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A couple of longer posts will hopefully be coming your way sooner than later, but in the meantime, check out this artist’s representation of what Super Mario might look like if he were a real dude (and not Bob Hoskins). Also included on the artists page are representations of Jessica Rabbit and Homer Simpson.

I don’t have any comments on these images.

Oh…hell. Okay. I’ll say it. They are just too weird. They make me cringe. Give me Jessica the cartoon or give me (1980s) Kathleen Turner. Give me Mario the cartoon or give me Bob Hoskins. But I do not want to see these creepy hybrids ever again.

On the other hand…hitching these representations to some cockamamie B-movie horror movie plot might make for a sweet creepy short film.

This article begins as an exploration of the legacy of Gary Gygax (the creator of Dungeons and Dragons) but segues into an exploration of the modern American’s tendency to:

• Create a character based on themselves through an online identity, so that they may
• Form relationships between other characters within the context of that artificial identity, so that
• Everything can proceed within a certain set of imagined rules, so that
• Our behavior (and thus, much of our lives) can be weighed and measured as data or information, which is
• More easily bendable to our liking and cleaner and neater than real life.

I will save my exact comments on the general theory put forward by the article and its author…because while I see the point and even agree with it…I tend to think that the cause and effect relationship at play here has slightly more complexity and depth to it. Read more

There are a lot of good things about HBO’s new series In Treatment. I won’t be sharing my thoughts on any of them, however, because HBO has pissed me off.

Having watched the very first episode of In Treatment while visiting family (I cannot afford cable at home, a result of “the artist’s life”), and having enjoyed it enough to want to watch more of the show, I did some research when I got home and was surprised to find that HBO was offering the show online, for free, via an iTunes podcast. This seemed too good to be true, but I tried downloading the episodes from the podcast, and it worked, so I shrugged and decided to just not worry about it. This was a pleasant feeling, and I privately congratulated HBO on the marketing move. I was still convinced that something fishy was going on, but my naive prediction was that I would be allowed to watch the first season of the show online, in this manner, before then being cut off.

This prospect did not bother me. I understand that even when your total production budget has been dramatically reduced - due to the fact that you shoot 90% of your show in one room, and that the majority of your cinematography consists of filming two actors sitting across from one another, at only a few different camera angles and under the same lighting arrangement - that these things cost money.

So on my merry way to therapy I went, for approximately three weeks. Due to the different sort of format they use for the show (each week features five different original episodes, but I am not going to go into any more detail, because I’m pissed off) I was able to watch fifteen half hour episodes, online, for free. That’s seven and a half hours of free premium entertainment. More than just a taste, this represents several separate meals. They might have been good meals, too. Actually, I can’t remember. I’m pissed off. Read more

Excuse the melodramatic headline for this post, but I just spent way too much time writing it, and am too tired and depressed to come up with an original catchy title. Thus, the lazy man’s catchy title. Consider your curiosity exploited. Now, read.

* * *

I was going to let this one go - so as not to lower myself too much - but I think this particular example of cultural starvation/degeneration is too big and ugly to ignore. Cheap and dirty I have promised, so cheap and dirty I will deliver.

Except that this, a recent photo spread in New York Magazine featuring Lindsay Lohan as Marilyn Monroe in “The Last Sitting,” also known as the last photo shoot Monroe did before her death, actually represents more of an opposite to the sort of “cheap and dirty stuff” that I wrote about in my grand old furious introduction. Before I go on, I should relay a fact that New York Magazine takes some minor pains to point out with its pink-lettered parenthetical reminder within the caption link for the photo spread on its main fashion page, that the original photo shoot, as well as the desperate and awful reproduction, features nudity. So if you somehow ended up here as part of a search for Lohan boobie, and Lohan boobie only, follow this link and be gone.

Look, I’m sure that I don’t have to go into too much detail about why the very existence of these photos represent a big ugly cultural step backwards, but for the sake of catharsis, and also because I’m currently holding onto what some might consider to be a surprising sub-opinion in regards to the topic, let’s do it… Read more

I wrote the first sentence of this post three times before I gave up. You are now reading a sentence about a sentence. You are now reading a post about a post - no, not even that - you are reading a post about a post that never was and never will be. And the saddest part of the whole thing isn’t that you’re going to keep reading or that I’m going to keep writing. No. The saddest part is that, beyond this, neither of us have much choice in the matter. This never-post now does exist, despite being comprised of essentially nothing.

