crude futures

cartoon day at crude futures

Off-off Broadway revival of Crude Futures

Imagine reviving a play that was inspired by a minor, Dickens-style character from Victorian literature named Betty Blobs, the greengrocer's widow.

Imagine the marketing effort for this revival, spearheaded by friends of the director — all of whom are strangers to you, personally.

There are imaginary advertisers who lovingly labor to support imaginary low-budget theater productions, which are labors of love reviving labors of love.

Fadgetty Tarce

First Time it's a Fadgetty... It's a Tarce.

First time, it's a Fadgetty. Second time, it's a Fadgetty Tarce.

Everything happens twice: The first time, it's fudgy. The second time, you already know what flavor the fudge is. English teachers stress the importance of trying fudge twice.

History repeats itself as a vagina.

Alton double feature

Katie and I both have iPhones now. They're not a green technology, but they are a fun technology:

Gorvey Garfoul sketchbook, part 5

Notes from a detective on the trail of art and culture

• I spent the weekend studying the history of art and culture, hoping this would enable me to find it. On Monday morning, aided by my research, I found it where I thought I would.

• Expenses were $38.08 for gas, phone, and video rental. (I am more than happy to provide original receipts if you need them.)

• The daily rate was 150 x 2.5 = 375, for a grand total of $413.08.

• My social security number is at the top of this invoice.

Gorvey Garfoul sketchbook, part 4

Gorvey Garfoul sketchbook, part 3

Man, I wish "Malls R Us" was playing in San Francisco

I badly wanna see the movie Malls R Us. It doesn't seem to be playing in many theaters, though. Maybe I can rent it on DVD.

If you click this picture of a vacant Lion Store in Toledo, OH, you'll be taken to deadmalls.com:



I had a pleasant emotional reaction to the eerie, Golgo-13ish synth music in the first 83 seconds of this teaser:



In the teaser (above), I didn't like it when the female narrator said the phrase "shopping faithful." But I still want to see the movie.

Seen and heard by Gorvey Garfoul

Reneg-ade

My brother just telephoned from a waiting room, where he is stuck staring at the cover of the current TIME magazine issue:



Here are his questions:

• Does this TIME cover really need the word "The" on it?
  
  
• Wouldn't it be a stronger cover if it just said "Renegade," without the "The"?
  
  
• The presence of the "The" makes it so the "Reneg" part of "Renegade" is centered over Palin's corpus. Has the "Reneg" been centered over Palin on purpose?
  
  
• (Is that why they added the "The"? So "Reneg" would be centered?)
  
  
• Is TIME is trying to push a subliminal, negative message? Namely: that Palin has reneged on her responsibility?

My brother notes that the story on Palin inside the magazine is not especially negative. I haven't read it.

What do you think? Has TIME done something tricky, on purpose, with this cover?

The arcade video-game death of Michael Jackson, 1990

In 1990, SEGA released Moonwalker, an arcade video game starring Michael Jackson. In the game, you maneuver a Michael Jackson "benevolent gangster" sprite through a pool hall, a dark alley, and a graveyard. You (Michael Jackson) fight thugs, robots, and zombies with supercharged dance moves, and you free tied-up child hostages to the bit-tunes of "Bad," "Smooth Criminal," and "Beat It."

If Michael Jackson receives too much enemy damage, he falls on his face and cries "help me!," begging the defeated player to insert another quarter and revive Michael's mission to heal the underworld.

If you do not insert another quarter, Jackson's corpse transmogrifies into stardust and flies heavenward. Then the stardust rains down and crystallizes into the words GAME OVER.

See 6:18–7:00 in the following video.