Greatest. Holiday. EVER.

Today on Cracked, they ran the winners of their weekly reader-submitted Photoshop contest. (FYI, if you follow the link, be prepared for jokes about gender-specific body parts and exhaustive use of words children like to look up in dictionaries to see if they're really there.)

This week's topic: holidays they need to invent. And the overall winner's idea is awesome.


Cracked photoshopper "Syphon", you have changed my life. I need to make this happen. But how? Get a group of friends together to watch the new Star Trek movie then go out for a beer? Stock up on original Star Trek DVDs and Spotted Cow and make a day of it?

Any ideas? Click here to read more . . .

Dune

I just got done reading Dune. I got the impulse to do so from this article on Television Without Pity (I'm starting to wonder if I should fear that website's influence on me) about how there's a new film version of it just getting underway. Also, there are lots of references to it in Questionable Content. And Neal already had it, so it was right there. Plus, it doesn't hurt that reading Dune apparently bolsters my nerd cred (although, let's face it, my nerd cred is never going to be wholly legit until I finally cowboy up and read The Lord of the Rings. Siiiiiigh).

I thought it was pretty good. It's one of those books that lets you try to figure out what's going on on the story's universe before it explains it to you, which is fun--although at the end I often have the feeling that not every loose end was as tied up as I would like. Also, I agree with my mom, who had told me that she read it and enjoyed it, but when she went back to re-read the good parts, she couldn't find any. It was interesting as a whole, but I can't think of any particular scene that had me glued to my seat. There are some pretty great secondary characters, though. My favorite (and I suppose you could count this as a spoiler) is the main character (Paul) 's little sister, Alia. That little chick crazy.

Despite the engaging characters, sweet sci-fi settings, and big actions scenes, I can see why attempts to make it into a movie have not been well received. It's pretty complicated, riding on understandings of complex religious and political structures. Besides that, a lot of the book is made up of characters very closely observing others and unraveling their motivations. How do you do that on film? Or rather, how do you do that well on film?

I haven't decided whether I'm going to read the sequels or not. I hear they get weirder and also, they aren't right here in my apartment so I'd have to put some actual effort into getting a hold of them. Decisions, decisions.

Finally, when I Google image searched "dune," it gave me suggested related searches of "dune movie," "sand dune," "dune book," and "fjord." If that doesn't crack you up, then you and I are very different people. Click here to read more . . .

Review of Star Wars: The Clone Wars: The Motion Picture: Saving a Baby Hutt, for Some Reason

About a week and a half ago, the 'sband and I got around to watching Star Wars: The Clone Wars (The Movie). It wasn't, like, terrible. Neal has watched episodes of the Clone Wars TV show, and he said the movie was pretty much exactly the same, except longer. It seems like it would be pretty decent for something you'd watch on Cartoon Network, but I'm glad we didn't go see it in the theater.

The biggest negatives I'd read in reviews didn't seem that bad to me. I read that it was like watching somebody else play a video game--fight, cutscene, fight, cutscene--but I thought it gelled better than that. I'd also seen complaints about baby-Hutt slapstick (since Anakin and his Sassy Padawan have to rescue Jabba the Hutt's infant son for reasons that aren't entirely convincing), but there was barely any of that.

The dialogue is pretty stilted, even for Star Wars. It got less rather than more annoying as the movie went along, though. Also, the new Sith-ish villain they introduce is kind of lame. She has the two-lightsabers thing going on, but never used them to do two different things at once, which annoyed me (instead of blocking Obi-Wan's blade with both of yours, use one to block and the other to cut his legs off! COME ON!). She also couldn't manage to kill the 11-year-old Sassy Padawan with them, either. Weak. The thing I just couldn't stop noticing was the voice acting on Obi-Wan. Like I mentioned to Neal, it was like the voice actor gave very serious thought to the role: "What is the essence of Ewan McGregor's performance as Obi-Wan Kenobi?" he asked himself. "I've got it! Smugness. Pure, unadulterated smugness. I'm going to be awesome at this."

The biggest "Wait . . . what?" factor in the movie is definitely the gay Hutt. See, Jabba has this uncle, Ziro, who lives on Coruscant, making it convenient for Padme to go try to negotiate with him (side note: this happens about two thirds of the way through the movie, and until it did, I had completely forgotten that Padme existed. I didn't miss her when she wasn't there, apparently). You wouldn't think a being without feet could mince, but you'd be wrong. Displaying his customary level of cultural sensitivity, Lucas apparently watched scenes of this character--a craven, highly-strung, gaudily adorned nightclub owner, and decreed, "I want him to sound like Truman Capote." . . . It's weird, is what I'm trying to say.



So, as ever, the key is expectations. If you go into this with low expectations, expecting it to be more like a high-quality Saturday morning cartoon show than a big budget summer blockbuster, it's . . . fine. Click here to read more . . .

Hee hee hee!

The NBC analyst is saying Nebraska is going to split its electoral votes. Nebraska and Maine are the only states that assign their votes to districts, instead of winner-take all, but they've never actually given their votes to more than one candidate. The analyst thought it happening for the first time was really cool, and he was like, "But that's the sort of thing that only I care about." Not true, NBC guy! I think it's awesome! Click here to read more . . .

Mawwiage

Hello!

So, clearly, the ol' blog has been out of commission for a while. I mean, I have been kinda busy trying to write a masters thesis and moving and, you know, gettin' hitched.

(photo credit: MacKenzie!)

I was thinking this morning in the shower (where I get all my greatest ideas, for some reason) about what I could write on this blog about marriage. And the word marriage made me think, of course, of "Mawwiage! Mawwiage is what bwings us togetho . . . today." And then I thought of one of the most amazing potential events a person could ever hold: a Princess Bride theme wedding!

Imagine it:

You hire Peter Cook to officiate, in character.

Of course, first you'd have to get him ordained in one of those internet religions, like they do on TV, or possibly you could just rig an election in a small community and get him elected a Justice of the Peace. Either one.

The bride would wear Buttercup's wedding dress, but clearly the groom couldn't wear the Humperdinck outfit, because that wedding just didn't work out and who wants to emulate that? No, the groom would need to dress in all black and would preferably grow out a weaselly ponytail and sad little blonde mustache. (If possible, he would somehow despite these things continue to radiate animal magnetism.) So the bridal couple would be like so:

We're lucky we're not going with groom-as-Humperdinck, because then you'd need to find a six-fingered best man. What you'd actually need is one with flowing locks and an impressive sword.

The bride would obviously either ride in on a white pony or be carried in by a giant. If you can find one, I'd recommend the giant option.

The tricky part is bridesmaids, because there are barely any female-types in Princess Bride besides Buttercup. Also, according the the novel version, Buttercup didn't have any friends. On the other hand, Buttercup does wear some pretty rockin' dresses, especially when Humperdinck is keeping her all cooped up. You could probably just adapt one of those, or maybe the red one she wears when she's kidnapped.

So, anyway, this idea is awesome. If only I had thought of it six months ago! Oh well. Frankly, the wedding I did have was pretty sweet anyway. And probably less expensive and complicated than a Princess Bride one would have been. We couldn't have ordered four Inigo Montoya costumes through Men's Warehouse, that's for sure.

Click here to read more . . .