Film: Wheel of Time

An involving documentary from Baxblog fave Werner Herzog.

A bit of synchronicity- I picked it up the day before a fraught meeting with my mom. I've gone over the Herzog section at the Insomniac a thousand times and never seen this one until it fell into my hand.

When it comes to documentaries the subject is irrelevant, the star for me is Herzog's mesmerizing voice. He fits that old saw about the vocalist who can sing the phone book- Werner could read a list of neocon talking points and have me nodding along in a trance. It's fortunate that he uses his amazing powers only for good.

This one is a winner.
Herzog is in fine voice, and the topic (Tibetan pilgrimage) is fascinating and completely unknown to me. It also delivers an apropos life lesson, like a uniquely uplifting episode of the Cosby Show sans schmaltz.

Worth a rental for the scene where Herzog leans all his humorless Teutonic gravity behind the question "is this tree really the center of the universe?" and the Dali Lama can't respond without laughing.

Good stuff, with plenty of typically brilliant Herzog shot framing.
Two thumbs up.

New banner

courtesy of London street artist Eine.

tiny motorcycles

made out of watch parts.

Gratz to DT!

He arrived safely in Sydney, Australia for a summer of hanging out at the nearby racetrack & rugby stadium & sunning himself like a lizard.

Hey Bobo, howcome all you ever get to do on your summer vacation is herd rich alumni up the Amazon on a barge? What a ripoff!

wallpaper

neato collection from Germany.

Tales of Jack

the wife:
I think we're going to the beach tomorrow, jack.

jack:
Oh, GROSS!

the wife:
We want to swim in the water.

jack:
that's even grosser! Do you wanna get eaten by a shark?!?

This has been another chapter from the Book of Jack.

Blurb of the Month

Dust jacket copy for Jorney to the Golden Door:

Journey to the Golden Door is the autobiography of Jay Sommer, who at the age of twenty-one came to America with a limited formal education and with virtually no knowledge of the English language to eventually become the 1981 National Teacher of the Year, an award presented to him at the White House.

The only question is why hasn't Jerry Bruckheimer optioned this rags to riches saga?

how it goes

Someone comes up to the counter with a really nice book.
Nothing rare, just an exceptionally nice copy of an uncommon title.
Maybe it's an old Modern Library Giant with a really clean dust jacket, or a nice book on something really specific like narrow-gauge railroads in Maine.

This time it was a lovely, clean old book on American folk art, priced $35.
The selling point was the dust jacket, which was whole & in remarkable shape for its age (the book was published in the early 30's).

They didn't start coating dust jackets for durability until fairly recently, and most older ones weren't even printed on heavy stock. This is why in the literary collectibles market the dust jacket carries nearly all of a book's value. A collectible literary 1st in a beautiful DJ worth 10k would be lucky to bring in a few hundred dollars without the jacket.

Even the existence of this jacket is mildly amazing. $35 is more than fair- if I'd been pricing it my pencil would have been tempted by the sweet siren song of $50.

Customers being how they are, this fellow brings this beautiful, uncommon title to the counter and whines about the price, pointing to a few insignificant bits of wear. This happens often enough that I've developed a scripted reply;
"Gee, that's unfortunate....but I'm not going to mess with the owner's price".

This always gets the same response- they grumble, then buy the book.
They know why it's not cheap as well as I do...it's just a game they play.

This particular fellow had an extra layer of chuzpah.
He browsed a while more, found another interesting, fairly pricey book, and as I rang him up said "You know, that's the first copy of that book I've ever seen in hardcover. I didn't think a hardcover edition even existed."

Maybe I'm odd, but when I come across a beautiful, reasonably priced copy of a book I admire in a format I didn't know existed, I don't wheedle over a few dollars...I'm excited I found it and cough up the green.

Reading list

I'm attempting a biography of Stalin.

Wish me luck!

/edit
Thanks to DT for his suggestion in the comments, which led me to this superlatively headlined review.

But it's such a lovely day.
What better compliment for a few beers & a plate of Carnitas on the creekside patio of the new Mexcian place than 785 closely typset pages of Josef Stalin!

New Friend

One of the head chefs at a new sushi place in town has been coming in a lot. I know this only because on his first visit he handed me a business card.

Every time he greets me with
"Movie poster?"

and when he leaves it's
"Next time!"

