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Revisiting Tumblr
It’s been quite some time since I have bothered signing on here or checking my stuff. I haven’t really had the time recently to lose myself on here as it requires me to do. I’ve fallen embarrassingly behind in my school work and have been devoting the majority of my time to catching up. Tonight sees a rare and short-lived hiatus from my schoolwork, though. I felt like I needed one.
To start, I’d like to note that the most popular post I have made is still, again, embarrassingly, one that is total bullshit. I made a post not too many posts ago about it being bullshit, too. I’m aware of my mistake when I made the post, but it does not seem like the majority of Tumblr is. I also lack the desire to find and remove that post, so I will say it once more for any record: That purple eye is a farce. Okay, done.
Next up is how hard it just hit me that no one is going to read this, and how I should probably be doing something else, as no one wants to see a post that isn’t a graphic of some kind. No wonder I felt other matters weighed in more than checking and updating Tumblr.
Done. For now, at least. Also for the foreseeable future. The account will remain open on the likely chance that I will venture here again when I have less on me. I guess it was just checking in and seeing how wildly popular my bullshit post was that prompted me to say something.
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I forget why I even come here.
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Help Wanted for Basterdly Riffing
In an earlier Tumblr post I made, I mentioned and focused on two of my favorite comedy projects ever, MST3K and Rifftrax. If you are unfamiliar with these shows and their concepts, the aforementioned post I made discussing it can be found here.
When i first started this post, I made about six paragraphs explaining MST3K and Rifftrax and how it all works, but then I remembered “Oh shit, I’ve already written this!” That is why I have linked to that previous post.
With all of that said, Rifftrax.com hosts, through their site, a method for fans of riffing to record their own comedy commentaries. It’s called iRiffs, and it is done pretty much exactly the same as Rifftrax. The following is an excerpt from the iRiffs page which briefly explains the system I am trying to become involved with:
What is iRiffs?
Think you have the chops to make a RiffTrax?
Just create and upload your humorous commentaries on anything, set your price, and we’ll do the rest by hosting and distributing your content. You’ll even get your very own product page to promote your iRiff. Best of all, you share in the sales of your iRiff! We will feature the best tracks on the RiffTrax home page and the funniest stuff will rise to the top based on our user comments and star rating system.
We’ll be having contests with cash prizes, and the best iRiffs’ artists will get invited to work with Mike Nelson and the RiffTrax guys, and get paid to make a RiffTrax Presents!
Sounds pretty easy, I suppose.
So, if you cannot tell where this is going already, I will proceed to fill you in on it. In a short brainstorming session, my girlfriend and I came up with the idea to do an iRiff of our own. We intend to bring at least two, at most four other people into the project with us, and while not everyone has to pitch in on the riffing (especially if we wind up with a group of six), the more joke writers, the better. The plan is to write a script of riffs (with time codes and cues and so forth to avoid confusion), rehearse the riffing and eventually record it for our very own ‘make a movie funny’ commentary.
Now, before I go on to state what film we have in mind to riff, I’d like to make it perfectly clear that while MST3K would use movies in the Public Domain, movies with super cheap prices to buy the rights, and movies that were ‘chopped and screwed’ or just television episodes smushed together, Rifftrax takes a very different approach.
In order to avoid copyright infringement on larger-budget, major studio movies and such, their method is to record their joking commentaries as an independent MP3 track that one can just sync up to the movie.
With that said, it is important to note that the guys really, really like to riff movies that were praised, popularly-beloved, high-grossing and so on. Examples of such films would be things like the Twilight films (all up to date), most if not all the Harry Potter films, Memento, all of the Star Wars films, many Marvel comic movies, The Dark Knight, the Transformers movies, so on and so forth. The reason I bring this up is because it isn’t uncommon for them to make fun of a movie that a lot of people like. There are upsides to this—typically a fan of the original film(s) who also enjoy riffing will usually be happy to laugh at the films of their liking. Not only this, but needing to have a copy of the DVD in order to hear the jokes (and have them make sense) boosts DVD sales and rentals for said movie. I am sure that the people at Netflix and my local library find my seemingly erratic tastes in movies quite entertaining, as I’ve contributed to sales and rentals of movies I would otherwise never dream of checking out, such as the Twilight films. …My point is, I know the movie I have chosen to try to riff is popular, and I know that a lot of people love the film and its director (more on that in a second), but the bottom line to it is that I doubt people who genuinely liked the film would be offended or turned off by my movie selection—in fact I expect those people to be likely candidates to give it attention.
