See, this is why LiveJournal users freak me out.

That's the entire post.

9:37 PM

"You're not alone.
Don't pretend to be."

"Lost" is such a great show. I especially liked the scene last week where Hurley had to bury the islander killed by that psycho from the other side of the island.

"Scott Jackson worked for an Internet company in Santa Cruz. He won a sales prize: a two-week Australian vacation, all expenses paid. He was a good guy. Sorry I kept calling you Steve, man.

Um...amen, I guess. Uh...I don't know how to end these."

I think I know what it all means. They'll eventually go to the other side of the island, and living there they'll find......

Gilligan.

Or, the island has a virus that's making them all super-paranoid, super-strong, super-violent - and prone to flashbacks.

But it'd still be cooler if it was Gilligan.

9:17 PM

Jack in the Box's new Ciabatta Chicken...

is really good.

10:15 PM

Note: most of the links in this blog post have expired - but not the last one!

I feel kind of bad. Someone searched Google for the comic strip where Cathy gets married - and instead they found my web site, linking to the one where Cathy gets tied up by Dickie the cockroach.

So, okay - here's the one where Cathy gets married.

And the one before it, where Irving reads his wedding vows off his laptop. ("I finished writing my part on the way over but I couldn't get it to print!")

And the one where the bridesmaids strew the aisles with shredded photos of Cathy's ex-boyfriends [this link also still works!], the one where Cathy complains about her wedding dress, the one where Irving makes Cathy a valentine's gift...

And the one where the "Comics Curmudgeon" columnist screams "Please make it stop."

5:08 PM

I loved the movie Sideways. Easily the best movie from 2004... A clever delight.

And here's something I learned. If you write a novel, don't be afraid to give the manuscript to a woman you meet in the wine country. Even if you're not sure you'll ever see each other again - that moment of connecting ought to be enough.

8:21 PM

The comic book guy on the Simpsons finally has a name.

"My name is Jeff Albertson," he says in Sunday's episode. "But everyone calls me comic book guy."

Comic book guy - er, Jeff - accosts Ned Flanders asking for some video footage of a drunken Homer Simpson dancing with an inflatable octopus. Then he uploads it to his web site, "Dorks Gone Wild . com." ("Best website ever.")

"Stupid internet," grumbles Homer. "Whole world laughing at me."

It turns out it's a real domain, containing the very footage from the episode itself.

Registered to the Simpson's owners, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, 10201 W. Pico Boulevard.....

Comic book guy's t-shirt read:
"Nerds do it rarely."

10:25 PM

Frank felt cold chills run up and down his spine. Here was something that thrilled him as nothing else had ever done, something of the spirit of men who brave the unknown terrors of the deep. Perry was one of them. At the moment Frank admired the diver more than anyone else in the wide world....

That's from the original 1938 edition of Hardy Boys book #17 - "The Secret Warning." (Page 97.) I'm enjoying the gushy children's-literature prose...

Back at the car Frank turned to his companions. "Fellows we must--"

"Interview that officer!" Joe finished impolitely.

8:05 PM

I hate Clint Eastwood.

"Sometimes killing is okay." That was the basic message of Unforgiven. Oh how the woman loved her gun-slinger husband, the end titles remind us, immediately after a final round of righteous killings.

"Sometimes killing is okay." That's what I took away from Mystic River, too. My friends said I mis-read the ending, which left me feeling upset over the sympathetic treatment of the killer.

Oh well. Million Dollar Baby has a nice cheery title. Maybe Clint Eastwood's latest movie will change my mind...

Come to think of it, there's even a justifiable-homicide theme in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

Eastwood has got to stop doing his own music...

2:43 PM

It's a geeky Friday night.

I read Wired magazine's profile of Firefox uber-geeks Blake Ross and Ben Goodger - and then found my way to Ross's web-log.

There he laughs at a college "social network" application that inadvertently exposed the home phone numbers of 1.6 million college students.

10:35 PM

"Has-been
might again."

William Shatner's new music album is amazing...

Guest vocalists include Joe Jackson, Aimee Mann, Ben Folds, and Henry Rollins.

5:30 PM

The 38 States of America?

A geography professor re-drew the state boundaries of America, grouping population centers and transportation into just 38 states.

It's not as crazy as it seems. The original boundaries were based on 19th-century landmarks like rivers and mountain ranges, or simply long, straight latitude lines. Re-drawing the boundaries based on contemporary data could save billions of dollars each year by consolidating state government costs and re-uniting cities currently straddling two state lines.

