Quite frankly, I’m amazed. And Johnny Depp’s in it too, which is both shocking and expected. Good for you, Johnny. Nice to see you doing a movie that I wouldn’t rather have cancer than see for a change.

Fascinating that they’re seemingly presenting it as essentially a prequel to Depp’s filmic version of Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas (and thankfully making it nothing like Bill Murray’s Where The Buffalo Roam, which was ghastly). The novel itself – which was Thompson’s second, after the still unpublished Prince Jellyfish – was a pretty straightforward Hemingway-esque affair and it’s interesting to see that they added quite a bit of “zany” to the story and, of course, changed a lot of the characters around and the story too, it would seem. And by “change the story,” I clearly mean that, if the trailer is accurate, they’re trying to add one here. For example, they beefed up the character that it looks like Aaron Eckhart and his mighty chin play and turned him into some kind of villain to be defeated through wacky journalism and a lot of what would amount to alcohol poisoning in a normal person.

Also,  I’m sorry, did I say that they added some “zany” to the story? I meant to say “gonzo,” clearly. They’ve added a shitload of “gonzo” to the thing.

The attempts to bring this adaptation to life over the past decade have been cute to read little tidbits about, but I find myself actually surprised that it actually, you know, took. Thankfully it didn’t happen until now when Thompson himself is dead because it seemed like he was a bit… sensitive to anything of his when it came to the movies. And it’s directed by the guy who directed Withnail And I! This should be a beautiful mess, certainly. Considering the movies that do get made these days I still find that I’m surprised to say this but: I can’t wait to see this.

The important new dynamic in modern human communication.

The first image (fucking finally) from Joss Whedon/Drew Goddard’s Cabin In The Woods.

Are wide male faces a predictor for unethical behavior?

James Spader is joining The Office, but not as the boss, not for long.

Zadie Smith turning to speculative fiction and sci fi.

Infidelity might just keep us together.

Spike Lee to direct the American remake of Oldboy?

Above: Katie West summer print sale.

An oral history of Explosions In The Sky.

Antonia Fraser and Harold Pinter.

The paradox that was G. K. Chesteron.

Don’t let them cut off your balls, boys.

At least Glenn Beck is gone from the airwaves.

An oral history of Michael Fucking Bay.

9 steps to foolproof outdoor sex.

“In addition to my other numerous acquaintances, I have one more intimate confidant…. My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known—no wonder, then, that I return the love. “

-Søren Kierkegaard

Harry Potter’s favorite magic potion is booze.

Speaking of which, some of your favorite fast food chains are now serving alcohol.

Also, the “experts” are now saying that some “light drinking” may be “safe” while you’re pregnant.

And: An oral history of the Harry Potter film series.

The evils of “like” culture.

“All I want is to have incredibly violent sex.”

from here.

Massive amounts of cheating discovered in Atlanta public schools.

Topless sunbathing in the bit city.

How Charlotte’s Web was conceived.

The perfect penis.

Alfred Hitchcock recalls working with Salvador Dali.

“You are a computer salesman – I am fucking JAMES BOND.”

Ours might not be a holographic universe after all

I’d like to talk about a concept of punishment he puts forth in his novel Anathem. It’s called the Book. A brief primer: Anathem takes place in a world similar to our own, but where scholars live a quasi-monastic life of simple means behind the walls of big stone concents, cut off from the rest of society for a period of one, ten, 100 or 1000 years. This separation allows the “avout,” as they are called, to dedicate their lives to scholarly work without distraction or interruption. While there are your typical chores and kitchen duty that can be assigned to reprimand bad behavior, there is also the Book. When an avout needs sterner discipline, the administrators can “throw the Book” at them.

The idea of the Book, as the main character Erasmas explains it, is to punish the mind of the wayward avout. It’s 12 chapters long, filled with inane, inaccurate and possibly insane content that must be memorized and tested against. Imagine a mathematician being forced to learn and apply false proofs, or a writer who must memorize incorrect definitions. The Book is designed to poison the mind, taking a sledgehammer to the foundations of an avout’s critical thinking and logical faculties. And each chapter is exponentially harder than the one before. In the novel, it’s said that only 3 men ever completed all 12 chapters, which took a lifetime, and they were all thoroughly insane when they finished. That the avout have dedicated themselves to learning makes it all the more heinous a punishment to them, as they are forced to corrupt their minds and waste their time working counter to their own life’s work.

One example Erasmas gives is a chapter full of nursery rhymes that almost, but do not quite rhyme. Another is five pages of the digits of Pi. In the novel, he is assigned the first five chapters as penance, which takes him several weeks to complete. And the idea is that, if you get in trouble again, you could get assigned even more. It is suggested that going higher can permanently damage one’s ability to process and organize information effectively.

