Big Pen

Oct 18, 2014

Good Stuff Round-Up: Tornados Stunts and Music

Today, I am posting links to good articles I've found around the web over the past few weeks and months...
One of them is:

Here-are-10-of-the-most-awesomest-movie-stunts-in-film

Who Knew Tom Cruise does nearly all his own stunts?

Or How about THIS link, of a family surviving an Illinois tornado?

chilling-video-of-tornado-destroying-family-s-illinois-home

Or perhaps this "quiz" about which pop albums sold the most copies?

which-album-sold-more

Enjoy. Oh, and that gratuitous pic of Alina Vacariu is here for no good reason at all. Perhaps it will annoy someone. Not my intent. It just looks nice,... that's all...

Prevent Scumbags From Stealing Your PIN at Checkouts

A recent article showed how people can figure out your PIN CODE while you are swiping out a a grocery store... The chilling details, and the simple solution are all at Lifehacker... Hint: Use a Pencil.

Lifehacker Article Here

Customize Netflix A LOT

Customize Netflix A LOT

Chrome Plug-In Customizes Netflix

Features:

- This extension will add a hide button next to every movie poster so that you can

hide it from any future listings. You can still use the search box

to bring that movie up. 

- Every Netflix profile has their own data set. For example, if you and your wife

use the same netflix account, each of you can hide the videos you don't want

only for your profile.

Sep 28, 2013

Joseph Gordon Levitt: Not The Smartest Guy in the Room After All

I am hard pressed to find a dumber movie than "Premium Rush". In JGL' other notable films, he comes off as a smart guy's smart guy, but he evens out his image in the most hackneyed film to hit the screen this decade.
I won't waste your time or min with a full review with spoilers, but if you believe that a bike messenger can hit 50 mph in NYC, with a police bike officer chasing him with no calls for back up, then you probably enjoy other mindless BS like Gone in 60 secs, or any Vin Diesel movie. An idiotic plot that could all be solved with a single phone call to the cops goes on for 100 minutes. I watched at 2x speed for the final 40, so I only wasted 80 minutes by my calculations. If you understood my math, stay away from this turd!

Sep 14, 2013

Jinji Kohan Cooks Up Another Winner with 'Orange.."

There have been a lot of great ensemble casts over the years, from the Sopranos, to Deadwood to Frasier and Weeds. One season in, and the cast they've assembled for 'Orange Is The New Black"
might be the most talented of them all. The show, about a WASP-ish 30 year-old girl who gets sentenced to prsion for being a drug mule, gives the audience a look at female prison life that clearly side-steps all the expected stereotypes, and delivers incredibly well-rounded characters, far more fleshed-out than those on her previous show, "Weeds." Since we, the audience, are all wonderful people, we can try to look down on these ladies, but through the use of well-timed flashbacks, we learn why each inmate is there, and it makes us see that we're all just one bad decision away from joining them.
The lead character is both beguiling and bewildering. Taylor Schilling plays Piper Chapman, who is in the slam for 15 months, and I figure Kohan will have her do something,....... ill-advised, if the show runs more than 3 seasons, as I suspect it will. How else will she stay? The show is so good, I hope she murders someone!

Orange Is the New Black Info On IMDB

Breaking Bad's Final Eps Are Epic

Breaking Bad. If you haven't seen the show by now, I guess there's not much else that will convince you that you don't like well written, edge of your seat drama. It's free for viewing on Netflix, so it can't be a money issue... Are you afraid of the time committment? Yo, the first season is only 6 episodes! You'll be wishing that the last season had 60.

The most recent episode (SPOILERS AHEAD, SKIP TO THE PARAGRAPH FOLLOWING THIS)

with the desert gun battle between Walt and Hank easily ranks with anything in the multiplex for cinematography, but because this is between characters we all know so well, and have an investment in, the battle is jaw-dropping, and the simple cut to black RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FIGHT? Talk about your cliff-hanger. I still find myself rooting for Walt, despite where he's gone, because I sense that he knows he's gone too far, and is trying to just exit the Earth as quetly as he joined it, but it is not to be...

