Category: Personal

Raging Hormones Menopausal Prozac Barbie – another gutbuster supplied by Pam.

Heath Ledger goes a little over the top in this fictional biography called A Knight’s Tale. Gleefully filled with anachronisms, imagine one of the better teen flicks of recent years (such as Ledger’s own 10 Things I Hate About You) set eight or nine hundred years ago. The locals know the words to Queen’s “We Will Rock You” and dance to Bowie’s “Golden Years.” The tournaments of knights go from town to town and lead up to a World Championship, sort of like a WWF without the scripting.

One of writer/director Brian Helgeland’s amusing creations is using Geoffrey Chaucer (yes, he of the Canterbury Tales) as a kind of PR flack/herald for Ledger’s character. Not to mention Chaucer (Paul Bettany) first appears to us nude after losing his clothes to a gambling addiction. Rufus Sewell is a very good baddie and Helgeland wisely makes no attempt to give him any redeeming qualities. Shannyn Sossamon makes her screen debut as the love interest and she is quite beautiful; not another generic blonde but also not too impressive in the, um, curves department.

The principals must have enjoyed working together quite a bit as Helgeland, Ledger, Sossamon, and Mark Addy (Ledger’s primary squire) have reteamed for The Sin Eater, a religious themed murder mystery due out later this year. Anyway, if you’re in the mood for something goofy, fluffy, and medieval, A Knight’s Tale is recommended.

Have you listened to Little Steven’s Underground Garage yet? Very cool radio show (Sunday nights) but the shows are also available on the website. I just listened to Show 4, which featured versions of “Hey Joe” and “Louie Louie” I’d never heard before plus excellent tunes from The Yardbirds, The Kinks, Flaming Groovies, Nazz, two hours worth of cool guitar and organ driven music from the ’60s to today. Get cracking!

As hosted and proofed by the prolific Aussie Beau Lebens of DentedReality, version 1.1 of our PHP implementation of the Blogger XML-RPC API has been expanded by Kathryn Aaker to include support for MoveableType. Kathryn is a witty, intelligent San Francisco-based photographer and novice PHP/Flash programmer with a passion for Lomo photography (which I am to thick to get).

With Bruce you never know what’s going to happen. In the early ’80s and again in the early ’90s he recorded complete albums, was on the verge of releasing them, and decided otherwise, essentially scrapping them. For all the talk that Tracks was intended to clean out the vaults, there is no doubt that he has several more Tracks-sized releases possible, several hundred songs completely recorded and mostly mixed.

The latest news, though, is that a new record around October (of this year) is looking more and more likely. Just yesterday, for instance, Backstreets reports that five new tracks were played at a Sony meeting, where retail, distribution, and label representatives received a first taste of the forthcoming album. Springsteen manager Jon Landau was on hand to present the new recordings to an assembly of roughly 50 people. He continues to be seen in Atlanta, site of the recording studio he’s using, in the company of alleged co-producer Brendan O’Brien.

Next, some politicos are attempting to put together a campaign to elect the Boss to the Senate even though he hasn’t responded to their six monthlong effort. Boss Springsteen? Shades of old time Tammany Hall, eh? The organizers, who were with Jesse Ventura’s Minnesota gubernatorial effort, has a Draft the Boss website. Their idea is for him to run as an independent since they claim neither major party has strong candidate. Democratic incumbent Robert Toricelli has “spent long months facing charges connected to campaign contributions” and the Republican frontrunner is another well-off guy spending his own millions to get in office. Somehow I doubt Bruce would be willing to get involved.

Tell me you wouldn’t want to be the meat in the middle of this sandwich. I won’t believe you but you can tell me if you want to waste your breath.

I love watching cooking shows, like Great Chefs and Molto Mario, but the Times article Cooking Like a 3-Star Chef in Your Own Home (Almost) sets out the truth about what really goes into such top level cooking. Just not going to happen in a home kitchen, the equipment and the ingredients are too much. simple tip: cook hot and use extra butter. But hey, they also have the recipe for a perfect steak, so it’s cool.

After the whole executive retirement storm, there are some positive stories coming out this week and with any luck the stock will remain above $7:

• Sun retakes Unix sales lost to IBM – moving up to 54% market share of UNIX-based servers, all the 3.3% gain at IBM’s expense.
• Blueprints for Sun’s New Direction – very positive article on the new Blueprints programs at Sun which give customers and tire kickers detailed instructions on installing and configuring complete solutions featuring Sun products at their core.
• Microsoft ploy to block Sun exposed – one has to wonder how hard the execs at MS laugh at the rest of us sometimes.
• Solaris 9 to Ease Patch Uploads – working to match some of the innovative Linux systems.

Somehow, I wonder if I’m speaking too soon, if Sun will ever get back to say $10 and save my butt.

Yes that was a decent-size earthquake tonight, 5.2 on the R scale, centered about 70 kilometers south of here near Gilroy. I spoke to Vivian in SF and she felt it strongly but a friend in Concord didn’t notice a thing. No damage, no one hurt here, but it happened while I was in bed watching the Sharks game and the rolling and shaking lasted a few seconds longer than I liked, I can tell you.

As you may recall, my birthday was not all that long ago and I finally grabbed four pics out of my camera from that day. Vivian has more but she has had other things to worry about; those probably won’t get posted until next week at the earliest. Here’s me and Viv and me and Byron:

 

There are also pictures of Vivian and Byron by themselves.

Poo and puke make science palatable – Pam says to blog this because it’s “an absolute, screaming riot.” And of course she’s right.

And the answer is yes. In “The Dell Dude Graduates” (my title) Steven uses slides of himself posing as a moron giving what seems to be the valedictory address. With any luck this graduation means the end of the ad series but somehow I doubt it. Sad how advertising execs come up with something funny and then abuse it into the ground.

Back in 1979, when Apocalypse Now first came out, I saw it and loved it. Francis Ford Coppola made a masterpiece, simple as that. Saw it once straight and once, right in the front row, stoned out of our gourds. The beads of sweat standing out on Martin Sheen’s forehead in the cheap Hanoi hotel room. Robert Duvall walking on the beach without blinking while bullets and mortars whiz past. Laurence Fishburne, incredibly young, dancing on the patrol boat. Cynthia Wood, Colleen Camp, and Linda Carpenter as Playmates engulfed by the horny crowd.

The new version, retitled Apocalypse Now Redux, with an extra 50 minutes edited in started playing on Showtime so we watched it last night. Or tried to but fell asleep. The extra scenes were alright in themselves but they did nothing for the movie. Just stretched out Sheen’s river trip and delayed the riveting encounter with Brando. Why do directors always think longer is better?

Well this is counterproductive since Universities produce so many of the violently disaffected.

Big Networks Afraid

For all you out there that still have your mom, make sure you love her and let her know, no matter what. Not just on Mother’s Day but all the time. Whether you get along with her or not. Tell her!

Mom, I love you!

Harlan’s new novel Gone for Good makes a strong start at number 12 in its first week on the NY Times Hardcover Fiction Bestseller List.

Friedman: Global Village Idiocy – a new virus, spread through satellite TV and the Internet, gaining momentum every week.

Ugly car – Lexus IS 300 SportCross, a strange way to spend over $30,000.

Would a spy pee himself?