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The Euro Cup… thing. You know, with the ball.

June 26th, 2012

This past weekend I went to Astoria to watch the soccer match between England and Italy. England lost about thirty years after the game started during the penalty kick part. Of course, the entire time the game was being played I was going on and on about how lovely the logo this year is. “Ooh, lookit! It’s a tulip! Pretty colors!” Then I went to the website and the whole thing is pretty and flowery, which is unusual for a sporting event.

Can you imagine the Super Bowl (or Superb Owl, as I call it) with lilies and chrysanthemums incorporated into their motif? I’m impressed that the rest of the world isn’t as testosterone-driven with their design elements as we are in the U.S.A.. Good for them. Good for you, Rest of the World. If you want to bet on sports games or play different casino games, you may look into this dewi222 gaming platform.

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I have seen many things that I must now share with you.

June 22nd, 2012

Number one: Are you people watching Game of Thrones? If not, you need to get on that, pronto. I just watched all of Season 1 and Season 2 and whoo, it is addictive. For those of you who don’t know, here’s a basic plot summary. There’s seven kingdoms and the king who ruled them all dies. Now there’s an all-out battle to figure out who the “rightful” heir to the throne is. And the throne itself is amazing. It’s called the Iron Throne and it is made from the swords of people the king vanquished, which is so very, very cool. HBO has a replica for $30,000 and I was sorely tempted to sell off a great many of my possessions to acquire this. Here’s a poster of Sean Bean sitting on it.

WANT. But it’s not worth watching solely for the rad sitting device, oh no. The writing is great, the acting is great, especially the child actors. Costumes, great. Sets, great. Opening credits, super-great.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7L2PVdrb_8

See how it’s a map? In each episode, it changes depending on the people they’re focusing on. Despite having no sense of direction, I have totally figured out where everybody is from because of that helpful map opening. Thank you, helpful map opening! Now, a heads-up. The show has loads of incest, rape, prostitution, beheadings, stabbings, maimings, etc. It’s about war in a mythical medieval land where life is, you know, rough and medieval-y. I learned early on not to get too attached to any particular characters because chances are good that they will die in a gruesome and horrid manner. I was wondering how they were going to keep this up but they seem to be introducing new people all the time, so I don’t think they’ll run out.

Number two: I saw Shame, the movie with Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan. Very good and very depressing. I am shocked – shocked! – that Michael Fassbender did not get nominated for an Oscar. Not only does he give a fantastic performance, he checks all the boxes required by an Oscar movie. He sobs (in the rain!), he gets naked, he moodily stares off into the distance to complete silence multiple times, he is super self-destructive. He basically gives the same performance as Halle Berry in Monster’s Ball or Charlize Theron in Monster. It’s a perfect Oscar nomination movie. The rumor is that he wasn’t nominated because… of his penis. Seriously. How can I put this graciously? Michael has the longest wang in film history and he walks directly towards the camera a couple of times where it swings back and forth like an elephant’s trunk. Apparently well-hung men are not Oscar-worthy. I would like to say I am very disappointed in the Academy and I think not only should they award Michael Fassbender with an Oscar, they should award a separate one to his dick as an apology. I think you should see this movie because the performances are excellent, but it’s a sad movie about sex addiction without a happy resolution and copious amounts of compulsive unpleasant shtupping, so don’t rent this movie for date night.

Number three: I also saw Kung Fu Panda II. No one was more surprised than me that the movie was delightful. I loved Kung Fu Panda I and I was really concerned and apprehensive that KFP2 would be epically crappy. I shall not soon forget the sadness I experienced with Men In Black II. But I decided to steel myself and it was really sweet and charming and, as in the first one, the animation and design was terrific, very beautiful. I am actually looking forward to a Kung Fu Panda III. Probably my favorite thing was when Po the Panda hides in a Chinese dragon-type thing. I say “Chinese dragon-type thing” because it does not look like a Chinese dragon. It looks like a Tim Burton bear/caterpillar with antlers all over its body. I want one. I made an animated gif.

My favorite moment was when the Kung Fu masters (who are now all hiding under the Tim Burton dragon) drag a bad-guy wolf into the mouth part, beat the crap out of the wolf, and “poop” him out the other side. I made an animated gif of that as well.

So you should see this movie too. This one will be good for date night. Waaaaay less dangly man-junk.

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Lobstahs.

June 20th, 2012

I was doing research for my Burning Man costume (I’m trying to accomplish building a face-thingie), and when searching for “lobster face” on Google, once I get past the four million pictures of Lady Gaga wearing that glittery lobster hat, I found some really interesting lobster pics. Did you know lobsters develop each half of their body separately? I didn’t. The cool side effect is two-toned lobsters. One is even half male, half female, split down the middle. (S)he is an exceptionally confused crustacean.

