Do, however, use nonconversational verbs and locutions.
Example: "Undomesticated equines could not remove me," as voiced by Teal'c (Christopher Judge) in an episode of Stargate SG-1.
Teyla (Rachel Luttrell), an alien character on SG-1 spin-off Stargate Atlantis, uses conversational patterns similar to Judge's Teal'c.
I think they do this because it's easier to throw some crazy costuming on a character and alter their speech patterns than it is to craft Ferengi-style ears, subjecting the actor to hours of make-up and running up show costs. It's just a cheap, easy way to convey alien-ness.
It strikes me as a bit odd, though, that these off-worlders speak English better than Earthlings. Then again, if they spoke crazy English, the producers would be accused of harboring anti-immigrant sentiments. Who knows. I am, however, perlexed as to how Teal'c came up with the "undomesticated equines" bit. In order to speak that stilted phrase, he would have had to have first heard the proper "wild horses couldn't drag me away" version.
I really need to spend less time thinking about this shit.
Somewhere, in some magazine or online publication or blog comment, I remember some writer make a passing remark to the effect of, "Wouldn't it be perfect if R. Kelly turned out to be some crazy conceptual performance art piece by an art school kid?" It was the only way the writer could explain R. Kells' craziness.
Anyway, I'd agree to some extent. It's like, how can the man be so un-self-aware? I think to some degree he must know how crazy his shit is.
Anyway, R. Kelly analysis is not what I'm here to talk about. That's best left to American studies grad students and other wankers. I'm a bit of a language geek, so I really dig some of Kells' crazy phrases. My favorite by far is "half on a baby," as in, "Hey, you and me girl, let's go half on a baby."
I think you get the meaning.
It's just crazy how he manages to work an absolutely absurd phrase like that into a smooth R&B song, since for many people, the ideal result of a night of knockin' boots—which, presumably, this song is intended to induce—would be, well ... certainly not a pregnancy.
chorus
Half on a baby
All I need is your body next to me (saying ooh)
ooh na na na na na (yo.. yo body) Yo body na na na *2x*Now tell me what da deal is, are u ready to bump
It's gonna take a life time, to give u all of dis love
so baby open up, and get ready to recieve
a miracle of love, gettin down wid me
like a baseball field, wanna hit a home run
me and u get together babe, and raise a lil one
It's made be A.N.T. Bikes (Alternative Needs Transportation), a small bike shop run by Mike Flanigan and Betsy Eckel Scola in Holliston, Massachusetts. Almost every bike on A.N.T.'s bikes page is what I'd call a work of art. There's something so clean, simple, and elegant about the geometry and finish of these bikes. I'd almost be afraid to ride one for fear of messing it up.
Not only that, but because of its design and shape, it needs a special frame that's built to accommodate it, which the A.N.T. Rohloff is.
I'd love to own one of these, but I doubt I ever would bite the bullet. $6,000 is a lot, no matter what you're buying, and the thought of spending it on a bike, no matter how beautiful or functional, is just too much. Heck, that's worth more than some cars I've owned. The only way I could truly justify the outlay is if I rode my current bike to work every single day, and I don't. And if I rode it everywhere. Basically only if I cut out all subway trips. And that's not going to happen.
The A.N.T. Boston Roadster, however ... that might be a bike I could see myself buying—a way to own one of these exceptionally well-designed machines at a less crazy price.
Perhaps I was a bit harsh when I went off on iLife '08 in early August. I've been using it now for a little over a month and a half, and really, it's working quite well. Here's what I like about it:
PHOTO EDITING: iPHOTO
I know a lot of folks out there get to town with Photoshop, playing with S-curves and otherwise adjusting levels in what's basically the Rolls-Royce of photo apps. But I never got in on the ground floor of Photoshop, plus, I'm colorblind, so I find Adobe's tool too powerful and confusing. Instead, I use the "Enhance" button in iPhoto. Yeah, I know this makes me a photo rube. Whatevs. It works most of the time, and it's fast, and it's easy. About half the time, the "Enhance" button alone does the trick, but the other half, I just go into the "Adjustments" pane and play around with Temperature (how blue or yellow your whites appear) and Levels. The Straighten feature is nice, too, though I've found it often doesn't help—my camera, the Canon SD800is, puts a lot of spherical distortion on objects because it has a pretty wide angle lens on it.
Anyway, the editing on the new iLife is much, much, much more responsive than the previous version.
And all that ranting I did about the use of "Events" instead of "Rolls," well, I'd still like "Rolls" back, but I find that I pretty much import via iPhoto, do some light editing, upload to Flickr, and then delete my pix out of iPhoto. So it's not like I really have that many "Events," "Rolls," or photos in the program at any given time.
