Edited for TV.

I want to see all of my favorite movies edited for TV. I want to start a website documenting all of the changes made to allow movies to be aired on television.

I was flipping through the stations today when I caught Kill Bill I on Spike. It was right after she had taken out Black Mamba and when she was talking to the daughter in the kitchen. I had to watch to see what changed.

In addition to heavy cuts, some of the funny things replaced:

*The sheriff at the wedding chapel after the shooting: "Son Number One -- this ... tall ... drink ... of water ain't dead yet."

*At the hospital right after the Bride wakes up from a coma: "My name is Buck, and I'm here to ... party." "Your name is Buck, right? And you're here to PARTY!"

*Immediately following, digital changes to shots to show Buck's key chain and car decal to read "Party Wagon." The Bride is disturbed by the name of this "Party Wagon."

Etc.



What is he saying about "scrambled eggs"?

No covers, no surprises.

Let It Die: 23 Songs That Should Never Be Covered Again

Lists.

I like lists and all but this is pretty pathetic. What about Top Three songs with the word "Tyrannosaurus" in the title?

Also, apparently Cuomo is back with a compilation of home recordings. Well, I don't know, this might be okay -- "Blastoff!" is worth listening to more than once, at least. We'll see.

Also, just heard that there was a controversial firing in the neighborhood -- a winning football coach was fired from North Florida Christian (high school - Baptist) for unclear reasons. Official reason: "God's Will."

Not in my 50 years...

It's amusing when at work
I ask a professor here for something
and he responds with "Not in my 50 years
here have I had to do that," and then I realize
that I'm just asking about the wrong thing. (This is not sarcasm
-- it really was amusing.)

Not in my 22 years on this planet
has anyone responded to me
like that.

Don't chu eva.

***

I kind of want to start a new Blog, start fresh. Maybe I will when I start a website.

I've finished all of my work at work, and so now I just sit around and read the newspaper, news online, and books. Needless to say, I am reachable by email and will almost instantaneously respond, since I check all my accounts about once every 10 minutes.

I just thought of a great idea for the theme of my graduate application letter/personal statement, but I think that it will not matter how well I do on it -- the program I'm applying too looks like it's hurting for people to join (the advisor asked me if I will just go ahead and stick around for a Ph.D., too), and my grades and recommendations should be pretty much airtight. I do still have to signup and take the GRE, though. Bummer (mostly bummed about the cost of it).

The following is a list of things that makes me feel like I have a real job and am grown up:

*Signing up for and paying for various insurances.
*Thinking about my retirement options.
*Thinking about renting a house.
*Telling stories about my co-workers that do not involve the phrases "came in so hungover," "said that she got so high," and "was forced to spend a few hours in jail."
*Actively participating in the verbal bashing of "kids nowadays" who say phrases such as "hooking up."
*Reading the newspaper every weekday.

New Report:

Study: 3 out of 4 homeless are big fat liars

heh.

Hahahahahahahah.

LOLOLOLOLOL.

whatwahtahwawh?

The words "accidental, cross-country flight of a nuclear-armed B-52 bomber" do not belong together in a U.S. news article.

And we're concerned with other country's nuclear potentials?

And, now for something completely different...

Today, in a meeting, members of the department had to vote on whether the following change in an official document was permissible:

-"Section 12.0: The word 'involving' was replaced with the words 'together with', which actually clarifies things a bit..."

It was my job to take notes on this meeting.

Everyone voted for the change.

Paint your own...

Hmmm... guess what artist this site allows you to imitate...?

children's wear

I do not remember clearly, but my mother says
she wrapped my tiny body, low in temperature,
in my soon-to-be favorite blanket,
a multi-colored affair grandmotherly made
for the family's newest arrival.

She does not know where
that blanket has gotten off to;
perhaps it was a prisoner of childhood wars,
stuffed into a forgotten crevice
by a forgetful sibling and left behind
by a hurried family trying to set up
their new home down south.

Pictures help me to remember next
a woolen cap pulled down past my ears,
which my mother says reminded her
of my grandfather in the winter,
whose bald head could not afford to lose
what loving warmth he had left to spend in his old age.

I wore that cap until it was beyond repair,
the crown of my head weathering a hole
into its thinning fibers like a group of unrelenting gases
pushing through a single spot in the Earth's atmosphere.

Things I found/found out today.

1) Yes, I've reached the point - Blogging about a Blog function. Blogger Play is not as cool as I thought it would be when I was reading the description. It's just a slideshow of every photo uploaded by Bloggers. I can get a similar experience by searching for anything on GIS:

(First hit)



2) There is someone who works in the Department of History at FSU who doesn't use a computer. He has worked there for 50 years, and does everything by typewriter still, relying on cronies to put his stuff into Word documents. Talk about tenure. I kind of feel bad for the guy, but he won't ever know that because he can't read this post.