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Prometheus. But not really.

June 11th, 2012

I saw Prometheus this weekend and I thought it kinda sucked, which made me sad because I really wanted to like it. I imagine tons of people will love it, so I will sadly sit in the corner all alone not liking it. I have two theories: either there are big weird plot holes and no one cares but me, or I am obtuse like a rock and I cannot appreciate subtle nuances and not-spelled-out twists in this movie. Either one is acceptable. But, more importantly, there was a three-sided advert in the lobby for a movie that sounded so profoundly saccharine and fake that if it had been in a book we would have written it off as total fake horsepoop and yelled at the author for fabricating such garbage. But it’s real and it’s coming to theaters near you.

The description of the film is the part that blew my mind. Even if I had meningitis and my brain was pressing against my skull I couldn’t write this crap. Seriously. Read this out loud to someone and watch their facial expressions.

Over the mountains, beyond the sea, is the loveliest place there ever could be. It’s in this wonderfilled™ land of Lovelyloveville that our BIG interactive adventure begins. Meet Goobie, Zoozie and Toofie, the Oogieloves, as we set out to find Lovelyloveville’s last five magical balloons in time for our dear friend Schluufy’s surprise birthday party. Shhh!!! It’s a secret!!! As we all search for the golden balloons throughout Fun Forest and over Great Grass Lake, together we meet colorful new friends along the way, including a comically rose-obsessed diva (Toni Braxton), a grandmother with a hysterical passion for polka dots (Cloris Leachman), an Elvisesque diner owner and his milkshake-making cow (Chazz Palminteri), a cowboy who grows bubbles in the back of his truck (Cary Elwes), and a couple of enthusiastic dancers who live in a giant hovercraft shaped sombrero (Christopher Lloyd and Jaime Pressly). With the help of old friends and new, can we along with the Oogieloves, find the balloons in time for what could be Lovelyloveville’s most sensational party ever? In a world of endless possibilities, The Oogieloves in The BIG Balloon Adventure just might be the most extraordinary and joyous adventure of all time.

Lovelyloveville? Was this script written by a first-grade girl? Because if it was, it’s fantastic. If it was written by adults, however, they should go drown themselves in Great Grass Lake immediately. Jim Henson is rolling over in his grave. Shame on you.

Addendum: Here’s why I didn’t like Prometheus in four minutes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=-x1YuvUQFJ0

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Burning Man Costume, Part 7 – I got crab.

June 7th, 2012

Notice I said, “I got crab” singular, because if one says, “I got crabs” plural, it has a WHOLE other connotation. And it’s inaccurate anyway because I only made one crab. He’s pretty fantastic if I do say so m’self.

Crab from the back.

Crab from the front so you can see his cute little eyes.

Since the photos don’t show all the detail, I’ll take you through it. There’s a nearly identically-shaped backpiece that everything is attached to via twisted wire and coat hangers. and it has two clips on it so I can hook Mr. Crab right onto the waistband of my skirt. Also, I left about an inch of space between the backpiece and that top part there, then I drilled a myriad of holes into the top part so I can shove some wee Christmas lights in there and light will both emanate from around the perimeter of the crab as well as through the holes. Hopefully. That’s the plan. That may not be how it will end up, but I’m hoping that’s how it’s going to go. In addition to nighttime coolness, I made an effort to make the crab interesting during the daylight hours. I cut up some gold sequins and glued the bits on the claws, and I covered the orange butt-part with iridescent glitter shards. He’s a sassy jazzy crab.

Now I’m conquering my great white whale, the hat. I had Cricket take pictures in my get-up so I could assess how it’s coming along, what I should change, etc. The first thing I noticed when I looked at the photos was that my tube worms were too tall and the hat was sliding back on my head.

So I took a deep breath, got out my X-Acto knife, and hacked my two tallest tube worms way down. Then I reattached the flowery bits and I do have to say it looks a million times better. It looks tighter and more compact. Now I need to add all the frilly sea kelp and additional ocean whatnot to the base to cover up the mesh, but it’s coming along.

Dolce did not care one bit about my crab or headdress.

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The internet is made of cats, who am I to fight it? Meet Dolce.

