Remains of the Day

Happy happy joy...

Joy! Second half of season one of The West Wing on DVD, Region 2, from the UK.

I'm still bitter because I set a timer to record the season finale of The West Wing, and somehow I taped Law and Order instead. If someone has the Season Three finale on tape, please send it my way.

Get me undercover brother!

Okay, I admit it. I want to see that movie. I don't care what any of you think. So there.

If only

If only it were so.

Someday, as the world is coming to an end, I will dash to a computer, launch a browser, and pull up The Onion. That way I can go out laughing at the absurdity of it all, instead of whimpering my way into oblivion.

Catch up

This is a series of posts written offline b/c I didn't have Internet access. Arranged in random order, because I can't remember when I thought what.

Disconnect (Tuesday 5/28)

For most of the weekend, I didn’t have fast Internet access. In fact, most of the time I didn’t have any Internet access because we had to keep the phone lines clear with all the wedding events to coordinate for all the various guests and friends and family in town, many of whom were staying with us. My work laptop modem has one of those plastic pop-out connectors that acts as a conventional phone jack, and I snapped it off in my haste to unpack my laptop for security at the airport, so I couldn’t dial in while home.

Looking back now, I think it was a good thing to totally disconnect. I’m slightly daunted by the prospect of confronting a thousand e-mails tomorrow morning, but I needed the mental break. It wasn’t the most relaxing of weekends, and I didn’t get a ton of restful sleep with all that was going on, but it was quality family time. Joannie forbade me from running around during the ceremony taking pictures, and I forgot my camcorder at her apartment, and in many ways I probably had more fun because of it. Many wonder how we used to get along without Internet access, myself included, and the weekend reminded me that it wasn’t all that bad.

Note that this does not change my opinion that nationwide high speed wireless Internet access would be a great thing, as I note below.

In search of bars (Wed 5/22)

I imagine a day when our bodies themselves are cell phones, and we run around trying to get a strong signal the same way we chase additional bars with our phones today. As some comedian noted, we didn't call the mobile phones because we wanted to have to run around trying to get a signal.

In that distant day, we'll be able to summon graphical displays projected forward in our field of vision, so that only we can see what we're viewing. Like a heads up display built into our vision. And we can instantly have a series of experts with us, guiding us by voice or data, and they'll see what we're seeing. Impressing folks at cocktail parties will never be easier.

I want my wi-fi (Wed. 5/22)

I’m so frustrated anytime I can’t get Internet access now. Like here on the plane. Recently Pittsburgh launched a city-wide wi-fi network. Seattle needs one so that I can carry my Powerbook with me everywhere and have the Internet accessible, like the way my mobile phone has freed me to communicate with anyone, anywhere.

The only way to fly (Wed 5/22)

Flying is generally unpleasant. But it’s somewhat tolerable if you have three seats across and only one person on each end, with the middle seat open. In that situation, I like the window seat. Especially if the person in the other seat is an attractive, friendly young woman. There’s a diamond ring on the left hand, but there’s a seat in between us, and we’ll spend the flight glad that the seat is there, but also glad that it’s empty. It’s our playground, where magazines and newspapers and airline meals are shared. Where our stories and innuendo and suggestive glances meet and mingle. Maybe we’re being friendlier than we should be, but it’s a long flight, the in-flight movie is terrible, and the novel each of us is reading requires too much concentration. Yeah, conversation is easier.

We tease the moment out.

Making room for tubby

These days, when I have to wear a tie, I like to leave the top button of my dress shirt undone. All your life you grow up thinking it’s sloppy to leave it undone. Then one day I realized it looked fine. Dressed up, but not to the point of sacrificing comfort. That’s cool. I also can’t stand having my sleeves buttoned anymore. It’s so much more comfortable wearing dress shirts with your sleeves unbuttoned, perhaps rolled up, maybe not.

Have been eating this whole trip. Feel like a hippo. Miss my bike dearly. Really really need to be on my bike, climbing a steep hill, dripping sweat, heart rate at 185 or so, about to pass out.

My very own Brady Bunch (Mon 5-27)

I am blessed. My stepfamily is awesome. Stepbrothers, step sister-in-law, step-brother-in-law, stepmother. Fairy tales have long conditioned us to believe the worst about step family members. Cinderella’s stepsisters were vain, cruel. Hardly much of a family at all. Most fairy tale heroes are orphans whose surrogate families fail to provide the nurturing love that would eliminate the conflict necessary to generate the emotional and psychological conflicts central to the heroic quest.

I doubt many of us seek stepbrothers and stepsisters. For me, having James and Alan and Sharon and Jeff to spend time with at family reunions was an unexpected bonus. I interact with them differently than I do with Karen and Joannie. They’re more like really close friends or cousins. Family reunions are a lot of fun—we’re all in the same age range (22-29) and have many common interests. Our interactions have the open, relaxed nature of those among long-time friends or colleagues who know and laugh at each other’s shortcomings and follies.

Few people poke fun at me regularly. Joannie and Karen, of course, do so incessantly. I find it easier to take ribbing from people I love and/or respect. When Joannie, Karen, and I get together with James, Alan, Sharon, and Jeff, we spend most of the time laughing at each other. It’s quite therapeutic.

Early mid-life crises (Mon 5/27)

Derek and I were discussing mid-life crises, and he had a theory which made sense to me, and that is that mid-life crises arise from a surplus of freedom and choice. Since our generation marries later now, and since lifetime employment with a single company is such a rarity now, more of us experience that mid-life crisis in our mid to late twenties than in our forties. That’s when we would usually confront the freedom of an empty nest, kids off to college, extra cash from twenty years on the job, a re-examination of our marriages, an open question about whether the sacrifices of the past twenty years had been the right ones.

The mid-life crises of today are of a different nature. We wonder if we’ll be brave enough to choose the life’s work which we feel is our life’s destiny, because there’s a chance we won’t be able to support ourselves doing so. Or that we won’t be good enough. We wonder if we’ll find that person who’ll put up with our shortcomings and travel the world with us, sometimes leading, sometimes following, always at our side. It’s not about making up for lost time, but making the most of the time ahead.

Happy sad, sad happy (aka "My sister's married!!" Sun 5/26)

Over the years, I can remember the number of times I’ve cried on two hands. Some, in retrospect, are silly:

• When King Kong dies at the end of the version starring Jessica Lange.
• When the Cubs lost to the Padres in game five of the major league baseball 1984 NLCS after being up 2-0 in the best of five series.
• When my Little League baseball team, the Indians, lost a double header for the league championship. We only needed to win one of the two games to win the championship, and we lost both games in the last inning. In the second game, this pitcher named Darren struck me out on a slider in the last inning. I’d never seen a slider before.