3) I found another job rejection letter today in the mail. Figuring in all the jobs I've applied to, I expect to continue to get at least one a week for about 3.5 years.

4) Damn, son! Gas is expensive! (A.K.A. I hate driving.)

... and it doesn't last long (... that's what she said).

'sit.

In Rainbows.

I'm going to have to pull the holier-than-thou indie being-a-dick card, because I checked Radiohead's Blog yesterday and totally saw a new update about the band's new album.

It was just a queer black n' white photo with a link to the queerly titled "In Rainbows" Web site.

I quickly searched around for news on this update, but... WHOOPS! I SAW IT FIRST!

Then all kinds of Blogs and news sites started coming out with posts about INFORMATION I ALREADY KNEW ABOUT, SUCKERS!

LLOLOLOLSOLZLZLZOLLO.

Yeah, blah the box set costs $80+, yeah, no record label, blah, yeah, any price for down-blah-load, etc. + crap = whatever.

P.S. - I might have just gotten a job. SSssshhhhh, I don't know yet, but it sounds like it. SShhhh.

---Yeah, and now I'm just Bloging really late about an event that happened yesterday, I know, but I'm just gloating, really, not trying to spread the info.

Whoa-zers.

Somehow Art Garfunkel, Martin Short, Bela Fleck, and Salman Rushdie will be appearing in a few months for Seven Days.

Somehow, I don't think I will be able to get tickets to those. (Maybe...)

Also, Wynton Marsalis is performing a week from today. But I don't have $50 for a ticket. And if I did have $50 for a ticket, I'd spend it on a Morrissey-in-Melbourne ticket instead.

Video Clash.

So I was reading the daily email message synopsis from a Spoon messageboard when I saw a post about Spoon canceling three showdates to perform on SNL. That sucks for people with tickets, but the band promised to re-schedule, and I suppose SNL should give 'em a pretty good bump.

The story underneath the Spoon one was about The Sex Pistols re-recording "Anarchy in the UK" for Guitar Hero III, which is a really, really funny development.

I happened to catch Johnny Rotten on a very annoying late night Fox News Channel program called Red Eye a while back, and it was ridiculous. He was talking about how the Pistols turned down the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and how he doesn't think any current bands are comparing to the Pistols and all this crap. All this while he was on a late night cable TV talk show. On Fox News. That sucks. A lot.

So the Pistols article linked to YouTube, and I watched a couple videos and caught an argument over which Pistols bass player was a better player, which is sort of like arguing about which member of The Village People is the most masculine.

Okay, okay, I guess Glen Matlock gets props for working with Johnny Thunders. Actually, I wrote a lyric featuring him in a song I will never use:

She said, "You remind me of a young Ben Matlock with your bass."
I said, "So, give me your number and I'll get right on your case. I'll solve it in an hour with my band, up on stage."

I got fed up after a while, and searched for The Clash on YouTube, only to find a very funny, appropriately goofy interview and set of performances on the Tom Snyder show. I watched some Tom Snyder when I was younger (I think he followed Letterman at one point), and it was pretty boring -- at that time he didn't have a studio audience, and the whole show was filled with his absurd chuckling.

Anyway, The Clash didn't turn down the Hall of Fame, and ultimately recognized that they had a lot of social questions, but not a lot of answers. (Notice how they sidestep the question about what messages they want to convey to people.) I was really surprised at how good these performances were, but I guess I shouldn't have been so surprised.

Maybe all those rad' conserve' Christians were 'right'...

Gorilla Collins.

An interesting view on an interesting ad:



Watch the video first, then take a look at this:

Ape and Essence

I think the dude hits on a couple of good points on the nature of music criticism. A lot of people try to make reviews of art an art style all their own, and while some certainly overuse metaphors and similes, I think there's an argument for a certain level of creative thinking/writing going into reviews (when done well). Of course, one could just summarize materials, list pros and cons, compare to other materials or artists. But capturing the essence of art (even prose and poetry, I suppose) in his own words should be one of a critic's main goals.

Bomb, or trinket?

Trinket.

I can understand the heightened security at airports, but this seems a little bit too much.

A girl walked into Logan Airport in Boston wearing the above 'device' on a sweatshirt. She was later confronted by troopers with submachine guns. She was confronted by a guy who said:

"She's lucky to be in a cell as opposed to the morgue."

Don't they have rubber bullets or tasers or some non-lethal form of stopping people?

The only thing that makes this a tad more shady than normal is that the girl had "Play-Doh in her hands." The other thing is that she called the thing "art" and not just a homemade clothing design. I think she might have been asking for something with that, but there's a possibility that she wasn't...

