Wax Off.

Pat Morita aka Arnold from Happy Days and Mr. Miyagi from Karate Kid died.
Fascinating background story about his life. He saw some serious b.s. in his day.

He was cool.


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Some Funny Serendipity

No joke, so I'm checking out compilation of Frank Zappa tunes put together by the drummer of Phish, and while listening to the song "I'm The Slime", a delicious anti/warning song about television, I click over to the onion.com and start reading this article.

Nooooo shit Frank...

Turkey's Comin'

Ted Koppel does his last Nightline tonight, Tuesday 11/22.
In one year we say bye bye to Rather, Brokaw, Jennings, and now finally Koppel.

A terrific Charlie Rose with Ted on tonight, spanning multiple Ted segments over the years on Charlie Rose.

What anchors of today are really befitting the term when it comes news? In this day and age of fashionable cynical contempt for the media, it's political leanings or affiliations, and it's ferocious Bottom-Line-Or-Die marketing agenda, will the American viewing audience possibly trust their next wave of prime time news anchors as much as they might have with this departing crew?


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Would it be cool to ride the rides at Cedar Point in the middle of winter, so when you're racing up, down, and along the rails there's snow flying past you quite fast? Shards of broken snow zipping over your head. You'd have to bumble up like an old WWII fighter pilot with goggles and helmet and scarf to withstand the cold rush of air.

Like when it snows big wet slow flakes and the suburban road street lights let you see the snow blossomng down and at your windshield. It's like your jumping into lightspeed in the Millenium Falcon.


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My department at work takes turns bringing in better coffee to avoid the freeze-dried company supplied stuff. While opening a new canister of coffee beans this morning at work , I joked to a coworker that "revolutions usually start with the coffee."

But then I thought on it a moment.

Really, do you think throughout history that when the oppressed masses gather in the subterannean rooms to plot the uprising, that there's been an especially astute matronly member of the Resistance actually thinking "these/my people have endured enough...at least I can get some good goddamn coffee for the meeting."?

Or, in a show of 'keeping it real', they resort to integrity-keeping measures (like Eddie Vedder sleeping in his van for awhile after Pearl Jam made millions) and drink the really bad stuff? To retain their grit to keep their cause pure, ya know.

Then again, if all this fuss is about not being oppressed, why is there someone delegated to making coffee in the first place? Who's speaking up for the kitchen ladies? Getting to the lair early to make the bread for the members, keeping the coffee tins filled during the speeches, emptying the ash trays after the meeting so it doesn't stink like cold dank shit when they come next time. (How many revolutionaries you ever see not smoking? Being pawns of the State tweeks a person.)

You make sure an' teach your kids to honor the hell out of the Lunch Lady at their school. Tell Junior to say "thanks...Comrade" with a knowing wink after Mrs. Krupski wipes up the milk that Kevin made Josh laugh out his nose.


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Ya know when you see young, liberated, anti-fashion women in their 20s doing the hippy-chick, rag-a-muffin look with the mishmash of hand-me-down Grandma clothes from Value Village?

What did the hippy-chick, rag-a-muffin girls of the early pioneer times wear? Ya know, when these kind of clothes were actually the 1.0 version of themselves? Did they wear tattered old Revoluton or Civil War uniforms to the saloon?


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The J. Geils Band should be a permanent Artist-In-Residence at Bonnaroo. Every year.
Think about it. It makes total sense.

Sooooopa Toooooosday

Midnight tonight we might have that Coleman Young-legacy a-hole Kwame Kilpatrick out of Detroit's mayor office. He and his loudmouth Momma.

This guy will tell you. He rewrote lyrics against Kwame using 'Baby Got Back' but its "Kwame Got Fat". It's really bad. But one of those train wreck bads because you can't stop listening to see how much worse it is. (You can hear the real Sir Mixalot version in the background he's singing over.)


**********

Anyway the real reason I'm here:

"E"MAIL IS FOR "EXIT" MAIL.

Ever heard of the Peter Chung email?
Now you will.

New old Yoda

Weeks back I mentioned that the Star Wars people were going back and putting a CG Yoda into Phantom Menace, replacing the puppet. (All 6 films are coming back out again starting in 2007, in 3-D. One a year for 6 years, all the episodes in order.) You can see some of their work on this CG Yoda with the Ep 3 DVD special features disk.