It is followed up each week by the pale-in-comparison 'Low Winter Sun' which I'm trying to get into, to ease my inevitable withdrawal from Breaking Bad that I will feel in 3 weeks. AMC is in trouble, as LWS is not getting traction, and Mad Men and this are wrapping up. They shuffled the well-done Hell On Wheels to the Saturday night graveyard, for tactical reasons unknown to me. It should be the follow-up show behind BB... And now rumors that "Better Call Saul" is a go from AMC gives us all hope that the well-hidden humor in Breaking Bad gets its chance to blossom. Bill Odenkirk says he'd do it in a heartbeat, and that is the saving grace for all of us come 10:01 Sunday night October 11.... It'll be an epic finale. Vince Gilligan says he cried after writing the finale.......

Oct 15, 2010

Viral Video: If This Isn't Viral, It Should Be....

My nephew, who is a dad himself, sent me this clip... What's it like to be a DAD? This sums it up, Yo!

Sep 17, 2010

Oh Dear God... Ryan Seacrest's High School Picture

11 Points . com has a fairly great set of lists such as the list of 11 Musicians who would rather you didn't see their High School Photos..... and 11 movie stars..... The biggest mind-blowers: Eminem, George Clooney and the manly-man Ryan Seacrest.... I like Ryan.... He's good at what he does.... but woah.... Never would've seen his potential back in high school......

Sep 8, 2010

How NOT To Fire A Watermelon

Image via Wikipedia

Poor girl...... She obviously never got up at 6 a.m. on Saturday mornings to watch Wile E. Coyote beta testing these type of contraptions, and moving on to something less.... headache inducing.... I guess not winning the Emmy this year made The Amazing Race go into panic mode (i.e. "someone's gotta get messed up every episode, or we'll become irrelevant"..) And how about her "compassionate" teammate? THAT'S where the cat fight probably got edited out...

Aug 31, 2010

Mashups: If You Can't Beat 'Em, Do Them

I've been very busy, creating over 50 instrumental and vocal mashups, specifically mixing new music with 80's music.... Here's an example....

Tons more at my website:

Aug 30, 2010

A Musician's Thoughts on Tech and Trash

Steven Wilson started the show out with a solo...

Image via Wikipedia

My favorite band for the past 5 years has been Porcupine Tree, a British progressive metal band that's been around for 20 years.....
A couple samples, if interested....
Halo Shallow Your Blackest Eyes

Lead Guitarist, and mastermind of the band Steven Wilson was asked about the shape of the music industry...

Difficult to say. This is the worst time in history for the music industry. Everyone agrees on it, artists and labels - everyone involved.
I believe that ultimately what will happen is that recorded music will become something no one will pay for. People will expect to get it for free, even now a lot of people don't think about buying music, just to download it. Recorded music will become an advertisement for the live show. I already see it in Porcupine Tree concerts, where the attendances keep on growing, and the record sales as well, but not in the same proportion.
People get to know the band from downloading on the internet for free but they pay for the shows. This has a positive side, because it means that bands who play real instruments, and can manage a good live show will survive, and the kind of manufactured artists like Britney Spears won't. These are interesting times....

Anesthetize (DVD + Blu-ray)Anesthetize (Ac3)

.......It struck me that in the 21st Century what's replaced race relations as the number 1 concern for young people is a kind of terminal boredom, a generation X thing, it's the blank generation. It's exacerbated and accelerated by living vicariously through gadgets. Since I was a kid in the 80's the amount of technology that's around now is unbelievable. The worst thing my parents were probably worried about was TV, and we only had 4 channels in the UK back then!
But now we live in the information technology age – with the Internet, Ipods, cellphones, Playstations, and Xbox's. You have the proliferation of TV channels, digital TV and MTV and it's various imitators. You have lowest common denominator stuff like American Idol, Big Brother, Cribs, and all the other similar shows.
It seems to me that no one's really trying take notice or take gauge of how all this stuff is affecting the younger generation. You know, what kind of human beings are we going to turn out?

----Steven Wilson

I couldn't have put it better myself, so I didn't try.... Music is dying a most unflattering, slow, painful death, and it's hard to watch, and even harder to listen to. Like Wilson, I want to go deaf when I hear most of the stuff out there, especially rap. How about you? Do you think today's youth are actually HEARING the music? When they have no physical contact with the band, such as an album or a CD to own, they simply delete it from their iTunes playlist, move on, with the attention span of a flea....and forget the whole thing happened... He just wrote a guest editorial in September about music reviews.....found here

"Great music journalism is an art in its own right. It places music in a historical and cultural context while revealing the passion and personality of the musicians that made it. It reaches out beyond the music to the core of the human condition, just like the music it is about. "

Aug 26, 2010

The Most Alive Man In The World

If this video hasn't gone viral, than it will soon... Unbelievable... gorgeous... thought-provoking....
To see the video, you must be a Facebook member... This is almost worth joining the service for..

