Al Roker Gets His Nub Yubbed

On October 30th, the entire cast of the Today Show got into the Halloween spirit by dressing like characters from Star Wars. They even hired extras to play characters like the Ewoks featured in this clip. Maybe you should have a better screening process for extras when you have a live broadcast...

That Ewok is my new hero.

[via Geekologie]

Beer + Clam Juice...Oh, It's Happening

Introducing the Chelada, an unholy concoction of Budweiser and Clamato. They might as well have called it Cthulada, and slapped an image of ten thousand tormented, wailing souls on the label.


[via Laughing Squid]

Paranormal Activity

I saw The Blair Witch Project way after all the hype had died down, and was completely underwhelmed. Paranormal Acitivty wasn't very high on my radar for this reason. Generally when something starts to get hyped as the SCARIEST MOVIE EVER, I tend to tune out. But I ended up going, and was fairly surprised.

I found Paranormal Acitivity to be a pretty successful attempt at the faux documentary style. And it was genuinely scary (something which Blair Witch was not), and gradually built the scares up in a very effective way.

There are a lot of familiar elements at play, including characters that are so thick headed you want to throttle them. There are a lot of don't-investigate-the-creepy-sound! moments, but at least the stubbornness feels like a character trait rather than poor writing like it does in lesser horror films.

There are some very startling and disturbing moments, and everything is heightened by the convincingly natural performances. This should become a classic rental or purchase for people looking to creep themselves and their friends out.

Where The Wild Things Are

I really enjoyed Where The Wild Things Are, but wasn't blown away by it. I loved the style of it. The special effects were very impressive (props to the Jim Henson Company, and the CGI crew).

I always appreciate kids movies that aren't afraid to have real emotion, or be scary occasionally. Some of my favorites growing up were movies that terrified me in certain parts, like The Dark Crystal and The Secret of NIMH. Wild Things has a lot of serious stuff going on. It really captures the range of conflicting emotions that young children have to deal with. And splitting those different emotions into the different characters of the Wild Things was really clever.

There was also enough quirky humor to keep things from getting too bogged down in angst and grief. Bob and Terry were a particular highlight.

Great performances, direction, soundtrack...All around terrific movie. The only thing that kept it from being a classic for me was the general lack of story. But it's hard to fault it for that since it already has more story than the book. It's hard to create conflict in a movie without real villains. But it's still a great adaptation.

Carl Sagan Day

"Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human beings will prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition. They avoid rather than confront the world. But those with the courage to explore the weave and structure of the Cosmos, even where it differs profoundly from their wishes and prejudices, will penetrate its deepest mysteries."

Today is the first annual Carl Sagan Day. We all know that he sounds good auto-tuned (if not a little bit like Kermit the Frog). But his voice and words are beautiful enough without manipulation. Take this brief ode to our planet:

Sagan's gift, more than anyone else I'm aware of, was in highlighting the beauty of science and nature. His ability to see the whole of mankind's history and future in a single blurry snapshot of a pinpoint in space is startling.

The fantastic radio series/podcast, Radiolab, featured the following story on their episode entitled "Space". It perfectly illustrates Carl Sagan, the scientist and the romantic.