I saw A Beautiful Mind after having read the book. I think it is a decent movie in its own right, but I believe it capitalizes on the audience's ignorance to portray it as a realistic account of John Forbes Nash's life and genius, and that is just plain wrong. Sure, it doesn't say "based on the life of" at any point in time, and the commercials all noted that it was "inspired by the life of," but yet the character is named John Forbes Nash, and Ron Howard inserts dates and post-movie text post-scripts that are common devices of non-fiction films.
Among other things, John Forbes Nash had several homosexual relationships and fathered a child with a woman he refused to marry or support. Later, he did marry Alicia, but she later divorced him when his schizophrenic paranoia was too much to tolerate, though she remarried him last June. He was also a truly brilliant mathmetician. None of this comes across in the film. If the filmmakers didn't feel that the movie would be as moving if it wasn't based on a true story, they shouldn't have made it.
I'm freezing my butt off here. It's great!
Saw The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring again with the family. Noticed a lot more the second time around. Lots of fun.
We all sat around and chowed down some Krispy Kreme donuts last night. James kept eating one more, saying, "I'm having another one, I don't care what any of you think." We were all thinking the same thing.
I think it's the same thing with work. I didn't realize how mentally spent I was from this last stretch of two to three months until my last meeting ended today. I sat in my office for about five minutes looking at my monitor and I don't think I had a single coherent thought. I don't even think I had any incoherent thoughts. I need sleep. I need to stroll through a store by myself, and do some Christmas shopping. And for at least three consecutive days, I need to think about something other than difficult business problems. Every day I've had to stay a little bit later at work, because I think my brain has overheated.
For all its finer qualities, and Seattle has its share, one it lacks is a Christmas feel. I just can't imagine staying here in Seattle for the holidays. I always leave. Maybe it's a sign.
One thing I don't have as I leave this year is emotional baggage. In even-numbered years, I always leave this town with an unsettled mind, a restless heart. In odd numbered years, I'm just plain tuckered out.
Yes, M. Night is an arrogant dude. But I like his movies.
The Cubs signed Moises Alou, which is not as great a thing as it sounds, but definitely still a net positive. What's really great is that since the Astros didn't offer Alou arbitration, the Cubs don't have to surrender any draft picks. Baseball rules are complex and sometimes silly, but arbitration is very easy to understand, and in most cases teams are too conservative about offering arbitration to their players. Usually, it's because teams are scared of being stuck with that player for one year. But the Cubs made out well this year. They offered arbitration to Todd Van Poppel, David Weathers and Rondell White, all of whom signed elsewhere. That means the Cubs will receive seven draft picks in the first two rounds of the 2002 amateur draft for 3 essentially
mediocre to slightly above average old players. That's a good good move.
I can't wait for Christmas break. You know how sometimes you just really, really....of course you do. I need it.
It's movie awards nomination season, as different pools of movie critics across the country select their best films and actors of the year. The AFI has gotten into the act, announcing their first ever nominations for movie awards, and they will be accompanied by an awards show January 5, preceding the Golden Globes and the Oscars.
The nominating committee seems solid. According to Roger Ebert, it included "director Mimi Leder; writer-director Steven Zaillian; actress Marsha Mason; producers Michael Nesmith and Tom Pollock; academics Jeanine Basinger, Todd Boyd, Edward Branigan and Vivian Sobchack, and critics Molly Haskell, Andrew Sarris, Richard Schickel and [Ebert]."
Nominations included:
Looking at the list, what strikes me is that I've only seen five of the best picture nominees. The glass half empty: it was a long, bad year for movies. The glass half full: the home stretch will be a lot better.
I think what's most disappointing about the year is that we got films from some great directors, but none of them, at least from what I've seen, hit a home run.
An early cut of a trailer for David Fincher's next project, The Panic Room. Give it a bit--the MPEG file loads slowly.
