It's Not Working

It's not working. It's never worked, it's never going to work. Somebody please make a chart - every time the government has interfered in the markets to save the economy, every time President Obama has opened his mouth on the issue since Jan 20, the market's slid down.

Guess what happened when Big Brother took over a chunk of Citigroup?

Or don't guess, just click on the link.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Wall-Street-slides-after-apf-14501283.html

Well, Mr. President, we sure have the change. (Hang on, lemme check under the bed... might be another quarter down there...)

How about some hope now?

The polls may be in your favor at the moment, but the market is circling the drain. We're seeing what government interference is doing to the economy, and it is bad.

So, in short, it's not working.

Unless you really do mean to wreck the economy in order to implement the same EU-style socialism that is driving those countries to a slow death. Because that plan's working out incredibly well.

Weekly Quick Hits List for February 27

http://www.collegehumor.com/article:1771357

http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=3093
http://technology.todaysbigthing.com/2009/02/19

http://xkcd.com/369/
(though I have to wonder how many of the “Gardening” entries are courtesy of Spinal Tap)

http://news.aol.com/article/david-after-the-dentist/360214

http://www.cracked.com/article_17090_wheres-bridge-7-biggest-things-ever-stolen.html

I normally won’t put political stuff on this list, but come on, we just had a quasi SOTU address, and this analysis most closely matches my own opinion, namely that Obama presented a liberal agenda couched in conservative terms (i.e., he’s got the job and he’s still campaigning):
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0209/19294.html

Friday Quick Complaints

Things I don't like:

Websites that load their ads first when all you want to do on the main page is click a link off.

Websites that add their content first but don't let you do anything until the ads are loaded (Facebook, I'm calling you especially out on this one).

Computer mice that randomly decide that, even though they are plugged in, they're not going to move the cursor for a while.

Pdf files.

The asinine programming at my school that gives only 30% of the broadband to the dorms between 6 am and 6 pm, even though the bulk of classes run from 10 to 4.

Excuses that are even more moronic than the actions that require said excuses.

Republicans who spend a lot and then try to lecture Democrats on fiscal responsibility.

Democrats who note the hypocrisy of the above... and then pass the largest spending bill in history.

This list was created by Jim shortly after he woke up and before he had any food/coffee/pills.

The man in black

by Jim

Yes. A straight guy is devoting an entire blog post to talking about what he wore today. What is this world coming to?

Anyway,
I tend to think that people who dress in all or mostly black are at least a wee bit pretentious - come on, guys, The Matrix is now ten years old.

Sorry, I actually have to pause to take that one in. The. Matrix. is. ten. years. old. Wow.

Eh, in a world where your Treasury Secretary is a tax cheat, there's not much that should take you by surprise. I guess it's a reflection of my general disdain for all things Hollywood (I want George Lucas to re-release the Prequels with every visual effect removed and see how little a movie he has - though there would be no Jar Jar Bongs, so I guess that's some improvement), but I still consider The Matrix to be on the cutting edge of visual effects technology.

(By the way, the obvious political jab at the start of the previous paragraph does not necessarily reflect Tom's view on the Treasury Secretary or anything else, for example, tennis balls.)

Anyway, The Matrix came out a surprisingly long time ago. But, seriously, if you go around wearing all black (and are a guy), I'll be inclined to think that you think you are:
a) Neo
b) Angel
c) the Ninth Doctor
d) a member of Metallica
e) any of the above, and/or also choking on your own oversized ego.

There are certain other people who like wearing all black who will get absolutely no mention here.

P.S, if you're legitimately famous (for example, in addition to everyone in Metallica, author Neil Gaiman has been known to wear all black), you have an excuse, your ego is warranted, and go for it. This is for all the nobodies.

Okay, hypocrisy self-examination; at the moment I am wearing black boots, black socks, black pants, a white t-shirt, and, when I go outside, a black leather jacket.

Explanation for the black socks - it is laundry day.
Explanation for the black pants - they were the first ones I pulled out of the drawer. I looked outside (remember I have a new masochistic habit of waking up at 6:45, so this was before the weather got bad) and decided I could get by with a sweater and a tan trench coat, and thus avoid wearing my leather jacket with black pants and be a hypocrite.
Explanation for the white t-shirt - what, you think I was gonna wear a clever t-shirt under a sweater where nobody could see it?
Explanation for the leather jacket - the weather did not, as anyone who was paying attention today, stay good for very long. The trench coat did not cut it.
Explanation for the boots - uh, it started raining.

