This Friday the newest Batman
animated series, The Brave and the Bold, premieres its newest episode, "Mayhem of the
Music Meister," a musical starring Neil Patrick Harris. The Music
Meister (a new villain created for this episode) is a enemy who creates chaos
using his voice (much like Ashlee Simpson), and when he hits a certain note he
hypnotizes others into doing his bidding. Like the cast of Rent, he is almost constantly singing, and in this
particular episode he hijacks a communication satellite and casts the world
under his musical spell. With us devoting a post to NPH as Peter Parker, and
his recent starring role as Dr. Horrible, it looks as if The Music Meister is
just another addition to Neil Patrick's geektastic resume, and hopefully it
will not the be the last time we witness the Music Meister's range.
Surprisingly "Mayhem of the Music Meister" is not the first time Batman has dipped his batarang into the world of Broadway. In
the late-nineties, after Disney's success with Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King, Warner Bros began planning a musical version of the
Caped Crusader. Jim Steinman, famous for his Bat Out of Hell series with Meat Loaf and the Bonnie Tyler
ballad "Total Eclipse of the Heart," was tapped to write the music and
lyrics, while everyone from Stephen Daldry to Tim Burton was rumored to
direct. Though it never made it past the planning stages, Steinman had already
written and recorded some of the songs in demo form for the show, which he
later released on his website.
Judging from the demos, Dark Knight of the Soul, as it has been dubbed by its cult of fans, is
exactly what one would think a Jim Steinman-Batman musical would sound like -- Bat
Out of Hell, but instead of Meat Loaf, it's
Batman singing while throwing the punches. With Catwoman and Batman singing tender duets and Joker's song "Wonderful Toys" where he rhymes the
title with the line "How did Abercrombie & Fitch come up with
all those boys?" it seems that Dark Knight of the Soul would be far gayer than the upcoming Spider-Man
musical, Turn off the Dark.
Hopefully the Batman musical will hit the stage in some form one day. If only it could include the true musical majesty we've been waiting for, a love
duet between Batman and Robin.
Batman: The Brave and the Bold airs tonight at 7:30 ET on Cartoon Network.
You can all rest a little bit easier now, boys, the gay hookup has finally made its way to the iPhone. Once upon a time the internet made the causal connection even more immediate and, well, causal. But here in 2009, we’ve been waiting for something new. We live in a culture of now; our news, our food, our travel -- immediately, if not sooner, please. So why not score our bedfellows the same way? Welcome to the wonderful world of Grindr. Think Manhunt, but for your phone. And actually better. Whether you’re looking to chat, locate a hottie, or just looking for a wingman to accompany you on your late night romps, your iPhone application dreams may’ve just come true.
If you’re like most folks, say, under 45, you just don’t have time to go home, login and look up to hook up when you have places to be. Grindr cuts out the BS of starting up your browser and just gets to what’s important -- the dudes. And it’s mobile! It’s a location-based social networking application that takes full advantage of your iPhone’s GPS to instantly hone in on the hot men in your area. Have a few hours to kill before meeting your friends? Feel like playing around? Simply open the app., and let it do its magic. Your 3.5 inch screen will fill with the smiling faces of all the boys to your left, right up and down -- all you need to do is choose one!
Playstation Home, Sony's new 3-D Virtual world component for PlayStation 3, is barely out of the starting gates and already it's plagued with problems. Michael Marsh, a straight 18-year-old gamer, attempted to create a gay/straight alliance but found that words like "gay," "lesbian," and "bisexual" were all being filtered.
"I can understand if they're filtering out profanity, but if feel like
it's discrimination," Marsh said. "By blocking a word like 'gay,' which
is a preferred term by the gay community, you're encouraging it as a
bad word." Other words found to be blocked: "Jew," "Christ," and even "Hello," which was apparently censored because it contains the word "hell."
The filtering isn't the only glitch: women and other minority players have reported sexual and racist comments and some gamers -- seemingly those with nothing else to complain about -- are up in arms over the high prices of virtual items in Home like Diesel clothing.
