Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Things that make me irrationally angry.


I always hit the gray part. Also, Googling "toe" results in fewer pictures of what I expected -- that would be toes -- and more pictures of women in tight pants.

#1 Stubbing a toe

This one's obvious, I know, but that doesn't make it any less angrifying. (That is a word, Spell Check, and so help me God I will make you understand that.)
Basically, while walking daintily between one area of the world and another, I hit my toe. That's all. Or is that all? Look more closely! Time and space seem to bend around the toe-object nexus so that my toe manages to strike the object while the rest of my body avoids it; in addition, the toe manages to slam into the object with the equivalent force of me running at full speed and kicking the chair or table with all of the strength I can muster up. (And I'm not running when this happens. I can't run. My hips would shatter two steps into it.)
Reaction: Stabbing the chair or table to death, possibly with a rock. Cradling toe while sucking breath in between teeth. Lightly swearing.


Google! Are you listening to anything I'm saying? This is the wrong beard, Michael. So help me, you knew that. Also? Not an airbrushed photo. Or a depressing choice by a female athlete. This is neither of those.
NOTE: I am not to blame for this, wife! Google did it! I am innocent!
DOUBLE NOTE: Mostly innocent.

#2 Beard hair stuck in cell phone
Whenever my wife calls me (and only my wife ever calls me), I like to answer the phone. I like my wife. I like talking to her. And my cell phone lets me talk to her in many places, which I enjoy. What I don't enjoy is getting my beard hair stuck in the cell phone.
I position the phone in such a way that I can both talk and listen at the same time; I think that most people do this. When I'm finished with the conversation, I move the phone away from my face and hang up.
And every time I do this, one of the hairs in my beard has stretched itself out, lassoed itself around the hinge of the cell phone, and readied itself to be ripped out. It's not as if I hang the phone up in a furious sweep of my arm. It's also not as if I have a Karl Marx beard. The hair's getting ripped out in a beard-phone conspiracy and I am through with turning a blind eye.
Reaction: Biting the phone to death with my teeth. Or throwing the phone into the wall as many times as it takes. Bursts of expletives.


Nobody could have avoided that. Or the murdering afterward.

#3 Hitting a pothole

Sometimes, while driving, the wheel of my car will dip into a pothole, causing the car to bounce slightly. Sometimes hitting a curb while turning too closely to it will create the same effect; intermittently rough roads can also do this.
Reaction: The murder of the road and all cars on the road. The murder of my car and anyone in the car. Also cursing, if "cursing" means screaming inarticulately.

Saturday, October 27, 2007

I feel the night explode.




Taylor Dayne - "Tell It to My Heart"

Walk with me now through lush meadows filled with forever-blooming flowers of melody, poetry, and dance. The name of this particular meadow? Taylor Dayne Meadow.

NOTE: Due to my strong personal convictions, I wish to stress that this film in no way endorses a belief in the occult.


00:01 - "The eyes are the windows of the house of the soul," say the poets. This eye is a window that opens to show us into the living room of the house inside, where the most incredible feelings are hosting the most incredible party, with streamers and music and punch, and all of it is on fire.

00:03 - Only the most confident videos can afford to release the backflipping backup dancer visual (usually the coup de grace) a mere three seconds in. Only the most confident videos can afford to say, "We see the horizon, and we are sailing right over it."

00:15 - At fifteen seconds, you may notice the first subtle theme of the video: red. Go back with that word in mind, and you'll start to pick up the clues. Red lipstick, red nail polish, red paint, red underwear peeking through slashed jeans, red socks. Finally, a set of red footprints following a pair of mysterious feet. Why is there only one set of footprints? Because that's when I was carrying you.

00:22 - First line: "I feel the night explode when we're together." The imagery is potent; at first, we are afraid that so much is literally exploding that the entire night is in danger (and we of course hear the echo of Milton's anthropomorphic Night speaking to Satan in Paradise Lost here), but then the verb "feel" catches up to us. The unshuttered eye, the concatenation of red: these are all the vestiges of feelings. Exploding feelings.

00:24 - The first synthesizer fill aurally titillates us with its brief melody while the man in the slashed jeans dances. If you can call that dancing. It's more like a kinesthetic explosion. (Notice the second motif that is already developing: exploding.)

00:30 - The best stage actors know to enunciate powerfully, and so does Taylor Dayne. Watch her mouth form those elongated "o" sounds in the few seconds before the half-minute mark. Sensuality like that could only be matched by suggestive shoulder rolls; fortunately, we have those here, too.

