Day: August 17, 2009

The McBournie Minute: Still churning out crap, just a different shade

I’m not really sure what kind of a world we live in, anymore–at least as far as movies are concerned. Judd Apatow makes a serious (and disappointing) movie, Johnny Depp and Michael Mann somehow manage to flop at the box office, and some alien-Guantanamo thing is #1. What the hell?

The country right now is all about sequels or related spin-offs. Just take a gander at Transformers 2: Revenge of the Volume Dial and G.I. Joe. Hasbro is trying to get their nostalgia products formed into a movie genre aimed at the 25 and under crowd, plus toy sales. I get that movie makers want to stick with franchises that work, but do we really need a G.I. Joe 2?

Instead, let’s go with another Hasbro toy: Play-Doh. Continue reading The McBournie Minute: Still churning out crap, just a different shade

A riddle inside an enigma wrapped around a turd

A Regis Philbin is a solid indicator, too.At a time when it seems the 24-hour news networks aren’t aware of their own banality, CNN asks whether the media has payed too much attention to Jon and Kate Gosselin and the Octomom … in another f$#king article about the Gosselins and the Octomom.

The CNN piece mentions how Kate Gosselin gave an interview last week on NBC’s Today show and Live! With Regis & Kelly, and Nadya “Octomom” Suleman will appear in a two-hour special on Fox.

These are interesting points, except we’re talking about:

  • The Today Show and Regis, two morning zoo shows. These are the big networks’ equivalent of an alarm clock that annoys you out of bed, only with fake tans and cooking segments. Stupid interviews with sad people are kind of standard, considering most of the audience is unemployed or in waiting rooms.
  • Fox Two-Hour Specials. Previous Fox specials have included a bogus alien autopsy, the original When Animals Attack special and extra long segments of Cops and Jerry Springer.

So, way to go, CNN. You’ve managed to be the only “credible” source to cover vagina clown cars today.

Love potion number bird

Scientists believe that the hormone oxytocin is responsible for creating intimate bonds between humans … but there’s much more to it than just being Simpson & Son’s tonic, as new studies are showing: finches beware! It’s been reported that researchers at Indiana University have experimented with finches’ levels of mesotocin, the finch version of oxytocin:

When the scientists at IU gave drugs that block mesotocin receptors to zebra finches – which are normally highly social creatures – the birds spent much less time with familiar individuals and more time with unfamiliar individuals. They also preferred to hang out in smaller groups. By contrast, zebra finches given extra mesotocin became more social and spent more time with familiar faces… Intriguingly, the same paper suggests that the distribution of oxytocin receptors in the brain might help to explain why some animals are more social than others. When the researchers compared three flocking finch species with two territorial, aggressive species, they found that the more social species had more mesotocin receptors in a part of the brain called the lateral septum. Blocking these receptors made the birds become less social.

So there you have it: oxytocin – the chemical that will make you act like a jerk, whether or not you like someone. Also, how can you not like testing oxytocin on animals? You know that they’d do the same thing to us if they had opposable thumbs.

Bob Dylan: Famous, looks homeless

It’s not easy being Bob Dylan. Sure, he may have a lot of money and all, but he did give us the lead singer of The Wallflowers, so he had probably had a sense of guilt and need to make it up to the world.

Dylan was in New Jersey when a police officer thought he looked suspicious. The staff of a nearby hotel had reported a man walking around “a housing estate,” whatever that is. He was asked for his ID, it was only then the police officer realized her mistake. To be fair, Dylan was touring with Willie Nelson, who also looks suspicious.

Two years ago, a panic started in Dylan’s grandson’s school when a child told his or her parents that a man came to school and sang songs for them.