Monthly Archives: November 2009

Oh, the Kittenanity!

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The writer of our brother blog, It’s Good to Be in N.D., volunteers at a Humane Society animal shelter, and as a result, he is exposed to nearly-toxic levels of cuteness every single week.

This week he’s posted many, many pictures of adorably fuzzy little kittens, because the humane society over there has been flooded with kitties. If the levels of cute in your bloodstream have not gone over federally-approved guidelines, you may wish to check out the tiny kitties, but if you have recently viewed puppies, babies or stuffed animals, such viewing may be hazardous to your health.

I will not be held responsible if you sprain your "Awwwww" muscles or develop acute hypercutosis.

If that isn’t too much for you, perhaps you can handle an additional 17 seconds of adorable kitten.

Have a great, cute day!

Plenty to Be Thankful For

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Yesterday I got to see my parents’ new house in Jackson for the first time. It’s across town from the house they’re living in now, just on the edge of the city.

And it’s a lovely house, with a gigantic garage and more storage nooks and crannies and closets than I’ve ever seen in any house.

It also has a truly astonishing number of electric outlets in every room. I think we counted up to 13 in the small office room alone; the people who lived there before my parents must have been very forward-thinking in terms of electricity because in most houses I’ve lived in, I have to add a surge protector in every room. Not this house. I’m not sure what they’re going to do with all the extra extension cords and splitters they have, but I won’t feel guilty for borrowing them and never giving any back, because they’re definitely not going to need any.

I’m pretty sure you could run a LAN party in every room in the house except the bathrooms.

My brother and I, both of whom are out of the house, chose "our" rooms in the new house pretty easily and dad told us both about a million times that we were both welcome any time, and that we’d each (of course) get keys to the house.

The kitchen is small, but it has a ton of storage space, a built-in microwave and a built-in spice rack. It also has carpet, which I’m not wild about (ten bucks says I’m the first one to drop a can of tomato sauce on it, mom), but lots and lots of counterspace, which I am wild about, helped by the microwave being up and out of the way. I hate not having enough space to make a really big mess, because usually that’s what you have to do to make anything bigger than a TV dinner.

It’s a great house.

And now, in exchange for the 5-10 times my poor parents have helped me move from dorm room to dorm room and apartment to apartment, I get to help them pack and move into their awesome new house.

GaGa for Lady GaGa?

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I bought Lady GaGa’s 2008 CD because 1. It has annoyingly catchy tunes and 2. It perfectly embodied Soren Kierkegaard’s aesthetic mode as detailed in "Either/Or" (no, I’m not kidding).

When I listened to it, though, I noticed she is actually talented and could probably sing non-poppy, tuneful music if she wanted to make a lot less money.

Here’s proof: a girl named Stefani Germanotta singing and playing the piano in a contest, or Lady GaGa before she got famous and learned she did not need pants. Without all that synthetic crap, she has a lovely, strong voice.

I am also not kidding about pants. While she’s known as a style icon, for her wacky and bizarre costumes and weird platinum wigs, she tends to wear not much of anything that isn’t shaped like underwear on her lower half. You’re warned, so here’s a photo gallery of La GaGa’s style, just so you can see what I’m talking about.

Evidently pantslessness is a way of life.

 

Barbarella Plus Music Plus Mustache Equals… Milk?

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I’ve heard of some pretty strange marketing campaigns over the years: alternative reality games such as The Beast, which was meant to promote the movie A.I., Burger King’s infamous square butts commercial, which united the creepy plastic king with the creepy animated sponge thing, and the Aqua Teen Hunger Force ads that had half the population of Boston worried about bombs in 2007.

But the "Battle for Milkquarious" campaign from the California Milk Processor Board takes the cake. In fact, it takes the cake, the ice cream, the chocolate syrup, the whipped cream and the cherry, along with the spoon and hey, it probably mugs a couple of party guests as it goes out the door, because it’s just that out there.

Essentially, it’s a sci-fi Barbarella-style rock opera starring a heavily mustachioed, bare-chested rock star (left) who plays a milk-filled guitar, who must rescue his gorgeous girlfriend and his planet’s milk supply after they have both been stolen by… some guy in a purple cape, I’m honestly not sure who he was supposed to be.

The movie is about half an hour long, and it is ultra-campy, though it features lovely set designs and some pretty good milk-related imagery. The songs are demented and funny; the first one is about White Gold (the rock star) telling his girlfriend, Strawberry Summers (the girlfriend, at right), that she is almost as pretty as he is. There are also plenty of milk-related jokes, and yes, a unicow.

