Two for the Road

Holy shit!

Seriously!

I’m not used to having a television show, even the ones I like, make me genuinely feel anything, but this one hit me like a ton of bricks. Like, just sitting there like I’d just been in a car accident or something, with that feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach and thinking, “No way did that just happen.”

Now I’m even dreading watching the next episode and having to see the fallout. Until then, I guess it’s poring over The Hanso Foundation.org (1-877-HANSORG).

And after all that build-up, the spoiler warning: Seriously — if you’re thinking you might watch “Lost” at some point, skip the rest of this post. It’s for your own good. (And it won’t make any sense if you don’t watch the show anyway, so there’s no use in spoiling it for yourself).

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The Next Food Network Star

Everything tastes better when you make it in your underwear.“The Next Food Network Star” ended last weekend, but I just got around to watching the finale. I’ve never really liked reality TV, so I’ve really got no excuse for getting sucked into that show. Of course, I can’t cook more than hamburgers and grilled cheese sandwiches, so I’ve got no excuse for watching so much of the Food Network, either.

The show had the Marc Summers taint all over it: it looked like a real reality show, but it was overwhelmingly safe. Every time it seemed like there was going to be some drama, it quickly cut away. Everybody pretty much got along the whole time, they were all pretty supportive of each other and seemed genuinely sad when another person got eliminated. And whenever anyone did get eliminated, they learned something valuable from the whole experience. It was kind of like “Seventh Heaven,” but more boring.

Still, I was all over that. As soon as they introduced everybody, my favorite to go all the way was Jess Yang, who would’ve been great because she’s young and seems genuinely nice and enthusiastic, and she would’ve taught people how to cook Asian food, which nobody else on the network ever does. So she was the first to get eliminated.

After that, all my favorite choices got knocked off, right down to the final three. I thought it should’ve been between Carissa, who’s hot, and Guy, who seemed like a nice enough guy and charismatic enough to have a show. But she got eliminated. At least Guy won; it’ll be like every other show on the Food Network, but then pretty much every show already on the network is like every other show on the network. And at least he’s better than the annoying couple that won last year.

Watching enough of the contest convinced me it’d be a bad idea to enter with my “Bachelor Chef” series idea. It’d still be a good show — fat, lazy guy has thirty minutes to make a meal for one with only what he has on hand, meaning we finally see some interesting variations on hamburgers and grilled cheese sandwiches. I just don’t think I’m the guy to host it.

But it did make me realize what is the big gaping void in the network’s programming. They don’t have a comedy. Alton Brown tries to be funny on “Good Eats,” and George Duran gets a little closer on “Ham on the Street,” but they’re both more corny than genuinely funny. “Good Eats” relies too much on Atlanta-area community theater performers, and “Ham on the Street” relies too much on random people freaking out when he’s made them eat something with French cheese in it.

The network doesn’t have any original programming that’s nearly as compelling as “Iron Chef.” Their attempt at an American version of “Iron Chef” just proves that they don’t get what makes “Iron Chef” cool — it’s not really a cooking show.

So here’s my totally free pitch for the next Food Network breakout hit: it’s called “In the Night Kitchen.” It’s a combination of “Iron Chef” with “Dark Shadows” and “Passions.” (Food Network’s main audience are women and geeks; geeks love “Dark Shadows,” women love soap operas. It’s Science.) The main character is The Baron, who was considered the greatest chef in the world until some mysterious scandal ruined his career. He fled to a castle in the Czechoslavakian countryside, where he broods and cooks. If you want, you can make him a vampire or a ninja. He’s got secrets, is the thing. Sometimes, in the dark of the night, you’ll find him in his kitchen, preparing some of the most amazing dishes imaginable, and cursing the fact that only he will be able to enjoy them.

The Countess Porcheska is really hot and secretly an agent of Interpol trying to expose The Baron’s secrets. She frequently visits with ingredients. She’s drawn to the charms of the Baron as much as she tries to deny it and stay focused on her task. There’s assloads of chemistry there.

Occasionally, a challenger comes to the Night Kitchen, seeking to overthrow The Baron. The Baron must win the contest without revealing his true identity to the Countess. The loser of the battle (it’s never the Baron, obviously) must commit ritual seppuku with a ladle.

