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WARNING: This blog post contains warnings
I’ve never been a fan of movie ratings.
In America, ratings are designed to aid parents in choosing appropriate material for their children to consume. But the people hired to assign the G, PG, PG-13, R and NC-17 notations tend to be far too narrow-minded and puritanical to provide an accurate overview of a movie’s contents. If I was a mother, I doubt I’d pay much attention to these arbitrary labels.
Now warnings, warnings are a different story. Warnings can be helpful .. and humorous.
“This show contains scenes that some viewers may find disturbing. Viewer discretion advised.”
That’s rather vague. Define disturbing.
“Intended for mature audiences only.”
At what age is one “mature”? I know some 40-year-olds who wouldn’t qualify.
“This program contains language.”
No way!
Monty Python’s Flying Circus had a great one:
“There are scenes of violence, people’s heads being ripped off and their toe nails being pulled out in slow motion. Then there’s a scene where you can see EVERYTHING, but my friend says it’s just all in the way he’s holding the spear.”
This week, I spotted a hilarious warning. It applied to the new teen zom-rom-com “Warm Bodies.” Although the film is rated PG-13 (parents strongly cautioned), the actual contents of the film include:
“Gun violence and mild zombie chomping.”
What exactly is “mild” zombie chomping anyway? Do they just nibble or is actual chewing involved? Either way, consider yourself warned.
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Sting v.4
This is what I’ll be doing on June 20th:
Now Bangor, Maine, is a five-hour drive each way from my home, but getting the opportunity to see one of my favorite artists in an outdoor venue is just too good to pass up.
The first time I saw Sting perform was at Jones Beach on Long Island, a beautiful amphitheater right on the water. While most of the audience sat contently in their seats, I spent the entire concert dancing in the aisle.
The second time I had the chance to see Sting was during the “Today” show’s summer concert series. As soon as I got off work on Friday morning, I raced over to Rockefeller Center and arrived just in time to hear him sing two songs before the show ended. Although incredibly brief, the performance put me in a fantastic mood all weekend.
The third time I saw Sting in concert was on a hot summer night in Central Park. I managed to arrive early enough to find a decent spot near the stage, and when he sang “Moon Over Bourbon Street,” I was entranced by the both the song and the stunning full moon that rose up behind the stage. I was in the heart of Manhattan, but the combination of the music, the moon, the heat, the humidity, the crowd and the hours of dancing made me feel as though I had been magically transported to New Orleans. It was wonderful.
So even though I generally dread the arrival of summer, I have at least two things to look forward to this year: attending the next Society of Professional Obituary Writers conference in Toronto and seeing the amazing Sting again.
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Late night ponderings about mocking machines
Sometimes The Blog of Death server mocks me. I’ll sign into the content management system, in this case WordPress, and attempt to delete the thousands (I kid you not) of spam messages sitting in the “to be approved” queue. For some reason, WordPress or my server Dream Host only allows me to delete 100 messages at a time and so the whole process takes for-freakin’-ever.
When I spend too much time on this task, I receive a server error that says my request is too large.
I hit the back button and try again.
“Your server request is too large.”
I clear my cache and try again.
“Your server request is too large.”
After seeing this message over and over, I start to take it personally. “No, server,” I think, “my request is not too large. Perhaps your capabilities are too small? Or maybe, just maybe, the spammers are too cruel. Did you ever think of that?”
The server does not reply.