During the 'Chosen One' feature on Anakin/Vader, they show the clip of Yoda again saying his speech: "Fear is the path to the dark side...fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, etc etc..." It's the CG Yoda.

It looks great.

We WILL Be Beaming To Places, Like In Star Trek.

Just you watch.
We're already slowing down light to fill it full of information and data.

You know who already slows down light and makes it do cool crazy shit?
Dudes that take on the X-Men and shit... or Palpatine and chicks in Fantastic Foursomes.










You think I'm lying?

Let's take bets on this:
The iPod gets smaller and smaller. We already have chips in dog's ears to track them. Like that technology, Apple will first create sensors that allow us to clench our jaw, twitch a cheek muscle, blink a few times to shuffle the playlists, go to the next song, etc. The little doodad to do this will start as a little chip or sensor (like the sensors in smoke alarms...a band of mine years ago, we made some to simulate drum triggers for midi. They were more sensitive than $5000 dollar jobs at GUitar Center.)

This stuff will be the bridge that gets us to triggering technology in ways that in sci-fi movies was portrayed as using telepathic ability. Using chips to sense the super subtle nerve and muscle twitches to make some technology "do our bidding" will be as though we were "controlling it with our mind."

The technology that takes over in the bad Orwellian ways always starts out as fun doodad gadget stuff.

I'm tellin' ya, read this book.




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In cooler news, it's that time of year when I can drink my favorite beer of all time, Sam Adams Cranberry Lambic, a seasonal only. I used to drink 22's of this in college. Now it can only be obtained via buying a 12pack of the holiday sampler, so I only get 2 bottles per 12pack. Damn it.

So good though. Try it.

Who doesn't love a farting preacher?



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Sitting in the allergy clinic this morning and thumbing thru a NEWSWEEK about the scandals with Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, and the other rich businessmen advising our President (and the messes it sure seems to be uncovering), it was ironic to see today's entry from my George Carlin desk calendar today:

"If everything is really the fault of politicians, where are all the bright, honest Americans who are ready to step in and replace them? Where are these people hiding? The truth is, we don't have people like that. Everyone's at the mall, scratching their balls, and buying sneakers with lights in them. And complaining about the politicians."

Check out this soccer dude hitting the crossbar of the goal every time. From the outside box.
(Takes a sec while puts shoes on in beginning. Wait for it.)


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Well, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith came out today. All 6 movies are now in the hands of geeks everywhere. Now we can take George up on his claim of "it's one long story you have to take in all at once." We'll see. I'm sure it's cool.

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I did not do up Halloween like I wished I would have this year. I'm quite bummed about this and disappointed in myself. Especially after finding an email I sent myself of what I should have dressed up as. It would have been perfect. So next year then. Glad you know this, aren't you?

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RadioShack is making (or made) a nice comeback. The store I was in last night was pretty hip. They hired a team to take the GeekDrab "white walls and hooks" aesthetic out and make the store more pleasant on the eyes while you're shopping. Some color, ya know. I grew up with these stores so they have a weird place in my heart kinda; my Dad was an electrical engineer so per whatever project he was working on, there were lots of runs to RadioShack back in my way younger years. That was OUR hardware store to run to on weekends. Remember when computers in the early 80s were coming out, like Atari 800XL and the Commodore 64? But do you remember RadioShack's line of computers just like them but with the orange text fonts on the black screen? Like the computers in WarGames that Broderick was using, but with ORANGE font? Seems pretty cool now eh? Back then it was like "what, you expect me to buy this obvious lowgrade computer? Thes eletters are orange!"

Like my dumb 10 year old ass knew what a computer did or that orange font made a difference to anything. I bet though if I made a black t-shirt with dot-matrix orange font across it saying 'radio shack', I'd get some serious mock-retro cred. I'd be so hip Ashton would have to punk me. I wouldn't even need a Miller Light trucker cap to get in the club. Bruce Willis would be snorting coke off MY tits in the Champagne Room.

As an annoyed Fenster would say: "Whutda fah?..."