Posts tagged insomniyeah!
Twist Street
Sam Westing, Barney Northrup, Sandy McSouthers, Julian R. Eastman, & Me
Most people who saw this video of Wolf Blitzer asking this lady if she thanked God for not having murdered her using one of his murder-tornados… most of them were struck by the fact she responded that she was an atheist and how that kind of made things a little awkward. But here’s the thing that’s more striking to me: even the baby seems to think Wolk Blitzer’s a fucking idiot. The baby’s just barely begun to cogitate, and he’s already got no respect for Wolf Blitzer. He’s looking at Wolf and literally— LITERALLY— going “Oh No Oh no” and trying to keep the microphone away from Wolf Blitzer. Why has CNN not taken the hint?? None of us like this guy, right?
Are there people who think Wolf Blitzer is good at being … whatever the hell he’s supposed to be? Who are those people? Where do they live? Were they recently in car accidents? Do they have Wolf Blitzer confused with someone else? Have they lost their glasses? Can we buy them new glasses? This isn’t even a conservative-liberal thing, I don’t think— don’t we all just as Americans think this guy’s just terrible? It’s not even, like, “Oh I disagree with his views” like with a FOX News guy— I could not care less what Wolf Blitzer’s “Views” on anything are. He just doesn’t seem very good, like, at anything, at least not anything television news related. Why hasn’t anyone put a stop to this? It’s not funny anymore.
I’ve never once in my entire life heard someone talk about how reassuring they found him in a crisis or his charisma or… anything. It’s certainly not like he’s got any wisdom from his advanced age— I refer you here to his classic essay “Why are some people running for president?” (“Presidential politics in the United States – always a bit weird. It’s why I love covering politics”). Is he giving old ladies granny-boners? I don’t know. I just really think CNN should have let the baby keep the microphone. The baby at least had gravitas.
Fucking Japan…: “These 3D printed dolls are cloned from real human heads. Danny Choo at Culture Japan visited the Clone Factory in Akihabara, Japan. There, his face was scanned and 3D printed and made into a totally creepy doll”
… Is this what it felt like when computers were just starting to happen and old people were like, “What is this Pong shit I keep hearing about? I can’t program my VCR. I’m afraid of the minorities. Why are you grabbing my purse? Waaah.” I’ve never even seen a 3-d printer and it’s like… fucking Martian shit. I just know there’s some punk kid Steve Jobs embryo out there who’s going to get rich off this thing, and I’ll be sitting there in some cut-rate old age home, going, “Oh, if only I’d invested in Jibsplat! I’d be a rich man, today. The orderlies are abusing me and no one will help me.” It’s going to be pretty, pretty dark. (See also)
For as much as $20,000 per script, Mr. Bruzzese and a team of analysts compare the story structure and genre of a draft script with those of released movies, looking for clues to box-office success. […] Bowling scenes tend to pop up in films that fizzle, Mr. Bruzzese, 39, continued. Therefore it is statistically unwise to include one in your script. “A cursed superhero never sells as well as a guardian superhero,” one like Superman who acts as a protector, he added.
He bills himself as a distant relative of Einstein’s, a claim that is unverifiable but never fails to impress studio executives. “All screenwriters think their babies are beautiful,” he said, taking a chug of Diet Dr Pepper followed by a gulp of Diet Coke and a drag on a Camel. “I’m here to tell it like it is: Some babies are ugly.
Some nights I sleep like a baby. Other nights it’s, Oh God, I just came up with a bomb shot.
Gizmodo: “ A two-year-old toddler figured out how to use nail clippers to pick the lock on his eight-year-old sister’s door so that he could steal a stuffed animal at night.”
Even aside from those ridiculous tabloid spreads cooing about how soon a celebrity gets back into her “skinny jeans” after birth, there are salons that urge women to get Brazilian waxes before giving birth… For the record, I am not a mother .. so for all I know getting all of her pubic hair ripped out with hot wax is precisely what a nine-month pregnant woman craves right before expelling a human through her vagina. It certainly was what avowed feminist Heather Wood Rudulph sought before she had her baby, a choice she recounts in detail in her new co-written book, Sexy Feminism, which is based on the website of the same name: “I just like being taken care of down there. It’s one less thing to worry about in the ongoing maintenance routine that is a woman’s life,” she writes, somewhat contradictorily, before then going on to explain that having a Brazilian wax before giving birth is practical because “grooming a vagina still recovering from birth trauma = not fun”.
