Prince Jellyfish.

So after all these fucking years they finally made a movie out of The Rum Diary

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 The novel itself – which was Thompson’s second, after the still unpublished Prince Jellyfish – was a pretty straightforward Hemingway-esque affair and it’s interesting to see that they added quite a bit of “zany” to the story and, of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.

Strong Motion.

Benjamin Light: I now have two real credit cards, so I won’t have to use my debit card everywhere. I feel like such an adult now.

Kitty Ravenhart: I nearly never use my credit card. It may not change your behavior as much as you think.

Peanut St. Cosmo: Yes, it definitely does make you feel like an adult. But its so easy to get carried away spending when you don’t keep track like you do with a debit card. Be careful with those things.

Benjamin: Oh, I plan on using my CC everywhere I would normally use my debit card, then I’ll just pay it off every month. My intention isn’t to be able to spend money I don’t have, just to use a CC with fraud protection instead of putting my own bank account at risk.

Marco Sparks: You need to start saying “I’m gonna charge that shit!” everywhere. Like an adult.

Kitty: It’s true. That is what adults do. I mean, I don’t personally, because I’m not an adult, but I’ve seen it done.

Benjamin: Yeah, I suppose I’ve just read too many articles about card skimmers and online sites getting hacked.

Peanut: I’d pay good money to be somewhere with Benjie as he says, “I’m gonna charge that shit.” Preferably somewhere really *classy* like Sizzler.

Benjamin: heheheh

Marco: People charge the shit out of things at Sizzler.

Peanut: I fucking hope so!

Marco: When your boyfriend Jonathan Franzen goes to Sizzler he tells them to “Charge that shit!”

Peanut: Oh fuck me, I hope so! I’d have a whole lot more respect for him!!

Marco: I had such a great response to this but I don’t think I’ll post it. It’s a bit dirty, and you have to love before you can be relentless, or suicidal. The punchline involves Franzen not fucking Peanut at Sizzler, but letting her sit at his booth with him while his girlfriend gets up to get another plate of shrimp. Yada yada yada, if someone plays their cards right: fingerbang.

Editor’s note: By “fingerbang” what Marco Sparks clearly meant was: fingerblast. Obviously.

Peanut: Whoa, what? I get fingerbanged by Franzen? I don’t know what to say about that… Does he leave his glasses on?

Marco: Well… Of course he does. When you “charge that shit” they give you a receipt and all, but there’s tiny print on it. Hard to read. Also, he has trouble reading the directions on all his pill bottles. These days those glasses are practically glued to his face. And don’t worry cause he washes his hands like 13 times a day.

Kitty: If she’s in a Sizzler at all do you think she cares that the fingers in her vagina have been washed?

Benjamin: This has gone to such a wonderful place.

Kitty: Wait, is the wonderful place Sizzler or Peanut’s vagina?

Marco: People will be asking that same question long after we’re all gone, Kitty.

And… You’re forgetting that he’s a famous author. You don’t snub Oprah and get your face on the cover of Time magazine AND THEN go fingerbang girls with nasty, dirty fingernails. Ick. No. He’s not a member of the goon squad!

Peanut: Oh yes, I care about those fingers, Kitty! Thank god, you can’t let anyone who washes their hands less than 10x a day go sticking their fingers in your pikachu. I mean if you had one, you know? Oh Franzen, I’ll help you read all your little pill bottles! And defrost your weed you keep in the freezer!!! :)

Marco: This…

Benjamin: He looks like he has seen things that cannot be unseen.

Marco: Just be thankful you can’t see his hands.

Peanut: They were under a table @ Sizzlers!

…while he was podcasting. And hopefully alone!!

Kitty: I’m going to borrow the pikachu euphemism sometime.

Marco: Right now Jonathan Franzen’s girlfriend is folding her arms over her chest and looking at you and your pikachu with a very, very disapproving look, Peanut.

Also, I feel like Cormac McCarthy also eats at the Sizzler, but J-Fran pretends not to see him whenever they nearly bump elbows over by the ice cream machine.

As if dudes aren’t confused enough. Now our girlfriends will come into the bedroom at night and say, “Wanna play some Pokemon?” and we just won’t get it. Ugh. What the fuck else is new?

