Empty Bookshelf Reviews

Author: Nate

  • Putting Things on Notice


    I’m calling you out, Andy Dick!

    I read on a semi-well-known TV blog that this guy created an internet page that generated Stephen Colbet-style “On Notice” lists. All you have to do is type in whatever you want to put on notice, hit a button and a picture will be generated that you’ll be able to save. Not sure why you’d really want to save it; perhaps to post on your blog review site, or maybe just to show it to your friends.

    Now don’t get me wrong; I think the application created to do this with is pretty cool, and I like Colbert’s list and the general idea of it, but I’m not quite sold on people creating their own lists. Stephen Colbert has a national show where showing off this list of things he’s upset with will reach a wide audience. The only thing that making a list for yourself accomplishes is the sense that you now know where things stand, as in you have a concrete ranking of what you hate most, and in what order. Maybe your friends might appreciate it and you’ll all get a laugh out of it. But it won’t make a difference in the real world, and you’ll only be left with the comfort of knowing that you complained about something, even though you did it to no one in particular. Kind of like bloggers. In fact, if I had another spot, I’d throw bloggers on there as well.

    The whole “not being seen by anyone” thing is sort of worked around by being able to see on the site, the last 100 lists that were made. Of course, half the time, the people don’t fill in all the boxes and many of them are just the defaults, and a lot of the lists are just excuses to throw profanity out there, but sometimes there are some good ones, like “planes without snakes”, the WNBA, Billy Bush, Cut-off shorts, and strangely enough, Charlie Dent.


    Just for good measure. By the by, don’t you hate pants?

    ***
    Three stars for idea and execution. Minus 2 stars for a lack of real purpose, including the usual internet “busying yourself” excuse. I do invite readers to create their own lists and post them for my viewing pleasure, even if it’s not in picture form.

  • “Rewriting History”, or “Pluto no longer a planet and Yogi stops smoking”

    048_PFD530~Society-Dog-Show-1939-Mickey-and-Pluto-Disney-Posters.jpg
    Just when you though I wouldn’t be able to find a picture to go with these two topics…. BAM!

    A few days ago I read that Turner is going back through their catalogue of old Hanna Barbara cartoons to remove all intimations of smoking. First of all, I’m not really sure how they’re going to do this. I understand that if they can take the cops’ guns away in ET and replace them with walkie talkies, they can pretty much do anything, and with 5 color animations they can do it easier I’d assume. But the question isn’t the technical ability. The question is the context of the situations and how they’re going to make them make sense to people. Granted there is a valid point with making sure that kids aren’t starting to smoke because they see Quickdraw McGraw or Snagglepuss doing it. After all, I’m sure the only reason that kids buy Fruity Pebbles is because Fred Flintstone does, right? But should the works of the past be censored because of semi-questionable content? Disney will NEVER let Song of the South see the light of day because of some supposed racial issues with the movie. But how are we supposed to remember what things were like when these cartoons were made, unless we’re able to see them. Being a gatekeeper is one thing, but erasing history is another. And who are all these kids who are watching Hanna Barbara cartoons anyway? It’s not like you can even watch these cartoons unless you have the Boomerang channel which may not even exist anymore. Kids today are more interested in watching fake anime and Pokeymans than anything else. Where are the robots that change into things? Or the magical cats from far off planets? I’m getting away from my point.

    Today they discovered that Pluto isn’t a planet. Once and for all. The thing is, these are planetarians saying this. I would expect these sort of mistakes from a cartographer (the study of uncharted lands), but these people are studying something more important, the whole solar system. What are we all supposed to do? Go back to the science books that we had during that brief period when Pluto wasn’t a planet last time? Actually, knowing my school district, they probably still use those books. Next thing you know, we’re going to be told we never had to wear those stupid glasses to look at an eclipse… like these “cool kids“. Seriously, I could understand the decision if it really meant something. But what’s the point of this change, except to make trouble for anyone who’s ever learned that Pluto is a planet. Whoever was pushing for this is on notice!

    People should really worry about changing things that matter to the masses, or will cause trouble if they’re not changed. In the case of the cartoons, censoring for kids is one thing, but not allowing people to ever see these cartoons the way they were originally made is a disservice to the people who made them in the first place. Kids should listen to their parents and not cartoons anyway.

  • Rockstar: Season 2

    This one may balloon to huge proportions again like the season 2 LOST review. That being said, I’m officially starting it on Friday August 18th… we’ll see how long it takes to finish.


    One of the contestants on the show is named “Storm Large”. The one night after she performed, Tommy Lee said “I’d like to see more of you”, and she suggested an internet search. I did and this is what I got.

    I’m not so much the fan of “reality TV”. Call me a TV snob, but I find the amount of manipulation in the genre to be completely too much. Manipulation of people to do certain things. Manipulation of actual events to make things look a certain way. Manipulation of audience emotions to make us feel empathetic or hateful. Certain people who are even more cynical than I am about such things might say that all of these manipulations are used in any sort of narrative/fiction work, and so therefore I shouldn’t be complaining, because nearly all of my favorite shows are fictional. The difference here is the illusion of reality that exists in the non-fiction genre. Shows like Laguna Beach, Survivor, Big Brother, and yes, even “The Real World”, all have producers influencing actions of characters, the editing of actions to portray people in a certain light, and of course the casting of people to fill certain roles on the show… because without an antagonist, there’s no drama, and without drama, there’s no point. And they manage it by making us believe that these are people without outside influence… as they really are.

    Of course in competition reality shows, usually that antagonist comes in the form of a person who isn’t performing up to the standards set by the other competitors, but miraculously does not get voted off, with a much more solid competitor taking that bottom spot. Then there’s always a big “shock” when a popular contestant gets kicked off (once a year without fail), and somehow the one we all seem to hate stays on for another week, until finally they get shelved and we all rejoice.

    Where am I going with this? I’m still gonna need another paragraph to get there. You see, I always hated American Idol. HATED it. Even when I was forced to live with it at work every single day of the week. That might’ve actually made me hate it more. The next January though, I was among a high concentration of people who wanted to watch the audition episodes. I knew where it was going to go. A slew of bad singers hoping to be the next William Hung were going to come on and be completely oblivious to their lack of talent and then be exploited to sell advertising space. AHH America! What I never realized though, was that these horrible singers were actually selling the remainder of the season. Sprinkled in with the talentless souls are a handful of people who are either gorgeous and good singers, or they’re unattractive but have overcome obstacles in order to be able to sing the way they do. And while you think they’re just telling you more about the person, they’re filling your head with sympathy or lust. And that’s where they hook you. The personalities. American Idol is a personality contest as much, if not more than it is a singing contest, with terribly bland arrangements, stiff contestants who are oftentimes “pitchy”, and don’t really know how to entertain a crowd for the most part. And product placement. Lots of product placement. Of course I fell into the trap, but I thought I was being anti-Idol by rooting for the completely awesome Bo Bice (still the best contestant they’ve ever had on the show). “The Man” still won though, because by being the provider of such “anti-Idol” material, they got me to watch it. CURSE THEM!

