Swiped from boingboing Submitterator: A look at the man behind the IT Crowd.

I live in the States. I love the BBC. I love the IT Crowd. And even though I am a writer, I often times forget about the writers behind a lot of my favorite shows. So it's always nice to be reminded of that. Also, apparently it's one guy writing this show. One dude. It's one six episodes a series, but still. One guy writing everything!

via Boing Boing.

Punch and Judy: A study in violence.

My parents' generation (the baby boomers) often get upset at the horrible violence that's on TV. What could that crap be doing to the children? Oh! Think of the children! For a time, I just shook my head and agreed. But then the internet came along and I started to discover gems like Punch and Judy. A show my father remembers well and talks fondly of. I don't think he realizes the horrible, horrible madness that was hand puppetry then.

Splinters: Surfing in Papua New Guinea

If you've been reading this blog at all then you know that I love documentaries. But what you probably don't know nor do man people in my real life know is that I love surfing. I own a surfboard. I watch surf movies to relax. I really love it.

The problem though is that I am a landlocked fool in the heart of the Midwest. Indiana doesn't offer much surf spots unless I go wild and decide to hit the probably disease filled lakes in the north. So I have to say that I love it when a film comes along that combines both my love of cultural documentaries and surfing. This looks like an awesome doc and I can not wait for it to be released.

From the site: 

Splinters is the first feature-length documentary film about the evolution of indigenous surfing in the developing nation of Papua New Guinea. In the 1980s an intrepid Australian pilot left behind a surfboard in the seaside village of Vanimo. Twenty years on, surfing is not only a pillar of village life but also a means to prestige. With no access to economic or educational advancement, let alone running water and power, village life is hermetic. A spot on the Papua New Guinea national surfing team is the way to see the wider world; the only way.

 

Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom

I was introduced to Wes Anderson in early college/late high school. I don't remember how or where or exactly when it happened, but I know the movie. It was Rushmore. That strangely European, magically American film of teenage wonderment. It hooked me right away.

After that, I found myself drawn to movies normally out of my comfort zone. The Criterion Collection became a new friend. Before that I liked movies. I watched lots of movies. But they were mostly bad B-movies and weird 1930s serials. I still watched those and kept them in my life, but I graduated to French directors and Japanese epics after that. Though I never seemed to have the money for most of the films I wanted. It was down to renting, which is fine and will be my way for the foreseeable future.

Boycotting Girl Scouts Continued...

So, I just read Phil's take on the video about boycotting Girl Scout cookies because the GSUSA (Girl Scouts of the United States of America) allows transgender children to join and I agree with his sentiment. If a child is born MAAB (male assigned at birth), but self-identifies as a girl and wants to live as a girl, I don't understand why there is an issue with this child joining Girl Scouts or participating in other groups and organizations specifically geared toward girls. This child is a girl because she says she is a girl, end of story.

After watching the video, it's clear to me that the person speaking in this video doesn't really know what it means for a person to be transgender. Drawing parallels between a transgender girl, or as I like to say, girl, joining the Girl Scouts and a cisgender boy wanting to join Girl Scouts is way off base. It is a completely different scenario and most people are intelligent enough to realize that.

I cannot stress enough that trans* people aren't pretending to be something they are not to join your club or your organization. Trans* people aren't scary sexual deviants that are trying to break into the Girl Scouts to have sex with your children. Transgender people exist in this world and more often than not are just trying to carve a life for themselves where they can just exist in a way that is comfortable to them. Trans* people do not need to apologize for occupying space and joining social organizations that are aligned with their gender identity. If anyone is giving the Girl Scouts of the United States a bad name, it is the girl scouts that are behind the group making this video, Honest Girl Scouts. Take a look around their website and you will find ideas even more alarming than their take on trans* kids joining Girl Scouts. They are anti-women, anti-civil rights for GLBT people, and they are spewing a bunch of hateful, ignorant garbage.

Boycotting Girl Scouts over Transgenders is a Load of Poop

I just watched the video of a girl scout asking for a boycott of selling cookies until transgendered females are removed from the organization. It was strange.

There are some problems that people can nitpick on this video. But there is just one major problem that I am having with it. That problem is the girl scout's inability to recognize a male to female (mtf) transgender as a woman. She makes the often uneducated assumption that trans people are simply playing dress up or messing around. That the boys who are wishing to enter the Girl Scouts are doing so as secretive perverted spies or something.

Nope. Wrong.

Horror Host Svengoolie Shrew Opening

I grew up in Northwest Indiana. One of the few great things about that was receiving Chicago television with just an antenna. Thankfully, Chicago has a great history of local television. And one of the best and from what I hear, still thriving, is Svengoolie. A throwback to the late night horror hosts, Svengoolie was often on during the mid-Saturday mornings competing with stuff like Animaniacs and boring judge shows. How did he make it?

Svengoolie is not the original Svengoolie. There was one before him. When the current took over, he called himself Son of Svengoolie until the original told him he was grown up enough to take on the full name. Thus, the modern Svengoolie was born. The host has a great sense of humor and doesn't take himself too seriously. He leans into his cheap production values and just rolls with it, making for a great watch, not matter what.

Reviewing Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam

I literal just finished watching his movie, and I have to be up front. This is the first movie in a long time that kept my stomach in knots in one of those really special kind of ways. First a short lesson: taqwacore is Islamic punk kids. Also, this is the documentary not the theatrical film.

