Just Giblets

84%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

Mingle² – Dating Site

Hmmm… that’s way more than I would have thought.

So, I’m checking out my professional library blogs via RSS this afternoon and come across a post from one of my favorites, Chronicles of Bean. I’ve never met Cindi, but we’ve exchanged a couple tweets in passing on Twitter and she gives reliably good and sensible blog. So how has she been spending her time lately?

Today’s stoopid web quiz

OK, so I took a couple of these… I am part Jim, part Ryan from The Office, I would have been in Gryffindor, I am Hagrid (the outcast with a heart of gold), I am part Hiro, part Peter from Heroes, but best of all:

What Kind of Guy Will You Fall For?

And she goes on to say that it was dead on, matching her with the “geek” type and even displaying a picture of Tobey Maguire, which apparently works for her.

So, I worked through lunch today and it’s 4:00. Who’s my Mystery Date?

What Kind of Guy Will You Fall For?

You would fall for the sensitive guy. You’ll find your future man wherever turtlenecks are sold. He will have depth, introspection, and a disturbing knowledge of musical theatre. And he may be a little weird. But hey, while your girlfriends cry over broken hearts, you’ll be having Shakespeare read to you every night.

Find Your Character @ BrainFall.com

Holy moley. Jake Gyllenhaal reading me Shakespeare?! Do you really think he has a “disturbing knowledge of musical theatre?” It is scarily accurate, I’d say. But I think I’ve got a pretty sensitive guy already. And if he already knew a whole lot about musical theatre, what would be left to teach him!?

My reading theme for vacation last week was catching up with books being adapted into films. Neil Gaiman’s dark fantasy for youth is called Coraline, and it tells the tale of a girl who stumbles upon a terrifying nightmare world right next to her own in the last couple of weeks of summer vacation. Think back to your childhood; think back on your summer vacation. For many, the last couple of weeks in August herald a transition time. The summer is starting to get a little boring, and while your mind was once occupied with exploring, playing, dreaming, now thoughts turn excitedly toward school. Such is the case with Coraline. Her parents don’t have time to keep her entertained, and while the eccentric tenants who live in the other parts of her building provide curious diversions, they aren’t quite enough. One day Coraline discovers that the door in the study which usually opens to a blank brick wall now opens to a long, dark tunnel. What else is there to do in the dog days of summer but explore the tunnel?

What Coraline finds is a strange world where her other-mother and other-father live. The eccentric tenants are represented as well, as is the aloof, black cat that lives out in the yard. The people are interesting, but a little off-kilter, and instead of eyes, black buttons stare unblinkingly form their faces. For the better part of a day, Coraline enjoys exploring this new, strange world, but when it comes time to leave, Gaiman’s fable takes a decidedly dark turn. In the days leading up to school, Coraline must fight for her soul, the souls of the children who have come before her and the lives and souls of her parents.

Gaiman spins a tale reminiscent of the fairy tales of youth. There is something safe and comforting about them even as the plucky heroine faces chilling and very-real danger. Here’s hoping Coraline makes for a good film-adaptation, and since it is animated, the visuals will surely have a huge impact on its success. The film is currently in post-production and is scheduled for release next year. It will feature the voice of Dakota Fanning as Coraline, Teri Hatcher as her mother (and her other-mother), and the brilliant Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders as two of the neighbors. This is a quick read, and I highly recommend it.

Michael told me about this the other day, but it never really sank in until I read on Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals that Javier Bardem has been cast as Guido Contini in the film version of Nine. (For non-theatre people, Nine is a musical based on a film by some unknown director named Fellini. But it’s a half-number better.)

In his blog post, Chris rightly points out that it’s hardly an issue if Javier can’t sing beautifully — dude’s hot. Who cares? (Wait, did you say there were some women in the movie too?)

But my real question is this: Why do Spanish-speaking actors keep getting cast in this Italian role? Raul Julia, Antonio Banderas, Javier Bardem. WTF? Not saying they can’t do it, of course. I just have this feeling that it seems “close enough” for America. (Zhang Ziyi in Memoirs of a Geisha, anyone?) Eh, could be worse. Could be Mickey Rooney as a Chinese landlord.

I was just saying to Michael that I’m waiting for the day the Village People get their props — not as artists, of course, but as truly brilliant subversive social revolutionaries. Doesn’t it make you giggle to think of millions of sporting fans the world-over semaphoring along to a song about gay sex?

