I Let My Fists Do The Talkin’

You can now buy food on Amazon, which seems like a pretty terrible idea. What is funny is they’re using the same template from their book/music/other crap so fucking bananas have “product features” and “If you like _, you’ll like _” only it’s a fucking avocado because you gave lettuce five stars. [I’m seethingly furious and hate everything in the world]. Check the reviews before you buy, friend.

I also got too much glee out of this online mag of cinema review, for one article on silent comedians for referring to the party where Fatty Arbuckle allegedly raped an actress with a bottle as “...little more than a one-man orgy featuring Fatty and half a dozen naked whores.” Elsewhere in the article, a footnote states “It was always difficult to imagine why a woman would want to mate with Harry Langdon,” which also makes me laugh. I think I like sex jokes at the expense of the long-dead.

I’ve also been obsessively watching silents lately, working my way (via Netflix) through 9 disks of the Harold Lloyd box set and catching Buster Keaton Mondays at Film Forum for the next two months.

Today I went to the nominally “dramatic” Douglas Fairbank’s Mark of Zorro... which was pretty much physical comedy seperated by wordy screen-filling intertitles and constant denouncement of “oppression.” Zorro was less a master swordsman in this incarnation than a master jump-over-a-lot-stuffs-man.

(Next I will write about the most specific downside of seeing silents in a live audience… there’s less distraction from the horrible rude/senile old people in the audience.)

This came out pretty well, I think.

Will be running in the LA edition of the Onion next week.

(The font is from Cape Arcona)

I answered the weekly Film Forum trivia question without googling and kinda weirded myself out for instantly knowing it.

On Friday, we open our 3-week SUMMER SWASHBUCKLERS series with a double bill of THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL (1935) and CAPTAIN BLOOD (1935), starring Errol Flynn as the original pirate of the Caribbean and based on a novel by Rafael Sabatini. Name a famous play of the 1960s in which one of the characters uses “Rafael Sabatini” as one of several pseudonyms.

I saw the movie based on this play once on TV when I was in high school. The pseudonym is mentioned in a list of other pseudonyms pretty casually in one monologue in the movie if I remember. But for some reason, it stuck with me.

My mother had mentioned the movie was playing in her town when she was growing up and was held over (for popularity) week after week and she saw it a dozen times… just because they went to the movies every week.

Looking to get more flyer work this month to offset some unexpected medical bills.

Help me pay off my teeth!

Helsinkians are amazing.

Oh Wikipedia…

As a follow-up to my previous post on the worst TV shows ever, here’s Wiki’s article on The Worst Films Ever

I have been glued to EtiquetteHell.com for the last couple days after being linked to it in a friend’s wedding invitation.

...What followed was an incredibly tacky performance by a pair of dwarfs or very short people dressed in doll-like bride and groom costumes. Apparently, they’re called the “little people.” It really did not fit into the elegant reception that we had planned…

I’m well familiar with this song but never saw the video before—
—lots more at Pitchfork’s 100 Awesome Videos

Wikipedia lists TV Shows Cancelled After One Episode

Of most interest (aside from Jackie Gleason’s rant about You’re In The Picture, which everyone who cares about TV already knows about) is the British sitcom misfire Heil Honey! I’m Home, which even the title broadcasts suggests will be no good. Not “contraversial” or “tasteless” but tiresomely unfunny and punch-pulling which, since finding on YouTube, I can confirm—

Two satirical fish in a barrell… Hitler and “old sitcoms” (really not based on any particular sitcom but the platonic dis-ideal of them). Even Mel Brooks’ mining Hitler for laughs became tedious long before 1990 and this is sub-that.

Also the premise is really confusing… is it 1930? 1950? Why are they all American—the funniest thing about Hitler is his stupid shrill German (or accented) voice.

(If you particularly hate yourself, part 2 is here.)

This is only confirming my desire to make my sitcom parody “Hitler’s Pizzeria” (temp title), but I’m so grateful youtube exists so I can find stuff like this.

Although I like that other Zuiiken clip for the drama… this one is more ready to be featured in a mash-up or sampled into a techno song.

If you’re very vaguely naughty, you may be interested in “Sexy English” taught entirely by Russian call girls and the yakuza… no native speakers need apply!

Your new favorite band…

Pizzicato Five through an Konami filter

http://myspace.com/ymck

It’s my birthday.

What should I do today?

A couple of new blogs I’m psyched to find…

a sampler of things from the guy behind Tick Tock Toys, an archive of food/candy packaging of an earlier era, where I found the source my favorite AIM/Message Board icon.

Ironic Sans has the hand-drawn crosshatched look I’ve often imagined doing to this blog as well as interesting observations on design stuff in general. The highlight for me was the colorblindness artwork for your wall— The Ishihara Triptych—which the blogger shares with the rest of us.

Finally, this thing… which inexplicably entertains me to a ridiculous end:

Thanks to Subway Cinema’s Asian Film Festival, I have been able to do the impossible—see Sakigake! Cromartie High School on the big screen (fans of this journal will remember by delight at finding the trailer online last year). Basically, the movie is Rock and Roll High School if you took the Ramones out and replaced them with awkward pauses and references/parodies to Japanese shit you’ve never heard of*. The Cromartie anime was basically an “Adult Swim” show—stilted “no-mation” cartoons speaking non-sequitirs, 1/20 which is the most hilarious thing ever, the other 19 shrugged off. I think for American audiences , it’s trapped on the mobius moving sidewalk of a comedy catch 22—to enjoy it, you have to be really fucking stoned, but if you’re stoned, you can’t read the subtitles and follow the plot. So, target audience is Japanese-fluent potheads. Have at it.

typical Cromartie anime episode. Key points: robot juvenile deliquent, excessive swearing, idiocy, Freddie Mercury

If this at all sounds appealing to you, there’s an encore showing on June 23rd.

