You know, just in case you were considering doing that.
While there’s no end to fail video on the Internet, I’m posting this one because: A.) It was such an obviously, amazingly stupid thing to attempt in the first place, and B.) I tried to find this a while back to show friends, but had forgotten the actual conveyance (bike? skateboard?), which made finding the video difficult. So this is more of a bookmark for myself than anything else. As well as an abject lesson in what not to do.
John Picacio ‘s Kickstarter for his 2013 art calendar only runs through noon on November 28, so if you want in, you better hurry up.
He’s already at $25,000, and his next stretch goal is at $30,000.
Spider-Man, Spider-Man
Did you arrest the right Spider-Man?
Get the one for assault?
Outstanding warrant? His own damn fault.
Oh yeah! You got the right Spider-Man!
Were it not for Slowdive’s Just for a Day, I wouldn’t being doing these Shoegazer Sunday posts in the first place. Poking around YouTube, there seems to be a lot more Slowdive songs that never made it onto their three studio albums than I realized. “Losing Today,” a sad, echoey, moody piece perfect for teenage girls to mope around to on cold, rainy days, is off their Blue Day compilation album.
Vampire Effect
Directed by Dante Lam and Donnie Yen
Written by Hing-Ka Chan and Wai Lun Ng
Starring Ekin Cheng, Charlene Choi, Gillian Chung, Anthony Wong Chau-Sang, Edison Chen, Jackie Chan, Mickey Hardt
If you like Hong Kong supernatural martial arts films, you’ll probably enjoy Vampire Effect (AKA Twins Effect, since the two female leads are evidently in the same pop band). Modern-day vampire hunter gets cute new partner who clashes with his cute sister, who just happens to be dating an Emo vampire prince whose essence a vampire king wants to eat to unlock a vampire grimoire. Martial arts ensue.
You know, the usual.
Jackie Chan has an extended supporting role that’s pretty much unnecessary, except you get to see Jackie Chan fight vampires. He’s third-billed and gets about 15 minutes of screen time, so it doesn’t even make Top Ten Most Dishonest Uses of Jackie Chan’s Name on the DVD Cover list. (I’m looking at you, Drunken Fist Boxing.)
This hasn’t gotten great reviews, and it’s not a patch on the best work in the genre by the late, great Ching-Ying Lam. The romance subplot drags a bit. The pace and style of the film does rip off the Blade movies…which in turn were ripping off Hong Kong action films, which ripped off everything they could lay their hands on, so par for the course. But it’s funny, and the action scenes work, which is pretty much all I ask as a threshold for enjoyment for this kind of film.
The “sequel” Twins Effect II is evidently a historical martial arts epic with much of the same cast, but none of the same characters.
Supposedly the American DVD (I saw it on-demand) has some scenes chopped that hinder the continuity. When it comes to Hong Kong action films, continuity does not rank high on my list of requirements. I saw the version with lots of martial arts.
November 16 next year, there will be a UT home football game (against OSU) and a Formula One race in Austin on the same weekend.
What could possibly go wrong?
The biggest winner? Hotel and motel owners in Bastrop.
If you plan on attending either of these events, you might want to make your reservations now…
Another Thanksgiving-related Public Service announcement: Try to avoid dropping a frozen turkey on your foot or your pets. You know, just in case you were planning on doing that for grins. At the very least you might want to wear shoes when you pull that sucker out of the freezer.
From the title, I was hoping they would recreate the turkey drop episode of WKRP in Cincinnati, but no such luck.
Just as I did last year, I bring you a public service announcement from William Shatner: try not to set yourself on fire while frying a turkey:
For those with low Shatner thresholds, the advice is:
If you’re going to fry a turkey, this is pretty sound advice.
And now, new for this year: The remix!
And remember: It can even happen to professionals, as last year Sambet’s Cajun Cafe managed to burn themselves down frying turkeys.
Here’s The Emerald Down’s “Sometime the Sun Shines” off their Aquarium album. It starts out sounding a bit like Nirvana’s “All Apologies” (no bad thing), but then shifts more firmly into Shoegaze territory.
Dwight and I were watching episodes of Night Gallery, and in addition to the extremely good “They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar” (with a fine turn by the late William Windom), we also watched “The Last Lecture of Mr. Peabody,” in which a professor of comparative religion lectures on The Great Old Ones, including reading aloud from the Necronomicon, with somewhat predictable results. The Mythos is mostly played for laughs and in-jokes (including students named Lovecraft, Bloch and Derleth), but it may be the first time the name Cthulhu was ever mentioned on network television.
It’s a little broad, but it does have its charms:
The episode was written by Jack Laird, who seems to have adapted a number of Lovecraft stories for Night Gallery.
A deeper appreciation (and the nifty following screen grab) can be found here.
