Gallo’s Bad Day Gets Worse

Posted on June 6, 2003

Hey, it looks like Vincent Gallo has decided that the fact that his film sucks wasn’t his fault after all. Turns out it’s everyone else’s fault. Who knew?

• CNN: Reviled ‘Bunny’ could be hot property
• Roger Ebert: Gallo goes on the offensive after ‘Bunny’ flop

Sez Gallo,

If a fat pig like Roger Ebert doesn’t like my movie, then I’m sorry for him.

Sez Ebert,

It is true that I am fat, but one day I will be thin, and he will still be the director of ‘The Brown Bunny.’

Snap! 🙂

Preach It, Brother!

Posted on June 6, 2003

It’s thrilling to see that the streets have finally given us a gangsta poet who isn’t afraid to tell it like it is!

File Under “Death By Embarrassment”

Posted on June 6, 2003

“What are you doing???”

“Um… honestly, officer, it’s nothing…”

Yeah, right. Some things, alas, are kind of difficult to talk your way out of. Like, say, this.

Sweatin’ to the Really Oldies

Posted on June 6, 2003

Those of you unfortunate enough to live in NYC might want to check this out: Shakespeare on the Run is a theatre group that is mounting a production of “Much Ado About Nothing” in Central Park. Nothing new there, but their approach to staging is — while you watch one scene, the next scene is getting ready to start, 50 feet away. When it’s time for that scene, the whole audience runs over to it, and that one starts while the next one gets ready, and so on. Every 5-7 minutes the audience has to pick up and run, so be sure to wear comfortable shoes!

Rupert Murdoch’s Stomach Will Roast in Hell!

Posted on June 6, 2003

Mark Fiore has a funny Flash comic on Michael Powell, FCC Chairman, and his successful push to remove regulations on media ownership. (Thanks to Donna Wentworth for the link.)

Weapons of Mass Destruction Finally Found

Posted on June 5, 2003

They’re in New Zealand. Who’da thunk it?

(Props to Oscar Merida for finding this.)

Microsoft Opens Up — Just a Bit

Posted on June 5, 2003

Looks like Microsoft is going to open the Windows source code — but only to “enterprise customers” (1,500+ seats), and there’s no word about whether those customers have the right to actually modify the code. So it’s interesting but hardly a threat to the anything-goes appeal of Linux.

More Help For Men Who Desperately Need It

Posted on June 5, 2003

Here’s another bright idea aimed at the same type of fellow who’d go for the buy-gifts-for-my-GF-for-me schtick: a company that will sell you fake ATM receipts with six-figure balances, to impress women.

Frankly, if you’re the type to use this, and your woman is that easily fooled, you probably deserve each other!

Wolfowitz: Open Mouth, Insert Foot

Posted on June 4, 2003

Oh, man… I don’t even know where to BEGIN with this one.

Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil

Asked why a nuclear power such as North Korea was being treated differently from Iraq, where hardly any weapons of mass destruction had been found, the deputy defence minister said: “Let’s look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil.”

Wait, it was for oil? How could that be? It was called Operation Iraqi Freedom, for Pete’s sake! The word “oil” isn’t in that name anywhere!

It’s a good thing that nobody who supported the war claimed outright that it had nothing to do with oil, though…

Oh. Except:

• Tony Blair: “The very reason we’re taking the action we are, is nothing to do with oil, or any of the other conspiracy theories put forward. It is to do with one very simple fact. I believe that we have to make sure that the will of the United Nations is upheld.”
• Richard Perle: “I find the accusation that this administration has embarked upon this policy for oil to be an outrageous, scurrilous charge for which, when you asked for the evidence, you will note there was none. There was simply the suggestion that, because there is oil in the ground and some administration officials have had connections with the oil industry in the past, therefore, it is the policy of the United States to take control of Iraqi oil. It is a lie… It is an out and out lie.”
• Donald Rumsfeld: “Nonsense… [The war] has nothing to do with oil.”
• Colin Powell: “This is not about oil. This is about a tyrant, a dictator, who is developing weapons of mass destruction to use against the Arab populations.”

… and those were just the ones I bothered to look up.

D’oh! Wonder what the justification for the war will be next week.

