The Unification Day Shindig was a lot of fun; the pictures that I took are here and here's one of me that R:tAG took at home afterward when I realized I didn't have any of me. I made the shirt; I found a Fruity Oaty Bar image on the Web and used that cool iron-on inkjet paper and an old tanktop. Everything else is just scavenged from army surplus and/or my regular wardrobe (these are my everyday goggles, not my fancy Steampunk goggles). I was considering a more elaborate costume, like a Reaver or something, but the venue was a hot 1.5 hour car ride away and elaborate makeup would have slid right off me.
The iPhone camera is not the best quality in low light (should have brought the real camera) but it gives you an idea of some of the costumes. I missed a bunch, because it wasn’t until it was suboptimally dark that I remembered that I really ought to be taking pictures. Dur. I won a prize for my Firefly trivia knowledge so go, me! The location was interesting too; a really out-of-the-way place that I don’t think I’d have ever visited on my own. But the GPS worked really well and kept us from getting lost out in the black.
So having an iPhone is a bit like having a pet; you end up getting all these little accessories for it, not to mention having to feed it more often than you expected. The best app I’ve seen for it so far is Shazam, where you basically hold your iPhone up so it can listen to the music and it tells you what the song is, who it’s by, and gives you an iTunes link to purchase it. Bloody amazing. It worked in a crowded, noisy restaurant, too.
We saw the new Batman movie, and it was really good, though it felt like ten pounds of movie in a five pound bag and (my mind being the burden that it is) I could not get past some of the more egregious violations of physics*, but I thought the acting was excellent. We also saw Tideland which was just as good a movie as The Dark Knight in its own way but really really disturbing. But not for the obvious reasons. Well, OK, a little for the obvious reasons.** Well, OK, a lot for the obvious reasons.*** But also because it really does succeed in presenting these things innocently and sort of beautifully, and then you realize what you’re watching. It was actually filmed in Saskatchewan, near Katepwa, but I don’t imagine it played well there.
* Glass is transparent to light, not sound.
** As soon as the neglected, precocious eight-year old heroine met the Faulknerian man-child, I started the anticipatory cringing.
*** Not to spoil things too much, but Faulkner really is in the same genre as this movie.
We’re on daylight savings three weeks early, by government fiat, so today is a day of confused computers and general brain-lag because all of a sudden it's an hour later than it should be. Luckily my Mom called yesterday to remind me it was happening (she knows that, having been raised in a sane place, I tend to forget these arbitrary time changes).
I’ve just been accumulating links for the past few weeks and saving them for a day where there is nothing else particularly of interest. And that day is here!
We went to see 300 yesterday. I liked it, but I think R:tAG liked it more than I did. I think the movie appeals especially to something in the male hindbrain even though visually this is a movie for the ladies, what with all the leather posing pouches and the CGI enhanced abs* and all. We did get a few giggles from one scene where the narrator describes Leonidas as standing in front of the Persians with his 300 men behind him… and what’s actually behind him is this little turtle of about 15 shields. I started snickering and R:tAG whispered “Maybe they’re all in a hole” which made me snicker even more**. And poor Ephialtes… it’s not enough that his name was already synonymous with Benedict Arnold, he gets portrayed as a deformed monster? And Xerxes? The hell?***
We also saw Ghost Rider last weekend (which was powerful weak IMHO and others’) and Talladega Nights, which was funnier than I thought it would be. It’s sort of unfortunate, though not really, that the two movies are getting blended together in my head. I mean, both have racing guys in suits covered in logos (with pornish girlfriends and good ol' boy sidekicks) screaming about being on fire… I’m not crazy, it’s true!
Anyway, on to these links!
Person Cosy - I have so had days like this.
Huggies Thongs
The Awful Guide to Graduate School
Squee! - They’re making a “The Dark is Rising” movie, and it’s got Christopher Eccleston in it!
Scott Adams’ Happiness Formula - Similar to the old “Good, cheap or fast; pick two” axiom.
Bulwer-Lytton 2006 Fiction Contest - the long-running contest for the "best" (i.e. worst) opening sentence of works in various genres.
NFCTD - So, so pretty
Order of the Stick - This is always funny, but Mr. Burlew has really outdone himself with this one (no background required)
OK, these last two are knitting-related, sort of, but they’re so ridiculous that I think they’re of general appeal:
Scarf - This is a pattern. INSTRUCTIONS for wrapping a hank of yarn around your neck. For when actually making anything from it is just too much work
High Fashion Knitting - This just made me stare and laugh. The sixth picture in particular. How much would you have to pay someone to wear that?