Note: It's extremely unlikely this will ever happen.

8:53 PM

This Sunday's comics page featured a particularly surreal Pearls Before Swine.

I last blogged about it when the character Rat introduced his own comic strip, "Dickie, the cockroach." (If you say something stupid, Dickie ties you up and slaps duct tape over your mouth.) Dickie was last seen addressing the comic strip Cathy...

In Sunday's strip the characters are mourning the death of Rat when cartoonist Stephan Pastis suddenly gives it a strange twist.

And then it all comes together...

4:49 PM

Those wacky geeks.

If you're browsing the web with the FireFox browser, you can add "Extensions" that give it special capabilities. One geek coded up a special feature that's "Useful for surprise visits from bosses."

Tapping two keys closes every open browser window, and replaces it with one "which, to the casual observer, appears to be yet another of your tireless efforts of productivity for your employer.

"The default setting is a Google search for 'increasing workplace productivity'."

And the name of the program? "PaNIC." It cleverly disguises itself within your browser as the "Productivity and Networking Information Component," with the description:

"Enhances workplace productivity."

4:43 PM

"Some people call me the space cowboy.
Yeah! Some call me the gangster of love.
Some people call me Maurice
Cause I speak of the Pompatus of love."

Pompatus?

Pompatus.

Steve Miller's "The Joker" borrowed a word from an obscure 1954 R&B hit by the Medallions' vocalist Vernon Green. "You have to remember, I was a very lonely guy at the time. I was only 14 years old, I had just run away from home, and I walked with crutches."

Scraping by singing songs on the streets of Watts, he composed "The Letter", which included the word "puppetutes" (alternately spelled "pulpitudes") meaning: "a secret paper-doll fantasy figure who would be my everything and bear my children...."

5:01 PM

And now, a special announcement from Destiny-land...

Not that there's anything wrong with that...

Click the image for the story.

10:45 PM

In "Coach Carter," Samuel L. Jackson challenges one of his players by continually asking what his greatest fear is.

After the team is sidelined to the library, Coach Carter's question finally yields an emotional answer.

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

It's a poem by Marianne Williamson, often mistakenly attributed to Nelson Mandela

6:41 PM

"Blah blah blah Acck! Slap! Bye bye!!"

I've gained new respect for the comic strip "Pearls Before Swine." Last Sunday Dickie the Cockroach snuck into the Cathy comic strip, and slapped duct tape over Cathy's mouth.

This week's Sunday strip continues the saga.

"Dickie!! What have you done...?"
"Blah blah blah Ack! Slap! Bye bye!!"

"This is the best "Cathy" I've seen in twenty-five years."

10:53 AM

A 1647 colony in the Bahamas included a Welshman named John Bethel. The folk ballad of his crew is believed to have descended through the centuries into the folk song "(Wreck of the) Sloop John B."

In 1926 the original wreck of this ship was discovered in Nassau, a Bahama island near Florida. (Sloops were precarious 16-foot vessels, sailing hundreds of miles without a chart with a 5-person crew.) Poet Carl Sandburg adapted the folk lyrics into a poem, which thirty years later was recorded by The Kingston Trio.

Apparently there's also a forgotten third verse

The stewardess she got stewed,
Ran 'round the poop deck nude
Constable had to come and take her away.
Sheriff Johnstone please let me alone
I feel so breakup, I want to go home.

8:44 PM

TV history was made Wednesday night. In the decades of television, no show has ever debuted with fewer viewers than a new reality series on CBS.

The Will achieved a rating of 2.9.

No further episodes will ever be aired.

5:30 PM

"The day you stop drawing Woody Woodpecker in the sand is the day I stop being your friend."

Derek Kirk Kim's "Same Difference" is an amazingly poignant story, told in comic form.

Two Korean American slackers in Oakland remember high school, tease a stalker, agonize over the blind girl, and think about life.

Link via Waxy

4:45 PM

Four of the ten top-grossing films of 2004 were cartoons.

Shrek 2
The Incredibles
A Shark's Tale
Polar Express

Er, and I was surprised that #8 on the highest-grossing list was: "Meet the Fockers."

"50 First Dates" was #14, and "Dodgeball" was #17.

Two One lists

4:51 PM

To a Denver college teacher, video games "look like the center of the popular-culture revolution."

A profile in a Denver alternative newspaper led a journalism web site to echo his question: who is the next influential videogame critic?

