Thursday, August 26, 1999

Swooning for James McArthur

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!! The Blair Family Circus Project.

SIGH. SWOON.: I stayed up late Sunday night watching Swiss Family Robinson (the 1960 Disney version, natch) and was reminded of the powerful crush I used to have on James MacArthur, the actor who played Fritz in the shipwreck flick and, still surrounded by surf and sand, was later known as ("Book 'em") Dano on Hawaii Five-O. Wow, he was handsome and probably still is, although I couldn't quickly find a recent picture of him. Here's a nice archive of much of his career/life in pictures, though.

ONE RINGY-DINGY: Need to speak to no one in particular? Reach out and touch a Missouri stranger.

Saturday, August 21, 1999

Maude-lin

GO. NOW.: After several failed attempts to make it to the theater, I finally got to see The Iron Giant last night. Every review I've read and every weblogger I trust urged me to see this film before it disappeared from theaters, and now I'm urging you. I can recommend it without hesitation, especially if you have children or anything remotely childlike in your own nature.

This is an animated feature, but not a cartoon. It has a wonderful story, a warm moral at its heart, charming characterizations and, lest I make this sound like too much of a chick-flick to scare off you he-man types, some stuff gets blowed up real good. I cried at the end, and somewhere near the middle too. I laughed a lot. Go. Now.

IMMORTAL BEA-LOVED: Once again, the web has delivered a dream to me. Long have I staggered through life, hoping — nay, wishing! — that somewhere I might find a comprehensive resource dedicated to that marvelous comic actress Beatrice Arthur. And here it is! (I understand that TV Land is rerunning Maude. My cable system doesn't carry TV Land. I am, therefore, cranky.)

OTHER FUNNIES: The iMac ad parodies continue, in typically geeky fashion. And The Brunching Shuttlecocks, always good for a laff, offer up some unconventional Y2K survival items:

Experts agree that the only two currencies of any value in the post-Y2K era will be pure gold and science fiction tie-in merchandise. So we combined the two, producing these attractive coins, each bearing the image of a beloved character from the critically acclaimed, ground-breaking Babylon 5 series.

UPDATED: Ten Random Facts About Brad.

Friday, August 20, 1999

Celestial seasoning

Funny, in all of the hype surrounding the recent eclipse, I somehow failed to hear any mention of this marvelous marketing coup for Apple Computer.

Monday, August 16, 1999

Eleven angry men…and me

I'm on jury duty this week, and in the midst of several projects besides. Many other weblogs seem to be taking an August hiatus, so count this as mine. In the absence of my usually abundant links, glittering wit and cogent commentary, please to consider visiting:

Lileks.com — 'cuz my man James is da' bomb. (Please note: James is neither my man, nor an actual explosive device. Price excludes tax, license and transportation. Your mileage may vary.)

User Friendly — "Funnier does not geek humor get." — Yoda.

NowThis — literate logging from a Frontier jedi.

Windowseat — hot dish from Minnesota, with props to Laurel for great TV picks. (Now featured on TV Barn! Bonus!)

And, with apologies for all the twee, affected white-boy talkin' jive silliness, I am out of here!

Wednesday, August 11, 1999

Wild Frontier

SORTA-META: I feel bad about not having updated ye olde weblogge recently, but I've been monster busy in The Big Room. Plus I'm learning some minimal Frontier website management stuff for other projects and, as a consequence, crafting this site in WYSIWYG tools just seems damned inelegant by comparison. Dear God, I'm still manually archiving things! And the glossary...the glossary rocks!

So...there may be longer lulls between entries hereabouts. I'm shooting for at least two updates a week, no schedule, so keep on comin' back if you're so inclined. I'm contemplating a back-end design tweak, and also trying to get the showtunes section up and running. Bear with me.

SOME QUICK HITS:

A pretty, new weblog: Whim & Vinegar

Every restaurant in the free world should immediately adopt the technology that makes this possible. I will brook no argument on this point. "Separate checks? Why, certainly sir! No trouble at all!" [Ask Tog]

I talked a little bit about the great musical revue "When Pigs Fly" last month (q.v. July 22, 1999), but this page is a lot better as an introduction to the show than the one I linked then, and the old page has succumbed to linkrot anyway. Meanwhile, the show is playing through August at (ugh!) Faces. It's an earnest effort, not bad for locally produced amateur theatre, but it could certainly benefit from a change of venue. Caveat theatregoer.

Some very nice Flash animations and narratives here.

Wednesday, August 4, 1999

Dispatch from The BradLands

"This boy has a personality like a Frank Lloyd Wright floor plan: tightly organized yet remarkably open. I immediately see what has kept the pair together these past few weeks and what will, I predict, bind them for some time to come." The New Kid on the Block.

Monday, August 2, 1999

Um, hey there, Sparky…

HOW HOT WAS IT?: McSweeney's serves up a steaming selection of punchlines. It was so hot...

NAUGHTY: An illustration of (one of the many such) double standard the Motion Picture Association (MPAA) has regarding same-sex/opposite-sex onscreen sexual relations and affection.

I LOOKED ALL DAY... for the answer to a relatively simple question I had about AppleScript syntax. No wonder AppleScript is considered one of the Macintosh's best-kept secrets. It's powerful, but damned if you can find the documentation. Dig this funky URL!

POOR LITTLE SINGLE RICH MAN: So there's this guy from Toledo, right? Loaded to the gills. On the search for a wife. Been on the search for a while now. Can't figure out why he's not hooking up with the perfect future missus. To wit:

"Another point I would make: some people think gay rights doesn't hurt anybody, but I would say to be a single male over 40 years old, the gay movement is very hurtful­definitely detrimental to my position, because I am a totally heterosexual individual. In the past, I would have gotten credit for that. Today, people say, 'Why aren't you married?' Or, 'Maybe he's gay.'"

"I will speak personally. I'm a conservative on this matter. I am a tolerant person, but I believe sexuality is a private matter and it should stay private. I do not believe in gay expressions of sexuality in public, period. If someone says, 'Well, that's unfair,' well, I would say, 'O.K., now we can have a 1950's morality as far as heterosexual expression of sexuality.' But I do not believe that gays should be kissing in public. I don't believe in openly homosexual people! It used to be it was a mental illness. Today they think there's some biological­the bottom line is, the answer to that would be they're now proving that schizophrenia has a biological basis. You're born with schizophrenia, too, but no one's saying, 'Well, that's normal.'"

Um, hey there Sparky: maybe your problem isn't that women think you're gay. Maybe it's that they think you're a backward, Victorian jerk. Eh?