Peanut: It’s because I have better hair than her, Marco. Oh yes. Take pikachu, I use your mood status: stabby, all the time!

Benjamin: Really? I think “Pokemon” is pretty obvious.

Speaking of mood statuses, I had occasion to be looking at myspace earlier today. I miss all my old over-sharing blogs and current mood settings. :D

Marco: Jonathan Franzen’s girlfriend does have bad hair, you’re right. It’s like she works at a fucking Wal-Mart or something.

Kitty: That would explain the dinners at Sizzler.

Peanut: Who is this chick? I’ll challenge her to a dance off or something? Yes, myspace blogs and oversharing were pretty great :)

from here.

Benjamin: Maybe you guys could have a home perm-off.

Peanut: Benjie, my hair is too awesome for home perms.

Marco: But not too awesome for dance offs or getting fingerbanged in a booth in the middle of a Sizzler’s. We read you loud and clear.

Kitty: That does pigeon-hole you in a very narrow range of awesome.

Marco: Very narrow.

Peanut: Who doesn’t love a good dance off? No lying now…we grew up in the era of a post-Britney/Justin world and their dance off that followed.

Benjamin: You might have, I’m older.

Peanut: Barely. Dick.

Bejamin: ={

Marco: Would Billy Zane be judging this dance off?

Peanut: No Billy Zane, but maybe Paula’s available?? If I had a steady pill supply for her anyway. No, I don’t watch those dancey idol talent shows.

Marco: They play them on the TVs at Sizzler. You’ll be fine.

Harbingers

As you may have gathered from some of my past writing, I’m a big Neal Stephenson fan. He is one of my favorite authors. I was discussing with Marco the other day how when reading, say, the fifth Harry Potter book,  it felt like Rowling’s editor needed to step in and convince JK to tighten it up a bit. But with Stephenson, even when he’s plowing into a chapter-long tangent, you don’t mind, because he takes you interesting places. That’s not to say that Rowling is not a talented writer, but the voice that Stephenson writes with is just on a different, more stylistic level. His sometimes indulgent asides are what make him so much fun.

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:

this is the end, my friend

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

Apropos of nothing…

…it’s been a rough week, kids.

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

…And I feel fine/No future for you!

Well, I guess the Rapture didn’t happen, huh? Not today, I guess. I mean, I’m still here. You’re reading this, so I guess you’re still here too, huh? The sad thing about “The Rapture” is that, well, besides it being a fictional event in a set of fables in a funny book of short stories about wizards and demons and old world customs, is that… well, I just don’t know anyone who would be going up in this fantastical sounding Rapture thing. It’s just for the good, right? Well, all the people I know are bad, bad people… And I guess I wouldn’t have it any other way.

from here.

Oh well, a shame. But I suppose the Internet will quickly find something else for itself to get excited about, right? But there’s still us and there’s tomorrow and a little more juice to be squeezed out of whatever could be “the future” and there’s whatever could possibly come with that…

Mad linkage:

Here’s 10 other recent predictions for the End Times that didn’t come true either.

German insurance firm held orgy to reward salesmen.

Learn how to tie your shoes right.

Quite possibly our first look at Tom Hardy as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises.

Kirk Cameron vs. Stephen Hawking.

Ricky Gervais on The Office‘s finale.

If you do go up in the Rapture, don’t worry, the atheists will take care of your pets… for a price.

An excerpt from Chris Adrian’s new novel.

“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.”

-Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

by Beth Hoeckel, from here.

What really goes on in Area 51?

A volcano in Iceland called Grímsvötn has erupted.

Twitter shit about the Rapture from yesterday.

Inside the Robert Redford biography.

Stephen Fry joins The Hobbit.

New discovery about mosquitoes reveals why vampires will never exist.

Speaking of which, Joe Jackson is still a bloodsucking piece of shit.

from here.

“The future is already here… It’s just not even distributed.”

-William Gibson

David Lynch to release an album later this year.

The visual impact of gossip.

The story of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s doomed/failed/totally fucking crazy would be adaptation of Dune to become a documentary. Here’s Dan O’Bannon talking about it a little.

Related: the team up between Salvador Dali and Walt Disney.

Just checking: Still no Rapture, right? Whew.

NBC cancels Outsourced. Good.

