Law, life and the local spectator sport called politics.
The Brett Kimberlin Saga:
Follow this link to my BLOCKBUSTER STORY of how Brett Kimberlin, a convicted terrorist and perjurer, attempted to frame me for a crime, and then got me arrested for blogging when I exposed that misconduct to the world. That sounds like an incredible claim, but I provide primary documents and video evidence proving that he did this. And if you are moved by this story to provide a little help to myself and other victims of Mr. Kimberlin’s intimidation, such as Robert Stacy McCain, you can donate at the PayPal buttons on the right. And I thank everyone who has done so, and will do so.
Showing posts with label friday frivolity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label friday frivolity. Show all posts
Okay, less frivolous than usual, but I want to talk about it, so there. When I heard there was going to be a movie about Lincoln by Spielberg, I got hopeful. Spielberg was the kind of guy who could move movie mountains, who could get a studio to waste a ton of money on a likely financial loser in the name of art, and give us a high quality historic epic...
...assuming he didn’t miss the point. Which is a real problem with him. The history geek in me absolutely loves the opening scene in Saving Private Ryan for its startlingly realistic depiction of D-Day, warts and all.
And part of me hated the movie’s “Vietnamization” of the war. I once heard Spielberg say that he believed that all great war movies are anti-war movies. Well, of course every person should be reluctant to fight a war; the default position, the presumption for every civilized person should be to prefer peace to war unless a moral justification for the war is presented. And if that is all he means—that a great war movie should make us hesitant to go to war—that is fine.
Sometime in the last few months I learned about the phenomenon of Bronies. “Bronies” are fans of the show My Little Pony, particularly the more recent My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, who happen to be guys. Get it? Bro, as in brother, bro-nies? So yes, this is a thing.
And they even have a thing called Bronycon. Yes, hard-core Trekkies, you finally have someone you can look down on! Here’s some videos from it:
And then today we get the special horror that is the Brony fighting game. Called Fighting is Magic, this is a 2-D fighting game, featuring My Little Pony. Which is being created for free, to be released for free, by the fans and without approval of the actual franchise owners.
So we didn’t run a Friday Frivolity, because with the Batman Massacre, that just didn’t seem right, especially given that most of my choices were Batman related. I don’t think that the whole world has to be put on hold when this kind of tragedy happens, but there is such a thing as decorum. For instance, I thought it was in really poor taste that when just before watching The Dark Knight Rises, I saw a trailer for the movie Gangster Squad, about an anti-gang squad in old timey Los Angeles, where in one scene some guys with Tommy guns go into a movie theater and machine gun into the crowd. This has led to some speculation that the movie could be changed. I don’t think you should change the movie itself, but putting the preview on seems to have been a really poor choice, especially leading in to that movie, akin to the infamous Spider-Man World Trade Center preview.
Of course cutting out the entire scene from the movie itself made sense in Spider-Man because the collapse of the towers would have dated the movie instantly, as taking place sometime in the past when the movie makers want you to imagine it took place in the present or perhaps the near-future. But if someone makes a movie that takes place in pre-9-11 New York city, I don’ t think they should shy away from showing us the towers. We shouldn’t pretend like it never happened.
Anyway, so no Friday Frivolity, but we get Monday Frivolity, which is like Friday Frivolity, only without the alliteration and in today’s edition, you are going to learn why it pays to follow my Twitter account. Sometimes you get random fun, like me pointing out that my wife made me 4 pancakes—3 regular ones and one that is heart-shaped. And then there are people just goofing around. Like people like to come up with “humor challenges” for lack of a better word, so someone came up with the idea of trying to come up with humorous examples of what happens when you take one letter out of a movie title. So you get this from Bob Owens: “Fat and Furious: Michael Moore gets his dinner bill.#removeoneletterfilms”
Well, I racked my brain, and finally came up with one I thought was funny:
"T: The Extra Terrestrial" Mr. T plays an alien who will pity the fool who screws with Elliot#RemoveOneLetterFilms
I never know how funny my own jokes are, but apparently some people liked it, including one enterprising person going by the nickname @Darth who wrote that “This needs a poster” and then went on to make this very excellent mock up:
For this week’s Friday Frivolity®, we have the Frivolous Five! Yes, an actual musical group called the Frivolous Five. Here’s a sample of their music
That is from their album Sour Cream and Other Delights, an album mostly notable by the sheer awfulness of its cover:
Then again, as bad as it is, it got the attention of Bored Panda, which listed it as among the forty worstalbum covers of all time (warning actual nudity at the link, so very NWFW). So... free publicity! They must be thrilled.
