Archives

Jul062006

Check Out Rob Zombie’s Place

I’ve recently discovered the highly entertaining Secret Fun Blog, an offshoot of a Web site called the Secret Fun Spot; both are dedicated to all the weird and wacky toys, ephemera, and retro crap that strange, overgrown kids like me love.
Yesterday’s entry on the Fun Blog is particularly interesting: It features a number of screen grabs from an episode of MTV Cribs that showcased the enviable home of heavy metal/industrial musician Rob Zombie. Why is that interesting to me? Well, Zombie is an afficianado of old horror films, you see, and his house is a treasure trove of collectibles; while my own collecting tastes run more toward science fiction, I definitely identify with his general aesthetic. I especially liked the pirate bar, the built-in, floor-to-ceiling curio cabinets full of toys, and the walk-in video library. Ah, yes, some day I will have a walk-in video library…

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Jul062006

One More Thing

One last thought on Superman Returns, which will no doubt brand me once and for all as a nitpicker on the level of The Simpsons‘ Comic Book Guy:

I hated the new supersuit. The colors were too muted, especially the cape, the textured fabric was weird (reminded me of Aquaman’s outfit, actually) and the big plastic S-shield on the chest just looked, well, like a big plastic shield.

I understand that it’s hard to make something like tights and a cape look cool, or like something that someone would actually wear in the real world (reference the very funny line in X-Men about “yellow spandex”), but is a dingy wetsuit the best they could do?

Yes, I am a dork…

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Jul052006

More Thoughts on Superman Returns

Forgive me for continuing to blather on about the same subject, but I started thinking on the train home from work tonight and I realized that I’ve still got a lot to say about this particular movie. I hope you’ll bear with me…

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Jul052006

Movie Review: Superman Returns

First things first: Brandon Routh does not look like Christopher Reeve to me. For the past several weeks, I’ve heard all kinds of breathless gushing about how much the new kid looks like the late, great Superman of my youth, but I gotta tell you, I just don’t see it. Yeah, he’s tall and muscular like Chris was in his prime, and they share similar coloring… but aren’t those prerequisites for the role? If anything, Routh reminds me of a young Timothy Dalton.

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Jun302006

Housekeeping

In the bright light of morning, my previous entry on Aaron Spelling doesn’t look like one of my better pieces, does it? I have to admit, I was forcing it. The ending especially… as if I could really sit through an episode of T.J. Hooker, even just to ogle one of my youthful lust objects. Right. No, the truth is that, while I’ve watched plenty of Spelling-produced shows over the years and felt like the man’s death warranted some comment, I honestly don’t have any deep fondness for any of his work. To extend that cheeseburger metaphor just a bit more, Spelling’s shows are more like the McDonald’s end of the cheeseburger spectrum than the huge, juicy, home-made, Jimmy Buffett “Cheeseburger in Paradise” end. They fill the hole when you’re hungry, but when you really think about it, they don’t even taste all that good. They were just there. Shows like Charlie’s Angels and 90210 were just there, a familiar and inescapable part of the pop-cultural landscape, enjoyed but not treasured. Televisual Big Macs.

Moving on to other subjects that I actually know how to discuss, I just want to point out that I’ve added a couple of new links over there in the sidebar, both related to that LibraryThing Web site I told you about a couple days ago. Under “Obligatory Narcissism,” you’ll find a link that’ll take you my personal catalog — currently consisting of 102 entries with God-only-knows-how-many to go — while the LibraryThing link under “Miscellaneous Coolness” will take you to the site’s home page so you can set up your own account. If anyone reading this does set up an account and wants to share it here, just let me know and I’ll post the link.

And finally, I noted a few days back that my photo gallery was going to be wonky for a little while in the wake of the server change. If anyone cares, here’s what’s happening: an upgraded version of the gallery software has been installed, which created a whole new directory in which to store my pictures. In other words, I’ve currently got two galleries, the old and the new. I’ve ported over all the stuff from the old gallery and am currently making sure everything ended up in the right folder, that all the captions and descriptions are there, that sort of thing. Also, as long as I’m puttering around, I’ve been uploading several all-new albums, which takes forever over my crappy dial-up connection. Long story short: I should have the new gallery up and running in a few more days. In the meantime, if you have a hankerin’ to see what yours truly looks like, I believe the link over there in the sidebar will still take you to the old gallery.

Back later…

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Jun292006

Time for Timer

From Evanier, I’ve learned of another notable death: the character and voice-over actor Lennie Weinrib.
What’s that, you say? The name “Lennie Weinrib” doesn’t ring a bell? Don’t feel bad, I didn’t recognize it, either. But I certainly recognized his best-known role: the title character from the old Sid and Marty Krofft kid’s show H.R. Pufnstuf. I wrote about Pufnstuf in this entry, and I won’t repeat myself except to note that ol’ Puffy was a pretty special part of my childhood, and I’m sorry to hear that his voice has gone silent.

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Jun292006

Tribute to Jim Baen

Jim Baen, who founded the very successful publishing company that bears his name, passed away yesterday, some two weeks after suffering a massive stroke. Unlike many of the celebrities I eulogize here, I have no personal feelings toward or about Mr. Baen. I know his name, and I’ve undoubtedly read something he published, but that’s about it. Still, I was moved by the tribute written for him by his friend, the science-fiction author David Drake:

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Jun282006

LibraryThing Takes Over the Bibliophilic World!

Yesterday, I followed a link from Boing Boing to LibraryThing, this groovy online service that lets you catalog your book collection and share it with others. It uses tags like Flickr or MySpace, so other people can easily search your personal library and you can search theirs. Thus, the system doubles as a social network based around similar tastes in reading.
I thought the idea of a non-local catalog sounded like a good one — I’ve got a database of my movie collection on my home PC, but if the house burns down, I lose the record along with the collection — so I set up an account. So did one of my three loyal readers and frequent commenters, the inimitable Cranky Robert. Judging from the sporadic outages and slowdowns the site has been experiencing, so have a lot of other people. It’s one of those full-blown Internet fads, I tell you! Everybody’s doing it… so why aren’t you? Seriously, if you own a lot of books, you ought to go check it out.

(Incidentally, if you go to my catalog, you will notice that I haven’t yet entered very many titles. That’s because, as my profile page notes, I have a huge library that’s scattered all over the house, and, as with everything else I do, it requires time, of which I have precious little these days. Now that I think about it, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. The last thing I need right now is another fracking project…)

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Jun272006

Congratulations to Steve and Jen

Just a quick one to note that Anne’s and my friends, Brozinski and Puff Bird (better known in the Real World as Steve and Jennifer Broschinsky), welcomed their second child into the world last night. It’s another boy. Steve describes him thusly:

8lbs 14oz, 21 and a half inches long. Dark hair and a Kirk Douglas cleft chin. Ian Bradford Broschinsky.

Ian Bradford… ’tis a fine Scottish name, laddie…

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