The Invention of Lying – Ricky Gervais’ latest movie is a high concept comedy where he lives in a world where everyone tells the truth and discovers that you can lie. Not sure if I will get to it in the theater, but I was one of the people that actually enjoyed Ghost Town, so I will see it at some point.
Assassin’s Creed 2 – I’m actually really excited for AC2, even if I thought Assassin’s Creed was a little repetitive. I love the setting of Renaissance Florence and am hopeful that Ubisoft will bring more variety into the game.
Precious – Besides getting a lot of nice hype at various festivals, Oprah loves this movie. So get ready to hear a lot about Precious is the coming months.
1 Earth is referred to as the BLUE PLANET. WHY? Because from space, the oceans combined with our atmosphere make our planet look blue.
2 Earth is the only planet on which water can exist in liquid form on the surface.
3 Earth travels through space at 66,700 miles per hour.
4 Earth’s oceans are an average of 2 Miles deep
5 El Azizia in Libya recorded a temperature of 136 degrees Fahrenheit (57.8 Celsius) on Sept. 13, 1922 – the hottest ever measured.
6 Only 11 percent of the earth’s surface is used to grow food.
7 Only 3% water of the earth is fresh, rest 97% salted.
8 Pacific (155,557,000 sq km) is the largest ocean of the earth.
9 The coldest temperature ever measured on Earth was -129 Fahrenheit (-89 Celsius) at Vostok, Antarctica, on July 21, 1983.
10 Mount Everest 8850 meter (29035 ft) Nepal/China is the tallest mountain.
11 The dormant volcano Mauna Kea (on the Big Island of Hawaii) could be considered the tallest mountain in the world. If you measure it from its base in the Hawaiian Trough (3,300 fathoms deep) to its summit of 13,796 feet, it reaches a height of 33,476 feet.
12 The Earth is the densest major body in the solar system.
13 The gravity on Mars is 38 percent of that found on Earth at sea level.
14 The sunrays reach at the earth in 8 minutes & 3 seconds.
15 The total surface area of the Earth is 197 million square miles.
16 The world’s deadliest recorded earthquake occurred in 1557 in central China, more than 830,000 people were killed.
17 The World’s largest hot desert is the Sahara in North Africa, at over 9,000,000 km², it is almost as large as the United States.
18 There are roughly 4,000 known minerals, although only about 200 are of major importance.
19 About 400 billion gallons water is used worldwide each day.
20 About 70% of the world’s fresh water is stored as glacial ice.
21 Aluminum cans take 500 years to break down.
22 Angel Falls in Venezuela is the worlds highest waterfall, The water of Falls drops 3,212 feet (979 meters).
23 Antarctica is the highest, driest, and coldest continent on Earth.
24 Australia, (7,617.930 sq km) is widely considered part of a continental landmass, not officially an island. But without doubt it is the largest island on the planet, and when combined with Oceania, the smallest continent on Earth.
25 Plastics take 500 years to break down.
Redfin will run out of money. Unable to raise another round, they will enter the TC deadpool towards the end of 2008. The company’s assets will be listed on Ebay and the reserve price will not be met. Glenn Kelman (CEO) will go back to school, get that MBA from Harvard and become an owner/operator of a Quiznos sandwich franchise. Subway sandwich artists around the country will cry foul.
Since every major real estate company that signed up with Trulia has now inked deals with 993+ me-too real estate search sites (including my 14 y/o neighbors startup), Trulia’s initial successes have become null-and-void. Agents and brokers will continue to feed their listings to as many sites as possible, making it impossible for Trulia to gain a competitive advantage or any real traction. Trulia will continue to operate throughout 2008 but Bjorn and Sven will sell cheap (2nd quarter 2009) and start their search for the next big thing (they will utilize heat map technology to discover their next endeavour).
Zillow will continue to display declining values to a shrinking pool of real estate masochists. Agents will realize that paying $0.01 per ad impression ($10CPM) to put themselves in front of the wrong audience is a losing proposition. Zillow investors will push the company to ramp up the marketing spend and we will see a Zillow commercial during the Super Bowl. Zillow’s revenues will not support an IPO and the company will be sold to Yahoo! towards the end of 2009 or beginning of 2010 for a small profit.
Craigslist will introduce a small fee to post in the real estate section. Everyone will pay it.
Greg Swann will start a cult. The BloodhoundBlog Unchained Conference is the opening he has been crafting in his head since he was 4 years old. All conference attendees will be deloused, forced to remove their shoes/socks and don a robe of hemp for the initial weekend of re-education. Their brokers will never see or hear from them again.
