H2G2

To avoid spoilers, I'm putting my thoughts on Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy in the comments on this post. What did you all think?

Racial Data Sought for Bush Event

The Secret Service has requested racial information on journalists and guests scheduled to attend a reception tomorrow night with President Bush.

White House reporters said they were offended that after furnishing the customary information -- name, date of birth and Social Security number -- they were also asked for the race of each person expected to attend the small reception scheduled before the White House Correspondents' Association's annual dinner.

Washington Post

The Raw Story

NOOOOOOOOOOO!

From the Chron:

"Armando Benitez, the Giants' first bona fide closer since 2002 -- the last year Robb Nen was healthy -- will miss at least four months and undergo major surgery on his right hamstring on Tuesday, leaving the Giants wondering again who'll pitch the ninth inning."

Just when it looked like we were going to kick ass all over this season. Oh, wait, no, we were sucking anyway.

Fuck.

Because What Else Can You Do?

new Miyazaki

I get to see this before you. It opens early in NY and LA.

trailer for Howl's Moving Castle

Looks like another weird one. I still prefer Laputa to Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke. I haven't seen the new Disney dubs of Nausicaa or Porco Rosso, but those are great movies if you haven't seen them.

RatZ!

this summer

I'll be spending this summer in the Bay Area. At least four weeks from late July to mid August, maybe six weeks starting in mid July. Teaching at SF Shakes, hanging out with all y'all. Had to give SF Shakes an answer today.

pope palpatine?

the resemblance is a bit uncanny



of course, the newly elected pope looks to be even more evil than the emperor.

As John Paul's doctrinal overseer, Ratzinger disciplined Latin American "liberation theology" theologians, denounced homosexuality and gay marriage and pressured Asian priests who saw non-Christian religions as part of God's plan for humanity.

also he was apparently a nazi.

that rocks.

(fixed nazi link)

for the html impaired

i think its funny that while others try to post links and are unable to, when i try to type an example of the html coding for a hyperlink to show how its done, i cant NOT make it into a link. (see comments under "china and japan battle" for details of my stupidity).

soooo... here is a little tutorial that tells you how to type a hyperlink. read it and learn people! your un-hyperlinked url's are activating my ocd in the worst way.

link

no pope

black smoke



worried that's actually white smoke that got dirty on the way up? no need to fear folks, a NEW pope-election chimney was installed on friday!

finger food

this is randomly freaky. and i just saw it on the daily show.

A woman who lost part of her finger in a leopard attack believes it was her body part that allegedly showed up a month later in a bowl of fast-food chili in California.

we're screwed

Have you seen this? Mark Morford of SFGate points to this article in his column today:

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/7203633?rnd=1113510963695&has-player=false

it's pretty scary. It also brings up an interesting point of view about the future- and in thinking about Hitchhikers and Star Wars and by association, Sci Fi in general, it's funny to think that the popular vision of the future is one dominated by increases in technology, perhaps to the point of making over the planet into one giant indusrial/mechanical city. But this guy is saying maybe the future is really going to be the opposite - the loss of all the 20th century technology we've created, a return to more basic living - and not because we want to, because we'll be forced to.

Is it wrong to be more excited about H2G2 than ROTS?

http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2658144?htv=12

bad mistake

no spoilers here, i promise.

i was in cody's and picked up the novel version of rots. how is it ok for that to be out already?

anyway, masochistic scorpio detective that i am, i read the last page.

someone shoot me now.

the potato is strong in this one

the scary thing is how much money this will be worth someday...

link

Episode III is PG-13

That's the word.

http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=19860

ROTS tv spots

threepio
Originally uploaded by Lorrimer.

They're here:

http://www.comingsoon.net/films.php?id=4777

Now, this shot of threepio (from the second spot) -- what set is this? Doesn't it look like the opening of Episode IV? Is Lucas actually going to give us that? Wouldn't that mean he'd have to explain why threepio doesn't remember anything?

Or is this a different set?

from the NY Times

NY Times article today about Spamalot (the new Broadway musical adaptation of Monty Python and the Holy Grail starring Tim Curry as King Arthur) attracting young straight white men to Broadway. Apparently all the Broadway people are jumping up and down because young straight white men are a demographic they can never get to buy tickets. But here's Harvey Fierstein on the phenomenon:

"If I were of frat boy age and I had $100, would I opt for a Broadway ticket or would I want to spend that on booze and drugs?" Mr. Fierstein asked. "Even I, and I am as gay as a pink leather piñata, would choose booze and drugs."

Uncle Owen - Aunt Beru - Special Edition

Uncle Owen - Aunt Beru - Special Edition
Originally uploaded by Lorrimer.

I know I already posted this a while back on my other very short-lived blog, but no one has posted here for a couple of days so I figured what the hell.

the onion

From this week's onion horoscopes:

Scorpio: (Oct. 24—Nov. 21)
Hope can sustain a person through excruciating personal trials, but unfortunately, there's no real reason to believe that the new Star Wars movie will be tolerable.

Feel the Fo. . . .DOH!

I can just see Josh here throwing a big fit.

Star Wars fans have started queuing seven weeks early for the opening of the final movie - but appear to have camped outside the wrong cinema.

Dedicated fans are lining up outside the famous Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood but have been told it will open on 19 May at a cinema a mile away.

Producers opted to open the film at the ArcLight cinema, making it unlikely other cinemas in the area will show it.

But the fans are refusing to move, believing the news to be false.

Mac vs. Windows

from Jon Carrol's column in the SF Chronicle today (though he's quoting Umerbto Eco):

"Insufficient consideration has been given to the underground religious war that is transforming the modern world: the division between users of the Macintosh computer and users of the MS-DOS-compatible computers. I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant. Indeed, the Macintosh is counter-reformistand has been influenced by the methodical path of the Jesuits.

