Tip for the day: always check your girlfriend's baby's tag before attempting to dry the child. You may think that it needs a good tumble dry after spilling a drink on itself, but if you had just checked, you would have noticed that it said "hand dry only." This particular baby apparently suffered "serious burns to both feet and her left hand as well as bruising to her face and back." At least he didn't iron her afterward.
After Nintendo announced very little about the release date/price of the Wii (they said that it would come out in Q4 this year and be less expensive than the PS3), they've now decided to tell everybody that it will come out this Fall (Q4) and less than $250 (less than the PS3). Seeing as analysts and anyone with a brain have been saying that the Wii will most likely be priced between $150 and $250, we have gained absolutely no new information on the release date/price. What I would like to know is why there are 221 news threads about this waste of an "announcement."
I found this site via Clive Thompson's blog (one of the contributor's to Wired). Jeremiah Palecek does oil paintings of scenes in video games. The one to the left, here, is an 8 by 4 foot painting of a scene from Counterstrike. He's got some fun paintings of Joust and Super Mario Bros. as well. Call me a geek, but this is the sort of thing I just find so damn entertaining about the internets. His site doesn't display well on Explorer, but that only affects about 2 of you.
House usually follows a fairly predictable pattern: someone somewhere has a medical crisis. They are brought into the hospital wherein Dr. House and his associates diagnose this person. They're wrong for a while, House has a revelation, and then they're cured (with the few exceptions in which people die). This episode started with a case...then a former patient barges in and shoots House.
The rest of the show details House dealing with mental deterioration and the case at hand all whilst the shooter (shot by security) lays in a hospital bed next to him and challenges House to analyze his life and determine why he is the way he is (an asshole). His leg is fixed and yet his mind is falling apart. It soon becomes clear that not everything is real, and the show becomes a perplexing amalgamation of hallucinations until the audience is not entirely clear (as we say) what the fuck is going on. As House comes to terms with his prickishness, he becomes increasingly aware of how unreal his reality is. The show climaxes with a scene of House taking controls of a surgical robot and cutting a patient from belly button to chest, innards spilling and all. House then wakes just after the shooting, being wheeled into surgery.
This episode did something it very rarely does; it broke the mold and delved more into his character than the solving of a case (in this way it's rather similar to last year's season finale). I found it to be rather gripping, and for an audience member who has watched this show rather ritualistically who knows the characters very well, it was refreshing (and necessary) for the writers to give the most interesting part of the show (House) the main focus for a change. That's not to say that the patient's side story wasn't interesting; it was. Seriously, how can a guy whose tongue is expanding and have an eye and testicle explode with large sprays of blood not be interesting?
I watch the show for multiple reasons. I find the cases fascinating, the gore titillating, and the writing clever. But the primary reason (and the only reason that gives the show a point of difference) is House: his personality, his one-liners, and his history. To put it simply, the season finale rewarded all of us who watch the show regularly with an in depth look at what we care about the most. Without these, the show may as well be any other medical drama. This episode proved that it wasn't.
In honor of Sam & I now owning cars with mufflers, quiet engines, and CD players that work, I have decided to link to Lore Sjöberg's article about rental cars and why they are better than his car. Here are some highlights.
Comfort:...my car has one bar to move the seat back and forth, and one to move the seat up and down. But they don't really move the seat, they just loosen it so that I can jerk around like three go-go dancers roped together, trying to get it into place. By comparison, my rental has an ingenious little knob that gently tucks my body into perfect ergonomic balance. It's like a womb with new-car smell. Actually, for all I know, wombs do have new-car smell. Maybe that's why we like new-car smell so much.
Buttons on the steering wheel:Rental cars these days also have buttons all over the steering wheel, which makes me very happy. This is because like all rational, mature adults, I want to be Speed Racer. All I need is a child and his chimp in the trunk and I'm ready to rock. It's not precisely totally 100 percent the same, though, because Speed's buttons transformed the car into a boat and launched a robot homing pigeon, while my buttons engage cruise control. In all honesty, I'm about 400 times more likely to use cruise control as I am to need a robot pigeon, but it would be nice to have both.
A while ago, I posted about crazy people who were going to roll a giant Katamari through San Francisco. Well, they did it, and here are the stats:
Chris Kohler over at Wired's Game|Life covered the action as well and sums it up well:
Oddly enough, as you might have noticed, this was actually Katamari Damacy in reverse: they began the day with a huge Katamari, which got progressively smaller and lost items as they rolled it. Still, though: a job well done. And, as so many Bay to Breakers spectators say after watching the race: next year, I'm gonna run it.
