week's Monday Night Live (in Windows Media format), the first that I produced... featuring Yours Truly as the voice of "Greta" from the Bulgarian Institute of Standards and Technology. Thanks to Richard Moore (AKA "BillyBobMan") for hosting it!
Thursday, June 29, 2006
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Tonight's serving from Netflix: MOTHER, JUGS & SPEED
I've seen this movie a few times already (and first wrote about it several months ago) but it's so darned funny I just had to put it on the Netflix queue. So tonight Lisa and I watched Mother, Jugs & Speed, the 1976 flick starring Bill Cosby, Raquel Welch and Harvey Keitel as staff members of a private ambulance company that breaks all the rules ("Everything in this place is illegal" as Cosby's character Mother says at one point). This is one of the most hilarious movies ever made in my opinion, and also the darkest comedy that I think Bill Cosby has done at any point in his career. Lisa thought it was really good and it was fun to watch her reactions to some scenes, like the part where Murdoch insists on riding in the back of the rig with the female patient (not to mention the "out-of-control gurney" scene). I can't recommend Mother, Jugs & Speed highly enough if you're in the mood for a good comedy to watch on some summer evening.Here's Mr. Fishbine's opening monologue from the movie. I crack up every time I hear this...
"I don’t have to tell you people times are tough. You read the papers. The country’s going to Hell. Now you take inflation, recession, welfare. There’s nothing we can do about that. But thanks to muggings, malnutrition, assassination, and disease, we got a chance to make a buck! I can see that some of you men must be shocked by that statement, but I didn’t write the rules of life myself, no sir! The cripple, the junkie, the wounded, and the dying. Society calls them all worthless. They’re not worthless. Not to us! To us each one is worth $42.50 plus 50 cents a mile, and let’s not forget it! When it comes to realizing that people in distress will jump into the first rig that shows up, well, then that’s when the drive and enthusiasm of you men will make the difference! But there’s another group out there, men... and I will not dignify the Unity Ambulance Company my mentioning its name, but they want our territory. Our sick! Your jobs! But we’re not gonna let them do it to us, are we men? You bet we’re not! No sir!"By the way, I've heard from several people that this is definitely a must-see movie if you're involved in medical/rescue services. Who knows... maybe you'll relate to this movie somehow :-)(Jugs tells them they've got a call about a woman in labor)
"A woman in labor. What could be more eloquent than that? Well, it looks like life has it’s own little ways of summing up the situation, doesn’t it men? Gentlemen? The F&B Ambulance Company is rolling!"
Darth Larry reviews SUPERMAN RETURNS
Haven't seen it yet (wish I could have caught the 10 o'clock showings last night 'cept I had a shift at the station) but Darth Larry - my oftentimes filmgoing companion and all-around nice guy - has a great review of Superman Returns up on his blog, in a style that can only be called his own. Makes me want to see this movie that much more. I'm probably going to see it sometime in the next few days, with Lisa and maybe a few other friends. I got a feeling that this is the kind of epic best shared the first time with the people you know best. Anyhoo, expect my own review to pop up here sometime afterwards.
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
SPIDER-MAN 3 teaser swings online
And we even get to see the symbiote (the black blob that becomes the black costume). Mash down here to watch this amazing trailer in Quicktime format.
Monday, June 26, 2006
This will be a night long remembered...
I guess I've come full circle now. Or maybe just call it "karmic retribution" for all the calls that I used to make to this show. Years ago in high school a lot of us used to watch Monday Night Live on the local TV station. Some of us liked to call up and see if we could get away with prank calls (like the forever-infamous "laughing box" caller). I loved to call this show up and talk about serious stuff, but I will admit now to making a few joke calls every now and then. Well, tonight I was running Monday Night Live as, I guess you could say I was the producer. And I got to join in the fun with hosts Ken and Mark as the voice of "Greta", the lady from the Bulgarian Institute of Standards and Technology ("B.I.S.T."). I know, to a lot of people this all doesn't sound like much, but for me it was a big thing that was a lot of fun to do. Who would have thought all those years ago that I would someday be on the other end of the phone line. Ahhhh, good times!!
Sunday, June 25, 2006
New study: Adult immaturity is on the rise
An article on the Discovery Channel's website talks about a recent study which indicates that today's adults are increasingly loath to grow up...
Serious Study: Immaturity Levels RisingPersonally, I don't know of very many people who fit the description of "psychological neoteny".Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News
June 23, 2006 —The adage "like a kid at heart" may be truer than we think, since new research is showing that grown-ups are more immature than ever.
