Old notes I can now trash.

For a few weeks now, I’ve had a draft on my WordPress dashboard that reads “crudity Seth MacFarlane all horror movies.” I don’t think it’s going to get written. As I recall, I started jotting notes while watching the first 20 minutes of “Ted,” the film MacFarlane wrote and directed, but realized if I was going to say anything intelligent about it, I’d have to watch the rest of it, and I couldn’t do that.

It occurs to me that, day after day, Mondays are the hardest to come up with something to say here. Not much happens to me on a Monday, unless you could two gingerly minces around the bock on the treacherous icy lumpy fuck, as well as a few phone calls and 12 million emails. I have but two things to offer today, one stolen from Eric Zorn’s link roundup, but a subject I’ve always wondered about: How do they make the yellow first-down line in televised football? Like this.

And here’s a seven-minute Philip Seymour Hoffman highlight reel, with NSFW language but some of his most memorable scenes:

I loved “The Savages.” Think I’ll Netflix it tonight, if it’s Netflixable.

For now, eh, a weak effort and I’m out.

Posted at 12:30 am in Movies, Same ol' same ol' |
 

48 responses to “Old notes I can now trash.”

  1. Dexter said on February 4, 2014 at 2:00 am

    Let’s say Budweiser beer is the brand the team and the local TV station that carries the hometown games pushes hard. And let’s say the Big Fox guys (last year Buck-McCarver, in 2014 it will likely be Buck-Smoltz) come to town for a national broadcast and they are pushing Miller Lite. Those ads we see by the on-deck batter, visible before every pitch, are not what the fans in the stands are seeing. It’s probably the same technology or close to it.

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  2. Deborah said on February 4, 2014 at 2:22 am

    Turns out Little Bird’s aunt (her father’s older sister) was one of the people incensed by the Super Bowl Coke ad. LB said her aunt screamed out something about speaking “American” if you live in America, when the ad came on. LB had lots of stories to tell about her trip to Texas for her grandfather’s memorial service.

    It snowed a bit here in Santa Fe, we certainly needed it.

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  3. Sherri said on February 4, 2014 at 2:28 am

    The yellow first down line was a great innovation in sports broadcasting. You can still see instances where the tech struggles, like during the snow games this season – the snow screwed up the palette.

    The tech in baseball broadcasts has really taken a leap forward, too, since they’re now able to track pitches. Televised baseball has also figured out how to add advertisements in the picture while making them look like part of the park; those ads behind the hitter are totally computer-generated, and not actually physically there.

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  4. Bowditch said on February 4, 2014 at 3:48 am

    You can thank my friend Stan Honey, who founded Sportvision, for the yellow line, and various other pieces of sports TV CG wizardry. One of the brightest EEs I ever met, and also a world famous navigator, both on his own Cal 40, Illusion, and various ocean racing teams. He holds the world record as navigator and tactician for the Jules Verne Circumnavigation on Groupama 3, completing the course in 48 days, 8 hours.

    The baseball pitch tracker was his also.

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  5. Jolene said on February 4, 2014 at 6:48 am

    “The Savages” is not on Netflix, but you can rent it for a few bucks through Amazon or iTunes. I love this movie too and watched it just a few weeks ago.

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  6. Dorothy said on February 4, 2014 at 8:31 am

    Lots to smile about and celebrate on the comments yesterday. Firstly, basset, like WOW, too close for comfort about that plane crash! Yikes. And Kirk I really did laugh out loud at your comment at 75! Still laughing in fact, but oh so accurate! And Dexter, the Brando story was pretty neato too.

    Thanks for all the love about the job news yesterday. I’m really on cloud eight. Nine will be when I know my son is back on US soil in a short period of time. And by the end of next week I hope I can share a picture of me hugging him. You already know I’ll be the one with really red eyes and a wet face from happy tears! He doesn’t hide his emotions well, either, so don’t be surprised if his face is wet, too.

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  7. beb said on February 4, 2014 at 8:39 am

    Even if it were only half-formed thought I would be interested in yhearing more about your thoughts on Seth McFarlane’s Ted. “Crudity” and “Seth McFarlane” of course goes without saying. Sometimes I think the only reason Family Guy remains on the air is to see how vulgar McFarlane can get and not get banned. But what is the relationship between “all horror movies” and Ted?

    Right-wing gasbag Erik Erikson apparently doesn’t understand the outrage felt by his fellow bloviators over the Coca Cola ad. Does this mean he has a shred of intelligence? Either way, it’s off to the re-education camps for him.

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  8. nancy said on February 4, 2014 at 8:41 am

    I was thinking the other day, beb, that I can no longer watch contemporary horror movies. They are so preposterously blood-drenched they simply gross me out too much. Add the far darker themes of torture and madness, and I’m just outta there.