I contacted them and nominated SeanBaby.

Read my letter!

11:08 PM

One more Napoleon Dynamite link...

When the movie was released on DVD, David Letterman had Napoleon on his show to read a Top Ten List.

Its topic? "Top Ten Signs You're Not The Most Popular Guy In Your High School."

"Everyone's jealous of your tetherball skills."

"Not only did you take your mom to the prom, you had to pay her 20 bucks."

7:11 PM

Wanna see Ashton Kutcher get beat up in prison?

Then watch The Butterfly Effect. It's just one of many surprises in a movie which requires Ashton's character to re-live the alternate paths of his life.

It takes the movie two hours to get through them all. But at least I liked the ending. And as the girl walks by and the screen fades to black, Oasis sings...

We're all of us stars
We're fading away
Just try not to worry
You'll see us some day...

11:38 PM

"Flight of the Phoenix" - starring William Shatner?

Sort of. Andrew from work reminds me that the Libyan desert plane crash also inspired a 1970 TV movie called "Sole Survivor."

Except in this version - there's ghosts.

4:39 PM

We've worked at it two nights now, but Dorfman's brainchild looks less like an airplane than it did when we started.

It's almost mid-day and he's still working. He's right about one thing, though. The little men with the slide rules and computers are going to inherit the earth.

It's kind of sad that Dorfman won't be there to see it, but then I guess he doesn't need to see it.

He already knows it.

Jimmy Stewart gives that speech in 1965 in the original "Flight of the Phoenix." But apparently there's some morbid truths behind the story.

During World War II an American bomber crashed in the Libyan desert. The survivors attempted to walk across the desert, travelling 75 miles. None survived; their remains were discovered a decade later by an oil survey crew. The author of "Flight of the Phoenix" apparently knew this story. His fictitious plane crash occurs in precisely the same part of the desert.

Equipment from that plane - the "Lady Be Good" - was installed in other planes, which then, mysteriously, also crashed.

In the 1965 film the rickety take-off was simulated by a real-life stunt pilot - Paul Mantz - who was to fly his C-82 Boom down to touch the sand, and then up again. His plane crashed. The movie was dedicated to his memory.

Stranded in the desert on their first night, the lonely men's spirits are lifted when a transistor radio picks up this haunting song - "Senza Fine" - by Connie Francis.

No fears, no tears
No love that dies...

Never ending,
the summer days,
The moon at night,
The sea, the sand,
the starry heights
Are yours and mine
Forever

10:42 PM

Okay, here's some more clues and trivia.

• The movie's soundtrack includes the theme for The A-Team
  
• The opening credits ballad was performed by the White Stripes
  
• Kip's awful song "Always and Forever" was covered by -- er, this guy.

"Why do you love me? Why do you need me?
Always and forever...

We met in a chatroom, now our love can fully bloom.
Sure the world wide web is great,
but you, you make my salivate.
I love technology, but not as much as you, you see.
But I still love technology.
Always and forever.

Our love is like a flock of doves, flying up to heaven above.
Always and forever.

This page of memorable quotes includes nearly the entire screenplay. And four long quotes (near the top) that didn't even make it into the movie's final cut.

9:01 PM

"This is pretty much the worst video ever made."
"[L]ike anyone can even know that."

Guess what movie I just saw?

"You know what, Napoleon? You can leave."
"You guys are retarded!"

"Pedro offers you his protection."

"I bought you this delicious bass."

8:44 PM

I was one of only a few hundred thousand people who bothered to turn out for the worst-grossing film of 2004.

Despite having Owen Wilson and Morgan Freeman in a heist story written by Elmore Leonard and set in sunny Hawaii, "The Big Bounce" earned only $5.9 million.

Assuming an average ticket price of $8.50, that's just 694,117 tickets.

4:08 PM

Here are the best movies of 2004 - according to ME!

Alfie
Polar Express
Farenheit 9/11
The Incredibles
Spartan

Monster* (2003 release date, says my friend Jeff)

Yes, I liked Alfie that much. (And I saw Polar Express in 3-D Imax, so it looked better than the one most people saw...)

I didn't see every movie this year - so a better question might be which films I saw which didn't make the "best" list...

Catwoman
The Bourne Supremacy
The Manchurian Candidate

Those first three films had a great look and some good scenes, but I didn't like them enough to put them on the "best" list.

Spider-Man 2
Shrek 2
Ocean's 12
Kill Bill, Volume 2

Notice how those are all sequels?

