When I say I’ve been waiting a long time for this, I mean decades.

I had the good fortune to not only back the FSU Seminoles during the ’90s, but also go to school there. Their recent run of subpar seasons wasn’t my first experience with love for the underdog, though. My loyalty to the New Orleans Saints was solidified during my high school years in Northwest Florida, whose Mardi Gras makes up in outrageousness what it lacks in size.

I came close to having my heart broken twice in 2007, and by far the more notable of the occasions was the Saints’ loss to the Chicago Bears on January 21. But hey, you know? When you love the underdog, the heartbreak is part of the experience. I was almost afraid to look, when they won 13 games in a row this season. When they went to the playoffs, I braced myself for another near miss. But the Vikings went down easier than the Bears. And my-freaking-God, there the Saints went to the Superbowl.

It’s funny, what we tell ourselves when we want something really bad. “It doesn’t matter, I’ll love them anyway.” And then: that freaking interception! Watching Tracy Porter run 74 yards was like peering into another dimension, one in which the Saints were the exact opposite kind of team they’d been my entire life. But you know what? This new dimension’s just fine! WHO DAT, BITCHES? I TOLD YOU THEY’D WIN IT! GEAUX SAINTS!

NASA prepares to launch Endeavour tomorrow, in what should be its second-to-last flight.

I’m alternately relieved and appalled at the planned 2010 decommissionings of all 3 of the Shuttles–relieved, as they’ve been in service 18-26 years, and I’ve no wish to watch my third Shuttle disaster; appalled, because as of Discovery’s final flight in September, for the first time in my life, the United States will be grounded from space.

Sure, we could hitch rides with other countries. But what a comedown for the country that first put a human being on the moon.

I don’t know what will come of our space program–people much smarter than me, working for NASA, probably wonder the same thing right now. It’s one of the few things in which I totally disagree with President Obama. The space race and its magnificent fruits were what inspired generations of children to take science seriously. How will we motivate students to refocus on science now, if one of its greatest achievements can be so visibly abandoned?

Just a quick post to thank you for visiting. Here’s hoping that the next decade, and the next five years of this blog, bring even more zany BS to cover and rant about. Get smashed, turn it up, take photos, and remember: never try to relight duds!…

Under the guise of celebrating the Shia festival of Ashura, when street parades are common, hundreds of thousands of Iranians in Tehran protested today, in what many reported as the heaviest demonstrations since they began this past summer.

Some streets were dominated by protestors, who shouted for the downfall of Ayatollah Khamenei and burned police vehicles. Other streets saw the police with the upper hand, using gas and clubs to intimidate demonstrators. Unofficial witnesses claim that for people were shot by police, when they fired a warning shot and then fired into the crowd. One of the victims is claimed to be Seyed Ali Mousavi, the nephew of the reformist leader Mir Hossein Mousavi.

Four more people may have been killed in Tabriz, and hundreds arrested around the country.

link to iranprotest’s YouTube channel

BBC link

photo uploaded to Flickr by leemellonjr

It’s been a long year. And I’ve been sick of Tallahassee, and of the south, for most of it.

And because I can’t let the year run out without giving some sort of nod to Der Alte and Nummer Eins, here’s another GWAR clip. I don’t normally do this, but I’m in Florida, and I’m feelin’ the love:

For Prochnow fans only…

…But if you like the old boy, you’ll enjoy this perhaps more than you might expect.

People who even know who Jürgen Prochnow is tend to already be fans of the character actor. And why not? He’s a talented combination of intense, wry, sexy and slightly nuts. He’ll be genuinely tender with the female characters, in a way that can’t be faked, and then smile mischievously while having another character horribly tortured. He can do more acting with his eyes alone in one film, than the overpaid wads of fluff populating the average DVD collection can do in a whole career.

Too bad he was born in Germany, apparently rendering him unfit to play anything but villains in American films.

I sat down to watch “Killing Cars”, in which Prochnow is the self-absorbed romantic lead, after reading a review elsewhere by a Prochnow fangirl. I wanted to see what was on the other end of the spectrum of his movies from the immortal “Das Boot”, one of my favorite films. I was expecting utter garbage–I mean, a low-budget foreign car movie shot in 1985? I thought I’d be watching it through my fingers. Actually, it was surprisingly entertaining.

The early 80s sleaze factor is turned up to eleven here, especially in the beginning. Porches, neon, punks, industrial lofts, feathered hair, smoking, spy subplots…it’s utter camp. Prochnow actually puts on sunglasses at night to drive. But the characters–at least the core 3 or 4–become a bit more sympathetic as the movie goes on, largely due to the understated seriousness with which Prochnow approached the role. What is it with that guy?

I thought this would be an interesting case of how a good actor could be dragged down by a bad script, low budget, and subpar supporting actors. In fact, through sheer talent and force of will, Prochnow made the movie gel. Sure, it gels into a barely-comprehensible, badly-lit study in hilarious industrial surrealism…but by the climax of the movie, I actually really gave a damn what happened to that ugly car.

The ability of this movie to make me care about it, despite my plans to mock it, hinged on one obscure German actor. That’s talent.

The most popular movies nowadays are filled with actors dumber than the average viewer, lending a much-needed ego boost to the audience. People seem content to watch what they know is terrible acting disguised with world-class special effects. After all, special effects don’t require emotional engagement, and bad acting presents no mental intimidation.

I guess I just like my actors brilliant and my movies puzzling. If anybody else enjoys feeling their scorn turned to curiosity by intelligent, subtle acting, there are much worse investments of your time than this movie. And if you’re a Prochnow fanatic trying to decide whether this is worth the pain, know that he has a nude scene.

(review at Amazon.com)

And this, my friends, was how I got here (no cheating at all):

What a month…once again.

Here was the title of the BBC Online article:

“Men and women ‘respond differently to danger’ ”

And here was the accompanying photograph:

Really? Really? In 2009?

I just wrote seven thousand words in 4 1/2 hours.

Some gems include:

“We’re all pirates. And we all call ourselves the good guys.”

“Then my mind went dark, and slowly pictures began to surface in my mind’s eye, like fish swimming to the top of a pond—weird, grotesquely clored fish.”

“He put his hand on the knob again. As I stared, it glowed red, then melted into smoldering, smoking liquid, flowing through his fingers like mercury. It fell towards the floor, but vanished before it could burn the antique wood.”

“The room was stuffy and smelled like abandonment.”

“the little lavender slut boy think like he used to have befor ehe got married and stupid?”

“Well, iv’e written about three hindred words in threeminutes, which is obvs a hundred words a minute. And look at the remarkable job I have done of it so far. I would be a lovely secretary. She’s pretty, but can she type? No, absolutely not.”

***

That’s right, folks. I am currently triple-fisting Goldschlager, sweet tea, and a Starbucks Doubleshot espresso drink. And I have come dangerlolzy close to setting my hair on fire twice tonight.

Here’s a random photo of Kiss, just to be safe: