The Snook’s been driving me crazy for two days now with these “colored spots” he keeps seeing on the TV. He’s convinced that it’s somehow become magnetized or something, and thus we get weird purple spots over certain color backgrounds. (Can you tell that I’m skeptical?) His most recent attempt at correcting the “problem” involved him holding his giant computer monitor up in front of it while I turned it on. This would supposedly “de-gauss” it.

Snook: Maybe they’ve installed something in the cafe [below our apartment] that’s creating a magnetic field…
Me: Like a giant magnet?

I dunno; I just find the whole thing funny.

Holy crap! This is the coolest thing ever! They’re filming a music video across the street from our apartment, and the director just came over to ask if they could get some shots off our balcony! I’m gonna see if I can sneak a few pictures for you…

Update: Cease excitement. It was some college kids doing a video for the local cable-access station of a local weirdo who walks around playing the guitar with a cockatiel on his shoulder. I’m not kidding. They’re gonna send us a copy, though, so at least we’ll get to see our names in the credits.

Hmm, so Dave Barry’s Big Trouble movie has finally been released? I’m less than enthusiastic. I bought and read the book years ago and – if I recall correctly – I thought it sucked. I’m normally a big Dave Barry fan, so the utter non-funniness of this book should be apparent to you. I can’t even remember what it was about. That’s how forgettable it was. I can’t imagine that it’ll make a very good film, especially if Tim Allen’s in it.

It’s three a.m. On top of everything else, I’m suffering from a severe bout of self-induced insomnia. Oh, I can sleep; I just choose not to. See, I’ve been having disturbing dreams lately. I dreamed that I met with George Bush and John Howard to discuss stem cell research. I dreamed that I was in a play at my high school and, despite not knowing any of my lines, bitched out my director for giving me such a small part. I dreamed that my sister killed somebody and I had to help her hide the body. I dreamed I was having a baby. Like I said, disturbed. And what’s more, they’re coming every night, all night. Some of the worse ones leave me upset and shaky in the morning. This never used to happen to me. I’m wondering if it’s my new hayfever medication…

Matt linked to an interesting article about the ethics of posting “found” material on the Internet. I’ve been puzzling over a somewhat-related issue lately myself. Does anyone know anything about public artwork and whether it can be reproduced online? There are a number of murals in Newtown (where I live) that have caught my attention. Most seem to have been done by random graffiti artists, but a few seem to be attached (literally and metaphorically) to businesses. My first impulse was to post some pictures of these at my site, which has turned into a full-blown “Why don’t I start up a Mirror Project-type site for everyone to post these?” idea. I’m worried that there might be copyright issues involved, though. But that can’t be the case when the artwork’s already been put out there in the public domain, can it? What if I take a picture of myself and the mural just happens to be in the background? Is that acceptable? As long as I’m not making money off it, I would assume that such a website could only be seen as promotional, encouraging people to visit the murals shown and to be on the lookout for public art in their own hometowns. Or is this just a silly idea? All I know is, if you saw the big map of Africa on the side of Newtown’s North African Eatery, you’d see what I mean. Someone worked hard on that. This stuff deserves to be noticed.

In case you didn’t notice, my blogging drought ended. And though I still haven’t been to the gym, my life force energy seems to be on an upswing. Today I successfully managed to finish my Burn Baby Burn Mix CD! I’m worried that I put way too much effort into it though. I always do that. It’s like when we’d have gift exchanges in elementary school, and I’d always pick out something over the price limit yet really cool that I’d like to get myself, and in exchange I’d get a piece of wood with that “Footprints” poem glued to it. Not that I think your CDs will in any way equate to “Footprints”! I just mean that I never know what’s required in such situations and I tend to overcompensate. In other words: I spent five hours laying out the booklet insert to make sure that the pages were double-sided and lined up correctly and organized so that they’d be in order when you turn the pages. When in reality, nobody would have thought the less of me for printing it out on a sheet of paper, folding it up, and wedging it inside. See, when you don’t have a job, you find lots of other little tasks for your brain to obsess over. *sigh* Anyway, they’re going out in the mail tomorrow, so you, you, you, you, you, you, and you feel free to bitch about my issues when you get it. I’ll understand.

I finally picked up a copy of the Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory – 30th Anniversary DVD the other day. You know, I have really mixed feelings about this film. On one hand I have the same cheesy feelings of nostalgia and love for it that all Generation Xers have. On the other hand, as a Roald Dahl expert I find it to be a cheap, shoddy, craptacular adaptation of the book. So I had a lot of conflicting emotions while watching the “cast commentary” version today. My thoughts:

• While it was great to have all five of the kids there, I wish they had actually shown them grown-up at the start (a la the terrific Goonies DVD commentary). Instead you just get voice introductions, and it’s a little hard at first to remember who’s who.
• Just as in the film, Charlie and Augustus don’t say a lot. Mike, Veruca, and Violet dominate the discussion. I guess that’s not surprising, considering those three stayed in the acting profession while the other two quit and faded from public view.
• Veruca and Violet were both hot for Charlie in a big way. Apparently Veruca won and Violet ended up with some random other blond extra kid. Violet is still bitter about this, and the two of them spent most of the commentary laughing about it. They kept trying to get Charlie to comment, but he seemed embarrassed and wouldn’t say anything.
• You could totally hear them trying to pull Augustus into the conversation and failing. He’s only in the movie for about fifteen minutes anyway, so once he’d gone up the pipe he was pretty much silent. They finally just resorted to asking him for German pronunciations and landmark identification every so often.
• Damn. I’ve corresponded with both Mike and Violet (via my Dahl site), so I was totally hoping for a shout-out. Denied.
• The only mention of Dahl’s name occurred when Mike referred to one of the schoolteacher’s speeches as “So Roald Dahl.” Which was utter crap, since that bit didn’t come from the original book and didn’t sound anything like typical Dahl.
• Dahl only makes a few appearances in the extra documentary and featurette, as well. The director never explains why he decided to throw out all of the Oompa-Loompas original songs in favor of the dreadful Bricusse/Newley ones. He also mentions but never fully explains why Dahl’s original script was torn to shit and rewritten by someone else. He does, however, tell the thrilling tale of how the entire film was conceived and produced merely to sell a new Quaker Oats candy bar (that ended up flopping completely). Well, at least no one will be in any danger of presuming the producers’ intentions to be artistic.

See what I mean? I start out with nice feelings towards the film, but that quickly fades when I realize how great it could have been and how crappy and commercial it turned out. I feel sad that my generation venerates such a shallow marketing ploy as a cinematic classic. Mostly I feel for Roald Dahl, who hated the end result and resented having his name put to it. Sure, he wasn’t the greatest writer in the world, but at least he wasn’t responsible for “Oompa loompa doompety doo.”

Holy crap. Am I insane, or did I just realize that Billy from Six Feet Under is Elton from Clueless, but with, like, a lot more hair? My mind is blown.

“Web Designer Builds Home Out of Flash”. My friend Ferret sent me that link, and if anybody could do it, he could. 🙂

I’m all blogged out. In fact, I’m “everythinged” out. I’ve got lots of projects waiting to be finished and I just can’t muster the energy. I haven’t been to the gym in a week. My Burn Baby Burn CDs are still missing their cover art. I blame it all on seasonal affective disorder, really. Does anybody have any ideas to get me motivated?