Troll 2: The Best Worst Movie of All Time

Anyone that knows anything about B-movies will tell you that Troll 2 is a cinematic gem. Filmed in Utah in 1990, Troll 2 is the very loose sequel to Troll (1986) starring Sonny Bono, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and that kid from The Neverending Story, Noah Hathaway. I’m not even sure Troll 2 can count as a sequel since Troll is actually about trolls while Troll 2 stars goblins in burlap sacks, but that’s part of the magic to this movie; nothing makes much sense. Highlights of the film include a sheriff named Gene Freak, a sex scene so hot and steamy that an ear of corn turns into popcorn, and a whole lot of unintentional homoeroticism.What more could you ask for in a film?

Joe Sacco's Kushinagar

Growing up, I loved comics.  I still do, but I’ve kind of left their usual subject matter behind.  The idea of Spider-Man still captivates me, but while the actual stories being told may be plenty creative, they just seem so irrelevant to my life as a twenty-something who’s curious about the wider world.

Enter Joe Sacco.  With a background in indie comics and journalism, Sacco combines detailed and appealingly stylized art with on the ground reporting to create some of the best nonfiction around.  Comics or otherwise.  His latest is called Kushinagar.  Since it focuses on rural poverty in a modern day India that is still ridden with caste divisions, some have called it a departure from his usual work which focuses on violence in such locales as the West Bank, Gaza, Iraq, and Bosnia.

Evolution of the Hipster

Puppetry often can speak volumes on subject that not many other mediums can. That is the case here with the Evolution of Hipsters. They take you through a thorough and in-depth look at hipsters and where they come from. So in-depth that I feel that I cannot add too much to the subject. Please watch and enjoy.

via Puppetvision.

Shaq, Queen, and a puppet.

Title says it all.

Black Metal Doc Review: Until the Light Takes Us

Until the LIght Takes Us is a 2008 documentary on the black metal movement in Norway that spawned a series of church burnings and murders.

The movie has pretty compelling subject matter and the directors match their cuts, music, and pacing to it. Ambience of the movie is stark and cold and, though, no frightening, it still has a sense of gloom that hangs over it throughout the film.

Dooby Duck. WTF.

There were three series of these made in England. That's three seasons over here. Three seasons. Dooby Duck went from a disco to a truck to a Euro-tour. Let that all sink in as you watch this.

ThunderAnt: Before Portlandia

Hulu currently has an insider's look at Portlandia. I posted the video above. This is not breaking news or anything, but I discovered after watching the episode that Portlandia started as a webseries called ThunderAnt, which is a pretty kickass title. So I went to hunt the show down.

And I found the site for the series. I was super stoked. However, none of the links worked. All of the little shorts that were filmed were set to private on their Vimeo account. So I became super sad and turned to my only true internet friend. Youtube. I found a bunch of them online and gathered them up right here. You can check them out after the jump.

1994 Otaku documentary is a time capsule

Stereotype

I just watched the 1994 French documentary Otaku: fils de l'empire virtuel on Netflix. I gotta say it was one of the stranger docs I've watched in my life. Which is saying a lot since most of my movie watching is dedicated to documentaries. Why is this so strange? Well, it was filmed in 1994 and about an emerging subculture in Japan.

The film is there at the very beginning of Otaku culture. Common Japanese on the street are asked what they think of Otaku and very few are able to give an answer. They were that unfamiliar with the term at the time. Even the Otaku that were interviewed were more like proto-Otaku. They seemed to have an idea what it meant for them to be Otaku, but they were more interested in just doing what they do rather than have labels put on them. Kinda like the hipster.

Mika Miko: Oh look, I found this great band. ARGH, they broke up!

I've been out of the music side of life for a few years now. Just not feeling. I think it has to do with getting old. I little known fact that I am making up now, the older you get the more your ears close. But I've been wanting to get back into it. So I started stumbling around the internet. Looking at places that point people new music.

And I found Mika Miko. A group of teenagers who sing crappy, punk music. It took me back to my high school days and I was so stoked, but I found that I was too late.

Cats, Evolution, and a missed opportunity by Disney

Disney is filled with feral cats. It's true! When I first heard about this, my mind went wild. all I could think about was a group of street thug cats terrorizing anyone that would be caught after dark in the enchanted kingdom. But after I settled down, I started to think about the genetic possibilities.

For the past year, I've been obsessed with watching Cats 101 and Dogs 101 on Animal Planet. The reason being that I want a pet but live in a pet-free apartment so this satisfies my animal interests for now. The thing that I didn't think I would be so interested in after all that tv watching was evolution. And genetics. Which I've been interested in with cloning and gene manipulation but never thought about the old, in-out, in-out breeding stuff.

A new direction in writing

I gave myself a break for the month of December as I was having a few issues with my writing lately. And I've come back renewed. I have decided to move further away from fiction and work in non-fiction. And move away some from online publishing and concentrate on blogging. I've tried my hand at it in the past with some less than stellar results, but I think this will be good.

The reason this time will be different? One: I am not writing about stuff I don't care about. Every time I've written a blog it's been on a hot topic. A topic that others can get excited about but not me. So this blog will be about what I like. Which is a lot of different things.

Two: I'll be bringing some friends in. They all have pretty busy schedules so I don't know how many times that can pop in for the week, but just the idea that there are others along for the ride really puts me at ease. So making this a collaborative effort will, I think, push the whole thing forward.

Well, I hope any readers out there enjoy where this is headed. And what will I be writing about? Well, anything interesting. Art, comics, music, movies, ideas, events, whatever strikes my fancy.