I mention all this as prelude to my latest movie review:

Surely, if the Book were real, Chapter 6 would be the shooting script to Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon. And the less said further the better.

–Benjie

And I’m really fucking ready for the weekend. How about you?

A bootleg look at the trailer for David Fincher’s upcoming adaptation of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Finally. Perfect timing too since I was just watching The Social Network again tonight with a friend. A NSFW work trailer (because of Rooney Mara nudity) for “the feel bad movie of Christmas.” I’m definitely excited.

Also, That’s Karen O’s voice on the cover of the Led Zeppelin song, which is an interesting addition to the soundtrack. And what do you think of Rooney Mara’s look as Lisbeth Salander?

and

and

and

and last but not least…

from here, here, here, here, and here.

And previously: go here, here, here, here, and here.

Maria Diaz: Hey…

MD: Huh? Oh, I sent you the wrong one. But i do love that song. Look at this:

and…

Marco: Oh man, that song.

MD: This one is better:

MD: Which one, the Nine Days one? Or Vertical Horizon?

Marco: Oh, the Nine Days one, sorry. But I think a lot part of it had to do with really thinking that the girl in the video was super duper cute.

MD: Yeah, that was probably the real reason. Especially because that Vertical Horizon song is terrible.

Marco: Part of it was also because I was really trying to win over this girl who looked like the girl in the Nine Days video and… I don’t know, maybe I felt justified in my affections by the song/video?

MD: the song is kinda cute, I think.

Marco: She was dating this ginormous drug dealer at the time. Well, not “ginormous,” neither physically not, you know, stature in the suburban drug selling racket, but… well, either way, I just couldn’t compete with the guy. And yeah, the song is fine. Probably better than fine.

MD: Awww. Yeah, drug dealers are very attractive to women. All that money. And all those drugs.

Marco: That particular Vertical Horizon song… I liked it maybe the first time I heard it, but every time after… grating.

MD: It’s the reveal at the end of the song… that HE is the one the girl doesn’t want.

Marco: Of course she doesn’t want him. (He’s hideous.) This…

MD: OMG this song.

Marco: There’s a very sad, very tragic playlist of recurring songs that I listened to a lot circa 1999 – 2002ish, and this song was on it intermittently.

MD: I bet we had many of the same songs. This was definitely on mine.

Marco: I feel like I was carrying around this very shallow sense of sadness or regret… like I had lost something that should be crucial but wasn’t, not really, though you at the time you couldn’t convince me of that… and my music reflected that.

MD: Exactly.

Marco: It’s strange that you got me thinking about that cause I was really thinking about a lot of music from back then lately the first summer I moved to this shithole state I live in… I did nothing. Absolutely nothing. Ate shitty food. “Ate shitty” as in “ate terribly.” Drank beer. Lots. Laid on the couch in my huge bedroom listening to music and reading. That was it. Oh, and thought up ridiculous plots of silly Clive Cussler-esque thrillers.

…but that one U2 album, All That You Can’t Leave Behind? I associate that album so strongly, oddly enough, with Bret Easton Ellis’ first book and with Hunter S. Thompson’s The Rum Diary because I listened to that album on repeat while reading those books for the first time that summer.

MD: The first Bret Easton Ellis, that’s Less Than Zero?

Marco: Yeah, Less Than Zero.

Okay, that invisible pain I mentioned… do you want to see a really bad example of a song from that period?

MD: Of course. Always.

Marco: okay, this artist I’m about to bring up is ridiculous and you kind of knew that when she first debuted, but just how ridiculous and plastic hadn’t quite hit yet…

Anyway, her first two singles were just silly radio pop fluff, but this was her third single, I believe, and I remember hearing this song for the first time on headphones while walking somewhere late at night… and it just seemed to resonate with that tragic void living inside me…

It’s probably been so long since i’ve bought an actual CD i’m sad to say because I still like CDs, I’m still a guy who likes CDs, but I have a lot of bad pop punk CDs from that circa Avril era. I mean, I probably have 700 cds and it’s just this incredibly awesome, sexy music collection, but just figure that 30 or so of those cds are from artists like…

Marco: Well, maybe a little, but it was a time and a place and everything changes and you make explorations and sometimes what’s bad is good and vice versa. And blah blah blah. And anyone who doesn’t get that is an idiot, right? Plus, these tiny revelations made here are hardly the worse musical sins I’ve committed as a listener…

Though, thankfully, this was the time period in which was i also really discovering, like, The Get Up Kids, so it wasn’t all bad. And that said, I gotta tell you, I’m sorry, but I can’t join you on the Jason Mraz journey.

