Links

Things I run across that I find to be interesting, but might not have the time or inclination to craft a fuller post around it. Generally, short little “go here, look at this, isn’t it neat?” posts.

Me and My Shadow: The story of Jason Mewes

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I’ve been watching the pieces of this show up bit by bit (kindly assisted by watching Mike’s del.icio.us feed), and since the last section went live today, here’s a list of links to all the pieces so I can read straight through, beginning to end.

Since the gossip sites have seen fit to print only the portion of the Jason Mewes story I told at UPenn (that portion being what said sites seem to feel is the only interesting aspect of Mewes’ life), I figured why not put the whole tale of Jason’s battle with drug addiction into print here, where folks can get a better idea of who Jason truly is and maybe why he fell victim to heroin abuse in the first place.

[..] At the least, it’s a more comprehensive profile at a guy who’s accomplished a lot more than celebrity bathroom sex; at the most, it’s an ode to a very unlikely hero of mine and a man I love (in a decidedly hetero way).

  1. Me and My Shadow, Pt. 1
  2. Me and My Shadow, Pt. 2
  3. Me and My Shadow, Pt. 3
  4. Me and My Shadow, Pt. 4
  5. Me and My Shadow, Pt. 5
  6. Me and My Shadow, Pt. 6
  7. Me and My Shadow, Pt. 7
  8. Me and My Shadow, Pt. 8
  9. Me and My Shadow, Pt. 9

iTunes “Rise Up (Future)” by Commodores, The from the album In to the Mix Vol. IV: The Classics Remixed (2000, 3:50).

Back in 1973…

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This is fun: THE movie timeline.

So here’s the pitch: The Movie Timeline is the history of everything, taken from one simple premise: that everything you see in the movies is true – the real mixes with the fictitious, so long as it’s reported in a movie somewhere…

In 1973, the year I was born:

  • January 1: 12:01am – The Poseidon, a luxury liner on its last voyage from Athens to New York, is struck by a 90ft tidal wave and capsizes (The Poseidon Adventure, 1972)
  • Bobby Darin dies (Beyond The Sea)
  • New York – William Miller and Penny Lane go on tour with Stillwater (Almost Famous)
  • Las Vegas – Sam “Ace” Rothstein begins running a casino (Casino)
  • The Ice Storm
  • The Long Goodbye
  • Astronauts travel 3000 years into the future and bring back talking apes, who are killed by the police and the investigation files sealed (Planet of the Apes)
  • March 15: George McFly wins a writing award, or is killed, depending on the timeline (Back To The Future Part II)
  • June: Mossad debriefs a killer it may or may not have hired (Munich)

And in 1976, the year both Prairie and my brother Kevin were born:

  • January 4: Rocky Balboa shocks the boxing world by lasting 15 rounds with heavyweight champ Apollo Creed – though Creed wins (Rocky)
  • King Kong is again discovered on Skull Island and let loose – again – on New York City (King Kong, 1976)
  • Atlanta, Georgia – Bo “Bandit” Darvill and Cledus “Snowman” Snow bring 400 cases of Coors beer 1800 miles from Texarkana to Atlanta in less than 28 hours, winning $80,000 (Smokey and the Bandit)
  • Israeli officer Avner is debriefed by Mossad (Munich)
  • Rocky Balboa marries Adrian and they have s son, Robert “Rocky” Jr (Rocky II)
  • Summer – Dazed and Confused
  • July 4: Coeur d’Alene Indian Reservation, Idaho – Arnold Joseph saves infant Thomas Builds-The-Fire from a burning house (Smoke Signals)
  • July 8: Hannibal Lecter savages a nurse during a medical examination (Red Dragon)
  • September 8: Howard The Duck arrives on Earth (Howard The Duck)
  • November 25: Philadelphia – Rocky Balboa knocks out Apollo Creed in the 15th round in their rematch (Rocky II)
  • November 26: The Band perform their last concert together (The Last Waltz)

Who knew things were so eventful back then?

iTunes “Stay” by Shakespear’s Sister from the album Hormonally Yours (1991, 3:48).

Googling a Dead Horse

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There’s a certain irony in Google‘s new Google Calendar supporting the iCal standard for calendar sharing and distribution (named, unsurprisingly, for Apple’s iCal calendar application) when — as usual — they don’t yet support the standard Mac web browser.

Google Calendar in Safari

Sigh.

I don’t know why I even bother checking, really — this has been the pattern every time Google’s unveiled something new and shiny.

iTunes “James Brown Is Dead (Take Outs)” by L.A. Style from the album James Brown Is Dead (1991, 0:55).

Penguin Floozies

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The shocking truth about penguin’s sex lives, photo by downtempo, found on Flickr today.

For years penguins have been regarded as the conservatives of the avian world. Always attired in formal evening wear, they have become symbols of literature and family values.

Recent studies, by Otago University lecturer Lloyd Davis and colleague Finoa Hunter of Cambridge University have shown this veneer of respectability to be a sham. During a summer camped on the ice watching Adelie penguins mate around the clock, Dr. Davis and Dr. Hunter observed prostitution and wife-swapping.

The most bizarre aspect of penguin sexuality is the female’s penchant for prostituting herself to acquire pebbles to line her nest. In the ice and snow of Antarctica pebbles are useful insulation, crucial for survival of broods, but they are at a premium.

Often the only way to get pebbles is to take them from other nests at the risk of severe pecking. Females have figured out that a good way to get pebbles is to swap sex for them, says Dr. Davis, who has been studying the penguins since 1977.

“Occasionally females who have pair-bonded with a male will go off for a quickie.”

