random neat picture #1

Nuthin' but net. Taken by me on March 24th of this year.

Kill Bill Vol. 1 Review

That Tarantino, whatta guy. Just when you're ready to write him off as a has-been after all these years without a film, he shows up with this outrageous Kill Bill jive.

This film crystallizes something I'd always suspected about QT: he makes cool films. I don't mean like, "I saw Scary Movie 3, y'know, it was cool." I mean, cool. Cool the way the term originally meant, before it got horribly de-valued. Cool the way Brando was cool in The Wild One. Cool like Steve McQueen in Bullitt. Cool that's dangerous, that the squares can't handle.

You see this level of coolness all over Tarantino's writing and directing, but especially in the way he creates indelible characters. Reservoir Dogs's Mr. White was cool. Jules Winfield from Pulp Fiction was cool. Jackie Brown was supercool.

Uma Thurman's The Bride beats 'em all. She is 50 gallons of ass-kicking in a one-liter bottle. She is an angry, sword-swinging vengeful banshee of death. She inhabits a world where you can carry katana swords on airplanes, and no one in the Japanese Mafia carries any weapon invented in the last 300 years. She's been hurt bad (a gut-wrenching scene when she wakes up from her coma to discover there's no baby in her tummy anymore, and the camera stays on her hysterical crying face for what feels like an eternity to show you what 'hurt' really means), and if you're a member of Bill's Deadly Viper Assasination Squad that double-crossed her on her wedding day, then she's gonna hurt you right back.

This movie is ultraviolent - let's get that out of the way right now. It's style is grounded in the same reality as the old Shaw Brothers chop-socky films and animes like Fist of the Northstar, which is to say, not "reality" at all. 60 gallons of blood gush out of every wound. People jump ten feet in the air. Mobs with weapons will surround the Bride, then attack one at a time until they're all dead. You will laugh harder at the limb-hackings and beheadings in this film than at any joke in any Adam Sandler movie.

Performances - what's not to like? Uma, Lucy Liu, Darryl Hannah in another of Quentin Tarantino's patented Career Resurrection roles, and the extremely scary Disembodied Voice of David Carradine. And SONNY FREAKIN' CHIBA!

Direction - Beautiful. Every shot's ripped off of another movie, completely unapologetically. From the overhead-looking down tracking shots of Brian DePalma to the rapid zoom-in facial close-up from every kung-fu film EVER. It's all there and all awesome.

Script - There is none. To paraphrase Joe Bob Briggs, who needs a bunch of plot getting in the way of the story? Seriously, if you come to this looking for comedic banter a la Jules and Vincent, fuggedaboutit. There's no time for banter, just time for vengeance.

Music - By The Rza. Great pastiche of Kung Fu movie incidental music, Sergio Leone spaghetti western scores and hip hop.

Rating - 4 Stars out of 4. Go park your ass in front of a screen for a few shows. When your ass goes numb from sitting too long, command your big toe to wiggle.

Why a Yankees/Florida World Series proves there is an intelligent design to the universe

The Yankees just won. And there was much rejoicing and spraying of Cristal. They go on to face the Florida Marlins in the World Series (this recap for my readers who habitually avoid the sports page, bar chatter, or the last five minutes of the local news, which is to say, all of my readers).

In the last few weeks, everyone was talking up the possibility of a Cubs/Red Sox title match. And Fate, in its infinite and cruel jest, almost let it happen. But there was another force at work in the last few nights, an imperceptible hand guiding the destinies of four teams. Call it God, karma, thermodynamics, or the Galactic Overlord Xenu himself, but forces were arrayed to keep the unthinkable from happening. For you see, a Cubs/Red Sox World Series threatened to unravel the delicate threadwork of society, if not the very fundament of the space-time continuum.

For you see, Major League Baseball dictates that one team must win (unless it's deep into extra innings during the All Star Game and the commissioner needs his beauty rest). But here we are faced with a conundrum. Both the Red Sox and the Cubs can't mutually lose. This would necessitate a universe in which either the Red Sox or the Cubs could somehow win a World Series. Needless to say, this universe is not our own, but some dire fubar'ed cosmos in which you can probably kill your own grandfather before you were born.

Don't believe me? Here's a complete breakdown of this fantasy World Series (note: do not read on unless you have a doctorate-level understanding of astrophysics and apocalyptic theology, or are already insane):

Game One: 1-1 tie is broken in the 17th inning when a house cat, driven wild by a sudden ultrasonic noise heard by animals around the world, streaks onto the field and claws out Red Sox shortstop Nomar Garciaparra's eyes, allowing a blooper up the middle to score. Cubs win.