I can't count the number of people who've scolded me for praising his film Seven. How could I condone the abhorrent things depicted in that movie? The difference between that film and The Silence of the Lambs, which so many people praise, is a matter of how thick one's stomach lining is. Seven is a better film, the cinematography and music and atmosphere as lush as that of any movie I can recall seeing in the 90's. Put Fincher in that category of directors whose work I'd always see, regardless of what the reviews say, because even his missteps are fascinating.
Also, The Panic Room marks the return of Jodie Foster.
A popular link among weblogs now. Call it matchmaking in the 21st century.
For $78,000, get set up with intel and a series of coincidental meetings with your dream date. I have no idea if this is for real, but I do know that there are cheaper ways to do this. Whatever happened to asking her friends, or your friends, to help you out. Are we so lazy in the modern world that we need to outsource our own stalking?
I doubt this is serious, but even if it is, it's humorous, especially the FAQ. It includes such standard business cliches as the first mover advantage:
"As industry initiators, we are in a strong position to capitalize on our domination of this market -- a robustly growing market, if our experience is anything to go by."
Or this question and answer, which seems quite sensible:
Q. Even if the subject and I do fall in love, won't it be a hollow love, having been artificially engineered?
A. No, no, no. We do not provide the love that arises between the two of you. We merely help you overcome the various societal obstacles that make the coming together of two human beings in modern society so difficult.
Getting to know someone and falling in love with someone thanks to an engineered coincidence is, if anything, more laudable than meeting someone via an authentic coincidence, as you had to work hard to make it happen. And there is no reason why some people should be the luck-prone beneficiaries of coincidences and others not.
A natural evolution of Serendipity, in which a hack screenwriter designs the coincidences which bring attractive actors John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale together.
Come to think of it, somewhere in this there's a movie waiting to be made. A more ruthless version of J. Lo's The Wedding Planner.
Every year, Britain holds a unique literary event, the Bad Sex Awards, designed to honor the novel containing the worst description of the forbidden act. The goal of the prize is to "draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it." This according to a short column in this Sunday's NY Times.
This year's nominees included Jonathan Franzen, whose otherwise well-written The Corrections includes the unfortunate scene in which Chip engages in "sexual congress with his red chaise-longue." Personally, I think any writer would do well to avoid the use of the phrase "sexual congress," except when attempting satire, or in legal proceedings.
The winning passage this year came from Christopher Hart's Rescue Me:
"Her hand is moving away from my knee and heading north. Heading unnervingly and with a steely will towards the pole. And, like Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Pamela will not easily be discouraged....Ever northward moves her hand, while she smiles languorously at my right ear. And when she reaches the north pole, I think in wonder and terror...she will surely want to pitch her tent."
Writing sex scenes is never easy, and in fiction writing classes in college, professors always warned students about the common pitfall of writing such scenes: don't be too clinical, but also don't engage in hyperbolic metaphor in an attempt to capture the raptures of lust. Any attempt inevitably toes the line of between eros and camp.
But, maybe because we were college students and our teachers did not wish to engage in sexually frank discussions, we were never given hard and fast rules, or examples of well-written sex scenes. In general, I think were discouraged from writing them, and the embarrassment of having to share such scenes with our peers was enough of a deterrent to prevent the situation from arising.
Is there anything better than seeing Notre Dame's football program take one in the arse? This coach, this man of integrity, brought with him a 33% graduation rate from Georgia Tech and and the dark cloud of having allowed (ordered?) one of his players to be physically assaulted by at least two other players after he missed some blocks in practice. Why would a football coach want to lie about having a master's degree anyway?
Notre Dame is in the Midwest, but its football practices are a few miles South of shady, leaning more towards those of the Florida programs in the Southeast than those of its more solid academic reputation. I love it when Stanford beats up on Notre Dame in football every year.
...is sweet. I wonder if this couple got any recompense
from Doubletree after conducting this public lynching. Ah, yet another use for the Internet.
Does anyone know of any websites that don't open a pop-up window? I may have to throw some pop-ups on my site as well.