Otherwise, I’m generally reserved. An emotional cipher. I suspect it’s a skill I developed as a defense mechanism as a child, and it’s stayed with me ever since.

Women are always hopeful of catching guys shedding an inadvertent tear. My freshman year in college, one of my hallmates, a cynical Brit named Mark, the last person in the world I’d expect to see in tears, surprised me by conceding that when his sister got married he’d probably bawl like a baby.

On Sunday, my sister Joannie joined hands in marriage with Michael, her boyfriend of some six years. A few times during the night, I choked up. Happy sad. Sad happy. I’ve always been a misty-eyed laugher. Whenever I laugh I tear up. I’ve always thought it an appropriate biological cross-wiring—aren’t good times and sad times merely flipsides of the same coin? Every laugh reminds you that the moment is fleeting, recalls unhappier times past, summons hope that good times can and will occur again in the future.

Four years ago from Tuesday, my mother passed away after a long fight from cancer. May is one of the more emotional months for me, and perhaps for Joannie and Karen as well. Mother’s Day reminds us of our loss, and Memorial Day weekend will always take on greater meaning. Sharon’s birthday is the 25th, and now the 26th will always be my sister’s wedding anniversary. Joannie’s wedding, seeing all of my mother’s brothers and sisters, being in the company of the newest members of my family, from my stepfamily to my future in-laws—it drew lots of memories and emotions to the forefront. Joannie is the most emotionally honest of the three of us and tends to emote and amplify what we’re all feeling. I think it’s one reason she was ready for marriage.

I cried during the ceremony when Judge Holderman stopped for a moment to remember those who couldn’t be with us, especially my mother. Joannie and Karen placed a single yellow rose by the unity candle in memory of her. It was my mother’s favorite flower. I didn’t realize they had done that. The day before we had placed a dozen of them on her grave before going to have dinner with all of my mother’s brothers and sisters and their children. I cried when Keila sang a song for Joannie and Mike during the ceremony because the lyrics told me that my baby sister had someone to watch over her. A few more tears fell when Mike choked up as he read his vows because I realized how much Joannie meant to him. I cried later, during the reception, when my Uncle Sherman, my mother’s big brother and my only uncle on that side of the family, surprised all of us at the end of dinner when he gave an unanticipated speech.

He had the DJ put on a CD my uncle had brought from Minneapolis. He remembered the last time our families had gotten together, when my mother was still alive, in Minneapolis. The CD was playing as we sat by the lake, watching a beautiful sunset. The song was “Forever in Love” by Kenny G, and Uncle Sherman wished that Michael and Joannie would be blessed to embody the title. And then he asked Joannie for a dance in memory of his loving sister, my mother.

I cried while they danced, not just because I was so touched by the gesture, but also because I knew how emotional a weekend it had been for Joannie. Weddings are extremely stressful. I was stressed out just running around trying to help run errands, get things set up, and I can’t imagine what it was like to be Joannie, trying to get everything nailed while imagining how much easier it would be if my mother were still around to help keep everything organized and acting as a buffer between all the demanding out-of-town guests and Joannie. My mother was good at that. I’ve never been a huge Kenny G fan, but that song of his will always mean a lot to me now.

I’m really proud of Joannie. She’s always found her own path in life, with little assistance from me. I’ve never really wanted either of my sisters to feel any pressure to react to my life’s choices, and I don’t think they have. Joannie graduated in the top 5% of her college class, and she made law review and graduated in the top 5% of her law school class. She has a prestigious clerkship, and in a year she’ll be making more per year than I will as she joins a law firm. She’s worked as hard as anyone to achieve all of it. She deserves every bit. Can’t wait to ask her for a loan when I become an unemployed starving artist.

Seeing her in her wedding dress for the first time was amazing. She was amazingly beautiful (as was Karen—hair stylists can do the most wondrous things with women’s hair), and she was all grown up.

I hope she’s having a grand ole time in Belize.

New Gomez

Happiness is a new album from Gomez, In Our Gun.

SIFF

Tonight I was going nuts because I couldn't find the battery pack for my minidisc player (and thus couldn't listen to the Steve Reich MDs that Ken sent my way). Also, I couldn't find all the SIFF tickets I bought. After waiting in an interminable line for those damn tickets, I would have thrown a fit if they disappeared.

The night went from distressing to triumphant when the battery pack turned up under my mattress and the SIFF tickets showed up in the trunk of my car, both places which just came to me after I sat down and calmed myself down. It reminds me of the Far Side panel in which a deer stands with his back to a tree while a hunter searches in the background with a rifle in hand. The caption reveals the thoughts of the deer, and it read something like, "Don't panic. Why is this guy after you? C'mon, think, think!"

It also reminds me of those studies that show if you screw up a customer order or experience but rectify it with impeccable customer service, you often end up with a more loyal customer than you would have if their experience had gone off without a glitch from the start. I'm going to start misplacing cash and random items in places I know I'll stumble across accidentally in the future so that my days are filled with pleasant surprises, like the beneficiaries of Amelie of Montmartre's furtive good deeds.

A list of films I'm seeing at the Seattle International Film Festival this year, for those of you who asked:

Title Date Theater
Tadpole (2) 6/4 Egyptian
Agitator (2) 6/9 Pacific Place
The Fast Runner (2) 6/10 Cinerama
The Piano Teacher (2) 6/10 Cinerama
Hi, Dharma (2) 6/12 Cinerama
Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance 6/14 Cinerama
The Rule of the Game 6/15 Harvard Exit

And the Secret Festival, which is for undisclosed films.

For you Seattle readers who decide to attend one of the films, drop me a line and I'll save a spot in line for you. I really hadn't heard of many of the films this year, so I have no idea if any of these are any good, but I used contextual clues as much as possible. Directors I've heard of, films that won awards at other film fests like Sundance or Cannes, clues like that. I was hoping Spirited Away would be one of the films, but I guess we'll have to wait for Disney to release it.

Hot

There's a moment in Unzipped, near the end, during the fashion show. A swarm of attendants are getting Linda Evangelista into an outfit before she has to hit the runway. The camera is right in her face, shooting her profile from her left. Just before she heads out, she turns and faces the camera for about three seconds, staring straight into the lens with a look of pure...it's a look that says everything about why she's on that side of the camera and you're on the other.

After seeing that movie the first time (it's a documentary about fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi), I decided that everyone needs a few supermodels and flamboyant fashion designers as friends. I still believe that, despite not knowing any.

