Seriously….wtf? I’ll still watch it, over and over and over

Kind of reminds me of that scene from Lord of the Rings, the really awesome one where the elf brings down an elephant by its earring....maybe this sport also needs some elves...

Some of the world’s craziest sports were definitely influenced by alcohol. They had to be—no way some of these strange games could have been created if people weren’t intoxicated.

One sport that admittedly was started after a “drunken lunch” was elephant polo. The game takes what is relatively normal in some places, polo, and adds the most powerful land animal on earth.

The World Series of Elephant Polo is played out for a week straight in Thailand, Nepal and Sri Lanka. It is truly a sight to see: goofy men seated atop elephants, being “driven” by mahouts (natives) with long mallets. The rest of the rules are pretty similar to normal polo. The biggest difference? Elephants are fast.

Watching them gallop around on the Discovery Channel doesn’t do justice to how fast they can be. The only problem with that is their girth doesn’t produce great results when they try to stop. Turning isn’t out of the question in elephant polo, but it takes a very skilled driver. Hence, the game takes a perpendicular pattern.

The sport is supposed to raise money for the conservation of elephants. I think the actual game is supposed to be a little bit of a joke, but I’m sure people out there take it very seriously.

Entering it’s 25^th year, they should spice it up a little. Put the elephants on steroids. Maybe give the competitors spears or something and then play until the death. That would really take it back to man and wild, humans and animals. And instead of all of the people being drunk while playing, slip the elephants a few shots of something. Of course, those things probably need $200 worth of liquor to feel a buzz, but nothing would draw more attention.

Won't do any good to say this isn't what I planned

First of all, an explanation:  There was no post last week because I was buried under a pile of work.  I still am, but I needed a little breather.  A chance to write something a little less news-y or academic.  So I return.

I’m still muscling through Robert Bolano’s The Savage Detectives slowly.  I like it, but it’s more of an undertaking than I was expecting.  What keeps me going is the feeling that something better is around the corner.  I mean, it’s what any good creative product should do, leave you hungry for more.  But I wonder why I feel like something better is on the horizon.  Whatevs, I need to finish this (or any) book, one way or another.

Besides my flirtations with progress in Bolano’s book, I snuck in some shorter readings.  There was a surprisingly decent article on Megan Fox in the latest issue of The New York Times Magazine.  The article, “Stardom Becomes Her” by Lynn Hirschberg, is interesting but it made me wonder why exactly Megan Fox is considered a star.  But what really stuck out to me this week was George Saunders’ short story “CivilWarLand in Bad Decline,” a trippy story about a Civil War theme park that’s gone to shit.  Follow our narrator as crazy things happen and he talks to his friends, a family of ghosts that were hacked to death by their father.

Headlights reflecting on my face

I’ve always like Saunders (btw, a creative writing professor at S.U., for those of you who don’t know), but I don’t read nearly enough of him.  This story features all his trademarks, a weird satirical premise, creepiness galore and a scene or two of hyper violence.  It always takes a few paragraphs to get into a Saunders story, his voice can be a little off putting/jarring at first, but once you do, it’s a truly visceral experience.  Oh and also, his writing is some funny shit.  Anyone curious should check out this, or my personal favorite story of his, “Sea Oak.”

So yeah, that’s what I read this week.  Now excuse me while I climb back under my pile of work.  Until next time…

I don’t know if I’ve ever watched a black and white movie before because a movie without color kind of seems unnatural to me. That is, until I got to watch Casablanca in class. 

It was as good as everyone says it is. Most of the accents were pretty horrible, but otherwise it was a classic love story about a guy that I wish existed in real life.

I even ended up loving that it was in black and white. It made it classic and romantic–and that soft Rembrandt lighting made Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) look so beautiful that I almost wished my boyfriend was colorblind so that I’d look like that to him (and yes, I realize that being colorblind doesn’t actually mean you see black and white).

Now that's love.

And Rick (Humphrey Bogart). Oh Rick, how I wish you were a real person. I love his sort of gruff exterior and how he loved Ilsa so much that losing her completely changed his personality. I love how he says thinks like “Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine” and “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

Men like that just don’t exist anymore. Well, I don’t know that they ever existed, but I really wish they did.