I'm just glad the reporter mentioned the nite lite fixtures from Cartoon Network that were put up around Boston. Remember, the ones that cost the city thousands of dollars because everyone thought they were bombs? (When several other major cities had the same fixtures up at the same time?)

mik

Ah, Urban Dictionary, where would the Internet be withoutcha?

milkshake

1. A whipped iced dairy drink, usually chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry.

Wow, that milkshake from McDonald's was bangin.

2. A girl's body and the way she carries it.

Kelis' song 'Milkshake':

My whipped ice dairy drink brings the attention of many males to my place of residence and/or employment, and they declare that its quality far surpasses that of yours. Absolutely, it far surpasses yours. I could convey to you the recipe, but I would have to demand compensation.

I'm spending...

I'm spending $5 and two hours loading 50 photos from my old phone to the Internet to perhaps my new phone (I don't know if they'll let me do that yet). I had to pay the $5 to get 400 picture messages so I wouldn't be paying 15 cents per message to do this. At least my replacement phone came 3 days after I called for it. (It won't let me keep some of my best pictures, because they're "too big" to send. I don't see how my phone can take pics as small as 100 KB and as big as 500 KB. I guess it's that zoom function at work.)

Here's one I got to upload -- a statue from New Orleans (I think it might have been Jackson):


***
Every time I go into the bank downtown, I see a sign on the counter and feel a need to have them validate my parking. Except that I don't need it -- I just drop a quarter in a metered spot every time.
***
I dread the day that it is socially unacceptable for me as an adult male to have posters in my bedroom.
***
I may or may not become a rapper. Peep this:

Man, you been acting like General Petraeus, acting like you betrayed us like Benedict Arnold, gonna name some eggs for you.

Don't bite that -- I might use that.

"Some people graduate, but they still stupid."

(I guess this lyric is actually "Some people graduate, but we still stupid," but I'm going to leave it like I first wrote it because I like that better.)

I just listened to the new Kanye West in entirety.

(Please excuse the aesthetics of this post. I'm too lazy to find appropriately similar pics of the album covers involved.)


I think I'm going to need a few listens to digest this. There are strong tracks (I don't think any that are his strongest to date) and there are weak tracks (some that may qualify as his weakest). We'll see how I react to it over time, but upon first listen it felt like he rode a couple of things a little too far. I do like the diversity of sounds, and I do believe the tracks make a great sonic combination of traditional hip-hop and electronic sounds. I guess I was expecting 13 huge, solid hits, which was kind of unrealistic. In general, I really liked the beginning and end of the album, which is pretty good -- started with a good impression and left with some strong material.

Outside of the adaptation of fuzzed electronics, there is a noticeable lack of skits. None, actually. On one hand I appreciated the humor and break between songs before -- the flow of the previous two albums I think was complimented by the skits. But at times I did tire of the thematic things a bit (dropping out of college, being dirt poor), and at those times the skits only seemed to exaggerate any themes to the point of absurdity (which, I suppose is what they're for -- humor).

Anyway, I'm not writing coherently. Let's just say my trip to Vinyl Fever did not just involve Mr. West. I also picked up some budget priced novelties:


(Ben Folds Five -- Whatever and Ever for $2.99)


(Lightning Bolt -- Wonderful Rainbow for $4.99)


(Dismemberment Plan -- Emergency & I for $6.99)

mmk.

MMMMk.

Sup, MBT?

What the heck happened to Matchbox Twenty?



And don't give me that "they've been challenging audiences with their ever-evolving sound," because they haven't. I can still listen to Yourself or Someone Like You (note: stupid album title) whenever it falls out of the dusty back stacks of my CD collection and when I don't feel like becoming involved with what I'm listening to, but when did MBT adopt the sleek punk sound with Green Day-esque politics?

Give me a breakers.

And do not even tell me that this single is from an upcoming album called Exile on Mainstream. You thought it couldn't get any worse than "Yourself or some crap like you," but it can.

What does that even mean, "Exile on Mainstream"? Is it ironic that they were actually exiled from the mainstream, and that they're trying to regain their mainstream status by pandering to the current mainstream sound? Or are they trying to show that they're proud of their status as "mainstream" "outsiders" (whatever that could mean)?

It's not even that's it's a horrible horrible song. Other bands could have done it worse. But that doesn't make it good.

And MBT: 1) No one gives a crap how many milliseconds there are until your next album hits Wal-Marts everywhere. 2) You're not tough just because you're black and white and all carrying acoustic guitar cases. And 3) You're not coy. Album titles named after other album titles suck. And although he did a slightly better job, if Jeff Tweedy couldn't do that successfully, then you definitely can't.

