I think I saw Amy Poehler on some talk show somewhere acknowledging that her Hillary impersonation isn't very good. I guess she got the job because there's only three female cast members, and she's the only blonde one, or something. Impersonations just aren't her thing, and the show is set up so that they can really only work with the cast members they have. They need more women who are talented impersonators.
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 8:51 PM on May 26, 2008

wtf is qualitatively mean lol

plz check out my vids
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 5:57 PM on March 29, 2008

Any other Canadian kids here learn to remember opening and closing quotation marks as 66 and 99, Lemieux and Gretzky?
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 1:58 PM on March 2, 2008

Ironmouth and porpoise are right. If a player is playing dirty or otherwise unfairly harassing the stars or goalie on the other team, it is often not enough to rely on the officials to keep things clean. Just look at what goes on in goalie creases when there's a lot of players crowding it. And fighting is a way to signal to the harasser that his behaviour won't go unpunished, without actually injuring him. As porpoise notes, it is rare that a player is seriously injured in a fight, because you... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 4:57 PM on February 21, 2008

Yes! "On the ground" ranks up there with "at the end of the day" as the cliches most overused in televised news, especially by correspondents and interviewees. "Going forward" is getting up there, too.
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 3:00 PM on January 1, 2008

At least it's not an orca.
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 1:59 PM on November 27, 2007

Because it's catchy and easy to dance to? Who are you, Bob Seger?
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 1:47 AM on October 25, 2007

Neat. I too found it easiest to have her switch direction by focusing on the foot she's spinning on.

I don't think it's a hoax, I opened up the GIF file in ImageReady and it's just one revolution in 34 frames, repeating infinitely.
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 8:15 PM on October 8, 2007

I'd guess the optical trick is that the direction she appears to be spinning is dependent on whether your brain thinks her outstretched leg is on the near side of her body, or the far side at a given moment. Since there's no shadows on her body to help determine depth, it's sort of a "do you see a vase or two faces" -type illusion.
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 8:20 PM on October 8, 2007

I thought Commander Flex Plexico should have been number one. Can you imagine being under his command? It would be like reporting to Captain Zap Brannigan.
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 1:28 PM on October 8, 2007

I think, in case anyone missed it, that it is necessary to mention the best mashup I've seen on this topic, a mashup of "Downfall" .

Kottke posted a link to another Downfall mashup the other day, about Hitler getting banned from a game called iSketch, which I thought was done a bit better than the XBox Live one.
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 5:45 PM on October 6, 2007

I just bought my first DSLR about a month ago (an XTi), and avoided the kit lens in favour of the 50mm f/1.8. I'm loving the low-light indoor shots I can do, but after trying out a friend's 70-300mm IS lens in Stanley Park on a nice day, I'm itching to get a decent zoom. In those sort of conditions the zoom seems to offer more opportunities, especially, as quin notes, with regards to wildlife. I guess it's a grass-is-greener thing, especially when you're just starting out and you've only got one... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 8:09 PM on October 2, 2007

Thanks Jesse! Elephant Larry were great on the most recent Jordan, Jesse Go! Didn't realize they were behind the Minesweeper movie, but doesn't really surprise me now.
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 1:38 PM on September 25, 2007

Thanks for this, I'm sure I would have missed it had it not been posted here and I'm a big Fountain fan. I too was disappointed that the DVD did not have a director's commentary, although the included making-of documentary was pretty good.

I can see why this film is so polarizing (its Rotten Tomatoes score is, appropriately, 50%), but as I suggested in the previous thread about this movie, you can at least give Aronofsky some credit for trying... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 12:09 AM on September 18, 2007

Kattullus, I agree that pacing is not one of its flaws: I've probably seen it 5 or 6 times now beginning to end, and I still can't believe it's only a 90 minute movie, there just seems to be so much packed into it. It really rewards repeated viewings too, with the amount of scenes and shots that mirror other scenes and shots in other parts of the movie, like a big visual puzzle. I just finished listening to the commentary, and prior to that I hadn't noticed that the shot of Tommy climbing the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 5:43 AM on September 18, 2007

Not sure if this has been posted elsewhere on Mefi yet, but this recent audio interview with Gibson on The Bat Segundo Show was fascinating. I love how he speaks somewhat slowly yet wastes no words and comes across as exceptionally intelligent. I'll definitely be making a point of reading Spook Country when I get the chance.
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 2:08 AM on September 9, 2007

And wow is that PDF interesting and scary. Sort of a flash card set for the Modern Scamming 101 midterm. Thanks!
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 2:20 AM on September 9, 2007

Neat! But is there still no way to save someone else's playlist to your YouTube favourites? I hate having a nice neat playlist already set up for me, like this one, but having to go and recreate it manually if I want to save it. Also, boo audio sync problems.
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 5:34 PM on September 3, 2007

Contrary to what many people think...

