CultureGeek

Linkspam wishes Captain America a happy birthday

Happy 100th birthday to Captain America! Otherwise known as Superman, until the real Superman comes back to the movies, Cap currently carries the banner for truth, justice and the American way.

How did we come up with this “birthday”? Someone zoomed in on Cap’s initial 4-F card for the Army and his birthdate is listed as July 4, 1918. Of course he was born on the Fourth of July.

And since there’s not been as perfect a match between actor and role since Christopher Reeve donned the red cape as the Man of Steel, Chris Evans had this to say on Independence Day:

 

Happy 4th everyone!! I love this country and I’m proud of how far we’ve come. Be safe today! Also, Happy Birthday to a very good friend of mine. I hear 100 is the new 20

— Chris Evans (@ChrisEvans) July 4, 2018

 

• I try not to delve into politics on this blog. But I cannot let the #SecondCivilWarLetters go unmentioned… hee hee hee, sorry, I just read another one. The hashtag went wild after Alex Jones of InfoWars declared that Democrats (or liberals, I’m not sure which, he seems to think they’re interchangeable) planned a civil war launch on the Fourth of July. Thus began a cavalcade of internet snark unmatched in my experience - and, actually, very well written in most cases. It takes some skill to match the tone and language of an actual Civil War letter. And… tee hee hee… Sorry, I got distracted again. Go to Twitter and hit the hashtag, but only if you have several hours free, and try not to drink anything near your keyboard.

• A plus-size superhero? I’m casting the side-eye at all my comic-nerd pals, because not one of you has ever mentioned Faith to me. A superhero who actually looks like me (but with cuter hair)? And they’re making her into a movie. I’m braced for the Asshat Brigade that drove Daisy Ridley and Kelly Marie Tran off social media for being female in Star Wars, and I hope the actress who lands the role is as well. In the meantime, I’d best go look up some Faith comics!

• Wait, I thought movie theaters were suffering oh so much because awful MoviePass was letting people of limited means actually see movies on a budget. Those poor movie theaters with their box office up 29 percent over this time last year, a five-year high…

• My friend Kelly Chandler found the most awesome ad display for Luke Cage … in Paris. No, I haven’t seen the second season yet; I’m still soldiering my way through Handmaid’s Tale, and then I’m up for Luke again.

• Ghost fans: Riverfront Times has a roundup of St. Louis ghost stories, which they call urban legends. Lemp Mansion and the Collinsville Seven Gates of Hell are prominently featured.

 • Have you wondered what Nicolas Cage was up to these days? If you guessed Spider-Man, you’d be right! And not as the villain - as Spidey! Wait, what?

• Best Buy stops selling CDs. But no one is weeping, because we all buy our music on iTunes anyway and we haven’t bought them at Best Buy since Amazon showed us Best Buy was soaking us for 20 percent more.

• Hollywood Reporter has all the details of the live-action Aladdin, starring Mena Massoud, Naomi Scott and Will Smith as the Genie. Alan Menken has made up some new tunes, there’s a new character (Jasmine’s handmaiden), the Middle Eastern roles are actually played by Middle Eastern actors because Disney eventually learns, and Sherlock Holmes director Guy Ritchie is directing. Release is set for Memorial Day 2019.

What else is coming for live-action Disney? The Tim Burton Dumbo, which sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, but the trailer didn’t horrify us and that’s about all I can ask of Tim Burton getting his hands on yet more of my childhood. Of course we know Christopher Robin is pending, as well as a second Maleficent movie following the fairytales of Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, The Jungle Book (again) and Pete’s Dragon.

Live-action The Lion King is slated for July 2019, with James Earl Jones returning along with Donald Glover as Simba, John Oliver as Zazu (perfect), Alfre Woodard, Beyonce and a few other people you might’ve heard of.

Mulan drops in March 2020, and following that will be Pinocchio, Oliver Twist (starring Ice Cube?), James and the Giant Peach (again), Cruella, Tink, Peter Pan (again), Lady and the Tramp, The Sword in the Stone (oooo), Snow White, The Little Mermaid (with new songs co-written by Menken and Lin-Manuel Miranda, who is co-producing)…

And Prince Charming, stealing a concept from Fables comics that the prince is actually ONE prince who romances Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, but telling it through the eyes of his brother, who never quite lived up to expectations. Directed by Stephen Chbosky of The Perks of Being a Wallflower and the live-action Beauty and the Beast, it’s pending.

• This Week in Sexual Harassment News: Kevin Spacey faces new allegations of sexual misconduct, which are being reviewed by London police.

 

RIP

• I said at the time that I didn’t have words for the death of Harlan Ellison, the flawed genius of speculative fiction (please don’t call it sci-fi) who passed away the same day as the Annapolis shooting. Much has been written about Ellison, both positive and negative - everyone who ever met him has a Harlan Ellison story, and I am no exception. To understand Ellison, watch a documentary titled Dreams With Sharp Teeth. It is a well-directed, entertaining look at the man and the work, while unflinching at his controversies, legal battles, and the varying reputation he held in the craft.

• Dame Gillian Lynne, 92, Tony-nominated choreographer of Cats and Phantom of the Opera. Beginning as a ballerina in 1946, she worked on seven Broadway shows, including three with Andrew Lloyd Webber and the 2004 Phantom film. Lloyd Webber renamed the West End’s New London Theater as the Gillian Lynne Theatre, the first non-royal woman to receive the honor. Married for 40 years, her husband announced her passing on July 1.

 

Trailer Park

• Skyscraper finally gets a new trailer, and we stopped making fun of it and arguing whether it was a ripoff of Die Hard or The Towering Inferno. Instead, it actually looks like a movie we might want to see, since we like Dwayne Johnson and I adore Neve Campbell (why the hell wasn’t she in any of the previous trailers that looked so lame?)

• Summer of ’84, yet another bounce on Stranger Things but with more satire for both the 80s and silly slashers. Though honestly, I think they get the 80s better than Stranger Things, but I haven’t seen Season 2 yet.

 

Coming This Weekend  

• Ant-Man and the Wasp, because it’s summer and superheroes are required. 

• The First Purge, whose trailers actually give this absurd premise for a franchise enough of a hint at social commentary that I’m actually interested in it.

• Whitney, a documentary about the late Whitney Houston and her transcendent voice.

  

Continuing:

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom; Incredibles 2; Sicario 2; Uncle Drew; Ocean’s Eight; Deadpool 2; Tag; Hereditary; Superfly; Gotti; Avengers: Infinity War; Solo; Adrift; Book Club; Won’t You Be My Neighbor.

Linkspam hears the verdict

Unless you were living under a rock this week, you know that Bill Cosby was convicted on three counts of sexual assault Thursday.

Ever since this began, it seems my entire generation has struggled to reconcile our memory of the friendly, sweater-wearing Cliff Huxtable and the funnyman who voiced Fat Albert and sold pudding pops with the predator described in court. The impact seems to be twice as harsh for African-Americans who grew up watching The Cosby Show and A Different World, who saw positive reflections of middle- and upper-class black America presented on a national stage for the first time.