VIDEO EDITING: iMOVIE
The new iMovie is pretty hot. I can make movies pretty damn quickly now. And the one feature I always wished iMovie had—a simple way to crop video clips—has materialized. You can now just hover over the clip and then click and drag across it to select only what you want. At that point, you can move that selection to the pasteboard while your entire clip remains in the clips palette unchanged.
It's now almost ridiculously easy to add titles, too. And in such a way that lets you better envision length and look of the titles.
I will have to say that, for some people, the iMovie app has probably become too simple. Apple has really streamlined it and done away with a lot of the more customizable and powerful options. Titling, for instance, while easier, leaves you with only a handful of available title styles, only a couple of which I find acceptable for any movie I'd want to make. And some of the transition effects seem to have been removed. Still, I'd say the new ease of use outweighs the reduced featur-ism. This is supposed to be an app, after all, that anyone can use to really snaz up a quick home movie. And if that's Apple's goal, I think they've achieved it with the new iMovie.
One last thing on iMovie: The "Share" features are great. It integrates with YouTube, remembering your account for easy uploading, and it exports it to the site, automatically adjusting its settings for optimized YouTube vids.
For all the complaining I did, I now have to eat my words. The new iLife is pretty darn good.
Watch this and tell me that Miami Vice is not brilliant.
Unfortunately, watching it on Sleuth TV, it's not all like this clip.
I was looking at Kathryn Yu's Vox blog, and I noticed something ...
Does that background image look familiar?
I know, right?
Someone's been bitin' the Slice. I'm lookin' atchu, Mena Trott ;)
Heh.
I had this made at Neighborhoodies. It's going to become part of my blogging uniform. I just need to get some American Apparel tracksuit pants, and I'll be good to go.
My thought is that I'll ride my bike to work in my riding gear, then change into my blogging uniform upon arrival at the office. Kinda like a very dorky, reverse Superman.
By the way, I hate Superman. I think he blows chunks.
Where: AMC Loews Village 7, 66 Third Ave., New York NY 10003
With Whom: Me, myself, and I
Snacks: Small popcorn with butter, small Coke
Rating: A-
Snap Judgment: Having just done a marathon Bourne-watching on Thursday night/Friday morning, I had both predecessors fresh in my mind. I liked this one more than the second one, but I still like the first one the most.
This one didn't seem as ridiculous as the second one in terms of car chases, etc. I thought the whole Moscow tunnel car chase scene in Supremacy was too over the top. But this one was, somehow, more subdued.
One of the reasons I really liked the first one, though, is that it painted the CIA as dark and evil and plotting—which is everything you suspect it is. I liked that it wasn't all rah-rah, go go go Team America. With Supremacy, you start to see the seeds of the heroic whistleblower in the character of Pamela Landy. I'm sure there are plenty of good people in the CIA as well as evil plotters, but I was kinda like, "Yeah, right, someone's trying to help Bourne. Whatevs."
I also thought that it was pretty lame that it showed how super efficient the CIA was at taking over security cameras and zeroing in on Bourne's locations in Europe. Whatevs. <cliche>If they can do that, then why can't they find Osama?</cliche> It's like they're painting the CIA as a super great intel machine and that the only person who's skilled enough to outwit them is Bourne—a product of their own making. I seriously doubt it.
I'm happy to see he got away at the end, and I look forward to more Bournes, but I don't know what they're going to do from here. Maybe he'll try to find his parents and reconnect with his old life? Maybe they'll show what happened in his life that caused him to give himself so willingly to Operation Torchstone? Who knows.
An aside: AMC Loews Village 7 is the only theater I've been to recently that does buttered popcorn the right way. That is, they butter it for you. I have to admit, though, that when I saw the butter machine behind the concession stand, I figured they'd fill the bag all the way and then top it with one measly squirt, but they did it the right way, filling the bag halfway, buttering it with three squirts, topping it off with corn, and applying more squirts. Kudos, Village 7!
Some ideas for future Bourne titles:
The Borne Equation
The Bourne Logarithm
The Bourne Soliloquy
The Bourne Meritocracy
???
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Claire said:
Sasha Frere Jones wrote a short music review in the New Yorker where he was talking about some British chick... read more
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Anil said:
[this is good]OMG red checkered tablecloth scandal! read more
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Adam Kuban said:
It's true. I used to be better about buying snacks elsewhere and sneaking them in. I'm going to have to... read more
on At the Movies: The Simpsons Movie
I've been looking into this too (not an ANT specifically, but a locally built lugged steel Rohloff commuter with dynamo... read more
on The A.N.T. Rohloff: My Dream Bike