davextreme: April 2007

29 April 2007

26 April 2007

Mary Sue - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A term usually used in fan fiction for when the author writes a character who’s a stand-in for herself.

25 April 2007

Q&A with Jon Favreau about Iron Man

Out on DVD for the first time ever, and coming almost six years after the release of the first season, is Twin Peaks Season Two. Previously the only way you could watch it was on a VHS set that had five hours on each tape.

I absolutely love this show. It did the “mystery with a supernatural slant” thing 14 years before Lost came around (and also the “OMG the plot is dragging do they know where they’re going with this?” thing). Katherine got this for me for my birthday, but I managed to ruin the surprise by almost ordering it last month.

We’re off to New York for a few days. I was considering picking up Pokémon Pearl for the ride up, but I think I’ll wait on it until later in the summer.

Why Gambit Sucks

24 April 2007

Ebert: We Spend Too Much Time Hiding Illness

Ebert: We spend too much time hiding illness

Robert Ebert on his condition, with a touching warning that when he shows up for his film festival he be missing part of his jaw. Oh how I miss reading his reviews.

23 April 2007

Anil Dash: Cats Can Has Grammar

Great look at the lolcat phenomenon.

22 April 2007

New nickels ship

50 First Deaths: A Chance to Play (and Pay) Again

ABCNEWS.com : Porn Profits: Corporate America's Secret

ABCNEWS.com : Porn Profits: Corporate America’s Secret

Jeph Loeb's Super Friends

Jeph Loeb’s Super Friends

How Does Sweeps Week Work?

Grey Album Producer Danger Mouse Explains How He Did It

Mr. Invisible and the Secret Mission to Hollywood

Astonishing X-Men #1

Get Out of My Namespace

Interesting article on names and cybersquatting.

Save ‘Angel' Campaign Takes Flight

Save ‘Angel’ campaign takes flight

gets around to covering the fan movement to save .

Holy Automobiles Batman!

Batmobile voted top movie car.

Oregon County Bans All Marriage

Oregon county bans all marriage

County stops giving marriage licenses until it can determine who’s allowed to get them.

Green Lantern's Homecoming Blues

Green Lantern’s Homecoming Blues

Ron Marz discusses returning to the character he created.

Justice League Unlimited Update

JLU director Don Santos teases the new season.

Mini Dachshund Picture

Mini d in a hot dog bun.

The Adventures of Seinfeld & Superman

Web cartoons starring Jerry Seinfeld and Superman.

A Pair of Long, Well-Thought-Out Essays About the Matrix

A pair of long, well-thought-out essays about The Matrix

Interview: Will Friedwald, Owner Of The World's Largest iTunes Collection

Interview: Will Friedwald, Owner Of The World’s Largest iTunes Collection

I’m not surprised that he’s found that iTunes isn’t able to handle very, very large music collections. The suggestion that Apple release a pro version for libraries is an interesting idea.

21 April 2007

iTunes Store Sale: Classic Albums for $7.99

iTunes Store Sale: classic albums for $7.99

Link opens iTunes

20 April 2007

Were Video Games to Blame for Massacre?

Were video games to blame for massacre?

Despite the media’s desire for them to be a boogie man, there’s no evidence the VT shooter played games, nor that people who do play violent games are more likely to be violent.

19 April 2007

The A.V. Club Interviews Ronald D. Moore About Battlestar Galactica

The A.V. Club interviews Ronald D. Moore about Battlestar Galactica

Not much new stuff if you’ve kept up with his interviews, but some nice comments here and there.

WSJ - Wii and DS Turn Also-Ran Nintendo Into Winner in Videogames Business

Take a look at the sales chart. The DS is a great system that doesn’t get enough press.

History Channelling: World War III

I agree with this assessment mostly. Black Adam is treated as an all-powerful macguffin, and the plot reads like a checklist of things they forgot to touch on in 52.

18 April 2007

Chicago Tribune on the Long Tail of Video Rentals

Chicago Tribune on the long tail of video rentals

17 April 2007

Throw a Snowball at Captain America

Throw a snowball at Captain America

16 April 2007

For Your Consideration

Christopher Guest movies, you may not have realized, are very hit-or-miss. The reason you may not have realized this is that, starting with This is Spinal Tap through A Mighty Wind, they’ve all “hit.” For Your Consideration sadly just doesn’t fit together like the others have. The quirky characters and absurd plot turns are there, but it seems like there’s something missing. According to this interview with Guest and Eugene Levy, they write the plot for the film and then let the actors improvise all of the dialog. The actors who usually work in his films are good enough that usually it works, but here it never quite adds up to a complete story. The plot of the movie is about how the studio tinkers with the film they’re making, and about how a marketing buzz leads to some high expectations, but neither story is fleshed out properly. I wonder if maybe they had to cut some of those scenes because they weren’t working. There are lots of great moments, but they don’t all add up to a great movie. Don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy the film, but it’s not one I need to have on my shelf alongside the others.

Summary of Findings: Public Knowledge of Current Affairs Little Changed by News and Information Revolutions

People today are about as aware of current affairs as they were 20 years ago. Viewers of The Daily Show and the Colbert Report were the most knowledgeable.

Interview with Bill Watterson | The Complete Calvin and Hobbes

It’s rare to read anything from Watterson, and naturally he keeps it short. On merchandising: “I clearly miscalculated how popular it would be to show Calvin urinating on a Ford logo…”

What Makes "Buffy" a Gay Icon?

What makes “Buffy” a gay icon?

14 April 2007

Most Controversial Films of All Time

13 April 2007

Who Are You Calling Chicken? T. Rex's Closest Living Relative Found on the Farm

Who are you calling chicken? T. rex’s closest living relative found on the farm

Proteins extracted from 68 million-year-old dinosaur bones.