Some lamented that this seminal work is now tainted forever with Cosby's sins. And I am never going to be That Person and tell the black community what to think or how to feel. It’s not my place.

But I do think this is going to be one of the great struggles for us as a society, as social media now puts us in closer contact with the people we have previously idolized: how to separate art from artist. One nasty tweet can reveal that an artist we loved is actually a racist, or misogynist, or simply clueless and rude. We’ve gone through it many times, with allegations against Woody Allen and Kevin Spacey and so, so many others, going back to Orson Scott Card and before. How can we separate the person from the work? And is it fair to do so?

I know the choice I make: to try to separate art from artist up to the point that the artist’s malfeasance or problematic beliefs infects the art. But I also try to pay attention to the financial impact of my consumption of art, to ensure that little to none of my money goes to support causes I would stand against. That means, for example, if I simply must read a book from an author who espouses hateful homophobia, I can always get it from the library without giving him my money.

Can we really say that we should throw out The Cosby Show and A Different World because Cosby was a criminal? (Good luck finding either on streaming services, by the way.) There were so many artists who worked on those shows, writers and actors who did good work that deserves to be remembered. It wasn’t just cheap laughs that entertained us; it made us think, in ways that the modern sitcom often avoids, and busted stereotypes that go back decades.

It would be a sad thing for our collective culture if the fine work of so many people disappeared or was disparaged and dismissed because the lead actor was a criminal. The legacy of those shows does not belong to Cosby alone.

EDIT: A little birdie has informed me that you can find A Different World streaming on Amazon Prime.

• Speaking of artists doing very bad things… Smallville actress Allison Mack has been charged in the ongoing NXIVM sex cult weirdness. Mack is accused of assisting group leader Keith Raniere with coercing and enslaving unwilling women into the cult and forcing them to have sex with Raniere. As many as 50 women are alleged to be victims of the cult.

• Winter is not coming…. George R.R. Martin says The Winds of Winter will not be published in 2018. There hasn’t been a new Ice and Fire novel since 2011. Instead, there will be a 1,000-page history of the kings of Westeros, coming out in November. The fictional history has been compared by some as Martin’s Simarillion. Meanwhile, HBO is considering three to five possible spinoffs. Yikes.

• The first St. Louis Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Film Festival will take place at First Friday in May at the St. Louis Science Center. Attendees will be able to learn about cinematography, special effects, editing, directing, lighting, costuming and set design as well as screening the various short films. As it will be May the Fourth (be with you), the Planetarium will celebrate Star Wars Day. Finishing up with a screening of Ed Wood in the Planetarium, I’m really wishing I were off work.

• Ever since I saw this silly “Marvel Bunch” video, this song has been stuck in my head, so I gift it to you and you can have it stuck in your head. (Chris Evans, we gotta talk about the 'stache.) I think those guys have a movie coming out, have you heard anything?

• Hamilton may be gone (don’t worry, it’ll be back) but there’s still theater in St. Louis! Highlights this week include The Dresser by Gaslight Theater, Falling by Bankside Reperatory Theater Company, The Fantasticks by the Hawthorne Players, and Jesus Christ Superstar by Stray Dog Theater.

• In case you were worried that you weren’t giving enough money to Amazon, they’re now raising the price of Amazon Prime from $99 to $119. The change goes into effect May 11 and will apply to renewals beginning June 16. Amazon has had cost increases, they say. Sign on the dotted line if you feel sorry for them.

• Locals: Afterwords Books in Edwardsville celebrates its ninth anniversary on Saturday, May 12! Drop by for baked goodies, a 20-percentn discount, storytime and a drawing for a $50 gift card. Congrats to one of the hidden jewels of Edwardsville!

• Is Thursday really Alien Day? Is that a real thing? Twitter thinks so.

• A recent study in the journal PLOS One found that authors with female names were paid 9 percent less than authors with male names; female-dominated genres such as romand are thought of with less value; and there are gender differences in the prices of books within the same genre. Who’s surprised?

• You could fill a whole column with the latest in WTF is Next for Star Trek, but this latest one is interesting. S.J Clarkson has been tapped for the next movie, which makes her the first female director in the franchise. Side-eye that it took that long, but if you’re hoping to find out what movie they’re doing… is it the flashback movie with Chris Hemsworth as George Kirk? Is it that weird-ass idea of letting Quentin Tarantino direct a Star Trek movie? Is it Prime Universe or Abramsverse? Stay tuned.

• You know what Hollywood thinks needs a sequel? If you answered A Quiet Place, you’re right. Not sure if Paramount is right, since the movie was one of those experiences that really works and would be hard to recapture. But that isn’t stopping them…

 

RIP

• Bob Dorough, creator of Schoolhouse Rock, age 94. Sing along with “Conjunction Junction” and “I’m Just a Bill,” songs by Dorough the jazz pianist and vocalist. He was first hired by an ad exec to write a song to help his kids learn their times tables. The rest is television history.

• Arthur Rubenstein, 80, movie composer who worked on more than 300 films and television programs. His music direction could be heard on Broadway in A Chorus Line, Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita and more. You’ve heard his scores in Wargames, Lost in America, Blue Thunder, Nick of Time and many other movies, frequently working with John Badham. He founded a symphony that presented more than 60 free classical concerts to 80,000 families and children. His composition “Observations” was performed at the Griffith Observatory in honor of the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s achievements.

 

Trailer Park

• Jurassic World, which doesn’t look any less sexist or annoying, but I applaud Chris Pratt for his multi-tasking this year (although his Star-Lord and Owen the Raptor Whisperer appear to be roughly the same guy).

• Kin, with Dennis Quaid and a young kid in a dystopian future, whose older brother just got back out of prison and is already getting back in trouble. Enter an alien body, funky ray guns, and wackiness ensues. It’s an interesting setup, but could someone turn on the lights? You can be grimdark and still light the set.

• Deadpool 2, and I couldn’t get the silly thing to run, but given how I usually feel about Deadpool humor, it’s probably best. (In all fairness, I didn’t see the first one. But the menfolk did, and assured me that they found it hilarious and I would absolutely hate it. I trust their judgement.)

• In a completely different vein…. The Tale, pending from HBO and starring Laura Dern as a documentarian whose mother finds a short story she had written as a child that exposes long-buried secrets. Also starring Ellen Burstyn, John Heard (RIP), Jason Ritter and Isabelle Nelisse.

• Curious about the new Venom movie? Have a trailer that actually shows some plot! Tom Hardy plays a reporter who gets infected with the Venom symbiote, and who may or may not be an unethical turd. Can Marvel manage to produce one journalist who is competent, dedicated and ethical? We’ll see, but I’m not holding out hope.

 

Coming This Weekend

• Avengers: Infinity War. You might heard a little something about it.

