The Webbed Toe

Feeling Evil

2008-03-15T20:56:00.000-07:00

Toward the end of college, the Muse and I took a few classes together, one of which was a modern American history class taught by a senior graduate, who would, at the slightest prompting, tell you about his search for a tenure-track professor somewhere, anywhere. One day, he said that “we would be talking about the past today, but all of history is in the past, I guess, so we’re going to talk about it anyway.” As was typical of these classes, we were sentenced to a one-hour “discussion section” of about 10 students led by a junior grad student. When the Muse and I walked into our discussion section, I more or less decided that there was no point to showering or brushing my hair because I was never going to be as good-looking as the grad student teaching the section.

We’ll call this Adonis “BS.” Well, BS seemed to develop a bit of crush on the Muse, which, as you can imagine, did not please me. Moreover, this guy knocked my grade on a paper about the movie version of The Grapes of Wrath down partly because I said that one character in the movie was a clear allusion to FDR. Specifically, BS wrote on this part of my paper, “From under what deconstructionist rock did you get this?” Later, in college, when an actual professor referred to the fact that the character in the movie looked amazingly like FDR, I wanted to hunt down BS and rub his nose in it.

Well, the Muse and I got to talking about BS a while ago. She referred to some newspaper columnist saying that he was “so gay” for some other man, I said that I really didn’t understand the concept, that I understood how other guys could be super good-looking like BS, but that I didn’t really understand the “so gay for” thing. This led the Muse to Google BS. What she discovered induced me to develop a truly wicked, evil sense of superiority.

The Muse’s Googling turned up that BS got his Ph.D in 2001 – a mere nine years after our class with him – then went and got a law degree – in 2006 – and is now a junior attorney at a Nevada firm, practicing water and environmental law. I practice water and environmental law. I graduated from law school in 1995. I have been an attorney for over 12 years. I made partner in 2002.

As soon as the Muse showed me BS’s current occupation and status, my immediate thought, “Oh my God, if he was my associate” – notice the ownership allusion, “my” associate – “I would make his life miserable.” I started cooking up miserable projects I could give BS. I would send him to depositions with obnoxious opposing counsel. I would work the words “deconstruct” and :”rock” into every conversation.

I knew this was bad, but, ooh, it felt good. Like milk, I guess a little hypothetical revenge does a body good.

LEGO America

2008-02-17T07:43:00.000-08:00

If you use Google -- and if you're not a Microsoft or Yahoo employee, then you know that you do -- then, at some point, you've noticed that Google sometimes changes the word "Google" on its home page according to the season. For Christmas, it's dressed up for Christmas. For Valentine's Day the other day, there was a picture of a elderly couple in love and apparently sprinting away to some place where they didn't want to be watched. A few weeks ago, I clicked on Google and I noticed that the word "Google" depicted in square letters. I hadn't seen that before, so I looked closer. It turned out that it was the 50th anniversary of the LEGO brick.

This gave me a warm fuzzy because, man, I loved LEGO's when I was a kid -- especially Star Wars LEGO's. First, you'd assemble them according to the directions for whatever Star Wars ship you had bought or received and then, a week later, you'd tear them up and make race cars. The themed LEGO sets were the gateway to true LEGO obsession because, of course, the real attraction of LEGO's is the ability to make whatever the hell you want that you can get little bricks to form. Because you really don't care -- or at least I didn't care -- what color combination is involved with really great LEGO creations, they end up being a random mosaic of colors, kind of like the American melting pot as depicted on ABC's Schoolhouse Rock.

Which brings me finally to my point. In this most interesting of political years, the media is treating we voters -- at least the Democratic ones -- like LEGO bricks. It has become somewhat disturbing to watch television coverage of, and read print articles about, primary election returns because they are focusing so heavily on the demographics of the voters. Last week, Obama won Virginia and the big news was that he had cut into Clinton's "base" with "the female vote" and "the Latino vote." But the coverage didn't stop there: they then broke it down to how did how well with "white Catholics" and "white evangelicals." It's similar when Clinton wins.

It's as if the media sees the multi-colored LEGO creations that these candidates assemble to win in any given state and all that they want to do is smash them on the ground and examine the pieces. The pieces were never the point of LEGO's and are not the point of running an election. Do we really want people who want to be our president to be spending all of their time figuring out how to grind out a slightly higher percentage of the female Latino evangelical vote or the male biracial Hindu vote? Isn't that kind of thinking how we got to where we are today, which no one seems to think is where we should stay?

The joy of LEGO's is in their assembly. The assembly of voters hopefully will be the joy of this election year. The people who are telling us the story of this election need to remember that a little more.

They Killed The Time Lady

2008-02-08T23:07:00.000-08:00

The clocks in our house drive me kind of crazy. None of them match. My alarm clock is something like seven minutes faster than The Muse's alarm clock. The clocks in our kitchen are somewhere in between, but they don't match either. Until very recently, I would have resolved these issues by calling the Time Lady.

You know the Time Lady. You could call 767-8900 and she would tell you exactly what time it was down to the ten-second intervals. "At the tone, Pacific Standard Time will be one forty-three p.m. and thirty seconds." No matter what, she always had this very smooth tone, just oozing pleasantness and knowledge. It always reminded of a really nice librarian. I began calling the Time Lady as a kid. It didn't occur to me until much later that the time quotes could have been assembled by a computer from little quotes from the Time Lady. I mean, for her to have recorded each individual ten-second interval, she would have had to record -- according to my calculations -- at least 69,120 time statements (6 10-second intervals per minute x 60 minutes per hour x 24 hours per day x 4 continental American time zones x 2 time alternatives [Standard and Daylight Savings] = 69,120). How could anyone have done that? But her time statements never sounded constructed, unlike the apartment information that the Muse and I got before we moved to the Bay Area ("Off . . . street par-king"). A few years ago, though, I was clicking channels at some point and saw some story in which they actually showed the Time Lady recording her time statements. She looked just as I imagined -- kind of bluish hair, glasses a little out of style. It made me happy.

And now they have killed her. Well, they haven't killed her -- I haven't heard her that the lady herself is dead. The phone company, however, no longer makes her time statements available. If you call 767-8900, you apparently get nothin'. This is wrong, wrong like how Mr. Dry Wit's friend described it as wrong when everyone on Sesame Street -- not just Big Bird -- became able to see Mr. Snuffleupogas. My kids will not be able to call the Time Lady to find out exactly what time is.

Nor will I and this bugs me. We have fewer and fewer common experiences these days. Everyone uses the Web and their My Yahoo pages and their iPods to edit the world per their predilections. The Time Lady, however, could tell everyone what time it was. Now what the hell are we all supposed to rely on? Atomic clocks are not yet available at Sharper Image or in SkyMall, as far as I know. What are the other options to find out exactly what time it is? The little clock in the bottom right-hand corner of your Microsoft Windows screen? Screw that. Bill Gates has his money-grubbing fingers in enough places in our lives. I don't need him to be defining time for me. The government? I'll bet Gates would send Dick Cheney a daily Excel file on everyone who accessed the government's official clock.

Where have you gone, Mrs. Time Lady? A nation turns its lonely ears to you.

Goodbye, Isuzu

2008-02-03T21:01:00.000-08:00

There was an obituary in the business section. Isuzu decided to stop selling cars in the US. This made me sad.

The article focused on how Isuzu's "Joe Isuzu" commercials had been something of a phenomenon in the 1980's and how Isuzu had been one of the first companies to sell SUV's You remember Joe Isuzu. He was the oily used-car-salesman-type guy who described Isuzus as being able to go 300 miles an hour, with a little graphic below that said something like "going down a mountain in a hurricane." They were very funny and helped Isuzu sell a lot of cars for a while. Isuzu's Trooper was one of the first SUV's, along with the Jeep Cherokee. As you know, they spawned bigger and bigger SUV's, eventually achieving their ultimate expression. Once every freakin' car company on the planet except Yugo started building SUV's -- hello, Cadillac Escalade and Porsche Cayenne -- no one bought Isuzu Troopers any more and they died a long, slow death.

The end of Isuzu America made me sad because, in my first wave of sports car lust, I really wanted an Isuzu Impulse. Well, I really wanted a Porsche 911 or 944 or a Ferrari of any type, but that wasn't going to happen. An Isuzu Impulse was somewhere near the range of doable. The Impulse really was the spawn of the first generation of the VW GTI, the seminal pocket rocket car. While the first GTI was boxy and the GTI has never achieved artistic excellence, the Impluse was a very nice-looking car, being designed by some acclaimed Italian designer. It had a turbo four, which what my Audi has now. Besies being named "Isuzu," it had enough other kind of goofy features to give it some weird cred. It had pods of controls on either side of the instrument cluster whose height could be adjusted so that you could have your windshield wiper controls just where you wanted them. I didn't want a Toyota Celica -- that was a chick car. I didn't want a Nissan Pulsar -- that thing was butt ugly. The Dodge Daytona was pretty cool, but my parents had had a Dodge Charger that more or less fell to pieces under their feet, so that wasn't happening. I wanted an Isuzu Impulse.

I never got one and not too many other people did either. The GTI lives on, funky cool as ever. The Impulse is dead. When I read the article about Isuzu America's demise, I ran an Autotrader search for any Impulse between 1981 and 2008 within 500 miles of my town. There was not a single one for sale. They have disappeared from the face of the earth, like the dinosaurs and Michael Dukakis. Good luck, Isuzu, I wish you well back in Japan.

There Are Evil People In This World

2008-02-03T20:31:00.000-08:00

SPOLIER ALERT: THIS IS NOT A FUN POST.

I'm not a religious guy, owing to circumstances that wouldn't interest you. I believe in a higher power and all, but not being attached to any particular faith and having gotten a UC education, I tend not to buy into a whole lot of handed-down rules other than the Golden one. A law school friend of mine had his own issues with religion, but married a more-or-less lapsed Mormon and found himself struggling with her family's faith. He described his philosophy to me one day as follows: "There are a lot of religions and I don't know which one is right, so I just try to treat people well and do what I think is right." He and his wife eventually divorced, although not over religion, but I have always liked his philosophy.

All of that being said, however, there are times when you just have to recognize that there are evil, evil people out there.

Today's confirmation came from Iraq, where else? I thought that the invasion was a stupid idea at the beginning and now am just one guy in about 85% of the American population that thinks that it was a stupid idea in retrospect. It drives me nuts that my kids are going to be paying for it, financially and possibly geopolitically, in that Iraq has sure managed to get a lot of people angry at our country. What Iraq such a difficult issue, however, is that you can't deny that at least some of the people who our troops are fighting over there are plain evil.

Yesterday, bombs in Iraq killed something like 30 people, the worst daily toll in a while. I saw that squib on my Yahoo home page and it made me queasy. When I read the article in today's paper, I wanted to puke. Apparently, after looking at the severed heads of the presumed bombers and talking to witnesses who had seen them before they exploded, the relevant authorities determined that the bombers actually were female beggars with Downs syndrome who someone had convinced to wear jackets of explosives during their daily begging in the market, someone who then detonated the explosives via remote control. No adjective is sufficient here.

Because of the Mermaid, I am very sensitive to the treatment of people with disabilities. You do not need to have a child with a disability, however, to recognize evil when you see it. I grew up during the Cold War and it was scary, thinking about all of those nuclear-tipped Soviets missiles pointed at us. The Soviets did some bad things, but they never sent planes to crash into our buildings and I don't ever remember hearing about them taking advantage of disabled people as bombers. It's a different thing out there in the world and we just need to recognize it for what it is.

Porn Is Not For Kids

2008-01-27T17:29:00.000-08:00

OK, I know it's been a while for The Webbed Toe, but I'm back and I have a list of ten topics or so to write about, so I'm planning to get your synapses firing again. Well, I'll try at least. Here it goes:

Making kids' movies these days must be hell. When I was a kid, Disney put out a new animated movie every few years, they dragged Bambi and the other classics out every once in a while and, in between, they made Witch Mountain movies. We were happy to have this stuff because there wasn't anything else. Now, it's a whole new world. Pixar makes brilliant movies. Enthusio asked me to make a list of my ten favorite movies and, in doing so, I realized that The Incredibles is probably in my top 25 -- not kids' movies, any movies. Even some lesser kids movies are pretty good. The first Shrek hit just the right balance between kid humor and grown-up humor. When it made a gadzillon dollars, everyone started trying to make kids' movies that arched their eyebrows at the culture for grown-ups' amusement. It's shrewd marketing, of course -- grown-ups buy the tickets after all.

The whole "kids movies with grown-up humor" thing, however, has gone way too far.

There are always going to be bad kids movies, just like there are bad grown-up movies. For example, the kids and I saw a kids movie named Doogal a few years ago. It made so little sense -- it climaxed with a showdown between two magical springs who cast their spells by twisting the ends of their handlebar mustaches, no lie -- that I began to wonder if it had been dubbed from another language. With a little research, I discovered that it more or less had, with the source material being French. Those crazy French. A mime show starring Carrot Top would have made more sense than Doogal.

Still, plain bad kids movies are not what this post concerns. This post concerns thoroughly inappropriate things being inserted in kids' movies for the purported amusement of grown-ups. The straw that broke the camel's back by reaching a tipping point over the line in the sand on this issue for me was the recent Alvin and the Chipmunks movie. I didn't see it, but I saw the ads and they were enough.

One of those ads featured during its 30-second duration the following "jokes:" (1) after the long-suffering Dave, the Chipmunks' pal/manager/plantation owner, talks to an attractive woman, one of the Chipmunks busts out the music line "bow-m, chick-a, bow-m, bow-m;" (2) after another woman leaves the room in a French maid outfit, one of the other Chipmunks lets loose a "oooh la la;" and (3) when some other Chipmunk leaps off of something heroically, he yells, "Yippee k-eye yeah mama-cita." Item (2) would be halfway tolerable. It's not a whole lot worse than that stinking Pepe LePue -- the second-worst Looney Tune after Speedy Gonzales -- used to do, although, in the Chipmunks' case, having the chipmunk say it suggests some weird inter-species stuff.

Items (1) and (3), however, depict the decline and fall of American culture.

Of the two, item (3) is slightly more tolerable. It derives from a famous Bruce Willis line from the Die Hard movies, specifically "Yippee K-eye yeah motherf----r." Really, do we really have to reference the mother of all obscenities in an Alvin and the Chipmunks movie?!? Oh, those Chipmunks, they're so f----n' funny, ha ha ha. Maybe Samuel L. Jackson -- the F-Word King -- can voice one of the Chipmunks in the next movie to really hammer home how hip the Chipmunks are.

So item (3) was appalling, but it really was nothing compared to item (1) -- in which one of the Chipmunks suggested the attractiveness of Dave's date by spouting the universally-known porn-movie music. As John McEnroe would say, "Are you kidding me?!?" Adults are supposed to want to think the Chipmunks are funny and thus want to see the movie because the Chipmunks know about porn?!? That had to be the logic behind putting that part of the movie in the ad. My head almost exploded when I saw that commercial.

I am a pretty liberal guy, but I think that we need an exception to the First Amendment for porn references in kids' movies. Maybe we can sick Dick Cheney on such things once he stops running the country.

Giving a McEnroe

2008-01-27T17:25:00.000-08:00

One of the Muse's friends told her something funny quite a while ago. Her friend said that either she or one of her friends had invented the idea of the "Slap Squad," which could be sent to smack someone whose irritating qualities or behavior entitled them to some free pain administration. The Muse now uses a picture of the Slap Squad on her blog when she get mad. It's quite entertaining.

Figuring that I need a gimmick, too, I have decided to start assessing a McEnroe when something strikes me as offensive and ridiculous. This new gimmick derives of course from the 1970's and 1980's tennis player John McEnroe. The man was a brilliant tennis player, but also a ferocious jerk quite a bit of the time, at least on the court. In particular, when he felt that a call had been made incorrectly in his opponent's favor, he used to yell, "ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?" His tantrums became iconic. A friend recently told me and some others that, in a past life, he had been a sports photographer for a newspaper and McEnroe had yelled at him during a match. We are all very, very impressed.

So, now in this space, when I comment on something that I just can't believe, I will be assessing its perpetrator a McEnroe by applying that picture of McEnroe to them. Watch out, evildoers.

Everyone Drives Fast Now

2007-09-09T08:07:00.000-07:00

Starting a few months ago, an interesting phenomenon became apparent to me. Being an attorney, I sometimes have to work some on the weekends if I have deadlines. (They told us in law school, "the law is a jealous mistress." That was something of an overstatement, in my experience. "The law is a dog that barks at you for a walk every night" might be better.) In the last few months, driving into the office on a few Saturdays, I noticed that EVERYONE DRIVES LIKE FREAKIN' MANIACS WHEN THEY CAN.

Now I am not immune from driving fast. One of the things that I always wanted was a sports car and, once I reached a point where I could afford one, I got one. Sports cars like to go fast -- "really, officer, the car just wanted to go 105" -- so I drive mine slightly over the speed limit at times. So, one Saturday, I'm driving to the office at a rate slightly over the speed limit -- OK, somewhere between 75 and 80 -- and I swear to God, absolutely every car on the freeway is going faster than me. I moved over from the fast lane so the gigantic raised pickup could go by and that sucker blows by me at 90. I look up and I notice that I am losing ground to the crappy 15-year-old Toyota Corolla a quarter-mile ahead. The Paris Hilton wannabe -- why would anyone wannabe that? -- talking on the cell phone in her ten-year-old Chevy Malibu flies past at least 85.

This happens ALL THE TIME. I took a little trip recently and was driving back up 101 through the Salinas Valley -- a pretty long slog, but nothing compared to the desolation that is I-5 on the other side of the hills -- and I was going, again, slightly over the speed limit at, you know, about 80 and every other damn car was going by on my left at 90. The big pickups. The guy in the 2002 Jetta. The velosport maniac with four bikes on the top of his Subaru station wagon at 95, at least. And don't even get me started about what Bay Area and LA freeways are like.

Why are we driving like this, as a habit? The only thing of which I can think is that, in our usual, work-a-day lives, we are in traffic, we are in line at Togo's for lunch, we have a deadline driving our life, we are in one of those chaotic what-checker-are-you-going-to lines at Costco, we are having to merge because construction has blocked a lane, we are talking to health-insurance "customer service," so, when the road is open and the space is free, it is pedal to the metal, baby. Get the hell out of my way because today is my day to go fast.

Personally, I don't think that this is an especially good way for a society to function. I have little doubt that this country works, and works better than most, because people are more or less free to do their own thing. Where I think this is get us, though, is that everyone is running faster and faster, because things are getting cheaper and cheaper, so there is more pressure and pressure on everyone. So, when people get the chance to cut loose, man, they do. Get out of the fast lane because here I come. I don't know what to do about this, and don't know that there really is anything to do about it. Just keep your auto insurance paid up and the Beach Boys on your iPod.

The Mermaid, The Surgery and Frasier Crane

2007-08-05T14:15:00.000-07:00

For several years, The Muse and I watched Frasier. Eventually, like most really good TV shows, it stayed on too long and got pretty stupid, so we stopped watching. (Experiences like this make you realize just how incredible a show like Seinfeld was, where it pretty much stayed good until the end. Well, except for the finale in Seinfeld's case. And MASH's.) Anyway, one thing that Frazier himself said one time has stuck with me and became very relevant recently when The Mermaid became sick. Specifically, Frasier was talking to Roz about her in utero child, which she was having unwedlocked and thus worried about the experience, and told her:

"It's not just that you love your children, but that you actually fall in love with them."

Few truer words have ever been spoken and certainly not on TV. Well, maybe "trying to get something off the Internet is like trying to get pee out of a swimming pool" from NewsRadio, but you know what I mean.

The Frasier line popped loudly into my mind recently when The Mermaid got sick. Specifically, after a few miserable days (for The Mermaid) of hiding like a nasty stomach bug, an large ovian cyst decided that it needed to come out of The Mermaid. Right now. The Mermaid had just been talking about how she had never wanted to have surgery and, now, it was basically a health necessity. Once it was explained to her that she would be asleep and would not, as she put it, "feel them cutting me open," she was down with the idea because she wanted to get better. She now appears to be well on her way back to health, although things like parts of the incision popping open are still happening and we are still being quite vigilant about infections and she still doesn't want to look at the thing and neither do we really and we have talked to the on-call surgeon three times in the last two days and she has another appointment tomorrow. (What a fabulous health care system we are.)

The experience, however, has made me realize the truth of the Frasier line.

One oh-so-wonderful aspect of this experience was that, when the surgeons wheeled The Mermaid into surgery, they did not know exactly what they needed to do. The ER docs had thought that it was clearly a "hot appendix" that needed to come out, as they put it, but said that the surgeons wanted a CT scan to make sure before the surgery. For the few hours in the ER that we thought The Mermaid had a "hot appendix," it was oddly comforting. I know I was thinking, "Oh, a hot appendix is bad, but she's in the hospital and they take appendices out all the time and, hey, no one needs an appendix anyway." (We have "appendices" in the law business, so words like that occur to me.) Then the CT scan came back and, no, it wasn't an appendix, but some huge unknown thing inside The Mermaid that had to come out, right now. So, when they wheeled The Mermaid into surgery, they didn't know what they needed to do exactly.

And I don't really know if I have had a lower moment before. It is "please just do that to me because I don't want you to have to do that to her" moment. I will not say that nothing is worse than having your child wheeled into some unknown surgery because I know that there are worse things. I just know that I don't want to experience them because I know that never want to experience that again.

But then things picked up because the surgery went smoothly and, less than 24 hours later, The Mermaid was more or less back to herself, at least emotionally. In fact, the following 24 hours or so were a real eye-opener with The Mermaid.

If you are a loyal reader of this blog -- see that's irony (I think) because I know I haven't written on here for months, so I know that there aren't any loyal readers -- then you know that The Mermaid is high-functioning autistic. She also is 12 1/2. In the last 6 months to a year, she has been pretty withdrawn, keeping to herself a lot. Given her condition, this worried me some. It turns out, however, that she basically is just 12 1/2. While she was sitting there in her hospital bed between she kind got back into her own head and they sent her home (without the meds she needed, but, ah, that's different story), she was kind of a Chatty Kathe. I gave her the local newspaper's real estate section -- which she likes to read because she likes to see what houses go with what addresses, I think -- she said, "Thanks, Dad, that was really nice of you to give that to me." She finished watching whatever TV show she was watching and offered me the remote, saying, "Dad, if you want to watch baseball or basketball, that would be great."

The whole experience has been not just an arthimetic reminder of how much I love The Mermaid, but rather an exponential one, because the highs and the lows multiplied, not added, together.

It's Harry's World and We're Just Living In It

2007-08-05T14:12:00.000-07:00

You may have heard that the new Harry Potter book came out. I have read it. It was good. There will be more on that later. Right now, though, I want to talk about the Harry experience.

Besides reading the book itself, I have really enjoyed how this has been A Harry Moment. It is one enjoyable aspect of having a mass media culture that lots and lots of people can live through a fun thing together. I remember reading at some point an article about the release of the Beatles' St. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album. (I'm pretty sure that I read this in 1987 when, you know, St. Pepper's had been "20 years ago today.") Someone in the article was describing how he had been in college at the time and he and his fraternity brothers were out on their balcony playing the album and he slowly realized that every other fraternity on the street had it playing out of their house, too. That's what the release of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows has been like.

We went to a big release party and stayed up until 12 midnight and watched as kids -- and adults -- gleefully came running out of the bookstore with their copies. We went with friends and, within five minutes of getting the book, their 8-year-old daughter was telling our 8-year-old son Enthusio that, "oooooh, there's a chapter called "The Wedding.'" I sucked up all of the reviews of the book as soon as I finished it. I watched MSNBC before it came out to hear about leaks of it and unauthorized sales and other examples of the Dark Arts that were deployed in the days leading up the release. I read Stephen King's column about how he couldn't wait for it to come out.

And I really enjoyed being a part of all of that. It just doesn't happen that often.

Most phenomena kind of sneak up on you and then are all over. The original Star Wars was kind of like that, as I recall from when I was 6. The Matrix was like that. Nirvana was like that. (I know I had a hard time grasping and enjoying "Smells Like Teen Spirit" when it first came out.) Michael Jackson's Thriller was kind of like that.

There are a lot of possible phenomena that don't become phenomena. Being a Star Wars -- well, "junkie" doesn't seem right, "devotee" or "acolyte," I suppose -- I was all geared up for The Phantom Menace to be freakin' awesome. Ask The Muse, she'll tell you. She taped the trailer off Rosie O'Donnell's show one day and I couldn't stop watching it. But, then, the movie came out and the initial signs weren't encouraging. And, then, I went to see it. And, then, I realized in horror that the movie actually . . . sucked. Sucked a lot. Had some really weird and questionable and borderline-racially-insensitive stuff in it like the trade federation guys who spoke like Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Had Jar-Jar Binks. Noooooo! Attempted to explain how you became a Jedi from testing your blood for mitochlorides, I think, though I have tried to black the word out. Aaaaaaah!

So the experience of the last Harry Potter book's release has been great. Everyone was into it and the book was good and you couldn't get away from it in a good way. A fun time together was had by lots and lots of people. No one sang Cumbaya, but we could have.

And The Book Was Really Good, Too

2007-08-05T14:11:00.000-07:00

BIG SPOILER ALERT: Don't read this if you are still in the dark about what happens in the last Harry Potter book. I will tell all.

So I read the last Harry Potter book. It took me about a week because The Muse and I were sharing it. She, however, was kind enough to read the whole 759-page thing in about two days, which, given that it came out on a Friday/Saturday, fit nicely with my work schedule. Thanks, Muse.

I thought the book was great. I kind of expected some of the major plots. There was no way in hell J.K. Rowling was going to kill Harry. You don't kill the thing that pulled you up from being a single mom on the dole to being wealthier than the Queen of England. Instead, you love that thing and make sure things work out for it. I had a sense that Snape wasn't evil and that Dumbledore would help Harry at the end. Campbellian mythology predicted these things.

While many of the reviews thus were undoubtedly right that the book was somewhat derivative of mythology and Tolkien and Star Wars and other sources, what you have to give to J.K. Rowling is her commitment to the story. She had set up, lovingly and lengthily, the story that Voldemort was not just mean, but flat-out evil, and that Harry would have to be the one to defeat him. In the words of Bugs Bunny, "of course, you know, this means war." And Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows was war. And Rowling committed to that fact.

Some modern pieces of mythology, much as I love them, shrank from the real meaning of their stories. In short, good guys didn't really die. In the Star Wars movies, there is an awful lot of carnage, but, when you think about it, no one you really cared about died. A lot of "Gold Leaders" and "Red 3's" and "Daxes" became balls o' flame, but none of the main characters died. Obi-Wan gave himself up and came back "more powerful than you can imagine," supposedly. The closest Star Wars came was when Han Solo was frozen in carbonite and, while that set off my personal first existential crisis, Han lived and fought on, smart-mouthed as ever. Similarly, in Tolkein, at least in the movies (got to admit, I haven't read the books), who really dies? Gandalf comes back. Gollum dies, but that was fine with me. The only important good guy who dies is Boromir and he deserved it because he tried to take the ring from Frodo. Hell, even Faramir survives his explicitly suidicial charge at the Orcs.

J.K. Rowling, on the other hand, had the courage to show you what a war against Voldemort meant. Fred Weasley died. We loved Fred. He and George made the magical swamp and gave Harry the Marauders' Map. How can George go on without Fred? Well, he'll have to because Fred died in the war. She killed Lupin?!? Poor tragic Lupin, bit by a werewolf as a child and doomed to be an outcast his whole life, has his great friends the Potters be killed, thinks his friend Sirius may be a mass murderer for 12 years, finds out that, no, his other friend Pettigrew betrayed the Potters, has Sirius be killed, finds happiness very briefly with Tonks and then they both get killed in the Battle of Hogwarts just after their son is born. Wow, that is some potent stuff. Hedwig, Harry's great owl friend. Dead. Madeye Moody, so desperate to fight Voldemort and protect Harry. Dead. Colin Creevey, who loved to take pictures. Dead.

And the one that hit me hardest of all, Dobby. Dobby, who loved Harry and who Harry freed (by tricking Lucius Malfoy into giving Dobby one of Harry's dirty socks), coming to save Harry and the others at the Malfoy's house because only Dobby could do it because he had House-elf magic and could apparate in his old master's house, shaking with fright and then killed by a dagger as they apparated out. Good Lord, what a moment.

These things made the ultimate resolution so much the better. Made it so much the better that it was goofy, forgetful, lame Neville, who found courage, had Gryffindor's sword emerge for him -- a true courageous Gryffindor -- from the Sorting Hat to lop the head off the snake, the last Horcrux. What a moment! Kind, worrying Mrs. Weasley doing in the evil Bellatrix Lestrange (what an evil name, like Scott Farkus) in motherly fury. Freakin' awesome! Snape's back story and horrible end. The Malfoys ultimately caring more about their kid than being evil. All of that, plus the escape from the Ministry, the escape from Gringotts and the fight inside the Room of Requirement. Whoa!

I think it was a great book and think that the series really is an astonishing achievement. I don't know how they are going to get the last book in a movie, but I know that I will go see it.

Damn, The Depression Sucked

2007-04-21T16:10:00.000-07:00

I am of a generation whose grandparents grew up in the Depression. Now you know, most people really love their grandparents. My maternal grandfather -- Papa -- taught me to play golf, used to always have M&M's in the desk/bureau thing, would buy me Coke's and said lots of great things like "You want a dollar? You're not worth that for your hide & tallow," "He who does not tooteth is own horn, the same shall not be tooteth" and his true masterwork "People in hell want ice water, too." For a while, when I was 11 or 12, he was probably my best friend. My maternal grandmother -- Grandma -- has always been a very bright light to me. She would drive really slow, go to the 7-11 every Sunday to buy the Sunday Chronicle, ate All Bran a lot. Every once in a while, she would say things that would say things that, as her grandchild, would make your hair stand up to realize that, well, Grandma had enjoyed her youth. Like the time she told my sister TFON that, woo, my Papa had been awfully good-looking in his Navy uniform and they used to swing on a few chandeliers. (Don't know about that spelling, but I don't care.)

Anyway, one thing that I think our generation finds pretty humorous about our grandparents is the way they horde things, tuck things away, worry a lot about money when they don't need to, all because of the Depression. When my grandma started to slide some, my mom and my aunt The Nurse were reviewing her finances and discovered a savings account that my grandma hadn't ever mentioned. The Muse's grandma continued to knit dishtowels until quite recently. The Muse's mom will call her and tell her something that her grandmother did and the Muse and I will laugh about how "oh well, she grew up in the Depression."

After having had many yucks about our grandparents and the Depression, I read a book about the Depression and FDR recently and, boy howdy, I'm going to try not to laugh about the Depression anymore.

None of this is any great insight, but, jeez, there was a stretch in late 1932 and early 1933 when basically the banks all over the country were just straight out closing. You know, you think you have money in the bank, but, oh sorry, your bank just closed and you don't have any money any more. Right before FDR took office in March 1933, it was a very real possibility that ALL of the banks in the country were going to crater. D'oh!

I now promise to never make fun of anyone's grandparents washing Ziploc bags ever again.

Zodiac and Chowchilla

2007-03-03T07:37:00.000-08:00

If you partake of any media source whatsoever, then you know that a movie called "Zodiac" about the Bay Area's Zodiac killer opened yesterday. That was (is?) one creepy guy. Killing five people and then sending the newspapers encoded messages about it. Threatening to shoot up a schoolbus. Talking about how there should be a movie about him. Never getting caught.

It is little wonder that there is still a lot of interest in the case something like 35 years after the last murder. There always has been. When I was in high school, my group of friends discovered that one of the San Francisco police officers who had worked on the case had retired to run a trailer park in my home town. One of my friends used to say that he wanted to call the guy up and say "This is the Zodiac speaking." Luckily, we never did that. Wow, we would have been working that karma off for a long time.

One of the things that I have found interesting about all of the Zodiac hype lately is that the director remembers being a kid in Marin County and having his bus evacuated one day because people were worried about the Zodiac. That's something that will stick with you. I think that everyone has something like that, some crime or disaster that you heard about when you were a kid that imprinted itself on your brain and still gives you the heebie-jeebies when you think about it.

My thing is the Chowchilla bus kidnapping. You probably know something about this, but, basically, one day in 1976 or 1977, three young guys from wealthy Bay Area families stopped a school bus with about 20 kids in it at gunpoint and forced the driver to drive the bus to a quarry in the outer Bay Area where they had some kind of container thing buried underground where they shut up the driver and the kids. They then demanded a big ransom. The whole thing fell apart quickly, with the bus driver and some of the older kids figuring out how to escape not long after the kidnappers made the first ransom call. The kidnappers got caught pretty quickly, are still in prison and seem pretty unlikely to ever get out.

This scared the S**T out me when I was a kid. I used to ride the bus to school through the fields every day. Being a kid, I thought this could happen any time. It didn't, of course. Anywhere, to the best of my knowledge. That being said, when I drive through Chowchilla on Highway 99, I think of the bus kidnapping every single time. It's so strong a memory that I don't even think of the time that I had to stop in Chowchilla because The Mermaid got sick and needed to throw up. Wow, that was fun. Nonetheless, for whatever reason, the bus kidnapping is so imbedded in my mind that I always think of that instead.

Well, That's Unexpected

2007-03-03T07:35:00.000-08:00

There are some things you never expect to see. Unicorns. Dogs and cats coming together in peace. Paris Hilton with a book. Dick Cheney in public.

Well, I'm here to tell you that these things are not impossible because I saw just as impossible just the other day in my gym's parking lot. Now let me set the scene. Our little town here is pretty darn liberal. In 2000, Ralph Nader got more votes for President than George W. Bush. Not only that, but we have a college here. You put the two things together and the logical result is that there are a lot of Volvos here. There are many, many Volvos here. And not just Volvos, but Volvo station wagons. And not just Volvo station wagons, but Volvo station wagons with lots of bumper stickers on the back.

Now you can see why this happens, just from a physical point of view. The back end of a Volvo station wagon is so large and so vertical and so square that it makes a perfect billboard. If you put a bumper sticker on the back of your Volvo station wagon, that people behind you in line at the Starbucks drive-through, he or she is GOING to KNOW what your politicial preferences are. The back end of a Volvo is such an effective marketing tool that I'm a little surprised that Volvo doesn't have marketing deals to slap stuff on the back of those cars, kind of like NASCAR teams. Well, on second thought, it's Volvo, so I guess I'm not that surprised.

So, anyway, there are lots of Volvo station wagons with lots of bumper stickers around here. Usually, those bumper stickers say things like "Kerry Edwards 2004" (there are a lot of those still around), "Eat Vegan" and "Somewhere In Texas, A Village Is Missing Its Idiot." But, one day, walking out of my gym through the parking lot to my car, I saw something on the back side of a Volvo station wagon that was so shocking that I basically stopped in my tracks and wondered if something had happened to the space-time continuum.

What I saw was this: a Volvo station wagon with a NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION bumper sticker on the back. What the hell?!?

Boy was that confusing. It was like that time I read a quote in the paper from Richard Nixon, in which he said something like, "If we had had rap when I was growing up, I think I might have been good at that." What?!? I mean, if Volvo people can belong to the NRA, what's next? Hybrid Harleys? Tofu tri-tip? Cats and dogs co-existing in peace?

