Then, last night, I dreamed we had a house and there was a tornado and Jeff Bridges happened to be passing our house in a black SUV so he pulled over and came in to take shelter in our basement with us.  He was with his wife and their five little kids (except he only has three kids and they are grown-up, I looked it up).

I’m kind of curious to see what my next Jeff Bridges dream will be.

What has been seen cannot be unseen.

C-3PO has a nice ass.

Why does food in the 1970’s always look totally garish and gross? I have fondue cookbooks from the 1970’s and the food always looks horrible.  And the people! Good God…like their souls have been devoured by The Unnameable. And those sweaters…!

“I think you should never have to change yourself like that,” Alba said. “If somebody loves you, they’ll love you no matter what.”

Apparently the woman’s ex-boyfriend was obsessed with Ms. Alba, even going so far as asking her to wear a blonde wig. The upshot is that the hospital has agreed to do the surgery free of charge, in the hopes that the results will bring in business.

So what does the hospital director think?

“If she wants to look much better than she does now, for example if she wants her skin to look smoother and her overall facial facade to look more beautiful, I think we are able to help her fulfil her wishes,” Jiang said.

“But if she wants to totally look like Jessica Alba, I would think she is still not confident of herself and that she needs to solve this problem psychologically.”

Or get a better boyfriend…

Reincarnation is a potent idea in China, and Beijing doesn’t want moviegoers to be reminded of the Tibetan belief that no one ever really dies. This faith is partly the reason why many Tibetans remain fiercely loyal to the exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, whom Chinese leaders believe to be a dangerous separatist. Even when he is old or frail, irresponsible or doddering, his followers worship him and, when his corporeal form eventually passes away, they eagerly await the discovery of the Dalai’s new incarnation. Indeed, the state of the elderly Nobel laureate’s health will be on many people’s minds during U.S. president Barack Obama’s expected meeting with him in Washington—slated for this month—a move that has already triggered gnashing teeth among Chinese authorities.

On so many levels, and despite the designs of Chinese officialdom, Avatar has taken on a life of its own. That’s why audiences weren’t nearly as interested in the great sage. First, they panned Confucius, which brought in a paltry $5.5 million over five full days—compared to Avatar’s record opening-day take of $4.8 million. Chinese movie star Chow Yun-Fat had said, “If you don’t cry after watching Confucius, you’re not human.” (Chow plays the erudite Confucius, which itself stoked controversy because the star of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon does not have a classical Chinese education.) But the attendance numbers were so anemic, popular blogger Han Han wrote that the viewers with the best reason to weep were the filmmakers themselves, realizing “how many middle-school classes and government officials they’re going to have to drag into theaters en masse to break even.” Global Times called the film “thoughtless and mind-numbing.”

I’m not a lawyer, but I think these are incredibly muddy waters – I can understand Ms. Munn’s reaction (if indeed this is her reaction – it’s entirely possible that her legal counsel is simply being proactive in trying to defend their client’s image/rights/etc, rather than Munn siccing her hounds on Heavy Ink…). On the other hand, Heavy Ink is not the publisher of the comic in question – according to Travis Corcoran, President of Heavy Ink: ‘…the item offered for sale is not “our” comic book – it is created by a third party and offered for sale through our website.‘

The ever-clever Boing Boing (where I first took notice of this issue) points out (via Geoff Gerber) that Ms. Munn may actually have a legal leg to stand on, depending on whether or not the law considers Celebrity Showdown to be a ‘parody’.

Personally, I’ve not seen the content of the comic in question, but it doesn’t seem out of line with the innumerable celebrity-based indie comics that littered the shelves of my local comic shop back in the 80’s and 90’s. I’m curious if the content itself is questionable or if the complaint is simply about the use of Ms. Munn’s image.

Update: Jesse Thorn of maximumfun.org comments thusly (I post this because it kind of sums up my feelings on the subject…)

I’ve been on Olivia’s show a couple times, and met her. She’s a very nice lady, and this whole thing kind of creeps me out. I don’t see any evidence that it’s parody – if it is, I suppose it’s legal, but that doesn’t make it less creepy.

I’m a (very minor) public figure myself, and if someone made a hyper-sexualized comic book about me without my permission, I’d be pretty upset. And I think I’d have grounds to be.

Again: may be completely legal, and I’m no fan of lawyer-bullying, but I’m not crazy about it otherwise.

Dudes Having Lunch

That one guy’s burger looks pretty tasty, though. And good for him for drinking milk with it.

The exhibit will include selections from Joe Peacock’s personal collection of Akira production art and cels, which he claims is the larges private collection in the world, and is planned to include a traveling show.

(via MeFi)

The litigation began in October 2008, when KDE discovered that counterfeit cards from the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG were being sold in Toys R Us stores by a sub-distributor for Upper Deck. KDE filed suit, and the sub-distributor told KDE that the counterfeit cards were supplied by Upper Deck.

“As a leading company in this card industry, Upper Deck should have known more than well that counterfeit activities would irreparably harm the trust of Duelists and the integrity of the Yu-Gi-Oh! brand,” said KDE’s Hoashi. Upper Deck initially denied those charges and issued press releases announcing that any suggestion that Upper Deck would be involved in counterfeiting activity is “absurd.”

Failing to own up to its actions, Upper Deck sent out a press release on January 29, 2010 stating its satisfaction with the settlement and how the judge ruled against KDE in several areas. The ruling that United States District Judge Valerie Baker Fairbank made on December 23, 2009 was simple. She ruled that Upper Deck violated trademark, copyright and unfair competition laws by counterfeiting Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG cards.

Discovery in the lawsuit revealed that Upper Deck had counterfeited Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG cards, and that it took extensive steps to cover-up that activity. The cover-up included a meeting in the office of Upper Deck’s chairman, in which he and at least one other Upper Deck employee compared samples of authentic Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG cards against fakes made by Upper Deck, and shredded the samples in the chairman’s office, as well as an e-mail from an employee of Upper Deck to other employees asking to provide her information how to obtain Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG security foils “in secrecy.”

Following almost one full year of court proceedings, Upper Deck finally admitted to having printed in China and importing to the U.S. hundreds of thousands of bogus Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG cards. Mr. Howell of Rutan & Tucker noted in the opening statement to the jury: “The behavior is still undeniably wrong. And I am in here, as counsel for the two defendants, asking you to hold my clients accountable for that behavior; asking you to hold my clients responsible for this conduct that there is no dispute, and there was no disputing even before this case started today, that it was wrong.”

Seriously – Upper Deck didn’t think Konami would notice? I’m also amused by the defense attorney’s comment.

“At this point, Upper Deck doesn’t have a lot of Life Points. We’re talking about behavior that, from a defense attorney’s standpoint, I can’t defend and I am not going to defend,” noted attorney Richard Howell, of Rutan & Tucker, who represented The Upper Deck Company during the trial.  “I’m here defending a counterfeiter. And now I have to deal with that issue.”

Life Points?

Huh.

I kind of like X Japan in a really guilty way. The same way I like Lady Gaga, actually.