I work at a deeply awesome company.  One of the founders is even something of a Silicon Valley celebrity, in a geeky sort of way.  He founded Network Appliance, CacheFlow and this one.  The man helped make NAS popular.  Don't have NAS at home yet?  You probably will, in one form or another.

So, this month, Variety interviews him.  Meh.  What we do is so much more awesome than that.  I could talk about RAID-K to strangers.

If you click on his name in the Variety article, does it take you to a biography of the Silicon Valley legend?  Nope.  It's a link to an assistant on Cheech and Chong's Nice Dreams.  Hee hee.

Note to self:  Investigate Frank Oz's Death at a Funeral.

I can be so stupid and predictable.  I've always admired Salma Hayek.  And hot nurses easily turn my head.  (It's convenient that I married one.)  Heck, I even liked the hot evil puppet nurses in Silent Hill.

So, I found myself strangely compelled by the song "Happiness is a Warm Gun" in the movie Across the Universe.


It wasn't until after the movie was over that I realized that yes, indeed, Salma was the hot nurse. 

Oh, and I adored Prudence's rendition of "I Want to Hold Your Hand."  So sad and beautiful.

Dredging for a silly B-movie, I came across Yoyo Girl Cop.  Something about it rang familiar, but I couldn't place it.  The title and artwork were so cheesey, I knew I had to watch it.

I was even mentally preparing for an LJ entry titled something like, "How bad does a movie have to be before I won't watch it?"  The punch line would be, "Evidently worse than Yoyo Girl Cop!"

The DVD cover only has the English title.  The movie, though, displayed the original Japanese title, and I could read the kana (not quickly, but I could).

"Sukeban deka."

That was so familiar.  Wait.  This isn't a one-shot cheesey movie!  This was the latest installment in a franchise with a long pedigree!

How could I not have known?  Reminds me of the time that zannah had to tell me why Haibane Renmei reminds me of Hardboiled Wonderland.

I can be so forgetful, or just plain obtuse.

Back in the day, the story was that the group's name was the ages of all the members.  Sum 41.  Bunch of losers.  I've been secretly in training, and now I can do that all by myself.

What's the word of the day today?  Bibulous.

Which also reminds me of my birthday!  Why haven't I been blogging?

Blame it on Walking with the Dinosaurs.  (Rawr!!  Having a five year old boy is the best!)  Van Gogh Double Espresso Double Caffeine Coffee Infused Vodka.  (Ice cold!  Seriously yummy.)  Surfing the web.  (Reading your posts!)  Much Guitar Hero.  Climbing at Planet Granite.

I've also had a web service magically fixed for me!  (My report of the problem, with an interim fix in the replies.)  Weeks later, on my birthday, Ozgur Huseyinoglu replied in private email with a full fix!  W00T!  It'll probably be committed to the repository soon.

What have I been reading?  I'm all about (typically Greek) god antics:  Anansi Boys. Gods Behaving Badly.  Now, Good Omens is in the queue.

What have I been watching?  Well, I knew I'm all about Focus.  Just saw Eastern Promises.  Seriously, I'll watch a film simply if Focus is associated with it.  Surprisingly, Viz, (whose comics I used to read) is finding its way into my home again.  I'm watching Taste of Tea after having enjoyed Linda Linda Linda.  (And for my birthday, my wife got me Yoshiyuki Sadamoto's Der Mond.)  Surprise, Viz released that book too!

Damn you, R. L. Stein.

Tonight, Cartoon Network is playing an R. L. Stein marathon.  Right now, they're playing The Haunting Hour: Don't Think About It.  So, of course, I think about it.

Yeah.  I lose.  Move along.

Also, while watching the episode right before that, my four-year-old son says in his most suspenseful voice, "It's just a dream.  But it's not a dream.  It's real!"

Thanks, R. L. Stein.  Now even An American Werewolf in London won't have any effect on him, because he'll have seen all the twists.

::dejected:: Phooey.

Our TiVo died two weeks ago.  Whatever programming we had on it is lost.  It's the one thing I don't backup.  (And now that I write that, I'd better back up this computer again, soon.)

The first replacement TiVo was broken and was promptly sent back, and the second one is here.  Phew.  Just in time for me to record Negadon tonight!  (Yes, I'm serious.  Why are you looking at me funny?)

I generally can't abide by wishy washy protagonists.  I almost had to give up on Kamichu, because the heroine is so introverted and shy.  But, it is almost Miyazaki-esque, and the opening and ending themes kept me in for a few episodes.  Especially that ending theme.  My kids get up and air band with the characters on the screen.  It's fun!

And the episode where the cat Tyler Nyaden* makes his appearance?  Any reference to Fight Club improves a show's rating in my esteem!

--David

*That's how a cutesy talking Japanese cat would pronounce Tyler Durden.

PS.  The first DVD also catalogues the gods and what they do.  There's one god, who... ::shivers::.  You'll have to read it yourself.

PPS.  Finally, something to wash away that Narutaru stain.

Zhang Yimou's latest film, Curse of the Golden Flower, isn't his best.  But it does speak volumes about family values.