There are three reasons for this - why it exists in spite of its non-existence. Bang they come:

• It really has all been done before, and then some, so what else is there to do but dispense with the lie and just make something out of nothing? If you don’t understand what I mean by this, or if you disagree, consider yourself lucky. Then go out and slowly educate yourself. Misery loves company. I’ll see you later.
• You’re bored. You need something to do or to read, because at this moment, for some reason, you are either incapable of “watching” or have decided to take a break from “watching.” Like me, you sometimes fly towards a piece of news, writing, or entertainment, not so much for the thing itself but because you’ve just become accustomed to the process. You’ve grown up along with media bombardment. The television and the advertisements and the movies and the music have promised you a full, exciting, glamorous life, shared in the company of beauty, and the newspapers and the television anchors and the tabloids have provided you with enough proof to support the claim that life tends more towards the opposite. So, hey, if you can’t quite live life to it’s fullest, and, further, if everything sucks, you might as well keep yourself comfortable and occupied.
• It is what The Man wants. I don’t know who exactly The Man is anymore, I think maybe we’re all The Man (guilty by association) but, regardless, I think He wants us to pay attention to nothing, to discuss nothing, to dissect nothing, and dress nothing up in new clothes each year, so that he can continue to do what he does best. What does he do best? You may be surprised to hear see me skip over the usual answers of “control you,” or “control your money,” or “control your soul” - but, really, I don’t think he puts much effort into any of these things anymore. The Man, now, wants something simpler…something more essential and basic.

He wants victory over movement. This is the ultimate definition of control. Having gotten things to a point where even the poor can get by in terms of the bare essentials - see this absolutely ridiculous article about why “the poor are doing just fine” for a sound bite from one of The Man’s top henchmen (careful, don’t be fooled, it’s written with authority, puts forward its ugly opinion without using any exact ugly words, and contains charts!) - The Man now wants to take things one step further. He has control over the system, but the system isn’t always as dependable as he’d like it to be, and he knows that.

Read more

About a year ago, I was having lunch with a friend, and was just starting to launch into my usual “communications-technology-is-killing-communication” speech, when she stopped me pre-rant. “I know what you are going to say,” she said. “And it’s so much worse in Asia.”

My friend is Korean. She was born and raised in the United States but has worked in Korea and Japan for much of her life. And according to her, the average citizen of each of these countries - and especially, the average young person - is completely dependent on his or her cell phone as a source of not only communication but entertainment as well.

Now, I don’t have statistics to support that claim, but let it be known that my friend is both observant and intelligent. Even if her point of view is somewhat exaggerated - probably in the face of the possible ramifications of what’s in that point of view (something that admittedly often happens to yours truly) - there’s very little chance that she’s not somewhat right. I’ll leave it to my Korean and Japanese readers, and my half Korean and half Japanese readers, to add some more perspective or information if they feel the need.

But back to the point, before it stabs us:

Novels written and distributed via cell phone are starting to dominate the best seller lists in Japan.

Read more

As mentioned in an earlier post, I’ll soon be working on producing some web video episodes (webisodes!) for the site. They will hopefully be both entertaining and thought-provoking. Look for the first one to arrive in three or four weeks.

For now, though, please watch (or re-watch) the only other online video(s) I can offer for the time being, which come from my first directing effort, Over Easy. Originally released as a standalone short film, I have split it into three parts for the internet.

Check out this post from the NY Times Bits Blog for a sampling of what it’s like to be in the belly of the consumer electronics beast (The 2008 Consumer Electronics Show).

And, if you’re interested, click around and read a few more of the author’s posts. He looks like he knows both how to write and what he’s talking about.

This is encouraging. This is refreshing. This is a Diet 7-Up with a fortune cookie label.

One of the first in-depth articles that I’m going to be working on for this site will be an exploration of Second Life, the self-proclaimed “3D online digital world.” I haven’t yet had the time to really start this article - I think it would be better to “enter the world” and bum around in it for a while before jumping to any furious conclusions (based only first impressions and second-hand information) - but for now here’s a morsel of something similar. This one deserves a furious early conclusion. I’m almost positive that it does.

Children are being targeted by companies that run virtual worlds. And the reasons why they are being targeted are not okay.

The article that I just linked to comes from the New York Times and contains this information in its second paragraph:

Children’s entertainment companies are greatly accelerating efforts to build virtual worlds for children. Media conglomerates in particular think these sites - part online role-playing game and part social scene - can deliver quick growth, help keep movie franchises alive and instill brand loyalty in a generation of new customers.

Not surprisingly, the article also points out that some parents and child advocacy groups are “dismayed” by the popularity of these virtual worlds for children. I was so very glad to hear this. Everyone is always so quick to fix things when they feel “dismayed.”

A few more notes from the article, before the fury takes over:

Read more

NOTE: This post was initially published on Yesterday’s Salad. It is reprinted here with the permission of the author, who shares several pairs of shoes and underwear with The Furious Romantic.

*    *    *

Earlier this year, when I read about the premise for Showtime’s new series, Californication, I got a sinking feeling. My girlfriend watched the pilot episode of this “show about a writer,” starring David Duchovny in his first TV role since The X-Files, and liked it pretty well. But she warned me about watching it for myself.

“I feel like you might get kind of sensitive about how they treat the character,” she said. “He’s definitely a writer, all the stereotypes are there, but I don’t know if you’ll like it…then again…why else would they be stereotypes?” A teasing description of how many of the stereotypes fit onto my back probably followed, after which I probably bit her.

Anyway! After heeding her warning for a while, I caved. There’s just not much else out there worth watching, and Showtime and HBO have each proven themselves as surer bets in the search for eye-safe television. And, lo and behold, my lover was right. I did get kind of sensitive. In all the right ways.

Read more

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