    This was all prompted by watching “The Shining” with Kate, which is positively chaste in comparison.

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  9. Judybusy said on February 4, 2014 at 9:50 am

    Dorothy, what great news for you! So glad everything’s coming together…

    In totally unrelated news, I thought the Lincoln buffs would like to know about a new book about Lincoln’s secretary and how the helped frame how we see the 16th President. Of course, this may not be news to the aficianados, but I’m putting it on my to read list. The Smithsonian magazine had an article based on the book.

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  10. Bitter Scribe said on February 4, 2014 at 10:04 am

    Funny thing about “Ted”…I loathe “Family Guy” and, when MacFarlane did that “We Saw Your Boobs” number at the Oscars, I kept hoping one of the actresses he was insulting would walk up to the podium and kick him in his punk crotch. So when “Ted” came on in a hotel room, I fully expected to hate it and watched it only out of curiosity as to when it would become repulsive enough to force me to turn it off.

    Surprise, I really liked it! It was genuinely funny and touching. Yes, you get the usual thing about the stoner loser with a ridiculously hot girlfriend, but a lot of movies do that. He didn’t even overdo the gross stuff, IMO. (It helped that Norah Jones was on hand to soft-pedal that.)

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  11. brian stouder said on February 4, 2014 at 10:30 am

    JudyBusy – looks interesting indeed.

    Years (and years!) ago, William Safire wrote a book that I enjoyed very much – titled (iirc) Freedom, which was one of the first Lincoln books I read, and which introduced me to John Hay – who would be the star of the movie, if they put it on the big screen.

    The book was really great, and included an “underbook” that went chapter by chapter and pointed out what was true and what was invented (Safire inserted a quiet romance between Hay and Kate Chase, iirc)

    So in addition to your book, I may have to look at that old Safire book again. (Is he still alive?)

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  12. Deborah said on February 4, 2014 at 10:43 am

    Brian, I had to google iirc, for those of you like me, who don’t know: if I recall correctly.

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  13. brian stouder said on February 4, 2014 at 10:54 am

    Deborah – this is why I bet you were an “A” student while I was generally not!

    Your comment prompted me to google Mr Safire, may he rest in peace, who (I learned) has been dead since September 2009.

    And I didn’t even know he was sick!

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  14. Judybusy said on February 4, 2014 at 11:14 am

    And here I thought your were just politely burping, Brian….

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  15. brian stouder said on February 4, 2014 at 11:18 am

    Years of my lovely wife elbowing me for that have pretty much reigned in the habit; except now if I do burp I also go into a reflexive, defensive posture…

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  16. Dexter said on February 4, 2014 at 11:42 am

    I guess because I have invested several hours over a couple seasons, I feel compelled to keep watching “The Following”. I read a year go that this was a vehicle strictly designed for Kevin Bacon to recoup the losses he took in the Madoff debacle. I read that Bacon himself pitched the storyline. This damn thing is ridiculous, horrid constant murders in bloody and sick fashion. Ryan (Bacon) just smarter than the rest of the cops but not as smart as “Joe Carroll”, the villian with the soft Brit accent. And so, through subways and on buses and in cars, the pack of rats scurries around the area, always eluding the FBI and the rest of the pursuers. I gave up on “True Blood” when it left the rails and turned into a special effects glam-o-rama. bah…

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  17. Icarus said on February 4, 2014 at 12:10 pm

    Netflixable a new verb like Google?

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  18. brian stouder said on February 4, 2014 at 12:24 pm

    Icarus, I’m thinkin’ the “able” suffix makes it an adjective….

    until people says “I netflixed that movie and hated it” (or whatever) and turn it into a verb.

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  19. Connie said on February 4, 2014 at 12:40 pm

    Some of my facebook friends are rooting for Ken Ham in tonight’s Ken Ham/ Bill Nye debate on creationism. Because the Bible. One said that the Bible says “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” and thus all Christians should be creationists. I am kind of horrified to learn that some of my well educated friends feel this way. I wonder if they think the earth is 6,000 years old.

    So must all Christians be creationists as a requirement of their faith? Must you believe in the literalness of the bible? Help me figure this out.

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  20. brian stouder said on February 4, 2014 at 1:27 pm

    It was news to me when I learned, some years ago, that old fashioned Catholics really discouraged individuals reading their own bibles, let alone approving a particular edition of the bible.

    Makes sense, though

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  21. Julie Robinson said on February 4, 2014 at 1:38 pm

    Connie, many Christians believe that evolution IS the method God used to create the heavens and the earth, even many scientists like NIH head Francis Collins. Biblical scholars who have studied primitive peoples’ creation myths have noted large similarities with Genesis.

    But which Genesis, chapter 1 or chapter 2? They are completely different accounts with different orders of creation (and likely came from different sources). There’s no possible way to reconcile them, and literalists get themselves in trouble very quickly. That doesn’t mean they don’t try, but it’s a lot of twisted semantics.