The video is here on Facebook.

Aug 9, 2010

Caddyshack's 30th Anniversary Trivia

Not by any means, a top 50 movie favorite of mine, Caddyshack still is a must-see movie... My God, I am old... 30 yrs? Anyway, here's Trivia Fact No. 1:
1. Bill Murray's classic "Cinderella story" moment came from two simple lines of direction. Harold Ramis asked Murray to play the scene like a kid who pretends he's a sports broadcaster; Murray asked for a few rows of flowers and then improvised. He did the scene in one take, too.

The other 29 are over at Moviefone

Aug 6, 2010

The Search For The Funniest Screen Names

One of my favorite sites is Gizmodo, because the readership is pretty literate and funny.. One of the screen names on there made me spill coffee on my keyboard.. Korean Abdul Jabbar....That got me thinking.... and then I did a short search for other witty names.... a few I found amongst the crap:

iris wishkey
mexyback
Lactose_The_Intolerant
daft.vader
not eurotrash
DeucheBagalo
IHopeThisNameWillFi
My Pretty Pwny

I then discovered there are wise asses who name their wi-fi networks... creative names... which can be seen here.

My Favorite Guilty Pleasure of 2009 Returns: Dating In The Dark

Could I BE more embarrassed? I watched all of last season's 6 episodes of the ABC-TV reality series "Dating In The Dark," and was surprised a network would only order 6 episodes of a show...and bummed that there weren't more... I'm not a reality TV freak... but this... is safe voyeurism in its purest form... not even the people we're watching can see each other...

The Concept? 3 guys, and 3 girls spend a weekend in a special house, separated into two groups, and occasionally, each guy and girl get to go into a pitch black room, to get to know each other... At the end, they get to finally see each other, and then decide whether to date again in the real world in the future... You see more REALITY in this show, than most others.... Guys, like the moron presented in the teaser trailer try to hit on the women, and the women are free to react facially to the nonsense...since no one can see their expressions, but the viewer.... a vital social cue that we don't normally get to see.... I've never watched Big Brother, because it seems like there are just 16 actor wanna-be's who are looking for FAR more than their 15 minutes of fame... Dating ITD seems more genuine.... (ABC TV Monday, Aug. 9 8 p.m.)

Aug 5, 2010

Best of YouTube in 4 minutes?

With the semi-intriguing movie about Facebook coming out soon enough, someone created a fake trailer for a film about Youtube.. And it should get made... but in the meantime, hold on to your hats for a whirlwind tour of the YouTube experience....

Back When America Actually Dreamed Big

I discovered, then forgot about, then re-discovered a website/blog that highlights lots of vintage photos of America..... One reader summed up the impact of photos like these:

"Having been so used to seeing this time period only in black and white it's almost surreal to actually see it in colour..." Obviously.. the main pic on this post is b&w, but click here and here for a ton of COLOR vintage photos...

The Detroit River circa 1910. "Sinking cast section of Michigan Central Railroad Company tunnel." Detroit Publishing Company glass negative. View full size.

Jul 31, 2010

FIDO is the obvious next movie to see after Zombieland....

Cover of Fido

Should a movie about an 11 year-old boy, who befriends a zombie get an R Rating? This was the question that nagged me as I sat down to watch "Fido." a Canadian movie releasedin 2007 starring Carrie Anne Moss (The Matrix) and Tim Blake Nelson... While the DVD cover says it is gut laughing funny, I was more intrigued, waiting for the "R" rated violence to happen...

For the first time, I think a movie's rating influenced how I viewed the film... I kept expecting something that would force me to pass by it on the next family movie night... Nope.... Nothing... Alright, so a kid beheads an old woman... who here hasn't seen a few of those things happen from time to time? And yes, who hasn't seen a mom kill and burn a couple of ill-mannered kids....? But seriously, I am not afraid to recommend this to kids aged 12 and up. It makes no real attempt to scare you....just entertain....

