The way of the few-ture.

Okay okay okay, so I'm getting lazy, but these were all too funny not to post.


In The Know: Are We Giving The Robots That Run Our Society Too Much Power?

This is my kinda philanthropy

Anonymous Philanthropist Donates 200 Human Kidneys To Hospital

I sure hope this gets passed

Congressman’s War Hero Son Would Have Wanted Highway Bill Passed

I hope they catch this sick bastard

DNA Evidence Frees Black Man Convicted Of Bear Attack

I need this job.

Thanks Bill.

Theology at it's finest

Click on this. Read it. You're welcome.
(Admittedly, this is probably fake, but it's still awesome.)

Thanks Bill.

Everyday Heroes

Inspiring.



Thanks Bill.

Guilty. But to a lesser extent than many of you, I'd wager.

Dan's Review of 'Knowing' With Nicolas Cage

Ahahahahahahaha!

A New Nemesis?

So Nick SantaCroce of Gadwell Lane fame doesn't like Wall-E. I do. It's not my favorite Pixar movie, but it's fun to give Nick shit about it anyway. So we've been facebook-bitchslapping one another concerning this point... and this just seemed like a fun snippit.

For my two Rat Girls...

Michelle and Jenna... this one's for you...

A Goodenough Post

So Michelle, Jermaine and I were out scouting cemeteries for 'Claire' all day, bouncing all over Ventura county from Ventura to Oxnard to Santa Paula. And in Santa Paula we pull in and the first thing we see is this family plot:

I'm not sure if the picture is Goodenough, but I think you get the idea.

My favorite moment might have been Jermaine's immediate, amused, flat out refusal to believe this was an actual family plot:
"What? No waaay! That's not reaaal." (Followed by a fit of laughter).

Of course, this family plot lead to several inappropriate jokes that we were not Goodenough to avoid.

Michelle: "Hey, what's that plot over there?"
Dan: "I dunno, I don't think it's Goodenough."

Michelle: "They were all born in the early 1900's"
Dan: "I wonder if there's anyone Goodenough left."

Jermaine: "What do you think of this location, Dan?"
Dan: "It's Goodenough, I guess."
Jermaine: "Okay Dan, time to stop."
Dan: "Okay, but when we scout the next location, let's keep an eye out for the 'Better' family plot."

This post may not be Goodenough, but hey, I tried.

Probably a good thing it wasn't the Wellenough family, because we know I couldn't have left that alone.

Update: I'm not alone on this:


Awesome.

Annnnd the parents drop the ball...

So I don't usually just post personal stories, but this one is just priceless. And I can't decide if I mean priceless in a good or a bad way.

My chocolate labrador Sara has been getting pretty up there in years and hasn't been feeling too well of late. My parents have been taking care of her since I left for college, but she's always been my dog and I've had her since 7th grade. She was a replacement for my doberman-rottweiler mix, Max, who was previously run down by a neighbor for no good reason at all. Not getting into that story this time around.

So I wake up this morning and realize I have a missed call from 5:38am. My parents are on the east coast, but they don't usually forget about the time change, so I was a big alarmed thinking Sara must in particularly bad shape and they had to put her down. I'm semi-prepared for this news because Mom had been telling me a few days prior that Sara wasn't doing so hot.

So I'm driving to work and call back (with my hands free device) and finally get my mom on the phone. And the call goes something like this:

"Hey Mom, I saw you called and just wanted to make sure everything was okay."

"I called? When?"

"At 5:30 this morning."

"Oh, that must have been by accident. I'm sorry, did I wake you?"

"No, the phone was on silent. No worries." (Sigh-o-relief) "I'm just glad it was an accident."

"Oh, why's that?"

"Ya know, I was afraid it was an emergency, maybe you had to put Sara down this morning or something."

"Oh, no honey, we did that yesterday."

WHAT?

Yeah. Apparently they both forgot to tell me or assumed the other one had called. This amused me for the first half of my day, but like any bad news that doesn't sink in until later, it eventually devolved into frustration.

So that was my morning. I hope someone out there at least finds it as mildly amusing as I did. At first.

