Thursday, March 29, 2007

jake Gyllenhaal: Green Celebrity

Gyllenhaal has been making smaller green lifestyle statements: arriving at Hollywood award shows in a bio-diesel powered eco-limo, driving his own Prius around LA, and sporting eco-fashionable organic cotton Loomstate jeans.


Jake on Treehugger

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Hurt

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Paranoia



(via Bruce Schneier via leo laporte)

Sunday, March 25, 2007

Art in LA

It's not without a slight tinge of East Coast bias, but it was nice to see an article like this, about LA's artistic coming of age, run in the NY Times. My tangentially related question is, why aren't there more bands of note coming out of LA right now?

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Friday, March 23, 2007

David O. Russell Has Kind of a Short Temper

Get a load of this.



(via MeFi)

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Playstation 3 Will Cure Cancer

Medical researchers at Stanford have launched a project called Folding@Home, which is a program that simulates protein-folding (the continuing study of which is expected to lead to breakthroughs in curing cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and more) designed to run on distributed Playstation 3s. The page suggests that if enough people already in possession of a PS3 are willing to run this program, which is available as part of the Home service, once in a while—and this would entail simply navigating to the application on the Sony network and then leaving your PS3 on while you go run errands or sleep—the combined processing power behind said program will exceed what would be attainable by a traditional supercomputer. They've gone a step further and made it competitive, allowing "players" to form teams and ranking teams on their progress. This latter feature was obviously intended to arouse interest, and it seems to be working.

A PC version is also available.

(via Penny Arcade)

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Thursday, March 22, 2007

Big Pool

World's deepest indoor pool. Add this to the list of unbelievably cool stuff in my dream house. Which I will be able to afford on a professor's salary.

(via MetaFilter)

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Aaron Sorking to adapt Flaming Lips album for Broadway



Sorkin Will Script Flaming Lips Musical:


The Great White Way will never be the same: In an exclusive interview, Wayne Coyne, lead singer of the Flaming Lips, told EW.com that the psych-rock band will team up with acclaimed TV writer and show creator Aaron Sorkin to turn the group's 2002 album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots into a Broadway musical.

Sorkin's reps confirmed on Tuesday (March 20) that the West Wing creator has officially signed on to write the musical's script. ''Maybe that means they'll need to build a stage with lots of hallways on it,'' joked Coyne of Sorkin's fondness for walking-and-talking characters. ''It will be a giant tube that's always moving!''


(via Digg)

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Bolton on the Daily show

Loathsome dillhole John Bolton goes on the Daily Show. I really, really hate to admit this, but I think he comes across rather well. At least he makes a show of having real arguments. Of course, I think he's pretty thoroughly misled. In particular, there's this deeply weird sense of a unitary "democratic theory," as well as a kind of disturbing and (improper) fetishization of elections. Anyway, it's a good clip.

(via Crooks and Liars)

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Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Revolution Studios to ruin Julie Taymor movie

Film Has Two Versions; Only One Is Julie Taymor’s (NY Times):


In Hollywood creative differences among moviemakers often make for more interesting results on the screen. But rarely do those battles escalate so much that a studio takes a movie away from an award-winning director.

Such is the case — for the moment — with “Across the Universe,” a $45-million psychedelic love story set to the music of the Beatles, directed by Julie Taymor, the stage and screen talent whose innovative interpretation of the Disney animated film “The Lion King” is one of the most successful modern stage musicals.

After Ms. Taymor delivered the movie to Joe Roth, the film executive whose production company, Revolution Studios, based at Sony, is making the Beatles musical, he created his own version without her agreement. And last week Mr. Roth tested his cut of the film, which is about a half-hour shorter than Ms. Taymor’s 2-hour-8-minute version.

Mr. Roth’s moves have left Ms. Taymor feeling helpless and considering taking her name off the movie, according to an individual close to the movie who would not be named because of the sensitivity of the situation. Disavowing a film is the most radical step available to a director like Ms. Taymor, who does not have final cut, one that could embarrass the studio and hurt the movie’s chances for a successful release in September.

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Saturday, March 17, 2007

3-Way Tie on Jeopardy!



Yesterday, on Jeopardy all three contestants finished Final Jeopardy with $16,000. It's the first time in the history the show that there's been a 3-way tie. All three contestants will be coming back on Monday to play against each other again.

Friday, March 16, 2007

Dude Dream Nation

Sonic Youth is playing a very fucking special series of concerts this summer, including one in LA on July 20. I already need to be in town around that time anyway, as I have a wedding to attend on the 28th, so I'm thinking of structuring a trip around these two events.

Who's with me? Who's ready to party like it's 1988?

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Wednesday, March 14, 2007

pedal-powered roller coaster



Pedal-powered roller coaster in Japan. . .

Spring Break

Speaking of... I'll be in Portland 3/28 to 3/31. Will has said I can stay with him, but he also said that his couch has "free offf craigslist sort smell". If there's room at the other estate, I'd appreciate it.

Spring Break

Which I realize doesn't apply to most anymore. But I'm gonna be in town next week. Anyone around?

Saturday, March 10, 2007

All God's Children Can Dance

The new web/magazine Monocle has a preview for the first movie ever adapted from a Haruki Murakami story. It seems to be about a young man who is the son of God. I can't tell from the blurb and preview whether or not it's a short. Seems to have the Murakami tone down pretty good, though. Premieres at Cannes this year.

Friday, March 09, 2007

The Speculative Grammarian

Speculative Grammarian is "the premier scholarly journal featuring research in the neglected field of satirical linguistics."

The current issue includes fascinating articles like "Weee!"—The First/Second Singular/Plural by Christopher Wood and TLAs DOA? TBD! by Claude Searsplainpockets.

Enjoy, language nerds!

You Don't Know Jack Online

youdontknowjack.com

Sunday, March 04, 2007

An Extra Inch Below!

Happy Birthday, Cameron and Reid!

Miss you guys. Come visit us!

Saturday, March 03, 2007

New At Dusk

Hey Gang-

Many things to talk about (e.g. Pretty satisfying Oscars in spite of the utterly mediocre pool, my new column) but what brings me to post here is my excitement for the fact that At Dusk has a properly recorded new song to share!

For the past 6 months, we've been writing a town, and it's pretty much all ben acoustic. We've also been naming the new parts in alphabetical order by video game...I just posted our first finished deal, which is, for now at least, called "Duck Hunt." I hope you enjoy it!

Here it is on our MySpace page.

Funny, seeing as how You Can Know Danger is finally being officially released, press campaign and all, on May 22 of this year. But that's cool, too.