Specifically, it seems a growing number of people are retaining the behaviors and attitudes associated with youth.
As a consequence, many older people simply never achieve mental adulthood, according to a leading expert on evolutionary psychiatry.
Among scientists, the phenomenon is called psychological neoteny.
Stay tuned for my next article: a review of the blockbuster hit Nintendo DS game New Super Mario Bros.
Friday, June 23, 2006
WATCHMEN prepares to chew up and spit out another one
Zach Snyder is the latest filmmaker to be tapped to direct Watchmen, it's being announced today. He follows Terry Gilliam, Darren Aranofsky, Paul Greengrass and several others over the past two decades who've attempted to bring the Alan Moore graphic novel to the big screen. And like them, I'll wager it's only a matter of time before he throws his hands in the air in total surrender. I've already posted before (here and a longer rant here) that Watchmen is probably the one book of modern literature that is absolutely unfilmmable. The only way it could possibly work is, as has been suggested by many, adapt it into a twelve-part series for HBO. Give each chapter of the book a one-hour installment, and maybe then everything in this most dense of stories could be conveyed to the average viewer. But there's no way, no way at all, that Watchmen can be boiled down into a 2-3 hour movie and stay faithful to the original source material.
Thursday, June 22, 2006
Christian film flap shows farce of movie rating system
Facing The Giants, a film made by Baptist pastors in Georgia, is getting a PG rating from the Motion Pictures Association of America. That's not good enough, the filmmakers and others are saying: they want a more "family-friendly" G rating. The MPAA has received around 15,000 complaints so far about their decision to make Facing The Giants PG. Opponents say the movie is being unfairly targetted because of its religious themes.
There's two problems that I see here: one, the whole rating system is terrible. It's capriciousness in determining what is - and what isn't - suitable for the screen is legendary. Mostly it has to do with how it's not a system that's suited for determining the merits of an individual film at all, but rather an arbitrary determinant of how controversial a movie is likely to be. I imagine that if Facing The Giants does have a lot of Christian sentiment, that alone would raise the eyebrows of the judging board. Clearly, some other system is needed.
Now, the second: these Christians, and too many of us do this also, are giving the rating system way too much importance. I know of some Christian parents who won't let their children see any movies with a rating over a G. Okay, well does that automatically qualify the movie for family viewing? I've seen plenty of PG-rated movies that should have been rated R, or at least PG-13. And one R-rated movie in recent memory, The Passion of the Christ, had a very powerful Christian element to it. I'm not saying that little kids should be allowed to see that, but there are certainly enough adolescents and up who could readily comprehend that movie... and maybe be affected by it in a positive way on some level. As it is, I know that some Christian pastors literally begged their congregations to "go see this R-rated movie!"
We as Christians are supposed to adhere to another measure than that imposed by the world around us. When we let something like a "PG rating" get under our skin, it's saying to the world that it has a power over us, when instead we are supposed to be free from its grasp.
Long story short: Christians should start thinking for themselves more, instead of letting others - like the Motion Picture Association of America - think for them.
More thoughts on last week's visit from the Westboro Baptist mob
Adam Feldman posts some good thoughts about last week's picket of the Southern Baptist Convention by the Westboro Baptist Church (here's the link to my earlier report on their visit to our TV station). I like this part of Adam's essay especially...
For the record: What you see is what happens when truth is presented half-way. For instance, Scripture (Old and New Testaments) clearly teach that homosexuality is a sin--along with gluttony, pride, anger, malice, idolatry, adultery, disobeying parents, drunkenness, orgies, witchcraft and a host of other things. However, no where does it indicate that man can pass judgment or condemn a fellow man... this is reserved for God alone. Likewise, Scripture clearly teaches that all have sinned--not just homosexuals--and that everyone (yes, everyone) is deserving of eternal separation from God as a result (i.e. Hell). However, Scripture also teaches that God in his loving mercy and grace has provided forgiveness of sin and redemption from sinful behavior through his Son, Jesus Christ.Amen, bruddah!
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
The mighty Amiga 2000 and Video Toaster 3.1 combo
Last night our TV station had a telethon to raise money for a local charity. As the evening progressed a graphic on the screen kept a running score on how much money had been raised. And so it was that I got my first up-close look at a Commodore Amiga 2000 loaded with a Video Toaster board. This morning during a slow period I let myself play around with it some. And all I gotta say is: it ain't too bad at all... for a computer that's twenty years old!