Mostly these bad album covers fall into four categories (warning: NSFW below the fold). First, inoffensive covers featuring people who just look very uncool:
Second, covers that were probably made innocently and just sounds dirty now:
(Sandusky's favorie album!)
Third, covers that are intentionaly sexual, but really, really bad at a it.
As I noted yesterday, weather concerns screwed up my enjoyment of fireworks. But considering these items, I am not sure I should be all that upset. First, we have via Hot Air the screw up in San Diego’s display where apparently all the fireworks went off in something like 17 seconds. And no, it doesn’t seem cool, it seems like nothing more than an evening sun. The idea of an hour’s worth of fireworks going off in in about 17 seconds sounds much cooler than the reality:
On the other hand, while much of this is conduct one should never emulate... it doesn’t mean we can’t laugh at the sheer FAIL! of it (via Kotaku):
Let freedom ring.
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My wife and I have lost our jobs due to the harassment of convicted terrorist Brett Kimberlin, including an attempt to get us killed and to frame me for a crime carrying a sentence of up to ten years. I know that claim sound fantastic, but if you read starting here, you will see absolute proof of these claims using documentary and video evidence. If you would like to donate and help my wife and I in this time of need, please go to this donation page. And thank you.
Follow me at Twitter @aaronworthing, mostly for snark and site updates. And you can purchase my book (or borrow it for free if you have Amazon Prime), Archangel: A Novel of Alternate, Recent Historyhere. And you can read a little more about my novel, here.
Legal Insurrection took a light-hearted email and turned it into something dark and foreboding, and while there is nothing wrong with what he wrote, I want to restore the fun to this.
As you might know, Prof. Jacobson likes to highlight funny/interesting bumper stickers as a break from the otherwise serious topics he discusses on his blog and he always meticulously edits out the license plate. Well, I sent him one recently.
As I said to Jacobson I know normally you should not put personal information out there. Phone numbers, email address, etc. should not be posted on a website. But this seems like a reasonable exception; this is a personalized license plate that seems reasonably calculated to get attention. I was driving around Manassas about two weeks ago, when I saw an orange “modern” Dodge Charger:
And as I am wont to do when waiting at a red light, I like to read license plates and bumper stickers, and I noticed what this one said on its plate:
And I noticed something else. That plate is a Virginia Civil War commemorative plate for General Robert E. Lee. Here’s a better view of the model plate:
Holy crap! It’s the Genereal Lee!
Wherever you are, sir, I salute you for a very cool nod back to a silly show I loved as child.
I mean he could have gone the obvious route and painted a Confederate flag on the roof; but instead what he did was subtle, and that makes it awesome.
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Follow me at Twitter @aaronworthing, mostly for snark and site updates. And you can purchase my book (or borrow it for free if you have Amazon Prime), Archangel: A Novel of Alternate, Recent Historyhere. And you can read a little more about my novel, here.
Even in the midst of all the hectic fallout (I have been contacted by several people, including reporters) from yesterday’s monster post detailing how Brett Kimberlin attempted to frame me for a crime, I still found time for laughter.