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
The Stepford Wives
The Big Bounce

Pleasant enough, but not "best of the year" material.

And the worst movie I saw this year? Sorry, Jackie Chan.

Around the World in 80 Days

3:45 PM

How pop music is made. Case Study #1: Jan and Dean's "Honolulu Lulu."

Jan (Berry) had a late-night snack with song-writer Roger Christian "over a bowl of tapioca pudding at Los Angeles's Copper Penny all-night diner.

"Producer Lou Adler had suggested the title, and a bleary-eyed Christian scrawled the lyrics on a napkin, which he neglected to retrieve when the waitress cleared the dishes. Realizing his carelessness, Christian asked Berry to help him scour the diner's back-alley dumpster in search of the rough draft of the song; he finally found the precious napkin at 4:00 a.m.

"'Honolulu Lulu' hit number 11 on Billboard's Hot 100..."

Yet-another story from "The Nearest Faraway Place: Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys, and the Southern California Experience."

See also: Jan and Dean meet a stripper.

Bonus link: That time the Beach Boys recorded with a symphony orchestra.

2:20 PM

Theme from Blog:

Welcome to my blog.
I'm so glad you came....

Each week the Quirky Works music blog posts an original recording. This week's (self-referential?) work is the catchy, infectious "Theme from Blog."

"I was going for a modern sitcom feel a la Friends or Malcolm In The Middle...

"...though the end gets a little weird."

Via Waxy

12:41 AM

I nominate this as the most-2004 moment of 2004.

"How did you get fired?" the bartender wanted to know.

"I wrote an X-rated blog," Jessica said.

The bartender looked puzzled.

"What's a blog?" he asked.

Click here for Destiny-land's original post about Jessica Cutler's blog

4:00 PM

I watched the 1967 movie "Thunder Alley" - starring Annette Funicello and Fabian.

But I didn't expect to see Annette Funicello swilling hard liquor from a bottle and driving drunk in a stock car...

Fabian: You crazy broad! What's gotten into you?

Annette: Thatshh right, I'm a crazy broad. But you don't care...

Fabian: I'd kiss your silly-looking face if you didn't smell like a brewery...

Annette sang a pretty song (in a hideous peacock-eye dress), and I decided I wanted the out-of-print vinyl soundtrack. And at that same moment someone was selling it on eBay...

"I HAVE A TON OF RECORDS THAT WERE IN STORAGE FOR A VERY LONG TIME. MANY ARE IN REAL GOOD CONDITION. BUT THEY MAY HAVE AN ODOR AND HAVE A BIT OF SOILING FROM BEING STORED..."

Amazingly, the winning bid was 99 cents!

Let's free-associate some more on those moments gone by. Here's the movie's lurid taglines...

Days of screaming wheels.
Nights of reckless pleasure!

Their god is speed...
Their pleasure an 'anytime' girl

And enjoy this moment of existential angst from the movie's theme song by "The Band without a Name."

They give him a number then they gave him a car
And maybe with guts and luck he's gonna go far.
They say they've a buckle, and you'll be a star
but I wonder if he'll make it through
      Thunder Alley

He knows that there's danger riding down by the tracks
He knows there's no way of hiding when it looks black.
He's gone through the middle and there's no turning back
but I wonder if he'll make it through
    Thunder Alley

There isn't a way to win that he hasn't tried.
You get in his way he's gonna push you aside.
But when he gets there will he still have his pride?
And I wonder if he'll make it through
        Thunder Alley?

Lyrics by Guy Hemric and Jerry Styner

3:07 PM

Now, let's see....

(12 x 1) + (11 x 2) + (10 x 3) + (9 x 4) + (8 x 5) + (7 x 6) + (6 x 7) + (5 x 8) + (4 x 9) + (3 x 10) + (2 x 11) + (1 x 12)

Ah, but it turns out you receive the same number of pipers piping (12, on the last day) as you do partridges in pear trees (one per day, for all 12 days.) This holds true for the second and second-to-last day, so you can simplify the equation to...

2 x (12 + 22 + 30 + 36 + 40 + 42) = 2 x 182 = 364

I was a little disappointed I couldn't just say something like "twelve factorial" and let it go at that - say...

1! + 2! + 3! + 4! + 5!+ 6! + 7! + 8! + 9! + 10! + 11! + 12!

But the factorial symbol multiplies all the numbers counting up to the target number. You'd need to use the sum function.

		2		3		4
1	+	Σ	+	Σ	+	Σ	...
		d=1		d=1		d=1

Click here to see the complete equation.

