michael jackson is dead. that’s really weird to say. i think most people have really mixed feelings about this. on the one hand, he’s fucking michael jackson, the king of pop. there’s no discounting his immense talent. on the other, he probably touched little kids. but as i’ve said before, just like chinatown is still a great movie, thriller is still an amazing album.
i loved michael jackson when i was a kid. we had a copy of moonwalker on vhs that i used to watch over and over. the plot, in case you haven’t seen it, is like this: michael jackson is on a mission to save a bunch of kids from evil druglord mr. big, played by joe pesci. he can also turn into a car that can turn into a giant robot version of him. need i say more?
i’ll also mention the time that my best friend joe and i made a “mix” that consisted solely of 22 tracks of “will you be there (theme from free willy)” and listened to each one, partly because it was a funny concept, but mostly cause that’s a damn good song. we were, for the record, freshmen in college at the time. years later, joe did a stirring karaoke rendition at the playstation pub here in grand rapids that yielded a standing ovation.
so yeah, the king of pop is dead. collin nominated justin timberlake to succeed the throne. i second.
twitter hashtags are kinda fun, especially when you see all the people who just don’t get the concept. for example, today’s big meme seems to be #nicerfilmtitles, which is when you take some popular film titles and make them nicer. for example, my choice was “star debates: rebuttal of the sith.” pretty self explanatory, right? apparently not. here’s a few choice ones:
@Brownie_86 #nicerfilmtitles Blown in 60 seconds -not sure that’s nicer…
@BiBaby75 #nicerfilmtitles Cant take credit for this just saw it on Family Guy…Assablanca. -neither original, nor nicer.
@Rubyclaygirl Crank: High Voltage Fuckfest #nicerfilmtitles -again, way off here.
@ZexyNurse #nicerfilmtitles Star Trek: The Wrath of Spock’s Voyage to the Final Undiscovered Generations that made First Contact with Nemesis… -you forgot insurrection, n00b.
@justomar #nicerfilmtitles “Bitches Aint Shit: The Musical” -is that even a movie?
i don’t often (or at all, come to think of it) talk about work on this thing, but here’s a cool chance to do something that could save a life. running until the june 22nd, the national marrow donor program is offering free tissue-type testing to join their be the match registry. click here to sign up and enter “btm2009” (case sensitive) under “promo code” when prompted and they’ll send you a swab kit for free. swab the inside of your check, mail it back postage-paid, and you’ll be added to the registry. it’s free and easy. most of all, you could save someone’s life if you prove to be a match for someone with cancer.
ok, so now this is starting to get weird. those of you who know me personally know that one of the stupid things i do is the gay al gore voice. this is something that developed back in my jimmy johns days, a weird way of saying “sprouts” that somehow turned into something that sounded a lot like a gay version of the former vice president of the united states.
so imagine my surprise when i heard this week’s episode of “wait wait…don’t tell me!” featuring ed helms in the “not my job” segment doing his version of the gay al gore voice!
that is of course a complete exaggeration. andy samberg is hilarious. that said, this video from the mtv video awards last night is essentially an idea i came up with a few months ago after watching the wolverine workprint and lamenting the cliche’ of action heroes walking away from explosions.
just this past friday, i was discussing the concept of a fake trailer called “guy who doesn’t realize that crazy shit is happening behind him” with some friends as we were sketching out our wrath of khan parody video. ours even had a scene where the action hero is getting his hearing checked while terrorists are attacking directly behind him. ours did not have a song.
drew mcweeney, formally of ain’t it cool and currently of hitfix, posted an interesting read last week regarding where we are now 10 years after the phantom menace. from the article:
Familiarity breeds contempt.
And prequels are a narrative dead end. Period.
Please. Please. Please.
Stop giving geeks what they ask for.
“I want the Clone Wars!”
No. No, you don’t.
You think you do. But you don’t.
“I want the Terminator Future War!”
Again… no. You really, really don’t.
It’s Pavlovian. You’re watching some good science-fiction movie you love and they mention “attack ships on fire off the belt of Orion” or some such thing… like “You’re older than the Zarkon Battlefields,” and you end up liking the movie a lot, so you end up watching the movie a lot because that’s what geeks do. And by the 43rd time watching it, and half-watching it, and watching it with friends while talking, and wallpaper-watching it, you hear that line again… “You’re older than the Zarkon Battlefields”… and you think in passing, “Man, I’d like to see the Zarkon Battlefields.” And then it becomes a thing, an itch you feel like you need to scratch.
No. No, you don’t.
