February 29th, 2004
Anyone who thinks that reality TV has reached rock bottom with Back to Reality should think again: The Guardian reports on an Italian show called Scalpel: Nobody’s Perfect:
Annamaria had always been a bit self-conscious. In the Bel Paese, where at 69 Sophia Loren still turns heads, the 20-year-old was painfully aware of her flat chest.
And then along came the adverts in Italian newspapers offering free plastic surgery. Only one drawback: you had to have it on camera, in front of several million viewers.
This week Annamaria bared her A cups to the nation on prime-time TV, dotted lines penned around them by surgeon Roy de Vita as he mapped out the planned ‘before’ and ‘after’.
[…]
Since the show was devised by Endomol, the creators of Big Brother, we can safely assume that the idea is being shopped round the British TV networks even now.
(Must. Resist. Cracking. Joke. About. It. Coming. Several. Years. Too. Late. For. Jordan.)
February 29th, 2004
Here’s this weekend’s collection of pretty pictures
February 29th, 2004
Over at tequila mockingbird, a fantastic tale of a wrong number:
[…]
i was on a break during training i was conducting for two legal assistants when my phone rang.
the number on the screen was a baltimore area code, so i assumed it was one of our baltimore attorneys who is a particularly frequent caller.
“hello?”
“hey, jules, what’s going on?”
“uh … just working … how about you?”
i have no idea who this is.
“wellllll, it’s not the best day.”
i’m thinking this sort of sounds like one of my friends, but i’m not really sure. and he just told me he’s having a bad day. so, i’m thinking it would not be the best time to say “i am very sorry to hear that. and also, i have no idea who you are.”
so, of course, i keep talking. my plan - if you can really call it a plan - is to keep him talking until i definitely recognize his voice, or until he gives me some descriptive detail that clearly identifies him.
“oh no, i’m sorry to hear that. what’s going on?”
“well, i guess my luck finally ran out. the feds finally showed up. this morning. it doesn’t look good, jules. i’m pretty sure i’m going to need your help in finding a good home for the dogs, because i’m pretty sure i’m going to be going away for a while. can you believe it?”
[…]
It gets better and better after that, trust me.
February 29th, 2004
Courtesy of Francis Strand:
February 29. A day to remember that everything takes a bit of compromise, that if you don’t fudge things around the edges, dire consequences are in store. A day to remember that every four years, we’re forced to add a day to prevent summer from becoming winter over the centuries. […]
February 29th, 2004
Three year-old Gabby Gingras feels no pain, having been born with Hereditary Sensory and Autonomic Neuropathy Type-5. This very rare condition stops the nerve fibres from sending a signal to the brain. Which sounds good, until you consider that pain is often a sign that you’re doing something you shouldn’t.
It’s hard to read about her life without wincing:
The teeth she didn’t break off while biting toys were removed by an oral surgeon after Gabby chewed up her mouth and tongue so badly she had to be hospitalized.
It’s not just immediately visible damage that’s a problem: at one point, she broke her jaw and nobody knew for a month. Here’s hoping that Gabby survives to an age at which she’s capable of monitoring her body’s condition and recognising the signs of damage.
[Via MetaFilter]
February 28th, 2004
After the subject of the Farscape miniseries came up earlier this week in comments, it occurred to me that there’s been almost no news of progress on the Farscape mini-series. Even the Save Farscape site is lacking in hard information beyond the “officially unofficial” announcement that the miniseries would go into production in mid-December 2003. The nearest I’ve seen to official word on the production is this report on What’s Shooting in New South Wales:
FARSCAPE MINI-SERIES
TYPE: Telemovies (2 x 2 hr)
PRODUCTION COMPANY: Farscape Mini-Series Productions
PHONE: 8748 9299
START SHOOT: 15/12/03
WRAP: 15/3/04
Against that, there’s this report on Usenet from earlier this week (admittedly, a second-hand source at best) that Henson told a journalist that production hadn’t started yet.
If I were paranoid I might wonder whether the whole project has fallen through, particularly given that the management at Henson have presumably been preoccupied with negotiating the sale of the Muppets to Disney of late. But that’s very much a worst-case scenario. More likely, the silence is due to the production team being too busy working hard in Australia on the set to be spending time chatting with journalists in LA, and once the miniseries is in post-production and broadcast rights have been sold we’ll no doubt start seeing interviews with the show’s stars and writers. I hope.