UPDATE: Well, it looks like Wolfie hasn’t completely lost his mind after all. The Guardian appears instead to have misquoted him. In the interest of fairness, here’s his complete quote as recorded in the official transcript of the event:

Look, the primarily difference — to put it a little too simply — between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options with Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil. In the case of North Korea, the country is teetering on the edge of economic collapse and that I believe is a major point of leverage whereas the military picture with North Korea is very different from that with Iraq. The problems in both cases have some similarities but the solutions have got to be tailored to the circumstances which are very different.

Saying that we had much less economic leverage over Iraq than we do over North Korea is a reasonable statement — all those years of sanctions pretty much proved that. So it looks like I (and more importantly, the Guardian) owe Wolfowitz an apology.

You Got Me Straight Trippin’, Barney

Posted on June 4, 2003

This is just wrong!

Keanu: I’ve Already Got Enough Cash, Thanks

Posted on June 3, 2003

Turns out Keanu Reeves is a hell of a nice guy. Who knew?

From Hello Magazine’s story KEANU REEVES GIVES £50 MILLION TO UNSUNG HEROES OF ‘THE MATRIX’:

Keanu Reeves has shown his generosity by giving away £50 million of his earnings from the Matrix sequels… to the unsung heroes of the sci-fi blockbusters — the costume and special effects teams…
His gift to the Matrix series’ 29 behind-the-scenes whiz kids will see each of them receiving £1.75 million.

To put his gift in perspective, he is expected to net in total around £70 million from both Matrix sequels. So he’s giving something like 70% of his take to the SFX wizards who made him look so good fighting off a hundred Agent Smiths.

In a word: whoa.

Under New Management

Posted on June 2, 2003

Now that the FCC has ruled that giant media corporations can legally swallow up what remains of local outlets, I’m proud to be able to announce a bold new direction for this blog:

Just Well Mixed has been purchased by Clear Channel Communications!

From now on we’ll be ditching the thin soup of tech news, political ranting, and goofy pictures that you’ve been getting from this blog. In their place, we’ll proudly be presenting all the content that our extensive market research has determined you really want:

• Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston. Are they happy? Are they fighting? Special reports every hour, on the hour.
• A New Weekly Opinion Column: “Why President Bush Is Right”
• J. Lo., J. Lo., J. Lo! Hard-hitting coverage of the issues the other blogs won’t touch: what’s she wearing, who’s she dating, what’s in her pre-nup.
• Financial News You Can Use: A housewife in West Virginia has made ten trillion dollars selling troll dolls on eBay. We’ll show how you can do the same!
• Celebrity Screw-Up Report: Yes, those wacky celebrities are always locking their keys in their car, losing their Faberge eggs in the couch, or forgetting to close the blinds before getting stoned and banging a bongo drum in their living room. Our Celebrity Screw-Up Report will help you forget your own shortcomings by exposing those of actors and singers!

And all this will be delivered in the bland, inoffensive way that you expect from Clear Channel. Never again will you be offended by what you read! Or angered, or provoked, or anything else for that matter. At Clear Channel, we read the bad news so you don’t have to!

In conclusion, we’d just like to give a shout out to our new corporate masters! Just Well Mixed is thrilled to be a member of the Clear Channel brain-sucking zombie collective family.

TV Network to Take Great Program, Ruin It

Posted on June 2, 2003

Oh dear sweet merciful Lord, tell me this is a joke:

David E. Kelley to produce next season of ’24’

In a move that has obviously been brewing since the network’s upfront presentation two weeks ago, Kelly evealed some changes he has already considered for the program as well as some other eye-raising decisions he has already made.
“A new agent for CTU will be Kim Bauer, played by Elisha Cuthbert….”

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Kim’s budding skills and obvious inheritance of her father’s ability to maneuver difficult situations makes it a natural transition for the program and a realistic way to keep a much-loved character involved,” Kelly said. “She killed Megan’s abusive father. She escaped from Ira Gaines. She escaped from a police officer’s car. All of these things qualify Kim for a promotion.”

AAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH

“We haven’t seen the last of Nina Meyers, either,” Kelly stated. “This season we will find that she has been placed in the witness protection program as a cabaret singer in the Midwest.”

MAKE IT STOP!!! MAKE IT STOP!!!

This has to be a joke. Right? Right?!?!

(thanks to Diego Doval for the pointer)

UPDATE: Well whaddaya know, it was a joke after all. What’s scary is that TV is mostly so abysmal that you could read something like this and actually see some network exec thinking it was a Good Idea!

