Shades of Airplane!: Pop singer Dannii Minogue (younger sister of Kylie) was attempting to signal people watching her waterfront performance that a nearby boater had capsized. Unfortunately, they mistook this for a new dance move and began miming her motions.

Can I just say that nothing will make your self-esteem crash like lousy pictures taken by your mother? I got some pictures back from the wedding I went to a few weeks back, and man... She's managed to get me from my worst angle in the worst light possible at just the moment when I wasn't really expecting to be photographed. Ugh. I look like some sort of enormous-noggined mutant.

My date still manages to look hot though. It must be a family thing.

I posted this on Re:zine (a news analysis blog I sometimes contribute to) tonight, but since they don't pay me and I'm quite proud of the piece (well, it took a lot of research, anyway), I'm posting here, too.

THE BLAME GAME:
Summer hasn't been kind to Hollywood. The reality TV cash cow is showing signs of burnout, the music biz continues to sink, and for their part summer movie receipts aren't yielding any better news:

Through the middle of last week, revenue was down 3.23 percent from 2002, and attendance was down 7 percent. The summer movie season, which traditionally runs from May 2 through Labor Day weekend, is down about 1 percent in revenue, but 5 percent in attendance.

Naturally, the movie industry is putting the blame anywhere but on itself. Never mind that the average ticket price jumped 43 cents from last year, the biggest jump in twenty years (1980 being the furthest back I could find data), it must be those pesky pirates! But have no fear: The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has launched a series of public service advertisements (PSAs) detailing the effect that piracy can, theoretically, have on the regular working folk who make their money from the movie biz. (Naturally, no mention is made of losses that may be incurred by stars making millions for each film.)

I myself have never downloaded a film off the Internet, but I have been shown such discs by friends (who, I swear, found them lying in the street). For starters, the quality can be dodgy, but you can at least get some idea of what's going on. (Unless the movie is "The Matrix Reloaded," which doesn't make sense even if you see it in the theater.) Now, if I were going to download a movie, it wouldn't be a movie I was actually planning on seeing in the theater, but rather something that I probably wasn't going to see anyway, to check if it was worth the bother. With movies in my area costing around ten bucks a ticket, I just can't see the point in wasting time and money on a film that I'm going to wish I hadn't seen.

But that's just me.

Anyway, from the looks of it, this summer's box office atrophy really can't be ascribed to piracy, but simply that the current crop of films sucks eggs. Perhaps most tellingly, 24 films released so far this year have been sequels, 15 of them released during the summer. And you all know what they say about sequels: They're never as good as the original. Certain exceptions apply, of course, but the rule seems to have held in 2003. Just ask the critics: According to Rotten Tomatoes, a site that gives each movie a breakdown of the number of good reviews versus bad, the only sequels that have gotten passing grades are "X2: X-Men United" (the highest-rated sequel, with 86% "fresh," i.e., positive, reviews), "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" (75% fresh) and "The Matrix Reloaded" (73% fresh). That's three for fifteen, folks. (Unsurprisingly, those three also happen to be the only sequels in the top ten grossers this year.)

In fact, only 37 of 70 films out this season got "fresh" scores, which sounds like a decent average, except that the vast majority (27) of those films are low-budget "indie" releases, shown on mere fractions of the wide release standard of about 3,000 screens on opening weekend. (It's worth noting that the highest-rated film of the summer (99% fresh!) is the delightful "Finding Nemo," a non-sequel made by the always wonderful Pixar. Nemo's the only film to crack the $300 million mark, which is by no means a small chunk of change, but still far short of last summer's top grosser, "Spider-Man," which made $400 million and some change. However, the summer's not over yet...)

It seems a week can't go by without some new sequel opening at less than was expected. "Charlie's Angels 2" failed to come close to the predecessor's numbers, in spite of the promise of even more of Cameron Diaz's booty this time around. "Terminator 3" opened with $8 million less than "T2," in spite of opening on a holiday weekend, and an average ticket price more than two dollars higher than in 1991. (And any Democrats out there might want to reconsider seeing this movie if they don't want Arnold to run for governor of California. If T3's a big hit and demands another sequel, he would likely have to stay out of that state's recall race.) With an estimated production budget of around $200 million and an advertising budget of about $50 million more, a gross of $140 million could be disastrous.