"It tells the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reach -- if not the Kingdom of Heaven -- the moment in which their document is printed. It is catechistic: the essence of revelation is dealt with via simple formulae and sumptuous icons. Everyone has a right to salvation.

"DOS is Protestant, or even Calvinistic. It allows free interpretation of scripture, demands difficult personal decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneutics upon the user, and takes for granted the idea that not all can reach salvation.

"To make the system work you need to interpret it yourself: the user is closed within the loneliness of his own inner torment.

"You may object that, with the passage to Windows, the DOS universe has come to resemble more closely the counter-reformist tolerance of the Macintosh. It's true: Windows represents an Anglican-style schism -- big ceremonies in the cathedral but with the possibility of returning to DOS to fiddle with things. With Windows, you can still decide to allow women and gays to be priests if you want to.

"And what about the machine language that lies beneath both operating systems? Ah, that is the stuff of the Old Testament, Talmudic and cabalistic."

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/04/07/DDGSVC3J641.DTL

the TV studio

KOCE10
Originally uploaded by joshcostello.

Getting set up for the broadcast. We rebuilt the set for the show inside the TV studio. I'm over on the right side of the photo talking to the actors.

getting ready for the tv broadcast

KOCE13
Originally uploaded by joshcostello.

Here I am with the TV director, with the set visible on the monitor. It was crazy.

Sin City

I saw Sin City by myself, as I live in Los Angeles and don't have any friends. If I had seen it in the Bay Area with a bunch of friends, I probably would have enjoyed it more than I did.

Which isn't to say I hated it. But I've had a hard time connecting to that geeky gleeful feeling that I used to get from movies like this. So I was a little more sensitive to the problems and a little less excited about the cool stuff.

Summarizing my thoughts:

I loved Mickey Rourke -- he looked perfect and really nailed the part. More than anyone else in the movie and certainly more than the other male narrators, he felt like he belonged in Sin City. Awesome. If the whole movie had been focused around Marv, or if everyone else got it to the extent that he did, it could have been a great film.

Clive Owen didn't do anything for me at all, and Bruce Willis was fine but was much more Bruce Willis than Hartigan. I thought Rosario Dawson was great. Elijah Wood was perfect and an inspired bit of casting. Jessica Alba was totally forgettable and the decision to cast someone who wouldn't take off her top in the strip club was just wrong -- it really changed her character from the graphic novel.

Robert Rodriguez makes a big deal out of editing his own films, and after Once Upon A Time In Mexico and this, I think he's making a big mistake. In several scenes, I felt the rhythm was completely off. Not as bad as in Once Upon A Time In Mexico, but still bad enough to be a problem. His action scenes have cool shots but don't fit together in a way that simultaneously tells the story and gets your blood pumping -- this is a pretty common fault these days, but this guy is supposed to be better than that and he's just not. And it's not just the action scenes. Most of the dialogue scenes are flat, or flatter than they could be, because he's not using rhythm in any kind of purposeful way.

The visual style was cool; in places it was very cool. There was actually far less stylization than I was expecting from all the hype -- for the most part, it's black-and-white with bits of color in almost every shot. Far more color than in the graphic novel, and a hell of a lot more gray than the original solid blacks and solid whites. I thought the occasional dips to pure black and pure white were effective (like at the end of the Hartigan story), and I wish there had been more of that.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. What did you all think?

check me out (no seriously...)

The latest UW arts and sciences magazine features an article all about the speech and hearing clinic here at the UW. This is, of course, where I do the majority of my clinical work while I study for my masters degree. The article is pretty cool and even has some pictures of some of my classmates.

link

check it out!

-Jamie

Transformers the (live action) movie

Rumor on Aint It Cool News that it will be directed by either Michael Bay or Roland Emmerich. I vote Bay.

Sin City

Should I wait to post anything until you all see it on Sunday?

Gmail adds more storage space; Lorrimer muses on technology

I just noticed that Gmail has given everyone a second GB of storage for every gmail account. I was wondering whether and when they were going to do something like this; I guess it's their one-year anniversary. I had been at about 15% of the original 1GB after using gmail since June (and as my primary email for the last couple months). Tons of photos and MP3s are all in my old messages on the gmail servers; it's nice not to have to worry about it.

It feels like we're rapidly approaching the point at which storage space and bandwidth become better than we'll ever really need on a daily basis. Which could prove to be interesting from a historical perspective -- "Do you remember when you had to wait for a website to load?" "Do you remember when you had to buy more memory for your computer?" "Do you remember when you had to choose which photos to save?" Wired has an article on the end of the idea of the disc format altogether (DVDs specifically) with the onset of movies over the internet (and Sony just announced an iTunes-for-movies service). Within a couple of years, we could have superfast wireless internet pretty much everywhere and handhelds that really do combine cellphones with computers and video players. What next?

i know i know, i'm not even catholic, but...

i think this picture is beautiful.

A view of Saint Peter's Square during a special prayer at the Vatican April 1, 2005. Pope John Paul neared death as his health suddenly worsened, drawing anguished prayers from Catholics around the world reluctant to accept his historic pontificate was near its end. Photo by Alessandro Bianchi/Reuters

link

how weird is it that he is probably going to die the very day after terri schiavo? i can just imagine what the religious nuts are going to say... "look, god punished us for killing terri by killing the pope!"

april fools!

at 10:55 am this morning




at 11:28 am



that's not a nice thing to do to people...

(note: if you want to see the full size picture, click "all sizes" when you get to the flickr page)

President Apologizes for War, Admits 'It Was a Major Mistake...One of Many, I Might Add'

Bush vows to be "more honest" and to "read more."