New Moon Volturi Fight

I have watched this clip about a thousand times, every time they show a clip of the movie on a talk show, etc. I finally slowed it down on the TiVo (if only YouTube had slo-mo!): watch the completely unnecessary flip starting at 0:25. Edward flips Bella over, only to have her land facing the same direction, and then turns her around, this time out of the way. I love Twilight, but this is a little ridiculous.

And, by the way, do you know how hard it is to fix marble? That you would have to basically replace everything damaged here? Even if I was immortal and unbelievably wealthy– thus, having both the time and money to do it– I would be supremely peeved at the damage done to the steps of the dais, never mind how stupid the dais and thrones are. (That part of the fight isn’t in the clip, but you can see part of it at 1:50 in this featurette. I know, I have too much time on my hands right now. At least I tell you how to cut to the chase with the video.)

Robert is Bothered

I love Twilight (really, almost to an unhealthy degree…) and think Robert Pattinson is great– loved him first as Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. More recently, check him out in Little Ashes and How to Be to appreciate him fully as an actor, not just ridiculously good-looking, brooding, “good” vampire Edward Cullen.

Having said that, I love Jimmy Fallon too and these spots he does are hilarious. Here’s the one on Snickers Ads:

Check out more at Robert is Bothered.

Casual Relationship

While watching The Rules of Attraction, went online to look up the complete details of Victor’s monologue about Europe (read the transcript here, skip to text “Victor:”). It’s great, as is Kip Pardue when he’s delivering it, and was let to the Wikipedia article on the book, which I’ve also read and, like most Bret Easton Ellis books, found it, in a word, “interesting.” Also found it interesting that, while describing Dick and Paul’s relationship, there’s a link for “friends with benefits,” which leads to this article on casual relationships. Wikipedia really is trying to catalog everything.

Back

So, I haven’t had a substantive post here since last August, but I’m back now (hopefully). There’s lots of reasons I’ve been away– first off, I had a bout of pancreatitis last summer, which despite over a week in the hospital, was followed by repeat instances of pancreatitis (or some similar illness) for months after, resulting in a few more hospitalizations. After getting over my GI problems (sort of), I’ve been suffering from constant migraines, threw out my back (I have no idea how, but I could barely walk for days), and just had a car accident. It’s been a long nine to ten months and I’m trying to dig myself out of this hole. As my Facebook status reads, I am recovering from life. And with that comes a return to blogging, including my continuing coverage of IdeaFarm (the truck is back, alive and well parked on the corner of Castro and El Camino in Mountain View) and other random stuff, like my teenage infatuation with the Twilight series as well as my continuing love affair with Depeche Mode (I’m re-watching 101 as I write).

So, stay tuned.

Harry Potter y los santos de la muerte

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Originally uploaded by sindy

Yes, I couldn’t wait. My pre-ordered copy should be delivered to my house today, but I’m overseas, so I still bought it. Check out the covers for the UK edition, including the “adult cover” on the right.

(Harry Potter y los santos de la muerte is the rumored Spanish translation title.)

Read a book, okay?

Vonnegut on Love, Men and Women

From Timequake, talking about Kilgore Trout (who you might consider Vonnegut’s alter ego):

In the only love story he ever attempted, “Kiss Me Again,” he had written, “There is no way a beautiful woman can live up to what she looks like for any appreciable length of time.”

The moral at the end of that story is this: “Men are jerks. Women are psychotic.”

Remembering Vonnegut, or God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut, one of, if not my favorite, authors, passed away last night. An incredible loss. Discovering Vonnegut was bittersweet– I received Cat’s Cradle as a gift from a guy I’d sometimes rather forget– but for a few years in there, I was obsessed with reading everything by the author and I was constantly lost in the pages of Sirens of Titan, Mother Night, Galapagos and others. If there was one author out there that truly shaped the person I am, the way I think, the way I view the world, I would have to say it was Vonnegut. And even years later, after I’d put the worn paperbacks away on the shelves for some time to explore other realms of literature, when I would pick up Breakfast of Champions from time to time, it was both comforting and refreshing. Familiar, but like all good fiction, new things discovered with every subsequent reading. And with his later works, with Timequake, with Man Without A Country, I felt the same way– same old Vonnegut, but still fresh and relevant and his words resonating with me as always.

