Remains of the Day

Episode II Commercial

I saw my first Episode II commercial tonight. Looks like fun.

Gap ads

Those Gap ads I mentioned are available in Quicktime format from the Gap website.

My favorite is the Coen brothers ad for white shirts, with Dennis Hopper and Christina Ricci. Mostly because I like the way the camera zooms slowly away, at a pace that mirrors the music. (On a sidenote--caught some of the rerun of last week's episode of 24 last night, and Dennis Hopper's supposed Eastern European accent, I think it's supposed to be Bosnian, is laughably bad).

This trend of using big-name movie directors to direct commercials that are streamed on the web...I like it. The BMWFilms were great, and let's face it, commercial films are rarely all that different from filmed commercials (Scorpion King, anyone? Disney toy Happy Meals?). Good directors can sell a story visually. Why not a product? Streaming on the web is cheaper than showing these on television and reaches an attractive upscale demographic.

Books should be marketed as well as movies are.

Adam and Jenny

Last last Sunday, Adam and Jenny got married. I've been meaning to wait until my photos from that day were developed to jot down some thoughts, but I threw in a roll of 36 and ended up dancing too much to finish it off. I promised Jenny I'd record an entry for her before she returned from the honeymoon in Italy, and what's more personal a gift than the written word, besides the random kitchen housewares one usually purchases off a wedding registry? When I get married, I'll throw a few items on my wedding registry, but they'll be more likely to produce binary digital or audio data than they will a loaf of bread.

I learned during the wedding ceremony that Jenny and Adam first met at my Star Wars marathon movie night leading up to the release of Episode I. This was exciting news, and I thought about standing up to acknowledge my huge role in this union, but I don't think that is part of the traditional Jewish wedding ceremony. I was also around
the night of their first kiss (well, I actually wasn't there when it happened, but work with me, people, as I grossly exagerrate my role in their courtship).

Jenny: I recognized your photographer from somewhere. Who was he again? Why do I know him?

Adam's brother looks a lot like Adam. I point this out only because everyone always says I look nothing like my sisters (that is, they're much better looking than I am).

Of course, Jenny and Adam were hoisted on chairs and carried around the dance floor. That's a fun tradition. I later sat in one of the chairs and looked about expectantly but apparently that's a privelege reserved for the bride and groom. In accordance with their first meeting, it would have been nice if I could have levitated Jenny and Adam in those chairs using the Force, as Luke did for C3P0 in Return of the Jedi to spook the ewoks.

Lots of fun dancing. I need to stop wearing ties to functions where dancing is involved and where any woman named Kristin is present. Inevitably I'm dragged around by my tie like a small dog on the dance floor. Maybe it's my hair, or my soulful puppy eyes? I have a few ties in my wardrobe that are about a foot longer than all my others.

Adam and Jenny are really happy when they're around each other. That, in essence, is all you need to know about why they'll have a long and happy marriage together. Adam will provide his trademark witty humor, and Jenny will help to provide clarity in decision-making and honest, open communications. I know because I've been the lucky recipient many times in the past.

Oh yeah, Jenny was the one that helped me recall the word "ditto", which I wrote about in my weblog previously. That was driving me nuts.

Adam has the all-time lowest score on the body fat tester I have lying around. Everyone was over watching a movie one night and once someone asks what that thing does, inevitably everyone has to go through the nervous moment of truth. Most people generally run to the far corner of the room and refuse to let anyone see their score until
they've seen it first. I think Adam scored 7% or 8%. I state this so that when I finally do post some photos from the wedding everyone will look at Adam closely to see what 8% body fat looks like.

Coolest thing? The groom's cake was made of Krispy Kreme donuts and had a small Pedro Martinez figure on top--now that's thoughtful. Who doesn't believe in evolution? Darwinian forces have shaped even fat itself into this most enticing of forms, the original glazed Krispy Kreme donut. Now how, Adam, do you get away with loving Krispy Kreme donuts and maintaining single digit body fat? And get into Harvard Business School?

