New Blog

I mean that 100%.

Go here:

http://callofdoody13.tumblr.com/

I have an iPhone and a tumblr app. I never found a blogger app. Plus, tumblr seems to reflect the fact that the internet has advanced in the past five years. This last post on blogger is the same as the one I did the first time. That's not bad, but there are features on tumblr that I didn't know you could do with a blog, and I'd like to take advantage of them.

Idea for a Meme

This isn't my idea, I'm just following up something that was written in this pretty good breakdown of the half season finale. (I don't care that it was built up as "Matt Smith getting angry" or that Tennant was even angrier on a weekly basis; from what I saw on the screen, it was an excellent episode)

The meme concerns a particular scene with perhaps the most ridiculous line of dialogue you'll ever see on TV, which is saying something considering Doctor Who has many ridiculous lines of dialogue per episode. (Proof? Crazy explanations for why stuff is happening. I'm waiting for the episode where the flux capacitor is broken. I think it's coming.)

The scene is available here, specifically the following line of dialogue:

My friend, you have never risen higher.

Down near the bottom of the above linked breakdown, the writer presents this idea:

And now I wish I could hire Madam Vastra to follow me around saying things like, "My friend, your hair has never looked more awesome." Or, "My friend, your dancing is really quite coordinated and not at all embarrassing."

So the meme idea is that Madam Vastra provides overly effusive praise for situations that (while good) are not quite great. Here's more ideas:

• My friend, the Gods will be jealous of your beauty.
• My friend, she will regret snubbing you until the last star burns out of the sky.
• My friend, Iron Chefs must take lessons from you.
• My friend, your song will unite the world.
• My friend, it will be hanging in the Louvre within a week.
• My friend, this will be printed more times than the Bible.
• My friend, all of human existence will change with that idea.

Doctor Who Loves You

Sorry this is late, but I had to wait for my dad to finish watching the rest of the first half of this year's Doctor Who season to post this.

First, some quick hits:

Those two episodes that preceded the finale sucked. The story was overlong and boring and could--SHOULD have been done in a single episode. Why did we need 2 for that? And what was the point of those episodes? Yeah, the flesh is just about real so we should all treat them better... but then, why does the Doctor make the Tardis turn them into real humans? What was that about? Did the Tardis not notice the little speeches everyone gave where they all promised to treat each other more humanely? Crap. And how about the big ball of flesh they find, which makes them... do nothing. Superfluous. Plus the one woman turned into a spider monster because... no idea.

However, the ending was good. That got me, though, as I saw pointed out someplace else, Amy wearing the same clothes for the whole season should have been a tip off that something wasn't right.

While those two episodes were absolutely terrible, I enjoyed the hell out of the finale. Seeing this Doctor finally get angry was a treat, the dirty dozen he recruited were hilarious, and we finally got the answer to the worst attempt by a space ship to send a warning to the passengers who walk inside it. "There is no pond in the forest." How the HELL was anyone supposed to take that and get "River is Amy and Rory's baby"? The Tardis might as well as told them who won the 2014 World Cup for all the good that line did.

Anyway, this post actually started out about something else but degenerated into my thoughts, so I'll have to postpone my suggestion for a Doctor Who related meme until later in the week.

The Future!

Two things about the future:

1) Blogger just isn't cutting it for me anymore. Any suggestions? My friend uses Tumblr. Does anyone have thoughts on that? Also, if I move the blog, can I bring along my old posts? I'd hate to leave them here on blogger, all lonely and scared.

2) The future of pop groups. This band (this is the longest wikipedia entry I've ever seen written in Japanese. It might actually be longer than the WW2 entry) has 48 members, and that's just in it's A, K, and B teams. There's also Team 4, with 10 members. Then there's the JV team with 19 members. Then there's the loosely affiliated SDN48 group, which is more for adults. That's a lot of young girls. Enough that it makes you wonder why they felt the need to CGI another.

AKB48 sign Ponytail and Shirts, which I've sung in karaoke.

The saddest part about the CGI idol they've created is that they took the nose of the girl with the nose I most want to punch in the face. Everytime I see this girl (and I've been seeing her WAY too much lately), I feel the urge to punch her in the face. Why did they have to choose her nose?

Finally, I just hope that this CGI idol doesn't do what Rei from Idoru did and pop out of the microwave at every 7-11 around the world. That would be scary.

(P.S. Remember when William Gibson wrote stuff you actually wanted to read? Those were the gold old days.)

