Hey Flipper! Feast Your Eyes on This Beauty!

My post of earlier in the night was pretty depressing.

But then, with Spec's help, I found a new way to make WWYG?! even more thrilling--and that has made me pretty happy and taken up a lot of my time tonight, getting something ready.

So, I present to you: Why Won't You Video?!

Of course, because it's me I may be changing the look of the site a bit as time goes on.

Keep in mind that WWYV?! is not hosted by Blogger, so it doesn't have the uniformity of design that I have striven to maintain up to this point.

But moving pictures helps to mitigate that shortcoming, don't you think?

The context for this inaugural video clip can be explained here, over here, possibly here and maybe here. You might also try here, but I am sure that she will provide some angry context before it's over as well.

I sometimes wonder

if this is all there is. I know that sounds really terrible and actually now that I think about it more it sounds REALLY terrible.

I almost want to just delete this and act like I never started the post, but I think I'll continue.

So, why terrible? Well, for me to ask, "Is this all there is" is awful considering that I have SO MUCH more than about 99 percent of the planet. I've got everything I could EVER need and yet I still get to the end of a week of work (that wasn't even filled with pressure, stress, or tons of deadlines), eat dinner, pick up after the kids, get them to bed and well, then what . . . ?

Tegan is working so hard, she is taking the chance to just go to bed. So, what am I going to do all alone? I could flip through endless channels of useless TV; I could read a book until I inevitably start falling asleep, I could try to fiddle around with various blog ideas and projects that I have in mind but are all sort of long-term things; I could watch a movie.

All of these things just seem to be time fillers, things to do when you don't have anything more worthwhile to do.

The truth is, I'm bored--and I feel really bad about admitting it. I am ashamed because I see every day how hard Tegan is working to get her project done and I hear every day about how difficult it is to stay focused and positive. Meanwhile, I'm in limbo between my own work projects--one wrapping up and the other not yet fully formed and ready for me to pursue. I am grateful that I am not pulling out my hair worried, but I am guilty about it as well.

I guess that is me . . . worried about being ungrateful and feeling guilty that I am not saving the world or doing Something Important.

Random thought--If Sartre argued that "Hell is Other People" (didn't he say that, in so many words, in No Exit?), then maybe I say Hell is Laundry. No matter how much of it you do, no matter how well you may do it, no matter the feeling of accomplishment and completion you achieve when it is folded and put away . . . it's coming back in five to seven days and there you are doing it all over again.

So, what is the point? Maybe I should go do someone else's laundry, so I can get the feeling of completion and accomplishment and they will have one less thing to fret about. I could start my own Laundry Brigade that travels around, taking the tedium of laundry out of someone else's hands, so that they can free themselves to achieving their own goals.

But then I'm sublimating my own goals in favor of others. Is doing other people's laundry truly the best thing I can think to do with my life?

The Day After I Began Admiring the Gyllenhaal

Relax, okay?

He'll NEVER be Tobey.

But he's more talented than Fabio.

These thoughts came to me the other night as I watched The Day After Tomorrow and soon upon the tails of watching Donnie Darko. So, maybe I've got the Gyllenhaal on the brain and don't really admire him at all. His image is just shifted up into the short term memory area of the brain's cortex. (Or maybe I now know what Flipper is like every day when she walks around. Her brain's cortex has probably carved out its own little Gyllenhaal area.)

Anyway, I am sure that when Spiderman 3 comes out next summer (TOO FAR AWAY!) I'm quickly displace Jake with the Tobey. In the meantime, I'll try to scrub it all clean by watching The Ice Storm or something.

As for TDAT, it is standard summertime fare that I finally got around to watching. Maybe it seemed more dramatic because I was watching it Tuesday night/Wednesday morning as the lightning and thunder flashed and rolled outside my windows.

I was struck by the fact that Jake's character never has a moment's hesitation about anything that he is going to do. At one point, in order to save the life of his cute girlfriend, Jake must collect medicine from a Russian tanker that has run aground in the urban canyons of NYC. But to get the medicine, he has to experience the super-cold storm that is inflicting a new ice age upon the Northern Hemisphere. Remember that his meteorologist father (Dennis Quaid) has ALREADY warned Jake that this storm is so cold that he could be frozen to death instantly! But Jake is so noble and heroic that he never hesitates to expose himself to the cold. And, while on the ship he has to crawl out one ship window and shimmy along a icy/frozen metal pole to access the room with the medicine. And after THAT he has to outwit CGI wolves that are also roaming the ship! WHEW!

But throughout it all, Our Man Jake soldiers on, never making a mistake, doubting his actions, second-guessing, nothing.

Forget having your own personal soundtrack . . . I want my own personal screen writer!

*******

On to other media news.

Shannon died on LOST last night and I am not too sad. (I called it accurately, by the way.)

I did wonder today if, since we didn't actually see her dead and buried besides Boone, it might be possible that Jack could save her. After all, it was only a gut shot, right? I mean, Charlie didn't die and he was hung up in a tree by CrazyTomCruise'sCrazyCousin.

But then, I read this.

So, I guess it really is goodbye to Shannon.

(The funniest part of the articled linked above is Jorge Garcia's mother worrying that Sawyer might die. Hey mom, what about your son's character, hmmm? I mean, doesn't "Everybody Love Hugo"?)

Toys! Lists! Fun for EVERYONE!

Hey kid! Watch where you're putting that hand, okay? We're underage, after all!

Yep, it's another one of those posts, featuring links to another website that foists another list of 100 things to be ranked and discussed.

But this one is a British website and the subject is toys! Crank up your nostalgia generator and dive in!

You'll love the oh-so-British descriptions of some of these items, most of which were created for British children. But you'll see familiar toys that broke the cultural and geographic barriers of our two countries.

After all, if we can get together on our love of Weebles, then maybe this world can become a better place after all.

I counted 34 of the 100 toys that I either owned myself or played with on a regular basis at neighbors homes. The two most startling things--the inclusion of the Evel Knievel toy that I absolutely played with all the time as a young lad of the 1970s (he also shares my October birthday, dontcha know) and the odd and sad British version of the Death Star. My Death Star playset wasn't cardboard, but rather a three-storied plastic transport to wonder that was a fabulous thing. That Christmas morning was one of the best ever . . .

(Thanks to Pop Culture Junk Mail for the original link.)

Can you help?

If you have been keeping up lately, you know that I watched Donnie Darko the other night. At the end of the movie, there is a really great song, "Mad World" that plays during the final scene. This song, originally written by Tears for Fears is covered in the movie by Michael Andrews.

I really like this version of the song and wanted it for my iPod. Unfortunately Apple's iTunes Music Store won't let you download that song. You can download every other song on the soundtrack, but not that one. To get that song, you have to download the entire album--spending $10 to get a $0.99 song! Outrageous.

And judging by some the reviewers of others who visited the Music Store, they were upset by the same issue. Though some were swayed by the entire soundtrack over time, they initially went to the store in search of that song alone.

Flipper suggested that I borrow a copy of the soundtrack from the metropolitan library system. I searched for it and found that no library in the system has a copy of the soundtrack of this somewhat obscure film.

So, now I'm stuck . . . jonesing for a song I can't get!

In desperation, I am turning to the impersonal void of the internet. If there is anyone that reads this post that happens to own the soundtrack, would you mail it to me? I can rip a copy and mail it right back, I promise.

Anyone?

Hello?