There are also frequent visits by aliens, werewolves, ronin, turn-of-the-century explorers with some rare theme ingredient, and pastry chefs. The other big drama on The Food Network is their pastry competitions, where you watch for an hour just to see somebody drop the sugar sculpture while trying to take it to the table. So there’s that.

And the real genius? Val Kilmer. The real genius about this idea? It’s only thirty minutes long. He never finishes an entire recipe in one episode. You have to keep watching to get the whole thing. I can’t imagine why they haven’t done that before.

This idea is pure gold, and I’m giving it away for free on the internets. It’s got cult hit written all over it.

Movie Literate

A couple of blogs have linked to this movie critic’s list of 102 Movies You Must See Before You Die. As far as I can make out, it was written in 1999 and brought back to life in response to this book of 1001 entries. Mac has a copy of that book, and from what I saw, it’s missing some key movies and includes some others that I would’ve left out.

The shorter list is a lot easier to deal with, though. I’m going to copy Emerson’s list and mark the ones I have seen in bold. I’m kind of surprised I have so few problems with the list — I don’t agree with it 100%, but as far as the nebulous concept of “movie literacy” goes, it seems to be pretty dead-on.
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You know, for adults!

HudsuckerPretty much every single one of my hobbies, and for that matter most of my professional career, has the taint of arrested development around it. I like videogames and theme parks enough to get jobs working for them, at least half of my TiVo season passes are on Cartoon Network and the Disney Channel, and I’ve got almost as many comic books as I do gray hairs.

So I’m familiar with the whole “but blank isn’t just for kids!” argument. So familiar, that I’m pretty sick of it.

First, it’s pretty dull at this point. The people who matter have already caught on, and those who are still convinced that it’s all inherently juvenile are never going to be convinced otherwise. “The Simpsons” and even “South Park” have been on for so long at this point, they’ve already gone through their cycles of being dismissed/cult favorites/popular favorites/tired sell-outs. There are still flare-ups here and there, especially around videogame violence, but for the most part it’s background noise. Big business doesn’t care one way or the other as long as there’s money involved, and at the moment, there’s a lot of money in videogames and animation.

Second, the argument is always being made by people who are a little too desperate to believe it’s true, and who somehow always end up shooting the argument in the foot. They’ll start quoting statistics and end up saying stuff like, “Research has shown time and again that the median age of videogame players is 25 and rising, and to dismiss it as juvenile is just — hey, look! Boobies!”

This list of “15 Animated Films For Grown-Ups” from The Onion AV Club manages to do both. (Of course, it’s The Onion AV Club, so it’s “Animated Films” in the title, but if I started going off about the Pompous Hipster mentality, I’d never stop). The AV Club used to do round-ups of “The Most Inessential Albums of the Year” (maybe they still do); this list feels like a candidate for Most Inessential Pop Culture Commentary On the Internet.

For starters, the whole concept is stupid on two fronts. First, because it distinguishes animated movies from the live-action ones, which is a distinction only the Academy Awards makes nowadays. And we’re hipsters, right? We’re supposed to hate the Oscars. Second, because as it tries to assert that animated movies aren’t just for kids, it starts with the assumption that people still think they are just for kids.

Then, there’s the apparent criteria for entry. Read enough of the comments, and what do you see pop up again and again? Porn. Sex. Boobies. Violence. All of which are aces in my book, but is that what makes something “adult?” What about concept, tone, message, or execution?

What’s heartbreaking is that the author seems to be aware of the basic distinction, but not enough to compile a simple 15-item list based on it. There are frequent mentions of “teen raunch” and “the old sex-and-violence tropes,” but except for three of the entries, that old sex-and-violence is the only thing that seems to be required to be “adult.”

And the list itself is so damn boring. Fritz the Cat? Seriously? Does anyone out there, anywhere still think this movie has any value at all? I could go on for another 10 pages about all the ways Ralph Bakshi sucks, but I was under the impression that at least he’d used up all of his pop culture cred from making a cartoon movie about cartoon cats screwing each other. I thought even the most knee-jerk simple-minded hipster had already accepted long ago that the movie had no value even as an anti-Disney novelty.