MD: hahahahaha.

When I was flying back from Europe with an ex, we had a HORRIBLE fight. And this is like 10+ hours of flying BTW, and I just listened to this Jason Mraz song over and over again on the airplane radio system. It was really quite sad.

Marco: I can imagine. I think I’d like the song if it was a different artist, you know?

MD: Yeah. Jason Mraz is easy to hate.

Marco: And it’s something about Mraz himself that I just despise.

Okay, so I am about to hit you with two megahits from that time period. i don’t know if you’re ready for it.

MD: I’m so fucking ready.

Marco: That is exactly what I wanted to hear. But first, let me just say… Thinking about that Unwritten Law song… I was working where I am currently already when that song was unleashed on me and it’s so vivid in my memory the girl I had a crush on then that I associate that song with… I mean, nothing ever happened with that girl. She thought I was profoundly weird without ever realizing just how right she was and yet I still think of her when I hear it. Anyways… Prepare thyself!

MD: Getting ready…

Marco: You say that but can ever truly be ready to go back to… this:

MD: OH MAN, that Lifehouse guy. Do you think he made his voice sound like that?

Marco: Ha ha. Do you remember where you were when you first said out loud, “NO WAY, THAT BIG VOICE DOES NOT SOUND LIKE THAT LITTLE GUY FROM THE CALLING.”

MD: Wow. Seriously. I had no idea this band even had a name. It was just a song that was everywhere at the time.

Marco: Like back then, as they were signing their record contract they must’ve known they would not last.

It would be so much easier if we were talking about just the 90s here…

from here.

or late 90′s fin de siècle music, but this period we’re talking about, that early 00s, was just so fucking weird. Here’s a really, really sad fact: I also recall the first mp3 I ever downloaded and while this wasn’t the very first, I believe that lifehouse single was either #2 or #3.

MD: Hmm has this song been on a lot of commercials?

Marco: Probably so very many.

MD: Here’s one for the ages:

Editor’s note: This was a few months ago, mind.

MD: The ultimate compliment for any music video, really.

Marco: For serious. Yeah,back then I really liked the Bleed American and Futures album, which made me go back and look up Clarity. So emotastic.

MD: yeah, all the emo kids were soooo mad when they got popular for 5 seconds.

Editor’s note: I then told MD again about the 600ish page political novel that Benjamin Light and I started writing back during the time period being covered in this music discussion. (Separate editor’s note: Those 600 pages ended up only being probably 1/8the the novel’s probable length had it lived past its infancy. Jesus.) Anyway, about 75 pages of that book were written to Jimmy Eat World’s Clarity album. -Marco.

MD: That’s what it’s supposed to do!

Marco: I remember there was a period where I went to Burger King for lunch every day – ugh – and I’d order my food and sit myself in the corner, with my back to the TV and so I could see everyone there and I’d listen to music on headphones and eat and read articles from the internet I had printed out earlier in the day at work and just write. I was working on so many things back then and I had downloaded the Wicker Park soundtrack of all soundtracks because I had heard it was “hip.” And on it was this song:

Marco: …and that begat me downloading their album at the time and I would listen to that Snow Patrol album all the time during that period and write and, of course, it’s strongly associated with a girl at the time and all that blah blah blah. Words and music and women… funny how they’re all so strongly tied together in my head.

And yeah, I thought that was funny too, re: The Office video. I guess Pam/Roy was someone’s OTP at the time?

But anyway, that Snow Patrol thing… I think that was the start of me pushing into a new aeon on musical interests, as far as cruising on the surface of mainstream “alternative rock”ish type music for the masses, and enjoying something about the generic nothingness there.

And that strange sadness that belonged to nothing real in my life? I really think that perhaps it died when I first heard this song…

Marco: I remember listening to this song on headphones on a lunchbreak at work and just breaking down into tears. I had to call in to my job from 100 yards away and tell them I’d be late and I just walked around, listening to this over and over again and feeling terrible, and wonderful, and terrible and sad and wounded, and it was like somewhere around then I stopped feeling sad about nothing and it was like the real regrets and misery entered my life.

MD: Like catharsis, like a breakthrough of sorts.

If all of this right now was a part of a documentary about my sad dealings with music at the dawn of my 20s, then the song that would be playing over the end credits sequence would be this:

Marco: Nothing. Nothing is ever really learned.

And that end titles sequence, also, would just be sitting on the sidelines of a Quinceañera, watching young Spanish girls in pretty dresses dancing around with their family.