And most importantly, I always find myself smiling when I read Vonnegut. He was snarky before we knew what to call it.

The NY Times article says how some dismissed him as a “comic book philosopher.” Well, if that’s not the voice of a great American novelist, I don’t know what is.

Check out this post from September 2005 about when he was on the Daily Show. Video clip included.

Zimbardo on The Daily Show, Viacom vs. YouTube

For those of you who may have missed it last Thursday night (3/29), a shout out to Stanford Professor of Psychology (Emeritus) Philip Zimbardo on The Daily Show talking about his new book The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil and similarities between the famous Stanford Prison Experiment and Abu Ghraib.

Note the copycat version of video sharing: Viacom’s replacement for all those video clips pulled after the mother lawsuit against Google over their YouTube clips. It’s not a bad reproduction of YouTube functionality in terms of letting me embed this clip here or pass around the URL, but I certainly don’t get my pick of clips, which I suppose is part of the point, but also the ultimate price. Case in point: again on The Daily Show, Larry Wilmore and John Oliver did a great piece last week on the proposed N-word ban in New York City. The piece quickly made it onto YouTube and was subsequently taken down due to copyright complaints by Viacom, but it wasn’t in turn made available by Viacom on the Comedy Central site. As a result, another brilliant combination of comedy, journalism, and social commentary is lost in the endless bowels of cable TV history, only to be re-experienced or heard of again by the lucky re-run watcher. Are you happy Viacom?

E.F. and the Meaning of Liff

Around my office and among my friends, we have this term called “E.F.,” which stands for “Embarrassed Feeling.” It’s basically a succinct way to refer to that feeling you get when you’re embarrassed for someone else because of the awkwardness of the situation, what that person is saying or doing unwittingly, etc. and out of politeness, there’s nothing you can really do about it other than grin and bear it. For example, when you’re in a group of people and somebody starts telling a story that becomes weirdly personal so as to make everyone else uncomfortable or when somebody is trying to tell a funny story and nobody is really responding, but the person just continues awkwardly and desperately with it anyway. E.F. is also a common phenomenon when watching episodes of Three’s Company, owing to the absurdity and general hi-jinks of their plot lines, usually based on some implausible misunderstanding and the ridiculous chaos that ensues (just look at the entire premise of the TV show itself).* There are a number of opportunities and situations in which you get E.F., but at least for me, it’s a particularly torturous feeling that I get on a semi-regular basis and it’s a small comfort to have a term with which to quickly refer to it.

Like E.F., there are a lot of common things out in there in the world that we’re all aware of, but don’t have real words or phrases to capture them with so we can refer to them in our daily conversations. The Meaning of Liff, aside from being terribly amusing, manages to capture a lot of those things, whether the word be adjective, verb or noun, made-up or real:

AINDERBY STEEPLE (n.)
One who asks you a question with the apparent motive of wanting to hear your answer, but who cuts short your opening sentence by leaning forward and saying ‘and I’ll tell you why I ask…’ and then talking solidly for the next hour.

BODMIN (n.)
The irrational and inevitable discrepancy between the amount pooled and the amount needed when a large group of people try to pay a bill together after a meal.

YARMOUTH (vb.)
To shout at foreigners in the belief that the louder you speak, the better they’ll understand you.

For the American reader, it may feel a little strange– the book was written by two Brits, Douglas Adams (of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy fame) and John Lloyd (who also worked on parts of the radio series of The Guide and produced all four Blackadder series, another favorite of mine), and its contents have a markedly British tone. (Of course, I opted for the authentic UK edition, shiny and new, shipped over from the UK.)

In any case, for those who love words, even made up ones, and being able to sum up the daily idiosyncrasies of life, you should take a look.

Get a random meaning of Liff

*And as my co-worker said of Jack Tripper, “he had such a 70’s f*cking haircut, I just wanted to punch him in the face.” (No offense to John Ritter, God rest his soul. Despite probably being best-known for playing Jack Tripper, he did a lot of other work that I thought was much better and certainly induced less E.F.)