Ban de Soleil!

Finally one of those obscure little state laws I LIKE... There is currently a statute on the books that bans circuses anywhere in Minnesota while the State Fair is on, from late August through Labor Day. Next time that French troupe Cirque du Soleil comes to town, I say lock 'em all up and throw away the key...And speaking of the French, why do they hate us? My favorite part of the article is when they refer to them as cheese-eating surrender monkeys.

One of the world's most expensive paintings, "The Massacre of the Innocents" by Paul Rubens is getting its first public viewing in 400 years... The Massacre shows naked children being torn from their mothers, put to the sword and trampled by soldiers of King Herod seeking to kill any infant who might be the long-awaited Messiah. Er, this isn't the same Paul "Pee Wee Herman" Ruebens, is it?

Where does Dick Cheney shop for home improvements? The Home Despot, of course.

Britney walks out of Robert Downey, Jr.'s new movie at the Sundance Film Festival. My favorite quote: Sundance is weird. The movies are weird - you actually have to think about them when you watch them.

Just what the world needs. A doorbell for pets. Mark my words, if a dog learns how to ring the doorbell, it's only a matter of time before he learns how to poop in a paper bag and set it on fire.

Man riding lawn mower is attacked by Coyote. Hmmm. Was it an ACME lawn mower? Meep meep!

Man ejects from James Bond ejector seat dangles on high wire like Jackie Chan. Unintentionally.

Can you tell the difference between an ABBA song or goth poetry?

Want to know your true personality? Visit the Oracle of Starbucks. Here's what it said about me:

Personality type: High Maintenance

You pride yourself on being assertive and direct; everyone else thinks you're bossy and arrogant. You're constantly running your mouth about topics that only you would find interesting. Your capacity for wasting other people's time is limitless. Your friends find you intolerable, that's why they're plotting to kill you.

Also drinks: Water. Bottled, chilled, with four ice cubes, a twist of lemon, in a crystal glass.
Can also be found at: Trendy martini bars

Very true.

Did anyone else play the State of the Union drinking game the other night? I did. I also added these words:

catbird's seat, purple, egregious, ne'er-do-wells, tippy-toe, high-hat, flummoxed, dastardly, moi?, gastro-intestinal, marauders, nipple, poppycock, and whoop-ass

Each word was worth 3 drinks. Unfortunately, I stayed sober.

Uh oh... Dave Barry has a weblog... Better bookmark this one.

Interesting. New evidence that during the Spanish civil war, Franco had special torture cells built that were inspired by Surrealist art.

I like Janeane Garofalo. She thinks Bush is an idiot and isn't afraid to say so... On a related subject, here's the best outcome from the war with Iraq.

North Korea withdraws from Starbucks Nonproliferation Treaty.

Kind of busy, so just a few short ones today.

"You see, in this world there's two kinds of people, my friend: Those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig." -- The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly. The Best Quotes From Westerns.

Powers of 10.

Kind of an electronic whiteboard. Oddly fun.

That big hole in Long Lake in Brainerd? They're still baffled. Speculation now favors aliens and lake monsters.

Oh, I watched a couple movies over the weekend. My favorite, bar none, was Monsoon Wedding. 4 our of 4 prontopups for this one. (I'm changing from a 10 prontopup scale to a 4 prontopup scale)... Ebert liked it too, but only gave it 3 1/2 prontopups...

Sigh. Thanks John Ashcroft and the stupid supreme court. And thanks to the dumb Eldred vs. Ashcroft decision that will keep most of the Mystery Science Theater re-runs off the air (and out of print), possibly forever. The ruling supported copywrite owners to another 20 years of collecting obscene royalties.

The rights to the films featured in most MST3K episodes were purchased for only a few years and, in the majority of cases, those rights have expired, and will have to be renewed before the episodes can be shown on TV or released on video and DVD. In quite many cases the rights owners have set prices prohibitively high; in a few cases they are apparently doing so to suppress the episodes in which their property was ridiculed.

Here's some numbers, especially for the 39% of you think that Bush's "tax cut" plan will actually save you any money. I also heard this analogy that seems to help explain Bush's misleading use of numbers. Bill Gates walks into a restaurant. Everyone jumps up and screams, 'Hooray, we're all rich!..." A waiter asks, how do you figure? "Because our average net worth is now in the millions..."

Need a little Friday pick-me-up? Go here, and play the 'Springtime' song.

