Yet another reason to go to the Village Halloween Parade: a group is recreating Ferris Bueller’s “Twist and Shout” float, complete with spontaneously dancing extras in the crowd.
Were I not already going to be in the parade, I’d go just for this. In any case, I’ll definitely be on the lookout for it at the event.
Saturday, October 18: ZombieCon, a sort of travelling flash mob where a crowd of self-made zombies lurch around Manhattan going shopping, pub-crawling, Thriller-dancing, and general-public-terrorizing.
Friday, October 31: The Village Halloween Parade, in which some pals and I march our costumed carcasses every year. Photos from past parades of mine can be found here and here.
Any of you local folks into meeting up for either event? Get in touch! These things are always more fun with friends.
Just about time for the debate. I’ve got Nicky on Skype and we’re going to check it out together. I’ll just add to this one post as it goes.
9:03 – Jim Lehrer is comfortably familiar.
I always wonder what personal jabs and hate-filled hissing are in those friendly-looking muttering initial handshakes between the candidates at these things.
9:05 – THEY TOOK’R JAERBS!
McCain’s invoking Senator Kennedy instead of answering the damned question. Also, McC is giving his condolences that Ted is in the hospital, when the currrent word is he’s home again. Good jaerb.
9:09 – Lehrer is getting bitchy already. Good, we need that.
9:11 – McC – “Yeah, I warned ‘em about this financial crisis too just like Obama did or something let’s talk about Eisenhower now.”
9:15 – McC responds to a question about how we fix things with a bunch of “I believe in the American worker” rhetoric.
Don’t you think McCain looks tired?
Nicky: “Out of control spending is a gateway to out of control spending? It’s all so clear now!”
McC brought a pen. Yay! High-energy prop comedy time! Where’s Carrot Top?
9:20 – McCain at a debate: “I don’t wanna go back-and-forth, but…”
Obama has this permanent WTF look on his face.
This blue screen behind the guys would work so well for chromakey lulz. Get to it, Youtubers.
McC wants to give us $5,000 tax credits so we can buy our own healthcare. That would be neat if 5K bought any healthcare at all.
9:26: Bring on the bailout talk. This ought to be entertaining.
9:30 – O is going on about infrastructure and spacewalks in response to a bailout question. I do hope one of these guys gets somewhere near an answer to the actual question that Jim gives them at some point.
Jim is pwning both these guys left and right. Can we just make him the fucking president?
Jim Lehrer is so able to say “stfu and answer my question you twunts!” so politely and diplomatically. I hope that works out for him at some point.
9:35 – I wish I could give Jim a hug. He needs one right now.
O is referring to the somewhat positive outcome of the Great Depression when he talks about what we have to look forward to after the current crisis. How apt.
McC can’t pronounce “Senator Obama.” It comes out like “Sennero Bomma.” Sounds like an Italian/Greek restaurant.
Oh, here comes the “v” word. Yep, veteran war hero stars and stripes forever time. How long until someone plays the 9/11 card?
9:39 – McC: “You cannot have a failed strategy that will cause you to nearly lose a conflict.” WHAT THE CRAP DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?
9:47 – O just handed McC his ass over Iraq. In response, McC is intoning in a kindly grandfatherly voice how terrible it is that O won’t admit that we are totes winning over there.
O just said he wants to “capture and kill Bin Laden.” Ouch. I’d have used the word “punish” or “bring to justice” or something.
9:52 – I like how O pronounces “Pakistan.” “Pahkistahn.”
Did McC really just say that you don’t say out loud who you are going to attack? Nicky raises a great point; shouldn’t you do exactly that, so they have a chance to go “OMG we’d better negotiate before they kick our ass?”
9:57 – McC is talking about when he voted on something in the senate in 1983.
Me: “25 years ago.”
Nicky: “And 25 years ago.. he was still old.”
10:00 – Stuff like little town hall meetings in New Hampshire and some lady giving you her son’s bracelet have no place in a televised presidential debate. Save the schmoopy human interest crap for your paid adverts.
10:03 – Someone give Jim Lehrer a pizza. Or a trophy. Or a pizza trophy.
WTF is “an existential threat?” Is it a threat that is being emo and unsure about its place in the world?
Actually, McCain forgot Poland.
O seems to be keeping his microphone’s shadow perfectly centered on his necktie. It’s hypnotic.
10:14 – Oh no, McC did NOT just invoke Reagan as a good thing. *headdesk*
10:17 – Obama totally remembered Poland!
O is working with Senator Luger on the weapons situation. I wonder if Senators Colt, Smith, and Wesson are helping.
10:19 – NOW McC remembers Poland. Took you long enough, granddad!
McC’s fingers are like a bunch of pale doughy pigs in blankets, before they’ve been baked.
McC’s smile is a terrifying, withered, yellowed rictus. If that man never smiles again, it’ll be too soon for me.
10:26 – 9/11 the whole 9/11 with 9/11. 9/11!
10:31 – Why would McC be invoking Reagan so much? Doesn’t he know that Reagan was a deluded, senile, doddering old fool who was way too old to be put in control of – oh, wait.