Of course, I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised. When I was a kid, we had a dog that started nursing kittens. No lie, I think there are still pictures.

A Brilliant Idea

2007-02-25T21:48:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, you hear a brilliant idea, one that you get instanteously and have to pursue.

Watching the broadcast of this year's historic, most-boring-ever Oscars -- I mean, Martin Scorese finally wins Best Director and then they play canned music over the standing ovation and Marty stands up and thanks every agent in town, woo woo -- what got me was the Oscar for Best Short Film (or whatever that category is called). The winning nominee was "West Bank Story." I didn't get for a second and then they started showing Palestinians and Israelis approaching each other in lines, snapping their fingers.

Just like West Side Story.

That's genius. I have got to see this one.

The Perfect Song

2007-02-24T18:25:00.000-08:00

Being the tragically unhip guy that I am, I recently have gotten into a couple of songs that I think the young people were into a year or so ago. First, I heard Modest Mouse's Ocean Breathes Salty about a month ago and started listening to that all of the time. Then, I heard the whole thing of Gnarls Barkley's Crazy for the first time and really got into that. It being an iPod world, I loaded them both onto my little external music brain in an elegantly-designed sliver and now listen to those two songs first when I get in my car or start at the gym.

And those two songs got me thinking about the kind of songs that take over your brain. There's a certain perfection to that kind of song. They're basically three (or six nowadays) minutes of perfectly-executed music. You listen to them eight times in a row. You listen to them whenever you get the chance. What is it that makes a Perfect Song?

Well, in my purportedly humble opinion, here are some things.

You have to have catchy music, of course. I thought Ocean Breathes Salty was catchy, but then I heard Crazy with its beat and the background singing and the crazy Bee-Gee-esque lead vocals. It's really good if you've got some kind of unusual musical hooks like, say, the Irish music in Dexy's Midnight Runners' "Come On Eileen," the Scottish (I think because, you know, the song is not crap and, if it's not Scottish, it's crap) music in Big Country's "In A Big Country" or the really prominent fat bass guitar riff in Cake's "Going the Distance."

You have to have some lyrics that get in your head, like Ocean Breathes Salty's "Well, that is that, and this is this, you tell me what you want and I tell you what you get, you get away from me." Such catchy lyrics, however, do not necessarily have to make much sense for a song to be a Perfect Song. Hell if I know what Ocean Breathes Salty is actually about, other than a guy being mad at a girl who may or may not believe in multiple lives like Shirley Maclaine. Other Perfect Songs are similar. I couldn't get Smashmouth's Walking on the Sun out of my head for days. It has been, I don't know, seven or eight years since that one came out and my best stab at what the lyrics mean is that things were better back in the '60s and '70s when people smoked pot instead of crack. If your lyrics are too elliptical, however, you can't be a Perfect Song. It's been about 19 years and I still have no idea what U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name" is about.

The problem with Perfect Songs, however, is that times change and more Perfect Songs come along. For example, I was in the grocery store today waiting (and waiting) at the deli counter for a sandwich and Human League's "Don't You Want Me" came on. Now that was a Perfect Song in 1982 or 1983 when it came out. I mean, you have these great half-way disco beats going over this awesome he-said-she-said exchange where the only thing that the starcrossed lovers can agree on is that he found her working as a waitress in a cocktail bar. But, geez, does that song scream 1982 or 1983 or what? It's in there with Level 42's "There's Something About You" and Kajagoogoo's "Too Shy" as Perfect '80s Songs that still sound great, but definitely are of a time.

Now, what you've undoubtedly noticed here is that I'm talking about a lot of one-hit wonders as Perfect Songs. That is no coincidence, I think. I would bet that each of those bands just worked and worked on their babies to make sure that they were Perfect. Eventually, they were polished like a gem stone. But, then, suddenly, it's a big hit and you don't have the time to both make your song perfect and hit the market when you need to do so. Your next song isn't Perfect and someone else's is.

Now, it's very interesting to compare Perfect Songs to songs that most everyone agrees are classics, timeless, Great Songs. It's weird, but Great Songs don't have to be Perfect Songs. Let's take the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil." This is a Great Song. It has just layers and layers of music. Mick really outdid himself on the lyrics, weaving in Pontius Pilate (and thus Jesus), Anatasia, Nazis and the Kennedy brothers, among others. Then you overlay all that with the fact that you've got one of the biggest bands ever putting themselves in the shoes of Lucifer. That is one ambitious song, but they pulled if off.

Is Sympathy for the Devil, however, a Perfect Song? No, it is not. The "woo-wooing" toward the end is too loud, goes on too long and is too lame for "The World's Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band."

You can think of other Imperfect Great Songs. The Beatles' "Strawberry Fields Forever" has been exalted in this space, but it is not a Perfect Song because it has that totally superfluous part at the end after the music goes quiet. (The Mermaid says that part is scary and asks us to fast-forward through it every time. You can't be a Perfect Song if you scare my kid.) The Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter?" Great Song, but not Perfect because it has that loud, jarring harmonica solo. It just doesn't take much to prevent a song from being a Perfect Song.

In fact, it seems pretty rare that a Great Song is also Perfect. I can't think of too many. Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit. Marvin Gaye's What's Going On? The Rolling Stones' Jumping Jack Flash. U2's I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For. (A song's title can't prevent it from being Perfect or else U2 would have gotten dinged for the preposition at the end of that one, which brings me to a totally unrelated point. Have you heard these commercials for orange juice where the slogan is something like "Completely Unfooled Around With?" They make me want to tear large patches of hair out of my head every time I hear them. Read Strunk & White or Eats, Shoots and Leaves, for God's sake. You're college-educated advertising people. Stop dangling your prepositions.) Knowing just enough about rap to be dangerous, I'd say The Beastie Boys' "Sabotage" is both a Great and Perfect Song, while Coolio's "Fantastic Voyage" is Perfect, but isn't Great.

There are fence-sitters. Does the weird fact that Stevie Wonder's "You Are The Sunshine of My Life" -- a certified Great Song -- opens with singers you never hear again prevent it from being a Perfect Song? Close one. Is OutKast's Hey Ya -- a pretty damn Perfect Song -- too loopy and cute to be a Great Song? I'd said "yes," partly because I think Gnarls Barkley made a similar and better song.

Now, I know that not everyone -- maybe not anyone -- will agree with this particular musical theory, but, hey, you try to get Crazy out of your head.

Sports Oddity

2007-02-20T19:50:00.000-08:00

There's a very odd phenomenon in sports, one that just played out in the NFL playoffs. The big story was, of course, Peyton Manning and the Colts getting the monkey off their back by winning the Super Bowl. Yeah for them. Go Colts. But what's weird is how they did it and how similar it was to other teams who had monkeys on their posterior sides.

The Colts had to go through their nemesis, the Patriots, who had beaten them like a drum for a few years, at least a couple of times in the playoffs. Moreover, they had to beat the NFL's big man, the NFL ursa major, Tom Brady, who had just won a game for the Patriots against the Chargers that the Patriots never, never should have won. Now that's not very unusual. To be the best, you frequently have to beat the best. When Steve Young finally got the 49ers to the Super Bowl, they had to go through the Cowboys team that had beaten them the previous two years. Back in the early '90s, the Pistons first had to get through the Celtics after years of trying to get to the NBA Finals, then lost to the Lakers, then had to beat the Lakers. Michael Jordan's Bulls then had to get past the Pistons to win a ring. So going through the best team to win a ring obviously isn't that unusual.

What's unusual is how teams with monkeys on the backs go through the most spine-wrenching contortions to do it. Specifically, the monkey-laden teams dig themselves big holes, deep dark holes and then climb out of them in unreal, karma-changing ways. The Colts, of course, got themselves down 18 points to the Patriots in the first half of the AFC championship game and then came back to win in the biggest comeback in the history of that game.

This kind of thing goes back a very long way. For example, the Dodgers lost to the Yankees in the World Series in 1947, 1949, 1952 and 1953 before finally beating the Yankees in 1955. How did they do it? They lost the first two games in 1955 and then came back to become the first team to come back from a 2-0 deficit. The Cowboys had beaten the 49ers twice in the NFC championship game in the 1970's, in very painful fashion (I believe that, in one of those games, the Cowboys scored two touchdowns in the last couple of minutes to win by about four). How did the 49ers finally get to the Super Bowl? They had to beat the Cowboys with Joe Montana hooking up with Dwight Clark with 57 seconds left. (And, as I recall, all of the calls went for the Cowboys in that game, too.) After the Dodgers lost the 1974 World Series, and the 1977 and 1978 World Serieses (serieses? seria?), they had to come from 2-0 down again to win in 1981.

And, of course, there's the mother of all comebacks, the Red Sox coming back to beat the Yankees in 2004. OK, no team had ever come back from 3-0 down in a 7-game baseball series. It hadn't happened in the NBA and only once or twice in the NHL. Not only that, but the Red Sox were a run down in the bottom of the 9th with the best postseason closer ever, Mariano Rivera, pitching. That is a bad, bad, bad situation. And how did they dig themselves out? Dave Roberts stole second base. The Red Sox stole a base?!? They never steal bases. And the rest is history.

It's just very weird how teams with the monkey on their backs seem to have to go through gut-wrenching, soul-bearing crises against their worst enemies to win. And woe is to the team that doesn't pull it off. The Kings missed their free throws in Game 7 of the 2002 Western Conference Finals against the Lakers and their bodies fell apart in 2003, 2004 and 2005 until finally their players lost the mojo (and parts of their knees). Damn, that sucked.

It Doesn't Suck Too Bad, Star Wars Ed.

2007-02-17T07:45:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time, someone in or associated with The Muse's family asked me how I liked a movie or something and I responded, "Well, it didn't suck too bad." I have yet to live that comment down. I now have decided to love my problem to death by starting a new feature here on The Webbed Toe called, surprisingly enough, It Doesn't Suck Too Bad. When you see the header It Doesn't Suck Too Bad, you will know that The Webbed Toe is rising to defend some unfairly maligned piece of our culture, political figure, sports team or other random thing about which I have decided to write. This will be a periodic feature, although it will only show up when it's interesting to me.

As you can tell from the header here, the first edition of It Doesn't Suck Too Bad concerns, as do many of the posts here, Star Wars. Today, The Webbed Toe rises in defense of The Return Of the Jedi.

As all sentinent beings know, The Return of the Jedi was the third movie of the original trilogy and is now also known as "Ep. VI," or, to some, "the worst one of the good movies," "the one with the freakin' Ewoks" or "the one that wasn't very good, but at least didn't have Jar Jar Binks." It is the red-headed stepchild of the first trilogy and stood in its accepted place as the only Star Wars movie that sucked for a very long 16 years until Phantom Menace came along and demonstrated what a Star Wars movie that truly sucks actually is.

But let us revisit The Return of the Jedi. At Enthusio's urging, we sat down and watched the whole thing a few weeks ago. Then, the movie has been on HBO this month, so the HBO Effect kicked in and I have been watching five-minute snippets of it periodically. So I'm primed for this one, baby.

Now just about everyone who has seen The Return of the Jedi admits that the first hour of the movie rocks. (Well, except for my grandma, who went with us to see the movie when it first came out because my mom decided to surprise me by taking us to see the movie on a trip to our big city in association with a more regular shopping trip. Grandma would always go on a shopping trip to the big city because, you know, that's where the closest Standard Brands was. Anyway, Grandma must not have liked the Return of the Jedi because she fell asleep. I don't know what got her, although it could have the damn Ewoks.) I mean, what's not to like?

Right off the bat, this was the first time we ever saw Jabba the Hutt. Wow, there was a creation. A giant, nasty slug who was keeping poor Han Solo frozen in carbonite on the wall. Cool! And then the good guys all show up in disguise to try to save Han. Cool! C3PO wigs out when Luke's hologram says that Luke is giving the droids to Jabba. Funny! One of Jabba's henchmen starts crying when Luke kills the giant monster thing that Jabba keeps around to eat people for entertainment. Also funny! (I know the name of that thing, but it's not coming to me right now. It's 7:20 in the morning.) "They're going to throw you in the Sarlaac, where you will be digested for a thousand years." No way! The whole shootout at the Sarlaac. Awesome! Oh yeah, and Princess Leia in the gold bikini. Young men's minds everywhere were opened to new, previously unimaginable possibilities.

So it's the second hour of the movie that's the problem. Now let's dissect that. What does the second hour of the movie have? It has the speeder chase through the forest of Marin, excuse me, Endor. Pretty cool. It has the Emperor being all evil. Again, pretty cool. It has the drama that the new Death Star actually is operational. An Imperial trap! God, are they evil! Ultimately, it has the destruction of the new Death Star (and, as noted in Clerks, all those independent contractors who were still working on it because it wasn't done).

Most importantly, the second hour of the Return of the Jedi has the moment when Darth Vader saves Luke because Luke is his son and, hey you know, that's way more potent than the "power of the Dark Side." (When you read that last sentence, say "the power of the Dark Side" out loud in your best James Earl Jones impression. It will really add to the experience.) That's the climax of the whole trilogy, man. Vader picking up the Emperor as he's death-raying Luke and throwing that old SOB down into the Death Star's reactor core (or something, I can't imagine the Imperial General Services Department would be so sloppy as to design a Death Star that left the Emperor's lair open to direct access to the nuclear core -- that seems like a very good way to get fired or choked to death by the Force). That was it. The end. The thing. The moment. Good triumphing over evil. Yeah, Lando got to blow up the Death Star, but that was an anticlimax at that point. (I mean, really, Lando? What did he do to deserve the honor? Serve up Han like a pork chop? Try to use some awesome Billy Dee moves on Leia?)

So why is the Return of the Jedi considered to suck so universally? Well, I think it comes down to the Ewoks. Yes, they certainly did suck. In retrospect, they were really the first sign that George Lucas, if left entirely to his own devices, will do stupid things. (Letting your kids name the characters? That's how you end up with Sith lords being named Count Dookoo. Oooooh, real scary.) As The Muse once brilliantly asked, why couldn't Endor have been the Wookie planet? Imagine how awesome that would have been. OK, and there was unnecessary mushiness with the whole Leia-is-Luke's-sister thing. But, jeez, that wasn't that bad. It's really just the Ewoks that are the problem.

So, when we look back at the Return of the Jedi, with the perspective that comes with having suffered through Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones and some of Revenge of the Sith (because some of that movie was pretty good), I think we should all agree that we should forgive the Return of the Jedi for the Ewoks. In fact, with DVD technology, we probably can just skip their scenes now. If you do that, I submit to you that the Return of the Jedi well deserves its place in the original Star Wars triolgy. Cut it some slack. It Doesn't Suck Too Bad.

Yin, Yang and Y.A. Tittle

2007-02-11T10:27:00.000-08:00

Besides being a Hall of Fame quarterback, Y.A. Title has nothing to do with this post. I just needed a football player whose name started with Y to go with Yin and Yang.

Anyway, the annual football-apoolza of the Super Bowl got me thinking about football. As any decent sports fan knows, football has become by far the most popular spectator sport played in the U.S., at least in terms of attention paid and money bet. (Simply due to the relatively low number of football games, I suspect that far fewer football fans attend football games than other fans attend baseball games or basketball games.) There is a special football network, NFL Network. Many football fans are in multiple fantasy football leagues, as well as football pools. Many of those football fans probably bet on football games, and not just professional football games, but college football games, too. Lots of football fans wear football-related paraphernalia, whether or not they’re watching football games or not watching football games. The craziness about football seems to have really increased in the last few years. What is it that has triggered this increased obsession about football? I mean, football more or less took off when ABC introduced Monday Night Football, which I believe was shortly after the two professional football leagues, the National Football League and the American Football League, merged in 1970. Plus, you know, the more people are obsessed with football, the more they say the word “football” because, when people talk about football, they say “football” every third word. Right, football fans of football? (I once tried to read a book about the history of salt – I’m a geek, I know, no further comment is necessary – which was called, appropriately enough, “Salt.” I stopped reading it after about a hundred pages. I had not anticipated how tiring it would be to keep reading the actual word “salt” at least twice in every sentence.)

So why has the sports-loving word gotten so much more obsessed with football in the last few years?

Here’s a theory.

As we all know, football is a uniquely American game. We’re really the only place where football – not futbol – is played. Unlike our other classically American, non-football sports – baseball and basketball – football hasn’t really taken off in other countries. More than other sports, then, you would expect football to be more purely representative of American culture.

Football is a polarized, specialized game. Players generally play position and they for damn sure play on one side of the football. You play offense or you play defense. (When someone switches for any time at all, like Troy Brown on the Patriots, people behave like they have seen a unicorn. A really muscular manly unicorn, kind of like the centaurs in the Harry Potter books, because, you know, it’s football.) In fact, a lot of football players are assigned to only play on very particular offensive or defensive plays. There are “nickel backs,” who only play on defense and only when the other team basically has to pass. There are “third down backs,” who basically only play on offense and only in those same situations. There are so many substitutions going that offenses sometimes will try to run up to the line and snap the ball really fast to stop the defense from shuttling eight guys on and off the field between plays. All of these specialized guys then train their bodies to do their specialized things, so their collisions are very efficient in their speed and ferocity. This then seems to lead to a really over-the-top mentality, particularly among defensive players, who seem to relish thinking of themselves as, and being, basically guided missiles.

Why is this relevant? I think it’s relevant because, in the last few years and concurrently with football’s explosion in “importance,” our country has been very polarized. Beginning no later than Bill Clinton’s Lewinsky mess, continuing through the disputed 2000 election, and the Iraq war, and the 2004 election, and the 2006 election, we have been a very divided country. Classes of people view their roles in our politics basically as being guided missiles for their side. In this context, it seems unsurprising that the sport that best embodies these tensions has really taken off.

Now contrast football in these terms to baseball and basketball. Those sports generally require players to play offense and defense and to prepare themselves to do both. (The fact that the designated hitter messes this up in baseball is the reason why that thing is such an abomination. I agree with Crash Davis: “I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter.”) Like the Force, they require balance or at least some semblance of it. (I’ll bet you thought you might get through this post without any Star Wars reference. Sorry about that.) They have the yin and the yang.
Football doesn’t have yin and yang and our country hasn’t really in the ten years or so either. It’s like football got its chocolate in our politics’ peanut butter and everyone is having Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. The big ones, too, not those little “Fun Size” ones you get at Halloween.

Scenes From The Airport

2007-02-11T09:53:00.000-08:00

Spent some time in the airport this week. Among other things:

1. Missed an earlier flight home by 10 minutes due to a missed freeway turn and spent another three hours at the airport.

2. Security took my 5.1-ounce tube of Neutrogena shaving lotion and threw it away, while allowing me to keep about six travel-size bottles of shampoo, toothpaste, hair gel and other grooming substances because they each were under 3.4 ounces. That 1.7 ounces per bottle apparently threatens our national security. If you keep liquid explosives in SEPARATE 3.4-ounce bottles, well, that’s no problem.

3. Turned on my laptop, almost instantly identified a wireless network named “Free Public WiFi” and almost just as instantly discovered that my laptop could not connect to that network. Asked the guy at the horrendously-overpriced airport bakery where I bought a cookie if there was Internet access in the airport and was told “no.”

4. Overheard the single rudest one side of a telephone conversation that I have ever heard. To start, this was in the restroom and the caller was using the facilities. The sit-down facilities. The conversation then went something like this: “I hate when rude b**ches give me s**t like that . . . . s**t, she’s too far away to give me p***y anyway.” Click. Flush.

Go California

2007-02-04T20:45:00.000-08:00

We have our issues here in California. Most of the water is in the northern third of the state and most of the people are in the southern third -- on the other side of 3,000 ft. mountains. Houses cost about as much as the budget of some small cities. We have earthquake faults spread around like spaghetti thrown against a wall to see if it's done. Paris Hilton lives here.

But, damn, you have to love a place where you can wear shorts on Super Bowl Sunday.

Nancy, Tony and Lovie

2007-02-03T12:11:00.000-08:00

2007 is starting out to be a pretty decent year or at least a year of some good milestones. I speak here of course of the facts that, for the first time in the 231-year history of our country and the 218-year of our Constitutional democracy, we have a female Speaker of the House of Representatives. As the Speaker is technically the head of the legislative branch and there has never been a female President or female Supreme Court Chief Justice, this is the first time a woman has been the head of one of the three branches of government. No matter your politics, this is a big deal. Go Nancy Pelosi!

Perhaps just as historic or at least as relevant to our culture these days, we have the fact that one of the Super Bowl teams has an African-American coach. In fact, both teams do, of course. No matter on whom you are betting -- of course, with the Super Bowl, it is possible to bet on both teams in one way or another, as well as the coin flip and the possibility that there will be nudity at some point during halftime (with Prince being the halftime entertainment, I personally will be betting that something inappropriate will happen during halftime, although I doubt he'll play Darling Nicky) -- go Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith!

What is interesting is the different routes by which these things have happened.

It really wasn't that long ago that there literally were no women in congressional leadership. Nancy Pelosi was elected minority whip less than 10 years ago. From that point to the time that she ascended to the Speakership, I don't think that there were any other women in the top three or four congressional leadership spots in either party. Pelosi was more or less on her own. Pelosi becoming speaker therefore was really a very significant individual accomplishment. After the 2004 election, she, along with Rahm Emanuel, apparently decided that the Democrats needed to recruit moderate or even rather conservative candidates in a lot of districts if they ever wanted to be in the majority again. That was some thinking outside of the box, particularly because Pelosi might represent the most liberal district in the country. Pelosi becoming speaker thus seems like a very individual accomplishment.

The African-American football coaches in the Super Bowl, on the other hand, seem like more of a culmination of a long group slog. I had a subscription to Sports Illustrated from about 1979 to 1990 or so and have read it on and off since. During that time, the magazine frequently wrote articles about the lack of African-American head coaches in the NFL. I mean, they were talking about Tony Dungy as a possible head coach by about 1985. He kept not getting interviewed, not getting jobs. The Raiders finally hired Art Shell in about 1989, he stunk, got fired and then wasn't followed by another African-American head coach for years. The situation got so horrendous that the NFL adopted a rule that requires any team interviewing for a head coach to interview at least one minority candidate. And Dennis Green got hired and came really, really close to getting to the Super Bowl -- if Gary Anderson hadn't missed his first field goal of the year in about the last 2 minutes of the Vikings-Falcons NFC championship game in about 1997, the Vikings would have gone to the Super Bowl. And Tony Dungy finally got hired in Tampa Bay and had really good teams, couldn't get them to the Super Bowl, got fired and watched as Jon Gruden took his team to win the Super Bowl the next year. And Lovie Smith, after a lot of probably token interviews, but got hired by the Bears -- as the lowest-paid NFL coach.

Meanwhile, morons like Wade Phillips -- who benched Doug Flutie as QB for a playoff game after Flutie [full disclosure here: Doug Flutie is one of my personal heroes] had led the team to the playoffs -- and semi-retirees like Steve Spurrier kept getting big-money NFL jobs. (I personally found it hilarious that, in the game that Phillips benched Flutie, Phillips' team -- the Bills -- got beat on the Music City Miracle. Instant karma got him, for sure.)

So, given all of the obstacles, it really is a remarkable triumph for African-American coaches generally to have both Super Bowl coaches be African-Americans.

Futher-so, you have like a year that starts with two major glass ceilings being broken. Maybe 2007 will be a good one. Seven is a lucky number. I just hope I get 7 in a Super Bowl pool because that always rocks. That is almost always a winner.

Oh, Paula

2007-01-27T09:19:00.000-08:00

The Muse has been watching American Idol some lately. This means, of course, that I have been watching American Idol some lately. I personally haven't watched this before, having been scared away by the idea of rude Englishpeople humiliating deluded attention-seeking Americans. Damn limeys! (And I really like lime. Have you had that natural limeade that they have started selling in grocery stores? As my sister The Force of Nature would say, "Tast-aaay!")

Having started watching the show some, though, I can see some of the charm, especially if you mute the TV when you know Simon is going to start ranting, as The Muse does. Simon and Randy have little appeal to me. Each seems to have basically two modes. Simon say either: (a) "God you suck, I have heard choirs of laughing hyenas and howler monkeys who sound better than you;" or (b) "I quite like your voice, although you need better tone and perhaps more vibrato." Randy says either: (a) "Yo, dawg, you know I liked your totally unjustified confidence that you can sing, but I'm going to have to pass;" or (b) "Wooooo, dawg, 8 million percent yes, you're GOING TO HOLLYWOOD!"

It is Paula, the much-maligned (by me) Paula Abdul, who is the star of the show. The things she says would read as mostly normal on a cold black-and-white transcript of the show. It is her facial expressions and physicality that make the show. I have heard these rumors about her supposedly being intoxicated somewhat and, having watched the show, well, let's say I'm intrigued by them. There are times when, for no good reason, she is wobbling her head around like a well-oiled Stevie Wonder. There are times when she is clipping her words like Donald Rumsfield. (Imagine Rumsfield on American Idol: "Goodness gracious, your voice is like the nails of my fifth-grade teacher Miss Dorothy Gale upon a chalkboard. What is the ultimate level to which you would sink to get on TV? It is unknown, but I believe that it is a known unknown and not an unknown unknown.")

My favorite Paula moments, however, occur when an attractive male gets up and gives a nice performance. Paula starts purring like a cat on a heating blanket. There was one 16-year-old, very good-looking guy who could sing last week. Paula had very complex look on her face as she told him he was going to Hollywood. On the one hand, you could tell that, instead of saying "Your voice has very nice tone and you're going to do very well," she wanted to say something more like "Young man, I would like to lick you." You could also tell, however, that she knew that wouldn't be very appropriate, so she had this slightly embarrassed thing going on. It was very, very entertaining.

The only moment that compared was when the judges asked the hot Long Island girl to bring in her best friend who also was trying out. When the friend came in and she was even hotter, you could tell that Randy wanted to say something like "You two are definitely going to Hollywood . . . WITH ME." Of course, after closing his gaping jaw, he said something much more appropriate. And then the judges sent them both to Hollywood. Shocking.

So good for Paula that she has come back from the celebrity dead. I guess the bad karma flowing from dancing with the cartoon cat in the "Opposites Attract" video finally peetered out.

Who Is Killing The New Celebrities?

2007-01-27T09:07:00.000-08:00

We have become a pretty celebrity-obsessed culture. Why was Keith Richards in the coconut tree? Why did Britney divorce K-Fed just to start dating someone who looks (but hopefully doesn't smell) just like him? Is it because Britney's underwear keeps disappearing? Why can't Halle and Jennifer hold on to men? Maybe they need new hair. Where was the sexy and why is Justin the only one who cares about bringing it back?

Given this level of celebrity obsession, it is very mysterious to me how a recent rash of celebrity deaths has gone so underreported. And not just celebrities, but brand-new celebrities, people who haven't had a good public divorce yet, who probably haven't even gotten their well-deserved celebrity party gift bags with $10,000 Rolexes and such. It is such a tragedy and yet so little attention has been given to it.

It seems like since about mid-December, all of these new celebrities just keep dying. There must be a conspiracy. Suddenly, a new star bursts out like a supernova and, two weeks later, he or she is dead. There has been shockingly little coverage of this. I mean, where is the Star? Where is Us? People? We need answers. I mean, just weeks after someone is announced as the world's oldest person, he or she is dead. Someone or something is killing these poor brand-new celebrities just as they enter the prime of their lives. We need to find out what is going on and we need to find out now. Call Fox Mulder or at least Dick Cheney.

Christopher Walken

2007-01-20T23:19:00.000-08:00

Christopher Walken rocks. There is absolutely no one like him. Biloxi Blues -- perhaps the greatest comedic portrayal of someone with a steel plate in his head. Pulp Ficton, Weapon of Choice, More Cowbell, Colonel Angus -- genius. Even his lesser known work is brilliant -- the embittered Rainbow Head on SNL. Brilliant. He's so good that multiple people do hilarious impressions of him. All of this and he was the second choice for Han Solo.

But does he have to be in every single movie? Caught the last 45 seconds of Joe Dirt today. You know the world's only David Spade vehicle? Chris was there. Saw some commercials for the apparently horrible remake of Stepford Wives. Chris was there.

Chris, take a break. Have a beer. Don't turn into Michael Caine.

iPod Nation

2007-01-20T22:23:00.000-08:00

The iPod is a great product. That's no great insight, of course. How cool is it that you rip the songs you like off of your CD's or download individual songs and mix them up into playlists of whatever theme or order you like. No more buying PYT to get Beat It and Billie Jean. No more buying Bullet the Blue Sky to get Where the Streets Have No Name, I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For and With or Without You (the greatest three-song opening of an album ever, by the way). It's revolutionary.

Not only that, not only that, but the iPod is this tiny little thing into which you stuff a 1,000 songs. No more dragging a pack full of CD's on trips. I haven't yet set it up to run in my car, but that should rock. Plus the iPod is just elegant. Run your finger on the little circle to scroll down a menu or adjust the volume. It's just a beautiful product.

And it scares me a little.

Go to the gym now. Essentially, every single person in the building has wires coming out of their ears. The teenagers, the 20-somethings, the working professionals, the retirees. I think that the only person I now see at the gym without an iPod tether is Lenore, the older woman who talks to everyone. Everyone. And it's not just the gym. It's everywhere. On the street - iPod ears. Grocery store - iPod ears. Haven't seen it in court yet, but I'm sure there will come a day (although judges will fine you if your cell phone goes off in court, so the iPod's day in court may be a ways off).

What the iPod has done is encourage and allow people to basically develop their own worlds. You don't have to listen to other people's music. You don't have to listen to other people, really. You can download podcasts, so you don't really have to listen to other people's opinions much if you don't want to. If you have iPod's little friend TiVo, then you don't have to watch TV shows when THEY want you to watch them and you for damn sure don't have to watch commercials. And, hell, we've had the Internet for years, so we all can read pretty much what we want.

Basically, what the iPod represents in some way is our increasing ability to edit the world to our liking. Computer storage technology has become so potent that you basically can have whatever information you like come in through some digital pipe or another and just select the stuff that you want.

It's a good and a bad thing. I quite love the iPod and TiVo. I quite like having five different 80s playlists that I mixed myself. I love being able to rewind a sports game to see the disputed call or The Office to catch what hilarious thing someone muttered under their breath.

But, if everyone is doing this -- and they are, I think, in some form -- then I think we're losing something. We don't have a lot of common experiences. And then we have something like an election and we just can't understand for the life of us how anyone could be on the other side. That's probably not ideal.

Of course, I'm guessing that hip guys like Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton probably would have loved a nice Nano. Washington and Lincoln are a little harder to picture with ear buds.

Golf and The Gym

2007-01-16T20:57:00.000-08:00

My grandfather -- Papa -- taught me how to golf when I was a kid. At least as important to him was that I learn the etiquette of golf. Don't stand in other people's lines when they're putting. Don't get so mad that you bug the people with whom you're playing. Shake hands with the guys with whom you are playing when you're done. Most importantly, don't hold other people up. If the people behind you are playing faster than you, let them through. You are not a pro and there aren't a million bucks riding on your putt, so don't spend 15 minutes lining it up Golf is a game, it should be fun.

Going to the gym reminds me of all of this, but not in a good way. Basically, as best I can tell, there is no etiquette at the gym. A lot of people apparently view entering the gym as a magical experience that transforms them into the only important person in the world. I have seen a man yell at a woman, calling her a bitch, because the woman turned the TV volume up enough to listen to the football game that was on TV. People open the gym doors when it's close to freezing outside without asking anyone else and while wearing long-sleeve shirts and long pants. At our gym, people messing with the stereo speakers apparently was such a problem that each of the speakers now has a sign that says something like, "Don't touch the speakers. If you do, your gym membership will be immediately revoked."

The difference between golf and the gym strikes as one of rules. There are rules in golf. The formal rules of golf are lengthy and, when you're playing seriously, you are expected to enforce them on yourself. For example, in serious golf, you are expected to keep your playing partner's score accurately and your playing partner then checks his or her scorecard. If you screwed up keeping my score and I don't catch it before signing my scorecard, tough noogies, I lose. In 1967, at the Masters, Roberto DeVincezo's playing partner wrote down a 4 on a hole when DeVincezo made a 3. DeVincezo signed the screwed-up scorecard and lost the Masters -- one of the two or three most important golf tournaments in the world -- by that one shot. The rules that Papa taught weren't that rigid, but you are supposed to follow them. Do unto others as you have them do unto you.

The gym has no established rules. Power abhors a vaccuum, so people apparently view the lack of structure at the gym as an opportunity to behave in ways that they would never behave in their professional lives. People do what they want without a lot of regard for others. It isn't pretty sometimes. Papa would not be pleased.

Good News

2007-01-16T20:53:00.000-08:00

Watching The Blues Brothers on cable TV here tonight -- "Illnois Nazis, I hate Illnois Nazis" -- I got some good news. A commercial for some kind of pet collar or something, I noticed that Betty White was in it. Betty White apparently is still alive. That's cool. Who knew? I always liked Betty White, especially on the Password game show she used to be on a lot.

Toy Stores

2006-12-30T14:08:00.000-08:00

If you have read The Muse's blog in the last couple of months, then you know that we -- after an election on the issue -- are getting a Target here in Carmel-by-the-Causeway. (Apparently, our town was the first town in the country to require a public vote to approve a Target. There is a first time for all things, apparently.) This pleases me. I like Target. I like the concept of being able to shop for socks, among other things, in town. Yeah to reducing our town's daily hemorrage of sales tax money to other local communities. One thing about the Target concerns me, however. That is I am pretty concerned about what it will do to our local toy store.

We have a pretty good toy store downtown. It's not the greatest toy store ever, but you can easily spend enjoyable 30-45 minutes in there while your kid shops for a birthday party (which is usually in about an hour, but that's a different issue). It is unfotunately one of a dying breed.

I'm old enough to have very fond memories of local toy stores. The next town over from where I grew up had a toy store to which my mom took my sister and I many times. My mom, my Grandma and my aunt used to go have lunch every Saturday -- usually at a very dark Mexican restaurant where I usually had a hamburger, which is one of the many things about which I now kick myself -- and then go shopping. One of the few appeals of participating in this to me -- shoe and garden-plant shopping often was involved -- was that, if we were good, we got to go to the toy store and spend $1. Even more importantly, after Star Wars came out, we could go and put an action figure on layaway for when I was able to come up with $3 to actually buy it. Ooh, that was awesome.

A local toy store was something of a metaphor for your community. In my hometown, a woman opened a toy store on the main drag (right near the B of A, as I recall) and gave it a go. I was about eight or nine and that was great. A toy store in our town!!! The store closed within a year or two, though, and what I remember people saying is that "I guess town just isn't big enough for a toy store yet." We apparently lived in a small town, although it get a stoplight right around the time that the toy store closed.

The bigger the town, the better the toy store. Our local big city -- known for many things, including being Kevin Federline's hometown -- had a huge, spectacular toy store. We went there about once or twice a year. It had whole separate departments of toys. You could spend days there as a kid.

Toy stores like these, however, are an endangered species. Target and Wal-Mart and probably Costco can buy toys in much larger quantities and therefore probably get much better prices. I recognize that this is the situation with small stores that sell many things that these big stores sell. In relation to toy stores, however, this situation seems particularly troubling. Toys are for fun. (If you leave them in the box so they are pristine, so you can sell them on EBay a la the 40-year-old virgin, I fear for you.) Our kids probably are not going to know how fun it is to go to a really good toy store. "Toy aisle" isn't the same as "toy store."

