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Wrod as a Wlohe

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Thor: Love and Thunder - Official Teaser

Here’s the official teaser for Thor: Love and Thunder.

Cool reveal at the end.

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Slap bass with Synth Pedal

The very talented musician Charles Berthoud hooked up his bass guitar to a synth pedal and proceeded to perform a slap bass-forward heavy metal instrumental.

The pedal gave the instrument’s usually rich, baritone sound an excellent, intriguing electronic tone.

And then I found Liquid Tension Experiment…

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Overhauling DC Entertainment

According to Brent Lang, writing at Variety, David Zaslav, the new CEO of the combined Warner Bros. Discovery, is reportedly looking for his version of Marvel Entertainment’s Kevin Feige. He wants:

…candidates with experience in creating and nurturing blockbuster intellectual property with a goal of potentially finding someone to serve as a creative and strategic czar similar to what Marvel has in Kevin Feige.

Well… it’s about time.

The DC Cinematic Universe has been a dumpster fire since 2013′s Man of Steel, which saw Zack Snyder using all the wrong comics as inspiration for his Superman flick. In response to the backlash, Warner Brothers doubled down instead of doing the responsible thing and not letting Snyder anywhere near their potential cash cow. Instead, WB gave him a couple more shots at creating the DC Cinematic Universe before cutting their losses.

It is no surprise the DC films that bore little connection to Snyder’s sepia-toned, slow-motion crap like Shazam! and the recent The Batman were met with critical acclaim. Even a few films set in the DCEU, like Aquaman and Wonder Woman, were so much better than the start.

A hard reboot is screamingly obvious here, and I truly hope they do it. It remains to be seen if it will come to pass.

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The Strange (but True) History of Easter

Stephen Johnson, writing for Lifehacker, has an amusing look into the origins of Easter.

Easter is weird.

To religious people, it’s the most sacred day of the year, a time for reflecting on the central miracle upon which Christianity is based. And, for children, a side of “a magical bunny stopped by last night and left a basket full of painted eggs and candy for you.”

The modern celebration of Easter is rooted so many sources—the Catholic Church, paganism, Judaism, the spring equinox—over so many centuries, it makes sense that it’s a little disjointed.

It’s pretty fun and entertaining.

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Corrective Measures on Tubi April 29

Soon.

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Elon Musk Offers to Buy Twitter

According to a report from Reuters, Elon Musk has offered to buy Twitter for $41.39 billion.

Musk, who calls himself a free-speech absolutist, has been critical of the social media platform and its policies, and recently ran a poll on Twitter asking users if they believed the platform adheres to the principle of free speech.

“My offer is my best and final offer and if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder,” Musk added. Twitter will review Musk’s offer with advice from Goldman Sachs & Co and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, a source told Reuters. The company’s shares jumped 12% in premarket trading, while those of Tesla fell about 1%. The total deal value was calculated based on 763.58 million shares outstanding, according to Refinitiv data.

Obviously, this would be tantamount to completely gutting the application and starting over. Twitter has no obligation to free speech as it stands now.

Even better, I look forward to the idea that Twitter should be something people pay to use. Of course, if it costs money to use, most of its users would decide they’d rather spend their money on just about anything else. Even if Musk just turns it into a private company, I think many users may move on.

Twitter, unfortunately, must take Musk at least semi-seriously. He’s worth an estimated $273 billion, so it could happen. I just don’t really expect it to happen. I expect investors to decide the offer isn’t good enough, and that will be that.

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Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Animated Series

What if Star Trek: The Next Generation was animated in the 70s instead of produced as live-action a decade later?

How fun is this? The attention to detail is astounding, from the lack of whites and shifting of their eyes to the strange angles of the shots and the weird pacing.

It’s the music that gets me, though. The Borg’s mauve cube also made me laugh out loud.

Also, the double colons made me smile.

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Movies and Streaming

Peter Kafka, writing for Vox, peers into a crystal ball and sees where movie theater experiences and streaming are headed.

Going to the movies — with friends, with strangers — and enjoying something together in the dark for a couple of hours is a very specific experience, and it’s getting taken away from me. And from us: We are a country that does a lot of the same stuff, but we don’t do it much together anymore. We’re asynchronous and alone. Movies were an exception to that.

How did we get here? Slowly, then all at once: Yes, the pandemic forced movie studios, out of desperation, to stream movies they might have once tried to put into theaters. More importantly, the pandemic gave studios the ability to do something they had wanted to do forever — shrink the “window” of time between when movies debut in theaters and when you can see them at home.

In the old days, you used to have to wait three months to watch a movie at home. Even then, you had to buy it on DVD or pay to download it. Now the industry standard is a 45-day delay — at which point you can watch them on a streaming service you probably already subscribe to, like Disney+ or HBO Max. Not exactly free, but close enough — and, as Rich Greenfield, an analyst at Lightspeed Partners notes, enough to create a very powerful cycle: If it’s not a movie you’re dying to see in a theater, you can be rewarded for your inaction and get it at home weeks later. Which makes studios even less likely to try to get anything but a slam dunk in the theater to begin with.