MD: You know, that sounds oddly hopeful.

Marco: Le Sigh. Remember when everything was just so simple and innocent and… BRITPOP?

MD: And it’s probably right there when i realized that this whole conversation would a blog post.

Marco: Yeah, sorry about that, but I think you’re right… Or maybe it’ll even be two!

Editor’s note: TO BE CONTINUED!

Nudists are seeking the next generation.

The grilled cheese sandwich gets a trendy rebirth.

An absolutely amazing abandoned end of the world bunker.

Animals that have Jack Shephard’s face.

“Only zealots and fools will continue to bow down to the gods of social media.”

Junot Diaz on Tokyo’s insane urbanism.

Relive Bill Paxton in all his glory in James Cameron’s Aliens.

FYI: The last name of the guy who plays Magnitude (which is short for “Magnetic Attitude”) on Community is Youngblood. Pop pop!

Martin Amis on Christopher Hitchens.

Japanese graffiti artist adds Fukushima disaster to famous A-bomb mural.

The haunted pod village of San-zhi.

An interview with Werner Herzog.

Professional online poker player ponders how he’ll make a living now.

Lindsay Lohan & Shenae Grimes: This should be interesting.

Thankfully the death of Osama Bin Laden doesn’t really affect Kathryn Bigelow’s film about the death of Osama Bin Laden.

Salvador Dali’s TV ads for chocolate, alka-seltzer, and wine.

On Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley.

Roberto Bolaño’s European adventures.

The Naked And Famous.

Jim Caviezel says that playing Jesus ruined his acting career. LOL. Good.

Baby was breastfed by wrong woman!

The man most likely to take top military job has never seen war.

The collected letters of Vladimir Nabokov.

Women are changing the sex industry from the inside, by Molly Lambert.

Guy Pearce cast in Ridley Scott’s Prometheus/Aliens prequel.

Will Ferrell shaved Conan O’Brien last night.

The pictures in this post are from this awesome collection of covers to the various editions of the novel and the two film adaptations of Lolita. Some really interesting design work there, ranging from the incredibly boring to the incredibly tantalizing.

“Lolita is famous, not I. I am an obscure, doubly obscure, novelist with an unpronounceable name.”

-Vladimir Nabokov, interviewed in The Paris Review.

But I guess they just happened to miss this one:

from here.

Nikola Mihov’s fascinating photography series “Forget Your Past.”

Relive Bill Paxton in all his glory in James Cameron’s True Lies.

The billionaires go back to school.

Bin Laden’s legacy will depend in part on what Obama does next.

Al-Quaeda: the next generation?

Back To The Future 2 is totally amazing and depressing at the same time.

6 medication side effects straight out of a horror movie.

Tracing that fake MLK quote back to its source.

Hipster animals!

Hot women pandering to nerds.

Mad linkage:

How to be a retronaut!

Superman is no longer an American citizen. Deal with it.

The uncensored version of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture Of Dorian Gray to finally be published.

How to build a religion.

They might actually release Joss Whedon’s Cabin In The Woods.

Lars Von Trier and the apocalyptic whimper.

Unlike with Natalie Portman, don’t expect a post here called “Who’s January Jones fucking these days?”

Budget cuts curtail the search for alien life out there.

Also, Natalie Portman’s dad self-publishes a novel about severed heads, stolen presidential embryos, and mysterious clones.

May Day, 1871: The day “Science Fiction” was invented.

Emma Watson leaves Brown.

Speaking of which, the new Harry Potter trailer is kind of epic.

Ayn Rand’s first love and mentor was a sadistic serial killer who dismembered little girls.

Charlie Sheen and Chuck Lorre: Honestly, who gives a fuck anymore?

Mitt Romney’s bullshit is back and it’s not off to such a great start.

RIP Joanna Russ.

Bessel beams are cool, but don’t actually exist.

FYI: It’s Walpurgisnacht!

Before he retires Steven Soderbergh will make Channing Tatum’s male stripper movie.

I don’t know where you are but summer’s here.

Is Netflix helping to reduce movie piracy in the United States?

Giant black holes discovered in the nuclei of merging galaxies.

An interview with Chuck Klosterman.

Big Boi and Modest Mouse are finally working together.

How bacteria could generate radio waves.

Iggy Pop was considered for a judge slot on American Idol and Fugazi may actually reunite some day.

Scientists create stable, self-renewing neural stem cells.

The 10 greatest apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic music videos.

All living humans are more closely related than you might think.

Vigilantes band together to protect NYC sex workers.

