Pop Culture
drorzel | July 14, 2006My plan was to spend yesterday and this morning doing deep and substantive blogging while sidelined by a medical test. That sort of fell through, which means I get to spend an extra day in the lab, but also means you get lazy blogging. And what could be lazier than the classic "Random Tracks from iTunes"?
My recent listening has been dominated by live tracks from the KBCO discs posted at jefitoblog-- there's some great stuff there, check it out. For the sake of this, though, I'll give you ten tracks from the four-and-five-star playlist, plus ten tracks from the entire music library, as a…
drorzel | July 14, 2006I was scheduled for a deeply unpleasant medical test yesterday, which I thought was going to leave me lots of time for blogging. yesterday afternoon and this morning. The preliminary test turned out to be so unpleasant (if anybody ever offers to stick a tube through your nose into your stomach, decline politely) that I didn't go through with the test, and, in fact, was kind of wiped out all last night. Hence, yesterday's light blogging, and today's lazy blogging.
One of the controversial things that China Miéville said on the Readercon panels I went to was to sort of dismiss the whole idea…
stcynic | July 13, 2006Radley Balko links to, and rightly lampoons, this silly article by Fortune writer Marc Gunther. Gunther claims that we have too many choices now, with 300 TV channels focused on particular niches. It's reduced the power of the 3 networks to present the news to a bulk of the population, it's reduced the commonality of our shared experiences (since we no longer all watch the same thing, we don't talk about it around the water cooler), and it's "fragmented" our society. Is he joking? One would hope so. Are we really supposed to lament the fact that we can now buy and watch what we actually want…
drorzel | July 11, 2006Having spent the weekend at Readercon, I feel like I should talk about it a little. For those who have never been to a SF convention, it's not all people dressing up like space aliens and fairy princesses-- in fact, the cons Kate and I go to tend not to have all that much of the dress-up thing going on. Instead, they're run more like an academic conference, with lots of panel discussions on different topics relating to stuff in the genre. Why this happens is somewhat mystifying, when I stop to think about it, but it's entertaining enough in its way.
Anyway, I went to a handful of panels that…
drorzel | July 11, 2006Having spent the weekend at Readercon, I feel like I should talk about it a little. For those who have never been to a SF convention, it's not all people dressing up like space aliens and fairy princesses-- in fact, the cons Kate and I go to tend not to have all that much of the dress-up thing going on. Instead, they're run more like an academic conference, with lots of panel discussions on different topics relating to stuff in the genre. Why this happens is somewhat mystifying, when I stop to think about it, but it's entertaining enough in its way.
Anyway, I went to a handful of panels that…
evolgen | July 5, 2006France's diminutive goalkeeper Fabien Barthez and Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford:
stcynic | June 24, 2006I've said before that, for my money, Bill Hicks is the greatest comedian of all time. And I came across this video from Daily Motion (similar to Youtube) and thought I'd post it here. This is Bill Hicks riffing about the war on drugs. Enjoy.
drorzel | June 22, 2006OK, it's not an official Ask a ScienceBlogger question (that answer will show up next week), but over at the World's Fair, they've raised an important scholarly question via a scene from The Simpsons:
Marge: Homer?
Homer: Yelloh?
Marge: There's a man here who thinks he can help you.
Homer: Batman?
Marge: No, he's a scientist.
Homer: Batman's a scientist.
Obviously, this leads to the question : "What sort of scientist is Batman, anyway?" Some of my colleagues are trying to claim him for psychology or genetics, but the real answer is after the cut:
It's a trick question. Batman isn't a…
stcynic | June 17, 2006Okay, I am officially in love with whoever came up with the concept of Youtube. This absolutely rocks. I did a review a few weeks ago of the Pamela Anderson roast DVD and youtube has the uncensored clip of Jeffrey Ross - the undisputed king of the roasts - at that roast. This you have to see. Warning: this you have to see if you have a dark and sick sense of humor and are not easily offended. It's rude, it's crude and it's very, very funny.
Oh, and while we're at it, here's Nick DiPaolo's set from the Pamela Anderson roast.
drorzel | June 15, 2006Via James Nicoll, a new SF Webzine, Helix. Because you don't have enough things to read on the Interweb.
stcynic | June 12, 2006There are bad ideas, there are really bad ideas, and then there's "who in their right mind allowed this to happen" ideas. The three most frightening words in the English language are no longer "starring Carrot Top". They've been replaced - and believe me, I wish I was kidding - by Bolton Sings Sinatra. Yes, Michael Bolton has made an album of Sinatra songs. Ladies and gentlemen, the 7th seal has been opened; Armageddon is upon us. And not a moment too soon.