Like Little Miss Sunshine and Ran before it, it's a film about a dysfunctional family (aren't we all), with the children going through a rebellious phase (don't they all).

But what you take home from this film, the one indelible lesson, is this:


I'm gonna sit my kids down, and make them watch that flick ten times, until that little lesson is permanently ingrained.

:-)

Is it too late for another new year's resolution?

Herb Sutter points out that Arthur C Clark got it right, the temptation to consume media is now overwhelming.

I loves me my comics, TV, books, movies MP3s, radio and video games.  I'm not giving them up.  Entirely.  But I am cutting back.  Enough that I can continue to make the things I enjoy making.

Personal note:  A big culprit for me is NetFlix.  I feel a compulsion to "work through" the queue I made, and to maximize the value of my subscription.  I won't sacrifice creative time to NetFlix so much anymore.

I glower at you.  That movie's been at the top of my Netflix queue since it's been released, and it still says, "very long wait."  All the local brick-and-mortar rental places don't have it.  The comic-book shop that had it sold all of their DVDs to animelane.com.  They're local, but they're an internet-only business.  Grr!

From the Grind House trailer, the image of Rose McGowan blowing the smoke from her machine gun prosthetic leg like she’s drying toenail polish is burned permanently in my mind.  I'm a 14-year-old all over again.

Found out that the TV show Heroes has Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale behind it. Funny, I'd just finished Catwoman: When In Rome, and was wondering what else I could read that they'd done.

Was amused to watch the actor-cam documentary behind Fast And Furious: Tokyo Drift to see all the party kids and yakuza actors spending their free time on-set in full costume practicing Para Para. Looks like they had a really good time making that movie!

Lucky Number Sleven was released on DVD today.  I liked it well enough.  I enjoyed at least two good WTF moments.  Best thing of all?  The trailer didn't spoil the movie!


And for those of you who don't want to be spoiled but are wondering why I'm making a big deal of it:  There's a clip in the trailer that was edited with a post effect just to not spoil the viewer.

That's deeply considerate for the editors to care enough about our movie experience to not ruin it with a too-revealing trailer!

By far and away, Happy Feet!  Unlike any other movie this year, I fully expect to see this in the theater and to buy the DVD the day it comes out.

An Inconvenient Truth is available for rent starting tomorrow.  It's buried under some more popular titles, but I think we should rent it, watch it, and discuss.

I haven't seen it yet, but I've got a feeling it's going to touch on a pet peeve of mine.  (The media's penchant to present two sides to every issue.)  I get it.  I understand it.  I just want everyone (translate: my kids) to get it, too.

If you set your expectations accordingly, you can have a good time with the movie.  Acknowledge that the source material is a video game, and the transition from game to movie requires a director capable of a shift from non-linear progression to linear narrative, while keeping the elements you loved in there.  Accomodate the nature of the genre.  This movie was a horror movie, and so suspension of disbelief has to be racheted a little higher for horror movies.  You just gotta go with it.  Have a mindset to have fun.

With all this in mind, I rented the movie, and was surprised to find that I had a good time watching it.  I wouldn't be surprised if people who haven't even played the game would enjoy the movie, and that's relatively high praise.

So, go ahead.  If you think you might like it, go ahead and see Silent Hill.  It's not high art, but I wasn't expecting it to be.  I was in a mindset to find the zombie nurses disturbingly hot.  I think that's a good place to be to enjoy the movie.

Oh, you didn't think I was talking about BloodRayne, did you?  Yeah, I saw that.  I'm not proud.  It wasn't good.  But I have seen worse.  I can see where Uwe Boll wanted to go with the movie, and I think he couldn't quite pull it off.  The delivery (and fight choreography) was flat, but the special effects were good.  There.  I said something positive.

Sometimes, we just have to make our own mistakes. There's just no talking us out of it.

I'm putting my hand into that fire. You can't stop me.

I haven't done it yet, this may be my last LiveJournal post before the experience. I may be a different man: sullen, empty, disillusioned the next time you hear from me.

I've never seen a Uwe Boll flick.

But how can I resist a hot scantily-clad nazi-fighting vampire? Billy Zane, Michelle Rodriguez, Sir Ben Kingsley and Meat Loaf all signed on. Am I better than them?

No!

Who am I to cast aspersions? I'll believe! If the SciFi channel can succeed by making silly B movies without shame, I'll give this movie a chance. It can't be that bad.

...when renting anime series which are being continuously released, NetFlix doesn't represent the DVDs that aren't scheduled for immediate release in their database.

You can't add a new series to your queue, and expect future episodes to magically appear when they get added to Netflix's database.

So, I have to keep a little journal around reminding me that at some point in the future, I have to revisit these series and add new DVDs to my queue. For example, today:

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: up to 5 available (of 7 total)
Samurai 7: up to 6 available (of 7)
Fullmetal Alchemist: up to 10 available (of 13+)

[Edit] This reveals way too much about myself. Luckily, I've already made my own little brood of people, and they have to love me, regardless of my taste in pop culture. :)