It’s 1 am and i can’t ever sleep because aaaaaah. On account of LIFE. (Also: TIME!). Further to that point, here’s what bra ads look like in France. You know? So: thanks, Pixar.
Wilford Brimley dropped out of high school to join the Marines during the Korean War, serving three years in the Aleutian Islands. After an honorable discharge, Brimley worked as a ranch hand, wrangler and blacksmith throughout the Western states, then spent three years as bodyguard to Howard Hughes.
“… seeing heavy action as a playgoer and boulevardier. Since 1952 he has lived in Los Angeles. He is a bachelor by choice. He says he likes rare beef, strong coffee, baseball, the theatre, good writing and the sound of his own voice.”
(Source: salmongutter.blogspot.com)
Behind The Scenes At The Final Days Of 30 Rock:
Last day at the writer’s room.
Last table read.
Last shooting day. (x)
(Source: feyminism)
30 Rock is Ending Blogging: It’s funny watching any pop culture thing wrap up, people’s outsized reactions to it, especially now when people who are into TV are just REALLY, REALLY into their TV in a way that’s a little more demonstrative than I can ever remember it being. People sure get worked up by their shows. It’s funny trying to write about a TV show ending— I’ve basically turned into an Anna and Katy sketch (“it’s quite hard to explain if you’ve never seen it”). The internet’s sure had no shortage of 30 Rock think-pieces lately…
I think a lot of it is just time. A TV show ending is a weird opportunity to note the passing of time, not just by some personal marker (graduation, birthday, etc.) but by a public marker. There’s TV shows ending and there’s elections and Olympics and maybe certain sports things… it’s not the longest list, I don’t think. WIth 30 Rock— 7 years…? Who were you 7 years ago? That much time? Probably someone else in some material respect. Me— I’m a pretty boring guy and I get stuck in all kinds of ruts, but still: different job, different apartment, different car, different goals. Same underwear though. Is that bad? That’s probably not all that good. I’ve still got room for improvement, I guess, is the good news there.
Here’s a key bit for me— Tina Fey talking to Rolling Stone: “I feel like we made a lot of good episodes of the kind of show that usually gets cancelled. The kind where there’s 20 episodes and ‘only me and my hipster friends know about it.’ That part’s still true. But we made about 140 of them!” I sure do like that quote. The world can very easily default to terrible— terrible TV, terrible comedy, terrible news, terrible politics, terrible people. 7 years of getting to know something unusual and weird and sometimes pretty iffy (Julianne Moore’s Boston accent!) but sometimes pretty, pretty good could make it through…? Getting to say “sitcoms don’t have to be the worst thing on earth”, 7 years of getting to have it as an example that we all don’t have to default to something dull and lowest-common denominator, that lizard-brain shit doesn’t have to be what we all have to settle for… Well, I liked that part. I’m glad 30 Rock was around besides for the jokes, for that, whatever you want to call it. That’s always good news.
Punk Magazine interview with Lou Reed from about 1976 (I think), c/o online talk about The Best of Punk. (further c/o) (See also, Joey Ramone-Debbie Harry photo-comic).
Photo of Rob Schrab and Dan Harmon.
(Source: havingchanged, via harmontown)
(Source: theinspirationroom.com)
“Sticking with supermarkets, Iceland, at least, has the decency to use the original recording of Gene Wilder singing Pure Imagination from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory to soundtrack its Christmas ad. Unfortunately, the visuals don’t quite match up. We see a little girl wide-eyed with delight as she enters a magical kingdom filled with Iceland’s range of demented Christmas edibles, bastard experiments that, as ever, look and sound uniquely unappetising. You know the sort of thing. Curried lasagne tacos. Pork and pink lemonade profiteroles. Salted caramel salmon tampons. It’s the stuff of “imagination” all right. Clive Barker’s imagination.” — Charlie Brooker, on Christmas ads.
