GI Joe and Philosophy

This is now my desktop background.  It is the most profound graph I have ever seen.  Genius.

(HT to Brain Rage)

Bill Shatner + Sarah Palin = Awesomeness

The Shat reads Sarah Palin verbatim, and suddenly she sounds like a cross between Robert Frost and Gregory Corso!  Few working actors today could have pulled this off…  If only her speech really were the product of tennis and peyote.

[HT to James Webb]

Peeking into my Cat’s Imagination

I have a cat named Tiger.  This is what I imagine enters his head when he looks at our bath tub.

And then he rolls over and starts to purr…

“In what distant deeps or skies / Burnt the fire of thine eyes?”

Wonderful, Amazing Paper!

See this?

It’s made of paper.  It took four years to make.  And it’s one more thing pointing at my lack of creativity.

Public Enemies Review

To continue my plug at the summer movie hit parade, Jamie and I spent our Fifth Anniversary partaking of a fine meal from a new restaurant in Owensboro (excellent) and checking out Public Enemies.  Again, I’ll try to avoid spoilers, but keep in mind that the film is based upon an historical account of the same name by Bryan Burrough. I now intend on reading the book.  Plenty of people know John Dillinger’s story as bank-robber extraordinaire cum Depression-era Robin Hood (kinda sorta).  He was the classic criminal with principles.

Very early in the film, Dillinger (Johnny Depp delivering yet again) tells a bank patron that “We’re here for the bank’s money, not yours.”  Of course, the smart person would ask, “What’s the difference?”  But Dillinger came by his folk-hero status at a time when many Americans looked at banks as enemies to the people.  While the common man struggled to survive (quite literally in many cases), bankers in their tailored suits became symbols of the growing economic divide.  Many people in the midwest saw Dillinger as a kind of equilizer.  And the film definitely plays with this angle of Dillinger’s cultural status.  Depp has even referred to it in more than one interview — I’m sure playing up the theme within the context of the current economic decline. 

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen Review (Minor Spoiler)

UPDATE: Here is a link to a Yahoo! article in which Bay tries to justify that Mudflap and Skids are “posers” who have adopted a racial identity not their own because the robots learn their human language skills through the Web (a fact dropped into the first film).  He’s arguing, in a sense, that he’s really taking potshots at people like Kevin Federline.  I could buy this if there were even a whiff of it in the movie.  But there isn’t.  They’re racial caricatures, no matter what Bay’s intentions may have initially been.

Reading the reviews of Revenge of the Fallen, I was perfectly prepared to hate this movie, in spite of my expectations.  What were those expectations?  Simple:

First, make me nostalgic for beloved toys from my childhood.  Optimus Prime and Bumblebee were significant heroes for my 10 year old self.  And Soundwave was my favorite Decepticon as a kid; his appearance in the movie (altered as it is) along with Ravage helped etch a pretty huge smile on my face.

Second, if you’re not going to make me think, distract me in a fun way for a couple of hours.  I don’t expect every summer popcorn flick to be the next The Dark Knight.  That film established a brand new standard in the ADD-riddled summer blitz.  It was brilliant on so many levels, and transcended every convention of its genre to be not just a good summer film, or a good superhero film, but to be a good film — no limiting adjectives needed.  But, I don’t ask that of all summer movies.  I loved the first Transformers, in spite of its many flaws.  The plot was paper thin and the characters weren’t much more than targets that cracked a joke every few minutes.  Nothing radical about that.  But, I smiled — a lot — and chills creeped across my spine when I first heard Peter Cullen’s voice intone, “I am Optimus Prime…”

Pearl Jam on Conan (06/01/09)

Because, damnit, it’s frikkin’ awesome!

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