Nicky: “Normalization of relations? Did you use a bell curve?”
That caps this off, and I’m not interested in the talking heads afterward. I agree with Nicky; this debate was a damned train wreck, and the only winner was Jim Lehrer.
Would anyone happen to know of any live webcasts planned of tonight’s presidential debate? I’m sort of in the mood to liveblog it, but I don’t have a television hooked up.
It’s not difficult to see how we got here. The worst part is, it was all legal.
— CRUDE: How Wall Street Is Screwing America, Long Island Press, 9-24-08
I find this article a really interesting read. It’s worth plowing through to the end, even if you don’t normally read stuff like this.
I don’t think I’ve ever read Entertainment Weekly outside a doctor’s waiting room, and even then only when all the Highlights for Children issues had the puzzles already filled in, but I really dig this interview with the funny fake news people.
STEWART: We’ve got three financial networks on all day. The bottom falls out of the credit market, and they were all running around. On CNBC I saw a guy talking to eight people in [eight different onscreen] boxes, and they were all like, ”I don’t know!” It’d be like if Hurricane Ike hit, and you put on the Weather Channel, and they were yelling, ”I don’t know what the f— is going on! I’m getting wet and it’s windy and I don’t know why and it’s making me sad! Maybe the president could come down and put up some sort of windscreen?”
STEWART: We were in this huge credit crisis, out of money. Then the Fed goes, We’ll give you a trillion dollars, and all of a sudden Wall Street is like, ”I can’t believe we got away with it!” Can you imagine if someone said, ”I shouldn’t have bought that sports car because it means I can’t have my house,” and the bank just said, ”All right, you can have your house. And you know what? Keep the car.” [He throws up his arms joyfully and shouts] ”Yeaaaaah, I get to keep the car! Wait, do I have to give the money back?” ”No, it doesn’t matter.” ”Yeah, I’m gonna get another car! I’m gonna do the same thing the same way, except twice as f—ed up!”
COLBERT: The idea that Lehman Brothers doesn’t get any money and AIG does reminds me very much of ”Iran is a mortal enemy because they have not achieved a nuclear weapon. But North Korea is a country we can work with, because they have a nuclear weapon.” The idea is, Get big or go home. How big can you f— up? Can you f— up so bad that you would ruin the world economy? If it’s just 15,000 who are out of jobs, no. You have to actually be a global f—up to get any help.
I’m home with a migraine which is going into its second day. It ebbed enough yesterday evening for me to do Off the Hook despite feeling a bit off my game. It came back in full force about five minutes after I went off the air. I had to ditch the crew before dinner, and head back home wearing my sunglasses in the dark (migraines kick my light-sensitivity up like whoah; I’m only online now with my window blocked and my monitor’s brightness turned way down.)
While I’m often accused of being everyone’s obligatory overly positive friend, it’s times like this when I feel better about venting some negativity. So, here’s a few things that are getting right up my nose at this particular moment.
I’m only one man, though, and I don’t really need $700 billion, so perhaps I could scale things back a bit. If I get a job at McDonalds and burn the fries, can I just have a million?
Christopher Nolan and Heath Ledger took a character that was delightfully chaotic and evil, and turned him into a grumbly emo kid who delivered his lines with all the personality of a glass of stale water. Like Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker; it turns out that a legendary badass is really just a clone of any of several tetchy kids I went to high school with.
The Joker, when done right, is menacing and darkly hilarious and truly chaotic. My favorite interpretation is probably Mark Hamill’s performances in animated Batman; just the right amounts of silly and psychotic. It seems that the writers of the film sort of had a handle on a good Joker, as some of the lines would be scary and/or funny as hell coming from a more suitable actor. Heath, however, reads them like a drama-school dropout with mild indigestion, or a bitter old lady in the throes of refusing to buy cookies from a girl scout at her door. This Joker just doesn’t cut it.
The Dark Knight was a neat film otherwise, but Heath was definitely the low point.
I’m not among Obama’s dazzled fans who put up that Shepard Fairey poster and believe he’s a magical man who will make everything better, but out of the current choices he’s the only one I would trust in the slightest not to screw things up even worse than the current regime.
Had Moore succeeded in his mission this film might have succeeded as a bit of self-congratulatory fluff, which I probably wouldn’t have dug much either, but as is this film doesn’t even have that going for it. It basically ends up showing a movement patting itself on the back right up until it fails spectacularly.
This whole thing seems to me like something that would make an interesting second disc on a special edition Fahrenheit 9/11 DVD, but on its own it’s just a chronicle of an epic fail.
Moore’s other work has a reason behind it outside himself. This film doesn’t seem to have any more of a point than “look at Mike being snarky and brilliant, look at all these lefites looking spunky and all these righties looking stupid, Mike is so great… oh, damn.” It’s like someone publishing the edited highlights of their most awkward home movies, and declaring it a gift to the world.