R.I.P. Sara 'The Beef' Ast

Basically... be Don Draper.

Thanks again, Asenath.

"And he's like "Yeah! I'm the Guy!"'

"Lex Luthor Bailout" with Jon Hamm from Jon Hamm

Thanks Asenath.

Ooooooh Florida

This isn't one of those crazy "Kid kills whole family, feeds to crocodile, tries to hijack his school bus" Florida stories, but I think it has the same forehead-smack inducing effect.

We don't need no edumucation.

As if Florida education wasn't bad enough.

This explains everything...

Mike, you are my hero for finding this. Click on this bad boy to watch in the proper size at College Humor.

Watch Why Terminators Transport Naked on CollegeHumor

Imma Gunna Buy You... A Draaaank

Gotta love Cute With Chris. Especially when he nails Will's pick up lines like a pro.

Dan The Terrible Boyfriend

This one goes out to John, who sent me this and told me it was very me. And he's right.

The Dark Knight... by Pixar

Okay, I may be 10 years behind on this, but this is brilliant and I'm posting it anyway.



P.S.

Nucking Futs

So other than staving off the negative influences of Will on the Blogosphere, I rarely take a moment to get too serious on here.

I remember when the Canadian Bus Beheading happened... and then never hearing about it again. Months later I tried to find a follow up and couldn't find anything then, either. Maybe I just can't google worth a damn but-

Here's a follow up-

and I gotta say... it's kinda infuriating. Maybe I'm just not sensitive to the plight of those with a (possible) mental disorder but... anyone else feel like Canada's dropping the ball here?

Dan's Spoiler Free Watchmen Review

Keeping this spoiler free is pretty easy. I think the story works fine. I didn't really miss anything they took out. I thought the changes they made work to serve the story best as a film. There are minor things I would change. I agree with a review I read where they said they'd prefer Nixon removed and only seen on television.

What works?

Rorshach, of course. Totally badass. Hard not to love everything he does in this movie. The ultimate badass being ultimately badass. He has one line in a prison lunch line that literally had the audience cheering.

All the characters are well cast. There wasn't any point where I felt they weren't doing their character justice.

The fight sequences are solid and fun. I had reservations against Snyder's visual style, and while I'm still not sure a Watchmen movie should be this 'cool' and stylized, I think it actually works pretty well for this film.

Anytime the movie is being dark and gritty, it works. It feels right. It feels Watchmen. It doesn't shy away from violence, nudity, sex, gore, and hard-to-watch situations.

The moral grey area of the comic is intact. That was hugely important to me, as I felt losing that would betray the entire story.

What doesn't work?

Tonally, it's all over the place, and that was hard for me to deal with. Some scenes are very comic booky, almost goofy. Nixon plays like a charicature. This movie is far too aware that it's a comic book. It goes big and over the top in some scenes, then wants to be taken seriously when it gets down and dirty in others.

There are musc cues in here that are laugh-out-loud funny, and I'm not entirely convinced they weren't meant to be. It's almost like Snyder said 'well, no one will take this seriously, so I'll make it funny instead.' One scene in particular is played almost completely for comedy set to one of the funniest musical cues in the movie, and while I don't remember that scene in the comic being overly serious, the humor feels wrong here. Instead of it being inherently funny within the story, the scene and play as though Snyder himself is making the joke.

Am I biased because of the comic? Possibly, but I don't think I would have liked this scene in it's present form even if I hadn't read it.

It's a 'cue the music' movie.

Melodrama. Some dialog, particurlarly dialog between love interests, just feels cheesy, staged, lacking the weight they should probably have. Snyder knows how to stage action, but it seems he needs some work with actors. A score dips in at all the 'right' moments to try to illicit more emotion, but it's noticable. It adds to the odd tonal inconsistency.

It's a fun movie. I enjoyed it. At this point, it's hard to tell if it will have mass appeal outside of the comic's fans. Do I think it could have been better? Yeah, but I wasn't too disappointed, either.

I'm curious to see what others think once they've seen it.

Click on this awesome comic strip to read - Thanks Janet.