AT&T: Same as it ever was.
Recalled and watched the movie “Crazy People” (1990) last weekend. Some of the ad satire is pretty on-point. This one, pitched by Daryl Hannah, rings true even today.
I wouldn’t normally self-promote like this. I mean, I self-promote, but not like this. In this case, though, I’m asking you to consider shifting over momentarily to this Fashion Blog contest and clicking the Put This On button because a vote for our blog is a vote for all the tremendous work my partner Jesse Thorn puts into it.
Honestly, I have less than .15% of anything to do with the blog. The video stuff is my bag. But Jesse puts so much care into curating a great source for style inspiration, he writes with such a strong voice, he exhibits such unimpeachably distinguished taste, that my plea is for you to show him you appreciate the fine work he does.
Plus, the winner gets like a full year supply of Details Commemorative Edition Axe Crotchspray in a flavor called Endangered Eagle(?), so you know I’m not about to let this die.
Congratulations to Us
I just received an email from the good people at Details Magazine, informing us that we’d been nominated in the category “Style Curation” in their First Annual Fashion Blog Awards. We’re proud to be nominated alongside many of our favorite blogs (though we’d like to have seen our pals Street Etiquette, A Suitable Wardrobe, An Affordable Wardrobe and Sartorially Inclined get nods, especially considering a few perplexing inclusions like the interior design blog The Selby). We feel this will be our shining moment: a time for us to rise above the consistent mediocrity we’ve perpetrated upon the American people, and an opportunity to prove once and for all to the world how amazing we are through the one test more foolproof than any other: internet votes.
The voting period for this thing runs for a month, and voting is incredibly easy. We considered taking the high road and not shilling for your votes, but then we realized: when have we ever taken the high road? If we win this thing, we will know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we are the best Style Curation Blog in the world! Can you imagine? It’s like when Casey beat Dan in that internet poll about who was cooler on Sports Night, only we won’t even have to get Jeremy to rig it for us!
So: CLICK HERE AND VOTE! VOTE! VOTE!
“The Experts” (1989)
Summary from IMDb:
When Travis and Wendell are kidnapped while on their way to opening a nightclub in rural Nebraska. The KGB spy Cameron Smith takes them to the U.S.S.R. instead with the intention of teaching KGB agents to be hip like Americans.
Near the eastern edge of the USSR is a village populated by Russians who speak and act American, where KGB trainees go to practice. The town is mired in the 50’s, and the new KGB hotshot fears his agents will fail to learn real US culture. He goes to New York and hires two young hipsters to come to “Nebraska” to open a nightclub. He drugs them en route to Russia, and they think they’ve awaken in the Midwest. There they turn a tiki lounge into a hip club, teach townies to dance, and introduce pop culture. Both flip for local chicks. Things get dangerous when the townsfolk taste freedom, a KGB faction tries to kill our heroes, but will the guys figure out they’re not in Nebraska?
That’s right, two American sho-lo hipsters are drugged and planted in a Russian town of Russian spies impersonating Americans. I remember this false-world inside a false-world with creepy fondness. This movie was “The Truman Show” and “Synecdoche, NY” before those stages were built. It’s where John Travolta met Kelly Preston and they fell in love (be still our hearts). Yet I can’t find the damn trailer on YouTube. How often does that happen?
Smells a bit like KGB-style information suppression. Now more than ever.
Movieparts.biz Issue #7
Includes movieparts from:
- “Torque” (2004)
- “Punch-Drunk Love” (2002)
- “Youth in Revolt” (2009)
- “Code 46” (2003)
- “L.A. Story” (1991)
Just dawned on me I called this shit three years ago.
And if reblogging myself calling this shit three years ago is wrong, then tough titties for you, fishface.
lonelysandwich, 2007:
don’t these guys (the winklevoss twins on either side and divya narendra in the middle) have the makings of great movie villains? if ever there were a reason to write the story of facebook and the triumph of zuckerberg 6 years prematurely, these faces would be it.
I trust Fincher. But I can already tell in the teaser by the audio alone, the character could’ve used someone a little less self-aware and a little more aspy than Eisenberg. I can’t wait to see who plays the Winkelvoss twins. Please oh please oh please let it be Chris Klein in dual roles. Or for that matter, Eddie Murphy in dual roles. Fuck it. Let’s make it the Winkelvoss triplets.
UPDATE: Here’s who’s playing the Winkelvosses, posing with the twins at a party last week. Two unrelated guys, four years apart in age. One is Armie Hammer, who has been on Gossip Girl and is great-grandson to oil tycoon Armand Hammer. And the other is Josh Pence, a model.
Here’s more on the cast, which includes Timberlake.
Oopsie on the descender, iPhone.
UPDATE: Neven helped me submit my first bug to Radar! Problem ID 8132574. So proud.
UPDATE 2: Now this is interesting. The descender only gets cut off if you access Contacts through the Phone app. If you access Contact info through the Messages app (by scrolling to the top and tapping “Contact Info”, or the Contacts app (which I never use), the descender is rendered correctly.
Local anchorman John Beard reports on a new coffee drink (1979)
Maybe my favorite-to-quote Arrested Development line. Always good in a Starbucks.
Face/OffTime
“Cameron, I want to try something.”
So Cameron and I are facing a half hour ago. It’s my first FaceTime and I’m completely mindblown. Steve and Jony’s demo at WWDC didn’t even begin to convey the magic of this thing or the radical shift it represents. But that’s aside.
We’re chatting, cracking jokes, switching to the back-cameras and giving each other tours of our places. Things everyone is going to do their first few times facing. (Incidentally, it’s called facing. If you use SMS, you text someone. If you use FaceTime, you face them. Cameron called this earlier in the day.)
Around my house, to fill any silence, we’ll just call out “FaceTIIIIIIIIIIME”. Try it on. Instant cool attitude.
It turns out it’s okay to look away from the camera while you’re facing. Not discouraged. Go ahead and check your Twitter. The other person won’t be offended. The rules of FaceTime etiquette will be written quickly, and then we’ll all be good.
One hundred million smile points to the first person who rigs one of these for facing on an iPhone. Double when the rig is business-appropriate and we start seeing them in stock library photos of pretty office ladies.
“Cameron, I want to try something. Yeah, cut off half your face. No, the other half. Yeah, that’s it. Okay, look at the camera. This is gonna be great.”
So yes. FaceTime is a new thing, and it doesn’t suck in all the same ways as the things that tried it before. I feel like I’ll be facing a lot. Face me if you want a facejob and we’ll face back and forth forever.
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Nine Deaths of the Credit Sequence
Clearly, this was an attempt at some sort of a Bond-esque intro to the 1985 Shô Kosugi suckfest “Nine Deaths of the Ninja”, what with the sexy(?) leotard dancers Vaselined to within an inch of their lives, the budget fog machine, the best pop ballad $350 could buy, the delightful(?) interplay between weaponry and the female form (which, would it have killed them to rehearse first?).
Shô Kosugi was a hero to me as a kid. But had I seen this, my life might’ve gone in a completely other direction. And not into ninjutsu. Like it did. Because I practice the art of the stealth assassin. I’m a pirate. Now I’m a wizard. Now I’m a sexy leotard dancer.