Call him kwai-lee or kwe-lee.

That was a hard title to post. Although I took linguistics, I had trouble representing those vowels the way Kanye raps 'em.

Anyway, I really enjoy Talib's feature on "Get 'em High" and I went out and bought a used copy of one of his albums, Quality ... but, whoops, it didn't really impress me. I'm kind of scared to try other ones (though I've heard good things about/from Black Star), but this track is pretty cool, so maybe I'll just listen to this for a while.

AP Style.

I bought the most recent edition of "AP Stylebook" over the weekend in an effort to pass my copyediting test today with flying colors.
While I've never heard of someone who didn't get frustrated with the seemingly arbitrary "rules" of the Associated Press Style, I've been reading about a lot of general rules, subrules and sub-subrules (notice the hyphenated repetition of prefix and lack of comma before the conjunction), and I've been shaking my head, scoffing and chuckling.

Firstly, allow me to voice my disgust at the AP's desire to stifle the use of parentheses:

parentheses () In general, use parentheses around logos ... but otherwise be sparing with them. ...
... (Note that this is indeed the AP Style correct way of omitting a paragraph in condensed texts -- a period at the end of the complete sentence, followed by a space, followed by an ellipsis, followed by a paragraph jump, followed by another ellipsis. Note also that the previous sentence would be frowned upon by the Associated Press.) The temptation to use parentheses is a clue that a sentence is becoming contorted.

"Becoming contorted?" I ask. Nay. Parentheses are great. AP can jog on for that one. Pffhhbbt.

Also:

names ... In stories involving youngsters, generally refer to them by first name on second reference if they are 15 or younger and by their surname at 18 and older.
However, use news judgment and refer to children under 15 by their last name if the story is a serious one involving, for example, a major crime. With 16- or 17-year-olds, use the surname unless it's a light-hearted story.

That entry was particularly amusing to me. Notice the phrase "use news judgment." There are many times throughout the book where it says to do something a very particular way "unless you need to do it another way to clarify text."

Well, AP, clarify this:

I already found an inconsistency in your book, which is hailed as "The Bible of the Newspaper Industry." Under telephone numbers, you say, "Use figures. The form: 212-621-1500."

But under numerals, you say (350) 262-4600, which, with parentheses, was the pre-2006 way of representing phone numbers.

Amateurs.

College graduation.

Looking forward to the new Kanyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeze.

I guess this is pretty tight.

Got nothing.

I don't have anything insightful today, so I won't say anything at all.

News, news, news.

As soon as I have time to start checking out the local news, a lot of stuff starts going on. I've noticed recently a lot of police officers out and about, and just assumed it had to do with the return of tens of thousands of college students to the area. It seems other things have been happening too...

There have been an amount of home invasions and car break-ins that, I've heard, the police think are connected. It would make sense -- thousands of people moving in to places within the same two weeks.

But then I saw this humorous number, where a local CD shop was selling thousands of pirated discs. The way the article makes it out (the police just "discovered" the stuff at his store) seems like someone was just shopping and realized that all the CDs and DVDs were copies. Why would you sell that from your store?

Then the police just up and find a house growing marijuana -- half a million dollars worth. The owners weren't home at the time, and apparently haven't been caught yet. I've delivered to that street before... I always wonder what the government does with confiscated materials...



And then -- a real tragedy. Yesterday I went to an eatery downtown and heard someone say "They should lock those kind of people up for 90 years. Don't even execute them." I didn't know what they were talking about until I stopped at a gas station for soda. The attendant there just went right into it without me saying anything: "I'm glad they found him. That's just awful." "What?" "That man who killed that worker down at the BP."

Also known as the gas station on the corner of where I used to live, where I would walk down to for late-night chocolate or soda. The details of the crime are very confusing and sad -- this 24-year-old had been working there for a month, was hit, struggled, and was shot. Three times. Robber left without any money. Then the police picked up a suspect who confessed to it, but are continuing to look for clues and evidence.

There has naturally (and justifiably) been a scare amongst parents, since this happened one day before fall classes started.

Still got it.

I've got to give it to 'em -- for two guys, this stuff remains consistently entertaining. I can't now remember why I stopped checking it.

Public school dropouts.

The commission has calculated that these days nearly a third of all new teachers leave the profession after just three years, and that after five years almost half are gone — a higher turnover rate than in the past.

According to the most recent Department of Education statistics available, about 269,000 of the nation’s 3.2 million public school teachers, or 8.4 percent, quit the field in the 2003-4 school year. Thirty percent of them retired, and 56 percent said they left to pursue another career or because they were dissatisfied.

Will this force the U.S. to pay teachers more?

Will this persuade the U.S. to put less emphasis on standardized testing and inane "school grades"?