00:33 - Held in reserve until this moment, the second backup dancer cartwheels into frame. Now we have two of the three primary colors struggling to burst forth from slashed jeans.

00:34-00:44 - These ten seconds split our attention between the enunciated, emotional power in the front and the gesticulations of the men in the back. Focus on the men. Each motion clarifies the lyrics like a resonant bell rung high in a church tower, perhaps by a quasi-formed but tender-hearted man.

00:47 - With one heart-wrenching, "Tonight, I really need to know," we prepare to hit the chorus; also, her jacket vanishes to allow Dayne's delicately tousled locks to spill over her shoulders.

00:47 - Please don't forget to watch the men in the back. They are wearing expressions of such focus, such stoic commitment, that they can't help but underscore the pathos of the lyrics.

00:51 - Yes! The chorus! If I can be permitted a bardic aside, I'm nearly giddy with the thrill of it all. When Taylor Dayne and the back-up dancers punch the air in perfect unison, they are punching me in the heart.

Take a second to digest the lyrics of the chorus:

Tell it to my heart
Tell my I'm the only one
Is this really love or just a game
Tell it to my heart
I can feel my body rock
Every time you call my name

Some might argue that these lyrics are cliched, echoing with the same trite longing of any pop song. To a point, that is true. Yet it is that very same cliche, knowingly employed here, that provides the appropriate backdrop to the exploding punch of this line: "I can feel my body rock." The image evokes obviously the idea of movement, but the physical orgasm is matched by a spiritual one: like Peter, she is building her house on a rock. And I am moving in to the spare bedroom.

1:03-1:06 -
Watch the dancer on the left. Nureyev is reborn. Unless he isn't dead yet. Then he is merely replaced.

1:15-1:21
- At what are the dancers pointing? Maybe a star. Maybe the future.

1:26 - Here the lyrics help literalize the song's message; "soul to soul," we hold on to Taylor Dayne's waist, gracefully kicking behind us.

1:39 - In the second chorus, she begins to plumb even greater emotional depths, becoming fiercer and fiercer in her lamentations.

1:55 - There is a single frame at this point that is not part of the movement of the rest of this sequence. In that single frame, the "red" dancer is striking a lounging, half-kick pose. Like the single frames cut into the original theatrical release of The Exorcist, this may be a subliminal message designed to augment the rest. Here, the visceral target is not fear but the confluence of passion and sorrow.

1:56 - 2:06 - For ten seconds, Taylor Dayne gives way so that the music can stretch its legs. While the synthesizer is being teased into unheard of melodies, Taylor Dayne walks purposefully toward the camera, eyes seeming to reach out from her anachronistic haunt and into our own...

2:07 - And then she whirls around, leaving us spurned and gasping. Freeze the video at 2:08; that sneer speaks more loudly than any lyric could have.

2:13 - 2:32 - During the bridge, notice two things. First, Taylor Dayne's jacket once again appears and disappears in an almost rhythmic cycle. Second, the back-up dancers are doing the same move for twenty seconds. Are they attempting to suggest the Sisyphean machinery of love? The way we throw ourselves again and again into the fire, hoping for new results?

2:29 - "We keep holding on." The last word is transformed into a wail informed by a grief not felt since Juliet awakened to find Romeo dead at her side.

2:30 - 2:57 - The motifs of this passion play return now, and we again see the over-magnified eyes, the painted footprints, the gesticulating. Not content to revisit old ground, Taylor Dayne spins into frame like single images from a beautiful kaleidoscope, repetitive but mesmerizing.

2:57 - The dancers die.

3:03 - The dancers return to life with a jolly spin and hip wiggle.

3:37 - Up to this point, the ending of the song is a frenzy. Taylor Dayne alternatingly smiles and scowls, torn by the emotions of the song, and the back-up dancers can only dance as hard as possible to console her. Then, just as suddenly as it began, the dancing stops. The trio turns and walks into the white background. The image begins to fade.

And we are left only with our memories of ineffable heartache.

Fin

They call me "Panic" 'cause I never do.

I found this randomly while looking for pictures of Rawhead Rex, but it's actually a good list of Halloween-y things:

Ingredients for a Halloween at Home

I've got no reaction to the music, because I don't recognize it. I only listen to The Best of Bonnie Raitt when I'm at home. But I love the movie list.

