And he’s already British, so it’s even better
I don’t know whether Benedict Cumberbatch as Julian Assange in The Fifth Estate is supposed to be a towhead, silver fox or what, but all I know is now that I’ve seen him with really white hair, he absolutely has to play Elijah Snow in the live-action Planetary movie that lives in my head.
I mean it.
I really, really mean it.
Don Jon: Please fire the title writer
Don Jon could be a good movie.
The POSTER certainly wants you to think so.
I mean, I don’t want to see it. But it could be a good movie. Even if it is about Joseph Gordon-Levitt suffering from a porn addiction trying to see Scarlett Johansson as an actual person, because when you’re trying to see women as real people and not objects, Scarlett Johansson is the logical place to start.
Scarlett Johansson: A person who is totally never objectified to satisfy our personal lusts.
So … probably not a good movie (but certainly better than Baggage Claim, which I recently learned exists, and is about a woman who wants to meet Mr. Right before her younger sister gets married and it involves lots of frequent flyer miles, because of course it does)…
Oh God, don’t touch her, gentlemen! Her spinsterhood might get all over you!
… but WHAT THE HELL WITH THE ATROCIOUS TITLE?
Also this expression. WHAT THE HELL WITH THIS EXPRESSION, Joseph Gordon-Levitt?
GAHHH fish I hate them so much!
Right now at work, we’re going through some remodeling, so our fish tank has been moved to the back room. Which is fine and all, because it’s not right in the hallway and I can avoid it unless something needs shredded, which, hell, I can just keep a pile on my desk until the fish are moved again.
But because the fish tank is in the back room, everybody keeps forgetting to feed the fish and when I remind them, they’re like, “Oh, they’ll be fine,” and then nobody has fed the fish in three days, so I finally feel guilty enough that I decide I guess I had better feed them even though they’re creepy and horrible and COMING RIGHT UP TO THE GLASS TO LOOK AT ME AND OH GOD ARE THEY TRYING TO GET OUT GAHHHHHHHHH, and anyway, if my damn coworkers don’t start feeding the fish soon I am quitting, I swear.
*Sob*
I’d like to teach the Internet to sing
… Or to at least get song lyrics right, for goodness’ sake.
I’m a person that loves to sing along to songs. So when I try to find the lyrics to Sin Fang’s What’s Wrong With Your Eyes? (You should listen. It’s ever so pretty.), and all I can find claims one line is “Made the trees grow out of our eyes” when it’s clearly “Made the tears flow out of our eyes,” because that actually makes sense, you know?, I have a hard time believing they got any of the other lyrics right.
Although having trees grow out of our eyes could be some weird Icelandic turn of phrase that I’m not familiar with, I guess.
Anyway, if anybody can figure out the other lyrics to “What’s Wrong With Your Eyes,” I’d be so grateful.
Also, if someone could let me know if Sindri Már Sigfússon smiles, ever, because he looks so sad, I’m kind of worried about him.
The Flukeman liveth!
After seeing Breaking Bad kick some Emmy butt again, I was very happy for my second-favorite X-Files writer, Vince Gilligan, who has gone on to create a critically-acclaimed, fan-beloved TV show that I have never seen.
It is in the A-#1 position on my list of things to watch that my parents would never approve of.
And then I thought: But what of my favorite X-Files writer, Darin Morgan?
Well, here’s what of him.
According to Wikipedia, Knower of All Things Editable by the Public, Darin Morgan was born in Syracuse, New York, and then immediately went to college. Actually, probably some stuff happened in between birth and college, but Wikipedia doesn’t want to bore you with that crap, so I guess I won’t either. Anyhow, at college (specifically, the film program at Loyola Marymount University), Morgan co-wrote a six-minute short film that led to a three-picture deal with TriStar. I basically copied and pasted that out of Wikipedia, if you were wondering. Also, oddly enough, there’s no mention of any TriStar films on his IMdb page or on Wikipedia, so I don’t know what happened there.
Don’t look so smug, you flying horse. It’s your loss.