From Underoos to thongs

Humorous flap over new thong underwear for 10 year olds, from Abercrombie and Fitch. Most humorous is the quote from company spokesperson Hampton Carney, stating that styles like the graphic thong are targeted at the same market once targeted for Underoos. Or the statement that the smallest size is merely a medium, as if that means anything for a thong.

Visitors

Sharon and Alan may come visit me in June. No one ever visits me in Seattle, so that would qualify as a big deal. Of course, my life B.S. (before Seattle) and my life P.A.J.O. (post Amazon job offer) have always been two discrete and separate worlds, and that has had its advantages. If those universes should collide, to borrow a line from Seinfeld, both groups of friends and associates might discover the truth, which is that I'm pretty much the same guy then that I was now. Just a bit more battle-scarred.

Hot news clip from IMDb:

Hot news clip from IMDb:
Aussie star Nicole Kidman's alleged romance with Spider-Man star Tobey Maguire is a sham - she's really dating Ben Affleck. Ben, 29, fell for Nicole, 34, during dates last Christmas, and despite hectic working schedules the pair have been keeping in touch by phone and email. The pair shared an intimate dinner in Beverly Hills two weeks ago. A confidante of Ben's quoted in London newspaper Sunday People says, "He's head-over-heels in love with Nicole. He's always been popular with the ladies, but at the moment Nicole is his only interest. They've been filming all over the world but any chance of a meeting and they're there. It's all a bit cloak and dagger as they didn't want the press to find out. The Tobey thing was a smoke screen."

Season finale week

It's the annual TV season finale week. These are the times I wish I had a dual tuner for my satellite.

24, Smallville, The West Wing, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer all conclude this week. The one blessing this long winter season has been a surplus of good television, from the series listed above to miniseries like Band of Brothers.

The X-files television series aired its last ever episode tonight. I hadn't really watched that many episodes this year, but I watched tonight out of loyalty. As expected for a show that plans to branch out into movies a la Star Trek, it didn't wrap up everything in a satisfying way. It was a tough season for the show, but I did find the explanation for why the Anasazi and the American Indians fled to the Southwest of America and relinquished their land to be clever. Basically, the material in that area of the country (magnetite?) was kryptonite to the alien super soldiers. American Indians discovered that and fled to that area to avoid being wiped out by past alien invaders.

I started watching the X-files in season three, and through the X-files newsgroup I found someone who was willing to copy videotapes of every episode from seasons one and two for me in exchange for $50 and a series of blank videotapes. I watched all fifty episodes of those seasons in a matter of two weeks. With the advent of DVD, I must say that one of the most satisfying of all entertainment events is watching an entire season of a great TV show over the course of a week or two. The duration of such a length of episodic entertainment makes it wholly unique.

I can't wait until they put the rest of Seasons One and Two of The West Wing out on DVD.

Adieu to the X-files. It was time for it to go gracefully into the good night. The website Jump the Shark is dedicated to identifying those moments or episodes when a television show hits its peak. After that point, it's all downhill. The name comes from an episode of Happy Days when Fonzie waterskis and jumps over a shark. For the X-files, that moment, for me, was sometime before Duchovny left the show for good. The whole plot with the cigarette smoking man had been resolved, the story about Mulder's sister had been closed out, and the mythology tried to change course and extend its run for a while longer. Duchovny's departure sealed the coffin. Okay, that's not really a moment, but I'm tired, I can't fall asleep, and my foot is cramping.

Perhaps M. Night Shyamalan's Signs will provide me with my summer's worth of paranormal mystery.

Unfaithful

Went with Audrey to see Unfaithful today and mentally catalogued the standard visual vocabulary of suburban housewife infidelity used by director Adrian Lyne, who has covered variants of this theme in his previous films Fatal Attraction and Indecent Proposal.

The opening shot immediately employs the standard establishing images for suburban bliss: a shot of a beautiful home with a large yard, children's toys in the backyard (a bike which ominously topples in the rain), the family dog (standard prop), and the mother at work preparing breakfast. Later in the film there are other such tropes of domestic suburban life: crayon drawings by the child, tacked onto kitchen walls. As Ebert points out, "all movies involving suburban families are required to contain, a scene where the parents sit proudly in the audience while their child performs bravely in a school play." That scene occurs here.

The suburbs are where family resides. New York City, where Diane Lane's Constance Sumner has her affair, is the urban jungle where family has no place (think Jodie Foster in Panic Room for another example of family under urban assault). When a common household item makes its way from one setting to the other, Lyne makes it clear that those world's aren't supposed to mix (I won't reveal what the item is in case any of you go see the film).

Her loving, faithful family man of a husband wears sweater vests, or long-sleeve sweaters in shades of blue that only your grandfather would wear. He has a conservative haircut, is always wearing his respectable half-rimmed glasses, goes to a job which requires a tie.

Her stud of a boyfriend wears the types of sweater that male models wear, those with fancy knit patterns, and he doesn't put anything nothing on underneath. That way he can reach over his back and pull the sweater up over his head (I learned long ago that that is the way women like to see guys remove shirts and sweaters and other such tops) at a moment's notice before their next romp in the sack, or public place, as it may be. He has the type of long hair which Prada models sport, the eternal 2 day shadow, and a tattoo on his shoulder. Somehow he affords his apartment in Soho, despite evidence that he mainly deals in out of print books. Of course, he does happen to con some poor sucker out of a first print of White Fang in its original dustjacket for $1.50. He claims it's worth $4000. I guess that would cover rent in New York for about two months.

Anyway, the point is that Lyne is not exactly the most subtle filmmaker. Unfortunately, American film in general has always dealt with infidelity in one of two ways. Either the affair is justified because it's the result of true love (and the actual spouse is cruel or evil or uninspiring) or the affair causes vicious repercussions for the spouse who initiates it and everyone around him or her.

I thought of this today in particular because I caught the rerun of last week's episode of 24 and my worst suspicious were confirmed. Don't read ahead if you haven't seen the episode yet...

So it turns out Nina is the traitor. I had a feeling early in the season that she'd die, but then, last week, after the commercial mentioned that next week we'd find out who the traitor was, I knew it was Nina. That's because she had an affair with Jack. In American drama, the woman who has an affair with the otherwise loving husband always either dies or turns out to be evil. I've enjoyed 24, but it isn't without its flaws. This is one of them, that they'd fall back on this standard plot cliche. What's worse, having Nina as the double agent probably means some of the earlier episodes don't make much sense.

Of course, the series has taken lots of twists and turns. Let's hope she's pretending and isn't actually the traitor. I suspect, however, that she is. And if she dies, I guess another home-wrecker gets her just due.