Oooh

Posted on June 2, 2003

What can I say? I want one.

Transparent Browser Upgrades

Posted on June 2, 2003

My colleague Oscar Merida has some thoughts on convincing people to upgrade to Mozilla Firebird from IE:

I’ve been
installing Mozilla and related projects on friend’s and family’s PCs
for a while now to help them upgrade. I don’t think you even
really need to mention that its not IE, just say – want me to upgrade
your browser so that it blocks pop-up ads and gives you tabbed browsing?

Exactly! Heck, if you install Firebird with the Luna theme, it looks so much like IE6 does on Windows XP that they may never even know they’ve switched. This kind of “stealth switch” is going to become more and more common, I think, as end-users who don’t care about what browser they’re using (so long as it works) turn to their geek friends for help/advice.

Spolsky Makes the Switch

Posted on June 1, 2003

Well, I never thought I’d see this, that’s for sure — Joel Spolsky, head of Fog Creek Software and a former Microsoft development manager, has decided to switch to Mozilla Firebird as his default browser. Wow! Spolsky has caught plenty of heat over the years for his Microsoft advocacy, so it warms my heart to see that even he can recognize Firebird’s superiority over Internet Explorer.

Now we just have to get the other 90% of the market that still stuck on IE to give Firebird a whirl and see what they’ve been missing!

You Think You’re Having a Bad Day?

Posted on May 30, 2003

I bet yours was better than Vincent Gallo’s… 🙂

Mozilla 1.4 RC1 Released

Posted on May 30, 2003

Those of you who haven’t made the switch to Mozilla Firebird yet should know that Mozilla Suite 1.4 Release Candidate 1 was unleashed on the world today. Lots of improvements — especially if you’re using a version older than 1.3 (junk mail filtering 0wnZ spam!).

So Does Microsoft At Least Pay For the Kneepads?

Posted on May 30, 2003

Browser god Ian Hickson has written up everything you need to know about yesterday’s settlement between Microsoft and AOL of AOL’s 2002 antitrust complaint.

(sigh)

I hope this doesn’t mean AOL’s going to drop or neuter mozilla.org… Mozilla Firebird rocks pretty hard, and it completely slaughters the anemic Internet Explorer (where’s the tabbed browsing? CSS support? Popup blocking?). Here’s hoping Mozilla.org can continue to innovate and push the limits.

Who… Is the Man In the Suuuuit???

Posted on May 30, 2003

Salon has a great article on one of the hilariously bent shows on Cartoon Network‘s Adult Swim block of programming — “Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law“, which re-casts 60s minor-league cartoon superhero Birdman as a half-competent attorney handling the legal problems of Fred Flintstone (who’s a Mob boss, the “Dabba Don”), Boo-Boo Bear (the “Unabooboo”), and other Hanna-Barbera characters.

“Harvey Birdman” is a riot (along with several other of the Adult Swim shows, like Sealab 2021 and Aqua Teen Hunger Force) — stay up this Sunday night and see what all the fuss is about, you won’t be sorry.

Free Your Mind

Posted on May 29, 2003

I took the “What Matrix Persona Are You?” test, and apparently, I am Morpheus:

You are Morpheus, from “The Matrix.” You
have strong faith in yourself and those around
you. A true leader, you are relentless in your
persuit.

What Matrix Persona Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Interesting. When I was a senior in college I had a group of underclassmen who worked for me on the lecture program. They called me “Yoda” because I’m short and given to spouting vaguely philosophical aphorisms. I suppose Morpheus is this generation’s Yoda… not that I mind, Morpheus looks cooler by a mile 🙂

Hitchens on Blumenthal

Posted on May 29, 2003

Christopher Hitchens has a great review of former Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal‘s new book, The Clinton Wars, in The Atlantic. It’s especially interesting given the history between Hitchens and Blumenthal, who were once friends until Hitchens chose to testify to Ken Starr’s impeachment inquiry that Blumenthal had testified falsely in a sworn deposition to that inquiry. Ever since, the two have warred in public and in private. That gives Hitchens’ review a sharp edge and a new angle that an uninvolved observer couldn’t have.

Long Time Coming

Posted on May 28, 2003

This is interesting — there’s a movement afoot in New York state to pardon Lenny Bruce, the controversial comedian who was hounded by the authorities for “obscenity” until he died of a drug overdose in 1966.

