Day: August 6, 2009

MasterChugs Theater: ‘Funny People’

Comedy is always serious business, whether the joke is on the funnyman with the pie in the kisser or the woman trying, really trying, to fall for the schnook who didn’t use the condom. Funny People, the latest from Judd Apatow, the director of the hit comedies Knocked Up and The 40-Year-Old Virgin and a prolific producer, is being pitched as a bid at gravity, earnestness, adulthood, whatever. It’s an angle that sounds as if it had been cooked up by a studio flack to explain how words like divorce and death got tangled in with all the penis (and thereabouts) jokes. But the only difference is that now, Judd Apatow also seems almost lethally serious about being Judd Apatow.

Which is kind of ironic, considering the Judd Apatow name has essentially become synonymous with a new style of comedy. While Apatow has only directed 3 films including Funny People, he has written and produced countless films such as Anchorman, Step Brothers, Talladega Nights, Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Pineapple Express-each movie carrying a distinct comedic style known as Apatow comedy. The stories all have similar themes, man children trying to grow up, hot chicks liking geeky guys, hard-core bromance; essentially coming of age stories for adults.

So the question is does Funny People live up to the Apatow legacy? Honestly, like this movie, the answer is a conundrum. Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: ‘Funny People’

Bill Clinton: The DP in your RK

"Tell me where you're misunderstood."Some news companies (that begin with an “F” and end with an “X”) have suggested that Bill Clinton freed the two American journalist captives by rewarding Kim Jong Il, that his presence gave North Korea “status and bragging rights.”

Other news companies (that begin with an “A” and end with a “P”) suggest otherwise: he nagged them to capitulation.

Get ready for your ‘Webmaster’ to block this site

Do you have any idea how many hacks we had to write into SG to make it readable in IE6?

If you’re reading this at work, then chances are pretty good that it’s through Microsoft Internet Explorer 6, isn’t it? We’re sure you don’t want to, that you use Firefox or Opera at home, but your company just won’t upgrade to IE 8 because of “security reasons.”

Oh, yeah. IE’s up to version 8. Remember how your IT department said not to upgrade to 7, yet? Anyone in sales knows that “yet” generally means never, especially when their barely functioning intranet (look for the .asp) was hastily put together back in 2001 and won’t work on more streamlined browsers.

Well, it appears that the Internet hears your cries and is rebelling with a netroots “IE 6 No More” campaign.

Either they’ll win and your office will finally upgrade, or you’ll eventually be unable to browse any Web site written before the first season of American Idol. (We’ll always have the hamster dance.)

Dentists have officially begun defecating themselves

Hate going to the dentist? Can’t stand the sound of the drill or the smell of powdered tooth? Afraid of anaesthetic injections or getting gassed? Worry no more. Those same cagey individuals that brought you The Glubber may make contemporary dental operations obsolete.

Researchers at Tokyo University have taken stem cells and used them to give a mouse some new teeth. The cells were taken from a mouse embryo and cultivated, growing a new tooth “seed,” a lump of tissue with the genetic ingredients needed to grow into a tooth that was then implanted to in place of a lost molar.

Over about a month and a half, the tooth sprouted and grew to match the dimensions of its neighbors, with the same hardness and qualities of any normal tooth, including nervous and vascular connections that most replacement teeth can’t duplicate. Someday in the future, a dentist might be able to fill a cavity by just slapping on some painless organic gel and sending you home. Like the aforementioned fish, the tooth also glows in the dark, for display purposes.

In the research team’s experiments, the fluorescent glowing dye was a side point, but it isn’t hard to imagine bio-luminescent add-ons catching on in the future. Imagine showing off your new glowing teeth to your friends, or even growing a full head of fluorescent pink hair. It could mean a whole bio-punk movement: body modification taken to the next glowing level. We’ll never sleep again.