Month: May 2006

Sam Anderson of Slate recently bought the newly released first volume of He-Man: Masters Of The Universe on DVD and took the opportunity to write about it in the article Rediscovering He-Man. Among other things, he had a somewhat starting revelation:

The best part about rewatching He-Man, after the initial nostalgia-burst, was tracking the show’s hilarious accidental homo-eroticism—an aspect I missed completely as a first-grader. In the ever-growing lineup of “outed” classic superheroes, He-Man might be the easiest target of all. It’s almost too easy: Prince Adam, He-Man’s alter ego, is a ripped Nordic pageboy with blinding teeth and sharply waxed eyebrows who spends lazy afternoons pampering his timid pet cat; he wears lavender stretch pants, furry purple Ugg boots, and a sleeveless pink blouse that clings like saran wrap to his pecs. To become He-Man, Adam harnesses what he calls ’“fabulous secret powers”: His clothes fall off, his voice drops a full octave, his skin turns from vanilla to nut brown, his giant sword starts gushing energy, and he adopts a name so absurdly masculine it’s redundant. Next, he typically runs around seizing space-wands with glowing knobs and fabulously straddling giant rockets. He hangs out with people called Fisto and Ram Man, and they all exchange wink-wink nudge-nudge dialogue: “I’d like to hear more about this hooded seed-man of yours!” “I feel the bony finger of Skeletor!” “Your assistance is required on Snake Mountain!” Once you start thinking along these lines, it’s impossible to stop.

Great, another sacred childhood memory ruined… 😉

Ben Stein has an interesting op-ed piece in the New York Times entitled You’re Rich? Terrific. Now Pay Up. (registration required, link will expire soon; sorry) in which he reveals some interesting thoughts on the rich and “superrich:”

The real problem is the difference between the rich — including rich oil people, of whom there are not many, but there are enough — and the poor. It is up to the government to redress this extraordinary difference in incomes of the rich and the nonrich, even at the margins.

What Congress can do, and should do, is address the stunning underpayment of military men and women and the staggering budget deficits that will be a burden on our posterity for decades, by raising the taxes on the rich. It’s fine that there are rich people. It’s even fine that there are superrich people.

But if they are superrich, they derive special benefits from life in the United States that the nonrich don’t. For one thing, they can make the money in a safe environment, which is not true for the rich in many countries. It is just common decency that they should pay much higher income taxes than they do. Taxes for the rich are lower than they have been since at least World War II — that is to say, in 60 years.
…
Whatever rationale there may have been in 2001 for lowering their taxes is long gone. It’s time for them — us, because it includes me — to pay their (our) share.

It’s not about oil. It’s about fairness.

Great article; too bad it won’t change a thing…

First of all, yes, I still watch American Idol. I’m fully aware of how cheesy the show is, but I still tune in every week. :-p Anyway, for those of you like me who can’t believe that ostensible front-runner Chris Daughtry got voted off last night, there is a small bit of silver lining: supposedly tonight he will announce that the band Fuel is offering him a gig as vocalist.

I’m not sure how this will work considering that Fuel already has a vocalist, but I’m actually somewhat glad that Daughtry got this gig rather than winning. If that had happened, it would have all but ensured his indentured servitude by the American Idol marketing machine, which would’ve surely castrated mainstreamed his sound beyond recognition. However, I suppose he’ll still have to do the cheesy summer tour thing with the rest of the top contestants, which isn’t much better. Here’s hoping that this gig will lead to bigger and better things for him, as I think he deserves them…

Update: CNN confirms that Fuel “offered Daughtry a job Thursday.” I didn’t realize that Brett Scallions, their lead singer, had quit some time ago, so this now makes a lot of sense. The article goes into some more detail about Daughtry’s time on American Idol and reminded me that he sang the Fuel song Hemorrhage on the show several weeks ago.

One of the cheesiest “movie trailers” I’ve seen in a while is Pac-Man: The Movie (YouTube video). Go watch it; it’s just too weird to explain. Special props for the awesome remix of the Pac-Man theme music… 😉

W has been in office for five long, torturous years. What do you think the best moment of W’s tenure has been so far? Here’s W’s answer:

“You know, I’ve experienced many great moments, and it’s hard to name the best,” Bush told weekly Bild am Sonntag when asked about his high point since becoming president in January 2001.

“I would say the best moment of all was when I caught a 7.5-pound perch in my lake,” he told the newspaper in an interview published Sunday. Bush said the worst moment was Sept. 11, 2001, when hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.

As mind-numbingly idiotic as that answer is, I think that one of the somewhat tongue-in-cheek poll responses at the end of the article might just say it all: “Yes, everything else he’s done pales in comparison.”

Oh, and it’s good to see that he didn’t forget to include “9/11” in there. Moron.

In honor of Pink Floyd album Dark Side of the Moon’s 1500th week on the Billboard charts, Billboard is featuring an interview with Roger Waters.

The BBC reports that:

A joint UK-US team has put forward an alternative theory of cosmic evolution.

It proposes that the Universe undergoes cycles of “Big Bangs” and ’“Big Crunches,” meaning our Universe is merely a “child of the previous one.”

It challenges the conventional view of the cosmos, which observations show to be 12-14 billion years old.

Professor Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University, New Jersey explains that “this new theory suggests that there’s a continuous cycle of universes, with each a repeat of the last, but not an exact replica.”

Man, I should not be trying to grasp this kind of stuff just before bed…

The recent Worth1000 PhotoShop contest Poor Products 8 has some fun entries. One of my favorites is the toilet/toothbrush… 🙂

ASCII Maps takes any Google Map and renders it in ASCII characters. Fun…

Pretty Planet has some amazing images of the Earth from space…