That might sound odd to you, but anyone who knows me in real life realizes that I will make jokes all the time, even in pretty bad situations. I tell people to only start worrying if I don’t joke. I think it is a cultural quirk I picked up from my Jewish friends growing up. That is why a movie like Life is Beautiful made profound sense to me, while I think for a lot of people it was kind of a head-scratcher. Certainly this trailer doesn’t do a very good job explaining it:
Some people felt that it was weird to place a comedy during the holocaust, to show a man trying to make his son laugh in the midst of horror. But I get it. I can’t even quite explain it, but I get it. I don’t mind any other person being offended by it, but I found it to be a great movie.
And of course there is also Mel Brooks’ decision to make a mockery of Hitler in The Producers (this clip is from the original, not the more recent movie based on a Broadway musical based on the original movie—and even reciting that makes my head hurt):
Anyway, so the ultimate geekgasm movie The Avengers is out today and the embargo on reviews has been lifted and it seems to be getting pretty good reviews, including Rolling Stone, which says:
It's also the blockbuster I saw in my head when I imagined a movie that brought together the idols of the Marvel world in one shiny, stupendously exciting package. It's Transformers with a brain, a heart and a working sense of humor. Suck on that, Michael Bay.
But apparently in the New York Times, A. O. Scott wrote a fairly negative review. Hey, I haven’t seen the movie, but I admit to being offended by this just for the sheer snottiness of what he wrote:
Mr. Whedon’s playful, democratic pop sensibility is no match for the glowering authoritarianism that now defines Hollywood’s comic-book universe. Some of the rebel spirit of Mr. Whedon’s early projects “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Firefly” and “Serenity” creeps in around the edges but as detail and decoration rather than as the animating ethos.
“I aim to misbehave,” Malcolm Reynolds famously said in “Serenity.” But for all their maverick swagger, the Avengers are dutiful corporate citizens, serving a conveniently vague set of principles. Are they serving private interests, big government, their own vanity, or what? It hardly matters, because the true guiding spirit of their movie is Loki, who promises to set the human race free from freedom and who can be counted on for a big show wherever he goes. In Germany he compels a crowd to kneel before him in mute, terrified awe, and “The Avengers,” which recently opened there to huge box office returns, expects a similarly submissive audience here at home. The price of entertainment is obedience.
I mean sheesh, the man is in danger of disappearing up his own arse. And apparently Sam Jackson isn’t happy, tweeting:
Actually this phenomenon is not exclusive to video games, but there was a time when this “rap” thing was new, and different, and lazy advertising agencies would tell various companies that the way to reach kids was to do a rap ad... by people who knew nothing about hip-hop. So you would see things like car dealers who clearly never listened to an actual rap song, rapping as you covered your ears. It was clearly an example where literally no one who made the ad thought the music was good, but they believed other people when they told them it was good or that others would like it.
In my humble opinion, if you can’t see the value in a thing, probably no one else can either.
So via Kotaku you get this psychological punishment:
Also this is completely unrelated, but if I don’t post it soon it is likely to disappear for copyright concerns. Those of you who own Xboxes (or, God help you, Wii’s) probably have heard all the shouting about the Playstation’s Uncharted series. You are told that this mash up of Indiana Jones style adventure and cover-based shooting is like a playable movie. Indeed many people note that spectators often enjoy watching the game just like a movie, a concept that Playstation itself riffed off of in one of its classic “Kevin Butler” ads:
Well, my dearly deprived Xbox (and *cough* Wii) players, now you can get a taste of what you are missing. Someone took all three Playstation 3 games and edited them down to movie-length videos. Some of the graphical fidelity is lost—in other words, it will not look as amazing as it does in a Playstation 3, on an HD TV. And judging by a few minutes of the first video, it appears that they cut out about 90% of the actual gameplay. But still it’s about as close as you are likely to get to enjoying these games without buying the necessary hardware and software.
So I present to you, Uncharted (1): Drake’s Fortune:
Uncharted 2: Among Theives:
In my opinion, #2 is the best in the series, even if there wasn’t enough Sully in it.
And last is Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception.
