The German

A coworker sent me this short, The German, to watch.  It's impressive what special effects look like now, thinking back to what war movies looked like when I was a kid.


The German from Nick Ryan on Vimeo.

Bellflower

I'm using this from The Best Movie Dialogue of 2011 from the Forth Worth Weekly Blotch, by Kristian Lin:

Some people thought Evan Glodell’s Bellflower was a terrific dissection of male machismo and vulnerability, while others thought it was self-indulgent and meandering. I tend toward the latter camp myself, but his SoCal-set indie film does have its moments, like this speech at the very end. Woodrow has either a) brutally beaten and raped his unfaithful girlfriend and caused another woman to take her own life, or b) imagined it all. His overly loyal best friend Aiden, having collaborated with Woodrow on building a tricked-out car armed with weapons, gives this insane and amazing pep talk that references a character in The Road Warrior. Even divorced from their meaning, the rhythm of the words and the repetition give it a hypnotic power. I must confess I laughed when he mentioned the jackrabbits. More seriously, this encapsulates the pain and misguided friendship that has led them down a poisonously misogynistic blind alley. What a speech coming from this blind alley, though.

AIDEN: I’ve been thinking. We pretty much moved all the way out here for no reason except for that we thought it would be cool, like in the movies. I mean, we never even go to the beach.
WOODROW: Yeah.
AIDEN: We could just leave. I mean, you’re the only reason I’m here. And it’s like nothing’s even changed.
WOODROW (after taking a drink): Nothing ever changes, dude.
AIDEN: That’s what I’m saying. But I feel like things could change, you know? I’m serious. Like, … (pause) …your car is really badass, dude.
WOODROW: Yeah, it’s not really my car, though.
AIDEN: Yes, it is. I built it for you.
WOODROW: Thank you.
AIDEN: We could just get in the car, put the flamethrower in the trunk, leave town. Do you know how awesome it would be if we, like, went to some small town and went to one of the local bars? Pulled up in that car? People would be like, “Holy shit! Who are these guys?” And we’d be like, “Come outside and take a look at our flamethrower!” Dude, I don’t think you realize how cool your car is. (pause) I’m fucking serious, though, dude. We could take the flamethrower and guns and get a shitload of drugs and liquor and put them all in the trunk and just fucking go.
WOODROW: Oh, fuck, dude. I really feel like I’m having an anxiety attack right now.
AIDEN: Dude, it’s ‘cause you’re thinking about the wrong shit. You just need some better images in your mind. Can you imagine two sweet-ass dudes like us in that car traveling through the desert across America? We would look so fucking cool. We would go places and park the car in places where we know we’d look cool. Hang out smokin’ cigarettes, leaning against the car looking cool, and let people look at us. We could get fuckin’ trashed on drugs in the middle of nowhere and drive a hundred and fifty miles an hour naked down the freeway, hanging out the windows shooting shotguns at freeway signs and fuckin’ historical landmarks and fuckin’ jackrabbits. Dude, we could make some jackrabbit jerky and jackrabbit shoulder pads for our new leather jackets. (a pause as he realizes) Dude, you are Lord Humongous! Dude, you are fucking Lord Humongous! You are Lord fuckin’ Humongous! The master of fire! The lord of the wasteland! Lord Humongous doesn’t get cheated on by some stupid bitch. Lord Humongous doesn’t say, “Was it good for you?” He doesn’t say, “Who called?” or “Where were you last night?” He doesn’t leave the fucking game when he falls in love. Nobody fucking tells Lord Humongous what to do. Lord Humongous fights when he wants to fight and fucks when he wants to fuck and when all else fails, he drives straight into the fucking tanker. The thing is, is that Lord Humongous dominates his women, and they fuckin’ love him for it. (pause) Seriously, we should get outta here. We should get away from all this shit. Make new friends and meet people and stuff, and like… (he trails off)
WOODROW (whispering, almost in tears): I…I fucked up. I fucked up. Fuck!
(Aiden puts an arm around him.)
AIDEN (gently): It’s okay that it hurts. You’re not the only one who fucked up. Okay? You’re getting ready to start your new life as Lord Humongous.

Quiet Day

I had breakfast with Ming this morning.  We appreciated our waitress, not so much for her serving skills as for her youth and good breeding.  Ming wasted $2 on parking that could have been donated to Cats 'R in Need of Homes, LOL, despite my coaching him on where to park.

