You are currently browsing the monthly archive for June 2007.
Mika Brzezinski is my new journalistic hero. She refused to read a bulletin about Paris Hilton this week, attempting to burn the script on-air. When her lighter didn’t work, she ripped it up. When a producer handed her another copy, she put it through a paper shredder – all on-air. Whoohoo!
I applaud Ms. Brzenzinski. How refreshing! It’s about time more people on reputable news networks protested real news being replaced by stories that should only be on E! News.
Watch what happened on YouTube:
In a rare poetic urge, I jotted this down a while ago while I was waiting for a train on a blustery autumn day, and thought I’d send it out into cyberspace…
a lonely bench on an autumn peninsula overlooking cool rippling waters watches a warm sunset painted across warms the horizon but the bench remains chilled and solitary contemplating visitors past |
| Untitled, © Juli Kobayashi 2007 |
OK, not directly. But as if we needed another reason why increased levels of carbon dioxide caused by global warming is generally bad, recent studies have shown that undesirable plants such as Poison Ivy love CO2. It makes them grow faster and bigger, more resilient to pesticides, and their irritant even stronger. Basically, more CO2 makes Poison Ivy into the cockroach of the plant world. I got a bad case of Poison Ivy a couple summers back and it was a major drag, so poison ivy sucks big time, and anything that makes it stronger is bad…very bad. (Alright, I know poison ivy is not harmful to most non-human animals and is an important part of the eco-system, blah blah blah).
But…wait a minute. Don’t all plants love CO2? Wouldn’t many plants thrive in a warmer climate with higher levels of CO2? Why just poison ivy? I did a quick search and came up with a lot of anti-global warming sites that said rising CO2 levels was cyclical and natural. (There’s something about the “Global Warming Is A Myth!” pushers that make me feel like they are trying to get me to join a cult, or buy a drug that will ultimately do nothing but cause explosive diarrhea, or a buy a pet that will destroy your life if you feed it after midnight).
But then I found an article on Yale Global Online about a study that global warming spurs asthma and allergies, since increased levels of CO2 seems to make invasive plants in particular, such as ragweed, even stronger.
So spread the word. Global warming will give you a disgusting rash – so let’s do our part to be more eco-friendly. Seriously, people. Nobody likes to be itchy.
Read more about global warming on nrdc.org >>
I watched Bruce Willis on The Daily Show today (as much as I love him in movies, he really, really should just stick to other people writing dialogue for him – in fact, I think he should hire someone to do that for him in everyday circumstances or at least for talk show appearances – it’s embarrassing, Bruce! We love you and you rock, but please, don’t joke, you’re not funny.) Anyway, I was seized with stress about whether Live Free or Die Hard was going to be terrible since I really want it to be good.
So far, all the summer sequels have let me down…from Spidey to Pirates. I was expecting “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” to be terrible so it didn’t make me angry and it was for the most part fun, but “Spider-Man 3” was like a slap in the face, it was so awful.
I’m a huge fan of the Die Hard movies – what can I say? I love “guy” movies. I know they won’t ever make the AFI’s 100 Greatest Movies list, but there’s a time and place for all Great movies. Observe:*
In the mood for…
…brushing up on film history? Watch Citizen Kane, Seven Samurai, Lawrence of Arabia, & Casablanca for a start.
…laughing? Young Frankenstein, Spinal Tap, Airplane! or Monty Python & The Holy Grail.
…being inspired? To Kill A Mockingbird, Searching For Bobby Fischer, It’s A Wonderful Life
…being scared to death? The Exorcist, The Shining, Silence of the Lambs, The Omen
…Yippee ki ya MotherF^%#$*? Die Hard, beeatch!
When I saw on Rotten Tomatoes that Live Free or Die Hard got a 76% on the Tomatometer, I breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe it will actually be good. I’ll let you know.
*note: These movies are off the top of my head – I have about a zillion favorite movies and if I broke them down by genre, this post would be so long you wouldn’t have the patience to read it.
Ah, Paris! (pronounced “pari”)
Instead of stupefying yourself with the drivel saturating the media about that nuisance of a girl who got out of jail, why not talk about the other Paris, the capital of France, instead? It’s so much more interesting and it won’t slowly kill your soul.
Here’s a sprinkling of really random things about Paris that I find interesting:
Paris was named after the Parisii, a Celtic Iron Age people who lived along the Seine River from circa 350 B.C. to the Roman era.
Paris is a culinary mecca. Adolphe Duglere, chef at the famed Cafe Anglais, was known as “the Mozart of the kitchen.” In 1867, he served what was arguably the greatest dinner in European history to Russian czars, now known as “The Dinner of the Three Emperors.” See what was on the menu>> Yummm…
Paris has one of the most remarkable sewer systems in the world, and it even has a museum called Musée des égouts de Paris, or the Paris Sewers Museum so one can learn about its ingenious engineering. C’est très bizarre, non?
Speaking of engineering, Paris is filled with incredible architecture, from to the Notre Dame Cathedral to the Arc de Triomphe.
I once drew the Centre Pompidou, its exposed skeleton of colored pipes and all, (which was said to “turn the architecture world upside down” by the New York Times) as a visual aid for a French class project in high school and it was a bitch. (I wanted the Louvre, but the subject was already taken by a classmate.)
The Louvre was built in 1190 by Philippe Auguste as a fortress to protect the capital from the Anglo-Norman threat. Going through many transformations, part of the chateau became a museum in 1793, and the collections gradually spread through the entire building.
The Eiffel Tower weighs 10,000 tons.
There are about 10,000 books that have been written about Paris.
