Why Movies?

Do you ever wonder why movies are the biggest cultural events? Big movies are really the biggest kind of entertainment event. Movie stars really get the biggest press. TV stars want to be movie stars, not the other way around. When Kiefer Sutherland goes and does 24 after a run of really bad movies, it's viewed as a downshift. When Faye Dunaway steps back to do a TV show and it bombs, oooo, that is bad. It is a big deal to have seen a really good movie "in the theater" (particularly if it is somewhat obscure and gives you some cultural bragging rights). Having seen a particular TV show when it first came on? Not so much (although I do give The Muse and her mom props for watching Cheers from the beginning, when it almost got cancelled). Yes, TV is our daily bread, but we tend to love -- and hate -- movies much more. (Radio/music doesn't have pictures so it's not going to have the impact of TV or movies usually (the Beatles being the exception that proves the rule, I suppose). Theater. Ah, I enjoy it -- Spamalot rocked -- but, no.)

Why is this? Is it just that movies are bigger? Is that you have to make a more significant investment to go see a movie? You can't just sit on your butt and click channels to get a TV show that is 30 feet tall. Is that movies are a "hotter" medium, so they provoke more intense reactions? Can you imagine watching Jack Nicholson every week on TV? That might get irritating.

So why is it that Entourage is about a movie star and not a TV star? As you might have guessed, I have a theory. (I have a lot of theories, like how you get tired after a long car ride because you have seen a lot of stuff in a relatively short amount of time. Your eyes just get tired, man.) Here it is. Movies are longer than TV shows, but more self-contained. Few movies are made with the thought that the story will continue on past their end. (Most of the exceptions are bad -- e.g., Pirates of the Caribbean 2 -- while a very few are brilliant -- Lord of the Rings is the only one that comes to mind.) But they are much more involving than even a good TV episode. There's just more time and room to bring out characters, laying out stories (doing stunts, if that's your thing). It is the very rare TV episode that reaches the same level of involvement of even just a good movie. I'm thinking the X-Files with the thing in the forest with the red eyes, for example.

So that's why I think we care more about movies than TV, why we care more about Tom Cruise going nuts than Roseanne going nuts. As they, it's a theory.

KA 4993

KA 4993. Does anyone know what this means? I see it on license plate frames all the time (and only on license plate frames). What, what, what does it mean? Why isn't it KB 3882? LC 5004? Is it code? Please someone help. I'm so confused.

Poor Pluto

Presumably, you have been following closely the saga of whether Pluto is a planet. Yes, despite the fact that the vast majority of people who are alive grew up learning that Pluto is the ninth planet, the people in charge of these things -- the International Astronomical Union, I believe -- voted to adopt an official definition of "planet" that excludes poor little Pluto. The definition is something like "a planet is an astronomical body that orbits a planet, has sufficient self-gravity to be round and has cleared its orbital space." Apparently Pluto doesn't qualify because its orbit around the Sun intersects with Neptune's orbit, so Pluto hasn't cleared its orbital space. This whole mess started a couple of years ago when some astronomer at CalTech, I think, published a paper saying that he had discovered a new planet out beyond Pluto. He called it "Xena," after the Lucy Lawless TV show (you know, the one that used to come on the stations with no network affiliations at 3 p.m. on Saturdays that implied that Xena and her best friends weren't so much friends as something else, but then Xena got her head chopped off in the last episode). I'm not lying here. Apparently, a lot of astronomers didn't like the idea of making Xena a planet for whatever reason, but the problem was that they couldn't exclude Xena without excluding Pluto.

And thus began Pluto's downfall. Following Xena's discovery, some astronomers got all like "kick Pluto and Xena to the planetary curb," and some others got all like "don't be hatin' on Pluto and Xena" and some others got all like "yo, Pluto's old school, man." Anyway, all of this culminated this last week in a big astronomical conference in Geneva, I believe. First, there was some secret committee that was organized to make a proposal about defining "planet" to the big meeting. And the committee came up with a definition that would include Pluto. Did this end the static? Nooooo! A bunch of astronomers went all postal (I know, "postal" is so 1996) because the committee's proposal also would have included a bunch of rocks besides Pluto (including poor crazy Xena) as "planets." So the whole big group started thrashing around to define "planet." There was fighting and hair-pulling and noogie-giving and name-calling (like "you astro-dweeb, Pluto's orbit is far too inclined to be a planet" and "hey, Napoleon Dynonerd, Newtonian mechanics predicted Pluto's presence based on perturbations in Neptune's orbit, ha!"). Finally, after England's royal astronomer lectured the gathering that they would, quote, "look like fools," unquote, if they didn't adopt some definitions, the group adopted the definition above. But not before adding a footnote to the definition that clarifying that Neptune should be considered a planet because the adopted definition could be construed as excluding Neptune. OK, so that's all perfectly clear now.