My best friend Grey is really into the Twilight series. I’ve been listening to her talk about the books, gone shopping with her for supplies to make jewelry and stuff based on them, helped her track down new movie trailers, and so on. I get a huge kick out of her fangirl enthusiasm, and support her digging what she digs. So, when she decided to loan me the first book in the series, I dove in. Her tastes and mine often coincide at least slightly, and I was willing to give the book a shot for her.
Five pages in, I knew I was in trouble. Thirty pages in, I was feeling physical pain. About ninety pages in, I had to close the book and email Grey asking how soon I could get it out of my house.
I love reading, and usually I can read anything once. Even if I hate a book entirely, I can take something away from the read, or at least play Mystery Science Theater 3000 in my head. This novel, however, has taken all my least favorite things about trashy young-adult romance novels, trendy Buffy-knockoff vampire drama, and standard directionless vapid teen angst, and wrapped them up in one little package.
The prose was a chore and a half; it’s written like some middle-schooler’s Myspace blog. The story just brought cliche after cliche. I couldn’t develop the slightest bit of empathy for any of the characters, and every page made me wish that the next page would include a scene of rocks falling and everyone dying.
After I gave up on the book, I did take the time to skim ahead, and then pull up the plot details on the rest of the series. Every bit I learned about the continuation of the story made me glad I gave up so early; if any of that had happened to characters I gave a tin shit about, I’d be sorely disappointed. The whole thing is like the bad Mary-Sue fanfic version of itself.
I don’t begrudge anyone else their choice of entertainment or fandom; it’s just so totally not for me at all. I do really like this parody, though.
That’s all I’ve got for now. I’m going to go put my head down for a bit.
On behalf of the show and myself, I’d like to thank the Off the Hook listeners among you.
For one thing, so many of you are coming through with an awesome show of support during the current WBAI fundraiser, allowing us to thunder past our pledge goals like a crazed herd of sweaty community-radio-supporting buffalo. Some of us had to leave the studio partway through last night’s broadcast and help out the volunteers taking pledges in the phone bank, it was that busy. :-)
Even if you aren’t among those able to pledge, thank you for listening. Were it not for you, we would all just be a bunch of strange people closed up in a soundproof room talking to ourselves, which wouldn’t be nearly as fun.
On the way out of my room this morning, I grabbed a random pair of socks. It wasn’t until I hopped into them and my shoes on my way out the door that I realized something unusual; they’re a matched pair.
Normally, I never wear matching socks. I just don’t dig dressing that way, I’ve always felt most comfortable when my socks are mismatched. In fact, I can’t remember the last time they matched; I was probably still in school.
My sock drawer is a bit unusual. It’s full of striped, patterned, and brightly-colored socks. About half of them are toe-socks. Not a single one is white, and none are the standard black or dark blue ones you’ll find in the men’s section. I figure, if you can’t have fun with your socks, what can you have fun with? No matter how formal or business-casual I have to get, I can always have fun ankles at least. Grabbing a matching pair out of my sock stock at random in the dark is highly unlikely; it’s like throwing a coin and having it land on its edge.
But today, it not only happens that my socks are a matched pair, but they’re arguably the most boring and mundane pair I own; plain orange ones. It feels odd, like I’m walking around with a stain on my shirt or something, but I know it’s not really that big a deal. Besides, I thought to myself as I walked into my day job this morning, maybe this means today will be an unusual day in other ways. I could do with a bit of shaking up.
As it happened, a few hours into my day I got a call from my beloved girlfriend, whom I’ve missed terribly since I saw her last a few long weeks ago. She’s got a sudden business trip that just so happens to be in New York, and she’ll be coming over tonight to spend the better part of a week with me.
:-D
Perhaps I should match my socks more often. At the very least, I should buy a lottery ticket before I change out of them.
I got home from Off the Hook last night at my customary Stupid O’Clock AM, and had high hopes of getting a good five hours or so of sleep in before geting up for work today.
As I was walking home from the train station a low-flying police helicopter was flying in a circular pattern right near my neighborhood, shining its spotlight down into the street. It was quite jarring; possible dangerous fugitive types with pixelated faces aside, it was just freaking loud.
By the time I got to my block the chopper had stopped its search pattern, instead hovering maybe ten blocks or so from my house, shining the spot straight downward. I was nearly curious enough to take a walk over and have a look, but fatigue won out.
Unfortunately, thanks to the noise, I couldn’t pass out for another couple of hours. Usually I can sleep through anything, but I was too tired to focus enough to do so (if that makes any sense.) When I did eventually fall asleep I ended up with a pretty wicked nightmare, and the alarm rang far too soon for my tastes.
Thank goodness for free caffeine in the office.
I’ve never properly written up my version of the “where I was/who I lost/how I felt/etc.” stories everyone who was around seven years ago has, and I doubt I ever will. I have probably barely addressed the issue in all my years of public writing. It’s not something I enjoy discussing, nor is it something that I can really see myself reducing to text archived on a screen at this point. I’ll occasionally talk about it in person if asked, but not often, and not enthusiastically.
I’ve seen people who do get enthused while talking about it, and they tend to frighten me more than the event itself did.
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