Because otherwise it wouldn’t have been strange enough.

Whoever thought of this advertisement is insane. They may also be a genius; I’m honestly not sure. Either way, the movie is pretty funny and at the end promotes a contest for students (in California only), who can win money for their school by submitting a video of… something. I think I was still trying to understand White Gold’s mustache at this point in the process, because I ignored the bit about the contest.

So, if you have a few spare minutes, watch the movie. It’s like watching Power Rangers, but with irony and a lot more mustache.

You too can be this cool.

But only if you drink milk.

Beauty Is Only Skin Deep… Without Botox.

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I turned 29 last week. I had to clarify this to a few people by adding "for the first time," so they’d know I was really 29 and not a botoxed, surgically-enhanced 47 year old. You never know these days, do you?

If you don’t watch the gossip and celebrity news, you may not be aware of the controversy involving the most recent cover of the magazine "W," which featured Demi Moore in sort of a golden gladiator outfit with epaulets and a loincloth. The issue is whether or not a clumsy photo editor erased part of Demi’s hip to make her look thinner, even though she ranks as one of the world’s most beautiful women without being artificially slimmed down by airbrushing.

Movie stars like Moore are beautiful, don’t get me wrong, but they can also afford a home gym, a home swimming pool, a personal trainer, a personal chef and maybe even someone who just follows them around and slaps their hands whenever they think about doughnuts. The rest of us can’t afford a doughnut-thought-watcher. My entire fitness staff is limited to the nice folks at the YMCA, who really do have better things to do than follow me around and remind me that I’m supposed to be watching my blood pressure.

But even if I had a home gym, a home swimming pool, a personal trainer, a personal chef and a don’t-even-think-about-that-doughnut servant, I still wouldn’t look like a movie star.

The problem is, these days sometimes even the movie stars don’t look like movie stars.

Everyone expects the women on magazine covers to be wearing makeup, which by the way women sink millions of dollars into every year in order to attempt to look as good as someone like Demi Moore.

Of course, movie stars also often have professional make-up artists, and yes, I do mean artists. When I wear makeup, I apply four or so products with a brush, a spongey thing and my fingers, along with prayer. I’m guessing movie stars end up with 20 to 30 products on their faces before they even make it to the room the magazine cover shoot will be, placed by people who use makeup like DaVinci used paint.

Moore denies her picture for "W" was altered (and she may certainly be telling the truth), but plenty of publications are very up-front about the fact that they edit the stars on their covers – the stars who already have the benefit of having lots of money to spend on makeup, training, diets and equipment.

I’m glad these publications are honest about the editing they do.

But isn’t it just a little sad?

Somehow, these women, whether they’re singers, movie stars or even professional models, are not pretty enough. Apparently, almost no one is pretty enough to be on the cover of a magazine anymore, at least, not without a little photo editing to make them just a little more perfect.

What about the rest of us, who must somehow survive without a group of professionals maintaining, fixing, and finally editing us into perfection?

Ask me next year, when I turn 29 again.

The Craze for Twilight and New Moon

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Girls and women have surely been waiting outside movie theaters all over the U.S. for hours already so that they can be some of the first to see the new Twilight movie, New Moon.

I read all of the Twilight books and I almost laughed myself to death. No, this doesn’t mean I hated them; I enjoyed them a great deal (and bought all four), mainly as camp. Even though they weren’t intended as camp.

It’s just that I find it very hard to take seriously any book in which vampires can’t go outdoors during the day because they are sparkly.

As such, I must recommend this Saturday Night Live spoof of the first Twilight movie’s trailer.

Explosions

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Newsroom quote of the day:

"Why does Lake Wilson keep blowing up?"

It was said in relation to this story about a vaporizer explosion in the small town of Lake Wilson.

It wasn’t meant to be funny; tiny Lake Wilson has suffered a surprising number of explosions and other disasters before.

A propane explosion in January 2004 damaged a two and a half block radius. Prior to that, the town was hit hard by a tornado in the 1990s and Lake Wilson’s downtown was destroyed in a fire in the 1900s.

Fortunately, this time no injuries were reported.

Review: A Christmas Carol

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I cannot remember not knowing the story of "A Christmas Carol," so naturally when I heard that Jim Carrey had been selected to portray Scrooge in an animated (horrors!) version of the holiday classic, I pretty much decided I’d rather be boiled in my own pudding (and buried with a stake of holly through my heart) than see my beloved story desecrated by Jim Carrey’s… Jim Carrey-ness.