• Foolish enough to actually premiere the same weekend: Kings, about a foster family in South Central Los Angeles right before the Rodney King riots; and Disobedience, a starcrossed love story between two women in a conservative Jewish society. (Technically it premiered last year, starring Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams; this is its wide U.S. release.)

 

Continuing:

I Feel Pretty, Super Troopers 2, Traffik, Rampage, Truth or Dare, Isle of Dogs, Blockers, A Quiet Place, Ready Player One, A Wrinkle in Time, Pacific Rim Uprising, Acrimony, I Can Only Imagine, Love Simon, Sherlock Gnomes, Chappaquiddick, and The Miracle Season. And probably BLACK PANTHER.

 

Avengers assemble! 

Linkspam wins the awards (not really)

The Pulitzer Prizes are out - in case you’re wondering, your Friendly Neighborhood CultureGeek did not win one. Next year!

However, there were some really amazing choices, and Poynter has a great summary analysis. Here are some of the highlights:

The New York Times and New Yorker shared t he prize for public service for exposing Harvey Weinstein and kicking off the #metoo movement, changing the national conversation about sexual harassment and abuse. The Washington Post won for investigative reporting in the Alabama Senate race. The Arizona Republic and USA Today network won for explanatory reporting of the “unintended consequences” of building a wall on the Mexican border. The New York Times and Washington Post shared an award for “deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage” of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Note: This was the first Pulitzer for USA Today, after 35 years of reporting.

That’s the short version of the journalism awards, which will be detailed to a much greater extent on my other blogs. This is a blog about pop culture, and so we should take a closer look at the artistic awards than my “day job.”

The fiction Pulitzer went to Less by Andrew Sean Greer (Little Brown), described as a book of fine prose and structure about growing older and the essential nature of love. Finalists were In the Distance by Hernan Diaz (Coffee House Press) and The Idiot by Elif Batuman (Penguin Press).

The drama Pulitzer went to Cost of Living by Martyna Majok, examining perceptions of privilege through a former trucker and his recently paralyzed ex-wife, and an arrogant young man with cerebral palsy and his caregiver. Fiinalists were Everybody by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and The Minutes by Tracy Letts.

The poetry Pulitzer went to Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016 by Frank Bidart, with finalists Incendiary Art by Patricia Smith and semiautomatic by Evie Shockley.

The history Pulitzer went to The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea by Jack E. Davis; nonfiction went to Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America; and biography went to Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser. Music went to DAMN by Kendrick Lamar.

• Netflix is picking up a vampire series based on the V-Wars novel/anthology/comic series by Jonathan Maberry. The series will star Ian Somerhalder as the doctor trying to solve the vampire plague while society is ripped apart by its spread. I will now shamelessly name-drop that Jonathan is a friend of mine, and he’s killed me in one of his novels. I couldn’t be happier for Jonathan on his success, and not just because he’s a terrific writer. He’s also a really good guy, and his success story gives hope to the rest of us toiling in the vineyards that good work finds a home.

• AMC is picking up NOS4A2 by Joe Hill, who is not a personal friend, but a pretty nifty writer. Hill is famously the son of Stephen King, who launched his own horror-writer career under a pseudonym to try to “make it” without his father’s fame. The series follows an artist who discovers she can track an immortal creature who steals the souls of children and deposits them in a twisted version of a Christmas village…  Is anyone else excited about how much creepy-supernatural programming is getting picked up by the non-network systems, including possible Dark Tower at Amazon? NOS4A2 launches in 2019.

• Speaking of Stephen King, part II of IT will film in July. The only character cast yet is Jessica Chastain as Beverly, and I wait to see if they sugar-coat Beverly’s life as much as the TV series did - one of my few complaints about it. I have more complaints about the new adaptation, primarily the utter travesty inflicted on Mike’s character, but I wait to see what the final product will be in developing my favorite novel of all time to the screen.

• Amid criticisms that review conglomerate Rotten Tomatoes is a) needlessly black-and-white with movies rated fresh or rotten, and b) overwhelmingly male among its certified critics, a new site is being launched. CherryPicks will offer a tiered rating system and feature opinions from women, which the Mary Sue says should counterbalance RT’s tendency to rate male-led movies dramatically higher. I find the concept intriguing, though the name annoys me. The site launches in the fall.

• For your little burst of nostalgia today: watch Angela Lansbury and the late great Jerry Orbach record “Be Our Guest” for the original Beauty and the Beast. Trivia note: Orbach is probably best known as the world-weary detective Lenny Briscoe on Law & Order, and for a long time his partner was played by Jesse L. Williams. Both Orbach and Williams were song-and-dance Broadway stars before they donned the trenchcoats, and rumor has it that when they were out and about filming in New York City, they would entertain the passers-by and extras with song and dance routines. It is criminal that in the age of the selfie and street video, no YouTube clips have survived of this (at least none that I have found.)

• Huey Lewis has canceled all his 2018 performances, including the one in Alton. Seems Huey lost most of his hearing a couple of months ago, possibly due to Meniere’s disease, and cannot hear music well enough to sing. Huey later posted that the response from fans and colleagues is “truly overwhelming,” and he he is focusing on improving and finding a way to sing again.

• Blockers is a nuanced and sex-positive teen comedy - wait, what? And it’s the Mary Sue saying this, but wow, was that NOT what I expected to hear about this movie. Three girls plan to lose their virginity on prom night, their parents do their best to derail this plan, wackiness ensues… but the girls are allowed their own agency and owning their (not entirely hetero) sexuality? Am I in Bizarro World? (Don’t worry, there’s still stupidity and vomit.)

• Strange Horizons has a verrrrrrry long and extensive exploration of why everything we know about James T. Kirk is wrong. They’re not the first to point out that Kirk was a) not a womanizer and b) not a lightweight charmer who never took anything seriously, despite how the idiot AbramsTrek movies have portrayed him. I recall Keith DeCandido expounding on this to a great extent, your humble CultureGeek has said much the same. I don’t expect the writers of the current Trek to actually notice, mind you. It’s too much fun to remember him as a blithe horndog.

• Locals: international violin superstar Rachel Barton Pine will perform at 7:30 p.m. Monday, April 23 in Dunham Hall at SIUE, with the combined orchestras of SIUE and SIUC. Pine first performed with the Chicago Symphony at age 10, and has been a virtuoso performer around the world, including winning a gold medal at the J.S. Bach International Violin Competition in Germany. Order tickets at artandissues.com.

• Also local: Gift of Voice needs to sell 41 more tickets to Suicide: The Ripple Effect in order to screen the film in Edwardsville on May 1. The documentary follows a man who tried to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge at age 19, and the “ripple effect” his attempt had on his family, friends and first responders who saved him, as well as his advocacy of a suicide prevention net on the bridge. Order your tickets here. The screening accompanies a suicide prevention program at SIUE on April 27, targeted at high school and college students.

• Also also local: SIUE will host the world premiere of a thought-provoking new play titled The Great Divide by E.M. Lewis. It's a political play, according to the playwright. "This is the story of the longest, angriest, strangest presidential election this country has ever seen,” said Lewis. “This is a story about America, in this divided moment.” The play runs Thursday-Sunday; click here for full details.