And how brilliant would it be to hear it in Finnish?

I love how this man dances.

So TVLand is doing something pretty cool with some classic actresses, and I just had to post this video here because it features one of my favorite classic TV actresses. I was going to list who plays the desperate classic housewives, but I think you’ll get more of a kick out of seeing them revealed one at a time. E-mail me if you don’t recognize them (and if you’re under 30, you may not!

There’s also a pretty funny spoof of Sex in the City.

José Saragamo’s Blindness was the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature. As the inhabitants of an unnamed city go blind one by one, the very fabric of society begins to decay until it is transformed into an animalistic morass of survival. That is the premise of Saramago’s intensely powerful and challenging novel. The core of the story revolves around seven people, among the first to go blind, along with a doctor’s wife who for some reason never loses her sight, but keeps this fact hidden from all save her husband.

Saramago explores how the removal of sight causes the destruction of the social structure. Even before the entire community goes blind, the government, fearing (rightly) an epidemic, quarantine all the blind under inhumane conditions. Yet as the worst of human society emerges, so too does compassion and cooperation, as we follow the seven main characters and watch as they form their own family to insure their survival.

Blindness is not a beach-reading novel that you can flip through in a day. It require concentration and reflection. Saramago pulls the reader into some pretty horrific situations as some of the downtrodden take advantage of others. With the character of the doctor’s wife, the sole sighted person in a city filled with the blind, Saramago creates a character both helpless and with great responsibility to those around her. It’s an insightful allegory to our world today.

I decided to read Blindness after finding out that it has been adapted for the screen by writer/director/actor extraordinnaire, and my pal, Don McKellar. It’s sure to be a harrowing experience.

With a headline like, “Life Sized Satanic Doll Serves As Masturbation Toy for America’s Youth” blazed across the Landover Baptist Church Newsletter, how can you not read the entire article? Okay, upon a tiny bit more examination, it becomes clear that this is a complete satire… it’s still worth checking out.

Thanks so much to Solaris for pointing this out over on the Comic Book Resources Forum.

Given the popularity of my previous post, The Wind, I just had to put this Daily Show clip up! These are the fools I dedicated the previous post to…

The A.V. Club has a great interview with Joss Whedon, creator of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the television series turned movie, Firefly/Serenity. I’ve been trying to get Joss to come to the Massachusetts Library Association’a annual conference for the last couple of years, but other than a couple very curt e-mail message from his assistant’s assistant, haven’t had any luck yet. Don’t you think Joss would rock at a library conference? He has created the hippest librarian ever in Buffy’s Watcher, Giles. (Okay some might argue – myself included – that Oracle/Barbara Gordon/formerly Batgirl is the hippest librarian ever.)

Recently Joss has been doing some comic book work, including a new “season” of Buffy in comic form, and for Marvel, Astonishing X-Men. Over the past year or so, Joss has also been working on the movie version of Wonder Woman, something that had me brimming with potential excitement (with Joss on board, the movie’s gotta get made!). Of course, anyone who knows anything about movie development knows it can be hell, and even if you’re Joss Whedon, there are times when you’ve just got to throw in the towel. Apparently the Wonder Woman people just didn’t buy Joss’ concept for the film and after a lengthy period of frustration, Joss decided to give it up and leave the project.

Surprisingly, upon reading this interview with Joss, I think I might be happy that he’s leaving the Wonder Woman film. Here’s an excerpt from the interview where he discusses his concept:

“Well, I’ll tell you one thing that sort of exemplifies my feelings. The idea was always that she’s awesome, she’s fabulous, she’s strong, she’s beautiful, she’s well-intentioned, she thinks she’s a great big hero, and it’s Steve Trevor’s job to go, “You don’t understand human weakness, therefore you are not a hero, and you never will be until you’re as helpless as we are. Fight through that, and then I’ll be impressed. Until then, I’m just going to give you shit in a romantic-comedy kind of way.”

Now, I try to reserve judgment on a film or any sort of entertainment until I actually see the finished product, and perhaps if Joss had ever made the Wonder Woman film I would have loved it (a good chance of that, actually, since I do enjoy lots of his work). That said, and as an avid reader of the Wonder Woman comic, that concept sounds like a really bad idea to me. Still, I guess we’ll never know, and I suppose it would have been nice for Joss to prove me wrong and make something really cool for the WW movie.

Anyway, fans of Joss should definitely check out the interview.