Although this encompasses his entire English vocabulary, we have a good rapport.

I'm afraid I'm not much practical help, but he seems happy to see me & I know I'm happy to see him.

8 Craziest Cults

clicky clicky.


For a stuffy but interesting book on the Cargo Cult (weighing in at #8) check out Road Belong Cargo by Peter Lawrence.

Jean Claude VanDance

dunno what's worse, his acid-washed pants, or the boner he sprouts halfway through the clip.

flippin SWEET!

big juicy archive of comic book covers

attn IVAN

How To Knit a Viking Helmet.

Allegedly for babies, but I'm sure it could be enlarged.

True Customer Stories

An old gal calls looking for a book.

"Yes, I'm looking for a book about 20 famous geniuses who had epilepsy."
"Hmmm. Have you got a title & author?"
"Yes, it's called 20 Famous Genuises With Epilepsy."
"....y'know, I think I'd remember it if that one came through. I'm pretty sure we don't have it."
"Well....my copy was stolen. I'm a public speaker, been a public speaker for 20 years, and I never took it out because I was afraid it would be stolen."
"Mmmhmm."
"And the one time I took it out, it was stolen!"
"That's too bad. I'll keep an eye out, if I see a copy I'll grab it for you."
"Ok, then, thank you."

Smartcar coming to the US

yay.

Enjoyed seeing these during our European swing and looking forward to having them released in the wild here.

Iran Graffiti Report

clicky clicky.

There's no resisting the relentless march of decadent Western culture.

Review: Dog the Bounty Hunter

courtesy of one of the UK posters on my boxing forum:

So yesterday, in a moment of extreme tiredness / weakness, I watched a show called 'Dog the Bounty Hunter', which I understand is reasonably well-known. I don't know if this show is popular because people like the guy or because they laugh at how preposterous he is.

I have to say I found the guy to be an unalterable knob. Feller seems to think he's a cross between Johnny Rambo, Jesus, 'Dirty' Harry Callaghan and Confuscious. He's actually some kind of bastardisation of Jon Bon Jovi, Xena Warrior Princess and Ron Hubbard. Bouffonted cock who seemed to lace every sentence with the word 'bra' in order to gain some kind of street cred by knowing the name of some ladies' underwear.

I just wanted to get that off my chest. Which isn't poking out of the side of a vest.

Why I love Brits, pt 532

my raptors aren't peregrines after all

they're White Tailed Kites.
some info.

thanks to Jack and Penny for the ID!

Silver Age Comic Book Ads

clicky clicky


I actually sent away for this one:


I was pretty disappointed because all the soldiers were flat yellow plastic, & I was expecting something more like classic green plastic army men.

Title of the Day

I'm not sure how well the lesson stuck, since it's still in diapers and there seems to be a pool of liquid on the toilet seat....but baby steps, baby steps.

While tracking down the cover I came across this alarming gift set.

The miracle of Google Image Search also brings us this disturbing image:

Just what the sam hill is going on there, and why did it show up in a search for 'monkey learns to potty'?

Insight

Why You Should Never Stay Logged In on a Shared Computer, pt 6:

Co-workers expose your Amazon Recommended for You list on their blog, as I will now demonstrate.

The homunculus is finally gone, but not without giving me one last dismayed laugh. Here are some select titles Amazon thinks would be appropriate, based on his browsing history & order pattern:

How to Become an Alpha Male
by John Alexander

The Professional Bachelor Dating Guide - How to Exploit Her Inner Psycho
by Dr. Brett Tate

How to Succeed with Women
by Ron Louis

Understanding Women: The Definitive Guide to Meeting, Dating and Dumping, if Necessary
by Romy Miller

MACK Tactics: The Science of Seduction Meets the Art of Hostage Negotiation
by Christopher Curtis

Irresistible Attraction: Secrets of Personal Magnetism
by Kevin Hogan

Sperm Wars: The Science of Sex
by Robin Baker

I have alternate suggestions for a 20 year old divorced sole custody parent who feeds his child Cheetos & Taco Bell.

What they say about computers is true- garbage in, garbage out.

More Raptor Than Raptor is our motto

Our Falcon friends were back again, for day three of tree-sitting, growling and aerobatic displays.


More pics at flickr.

Super Awesome Flowchart of the Apocalypse

clicky clicky

Any apocalyptic flow chart that gives Bruce Campbell a shout-out is OK in my book.