June 4th, 2012

Cricket and his family went on vacation for three weeks, and Cricket’s father has a cat that lives in their basement, prowls around outside, kills them “presents”, etc. I offered to watch said kitty for the duration of the trip, so now I have a cat named Dolce in my apartment. Cats are extremely weird animals, has anyone else noticed that? I get the midnight crazies, cats are crepuscular (most active at dawn and dusk) and so Dolce gets this insane need to zip from room to room yowling and attacking my plants and my bedskirt. That’s fine. It’s the odd emo things she does that I don’t get. Here’s the deal: I feed her. I give her fresh water. She eats and then follows me from room to room meowing. When I go to pet her, she shimmies away and continues complaining. WHAT DO YOU WANT, CAT? I am giving you food, cleaning up your poop and trying to pet you. What the hell is wrong? I’ve just started ignoring her feelings and aggressively loving her against her will. Hey Cat, if you keep complaining I’m gonna pick you up and give you kisses and squeezins. Too bad. Deal with it.

Here’s a picture of Dolce with her typical expression which is, “Meh.”

It’s like living with a ninja. She makes almost no noise when she walks around, so periodically I’ll jump when suddenly next to my foot I hear, “Meow.” Oh, hello Dolce, I didn’t see you there. Don’t mind me, I’m just going to mop up this piddle that is now under my chair as soon as my heart stops beating in my ears. The other night I was walking to the kitchen and I walked past my jacket sitting on my couch.

I got some almond milk, turned around and OH MY GOD DEMON JACKET!!!

I’m not going to lie: I shrieked like a wee girl seeing an icky bug. I highly recommend not owning only black clothing if you’re sharing your living quarters with a black cat. Too many places for kitty to blend in and scare the crap out of you. Only have light colors or hot pink everywhere so you can keep track of where that thing is.

I still love her, though. I tried to take pictures with both of us together. Dolce really hates flash photography in her face, so in most of the photos she tucks her head into her armpit, or she has the expression below. “SO BRIGHT!! NO LIKE BRIGHT!!”

I took one where I’m giving her smootchies. I think her expression says it all.*

*”Meh.”

Cricket returns in a little less than two weeks, so basically I have to not kill this cat for about twelve more days. I think I can handle this.

Addendum: Additional Meh to get you through your day.

Posted in Apartment, Beastiesbeastiesbeasties, Stuff | 3 Comments »

Art! Not mine! Let’s look at it!

May 31st, 2012

First of all, Tom Gauld (who I’ve talked about here before) just started a Tumblr of his Guardian newspaper cartoons and I am delighted. I think his work is charming. I especially like the Tom Waits one.

http://myjetpack.tumblr.com/

And, in keeping with the recent Alien theme, there is an artist I came across in my travels who I think is super-swell and who’s work is in that same Geiger-eque vein. There’s a bunch of artists who have started working in Photoshop almost exclusively and often their work looks like oil paintings, all rich and smooth and vibrant. Mark Facey is one of them. The second I saw his stuff I was entranced. He has an understanding of different textures that I can only dream of. His work is reminiscent of Brian Froud’s to me, and if you go to Mark’s Tumblr you can see he also names all his creatures and gives them a bit of a backstory. Here’s a few examples of his unbridled awesomeness.

It appears that he first makes a complicated and thorough pencil drawing, then scans that in and works from that. Here’s one of his pencil sketches.

And here’s where you can buy his prints: http://society6.com/mrfungi

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More Alien movie. Oh, you thought I was done? You was WRONG.

May 30th, 2012

Sorry for not blogging in a while, a bunch of stuff has been going down which impeded my ability to share the daily detritus of my life. Did everyone have a nice Memorial Day Weekend? I did not go to a beach. I at no point attempted to tan. I did, however, work on my Burning Man costume and I will have pictures of cool elements shortly. First, here’s a festive bit of spam I received recently. I don’t get much spam nowadays since I installed a filter-thingie, but dribs and drabs get through. This one caught my eye.

It’s the usual collection of words that are unrelated but it ends with the sale of tinfoil hats. Where are they selling them? It seems like such an odd thing to reference. Perhaps the Russian computer dork in the dark basement concocting this spam had recently watched the Mel Gibson classic Signs, which features tinfoil hats rather prominently, who knows? One can only guess.

