It took nine years, but it looks like Spike Jonze’s adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are will see the light of day this year in October, two days after my birthday. It’s hard to describe how much I’m looking forward to this movie. I might explode when I see it in the theater.

We have ourselves a new president. We’ll see how that goes, but he can’t be worse than the last guy. And if nothing else at least the rest of the world doesn’t hate us as much now. 

I watched For All Mankind the other day, which was a fantastic documentary about the first moon mission, complete with a great soundtrack by Brian Eno. I’d never seen the majority of the footage before and I have no idea why, a lot of it was… well, there’s no way to describe it without devolving into terms that are so cliche they borderline on meaningless. Words like “breathtaking” and “awe-inspiring” are the only things I can think to write, but I cringe a little putting it that way. Anyways, with a movie like this having existed since 1989 it’s hard for me to understand why America’s interest in space has seemed to wane so much in recent years. 

Anyways you should see this movie.

Some of the editing here is a little silly, but I thought this was a pretty great introduction to skepticism. Here’s hoping this show gets of the ground, I’d absolutely love to see it.

This last weekend I went to the Texas Renissance Festival for the second consecutive year, this time with Steve, Gina, Freddy and Forest. I bought a monk bag, which is dangerously close to a purse but still awesome. We watched some cool shows, some of which I grabbed some pictures of and threw on my Flickr page. I do wish I took some of this falconer guy and his birds. They were doing all sorts of tricks and I was to mesmirized to remember to take out my camera. 

Oh and here’s a lightly amusing group of twitter updates (tweets) stright from the festival, slightly edited for contextual reasons.

AdamGlasgow: Messages written on bathroom wall: “if you give good blowjobs meet me here at 4:30pm sharp.” “poop yum,” and “democrats are brainless.” Oh and of course various pictures of dicks.

ShaunPatrick: It’s almost 4:30.

AdamGlasgow: I better get out of here.

Completely unrelated:

As you guys probably know this last summer I went to comic-con (man this post is all about nerd-orgy fests). While shopping at a local grocery store in San Diego I spotted a scruffy looking guy dressed in an elaborate Hulk costume. I talked to him a little bit and was even obnoxious enough to get a picture (although I’m having trouble finding it, if I do I’ll post it for sure). I thought it was funny that he didn’t take off anything but his mask to go and buy lettuce, and apparently so did the employees of the store, because they all ended up having their picture taken with him. 

Well the other day I was over at a friends house and we decided to watch Confessions of a Superhero, a documentary about panhandlers in Hollywood who dress up as superheros, pose for pictures, and essentially beg for tips. Well it turns out the guy who I spotted in San Diego is one of the main subjects of the movie and his name is Joseph McQueen. It was a little surreal watching a movie about a guy’s (farily depressing) life who I briefly met whilst shopping for sandwhich pieces. 

Side note: He seemed like, hands down, the coolest (and least crazy) person in the movie.

Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore? is about Jeff Smith, an unknown, running in the 2004 Missouri Democratic primary. With massive grassroots campaigning he becomes a real contender for the seat, running against a local dynasty. Aside from being a good underdog story, it gives some great insight into the state of American politics. The movie seesaws back and forth from inspiring to funny to massively depressing. It’s highly watchable, even if you’re not usually interested in this kind of thing. Certainly worth checking out.

Street Fight is one you may have actually heard of, on account of its being nominated for an Academy Award. Although that’s a pretty highly ignored category, that is unless Michael Moore’s fat head is up for the award.

Anyhow, Street Fight covers the 2002 run for mayor in Newark, NJ. It’s much harsher than Mr. Smith, and the politics get a lot dirtier. Watching it makes you appreciate how accurate the mayoral elections in The Wire were portrayed. The movie follows Cory Booker, who like Smith, is the underdog of the election. Also like Smith’s movie, Street Fight feels fast and easy to watch. If you do decide to watch this one, do yourself a big favor and avoid reading anything about the election until after you’ve seen the movie. Some of the aftermath is pretty crazy.

The Saturday before last (September 13th) Hurricane Ike came by and decided to kill some people, destroy lots of stuff, cancel school until next Monday (the 29th), knock down loads of trees and powerlines blocking roads and leaving me without power until yesterday afternoon, with many others still waiting for returned power. This was only one of the things that made this last week and a half suck. Others include David Foster Wallace’s suicide by hanging and some more crap I wont go into in public. And no, I didn’t get an accidental sex change or anything like that.