This obviously is a day late but I was out all day yesterday so here it is now! As many people do cool things for Halloween, this WoW pumpkin carving contest is pretty frickin AWESOME. I was originally just going to link to some other cool game-related carvings but these blew the WoW ones were even better. A couple of my friends and I carved a pumpkin but being the non-artistic people we are, we printed out a stencil and carved around that instead. We were still pretty proud of ourselves 
Anyway, yesterday I saw This Is It which was GREAT! I can understand why some people may not like it though because it is just a bunch of MJ’s rehearsals for his last tour which unfortunately never happened so it’s not perfect or anything but it still looked so amazing. That would have been one amazing concert. And of course the songs are amazing but the dancing was fabulous too. It was really cool to see MJ really involved with how the songs and dances were supposed to be and how well he knew everything that was going on. And the green screen clips between songs that introduced them was AWESOME! Of course, particularly the Thriller one. Awesome. What was kind of sad though was the turnout. The theatre I went to was basically empty. Sure, it was Halloween, but it was a 4pm showing and wouldn’t seeing that just add to the awesomeness of your Halloween? I would have thought our generation still knew enough about the awesomeness of MJ to respect him. No matter what his personal life was, no one can deny the impact he’s had on music and dance and he is the King of Pop. Of course, as much as I was happy and excited to watch it, the beginning and the end reminded me of the sadness for why they even had to make this into a movie, so you will definitely feel a variety of emotions watching this. Now I need to go Youtube some more MJ songs, particularly those on the “This Is It” album.
And in random but also awesome news, Nintendo announced some upcoming games and DUDE IT SAYS GOLDEN SUN DS! OMFG YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It’s still TBA but hey! It’s at least ON THE LIST! YAAAAAAAAAAY!
lol can you tell I’m excited? Hopefully it won’t be “temp.” for long!
In other Kotaku news, the british band Kasabian has an interesting promo for it’s new song. And as the title says, it looks difficult but totally awesome. Football Hero in itself is just a cool concept, but for publicity for a song is a pretty genius idea.
Anyway, I’ll be busy out of town next weekend so there may not be a post, but I’ll see what I can do!
Random Quote: “If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
- Abraham Maslow
I saw this online over the weekend and thought is just kind of fun and mindless. Some of the couples looked so cute together but as you scroll down it gets rather creepy. See who creeps you out the most…
Keith Sutton is your newest Wake County school board member.
The school board moved so quickly through the interview process today that the vote wasn’t held off until tomorrow. Board members tapped Sutton, legislative affairs program manager for the N.C. Department of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, for the District 4 vacancy in Southeast Raleigh. (News & Observer)
Cary Grant was the perfect example of the dashing leading man. He was suave, debonair, sophisticated, and handsome, with a sexy mid-Atlantic accent. Only one name is before his on the American Film Institute’s list of Greatest Male Stars of all time, and that is Humphrey Bogart.
Born Archibald Alec Leach in Horfield, Bristol, England in 1904, Archie was an only child. He had an unhappy childhood, and when he was nine years old, his mother was committed to a mental institution. He was told that she had gone to a resort, and he did not discover the truth until he was in his twenties when he found her at the institution.
He left school at the age of 14 and forged his father’s signature on a letter so that he could join the Bob Pender Stage Troup. He traveled to the United States with the troupe, but when the rest of them returned to England, he stayed in the U. S. He worked on the stage under his birth name until 1931 when he went to Hollywood. He changed his name to Cary Lockwood for a while, but when he signed a contract with Paramount Pictures, they did not like the name Lockwood. It was then that Cary Grant was born.
Grant starred in some of Hollywood’s best and most memorable films – from screwball comedies such as “Bringing Up Baby,” “Arsenic and Old Lace,” and “His Girl Friday,” to Hitchcock suspense films like “Notorious,” “Suspicion,” and “North by Northwest.” He was equally great in comedies, dramas, suspense films, and light-hearted chick flicks. He had the versatility, as well as the talent, to do it all.
Alfred Hitchcock, who was known for not liking actors, directed Grant in several films. He said that Grant was, “the only actor I ever loved in my whole life.” Grant’s reputation with directors, producers, and fellow actors was that of being a gifted actor and a wonderful man.
He was married five times. His first wife was Virginia Cherrill (1934-1935), then Barbara Hutton (1942-1945), Betsy Drake (1949-1962), Dyan Cannon (1965-1968), and finally Barbara Harris (1981 until his death). His only child was with Dyan Cannon, a daughter named Jennifer.
Unusual for someone in the acting profession, Cary Grant was a Republican. After his retirement from acting, he was active in numerous Republican causes. He supported Nixon and his good friend, Ronald Reagan. He also introduced First Lady Betty Ford at the Republic National Convention in 1976.
Grant received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1981. He was also nominated for two Academy Awards in the 1940’s, but the award would not be his until 1970 when he received the coveted Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement.
He was quoted as saying, “Everybody wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant.” That sums it up. Cary Grant was what all men secretly wish to be – sexy, handsome, suave, and sophisticated, the perfect leading man.