We can use Perl to write a short program performing the same calcuations.

#!/usr/bin/perl

# In the song "The 12 Days of Christmas,"
# how many gifts, total, did my
# true love give to me?

for ($day=1; $day<=12; $day++)
{
  $newgifts = $day;
  $totalgifts += ($newgifts + $repeatgifts);
  $repeatgifts += $newgifts;
}

print "After 12 days of Christmas,"
print "my true love ";
print "had given me $totalgifts gifts \n";

OUTPUT:
After 12 days of Christmas, my true love had given me 364 gifts

Have a geeky holiday, everyone !!!

Click here for a longer script which breaks down the total by type of gift!
And by popular demand: the same script re-coded with a hash array!

6:24 AM

Stories within stories. The 2002 movie "Far From Heaven" was dedicated to "Bompi", the director's grandfather, who was a union organizer and a Communist who left studio work during the blacklist era.

For the score, director Todd Haynes brought in composer Elmer Bernstein - who studios had refused to hire during the blacklist era.

And the film was inspired by the 1950s melodramas of another famous director. In an interview, director Haynes remembered the life of Douglas Sirk. "His second wife was Jewish, and he had a difficult time getting her out of Nazi Germany.

"Meanwhile, his first wife, a Nazi sympathizer, made their son a star of the Nazi youth cinema. Because she wouldn't let him see the child, he had to watch propaganda films to keep abreast of his little boy, on the screen wearing Nazi regalia. When the child died, the Nazi cinema was his last connection to his son..."

You have to wonder if his life influenced his work. Here's how the director is remembered now.

"Sirk recoiled at the studio's insistence on happy endings, finding them unrealistic conclusions to the conflicts that preceded them. Thus, Sirk's films are filled with some of the unhappiest happy endings ever recorded on film. Technically, life goes on and the assumption is that everyone lives happily ever after, but any thoughtful observation of the story's dynamics will alert the viewer to the unlikeliness of that ever occurring."

Interesting trivia: The 2002 Far From Heaven apparently owes some of its plot to Sirk's 1955 film All that Heaven Allows, "When widowed Jane Wyman wants to make it with younger and Thoreau-quoting gardener Rock Hudson..."

And during the filming of Far From Heaven, Julianne Moore was pregnant!

2:08 PM

"Blog only unmarried man in tribe.

"So female prisoner must marry Blog -- or die!"

"Well, Lois, it looks as if you're destined to become Mrs. Blog instead of Mrs. Superman..."

In 1959 Clark Kent and Lois Lane crash landed in the Mexican jungle - where they were captured by a secret tribe of cavemen. Lois Lane comics told the story - and 45 years later, the caveman's name creates wonderful moments of serendipity.

"No female will have Blog! But you female prisoner! Female prisoner have no choice!"

Clark Kent smugly thinks his mild-mannered alter-ego will become more attractive to Lois "when she starts comparing him to bachelor Blog!"

"This Blog's cave! Blog give mate everything..."

The words you thought you'd never hear...

"Blog's become a tribal hero! The tribal beauties are drawn to his flame like moths! Poor Blog will set fire to many a heart!"

"But," warns the man of steel, "let's hope he gets married before his lighter fluid evaporates."

SEE ALSO: Batman meets the Beatles.
("How did you groove it was a trap, Batman?")

Via Waxy via Empty Bottle

6:13 AM

Wow. You've really done it this time, writer. Where the vast majority of National Novel Writing Month participants abandoned ship at some point in the journey, you bravely persevered, continuing your literary quest in the face of ridiculously long odds.

In one month, you have written more fiction than most people create in a lifetime. You have dared to dream big, to throw long, to say: 'Enough of the self-critical crap, and the hemming and hawing. This time I'm going for it....'

It's an amazing accomplishment, and we're proud of you for seeing it through.

11:01 PM

"Greetings, Legionnaires! The time has come for you to meet... Arm-Fall-Off-Boy!

"My power will ASTOUND you! Observe as I detach my limb -- and transform it into a deadly weapon!"

D.C. Comics' Legion of Superheroes took a strange turn in 1989. "Legend has it that "Arm-Fall-Off Boy" was kind-of an in-joke among Legion fans for many years," remembers one fan, "a kinda generic reference to some of the laughable Legion rejectees over the years..."

"Can you imagine a comic book artist coming up with this idea?" writes another fan. "Discussing it with the guys down at the office? Isn't it majestic that someone actually gave the go-ahead for this character to appear?