An 18th century Parisian architect planned to construct a bordello in the shape of a giant phallus (hee hee). Got this from the editorial review of Paris: Capital of the World by Patrice Higonnet.
One of my heroes, Gordon Parks, when he went to Paris on assignment in the 1960’s for Life Magazine, said that it was the first time he could breathe and spread his wings as an artist without being oppressed by racism*
*paraphrased, not a direct quote
As an artist, a man has no home in Europe save in Paris. – Friedrich Nietzsche
Paris is always a good idea – the film “Sabrina” (1954)
I just saw “1408,” which I’d give 3 1/2 stars, a B+, a fresh tomato, or a thumbs up to (choose whichever rating system you’re comfortable with). It’s more fun if you don’t know that much about it before you see it, so I’ll just say 3 quick things:
- John Cusack’s performance was stellar. Samuel L. Jackson’s brief role was delicious.
- Had a few really scary/cool moments & great sound design. Middle part was boring.
- If you like supernatural thrillers, just go see it – it won’t knock your socks off, but it’s one of the better ones and I totally enjoyed it.
“1408” was based on Stephen King’s short story, which is available on his audio book, “Blood and Smoke.” One of the taglines for “1408″ is “Based on the terrifying story by Stephen King.” That tagline wouldn’t work if you put another best-selling novelist, say Dean Koontz, in its place. So I wanted to ramble about Stephen King for a bit…
Sure, King is prolific, but there have been myriad authors who wrote faster (Mary Faulker, a romance novelist @ 900+ books, John Creasey, an English thriller writer @ 500+ novels, Anthony Trollope and so on and so forth). King’s books aren’t of the “Great Expectations” or “Moby Dick” caliber, but they’re not meant to be. He certainly takes a lot of crap from literary snobs for his commercial success, but the sheer volume of King’s works which have been ingrained into popular culture is impressive, indeed.
I just like him. He seems to be a humble and down to earth guy. He’s quirky and kooky, he plays guitar in an all-writer’s band, he’s a dedicated father and husband (married to the same woman he married after college), he survived alcoholism, drug addiction and a serious accident…he’s just a really interesting dude. He’s not trying to be Edgar Allan Poe or Shakespeare. He simply has a ton of great ideas in his head, and he writes them down. The results more often than not entertain the hell out of us.
I highly recommend King’s “On Writing,” which is a wonderful, practical and unpretentious book for anyone interested in the craft of writing. There is no doubt in my mind that he’s a genius that is lucky enough to be appreciated in his own time.
So write on, Mr. King, and we’ll keep reading!
As long as I’m blogging about strange natural occurrences and things disappearing…
I just read that a 100-foot deep, five-acre glacial lake in the southern Andes is suddenly a huge crater – as if someone decided to drain it. Park rangers in Chile’s Bernando O’Higgins National Park found an empty crater with glaciers strewn about where the lake used to be. Read about it & see pictures on cnn.com >>
Geologists don’t have any solid theories yet – one guess is that cracks mysteriously appeared at the bottom of the lake. Hmmm, I wonder what’s going to disappear next?
I was watching a great documentary series “The Galapagos” on the National Geographic Channel, saw some Galapagos bees pollinating away, and realized I never found out what happened to those missing bees from this past winter so I did some googling.
As you’ve probably heard, this past winter, millions of honey bees mysteriously vanished without a trace in over 20 states, which has much more dire consequences than a shortage of honey. More than 90 crops in the U.S. depend on their pollination, worth about $14 billion a year to the economy. Bees directly & indirectly affect about 1/3 of the typical American’s diet – the healthier part, that is. Source: New York Times “Losing Their Buzz”>>)
Despite the sequence of the entire honey bee genome being published in October 2006 to better understand these insects, and a House Hearing called in March to pinpoint the cause of this disappearance, currently called “colony collapse disorder” or “CCD,” nobody has come up with a definite reason why this happened. There are of course, tons of theories from viruses, stress, pesticides causing disorientation, global warming to alien abduction.
Curious to see if there have been any developments on this phenomenon, I did a quick news search, and have so far only come up with an article about scientists in Ontario, Canada, getting funding in late May to solve the bee mystery. (read it on cbc news >>) And then I saw on The Daily Green that Beekeeper Kim Flottum, editor of Bee Culture Magazine, blogged that there’s no buzz on CCD, and that the summer hives are looking good (I’ll take his word for it, he seems like he’s a Jedi Master of Beekeepers). So I’ve gathered that as of yet, this issue is still unsolved. I’m very curious to see if and when they come up with an answer.
My theory? The pesticides were stressing out the bees, making them loopy and thus easier to herd and persuade. The aliens took this chance to abduct the bees because they are mad about global warming. (We’re wrecking the planet and there’s no point in invading earth and taking over it anymore and they have to look elsewhere.)
Learn more about Colony Collapse Disorder on Wikipedia >>
NH Hoteles, a Spanish hotel chain, will allow a team of psychologists so choose 30 people to demolish the interior of one of its hotels as a form of stress relief for executives. Read the short article on Reuters >>
Overworked execs maniacally breaking down walls and windows to smithereens? Sounds like it could be a recipe for legal disaster. I’m sure they’ll have a very long and detailed disclaimer that protects the hotel from personal injury lawsuits.
But I have to admit, smashing up a hotel with a mallet sounds like a blast! Trashing hotel rooms as a form of stress management…what will they come up with next?
[Insert your Johnny Depp joke here]
Pretty interesting Escher-style optical illusion.
If anyone knows who this drawing is by, please leave it in the comments. Thanks!
