Yet another Cool Band Name™. Here it is: The Management

As in, “Provided by The Management for your Protection.”

I figured U2’s new commercial/video was too good not to mention. Pretty sweet. I wonder if the whole thing will air at any point, or if they’ll have to cut it down to 30 seconds.

I can’t think of any single movie prop I would rather own than HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and he’s now up on eBay. Pretty tempting. Now if I could just scrape together a current minimum of $150K (sure to be higher soon), I could put my bid in!

What movie prop would you most love to own?

I’m a little surprised that I was never deeply into Futurama when it was actually on the air and they were making new episodes. I didn’t hate the show, I just wasn’t really excited to see it for one reason or another. It’s odd because the crew who creates it has quite a few overlaps with The Simpsons, and my love of that show has been made quite plain here in the past.

When I discovered that Futurama’s first three seasons were available on NetFlix I was eager to stick them at the front of my queue, and I did just that. I watched them in a matter of weeks, and now I’m a big fan. I should’ve known that satire and sci-fi would be like the peanut-butter-in-my-chocolate of television. Fox didn’t agree with that assessment, unfortunately, but no one’s ever sure what those guys are thinking.

Anyhow, I wanted to share a couple clips (Fair use! Fair use!) from one of the episodes in season three in the hopes that you’ll go and check it out. When I first watched this episode, I was shocked to find that Beck plays a rather large role in it. He’s one of my favorite musicians, and he does quite a lot more than a cameo. Those of you who are fans of Beck’s music will appreciate these jokes much, much more than those who haven’t heard it or aren’t very familiar with it. The thing that really impressed me about this episode was how tightly it was connected to Beck’s work, instead of just being generic music jokes or generic rock star jokes.

So without further ado, I present Bender’s introduction to Beck, and the Becktionary.

Time for a little poll. This is a comments-centric entry, so be prepared to contribute! My question is simple: What is your favorite Simpsons running gag? I’m talking about the jokes that appear in several episodes, again and again. For instance, you could say your favorite running gag is when Homer chokes Bart and Bart’s tongue sticks out like a little red squiggle under his bulging eyes (although the gag is more literal in that instance, no?). That’s might not be anyone’s favorite, but it’s an example.

Mine is right here. Dr. Nick gets me every single time even though I know exactly what’s coming. (“The B is for bargain!”) Still, I have a feeling that once people start picking theirs, I’m going to go “Oh! That one is way better than mine… dangit.”

Oh! And if you’re feeling really creative, also give your favorite instance or variation of the gag. For mine, it would be when Mel Gibson gets cornered in the movie theater lobby and says “Hi, everybody!” and Dr. Nick steps out and says, “Hi, Mel Gibson!”

Anyhow, sound off!

I just wanted to make a quick post to be sure everyone had the opportunity to see the amazingly high-quality Spider-Man movie made entirely of Legos. I’ve seen Lego movies before, but never as well-done as this. They’ve got depth of field and everything!

If you’re a fan of Stanley Kubrick, you may enjoy reading Citizen Kubrick. Very interesting stuff.