An article that Neil Gaiman and Adam Rogers (a senior editor for Wired) wrote about the myth of Superman is up on the Internets. It's short; it's fun; it's a bit like watching the end of Kill Bill vol. 2, but without having to insert a DVD and skip through scenes to find it. This really gets right down to it:Other heroes are really only pretending: Peter Parker plays Spider-Man; Bruce Wayne plays Batman. For Superman, it’s mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent that’s the disguise – the thing he aspires to, the thing he can never be. He really is that hero, and he’ll never be one of us. But we love him for trying. We love him for wanting to protect us from everything, including his own transcendence. He plays the bumbling, lovelorn Kent so that we regular folks can feel, just for a moment, super.
Via Wired, I came across this site called Cork'd, which lets you catalogue the bottles of wine you own, write journals, reviews, become "drinking buddies" with other users, create wish lists, and pretty much makes a lot of things cool and handy. It's free and seems like it'd be a lot of fun if all of us wine snobbish people signed up. I'm going to go do it right now.
I started another blog. Bitches will still be my main one, but the new one is more casual. I have it set up so I can blog from my sidekick so I can post pics from my phone or random things I think of (the main motivation behind this is that I thought it would be fun drunk). I guess I'll see if it works out. Go to it here.
Fox has just announced their fall lineup. To be honest, I don't really give a shit about most of it. The important thing is that The O.C. is staying in its spot and The Loop was renewed (at least a mildly funny show with potential, which is at least better than most of Fox's comedies). It seems that things in the world of television are being aligned correctly, as NBC announced not too long ago that it would be rearranging its Thursday night lineup, which ought to give me a chance to start watching The Office and My Name is Earl again (which will be playing an hour earlier). Now, if somebody would move around Tuesday night, my week of sitting on my ass and watching TV would be complete.
Read about Jan Svankmajer's new movie here. "Described by Svankmajer himself in a prologue to the film as a ’philosophical horror film,” Lunacy combines live action and stop-motion, sex and violence, grand guignol terror and gallows humor, and a lot of animated meat." I can't wait.
Pretty cool Q and A with Herzog here.
Michel Gondry's new movie staring Jack Black sounds like it's going to kick ass. It's called Be Kind Rewind and is about Black becoming magnetized and erasing all the tapes at a friends video store.
David Blaine is a bitch. After failing to hold his breath for just 9 minutes at the end of his 2 hour TV thing he is already trying to get back in the spotlight by announcing his next "act". Blaine says "I'm planning to live harmoniously among wild beasts. And I'd like to do it alone in the jungle." Ok Dave, whatever, you and the camera crew...
Great interview with Henry Rollins here. He is not a bitch. Great part with him talking about Herzog.
"...when Werner Herzog came in, a man I've never met, I didn't exactly gush… but I did go, "Damn! I am really honored to meet you." I said, "You mean so much to me. Thank you so much for coming." And he was a wonderful guest, but I was like, "Mr. Herzog…" "No, call me Werner!" I said, "Okay! Man, I don't know if I can fully express what this means to me." And I was being very honest. I really think that, as far as movies go, he's really for me a cornerstone for modern film. I said, "You know, you're kind of an outsider to Hollywood." He went, "No, Hollywood is an outsider to me."
End of the season for Boston Legal tonight. If you don't watch your a bitch.
This is pretty much what I've been saying about the advantages of Nintendo's system over the others:
Miyamoto explained that the number of in homes is "really not that high, yet. Of course I think five years down the road it would be pretty much a given that would create an HD system, but right now the predominant television set in the world is a non-HD set." Miyamoto added: "We thought it would be better to create a system that allows you to interact with any set you have in your home in an entirely new, different way, and even kind of turn that into a toy for your TV that anyone can pick up, interact with and enjoy - rather than only the people who have a very high-tech, specific kind of TV set."
This article really stabs at the heart of the issue: how old is the age of consent...for someone to eat your body? 43, apparently, is not the answer. 44 year old Armin Meiwes met with 43 year old Bernd Juergen Brandes to eat him, voluntarily. This is what happened: The pair met at Meiwes's home in Rotenburg in March 2001, where they had sex before Meiwes cut off Brandes's penis, which the men then cooked and attempted to eat. Meiwes later stabbed and killed Brandes, before cutting him to pieces and freezing parts of his body, some of which he later ate.
Meiwes received an 8 and a half year sentence on a count of manslaughter. A judge seemed to think this was too lenient and ordered a retrial. I think this is good information for any of us thinking about logging on to the Internets, roaming chat rooms, and finding that one person that is not only okay with dying, but with being eaten. Please, people, wait until the age of consent: human meat doesn't taste good until your 50 anyway.
I saw on the news this morning that PS3 has an official release time of late November and it is going to be $499. By that time I will be out of school and making the big bucks...but anyway I was wondering if I should plan on getting one or not.
I went to IGN and watched the trailer for Final Fantasy XIII which convinced me on the spot that I will buy a PS3 for this game alone. If you (dan/ciggy) haven't seen this you need to watch it.
