The seven words (which may be gleaned from the title of this post) are 100% from Guy Flick titles. And, you know, fair enough. But you could probably come up with a similar list for Chick Flick titles (“Heart” and “Love” both come to mind).
Even by that standard, I bet there are more crappy movies with the “Fighter” than “Ninja” in the title.
Horror movies are insufficiently represented. “Dark” and “Blood” (Blood Simple and a few others excepted) would likely yield a crapload of crap. And don’t get me started on “Shark”. Has there ever been an actual good movie with “Shark” in the title?)
Despite what the article says, any Hong Kong movie with “Cop” in the title starring Jackie Chan is pretty much guaranteed to be awesome.
(Hat tip: Bill Crider, though his link is a little off.)
Here’s a live version of Japanese threesome Lemon’s Chair song “Sonar.” It starts off as some very pleasant noodling, and then more than halfway in transforms into a sonic wall of sound that never quite loses the central groove.
They also have a nice solid slab of steady-state shoegazer sweetness called “Swallowtail” on iTunes, but there doesn’t seem to be a version of that on YouTube.
The second trailer for Ridley Scott’s Prometheus is out:
When this was first announced, it was disclosed that it was set in the Alien universe, but it wasn’t clear whether the xenomorphs themselves would make an appearance. After this trailer, I feel pretty safe in saying that they will.
Howard Waldrop and I will review this when it comes out.
So I saw this video on Fark on how to peel garlic in ten seconds by shaking the cloves between two steel bowls a while back:
I make fresh salsa from time to (and have won some honorable mentions at a local hot sauce competition for same), and one of the biggest pains in the ass is peeling 4-5 whole bulbs of fresh garlic (the jar stuff just doesn’t work as well). So I thought I would give it a try.
What do you know? It works. Not 10 seconds, or quite as well peeled as in the video, but my two steel bowls are smaller than this guy’s. Even so, this easily cut about 80% of my garlic peeling time, which adds up to over an hour in the course of a year.
This may be an old tip for many of you, but I thought I would share it for those who regularly have to peel garlic…
Yesterday Google managed to break uploading attachments in Firefox, so that it doesn’t do anything when you click the Attack a File Link, and it’s still broken as I write this. I am not the only one having the problem.
Worse still, Gmail used to have a work-around for the problem, instructing people to go to Settings page and disable “Advanced attachments.” Well, guess what? They’ve removed that setting from the settings page, so you’re just stuck with it being broken.
This may be a simple screw-up, but it follows more user-hostile actions from Google, such as not carrying search strings over from the main Google search to the Google News search, and removing the Google Blog search from both the main search bar and the More menu as well. It seems like Google is trying to make their system less usable to…what? Force them to use Chrome and Blogger? Whatever the reason, it’s extremely annoying.
Updated: As of just after noon today, the upload attachment problem seems to be fixed.
Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You” is the music Bruce Sterling would put on at the end of the party after every Turkey City Writer’s Workshop held at his house, mainly so people would leave. It worked too, not because it was bad, but because the waltz tempo, echoey steel guitar and smoky vocals make it the perfect “chill out at the end of a long day and feel your eyelids getting heavy” song. I bought the single off iTunes, but I think I might need to pick up the entire album, So Tonight That I Might See, as I’ve developed a craving for Hope Sandoval’s voice, which combines that smokey, chill tone of a classic jazz/blues chanteuse with peak-period Sinatra’s last-second, end-of-the-measure timing.
Is Mazzy Star shoegazer? I think they’re more sui generis, but I’ve seen “Fade Into You” on several Best of Shoegazer lists, and that’s good enough for me…
While the weird herons were far and away the most interesting art I saw in Stavanger, I did find the installation in my hotel (the Radisson Blu Royal) of a large tapestry I called “The Eye of Sauron” sort of interesting:
This was evidently by an artist named Randy Naylor and was for sale. Which makes me wonder exactly who he thinks will buy a four story piece of interior hanging art in Stavanger.
There was also a similar painting behind the breakfast buffet tables I called “The Eye of Sauron Jr.” that was probably more practical for the average art buyer.