Eryn and I went to the Journey to the Center of the Earth 2: Mysterious Island today, which was the first movie in about....ever...that put me to sleep.  NOTHING HAPPENED!  They went to the island, Vanessa Hudgens looked hot (I'm not even sure I'm allowed to think that - wasn't she born in '98 or something?), they found Nemo's submarines, The Rock flexed his pecks and played the ukulele.  I read the original Mysterious Island by Verne...this wasn't it.  There wasn't even really a protagonist, unless you count nature in terms of the volcano and liquefaction.

Wrote, wrote, wrote.  I went back to reediting the book I'm writing.  I'm at about page 42.  That's about 1/6 the way done.  Honestly, given the sheer volume of action I put into the first 42 pages, I'm not quite sure how I'll pad out another 180+ pages.  It's going to be a challenge, despite knowing my ending.  Ugh.  And I still have to publish the story I want to get out there as a prelude to a book.

Everything is loaded for doing the job fair on Monday.  I'm not thrilled about working on Monday, particularly as I was supposed to have Friday off until the reorg, a prod issue, and two hot fixes ate the whole day.  And I think the reorg wants to eat my jQuery training on Thursday and Friday. I might tell the reorg to bite me.

But a good day, nonetheless.  I always get more done than I suspect.

What “Rape Sonograms” Are Really About

What “Rape Sonograms” Are Really About

A very good editorial on The Feminist Wire one of my friends on Facebook shared with me...

By Soraya L. Chemaly
"Can you imagine making it mandatory for any man needing medicine for erectile dysfunction to pay for and have a rectal exam and cardiac stress test? I mean, how ridiculous is that? No legislative body would ever pass an amendment making anal penetration with a probe mandatory for men who don’t want it.

Ha! What a joke! Except it isn’t. It was a protest that no one took seriously.

Virginia State Senator, Janet Howell, to whom I am currently erecting a small shrine in my office, attached the mandatory rectal exam and cardiac test to theses abortion bills. Needless to say, it did not pass. That’s because THAT is different and the legislators in question have no doubt about what transrectal probes are. Just to be clear, I don’t want to make any transorifice probe mandatory, but there is no difference between these procedures except the gender of the people subjected to them."

Highlight of my day...

...and there were obviously competing highlights if you knew the history of my day...but getting an email from a burlesque dancer with "xoxo" at the end was the best. Thank you Ms. Martini.

The web is good...

...because if it wasn't, I wouldn't be able to find two pictures of Ming by searching Google photos for "hello kitty jock strap martini midnite".

Daddy Daughter Sweetheart Dance

Despite being obnoxiously ill, I went to the Sweetheart Dance with Eryn.  Which reminded me that I was rather ill last year when I went.  But at least I get to share my annual illness with lots of kids, which makes it all worthwhile.

There was dancing.  If you're a 2-12 year old girl, dancing involves bouncing up and down.  Having been to a few college parties and watched MTV, I know that this works for 18-24 year old women as well, although for different reasons.  For us white, middle-aged dudes, it's much more complicated.  There was the shuffle step - back and forth, feet touching on each side.  There was the minor bounce - basically a bending of the knees.  There was the hands in the air, ala Ronald Miller in Can't Buy Me Love (oh yeah...Dr. Dreamy had a past and I saw it in a big physics auditorium in Troy, NY).  There was the arms up and down.

The following image is an animated gif.  If you click through, you should be able to see the arms up and down.  Which should distract you from the fact that I'm in a hula hoop contest.  Little girls in a hula hoop contest - it's on until they have to raise their arms and then stick them out to their sides.  Dads in a hula hoop contest, the winner is the tallest one who starts his hoop the furthest up his body.  True dat.

See that suit jacket?  The dance cost me $300.00.  Since losing weight, I haven't bothered to replace any of my high end dress clothes.  Fortunately, there was a two-for-one sale.  Reminded me of the last time I switched jobs.  I think my mother may have bought me the last suit I own.

There were activities other than dancing...there was the toilet paper contest.  I didn't have to participate in this one.  But in my defense, I was probably the first dad on the floor for the hula hoop contest.  The goal here was to wrap your dad in as much toilet paper as possible. Yum.  Picture courtesy of Eryn.


There was cookie frosting.  After I got done with my cookie, Eryn pointed out to me that the cookie was a ballet slipper, not a car.  Boys.  She's lucky I didn't frost a gun.


