Thursday, March 31, 2011

tweet surfing

Saw Norm McDonald tweeting Steve Martin on Letterman last night.

Interesting to see who they are following. Both follow Conan. Neither follow Leno. Dave of course doesn't twitter. And Conan is still following only that one person.

Norm follows 22, among them: David Spade, Sarah Silverman, Howard Stern, Kevin Nealon, Dennis Miller, Blake Griffin, DeAndre Jordan.

Steve Martin follows 36, among them: Kevin Nealon, Tom Hanks, John Cleese, Kevin Pollak, Andrea Martin, Teller, Sarah Silverman, Jim Carrey, Ron Howard, Ben Stiller, Brian Grazer, Gladwell, Goldie Hawn, Howard Stern, Bill Cosby, Michael Caine, Joy Behar, Gayle King, Dennis Miller, Albert Brooks.

Let's see who Leno follows: Howie Mandel is the only comedian.

Looking at Albert Brooks. He mentions Mort Sahl has joined twitter. Others among the 12 he follows: Judd Apatow, Sarah Silverman (again), Conan (again), Kevin Pollak, Howard Stern (again), James L. Brooks (are they related? -- no, but he casted him in Broadcast News), Steve Martin.

Arnold will be back

With his years as governor behind him, Arnold Schwarzenegger will soon return to his acting career with a new animated TV series.

The planned action-comedy cartoon is called "The Governator," according to A Squared Entertainment, a partner in the venture. It will focus on a superhero living a double life as an ordinary family man. Schwarzenegger will provide the voice of the title character.

Comic-book legend Stan Lee is another partner in the project, which will be officially announced Monday at the MIPTV trade show in Cannes, France.

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Body of Proof

After the first cut of Dancing with the Stars last night was a show called Body of Proof. I think I left it on because the description said that Jeri Ryan was on it.

Anyway, Jeri Ryan is not the star of the show. It's Dana Delany. And the show turned out to be pretty entertaining. Delany plays a doctor who's sort of a cross between House and Monk. A doctor/detective. So it wouldn't be out of place on the USA network.

I might just tuned in next week too. Actually there's a special showing Sunday.

[4/19/11 - looked at a couple more episodes and they weren't as interesting as the first to me.]

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Elizabeth Taylor

LOS ANGELES >> Elizabeth Taylor, the violet-eyed film goddess whose sultry screen persona, stormy personal life and enduring fame and glamour made her one of the last of the old-fashioned movie stars and a template for the modern celebrity, died Wednesday at age 79.

She died of congestive heart failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where she had been hospitalized for about six weeks, said publicist Sally Morrison.

Taylor was the most blessed and cursed of actresses, the toughest and the most vulnerable. She had extraordinary grace, wealth and voluptuous beauty, and won three Academy Awards, including a special one for her humanitarian work. She was the most loyal of friends and a defender of gays in Hollywood when AIDS was still a stigma in the industry and beyond. But she was afflicted by ill health, failed romances (eight marriages, seven husbands) and personal tragedy.

"I think I'm becoming fatalistic," she said in 1989. "Too much has happened in my life for me not to be fatalistic."

Her more than 50 movies included unforgettable portraits of innocence and of decadence, from the children's classic "National Velvet" and the sentimental family comedy "Father of the Bride" to Oscar-winning transgressions in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and "Butterfield 8." The historical epic "Cleopatra" is among Hollywood's greatest on-screen fiascos and a landmark of off-screen monkey business, the meeting ground of Taylor and Richard Burton, the "Brangelina" of their day.

She played enough bawdy women on film for critic Pauline Kael to deem her "Chaucerian Beverly Hills."

But her defining role, one that lasted long past her moviemaking days, was "Elizabeth Taylor," ever marrying and divorcing, in and out of hospitals, gaining and losing weight, standing by Michael Jackson, Rock Hudson and other troubled friends, acquiring a jewelry collection that seemed to rival Tiffany's.

She was a child star who grew up and aged before an adoring, appalled and fascinated public. She arrived in Hollywood when the studio system tightly controlled an actor's life and image, had more marriages than any publicist could explain away and lasted long enough to no longer require explanation. She was the industry's great survivor, and among the first to reach that special category of celebrity — famous for being famous, for whom her work was inseparable from the gossip around it.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

how to get rid of haole koa

After spending some time cutting some haole koa in the back yard, I wondered if there is a good way to get rid of it.

Apparently, there is a way to get rid of it (and nutgrass too), but it doesn't sound easy.

[11/19/14] Found this Kokua Line article

Monday, March 14, 2011

G. I. Joe: Rise of Cobra

For my first-ever Redbox rental, I decided on GIJROC. (Actually my first ever rental from one of those machines was Sorceror's Apprentice at Times: Liliha, but it wasn't a Redbox.)