A very smart couple. A couple of sharp cookies.

The other great thing about Adam and Jenny is that they're two of my faithful weblog readers (I may be embarrassing Adam to say that, but since he has his own weblog now I will both out him and send traffic his way, and hers too).

What's the right phrase? Happy wedding? Merry wedding? Or maybe just congratulations?

Yeah. Congratulations.

I'm experiencing title block. Thus the lack of titles on these weblog entries.

Seattle sports weekend. Yankees-Mariners game on Friday night. Rocket Roger Clemens shut the Mariners down. I found a baseball under my seat at the game. I've never caught a foul ball at a game. This will have to do, I suppose. Once at Wrigley Field I rushed out into the aisle in pursuit of a high pop foul, my eyes aimed skyward, locked on the ball, while my legs carried me on the shortest path towards its landing point. Unfortunately, this meant I didn't spot the very man with the "body by Budweiser and ballpark franks" heading towards that same location with a baseball glove. Whammo. He deposited me several rows back and probably gave me a minor concussion. The moral of the story is that any weenie over the age of 7 who brings a baseball glove to a baseball game to catch a foul ball is a weenie. You can be sure he doesn't know how to play baseball.

Afterwards, a quick pitstop at Temple billiards to grab a drink. Some random schmo tried to pick up on Nik, and she gracefully and sweetly sent him on his way (as she has to do about three time a night whenever she is out). That is a very Seattle convention, the kinder, gentler rebuff. In NYC most women don't even bother responding. Which is fine, too. Clarity in communications is underrated. Oh, where was I? Oh yeah, sports.

Saturday I saw the San Antonio Spurs demolish the Sonics. The most impressive thing about the game was that Tony Parker stepped up to give Tim Duncan and the Spurs their needed second scoring option. Parker is 19 years old. Some of the Sonics dance team girls could be his mother. He crossed over Payton about five times in the game and made the Glove look silly.

Danny Ferry has one of the ugliest jump shots of any professional basketball player. Ferry and Cherokee Parks should warm the hearts of Duke-haters everywhere. Parks job is to do whatever Tim Duncan tells him to do, and to pray that no one ever asks him to justify his spot on the Spurs payroll through any demonstration of actual basketball skill.

Last Thursday was Teatro Zinzanni. Is that a sport? I've seen it twice in Seattle now, and both times the heart of the show has been the male ringmaster/host who dresses up as a woman and pulls random men out of the crowd to embarrass them with tawdry humor and lighthearted innuendo. The crowd, mostly older, ate it up. The older you get, the funnier everything must seem. Maybe I'll be a hearty laugher in twenty years as well instead of a grumpy critic.

Basketball Saturday morning, biking this afternoon, and some frisbee. I can't feel my legs.

There you go--managed to bring it back to sports in the end. Probably could have given this entry a title related to sports.

A popular online comic strip created just after September 11, 2001: Get Your War On.

Done in response to various things, including an article in Vanity Fair that declared that irony was dead in the face of Sept. 11.

Complacency or naivete about terrorism, perhaps. Not irony, though. Or lousy movies about terrorism, for that matter.

Saw this in IMDb news clips:

Actors Orlando Bloom and Kate Beckinsale are to feature in new ads for clothing giants Gap. Three new TV ads have been directed by Cameron Crowe, the eccentric Coen Brothers and Roman Coppola. Bloom and Beckinsale feature in Crowe's ad as a couple being chased by a group of admirers while out for a stroll. The ad directed by the Coen Brothers sees Christina Ricci beating Dennis Hopper in a game of chess, while Coppola's effort features Scarlett Johansson and Ashton Kutcher riding bikes.

Common language

Karen Hughes, arguably George W. Bush's top aide, is moving back to Texas so her son can attend high school there. She was often credited with ensuring that Bush spoke in the language that the regular Joe can relate to and understand.