 

RIP

• Harry Anderson, 65, best known to you as Judge Harry Stone of Night Court and to me as the grownup Richie Tozier in the original IT miniseries, a role he was born to play. A longtime standup and stage magician, Anderson left Hollywood in 2000 to live in New Orleans and run a nightclub. They managed to make it through Katrina, and according to this piece in the New York Times, Anderson reopened his club as the French Quarter Town Hall to evolve a de facto government in the storm-paralyzed city. But in 2006, unable to make the bills in the post-Katrina mess, Anderson and his wife shut down and left for Asheville. His cause of death was not immediately known.

• R. Lee Ermey, 74, best known as the shouting drill sergeant of Full Metal Jacket. He was actually a drill instructor and staff sergeant in the Marines and served 14 months in Vietnam, retiring after 11 years in the military before he became an actor. He also appeared in movies such as Mississippi Burning, Se7en, Prefontaine, and was the voice of the Army Men in the Toy Story series. Semper Fi.

• Milos Forman, 86, inexplicably remembered as the director of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest instead of the intense, epic masterpiece that was Amadeus. Forman was born in Czechoslovakia, orphaned when his parents died in Nazi concentration camps and was raised in foster homes. He was in Paris in 1968 when Russia took over Czechoslovakia, placing the artistic world under Soviet control, and he fled to New York to continue working there. Other films included Hair, The People Vs. Larry Flynt and Ragtime.

• Art Bell, 72, host of Coast to Coast AM on more than 400 radio stations. He took calls unscreened, with a separate line just for the Area 51 folk, according to the Washington Post. No matter how crazy, he put them on the air, beginning in 1984 as a political talk show.

• Jean Marzollo, 75, author of the I Spy books - a total of 150 children’s books, from I’m a Seed to Ten Little Christmas Presents. A teacher first, she wrote books for adults on learning through play and baby-care for dads, before branching into children’s books on a variety of topics from learning to count to the life of Martin Luther King Jr. to the eight I Spy puzzle books.

 

Trailer Park

• The only thing I don’t love about The Incredibles 2 trailer is that they kept the off-screen Nagging Wife of Frozone. I know a lot of people find her funny; I find her an annoying, borderline-stereotype trope that is actually subverted IN The Incredibles, as Elastigirl gets whapped upside the head by Edna Mode and reminded of her own identity, which is not dependent on her husband’s behavior and doesn’t have to be limited to the wet-blanket wife who doesn’t understand. Everything else about this trailer is pure gold, mind you.

• The Verge says almost everything I would say about The Meg, which apparently added “the” so that people wouldn’t think it was a Meg Ryan comedy? No one can figure out of they’re trying to be serious. And I’m usually all about the sharks - Jaws is a personal favorite - but given author Steve Alten’s horrific author-scam attempt a few years ago, I’m reticent about giving him more money.

• Hotel Artemis has a ridiculously stellar cast with Jodie Foster, Jeff Goldblum, Dave Bautista, Sterling K. brown, Zachary Quinto and others, on an underground hospital for criminals in a dystopian future with lots of dark lighting.

 

Coming This Weekend

• I Feel Pretty, Amy Schumer’s latest comedy about an insecure woman who gets hit on the head and suddenly lives confidently and fearlessly. Um, I’m hoping it’s not nearly as bad as its promos.

• Traffik. Vacationing couples vs. vicious bikers. Looks to be a bright spot in a lousy batch this weekend. How long until the summer blockbusters? (But seriously, I'd watch Omar Epps read the phone book, so I might give this a try.)

• Ghost Stories. In limited release, British take on "skeptic debunker meets real ghosts." Promo is vaguely creepy, also co-stars our favorite hobbit, Martin Freeman. 

• Super Troopers 2. No. 

 

Continuing:

• Rampage (unfortunately), Truth or Dare, A Quiet Place, Blockers, Ready Player One, Acrimony, BLACK PANTHER, I Can Only Imagine, Chappaquiddick, The Miracle Season, Love Simon, Midnight Sun, and Sherlock Gnomes.

Hollywood has run out of ideas, but Linkspam is still watching

In the category of “Hollywood has run out of ideas but we’re still there,” Zimbio did a roundup of prequels, sequels and remakes, some of which have already come out.

Believe it or not, many/most of them are not head-shaking exercises in whyyyyyy? We all know there will be another round of MCU films, most notably the next Avengers movie (see Trailer Park) and I may be dragged kicking and screaming to another Pacific Rim film, this time with bigger plot holes! Likewise Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, because my hate for Jurassic World won’t stop my eternally optimistic heart from remembering what it felt like to see the brontosaurus for the first time, even if the trailer shows us it’s going to be more of the same nasty, misogynistic claptrap.

Cautiously optimistic: Ocean’s 8, this time with an all-female caper. Starring Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway, Helena Bonham Carter, Mindy Kaling and more. I am actually not hating this idea. And, strangely, the sequel to Mamma Mia, whose trailer actually tempted me to consider watching the first one. Bonus: Cher! Plus Mary Poppins Returns, which makes me veer from excitement to “should this exist?” - along with Bedknobs and Broomsticks, with Kate Winslet replacing Angela Lansbury in the trademark cardigan.

And despite myself, one (last? again?) Halloween movie, with Jamie Lee Curtis returning despite her previous death(s). And Nick Castle! #pleasedontsuck

Actually excited: Solo. Duh. Plus Incredibles 2: Finally, the live-action Mulan, and The Predator (What. I liked Predators. Unfortunately I also saw AvP 1 and 2.) I’m trying to be cautious about X-Men Dark Phoenix after the abomination that was X-3, but… I can’t help it. Only, how will they do it without Wolverine?

OMG Whyyyy: Overboard. Problematic premise that was funny because it was the 1980s and we didn’t really know better, now with less charm. Bonus The Crow Reborn, which replaces goth artist Brandon Lee with Jason Momoa of Aquaman bulk. Confession: I really rather hated the original, despite Lee’s undeniable charm, and I don’t know how I’ll feel about a bigger, badder, more violent Crow.

Huh?: A Star is Born, starring Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper with… Andrew Dice Clay? Also: Scarface, with Diego Luna in Al Pacino’s role? Meanwhile, Jungle Book gets yet another attempt - how many times will they try to make this movie?

And of course we must have the sequels: another Mission Impossible, Aquaman, Transformers (Bumblebee backstory), Wreck-it Ralph, Ant-Man, Deadpool, The Equalizer, and Fantastic Beasts.

But there is only one Grinch, people. And his name is Boris Karloff.

• And once again I am torn between “yay!” and “why does this exist?” Well, it doesn’t yet, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t intrigued by the idea of more Buffy. Hey, most of the major players are (um) between gigs at the moment, and if they’re going to do more Buffy, best get at it while the vampire characters can still pass for their “ages.” I’m not knocking them; that’s what poor James Marsters said when beleaguered once again with rumors of Buffy or Spike: The Movie. “If it’s going to happen, it ought to be soon,” he said. “Vampires don’t age, but I do.” (I’m paraphrasing, I can’t find the original link.)