100 Words

all High School grads should know.

The ones I wasn't sure of:

orthography
(The orthography of a language specifies the correct way of writing in that language.)
pecuniary
(Of or relating to money: a pecuniary loss; pecuniary motives. Requiring payment of money: a pecuniary offense.)
moiety
( * In chemistry, a functional group, or part of a molecule
* In anthropology, a type of descent group
* In Australian Aboriginal kinship, a skin group
* In the 1997 computer game Riven: The Sequel to Myst, Moiety was the name of a group that rebelled against Gehn.)

Now you can't say the Baxblog never taught you anything!

attn Woody

former Circuit City drone tells all!

Accurate?

HP Lovecraft

BBC Radio documentary on the life of my favorite chronichler of unnameable eldrich terrors.

Attn IVANUS

an answer to your Mongols with Anaconda skin geee-tar video.


I give you the Afghan Beat Box Wizard.

Milk, meet Coffee

teh sexy.

Buying books from alien masterminds

A weird fellow with a halting, stilted manner came in asking about our buying policy. I explained the system in a very confusing interaction filled with non sequitur replies, and he finished up with this gem-

So if you don't want them I'll donate them automatically...that's my algorithm.

After I'd sorted through the buy and paid for the winners, he spoke again.

So, is there any work for me to do?

.....uh, no, we're all set Dr. Lizardo.

RAPTOR return!

Went out tonight and the junior raptor was back in his tree.
This is the best pic I could get with my little camera.

(Click for a bigger pic.)

RAPTORS

Megan swung by last night to catch Bagdad Cafe with the wife (a movie that makes you wish the phrase heart warming wasn't so devalued).

I was called out to the garden, where they were taking tea with a spot of milk, to ID some strange birds in a nearby tree.

At first the gals thought they had a pair of lost seagulls. Then owls, but it was still light out. I took a look and they were waaaay to big for seagulls, and weren't sitting right to be owls, not even rabid ones braving the late afternoon sun.

One was perched at the summit of a pine tree, looking uncomfortable and making a weird squawking sound. Another one flew over and started circling the three.

"Holy shit, those are falcons....I think those are Peregrines!" I marvelled, slack jawed as a yokel fresh off the bus in Times Square.

Another one flew into the picture, and after a few circuits of the tree the three of them took to the sky, all making really strange growling noises. The treed one was a youngster- he was fluffier than the other two, and not as sure of his balance.

I think it was the family that nests in Morro Bay. I dunno what they were doing this far from their usual stomping grounds, but what are the chances it was some other family of Peregrine Falcons just passing through?

They were just beautiful in the air.
Gliding they were an art deco vision, all sweeping curves and patterns. Maneuvering they swooped and turned much faster and crisper than any large bird should- the spirit of a sparrow in something the size of a well fed housecat.

The young one kept coming back and landing in the tree, and the parents kept flying around arguing and chiding.

We hung out and watched them until they resolved their discussion & all took off, spiralling up until they were just graceful commas in the sky.

Say No to the Devilfish

ATTN DEVRA

And to think, they're less dangerous than cuttlefish!

Winnie the Pooh vs Apocalpse Now

Fresh collection of Worst Album Covers

I've seen a couple of these 'around', but it's mostly new stuff.
And definitely NSFW.

Set One
Set Two

If I were bobo and this was his blog, I'd use this one as my graphic:


Link your faves in the comments, mmmk?

Title of the Day

Don't Make Me Go Back, Mommy: a child's book about Satanic Ritual Abuse by Doris Sanford.

Alas the Amazon listing fails to provide a cover. You're missing out on a virtuoso colored pencil performance.

bonus funny
The first Google image search result for Don't Make Me Go Back, Mommy:

RIPPED from the Headlines!

aka STOLEN from Ivan!

Snazzy back tat generator!

Fight Night: Cotto vs Judah

We return again to the eternal optimism of boxing fans and the short-sighted money grubbing of the suits in the glass towers with tonight's Miguel Cotto vs Zab Judah PPV, an exciting, potentially explosive crossroads fight that should be creating new boxing fans on free TV but is instead soaking the faithful to the tune of $55 behind the PPV firewall.

It's an interesting fight because there are legitimate questions about Cotto, who is being hyped as the heir to Tito Trinidad's mantle as the paragon of Puerto Rican boxing. Never mind that all they have in common is ethnicity.

