Various 2

The first day of Spring, it was warm. The second day of Spring, it snowed.

I don't usually do memes, but I did this one when I had 35 minutes to kill. So check it out here If the video stutters, click the "YouTube" logo in the bottom right of the video screen.

Author event on Friday was super fun. Photos here (they're they last ones in the album)

I own this t-shirt now.

Second interview for the podcast last week with Michael Palascak. Super cool. Stay tuned for those animations. In the meantime, Michael on Letterman:

The Men Who Stare at Goats

I know I normally post my book reviews on my other blog, but I don't feel like it, so there. This is a review of the book The Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson, and it's great timing because I just found out via Twitter (Jon Ronson is on Twitter: @jonronson) that he's just updated jonronson.com. Even though I am a big fan of goats (totally disagree with the military in this book who says that forming an attachment to a goat is nearly impossible), it's not the goats in the title that drew me to this book. It was listening to Jon Ronson on Robin Ince's Utter Shambles (listen here) and then later on Robert Llewellyn's Carpool (watch here). I had seen the trailer for the movie and was undecided about if it was too cheesy. But listening to the author, I became interested in how absurdly funny the American military was in the '70's according to the people Ronson interviewed.

The Men Who Stare at Goats is a story about the US government and military trying to use paranormal forces to their benefit, especially different kinds of psychic powers: walking through walls, reading minds, seeing the future, stopping the hearts of animals ("affecting livestock from a distance"), and brainwashing. However, their inability to completely master any of these things mixed with the bureaucracy of it all makes it hilarious. For example, the military had a psychic spy team, but since they didn't technically exist (according to the books), they were not given a coffee budget and were most cross about being the only branch of military to have to buy their own coffee. Throughout the book, Ronson--the writer/narrator/journalist--digs deeper and deeper, discovering how much of this secret effort lies under our American history (9-11, Heaven's Gate, Guantanamo Bay).

I have not seen all of the movie, but I did see about half of it on YouTube. I was shocked to realize that nearly everything in the movie is in the book--very little made up. The things they did make up were trivial:

• Ewen McGregor's character is supposed to be Jon Ronson but is not named Jon, is American instead of British, and has this whole cinematic backstory about his girlfriend leaving him for his one-armed editor.
• They changed character names and combined some of the characters because there are a lot of characters in the book. However, pretty much all their actions and a lot of the dialogue is word-for-word from the book.
• The action adventure part of the movie was obviously exaggerated and in some cases made up. George Clooney's character (Lin) is in the book called Pete, and he does beat Jon up using his Predator weapon and by knocking him to the floor (sharp edges!) and all that--that's true--but they were not meanwhile being held prisoner in the desert and all that drama.

Ronson does an excellent job making the real sound ridiculous. Not that these people needed a whole lot of help from a journalist to sound crazy, but Ronson uses phrases like "when he was busy staring a goat to death" or "Guy, next time you go to Fort Bragg with a hamster, can I come?" This wouldn't make a very good fiction story. I'm not a fan of realistic investigation novels that were made up, but as non-fiction, it sounds made up, it's that insane.

Walking through walls: Both the book and movie begin with a military officer trying to walk through his office wall, failing, and being frustrated that he couldn't do it.
Invisibility: When the military failed to learn how to become invisible, they learned to just be unseen
Sticky foam: Like in the Incredible Hulk, the military created a sticky foam that they spray and it solidifies. They only used it once: to stop a riot by creating a wall between them at the food, which only lasted about a minute before the riot climbed the wall, and the foam was abandoned.
Goat staring: Supposedly, Guy Savelli killed a goat once by just staring at it. They had something called Goat Lab in the military, which was a secret shack where they had to de-bleat and lock in place a bunch of goats to keep them from giving away its secret location. It was meant as a way to teach people how to save the lives of dying humans by practicing on goats, but ended up as a place for people to practice psychic powers of stopping hearts. Ronson suspects in the book it may have been a sick goat.
Visions: Visions of something or someone near the comet Hale-Bopp fueled the Heaven's Gate cult and their suicide.
Brainwashing: They used music as a method of interrogation. In one method, they blasted music non-stop for days--the same song over and over--Metallica and the I Love You song from Barney--in Iraq prisoner holds. In the other method, they played the song once and at a normal volume. One of these was Matchbox 20 (hey, I like M20). Here, they suspect, may have been subliminal messages, or an attempt at them. This was done in Guantanamo Bay. The strangest thing was that the writers to some of the songs they used to torture prisoners wanted to cash in on the royalties, no sympathy for the people being tortured.