Storytelling… great fun pulp storytelling, anyway… is all about forward motion. Everything is always in motion. The entire idea of backing up to fill in the blanks is counter-intuitive. So here’s where I find myself now on this entire prequel reboot remake update reinvention thing.
i’m stoked to announce that starting on monday, i will be taking over the man zero video game blog on mlive. my buddy jon hooked me up with the gig, which he inherited from coworker. so i’m the third guy to write for man zero, the tanooki suit, if you will. i will of course continue to blog here, but all the video game stuff can be found over on there. also, if there’s something coming out that you think should be on my radar, feel free to let me know.
in my nerd-heart of hearts, it never really left. but for many, star trek was dead, those memories of a utopian future for mankind dashed on the rocks of an underwhelming prequel series and a lackluster 10th movie. so thank the great barrier that j.j. abrams was able to breath new life into the ailing franchise.
i will admit that i was skeptical at first (in regard to the title of that post, yes, yes there was). but sitting in the theater last night with my mom, as the lights dimmed and the first shot of the uss kelvin flashed up on the screen, i just started smiling, and didn’t really stop for the rest of the running time. i won’t get into a full on review as there’s a million of those out there already. i frakkin’ loved it and need to see it a bunch more times. bullet-list of some of my favorite aspects, coming atcha:
chris pine’s kirk was definitely kirk without being shatner.
bones was dead on bones. who knew karl urban could act?
simon pegg’s scotty was hilarious.
i think i caught all of the in-jokes, including scotty’s bit about transporting admiral archer’s beagle into nothingness. (rip, porthos!)
the realistic look of engineering. in fact, all of the interiors of the ships were pretty sweet.
phaser fights feeling like actual shootouts.
successfully rebooting the series via time travel to skirt the canon issues.
most of all, i like that a whole new audience is being exposed to star trek. george lucas take note: this is how you bring back a beloved property without, you know, ruining everyone’s childhoods. good on ya, jj. i already can’t wait for the sequel.
-srd
ps- does this mean that years down the road we’ll have a rebooted tng? that could also be awesome.
“it’s like writing with a sword.” – darrin r. bursick on the pilot g-2
i gotta agree with my friend darren. the pilot g-2 (.07 mm) is easily the finest mass-market pen available. i used to not really care about what i wrote with. that was until i met the g-2 about 5 years ago and never looked back. it’s the perfect weight, feels great in your hand, and the gel-ink flows smoothly without smudging. simply put, the g-2 pwns your paper. and i just got a new box of ‘em in at work. my pen cup is delighted.
so here’s to you, pilot. your pens are teh awesome.
so the crew (me, dani, greg, tim, aric, luke, and jess) made an excursion out to detroit this weekend to catch a tigers game care of some free tickets i scored through work. i’ve never been a huge sports person, but after three $7 beers i can now understand why someone would try to fight a dude for wearing a different colored shirt. not that that happened, but i can see how it might. our seats were pretty sweet, i ate some dank nachos, and we saw a grand slam. and the tigers won. so yeah, sports! sports! sports! here’s a shot from our seats:
and here’s a shot of dani and me:
i guarantee more pictures will surface later this week, some of which will be undoubtedly embarrassing, though not as much as the picture i took with dani’s camera late saturday night, forgot about taking the next morning, found while looking at the pictures from the previous night, and then promptly deleted. luke knows what i’m talking about.
”When Captain Pike sits in the chair on the Enterprise for the first time, there’s a splash of light right across his eyes,” Abrams says. ”They used to do that all the time on the old Trek — a splash of light across Kirk’s face to heighten the drama. I did that on purpose. I wanted to show people that we weren’t trying to undo Star Trek. We were embracing it.”
the keylights on kirk’s eyes were ridiculous in the old show. i’m really glad abrams threw that in there, even if it is just for pike.
obligatory plug: cheeky strut’s grand opening is tomorrow night from 7-11pm at 216 grandville (across the street from founders) in grand rapids. they’ll have sushi and drinks from republic and music and all those things. i was in there yesterday (my stylist migrated over from echo) and the space is really expansive and welcoming. so check it out if you’re free.
i was going to write up a post about all this bullshit whining by the so-called “artists” of grand rapids about artprize, but my friend juliet had already done so over on her livejournal. so with her permission, here’s her response, which sums up how i feel about it pretty succinctly:
—
Art Prize? What is the big fucking deal?
I don’t understand all this ARTPRIZE whining. I know that I’m the sort of person that doesn’t give a fuck and isn’t on the DAAC board and I don’t even leave my house much these days, but it’s SOMETHING that’s going on in our city and you’re not going to stop it and you’re not the first person that ever realised that the DeVos family has more money than you.
