Category: Uncategorised

Tomorrow's Buildings/Today's Heat Rays

This is a fantastic little story about an accident of engineering that I couldn’t pass up, despite the fact that it’s making the rounds pretty vigorously.

Vdara Death Ray

Among the victims is one Bill Pintas, whose tale of woe was recently printed in the Las Vegas Review-Journal:

[A]fter a brief dip in the hotel pool, he was sunning on a recliner. He was on his stomach, relaxed, eyes closed. But suddenly, the lawyer became so uncomfortably hot that he leaped up to move. He tried to put on his flip-flop sandals but, inexplicably, they were too hot to touch. So he ran barefoot to the shade. “I was effectively being cooked,” Pintas said. “I started running as fast as I could without looking like a lunatic.” Then he smelled an odor, and realized it was coming from his head, where a bit of hair had been scorched. (Via my friend Anycheese, Via engadget, Via BoingBoing)

Never mind that any comic book fan will tell you this is a heat ray and not a death ray, this is exactly the kind of thing we need to be considering as design technology becomes increasingly flexible in its usage.

Who has to live in the shadow of a space elevator? Who  gets to live next to the genetically-modified-animal MegaZoo? How much polution does a floating city put out, and where does it go?

Personally, I’d like to see some of these proposed Choi & Shine Architects’ electrical towers roaming the landscape.
Choi + Shine Architects' Power Pylons

Another Round

From the CNN front page:

CNN InterviewNo, dammit, YOU interview someone interesting.

What is this supposed to even be, advice on how to spend your Sunday?

Other possible CNN suggestions for ways to fill your time:

  • Find a decent 30 seconds of live video and loop it on your DVR throughout the entire day
  • Work on your James Earl Jones impression
  • Write some decent commercial break intros and outros for Rick Sanchez
  • Buy Wolf Blitzer a scotch

Update: Whoa! How did I miss that Sanchez got himself fired!?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrFoLZqY_s4]

October 31 – #1: Bride Of The Monster

Bride Of The Monster

I’ve long loved Lugosi, in all his forms, and this movie scratches a festering itch every time I sit down for a re-watch.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8YGES_Ynkk]

What follows isn’t so much a review as a series of disjointed notes.

It seemed more appropriate.

  • You know you’re getting yourself into a quality movie when the major set of the film is obviously made up of large stone bricks painted onto drywall.
  • Lugosi explains that Tor Johnson’s Lobo was supposedly found in “The Wilds Of Quebec”. Technically, I was born not far from “The Wilds Of Quebec”, so maybe I am also half monster/big guy with an awkward vest.
  • This was Bela’s last speaking role. His last appearance was in Ed Wood’s next film, Plan 9 From Outer Space.

Whim Wham

  • Bela uses the Dracula hand wave of hypnotism in this movie too. I realized, after seeing him put the main female character under his influence, that I’d probably watch The Mentalist if he played the lead.
  • Oddly, this film actually passes “The Bechdel Test” in spades. Not only does the female lead play a hard-nosed reporter, she blows off her love interest for work, and has repeated conversations about the plot without any males on screen.

The Bechdel Test, sometimes called the Mo Movie Measure or Bechdel Rule is a simple test which names the following three criteria: (1) it has to have at least two women in it, who (2) who talk to each other, about (3) something besides a man. – BechdelTest.com

  • Finally, despite the fact that the crux of the movie largely revolves around people accidentally falling into the arms of an inanimate octopus, somehow it has really nice looking cars throughout.

Studebaker

Flash Pulp 075 – Ruby Departed: Neighbours, Part 3 of 3

Welcome to Flash Pulp, Episode Seventy-Five.

Flash PulpTonight, we present Ruby Departed: Neighbours, Part 3 of 3
(Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)

[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp075.mp3]

Download MP3
(RSS / iTunes)

This week’s episodes are brought to you by Flash Pulp on iTunes.

Every story comes with a free high five.

Find the feed here.

Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

In this, the second chapter of our current story arc, Ruby, our heroine, encounters some unexpected company.

Flash Pulp 075 – Ruby Departed: Neighbours, Part 3 of 3

Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May

Ruby Departed: Neighbours 3-1Ruby Departed: Neighbours 3-2Ruby Departed: Neighbours 3-3Ruby Departed: Neighbours 3-4Ruby Departed: Neighbours 3-5Ruby Departed: Neighbours 3-6Ruby Departed: Neighbours 3-7Ruby Departed: Neighbours 3-8Ruby Departed: Neighbours 3-9Ruby Departed: Neighbours 3-10

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm. The audio and text formats of Flash Pulp are released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.

31 in 31: Bride Of The Monster, etc.

Poster for Bride Of The MonsterThis poster is way more coherent than the film could ever hope to be. I’m glad they got the octopus in there at least.

Tonight I begin my annual quest to watch 31 horror films over the course of October. It’s not an easy challenge at the best of times, but this year should be especially interesting as we’re still attempting to complete our move and have quite a few social events lined up for the month.

That said – the first movie I will undertake to watch will be Bride Of The Monster, a Bela Lugosi flick. I’ll likely be watching it with The Sevens, so it will have to be the MST3k version. Feel free to watch it at the following link, and, when I write my mini-review, we can compare notes.

[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8072534493224136268#]

Feelm

I’m crazy busy today, so I haven’t had much time to make with the content. Might I instead point you towards the The Film Crew‘s take on Killers From Space, available for free via youtube? Shout! Factory actually has quite a number of shows freely available, including the entire brief run of the precursor to Rifftrax.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7z92lkFY8JY]

(I realize that embedding is disabled, I really recommend clicking through – it’s definitely worth it. They also have some Elvira hosted horror movies available, if that’s more to your mood.)

Flash Pulp 074 – Ruby Departed: Neighbours, Part 2 of 3

Welcome to Flash Pulp, Episode Seventy-Four.

Flash PulpTonight, we present Ruby Departed: Neighbours, Part 2 of 3
(Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)

[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp074.mp3]

Download MP3
(RSS / iTunes)

This week’s episodes are brought to you by Flash Pulp on iTunes.

As Bob Dylan famously sang:

Now you see this one-eyed midget
Shouting the word “NOW”
And you say, “For what reason?”
And he says, “How?”

Find Flash Pulp here.

Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

In this, the second chapter of our current story arc, Ruby, our heroine, encounters some unexpected company.

Flash Pulp 074 – Ruby Departed: Neighbours, Part 2 of 3

Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May

Ruby Departed: Neighbours 2-1Ruby Departed: Neighbours 2-2Ruby Departed: Neighbours 2-3Ruby Departed: Neighbours 2-4Ruby Departed: Neighbours 2-5Ruby Departed: Neighbours 2-6

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm. The audio and text formats of Flash Pulp are released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.