Adieu, Milton Cougar

The cougar they shot in Chicago was the same one seen in Wisconsin last month. Story here.

AIRWOLF!!!

I'm not generally a big fan of spoken word poetry, unless it's a poem about Airwolf.

My New Favorite Photographer Who Photographed People Mowing Underwater

I really, really, really love these underwater photographs featured in the new issue of Smithsonian.

Good Eats

The farmer's market started up here today. Honestly, I've never gone all that often, but I feel like I should. They have a lot of good stuff.

Some of the more interesting items purchased today, all of which got worked into my lunch: goat milk cheddar cheese (very strong), ostrich burgers (delicious), hazelnut honey (light and pleasant), spicy venison jerky (awesome), sunchokes (interesting . . . they told me these tasted like a cross between a potato and watercress, and they do! I'd never even heard of these little root veggies before.).

"The coach . . . threw in the towel to spare his pitcher’s arm with his team losing 66-0"

Um, wow. That's a pretty tough kid, though, just to be able to stay in there through all of that. Also, this kind of reminds me of some of the worst of our little league games when I was a kid, which probably would have gotten this bad if we didn't have the ten-run rule.

Old-timey Photograph of the Day

Will the person who invented photography take one step forward, please? Not so fast, Henry Fox Talbot. Cool story about an early photograph, from yesterday's NYT.

Screaming for Excedrin

Comb-Jellies: We're Number One, We're Number One!

Looks like scientists found a new candidate for the first animal on earth. Neat!

Sid Laverents: Super Cool 100-year-old Dude

Sid Laverents is a former vaudevillian who started making movies in the late 1950s. I saw a series of his experimental shorts at the Wisconsin Film Festival last weekend, and boy oh boy were they fun! A real hoot. You can actually order 'em right from the man himself. I think I'm gonna do just that fairly soon.

Go Steve!

Stephen King points out that attempts to ban violent video games are asinine. He is correct.

THE INTERNETS ARE GONNA ASPLODE!!!

Oh no!

Planet of the Gators

So, if we aren't overrun by genius fish, I'm guessing the WALKING ALLIGATORS will be the end of human civilization.

That's a Wrap

I saw a couple more movies at the Wisconsin Film Festival today. Urban Explorers: Into the Darkness is a new movie by Melody Gilbert, who directed Whole, which was one of my favorite movies at the festival a couple years ago. This one's also about strange and interesting people. Here, she focuses on people who explore abandoned buildings and subway tunnels and sewers and the like; I really liked everybody featured in the movie. You can find out more about the fascinating hobby/lifestyle of urban exploration here or here or here. The movie was good, by the way.

Flight of the Red Balloon was as lovely as I expected it would be. A lot of it was shot in reflections on store windows and reminded me vaguely of certain photorealist paintings I've seen, and there was a lot of playful fun going on in the backgrounds (a lamp that looks like a red balloon, shapes and patterns created by streetlights and signs, etc.).

I was supposed to see The Singing Revolution, too, but I screwed up and walked all the way to the wrong end of campus thinking it was at the Union Theater when it was actually at the Orpheum, so I ended up skipping it.

The End.

Ouisconsin Festival du film

More film festival movies on Saturday:

Unfortunately, the Union Theater at the Wisconsin Union isn't the best venue for film screenings. Sound problems hampered my enjoyment of The Pixar Story and You, the Living (a shame since both were decent movies) and one of the projectors broke during Planet of the Apes, which was a real tragedy cause the print looked nice.

(Speaking of which, right after I got home I learned some unfortunate news.)

The program of Sid Laverents shorts was fantastic, and I also enjoyed the epic Mongol quite a bit.

"Lets Play Two"

I'm a baseball fan and a Cubs fan, and I knew about the statue going up at Wrigley, but I hadn't heard about this wacky controversy until today. I'm glad they fixed it, though. Misplaced apostrophes drive me nuts! I'm looking at you, CNN news crawl.

Language Log gets into it.

Deadspin makes light of it.

Chicago Sun Times explains how long it took to chisel in the apostrophe.

Steal This Building

Well, this is ironic, dontcha think?

Movie Movie

I saw two movies at the Wisconsin Film Festival yesterday. Both were very good, but not quite as much fun as the movies I saw on Thursday.

