Opening Arguments

Last night I finally saw the 2007 Transformers movie.  It was OK, in a Michael Bay sort of way, but it was very clear that it was made for a very specific audience: young white nerdy men who wish they could bone models after watching them sexily fight robots so sweat cascades down their luscious tanned bodies.  All right, fine.  If you must, Michael Bay.  I’d prefer if you objectified some hot men every once in a while, but I also understand that you think that would make you gay, and you don’t want that, Michael Bay.  I understand.

But then I see this quote from Megan Fox, the actress/model playing main hottie of the film:

“Both of the female characters in the movie were very strong characters. Rachel [Taylor]’s character is very intelligent. I thought that they were representing women very well.”

That’s the last straw.  It’s bad enough that they make movies that objectify women, but then to call those women Strong Female Characters?  I do not think that phrase means what you think it means, Megan Fox.

So you know what I say?  I say screw Strong Female Characters.  What we need now are some Weak Female Characters.  My arguments below the fold…

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If you’ve been watching TV at all lately, you’ve probably come across this commercial for the shamelessly sleazy CW show Gossip Girl.

I’ve not watched the show before, and I don’t think I care to.  But what is UP with that music?  The man you’re hearing is Plastic Bertrand, and the song is 1977’s Ca Plane Pour Moi.  It’s way better when it isn’t chopped up into three second clips. more »

The moral values that have held together this country and this world are in an advanced stage of decay. From schools to shops to our own homes, we turn on one another — race against race, religion against religion, nation against nation and brother against brother. Feuds great and small divide us. I say, no more!

In such times, we need strong leadership! We need a Lord Protector who guides with his gut to dispel this discord and disagreement that has sapped the world’s vitality and capacity for greatness! I am proud to say, I am that Lord Protector. And I have a plan.

Our true enemy is excessive and destructive emotional freedom — recklessly granted in the well-meaning spirit of progress, it has been abused to the point of madness.

It’s time for a new moral authority, one of tenderness, true, but one supported by the only thing human beings seem to understand — force.

Stare into our brave new world, after the jump —

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It’s Saturday. Keep your PJs on, grab a bowl of sugary cereal, plop yourself on the floor 9 inches from the TV, and commence mouthbreathing. [via Big Contrarian]

As loljoker contest submissions have continued to roll in, an interesting pattern has emerged; there are lots of lulz about Heath, Romero, and (as you’ll see in this post) the comic book and lego incarnations of the Joker, there has been a conspicuous paucity of Jack Nicholson themed submissions. What is the deal with that?

It seems that Ledger’s performance has pushed Nicholson’s joker into the taint of irrelevance; Nicholson can no longer lay claim to the darkest incarnation of the Joker, yet his portrayal is not as campy as Romero’s turn in the classic TV series. Is his generally solid interpretation of the character doomed to be forgotten? Maybe Jack will start lobbying Nolan to be cast to replace Ledger in the next installation of this series?

Lots more romero and comics loljokerz (all submitted by Cushman) after the jump (plus some late-breaking submissions from Gab that attempt correct the underrepresentation of Nicholson)…

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Jean-Paul Sartre once said “Hell is other people,” but his characters were just stuck in a plain old room with some other folks and no exit.  None of them was the lone existentialist trapped in a children’s television program.

Here’s a tribute to those top five hapless souls who, though depressed, distraught, or just plain angry, are doomed to live in saccharine-filled worlds where cotton candy lines the streets and the power of friendship is always, always the answer.

5. Oscar the Grouch: Poor Oscar.  Even if he weren’t grouchy, “the Grouch” is still part of his name and his species.  He lives in a trashcan, he has no legs, and his only friend is a worm.  I’m fairly sure he became a grouch back in ‘Nam and at some point lived in a van down by the river.  To add insult to injury, the only way he can make enough money to scrape by is to teach dumb kids the letters of the alphabet.

Oscar can’t be too high on this list, however.  After all, he’s not the only one of his kind like those poor saps below.  Then again, even having kindred spirits in the wonderful land of Sesame Street isn’t too much help for Oscar.  If this clip from the Sally Messy Yuckayel show is to be believed, even other grouches hate Oscar because he once had his heart melted by an adowabul kitten.  The fellow just can’t win.

Wanna know 4, 3, 2, and 1?  Well, you’ll have to click, won’tcha?

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The Harvard Classics Project is a very Overthinking It-type enterprise, in that it combines high culture and pop culture.

On the high culture side is The Harvard Classics. In the first decade of the 20^th century, Harvard President Charles Eliot claimed that a five-foot shelf of books could provide “a good substitute for a liberal education in youth to anyone who would read them with devotion, even if he could spare but fifteen minutes a day for reading.” (Which leads me to wonder, was President Eliot implying four years of Harvard was a pointless waste of time and money?)

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I recently had the pleasure of watching a play I had written go up as part of the New Works New Haven theatre festival, and sitting in the green room with the actors and techies before the show, I was confronted by a question that every writer hears quite a lot.

“How do you get started?”

Now, I could tell them the truth — it’s a three step process:

1. Coffee
2. Don’t fall asleep
3. Write a script!

But they don’t want to hear the practical details on the act of writing. Everybody wants to have written, but nobody really wants to write.

Aspiring writers want to know how their impulse to put something on paper can come to fruition in a fully formed idea that basically writes itself. (Thanks to the death of the author, writing is really just a matter of exposing a laptop to the right combination of socioeconomic preconditions. Once you can get started, you can just minimize the window and play Minesweeper.)

“The Secret” that isn’t actually The Secret, but is still about as Secret, by which I mean, not secret at all, plus a real-life Hollywood bonus, after the jump. more »

Okay, in my original Eurovision post, I dismissed the Russian entry, “Believe,” as being “too lame to embed here.” But after the song’s victory, I watched it again. And I realized that when something is lame enough, it becomes camp, and camp is very much worth embedding.

So now I invite you all to enjoy a truly silly performance, Dima Bilan (a man that Reuters describes as “lithe“) singing “Believe” — after the jump. more »

On Saturday, the finals of Eurovision 2008 will take place in Belgrade. This mother of all talent shows has been organized by the European Broadcasting Union every year since 1956. Each European nation gets to send one singer or band, to perform one original song. Over 100 million people watch the show, and everyone gets to vote for the winner via phone (but you CAN’T vote for your own country).

Okay, let me take you back a couple years, get you up to speed. more »