So…

Look, there’s some really intense stuff going on right now.

I’m a big idiot and don’t understand all of it. That’s not particularly new, but I sure wish I had more words for it. Seems like I’ve got ‘em for just about everything else.

I think I’d rather have a song right now. How ’bout you?

Also, this guy posted another response video to our old global warming spoof again… then apparently un-posted it. But the notification email remains. Anyway, here’s a video:

After you’ve watched it, you should feel about as confused as I’ve been for a week and a half. And you’re gonna need a palate cleanser. Well, this is inspired by the mid 1990s, when it was a lot easier for me to know what to do when.

Lizzie, a friend and colleague who shares an interest with me in people who are extraordinarily passionate in their pursuits — nerds, geeks, you might call them/us — had shown me the trailer for a movie called Darkon.

The movie is a documentary about LARPing — live action roleplaying. We agreed that we had to see it. The trailer is here:

So Sunday, when I was feeling under the weather but at school anyway because I am a sap, Lizzie tells me that she has found a screening: that night at 6 p.m. It’s at a comic book convention. Brilliant. I have been to two conventions in my life, I think. The first was for a story called “Stalking Shatner” that I did for dirt. The second was for another story called “Dissecting UFOlogy.” So I have a bit of a history with such conventions.

And I love them.

So when we went to see the movie — Kenan (of GreenGrog) and I went a little early — I was a little disappointed to find out that the convention was all but over. There were a few stragglers, sure. But not the costumed massed I had been hoping for. Somewhat dejected, we headed up to the 18th floor, where the movie would be playing.

When we got of the elevator, we found 25 or 30 Jedi fighting with lightsabers. Hallelujah. I said to Kenan, “Do you think they have enough lightsabers that they could spell my name with them?”

“Hell yes,” he said.

So I approached a Jedi and asked if they were all from one organization. Yes, he said, NYJedi. Of course! I posed the same thing to him: “It looks like you all have enough lightsabers where you could spell out my first name, Dave, with them.”

In a flash, a female Jedi was corralling her colleagues and directing traffic. The prize is a photo posted after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

Maybe you’re wondering why I’ve been so mysteriously silent.

Well, one, to stoke the mystery. There hasn’t been enough mystery around here lately. I mean just this weekend there was a whole New York Times thing on how we’re such exhibitionists and voyeurs and architects and so on and so forth. Where’s the mystery? WHERE?

Wonder no more. The mystery is here.

Secondly, I’ve been busy reporting about sustainable beer. And other things. But right now, I want you to go and learn how to drink a beer.

But there have been some things that I should have blogged about here, so we’re going to do the quick-hit version of a lot of them:

Stephen Colbert tried to run for president in the South Carolinian primaries. The GOP wanted $35,000 and the Democrats wanted him to be serious. I feel his pain — and I think we now see that no comedian will ever be president of South Carolina — but frankly I’m glad it’s over because this way I won’t be asked to form an opinion on his running.

And also I’m thrilled that we don’t have to hear from other presidential candidates and politics blogs on the matter. I’m even beginning to hate it when they show up on Comedy Central shows. It just feels so desperate (Kucinich, oddly, excepted).

To be fair, when comedy shows do things on presidential candidates, it looks desperate, too. Honestly, I’m the perfect market for a comedy sketch on democratic primary presidential candidates and, uh, come on. Come on.

I did laugh at Horatio Sanz playing Bill Richardson playing Al Gore, due in no small part to increasing numbers of recent descriptions of the New Mexico governor as a Horatio Sanz character. But I just felt so bad for Amy Poehler in this sketch. In a relay race where every checkpoint was a heavy-handed set-up for a light joke about people the American public doesn’t know, she was forced to play baton. Meanwhile, Darrell Hammond was doing an unrelated one-man Bill Clinton sketch. (Bonus points to this sketch for giving me another excuse to write the word “mystery” in this blog post; points taken off because it’s a reference to the Pick-Up Artist television program for toolbags.)

I don’t think I could smack my forehead hard enough for this story about an artist attempting to “attack” the cruise ship Queen Mary 2 with his small, wooden, spherical submersible.

“I’m not really a very technical kind of guy,” he said, sitting shirtless on the pier Thursday with various green things still clinging to his arms from the water. “I just guessed a lot on this.” Asked how he planned to get back to shore after the tide carried him out to the cruise ship, he grinned. “I haven’t really thought about that yet,” he said.

Look. Sometimes artists have ideas. Other times, they have various green things clinging to them. I think the idea of attempting to “attack” something with a small, wooden, spherical submersible is pretty funny, but the Queen Mary 2? Who cares? You might as well try to hide out in a swimming pool. Not as sneaky, but much bigger impact.

Plus, the story pretty much breaks down how inept the whole operation was. Oh, artists. Sometimes, you’re amazing and other times you’re just dudes butchering “Video Killed the Radio Star” on the theremin.

What? Oh, yes. Video, too:

Check out the New York Times’ video story about Rupert Murdoch (you know, of NewsCorp/Fox News/etc.) and his apparently successful bid, at long last, to buy the Wall Street Journal. It’s newsnerdy, so deal with that.

The Wall Street Journal, of course, is one of the most respected newspapers in the world.