Riding through the rain

Last week, work destroyed me. I was basically catatonic Friday night. I couldn't really think of anything to say to anyone I ran into after work. I was exhausted and my brain had shut down. At some point during the night I was out on Lake Union and a whole series of ships had burst into flames. Fire engines went cruising on by, and all the while it all went in my eyes and never got processed.

I barely had any sleep all last week, so I thought I'd sleep the deep sleep of the just on Friday night, but I awoke early on Saturday as usual. It's the one day of the week I desperately want to sleep in and can't. The weather was gray and drizzly, and while I had committed to Tim that I'd ride a long ride with him, secretly I was hoping for a rainout. I was awake but my body was asleep.

So when he called and said it was raining where he was and asked me whether or not I still wanted to ride, I of course logically said yes. My longest ride all season was about 60 miles, so of course we decided to do a 100, consistent with the doctrine of gradual increases in mileage.

The first half of the ride we got drenched. It's my fifth winter in Seattle, and I've realized it's not the severity of the weather in Seattle (it's one of the mildest climes I've lived in) but the duration of the gray season which slowly wears out all but the sunniest of personalities. We were cold, wet, and covered in mud from the road. Even worse, because of the backspray from out back tires, neither one of us could draft off of each other so we had to expend a ton of energy.

We had to stop for food and warmth at a Subway in Enumclaw. The second half of the ride, the sun poked out on occasion. By then my legs were shot and it took an eternity to make it home.

Eight hours on the road, 104 miles, a pair of sore legs.

So Sunday morning I woke up early again and thought it was strange that I had only needed seven hours of sleep. I picked up Lucky Jim, read about five pages, and passed out with the nightstand light on for two hours and dreamt about work. I dreamt I was in a huge and unproductive meeting with a whole bunch of my co-workers, and at the peak of my frustration I woke up.

I leave for my sister's wedding Wednesday, and I can't wait.

Man vs. Machine Part III

Kasparov beat Big Blue. Then Big Blue beat Kasparov.

Now, in October in Bahrain, Kramnik versus Fritz7. It's an opportunity for mankind to reclaim the title of chess supremacy, short-lived as that may be.

I need a chess set.

The twenty seven thousandth review

Nearly every person with a weblog will mention Attack of the Clones at least once in their weblog this month. Count me in. Perhaps someday we'll look back and wonder what all the fuss was about, but the fact was that my Thursday started at 5 in the morning as I woke up and left to wait in line to hold a spot for my team from work at Cinerama for an 8am showing, and my Thursday ended as I sat in Cinerama yet again, about halfway through the 10:45pm showing.

If you haven't seen the film and don't want to read any spoilers, then this entry ends here for you.

Attack of the Clones reveals what we've all perhaps known for some time, which is that George Lucas is skilled at pointing the way for new technology in cinema and fundamentally a poor storyteller. All the dramatic highlights of Episodes I and II result from the audience's knowledge of Episodes IV through VI and not from anything on the screen itself. Which is okay for George Lucas: he did have a lot to do with those three films and he deserves whatever is coming to him.

The fundamental flaws in Episode II include an overly complex storyline, terrible acting (especially in the unconvincing central love story), and the disappearance of the sense of humor which was present in Episodes IV through VI which let the audience know that they were supposed to be having fun.

Lucas has never been a great director of actors. Unlike someone like Tarantino, who seems to always get the best out of his actors, Lucas shows no interest in the potential of acting as a discipline. His actors are props in the digital universe he is much more preoccupied with.

Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen are better actors than this as evidenced by their other film work. Their love story is unwatchable. The only reason they hook up is that they have to or Luke and Leia will never be born and the later films will never occur. At least, that's the only reason I could spot. They have no chemistry together on screen, reading their lines as if they were in a David Mamet film, except with bad dialogue.

Some samples:
"I hate sand. It's coarse, and rough, and gets everywhere. Unlike you. You're soft, and smooth," says Anakin, as he runs his finger lightly up the bared back of Senator Amidala.

"Tell me you're suffering as much as I am," begs Anakin of Amidala, and someone in the audience shouted "We are!"

When Amidala says to Anakin, "I truly....deeply....love you" before they are sent in to the arena to be eaten by strange monsters, Anakin does a double take. "You love me?" he asks. I had to admit, I understood his surprise. Nothing in her acting would have convinced me she cared one bit about him. What's worse, it evokes wistful memories of that fantastic moment in Empire Strikes Back when Leia says to Han Solo, just before he is submerged in they cryogenic freezing chamber, "I love you."

Han Solo replies, "I know." It's a wonderful scene because everyone in the audience knows it as well.

Some critics theorize that the bad acting is a result of having to shoot most scenes in front of blue or green screens. Perhaps there is some merit to that theory, but it can't be the sole reason. Actors are constantly shooting scenes in obviously phony settings. That's why they call it acting. Ironically, or not, considering Lucas' interests, the best performance is given by Yoda, a completely digital actor.

Yes, there was bad acting in the other four Star Wars films, but Episode II plumbs new depths.

What's worse is that the first two storylines (The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones) are needlessly complex and drag along painfully until those scenes in which someone draws a lightsaber and starts kicking some ass. In that way these episodes are not unlike some of the poor martial arts films coming out of Asia, those which should be seen on DVD so that the viewer can simply jump to the fight scenes.

Episode II's plot intends to draw its suspense from a mysterious separatist movement and suspected treason amidst the Senate. Political stories can be fascinating, but only when the central conflict is clear enough so that the political machinations around the edges stand out. We're supposed to believe that Senator Palpatine, who is Darth Sidious, asked Count Dooku (or Tyrannus)10 years prior to order the creation of a clone army which would later gets approved for use by the Senate after Dooku leads a Separatist revolt with the aid of the Trade Federation (those strange bug-eyed creatures with the ethnic accents) and after Chancellor Palpatine gets voted emergency powers by the Senate after Jar Jar Binks gives what I guess is intended to be a rousing speech to the Senate. This clone army is built from the DNA of a bounty hunter named Jango Fett--it's never explained why he was chosen.

Odd that neither side has an army. What happens to the military in whatever day and age these films are supposed to take place in? Why do have to build robot or clone armies? There are probably answers to these and other questions, but they're the type of questions no one had to ask in the original trilogy. No young kid will have any idea what the storyline of this film is. It took me two viewings just to get all the details straight in my head. Clarity of plot is a good thing, and it can be had in plots both simple and complex.