I’m going to make a point to catch Takeshi Miike’s Yokai War and possibly the girl rock band story Linda Linda Linda before the festival’s out. It fills in the time before the latest Billy Wilder festival at Film Forum (their third in so many years… is there a discount in bulk on these films?).

The festival seems pretty cool, though. They gave away prizes (and made fun of them) before the show started (t-shirts and “girls in bikini with guns poster”) The enthusiastic host (who might be an organizer, I’d wager to guess) enthusiastically listed all of the wrestling-themed shows in the program (3), thanked the many liquor brands sponsoring the fest, and then cheerfully described the sponsoring McDonald’s ad replacing the short film that was supposed to preceed the movie (until somebody locked the DVD in their office) as “racist.”

The biggest downside to the showings of the festival are the unsubtitled trailers before the movies for the other in the fest… most of which seem to feature Old Boystyle torture and gore in lingering closeups. I was surpressing the gag reflex for Art of the Devil 2... I can only imagine what’s going on in the heads of the sick fucks who wanted to see a full 2 hours of skin being peeled off, lizards errupting bloodily from inside the body, iron hooks ripping through hands. Thanks a lot, Thailand. I expect this shit from Korea, but I’m really disappointed in you acting out like this.
—

*I was horrified to “get” a 2-line reference to the 1981 pilot episode of Urusei Yatsura. I think this is the information taking up space in my brain that makes it difficult for me to do simple mathematics anymore.

I know it’s so old, but I really enjoyed playing Eyemaze’s Grow Cube and other related games.

“Playing” isn’t the best word but it’s more efficient than saying “got really confused, then frusterated, then looked up the walkthrough and did it.”

I get distracted on the internet and end up researching bizarre topics with far too much gusto.

A passing reference on the commentary on The Bob Newhart Show Season 3 DVD (the rental of which was a consequence of another research project) had be reading about the McMartin Preschool Case, the longest court case in US history.

If you’ve seen Capturing the Friedmans you’re familiar with the idea… the two cases were both part of the 80s “Child Abuse Accusation/Repressed Memories” dance craze, bopping to the beat of shoddy police work and overzealous child psychologists. But the Friedmans case seems to have had some kind of basis (if the movie is to be believed)—The McMartin case was based on the accusations of a mentally unbalanced mom—who was diagnosed with schizophrenia and according to this article who had an “obsession with her son’s anus.” That article, a couple of pages in, describes the investigating psychologists using sexually explicit dolls and puppets to coerce confessions out of the “victims.” Really, really fucked up shit. Never run a day care center… especially if you find yourself in the mid-1980s.
—
Today’s obsession is the urban legend of the “Hungarian Suicide Song” aka “Szomoru Vasarnap” aka “Gloomy Sunday,” a song written in the 1930s that supposedly causes people to commit suicide when they hear it. (I was searching for the most depressing song ever written.) When I finally tracked down an mp3… expecting ghouls to manifest in my room… I discovered I already knew it… it’s on an Elvis Costello album for god’s sake. Further probing showed it was a big hit for Billie Holiday back in the dizzity as well (All the jazz & blues fans reading roll their eyes for my obliviousness… and go back to rolling their eyes at their musty, empty apartments that reek of sour milk and friendlessness.)

I haven’t found a recording of the original Hungarian lyrics yet, though I have found many covers. My aim is to do a techno club remix of the Suicide Song. Music hacks with an excess of keyboards, jack-hammer beats and a desire to launch a wave of hypnotic self-destruction in the glowsticks n’ poppers set should contact me.
—
One last research project summed up briefly—Sliders was not a good show.

My living room (as seen in The First Steps and Cakey!) is no longer Cheerios-box, school-bus yellow. With the assistance of Mitch Magee, we spent 2 days repainting it “Harbor Haze” (though “November” was considered) which he described as depressing, rainy-day blue. I think it’s a marked improvement!

My computer has AI. I’ll take it a step further and say my computer has AD on top of it—Artificial DICKERY. My computer can think and it is hell-bent on making me look like a complete boob!

It constantly resets itself to make me think something is wrong with it. Like, it randomly changes it’s brightness level to the absolute lowest so I think the screen has burnt out. Most recently, it KNEW that its AppleCare protection was about to expire (which I did not) and then tricked me into thinking the speaker was busted. I took it into Tekserve today, learned that the AppleCare expired last month, and then resigned myself to paying through the nose (I keep my money in my sinuses). So the guy looks at it awhile, takes it back to the workroom and then comes back 5 minutes later and says the preferences had been set so that one speaker was silent. THE FUCK?

It also somehow clouded the minds of all people I’ve asked about getting a wireless card put in so that they don’t know or recommend incorrect products for it. The Airport Express card I was advised to buy at the AppleStore… WORTHLESS. I had to return it and got VERY TIRED AND SWEATY on the way there. To recover from the shock of learning that I DON’T KNOW HOW MY COMPUTER PREFERENCES WORK to my shame in front of the Tekserver, I said “how about selling me a wireless card.” And he said OK and went to go get one to make up for the time we wasted fixing a non-broken computer only to learn the card I needed was OUT OF STOCK.

I went home and ordered it from Small Dog Electronics ($20 cheaper than the Tekserv price)... but then I realized the bag containing two shirts I had bought at H&M on the way back from the AppleStore were somehow LOST on the way home. This also is my computer’s fault, for being HEAVY and making me not realize I had dropped or left the bag somewhere. I don’t know. I don’t have shirts now.

Historical reproductions of Medieval erotic pottery and brothel token/bachelorette favors:

Ellesh’s Closet

Thank you, internet.