I just got my copy of the 2002 Jack Welch Management Game for the Playstation 2 and I noticed that I had crappy ratings for finance and marketing skills. That really irked me. It's like only the famous business people like Bill Gates and Michael Dell get great ratings across the board. But at least I'm in the game, and it's cool when my relatives get to play the game and be me as a middle manager. I had to wear this body suit with little lights on it, and they followed me around for a day in the office with a camera, so they've got a really realistic depiction of my arm gestures in meetings, so if you have the game, try to play me in a meeting and press the A-button a few times. It's really great.
What's most enjoyable about The West Wing is Aaron Sorkin's dialogue. I know of very few people who speak like that. But, occasionally, I find some people who speak to me like that, and I feel like I'm in a movie. The conversation is so charged it puts your brain on tilt and accelerates your own thinking.
More good reviews for the Treo 180. I have held off on upgrading my cellphone for a year and a half now, and my Nokia 8260 is starting to show signs of wear. The sound is starting to go. I haven't had any significant reason to upgrade my phone during that time as the primary advances in cell phone tech have been in form factor, primarily, and it's painful to pay $100 just so your phone is small, looks good, is made of chrome, etc. Functional advances have been absent.
Once AT&T flips to GSM, or even if they don't, I may have to get a Treo 180. Syncing my Outlook address book to my cellphone easily is key, and I prefer the keyboard approach to the graffiti approach (the 180g offers graffiti for those who are of the opposite opinion). The ability to rattle off a quick e-mail from my phone is not a huge need, but I could see occasional uses for it. And for remote web browsing, I have to have at least a minimal screen. I refuse to browse the web using a four line black and white text interface.
Google has finally integrated some 20 years of Usenet archives into Google Groups. (Usenet, for those who don't know, is essentially newsgroups; it's funny, because so many people don't know what they are now, but back in the early days of the Internet, newsgroups on various topics were these amazing communities of like-minded people, sharing information on every topic imaginable). Because this archive goes back so far, you can find such posts as...
First mention of Microsoft (May 1981)
First mention of Star Wars Episode 6, then called Revenge of the Jedi. This post reads like a precursor to Ain't It Cool News, albeit minus the foul-mouthed fanboys and large (both physically and personality-wise) moderator Harry Knowles.
First mention of Microsoft Windows, an operating system for personal computers made by Microsoft Inc. of Bellevue, Wash."
First announcement of the Challenger tragedy. Tasteful post to net.space.
First mention of AOL, which I didn't realize had early early links to Apple.
Tim Berners-Lee announcing his WorldWideWeb project.
Marc Andreessen announces Mosaic, the first web browser.
Linus Torvalds announces Linux.
What's really fun is trolling for my own early posts. Finding them out there and reading them is a complete nostalgia trip. The earliest post that I wrote is from 1993. Here I am, in 1994, begging some hometown fans for news on my beloved Cubs. I write: "Steve Traschel--his stats look impressive. I can't wait to see him pitch. What kind of stuff does he have, and is he for real?"
I didn't really post to Usenet that much in school. I remember reading a lot more than writing. I do remember printing out some of the early FAQ's off Stanford's networked printers, carrying off 400 page printouts of the complete annotations to Milton's Paradise Lost or Neil Gaiman's Sandman, crazy things like that. All plain ASCII text.
I've never learned the military alphabet, but tonight I decided I would. Do you know it?
A = Alpha
B = Bravo
C = Charlie
D = Delta
E = Echo
F = Foxtrot
G = Golf
H = Hotel
I = India
J = Juliet
K = Kilo
L = Lima
M = Mike
N = November
O = Oscar
P = Papa
Q = Quebec
R = Romeo
S = Sierra
T = Tango
U = Uniform
V = Victor
W = Whiskey
X = X-ray
Y = Yankee
Z = Zulu
My favorites? Zulu, Whiskey, Tango, Victor, Bravo, Foxtrot, Charlie, Delta, and Juliet.
You'll notice a new button on some of the pages of my site, including the left-hand column of my weblog. You're thinking, oh great, Eugene's going to start charging for this crap on his personal site? Who does he think he is? Is this like Salon Premium? Did he promise venture capitalists more advertising revenue and now he has to flip the switch?
