Link Dump

As per usual, just a list of fun stuff seen on the internets of late:

• Choose Your Quarantine Character – Perfect little parody by filmmaker Alina Polichuk. Every detail of this is well observed and executed perfectly. And there’s a Part 2
• What Day Is It? With Todd Meany – Cleveland news programs are having fun with people apparently not realizing what day it is anymore because they’re just sitting in their house all day.
• put me in coach – I have no idea what is going on in this video, but the comedic timing is absolutely perfect
• The Movies Behind Your Favourite GIFs – Interesting video exploring the concept. The guy’s voice is grating at first and ew could probably use more examples, but it’s a good exploration of the topic.
• Pizza (2012) Movie Review by Dylab – This Indian movie about a pizza delivery guy getting stuck in a haunted house was a contender for Weird Movie of the Week, but it’s not quite weird enough… but this review of the film is really fantastic and you should read it. (The movie is far too long for what it is and some of the haunted house stuff is overbaked, but it’s got some kooky twists and is pretty fun otherwise.)
• Getting In My Ex-Girlfriend’s Back Door – This locksmith video is a hilarious deadpan April fool’s joke.

So there you have it. Stay safe and sane in lockdown, folks.

Just the usual interesting links from the depths of ye olde internets.

• Is My Pastor an Alligator? 7 Gospel-Centered Takeaways – A recent gem from the #idontknowwhatthefuckisgoingon tag, the entire Matthew Pierce Evangelical Thought Leader™ site is a doozy, but I loved this one in particular:
  

  Have you ever heard horrible snarling and grunting sounds coming from your pastor’s office and walked in, only to find your pastor’s wife quickly trying to button her Mandy Moore Walk to Remember good girl white shawl with her stubby little arms and your pastor holding a copy of Systematic Theology in his lap but it’s upside down and he clearly wasn’t reading it, he’s just trying to hide his man goodies and you’re like oh, my bad, and your pastor is like “oh, uh, Sherri and I were just praying” and Sherri is so nervous she knocks over the lamp with her green scaly tail.

  Brilliant.

• The Two Generals’ Problem – Pretty good overview of a classic computer science problem. In case you can’t tell, I read a lot of science fiction (and, for the record, science fact), and one of the concepts that comes up is that we could, like, digitize ourselves and beam copies to other planets/systems/wherever. You’d need to travel there via conventional means first, but once you have a receiver… but then you’d have to contend with the Two Generals’ Problem, which is terrifying in this context.
• Long Chile, Ohio2, and the Snack Rack – You may have seen the strange and brilliant alternative USA map drawn by a creative teenager; this is the story behind that, as well as some other antics from their family.
• We Interviewed David Lynch and Now We’re Trapped in This Diner Forever – I mean, what did you expect man?
• Gone Girl Commentary: Four Days – David Fincher calls Ben Affleck unprofessional in this short clip from the Gone Girl Commentary. I can’t tell if this is an actual, true story, or if Fincher just has a really dry sense of humor and is just messing with Affleck.
• A family bought a 20,000-square-foot Freemason temple in Indiana for $89,000, and they’re now turning it into their home – Living the dream. I mean, I assume the place is a total Money Pit in the long run, but it seems like a no brainer otherwise. It’s also apparently haunted.
• America Uses Fahrenheit. The Rest of the World Uses Celsius. America Is Right. The Rest of the World Is Wrong. – There are arguments to be made about the rest of the metric system, but Fahrenheit vs Celsius is a different story. The chart on this page is dead one.
• Why are they called Triscuits? – Twitter is often a cesspool of political bickering, but stumbling upon stuff like this is just the best.
• The Lord of the Rings with Lightsabers – Normally, I’d say that people have too much time on their hands, but then, you know, pandemic. Pretty sure someone would have done this anyway though.

That’s all for now. Stay safe and healthy, everyone.

The usual roundup of interesting links from the depths of ye olde internets:

• And Now, An Intimate Conversation With Elijah Wood – Scott Wampler’s interview with Elijah Wood is, well, it’s something else:
  

  I’ve interacted with you often enough on Twitter to know you’re a regular social media user.

  Oh, yeah.

  So then you must be familiar with Daddy Culture.

  (long pause) …Not really.

  I don’t believe that.

  Do you…are we talking about, like, someone who’s looking for someone else to take care of them? Like a Sugar Daddy?

  Yes, it could be that. Anyone can be a Daddy.

  I don’t –

  People said Venom was Daddy.

  Okay.

  A lot of people said Venom was Daddy, in fact.