On the bright side I re-watched (this time on Blu-ray and a friend’s nice HD TV) Speed Racer,  which was surprisingly awesome the first time and still amazing the second time. Its complete over-the-topness is an obvious attributer for its mixed to cold public reception, but screw that, Speed Racer kicks so much ass for so many reasons I don’t even need to defend my liking it.

While in Austin this weekend I watched a few movies and read a comic. Let’s take a look. But before we do I think I need to make a statement about the movies, books and &c. that I talk about on my blog.

If you’ve been reading my this page for any amount of time you’ve probably noticed that I pretty much like everything I talk about on here. I’m always recommending something,  talking about how much I enjoyed something, or demanding you read something, or whatever. This might make it seem like I like just about everything and that you should ignore any suggestions I make because hey what’s the point if I like everything, right? Well, that’s not really true. The fact of the matter is I’m kind of an asshole about the things I like. I’m legendarily picky and kind of a snob when it comes to things like books and movies and music. The reason why I’m so generally positive on this site is because, well, I pretty much only write about the things I like. It would be really easy for me to primarily write about all stuff I hate, but someone else I know is already doing that and doing a better job than I could anyways. So while I’m sure to bitch about things from time to time usually when I’m going to talk about entertainment in one way or the other, it’s going to be positive. Anyways.

Happy Times by Yimou Zhang. Zhang is a pretty well known director nowadays for movies like House of Flying Daggers, Hero, and Curse of the Golden Flower. While I’m a pretty big fan of these, his best movie (that I’ve seen) is Raise the Red Lantern - a film so far away from kung-fuing and swording and daggering and flipping that the only way you could even start to guess that it’s the same director is the incredible (albeit much more subtle than his more recent stuff) cinematography. When I heard he made a comedy movie about eight years ago I knew it had to be the next on my list for me to see. The story starts out being pretty funny, but by the time it ends it’s much closer to sad than amusing. Describing it as bittersweet is probably overstating its sweetness, but it is there. It’s a good little movie and I’m glad I watched it.

Lake of Fire is a documentary about abortion by Tony Kaye (American History X). The movie is long – about two and a half hours – and NOT for the squeamish. Both sides of the issue are covered with a few mediating voices in between. It’s fair, disturbing, enlightening, and not easy to forget. If you’re undecided on the issue I recommend it. If you’re already solid on one side or the other I highly recommend it. It didn’t change where I stand on the issue, but it made me think a lot about it.

I read Good-Bye, Chunky Rice by Craig Thompson. It’s a sad comic about moving on in your life even when you’re not sure where you’re moving on to or exactly why you’re doing it. It’s about friends and the impact people have on each other before and after they’re out of each other’s lives and how there really is no such thing as “out of each other’s lives.” To make this a short review, the book is striking and brilliant and haunting, but in a non creepy way.

At the end of the weekend I realized that pretty much everything I read and watched was, at least to an extent, fairly depressing. If you decide to go after any of this stuff, I suggest spreading it out a bit.

Also of interest, Derrick pointed out to me that Google just announced a new web browser called Google Chrome. It sounds pretty promising, as outlined in this comic by Scott McCloud of Understanding Comics fame. Who knows if the final product is going to be any good, but I’ll be right there to mess around with it as soon as the beta comes out.

UPDATE: The beta for Google Chrome was just released and I’ve got to say… it’s pretty sweet. It’s faster, the interface is nice and logical and everything feels really open. There are some weird things about it and I do miss a few of my Firefox plug-ins, but hopefully with time people will make versions of those for Chrome. Check it out. I’ll have to play with it more before I decide if I’m switching permanitely, but so far it’s looking good. If you try it out let me know what you think.

Also not of interest, for some reason every time I write “each other” I want to write “eachother” like it’s one long word. It’s annoying and if you search the archives I’d be shocked if you didn’t find more than a few examples of this misspelling. Maybe someday the powers that be will decide that English should evolve (laterally in this case) and “eachother” is how the word(s) is/are to be written, but not now. Not today.

I watched this documentary the other day called King Corn. I went into it, honestly, thinking that (for some reason) it was about ethanol. I must have read the description for the wrong movie or something, because this was most definitely not about ethanol.

The whole Idea of King Corn is these two guys decide to raise an acre of corn and try to follow it through the system to see where it all ends up. The first part of the movie is basically them raising the corn, and interesting information is kind of sparse during this part. There is some to be found though, namely when the movie discusses how the corn is genetically modified to be immune to certain types of pesticides so the whole field can be sprayed with poison and the corn still live, and how those modifications make the corn inedible without first processing the hell out if it.