Sony Computer Entertainment America spokesperson Patrick Seybold told the San Francisco Chronicle that the program, while open to the public, is still in beta testing stages and is a work in progress. "The key message is that it's a beta and it's evolving on a daily basis," he said. "We've said early on that user behavior and feedback will shape where we go with Home." He also added that when the program is out of beta testing and officially launched all of the aforementioned words should be unfiltered.
Paying high prices for designer clothing is nothing new -- especially lately -- but how are we supposed to root out other gays to have virtual hook ups with if we can't even type in g-a-y?
> The RIAA won't sue you any more for all that illegal downloading of music you've been doing.
> The iBreath can tell you if you've had one too many cocktails, a more serious upgrade to the Drunk Dial iPhone application that makes you do math before sending late-night emails. (Neither of these can keep you from hooking up with the cute guy at the office who's way more trouble that he's worth, however.)
While iTunes has always asterisked potentially offensive entries in its database, recently the UK version of the music retailer went on a censoring binge that blanked out hundreds of inoffensive song titles and artist names. The Dick Van Dyke song from Mary Poppins was changed to "The D**k Van D**e" song. Danny Kaye's innocent little tune "I Thought I Saw a Pussy Cat" became "I Thought I Saw a P***y Cat." Stranger yet, Johnny Cash and Johnny Mathis had their first names reduced to "J*****y" and Avril Lavigne's "Hot" read "H*t."
An Apple spokesperson claimed a "database glitch" occurred during a check for explicit references and that the problem should be fixed sometime soon. In the meantime, why not download D**k Hyman's (or should that be H****n's?) jazz classic "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?"
From fashion phenoms to trendy restaurateurs to dance company directors, these men's impeccable taste and sensibility make our lives simpler, prettier, happier, and richer. We'll feature a new Tastemaker each day, beginning with Ducati's creative director David Gross:
When the iconic Italian motorcycle company Ducati came under new management just over a decade ago it needed a creative director who could reinvent the brand without losing any of its sense of history. Enter David Gross, a Harvard-educated corporate lawyer and marketing whiz who left New York for Bologna in 1997 to tackle the task and “to escape [his] dull NYC life.” His strategy was to change the manufacturing company (which made only a few motorcycle models and little else) into a cross-marketing machine.
A startling ad campaign featuring the rugged-looking employees of actual Ducati factories brought a new relevance to the brand. “I was in awe of the historic factory in Bologna right from the beginning. The brute gigantism of the machinery, the whirring of the paint plant, and, last but not least, the star quality of our factory workers with their dark tans and designer stubble,” he explains. “I bought a cheap camera and started taking Polaroids.” New products soon began to blossom: T-shirts with vintage Ducati logos (worn by the likes of Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom) promoted the motorcycles, which in turn promoted the designer gear necessary to complete the look -- and high-gloss boutiques brought all the elements together.
I was one of a couple thousand geeks privileged enough to catch the old, but still spry Steve Jobs bring Apple fanatics to church. Here at San Francisco's Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, the tiny evangelist teased us with two hours of talk about development platforms, sales numbers, blah, blah and blah.
As always, he saved the best for last: a new iPhone! 3G speed! $199!
Hitting stores July 11, the iPhone 3G will run $199 for 8GB, $299 for 16 GB. It is a bit thinner than your fat original iPhone and has smoother, less obtrusive volume buttons. The cold silver metal casing is now a shiny plastic black. Pony up for the 16 GB and you can choose between black or the classic Mac white.
The big difference, however, is on the inside. Jobs had a nifty live presentation of the 3G iPhone network compared to your slow, sloppy iPhone (which uses AT&T's slow, sloppy EDGE network). The 3G iPhone downloads websites and email attachments about three times as fast.
If you're not keen on upgrading, Apple also unveiled iPhone software 2.0, which will give all iPhones full Microsoft Office support to view your Powerpoint presentations, international language support for your Chinese and Turkish friends, and lots of other small goodies.
The only problem? We have to wait for a month to get any of this. At least it will be cheap.
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