TSA, Eat Your Heart Out (In Two Servings)

Touch My Junk:



Touch My Junk Part 2

So Long, Leslie Nielsen

As tribute to the late comedian, I recreated my favorite scene from Airplane!:

Legacy vs Lebowski

What's Your Definition of Cool? My attempt at machinima polemic tackles the timeless question:

Beastie Boy Says: Have an Ivory Friday!

Pondering those folks insistent on referring to the day after Thanksgiving as Black Friday, she came to the conclusion that it's better to stay in and stare at her ivory socks. Beastie Boy, also known (unfairly, she'd have you know) as Devil Cat, is decidedly feminine; she is strong, supple, and totally shopping-averse, preferring to skip that step in getting to the second half of the "shop till you drop" equation.

Have a Great Weekend

24 Days and Counting

This early effort at TRON getups is amusing and I'm so very grateful they went with something else (though some might question the aesthetic sensibility of frisbees with bike helmets). Our hero wants to play keyboard in Duran Duran, while Yori has this cyber-Pocahantas vibe going that might play well at the Renaissance Fair.

I used a website to tweak the image for my Facebook profile, but they call it Obama-izing the image. Obama-izing. That doesn't sound natural or right. And for such a brutal neologism, totally inaccurate as well. You can sanitize, patronize, and weaponize, but Obama-ize? Change your birthplace to Hawai'i and we can talk. Awful, vile word. The President should be ashamed.

De Se Brosser La Lune

First Snow of the Season

I love that in the snow our table becomes a flying saucer with its landing gear down.


The bus was ninety minutes late and though the view from Aurora Bridge was compensatory, I'm still billing Metro for frostbite.


Then fell the night and rendered the roads an apocalyptic gridlock, this kid getting home, by bus and on foot, in five hours and relieved beyond words when stumbling down the hill to see that the power was still on.

26 Days and Counting

-and tomorrow begins 25 days of Tronmas. I'm really milking this, aren't I? You bet your grain-fed Holstein, I am. And speaking of cash cows, see if you can peep one in the still below:

Clever programmers, eh? Then again, Disney has always been at the forefront of animation and Mickey Mouse serves as herald of the future in TRON just as he did in Steamboat Willy. Stay tuned for more hidden prizes like this in weeks to come, as the countdown continues for TRON:Legacy.

I've already laid out what I'm looking forward to in the sequel, and since posting that, though in a more sober frame of mind, there's been even further ruminating on the subject. Just yesterday it hit me that, with all the videos and articles I've scoured about TRON:Legacy, I know too much about the blasted movie; too much, that is, in relation to your average moviegoer, who'd prefer I think going into the theater knowing as little as possible. Not this guy. When it comes to spoilers, I'm pure teflon. They bounce right off. Additionally, with such a long gestation period as this sequel has had, I've no doubt there will be surprises a'plenty when opening day arrives.

My expectations, contrary to how it must appear, are actually quite low. Why, you might ask, gush so frequently about something that in any reasonable estimation is certain to be another bad sequel? Excellent question, and one to which (you saw this coming) I have an answer. A well-rehearsed reply, I might add, that hopefully doesn't sound too defensive. Because I don't care if the movie is good or bad, it could be pure trash and I'll still be glad I put down my coin (yes, I've had my ticket for over a month now); the simple fact that a sequel to my favorite film exists and was made with full participation of the folks who made the original is sufficient cause to get my heart racing with anticipation.

Okay, that was totally defensive. Apologies. I've got a chip on my shoulder, what can I say.

Anyhow, you'll only have to put up with my TRON froth a bit longer. Meanwhile I've got my eye on the prize that's less than a month away, and counting....

Roman Holiday

Finding wireless in 16th century Rome is a drag, and I've been busy seeing the sights between fights with Borgias. My new friend Niccolo Machiavelli makes an excellent tour guide, but who has time to blog when rooftop archers left and right are giving you the shaft. One has to have priorities. Ah, but it's worth it, every scrape and puncture wound, and a snort off the old medicine flask makes me right as rain again. Now, if only I can track down the new pope, we have some policy issues to review; the last one was corrupt and... let's just say it didn't end well for him. Not that I had anything to do with it. I was nowhere near the Vatican that night.

Destiny's Child: A New Dad

You can make web movies at Xtranormal, time-consuming but fun. If I remade The Empire Strikes Back, it would go a little like this:

30 Days and Counting

Twenty eight years later, my anticipation of the sequel to TRON is reaching a fever pitch. It's ridiculous, I know. When has a decent sequel come so long after? This could be The Phantom Menace Redux -but who wants to be negative?

Asked what I'm looking forward to most in TRON: Legacy, some reflection was needed. Great visuals, sure, and sound design; the soundtrack by Daft Punk hopefully won't be some ear-scorching techno hybrid. These leapt to mind, then I started thinking about Yori and had my answer.

Our man Tron had a girlfriend in the original film. People forget. Her name was Yori, and Tron saved her from a soulless existence of solar sailer customer support. Good god, what a fate. He even kissed her, very un-PC. That's got to be a gateway drug in the antiseptic, analog world of programs that could develop into all kinds of drama. So, obviously we have to wonder what Tron and Yori have been up to all these years.