Eryn frosting her cookie and looking very old in her fancy dress and pearl necklace.


Afterwards, we did our annual trip to Ring Mountain - not that we go to Ring Mountain once a year, but we always go there after the Daddy Daughter Dance - and they had Chocolate Chili pepper on tap!  An excellent evening, particularly as there's a quart of chocolate chili pepper misered away in the downstairs freezer at this very moment.

Project Management?

I think this blog may be trying to tell me that the culmination of WW II was Project Management.  That explains a lot of my ambivalence regarding project management.

"In the World War 2 and the Post-World War 2 eras, the US accomplished impressive feats using the skills & techniques of Project Management The Manhattan project which developed the atomic bomb was one example of project management.  The Apollo Program which put a man on the moon was another example.  Virtually all large construction projects now are constructed using project management tools.  Project management forces good planning and strategy on a manager.

Why can't we make better use of project management techniques in developing reliable alternative energy sources.   What about using the techniques in fighting global warming."

Midwest Burlesk 2012

On Saturday night, despite being ill of health, I went to Best of Midwest Burlesk 2012 with Ming, Kyle, my father-in-law, Greg, and Matthew.  I'm not sure what Greg thought of it.  He was the new guy, and it's always difficult to get a read on anyone's first time at BOMB.  He said he enjoyed being asked to go and had a good time - so I'll assume he was.

We were two up on my wife's night at BOMB.  She didn't have the live band, The Southside Aces.  We did, in their long johns.  She didn't have Nadine DuBois MCing.  We did.  As the main host, accompanied by a variety of other hosts.  My favorite extra host was Big Mama Red.  She entered an aisle on one end down front and slowly talked her way to the middle where she leaned over a guy who enthusiastically decided a bit of a motorboat was in order.  She laughed at him when she backed up and told him to stand up and turn around.  He had a big goofy grin and the most serious case of glitterface you've ever seen.  She continued to talk and slowly move toward the other end of the aisle, and close to the end, midword, just bent over and licked a bald guy on the head, back to front, and then a little extra for good measure.  She borrowed wine from another table claiming he'd been very salty.

My favorite acts?  Ray Gunn dancing with an image cast on sheets. Impressive.  Looked like it took an amazing amount of work.  I hear my wife's crew was taken with his little red pouch.  The Beaujolais Sisters and their banana song about the banana between the branches.  I can't find the lyrics on the web, unfortunately.  Peach Pies Caburlesque out of Madison, Wisconsin, with their mustaches and 70's jackets. One of them had this Butthead look on her face, mouth open, upper teeth showing, that was hilarious.  And Midnite Martini and Buster Hymen, who did an amazing Hello Kitty act.  She came out in a Japanese schoolgirl outfit.  Danced around with her Hello Kitty, and finally threw it in her toybox.  The Kitty came alive and danced with her until someone off stage handed her a shirtless Ken doll.  Hello Kitty was irritated, so he began to strip...right down to his Hello Kitty softball-sized stuff head on a jockstrap.  Nadine encouraged everyone in the audience with children to consider their Hello Kitty backpacks.

The locals did some very nice work as well: Coco Dupree, Nadine, Tila (not local, but local enough I've seen her many times), Sweatpea, Ophelia Flame.

My sister might note I left out the cross dressing Mistress Victoria DeVille who sang the Little Mermaid's Part of Your World with a gay-marriage political theme.  Enjoyable, and the big costume made it more integrated with the show than this YouTube performance.  But to me it didn't feel like burlesque - more like something I'd go to the Gay 90s to see - which could be a lot of fun, it just wasn't what I was expecting.  However, Mistress DeVille seems to be a staple at burlesque around town, so maybe I've just always missed having male cross-dressing at my burlesque (which is decidedly different than what the Peaches were doing, for instance).

So overall, fun.  Despite being a bit ill and forgetting to get a beer before a show where there wasn't an intermission and a bit of disappointment that it's become hip enough that it's noticeably more expensive than in the past.  Ming was less enthusiastic, but only because the woman next to him was whistling so loud he was going deaf.  He claims that's why he's making this face, although she doesn't appear to be whistling that I can see.  Just quietly reading her program.  I think he was just putting on a posture so Julie doesn't know he was checking out her legs.

Look at how happy he is to see her backside...you know, so the whistling is over.  Why are you keeping your program strategically positioned, Ming?

