Category Archives: Celebs and Media
Return to the World, Part 4
SharkBoy, Stitch and Dead Robot
Never punch a Disney park character in the face.
I’ll expand on that in a moment.
I am shy when it comes to meeting celebrity. This extends to theatre people in big plastic and foam rubber heads. I don’t know if I was shy or if it was just blind bad luck but SharkBoy and I didn’t pose with any of the park characters until our 4th day at DisneyWorld, and by that time we were at Animal Kingdom. The first Disney character we posed with was Stitch, the blue alien from Lilo And Stitch. I was nervous as hell for some reason, not because there were 30-50 people watching us get our picture with this ‘star’, no pressure to be clever, no, I was honestly star struck and didn’t want to look like an ass. I knew Stitch would not be able to respond to any of my questions or compliments other than an overly dramatic pantomime of “hello”, so my approach towards him was fraught with internal monologue: do I say hello? Do I gush like a common pleb and say how much I loved him in his last couple of movies? Do I ask if he knows Mickey? Do I just say “Lets get this over with…”
My first character encounter went something like this:
Me: “I… loved your movie.” And I thrust my hand towards Stitch in greeting.
Stitch did a panto move of “Aw Shucks.” I guess his big blue furry head hid the cast member’s line of sight to my outstretched hand. I was left hanging with my hand out in front of everyone.
The photo isn’t that bad. I’m genuinely excited as you can see. Somehow Stitch got us to do half of a Cowabunga hand sign thing. I was too excited but embarrassed to know how he got us there.
SharkBoy is well practiced with character greets. Our last trip we got our picture with the Evil Queen from Snow White. As we were finishing up, he leaned in and conspiratorially whispered “You’re my favorite…” to which she responded sternly, loudly, without missing a beat “Of course I am.” He also claims that one of the Tweedledee (or dum…?) touched him inappropriately but I don’t believe that. Regardless, in all our pictures, he looks great and is always doing something different.
So getting back to not punching a Disney character.
Our last trip to Disneyland in California we were around the back end of California Adventure early in the morning. We came upon Goofy and his handler, literally alone since barely anyone was at that end of the park. I asked SharkBoy to take my picture with Goofy (PROTIP: purchasing the photopass CD *before* leaving for Disney saves you a ton of cash) and I ran up beside him. I didn’t see what he was doing but I went into my signature YAY! pose which is me with both arms thrust up in the air, like I just won the Special Olympics. As I shot my hands up, I made contact with the Goof’s big plastic snout. I knew instantly I had disturbed something innocent.
As I looked at Goofy to see if he was ok (he had started to mime being punched in the face) I immediately started to blubber my apologies. Holy crap I punched Goofy… Then the handler was upon me. The handler was going to say something and judging by the look on his face, it wasn’t going to be offering me a discount at the gift shop. More like a FastPass ticket to the front gates. Before he could say anything however, Goofy righted his head, and gently put his hand on the handler’s arm. All was smoothed over within that moment.
The actual picture I got is there on the right. I think his head is still a bit askew in that shot.
Oh Hugh.
“Bring it!!”
Seriously?
Still, looks pretty cool…
Grab Bag
The Daft Punk Tron:Legacy soundtrack sounds like Phillip Glass, if Phillip Glass had originally learned music instead of driving around NYC playing tapes in his cab.
And speaking of Tron, I always loved this shot in the original. I knew it was impossible, a matte painting, but thought it was really good satire.
George Lucas is buying up the rights to dead actors. Read that again, consider Howard The Duck and weep silently into your beer.
Hate filled Christian ranting? There isn’t an app for that. Fake Steve Jobs explains it better than any news outlet.
Denver police kill a robot, dead.
The Ten Most Disturbing Invader Zim episodes (via Topless Robot). I loves me some Pusstulio!
The (All Too) Happiest Place On Earth
The night is damp as Bob Hope sings about a White Christmas while the temperature hovers around 20C. The music mysteriously comes from behind a bush, past yellow police tape. Pull back to reveal a Florida home, curiously designed like a Cape Cod cottage. The house is done in muted green pastels, occasionally splashed with red and blue, shone from stubby police cars, parked outside the home. The cars are on odd angles, belying this well ordered, clean neighbourhood.
Detective Goofy’s own electric NEV police car pulls up to the crime scene. He pauses a moment and looks out past his steering wheel as Annabell cow comes running from the front door of the house and vomits. Technicolour cud spills across a perfectly manicured bush – the Christmas music sputters and stops – she hit the speaker.
As he opens his door to his tiny car, Det. Goofy’s shoe catches on the runner and he tumbles out.
“Waahoooie!” Goofy says, stumbling and righting himself. He then slips on Annabell’s vomit and walks backward onto a rake, which whips up and smacks him squarely on the back of the head with a loud bell noise. None of the other dog and cow faced cops laugh.
He meets Donald in the doorway of the house. Donald looks like he hasn’t slept in 48 hours. No surprise, thinks Goofy, since this is the second murder come to Celebration. In as many days.
“Isha fawkin messh! I’ve never scheen scho mucsh blood!” Donald says.
