Ever wonder what EXACTLY Kubrick and Clarke were trying to tell us in 2001: A Space Odyssey?

Now you can find out what these guys think it means. Considering the scale of the movie and the messages conveyed in the film, they've got a pretty good handle on it. (via mefi)

I got an Xbox.

Yeah I know, the Xbox 360 is coming out in november. But it's going to be too expensive, and they just lowered the Xbox to $149.99

With Xbox live, I've been playing Halo2 online. You can even track my stats. Like... You can see how much I get beat by 10 year olds. They are ruthless.

If you are playing on Xbox live, and don't mind playing with a n00b, send a message to my "gamertag" clunkyrobot.

We're fairly convinced that E!'s Love is in the Heir is a made-up pre-written terribly and/or awesomely improvised comedy show. So far, only one other person thinks so. Which either means they are fooling everyone. Or... Nobody but us and some other zine writer are watching that peice of crap television show.

either way, everybody loses.

Internet magazine Slate.com has an interesting article about "The O Factor."

It basically states that Wes Anderson movies, like Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums are better when co-written with Owen Wilson then without. As is the case with The Life Aquatic. (co-written by Anderson and Noah Baumbach) As well as Anderson's newest venture with Baumbach, The Fantastic Mr. Fox. And apparently all Anderson films henceforth, as Owen Wilson has been discovered by Hollywood for his admittedly near perfect comic timing.

"wildcat... wild... cat...
[he stares into space]
... pow... wildcat... I'm going to go."

The article also makes an interesting point. About the secretive and in-explicatory writing sessions of Wilson and Anderson. With Luke Wilson (Owen's brother and Anderson's former roommate) adding this about their strange writing partnership:

"Frankly, I have never seen them working together... I get the feeling they both toss out names, ideas, fragments. But I couldn't tell you. And if I can't, I think probably nobody can."

fellas, please... get the band back together.

We closed our play this weekend. I would call it a categorical success. A special thanks to everyone who took the time to come out and see it.

Audiences seemed to be entertained, cast and crew left the project feeling accomplished and like a family. I don't think we could have asked for more.

The beauty of this play was how simple and small it was. We basically had no budget, the actors were even willing to do the show for free, though the theatre came through with nice paychecks for almost everyone. I think we all needed to know that we could do a show on the cheap. Especially with Dad's having such money troubles, we could certainly stand to do some more smallish, charming shows like this one.

We're already talking about what the next improvised play could be about. My vote is for a story about an "unlikely, reluctant hero who is chosen to lead an intergalactic rebellion against the forces of evil." Sounds simple enough. I want a space fighter dogfight! We just need to figure out how to do that for $20.

For now though...
Protamo sleeps.

I'm in the mood to keep my momentum going. I've already agreed to do more projects. The next big one should be the short play festival 8 1/2 X 11, for which I'll be providing a short animation.

The first manned moon landing took place on July 20th 1969, mission designation: Apollo 11.

You can celebrate one of the greatest feats of human engineering ever accomplished a couple of different ways. Google has introduced Google Moon. (be sure to check out the high zoom level) Check out the full screen quicktime panorama of the Apollo landing site complete with sound.

Stewert (who works at Flickr) snapped this picture of our favorite british mash-up artist, the elusive Eric Kleptone, who just happens to be sporting a creative commons t-shirt.

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that offers a flexible copyright for creative work. Copyrighting is finally being put in the hands of the artist, and out of the hands of the companies.

D'oh!

"Smokey, this is not Nam, this is bowling. There are rules."

This weekend marks the 4th celebration of the annual Lebowski Fest, celebrating one of the greatest, and most qoutable movies ever made, The Big Lebowski.

We swore last year that we would definately go, no matter what it took. But again... we cannot. We have a play to do. That means we will miss the costume contest, the concerts, and most of all... the free flowing caucasians.

If you cannot go, or are otherwise stuck in ATL, come see our play we'll go out afterwards and cry into our white russians.

We got a little bit of press for our play The Computer Wore Flat-Soled Pumas in The AJC's weekly insert Access Atlanta. If you want to see the full color photograph taken by the lovely Linnea Frye, you'll need to either register, or use a bugmenot pass.

Otherwise here is the article reprinted in it's entirety and without permission.

+--------------------+
At Dad's Garage: 'The Computer Wore Flat-Soled Pumas'

By BRET LOVE
For accessAtlanta
Published on: 07/14/2005

IF YOU'VE EVER BEEN TO Dad's Garage, chances are you've seen Christian Danley. At 6-foot-4, with a linebacker's large frame, an endearingly goofy grin and a propensity for dropping F-bombs at random, the guy's hard to miss. Now he's starring in and directing "The Computer Wore Flat-Soled Pumas," an improvised coming-of-age story about a boy and his sentient computer, which is part of the theater's workshop series.

Your title reminds me of the old Disney film "The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes." Were you inspired by the movie? It's more just for reference sake, to give people the feel of the story. The play is about played-out, cheesy archetypes, and that's why it's improvised. When you see these types of movies and you see a dorky kid go up to a popular girl, you know what's gonna happen — we don't have to write that scene. If the improvisers are comfortable with their characters, they can make up the dialogue every night, and as long as the story arc is interesting the audience should find the dialogue interesting.

The movie's tagline was, "A college sophomore crosses wires with a computer and electrifies the establishment." How do you hope the play will electrify the establishment? Mostly I just want people to have a good time. I've always been a fan of computers and geek technology — "War Games" has always been one of my favorite movies — so I thought why not have a coming-of-age story that takes place between a kid and a computer?

