Category: entertainment

Why did I watch it? I don’t know. I must have been too lazy to change the channel. Last night, some movie station (I forget which one) showed the confused 1998 romantic comedy, “You’ve Got Mail”. Having just seen Tom and Meg the night before when I watched the last 30 minutes of “Sleepless in Seattle” (again, too lazy to grab the remote), I thought it was a repeat showing. It wasn’t. Same cast, slightly different story.

Anyway, maybe as I guy I don’t get the romantic comedy genre in general, but this plot confused me. In short (spoiler coming, if you haven’t seen it), Joe (Tom Hanks) falls in love with Kathleen (Meg Ryan), anonymously, by e-mail. They don’t realize that in real life, they’ve met, and they’re bitter enemies.

• When Joe realizes who his Internet crush is, instead of telling her, he keeps it secret, and is really mean to her. Why? That’s never explained. He just is. The unexplained motivations get better.
• When Joe, the man Kathleen hates intensely, barges into Kathleen’s apartment, she’s not upset. No, they have a friendly chat. Huh? Seriously, in real life, she’d be calling the police and fending him off with a knife. That’s scary stuff.
• Joe keeps his identity secret for days (weeks?), playing with Kathleen’s emotions by e-mail. This, in real life, would be considered cruel and deceptive. What does she do when she finds out? She kisses him.

Alright, I just don’t get it. And don’t get me started on “Sleepless in Seattle”. I mean, for crying out loud. How could they fall in love? She was a stalker!

What’s on tonight? Oh, crap. “What Women Want”? No! I put my foot down. I’m going to go to Blockbuster and I’m going to find a cheesy action movie. Like Roger Moore in “Moonraker” — I always get all misty when that metal-toothed behemoth, Jaws, meets the love of his life. *sniff* Pass me a kleenex, will ya?

I watched Quentin Tarantino’s ultra-violent “Kill Bill, Vol. 1” on video last night. As I watched, these thoughts occurred to me:

• Of any movie I have ever seen, “Kill Bill” has by far the most gratuitously gory, sickening violence.
• The body count is higher than any martial-arts themed movie I’ve seen. Then again, I may have miscounted — some of the bodies were in several pieces. (shudder)
• Lucy Liu looks really hot… until her brain is exposed. All I can say is that she’ll need a serious comb-over to hide that.
• If “Kill Bill, Vol. 2” is more of the same, then I have absolutely no desire to see it.
• Uma Thurman has funny-looking toes.

Go rent the movie Bubba Ho-Tep. Right now. Do it.

It’s silly and clever at the same time. Elvis, JFK, and a soul-sucking mummy, all in the same movie. How cool is that?

What are you doing still sitting there? Git!

Thankyuh, thankyuhverruhmuch.

Edit: About 10 years ago I had an idea for a screenplay in which Elvis, JFK, and Marilyn Monroe shared an apartment. Everyone told me my idea was too stupid for a full length script. They were right — I should have thought to include a soul-sucking mummy. It makes all the difference, apparently.

WARNING: MAY CONTAIN MOVIE SPOILERS. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Things I noticed about Troy:

• Achilles really likes to point his sword sideways at people and look down the blade. Someone should have mentioned to him that you don’t need to aim a sword like a gun.
• In one scene, the Trojans appear to roll gigantic balls of yarn down onto the Greek encampment. They should have followed that by unleashing the gigantic kittens. “Cry Havoc! and let slip the kittens of war!”
• They keep starting massively violent battles, only to stop them suddenly, saying something like, “Well there’s been enough killing for one day.”
• Is it really necessary for the men to have shorter skirts than the women?
• Maybe if they wore thigh armour instead of shin armour they’d have fewer leg wounds.
• Achilles, of course, gets an arrow in his heel. A nearby audience member whispered to another, “His Achilles tendon!” No, that’s not why it’s ironic, you doofus.
• Achilles manages to woo the lovely Perseus into his bed, despite her being the cousin of Hector. Fortunately, Achilles has a Trojan on him.

In the words of the immortal Homer: “Doh!”

At last, it’s here. The long unawaited-for book that critics have hailed as “rectangular” and even “a book”. Yes, now you too can have your own copy of Raised by Penguins, the compilation of selected entries from this website.

Why would anyone pay good money for words they can get for free, you might ask? I have an answer for that, which was supplied by my friend, Christine: It’s for the toilet.

That is, unless you have a notebook computer with wireless networking, you can’t take this website with you when you… uh… do your business. The book, on the other hand, is entirely portable and doesn’t require any special hardware for you to read it — except maybe glasses. Also, each entry takes only a minute or two to read — timed perfectly to whatever you happen to be doing. So that’s one good reason why you want Raised by Penguins. Christine has a very sensible head on her shoulders… and probably has an entire library in her bathroom.

I should add that it’s also good with coffee breaks, bus stops, sushi stands, park benches, elevator rides, and salad bars. I don’t recommend it for use with fast food because you’ll get greasy fingerprints on the pages.

The real reason for printing this book is this: I don’t trust the web. Formats change, browsers change, and we can never be certain that the format we write in now will be readable in a few years. I’ve posted many thousands of words to this blog, and I’d like to keep some of them.

Paper, on the other hand, is never obsolete. So I’ve decided to go the route of so-called “vanity publishing”, which means that I bodged together the entries into a PDF, slapped a cover on it, called it a book, and sent it to Café Press, who can print copies on demand. I don’t expect to sell (m)any, but should you decide to order a copy of Raised by Penguins, then thank you, and I hope that you enjoy it and whatever activity you’re doing when you read it.

View some sample pages from Raised by Penguins: Raised_by_Penguins_sample_pages.pdf (PDF, 3.35MB)