Now all of this made me a little sad. I mean, poor Pluto, all this time it's been sitting out there all cold and far away and, first, it's a planet, yeah, then, 75 years later, it's not a planet. All because of that damn Xena. Now we all have to teach our kids that, no, there's aren't really nine planets, like we've been teaching you, but, really, there's only eight planets because a bunch of people in Geneva decided that. Yes, Mermaid and Enthusio will get this right off, I'm sure. It does probably increase the value of the little set of planet magnets that we bought at the science center in Baltimore. It has Pluto! Ha, they won't be making that anymore! Can you say collector's item?

But, really . . . it does make me a little sad because I'm guessing that, when they first declared that Pluto was a planet in 1930, it probably was really big news. And, man, people needed some happy news in 1930, I'm sure. We're talking bread lines, Hoovervilles. People probably thought that a new planet was kind of cool. And that should count for something.

Kurt Cobain Clarification

Being somewhat self-obessed, I reread my posts once in a while. Shoot me. Anyway, in rereading that Kurt Cobain post, I realized that my admiration for All Apologies could be taken as admiration of its general point of view on marriage. Ah, no. Not what I meant. As Spike on Buffy would say, sorry about that, chief. (That was in the episode when UC Sunnydale dug up the Chumash burial ground and Chumash ghosts were trying to kill people. Ah, Buffy, what a show.) What I really meant to say was: it was a brilliant commentary on what it must have been like to be married to Courtney Love. She seems more than a little nuts.

Golfin' in America

This country has its problems. We haven't figured out how to deal with the fact that there are serious economic inequities among ethnic groups. We've been divided as hell for the last few years. We can't take liquids on airplanes because terrorists are trying to blow up Americans.

All of that being said, I don't think that something I saw and heard today could happen anywhere else. Here's what it was.

I had pulled into the parking lot of my local golf course and was unloading my clubs. There were two men who looked like they were Pakistani to my admittedly under-educated eye. They seemed to be sharing a joke. Here's what I heard:

Man No. 1: [Something in a language that I didn't understand, in a humorous tone of voice.]

Man No. 2: [Ditto.]

Man No. 1: [Laughing] Okey dokey.

Man No. 2: [Something in a language that I didn't understand, in a humorous tone of voice, said jovially.]

Man No. 1: [Laughing] Shit.

This just seemed like a uniquely American thing to me. The joke shared in a language that is not the dominant language (in France, no more than 10 years ago, I believe that they were requiring Web sites accessible in France to contain a certain amount of French). The addition of "okey dokey" in the middle. The fact that the guys were getting ready to play golf. Hell, in America, not that long ago, ethnic minorities weren't let on golf courses. That has changed here, thank God. This situation just struck me as uniquely American.

I ended up playing nine holes with the guys that I heard. They were both pretty good and really nice guys. Kit and Sudash. Okey dokey.

Football. Already. Yeah.

NFL Football is back. Actually, it seems like it's been back about two weeks, since July, for God's sake. I am really sick of NFL football.

Don't get me wrong. As a game, NFL football is pretty good. It's not as good as major league baseball, which has tension just built into it. Waiting, waiting for that pitch with the bases loaded. Watching a Bugs Bunny curveball, like Eric Gagne throws when his arm isn't falling off. Football also isn't as good as NBA basketball. Nothing in football is as good as a well-executed fast break. But I do like good playoff football. The playoffs, not the Super Bowl.

The Super Bowl, in fact, is indicative of what has good seriously off the rails with the NFL. There's. So. Much. Hype. And blather. Blather. Blather. It's a fundamental problem with the NFL. There's only one game a week. The rest of the time, it's just talk, talk, this guy's got a turned ankle and is "questionable" (the NFL has an official injury scale, kind of like the Dept of Homeland Security's rainbow of doom), that wide receiver said something marginally questionable about his quarterback and what a controversy, this coach says his punter needs to focus on getting more hangtime, Mel Kiper Jr. has moved huge fat 11-year-old up on his big board for the 2015 NFL draft, blah, blah, blah. There's so much freaking' hype about the NFL that you hear a lot of people -- on sports radio, at least -- about how the NFL has become "by far the dominant professional sports league."