But if the scuttlebutt around Hollywood is any indication, the biggest disappointment would seem to be "Lara Croft, Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life." (And, seriously, what were they expecting when they make an action film with "cradle" in the title? What's next, "Indiana Jones and the Wet Nurse of Doom"?) With a total (marketing and production) budget of about $120 million, the film has so far only managed to snag about 1/6th of that. And who's to blame? Paramount for investing tens of millions in effects and stunts, but apparently jack squat for the script? Jan de Bont for directing the turkey? Angelina Jolie's costumers, for decreasing the size of the character's bust from the previous film's DD to her natural C? None of the above, actually, according to Paramount anyway. They say it's the guys who made the latest "Lara Croft" video game.

Disappointed movie bosses are pointing the finger of blame at video game "Tomb Raider: Cradle Of Life" after the Angelina Jolie-starring sequel of the same name bombed at the box office. Executives at Paramount were left stunned when the much-hyped action movie took only $21.8 million on its first weekend at the American box office, less than half of what the original installment bagged in the same time frame. And they cite the critical mauling given to the latest computer game as the reason cinemagoers are deserting the archeological franchise. Paramount's Wayne Lewellen says, "The only thing we can attribute to is that gamers were not happy with the latest version of the video game."

(I can't link to the story, because the IMDB replaces their news content each day, and it's already gone, but trust me, this is what they wrote.) Sure, it's the video game that kept people away, Wayne. It had nothing to do with the movie getting reviews like, "At least now we have a clue about what's in Pandora's Box: It's movies like this." And, "How could something so expensive, so loud and so frenetic simultaneously be so mindnumbingly boring?"

Yep, must've been the video game, Wayne...

Going for my run tonight as usual, just like the other several hundred times I've done it, but this time, something -- I think it was the copious acorns on the sidewalk -- caused me to spill. Hard. Worst fall I've ever taken on a run, which isn't saying much. Usually I just scratch myself a little, but I'm able to get back up and keep going. Not this time.

My ankle is now nicely sprained, and I have a nice chunk of skin missing from my right hand. Which is just perfect. I mean, totally emblematic of my life of late.

I've resisted writing about my personal life lately because, well, who cares? Even I find it tedious, and I can't imagine anyone seeking out my little corner of blogdom for insights into my little life. And to top it off, things have just been depressing lately anyway. It got busy for a bit, but then got even more depressing, and who needs to read about that? I certainly don't want to relive it anymore than I have to.

But then, maybe I should. It could be, you know, therapeutic and shit. Yeah, sure.

The summation is: Went to a wedding, had a great time, but mostly it just served to remind me of how my life seems utterly behind those of my peers. Which is being rather generous, I suppose. I never seem to hear about the people who, say, get divorced three times and have one kid to show for each one. Okay, not very often anyway. But when your lifelong best friend gets married and you haven't had a decent date in a while, well, you start to get a bit of a complex.

And then there was the job. I don't even want to talk about it.

Yes, I do: My boss was a bitch. Not that she let on to it right away. No, of course not. She preferred the passive-aggressive, find-out-from-a-third-party method. I knew when I met her that she was one of Them. You know, the people with no discernible sense of humor. She struck me as an ex-sorority vice president, not quite popular enough with the Mandys to warrant presidency, but pushy enough to wind up with the Miss Congeniality spot. And the type who bugs everyone to submit their memory sheet so they can put it in the yearbook, oh my God!

Or maybe I'm just bitter. I don't know. What I do know is, maybe this whole corporate thing isn't for me. Bit what's the alternative? Somebody tell me. Quick.

The hits just keep on coming. Had a miserable fight with my brother when I really didn't have the energy to work through it, so I essentially hung up on him. Felt really good about my maturity that day. He and I have never seen eye-to-eye, really, but he always had the age thing on his side. Much like all my brothers and sisters do (I'm the youngest), but none of them really choose to wield it as often as he does.

Thing was, I was calling him to offer my sympathies.

Oddly enough, though, the writing thing has a renewed sense of purpose. I suppose it was the end of the aforementioned job that really kicked me into gear on that. So I suppose some good came of it all.

I got two interesting e-mails the other day. The first came after I was reminded of a girl who moved away when I was in sixth grade (or was it seventh?) after doing some idle research into a story where the fellow had the same last name as she did. (And, in the interest of total disclosure, I had a terrible crush on her before she left. By which I mean I didn't do the crush thing very well. But it was pretty intense, being my first one and all.) So I googled her, but her name turned out to be far too common. The depths of my memory pulled out the name of her father, though I'm really not sure why I recall that piece of information. I can barely remember my own middle name most days. He was much easier to find, and so I sent out a tentative e-mail to see if he was indeed the same man. And, apparently, he is.

More as that story develops.

