Friday, November 23, 2007

creepy saint freaky

I like scary movies. Not gory movies, mind you. Scary movies. The kind that are psychologically terrifying instead of bloody and full of dismemberment. I don't do well with dismemberment. Part of why I liked the movie Se7en so much was that it's fairly goreless despite the subject matter. Instead, the horror in the film comes from pure fear - the fear of madness, the fragility of sanity, and the power a single person's destructive lunacy can have on random strangers.

Today I found a webpage that left me with the same feeling I had watching Se7en, that same feeling of watching someone soft shoe off the deep end in a dress made of people meat. There is a ... performance artist? ... apparently in Los Angeles named Shaye Saint John. Whether Shaye is a man or a woman, no one really knows as Shaye has obscured his/her entire appearance with broken doll parts and thrift store clothes. And Shaye likes to make movies. Creepy fucking movies. Go ahead, check them out. They're the kind of home movies that David Berkowitz or the Zodiac killer would have made if they'd had a camera.

Which of these was said by Shaye Saint John and which are from serial killers?

1. I needed a little time on the wires."Corretta could you get me the simon says game? Its under Jordan's bed!"
2. I shall have them play in a darkened dungen cell with crooked cues + Twisted Shoes.
3. I miss my pretty princess most of all. She's resting in our ladies house.

Unsettling weirdity, all of it. And all of it stemmed from a comment on Digg. Apparently, today is the 20th anniversary of another particularly odd piece of weirdity - the pirate television take-over of CBS television in Chicago. You can see that clip here.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

uh .... how about "no?"

I just got stock advice spam from someone named VampireKing.

I think I'll pass on his input.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

busted

Yesterday I found myself aimlessly flipping through a copy of The Hollywood Reporter. As I thumbed through the pages, something odd caught my eye. Amidst the stories of "movers" and "shakers" that I don't recognize, interspersed among the ads, there was a full page apology from Warner Bros. Pictures. It read:

Warner Bros. Pictures
acknowledges and regrets
that a number of the music cues
for the score of
"300"
were derived from music
composed by
Academy Award-winning® composer
Elliot Goldenthal
for the motion picture
"Titus."
Warner Bros. Pictures
has great respect for Elliot,
our longtime collaborator,
and is pleased to have
amicably resolved this matter.


?! That was a surprise. It's rare these days that you hear about actual plagiarism cases and it surprised me that there wasn't more of a hub-bub about this. Someone has actually edited two of the music files in question side by side and you can listen to them here. Believe me, there's no getting around it. It's a complete rip off.

Bad times.

Thursday, November 08, 2007

flashbacks

I'm getting flashbacks of my late teens today. My sister is applying to college and, as everyone has to deal with during the process, she's in the midst of writing college admissions essays. I'm very appreciative that she trusts me enough to ask me to look her essay over and offer a critique.

But, man ... I had forgotten just how mind-numbing admission essays are. For those who don't remember, every college wants you to basically tell them how great their school is, how you've been dreaming of going there since before you could talk, and how - even though they're ridiculously close to Earthly perfection - the only thing that could possibly push them over the edge into actually being Heaven incarnate would be if they were to accept you.

"Since childhood, I have made it a personal goal to live each and every day by the three words that grow, shrink, and fade on the University of South Detroit's web page banner ad."

That kind of crap, a muddled diatribe about integrity, diversity, and about 4 different flavors of excellence. My sister is doing a great job jumping through the hoops so far, but the entire process just reeks of insincerity right now. In reality, it's very simple: they want her money and she wants a degree. I can see ass-kissing essays being an important part of admissions for places like Yale, Harvard, Stanford, etc. But University of Whereever, Iowa? Come on ...