The trailer for the new film by Miranda July.

Carrie is being remade and Stephen King suggests Lindsay Lohan for the lead.

from here.

This trailer/movie looks really terrible: Horrible Bosses.

This trailer looks so so, but the movie will probably suck: Another Earth.

It’s Pilot Season! Trailers for (just a few of the) new TV shows that were just picked up:

Awake. Which… looks good, looks interesting, but I just don’t see a TV show that I would follow/watch for years and years there. Funny how both it and Another Earth‘s trailer use that song by the Cinematic Orchestra.

Alcatraz. The latest from the J.J. Abrams camp… The 4400 meets Prison Break, featuring Sam Neill and Hurley from Lost. This looks ridiculous, and I’ll watch it and just hope that it’s not another letdown like Fringe.

Person Of Interest. Another from J. J. Abrams, although it seems like it’s mostly just his name on it and the real creative juice is from Jonathan Nolan, writer of The Dark Knight and brother of Christopher. Looks interesting-ish, but Jim Caviezel? Was that really necessary?

A trailer for the documentary on the showrunners of all your favorite TV shows.

And a nice guide to the shows that didn’t make it to the Fall 2011 season.

“The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented.”

-Dennis Gabor

I had a dream a while back that the world was ending… It was an odd dream, but not a terrible one, I guess. It’s just not something you can prepare for, the end of the world. You can’t ever really be ready for it. You just gotta keep on living, don’t you? And loving and listening to music and dancing and pursuing impossible things and enjoying mundane moments and people and doing all kinds of stupid shit. Take things seriously but maybe enjoy the ridiculous things that surround you just a little bit more? I don’t want to tell you something terribly cliched, like… Live every moment like it’s your last!

No, don’t do that. You’ll probably hurt yourself trying to do that.

But maybe every once in a while, take a single moment and consider that it is your last moment on this beautiful, insane planet, and just really ponder that. And think about what you would do if it wasn’t. Beam yourself into the future and peek in on yourself and see what you’re up to. Take a vacation into the future and see who you are there. Interview yourself and find out what went right and wrong in your life in the moments/weeks/months/years between now and then, and take good notes. And when you come back to the present, remember that little trip. Remember that time you went to the future and appreciate that you’re back here, and now, and then go there again.

The anniversary of Bikini Atoll is coming up.

Chinese “dinosaur city” reshapes understanding of prehistoric era.

Brittany Julious is sexy.

The kind of guys who stay single?

The Cat Rapture for Caturday!

Neil Gaiman on Gene Wolf.

Grant Morrison to write a movie about dinosaurs vs. aliens, Barry Sonnenfield to direct.

from here.

RIP “Macho Man.”

The fashion of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Fleetwood Mac to reunite in time for the end of the world.

The never before seen original ending to Alexander Payne’s Election, which is much closer to the book’s ending.

I don’t think I’m all that crazy about these Odd Future guys.

Skeeter Davis and Henry Moore.

Tom Cruise is a lonely robot repairman.

from here.

How to survive a mass extinction.

Plot details from the upcoming Tim Burton/Johnny Depp big screen version of Dark Shadows.

Will the internet destroy academic freedom?

A history of bedwetting.

Bionic hands! The future is now!

A good prank for the Rapture.

Oh well, hopefully this one was good practice for the next time the world (supposedly) ends. Still plenty of time to get your Rapture Playlist just fucking perfect. No sleep til 2012!

Sequential art/literature.

More from the genius that is Tom Gauld:

and

and

and

and last but not least…

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

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

Young Blood!

Mad linkage:

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.

hey, i’m a child of divorce, give me a break.

evelyn: what about the past?

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…..

Think in images.

Three quotes from Vladimir Nabokov and a couple of pictures from the internet…

1. This:

from here.

“I know more than I can express in words, and the little I can express would not have been expressed, had I not known more.”

2. This:

by Matt Bors, from here.

“I don’t think in any languages. I think in images.”

3. This:

and this:

and this:

and also this:

Cats quoting Charlie Sheen! from here.

“Play! Invent the world! Invent reality!”

The suburb of the soul.

Mad linkage:

Who is Arcade Fire?!

It seems like the theme of Sunday’s Grammys were “I don’t know who this person is.”