Hello, my name is Scott. (And as Chevy Chase would say)... and you're not.

Hmm. Monobrow.

It's still not too late to get your official George Bush desk calendar. Check out the sample quotes. Sigh.

Feel good story of the day. A ram named "S--- for brains" attacks a Jehovah's Witness. Even though the property was marked "Private-Keep Out", the man entered the fenced in property and is now suing because "S--- for brains" made him fall and break his shin, all while he was trying to fend off the belligerent sheep with a briefcase full of bibles. Oh, I just love stories like this.

Just read this last night in my Best American Nonrequired Reading book. McSweeney's Journal of a New Cobra Recruit.

I also read a story called My Fake Job which was hilarious, but I can't find the article online. A former editor of the New Yorker just decided to start showing up to work at a Dot-Com company. He worked for almost 2 weeks, and nobody ever realized he wasn't a real employee.

Modern Humorist's Why I lost my job as a movie tagline writer.

Want to be annoying at work? Use these tried and true methods of conversational terrorism.

Hmmm. Interesting new rumor. What if Joe Millionaire really IS a millionaire after all?

Yesterday I was ranting about American movies... Instead of more sequels, create your own story with the Hollywood Plot O' Matic.

Monkey Island, 2189
an original screenplay concept
by Brian Smithee

Action: An absent-minded scientist teams up with an alcoholic ex-CIA agent to take a cruise on an unsinkable ship. In the process they turn state's evidence on a super intelligent chimpanzee. By the end of the movie they burn 12 washed up ex-SNL cast members and end up winning the admiration of their manager, living happily ever after.

Think Ernest Goes to Camp meets Apocalypse Now.

See? That works.

Also, read this enlightening review of Chicago from His Holiness The Dalai Lama.

Well, I survived my adventures in babysitting this weekend. I also gave my nephew a solid introduction to the world of Sid & Marty Krofft. He liked it. Obviously.

Here's a mind boggling question: Why do the preferences of America's movie critics differ so radically from the tastes of the general public?

Why? Because the general public has no taste. To wit, Stallone has just written another Rambo script (and this is on top of his Rocky VI movie that's in the works) and the movie forecast for 2003 is partly cloudy with a 90% chance of sequels.

The Onion a.v. club reviews the year in movies, 2002, but this is just some high-falutin' critics view.

More odd stuff. August Strindberg and Helium.

1" scale Sixties Boy's Bedroom.

Surreal Saturday:

The maltese dog is under the sea. Yeah, I'm not sure what this is either...

Leonard Nimoy sings of the Ballad of Bilbo Baggins. Scotty, beam me up...

Mona Lisa. Quit smiling. It's not that funny.

If an old punker falls in the forest, will anyone hear him? Yes. Plant a tree in the Joe Strummer Memorial Forest in Scotland.

On a similar topic, one of my favorite boards has just bit the dust. Bollocks! TCPunk.com, or the Punk Rock Nursing Homepage, has been discontinued. Start another memorial forest, lads...

New Strongbad e-mail.

Art imitating life. No wait, that's life imitating art. Boat sailing in the Jules Verne yachting race is attacked by giant squid. Yar!

Super-sleuth detectives in Brainerd discover the mystery behind a large hole in the ice on Long Lake -- warmer water. Marge Gunderson unavailable for comment.

Busy weekend ahead for me. I'm baby-sitting my nephew and niece. I should have some interesting stories next week, if I survive. Yar!

Kind of busy lately, so just a few more links until I get caught up:Drunk waxwings play chicken with glass at University.

The 2002 Darwin Awards.

This is dumb. There's no good reason for this unless you're working for a squirrel rescue organization.

New Joe Strummer album planned.

Random picture of the day

Nothing new today. Still cold and dark. This is what I'm currently reading, Dave Egger's The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2002.

After I finish that, I plan to dig into Kevin Murphy's A Year at the Movies: One Man's Filmgoing Odyssey.

Until they realize how much dreck Hollywood puts out, most people wouldn't mind having Murphy's job. Murphy, best known from the cult TV hit Mystery Science Theater 3000, set out to see a movie a day for all of 2001-and he's got the occasionally repetitive but usually amusing stories to prove it. He snuck into Cannes, roamed Route 66 in search of drive-ins, visited a midnight sun film festival in Lapland, and lived for a week on (almost) nothing but concession-stand food. Few would argue with Murphy's harangues at shoddy theaters and dopey summer movies ("people watch them simply to be distracted and sort of entertained, and since I can do this watching a ceiling fan, I bristle at paying good money"), and his jolly geekdom makes for engaging company.

