Thanks, Vatican

Vatican forgives John Lennon for Jesus quip - MSNBC

"The remark by John Lennon, which triggered deep indignation mainly in the United States, after many years sounds only like a 'boast' by a young working-class Englishman faced with unexpected success, after growing up in the legend of Elvis and rock and roll," Vatican daily Osservatore Romano said.

The article, marking the 40th anniversary of the Beatles' "The White Album," went on to praise the pop band.

"The fact remains that 38 years after breaking up, the songs of the Lennon-McCartney brand have shown an extraordinary resistance to the passage of time, becoming a source of inspiration for more than one generation of pop musicians," it said.

Way to go, Vatican. Too bad he's already dead. But nevermind, Yoko will gladly accept on John's behalf. What's next, I wonder? Maybe they'll finally forgive Madonna for that whole "having sex with a cross" thing.

Herr Zrbo's Newest Favoritest Blog*

Herr Zrbo's got a new favorite blog in town. Not content to sit here all day dreaming of Ladies of 280 or of TV anchor babes, yours truly has discovered Failblog. It's really nothing new, it's just America's Funniest Home Videos (or Jay Leno's 'Headlines') updated for the youtube generation, but boy oh boy, is it hilarious! I've spent many hours of my time at work chuckling away at whatever Failblog has to offer. Take the example up above, HILARITY! You can find all sorts of ridiculous stuff on this site. Like this one, for example, taken from a Dear Abby column:

"Dear Abby,
I have a man I can't trust. He cheats so much, I'm not even sure the baby I'm carrying is his."

Good times, good times.

*This title is meant to reflect a fail

Dennis Hopper: Still The World's Most Entertaining Asshole

While many kind and selfless artists have died prematurely and left us much too soon, Dennis Hopper, one of the most reckless, abusive, and obnoxious talents in the film industry, has somehow managed to live to the ripe old age of 72. Perhaps there really is no justice in the world. Or perhaps God simply likes the entertainment. I know I do. Here, then, in his fully self-conscious glory, is Dennis Hopper, from an interview with The Hollywood Interview, a fellow blog on Blogspot (note: why can't we land these kinds of interviews on our blog?). The casual observer might only think of Hopper as that guy from Easy Rider, Apocalypse Now, Blue Velvet, and...Waterworld, but in truth, he's made films with everyone from James Dean to John Wayne to Andy Warhol. While growing up in Kansas during the Dustbowl, he actually bought a dog from the Clutter family of In Cold Blood fame. He apparently produced an album for Miles Davis. The man has seen and done it all, and what's really impressive is that he's seen and done it all...as an asshole! Excerpts:

Watching your character in the first episode of Crash, I thought to myself ‘So Frank Booth survived the gunshot to the head in Blue Velvet and became a record producer.’
(laughs) Yeah, right!

Who else would call someone an “eyeless fuck” but Frank Booth?
(laughs) Yeah, yeah. My first conversation with my penis in the limo with the young woman driver, it’s pretty hairy. When I hire the new driver, who’s black, and say “Gorillas in the mist, that’s what the LAPD call you,” he has no stop switch, my character. He says everything and insults everybody. He just goes for it.

Which at one time could have described you.
Yeah, probably. I guess so. It was so long ago now, I can’t remember. (laughs) Phil Spector and I had an office together for ten years, and people have asked me if I’m doing Phil Spector in this and I said ‘No. I’m doing me!’ (laughs)

*********

I remember hearing you tell a story about snorting gasoline from your grandfather’s truck…
Yeah, and I looked up at the clouds and saw clowns, until I ODed on the fumes and smashed up his truck with a baseball bat, thinking it was a monster, smashing out the lights. (laughs) I was about seven. (laughs) Not good, but that was the end of my gas-sniffing.

*********

I heard that during the filming of True Grit that John Wayne chased you around Paramount with a loaded gun?
(laughs) No, that’s not quite how it happened. He used to arrive on the lot via helicopter from his mine sweeper that he had moored in Newport Beach. He’d have a .45 strapped on his side, wearing army fatigues, and that’s the way he’d arrive to work every day. This one day he arrived, and he wanted to know where “that Pinko Hopper was hiding.” I was actually in Glen Campbell’s trailer, hiding from him. He was screaming “My daughter was out at UCLA last night and heard (Black Panther) Eldridge Cleaver cussing, and I know he must be a friend of that Pinko Hopper! Where is he? I want to talk to him!” So he wasn’t literally running around with a gun looking for me. He was walking around with a gun at his hip, but I think he wanted to have a political discussion, as opposed to committing actual manslaughter! (laughs) Anyway, nothing ever came of it. That was just Duke.

*********

We have to talk about the character of Frank Booth in Blue Velvet. I read an interview with David Lynch where he said you called him after reading the script and said “David, you have to let me play this part because I am Frank Booth.”
Well actually, he’d already cast me, but I did call him after he’d cast me, and we’d never met at that point, and said ‘You haven’t made a mistake, because I am Frank Booth.” So supposedly he went back to the table with Kyle MacLachlan, Isabella Rossellini and Laura Dern, they were all having lunch together, and said “I just got off the phone with Dennis Hopper, and he said that he was Frank Booth, which I guess is really good for the picture, but I don’t know how we’ll ever have lunch with him.” (laughs)

