They used to be funny…

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When did Steve Martin stop being funny? It had to be sometime after 1991, when he wrote and starred in one of my personal favorite films, L.A. Story. I found out some time ago that Prairie hadn’t ever seen L.A. Story, finally managed to remember that while we were wandering through Blockbuster, and got to introduce her to it this weekend. As I expected, she loved it.

Still, I’d watched Bowfinger, a more recent Steve Martin comedy, earlier in the week and had been singularly unimpressed with it. Neither Steve Martin nor Eddie Murphy are nearly as funny as they used to be — in fact, these days I generally tend to avoid movies with either of them. Admittedly, Eddie Murphy has done some worthwhile voice work lately, as Donkey in the Shrek films and as Mushu in Disney’s Mulan, but his recent live-action work (Daddy Day Care? Dr. Doolittle?)…well, even the trailers make me cringe. Meanwhile, Martin, who has two of my favorite films in his past — L.A. Story and Roxanne — has been turning out such quality fare as Cheaper By the Dozen and Bringing Down the House (I’ll admit that I haven’t seen either of those — but again, the trailers don’t give me any reason to bother).

A shame, really.

iTunes “Blues Line” by Toyes, The from the album Toyes, The (1996, 4:13).

Small Pets Allowed

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As Prairie and I are planning on getting a place together in a few months, we’ve started occasionally flipping through ‘For Rent’ listings to see what’s available in our price range around town.

Yesterday, one of the listings caught my eye.

“Hey — ‘small pets allowed, up to 20 pounds.’ We could get forty hamsters!”

Sadly, my idea was vetoed, as was my backup suggestion of one large hamster.

Ah, the compromises we make when arranging living with someone else.

iTunes “Razor’s Edge” by Revolting Cocks from the album Beers, Steers and Queers (1990, 4:45).

Photo Flood Finished

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I’ve finished uploading older photographs into my Flickr account for now. I’ve been concentrating on bigger “event” things to put into sets, rather than everyday stuff.

New sets since the previous update: The Jensonia Hotel fire, Kevin and Emily’s wedding, Bumbershoot ’03, Pride Day ’03, Bumbershoot ’02, Bumbershoot ’01, and Pride Day ’01.

And right at the end of the Pride Day ’01 set, just for Kirsten:

Seattle Gay Pride Parade, Seattle, WA

WordPress, Inc.

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Congratulations to Matt on turning WordPress into WordPress, Inc. — and to [Jonas](http://www.jluster.org/ title=”Jonas Luster”) for being the first hire at the new company!

I haven’t met Matt, but he was kind enough to contribute one of the “pink” themes for this site, and I got to hang out with Jonas some time ago when he came through Seattle. Congrats to you both!

Photo Flood

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Yesterday I realized that while my Flickr Pro account allows me up to 1Gb of uploads each month, I haven’t been using anywhere near that much — so I decided to fix that. :) I’ve started digging into my iPhoto archives and adding photosets from past events, working my way backwards.

Last night I managed to get three four sets up, all from 2004: Bumbershoot, the Gay Pride Parade, the Fremont Solstice Festival, and the Folklife Festival.

iTunes “Baseball Dub (Cheeky All Stars)” by Faithless from the album Irreverence (1997, 2:42).

Which religion?

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I know I’m not going to have time to really go as much into this as I’d like while I’m on my lunch break, but I found an interesting little online quiz through Subzero Blue: Which religion is the right one for you? Here’s my results:

You scored as agnosticism. You are an agnostic. Though it is generally taken that agnostics neither believe nor disbelieve in God, it is possible to be a theist or atheist in addition to an agnostic. Agnostics don’t believe it is possible to prove the existence of God (nor lack thereof).

Agnosticism is a philosophy that God’s existence cannot be proven. Some say it is possible to be agnostic and follow a religion; however, one cannot be a devout believer if he or she does not truly believe.

agnosticism
79%
Satanism
75%
Islam
58%
Buddhism
54%
Christianity
50%
atheism
50%
Paganism
46%
Hinduism
38%
Judaism
38%

Some points before I head off to work, some of which I might come back and expand on later:

I come from a strongly religious background, specifically the Episcopal faith. Having grown up with that, Christianity forms the base for many of my beliefs.

That said, one of the things I’ve always felt very fortunate for is that my parents never had any problems with the fact that we’re a pretty bright family, and have a tendency to question, poke, and prod at things. Christianity was never something that had to be accepted at face value — it was okay to ask “why?” when things didn’t seem to make sense. In fact, if I’m remembering the story correctly, my father was at a point where he found either Christianity in particular or religion as a whole to be fairly hokey, and first sat down to read through the Bible with the avowed goal of finding every problem, every issue, and every inconsistency so that he could point them out to mom…and while he certainly found a fair amount of all of those, he also discovered along the way that there was a lot of really good stuff in there, too. He’s since devoted a fair amount of time to theological study, and is currently in the long process of getting ordained as a minister.

Over the years, I’ve found plenty to question when it comes to religion, which came into play as I was answering the questions on this test. While I wouldn’t say that I am entirely without faith, I certainly do question things, and I often have difficulties when it comes to my concepts of both God and the afterlife. I tried to be as honest as possible when answering the questions, and these doubts certainly pulled my scores towards the middle of the spectrum.

I’m also not entirely happy with either the questions or the scoring system on the test — there were a few where I felt that having to pick a point on an agree/disagree scale didn’t really do justice to the question, or truly represent the answer I wanted to give. Still, I did the best I could with it.

I am rather amused that my second-place score was Satanism, though. Make of that what you will.

Lastly — why do all of these quizzes produce the most god-awful HTML when giving you the code to post your results? Normally I clean them up, but this one was too complex for the little time I have on my lunch hour. Ick.

iTunes “Skin” by Oingo Boingo from the album Best o’ Boingo (1990, 4:40).

The Last Unicorn

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I have no idea what the status of this is, how close to completion it may or may not be, or whether it will actually ever see the light of day — but there’s a live action version of Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn (previously produced in animated form) in production.

In theory, this could be a very good thing — though I must admit, I’m a little more excited about the live-action version of C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe — apparently the first in a planned seven-film series covering the entire set of books, with special effects by the crew of Weta (you might have heard of them — they did the effects for a little series called The Lord of the Rings). Apple has a short look at Weta’s work on the film and another on director Andrew Adamson.

iTunes “I Love Saturday” by Erasure from the album I Say I Say I Say (1994, 4:02).