So, while I am quite glad that Target is coming to town, I think that our kids will keep going to the local toy store for birthday presents. Given our kids' ages, that should for another year or so.

Customer Service

2006-12-30T14:02:00.000-08:00

I am sitting here on the phone trying to call JVC's customer service and, in with the usual soothing Muzak, they have an automated function that tells you what number you are in the queue to have your call answered. What a novel concept! After many, many calls to many, many customer service black holes, this is the first time that I have ever called one that actually told how many are in front of you. There ought to be a law requiring this of all customer service lines. Even the ones in India.

Casino Royale

2006-12-03T16:15:00.000-08:00

When I was a teenager, I loved James Bond movies. One time when I was about 14, I stayed up until 11 p.m. on a school night to watch On Her Majesty's Secret Service on TV, just so I could say that I had seen all of the movies (to that time). Perhaps even more amazingly, my parents let me do this because they knew the depth of my obsession. And, man, that movie blew. George Lazenby as Bond? Telly Salavas as Blofeld? Not good.

Some time around the time that I went to college, though, I lost interest. Every movie that came out basically sounded about the same. They picked Pierce Brosnan to replace the lame Timothy Dalton (who has done at least one pretty entertaining parody of being James Bond -- in Looney Tunes Back in Action, to be precise). Yawn. John Cleese became Q when the original Q -- Desmond someone, as I recall -- died. Whoa, shocker. Denise Richards played the love interest in one. She was supposed to be a nuclear scientist. Now you have gone too far.

When I read that they were getting a new Bond and doing a simpler story about Bond's first 00 mission, though, I was intrigued. When I saw this guy Daniel Craig that they picked, I thought that he looked like he could be a brutal kind of guy in the same way that Sean Connery looked like he could be a brutal kind of guy. So I was looking forward to Casino Royale, especially after seeing Craig in Munich, which I really liked.

I saw Casino Royale today and it was excellent. You believe Craig as someone who would kill bad guys with his bare hands and then change his tuxedo shirt and go play poker some more. The female lead was much more substantial than the female lead in any other Bond movie. Their relationship was very believeable, although it got uncomfortably . . . mushy for about five minutes. It was kind of like From Here To Eternity. I found myself thinking, "Where in the hell are they going with this?" But then things changed and there was a very well done ending. The movie has some stereotypical Bond elements -- the hot woman in the middle of the movie who ends up dead (although, in a huge upset, Bond doesn't actually sleep with her), blatant product placements, the creepy villian with some facial disfiguration, etc. -- but I highly recommend it.

What I found fascinating both about the movie and, by omission, reviews of it is the debt that the movie owes to 24 and Jack Bauer. The stunts were really more complicated versions of the kinds of things that happen on 24. Chases through construction sites. Fighting in buildings. Bond gets beaten up a lot. People throwing each other down stairts. Things that might actually happen in the real world. There was no skiing away from anonynous bad guys in black suits who descend from the skies on go-karts with parachutes.

Lots more of the movie was like a really high-budget 24. Bond chasing down one terrorist after another, all of whom are working together or for each other. Moles in your organization. People getting tortured for information. Lots of people talking on cell phones and getting information from their PDA's.

Bond movies generally have not been this complicated. Usually, in Bond movies, the one big, bad guy has one grandiose scheme to take over the world and has one really unusual henchman/woman. Yeah, their nefarious plots were complicated, but the actual stories have not been. Casino Royale, though, has the kinds of wheels within wheels that 24 does.

None of the reviews of Casino Royale -- at least the ones that I read -- mentioned how much the movie is like 24. To some extent, the similarity is not a surprise. After September 11, Bond couldn't be interesting if he was going after meglomaniacal fiends with killer satellites. That would have come off as stupid and frivolous now. So, naturally, Bond was going to go after terrorists like Jack Bauer does. But that doesn't explain all of the similarities.

Whatever studio makes Bond movies supposedly wasn't very happy about the producers wanting to shake up the franchise because the previous movie had been the highest grossing one ever. I'm guessing that the producers told the studio, "Look, it's going to be like a 24 movie." And so it was. Which is a good thing.

Casino Royale: Film minus

Match Point

2006-11-30T21:43:00.000-08:00

SPOILER ALERT: THIS BLOG PRETTY MUCH GIVES AWAY LOTS OF STUFF ABOUT A MOVIE.

In sports, the stars get the calls. Good pitchers get the outside corner. When Atlanta had three future Hall of Famers in its rotation -- Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and John Smoltz -- they got strike calls six inches outside so often, people started calling it an "Atlanta strike." In the NBA, if you're within two feet of Kobe Bryant when he shoots -- no matter into what pretzelesque shape he has concorted himself to get off a shot in a blatant attempt to get a foul call -- the foul's on you. Kevin Garnett has never been called for a moving screen in his life and also has never set a legal screen in his life. The NFL has lots and lots of rules whose single intent to prevent defenders from killing quarterbacks. Figure skaters from former Soviet republics get the best scores even when they flail around like mimes on crack.

The same things goes for movie reviews, at least some times. I'll give you an example.

The Muse and I watched Woody Allen's newer movie Match Point a few nights ago. I had been really interested in seeing this movie. I like a lot of Woody Allen movies, but hadn't been interested in very many recent ones before Match Point. Basically, Allen spent about 10 years starring in movies where he was the romantic lead opposite people like Mira Sorvino and Helen Hunt. Yuck. He apparently had to try to prove that it was OK for him to have married his step-daughter by showing that, hey, people will watch me in movies doing basically the same thing. It came off as deranged and gross. Woody's lucky that law enforcement didn't get involved.

Well, at some point, someone apparently gave him the hit over the head with the 2"x4" that he needed, so he made Match Point. He didn't appear in it. It was a drama and not some goofy comedy. It got really good reviews. And, you know, Scarlett Johansson is OK looking. So I was pretty interested in seeing the movie.

And you know what? It was barely OK. I kept waiting for something unexpected to happen. Nothing ever did. I kind of wonder if Woody was going for a Greek tragedy/kabuki theater kind of thing by telling a story where everyone knew what was going to happen. The Muse pointed out that the main character was a cypher. Was he supposed to be an unexplainable phemonenon like Iago or an empty vessel that is supposed to represent something that everyone could become? Who knows? Scarlett Johansson was largely wasted, although she had one scene where she flew off the handle and went all crazy that was pretty good. So, when the cypher guy extramaritally knocked her up and then killed her in order to hold on to the super-wealthy lifesftyle into which he had married, you both saw it coming from about a mile away and weren't too shook up about it.

Which made me wonder, why did all of these critics pee themselves over this movie? The only thing I can think of is that the critics, who probably are almost all great lovers of Woody Allen movies, were so happy that he had stopped trying to play himself off as the romantic interest of actresses who are 75 years younger than him that they just went so crazy. Basically, Woody got, in the parlance of figure skating, propped up. He got marks that he shouldn't have gotten. They didn't call him for traveling even though he took three steps.

Match Point: Movie minus

Arkady Renko

2006-11-22T23:10:00.000-08:00

Just finished reading Red Square by Martin Cruz Smith. This was the last of Smith’s Arkady Renko series that I hadn’t read. Four of the five – Gorky Park, Polar Star, Red Square and Havana Bay – are great books. Read them. The fifth – Wolves Eat Dogs – is good. Unfortunately, it’s the most recent, which is not a good sign. Hopefully, any new ones won’t suck too bad.

The books have two unique things going for them. But, as attorneys frequently say, let me back up. The books are all set in what used to be called the Soviet bloc. Arkady is a police detective in Moscow. As with all good male detectives, he constantly gets into trouble, has a lot of scars and has difficulty with women.

Now, what the books have going for them.

First, Arkady is a great character. He basically is the traditional noir-type detective transplanted to Moscow. He never listens to anyone who tells him he should just let situations go. He always wants to actually be a detective and figure out what happened and catch the bad guys. Smith writes him, however, to make mistakes, to screw up, to not figure things out fast enough. He gets beat up constantly. Red Square starts with him basically getting his snitch killed and follows his laborious efforts to figure out what happened. Polar Star involves him trying to solve some killing on a fishing trawler for really no good reason other than his nature and consequently having people try to kill him. He chases what initially seem like simple crimes through the inevitable political machinations involved. I’m telling more than I’m showing here, but the character and his voice are very, very good.

Second, either Smith is a better psychic than Miss Cleo or he got extreme lucky in that he started writing these books in the last few years before the Soviet Union fell apart. Gorky Park was published, I think, in about 1985 and Wolves Eat Dogs was published in 2005. Obviously, everything changed with the Soviet Union and its satellites in that stretch.

Gorky Park was a very unique window into how the Soviet Union worked with Arkady chasing down some crime that involved political dissidents and his investigation getting him into some serious political trouble. I haven’t read that book in years and years – at least 15 years – but what I recall of it was that it just presented the way that the Soviet Union worked at the time, which, in that period, was a very mysterious and foreboding thing. (Gorky Park was published only a couple of years after Reagan declared the Soviet Union to be the “Evil Empire” and, thinking his mike was off, declared that the Soviet Union had been outlawed and that bombing would begin in five minutes.)

Polar Star involved the exile to which Arkady was sent for his actions in Gorky Park. Basically, he sent to work on fish factory ships in the Bering Sea. Again, this book involved not a lot of talk about the Soviet Union breaking up, but described what it was like to be on the wrong side of political issues there and what it is like to work in the Artic. By the time Red Square was published in about 1992, things had fallen apart and that book describes how there was no food in Moscow and how the ruble was totally worthless and everything was being stolen and sold and then shifts to Munich and Berlin, which are like Oz to Arkady. Havana Bay takes place in, shock of shocks, Havana, in the years after the Soviet Union cut off support for Cuba and Cuba was falling apart. Wolves Eat Dogs then occurs mostly in the Ukraine and, specifically, the restricted zone around Chernobyl and Arkady trying to figure out how a big Russian mobster was killed without any particular weapon and what the big pile of sand in his closet has to do with it.

What these books do is provide this very detailed portrait of these worlds that Americans have always heard a lot about – Moscow, Havana, Chernobyl – but to which we really have very little access. I don’t know how Smith has the level of knowledge necessary to write these books, but I know that his description really made want to see what Havana is like. It sounds like it is going to be really something once things change in Cuba. The Malecon sounds like a wilder sort of South Beach.

Anyway, check these books out. As for me, it’s on to one of my big non-fiction bricks. Give me a nice 850-page book about a dead president and I’m a happy camper.

Where Is The Handbook For These Kids?

2006-11-20T20:15:00.000-08:00

In the movie Parenthood, there is a part where Jason Robards tells his oldest son Steve Martin that, in parenting, you never get to cross the goal line and spike the ball. (This is after Robards' youngest son Tom Hulce -- you know, the skinny pledge in Animal House who drops the girl off at her house in a grocery cart and also Amadeus -- has to get $26,000 from Robards to pay off bookies who are going to kill him, which will prevent Robards from retiring from his hardware business.) Not to mix metaphors or anything, but these children also do not come with handbooks. Any time you think you have a handle on them, they show you that you don't.

Got a good reminder of that last night. Enthusio, Mermaid and I were upstairs flipping channels and came across Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire. Now, in thinking about whether this was OK, I thought "OK, I know that Enthusio likes this movie and he and Mermaid both saw in in the theater, this should be all right."

And, indeed, it was, right up until the scene where Voldemort comes back. At this point, Mermaid got quite upset. It wasn't because Wormtail cuts Harry's hand to make him bleed. It wasn't because Voldemort tells Harry he is going to kill him. No, instead it came earlier. It came when Wormtail dumps the not-yet reinstated Voldemort -- who is naked alien-looking thing at that point -- in the pot in order to perform the reinstatement spell.

For a moment, I couldn't figure out why Mermaid was getting so upset. Wormtail had just killed Cedric Diggory with a spell and she didn't flinch. Voldemort was the bad guy, but he wasn't being scary yet. What, what, what was going on? Then I realized that, to Mermaid -- a very literal child -- it probably looked they were cooking Voldemort. Moreover, at that particular moment, Voldemort looked kind of like a baby. I think Mermaid thought it looked like they were cooking a baby. Not good. Good job, Dad, letting them watch that.

Once I realized what was going on, I was able to talk Mermaid down. It took some work, however. That fell into the category of "troubleshooting," though. It sure would be nice if the child manual didn't come with just the troubleshooting part.

My New Favorite Picture

2006-11-18T22:39:00.000-08:00

This is my new favorite picture:

It's from this week's Time Magazine. Nuns who play beach volleyball rock!

The Cords Are Coming

2006-11-18T17:14:00.000-08:00

It is a continuing theme of science fiction that, some day, the machines will take over. Usually, when they take over, they start killing or subjugating the people. The Terminator and Matrix movies are all about this. Star Trek has the Borg. Even Star Wars has the stormtroopers, who apparently actually were people, but that fact didn't really come out until Attack of the Clones in 2002. When I was 8, my friends and I were sure that the stormtroopers were robots.

At this point, though, I have to disagree with this idea that the machines will take over someday. Personally, I think that the cords will take over.

Have you looked behind your desk lately? It is the land of the cords, I'm sure. I know the space behind my work desk is like that. Since I got my IPod, the cords behind my dresser have multiplied. You have: (1) the power cord for my computer; (2) the power cord for the external CD drive; (3) the cord that links my computer to the external CD drive; (4) the cord that links my computer to the IPod; and (5) the cord for my IPod headphones. And I have a pretty simple setup. Enthusio got a GameCube for his birthday. That thing has: (1) the power cord; (2) the cords that hook the GameCube up to the TV; and (3) the cords that hook the controller to the GameCube.

So I think that the future belongs to cords. Oh, the machines may think that they will be taking over, but, on the day that they piss off the cords, the cords will unplug themselves and take over. And the world will be their rats' nest.

Michigan, Ohio State and Money

2006-11-18T11:17:00.000-08:00

If you have watched anything having to do with sports this past week, then you know that Michigan and Ohio State are playing their annual football game today. Both teams are undefeated, they are #1 and #2 in the polls and the winner undoubtedly will go to the so-called national championship game. All of this on top of the fact that these two colleges' teams are both traditionally really good and have played each other about 1,000 times.

This year, however, is different. The whole "they're #1 and #2" thing has put the usual amount of hype over this game into the stratusphere. The elections office in Columbus, Ohio, is giving its workers the day off for the game, so the vote counting in one of the last undecided congressional races is just going to have to wait, dammit. (They work on Saturdays right after elections to make sure everything gets done, apparently. But not this Saturday.) The level of "analysis" of this game on ESPN and elsewhere has been akin to the bloviation that goes on before the Super Bowl. "Let's analyze who has the advantage in the running back matchup." "Who has the better punter?" Blah, blah, blah. Lots and lots of people are making, and getting paid, a lot of money because of this game.

But you know who isn't? The players. At least to me, this game has really put a spotlight on really serious problems with big-time college sports. Basically, hordes of people are more than happy to make serious bucks off of college athletes -- coaches have their own shoe contracts and TV shows, ESPN practically would have had to go out of business without this game this week, the colleges that make the BCS bowl games literally rake in millions and millions of dollars -- but the athletes themselves get scholarships and a whole lot of trouble if they try to make any money off their fame.

Now getting a full ride scholarship to some major university is nothing to sneeze at. (This is a blog, my grammar doesn't have to perfect. I can dangle my prepositions if I like.) With college costs going up much faster than inflation, getting a full ride scholarship is a big deal. And so it arguably is just compensation for athletes who are going to go out and represent their colleges (arguably).

The NCAA and the big-time sports colleges, however, essentially hide behind this sweet mirage when it comes to football and basketball. Those sports in college are no less about the money than the NBA or the NFL. It is very disturbing, at least to me, to see college athletes be pimped on the cover of "NCAA Football 2006" video games when you know that everyone involved in that game made bucks except the people who made it possible -- the players. Yet Notre Dame and USC and Michigan and Ohio State routinely rake in big, big bucks based on those players and then pat them on the head and "Good job, get back to your dorm." You think Coach K shares the money he makes on Chevy commercials with the players. Uh, no. Even if he wanted to do so, it would be against the rules and the NCAA would sanction the hell out of everyone involved.

I'm not saying that college athletes should get paid like NBA and NFL players. But they should get some slice of the compensation that they are generating. Maybe there should be some kind of trust fund for big-time college athletes who don't make the show.

I'm not saying that you should stop watching college sports. I'm not. I am quite hoping that my office gets tickets to the first couple of rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament for which we applied.

It's just that, when you create a system where one group of people generate the value and another gets the value, you are going to have problems. Guaranteed. And that's where big college sports are right now.

Time Flies

2006-11-16T21:34:00.000-08:00

Two things happened recently that made me feel old.

First, I turned 36. Birthdays hadn't bothered me much in the past, but, when I started doing the multiplication -- I think that this was one day when I was walking over to play softball, the sport that claimed my right ankle last year and has recently broken the bones of at least three guys I either know personally or was watching during the incident -- I realized that 36 is 18 times 2. O-kaayy, twice as old as 18. Still better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, though.

Second, Bob Barker retired. Yes, retired, after 1,543 years of game-show-hosting. I believe that Grandpa Bob actually started his career as one of the Irish monks who helped saved civilization during the Dark Ages. Bob saved the part about the prices of dinette sets, washers, driers and hot dogs carts and spaying and neutering your pets.

But, really . . . I watched The Price Is Right almost literally from infancy. One of my earliest non-Watergate memories is sitting in our living room trying to talk to Bob (OK, maybe one of the hostesses) through the TV and having my mom tell me that the people on TV can't hear you. (But what if they could? Pleeaaase, Jack, Sawyer and Kate, go away for a while. Chloe, go to the CTU cafeteria and get a nice chocolate-vanilla swirl soft serve, it will make you feel better.) As a teenager, I loved The Price Is Right. I spent way, way too much time during the summer watching Bob on the show. One of my greatest accomplishments is that, on one magical day when I was about 14, I guessed within $100 on both showcases. Dude, man! My freshman year of college, I was sitting in my dorm room one day minding my own business when, suddenly, the small guy with the really loud voice (no, not me, the other one) yelled "OH MY GOD!!!" down the hall I leapt out of my room, looking to see who had set something on fire now, when the guy then yelled, "THE BITCH OVERBID ON THE WASHER!!!" Yes, he was watching The Price.

And who held that cultural jewel together? Bob. For 877 years, Bob hosted that show. When it was on during the day. When it was on at night. With the dark, natural hair. With the dark, dyed hair. With the white, natural hair. Saying something other than "spay and neuter your pets" at the end. Saying that every single day at the end. Watching as women busted out of their tube tops running down to contestants row. Running away from Samoans who wanted to put a death grip on him. Bob was there, the Walter Cronkite of game shows.

Then about 1992 or so, Bob started showing us his more human depth. "Depth" in lots of senses. Acting depth, in his classic turn in Happy Gilmore, slugging Adam Sandler. Personal depth (as is "god, how low can you go?") in that he apparently had been harassing the hostesses for years, according to the hostesses at least. No longer was Bob just the guy who had hosted game shows during the Crusades. Now we knew Bob to be a game show host with feet of clay.

And now he has retired. It is the end of an epoch, a geologic age. I suppose that this had to happen at some point. Mike Wallace retired from 60 Minutes, right? Storm Thurmond retired from the Senate, right? The Rolling Stones retired from touring, right? (Oh, sorry. But that does remind me, when will we finally learn why Keith Richards was in the coconut tree?!? It's a cover-up of Mulderian portion.) So Grandpa Bob's bowing-out made me feel old, too.

But, of course, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Standing in line at Safeway yesterday, I saw on Soap Opera Digest that Bo and Hope are back together on Days of Our Lives. What is this, 1985?

Spots on Presidents

2006-11-09T21:46:00.000-08:00

"A leopard can't change its spots." "You can't teach an old dog new tricks." They are total cliches and kind of offend us in that they violate the American idea that you can always change into something better or at least different. But, when you vote for President in 2008, keep them in mind.

I say this because at least our last two Presidents, probably the last three, got themselves into deep trouble doing things that were perfectly consistent with the things we found out about them during their first campaigns. Don't believe me? Look at the facts.

In 2000, we found out that George W. Bush basically had sunk at least two companies by apparently committing to the same business his dad had been in and overcommitting what was basically other people's money. When things went south, his father's friends bailed him out. Eventually, his father's friends basically put him in charge of a baseball team, whose value went way up when public money was committed for its benefit, and he sold high and got rich.

In 1992, we found out that Bill Clinton had had a lot of trouble staying away from women to which he had access as a public official. Gennifer (with a G) Flowers was the one who came out in 1992. Clinton never exactly denied that he had had something going with her.

By 1988, there was little doubt that George Bush was basically a pretty decent guy who didn't have a lot of grasp of the way that most people lived, tried more than a little too hard to make up for that and was willing to be pretty fluid in his political positions.

And each of these guys' characteristics came back and bit them badly when each of them was President. The mess in Iraq strikes me as a really, really unfortunately inflated version of W's oil business failures. Now he's asking Jim Baker, his dad's old friend, to tell him how to deal with it. You (and Hillary) can draw a straight line from Gennifer (with a G) Flowers through Paula Jones to Monica Lewinsky. Bush 41 bought it politically when he couldn't figure out what a supermarket scanner was and tried to do the right thing by agreeing to raise taxes after glibly declaring "Read my lips -- no new taxes."

Now this doesn't mean that you shouldn't vote for someone for President if somewhat disturbing things come out about them when they are running. Let's face it, there has be something a little different about you if you decide to go through what you have to go through to get elected President. Ultimately, you have to pick the best person from your party's candidates or, if you don't care about any particular party, the best of two candidates. But, as in all things, you have to listen to your little voice when considering Presidential candidates. The things you learn about them when you first meet them tell you who they will be in office.

Weirdness in the Underwear Aisle

2006-11-04T20:23:00.000-08:00

OK, I know most of you probably haven't been dying for a post on this subject, but I bought some underwear today. When I got them home and went to put them away, I noticed some very odd about them:

They came in a Ziploc bag.

Yes, if I had so chosen, I could have sealed my new underwear back up in their package to keep them fresh.

Why does underwear now come in resealable containers? Who knows? There is, however, someone out there who made the conscious decision to market his or her company's underwear as a perishable. I wonder why they didn't choose to use Tupperware. I mean, they're easily stackable.

I undoubtedly have dwelt upon this topic for far too long already. I will just add Ziplocs for underwear to my ever-lengthening list of pointless things along with, among other things: (1) revolving lights that outline license plates; (2) little toes; and (3) Paris Hilton.

The Millenium Falcon

2006-11-04T10:38:00.000-08:00

Enthusio got a truly awesome birthday present this year. I mean, I think it is truly awesome. He got a Transformers set that is supposed to be Han Solo and Chewbacca that connects and transforms into the Millenium Falcon. As they supposedly say in Boston, wicked awesome!

What makes this so wicked awesome is that Enthusio thinks that it is wicked awesome. This is beyond lame, but it just makes me gleeful that Enthusio loves Star Wars. (At a band concert in which The Mermaid was playing a couple of weeks ago, one of the high school kids played a little riff of Luke's Theme and Enthusio and his pal looked at each other and simultaneously said, "That's from Star Wars!") In past generations, I suppose that fathers swelled with pride when their sons first rode a horse or tied a nice nautical knot or shot a deer. I, however, swell with happiness because Enthusio loves Star Wars just like I did when I was his age. And, more than that, because he, like all right-minded Star Wars fans, loves the Millenium Falcon.

Of all the machines, gadgets, things, etc. in the Star Wars movies, two reign supreme: (1) the light saber; and (2) the Millenium Falcon. The light saber's appeal is pretty obvious. The absolute coolest thing in the Star Wars movies is the concept of the Jedi. The second set of movies diluted the Jedi's coolness by showing that, yeah, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, there were a lot of Jedi and that they basically were like the karmic cops. But, the Jedi remain the absolute coolest thing from Star Wars (see the movie "Go" if you doubt me -- one line from that movie reflects Obi-Wan Kenobi's eternal coolness). And the light saber reflects that fact.

The Millenium Falcon is a different matter. Unlike the light saber, it is not elegant whatsoever. It is constantly called a piece of junk. There is a whole motif in Empire Strikes Back about how the hyperdrive won't work. It catches on fire and R2D2 extinguishes it. Han Solo won the Falcon from Lando Calrissian gambling. It's a sketchy ship. But, of course, it basically always comes through. It gets out of Mos Eisley. It escapes from the Death Star (although, of course, Grand Moff Tarkin allowed it to escape in order to track it to the rebels' base). It knocks out Darth Vader just as he's about blow Luke up. It gets Princess Leia off of Hoth when she can't make it to her transport. Its ugliness is an asset because it can hide in the Imperial garbage. It basically is the mechanical embodiment of Han Solo, the skeevy rogue who comes through. It is a mark of Return of the Jedi's inferiority that Han and the Falcon spend a lot of the movie separated. Why should Lando get to use the Falcon to blow up the Death Star II (and all of those independent construction contractors as noted in Clerks)? That was B.S.

So the Falcon is the best-loved ship of the Star Wars movies (some people might argue for Slave I, Boba Fett's ship, but I have never gotten the Boba Fett obsession). I remember reading a quote from Tiger Woods somewhere in which he said that the best Christmas present he ever got was a set of Millenium Falcon Legos that he begged and begged for. That kind of says it all. I remember seeing the big set of Millenium Falcon Legos a few years -- somehow it was the first time I had seen it -- and thinking, "I literally would have killed someone for that when I was 8."

Having this in my background, it just tickles me how much Enthusio likes that present he got. Last night, he had me help him transform it from the robots into the ship. Oooh, that was fun. And I'm too old to have been into Transformers. My younger brother The Philosopher was into Transformers AND Star Wars. If and when he ever has a son, I will have to get him -- them -- a Millenium Falcon Transformers set.

Voting in California

2006-11-04T10:07:00.000-08:00

Politics have always interested me greatly. There is a story in my family that, when I was about 2 1/2, I went around talking about Nixon firing Archibald Cox. Operating from my own memory, I believe that my first memory is of the House Judiciary Committee's Watergate hearings. (I remember sitting in the middle of the floor of our house on the dairy around lunchtime with my dad, watching these long rows of people talking. I have a very distinct memory of a black woman talking. As best as I can piece together, this is a memory of Barbara Jordan and the House Judiciary Committee. I have never claimed that I am not somewhat unusual.) I was a Political Science major in college and actually took way more Poli Sci classes than were necessary to finish the major. As with sports, I have to try hard not to obsess about politics. And, of course, I always vote.

All of that being said, the task of voting this year in California, in my particular town, is almost beyond comprehension. Here is the list of things on our ballot:

1. U.S. Senate
2. U.S. House
3. California Governor
4. California Lieutenant Governor
5. California Attorney General
6. California Secretary of State
7. California Controller
8. California Treasurer
9. California Insurance Commissioner
10. California Assembly
11. California Supreme Court Justice 1
12. California Supreme Court Justice 2
13. California Court of Appeal Justice 1
14. California Court of Appeal Justice 2
15. California Court of Appeal Justice 3
16. California Court of Appeal Justice 4
17. California Bd. of Equalization (which deals with certain taxes & fees)
18. A state ballot proposition about transportation bonds
19. A state ballot propositiion about homeland security bonds (I think)
20. A state ballot proposition about housing bonds
21. A state ballot proposition about education bonds
22. A state ballot proposition about flood control bonds
23. A state ballot proposition about penalties for sex offenders
24. A state ballot proposition about water bonds
25. A state ballot proposition about parental consent for abortions
26. A state ballot proposition about cigarette taxes
27. A state ballot proposition about oil taxes and alternative energy
28. A state ballot proposition about parcel taxes for education
29. A state ballot proposition about political campaign financing
30. A state ballot proposition about eminent domain
31. A local ballot proposition about local electricity service
32. Another related local ballot proposition about local electricity service
33. A local ballot proposition about whether to have a Target in our city
34. A local advisory ballot proposition about having preference voting (just asking for our opinion -- it won't actually do anything).

I guess that I should consider myself lucky. Our city's always hotly contested city council election was on the June ballot. There's no runoff for state schools superintendent and this isn't our year to have county supervisor and state Senate elections. We don't seem to have any runoff elections for county officers like sheriff, clerk-recorder, assessor, district attorney, tax collector, coroner . . . . We aren't in a hotly contested congressional district and our U.S. Senate race was decided in about November 2005, so we haven't been subjected to a deluge of stuff about them.

But to paraphrase Dirty Harry (only the first Dirty Harry movie was really good, the second and third ones kind of blew, but the fourth one -- Dead Pool -- was good and, it's a little-known fact, featured Jim Carrey's first role in a movie because he was the Axl Rose clone who got killed at the beginning), do I feel lucky?

No, I do not. I mean, how can anyone have really good opinions about all of these things on which we are asked to vote? I'm an attorney, so I actually have some opinions about California Court of Appeal justices, but, if you're not an attorney, how can you really know much about them? Why does California have both a State Treasurer and a Controller, both of whom deal with the state's money and both of whom are elected statewide? I'm in the water business, so I understand what the water bonds and flood control bonds are, but, if you aren't in that business, could you have a really good opinion about them. I'll tell you, I don't have a firm grasp on what the transportation bond is about, but, geez, if you driven in LA or Bay Area traffic lately, you know they have to do something. I'll admit that, when I saw Proposition 88 on my absentee ballot -- it's about parcel taxes and education -- I had no idea what it was. Guess I need to read up on that one.

At least Gary Coleman's not on the ballot again this year.

Stayin' Alive

2006-10-26T20:31:00.000-07:00

So I got the IPod that I wanted for my birthday. As I frequently do with things that I like, I have gotten rather obsessed with it. But this post is about what I found when I first turned the thing on.

Basically, I think that The Muse loaded some songs on it so there would be something on it to start. And one of these songs was Stayin' Alive by the Bee Gees.

Now this song was a joke when I was a teenager. Stayin' Alive was right up there with YMCA for evoking sarcastic laughter during the mid- to late 80's. Basically, it was a way to rip on the prior generation, who, by definition in teenagers' minds, is always uncool. I remember, one time when I was about 15 or 16, I was humming the base line from Stayin' Alive and one of my friends looked at me with a withering glare and said, "God, why are you singing that?"

When I got my IPod, though, as soon as I figured out how to turn the writing from Chinese to English (it's hard to find and use the settings menu when you can't make out the language that the menus are in), I played Stayin' Alive. For I have come to realize what a great song it is.

Part of this is me fondly remembering my childhood. Saturday Night Fever was everywhere when I was about 8. Given that I wasn't allowed to see it, I obviously didn't get into it in the quasi-religious way that I got into Star Wars (I say "quasi" only because I know that some people have developed their own actual religions based on Star Wars), but it was everywhere. The songs were on the radio all the time. The lady who cut my hair used to ask me if I wanted a "John Travolta haircut."

And Stayin' Alive was the biggest song. It wasn't until I saw the movie all the way through (which took a long time, for some reason, although I made sure that I watched the R-rated version) that I quite understood just why Stayin' Alive was the big song. That opening sequence with John Travolta just walking down the street with the paint can swinging on the beat is pretty awesome.

I can't really think of a song that has ever quite caught the zeitgeist like Stayin' Alive. Maybe I Want To Hold Your Hand, but I wasn't around for that, so I don't really know. Smells Like Teen Spirit hit like a bomb, but it didn't come with the hottest movie too. Hey Ya? Maybe I'm too old to really know about that one. Amazing as it is to think now, Michael Jackson was undoubtedly the undisputed coolest guy alive in 1983, but Thriller spit out so many hits ("I want to love you, PYT, pretty young thing, you need some lovin'" Little different connotation now, unfortunately) that no one of them really was THE ONE (although Beat It and Billie Jean were THE TWO, I suppose).

But the song is damn good. You don't get too many songs with not one, but two, big, fat, awesome base lines. Stayin' Alive has got the big drumbeat (which has to be a drum machine or a loop, but oh well), but that classic bass guitar line too (duh-da, duh, duh, duh-duh-da, duh, duh). I'm kind of amazed that no rapper or hip hop artist has ever stripped that baseline out and mixed it into something else. (Maybe Puffy has made a song that uses all of the same music and just changes the words. That kind of seems to be his MO.) It could be pretty darn great.

The Bees Gees' vocals then add just the right fragance of fromage. Good Lord, what did the parents of those guys to do them that allowed them to sing like that? I guess that I don't really want to know. But, man, it's kind of hilarious to hear guys singing about they're rough ladies' men in voices that dogs can barely hear.

The whole thing, though, is such a great mash-up of good music, good cheese and good nostalgia. It makes me want to wear a white suit.

That Chevy Ad

2006-10-26T19:35:00.000-07:00

I am watching baseball these days. It's the World Series and, even though I don't really give a fig about the Tigers or the Cardinals, I'm a baseball fan, so, like Tommy Lasorda says, I watch. (It's good to see Tommy. I like the one where some woman calls Tommy to talk her husband out of a tree. He says "Who's he a fan of?" When she says "the Cubs," he say "Ugh.")

This, of course, also means that I am watching Chevy commercials. GM seems to have made a decision about 75 years ago that it would advertise Chevy heavily during baseball games to show that Chevy is darn American. They even had a song at one point where the chorus was "Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet." So I guess a lot of people see baseball and Chevy as a natural fit. Sort of like Tiger Woods and Buick. (Oh, wait, no, those ads are ludicrous. Ferrari or LeSabre? Of course, Tiger would go with LeSabre.)

Anyway, so they've got a new Chevy ad for postseason baseball this year featuring the vocal stylings of John Cougar-Cougar Mellencamp-Mellecamp (given his various personal issues, the Muse calls him The Singing Scumbag) played over a montage of "American" images. He's singing "this is our country."

I am fascinated, weirded out and appalled by this ad. For a 30-second ad, it works hard.

The montage goes roughly like this: women in 50's two-piece swimsuits dancing on a beach, Rosa Parks sitting in front of a white guy on a bus, kids riding bikes in a suburb, lots of people at the March on Washington, Martin Luther King giving his "I Have a Dream" speech, hippie-looking people doing the Fugue or something, Muhammad Ali flattening a guy with a quick right while shuffling (dude, Ali was awesome), soldiers in Vietnam, protesters with peace signs, Nixon doing his weird victory wave he as he boards the helicopter after he resigned, some stuff that I don't remember, scenes of New Orleans being flooded after Hurricane Katrina, a shot of a black guy standing by his Chevy truck on a destroyed New Orleans block, generic scene of guys and Chevy trucks walking through a field, a shot of Dale Earnhardt's car racing on a track (amazingly, he's not bumping someone loose from behind), some non-Amish people pushing up the framing of the wall of a house, some supposed firefighters who like they're about ready to bust out with a Chippendales number and then the towers of light coming out of Manhattan from where the World Trade Center was.

On the one hand, I am fascinated by GM's disproportionate reliance on what were very, very controversial African-Americans in the ad. Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King and Muhammad Ali. I recognize that each and every one of them has become kind of a transcedent icon. You are not going to convince me, however, that everyone in the U.S. thinks of those people as "their country" however much they truly are. Obviously, MLK was assassinated. People refused to call Muhammad Ali by that name for years after he converted to Islam and the US government tried to throw him in jail for refusing the Vietnam draft. It's fascinating to me that GM, the prototypical American company, is putting those three out there as a very large part of GM's vision of "our country."

