Today I tweeted my 500th tweet on Twitter. An occassion for celebration and remembrance! Just six (or is it seven..) months ago I was all like “Hells no I’m never signing up for Twitter” and god be damned if I do stare blankly at it every day for several hours, occasionally funneling clever or funny thoughts into its clever whirlpool. At least on Twitter there’s no room for run-on sentences and THAT is the lasting contribution.

To celebrate, I re-read all my tweets in chronological order. Some were dumb, some were sad, but many were funny (I’m not shallow if I laugh at jokes I forgot I wrote four months ago). Here are my Fifty Funniest Tweets, enjoy!

• On larry king: cher was at a party with val kilmer and MJ wouldn’t stop talking about the socks kilmer was wearing
• Nothin left to say about Transformers 2 but it is terrible- it farted in my mouth
• Applying to jobs on a bus is a new low – or high!
• it’s hot enough to eat eggs
• i had a dream i Tweeted about seeing a commercial for Applebee’s honey flavored toilet paper
• i hope no one discovers my secret underwater base (more…)

Let’s cut right to the chase: Jay Leno sucks and NBC is really desperate. So by all means, give him five hours a week during prime-time.

Let’s get this fat clown show on the road:

9:52 – Change channel to NBC which is finishing up “America’s Got Talent”. They should just rename NBC to UPN

9:53 – Change channel to “Family Guy” rerun on channel with screwed up image and sound because it’s  less annoying

10:00 – WOW THE TITLES! It’s like a barrage of 1995

10:01 – Jay Leno throws Cheez-Its on the ground, audience rushes stage

10:02 – It’s like watching a fat 1970’s Italian film actor do stand up. WISH THEY OVER-DUBBED A LESS ANNOYING VOICE (more…)

The summer movie season is the best movie season because summer movies are the best kind of movies. With the passing of Inglourious Basterds, I’m officially declaring the 2009 Summer Movie Season over. I saw all the big summer movies (except maybe one), so I am more qualified than you to review them.

Chronological release order OHHHHHH:

X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Award: The 2009 Love Guru Certificate for Memorable Awfulness
Yes: Parts of the film seemed like they were reaching for goodness, spinning cyclops-beam head destroying nuclear cooling tower, CGI Patrick Stewart
No: Worst CGI effects and action in a theatrically released film since 1995, felt as coherent as a Sega CD full-motion-video video game, CGI Patrick Stewart
2.5/10 (more…)

Society’s consumption and listening of music has changed a lot in the past eight years – the same eight years that I have been into music. In high school I bought CDs and listened to them in my car or Walkman. During this time Apple released its now-dominant iTunes and iPod. iTunes was the first well-designed and very usable digital content managing program for many of us. Forget iPods for a second – iTunes let the masses easily burn all their CDs and store a massive library of music in practically no space at all.

When I went to college I burned all my CDs to my laptop. Because of its easy to useness and legitimateness, iTunes was partially responsible for me letting go of the need to physically buy and maintain a music library. I’d still rather buy DVDs and books, but I have not bought a CD in two years and that is a big deal for someone who had as many albums as I did in high school. I have since sold most of those CDs because I just don’t need them anymore.

Everything fit on my hard-drive in the fall of 2005. But thanks to dorm file-sharing applications and my position at the college radio station, I had more access to free music than ever before. I kept getting so much new music that a year later I had to buy an external hard-drive to house all of that music. Later, after buying a new laptop with more internal space, I was able to move it back to my internal hard-drive to make listening to music more fun. But I still had to cull back my collection, pruning 10 or so gigs of forgettable crap.

Over the course of a few years, I’ve been slowly deleting records to make space for new ones or just to satisfy my desire to get rid of records I did not like. Or, more importantly, to eliminate the problem that years of liking post-rock and drone/ambient/experimental instrumental electronic music effectively ruins any fun in letting music shuffle or play from the master collection.