It's often argued that one reason Bush defeated Gore in the last election was that while Bush's speeches and quotes were often inarticulate, Gore's speech was condescending, highbrow, and lacking in charisma. Clinton was a powerful politician because he managed to merge the good points of both sides.

Speaking of resignations, there's some tabloid-style intrigue going down at the Harvard Business Review. Protests, affairs, divorces, Jack Welch, journalistic integrity under fire. Anyone who discounts the price of being famous is naive. What you get in exchange for your wealth and fame is the chance to deal with random press and amateur weblog gawking.

Crank

Everyone is cranky. Coworkers, rotisserie baseball managers, random strangers... I'm starting to get cranky, too. I wanted to flip out today, but I managed to count to ten. Maybe it's lack of sleep, or the long and lousy bout of winter weather, or just a general need for a vacation. My patience is running very thin this week. I could feel the frown on my face growing all day, like the gradual tightening of a violin string, or the rising pressure in your ear as a plane lifts off.

I need to cool off, because blowing up is rarely productive, and not something I admire in others. But more than ever I'm realizing why I need parts of my life that are my own, cordoned off with barbed wire and rabid dogs.

One, two, three, four, five, six...

Atonement

A quote by Ian McEwan in an article in the New York Times today: "Not to write seems to me to be a gross rebuke of the gift of consciousness."

The article was about McEwan's latest novel Atonement. I have a small pile of his books by my bed and have been meaning to dive in. I'm at an all-time high in terms of number of books I've started and am only partway through. There's barely any floorspace next to my bed now.

Feel my saber you do

Yoda wields a light saber in Episode II. I can't picture it. I'm trying, but I can't.

Getting good buzz

A positive shout from Time about Episode II. Looks like they bagged the early mainstream media exclusive with Lucas and company on this one.

JetBlue--the next Southwest? I've heard about its leather seats and its cheap fares to New York.

Nikon D1X. I don't have a digital camera yet, but if I did, this is the one I'd want.

Random fame

On the web, it doesn't take much to get a massive infusion of traffic to your site. Make sure your computer has its sound turned up.

Fashion forward

Juli, my fashion consultant, helped me to pick out a pair of glasses on Saturday down at Marketplace Optical. As Susannah, the lady who worked there, explained, Marketplace specializes in frames that are "fashion forward." That basically means glasses that don't make you look like a geek.

Juli is a graphic designer, an illustrator, and one of the most stylish dressers I know. I highly recommend that you get to know someone like that to help you pick out clothes, glasses, artwork and furniture, etc. If I were wealthy and famous, I'd probably have names of people like that in my Rolodex (er, Palm Pilot, perhaps, in this day and age? that might be passe now also) for all occasions. I'm not, but I still have Juli, and thank heavens for that. Shopping will never be the same again.

I've never really worn glasses, but I'm a big fan. I can't wait to get my specs and transform into, mmm, someone else. Not quite me. Someone I'd like to be. A better me. Clark Kent.

Mercer morning loop

Did a loop of Mercer with Tim and Jessie this morning, and that's like chasing two motorcycles. Yikes. It is proof, though, that there's nothing that will push you harder than having a workout partner who can kick your a$$ six ways from Sunday. That's true in life generally. Hopefully you come to a point in your life where you're secure enough to swim with bigger, faster, smarter sharks in all aspects of life. I'm closer to that than I have been in the past. It's humbling because the majority of the time I feel like an idiot, a sloth, or the ugly duckling. But I'm secure with where I stand. If it were any other way, life would be so dull.

pant pant pant

Just did a loop of Mercer with Tim this morning. First time out with him this season, and I now remember, riding with him is like chasing a motorcycle. Good golly.

Random acts of kindness

Have you read Lucky Jim? Damn good book.

Have been feeling a bit weary this week, mentally and physically. It's the feeling you get when you try to solve the Saturday or Sunday NYTimes crossword puzzle. Lots of work, brows furrowed, minimal progress. At some point you're ready to just cheat, but the answers don't come out until tomorrow, and by then you just don't care anymore.