After writing a few screenplays that didn’t see the light of the big screen, a stroke of luck finally came to Darin Morgan, in the form of an invitation from his brother Glen (one-half of my third-favorite X-Files writing team of Morgan & Wong) to play a hideous mutated fluke monster on an episode of the X-Files that I only watched once because ewwww, hideous mutated fluke monster. Darin Morgan’s account of the experience leads me to believe that playing a hideous mutated fluke monster is worse than watching one onscreen, because he was stuck in that costume 20 hours a day during filming. Gross.
After his acting experience, Darin Morgan went on to write one of the best episodes of the X-Files ever: Humbug. He then wrote another of the best episodes of the X-Files ever, and also of TV ever, The Final Repose of Clyde Bruckman. All you young kids who have never watched the X-Files need to watch that episode right now, right away, because it is amazing.
“Why do you keep looking at me when you talk about people dying of auto-erotic asphyxiation, psychic guy?”
“Oh, no reason.”
He also wrote the very excellent War of the Coprophages, because “Cockroaches” is just too easy to spell, I guess, and then the hilarious and awesome and superb Jose Chung’s From Outer Space, which you also need to watch right now, right away, because Mulder shrieks like a girl.
I should totally read that book.
He also wrote part of Quagmire, but wasn’t credited, except everybody knew the one part with the great dialogue was totally him, and then he disappeared from the X-Files forever. (Oh, except for playing a character in Small Potatoes, which I always forget, because Darin Morgan in person is less godlike than I imagine him to be.) Vince Gilligan showed up around that time to carry on the torch of awesomeness, but it wasn’t quite the same.
What do you mean Darin Morgan is a mere mortal?
In the meantime, Darin Morgan was busy writing away for Millennium, which was scary and depressing and got cancelled before I could get past my fear of Lance Henriksen.
GAHHHHHH!
I mean, no, I’m fine now.
After the cancellation of Millennium, Morgan helped out on the Kolchak: The Night Stalker remake, which got cancelled almost as soon as it aired, and on Bionic Woman, which fell to the same fate.
But then — and I feel incredibly stupid for forgetting this, because I remember seeing his name in the credits and going “whooo! No wonder this show is awesome!” — Morgan worked as a consulting producer on Fringe.
Yea, Fringe!
But Fringe got cancelled too, because the TV gods hate nerds, so what’s Morgan been up to since then?
Well, he and brother Glen worked together on Tower Prep, a live-action drama for Cartoon Network, “The Network that’s Forgotten What Its Name Means.”
Although not as badly as ol’ “Music Television” here.
Since then … ummm, I don’t know. Modelling clothes for today’s modern hideous mutated fluke monster? Seriously, though, someone hire this guy to write things, right away, all the time, because he is the best.
“I could be more awesome, but then the rest of you would be reduced to cinders in my presence.”
Why couldn’t I finish watching Sleepy Hollow?
I had no intentions of watching Sleepy Hollow. I mean, the premise alone is ridiculous: Ichabod Crane is brought back from the dead and he has to help solve crimes and the Headless Horseman is one of the Four Riders of the Apocalypse?
Oh, and they had to go with the most obvious joke, of course.
So, yeah, I was going to give that one a gigantic pass.
But then:
But THEN!
I learned that John Noble (a.k.a. Walter Bishop, the maddest scientist ever) will have a guest-starring role on it!
“John Noble?!” I cried. “He’s wonderful!”
God bless you, sir, I will always love you.
And that’s how, last night, I ended up trying to watch Sleepy Hollow.
The cast, from left: Head Cop, Witch, Reanimated Dead Guy, Lady Detective.
And OHMYGOD it is TERRIBLE. And not, like, Siberia terrible, which was quite hilarious in its ineptness, but more like sad terrible, like you feel bad for everybody involved, especially John Noble, because they deserve better. Especially John Noble.
Like silk suits and alternate universes.
Now, mind you, I completely missed the first episode, so I don’t know how that one was (I can only assume bad, though), but here are some highlights of the second episode:
First off, there’s an interminably long dream sequence, like, I knew it had to be a dream sequence because Ichabod Crane is running from four horseman (and one of them doesn’t have a head, of course), and he’s running and running. And then he’s running some more. And also? He’s still running. Finally, he gets caught by some trees. Like Evil Dead-the-original caught. Except instead of getting tree-raped, he gets pulled into the ground. There’s a woman there (apparently his wife? Who was a witch? I guess?) and she says a bunch of annoying, prophetic things, and Ichabod Crane STILL hasn’t woken up, and then she keeps talking while walking backwards, because prophets are always doing that in dreams, and then he doesn’t wake up some more, and then FINALLY he wakes up and it’s like, UGH LEARN PACING GOOD GOD.