  Sure.

  So, was there ever any concern on your part that titling your film Come to Daddy might therefore be considered an intrusion, or co-opting of, Daddy Culture?

  I don’t think that was ever a concern.

  Mhm.

  The first thing that came to mind when I read the title was probably the Aphex Twin song, and there’s actually another Aphex Twin song in the movie, it’s beautiful. But no, I don’t think we thought about Daddy Culture, or how we might be appropriating it.

  Well, maybe that’s something for you to think about.

  You’re absolutely right.

  Do you consider yourself a Daddy?

  Well, I mean, I am a dad.

  Yes, you’re a recent father, but are you a Daddy?

  (long pause) I don’t think I quite know what that means.

  Alright, Elijah, if we’re gonna continue to play games I’m just gonna have to move on to the next line of questioning.

  Honestly, Scott, I want to help you, I just –

  Moving on.

  They talk about things other than Daddy Culture too.

• It’s Time for a Best Stunts Oscar – The trials and tribulations of trying to get a Best Stunts Oscar off the ground. It’s more complicated than you might think, but it’s also stupid that it doesn’t exist.
• Why Didn’t Ancient Rome have Dungeons and Dragons? – Ruminations on the nature of innovation and how infrequently it actually happens.
• Predators And Danny Glover Dancing On The Set of Predator 2 – I mean, what is going on here?
• Spiders On Drugs – Stick with this until the end, it’s not what you think. Or maybe it is. I don’t know what you’re thinking.
• This Grasshopper Mouse Hunts Scorpions, Howls at Moon – This mouse is much more badass than the bigoted stereotypes surrounding mice.

That’s all for now…

Just the usual twirl through the depths of ye olde internets:

• The Five Stages of Being Adapted by Martin Scorsese – Interesting article interviewing authors who’ve had movies adapted from their novels. I particularly liked Dennis Lehane’s thoughts on writing for the screen:
  

  I hate the term “cinematic” when it’s applied to anything besides cinema. I feel like saying, “What it is is perfectly detailed. What it is is giving you the impression of cinema before cinema existed.” Good writing is vivid. Good writing is visual. Good writing makes the brain turn into a film projector. What I would consider “cinematic writing,” and I would disparage it, is writing so it can be made into a film. Just write a script.

  And this bit about the reception of Shutter Island is good too:

  Critically, the response to [Shutter Island] was pretty tepid. I remember A.O. Scott at The New York Times practically had an embolism over it. He hated it so much. I thought it was hilarious. I had a blast reading that review and I would read that out loud to my friends. I know that the general critical response was, “It’s OK, but in the Scorsese lexicon we throw it around the Cape Fear general area.” But the popular response is bigger than anything else I’ve been associated with.

  “Oh, you’re a writer, what do you write?” Like, people expect you to say you’re a copywriter or something like that. I’ll say, “I wrote Mystic River,” and sometimes I get a kind of, “Oh, I think that was a movie.” But I say Shutter Island, everybody goes, “Oh, DiCaprio?” Everybody knows it, so …

  I guess there still are movie stars these days…

• ‘Parasite’: How This Year’s Wildest, Buzziest, Most Unexpected Breakout Hit Came to Life – This interview with Bong Joon Ho features this insane exchange:
  

  Would you direct a Marvel movie?

  Bong: I have a personal problem. I respect the creativity that goes into superhero films, but in real life and in movies, I can’t stand people wearing tight-fitting clothes. I’ll never wear something like that, and just seeing someone in tight clothes is mentally difficult. I don’t know where to look, and I feel suffocated. Most superheroes wear tight suits, so I can never direct one. I don’t think anyone will offer the project to me either. If there is a superhero who has a very boxy costume, maybe I can try.

  Now I do kinda want to see him take that on.

• Sporty – From the #idontknowwhatthefuckisgoingoninthisvideo file. As speculated by the commenters, I’m pretty sure they found the jacket and just had to make something to capitalize on it.
• Hermit Crabs have an interesting form of cooperative competition:
  

  As the hermit crab grows in size, it must find a larger shell and abandon the previous one. Several hermit crab species, both terrestrial and marine, have been observed forming a vacancy chain to exchange shells.[8] When an individual crab finds a new empty shell it will leave its own shell and inspect the vacant shell for size. If the shell is found to be too large, the crab goes back to its own shell and then waits by the vacant shell for up to 8 hours. As new crabs arrive they also inspect the shell and, if it is too big, wait with the others, forming a group of up to 20 individuals, holding onto each other in a line from the largest to the smallest crab. As soon as a crab arrives that is the right size for the vacant shell and claims it, leaving its old shell vacant, then all the crabs in the queue swiftly exchange shells in sequence, each one moving up to the next size.

