July 23rd, 2008
Teri Garr gave a terrific interview for The A.V. Club’s Random Roles feature:
[Re After Hours...]
AVC: What goes into auditioning for Martin Scorsese?
TG: Well, I wrote about it in my book, which you obviously haven’t read. I had lunch with him every day for a week at his loft, and I saw that he was very, very into movies. He had lots of posters and films around. So I liked him, because I like movies too. He was also very respectful of actors, because of Bobby D [Robert De Niro], and any time you were on the set he’d go [to the crew], “You can’t talk to the actors! Can’t touch them! Don’t talk to them!” Like, what are we? Crabs or something?
July 23rd, 2008
Never, ever annoy a mantis shrimp:
Mantis shrimps are aggressive relatives of crabs and lobsters and prey upon other animals by crippling them with devastating jabs. Their secret weapons are a pair of hinged arms folded away under their head, which they can unfurl at incredible speeds.
The ’spearer’ species have arms ending in a fiendish barbed spike that they use to impale soft-bodied prey like fish. But the larger ’smasher’ species have arms ending in heavy clubs, and use them to deliver blows with the same force as a rifle bullet.
[...]
With each punch, the club’s edge travels at about 50 mph
Wait, there’s more…
[Each...] of the smasher’s strikes produced small flashes of light upon impact. They are emitted because the club moves so quickly that it lowers the pressure of the water in front of it, causing it to boil.
[Via MemeMachineGo!]
July 21st, 2008
To say that the town of Baarle-Hertog is in Belgium is not entirely accurate:
Baarle-Hertog is noted for its complicated borders with Baarle-Nassau in the Netherlands. In total it consists of 24 separate pieces of land. Apart from the main piece (called Zondereigen) located north of the Belgian town of Merksplas, there are twenty Belgian exclaves in the Netherlands and three other pieces on the Dutch-Belgian border. There are also seven Dutch exclaves within the Belgian exclaves. Six of them are located in the largest one and a seventh in the second-largest one. An eighth Dutch exclave lies in Zondereigen.
The border is so complicated that there are some houses that are divided between the two countries. There was a time when according to Dutch laws restaurants had to close earlier. For some restaurants on the border it meant that the clients simply had to change their tables to the Belgian side.
July 21st, 2008
Recent volcanic activity.
The word “spectacular” seems woefully inadequate…
July 20th, 2008
Simon Kuper reckons that “stupidity is part of the football business”:
As football’s transfer market cranks back into action, one remembers the sad words of the English striker Luther Blissett. Milan bought Blissett from Watford in 1983, reputedly by mistake after confusing him with another black player. His sole, unhappy year in Italy gave football one of its greatest quotes. “No matter how much money you have here,” Blissett lamented, “you can’t seem to get Rice Krispies.”
There will be many more Blissetts this summer. Clubs still sign foreign players and tell them: “Here’s a plane ticket, come over, and play brilliantly from day one.” The player fails to adjust to the new country, underperforms, and his transfer fee of millions is wasted. This happens because football clubs are incompetent. Just as oil is part of the oil business, stupidity is part of the football business. [...]
[Via Pitch Invasion]
July 20th, 2008
Tor have marked the launch of their new web site by putting up some new short stories to read, including Down on the Farm, a story by Charlie Stross:
Ah, the joy of summer: here in the south-east of England it’s the season of mosquitoes, sunburn, and water shortages. I’m a city boy, so you can add stifling pollution to the list as a million outwardly mobile families start their Chelsea tractors and race to their holiday camps. And that’s before we consider the hellish environs of the Tube (far more literally hellish than anyone realizes, unless they’ve looked at a Transport for London journey planner and recognized the recondite geometry underlying the superimposed sigils of the underground map).
But I digress… [...]
[Via Whatever]
July 18th, 2008
Found while searching for an mp3 of the TARDIS engine: is The TARDIS Sound Effects - A Not-So-Brief History the geekiest single web page on the internet today?
Ask anyone what happens when the TARDIS materialises and they will tell you it makes a sort of wheezing, groaning noise. Or they might say it sounds like the trumpeting of elephants. Some might even tell you it is the sound of a front door key being scraped down a piano wire. It all depends on how many Terrence Dicks books they have read, or how many DVD extras they’ve seen.
And whilst these answers are accepted fact now, the complete story is less simple and quite interesting. No honestly, it is quite interesting. Stay with me. [...]
Granted, it’s not necessarily interesting to everyone. But that’s not important.
July 18th, 2008
The first trailer for Watchmen is out.
It certainly looks the part, and the cast is potentially pretty good; now let’s see if they can extract a story that works in two hours of screen time as well as the graphic novel did in that format. It won’t be the comic on-screen - it can’t be - but it’d be nice to think that someone might finally do justice to Alan Moore’s work.
[Via Oliver Willis]
July 18th, 2008
Catching up on my backlog of Coverville podcasts I came across a track by Low Strung, also known as:
“Yale’s only cello-rock group.”
Their cover of U2’s Where the Streets Have No Name doesn’t appear to be available to stream at their MySpace page, but trust me: it’s well worth listening to Coverville 459 for.
I liked Low Strung’s U2 cover so much I went and bought their album. The ensemble’s taste in covers isn’t what you’d call adventurous, but the highlights - Baba O’Riley, Don’t Stop Believing, Sympathy For the Devil and Fix You - are such fun that I can forgive that minor sin.
[Via Coverville]
July 16th, 2008
Armando Iannucci imagines a meeting between David Cameron and Barack Obama:
Cameron: [The...] fundamental question we both have to address is: what should we actually do once we get into office?
Obama: Exactly. You know, I come from a background that is magnificent testimony to this great nation of mine. A child of a Kenyan father and a mother from Kansas, we can all be proud of the path I’ve trodden to come through to this, the greatest moment in the history of civilisation when I eventually take the oath of office.
Cameron: Yes and similarly I too am from an exciting mongrel mix of cultures and values. Born of a mother from Kent and with a friend from Hull, I share and sniff the sense of wounded anger that blights this broken society I come from. So, as I say, what should we do about it?
Obama: Listen to the deep well of yearning within the hearts of the people. For example, what does your friend in Hull think you should do?
Cameron: Well, he was born in Hull, but he doesn’t live there any more. I think he owns some of it, though. [...]
[Via The Sideshow]
