Most Anticipated: The Road

How can you have more than one most anticipated? Shut up, that's how!

Four reasons why I'm looking forward to The Road.


1) Viggo Mortensen. Look at him there, in that picture, all bearded and badass. Viggo has quickly become one of my favourite actors, mostly (entirely?) thanks to his work with David Cronenberg (esp. A History of Violence). Viggo also has Good and Appaloosa coming out this year, which look good and interesting, respectively.

2) Cormac McCarthy. The man wrote the source novel to No Country for Old Men, which I loved, as well as the source novel to this. And ummmm All the Pretty Horses, too I guess.

3) John Hillcoat. The man directed The Proposition, which was all kinds of grimy and gritty and violent and dirty realistic down under western, which would seemingly make it for this project as it's set in...

4) The Post-Apocalypse. How I love post-apocalyptic worlds. Maybe because they so often involve zombies. Not that this involves zombies. None that I am aware of, at least. But I can love them separately. I'm not sure what love came first. It's a chicken and the egg thing.

Replica Ponchos I Would Buy

I don't want to look like a dick, but those Clint Eastwood westerns by Sergio Leone (A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly) are totally badass. I don't know how coincidental it is that he is wearing this poncho in all three. The poncho by association is a badass signifier. But who wears ponchos... only if it was this one. Replicas available for purchase here.

Weekly Wikipedia Find: E pur si muove!

And yet it moves. Galileo is one of the world's all-time badasses, enshrined in the seventh circle of the hall of fame and these were his words, albeit in Italian: E pur si muove! The Roman Catholic Church of the seventeenth century was rather geocentric in its views of the cosmos, see, and its Inquisition into heresy forced Signor Galileo Galilei to recant his opposing belief that the Earth moved around the Sun against penalty of death and these words were his to mutter, maybe only in legend and unheard, but to hold the truth of heliocentrism.

Wikipedia by Week

Week Twenty-Seven: Unico
Week Twenty-Six: Panopticon
Week Twenty-Five: Legendary
Week Twenty-Four: Ostern
Week Twenty-Three: Kilroy was here
Week Twenty-Two: Jack Parsons
Week Twenty-One: The Wold Newton Universe
Week Twenty: Anonymous
Week Nineteen: Monty Hall problem
Week Eighteen: Brown Booby
Week Seventeen: Dieter Dengler
Week Sixteen: New Jerusalem
Week Fifteen: Technological Singularity
Week Fourteen: Numbers Station
Week Thirteen: Culper Ring
Week Twelve: Mary Sue
Week Eleven: Byford dolphin diving bell accident
Week Ten: Deep-sea gigantism
Week Nine: Bloop
Week Eight: Rat king
Week Seven: Gustave Doré
Week Six: Tomorrow
Week Five: Borscht Belt
Week Four: Swampman
Week Three: Chinese room
Week Two: Ambrose Burnside
Week One: Lolita fashion

Weekly Wikipedia Find: Jack Parsons

Jack Parsons is a badass modern renaissance man. That's right, I said is. He's so badass to transcend both death and the past tense. First off, his birth name was Marvel Whiteside Parsons. Like what the fuck? Did he eat his mom's pussy on the way out too?

Jack Parsons died of a mercury fulminate explosion in his home laboratory in 1952 at the age of 37. Let's stop for a second and calculate the badass rating of that sentence. Home laboratory? Check. Explosion? Check. Nineteen fifties? Check. Dead before age forty? Check. Jack Parsons? Check.

I should also mention that Jack Parsons was a rocket scientist. And he helped found the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Oh, and he was a noted occultist who knew and socialized with both Aleister Crowley and one Lafayette Ronald Hubbard.

Not to go too deep into Parsons and Hubbard's magickal adventures, but they attempted to summon a living goddess, Parsons tried to sire a Moonchild, they co-owned a boat company and Hubbard stole Parsons' wife.

Here's a photo of Parsons from the cover of his book of essays. Badass:

Wikipedia by Week

Week Twenty-One: The Wold Newton Universe
Week Twenty: Anonymous
Week Nineteen: Monty Hall problem
Week Eighteen: Brown Booby
Week Seventeen: Dieter Dengler
Week Sixteen: New Jerusalem
Week Fifteen: Technological Singularity
Week Fourteen: Numbers Station
Week Thirteen: Culper Ring
Week Twelve: Mary Sue
Week Eleven: Byford dolphin diving bell accident
Week Ten: Deep-sea gigantism
Week Nine: Bloop
Week Eight: Rat king
Week Seven: Gustave Doré
Week Six: Tomorrow
Week Five: Borscht Belt
Week Four: Swampman
Week Three: Chinese room
Week Two: Ambrose Burnside
Week One: Lolita fashion