The movie is awesome.... Basically very funny, and exudes 1950's charm, a la Pleasantville.... But shame on the MPAA for rating it 'R'... This is a PG-13 movie all the way!! Unlike any other zombie movie you are likely to see this week...
One reviewer noted: "It is probable you will appreciate the humour of this film unless your father tried to eat you."

Don't Throw A Brick In Your Washing Machine

FAST FORWARD to about 45 seconds in..... wait for it........
Then read some of the comments posted by readers of Gizmodo below.....:

The robots will just see things like this as snuff films and cut our food rations in the future because of it :(

Tsk Tsk Tsk. He forgot to use faBrick softener.

That brick was filthy. Should be all clean now.

Awww man that a really nice washer. I wish I had a washer so bad.

Usually washing machines have concrete on the bottom to weigh it down to prevent something like this from happening. They must have removed that weight, or this thing would not have gone very far.

So...why didn't Jack use a brick to kill the smoke monster?

His mother is going to be really mad!

Oh man. Why do I feel horribly bad for an inanimate object? What's wrong with me? Why wasn't I able to kill bystanders in Grand Theft Auto?

Can a man feel sympathy towards tools and imaginary things?

Omg, that's so stupid and i can't stop laughing. I don't know why, it's cruel to the poor washing machine, but it's hilarious.

Sounds like a song from Nine Inch Nails.

so, what was wrong/going on with the machine before he put the brick in?

Jul 29, 2010

Sunday Night Football? Uh.....Try NFC East Footbal

NBC has lost their freakin' minds, giving all the football love to one conference this season. The 4 NFC East teams: Dallas Cowboys, Philadelphia Eagles, New York Giants and Washington Redskins appear a combined 10 times out of the 16 games televised...The Giants and Philadelphia each appear 3 times this season, despite neither team remotely doing well last season..The Giants missed the playoffs at 8-8, and Philly got trounced in their one wildcard game... Total rip-off if you ask me... My Denver Broncos appear just once, vs. San Diego on Monday Night.. The NFC East teams appear a combined 17 times in ALL prime-time games this season... Boring........The Super Bowl champs, the New Orleans Saints get little Sunday love with just one appearance on Sunday Night, but 4 other prime-time games: twice on Monday, and twice on Thursday...

Jul 25, 2010

The Scientifically Perfect Handshake

Lifehacker had an interesting article on handshakes....As usual, the comments were more entertaining than the article... First the meat of the article....
Researchers at the University of Manchester in England have turned their attention to uncovering the perfect handshake:

1) right hand
2) a complete grip
3) and a firm squeeze (but not too strong)
4) in a mid-point position between yourself and the other person
5) a cool and dry palm,
6) approximately three shakes,
7) with a medium level of vigor,
8) held for no longer than two to three seconds,
9) with eye contact kept throughout and
10) a good natural smile
11) with a slow offset
12) with, of course, an appropriate accompanying verbal statement.

COMMENTS:
Oddly enough, its almost the same formula for someone at a urinal...
---------
So, no deductions if I whip it out? AWESOME!!! yes. I've been drinking..
---------

I find that this always does the trick...
------------
Isn't this entirely culture-specific? I've been in the middle east and south-east asia, where handshakes are completely different - very limp, a shake or two, but then the grip can last upwards of 30 seconds. I've had short conversations before the hand release. Very awkward for a westerner the first few times. I've gotten used to it, but I still don't like it. It is fun to demonstrate to other people, and see them start getting very antsy :)My point is that its very culture-dependent.
-----------

Cartoon site "The Oatmeal" has a nice overview of "The 9 Types of Crappy Handshakes": HANDSHAKES

Jul 24, 2010

Great Movie Pick-Up Lines

In the movies, they make it look so easy..
Take this, from Clark Gable to Jean Harlow in Red Dust:
"Mind if I get drunk with you?"

Or Annette Bening to Warren Beatty in Bugsy:
"I gotta warn ya, every man I've ever gone out with has been ruined."
"Well, that's what they get for messing with my girl."

Or, of course, Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn in Charade:
Cary: "Do we know each other?"

Audrey: "Why, do you think we're going to? Because I already know an awful lot of people and until one of them dies I couldn't possibly meet anyone else."

Cary: "Well, if anyone goes on the critical list, let me know."

