We spent most of Saturday afternoon in Darkside Cinema at the da Vinci Film Festival encore.

I loved the feature documentary In Pursuit of Panama by first-time filmmakers and lifelong friends Garrett Martin and Ryan Swan. The film is Kerouac-like, both genuine and inspiring. It’s a truly funny, coming-of-age story about a seven-country road trip that starts in Corvallis, Oregon. I definitely recommend it, if you can find it. (Personal sidebar: The experience of watching it approximated the feel I wanted to create with my first novel . . . that I never actually finished.) See the trailer at their website.

More movies

Last weekend I also watched Timecrimes, which was very good and reminded me of Primer. I love the exploration of time-travel paradoxes. See other films I’ve rated and reviewed at Filmometer.com.

Here is some interesting news: “Neuromancer movie in the works (no, really this time!).” The attached director is Joseph Kahn. You may know him as the director of Britney Spears’ “Toxic” and “Stronger” music videos. As well as Destiny’s Child’s “Say My Name” . . . and a Blink-182 music video . . . and a horrible feature with Ice Cube called Torque . . . and . . . I am afraid. I really want Neuromancer to be awesome.

On that note: “After Watchmen, What’s ‘Unfilmable’? These Legendary Texts.”

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus received a standing ovation at Cannes Film Festival this May but has not yet been picked up for U.S. distribution. Read more: “Terry Gilliam’s Final Cut for Heath Ledger and Imaginarium.”

The Orwellian satire Visioneers starring Zach Galifianakis looks very interesting as well.

It’s refreshing that Michael Bay has progressed to this current point in his career, where he’s willing to be a parody of himself. He’s really become the ultimate artist the postindustrial world has been waiting for. See: Verizon Commercial – Michael Bay EXTENDED. Groan.

Browsing the Web from 10,000 feet

This is very cool: Pixamix. It’s an experiment that reduces any site to its core color mood (i.e., giant pixels of color).

Resignation

Vanity Fair edits Palin’s bizarre, incoherent resignation speech into publishable shape: “Palin’s Resignation: The Edited Version.” Wow.

Ice cream

Will they succeed in making ice cream fall from the sky like snow? Check it out: “The Cloud Project Would Theoretically Make Ice Cream Fall Like Snow.”

I am reminded of a few weeks ago when I ate Cold Stone ice cream that melted into JELL-O pudding (mentioned here and here on Twitter). That was fun.

I enjoyed the variety of cool illustrations (and Mario wallpaper) by smashmethod on deviantART.

Take a look at these awesome Ghost in the Machine cassette tape portraits from iri5 on Flickr. There are also some portraits created from old film and reels.

The Periodic Table of Controllers (console and handheld) is nice too. More nostalgia.

Brackets

This year’s NCAA Tournament has been a disappointment for fans of underdogs (and those who try to be creative with their office-pool picks). In the Sweet 16, we have the following seeds remaining in the four regions: 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-5 and 1-2-3-12 (and the lone 12-seed is tournament perennial Arizona). Boring! Here’s an article that analyzes this trend: “Powerful programs take over Sweet 16.” I hope the Final Four isn’t all 1-seeds again like last year or I will completely lose interest.

Speaking of brackets, here’s some ESPN malarkey for you: Who is the king of meats? And will the cereal champion be a sugary or healthy brand?

Forms of narcissism

I found this to be a useless but amusing connection between two misunderstood web applications: “Giant Typewriter in Second Life That Outputs to Twitter.”

Perhaps you would like to take Dr. Drew’s Narcissistic Personality Inventory, which is a 40-question survey that reflects your level of narcissism (composed of vanity, entitlement, exhibitionism, exploitiveness, authority, self-sufficiency and superiority). The average score for the general population is 15.3. The average score for celebrities is 17.8. The quiz is apparently from Dr. Drew’s new book, The Mirror Effect: How Celebrity Narcissism is Seducing America. Good title. Hmm, who knew that celebrities are more in love with themselves than the average person?

The undefeated Penn State’s women’s volleyball team completed a historic run today: “Back-to-Back National Champions! Nittany Lions Down Stanford, 3-0, to Take the Title.” Penn State (38-0) finished the season with a 114-2 individual game record and pushed its current NCAA-record match winning streak to 64.

In other sports-related news (from June): “The funny people who run the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow site are so frightened of gays that they’ve set up a filter to change every instance of the word ‘gay’ to ‘homosexual.’” Read the complete article: “Homophobic news site changes athlete Tyson Gay to Tyson Homosexual.” I was amused by this user’s comment about so-called “family” organizations in the United States: “If you put the word ‘Family’ in your group’s name, I think your collective IQ drops to near lethal levels of stupidity.”

See lucky video clips involving sports events, vehicles and real life: La Chance Compilation.

Speaking of chance, this story from China is incredible: “Weather rocket kills man and blows up his body at cremation.” Yes, apparently firing shells into the atmosphere to break up hail does work: “China to use missiles to control Olympic weather.” But sometimes there are human costs to weather control, like . . . exploding men. Hooray for missile rain! Weather control is the future! Also, whoops: “Massive New Chinese Missile Base Uncovered.” Are we afraid yet?

While we think about our sci-fi future, let’s see what Keanu Reeves has to say about aliens, superpowers and why typewriters are better than computers. Wait, what? Read the interview: “Keanu Reeves’ Low-Tech Life.”

Look out, Mr. Johnson! is a fun Flash game with unique method of controlling the main character. Basically you have to protect Mr. Johnson by scaring him using another character, the Pink Ghost. It’s challenging to get the hang of it. Watch out for the zombies! They’re the future!

