For Jenelle

Prepare to go on a trip, whether you've eaten drugs or not!

Good Things Should Never End.

David Bowie = Macaulay Caulkin + Nick Frost < Mark Sanford

Laziness is setting in... This week has been unaccountably long so far and quite busy and I'm starting to feel my energy level drop out from under me. Rather than losing it entirely by pushing myself too hard, here are some bits of awesome I've found scattered about on the cluttered floor of the Internetz.

1) From Overheard In New York:

Random hipster: If David Bowie had wheels, how much would you pay to ride on him?
--St. Mark's Place
(You guys know my answer to that question.)


2) I have to find a way to watch this show somehow, even though it airs in Britain. A sample question for the contestants:
Q: Macaulay Culkin is a child, but can you name an adult?
A: This was not as easy as it seemed, as the only acceptable answer was Tom Petty.

3) Speaking of British shows I love, check this out:


4) Taking a break from laziness, can I please just take a moment to ask why this story about South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford having an affair is such a big deal that it warranted front page placement in both the NY Times and Wall St. Journal (and probably many others - those are just the only 2 papers I see in physical paper form every day)?? Every time another politician admits to having had an affair, and the media goes crazy, and people start acting as if this is a HUGE story like Atlantis has fucking surface from the bottom of the ocean and our understanding of the world has irrevocably changed, I just scratch my head. I mean... Oh my gosh, somebody is having an AFFAIR? Well, isn't that novel. Oh, wow, and it's a POLITICIAN? Who knew politicians, those upstanding and morally unimpeachable pillars of the community, could have affairs? Isn't it shcoking?

....No, no it's not. LOTS of people have affairs, and politicians have probably more than average. Isn't this common knowledge by now? How many political sex scandals have to break per week for us to get this through our heads? Holy crap, people, calm down. Why should what a governor does with his dick have to have ANY impact on what he does for his state and constituents? I just... I don't get it. Can't we focus on something pertinent to something, please?

/end grumbling

Fun on the internets!

Ah, Mondays in the city. People are either angry that it's Monday, discussing their crazy weekends with friends, or sleeping off hangovers. And the internets are abuzz with things I am just now seeing after not reading much last week because I was writing DVD reviews like mad. So, here are a few tidbits to make you laugh:


During my lunch hour today:

1) As I was walking down 55th Street after buying some coffee in Dunkin Donuts (an adventure in itself, after I'd gotten into a kind of confused staring contest with a homeless man outside who said something in gibberish to me and then refused to repeat himself, but instead just smiled at me while I blinked at him), some really loud young men decided that they should walk DIRECTLY behind me and talk very loudly. This is what they said:
Dude #1: Yeah, I'm talking about my SCROTUM.
Dude #2: Yeah, just to be clear.
Dude #1: My nutsack.
(Pause...)
Dude #1: Man, I've got to go back to that strip club.

2) Later on, as I was walking down 5th Ave, I heard two men discussing homeless people when we walked by an old babushka looking panhandler (who I later saw stuff her bills into her pocket to make it look as if she wasn't making any money... sneaky...):
Man #1: Homeless people are interesting...
Man #2: They can make a good bit of money doing that.
Man #1: I'd imagine.
Man #2: No, I mean it! There used to be this man who would ride on the 2 train with me every day. He had a skateboard and he would push himself up and down the cars on it, as if he had no legs. And people would give him a LOT of money, cause he had no legs. But then, he would get off the train every day at South Street Seaport, and STAND UP -
Man #1: Stand up?
Man #2: Yeah, he'd stand up on his LEGS and walk to his car and go home.

3) And later on still, on 56th Street as I was heading back to work, I passed a gay looking thug-type man who was saying to the girl he was with:
"That fucking ignorant fuck! That illiterate fucking fuck!
I was impressed by his use of expletives.



Meanwhile, over the weekend and in some cases last week, these things were happening on the internet:

1) David Bowie meets Tim Burton meets Colonel Sanders - in chicken form!

2) Take a good look at all three of these photos, people:
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-
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Now, imagine little old me at a Man Man show, getting all riled up by the music and finally getting up the gumption to jump into the moshpit nearby. And immediately getting SLAMMED to the floor by a huge, sweaty, almost-naked body...
Turned out, that "most pit" wasn't a mosh pit at all. It was just that guy flinging himself around in nothing but a headband and underpants. And he flattened me.
Good times.