Hey Joss: If you’re looking for something to do, I hear there’s this really awesome space Western with built-in fans…

• Duolingo is now offering Klingonese as an actual language you can learn. Qa’pla! (Or is it Qapla’?)

• Submissions are now open for the 2018 Whitaker St. Louis Filmmakers Showcase, screening films written, directed, edited or produced by St. Louis natives. Check out the July event and how to submit YOUR film here. Likewise, check out the St. Louis Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Film Festival, a juried competition with cash prizes hosted by Cinema St. Louis. Details here.

• I am a long-time member of the Sarah Connor Charm School, and as they point out: “Do you want self-aware A.I. killing us all? This is how you create self-aware A.I. that will kill us all!”

• Tor.com has a series of “And Related Subjects” in which writers write about not-writing. This week it’s terrific tie-in author Keith DeCandido on his martial arts journey.

• The family of Marvin Gaye prevailed in Robin Thicke’s appeal on the copyright infringement suit over “Blurred Lines.” The suit awarded $5.3 million plus 50 percent royalties to Gaye’s estate after the trial judge ruled “Blurred Lines” was illegally copied from Gaye’s “Got to Give it Up.” Thicke has been appealing over the hit song, but the appeal was denied.

• The death of Toys ‘R Us has all of us Gen-Xers in mourning. So if you feel like hysterical weeping over your lost childhood, check out a minor-key pop remix of the Toys ‘R Us jingle as dirge, going viral right now. Meanwhile, the founder of Toys ‘R Us died, ostensibly not because of the impending demise.

• Did you know that Timeless was un-cancelled? Did everyone know this but me? I remember mourning it, as a fun-if-occasionally-stupid show that qualified as my guilty pleasure. Season 2 is on its way after all!

 

RIP

• Stephen Hawking, renowned scientist and all-around genius. A former Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge, he was known as much for his ability to popularize science as for his own theories. At 76, he outlived his original two-year diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis by more than 50 years. As several put it online, the collective IQ of the United States just dropped significantly. He did a brief cameo on Star Trek: The Next Generation, joining Sir Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and Data for a poker game. (Spoiler: They don’t get along well.) Allegedly, on his visit to the set, he asked to be put in the captain’s chair (a rare departure from his wheelchair) and when he saw the warp drive set, he said, “I’m working on that.”

• Steve Reevis, Native American actor featured in Dances With Wolves, Fargo, Twins and many others. He grew up on the Blackfeet Reservation and began acting in 1987, with a long career in supporting and leading roles. He died in December, but his death was only recently announced online.

• Kate Wilhelm, speculative fiction author. Co-founder of the Clarion Writers Workshop, Wilhelm has been published since 1963 in dozens of books, short stories, magazines and more. Her death adds to the number of founding mothers of speculative fiction, as we lose another generation of our mentors.

• Floyd Carter Sr., 95, former Tuskagee airman who married one of the all-female repair crew. He joined George Lucas for the screening of the film Red Tails about the Airmen, who were the first black aviators in the U.S. military. He died last week.

• Robert Scheerer, longtime television director who chalked up 11 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, one of Deep Space Nine and two Voyager in his era. Among his credits are “The Measure of a Man,” which I consider one of the finest hours of television, and “Shadowplay” as well as “Chain of Command, Pt. 1.” He was 89.

 

Trailer Park

• Infinity War. Final trailer. If they kill Cap, I will riot. (It will be a small riot, but I will riot nonetheless.) Chris Evans said he’s probably done with Cap after Avengers 4, which is NOT good for me because he’s about 65 percent of the reason I watch, but good in that I guess that means he’s not dying in Infinity War.

• An Ordinary Man, starring Sir Ben Kingsley as a war criminal in hiding. Final trailer.

• I don’t necessarily mind that the new Karate Kid movie is rehabilitating the bully from the first movie as the new Cobra Kai. I rather liked the idea that a) bullies are usually raised/taught by bullies, b) people can outgrow childish dickishness, and his character did congratulate Daniel at the end of the first one; and c) bonus points for an overweight girl fighting well. However, making Daniel into an utter prick of a car salesman tells me this falls more in the line of the ill-considered Heathers remake: See? The bullies are really the good guys! Underscored by the voiceover about “real” martial arts training a la military without all that weak self-control and inner strength meditation. We don’t need that! Entitled white heterosexuals are the ones who are picked on now! And will that heavyset girl be a real character, or a running fat joke? Stay tuned.

• Broadway trailer for the upcoming Frozen looks promising!

 

Coming This Weekend

• The Hallquist Brothers are playing at Knights of Columbus in Edwardsville this weekend. $6 in advance, $7 at the door. These kids are amazing, you should definitely catch the show.

• Pacific Rim Uprising is here, god save us, and while I don’t think it’ll knock Black Panther off his throne, it should take the weekend. Also released this week: Sherlock Gnomes (no), Isle of Dogs, Unsane, Midnight Sun, and Paul, Apostle of Christ.

 

Continuing:

• BLACK PANTHER because of course it is. Also A Wrinkle in Time, Love Simon, Annihilation, I Can Only Imagine, Thoroughbreds, Hurricane Heist, Death Wish, The Strangers, Gringo, Red Sparrow, Game Night, Tomb Raider and Peter Rabbit.

• Limited: Jumanji,The Greatest Showman, The Shape of Water, Fifty Shades Freed and Three Billboards.

Thursday-ish Linkspam

Grab the popcorn, folks: the next step in the Sexual Harassment Merry-Go-Round is the sale of the artist formerly known as the Weinstein Company. Okay, it’s still called Weinstein Co., but it is selling itself and the bulk of its film and television assets to avoid bankruptcy, according to Variety. Possible bidders include Killer Content with the backing of a collection of investors gearing to steer Weinstein profits to nonprofits helping women.

In general, the other companies aren’t really interested in absorbing Weinstein whole; just sort of peeling off its assets. That includes Project Runway, The King’s Speech, Django Unchained and others. First round of bids came today. (Meanwhile, Bill O’Reilly faces two more lawsuits from accusers alleging he violated the confidentiality agreements of their settlements.)

• Speaking of sexism and misogyny! E! News co-anchor Catt Sadler quit today when she discovered that her male co-host earned almost double her salary, even though they did the same job and had started at the network in the same year. She stated that she asked to close the pay gap and was repeatedly denied. “How can I operate with integrity and stay on at E if they’re not willing to pay me the same as him? Or at least come close?” she wrote in her personal blog. “How can I not echo the actions of my heroes and stand for what is right no matter what the cost? How can I remain silent when my rights under the law have been violated?”

Sadler, a single mother of two, said it is “scary” to quit, but that it is important to stand up for equal pay. “The unknown can be terrifying, but it can also be the most beautiful gift,” she wrote. “How can we make it better for the next generation of girls if we do not stand for what is fair and just today?”

