Here’s a weird little novelty, courtesy of Lileks. No introduction from me would really do it justice, so just watch:
Remember when everyone thought the future was going to be, well, futuristic? We’ve lowered our sights in so many ways. Sigh… at least they haven’t de-wrinkled our prunes yet. (Um, wouldn’t a smooth prune just be a plum? Duh, guys.)
Since I seem to wallowing in stereotypically masculine interests today anyhow, what with the airplanes and all, I thought I’d throw this up, too:
That’s the eternally yummy Raquel Welch, circa mid-1960s or so. I have no idea if this is a still from a movie or a modeling gig or what. But… it’s Raquel Welch… in a serape and a gun belt… mmmmm…
Oh, come on, it’s Friday afternoon! What better time for a big ol’ slice of cheesecake? Stop looking at me like that…
While I was seeking out links for the previous entry, I came across the photo below and thought it was too awesome not to share:
Hm… I just read some news that kind of startled me: the Air Force is retiring its F-117A Nighthawk fighter planes — a.k.a. “the stealth fighter” — this month. Next week, in fact. Monday, to be precise.
And why is this startling, you may ask? Mostly because it doesn’t seem like these weird little black arrowheads have been around all that long, but the article I read reveals that they’ve actually been in service for over twenty years, ever since 1983, although the Air Force denied their existence until 1988. (Makes you wonder how many UFO sightings prior to ’88 were actually Nighthawks being tested out and then flown on secret missions, doesn’t it?)
I’m not one to pay much attention to dreams — I don’t try to interpret them, I don’t freight them with any real significance, and most the time I don’t even remember them (I assume, however, that I do have them, because, as far as I can tell, I haven’t gone mad like you’re supposed to if you don’t dream) — but I had one this morning just before the alarm woke me that’s really staying with me for some reason. It wasn’t scary or anything, it was just… weird.
In the dream, I was in The Girlfriend’s bedroom, trying to find the source of this freaky purple light emanating from beneath her bed. I got down on my knees and, after a moment’s hesitation, lifted the bedskirt. There was an automated plasma torch under there, merrily slicing strips from this long bolt of fabric, which I somehow knew were going to be used to make underwear. I don’t know what kind of underwear, or whether it was ladies’ underwear or men’s or sexy or utilitarian. Just that the fabric would end up as… underwear.
And then an ex-girlfriend that I haven’t seen in probably 12 years showed up. She didn’t do anything, she just walked into the room, gave me a little wave, and walked out the other door.
And that was it. Weird, huh? The ex-girlfriend’s appearance makes a certain amount of sense — the media coverage for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is beginning to pick up, and I was involved with her back when Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade came out in ’89, so reading those articles yesterday probably just stirred up some old memories — but where the hell did the plasma torch and the underwear come from? I’m going to be pondering this one all day, I fear…
Just in case desktop computers, HDTV, and cellphones are insufficiently science-fiction-y for you, we’re soon going to have light-emitting wallpaper and vat-grown hamburgers.
I am frankly flabbergasted by this stuff. And also by the fact that I just glanced out my window and it’s freaking snowing. On a sunny day, no less. I love springtime in Utah…
My good friend and occasional writing partner Mike Chenoweth (more familiarly known in these parts as “Chenopup”) has just launched a nifty entrepreneurial venture, a company called Reel Classroom, which will produce and sell educational DVDs targeted at those who want to become film and video professionals, as well as those who are already in the business and want to deepen their skill sets. The first two DVDs — Introduction to Lighting for Film and Video and Green Screen Lighting — are available now.
Both were written, directed, and edited by Mike, and they feature veteran gaffer Carl Gundestrup as your host and narrator. I’ve seen both DVDs myself, and think they’re pretty interesting, even for people who have no intention of ever becoming gaffers or lighting techs. (Full disclosure: I actually appear on-screen in Green Screen Lighting, in all of my difficult-to-light glory!)
The Reel Classroom web site is live as of yesterday, so I’d like to ask my three loyal readers to do me a favor: click on over there and have a look around, see if there’s anything there you might like for yourself, and generally do what you can to spread the word. If you know anyone who might be interested in learning about the film industry, let them know.