Bruce has always been one of my personal heroes. He was a troubled soul, to be certain, and his personal life was pretty screwed up (as is true of many comedians), but he had the courage to say something bold and original in a culture that didn’t want to hear it. He was a truth-teller who paid the price: plainclothes cops would be in the audience of every show he did, waiting to haul him off the stage the minute he started saying anything they deemed objectionable. He spent the last years of his life fighting an uphill legal battle to clear his name, a battle he ultimately lost.

What’s often lost in the noise about Bruce is that he was truly, truly funny — if you read his material today, most of it still holds up very well. (There are RealAudio clips of him up for you to listen to, if you aren’t familiar with his material.) There would not be another performer who mixed devastating wit with insightful social commentary as powerfully as Bruce until Bill Hicks hit the scene in the 80s.

Hopefully the pardon-Bruce movement will win the support it needs and clear the name of a comic pioneer.

Welcome to the No-Spin Zone

Posted on May 27, 2003

David Brake points to an amazing transcript of a recent interview on Fox’s “O’Reilly Factor” between anchor-slash-blowhard Bill O’Reilly and Jeremy Glick, whose father died in the 9-11 attacks and who signed an ad opposing the war in Iraq.

(Note that the transcript is hosted by a liberal news site, so its veracity may be suspect — Brake reports it’s been confirmed in the latest issue of Harpers’, but their site doesn’t have that confirmation online yet, so I can’t say for certain. If it isn’t confirmed by a reliable source soon I may shell out the $9.95 to Fox for a copy of the official transcript to see…)

If this is for real, it’s an amazing read. O’Reilly comes off as the biggest jerk on the face of the Earth — he actually at one point berates Glick by arguing that he knows what Glick’s father would have wanted better than Glick does:

O’REILLY: You’re entitled to it, all right, but you’re — you see, even — I’m sure your beliefs are sincere, but what upsets me is I don’t think your father would be approving of this.
GLICK: Well, actually, my father thought that Bush’s presidency was illegitimate.
O’REILLY: Maybe he did, but…
GLICK: I also didn’t think that Bush…
O’REILLY: … I don’t think he’d be equating this country as a terrorist nation as you are.
GLICK: Well, I wasn’t saying that it was necessarily like that.
O’REILLY: Yes, you are. You signed…
GLICK: What I’m saying is…
O’REILLY: … this, and that absolutely said that.
GLICK: … is that in — six months before the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan, starting in the Carter administration and continuing and escalating while Bush’s father was head of the CIA, we recruited a hundred thousand radical mujahadeens to combat a democratic government in Afghanistan, the Turaki government.
O’REILLY: All right. I don’t want to…
GLICK: Maybe…
O’REILLY: I don’t want to debate world politics with you.
GLICK: Well, why not? This is about world politics.
O’REILLY: Because, No. 1, I don’t really care what you think.

Wow. “I don’t really care what you think.” So I guess the only reason he invited Glick to be on his show was to bully and berate him. To Glick’s credit, though, he more than holds his own. I’m glad to see that politeness and tolerance for opposing viewpoints are alive and well in the fair and balanced No-Spin Zone!

Desert Combat: Lost Village

Posted on May 26, 2003

The latest update (version .35) to the outstanding Battlefield 1942 mod “Desert Combat” adds a sweetener that’s practically addictive: a new map called “Lost Village”. Lost Village addresses the greatest problem with DC to date: how to address the overwhelming advantage in force the “Coalition” (aka Americans) has over the “Opposition” (aka Iraqis). LV’s solution is to present a claustrophobic urban battlefield where the fighting is too close-in for tanks or air power — and then to start all the Americans at a helicopter pad waaay on the other side of the map from the town. This forces the Americans to fight their way into the town by dropping in from Black Hawk helicopters and seizing the spawn points they need to obtain victory — a dicey proposition when you consider that each dead Iraqi re-spawns in a building next door, while each dead American goes back to the helo pad (until they can seize and hold a spawn point in the town). In practice, this results in small bands of Americans holding on for dear life against swarms of Iraqis, trying to hold out until the next helo shows up. Even though the bad guys are Iraqis, the overall feel is more reminiscent of the gritty battle of Mogadishu than anything from either of the Persian Gulf Wars. It’s a real nail-biter, and the best Battlefield 1942 map produced to date — check it out.