(Look at this! There were two sequels to Pumpkinhead? And a poem?)

Left off of the movie list is the epic Ticks, which is reviewed at BadMovies.org. More childhood memories with my brother and sister...

Anyway, the best part of this guy's list is the video games section. Maniac Mansion is awesome enough that I will probably not be writing letters of recommendation this morning to instead play that on an emulator (because these students don't need college); however, the real victory is Resident Evil.

After playing the sequel, Resident Evil 2, I made a series of .wav files doing the voices of the main characters, Leon and Ada. (I would have been 18 at the time, which is a nice little fact for people who are married to me to keep in mind as they consider annulment.) Thing is, I made these .wav files with over-the-top caricatures of the voices telling nonsensical stories, having nonsensical conversations, or telling nonsensical jokes. Only I can't quite remember all of them.

I know that one started something like this:

Leon: Hey, Ada! Where are you going with my car?
Ada: I don't know, Leon! I thought I'd take it for a drive!

And then there was a "punchline" with laughter from both characters.

Where are those .wav files? Justin may or may not have at the same time created gems entitled "lion attack" and "real lion attack," and these must also be recovered. We were such winners back then. Before it went downhill.



Did You Know? I used to play Resident Evil 2 constantly, but I cheated every single time. I had to. Otherwise, it was terrifying. Actually, it was still terrifying, but I can't help that I screamed like a girl whenever I was attacked in the game. (Once again, I'd like to point out that I was 18 years old then. Fodder for the annulment hearings!)

I can feel my body rock.

My sister is the source to turn to when you need awesomeness broken down for you. Also if you need awesomeness put back together for you. And should you want to indulge this Halloween in a marathon of movies like Critters and Rawhead Rex, she's the girl you want riding shotgun.

(Except that she fell asleep ten minutes into Rawhead Rex. Justin and I watched the whole awesome spectacle, and she'd wake up -- excuse me, "wake up" -- for a few moments every so often, pretend that she wasn't asleep, and drift back off. )

This post is actually going to be a kind of preamble. Trust me, I need to talk about "body rock[ing]" soon, but while looking for the links to the IMDB entries for those two cinematic gems up there, I got some interesting image results.

I'd like everybody to look at the second Google result for Critters first:



That's the box art for the sequel to Critters. You might want to look more closely. (Although I suppose that not spending part of one's childhood watching these movies with one's sister sort of dulls the impact...)

Here's the very first result in Google for Critters:



It's not just the juxtaposition of color or species that's getting it done here; it might be the expression on the woman's face. And her pose. She's posing, as the wife describes it, "for a beauty pageant with her arm ostensibly on the railing of a stairway and her leg cocked to show off her nice body," but instead of a beauty pageant railing, "unbeknownst to her, there's a monster where the railing should be."

But I say it is beknownst to her. She's digging on that thing. Digging hard.

Also someone made that suit. Or stole it from the movie studio. Either way? Job well done.

Next post: A Halloween list I found when clicking through to this pinnacle of costume design:



Did You Know? In "Stranded on Death Row," Kurupt drops a line about Rawhead Rex; specifically, he "gets rugged like Rawhead Rex with fat tracks that fit." Also, what he "recite[s] is kinda lethal."

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Photo booth inspiration.

Inspired by Charlotte, that little doll, I am too posting pictures of recent Photo Booth escapades.
http://getsgalore.blogspot.com/






And the real winner.

Gah Lak Tus.

So we did, as the last post suggested, watch Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer on Sunday. And it was very bad. I was grading for most of it, but it wasn't even enjoyably distracting. Even the effects were mediocre.

Especially Galactus, who looked like this:



Maybe that works for some people, but does it really capture things like the real Galactus does?




Because that's what an arm does! That's how it bends when you're the devourer of worlds.

I just wanted to use that picture because Uatu is ripped up in it. I like him that way.

Movie-watching criteria.

Actually, let's make that "criterion." We've really just got the one.

Does a little girl die at the end of the movie? Yes? Then no. We don't want that. That's not a movie we wanted to see.

Little scenario for you:

We went to see Pan's Labyrinth in the theater, and we were both mega-excited. There was this whole lie about "adult fairytale" not meaning "girl gets shot in the stomach," but then, there at the end? Girl gets shot in the stomach.

Sorry if that's a spoiler! Here's the girl not shot in the stomach:



See? Adorable.