You played a robot in the sci-fi season of "Scandal!" You play the computer in this show, and your Web site is called Clunky Robot. What's up with the tech-love? I've always been a fan of technology, especially the stuff that's accessible to the consumer. What's even more interesting to me is this archaic technology that's outdated, and ClunkyRobot.com is all about math, science, my artwork and clunky technology that's not quite there yet.

• THE 411: $13. Today-July 23, 8 p.m. Dad's Garage, 280 Elizabeth St., Suite C-101, Inman Park. 404-523-3141. www.dadsgarage.com.

Every time I look at this it makes me laugh.

The FAKE Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak:

The REAL Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak:

should be a funny play.

I have a play opening this Thursday. It's called:

The Computer Wore Flat-Soled Pumas
Directed by Me

And it's about a boy who befriends a sentient computer. Together they learn a little bit about life, love, and being a man... or a computer... or both. It also tells the story of Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs. Who together, in their garage, constructed the first Apple computer. Only now Wozniak is a burnt out Computer Science Professor, and Steve Jobs, well, he runs Apple, and he always gets what he wants.

The play is improvised. There is no script, each night we make up the dialogue. We've been practicing being these characters, and because the characters are simple archetypes (The Burnt Out Professor, The Dorky Kid), the philosophy goes that if you put two archetypes in a scene together you instinctually know what that scene will be like. We are pre-programmed to know it. For instance...

If there is a scene where The Dorky Kid asks The Popular Girl out on a date, we know what that scene will be like. We've seen it a thousand times in a thousand John Hughes movies, we can make up the dialogue ourselves. The fun comes in making that dialogue interesting and different every night.

We are re-mixing the culture of entertainment. We grew up examining these relationships in television shows, and movies. Now our culture is informed by them. Now we can take them and play with them.

the vitals:
The Computer Wore Flat-Soled Pumas
In The Top Shelf @ Dad's Garage
Tickets are $10 (you can buy them online)
July 14th-23rd, 2005  Th-Sat at 8pm

I hope you can come, even if you have to drive from the moon.

Dude, I'm lame, and late on this bus, I should have posted this a few days ago.

This is really funny. A few of my friends were hired to pretend to be a boy band called S*Moove (pronounced sche' moo-ve) by a law firm. The photos are funny, even if you don't know them. But the real genius is in the "management only" section. Enter the password "kilstock" to listen to the Boyband's phone conversations with their bewildered lawyer.

This past weekend the Big Blue God of All Hipsters landed a blockade runner smack in the middle of Midtown Atlanta.

Ikea has arrived, and none too soon, some people in Atlanta nearly exploded in anticipation of buying inexpensive modular furniture originating from Sweden. Soon we will all breathe a sigh of relief as we line our Billy Shelves with esoteric collections of poetry books and Moleskins. Well some of us anyway.

We tried to go to Ikea this weekend, to experience this mecca, to eat of it's fabled swedish meatballs. We tried, we really did... twice. We still haven't stepped foot inside the store. I plan on never stepping foot inside, and I'll tell you why...

Upon crossing the giant landbridge at connects The Ikea to the rest of Atlanta we were greeted by a cute little sign that simply said "Ikea" with an arrow pointing to the right. We laughed, "how efficient" we then got promptly to the right. The next intersection had a comical sign that, again, simply said "Ikea" only this time it had two arrows, pointing in OPPOSITE directions. We made a split second decision... we went right. Next we got to another intersection, this time with Cops standing around directing traffic to seemingly pointless surface streets. When asked where to go, the Cops would simply point more aggressively. Thanks. We were hearded over a bridge, around a corner and then right back into the Cop laiden intersection we just escaped from!

Apparently all parking lots surrounding Ikea were full. And all lots surrounding the lots surrounding Ikea were full. Oh, except for the one charging $10, and that was still about a mile away.

We found a Parking Deck even further away that only charged $2. But this lot was so far off that shuttles were required to carry shoppers to and from the Ikea Store. (what if I wanted to buy a new bed?) We waited, 2 shuttles came by to drop people off, only they weren't picking anyone up. Despite the fact that signs on the side of the buses clearly stated that these were "Ikea Shuttles" they weren't going to Ikea, they were going to Georgia Tech. !?!?

After standing in the shuttle line we finally boarded a bus. An Ikea worker was sitting in the front row, she told us that once we got to Ikea we would once again have to wait in line. This time to actually enter the store. Apparently Ikea was filled to capacity, she told us we would be standing in line for "about an hour." She told us we'd be better off "just going home."

When an Ikea worker tells you not to go to the store, you don't argue. You pick yourself up and you go the fuck home.

We tried to go back the next day, we were greeted with the same confusing signage, and the same unhelpful Cops. This time we gave up before we invested 2 hours into the ordeal.

And all of this so we could go to a FURNITURE STORE.

Word from San Fransisco is that their Ikea Store is mobbed like this every weekend! What is so special about Ikea? I mean besides the cool robotic Virtual Help-desk Assistant Seriously, tell me, because at this rate I'll never be able to find out, and don't particularly want to.

The end of an era.

There is a store on south street in Philly... well there USED to be a store called Zipperhead. It was immortalized in the Dead Milkmen song Punk Rock Girl.

Thursday they closed their doors, apparently South Street has gotten too "un-punk." They're moving their operation to 528 S. 4th Street and are changing the name to Crash Bang Boom.

What is to happen to Zipperhead's old location? ...apparently an NYC Clothing company is moving in... Word on the street is they'll be keeping the giant ants on the front of the building.