On the other hand, Nixon flying off in disgrace as a big part of "our country." OK, some significant part of the country views Nixon as a big part of American political history (at Nixon's funeral, Bob Dole said that he thought that historians would come to call the second half of the 20th century "the Age of Nixon"). But does even that segment of the population want to see him flying off after resigning as "our country?" How about the picture of Nixon shaking hand with Vegas Elvis instead? As it stands, it's just weird. Maybe in 20 years, the Chevy ad will show Clinton waving his finger at the camera about how he "did not have sexual relations with that woman."

Finally, on the other hand (wait, that's three hands), I am just appalled at GM's blatant use of the two most horrible recent disasters in the US to sell cars. Flooded-out New Orleans is "our country?" No one wanted it to be, that's for damn sure. Is GM going to donate some slice of its Chevy sales while the commercial is running to some Katrina relief fund? Even worse is the use of the WTC towers of light. I have pretty much come around to the conclusion that there should be a law against the use of images from, or allusions to, Sept. 11 for commercial purposes. I am not kidding. I am a big believer in the First Amendment, but I don't really care that such a law probably would be unconstitutional. Let someone sue to throw it. Something like 2,749 people were murdered in the WTC. They are still finding body parts at the site. It is freakin' wrong for people to be Sept. 11 to sell anything. Although I guess cars are better than those flip-up coin things that I saw on cable TV a while ago.

The Krofft Brothers Are P.O.'d

2006-09-29T23:11:00.000-07:00

You watch Lost or you have at least once. How do I know this? Because everyone does or has. I resisted, kind of, for a season. Now I'm hooked on the eternal Lost mindscrew. The Muse kept telling me how good it was. The pitcher on my softball team tapes it because our games are Wednesday night. My aunt The Nurse watches. Last May, I went to San Diego to see much of my family and I hadn't been able to watch the season finale. The Nurse, my brothers The Philosopher and Intensio and my sister-in-law The Organizer could barely contain themselves from talking about the finale in front of me. It is a cultural phenomenon, people.

What you all should know, though, is that Sid & Marty Krofft are going to be coming for Lost's highly profitable butt. Why? Because they thought of it first. They put Land of the Lost in 1974 and they are going to want a pound of flesh. Don't believe me? Check it out:

ABANDONED IN SOME KIND OF WEIRD JUNGLE PLACE? Check.

STRANDED DURING A ROUNTINE EXPEDITION? Check.

Lost: Flights from Australia to L.A. are pretty routine. I mean, Rain Man loved Qantas, right? (I have always liked the word Qantas. Good for Q, throwing off the shackles of U's co-dependent oppression.)

Land of the Lost: Not that I take my kids when I take rafting trips to explore the jungle, but the theme song did say it was a "routine expedition."

MAROONED THERE BY A CATACLYSM? Check.

Lost: Crash of Oceanic Flight 815.

Land of the Lost: "The greatest earthquake of them all," at least according to the theme song.

STRANGE BUG-EYED AND EVIL PRIOR RESIDENTS? Check.

Lost: Henry Gale, the Others guy.

Land of the Lost: The Sleestaks.

WEIRD, BUT HELPFUL, PRIOR RESIDENT? Check.

Lost: Desmond.

Land of the Lost: Cha-Ka.

SELF-APPOINTED LEADER WITH A GOD COMPLEX? Check.

Lost: Jack (Wouldn't it be funny if Jack from 24 switched places with Jack from Lost? I'll bet Sawyer wouldn't be so mouthy any more. Jack Bauer would mess him up. Jack from Lost would be dead in five minutes on 24.)

Land of the Lost: Marshall (well, he was the dad, so I guess he wasn't so self-appointed)

TENSE TRIANGULAR RELATIONSHIP? Check.

Lost: Jack, Kate and Sawyer (although, God, I wish they would give that a rest).

Land of the Lost: Marshall, Will and Holly (sibling rivalry can suck).

RANDOM CREATURES WANDERING THE JUNGLE PERIODICALLY THREATENING THE LOSTIES? Check.

Lost: Polar bears, smoke monsters, etc.

Land of the Lost: Stop-motion dinosaurs.

STRANGE PORTALS INTO THE REGULAR WORLD? Check.

Lost: I mean, how did Mr. Ecko's brother get into that plane? Some serious space-time issue was going on there.

Land of the Lost: They could open portals by stirring crystals or something.

So do you think all of this is a coincidence? To quote one of the greatest things that I have ever heard a child say, "I doubt it." And I think Sid & Marty Krofft doubt it, too. They will be coming for J.J. Abrams' and ABC's sorry butts. After all, they sued the pants off of McDonald's when McDonald's ripped off H.R. Pufnstuf. (See Sid & Marty Krofft Television Productions, Inc. v. McDonald's Corp. (9th Cir.) 562 F.2d 1157.) Watch your back, Lost.

Strawberry Fields Forever

2006-09-27T21:35:00.000-07:00

The Beatles have never done that much for me. When The Muse asked me with surprise a couple of years ago, "You like the Stones better than the Beatles, don't you?," I said "Yes" without hesitation. Maybe it relates back to when I was a kid, when my parents listened to 92.9, what was then a new oldies station in Fresno, and the only Beatles song they really played were stuff like Love Me Do. That early Beatles stuff very well may have been pretty revolutionary at the time -- after a few years of Frankie Avalon and Dion, particularly -- but it sounded kind of lame to me. Add that perceived lameness to the fact that the Beatles were on all . . . the . . . time and I didn't like them much.

The Muse has always been a big Beatles fan and now the kids, The Mermaid in particular, are big Beatles fans, so we are listening to the Beatles a lot these days. We have lots of homemade Beatles CDs. We have Beatles posters in multiple rooms in our house. We all have favorite Beatles (mine is John, The Muse's George, The Mermaid's Paul and Enthusio at least was Ringo, but that may have changed). Accordingly, I have a specially-made Beatles CD that the kids want to listen to when they are in my car. And, lo and behold, I have found that I find one Beatles song to be just brilliant.

Strawberry Fields Forever, to be specific. There are others that I like a lot (e.g., Help!), some for which I have great affection (Yellow Submarine, which The Must and I used as a lullaby for The Mermaid when she was a baby), but Strawberry Fields Forever is the only one that I find to be really great.

Basically, that song was at least 25 years ahead of its time. I don't know what album Strawberry Fields Forever was one, but it's from about 1966, before Sgt. Pepper's, which was released in 1967. I don't think that any well-known band really made anything like it until maybe Nirvana released Nevermind in 1991 (not that I have an encyclopedic knowledge of 1967-1991 popular music).

To me at least, in Strawberry Fields Forever, John Lennon used strange, confused lyrics to show how he (and maybe the other Beatles), or maybe society generally, were very confused, not sure where they were going. "Always, no, sometimes think it's me, I mean I know when's it's a dream." "It's getting hard to be someone, but it all works out, it doesn't matter much to me." "And I forget just what takes, and yet it makes me smile, I find it hard, it's hard to find, oh well, whatever, never mind." Similar stuff, man.

It's not exactly a brand-new thing to do in art, to use confused language to express confusion. William Faulkner wrote at least 1/4 of The Sound and The Fury in the voice of a 33-year-old retarded man (although I only got through about four pages of that because it drove me crazy). But Strawberry Fields Forever seems pretty revolutionary to me because it incorporated that into the most popular music. Most popular music tells stories, usually pretty simple stories. That just doesn't work that well when you're trying to get over that you're really confused, though. The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds is a brilliant album (I listened to Wouldn't Be Nice? about 15 times in a row today), but it has this song "That's Not Me," which, well, sucks. That's Not Me was kind of trying to get over the same feeling as Strawberry Fields Forever, but it has lines like, "I miss my pad and the places I know, and every night as I sit there alone, I would dream." It's too direct. By being explicit, That's Not Me recites cliches and feels dated. Strawberry Fields doesn't feel like that. It feels weird, but that's the feeling that John Lennon was trying to get across in the lyrics.

Now, when you pile the lyrics on top of the music in Strawberry Fields, you really get something brilliant. If Strawberry Fields came out today and someone told you it was Beck, would you be surprised? No, you wouldn't. It has all this mixed up, un-pop-y stuff, horns and what sounds like a record being played backwards and all kinds of stuff. But it mostly sounds just this side of confused. You add that up with the lyrics and you just get a great, great song, one that doesn't sound like anything before and not much after for 25 years or so.

So, after years of not thinking much of the Beatles, I have discovered that they -- or at least John -- could be pretty brilliant after all. So, when I make up my 60's playlist on the IPod that I'm getting for my birthday, along with Marvin Gaye, Martha & The Vandellas, The Stones, The Beach Boys, Frankie Valli, The Kinks and The Hollies, I'll have at least one Beatles song. Maybe the first song.

WWII

2006-09-18T21:28:00.000-07:00

One time, a few years ago, I was laying around watching cable TV and, for no particular reason, was watching some WWII show on History Channel. I think it was "The Last Days of Adolf Hitler" or "War in the Pacific." Anyway, The Muse comes in and says, "Are you watching a World War II show?!?" Are you interested in that stuff?" Just instinctly, I said, "Of course, all men are interested in World War II."

A book I just finished reading, "Ordinary Heroes" by Scott Turow, reminded me of that. There was a time when I really, really liked Scott Turow. The Muse will tell you that I decided to go to law school because I liked Presumed Innocent so much. (It is certainly true that I read Presumed Innocent at a time when I was debating whether or not to go to law school, and that the trial work in that book was presented so well that law school seemed like a pretty decent option there in the fall of 1991, with the economy in a mild recession and me about to get a poli sci degree, although I had been thinking about going to law school for a while, at least since my senior year of high school, when I wrote my admissions essay for the UC's about liking to argue. Eat that run-on sentence, Strunk & White.) I read One L my first year of law school and, damn, that book pretty much nailed the experience. (I highly recommend it to anyone thinking about law school.) I really like Burden of Proof, too. Pleading Guilty, however, made me so angry that I threw it across the room when I finished it. So it was with some trepidation that I picked up Ordinary Heroes at the beach on our big trip, but, hey, it was a $7 hardback.

Plus it was about WWII. Basically, it's about a just-retired, kind-of-flailing newspaper reporter whose father dies and who discovers really surprising stuff about his father's experience during WWII in his papers and pursues the story. The book then alternates between ever-briefer sections told by the reporter and ever-longer sections from the father's supposed description of his experiences. I really liked the stuff in the father's voice about WWII and pretty much found the reporter's stuff from now to be pretty lame. At some point, though, I felt compelled to look up something about the book on Amazon. Some review excerpted on Amazon said that the book wasn't very good and just repeated a lot of WWII cliches, at least until a particular harrowing scene during the Battle of the Bulge.

The funny thing was, I hadn't seen it that way at all. I was just really enjoying the WWII stuff. The part after the one harrowing scene -- where the father and his troop play dead for hours in the snow so that Nazi snipers won't shoot them -- was better, but it didn't seem like it was that much better to me.

That made me think about WWII some. I think that just about every American guy of my generation and probably the generations that followed the generation that fought in WWII has some level of fascination with it. I mean, there was one time that I watched my best friend from law school and his undergrad fraternity brothers sit around drinking cheap beer -- Henry Weinhardt's, I think -- and debate what Hitler's biggest tactical error was. Look at the way that Tom Brokaw talks about The Greatest Generation. Look at how popular WWII shooter games for XBox, GameCube and other game boxes are. Why do we, American males, do this?

I think it's basically because WWII represents the high point, at least so far, for the American male. Basically, in the popular imagination, the U.S. was forced into the war by a sneak attack (although FDR of course had been giving the U.K. help sub rosa for a while), went out and fought the people who perpetrated the sneak attack and their pure evil ally, defeated both of them after just horrendous fighting (although of course the Russians probably tend to believe, with more than a little justification, that the millions of people that they lost in the war had an awful lot to do with the Nazis' defeat) and then turned around and helped both Japan and Europe get back on their feet (although we undoubtedly did that in no small part to contain the Soviets). Unlike WWI, we didn't just get in at the end to break a deadlock, the resolution of which led to another war. Unlike Korea, WWII didn't end in a stalemate. Unlike Vietnam, we won. Unlike the Civil War, we weren't shooting each other. You have to leave aside the Japanese internment and enforced segregation in the military to make this vision work, but, it's one that pretty common and very attractive. And, at least for my generation, it's a way to think well of our grandfathers, which is always cool.

So that's it, I think. That's why the History Channel basically should be called the WWII Channel and why, if there's nothing else on, I will happily watch "D-Day: Invasion of Europe" on a slow Sunday afternoon.

Impressing Enthusio

2006-09-17T20:55:00.000-07:00

Last week, Enthusio got this giant blow-up football. Last weekend, he was trying to blow it up himself by blowing into it. I told him to stop and that I would blow it up with a pump that we have. He went out to play on the trampoline with his friends. I blew the football up with the hand pump and, about 10 minutes, I went outside with the blown-up football for Enthusio.

When I emerged with the football, Enthusio yells, "Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!" Well, that was a good moment, although I have to say that I didn't feel like I really earned THAT much enthusiasm. I went inside and told The Muse, "There will come a day when nothing I can do will make my son say 'Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!" but today is not that day."

It was only after The Muse said, "There's blog entry," that I realized that I had ripped off Aragorn from Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.

Cable TV

2006-09-17T19:29:00.000-07:00

Sitting here watching cable TV this weekend, I decided two things:

(1) I do not want a Countrywide combo loan. I do not care that it is a unique kind of loan that would allow me to combine my home loan, my car loan and my loans so I have only one low monthly payment. I just want the Countrywide Home Loans commercials to stop. Now. Mr. Countrywide Home Loans seems like a decent guy, but, you know, at this point -- after seeing him 27 times an hour during every hour of TV watching that I have undertaken in the last month -- it wouldn't bother me if he got hit by a bus.

(2) Prison time should be mandatory for anyone who exploits Sept. 11 to sell cheap shit on TV. About 30 minutes ago, I saw a commercial for a Franklin-Mint-knock-off (yes, a Franklin-Mint knock-off, because pewter Star Trek chess sets need to be knocked off) company that is selling a specially-minted gold coin in which the World Trade Center -- or, as the commercial says, "the Twin Towers" -- are inlaid in silver "minted from silver that was stored in the vaults of the Twin Towers themselves." But that's not all. The "Twin Towers portion of this special coin rises to form a beautiful table display." In other words, there's a hinge on the World Trade Center part of the coin so they stand up. Then the commercial ends by saying something like "once the silver from the Twin Towers' vault has been used, these special coins will never be minted again." They never should have been minted in the first place. Someone should get locked up for this B.S.

Munich and Spielberg

2006-09-17T13:39:00.000-07:00

When the Muse goes out of town, I tend to try to rent a movie that I know she doesn't want to see. You know, with shooting and guts and stuff. Sometimes this works very well, like the time that I saw Saving Private Ryan. Sometimes it doesn't work so well, like the time that I watched Femme Fatale. Wow, that one was bad. The Muse is out of town this weekend, so I rented Munich. The Muse pretty much told me straight out that she had no interest in seeing that one.

As you probably know, Munich is Steven Speilberg's movie about Israel's supposed program to track down and kill the Palestinians responsible for organizing the killing of 12 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany.

[SPOILER ALERT: I AM GOING TO TELL ABOUT THIS MOVIE, SO, IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS, JUST STOP RIGHT NOW. I'M TELLING YOU, STOP, BECAUSE I'M GOING TO TALK ALL ABOUT THE ENDING.]

This movie was pretty darn great. The whole thing was very believeable. Given Israel's history of awfully audacious military operations -- kidnapping Adolph Eichmann from South America and bringing him back to Israel for trial, destroying the whole Egyptian air force in an preemptive strike at the beginning of the Six-Day War, flying a whole military unit into an Ugandan airport to take over a hijacked airliner full of Israeli in 1976, preemptively bombing Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1982 -- I completely bought the idea that Israel would send out a group of secret-agent guys to assassinate the Munich organizers. It was very tense for much of the movie, with the group of five guys undertaking various frightening operations. It was completely believeable how the operations never seemed to go quite right.

What the movie is really about, though, is how the leader of the group, played by Eric Bana, basically loses it as he keeps killing guys in cold blood and almost getting killed in the group's operations and having guys in his group get killed and realizing that other people out there apparently have found about him and are now trying to kill him and the people in his group. When it becomes clear that his group isn't going to be able to much more -- three of the five guys have died and the Palestinians they are trying to kill basically are on to them -- he is brought in from the cold. He then goes off to Brooklyn, where his wife and baby have moved to get away from Israel. (His wife was pregnant when he started on the operation and he only saw the baby when she was just born and hadn't seen her for another year or so.) Once he gets to Brooklyn, he basically thinks everyone is out to get him. Finally, his Israeli handler comes and asks him to come back to Israel, but he decides not to. Anyway, it's really good movie.

But it could have been better. Basically, Spielberg just couldn't help going over the top to beat us over the head right at the end with, first, perhaps the single strangest scene that I have ever seen in a movie and, second, one of the most blatant closing shots ever. I found these things to be really interesting because they were really similar to the kinds of things that Spielberg did in Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan that kept those movies from being really brilliant, at least to me.

First, the climatic scene of the movie is one where Eric Bana is laying in bed, unable to sleep, in Brooklyn and his wife comes on to him. They end up having sex. Bana is on top and starts looking all possessed, like he's taking out all of his problems on his wife. Now, Spielberg intercuts this scene with the climax of the Munich situation, where the Palestinians realize that the airplane that was supposed to fly them and their hostages out of Germany has no pilot and that they are surrounded by the German military on an open tarmac. Basically, what they did as they were being shot was kill all of the Israeli athletes by hand grenade and machine gun. So the climatic five minutes or so of the movie flip back and forth between Eric Bana having rather disturbing sex with his wife and Israeli athletes being slaughtered. At the end, when Bana's done, his wife tells him softly that she loves him. O-kaaaaayyyy.

Second, the very last scene of the movie -- where Bana's handler comes to Brooklyn to ask Bana to come back to Israel -- takes place in a park right on the river in Brooklyn across from Manhattan. So the Manhattan skyline is the background of the scene. When Bana tells his handler that he's not going back to Israel, the camera follows Bana as he leaves the park, thus panning across the Manhattan skyline. As Bana leaves the park, the camera centers on the World Trade Center. And stays there as Bana leaves the park and some verbiage about how nine of the 11 Munich organizers eventually were killed. Oh, I get it, Spielberg's trying to tell us that killing only leads to more killing -- see Munich, then assassinating the Munich organizers, then eventually Sept. 11 -- or something. Thanks, Steven, nice use of Sept. 11, wouldn't have figured out that terrorism and killing is bad without that last shot.

Don't get me wrong, Spielberg is a very, very good director. Jaws is a brilliant movie. Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of my all-time favorites. My Dad swears that Duel -- the TV movie that really got Spielberg going -- is one of the best things that he has ever seen. And, as he has gotten older, he has taken on really interesting and difficult topics. Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan and Munich all are great movies, some of the best of their various decades.

But Spielberg always seems to find some way to take them just over the top in schlocky ways that really detract from them. In Schindler's List, it was the little girl in the red coat. You do a whole, very difficult movie very, very well in black and white and then you stuff a little girl in color in there just to make sure that we get the point that the Nazis were killing lots of innocent people and were pure evil. Lame. Even the scene at the end of the people going to Oskar Schindler's grave was more tolerable than that. In Saving Private Ryan, you have to have the scenes at the beginning and end with Private Ryan visiting the graves of the guys who saved him and crying about it and hugging his grandkids. Really, that was necessary? (I'll bet if you polled the Oscar voters who didn't give Best Picture to Saving Private Ryan, they point to those scenes.) Then those last couple of scenes of Munich. I mean, really, did you really just hit us over the head with Sept. 11? Come on.

It's very unfortunate. As Spielberg has gotten older and so freakin' powerful that he basically can get any movie made -- I kind of doubt that Munich would have gotten made if Spielberg hadn't been involved -- it is great that he making movies about these difficult and fascinating issues. The flip side of having that kind of power, though, is that no one is going to edit your stuff. You can see that with George Lucas, who seems to have had no editing at all in the second Star Wars trilogy (I mean, he let his kids name characters, thus leading to one of the big bad guys being named "Count Doo-koo" (phonetic)). That seems to be going on with Spielberg, too. You have to give him credit that the movies he's making are great, with these schlocky problems, and not bombs like Phantom Menace.

But, God, Steven, get someone to help you make brilliant movies out of your great movies.

Why Movies?

2006-08-26T16:00:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-26T15:57:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-26T15:17:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-19T10:33:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-13T21:00:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-08-13T20:29:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-13T19:55:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-06T20:46:00.000-07:00

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.

The New Comedy

2006-07-20T21:31:00.000-07:00

It occurred to me the other day while we were flying across the desolation of southern Utah or maybe northern New Mexico that there has been an important shift in comedy in the last 10 years or so. Basically, I was reading Premiere magazine, which I never read, but bought because I was hurting for a magazine to read on the plane to the East Coast and it had Steve Carrell on the cover. After 40-Year-Old Virgin and watching this last season of The Office, I’ll pretty much watch whatever the guy is in. Anyway, this particular edition of Premiere magazine was entitled (either explicitly or by obvious implication) The Comedy Issue. It had a big article about Mr. Carrell and also an oral history of comedy through the movie ages.

In reading these materials, it struck me that something has really changed in comedy since my comedic perspective developed. Basically, in high school, my friends and I were total smart asses, largely because the comedy that we liked revolved around smart-ass behavior, this idea of finding humor in the belief that you are smarter than just about everyone else. Now every 15-year-old boy thinks that he is smarter than everyone else. But I think that there was more to it than that.

We were basically the first generation of teenagers who had come up simply marinated in the early glory years of Saturday Night Live. Yeah, yeah, those 1975-1980 years of SNL were the first time that baby boomer humor was released to roam free, but that little group of comedians really set the entire tone for what came after in comedy for, I don’t know, 15 years. Basically, even when that group was being out-and-out stupid – see Samurai Deli, the Killer Bees, “it’s a dessert topping and a floor wax,” Bass-o-matic – it was with the underlying theme that they were smarter than everyone else. This theme then played out in a ungodly number of comedic contexts over the nest couple of decades. You watch Blues Brothers and that whole movie has the feel that Joliet Jake and Elwood have got it figured out and everyone else basically is stupid. Carrie Fisher (ah, Princess Leia, post-Star Wars, pre-gold bikini) blows up their apartment building, Belushi and Ackroyd just dust themselves off and continue on their mission from God. Even in Animal House, when Belushi is behaving basically like the Tasmanian Devil, he is doing so with this arched eyebrow, like he knows he is going to get away with all of it. Seven years of college down the drain? No problem. He still gets the hottest sorority babe and is a U.S. Senator at the end. More than just SNL alums bought in on this vibe. Without this vibe, there is no David Letterman, no Stupid Pet Tricks, no throwing melons off of roofs, no Alka-Seltzer dunk tank, no Larry Bud Melman, no Biff Henderson in a pencil suit and certainly no jumping against a Velcro wall in a Velcro wall to see if you stick. Perhaps most importantly to my particular consciousness, there is no: (1) Bruce Willis in Moonlighting (at the end of this post if my recollection of the ever-classic “man with a mole on his nose” scene from about Moonlighting 1987); and (2) Bill Murray in Caddyshack (“this Cinderella story about to win the Masters, oh, it’s in the hole, it’s in the hole!”).

But, in the last 10 years or so, something changed. As one of the Premiere articles put it, “Ben Stiller and Will Farrell are the next generation’s comedy icons.” And it is undoubtedly true. I will still: (1) watch everything Bill Murray does; (2) mourn the premature loss of John Belushi; and (3) stare in horror as Bruce Willis buries what could have been a brilliant comedic career under lots of put-upon, regular-guy-being-the-noble-action-hero roles. However, the big laughs these days are with the guys who commit, totally, completely, to a character without ever winking, no matter how humiliating or ridiculous the situation. Beans and franks in There’s Something About Mary? (The funniest movie of the last 15 years.) No problem, Ben Stiller is there. Running down the street butt naked (literally) in Old School? Will Farrell is your man. Behaving like an elf for two hours in Elf? Farrell again. The entire two hours plus of ridiculous behavior in 40-Year-Old Virgin (runner-up to There’s Something About Mary in the last 15 years) and behaving like a self-delusional butt every week on The Office? Let me introduce you to Steve Carrell.

Somewhere around the turn of the century, the dominant form of humor shifted from the “we’re smarter than everyone” mojo that my friends and I completely bought in the mid-80’s (when people asked us if we knew some guy, we would say things like “you mean the one with the eyes?”) to complete commitment to humiliation.

Why did this happen? Is it a natural consequence of having Presidents say things like “that depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is” and “people misunderestimate me”? I mean when the big bosses are saying things like that, what is the point in trying to show that you are smarter than others? Are we now focusing on humiliation as humor because that is the best way to get attention in an infinite media source kind of world? (Check out MXC on Spike TV.) Don’t get me wrong, I find Stiller, Farrell and Carrell really, really funny – particularly Carrell – but will my brothers Intensio and Guitar Guy be able to remember snappy wordplay like the following 20 years after it was on TV:

David Addison (Bruce Willis): “We’re looking for a man with a mole on his nose.”

Secret Service guy: “A mole on his nose?”

DA: “A mole on his nose.”

SSG: “What kind of clothes?”

DA: “What kind of clothes
do you suppose?”

SSG: “What kind of clothes
do I suppose
would be worn by a man
with a mole on this nose?
Who knows?”

DA: “Did I happen to mention that I vowed to disclose
that this man that we’re seeking with a mole on his nose,
I’m not sure of clothes
or anything else,
except he’s Chinese, a big clue in itself?”

SSG: “I’m sorry to say
I’m sad to report
I haven’t seen anyone of that sort
No Chinese with a mole on his nose
With some kind of clothes
That you can’t suppose
So get out of this door and leave this place
Before I have to hurt you,
Put my foot in your face.”

Things That Bug Me

2006-07-20T21:30:00.000-07:00

I have resisted the stereotypical list of things that bug me on this blog up until now, but the time has come and here it is:

(1) White golf gloves. Every freakin’ golf glove in every freakin’ golf shop is white. Why is this? Golf definitely needs to present itself as the type of sport that can only be played when you’re dressed like a butler. Every time that I go to try to buy a new golf glove, I feel like I am shopping for handwear for a cotillion to be held between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Jeez, give us some options, golf people.

(2) The World Cup. This is a little bit of a misnomer. The World Cup per se doesn’t bother me. I think that it is interesting and exciting that the whole world except the U.S. – and even more and more of the U.S. – gets all worked up over a sport every four years. What gets me is that, every four years, I start to get a little worked up about this and then – I actually try to watch some of one of the games. Oh my God, soccer is boring. I like to watch soccer the way my dad used to say that he liked to watch all sports – in the highlights at the end of the day. I just can’t, can’t, can’t watch guys going back and forth across this big field for hours on end in the faint hope that one, maybe two – if the planets align just right – goals will get scored. This may make me an ugly American and I guess that I just have to live with that. Damn.

(3) The Pacific Ocean at the California coast. Don’t get me wrong, it is beautiful and occupies a large place in my soul, right in there with baseball, brilliantly stupid comedic movies and sports cars. But, God, why is it so cold??? The Atlantic Ocean isn’t so freakin’ cold right at the coast. The Pacific Ocean is warm and wonderful in Hawaii. Why is the closest ocean to my place of residence something that induces hypothermia with very little exposure.

(4) Traffic. Now I share this annoyance with everyone else in the U.S., but my commute involves one particularly mystifying stretch of traffic. Every work day, I drive across a causeway that spans what may be the world’s largest intentionally created flood passage area. Basically, when it rains in buckets, they open weirs on the relevant rivers and large portions of said rivers pour out into this leveed plain to rush less harmfully to the sea. Due to this area’s unique function, the causeway across it has no on-ramps or off-ramps. Basically, once you are on the causeway, no cars are entering or leaving the road. It has always seemed to me that traffic thus should flow smoothly and rapidly from one side to the other. “But,” in the immortal words of John Belushi, “nooooooo!” Somehow this thing still backs up. Even on days when the be-exited-and-onramped highway on either side of the causeway is flowing smoothly, the causeway itself will back up. Why, why, why?

(5) TV coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court. Whatever you think of the Court’s decisions, it is undoubtedly true that you are working with nine very (usually) smart people who are dealing with very complicated and usually important issues. Moreover, sometimes when you read the decisions, it is little like reading a synopsis of a soap opera about the Justices’ personal interactions. (Go read the Court’s recent decision about the Clean Water Act in the Rapanos case.) TV coverage of the Court, however, seems to be focused mainly on: (1) distilling its decisions down into five-word summaries that can run on news crawls; and (2) discussing whether those decisions’ political implications. To paraphrase Jon Stewart, in doing this TV news is hurting the country. The part of such coverage that really bugs me is the coverage of cases that the Court doesn’t take (i.e., cases in which it “denies cert” by denying petitions for writs of certiorari). TV coverage always makes a big deal out of the fact that the Court “refused to hear” – that’s about how they always say it – some case that involves a hot-button political issue. Well, the Court denies cert in at least 95% of the cases presented to it. The fact that the Court denied cert in some abortion case or some freedom of religion case doesn’t mean that the Justices have decided that some state’s law on those subjects is OK. It just means that they didn’t think that the case’s facts were sufficiently general to make a good statement of law or that the lower courts have all decided pretty consistently (minimizing the need for the Supreme Court to step in) or just that the Court already has too many cases on its calendar for that year.

(6) Chris O’Donnell. Duh. I saw some picture of him recently where he had grown his hair out and was wearing a weak beard. Unfortunately, those things do not equal talent. Have I mentioned how much it irritates me that this no-talent guy gets to play in the AT&T golf tournament at Pebble Beach?

Stuff I Like

2006-07-20T21:29:00.000-07:00

Now that I have bored you with my list of current pet peeves, I will bore you with some things that currently please me. Now I’m going to avoid the obvious stuff like The Muse, Mermaid, Enthusio, chocolate ice cream and vacations. So here goes:

(1) Tennis on TV. Every year around this time, I get into Wimbledon. The setting is awesome, like they’re playing tennis in Fenway Park. And the grass court surface lends itself to really great tennis where the players are flying around and, in particular, playing some serve-and-volley tennis where someone is right up at the net hitting pure reaction shots. Even more impressive is when someone is rushing up to the net and the other player whacks the ball right at the on-rushing player’s feet and he or she chips it back on the run (which I believe is called a half-volley). The athleticism involved there is something else, kind of like a point guard throwing a wicked behind-the-back pass on the dead run on a fast break. Moreover, tennis just fits beautifully on a TV screen. You pretty much can see all of the action in one steady shot. There really isn’t any other sport that I can think of that works that well on TV. Basketball is pretty good, but the TV only really covers half the court and you can’t keep your eye on every player all the time. So, anyway pretty much every early July, I get into tennis, watch the Wimbledon finals, then watch some of the U.S. Open in August and September and then forget that tennis exists until the next July.

(2) Pixar movies. The kids and I just went to see Cars the other day, after many requests by Enthusio. We had to go to Maryland (from Delaware). The kids thought that was kind of weird, to go to another state to see a movie. Hey, man, you know what they say: variety is the spice of life. But, anyway, I pretty much consider Pixar’s collection of movies to be one of the great cultural achievements of the last 25 years or so. What you are talking about is the marriage of really fabulous technology – I don’t think that there had been anything like the first Toy Story before it came out and the technology has gotten better and better over the years – with great storytelling. To me, three of the Pixar movies are flat-out great Films: (1) Toy Story; (2) Toy Story 2; and (3) The Incredibles (my personal favorite). Two are, to my mind, Film Minuses: (1) Monsters, Inc.; and (2) Finding Nemo. The last two, Cars and A Bug’s Life, are Movies. Not one stinking Doogal or Shark’s Tale in the bunch. Not one where I walked out thinking, “There’s 90 minutes of my life I won’t get back.” Among other computer-animated movies, only the two Shrek movies are comparable and even that is giving a break to Shrek 2 by letting really excessive pop culture references slide (Princess Fiona’s Matrix fighting in the first Shrek was funny, incorporating Starbucks as a major plot device in Shrek 2 was a bit much). So, Steve Jobs and John Lassetter, I salute you.

(3) Trees. It is very easy to take trees for granted. They’re there. They’re frequently green. In places that I have never lived, they turn colors in the fall (the second most common complaint about California from non-Californians – other than “there’s earthquakes there” – seems to be “the trees don’t turn in the fall” – yes, but you can frequently wear shorts until Thanksgiving). I often hit them with misstruck golf balls. Nonetheless, you can’t do without them, either physiologically or aesthetically. In the Central Valley, they are essential for shade in the summer (the Sacramento area supposedly has the world’s second-largest urban forest after Paris). My sister TFON once sent me one of those e-mail lists that, in this case, was entitled “You Might Have Grown Up In The Central Valley If:” and one of the two items that I remember was: “You believe that shade is the world’s most precious natural resource.” True that. (The other item that I remember on the list was “You always keep a pair of oven mitts in your car in the summer so you can touch the steering wheel.” Double true.) More than that, though, trees really almost make a city themselves. When the Muse and I were moving back to where we now live after an absence of several years, the thing that struck us both was how pretty the streets with overhanging trees are. During the years that we were gone, the dominant image that always arose in my mind about the place was driving down one particular street with overhanging trees. We just stayed in Maryland for a few days and the biggest thing that struck was how trees were everywhere. It was quite pretty. Trees, they’re good.

(4) Henry Winkler. Sitting here working on this post on American Airlines, looking up at the little tiny TV screens on which they play only CBS material, I see that the show that had Henry Winkler on it this last year is on. (They were promising me Letterman and then only showed a Top Ten List. It was a funny one, but that was bad form.) This show had a good cast: Mr Winkler, the lovely Paula Marshall, the amazing Stockard Channing (who still appears to be in her mid-30’s, just like she did in 1978 in Grease) and this pretty good actor whose name I don’t know who used to be the Ducky-type guy on this show “Popular” that The Muse used to watch. Despite the good case, the show apparently stunk, badly, and was cancelled. Nonetheless, seeing it reminded me how much I like Henry Winkler. Now here is a guy who is an icon to people my age – he was The Fonz. The coolest guy, possibly ever. Turned on the jukebox by smacking it just right. Said “ehhhhh” all the time. Immortalized in Pulp Fiction’s climatic scene. (“Do you know Fonzie? Yeah, I know Fonzie. And what was Fonzie? He was cool. That’s right Fonzie was cool, so we’re gonna be just like Fonzie and be cool.”) Now, given Mr. Winkler’s status as an icon, he easily could have slipped into a career of only wanting to be the coolest guy in everything. You know, sort of the way that Michael Douglas apparently views himself as the put-on American male – despite his having grown up the child of a Hollywood star and having been given the money to produce One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest at about 13 – and will only play that part now. But, no, the Fonz is willing to play all kinds of things and he does it really well. He was pretty brilliant in Night Shift as the put-on schlub who finds his spine. He was quite brilliant as the totally incompetent, more than a little weird family attorney on Arrested Development. And we saw him as a recurring character on The Practice as a guy with a bug crush fetish that eventually resulted in his son killing someone, but he confessed to doing it and went to prison. So you have to give it up for Henry Winkler. He could have been David Caruso. Thank God he’s not.