Before starting this, I had 35 and 1/2 days, or almost 57 gigabytes of music. That’s almost 13,000 songs. I know people who have more, for sure, but I think I need to do a serious purging of my iTunes. Weed the bad albums and bands that I never listen to. I’m writing about it because I think it will be a fun way to look back on the evolution of my musical tastes as well as figure out why I like what I like and why I don’t like what I like.

There will be several Rounds of elimination, starting with albums I’ve never listened to, then going to artists and albums where I really like one song but never listen to the rest, and so on and so on… And here we go!

Round 1: Eliminating Outliers

Here are some of the albums on iTunes that I have never, ever listened to. I would have a long time ago, but there is a peril to eliminating records I have never listened to in that one day I might listen to them and discover at least one good song. So I’ve listened to all (or most) of these records to give them at least a fair shot toward being a KEEPAH or getting the AX. (more…)

What can you watch tonight?

                                                                    / ___/
                                                                  /  /  /
                                                                /   /  /
                                                              /    /  /
                                                       __ __/_____/_ /____
                                                      ]  ] DC10-30 ----_!
     ___________/!___________________________________]__]_______------'
    /       Antiques Roadshow (R) - PBS 9p               ____--   /
  /||| II O O O II O O O_O_O_O_O_O_O_O_O_O_O_ O II O O_O-________/
<|     II       II     ]  ]   [-----,-----'          II   ____----
  \--------------------]__]___[-----'-----------------

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                            ] """"---...._                             .' /
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                    ,' ) ,--. .-----.         `.___________________.' ///_
                  .'  / /___| |_____|  The Nanny            _______  ()  _>
                 /   / /____| |__|__|  Nick - 11p ,----"""""       `//  \
               .<`=='===========================.'                 (/`.  \
              (  `.----------------------------/                       `._\
               `-._\_                ____...--'
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                    .____//______//___,
                     `-----------------'

(more…)

This summer has marked the passing of two cable network institutions: the Sci Fi Channel and Cartoon Network.

Yesterday, July 7, the Sci Fi Channel abandoned its 17 year old moniker to take on the new identity of SyFy. According to executives, this new brand is intended to open up the network to less genre-specific content and clarify longstanding spelling issues (Sci-Fi, SciFi, Sci Fi) that have haunted the network.

Cartoon Network still exists, but in many ways it is dead. Earlier this summer they debuted a new reality programming package, dubbed “CN Real”, which not only breaks the name of the network but also the unspoken rule against making reality TV aimed at children.

In many ways, the death of these two networks has long been a long one coming. (more…)

is when you search for yourself:

THATS ME!

What are you going to watch tonight?

               , _______________________________________
               |/ |                                     |
       ____:---|| |                                     |
      |.--.|[] || |                                     |
.------'--'|   || |          WWE Monday Night Raw       |
|-----\  ~ |   || |              USA 10:00              |
|] ___ |___|___|| |                                     |
[_/.-.\_(_|_|_)|¬_]_________                 __________[]
  ( O )          (( O )( O )\_______________/( O )( O )\
   '-'            ''-'  '-'                   '-'  '-'

                  __===*@@@ @@@@@ @@@@@
                 /       ________________________________________ ___ _
          ______|^|_    | ***                                    |___ _
         /|/~~~~~~~|    |  ***                                   |____ __
        / |    {_) |    |   ***       The Closer TNT 9:00        |__ ___
   ____/__|)  /~~| |@@@@|    ************************************|____ _
  / _____ ~~~~~~~~~|@@@@|     ***********************************|___ __
 | /     \\      --|    |_/~~~~~\_______________________/~~~~~\__|_____
 |/  ***  \\       |---~|/  ***  \_____________________/  ***  \_|___ _
 `  *****  ~~~~=====       *****                         *****
     ***                    ***                           ***

(more…)

In the wake of the death of Michael Jackson the internet almost exploded – Twitter, Facebook, CNN, even mighty Google, were all clogged with the surge in traffic of people researching and blogging and tweeting the King of Pop’s death.