First up was Bon Cop, Bad Cop, a Canadian buddy cop movie about a Mel Gibsonish loose cannon from Quebec and an uptight Ontarian who get partnered up after some very funny hijinks at a really messy crime scene. I liked it. I was expecting something a bit more parodic, more in the vein of Hot Fuzz, and this did have moments like that (and the villain's motivations and actions are similar in a weird way), but a lot of it played like a real buddy cop movie a la Beverly Hills Cop or Bad Boys II. The violent sight gags are worth it, though, cause they're really funny.

ADDED: the more I think about it, the more I think this actually was a lot like Hot Fuzz, just not quite as funny . . .

I also saw Timecrimes, which was a good head-scratcher. I'm still not sure if it solved all its paradoxes or not, but I suppose that's the way with time travel stories.

I AM IRON MAN!

Nifty article on the origins of the Black Sabbath song and its connection to the comics.

Good Movies Are Good For the Soul

I saw two films at the Wisconsin Film Festival last night. Both were excellent.

My Winnipeg, Guy Maddin's experimental documentary about his hometown, was utterly amazing. It was funny, weird, gorgeous, and very nearly perfect.

OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies was clever and a lot of fun. Like Down with Love or Far From Heaven, the cinematography, set design, and costumes were designed to give the feel of a time period through the movies of that time period, and they really captured the look of James Bond-ish thrillers. And Jean Dujardin was an eye-opener as the central spy, OSS 117 (sort of a cross between Austin Powers, James Bond, and Inspector Clouseau). He's an amazing comic actor.

Wisconsin Film Festival

The Wisconsin Film Festival starts today. I'm going to a few movies. It's their 10th anniverary this year. To celebrate this momentous occasion, here are some of my favorites from years past.

Whole: an amazing documentary about people who want to have their limbs removed.

The Big Red One: the reconstruction of one of Sam Fuller's great movies and one of the best war movies ever made.

Young Frankenstein: the classic Mel Brooks comedy, shown at the beautiful Capitol Theatre last year. This was just a great movie-going experience. I wish they were using this theater as a venue again this year, but for some reason they're not.

Blackboards: a wonderful, sad film from Iran.

Slasher: John Landis's amusing documentary about used car salesmen.

Cure: a truly excellent Japanese horror film.

Wheel of Time: Werner Herzog's documentary about Tibetan Buddhists. Beautiful.

Story of the Weeping Camel: one of the sweetest, most poignant movies I've seen.

The Life of Reilly: a surprisingly (?) awesome movie about Charles Nelson Reilly.

The Milk Can: one of the funniest movies I've seen in recent years.

Martin & Orloff: a very funny comedy from the Upright Citizens Brigade.

Meet the Parents: the original that the Ben Stiller movie was based on. Much darker and weirder. With Emo Philips, who is weirder than this guy, but maybe not as good an actor.

Youtube Frenzy

Here are a bunch of mostly unconnected youtube videos I just like. They're good, in different ways.

Mike Gravel does "Helter Skelter." Cause that song isn't associated with crazy people at all.


This was his last little number. It's awesome.


Excellent April Fool's gag from Terry Jones and co.


The greatest ad ever made: Hungarian sausages!



And this is sublime and beautiful.

Hats Off to This Guy

Very believable April Fool's joke here. Bravo! I read this on a political site, went to the link, and didn't figure out it was a joke until I went to one of his links. The best part is the $10 fee for microwave use. It's that little hard-to-believe touch that paradoxically makes it that much more believable.

Tiny Projector in My Ha-a-ands

This is kinda neat, or disturbing, depending on your point of view. They're developing itty bity projectors to project your itty bitty movies now.

(Sorry about the terrible Elton John joke in the title.)

April Fool's

Here's a fairly interesting article on the psychology of practical jokes from today's New York Times.

Don't Steal Movies or I Will Turn You Into a Skull

This is old, but great, and I forgot about it until today, and it's never not a good day to show people the creepiest, weirdest anti-piracy ad you've ever seen.

Here's the youtube:

Cougars in Wisconsin

Earlier this week, I read about a sighting of a big cat in Milton, Wisconsin, which isn't that far from here. Here is an article from today's Wisconsin State Journal confirming that genetic testing on the animal's sundry residues suggest it is in fact a cougar (and, in my favorite part of the ongoing story, that it is a wild cougar, not an escaped pet . . . who keeps cougars as pets?!?).

People have been seeing these things for years, though. This article is from 2003, for instance. And here is a Cryptomundo post from last year that details some of the work being done to prove that these animals are running around up here.