Washington Post dug in deeper, pointing out that women currently make 81 cents for each dollar made by a man, and the gap is wider among college grads, business, finance and legal careers. The White House gender pay gap has tripled in the last year, as the administration halted an Obama policy that would require large companies to report pay broken down by race and gender, according to the Post.

• I thought the NFL was in trouble? Football is still the top-watched show on broadcast networks this fall, including NBC and CSB and Sunday and Thursday… so not that much trouble. The top scripted show is still The Big Bang Theory, in defiance of logic. Rounding out the top ten are The Good Doctor (really?), This is Us, NCIS, Young Sheldon (dammit) and Bull.

In looking at the full 75-show list, no one is ever allowed to complain to me again that there are too many police procedural shows on TV. Of the top shows, at least 17 are police procedurals. This is just like when people say they’re tired of all the violence in the news, but let me tell you what people click first and most often, folks…

• Apple is being sued on allegations that it intentionally slows down older iPhones with new iOS releases in order to goad people into buying a new phone. Apple admits that older phones might slow down with later software, but only to keep them from crashing when the processor can't handle it. The suit was filed in Chicago.

• Note to Ridley Scott: Shhh. When discussing your need to reshoot All the Money in the World with Christopher Plummer instead of accused rapist Kevin Spacey, maybe this comment is not the best choice: “Any form of publicity is useful.”

Oh, Ridley. You were doing so much better when you originally said that one person’s actions should not affect the good work of all these other people, telling this dramatic story. That made it seem like you were trying to preserve art and storytelling, not to mention fine acting, not just scrambling to make a buck and uncaring about the implications of the allegations against Spacey.

Out of context? Not really. Full quote: “If you forget as the director your one priority is to put bums on seats and you better entertain. So any form of publicity is useful. Need I go further?”Please don’t.

• That awful, terrible, illogical, franchise-ruining Last Jedi* is up to $536 million international take - oops, $600 million! Coming up this weekend: Jumanji and The Greatest Showman, with a couple meaningless comedies a few days later. Good luck besting the Jedi, guys.

• I really thought it was a joke, but not-the-Onion reports that they’re seriously going forward with a Quentin Tarantino Star Trek movie. Because his nihilistic ultraviolent style of reveling in blood because pain is funny is just what an optimistic, humanist view of the future needed. (Note: Not a fan.) Mark L. Smith, who wrote that utopian flick The Revenant, will be writing it. Meanwhile, Tarantino is working on a Charles Manson film, which seems much more his style of “let’s watch them squish the eyeballs.”

  

RIP

• Heather North, the voice of Daphne for Scooby Doo fans, died Tuesday at age 71 of a heart attack caused by respiratory disease. North began on Days of Our Lives and started her run as Daphne in 1970 in the show’s second season and would play Daphne for 30 years in various formats. She did a lot of TV work and a few movies; her husband, Wesley Kenney directed the most famous season of All in the Family. He died in January 2015; one of her stepdaughters died a week ago.

 

 

Trailer Park

 • I can't really tell if the upcoming Chappaquiddick is going to be worth a watch or not. It's an interesting story that is ancient history for many of us too young (or not yet born) to follow the scandal that ended any chance of Ted Kennedy following his brothers in pursuit of the presidency. The acting in the trailer is surprisingly flat; you expect to see their best work. It is not clear what side the movie takes: accident or murder, or something in between?   

• They gender-swapped Overboard, which is one of my guilty pleasures: it’s horribly problematic and yet funny as hell with a good bit of charm. There are a number of comedies like that for me: I can’t help liking them even though every good sense says “This is horrible!” (Note: You’ve Got Mail is pretty much gold-plated in this category.) I was neutral on the gender-swap, leaning positive on the “revenge of blue collar over the 1 percent” theme, but this trailer pretty much tells me this will be the most unfunny flop of the spring.

• There's a real Alice in Wonderland/Narnia vibe to Disney's teaser for The Nutcracker and the Four Realms. Not even I knew that the Tchaikovsky ballet was based on an 1816 short story by E.T.A. Hoffman, later adapted by The Three Musketeers' Alexandre Dumas. There's some pretty dark stuff in the original source material, and I'm interested to see what the movie does with it, as a fantasy fan and as a former ballet sugarplum. Shh, don't tell anyone. 

* Read: sarcasm.

Thursday Linkspam

• This year’s WWDC conference had a bunch of gifts for Apple fans. Business Insider has an interesting analysis: instead of flashy new projects (though there are a few of those), Apple is laying out a strategy for the next 10 years. Personally I don’t care about the iWatch or augmented reality. The HomePod interests me much more, as a lifelong Apple user with a full-house Apple system. MacOS and iOS updates, App Store update, lots of other toys (and an iMac Pro that makes me long for the budget to acquire a $5,000 desktop). Wired hits the highlights so you don’t have to watch all two hours of the presentation. I cannot confirm or deny that I may have done precisely that, while fast-forwarding through the iWatch and the deep-dive programmer stuff. 

• Wonder Woman is the gift that keeps on giving. Did you know Gal Gadot did reshoots while five months pregnant? Enjoy some hilarious Tweets. Bustle explains why women are crying during the fight scenes - I didn’t, but it’s been explained that I’m heartless. More love for General Buttercup - er, Antiope. EW lists some suggested comics, but doesn’t include Trinity, so I can’t take it too seriously. io9 wisely wonders why Patty Jenkins isn’t contracted to a sequel yet when David Ayer was signed for one after making the disastrous Suicide Squad. Connie Nielsen and Robin Wright are confirmed for Justice League. Mashable takes a look at the Diana-Steve romance and how well it works. And enjoy these nifty posters.

• Lest we forget that badass women have been in movies/TV before without getting their credit, the Mary Sue takes a new look at Evie of the Mummy movies - at least, the ones who count. I have a whole rant on the O’Connells as a model for romantic partnership… and compiling those Wikipedia links now makes me want to watch all those movies again. I already knew the new Mummy movie couldn’t hold a candle to those, but its prospects look even worse than that. I almost feel sorry for Tom Cruise… But not all the reviews are bad.

• Speaking of sequels, Mary Poppins Returns is on its way, with Emily Blunt taking the not-inconsiderable task of following in Julie Andrew’s practically-perfect-in-every-way bootsteps. Lin-Manuel Miranda takes up the lamplighter’s role (and if there is no cameo by Dick Van Dyke, I will personally march on Main Street, I swear by my magic umbrella). I’m actually hopeful about this one; from the looks of it, the only person who wouldn’t like it would be P.L. Travers.

• Romance is alive! Well, in a dark and twisted kind of way. Batman proposed to Catwoman (again) in the latest Batman issue as part of the DC Rebirth. Somehow I doubt they will live happily ever after, since this is comics and ol’ Bruce has… issues. (See what I did there?) Mazel tov, Bruce and Selina. For now.

