Tuesday, January 31, 2006

If you decide to start dancing in the street, everyone you bump into will know all the steps.

40 Things That Only Happen In Movies

Monday, January 30, 2006

Wunderbar, wunderbar!
What a perfect night for love
Here am I, here you are
Why, it's truly wunderbar!


I've been listening to my copy of the Kenny Everett compilation The World's Worst Record Show.

One particular track, Zarah Leander's Wunderbar is so over the top that it always brings a smile to my face. (Imagine a lady with a deep voice singing to the accompaniment of musicians who sound like a cross between a Strauss waltz orchestra and a beer garden oom-pa-pah band.)

Imagine my dismay when I find, upon looking at the record label, that Wunderbar is a Cole Porter song! (I think it's from Kiss Me Kate.) Cole, how could you!?!

Saturday, January 28, 2006

Have a dog poop on your least favourite website

Net Disaster allows you to type in a website address. The software then visits various animated disasters upon it, such as being attacked by Martians, etc.

Hat tip: Antonia Zerbisias.
Good to see

I see that Linda Frum is writing again, doing feature interviews for Maclean's magazine.

I've always liked Ms. Frum's work, so I shall forgive her in advance for writing for the Report magazines' chief competition. :) Good luck to her.

Saturday, January 21, 2006

Tod K. Maffin, boffin!

Before Tod Maffin became a technomedia guru he was my successor as the B.C. Bureau Chief of Canadian University Press.

"Bureau Chief" was a relative term, of course. The bureau had one person.

I tried to become the National Bureau Chief, in charge of CUP's news service, but was thrashed in the election to that post. It was all for the best though. Had I moved to Ottawa, I would never have met my friend Rajiv and started going to his church. The church remains a very cool place to go.

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Too much time on my hands

The Bionic Woman Files is a tribute page about the Bionic Woman TV show.

Sunday, January 15, 2006

Could you survive in 1973?

The BBC, which has a new TV show about a cop who has been time-travelled to the year 1973, has a fun quiz asking Could you survive happily in 1973?

I flunked the quiz because I am too modern, which surprised me.
Memoirs are better when you lie

John Gushue cites two interesting and recent examples of "memoirs" that are heavily embellished.

Won't get fooled again, as the title of that old rock song says.

Saturday, January 14, 2006

"He's quite the boy"

Here's a recent newpspaper feature on Chad Allan, the first lead singer of The Guess Who. Mr. Allan, who I was fortunate enough to know briefly during my teen years, now sings in seniors' homes.

Understandably, the fellow who sang lead on Shakin' All Over includes a couple of uptempo 1950s R and B songs in his set. He also told The Vancouver Sun that as baby boomers age he might be able to include a Beatles or Rolling Stones song in his act.
The CBC version of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 would make the little baby Jesus cry

Something Awful humorously speculates what several U.S. TV channels would do if they decided to bring back Mystery Science Theatre 3000 on their networks.

Hat tip: Satellite News.
Chuck Norris lost his virginity before his father did

Sam Kirk has posted some amusing "facts" about Chuck Norris.

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

I am woman!
Or, why cribbing can be dangerous


Buckets of Grewal has found some bloopers caused when workers for Ontario Tory candidate John Sprovieri just lifted an "issues page" from B.C. MP Nina Grewal's page without changing some entries.

Voters, Buckets of Grewal chortles, were no doubt surprised to learn, until the bloopers were fixed, that Mr. Sprovieri is married to outgoing Tory MP Gurmant Grewal. Moreover, they at first forgot to change the part where Mrs. Grewal noted that she was pro-choice because "I am a woman. End of discussion."

Dief the Chief must be spinning in his grave. :)
The 9th wonder of the world

Popular Science reports on the invention of Silly Putty in 1945.

Sunday, January 01, 2006

The greatest writers of all time!

Poking around the internet, I have found tribute sites to two great writers.

First, Lionel Fanthorpe, who didn't let the pressing deadlines for his science fiction novels impair his efforts to produce quality writing:

"To meet his grueling deadlines, Fanthorpe employed an unusual technique. He dictated his masterworks into a reel to reel tape recorder, oftentimes under the cover of a blanket to enhance his concentration. He would then ship those tapes off to a pool of typists for transcription. This created many unique problems. People who die in one chapter reappear a chapter or two later because it was forgotten that they were dead..."

If mysteries are more your style, you may learn more about Harry Stephen Keeler, who is thought to be the worst mystery writer ever:

"...In the late thirties, Keeler's style began to depart even further from normal prose. His books were dripping with outre elements (such as bordellos of freaks) and twisted into supremely convoluted webwork plots--but in many works, he removed almost all of the action from the immediate scene and presented it through dialogue. And often this dialogue consists of page after page of thick, artificial dialect..."
Springtime for you-know-who

As someone who also loves the 1968 movie The Producers (so much so, that I have almost memorized big chunks of the film), I found myself agreeing with a lot of Roger Ebert's take on the 2005 remake of The Producers.

That said, after seeing Uma Thurman's take on Ulla, I have decided that I need a receptionist. Now!

:)