The list makes a long disclaimer about not including more than one anime movie on the list of “films for grown-ups,” and then includes Akira? The movie about teenagers on street bikes fighting each other with psychic powers? Yeah, it’s a great movie, but whenever I think of it, “adult” doesn’t spring to mind. The list mentions Perfect Blue; what about Millennium Actress? That’s one of the most mature, moving animated movies I’ve ever seen.

I don’t really need to say any more about the inclusion of Heavy Metal, right? The author makes another long disclaimer about how adolescent a movie it is, but includes it anyway. And — here’s the kicker — also includes Rock and Rule for good measure.

The whole thing is just dumb, and it pushed my “animation” and “pompous hipster” and “stupid generalization” buttons all at once, which automatically generates a blog post. And it’s been said so many times that it’s become trite itself, but it’s still true: the best movies aren’t ones that are made for kids or for adults, but don’t pander to any audience and just stay true to themselves.

Now, it may seem like a cop-out not to include my own list, but like I said, I think the whole idea is stupid; both for making distinctions between animation and live-action, and for not making a distinction between “adult” and “adolescent.”

Plus I just tried to, and realized I haven’t seen enough feature-length animation to come up with 10.

Hey! BOB SAPP Please!!

Man, I’ve got to stop reading the internets. There’s no way in hell I’ve got enough time to make it through TV In Japan. It’s like being on a commuter train and the passenger before you left a box full of candy and Star Wars toys under the seat and you don’t find it until five minutes before your stop so there’s no time to play with it all but still you can’t just leave it and come back to it later.

All I’ve had time for so far is Bob Sapp is Fire, which is “Hey Hey Hey Music Champ” Variety Show-style wacky with a big black guy rapping. I don’t know who the dude is (I guess he’s featured in other videos), but he seems jolly enough.

It all got me wondering what life is like for advertising people in Japan. There’s a stereotype about Japanese companies being stressful anyway, and at least if you believe “Bewitched,” working for an advertising company in the US is stressful enough. Are the guys who work on Tokyo’s equivalent of Madison Avenue just killing themselves every day to find a way to top the last ad? Do they have gruff, fat-cat bosses who threaten to fire them if they don’t come up with something by tomorrow that’ll top the three guys dressed as canteloupes jumping on trampolines with singing raccoons? Or do they all have magic wives who come up with genius pitches at the last minute to cover up some wacky family hijinx?

Inscrutable.

Oh yeah, and I’ve seen this commercial a while ago, so it’s probably old news. But it does have a tanuki in it, which means I’m a fan.

See ya!

Everybody should take a minute to watch this, the greatest fight scene in movie history.

I haven’t seen the movie it’s from (and thank goodness the IMDB is there to provide the all-important Chinese title for this action classic), but I’m hoping it answers the questions this clip raises:

  • How come it sounds like our hero and villain are made out of bookcases?
  • Why is Stingray dressed like a pharmacist? And how did he get out of a lab coat, shirt, and tie so quickly? And get all greased up?
  • What did Stingray do that was all that bad? Other than grimacing and licking knives? Was it bad enough to warrant such serious eye trauma?
  • How come our hero is such a wuss that he’s fighting a guy who only has one hand free and he still needs to get rescued by one-armed Felicity Huffman from Transamerica and a towel?
  • Couldn’t they have taken a few more minutes to come up with some better quips? Like, “Here’s looking at you, Stingray!” or “Enjoy the ride, Stingray, but be careful you don’t get hooked!” or “At least now you won’t have to look at your own god-awful poodle mullet every morning, Stingray!”

And to answer the guy who posted it on YouTube in the first place: yes. Yes, it is.

Update: Okay, I guess I didn’t read the IMDB entry closely enough. Apparently it is a Hong Kong movie, so the Chinese title is given first for a reason. And dopey guy isn’t the hero; Cynthia Rothrock is, which is why she has to come in and save the day. I imagine his drooling problem also has something to do with it.

I still say that this scene would’ve been a brilliant finale for Transamerica.