Last week’s news

In other Jesus news: A woman who has been suffering for years with various medical ailments believes she can see the image of the Virgin Mary in an MRI of her brain, and is auctioning the image to raise money. Watch this video: “Virgin Mary in woman’s brain?” Slow news day?

The New York Times tells us how to make a living on YouTube: “YouTube Videos Pull In Real Money.”

I don’t know if this is happening in Oregon, but recycling programs are disappearing around the country due to economic conditions: “Back at Junk Value, Recyclables Are Piling Up.”

Burritos

Last week I was having a discussion with some friends about burrito places in Corvallis and the unstoppable “fast casual” (halfway fast-food crap) or “Fresh Mex” dining phenomenon. As far as chain restaurants, there’s the new Chipotle (McDonald’s used to own a majority stake) that just opened on Monroe Avenue, plus there’s Qdoba (owned by Jack in the Box), Baja Fresh (used to be owned by Wendy’s) and Taco del Mar (doesn’t appear to be owned by any larger corporation of doom). As a side note, a friend pointed out that the evolution of the Burger King logo is kind of awesome (see Burger King logos). (BK doesn’t appear to own any fast casual chain, but they were bought out several years ago.) Regarding Corvallis restaurants, there does not appear to be a specific burrito category in The Alchemist’s first annual Alchy Awards. However, there is a “Best Mexican Restaurant” category, which includes El Presidente, El Sol de Mexico, La Conga (AKA Rigoberto’s), ZIA, Bombs Away Café, La Rockita and Tacos Uruapan.

Movies and amusements

Here are a couple of funny stand-up bits from comedian Patton Oswalt: At Midnight I Will Kill George Lucas With A Shovel and Racist Cell Phones, Birth Control, and A Stupid Heckler.

Speaking of George Lucas-related crap, I give you Shia LaBeouf in “No No No NOo” video. The Lucas-LaBeouf connection is Indiana Jones 4, which I think we can all agree never actually happened.

Here are some movie recommendations from Roger Ebert: “The best films of 2008… and there were a lot of them.”

I was thinking about Aronofsky’s The Wrestler starring Mickey Rourke and wondering (don’t ask me why) which of these tag teams of wrestlers would defeat the other. In the blue corner: Mickey Rourke, James Spader and David Duchovny. In the red corner: Jack Nicholson, James Spader and Christian Slater. FIGHT! (Yes, I know James Spader is in both groups. He somehow fits in with either team.)

I will end with three more weird/funny items: Zombies in Plain English, body parts made of bread and the Canadian “She-3PO” robot Aiko. (See this YouTube video featuring Aiko for this creepybot greatness: “I do not like it when you touch my breasts.”)

With wins this weekend, both the Oregon State Beavers (8-3) and the Penn State Nittany Lions (11-1) stayed on track for a rematch in the Rose Bowl.

OK, now I have some random entertainment for the week, most of it sent to me by friends and family:

The trailer for the forthcoming stop-motion animation film Coraline, by director Henry Selick (of The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach fame) and fantasy author Neil Gaiman, is now available. Looks awesome.

You may be interested in the addictive World of Goo game by 2D Boy. It’s an excellent physics-based puzzle/construction game. There’s a free game demo available for multiple platforms.

Here’s some classic stand-up from comedian Joe Rogan: Devolution Of Stupid People and Noah’s Ark.

These Orange TV advertisements are pretty funny: Darth Vader and Steven Seagal.

Oh yes, we have Japanese Ronald McDonald Insanity.

A&E’s Biography featured Val Kilmer awhile back. He’s an eccentric guy with an interesting career story. Watch part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5 and part 6.

Lilia Stepanova seems to be a one-trick performer, but it’s an alluring trick. Lilia showed off her contortionist archery skills on America’s Got Talent (during which Hasselhoff nearly wet himself) and also starred in a commercial for a Danish financial company.

Robot Chicken’s recent “Star Wars Episode II” was pretty good. South Park’s twelfth season ended three days ago with “The Ungroundable.”

Check out the Atlanta Zoo’s Panda Cam to see a panda mom with cub. Also: “Sci-Fi Ray Gun Debuts in Iraq.”

Have a Happy Thanksgiving.

If you didn’t see it, be sure to check out the Americans’ amazing gold-medal comeback performance in the men’s 4×100 freestyle relay: “Lezak runs down French to win relay gold for U.S.” This means that Michael Phelps’ quest for eight gold medals at one Olympics is still alive. ESPN has provided some classic sports achievements to compare to the 400 relay: “Dramatic relay latest among fantastic Olympic, sports finishes.”

The first episode of Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People is out. It’s titled “Homestar Ruiner.”

So, if celebrity deaths come in threes . . . (OK, wait, put your critical thinking abilities on hold and let’s pretend we aren’t forming patterns from random data) . . . did Estelle Getty from “Golden Girls” begin the trilogy of deaths that Bernie Mac and Isaac “Chef” Hayes just finished? Or was Estelle part of an earlier series, maybe the one that included TV journalist Tim Russert? Should we be waiting for a third? And does this game require all recently deceased individuals in the series to have something in common, such as profession or ethnicity or geographic location, in order to complete the series? Can I get a ruling?

Speaking of rulings, The Onion reports: “Supreme Court Rules Death Penalty Is ‘Totally Badass’” and will continue to rule on the basis of awesomeness rather than constitutionality.

In music-related news: The Year Zero Case Study is a great overview of the alternate reality game based on the Nine Inch Nails concept album of the same name. Radiohead and aniBoom have chosen four grand winners in the In Rainbows Animated Music Video Contest. And people keep making cool stuff with the “House of Cards” 3D animation data that Radiohead released last month, such as a time-lapse LEGO bricks interpretation of the song.