• I have quite enjoyed watching Luke Cage the past week and a half, binging it in several sessions while the characters troll each other on Twitter. CBR has a rundown on what did and didn’t work, and halfway I agree, but with several quibbles. I disagree that the series was too long and dialed back “because it’s still a Disney property”; uh, guys? Did you actually watch Jessica Jones with the running theme of mental (and physical) rape? Dialed back my ass.

I also strongly disagree that Mike Colter’s acting was a problem, though they’re dead-on about the inconsistency of Luke’s romances. He refuses a phone number from a nice, attractive woman he knows, then has a one-night stand with a total stranger, which then dissipates into thin air so he can romance Claire the Omnipresent Nurse, and did we all forget future wife Jessica Jones? Luke as a ladies’ man or Luke as grieving widower eschewing close relationships or Luke as serial monogamist - oh, make up your minds.

The music was actually hit or miss with me, but I fully recognize that my eclectic taste in music is not that of the wider world. Also: The only episode that didn’t work for me was the finale. The beatdown in the street with cops holding back the crowd was a tad too Lethal Weapon-dumb for me.

I’d really like to skip Iron Fist, though. Can I have two Jessica Jones and wait for the next season?

• Rest in peace, theater designer Mark Wilson. Wilson’s designs were seen at the Repertory Theater of St. Louis, Shakespeare Festival, St. Louis Actors’ Studio, Shakespeare in the Streets, Opera Theater of St. Louis and many others. If you saw a theatrical performance in St. Louis in recent years, odds are good you saw a Wilson design. He died last week in a tractor accident, and this year’s Shakespeare Festival run is dedicated to his memory.

• For locals here in the sunny metro-east, it looks to be a big weekend! There’s the Glen Carbon Homecoming and the Route 66 Festival. If I may be permitted a moment of self-indulgence, I will be signing at Afterwords Books in Edwardsville on Saturday along with eight other authors as part of the Blue Corridor Route 66 celebration. No, my work has nothing to do with Route 66, but I live here, so shut it.

In addition, U2 is coming to town. Troy is playing Rogue One with plenty of Star Wars fun (including lightsaber giveaways and demonstrations, free hot dogs, and more) in Tri-Township Park. Thunderbirds are go at Scott Air Force Base. And the Shakespeare Festival’s Winter’s Tale is rolling.

• Finally, look at some lovely images of Central Park shot by a New Jersey photographer with terrible insomnia. It’s like something from another time.

Monday Linkspam

Welcome to a mega-edition of CultureGeek Linkspam, since we took Memorial Day-Week off. What? There were brats to grill.

• Apple Computer held its WWDC keynote today, announcing a number of fun stuff. Among them: Amazon Prime finally comes to Apple TV; the older iMac model gets a boost and they premiered a new iMac Pro; the HomePod; software updates…. oh, just read it.

• A review of Wonder Woman is pending after a rewatch. In the meantime, it’s a clear hit, with more than $100 million domestic and another $125+ million foreign in the first weekend alone. Critics like it too. It’s the biggest opening for a female director ever, and I take some special notice that the record it obliterated belonged to Fifty Shades of Grey. Heh. Actual athletes were recruited to play the Amazons, including Crossfit champions, cyclists, equestriennes and professional fighters. Tor.com’s Keith DeCandido looks back at Lynda Carter as role model. Indian Country Today celebrates an actual Native American actor speaking actual Blackfoot to Wonder Woman in the film. And of course there is a sequel already planned: in America. I’d ask y’all to name her potential villain(s), but maybe we shouldn’t go there… Texts From Superheroes says hello to WW, and Thor admits Wonder Woman would kick his ass. (P.S. Check out this vision of Mr. Rogers wielding Thor’s hammer. No, seriously.)

• Since everything old is new again, Steven Spielberg’s production company is reviving the Animaniacs. This is good news if you were a fan; I was not, but I did not have the outright dislike of the show as I did, say, Rugrats. The article does point out that shows as old as Full House were quite popular in resurrection, and now we are seeing Will & Grace and Roseanne return, among others. Yes, Hollywood has run out of ideas, but zombie series of good work is still better than *shudder* reality TV.

• Speaking of the return of the ‘90s, Zima is back. For a limited time only. Yikes.

• In commemoration of the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie (which CultureGeek Jr. gave enormous applause and the critics… disagree), check out the pictures and radio commercial of the 1967 launch of the Disneyland ride. Yo ho yo ho…. Yes, your friendly neighborhood CultureGeek has seen it and a review is pending. Y’all, it’s summer. Things be busy.

• Cancel your plans for the weekend, because Orange is the New Black launches its next season after the trauma-inducing finale of last season. ScreenRant’s awesome Lauren Wethers details 15 OITNB characters you (and the writers) completely forgot.

• The story of the demise of Booksellers at Laurelwood, one of those marvelous anchor bookstores in Memphis, and how the phoenix is rising from the ashes. On the flip side, the New Yorker believes that Amazon’s brick-and-mortar bookstores “are not built for people who actually read.” Apparently they’re like the world’s biggest airport bookstores: the same titles you’ll see in every bookstore. Only 200 titles in fiction, 3,000 in the whole store. The charity sale my church runs on a quarterly basis has a wider selection than the most comprehensive bookseller in the nation.

• Speaking of books, learn the true stories behind The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. Raise your hand if you loved that book, dreamed of running away to live in a museum and embarked on a lifelong fascination with the works of Michelangelo. Just me? I was also quite fond of Elain Konigsburg’s debut novel, Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth.

• Ever wonder what they put in the recording in Voyager I? Other than, “Hello Borg: Please Come Assimilate Us”? Find out here, as Carl Sagan’s team unpacked the whole of human history and culture.

• Locals: LouFest has added Snoop Dogg among others to its lineup. As I scan the list, I recognize Huey Lewis & The News and that’s it, because I am desperately uncool and old. However, they are celebrating Chuck Berry, which is awesome.

• Nerds of Color’s Denny Upkins reviews why Cassandra Cain is really Batman 2.0. Check out the many heroes of Gotham City…

• And in case you missed them, Annie Leibovitz did amazing portraits of the characters of The Last Jedi for a spread in Vanity Fair. I’m not sure how she does what she does, but I may spend a lifetime trying to learn it. Kathleen Kennedy says of Carrie Fisher: “Harrison (Ford) was front and center on VII, and Mark (Hamill) is front and center on VIII. She thought IX would be her movie. And it would have been.” Sniffle.

Snake on the Town

It's absolutely hiss-terical.

The silliness started about noon yesterday, as @BronxZoosCobra tweeted, "I want to thank those animals in the movie 'Madagascar.' They were a real inspiration."

Since then, the tweeting snake has taken in a Broadway show, hunted Donald Trump, taken a class at Equinox, watched a taping of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, eaten cupcakes at Magnolia Bakery and pranked Peter Alexander of NBC News.

 

Some of my favorites:

• "I do speak Parseltongue, but with a thick Bronx accent."

