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Conjuring Up Cinematic, Political, Athletic, and Cultural Arcana Since The Final Moments of the Last Century

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3/3/00 - Could Johnny Starks be returning to the Knicks?

In Defense of Harry Potter.

Turlyming (via Mirasol) asks if you've found your Star Wars twin. (I'm as laid-back as Leia and as extroverted as Luke, but unfortunately I'm also as (un)agreeable as the Emperor.) Also on the SW tip, here's a mildly amusing albeit a little too cutesy piece exploring John McCain's campaign use of Star Wars metaphors.

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3/2/00 - Maria Hsia, Gore's Buddhist Temple fundraiser, has been convicted on all five counts of lying to the FEC. Gore immediately told aides to stock up on ice tea.

In a touch of class and dignity (two traits his opponent wouldn't recognize if they bit him in the ass), Bradley made nice in this last debate and returned full circle to his original message of idealism, character, and leadership. I challenge any self-respecting Democrat to watch last night's debate and tell me that the Vice-President is the better candidate, the better leader, or the better person. *sigh* Come back, Shane! Run for President!

On the other side of the aisle, Dubya rivaled John McCain's infamous Chelsea joke in bad taste with his appearance on Letterman last night. The recuperating Letterman asked Bush what he meant by his constant repetition of being a "uniter, not a divider." Bush: "That means when it comes time to sew up your chest cavity, we use stitches as opposed to opening it up." Egad. I mean, it's not even funny.

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3/1/00 - Another shooting in the Bronx?!?

Though it may be a tad anticlimactic at this point, The Final Showdown between Bradley and Gore is tonight on CNN at 9pmET/6PT, after which I'm going to sit in an unlit room for several hours and contemplate this world's amazing tendency to continually reward the most unethical and least deserving of our species.

Speaking of which, having vanquished Bradley with their acerbic pens, the scorps are now putting John McCain on death watch.

Breaching the Web found that President Clinton was "amazed" by a screensaver, which to my mind is as bad as Bush pere's supermarket scanner epiphany.

The official Lord of the Rings site has updated. It now includes some teaser banner pics (including Arwen, Gandalf, and a nasty-looking orc) and a place to ask director Peter Jackson anything you want about the upcoming three films.

From the ever creative Wetlog, American Beauty in ASCII.

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2/29/00 - The Theocrats Strike Back. Bush takes Virginia, with 8 out of 9 Religious Right votes. The word's still out in Washington State, although the talking heads seem to be inferring from their re-hidden sources that Gore is probably on top.

Well, the press is finally noticing Bill Bradley again: Unfortunately, as Jake Tapper of Salon aptly put it, they have come not to praise him but to bury him. Bastids. I'm utterly, utterly depressed right now.

There's eighteen minutes of Lord of the Rings footage out there...somewhere.

In other movie news, it sounds like the delayed Fight Club DVD is going to be chock full of coolness, including several alternate endings and a Pitt-Norton musical number.

Matt Damon or Leo DiCaprio in the Tim Burton Planet of the Apes remake? I don't like the sound of that at all. Why not Russell Crowe? After all, Earth's last man shouldn't look like a boy.

One of the greats, Elvis Costello, enters the MP3 Age. I didn't know he was once a programmer.

Wetlog has upped the ante on his Sims Movie Competition. Meanwhile, /Usr/Bin/Girl shows once again why she's my favorite source for Interactive Fiction Humor, and Turlyming points out the Harry Potter Dictionary.

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2/28/00 - Smoking weed helps fight cancer? Take that, drug warriors.

So John McCain takes it to the Christian Coalition a day before Virginia votes. Bully for him. I would think his move has more to do with his sagging numbers in Cali among the less religious, more libertarian GOP voters of the West than a sudden declaration of principle, but it's nice to hear anyway.

Elaine and I spent Saturday at a wedding in Chapel Hill, NC, and most of Sunday in heavy recuperation mode (which for me included watching the Knicks eke out their second come-from behind victory in a row). Elaine's now on a business trip in West Virginia for a week, meaning that, with nothing to do, my updates here should be more frequent and my lack of personal hygiene should be made criminal.

The villain concept design being one of the few elements in Episode I that lived up to expectations, I found this article relating Darth Maul's creation to scary clowns to be quite an interesting read. And, while I'm in fanboy mode, I should record my disappointment with the William Gibson X-Files I had earlier hyped on this page. Ripe opportunities for satire were wasted by lousy dialogue, flat characters, and lame gender archetypes.

Strange Sims behavior is spreading. Wetlog wants American Beauty recreated in Simland, while Harrumph and Gammatron have discovered the Sadistic Family Photo Album.

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2/26/00 - Rodney King Redux. Sad, sad, sad. It seems no matter what coast you're on, D.A.'s can find 12 people who trust police officers over minorities, no matter how glaring the facts of the case.

Hmmmm...This could be bad. (via Wetlog and, of course, Twernt.) And, while I'm ganking links from Twernt, who asked David Duchovny?

Elaine and I are off to the wedding of some of her college friends in Durham, NC later today. Six months after our big day, it'll be nice to relax and get drunk at nuptials, rather than sweating the details and working the crowd.

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2/25/00 - The Sims Exchange is now open. Also, for its snazzy design and strange downloads (Stormtroopers?), The Mall of the Sims looks to be the best fan download site.

Oliver Stone is doing Superman Lives?!? If so, hopefully he'll go back to the Kevin Smith (pre-Tim Burton) treatment, although somehow I doubt it. In other movie news, Salon interviews the Harry Potter screenwriter.