The film of my choice to riff: Quentin Tarantino’s 2009 love-it-or-hate-it feat, Inglourious Basterds.
NOW. Before you put a gun in my mouth an tell me to suck it til it comes, I want to say that up until Death Proof, I was quite the fan of Tarantino. I really do enjoy his earlier films, especially Pulp Fiction. Also, before I continue to the next thought, I just want to make this clear: Just because I, personally, disliked the movie, I don’t intend for my riff idea to actually insult fans of the movie—I know there are a lot of them. My personal disliking of the film only fuels the humor in my riff idea. Outside of that, there’s not a thing personal about choosing this film—nothing toward the viewer, at least. Just enjoy the comedy, ya’ know?
Thing is, though, I went to see Basterds with a group of my close friends, some of which I am hoping will be involved with me in the creation of this iRiff. When the movie was being hyped, before its release, I believe I was the only one of my friends who had faith in the film. It didn’t take too long before my friends and I were riffing the film, improv on the spot in a theater full of people, and we even managed to get a laugh or two from the audience.
My logic is that, if we did that well just improvising, three years ago when we were all teenagers, I figure that now—three years later and several months more mature—if we were to sit down and write out our jokes in a script form, rehearse them and then record them, we should be able to form quite the entertaining comedy piece.
I already have three people who are interested in the project, but only one who would certainly be involved. What I am looking for is anyone who would be interested in contributing to the writing process and/or the technical aspects such as recording, timing and some kind of system to let viewers know they are properly in sync with the movie (Rifftrax fans would recognize this idea as Disembodio).
So, that’s about the gist of it. The only other thing I want to add is that I know riffing on movies that were intended to be somewhat funny can be a bit of a drag sometimes, but it doesn’t change the fact that personally, I feel the movie has it coming. It also doesn’t change the fact that I feel it would provide viewers with entertainment.
And that’s that, really. Please contact me if you are interested in helping. I would, obviously, prefer collaborators from my local area due to the writing together and rehearsing, however, if you do not live anywhere near me and are familiar with the film, there’s not a thing stopping you from contributing a joke or two, nor would there be anything stopping you from helping with some technical aspects.
So please, hit me up if you’re into the idea!
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Oh, by the way.
I hadn’t mentioned this because fuck it, but when I saw how many people have reblogged the photo of the purple eye, I figured I’d speak up.
Got a heads-up a while ago that it’s a ‘shop and therefore, a forgery. Or, well. Fake, at least.
I have no actual evidence either way, and it’d be uncharacteristic of me to not be a skeptic and side with it being a manipulated photo.
honestly, I’m only doing this because it was way easier than finding my post and deleting it
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Ilene: “Mr. Little, how does a man rob drug dealers for eight or nine years and live to tell about it?”
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Omar: “Day at a time, I suppose.The Wire. Omar testifying at Bird’s trial.
2.6: “All Prologue.”
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Eastbound & Down
I started watching Eastbound & Down the other day, albeit reluctantly. You see, despite the fact that HBO is one of the two channels I trust the most when it comes to shows, I typically only watch dramas on it or comedies more along the lines of Bored to Death.
See, when it comes to Danny McBride, all I had really seen him in was a handful of popular comedy movies where he plays the roles that he is commonly typecast as (and was even typecast as in E&D). He’s always being cast as the backwards, southern, dumb-in-some-way guy.