Ultimately, Kafka thinks all of this will eventually mean a consolidation of streaming services and finding ways to keep people at home. The movie theater experience will be only for big-budget extravaganzas like superhero movies and low-budget horror films.

Aside from the streaming services being bought by each other, the rest of it is already happening. A movie on a streaming service won the Best Picture Oscar, it’s all over but the shouting.

I can’t wait until Disney buys DC Comics, Image Comics, and the rest of them to put out the superhero movies people will love to see. I’m also waiting for Apple to buy Netflix, but I’m not holding my breath on that one.

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Start From Quiet

I loved this post from Niklas Göke.

How often do you sit in a quiet room, by yourself, before you take the next step? It could be any step: buying bread, heading to the office, opening your laptop to send an email, powering up your gaming console, reading a book, making dinner, taking a nap, calling a friend, writing a blog post, or submitting your vacation plans to your boss.

That step can begin one of two ways: from quiet or from noise. Nowadays, our default is to start from noise. There’s a TV playing in the background or a constant murmur of co-working small talk. We inject music, TED talks, and podcasts right into our ears. Open spaces have turned up the volume on office buzz. How often do we choose our own beginnings? When do we get to set the terms of the next stage without some stream of interference drilling into our consciousness? Whenever we pick quiet.

You can make quiet, you know? Find it. Go for a walk. Sit in an empty room. Close the door. Take off your headphones. Escape the chatter. It is remarkable what two minutes of quiet do for the brain, and how different a new beginning feels when you decide to make it from nothing rather than something — because that’s what you’re doing, you know? All day, you turn nothing into something, but if the intention isn’t clear, it’ll fall right back to ashes.

Protect your moments of setting intentions. Create the space to choose them deliberately. Take off from quiet, and you’ll find a much stronger wind beneath your wings.

I try to do this and fail all the time.

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Gilbert Gottfried Dead at 67

Gilbert Gottfried, whose amazingly grating voice so perfectly illustrated his abrasive brand of comedy, is dead at 67.

“In addition to being the most iconic voice in comedy, Gilbert was a wonderful husband, brother, friend and father to his two young children,” the Gottfried family said in a statement on his Twitter account. “Although today is a sad day for all of us, please keep laughing as loud as possible in Gilbert’s honor.”

He was a rare comedian who managed to make a career telling some of the most memorable dirty jokes while also having a prolific run in some of the biggest family-friendly films and TV shows.

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They Think Their Hate Makes Them Special

John DeVore, writing at his site Humungus, explains the mind of the current Republican Party simply and without any pretension.

It is obvious that their plan to win back the House and Senate during the 2022 midterm elections is straight from their oldest playbook: preach prejudice, spread lies, and legitimize fears, no matter how irrational.

And here’s the crux of everything Republican today:

What is most galling about right-wingers, though, is how proud they are of their intolerance, as if it makes them special little snowflakes. They spit hatred at cis women and trans women and people of color and they do it with their noses in the air, all superior and haughty. They wear their bigotry like a gold star.

Their political strategies are morally offensive reruns from a past they should all be collectively ashamed of but they aren’t because winning is the sole goal, no matter the carnage. This retreat back to the old ways is a symptom of ideological rot — at the moment, conservatives believe in nothing but whatever gains them a short-term advantage on the TV, on social media, and at the ballot box.

And so they tell the faithful and those full of doubts that their fears are noble, righteous even. A white man in this country will sell out his neighbor if you nod approvingly as he explains one of his convoluted, paranoid conspiracy theories. “What’s that Mike? The Democrats are actually a secret Satanic sex cult? Sure!”

I’m so, so tired of this bullshit.

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WATCHTOWER

Warren Ellis wrote a new short story entitled WATCHTOWER, and it’s a fun read. Here’s how Ellis pitched it to potential readers:

I was in the mood to try some pop-sci Andy Weir style good time writing, a mood that was responding to the preponderance of Sad Astronaut stories in tv and film. It has a jumpcut sort of structure, because I also was thinking about the idea of the condensed novel, in JG Ballard’s conception, and connecting that with a certain style of film editing — Christopher Rouse with Paul Greengrass on THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM, for example. It kind of took a turn during the writing, which I personally ascribe to watching two seasons of Ed Stafford’s FIRST MAN OUT.

Anyway. I wrote it. And 10,000 words is worse than a novella. I don’t think Kindle Singles are a thing any more, and it had no other utility other than having amused me to write it and get it out of my system.

I dunno how I’d describe it. Indiana Holmes And The Case Of Elon Musk’s Rendezvous With Rama? It’s a bit of fun, but it’s also about human damage, exploration and colonising. It probably makes no sense at all. If you decide to read it, I hope it at least amuses you.

It’s definitely Indiana Holmes And The Case Of Elon Musk’s Rendezvous With Rama.

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Alternate Universes

Nicholas Bate on writing:

Incredibly, there are whole new alternate universes hidden deep in your brain. Unique to you.