Trinidad was an electric personality who fed off the crowd, and who fed them in return. Cotto is an excellent fighter, but seems to trudge po-faced through his business inside & outside the ring, a pugilistic Buster Keaton who just sucked on a lemon.

Whether grudgingly answering questions at a press conference, stalking an opponent inside the ropes, or staggering around the ring like a drunk grabbing at a quarter on the barroom floor after a hard shot, he maintains the same deadpan expression of mild concern, framed by the ruthlessly waxed eyebrows of a drag queen.

Zab is Zab, the kind of fighter who eternally breaks the hearts of boxing fans and is eternally forgiven his trespasses in light of his obvious, overflowing physical talent.

Zab has two things in abundance that you can't teach- power and speed. And he has one flaw that you can't repair, a certain flaw in his demonstrations of fortitude, desire & concentration, collectively known as 'heart' in the patois of the sport.

Peak Zab can give anybody fits for the first half of a fight, witness his showdown with Floyd Mayweather Jr, which I scored 4-2 Zab after 6. But he can fall apart in the second half of a fight & lose to anyone. His collapse against Carlos Baldomir, a journeyman with little going for him except a concrete chin and the willpower to ignore the evidence of the first 6 rounds and keep striving for victory, is still hard to fathom.

The combination of a quick-handed puncher (even one with the baggage & mental problems of Zab) and a fellow who's been badly hurt by journeymen & light hitters (even one as relentless & powerful as Cotto) is intoxicating.

I'm pulling for Zab in this one.
Because the headcase from Brooklyn beating one of the network's handpicked attractions would cause HBO Corporate to collectively shit their thousand dollar Armani slacks.

And because I'm a boxing fan, and we never stop dreaming of talented washouts finally putting it together when their backs are up against that final, bullet-scarred wall.

(For more, check out this excellent overview from my buddy Cliff, who's a filthy Republican but does know his boxing).

new Firefox imminent

3.0 baby!

I hate updating and stick with old versions until they just stop working. My work browser is Mozilla Firebird 0.7, which is like travelling the Internet in a horse-drawn carriage. My chat client is an antiquated version of Gaim, which has changed names since the last time I updated.

My antipathy toward the new germinated in programs like Winamp & ACDsee, excellent shareware tools that eventually 'went public' and collapsed under the twin weights of feature bloat and escalating prices. Winamp wised up and reversed the process, but it took them a couple of years. ACDsee I replaced with Irfanview, which isn't as intuitive but gets the job done.

Updates

Bobo has updated, and narrowly avoided the shame of blogroll exile.


A weight is lifted from my heart.


secret bobo reminder: Pirate of Pwnzance

/edit
added faintly appropriate but random photo as per DT's requirements

High Res Mars pix

yeah baby!



Bobo:
Please note how simple it is to use that astonishing new invention, THE INTERNET, to find material for BLOG updates.

Is that a lightsaber, or are you just happy to see me?

top ten geekiest yarn creations.

in honor of the wife's obsession with crochet.


/edit
link fixed, hat tip WOODY.

neato how-to

Aliens Pulse Rifle

One of my two favorite SF weapons of all time, alongside Harrison Ford's kickass pistol in Bladerunner.

For some reason Bladerunner was on PBS last night...crappy print, but it was the letterboxed director's cut. Amazing how different a film it is with the turdrageous hand-holding voiceover removed...

Exile!

Perhaps my binary threat to exile Bobo from my blogroll unless he updates was a bit hasty.

I like Ivan's idea better.
I have unilaterally promoted Ivan to the top of the heap to illustrate the gravity of my threat...nay, promise.

Further indignities will follow until I am appeased by updates!

photoblog with a difference

el cheapo digital camera + cat + electronic know-how =CATCAM!

Steve Gilliard RIP

Fuck.

The News Blog was one of my daily stops, and Steve's writing style was so direct and conversational I felt like I knew him. I'd kept tabs on his recent dire health struggles via posts from his partner Jen, but assumed he would eventually recover.

Just another weird way the internet has impacted human relationships, here I am crying and feeling like shit because some guy I never met died.

/edit
seems like I'm not the only one.
And Wolcott nails my feeling about his 'voice' much better than I did, which is why he's a highly paid writer and I work in a bookstore.