Among my various esoteric interests is a curious — some would say morbid — fascination for the infamous tragedies of history: Pompeii, the Hindenberg crash, and of course, the grandmother of disaster stories, the sinking of the RMS Titanic.
Today is the 96th anniversary of what author Walter Lord called “a night to remember,” i.e., the night the supposedly unsinkable ship struck an iceberg while on her maiden — and only — voyage. (Technically, the ship hit the iceberg late on the night of April 14, but it took two and a half hours to go down, so it actually sank on the 15th.)
Public interest in this particular shipwreck never seems to wane, for some reason, and to this day people are still debating over what exactly happened out there in the North Atlantic. Oh, sure, everyone knows the ship hit a ‘berg, but was it ripped open like a giant can of anchovies by a sharp spur of ice, as so many movies have depicted? Or was the damage actually something more… subtle? Caused by something innocuous that nobody thought would be a problem, like the stupidly mundane combination of rubber o-rings and freezing temperatures that brought down the space shuttle Challenger?
Here’s a theory: it was the rivets that held the ship together. More precisely, according to two authors of an upcoming book, it was rivets made of inferior, brittle materials that shattered when the iceberg gently brushed — not ripped into — Titanic‘s side. According to this theory — which is backed up by observations of the wreck itself on the ocean floor — the ship wasn’t torn open, as everyone has believed; rather, the broken rivets allowed the hull plates to simply open up along their seams. The end result was the same, of course.
Did you know that what they used to call “marital relations” is entirely dependent on the quality of what’s in your cup? No, really. Check out this “educational film” from the Folgers company:
So, let’s review: hubby is so disgusted by his morning ration of battery acid that he’s apparently decided he never wants to have sex again, at least not with his wife. (There is that veiled threat about the girls at the office and their “hot plates,” the implication obviously being that he’s ready to throw the missus over for somebody who really knows how to brew some good joe.) Fortunately, she’s not the sort to throw crockery at the jerk and move back in with her mother; instead, she wisely identifies the source of her husband’s discontent and takes steps to remediate the problem. And sure enough, by nighttime he’s all hepped up on go-juice and ready to rock her world.
Which of these two is the more foolish, the shallow man who is obviously on a caffeine-fueled emotional rollercoaster, or his doormat of a wife who’ll do anything — even turn to convenient, cheap, processed, better-living-through-modern-chemistry food substitutes — just to avoid revealing that she flunked her Home Ec class three times in a row?
Did these quaintly ridiculous ad campaigns really work back in the day? Do they even still make Folgers Crystals, and is anyone dumb enough to use them? And what would happen to this guy if he someone served him some freshly ground French-press coffee, i.e., real coffee? Based on the evidence presented here, I imagine the sexual release would probably kill everyone within five feet of the sap…
One more for tonight: our esteemed colleague Jaquandor has declared me an excellent blogger:
Another terrific source of high-quality geekitude, Jason at Simple Tricks and Nonsense always brings the goods. Sometimes we agree on stuff, sometimes we don’t.
To which I say, with all sincerity, thanks, man. That truly means a lot to me. I’m glad people out there enjoy what I do.
And to everyone else reading this, if you haven’t checked out Jaquandor’s blog, Byzantium’s Shores, I highly recommend it. He’s a fine writer and seems to be a good egg. Have a look, in particular, at his on-going project to “fix” the The Phantom Menace; basically he’s writing a story treatment that retains the bulk of Uncle George’s screenplay as we saw it, but with a few tweaks that would’ve made for a drastically improved film. As he says of me, I don’t agree with everything he’s doing — I would’ve made far more substantial changes to Jar Jar Binks and the Gungan people than Jaq has chosen to do, and I probably would’ve jettisoned the midichlorians altogether rather than trying to find a way to make that idea work — but that’s the fun of these sort of geeky conversations. At least it used to be, back before everybody got so damn serious about them.
As you can imagine, this rewrite is a pretty lengthy process; he’s doing it by installments and is about halfway through the film at this point. Here’ s Part One to get you started…
