Ben Joseph

Air Force One Is On TV

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 13:06:00 -0400

“Get me the Attorney General and a copy of the Constitution!”

“If this works, you get to be Postmaster General.”

[Crossing three wires blindly] “I’m counting on you, red, white and blue.”

Hell to the yes. Fine, it’s a little ridiculous. To paraphrase Jesse Thorn, it’s a movie in which the President of the United States is a total badass and defeats a plane of armed terrorists practically solo. How can you take a movie like that seriously?

At the same time - I don’t know if I mentioned this - the President is a total badass and takes down a plane full of Russian radicals with his bare hands. How can you not think that’s awesome? As ludicrous as it is, I (among others) would posit that it’s still very possible for perfectly intelligent people to, sincerely and without irony, love a movie like this.

Perfect.

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 11:49:00 -0400

Perfect.

Have you checked out Sara Benincasa’s amazing series of...

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 12:16:33 -0400

Have you checked out Sara Benincasa’s amazing series of Sarah Palin vlogs? Well, you should.

Timecop is on TV. What a sad reminder that Jean Claude Van Damme...

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 19:00:00 -0400

Timecop is on TV. What a sad reminder that Jean Claude Van Damme challenged science to make time travel a reality by 2004, and science failed to rise to his expectations. Not since we failed to make it to the moon have I been so disappointed. Shame on you, science. Shame on you.

The Guys Writing The CollegeHumor Movie Just Commissioned To Write The Next Ghosbusters

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 08:34:00 -0400

The Guys Writing The CollegeHumor Movie Just Commissioned To Write The Next Ghosbusters:

Effective “who ya gonna call?” pun in progress.

Via Mundy.

Stewart at his finest. I’d even venture an “epic...

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 22:39:00 -0400

Stewart at his finest. I’d even venture an “epic burn”. 10,000 Diggs and growing.

Dear Atom.com:

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 20:03:11 -0400

I am trying so, so very hard to enjoy the Legend of Neil Finale. It is very funny, and for that reason alone, I am agressively trying to use your site. Why won’t you let me in?

xoxox,

-Ben

This is a parody of a very, very specific phenomenom from my...

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 19:22:00 -0400

This is a parody of a very, very specific phenomenom from my childhood, and for that, I love it.

jamiew: Coney Island Beard & Moustache Competition (via...

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 11:54:04 -0400

jamiew:

Coney Island Beard & Moustache Competition

(via Julia West)

If only…

The Most Prestigious Honor Yet

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 11:23:18 -0400

samreich:

We were nominated for a Stony. Apparently the award also functions as a bong.

So proud.

"I’m writing because I’ve lost my cell phone, and I’d really appreciate it if each of you could reply..."

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 20:40:00 -0400

“I’m writing because I’ve lost my cell phone, and I’d really appreciate it if each of you could reply to this message with your phone number… I never wrote it down on a piece of paper or in a book, or backed it up on a computer, because cell phones are historically quite dependable, and not prone to getting lost or stolen—at least, not where I come from, a place where there is neither crime nor personal failure. I come from Iceland.”

- One of the funniest New Yorker shorts I’ve read in a while.

erockappel: Fake but awesome. Prove it.

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 09:34:41 -0400

erockappel:

Fake but awesome.

Prove it.

Found this on the subway. I guess someone actually saw it?

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 19:34:00 -0400

Found this on the subway. I guess someone actually saw it?

I Watched "Trekkies"

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 00:19:00 -0400

It’s strange - in 1997, the profiling of wacky nerds is treated as a sufficiently entertaining discovery, but in the post-LotR/post-Buffy/post-Matrix/post-Harry Potter world of 2008, it’s less dynamic filmmaking and more a startling reminder of how recently cult fandom has moved in from the fringes to become a integral (and profitable) part of the mainstream. The film ends with positing that Trek fandom will never die and in fact last forever, but with that prophecy misses a third option - that the obsession of Trekkies would end up white noise against a field of greater, commoditized geekdom.

The lo-fi, socially uncoordinated Trekkies of 1997 revel in their relationship with the franchise - they’ve co-opted a network television series, a corporate product, and transformed it into something uniquely their own. However, in 2008, when 100,000 people attend an event called “ComicCon” and a Google image search for “cosplay” returns over three million results, fan devotion isn’t a suprise or even an annoyance, but a given and a variable, to be factored in and calculated as a product is prepped for market. Was there some awkward, gangly innocence lost as fandom went corporate? Maybe, but it’s pretty entertaining to see multi-national corporations bow down at the altar of a subculture (culture?) that, less than a decade ago, they could only ridicule and dismiss.

My friend Daniel, who’s been kind enough to let me stay in...

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 12:12:00 -0400

My friend Daniel, who’s been kind enough to let me stay in his ridiculously big house*, is a “one item per fridge” kind of guy. This seemed a lot funnier last night.

*After New York, the majority of houses out here seem ridiculously big.

TheWB.com Launches

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:29:00 -0400

TheWB.com Launches:

Tagline: “It’s TV! Online!!” (Punctuation my own.)

I will give them props for getting behind The Jeannie Tate Show, and A Boy Wearing Makeup gets points for bizareness of concept alone. The custom intro clips on show landing pages are kinda cool, too, if not entirely useful or necessary. Overall, though, with clumsy design and half of these series living elsewhere (usually with more episodes), the site still has a way to go to justify its existence. Considering all the original content Warner Bros has bought over the past year, I’m interested to see what they roll out in the weeks to come.

Surely I’m not the first?

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 18:49:00 -0400

Surely I’m not the first?

"It’s as though YouTube grew up and got a job."

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 18:20:23 -0400

“It’s as though YouTube grew up and got a job.”

- How I will be describing Hulu from now on, courtesy Penny Arcade.

Want a good read? I have a recommendation. Don’t know if...

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 20:01:00 -0400

Want a good read? I have a recommendation.

Don’t know if it’s real, but love it either way.

"Imagine I told you we’re going to shoot on superexpensive cameras, using rolls of celluloid..."

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 18:48:48 -0400

“Imagine I told you we’re going to shoot on superexpensive cameras, using rolls of celluloid made in China that are a one-time-use product susceptible to scratches and that can’t be exposed to light. And you can’t even be sure you got the image until they’re developed. And you have to dip them in a special fluid that can ruin them if it’s mixed wrong. People would think I was crazy.”

- DP Bengt Jan Jönsson on moving to digital.