Nobody Knows Anything

Welcome to Diane Patterson's eclectic blog about what strikes her fancy

Morning round-up

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• So, there is a movement afoot to take next year’s Foothill New Works Festival to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Pretty much the major reason why we wouldn’t do it is if the American dollar goes to, I dunno, 3 or 4 to the British pound. But! Doctor Who as Hamlet! I am so there! Must. Go. To. UK. Somehow. Go, Apple stock!

• Please to watch this absolutely brilliant four-minute-long opening credits sequence for The Kingdom, which manages to cover the salient history between Saudi Arabia and the US. I still have no interest in seeing this movie (despite the presence of the ever-awesome Jason Bateman), but this sequence: Wow. When’s the last time you saw a credits sequence this memorable? (For that matter, when’s the last time you saw a credits sequence? Seems like they’ve been missing from every movie we’ve seen recently.) (Via Making Light)

• Speaking of movies you should see or Netflix immediately: The King of Kong. I have to say, I wasn’t that thrilled about going to see a movie about a showdown between two Donkey Kong players (I don’t even like arcade games), but this documentary about what happens when a guy decides he wants to beat the high score in Donkey Kong is fabulous. I am so happy Darin and I went out of our way to see it in downtown San Jose.

• Have you ever said to yourself, “Self, I need a Hostess cupcake that’s bigger than my head”? Well, if so, Nicole at Baking Bites has felt your pain, made the band-aid, given you pictures and a recipe.

• Jon Carroll gets right on the whole no-gays-in-Iran thing, discovers there are some who “believe that Iranians will like any group of Americans that doesn’t try to kill them.”

• There are approximately 8 million people in the greater Los Angeles area, at least 2 million of whom have SAG cards. And the producers of the number one hit show on TV from last year couldn’t find at least FIVE who could do a decent Irish accent for the opening show of the season?

• Speaking of the fall season, is there anything out there that I absolutely, positively must catch amongst the new shows? We watched Moonlight because of Jason Dohring (he of Veronica Mars fame), and our JD love remains intact because he was the only good thing in this amazingly horrible pile of dreck — he managed to deliver unsayable dialogue with panache. The rest of the show was poorly written, poorly acted, and poorly stitched together. We had to turn it off halfway through, and we never turn off shows.

We’ve also watched Reaper (yay, Ray Wise, but we liked this show much better when it was called Brimstone) and Chuck (yay, Adam Baldwin, but sorry, dude: you’ll find a better show eventually).

Darin really likes Mad Men (the portrayal of women’s roles in 1960 gives me the heaves — let me just put it this way: I hate it when I hear a woman mutter that she doesn’t believe in feminism, and this show perfectly dramatizes why).

• My God, Torchwood is silly stuff. The big mystery to us is how Captain Jack kept his American aviator’s coat in such perfect condition for the past 60 years — perhaps he had one made up in alien fabric.

• Have you ever said to yourself, “Self, I need a wrist rest that’s both useful and funky”? If so, the people at the What On Earth catalogue have felt your pain and produced the Baguette Wrist Rest. (Via Nicole at Baking Bites.)

• The ever-fabulous Otto passes along the best of Craiglist Boise:

2 COWS OR MORE – $1

Reply to: sale-437692507@craigslist.org
Date: 2007-10-01, 11:32PM MDT

HERE IS THE DEAL IF YOU WANT TO RAISE YOUR BEEF I HAVE THE PLACE.LETS TALK
CALL xxx-xxxx
——————–

Free Llamas–You catch, you haul

Reply to: see below
Date: 2007-10-02, 10:00AM MDT

We have three llamas that we don’t have time for. They’re free, but you need to catch them (in a corral) and haul them. One young male, one adult male and one adult female. These llamas have NOT been trained for packing. Please call Tony at xxx-xxxx.

Funniest thing I’ve read for a while

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Via Holden at First Draft, we get a report from The Telegraph that’s the funniest damn thing put in print since… I don’t know. Early 2001, maybe:

Country music has thrived for years as the soundtrack to redneck America, supplying the Republican heartlands with a diet of knee-jerk jingoism that has included flag-waving anthems supporting the war on terror.

Toby Keith has claimed he never supported the war

But as the US death toll rises in Iraq and public patience with the conflict — and with George W. Bush — diminishes, many anti-war songs are emerging from Nashville, Tennessee, home of the genre.

No one has moved further than Toby Keith and Darryl Worley, two of the biggest names in country music.

In 2002, Keith had a huge hit with Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue, which includes the lyric: “You’ll be sorry that you messed with the US of A, ’cause we’ll put a boot in your ass — it’s the American Way.”

Worley’s Have You Forgotten in 2003 justified the Iraq invasion as a response to the September 11 attacks. The military liked it so much he was presented with a flag that had flown over the Pentagon.

Now Keith says he is a lifelong Democrat and has claimed he never supported the war, while Worley has had a hit with I Just Came Back from a War, about a soldier returning from Iraq with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Tim McGraw — the biggest contemporary country star — has a hit single with If You’re Reading This, about a dead soldier’s last letter home, and the Dixie Chicks, boycotted in 2003 after lead singer Natalie Maines told an audience in London: “We’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas,” won five Grammy Awards this year.

Wow. How far down do you have to go to make your supporters deny they were ever behind you? (And no, I don’t think this is quite a Jesus/Peter situation, guys.)

You’ll notice that there’s no public apology to any of the dirty fucking hippies who were against the war from the start.

Hands off the coffee

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Today I ran across this article, which notes the attempt by Nestle in Australia to copyright two images of coffee in a mug:

At stake are two images of coffee; one is a cup of black coffee in a white cup viewed from above.

The other is an image of a red coffee mug, viewed from the front.

If Nestle is successful coffee roasters, sellers and even cafes risk breaching copyright if they use images similar to Nestle’s.

And you just wanna say, Are you kidding? Of course they are not: companies are not screwing around with this stuff, because every tiny victory they win pushes the envelope for exactly how far they can go in owning every image, word, thought. Copyrighting a particular instance of coffee in a mug? Hey, have at it. (Although, that would be a trademark, wouldn’t it? Damn, I can never remember this stuff.) But to own the actual concept of coffee in a white or red mug?

Ye Gods. The sheer gall.