Update

Spontaneous evil dog interlude.

Tom Wait's Thursday: Shiver Me Timbers

Here's some old school Tom Waits from before he was the creepy we all know and fear.

Super short revies: The Great Train Robberry

Well, I just got back form seeing a classic of Western cinema. One of the first movies that changed everything.
And I must say, it was certainly everything it was cracked up to be. The Great Train Robbery is famous for being one of the first films to use parallel action. In other words, when the main plot of the movie, the train robbery, takes palaces the scene cuts back to show a different set of events occurring simultaneously. In this case, this event is the release of a tied up ticket taker and the summoning of Calvary.
Other than that there's not a lot to the film. The plot is standard: Train gets robbed, criminals are gunned down by the authorities. The film spend what, for modern audiences, is an inordinate amount of time on things like squaredancing. Seriously, there's a minute long sequence that's nothing but squaredancing.
The special effects are also laughably primitive. For example, in one seen, a robber beats a man to death and troughs him off a train. By "man", I mean a really, really, crude dummy. It doesn't even have anything approaching realistic human proportions.
All in all, I give this movie an F. I know,I know,it's a cinematic breakthrough. But I really, really, really hate squaredancing.

They Might be Giants Tuesday: the Mesopotamians

The World Explained with Britsh Comedy

Mitchell and Webb explain homeopathic medicine.

Mooning the Cheetahs

There's a fine line between tragedy and comedy that often get blurred. This is often true when it comes to celebrity deaths. For example, how long is it going to be before Michael Jackson jokes are OK again?
I would like to propose a simple rule of thumb about such celebrity demises. The more tragic a celebrity's death, the longer it takes for it to be funy. For example, Princess Diana jokes had a wating period before they were socially acceptable. However, David Carradine, who died in an ill-conceived attempt at auto erotic asphyxiation, becomes subject for mockery almost immediately.
I call ths the "Mooning the Cheetahs" rule after a Dilbert comic stirp on ettiquete which says that is OK to laugh at demise of others as long as said demise is so hilarious and deserved that it becomes a health hazzard not to laugh. The example given is a man who died, as the name of the rule implied, whilst mooning enraged cheetahs.
With this simple rule, Michael Jackson jokes should be OK agian in about a week.

Redneck Health Care Policies

A funny little video.