With all the crap public school teachers put up with (college professors, too, I suppose), I'm all the more surprised that I had a tip-top crew of good-natured, intelligent, inspirational instructors. Here's hoping our kids have a shot at some qualified teachers.

No Good Teacher Left Behind

What the shrapnel in my back pocket could afford.

I thought deeply about changing the layout/design of this blog, but decided against it. Call it laziness, lack of an innovative spirit -- whatever. I picked a template and fiddled with it (without knowing a bit about HTML, mind you) until it looked closer to what I liked when I started this thing, and now I've grown accustomed to it. Then, it continued to look like crapballs in Internet Explorer.

In trying-to-grow-up-and-pay-attention news, the median price of U.S. homes is in decline! I suppose that's good for me.

"On an inflation-adjusted basis, the national median price — the level at which half of all homes are more expensive and half are less — is not likely to return to its 2007 peak for more than a decade, according to Moody’s Economy.com, a research firm." (Source)

Score?

The official kick-off of the rock band season (which for me could be compared to what 78% of college students identify with college football) began last weekend with a performance by Polyphonic Spree and Diplo. Unfortunately, our hero was busy working. To ensure this won't happen with things I would like to see in the future (... Spoon? ...), I will start asking for days off.

This week sees the arrival of Glasgowian outfit The Cinematics, who, despite the crappy name, might have a shot at the mainstream. Perhaps I will go, and perhaps they will be good live.



Perhaps not. (This was the first I saw/heard of them, and the opening line, "I like my loneliness" did not make a good first impression.)

Bathroom propaganda.

For the first time in a while, I saw a positive (well, non-negative really) message scrawled on a bathroom stall:

Be like Dad
And not like Sis
Lift the lid
before you piss.

I was taken aback by its lack of faux-macho racism/sexism/lewdism. But I did not laugh, nor chuckle, nor smile.

I can recall the last message before that one to get my attention:

"the last of the famous international playboys."

Scrawled on a bathroom wall in the Bellamy Building on campus, it was accompanied by an arrow that pointed to a lewd offering written by someone else below it.

I smirked.

Mueck.

SO I got this chain email about this sculptor, Ron Mueck, and I decided to share with my extremely dedicated fanbase.

I couldn't find any official web page of his, so if any of y'all find it, that would be great.

Flim-flam.

It's been raining a lot here around these parts. This is good because it has been very hot and dry. This is bad because it makes it more humid, and because everyone (including me) is in the process of, or will soon be, moving.

Another job interview that felt really good today. I don't think I've ever bombed an interview. In this one, I felt like I got to talk a lot about myself and I don't know if that was good or bad. Also, upon hearing the job description, I realized that it would actually be a job that I was interested in, perish the thought.

It's an entry-level position that generates content for museum exhibits and assistants the president of the company, who, though she did not at the time of interviewing, reminded me of Judi Dench.



So me and Judi were talking about my school projects, my inability to pick a major and my desire to keep learning. In the job, I would just get random assignments with a few references and have to research "anything from prehistoric man to modern baseball." I said I could find interest in anything and that I researched things that interested me in my spare time. She appreciated my varied background and only seemed miffed by my "only" previous employment at the newspaper.

I was in 15 of more than 70 applicants chosen to interview, and if I make it to round two, I get to go in, interview with a "business" associate and perform a sample project in 3-4 hours. Sounds kind of cruel, but I'm sure I could smoke it.

Today's award-winning...

Today's award-winning job title is...

"Parking Ambassador".

Employees will take part in many facets of promoting the new bus routes including acting as an ambassador by providing tours, information, and assist in making student's ride more pleasant.

Funny faces.

"[Jim]Jarmusch is the founder of The Sons of Lee Marvin, a humorous 'semi-secret society'... The entry criterion for the club is that the person must have some physical resemblance or plausibly look like a son of the actor Lee Marvin."

Car sure.

Whenevah you need your car inspected for insurance purposes, go on a Friday afternoon 15 minutes before the office closed. And pick the right place.

I went to an office near FAMU, and if it weren't for the insurance decal on the windows, I wouldn't have known it was an office. There were a couple of weird looking desks set up and what looked like a 16-year-old girl greeted me from a computer. There were a few other kids just running around the office and out front, and the inspector came out in about ten minutes, took a quick walk around the car, looked at the mileage, what she claimed to be the "factory installed" CD player (though I insisted it didn't come that way), and the license plate and went back inside.

I thought it was going to be fairly thorough.

Guess not.

http://www.mergerecords.com/gagagajuke/

http://spinner.aol.com/artists/the-interface/the-national (two sets of brothers in this band)

Huh?

Barker has a black belt in karate (his first instructor was Chuck Norris) and is a Civil War buff.