  It’s not all rainbows and sunshine (“Hermit crabs often “gang up” on one of their species with what they perceive to be a better shell”), but it’s neat when it works out.

• Captain Picard sings “Let it Snow!” – Some people have a lot of time on their hands.
• The greatest talk-show entrance of all time – Nicolas Cage on Wogan, 1992.

That’s all for now…

Just the usual selection of interesting links from the depths of ye olde internets:

• The Restrained Genius of a Joe Pesci Performance – Nice profile of Pesci; includes this offhand anecdote that is hysterical:
  

  After frequently lamenting the typecasting and grind of set life in interviews, he went into semiretirement to focus on jazz (under the pseudonym Joe Doggs), his family and golf. Even Louis C.K. at the height of his pre-scandal fame couldn’t coax Pesci to work with him; instead, Pesci told him that he should quit doing stand-up because he wasn’t funny.

  (emphasis mine) Heh.

• Being prepared is overrated: start before you feel ready – Just getting started is often the most difficult part.
  

  Being successful is not about your ability to plan, but your ability to act. There will always be more planning to do, more scenarios to consider. Of course, it would be amazing to feel utterly ready. But the reality is that waiting until you feel ready may mean the opportunity to act has already passed.

  You may make more mistakes at first if you decide to start acting before you feel ready, but the long-term compound effect of learning from these mistakes will get you closer to your goals than any amount of preparation. The illusion of a perfect time to start is holding you back. Anyone who has managed to put their work into the world most likely started before they were ready.

• History and Guardians of the Galaxy Mashup – It’s easy to look at social media and stuff like TikTok and think we’re doomed, but then you see stuff like this. Which is silly, to be sure, but still great.
• Martin Scorsese on Late Night with Conan O’Brien (1996) – Forget about Scorsese on Marvel, check out Scorsese on Cats! Also, I forgot about how weird Conan’s show used to be.
• How They Expect You to React When You get an Amber Alert – Heh.
• I Built a COMPUTER in Magic: The Gathering – Magic is Turing complete.

And that’s all for now…

As per usual, interesting links from the depths of ye olde internets:

• The Problem Solving of Filmmaking – Great video made by David F. Sandberg, the director of Shazam!, explaining the multitude of problems to be solved in even the most trivial of scenes. It reminded me of a great anecdote about Kurosawa that I cannot find anymore, but went something like this: An interviewer praised the composition of a shot in one of Kurosawa’s period movies, and asked him what inspired the shot. Kurosawa answered that if the camera was pointed just a little more to one side, then you would have seen a busy highway with lots of cars. If it was just a little more to the other side, then you would have seen a big factory. He pointed the camera where he did not just because it looked good, but because he couldn’t really point it anywhere else…
• My many years of reading dangerously – whether Twitter likes it or not – Andy Miller reads a ton of books and thus made the reasonable decision to talk about it on social media. This, of course, is a disaster:
  

  I really love reading. The thing that drives me crazy about social media – about life, in fact – is the presumption of bad faith where none exists. Motives attributed to me for regularly posting, and it’s hard to emphasise this enough, A PHOTO OF A PILE OF BOOKS ON A KITCHEN DRESSER include: lying; boasting; publicity-seeking; ego-boosting; product-shilling; cultural-gatekeeping; trying to make individual correspondents feel guilty about the quantity and/or quality of their reading; and, of course, reminding hard-working, family-loving men of the pleasures they have sacrificed by working hard and loving their damn families, one of which is the reading of books. When they discover I have a job and a family too, that only makes it worse.

  It’s important to recognize that Twitter is not the real world.

• Kim Stanley Robinson on Infodumps – He’s not a fan of the term:
  

  Someone once described your Mars books as an infodump tunneled by narrative moles. I think it was a compliment. What do you think?

  No, not a compliment. I reject the word “infodump” categorically — that’s a smartass word out of the cyberpunks’ workshop culture, them thinking that they knew how fiction works, as if it were a tinker toy they could disassemble and label superciliously, as if they knew what they were doing. Not true in any way. I reject “expository lump” also, which is another way of saying it. All these are attacks on the idea that fiction can have any kind of writing included in it. It’s an attempt to say “fiction can only be stage business” which is a stupid position I abhor and find all too common in responses on amazon.com and the like. All these people who think they know what fiction is, where do they come from? I’ve been writing it for thirty years and I don’t know what it is, but what I do know is that the novel in particular is a very big and flexible form, and I say, or sing: Don’t fence me in!