My one antidote to this general malaise has been to dress more formally this week. Dress shirts every day, nice wool slacks. I don't know why. Perhaps it goes back to my college days, when Sam used to say, "If you dress well, you test well." I sometimes wore a tie to midterms or finals. Was there a correlation? No clue.

I think I'm supposed to be watching The Osbournes. Has anyone seen it?

David Fincher (Fight Club, Seven, Panic Room, among others) is close to signing up to direct Mission Impossible 3. Hmm, that's an odd combination.

There are three words in the English language that start with the letters "dw". Don't cheat and look it up. You have one minute to think of all three. Two of them are similar in meaning. I heard this in an episode of The West Wing from season 1, which is out on Region 2 DVD from the UK. At the time, it was likely one of the two best shows on TV, and it might still be. Anyhow, I'll post the answer in the comments field later.

Read an article on Alduous Huxley recently, can't remember where. He believed that humans needed chemical assistance to realize the full potential of their brains. On his deathbed, he asked to be injected with LSD, and I wonder what he saw as he moved off this plane. We should all hope for such an interesting and memorable death, like the supposed death of Nietzsche. Supposedly, he saw a horse that had just been whipped to death lying on the ground, and he went to the horse, hugged it, and wept. I really really hope it's a true story.

Author's Guild protest against Amazon.com

Ken sent me this link to this sensible rebuttal by Sylvia Nasar (author of A Beautiful Mind, the biography) to the recent Author's Guild protest against the way that Amazon features used books for sale on its website. Nasar was recently elected to the board of the Author's Guild.

From the letter from the Author's Guild to all its members, urging them to stop linking to Amazon.com, it's apparent that the Author's Guild has fallen into the trap of believing that siding against free market economics and their very own readers in the name of financial gain is somehow sustainable.

The Internet is wonderful because it has forced business people who depend on inefficient markets to become more customer-focused. Music labels who have kept CD prices high are now wringing their hands over declining music sales which they attribute to Napster and other file-sharing services.

In this case, physical space has been collapsed. The shortest distance between two places in the physical world is a straight line, but more often it is a windy path over streets, around blocks over and over again to find a parking spot, and then a hike over to your final destination. The Author's Guild doesn't protest used book stores because, frankly, there aren't that many of them and they're hard to get to. Customers who once wanted to shop for both Prada and Target once had to drive long distances because the Prada's of the world don't want their stores showing up next to discounters. They could use physical distance to mimic the distance between their brands (and their prices).

Online the shortest distance between two places is not even a hyperlink. It's to put two things next to each other on the same page. As a customer, if you could buy a used copy of a book for cheaper than a new copy, wouldn't you want to know about that option when you were on the page listing the new copy? You wouldn't want to buy the new copy only to find out later that a used copy was available but was located elsewhere on the website. That's what the Author's Guild wants Amazon to do.

I've bought a ton of used books since Amazon launched the service, but it has only increased my overall book spend. I buy used copies of books I'm not really sure about--it may be an author I haven't heard of. In the past, I would have just not purchased the book. When I know I want a book, I still buy the original hardcover because I want to keep a nice first print in my library. For a few books, I keep both a hardcover first print and a paperback copy that I use as a reading copy or a loaner to friends.

Certainly, I hope to be a published artist of some sort some day, and if I am, I would only hope that an active used market existed for my works. The Grateful Dead are probably grateful that their fans actively trade bootlegs of their concerts. Far worse to be an author who sees his books fail to generate demand even in the used market. Those unfortunate souls have no chance of even generating any revenue to be "lost" to the used market.

Phunny site

Interesting interpretations of films.

I liked this take on Memento by Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club (which was a great book, better than the movie, though that was pretty damn good too).

Or this interpretation of Training Day as the education of George Bush Jr. by his dad.

All of this reminds me of Quentin Tarantino's speech from Sleep With Me, the one which claims Top Gun is about Maverick's struggle with his homosexuality.