I'm an Ape Man, I'm an Ape Ape Man, I'm an Ape Man

Monster Quest, a fun cryptozoology show on The History Channel, is running an episode this week focused on an alleged plan of Stalin's to create an army of ape men, which it turns out didn't really happen. However, the show is absolutely fascinating anyway, especially if you're not in the habit of keeping up with all the COMPLETELY INSANE things scientists have tried to do over the past century or so.

Here is the article that kick-started the "Stalin tried to create an army of ape-men" story, which was published in The New York Times and got picked up with some distortions by The Scotsman.

Here is a site devoted to ape-like cryptids, including the Alma, which are also discussed in this show.

The Monster Quest episode also covers other crazy stuff I wasn't aware of, including the doctor who semi-successfully performed a head transplant (the show includes very disturbing footage of this) and of course the Soviet scientist who really did try to cross-breed chimps and humans.

Anyway, this show is awesome. Watch it.

Sociology in Space

Interesting little piece about alien sociology over at space.com.

The Mist

I have not yet seen The Mist, Frank Darabont's movie of Stephen King's fine story, but I am really excited about the fact that the DVD will include a black-and-white version of the film. Even if the movie isn't great, this idea is.

Weird Tales

Here's a nifty list of 85 Weird Tale-tellers. I like this list. Most of these are people whose work (music, movies, books, whatever) I sincerely dig. A few are so-so. But, hey, it's a list. That's what lists are for.

Comedyball

From one of my favoritest web sites: some baseball-related comedy yucks.

Old-timey Slang of the Day

heavy-cake: a ladies' man

ABC Links (mostly Wikipedia, mostly awesome)

A. Recently, a parachute possibly belonging to the infamous D.B. Cooper was found up in Washington State. (On a side note, while I've grown very tired of the increasingly ridiculous show Prison Break over the last two seasons, the first season was kinda good, largely because it featured D.B. Cooper as a character).

B. Also got this today. Now he would have been an interesting Vice President.

C. Speaking of Vice Presidents, my brother sent me this a while back. Richard Mentor Johnson had the best/worst campaign slogan ever: "Rumpsey Dumpsey, Colonel Johnson killed Tecumseh." I guess it's not as bad as "Whip Inflation Now."

Step Right Up

Carny tricks!

Old-timey Slang of the Day

sitzbein: da butt (it's from da Germans)

So Crazy It Might Be True!

A couple of interesting stories I saw on Boing Boing today:


The more believable one first: this dude is preggers. Is this a first? It seems like it would have happened before, since I assume it has been technologically possible for some time. And, no, you can't count Arnold Schwarzennegger.

I find this story about a dude who regrew his severed fingertip a bit hard to believe, though it is from a reputable news source. If this one's true, then, wowee zowee! People will be like Swamp Thing in the future! Just chop off an arm, sprinkle on some piggy dust, and it sproings right back. Awesome!

Old-timey Slang of the Day

A lovely phrase for today:

scratch gravel: to leave quickly. This one is a mid-19th century phrase. I like it a lot. It conjures up images of flying chunks of rock and cartoony fast-moving feet.

Old-timey Slang of the Day

Here's one that surprised me when I looked it up in my slang dictionary.

zilch: gibberish; double talk; meaningless language

Huh? It doesn't even list the more common meaning ("zero" or "nothing") in my dictionary (Wentworth and Flexner, eds. Dictionary of American Slang), which was published in 1960. Weird.

Beards Again

This list of bearded vice-presidents is somewhat amusing . . . and informative. I was not aware that the United States had ever had a Native American VP. I suppose I could be a typically dumb product of our nation's education system, but I prefer to think of myself as vice-presidentially challenged. Did you know that?

Old-timey Slang of the Day

Here's an odd one.

marfak: butter.

Apparently, this was used in the army for a while, and it comes from an old brand name for a chassis lubricant made by Texaco. Clever!

1 Fish, 2 Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

Fish can count. It's kinda cool right now, but when they become our Fishy Overlords, will it seem so nifty? Who will be laughing then? Probably not the fish, cause fish can't laugh. They can count, though.

Old-timey Slang of the Day

Today's word:

darb: an excellent person or thing. As in, "Ain't that a darb?!" or "She's a darb, Sully, a darb!" or "My new jalopy is a real darb, I tells ya."

This comes up a lot in movies from the 1920s and 1930s. I've also seen it in an old Krazy Kat cartoon from the 1910s. Most recently, I heard it in Sons of the Desert, a great Laurel & Hardy comedy I saw on TCM the other day. I think I heard three different permutations of it in that one.