I decided on this because I always thought the trailer looked pretty cool. And the Blu-Ray is on the top of my wish-list on swapadvd.com.

I had seen the DVD available before, but never rented it. Then it disappeared for a month or two. Then I saw it again at Foodland Liliha, but it disappeared again. But a search at redbox.com showed it was available at Foodland Dillingham. OK, I'll venture out my 1.04. (Or maybe it's free because I'm supposed to have a free credit for signing up, not sure if it's claimed automatically.)

Anyway, even though it wasn't a Blu-Ray, I thought the picture looked pretty good on my 42" Plasma. Saw the first half yesterday and the rest today on the old 27" Panasonic outside. OK, maybe a little confusing with all the characters. And the picture was a little darker since the scenes went underwater. But overall, I'd say it's filled the bill as an action picture. I'd give it a thumbs up.

But then, I'm speaking as one who never really watched the G.I. Joe cartoons. Here's another view (which turned out to be nearly as entertaining as the movie for me).

The movie's ostensible lead is Duke, played by Channing Tatum, who is without question the absolute worst actor to have ever lived in the history of mankind's existence on this planet we call Earth. I'm talking all the way back to the birth of drama in ancient Greece, never has there been another actor as awful as Tatum. Even Ed Wood would have laughed at this guy's screen test. The filmmakers should have called his character "Cue Card," because he's obviously reading his lines off of them.

Nearly as bad is Sienna Miller as The Baroness. Yes, she's sexy, but my lord, the woman needs to take some acting lessons. Not only is Miller's delivery stilted, the movie's version of the character is an American bimbo (a blonde, we learn in flashbacks) with no accent, is Duke's ex-girlfriend, and isn't even really evil. What the hell? What does any of that have to do with The Baroness, who was previously one of the juiciest characters in all of G.I. Joe lore? I'm going to assume that Miller had to be cast in the movie due to some studio contractual obligation. If she has to be in the movie, why not give her a more appropriate character that she could handle, like Cover Girl? Shouldn't The Baroness actually be The Baroness, and played by someone who can pull off the role?

Supporting characters make just as little sense. Saïd Taghmaoui is Breaker. Except that he's not actually playing Breaker, the team's radio operator. He's playing Mainframe, their computer tech geek. So why isn't the character just called Mainframe? Obviously, the writers didn't know who Mainframe was because they'd never gotten past Issue 3 of the comic book.

The film is agonizingly, insultingly stupid. It has been written by people who have no respect at all for their audience's intelligence. Movies like this are often called "turn off your brain" entertainment. I've never understood the appeal of that. There's nothing stopping any movie from having major excitement and thrills along with a decent story and interesting characters, except the will to do it. How far must we lower our standards to find something like this entertaining?

***

Then again, I just picked up Karate Dog from swapadvd.

Saturday, March 05, 2011

Charlie Sheen winning yet?

[7/14/12] Quitting Twitter.  Checking twitaholic, Charlie is no. 35 with 7708629 followers.  The current top ten: Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Rihanna, Britney Spears, Barack Obama, Shakira, Taylor Swift, Kim Kardashian, Youtube.  Oprah is 12.  Justin Timberlake is 13.  Ellen is 14.  Ashton Kutcher 20.  JLo 26.  Jim Carrey 28.  Mitt Romney is 1824 with 560,248 followers.  Cesar Millan is 2489 with 424,258 followers.

[5/13/11] Acting with an imminent deadline to keep alive a hit comedy after it had been derailed by Charlie Sheen's troubles this season, CBS and Warner Bros. Television said Friday that actor Ashton Kutcher will replace Sheen in "Two and a Half Men."

The show goes into production this summer and will be on CBS' schedule in the fall.

The deal apparently came together quickly, following reports earlier this week that negotiations with film actor Hugh Grant to join the show had fallen through. Kutcher is familiar to television audiences through his role on Fox's "That 70s Show," film roles like the romantic comedy "No Strings Attached" and for producing and hosting the prank show "Punk'd."

A deadline on deciding whether the show would continue was looming with CBS set to unveil its fall schedule to advertisers in New York next Wednesday.

Kutcher is not as well known as Sheen but is 12 years younger and has a huge following of fans who check in on his ever utterance on Twitter. He said Friday he believes that "we can fill the stage with laughter that will echo in viewers' homes.

"I can't replace Charlie Sheen but I'm going to work my ass off to entertain the hell out of people," he said.

Kutcher gave his followers a big clue Wednesday on Twitter that he may be joining "Two and a Half Men."

"What's the square root of 6.25?" the actor asked in a tweet.

The answer is 2-1/2.

Sheen offered his replacement a welcome on Friday — sort of.