~Kelsey Bennett

Lady Gaga’s new video “Bad Romance” is ridiculous. I honestly couldn’t have expected anything less, especially since her crazies at the VMAs.

Was there a marketing and PR (don’t forget her costume designers) meeting early in her career when someone said, “Let’s make you as absurd as we possibly can?”  She seems to be popular enough, but I don’t know if its even remotely safe for the mental well being of little kids to watch her music videos.

[via Daily Mail]

~Beckett Noyes

“Do you want to waste three years of your life debating stupid and utterly irrelevant minutia? Then yes, get your JD. Do you want to get a degree that allows you work the rest of your life in a tedious, shitty, unrewarding job? Then yes, get your JD. Are you a boring, facile, socially retarded whore, desperate for the illusion of money and success, regardless of the cost to your life and the lives of those you love? Then yes, get your JD.”

-Tucker Max

Cha-Sa smiles for the camera, 950 times later!

Watch out Korean drivers! In Seoul, on Wednesday, a 68 year old, Korean woman passed her written drivers exam after taking it 950 times (I bet most of you are happy you don’t have to drive on Korean streets right about now.)

Cha- Sa soon has been taking the test almost every day since April 2005. She supposedly needs her license for her vegetable business. She was obviously very determined, because I don’t know anyone who would voluntarily put themselves through that much stress and humiliation.Shouldn’t there be a rule on how many times you take the driving exam? I’m sure any person would agree that 950 times is a little more than excessive. Sorry, lady but come on now, some people just aren’t good at things and obviously driving is something that you just weren’t cut out to do.

If it took her 950 times to pass the rules of the road can you imagine what kind of driver she is behind the wheel? She now actually has to apply what she wasn’t good at understanding and drive around other cars and people. I would not want to be that driving instructor.

~Brooke Belke

Here’s a shocker…writers make mistakes, or in this case, unintentional faux pas. Considering the 70 year history of Batman, something like this panel doesn’t seem too out of line given the thousands of words that have been written on the Dark Knight.

Having a sidekick means you’re going to come into physical contact with him (or her), but within the context of every other superhero in the scene being concerned over a women, this comes across as curiously homoerotic.

File this under unintentionally hilarious.

[via yesbutnobutyes]

~Beckett Noyes

Have no fear, Stephenie Meyer is here!

Last week Female Force comic book released a biography of The Twilight Saga author Stephenie Meyer. According to ComicsAlliance, the 28-page snoozer tells the story of how Meyer “grew up in the Southwest, got married, had kids, wrote some books about vampires and got rich.”

For those of you like myself, who read Meyer’s four-book saga, this news might make you say, “WTF? She’s the subject of an entire comic book?”

I’m not going to lie. I love The Twilight Saga. I’ve read all four books, own the DVD, have plans to see New Moon next week and am listening to the Twilight soundtrack (my younger sister burned me her friends’ copy) as I write this.

But, I adamantly proclaim that Meyer sucks at writing. She can tell a story, but the technical deliverance is another issue. Therefore, this comic book news made me realize, if Meyer can star in a comic book, so can I.

Me in London. I sent this picture back home to my Edward-obsessed friends

What I’ve learned from Meyer:

1) Dream. Twilight came to Meyer in a dream. On Friday’s episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show, Meyer said that she dreamt chapter 13 of the first book and continued on writing from there. The stay-at-home mom who studied literature had never even written a short story before.

2) Aim for substance instead of quality. It’s no secret: Meyer isn’t the best writer. I actually almost didn’t finish Twilight because I couldn’t stand the shitty quality of writing that Meyer put into that book (and subsequently the rest of her novels). Seriously, if she sold 70 million copies of lackluster writing worldwide to land her own comic book, why can’t I land a deal for that book I wrote in third grade?

3) Whore books out as much as possible. Have you been to the mall lately? Borders and Hot Topic should change their names to Eclipse and Breaking Dawn, respectively. The most obscure Twilight crap is everywhere. With that kind of supply and demand it’s no wonder she has her comic book. That piece of crap will undoubtedly bring in the dough.

~Jessie Assimon