The book starts out fairly simply: Ronson wants to track down who stared a goat to death and if it's possible and how the government can use that power. But it spirals into really serious stuff. In fact, one of the people he interviewed had to video tape him while they talked (this is the guy in the movie who has the video of him staring at his hamsters until they fall over and who said the Lockness Monster is really the ghost of a dinosaur--both true stories). Ronson didn't know why he had to be on video tape at the time. But later, he found out, he had been one of six people to call him that week asking if he could stare a goat to death. The other five had been al qaeda.

My only regret is that Ronson was not able to wrap up all of the mysteries that he presented. And maybe he left in all the questions that he couldn't answer because he wants people to know that there is more to investigate and we should keep our eyes peeled. But at the same time, in a narrative, I expected that any questions he brought up would be answered. So when we don't find out who the mysterious Ron is, and we don't find out what happens with the guy with the hamsters at the very end, I feel a lack of closure. But maybe that's why Hollywood came in to fill in the gaps.

Overall, very enjoyable. I'm also interested to hear what Ronson's got to say about memory and about madness in his other writings.

Media Announcements

1. Independent Film Channel announces it will air Rhett and Link's new TV show on June 24th. Commercial Kings. Link to announcement.

2. Terry Pratchett and Terry Jones are creating a TV series based around the Watch in Pratchett's Discworld series. Is this for serious? If they're using the real characters from the books, including my favorite character in anything ever, this could be my new favorite show. Link to announcement.



3. They've already cancelled Outcasts in the UK. Lame. I hope we still get it here on BBC America.


4. Someone is finally making a Good Omens mini series. I think Terry Gilliam was supposed to direct this film a long time ago, I believe but he just sort of...didn't in that Terry Gilliam way. His films are brillliant...when they get done. Instead, the production company Prime Focus is doing Good Omens. It's a cult classic, and most people consider it the best thing that came from Pratchett or Gaiman, but I like a lot of their solo work better. I still want to see it though. I want to know who they've cast for Crowley and Aziraphale because this has been a subject of much discussion on the interwebs for over a decade now. I think Terry Jones is working on this one as well. (There are too many Terrys in this post!)
Link to announcement


5. I missed watching Stephen Merchant on Graham Norton last week, but I watched it on YouTube. He's doing a standup show in NYC on December 20th. Exciting. I've also just noticed that I missed the Graham Norton episode in February with Brian Cox. Really must pay attention.

Various things

The first being the new clip from our podcast:


Also, I saw the movie Paul that I've been waiting a long time to come out. It isn't bad, certainly. Some of the humor is a little too low brow for my taste, but it was definitely still funny. They cater a lot to the American audience that likes that over-the-top dumb humor, but there's some good subtle stuff in there too. Like there's this one scene, and I don't know if I remember it just right, where they're having an emotional crisis, and one guy goes, "Do you want tea?" and the other guy goes "No!" and the first guy goes "Yeah, they don't do good tea here [America]. They leave the teabags in."

Also, while I'm animating, I am listening to a book on tape: The Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson. Haven't seen the movie yet, but it doesn't seem to be available as a download or rental on iTunes or Amazon yet. The book is really funny. It wouldn't make for good fiction, but it's great as non-ficiton. I'll do a proper review of it when I'm finished.

British telly

Doctor Who premiers on BBC America on April 23.

Outcasts is coming to BBC America! But it just says "coming soon." When BBCA, when? This is the first reference to "from the makers of Life on Mars" that I've seen. Which makers? Matthew Graham isn't involved (though he is writing a couple episodes of Dr. Who this season) and Ashley Pharoah isn't involved either. So...not really the makers of Life on Mars, then really? But Danny Mays is sure to give a smashing performance.
http://www.bbcamerica.com/content/426/index.jsp

Idiot Abroad season 2 has started production.
Speaking of Karl, how about a round of Rockbusters?