The storyline of the original trilogy was clear. There were the good guys, the rebels, and they were being chased all over the galaxy by the bad guys, represented by Vader, stormtroopers, and vaguely Nazi-esque generals. Luke was trying to become a Jedi Knight with the help of Obi-Wan and Yoda. The bad guys keep trying to build Death Stars. Han Solo joins the rebels and wins the heart of Leia in a Gable-esque manner.

It's not even entirely clear who is on the side of right in Episodes I and II. Some argue that it appears that the Empire is actually in the right, and it's not a stretch to accept that argument.

Having said that, Episode II reveals glimpses of potential that the remaining film to be shot could be, if not a great film, at least the type of grand entertainment which we hope for from our best summer blockbusters. It is clearly superior to A Phantom Menace.

Unlike those in A Phantom Menace, the digital landscapes and cities in Attack of the Clones are beautiful and realistic. When I say realistic, I don't mean that they are photo-realistic. It is a particular brand of digital realism which is something entirely new and intriguing. It's still clear at times that actors are standing against green screens--you can see the unnatural delineation between the outline of the actors and the surrounding environment. But the buildings and ships and rooms themselves are beautiful and articulated, unlike those in A Phantom Menace which looked like watercolors. The long money shots that establish each setting--the gliding pan over the turbulent seas of Kamino, the city spires poking through the clouds of Coruscant in the movie's opening shots, the plunging urban chasms of Coruscant at night during the speeder chase, the enormous cathedral which Windu, Yoda and Obi-Wan stroll through, the wide open landscapes and waterfalls of Naboo--these are places I'd like to visit.

This may be a result of the digital projection system, in which case I understand why Lucas would wish that his film be shown digitally throughout the world. I have yet to see Episode II on film, and I'm not sure I wish to. Unfortunately, most films are still shot primarily on film (the special 24p HD digital camcorders with Panavision lenses designed by Sony for Lucas cost $100K each, and digital projection systems for theaters cost at least that much, so the economic equation doesn't work in favor of mass adoption) and for those movies digital projection may not offer nearly the same step up in sharpness.

John Williams devises a memorable new central theme for his score, something lacking in the score for Episode I. The soundtrack itself gives the viewers all sorts of musical cues rooted in the themes for Episode IV through VI. When Anakin loses his temper, we hear strains of Vader's imperial march.

Yoda's lightsaber scene with Dooku is the type of campy yet momentous scene which gave the original trilogy the feel of grand space opera. When Yoda pulls aside his robe and his lightsaber leaps into his right hand, the crowd cheers, giddy with anticipation to see something they haven't seen before in the trilogy. Sure, it's borderline ridiculous to see Yoda doing somersaults like the Chinese monkey king, but anyone who feels that way probably shouldn't be forking over cash to watch any of the Star Wars movies.

Episode II made an estimated $86.2 million this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and $116.3 million since opening day. A common lament among critics when reviewing films like Episode II is that no matter what they write, the film will do good box office. Any such critic clearly doesn't take their job seriously enough.

Anyway, that's my $10. Oh wait, I saw it twice. That's my $20. Oh wait, I had to pay service charges. That's my $21.

P.S.: For those who may go see the film in the future and want to go on a visual easter egg hunt, here are some to look for courtesy of Zentertainment...

• When Anakin and Padmé arrive on Naboo, you'll spot three Millennium Falcons in the background and at the docking station.


• When Yoda is meditating and Anakin is killing the Tusken Raiders, listen for the voice of Qui-Gon Jinn, Anakin's old master.


• When the clones attack and the evil Count Dooku is fleeing Geonosis, keep an eye out for a cameo of the Death Star.


• Remember the royal guards from Return of the Jedi? The red-cloaked personal protectors of the emperor make a background appearance in Clones, but keep an eye out. They're there for only a second.


• During the chase scene in Coruscant, Anakin and Obi-Wan zip by different billboards with strange writing. The writing is in a style called Aurabesh and corresponds with our own alphabet. Fans with much time on their hands have already begun trying to translate them.


• While the end credits scroll along, look for the name "Michael Smith." Mr. Smith is credited as "Javva the Hutt." He's not a character in the film; he's the guy who got coffee for the cast and crew.


• The ceiling of the dining room at the Lars homestead — which will become Luke Skywalker's future residence — on Tatooine has a pattern similar to the tattoo on the mug of Darth Maul, the bad guy from Phantom Menace.


• The shaaks — the cow-like creatures that are roaming Naboo — became the butt of jokes among Lucasfilm special-effects wizards. You can find one floating in an asteroid belt, and another is on fire in the final, climactic battle scene.

Digital clones

I'm excited to be able to see Attack of the Clones digitally projected at Cinerama opening day (tomorrow I guess!). This will be my first experience with digital projection, which George Lucas has been pushing for hard. There are two popular digital projection systems: Boeing and Texas Instruments. Cinerama will use the Boeing system. The number of theaters digitally projecting Episode II in the United States is low--something like twenty or so.

Roger Ebert, long a fan of film over digital projection, admits that based on his firsthand experience, the digital projection of Clones looks superior. He theorizes it's because Clones was shot digitally so it didn't need to be translated to film in the digital projection system (the same reason audiophiles hate to see
signals translated from analog to digital or vice versa--something is always lost in the translation, as everyone knows).

Trailers

E-mail I received:
"The first teaser to the MATRIX: RELOADED and THE MATRIX: REVOLUTIONS is set to be released on Wednesday May 15th, with its world premier on Entertainment Tonight. To see it in theaters, it will be attached to a certain film due out this week. If you miss it, don't worry, you can view it here, at www.TheMatrix.com, directly after its final airing on Entertainment Tonight. That's roughly 9pm PST, May 15th.

For this online release, we've decided to go digital... this is THE MATRIX, after all. We compressed this first teaser directly from the 2K digital source files, over 20 gigabytes of data. Why'd we bother? No scan lines, capable of far higher resolutions, zero transfer loss. More shortly."

Also, teaser for the new Bond flick, Die Another Day.
Unfortunately it's in Windows Media or Realvideo format so it's blurry.
(Update: now in beautiful, glorious Quicktime)

The trailer for Gangs of New York, the long delayed film by Martin Scorsese, features Leonardo Dicaprio trying his best to feign an Irish accent, and the return of Daniel Day Lewis from his stint as a cobbler in Europe.

A trailer, sort of, for Full Frontal, Soderbergh's new film which I'm dying to see because he shot it using equipment I might be able to access to make my own film. Though it still leaves the issue of how I'd secure Julia Roberts' time.

Trailer for Irreversible, a French film. The trailer works, really, because it's set to Beethoven.

High res Quicktime trailer for Walt Disney's animated adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Planet. Looks to have better animation than Atlantis: The Lost Empire did.