  To me, infodumps are just a part of SF and thus not inherently a bad thing. As Robinson goes on to say (there’s more to the quote at the link), SF needs science, and science is expository. So he certainly has a point here, but on the other hand, exposition and infodumps can be done poorly. It’s all subjective and I’d argue that SF needs to make room for this sort of thing, but it’s possible to go too far.

• Quantum Physics, the Mandela Effect and perceived changes to your NECS entrée data – So this company that creates food distribution software made this video talking about how the names of foods are changing (i.e. Haas vs Hass Avocado) and how it’s all due to Quantum Physics, the Mandela effect, and alternate universes and what the hell am I watching? Is this some sort of elaborate hoax? YouTube is filled with videos like this, to be sure, but not from the CEO of a software company. Maybe it’s just because I’m reading Neal Stephenson’s Fall, or Dodge in Hell (which has a lot to say about false information on the internet), but this feels like the truth is slipping away from the internet.
• Iguana Chased by Snakes – I mean, yeah, pretty great chase scene, better than most Hollywood versions…

That’s all for now…

As per usual, interesting stuffs from the depths of the internets:

• Terminator: Dark Fate trailer turned AMA with Arnold – So Arnold Schwarzenegger posts the Terminator: Dark Fate trailer on Reddit and it turns into an impromptu AMA. Someone asked: “Did y’all know how hilarious COMMANDO was (in a great way!) while filming it?” Arnold’s response is amazing:
  

  As soon as I carried a thousand pound log with one arm I knew it was funny. But let me share the scenes you didn’t see that I tried to get in.

  I wanted to cut off a guy’s arm and kill him with it. This wasn’t in the script. He would throw a knife at me and after he missed, while his arm was still extended, I chop it off at the shoulder with a machete and beat him to death with it. Needless to say, I was asked by the head of the studio, Larry Gordon to come to his office. And he said “what the fuck is the matter with you? Do you want to make money with this movie or an x-rated movie?”

  I said “you’re right” and he said “get the fuck out of my office.”

  That’s awesome. I need to watch Commando again (and it’s not like it’s been so long since the last time…)

• You’re No Longer the Man Now, Dog! – It’s hard to believe it’s been around 15 damn years since YTMND became a thing, but in internet time, that’s an eternity. The surprisingly influential (but at this point, pretty staid) site has shut down, but it’s still there on the Internet Archive…
• Amazon Stolen Package Tracking – Heh.
• Hell of a Week – Well, that escalated quickly.
• You Do Not Fit In Here – This comic perfectly encapsulates are frustrating phenomenon.
• Pee Wee’s Jurassic Adventure – Who did this?

That’s all for now…

Just the usual interesting links from the depths of ye olde internets:

• Toaster Posessed by the Devil – Watch the whole thing (it’s short), the kicker is truly brilliant…
• The Plane Highway in the Sky – Interesting look at the airway paths from the US to Europe… I always assumed some details of this, but did not anticipate others…
• How to make a good sci-fi space helmet – Interviewing the filmmakers of sci-fi film Prospect – David Chen (and some filmmakers) tackle one of my pet peeves of SF movies…
• I have drawn the world’s worst pun – More like the world’s best pun, but then, that’s the same thing, amiright?
• Sneaky Thanos – Ah, the time honored tradition of photoshopping stuff into backgrounds of famous shots (remember Bert is Evil?) continues with this Sneaky Thanos contest, which indeed has some inspired entries.
• Peter Jackson Says He ‘Winged It’ on THE HOBBIT – Yeah, no kidding. I mean, not entirely his fault due to the realities of the production and whatnot, but it does explain how the LotR movies are so great while The Hobbit is… not.
• This Spider Has Been Dead For 110 Million Years, But Its Eyes Still Shine in The Dark – THIS IS NOT OMINOUS AT ALL.
• Forget chocolate, how about a cockroach for Valentine’s? – I’m a little late to this one, but this isn’t what you think. It’s actually a scheme wherein “A zoo in Texas is offering singles the chance to name a cockroach after their ex and see it fed to a meerkat live on camera on Valentine’s Day,” which is *chef’s kiss*
• dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets – A good overview of the past and future of black markets on the internet. Dropgangs appear to be automated messaging platforms combined with dead drops for delivery…

That’s all for now…

Odds and ends from the depths of ye olde internets:

• Ricky Jay’s 52 Assistants – RIP Ricky Jay, this hour long show is well worth a watch.
• Secrets of the Magus – And a New Yorker profile of Ricky Jay, featuring one of my favorite anecdotes:
  

  Deborah Baron, a screenwriter in Los Angeles, where Jay lives, once invited him to a New Year’s Eve dinner party at her home. About a dozen other people attended. Well past midnight, everyone gathered around a coffee table as Jay, at Baron’s request, did closeup card magic. When he had performed several dazzling illusions and seemed ready to retire, a guest named Mort said, “Come on, Ricky. Why don’t you do something truly amazing?”