As for the second e-mail, it arose after seeing a familiar name in bylines for Entertainment Weekly. The name, in this instance, wasn't common at all, so I was fairly certain that the fellow in question was, in fact, the same guy that I used to work with at the paper. So I blindly poked around the mag's site for an e-mail address that I could send an inquiry to besides the general e-mail box. And not two days later, the guy writes back, and it is indeed him.

I'm still not sure how to reply to that one. I'm sure something'll come to me.

So that's a vague summary of where things are of late. I have this vague feeling that something, something is right around the corner. I just haven't got a clue as to what it might be, or when I could expect it. And hanging on for dear life has become somewhat difficult of late. It's gone beyond boredom with the same old, same old. It's starting to wear on my psyche to the point where I'm getting worried.

I wish that, whatever that something is, it would hurry up and get here already...

The award for the least descriptive, most confusing headline goes to...

For the record: I was NOWHERE NEAR Bob Hope when he died.

I wanted to see what would happen if I left out the state while looking for directions within the city. Well, now I know.

No way in hell I'm driving to Alabama for coffee.

Friday night, I watched a movie called The Ninja Dragon, which was a ridiculous movie about a girl who was the daughter of a Yakuza type, but descended from a long line of ninja (I guess), who happened to be protected by three mystical ninja, one of whom has a secret alter ego as her bumbling, hilariously mulleted driver.

The film was atrocious and stupid, and actually degenerated into something of a Troma film at the end, but the dubbing was brilliant. Every time one of the ninja did something, it was announced with "ninja" thrown at the beginning. "Ninja stop! Ninja go!" The rest of the dialogue was brilliantly self-aware, almost like it had been rewritten by Woody Allen in his Tiger Lily mode.

But the rest of the movie? Horrible, horrible crap.

"[Moore] spent the past 10 years dedicating himself to becoming a magician. 'Magic and art are more or less analogous,' he tells me. 'Both are the creation of something out of nothing.' And then there's the revelation that he now worships a second-century Roman snake god called Glycon."

I love the Internet.

Fun science fact: Female ferrets don't ovulate until they have sex, and they need really rough sex to stimulate ovulation. If they don't get it hard enough they can stay on heat indefinitely, the oestrogen levels keep building up and they usually die from oestrogen toxicity.

Share it with your friends!

Someone just called me collect, and during the part where you're supposed to say your name, made a "tpppth" sound, and then hung up.

Very, very odd.

Kids today...

I love this picture.

Note to women on dating sites: "HERPIESGAL" is a really poor choice for a username.

I just got some spam e-mail with the subject line "big cacks in small puss-e mm."

I suppose it was bound to happen: Some Boston spammer took Hooked on Phonics, and now here we are.

There was an old woman who swallowed a... cockroach and a fork?

She swallowed the fork to get the roach... I don't know why she swallowed that roach. Perhaps she'll, um... approach? Buy a broach? Get hired by the Pittsburgh Pirates as coach?

Paging Dr. Freud:

Pirate In Trouble for Sausage Assault

I was reading this piece, Ashton Kutcher: Luckiest guy on the planet … or Satan's tool? and this sentence popped out at me:

This is a kid – OK, young man – who was majoring in biochemical engineering at the University of Iowa, before dropping out to pursue a career in modeling...

Suddenly, I realized that the UI's three arguably most famous alumni never graduated: Tom Brokaw went to school there, but dropped out. Tennessee Williams was a theater arts student, but his thesis, "The Glass Menagerie," was rejected. (Okay, so technically he dropped out, but reject "Glass Menagerie"?) And now Kutcher, who's boning Demi and just made the cover of People as the hottest bachelor.

Maybe I should have dropped out...

Arkansas man wakes after 19 years in a coma: "Let's see... We have a Republican idiot in the White House running up deficits, cutting social programs, giving tax cuts to the rich, declaring 'war' on a concept and invading other countries pretty much at will. You sure it's not 1984?"

Disturbing mental image of the day: Stephen Hawking getting a lap dance.

I'm guessing I just made some therapists' day.

[edit: I see also that Spider-Man creator Stan Lee allegedly likes his lap dances too: "A former stripper is suing buxom babe Pamela Anderson over her cartoon series, Stripperella. The former Baywatch star provides the voice of the animated stripper, who moonlights as a superhero. However, Janet Clover, 37, of Florida, America, claims she is the 'true creator' of the series and has also filed suit against Stan Lee, who created the character, as well as Viacom TV Networks who are screening it. Clover writes, 'This office challenges Lee to produce proof of his creative work, as true authorship belongs to Tanga's Jazz. I'm just trying to get this off TV because it's not his idea.' Tanga's Jazz is the adult club where Clover claims she asked Lee about the Stripperella concept during a private dance session. Anderson's agent declined to comment while Viacom were unavailable." Shudder.]