Back to Alien(s)(3)(Resurrection). Snorth came over on Monday to hang out and we went to Barnes and Noble, where she purchased Aliens (that’s the second one) and Alien Resurrection (that’s the fourth one, they didn’t have the third one in stock). And we watched them. And now I have seen them. I grow weary of the dark, Geiger-inspired hoohah that I have now seen for five hours. I have a couple of thoughts:

ENOUGH ALREADY WITH THE DRIPPING AND THE WETNESS AND THE DROOLING. What the hell is the alien related to, a bull mastiff? I developed a moisture-related rash while watching.
I had the same problem with 1 and 2 that I had with Dark Knight, specifically it is very dark and when there is conflict and the camera is zipping all over I cannot tell who is fighting whom or what.
I don’t know if this is sacrilege or not, but I liked Resurrection best. It was directed by the same guy who directed Delicatessen which is one of my top four movies of all time, and his style was clearly present throughout this film. That made me happy. Also, it was a substantially brighter film, so I could see everything that happened, which was nice. Let me be clear, though. I thought it was good up until the humany-alien ripped its way out of the queen’s womb and then the movie got über-stupid. I did like the humany-alien’s death a bunch. Ripley breaks a window in space and y’all know how nature abhors a vacuum so the humany-alien sticks back-first to the window hole where he receives the most violent hickey of all time, courtesy of outer space. He looks like a sex doll deflating. The most revolting sex doll ever.
The aliens have yellow glorpy acid blood and sometimes when they get shot with high-caliber bullets or grenades they explode like fruit. Now, Publicis (the company I work for) made a series of web commercials for Pepto Bismol celebrating Cinco de Mayo which I will link to here, and I totally thought that the aliens going boom looked nearly identical to the pinatas filled with nacho cheese, which kind of ruined the magic a wee bit. It also made me want nachos. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xigklq_pepto-bismol-pinata-smash-with-brick_fun
Ugh, I really hate Bill Paxton. He’s that guy in high school that I would like to not be near ever. I rejoiced in his death by alien.

You know how the alien has the second mouth inside of its main mouth? That always reminds me of those fish that keep their babies safe in their mouth. It definitely softens the scariness. As do the silver teeth, which make me think of rapper’s grills, which makes me think of Lil Jon, which makes me think of Dave Chappelle’s impression of Lil Jon, which makes me lose my focus and then someone is killed by the alien and I don’t know who and then I’m frustrated. Here’s the impression I’m referencing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUfiqhDY_8s

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Alien. A movie. With Aliens. There ya go.

May 21st, 2012

Because Prometheus is coming out shortly and it is based on the movie Alien, Snorth informed me that I must see Alien. I was like, okay, I really should, but I forgot my “classic movie” rule, which is if you see either an older movie or a movie that came out when you were a kid, chances are you are going to (incorrectly) think it sucks because you are old and jaded and a million movies just like it have come out in the time since the original came out. It is not a bad, lame movie. You just didn’t see it when you were supposed to see it. In the case of Alien, I was supposed to see it in the early 1980s. Instead, I saw it in 2012, and I thought it was kinda slow. There was no deeper plot elements to sink your teeth into – it was literally:

Oh well, we gotta do this outer space job. Hey, what’s that signal? Something’s stuck on this dude’s face! Oh, now it’s not. Let’s have dinner. Punch through sternum. Scuttle across floor. Ruin mealtime. Everyone mills around looking mad nervous for what feels like a million years. Here kitty kitty kitty – HOLY CRAP! Who’s left? Now let’s mill around with a flame thrower for another million years. He dies. She dies. Everybody except Sigourney dies. Sigourney catches the stupid cat, they get on the pod (did anyone notice that a goodly portion of this film involves stuffing that cat into one or another tiny cage-like space? If I was that cat I would not volunteer for any more space missions) and AHHHHH Drooly Soggy Lizard Creature is napping over the console! Sigourney gets kinda nekkid. Then she puts on a space suit making THE MOST POSSIBLE NOISE EVER yet the alien is totally cool with this. She sucks him out the side of the escape pod, he snags a grappling hook and she revs up the engines and sautees him. The end.

Now, please realize I went about this all wrong. I’m old, this movie is old, I’ve seen a ton of movies that ripped this movie off therefore nothing in it is unique. All these things are errors on me. I like to think of this as the Elvis Situation. Elvis was the first of his kind to make his music and I think that’s great, but I don’t love his stuff. I respect how he was the first honky singing blues. And that’s how I feel about Alien. I respect its original awesomeness and all the doors it broke down, but it didn’t change my life in any integral way.

I’m psyched to see Prometheus, though.

Posted in Movie and Book Reviews. Possibly With Spoilers., Teh Intarwebz | 2 Comments »

Burning Man Costume, Part I don’t know about this.

May 21st, 2012

You all know how hard I’ve been working on this costume, but between work constraints (I made a fifty-page book in two days last week!) and personal stuff going on (I’m not going to get into that!), it is a real possibility that I may not get done by the time Labor Day weekend rolls around. I’m super-disappointed because I’ve been working on this since November, but life happens and, eh, what are you going to do. I’m going to keep plodding along on it whenever I find the time, but I make no promises. I feel good about it being done for Halloween, though. That there is a definite maybe.

In the meantime, charts.