Proliferation of weblogs

Weblogs are gaining notoriety because famous people are starting to create them. Perhaps this is a tipping point for weblogs. They've already gotten a ton of press this year. No one should be surprised when the web is flooded with a slew of boring, poorly-written weblogs. There are plenty already. But weblogs won't disappear or fade away like so many Internet fads. The web is not as wondrous a place as it once was--there are few new websites that blow anyone away. Personal weblogs provide a unique daily diversion for folks--I think of it as mental exhibitionism (on the part of the blogger) and mental voyeurism (on the part of the reader).

A sampling of celeb weblogs:
RuPaul
Moby
Jeff Bridges
Melanie Griffith
Douglas Rushkoff
Neil Gaiman

Finally, perhaps, we can hear celebrities uncensored, not filtered through their agents or publicists. We can laugh at ones who can't write, ignore those who use their weblogs for marketing themselves, and realize that celebrities may not be any more interesting than people we know. I predict that in a year and a half, the celeb who doesn't have some sort of website up will be the exception rather than the rule. True, weblogs may no longer be cool (everyone blames Mariah Carey for having tainted the whole affair), but they're a welcome diversion from checking stock quotes on the web every morning.

Someday the history of weblogs will be traced, and for me the weblog as I think of it (personal diary on the web) started with web developers I knew and spread out from there.

Tax day

The one day each year where people everywhere complain when they don't receive a refund and have to write a check to the government even though a refund means that the government borrowed money from you with every paycheck throughout the previous year without paying you any interest. And now they're giving that money back to you. Far better to have borrowed money from the government and now pay them back. But if you really want that refund at this time of year, please send me a check for what you think your withholding tax will be for this upcoming year. Next year on April 15 I'll give you a check back so you can feel great about getting a refund.

Postal rate hikes

Effective June 30, the price of a first-class stamp will increase 8.8%, from 34¢ to 37¢, and the rate for postcards will rise 9.5%, from 21¢ to 23¢. Postal rates will jump 15% for magazines and other periodicals, 10% for Priority Mail, 9.6% for Express Mail and about 10% for various other classes of business mail.

The USPS ran a loss of $1.7 billion in 2001, and, business 101 says the fastest way to increase profits in the short-term is to raise your prices. The USPS is in a tough spot, though. Businesses are increasingly using the Internet instead of physical mail to market to consumers, and that will only accelerate, not decline. I'm sure people send less physical mail than they did in the past, what with an incremental e-mail costing essentially nothing and getting to people faster. With the economy in the state that it's in, mail price elasticity is probably high, so many businesses will just cut back on mail. This will further decrease USPS revenues which will, based on USPS history, lead to further price increases. Yes, that's the groan of what business people call the vicious death spiral. If you're a postal delivery guy, I wouldn't count on getting a brand new Segway to ride around on this year.

Some businesses will have to suck it up, like magazines. I wouldn't be surprised to see magazine subscription rates bump up at the end of this year.

In fact, if you look at the USPS as a business, which it is, they're going to need some creative thinking to overcome these forces. So, if you were the Postmaster General (and BTW, why is it that the USPS and Surgeons name the heads of their posts generals? I don't mind it, though abandoning this military term might contribute to an earlier demise of the term "going postal." I haven't heard of any postal workers losing their marbles recently so maybe it's just a myth that should go away), what would you do to boost revenues at the USPS? Who is the Postmaster General?

At least they have a good bike team.

The only good that will come of this is that the cost of sending junk snail mail will increase. Maybe now I'll get not 10 but only 5 credit card offers a day.

Rostropovich

Happy 75th birthday to Mstislav Rostropovich, perhaps the world's leading cellist, and also a great man. I saw him play the Dvorak Cello Concerto with the Seattle Symphony tonight, and it was a grand occasion. The Symphony was in great form, and they've been up and down in the concerts I've seen this year so this was a pleasant surprise.