What few people other than Tom Tolbert talk about, though, is how so much of the interest in the NFL is about gambling. The NFL is uniquely suited to gambling. Baseball and hockey aren't good for gambling, partly because the pure quantum of runs and goals make point spreads almost useless. The spread on almost every baseball game would be one, maybe two. Same for hockey. The NBA would be somewhat easier to bet on. There's lots more points scored, of course. The final score of an NBA game, though, can really because of the way the ends of games work out. Teams that are just a little bit behind foul to stop the clock. So a close 5-point game can go to a 15-point final very easily. Similarly, they put in the guys at the end of the bench in a blowout, so a 15-point game with three minutes left can go to an 8-point final or a 30-point final easily. How can you bet on that?

This stuff doesn't happen in football. No one kicks meaningless field goals. It's hard, but not too hard to score points in the NFL. So it's easy to bet on the NFL (I didn't say that it was easy to win -- that's why I don't do it).

And the gambling seems like a huge deal with the NFL. The NFL turns a blind eye, of course, but, unless you live in Phoenix or Detroit, there's almost no reason to care about that Cardinals vs. Lions game in November. Unless you have money riding on it. (And don't tell me that your fantasy league isn't gambling.)

I don't agree much with George Will, but, when he wrote one time that football marries two of the worst things about American society -- violence and committee meetings -- I had to agree. He could have added gambling. So, no, I can't get very excited about Bill Parcells trying to keeping the score in the teens again, like he has for the 20 years. I can't get worked up about what the Raiders QB said about Randy Moss. I don't care how the Dolphins' new coach plans to resurrect their long-dead winning tradition.

Wake me up when the Colts are getting ready to lose in the playoffs again. Let me know when Ben Rothlisberger is going to save the Steelers' season again by tackling a fast guy (I do like Rothlisberger). Tell me when Tom Brady is getting ready to school some defense in the snow in Foxboro. Just don't ask me to get worked up about Carolina playing Tampa Bay in October. Don't ask me to try to explain a Cover 2 or an H-back.

Kurt Cobain

Enthusio and I were driving somewhere last weekend, listening to the radio, and Nirvana's All Apologies came on. That's a damn good song. "Buried, buried, married." Very expressive. When the song was done, the DJ came on and said something like, "You know, sometimes I think about how Kurt's not around anymore and I still get pissed off. I mean, what kind of music would he be making now? I don't know, but I bet it would be good." I knew exactly what the guy meant. I really would like to hear what Nirvana, or maybe just Kurt, would be making now.

I didn't get Nirvana at first. The first time I ever heard of them was when this girl Allison with whom I worked in college started talking about them. Now, I liked Allison well enough, but I didn't exactly buy her cultural preferences. She was the first persion I knew with a facial piercing (eyebrow, I think). That was out there in 1992. Super dark black dyed hair. Ended up moving to Uzbekistan in the Peace Corps. Anyway, she started talking about Nirvana and when they finally came on the radio at work and Allison pointed out who they were, I thought, "God, this sucks." It was "Smells Like Teen Spirit," of course, and my ears just weren't ready for it. It sounded like total musical chaos to me. But I came around, although I still liked Pearl Jam better.

Now the more I listen to Nirvana's music, the more I appreciate it. The music is great and the lyrics -- when you can understand them, of course -- are very good, too. How many bands had the cojones to start a song "Sell the kids for food" like Nirvana did in In Bloom? Not many, I think. It certainly gets across a serious level of desperation. I have even come to recognize that Nirvana really was a better band than Pearl Jam. Nirvana's music was more innovative, its lyrics were more poetically incomplete (where they sing little bits and phrases and you fill in the rest with your mind -- like getting across total disillusionment with "oh well, whatever, never mind").

But Pearl Jam is still around. Not only that, but after years in the wilderness, Pearl Jam has a damn fine new CD out there. I listen to it frequently. There's some great stuff on that. "The lights of the city, they look good while speeding, gonna leave them far behind, because this time, I'm gone." "Unemployable" is a great song. (I don't think, however, that Pearl Jam will ever have a better lyric than the following from "I Wish": "I wish I was the full moon shining off a Camaro's hood." Not just the moon, but the full moon, when people go crazy. Not just a car, not just a fast car, but a Camaro, traditional choice of Jim Rockford and mulleted men everywhere. That must have been a seriously well-waxed Camaro, too, to get that kind of shine on the hood.)

Nirvana isn't ever going to have that. We are never going to know what Kurt Cobain would have written about George W. Bush. We are never going to know what Kurt Cobain would have written about his inevitable divorce from Courtney Love. We are never going to know what Kurt Cobain would have written when we decided that he wanted to write a song like "You Are The Sunshine Of My Life" about Frances Bean.