    I realized that American Idol was like that terrible contestant who nobody seemed to dislike enough to get kicked off. It’s flashy, attractive and diverse/bland enough for EVERYBODY to like something about it. The problem is that it’s not good. But last year after Idol’s season ended I found a show on CBS that did everything that Idol did, nearly five times better, but nobody really knew about.

    Rockstar: INXS was a talent competition to find a new lead singer for the band INXS, probably unknown to most people my age. The show had incredible production design, better camerawork, better direction, better judges, a much much better results show, a phenomenal house band, better arrangements week after week, and at least six singers that probably could’ve won Idol. In fact, the top six contestants were so uniquely awesome that any one of them could’ve had a successful solo career had people actually watched the show. There was half-hour backstage episode every week that took a look at the personal interactions of the contestants, challenges and sort of rockstar-seminar things, and song selection/arrangement, which was a very interesting supplement, but got moved to VH1 because of bad ratings. Also, the show had Brooke Burke wearing conveniently revealing outfits. And it was all on during the summer, when nothing else is on. What more could you ask for?

    Season 2 definitely has a different feel, and for good reason. The contestants are auditioning for a different band, a new band without any released material, and without a former lead singer. Called Supernova consists of Tommy Lee, former Metallica bassist Jason Newsted, and former Guns N’ Roses guitarist Gilby Clarke, who, like INXS in season one, serve as judge and executioner. I’m going to break this all down in good and bad as compared to last season.

    First the good.
    1. The judges are better than last year. Call me ignorant, but I never knew who INXS was, and I could never tell the band members apart when they were giving their comments to the singers. Not only does Supernova have members that stand out on their own, but are telegenic, and give really good advice much of the time. Of course Tommy Lee is gonna flirt with all the women, and there’s gonna be all sorts of innuendo, but there’s also genuinely constructive criticism.

    2. The shows use of alternative media is staggering. They took the backstage show off the air, and put it where people who really would make the effort to watch it have the ability to watch it… the internet. The show’s website has a plethora of activities and information, including “mix-tape” tracklist of contestants, band members, and the houseband’s favorite songs, which you can then buy from MSN.com’s service. You also can vote for your favorite performer online, as well as by phone. During this week, viewers were actually able to vote which songs contestants would sing, from a list of four per singer.

    3. No INXS songs. Even though it served all of its purposes in season 1, I couldn’t help but be a bit bored by performances of these songs, mostly because I didn’t know them. I understand that this was partially done so I could get to know them, and that people who once liked INXS would probably like them, but I didn’t. Because Supernova doesn’t have any previously recorded songs, the people in the bottom three pick which songs they’re going to sing for survival. I’m not exactly sure at what point they pick their songs or rehearse with the house band, but it always comes off great.

    4. Zayra Alvarez. This woman could easily go under the “Bad” column, but I’m gonna count her as “so bad it’s good”. She’s not bad in a William Hung way though. Zayra is what Bjork would be if she were a Latin music performer. She obviously never stood a chance of becoming the lead singer for this band, yet she somehow managed to escape elimination twice… I think because the band thought she’d make good TV, and they knew they’d kick her off eventually. Watch for yourself here. The best ones are Razorblade, and 8675-309. Trust me when I tell you that you have never seen anything on TV like it. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing is up in the air, but at the very least, it’s incredibly compelling TV.

    5. The job to be won is a much more difficult one. Becoming the new lead singer for INXS is tough, no doubt. But you’ve already been given a blueprint and a catalogue of songs to work with. Here, not only will you be creating your own original sound and direction for the band, but the winner is also going to have to hold his own with these three incredibly charismatic musicians, something that INXS didn’t have. Thus the competition is harder and therefore makes for better TV.

    The Bad
    1. Brooke Burke. I really hate to say it, cause she’s freakin gorgeous, but she’s got no personality this year. Not that she was amazing last year, but she had some life to her. This year, it’s like she forgot how to read over the summer, then started learning again, just in time for the new season. Complete lack of energy, enthusiasm, and sincerity. Come back old Brooke.

    2. “ROCKER”. I hate this word. I hate hate hate hate hate this word. I hate the fact that it supposedly stands for individuality and anti-authority, but has become both a stereotype and a tool of the man. When American Idol took it and used it as their own word…. exclusively using it to refer to two or three people, rather than calling them singers, it got to me. It reminds me of how the wrestler A.J. Styles in TNA has to be referred to at all times as “The Phenomenal” A.J. styles. Or how wrestlers in WWE are ALWAYS referred to as “Superstars” and not wrestlers. Not only is it lumping all the singers into one stereotype, but they’re using the same word over and over again. I swear I heard the word “rocker” used 4 times in the first five minutes last week. Seriously, I know you’re trying to prove yourself as the anti-Idol, but get a damn thesaurus, and make the script sound a little more natural. Looking on the website, “Rockers” actually has a capital “R” because, obviously, it’s a proper noun.

    3. The SAME songs. They have changed it up a bit, but for every “Zombie” by The Cranberries, there’s a “We are the Champions”. How many times must I hear “Creep”, or the four overplayed combined hits of Jefferson Airplane and Janis Joplin. Does Nirvana really deserve to have had eight performances of their songs? And if i have to hear Interstate Love Song, Bring Me to Life, or Cult of Personality one more time, I’m totally going to illegally download the Supernova CD instead of buying it. And I’ll convince all my friends to download it instead of buying it as well. That’ll show them. It’s just like stealing from them, but I deserve it for having to sit through repeats. Please, more songs like “Starman”, “One Headlight”, and “Helter Skelter”.

    4. Tommy Lee acting like a sleazebag. I guess it’s hard for him not to, but come on. Grow up.

    5. Dave hasn’t played guitar yet. Granted, there still four weeks to go I think, but it’s about time we see him show off his guitar chops and see if the singers can keep up.

    6. Enough with the voting info. I understand the need to make it clear to the audience, but it’s way too much to give me the info 15 times in an hourlong show.

    As far as contestants go, I’d say that last years group was stronger, but I can’t really remember anyone other than the top six. We’re still at seven right now, so I’m sure that with two more weeks of showing off and getting better, the top five could probably match last years top five. After all, I wasn’t the biggest fan of last years top two, instead liking 3rd-6th place a lot more. This year’s group is a little more hard-edge with the obligatory tattoos and piercings than last years was and that’s for good reason, because the band and its music is more that style. While Mig had last year’s breakout performance with this song, so far there have been at least two really memorable performances this one and this one, both by Ryan Star. His “smoldering intensity” might just be enough to get him to the finals, and as he’s due to sing an original song this week, we’ll see how far his skill set goes. Even if the top six aren’t better than last year, whoever makes the top three has the potential to surpass the IXS top three. It’s all a matter of whoever has the better single, which, in my opinion is why J.D. Fortune won last year.