• "What does it take to get a cab in this city? It's cause I'm not white, isn't it?"

• "Holding very still in the snake exhibit at the Museum of Natural History. This is gonna be hilarious!"

• "Leaving Wall Street. These guys make my skin crawl."

• Upon being invited to a store sale... "If I recognize a single belt..."

• "At the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Temple of Dendur really kicks some asp."

• "A lot of people are asking how I can tweet with no access to a computer or fingers. Ever heard of an iPhone? Duh."

 

Meanwhile, @BronxZookeeper is having a tough day. His day started with, "SHIT." Since then, he has stolen a pedicab, broken his snake net, avoided Union Square, gotten drunk in a pub, stolen nets from Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, pedicabbed over the Brooklyn Bridge and generally been much more foul-mouthed and crankly than the errant serpent.

 

His highlights:

• "Seriously, @BronxZoosCobra. I give you special entrance to the rodent exhibit and this is how you re-pay me? NOT COOL."

• "Which one of you sons of bastards put a Madagascar DVD on my doorstep!"

• "Buying fireworks out of unmarked van in Chinatown. Cobras hate fireworks, didn't you know?"

 

Best exchange:

BronxZoosCobra: "Just FYI, I've had it with Samuel L. Jackson too."

BronxZookeeper: "Bastard won't return my calls."

 

Over the weekend, you see, the real female cobra at the Bronx Zoo escaped and has not been recovered. The real zookeepers believe the snake has not left the reptile house, and are conducting repeated sweeps, lures and traps to coax her out of hiding.

The snake herself says, "Follow me on Twitter. I really don't know how to make it easier than that. Well, I could join FourSquare, I guess." 

As of this writing, the snake has 48,753 followers. Her nemesis has only 2,913. It's all about the snark, man. SNARK, not snake.

And as for that wascally weptile.... fangs for the memories.

Dear GoDaddy...

Hi there.

I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Elizabeth Donald. I'm an author with about five or six books in print. I'm a reporter for a mid-size daily newspaper. I'm a writer active on social networks with thousands of readers. I'm a business owner with an active online presence and web store.

And I'm one of your customers.

I currently manage and/or design six web sites, including the web store for my business and not including the three blogs I write. In addition to using your service for registering my domains, I also use it for web hosting on all six sites, plus the webstore feature, email hosting, SSL certificates and your express email marketing so I can be one of those annoying spammers.

I can't even publicly admit how much money I paid you last year.

But I must admit, you give me terrific service. My web sites are reliable and do not crash. There are no annoying pop-up ads and while I am not the brightest bulb in the programming drawer, I can navigate through your procedures with only a minimum of pain and anguish. You make the interwebs easily accessible for people who aren't programmers or experts, and you do it for a fair price.

Wouldn't it be nice if THAT was the selling point in your commercials?

See, we're coming up to that holiest of Sundays, the Super Bowl. And as usual, I shall be watching with some of my dear friends, and we will pay only the most cursory attention to the football game (who's playing again?) because the real attraction is the commercial lineup.

Last year was one of the worst displays of utterly grotesque misogyny I have ever seen - I can't recall which site called it "Pathetic Men and the Women Who Ruined Them." At least you weren't alone in your annoyingly sexist commercials - Budweiser, the car companies, the stock-purchase people, they were all grotesque last year - more than usual.

At the time, I wrote that it was not only offensive to be so sexist in Super Bowl ads, it was actually bad business - at least 50 percent of the Super Bowl's audience is comprised of women. And unlike me, many of them were watching the game, too.

I can't imagine what a nightmare it would be to move all six of my sites to another service. But each time I see your ridiculous ads with some well-endowed chippie flirting with another girl and a teaser to get us to run to your site and watch juvenile double entendres batted about, I am embarrassed to be one of your customers. From your ads, we can't even tell what you do. Based solely on your commercials, we have to conclude that you are a softcore porn site, and a bad one at that.

Women run web sites.

Women run businesses.

Women make their business decisions based on something other than their pants.

Women watch the Super Bowl.

Wouldn't it be nice if you noticed?

 

P.S. This goes for the rest of you, too.

Our long national nightmare is nearly over...

And by that, of course, I mean the endless breathless wait for a Verizon iPhone.

Oh, shut up.

I am an Original Mac User, buster. I was Mac when Mac was for nerds. Not geeks - NERDS. Everyone complaining that we Mac users just follow the oh-so-cool trends can shaddup, because I had Macs when they were boring beige boxes that noooobody had but me.

And I still have never in my life needed antivirus software. So there.

Everything I use is Mac. My laptop, my work laptop, all my software, every file I've created since I was fourteen years old and my dad brought home the Apple SE, all of 1 mg RAM and an external modem for that wacky new AOL. Therefore, if I'm to get a smartphone that talks to my computer, it would be nice to have a smartphone created by Apple.

Hey, I wanted an iPhone when they came out. I could replace three devices I must carry on a daily basis with one gadget. No more digital camera (which has an overbright flash and eats batteries like my son attacks Oreos), no more iTouch (which is very nice as a PDA but sort of doesn't make phone calls) and it would replace my hand-me-down cell phone, which was perfectly good... in its day. Which was many days ago.

However, I did not get an iPhone in 2007. Or 2008, 2009 or 2010. Because Apple, for a company run by and employing literal Geniuses, doesn't always learn from its mistakes. In the 1990s, Apple nearly died because it insisted on proprietary everything, and its market share was approximately that of the Yugo.

But when Steve Jobs came back, he did two big things. He made the computers multi-colored and awesome, and he stopped the proprietary bullshit. Suddenly Mac was cool again, then they created the iPod and the rest is history.

iPhone looked awesome, and it currently holds about a 59-percent customer loyalty - as in, iPhone users intend to stay with iPhone in their next purchase - while smartphones overall enjoy about a 25-percent loyalty. Which kind of doesn't speak well for Android, no matter what market share they have.

But my love for Apple notwithstanding, I ain't going AT&T. Not no way, not no how. I'm Verizon, and so is most of my newspaper, and all of my family. That means our calls are free. I had no intention of switching to AT&T no matter how much Steve Jobs begged me or how many emails he sent me. 

So after three long years of waiting patiently, Verizon gets the iPhone. And it's the 3G iPhone, not 4G, but since I never had a smartphone before, I really don't care much about the difference. They say I can't go online while talking. Well, I can't do that now, unless I'm using my laptop while I talk on the phone. They say the 3G network is actually less crowded than the 4G at this point because of all the people leaping onto iPhone 4. They're welcome to it. They have to pay AT&T.

Verizon iPhones go on sale next month. Current Verizon customers get to go first. I'll be first in line. Well, I'll be first in line behind the guys who set up their tents in the parking lot waiting to be first in line. So I'll be first in line among people who have lives.

And my dear old Razr... well, it can go into storage next to that old Mac SE. Wait, I gave that to my Mac Genius friend. Seems he can still make it work, 22 years and still ticking. Take that, Microsloth.