Crouching Convertible, Hidden Roof

A few 12 second videos featuring my new car. I'll post some real photos of it one of these days.

Thought... who wouldn't buy a GPS unit that had William Daniel's voice? "Hello Michael, turn left in 100 yards."

Life's Little Conundrums

I have actually asked this very question, and the Onion tackles the issue on my behalf.

How does Radio Shack stay in business? I occasionally stop at the one in my neighborhood, mostly because it is close to my house and sometimes you need an extension cord or a coax cable really fast. There is never anyone there. The salespeople manage to either ignore you, be rude to you or are just plain ignorant. And there are never less than two of them, regardless of the fact that there are rarely customers around.

Money laundering? Vanity business? CIA front? Just askin'.

Oxymoron?

Building on the San Jose State Campus.

Gee, our old LaSalle ran great

In my household quiz shows were a contact sport with everyone yelling at the screen, especially for Jeopardy, but Password and College Bowl were also favorites. What's my Line and To Tell the Truth and the erszatz quiz show, You Bet Your Life were often on the tube, a 25" RCA in a massive wooden cabinet. Some of these I saw in reruns (like You Bet Your life, which was canceled before my birth) and others I watched in prime time with my parents and sisters. So when I heard that Kitty Carlisle Hart had passed away, it brought back quite a few childhood memories.

I was glad to see I am not alone in remembering those golden days. Terry Teachout eulogizes Kitty Carlisle Hart, the widow of the Moss Hart, she always seemed like a classy lady and part of a bygone era.

I also discovered that Terry and I both played Beverly Carlton in productions of The Man Who Came to Dinner. He in college, me in High School.

God Bless You Mr. Rosewater

Saddened to read this morning that Kurt Vonnegut has passed away. The world is a poorer place without him.

Poo tee weet.

Update: I logged this early yesterday, upon my first shocked reading of Vonnegut's passing. Since then the blogs have been filled with eulogies far more eloquent than I could muster. Friend George at Fool in the Forest expresses many a shared sentiment.

Julie Andrews!

Via the permalink free DVD Journal (scroll down to the April 9th disk of the week), is a glowing review of the original version of Bedazzled that has just been released on DVD. Not to be confused with one of the most useless and irrelevant remakes of all time, the 1967 version stars Peter Cook and Dudley Moore in fine form as the Devil and his unwitting Faust, featuring Raquel Welch as what else but, Lust.

As DVD Journal rightly points out, what makes this film so classic is not the extended flights of fancy as Stanley Moon (Moore) attempts to achieve his dream of marital bliss with his love interest Margaret (Eleanor Bron,) only to be repeatedly thwarted by the Devil's trickery, but instead the scenes of dialog between the comedy duo of Cook and Moore. The final scenes of Peter Cook railing against God are hilarious as well.

And by the way, Julie Andrews is the Devil's magic incantation by which he grants Moore his ill fated wishes.

567359

Drumming in the Rain

A typical rainy day in Portland.



From a recent excursion.

Guilty Pleasures

First of all, before I begin my rant, I've got to admit to a couple of things. My wife and I are American Idol viewers. Secondly, as if you did not already know this, I am addicted to political talk tv, Olbermann, Matthews, MTP, etc. etc. Now of late, political talk TV, Joe Scarborough being the worse culprit, has turned into American Idol TV and my guilty pleasures have intersected.

The advent of Sanjaya Malakar, he of the insane hair and less than stellar singing ability, has prompted a virtual nightly segment on a number of these shows in which serious and not so serious people discuss the completely unserious topic of whether Howard Stern and the website Vote for the Worst are "corrupting" the voting process. I wish they spent that much energy on the Florida recount.

To this, I have one thing to say, any process that allows people to vote multiple times, only limited by their obsession and speed dial is already corrupt.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled program.

Oh, Rochester

I just came across a link to the online collection of the George Eastman House Musuem in Rochester, New York. A varied and eclectic list of photographers, of whom I am only familiar with a handful. Certainly an enjoyable way for any photography lover to idle away a bit of time.

The online collection can be viewed here.

The museum's website is here.


Robert Parke Harrison

Escher is my favorite MC

The San Jose Museum of Art is currently exhibiting a collection of the work of MC Escher.

It is an interesting exhibit that includes much of his early work, as well as the more familiar pieces that have graced many a dorm room wall over the years.

The official MC Escher site is worth a visit. There is a fairly extensive picture gallery and a download section with a free interactive puzzle.

Movie News

Coming Soon to a Theater near you

Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodrigues team up again for the double feature Grindhouse. I'm sure this will engender as much debate as Kill Bill.

Coming Soon on DVD
Via DVD Journal

Our friends at The Criterion Collection have announced a two-disc release of Lindsay Anderson's 1968 If… starring Malcolm McDowell as hell-raising schoolboy Mick Travis — expect a new transfer from restored elements; a commentary featuring McDowell and film historian David Robinson.

If... is the predecessor and companion piece to Anderson's 1973 film, O Lucky Man! If... is the better picture, but the Alan Price soundtrack from O Lucky Man! is a classic.

Recent Viewing
The Departed and Hollywoodland are the two most recent DVDs that have found their way into my player.

As a longtime Scorsese fan, I am happy that he finally won the Oscar, and The Departed is definitely worth watching. The dialog, the performances, the story are all engaging and it is one of the fastest 150 minutes I've spent in a while. But it is not the film that Raging Bull or Goodfellas were. It feels a bit like a pity Oscar when you look at it in the context of Scorsese's earlier works, but it is a mile above the Aviator and is still worth watching.