Link

Had to.

I'll try not to make this a new fad, but this one just seemed very appropriate...

Can Spoon ... ?

If I CAN believe everything I read, then the following is the song Daniel named his band after:

Little known fact:

"'Me and the Bean' is actually a cover of a mid-90's Austin band called The Sidehackers. The songwriter of the Sidehackers, John Clayton, appears on Kill the Moonlight, contributing his bass skills to the album."

Source

Interesting stuff written there that I didn't know about. If ever there was a band/artist that I would choose to collect every release from, that band would be Spoon (artist: Britt Daniel, of course). Awful shame on the new album title, though...



***

P.S. - Talk about a crash course in indie. Credit once again to Covert Curiosity.

XXX-treme.

Be Wary.

Confucius says be wary of any company offering you a job when a simple Google search of the company lists three sponsored results that offer websites offering a legitimization of the company itself.

These include:

World Voice News
EBand Search

Also be wary of job offers that get automatically sorted to your spam folder, which is a pretty good indication sometimes.

Much fun.

Having Fun, Part One.

Alright.

Alright, guys, I'll have to admit I enjoyed your band name when I first came across it.

Wow.

The headline for this story should have just been "Yeah, but..." and the subhead (absent on most online stories) should have read "New planet with possible temperatures supporting life found ... or maybe it doesn't support life ... well, it looks promising enough," and then the author of the story should have told me not to read it because it doesn't tell me any new information.

Oh yeah, and it lies.

And it's likely, but still not known, that the planet doesn't rotate, so one side would always be sunlit and the other dark.

If it didn't rotate but did revolve, sunlight would slowly move across the planet's entire surface. In order for one side to remain constantly lit and the other constantly dark, it would have to rotate one full time every 13 days to match its revolutions.

Boo-yah! Take that, "AP Science Writer"! I didn't even have to take introductory astronomy to know that much -- I could have figured it out with a ball and a candle in a dark room.

Spaced out.

Right before I was going to sleep, I saw the tail end of a documentary about... well I didn't know what it was until someone said "Jonestown." I checked out the Wikipedia and ended up reading about a bunch of different crap, including...

Jonestown:
Two Peoples Temple members (Vernon Gosney and Monica Bagby) made the first move for defection that night, and Gosney passed a note to an NBC journalist, reading "Vernon Gosney and Monica Bagby. Please help us get out of Jonestown."

Heaven's Gate:
Applewhite convinced thirty-nine followers to commit suicide so that their souls could take a ride on a spaceship that they believed was hiding behind the comet carrying Jesus.

One member, Thomas Nichols, was the brother of Star Trek actress Nichelle Nichols. Prior to the group's suicide, he and other members solicited her assistance in publicizing the cult's message.

The cult funded itself by offering professional website development for paying clients.

All 39 were dressed in identical black shirts and sweat pants, brand new black-and-white Nike tennis shoes, and armband patches reading "Heaven's gate away team".

Etc.

Oh yeah, and Mortal Kombat-Ultra.

Internship...?

I already heard back from a certain largest newspaper company in the U.S. that a certain sweet internship that a certain graduating senior applied to would not get it. That's less than two business days for a response to something hundreds of people probably applied for.

I guess my resume didn't turn out as well as I thought...

Oh well. This Thursday's newspaper issue, featuring a full-page spread on Grindhouse and Grindhouse-related materials should make up for it.

Grindhouse!

(Don't worry, no spoilers.)

This thing is just pretty much awesome. I mean, it doesn't entertain every single minute, but what it does it does great (and if you see it, you might get why it doesn't have to entertain every minute -- that's part of the point at times).

Out of the two, I preferred Rodriguez's Planet Terror, but that's not to say Death Proof disappointed. It was just, surprisingly, different in aim from Terror.

Both use shock and gore to discomfort the audience, so if you're weak of stomach or squeamish, I wouldn't recommend it to you. But Tarantino goes a bit further and alienates the audience with extended dialogue, and seems to try to get people bored at times. I'm pretty surprised that it's doing so well at Rotten Tomatoes, but I think Tarantino is a critical darling at this point, even if he just screws with audiences just for fun.

Terror was basically what I expected, but Proof surprised me for the most part. Some of the best stand alone moments, though, were most definitely from the fake trailers run before and between the two parts. Very very very very funny. VERY. I can't emphasize that enough.

During the movies (even Rodriguez's), keep a lookout for a couple of mainstays -- camera shots from a car trunk POV, foot shots, Red Apple cigarettes. There are also a couple new trends to notice, and a few surprises that are too good to give away.

Just go see it, man. It really is two full-length movies for the price of one, but it won't last you much longer than a Lord of the Rings, and it has ten times the violence, cursing, and humor of one of those, too.