"People think it's a lot easier to break blocks than it actually is—I make it look easy."

Brick-smashing! A Cornish strongman (how cool does that sound?!?) has broken the world's record for smashing stuff.

Another good quote from The Smasher, "I used to break things when I was a kid for fun with my friends and I would break things easily whereas my friends wouldn't."

Sweet!

Old-timey Slang of the Day

I think I will start collecting old-timey slang and posting it on this blog. Here's one.


flub the dub: to loaf, to "screw up" (used in the 1940s)

Wolfman, Jack!

Entertainment Weekly has some awesome pics of the new Wolfman movie. I love me some werewolves, and these photos look like they got it just about right this time.

NOTE: That's not him above, though that one is pretty good too.

Cons

I like a good con artist story. Here's a pretty interesting one. Apparently, a woman disguised as a male army major conned a bunch of women out of a bunch of money over in China. The best part of this article is where the investigators become convinced that something is a bit off when they hear the fake major's "high-pitched voice."

ADDED: If this was primarily an internet scam, why did this person go around dressed up in uniform? Were the police really unsure this was a lady looks like a dude? Is ananova.com trying to fool me into thinking this is a news of the weird story, or is it really a news of the weird story? Hmmm....

Monkey Bidness

I enjoyed the heck out of this gallery of medieval monkey imagery. If you like monkeys, or the Middle Ages, or storks "with a demon's head for a butt," this is for you.

Waiter, there's a bear in my courtroom!

When I was a kid I always enjoyed checking out these books from the library about odd laws from the past. Many of them revolved around animals being put on trial. I hadn't heard much about this of late, though I seem to recall a story from a few years ago about a dog being put on trial in Michigan or some such fantastic place. Well, thanks to Macedonia, my long nightmare of waiting for a story about a bear being put on trial and convicted of theft is finally over. Stephen Colbert will probably enjoy this.

I will assume that this was the defense lawyer.


P.S., this story has a reference to "turbo-folk," which you can now "understand" thanks to "Wikipedia."

"O-kay!"

Check out this freaking awesome Japanese propaganda cartoon from 1934. It's got an evil Mickey Mouse riding a bat that shoots bullets out of its mouth.

Bark!

Dog goes nuts.

Right Outta The Screen!

I found this New York Times article on upcoming 3-D movies helpful in figuring out what I'm gonna go see this summer. It's like you're right there, getting poked in the eye!

Seriously, though, 3-D is cool. I don't care what any of you say.

Neato Toledo!

Here are some fun kaleidoscopes you make with your internets.

Kaleidoscope 1

Kaleidoscope 2

Gnomishness

Uh-oh! A gnome sighting.

It's good, but is it THIS good?

Cape and Tights

While we're reading, this New Yorker essay by Michael Chabon is quite good, too. It's about superhero costumes. Y'know, capes and like that.

Hello

I enjoyed this article about weird names today. It's a good article detailing some of the unusual names uncovered in a new book and some of the historical and cultural reasons for the names people give their kids.

On the same page in today's New York Times was this article about the end of the planet. This second article is quite interesting on its own, especially if you enjoy that feeling of awe that you can only get by thinking about space and the impossibly distant future. My juvenile brain, though, happened to notice one unfortunate name in the article, which I probably wouldn't have caught had I not read the other article first. You'll see.

More bad name ideas here, from the co-author of the book I just mentioned.

Oh, and there's a guy on this show right now named Wendell Mendell.

As they say on The Wire, it's all connected.

"A consumer advocate is a person in your neighborhood..."

I love this scene. And Sesame Street.

"Death comes in the night on little cat's feet"

Andrew W.K. meets John McLaughlin here. Oh, and it's awesome.

ADDED: Here is the actual exchange, from Wonkette.

Hey, A Movie!

I ordered my Wisconsin Film Festival tickets today. Here's what I plan to see, at least for now:

*My Winnipeg

*OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies

*Bon Cop, Bad Cop

*Timecrimes

*The Pixar Story

*You, the Living

*The Wonderful World of Sid Laverents

*Mongol

*Planet of the Apes

*Flight of the Red Balloon

*The Singing Revolution

Squiddy Squiddy Squiddy, Rock and Roll

A friend of mine sent this to me; it's amusing.

Another friend sent me this only an hour later.

Cephalopod synchronicity?