Rostropovich got a gazillion standing ovations. Some were for his performance, but most were for the man. Slava, as he is affectionately known, has done some great humanitarian things in his life. For his final encore, maestro Gerard Schwartz and the symphony surprised him with a rendition of Happy Birthday.

Matrix Reloaded

The trailer for Matrix Reloaded will be shown before Episode II. Not that movie geeks needed any other reason to wait in line to see the film. May, and more specifically Memorial Day, has usually marked the debut of the summer blockbusters which have been marketed to death for the previous year. Typically kids have just gotten out of school, and it's the perfect time to release that PG or PG-13 flick which will turn away no one and debut with $50 to $80 million opening weekends. Studios are pushing back earlier and earlier into the summer, though, so we actually get Spiderman on May 3.

Elin Nordegren

Proof that some Stanford grads do end up dating 21 year old Swedish supermodels: Tiger Woods' new girlfriend.

What's actually more interesting is that this story is breaking and spreading through WOM (I got the tip from a few friends and finally had to investigate to see what the fuss was all about) and weblogs. Do a Google search and you'll see that most of the top results are personal weblogs. For once, a whole slew of young male webloggers are beating People Magazine to the punch.

That reminds me, I really need to work on my golf game.

Oh Danny Boy

Congratulations to Dan on his very recent engagement. Most people I know are consistent and rarely shock me. Dan is consistently and genuinely surprising, and he's not to be confused with folks who are constantly seeking to attract attention through purposeful lunacy. He is stubbornly his own man (for now, at least), and I'm thankful for that, even when I'm right and he's wrong but won't accept it. Hopefully he'll continue to cause us all to shake our heads in puzzlement, despite the marriage.

Oh, of course he will.

Blah blah blah--insert the usual cliches about "losing another guy from the roster" and "wild guy getting domesticated". Actually, what's more concerning is that I tend to trail most my friends in Seattle in age by a few years, and they're rapidly coupling off and disappearing from general social circulation. Hmmm. Hmmm. People might ask me Mary Ann or Ginger, and the truth is, I have no idea. It was before my time. No need to panic, but this is Robin Hood noticing the guards locking all the doors and sealing all the windows and wondering if he's at the right dinner party.

2002 Pulitzer Prizes announced. Does anyone read poetry anymore?

Yahooligans

Most of you have probably heard about this already, but Yahoo didn't tell its users and went in and created a whole new set of e-mail preferences and defaulted them to yes. So if you have an account at Yahoo, you've probably been opted in to receive lots of spam from Yahoo.

Go here to override those and select no to everything. It's especially important if you have a Yahoo e-mail account which you use semi-regularly. I have one, as well as a Hotmail account, and they are essentially worthless because they're collection grounds for spam. I don't even log in to either account anymore. They're like elephant graveyards. It's embarrassing to even hand out a Hotmail e-mail account to someone--it's like pulling out a checkbook to pay at a restaurant.

Yahoo even included options to mail you or call you at home which is frightening if it meant that Yahoo partners would call me and intriguing if Yahoo itself called me. What would they call me about? What would they mail me about? Would Yahoo himself call me? "Hello, this is Yahoo calling, would you like to pay for a subscription to play Hearts online?"

Of course, everyone realizes why spam is so prevalent--the cost of sending one spam e-mail is nearly zero now. There are sites that give tips on preventing spam, but frankly, why should we spend time trying to fight spam if we didn't ask for it in the first place? More power to those fighting on the front lines. I think the proper penalty for spammers is that they must eat one can of Spam for every spam e-mail they send out.

Not that I have anything against Spam (for all you Hawaiian readers). This is a good occasion to bust out some classic Spam haiku:

Old man seeks doctor:
"I eat SPAM daily," he says
ANGIOPLASTY

and the two famous "pink coffin" Spam haiku:

Highly unnatural,
The tortured shape of this "food"
...A small pink coffin.