"It's been done."
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 9:08 PM on September 1, 2007

Oops, link for that snark.
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 9:11 PM on September 1, 2007

I thought Little Richard's comment (something like "I created rock n' roll, and I didn't really know what I was doing") could be interpreted as meaning he created rock n' roll songs, not necessarily the entire genre. You know, just like John Lennon created rock n' roll (songs).
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 1:24 PM on September 2, 2007

Ctrl + Alt + A didn't work for me until I clicked in the main window. I think when you start Google Earth the focus is in the sidebar.

Neat little distraction, but I wish they had an autopilot button that would level your plane off when you pressed it. Just so you can fly in a straight line and sightsee.
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 1:26 PM on September 1, 2007

Video of the plague laying waste to the city of Orgimmar (warning: music).

I was playing back then, but I don't think this happened on my server, at least not on the Horde side. Pity, because I remember it being talked about in the mainstream media, which I found more interesting than the "plague" itself. Especially since it wasn't all that different from the "living bomb" trick that had been known by WoW players for a while (and which I believe is... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 1:12 PM on August 21, 2007

There was a hidden track at the end, but between it and the last listed song was something like fourteen irritating minutes of silence, during which they somehow got the counter on my cd player to go backwards. I could never figure out how they did that.

Some CD players will display a negative "countdown" in the sections of silence between tracks. I know I've used some players that will display "-00:02",... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 6:41 PM on August 17, 2007

I really like Michael Caine as an actor, but after seeing The Weather Man, I have to reluctantly add him to my small but growing list of British actors that can't quite do American accents. So far the only others I can think of at the moment are Jude Law and Ewan McGregor (but only in Black Hawk Down).
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 10:56 AM on August 2, 2007

...one of my favorite mental exercises is to escort historic figures around modern times. Taking Bach to the Cleveland Orchestra...

Weird, I do this too, except it's usually Isaac Newton and I'm explaining things like toilets and microwaves and airplanes. Good to know I'm not insane.
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 5:20 PM on July 20, 2007

I'm waiting for someone to do LOLNAZIS.

A classic (didn't see it in florence henderson's link).
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 5:58 PM on July 6, 2007

As bad as I feel for these poor Chinese kids, playing a mage for a couple years meant that the regular "you give 200 food ok? ^_^" messages got pretty annoying.

However, there was a period of a month or two, I think possibly late 2005 or early 2006, where the farmers were using a teleport hack in Dire Maul (a relatively high-level dungeon back then) so that hunters could solo the bosses. My guildmates and I were loving the plentiful and dirt-cheap mana potions... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 11:56 AM on June 19, 2007

Others have said this already, but I just wanted to chime in by saying how shocking the depiction of the US health care system was in this movie. As a Canadian, I found the part about the 9/11 workers having to hold their own raffles to raise money for treatment to be almost not believable. I guess I felt like the Canadian girl in the waiting room, who said she'd heard about the American system, but didn't really understand it.

I know this movie is directed at Americans,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 2:40 AM on June 18, 2007

Wow, that was some pretty great animation, although the . Wish there had been more stuff with Hobbes, though. I've been flipping through a few of my C&H treasuries lately, and I liked how the video incorporated a number of one-off gags from the strips, like Calvin poised over his sleeping parents with a bugle.
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 5:16 PM on May 17, 2007

Whoops, ignore the "although the ."
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 5:16 PM on May 17, 2007

Interesting that some of the most obvious "number" movies were not used for their respective spots in the list: 48 Hours, Catch-22, 12 Angry Men, Se7en, etc. Entertaining nonetheless. I laughed at number 8 (Office Space), which I've seen many times but didn't see coming.
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 4:15 PM on May 17, 2007

It's a shark, people! Tail swishing side to side = shark! Up and down? Whale!