No, no, I'm not going to start e-mailing you and begging for money. Simply a thought, which is this. I have to spend a bit each month to keep the site up and running. Website hosting fees, licensing the URL, software to do HTML editing and photo editing, stuff like that. If somehow I can cover my costs through the occasional donor or through Amazon Associates fees (yep, if you click through on something I recommend and buy it from Amazon, I get a small commission), awesome. If not, no worries. I'm having lots of fun with this. It was one of those things on my 30 things to do before 30 list.
My website's a little over a year old now, and it's come a long way from where it was at the start, which was simply a weblog. Thanks to all my occasional and regular visitors and readers. I'm continually amazed at how many random people stumble across my site for one reason or another (usually content of some sort) and drop me a note.
Okay, can I end this with a plug? If you own a DVD player, you absolutely must own Almost Famous Untitled --The Bootleg Cut. Cameron Crowe makes movies that can have high repeat play value. I just watched this movie again. Good good stuff. Happy holidays!
EW recently put out an issue that touted the five new TV shows to watch this season. Coincidentally, or maybe not, I've been watching three of them: Alias, 24, and Smallville. The other two shows, I believe, were Scrubs and Undeclared, neither of which I've seen.
I like 24 a lot, but I read that they still have half the season to write, or something like that, which strikes me as a dangerous proposition. Frankly, I'm not religious about getting exactly 24 episodes, so if they have to condense the show a bit and fast forward some parts (Kiefer Sutherland's character has yet to use the bathroom, which you would think he'd have to do sometime in the span of 24 hours) I'd be fine with that. They do some interesting things with split screens, similar to what Mike Figgis did with Timecode, and I'm curious to see where more filmmakers take that technique. Overlaying narratives like that is something not easily accomplished with literature.
Alias is somewhat fun, but I really think I just watch because Jennifer Garner is cute and dresses up in all sorts of crazy outfits and wigs in each episode. It's not really that great a show, but most of TV is trash anyway and this is shiny trash. Her character seems way too emotionally fragile to be an international spy, but she looks good running from her pursuers.
Smallville has been up and down, and I've missed a few episodes. I love re-examinations of popular mythologies, and this is a sometimes clever revisiting of the Superman mythology. There's certainly enough material to work with, but hopefully the show doesn't descend completely into teenage melodrama.
I've given up on the X-files. Not just because Mulder and Scully are gone, but because the material feels stale. Without the conspiracy engine, the show is just a weekly monster mash. I personally believe the show could have survived the loss of Mulder and Scully, but the lack of interesting new story material is what's killing that series. Doggett and Reyes are fine, but at some point they have to run into some creature and think, "Wait, didn't Mulder and Scully figure this one out in Season Five?"
I wish the Simpsons would focus even more on current events and on spoofing pop culture. That's when the show is at its best. Some of the territory the show covers now no longer amuses me. What's amazing about the show is how broad its canvas can be, and I'm logging my vote for more pop culture bashing. Take advantage of the flexibility of the Simpsons universe and the inherent freedom that comes from animation and stick closer to current events. For example, that episode last year with the teen boy singing group (of which Bart is a member) was great. N'Sync guest starred, made fun of themselves, a good time was had by all. Basically, I'd like to see the Simpsons steal a bit of The Onion's soul.
Adam, Dan, Christina, Rachael.
Adam: a funny, funny guy.
Dan: living the life I could have lived, if I'd only sold. The ghost of Christmas that could have been.
Christina: young. Very Chinese. Not as disillusioned as she thinks she is. I hope.
Rachael: new age energy and powers. Interesting mix of wise and fragile. Approachable member of the Seattle power late 20's, early 30's, power women's reading group.
Steven Spielberg's long delayed film finally hits theaters next summer. He seems to have a hankering for sci-fi these days. Let's hope it explores the ramifications of the idea (murders can be predicted by reading people's minds so people can be arrested for crimes they will commit in the future) like all the best sci-fi novels do, instead of being a smash it up type of film.