“I would give anything if you were two people, so I could call up the one who is my friend and tell her about the one I like so much.”
(Albert Brooks to Holly Hunter, Broadcast News, 1987)

“Can you keep a secret? I'm trying to organize a prison break. We have to first get out of this bar, then the hotel, then the city, and then the country. Are you in or you out?”
“I'm in.”
(Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson, Lost In Translation, 2004)

“Your eyes are amazing do you know that? You should never shut them, not even at night.”
(Oliver Martinez to Dianne Lane, Unfaithful, 2002)

Jul 23, 2010

Inception Hurts Your Head

Let me start off by saying I love movies that ask you to think... But I also am partial to movies that have a narrator chime in occasionally, to reinforce what I think I just saw.... Inception... well.... needs continuous narration, from the very first frame.... to the VERY LAST. I give it an 8 out of 10. I love every movie Ellen Page has made, and most of Leo's....I immediately glossed the movie as "The Matrix meets James Bond." and apparently so did a few other critics... The visuals are worth the ever-increasing price of admission alone... At my thater, it showed on the former IMAX screen, and they charged $12... Damn....Add popcorn/diet coke, and we're at $26.... this had BETTER be a good movie..... I hated the first bombastic 10 minutes of the film, as it doesn't put it's big toe into the cinematic water... It does a freaking cannonball, splashing all kinds of plot and narrative over you while you're still reaching for your popcorn.... After awhile the film does let you in on the idea: What if you can get 7 or 8 people together to simultaneously share one dream? And what if you put one person in charge of "building" the very grounds, and buildings you will visit in this dream? And what if you wanted to take advantage of one of the other people in this same dream? And what if it took you 3 or more levels of dreaming to get it done?.... Go enjoy this movie, and quit reading now... No way can ANYONE sum it up.. It's good. Not perfect, but good. Comment below with your rating....

The First Post-Apocolpytic Reality Series

The Discovery Channel finally got off their duffs, and added something to their seemingly non-stop Crab-Fishing coverage, and came up with something intriguing.... A "Survivor" type show in an urban area, predicated on the idea that something HUGELY BAD has happened, and 7 volunteers are on their own.....Against real people, and staged .... um events.......

It Premieres this Tuesday, the 27th.
To get a taste, click here

Jul 21, 2010

A Few Thoughts About Time Travel

A recent article in WIRED.COM talked about Time Travel, and the latest philosophical thoughts about it, but it is the reader's comments that are the most fun to read.....
From the article:
" .....Any theory of time travel has to confront the devastating “grandfather paradox,” in which a traveler jumps back in time and kills his grandfather, which prevents his own existence, which then prevents the murder in the first place, and so on........"

Selected comments from readers:
- Someone’s mere presence in the past is sufficient to disrupt air currents, people, etc. so that the future is altered (even if imperceptibly) on an exponential scale depending on how far into the past one traveled. For time travel to the past to work, it would be a one way trip; one could never travel to the past and return to the same future from whence they came.

Posted by: sixwings | 07/20/10 | 6:05 pm |
- Any physicist (e.g., Stephen Hawking, Kip Thorne, Michio Kaku, etc.) who claims that general relativity does not forbid time travel is a fucking crackpot or a liar/con artist.
Nothing can move in spacetime, goddammit. Furthermore, the idea that we are already traveling in time toward the future at one second per second is not even wrong. It is an illusion of the mind that we are traveling toward the future. There is no time dimension because a time dimension would make motion impossible. There is only the changing present, the NOW. That’s it.
All your time travel fantasies are crap. LOL.

- Posted by: Xylenz | 07/20/10 | 6:09 pm |
Someone please go back in time and shoot sixwings’ grandfather.

- All the people who have ever gone back in time and shot their own grandfathers are already not here. The future is all done and in our past already.

- The question is — If time travel is possible, why hasn’t there been a scientist come tell his past self or other scientists that they’ve figured it out. He could help the process along. But then he wouldn’t need to if the process would be fast-tracked in the first place.
But then surely someone would have visited our time from the future by now if time travel is ever going to be possible??

- If you are going to travel back in time you already have. There is no way to change what has happened. You may go back with the intention of killing your grandfather or mine. You have already failed to do so, it is an inevitability. This takes away free will, turning us into mere chemical reactions going through phase changes as the universe cycles through.