    ***½

    What I’ve seen of this year’s Rockstar: Supernova show gets a 3.5 star rating by showing constant improvement, a willingness to be different, and the potential to give the band a really tough choice when it comes to the top three. If only Brooke Burke would be able to stop using the word “Rocker”.

  • The Ubiquitousness of Nic Cage



    I honestly think I’d rather see LUKE Cage than Nic Cage right now.

    Right now Nicolas Cage is everywhere. It’s hard to turn on the TV and not see his long, thin mug. At the moment, he’s got two movies out… The Ant Bully, and World Trade Center, in which he adds a creepy moustache to his physical repertoire. He’s been doing interviews galore, “waxing philosophical” if you will, about the September 11th melodrama, and the merits of “storytelling about history” as opposed to “entertainment”. Not that he doesn’t have a point at all, and I’ve heard mostly good things about the movie, but his pompous attitude is enough to make you wonder what Tom Cruise and Ben Affleck are doing at the moment. But I just gotta say thank God he no longer has the moustache. It’s been replaced though, with this long, straggly hair, that I can’t find the picture of right now but might have to do with one of his next movies, or maybe he’s taken on some work as an old-age Elvis impersonator.

    But in case his grandstanding, pompous interviews for “WTC” weren’t enough, I just started seeing commercials for his NEXT movie, a sure-to-be crappy remake of a terribly over-dramatic British suspense-“horror” movie from the seventies, called The Wicker Man. Now, I’ve seen the original, and I have a feeling that audiences are going to loooooove this movie, because there’s nothing that Americans find scarier than a bunch of pagans dancing around a May-pole with masks on. OOOOOOH. Don’t worry. If you haven’t yet seen the commercial, I’m sure you will soon enough, and over and over again. It will be in movie theatres in about three weeks. By all counts, Nicolas Cage could have three movies out at one time. Who does this guy think he is? Will Ferrell?

    You’d think three movies at once would be enough. It probably isn’t, because I’d be willing to make a bet that when you go see The Wicker Man, you’ll probably see the new trailer for Ghost Rider, Cage’s “been in production for five years” superhero movie about a guy who rides around on a skull-and-bones motorcycle fighting the brooding neighbor from American Beauty. It’s directed by the guy who did Daredevil, and wrote Jack Frost and Big Bully. Okay, so the guy also wrote Grumpy Old Men, and did that Simon Birch movie, but citing them does not suit my needs. Ghost Rider is due in February.

    The point is this: I am sick of seeing and hearing Nicolas Cage. I don’t hate the guy. I do know people that do, but I happen to like Matchstick Men, Adaptation, the first half of Snake Eyes, The Rock, and theoretically Face/Off, Con Air, The Weather Man, and Raising Arizona. Lord of War was alright, but he’s been in his share of bad movies too… really bad movies. The thing is, he can be really grating when you’re over-exposed to him. When he’s all over the place. And it just seems to be getting worse.

    One movie in 2004, two in 2005, three in 2006, four on the slate for 2007, and already four on the slate for 2008. Next up after Ghost Rider, is appropriately titled, Next. After that, Time to Kill, and of course the “obligatory” National Treasure 2… I guess the founding fathers didn’t bury all of their treasure in New York… or they had two treasures. In any case, there goes Washington never telling a lie.

    *½

    The ubiquitousness of Nic Cage gets two stars because I am fed up with seeing him all over the place. It could be worse though, and the movies that Cage is doing aren’t all that terrible. I would much rather see more entertaining and versatile actors appearing in 5 major movies a year.

  • Empty Bookshelf’s First 100 Reviews


    Oh, those kids. Always at it. You guys really shouldn’t’ve.

    So here we are at the first of what may be a few reviews of our first milestone, 100 reviews. Not only is this the first review of this milestone, but of what could be very many milestones. We here at the Bookshelf like the word “milestone“, and don’t believe in Thesauruses. So here we go, our first hundred in a nutshell.

    The first actual review happened way back in October of 2005… remember that time before the Steelers won the superbowl, before “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” movie, before Dick Cheny accidentally shot his friend while hunting, and before Bristol, United Kingdom celebrated the 200th birthday of Isambard Kingdom Brunel (actually April 9) by relighting the Clifton Suspension Bridge?

    Dan’s first review was aimed at complaining about post-game hype surrounding an extremely long baseball game. Of course our readers probably care about boring Astros-Braves baseball games as much as they seemed to care about my terrible review of the dictionary. Even though that picture was good, it was nowhere near the five star quality of this image. I too tried my hand at reviewing food, but it was an utter failure. On the plus side, my review of the letter to the editor is one of my favorites, and my first review actually got eight comments, including this link. The few following that grilled cheese review focused mostly on music, my opinion of “Good Night, and Good Luck”, a particular episode of Trading Spouses, and Dan’s opinion of My opinion of “Good Night, and Good Luck”. Dan also said that the Colbert report wouldn’t last, which seems to have been proven false.

    October seemed to be us finding our footing.
    ***

    November saw Dan’s Cleveland Trifecta, a diatribe against horses, a road that he liked, an episode of “Coach“, and his complaints about how much he aches, now that he’s an old man. I started the month strong with the Beth review, but struggled through the rest of it, with lame reviews like Thursday, a type of tooth”paste” that doesn’t work for me, and an insightful, yet completely unnecessary complaint about my nosebleeds. My FAO Schwarz review kinda made up for them, but the highlight of the month involved Dan and I sparring about how Christmas is coming earlier every year, and something about me being a time-traveling sheep.

    November didn’t see much improvement over October, but the Christmas stuff was entertaining.
    ***½

    December got a bit better, even with a few less reviews. I busted out the old NES games, for a few reviews that I swear are not trying to copy off of XE, another personal favorite, Christmas Cards, Adam’s first review, Dan throwing the hate down on Pitchfork media, and a surprising amount of people commenting on Roger Ebert’s take on video games. The biggest advance in December was the pop-ins, that added some clarity to our parentheses-obsessed-writing.

    December was a highly engaging and entertaining month, even with only nine reviews.
    ****½

    2006 rolled around, and January saw Dan get political, review half of a book, not like warm winters a lot. I only contributed three of ten reviews that month, but all three of them were relatively alright, mostly because “Where In Time is Carmen Sandiego“, and “The Simpsons” after season 9 is so easy to complain about.

    January’s topics fell off a little.
    ***½

    February, while being the shortest month, was also a monster for us, as far as number goes. A whopping twenty-one reviews. To be fair, 17 of them came in our envelope-pushing live superbowl reviews, the biggest stunt pulled in the history of reviewing anything and everything on a five star scale. The only other reviews of any substance were my Gauntlet Review of the Beatles albums, and Dan’s digging up of our one-issue underground high-school newspaper.