Well, toward the later end of what was a remarkable run in the home computer market, Commodore rolled out the Amiga: maybe the first serious multimedia platform anywhere. There were a few models available for various-sized budgets, but the high-end system was the Amiga 2000. It boasted what was then a whopping 512 K of RAM, which depending on release version it was it could go all the way up to (back in the day anyway) an inconceivably huge 9 MB of memory. The processor speed was 7.14 mHz. And the way the entire system was clocked to run... well, let's just say it lent itself toward some astounding applications.
In 1990, Brad Carvey (brother of Dana Carvey of Saturday Night Live fame, and the inspiration for "Wayne's World" character Garth), Tim Jenison and a few other engineers at a company called NewTek rolled out the Video Toaster. And the Amiga 2000's full capabilities were at last unleashed...
The Amiga 2000, loaded with a Video Toaster, could create a virtually limitless number of titles, graphics, wipes, and other visual elements for real time television production. As a result, hundreds of smaller TV stations (and many visual artists) were able to do with approximately $5000 - the cost of an Amiga and a Video Toaster - what the big network affiliates in town were doing with equipment costing $50,000 and up. Probably the most impressive thing that the Amiga/Video Toaster combo did was rendering the special effects for the pilot movie and first few seasons of the television series Babylon 5, which called into service an entire render farm of networked-together Amigas loaded with Video Toasters.
There's no telling how many Amiga 2000s and Video Toasters wound up being put to work out there. And amazingly enough a few of them - like the setup at our station - are still being used, now almost a decade and a half after acquiring the equipment (the Video Toaster we're using is version 3.1, released in 1993).
NewTek is still making Video Toaster these days, but it's now a plug-in board/software suite for Windows-based machines. No doubt the latest versions are much more robust and slick than the original Amiga versions and certainly faster: it took our system about fifteen seconds to update the dollar amount last night as the pledges came in. But, it still works and gets the job done. And in the end, isn't that the real measure of how good a computer is, no matter how antiquated it may seem? Does it do what it's intended and does it do it fairly well?
In a cyber-driven society that's gone mad with upgrading to the latest model, our station's humble little Amiga 2000 and Video Toaster 3.1 are a nice reminder to me that older technology still has qualities that merit some appreciation. If for no other reason than because they helped pave the way for all the things that we can do with the latest innovations. But it's still nice to know that against the more modern tech, a 20 year old computer and an early Nineties circuit board are still holding their own.
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
TERRIBLE new episode of DOCTOR WHO this past weekend
No, not talking about the Christopher Eccleston season that's been running on Sci-Fi Channel. I'm referring to the new series that's been airing on the BBC in Great Britain, which is getting bootlegged to this side of the pond over the Internet by those jolly good English chaps.
Saturday night I downloaded and watched "Love & Monsters" a few hours after it premiered there. And ever since it's been like a splinter in my mind, driving me mad. You know how some things you can't "unsee" after you've seen them? Well, that's what "Love & Monsters" is.
I've raved a lot about how good this new Doctor Who series has been: the Eccleston episodes and now David Tennant's turn as the Doctor: episodes like "The Girl in the Fireplace", "The Age of Steel" and then "The Impossible Planet"/"The Satan Pit" two-parter. All excellent work. Like that guy in Big Trouble in Little China: "I've got a really positive feeling about this."
And then comes "Love & Monsters".
This could have been a brilliant episode. I keep thinking this might have been to Doctor Who what "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" was to The X-Files (or what the other Jose Chung episode was to Millennium).
I can accept the "Scooby-Doo" antics at the beginning, and the L.I.N.D.A. group, and the off-kilter way how this episode was presented: as a perspective from the average "man on the street" who witnesses all these events of the Doctor's adventures. I can even accept the Absorbalof as a unique creature in the Doctor Who bestiary.
What I can not accept is the horrible, horrible ending: something is lost from the Doctor's character when he "rescues" a woman by trapping her disembodied head - that will never die - in a slab of pavement so she can be used for oral sex by her boyfriend.
This episode was vile and disgusting... a real shame 'cuz it had so much promise. If the BBC was smart it would make "Love & Monsters" one of those legendary "lost" Doctor Who episodes that forevermore only exists in the memory of whoever got conned into watching it.
