Archive for March 15th, 2011

Random notes: March 15, 2011.

Tuesday, March 15th, 2011

The NYT has a long and interesting obit for Owsley Stanley, noted recreational chemist and sound engineer for the Grateful Dead (and others).

He moved to Australia in the 1980s, as he explained in his rare interviews, so he might survive what he believed to be a coming Ice Age that would annihilate the Northern Hemisphere.

Well, okay, then.

(He had insisted, among other things, that the [Dead] eat meat — nothing but meat — a dietary regimen he followed until the end of his life.)

Ditto. (By the way, Stanley died in a car accident.)

I kind of like Berkeley Breathed (much less so post-“Bloom County”, but still), so it doesn’t give me that much pleasure to note that “Mars Needs Moms” is being compared to “Ishtar” and “Pluto Nash”.

Walt Disney Studios spent an estimated $175 million to make and market “Mars Needs Moms,” which sold $6.9 million in tickets at North American theaters in its opening weekend.

“Mars Needs Moms” is a 3-D movie, so that $6.9 million figure is with the higher 3-D ticket prices.

“Mars Needs Moms” may lead to the end for the Zemeckis style of motion-capture filmmaking, which has proven increasingly unpopular with audiences.

Good!