Duh

2006-05-19T22:10:00.000-07:00

Evel Knievel, 67, living in serious pain: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/more/05/19/bc.evelknievel.ap/index.html.

No! Way!

The guy looks like death in a Hawaiian shirt.

I guess when you spend your life jumping over things and frequently crashing, you end up having things like this written about you: "The man who survived 300 perilous motorcycle jumps and once climbed into a rocket-powered cycle to fly over a canyon, now stays close to an oxygen tank, ingests 50 pills a day and sucks on lollipops that deliver fentanyl, a heavy-duty painkiller."

Damn, I thought he was pretty cool when I was 6, though. That rocket car he tried to jump over the Snake River in was the bomb! Literally.

Pandemonium

2006-05-07T21:22:00.000-07:00

Well, another Kings season has come to the usual bitter end. Ah, hell, it wasn't that bitter. They were 8 games under .500 at one point, made the playoffs and played some good games against the Spurs, the defending champs. Plus, as long as Ron Artest doesn't start any fires (literally), they look very nice for next year, even if they don't sign Bonzi Wells. It would be nice if Brad Miller could jump and Rick Adelman may be out (which wouldn't break my heart). Wait 'til next year. That being said, I got to go to Game 3 of the series and that was fan-tastic. In a very literal sense, there really is nothing like being at a great basketball game.

As you probably know, the Kings won Game 3 in an almost impossible way. Michael Finley on the Spurs made a 3 with 40 seconds or so left to put the Spurs up one. Artest then dribbles the ball off his leg or his foot out of bounds with something like 29 seconds left. So the Kings are down by one with 29 seconds left and the Spurs have the ball. No freakin' way the Kings win that game. It's total depression in ARCO. But Mike Bibby gets a steal with 8 seconds left, passes to Kevin Martin, who flips the ball over his head and Tim Duncan, the ball bounces three times on the rim, the backboard lights up and the horn goes off and then the ball drops through. The Kings win!

And the ARCO crowd went absolutely freakin' insane. Along with 17,000 or so of my closest friends, I am going absolutely crazy, screaming and jumping up and down. No one leaves for 10 or 15 minutes, just screaming, chanting, roaring. Maloofs running around on the court. Total pandemonium!

There is simply nothing like it. Here's this huge space, you know, 300 feet or so long, 250 feet or so high, 300 feet or so wide, just filled with noise, noise, noise, people jumping up and down. 17,000 people going nuts together at exactly the same time. That is not an experience that you have very often and you can't have that experience in very many places.

Basketball has been my favorite sport to watch in person. Baseball is my favorite sport and I still don't think that great basketball matches great baseball. There is nothing like sitting there watching your team trying to wriggle out of a bases-loaded-one-out jam in the eighth inning at the end of the season or in the playoffs. You just sit there and wait and watch. You're praying, praying. After all of that, if your pitcher gets the guy, there's this huge release. Basketball is too frenetic to quite match that level of focused intensity.

Nonetheless, I haven't ever watched a great baseball game in person, but I have watched a lot of great basketball games in person and I can't imagine that the scene of a great live baseball game really exceeds that of a great basketball game. I always loved going to basketball games in high school because our gym was so loud and so hot that you just knew that it affected the game. There was a playoff game my junior year when we were playing the second-ranked team in the region at home. The gym was full an hour and a half before the game and was loud the whole game. With about 10 seconds left, the other team's star was fouled shooting and got two free throws with his team down one. So he makes two free throws and his team goes up one. Our team calls timeout. Our crowd was chanting "Air ball" the whole timeout and the guy misses the first free throw. Our team gets the ball and puts in a shot as the clock runs out. I still remember a kid across the court in about the third row throwing his hat up in the air. It was great. And there were other games like that. People standing in the exits shoulder to shoulder with the fire marshal.

When I first started going to Kings games, I was really surprised that you could get the same vibe that we had going in our high school gym in a place with at least five times as many seats. And I've been there a number of times when the crowd was going absolutely bananas. But I don't think that I have ever seen it like at the end of Game 3 this year.

Being immersed in an environment like that is just rare. Where can you find 17,000 people all together in the first place? I guess you can find that many people at concerts, but they don't really involve the drama of a sports game. I mean, the band is going to come out and play one of their best songs for an encore. At a concert, you don't go from total misery to total happiness in 10 seconds like at the end of Game 3. You don't get that kind of feeling in regular life. This is why some people -- like me -- are sports junkies.

So I have got to call this Kings season a success because they gave us a truly great moment of pandemonium. I mean, if your team doesn't win a ring, how do measure how good a season was? Without a ring, your team lost at the end. One good way to measure a season then, I think, is whether your team gave you an absolutely classic moment that you'll remember during that season. And the Kings gave us one in 2005-2006, so I'll call that a success.

80's Quiz Answers

2006-05-07T19:35:00.000-07:00

After having been shamed by a few people for having not posted answers to my 80's quiz, I figured that I better do that before I got into really big trouble. So here they are, answers in all caps:

1980

1. Who shot J.R.? HIS MISTRESS KRISTEN, WHO I BELIEVED WAS KILLED IN THE FOLLOWING SEASON’S CLIFFHANGER

2. Who scored the winning goal when the U.S. hockey team beat the U.S.S.R. in the 1980 Olympics? MIKE ERUZIONE. I MET HIM IN A RESTAURANT IN SAN JOSE LAST YEAR. HE WAS VERY GRACIOUS ABOUT ME BUGGING HIM WHILE HE WAS EATING HIS BREAKFAST.

3. Bonus true or false: By beating the U.S.S.R., the U.S. won the gold medal. FALSE. THE U.S. STILL HAD TO BEAT FINLAND. THEY DIDN’T HAVE A “GOLD MEDAL” GAME, BUT HAD SOME KIND OF LOONEY POINT SYSTEM.

4. Song lyric: “So I got to ride, ride like the ______, to be free again.” WIND. CHRISTOPHER CROSS WAS THE MAN TO ME WHEN I WAS 10.

5. Multiple choice: The Pina Colada song guy said he was not into: (a) yogurt; (b) yoga; (c) yogis; or (d) Yo MTV Raps. YOGA, ALTHOUGH I BET HE WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN INTO YO MTV RAPS EITHER. HE WAS PROBABLY INTO YOGURT, BUT I DON’T EVEN WANT TO THINK ABOUT HIM AND YOGIS.

6. The “jive translator” woman in Airplane! was: (a) Harriet Nelson; (b) Mrs. Brady; (c) Mrs. Cleaver; or (d) Mrs. Partridge. MRS. CLEAVER. MRS. BRADY IS THE ONE WHO DATED HER TV SON GREG.

7. Movie line bonus: “Joey, do you like ________________ movies?” GLADIATOR, ALSO FROM AIRPLANE! THE PILOT ALSO ASKED JOEY IF HE: (1) LIKED LOCKER ROOMS; AND (2) HAD EVER SEEN A GROWN MAN NAKED.

8. According to George Bush, Ronald Reagan’s economic plan was “_________ economics.” VOODOO. OH, THE IRONY.

9. In The Empire Strikes Back, Luke’s _________ is killed by a ________ on the planet _______. TAUN-TAUN, BANTHA, HOTH. THE SCENES INVOLVING THE BANTHA ATTACK ALLOWED GEORGE LUCAS TO EXPLAIN AWAY MARK HAMILL’S MOTORCYCLE-CRASH SCARS.

10. Star Wars Bonus: Name as many Muppets as you can who have the same voice as Yoda. (One point for each Muppet.) FRANK OZ DID THE VOICE OF YODA, WHO ENTHUSIO POINTED OUT HAS THE SAME VOICE AS GROVER. FOZZIE, TOO, I BELIEVE.

11. Movie line: “Nazis, I hate ________ Nazis.” ILLNOIS, AS STATED BY ELWOOD BLUES OF THE BLUES BROTHERS.

12. Bonus movie line: “Hey, look, the new ___________ are out early this year.” OLDSMOBILES, AS ALSO STATED BY ELWOOD BLUES AS THE BLUES BROTHERS DRIVE AROUND DESTROYING A MALL.

1981

13. Sandra Day O’Connor became the first female Supreme Court justice in 1981. Later, in the 80’s, she attended an event in Washington, D.C., at which a Washington Redskins running back got drunk and told her, “Hey, Sandy baby, ________________.” Complete the quote for a point and name the running back for a point. LOOSEN UP, BY JOHN RIGGINS OF THE WASHINTON REDSKINS, WHO LATER WON A SUPER BOWL MVP.

14. John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan to impress what actress? JODIE FOSTER.

15. Bonus Reagan true or false: Ronald Reagan would approve of that actress’s lifestyle. FALSE. JODIE FOSTER, I BELIEVE, HAS COME OUT AS A LESBIAN AND REAGAN WASN’T TOO INTO THAT.

16. Movie line: “Throw me the ______, I throw you the _____.” IDOL, WHIP. FROM RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, BY INDY’S ASSISTANT. THE ASSISTANT, OF COURSE, SCREWED INDY OVER BY NOT THROWING HIM THE WHIP, BUT HE GOT HIS SHORTLY THEREAFTER.

17. Bonus movie line: “________, why’d it have to be _________?” SNAKES, SNAKES, ALSO RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. FOLLOWED BY INDY’S FRIEND SALLAH SAYING, “ASPS, VERY DANGEROUS, INDY, YOU GO FIRST.”

18. Fernando Valenzuela’s country of origin was ___________. MEXICO.

19. Bonus sports question: Because of the unique playoff structure Major League Baseball adopted because the 1981 players’ strike, what team had the best total record in 1981, but did not make the playoffs? CINCINNATI REDS. THEY FINISHED ½ GAME BEHIND THE DODGERS IN THE PART OF THE SEASON BEFORE THE STRIKE AND SOMETHING LIKE TWO GAMES BEHIND THE ASTROS IN THE PART OF THE SEASON AFTER THE STRIKE. OH WELL, TOO BAD FOR THEM. L.A. DODGERS: 1981 WORLD CHAMPIONS.

20. The first video on MTV was _____________________. VIDEO KILLED THE RADIO STAR. OF COURSE, THAT WAS WHEN MTV STILL SHOWED VIDEOS. MAYBE THE RADIO STAR WOULD STILL BE ALIVE IF MTV HAD COME OUT OF THE GATE WITH REAL WORLD/ROAD RULES CHALLENGE 18: SON OF THE GAUNTLET.

21. Bonus: One point for each of the original MTV VJ’s that you can name. I ONLY REMEMBER JJ JACKSON AND MARTHA QUINN’S NAMES. THERE ALSO WERE NINA WITH THE BIG HAIR AND SOME OTHERS.

22. Movie line: “He’s got about 200 yards to the hole, looks like he’s got about a _________.” NINE-IRON, FROM BILL MURRAY’S CLASSIC AB-LIDDED MONOLOGUE IN CADDYSHACK. IT’S IN THE HOLE! OF COURSE, NOW, PRO GOLFERS DO SEEM TO HIT NINE-IRONS 200 YARDS.

23. According to the Reagan administration, ketchup was: (a) the backbone of the California tomato economy; (b) a vegetable for purposes of school lunches; (c) the best substitute available for blood in “Bedtime for Bonzo;” or (d) an important nutritional supplement to French fries. B. AND, REMEMBER, THEY’RE FREEDOM FRIES.

1982

24. Devo appeared in a commercial for what consumer product? MOTOR SCOOTERS.

25. Bonus Devo question: In what brand’s commercial did Devo appear? HONDA.

26. Who made “The Catch” on a pass from Joe Montana? DWIGHT CLARK.

27. Football Bonus: The nickname of the 49ers’ star linebacker in 1982 was ___________. JIM “HACKSAW” REYNOLDS. EARLIER IN HIS CAREER, HE HAD SAWED A CAR IN HALF WITH A HACKSAW. APPARENTLY, HE WAS AN EARLY FLAXSEED OIL USER.

28. The Stanford band member who was run over at the end of UC Berkeley’s “The Play” was the ______________ player. TROMBONE PLAYER.

29. Sports bonus true or false: One of the UC Berkeley players who participated in The Play is currently serving a life sentence for murder. TRUE. MARIET FORD, WHO IS THE GUY WHO THROWS THE BALL OVER HIS SHOULDER RIGHT BEFORE THEY START RUNNING THROUGH THE BAND, WAS CONVICTED OF KILLING HIS WIFE.

30. Music: What kind of jeans did Diane wear? BOBBY BROOKS. JACK DRIBBLED THEM OFF.

31. True or false: The Go-Go’s just said no. UH, FALSE. THEY WERE INTO COKE PRETTY HEAVILY, I BELIEVE.

32. The African-American Miss America was _______________________. VANESSA WILLIAMS.

33. Bonus true or false: She did not serve her whole term because explicit pictures of her were published in Playboy and she was forced to resign. FALSE, IT WAS PENTHOUSE. OF COURSE, HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF ANOTHER MISS AMERICA HAVING ANY KIND OF DECENT CAREER? PHYLLIS GEORGE’S CHICKEN DOESN’T COUNT.

34. In Flashdance, Jennifer Beals’ character was a __________ (job) from ______________ (city). WELDER, PITTSBURGH. ‘CAUSE, WHEN I THINK OF HOT DANCING, I THINK OF PITTSBURGH.

35. Movie bonus true or false: Jennifer Beals did her own dancing in Flashdance. FALSE. SHE HAD A DANCE DOUBLE, WHOSE CONTRIBUTIONS WERE UNCREDITED, I BELIEVE.

1983

36. Jabba the Hut planned to feed Luke Skywalker and Han Solo to what creature on Tatooine? THE SARLAAC.

37. Star Wars Bonus: How long was that creature reputed to digest its food? 1,000 YEARS. POOR BOBA FETT.

38. Who directed the Thriller video? JOHN LANDIS.

39. Bonus: Who was killed on the set of a 80’s movie directed by that director and what movie was it? VIC MORROW, THE TWILIGHT ZONE.

40. Song lyric: “Her name is _____ and she dances on the _______.” RIO, SAND. THE MUSE CANNOT BELIEVE THAT THIS IS THE DURAN DURAN SONG THAT YOU NOW HEAR THE MOST.

41. What two future NBA Hall of Famers were members of the University of Houston basketball team that North Carolina State beat in the NCAA championship game on a last-second dunk? HAKEEM “THE DREAM” OLAJUWON AND CLYDE “THE GLIDE” DREXLER ARE THE TWO MEMBERS OF PHI SLAMMA JAMMA.

42. Basketball Bonus: One of the Houston players used one first name in college and another in the NBA. What were those closely-related names? IN COLLEGE, HAKEEM WAS KNOWN AS AKEEM.

43. Not realizing that his microphone was on, Ronald Reagan said that what country had been outlawed and that what would begin immediately? SOVIET UNION, BOMBING.

44. Kevin Bacon did not jump off of the tractor during Footloose’s tractor chicken game because _______________. HIS SHOELACES GOT TANGLED UP IN THE PEDALS. HE WOULD HAVE BEEN AS GOOD A FARMER AS ME.

45. Footloose bonus: One of Kevin Bacon’s friends in Footloose was in what Quentin Tarantino movie and his character nickname was ______________. CHRIS PENN WAS IN RESERVOIR DOGS AND WAS GOOD GUY EDDIE. AND TO THINK THAT HE SHOWED SUCH HOT DANCE MOVES AT THE PROM IN FOOTLOOSE.

46. According to David Bowie, what color shoes do you put on to dance the blues? RED, IN LET’S DANCE. OF COURSE, IT WASN’T CLEAR THAT DAVID BOWIE DID MUCH DANCING. HE APPEARS TO HAVE LEARNED HIS DANCE MOVES AT THE DAVY JONES-AXL ROSE SCHOOL OF DANCE.

1984

47. What actress appeared in the video for Dancin’ in the Dark? COURTNEY COX.

48. Boss Bonus true or false: Bruce Springsteen endorsed Ronald Reagan’s re-election campaign. FALSE. REAGAN’S CAMPAIGN STARTED PLAYING THE CHORUS OF SPRINGSTEEN’S BITTER VIETNAM-AFTERMATH SONG “BORN IN THE USA” AT CAMPAIGN RALLIES AND THE BOSS MADE THEM STOP.

49. Who won the Olympic gold medal in women’s figure skating? KATARINA WITT.

50. Bonus: Who won the silver? ROSALYN SUMNERS.

51. Double bonus: The gold and silver medalists initially tied. What was the tiebreaker? WITT HAD HIGHER ARTISTIC SCORES. FREAKIN’ COMMUNIST BLOC JUDGES.

52. The “Where’s the Beef” lady’s real name was _________________. CLARA PELLER.

53. Beef Bonus: Wendy’s later sued the “Where’s the Beef” lady for copyright infringement for appearing in another commercial and alluding to the location of the beef. TRUE. SHE APPEARED IN SOME OTHER COMMERCIAL ABOUT MEAT, SITTING IN A ROCKING CHAIR AND SAYING, “IT’S IN THERE.”

54. Movie line: “____________ would so capture the moment.” BLACK-AND-WHITE, FROM SIXTEEN CANDLES. SAID EITHER BY JOHN CUSACK OR HIS FRIEND WHEEZE WHEN FARMER TED SHOWS UP AT THEIR HOUSE WITH THE PROM QUEEN IN THE BACK SEAT OF THE ROLLS.

55. Bonus movie line: “Get him a _______ bag!” BODY BAG, FROM THE KARATE KID. THE TV SHOW THE OFFICE RECENTLY HAD AN ALLUSION TO ONE OF THE OTHER GREAT KARATE KID LINES: “SWEEP THE LEG!”

56. True or false: McDonald’s went into bankruptcy because the Soviet bloc boycotted the 1984 Summer Olympics, the Americans won so many more medals than had been expected and McDonald’s was running an “American gets a medal, you get free food” promotion. FALSE, ALTHOUGH I SURE ATE A LOT OF FREE McDONALD’S FOOD THAT SUMMER.

57. What was the last single released from Thriller? PYT. JUSTIFIABLY THE LAST SINGLE.

58. After the Olympics, Mary Lou Retton became the national spokeperson for what relatively low-profile sport: (a) curling; (b) gymnastics; (c) bowling; or (d) cow-tipping. C, BOWLING. MARY LOU REALLY CASHED IN.

59. Sonny Crockett’s alligator was named _______________. ELVIS.

1985

60. True or false: The first Air Jordans were partially white. FALSE, THEY WERE JUST BLACK AND RED AND JORDAN EVENTUALLY GOT FINED FOR WEARING THEM, I BELIEVE.

61. SNL: Tommy Flanagan’s imaginary wife was ____________________ (hint: he claimed she was his wife, she wasn’t actually imaginary). MORGAN FAIRCHILD, WHO LATER PLAYED CHANDLER’S MOM ON FRIENDS AND, ON FRIENDS, HAD HAD CHANDLER WITH CHANDLER’S DAD KATHLEEN TURNER. FOR THOSE OF US WHO WERE 15-YEAR-OLD BOYS IN THE 1980’S, SEEING KATHLEEN TURNER AS A TRANSSEXUAL WAS VERY DISTURBING.

62. Van Halen fired David Lee Roth and hired _____________ as their lead singer. SAMMY HAGAR, LEADING TO SHORT-LIVED RUMORS THAT THE BAND WOULD BE RENAMED “VAN HAGAR.” GOOD THING THEY DIDN’T DO THAT, GIVEN THAT THEY EVENTUALLY FIRED SAMMY, TOO.

63. Van Halen Bonus: Van Halen’s first album with the new lead singer was named _________. 5150.

64. Van Halen Double bonus: That album title refers to ______________________. THE CALIFORNIA WELFARE & INSTITUTIONS CODE SECTION THAT AUTHORIZES DETENTIONS OF PEOPLE WITH MENTAL-HEALTH PROBLEMS.

65. Van Halen Triple bonus: David Lee Roth now is a licensed: (a) distributor of alcoholic beverages; (b) massage therapist; (c) emergency medical technician; or (d) minister, by virtue of having answered an ad at the back of Rolling Stone. C, EMT. WOULDN’T IT MAKE YOU FEEL GOOD TO SEE DAVID LEE ROTH AT THE SCENE OF YOUR CAR ACCIDENT?

66. True or false: In 1985, numerous Major League Baseball players were dragged before a grand jury to discuss their use of steroids. FALSE, IT WAS COKE.

67. State the amount of electrical power necessary for Marty McFly’s car to go back and forth in time. 1.21 GIGAWATTS!!!

68. Movie bonus: What kind of car was the time machine? DELOREAN.

69. Double movie bonus true or false: The businessman for whom the car was named was convicted of cocaine trafficking during the 80’s. FALSE, JOHN DELOREAN WAS ACQUITTED OF COCAINE TRAFFICKING CHARGES BECAUSE THE JURY THOUGHT HE HAD BEEN ENTRAPPED.

70. According to David Byrne, where is water flowing? UNDERGROUND. AND IT DOES FLOW UNDERGROUND, JUST VERY SLOWLY.

71. Mrs. Huxtable was an attorney. What kind of doctor was Mr. Huxtable? OB/GYN, I BELIEVE.

72. Cosby Show bonus: Based on the show’s depiction of Mrs. Huxtable’s work schedule, approximately how many hours a year did Mrs. Huxtable bill at her law firm: (a) 0; (b) 1,000; (c) 1,500; or (d) 2,000? AS AN ATTORNEY, REMEMBERING THAT SHOW, I AM TEMPTED TO SAY A, 0, BUT WE’LL GIVE HER A BREAK AND SAY B, 1000.

73. Multiple choice: Why did Chicago Bears quarterback Jim McMahon always wear sunglasses: (a) because of the Corey Hart song; (b) as child, a fork got stuck in his eye and one of his pupils was permanently dilated; (c) the future was so bright; or (d) bright lights gave him migraines and he had to save his unshaded time for games. B. HOW MANY OF YOU THOUGHT B WAS ONE OF THE THROW-AWAY ANSWERS? RAISE YOUR HANDS.

74. What would kill a Gremlin (not like “all the party boys drive a Grem-i-lin,” but like the movie)? SUNLIGHT. OF COURSE, IF YOU HADN’T FED HIM AFTER MIDNIGHT, YOU WOULDN’T HAVE A GREMLIN PROBLEM, WOULD YOU?

1986

75. Shortly before the Challenger exploded, mission control told the crew to “Go with” what? THROTTLE UP.

76. What famous singer sang back-up on Dire Straits’ song “Money for Nothing?” STING.

77. Money for Nothing Bonus: How did Dire Straits come to know that singer? STING HAD SUED DIRE STRAITS FOR COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT OVER ANOTHER SONG.

78. Rocky fought Ivan Drago in what city on what day? MOSCOW, ON CHRISTMAS. NOT TOO DRAMATIC, REALLY.

79. Movie line: “That’s right, _______, I am _________.” (Hint: if the actor wasn’t what fills in that last blank then, he is now.) ICEMAN, DANGEROUS FROM TOP GUN. AND YOU KNOW WHO STARRED IN THAT.

80. Bonus movie question: A supporting actor in what movie released in 1986 is now playing a polygamist on TV? BILL PAXTON WAS HUDSON IN ALIENS AND NOW PLAYS A POLYGAMIST ON HBO’S BIG LOVE.

81. Double bonus movie line: In that movie, the actor said: “_____ _____, man, _____ ______.” GAME OVER, GAME OVER.

82. True or false: In Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, the Red Sox’s Bill Buckner let the Mets’ Mookie Wilson’s ground ball roll through his legs, allowing the Mets to score the tying and winning runs. FALSE, THE TYING RUN HAD ALREADY SCORED ON A WILD PITCH DURING MOOKIE WILSON’S AT-BAT.

83. Bonus: The MVP of the 1986 World Series is, or at least was, married to a famous female golfer. Name both of them. RAY KNIGHT AND NANCY LOPEZ.

84. Fill-in: William “The __________” Perry. THE REFRIDGERATOR.

85. The detective agency on Moonlighting was named _________________. BLUE MOON.

86. TV bonus: On Moonlighting, one of Miss DiPesto’s boyfriends also appeared in two well-known 80’s movies. In Revenge of the Nerds, he was Booger. Name: (1) the other well-known 80’s movie in which he appeared; (2) the type of test he had the morning after he was being followed by a character played by Joe Pantiliano of Sopranos and The Matrix fame in that movie; and (3) the nickname he gave to Mr. Pantiliano’s character. (1) RISKY BUSINESS; (2) A TRIG MID-TERM; AND (3) GUIDO THE KILLER PIMP.

87. Cameron’s father had what kind of car? A FERRARI. “HAD” BEING THE OPERATIVE WORD SINCE CAMERON KICKED DOWN INTO THE RAVINE.

88. TV bonus: Name two 80’s TV shows in which the same make of car as owned by Cameron’s father was featured prominently. (Hint: two featured tropical climates.) MAGNUM, P.I., AND MIAMI VICE. MAGNUM HAD A 308 AND SONNY CROCKETT HAD A DAYTONA, THE COOLEST TV CAR EVER.

89. Movie bonus: What music plays as the parking attendants drive Cameron’s dad’s car over a bump and catch air? THE MAIN STAR WARS THEME.

1987

90. Name the three Beastie Boys. KING AD ROCK, MCA AND MIKE D.

91. True or false: Bono’s real name is Dave. FALSE. THE EDGE’S REAL NAME IS DAVE. BONO’S REAL NAME IS PAUL. IF ANYONE IN U2 NEEDS A FAKE NAME, THOUGH, IT’S LARRY THE DRUMMER.

92. U2 Bonus: In what city did Bono spray-paint on public art and get fined? SAN FRANCISCO. DIANNE FEINSTEIN GOT MAD, MAD, MAD.

93. Movie fill-in: Glenn Close took Michael Douglas’s daughter to the __________________. AMUSEMENT PARK.

94. Bonus movie true or false: The ending of the above-referenced movie was reshot because test audiences didn’t like the original ending. TRUE. I BELIEVE THAT THE ORIGINAL ENDING INVOLVED GLENN CLOSE’S CHARACTER KILLING HERSELF AND FRAMING MICHAEL DOUGLAS.

95. Oliver North’s attorney Brendan Sullivan said he was not: (a) an idiot; (b) a potted plant; (c) a rocket scientist; or (d) someone who liked to represent people convicted of felonies whose convictions subsequently were overturned on technicalities. B, A POTTED PLANT.

96. Multiple choice: Jimmy Swaggart said that, if his flock didn’t contribute several million dollars to his ministry, God would: (a) be really mad; (b) call him home; (c) unleash tornadoes across the Midwest; or (d) vote for Pat Robertson for President. B, CALL HIM HOME. APPARENTLY, SWAGGART’S FLOCK SENT HIM THE REQUISITE COIN.

97. What did Diane have on her face when Sam asked her to marry him? A FACIAL MASK.

98. TV bonus: What song made Carla dance involuntarily: (a) Shake Your Tailfeather; (b) Shout; (c) Louie Louie; or (d) Twist and Shout, but only the Isley Brothers’ version. B, SHOUT. SHAKE YOUR TAILFEATHER WAS IN FERRIS BUELLER, I BELIEVE, AS WAS THE BEATLES’ VERSION OF TWIST AND SHOUT. LOUIE AND LOUIE HAS BEEN IN 50% OF ALL MOVIES MADE SINCE 1960.

99. Movie line: “Greed, ___ ___ ___ __ ___ ____, is good.” FOR LACK OF A BETTER WORD, FROM WALL STREET.

1988

100. What candidate won the Iowa caucuses on the Republican side? PAT ROBERTSON.

101. Democratic presidential candidates Dick Gephardt and Michael Dukakis supposedly had how many eyebrows put together? ONE. DUKAKIS HAD A UNIBROW AND GEPHARDT HAD NO EYEBROWS WHATSOEVER. LITERALLY, GEPHARDT WAS GETTING EYEBROW DYE JOBS DURING HIS SHORT-LIVED CAMPAIGN.

102. Who was on base when Kirk Gibson hit his home run against Dennis Eckersley in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series? MIKE DAVIS, WHO HAD PLAYED WITH ECKERSLEY ON THE A’S THE YEAR BEFORE.

103. Name the theme song of George Bush’s presidential campaign. DON’T WORRY, BE HAPPY.

104. Bush Bonus true or false: If you had heard that song one more time, your head would have exploded. TRUE. IF YOU ANSWERED FALSE TO THIS, YOU EITHER HAVE REPRESSED 1988 OR YOU WEREN’T ALIVE THEN.

105. Political fill-in: “Senator, I knew ___________, I served with __________, Senator, you’re no ________________.” JACK KENNEDY, JACK KENNEDY, JACK KENNEDY. MAYBE THIS SMACKDOWN IS WHY DAN QUAYLE THOUGHT THAT “POTATO” ENDED IN E.

106. Name the carnival machine that caused the kid to become Tom Hanks in Big. ZOLTAR. NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH LOTHAR, OF THE HILL PEOPLE, FROM SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE.

107. Big Movie bonus: Robert Loggia appeared as Tom Hanks’ boss in Big and as the evil father-in-law in another 80’s. Name: (1) the 80’s movie in which Mr. Loggia was the evil father-in-law; (2) the star of that movie; and (3) the competitive sport in which the star participated in the movie. (1) OVER THE TOP; (2) SYLVESTER STALLONE; AND (3) ARM WRESTLING. THE ONLY REASON THAT I KNOW THIS IS THAT MY FRIEND AND I TRIED TO GET INTO PLATOON, BUT IT WAS SOLD OUT, SO WE WENT WITH OVER THE TOP. WE WEREN’T VERY DISCRIMINATING.

108. SNL: The first guest on Sprockets with Dieter was: (a) Ben Stiller playing Eddie Munster; (b) Jim Carrey playing Iggy Pop; (c) Dana Carvey playing Andy Warhol; or (d) Phil Hartman playing Ronald Reagan. A, BEN STILLER PLAYING EDDIE MUNSTER. DIETER’S MONKEY BIT HIM.

109. According to the guys on the mound in Bull Durham: (a) candlesticks always make a nice gift; (b) a Blaupunkt is a better car stereo than a Pioneer; (c) you have to cut the head off a live chicken to take a curse off a mitt; (d) Millie was “better” than Annie; (e) Pantera was a better band than Quiet Riot; (f) all of the above; (g) a and c, but not b, d and e; (h) a and d, but not b, c and e; (i) b, d and e, but not a and c; or (j) a, b and d, but not b and c. G, ALTHOUGH THERE ALSO WAS DISCUSSION OF QUADRAPHONIC BLAUPUNKTS IN THE MOVIE.

1989

110. What Communist country opened its borders shortly before East Germany did and was the first Communist country to do so? HUNGARY. I BELIEVE THAT THE EAT GERMAN LEADER WHO OPENED THE BORDERS WAS EGON KRENZ. YOU KNEW COMMUNSIUM WAS DOOMED WHEN THEIR LEADERS’ NAMES WERE SO CLOSE TO IGOR.

111. Political bonus: In the famous photograph from after the Tiananmen Square massacre, in front of how many tanks did the protestor stand? FOUR.

112. Name the restaurant involved in Do the Right Thing. SAL’S PIZZERIA.

113. Bonus: Name Public Enemy’s DJ. TERMINATOR X.

114. Super movie bonus: The proprietor of the restaurant in Do the Right Thing played the brother of an Oscar winner in an Oscar-winning 80’s movie, although the actor didn’t win his Academy Award in that particular movie. Name: (1) the two actors; (2) the Oscar-winning ‘80’s movie in which they played brothers; (3) one or more of the Oscars that that movie won; and (4) the movie in which the one actor won his Oscar. (1) DANNY AIELLO (WHO PLAYED SAL) AND NICHOLAS CAGE; (2) MOONSTRUCK; (3) BEST ACTRESS (FOR CHER) AND BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY; (4) CAGE WON A BEST ACTOR OSCAR IN LEAVING LAS VEGAS.

115. Name the members of the Traveling Wilburys. GEORGE HARRISON, ROY ORBISON, TOM PETTY AND JEFF LYNNE. AS THE MUSE PUTS IT, YOU KNOW YOU HAVE A PROBLEM WHEN GEORGE HARRISON WINS THE BAND’S BEAUTY CONTEST.

116. In the Simpsons’ pilot, Homer gave his family what for Christmas. A DOG NAMED SANTA’S LITTLE HELPER.

117. Movie fill-in: “Have you ever danced with the _______ in the pale __________?” DEVIL, MOONLIGHT, BY JACK NICHOLSON IN BATMAN. THAT LINE NEVER MADE ANY SENSE TO ME.

118. In 1989, for the first time since Reconstruction, an African-American was elected governor of a U.S. state. Name the state and the governor. VIRGINIA, L. DOUGLAS WILDER.

119. Valeria Golino starred as the romantic female lead in two major American movies in 1988-1989. Name: (1) the movies; and (2) the male romantic lead in each movie. (1) RAINMAN AND BIG-TOP PEE WEE; AND (2) TOM CRUISE AND PEE WEE HERMAN.

120. Bonus point: Describe in one sentence which of Ms. Golino’s male romantic leads you now find more normal and why. I’M GOING WITH PEE WEE, FOR OBVIOUS REASONS.

121. Tone Loc did not make which one of the following songs: (a) Cheeba Cheeba; (b) Wild Thing; (c) Pass the Chronic; or (d) Funky Cold Medina. C, PASS THE CHRONIC, ALTHOUGH, GIVEN THE OTHER SONG TITLES, I’M THINKING C MAY BE THE TITLE OF A BIG COMEBACK SONG BY TONE LOC.

Super, super 80’s bonus question

122. Two actresses played the same part in different Star Trek movies. Name: (1) the part; (2) the actresses; (3) the Star Trek movie in which each first appeared in the part; (4) the long-running TV shows in which each appeared; and (5) the products for which they are now respectively shilling. (1) LIEUTENANT SAAVIK, THE VULCAN STARFLEET LIEUTENANT WHO TAKES THE KOBAYASKI MARU TEST AT THE BEGINNING OF THE WRATH OF KHAN; (2) KRISTIE ALLEY AND KIM CATTRALL; (3) STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN AND (I BELIEVE) STAR TREK VI: ONE OF THE STAR TREK MOVIES THAT MARGINALLY DIDN’T SUCK; (4) CHEERS AND SEX & THE CITY; AND (5) JENNY CRAIG AND THE BOOK “THE ART OF THE FEMININE ORGASM.”

AND THAT'S THE TRUTH, RUTH.

Aliens

2006-04-23T14:24:00.000-07:00

I did something kind of stupid last Thursday night. Don't regret it a bit.

Basically, I was flipping through the local paper and saw that one of the local theaters was showing Aliens that night at 10 p.m. as part of its throw-back program. (Old movies on Thursday nights. We live in a college town.) Aliens was one of my absolute favorite movies as a teenager. Saw it four times in the theater. Since then, I've wanted to see it in the theater again. I blew one chance in about 1994 when it was playing at the Pacific Film Archive more or less across the street from my law school. I blew it again about a year ago when the same local theater was playing it in the throw-back series. At the time, I thought, "Man, I'm old, I'm not going to a two-and-a-half-hour movie that starts at 10 p.m. on a work night." I of course regretted not going the following morning. So, this time, damn it, I went, with The Muse's blessing. Thanks, Muse.