“Kutcher is a sweetheart and a brilliant comedic performer ... Oh, wait, so am I,” Sheen said.

***

Charlie is up to #25 on twitaholic passing Alicia Keys, ColdPlay, Shaq and TwitPic with 3,884,762 followers and is just behind Paris Hilton and Pink. However, he now doesn't appear to have any shot to catch Ashton Kutcher who is at #7 with 6,699,411.

[4/4/11] By all accounts, Charlie Sheen's traveling stage show, "My Violent Torpedo of Truth/Defeat is Not an Option," failed bigtime on its opening night. The sellout crowd at Detroit's Fox Theater on Saturday booed the erratic star, shouted for refunds, and walked out early, leading Sheen to curtail his appearance after an hour. His broadly reworked second show, in Chicago on Sunday, went better. But repercussions from his disastrous effort in Detroit are already souring ticket sales for the tour's remaining 20 or so stops.

[3/31/11] Charlie has made his way up to #29 with 3,353,073 users passing The New York Times, Perez Hilton, KAKA, Chelsea Handler, Jimmy Fallon.

[3/17/11] Charlie has now passed Google Support is up to #34 with 2,908,192 followers. Up next: The New York Times

[3/16/11] Charlie has passed Luciano Huck and is now #35.

[3/15/11] Charlie has passed Lance Armstrong, Nicki Minaj, Snoop Dogg and is now #36 with 2,815,786 followers. Up next: Luciano Huck, Google Support, The New York Times.

[3/14/11] Charlie is up to #39 with 2,752,467 followers, passing Conan, The Onion, Khloe Kardashian, Soulja Boy, E! Online. Just ahead: Lance Armstrong, Nicki Minaj (hip hop artist from Trinidad), Snoop Dogg, Luciano Huck (Brazilian television personality).

[3/10/11] Charlie is now up to #48 with 2,482,522 followers, passing Time.com, People Magazine, and Ashlee Simpson Wentz. Just ahead of him are Conan, Khloe Kardashian, and Jonas Brothers.

[3/10/11] Sheen filed a lawsuit Thursday against Warner Bros. and "Two and a Half Men" producer Chuck Lorre for $100 million, plus punitive damages, TMZ reports.

Sheen, 45, is demanding he get paid for the eight "Two and a Half Men" episodes that were canceled this year, and he's also suing to gain lost wages and benefits for the show's crew.

Sheen's lawyer Marty Singer drafted the suit, and, according to TMZ, writes in the preamble: "Chuck Lorre, one of the richest men in television who is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, believes himself to be so wealthy and powerful that he can unilaterally decide to take money away from the dedicated cast and crew of the popular television series, 'Two and a Half Men,' in order to serve his own ego and self-interest, and make the star of the Series the scapegoat for Lorre's own conduct."

[3/9/11] Charlie is up to 51 with 2,368,290 passing Al Gore, Tony Hawk, and NBA and is just behind Time.com, People Magazine, and Ashlee Simpson Wentz.

[3/8/11] Charlie is now up to 58 with 2,215,685 followers. Just ahead of John Legend and just behind Al Gore. Soon to fall: Tony Hawk, NBA, Time.com, People Magazine. Conan may take two or three days. Teamcoco is 47 with 2,570,746 followers. Looking live at Charlie's account, he has 2,277,644 followers. Conan has 2,586,251 and is still following 1 person.

[3/8/11] Charlie fired from Two and a Half Men

[3/6/11] Charlie Sheen has jumped from 112 to 85 with 1,895,761 followers. Two spots ahead of him? Denise Richards! Oddly, going to his actual page, Charlie has "only" 1,810,129 followers.

[3/5/11] Charlie Sheen now has 1,755,443 twitter followers and apparently set the record of most followers in a 24 hour period.

Still has a ways to go to catch Oprah who has 5,250,998 followers and Ashton Kutcher who has 6,407,439.

Looking now at twitaholic, Oprah is only tenth and Kutcher sixth. The others in the top eight (starting from number nine): Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Ellen, Kim Kardashian, Barack Obama, Britney Spears, Justin Beiber, Lady Gaga.

Charlie Sheen is currently 112th with 1,707,580 and rising. Just behind John McCain and just ahead of Women's Wear Daily. He'll probably break into the top 100 in a day or two.

... Here's how fast Charlie's followers have grown:

3/1/11 - 141,468
3/2/11 - 837,124
3/3/11 - 1,244,318
3/4/11 - 1,551,589
3/5/11 - 1,707,580

So it's slowing down with the big jump of nearly 600K on 3/2 and only 150K on 3/5.

[2/28/11, posted 3/10] Charlie Sheen: bi-winning

Thursday, March 03, 2011