Dave Grohl has made some really good music with Foo Fighters. I hope Krist Novoselic is having fun on the dark side of the moon or whatever he is. But Kurt Cobain and Nirvana are gone, have been gone a long time and it makes me sad. When The Mermaid was born, both The Muse and I wondered, "Can you be a parent and still listen to Nirvana?" The answer is yes and I wish Nirvana was still around.

Golf People

Golf is my one things. I really like it. When I'm playing well, I get way too happy. Now, unless you've got a very regular foursome, you almost always end up playing with people you don't know. The Muse has always wondered how you can spend four or five hours with people you don't know. Other non-golfers have asked me the same question. Based on these questions, I thought that it might be a useful guide for non-golfers to categorize some of the people with whom you frequently play golf. Here it goes:

THE GAMBLING GUYS. Lots of guys (not women so much) like to bet on golf. They like the competition, I guess. (I like the Zen aspect of golf myself and betting can mess with that.) The impact of this on me, not a participant in the betting, is that you basically hear four hours of on-and-off talk about these other guys' bets. Now this isn't necessarily a bad thing. As a guy, it is pretty funny to hear other guys rip each other, which almost always goes on between the betting guys. But you do have to hear stuff like: "That's greenie. No, it's not a greenie unless you make the par. B---sh--, I get a dot for the greenie. Don't give me that, a--h---, you have to make the par." "Oh, man, this is a three-hole carryover. If I win this hole, you're f----d." Gentlemanly stuff like that.

THE TALKER. Some guys with whom you play golf want to talk to you. The whole round. Sometimes, this can be entertaining. Sometimes, you get like a guy from Australia and you learn all about Australia. That's cool. One time I played with a very nice guy from Scotland. He was pretty cool, but he wanted to talk a lot. In a Scottish brogue. I think I caught every third word. Sometimes, though, you get the guy who just wants to talk about every single shot. Eeee, that is not so fun. Dude, there are things other than golf in the world. Yes, thank you for saying I hit a nice shot (just like you said after the last three). Yes, this green is really fast (just like the last four). I hate trees too. Yes, the rough is really thick at this course. Dude, have a beer and calm down.

THE COUPLE. Golf, for whatever reason, still seems to be a very heavily male game. You just don't see -- or I don't see at least -- a lot of women out playing with other women or by themselves. Accordingly, most women with whom I have played golf tend to be playing with a man. Frequently, the situation is the man is pretty serious about golf and the woman is "learning," which sometimes means actually learning and sometimes means tagging along. The man is almost always instructing, which, I don't know, may be is a male thing along with tyrannical sightseeing. It can be very pleasant to play golf with The Couple. Sometimes, however, the man feels the need to instruct you on life, like the time one guy in a couple with whom I was playing golf asked me if I thought I could keep my marriage together like I was in law school. Yeah, I do, a--h--- (14 years and counting).

THE MAD GUY. This is the guy who gets freakin' mad when he hits a bad shot. This guy almost always has over-developed sense of how good he is. He'll sometimes yell lots of swear words at himself if he misses the green. This ire is never directed at you, thankfully. It just makes the round rather unpleasant. Sometimes, this gets really extreme and the guy will break a club. This is almost always occurs after the guy misses a putt, decides it's the putter's fault, snaps the putter's staff over his knee and then flings the putter into the next fairway. I have seen this two or three times. It's really something.

THE OLD GUY. The Old Guy doesn't have to be all that old. Just older than you. In addition, the Old Guy has the following characteristics: (1) he is usually wearing at least one piece of odd clothing (one of these guys I played with one time seemed to have rubber wraps that snapped just above his ankles on top of his golf shoes -- I have never seen anything like that); (2) when you first see him swinging, you think "man, that is a goofy swing, I wonder if he has arthritis;" (3) his short game is unreal, every time he misses a green, he chips the ball to about three feet; and (4) he ends up kicking your butt. The Old Guy is frequently very good to have in your foursome. He doesn't usually feel compelled to talk a whole lot, but is particularly willing to talk to you if you want to talk.

THE PROFESSIONAL JUNIOR GOLFER. This person is usually not encountered during a regular round of golf (for reasons to be explained below), but more often in tournaments. Basically, this is a kid who usually plays on country clubs who spends the whole round talking about how he just played some exclusive course or just got the new hot clubs or will only play the hottest, most expensive golf ball. One time, I played with one of these kids who was talking about how one of his dreams was not to play the Olympic Club -- the country club in San Francisco that has hosted several U.S. Opens -- but rather the San Francisco Country Club "because it is way more exclusive than the Olympic Club." Wow, love that perspective.

THE FRIEND. You pretty much know you have a good friend after that first time that you go play golf with someone and enjoy spending four or five straight hours with him or her. It's a little like helping someone move. It's kind of an acid test.