Feeling a little lazy and self-indulgent today, and I don’t have any brilliant ideas banging down the door demanding to be expressed, so for today, you get the ol’ potpourri.

First off, a wacky blast from WAY in the past. Recognize the song?

Yup, that’s “Smile, Darn Ya, Smile”, the song that all the toons sing as they celebrate the demise of the very scary Judge Doom (seriously, didn’t you nearly soil yourself when he went “I looked JUST LIKE THIS!” and revealed he was a toon? Scared the hell out of me. ) The wall between Toon Town and the regular world had been breached, and there was a huge scene of toons and people mingling, and I don’t know about you folks, but for me, it was a huge emotional moment when I saw the movie in the theater.

I have a great love of animation, and part of me, the kid in me, will always sort of feel like cartoons are people, so the movie really worked for me. The world of animation has always seemed a little like heaven to me, with everything so colorful and wacky and filled with possibilities. Part of me, quite honestly, still wants to go live in Toon Town, even though I know I’m a human and could die there.

It would be worth it!

And you know, it all being fictional and not real at all and therefore not possible to actually do.

I know it’s not real! Honest! It’s not real just like Narnia isn’t real! Right?

(Psst! Mister Tumnus! CALL ME. *makes the call me sign with his hand*)

Moving along, we have this absolutely marvelous piece of video from the Funny or Die people.

Watched the whole thing? Basked in its awesomeness? Laughed like a loon? Good, now I can talk about it.

Being a massive Weird Al fanboy, I might be incredibly biased, but nevertheless I say : that fucking ROCKED. Al is so my God of Comedy. He is the Lord of All Comedy Nerds. I bet every single person at Funny or Die was incredibly stoked just to be in the room with their comedy idol. I know damn well that Weird Al is one of the only people I can think of who would instantly reduce me to complete gibbering drooling fanboy brain melt tarishness if I was to meet him face to face. He is so totally my hero. I would want so badly to make a good impression on him. I would completely lose my shit.

Possibly literally. Harsh, I know, but true.

So yeah. I would stand there and be mercilessly gunned down by Al. I would be honored, in fact.

One of the things that makes Al a comedy god to me is perfectly illustrated in the video : he is completely fearless and groks that in order to make the comedy work, you really have to commit. He didn’t mug for the camera and fuck around. He totally sold being super serious to the point of absurdity, and delivered “I choose…. DIE. ” with just the perfect amount of psychotic conviction to make the whole thing blow up like a fucking supernova, comedy wise.

We love you Al. You rule us.

And finally, here is Roger Ebert’s review of Atlas Shrugged.

Basically, the review could be summarized as “Ebert Shrugged”. According to him, the movie is nigh incomprehensible and nothing much happens in it, at all.

This is what happens when you take a book that is short on plot and long on polemic in the first place and try to make three movies out of it, folks.

Of course, no matter what, all the mindless Rand-bots will declare the movie to be absolutely genius and declare that all the negative reviews are inspired only by the reviewer’s hated of Rand, objectivists, reason, logic, and excellence.

Being a decent human being, I of course have nothing but amused contempt for Objectivists. They are a particularly pathetic variant of the generally ludicrous and embarrassing species of lapsed intellectual known as “libertarian”. People with adult vocabularies and grown up jobs and houses and everything, yet somehow unable to get past Freud’s oral stage of development and hence remain stuck in their Terrible Twos for life.

Imagine that, full grown adult humans wasting their lives shouting “NO! I don’t HAVE TO SHARE! It’s MINE!” over and over again, but in different words. Pathetic.

Of course, maybe you’re an Objectivist and just can’t wait to tell me how wrong wrong wrong I am.

Go ahead, prove my point!