The Oyster’s Garter

All the other drooling Joss Whedon disciples have probably already heard about Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog, but just in case, I needed to post about it. Because when Joss Whedon gets bored during the writers strike, writes a superhero musical, recruits Neil Patrick Harris to play a noble supervillain and Nathan Fillion to play Capt. Tightpants a villanous superhero, and they SING…well, it might simply be the BEST THING EVER.

WordPress won’t let me embed, but
Teaser from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on Vimeo.

In Joss’ peculiar words:

Once upon a time, all the writers in the forest got very mad with the Forest Kings and declared a work-stoppage. The forest creatures were all sad; the mushrooms did not dance, the elderberries gave no juice for the festival wines, and the Teamsters were kinda pissed. (They were very polite about it, though.) During this work-stoppage, many writers tried to form partnerships for outside funding to create new work that circumvented the Forest King system.

Frustrated with the lack of movement on that front, I finally decided to do something very ambitious, very exciting, very mid-life-crisisy. Aided only by everyone I had worked with, was related to or had ever met, I single-handedly created this unique little epic. A supervillain musical, of which, as we all know, there are far too few.

And it will be streamed free! Part 1 will be available Tuesday, July 15, with the following segments (each roughly 14 minutes) available July 17 and 19. Don’t miss them, because they’ll only be up until July 20th. But fear not - there are plans for a DVD with a musical commentary track to go with the musical musical.

Apparently “Finding Nemo” has led to such a demand for clownfish as pets that wild Australian clownfish are now endangered. Wasn’t Nemo lost in the first place because he was captured to be a pet to an evil kid? I believe this can only be described as a conservation EPIC FAIL.

David Meyerson from VBS.TV emailed me this video series on trash in the North Pacific Gyre. VBS sent a reporter, a producer, and a cameraman out on the ORV Alguita with Charles Moore of the Algalita Foundation (previously 1, 2, 3). The resulting film series is called “Garbage Island,” and is part of a larger VBS series on toxic pollution.

I have only watched the first episode of their 12-part series, but I strongly suspect they get to the gyre and find a soupy mass of plastic. Be warned if you’re at work - the density of F-bombs from the narrator rivals the density of plastic in the gyre. (Also be warned that this series may aggravate the latent hipster-loathing a hypothetical person might have developed while living in Brooklyn. But I digress.)

If you want to learn even more about the Algalita Foundation’s exploration of the trash problem, Dr. Marcus Eriksen will be talking at Scripps Institution of Oceanography next Wednesday, April 16th, at 12:15 PM. (set up by yours truly - *pats self on back*) His talk is open to the public, so any interested locals should come on by. Email me if you’d like more details or directions.

This is an art film about…about…well, zits. And the people who pop them. Watching it, in fact, is just like popping a zit - repellent yet strangely enjoyable.

Via Boing Boing

I’ve been looking forward to 21 for a while - it’s a movie about MIT students gaming blackjack tables at Vegas. The true story is chronicled in the book Bringing Down the House.  Now, I expected the actors to be way hotter than 99.999% of MIT students, because beating people with the hot stick is what Hollywood does. But I didn’t really expect them to sink so low as to cast a white dude as the East Asian team leader. As ultrabrown says,

Are you kidding me? A movie about math, MIT and gambling, and the lead was made white? Have you ever seen the pai gow tables in Vegas? And this after the success of Harold and Kumar. One step forward, two steps back.

Via Racialicious

This time-lapse video of a Venus fly trap is WAY better than watching the grass grow. It probably has something to do with the teeth.

Via Boing Boing

The Tolkien Trust and HarperCollins are suing New Line for money they feel their owed on the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. As part of the suit, the estate wants the rights to The Hobbit back. I’d like to give the Tolkien family a hard time about this, but New Line tried to screw Peter Jackson and previous rights holder out Saul Zaentz of cash too. They may just be jerks. But dammit, Jackson had agreed to produce The Hobbit film. It was scheduled to start filming as a two-part series in 2009, due out in 2010. Let’s get this show back on the road!

First, there was Eric’s profile of the SIO biological specimen collector, Eddie Kisfaludy.

Then, there was the Discovery Channel being a big copy cat. They do have a nice view of a gorgeous local nudibranch, the Spanish shawl (Flabellina iodinea). My favorite part of this video is the brief view of the Discovery Channel guy freaking out that he’s alone in a boat in the not-so-middle of the ocean. Does that make me a bad person?

NOOOO!!! NOT THE MAKOS! glurggle blarg gahhhh… *ahem* I mean, I’ve been tagged with a HalloMeme to choose my favorite ocean-themed scary movie. Since I led a deprived cable-TV-less childhood, I missed out on all the fantastic 50s and 60s B-movies, but fortunately there’s been no lack of extreme silliness in recent years.

One of the finest of all marine movies is Deep Blue Sea (1999), in which super-intelligent mako sharks are GENETICALLY ENGINEERED O NOES by a hawt wetsuit-clad model-scientist working from a highly advanced underwater research station. Of course, when the sharks (whose super-intelligence also somehow translates to super-size and who don’t look like makos at all) inevitably escape, they eat LL Cool J’s parrot, chasing it down with Samuel L. Jackson and a bunch of interchangable beautiful people.

Here’s a clip of Samuel L. Jackson, who has failed to remove the mothereffing sharks from the mothereffing underwater research station.

I tag jebyrnes at I’m a chordata, urochordata for more HalloMeme goodness!

True Star Trek nerds know all about the fact that J.J. Abrams (Lost, Alias) is hard at work producing a new Star Trek film. But since I wasn’t nerd enough to know it, I thought I’d spread the news. The L.A. Times says the film will be Spock centric, and it will take place chronologically before the original series began. Also, Leonard Nimoy will somehow appear in the film as “old Spock.” Abrams is trying to find a way to work William Shatner in too, but given that his character is dead and already has been brought back to life in the story’s chronology, it may be tricky. The Times also has a great slide show with pictures of the original character and the actor expected to play him or her in the new film. Chris Prine is in talks to play Capt. Kirk, but the actor who plays Sylar on Heroes, Zachary Quinto, will likely be playing Spock and therefore will be the star of the film.

The casting makes sense. Sylar has a flat, emotionless affect with occasional bursts of temper. Both Sylar and Spock have super powers, and both look down on humanity. Actually, I think Quinto is already playing Spock, but an eeeevil Spock. Switching to good Spock should be easy, right?

Correction: An earlier version of this post suggested that Shatner is dead, rather than his character. Really, really, not true. Apologies to Martini-Corona, and others who nearly lost their lives from my error.