The LA Times reports that the Palo Alto house that Mark Zuckerberg has been renting is now available to anyone willing to cough up $7850 per month.
No word on where the CEO of Facebook has moved, or why the billionaire wunderkind has been renting. He can probably afford to buy a house in the area.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Arts & crap
Ah, a story for the season: Thomas Kinkade, the master of the Syrup School of Art Product, appears to have problems that slapping a coat of yellow paint on a canvas & “publishing” it won’t solve.
I know it’s mean-spirited to poke fun at someone when he’s down; but Kinkade—honestly, someone who panders to the, well, the tasteless en masse… I mean, if his little (or perhaps not so little) empire isn’t the triumph of marketing over substance, I don’t know what is.
I first saw his oeuvre in 2001, when I got back from three years overseas. The extent of his kitschiness just knocked me out. His paintings are as unartistic as you can get without having poker-playing dogs as your subjects or using black velvet as your canvas.
& then I saw the merchandise. Gawd.
At least we the taxpayers haven’t yet been called upon to bail his company out of bankruptcy. Although I suppose it’s not beyond the realm of possibility.
I know it’s mean-spirited to poke fun at someone when he’s down; but Kinkade—honestly, someone who panders to the, well, the tasteless en masse… I mean, if his little (or perhaps not so little) empire isn’t the triumph of marketing over substance, I don’t know what is.
I first saw his oeuvre in 2001, when I got back from three years overseas. The extent of his kitschiness just knocked me out. His paintings are as unartistic as you can get without having poker-playing dogs as your subjects or using black velvet as your canvas.
& then I saw the merchandise. Gawd.
At least we the taxpayers haven’t yet been called upon to bail his company out of bankruptcy. Although I suppose it’s not beyond the realm of possibility.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
We can hope
Andy Borowitz reports we’re in for big changes at airports: TMZ staff will replace TSA screeners since they can do the same job “but be more respectful & less invasive.”
Sadly, it’s only a spoof.
Sadly, it’s only a spoof.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Don't call him Shirley
Another light in the zaniness firmament has dimmed. Leslie Nielsen died yesterday at age 84.
Here’s a guy who built a career as a serious, not to say melodramatic, actor and then around age 50 he just hung a left straight into silliness. To the betterment of movies, audiences and society in general.
There’s a quote about him by Jerry Zucker, one of the team of lunatics who launched Nielsen’s second career in Airplane: “Leslie kept emitting gas in a very loud and embarrassing manner. We just assumed he'd been to Mexico or something. Then we found out he has this little rubber gadget that makes these terrible noises. And we realized that what we had here was a 10-year-old dipstick parading around as a genteel 50-year-old.”
People has a collection of clips from his movies. Two caveats: don’t be drinking anything whilst watching, as you’ll snort it out onto your keyboard; you might not want to view them at work, unless you don’t mind your colleagues thinking you’ve gone mental.
Most of the focus today will be on his movies—Airplane, the Naked Gun series, etc. But my fondest memory of him was his guest appearances on Due South as RCMP Sgt. Buck Frobisher. My favourite episode was “All the Queen’s Horses”, where he and his old partner (now deceased) rescue his partner’s son, Constable Benton Fraser, from a train that’s been taken over by an Insane Arms Dealer. It’s full of unconscious Mounties (members of the Musical Ride) who’ve been gassed by the IAD. But Frobisher escaped gassing because he was in the loo, on account of he’d had a hinky caribou burrito (or the like)…
Okay, I haven’t the words to explain it; you really do have to see it. When I got back from living in Europe at the end of 2001, knowing I was being laid off and not sure of employment prospects, I was in my house for a weekend before the cable could be connected. I pulled out the “All the Queen’s Horses” video and felt that in a world where Buck Frobisher could be a Mountie, maybe anything was possible.
Thanks, Leslie.
Here’s a guy who built a career as a serious, not to say melodramatic, actor and then around age 50 he just hung a left straight into silliness. To the betterment of movies, audiences and society in general.
There’s a quote about him by Jerry Zucker, one of the team of lunatics who launched Nielsen’s second career in Airplane: “Leslie kept emitting gas in a very loud and embarrassing manner. We just assumed he'd been to Mexico or something. Then we found out he has this little rubber gadget that makes these terrible noises. And we realized that what we had here was a 10-year-old dipstick parading around as a genteel 50-year-old.”
People has a collection of clips from his movies. Two caveats: don’t be drinking anything whilst watching, as you’ll snort it out onto your keyboard; you might not want to view them at work, unless you don’t mind your colleagues thinking you’ve gone mental.
Most of the focus today will be on his movies—Airplane, the Naked Gun series, etc. But my fondest memory of him was his guest appearances on Due South as RCMP Sgt. Buck Frobisher. My favourite episode was “All the Queen’s Horses”, where he and his old partner (now deceased) rescue his partner’s son, Constable Benton Fraser, from a train that’s been taken over by an Insane Arms Dealer. It’s full of unconscious Mounties (members of the Musical Ride) who’ve been gassed by the IAD. But Frobisher escaped gassing because he was in the loo, on account of he’d had a hinky caribou burrito (or the like)…
Okay, I haven’t the words to explain it; you really do have to see it. When I got back from living in Europe at the end of 2001, knowing I was being laid off and not sure of employment prospects, I was in my house for a weekend before the cable could be connected. I pulled out the “All the Queen’s Horses” video and felt that in a world where Buck Frobisher could be a Mountie, maybe anything was possible.
Thanks, Leslie.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
New meaning for social networking
File it under the heading You Can’t Make This Stuff Up: a New Jersey preacher who forbade his church leadership from having Facebook accounts because too many couples are using it as an adulterous hookups, has been caught in a sex scandal he produced all on his own, without the social media site.
There’s really not much I can add to this.
There’s really not much I can add to this.