Desperate to squeeze in a last-minute summer fling? Flow charts can help!

[via TheMorningNews]

Yes, that’s an ad for glue. GORILLA GLUE.

I mean, I get what they’re trying to say. I get their point about Gorilla Glue bonding things that wouldn’t ordinarily go together, but really?

Plus, Gorilla Glue isn’t even that good.

Silly Europeans [NSFW, btw].

The country that gave us The Little Mermaid really knows how to work the buzzkill. (Then again, the original Little Mermaid fairytale is pretty gnarly, too.) Anyway, FWIW:

Advertising Agency: this is not a pipe, Copenhagen, Denmark
Creative Director: Mathias Hovgaard
Creative producers: Sascha Pepke, Mikael Svendsen, Cecilia Flagstad
Special effects: Hummer Højmark, Janus Vinther
Motion Graphics: Gimmick
Published: December 2008

In Sociology 101, we learned that there’s always a little truth in every joke. The question in this case is: how much truth? And also: how much do we care? (Answer: increasingly less, the more time O’Connell spends with his mouth open.)

And what the hell is up with the dude’s hair in that movie? Did he cut it himself? With safety scissors?

Death, birth, beauty, ugliness: it’s all pretty much the same thing, so why not focus on the pleasant stuff? Like, say, the lasting influence of the dead, which often makes life worth living?

http://www.youtube.com/p/F1058990A249B5EA?hl=en_US&fs=1

Death in the age of Facebook. I think everyone’s writing about it — probably because nearly everyone’s experienced it by now. I have, at least three times. People who aren’t so picky about whom they add as friends have likely seen it far more often.

It’s not Facebook’s memorial policies that make it weird. Those are fine. Actually, I like what they’ve done for the departed on occasion — even Holocaust victims.

No, my problem is, I don’t know what we’re supposed to do once our friends are gone. I understand the need to talk to the dead — I’ve done it before and will again — but there’s a difference between saying something directly to the deceased and saying something on a Facebook wall that will then be liked or commented on by people you may or may not love/hate/know.

It’s just so public. I know that in certain parts of the world, certain cultures, grieving is a group activity. But not for me….

You know, maybe I’m just being selfish. Maybe I don’t want to acknowledge that others had a relationship with the departed that was as special as mine.

But more likely than that, I just don’t want to hear it. I want my grief and that of others to be private, not shared. Because when it’s public, it can border on showy, and that can seem disingenuous, and that makes me angry, and I don’t want to be angry when I’m supposed to be sad.

Ugh, I should probably just get over it right? That or go the old-skool route and build myself a goddamn pyramid. You know, like we all did before Facebook?

I’m not a fan of True Blood. I’m probably the only fag on Planet Earth who can say that, but it’s true.

The problem? Vampires do nothing for me. That’s probably because I live in New Orleans and I’m never more than 50 feet from a coven of Goth chicks wrapped in ankhs and patchouli. I mean, sure, I used to wear a lot of black — still do — but I never had any aspirations of becoming immortal because of it.

The accents on True Blood don’t help. However, the show’s creator has won some points avec moi — at least the part of moi that’s always had a thing for men my age or older:

The idea of celibate vampires is ridiculous, True Blood creator Alan Ball says. “To me, vampires are sex,” he says. “I don’t get a vampire story about abstinence. I’m 53. I don’t care about high school students. I find them irritating and uninformed.”

[RollingStone]

And it’s true: clueless youngsters are a guaranteed turn-off, just like crystal meth queens on the hunt for some pnp. Both are yappy and needy. Not my scene, never has been.

I’m not going to start watching True Blood now, but I can appreciate the mindset is all I’m saying.

A couple of ads for Frame On Wheels made the rounds last week, but this one’s been curiously overlooked:

Advertising Agency: Zubi Advertising USA
VP Creative Director: Andres Ordoñez
Creative Director: Ivan Calle
Associate Creative Director: Armando Garcia
Associate Creative Director: Rosamaria Mussfeldt
Photographer: Mauricio Candela
Published: June 2010

As a fundraiser, I love Kickstarter. It’s a great way for artists and small orgs to launch projects that might not otherwise get off the ground. Put A Egg On It raised dough for its last issue via Kickstarter, and my friend Amanda used it to fund her first professional fashion show. Both worthy endeavors.

