Here’s the “alternate ending” for the forthcoming “Yogi Bear” CGI movie. Let’s just say that if this is how the movie goes, then I will be seeing it after all.

From ShalomLife.com:

For the past 30 years the most famous of Jewish symbols was prominently displayed at Tehran’s airport and, embarrassingly enough, was only discovered now.

The building, which currently houses Iran’s national airline, Iran Air, was built by Israeli engineers prior to the 1979 Islamic Revolution. On the roof of the building the Israeli engineers left a massive Star of David which was hidden in plain view until today. The symbol was discovered by someone through Google Maps.

Ahmadinejad is said to be furious and has already ordered its destruction. If asked nicely, I’m sure the Israeli Airforce will be happy to assist.

In our college group, my friend Joe was a legendary poker player. Legendary for being the worst poker player imaginable. In the words of my late father as he was leaving our private game one night in a suite I booked at Harrah’s Marina in Atlantic City, “Joe shouldn’t play cards.” Joe is one of my favorite people — highly amusing, witty, and full of life. But no matter how acerbic, he doesn’t have the sort of killer instinct that makes you a good poker player. (One indication:  His favorite game to call is Indian.) He’d rather enjoy the company, and if that means losing enough to stay in the game, that’s enough of a goal.

I now feel the same way about Barack Obama. Except without all that fondness I have for Joe. Joe means a lot to me, but there aren’t millions of people counting on him.

When Obama sat down, the cards were in his favor. Yes, he inherited a crisis of epic proportions — but in that seat, if you don’t inherit one of those, you’d better figure one is on your way. Obama was dealt a huge numerical advantage in both the House and the Senate, and enough sense of crisis that he was able to put in place enormous change. But Obama now strikes me as someone so charmed in so much of his life that he’s ill-equipped to handle setbacks. The GOP captured one — just one — chamber of Congress, and now he’s folding every hand. The deal on the unemployment extension — in which benefits were supplemented in exchange for both an extension of the Bush era taxcuts and a rollback in capital gains — reads like a strong hand played weakly. (For more of the poker metaphor, check out this piece on Slate, which recounts in sad detail all the ways that Obama is throwing away his chips.) From reading Obama’s expression, I’d gauge that he doesn’t like what he sees in the flop. I’ve got news for him:  The turn arrives in January with those new Republicans, and he’s going to like that card even less. A little aggression at the table would help.

Lately, zombies are getting all the attention. This holiday season, mummies are tired of being kept under wraps.

Now that everybody has changed their Facebook avatars back from cartoon characters, how great has the upswing in child abuse been?

I guess comics really aren’t for kids any more.

There was a time when Batman looked like this:

This is more like what you’ll find now:

This isn’t a new trend. Even Wolverine looked a little… milder… in his debut.

Now he’s more likely to look like one of the vicious, battered bums in the backdrop of a Bukowski novel:

But even with all the changes that any character will go through over the course of almost 70 years, I’m still surprised to find what a downer Archie has become. I hated high school, so I couldn’t relate to the character at all, no matter how great a time he seemed to be having with Moose and Jughead and those fetching girls of his. But now even Archie is a victim of the recession, battling joblessness in what Slate calls “a middle-class hell.” Here’s their take on it, and here are some representative graphics. Looks interesting — if you can handle it.

Oh, to be in London on February 12th to see “Carnival of Souls,” screened with a live underscore provided by David Thomas & Two Pale Boys.

Mr. Thomas, as longtime readers of this blog, is to me the most important figure working in music today. Whether it’s with Pere Ubu or with Two Pale Boys, his off-kilter music and sensibility thrill me and speak to me deeply. There are certain sounds that speak deeply to individuals who take the trouble to tune into them. For me, it’s Glenn Gould’s piano, it’s Robert Wheeler’s theremin, it’s one of Thomas Dolby’s specific keyboard noises, it’s Robert Fripp’s guitar, and it’s the certain sound sets that only Brian Eno’s studio wizardry can result in. I can pick these things out from any haystack, because somehow they seem so tuned to me that the haystack disappears and the sound becomes iridescent. Chief among these things is David Thomas’s voice. And by voice, I don’t mean just the singing instrument — yes, that beautifully expressive warble, but also the delightfully blinkered worldview so specific to him that comes through all his work, his unique take on the culture we all live in, but which only he sees in his particular way. To listen to David Thomas sing about, for example, U.S. Route 322, which fronted our house when I was a boy, is to learn anew something you thought you understood but never did.

