Ryan, the Canadian short that won a 2005 Oscar

Writer-director Landreth appears in RYAN, a little the worse for wear.

Ryan is Chris Landreth’s dark, haunting, and wildly imaginative short film about his old friend, animator Ryan Larkin. Landreth calls his style “psychorealism”- essentially, he puts his characters’ psyches right into the construction of their bodies, so their personalities exist in plain sight. It’s surreal, creepy, beautiful, and confusing.

Real estate is better when it’s gooey.

Another “good try, but you fail” site: It’s lovely! I’ll take it! showcases the photos people post on real estate sites to try to sell their houses.

“Oh that’s ok, they don’t mind if you leave your shoes on, let’s just head on through. Now remember faux-finishes? This was kind of a “paint-draping” effect. It was pioneered in Chernobyl, and uh, it actually takes quite a while to achieve this look but the previous owners were here for a long, long time.”

HP Lovecraft had indigestion in here

“This one is kind of nice, they tidied up and used a wide-angle lens, natural light, fresh fruit, and, hey Brenda, do you hear… loud breathing? Almost like a sort of “panting” noise?”

Clifford?

Waffle House wedding

And you just know the dinner was delicious.

Getting married at a Waffle House restaurant (a big Southern US diner chain) probably isn’t for everyone, but I kind of like these people. They both work at Waffle House, and understandably, Waffle House is a big part of their lives, so why not get married there? They’re somehow less obnoxious than those Bridezillas who demand that the perfect cutlery be flown in from Sweden, or, you know, that the cake be a life-sized replica of themselves. Plus, Waffle House is delicious.

Once, on a roadtrip, we stopped at a Waffle House in a small town in Mississippi. The waiter was a very friendly, very effeminate man with outrageously plucked eyebrows and violet contact lenses, who surprised me by mentioning that he’d just come from church. “It’s Wednesday night,” I commented, to which he replied, “Honey, what the hell else am I gonna do in this town?”

Flash webpage animation: the best application I’ve ever seen

I do not like Flash-animated webpages. They load slow, they’re never as clever as they’re intended to be, and the individual pages are unlinkable- so if I want to refer someone to a specific item- you know, disseminate information, thus using the interweb for its original purpose- I can’t, because all the information is floating around on some clever design concept, instead of sitting in one place with a URL that lets me capture it. What, am I supposed to say,

“Hey fellow bridesmaids, I think I found an affordable dress in the bride’s chosen colour palette that would look nice on all four of us, score! Wanna see it? Just go to this website and then wait 3 minutes and 24 seconds. There’s some opening animation of flowers and vines and stuff, just wait that out. Then some shoes walk by for a while. Yeah, they just walk past with no feet in them, no it’s not MAGIC, it’s Flash animation. Then there’s a bunch of belts undulating like snakes, yeah, more Flash, yep, that website designer sure knew her Flash. I know you wanna see the dress but I can’t link to it, it’s Flash– never mind, not much longer now. Uh, well, first there’s a ballet of pantsuits, and then the dress, oh no wait, more vines- ok, now. See those 22 dresses square-dancing all over the screen? No, BEHIND the vines. I’m talking about the blue dress on the left, uh no, the other blue one, the one that just did a doe-si-doe, and now it’s gonna curtsey and… it’s gone. Didja like it? Uh… oh. ‘Kay, just press “reload” and call me in 3 minutes and 24 seconds.”

Nothing makes me lose my mind faster than a Flash site. They impress designers and nobody else. “Oh hai, you’re a photographer? Cool! Can I see some of the photos you took, or did you want me to first look at an inexplicable Flash animation of an empty wheelchair slowly rolling through a scrolling animated streetscape? Where is that, Cuba? Cool, ok. Oh look, still rolling along, huh. I’m just gonna go eat some expired yogurt, call me when the porfolio comes up.”

Um, what were we talking about again? Oh yeah, Flash websites. Well, usually they’re a waste of everyone’s time. But not this time! Here’s a site for German Dutch department store HEMA.

Best use of Flash ever. Except, then, after the Flash is done, the site just sits there shaking. Ok, so maybe this whole site is just a (very) clever portfolio for some German Dutch Flash designer. Or maybe that’s the entire extent of the functionality of yet another non-navigable Flash site. We’ll never know, will we.

Well yes, a stapler is a rather neat machine.