And if there is any doubt that the “Indiana Jones torch” has been passed to this series, you can go back to an old Patterico post I wrote showing Harrison Ford acting like a kid as he plays the third game, here.
Incidentally there has been stories for a while now of an attempt to make these into live action movies, starring Mark Wahlberg. Well, let me respectfully suggest to the studios that you avoid wasting a ton of money on a movie that will annoy fans of the series and will not win new converts, and just hire this guy and release what he made on the big screen. No, it won’t be a blockbuster, but I bet that it will be infinitely more profitable.
(Consider that an only half-serious suggestion.)
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Follow me at Twitter @aaronworthing, mostly for snark and site updates. And you can purchase my book (or borrow it for free if you have Amazon Prime), Archangel: A Novel of Alternate, Recent Historyhere. And you can read a little more about my novel, here.
So in Canada they are having their own political season. I guess. And one of the local party leaders is Danielle Smith, who you will see in a moment is pretty easy on the eyes. So naturally they are using a large picture of her on the side of a campaign bus and everything was going well until, um, this happened:
Mmm, yeah. So there are a few snickers about the whole thing and at the same time Shannon Stubbs, a local party spokeswoman, well… spoke on the subject:
“We’re getting it adjusted right now since it will be a distraction throughout the campaign,” said Shannon Stubbs, party spokeswoman and candidate in the Alberta riding of Fort Saskatchewan-Vegreville. “Nobody really noticed, since we have been focused on providing a solid campaign platform. There were a couple of comments when we were doing the initial draft a long time ago, but the majority of the team didn’t notice or didn’t anticipate it would be an issue.”
Those people who didn’t think this would be an issue are to be pitied, because they were clearly born without a funny bone.
The image in question has Smith’s head above the rear wheels, making it look as if the tires are taking the place of her breasts.
“We do think that if this is the absolute worst thing to go wrong in the campaign, then that’s not too bad,” Stubbs said. “We’ve been having a bit of laugh because of the attention it’s been getting. Somebody suggested we submit a picture into Leno or Letterman to get international attention, as well as the national coverage we’ve been getting.”
However, she also suggested that not everyone is amused.
“I did see someone comment that it might be one of the reasons why women are dissuaded from entering politics, and I think there might be a valid point there.”
So she goes from juking about it and talking about sending it to Leno for media attention, but then complaining that this somehow is a feminist crime.
And really? You don’t think this would happen to a man? Imagine if, for instance, the photo was of a man only it showed his upper body, going from his head down to his pelvis, so that those tires were exactly where his “beans” would be. Or imagine if they put him up on a wall mural and a flagpole just happened to be where his “frank” would be. Tell the truth, we’d be snickering about that, too.
For myself, I keep thinking of this classic scene in The Naked Gun:
I won’t say “rest in peace” to Leslie Nielson. I will say “rest in laughter.” The world is not as funny without you. (And he was a fine dramatic actor, too.)
Follow me at Twitter @aaronworthing, mostly for snark and site updates. And you can purchase my book (or borrow it for free if you have Amazon Prime), Archangel: A Novel of Alternate, Recent Historyhere. And you can read a little more about my novel, here.
On a day we hear of George Clooney getting arrested (I won’t be joking about it, because stopping the genocide in Sudan is actually a serious and noble issue), we get to look back at his... um, less successful movie outing.
You might think that there is nothing that can be done to redeem the movie Batman and Robin, and on this point you are wrong. It can be fixed... with a cheesy Phantom of the Opera style musical number:
I think what makes it work for me is the dead on imitation of how Ahnold would sound holding a long note. Or trying to.
