Nicolas Cage: is he reallly a bad actor? Or is he a so-so actor who gets cast in a whole lot of really dumb movies?

Exhibit A: Face/Off, which is a really dumb movie wherein Nicolas Cage plays John Travolta and John Travolta plays Nicolas Cage,* allows us to measure his performance directly against a known-terrible control.

Discuss.

- Z

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• 'How can we make this even more ridiculous?'

More likely than not, you didn't really want to know. Click 'play' and get what you deserve:



Don't mind me, I'm just going to go over here and be a nun now.

- Z

Just spent a week hiding out in the woods with a bunch of people who were not really pretending to be pirates . Oddly enough, I probably had the most actual pirate cred among the group, having been running rum across the border the same day that I arrived .

Some poor fucker brought a handle of Old Grand-Dad to the camp which we had to dispose of. It's a testament to the perseverance of the human spirit that the bottle was already half-empty when I got there one week into the event, but with one day left before packing up, we needed to figure something out. Enter (e:dragonlady7) and the #1 invention of the year: The Old Granddadtini*. Using several cans of Dr Pepper, a few bottles of sparkling cider, a fair amount of sour mix, and a smattering of triple sec, brandy, Mountain Dew, and anything else we needed to get rid of, she bent the laws of space-time physics to make Old Grand-Dad palatable --nay, delicious-- to enough people that we finished the bottle in only a couple of hours. The bartender was offering free upgrades to the Ballsacktini, which someone jokingly ordered and inadvertently received. Upon finding out, he drank the whole thing out of spite.

Another night, one of the tiki torches we used to light the road got busted and, with the help of a rubber band and a bottle of Stella, turned into Best Invention #2, the Beeki Torch. It earns points for majestic splendor, but loses points for practicality.

Deciding that there were too many Daves in camp [two], we founded the House of Daves. Our coat of arms [still under development] is Dave rampant sinister, Dave drinking dexter, beeki torches supporting. We have no constitution, but we have a number of amendments that start at number three because one and two seemed too important to use right away. I guess it doesn't matter because I can't remember them anyway. We also have the House of Daves Ladies Auxiliary which historically predates the House of Daves itself. And, using the closest item available [a monk-shaped dildo], we dubbed a knight John Henry David of the House of Daves based on his outstanding service to the Ladies Auxiliary [back massages].

Thus was a good time had by all. I'm glad I have the weekend to recuperate.

- Z

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• People would stop by our bar and ask for some ridiculous *tini drink. The bartender on duty would remind them that this was a pirate bar, and thus lacked things like Midori, Malibu, &c., whereupon they would ask for a Sex on the Beach. Hence the name.

You Linux guys got a real sense of humor.


- Fedora Core 8 installer

And yes, this goes into an infinite loop.

- Z

I fear that this will not end well.

In the absence of real information, we bring you the following live-blogs. The Guardian and The Huffington Post are tracking each other pretty closely now. There's different information at the New York Times and the National Iranian-American Council Of course Tehran is 8 1/2 hours ahead of us, so last call is 3:30pm EST.

In other news, 400,000 angry indigenous Peruvians called off their protest when the government admitted they hadn't bothered to consult anyone whose land they'd decided to sell Thirty-four people died in the conflict and the prime minister resigned.

Look it's not like I hate the government or anything, I just wish they'd pay closer attention to the governed [from whom they derive their just powers, right].

- Z

If anyone else is as riveted by the protests in Iran as I am, probably the most interesting information is coming from the liveblogs on the Guardian and the Huffington Post

Certainly you should check other news outlets, but I've found that international news organizations only seem to report that they can't report, official news reports are unreliable, and Twitter is just totally useless at this point. Also a lot of people nattering on about social networking.

- Z

I half-expected there would be a guy waiting for me in my driveway to shake my hand and give me a chocolate eclair.

- Z

I didn't think any of these really warranted their own post.

1. A couple of weeks ago, Federal had bogo bacon and cheap stuffed pork chops. Swine flu creates a global freak-out, and I reap all the benefits.

2. If you haven't tried it yet, I highly recommend Wolfram|Alpha for when you need facts instead of web pages. It does math conversions geography nutrition chemistry stocks genetics and probably more.

3. I've probably written about Spar's before - if you eat meat and you haven't been there yet, don't wait until after barbeque season is over. They have a good selection of 'normal' foods - sausages for grilling, cold cuts, sandwich cheeses, slab bacon, ribs - and some Extremely European items just kind of mixed in. They've got blood & tongue, two kinds of Krakauer, three kinds of head cheese, probably half a dozen kinds of salami, and a wide variety of cheeses with uninformative names. I was about to get the horseradish cheddar when I thought - let's go with the German butter cheese. For future reference: it's pretty mild but HOLY CRAP IT STINKS.

4. The woman at Spar's gave me a slice of Hungarian head cheese for being so well-behaved.

- Z

There's definitely something wrong with me.



To the driver of the orange Saturn VUE with New York State license plate #AGN-3258: check, mate.



n.b.: If I see your car as a personal challenge, you're definitely doing something wrong.

- Z

As the Western terminus of the Erie Canal and an important part of Western New York's industrial heritage, North Tonawanda has a rich and interesting history. The North Tonawanda History Museum boggles my mind:



A couple of days ago, (e:dragonlady7) made me go with her to Big Lots. I told her it was a bad idea, since it was almost my naptime and when I get tired I cause trouble. She said it would be a short trip [it wasn't] and that they had good prices on patio furniture [they do, but they left me with no opinion whatsoever - either positive or negative - and it's tough to drop a couple hundred bucks on stuff like that]. (e:fi) said it would be a cultural experience. So I went but all I wanted to do was sleep on The Biggest Recliner They had a pretty decent selection of all kinds of things, but their discount aisle [Big Lots has a discount aisle] was definitely weird.



So when we finally made it to the checkout counter, I was feeling a bit punchy. The guy behind us in line was buying a pretty big bottle of ketchup and I thought this was hilarious. In my mind, he was very self-conscious about the ketchup he was buying, like a man buying tampons for his wife. I really wanted to fuck with him. 'Hey man, that's a lot of ketchup.' 'What's with all the ketchup?' 'You are one ketchup-loving sumbuck.' But my instinct for self-preservation kicked in and I didn't want to have to explain to the emergency room why I picked a fight about ketchup.

- Z