Ow.

The good: I walked a little over six miles yesterday evening.

The bad: My knee hurts.

I suspect, strongly, that the two are connected.

Ow.

Hollywood hates me, part 903

Latest remake: Enter the Dragon.

Redone with a "noir" feel to it.

Fuck that.

The only EtD remake that was ever needed was "A Fistful of Yen" from Kentucky Fried Movie.

Otherwise, EtD is amazing because of Bruce Lee. The plot, frankly, is every crime and martial arts movie ever made: a hero is dropped into the midst of the bad guys, loses friends and partners along the way, and finally defeats the bad guy and brings down his operation. Hell, there are seven James Bond movies with the same plot. What made it special was Lee's amazing charisma and the fight scenes.

Call it something else. But Enter the Dragon will always be a Bruce Lee vehicle.

Friday notes

My mom's coming into town today. God help me.

1. Wondering what the flip side of the much-ballyhooed "free prescriptions" program at Publix is? Well, they're apparently discontinuing the policy of price-matching Wal-Mart on the 53 other $4 prescriptions they'd been maintaining.

2. Thor will be directed by Matthew Vaughn, of Stardust and Layer Cake fame (and who also almost directed X-Men 3, which would have made it suck a whole lot less. Then again, the fetid corpse of Ed Wood would have made a better movie than Ratner).

3. The Segway Fan Club has disbanded! Gob Bluth must be heartbroken. The best part of the article is where Segway insists that sales are up 50% over the last few years. Because "50%" is so meaningful when you're dealing with numbers in the double digits.

4. Invader Zim on sale again! $15.99 for the Complete Invasion (47% off). Get it, already!

5. I love this question that yuki_onna asks about fantasy literature within fantasy literature (as well as the discussion that follows).

6. Related to that, here's Wikipedia's far-from-complete (but still fascinating and useful) list of fictional books.

7. Bruno Maddox -- a writer who has never shown any particular genre leanings or knowledge (and who is best known for editing Spy Magzine in its unreadable late-'90s incarnation), has decided that sci-fi has become obsolete, all based on his readings of Michael Crichton. The obvious question the article raises, of course, is "when did Discover stop using editors to screen articles that aren't publication-worthy?"

8. Ever wondered why you have to dial a "1" before a long-distance call in the US? So does David Pogue. The comments provide some good answers.

9. An Idaho congressman thinks that the country's going to hell because of Muslims in the House and Hindus offering prayers. Me, I think it has more to do with assholes like Bill Sali getting elected in the first place.

10. Obligatory KOL update: First, thanks to blither, I now have hipster glasses! Yay! Thank you! Second, I've hit level 12. Taking it slowly, as I'm going for the best trophy there. As far as Gourdcore goes, I've gotten the first eight potions.

Smackdown of the day

Australian bookstore conglomerate Angus and Robertson attempts to extort publishers, and gets one hell of a public smackdown as a result. Read it, folks. Rakusin's response is a thing of beauty. Bonus points (to this Red Dwarf fan, at least), for the asshole here being named Rimmer.

Teresa Nielsen Hayden has more on this over at Making Light.