"Life is more wonderful than we can ever imagine."

1:04 PM

"Girls like me weren't built to be educated. We were made to have children! That's my ambition! To be a walking, talking baby factory...."

The 1960 movie "Where the Boys Are" is like a catalog of outdated social roles -- the 1950s, frozen and preserved. "Two years ago I showed it in a college class to underscore how social rules have changed," one teacher recently posted online at IMDB.com, adding that "it was all before the Pill appeared."

But despite the movie's hopeful Connie Francis tune, it's surprisingly serious. Like the scene where Merritt, played by 22-year-old actress Dolores Hart, confronts her college's dowdy sociology professor.

Merritt: "Dr. Kinsey says --"

Dowdy Teacher: "We are not discussing Dr. Kinsey. We are discussing interpersonal relationships!"

Merritt: "What could be more interpersonal than 'back seat bingo'?"

Dowdy Teacher: "Just what do you consider suitable subject matters for discussion in this course?"

Merritt: "We're supposed to be intelligent, so why don't we get down to the giant jackpot issue? Like should a girl or should she not under any circumstances 'play house' before marriage?"

Dowdy Teacher: "I'd be afraid to ask your opinion on such a subject."

Merritt: "Don't be afraid. My opinion is yes!"

Dowdy Teacher: "Miss Andrews? Report to the Dean....."

Ah, but Merritt Andrews is no push-over, as her Spring Break date finds out! She suddenly interrupts their making out to announce...

Merrit: "We're getting a little chummy aren't we? A cigarette please."

George Hamilton: "I thought we were hitting it off pretty good."

Merrit: "Too good. That's why I'd like a cigarette...."

And the movie veers instantly into another sociological discussion.

George: "It's not hard to see you were a frosh queen."

Merrit: "Thank you. Is that a compliment?"

George: "Yes, it was meant that way. Why, are you insulted?"

Merrit: "A little, yes. No girl enjoys being considered promiscuous, even those who might be."

George: "Now that's a pretty old-fangled notion, Merritt. Sex is no longer a matter of morals. That idea went out with the racoon coat. Sex is part of personal relations."

Merrit:"Oh, really....."

22-year-old actress Dolores Hart, who had already done two movies with Elvis, made just four more over the next three years. In 1963, "after completing a promotional tour for Come Fly with Me...she had her limousine drop her off at The Abbey of Regina Laudis."

And she became a nun.

40 years later reporter Mark Lembeck, who'd been trying to interview her for 20 years to ask her why, suddenly received a startling answering machine message.

"Hello, Mark Lambeck, this is Mother Dolores," began the hesitant, slightly tremulous message on my voice mail. "I'm so glad to be in touch with you again after so many years."

My reaction was immediate: I burst out crying.

It's one of the movie industry's most surprising stories.

"Along with Hollywood she left behind a broken engagement to Don Robinson, a Los Angeles businessman who broke down and cried when she told him of her decision. Never married, he has kept in touch with her to this day..."

As I turned off "Where the Boys Are," my TV reception returned me to 2004, and I heard Dr. Phil saying...

"You slept with this guy in a hotel room that your husband paid for?"

9:12 PM

"I never meant--"
"You never meant to hurt anyone.

"But you did, Alfie."

There were lots of great surprises in the re-make of "Alfie". Guess who's singing the new songs for the soundtrack?

"Writer/director Charles Shyer's reinvention of the beloved 60's morality tale about a serial-womanizer's quest for meaning in life is musically rooted in a voice that's lived the experience: Mick Jagger."

Mick's collaborating with David Stewart of the Eurhythmics. And if you hunt around DaveStewart.com long enough, you'll eventually find a music video...

But the biggest surprise in the movie was probably at the end, when Alfie asks "What's it all about. You know what I mean?"

Everyone in the audience waited for a song that never came...

11:20 PM

Spider-Man lost his love, Gwen Stacy, when she was killed by the Green Goblin in 1971. Now all these years lady, Spider-Man finds out...

She had children with the Green Goblin, too.

Gwen didn't realize she was sleeping with a homicidal super-villain that night she bedded Norman Osborne.

Later during an argument, she tells him "I'll die before I let you lay a finger on my children. Do you hear me?"

Oh, Gwen....

1:42 PM

"What did we learn in school today?"
"Revenge."

So I finally got around to watching the 1995 movie Hackers.

Where to begin....

11:20 AM