Well, obvious to me, at least.

Speechless Tuesday

Let's Do It Again

With big changes in the pipeline, I've been sifting my movies and piling up the ones that are past their shelf date. This has been a mostly successful exercise in discernment, with a couple exceptions. Let's Do It Again is one of the standouts, appearing at first glance like a disc I could do without but upon further inspection proving itself invaluable.

Sidney Poitier, concerned in the mid-70's that his public persona was too aloof, produced, directed and starred in three films aimed squarely at regular folks. Up to that point, he had portrayed powerful upright figures that stood for social justice and equality, and far from discarding those values Poitier instead married them to comedy -with devastating results, thanks in no small part to Bill Cosby, then at the peak of his comic genius.

This was the second of the three films Poitier and Cosby did together: Uptown Saturday Night is fine if slow, as is Piece of the Action, but neither has the brilliant invention or timing of Let's Do It Again. You can believe me, too; nobody is more fickle when it comes to comedy than this kid, and if I laugh out loud at a movie it's a special occasion. This one floors me every time. Check out this beautiful scene of Bill Cosby and see what I'm talking about:

33 Days Till TRON: Legacy!

Till We Have FaceMail

My gripe about the lack of fmail was premature: Facebook is set to announce its new mail service on Monday. Whether this move is timed to silence me, only Zuckerberg can say; he's been very disciplined when it comes to bringing me up in casual conversation, so I don't see any reason why he should change now.

I'm glad to see fmail happening, it is a natural outgrowth of Facebook's social preponderance. Rumbles of this being a gmail killer are already being heard, as if Google is the only other party in town. Social network activity historically resembles the boom-and-crash patterns of capitalism, but when it comes to mail service users are not so fickle. How many of your friends use Hotmail? Several of mine still do. What I think will happen is that Facebook will further dominate socnets and folks will stay loyal to their mail providers, as they have for many years running.

In the meantime, I'm enjoying RockMelt -what I fondly refer to as FaceMelt, seeing how full integration of Facebook is its big gun for future browser dominance. I can dig it. The timing is good, dovetailing as it does with fmail hitting the scene: separation of my Google contacts from Facebook friends will be that much cleaner and the cognitive dissonance of mixing and matching between the two will be greatly reduced.

FaceMelt; or, life's a b, then you reboot

A friend pointed out to me, in advance of recent Halloween revelry, that the best holiday movies are the ones we ourselves create by living them. No argument there, particularly as said revelries this year were fantastic. Celebrating the harvest in San Francisco isn't what it once was, not since too many shootings in the Castro District forced the city to outlaw mass gatherings of Soylent Green-like proportions; that is to say, mass over-population that sang and danced like it was 1999. Those were the best. Still, though we might miss brighter days, it's just as fun creating new ones: it's all about having the right company along.

To a former denizen like myself, SF visits are rife with sentiment. Around every corner lurks a pocket of memory. The least expected naturally has the greatest impact, such as finding a comic shop thought gone for good. Just as gratifying was being recognized by the proprietor, Al himself, and chatting it up like it was only yesterday rather than a decade ago that we last saw each other. A moment right out of The Big Bang Theory, geek nirvana.

Family and friends made this a memorable Halloween, as they have in the past and will yet again for many more to come. Life and its fragmentary burdens underwent a soft reboot, provided by that offline service called Holiday. It makes all the difference, not least thanks to the ability to go online and further utilize it to maximum potential.

The lazy Sunday that followed was spent partially online, as we reviewed and renewed the previous night's joys by posting pics to Facebook. Happy little editors of our memories, tagging old friends and new, sharing the brilliant costumed figures who populated the night. I couldn't help but pity those in my life not blessed with a Facebook profile: they missed out!

Next year I may feel less hemmed: RockMelt lurks around the corner, with its premise of Facebook-integration. This will add yet another delightful dimension to Halloween, as FaceMelt gives distant relations sights as well as sounds of celebration, transcending borders real and imagined, coming to you like the thing itself, realer than real: we will not merely live the best holiday movies, but have an audience to cheer us and by vicarious association live the very best of times.

Looking Forward to RockMelt

I'm ready for the next thing, ready for my browser and social net to be united in the next step towards a click-free era. While my anticipation of Facebook offering email any time soon is purely optimistic, it looks like Marc Andreessen's Chrome experiment will be the next best thing. I hope to have a chance to play with RockMelt soon and get rid of this web fatigue that's been lately dogging my keystrokes.

Co-author of Mosaic/Netscape, the web's first browser, Andreessen got my hopes up for a unified service two years ago with Ning. Unfortunately it didn't pan out, but now he's having another go at web convergence. Will this one stick? With its unified presentation of mail, social service, search function and video streaming (and geospotting!), RockMelt's chances look very strong.

I'm spending more and more time offline and welcome a service that will enable me to reduce web surfing further: a one click solution is just the thing I want to maximize my online interaction. Though I've not seen any sign of it, including Skype with this new browser would make it unbeatable.