AT LARGE Fake News Tuesday: Microsoft's Allen Sues For Being Less Cool Than Apple

SAN FRANCISCO (CAP) - Microsoft Corp. co-founder and billionaire Paul Allen is suing over a dozen major companies, including tech giants Google Inc. and Apple Inc., alleging that they used his Web technology to become much cooler than anyone ever considered him.

"It's not fair!" said Allen. "Everybody thinks Google and Apple are so cool and everything, but I'm the one who came up with all that browsing and e-commerce technology that makes everybody all like, Wow, Google is so awesome. How come nobody ever says I'm awesome?

"Um ... And when I say 'I,' I of course mean the Microsoft Corp.," he clarified.

The lawsuit also names AOL, eBay, Facebook, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo, YouTube, Kenmore, Waring, Ford Motor Co., Coca-Cola, Hostess, Marvel Comics, Nike, Stop & Shop and Ronco, among several others.

"Ronco in particular really irks me," said Allen. "Like, Ron Popeil expects people to believe he came up with that 5-Tray Electric Food Dehydrator by himself? I mean, puh-lease.

"Without the use of my company's food dehydration technology, his customers would never be able to make delicious beef jerky right inside their own homes, nuh-uh," said Allen.

Allen is also suing organizations he claims appropriated his technology for use in digital film production (Lucasfilm), global positioning (U.S. Air Force), stain and odor removal (Bissell), and the Gillette Fusion razor.

"That fifth blade? All me," said Allen, jutting out his noticeably clean-shaven chin. "That's worth, like, at least a billion right there alone."

Allen's critics say the suit has no merit, and is only the latest example of a long string of "lame attempts to convince people he's not a nerd," says Apple C.O.O. Tim Cook.

"This is a man who's a billionaire and who owns the Seattle Seahawks, and people are still giving him wedgies and stepping on his glasses - I mean regularly," claims Cook, citing Seahawks defensive end Kentwan Balmer as one example.

"Hey, he named his asset management company Vulcan Inc.," responded Balmer in his own defense. "That's just asking for wedgies."

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

COLUMN: Admit it — you wanna 'Piranha'

The other day, my son saw the commercial for Piranha 3D and had exactly the reaction you’d expect from a 9-year-old boy: “I WANT TO SEE THAT!” And I had the response required from said boy’s 42-year-old father, namely, “Absolutely not. It’s completely inappropriate.” By which I of course meant, “I WANT TO SEE THAT!”

“Inappropriate” is one of those catch-all words we parents use when we mean, “This is something I’d rather put off discussing as long as possible.” But in the case of Piranha 3D — which, judging from the trailer, consists primarily of people in tiny bathing suits being eaten in extreme close-up by prehistoric fish — the word seems entirely, well, appropriate. It looks like a movie that is completely inappropriate for viewing by almost everybody.

So why is my gut reaction to run down to my local IMAX and plunk down 15 bucks? After all, I consider myself a student of the cinema. I’ve paid to watch foreign films — with subtitles, not the dubbed kind where someone steps on Tokyo. Once I even went to a library to watch De Sica’s The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, a movie in which not a single person was skeletonized in 3-D.

Maybe I should blame the cheesy horror films of my childhood — for instance, I remember spending one particular Saturday afternoon glued to Kingdom of the Spiders (1977), a movie in which William Shatner and nobody else you’ve ever heard of are eaten by tarantulas. The movie did not have a happy ending for anybody except Shatner, who released Star Trek: The Motion Picture two years later and immediately removed this from his resume.

It was terrible, and yet I still remember it 30 years later as if I had seen it yesterday, whereas plenty of other “better” movies I saw back then have completely deserted my memory. You know, movies like The Black Stallion (1979), which got four stars from Roger Ebert and I think may have featured a horse, and possibly Mickey Rooney. I guarantee that if either of those characters had been eaten by a spider or a prehistoric piranha, I would recall that movie much better today.

The way I see it, as long as they’re not too exploitative (apologies to Roger Corman), creature features provide some much-needed mindless scares, and at least have the courage of their convictions. For instance, Entertainment Weekly reports that the makers of Piranha 3D used a tanker truck to fill an Arizona lake with at least (at least!) 7,000 gallons of fake blood, which we can only presume is still being cleaned off the fake turtles and pelicans.

Granted, I’ll admit that when I do happen to watch one of these movies now, I can’t help but see them through the eyes of a jaded adult. You’re supposed to revel in the untimely demises of the principal characters at the hands (teeth, claws, appendages) of whatever creature the filmmakers have dreamed up, but that’s harder once you’ve left your callow youth — these days I can’t help but think of the poor state trooper who has to knock on some lady’s door and tell her that her husband was eaten by a fish.

But even if they’re better for the young, 9 is probably a little too young for many of these flicks. I can only imagine if I took my son to Piranha 3D he’d wind up like the kids of a friend of mine — she gave in and let them watch Jaws recently, and now not only won’t they go in the ocean, they won’t sleep in their own beds, out of fear of land sharks. Also, bringing a 9-year-old to Piranha 3D would probably trigger a DSS investigation, and rightly so.

But I’m willing to compromise. Maybe we can settle on something with a little less carnage, like Gremlins (the little pointy-eared creatures movie) or Tremors (the giant worm movie). Or even Kingdom of the Spiders — believe it or not, they have it on Netflix.

I wonder if Shatner knows about that?

Peter Chianca is a managing editor for GateHouse Media New England. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/pchianca. To receive At Large by e-mail, write to info@chianca-at-large.com, with the subject line “SUBSCRIBE.”

AT LARGE Fake News Tuesday: Grizzly Attack Blamed On 'Yogi Bear' Movie

TETON COUNTY, Wyo. (CAP) - The grizzly bear that attacked three campers in Yellowstone National Park last week had just seen a special sneak preview of the upcoming Yogi Bear feature film, according to park officials.

The park had hosted an outdoor screening for campers of the first 30 minutes of the upcoming Warner Brothers film, featuring Dan Aykroyd as the voice of Yogi and Justin Timberlake as his sidekick, Boo-Boo. Several campers and the park's certified wildlife biologist, Terry McKinney, reported spotting a grizzly bear and her three cubs looking at the screen from a nearby hill.

"At first it was cute, like they were really watching the movie," said camper Fred Schafer, 49, of Addison, Wisc. "But then the big one got this look on her face ... I can only describe it as disgust."

A bear matching the same description attacked the campers later that night, and according to McKinney, " it's possible that the bear found the movie, in human terms, offensive to her. You know, as a an actual bear, one that doesn't wear a hat and tie."

"I mean, have you seen the previews?" asked McKinney, referring to the trailer in which a computer-generated Yogi Bear dances to pop music and tries to steal a lunchbox from the live-action Ranger Smith, played by Tom Cavanaugh of TV's Ed. "I'm just a biologist, and it made me want to maul somebody."

If McKinney's theory proves true, it wouldn't be the first time animals were moved to disturbing behavior by their portrayal on the big screen. At a 2005 outdoor screening in Newburyport, Mass. of Valiant - the World War II carrier pigeon movie featuring the voices of Ewan McGregor and Ricky Gervais - the event ended abruptly when hundreds of pigeons defecated on the crowd, sending children screaming and running for cover.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]