Yes, it’s true. I come from, as defined by Urban Dictionary, the “good, hardworking, trustworthy, honest, good-for-nothing, unreliable, foul-smelling vagrants” who man the traveling carnivals of the United States. My great-grandparents, Carolton and Ruth Mae Davis, operated a cook house and my grandfather would spend summers traveling with them.
Category: Personal
Stuff about me or my family.
Dumb Joke for a Hot Chick
This may not be clever, but my bride just loves the WOO (that’s the “Wizard of Oz” to us normals). This is for her.
(Apologies, but I can’t find anybody to credit the source image to. Thanks, whomever you are!)
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Bambi Meets Godzilla
One thing that came out of RiffTrax Live: Godzilla was that I reminded of this 1969 gem of a short film by Marv Newland [IMDB]. I can’t believe that I had never subjected my children to its understated genius before now.
I remember having to track down eccentric little movie theaters to see stuff like this when I was in my teens. Thanks Internet!
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RiffTrax Live: Godzilla!
When the fine, funny people at RiffTrax decided to take their special brand of snark to theaters across the country we knew two things:
- They were clearly both very smart and very lazy for doing so via satellite instead of actually, you know, driving around.
- It was going to be insanely, amazingly awesome.
The first show, August 20, 2009, was “Plan Nine from Outer Space” and this was followed up regularly with a small herd of super-cheese staples including “Reefer Madness”, “Manos: The Hands of Fate” and the modern, solar-powered classic, “Birdemic“. To do bigger movies, they’d need more money. Being that special combination of smart/lazy/awesome they left that part up to us. A hugely successful KickStarter campaign gave us an amazing evening with “Starship Troopers“.
So, after another successful KickStarter and nearly five years from that first show, they brought us Roland Emmerich’s 1998 character assassination of “Godzilla”. In it he accused the Big “G” of being an asexual, hermaphroditic, tunnel-crawling, no-fire-breathing, Jay Leno-looking mutated iguana. It got what it deserved and it was hilarious.
Broadcast by Fathom Events to hundreds of theaters across North America (the good America) the shows bring together thousands of fans and and some high-quality father/son time. I’ve seen “Guardians of the Galaxy“, but this – Roland-freakin’-Emmerich’s Godzilla – is still the most fun I’ve had in a theater all year.
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The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics
Most people over the age of 40 will likely remember this as a weird little filler cartoon thrown between “Bugs Bunny” and “The Road Runner” on any number of random cartoon shows. As a child I remember liking this immensely, but not truly understanding it. Now that I’m older and, dare I say, wiser, I can truly appreciate it as a classic piece of film-making.
Based on the book of the same name the short was directed by the legendary Chuck Jones and was one of the last MGM shorts to be produced. In addition to many other honors, it won the 1965 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.
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Personal Archaeology: Magazine Mentions
This cat was internet famous for a few minutes. She was also mean and dumb as a rock.
Way back in the history times of 1996 there were no truly “portable” computers; instead you had what were graciously called “luggables”. There was no Wi-Fi or 4G or anything else that my children annoyingly take for granted. If you wanted to read about the web when you were away from your blazing fast 486-class PC you needed to carry around a loosely bound sheaf of paper that other people had written things on.
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Personal Archaeology: The Purity of Line and Color that is the Rolodex Designer
Towel Day 2014!
Today is Towel Day, a celebration of all things Douglas Adams, who was taken from us all too soon.
Here are few of my favorite quotes from the man himself to get you in the mood:
- “A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”
- “Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the drug store, but that’s just peanuts to space.”
- “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”
- “We don’t have to save the world. The world is big enough to look after itself. What we have to be concerned about is whether or not the world we live in will be capable of sustaining us in it.”
- “Let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable, let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.”
So grab a towel and spend some time thinking about things upside down or inside out.
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Things that I wonder About: Mike Teavee
Remember Mike Teavee from “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory“? The boy that was completely TV crazy?
Well, in the book and both film adaptations Mike was so incredibly excited about TV and being the first person broadcast by Wonka-Vision that he idiotically threw himself in front of the equipment and ended up getting shrunk down to action-figure size. Despite his size he’s ecstatically happy about being sent by television. In 1971’s “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory“, he shouts, “I’m famous, I’m a TV Star!” He’s thrilled as a pig in slop to be on TV.
But (in the book and both films) when he wins the Golden Ticket and a horde of reporters show up to actually put him on TV, as the star, for the first time in his life he… annoyed, mostly ignores them and just wishes they’d just go away.
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Happy Star Wars Day!
It’s Star Wars Day, May the Fourth Be With You!
The official Star Wars page has a huge list of sales and deals just in case there’s a nook or niche in your home that’s screaming out for a Jar Jar Binks combo foot massager and potato peeler.
It’s a good time for Star Wars fans. The cast of the new trilogy was recently announced and isn’t horrifying. So far, at least, Damon Lindelof has been kept away from the project. A new animated show, Star Wars Rebels, is in the works.
Yes, it’s a good time for fans, so enjoy Star Wars Day!