I could do that for a living.

Interesting. The advertising artwork of Dr. Suess.

Make unique hors d'oeuvres at your next dinner party. Yes, the Pikachu Play Doh mold can turn slab of brie or pile of mashed potatoes into something fun. I recommend putting the finished products on a stick.

Also, hooking up a bar monkey would also make the party swing just a little bit more.

"The baby possums are easier to put up with in your brassiere than the baby squirrels, says Allison Adams of Round Rock." So begins a story that is both heart-warming (literally) and odd. And I thought animal lovers weren't supposed to wear fur...

The year in pictures. Click on 'Launch the Slideshow'. Some pretty amazing photographs, but just a few too many pictures with flags in them.

I was a total comic book addict when I was a kid. Not really into the whole superman/batman type of books, but I had Mickey Mouse, Scrooge McDuck, Richie Rich, Archie's, Chip 'n Dale (chipmunks, not the dancers), Casper, and some other cartoony ones. Here's an interesting page of old comic book ads. I recommend reading the little comic called "Swifty Seaver Wins For Beaver". It's about shoes.

And speaking of comics (sort of), what's this? The adventures of His Mega-Holiness Cyberpope Moses I, and his faithful sidekick Wormwood, the Ultra-Lizard.

Okay, so that's pretty bad. Here's some very good animated comics from Mark Fiore. Watch them all.

Another list of annoying people.

And speaking of annoying things (hey, I'm getting pretty good with these segues, no?)... Just more info on the Turbo Tax debacle. Apparently the "spyware" isn't really spyware in the sense that it sends any of your personal information, but it does surreptiously install C_Dilla for "copy protection". This thing sounds like a pretty nasty thing, and once installed, it cannot be fully uninstalled. Software shouldn't do that in my opinion. Also, with this new copy protection scheme, you can only use the software on 1 PC. Consider this: You do your taxes at home and then install Turbo Tax to print the returns at work (using a laser printer) -- CAN'T! Or, you archive your returns but sometime in the future you need to make an amended return, but now you have a new PC -- CAN'T! It really begs the question: Does Intuit understand how users actually need to use tax software?

More info and ranting on the newsgroups... Regardless, I'm now convinced that I'll be getting Tax Cut this year, which PC Magazine says is just as good without all this copyright hassle.

From the Onion: Canadian Girlfriend Unsubstantiated.

Random image of the day:

Harvard book store's 100 favorite titles. I was surprised (yet pleased) to see Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried make the fourth tier, just above King Lear and Of Mice and Men. It's a powerful book if you haven't read it...

Here's a proposition for you? Sign up for the CD Minimum Advertised Price Antitrust Litigation Settlement. This was a class action suit brought against the evil music industry for gouging customers for years. To get between $5-$20 back, all you have to do is fill out the short form and answer 3 questions: Did you buy music (anything)? between 1995 and 2000? Did you buy it from a store? If you answered yes, you're eligible. You do not have to have any receipts to be part of the class action settlement... There. I'm going to take my $20 and buy some blank CD's... How do you them 'dem apples?...

What fingernail polish says about a woman.

Hmmm. New guide book to Rome called Where to Eat, Sleep and Wash. French version currently unavailable.

Here's a funny new commercial from Apple starring Vern Troyer (Mini-Me) and that huge new basketball player, Yao Ming.

They announced the Grammy nominees yesterday. Horrible, horrible, horrible selections. But, the best part was when then April LaVigne (pronounced Lah-Vig-Knee), mispronounced some guy named David Bowie (rhymes with Howie)...

Getting ready to do taxes this year? Well, normally I use Turbo Tax, but perhaps this is a good year to switch. Turbo Tax is getting awful reviews, partly because it installs Spyware on your machine (allegedly) and it requires some convoluted registration process. Talk about a stupid move...

Limbo contest: How low can you go? TV networks now planning a reality-based series of taking real Appalachian Hillbillies and actually moving them to Beverly Hills. Ellie May not available for comment.

The picture of Chumley (below) is included for no particular reason.

Five bold predictions for 2012.

Oh my god, just shoot me now. A bunch of geeks from Minneapolis actually went ahead and filmed their own episode of Star Trek, with only modest compromises in production value from the original series. Sad.