How were you Frank Booth?
I’d come out of a heavy drug life, and had known a lot of people like Frank. I didn’t mean that I was literally Frank Booth, but I’d certainly run into characters like Frank, and understood him. A big discrepancy came the first day we were shooting the big scene where Kyle is hiding in the closet and I come in demanding my bourbon and tell Isabella to spread her legs, and then this sort of horrendous rape scene occurs against her. None of us had met at this point and that was our first scene. (laughs) David had helium on the set, because in the script, the tank that Frank was constantly taking hits from was written as helium, which makes your voice really high, like Donald Duck. But it doesn’t disorient you in any way, it just makes you talk funny. So I said to David, ‘You know I always thought of this as being nitrous oxide or amyl nitrate or something.’ He said “What is that?” I said “Something that disorients your mind for a few minutes. I’m also having trouble acting with my voice sounding like this. So could I just show you what it would look like with the other stuff?” And I did, and David said “Oh, that’s great!” So we went with that, and I said ‘If you want to put the (helium) voice in later, in post, we can,’ and of course, we didn’t. So that was the only real contribution I made to that film, I guess. (laughs)

At Least The Nazis Got Something Right

Thank you, Wikipedia, for Today's Featured Article, which is titled "Anti-tobacco movement in Nazi Germany." Because courtesy of this article, I have just learned that, aside from the oft-mentioned "making the trains run on time," Hitler was apparently a pioneer in smoking research. See, the Nazis weren't all bad.

Highlights:

Research on smoking and its effects on health thrived under Nazi rule[6] and was the most important of its type at that time.[7] Hitler's personal distaste for tobacco[8] and the Nazi reproductive policies were among the motivating factors behind their campaign against smoking, and this campaign was associated with both antisemitism and racism.[9]

Adolf Hitler was a heavy smoker in his early life—he used to smoke 25 to 40 cigarettes daily—but gave up the habit, concluding it was a waste of money.[8] In later years, Hitler viewed smoking as "decadent"[12] and "the wrath of the Red Man against the White Man, vengeance for having been given hard liquor",[8] lamenting that "so many excellent men have been lost to tobacco poisoning".[16]

Smoking was also outlawed in bomb shelters; however, some shelters had separate rooms for smoking.[4]

After the collapse of Nazi Germany at the end of World War II, American cigarette manufactures quickly entered the German market. Illegal smuggling of tobacco became prevalent,[44] and leaders of the Nazi anti-smoking campaign were silenced.[6] In 1949, approximately 400 million cigarettes manufactured in the United States entered Germany illegally every month. In 1954, nearly two billion Swiss cigarettes were smuggled into Germany and Italy. As part of the Marshall Plan, the United States sent free tobacco to Germany; the amount of tobacco shipped into Germany in 1948 was 24,000 tons and was as high as 69,000 tons in 1949. The Federal government of the United States spent $70 million on this scheme, to the delight of cigarette manufacturing companies in the United States, who profited hugely.[44]

^{U.S.A.! U.S.A.!}

Skimbleshanks the... Dance Dance Revolution Cat??

Broadway will turn anything into a musical nowadays. ANYTHING. Legally Blonde? Check. ABBA tribute? Check. Dance Dance Revolution the musical? Check! Word on the street this morning is that everyone's favorite "let's watch the fat kid excel at the one thing he's good at" party game will be making its debut on Broadway. It's about damn time I'm sure some of you are saying.

This adaptation of the popular dancing video game franchise will star Van Hansis of As The World Turns. And if that doesn't clinch it for you, perhaps the description of the musical will:

"Set in an Orwellian society where a dance prophet named Moonbeam Funk helps dancing youth gangs rebel against a fascist government. The company working on the show describes it as "like Footloose set in the future — but kind of scarier, and with 40 really attractive, barely-clothed young actors and buckets of free beer."

Footloose, in the future! Sign me up!

The Future is Now (on CNN)!

So I was watching CNN's election coverage last night. Not sure if you've seen it but they've got the best technology over there in Atlanta. CNN has this 'magic board' they call it, which they unveiled earlier this year, where John King uses his fingers like a mouse to zoom in and out of a map of the U.S., showing us which states are voting for whom. It's like Google Maps to the 10th degree. Then last night they had this gigantic wall where it broke down the vote by demographic, and the host could just tap the needed demographic (say, 'hispanics making more than $100k') and voila! A pie chart would open up with all the needed info.

I'm watching this when my girlfriend comes in and I'm telling her 'Wow, CNN's got all this crazy technology, like holograms and shit. Well, not really holograms'. Oh, but I would be proven wrong within minutes.

We sit down on the couch together to watch the results roll in and then suddenly - POOF! We are transported to a magical future, of maybe it was a long long time ago in a far off galaxy. Why? Because there's Anderson Cooper, I kid you not, conducting an interview via hologram! Mother fuckin' hologram!!! Seriously, I couldn't believe it. He was actually interviewing Will.I.am from Black Eyed Peas (please don't ask) and there's Will standing next to Cooper with a strange purple glow around him, like total Star Wars style. I turned to my girlfriend and said something along the lines of "Uh, I was actually kidding about the hologram", or maybe it was something more like "Holy shit we've been transported to the future!"

Well, after some brief searching on the subject it turns out that it wasn't a true hologram. It was just being projected for the viewer, it didn't exist in real space on the set. Still, if you want your mind blown, or maybe it's just a good laugh, check out the interview here .

Obama Wins!

I'm extremely happy about this news. Although I'd predicted this result, my gut didn't agree until today. As an early Obama supporter, and a meager donor to his campaign, I feel like something good has happened to a friend. That sounds silly, but in these days when we spend hours reading about, and surreptitiously traveling with the objects of Internet attention the people that we've never met can seem more familiar than those we pass on the street. But in another way, something good did happen to all of my friends--hope won, and the outlook for us all improved just a bit.

What Will We Know and When Will We Know It?

After 7pm est, when results start to come in, we may know a lot.

Obama Ahead in Early Voting

Barack Obama leads in early voting 15 to 6. No, there aren't supposed to be any zeros after those numbers.

That's My Alma Mater

UC Davis Provides Birth Control For Frisky Squirrels - MSNBC

Our evil plan worked! Muuuaa-ha-ha.