People describe my room as being too full of stuff. I must agree with them. I am overwhelmed with stimuli in my room. DVDs. Satellite TV. Music CDs. Video games. Books piling up in all corners. Dozens of unread magazines, but damned if I'm not saving each and every one because some article looked interesting. The internet. Art on the walls. E-mail. Snail mail. Catalogs. People describe it as a bachelor pad, but that is a mis-statement, because it's really set up just to indulge my need for constant idea flow. I find myself working hard to just stay on top of it, and I'm failing. I feel good when I can throw out a newspaper, or mail, or a magazine. Or finish a book. It feels like progress.
I walk in, and I can't get anything done because there's too much to do. Maybe it is a bachelor pad. It keeps me so occupied I'll have trouble getting out and meeting girls.
This past Sunday's New York Times Magazine was a great issue. The theme? A list of the most interesting ideas of the year as suggested by a slew of people in various industries. As such, it's not a definitive sorted list but just an alpha listing. Some hit, some miss, but all are fun to read. That's probably why I loved Waking Life, the movie. I just like to riff on ideas. Especially those of a contrarian nature.
I'll have to list a few of the more interesting ones when I get home. For example:
Why does Britney Spears appeal to so many people? She is the virgin whore, appealing to both women and men. She flaunts her sex appeal but then plays coy, claiming to be a virgin, to not comprehend the types of messages she sends with her revealing outfits and suggestive lyrics and dance gyrations.
The first revolution in golf ball design in years, coming to a golf shop near you in March 2002.
Evidence-based medicine, a new technique that has debunked lots of myths, such as the placebo effect.
The end of shoelaces. As invented by Nike.
The end of the police lineup as we know it.
Non-romantic dating, or speed dating.
The death of the X-files conspiracy trope.
[On a side note, can I please note that trope is a fabulous word, enormously under-utilized. If I can use just one new word this holiday season, let it be trope.]
Modeling reality with a computer, and, related to that idea, tracking murderers with software. I used this idea in my failed attempt at a 50,000 word novel in November. The father in my story becomes obsessed with modeling everything with computers and loses touch with his own family.
There's a whole list of these ideas on the NYT website, but they only keep this content up for free for a week, so if this whets your appetite, rush over and read them while you can, before this generic link becomes stale.
I went to a Seattle Symphony holiday concert on Friday, and it was jarring because it's been so long since I've really celebrated the end-of-year holidays in a blowout style. In the interim, I wonder if I've become too diseased with irony to appreciate the simple messages of carols. This singer, Brad Little, came out on stage, all 6 feet 8 inches tall (maybe more) and started talking about holiday cheer and twinkling lights and young children frolicing and all I could think of was Troy McClure from the Simpsons, or any of Phil Hartman's character sketches from old SNL. He had that kind of voice. Frighteningly, I think he was serious. I wonder if he cusses in private.
Saw Ocean's 11 yesterday, and it was charming good fun. For me, that is mass popcorn entertainment, much better than the summer spectacles from earlier this year. All about capitalizing on movie stars for their basic star power, good looks. Give them good lines, dress them up nice, let them show off a bit. Good guy wins, gets the girl, gets the money. None of the characters are more than sketches, mannequins which the actors can drape themselves over for the duration of the film.
I've realized a few things. George Clooney is a big movie star (he has recovered nicely from his Batman and Robin debacle). He even has the necessary womanizing rumors floating about him to qualify as a modern rat packer-lite. He also looks good in a tuxedo with the collar undone and the bowtie slung around his neck, untied, like a scarf, an essential quality for any leading man. It says, "I'll dress up, but not all the way, because I'm not a black tie stiff, I'm a little bit of a loose cannon, but not sloppy. I'm fun and style, a rule bender, not a rule breaker. And damn, I look good with this tux half on, imagine what I'd look like if I tied this damn tie."
