Category Archives: Entertainment

I disproved Google’s “Bacon Number” feature in under five minutes

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A new and generally useless feature on Google today is the Bacon Number, which allows you to quickly search for the number of degrees of separation any actor or actress is from the iconic Kevin Bacon.

Oh, by the way, this image is kind of scary.

Of course, this sort of game is no fun unless you challenge it, and what greater challenge could there be than silent film mainstay Lon Chaney, Sr.? Also known as The Man of a Thousand Faces, he appeared in over 150 films before his death in 1930. They’re not kidding about the thousand faces, either. His Phantom of the Opera was freaking scary, and it was done with a 1925 level of film technology. I figured this would be a good challenge, considering that he died  28 years before Kevin Bacon’s birth in 1958 (yes, this means Kevin Bacon is 52 years old, which also means he was about 26 in Footloose. I’m a little freaked out, too.)

Anyway, Google returns a Bacon Number of 3 for Lon Chaney, connecting them via Kenneth Branagh and January Jones.

There is a slight problem here. The Unknown is a 1927 film, and Kenneth Branagh was born in 1960. Oops.

Google actually didn’t need to go to the trouble of creating a search capability for Bacon Numbers. The website Oracle of Bacon already does this, and it has been doing it since 1996.

What does it have to say about Lon Chaney?

Huh. Still a Bacon Number of 3, but now it’s two people I’ve never heard of, plus a Kevin Bacon movie I’ve never heard of. Shall we check IMDB?

  1. The Phantom of the Opera does, in fact have Lon Chaney and Rolfe Sedan (in an uncredited, “undetermined” role.)
  2. Rolfe Sedan’s last credited movie was 1979’s The Frisco Kid, in which he was one of nine actors credited as “Rabbi.” The movie also had Eda Reiss Merin as “Mrs. Bender.”
  3. Sure enough, Eda Reiss Merin appeared in 1983’s Enormous Changes at the Last Minute as “Ma.” Kevin Bacon appeared as “Dennis.”

Clearly, Google has been outmatched in this round. (Also, I have wasted a significant portion of the workday.)

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Finding archetypes where none exist: another mutilation of Game of Thrones

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Any discussion of the women of Game of Thrones that fails to mention Septa Mordane is wrong. Just plain old wrong.

I’m about to geek out on Game of Thrones again, fair warning. I will limit my discussion, as best I can, to the television show up to this point, but beware of spoilers.

Over on Huffington Post, Ann Marie Rasmussen decided to blow her nose on her keyboard and call it commentary on female archetypes in the Game of Thrones series. It is the sort of reasoned analysis that makes you suspect that she had never heard of the show, let alone the books, until a couple of hours before her deadline, and that she spent at least an hour of that time eating a sandwich.

She does an appreciable job of shoehorning some of the show’s female characters into some prefabricated fiction archetypes, although none of them quite seem like traditional “fantasy” archetypes: the Tomboy, the Princess, the Seductress, the Self-Made Woman, and the Good Wife. Wha?

Let’s start with the “Tomboy,” Arya Stark, or as Rasmussen calls her, “the little daughter with a boy’s haircut.” It is actually entirely incidental to Arya’s persona that she has a boy’s haircut. Yoren cut her hair so that the Lannisters wouldn’t find and decapitate her. Not very archetypal, I dare say. Arya’s tomboyishness is not so much an important part of the story as the trials she has to endure to survive. At any rate, Arya is not the bone I have to pick with Rasmussen. Let’s move on to Sansa Stark.

tumblr_ma7k6vbVw41qzjnu8Sansa, of course, is the “Princess” archetype, but it is Rasmussen’s description of her that wakes my dragon: “Sansa Stark, sister to the Tomboy, is not too bright and is often punished for her vapid and romantic delusions.” No, just no. Yes, Sansa begins the series as the spoiled, petulant mean girl of the Stark family, but that just makes her struggle more tragic. She grew up believing in the tales of gallant knights and beautiful princesses, and the prospect of becoming queen was dangled right in front of her. Not only must she now endure beatings from the very knights she thought would protect her, but she had to watch as her prince ordered the execution of her father right in front of her. She is not being punished for being vapid. She is being punished by a psychopath with no checks on his power. She is not stupid. She is a survivor. She may be annoying to watch, but it is that veneer of helplessness that is keeping her alive. Do not mess with Sansa.