What can we learn by comparing the old and the new covers for the Left Behind series?

Unemployed ninja for hire.

from here.

Last night I had the strangest dream…

In the dream, it was the end of the world, or, well, it was the last night on Earth, and the following morning it was all going to end. In fire and flame, buried and suffocated in ash, or via instantaneous evaporation into total nothingness… the how I didn’t know. Things are vague in dreams. They change moment to moment and you just feel things, just know them. And I felt like it wasn’t this year, not 2011, but maybe it was next year, or maybe it wasn’t.

In the dream, some people had known that the end of was coming for a long time. The crazy people, we called them and always had, but they were the ones who had been having the dreams for years now. That’s how we all knew, every living thing on the planet, I mean, that’s how we knew that it was expiring the following morning: we had dreams. Most of us started having them about six months before that final night. In the dreams we were told that our time was finite and we woke up with the certainty of it. The sad, cold certainty of it.

We knew from the dreams and from intuition that most wouldn’t accept this, that there would be fights and attempts to stop it and plans concocted to spirit away or just generally save the human race, and that every effort must be made. But from the dreams we knew that all those plans would come up with nothing, all those efforts would be ultimately fruitless, and in the end… it would come down to the simple question of how would you want to spend your last night alive?

In the dream I had last night, I had tried to get in touch with my friends, but they were all on the other side of the world from me. Whoever they were and wherever I was, they were somewhere else. They had lives to finish living and people to wrap their existence up with. It was just me, me by myself, just as it had always been. And I was thirsty with nothing to drink in the house, so I went to a bar. There were strangers there living like there was no tomorrow, which was fitting because there would be no tomorrow, and everyone was laughing and talking and loud and very, very drunk. A band was playing. It felt like a celebration. The band wasn’t that great, but for the occasion, they were amazing. The music was so loud, so perfect. It felt like it wasn’t just coming from their instruments and their speakers and souls, but that it was coming from inside me. And they were playing this song:

This morning I woke up and the sun was shining. Dogs were barking down the street, my neighbor was mowing his yard, and car alarms were going off somewhere. And I had to pee really, really, really bad. For the briefest of moments, beyond anything else that could possibly be going on, it just felt good to be alive.

patrick: we never really shared one.

this man wasn’t just what they thought he was. or was he? that’s a tough call to make. i’ve read the bret easton ellis book american psycho and seen the movie again for maybe the 17th time just recently. 17th, yes, definitely. i see patrick in all his consumer elitism, hiding inside his nice suits, above average haircut, tortoise shell glasses, 18 pack abs, and jaw dropping business cards….i see it in us.

look at that subtle off white coloring

this man is sweating bullets (don’t think louis didn’t notice) over his business card not being the talk of the conference table. i can’t help but draw parallels between a movie/book about the mid 80′s and how it relates to life today. more specifically, social networking. as we’re all social beings, our networking is very important. if we go out on a friday, we’re sure to take our smart phones and upload those photos. not only do they go to our facebook and maybe even myspace (may it rest in peace)  but also to our twitter accounts. that’s if we’re so foolish as to not link our updates!!!!

omg, in the middle of 3some. #brb #philcollins

i’ve had talks with Capt Light, you may know him. we’ve discussed the way that people like to present themselves to the outside world. to certain people we are daughter/coworker/person we cheated off of in geometry. and that image may be who we actually are, or it may be just what we like to let others believe. but online we are anyone! we have camera phones! and four square!

i just became the mayor of your mom's box. #sorrybro

we can go out and let all our friends know about it. tell them where we’ve been and when we’ve moved on elsewhere. tag the people in photos that were our accomplices. and then the friends that couldn’t make it are left to :/ and comment or “like” it instead. it presents the most social and witty side of ourselves that we wish we could be more often. or at least present to those friends/followers/geometry inferiors.

oh yeah, i'm following @augustbarcelona. thought you knew.

is the real us such a let down? the real peanut is an unemployed sociology student that loves being a literary  elitist and music snob. when and if (!!) she graduates in two years, she’ll be begging for a job in social work that won’t pay the mounting debt accumulated by college. assuming our economy doesn’t continue to plunge deeper and deeper into the bowels of hell. but do i enjoy a peek into twitter or facebook? do i post photos of my drunk self out and about?

don't we all?

my intent here is not to say beware of your friends. we all know a crazy or two, and they’re good for a retweet. it may be more of a beware yourself. why must we present this better self?

…..why does or doesn’t patrick go all nail gun crazy on his secretary?

u know skirts, heading out for sorbet...

i guess we all want to protect our inner bateman’s…..