Live Painting

A couple weeks ago I went to an event where there were only like four Japanese people, and thirty white people. I couldn't remember the last time before then that I'd been in a bar with that many white people. These days, it's just me and a bunch of Japanese or Koreans.

Anyway, it was part art exhibit, part live music, part live painting, part dance party. I thought the dance party portion of the evening felt a little tacked on, as if one of the artist's friends had begged him to be put on the schedule. The dance floor was the size of a large bathroom. There was not much dancing.

The live music wasn't a big hit, either. It was a Korean girl and her friend, an old Korean guy. I don't think the old man knew Japanese. Or why he was there. Or where he was. I bet at the end of the night, he decided it was time to go back to Korea. Anyway, the girl banged on a drum cinched on a cord around her shoulder while occasionally hopping on one foot and kicking out her other. I think she was dancing to the house music played later because it didn't match whatever it was she was playing. The old man backed her up for the first two (three? five?) songs, then the girl wanted to take a break so she put the old man up as lead singer. He was terrible. He sounded like a tree moaning. I instantly joined the mass of people escaping.

The live painting looked like this:


So. Yeah. Not a fun night.

Movie Review

Last night I watched Domino, a movie directed by Ridley Scott's brother (and Top Gun director) Tony. It starred Keira Knightley as Domino and Mickey Rourke as Mikey Rourke. The writer was Richard Kelly of Donnie Darko fame, but more recently he made a movie called The Box that you didn't see.

Those were the principal players, and here's my review:

Domino gets a gold star.

You know how when you're in first grade and you draw something that's supposed to be a zebra but, if it were actually to scale, it would be fifty feet tall and have nine legs? Everyone does that, then shows their picture to the teacher who gives it... a GOLD STAR!!!! It doesn't really deserve a gold star, does it? Probably not, but you tried so gosh-darn hard on it, you're really getting the gold star for effort.

That's the same gold star Domino gets.

It just tries so hard, I couldn't bring myself to hate it. Of course, the plot made little sense and I don't see why Domino had sex with Choco and what was with the Afghan guy? But yet, were I to hate this movie, I'd be no better than a teacher who refuses to hand out gold stars because that zebra has no tail.

Random explosions, nudity, a guy getting his arm shotgunned off because of a bad cell phone connection, scenes taking place in a strip club JUST BECAUSE, two guys from Beverly Hills 90210--it was like a goodie bag of shwag from all the stores in the mall you never go to except at Xmass time. A soundtrack that never played more than ten seconds of a single song, a camera that never stopped moving, enough cuts to give a person epilepsy, more than one scene presented via security cameras--you could write "Hollywood Summer Movie Tips and Tricks for Dummies" using only examples from this movie and you would still need a second volume.

Here's my big take-away from this movie: there's a scene scored with a Tom Waits song. As I watched, I thought to myself 'Tom Waits is going to appear in this movie'. Two scenes later, there he was--playing Tom Waits! Actually, he played a preacher character, but quickly shed his preacher skin and resumed being Tom Waits. Not only that, I'd say he's more Tom Waits in this movie than he is in Coffee and Cigarettes, a movie in which he was actually playing Tom Waits.

I highly suggest this movie. Not as a movie, just as I would never suggest one of my crudely drawn stick figures as a work of art. Rather, enjoy it for the fact it tries so hard to please you, enough you'll want to give it a gold star, too.

White Men, Rejoice!

White men all over the world, you are finally going to be catered to--a sports and life website created especially for you! Before, white men could only get sports and life commentary that suited their whiteness from just a few sites, magazines, and television stations: ESPN, SI, ESPN the Magazine, the Sporting News, FX, Spike TV, G4, Maxim, GQ, Esquire, Yahoo Sports, NBC Sports, CBS Sports, Fox Sports, Fox's various sports channels, Comedy Central, local newspapers, large circulation newspapers such as the New York Times and Boston Globe, Fox, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, Fox News, every major movie studio, Marvel Comics, DC Comics, and some others I'm probably forgetting.

Plus, it's brought to you by Subway (on the day I put the link up). I suppose Abercombie and Fitch will be sponsoring the site soon enough.

**
I know those writers have appeared in major magazines and are (most likely) well respected, but did anyone just stop for a second and think, 'Hey, wait! Black people watch sports, too! And latinos! And women! Maybe we can find some voices for the majority of the population that fits in one of those groups.'