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Television Magic Needs Rules, or, Why Russell Edgington Needs to F***ing Die, Already (True Blood spoilers within)

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tumblr_m9algxAJAP1ru9c14o1_500The only thing worse than an annoying character is an all-powerful annoying character with no apparent weaknesses. In preparation for tonight’s True Blood season finale, I’m going to kvetch a bit.

In season 3 of True Blood, Sookie et al had to contend with the 3,000-year-old, entirely-psychotic vampire Russell Edgington. Basically, no character could do much of anything to hurt him, at least physically, on their own. The only explanation ever given for this, as best I can recall, was that he is over 3,000 years old. Evidently, vampires only get better with age. It was only through a collective effort that the main characters were able to weaken Russell by getting him into the sun, and then they proceeded to not kill him. I still don’t get that. I suspect that the producers wanted to keep his character on the back burner for the time when they decided to start phoning it in, e.g. season 5. (Seriously, how do you bring back Russell when Roman barely had a chance to do anything yet?)

Now, in season 5, a group of religious fanatic vampires who never seem to leave their conference room have brought Russell back to assist with their whatever-the-hell-they’re-doing, and Russell has entirely predictably gone off the deep end and freaked everybody way the fuck out. Setting aside the question of how the characters didn’t see that coming, were the producers expecting the viewers to be surprised? Once again, no one can stand against Russell because (cue inscrutable accent) he is over 3,000 years old!!! Continue reading →

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This is Scorpio

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Writers from The Simpsons recently listed their ten favorite “obscure” characters. Apparently, in the show’s 20+ seasons, there have been more than 1,600 characters and celebrity guest appearances. Their #1 pick (well, he’s the 10th one they name, so I’m assuming that makes him #1) happens to be one of my all-time favorites, too, so it seemed like time for a shout-out.

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Hank Scorpio (“You Only Move Twice,” Season Eight)

Possibly the most re-demanded one-shot. He was an employee-focused ideal boss, voiced by Albert Brooks, but unfortunately also a super villain. We look forward to having him back on The Simpsons once he’s finished serving his 47 consecutive life sentences.

A few of my favorite quotes:

Hank Scorpio: Uh, hi, Homer. What can I do for you?

Homer: Sir, I need to know where I can get some business hammocks.

Hank Scorpio: Hammocks? My goodness, what an idea. Why didn’t I think of that? Hammocks!

Homer, there’s four places. There’s the Hammock Hut, that’s on third.

Homer: Uh-huh.

Hank Scorpio: There’s Hammocks-R-Us, that’s on third too. You got Put-Your-Butt-There.

Homer: Mm-Hmm.

Hank Scorpio: That’s on third. Swing Low, Sweet Chariot… Matter of fact, they’re all in the same complex; it’s the hammock complex on third.

Homer: Oh, the hammock district!

Hank Scorpio: That’s right.

And:

Marge Simpson: Mr. Scorpio, this house is almost too good for us. I keep expecting to get the bum’s rush.

Hank Scorpio: We don’t have bums in our town, Marge, and if we did they wouldn’t rush, they’d be allowed to go at their own pace.

And:

Homer: Wow, my boss!

Scorpio: Don’t call me that word. I don’t like things that elevate me about the other people. I’m just like you. Oh, sure, I come later in the day, I get paid a lot more and I take longer vacations, but I don’t like the word “boss”.

And:

Hank: Good afternoon, gentlemen. This is Scorpio. I have the Doomsday Device. You have 72 hours to deliver the gold or you’ll face the consequences. And to prove I’m not bluffing, watch this.

(explosion)

Man 1: Oh, my God, the 59th Street bridge!

Man 2: Maybe it just collapsed on its own.

Man 1: We can’t take that chance.

Man 2: You always say that. I want to take a chance.

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Dave Mustaine Tries to Out-Nuge the Nuge

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Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine seems to be crying out for at least as much attention as the country pays to Ted Nugent.

TMZ reports that Mustaine told the crowd at an August 7 concert, “Back in my country, my president … he’s trying to pass a gun ban, so he’s staging all of these murders, like the ‘Fast And Furious’ thing down at the border … Aurora, Colorado, all the people that were killed there … and now the beautiful people at the Sikh temple.”

(h/t) That might actually be more insane than anything Ted Nugent has ever said. It’s hard to say. I’ve always thought Mustaine came across as kind of a tool, but I do like his music marginally more than Nugent’s.

