An evening of satisfying relaxation

The Lone Ranger is playing at the Morris Theater and I had a hankerin’ to watch Johnny Depp mete out justice in the Old West.

So I watched Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man. It’s on Netflix.

I don’t know why anyone would watch that glossy hollywood tripe when you can see gorgeous black & white cinematography, a weird and thoughtful movie, listen to a Neil Young soundtrack, and see Johnny Depp playing a stupid fucking white man. Bonus: well-researched portrayal of the diversity of Indian culture, and the actor playing an Indian is actually a First Nations person in real life.

Also, it’s one of those movies where the ending is set in the Pacific Northwest, and it always makes me homesick. When I’m dying, I want to be just pushed out to sea in a cedar canoe, please.

I should have known everyone in the world was going to compare Lone Ranger to Dead Man.

Scroobius Pip speaks

The Edinburgh Fringe Festival seems to be the place to go in early August. I can’t make it this year, but I’m trying to talk my wife into taking a vacation (I know, what’s that?) next year, and taking a little journey from Oxford up through the north of England and into Scotland and just relaxing with this sort of thing. Here’s the kind of event going on this year:

See? Relaxing.

I want royalties!

Sunday night, I suggested names for sequels to Sharknado…and this was one of them!

sharkcano

Looks awesome. Although, I have to confess that my favorite at that link was “Sharknado 2: Aftersharks”. Heh. Aftersharks. Get it?

(Please, Syfy, don’t make any of these. It’s just a joke. Someday I’d like to see some intelligent science fiction on the television, and you aren’t helping.)

A bad game is a bad game

The Russian Orthodox have produced a ‘game’ in which you destroy members of Pussy Riot who are charging at a cathedral.

killpussyriot

The intent is pure eliminationism: you wave a cross-shaped cursor at the little icons and they get zapped, and you get a score that is simply how many Pussy Rioters you eliminate. But it’s also a really bad game, since all you have to do is wiggle your mouse and *poof*, your enemies disappear — no strategy or skill is required, just boring, repetitious cursor movements. It’s kind of representative of the church, I guess: mindless ritual that makes your imaginary foes go away, all done with a complete lack of imagination and talent.

Yes, you can play the game at the link. You’ll only do it for a few rounds at most before you’re incredibly bored.

Aren’t “Superman” and “physics” incompatible?

This afternoon, at 3pm EDT, James Kakalios, Sean Carroll, and E. Paul Zehr are going to do a live chat about the Science of Superman. I’d say it needs MOAR BIOLOGISTS except just the physics of that movie alone ought to fully occupy the panel.

I’m a little afraid that the movie will get praised (it provides so many “teachable moments”!) rather than reamed out, but we’ll see.