Here is a video about Guitar Hero 2. Looks awesome. I like the last shot.
This is kind of a half assed post, but I'm sure Dan and Ciggy will have much to add.
I am downloading the Metal Gear Solid 4:Guns of the Patriots trailer right now, which if it deals with the patriots it will kick ass
See the Snakes on a Plane poster here.
Ian McKellen talks about a Magneto spin-off movie that will take place in his early years.
IGN starts a TV page with a list of the 25 must watch shows. I agree with most but Veronica Mars, Survivor and Prison Break (First 5 episodes were great, but we all know what happens when you start rolling down hill...). What the hell guys.
David Blaine goes for a world record tonight. He is going to "Hold his breath for 9 minutes or die trying." You may ask your self how long a program about a guy holding his breath for 9 minutes would be. I think a 2 hour slot on ABC tonight should be about right.
And on Halloween this year we get Saw III. I think the down hill rule still applies here.
It sounds like all the nerds have finally bitched enough, thank the lord, and Lucasfilm and Fox have decided to release the original theatrical edition of movies IV, V, and VI. So far I have only been able to find this reported at starwars.com and hollywoodreporter.com (registration), but it sounds like they will be released on Sept. 12th and will be available until Dec. 31st. The DVD's will be two discs with both the 2004 remastered version and the originals. I can't wait.
My favorite part of this story is not that James Gandolfini (of The Sopranos) got hit by a taxi; it's that he was driving a Vespa. I don't know about anyone else, but I think a Vespa Mafia would be both awesome and completely non-threatening...and, if it doesn't already exist, he should consider founding it.
Also: if you go here, you will see a great number of fantastic headlines about this incident. Some of my favorites are: "James Gandolfini aka Tony Soprano Gets Whacked by Taxicab!," "Gandolfini bada-binged in Big Apple," and "Gandolfini Gets Bada-Binged While On Scooter." The fact that two sources used "bada-binged" is hilarious.
Some voices have been cast from Where the Wild Things Are. I think this Movie is going to be awesome. Directed by Spike Jonze and writen by Dave Eggers, and now staring the following; Benicio Del Toro, Michael Berry Jr., Paul Dano, Tom Noonan, Catherine O'Hara(,) and Forest Whitaker. More here...
You can watch some exclusive footage from the third installment of one of this generations great trilogies here. Just make sure the Tokyo Drift doesn't take you.
Wayne Brady will not choke a bitch for your amusement.
This may be the only time that I wish I lived in San Francisco. A group of people are organizing a giant katamari roll, picking up stuff along as they roll the beast through the city. Made out of old refrigerator boxes and random stuff, this is what it looks like:
I figured there's no better way to celebrate our 200th post than with a slide show of Forbes.com's "coolest beers." Unfortunately (and it's probably because of my exposure to fantastic beers via the Muddy Pig), I was rather disappointed with their selection. I've had some of the beers on their list, and I've had much better ones. Where's the Skullsplitter, bitches?
Writing about a show like this is difficult. Besides the insanely huge lineup (12 comics total), it was simply a surreal experience. Before the show began, a slide show of pictures of Mitch ran with typical slow music in the background, making me feel like I had stepped into something more personal than I had anticipated. Family and friends were scattered in the audience (a large group of family was sitting behind us). Every performer that stood on the stage recounted funny/endearing moments they spent with Mitch. In one particularly awkward/touching/hilarious moment, Lynn Shawcroft (Mitch’s widow) got on stage with some of his old notebooks and read various jokes/notes that had never materialized into anything he did on stage.
Before I go any further, you ought to know that this was the lineup (in no particular order): Dave Attell, Nick Swardson, Patton Oswalt, Greg Behrendt, Mike Birbiglia, Doug Benson, Dave Mordal, Lynn Shawcroft, Todd Barry, Bonnie McFarlane, Rich Vos and Tim Slagle.
I had heard of a few. I knew Oswalt, Attell, and Behrendt were hilarious people. I played random bits from some of the other comics a few days prior to seeing the show. All I can say is that none of them disappointed (although I didn’t find Slagle that funny). Birbiglia, too me, was the funniest set there and a name I’ll remember (although mispronounce) when I’m checking the listings in the future. Although that’s a bit unfair, as all of these people are worth seeing again and a 10 minute set isn’t enough time to fully appreciate their talents.
The show ended with a clip of Mitch on Letterman (not the one that I have set for the VoW) and a standing ovation for the performers, Mitch’s parents, and, ultimately, Mitch. I’m really unsure of what else to say other than it was unbelievable and the best comedy show I’ve ever been to (and probably the best I’ll see in a long time). It was well worth the $95 we dropped on it to sit in the 3rd row of the pit. If I could translate how hard I laughed into a solid review, I would; instead, I’ll leave you with my ramblings.