From The Washington Post's gossip column:

When Celine Dion wants a facial, does she go to Rodeo Drive? Hardly. We hear that the silver-throated diva, in the middle of her grueling 200-night-a-year gig at Caesars Palace, recently flew Washington "aesthetician " Jacqueline Boucher, of the downtown salon Celadon, to Vegas to give her a two-hour treatment.

I guess this is only really funny if you dislike Celine and know the alternate meaning of the term "facial." That said, the joke is kinda ruined by the fact that the one administering the facial was a woman.

From the I'm-Not-Making-This-Up (Someone-Else-Is) Dept.: Rumor has it that Eminem's next album will contain standards such as "Moon River" and "Puff the Magic Dragon" to "prove that he's musically versatile."

My friend and former roommate from college Dan (yes, ladies, that's really him -- he's single!) forwarded this link from my old paper The Daily Iowan to me. The article in question, written by the paper's ad sales manager Jim Leonard, happens to be a fond recollection of the night Norm Macdonald (note the capitalization: mine is correct, theirs is not; they also spell Darrell Hammond incorrectly -- don't they have a copy chief anymore?) and two of his Saturday Night Live costars came to Iowa City to cap off some celebratory week or another. It turned out to be quite controversial, mostly because of Norm. His act started out blue and got even bluer. (I recall the phrase "I saw a lady fuck a pig once..." popping up in his material.) The show, which was co-sponsored by the UI athletics department and a local company called Aegon, attracted quite a few families. (And, not surprisingly, they got the best seats, while the students got stuck in the balcony.) The first two performers (Hammond and Jim "Goat Boy" Breuer) were fairly inoculous, but when Norm wandered on stage, already drunk, and started in on his mischief, people started leaving by the truckload.

Anyway, you can read my own recollections on the subject here, taken from my DI column at the time.

On another tack, the biographical note at the end reveals that Jim is retiring next year. Jim was always one of the good ones, and I'm sure he still is. I can just hear his gentle, winking voice in the piece. He was probably the friendliest of the older generation of workers at the paper, which was mostly populated by students from the university. He was quick with a kind word, and even volunteered to draw a cartoon or two for the paper when he felt like he had a unique take on it.

Anyway, check out the piece(s). Good stuff, good memories. Good times... I'd go back if I could.

I just got an e-mail from "Likinlezzy Likmytwatnow."

I bet she had a hell of a time in grade school.

I have no words.

Creation of human 'she-males' sparks outrage

Once again, Big Science proves that it's merely a tool of the porn industry.

An excerpt from an interview with Mr. Show's Bob and David:

UW: David, you starred in a Superchunk video a few years back. Have either of you been in any other videos we might not be aware of?

David: You can look for me in Patti Smythes' "I am the Warrior." I'm not in it, but you can look for me.

Aw, hell.

R&B singer Barry White dies at 58

Velvet-voiced R&B crooner Barry White, whose lush baritone and throbbing musical compositions oozed sex appeal on songs like "Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Babe," died Friday. He was 58.

A moment of sweet, sweet lovin' in Barry's honor, please.

You know, I thought I had put the whole dental floss incident behind me, but I just went into the bathroom to investigate what I thought was an oddity in the same area of my molars when I pulled out a chunk of nasty-ass floss strands from between my teeth. It's probably the size of, I don't know, 1/4 of a penny. And it's been in there for about a week. Ugh.

Excuse me. I'm going to go gargle with mouthwash for about an hour...

(Click on the pic for a larger view. A large color version can be found here.)

Frank Cho has officially drawn the greatest piece of art ever. And now you could own it. Be sure to look close at what Batman and the WonderTwins are doing.

Time for a Rorshach test: What does this astronomical picture say to you?

Bastards!

FIFA's executive committee decided Saturday that soccer players must keep their shirts on during games and banned all celebratory post-goal stripping.

And in other Hollywood news, following the monumental failure of "From Justin to Kelly" at the box office, American Idol loser Justin Guarini was ticketed by police in Grand Prairie, Texas, after nearly running over a 5-year-old girl with a personal watercraft at Joe Pool Lake. On the jetski with him at the time was "J2K" co-star Kelly Clarkson, who really should have learned by now that any pairing of these two is bad news.

Pay close attention, folks: This may be the quickest turnaround on a "Behind the Music" special ever.