Goofy pushes past into the home. One wall in an otherwise uber-organized living room has been painted with cartoon blood and brain.
On a gingham couch, is a human body with a shotgun tucked between it’s legs. From jaw to crown, there’s little flesh left that could describe a head. Yet little cartoon birds circle the dead body’s head/stump. Their chirping is repeated on a loop.
“Take a break boys,” says Goofy. The birds look dejected and fly off sullenly.
“Gwarsh,” Det. Goofy says to nobody in particular in the room, “Sure is messy!”
Project ing
Around 1995 I picked up a magazine called “Wired” and knew that graphic design was something that could be manipulated to manipulate. At the time, nothing was like Wired. They broke new grounds in typography and in design with head-scratching layouts that angered or amused, depending on your intelligence. The magazine embodied the spirit of “technology molding culture”, the very masthead they built the magazine on.
I remember one layout for an article had 2, 4 page spreads dedicated to just two quotes – something that will never be copied today (unless some advertiser paid huge dollars for it, or your magazine is called AdBusters). The printing was silver on silver and you had to angle the page just so to read it. Bad boy publishers indeed!
Today, Wired is tired. Oh it still has some pretty cool infograpics and splashy layouts but it’s not a leader in design anymore. It may even be transforming itself to curmudgeonly, what with the stir of their last article “The Web is Dead“. They may be displaying truth in numbers but the web never actually played to anyone’s rules. That’s another blog post. Point is, ad space and the “death” of print seems to have quieted their creative side.
Yesterday Sir Richard Branson (re)dropped his hat into the publishing world by releasing PROJECT. An entirely digital magazine (not the first, lets be clear) available through the iTunes store [iTunes link]. The smart move? Putting Jeff Bridges on the “cover” with a video overlay of TRON-like effects, tying in this month’s release of Tron and a Fanboy’s raving need for Tron things. Geeks, meet your new eReader.
I had some troubles downloading my initial copy from the Project servers (I suppose it was a busy day for them) and while I was at a Starbucks free WiFi, I wasn’t surprised. It took me two attempts, deleting and reinstalling the app, restarting the iPad and just plain “let it sit” patience for me to finally get my issue. In terms of App space, it’s a hog. I’m not surprised considering how much video is included with this issue, not to mention the audio files (Jeff opens up in little soundbites about Tron, Tron Thongs, The Dude and more). Also some transitions kakked out between finger swipes.
All that aside, I would say that Sir Richard got it right. He and his designers clearly wanted a Minority Report style magazine and they’ve managed to deliver.
For me. It was like picking up Wired magazine back in the 90’s all over again.
So far today I’ve learned that Jaguar has managed to put two twin micro turbines in their latest electric car, Alaska used nukes to create a harbour (and still may continue), Jeff Bridges is a wicked laid back guy and loved his head shave the most when it came to the movie Iron Man. And that’s not even an hours worth of playing with Project. I’m told that there are Easter Eggs to find too, so I’m set for a while. Next issue is Dec 23rd.
Click to see some screengrabs:
Pre swiped
Swiped
Gallery - touching the numbers advances the images/videos
Front Cover:
PROJECT magazine cover video from PROJECT on Vimeo.
Gardyn
Take a moment.
Seriously. Just stop for a second.
Watch this video.
Best Entrance Ever
Barbra Streisand
Get up and dance, motherfooshers!!
Fail Whale
Twitter is starting to annoy me.
It actually annoyed me from the start. When I first heard of Twitter I thought it was narcissistic, restrictive and destructive to the structure of the web. Example, all those shortened URLs aren’t only a security risk – you could click through to a phishing page, thank god for Macs! – they’re also reliant on a third party to serve up your link. Take it out and there will be millions of broken links to piss off search engines and anal retentive SysAdmins.
Twitter is the junk food of the internet.
With all this in mind I started to Twitter anyway. I followed celebrities and news journos and did enjoy getting their tweets. Still do. Some people post things that are the best of the web. It’s a great way to know when someone updates a blog/video/image etc. It’s great for information.
But lately as my private, non “professional” base of following/followers grows, I’m finding Twitter a lot like something familiar, something 1999…
Oh that’s right! Gay.com’s chat widget.
The majority of the people I follow on Twitter have started to use it as a chat program. I don’t know if this is a trend or if it’s just the type of person I follow. In the morning, I’m shifting through “HI! GOOD MORNING TWEEPS!” “HEY HOW YOU DOING?” posts and their equally important “HEYWAZTUP?” responses – meaningless manusia. During the day I have to skip past “EWWW! NO!” posts when someone mentions feminine hygiene. Or requests to add things to my avatar in the name of some social cause.
Don’t get me started on FollowFriday. On second thought, lets: #FF is utterly useless. If I want to know who you’re following I’ll take the time and click your profile. With the new Twitter page and other slick apps, it’s dead easy. Stop sending out your entire 150 names in 4-5 posts, filling my timeline with garbage!
This crap has no meaning to me. And I like it when Twitter has meaning. Has value. Now, to me, it’s becoming a really slow and irritating IRC channel.
Rant over. Back to your lives, humans.
(posted to Twitter 11:28am, Friday November 5th)