This is the second time Bolton has done an album of remakes. The first one was called The Classics and found him destroying most of the…
drorzel | June 6, 2006I've been watching Netflix DVD's of the late, lamented Homicide: Life of the Street lately, and a little while back, I went through the DVED's of the first season of The Wire, which shares some of the same creative team. In particular, both series were based in part on work by David Simon, whose Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets tracked the Homicide unit of the Baltimore Police for a full year.
I've been curious about the book for a while, and finally checked it out of the library a couple of weeks ago. It's a fascinating story in its own right-- Simon had unprecedented access to the…
stcynic | June 5, 2006This weekend I got to watch the Comedy Central roast of Jeff Foxworthy. As my readers know, I'm a big fan of roasts in general and I'm pleased to see this old tradition from the Friar's Club be revived over the last few years by a younger generation of comics. The Foxworthy roast had all the usual suspects - Colin Quinn, Greg Geraldo, Nick DiPaolo, Lisa Lampinelli. These are all New York/Boston comics who are involved in almost every roast. But more than any other I've seen, this is a roast I would love to have seen live, or at least see the unedited footage. Why? Because I'm not sure all the…
stcynic | June 4, 2006I remember in the last couple years, it was announced that Paul Rodgers was going to join Queen to replace Freddy Mercury. Jon Rowe and Jason Kuznicki both posted on it, with Jon being mildly cautious about it and Jason calling the idea "insane". I recall at the time thinking that Jason was closer to the mark, despite the fact that I think Paul Rodgers is great and never liked Freddy Mercury at all (for some reason, I always hated watching him perform - it was like watching someone "vogue", just cloying and preening and posing). But he undeniably had a great voice and sang some of the great…
drorzel | June 4, 2006As you know, Bob, the Hugo Awards are one of the top literary honors in the field of science fiction and fantasy. They're voted on by the attendees of each year's Woldcon, held in August or September, and include awards for Best Novel, Novella, Novelette, and Short Story. I posted about the Best Novel nominees back in March when they were announced (I don't read much short fiction, so I have nothing to say about the other categories).
If you're thinking to yourself, "Yes, we know what you think, but what about everybody else?", well, have I got a URL for you. Nicholas Whyte has posted a giant…
evolgen | June 1, 2006Addendum: Older women who drink are smarter. Question is, are they MILFs or Cougars?
Scanning a few blogs that I rarely ever read, I came across a link to this post from this blog. The post is on Crooked Timber, and the link comes from the awesomely named Lawyers, Guns, and Money. The post starts out with some stuff about the falling birth rate in Europe, but then digresses into a discussion of drunkenness (which is carried on in the comments). It turns out there are people who have never been drunk. Ever. I do not know these people.
I'm wondering what fraction of my readership are members…
stcynic | May 29, 2006Thanks to Fishy Fred for tracking down Bravo's list of the top 100 comedy movies of all time. I caught part of it and wanted to comment on the list. For the most part, I thought the list was abysmal. Four Weddings and a Funeral no higher than 96? Preposterous. Dr. Strangelove only at 53? No way. Only one Kevin Smith movie in the top 100? Unthinkable. I'm gonna post the full list, with my comments about the ones I have strong feelings about one way or the other.
100. Anchorman - Probably about as good as Will Ferrell is ever going to get in movies. Like many others before him - Dana Carvey,…
stcynic | May 29, 2006Who's Paul Gleason, you ask? He's a "That Guy", one of those actors you instantly recognize but whose name you don't know. He frequently played the same kind of character - the authority figure who blusters and poses but doesn't really know what he's doing. He was Deputy Police Chief Dwayne T. Robinson in Die Hard, the bumbling police administrator who thinks Bruce Willis should leave it to them. He was Clarence Beeks in Trading Places and Professor McDougle in Van Wilder. Most famously, he was Dick Vernon, the asshole teacher in the Breakfast Club.
evolgen | May 23, 2006While procrastinating (I should be analyzing data for a talk I'm giving on Friday), I stumbled upon this site (via EDSBS, not StumbleUpon). I tried to bypass registration (using BugMeNot), but none of the cheat passwords worked. If you want to play around with the gadget, you may need to register, but you can use a fake email address (they don't require you confirm your registration).
What's this fun website? Well, you upload a headshot, and it returns a list of celebrities you resemble. I uploaded three different photos. To find out who I look like, click through below the fold.
Photo…
evolgen | May 18, 2006
Albinos The pigmentally challenged are up in arms over the Da Vinci Code. They say it's unfair that, once again, an albino portrays a villain on screen:
Michael McGowan, an albino who heads the National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmentation, said "The Da Vinci Code" will be the 68th movie since 1960 to feature an evil albino.
"Silas is just the latest in a long string," McGowan said. "The problem is there has been no balance. There are no realistic, sympathetic or heroic characters with albinism that you can find in movies or popular culture."
Excuse me, but what about Powder?…