Minimum charges suck.

Minimum charges suck. I will no longer yield to their demands. If you can't sell me an overpriced Gatorade for $2.19 on a sweltering spring day because "minimum debit, credit charge is $3.00," but then you allow me to add a can of Diet Coke to the deal, bringing the total to $2.99 ("That's okay"), then you don't need my business anymore.

Same goes for anything else. If you make me buy/pay more for anything because of some pre-established minimums (minima), I just won't buy/pay for it at all. I'm sure you'll have luck suckering other suckers into buying useless crap they don't need so that both you and they can have the ultra convenience of not having to carry around cash.

Enjoy your spaghetti -- you're very egotistical.

Sharkdog!

This crap pretty much rules everybody's face. Only thing is the commercial breaks -- I'm never going to open a bank account at Bank of America. Watch Planet Earth the next few Sundays on Discovery Channel at 8 p.m. -- they'll probably have the first segments on during the week, too. (It's narrated by Sigourney Weaver!)

Tree's Company

Jobs, etc.

I thought about quitting my job for a full hour today. How to do it most poignantly, that I probably won't have an opportunity to quit any jobs later, since I'll need them for sustenance, how it would ruin the section entirely, etc. Yesterday they announced that the owner of the paper shot down the idea of a fake news issue (though everyone on staff at our "student-run" newspaper was truly excited at the notion), but that wasn't what pushed me over.

This is what did it this time. I wrote, without exaggeration, the BEST headline of my career, "Japanese police announce possible nuclear threat," and some dipshit changed it to "The Police Club set to play on campus Tuesday," which renders the following subhead line totally redundant and useless.

Read the fucking article, losers. It's about TOKYO POLICE (Japanese police) Club OPENING (announcing) for COLD WAR (nuclear standoff -- BOOM BOOM) Kids. NO ONE is going to see that headline (in the Arts & Life section) think that it's REAL (next to a picture of a group of guys holding a red flag and bubble gun) and AVOID reading the article about it. Then again, I guess I shouldn't put anything past our average reader here...

Loser 1: Dude, there's going to be a nuclear war!!!
Loser 2: Really? Where'd you hear that?
Loser 1: Our student newspaper.
Loser 2: Damn, then it MUST be happening! When's it going down?
Loser 1: Dunno, I didn't read about it, I just saw the headline.
Loser 2: Cool.

TPC = Tight.

What, Wilco?

"The band Wilco have officially decided to preview their new album in it's entirety, tomorrow night." -- March 10 post

I can't believe I missed this crap by ONE DAY. Oh well, I guess there are outlets for this ... music.

Ah, Val.

O Valencia

I think it's kind of stupid that the video that won the contest came from a guy who works for a company that makes music videos for bands. He probably wasn't even a fan of the band, but just saw about the contest.

Regardless, I think it's a lot better than this:

Fake news hits FSU.

The possibility of having an entire issue of the school paper as a fake news, Onion-esque endeavor has me jumping with joy. I sent out an email to everyone on staff with the idea and didn't hear back from anyone. Today, I brought it up in a meeting and everyone was all for it -- even my boss. Now all we have to do is put it past the owner of the paper.

If this thing flies, I'm going to wreak havoc on everyone and everything. The real problem I'll have is trying to pick out the best ideas from my mental list of ever-growing gold nuggets.

whoa.

This has got to be the worst All Music review I've ever read, regardless of the quality of the music reviewed.

There's a snake in my boots!

During the Oscars, there was a raccoon on our porch.


















We live in an apartment.














On the third floor.



I was by myself in the living room, watching the Oscars in the dark. I kept hearing stuff going down, and kept thinking one of my roommates was home. During a commercial I caught sight of the beast.







I think those bottles have something to do with it.



...You're the raccoon, Spoon.

interview.

Is there something that's going on in your life now that's going to affect the new record?

I've been hunting crocodile.

*****

Nice. Every time I read a new Spoon interview I inevitably read about a band or type of music I've never heard of and an opinion of Britt Daniel that usually matches with my own.

Here: Gary "U.S." Bonds and the bits on "selling out" and listening to music by entire album. And not liking young country.

Oscorsese

I guess I'll see that movie now.

yikes.

I am sometimes startled when I go from a dead sleep to being almost conscious and already talking to someone who just called me. Especially when it's my boss and he's telling me things to do and I'm already negotiating with him as if I were fully conscious. Already. Even though I don't really remember picking up the phone. And even though I'm talking as if I was fully awake when he called. And even if I don't remember some of the first things he said...

Mission accomplished.

I just created my first 'Facebook' group.

...

What now?

HCNY.

Happy !