Then we borrowed The Host from our sister, who failed to mention the girl, you know, dying at the end. Even though we were having a conversation about Pan's Labyrinth at the same time we borrowed it. True story.

Here's that girl, also before the dying:



Also adorable! It wouldn't be so bad if the movie was called Little Girls Dying For Two Hours, because we'd probably know what was up in that one. Probably look weird renting it, though.

From now on, when we borrow a movie, we are going to ask only one question: "Does a little girl die at the end of this movie?" Because it turns out that's important.

Maybe we should switch from the well-reviewed movies with the politics and the special effects and the drama and the good acting and the threat of little girls dying to, I don't know, the movie we watched on Sunday:




At least with Jessica Alba involved, you know what's coming. Greatness. Fantastic acting and drama. And never the feeling that she is a doll with painted eyes. And hair.

Bobbins

How exciting! My own post! My friend, Julia, sent me this yesterday. It's a definite get at the middle. One of these days, I am going to kidnap that boy of mine, drag him to France, and, within twenty-four hours, pop out two babies. As cute as those two. His "work" and my "school"-- unimportant.

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Laughter becomes horror.

So the wife and I sat down to laugh at Paris Hilton in whatever this horrible movie is below:



Wait for it... wait for it... 15 seconds in, was that...?

19 seconds in... OH MY GOD GILES WHY

GILES NO WHY

WHY NO WHY

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Trouble keeps you running faster.

My life peaked around 1993.


Think about the guy on lead guitar about 55 seconds in. Do you think he had a feeling about Sonic the Hedgehog? Or the other side of the rainbow? Or perhaps exploding?

But the ending... It doesn't smash into your face with a car filled with awesome, but it does make you think about things you never thought about before.


Make sure you watch this one and not the Japanese version. The Japanese were outdone in this case. Spenser Nielson redeemed us all.

That's where that goes.

This is where shoes go:



But most people know about that one. Most people don't know where to put there Rey Mysterio action figure box when it comes time to put it where it goes.

Which is here:

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Animals that are real (cute) animals.

Here is a real-life animal -- the pika:



We just wanted the pika to live through his adventures in Planet Earth, but instead he was eaten by the imaginary Tibetan fox.

If you watch this YouTube clip, you can see a few things:

1. The pika is adorable.
2. The Tibetan fox is very realistic.
3. The Tibetan fox has several types of thoughts running through his head.
4. The pika is only having feelings. Fear feelings.

Hip hip, fat fat.

These are two of the birds that flew into the bushes in front of our car when we pulled into our apartment complex. At least a dozen hipped into the branches and stared at us, but these cuties were the only ones to sit still long enough to be photographed. (The windshield of our car may not be completely clean, so it looks a tiny bit blargh.)

The first little bird:



The second little bird:



And then the giant fatty that was trying to eat a stem:



Can you tell that he's enormous? He is. And when the rest of the birds panicked at our moving to open the doors (which was right before we would have pounced on and eaten them), he just hopped farther into the bushes. A little farther. Maybe one small branch back. It doesn't matter, because he was still visible from being a giant fat little bird.

Saves the day.

At the Kensico Dam Plaza this afternoon, right in front of the bench where we were sitting and watching an approaching thunderstorm, a Japanese mother started beating her (maybe) 12-month-old son in the arm. While yelling in fear. After ten seconds or so, she switched tactics and started scraping at his arm furiously with a magazine pulled from her purse. Then they took off.

Since the kid was wearing long sleeves, and mostly just toddling along up to that moment, we figured something had attached itself to him. Sure enough, we found this little guy at the scene of the crime:



Completely undamaged. So who won this round?

Animals that are not real animals.

First, the panda is not real:



That is a man (or woman) in a panda suit. Those are human eyes.

Baby pandas are also not real:



But no person is this small. That is an animatronic creature. Watch a clip of a baby panda some time, and you'll see that it's not even very life-like. And you can see the remote control being used right behind it.

Tibetan foxes are absolutely untrue:



They have square heads and bodies. We love them very much, though. They are cute, much like --

We're trying to think of cute, imaginary animals here. Unicorns? That's not manly enough, and we are a manly duo. Baby dragons? That's geeky, and we are really erudite.

Musk oxen are incredibly hot, but clearly not real:



Those are ancient beasts that once walked the Earth. All the footage in Planet Earth is computer-generated.

Howler monkeys are similarly "real," but not so much animals:



Look carefully. That is a demon. It is having demon thoughts, not animal thoughts.