In addition to me showing up to my PoliSci exam dressed like the night-shift worker at a funeral home, a raven (or maybe a crow) decided to land right in front of me as I was walking to the exam.

Yeah, God likes messing with me.

Damn you, YouTube...

If you've got something (like, say, studying for a PoliSci test) to do, do not go to YouTube and search "Pink Floyd- Dark Side of the Rainbow."

I think I'm a conspiracy theorist now. Also gonna have to pull an all-nighter to get ready for this test. Did I mention I woke up early?

The joys of waking up early

by Jim

Apparently I'm giving up sleeping in for Lent. And along with that, my physical and mental health. Though those of you who know me personally know that I'm a walking skeleton with delusions of grandeur, so "health" is relative.

For the record, I've been conscious for nearly three hours. This time last week, I was slapping my head and uttering curse words as I stumbled into the shower, well aware that I was running out of clean laundry and had just missed breakfast again.

I feel mildly unwell, but that might be tomorrow's PoliSci test. Or it could be the fact that I've just added in an extra three hours of consciousness to what is already shaping up to be a fairly miserable day.

Doctor Who Review: The Time Meddler

Can't say I feel like doing an album review tonight. Besides, music today... eh, I'll save that for another day.

Anyway, Doctor Who is this obscure British sci-fi show about a guy with a time machine that's bigger on the inside. It only ran for 26 years (from the day after JFK was assassinated through late 1989). It was recently brought back (in 2005) and has been enjoying more than modest sucess since then.

Its formula for sucess is the fact that nobody on the show is irreplacable (expect a forthcoming post on why any show that does not undergo a major change should have a strict five-year lifespan). When the original Doctor, 58-year-old William Hartnell, got too sick to work and/or remember his lines, they "gently eased him out" (interpret that how you will) and replaced him with a younger (by their standards) actor - then-47-year-old Patrick Troughton. This was a good three years before On Her Majesty's Secret Service, the first (and if I'd had anything to say about it, last) Bond film without Sean Connery.

And unlike 007, they actually explained it in the show.

They had balls back in those days. They'd already changed producers at least twice, and all the other regulars who'd started with Hartnell had already left, along with their characters. Imagine Star Trek trying a stunt like this - actually replacing key Enterprise personnel every year or so. Yeah, they wouldn't do that.

Anyway, tonight I'll be reviewing The Time Meddler, a Doctor Who serial from 1965, from the end of the show's second season. It was the last Who serial produced by the late Verity Lambert, the show's original producer, and in all probability also the last one that she recorded a DVD commentary for. But more on that later.

The story itself is a bit confusing, and the fact that a new character - Steven - has just been introduced doesn't help much. The TARDIS has landed on the Northumbrian coast in the year 1066. Steven, who doesn't believe that the TARDIS is capable of time-travel (but oddly enough has no qualms about accepting the fact that it's bigger on the inside), finds what he thinks is evidence that this is all a big hoax - namely, a wristwatch. They later find a gramaphone and a toaster. Vikings and Saxons run around, there's almost certainly an offscreen rape (this is a children's show in 1965 - seriously), the Doctor is captured and then escapes, and the plot generaly bumbles along for the first three episodes.

Then comes the Episode Three cliffhanger, which basically changes the entirety of the Doctor Who mythos up until that point (look it up on Wikipedia; I'm not going to spoil it here). And then Episode Four almost makes up for three episodes of general confusion.

The simple facts of the story: there's technology that shouldn't exist in 1066. We know this midway through the first episode. The problem is that the plot then basically stalls there for an episode and a half.

It's a landmark serial, to be sure. Guest star Peter Butterworth is absolutely magical, and his scenes with Hartnell contain some of the best banter ever heard - Butterworth very playful and childish, Hartnell very much the stern figure fans know the First Doctor to be. I understand the BBC's reasons for setting this story in the past - as Tom Baker would remark more than a decade afterward, "the BBC is very good at period drama and not so good at giant rats." Unfortunately, the pacing of the plot is atrocious, even for 1965 standards - in the second episode, Steven does some investigating and there's a poorly staged fight scene as well as the aforementioned offscreen rape, and that's about it. Pieces are moved, but no relevant information is revealed until the end of the third episode. Fans watching these once a week would indeed be quite lost by the time that revelation came around.