  Baron recalls that at that moment “the look in Ricky’s eyes was, like, ‘Mort—you have just fucked with the wrong person.’ ”

  Jay told Mort to name a card, any card. Mort said, “The three of hearts.” After shuffling, Jay gripped the deck in the palm of his right hand and sprung it, cascading all fifty-two cards so that they travelled the length of the table and pelted an open wine bottle.

  “O.K., Mort, what was your card again?”

  “The three of hearts.”

  “Look inside the bottle.”

  Mort discovered, curled inside the neck, the three of hearts. The party broke up immediately.

  Of course, Ricky Jay anecdotes like this are a dime a dozen, so they’re all favorites.

• Man Abducts Scientist To Make His Dog Immortal – It’s always a Florida man.
• The First Film Version of Frankenstein, Newly Restored! By the Library of Congress. Still looks tattered, but it’s from 1913 after all, and it looks better than I’ve ever seen it. Plus, film preservation is a worthy cause.
• ‘Something doesn’t smell right’: Farting controversy clouds dart championship – Alright, fine, I’ll read your stupid article.
• Wait For It – Just watch it, it’s short. Kid can fly. And now I’m down a rabbit hole of similar videos…

And that’s all for now folks.

The usual links from the depths of ye olde internets that you might find interesting:

• Evil in the Mirror: John Carpenter’s Revealing ‘Prince of Darkness’ by Joshua Rothkopf – An interesting retrospective on John Carpenter’s career and an in-depth look at one of his more unsung films.
• My HALLOWEEN Audience Reaction AUDIO (1979) – Somebody took audio recorded at a screening of Halloween in a Hollywood Boulevard movie theater in 1979 and then spliced it together with the film. This is only a short clip, but it’s still fun.
• A Defense of Mrs. Bates – Maybe Mrs. Bates was, in fact, a good woman and mother smeared by her son, one of cinema’s great unreliable narrators.
• Man arrested for putting fake arrow decals on the floor in IKEA and for creating a labyrinth with no exit – Man is also a genius. “Police received dozens calls from people reporting that they were locked in IKEA and they couldn’t get out.”
• Video Game Blacksmith Struggling To Compete With Random Chests Full Of Free Armor All Over Kingdom – The Onion is still great.
• Panasonic designed human blinders to block out open-plan office distraction – More evidence for just how bad open-plan office designs are.
• You’ve been granted one wish by the Douchebag Genie. – Some guy on Reddit asked people to make wishes, and then, acting as genie, he “takes advantage of people’s poor wording when making wishes to screw them over.” And he does a pretty good job of it too. Someone asks for “pefect memory recall” and he responds “You’re given a new copy of the DVD ‘Total Recall’ but the shitty one with Colin Farrell.”
• The Apathy Party – A interesting, but perhaps too glum examination of why so many people avoid politics.
  

  that’s why most political polls in the United States of 2018 don’t mean much. So many people have joined the Apathy Party, turned off the television news, purchased apps promising “you will never again see a Donald Trump pop-up on your phone,” and plunged instead into the worlds of erotic macramé, Japanese baseball-card collecting, lesbian fetish cruises to the Dominican Republic, and every form of escapist fiction from gothic horror to Bigfoot porn, that a large chunk of the population never gets polled at all. They don’t take polls. They decline. They don’t wanna talk about it and they don’t wanna think about it. Their mantra is “I don’t do politics.”

  They’re disgusted. Disgusted by the people, disgusted by the issues, disgusted by the language used and the way the world is constantly divided into Us vs. Them. They turn it off at 8 a.m. because they want to feel good at 9 a.m. They’ve read the Harvard Business Review article that says “individuals who watched just three minutes of negative news in the morning had a whopping 27% greater likelihood of reporting their day as unhappy six to eight hours later compared to the positive condition.”

  And who can blame them?

And that’s all for now…