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05.02.11 by Widge @ 5:27 am  By Anthony Hopkins' paycheck! Can this prophecy truly come to pass? Thor hits this coming weekend. It's going to do, I believe, a great deal of coin. Based on the track record of Marvel Studios, my hope is that it will be an entertaining ride through Smacking Things With a Large Hammer Land. However, I've had this gnawing feeling of dread that I haven't been able to put my finger on...at least, not until today. Today is the day that my premonition finally manifested itself completely--and if you think about it, it only makes sense. It's this: Hollywood interprets box office success or failure in weird ways. And reacts in even weirder ways. And some of those ways are...less than pleasant. So my vision, filled with terrible consequences, entailed the following, ranked by how likely they are to happen. I want you to brace yourself. Because all of these are feasible. And some, mayhap all, will come true. So spake the prophecy. Categorized as: Stimuli
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04.24.11 by Widge @ 4:31 am  As we discussed on the most recent Weekend Justice podcast and has been pounding around Twitter and the net in general: Elisabeth Sladen, who played Sarah Jane Smith, passed away this past week from cancer. She was Last night after the sixth season of the new Doctor Who kicked off, CBBC aired this tribute to Sladen (embedded after the jump). It's rather nice and sums up a lot of what has been said and needs to continue to be said: she was fantastic and she will be missed. Categorized as: Stimuli
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04.24.11 by R.M. Rhodes @ 3:10 am  R.M. Rhodes, comic creator and friend of French comics, returns to introduce the uninitiated to another classic artist, essential to the history of the medium... Many art and comic historians consider Rodolphe Topffer to be the father of comics as we know them. The man in question lived in Geneva for the entirety of his short life, working as a schoolteacher and professor. He died young. By 1846, he had published eight full-length stories and left behind an additional six fragments in some state of non-completion. He was only 47. A combination of factors combined to shape Topffer's artistic output. His father was a painter with a strong anti-French outlook, who used his art to express his viewpoints through finely wrought caricature. The younger Topffer wanted to follow in his father's footsteps but had poor eyesight, which kept him from putting as much detail into his drawings as he would have liked--he settled on cartooning in sequence as a compromise. Categorized as: Stimuli
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04.20.11 by Widge @ 5:56 am  So I've now watched 127 Hours twice, once with the commentary. I had wanted to catch this in the cinema but just couldn't get to it--and now I'm actually glad I didn't since I found the experience to be personally devastating. I'm not just talking about That Thing That Happens In The Last Reel. And it's not spoilers if it's history, so let's just have it out and be done with it: Aron Ralston, played in the film by James Franco, amputates his own arm with a dull multi-tool in order to free himself from the rock that has pinned him down in a narrow canyon. And I'm glad I didn't watch this in the cinema because watching that had me out of my seat, hands over my face (but not covering my eyes) and in absolute shock. And I'm the guy who is normally fine with "fake" gore...but this was so real and felt so real--and I felt so much for the character of Aron--that I was mind-blown. Categorized as: Stimuli
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04.19.11 by Wolven @ 5:03 pm  So, UnknownBinaries & I recently saw Limitless. Now the film's animating premise is an old one, and you hear it in nearly every piece of science fiction concerned with human enhancement: we only use ten or fifteen or [insert number] percent of our brain or brain power or potential...or whatever. The science behind this trope isn't strictly correct, mind you, but it's not completely false either. It's hard to talk about the operations of the brain without falling into the heavily loaded language of "efficiency," "carrying capacity," "throughput," "processing power," etc. The problem with all of that talk is that it's directly tied to the ideas of production and consumption, which are values that come directly out of the mass-production developments of the techno-industrial revolution--and I don't Categorized as: Stimuli
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04.16.11 by PhantomV48 @ 5:59 am  VIOLATE!! VIOLATE!! The Story So Far: Intrepid pop culture adventurers PhantomV48 and Fleshvine have decided to make the long trek through the history of Doctor Who, starting all the way back at jump. So they just met the First Doctor in "An Unearthly Child" and now they make the second stop on their journey... The Daleks
