Tuesday, December 16, 2008

My New Religion

I just picked a religion this morning, and I decided on The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (see car logo on the left). The Flying Spaghetti Monster was established after bible thumpers decided to come up with 'intelligent design' to skirt the courts' rulings against creationism being taught in public schools as a science. This movement uses ambiguous references to an unspecified intelligent creator. What a crafty way to get around using the word God.

Even craftier was Bobby Henderson who professes a belief in a supernatural creator that resembles spaghetti and meatballs, which fits quite nicely into the profile for 'intelligent design.' Sayeth our prophet Bobby, "I think we can all look forward to the time when these three theories are given equal time in our science classrooms across the country, and eventually the world; One third time for Intelligent Design, one third time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and one third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence."

Prophet Bobby goes on to mock intelligent design's assertion that correlation implies causation by creating a chart linking the decline of pirates since the 1800s to the increase in global warming, hurricanes, and other natural disasters. Bobby points to Somalia as his case and point: it has the highest number of pirates and the lowest carbon emissions of any country. So there!

Look people, I'm all for everyone's right to worship the religion of their choice. But the place to teach your kids your religious principles is not in a public school biology classroom. That's what your church is for.

Monday, December 15, 2008

The Day the Earth Stood Still

I was a little disappointed with The Day the Earth Stood Still. I liked it because I'm a total sci-fi buff and the special effects were great, but it was missing two main elements that made up the basis of the original movie from the '50s. The alien guy doesn't try to reach the world leaders to tell him why he's here, nor does he try to communicate anything about why he leaves. In this version, only Jennifer Connelly knows and I guess we're just supposed to assume everyone will listen to her later on. These key missing elements created a movie without a lot of cohesion in the plot.

On the plus side, Gort totally rocked! He looks the same as the original, which was cool because he's very menacing looking, except he's like 20 stories tall. Freakin' awesome! They did some cool things with Gort but I wish they could have figured out how to do more with him, especially since the main story line with Keanu Reeves was a little loose. If I was film editor on this, I would have cut back to Gort a lot more to watch him do stuff.


If you're a sci-fi fan I would say to catch this on cable or DVD, but overall I would have to recommend the original over this remake - cheesy '50s special effects and all. It was a much better story and the point is (sadly) still very relevant today.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

The Power of Pop Culture, Teenagers, and the Internet and the Korean Guy who Profits from it All

So I'm a Twilight fan and a hack at the piano, so I thought I'd look to see if Bella's lullaby from the Twilight movie was available to purchase as sheet music. I looked at a couple sheet music websites and didn't find it so I Googled it. That's when I realized the craziness occurring in the online community at large.

One guy - one guy!!! - said hey, this particular song would be a good choice for Bella's lullaby in the movie. Now all the Twihard piano players have adopted it for themselves as Bella's lullaby. It's a beautiful piece of music called River Flows in You by a Korean piano player named Yiruma, and it's a much better song than the one featured in the movie - I'll give that to all the Twihard pianists.

On You Tube, there are tons of videos entered for this song. Some just show people performing the song, others have made visual montages to Twilight to go along with the music, and all mention the song as Bella's lullaby. ???

It is a very pretty song and I finally found the sheet music and plan to start hacking away at it in the near future. So I thought today that I should download this song from iTunes so I can listen to it anytime I want, because when I play a song it tends to not sound the way it's supposed to (I said I was a hack). So, lucky me, this Yiruma guy has a best of album on iTunes that has the song I want. You know that Popularity scale that's featured for each song in the iTunes store? Well, all of his other songs have one bar, meaning his mom downloaded the album so he wouldn't feel bad, and River Flows in You is rated at maximum popularity! The previously obscure and unheard of Yiruma is raking in the dough and gaining popularity all because one guy - one guy!!! - on the Internet thought this sounded like an appropriate song to use as Bella's lullaby in the Twilight movie.

And that, my friends, is the story of the power of pop culture, teenagers, and the Internet and the Korean guy who profits from it all.

The Tales of Beedle the Bard

What a fun little read The Tales of Beedle the Bard was! In case you live under a mushroom, this is the book of fairytales wizards tell their children in the Harry Potter universe. This book was mentioned in the final installment of the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and played a key role in helping Harry defeat Voldemort. JK Rowling had hand written and illustrated seven copies of this book about year ago, giving six away to people close to her and auctioning off the seventh for her charity, the Children's High Level Group. She has now released the book for mass consumption with all the proceeds going to the same organization. This release, however, contains annotations on each of the five stories from Albus Dumbledore himself and was translated by Hermione Granger from the original runes! What a fun idea that adds to the pure enjoyment of the book.

I, being the the ultimate Harry Potter geek that I am, sprung for the deluxe edition. Wowee! It came in a nifty box that looks like a large leather book. Inside the box on the left side is a package of collectors edition prints of the illustrations in the book. On the right side is a burgundy velvet sack with a gold drawstring and JKR's signature stitched in gold at the bottom. Inside the bag, of course, is the book.

And what a book it is! It's a small book bound in brown leather with silver adornments and blue gems in each of the four corners and on the clasp. In the middle is a large silver adornment with a skull that has the blue gems for eyes. Each of the five silver adornments has a picture on it representing each of the stories. It's quite a book to behold. It also had a green bookmark ribbon attached to the binding to you can easily mark your favorite story. (If any of you marked The Warlock's Hairy Heart you're sick and twisted.)

The book begins with an introduction in Jo's handwriting explaining that these stories are the Wizard equivalent to our Muggle fairytales, such as Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. She goes on to explain that magic was usually the cause of the problem in our Muggle stories, but that magic in these Wizarding stories is readily available to the characters and it doesn't make their lives any easier at all (a theme that's been carried over from the main Harry Potter books). She also tells us that Dumbledore created this annotated version about 18 months before The Lightning Struck Tower (a chapter that left me breathless and stunned) and he left these papers in his will to the Hogwarts archives.

The five stories are The Wizard and the Hopping Pot, The Fountain of Fair Fortune, The Warlock's Hairy Heart, Babbitty Rabbitty and her Cackling Stump, and, of course, The Tale of the Three Brothers which played in integral role in the final Harry Potter book. I'm not going to summarize the plot of each of the stories. I want you all to read them for yourselves for the pure enjoyment of it, because they are purely enjoyable - especially with Dumbledore's notes. They all center around the same ideas as Muggle fairytales - good things happen to kind and virtuous people and bad things happen the greedy and malicious.

This is a must read for everyone who has read the Harry Potter books. And if you haven't read the Harry Potter books yet, then get off my blog and crawl back under your mushroom!

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Just After Sunset

Just After Sunset, the latest book by Stephen King (one of my top 5 favorite authors), is an interesting collection of short stories ranging from scary-freaky to non-nightmare inducing even though most (but not all) deal with a little bit of supernatural booga-booga. He was inspired to compose this after editing a collection of short stories in 2007 when he realized he forgot the art of writing short stories. I'm glad he found it again. I always enjoy his writing, but this isn't a must-read that I plan to force on my friends (as I have in the past with other books). I think the reason maybe that the thing I like most about his writing is his ability to write characters, and these short stories don't allow him enough time to develop them the way novels do. Regardless, he's a great writer and this is worth checking out.