    Brian, one of Luther’s main emphases was to get the word of God into people’s hands. If you believe God made your brain, then there is no reason to fear knowledge.

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  22. LAMary said on February 4, 2014 at 1:44 pm

    Briefly back to the polenta discussion of a few days ago:

    http://www.tastingtable.com/entry_detail/national/16181/The_Piedmontese_polenta_dish_were_obsessing_over.htm?utm_medium=email&utm_source=national&utm_campaign=Whole_Lotta_Love_2014_02_04&utm_content=Cooking_editorial

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  23. beb said on February 4, 2014 at 1:45 pm

    Biblical literalism began with the protestent movement which dethroned the Pope as the infallible authority on all things religious. Since most people seem to expect their religious to be authoritarian and infallible. With a shortage of prophets and the general unreliability of them, protestants turns to the Bible and declared that every word of it has to be the direct word of God — ever that parts the contradict the other parts.

    Lately, though, people have just gotten stupid about reading the bible. So God created the Heavens and the Earth. How does that contradict the Big Bang theory? One can ask why there was a big bag and answer because God! And there’s nothing in Genesis that rules out God using evolution to create plants and animals. Sure it says seven “days” but who’s to day that those were man’s days or God’s, or that a day for God could be a 100 million years. People who think the Earth is only 6000 years old have a warped and stunted view of what God can do. The best proof of evolution is our horrible sinuses. If we had been designed by an intelligent designer, the sinuses would had the drain at the bottom and not half way up.

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  24. Connie said on February 4, 2014 at 2:09 pm

    Debater Ken Ham believes the earth is 6,000 years ago and that humans lived with dinosaurs. And has displays about that at his Creation Museum. It’s that world view that baffles me.

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  25. Sherri said on February 4, 2014 at 2:12 pm

    I was happy to see that the Super Bowl commercials were free of the crude humor that has been so typical the last few years, as well as being free of the bimbo genre. Even Godaddy has changed its ad strategy (as well as its CEO; I suspect those two things are related.)

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  26. LAMary said on February 4, 2014 at 2:16 pm

    Connie, I believe that’s the Flinstones interpretation of the Bible. Remember Dino?

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  27. susan said on February 4, 2014 at 2:43 pm

    I suppose creationists have a way to explain this, unless their heads explode first, which would be a good thing.

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  28. Kirk said on February 4, 2014 at 2:54 pm

    Sherri, you must have missed the Oikos yogurt spot.

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  29. brian stouder said on February 4, 2014 at 2:59 pm

    If that’s the commercial I think it was, Kirk has the pun of the day!

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  30. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on February 4, 2014 at 3:17 pm

    Even St. Augustine, in 400 AD, suggested that the days of creation were metaphorical. Creationism is a modern creation, regardless of the citations one can pull from patristics and the various ancient commentators that sound similar to their line.

    YEC, or “Young Earth Creationism” is where Ham is putting all his eggs. YEC is strict inerrancy as to scriptural interpretation, and holds that the Earth and everything was created in October of 4004 BC, so six thousand years old, because that’s what you get with the Bishop Ussher analysis of the ages of all characters mentioned in the Bible.

    Some conservative Christians hold to a restorational or progressive view of creation which says that a literal view only kicks in with the creation/designation/divine breath into the historical figures Adam and Eve as early historic/culturally recognizable humans, with some support for a Noahide flood as more regional, or “the whole world they knew”.

    And then you get the almost (to me) more intolerable neo-creationists who just like playing the ID game of “well, evolution doesn’t explain everything, what about (insert cause du jour here, like “the eye” etc.). Michael Behe and the Discovery Institute is more in this camp.

    Then you get the not inconsiderable number of liberal/progressive/moderate evangelical Christians, mostly in the mainline bodies, and lots of company from Catholics and even Orthodox folk, who say “metaphor and simile is the heart of how the Bible speaks to us of God, and literalism is always going to tie you to sinking ships of passing cultural conditions.” Creation in the Bible, for them, is an affirmation about the purpose and meaning and ultimate destiny of creation in the hands of God, but God’s thumbprints don’t have to be identified on each species’ baby photos. The Bible speaks of and to creation as a gift and a responsibility to we human creatures made from the dust, from “adamah” as it is in Hebrew.

    Did that cover it?

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  31. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on February 4, 2014 at 3:21 pm

    Sorry, typing without re-reading (I miss “edit”): ID is “intelligent design,” which is less a stalking horse for creationism as it is a neo-intellectual attempt to say “science can’t explain everything, and I want to argue for my belief as having equal weight with scientific so-called impartiality.” To be fair to ID proponents, they take the classic liberal “hermeneutic of suspicion” and flip it on the scientific consensus. But most ID adherents tend to be petroleum geologists or civil engineers who are concerned that we understand that they’re smart, too, and have degrees. Yes, and when biologists start trying to build bridges, we’ll argue with them, guys. But they don’t.