Brad Pitt dresses more and more flamboyantly in each successive movie as if to say, look at what I can look good in, I'm so damn good looking. Seriously has he worn the same pair of ridiculous sunglasses in any consecutive scenes in the last four movies he's made? My main grips with Pitt is that I have no idea where he comes from. What is he all about? It's a mystery. Pitt and Clooney fall into the category of guys that I don't mind my girlfriends drooling over, because even though I'm not gay, I have to admit that they've got that I don't know what, and if one of my girlfriends dated them, then hey, I'd get to hang out with Brad Pitt or George Clooney, and that wouldn't be so bad.
Julia Roberts, too. She radiates movie star power, but she's never really done it for me. I'm not sure what it is. Yet you know she's just something superhuman.
If I were a work of art, I would be Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa.
I am extremely popular and widely known. Although unassuming and unpretentious, my enigmatic smile has charmed millions. I am a mystery, able to be appreciated from afar, but ultimately unknowable and thus intriguing.
Which work of art would you be?
The Art Test (looks like this link is broken now--Eugene, July 28, 2003)
I realized in gauging reaction to the whole Ginger release in the U.S. what it is that bugs me about American life. It's the ruthlessness of the consumer culture. The idea that what makes the most money is right. Any idea that is thought to have a gold pot at the end of the road takes on a wholly unnatural life in the U.S.
It infects consumers with the idea that we need the next best, new thing. I'm as much a guilty party to this as well. Well, maybe I'm more victim than perp. I have this feeling I'll never know when I have what's good enough, because I'm caught up in this distinctly American Darwinian culture. Maybe that's the great American tragedy.
This problem infects the world of movies. Because of the power of media and marketing, and the economic incentives towards mass entertainment, true film art (and I'm not talking about artsy fartsy crap, which is still crap) becomes more and more difficult to both make and see. I realize this because my job recently was all about consumer marketing of movies, and thinking about movies in that way was extremely intuitive from a business perspective, but also sordid. As if a movie was a can of peaches.
I wish there was a library through the mail. I got a Seattle Public Library card, and I haven't used it once. The books area spread out across a whole series of different buildings, and it's too hard to find out if the book you want is available at one building versus another. I wish they offered an option to check out books online and have the book shipped to you, and then when you're done you could ship it back to them and get the next book on your list. Like Netflix for books. They could even charge a monthly subscription fee. I bet it would be net revenue positive for them.
Of course, the problem with books is they are bulky and a pain in the butt to ship (unlike DVDs, which are of a uniform, compact form factor), and there are lots of them so it would be hard to keep all titles in stock. I could live with the latter. Maybe the solution to the former is to only allow books of a certain size to be available through the mail, and to always use book rate to ship them.
I spend too much money on books.
Had dinner with Brian and Julie tonight. Helped Brian set up his DVD player with his fancy new Sony tube TV. I love watching people light up when they first experience a sweet home theater setup. Maybe I'm just a home theater snob, but part of it is I just believe that if you're watching high quality film or TV, you should experience it the way it was meant to be seen. Would you rather see the Mona Lisa in person or look at a small replica in a book?
Afterwards, we went over Brian's archive of "classic" e-mails from his history at Amazon. We just sat around laughing our a$$es off at some of the crazy hijinks that occurred over the years, some of the classic personalities we've worked with. The early days of Amazon were all about extremes. Everything was outrageous. These days life at Amazon is like traveling on an ocean liner on steady ocean waters. In the early days we were in a raft made of wood tied together with twine, barely holding together against the onslaught of 40 foot waves of a massive white squall. I'll always be glad I was there for those first several years.
One thing about a company as it grows larger--it is difficult to retain pieces of the company culture uniformly across all the employees. This year, for the first time, I ran into a non-trivial number of employees who seemed to want to shirk the annual tour of duty in the distribution centers. Since I've been held back this year to work on a special project, I'm not sure I can vent without seeming like a hypocrite, but I have to bite my tongue hard when I see how some people justify not volunteering to help out, or listen to excuses that some people come up with not to have to go. Some people gloat over not having to go. It kills me.