    Despite the big stunt, and two good reviews, February was kinda lacking.
    **½

    March just plain sucked. Four reviews total. One by me. Three mega–reviews by Dan.

    ½

    April was slightly better, with another of my top five of my reviews, Legacy of the Wizard. The other four I would give an average of 3 stars to, but since there were only four during the month, that’s going to cancel out the Legacy of the Wizard bonus and take it down a half star.

    **½

    For my money, May was our best month yet. Dan’s contribution was the lengthy three-part TV landscape review. I threw out quality stuff with my Songs for Silverman, and Degree Navigator reviews. The shorter American Dreamz and Da Vinci Code video game reviews were serviceable, but my immense LOST season 2 review tops everything.

    *****

    June fell off a bit. Four reviews total. Split two and two. Mine were based on a ridiculous news story, and anger at other people for coincidentally coming up with the same ideas as me. Dan tried to put everything into perspective by seeing how well the entire history of human ingenuity and artistry stacked up in the interstellar community, and complained a little about how the national geography of roadways isn’t designed to suit his needs.

    **

    July was filled with the (I gotta admit my ignorance as to the relevance of this phrase… and wikipedia does nothing to help) Navel Gazing set. I was had for a few minutes by a Jimmy Kimmel hoax, and I thought the critics were a little too harsh on Shyamalan. Despite the mediocre numbers for the month, I’d give it a 3.5

    ***½

    This gives us a per-month average of 3 stars, which isn’t too shabby.

    In my first ever review, I reviewed the concept of this website. I claimed that we wouldn’t be able to keep it fresh, that we’d run out of ideas, and that we wouldn’t be able to stay somewhat funny at least. I believe my exact quote was “It has the potential to provide hours of entertainment for readers, and shape their lives for years to come. However, the downside is that it could get old real soon, and provide us with nothing but an excuse not to get real jobs.”

    Well, I think we’ve significantly proven wrong every single point that I just brought up. We have 29 categories, 19 subcategories, and even two sub-sub categories. We’re still writing about reasonably different things, and while we may have slacked on the funny in recent months, we still bring the ‘A’ game on occasion. As far as my quote goes, I’d be willing to bet that we’ve provided maybe a few hours of entertainment for a handful of people, which probably did nothing to shape their lives for even the near future. On the upside, it hasn’t gotten old, and we have gotten real-ish jobs.

    For all of these reasons, I’m willing to up our star rating by half a star, over the average rating of 3. I’ve also realized that my method of calculating the rating might not be the best, so I’m gonna throw in another half star for a final rating of 4 stars out of five.

    ****

    And for those of you playing along at home, yes, this technically is the 100th review and so therefore should be included. This review receives 3 stars for not having much to offer in the way of witty musings, and for having a faulty overall rating method, but for packing so many subjects and links into one review.

    ***

  • The Critical To-Do over Lady in the Water


    The cast of the movie Miami Vice hard at work

    If you keep tabs on the movie world, you’re probably aware that right now, two sort of big deal stories are going on between critics and directors. The first one involves Joel Siegel making a big to-do and walking out on a screening of Clerks 2, and then being called out by Kevin Smith on the Opie and Anthony radio show. Interestingly enough, Smith’s going to be filling in for Roger Ebert on the “Ebert and Roeper” show this weekend. The second one is a little more high-profile, mostly because the movie’s director is a little more mainstream.

    M. Night Shyamalan’s new movie “Lady in the Water” was released into the wild this past Friday, and was met with mostly bad reviews. Strike that; terrible reviews. Strike even that: Reviews that not only claimed that the movie was bad, but “a charmless, unscary, fatuous and largely incoherent fairy tale“, or “idiotic, contrived, amateurish or sub-mental… [and] pretentious, paralyzing twaddle” among other things. The movie pretty much received pans across the board, with rottentomatoes counting only 28 “positive” reviews out of 130 total, with nearly all of the major papers/writers, Variety, Entertainment Weekly, and in probably the best-written of all of them, Roger Ebert’s MAMMOTH Mega-Review, completely tearing the movie apart.

    Movies get bad reviews all the time though. Just look at the 15 percent that Little Man got on Rottentomatoes, or the 20 percent that You, Me and Dupree got. The difference in these reviews though is that they’re written about the movies themselves. They’re not out there angrily insulting the Wayanses, or whoever was behind the latest Owen Wilson vehicle.

    With such terribly scorching reviews claiming that Shyamalan has basically declared himself a god, and that this movie is the “biggest ego-trip” ever devoted to celluloid, I was terribly worried about going to see it. But you know what? I enjoyed it. I didn’t take any of it seriously, because I knew that much of it would involve highly elaborate mythology that was quite silly. I didn’t care though. The movie looked good, was well-acted, and paced well for what was written, which by proxy means that it was directed well. Was it written well? That’s a matter of opinion, and usually that opinion is no. I’d say it’s serviceable while watching it, but the more you think about it, the worse it gets. Ignoring the overelaborate mythology for a second, there’s the way most all of the characters are said to have a specific purpose, and I guess that’s true to an extent, if you count being a red-herring, or standing around watching something as purposes. There are a lot of characters and they are diverse, and so in order to get their personas across in such a short time, he uses some stereotypes, which I don’t mind, but seems to be another cause for the death sentence he’s being handed. To me, the worst part of the writing was the obnoxiously expositional way that the “mythology” was told to the main character and how easily he and the rest of the people in the apartment complex believe it. Yes there are flaws, but while you’re watching it, it’s for the most part an enjoyable film. I’d give it two and a half stars, out of five.

    It seems though that the only person who really shares my sentiment is the guy from the Boston Globe. Everyone else seems to be caught up in this M. Night-hating party that’s all the trend. It’s one thing to criticize the movie, but they’re taking aim straight at him for being a complete egomaniac who won’t listen to other people’s ideas and who presents himself as a savior. What’s their basis for these accusations?

    Well, first of all, there’s this book that some guy wrote about why Touchstone Pictures (read:Disney) didn’t want to make this movie unless changes were made. Supposedly he refused to make the changes and they walked away, leading him to go to Warner, where they let him have free reign. Secondly, he likes to cast himself in his movies. That’s not a secret. People who thought he was full of it for casting himself in the role he had in Signs will probably be even angrier at this role. It’s not the size of the role that seems to be bothering critics though; it’s the importance of it. He’s cast himself as the person whom the Lady has come to see, whom she’s come to inspire to write a great piece of literature that will cause a great change in the world. Critics have seen this as the ultimate sign of messianic aspirations.

    What angers them the most though is the idea that he had the guts to throw in a character who’s a movie critic. He’s cold and unfeeling, snooty, likes to talk about annoying movie conventions, and (this isn’t much of a spoiler because it’s been talked about and the character isn’t important anyway) he dies.