And here are images from some of the other holdings that Murdoch owns or owned:

Technorati tags: [ murdoch | fox news | wall street journal | wsj ]

Now, look. I know that there are going to be a few people skeptical of new “Alvin and the Chipmunks” movie’s prospects, a few folks who believe in the ability of writers today to produce original material and circumvent the old storylines so deserving of another visit, and maybe even a few people who will be disappointed in Jason Lee for taking the role of Dave.

Well I’m here to tell you, on behalf of America, to cram it. Cram it right back in your brainhole and keep it crammed there so nothing else drips out. Here are my thoughts, which I will enumerate because your tiny anti-”Alvin” pea brains may not otherwise be able to hang.

NUMBER ONE.

So you think “Alvin and the Chipmunks” can’t sustain, as a live-action/CGI romp, the level of excitement and drama necessary to titillate audiences for a full ninety-ish minutes? How about “The Chipmunk Adventure,” the 1987 smash hit? How about CG-effing-I, as seen in films like “Toy Story,” “Jurassic Park” and “Sin City?” How about the new film’s director, Tim Hill (Garfield 2: “A Tail of Two Kitties”)? Bingo. Bango. In addition to your brainhole, why don’t you just shut your piehole?

NUMBER TWO.

You like original works, huh? Well, why don’t you go and write one? Go ahead. I dare you. Write a movie that’s better than the tried and true material of “Alvin and the Chipmunks,” which is being made into a feature film now because it has lasted for nearly half a century and not, I am confident, at all because of the 2006 expiration of the contract that Universal Studios had with Bagdasarian Productions, the original owners.

This whole originality fad has finally come to its end, and it was about damn time. I am thinking of making buttons that say “You Know, Screw Original Writing.” Email me if you’d like one.

And finally, NUMBER THREE.

Dave is a very complex figure. Dave is a character dealing with single parenthood, with pursuing his passion in music — look, I could go on, but as I often do, I think that Wikipedia may have already groupthought it best:

Like any other single parent trying to raise three kids, Dave has his patience tested on a daily basis, mostly by Alvin’s antics. Not only does he juggle his professional life as the songwriter for the musical trio, but he is also the Chipmunks’ father and confidant. While Dave struggles to remain calm and objective, Alvin often pushes him over the edge, reducing Dave to his trademark yell of “ALVIN!!!” One instance of this is in the song “Alvin’s Harmonica”, from The Alvin Show.

This is not just some guy with a few rodents for pets.

I think, with this primer in mind, it’s time to watch the trailer and let the work speak for itself.

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Shut up. Shut up. I’m sure the poop eating at the end is a metaphor. Don’t judge it out of context. There’s probably a whole subplot. Just shut up.

So, I’ve been very slowly watching the 1959 movie FBI Story, starring Jimmy Stewart and Vera Miles. Slowly because there are many scenes that are so totally fantastic that I have to watch them over and over again, then walk into my roommates room howling about how hilarious they are.

For example, there’s a marital dispute between Stewart’s and Miles’ characters that turns into an argument about eating shrimp with ice cream. I watched it five times and demanded that Reid watch it. He refused, so I turned the volume on the TV up so loud that he couldn’t help but hear it. Then he quietly agreed with me that it was worth it or quietly cursed my name but I’m assuming it was the former.

Here are some of the best lines from the bits of the movie I’ve seen so far:

Miles: You can’t just go getting married like ordering a ham sandwich.
Stewart: You can if you’re hungry.

Captured bad guy: In case I get any mail, you can send it to Canon City Prison for the next month or so. After that you can send it to Hell!

Stewart: It’s not very romantic kissing somebody in the middle of the murder section.

Townie: Well, beat a rug!

Miles: Does tissue paper really mean all that much?
Stewart: Not in this house!

Stewart: On Sunday morning he left the house. He couldn’t be going to work. Since he was a Communist, we knew he wasn’t going to church.

What a movie. Please watch it. Please. By the way, yeah, unemployment is going pretty OK.

I was recently witness to a fight between two strangers over which guy in “Spider-Man 3″ I resemble most. They did not resolve it.

“I won’t do it.”

Hey, this YouTube clip is a little crazy, but here’s evidence of journalists having enough of it all. And by “it all,” I’m talking about the pressure to report on things that don’t matter even a little bit. Ms. Brzezinski refused to read a story on Paris Hilton on her MSNBC broadcast. She looks a little crazy here, but only because the guys around her don’t have the cojones to agree with her on the air. I don’t care if it’s a relaxed, morning show type of environment. Paris Hilton doesn’t matter — even over a cup of coffee, even before breakfast. Let Paris exist on entertainment shows, in late-night talk show jokes, in her strange little world. But Ms. B is right — they should have led with the Iraq story.

Check it out:

Don’t let people around you blame “the media” for what you see on TV. It’s too vague. It’s ignorant. Learn about the process and do something about it. Write in to news programs and complain about coverage. Write in to sponsors and complain about coverage. Tell them what you want to see and tell them what you don’t want to see. The journalists of the world want to cover news, not crap, and they need you to tell their bosses that’s what you want, too.

Love,
dave

P.S. The Secret Sideshow was so awesome last night. More on that soon.

eBay has never been less practical or more awesome (and I mean that sincerely). McSweeney’s just had some stuff go down and they’re out about $130,000. So they’re doing this big auction and the three best items are hand-written notes by Miranda July:

Miranda July invites someone to your house.
Miranda July apologizes for you.
Miranda July congratulates you or a friend.

All totally amazing, especially if you have a screw-up worth several hundred dollars’ (and climbing) worth of apology.