Howard Enders, rest in peace.

I just found out that my favorite teacher from film school- the one who taught me as much about how to write and make it worth a damn as any teacher ever- passed away. We weren't in touch after I left the department, but the world was always a bit warmer for me, simply because he was in it.

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From the eternally awesome Tilda Swinton, the 8 ½ Foundation. Per their site:

“What great movies would you give to a child on their 8½ birthday?
8½ is a great age to fall in love with cinema, and so the 8½ Foundation aims to give all children an 8½th birthday, glimpses into new worlds and cultures, into magic and the heights imagination can take you to.”

The Foundation is holding a flash-mob style kick off on June 26th in Edinburgh where Tilda (and anyone else who shows up) will perform a Laurel & Hardy dance.

“On Saturday 26 June 2010 at 10:45, come rain or shine, we’re gonna meet at Festival Square, Lothian Road, Edinburgh. At exactly 11:00, music will start – The Avalon Boy’s ditty “At the Ball”. It’s a song from Laurel and Hardy’s funniest film Way Out West. In the film, Stan and Ollie do a wee dance, one of the most charming, amusing musical numbers in cinema history.

In tribute to Stan and Ollie, and to dancing in public and in unabashed celebration of doing something as a group and looking like dafties... when the music starts, we will put down our newspapers and do the Laurel and Hardy dance.”

Cheering myself up on a Friday night

Once upon a time, there was a soldier named... well, on the Web, he’s known as “Skippy.” Skippy was an E-4 who, over the course of time, amassed a list of behaviors in which he was forbidden to engage by superior officers. (Number 77: “The MP checkpoint is not an Imperial Stormtrooper roadblock, so I should not tell them ‘You don’t need to see my identification, these are not the droids you are looking for.’”) Thanks to nwhyte, I have now been made aware of two parodies of this: Via atalantapendrag, 50 Things I am not allowed to do at Hogwarts (1. I will not poke Hufflepuffs with spoons, nor will I insist that their House colors indicate that they are "covered in bees"); also, via Theta Sigma, 50 Things I'm No Longer Allowed To Do At The Academy (“TARDISes do not have flux capacitors...”)

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Swedish...Scotch?

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Today on "odd eBay celebrity memorabilia": Divine's high school yearbook.