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From beneath you, it devours…

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In honor of Shark Week 2012, the good folks at Mashable have compiled a collection of GIFs highlighting the second-most-terrifying animal on earth (at least to me, and I’m damned if I’m telling you what the first one is.) Here’s my, uh, favorite:

Goblin Shark Attack

At the opposite end of the mood spectrum, we have this GIF of a goblin shark attack. However terrifying most sharks may be, they don’t generally unhinge their entire faces and eject a jaw full of barbed teeth straight into their targets. Goblin sharks, as you can see, are a little different. Their elongated snouts contain highly sensitive electromagnetic sensors, which help them find prey in the blackness of the deepest ocean bottoms, where they dwell.

This video of a goblin shark in the wild comes from the Japanese broadcast of NHK Tokushuu on Aug. 31, 2008. Uploaded to GIFBin, it’s had 198 Facebook shares and more than 14,000 stumbles, from which we can draw certain demographic conclusions about the kind of people on Facebook vs the kind on Stumbleupon

Yes, that is indeed terrifying. What do you think, Jones the cat?

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This Week in WTF, August 10, 2012

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Oahu– Rep. Steve King (R-Idiocracy) found the microfiche of President Obama’s 1961 birth announcement in two Hawaiian newspapers. While he can’t deny the likely authenticity of these announcements, he also cannot rule out the possibility that he is insane (that is the only explanation I can think of for Rep. King’s subsequent wild-eyed speculation):

We went down into the Library of Congress and we found a microfiche there of two newspapers in Hawaii each of which had published the birth of Barack Obama. It would have been awfully hard to fraudulently file the birth notice of Barack Obama being born in Hawaii and get that into our public libraries and that microfiche they keep of all the newspapers published. That doesn’t mean there aren’t some other explanations on how they might’ve announced that by telegram from Kenya. The list goes on.

No word yet on whether he has considered the possibility of time travel. Or space aliens. Or improbable quantum fluctuations creating Barack Obama, fully formed, from a pile of aluminum recycling.

– Fox News doesn’t think our Olympic champions are being patriotic enough, because they don’t compete decked out from head to toe in American flag regalia or something. Our athletes should do it to show how America is exceptional, and also because other nations do it, but America is still exceptional, because shut up. (If you can make it through then entire almost-5-minute clip from Fox News in the linked article, you are made of stronger stuff than I.)

– Bryan Fischer compares kidnapping children from gay or lesbian parents to freeing slaves, thus failing at both American history and basic human decency. I wish I was making this story up.

Photo credit: ‘Oahu’ by Earth Sciences and Image Analysis, NASA-Johnson Space Center [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

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Batman is a River in Turkey

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320px-Batman,_TurkeySeriously.

The Batman River is a major tributary of the Tigris, joining it near the source of Tigris called Dicle River in southeast Turkey. It originates in the Anti-Taurus Mountains (at the Sason and Genç mountains) and flows approximately from north to south, passing near the city of Batman and forming a natural border between the Batman Province and Diyarbakır Province.

It’s also a city and a province.

Just thought you should know. I seriously doubt that the town has anything related to Bruce Wayne, so if you’re going to attempt “Batman tourism,” please don’t be a douche about it.

Photo credit: ‘Batman, Turkey’ by Bryce Edwards [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

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Batman, Fascism, and Absurd Occupy Wall Street Caricatures

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586px-Batman_(truck)I just saw The Dark Knight Rises (as in the start time of the movie was just over three four hours ago) and many thoughts are bouncing through my head. I reserve the right to augment/amend my commentary at a later date. Two warnings before I start:

1. There will be spoilers. Stop reading right now if you haven’t seen the movie and don’t want it spoiled.

2. If you are the sort of person who prefers not to think about movies too much, or is the sort of person to respond to any negative criticism with something like “Jeez, it’s just a movie!!!” you should stop reading now, too, because you’ll only waste your time. I recommend that you instead check out the blog “Indifferent Cats in Amateur Porn” (NSFW, obviously.)

If you are still reading, I will assume that you have read the above disclaimers, and that you not only are interested in what I have to say, but find it more interesting, somehow, than pictures of cats next to ordinary people’s non-airbrushed junk. So here goes:

Dear sweet Flying Spaghetti Monster, is this movie pro-fascist or what?

I should explain, lest my use of the word “fascist” send you into a tizzy. Certain words have been largely stripped of all meaning by modern political discourse. For example, “socialism” has some very specific economic and political meanings, but tends to mean “stuff that Obama does” to many people. People who lack an understanding of both history and irony claim that he is both socialist and fascist. The Dark Knight Rises, viewed at least one way, is just plain fascist, and I use the meaning of the term applied by Noah Brand in his article “The Dark Knight Rises is a Pro-Fascist Movie”: Continue reading →

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