To Boldly Nerd Like No One Has Nerded Before

Any kid in my neighborhood when I was in elementary school would have cheerfully murdered people in their beds to get their hands on this USS Enterprise bridge playset.

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Bonnie Tyler has left the building.

Like everyone else who secretly loved the shit out of the song "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and its bizarro video but was too cool to admit it, I am saddened by this news.

In tribute, the best spoof video of all time:

"I didn't get a harrumph from that guy!"

Happy one hundredth birthday to a true national treasure, Mel Brooks!

Tab Clearing...

• If your laptop or phone is getting long in the tooth, the best time to upgrade is three months ago: How the AI boom is driving an inflationary surge in consumer electronic prices.


• The guys with the Roman statue PFPs don't know jack about the classics they claim to love.


• War Films and the Experience of War.

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Star Wars Day

As everyone's favorite Jedi, Mister Spock always said...

No, seriously, have some actual Star Wars memes.

Fast Company

The guy who won the London Marathon not only set a new world record, but he finished in 1:59:30, half a minute under the once-thought-impossible two hour mark.

The second place runner made it under two hours, too, at 1:59:41. It was his first marathon.

In fact, the third place guy finished in 2:00:28, which would have been good enough to set a world record up until precisely fifty-eight seconds earlier.

At this rate we're a less than a decade out from the first elite distance runner getting ticketed in a school zone.

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Strange Attractors

I was today years old when I found out that Meir Kahane, founder of the Jewish Defense League, tutored Arlo Guthrie for his bar mitzvah, which is one of those weird pop culture trivia facts on the order of "Samuel Beckett drove Andre the Giant to school."

Coincidences like this feel like the universe is desperately trying to communicate something, but I'll be damned if I can figure out what it is.

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Tab Clearing...

• Some people have more of a right to privacy than others.


• Firefly animated series in development.


• Is Rationalism a religion?

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Rivalries

Got a pretty great advertisement out of the Winter Olympics this time around.

Weirdos.

I see the thought leaders on the Right are yet again rolling a critical failure on their "Can You Just Be Normal For Once In Your Life?" saving throws.

Conventions be damned, I ain't cheering for them.

With Indianapolis being an AFC city, it would be conventional sports fandom to cheer for the AFC team in the Super Bowl if the Colts weren't in it, but... yeah, there's no way I'm cheering for the Pats.

As a kid growing up in Atlanta when the Braves were still in the NL West the joke went "Who are an Atlanta baseball fan's two favorite teams? The Braves and whoever's playing the Dodgers."

So last night's manhandling of New England by the Seahawks was pretty tasty, if vicarious, revenge on our home team's nemesis.

I only caught the second half of the game, which means I watched it devolve from a slightly one-sided 9-0 affair into a 29-13 curb stomping. Seattle fans looked happy about getting sweet vengeance for Super Bowl XLIX.

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Tab Clearing...

• The Spinner from Blade Runner, from the fertile mind of Sid Mead...


• Saudi Arabia is scaling back on Neom, their weird project to build a linear megacity in the desert.


• It's cold, y'all.

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Hall of Famer

As a Braves fan who can remember him as a young rookie, I was happy to hear that Andruw Jones was elected to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.

He used to draw flak for always having a big grin on his face, like it was somehow bad that he seemed to actively enjoy playing baseball.

My favorite Andruw Jones story was from early in his career, his second or third year when he was 22 years old, and rumors swirled that the Braves had turned down a trade offer from Seattle that offered the then-30 year old Ken Griffey Junior. Andruw told reporters that he was flattered but confused, saying "I'd trade me for Ken Griffey Jr."

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Bonus Jake Paul Meme Dump!

Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

Christmas came early last night when insufferable internet jerk and accused scam artist and sex pest Jake Paul got his ass knocked out on live TV to the sound of rousing cheers across the breadth of social media.

Hang this shot in the Louvre.

Indiana is Basketball Country, but...

Between Mendoza being the first Hoosier to win a Heisman and then grandpaw Phil Rivers doing unexpectedly well in his first NFL start in five years on Sunday, there was a lot of football in the air this weekend.

(Oh, I forgot the NFL gets pissy about embedding its vids. Anyway, if you don't feel like clicking through to YouTube, it's Rivers' first TD pass since 2020. He seemed pretty happy.)

What a loss...

The sun went down on Saturday with the news of the shooting at Brown University in Rhode Island and rose on Sunday with reports of an antisemitic terrorist attack in Australia.

Then on Sunday night comes the news from California, where Rob Reiner and his wife had been found stabbed to death in their home in the Brentwood neighborhood of LA. The danger here wasn't a random shooter or an ideological terrorist; no, the suspect in the double homicide is the couple's own adult son.

I immediately thought about 99-year-old Mel Brooks, who has already buried his best friend, Carl Reiner, and now will be attending the funeral of his friend's son, who was practically a nephew to Brooks.

What a legacy Rob Reiner left, though! From his acting role as Mike "Meathead" Stivic in All in the Family to maybe one of the most amazing decade-long streaks in motion picture directing history, starting off with the iconic mockumentary This is Spinal Tap in 1984, followed by...

Oh, Mickey, you're so fine...

Disney inked a deal with OpenAI to allow the use of numerous characters from its formidable arsenal of intellectual property (which, remember, includes a lot of Marvel and Star Wars stuff, too) in AI-generated Sora videos.

I'm sure the idea here is that kiddos would make short videos featuring Goofy or Darth Vader and then buy more merch or beg mom and dad for a trip to Orlando. See, while movies and video are not a loss leader for Disney, they aren't the main profit center, either. That's all rolling in from licensing, merch, and their hospitality and amusement park arms.

I predict this arrangement will last about a week, during which time the 'net will be flooded with AI slop vids of Mickey and Minnie piloting the jets into the World Trade Center on 9/11 and Iron Man doing hardcore porn scenes with Belle from Beauty and the Beast.

We'll see. Disney's always been extremely protective of their IP.

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"My Baby Said Beep Boop"

Apparently there's a surge of AI songwriting cresting in Nashville.

I should have guessed when the local country music station played the latest hits "She Put Cat5 Tow Chains On My Heart" and "My Chatbot Girlfriend Dumped Me For My Cybertruck"... 

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Always watch the hands.

This is the kernel of a future post, but as I was binge-watching episodes of Person of Interest and thinking how much better the general gun-handling was in Hollywood action dramas from about the mid-1990s onward, there's one thing that still stands out.

Actors are much better coached in stance and movement and the general gross body movements with a firearm in their hand, but they never seem to really know that to do with their support hand on the pistol. Sometimes it's a glaring teacup Weaver, but most of the time the support hand is just sort of along for the ride.

As y'all know, if you can get both hands on the gun, it's the support hand that does most of the grip work.