Sorry. That video was pretty incredible, though.
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 11:17 AM on May 2, 2007

itchylick: I also had that same question after watching this, and I now remember being confused as a kid that there were two shows called Ghostbusters, and were quite different (I figured that the one with the ape was some sort of imposter, but it's actually the reverse).

According to Wikipedia, the sequence went like this:

1. The Ghost Busters (1975-6, live-action TV show)
2. Ghostbusters... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 10:43 AM on April 29, 2007

Oh, and how great is it that I can sing along to most of these theme songs a good 15 to 20 years after last hearing them. Perfect Sunday morning accompaniment to my pancakes. Thanks!
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 10:47 AM on April 29, 2007

Oh, and Metafilter definitely needs a power-rock intro song. C'mon mefi-musicers.

Yeah, like this overdub-ular version of the Transformers theme song (from the 1986 movie)
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 3:11 PM on April 29, 2007

The Predator one is brilliant.
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 2:35 PM on April 28, 2007

I've got posters on the wall
My favorite rock group KISS
I've got Ace Frehley
I've got Peter Criss
Waiting there for me
Yes I do.
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 3:29 AM on April 28, 2007

Saw this over on BoingBoing, which described it as "possibly the best thing ever." I dunno if I can go along with that hyperbole, but I did enjoy the Batdance sequence inside a newspaper at the end.
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 2:47 AM on April 26, 2007

I never would have thought that the Dutch would have submarines

The Dutch can even take credit for a significant development in submarine technology, the schnorkel, the idea for which the Germans copied during WWII and found handy as Allied air cover made it increasingly difficult for U-boats to operate on the surface.
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 9:57 PM on April 15, 2007

Now is the time on Mefi when we dance!
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 5:40 PM on April 7, 2007

I used to listen to the Ebert & Roeper podcast at work until they (apparently) stopped the podcasts in late 2006. I much preferred Ebert's opinions to Roeper's because he was usually willing to review a movie on its own terms, within its genre, while Roeper seemed unwilling to admit that a movie that was trying to be silly and fun might actually succeed at exactly that, and be a good movie for it. For example, Roeper trashed The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, while... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 1:46 PM on April 4, 2007

Angela Lansbury is still alive!
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 3:35 AM on April 3, 2007

E1M1... what a great song for the beginning of such a revolutionary game. My experience of Doom's sound was interesting, because when I first got the game, I didn't have a sound card in my 486 SX, so I played through all three episodes with only the PC speaker giving a weak little "bloom!" as a crappy excuse for a shotgun report., and a buzz to indicate that a monster had seen me. When I eventually bought a Pro Audio Spectrum card off of a classmate and played Doom all over again, I... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 2:36 PM on March 28, 2007

The Philosopher's Zone, from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, is another great brain-stimulating radio show/podcast that I've been enjoying alongside In Our Time for the past few months. It's pretty accessible for non-philosophy majors but also not horribly dumbed-down.
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 11:18 AM on March 24, 2007

GIRAFFE FIGHT!
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 1:01 AM on March 4, 2007

Oooh thank you!

Can anyone with better knowledge of classical performance than myself comment on the quality of these? I don't mean the audio or compression quality, I mean of the performances themselves. Last year Lifehacker had an article about free classical music available at Wikipedia. One Lifehacker commented that "Its a good site for beginners, but before long you'll be craving the London or Chicago Symphony Orchestra rather then the Polish Youth orchestra.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 3:17 PM on March 1, 2007

Oops, I should clarify: that would be the Vivaldi performance available at Wikipedia, not one at the Peabody site, if there is one.
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 3:20 PM on March 1, 2007

Sorry dhruva, I didn't mean to sound like I was knocking actual meditation poses or practices, Eastern or otherwise, merely the sort of stigma they have in Western pop culture. Kind of like how "zen" has been a marketing adjective in North America for some time now ("check out my new MP3 player, it's so clean and white and zen"). If this movie had come out of India or China, or if the director was Indo-American or something (is that a term? we have "Indo-Canadian"... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 6:01 PM on February 14, 2007

That's a very convincing argument. Good analysis.

Thanks! As a few others here did, I thought about the movie quite a bit for a week or so after I saw it. I actually wanted to make an FPP about it at the time (in December) but hesitated: the friend I saw it with hated the movie, it was getting bad reviews all over the place, and Internet commentary seemed to lean about three-quarters in favour of "tripe!" vs.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by good in a vacuum at 10:09 AM on February 16, 2007