    My take on the whole thing is “Why should I care about this book?”. This goes for both the people who put it out, and the reviewers who care to bring it up in every review. They see the book as being a publicity stunt for the movie, and not the possibility that the book people might want to put it out when the movie comes out as a publicity stunt FOR THE BOOK. Even if it was the case, I don’t see why these movie critics chose to review him instead of his film. When “War of the Worlds” came out, critics didn’t say anything about Tom Cruise’s shenanigans. In fact, they all liked the movie, even though the story was terrible and had more plotholes than both Lady in the Water and The Village combined.

    As far as casting himself goes, I don’t mind. I find his acting completely fine for the roles he’s cast himself in. He’s usually cast himself in inconsequential parts, and in his most emotional role in Signs, he was perfectly serious and brooding. His delivery seemed natural and all. In this movie, I understand the reasons why they’d think that he was full of himself for putting himself in the role that he was in. But he was perfectly capable in the part. When he wrote it, he knew that he was going to be playing a fictional version of himself, or maybe how he seems himself. But criticizing him for doing this is like complaining about Eminem in 8 Mile, or Woody Allen in that movie with “Humphrey Bogart”. Acting-wise they could do a lot worse, and any no-name actor would’ve been just as good.

    As far as the last issue, I actually agree with the critics. The character is useless in serving the story, except to provide some “wink wink”-type moments meant to criticize both the lack of originality in movies, and the pretentiousness of movie critics. At the same time however, the criticisms that the character has of movies seem to all appear in the film. Examples include characters talking aloud to themselves (ironically, this is done by the critic himself, when confronted with an angry creature), “seemingly unimportant” characters actually being “important“, and the climax taking place in a rain storm. He’s simultaneously written himself into a corner AND been brilliant about it. It’s as if halfway through it he realized that plot elements were too convenient, and so he needed a way to say “I know that that these things are too cliche”. While I understand the character’s “purpose” in the story, it would’ve been better off had he decided to either fix the story issues, or get take the character out entirely. The critic is basically the lazy way out.

    I guess my thought about the whole thing is that with such bad reviews, I figured I’d be squirming at how terrible it was, or want to walk out on it, or rip my ticket up out of anger. I didn’t, and I think that for critics to go this ballistic is unnecessary, especially attacking the director, and not the movie itself.

    For the amount of complaining that everyone does about how there is nothing new and unique that ever gets a big release, or all the gratingly bad horror movies, or Wayans Brothers projects that keep coming out, M. Night is ALWAYS putting out something different and unique. People should at least give him credit for attempting something like this, even if there were majorly unresolved story issues.

    *½

    The critics’ response to Lady in The Water gets one and a half stars for having a few legitimate issues with the movie to complain about, but instead opting to attack the director for off-screen dealings and the role he’s cast himself in, never mind about whether he was a capable actor in the role. I think that critics should spend more of their time vocally ripping apart terrible movies instead of mediocre ones.

  • Ken Jenning’s Letter to Jeopardy


    Aren’t they the happy couple?

    I saw a link to this on the interweb, and I figured I’d pass it along and thinly disguise it as a review. Ken Jennings has written a letter to Jeopardy offering suggestions on how to update the show. It’s Hi-Larious. I’m not joking. We’re talking “Daily Show“-funny. I understand that some of it will only be understood by people who watch the show, but still, it’s a great read. I especially love the part about the Clue Crew. I wonder if the rest of his blog is this good.

    *****
    Five stars.

  • The Last 40 Minutes of that Jimmy Kimmel Repeat that was on Last Week

    Update… I found the entire Kevin Spacey Charlie Rose show that I mention later in the article. Thank goodness for Google Video


    Not even the Emerald Rake of Jimmy’s hot, Mexican gardener Phillippe Rogriguez could save him from the horrific fake snake attack!

    I was flipping through the channels last night after watching the replay of the “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” episodes that were on, and I happened to somehow, get stuck on the Jimmy Kimmel Show. I’ve only watched the show a few times; once cause they were going to have a fictional character from the LOST universe on, someone that isn’t on the series, nor ever mentioned, save for the peripheral websites that are part of the LOST story machine, and I wanted to see how they were going to pull it off. I also think the segments where they show TV clips but bleep out words to make things sound dirty is clever and entertaining.

    What kept me watching, though, was the fact that they had an animal trainer on the show. Having an animal guy on is usually a sign that they’re hard-up for guests, but these segments are always incredibly entertaining, especially Jack Hanna when he’s on Letterman, or on the old Tonight Show. This is mostly because they bring on exotic animals and kinda let them roam around, and you can see all the madcap antics that they get into, and the host usually gets all flustered. The thing is, they’re usually relegated to the middle of show, to bridge the gap between the top guest and the musical act, and in this case the animal guy was the first guest. I figured that they must’ve been really strapped for celebs because it’s the middle of summer, and it’s the Jimmy Kimmel show, so I didn’t think much of it.

    So this guy brings out some vulture of some sort and he’s showing off, there was probably another animal in there somewhere but I got up to do something or another. Next thing I know, they’re bringing out this huge crate with a blanket over it, and there’s a guy who has one of those long sticks with the ring on it that dog catchers use on TV shows to catch dogs…. kinda looks like that women’s hair tool they used to advertise called the topsy-twirl or something. Anyway, they take the top off, and there is this ENORMOUS snake in it. I have no idea why they’d ever take the top off, even if they had it around the collar thing, because it was freakin pissed off. It was moving around in attack mode, and it started letting out this loud rattling noise. You and I know that when a snake does that, you back away and probably run, because it’s just like MR. T saying “Don’t mess with me, FOO”, and giving you that glare; you want to have nothing to do with it. I guess Jimmy Kimmel, though, doesn’t know, because he moved closer to the snake, but still behind his desk, and said “what does that sound mean?”, and as he was asking it, the snake, as fast as lightning, springs at him and bites his hand. There’s a whole lot of cursing, and they bring out the trained EMT crew. The audience doesn’t know what to think. Everyone’s treating this totally seriously, and I’m thinking that at any minute they could show that this whole thing is a joke. But they bring out the stretcher, put Kimmel on it, and give him an oxygen mask, and wheel him out to the ambulance. The whole time he’s cursing and pissed off, and everyone is genuinely concerned, especially the audience. The cameras are shooting in a plausible manner, with what would be a wireless steadycam operator following him out, and they fade to black as the segment ends. You can watch the video here

    And I’m sitting there wondering whether what I saw was real, or some Andy Kaufman-esque joke. Completely stunned. When they come back from break, it’s obvious that this new section has been planned because of the way the camera is cutting means it would’ve been pre-taped and edited together later, his sweat from the fever is terribly fake looking, and not only has the band followed him to the room, but they also brought their instruments for some reason. Yes, that’s right; Jimmy’s going to do the rest of the show from his hospital bed. In fact, his first guest is some supporting role on Grey’s Anatomy, and is dressed in full doctor scrubs, and the audience seems to have re-appeared once into the conversation, and they’re laughing. Jimmy and the guy have a terrible interview, where they spend the entire thing talking about how he went to Hawaii and a Don Ho concert, and then finish with him cattle-roping the Mexican guy that Kimmel keeps around for laughs.