* Really, it was excessive. At one point I thought it looked like nothing more than a parade of McRib sandwiches in red cloaks.
** The other time I snickered was when a Spartan referred dismissively to the Athenians as “lovers of boys.” O RLY? Though I did appreciate that they kept a few indicators that the Spartans continued homosexual relationships into adulthood – i.e. that the dismissive remark was on the order of “They are lovers of boys… we are lovers of men!”
*** My biggest problem with the movie was how much it felt like thinly disguised Republican propaganda... the small group of Manly Aryan Men (are there that many blonde Greeks?) bucking the cowardice of the (old and/or diseased and/or corrupt) opposition and going to defend themselves against the evil and degenerate threat from the Middle East... eeesh.
... so the corpse sits up and says, "Do you have anything to stop this coffin?"
I don't remember the actual joke, exactly, though it's implied from the punchline. My sickness has morphed into a persistant-tearing-hacking-coal-mining-smoker thing that is getting seriously old. Buckley's doesn't touch it. A pack of Fisherman's Friends barely took the edge off. Two packs of Chloraseptic Relief Strips helped only as long as it took for the numbing gel to dissolve.* It might be time to test out this wierd HMO thing.
We watched "Thank you for Smoking," which I do not recommend to anyone who is an ex-smoker or trying to quit, because it will probably make you want to smoke.** But it is a good and very funny movie, more about truth and perception than smoking. And I thought my coughing just added to the cinematic ambience.
Amusing links:
Google Fight (this is probably old, but I just discovered it. Again, I remind you that sickness makes me regress)
The 80's Tarot
Inexplicable Objects
Useful German Phrases (this can't be real. Can it? Nah. Can't be.)
Useful Latin song translation
* So these things are menthol/benzocaine versions of those breath-minty slips of gelatin that you put on your tongue and God forbid you should get stuck on the roof of your mouth. That goes double in spades with the medicated ones; I had several misfires that resulted in numb areas of my hard palate and gums, which felt interesting but did damn-all to stop my cough.
** Or maybe not. Upon reflection, there are not many scenes of people actually smoking, which is very funny in the context of the movie. I still thought about lighting up, but then, SuperSize Me made me want fries. I'm just a patsy in the hands of the hidden persuaders.
Just to be clear, in case you've seen Ze Governator on the news frowning thoughtfully at waterfilled farms, there's absolutely no flooding in our particular part of California, so don't worry about us.
Oh yeah... welcome to T-ass entering blogdom. Old news, I know, but I'm usually the last one to know these things.
And in movie news, we finally saw the Narnia movie and The Producers, both of which I'd been quite looking forwards to though with some mixed feelings in the Narnia case. After all, the Narnia books are part of the furniture of my mind, to use Douglas Adams' lovely phrase, and I've seen with Lord of the Rings how someone else's vision and the vicissitudes of the movie format can clash with my own mental images. But The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a shorter, simpler book, and adapted to a movie really quite well. The main actors were great and the special effects were so good that you stopped thinking of them as effects (the animals especially; I realized that I wasn't amazed at the CGI, I was amazed that they'd found talking beavers). And Tilda Swinton rocks my world.
And The Producers is great. I think they really kept the stage play/musical feel of it (original "stagy" dialogue, slightly stylized sets, over the top acting) and it worked. Mind you, it's a movie based on a musical based on a movie about a musical, so it's going to be campy. It's been a long time since I've seen the original movie (which I don't think was even a musical? It's been a long time) but if my memory serves they even kept a lot of the blocking.* I can't think about neo-Nazis now without snickering slightly ("Don't be schtupid, be a schmartie! Come and join ze Nazi Party!") which I'm sure was Mr. Brooks' intent.
I recommend both movies. Well, all three movies, since the original of The Producers is excellent also. I mean, Gene Wilder. C'mon.
* There was a slight difference in the plot; the original movie had a hippie playing Hitler, I think. Though the whole "I broke my leg!" running gag seemed familiar, so maybe he just auditioned. I guess the whole hippie thing was edgier in 1967. I'll have to see if I can find the original movie. Netflix to the rescue!
