People are totally freaking out over this video, of a Star Wars toy living as a dog. It really is incredibly well done! But fellow dog-haters may not enjoy it as much.

“We’re very disappointed.”
— Brooklyn resident Sylvia Mak, who had “wanted to spend $70, or more, on shirts” for her daughters at the mall-beachwear outpost Hollister before finding out that the Soho outpost of the chain was closed because of a bedbug infestation. What does a clothing store sourced from mass-distributed items do in that case? Burn all of its inventory? Send the clothes off to the same place that gets the shirts commemorating the Phillies’ 2009 World Series victory? Force the poor employees who aren’t up to the chain’s appearance standards to wear them? [Pic via]

India’s government has held an open call for design ideas for a symbol for its currency, the rupee-to join those internationally recognized as the dollar, the euro, the pound and the yen. The submissions have been narrowed to five, with the winner to be chosen today. True/Slant’s Jeff Koyen thinks it’s going to be #4, above. But I’m pulling for #2, because of its nice, broad, highly visible lines. I also think something else could work?

Or maybe this more stylized versino of RuPaul?

And here is what the gays are really saying about Eclipse, which really is a movie that doesn’t make a lot of internal sense when you view it through any lens except that of intense lady-tween sexual longing and the madness of adolescence: “The vampire army! It was led by a kid named Riley, who looked exactly like Brandon Teena as played by Hilary Swank. This is the first time outside of gay porn in which I have encountered someone named Riley.” Also? “This franchise is ‘subverting’ the genre by giving the vampires sparkly skin and bodies that are apparently made of fragile glass while still maintaining the age-old truth that women are weak and need to be protected until marriage.” Oh and also they want to have sex with Taylor Lautner, I guess.

I was settling into this steady warm feeling about Mike Bloomberg in recent months but that has pretty much evaporated with his latest insane bit of pro-business mouthing-off. Plans for a 6% tax hike on people earning half a million per year and more is going to destroy New York City, says New York City’s billionaire mayor: “I think it’s the best thing that ever happened to Connecticut. I can’t imagine why every hedge fund wouldn’t pick up tomorrow and move. The first common-sense rule of taxation is, don’t tax people that can leave.” Yes, just tax the poor ones who can’t. Bloomberg then went on to describe “legislation that would decrease the tax deduction for those who make at least $10 million a year” as “CRAZY.” Really, he did! And then: “the Legislature had insisted on raising taxes on the wealthy,” he complained, saying, “All of this stuff is going in totally the wrong direction.” Bloomberg has always sounded the red alarm that corporations and rich people will flee the city-and yes, the city runs because of rich people! And some did go to New Jersey and Connecticut! But it wasn’t without Bloomberg giving away the farm in concessions on their way out anyway. Does anyone really think the nutheads in Albany are going to do a great job designing tax proposals? Not really! Does New York City have to be a business-friendly city? Yes! But has Bloomberg lifted a finger to stop the New York City job loss at rich corporations? No-he won’t risk offending them.

by EA Hanks

Obviously I was taken to see Eclipse because my friend knows me well enough to know that, not only have I read the series, and seen the other movies, but I also have thoughts about both. Mostly these thoughts are about Mormon sexuality and anti-abortion propaganda, but also about how I give Robert Pattinson credit for wanting to be a good actor, and how I have nothing but empathy for how bonkers his life must be. Anyway, that’s not what I want to talk about. What I want to talk about is wigs.

Because I’m pretty sure the wig that Kristen Stewart (who I also want to give credit (and a sandwich) to!) is wearing is the best wig I’ve ever seen. Remember how she cut her hair into that ugly mullet to play Joan Jett? Well, obviously Bella Swan has to be… I don’t know, dreamy enough so that a werewolf will see her unborn daughter, who he will fall in love with STRAIGHT FROM THE WOMB, in her eyes and thus confuses his love for the pre-baby as love for the mother.

(Oh, uh, spoiler alert.)

It moves naturally-the wig, I mean. There’s no clear distinction between the wig itself and the secondary hairline piece, and, it’s the same color throughout the movie!

You’d think that’s a given, right? Oh, but, it’s not!

Other vampire’s wigs change! They change color, and length, and sometimes they look a little crooked, all in the same movie! (Also: you could say the same for the accents. Carlisle has one now!)

Which would be fine, I guess, except that in movies there’s supposed to be continuity. Also, because this movie is about intimacy and love, there’s no medium shots, as noted. It goes from big wide scenery shots to close ups, with nothing in between, so you really have to look at all those bad wigs quite a lot.

Did they use up the make up budget on Bella’s wig? That must be it, right? Because there is really no real reason why Emmett’s hair is suddenly pitch black in the Big Battle Scene (between 5 or so werewolves and maybe 8 new-born vampires) and cut so as to make the beefy star look like some sort of Slavic Gentleman’s Gentleman.

They didn’t use up all the money going to Italy for three or four extraneous exterior shots (that was the second movie) and they didn’t use up all make up budget on Charlie’s mustache (When is someone going to give that actor some more work? He’s so good!). So… what happened exactly?

