The usual roundup of things I found interesting on the internets recently:
- The Terrible Tragedy of the Healthy Eater – In the new year, I’ve been trying to eat a little healthier, but healthy eating is a kinda ridiculous racket. Sample awesome:
That really skinny old scientist dude says anything from an animal will give you cancer. But a super-ripped 60 year old with a best-selling diet book says eat more butter with your crispy T-Bone and you’ll be just fine as long as you stay away from grains. Great abs beat out the PhD so you end up hanging out on a forum where everyone eats green apples and red meat and talks about how functional and badass parkour is.
You learn that basically, if you ignore civilization and Mark Knopfler music, the last 10,000 years of human development has been one big societal and nutritional cock-up and wheat is entirely to blame. What we all need to do is eat like cave-people.
And it just keeps going… and going…
- Unchained Melody: Two Troublemakin’ Bruvas Take on Tarantino’s Django Unchained – An interesting discussion on the “controversy” surrounding Quentin Tarantino’s new movie, Django Unchained. For the record, as you’ll see in the coming weeks of 2012 movie roundup activities, I loved the movie.
- A Simple Walk Into Mordor – So some nerds realized that the actual, real life, distance between where they filmed the Shire and where they filmed Mordor (particularly Mount Doom) is only about 120 miles, and they thus resolved to fly to New Zealand, get dressed up in capes, put on fake hobbit feet, and actually walk that distance (the title being a play on Boromir’s infamous “One does not simply walk into Mordor” line). Since they’re city-folk, they get up to all sorts of jackassery whilst traversing the countryside and interacting with animals and locals and whatnot. Very entertaining. There’s four videos, and they’re all pretty fun.
- Videology: Dear Loyal DVD Customers – An interesting look at how one independent NY DVD rental store is looking to remain vital and relevant in this day and age of streaming and Netflix and so on:
A couple years ago, it became terribly obvious that a video store in this day and age was not something that could flourish on its own anymore, especially in New York City, let alone Williamsburg. We tried a lot of different things, some that were successful (No Late Fee Plans!), others not so much (delivery… a valiant effort). But in the end it came down to a singular decision: change or close.
With a collection of over 30,000 movies and many regular customers, shuttering our doors was not an option. So we came up with a plan. It was risky and expensive and we could be running ourselves even further into the ground, but there was nothing left to lose. Times had changed. Netflix and iTunes and Amazon and Redbox… well, they became our direct competition and that was a tough battle. So we decided we’d offer something that they can’t: a movie lover’s paradise, right here in Brooklyn.
The place sounds pretty cool…
- Wolfenstein 3D Online – The original Wolfenstein 3D is available to play for free online. It’s a classic, though clearly showing its age. I can’t believe that I still remembered all the secrets on the first level… I even managed to get to that purple secret level. Heh.
And that’s all for now. If all goes well, look for the kickoff of 2012 movie recapping with the announcement of the annual Kaedrin Movie Awards nominations next Sunday. Last minute recommendations/category suggestions welcome!