A New Kind of Science

Stephen Wolfram's long-awaited book A New Kind of Science comes out tomorrow. More a tome than a book at 1192 pages, and 10 years in the making, it promises to lay out Wolfram's ideas on numerous topics in science, from complexity and cellular automata to the possibility of an algorithmic theory of physics, from free will versus determinism to the nature of
intelligence in the universe.

At my last check, it was the top selling book at Amazon.com. That's amazing. I wonder how long that will last. Either every science geek around is purchasing it from Amazon.com right now, or we have the next hit science text since Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time.

I would buy it just to read about his thoughts on complexity, a topic which I can't get enough of these days. Wolfram is a fascinating guy. Brilliant, arrogant, unrepentant. Invented Mathematica, then took all the riches that accrued to the
company which he had formed to publish the software and went off for years and years to write this book.

There's an interesting discussion of Wolfram and his new book in this month's Wired magazine (incidentally, it's the debut of the new Wired magazine layout and format and I dislike it). In it, Wolfram theorizes, taking complexity and emergence to its extreme, that the secret of the universe is a single rule, a simple algorithm, which underlies all the rules of physics and the universe. Furthermore, he claims the rule will be so simple that if we translated it into software code, for example in his software program Mathematica, it would be perhaps three or four lines of code (to give you a sense of the order of magnitude he's thinking of).

It reminds me of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where they ask that machine what the answer to the universe is and the machine spits out a printout that reads:

42

Anyhow, this is the first "long awaited and discussed" book I'm aware of since The Corrections. It belongs on your bookshelf.

Kangaroo shoes

Most people are familiar with the comfort of a pair of true leather shoes which have stretched out to fit the contours of their feet. Adidas looked for a material that had even more give than the leather from cows and found it in kangaroo skin, used in their new top-of-the-line soccer shoe, The Adidas Predator (the shoe worn by the English
national hero, David Beckham, midfielder for Manchester United and loving husband of one former Posh Spice).

I would bemoan the use of kangaroos in such a manner but it turns out kangaroos have few natural predators anymore and are in no danger of extinction.

I'm surprised there are still any animals left which the fashion industry hasn't already exploited in some way. I wonder if we'll be wearing kangaroo leather pants and kangaroo dress shoes in a few years.

Oh, another thing

One thing lots of critics have admired about Spiderman is the clever wink the filmmakers toss the audience's way about male teenage sexual confusion by having Peter Parker actually develop and discover his ability to fire white streams of webs from his wrists (and by having him struggle comically to learn how to control and harness that ability--witness his inadvertent shots across the bow, as it were, when he first attempts to hit a crane from the top of a building).

What the critics didn't point out is that in the comic book, Spiderman doesn't get that ability--the saavy science whiz Peter Parker develops a web-like material which he stores in a web-shooting device which he straps to each wrist. If spider DNA really merged with Peter Parker's DNA to give him this ability, Tobey would've been shooting webs from his ass, which is how most spiders spin webs.

Could you hold

The number of telemarketers calling me at home is out of control. I've resorted to telling these folks, "Can you hold a minute?" Then I put throw my phone across the room and continue doing whatever it was that I was doing. Man it feels good.

Early Episode II reviews

Ebert reviewed Episode II and gives it...

Nah, I won't say. I won't read the review yet, either. I didn't even mean to see it, but Ebert usually doesn't release his reviews of a film until opening day, so I was surprised to see the review listed on his index page today.

Not Valid Without Signature

Okay, could signing the back of credit cards be any more difficult? How is one supposed to stay inside that tiny white strip which is so slick a ballpoint pen can barely get a grip on the writing surface? My beautiful florid signature goes to hell when squeezed into that coffin.

Rub your belly clockwise while singing and standing on one foot

This article in the Washington Post notes that University of Maryland researcher Ben Shneiderman has a good reason to believe that voice interfaces for controlling computers are fundamentally flawed, and that reason is speaking uses auditory memory which happens to use the same part of your brain as short-term and working memory. Therefore, it's hard to speak and think at the same time.

Using a mouse or keyboard to execute commands is easier than verbalizing them because hand-eye coordination uses a different part of the brain.

I'm no HCI expert, but that sounds right to me.

It is part of the vanity of mankind that we want computers to imitate us. Sure, some people probably wish for Jude-Law-like robot companions as in A.I. for those lonely nights when they can't find a prom date, but that's just creepy. The utility of a robot that is passably human has always been somewhat dubious. When Big Blue beat Kasparov in chess, thankfully no one thought it necessary to have a humanistic robot sitting across the chessboard from Kasparov, with robotic arms to move the pieces.

Computers do some things far better than humans, and vice versa, and almost all of the productivity benefits I'll experience in my lifetime come from focusing on those. I don't want a robot to make me breakfast unless he can do it at least one order of magnitude better than I can. Far preferable to have computers continue to do things I have no chance of doing alone, as a human being.

Broadband

If you still surf the web on some narrowband connection like a 56K modem but have alternatives, you should really consider trying them.

I couldn't live without my cable modem at home. My home Internet connection and PC are faster than the ones I use at work, which is an odd experience.

Don't be silly, wabbit

Every day I flip through IMDb's entertainment news area, because occasionally you'll find some gems.

Here's one:
"More than 1,200 people have signed an online petition in a bid to ban Peter Jackson from calling the second Lord Of The Rings movie The Two Towers. The petition argues that Jackson is referring to the attack on the twin towers of the World Trade Center last September even though author J.R.R. Tolkien's novel, "The Two Towers," was written 48 years ago . A statement on the site insists, "The title is clearly meant to refer to the attacks on the World Trade Center." It continues, "When I learned that there apparently was to be a sequel, I was overjoyed. However, Peter Jackson has decided to tastelessly name the sequel The Two Towers. "In this post-September 11 world, it is unforgivable that this should be allowed to happen. The idea is both offensive and morally repugnant.
"Hopefully, when Peter Jackson and, more importantly, New Line Cinema, see the number of signatures on this petition, the title will be changed to something a little more sensitive." A voice of reason does appear on the site. One internet surfer points out, "'The Two Towers' is the title of the J.R.R. Tolkien book originally published in 1954. The title was thus established some 47 years prior to the attacks on the World Trade Centre towers."

I'm all for sensitivity, but some people have way too much time on their hands. Somewhere Peter Jackson is in his Lord of the Rings pajamas, reading the morning newspaper, and laughing his ass off.

