WRITINGS & NEWS
I learned some things yesterday:
1. If you put dish soap in a dishwasher, it foams right up.
2. Dishwashers have a vent at the bottom that allows this foam to exit the dishwasher.
3. If you put a lot of dish soap in (say, filling both soap trays) a lot of suds will form (say, filling the room with bubbles).
4. If you do these things in the break room at work, you will never, ever, ever hear the end of it.
Ignore these things at your own peril.
Far be it from me to post news about Britney Spears, or to link to a People article, but this little piece of info has cropped up across the net and everyone needs to know about it: Britney has announced that she's letting her fans vote for her new album title. Click here to see the 5 options.
April and I both feel that the Lindsay Lohan one is probably her best option.
Watch Transformers in theaters or not at all. Loads of fun, but the silliest thing I have ever seen. If you watch it at home, you'll end up spending half the movie saying "hey, this movie doesn't have a plot. Hey! Do you see this? This movie actually has no plot whatsoever! I've never seen that before."
It's funny to me to hear Michael Bay talk about this movie, because he says things like "all my friends want to know why I'd do a silly movie like this, and I don't know what to tell them," and "this is just the most ridiculous thing I've been involved in," etc., etc.
Let me refresh your memory, Mr. Bay. You are Michael Bay. You made Armageddon, you made Pearl Harbor, you made a second Bad Boys movie eleven years after you made the first one. Frankly, it could be argued this is the most serious thing you've ever done, that's how ridiculous your career is. Do not, for a moment, try to give us your "auteur director" b.s. We see through your web of lies.
On the complete flip side, I watched Schindler's List for the first time last night. A lot of the shock was gone for me since the film has become so entrenched in our film conscious that most of the stunning, blood-run-cold bits were a bit dulled, in the same way it would be if I'd watched Empire Strikes Back for the first time tonight while still having lived in pop culture for the past 23 years ("oh, look, Darth Vader is Luke's father. Shocker.").
Still, that's a film of some real raw power, isn't it? The best parts were whenever I got to a bit that I didn't know anything about - that Auschwitz shower scene, for example, I knew nothing about - and all of a sudden my stomach clenched with a "what's going to happen? How terrible is this going to end? I can't take it!" type of suspense, which I imagine is what it would've been like for people who saw the film when it came out. I wish I'd seen it then.
I was surfing through TV Links - the greatest site in the world, if you haven't seen it yet - and I stumbled across a show called "A Bit of Fry & Laurie." I said to myself, "Geez, that sounds to me like a show where famed British character actors Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry clown around and make understated British jokes and do random sketches. Wouldn't that be funny if that's what it was? I bet it's just some random cartoon, though." I clicked on it.
I'll be damned, it was a 25-year old BBC show where famed British character actors Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry clown around and make understated British jokes and do random sketches. Simply marvelous. Here's a link to the show.
I'm here watching Tristram Shandy, a complicated Spinal Tap-meets-Shakespeare In Love mockumentary, waiting to fall in love with it. So far, more clever than funny, bewildering, and a little dull.
Oh, hell, it's over. No, I can't recommend it. Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon are doing Al Pacino impersonations over the end credits and I have no idea why. This is actually pretty similar to how I feel about the last two hours of the movie.
I watched the pilot for "Greek" today, a new "college kids getting crazy while fitting into pre-existing stereotypes" show on ABC Family. It's unremarkable, a simple knockoff on Animal House, "Undeclared," and John Hughes movies, but I got attached to the main two actors: the geek-turned-Greek main character's played by a likeable no-name, Jakob Zachar, and his social climing sister is Spencer Grammer, who is Kelsey Grammer's daughter. She's good anyway.
Here's a link to the latest Arthur The Intern. You can't read the graphics, but if you've got Facebook, trek to my page and look at it there. I just discovered it, but Facebook video is the best looking free video available on the web by a large margin. I wish everyone had Facebook.
I gotta go. This Tristram Shandy DVD menu has been looping an annoying little fife-and-accordion tune for what seems like centuries.