Everywhere I go, both online and in the real world, I hear Michael Jackson’s songs playing. “Don’t Stop Til’ You Get Enough”, “Beat It”, and of course “Thriller” have all been thrust back into the public’s consciousness. I’ve never danced at a farm before until yesterday when “Don’t Stop” started playing. I couldn’t resist the jam, even though I was holding a pie.

With the return of Michael Jackson’s songs into the spotlight, millions are bound to be searching for song lyrics and verses. The Thriller album and its titular hit are arguably Jackson’s biggest achievements, and so it is not surprise that people  are searching for the lyrics to “Thriller verses”. As such I have noticed that searching for “thrillerverse” on Google, my website has dropped several spaces from #1 to below search results for “Thriller verse” ringtones.

My twitter.com/Thrillerverse is actually the #1 search result for “thrillerverse” now, which is interesting on its own. While I think that the Iran elections galvanized Twitter in a legitimate sense, Michael Jackson’s death was the first cultural event where every tweet on my Twitter home page made a reference to Michael Jackson – both directly and indirectly. There were Jokes and there were RIP’s, but everyone from comedians to activists to RLPs (real-life persons, IE people I know) had something to say about Jacko, which is not something that could be said about Iran.

So where was I going with this?

The Thrillerverse is a soupy dimension, a smelly horror, and a peculiar state of mind. It has nothing to do with any verse from the song or album Thriller, though “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” is a rad song.

The new film Moon initially caught my interest one soggy afternoon while hounding perusing Matt Berry’s IMDB profile. “Is this it? The long awaited feature follow-up to Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace?” I bubbled as I clicked onwards. No, it’s an indie sci-fi film directed by David Bowie’s son. But I was not disappointed – another sci-fi film is never a bad thing, and it starred Sam Rockwell, one of the best actors of the moment.

Flash forward a year or so and Moon opened in New York and Los Angeles last Friday. I initially wasn’t hopping out of my seat to see it, but yesterday I awoke with a strong desire to go see it.

The film is alright – certainly it had a very small budget, and Matt Berry’s part is literally too small – but it is clearly a labor of love. The sets and effects are all small scale but work to create a realistic and claustrophobic atmosphere. Sam Rockwell is in top form, showcasing his ability to stand on the line of funny and violent, and, without giving too much away, proves he can carry an entire movie acting with only himself.

The story was more functional than I thought (no metaphysical stabs at love and god), and even though I easily guessed what the twist was going to be, I really enjoyed how the film lingered on well after the reveal. All the hallmarks of post-2001-and-Solaris films are there. From the unsettling How-did-another-person-just-appear-in-this-room-oops-they’re-gone to the slower pace and unsettling score (from Clint Mansell, also of The Fountain). And I guess that was my biggest issue with the film – it felt too much like a movie content with being a tribute to the likes of 2001 than trying to be anything of its own.

The same could be said for 2007’s Sunshine, which played out as 2001-meets-Jason X, albeit much better than that sounds. Outside of the realm of the big sci-fi blockbuster franchises (Aliens, Star Wars, Terminators) all of the space-based science fiction films seem to be unable to walk away from 2001. It is funny that as I write this, there is a 2001 poster on my wall, and it is the only film that I own on Blu-Ray. It is an immense and spectacular film that in many ways has created an obstacle for any filmmaker who wants to make serious science fiction.

I will say that while watching this movie my mind did keep traveling back to 2006’s The Fountain. Though I was initially very excited about it, I hated Darren Aronofsky’s film when I saw it, and continue to think that in many ways a failure. Chief among the film’s flaws is Rachel Weisz’s acting – like a generic movie pixie, she blithers about while her glum husband, Hugh Jackman, seeks the key to immortality. But despite my negative reaction, it stuck with me – its visceral imagery and emotion (though ham-fisted) lodged in my mind.

The Fountain is about finding the ability to move on, and as much as I hate to say it, I think we have to move on from 2001. If not, science fiction as a genre will become less about looking forward at what could be than an exercise in looking backward – nodding and winking to styles and ideas that once were.