    The next guest also is from Grey’s Anatomy, and I realize that this must’ve been after the season finale. They have an even worse interview which causes me to leave the room, but leave the sound up in case something interesting does happen. And it sort of does. You see, “hidden” the whole time via hospital curtain is Jimmy’s roommate, and coincidentally, the musical guest, Ben Lee, an Australian guy who’s got some fun songs and has been on tour and put out an EP with Ben Folds. Somehow I’ve actually managed to see him twice, once opening for Folds, and once opening for a They Might Be Giants free show at Cornell. Anyway, he plays his semi-hit, “Catch my Disease” (HA! It’s a hospital. Get it?!”) from his hospital bed, and then they reveal that it’s on the Grey’s Anatomy soundtrack which you can buy at Jimmykimmel.com or some similar website.

    I turned it off after that, but according to the wikipedia page, the snake actually talked over the end credits. No clue what it said. There’s no doubt in my mind that the whole thing was planned, but how’d they know that the snake would lunge at him and not actually bite him… or did it actually bite him and they gave him the medical attention he needed? I highly doubt the second one for insurance reasons.

    No doubt that this was one of the most interesting and ambitious ideas for a late-night talk show to try to pull off, at least that I’ve seen, and it seems along the lines of what I eventually wanted to do with my own college TV show back in the day, but never did. The problem was that everything after that animal/snake bite segment was incredibly awkward, unfunny, or boring…. with the exception of the musical performance, and that just seemed kinda silly. The fact that there were two distinct tones to the snake-bite segments completely threw everything off, and for as captivated as I was by the actual bite bit, the hospital bit was completely uncomfortable before the actual interviews. They were trying to make wisecracks while keeping the “this is completely serious… other than the soap-opera-style camerawork/editing” tone. Not only that, but the “jokes” were completely morbid, with one of the band guys playing the funeral song as he was walking out. That there was no audience laughter also made it weird. It’s funny how you’re annoyed by the laughing until it’s gone, and then you realize that they need it to hide how bad the show really is. I think they were just a little confused as to what direction they wanted to go with the bit and decided to split the difference, to little success.

    They got the left-overs of the guests from Grey’s Anatomy too, no doubt, as all the other big stars were probably doing Leno…. maybe Letterman if they were in NY. And I understand the reasoning behind not talking exclusively about the show, because that would alienate viewers like me who could care less about Grey’s Anatomy. Here’s the thing though, if you’re gonna talk about something other than the show, at least make it interesting. Tell a funny story, a humorous observation about something. If you’re not funny, I’m sure you might have something interesting to tell about something that happened behind the scenes that people who don’t care about the show might still find interesting. If all else fails, talk about your past experiences, but make it stuff that viewers might want to listen to. I don’t care to hear a few words about how you learned how to do cattle roping, but it was more interesting than a story about how you saw Don Ho perform, or how you were on an episode of the Cosby show but have no real stories about it. If you’re gonna talk about cattle-roping tell me how you got interested in it. I think that spending five minutes on one topic is a lot more interesting than one minute each on five different topics.

    Not to get off the subject too much, but the other night, I sat and watched Charlie Rose on PBS do an hour-long interview with Kevin Spacey, and was captivated the entire time by stories about where he came from and where he’s going, relationships he’s had with other celebrities, and an extensive section on the revitalizing of a theatre in London, that he’s now the artistic director of. They spent all of 4 minutes probably, talking about Superman. Now I really could care less about British theatre, and would love to hear more about Superman, but because of how much detail and how serious the conversation was, I was glued to the screen, listening about how the British theatre was different and something called a Panto, and how it’s the top money-making theatre style in England. Now, I’m not saying that Jimmy Kimmel is anywhere near the same league as Charlie Rose, or that “Random Doctor A” is as good of a storyteller as Kevin Spacey, but just pick one interesting topic and stay with it, that’s all. Heck, I saw Topher Grace spend an entire interview once talking about how great the movie “Wild Wild West” was when he wasn’t even in it and instead was supposed to be talking about some other movie he was in. It was fantastic, just because of how enthusiastic he was, and how much time they devoted to it. It wasn’t like a laundry list of you did this and this and this.

    Something that also bugs me about Jimmy Kimmel Live in general is just how over-the-top this show will go to get the audience from ABC’s primetime shows. Sure, Letterman has the Survivor-types on, and Leno has probably had the Will and Grace and Friends casts on, but this is different. This is a show that went to the site of the Superbowl (Detroit) to do their show from, after the game was over (also shown on ABC). This is the show that sent Kimmel to the set of LOST during the first season to shoot a terribly unfunny segment that was actually included on the LOST Season 1 DVD. This is the show that did an entire Academy Awards show to pull from that show’s audience (also shown on ABC). This week is all shameless promotion for ESPN’s ESPY awards show. I’m reminded of the UPN 9 news teases for the nights that WWE Smackdown was on. I’ve never seen so many “news” stories that involved wrestling, backyard violence, or half-naked women, all of which, of course were held until the end of the show to make us keep watching.

    But back to the topic at hand. The show really succeeded at pulling one over on us, or at least making us consider that it actually could be real. I’m still wondering how they managed to fake the snake bite part, knowing that the snake would lunge at him but not bite him, or if it actually did bite him and he just got the medical attention.

    The problem was that they held on to the idea of “putting one over on us” for just a bit too long, or at least in the wrong way, resulting in a terribly confusing and awkward stretch of about five minutes. I’m sure that the interviews were no worse than other interviews on the show, especially the ones with really low-grade celebs. The interviews are also about ten times better than Last Call with Carson Daly, a show that is so uncomfortable to watch, that it makes Kimmel look like a regular Johnny Carson, so I guess it’s not the worst thing I could be watching.

    Overall, I admire the idea, and I can’t wait to see how they top it when “Snakes on a Plane” opens.

    **

    Two stars for making the snake bite segment so convincing that part of me actually believed that it could be real, and for the ingenuity to link together the animal trainer, the Grey’s Anatomy guests, and the musical act in such a creative fashion. Also I enjoyed listening to the performance at the end of the show, even if it was a bit silly. Points off for two incredibly boring interviews that actually made me get up and leave, for not making me laugh once, even on the inside, and for making the bit with him being taken into the hospital so strange and awkward, and nothing at all like the rest of the show.

    Just a P.S. Now that I watched it again on youtube, I realize that it could very well not have even been a real snake, and that would be the reason that the guy had it on the stick. That guy with the stick could’ve been moving it. You tricky people you.

  • Other People Stealing Your Ideas Without Ever Having Met You or Knowing that They Stole Something

    Longest. Title. Ever.