12 April 2007

Ultimates 2 #13's 8-Page Spread

Ultimates 2 #13’s 8-page spread

While I agree this looks very nice, and I”m sure it took Hitch weeks to draw, I always approach these things and think of how much story eight pages could have been. One big fight spread looks cool, but it moves the story forward very little.

And... Logo Action!

And… Logo Action!

A look at how some companies animate their corporate logos in their ads.

A List Apart: Articles: Setting Type on the Web to a Baseline Grid

Composing Your Posts Offline and Quick Formatting with Markdown

Wow, great news. Markdown is my favorite way to write HTML. I’d love for this to hit Vox, too.

11 April 2007

Vampire Hunting Kit

Purports to be an actual kit sold in the mid-1800s.

Will Ferrell Movie Generator

Neil Gaiman - How To Talk To Girls At Parties

Free audio reading of his Hugo-nominated story.

Access Authenticated Feeds in Google Reader Using Yahoo Pipes

Access authenticated feeds in Google Reader using Yahoo Pipes | iNik

Useful, but not recommended for anything that really needs to be private.

Tapping into Evil: Ethan Van Scriver on Sinestro Corps

I’m probably unhealthily excited about this one. The first back-up Sinestro Corps. story in the most recent Green Lantern was really, really good.

10 April 2007

Cover to Cover: Déjà vu All Over Again

Guess how many comic book covers reference Michelangelo’s Pieta sculture.

09 April 2007

Grindhouse

We went to see Grindhouse over the weekend. I loved it, but I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone. Like Robert Rodriquez’s Sin City, you get what you pay for. If you go in knowing that you’re going to see Rodriquez and Tarantino’s send-up of bad horror movies, and you like bad horror movies, you’ll probably like Grindhouse. Certainly there are some great gross-outs and they capture the mood of what they’re going for perfectly. So if that sort of thing is your bag, do go see it in the theater rather than wait for the DVD, as the scratched film concept works much better in the context of having a real big screen there.

Pearls Before Breakfast

The Washington Post had a world-famous musician playing a $3.5 million violin to play at the Metro. Guess how much money he made.

Laptops vs. Learning

07 April 2007

Hold Tight

This is the song by Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich they play in the car in Grindhouse’s Death Proof. (Link opens iTunes)

Texas Ranger Earl McGraw

This character appears in From Dusk Till Dawn, Kill Bill, and Grindhouse.

05 April 2007

Give Family Members Their Own Netflix Queue

Give family members their own Netflix queue

I didn’t know about this feature until today. I kind of like DJ’ing the movies, but the idea of separate queues is clever.

04 April 2007

Alan Moore on Smut

Arthur Magazine recently published online an essay by Alan Moore that appeared in its November issue. Titled “BOG VENUS VERSUS NAZI COCK-RING: Some Thoughts Concerning Pornography”, it discusses the place of erotica in society from cave paintings to today. There’s a lot to take in, but something I found particularly interesting:

Sexual etiquette and even to a certain extent sexual politics could not be mentioned or discussed within the confines of Victorian propriety, which meant that only in a field already banished far beyond those confines could such subjects safely be brought up. It’s by no means unusual to find participants in some chapter-length orgy of the period suddenly declaring half-time during which they will discuss such issues as the gentleman’s responsibility to make sure that his female partner has been fully satisfied by their exchange, or the importance of always acceding to the female partner’s wishes even when deranged by passion. These were matters that could not be raised in Home Hints and were certainly not taught at school or by one’s parents. It would seem that the only sexual education being circulated in the 19th century was within publications that were by their very definition deemed obscene.

This attitude of course continues to today. Society has banned, along with outward depictions of sexual activity, discussions of sexual activity. Schools are hardly allowed to mention condoms at all let alone instruct teenagers in how to use them properly so that they don’t break, and hardly anywhere can you find advice on the *etiquette *surrounding their use. Take a look at Wikipedia’s top 100 pages for any given month. Here’s April 2007’s, but the date parameters don’t really matter. People turn to Wikipedia of all places to find information about intimate activities. They’re not there looking for smut, just information that isn’t available in any other readily available place. I’m not advocating that all manner of topics become fair game for dinnertime discussion, and certainly there are letters columns and the Loveline that get into such matters but I think it’s interesting that while our society as certainly become more depraved, some things haven’t change all that much.

Moore’s piece of course accompanies his own literary contribution to the discussion, which is also worth the read. Some day I’ll write up my thoughts on it, but I need to read it again first. In the meantime, the Arthur piece is worth the read.

rogerebert.com :: People :: "40 Years is not enough"

rogerebert.com :: People :: “40 Years is not enough”

Note from Roger Ebert on his recovery project and his desire to return to critiquing.

Human Computer Interaction in Science Fiction Movies

Reference UI in Star Trek TNG, The Matrix, Minority Report, and more.

In the Army Now: Slott Talks "Avengers: The Initiative"

In the Army Now: Slott Talks “Avengers: The Initiative”

What’s so apparent from the interview is how the concept is just dripping with potential. There are so many stories that could be told coming from the premise. I really hope it turns out well.

Naked Chocolate Jesus Nixed

Naked Chocolate Jesus Nixed | The Onion - America’s Finest News Source

“If I had that sculpture, I would trade it in a heartbeat for thirty chocolate coins.”

Real Estate Roller Coaster

Real Estate Roller Coaster - Google Video

US housing prices, adjusted for inflation and presented as a roller coaster.

02 April 2007

EMI to Offer Songs on iTunes without Copy Protection

EMI to offer songs on iTunes without copy protection

But no Beatles. Interestingly, singles at a higher quality will cost $0.30 more, but albums will be the higher quality for the same price.