The most British movie ever.

The oral history of Party Down.

The Machinist‘s Brad Anderson to adapt J.G. Ballard’s Concrete Island, starring Christian Bale.

Robots to get their own internet.

You can buy the new Radiohead album this Saturday!

PLAY The Great Gatsby for NES.

Sex, drugs, and cannibalism: the Chilean miners’ story.

Fuck Yeah Lady Writers.

Hello! And RIP Uncle Leo.

House group proposes shifting Earth science funds to manned spaceflight.

This guy will buy you breakfast if you can explain Lost to him.

The science of heartlessness.

Michel Gondry is adapting Philip K. Dick’s Ubik.

from here.

Michael Moorcock on J. G. Ballard.

Sarah Jessica Parker wants to do a Sex And The City 3 and she wants to do it just for Benjamin Light.

What makes black holes so black?

Crystal Renn addresses her weight loss and maintaining plus-size model status.

The Criterion Collection is on Hulu Plus (and so is your mom).

Americans know so little about the bible.

James Van Der Beek to play himself on an ABC sitcom. Seriously.

Also: Aaron Sorkin to guest as himself on 30 Rock.

“We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind — mass merchandising, advertising, politics conducted as a branch of advertising, the instant translation of science and technology into popular imagery, the increasing blurring and intermingling of identities within the realm of consumer goods, the preempting of any free or original imaginative response to experience by the television screen. We live inside an enormous novel. For the writer in particular it is less and less necessary for him to invent the fictional content of his novel. The fiction is already there. The writer’s task is to invent the reality.”

-J. G. Ballard

The sun unleashed a huge solar flare towards the Earth.

CBS News’ Lara Logan hospitalized after sexual assault in Egypt.

Living towers made of humans.

Hans Zimmer promises that the score for The Dark Knight Rises will be both “epic” and “iconic.”

Also, 1 in 5 films coming out in 2011 will be sequels.

Click here to see the beginning of something wonderful.

Natalie Portman cries a lot.

Who makes shittier movies, Guy Ritchie or Zack Snyder?

by Jason Brockert, from here.

Pakistan issues arrest warrent for Pervez Musharraf.

Whatcha thinkin’ about?

There’s a DuckTales comic coming out. How awesome is that?

Twitter, translations, and the new geopolitics.

The Onion’s AV Club interviews PJ Harvey.

Look at the trailer for this Dead Island game. I know nothing about this game, but based on this trailer, I want to play the fuck out of it.

Why the Oscars snubbed Christopher Nolan.

You rock, rock.

from here.

Why I want to fuck J. G. Ballard.

Maria Bello a reasonable replacement for Helen Mirren in the unnecessary remake of Prime Suspect?

An underground village in France where people lived for hundreds of years.

Jeff Mangum is touring.

Billy Ray Cyrus blames the Devil and David Lynch for his problems.

Facebook’s growing web of frenemies.

Justina Bieber doesn’t believe in abortions, even in the case of rape. Man… whatever.

from here.

Michael Emerson to star in Person Of Interest, the CBS pilot from J.J. Abrams and Jonah Nolan about predicting/fighting future crime.

Pitchfork gave the new Mogwai album a 6.6.

Top 10 famous people who didn’t actually exist.

Donnie Darko‘s Richard Kelly to do a normal, traditional thriller next.

What would Hüsker Dü?

There’s a campaign to replace the N-word in Huckleberry Finn with “robot.”

“I would sum up my fear about the future in one word: boring. And that’s my one fear: that everything has happened; nothing exciting or new or interesting is ever going to happen again … the future is just going to be a vast, conforming suburb of the soul.”

-J. G. Ballard

I like and respect Jill Thompson’s visual take on Wonder Woman.

Speaking of which, Adrianne Palicki is the new Wonder Woman (in that David E. Kelley TV pilot).

…and here is the audition tape for Tanit Phoenix, who didn’t get the role, that shows how obsessed the pilot script seems to be with breasts.

Iain Sinclair on J.G. Ballard’s favorite artwork.

The underage cast of MTV’s Skins pose in their skimpies in Elle. Now go crazy, people.

The age of consent around the world.

The businessmen drink my blood just like the kids in art school said they would…”

The guy who was raised by cats.