Former McDonald’s CEO Charlie Bell just died at age 44 of colorectal cancer. Do you think he had any thoughts about the crap he devoted the last few years to peddling and how many others he may have helped doom to the same fate? Odd that the CNN Money article didn’t mention a damn thing about the link between colorectal cancer and red meat. Or maybe it’s not so odd. CNN Money is more about promoting than reporting anyway.
My dear friend Curt (Morpheme Tales) is gathering stats on fired bloggers for a magazine article he’s writing. Send info his way: Statistics on Fired Bloggers
Why? Because he was recently not hired by Minnesota Public Radio specifically due to the content on his blog.
Life of one sort imitates life of another. And while it’s busy being all imitate-y, art sneaks up behind it and makes fun of it. Good art does, anyway. Steve Zissou (Bill Murray) and his team of oceanic documentarians, resplendent in their matching red stocking caps and sea-blue jump-suits, reflect what they see as they observe the life swimming around them. They dance, easily as colorful as the fantastic, imaginary, sea creatures that dot this movie with a casual disregard for taxonomy, in rituals as confounding as they are informed by their own curious drives and desires. The humans in this movie have been cast adrift and cope by following patterns unique to their genus or phylum. When they bump into other groups, the result – as in the “wild kingdom” – is usually violence. Or sex. Really, they are doing the best that they can.
Bill Murray is perfect. It seems to be becoming a habit with him. The Wilson brother (I mix up the first names) is exactly right. Angelica Huston, Willem Dafoe (comic scene-stealer? What the fuck?!), Kate Blanchett, et al, revolve with balletic ease throughout Alpa-Steve’s pack of fish-people with exactly the sort of understated expertise that you would have bet your bottom dollar on. The casting odds (casting odds) were definitely in director Wes Anderson’s favor, and he didn’t fuck with a sure thing.
Most importantly, this movie completely J’s parents. Perfect. Absolutely perfect. I had to chuckle a few nights later when they rented “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” looking for something “funnier.”
2005 is here. The new god. Millions will make promises (offerings and promises) and then, just as with their other gods, foget their promises with little fanfare and only the slightest blush of shame. Pray to the new god. Just like the old god. Pray, and remain alone in the darkness.
As my three year old son said when he woke yesterday, sick: “My timbers are shivering.”
From the Planned Parenthood Web-site:
“It’s an ingenious idea. Create a no-win situation for anti-choice protesters ? the more picketers who demonstrate outside a Planned Parenthood clinic, the more donations the Planned Parenthood clinic receives.”
2004 was the year of a head of cabbage! Its bold decisive leadership affected everything from the war in Iraq to the can-do inertia of the presidential election.
Read all about it
Beaconfire Consulting just launched the second website I’ve worked with them on. HearUsNow.org is run by Consumer’s Union (the folks who publish Consumer Reports) and is a clearinghouse of consumer information on telecommunications. My job was to take the designs and code templates to meet XHTML 1.0, CSS 2, and Section 508 Web Accessibility standards. Then I turn them over to developers who use my templates to build out the site. Then, out the other end, comes an odd mish-mash of good code and weird, random crap that the people who built the Content Management System decided was important or, more likely, that they just couldn’t figure out how to get rid of.
I’ve been working on this one for a couple of months. My first job for the good people at Beaconfire was ParentsAction.org which is a non-profit run by Rob Reiner and his wife to provide information fo parents. There’s some really interesting info on the site. I actually found myself reading the content as I was putting it in. That hasn’t happend much in my professional career as a Web-Guy.
Here’s what I want: a Content Management System cabable of actually rendering valid code. Not surprisingly, the worst offender I’ve come across is the Microsoft CMS. This piece of crap has such a willful disregard (along with the company that builds it) for Internet Accessibility and standards compliance that they should be prosecuted. But then again, what harm can a little prosecution do to Microsoft?
It was all Harris’ idea. We’d all get xboxes, headsets, and Halo2 so we could go online and blow the shit out of each other. It was good on paper, well…not really on paper, since Harris emailed his plan. It was a good plan on whatever it was on. So good, in fact, that we decided to do it.
Who could have forseen that it would end up being so incredibly fun? I mean, sure, running around with all sorts of guns and shit that blows up is fun. Doing so when the things blowing up are virtual representations of friends you haven’t seen in seven years is also fun. But the really, really, fun part was the talking. See, you put this headset with a microphone on your head (after spending about 30 minutes figuring out how to put the two pieces together and then how to fit those pieces on your head) and then you can talk. I mean really talk, to your friends in the game. You can just stand around looking at each others combat-dressed e-selves and have a freakin’ conversation!
And when conversation lags…well you do have a rocket launcher in your hand, don’t you?
And so, ManaTeam999 was born.
I had read some pretty dismissive reviews about this movie, so was not really expecting a whole lot. Well, actually, I was expecting – in spite of what I’d been told – to have a good time watching Jason Bourne trot around all kinds of exciting and exotic places doing all kinds of exciting and exotic things. And I was right. And so were the other reviewers.
Yes, the movie does go by as a sort of a travellogue. I’m still not sure how that is a bad thing. The locations are great (India, Berlin, Moscow, the U.S.). Each one is there for a reason. I never felt like the filmmakers were just zipping off to another country for no reason. It’s the plot, stupid.
Matt Damon is believable as Jason Bourne: MacGuyver for the new millenium. He’s all pent up and moral…just right.
The camera work is top-notch. They really do a great job of putting you right in the car during the chases (the Moscow chase is really amazing), and there is a documentary-style that they went for and accomplished. As is mentioned by Damon in one of the DVD-extras (of which there are many) there is much that happens at the edges of the frame. It really feels like the characters are doing what they do and we’re just barely seeing it; Like being let in on a secret. It’s a refinement on the style pioneered first on television (as far as I know) by the “NYPD Blue” folks (who sucked at it), except the camera doesn’t swoop and jerk around just for the sake of swooping and jerking which always makes me feel kind of sick. For a great example of how to use this style to nauseating excess, see Steven Soderberg’s cinematic aerobics in “Oceans 12.” Just be sure to take some Dramamine, or bring a barf-bag.
I’m trying to think of something biting to say, but his own words do it best:
“Courts are not equipped to execute the law. They are not accountable to the people,”