It has to be the funniest thing to happen in Batman’s universe since... well... this:
Yes, yes, the infamous shark repellant scene in the 1960’s Batman movie. For some reason they recently released this movie on blu-ray (seriously, why?), and a long time ago I saw where Conan O’Brien argued that the 1960’s Batman show was actually a brilliant comedy—that the stuff that seemed ridiculous as we were grew out of the show was intentionally ridiculous. Myself, I don’t know. On one hand it is pretty absurd that there are multiple types of repellant. And the shark blowing up (you find out later it was rigged to blow—that all of this was one of the most awkward assassination attempts in history, unless you count all the ways we tried to kill Castro)... it’s hard not to think it is a joke. But on the other hand, the pacing of that scene is awful. You watch the shark get creases in its foam from the rope ladder as Robin, supposedly an acrobat, makes an incredibly awkward climb down, complete with his cape batting Batman in the face. I think maybe the best explanation is that some of the people on the show understood it was a joke and played that up, but others did not.
But it’s really hard not to catch the pitch perfect comic timing in this bit:
Um, yeah, Batman that isn’t exactly going to tamp down those rumors about your relationship with Robin.
And Julie Newmar is cute, but it’s really hard to beat this Catwoman:
(That is referred to as Rule 5, folks.)
That would be how she was portrayed in Batman: Arkham City.
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Follow me at Twitter @aaronworthing, mostly for snark and site updates. And you can purchase my book (or borrow it for free if you have Amazon Prime), Archangel: A Novel of Alternate, Recent Historyhere. And you can read a little more about my novel, here.
I have disagreed with Kevin Drum a lot over the years, but geekery can bring people together, so we get this from him yesterday:
As background, some students at Lehigh University have estimated that it would be a very expensive project. The steel alone, assuming the Death Star's mass/volume ratio is about the same as an aircraft carrier, comes to $852 quadrillion, or 13,000 times the world's GDP. Is this affordable?
Of course the only thing geekier than that discussion is to throw a little real science cold water on it. Hidden in there is a massive assumption: that the materials are the same ones familiar to us. That is when you see something metal-looking, it is steel, when you see something like a glass it is glass, etc. What if instead of glass it is “transparent aluminum” that is used on Star Trek? What if instead of steel it is adamantium from Marvel comics? Or just Rearden Metal?
And then at the same time what if the distribution of materials in their galaxy is radically different. What if iron is far more rare, or more plentiful than it is here?
And let’s talk extraction, shall we? Surely an advanced alien civilization would have methods of extracting materials very different from our own and presumably more efficient. At least they would be capable of greater efficiency.
And then there are labor costs. Which is a great unknown, to tell the truth. Is it going to be humans building it, and is it going to be free labor, or slave labor? In the movie Clerks one of the characters argues that the second Death Star was likely to have the families of the workers on the station, but given that these might all be droids or clones perhaps bred for labor, that is far from a safe assumption (leaving aside the argument that all clones are actually identical twin brothers, thus they are all in a way family to each other).
And of course that gets into another variable: freedom. Free labor systems are always inherently healthier and more innovative than unfree ones. Consider one of the most extreme examples: American slavery. In the South American slaves adopted a term “fooling old master” to describe the ways that they intentionally slowed down work on the plantations. Indeed, it is argued that the Emancipation Proclamation might have struck the killing blow to the Confederacy in that it gave the slaves a stake in the contest between the North and the South. There is strong evidence of a severe work slowdown after the proclamation was issued. And one suspects that this was the source of the stereotype that black people were lazy—southern racists misinterpreting such passive resistance. And it is worth noting that this kind of thing happens all over the world. For instance, in the Soviet Union workers became fond of saying “they pretend to pay us, we pretend to work.” I am sure that some in the politburo misinterpreted that as sloth as well.
But the introduction of robotic labor would throw that analysis to hell. Would robots be as innovative as humans? Certainly it is hard to argue that droid warriors are as competent as human ones:
Which is all a complicated way of saying that there are just too many variables to make any kind of an intelligent stab at the truth.
And to out-geek the geeks.
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Follow me at Twitter @aaronworthing, mostly for snark and site updates. And you can purchase my book (or borrow it for free if you have Amazon Prime), Archangel: A Novel of Alternate, Recent Historyhere. And you can read a little more about my novel, here.
