The BillPages

If I'm going to be in your movie, you have to ask me first.

You don't have to pay me (ask Dave) but you do have to get my permission.

Or, the permission of the executors of my estate.

It seems that the execrable efforts of Kerry Conran to cheapen the legacy of Lawrence Olivier have spawned fears of copycats.

"We are robbed of our individuality and our life's work is tarnished."

It's okay, though. Paul Newman is sticking up for me. And Christopher Plummer. And Charles Grodin.

Just a quick word about this: What Conran did with Lawrence Olivier in the pustulent piece of crap that was Sky Captain is inexscusable. I don't know what permissions were sought and obtained. I only know the one person that wasn't asked: Lawrence Olivier. Maybe he would have said yes. Maybe he would have agreed to actually be in brand new footage for the film. Who knows?

But Conran didn't ask. He couldn't. Olivier was dead. Conran used his image and voice anyway. Conran is an ass.

And Paul, Chris and Chuck rock. More power to you, gents.

Some people will argue about anything.

Don't get me started on Prospero's Books. I know it's just a movie, but I take that pretentious piece of crap as a serious, personal, slap in the face.

So, I'm guilty of this over-sensitivity too.

But how trivial does something have to be before nobody can get really angry about it? I mean Greenaway's film is based on one of the most beloved works by the premiere playwright of the English language. Lot's of people are familiar with it, and can be completely pissed off at the bastardization it is subjected to at the hands of some indulgent ass.

But even I'm not getting too worked up over the controversy currently raging in the juggling world.

A while ago, I was sent this clip by my friend Lorne. It's a juggler named Chris Bliss, doing a 3-ball routine timed to the medley from the end of the Beatles' album "Abby Road".

I was impressed. What I was impressed with was the timing of the thing. I've tried juggling to music, and always found it hard to make three balls move in 4/4 time. But then, I'm not very musical at the best of times.

But some people weren't impressed. A lot of those people are professional jugglers. Chief amongst them was a guy named Jason Garfield. Jason Garfield is an AWESOME juggler, and quite possible insane. He got tired of people asking him if he'd seen the Chris Bliss thing, and sending it to him in email, and talking about how great it is because, well... let him tell you...

chris bliss's juggling skill is...not good. The most impressive thing he did was juggle for a long time and not drop. The juggling was not difficult at all and it's not surprising that he did not drop, so it's not that anyone should be amazed that he didn't drop. But if you're looking for the most impressive thing that he did in a routine chock full of unimpressive elements, it would be that he didn't drop. He calls it the big finale. I don't even understand why he juggles at all. His 3 ball skill is fair, good enough to make it three or four minutes without dropping. The world record for juggling 3 balls is over 11 hours, and the most difficult thing about that is staying awake and peeing.

That's just the start of a rather long and involved evisceration of Chris Bliss which can be found here (scroll down a bit, past the ads.) Jason got so tired of hearing about the damn thing that he did this, his own take on the Chris Bliss routine, only with 5 balls, more interesting and competant tricks and a little bit of parody of Bliss thrown in for good measure.

Jason's a better juggler. Hands down. Watch some of things here. He's also, as I said, kind of nuts. He considers juggling a sport and wants comedians to stop messing about with it.

This great rift in the juggling world rages on. I've been following it a bit, thanks to regular updates on the Penn Jillette radio show.

(Everyone should listen to Penn Jillette. Everyone. Young, old, male, female, black, white, Christian, Jew. Everyone.)

But just recently, they mentioned something on the show that I was unaware of. That would be the existance of The Galchenkos.

Watch some of this stuff.

Give it up, Chris Bliss. Shut up, Jason Garfield. It's a Galchenko world.

Those of you who click faithfully on the links at left are no doubt aware that James Randi suffered a heart attack recently. The good news is that he's on the mend. You can hear a message from the wise one here.

Randi is the front-line General in the war against fallacy, quackery and scurrilous assaults on reason. Modern society cannot afford to lose him. Wish him well.

It's worth noting that when Randi's health was so suddenly and direly threatened, it was saved by advances in science not available to us a mere 25 years ago.

Score one for the good guys.

It's hard to feel sad for people who have been paid bucket-loads of money.

Especially when they're getting paid that money for work they'd ALREADY DONE.

But it seems some folks expect us to.

Alan Moore, for example, feels pretty hard done by. It seems that the evil entity known as "Hollywood" is doing terrible things with his work. And I do mean terrible.

Mr. Moore writes comic books. Sure, he calls them graphic novels, but that's just a fancy word for comic books. He's really good at it. In at least one case, he managed to set an entirely new standard for intelligence and sophistication in his field. He is, as this (free reg req) article suggests, one of the the few people in comic-dom that can sell titles based solely on his own name. Frank Miller might be another, although after DK2, I have my doubts.

But as the New York Times article goes on to suggest, Mr. Moore isn't secure enough in his own accomplishments to recognize where his work has stopped and the work of others has started. The latest problem centres around "V For Vendetta", a big blockbuster of a film starring Natalie "Star What?" Portman and Hugo "Elrond was much cooler in the novels" Weaving.

In a nutshell, Moore thinks that Hollywood does a great disservice to his work by making shitty movies based on his comics. Adaptation after adaptation, the evil movie-making monster has turned his well thought out and deeply personal art into populist tripe.

Two things, Mr. Moore:

You wrote the comic book. Someone else made the movie. We all know that. We can tell the difference. Why can't you?

and...

They paid you a bucket-load of cash. Quit whining.

In fact, as David Lloyd, Moore's collaborator on "Vendetta" remarks:

"We didn't do it (sell the film rights) innocently. Neither myself nor Alan thought we were signing it over to a board of trustees who would look after it like it was the Dead Sea Scrolls."

So get off your high horse. If the reviews are to be believed, Vendetta is actually a pretty good movie. A cut above most Hollywood spectacle shlock.

And if at the next Oscars this film does not win a whole pile of awards, do not by any means do this.

See Rob's Blog for my comments on that self-indulgent embarrassment.

The ongoing campaign against the teaching of evolution may directly and imediately affect your ability to get the best quality health care.

According to this NY Times article, research into the human genome has indicated recent (in scientific terms) changes to the human condition that can be attributed to natural selection. That's right folks, we are still evolving.

So when somebody denies the whole evolution thing, their not just advocating ignorance of the world around us, but ignorance of ourselves and our bodies. They're putting a roadblock in front of potentially life-saving gene therapies.

They, in short, are bastards.

"Brokeback Abused Sheep"

Apparently the people who made Brokeback Mountain were - and I'm quoting here - "too rough on sheep".

Well, that's just too easy, isn't it?