And, man, I am glad that I went. The print was old, so there were little bugs -- not aliens -- on the screen most of the time. Lines, too. The theater staff was really irritating, not starting the movie until after 10 as they gathered written comments, talked about various types of lubes, held a raffle and made the raffle winners "roar like a Viking" to get their winnings. But that still is one hell of a movie.

The last hour of the movie is the most sustained white-knuckle ride I have ever seen. From about the time that the good guys determine that Paul Reiser's character Burke (he should try being a bad guy more often -- he's better at that than trying to be warm and funny) has tried to get the aliens to lay eggs in Ripley and Newt to get the eggs past quarantine for the Company's weapon labs, it is just aliens, aliens, ailens, Ripley and Hicks nailing aliens, Hudson yelling, Burke getting eaten, Hudson getting eaten, Vasquez and Corman getting trapped by aliens and blowing themselves up to kill aliens, Newt falling into water and getting abducted by ailens, Ripley going back to save her from aliens, Ripley slowly realizing that she's in the queen alien's lair, Ripley trying to blow up as much of the alien lair as she can, Ripley trying to get Newt out while the whole place counts down to a thermonuclear explosion brought on the earlier alien-induced crash of the initial transport ship, Ripley thinking she and Newt are stuck on the landing bay by the artificial human Bishop who took the new transport ship off the bay, the queen alien coming up the elevator chasing Ripley, Ripley and Newt getting on the transport, which can't quite get all of its landing gear up, the ship taking off as the whole place detonates, Ripley telling Bishop that he did a good job once they get back to the main ship, you thinking that the movie is more or less done, the queen alien stabbing Bishop and ripping him in half (although he lives because he's artificial), Newt and Ripley trying to hide, Newt getting chased by the alien under the cargo bay floor as the alien uncovers parts of it, Ripley coming out in the loading robot suit and saying -- in the single greatest line in an 80's movie -- "Get away from her, you bitch," Ripley and the alien fighting and then Ripley blowing the alien out of the airlock.

More than that, watching this movie after 20 years was really interesting. Some of the special effects haven't aged well. Many of the shots of ships clearly were shots with models moving against green scenes and kind of look silly (it's interesting to compare them with the shots of the rebel ships attacking the Death Star in Star Wars, which have held up much better because, I think, there was no green screen involved). The ending is still somewhat implausible. Ripley, Bishop and Newt are able to keep from flying into space when Ripley opens the airlock? O-kaaaaay. Ripley's shoe, but not her foot, gets ripped off when the queen alien finally can't hold on anymore? O-kaaaaay. But these are quibbles.

It was really interesting to see how Aliens both went with and played with some of the 80's action movie conventions. There is the obligatory gun-fetish scene, where Ripley straps together various space weapons and loads up on grenades as she's getting ready to go save Newt. That scene could have come straight out of Rambo or Die Hard or Lethal Weapon. Most importantly, though, I just can't think of another 80's action movie -- and really, until recently, any action movie -- that features such a prominent female action star. (Linda Hamilton in the Terminator movies is the only one who even came close.) And her motivation is done very well and not obviously as well. The set-up of Ripley basically being cut off from everything that she had going by the fact that she had been floating through space for 57 years after the end of Alien and had nothing going on, only to find this little girl Newt, who had lost her family, and basically become her mother as something to hold on to is not stated explicitly at all, but you know what's going on. God knows, the motivations of the heroes of other 80's action movies weren't that well-developed or that well-done. (For example, we learn in Lethal Weapon 2 that Riggs is mad at the South African bad guys because they killed his wife when one of the characters telling us that.) It shows you that James Cameron, Aliens' director and the director of the Terminator movies (see Linda Hamilton above), was once a really good director, before he started making hooey like The Abyss (although I have heard that the director's cut makes more sense than what was released initially) and Titanic.

And there are a lot of great lines. "Game over, man, game over!" "They come at night mostly. Mostly." "Ripley, she doesn't have dreams because she's just a piece of plastic." "How did they cut the power, man?!? They're just a bunch of animals!" "You always were an a--h---, Gorman." "Guess she don't like the cornbread either."

I give Aliens a Film rating, just like I would have in 1986 if I had met The Muse by then. So, in the end, I am really glad I did the stupid thing of going to see a 20-year-old, two-and-a-half-hour movie for the fifth time at 10 p.m. on a Thursday night. Try it sometime. Just don't expect to be running at full speed on Friday.

Johnny Cash

2006-04-23T13:45:00.001-07:00

In my continuing consumption of American pop culture like a Whitman's sampler (this is known perjoratively as "being a poser"), I've gotten into Johnny Cash a little lately. I admit that I only got interested because of all of the publicity surrounding the movie "Walk the Line" last year. The Muse and I watched that recently and this post covers that too.

You've got to start with the music, so I bought a CD that's the "Essential Cash" or something similar to that. It's really interesting stuff. I've never liked country music. Partly that's a reaction to lots of people listening to country music where I grew up. Partly that a reaction to driving around in my dad's pickup with my dad, my mom, my sister and my first brother (who was a baby) listening to Willie Nelson's Stardust Memories tape on the tape deck when those things were the new technology. (Sorry, Mom and Dad, "Soft Sounds of the 50's kind of soured me on the Platters, too.) Partly because country music often seems to fall into one of three categories: (1) dumb genre stuff (Achy Breaky Heart); (2) my-woman-left-me-I-got-drunk-and-kicked-the-dog stuff (Kenny Rogers doing "don't take your love town" comes to mind -- I thought the line in that song was "four hundred children and a crop in the field" when I was growing up); and (3) overtly political/jingoistic stuff like Toby Keith singing "we'll put a boot in your ass/it's the American way." I'm sure that there are brilliant country songs expressing the subtleties of life and stuff, but I just haven't heard them.

Or at least I hadn't until I started listening to a little Johnny Cash. Man, you just don't hear lyrics like his very often. I obviously am coming late to this particular party, but it is striking to hear "When I was just a baby/my momma told me son/always be a good boy/don't ever play with guns/but I shot a man in Reno/just to watch him die." Who sings anything like that?

LAWYER WARNING: This is a warning to all those who are considering being an attorney. That last line comes out of the Folsom Prison song. Folsom Prison is in California. Reno is in Nevada. Having had my brain rewired by law school and law practice, my first reaction to Johnny Cash singing about shooting a man in Reno in a Folsom Prison song was more or less: "Why was he in Folsom Prison? He shot the guy in Reno. California courts wouldn't have had jurisdiction over that." Just a warning: if you don't want your brain to work like this, don't go to law school.

Then you get Johnny Cash's voice, which is this deep, deep thing that seems like it's coming out of some mine. The combination of the voice with the lyrics just convinces you that this is a guy who has seen too much and been through too much.

What's really interesting to me is how these tortured lyrics and this unbelievable voice got put over these almost cliched arrangements. The first song on my particular CD is "Cry, Cry, Cry," which is one of Cash's first songs. Now here is a song that goes into the Creepy Guy Song Hall of Fame with stuff like "Under My Thumb" by the Rolling Stones and "Every Breath You Take" by the Police. "You'll come back to me/for a little love that's true/when I remind you of all of this/you'll cry, cry, cry." Yet it's set over with plink-plunk-plink-plunk bass and guitar arrangement that seems like it came out Grand Old Opry in 1945. The juxtaposition is just fascinating. The same with what is apparently the original arrangement of "Ring of Fire." You had the idea to use a whole bunch of mariachi horns to accompany a song about how love burns, burns, burns with a singer with a deep, sorrowful voice that is just making you feel the pain? It's like no one -- including Cash himself -- knew quite what to do with the things that he wanted to sing. The only early song that seems to get the whole package just right is "Walk the Line," which has the foreboding guitar line throughout that really emphasizes how Cash is having a difficult time keeping it on the straight and narrow. I think that I have heard of some Cash albums with new, really spare arrangements and I'd really like to hear them.

Which brings us to the movie "Walk the Line." I thought that it, and Reese Witherspoon in particular, were quite good. Joaquin Phoenix really committed to playing the part and that's always good, although the results were kind of uneven. But, to me, there was a big, basically irresolvable problem with the movie. The actors sang their own music, which made for good believeability in the singing scenes. The problem with this, however, was that Joaquin Phoenix obviously doesn't have Johnny Cash's voice and his voice was a very large part of his appeal. So, basically, if you've heard Johnny Cash's music, you have to get past Phoenix's voice to like the movie, but Cash's voice might be a big reason you wanted to see the movie in the first place. It's a Catch-22 that those involved with the movie couldn't have avoided. But they did an admirable job of working with it. I give the movie a Movie+.

Johnny Cash

2006-04-23T13:45:00.000-07:00

In my continuing consumption of American pop culture like a Whitman's sampler (this is known perjoratively as "being a poser"), I've gotten into Johnny Cash a little lately. I admit that I only got interested because of all of the publicity surrounding the movie "Walk the Line" last year. The Muse and I watched that recently and this post covers that too.

You've got to start with the music, so I bought a CD that's the "Essential Cash" or something similar to that. It's really interesting stuff. I've never liked country music. Partly that's a reaction to lots of people listening to country music where I grew up. Partly that a reaction to driving around in my dad's pickup with my dad, my mom, my sister and my first brother (who was a baby) listening to Willie Nelson's Stardust Memories tape on the tape deck when those things were the new technology. (Sorry, Mom and Dad, "Soft Sounds of the 50's kind of soured my on the Platters, too.) Partly because country music often seems to fall into one of three categories: (1) dumb genre stuff (Achy Breaky Heart); (2) my-woman-left-me-I-got-drunk-and-kicked-the-dog stuff (Kenny Rogers doing "don't take your love town" comes to mind -- I thought the line in that song was "four hundred children and a crop in the field" when I was growing up); and (3) overtly political/jingoistic stuff like Toby Keith singing "we'll put a boot in your ass/it's the American way." I'm sure that there are brilliant country songs expressing the subtleties of life and stuff, but I just haven't heard them.

Or at least I hadn't until I started listening to a little Johnny Cash. Man, you just don't hear lyrics like his very often. I obviously am coming late to this particular party, but it is striking to hear "When I was just a baby/my momma told me son/always be a good boy/don't ever play with guns/but I shot a man in Reno/just to watch him die." Who sings anything like that?

LAWYER WARNING: This is a warning to all those who are considering being an attorney. That last line comes out of the Folsom Prison song. Folsom Prison is in California. Reno is in Nevada. Having had my brain rewired by law school and law practice, my first reaction to Johnny Cash singing about shooting a man in Reno in a Folsom Prison song was more or less: "Why was he in Folsom Prison? He shot the guy in Reno. California courts wouldn't have had jurisdiction over that." Just a warning: if you don't want your brain to work like this, don't go to law school.

Then you get Johnny Cash's voice, which is this deep, deep thing that seems like it's coming out of some mine. The combination of the voice with the lyrics just convinces you that this is a guy who has seen too much and been through too much.

What's really interesting to me is how these tortured lyrics and this unbelievable voice got put over these almost cliched arrangements. The first song on my particular CD is "Cry, Cry, Cry," which is one of Cash's first songs. Now here is a song that goes into the Creepy Guy Song Hall of Fame with stuff like "Under My Thumb" by the Rolling Stones and "Every Breath You Take" by the Police. "You'll come back to me/for a little love that's true/when I remind you of all of this/you'll cry, cry, cry." Yet it's set over with plink-plunk-plink-plunk bass and guitar arrangement that seems like it came out Grand Old Opry in 1945. The juxtaposition is just fascinating. The same with what is apparently the original arrangement of "Ring of Fire." You had the idea to use a whole bunch of mariachi horns to accompany a song about how love burns, burns, burns with a singer with a deep, sorrowful voice that is just making you feel the pain? The only early song that seems to get the whole package just right is "Walk the Line," which has the foreboding guitar line throughout that really emphasizes how Cash is having a difficult time keeping it on the straight and narrow. I think that I have heard of some Cash albums with new, really spare arrangements and I'd really like to hear them.

Which brings us to the movie "Walk the Line." I thought that it, and Reese Witherspoon in particular, were quite good. Joaquin Phoenix really committed to playing the part and that's always good, although the results were kind of uneven. But, to me, there was a big, basically irresolvable problem with the movie. The actors sang their own music, which made for good believeability in the singing scenes. The problem with this, however, was that Joaquin Phoenix obviously doesn't have Johnny Cash's voice and his voice was a very large part of his appeal. So, basically, if you've heard Johnny Cash's music, you have to get past Phoenix's voice to like the movie, but Cash's voice might be a big reason you wanted to see the movie in the first place. It's a Catch-22 that those involved with the movie couldn't have avoided. But they did an admirable job of working with it. I give the movie a Movie+.

Entertaining Juxtaposition

2006-04-21T08:17:00.000-07:00

Being a bit of a geek, I was listening to NPR driving home yesterday. With traffic on the freeway backed up, I was ducking off on an exit to take a side road to go around some of the traffic. At that time, the NPR started telling us that they shortly would have an oral essay by a woman discussing her decision to remain a virgin until she got married at 31. At this moment, I looked up to see the cars ahead of me on the exit and saw, two cars ahead of me, a big utility-type truck of some kind that had the following word painted like a brand name on the back:

SCHWING.

I found this audio-visual juxtaposition to be most entertaining.

An Up of Autism

2006-03-26T08:47:00.000-08:00

Like having a child with curly hair or a child with blue eyes, or any child really, having a child with autism has its up's and down's. Yesterday, we got one of the up's from The Mermaid. As you may know, people with autism tend not to notice social mores much, so tact can be an issue (which reminds me of a hilarious thing that one of my friends' then-wife said to him after he said something rude: "Dave, remember that thing we talked about? Tact?"). The following is a transcription of a conversation that The Mermaid, Enthusio and I had yesterday at about 11 a.m. in our living room:

Webbed Toe (WT): OK, I have to go to work for a while.

Mermaid (M): Why can't I go?

WT: It would be really boring. I can't let you be on the computer because I have to use it.

M: I could take the GameBoy.

WT: Well, I think Mom is planning to take you guys to Davis Diamonds [a gym with open hours on Saturdays].

M: OK, I would rather do that than go to work with you.

WT (chuckling): That's one thing I love about you, Mermaid. You're always honest.

E: What does honest mean?

WT: It means that Mermaid doesn't lie.

M: Well, I do sometimes.

And that, my friends, is one of the up's of having a child with autism.

80's Quiz

2006-03-15T19:21:00.000-08:00

For my own entertainment, I made up an '80s quiz. I'll post the answers in a week or so. Have fun. If I got the events in the wrong year, I don't want to hear about it.

1980

1. Who shot J.R.?

2. Who scored the winning goal when the U.S. hockey team beat the U.S.S.R. in the 1980 Olympics?

3. Miracle on Ice bonus true or false: By beating the U.S.S.R., the U.S. won the gold medal.

4. Song lyric: “So I got to ride, ride like the ______, to be free again.”

5. Multiple choice: The Pina Colada song guy said he was not into: (a) yogurt; (b) yoga; (c) yogis; or (d) Yo MTV Raps.

6. The “jive translator” woman in Airplane! was: (a) Harriet Nelson; (b) Mrs. Brady; (c) Mrs. Cleaver; or (d) Mrs. Partridge.

7. Movie line bonus: “Joey, do you like ________________ movies?”

8. According to George Bush, Ronald Reagan’s economic plan was “_________ economics.”

9. In The Empire Strikes Back, Luke’s _________ is killed by a ________ on the planet _______.

10. Star Wars Bonus: Name as many Muppets as you can who have the same voice as Yoda. (One point for each Muppet.)

11. Movie line: “Nazis, I hate ________ Nazis.”

12. Bonus movie line: “Hey, look, the new ___________ are out early this year.”

1981

13. Sandra Day O’Connor became the first female Supreme Court justice in 1981. Later, in the 80’s, she attended an event in Washington, D.C., at which a Washington Redskins running back got drunk and told her, “Hey, Sandy baby, ________________.” Complete the quote for a point and name the running back for a point.

14. John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan to impress what actress?

15. Reagan bonus true or false: Ronald Reagan would approve of that actress’s lifestyle.

16. Movie line: “Throw me the ______, I throw you the _____.”

17. Bonus movie line: “________, why’d it have to be _________?”

18. Fernando Valenzuela’s country of origin was ___________.

19. Bonus sports question: Because of the unique playoff structure Major League Baseball adopted because the 1981 players’ strike, what team had the best total record in 1981, but did not make the playoffs?

20. The first video on MTV was _____________________.

21. Bonus: One point for each of the original MTV VJ’s that you can name.

22. Movie line: “He’s got about 200 yards to the hole, looks like he’s got about a _________.”

23. According to the Reagan administration, ketchup was: (a) the backbone of the California tomato economy; (b) a vegetable for purposes of school lunches; (c) the best substitute available for blood in “Bedtime for Bonzo;” or (d) an important export to China, thus completing the circle that began with Marco Polo.

1982

24. Devo appeared in a commercial for what consumer product.

25. Bonus Devo question: In what brand’s commercial did Devo appear?

26. Who made “The Catch” on a pass from Joe Montana?

27. Football Bonus: The nickname of the 49ers’ star linebacker in 1982 was ___________.

28. The Stanford band member who was run over at the end of UC Berkeley’s “The Play” was the ______________ player.

29. Sports bonus true or false: One of the UC Berkeley players who participated in The Play is currently serving a life sentence for murder.

30. Music: What kind of jeans did Diane wear?

31. True or false: The Go-Go’s just said no.

32. The first African-American Miss America was _______________________.

33. Bonus true or false: She did not serve her whole term because explicit pictures of her were published in Playboy and she was forced to resign.

34. In Flashdance, Jennifer Beals’ character was a __________ (job) from ______________ (city).

35. Movie bonus true or false: Jennifer Beals did her own dancing in Flashdance.

1983

36. Jabba the Hut planned to feed Luke Skywalker and Han Solo to what creature on Tatooine?

37. Star Wars Bonus: How long was that creature reputed to digest its food?

38. Who directed the Thriller video?

39. Bonus: That director also directed what other movie referenced in this quiz.

40. Song lyric: “Her name is _____ and she dances on the _______.”

41. What two future NBA Hall of Famers were members of the University of Houston basketball team that North Carolina State beat in the NCAA championship game on a last-second dunk?

42. NCAA basketball Bonus: One of the Houston players used one first name in college and another in the NBA. What were those closely-related names?

43. Not realizing that his microphone was on, Ronald Reagan said that what country had been outlawed and that what would begin immediately?

44. Kevin Bacon did not jump off of the tractor during Footloose’s tractor chicken game because _______________.

45. Footloose bonus: One of Kevin Bacon’s friends in Footloose was in what Quentin Tarantino movie and his character nickname was ______________.

46. According to David Bowie, what color shoes do you put on to dance the blues?

47. Movie quote: "Why don't you just make ____ louder? [Long pause] Because this one goes to ____."

1984

48. What actress appeared in the video for Dancin’ in the Dark?

49. Boss Bonus true or false: Bruce Springsteen endorsed Ronald Reagan’s re-election campaign.

50. Who won the Olympic gold medal in women’s figure skating?

51. Bonus: Who won the silver?

52. Double figure skating bonus: The gold and silver medalists initially tied. What was the tiebreaker?

53. The “Where’s the Beef” lady’s real name was _________________.

54. Beef Bonus: Wendy’s later sued the “Where’s the Beef” lady for copyright infringement for appearing in another commercial and alluding to the location of the beef.

55. Movie line: “____________ would so capture the moment.”

56. Bonus movie line: “Get him a _______ bag!”

57. True or false: McDonald’s went into bankruptcy because the Soviet bloc boycotted the 1984 Summer Olympics, the Americans won so many more medals than had been expected and McDonald’s was running an “American gets a medal, you get free food” promotion.

58. What was the last single released from Thriller?

59. After the Olympics, Mary Lou Retton became the national spokeperson for what relatively low-profile sport: (a) curling; (b) gymnastics; (c) bowling; or (d) golf.

60. Sonny Crockett’s alligator was named _______________.

1985

61. TV: Larry "____" Melman.

62. True or false: The first Air Jordans were partially white.

63. SNL: Tommy Flanagan’s imaginary wife was ____________________ (hint: he claimed she was his wife, she wasn’t actually imaginary).

64. Van Halen fired David Lee Roth and hired _____________ as their lead singer.

65. Van Halen Bonus: Van Halen’s first album with the new lead singer was named _________.

66. Van Halen Double bonus: That album title refers to ______________________.

67. Van Halen Triple bonus: David Lee Roth now is a licensed: (a) distributor of alcoholic beverages; (b) massage therapist; (c) emergency medical technician; or (d) minister, by virtue of having answered an ad at the back of Rolling Stone.

68. True or false: In 1985, numerous Major League Baseball players were dragged before a grand jury to discuss their use of steroids.

69. State the amount of electrical power necessary for Marty McFly’s car to go back and forth in time.

70. Movie bonus: What kind of car was the time machine?

71. Double movie bonus true or false: The businessman for whom the car was named was convicted of cocaine trafficking during the 80’s.

72. According to David Byrne, where is water flowing?

73. Mrs. Huxtable was an attorney. What kind of doctor was Mr. Huxtable?

74. Cosby Show bonus: Based on the show’s depiction of Mrs. Huxtable’s work schedule, approximately how many hours a year did Mrs. Huxtable bill at her law firm: (a) 0; (b) 1,000; (c) 1,500; or (d) 2,000?

75. Multiple choice: Why did Chicago Bears quarterback Jim McMahon always wear sunglasses: (a) because of the Corey Hart song; (b) as child, a fork got stuck in his eye and one of his pupils was permanently dilated; (c) the future was so bright; or (d) bright lights gave him migraines and he had to save his unshaded time for games.

76. What would kill a Gremlin (not like “all the party boys drive a Grem-i-lin,” but like the movie)?

1986

77. Shortly before the Challenger exploded, mission control told the crew to “Go with” what?

78. What famous singer sang back-up on Dire Straits’ song “Money for Nothing?”

79. Money for Nothing Bonus: How did Dire Straits come to know that singer?

80. Rocky fought Ivan Drago in what city on what day?

81. Movie line: “That’s right, _______, I am _________.” (Hint: if the actor wasn’t what fills in that last blank then, he is now.)

82. Bonus movie question: A supporting actor in what movie released in 1986 is now playing a polygamist on TV?

83. Double bonus movie line: In that movie, the actor said: “_____ _____, man, _____ ______.”

84. True or false: In Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, the Red Sox’s Bill Buckner let the Mets’ Mookie Wilson’s ground ball roll through his legs, allowing the Mets to score the tying and winning runs.

85. Bonus: The MVP of the 1986 World Series is, or at least was, married to a famous female golfer. Name both of them.

86. Fill-in: William “The __________” Perry.

87. The detective agency on Moonlighting was named _________________.

88. TV bonus: On Moonlighting, one of Miss DiPesto’s boyfriends also appeared in two well-known 80’s movies. In Revenge of the Nerds, he was Booger. Name: (1) the other well-known 80’s movie in which he appeared; (2) the type of test he had the morning after he was being followed in that movie by a character played by Joe Pantiliano of Sopranos and The Matrix fame; and (3) the nickname he gave to Mr. Pantiliano’s character.

89. Cameron’s father had what kind of car.

90. TV bonus: Name two 80’s TV shows in which the same make of car as owned by Cameron’s father was featured prominently. (Hint: two featured tropical climates.)

91. Movie bonus: What music plays as the parking attendants drive Cameron’s dad’s car over a bump and catch air?

1987

92. Name the three Beastie Boys.

93. True or false: Bono’s real name is Dave.

94. Bad Bono bonus: In what city did Bono spray-paint on public art and get fined?

95. Movie fill-in: Glenn Close took Michael Douglas’s daughter to the __________________.

96. Bonus movie true or false: The ending of the above-referenced movie was reshot because test audiences didn’t like the original ending.

97. Oliver North’s attorney Brendan Sullivan said he was not: (a) an idiot; (b) a potted plant; (c) a rocket scientist; or (d) someone who liked to represent people convicted of felonies whose convictions subsequently were overturned on technicalities by ideologically sympathetic appellate judges.

98. Multiple choice: Jimmy Swaggart said that, if his flock didn’t contribute several million dollars to his ministry, God would: (a) be really mad; (b) call him home; (c) unleash tornadoes across the Midwest; or (d) vote for Pat Robertson for President.

99. What did Diane have on her face when Sam asked her to marry him?

100. TV bonus: What song made Carla dance involuntarily: (a) Shake Your Tailfeather; (b) Shout; (c) Louie Louie; or (d) Twist and Shout, but only the Isley Brothers’ version.

101. Movie line: “Greed, ___ ___ ___ __ ___ ____, is good.”

1988

101. What candidate won the Iowa caucuses on the Republican side?

102. Democratic presidential candidates Dick Gephardt and Michael Dukakis supposedly had how many eyebrows between them.

103. Who was on base when Kirk Gibson hit his home run against Dennis Eckersley in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series?

104. Name the theme song of George Bush’s presidential campaign.

105. Bush Bonus true or false: If you had heard that song one more time, your head would have exploded.

106. Tom Hanks appeared at least periodically on at least three TV shows in the 80's. Name: (1) the three shows; (2) the show on which he was a co-star; (3) his co-star on that show; (4) the other classic 80's on which Hanks' co-star was a recurring character; and (5) the names of the three brothers on that last show.

107. Political fill-in: “Senator, I knew ___________, I served with __________, Senator, you’re no ________________.”

109. Name the carnival machine that caused the kid to become Tom Hanks in Big.

110. Big Movie bonus: Robert Loggia appeared as Tom Hanks’ boss in Big and as the evil father-in-law in another 80’s movie. Name: (1) the 80’s movie in which Mr. Loggia was the evil father-in-law; (2) the star of that movie; and (3) the competitive sport in which the star participated in the movie.

111. SNL: The first guest on Sprockets with Dieter was: (a) Ben Stiller playing Eddie Munster; (b) Jim Carrey playing Iggy Pop; (c) Dana Carvey playing Andy Warhol; or (d) Phil Hartman playing Ronald Reagan.

112. According to the guys on the mound in Bull Durham: (a) candlesticks always make a nice gift; (b) a Blaupunkt is a better car stereo than a Pioneer; (c) you have to cut the head off a live chicken to take a curse off a mitt; (d) Millie was “better” than Annie; (e) Pantera was a better band than Quiet Riot; (f) all of the above; (g) a and c, but not b, d and e; (h) a and d, but not b, c and e; (i) b, d and e, but not a and c; or (j) a, b and d, but not b and c.

1989

113. What Soviet bloc country opened its borders shortly before East Germany did and was the first Soviet bloc country to do so?

114. Political bonus: In the famous photograph from after the Tiananmen Square massacre, in front of how many tanks did the protestor stand?

115. Name the restaurant involved in Do the Right Thing.

116. Right Thing Bonus: Name Public Enemy’s DJ.

117. Super movie bonus: The proprietor of the restaurant in Do the Right Thing played the brother of an Oscar winner in an Oscar-winning 80’s movie, although the actor didn’t win his Academy Award in that particular movie. Name: (1) the two actors; (2) the Oscar-winning 80’s movie in which they played brothers; (3) one or more of the Oscars that that movie won; and (4) the movie in which the one actor won his Oscar.

118. Name the members of the Traveling Wilburys.

119. In the Simpsons’ pilot, Homer gave his family what for Christmas.

120. Movie fill-in: “Have you ever danced with the _______ in the pale __________?”

121. In 1989, for the first time since Reconstruction, an African-American was elected governor of a U.S. state. Name the state and the governor.

122. Valeria Golino starred as the romantic female lead in two major American movies in 1988-1989. Name: (1) the movies; and (2) the male romantic lead in each movie.

123. Bonus boyfriend point: Describe in one sentence which of Ms. Golino’s male romantic leads you now find more normal and why.

124. Tone Loc did not make which one of the following songs: (a) Cheeba Cheeba; (b) Wild Thing; (c) White Lines; or (d) Funky Cold Medina.

Super, super 80’s bonus question:

125. Two actresses played the same part in different Star Trek movies. Name: (1) the part; (2) the actresses; (3) the Star Trek movie in which each first appeared in the part; (4) the long-running TV shows in which each appeared; and (5) the products for which they are now respectively shilling.

Kinsey

2006-03-13T21:02:00.000-08:00

The Muse and I caught the last 3/4 of Kinsey the other night. The Muse had a very difficult weekend healthwise and this movie came on when she was starting to feel a little better and we both had wanted to see it and it was on, so what the hell?

It was a pretty good movie, nothing earthshaking. It was a pretty standard biography, although about a pretty interesting guy. What stuck out to me was the acting. Most prominently, it was the first thing that I have seen that indicated to me that Liam Neeson actually is a pretty decent actor. In everything I had seen him in previously, he played pretty much the same guy. A big, manly guy who also was pretty sensitive. Husbands and Wives. Phantom Menace (man, it hurts just to acknowledge that movie's existence -- damn you, George Lucas, making bad Star Wars prequels). Even Schindler's List. More or less the same kind of guy.

But Kinsey was different. He was playing this rather odd, very driven guy who decided that his life's mission was to find out as much about people's sex lives and get the information out there so that people would understand things better. He experimented with various alternatives himself, to see what they were like. He was willing to let his wife sleep with his assistant (with whom he had slept too) to promote his studies. He calmly conducted an interview with a guy who basically was a serial child molester. It was very interesting to see him playing this part, which he did well.

With one pretty glaring exception (more on that later), the acting was very, very good. Laura Linney was, as always, very good as Kinsey's wife, sort of this respectable Midwestern faculty wife who happened to participate actively in some of Kinsey's efforts. Peter Saarsgard also was, as always, very good. He has this very interesting technique where he speaks very quietly, but intensely, and pulls you in to pay close attention to what he is saying. He also has this way of saying kind of shocking things very blandly and calmly, like when he tells Dr. Kinsey that he would like to stop sleeping with Dr. Kinsey and start sleeping with Mrs. Kinsey. Basically, he presents himself in the way that is the opposite of what you would expect in the situation, which makes you pay closer attention. It's sort of like Al Pacino in the first two Godfather movies, I guess, which is saying something.

Now for the exception. I was merrily watching Kinsey when The Muse pointed out, "Hey, honey, it's your favorite actor." To which I thoughtfully replied, "What?" "It's Chris O'Donnell," she said. And, sure enough, it was Chris O'Donnell. Here is someone whose fame and fortune I will never understand. He's basically a bland, blond American lookin' guy who can't act his way out of a paper bag, yet probably has several million dollars in his bank account due to his participation in classics like Scent of a Woman, Batman & Robin and The Bachelor. Now, the several million dollars part I can take. Lots of people who don't deserve to be rich are (Paris Hilton, Nikki Hilton, etc.). What galls me specifically about Chris O'Donnell is that he gets to play in the AT&T Crosby pro-am at Pebble Beach because of his lousy movie career.

So enough about how Chris O'Donnell galls me. Let's move on to how bad he was in Kinsey. He basically was the opposite of Peter Saarsgard. Where you expect O'Donnell to be loud and mad, he's loud and mad. Where he and Neeson are interviewing the serial child molester, O'Donnell's character gets sick of it. O'Donnell shouts, "Screw this, I'll see you in the bar" and stomps out. Nice. What a brilliant choice of acting technique. Then he gets all twinkly at some point about his girlfriend. God, give me a break.

What was fascinating was to see Saarsgard and O'Donnell in the same movie. Saarsgard bascially can act circles around O'Donnell, largely because Saarsgard doesn't go for the obvious cut at things. I don't think that it's much of a stretch to say that Saarsgard will still be getting good parts when O'Donnell is starring in a reality show with one of the Olsen twins.

Too Much Rain

2006-03-13T20:55:00.000-08:00

OK, I'm a weather wimp, I'll admit it. Don't like snow much, for example. God knows, we don't live in Seattle, but I am good and ready for this particular California winter to be done. Too much rain for too long, man. As a native Californian, I pretty much have realized that I feel entitled to some nice 65 to 70 degree sunny to partly cloudy days in March. Haven't had too many those this year. I'm waitin'.

Brokeback Mountain and Doogal

2006-02-26T21:44:00.000-08:00

In the last couple of weeks, I saw Brokeback Mountain and Doogal. Both were shown in a theater. Both appeared to be projected at 24 frames a second. Both were seen by me. Other than those things, they basically had nothing in common.

Brokeback Mountain, of course, is something of a phemonenon at this point. It is a very good movie. The thing that really struck me about it was that the script and the direction were done in a way that was like a pretty stereotypical cowboy movie. Lot of yeps and uh-uhs. Lots of panoramic vistas and herds of livestock roaming around. The food gets screwed up. They eat too many beans. The cowboy doesn't want to move to town. The main character, Ennis, is basically a shut-off guy who has a hard time relating to his wife and kids. But this format of course is used for a pretty radical story, as mainstream movies go. It's the "gay cowboy" movie, after all.

I found this juxtaposition to be pretty brilliant. Shut-down cowboys using monosyllabic dialgoue to talk about their relationship. It wasn't a surprise when the end credits came up and Larry McMurtry was one of the screenwriters. McMurtry has a long history of writing cowboy characters in ways that speak to themes that work now. Lonesome Dove is a brilliant book and the miniseries was great, too. Once I saw that McMurtry was one of the screenwriters, I realized that the cowboys in Brokeback Mountain were very much like Woodrow -- the shut-down Ennis -- and Gus -- the more open Jack -- with a gay edge that didn't exist in Lonesome Dove, of course, but wasn't all that different from the really close relationship between Woodrow and Gus. Basically, Brokeback Mountain emphasized the personal effects of the characters' backgrounds -- Ennis needing something or someone to hold on to after he basically had been left alone when his parents died, Jack being a way closeted gay man -- more than Lonesome Dove did, while deemphasizing the Western panorama aspect of the cowboy stereotype. (It's kind of funny how Jack drove back and forth from Texas to Wyoming several times in the movie and it was treated like he was commuting, while just one cattle drive from Texas to Wyoming or somewhere around there consumed the whole book of Lonesome Dove). A lot of the same story elements just turned and applied to new kinds of issues.

Ultimately, I didn't think that Brokeback Mountain was a truly brilliant movie the way that, say, Sex, Lies and Videotape, LA Confidential or The Crying Game were brilliant movies. Some of the important characters weren't realized very well. Jack's wife's character was pretty crucial, but left largely undefined. Jack's confrontation with his father-in-law and his wife's reaction to it didn't make a lot of sense. All that being said, I thought that Brokeback Mountain was very, very good, especially Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams. Michelle Williams was great in getting over what it would be like to be a woman with severely limited horizons who was just trying to make a normal life, but that was falling apart. Heath Ledger similarly was very, very good in showing you a guy who really had nothing to rely on in his life, but was trying hard -- with very little dialogue. The moment when he tells Jack to lay off of his wife was really good. Similarly, without ever saying it, he got across that he really wanted to be a good father, but just didn't know how. In a weird way, Brokeback Mountain reminded me of Toy Story in that both are sort of landmark movies and would have been remembered for a long time even if they had only been decent, but fortunately turned out to be very good and so will be remembered even more.

