Family Guy Backlash

Bye Stewie. It's been nice knowing you.

RADAROnline has a great article on Family Guy and Seth MacFarlane backlash.

I've been irritated with Family Guy ever since the Barbershop Quartet AIDS song, but the reruns from the first volume of shows win me back. Lately though, it's been on the wane. I cheered Eric Cartman for trying to get Family Guy off the air.

Now that MacFarlane is teaming up with Burger King, he's pretty much officially sold out in my book.

Ben Folds Interview

Click Here to read my story on the News-Sentinel site. As usual, I will be posting the text on my other blog in a couple of days.

Book Review for Reality Magazine

[twin posting appears on Featured Writer]

My latest work is a book review in the September issue of Reality Magazine, the local LGBT magazine.

Click here to download the PDF. Click here to visit Reality Magazine online.

Don't Dream It, Be It

When discussing dream homes with a friend, he said that he wanted the bottom of his pool to feature Michaelangelo's "birth of man." We all thought that sounded kind of cool, but then like a giant pink lightning bolt, it hit me: "Wait, that was in Rocky Horror Picture Show." At first no one believed me, but then I said, "I have seen Rocky Horror more times than I've been to church. I promise you, it's in that movie."

Today I finally got around to checking YouTube. Yep, I totally called it. It's such a good feeling to know I'm right, even though I sort of threw cold water on someone's dream. Sorry, bad pun.

Without You, I'm Bored Out of My Mind

Few comedians are as unique as Sandra Bernhard. Today I watched "Without You, I'm Nothing," from back in the day. You know, back when the first Bush was in the White House.

This was probably the first existential, avante-garde comedy film ever. I don't think there has ever been another.

I enjoyed it much more than Chad did. I didn't even mind the part when she came out in a thong and tassels and did an interpretive dance to Prince's "Little Red Corvette." I have always liked her, she has always seemed to be on the edge of what's next. She's like an amped up modern version of Mae West. She's not the fake Mae West either like Bette Midler wants to be. Sandra Bernhard is authentic in her eccentricity. I just adore her. Thank heaven this came today. Too bad the DVD had a scratch in it that made me miss a whole chapter.

Art Crawl

I've been invited to the Art Crawl tomorrow night by a coworker. I think this sounds really fun.

The interesting thing is to see how many people actually get into the downtown fort wayne experience. I think that this city is great, but I am not so sure about paying a quarter million dollars for a condo overlooking a minor league baseball stadium.

Let's hope it's not lame.

UPDATE:
Friday after work brought horrible thunderstorms and rain. I didn't feel like braving the weather for the event, so I stayed home. I did eat a great meal at casa d'angelo. I highly recommend their rigatoni special.

The Golden Compass

Yes, I saw it. I was totally stoked about seeing Daniel Craig, and I loved the idea that the central character is a girl, not a boy.

The girl, Lyra, is very intelligent and utterly fearless. She's a bit of a tomboy, but she knows how to use her wits to get by. She goes into a situation with both mental barrels and she does an impressive bit of quick thinking. She does not wait to be rescued, and she puts her life on the line in virtually every scene. She's a great role model for young women because she's both tough and smart.

That being said, here are some of my other reactions:

• The movie seemed to be very simplistic, it was not anti-faith, but rather the Magisterium is portrayed as a power-mad and power-hungry bureaucracy. The magisterium is concerned about 'freethinkers' and 'heretics,' but there wasn't anything specifically anti-religious or anti-God about the film itself.


• The concept of each person having a daemon, an animalistic embodiment of their souls that walks alongside them is kind of interesting, but I had several problems with it. — The daemons seem to mirror the characters' occupations and personalities. If this was the case, it was very classist that the kitchen boy had a puppy dog daemon, the Gyptian boy had a rat daemon, and the porters and other staff had dog daemons. To me, that was like saying if you have a Labrador retriever, you won't be able to be anything in society that is higher than a butler.


• The bear fight scene was far too vicious for many children. Even though it was CGI, the actions of the battle were disturbing to me, and I'm nearly 31 years old.


• The witches were very artfully done, but their physical nature was kind of inconsistent. If they can fly and disappear into thin air, then why can they be shot?


• Sam Elliot was an interesting touch, but he was very out of place. He was a caricature of an old west cowboy and his aw-shucks dialog was pretty much vestigial and pointless.

Overall, I think it made a great looking movie. The action was very intense, at times too much so for children. Using the concept of parallel universes is always tricky though, and this one had some problems, even for a sci-fi devotee such as myself. I would give this 3 out of 5 stars. Somewhere between see at matinee price or wait for video.