Archive for July, 2009

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Desert Island Actors

Posted in Jeff Holland, Threat Quality on July 31, 2009 by braak

Here’s a fun mental exercise for Friday, couched into a dramatic scenario. desert-islandThe situation is this:

You are trapped on a desert island, with no hope of rescue. The island is so small that exploring it will only engage your interest for a week or two, tops. There is no companionship, nobody to talk to, not even so much as a volleyball to stuff with hair and imbue with a personality. (On the other side of things, you are a pretty serviceable fisherman, so food is not a serious concern.)

What you DO have, is a TV and DVD player, hooked to an otherworldly, eternal power source. And a plane is coming, with a cargo full of DVDs that it just might drop onto your tiny island. You have just enough rocks at your disposal to write the names of three actors or actresses that the plane might see.

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“You wanna dance?” NO I DO NOT.

Posted in Threat Quality with tags , , on July 29, 2009 by braak

So. Let’s talk about strip clubs.

(And that’s how Threat Quality became a popular website!)

I am somewhere between proud Dancerand embarrassed (proubarrassed?) to say that before my friend’s bachelor party this past weekend, I had never been to a strip club.

This was never a hard-line decision I made out of ideology or anything. Though I was always a little concerned that I’d end up making friends with the strippers and suggesting courses they could take at the community college (much like Tracy Morgan’s “30 Rock” character likes to proselytize to transvestite hookers to enroll them in data entry classes).

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Short Fiction: The Uncanny Death of Ozymandius McKaye

Posted in Braak, Short Fiction with tags , on July 29, 2009 by braak

In history and geneology, there are innumerable highly-specialized and often under-appreciated fields of study.  The history of 16th century printer’s inks, for instance, is fully as rigorous as more popular fields (the history of mathematics, for instance, the history of the Medicis, the history of historians), and is yet generally considered to be a waste of precious, history-gathering resources.

The history of magic occupies a position much like this:  it is a difficult and often fascinating subject, and yet it’s fruits are considered to be full of empty calories.  What does it matter, really, how David Devant performed the Mascot Moth?  Who really cares whether or not Selbit was actually the first person to perform Sawing a Woman in Half?  And yet, no doubt in many respects because of the triviality of the results, historians in this field are some of the most enthusiastic and obsessive historians at work in the world.

There is one name that aggravates them to no end, one name that provokes exasperated sighs and groans of frustration, one name that is, without question, the most famous in the field:  Ozymandius McKaye.

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Summer Movie A-Go-Go: ‘Harry Potter VI’

Posted in Jeff Holland, reviews, Threat Quality with tags , , on July 28, 2009 by braak

HP1The short version: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is quite possibly the second-best film in the series so far (for my money 3-4 rank highest, but you have to note they were also the first two to break out of the Chris Columbus kids movie vibe, and the last two that could be digested easily as movies on their own, rather than build-ups to the finale).

The long(er) version: Director David Yates’ previous effort, Order of the Phoenix, by and large felt unsure what to focus on (the book has a bit of that feeling, too – after the “Voldemort is back!” proclamation that ends Goblet of Fire, too much of Phoenix is devoted to…well, not the fallout from Voldemort’s return), and so there’s not a lot about the fifth installment that’s really memorable outside of the final battle scene.

That’s not really the case here.

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Peculiar Trends in Advertising

Posted in Braak with tags , on July 27, 2009 by braak

I’m writing about this thing, because I’m having a hard time thinking of what to write about.  Threat Quality Press is gearing up, over the next month, to unveil FOUR exciting, new, SECRET PROJECTS, and those things are kind of distracting me.

But, I want to talk about this.  The other day, when I was going into Philadelphia for rehearsal, I saw billboards everywhere for something called “GoPhila.com.”  Or maybe just “GoPhila.”  This is a city organization that’s trying to increase tourism.  They post billboards like this:

xoxo_BigWorld Read more »

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This is why comicon is neat

Posted in Threat Quality on July 25, 2009 by braak

Iron Man anime written by Warren Ellis.

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Dystopia Needs Comedians

Posted in Jeff Holland, Threat Quality with tags , , , , on July 24, 2009 by braak

Every time some new poll comes out talking about how Jon Stewart has become our most trusted news anchor, the reaction on the comments threads (where everyone is civil, and has a reasonable opinion to add to the discussion), generally goes this way:

- “Yeah, I gotta agree, I get a lot of my news from the Daily Show.”
- “UM HELO, JON STEWART IS NOT A ANCHOR, HES A COMEDIAN WITH AN LIBERAL BIAS!”
- “Stewart would be the first to say he’s just a comedian, but the show tends to take shots at all sides.”
- “IM SO SICK OF JOHN STUARRT!!! OVERATED!!!!!!!!!!!”
- “Who wants to see upskirt pics of Mischa Barton?”

And so on in that fashion.

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Man Up (?)

Posted in Action Movies, Jeff Holland, Reason and Rhetoric, Threat Quality with tags , , , on July 23, 2009 by braak

What is the measure of a man?chuck_norris

Whoa, whoa! Slow down. I know you want to say “Chuck Norris,” but hear me out.

The internet-meme-turned-annoying-T-shirt-franchise Chuck Norris Facts is actually a solid starting point for our discussion, as the Ideal of Chuck Norris seems to have overtaken the man himself – at least, that’s what I gather after finding that www.chucknorrisfacts.com outranks the actor’s actual homepage on a Google search.

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Hey, here’s a crazy idea:

Posted in Braak with tags , on July 22, 2009 by braak

Dear Syfy:

You know how you have the rights to all those old SF TV shows like  Twilight Zone and Automan?  Why don’t you just set up a thing like Hulu, except you charge $3 a month and let me watch any of those shows whenever I want?  You could even set it up so that I could build my own TV station–two episodes of Star Trek, two episodes of Buck Rogers, whatever.

I mean, I know that I could probably find that stuff for free, if I were so inclined.  But security is really about convenience–it’s easier for me to pay $3 a month to watch the TV shows than it is for me to find shitty resolution copies on YouTube.  As long as you charge less than the work it takes for me to find it somewhere else, I’ll pay for it.  I mean, that’s basically the reason that anyone pays for anything, right?  You could put an ad on the shows, too, maybe make a little extra money out of it.  Call it SyFy:  Vyntage, or something.

I’m just kind of frustrated by this idea that I have to pay for all of cable if I only want to watch six television shows.

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Today in Books: Courtney Crumrin

Posted in Braak, reviews with tags , , on July 22, 2009 by braak

Actually, these are graphic novels, and they came out several years ago.

A While Ago in Graphic Novels:  Courtney Crumrin

Thanks.

So, Ted Naifeh’s got this comic series, available in digest form from Oni Press (here on Amazon).  This series has got to be the best fantasy comic series centered around a kid that I have ever read.  I am including Neil Gaiman’s Books of Magic in this (I actually think Books of Magic is kind of boring).

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