The movie really takes off when they start exploring where the corn goes after it’s raised – much of it going towards making high fructose corn syrup, a processed, cheap sweetner that is both disgustingly unhealthy and also in almost everything we eat. The movie finishes up by sticking its finger into politics and talking about why corn is produced like this in America. The stance of the film in this respect stays pretty neutral, and is even borderline apologetic. I guess they figured trying to talk you into thinking that the role the government has been playing in corn production for the last thirty years is a bad one would be a waste of time, since the whole movie does a pretty good job of showing you it’s a bad idea.

All in all it was a pretty interesting movie. It started a bit slow, and at points seemed like it beat around the bush a little too much, but I’d still definitely recommend it, at least until I find a better book or movie on the subject that delves a bit deeper into the issues. If anyone has any suggestions, let me know.

So Mr. Stein has a new documentary coming out called Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. The fundamental argument of the movie is that those who speak out against evolution and in favor of Intelligent Design (ID) are “persecuted.” If you’re a scientist and you subscribe to the idea of ID you’re looked down on, if you’re a teacher who attempts to teach ID in school you may be fired.

There are already quite a few responses the the film that point out its many flaws, including one from the infamous Richard Dawkins (author of “The God Delusion”), so I wont spend too much time on it, but I did want to throw in my two cents.

If you’re a science teacher and you get fired for teaching ID in your classroom it has nothing to do with scientists being a bunch of heathen God haters. It has to do with the fact that you’re teaching unfounded, unscientific beliefs in a science class. If evolution turns out to be an incorrect theory (I don’t think it will) and a better theory is presented with more, founded, convincing facts than the theory of evolution (unlikely – due to the vast amount of evidence supporting evolution), science as a whole must, by definition, embrace that theory. Darwin was the first to say that if a better explanation comes along evolution should be thrown out. The problem is the more the subject is studied the more evolution starts to look like fact and the more ID looks like silliness.

If you want to preach that the earth is a few thousand years old and that we were all zapped out of God’s finger because the Bible says so, go for it. No skin off my nose. But keep it in church and don’t pretend like those claims have any real basis in science.

First off, I finished reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, the famous biologist. The book is essentially a scientific argument against the theory of a creationist God, followed by some not as scientific arguments against religion as a whole. Published in 2006, it’s practically already been adopted as the Atheist Bible, and it’s easy to see why. The book is clearly written and does a pretty good job of debunking arguments that God and science can co-exist and still both make sense. Of course if you’re a devout member of any church, chances are this wont change your mind about anything, although I think it’s worth your time anyways. If you’re like most people, you’ve been raised to believe in some kind of religion your entire life. You’ve read all the arguments for God and religion, it’s really only fair and logical that you at least listen to what the other side of the fence has to say. Anything less would be intellectually dishonest, really. One thing you should be warned about though, if you do decide to read it, is that the beginning of the book, which is largely an argument for evolution, makes Dawkins sound like a pompous jerk. Which, to his credit, he sort of has a right to be, since he is one of the world’s leading evolutionary biologists. But it still got on my nerves.

Finished listening to Cosmopolis by Dan DeLillo as well, which if you’re a regular reader (if those exist) you’ll know I’ve spoken fairly highly of already. It ended up being pretty good. Nice and perverted and with plenty of existential themes for those interested. I liked it.

Now I’m about halfway through Failed States by Noam Chomsky, the MIT professor of linguistics (he’s the guy who is credited for coming up with the theory of generative grammar), although he is perhaps more widely known for his writings and lectures in which he usually speaks out against America’s foreign policy. The book covers a lot of ground and gives more than a few examples of how America in its current state is essentially screwing up everything, or at least close to everything. Failed States is a fantastic read if you want to understand why it is that so many countries hold so much contempt for America. If you don’t feel like reading one of his books, you can always listen to one of his lectures or check out one of the many movies featuring him, my favorite two being Manufacturing Consent and The Corporation. The first focuses entirely on Chomsky and is interesting but not very exciting, the second one has its focus elsewhere, although Chomsky regularly chimes in.

On a non book related note, Warren Ellis.com (comic book writer, novelist, screenwriter) sent me to an interesting and fairly depressing blog called “What I Killed Today.” I’ll let the blogger explain in their own words what the page is all about.

I work with a lot of injured wildlife. Also not wild animals that are just in a lot of pain. Sometimes I have to euthanize them. I decided to record each animal I euthanize here.

Pretty wacky stuff.

Also completely unrelated, I can only hope that this is a legitimate document.

(click for the full size)