Art Deco (Images)

I know, I know, this is not what was supposed to be coming next, but the interview is proving surprisingly hard to put into a post.

Anyway, this post goes out to the lady behind GOD! GIRLS! GUNS! PIE!

Roland Emmerich's anti-Shakespeare movie "Anonymous" Completely Ignores the REAL Truth

So I read this article a while back. It's about Anonymous, Roland Emmerich's film about how Shakespeare wasn't Shakespeare and was instead a dude named Edward de Vere. An excerpt:

Orloff [the writer of the movie --N.] brushes off such criticism of his movie as a knee-jerk response to an “academic subversion of normality.” “When you learn it’s not fact, it’s a bit unsettling,” the screenwriter said. “Why not question everything you’ve been taught?”

Well, yes, in that situation I can see how that would happen, although as far as I know Orloff hasn't begun questioning the moon landing or the traditional dates of Ancient Egypt's Second Intermediate Period.

The studio plans to concurrently release Last Will. & Testament, a documentary about the authorship debate, through First Folio Pictures (a production shingle whose president is none other than Roland Emmerich) and has been providing materials to educators that encourage teachers to “make this thought-provoking new film part of your class plan.”

And this worries me. I think teaching class materials based on Anonymous is a bad strategy: it's giving kids an inaccurate and incomplete picture... because Anonymous didn't go far enough. It's true that conventional views of Shakespeare are completely false. But not in the way most people think. Let me elaborate.

*  *  *

When I heard about Roland Emmerich's Anonymous, I was excited. Finally, a movie that wasn't afraid to take on conventional scholarship and challenge long-held beliefs about Shakespeare. But then I saw a photo of Shakespeare from the movie:

Apparently the film thinks so little of Shakespeare that he doesn't even know which direction to bow in

I'm sure you see the problem here.

You see, Anti-Stradfordians (people who don't believe Shakespeare wrote the plays) often say that we don't have any evidence that Shakespeare ever read a book, and that we don't have anything that shows he wrote the plays besides copies of works that were allegedly by him and had his name attached to them on the cover somehow, and some obviously mistaken contemporary accounts.

But that brings us to an urgent, basic issue that needs to be sorted out before we can begin questioning identities:

Okay I Accidentally Lied

I've been busy. There will probably be something here Friday, though.

EDIT: Or Saturday.

Returning Soon

The Nimblog will be returning this December, sometime in the next two weeks.

Gideon Conversation

The Setting: A Place. The Gideons are handing out copies of the New Testament. The Gideons are mostly old men in suits of varying quality, and when people pass them by they seem even frailer, their suits even thinner, as if something has deserted them. Then another person passes by and they regain that spark and try again.

I take one, mainly to show support. They could be street-preaching about how America is the new Sodom and jezebels tempt honest young men in the streets or what the hell ever, but instead they're just quietly handing out copies of the New Testament, being ignored by most people.

So, as I said, I take one. The man smiles at me. I encounter another one a little farther down. The New Testament is small and thin, about the size of a box of playing cards, and it rests in my pocket where this new Gideon can't see it.

Gideon: Would you like one, sir?

Me: No thanks, I'll wait for the movie.

I show him the New Testament.

Me: Nah, I'm just kidding, I already got one.

He smiles. As I walk away, he calls after me, as an afterthought, perhaps worried that I haven't fully been sold on the book.

Gideon: Well, it's, I mean, it's almost as real as a movie!

Me: Haha, yeah...

I resume walking. A moment passes.

Me (thinking): Wait...

Fixing Bad Commercials: Singing (featuring NAPA Know-How)

Singing in commercials can be a fun, lighthearted way to communicate a message. The more clever the lyrics and the more catchy the song, the more an audience is going to respond to it. Unfortunately, most people leave out the first part (I'm struggling to think of a good example of it) and instead just focus on the second part.

You've probably seen a lot of local commercials that make this mistake (perhaps they even drop some phresh beats and lay down a rap!) but national commercials are also guilty of this. Companies, here's the thing. Just because your song is catchy doesn't mean that it's likeable.

The people who made the NAPA Know-How commercial don't understand this.

Okay, so, to start with, we've got this:

When the very first words of your commercial are the protagonist talking about how he doesn't care about other human beings (evidenced by his careless disposal of the very organ he is lacking), you should know that your character is going to come across as broken at best and insane at worst. We'll see which it turns out to be.

Space Age Drink Machine

I'll confess that I'm a little late on this one. I could have written about this at the beginning of summer, but I was really friggin' busy and never had time to stop and assemble the material. Hopefully, though, this will still be new to some of you. Also know that this would have been a scoop. I want you all to still give me credit for that.

In fact, at the restaurant where I encountered this machine, the workers proudly told me that it was the first one in the state. Badass.

In short, those old-school drink machines you may know and love--the ones with nozzles for each drink, like so:

may become as much a part of our past as the Stone Age.


That's right, say hello to the new kid in town:

THE SPACE AGE DRINK MACHINE.

Now, I know it doesn't look like much, but that's just 'cause I didn't get a very good picture of it. So I'll have to paint a picture... with words.

(I could just find a picture of it from the internet, but to do so would be to acknowledge that there are other sites out there carrying this story, and I'm just not ready to do that.)

Imagine one of those self-serve ice-cream machines. Now imagine only one dispenser thing.

Or, imagine one of those Coinstar machines:

Or one of those stand-alone ATM Machines:

Except they look like this:

I hope that's clear enough.

Find out more about the machine that will change the entire world after you click read more:

I Haven't Forgotten About This Blog

I'm writing a new post as we speak. It's going to be about something awesome.