But here's the thing - for all its flaws, we're still in a stage where this show isn't quite sure what it's supposed to be. Remember, this is the first serial that doesn't have Ian or Barbara in it, and those two were the real protagonists for the first two seasons. Hartnell's vacation from Episode 2 is even more of a bold move, forcing Butterworth, Maureen O'Brien (as Vicki) and Peter Purves (Steven) to carry all the action. And it works. In a way, Hartnell was never the star of his own show; by the time Ian and Barbara left, we were getting Butterworth's take on being a time-traveler, followed shortly by Peter Cushing's big-screen version. So it's ironic that as soon as the generic male lead is removed, and Hartnell gets a chance to move into the star role, other people start doing the exact same thing. I certainly am not the first reviewer to note that Butterworth is a warm-up for Hartnell's sucessor, Patrick Troughton.

Bottom line: Despite all its flaws, I do recommend this, as it is one of the most important serials of the Hartnell era, just after the very first episode and The Dalek Invasion of Earth (which is basically a 50s b-movie shown in six parts). The DVD commentary is, like all the commentaries where the actor who played the doctor is not present (Hartnell died in 1975), fairly light on jokes and high on insight into the behind-the-scenes process. A title card has been inserted at the end of the Episode Four credits, dedicating the DVD to the memory of Verity Lambert, who becomes, I believe, the second person (after Anthony Ainley) to have a commentary on the DVD dedicated to their memory.

Best to watch it all in one go - considering that it was written by the show's outgoing script editor, you'd think the plot would be more coherent...

Why What Won Won (concerning the Oscars)

The 81st Academy Awards are in the books and, since this is what blogs are for, I'm going to sound off on them. More specifically, on awards that people care about (How many people know the difference between Sound Editing and Sound Mixing anyway?). Slumdog Millionaire won 8 awards, which isn't much of a shock. The Director and Picture Awards seem to be a package deal these days-you win one you win both. This tradition is has only been broken once in recent memory-when Ang Lee won for Brokeback Mountain. That was basically a consolation prize because Hollywood was (and still is) too much of a pussy to give Best Picture to a film concerning homosexuals. Don't get me wrong, Slumdog is a solid film and was well made, but I believe Milk never stood a chance since it offends people. Same goes for The Reader. It's about underage sex, and that's controversial so it's out of the running almost immediately. I can't help but wonder if Penn's Best Actor nod is another consolation prize to the film in general. Some may say that this whole thing is too cynical-maybe Sean Penn just did a better job the Mickey Rourke and the other nominees. Maybe, but when you're dealing with actors and art of this caliber, it's much easier and less headache inducing to let politics decide the winner instead of actual opinions, which are notorious for being different amongst large groups of people. This is why Penn won, and this is why Slumdog Millionaire, an underdog film about love with a dash of white guilt concerning conditions in India, beat financial and technical juggernaut Benjamin Button, the only other film that stood a chance at taking home little Oscar this year.

-This article written and directed by Tom. Produced by The Gordric Brothers and Nothingbettertodowithmytime Entertainment.

The Movie - the story so far

A brief history of the movie, which, like Led Zeppelin's 4th album, is untitled. Not because we're crazy pretentious, but because we're crazy indecisive.

by Jim


So, in early spring 2008 I finally saw the 1986 classic British film Withnail & I. As far as I can remember, that was the jumping-off point for the plot of our movie: two guys slumming it in an apartment somewhere doing practically nothing. I transposed it to a college campus in present-day America and gave them a definite mission, namely, to get into, and then out of, a frat.

Tom and I tossed around the idea of doing a film that was a number of shorts, but only two of them really took- the aforementioned story, which would also involve them being in a band somehow a la Spinal Tap, and a story that I ripped off from an episode of Doctor Who.

So during the summer of 2008 we slowly patched the script together. Then suddenly it was time to go off to school... but summer 09 draws nearer, and when it gets here... then the movie shall be made.
For real(?)

-Jim

DDDD, Part 1

First post.

Very quickly, this blog is run by two people, collectively known as the Gordric Brothers. During the summer they live somewhere in Illinois. Jim (me) goes to college in Wisconsin and Tom (that other guy) goes to college in Virginia.

We're making an incredibly bad low-budget movie written by me and directed by him. This blog will consist of updates on that. Also, I'll be reviewing classic rock/hard rock/metal albums from time to time, and he'll be reviewing movies. Expect a fair amount of whining from both of us on random other issues from time to time as well.

We're doing this as one blog because it's mostly about the movie we're making, and we can't see the point of splitting up that news into two blogs.

-Jim