(Told in seven parts: "The Dead Planet," "The Survivors," "The Escape," "The Ambush," "The Expedition," "The Ordeal," and "The Rescue.") PhantomV48: So, they break these guys out pretty early, huh? When we last left our heroes-- Fleshvine: --and Susan The Whiny-- Categorized as: Stimuli
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04.14.11 by Widge @ 5:32 am  Leigh and her bestest friend in the whole wide world. So our very own Minister of Fine Spirits, Leigh, recently got me hooked on scotch. Before, I had never been a fan of the stuff--but Leigh showed me my problem was that I simply wasn't trying scotch that was expensive enough. I say this with a tear in my eye because now being addicted, it's not a cheap vice to have. But Leigh, vindictive and evil as you know she can be, took me straight to the heart of awesome yet pricey scotch country: a Macallan tasting. Macallan makes single malts and ages them in sherry and oak casks. Each type they put out is different and delicious and fantastic. And that's when I began to see the interesting aspect of drinking scotch: there are many, many differences between scotches. It's like drinking beer: but less fattening and more expensive. Unlike drinking beer, though, there are three major ways to enjoy scotch. There may be other ways, but those are best discussed in private and probably with someone you know very well. Categorized as: Stimuli
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03.29.11 by PhantomV48 @ 8:18 pm  Back row: Ian, Barbara, Carol. Front: Dokter Hartnell: The Mad DJ. Here's a new entry into our array of pop culture excavation and analysis. PhantomV48, animator and bon vivant, has decided to plunge into the world of Doctor Who. And run the entire length of it. Knowing that this is not a journey to take alone, he is joined in his adventure by his fiancee, Fleshvine (co-host of the Kinky and the Geek podcast). They've packed supplies, a compass, and a bunch of coffee. Here they begin their journey. Wish them luck. PhantomV48: Doctor Who has been around for 48 years. 48 years. More than half of the people reading this haven't been alive that long; neither of us have. Fleshvine: I'm closer than you are, babycakes. Categorized as: Stimuli
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03.28.11 by Widge @ 12:14 am 
Written by Tanya Ronder, an adaptation of the play by J.M. Barrie The story about the boy who refused to grow up sticks with us because nobody really wants to grow up. Indeed, when you see what's become of the world at the end of the show when growing up has happened, you start to think that Peter had the right idea. But that's just it: you get the trade-off between staying young and never figuring out what a thimble actually is or, well, getting old and dying. Is there a thimble worth dying for? Good question. There is a huge obstacle to doing this show, in my opinion. It's not the fact that it's been done six ways from Sunday, although it has--instead it's the fact that it's been done by Disney and that's the way everyone remembers it. So the dark side of things, especially in the epilogue section and the childish cruelty of some of the characters, is a surprise to a lot of audiences, I'm sure. So you've got people wandering in and wondering what the hell they've signed up for. But anybody who wants to try anything different should be commended, even though they risk confusing audiences by asking them to whisper to save Tinker Bell--after the audience has already started clapping to save her. Categorized as: Stimuli
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03.24.11 by Widge @ 8:06 pm  Welcome back, my son. We have missed you. In 1996 I left the world of alcohol behind, for reasons I've discussed elsewhere. I never thought I would be able to return. Now that I have returned, it's been a bit of a culture shock, to be honest. Fifteen years ago, the world of alcohol was different. Partly because I was just out of college and couldn't afford much of anything and partly because...well, there just wasn't a great deal of product diversity. Or if there was, I simply wasn't aware of it. I didn't frequent bars, unless I was singing in them with my band. (And because I was the singer, I couldn't drink a great deal lest my voice get screwed up--is that the reason they brought me on board, so they could drink more? Yes.) I didn't have a lot of cocktails because things with multiple ingredients could be pricey even if you were making them yourself. So the extent of my experience with "exotic beers" was Killian's Red and maybe, if I was feeling crazy, a Corona with lime. That's about it. Categorized as: Stimuli
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