Dead creatures unknown,
congealed into myst'ry meat.
Tiny pink coffin.

Note to self: sun is good

Jason's back from his trip to New Zealand...but now he's off to his sister's wedding. Supposedly Jason and Jamie jumped off a bridge (that's the non-suicidal bungee variety of bridge jumping, though some would say there's no difference). Jason doing that I can believe. Jamie? Hmmm. I'm going to await the pictures.

Did my first early morning bike ride of the year on Wed. morning before work. Tried, in a short time, to pack in a serious workout, so I did intervals. Brutal. Five 30 second sprints going all out and then a hard sprint up the hills above I-90 and I felt like puking. But the sun has poked its head out this week and it's made all the difference. Just the smell of sun-warmed air and earth is enough to cheer me up. I had been wondering how young is too young to have a mid-life crisis, but perhaps I was jumping the gun.

A movie convention: when a character in a movie spots some awe-inspiring sight on the horizon, but you can't see what they're looking at because the camera only show their awe-struck facial expression, if the character is wearing a hat, he or she will inevitably reach up with one hand and slowly remove the hat and bring it to his waist. Do people really do that? I guess I'll never know until one day I see someone witness a giant UFO approaching from the heavens.

The people I get along with best strike that fine balance between self-absorption and selflessness. People who crave attention and require constant affirmation to satisfy the depths of their insecurities lose my patience. People who are completely selfless are also frightening. It's a major accomplishment to confront your place in life and deal with it honestly and alone, on your own terms.

I'll say this about Macs--they make computing fun. I look for excuses to do things on my Mac instead of my Windows PC. Even if it's the same exact thing.

Movie to see this weekend: Y Tu Mama Tambien, despite the fact that it's playing at The Egyptian, which has terrible acoustics (Y Tu Mama is a foreign film, though, so perhaps the acoustic swamp that is this theater will not matter as much; by the way, "Y Tu Mama" is a great little phrase isn't it? Next time someone cuts me off on the highway, I'm going to shout "Y Tu Mama!").

Must choose once again from limited pool of single friends who will spend part of their weekend watching unknown subtitled film. You'd think that would be a big pool of people in Seattle, but you'd be wrong. You'd think that friends who are dating or have spouses don't get out much, and you'd be right. Am considering a wholesale age shift down in my social network. Older friends are moving on to another phase of life--marriage, kids, gardening, Blockbuster rental on a Friday night.

Gotta send some traffic to Idiot Savant, Allen's weblog. Looked at my traffic logs, and outside of Google and other search engines, his was the top referral site to mine the last few weeks.

Big fan of women who wear Seven jeans. Met one last week. We're getting married next week.

Actually, speaking of weddings, the sis is getting hitched soon. Whoooooooaaaaaa.

Toni sent me a DVD of all the BMWFilms, with extended director's cuts. What a dear. Watched WKW's film over and over again, and, inspired, tapped out a quick screenplay for a short 6 to 8 minute BMWFilm of my own. Am doing the casting in my head among people I know in Seattle. Good actors are hard to find. People who cringe when I take pictures of them? All disqualified. Question: how to shoot driving scenes without getting arrested? Hmmph. A problem.

Lots of allegations of racism in the criticisms of the criticisms of Halle Berry's emotional Oscar speech. I admit, I'm one of those folks who cringed at her speech. But, in my defense, I cringed at Julie Roberts' speech last year, and at Gwyneth Paltrow's tearful speech the year before. Probably reveals some innate discomfort with hysterical women on my part. No encounters with hysterical men come to mind, but I probably am not crazy about those, either.

Goals for 2002

Look up, and it's already April. This year has been flying by. Where has the time gone? It doesn't feel like I've done anything yet this year, yet I've been working like crazy.

Time for a time out. Need to set some priorities for the year before it disappears on me. These have been brewing in draft form in my brain for some time.

My goals for 2002:

1) Get my finances in order--complete my personal financial plan, and get it fully implemented.