I also find with artists that I follow that when I arrive someplace newly exciting — they are already there. The skewed sensibility that attracts me to them seems to lead us to the same places. Who produced that first Devo album that I could not get off the turntable? Brian Eno. Of course.  When I discover the era of Beach Boys music that truly speaks to me, I find that it’s all associated with Van Dyke Parks — and who appears in David Thomas’ oddball but thoroughly enchanting live “Disastodrome” extravaganza but Van Dyke Parks? And now, who is providing underscore to “Carnival of Souls,” a relatively little-known movie that got a small rerelease about 20 years ago, which I went out of my way to see at that time? David Thomas.

About four years ago, my son and I went to see Pere Ubu provide live underscoring for “Man with the X-Ray Eyes” — another great low-budget black-and-white horror movie — at UCLA. I had seen the movie several times before, but now it’s forever linked in my mind with the live performance by Pere Ubu, especially when the band played “Drive” during the final big chase scene, as Ray Milland’s character goes insane from everything that he can now see. Does it detract from the film, having it now associated with a song performed forty years after its release? Is the film harmed in any way? No — it was thrilling. The evening provided a new way to experience something I thought I’d already known (again, a specialty of Mr. Thomas’). And this is completely in the tradition of film. Silent movies came with suggested scores for organists to play, but many improvised their own scores; your enjoyment of Buster Keaton was often amplified by the aptness and originality of the attack by whatever organist you drew. I’m sure it will be this way with David Thomas & Two Pale Boys — another fine band that Mr. Thomas plays with, with a sound radically different from that of Pere Ubu — as they bring a fresh approach to a little film that is simple and terrifying in its own right, and which deserves every bit of attention and care that I’m sure the event will bring to it.

“Carnival of Souls” was filmed in and around the SaltAir Pavilion in Salt Lake City, Utah. In 2002, I was in Salt Lake City on business and rented a car so that I could drive out and see the SaltAir Pavilion. Salt is essential for life, but salt flats, of course, kill. Stretched far and wide were the salts left by a distantly receded lake; a flat bitter tang hung in the air, enclosing a pavilion that was remote and almost abandoned. This is the backdrop for the film, and provides to my mind a promising platform for the simultaneously anxious and affectless music of David Thomas & Two Pale Boys. I just wish I could be there for it.  Here’s hoping that some point, they bring it to the states.

So evidently, Charles Manson can field cellphone calls from inside his prison cell, behind acres of concrete and steel. Meanwhile, my wife could stand on a cell tower with her cellphone in her hand, and all the incoming calls would still drop directly to voicemail. Explain, please.

NASA has announced that they’ve found new life. As Gizmodo puts it, “[the] life form—called GFAJ-1— doesn’t share the biological building blocks of anything currently living in planet Earth. It’s capable of using arsenic to build its DNA, RNA, proteins, and cell membranes.

“NASA is saying that this is ‘life as we do not know it.’ The reason is that all life on Earth is made of six components: Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. Every being, from the smallest amoeba to the largest whale, share the same life stream. Our DNA blocks are all the same.”

My first thought on reading this is that I’ve seen this new life, and it was in a river in New Jersey. (I’m from New Jersey, so I get to say that.) But then I read further and learned that scientists then found a very similar life form on Earth that uses arsenic rather than phosphorous for its molecular building blocks. Where did they find it? Mono Lake, California. Make of that what you will.

My final thought is:  I’m surprised that they’re surprised. Haven’t any of them seen “The Andromeda Strain”? My father and two older brothers took me to see that when I was nine,  and to this day I’m as thrilled about that movie as I was then. The “Strain” of the title is an alien biological infestation that, wait for it, lacks ways we recognize to create DNA, RNA, proteins and amino acids. In other words, it’s “impossible” life that’s similar to what we just found. And which all of we science fiction fans have been expecting for 40 years.

It’s the Hot Guys and Baby Animals calendar.

(For my family, it would be Hot Guns with Dead Animals.)