On another note, where else but in Texas are you going to find a body of water called "Joe Pool Lake"?

Those wacky Hollywood accountants:

The original producers of the hit independent film "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," have sued star Nia Vardalos and actor Tom Hanks' production company, saying they haven't received their share of the film's profits.

MPH Entertainment Inc. originally bought the script from Vardalos for $60,000, then sold the rights to bigger producers in exchange for 3 percent of the profits, according to a lawsuit filed late Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court.

The lawsuit claims that despite reports that the comedy has grossed more than $600 million from worldwide box office receipts, home video sales and rentals and television broadcast rights, MPH has received none of the profits. An exhibit attached to the lawsuit claims to show an accounting statement from Gold Circle Films, one of the defendants, indicating the 2002 film actually has lost $20 million.

In Hollywood, even the biggest hits lose money. It makes me wonder how they stay in business after all these years.

I've shied away from the longer entries lately because, well, things have been a little bit raw for me, and I'm more guarded than usual. To sum up: Met an amazing girl -- the one I'd written about seeing on Match and instantly knowing she was my type, and apparently "my type" means she's fated to stomp on my heart eventually.

I suppose, at least it's better sooner than later, as the damage is minimized, but the consequernces are still tough. Self-confidence is wounded, hard questions abound, and overall I just feel less enthusiastic and motivated. But life goes on.

Naturally, she wants to be friends. My first instinct is to be the nice guy, which of course would only lead to more trouble. I could use some more friends in this town, I suppose, but I know my tendency to get hung up on one unattainable girl and ignore all the other attainable candidates in the area. It's happened before, and I'm determined not to let it happen again. But even though I know it's the right move, I still feel conflicted. I know I could turn her around, I find myself thinking in the deep recesses of my brain, but I know that's moronic to believe.

I had a dream this morning that I was living with a beautiful woman, just as roommates, and the sexual tension was palpable, at least for me. The dream ended with the two of us caving in to temptation, culminating in a fierce necking session. The most powerful memory was her use of a kissing technique that my last girlfriend used to like to do, which is to "hook" my two front teeth with her tongue as we pulled away. I woke up feeling incredibly alone. Of course, Freud said that dreams were really subconscious expressions of wish-fulfillment, and I suppose that if that's true that this must relate to my foolish belief that I could somehow turn this girl around.

As you may have picked up on, my subconscious hates me.

She told me that she broke up with me because I wasn't tall enough. This may be true, but I'm inclined to believe, perhaps for reasons of deficient self-esteem, that this is simply a polite way of saying she wasn't attracted enough to me, my height being one of those reasons. This is, believe me, quite an odd sensation. I've been rejected for other reasons, but height was never one of them. My entire life, I've been taller than most, and height was never really a concern, save when I was self-conscious about being significantly taller than my peers, or in concert/movie settings. This was indeed the first time I've dated a woman taller than me. It wasn't really an issue for me, but I could tell that she was aware of it. Part of me wants to be angry with her for being so superficial, for cliinging to outdated concepts of masculinity and femininity, but I can't really bring myself to condemn her for it (that nice guy thing again?), possibly because I subs to a lot of those same ideas myself, whether I want to or not.

So it's back to the drawing board, as if I don't have enough on my mind. The kicker of it all was that I was really hoping to finally move on in my life, but circumstances have once again conspired against me. The same issues that plagued me before plague me still. Not much I can do but try again, I guess.

God loves you, they tell me again and again, but the explanation usually stops there. What kind of love are we talking about here? Because, you know, I love God, but I'm not in love with Him. It's just, well, God, I don't feel that way about you, okay? We can still be friends. Okay? God?

From the Big Shock Dept.:

People like people like themselves. That's the conclusion of a study by Cornell University researchers, who asked 978 people what qualities they valued most in a potential mate, and then asked them to rate themselves on the same qualities.

Surprise! The researchers found that mate choice "seems to be based on a preference for long-term partners who are similar to one's perception of self."

The researchers, led by Peter M. Buston, asked people in and around Ithaca, N.Y., to rate potential partners on a scale of one-to-nine on such qualities as financial resources, physical attractiveness, faithfulness, parenting qualities, social status, health, devotion, ambition, family bonds and desire for children.

People who rated themselves highly were more discriminating in what they wanted in a mate, the researchers report in Monday's online issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

So... since I tend to be pretty picky about who I date, that would imply that I have abnormally high self-esteem, wouldn't it?

Wonderful. One more thing I have to work on.

Feh. Science.