But I found myself in need of some good old-fashioned holiday cheer on Friday and my parents, the very people who brought me to the Guthrie’s versions of the tale for more than 20 years, kindly invited me to go to the movie with them.

I wasn’t disappointed, although my expectations were, as I have said, very modest. Jim Carrey portrayed Scrooge as well as the ghosts, but he imparted very different characters to them. Scrooge sounded like Scrooge, even after his spirit-inspired transformation, and did not sound like Ace Ventura.

The Ghost of Christmas Past was, as in Charles Dickens’ text, candle-like, and though Carrey seemed to give him a weird Scottish or Irish accent, he also gave him a sputtering, sibilant voice that really did sound like a candle attempting to speak. The Ghost of Christmas Present began, as in the text, as a kindly Santa-like figure and ended up a dying, graying, senile old man cackling as he (it?) turned to dust (which I don’t remember being in the text).

And the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come was as scary as all hell, literally, given the totally not-in-the-text part where he was chasing Scrooge along with a pair of demonic horses and attempting to toss Scrooge into a fiery grave.

As you may have already suspected, this is not a movie for very young children.

Marley, portrayed by Gary Oldman (who also voiced Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim), was extremely scary.

I have never seen a production of this story in which Marley was not extremely scary. At the Guthrie, he inevitably came wailing out of a trapdoor in the floor that seemed to lead to hell or maybe somewhere worse, accompanied by smoke, the ghastly rattle of chains and the whimpering of the terrified Scrooge. In this movie, he came through the door, literally, bulging it out and dragging his ghostly chains along with him. And at one point, his jaw falls apart, which may be funny if you’re an adult but will give you a chill down your spine if you are a child or see the story through childhood’s lens (as I do).

The movie suffers a bit from the Uncanny Valley effect, which I will not attempt to describe here (click the link if you have no idea what I’m talking about), but it honestly suffers more because it was made to be viewed in 3-D. As such, it includes several lengthy scenes that weren’t in the book’s text at all or only comprised a few lines there: Scrooge attempting to escape the Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come, Scrooge flying all over the place doing heaven-knows-what and just generally, things poking out of the screen at you. I may have appreciated this more if I had seen the movie in 3-D. As it was, those parts of the film were a bit of a bore.

Several scenes were included which I had not seen before or else had seen them done differently: After Marley’s departure, Scrooge sees hundreds of other ghosts repenting of their heartlessness and flying around outside his window. It’s a chilling scene and one that’s difficult to do well on stage. The effect in the movie was marvelous. We also get to see one of the effects of Scrooge’s death that I had never seen before, and there is a moment of unexpected shared emotion between Scrooge and Bob Cratchit that was particularly appalling and very good.

Other scenes I found unexpectedly missing, only to find that they were not in the text. The Guthrie added a few scenes to its version of the tale: a scene in which Scrooge met the girl who later breaks their engagement. The scene illustrated how much Scrooge changed between childhood and adulthood, and I missed it, even if it wasn’t in the original text.

I also missed the Guthrie’s addition of some of Old Scrooge’s reactions to the breaking-up scene. Old Scrooge was a sort of stand in for the audience as he told the shadow of his younger self to go after the girl, railing against himself for his stupidity in letting her go. The anguished voice echoed the exact thoughts of the audience and I missed it, because you cannot shout "Go after her, you fool!" in a crowded theatre any more than you can shout "Fire!" albeit for rather different reasons.

The movie wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be, and in fact I found it to be a very faithful retelling of the classic Dickens tale, with only a few silly departures and nothing that pushed the watcher out of the story. It was worth seeing.

And so, as Tiny Tim observed, "God bless Us! Every One!"

A Random Bag of Delights

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I believe I’ve mentioned this before, but Bambi was a marine corps drill sergeant. (Got it from James Lileks, though I can’t remember when; thanks, O Great One!)

Today I learned (via Mental Floss) that Bob Ross, famous fro’ed painter of "happy little trees" fame, was an Air Force sergeant.

Also, randomly, the Leonid meteor shower will be especially beautiful at oh-dark-thirty tomorrow morning.

And a list of the "World’s Ugliest Buildings" does not include my least favorite building ever, located on the University of Minnesota campus in the Twin Cities.

(No, it is not the tin-can-esque art gallery, nor is it the mangled Tetris-game hospital, both of which I actually like. It is the Alumni Center, which is absolutely stunning on the inside and resembles a cancerous barnacle on the outside.)