V4 Vendetta

Also available in a V6Today we went to Haight Street for lunch, and no matter how many times I go up there I’m still struck with how ridiculous the whole place is. It’s as if all the hypocrisy of San Francisco is laid bare — the “summer of love,” rampant commercialism, poverty, empty promises of “counter-culture,” the head shops with signs warning you that you’ll be ejected for saying “bong” or “weed.” I was making a joke that we should go into the Anarchist Collective Bookstore and ask for a copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince; Mac went one better and suggested we ask for The Rules.

All the “free love” and “anarchy” and “counter-culture” stuff doesn’t even seem offensively hypocritical anymore; it’s just laughably quaint. So maybe it’s true that “there are no coincidences,” like V says in the movie, because on the same day we went to see V For Vendetta.

Not to say that the movie is quaint or laughable or as empty and meaningless as Haight Street — it’s really excellent. Very well done in presentation, emotion, and intellect. (And it kind of pains me to say that, considering how much I dislike The Matrix and was ready to hate this movie). It does a remarkable job of updating the comic book, working as a big-budget action/thriller movie, and making a statement. In fact, it’s causing me to re-think some of the political opinions I’ve formed over the last decade, formed out of either apathy or the sense that it’s “not my problem.” Balk at changing political opinions based on a big Hollywood comic-book movie all you want; I think that as long as the message gets out, that can’t be a bad thing.
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Awesome Inflation

One example of the titular happiness.And no I’m not talking about Pamela Anderson’s chest. ha-HA! Implants.

I’m talking about how it’s getting harder and harder for something to qualify as “awesome” these days. People have uttered the phrase “there’s nothing any cooler than robot ninja ghost pirate monkeys” so many times that it’s ceased to be true. Somebody could release The Ghost Ship of Dread Captain Jojo-san 3000 today, and I’d go see it, no doubt. But I can guarantee that it wouldn’t be satisfying.

Because if it were possible to make a good movie out of that concept, there’s no way somebody wouldn’t have already done it. We are rapidly depleting our reserves of coolness.

So I’m saying that’s probably why I was disappointed by The Happiness of the Katakuris. Back when I was reading about Takashi Miike and The Great Yokai War, I kept seeing mention of the movie on websites. It was always described as a big departure for Miike; depending on the obsequious-to-hipster ratio of the site, it was either further proof that Miike could do anything, or evidence that he’d sold out.

Either way, I’m damned if I know what to make of it. Did I go into it having too high expectations? If you just read a description of it, it’s a:

  • Japanese
  • black comedy
  • musical
  • with animation,
  • a schmaltzy message about the meaning of life,
  • scenes filmed as if they were from a Japanese TV commercial,
  • and a dance number performed by zombies.

So on paper, it sounds like The Perfect Movie. The reality, though, is just kind of… there. There’s plenty of imaginative stuff in there, sure, but it either draws too much attention to itself, is paced so poorly that it doesn’t have any impact, or is executed so amateurishly that you’re left thinking how cool it could have been as opposed to how cool it turned out.

The movie starts out with a young woman in a restaurant who finds a small white creature in her soup. She pulls it out and screams, the creature sees her uvula, thinks it’s a heart and he falls in love. So he bites off her uvula and is then carried away by a raven. After that is a sequence about five minutes long where the creature fights the raven, gets dropped, dies and is re-hatched from an egg, plus some other stuff I’m forgetting, all in seemingly random order. The creature, the bird, and most of the backgrounds are done with claymation — more proto-“Sledgehammer” quality animation, not Wallace and Gromit caliber. None of the characters from this sequence are seen in the movie again.

I was about to say that “none of this has anything to do with the rest of the movie,” but in a way, that sequence has a lot in common with the rest of the movie — it’s wacky but not in a particularly entertaining way, it’s amateurish, and once it’s over, you’re left wondering what was the point. And the movie has lots of amateurish claymation, but it seems that it was used for budget reasons more than stylistic ones — every time an action sequence starts, it switches to claymation.