Also, how did you manage to make a beheading BORING, Sleepy Hollow?
Then we get a bunch of flashbacks to the first episode, which I didn’t even see, but I was like, yeah, got it, let’s move on, although the best flashback was Daniel Cho in prison, which is best described by Lady Detective:
“There was something in that cell with him and it popped his head like a Pez dispenser!”
And, yeah, it totally did. And it was hard to tell if it was supposed to be serious and spooky, or silly, but it turned out to be neither, and just kind of stupid.
Also, yes: Daniel Cho DID play a character in Evil Sherlock Holmes in Space: The Movie.
Then they went to a funeral, which was also boring, and then somebody remembered Ichabod Crane is from the past, so he said things like “Take heed” every once in a while, and then there was a shot of a morgue and I said, “OK, unless Dana Scully shows up, the person in that body bag is going to start — oh, look, he’s moving now,” because nobody shows autopsies on TV unless they’re done by Dana Scully or some CSI character, I guess.
“If the corpse wasn’t dead before I removed his liver and spleen, he definitely was afterward.”
And after that was Daniel Cho coming back to life, and it was stupid, and I finally decided that it was never NOT going to be stupid, and I don’t love John Noble enough to wait and see if he ever showed up.
At least if it’s canceled, it’ll free Mssr. Noble up for other roles.
Hot Ninja 4ever
My mother recently learned that there will be a special Ninja Warrior edition: America vs. Japan. Knowing of my fondness for all things Japanese (except sushi, because ewwww, fish), she wondered: “Who will you cheer for?”
“Um, the hot ones?” I replied.
… And maybe Flip Rodriguez too.
Why was he called “Old Creepy,” I wonder
I want my Alvin Karpis biography to arrive, like, now.
Technically, “autobiography,” but whatever.
Of all the Depression-era criminals, I find him and Harry “Handsome Harry” “Pete” Pierpont to be the most interesting, but hardly anybody writes books about not Dillinger.
“Handsome Harry” Pierpont: Pictured on the right, plotting your death.
Luckily for me, Alvin Karpis, “Old Creepy” himself, wrote a book about not Dillinger! I’m so excited!
What new, torrid secrets will be revealed?
“My barber was blind.”
How did he hook up with the Barker gang?
Thus altering destiny by forever changing the gang’s name to the “Barker-Karpis Gang.”
Why did he have a 16-year-old (ewwwww) girlfriend?
“You should be asking: ‘Why did I have a 26-year-old boyfriend?'”
What was it like being the longest-serving inmate at Alcatraz?
“Oh, you know. Terrible.”
I’m just SO EXCITED.
I also highly recommend reading “Public Enemies,” which does have a lot about Dillinger, because who doesn’t love Dillinger, and also comes with this lovely cover featuring Johnny “Hotter than Dillinger” Depp.
“Always the Same”
Lately, I’ve noticed a local business has a sign on their marquee that says: “Always the Same.”
I think it’s supposed to be reassuring, but I find it rather depressing.
Look, I know nothing wonderful is ever going to happen to me, but do you have to rub it in?
Your bumper sticker is lame, and makes me sad
Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of bumper stickers that I disagree with. Which is fine, because people are allowed their opinions, even if they’re silly because they’re not exactly the same as mine. But I saw one the other day that really annoyed me:
“We believe in marriage.”
Like, yea! I also believe in marriage! It’s easy to believe in a thing that exists!
Marriage: A thing that has existed for centuries, if not millennia.
But that’s not what you’re trying to say, is it?
What you’re trying to say is this:
“We believe in not allowing homosexuals to get married.”
So get right out there and let your homophobic flag fly! Don’t try to hide it under “We believe in marriage.” That’s just cheating.
Also, maybe try being a little less close-minded?
Hollywood Hates Me 