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lowbrowculture.com is the personal weblog of John Kelly. It is updated on a nearly-daily basis.
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nothin' but love
Nike have designed new 'SwiftSuits' for athletes competing at the Beijing Olympics. And they look like something from the future. Dimpled gloves to help reduce drag caused by hands? Whoa.
The Open Source answer to the iPhone, the Openmoki Neo FreeRunner has been released for general sale. Ships with enough software to make/receive calls and texts and manage contacts. Not exactly an auspicious start.
To celebrate Independence Day in the states, Microsoft have released the Top Gun Anthem for Guitar Hero 3 for free. Appropriate? Probably not, but you know what they say about gift horses.
The Signal 24Jun08
Dir: David Buckner, Dan Bush, Jacob Gentry, 2007, 99′
IMDB Plot Keywords: Extreme Violence, Flashback, Poison, Beaten To Death, Loss Of Family
All the best horror movies deal with weird, unexplained shit happening on a large scale. We know this. The directors of the Signal (all three of them) know this, and they want us to know they know, so the film is littered with clever, knowing winks to other films. In the case of the Signal, the weird, unexplained shit is a signal on TV and phones that causes people to go crazy and start murdering other people. Not the most original of set-ups, but to make it interesting the filmmakers ditch the only sane character in the film after 25 minutes and spend the rest of the film concentrating on people who are dealing with actually having gone crazy. A good effort to put a new spin on an old formula, but unfortunately the movie is so wildly uneven, the whole thing ends up looking like an experiment in moviemaking onomatopoeia.
Google Street View coming to Rome 15Jun08
Going to the shops on Tuesday, I saw a car with some weird shit on top of it. At first, I just thought “man, people have some weird shit on their cars here in Rome” and was ready to write it off as just another aspect of Italian culture that I just don’t get. Then I realised that it was probably the Google Street View car, taking shots of the Lungotevere beside our house. This was confirmed when, coming back from the shops via the narrow streets behind our house, I ran into the car again. I had to step in to let it pass by. I got a good look at the Google Street View logo on the side of the car, as well as the fancy high-tech fuckery in the passenger seat, all while doing my best to mug for the camera.
So yeah, Google Street View is finally coming to places that aren’t in America. Shame the Roman one is going to be filled with badly-parked cars, dingy streets and a bunch of Romans staring like they’re the apes from the start of 2001 and the car is the fucking monolith.
Be Kind Rewind 10Jun08
Dir: Michel Gondry, 2008, 101′
IMDB Plot Keywords: Underpass, Interracial Romance, Camcorder, Steamroller, Power Transformer
A freak accident in a power station has Jack Black accidentally erasing all the videos in Mos Def’s video store, leaving the two to re-create (’swede’) a bunch of movies. Let’s face it, the sweded movies were always going to be the real draw here, but I’d still like to think that it’s possible to present these in a believable way without such a ridiculously contrived setup. Still, despite the best efforts of Gondry’s clunky script, Mos Def’s attempt to mumble his way through an entire movie and Jack Black’s phoned-in performance, the movie manages to come together in the end in an unusually satisfying emotional way. I was expecting a lot worse.
Still got it 06Jun08
BBC News: Eastwood hits back at Lee claims
Clint Eastwood has responded to fellow director Spike Lee’s claims that there are too few black actors in his films, saying he should “shut his face”.
Clint Eastwood may look like a 150-year old burn victim, but he’s still got it.
Abby Normal 05Jun08
Clicking through hundreds of Wikipedia pages eventually led me to the page for Lexington Steele, a porn actor1. In it, he talks about his struggle:
Yes, I am religious. I am Christian, Baptist. I grew up in as close to a Cosby-show lifestyle as you can get. Doing porno, on a repeated basis, I am committing Coitus interruptus like Onan. I’m not married, so I’m fornicating for a living. I’m paid to have sex, which means what? I’m prostituting by definition. These are things I have to reckon with my God on a daily basis. I knowingly do these things.
My decision to do porno has forced me to take my religion within. Because of my job I am stronger in my relationship with God, because now I take God with me everywhere I go; if I don’t, I’ll fail. I didn’t know that God blessed me with an abnormally large penis that allows me to make porno. But I feel blessed.
Apart from the whole religion thing and the bit about having an abnormally large penis, I know exactly how you feel, buddy.
- Actor? Is there much acting involved? Although, if questioning wrestlers leads to getting bopped in the head, I think I may leave this question alone [↩]
100% humidity 28May08
This is a fucking travesty. Send air conditioning.
Latest in an extremely long list of Wikipedia articles that have chilled me to the bone: Seduction community