    If only they could save the baseball team from utter annihilation.

    I’ll try not to make this like Dan’s “Half-Inventing Stuff” review, even though there are some thematic similarities.

    What spawned the idea for this topic was actually two events hat occurred in the past month, both of which involved people doing things that I had already done. Chances are that both of these events might turn into “Nate Stories”, and since I don’t believe in editing for content, other than adding to it, just be warned.

    So I got a disturbing call a few weeks ago. Nothing’s wrong, and it wasn’t sickening or anything… just upsetting. You see, my sister was at a Philadelphia Phillies baseball game. The fans (the few, the proud), the ones who don’t like to throw batteries that is, (although maybe if J.D. Drew was around), have started a sort of tradition over the past ten years. Groups of people would come and buy seats in the wide expanse of the Veteran’s stadium 700 level… that’s right, back when stadiums had 700 levels. Up there they found the space to spread out, dress up in costume, and display large signs usually featuring the group’s made-up name. This might sound a trifle confusing, so I’ll give you the most prominent example, and probably the one that started the fad. Randy Wolf had just made his MLB debut and a group of fans were looking to come out to support the first of the crop of minor league pitchers that would eventually be considered the saviors of the franchise. (Over the next 6 years, through the ranks came Brandon Duckworth, Brett Meyers, Gavin Floyd, and Cole Hammels. This was supposed to be the rotation of the future, but Duckworth was a minor bust and was shipped off to Texas or somewhere, never to be heard from again…. update, he just started pitching for the Royals I believe and didn’t do so well, and Floyd is back in the minors.) A group of fans looking to show support for Wolf showed up wearing wolf masks, with a huge sign that said “Wolf Pack“. Whenever Randy struck someone out they all did a dance in unison that kinda looks like the lawnmower-starting dance. Eventually other groups began to crop up. What else was there to keep you interested in the upper deck and following a losing team? There was the Duck Pond (for Duckworth), the (Vincente) Padilla Flotilla (a group of guys in sombreros with oars pretending they were in a boat. Whenever he got a strikeout they began to row), once there was (Pat) “Burrell’s Girls”, and the most recent high profile incident was two competing groups out to support backup catcher Sal Fasano… yes a backup catcher. The groups paint their faces to match his trademark moustache and call themselves, “Sal’s Pals” and “Fasano’s Pizanos”. Incidentally, Sal was apparently so overwhelmed with the cheering section that he once ordered them all pizzas.

    What this has to do with anything is this: When my sister called me on the phone, she told me of the newest group of supporters, “Flash’s Friends” or something like that. The Flash that they speak of is the new closing pitcher, Tom Gordon. How do they get the Flash from that? Well, he’s nicknamed from the 1930s sci-fi serial character, Flash Gordon. But these “friends” didn’t realize that, or I guess they thought that nobody would get it if they dressed up like Flash Gordon and his friends, because they decided to take it one step even further and dress up like the superhero The Flash, and his other superhero friends. It would be enough for me to say it was stupid that there are two jumps in logic to get from The Flash to Tom Gordon, and that people who aren’t from the area probably wouldn’t understand…. but my major problem with this is that WE DID IT THREE YEARS AGO. There is video and photographic evidence (see above) that not only did we use this gimmick first, but we used it better.

    The people in this group had really shoddy costumes, most of them partially storebought, and there were people in the group that weren’t even superheroes. So they did the costume thing poorly, the sign wasn’t as good as ours was… and they didn’t dance after strikeouts, but the biggest problem was that they didn’t think their plan through enough. In order for the pitcher that they were supporting to actually be involved in the game, the team would have to be winning by less than four runs going into the final inning… lucky for them it happened and he came in, but by that time, most of them were tired of standing around in their costumes, and were partly disrobed by the ninth inning anyway. When they finally got on TV, they just like a bunch of half dressed-hooligans, not following through with the bit.

    So all of these things led me to being not as affected by it. I suppose that my main issue with this scenario is how it made us look in hindsight. Not only was that experience very important for us, sort of serving as the capstone achievement of my high school friends buffoonery, but we were proud of both the fact that we were the first ones that we had ever heard of doing this, and the fact that we actually followed through with one of our hair-brained ideas… and were mentioned by the TV coverage as the “Fans of the Game”. This gimmick infringement would’ve definitely sullied the memory and sapped all of the originality from it.

    As far as the second incident goes, a little more than a year ago, my friend Adam and I completed our senior video project. Capping off this twenty-six minute opus, was a perfect final sequence/shot, that when seen for the first time with the song that Adam had found, literally gave me chills (literally!), and made me want to watch it over and over and over. I knew that if nothing else in the entire thing worked, that this last part would win people over. You can see for yourself here… it’ll probably give you a better idea as to what I’m talking about. The song is by a group called Thirteen Senses, titled “Into the Fire”.

    Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that song coming out of my TV a few months later, in the long-form ads for FX’s second season of “Rescue Me“, a show about firefighters. The song fit even more perfectly in that than it did in our project, mostly because of the lyrical contents talking about walking into the fire and such. Also, the ad came and went without much fanfare, and I’m sure that it won’t be remembered in years to come.

    Just a few weeks ago, a friend of mine was asking me for names of songs that she might like, and I passed along this title. Little did I know that hours later I would hear the song used in a montage of Jim Carrey’s dramatic moments at the MTV movie awards, a show seen by millions of people per year, and aired about the same amount of times. I hastened to the internets to email my friend to say “THEY STOLE MY SONG!!!1!” The next day, I decided it wasn’t a big deal, and pretty much let the whole thing go…. until about two days after that. I came home late and decided to catch a replay of the season premiere of The 4400, a summer show on USA that that somehow was the most watched basic cable series of last year (or at least last summer?). It was two hours long and started at midnight, and by the end was half asleep, when suddenly, I hear familiar piano chords. Chords I’ve heard hundreds of times. I couldn’t believe it! They were pulling out the end-of-the-episode-montage, and using the song! I was impressed that they actually used the entire thing, and put it to good use, but it was probably the absolute strangest timing ever. Recently, I also found out that the song was used in the pilot of “Grey’s Anatomy”, a show that I’ve never watched, and probably never will, but is watched by millions and millions nonetheless. I guess I should just be glad they didn’t use it on American Idol

    It reminds me of how way back in 2002-2003, the new Coldplay CD came out, and the WWE/F was the first that I had seen to use a little-known song called “Clocks” to do an absolutely great film/video montage about one of their wrestlers, and my olympic hero, Kurt Angle getting a very dangerous neck surgery and training to come back for the fans and for his family. Soon enough, the song was EVERYWHERE, including the trailer for the movie Peter Pan and a sound-alike version for the New Jersey travel bureau, mostly because they couldn’t afford the rights due to how much they suck. When I showed people the video, all impact was lost because the audience had no idea when this thing was made. The use of the song went from “completely innovative and perfect”, to “completely trite, cliche, and therefore worthless”. The entire impression of how great the video was tarnished by the fact that other people used the song after them, rendering it completely useless as any sort of art or entertainment. By that time people had gotten so sick of the song that they probably wouldn’t even watch it just because of the musical selection alone.