I am less sure about Morgan Tepsic’s art project, but I am almost 100% certain that he will be fully funded because he is cute and funny and wants to get naked, and many people enjoy watching cute, funny people get naked. (Are you listening, Jason Sudeikis?)

Anyway, from Morgan’s Kickstarter page:

How this came about: Ever since I graduated high school in 2008, I’ve been traveling throughout Asia…when times got tough, I had to move back to my hometown of Oklahoma City, OK. When I was there, I made the most out of situation by working with what I had…there isn’t too much happening in Oklahoma, so I decided to add some life to it by getting naked and jumping. Being free and exploring every way possible.

What I want to do: I want to travel the world and get naked. I want to bridge the gap between art and exhibitionism, show people parts of the world they’ve never seen before, and fulfill a life-long dream of mine…having my own exhibition.

What the money is for: If my project is funded 100%, the money will be used towards traveling expenses, retractable pants, hostels, printing, mounting and framing my prints that will be shown at the exhibition. No luxury hotels, no first-class…we’re talking couch-surfing, sleeping in a hut in Laos, sweaty buses in India and walking around the Great Wall of China.

And yes, there’s video, which is not especially safe for work because there is nakedness and loud music, too :

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=13997121&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=1&color=&fullscreen=1&autoplay=0&loop=0

Fish, meet barrel.

So, I finally got around to seeing Inception.

I know: day late, dollar short, right? I’m sure most of you have already seen it, and you’ve already articulated your own responses to the film, but what’s one more perspective? (NB: mild spoilers ahead.)

On the plus side: Ellen Page and erstwhile boy-kisser Tom Hardy are both great to watch. (Joseph Gordon-Levitt is easy on the eyes, but he’s not given much to do other than ride the galloping exposition pony.)

Also on the plus side: The thought of being able to spend two lifetimes with your beloved is beautiful. Infinity would’ve been too easy and also ridiculous; two seems nice and sensible and fair. It’s enough to make anyone who’s ever known love a little sad and jealous.

That’s about it for the plusses.

In the minus column: The score is terrible. In fact, it’s so bad, so sloppy, that it kinda ruined the whole movie.

About 3/4 of the way through the film, when DiCaprio & Co. entered the third level of the dream, a laborious action sequence kicked off, and with it, an endless assault of crescendos. It sounded like what John Williams’ talentless, half-wit cousin might compose if he were really high and listened to a lot of Philip Glass. By the time that Joseph Gordon-Levitt began wrapping people in ethernet cable (seriously), I noticed that the score had been building for at least ten minutes. I covered my ears, tried to ignore the music and focus on the visuals, and when I did, I realized that without the relentless beat, the story was nearly empty. If you haven’t seen the movie, you can hear a little of what I’m talking about in this trailer:

It’s like a poorly endowed, middle-aged man tooling down the road in a Ferrari convertible: someone’s compensating for shortcomings.

Also in negative territory: there were far too many people in the cast, and they had far too little to do. By now we’ve seen enough Matrixes and Aliens and Event Horizons and whatever to know how the team scenario works: teams exist to give focus. Members of the group get picked off, leaving us with one or two survivors and a nice story arc. In Inception, everyone lives happily ever goddamn after, proving what we already knew: that the stakes were too low and the characters too poorly drawn for us to care about any of them in the first place.

But here’s the worst of all: like most sci-fi, Inception takes itself way too seriously. You can spot bad science fiction from a mile away because it’s so busy trying to establish the rules of its universe (usually with clunky expository monologues) that it can’t be bothered to make jokes. “If people laugh, they won’t take this world seriously”, or so the thinking goes.

But it’s humor and humanity that make us care about characters and the films they inhabit. Look at Dr. Who: the universe its creators have built is utterly ludicrous, but we don’t give a shit. We forgive the plot gaps because the writers and directors and actors are so good at drawing us in, making the characters engaging, and telling a damned good story. Technically, Inception‘s storyline is fine, but there aren’t any likable, interesting characters to see it through. As a result, Inception works far better in theory than in practice.