Not too many people use Hotmail these days, so I don’t know if any of you guys’ve seen these before, but there are a series of strange ads that show up on the Hotmail pages alot.
The second thing you’ll notice about these ads is their weird tendency to word their sales pitches like propaganda, as if your country is telling you it’s your duty to use whatever their service is. But the first thing you will notice is the crazy ass photos they choose to represent the sort of person they are trying to sell to – i.e. you.
At left is the first one I noticed, and I think you probly have some of the same questions that I do:
What’s up with that? Who is that man with the giant nerd glasses and cartoonish overbite? Why does his face have the waxy look of a caveman dummy at a history museum? Is he organic or digital? Why does his open collar and string necklace suggest a laidback, comfortable surfer dude when his head looks like a hideous monster? Is that a fake nose, and if so is it attached to the glasses? What does he want from us?
I mean, this is weird. Somebody made this ad, and somebody purposely chose that picture to appear on that ad. What were they trying to make us think? Who was he supposed to represent? Is he one of the 9 out of 10 homeowners who fail to take advantage of government refinance plan? I don’t think so. Judging from his smile he must be the tenth guy, the guy who succeeds to take advantage of government refinance plan. That means he’s the person who is supposed to respond to this ad. That means he’s us. He’s how they see us seeing ourselves, isn’t he?
I read somewhere that there’s a movement and websights trying to make sure people pronounce it “twenty ten” and not “two thousand ten” since it will save you ONE GOD DAMN SYLLABLE, and God knows how many crucial twitterings and texts we could spend those extra milliseconds on if we would just call it”twenty ten” every time. I mean, in retrospect maybe if we had been saying “twenty one” instead of “two thousand one” for that whole year maybe we would’ve had time to look into that intelligence briefing about Osama bin Laden determined to carry out attacks inside the United States.
“Viggo Mortensen is… AMERICAN YAKUZA.” That’s what it says on the trailer. This is a rare early Viggo lead role and it’s pretty much a straight up action/crime movie. In the tradition of AMERICAN NINJA, AMERICAN KICKBOXER, AMERICAN SAMURAI and AMERICAN BEAUTY, Viggo is an American white guy who earns the trust and acceptance of the Yakuza, complementing their traditions and rituals with his own American spirit. When they drink sake he drinks Bud Light or Wild Turkey. But don’t worry man, he’s cool. I’ll explain. 
To Live or Die
All I wanted for Christmas was NINJ*. But it doesn’t come out in the US until March, so I ordered it from Thailand. It’s a Christmas miracle!
When I came out of AVATAR I had a nice free feeling that I wasn’t even gonna write a review of it. I figured what it excels at is self-evident and what it fails at isn’t really worth dwelling on, and every motherfucker with a computer already wrote way too much about this thing anyway so what’s the point? I wouldn’t have much to say.
Damn, I just read on The Ain’t It Cool News that Dan O’Bannon died. He’s mainly known as the creator of ALIEN (he wrote the original script). Although his script was re-written there’s no way to deny it came out of his mind when you watch DARK STAR, which he wrote with John Carpenter (as well as co-starred in and built the sets) and see how similar it is to ALIEN even though it’s a comedy. After that one he was hired by Jodorowsky to work on that version of DUNE that never came about.
