Hi guys! An epic relaunch is just around the corner, but in the interrim, here’s auteur Werner Herzog doing a reading of Where’s Wally.

Oh dear.

/Paul

I was watching some Peter Davison Doctor Who, and have made a kind of meme. LOVE IT.

/Paul

I’ve finally managed to upload my interview with Tommy Wiseau, writer, director, and lead actor in The Room. He was a surreal, lovely guy, but I’ll be brutally honest… talking to him was like be jammed in a Tim and Eric sketch. Tonight there’s going to be a $5 screening of The Room at RMIT, and it’s still showing in Melbourne at Cinema Nova, and also in Perth (more info over at Six Thousand). And I believe it’s showing soon in Sydney, but if you are going to see it, please, go with a raucous crowd.

Click to hear my interview with Tommy. Good luck.

/Paul

There really isn’t anything I’ve been more obsessed with in recent years*. For those of you unfortunate enough to have no idea just what The Room is, here’s a trailer. Before you watch it, however, you should know these important facts:

- The slightly creepy guy in almost every shot – the one with long, lank black hair – is Tommy Wiseau.

- Tommy wrote and directed the film, and spent millions that he raised himself on it. He made an unfathomable amount of unquestionably batshit insane decisions throughout the production of the film, and if you’ve ever read an interview with him, you probably still haven’t recovered from how surreal his answers are.

- The film has more continuity errors than I’ve had hot meals. FYI, I have had sixteen billion hot meals.

Why am I talking about The Room so much? Well, this week (on Friday, in fact), i’m doing a phone interview with Tommy. At some point this week, I’m hoping Luke will do what he and I discussed a few days back, which essentially involves him putting on a black wig and throwing some creepy and tangential answers at me. Either way, it’s on. And it’ll probably get a bit sexy.

/Paul

*With the obvious exception of Luke’s penis, and certain MMORPGs.

Well well well. If it isn’t YOU AGAIN.

Here’s a breakdown of what Tom, Alex and myself riffed about this fine morning on World of Nerdcraft:

- New research indicates that human brains have been shrinking over the years. Either we’re getting dumber, or we’re getting smarter. I’ll see you later, in the… place. The place with the stuff. Oh god. IT’S HAPPENING.

- Purple snow has hit in Russia! Is it a viral meteorological campaign for a new Prince feature film? Or is it because of African dust storms? Because frankly, they both make about as much sense.

- A new King of Kong has been crowned: a 35 year old plastic surgeon in New York. Will this ensure a cavalcade of gaming tail? I can only hope so.

- We talked about the prospect of being fined for insulting people on Facebook – it’s just happened to a guy in Wales. Sigh. Now I can’t refer to Tom publicly as vagina face.

- We chatted about a Korean man who married a pillow. A sexy pillow. No, seriously, this pillow is boner central. Tell you what, watch this video and make up your own mind.

- And finally, we looked at the ANU discovery of a network of ancient rivers underneath the Simpson desert. I’m guessing that water has gone bad by now.

BYE!

/Paul

Hello, you sexy bitches. Once again, World of Nerdcraft has happened all over your face and/or clothing. Here’s a breakdown of what Tom, Alex and myself chatted about this morning:

- In human behavioral news, new research at the university of Kyoto indicates that young chimps may have better memories than college students. To be fair, though, beer bongs, hacky-sack and hazing have yet to become staples of the everyday life of chimps. As far as we know.

- We briefly touched on some military tech news: a new, stealthier type of chopper has been invented! Will Gillette use this technology to design a huge, terrifying, multi-bladed razor that can give a clean shave AND carry dignitaries to important functions. OR BOTH.

-In some absolutely brain-shittingly adorable animal news, A LABRADOR HAS BEEN GIVEN A MEDAL. Treo, a black labrador retriever, has been given a military award for rescuing his human peeps in Afghanistan. LOOK AT HIS FACE! WHO’S A GOOD BOY? WHO’S A GOOD HIGHLY DECORATED WAR HERO? YES YOU ARE! YES YOU… ahem.

- We touched on some very Shawshank Redemptiony news: a Dutch convict recently used a spoon to dig herself out of prison. The fact that she only had 22 months left on her sentence suggests that either (a) she’s nuts, or (b) the whole thing is a viral campaign to promote the new album by Spoon. And if the latter is the case, bravo, Spoon. Bravo.

- I gave a quick update on my quest to get knighted! A family friend MIGHT be able to hook me up but, and I cannot stress this enough, I am willing, and able, to get knighted by multiple kingdoms, duchys, and whathaveyou. Hell, I’ll even let a shady cult knight me as long as I get to ride around on a white horse and use a javelin to puncture shit.