Penn (of Penn & Teller fame) recounts a funny story where he charged an airport security guy with assault for grabbing his crotch.

AARP's Modern Maturity magazine with some helpful tips on enhancing your eldercool. Mick? Keith? Are you guys listening?

And finally, an interesting Salon book review about a subject that sounds quite fascinating... Asperger Syndrome.

Asperger Syndrome... is a specific and rare form of "high-functioning" autism. That is, although people with Asperger's are generally very intelligent and appear normal enough to blend fairly well into the society around them, they have pronounced difficulties when interacting with others. "Essentially, for reasons that are completely unknown, Asperger's people cannot read the human face or its emotions," Osborne writes. "They cannot learn social rules, nuances or metaphors. Often brilliant intellectually, they cannot read the simplest social cue or hint: instead, rigid obsessions, often numerical, dominate their inner life."

Dude, do you know how many people I know who fit that description? I'm just going to start calling people Asperger's from now on (and it even sounds like an insult)...

Great list of the 100 most annoying things of 2002.

I have no idea what the hell this thing is, other than amusing. Click the Starta button.

Interesting profile from Salon on rock's latest fallen warrior, Joe Strummer.

Did you make any New Year's resolutions? Want to make any big changes this year? Well, here's a couple of articles that might help. First, Po Bronson asks the question, What should I do with my life? Very interesting. Also, following a similar theme, the strib ran an article this weekend about changing course. One place to start exploring is with the University of Minnesota's Compleat Scholar program, which offers short courses -- anywhere from a long weekend to six sessions. I heartily agree. I've taken several Compleat Scholar courses and I've enjoyed all of them. This spring I'm planning to take From Samba to Bossa: 20th Century Brazillian Popular Music. Also, at the end of this month, I'm going to a little seminar in my neighborhood on the History of Como Park.

Other stuff. Words that should be banished from English.

Got a ticket stub and an interesting story?

Fly guy.

The movie industry "gets it", but the music industry still doesn't. Why? Why is it that I can go to Amazon and buy the full DVD of Donnie Darko for $11.24 while JUST the soundtrack costs $13.99? The DVD has the complete movie, director's commentary, extra's like a video of Tears For Fears "Mad World", and extra/deleted scenes. $11.24 is a great price to get all of that. The soundtrack, on the other hand, is just the ambient score to the movie. They couldn't even get rights to redistribute the music that's played in the movie (you find this out by listening to the director's commentary on DVD), so WHY is it priced more than $2.00 higher than the DVD??? Makes no sense. Pirates win...

This weekend I watched Jules Dassin's 1955 noir classic Rififi. Great movie, especially a 30-minute heist sequence with absolutely no dialog and no music. 8 Pronto Pups for this one.

Sunday. A day for feeling existential and inadequate. This helped.

Twin Cities Critics Tally: Writers vote on the best local music of 2002.Paul Westerberg takes the #2 slot for both best album of the year and best song of the year. (He should have been #1, but at least somebody is recognizing his talent...).

Next on my movies list: Turkish Star Trek.

Use Snoop Dogg's Shizzolator site and see what it does to www.myprontopup.com...

The 10 dumbest stories of 2002.

Okay, a little late but still fun. Bob & Doug McKenzie's 12 days of Christmas.

Need to write a poem? and quick? Try this rhyme generator. You supply the first line of the poem, and it writes the rest... Here's one it came up with:

Oh Pronto Pup, My Pronto Pup
Though, for all that was known it was never understood
From time to time, we must all sup
my leaden heart ruptures, spewing blood

Not bad...

Anyway, I didn't make any big New Year's resolutions, except for a general goal to watch and study more movies. Yesterday, for instance, I went to see Scorsese's Gangs of New York. Amazing film. The story was a little weak, but the subject matter itself -- the gangs of New York -- was utterly fascinating. And if Daniel Day Lewis doesn't get the best actor nod (or at least serious consideration) it will be a travesty...

Also, I watched the Donnie Darko DVD a 2nd time, this time with the director's commentary turned on. I like it even better now. It's amazing to see how much care goes into each and every scene, and how this first time director interlaces the movie with subtle symbols and foreshadowings. For example, there's one scene where a teacher is talking to the principal, and in a picture behind here is a framed "reflection" of Ronald Reagan. It took a lot of time to set up that single shot, which takes up about 2 seconds of screen time and is almost imperceptible unless you are looking for it. Anyway, I just thought it was a very interesting film to say the least.