Game Two: 109-4. Massive onslaught of Boston runs in the 8th as gravity reverses itself for 15 minutes. Sox win. Also, Don Zimmer becomes Earth's second natural satellite, occupying a permanent orbit at L-5.

Game Three: The Dread Cthulhu, having risen from his sunken tomb of R'lyeh, throws out the first pitch. Most of both teams' starting lineups are instantly driven mad from fright. Dusty Baker offers to mate with the Deep Ones as a sacrifice to the Great Old One. Cubs win 2-1.

Game Four: After a rain delay which lasts forty days and nights, a faction of suicide bombers led by a coalition of Al-Qaeda operatives, the IRA, Sri Lankan separatists and radical anti-Papists wipe out the entire Chicago bullpen during the 7th Inning Stretch. Sox win 5-4 in 13 innings. California falls into Pacific Ocean for some reason.

Game Five: Cubs win 9-7. Not a bad game actually, only no television viewers see it due to unprecedented electromagnetic anomalies in the upper atmosphere interfering with global satellite transmission. Aurora Borealis seen as far south as Honolulu.

Game Six: Conventional mathematics fail as Red Sox somehow score runs equal to the square root of -1. Unable to determine whether the result is positive or negative, it is still deemed higher than the Cubs's score of 8 divided by 0.

Game Seven: Both teams perish as the Earth opens beneath them and swallows them whole. Archangels with flaming swords declare the series null and void. California somehow falls into Pacific Ocean again.

The Revenge of "Real Business Names"

There's been a real bumper crop of them lately, so let's dive right in.
Dimension Transportation Co. The cancellation of "Sliders" must have really hurt their business.

Magic Acquistion Corp. I think I had a Dungeons & Dragons group like this once.

American Heritage Exterminators. Rid your house of pests the way our Founding Fathers did: with muskets and bayonets.

Fashion Klan. Your one-stop source for all your white pointed hood needs!

Helium Leak Testing Inc. They must get so tired of people prank calling their office doing Smurf voices.

Your Child Is Mine Childcare. For best effect, say the name in your most outrageous supervillain voice, and throw a "Mwah-ha-ha-ha!" on at the end.

Trans Cosmic America Inc. I confess I have no idea what these people do. How about the world's slowest freight company? "Sorry your package is several million years late, Mr. Gerry. Our hub is in the Horseshoe Nebula."

May I humbly present my new Governor

Groping, shmoping. This is the kind of bombshell Gray Davis should have used.

Rumor Central

Let's make some controversy. Feel free to spread any of these rumors (completely fabricated by myself) in email attachments, drop them into conversations, or write exhaustive, obsessive-compulsive treatises on them.

-Taoists live in the New York sewers.

-The world is secretly run by a shadowy consortium consisting of Steve Jobs, the Gnomes of Zurich, Tony the Tiger, Hideki Tojo (not dead after all), and the members of Kraftwerk.

-You can bounce chihuahuas like a rubber ball, but only twice.

-A woman once inquired as to the "secret recipe" for the delicious cookie she ate at a fancy restaurant. They happily furnished it to her free of charge, and she took the recipe's ingredients to her grave.

-If you listen to Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" backwards, Robert Plant says "You dig hot man-love, kemosabe."

-Gravity is a scam cooked up by the Ford Motor Company.

-Dungeons & Dragons can make your average morbidly-depressed and drug-addicted teenager commit suicide. Alert your pastor!

-Elvis didn't die in 1977. He died in 1967. From the 1968 Comeback Special onward, "Elvis" , or "False E" as he was known to the Memphis Mafia, was portrayed by a cleverly-disguised JFK.

How to raise your hit count

Thanks to the magic of bStats, I can not only tell how many hits I'm receiving, but also how people are coming to the site, i.e. the location of the link they followed to get here. People, I'd like to tell you I saw lots of boolean search strings involving the words insightful+humor+sexy author, or old girlfriends Googling my name, but apparently most of my readers came here looking for Beyonce's ass.

Well, I'm no prude, and far be it from me to condemn those who share my fascination with Jay-Z's favorite back end. I applaud you, o accidental reader! I do love to watch that hit counter rise, so just maybe I'll take this site in a new direction.

Click here for a hot pic of Beyonce and her ass!

Thanks to Rachel for the image.