3) If you click on this photo:

...there's more where that came from. Jesus is WITH YOU ALWAYS and don't you forget that next time you're looking at porn online, people.

http://www.scificool.com/category/the-sorcerers-apprentice-2010-movie/.


Oh. Oh no. This is all wrong. This. Is. All gone horribly wrong. I Thought I'd just post the link because it actually is going to give me pain to have to describe it. But, if I don't describe it, in ... you know ... words... You might not click it. Ok, I'm taking a deep breath. Calming...

That link up there, is going to take you to information and - dear god - screenshots, of Nicolas Cage in... The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Yes, it's a film. 2010. Live action.

I'm just. This makes me feel the same way as this:

http://uk.reuters.com/article/filmNews/idUKTRE51P0YR20090226.

That sonofabitch right there is a link to an article about talks to remake The Neverending Story. Peter Jackson is mentioned. I just. I don't quite know what's happening here.

Oh, wait... Holy.... Oh no.

http://ontheflix.com/2009/03/31/original-actors-will-appear-in-the-new-ghostbusters-3-remake/.

Oh, it's Ghostbusters. I don't care if Jesus were in this, like really honestly Jesus, I probably would still be pissed.

And the end of times, ladies and gentlemen, I give you... Drum roll...

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117989391.html?categoryid=13&cs=1.

Rocky Horror.

Well, that's it folks, I'm cuttin' my ties and up and moving to Tibet. I plan to start farming yaks and using their strong but very soft wool and selling it to designers. I'm out. And I'm taking this guy:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3416/3196188065_3025768ab9.jpg.


SO stay away from me.




Happy 420 Everyone!

RIP Russian Rambo

This is interesting, because I've seen headlines about this story a few times in the past week, but the events described actually happened almost a year ago. They happend in Russia, from whence news takes a while to migrate to the States, but a year still seems awfully long.

No matter, though, the point is: this is one of the coolest stories I have ever seen in my life. Why did we not hear about this sooner and see it plastered on as many papers and tabloids and websites as the Rihanna beatdown? As awful as Rihanna's ordeal is (I'm not trying to downplay it - that guy should be locked up with a very large 'top,' if you get my meaning), this Russian Rambo guy went down in, quite literally, a blaze of glory that's worthy of movie deals in as many languages as command a large audience.

Check it out! This guy had been living in a shack in the woods in Russia for 20 years, hunting and trapping and using home-made pistols and myriad other weapons. He was 6'7" and had a giant bushy beard, was batshit insane, and had actually managed to keep all attempts at law enforcement at bay by being, for lack of a better term, absolutely fucking terrifying. He had captured and held hostage several local officials who had wandered into his "territory" in the woods, releasing them with threats after holding them at gunpoint for hours and effectively scaring the shit out of all their buddies, then backed up those threats not to invade his space by torching 30 homes in the area. He'd become such a legend in the area that locals say they wouldn't let their children out of the house without dogs to accompany them - even though many of their dogs had been killed by his traps.

And, when federal officials finally decided to crack down on this "Rambo" figure by sending out six specialists to get him, he wounded two with some of his arsenal before setting a swath of the forest aflame and somehow circling around behind the officers, and preparing to fight them to a man. As one of the officers put it, "It was pure chance the sniper suddenly saw his figure in the trees and pulled the trigger. He shot him right in the head and he died in a flash."

This dude is impressive. I am in awe. I think it's a damn shame they killed him, because I'd love to have heard his stories from in prison, or better yet, to have heard of his legend haunting the Russian forests for years to come.

Not exactly on topic, but impressive as all get-out, and I wanted to share.

Fun links for a Wednesday

Well, I haven't come up with anything groundbreaking to say, except to reiterate how much I sincerely admire and kind of have a crush on Barack Obama. What a guy. How nice is it that I can honestly say, with no reservations, that I think our President is a really great person? It feels so GOOD to say that.

Anyway, to help you get over your post-inauguration let-down blues and through hump day, here are some fun links and other goodies:

Go Around Twice If You're Happy, a public art piece in Dubai. It warms my cold January little heart.

On my favorite site, Overheard In New York, here's a funny bit from a guy who may have been trying to direct someone to my old apartment near Fordham:
Guy on cell, giving directions: So you take the D line... No, D as in "David." D! D! A, b, c, d! (pause) No, D. Okay...then you walk down to Hoffman Street... Hoffman Street, as in "Dustin Hoffman." He's that actor, with a big nose, that you really like, the one that's in that movie about your life...yeah...yeah! He's a cross-dresser! Tootsie! That's you, bro!