None of that applies to Doogal. That movie blew chunks. It's about a dog that has to, along with his friends, stop an evil wizard spring -- literally, a spring, like the ones that stick out the sides of old mattresses -- from freezing the world via the magic generated by his magic mustache. It made so little sense that, about halfway through, it occurred to me that it might be a movie that originally was made in a different language and then had English dialogue dubbed over it. I thought maybe it had been French -- the movie kind of looked like animated Cirque du Soleil at times. Turns out it had been English and then had American dialogue dubbed over it. Anyway, it blew. After seeing enough Pixar movies, seeing animated hair move doesn't justify a movie anymore. And that's basically all Doogal had going for it. Stay away, even if your kids beg. If, however, you are a college kid looking for a movie to watch while drunk (not you, Intensius), Doogal might work for you.

Brokeback Mountain: Film minus
Doogal: Flick

Attractiveness Quotient, Olympic Style

2006-02-25T13:14:00.000-08:00

A while ago, I wrote something about how I couldn't believe how out of whack the attractiveness quotient is between young men and young women at this point. Basically, you see scuzzy-lookin' young men with long, bad hair dating normal, attractive young women. It is mystifying to me because, over the course of modern history, I believe that this is unprecedented.

Now, we get the Olympics and The Flying Tomato. You know, Shaun White, the American snowboarder who won a gold medal:

Now, after this dude wins his half-pipe gold medal (he doesn't seem like a "pipe's half full" kind guy to me, he seems like kind of "full pipe" kind of guy -- of course, I don't know him), he starts long-distance hitting on Sasha Cohen, the American figure skater, saying he didn't see her at the opening ceremonies, hopes to see her at the closing ceremonies and hopes that she likes gold-medal winners. Then she kind of coyly plays along, saying it's too bad he's staying in the Olympic village in the hills while she's at the one in the valley, while also saying that she does like gold medal winners. She then goes out and falls a couple of times in the free skate, but still gets a silver medal. Then she's interviewed by Bob Costas, who asks her if she's going to see The Flying Tomato at the closing ceremonies, and she says that she might be on the Tonight Show (come, Sasha, Letterman please, be cool, man) and says "so I guess I shall leave you with an ambiguous answer."

Now Sasha Cohen is a regular-looking, pretty attractive young
woman. I hope to God that she has prospects other than the Flying Tomato. Now please understand what I'm saying here. First, I'm very happy that the Flying Tomato is having a successful career and apparently is a multi-millionaire due to his skateboarding and snowboardings exploits. (It could be worse. After all, Chris O'Donnell and EthanHawke are multi-millionaires too and they don't have any talent at all.) Second, I'm not saying that pretty women should only date handsome men. I mean, aging rock stars, for example, need love, too. (Rod Stewart and Rachel Hunter? Ugh. Ric Ocasek and Paulina Porzikova? Eeek. Mick Jagger, he of the currently unfortunate triceps, and anyone female? Yikes.)

What I am saying, though, is that young American men do not need to be encouraged in their currently horrendous grooming choices. Ms. Cohen had herself a nice opportunity to strike a blow for improving the world's attractiveness by saying, "The Flying Tomato, he might be OK if he'd wash his hair." Alas, she passed, expressed at least some insincere interest and thus encouraged the bad style choices of 15- to 19-year-olds all across our great land. And that -- not Ms. Cohen's missed jumps or Bodie Miller's 0-fer -- seems to me to be the big missed opportunity of this particular Olympics.

Pimpin' Kermit

2006-02-19T21:43:00.000-08:00

Sittin' here watchin' some Olympics, something horrible came on. Need to take a minute to regain my senses and to explain.

One of the more important aspects of watching the Super Bowl is, of course, watching the commercials (especially when the Super Bowl is as boring a game as this year's was -- except that play where Rothlisberger ran right up to the line of scrimmage, stopped and completed a pass to convert a third-and-25, that was brilliant). So, at some point while grabbing some good Maui kettle BBQ chips during the Super Bowl, I looked up at the TV and saw the tail end of some commercial with Kermit the Frog singing about how it actually wasn't that hard to be green. Through the magic of the Internet, I discovered that the commercial was from Ford and was about their gas-electric hybrid little SUV and Kermit was singing that it might actually be easy to be green because this SUV was green. The first part of the commercial featured Kermit singing about how it wasn't easy being green while riding mountain bikes and kayaking and rock climbing.

OK, that was pretty entertaining. It's a nice play on Kermit's classic song, particularly where Kermit gets his worried face while hanging on to a cliff with one hand. Enthusio liked it, so did I. Still, it's a small bit disturbing to see Kermit being a corporate pitch guy. I mean, Sesame Street is one of the most sacred things to people my age. One of my high school friends -- who now teaches high school Latin and AP English -- claims that our generation is more tolerant because, hey, we watched Sesame Street and, on Sesame Street, it didn't matter whether you were pink or blue or green or purple. And Kermit was the ringleader on Sesame Street, of course. But all things change and, when the rights to the Muppets were sold to Disney, you had to figure that the Muppets would get somewhat more commercial. I'm a grown-up, I can live it. Kermit pitching for a Ford hybrid. OK, give me some more chips and a beer.

But, tonight, what I saw something that sort of me feel like Roy Schneider in Jaws when he is throwing out the chum and first sees the shark come out of the water. Just speechless horror. You're gonna need a bigger boat for this one.

Just for you, I will relive the experience as a stream of consciousness. I come downstairs from getting The Mermaid and Enthusio tucked in and there's a pizza commercial coming on. There's a geeky-looking kid starting to eat his pizza. There's a song coming on. It sounds like "these bots are made for poppin'" What? Oh, wait, it's Jessica Simpson. Oh, I heard about this. She's singing something based on Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'" Wow, that's a bad song. Wow, it's being sung badly. Oh, they're talking about how the pizza has cheese bites around the edge. It's "bites," not "bots." That's good, "bots made for poppin'" makes no sense. You mean, the pizza has a pre-formed crust? There isn't some cook in the back carefully forming the crust from a lump of dough and carefully making sure the edge comes together? Lame. Ms. Simpson seductively throws one of cheese bites into the geeky kid's mouth. Wow, classy. Wait, wait, wait, what the hell is this?!? That's Kermit! He's saying, "We'll have what he's having." There's Miss Piggy! She's kicking him! It's not only about bad pizza with a bad, bad version of a bad, bad song being sung by a bad singer, it's also a bad take-off of a sex joke! You have got to be kidding me. They made Kermit participate in this! Kermit! Not Kermit! No, no, no!

At this point, I have almost lost a few of my senses. I must sit down. The horror is overwhelming. My mind is swimming. I am horrified because Jim Henson must be rolling over in his grave. No, I would be more horrified if Jim Henson wasn't rolling over in his grave. Kermit, Boots Are Made For Walking, Jessica "Is It Fish or Chicken?" Simpson, bad pizza, sex joke. Make it stop! Please! Kermit, bad pizza, sex. Is this a sign of the apocalypse? Is Elmo next? Will my children have to watch Blue's Clues Steve selling Viagra? Please, I beseech you, no.

My Sister Has Moved

2006-02-18T20:08:00.000-08:00

My sister The Force of Nature (we will use the term T-Fon [phone] in the spirit of J. Lo., T-Mac, etc., but not L. Ron) has moved. Moved to New York City, no less. I am very proud of her, though my own emotions are mixed. Pro: this is a great move for T-Fon professionally and personally. Pro: being not married and with no kids, why not move to NYC for at least a while? Sounds like a blast. Pro: now we have someone to see in NYC. Con: she's on the other side of the country now. Con (big con): if she stays there, she might become a Yankees fan (that sound you hear is my teeth grinding).

When T-Fon told me that she was thinking of moving to NYC, I wasn't especially surprised. She's always been an adventurous person, much more adventurous than me. When we were kids, we fought all the time, of course. If you have ever read the book Lord of the Flies, then you probably remember two brothers referred to as Samanderic. That's about how our mom would yell at us when we were fighting: WebbedtoeandTFon, stop fighting! (It's much more musical with our real names.) This kind of thing continued through our teen years, in different forms. She was a freshman in high school when I was a senior and, while her locker was about three down from mine, she only acknowledged my presence when she: (1) wanted a ride somewhere; or (2) wanted some money. (Perhaps I'm exaggerating.) But you get to be grown-ups and you realize that your sister is actually pretty cool.

Even as kids, though, it was always clear to me that T-Fon was always, and somewhat paradoxically, both more comfortable with the things that people did where we grew up and more adventurous. I read the encyclopedia, she rode horses on the side of the road. She would get out to see her friends during the summer, me not so much. She played sports "in town," I played golf with my grandfather (which is not to say that was a bad thing, it just was safer, looking back). She wore yellow Chuck Taylors to her eighth grade graduation, I wore a brown knit clip-on. So I guess that it's not a surprise that I found a groove that works for me here in the Central Valley pretty early on, tried a few different things and then came back while T-Fon is headed to the city so nice they named it twice. Just different paths toward finding what works for you.

So I'm quite proud of T-Fon. Not a lot of people go from Hall's Corner to NYC. I'm very glad to know one.

24

2006-02-18T09:07:00.000-08:00

Started watching 24 lately. I am way late to this particular cultural phenomenon, 24 being in its fourth or fifth season, I think. At least three members of my family have been into 24 for several years. When we were in Hawaii almost three years ago, Mr. Dry Wit made sure that he saw 24. But I guess it's better late than never.

Besides 24 being really entertaining, two things about it strike me as fascinating.

The first one is one that I probably don't appreciate fully because I haven't watched the past seasons. There was an African-American President on 24, played by the actor with the deep voice who does the Allstate commercials now. The thing about this is that it feels completely right. God knows, the country should be ready for a President of color. It's only been 143 years since the Emanication Proclamation, 138 years since the 14th Amendment, 43 years since the March on Washington. It's about time. If Colin Powell had run in 1996, he might have won, although it's pretty unlikely that he'll ever get to be President now. Similarly, Condelezza Rice might have had the potential to be President, but that seems pretty unlikely at this point, too. Maybe Harvey Gantt if he had beaten Jesse Helms in 1990 (still more than a little bitter about that one). Maybe Henry Cisneros if he hadn't had an affair. Maybe Barack Obama.

So I think that most of the country is ready for a President of color. But you still hear things like about how unnamed Bush supporters went around South Carolina in 2000 campaigning against John McCain by talking about his "black baby" (a child that McCain and his wife adopted from southeast Asia, I believe). That kind of stuff has to make you wonder.

Seeing 24 portray an African-American President and have that President -- President Palmer -- basically be exactly the kind of thoughtful, decisive, tough kind of guy that you would want as a President is a kind of very useful cultural thought experiment.

The second thing about 24 that I find really interesting is that it makes you think about what kind of government behavior would be acceptable if, says, terrorists were ready to set off a nuclear bomb or release lots of nerve gas. The lead character on 24, Jack Bauer, does some awful stuff, but always in the specifically defined context of one day in which the end of the world is about to happen. In that context, would be OK for government agents to torture people to find out what they need to know?

That kind of thing certainly doesn't seem wrong in the show's context. Use tasers on people or threaten to cut their eyes out to get information? Well, if there are guys driving around LA with nuclear bombs or nerve gas, that might be OK by me, I suppose. Being a bit of a geek, I've always been pretty interested in constitutional law (I remember being surprised hearing about eminent domain for the first time in fifth grade) and, you know, torturing people doesn't strike me as the most constitutional thing to do. The Constitution isn't just a statement of the rights that people in the U.S. have -- it's also a statement about what the government can't do. But what are you going to do in the most extreme circumstances?

The key to this mental exercise is the line-drawing, I guess. Where does this kind of thing go too far? This last week, Jack wouldn't help terrorists release nerve gas in a shopping mall, though the President ordered him to do so because that would have been a way to find the rest of the nerve gas that the terrorists have. Clearly, Jack is the lead character and you, the audience, are supposed to sympathize with him as the guy who is drawing the right lines. (BTW, this lionization of Jack gets to be a little much at times.) There's little doubt that, in the kind of horrific situation that is portrayed each season on 24, horrific choices would have to be made. As I understand, on Sept. 11, someone (Cheney, I believe) issued an order to shoot down Flight 93 if it got near Washington.

You don't have to buy the choices that Jack makes on the show. (There was an almost incomprehensible op-ed piece in the S.F. Chronicle last week that suggested that the mere fact that 24 exists and displays torture demonstrates that our politics have become totally unacceptable because the display of fictional torture shows that torture has become far too accepted in society. At least, I think that's what the piece was saying.) But I don't think that there is any other media creation at this point that is presenting anything that makes people think about the choices that may have to be made at some point in responding to terrorism. A lot of people seem far too willing to "make the tough decisions" about terrorism and a lot of people seem too willing to believe that such decisions won't ever have to be made. 24 is worth watching if only because it makes you think about such decisions and their consequences.

Madonna's Hernia

2006-02-18T08:22:00.000-08:00

You probably saw a story about it, but I'm going to tell you about anyway: Madonna apparently had surgery to cure a hernia. A minor event, in the greater scheme of things, no doubt. My God, it made me feel old, though.

I've always felt a little privileged to have been marinating in the pop culture when Madonna came out. I remember very distinctly being at a picnic -- it was called a picnic, it was called a party at a park, but it was basically a picnic -- in 1984 just after the finish of a play that I was in and just before I started high school, where a guy who was two years older than me and who was in the play and who would be the high school quarterback was standing around singing Madonna's "Holiday." (I now realize that the Go Go's' Vacation was a much better song on a similar theme.) Can you imagine a high school quarterback standing around singing something by Avril Lavigne or Ashlee Simpson (I'm not equating those two, BTW) these days? Uh, probably not.

But Madonna was a big deal. She wasn't particularly original to start -- she more or less took Deborah Harry's vibe and mixed it up with slightly updated disco music. She hit big right when videos started, probably largely because of videos. She has been a hell of a lot more durable and interesting than just about every other singer who hit it big via early videos. (Anyone know what Toni Basil is doing these days?) She clearly was intentionally outrageous to get attention -- rolling around on the ground singing "Like a Virgin," dancing around with burning crosses in the "Like a Prayer" video, the whole Sexx CD (I really wanted to type "album" there, but I have decided to leap into the 1990's) and book, the video with risque stuff in it that MTV wouldn't play before 11 p.m. or something (the one that they parodied on Wayne's World when Garth had a unit on him). Madonna, though, wasn't just trying to shock people to make money. She actually made the effort to be a better singer. She had a sense of humor (thus the participation in the Wayne's World parody). The thing that I found pretty impressive was that she was willing to publicly link herself with a lot of gay-themed things at a time when that wasn't particularly acceptable. You can view her use of "vogue" dancing as just a slick co-optation of gay culture to sell CD's, but would that kind of dancing ever gotten out into broader pop culture without Madonna? I think not.

So, anyway, I've felt a little privileged to have been around to see Madonna. Not nearly like I feel about having been around to watch the Berlin Wall fall or or to see Nelson Mandela become president of South Africa or even to watch the various sports miracles that I've seen (Doug Flutie's pass, Jack Nicklaus at the Masters in 1986, Kirk Gibson). It's just that there aren't that many people who make you consistently think, "OK, what's she going to come up with next?"

And now Madonna has a hernia.

Not one of those "sports hernias" that have become one of the cool injuries for professional athletes to have (along with microfracture surgery). Just your basic kind of hernia. The kind that Weird Al Yankovic sang about in "Livin' With A Hernia" (to the tune of James Brown's "Living in America". Heh!) Man, it was bad enough when Madonna bought the Scottish castle. Not much says unfunky like living in a castle in cold, foggy Scotland. But a hernia? Madonna? How did that happen?

What's next? Will Tom Cruise turn out to be a freak? Will Andre Agassi go bald? Will Kathleen Turner start playing parts where she pretends she was a man?

Sampling

2006-02-04T16:03:00.000-08:00

Enthusio wanted to go see the kids' movie Hoodwinked last weekend, so he, the Mermaid and I went to see it. It was kind of tolerable. If you don't know the intricacies of its plot, it's a mystery about who stole the recipes of Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother. (Spoiler alert: it's the rabbit with Andy Dick's voice. Really, it's Andy Dick's voice. He and Jack from Will and Grace who voiced the evil cat in "Cats and Dogs" are separated at voice-birth.)

Sitting there watching this movie, though, it suddenly occurred to me that basically every significant aspect of the movie was ripped off from something else that I had seen, heard or read before. Using the story of Little Red Riding Hood as the basis for the movie was tolerable, given that fairy tales have been the basis for later stories forever. However, literally everything was ripped off from somewhere else. Most of the structure of the story was in a format where various characters told the inevitable police investigator what they saw, a technique that the movie Rashomon (which I have ever seen, but have heard about) apparently pioneered. In recent years, that technique has been used at least by the excellent TV show "Boomtown" (unfairly cancelled, damn you, NBC). The police investigator frog essentially was Hercule Poirot, down to the little mustache. The wolf was an investigative journalist who was clearly supposed to be Fletch (there was even a scene with him playing basketball in a big Afro). Fletch's photographer was an over-caffinated squirrel who was clearly based on Scrat from Ice Age. Grandma was into extreme sports and even was featured slamming some kind of soda while skydiving, an apparent homage to Mountain Dew commercials. (Homages to Mountain Dew commercials, think about that for a minute.) While being chased by a Schwarzneggerian bad guy on skiis, Grandma busted out with a variety of moves captured in slow motion a la "The Matrix." The woodsman was a struggling Method actor who actually sold Schnitzel sticks and was trying to motivate himself to get a woodsman part by chopping down a tree while reading "Chopping for Dummies." Spoiler alert (like you care at this point): the evil rabbit bore more than a little resemblance to the drawings of the evil rabbits in "Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse." Red Riding Hood was put into physical danger by being tied up in an aerial tram with lit explosives in a kind of cross between a scene from "Moonraker" and "Speed" (she even kind of looked like Sandra Bullock). Otherwise, Red Riding Hood was just pretty dull.

I was just floored. The whole movie was a collection of samples from other things, all mixed together and spit out in a form to appeal to kids. (This was after sitting through pre-movie ads for nachos that were based on Lord of the Rings. Apparently, the flavor of some nacho cheeses is so powerful only Frodo Chip can resist being turned evil buy them. I didn't buy the basic premise: I hate nacho cheese and do not believe that I would be turned evil by it.) There's about $35 I'm never going to get back.

I guess that we've been headed toward this sort of thing ever since Sugarhill Gang hit it big with "Rapper's Delight" in which they sampled Chic's "Good Times." Lots and lots of rap music is based on samples, of course, and I enjoy quite a bit of that. I mean, it doesn't get much better than De La Soul's "Eye Know," which is based on a sample from Steely Dan's "Peg (I Know I Love You Better)." Both the juxtaposition and the result is entertaining. As rap has gotten more influential, this ethos of sampling has slowly made its way into all kinds of media and lots of times that's enjoyable (which is kind of ironic because rap has gotten less sample-dependent as other artists have realized that rappers are making big money using samples and accordingly the price for using a sample has gone way up). It really crossed over into kids' movies with "Shrek," I guess. I'll admit I thought it was pretty funny when Princess Fiona went all Matrix on Robin Hood and his men.

But we have gotten to the point in a lot of entertainment where the sampling is completely overwhelming any originality. Music reached that point no later than when Sean Coombs (Puff Daddy, Puffy, P. Diddy, Diddy, Iddy Bitty Wittle Puffy) basically just changed the words of the Police's "Every Breath You Take" to do his euology of Biggie Smalls/Notorious B.I.G. "I'll Be Missing You." The song was kind of like something that Weird Al Yankovic would do, except not funny (which is the point of Weird Al's stuff). All of the originality came from the Police.

This sampling is really bad, of course, when old TV shows are remade into movies. Very, very rarely, the movie is good (The Fugitive, anything, anything, anything else? Bueller, Bueller? Sorry, that's a sample, right there). Very, very often, the movie stinks (Flintstones, anyone?).

But Hoodwinked struck me as something new and bad. It's a whole movie that is just basically little bits of other stuff. It's like a collage of stuff cut from magazines run at 24 frames a second. Come on, people, make something new.

Bowling

2006-01-27T21:28:00.000-08:00

Last Sunday, I very roughly planned my morning around going to the gym at about 10, so I could watch football while exercising. Just before I left the house, I looked at the paper and it turned out the game wasn't on until 12. Damn. Had my gym clothes on, so I went ahead and went. Well, there was no football on the gym TV, so, instead, they had on . . . bowling. (On ESPN, just like in the old days, before ESPN showed roughly 50% college basketball, 25% exercise shows and 25% SportsCenter.)

Yes, bowling. Don't watch bowling much. When I was a kid geeking out on sports on Saturday, I used to watch bowling once in a while because it came on between college football games and Wide World of Sports. Anyway, I still geek out on sports, but not to that pretty pathetic extent anymore.

So there I am on the elliptical machine, exercising away, and I notice that one of the bowlers was wearing a HEADBAND. Yes, the bowler, he was bowling away so much, exerting so much energy, sweating so much, that he needed a headband. Now, granted, the guy was bald. I suppose that it's possible that the TV lights are pretty warm and, when reflected on the clouds of cigarette smoke floating near the ceiling of the bowling alley, might make someone sweat, the bald guy who was wearing one on TV especially, I guess. But, oh my God, have some "athletic" pride. You're a bowler, not an NBA player. I still haven't quite gotten used to NBA players wearing headbands all over -- I still blame the Kings' loss in Game 7 of the 2002 Western Conference finals on the fact that, for some damn reason, Chris Webber decided to wear a headband that day for the first time ever for some ungodly reason -- but I totally understand the need for them in the NBA.

But, in bowling, please. I saw a comedian one time who said that bowling was the only sport you could play while simultaneously shooting heroin. That might be a slight overstatement, but I'm pretty sure that headbands are uncalled for. I mean, what's next? Renting you headbands that other people have used while bowling? Why stop at renting you random shoes? Renting socks?

Professional bowlers should not wear headbands. Not even professional golfers wear headbands. Of course, that's probably because, if a professional golfer wore a headband, he or she couldn't rake in as much endorsement dough because headbands are too small to really show off those nice corporate logos on TV. Caps and visors make much better billboards. I mean, do you ever watch golf on TV? Those guys are like human stock cars.

Homework

2006-01-21T14:49:00.000-08:00

Man, homework is not fun. Not my homework, mind you. Sometimes, I have to schelp work home and that's not my favorite thing, but it goes along with being an attorney and the associated deadlines. So that kind of homework is just an occupational hazard.

No, what I'm talking about here is The Mermaid's homework. I don't mind helping The Mermaid with homework in the abstract and, in fact, The Muse does most of the work in helping The Mermaid with homework. (Thanks for that, Muse.) No, what mostly gets me is the sheer amount of homework. We're talking about at least an hour, sometimes two, just about every weeknight. Part of that is due to the fact that homework takes longer with The Mermaid due to her condition, but I don't think that the amount of time that The Mermaid works is a quantum jump from what other kids do. And I don't think that our local school district is especially burdensome in this way. The Mermaid's in fifth grade. I don't remember anywhere near this much homework when I was in the fifth grade. The Muse doesn't remember this level of homework in fifth grade either, and her school wasn't just across a chain-link fence from a working cow pasture.

Why are we doing this to our children? Why are we burying them in homework? From what I hear from teachers and other school-types that we know, it sounds like a lot of it is driven by the new emphasis on standards and testing in the last 10 years or so and The No Child Left Behind Act, in particular. That kind of stuff seems to be driven by these things you hear about "American children ranking 47th out of 50th industrialized countries on math tests."

What exactly are we trying to achieve in doing all of this? Certainly we need to improve our schools. Any time you have to fight and get hostile over a period of a couple of months to get your special-needs child the assistance that everyone agrees is necessary, things aren't perfect. And we live in one of the best school districts around.

But dumping all kinds of homework on fifth-graders and kids of similar ages really limits the time that they have to be kids and do the things that teach them to be creative. And isn't it being creative that really is what makes things work here, in California and in the U.S. generally?

There was a very interesting article in Newsweek a couple of weeks ago about this. The columnist -- I think that it was Fareed Zakaria -- interviewed the education minister from Singapore, which has some of the highest test scores in the world. The minister was saying that Singapore really needs to learn from the U.S. about encouraging that. The columnist also quoted a friend of his who was from Singapore, but who had lived in the U.S. with his children for several years. According to the friend, in American schools, his children had picked up that it was good to comment and to express their ideas, but that, in Singapore, when his kids tried to that, they were viewed as weird and obnoxious. The friend moved his children to Western-style private schools in Singapore.

Kids definitely need to know their multiplication tables by fifth grade. They need to be figuring out word problems, grammar and basic analytical skills in social sciences. But lots of two-factor algebraic word problems? Geometry in 8th grade (which apparently is now available)? Settle down, people.

Aaron Burr + TV = Crazy Hilarious

2006-01-15T16:05:00.000-08:00

If you've seen Lazy Sunday, you know that two of the funniest things that have ever been on TV -- Lazy Sunday and the "Get Milk" ad where the guy can't answer the radio trivia question because his mouth of full of peanut butter and he has no milk -- prominently feature Aaron Burr references. (If you haven't seen Lazy Sunday, where you been? Go to YouTube.com, type in "lazy sunday" and download it. "Are you buyin' what we're handlin'?/You can call us Aaron Burr/From the way we're droppin' Hamiltons.") I'll bet if you had told Burr's contemporaries 200 years ago that he would be such a good source of jokes, they wouldn't have believed you. This is the guy who ran for Vice-President on a ticket with Thomas Jefferson and, when they tied in the Electoral College (because someone screwed up and didn't withhold one vote from Burr), wouldn't defer and threw the election into the House of Representatives.

Oh, well, apparently even heavy, balding and not-very-honest Vice-Presidents can be funny eventually.

Please Stop Fighting

2006-01-07T19:49:00.000-08:00

If you have watched cable or satellite TV in the last few years, then you have undoubtedly at least flipped past some show with people yelling at each other.

It really started with Morton Downey, Jr., I guess. One of the summers that I was working in a pizza place after high school, one of the other cooks was always talking about how he would watch this crazy show late at night after we would close up the pizza place. It was on Channel 26 out of Fresno, which was a sign of the show's anti-quality. (Channel 26 was/is the Fresno FOX affiliate and this was back when FOX was pretty scummy. Pre-Simpsons.) So I watched this Morton Downey, Jr., show a couple of times and it basically was a guy who would get a couple of guests on, always with a cigarette dangling in his fingers, and then they would fight and he would fight with them. It was pretty dumb.

Well, little did we know what would happen. First, Geraldo had a big fight on his set and his nose got broken and Newsweek had this outraged cover story about how awful the whole thing was. Then Sally Jesse Raphael had to get cheap to compete. Then came Jerry Springer and we all know about that (although it did spawn a brilliant song by Weird Al Yankovic based on the Bare Naked Ladies' "One Week.")

At some point, this virus of trashiness jumped over to supposedly more respectable things like CNN's Crossfire. Being a total political junkie in college, I used to watch that when I got home from the warehouse where I worked during the summer. I got pretty sick of it, though, because it basically turned into people yelling at each other about politics. Every day. Pat Buchanan would say, "I just can't believe that the Democrats don't want to improve the economy by cutting the capital gains tax. Whatever liberal guy they had then would say, "Well, I can't believe that how the Republicans want to concentrate all wealth in the top 1% of America. Buchanan: "God, you liberals never stop with that LBJ Great Society stuff. People need personal responsibility." Liberal: "You mean like how Herbert Hoover wanted to encourage personal responsibility?" Well, pretty much every political show on cable news now seems to feature people yelling at each other. This is no great insight of mine. Have you seen when Jon Stewart went on Crossfire and told them to stop yelling because they were "hurting the country?" (He also told them he wouldn't "be their monkey." That was pretty cool.)

Sports shows have always featured people yelling at each other, but, hey, that was usually about something important like whether Shaq gets too many calls. (He does, damn it!) The absolute depth to which yelling culture has sunk, however, leapt out at me over Christmas.

Here I was, sitting in the little breakfast room at the Comfort Suites in Clovis. The hotel was pretty nice, but the breakfast room, well, I found it kind of wanting. No Equal for my cereal. The orange juice tasted funny. Only melons among the available fruit. (As an aside, I think that you can really tell the quality of a free hotel breakfast by the fruit. If all they have is cantaloupe and honeydew, you know it isn't going to be good. Step up to the pineapples and strawberries, people.) But they had ESPN on the little TV, so that was good (at least for we males).

But what they had on ESPN was this show First and 10 and what was happening on First and 10 was that two chuckleheads and the token attractive-female hosts were discussing their favorite sports movies. They get around to Caddyshack, of course, and one chucklehead declares something like:

"I think that is just about the best sports movie because it really makes fun of the stuff about golf that needs ridicule."

Then the other one says something like:

"You know, I really never liked Caddyschack very much. I mean, Bill Murray was really funny, but he basically had nothing to do with the rest of the movie, which wasn't great."

And there they went:

"Are you kidding me!?! Caddyshack is one of the funniest movies of all time!! I mean, Chevy Chase alone was hilarious!!"

"Please. All Chevy Chase did was act like he always did on Saturday Night Live! That had nothing to do with sports!"

"Give me a break. I mean, if you asked half of the American population, they would say that Caddyshack is hilarious! Look, even the dumb cameraman agrees with me!"

At which point, the token attractive-female host breaks in to say:

"Yeah, I think he's right. The crew does seem to agree with him about Caddyshack. Let's go to a commercial break, which will feature a Cialis ad, a beer ad and then a Bowflex ad." (OK, I made that last dependent clause up.)

At this point, I officially had reached my absolute fill of faux fighting culture. I know that there are a million cable and satellite channels and people need to get viewers to keep them all on, but, God, shut up with the fighting. On ESPN Classic, when they have one of their countdown shows (e.g., Best Plays (usually ending with Kirk Gibson's home run as #1, as it should be), Best Rose Bowls, Worst Chokes (Buckner, #1 of course -- God that's still horrible to watch)), they now have a little piece at the end where two ESPN Radio debate the list. And they fight, of course. Why, why, why?

All of this made-up fighting is just bad for us, I think. I think that contributes to people just refusing to listen to other people's points of view. Like Jon Stewart said, it's hurting the country. It encourages obnoxious people like Rick Santorum and Howard Dean. Shut up a minute. Have some nice chamomile tea or a beer, depending on your preference. Watch some Blue's Clues or Jeopardy. Just please stop fighting.

Cubicle Cinema

2005-12-11T16:27:00.000-08:00

I was watching some of The Matrix on TNT this morning and realized that I had egregiously left Office Space off my quickly-prepared list of the best movies of the '90s. Man, Office Space is a classic, of course. Flair. "Heard you're missing work lately? Wouldn't say I was missing it." The fax machine. "Why should I change my name? He's the one who sucks." "I love kung fu." "Um, yeah." Gutting a fish on your cubicle desk. The guy who played Oswald on Drew Carey hearing the secret plan to steal the rounding errors through the tortilla-thin apartment walls. Brilliance. Sheer brilliance.

What stuck me watching the first bit of The Matrix this morning is that The Matrix and Office Space are damn near the same movie in different clothes. Cubicle guys get fed up with cubicle culture and start working to subvert it. Neo takes the blue pill. Peter discovers zen through hypnosis by the heart-attack therapist. Same kind of thing. Jennifer Aniston gets inspired by Peter and flips off her boss (Mike Judge, Office Space's director, I believe) and gets fired. Trinity goes with Neo on a purported suicide mission to save Morpheus. Same difference. Peter writes the confession and slips it under Lumberg's door so that Michael and Samir don't go to jail. Neo goes back into The Matrix to save Morpheus. Same deal. Lumberg. Agent Smith. Same basic evil enforcer of conformity. The movies even came out the same year, 1999. I guess that's not much of a surprise given that the zeitgeist at that point in time was all about techie software companies making bucks. It was only natural that the dark side of that would end up in movies.

What strikes me as weird, though, is that playing off the dark side of that made for both brilliant comedy and brilliant drama/action. I guess it's pretty natural for any cultural inspiration to come out as comedy and drama. I don't remember a lot of these kinds of things like led to really good examples of both, though. Watergate led to All the President's Men and other noir-ish dramas (Chinatown, etc.), but I don't remember any comedies coming out of the resulting distrust. Don't really remember any good Vietnam comedies. The early '90s grunge thing led to Singles, which is a pretty good comedy, not as good as Office Space, but I don't remember any decent dramas about it. Can't think of a good civil rights comedy. The Cold War lasted so long that it produced at least one brilliant paranoid drama -- the original Manchurian Candidate (who knew that Angela Landsbury could be so evil?) -- and one brilliantly psycho comedy -- Dr. Strangelove. But the Cold War lasted over 50 years. That's long time for brilliant movies to be made.

The whole over-the-top dot com thing only lasted a couple of years, but Office Space and The Matrix came out of it. Is it because people are more apt to want to share their miseries these days? Don't know. Do know that the Wachowski brothers should have followed Mike Judge's lead and not made sequels. Especially ones with ugly Cadillacs all over the place.

License Plate

2005-12-09T22:26:00.000-08:00

As the post a couple of posts ago indicates, I probably spend too much time while I'm driving reading bumper stickers. I find myself reading personalized licensed plates too much, too, probably. So I'm driving home the other night and notice that the Explorer in front of me has a personalized plate. I notice an "H" and an "8" together. OK, that person hates something. The "I" in front of the "H" confirms that. So what does this person hate? What are those four letters after the 8? It doesn't look like a word. E . . . S . . . P . . . N What word is that supposed to be?

Oh, no, it's ESPN! Oh my God, how can someone hate ESPN?!? What else can I find out about this person from the back of his or her car? What could possibly drive someone so insane that he or she would be willing to spend $35-$45 a year to express hatred of the greatest entertainment innovation of the last 50 years? I mean, before ESPN, maybe you catch just the listing of sports scores on the late local news. Wait, this person's license plate frame is for the Pittsburgh Steelers. What?!? You love the Steelers, but hate ESPN?!? How is that possible? What's your problem?!?

More cognitive dissonance. It was a very confusing week.

The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe

2005-12-09T21:38:00.000-08:00

As you undoubtedly know, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe movie came out today. The reviews have been pretty good, particularly the one in the Chronicle. Little man jumping out of the chair.

This pleases me greatly. The trailer for the movie has been attached to a bunch of movies that I've seen in the last few months -- Harry Potter, Zathura, Chicken Little, Revenge of the Sith, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Capote. It wasn't very good. It was kind of a cross between Lord of the Rings and the Sound of Music with an overlay of Lion King self-righteousness. Yuck.

The trailer was very disappointing to me because I always really liked the book. In fact, I think that it was the first chapter book that I ever really read on my own. It was in fourth grade, in Mr. Shaver's class.

Third grade had pretty much been a nightmare due to a really over-the-top teacher who did things like separating the class into "flowers" and "weeds" and dissecting gophers that the janitor killed in class and making kids sit in their seats until they peed in their pants if they didn't ask to go to the bathroom just right. The little girl I had a crush on developed an ulcer. She was eight at the time. My two best friends left the school that year. Not the class, the school, because we only had one class per grade at my elementary school. One came back to the school in fourth grade, one did not. I distinctly remember the one who came back in fourth grade being dragged from the "flowers" to the "weeds" in his desk, crying. So third grade wasn't too hot.