In part because I remember when in our early days people would work all day and then head to the DCs and work all night, catch an hour or two of sleep, then do it again the next day. I remember in the early early days when I saw one executive work the DCs for 36 hours straight, until he could barely stand. You'd see everyone in the company in the Seattle DC, fired up to make it all work. I think the type of people who try their best to hide from DC duty, and it is a small minority, are like poison to the company spirit. It's tough for me to stomach, especially because some of the people are actually really nice.
Not that it isn't hard work. But I can't think of any other retail company that doesn't ask the same of its employees at holiday season. In the same way that sports bring out a person's real personality, this annual holiday retail call for volunteers is a litmus test of character.
Ugh, I'm being preachy. Let me flip it and salute my peers who are away at the DCs, who volunteered because they wanted to help, who left without a complaint, and are working hard to get everyone's holiday shipments out on time. Folks like Bill, who I knew would be a great hire for Amazon because the first two holiday seasons at Amazon, he worked in Fernley and then Seattle and busted his butt. And folks like Jason, who try to keep the early Amazon spirit alive by rallying folks to meet our volunteer needs. There's a long list of folks, and I'm really proud to work at the same company with them. They're the types of people, if you started your own company, you'd hire first, because they would step up and accept the responsibilities of ownership.
In his wonderful new Historical Baseball Abstract, Bill James points out exactly why I dislike Don Baylor so much:
"But personally, I find him almost intolerable, because, to me, he seems to be engaged in a perpetual charade designed to project the image of great strength. As a manager, he seems to be using this image of great strength, great conviction in the rectitude of his actions, as a substitute for having any reason for what he is doing."
Fabulous showing at the dentist's office this morning. She was blown away. I think it was my best checkup ever, so I note it here for posterity's sake.
Dentists are one of the few types of people who still address me like I'm 8 years old. And I'm okay with that.
I had a dream in which I was peeling off my skin to reveal a new me undereneath. Nothing quite as gory as the scene from Poltergeist, or other X-files inspired bloody moltings. It's a dream that begs for more than the simple interpretation of such things, but I woke up with no intuition about it at all. Maybe I just want to lose my biking tanlines.
The other dream, a strange one in which I have to go rent a super compact white car to drive George Bush across a bridge that will be going up. At the same time, I have to study hard for a class whose final is tomorrow and I haven't been to a class all quarter. I always have that dream. Why?
The Bears have nine lives. They are an embodiment of NFL parity. They really aren't that good, yet they have the best record in the NFL. They have no pass rush unless they blitz. James Allen is immensely frustrating to watch. He is a shifty when he should be plowing forward. The only running back who is fun to watch who jukes around like that is Barry Sanders. The Bears need the A-Train back in a big way.
I used to watch this show all the time as a child, and for some reason the other day I thought of it. It was such a distinctive show that I can still remember particular scenes even though I haven't watched an episode in years. What stuck with me was the real graphic tragic nature of many of the episodes. Children's parents would be transformed into monsters which Spectreman would kill, but only with great sadness. Spectreman himself would go through all sorts of trials and tribulations. Blindness. Sickness.
What was innovative about the whole show was the idea that the villains, these ape people from space, created monsters from the pollution or evil of the earth. These creatures were mankind's own failings come to life. It wasn't just about a giant robot beating up on space invaders, as many Japanese cartoons are today. In this way, it is similar to old Godzilla shows (though I think Spectreman may have come first?). That's what Hollywood missed with their adaptation of Godzilla, this whole idea that Godzilla arose from mankind's nuclear waste as a symbol of the perversions which are possible with advances in technology, and science.
The Japanese have a very strange love-hate relationship with technology. It's fascinating.
"Latency". Sit in enough software meetings and eventually someone will go off on a tangent and discuss latency. What a great word, because it describes a concept that can be applied to many fields, but in particular fields it will have a precise definition. I love words like that. Plus, the meaning of the word is not transparent to most speakers.
Congress is looking at ways of curbing Major League Baseball's antitrust powers. What's interesting about this is the idea that if it passes, owners of teams would have more ability to move their teams to different cities.