--Arthur Ave

Overheard by: eternal student


Here's a site for all your get-well present needs this cold and flu season: Giant Stuffed Microbes of Joy.

And, of course, a particularly humorous installment from Fuck You Penguin, a blog where the blogger tells cute animals what's what.

The kind of thing I hate to acknowledge

Some days it's really better to just avoid the news. But here I am at work on a Saturday morning, without having had any coffee or tea, with nothing to do (or at least no willpower to make myself do anything useful). So I started looking at news sites to keep myself updated on the world.

And I read about Abraham Biggs. Go ahead, Google it, then come back. I'll wait...

...aaaand Happy Saturday, everyone! Are you depressed already? Welcome to the weekend!

This poor kid. I know nothing about his personal or family life, so I'm not going to make any wild speculations about why he might have done this. Personally, I try not to bother the memory of those who have taken their own lives by digging into their private matters. I think suicides are necessarily sad, but it seems to me that it's well within one's rights to do what one wants with one's own life. I have no right nor reason to intervene.

But the facts of the case on a superficial level beg to be analyzed. This kid decided to end his life publicly by streaming it on the internet. And not in some gruesome or violent way that might just point to the last screaming moments of an adrenaline junkie with too much video gaming experience. He chose to overdose on Xanax, then quietly fell asleep on his webcam until his breath ran out, and 12 hours later was found dead by police, who covered up the webcam and ended the spectacle. No numbers yet on how many people actually watched it happen on the body-building website hosting the streaming spectacle, but there were comments and viewers in some quanityt up until the end.

What it says to me is that this person didn't want to go out in a blaze of glory. He wasn't looking for spectacle or martyrdom or fame. He just wanted his life - his memory - his last moments - to have some sort of meaning and he chose to validate it by sharing it with others over the internet. Others on the site had helped him decide what method to use, how much to take, and whether or not to go through with it when he'd announced his intentions. His watchers, for the most part it would seem, assumed he was faking it, typing in "lol" and "hahaha" and "OMFG" as he lay still on his bed for hours. It seems most of them watched the webcam tragedy half-heartedly, like an absurd funny-cat creation on YouTube.

The internet is such a bizarre mixture of raw communicative power and creative irony, dashed with a sprinkling of those intense assholes who always have to pop up in the comments with no mastery of the English language and an inability to hit "shift" simultaneously with "1" (11!1!!!!). It has become a platform for many to express their deepest feelings and thoughts in what seems like a safe environment, in which their faces can stay anonymous but their words can speak what is in their hearts. Simultaneously, for many it is the opposite: a place to make their faces famous while protecting what is inside them by building a false sense of self to show to the world. For a lot of us it's just a place to waste time in endlessly entertaining ways. For some it's a way to get news and cooking tips. But no matter what role it fills in our lives, most of us with a web presence often feel an odd sense of removal from reality in it. We can make ourselves pretty much whatever we want online. We can invent personas for fun or for evil (Google "Lori Drew"), we can write and re-write our profiles to seem as intelligent or witty or cool as we want. It's a space to connect with emails and messages and Twitters, but it's also looking through a lens of bizarre porno sites and Photoshop.

But then there are others out there, like Abraham Biggs, who lose that sense of removal, who let themselves be seen fully and intimately by their webcams or MySpace bathroom-mirror shots, who forget to keep that degree of separation from the computer screen and the people on the other end of the tubes. People whose identities have become wrapped up with their keyboards and whose Facebook photos don't have 'angles.' While most of us can look on while turkeys get killed right behind Sarah Palin with a little smirk on our faces because she seems so clueless, typing "OMFG what a moron" into the comments box, othersjust see the turkeys kicking and fighting to the bitter end and think, "Wow, that's intense." And maybe that thought connects, just like links on our sidebars, to thousand of other sites and thoughts that connect to... "Hey, I could do that to myself online. People will remember me that way."

I don't really know where I'm going with this. It's the kind of thing I hate to acknowledge publicly for fear of glamorizing something so sad, but at the same time I find the psychology in it so fascinating and the implications about internet culture so endless that I can't help it.

Here's where I wish I had a readership to comment and help me pick this apart, but then again, maybe it's not something we should hack up.