So when i heard he had his own show, and I heard what it was about, I didn’t jump to watch it right away. However, due to being so in love with The Wire, another HBO show (that is now off of the air), I was looking for new episodes of it up onDemand. I didn’t find episodes of The Wire I hadn’t seen, but I did find all of seasons 1 and 2 of Eastbound & Down—they had put them up to promote season 3, which starts soon. Well, I didn’t watch all of E&D season 1 before they took it off, but I AM watching as much of season 2 as I can before 3 starts.
Why? Because, sure, it’s a dumb show. McBride’s character is backwards as ever, and unashamed of it.
And I fucking love it. Laughing my ass off, here. It’s sort of like if Trailer Park Boys were from the US Trailer Parks instead of Canada’s or something.
Brilliantly stupid, which is about as funny as it gets.
So yeah, it’ sort of a guilty pleasure of mine, now, even though I do not consider myself guilty at all for liking it.
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I don’t talk to Jesus very much as he and I aren’t close at all, but I get the feeling that this is true, and that he does share that sentiment.
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A Blessing and a Curse
TRILLIAN.
I had been searching for a client that handled several different IM services and social media, and one with a spell-checker. I found it in Trillian. Hallelujah!
Except I just spent 3.5 hours customizing and tweaking everything to the way I like it, so now I’m gonna be fucked when it comes time to wake up and go to school.
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Help Finding a Good IM Client
About a week and a half ago, I received my new computer in the post. Until then, I had been using a Macbook for several years, and I had grown rather accustomed to it. I was in love with iChat and its glorious spell-check. I was really digging OSX-whatever-big-cat I had.
Thing is, all technology ages and eventually you find yourself in need of a new machine. I found myself in that situation, as my Macbook had quite some mileage on it. Sure, it still ran, but it was beaten up, glitchy, and clearly on, if not its last leg, its final two. And sure, I will still use it for a few things—transferring files and such, maybe Garageband, something like that, but overall, it was high time for anew machine.
So, I bought this one. Yeah, I know it’s not the best computer, and I know it’s not going to be the kind of machine I play tons of games on or whatever, but that’s fine because I don’t use my computer for that. For what I need, this is a good machine, despite me still needing to get used to it some.
Here’s my issue, though: I miss the way iChat used to work. Most of all, I miss the spell-check that it had. I’ve looked all over the Internet for all sorts of different clients and add-ons that might give me spellcheck. I tried Pidgin, but the spell-check dictionaries didn’t install…
So, my question is (and any help would be appreciated):
Is there a free, reliable Instant Messaging client that 1) connects to at least AIM (but it’d be nice to also have it connect to things like MSN and Skype), 2) has either a built-in spell-check dictionary or has one that can be added on to gain spell-check capability, and, of course, 3) is compatible with Windows 7?
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One thing I can never help but worry about, be it with myself or loved ones, is that they’re not at all any better upon being discharged from the hospital.
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Er’rybody move to the back of the bus.
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Concussions!
Last night I fucked up. I got over-heated or something in the bathroom, and I took a fall. I put my left hand down to catch myself. That did my the favor of fracturing my thumb. Well, after my thumb was done for, I was headed for the floor. I put my head down thinking ‘foreheads are strong, face is weak” It didn’t matter either way, as the top of my fucking head hit the floor. Well, after about ten minutes, I got back up, finally, and tried to finish peeing. Then I fell backwards and wanged the back of my head on the cabinets behind me.
It’s not my first concussion, Just the first hospitalized one.
Apparently, I wasn’t supposed to go right back to sleep after that, but I did.
Woke up puking all I could puke. Woke up again being coached onto a stretcher in an ambulance. Woke up again in the cold ans ball hospital entrance. Again on an elevator, then again in the ER halls. Then I was wheeled into a room and plugged into various shit machines. Probes were stuck on me and so forth. The following seemed like a week or so of strange, surreal horror, but it was really just about three hours or so of them giving me meds, running MRIs and so forth.
‘Concussion, send him home.’
No shit, man. I could have called and told you that and you could have sent me the meds in the buttrapin’ mailbox.
Anyway, the only upside to any of it was 15 7.5 Hydrocodones. No comment on much else about that. It’s just nice because pain.
Zeus missed me while I was hospitalized. Okay, he’s a cat, so probably not…
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