Maybe there's some redeeming quality about this episode that I'm missing. Maybe someone will tell me where that is. But as it is, "Love & Monsters" has the dubious honor of being the first Doctor Who episode to get wiped off my hard drive. There's three more episodes this season: hope they're better than this dreck was. But as far as I'm concerned, I'm going to just forget that "Love & Monsters" ever happened. This is some kind of sick twisted fevered delusion that doesn't belong at all in the Who canon.
(Besides, if you ask me there's no way the Sonic Screwdriver could pull off a trick like that.)
Why Brando in SUPERMAN RETURNS will be remembered
Ain't It Cool News has a terrific exclusive about how special-effects house Rhythm & Hues was able to take footage of Marlon Brando that was shot for 1978's Superman: The Movie and incorporate it into Superman Returns, which'll be out next week. You can watch the rather hypnotic video of how they dunnit in either Quicktime or Windows Media format at the link. For some reason, watching this really makes me excited about seeing this movie in a way that hasn't hit me before...
Monday, June 19, 2006
My wife, the song parodist!
As another year of being a music teacher at her school was wrapping up, Lisa began undertaking something she's never done before: writing a song parody. And I must say, she did a pretty darned funny job with it! Click here for "Teacher's Favorite Things"!
Want to save videos from YouTube and Google Video?
Then KeepVid is the site you need. Simply paste in the URL of the page at YouTube, Google Video or wherever else that your desired video is on, select which site it is from the drop-down menu and hit the "Download" button. In a few seconds KeepVid generates a clickable "save as..." link, which in the case of YouTube you'll need to add the .FLV extension to it and have a Flash video player like this one installed in order to watch it from your hard drive. I just tried this trick on the surreal-as-heck clip of Connie Chung singing and it works just fine (downloading the video that is, not Chung's crooning).
Saturday, June 17, 2006
Pigs R Us takes the checkered flag in race for excellent barbecue
Last month when Lisa and I were in Charleston for "Weird" Ed and Olivia's wedding, we were watching some TV in our hotel room one night and happened to catch a special on the Food Network about the Best of the West Rib Cook-Off that's held every year in Reno, Nevada. The program was filmed during the 2004 competition, and our mouths watered at the sight of all those beautiful slabs of barbecue ribs. One of the featured competitors was an outfit called Checkered Pig BBQ, based out of Martinsville, Virginia... just a quick hop across the border from where we live. Well, Checkered Pig won the big contest over a ton of worthy competitors from all over the country, and we told ourselves that night that we'd have to check them out when we got back home. We did that earlier tonight. And boy are we glad that we did!
Checkered Pig is actually the racing circuit spin-off of Pigs R Us BBQ in Martinsville, not far from the NASCAR racetrack. We found its official website and got directions to the place. Took maybe 45 minutes to get there and it's a little off the main highways, but well worth looking for. We told our waitress that we'd heard of the place from the special on Food Network and she said that ever since it ran, that they'd been getting new customers at a staggering rate. We looked over the menu: Lisa got chopped barbecue and I got the full rack of barbecue ribs. When my plate arrived the ribs were smothered in the restaurant's special Checkered Pig Grilling Sauce (a bottle of which I bought and took home while we were leaving).
Pigs R Us BBQ is awesome!!! Every thing about this restaurant is perfect in my book: good and friendly service, all food fresh and home-cooked, prompt delivery of food after it's been ordered... and what might be the best barbecue ribs I've had anywhere. I've written before here about Williamson Bros. Bar-B-Q in Marietta, Georgia (a full review of the place is planned in the future) and how much I love their ribs, but I only get to eat there when we're visiting Lisa's family in Georgia and those are goooooood ribs! And I've been wanting ribs around here that are that high a level of excellent. Well, I think I've finally found it. I can seriously see myself visiting the place at least once a month from now on. I'm very much looking forward to another visit to Pigs R Us: maybe the best-kept secret when it comes to great barbecue in the entire Greensboro/Reidsville/Danville metro area :-)
Biggest mistake ever in comic book history
Color me cynical, but I've still got bad memories of the disastrous-as-hell "Clone Saga": a Spider-Man story that started with only the best of intentions but soon spun completely out of the writers's control. I guess if the Marvel honchos decide that doing this was a very bad decision, they can always count on Doctor Strange to mystically alter the memories of everyone on Earth so that Petey can have his secret identity again. But then again, change can be a very good thing, especially when we're dealing with a forty-some year old character, if it helps keep that character fresh. Time will tell. In the meantime I might have to check out Civil War.
