- We live in a country where pizza is a vegetable. I’m just saying. [via]
- Harry Potter director developing all-new Doctor Who movie. Not at all a sure thing, but still, when do we stop remaking things? Maybe when the last remake is still on-going?
- Genevieve Valentine on Immortals, which she describes as “a batch of snickerdoodles with thumbtacks inside.”
The labyrinth and Minotaur are well turned out, and their showdown takes place in a temple mausoleum, where an archway of stairs frames a goddess’s head that’s inset with candles to make it glow from within. It’s the sort of thing where you think, “Man, that’s good looking! I wish this stupid scene would stop so we could just look at it.”
- I really don’t know what to think about actress suing IMDB for revealing her age. They both seem to have a perfectly valid point.
- Massive plagiarism might help your book sales [via]
- Billy Crystal will be hosting the Oscars this year, giving me another reason not to watch. Which is not a dig at Crystal, necessarily, who I generally like…you know, back when he made movies people watched. But it’s such a safe, boring choice. The Academy really missed a golden opportunity to let the Muppets host the Oscars
- Tilt-shift Van Gogh
- Polite Dissent on Forgotten Drugs of the Silver-Age:
The more I think about it, for all intents and purposes, Jor-El was a mad scientist. He espoused scientific theories well outside the accepted norm and performed numerous unauthorized scientific experiments of questionable ethics.
- Mysterious D.C. rampage leaves smashed cars in its wake. Seriously, it looks like the Hulk went through there. [via]
- And finally, the Center for Fiction interviews Margaret Atwood:
I think it’s a human need to name – to tell this from that. On the most basic level, we need to distinguish – as crows do – the dangerous creature from the harmless one, and – as all animals do – the delicious and healthful food object from the rotting, poisonous one. In literary criticism it’s very helpful to know that the Harlequin Romance you sneak into when you think no one is looking is not the same, and is not intended to be the same, as Moby Dick. But stories and fictions have always interbred and hybridized and sent tendrils out into strange spaces.
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Wednesday various
- Georgia Considers Replacing Firefighters with Free Prison Laborers. Oh yeah, that sounds like a great idea… [via]
- Nobody was more surprised than me when I discovered The Human Centipede wasn’t really as bad as it seemed on paper. It’s not, y’know, a good movie, but it’s got a genuinely creepy lead performance and some decent B-movie horror scares. A sequel, though, just seems like gilding the lily…then surgically attaching it to two other gilded lilies.
- I’m not sure saying that Arthur Conan Doyle would have preferred his first book to remain out of print holds a lot of weight. He often said much the same thing about Sherlock Holmes.
- Meanwhile, though, the top 10 books lost to time.
- And finally, via John Carroll, what sounds like smart advice to me: date a girl who reads.
Tuesday various
- Silicon Valley billionaire reveals plan to launch floating ‘start up country’ off San Francisco. Yeah, that’s gonna end well. [via]
When I first saw that, I asked, “Are there any words scarier than ‘inspired by Atlas Shrugged‘?” To which DoctorHu rightly responded, “Are there any funnier or more appropriate than ‘We want looser building codes in our floating city?'”
- But what do they care? Apparently, the very rich have less empathy. [via]
- Speaking of the divide between rich and poor, if you’re like me and were wondering how Blackberry’s became the organizing tool of rioters and looters recently in England, here’s an interesting article on their shift from executives to the urban poor. [via]
- Marvel Bribes Retailers to Destroy DC Comics.
- And finally, Bert and Ernie are not gay. So sayeth Sesame Workshop, and you know, I’m with Mark Evanier on this. It was just ridiculous from the get-go:
One could also argue, as I would if I could stand to devote five more minutes to this whole ridiculous matter, that there’s a nice lesson in Bert and Ernie not being retrofitted as gay lovers. It is possible for two men or two women to be close friends and live together and sleep in adjoining beds without their sexuality being an issue or someone saying, “They must be gay!” I don’t think same-sex wedlock threatens so-called “traditional” marriages in any way. I don’t think the idea that two males might just be really close friends (and nothing more) threatens gay marriages.
Monday various
- Monty Python’s Life of Brian recreated for BBC comic drama. This could be interesting.
- Wendell Pierce, of ‘The Wire’ and ‘Treme,’ to open groceries in New Orleans ‘food deserts’. Good for him! [via]
- Thudfactor in defense of parental leave:
Finally, complaining that parental leave is an unfair “benefit†because not everyone has or wants children is a like complaining psychological medial coverage is unfair because not everyone is insane, or permanent disability coverage is unfair because not everyone is guaranteed to have their legs chewed off by mechanical equipment while on the clock.
- Of course, along the same lines, the sad news that Women have to have a Ph.D. to Make As Much As Men With a B.A.. [via]
- And finally, the trailer for Francis Ford Coppola’s new movie, Twixt is just bizarre. His plans to “exhibit [it] as a road show, re-editing the movie after every screening based on audience reaction” sounds almost normal by comparison:
Tuesday various
- Orange goo near remote Alaska village ID’d as eggs. Well that’s one question answered… [via]
- Help provide free copies of Slaughterhouse-Five to students at book-banning high school. I sent them five bucks myself last night.
- Are smart people getting smarter? (See also: Everything Bad Is Good for You.) [via]
- Stan Lee is determined to create new superheroes for every man, woman, and child on Earth, isn’t he?
- And finally, How to Build a Newsroom Time Machine. This is kind of wonderful…even if the notion that they’ll need to teach this kind of course again twenty years from now is kind of predicated on the idea that there will be newsrooms twenty years from now. [via]