    What I’m getting at is that now I’m put in this position. This song stands poised to be the next “Clocks”, used in every video that people can put it in, make its way to the radio and soon enough, be so engrained into our public consciousness that you wouldn’t ever want to hear it again. In the event that I would show this video to someone in the future, the striking effect of the song is gone, because it devolves from “That’s a cool song that I’ve never heard, but fits great”, to “I see you jumped on the bandwagon too; way to be original, lame-o“. Without having done anything, the value of the piece is decreased tenfold. Sure, you can say “We made this before the song got popular, scuzz-wad”, but that’s like telling a jury to forget a court outburst that’s been stricken from the record via objection. You’ve already seen it, so there’s no letting it go.

    You could make the case that every person/group that uses the song in the same manner from now on is just copying off of a set television precedent and therefore should be subject to the same criticisms that I’d get, but it doesn’t matter to them. The song is nowhere near its peak popularity, nor even into the public’s SUB-conscious, and neither do the companies/groups care. If they continue to use the song, what is people saying “that’s already been done before, dill-wad” going to do to them? They’re in a position where if it fits, go for it, because it’s not like the CSI audience is really going to stop watching or feel less inclined to see a Jerry Bruckheimer movie/show.

    The people who would be watching my video would be people whom I know, or maybe people I just recently met, but in any case, probably people I want to impress, or at least show that I didn’t go to Hollywood Upstairs Medical College. Having the most impressive part of the video be undermined because of a collective overexposure to the song is something that I would rather do without.

    Of course, I could be totally overreacting, and in two years the song could be less remembered than Fastball‘s second single. I also suppose that I could always go back and change what song we used, but that would be like re-doing the end of “Return of the Jedi”, a whole lot of work for something that wouldn’t serve much of a purpose.

    How does this relate back to the baseball game? Well, if these people/groups can use this song without knowing that I’d used it previously, and if these Flash’s friends can go dressed like superheroes, what’s to say that our attempt at 30 seconds of JumboTron fame hadn’t been tried before, and done better? What if we were inadvertently copying off of some other group even though we didn’t know them, and had never seen what they’d done? That would just ruin the whole event for us, and the uniqueness of it.

    Personally, I think we should fight these so-called “Flash’s Friends”, because three Frankensteins and a Spongebob are no match for teh Hulk, Superman, Flash, Wolverine, ummm.. Thor, and some girl with an exposed midriff.

    Other People Stealing Your Ideas Without Ever Having Met You or Knowing that They Stole Something gets zero stars. It is something that will happen over and over in life, and it’s best just not to notice it. The problem is that it gets to you when you no longer can honestly take credit for an idea you had and did, even though there’s evidence you did it before the other person. Rather than feeling good about yourself that somebody else in a higher position than you thought of the same thing that you did, and feeling good about the fact that you’re “on the level”, you tend to feel like you’ve been devalued. The trick is to keep going and come up with something even newer because then you can just show that off to other people instead. Other People Stealing Your Ideas Without Ever Having Met You or Knowing that They Stole Something also makes us look inside of ourselves to determine whether we at any point were guilty of this, and if so make the necessary reparations to those we offended. I encourage all of you to think about this and what it means to you. Until then, Goodnight, and Good Luck, and take care of yourselves, and each other. I’m Andy Rooney… Jon?

  • the voice of mona lisa


    Looks like somebody beat me to it. I bet if she could talk though, she’d be telling us all about her favorite soda.

    So recently I read this article. I understand that you all might be in a hurry, but you might want to at least peruse the article, because the entire review is sort of based on it.

    Or…. I’ll summarize. It seems that some forensic scientist in Japan, for whatever reason, was commissioned to determine what the person who was the model for the Mona Lisa would’ve sounded like.

    Probably having spent at the very least hundreds of thousands of dollars to do this, apparently for no other reason than to say “We did it! BOOYA JIM!” even though nobody really ever questioned their ability, this seems like the most colossal waste of time since I sat through “Big Bully“.

    Maybe it was all a publicity stunt for the Da Vinci Code, considering the article doesn’t actually say who approached the Japanese, or maybe it just was a pull for the scientists to win another “Ig Nobel” Prize, awarded for research that “makes people laugh, then think”. Just the idea of an award like that sort of makes me a little upset. I bet by looking at the list of past winners, you’d be able to see some of the biggest misuses of resources possible. I mean, just look at what these Japanese people won the award for doing a previous time:”for promoting harmony between species by inventing the Bow-Lingual, a dog-to-human interpretation device”.

    I really don’t know what’s worse, that somebody actually spent money on a scientific process to create something that can never be proven or disproven, or that the people in charge actually thought that the public would care enough for it to not be a waste of time. Granted, I don’t know much about modern Japanese culture, and I’m not a renaissance art enthusiast, and those are probably the people that it would be aimed at the most (hence the reason why nobody here in the U.S. has made a huge deal over this “breakthrough”), so I could just be missing the boat. I suppose there is the whole “science for the sake of science” thing, like trying to determine if there ever was life on Mars, but there are some things that are more weighty than others.

    To me though, something like this has little to no easily accessible evidence to prove that it’s actually correct. Sure, these scienticians can make all sorts of claims about how big her vocal chords were and what her voice-related anatomy was like, but there are so many “X-Factors” at work here, like “what if she was deaf?”, or “what if she smoked?” (although that’s probably highly unlikely, but some sort of outside force on her voice could be possible), “what if she was from some other area not in Italy and was visiting, and didn’t even speak Italian?” Or, here’s one to make you think, “what if she wasn’t a real person at all?” Maybe I’m just a cynic, but I don’t see the point in hypothesizing about a topic that is so insignificant to our everyday lives and can’t be shown to be fact anyway. That’s like saying that if Bagwell or Biggio hadn’t hit that game-winning ninth inning home run against the Phillies last year that Philadelphia would’ve made the playoffs, and gone to the World Series, or if Roethlisberger hadn’t made that tackle at the end of the Indy-Pittsburgh game last year that Manning would be wearing a Superbowl ring right now. These events are in the past, and, at least with the first one, highly unlikely. In addition, it’s all speculation and therefore useless to those of us but the dreamers. When zombies roam the earth and Mona Lisa wakes up from her grave, maybe then we’ll get a better insight into how she speaks, but even then, she’ll probably only moan, “ZOMMMMBIIEEEE“, probably in her mystery Italian dialect, and we’ll still be as clueless as we are now.

    But really, who am I to argue with the people who mastered the canine language?

    *

    I’ll give them one whole star for the amount of work that they put in, but I view it as a wasted effort, because there’ll never be any way to prove that they’re right, and nobody will ever care.