About Wyrd Smythe
The canonical fool on the hill watching the sunset and the rotation of the planet and thinking what he imagines are large thoughts.
Now showing at the Heaven’s Gate Theatre:
Bacall’s famous line from To Have and Have Not is the all-time sexiest line in movie history! “You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together — and blow.”
My reaction matches Bogie’s every time! Hoooo-eeee!!
And at the Heavenly Comedy Club:
But tickets to these shows… are a little tricky to come by. On the other hand, you have plenty of time to get there and see them. They run every night (with matinees on weekends) … forever!
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16 Comments | tags: Bogart and Bacall, dearly departed, dearly missed, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Robin Williams, standup comedy | posted in Life
In my family, we were rather casual about birthdays and other event days. It wasn’t unusual to celebrate a birthday, not on the exact day, but on a nearby day. We were fairly poor, so birthdays mostly consisted of a cake and a token present of some sort. (Put it this way: I can’t recall a single birthday present I ever got. We just weren’t that into birthdays.)
But I don’t recall ever not celebrating Christmas or Easter on the day. That may be as much due to my father being a pastor and having to do his thing at church on those days. The religious upbringing — and the strong streak of anti-materialism that went with it — likely accounts for downplaying birthdays and other gift-giving occasions.
Which is all to say that I missed posting on John Venn‘s birthday!
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13 Comments | tags: aliens-robots-zombies, Doctor Who, geeks-nerds, John Venn, logic, sets, Simon & Garfunkel, Star Trek, Venn, Venn diagram, Venn diagrams | posted in Wednesday Wow
Some of those who take their comics seriously and think deep thoughts about them have remarked on the symbiotic relationship between super-heroes and super-villains. They do seem to form yet another Yin-Yang pair (and, as I’ve mentioned many times, we find such pairs many places in life). In fact, many see comics as nothing less than variations on the basic Yin-Yang of good and evil.
There are even those who suggest super-heroes create super-nemeses as necessary mirrors and justification for their existence. There is just enough truth to that to make it seem debatable, but the more common view is that both arise as natural symbols of basic good and evil.
So, today’s question: Is the Batman responsible for the Joker (and others)?
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Leave a comment | tags: Barbara Gordon, Batman, evil, good, Robin, super-villain, superheroes, the Batman, The Joker, Yin and Yang | posted in Brain Bubble
If you’re a fan of television you may know that David Letterman is retiring in 2015 and that his replacement is Stephen Colbert! If you’re not at all a fan of television, it’s possible you don’t know Stephen Colbert, who is the two in the one-two punch of Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show and Stephen Colbert‘s The Colbert Report.
One thing that makes Colbert stand out is how he plays a character who shares his name. Sort of. Stephen Colbert is a parody person played by Stephen Colbert. The fake is highly conservative, utterly ego-maniacal and massively ignorant. Part of the schtick is that Colbert usually appears in public — even testifying before Congress — as Colbert.
So I’m looking forward to seeing the Colbert behind the Colbert mask!
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22 Comments | tags: Andy Kaufman, caricatures, CBS Late Show, David Letterman, fake persona, Foster Brooks, Howard Stern, Jack Benny, parody persons, stage persona, Stephen Colbert, Taxi (TV series), The Colbert Report | posted in Brain Bubble
Does everyone these days know what a movie cookie is? I’m talking about the little scene a director sticks at the very end of the credits. They aren’t quite the same as outtakes — those are bits with muffed lines or where props didn’t work, and they’re often shown during the credits. And obviously, both are different from deleted scenes, which are bits that the director artistically excluded from the final product.
For a long time movie cookies were rare and always came at the very end, after all the final credits. They were a special treat (a cookie) for sophisticated movie goers who watch the entire movie rather than heading for the door the moment the final music begins.
Recently, cookies have become common, and are appearing early in the credits!
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22 Comments | tags: Airplane (film), Body Heat, cookies, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, impatience, Key Largo, movie cookies, Wild Things | posted in Brain Bubble
Last week Vinton “Vint” Cerf was the guest on The Colbert Report. The elegant Mr. Cerf is one of the two acknowledged fathers of the internet (the other is Bob Kahn). Among other things, those two invented the TCP/IP protocol that allows all internet communication.
Briefly, the need to connect different computers together goes back to the 1960s. Researchers in the 1970s sought to create a network for government (especially military) and academic computing (the ARPANET). The 1980s saw the birth of the internet — the first “dot-com” name was registered in 1985. And only six years later, in 1991, the “interweb” began!
It got me thinking back to those early text-based days before “the web”…
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19 Comments | tags: ARPANET, Colossal Cave Adventure, computer games, George Carlin, internet, internet communication, internet tubes, interweb, punch cards, text adventure, The Colbert Report, Vint Cerf, Zork | posted in Brain Bubble
Computer programmers are exceptional thinkers. By which I don’t necessary mean they are “exceptional” in the sense of “outstanding” (although no doubt some are). I mean they are trained to think about exceptions (to the rule), about what might happen.
Computer programmers, in general, think about all the possible paths a system could take. When creating email software, they have to think about all the possible ways a user might use the software. There are the obvious actions the user is supposed to perform to read or write email. But there are also “What happens if I click this?” moments to consider.
It’s not about just of the “correct” ways but also about the “incorrect” ways!
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5 Comments | tags: Computer programmers, computer programming, critical thinking, engineers, exception to the rule, negative thinking | posted in Brain Bubble
Even as a kid monster movies didn’t really frighten me. I just was never that impressed by Dracula or Frankenstein (let alone a Werewolf — a mere dog). The Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Blob, the Thing, giant insects, Harryhausen animations, even zombies… All such obvious effects.
Slasher movies weren’t that big when I was a kid. Jason, Freddie, Chucky, they all came along later. The first Saw wasn’t until 2004. And again, on some level, just special effects. That’s actually part of what’s cool about the gory movies.
But ghost stories? Ghost stories definitely get under my skin!
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9 Comments | tags: 13 Ghosts, ghost glasses, ghost movies, ghost stories, ghosts, horror movies, Ju-on, Margaret Hamilton, The Grudge, The Ring, What Lies Beneath | posted in Brain Bubble, Movies
Every generation “can’t imagine what it was like” with regard to something. Various generations have recently gone through not knowing what it was like before automobiles, before flight, before black and white TV, before space travel, before CDs, and — increasingly —before social media.
The thing about being plugged into the interweb is that you’re plugged into something very, very big. Not just big, big and fast. Lots of information rushes by very fast all the time. Drinking from the interweb — as those they that say things say — is like trying to sip from a firehose.
So what about a generation that’s never known the quiet?
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12 Comments | tags: advertising, change, internet, interweb, loud, modern life, noise | posted in Brain Bubble
Once upon a time I had a theory that Heaven and Hell were what happened at the very last moment of your life. They say your “life flashes before your eyes” when you’re about to die. What if that’s literally true? What if it really does?
And in that final, eternal moment, when your mind knows “this is the end,” and there’s no more kidding yourself, what if you have to face the person you’ve really been with no filters, no deceptions, no self-rationalizations?
What if, as death stands at our shoulder beckoning, we have an infinite moment of clarity in completely and fully recognizing ourselves.
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24 Comments | tags: death, eternal moment, eternity, final moment, heaven, Heaven and Hell, hell, last moment, self, self-awareness | posted in Brain Bubble
Logos con carne 
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