W2 - Wendy to the Second Power

Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" had a truly insane, incoherent video. They literalled it up, like with "Take On Me" by Aha. That one's still my favorite because the literal song is even catchy ("Piiiiiiipe Wrench Fiiiight!"), but the images on this just beg for this treatment.

These funny white boy rappers come up with some funny lines. They get a bunch of their friends to make a land/water video for YouTube, ha! And the topic is a good one on this deadly hot day: "Put on your clothes and jump in the water."


"Hello! Like my costume?"

This is an extremely rare Fennec Hare. Isn't this a freaky looking photo? Or maybe not so freaky to you. I have most of a zoology minor so I know that the typical hare has eyes set on either side of its head. That, in fact, makes it one of the few animals that can pretty much see 360 degrees. When you're a classically juicy prey animal, it helps to see all over!

He and many other adorably precious babies are blogged regularly on www.zooborns.com

Unfortunately, this little guy is too cute to be real. He's an April Fool's joke; a cute kitten given ears in Photoshop. It says he's from the Iperian Steppes -- which is not a place you can find on Google!

My buddy Kimber on her FragrantLiar Blog posted recently about the challenge of telling of your life in just six words. She came up with about ten arrangements...

Funny, I immediately got mine in my head:

Not too bad at all, considering.

Ha! The "old, legendary and lost until now film from 1957," ALIEN TRESPASS, was a special event this afternoon. The producer/ director was there himself. They chose Austin as a pre-release spot so people (like me) could blog about it and get word-of-mouth going. Free movie! And Austin Film Festival, the local sponsor, was smart enough to find FACT and me, the SlugTribe coordinator, and let us know people could see for free just for RSPVing.

The theater was almost full too! Lots of convention fans, others I knew, like Matthew, were there. My buddy Deb came with me* and she loved the film. I thought it was okay. It was filmed in a mere 15 days, y'all! That's amazingly fast for a feature. And it was period, with the right clothes, hair, vehicles. It had those highly colored stagey sets from the 50's, and it was done as a horror, drama. Not a satire, and the humor came out of the 50s corniness. I always find Eric McMormack appealing, and he's good as the nerdy astronomer and then later as Urp, the astronomer's body with an alien inhabiting it. The dialog is 50s-style schlocky, and the one-eyed bad alien is so awful he's good -- kinda like a Dalek.

So obviously it's not from 1957, but from 2008, but the Alien Trespass Website is cute with the funny fake story. Plus you can win things -- the posters they made to look like old posters, and even some iPods.

According to R.W. Goodwin who was co-exec-producer of the X-FILES for its first 5 years, the movie is a cross between WAR OF THE WORLDS, THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL and ?IT CAME FROM SPACE?

Plus they had some aimless odd goth folks there who I think were supposed to be performers, but they just ambled nerdily -- or in the case of their large, bald leader in a cape, lumbered heavily -- around the audience giving out buttons and stickers and chatting people up. Live Evil is their group, and they are goofy folks trying to be bad-ass. I don't think they realize they're as funny as they are...!


*a free movie, perfect for a friend who's got almost nil income but is too proud to let people treat her -- we'd just had a conversation about that & my position is that people want to do special things for friends and family so they can spread the good energy (in this case, abundance, since my income is good). It's up to the treatee to accept it with grace and realize that when they are flush in the future, they can spread the good energy themselves... So I got Deb to come, then later "forced" her to get coffee and a danish, my treat.

Check out the wry, wry, painfully ironic Publishing Glossary by Rightreading.


Yes, I know Bierce was indeed an editor and pretty close to being a publisher. I'm being ironic!

Saw the traveling show of Spamalot in its final Austin Showing tonite. Boy, it's cute! Funny how familiar some of the scenes sound. I bet I've seen that movie over a dozen times... They didn't include the Galahad in Peril Scene at the Castle Anthrax, however. Seems perfect for a play that has Las Vegas type bimbos doing the bump 'n grind every other scene, but nope!

"We are but eight score young blondes and brunettes, all between
sixteen and nineteen and a half, cut off in this castle with no one to
protect us! Oh, it is a lonely life -- bathing, dressing, undressing,
making exciting underwear."

I went with my friends Cindy and Debbie, and their friends David and Scooter (Scott). We had a lovely meal at El Chile beforehand where all 5 of us discussed creative works -- all of us being writers. Scott Wiggerman being the uncrowned King of Poety of Austin, in fact. Fun folks!