Three Idiots

Pooteewheet and I watched Three Idiots last night, an enjoyable Bollywood movie about three engineers and the students, teachers, and friends, they interact with, while trying to find a place in the world that isn't dictated to them by others and allows them to merge their passions with their careers. I recommend it, particularly if it ever makes it to Netflix streaming.

It was interesting to learn from Wikipedia: "The film also uses real inventions by little known people in India's backyards. The brains behind the innovations were Remya Jose, a student from Kerala, who created the exercise-bicycle/washing-machine, Mohammad Idris, a barber from Meerut district in Uttar Pradesh, who invented a bicycle-powered horse clipper, and Jahangir Painter, a painter from Maharashtra, who made the scooter-powered flour mill."

Aamir Khan and Kareena Kapoor in Zoobi Doobi:

 

Best Art-Related Podcasts In the Twin Cities

I saw this article about local arts podcasts on WCCO this morning while debating, "should I go to work early so I can  have coffee with Mean Mr. Mustard? Or should I just use my new french press, save $1.81 (not being overly fond of the free coffee at work, which means resorting to Caribou, which is a habit I'm trying to break in favor of paying off my house in 15 years, not 30, and saving just over $100,000.  That's right - not drinking Caribou may save me $100,000 over the next 15 years before I even get to the cost of the coffee), and read the local news."  Mean Mr. Mustard is never available anyway, so he's now second fiddle to a french roast decanter and CBS local news. He's probably not surprised.

My father-in-law (I don't have a blog nickname for him yet - I'll give it some thought and try to determine what won't get me the evil eye next time I see him, which will be in three days for BOMB) might find these interesting if he's looking for something to play while he's at the studio.  Their top five were (follow the article for the links):

• Talk of the Stacks (Hennepin County Public library)
• Collections Up Close (MN Historical Society)
• Soapcast (Soap Factory)
• Art on Call
• You Are Hear
• Building Minnesota (sort of Lost Twin Cities, but without the Lost?)
• Anything by the Guthrie or MIA

The Singular of Data is Anecdote

Thoughtworks pointed me at this enjoyable article by Amy Perfors  refuting a common saying, "The singular of data is not anecdote."  In places, it reads like I imagine Temperance Brennan would read if she weren't a fake forensic scientist based on a real person.

"A better truism would therefore be more like "the plural of anecdote is probably not data", which of course isn't nearly as catchy."

Office Art

Ming put Eryn's painting up in his office.  I'm posting it out here so she can appreciate that it's on his desk.

Dr. Who Plot Generator

Thought Kyle might enjoy sharing this with his nephew. A Doctor Who Plot Generator. Uncoded. Here's a die/dice roller so you don't have to track one down.

My plot:
Invasion! The Judoon invade Spain to steal unique tech from the Ogrons.

Harold and the Purple Crayon

Tonight we went to the Children's Theater Company to see Harold and the Purple Crayon.  Eryn's getting a little old for that sort of play, but she was interested in going and I had purchased the ticket package for this year, so that was good enough.  Next year we're hoping to swap in one or two plays for older audiences at Theatre in the Round or elsewhere.  Mix it up a bit.

I have to say, as you get older, and you have more experiences under your belt, some things just get much stranger when you make associations.  For instance, Harold and the Purple Crayon would be most accurately described by me, in a mental game of Apples to Apples, with the phrase, "Nutbuster the Ballet, but with better dancing, more singing, way better scenery, and more footie pajamas."  Why?  Because what other conclusion can you draw when there's a grown man doing interpretive dance in his pajamas?  The  only things missing were the blow up doll and the bottle of vodka.  Although I was worried we were headed to a fetish moment with the Crayon Girls each pulled out a piece of paper and slapped it on their chests for him to write on.

It really was a bit of an acid trip, going from (a grown Asian man in blue footie pajamas) singing a very "Under the Sea" song in much the same voice as Ariel, to an even more disturbing laugh that sounded almost exactly like Ariel's, to a rocket number that reminded me very much of Meatloaf singing in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, to an alien lovefest funk/disco number that brought back the acid trips that were the puppet portion of The Wiggles "Fruit Salad Yummy Yummy".

Haven't ever had the pleasure, here ya go...below. But I would recommend this play to someone my younger niece's age with an interest in music and dance. The staging was beautiful, and they did a variety of techniques to communicate how the crayon was drawing the purple line. Well done, just very weird with my play-going background.