The Body Snatcher is based on Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson’s short story of the same name, which was first published in December 1884. Stevenson’s story was inspired by a crime well-known to Scots to this day; the Burke and Hare murders. Burke and Hare were two Irish immigrants who sold corpses to Dr. Robert Knox for use in his dissection experiments in 1827 and 1828, and were symptomatic of a time when scientific curiosity was outpacing social and religious squeamishness. Prior to the Anatomy Act 1832, the only bodies that doctors could legally dissect were those of executed criminals. There were simply not enough executed criminals to fill the needs of medical schools, however, especially with the decline in executions in the early 19th century, so doctors and anatomy students frequently turned to sellers of corpses on the black market. Most of these sellers simply dug up freshly buried bodies, but Burke and Hare went an extra step, saving time by smothering people to death and selling their bodies. In the film, set in Edinburgh in 1831, the “Dr. K.” of the story becomes Dr. Wolfe MacFarlane (played by Henry Daniell), a respected surgeon who relies on the ghoulish cabman John Gray (played by Boris Karloff) to provide him with the corpses he needs to experiment on before he can cure crippling ailments. In a typical move for a film of this time, there is also a blandly handsome young doctor (played by Russell Wade), who adds little to the proceedings, merely existing to show the idealistic, humane, and optimistic face of medicine. The meat of the film is the twisted and symbiotic relationship between Gray and Dr. MacFarlane, whom Gray constantly calls “Toddy,” an old nickname that the doctor hates.
The Body Snatcher was produced by Val Lewton, who is one of the few producers to have survived the advent of the Auteur theory and emerge better remembered than many of the men who directed his films. A novelist, screenwriter, and producer, Lewton was a talented purveyor of horror and dread. He methods were suggestion and atmosphere, and he avoided cheap shocks and grotesque makeup. His monsters didn’t look like monsters, and the terror his films conveyed was largely psychological. And when horrific events did occur in his films, they did so mostly off screen. They delivered chills through the power of suggestion, and occasionally a stream of blood flowing under a door.
Prior to making The Body Snatcher, which was directed by Robert Wise, Lewton had a string of low-budget horror hits for RKO, all of which are currently available on DVD and are considered minor classics; Cat People (1942, directed by Jacques Tourneur), I Walked With a Zombie (1943, dir. Jacques Tourneur), The Leopard Man (1943, dir. Jacques Tourneur), The Seventh Victim (1943, dir. Mark Robson), The Ghost Ship (1943, dir. Mark Robson), and The Curse of the Cat People (1944, dir. Gunther von Fritsch and Robert Wise), which was originally supposed to be called Amy and Her Friend, and has only a tangential connection to the original Cat People. He had also produced two non-horror films, Mademoiselle Fifi (1944, dir. Robert Wise) and Youth Runs Wild (1944, dir. Mark Robson).
Lewton was under a few strict edicts from RKO when making his famous horror films; each had to come in at under 80 minutes long, each had to cost no more than $150,000, and the title of each would be provided by Lewton’s supervisors, which could explain why an intelligent, understated, and artful film like I Walked With a Zombie has the lurid title that it does. After the success of Cat People, however, which was made for $134,000 and grossed nearly $4 million, the studio interfered little with Lewton’s scripts and productions, generally allowing him to make exactly the kind of picture he wanted, as long as he brought it in under budget. I’ve felt for a long time that Lewton, who was a mostly unsuccessful novelist and journalist before he got into the movie business, felt as if he was better than the cheapjack films he produced. He may have been a master of the power of suggestion, but sometimes his films just feel too removed from the world of horror that they depict. I’m not saying that Lewton’s pictures would be better if they were awash in blood and guts, but sometimes they feel clinical and distant.
Along with I Walked With a Zombie, The Body Snatcher is one of my favorite Lewton pictures, due in no small part to Karloff’s brilliant performance. While the film itself can be stagy, Karloff’s performance is not. Each line he speaks drips with malevolence, while still showing the twisted humanity hidden somewhere deep inside. Gray is a man past redemption. One of the first things he does in the film is use a shovel to kill a little dog who is guarding its young master’s grave. That Karloff can create a somewhat sympathetic character from what he’s given is nothing short of phenomenal. I can think of few actors who are able to do what Karloff does with monstrous characters. (Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs is the only person who immediately springs to mind.) Part of the success of Karloff’s performance lies in its nuances. He interacts with nearly every character in the film–Dr. MacFarlane, his young assistant, a little crippled girl (played by Sharyn Moffett), a pathetic servant named Joseph (played by Bela Lugosi)–and is a subtly different person in each scene.
Yaah! It’s true, there is a raw restaurant in West Philly!!!
http://livingsunfoods.blogspot.com/2009/06/atiya-olas-spirit-first-foods.html
xoxo
Mrs. Pleasant
Beanie Weinies
1 pound package Weiners, slice 1/4″ thick
4 (1 lb.) cans Pork n Beans
6 slices Bacon, cut-up
1 large Onion, diced
1 large Bell Pepper, seeded and diced
1/4 cup Molasses
1/4 cup packed Brown Sugar
1 tsp. Dry Mustard
Salt and Pepper, to taste
Saute bacon to crisp, add weiners, onion and green pepper and saute until vegetables
are soft. Add all other ingredients. First bring to a boil, reduce heat to simmer,
cover and simmer 1 hour. Taste, add more molasses, brown sugar, dry mustard or salt
and pepper if you need to now.
Continue cooking another half hour. These beans are really good the next day so
you can prepare the day before.