'cray computer geek'

uh...

Gosh.

Hmm.

Yeah, well, I just don't know about this.

Smattering.

SAW:

WATCHING:

LISTENING:

CHEWING:

DRINKING:

THINKING:

Excuse me.

Excuse me, Maygen Utecht, Bayside Publicist, but

THE SMITHS were not one of "Punk Rock's most distinguished artists," nor do they sound shit like the band you're trying to pimp. Maybe The POOPsmiths, but not The Smiths.

Also, don't send me three promotional copies of albums that, given the choice, I'd rather remain sick than listen to.

Sincerely,
Your Jaded Entertainment Editor

When you're sick...

1. nothing is quite as soothing as "Peter Coppola New York Hi-Define (Hair)Styling Mudd" programming on HSN at 3:14 a.m. ... not.

2. being tired is good (it means you can sleep).

3. making a Spoon t-shirt is a top priority.

4. doctors only know how to a) test for things you know you don't have b) tell you everything that's hurting looks just fine and c) recommend doing things you've already been doing for days.

5. Duke sucks.

6. you miss an event you've been pining for for months.

7. although you acknowledge that Prince is probably a big jerk in real life, his halftime show still kicked your butt.

8. you're too tired to finish blog l

In retrospect...

In retrospect, this wasn't as over-the-top/satirical as I thought it was. (On Monday, the newspaper ran a commentary from another school [N.C. State] that got me really riled up. So I quickly wrote a response shadowing his arguments, but pushing them to the extreme and what I thought to be the satirical.)

In currentspect, I can still think it's funny when people vociferiously respond to my satirical jabs as if I truly believed them... even (especially?) if no one else knew I was being satirical.

(For the record, I think there must be someone out there who really believes everything I wrote, and that it wasn't that much of a stretch of certain people's opinions.)

(But c'mon.)

*This whole incident reminds me of the time (three years ago) when I tried to sell the two free passes I got to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake by mass emailing everyone in honors to post a price of $100 for the two passes that any student could get for free. I was inspired to do this because other students were abusing the "mass email" function trying to sell their football vouchers and tickets.

In the honors, I didn't get one response that understood what I was doing... but I did get about a half dozen responses telling me that I was stupid for trying to charge $100 for something anyone could get for free... and one of the respondents wrote "Sincerely, Anonymous," although her full name was clearly indicated on all her outgoing email.

Tightimus Maximus.

"As the 30th anniversary of the first Police single approaches, discussions have been underway as to how this will be commemorated. While we can confirm that there will indeed be something special done to mark the occasion, the depth of the band's involvement still remains undetermined."

Somehow

Eric Collins' (Denison Marrs, The Party People) new band The Dark Romantics just friended us on MySpace. And they are sounding good.

And they're coming to the The Beta Bar twice in the next two months. Interview, perhaps?

MC Jelly D

And the weirdest thing today:

Lady Sov vs. Jelly D

I don't even know what to write about this.

If.

If I've learned anything from my work experience, it's that I'm not as big of a moron as

1) I could be

and

2) many others are.

Music with movies.

12 Computers

This site was recently featured on Pitchfork for its "find" of a Grizzly Bear and City of Lost Children sync up.

My roommate talked recently about the Pink Floyd and Wizard of Oz sync up. And it's not that I'm skeptical that albums and movies line up with often suprisingly good accuracy, strangely related themes, and "Exit Music (for a film)" starting to play right when the credits appear. My concern is when people swear this was an intentional effort from the artist.

How would someone make sure the album syncs up with the rest of the movie, after the CD has to repeat two times (not to mention when Dark Side of the Moon was on vinyl and had to be repeated manually)? That would take some massive planning, forethought, and altering by the artist and producer to make sure everything lined up nicely. And even if done, those moves would definitely compromise the artistic quality of the music (unless, of course, the artist makes it clear the album is only intended to be listened to while watching the proper movie).

Notice the following remark about the Dr. Strangelove/Yorke example:

"(Info on tracks 8 and 9 not included in this guide, nothing too special worth mentioning)"

You can't just push off 2 of nine tracks with "nothing special worth mentioning" -- that's evidence against your theory...


Anyway, yeah, millions of CDs and millions of movies, and some series of "coincidences." But notice another line from our 12 computers website:

"This is a bad ass movie and a bad ass cd. So when you mix the two you get 200% badassness!"

Are you sure that when you mix these you don't just get someone really hoping for two of their favorite things to fit together in some weird freak occurence?

*Starts listening to 'Yankee Hotel Foxtrot' and watching 'The Big Lebowski'...*

Whatever.

The Weirdness.

Dummy.

I'm pretty sure, even if I tried, that I couldn't make this guy look or sound like any more of a doofus.