So there are deaths followed by musical numbers, and there are transvestites on television, and big musical love songs, and stories about Princess Diana, and a guy drinking water from an inexplicably polluted stream and then getting diarrhea, and a love song done in the style of a karaoke video (complete with cheesy 80’s lighting, and subtitles), and a song with zombies dancing on a landfill, and a volcano erupts, and then a finale song in the style of The Sound of Music.

And still, my reaction is just, “well that happened.” And I honestly can’t tell if it’s because I’m too jaded, or if it’s because the movie isn’t very well-done and it doesn’t have as much imagination as it thinks. The zombie musical sounds cool until you remember it’s already been done. Most of the rest feels like an early Peter Jackson movie.

And of course like with everything “post-modern,” it’s impossible to tell if the acting and effects are intentionally amateurish, or if they just didn’t do a particularly good job. What makes Japanese commercials so cool is that you never get the impression the people making the commercials are on the outside looking in — they’re in it 100%. That’s not to say they’re ignorant of how batshit crazy it all is, just that they’ve committed themselves to being completely and totally batshit crazy to the best of their abilities. (Take the Final Fantasy Potion ad, for example). Adding ironic detachment to that would ruin everything.

But in the end, I didn’t even dislike the movie. The actual ending is kind of sweet and lives up to the promise of the whole concept. And nothing in it, even the nonsensical opening, is blatantly bad. It’s all just not nearly as cool as it could’ve been, and therefore ends up saying nothing. I’m still no big fan of Miike’s, obviously, but at least Audition and The Great Yokai War were memorable.

A Bunch of Noise

What started out innocently enough as a search for “I Want Candy” by MC Pee Pants (second page) somehow ended up with me on the iTunes Signature Maker.

It’s a java app that digs through your iTunes library and generates a file that contains snippets of your favorite tracks mixed together. It’s not exactly pleasurable listening; the author’s sounds okay (kind of like what I imagine an alien SETI program would hear), but it seems like most of them come out pretty atonal.

I imagine the only way to get something that flows well is if you’re one of those people who claims “I have a very eclectic taste in music” but it turns out you listen to a bunch of bands that sound exactly the same, but you have the soundtracks to Manhattan and O Brother, Where Art Thou? to show how diverse you are. Or something.

On the other hand, this is pretty much what it sounds like in my head all the time, so maybe the computer don’t lie.

And speaking of noise, I just realized that I’ve got to be in Florida all next week for work. I’ve known about the trip for a couple of weeks, but I’ve been thinking it was further away. If it’s anything like the last trip, it’ll be that infuriating feeling of knowing I’m at Disney World but being unable to get out and enjoy it because I’m working. And even when I get free time afterwards, it’s no fun going to the parks by myself. Plus, during the week the parks close a lot earlier, leaving only a couple of hours between the end of a work day and closing time. Since I’m contracting, I can’t get into the parks for free unless I’m working there — which means I have to pay full price just to go a couple of hours.

And I’m not really fooling anybody, I realize. Even on a business trip it’s pretty damn cool. At the risk of sounding like I’ve drunk the Kool-Aid: the Disney hotels really just get everything right, and they’re a blast to stay at even independent of the parks. And as for the parks, I’m still hoping I get a chance to check out the new Expedition Everest ride at Animal Kingdom. It’s not supposed to open until next month, but supposedly it’s in “soft opening preview” mode now.

Update: Calendars are hard. Apparently I’m not leaving next week, but the week after. I just wanted to make sure that the Internet was aware of my travel plans. Go on about your business.

Lousy Runs Both Ways

They mock me with their bluegrassEvery time I’ve tried to see Alison Krauss and Union Station in concert, the tickets have been sold out long before I even heard they were going to be in town. One time I even considered driving down to some God-forsaken town in central CA to see them because the Bay Area shows were sold out.

So (duh) I signed up for their online mailing list. I got my first mailing in my inbox today, and they’re coming to the Nob Hill Masonic Center on March 11th! I immediately tried to get tickets online, and all that’s available are two seats way in the back of the far side of the balcony, which, including tickets.com’s bend-over fee, would come to $120! Single seats are easier to get; if I went stag I could sit way back at floor level for just under 70 bucks.