Dr. Davis says penguin prostitutes usually manage to get a stone without having sex. In many instances females will go through a courtship ritual, then abscond with a stone after the male gets out of his nest, expecting them to lie down on it.

Natural history documentaries have always described penguins as mating for life. Dr. Davis says that is clearly not so.

“My work shows they swap partners regularly, often in the same season.”

Saturday Mourning

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At about 3:30 Saturday morning, as the rave at Capitol Hill Arts Center (CHAC) was winding down, the young people who lived at 2112 East Republican Street scanned the dance floor for people they could invite to their afterparty. They made a habit of welcoming strangers—it’s how they had all met one another in the first place. They had almost finished with the invitations when Jeremy Martin, 26, spotted a hulking, solitary figure.

“Go ask him,” Jeremy said to his best friend, Anthony Moulton.

Another person who lived at the home, 24-year-old Jesiah Martin (no relation to Jeremy), remembers having seen the man that night—conspicuous not just for his 6’5″ 280-pound frame but for the fact that he wasn’t dressed up or dancing. “He was by himself mostly, fly on the wall style,” said Jesiah.

Anthony, who is disarmingly goofy in the way of most in their group, approached the man and said, “Do you know the difference between Scotch and beer?” Most at the party were drinking beer, but Anthony handed the man a flask full of Macallan. The man took a swig and grimaced. But he liked it. He even smiled, leading Anthony to say, “Hey, what are you doing after this? We have half a keg at our place…”

And that is how Kyle Huff came to visit the house on East Republican Street.

I’ve mentioned before that The Stranger has been consistently doing the best reporting on the Capitol Hill shooting. They continue with this feature story on the events of the night.

Capitol Hill Tragedy

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So sad and terrifying.

Vidal on Oscars and Politics

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One of these days I’m actually going to start reading more of Gore Vidal’s work, as each time I’ve run across him (beginning with his role as the Democratic incumbent facing down up and coming right-winger Bob Roberts in Tim Robbins’ excellent political satire), I’ve found him fascinating and incredibly intelligent.

There’s a two part interview with Vidal in TruthDig conducted just before the Oscars that has some wonderful quips in it. Part one looks primarily at the then-upcoming Oscars:

If [Brokeback Mountain] were to win an Oscar, would it be a step forward in tolerance? How important is Hollywood in this equation?

Well, it never has been, and I don’t see why it should be suddenly now. That it was made at all and that it was made so honestly and so well is a good thing, better than to make a mess out of it, or not try at all….

Look, homophobia is fed into every child in the United States at birth. It is unrelenting, it never lets up. They asked a whole raft of high school boys across the country a couple years ago, one of those polls about what they would most like to be in life, and what … they would hate to be, and so forth, and what they would most hate to be was homosexual.

There wasn’t anyone, not one, who just skipped the question. They all said “oh no, that’s the worst thing you could be.”

To get over that training, that’s generation after generation. And it has not done the character of our nation much good. And that’s why we are a joke to the rest of the world, because we carry on about sexual matters everyone else has forgotten about.

Part two concentrates on more political matters:

This is old news now, but in terms of terrorism, there was a lot of protest against the Palestinian Oscar nominee, “Paradise Now,” with a 36,000-person petition to get the film dropped from the roster because it sympathized with “terrorists.”

Never forget there are 1 billion Muslims on Earth. The United States is far too small a country to play big boss – and now far too insolvent a country; we have no revenues, we can’t repair our own infrastructure, much less rebuild the cities that we’ve just knocked down in the Middle East. I think we should learn a little modesty, we’re not number one! At invoking terrorism, yes, we’re pretty good at provoking people to hate us. In fact we’ve been quite successful at that. But we live in a small country, a vulnerable country, a country with no defenses, only “homeland security.” But there’s no true security here – anyone can do anything he wants and will!

Right, so now we have these proposals to build a wall on the Texas/Mexico border, to fill in the tunnels….

Oh it’s just Looney Time, but you see, we have no educational system for the general public. If you come from a well-to-do family, you get a fairly good education, but you get a lot of propaganda along with it. And we have a media that is quite poisonous and only echoes what the administration—and corporate America, which owns the administration—wants us to hear. So the average person has no information, or what he has is so distorted. How can he make up his mind intelligently on any subject?

(via Slog)

iTunes “Metal on Metal” by Kraftwerk from the album Industrial Revolution, 2nd Edition (1977, 3:18).

International Women’s Day 2006

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Today is International Women’s Day.

International Women’s Day is the universal day that connects all women around the world and inspires them to achieve their full potential. IWD 2006 launches another year of working progressively for women’s equality worldwide. It is an important day around the world because the collective power of women is witnessed by milions, and the brave achievements of women past, present and future are respectfully honoured.

Hooray for women!

Er. Maybe that’s not quite the right way to put that. ;)

(via MeFi)

iTunes “My Reign Falls” by Monster and Mother Earth, The from the album Unhooked: The Humpy’s Alehouse Anthology (1995, 3:21).

Episcopalian and Anglican Superheroes

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A brief rundown of comic-book superheroes of either Episcopalian or Anglican beliefs, sourced from The Religious Affiliation of Comic Book Characters, and pointed out to me by dad.

  • The Beast/Hank McCoy (Episcopalian)
  • Phoenix/Jean Grey (Episcopalian)
  • Archangel/Warren Worthington III (Episcopalian)
  • Psylocke/Betsy Braddock (Anglican)
  • Captain Britain/Brian Braddock (Anglican)
  • Scarecrow of Romney Marsh/Rev. Dr. Christopher Syn (Anglican)
  • Batman/Bruce Wayne (Episcoplain/Catholic (lapsed))

iTunes “Malaway” by Dario G from the album Sunmachine (1998, 7:18).