Another Eruption

Volcanoes have been in the news lately, so I thought I'd share this with you. In our March 26 issue I have a City Life Top Six on infamous April Fool's Day hoaxes. It was a riot to write, as there's been some doozies over the years. One that didn't make the cut occurred in 1974. On the morning of April 1, the residents of Sitka, Alaska awoke to the alarming site of a long dormant volcano on Mount Edgecumbe belching black smoke. Turned out that a local prankster named -- and I kid you not -- Porky Bickar had flown a bunch of tires up to the crater and lit them on fire. Not good for the environment, admittedly, but as a practical joke damn funny. (ImagesSmarter)

On a related note, I'm bracing for a firestorm with my March 26 Ask Greg. (skyrock.net)

Wild In The Afternoon

I'm not sure how long this has been on the Web but here's the trailer for the really weird-looking (in a good way) Spike Jonz adaptation of the classic children's book Where the Wild Things Are.

Click on this link, then click on some more links and be bitter that I can't find a quality embed.

If I had kids I'd ban them from drek like Shrek and force-feed this kind of thing down their little throats. Yes, I would be a terrible parent, it's true.

The music, which seems a little out of synch with the trailer's cut, is Arcade Fire, by the way.

UPDATE: I wouldn't really ban my hypotherical kids from watching Shrek. But don't ask me to pretend it's a satisfying, imagination-nourishing film. It is not. It's glib and shallow. Ha! What do you say to that?

UPDATE #2: I've had some complaints about the general ass-ness of that link, so here's another. This video claims to be embed-able, but it lies, lies, lies!

UPDATE #3: Let's try this one:



Better?

Do you really need to send that text?

The increasing boldness of cellphone users inside movie theatres is reaching new highs. It's seems socially accepted to TEXT during the screening. Guess what. The theatre is dark FOR A REASON. The screen glare is impossibly distracting and singlehandily ends with the suspension of belief any half-decent flick requests. My call is for all those annoyed with this inconsiderate behavior: SPEAK UP! Movie etiquette can't defend itself.