Dirk Gently movie review

This review is not full of spoilers but you still might want to watch the movie first. It's about an hour long. Here is the first part. They are all on YouTube until someone deletes them for copyright infringement.





Someone finally posted Dirk Gently on YouTube. Umm...I actually liked it. Was not expecting to like it at all. The plot line is very different from the book, and the character Dirk is played completely differently. However, it's actually pretty funny. Not to the degree of Douglas Adams, of course, but they've trimmed it down to be much much much simpler.

There is no alien or electronic monk or ghost. These are the things I liked about the book: it's a supernatural detective story, and I was annoyed that the movie didn't have ANY of that. But then they did bring in a timey wimey element, and that made things okay.

They took the real heart of the book and went in a different direction with it. They grabbed onto the whole thing about the interconnectedness of everything and made that the central focus. It's very easy to follow compared to the book. I had to read and listen to the book several times before I completely understood what all the different parts of the story had to do with each other. The movie is dumbed down but more digestible. However, the humor is subtle in that classic Douglas Adams way. There are a lot of physical jokes that they don't call attention to. (I like that instead of having a white board, he just roller paints his chalkboard white every time he wants to erase). Also, they grabbed onto the whole thing about Dirk and lost cats. That became the focus.

The biggest change is that in the book, Susan is the daughter of the wealthy Gordon Way who goes missing (and is the ghost in the story). In the movie, Gordon had gone to college with Dirk, Richard, and Susan, and is Susan's ex-boyfriend. Very different. But he still goes missing, so she's just as concerned about his whereabouts.

The secretary part is pretty accurate, but I'm sad they left out the part where Dirk is on the phone and Richard has to keep writing "You have no secretary!" That is classic. In fact, someone else has acted out that scene perfectly here at this video. <-- This video (completely unrelated to the BBC video above) is actually extra cool because the actor who is playing Dirk was a friend of Douglas Adams and is the inspiration for Dirk.

As for characters, I think Dirk is supposed to be a little bit older and is described as a podgy tornado. He is a bit devious and con-man in a way, but I always figured him for being legitimate with the unfortunate appearance of being a con-man simply because he actually believes in the interconnectedness. The backstory that they give him in the movie suggests that he is actually a con-man most of the time. Richard is played as more of a loser than in the book. In the book, he was very intelligent, not to mention employed. Here he's kind of a layabout. Susan's probably about the same. There were no Michael or Reg. Reg was so important to the story, it seems strange that he's not there, but since they left out the whole ending of the book (book spoiler alert) where it turns out Reg is responsible for sparking life on Earth, I guess it didn't matter. But no electric monk either. Perhaps this gives them room for more episodes to fit in all those details, building up to being more and more supernatural. The sequel book did include Thor the thunder god, after all. I did hear that this was meant to be a test pilot episode. So I hope they make more.

The Karl Pilkington Metaphor Matching Game

It's very simple. Try to match column A with column B based on the metaphors of Karl Pilkington. Doesn't matter if you don't know who he is (though you should). Try to guess. Or just enjoy mixed metaphors.



A .................................................................................................B

The Egyptian Pyramids are like .........................................an alien on the "Boswell" incident

Flowers on a cactus is like ..................................................a bit of weird art

Karl in Brazilian parade garb is like ...................................a restaurant only flogging ketchup

The stance of the Christ the Redeemer
Statue is like the stance of.................................................Andy Pandy on crack

Treat the world like ..........................................................someone testing out a Biro

Hummus as a meal is like .................................................a bungy jumper

Steve Merchant dancing is like......................................... a Kate Bush video

The Chinese alphabet is like .............................................putting lipstick on an ugly woman

Hazy sky of China is like ...................................................a head

Being naked for an operation
would make Karl look like .................................................a game of jenga that's got out of hand

Plain Ketchup Podcast Ep.1 Part1 - Front Matter

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Atlanta

Went to Atlanta on business. Got to see Coke World and the Olympics park during downtime. Here are some photos.

And now it's into a ten-hour workday week (also known as catalog time) and cauking the draft out of my room. No wonder Jesus followed in the footsteps of God and not Joseph the Carpenter. Being handy is hard. The next curtain I accidentally cauk to the wall and I'm trading this tube of vinyl adhesive for a crown of thorns.