Amazing What a Basket of Kisses Can Do

Was I the only one who didn’t realized that Flo, the endlessly perky spokeslady for Progressive Insurance, is played by the same actress who played Marge, one of the office hags in the early days of Mad Men?

I feel like the change is pretty dramatic. Of course, I will always primarily identify this actress, Stephanie Courtney, as one of leads in Melvin Goes to Dinner, which more people should see. But, like, seriously. It’s not Mad Men good, but it’s better than a Progressive Insurance commercial.

The Glittering Futuristic Skyline of 1988

I posted not too long ago that I feel tremendous nostalgia inexplicably for an old video game that I was never all that attached to. Here’s another one: a game I only played once but the mere intro to which transforms me back into a little kid.

I only played Mega Man II once or twice during my childhood. It was a rental, and, at that, I think it was my brother’s rental, so I didn’t get my hands on it all that much. Nonetheless, this one stands out in my head for one simple reason: seeing Mega Man’s hair “blowing” in the “wind” made me think I was looking at the future technology. Seriously. “They can do hair?” I still feel the same way, kinda.

To this day, I still get that opening tune stuck in my head, even if I’d only heard it a handful of times. Must be the marvel that is realistic (for its time) pixel hair.

The Soundtrack to a Feline Heart Attack

Asked by a co-worker: “Now, if you were to have been the music supervisor for this video, would have chosen a similar song?”

This is the video:

My response: “Yes, I would have chosen a similar song, and that’s this song, because nothing is more similar to this song than this song. It is the most appropriate song for this video, and in fact is the perfect melding of subject and soundtrack.”

No, kidding. Of course, I said “Baby Elephant Walk.”

A Dishes-Based Video Game, for Sad Girls Without Aspirations

Hey there, Susie. Are you tired of feeling left out of big brother’s video games? Well, now there’s a game made especially for you.

You know, in which you get punished for failing basic household chores.

Actually, Dishaster isn’t about washing dishes so much as it is about spinning them on poles. (And sure, that could be a metaphor for the life of a homemaker, but I feel that probably gives the game creators too much credit.) Seeing the actual gameplay in motion makes me wish it was actually about chores, because my god this looks tedious and horrible. Do you suppose the object was to trick girls, to make a life with actual dishes and related drudgery seem less awful by comparison?

Sounds Cute / Isn’t

Maybe only second to the Lemonade Berry tree in terms of Willy Wonka-style fantasticality, the Poodle-Dog bush sounds like a wonderful thing.

It’s not, as the L.A. Times points out: “Skin contact can cause rashes, blisters, swelling and general irritation. Those who have tangled with the purple-flowered plant called poodle-dog bush say it’s like handling poison oak.”

My theory: The plant evolved its irritating properties in revenge for getting stuck with the name Poodle-dog bush.

Chariots of Kong

Worth noting: The composer of the Donkey Kong Country games owes a debt to to Vangelis’s “Antarctica,” at least for Donkey Kong Country 2’s Arctic Abyss stage. Compare:

If not for the sonic similarity, then that each were created to soundtrack beautiful, frozen lands.

People and Their Silly Severed Heads (a Follow-Up)

So let’s be honest: There’s virtually no occasion on which someone be in the presence of a severed human head — theirs or someone else’s — and it doesn’t seem a little awkward. However, if you’re going to be a cephalophore and tote around a head like a big Christmas turnip, you may as well do it in a manner that will be immortalized in art. That’s the lesson we should take away from the Biblical story of Judith, the wily widow who gets an Assyrian general drunk, cuts off his head, and then shows people. The combination of Judith’s virtuous beauty and her raw aggression made the scene of her lopping off Holofernes a popular subject for painters.

See? Lucas Cranach the Elder’s treatment of the subject matter depicts Judith as poised, sly and powerful, whereas Holofernes wears an expression that we can only read as “What, bitch?” Just lovely.

Many chose to depict her carrying away the man’s head in a basket but some of whom instead painted the actual assassination. These ones are the most interesting. 

However, Spencer pointed out to me after me that certain artist’s rendition of Judith and Holofernes made for some interesting projections. Take Caravaggio’s painting.



Holofernes looks shocked, Judith looks like she’s concentrating more on the prevision of the act that the person she’s doing it to and finally Judith’s maid looks as if she’s goading Judith on. That all being said, it’s enlightening to know that, per Wikipedia, Caravggio based Holofernes on himself, Judith on his former mistress and the maid on the mistress’s mother. Which is cute.

Conversely, there’s Artemesia Gentileschi’s treatment of the same scene: the moment of death.

Gentileschi also mapped personalities from her life onto the characters. As Wikipedia points out, Judith looks a lot like Gentileschi herself, while Holofernes looks loopks like Agostino Tassi, a painter in his own right who’s today best known for having raped Gentileschi.

With background like this, I could actually not got tired of looking at biblical paintings by dead Italians.