- And finally, we discussed vampires! Specifically, the fact that a woman initially thought to be a vampire, whose remains were found in a mass grave in Italy a few years back, may have been a witch, and not a vampire as scientists initially thought. HOW EMBARRASSMENT.

Seriously though. How much do you want a delicious Brickwich right about now?

Mmmmm. Teeth-breakishly delicious.

I’ll catch you all, as usual, on weekend breakfast, 6-10am every Saturday and Sunday, and I’ll be back for yet another installment of World of Nerdcraft with Tom and Alex next Monday. Until then, remember: do stuff. Do stuff in a place.

/Paul

I love self-explanatory blog titles.

I also love Antiques Roadshow. Not even in an ironic way; my father was, and still is unless yesterday he had a massive career crisis, a dealer in antiques, and as a result the whole scene gets me fierce wet.

Yep. I just dropped some fierce wet in your lap.

The best thing about AR isn’t the surging overtone of heartbreak, or mortality, or even the musty smell of tweed. It’s the weird shit that occasionally surfaces. Take, for example, this PIG. It’s a circa 1900 wheelie-toy thing, and in a single moment, upon viewing it, I completely understood why turn-of-the-twentieth-century children were so brain-shittingly creepy. When you combine the fact that there were chimney sweeps still living and operating in major urban sprawls, coupled with dangerous levels of chalk inhalation, and you add this fucking DEMON PIG into the mix… well. Is it any wonder so many houses are haunted by glassy-eyed little cretins in petty coats, speaking in unison and burning you armpit hair with their mind powers?

No. No, it fucking isn’t.

(You can view the upsetting appraisal video here.)

/Paul

This is an actual ad. For an actual credit union. No joke. This is… oh god. This is so perfect I could shit.

/Paul

Sometimes I look about at the state of the world and it makes me long for the days of yore, simpler times all, where a man was a man, a woman was a woman and midgets were included in the food pyramid. Gone now are the days of easy utilitarianism, where the ends always justified the means because the ends were, frankly, kicking. Penicillin? Fuck yeah! Cecil George Paine just gave it to some babies and hoped for the best. And here we are, 80 years later, with the ability to cure syphilis. Thanks babies!

But none of that these days. No, these days we are mired by an excess of knowledge, a cynicism toward understanding and a seemingly endless parade of “ethical qualms”. And in few places has the magic of discovery been more actively suppressed than in the field of SCIENCE!!!!. The pursuit of scientific knowledge is one of mankind’s great strivings, one of the fundamental drives that separates us from the animals. Except, that is, when said scientific pursuit involves animals quite personally. I mean, I’m not entirely sure they always know what’s going on, but I like to think they appreciate the fact that it’s all for the greater good.

I have previously waxed lyrical about such endeavours in this rousing piece about the ongoing practice of feeding animals psychotropic substances, but today I’m striking a more nostalgic tone and looking fondly back at the glory days of mule experimentation. Well, one experiment in particular – the 1878 demonstration of the first ever instantaneous photograph. A development that, at first glance, might seem to have a pretty tangential relationship to your average household mule, but don’t forget, this was in the glory days of science. Days where a man was a man, a woman was a woman, and a mule was an integral part of new advances in the photographic sciences. From an 1881 issue of Scientific American:

“It became necessary, one day, at Willet’s Point, to destroy a worthless mule… The mule was placed in proper position before a photo camera and duly focused upon the animal’s forehead, a cotton bag was tied containing six ounces of dynamite.”

Now, “necessary” is a big call, but I think we can all be thankful that at least they stayed away from the prize mules for this demonstration of what exactly it looks like in the split second after a mule has had dynamite detonated in close proximity to its head. I’ll leave you to peruse the rest of the story/images over at Gizmodo Australia (You can probably lodge a reasonable guess as to the outcome. Gritty!), but nonetheless, I’m sure that I speak for everybody here when I declare “Thank you mighty mule! Your noble sacrifice shant be forgotten! Henceforth, every time we use our iPhones to take a photo of our naked torsos and send it to our local Members of Parliament, we shall remember that it was you who made it all possible!” Huzzah! Everybody with me?… Everybody?

Oh.

/Luke

a) It’s a genre, and collecting it all together in one place is a highly abstract concept, and

b) the sun gives our planet life. You really think it’s going to keep doing that if we hurl tonnes of this shit into it?

With that firmly in mind, I do hope you enjoy this.*

/Paul

*You didn’t enjoy it, did you?