To say that this prize is bullshit because you think the DeVos family should give money to local artists that are already here is trying to assert ownership over someone else’s income, something that if they so chose, they can EAT and shit out later. They don’t owe you shit. They don’t owe anyone shit. They built this city, and sorry for you, it wasn’t built on rock and roll. It was built on Jesus. And if that’s what it took to get hospitals and a convention center and shit that actually brought people to the shithole that used to be downtown Grand Rapids then that’s what it fucking took. I’m disappointed that John Waters didn’t fund the city and turn it into a carnival, but it didn’t happen. You got the Devos Family.
There HAVE been powerful local contributions to art. Peter Wege built a ballet theater. To complain about the art prize is kind of like me throwing a fit because Van Halen is playing here. BUT I AM A MUSICIAN THAT LIVES HERE AND I WANT TO PLAY THE VAN ANDEL! Oh, but I CAN’T because I have NO MONEY and I’m NOT FAMOUS.
It just doesn’t seem like a big deal at all to me. It doesn’t cost anyone anything except the people who choose to enter. No one is making you enter. No one is making you host a venue. And it’s HIS fucking money. He could pay to have a giant statue of Moses erected where the empty intersection of Fulton and Diamond is and that’s his choice, because it’s his money. And they’d all complain about that, I’m SURE, because that property is empty and shitty and unused and you weren’t going to do shit with it, but goddammit, you didn’t want a Moses statue there. Well, I don’t want the Tap House downtown, or anywhere, really, but someone bought it and made it and that’s that.
I hate to sound so Republican about it, but I think people should just capitalize on the opportunities it’s going to present, because you can’t change anything about it. The bars and hotels and restaurants and shops will get tons of business. Make your tips. Book your band. Busk. Whatever. Just stop COMPLAINING because you weren’t doing anything ANYHOW. I feel like most of us drink or eat or snort or smoke our extra money, so we might as well just… let it happen. At least this dude isn’t spending all his money on trying to breed a cabbit. Although… now that I think about it… why not?
I kinda of want someone to explain to ME what the big deal is. I know everyone is pissed because they think they’ll be hard-pressed to find liberal venues in the area, or so some article said, but if someone wants to host a live sex show in my house, I don’t give a fuck and I think there are other people LIKE ME. No, you might not win, but you’ll get to network, and that’s something I usually only do for free wine and cheese.
AND people bitching about how ‘non-conservative’ pieces won’t win and that’s not fair is like saying, ‘The majority of people didn’t vote for McCain, but I WANTED HIM TO WIN and that’s not fair.’
Maybe later I will smoke pot and discover the real meaning of controversy. Someone aid me.
i really wish there was a better recording out there of this song, as it’s not only one of my favorites by brand new, but by anyone really. youtube and shitty bootlegs will have to suffice.
and for good measure, here’s kevin devine’s version.
that’s what my brother told me at about 10:30 last night in the icu at holland hospital. he was pretty doped up, but it’s still good advice.
so my brother matt (yes, i have an older brother. where do you think all these nieces and nephews have been coming from?) was putting a roof on a building in holland on monday when one of the panels he was standing on slipped, spilling him 25 feet through the building and onto the compacted dirt foundation. on the way down, he broke a two by four with his t12 vertebrae, shattering it into a bunch of razor-sharp pieces. according to the surgeons who worked on him for about 6 hours yesterday, a diffrence of about 1mm and he would have been paralyzed. right now it looks like he dodged a bullet.
surgery went better than anyone expected. they had to go in through his side to avoid damage to the spine, which is kinda gross cause they had a special surgeon just to move all his organs out of the way. then the thoracic surgeon went in to take out all the bone shards, put in a metal cylinder, and took a piece of his rib to rebuild the t12. all of that is also kinda gross. he’s in a lot of pain, which is a good sign that all his nerves seem to be intact. and he’ll have to wear a back brace for 3 months or so, but it looks like there won’t be any long-term, permanent damage. the wry dailey “humor in the face of extreme situations” also seems to be uninjured.
“thanks for not dying and stuff.” -me
“yeah, i just threw that one in for free, no charge.” -matt
-srd
ps- if both of my siblings could stop ending up in emergency rooms for a while, that would be awesome. i only have so much pto to spare.
i guarantee more pictures will surface later this week, some of which will be undoubtedly embarrassing, though not as much as the picture i took with dani’s camera late saturday night, forgot about taking the next morning, found while looking at the pictures from the previous night, and then promptly deleted. luke knows what i’m talking about.