[NSW Film and Television Office article via James O’Rance]
February 28th, 2004
I don’t follow baseball, but even I’ve heard of the “curse” on the Chicago Cubs. The latest evidence of the curse was last year’s disastrous intervention by a fan who attempted to grab a ball, in the process knocking it away from a Cubs fielder and contributing to the team’s loss in the World Series playoffs. So what do you do when your team is cursed? One approach would be to blow up the accursed ball.
The question is, what do Newcastle United have to blow up to break their long dry spell…
February 28th, 2004
This bizarre-looking custom-built guitar is aptly named: the Pikasso.
I notice that the description of the instrument states that when the Pikasso’s 42 strings are tightly strung the instrument is under 1,000lbs of pressure. I don’t know a thing about guitars, so I have no idea whether that’s an unusually high tension level or perfectly routine, but I can’t help thinking that if the strings ever broke the poor guitarist would be flayed alive…
[Via bluishorange]
February 26th, 2004
The Institute of Official Cheer has a new exhibit: Stagworld, a look at some choice moments from the men’s magazines of the 1950s and 1960s.
Strangely compelling stuff. I mean, how can you not want to see the illustration that accompanied an article about “the Mata Hari Teachers Who Tripped up 3 Nazi Spies?”
“For 2 weeks the 3 young American teachers, on a vacation in London, behaved like harlots in order to find out what Plans the Nazis had Hatched to take over England.” […]
February 25th, 2004
Why won’t my brilliant anti-spam strategy work? Tick as many boxes as applicable:
Your post advocates a
( ) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won’t work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we’ll be stuck with it
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don’t care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else’s career or business
[…]
Very, very good.
[Via Boing Boing]
February 25th, 2004
Gary Farber has noticed a hot new writer who looks set to have a long career ahead of Him. He’s rumoured to have written a multi-volume epic which makes The Lord of the Rings look like a short story.
[Via Amygdala]
February 25th, 2004
Fametracker presents From the Future: Best Picture Nominees Turned TV Series: 2007-08:
Lost in Translation, starring Amy Jo Johnson and Jim Belushi, Mondays at 10 PM on NBC
In the elegant Tokyo Hyatt, Charlotte (Amy Jo Johnson) — often left alone while her photographer husband John (Christopher Gorham) works — has little to do but read, lie about in her underwear, and change the lives of the restless middle-aged American men who cross her path in the hotel. In the pilot, Charlotte meets aging movie star Bob Harris (Jim Belushi), who quickly becomes besotted with her as they explore the karaoke boxes and suchi bars of Japan. At the end of the episode, Bob passionately — and in exhaustive, entirely audible detail — declares his love for Charlotte, and they plan to continue their tryst periodically while remaining married to their current spouses. But Charlotte has her youthful magic to work on yet more dissatisfied fiftysomething male business travelers. In later episodes, Charlotte helps disgruntled CPA Jim (Bruce Davison) to reconnect with his love of adding figures by taking him on an inspirational tour of a local calculator factory; brings pharmaceutical salesman Eric (Joe Morton) back from a flirtation with a midlife adoption of vegetarianism by taking him out for Kobe beef; and helps heavyset Horace (Ernie Sabella) to embrace his size by accompanying him to a sumo wrestling match. But even as she dallies with these Bobby-come-latelys — and her husband, occasionally — Charlotte’s heart and sheer pink panties belong to Bob, who visits to rekindle their affair, coincidentally in November, February, and May! You won’t want to miss the season finale; John becomes suspicious about Charlotte’s activities in her absence when he finds an inside-out camouflage t-shirt hidden in her dresser drawer. Will Charlotte bother to assuage his fears about her fidelity, or make a new life with Bob, working at the Sanrio factory? Konichiwa, romance and suspense!
The other nominees fare even less well; I think I can safely say that the TV version of Master and Commander would cause Patrick O’Brian fans the world over to rise up as one and raze the studio to the ground.
February 24th, 2004
I noticed the other day that the Internet Movie Database page for Lost in Translation showed a different poster to the one which I’d seen.
Instead of Bill Murray’s Bob in his dressing gown, sitting on the bed in his hotel room looking glum, the alternative poster design shows Scarlett Johansson’s character peering out from under her umbrella at a Japanese city street in daylight. (A larger image of the latter poster can be found here, along with links to the more widely-seen Bill Murray poster and three other alternative designs, all of them much less effective.) I can understand why focussing on Bill Murray’s character in his hotel room works as a way to sell the film, but I think I prefer the Scarlett Johansson poster the IMDB used.
Perhaps it’s just that I wish every city had buildings with dinosaurs wandering across them…