Nelson News

Ed Nelson, UConn's Country Rappin' Rebounder, has signed a free agent contract with the St. Louis Rams as a TE.

Green Day and the Timelords

Dr. Who on Holiday - Green Day and the Timelords. The missus hates it when I crank up the Timelords version, maybe this one will be more to her liking.

Speaking Truthiness

Colbert at the Correspondents' Dinner looks hilarious but unfortunately I can neither get my laptop to play sound, find my headphones, nor find the rebroadcast on the CSPAN schedule. Maybe you'll have more luck than I did. Still, just reading about it was entertaining.

Da Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na

Swingin' Jon Favreau to helm Iron Man. Thor is getting a movie a too? Shaun of the Dead was wicked good, so I wouldn't be surprised if Ant Man turned out to be the best of that lot.

The Kansas City Shuffle

Saw Lucky Number Slevin today. I was pleasantly surprised to find myself enjoying what easily could've been Bruce Willis trying to cash in on some more of that Pulp Fiction magic, a man's wristwatch being a key ingredient and all. If you're looking for a Saturday matinee with some twists and turns and dose of bloody violence, this is one of the better action movies to come along since, well, Pulp Fiction.

OK, a day later, -- and this is spoilerish -- what bugged me a little now bugs me more. The idea that someone, even a coroner, can get a bulletproof vest and fake blood packets on short notice then be willing to risk that someone who's intending to shoot them will hit the packets and not decide to shoot them between the eyes, not to mention the unlikelihood that nobody would notice they're wearing a freaking bulletproof vest, it's all just a bit much. To me, it seems like they decided to take a lazy shortcut and didn't have enough respect for the audience to even try to pretend otherwise. There are probably more glaring credulity straining elements, but they were masked better, or at least an attempt was made to explain them.

From SD-6 to ST:11

J.J. (Alias, MI:III) Abrams to Direct 11th Star Trek movie. My feeling for a while has been that what Star Trek needs is a reboot. While this isn't that drastic, I'm liking the idea of revisiting the original characters with new actors. It was a bad idea to go back to the (future) past with Enterprise, but this movie does seem like step in the right direction.

I still feel a full on reboot of the original series, cherry picking the best episodes, grabbing the best stories from the novels, planning the five year mission and doing it as a closed-end series so it could have a proper story arch is the only way to revive the series short of pushing it ahead another couple hundred years or so.

As far as Abrams goes, I liked some of Alias and will probably check out MI:III even though Tom Cruise freaks me out. It never would've occurred to me to look in that direction for Trek and maybe that's not a bad thing. Bryan Singer looked like an inspired choice for the X-Men and that's turned out to be be pretty forgettable, but I would've rather seen someone with a less commercial vision at the helm.

Still, it's new Star Trek and for whatever reason that still gets my inner geek all stirred up.

(link via Ghost in the Machine)

50 Greatest Film Adaptations

The titles that leapt off the page.
Nitpick with the list: several were made into films at least twice and the list doesn't reference which version is supposedly the best ... for example which "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory"?

It's been a long time since I read "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" (Mr. Raccagni's class) but with Muriel Spark's recent passing and now the inclusion here, I guess I'll throw it on the Netflix list.

via Robot Wisdom

May Not Have Played a Great Game ...

... of Phase 10 last night but I sure showed our guests how to eat pistachios with ruthless efficiency.

Another web fave

... is the Washington Post's online sudoku. It's got the best notes system, at least for my solving style, and I think it's the easiest to use without a mouse. I'll usually do the Times and the Daily Sudoku as well, but I'll always work the Post first. There's also websudoku and a speed challenge one at sudoku fun that I haven't tried yet. Am I missing any good ones?

They're not extinct!

New dinosaur a turkey - World - theage.com.au
Turkzilla is out there. I've seen it.