Writing will access them.

He’s not wrong.

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Transforming in the Here and Now

Rebecca Toh, writing on her site, explains where she’s at with self-improvement.

There is simply no imaginary day in the bright future ahead when we’d wake up in the morning transformed, an ideal version of ourselves.

There is only transforming in the here and the now.

She is absolutely right. I want to improve myself and become that idealized version, but I also like French fries and pizza. What do I want more? That’s the question.

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Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 8

Honestly, this is what everyone really wanted at the start.

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Now is the New

Niklas Goke wrote something worthwhile about “newness” and “nowness.”

In Effortless, Greg McKeown muses that “the word now comes from a Latin phrase, novus homo, which means ‘a new man’ or ‘man newly ennobled.’” The etymology may differ, but the essence is true: Now is new. Actually, now can be new.

Sometimes, now is new without our doing. One second we have a job, the next we don’t. One moment the sun shines, the next it rains. More often than not, however, new is neutral because we choose it to be. We could wear a different mood, pick a new identity, or throw away or phone — but we don’t.

We don’t because we’re comfortable, afraid, doubtful, stuck, hurt, or stubborn, but it’s not uncertainty we’re stealing time from. The seconds we take when playing it safe come out of our own pockets. And tomorrow, the uncertainty will still be there.

“Each new moment is a chance to start over,” Greg says. “A chance to make a new choice.”

Make sure now is new.

I feel like I play it safe a great deal. Maybe I shouldn’t be so comfortable.

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Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

Damn it. I’m going to have to break down and get Paramount+ aren’t I?

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In the Shadow of the Star Wars Kid

In 2002, a 15-year-old Quebec boy named Ghyslain Raza filmed himself swinging a golf ball retriever in imitation of Darth Maul’s double-bladed light saber from The Phantom Menace. The private video leaked onto the internet and became perhaps the biggest viral video of the pre-Youtube era under the name “The Star Wars Kid.” Traumatized by the ensuing ridicule and bullying, Raza has spoken about the video only once before, and the man who initially helped popularize it, Andy Baio (MetaFilter’s own), has declined to be interviewed about it. They talk together for the first time about this formative moment in unwelcome internet fame in a new documentary Star Wars Kid: The Rise of the Digital Shadows/Dans l’ombre du Star Wars Kid streaming free from the National Film Board of Canada.

H/T: Metafilter

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The Slap Trap Clap

Dave Pell, the managing editor of the Internet, has had enough:

A request from the managing editor to the internet I cover: Stop. Seriously, stop with the bothsidesing think-pieces about Will Smith’s slap. I’m sure Alopecia can be a traumatic condition, but this isn’t story about Alopecia. We’re not even sure Chris Rock knew about Jada’s condition, and even if he had, it’s still not an Alopecia story. It’s also not a race story. It’s not a toxic male story. There are not two sides to this story. Here’s the whole story: Will Smith snapped and slapped and the audience clapped. The guy starting whaling on someone in the middle of the Academy Awards. Jim Carrey summed it up: “I would have announced this morning that I was suing Will for $200 million because that video is going to be there forever. It’s going to be ubiquitous. That insult is going to last a very long time. I was sickened by the standing ovation. I felt like Hollywood is just spineless en masse. It really felt like: ‘Oh, this is really a clear indication that we’re not the cool club anymore.’” That’s it. Like the swelling on Chris Rock’s face, there’s only one side to this story. Jim Carrey got it right, and even though he’s famous for doing so, it’s the rest of the internet that’s talking out of its ass.

Now why would I bring this story up again, other than to whine about headlines that irritate news curators like me? Because this is an example of the same kind of asinine false equivalence that we’ve seen soil the media for the past several years. There were not two sides to Trump’s habitual lying. There are not two sides to the vaccine debate. There are not two sides to the potential upside of using disinfectant on the inside of your body. There are not two sides to the climate change debate. There are not two sides to the Jan 6 insurrection story. There are not two sides to the 2020 election results. Yesterday, Donald Trump requested that Vladimir Putin dig up and share dirt on Joe Biden’s family. At a time of war, that’s straight up treachery, the kind of anti-American garbage this criminal has been spewing for years. End of story.

Being unbiased does not mean giving lies the same weight as the truth. What you see and hear happening is what’s really happening, and it’s about time the media started reporting things that way, instead of making bad decisions like ABC ‘s hiring of Chris Christie or terrible ones like CBS News’ hiring of Mick Mulvaney as a paid contributor. Mick Mulvaney is what we call in the business, a stone cold liar. He once argued that Covid coverage was an attempt to bring down the president. And that’s just for starters. Why would this clown be hired by CBS News? So we can pretend that his bullshit side of the story is just as valid as the truth? Because maybe the Trumpian scumbags who did everything possible to destroy our country at home and abroad may have a perfectly valid reason for doing so? Because maybe Chris Rock’s face jumped in front of Will Smith’s hand?

Yeah. What he said.