My full-price ticket gave me somewhat crummy viewing for the $75 or so I paid for the ticket, so I was a little miffed. The story is expanded, new songs added, an ending that turns the story meta for the stage, much like the movie turned meta for the cinema. Eric Idle wrote all the new scenes and dialog as well as the lyrics for new songs. It's also funny how he repurposed his own song from LIFE OF BRIAN for this musical. In fact, it was both a set-piece and the final singalong song -- "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life."

Then a weird twist of events -- I was in row D, far stage left, the farthest. At intermission, a woman moved down to take one of the two empty seats beside me. Toward the end of the play, there's a magical message "D101" that appears, and they realize where to find the grail. They came down into the audience, row D right by me, and took that seat-stealing woman on stage! They sang a song with her name in it, gave her a certificate and photo, and Richard Chamberlain gave her a kiss. That would have TOTALLY been me, had that woman not snuck in there! I mean, happy for her, she was laughing like a real fan. But damn, I paid the $75 and had the occluded view and didn't get the payback of meeting Richard Chamberlain!!

www.aetherparanormal.com

This Austin group of young arty types is just as cute as they can be. They've created their own company: Aether Paranormal Team. They do ghost-busting investigations for fun! What's impressive is how cool and upscale their Website and the filming of their adventures for Webisodes looks.

That Website and the art direction of the documentaries is mostly done by Shad, a co-worker buddy. He's the bearded guy. His wife Jentri has an RTF degree from UT, and has made small movies, and is getting funding for a feature length that I did some script doctoring consultation on! Right now I'm sending out their URL and info about them to some reality TV producers I know. Just 'cause (I'm not packaging them or anything).

They've got a major adventure planned for tomorrow evening, Friday the 13th. They'll film it and make another Webisode, so should be fun.

www.drhorrible.com

Ha, it's a pun! I ordered Joss Whedon's DR. HORRIBLE'S SING-A-LONG BLOG on DVD and got it in the mail this week. Most of this weekend, when I should've been doing rewrites on my comedy script, I was watching all the extras on the DVD. I'd watched the 3 episodes when they came out for free on the Internet. Now you can watch them (for free?) on Hulu.com.

The DVD is totally worth the price. The commentary is cute, that is, the ordinary commentary. But they also have a COMMENTARY - THE MUSICAL that is hilarious! A whole 'nother 1.5 hours of scripted and sung meta-info. What's sweet is that Whedon gives his two brothers (Jed and Zach) solos, and gives his future sister-in-law Maurissa hers. But then he also gives the secondary characters their solos. Very nicely done and it's clear that it's tongue-in-cheek even as it's letting them cut loose and shine.

Especially fun is Thteve (Steve), a friend who plays Groupie #3, who's a big goony gay(?) guy with a lisp. The song even makes reference to how surprised he is to have his own solo since he has this speech challenge, but surely nobody's gonna write a song to make fun of that and force him to sing it for laughs. Even as the song is loaded with S's.

Nathan Fillion, not aware that he was a singer, and it said he wasn't. He just felt like he could pull off cheesy singing since that was how his character was defined. Neil Patrick Harris turns out to be quite the pure tenor. In the commentary, he got several chances to hit and hold a high note... He might've been one of the actors in Broadway in RENT, now that I think about it. He has that way of singing. And of course he can mesmerize with his comedy timing -- as his multiple Emmys prove.

Extras: it appears that everyone who sent in their application to be a member of the Evil League of Evil is listed. The top ones are included -- and if you didn't sing in your application, you probably missed the point.

Some guy in the Philippines posted on his blog about a strange plant (really, he discovered, it's a mushroom) that grew up in his flower bed. He called it a Zombie Hand -- and took some eerie photos.

What his mushroom seems to be is a flattened Squid Mushroom, which also often sprout in colors like orange and teal. Having one pale white and lying down does give a zombie hand effect!

Based on the discussions (more, arguments and flaming) that people posted, I learned about the genus of Stinkhorn Mushroom which can vary wildly in look but, as this MushroomExpert discusses on his site, some part of the frutiing body at some point in its development is always covered with stinking slime.

Its Latin genus name is Phallacae. There's a reason for that, as photos on this last site will show you. Imagine a doggy dick growing out of your yard!