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  32. Julie Robinson said on February 4, 2014 at 3:43 pm

    Eloquently put, Jeff.

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  33. Connie said on February 4, 2014 at 4:07 pm

    Thanks, Jeff.

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  34. Icarus said on February 4, 2014 at 5:03 pm

    @brian stouder, thanks. I could never get my parts of speech right which is why I had to repeat high school English. I so hated those sentence diagrams.

    @beb, i’m so tweeting that.

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  35. Deborah said on February 4, 2014 at 6:36 pm

    How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

    Sitting by the fire with cat, LB is in the kitchen making leek and potato soup, I’m waiting for my bread to make the second rise, then it’s in the oven. We got a nice dousing of snow today, 4 or 5 inches with more to come. The mountains and surrounding hills look fantastic.

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  36. Connie said on February 4, 2014 at 6:39 pm

    Is it five minutes a day bread Deborah?

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  37. Sherri said on February 4, 2014 at 6:39 pm

    Sure, there were some couches burned over in the U-district after the Seahawks won the Super Bowl, but there was also this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qo4z77OvznU

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  38. Dorothy said on February 4, 2014 at 6:50 pm

    I made the same kind of soup today, Deborah!

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  39. Little Bird said on February 4, 2014 at 7:10 pm

    What Deborah didn’t mention is it’s rosemary walnut bread! The place smells divine!

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  40. Deborah said on February 4, 2014 at 7:11 pm

    No Connie, haven’t tried that bread yet. I’m wanting to find one of those Danish bread whisks and the right kind of covered bucket for the dough in the fridge before I do that. The bread today has Rosemary and walnuts in it because that’s what we had in the house and it sounded good. The Rosemary is from our Christmas tree, that amazingly is still alive. Last year we barely kept our Rosemary Christmas tree alive through the holidays. We would love to keep this one alive until spring when we can put it outside.

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  41. Suzanne said on February 4, 2014 at 7:58 pm

    Well, explained, Jeff. I know many conservative Christians believe that if you disbelieve the creation story, then everything else falls apart. If you don’t believe that, then maybe you won’t believe Noah really lived and floated in a boat, or that David didn’t kill Goliath. And if you don’t believe those things, then you might stop believing that Jesus was real and that he really died. And then, well, you are on the slippery slope to you know where.

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  42. Julie Robinson said on February 4, 2014 at 8:42 pm

    Oatmeal bread here, the lazy way, in a breadmaker. We were already having leftover meatloaf, fingerling potatoes, and fresh green beans. We were out of ketchup so instead of hopping in the car I made my own. Remarkably easy and tasty.

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  43. Deborah said on February 4, 2014 at 9:12 pm

    Would love the recipe for homemade ketchup, Julie.

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  44. basset said on February 4, 2014 at 10:37 pm

    Deborah, we got a covered bucket with measuring marks on it at the local restaurant supply store, I think it was $4 or so. No Danish whisk yet, I’ve been using a big three-pronged plastic fork and it seems to work fine.

    Deer burger for me tonight, and I second Deborah’s request for a homemade ketchup recipe. Maybe my tomatoes will do better next season.

    Went to the Nashville plane crash site tonight, 1.3 miles from home as the crow flies according to Google Earth. The plane hit about 100 yd from a YMCA, the same distance from a Kroger, right next to a housing development, and there are several shops and restaurants, a big church, an elementary school, a day care, a Publix, and a Walgreen’s all within a quarter mile. Very close call there.

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  45. Connie said on February 4, 2014 at 10:47 pm

    My daughter made tomato jam last summer and it is a wonderful substitute for ketchup.

    As for bread containers we just split the dough into two big GLAD plastic thingies. You can skip the wooden paddle, but the baking stone is a must have.

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  46. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on February 4, 2014 at 11:03 pm

    Suzanne, the question I usually get is “Do you believe in the whole Bible, or a Bible full of holes?”

    Compelling rhetoric. Akin, I fear, to the closing exchange in the Ham/Nye debate: Query – “What can change your mind?” Ken – “Nothing.” Bill – “Evidence.” And that’s all, folks.

    Faith is, like hope, the thing with feathers more than an anvil that drops from the sky. Or as one guy oddly enough not named Stouder said on Twitter: My argument for intelligent design would pretty much be an extensive PowerPoint presentation focused on Gisele Bundchen.

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  47. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on February 4, 2014 at 11:05 pm

    Deborah, the answer, as everyone knows, is 6.02 times 10 to the 23rd angels.

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  48. brian stouder said on February 4, 2014 at 11:13 pm

    Aye!

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