Hollywoodland is the story of the death of George Reeves, TV's Superman in the fifties. Ben Affleck inhabits the vapid personality of Reeves and turns in one of his best performances. The film, unlike the over-the-top Black Dahlia, that came out around the same time last year, does not propose to offer a solution to the mystery of Reeves' death. A bit slow at times, but for lovers of tales of old Hollywood and fans of the old Superman series, well worth your time.

Schmaltz will clog your arteries

Leaky truck on Louisiana highway leaves trail of chicken fat.

Quick, bring me some chicken livers and a Ritz cracker.

Via SFGate.com read about it here.

The google led me to this site, a list of road songs on the US Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration web site.

Good fun.

All things Bob

Nice to see that, in a qualified sense, the current Pope has acknowledged that Bob Dylan is a prophet.

And here is Weird Al's version of Subterranean Homesick Blues done completely in palindromes.



In the words of friend George, who sent this my way, this is totally inexplicable. Dylan hears a Who!

Baby's got a Major-General

Gilbert, Sullivan & Sir Mix-a-lot



via Salon.com To irresistable not to share.

...into this

Charles Bukowski (dinosauria, we)



I was just in that kind of mood. Enjoy.

Conservowiki

A must read over at Shakespeare's Sister about the conservative answer to Wikipedia, Conservapedia. Started by Phyllis Schaffly's son, it definitely takes the Colbertian view that facts have a liberal bias, so it seeks to avoid them as much as possible.

Here are a few examples from Conservapedia as described by Jon Swift at Shakespeare's Sister

Kangaroo: "Like all modern animals, modern kangaroos originated in the Middle East and are the descendants of the two founding members of the modern kangaroo baramin that were taken aboard Noah's Ark prior to the Great Flood." (I'm sure skippy will be very interested to learn this.)

Theory of Relativity: "Nothing useful has even been built based on the theory of relativity.…'All things are relative' became popular as atheists and others used relativity to attack Christian values. There remains enormous political support for the theory of relativity that has nothing to do with physics, and Congress continues to spend billions of dollars unsuccessfully searching for particles predicted by the theory of relativity."

Gospels: "The greatest writing in the history of the world is the Gospel of John....This single book has done more to shape human thought and behavior than any other work. Our uniquely American First Amendment right of free speech is based on ministers preaching of the 'Word' of God as described in the first few verses of the Gospel of John."

George Washington: "Washington is perhaps the person other than Jesus who declined enormous worldly power, in Washington's case by voluntarily stepping aside as the ruler of a prosperous nation."

Scopes Trial: "Hollywood has little regard for the truth. Its movie version Inherit the Wind changed everyone's name, thereby preventing libel suits, and changed the facts in order to ridicule religious belief. Thanks to Bryan's victory in the Scopes trial, Tennessee voters have been educated without oppressive evolution theory for 75 years. Free from the liberal indoctrination, Tennessee voted against native son Al Gore in the 2000 Presidential election - probably the only time a candidate has lost the Presidency due to losing his home state. If Tennessee had a high level of belief in evolution comparable to that of East Germany, then you can bet Gore would have won his state and the Presidency."

The Da Vinci Code: "Dan Brown is responsible for feeding millions of readers a pack of lies cleverly wrapped up as a historically accurate novel."

Holocaust: "The Holocaust was the massacring of the Jewish race during World War II. The Germans are not to blame for this but the Nazi are. Besides 6 million Jews dying, 3 million Christians were killed also along with many priests and nuns. This is a very touchy subject for the Jews and is not often discussed amongst them."

Communism: "Communists believe that if they share everything, no one will ever have to work."

Most of the articles in Conservapedia are scrupulously sourced. For example, the entry on Isaac Newton -- "Sir Isaac Newton was one of the inventors of calculus and the propsed [sic-whoops!] the theory of gravity (It should be noted that gravity, like evolution, is just a theory and has never been proven to be true). He was a Devout Christian whose discoveries were inspired by God." -- refers you to the Bible Code Digest, which proves that Newton was a devout Christian. Virtually all of the science entries cite books by Dr. Jay L. Wile, the respected author of homeschool textbooks.

And from my geeky standpoint, the site is a mess. The link to create a log on takes you to a login page with no way to register that I can find. The search field has two button, one that says Go, the other says Search. Hmmmm. And the site is painfully slow and times out on a regular basis. All this free publicity is probably more than they can handle.

Now with more marshmallow bits

Futurballa.com, the futurballa photography website, has been revamped, updated, redesigned and retooled for your pleasure. Come on in and make yourself at home.

A wee bit of free association:

It starts with an interesting review and history of the Brecht, Weill opera, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny can be found at a fool in the forest.

What follows is what happens when you start free associating on Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill and Miss Lotte Lenya. The last one is a leap of faith, but some of you might get the connection.

The stuff that dreams are made of

Joel Cairo: You always have a very smooth explanation...

Sam Spade: What do you want me to do, learn to stutter?

John's Grill, the real life haunt of Dashiell Hammett and the fictional haunt of Sam Spade on Ellis in San Francisco has sported a replica of the Maltese Falcon in a cabinet for many years. The owner, unable to attain the lead one that was used in John Huston's classic film, purchased one of the plaster, publicity models from actor Elisha Cook, Jr., who played Wilmer the gunsel.

Well, some weasel has stolen the black bird.

Read the San Francisco Chronicle's report here.

And to separate fact from fiction, take the Hammett tour.

...but you blew my mind

Best Manzanera solo ever. Ferry looking extra sweaty. Eno in his feather boa days. All that is missing is the Manzanera fly glasses. Takes pretty fly for a white guy to a whole new level.