2) Finish a screenplay, gather the resources, and make a damn movie. Post it on the Internet. Distribute it on DVD.

3) Finish my novel.

4) Do one big athletic event--NYC Marathon or Death Ride or the some of the mountain stages of the Tour de France are the leading contenders. I want to really add some horsepower to my cycling this year, while at the same time cutting down the lbs I have to lug around. So it's not really a weight I want to hit. More like an average speed of 20mph on the bike and less than 10% body fat?

5) Achieve happy work/life balance--easier said than done, I say, as I take a break from work in the middle of the night to jot in my blog. In this economy, you can't complain about being busy, and people do all sorts of irresponsible things in the name of "having a life," but I'm going to try. After this weekend.

Yes, shudder to think of this, it could involve getting out and dating more. But no, you won't read about that in my blog. As public as I am with most my thoughts, I'm intensely private about others. Gossip and people who are constantly seeking out gossip so that they can be the first to tell others "Hey, did you hear about..." really annoy the heck out of me. Those people need to get a life.

So do I.

6) Become a good people manager--this means being fair and effective, not necessarily nice. Hard stuff to learn, but it's a priority. It's like being a parent--tough love. My role model? Jed Bartlet, Martin Sheen's president from The West Wing.

7) Travel to one of the following continents--South America, Australia (New Zealand), or Antarctica. Antarctica is last on that list, if you have to know. Other places that tempt me: Greece, Prague, Turkey.

8) Learn to play chess semi-decently. I haven't played chess since I was probably 8. I'd like to try to figure out what it's all about. Seems like a fun blend of psychology, logic, math, and strategy. It's either that or start up a Texas Hold'Em Poker game with the boys. Chess isn't quite as sexy, but then again, maybe it is.

Hmm, I think that's a good list. Any longer and it would be gratuitous. There you go--all of you are silent witnesses and can hold me to this list at the end of the year.

Literary criticism

Is literary criticism a dying art? So many years in college I spent reading and analyzing texts, and the only real literary criticism that has any awareness today is the NYT Book Review and the occasional one-line or five word blurb published on the back of a book dust jacket. The Amazon.com customer review might just be the most influential literary criticism left today.

Opening Day

Baseball season has started again, and there is great joy in Mudville.

This year I'm in a rotisserie league for both the NL and AL, both of which are run differently, so it's a lot to absorb. The great thing about rotisserie baseball is that suddenly you care about every game being played, because either one of your players is playing or one of your opponents players is playing. It's like March Madness for baseball over a 162 game schedule. I may actually care about AL baseball this year. A large part of the appeal of March Madness for those who claim it as the best sporting event around is the money they have invested in their office pool. I didn't enter an office pool this year, and I didn't care nearly as much about the tourney as I had in previous years.

It being April 1, I hoped to link to some good April Fool's sites on the web, but nothing in particular jumped out at me. I also didn't have the energy to write a truly good April fool's blog, though I had a few ideas.

The Onion had some amusing headlines:
"Excited Catholics Already LIning Up for Pope's Funeral"

and

"Man Bitten By Radioactive Sloth Does The Lying-Around-All-Day Of 10 Normal Men"

Misc

Generally, I find Europe and Asia's more liberal policies on "mature" subjects to more reasonable than America's prude restrictions. However, maybe in the case of this Lee jeans commercial aired in Europe, that was a good thing. We get the talking belly buttons, and those were disturbing enough.

The latest supposed Google-killer launched today. It's called Teoma, and it was developed by the team behind Ask Jeeves.

So, how is it? Well, of course I searched for myself first, and my site showed up in the first three spots. I also show up in the tenth spot at some website that pirated my Amazon review for the X-files Season One DVD. The results look pretty decent. In fact, they look pretty similar to the results at Google. Which is another way of saying, doesn't look all that better to me, so why would anyone switch to use it instead of Google?

Isn't that called an ice cream float?

Coke may launch a new flavor: Vanilla Coke.

That sounds unappealing.