I’m convinced there’s something unsavory going on here. There’s got to be some consortium somewhere buying up tickets in bulk to scalp them. Or some secret concert-announcement service that I’m not aware of. Or the band has a huge fan following and they just won a bunch of Grammy awards and they’re playing in a big city and I missed out because I didn’t get up until 10 and didn’t log in until 11 this morning.

Anyway, the mailing list also linked to this mash-up of “I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow” with “Hollaback Girl.” I can’t say I like it, but I’m baffled and intrigued by it. Something Awful got it right when they said that in a better world, “Hollaback Girl” would’ve been the stupidest song of last year if not for the tragedy that was “My Humps”. And the beat doesn’t quite match up, either. But still, I can’t stop listening to it.

Checklist

One of the consequences of having a spastic attention span is that I’ve got a huge mental to-do list that grows faster than is possible for a mortal human — even one with my considerable gifts as granted me by your yellow Earth sun — to check them off.

And because it’s all in me head, it’s completely unsorted and un-prioritized, so stuff like “do laundry” is right there mixed in with “write a Flash prototype for that card game you want to do” and “make quarterly tax payment” is right below “watch the season premiere of ’24′” and “learn Japanese” and “get medical insurance” are somehow getting exactly the same level of procrastination. Which really doesn’t make sense, and is making me into more of a flake than I ever intended: “Sorry, I would’ve shown up for surgery to give you my kidney, but I’ve been meaning to finish reading this issue of Batman for months now.”

I keep seeing links to online and offline organizers and to-do lists, but have yet to find one that even closely approximates how my brain works. Err, “works.” I need to be able to add entries quickly, the second I think of them, attach notes or whatever other information I need to get it done, reorganize it and assign/change priorities so easily that “organize the To-Do list” doesn’t become another item, and give a real sense of accomplishment once I’ve checked one off. And maybe give me a cookie.

I could write my own, but I hope I don’t have to point out the problem there.

Still, even though technology hasn’t yet caught up with my brainspasm method of neural functioning, I have managed to make some minor headway. I’m assuming nobody reading this cares all that much about Java reflection and persistent object databases, so I’ll leave that stuff out. Even though it’s kind of cool, and isn’t so over-engineered as to be useless.

Finished Shadow of the Colossus
And I’m going to have to recant my earlier reviews of it — interesting concept and presentation and great visuals, but it’s not a good videogame. It feels too gamey, and it’s not a good game; it’s a frustrating game that you only keep playing because the concept is interesting. Sure, the conclusion is satisfying as an interactive movie, but I decided halfway through the last level that there was nothing they could show or do that’d be worth the frustration of beating the final boss.

Watched The Aristocrats
I’d expected it to be more interesting than funny, but it turned out more funny than interesting. The whole “joke as jazz performance” idea isn’t strong enough to carry a feature-length movie, and I’m not really buying it since very few people actually tell the joke. But pretty much all the people they interview came out of it seeming pretty cool and funny, even the ones I don’t usually like. The only ones who still seem irredemably creepy and annoying are Taylor Negron and Andy Dick. And that sleazy guy in the jacuzzi. And the bad ventriloquist.

Updated the website
Not really, but I did finally clue in and add a link to Fingerbutter.com. And that’s interesting either as a comment on the anonymity of the internet or on how dense I am. A while ago I saw via technorati that some new site was linking to mine, and so I checked it out to make sure they didn’t have any of my tasteful but misguided erotic photos on there. It wasn’t until last night that I actually made the connection that it was my friend Joe’s website. Even though his name is on the posts, he links to our mutual work friends, and he mentions stuff I should’ve recognized, I’d just been thinking, “hey, that’s nice and a little odd that some stranger is linking to my website.” I went back through and re-read it all hearing Joe tell it, and it makes sense now. So the lesson is either that Joe needs to add an “about” page, or I need to rethink my life dream of becoming a private investigator, or some combination of the two.

So that’s four down (I also finally saw Conan the Barbarian over the weekend), about a billion to go. Now I’ve got to go buy replacement ink cartridges for my printer, which had been hovering on the list between “write a novel” and “reconnect with friends I’ve been neglecting for way too long,” but just shot up in importance because of “do taxes.”