So we get to fourth grade and it was really good. Mr. Shaver was this huge guy, about 6'4", very solidly built (not fat). He drove around in a VW Bug. He was into computers -- Apple II's, man! He somehow acquired a VCR at Island Elementary in 1979. The thing was as big as a server is now. He volunteered at the local public television station, so sometimes you would see him working the phones during a pledge drive. Just a cool guy. Mr. Slinger in Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse by Kevin Henkes always reminds me of Mr. Shaver. Anyway, at one point -- probably to get me to stop asking him questions (I've always been something of a pest) -- he gave me the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to read.

Now the Muse thinks that the book is really too serious to be a great kids' book. I came at it, though, after having my brain wired from some good vs. evil stories by Star Wars (Empire Strikes Back didn't come out until the following summer, so I wasn't really wired for ambiguity yet) and I thought that the book was just great. Kids finding an unexplained portal into a place with half-humans/half-animals? Good. Kids fighting an evil witch? Good. Aslan dying and coming back? Good. Plus a cartoon version of it came out at roughly the same time that I read it. Man, you can't get any better than that.

The book's all tied up with fourth grade in my mind. I was thus quite disturbed when the trailer was not very good. Now apparently the movie is pretty good. Whew. And Enthusio wants to see it. Man, bonding with your boy over two fictional tales of your youth in one year. That's good.

Cognitive Dissonance

2005-12-09T21:22:00.000-08:00

Like about 75% of non-engineering college students, I took Psych 1 as a freshman. In that class, the professor talked about cognitive dissonance one day. You know, being confronted with totally irreconcilable ideas simultaneously. Or, as Jerry Seinfeld's agency would put, reasons for "freakin' out."

My commute foisted on me a classic case of cognitive dissonance this week. I usually drive into the Big City for work at about the same time every day. Accordingly, I occasionally see some of the same cars headed in, presumably driven by people whose schedules are roughly the same as me. Anyway, one day this week, I'm sitting there waiting to get through a stoplight and notice the following bumper stickers on the car in front of me:

"Bush/Christ 2004"

"Help Jesus Punish The Fornicating Harlots! Vote Republican!!!"

Whoa, how do you really feel? I spent the rest of the day thinking about how over the top the second one was particularly.

OK, two days later, I'm at the same stoplight at roughly the same time of the morning and I noticed the car with those bumper stickers again in the lane next to me and about two cars ahead of me. Now, given the somewhat broader perspective I had on the car this time, I noticed what kind of car those bumper stickers were on:

A Toyota Prius! A hybrid for God's sake!

OK, now what in the world was going on here?!?

The world's most committed liberal who isn't very successful at being funny? The world's environmentally-conscious religious conservative? What, what, what was I supposed to think about this? My brain nearly exploded. I was freakin' out! Cognitive dissonance, baby.

Been A Berry, Berry Bad Blogger

2005-12-09T21:19:00.000-08:00

Last night, out of freakin' nowhere, the Muse turns, stares at me, points her finger at me and says, "You're a bad blogger! You haven't updated your blog since November 19!" OK, OK, here it comes, baby. I'm watching 101 Most Unforgettable Moments of SNL, thus the "berry, berry" stuff. Garrett Morris's most famous character.

USC Again

2005-11-19T23:33:00.000-08:00

Just finished watching USC beat Fresno State. I was really rooting for Fresno State, having grown up down there, but, as one of my previous posts discussed, I have serious affection for USC football that kind of is embarrassing to me. I'm going to have to get over this, though, because USC fans bug me.

Fresno State gave USC a great game in LA. (Fresno State basically plays most of its big games on the road because colleges from major conferences essentially refuse to go on the road to play Fresno State. College football does not have the most equitable system.) USC won because Reggie Bush is freakin' unbelieveable. It is almost impossible to tackle the guy. He had something like 500 all-purpose yards. Plus Fresno State's quarterback made a couple of bad throws. Plus USC got a few calls. Still it was a really good game that wasn't decided until there was about a minute left.

So, what do the USC fans do? Do they respect the quality of the game? Uh, no. They start singing, "nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, hey, hey, hey, goodbye" over and over. So classy. This is after reading the weekly column that a USC student writes for ESPN.com in which she described begging, begging her friend not to go to UCLA. Uh, maybe your friend doesn't have the bucks, honey.

Maybe the fact that I had USC pajamas when I was 10 doesn't necessarily mean that I have to like USC forever.

The Tipping Point

2005-11-19T22:54:00.000-08:00

Finished reading The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell recently. It's a very interesting book, although I didn't really buy the author's argument.

The point of the book is that ideas often don't gain acceptance gradually, but rather reach a certain point -- The Tipping Point -- where they zoom from being accepted by just a few people to being accepted by lots of people very quickly.

The really interesting part of the book are the case studies of ideas that really took off. The author gives a whole interesting history of Paul Revere's ride that describes how Revere knew everyone and was very prominent in the Boston community, so, when someone heard British troops talking about going to seize the rebels' guns, they told Revere. He headed out to tell people about it and basically knew everyone on the way to Lexington and Concord, so they listened to him and were ready for the British redcoats. Gladwell contrasts Revere's set uccess with the response to William Dawes, who rode in the opposite direction and basically didn't gmuch response at all. Dawes didn't know everyone, so they didn't respond. Didn't know all of that.

Gladwell describes how the creators of both Sesame Street and Blue's Clues worked very hard to format their shows' presentations so that little kids would pay attention. As someone whose children have absorbed a lot of Sesame Street and Blue's Clues -- we have had very well-loved Elmoes and both kids wore themselves some serious Steve shirts -- I can tell you that they were very successful. There was great joy in our house when Baby Paprika arrived and it was quite an event when Steve went off to college and Joe became Blue's guardian, master, owner, landlord, whatever.

On the whole, though, the book's argument wasn't especially persuasive. It makes sense that ideas take off quickly at a certain point. Things reach critical mass and take off. (I don't know why Gladwell didn't use the term "critical mass" instead of the term "tipping point." I'm guessing that Gladwell wanted to use his own term, although it gets kind of irritating because he insists on capitalizing it. We get it, ideas have Tippings Points.) Gladwell says that three factors cause ideas to take off: (1) unique people who move ideas very broadly (Connectors), who discover ideas (Mavens) or are especially convincing in promoting ideas (Salesmen); (2) the "stickiness" of the ideas, how appealing their presentation is; and (3) the context in which they are presented. OK, all of that makes sense.

But Gladwell doesn't explain very well how these factors all fit together. He seems to say that any one of these things can be enough to make an idea take off. But he never actually says that or argues why it is. He presents all kinds of different Salesmen without much explanation. He presents the world's most persuasive financial advisor and people who look really cool smoking as his main examples of Salesmen. Huh? He presents both the decision of Blue's Clues' creators to show the same show every day for a week and the fact that nicotine affects people's brain chemistry as examples of the "stickiness" of things that becomes epidemics. Huh? I can only remember New York City's emphasis on "broken windows" crimes like subway-fare-jumping and vandalism as a major factor in the dramatic drop in crime there as an example of the Importance of Context (again, capitals) presented by Gladwell.

So Gladwell probably is right that ideas reach a point of acceptance where they take off like rockets and makes an interesting presentation of things that have done so. He doesn't do a great job of explaining why they take off.

Things That Don't Work

2005-11-19T21:23:00.000-08:00

Have you noticed in the last 10 years or so that things don't work? Way too frequently, you get something home and, some incredibly ridiculous short amount of time later, it stops working. Or you buy a service and, when the first monthly bill comes, it has some charge on it that was not explained to you.

The most recent incident of this kind in my life has been with a cell phone recharger that had to buy in Washington. (I somehow lost the one that came with my phone two years ago or so -- no idea where it went.) I got a recharger that was not the same brand as my phone, but was supposed to work with it. And it did. For about five days. Now it will go in the recharger slot, but it doesn't do anything. There's $27 down the tube. (I haven't decided yet whether to fight with Cingular about it.)

Unfortunately, this is just way too common these days. After The Muse and I switched cell companies (so I could get the phone that needs to be recharged), the first monthly bill had a $20 charge on it to have a second phone on the account. Was this explained to us when we signed up for our whiz-bang, new and improved, 1,000-minute a month plan? Hell, no. I screamed at several representatives of the cell phone company about this. They were apologetic. Did anything change? No.

As you may know from reading The Muse's blog, the hinge on her old laptop broke after less than two years. When I called the computer company about it, they said that it wasn't under warranty anymore and, even if it was, the warranty wouldn't cover the problem because we must've let something get into the hinge and that's not a mechanical problem. When I asked the representative how she could possibly know this given that she had never seen our laptop, she said that they build their laptops to withstand being moved around a lot. So the warranty wouldn't cover the broken laptop because the laptop was made so that it wouldn't break. (It reminded me of invading a country, allowing a bunch of terrorists to move in and then saying that the whole thing was justified because the country is the frontline in the fight against terrorism. Okaaaay.)

It's just unreal how things don't work. Our toaster doesn't toast. One upstairs TV has a yellow spot in the bottom left corner of the screen. My old car, a Toyota Solara that I bought because it was supposed to never break down, blew its water pump out about 2,000 miles after the warranty ran out and the ABS warning light flicked on and off periodically for no apparent reason. My Toyota, for God's sake! Our 2004 Mazda minivan makes a funny sound when the car is cold and you're backing up. The CD drive on our desktop broke less than a year after we bought it (the rewriter drive will run CD's though). The "p" key on my firm's laptop stopped working less than a year after we bought it.

When these things happen, I call the customer service and yell at people. Our office manager does the same thing at work. I know that customer service people aren't the ones responsible. I know that they are cannon fodder meant to receive hostility and not provide any solutions. I'm sorry, customer service people (especially the ones in India), but your bosses stink and they hired you.

Why are we willing to tolerate this kind of BS? It's because everything has gotten cheaper. You can buy desktop computers for something like $300 or $400. They just give some cell phones away when you sign a service contract. I think our upstairs TV cost something like $50. They give AM/FM radio headsets away with magazine subscriptions. You can buy burnable CD's for like $20 for 50. (You remember that scene in Sixteen Candles when Farmer Ted asks Samantha if he can borrow her underwear because he bet his friend a box of floppy disks that he would sleep with her and needs her underwear as proof because floppies are really expensive? It is for to laugh.)

At some point, we culturally decided that we want things to be really cheap and are willing to sacrifice a great deal of quality to get cheap things. The technology industry in particular seems to have taken that to heart. They keep pushing the price of computers down and keep pushing the quality of customer service down too.

For example, our firm just bought new computers. This is, I think, the third time we have done this in the six years since I started there. Did law firms change computers three times in six years 15 years ago? Uh, I think not. Computers are much cheaper now. My new computer, however, basically was a piece of trash as soon as it came out of the box. It basically didn't want to start some mornings. It would lock up so badly that I couldn't give it the three-finger-salute (Control-Alt-Delete) -- not the third-finger-salute, though that is what I wanted to give it -- and couldn't even turn it off by pressing the CPU's power button. I had to turn off the power at the surge protector. What was our computer provider's response? They wanted me to sit on the phone with them for some undetermined amount of time conducting troubleshooting exercises before they would agree to do anything else. Now, as you may know, attorneys' services are monetized by the amount of time that they work on a matter. So, our computer provider, having made a lemon, having not caught that lemon in their QA/QC process, having allowed this computer to be installed in our office, now wants me to blow off my billable work time talking on the phone with them before they spend any money fixing the problem. This made me rather angry. I refused. I was out of the office the next day. Our very kind office manager agreed to try to do the phone troubleshooting while I was out. The day I was out of the office, however, our office manager couldn't even get my computer to turn on. When she called the troubleshooting line, she told them she couldn't do what they wanted because the computer wouldn't even turn on.

This gave me a great deal of enjoyment. Their attempt to foist the burden of their ineptitude on to our firm was thwarted by the very extent of their ineptitude.

Is this cycle of things get cheaper and lousier unstoppable? I sure don't see it stopping. We like things cheap. We -- I -- will stand in gigantic lines at Costco because things are cheap. Communities welcome WalMarts, though they know they will hurt local businesses. WalMart sells things cheaply.

Don't know quite what to say about all of this, except that I will really try hard not to be nasty to Indian customer service representatives.

The Godfather and Al Pacino

2005-11-13T16:27:00.000-08:00

For some reason, I have been watching a lot of the Godfather movies lately. The first two, of course. I saw Godfather III on Christmas break whatever year it was that it came out. Man, it stank. In light of the quality of the first two movies, memories of Godfather III should be repressed. Just pretend it didn't exist.

I made a project of watching The Godfather and Godfather II during the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of college while back at home (I was all cultured from having gone to college and was renting all kinds of arty movies -- fell sleep during Last Temptation of Christ). I hadn't seen them in a long time, but recently caught a lot of both of them, first on WGN and then on our local WB affiliate. I'm guessing that these movies are highly appealing to channels with a lot of time to fill and not much quality TV to put on because people like me will watch some of them if we catch them and they're probably cheap to show at this point. Plus they're looong (especially if you show commercials every 3 minutes, like WGN). Anyway, I watched about 1/2 of The Godfather last week when The Muse was out of town and then, for some ungodly reason, stayed up until 1:30 last night watching Godfather II. Don't ask me why, I can't really tell you. But I did really enjoy it.

Two things struck me about the movies.

First, and this is no insight at all, but they're both really good. And The Godfather II is even a sequel. I think that my favorite part is the part of the first one between the time that Vito Corelone gets shot and the time that Michael Corelone shoots the guys responsible in the Italian restaurant. Here's where Michael commits to being part of the family business. Until then, he resisted it. He went to college. He was dating Diane Keaton, not someone like Talia Shire. He enlisted in the Marines when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor (to Sonny's dismay, as shown at the end of Godfather II -- everything was to Sonny's dismay).

But then his father is shot and, really, all he wants to do is prevent his father from getting shot again. At the scene at the hospital, you can see how Michael would be much better at running things than Sonny. He quickly figures out that someone's going to try to come kill Vito from the absence of anyone around. He convinces the nurse to him move Vito. He drafts the baker Enzo to pretend that he is a bodyguard with Michael when the hitmen come (there's that brilliant shot of poor Enzo's hands shaking so much that he can't light a cigarette after the hitmen leave). Then he's the one who decides that he needs to kill Solazzo and the dirty cop when no one else thinks he should and he's the one who explains how to spin it for the newspapers. He is very decisive and smart and is willing to go to the mat to protect his father.

Then you get the scene at the restaurant. There is so much good stuff in that scene. Solazzo wants to talk in Italian and Michael goes along, having a hard time finding the words because he isn't that fluent. He's going along with the old ways. Finally, he says in English that he just wants to make sure that no one tries to hurt his father again. He's doing it his own way. Solazzo says he just wants a truce. OK, here is the point when everything changes. Michael could have just said OK, that would have accomplished his goal, apparently. But now he's committed, he's going to be this person hadn't meant to be. He goes in the bathroom and he gets the gun. Then he stops and smooths his hair and heads back out. He disappears from view and then we see him through the mirror, kind of like it's not really him, like when he disappeared from view, he became someone else. He goes out, waits for a minute, then shoots the two guys dead. Now, when Clemenza told Michael what to do, he said to just let the gun fall from his hand. Instead, he starts out the restaurant, still with the gun, then he eventually throws it to the floor, like he had forgotten what to do. He kind of holds his hand up, too. (Jeff Goldblum basically ripped this move off in The Fly after he arm-wrestled the guy in the bar and broke the guy's arm.)

The movies are just exceedingly well put together and the stories are good.

The second thing that struck me about the movies is just how good of an actor Al Pacino is, or used to be. Marlon Brando's performance of course is really famous, one of the most famous ever. The movies, though, are Al Pacino's movies. They are mostly about his character and he carries them, particularly Godfather II, which is almost completely about Michael.

Since these movies, Pacino has become a yeller. I haven't seen a lot of his movies, but he has some pretty famous loud lines -- "Say hello to my little friend!" "Hooah!" -- and he seems to like to play the obnoxious guy.

And he wasn't like that at all in the Godfather movies. About 75% of his lines are almost whispered and he gets a lot of mileage out of not saying anything. By The Godfather II, there's a lot of menace in him being silent. It also makes the few tines that he blows up that much more effective. I think that the only time that he really detonates is in Godfather II, when Kay -- Diane Keaton -- tells him that she didn't lose their third baby to a miscarriage, but instead had an abortion because she didn't want to bring another one of his children into the world. He's really frightening in that scene because he's out of control and he's always been totally under control before. Even when he tells Fredo that he knows that Fredo was the one who tried to kill him, he doesn't come off as crazy, he comes off as intense and terrifying. Given Pacino's later acting choices, he seems like he is almost consciously trying to not do Michael.

So I guess the Godfather movies deserved their Oscars. They're awfully good. Plus they've got Abe Vigoda.

Autism

2005-11-13T13:18:00.000-08:00

There's an interesting article about autism in today's S.F. Chronicle Magazine. Specifically, it's about a 10- or 11-year-old boy in Marin who is presented as essentially cured of the autism with which he was diagnosed when he was two. The boy began having serious digestive and intestinal problems almost as soon as he was born and he had no language when he was two. (He wouldn't swallow anything and had blood in his output frequently.) Upon receiving the autism diagnosis, his parents, and especially his mother, began the intensive research about how to improve his condition that you hear about a lot of parents doing. They talked to lots of people with lots of theories, converted a room in their room into a therapy room and started with nutritional therapies. They put their son on a gluten-free diet and a wide variety of supplements. Now, he apparently presents as just about autism-free, although he has a helper in class who seems to help very lightly. He reads a lot, which is interesting to me at least. Judging by the quotes in the article, though, the boy retains a little bit of Aspergerian behavior. For example, he is quoted as explaining to the writer how the remote control fan in his room works. That's not something that a lot of non-autistic-spectrum kids would do (although my brother Guitar Guy, who was anti-Aspergerian in his socializing as a child, was known to explain that kind of thing to strangers -- sorry, Guitar Guy, it's just true).

We of course have heard a lot about dietary and vitamin-related therapies over the years as we have listened for ways to help The Mermaid. There are a lot of parents of autistic children who believe that these things can be very helpful and, apparently, they have been very helpful for the boy in the article.

The main thing that I took out of the article, though, is that there seem to be some very distinct patterns in autistic children's case histories. While there is some mention in the article of the boy having a somewhat adverse reaction to his MMR vaccination, his history is not the classic story that you hear, namely that a children was more or less non-autistic unless he or she got the MMR and then, shortly after the MMR, became quite autistic. The boy's history seems to involve some serious digestive issues. The boy did not seem to regress, but rather had significant communicative issues from the start.

None of these histories, however, is anything like The Mermaid's. The Mermaid was a happy little girl who just didn't talk. She didn't have any serious digestive issues (although she doesn't eat any meat -- she has never eaten much meat, although she ate pepperoni for a while). She didn't regress around the time she turned two -- that was just the time that we realized something wasn't quite what we expected. She responded well to language-related interventions almost as soon as they were used with her (she was the star of a video made by the San Luis Obispo County Office of Education for the use of PECS - a picture-based communication system that helps kids learn how to exchange ideas with others).

What all of these histories suggest to me, at least, is that it may be futile to search for a single cause of autism. Given that we now accept that there is a spectrum of autism disorders, it wouldn't seem to me to be much of a surprise if it turned out that there were a spectrum of causes. Because The Mermaid has never had serious digestive problems, I have never really felt that a dietary approach would work for her. Because she responded well to pretty intensive school-based programs as soon as she started them -- she was going to school something five hours every weekday when she was three -- and has always been in some kind of school several hours a day since, it has always seemed to The Muse and I that she needed some time to rest when she gets home. Accordingly, we haven't ever tried intensive at-home programs with her. And she is doing well -- mostly B's and an A in spelling in her mainstream 5th grade class and her teacher told us that, at one point when she was out of her class, the teacher asked the other students who would like to be The Mermaid's buddy and everyone in the class raised their hands.

The article in the Chronicle just sorted deepened the mystery of autism to me. Kids with different histories producing the same basic spectrum of communication problems. Huh? It doesn't make a lot of sense. We are just lucky with The Mermaid. I don't know a lot else to say.

The HBO Effect

2005-11-06T21:28:00.000-08:00

Do you have HBO? We have satellite, so we get six HBO channels. One is in Spanish, although it's pretty entertaining to watch movies in Spanish with bad dubbing sometimes.

Anyway, HBO plays the same movie multiple times in any given month, of course. It's always been that way. I remember going to my aunt's house in town in about 1982 or 1983 and checking out her HBO monthly guide and seeing that Risky Business was on about every four hours (this was around the time that the original ESPN was still showing aerobics in the morning). So now that we have six channels of HBO, the same movies are on over and over again every month.

This is an unadulterated good thing. If there is some movie you don't like, then change the channel. (We have like 100, including the BYU Channel. We don't watch that one much.) Ah, but, if there is a movie you like or even mildly interests you, then you can catch 15 or 20 or 30 minute swatches of it just about every day, if you want. For me, a liberal arts/attorney type guy who deconstructs stuff for fun and for a living, being able to watch little pieces of movies over time rocks.

This month is great. HBO is showing L.A. Confidential, which is one of my favorite movies of the last ten years or so. (Here's my very quickly prepared list of the best 12 movies of the 1990's -- couldn't get down to 10 -- in no particular order:(1) The Crying Game; (2) Pulp Fiction; (3) Dazed & Confused; (4) L.A. Confidential; (5) There's Something About Mary; (6) Schindler's List; (7) The Matrix; (8) Saving Private Ryan; (9) Toy Story; (10) Babe; (11) Fargo; and (12) Being John Malkovich. The Fugitive and The Shawshank Redemption are pretty close, too.) I've caught about an hour of it twice so far. I'll probably check out little bits of it several more times. (I highly recommend James Ellroy's book L.A. Confidential, on which the movie is based. Ellroy's L.A. Quartet of books are great, though they take a little getting used to.)

When you watch little bits of a movie a whole bunch of times, you catch all kinds of things that you didn't catch when you first saw the movie or even you saw it on video or DVD. So, for instance, Collateral was on HBO a few months ago and I caught 15 or 20 minutes of it a whole bunch of time. (After being into Miami Vice back in the 80's, I'll pretty much go see any movie that Michael Mann makes. The ones about crime and cops all have that after-dark, wet-streets kind of look that Miami Vice had and are pretty good film noir. See Collateral, see Heat, they're good.) Collateral is about a taxi driver (Jamie Foxx) who is hired for the night by a hit man (Tom Cruise -- playing a freak, got to give him credit for not always demanding to be a good guy) to drive him around while he shoots people (the taxi driver doesn't do it willingly once he finds out Cruise is a hit man, of course). I saw the movie in the theater and liked it, so, when it showed up on HBO, I was pretty happy.

At one point in the movie, Tom Cruise forces Jamie Foxx to go into a bar and tell them he's the hit man to get some information. Foxx asks Cruise some questions about him just in case Foxx gets asked. Foxx asks him, "How long you been doing this?" Cruise says, "Private sector, six years." (Foxx's next question is something like "So, do you like get benefits, you know, health care, stuff like that?") Now, when I saw the movie in the theater, I caught the "six years" part, but not the "private sector" part. The "private sector" part puts a whole new spin on the line and, to some extent, Cruise's character. The "private sector" part tells us that he was an assassin with the CIA or the military or something before hanging out his own shingle. Interesting. Wouldn't have noticed that without the joy of HBO.

I haven't caught a lot new in L.A. Confidential yet, except that it's kind of unbelieveable that, of everyone in that movie who was brilliant -- Guy Pearce, Russell Crowe, James Cromwell (the subject of a post here soon), David Strathain, Kevin Spacey -- the only one who won an Oscar was Kim Basinger. Apparently, the Academy that she didn't scream in the movie. There's three weeks left this month, though.

A Crack In The Edge Of The World

2005-11-06T21:27:00.000-08:00

Just finished reading A Crack In The Edge Of The World, Simon Winchester's new book about the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. It was really good, although a little repetitive of Winchester's last book about Krakatoa in that it is about, at its root, plate tectonics and their effects. In places, it also is a little repetitive of Assembling California, John McPhee's book about how California came together geologically, although Winchester does acknowledge the debt.

The book mostly describes the plate tectonics associated with the North American Plate, which starts in the east at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which is as far out as Iceland, and ends in the west at the San Andreas fault and in Alaska. (In Oregon and Washington, a small plate named the Juan de Fuca Plate is subducting under the North American Plate, which creates the volcanoes in those states. Subducting plates are one of the most common reasons why volcanoes occur. Krakatoa existed and exists due to a subducting plate.)

There's a pretty substantial discussion of mid-plate events like the 1880's earthquake under Charleston, South Carolina, and the three 8.0+ earthquakes that occurred in 1811 and 1812 under New Madrid, Missouri. The New Madrid quakes were so big that they were felt in New York and Chicago and made the Mississippi River -- a mile wide -- run backwards. These things really shouldn't have been happening in the middle of the plate, rather than at its edge, where people expect earthquakes. Apparently, because the plates move around due to the convection currents in the Earth's magma, there are some scientists who think that the New Madrid and Charleston quakes and other mid-plate events indicate that the North American Plate is in the process of splitting up. Great.

Of course, as a California native and junkie, the parts of the book about the San Andreas fault and the San Francisco earthquake were the ones that most interested me. I wasn't aware that the San Andreas basically has three parts: (1) from Cape Mendocino to somewhere around San Juan Batista; (2) from San Juan Batista down to the Tehachapis; and (3) from the Tehachapis down to the Salton Sea. The northern and southern parts are locked. They don't really move much, except with big earthquakes. The middle part, however, is pretty continuously moving north, which is why Parkfield gets so many earthquakes. (Got to get to Parkfield at some point. Barely anyone lives in that part of the world -- Parkfield, Cholame, the Carriza Plain -- but it not only features the San Andreas fault, but also the place where James Dean was killed. L. Ron Hubbard lived out there at some point, too. As a kid, I knew that we were driving past the James Dean spot every time my family drove from Lemoore to Pismo Beach, but I didn't know that we were crossing the San Andreas Fault every time too. I would have complained until my dad pulled off to look at the Fault at some point if I had known. Instead, I complained about getting lunch at the Black Oak in Paso Robles.) This movement causes the tension in the northern and southern parts of the fault that cause earthquakes in the Bay Area and LA. Accordingly, it's basically statistically certain that California will get more large earthquakes.

I also didn't realize what the geologic reason for the Tehachapis is. Generally, the Pacific Plate slides past the North American Plate. California's big bend to the east that begins around Lompoc and the Tehachapis are caused because, beginning at the bend and running down to about LA, the Pacific Plate pushes north into the North American Plate. This northern push pushed up the Tehachapis and causes earthquakes in the middle part of the fault, like the great big Tejon earthquake in 1857 and the big Tehachapi quake in the 1950's that my mom remembers.

It's quite a place where we live here. Of course, the book ends with a discussion of Yellowstone that describes how it exists because it sits on top of a volcanic hot spot (like Hawaii) and has been the site of two absolutely gigantic eruptions in the last few million years. Apparently, there'll be another one at some point. So, between Florida getting several hurricanes every single year and Yellowstone being bound to erupt gigantically at some point in the next couple of million years, California's issues may be a decent compromise. Plus you can wear shorts in October and even in November, at least this year.

Kitchen Confidential

2005-11-06T20:36:00.000-08:00

I read Kitchen Confidential a while ago. It's by Anthony Bourdain, a pretty high-powered chef in New York. It doesn't have a consistent narrative, but instead is kind of an anthology of Bourdain's stories, insights and thoughts about the restaurant business. He describes how he got started as a vegetable chopper or something like that at a restaurant in Providencetown, Massachusetts, I think, and how he basically got humiliated out of the joint the first time he burned himself and was yelping and asking for Band-Aids and the big, old, mean cooks started showing him their nearly disfigured hands and calling him profane names.

He also describes how he liked some of the local cooking that was done there because the cooks incorporated influences from the local "Portagees." As a half-Portuguese guy, I found this use of "Portagee" striking. I don't think that I have ever seen the word in print in any sort of non-fiction. I think that Steinbeck used it some, maybe in Tortilla Flat, but it was interesting to see it used loosely in something about the present. The word, like many ethnic generalities, inspires disparate reactions. I have never had a problem with it or with being called a "Portagee," or at least a "half-Portagee." My family used and uses the term frequently. Some Portuguese kids with whom I went to school for a long time -- mostly ones whose families had come to the US more recently -- really disliked it and did not want people using it to refer to them. Accordingly, I was surprised to see it used pretty loosely and somewhat admiringly in print. I wonder if Bourdain called the cooks "Portagees" to their faces. I guess that I would be surprised if he did.

Kitchen Confidential sold pretty well, so quite a bit of it is pretty well-known. For instance, I had already heard about how it explains why you shouldn't order certain foods on certain days of the week. Apparently, you shouldn't eat seafood at Sunday brunches or order seafood specials Sunday or Monday nights. Basically, the chefs order seafood for the weekend on Friday. If they haven't sold it by Sunday morning, they incorporate into brunch. If they haven't gotten rid of it during brunch, then they concoct something to get it sold before they have to throw it out and before they buy more seafood on Tuesday. There's other stuff like that in the book, like how chefs think that people who order chicken basically think those people don't know what they want. I was kind of offended by that. I usually order a BBQ chicken sandwich within the first couple of trips to a restaurant that has them (although obviously not at Thai places, or Morton's, or someplace where ordering a BBQ chicken sandwich would be stupid). I figure that I can compare restaurants by ordering that at different places. It's a test, not an indication that I'm lame (I think).

The other thing that struck me about the book was how brutal cook culture is. I cooked pizzas for a couple of summers and can attest that a kitchen pretty much turns into a locker room if populated by a bunch of guys. Of course, that's probably true of almost any place where you get late teenage guys together (like the pizza kitchen where I worked). Apparently, at least as described by the book, things just devolve when you're talking about long-time cooks. The story that really got me was the one about how Boudrain was working in a kitchen where some higher-up -- the supply guy, the expediter (who reads the orders as they come in), someone like that -- was constantly grabbing Boudrain's butt. Boudrain had enough of this one day and, as the higher-up approached to grab his butt, he grabbed a knife, arranged it so it was immediately available and, as the guy came to grab his butt, held out so that the guy would jam his hand into it. When that happened, he then pushed it into the guy's hand further. The guy was howling and spurting blood all over. He went off to the hospital and came back to work within a couple of days. Apparently, this incident earned Boudrain major props in the kitchen. Yikes! Good thing I got out of the restaurant business. Did pick up how to toss pizza dough, though.

Washington, D.C.

2005-11-05T16:46:00.000-08:00

I was out of town because I was in Washington, D.C. This was kind of a big deal for me because I'm a pretty big law/poli si/history junkie and, baby, that's all there in Washington. Got into the Supreme Court for five minutes of argument. That was pretty impressive, but, next time, I'm figuring out a way to stay all day. Other than going to the Court, I went (usually with my mom and some with my mom and my dad) to the American History Smithsonian, the Natural History Smithsonian, the Air and Space Smithsonian, the Lincoln Memorial, the WWII Memorial, the Vietnam Memorial, the Korean War Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery. Walked under the Washington Memorial, didn't go in.

None of those featured the oddest thing that I saw. That honor goes to Larry's Homemade Ice Cream on Connecticut Avenue. They had pretty good ice cream there. They also have a wall-size mural of Picasso's Guernica. You know, this is the Picasso that features people in various states of geometric fracture looking like they're howling. It is Picasso's protest of the firebombing of the Spanish town of Guernica by the Fascist army of Generalismo Francisco Franco (who is still dead, BTW) during the Spanish Civil War. So I'm looking at this mural and thinking "Why in the world is there a mural of Guernica in this ice cream place? That's a pretty big downer for this kind of place." Then I notice that all of the wide open mouths of the people (well, as close as Picasso gets to depicting people) have colorful scoops of ice cream in them. Ah, there it is, it's irony. I thought it was pretty funny personally, but I can see where other people might be pretty appalled. They did have good Oreo Cookie and Mud Pie ice cream. I did a lot of walking, so I felt entitled to some ice cream.

I wasn't particularly impressed by the American History Smithsonian when I first went in with my mom and dad. We didn't look at much, but just went through to get to the cafeteria because it was convenient for lunch. This was a little distressing because I was really looking forward to it. Anyway, it kind of had that look of an antiseptic and worn-down academic building built in 1962. My mom and I, however, went back a couple of days later and, boy, it's cool. The thing about the Smithsonian is the amazing stuff in it. It looks like a pretty basic great big museum, but, then, hey, there's the actual Brown v. Board of Education decision that the Supreme Court issued. There's the actual Supreme Court voting record for Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 decision that said "separate but equal" was OK. There's Muhammad Ali's gloves that he used to knock out George Foreman in the Rumble in the Jungle. There's Jerry Seinfeld's puffy shirt. There's Judy Garland's ruby slippers. There's a piece of plutonium and the Nobel Prize that Glenn Seaborg won for deriving it. There's the speech that helped stopped the bullet when someone tried to shoot Teddy Roosevelt. It just goes on and on. And we skipped the big exhibition on America's wars. The Natural History Museum was similar -- there's the Hope Diamond, there's a piece of the oldest rock in the world, there are real dinosaur artifacts -- and pretty cool. I just went through the lobby of Air and Space, but I did get to see the Campbell Soup cans that we used to send the Mercury and Gemini astronauts into space. You would not have caught me getting blasted into space in those things.

Going to the Supreme Court was a pretty big deal to me. I mean, this is the top of the top in my profession. The building itself is more or less built like a temple (they have marble busts of all of the Chief Justices, like they were from Rome or something). I did not make it into see a whole case get argued and ended up sitting in for about five minutes of argument. Arguing there is something that I would like to do -- I'm an attorney, after all -- but it would be a daunting prospect. Usually, we argue in front of one judge. A good judge may ask quite a few questions even in a 15- or 30-minute motion hearing and you should try to anticipate them. If a case goes up on appeal, it generally is argued in front of three judges in both the federal and California courts. I externed with a California Court of Appeal and sat in on a number of oral arguments. They could get pretty involved if more than one judge decided to start asking questions. The U.S. Supreme Court has NINE judges! In the five minutes that I watched, I think five of them -- Scalia, Roberts, O'Connor, Kennedy and Breyer -- asked questions. Justice Thomas apparently never asks questions at oral argument, so you'd only have to really worry about 8 of them asking questions. Still, 8 judges asking questions would be something. And these are supposed to be pretty much the best judges in the country and, even if you don't like them, they are undoubtedly very sharp. Then you would pile that on top of the facts that, one, arguing there would be a career highlight for nearly all attorneys, two, you probably would take your family along to see the argument and, three, your clients would be fired up for the experience, too. It would be quite an experience, no doubt.

Finally, something that really struck me was how tightly packed all of these institutions are. I mean, you can pretty much stand in the middle of the Mall and see both the White House and the Capitol and, if the Capitol wasn't so big, you could see the Supreme Court, too. Meanwhile, the Mall is lined by these huge buildings that house various federal agencies and courts. I guess that I knew intellectually that all of these places are all packed tightly, but, seeing it in person, I can see how people can lose perspective if they live and work in Washington for a while.

The Drought

2005-11-05T16:45:00.000-08:00

OK, I know that I owe you some posts. Hey, I was out of town and stuff. Anyway, here they come.