Here's another:
"Lord Of The Rings star Orlando Bloom has been spotted in the arms of cool Hollywood babe Christina Ricci. According to British teen magazine Just 17, the pair were seen leaving a Hollywood party after the Sleepy Hollow actress fell ill. Ricci reportedly vomited in the street while Bloom--he's elf Legolas in Peter Jackson's fantasy epic--held back her hair and whispered sweet nothings in her ear. Neither party has yet confirmed the story."

That's reporting for you, somehow being privy to this whispered conversation of "sweet nothings." One can be jealous that someone is making money off of selling a magazine titled Just 17, but far better to laugh and admit that
an occasional flip through an issue of People magazine is satisfying in the way that a fart joke can be both juvenile and temporarily humorous. Or that a situation like this one will elicit a mild chuckle, unless, of course, it happens to be your neighbor. Is that a pair of breasts or a penis? Or both?

Some things are not quite as humorous. Like this six page manifesto written by Luke Helder, the man being charged with the recent mailbox bombings in several states in the U.S. Odd subject matter. Everything from urging the gov't to lighten up on marijuana to a discussion of dreaming to a rant against public school obsession with book smarts over common sense. Some of which is sensible, but trying to blow up some of your fellow citizens is hardly the best way to win sympathy for your cause.

Jaguar

The next release of Mac OSX, code named Jaguar, looks pretty cool.

What else is cool? The new Ti notebook G4. So cool. Already my Ti notebook looks outdated.

And the Apple Cinema HD Display. Too cool.

I'm a lifelong Windows PC user, but I've got to admit, Apple is winning me over with its latest set of products. The design is beautiful, and Windows XP just doesn't really excite me at all. Neither does Office XP. Not that Office isn't a great application, but it's so good that every next release has to promise quantum improvements to justify hundreds of dollars in upgrade costs, and neither Windows XP of Office XP does it for me.

Places to go, people to see

I did the math today and realized I have enough frequent flier miles for two around the world tickets. Hmmmmm.

Amazing

Barry Bonds is having such an amazing stretch of offense (at last check his on-base percentage was .628--that's a beer league softball stat!!!) that he's actually not benefitting his team as much as walks normally benefit a team.

.628 OBP!!! An .899 slugging percentage!!! 40 walks and 5 strikeouts!

I absolutely have to get to Pac Bell stadium this year to see him play a game. Unbelievable.

Our softball team had its first game of the season. It was a nail-biter, but we managed to pull out a win in the bottom of the last inning, 10-9. Rich brought me home with a sac fly to win it. Since we only won one game last year, this one was huge. I was actually a bit jittery getting out there for the first time, not sure how good we'd be. But after out first one-two-three inning and after my first hit, I realized that the other team wasn't necessarily any better than we were. We'll be competitive this year if we play solid defense and avoid flyball outs.

I played right field today and got lots of action, which is fun. I wanted them to hit every ball my way. I enjoy standing out there and reading the batter, watching him warm up, looking at his swing, his stance, and moving myself around to get in the best position to catch the ball. There's an art to that.

My favorite type of fly ball to chase is the deep one over your head. The kind where you just turn and run as hard as you can and then, at some point, and you just know what point that is based on your body's internal clock and your split second assessment of how the ball left the bat and what trajectory it was on, you turn back and try and pick up the ball in the sky with your eye (again, your brain has guessed where the ball should be by that point and points your eyes there first) and then you reach out and hope you can pull it in over your shoulder. I got one to chase down like that tonight and it was the most fun I had all night.

Line by Ralph Ellison

Read this in an article on Ellison and Invisible Man in Salon. It's part of a quote attributed to Ellison:
"...everything in this life which plunges the talented individual into solitude while leaving him the will to transcend his condition through art."

Hmmm...

According to UnderTheKnife, "A very good source has given us a bit of scoop regarding the Cubs and a potential trade. The Rangers have offered the Cubs Ivan Rodriguez and Gabe Kapler in return for Robert Machado, Jason Bere, Carlos Zambrano, and Todd Wellemeyer (currently in A-FSL). Obviously, the trade isn't hot since Pudge cannot be traded while on the DL and Kapler isn't a great fit for the Cubs, but Andy McPhail left discussions open."

Pudge isn't what he once was and is unlikely to be able to play anywhere near a full season again, but it wouldn't take much to improve on the offensive ineptitude of the Cubs catchers in recent history.

Can't wait to see the Cubbies call up Mark Prior.

Divorce, molestation, and absolution

Another reason to think hard before getting married: divorced Catholics who remarry don't qualify for absolution, according to the Pope.

The two most irrational behaviors

I've heard Jeff Bezos say this before. The two most irrational human behaviors are how little research they do before buying a stock or choosing a doctor. People buy stocks based on hearing self-proclaimed experts on CNBC touting the ticker symbol, or based on magazine articles, or tips from their relatives. I'm not even sure they even do nearly that much research when selecting a doctor.

By the way, I'm guilty of both, and I've paid dearly for those mistakes. The first doctor who diagnosed my knee surgery thought it was a sprain. Turns out I had torn my ACL, MCL, and some cartilage. Oops. You bet I switched to another doctor for my ACL reconstruction, and I chose him after careful reference checks. Thankfully, with the stock market battered and beaten this past year, I don't have to listen to too many stock tips anymore.

I would add one other puzzling behavior to this list. I'm surprised by how little research people do before jumping into marriage or parenthood. You can sell a bad stock or switch doctors if he or she fails to provide decent care (don't try it with a brain surgeon). But pick the wrong spouse and you've gone through the huge ordeal of marriage (and forced most of your friends and family to go through it, too), sworn devotion for life in front of God and dozens of witnesses, and tied your lives and futures together. If you go a step further and decide to have kids without thinking it through, you've compounded the error by screwing up their lives as well.

That's not to say I don't admire the courage it takes to commit to a marriage. Perhaps people recognize that their spouses are likely to change but they're going to stick it out and work through those inevitable changes no matter what. But something tells me many people don't, since one in two marriages ends in divorce.

It's the modern day, and there are ways around this. Every couple, before deciding to get married, should travel abroad together. Or they should live together for a short while. Both will draw out all those little annoying habits or personality quirks in your prospective mate which might just drive you nuts if drawn out over a lifetime.

You should check your spouse out playing some competitive sport. People's true personalities come out on the playing field. That, for better or worse, is the person you're marrying. It may not come out when you're out at some nice restaurant sipping on Cabernet and sucking on opposite ends of a strand of spaghetti while an Italian water sings Ave Maria by your table side.

Before anyone has kids, they should practice babysitting for a niece or nephew for a summer or something like that. Or they should do an in-depth examination of some child they know who has grown up in front of their eyes, studying their interactions with their parents. I'm convinced that kids will never love their parents as much as their parents love them. Parent child relationships are more asymmetrical in responsibility than that between husband and wife. If you plan to let a nanny or babysitter raise your kid, don't have one.