I guess I’ll just have to go see it again to figure it out for myself.

EA Hanks is wondering why we can have computer-generated wolves but not computer-generated hair?

by Dan Horton

Dan Horton, a friend and former colleague, works on tugboats out of the New York Harbor for a living. Two weeks ago, he flew down to Louisiana to take a job on a barge unloading crude oil from the skimmer boats that clean the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. Crew are only allowed to send and receive one email a day; his girlfriend, Lori, passes along his daily email to friends and family. With their permission, we’re passing them along to you. -Dave Bry

Subject: Chicken Dolphin Report
Date: Saturday, June 26

Lori,

The barge was 90 degrees in the shade today. We took oil from a skimmer boat all afternoon. It’s really not hard work but doing anything in the heat is tough. I’m wearing a rag around my neck to keep the double burn from getting worse. I have a big-ass goofy panama hat, sunglasses and tons of sunscreen. My t-shirt was soaked with sweat within twenty minutes. BP dropped off crates of bottled water and a Gatorade-type of drink to the boat a few weeks ago-I believe they are paying for the fleet of supply boats that are running out of Venice as well. God bless ‘em.

We spotted two baby mahi-mahi swimming behind the skimmer boat. Just over a foot long. The tankerman I was working with is from Florida and does a lot of fishing; he called them “chicken dolphin.” He said they were only a few months old. Later, when I climbed down the pigeon holes from the barge to the boat (it’s a “pin boat,” I’ll explain that some other time) I could see the translucent blue that I’d been looking for down here. There was some shade from the barge, so the surface of the water was out of direct sunlight and it was just glowing. Looked like you could see quite deep. I could stare at that for hours. Of course, the day before we’d been going through some of the oil that had been broken up by dispersant and the white caps looked rusty. I’ll take the good stuff when I can get it.

The moon looked just about full tonight, there was a time where we were tooling along and had the full moon right off our starboard and the fires from “ground zero” off our port. I was on the back deck doing my tugboat yoga routine-stretching with the assistance of bullheads and H-bits, trying to work out the kinks in my back. I kept looking from one side to the other, trying to come up with words for the contrast. Turner, the British painter, came to mind for the portside scene-all orange glow and smoke clouds and half-discernible forms. And on the starboard, I kept thinking of the “luminous clarity” of the light that the Vajrayāna Buddhists talk about. None of this is proper tugboat talk.

I miss you,

Dan

Subject: One Barge Per Man
Date: Sunday, June 27th

Lori,


We just had a full night offloading skimmer boats, one on each side. 
That’s why they need the extra tankerman-only one barge per man by law. I 
don’t know if that would be grounds for keeping me on-it hasn’t happened 
all that often. But I really could use the money. Plus, I haven’t yet 
recovered from the trauma of getting down here in the first place. (The old 
”Greenport to Greenpoint” commute already seems like the golden days of my 
maritime career. I love to see new places and all, but chasing a boat 
doesn’t allow for the freedom that makes travel fun). Money and crew-change 
angst aside, I really want to get home and grill you a good meal. And yes, once you know the time to get home, or have a loved one get home to you, it 
always ratchets up a notch. We call that “channel fever.”


Finished the Stieg Larsson books last off watch. My bunk light quit 
working on me and I read the last 50 pages by flashlight. Swedish democracy 
and constitutional integrity restored by highly talented journalists, 
computer hackers, a few good cops and grrrrlll power. Well allrighty then! 
Loved it. Makes me want to go back to journalism. But then again, maybe not…


It’s time to wake up the front watch. Gotta go.


Love,


Dan

Archipelago Books is having a big old sale on books from countries in the World Cup. Why, you could be reading great books from The Netherlands or Argentina! Instead of watching soccer!

Silly Bandz — the non-circle-shaped variants on the old rubber-bracelet theme that clog up the checkout counters at your local drugstore and get serially banned by concerned elementary-school principals — are now a hit among adults, according to Thursday Styles! Hats off to this trendlet piece’s author, Kayleen Schaefer, who is so devoted to her Styles-reporting craft that she found someone who wears the brightly colored, 20.6-cent scraps (shaped like “a palm tree, the number 3 and a monkey”) on the same wrist as her Rolex. [Pic via]

The video for “The Power of Pussy,” the classic Bongwater song (with B-52s frontman Fred Schneider singing backup!), had a budget of “$1000 and $600 of that went to Ann [Magnuson]’s hair and make-up, with the remainder going to pizza and videotape stock.” And: “Ann threw a big party to premiere the video and it was the first time I was ever in Los Angeles. There were tons of TV and movie stars there (Albert Brooks, Richard Lewis), rockstars (members of Red Hot Chili Peppers and Fishbone) Russ Meyer actress Kitten Natividad and even Simpson’s creator Matt Groening, who asked me for a copy for his personal collection, which was a thrill.” DREAMY. It’s after the jump, because the video’s still is a drawing of a bunch of penises and a few of you have jobs!