Looks like the party's at our place next time.

As if the whole cop-or-child molester profile wasn't bad enough, here's another reason to dislike mustaches. In the words of the Irishman to the fly, Give it back, ya bastid! (via Mirasol.)

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2/24/00 - Today's the NBA Trading deadline and nothing happened? Bizarre. Speakng of Bizarre, do you dare venture into the rough-and-tumble world of Bowling Noir? (Courtesy of Breaching the Web and Bird on a Wire.)

The always scintillating James Fallows offers his take on Microsoft Corporate Culture. (via Absolute Piffle.) Elsewhere, haunted or no, why would you want such a creepy-ass painting in your home? (Via Strange Brew) Moreover, if Ebay can speculate in paintings, why not in souls? This guy had better watch out...remember what happened to Bart and Milhouse...

"Hyman Roth, Dick Gephardt, Sal Tessio, Mike Dukakis, Fredo Corleone, Bill Bradley -- 'I don't want to kill everyone, Tom,' Gorleone says. 'Just my enemies.'"

Feed Magazine explores the secrets behind both the Hamster Dance (that's Roger Miller in the background?!) and X-Cops. Speaking of which, next week's William Gibson-penned episode, First Person Shooter, looks to be Must-See TV.

I don't know about y'all, but I'm definitely looking forward to picking up a Yoda Furby come March.

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2/23/00 - "Each [boy] band, Pearlman says, needs a sexy hunk, a rebel, a young cutie, a nice guy, and a trusty older brother. An angelic blond is essential, one goatee is permissible. A Latino or two is OK, but blacks are iffy."

Drop the Cliff Notes. BluishOrange has unearthed Minute Books.

Man, I wish I had the design skillz to create a site like Raza's. I love his index page.

No Harry Potter for Spielberg. But, check out these tasty casting morsels: Christopher Walken as Snape? Rosie O' Donnell as Molly (Mother) Weasley? Both dead on, I'd say.

Weblogs make Wired. (Thanks Barbelith and Megnut).

Apparently Al has no problem with a few innocent people being put to death (Via Medley). Why am I not surprised? He's too busy "giving shout-outs" to gun-toting hook thieves to worry about the likes of the Hurricane.

More about Gore.

In a remarkable synergy of Ghost in the Machine's most discussed topics, the New York Knicks have pulled their training camp out of South Carolina due to the NAACP boycott of the Confederate Flag.

Ding Dong! "Oh, that must be the mission specialist...[cue Curtis Mayfield.]" And here I thought Moonraker was unrealistic all these years.

Riothero wonders aloud why he can't find a decent Doogie Howser page. Here's a more interesting question that came to my mind when I compiled my Icons List a few months ago. Why is it so hard to find celebrity fan sites for dramatic black actors? For example, no active websites are listed in Yahoo for Larry Fishburne, Ving Rhames, Yaphet Kotto, Don Cheadle, Clarence Williams III, Giancarlo Esposito, or Joe Morton. One fan site is listed apiece for Sidney Poitier, Morgan Freeman, and Taye Diggs. Cinematic luminaries Samuel L. Jackson, James Earl Jones, and television favorite Bill Cosby have only two each. Of name African-American actors, only Denzel - with a measly four fan sites - approximates the usual web celebrity treatment. As a random sample for contrast, Robert deNiro has 8 sites listed, Gary Oldman has 9, Seth Green has 12, and even lesser known white actors like J.T. Walsh (1), Jurgen Prochnow (2), Bob Hoskins (2), and Jim Caviezel (2) get some Internet love from crazy fans. (African-American women - Halle Berry (6), Whoopi Goldberg (6), Angela Bassett (2), Thandie Newton (1) - fare slightly better than do the fellas, but the numbers are usually inflated by enticing photo galleries promoting other traits than their acting chops.) Is this a white male conspiracy? Of course not. But it is a sad indicator of the Digital Divide.

Pith and Vinegar (not to be confused with Whim & Vinegar) suggests Jump the Shark, a site that aims to determine the exact point at which good TV shows go bad. Also, Hit or Miss points out this age-guessing website. It missed me by eight years, but other blogs seem to have had better results. Finally, Wetlog has moved.

John McCain takes Michigan by a hair and Arizona by favorite-son margins. Bushlings have privately picked a scapegoat and publicly claim that the Dems hijacked the primary...so much for being a "unifier."

Dubya discovers gravity.

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2/22/00 - Well, I thought Bradley completely kicked Gore's ass in the first half hour, then made too nice for the rest of the show to have any effect on the all-knowing, all-powerful, and of course never-wrong Punditocracy. I could rage on and on in this space about how much I despise Gore and what he's doing to our party, but it'd be redundant and unconstructive. Suffice to say, I hope all Democrats of principle do NOT follow Senator Bradley's lead and will support either Ralph Nader or John McCain should the Vice-President win the Democratic nomination. We as Democrats should take a stand against such pathetic, condescending, and unprincipled behavior, even if it means four years away from the Executive Office.

I noticed The Other Side has included me in his daily digestion. Thanks much for the compliment. It is reassuring to know that people of all political temperaments can agree that Cerebus is an absolutely amazing piece of work.

With tonight's win over the Clips and Miami's contemporaneous loss to the Pistons, the New York Knickerbockers now lead the Atlantic Division. NYC represent, represent, sent.

Salon has a great new piece on the Presidential candidates' side-stepping of the failed drug war. They also have delved into my friend Mike Colton's new project, Modern Humorist.

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