I'm of two minds on this. One is that I've always thought a clear way to solve competitive issues for small-market teams is to allow them to move to bigger markets. Why does New York City only have two baseball teams when its market is, and I'm guessing here, 10 times as large as the Montreal market? That is what free market economics is all about, allowing the business to chase capital and customers wherever they might be. The argument against this is that teams might constantly move around, and fans would not have stable teams to root for in their hometowns. I wonder, though, if that would really happen so often. Would it really be that cost-effective to buy a team and move it year after year? I think there would be more stability than one might suspect.
What's more, it's a problem that could be solved by setting some rules that restrict a team from moving again until it's stayed in a city for some minimum period of time.
Of couse, there are numerous options to prevent the Yankees from being the best team year after year. Look at football and what they've been able to do to achieve more parity. True revenue sharing. Salary caps. It all comes back to what type of competitiveness you'd like to see in the sport.
And of course, none of this excuses lousy management. Microsoft is a beast, but it did so primarily by being a smart business. The Yankees, damn them, have had a great run, but a lot of the players that have been core to their run have been straight out of their farm system (Jeter, Rivera, Williams, Posada, Pettite). It's not as if they bought all their World Series rings. There are very few cases, the Expos being one of them, where a baseball team's lack of competitiveness is primarily due to lack of money. The A's are a sign that a team can be in a small market and also competitive, and that's because Billy Beane, their General Manager, is a smart smart guy.
Brett Favre threw one of the most beautiful passes I've ever seen last night. In the 3rd quarter, he launched a rocket down the right sideline and hit Bill Schroeder in stride for a 43 yard TD pass. That thing was a tight spiral missile, probably never went more than 12 feet off the ground. He is so much fun to watch because he has a great fastball which, combined with his gambling personality, makes him an old school gunslinger.
If he had played with better receivers over the years, who knows what kind of stats he'd have.
I finally upgraded to an electric toothbrush. I tried it last night for the first time. It's a strange sensation, and doesn't quite provide the tangible feedback through my fingers that tells me I'm doing a good job. But afterwards, my teeth were indeed clean. A $100 toothbrush is definitely a status symbol, as well as a badge of personal hygiene. But I will miss brushing away with a regular toothbrush. I was good at it.
An electric flosser, now that would be something. I am an obsessive flosser, but I think that process could be improved. Every day I feel like I'm going to strangle the tips off of one of my fingers with dental floss.
I have my 6 month checkup tomorrow morning. I'm feeling supremely confident.
What's cool? Using sophisticated gyros and motors, it mimics a human's sense of balance, so it holds you upright. It senses where you want to go by how you shift your balance on it and it takes you there automatically. I've heard from folks who've ridden it that the feeling is uncanny. And it can move an adult around for a full day non stop on something like 10 cents of electricity. Until Harry Potter brooms become a reality, I suppose it's the closest thing to a machine that moves according to your thoughts.
Amazon.com is buying some for industrial use, so maybe I'll get to ride one in the near future at one of our fulfillment centers. To change the world, I'd have to want to ride this to, say, downtown Seattle to go catch a movie instead of driving my car. I'll have to think about whether that's the case. Where would I park it? How would I carry things? Will they build baskets for this thing?
The consumer model will cost $3000 and go on sale in a year. I can't wait to put one on my Amazon wishlist. I'll start saving now.
I think Dean Kamen is actually more interesting than Ginger. This on Kamen from Time:
A bachelor, Kamen lives near Manchester in a hexagonally shaped, 32,000-sq.-ft. house he designed. Outside, there's a giant wind turbine to generate power and a fully lighted baseball diamond; in the basement, a foundry and a machine shop. Kamen's vehicles include a Hummer, a Porsche and two helicopters--both of which he helped design and one of which he uses to commute to work each day. He also owns an island off the coast of Connecticut. He calls it North Dumpling, and he considers it a sovereign state. It has a flag, a navy, a currency (one bill has the value of pi) and a mutual nonaggression pact with the U.S., signed by Kamen and the first President Bush (as a joke, we think).