Of course, all this is coming from a guy who hasn't had to deal with either marriage or parenting. So disregard everything you've just read. I have no idea what I'm talking about.

How did I get started on this whole thread anyway? Oh yeah. Don't take stock picks from strangers. Damn. I had an interesting point to make, but it's not coming through. The thought is there, but it's just out of reach. Not one of my more eloquent days. This insomnia is death to clear thinking.

Inevitable nuclear attack on U.S.?

At the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder meeting, famed investor Warren Buffett told gatherers that some sort of nuclear attack on America is inevitable. "It will happen," he told shareholders at Berkshire Hathaway's (NYSE: BRK.A) annual meeting. "Whether it will happen in 10 years or 10 minutes, or 50 years... it's virtually a certainty."

Of course, he made those comments in the context of discussing the insurance industry (among Berkshire Hathaway's holdings is General Re, the insurance company, which like other property casualty insurers lost billions of dollars in the wake of Sept. 11).

Now plenty of people have already predicted such things, but Buffett gets attention because he's the second richest man in the world. Soon after Sept. 11 I had thought the same thing, that we now lived in a world where the U.S. would always be under attack, but in the past few weeks it had faded from my mind like the insane relative locked in the basement. But Buffett brought it back into the foreground, and it made me think a couple of things, none too profound in their own rights, but I wanted to set them down anyway.

One: our world is screwed up. You have people killing each other the world over and it's been happening for as long as people have been around. Sure, I'm in meetings all the time where I hear the statement, "Reasonable people can agree to disagree," but still, it doesn't mean you have to blast each other to kingdom come. Every day I read about Israelis and Palestinians engaged in urban warfare, bodies piling up, and I wonder how reasonable people really are if they agree to disagree at that level?

I'm at a point in my life where I feel like I can go most places in the U.S. without worrying about racism or crazy religious fanatics running into a restaurant where I'm eating with twenty pounds of C4 strapped to their chest. Am I more enlightened or just damn lucky I grew up in the company of more reasonable people (probably the latter)? I've traveled the world, met lots of people my age, and I've liked most all of them. I can't believe that we're born with such capacity for violence. We're definitely not saints at birth, either, but where along the path of life do we decide that there's some idea worth killing someone else for? What type of ideas have that type of power? I find it especially frustrating when the nature of the conflict is historical in nature. Some of this generation must feel like
Romeo and Juliet trying just to have a good time without the Montague and Capulet family rivalry hanging over their heads.

Two: What am I doing to contribute to world peace? I admit to not being the world's shining example of public service and social activism. I'd like to think my social conscience is late-blooming. Being a middle manager in a public corporation that sells stuff--is that enough? What's my lot in life? I used to look askance on a career in politics but I can understand now why it appeals to so many. I also understand why lots of extremely wealthy people (the Ted Turners of the world) dive headlong into politics late in life.

If there's a chance that a nuclear bomb could incinerate me or people I love tomorrow, two alternatives present themselves to me. One would be to quit my job and figure out a way to stop the madness. That path is likely strewn with the corpses of poor idealists who got frustrated starting from the bottom, couldn't pay rent, and got out. Not all of us have the bank of a Ted Turner. Two would be to call the world senseless and just go off and do all the things you've ever wanted to do and wait for the end. Search for big love, the big wave, the big mountain.

Jason and I were chatting yesterday about why a corporate drama would never draw well on television. The general public at large doesn't care because it's not life or death and it's not situational comedy. If the show's not set in the courtroom or the emergency room or on the mean streets where bad people carry guns and no qualms, it's not worth sacrificing a prime time hour, including commercials, to watch it on television. Maybe it also lacks the drama or urgency to build a career on.

I have a mid-life crisis every other week these days.

You can certainly understand why millions of people just want to spend a few hours of their weekend watching Spiderman. The darkened theater is a cocoon of escapist dream stuff. This world would be unbearable without our entertainment industry.

On a lighter note, People Magazine released their annual fifty most beautiful people list, and I once again failed to make the cut. Okay, I could understand losing to some of those people, but Jimmy Fallon? Puh-lease. I'm funnier and better looking than him.

Roll your own blog

Webmonkey ran a nice article on the most popular weblog solutions on the Net. If you're looking to start a weblog, you should check it out. Options covered include Blogger, Diaryland, Pitas, Greymatter, Movable Type, and Radio Userland.

I use Blogger, and it has worked fairly well. I've thought about trying out some of the other services, but I don't have the time, and why fix something that isn't broken? If I did switch, however, I'd probably start with Movable Type.

The mainstream press is all over blogging now. Every week some big publication picks up on the phenomenon (Wired, USA Today, Time, The Washington Post, among others). Today it's the New York Times with the article "At Large in the Blogsphere". Some established, credentialed media folks are criticizing bloggers for being inarticulate, narcissistic amateurs. Often, they're right. But many mainstream journalists are guilty themselves of being dull and slow on the draw. Some of the most interesting news or phenomenon now break in blogs, and some journalists are willing to acknowledge the strengths of blogdom.

The only casualty of my weblog has been my personal journal and my handwriting. My fountain pens don't get as much use as they once did. Joannie wants me to write all the guest cards for her wedding. I hope she hasn't seen some of my recent chicken scratch.

With the ubiquity of computers and e-mail and electronic input devices, handwriting is losing market share because it's slower than typing and often less legible. What's lost is the insight that a person's handwriting provides. The actual form and shape of a person's letters often provides more content than the meaning of the words themselves. I don't miss most of the birthday or Xmas cards I used to receive--most don't say very much anyway.

I plan on making a coffee table book this year with photos of people I know. If I do, one thing I'd have everyone do is hand write a page of notes to face each of their photos, with a short story about themselves. If I could have just one really nice photo of every person I'm close to, that would be enough. It would be nice and compact. Everything else is memory and imagination.

Pronounce you man and girlfriend

Today Scott, on bended knee, asked Lorin to be his girlfriend. Long-distance. A small group of us gathered for the ceremony at brunch at the Edgewater Inn.

Rich gave a speech, I was best man and presented the ring, a beautiful $18 number from Nordstrom...not a dry eye in the crowd.

You may wonder why asking a girl out requires such ado. If you do, you don't know Scott. Commitment is a four-letter word in his vocabulary. Was.

I'm happy for him. He seems much happier than he's been in a long time with Lo, and this will be a healthy new chapter in his life.

I was happy to be his ring bearer. One thing he did for me which I'll always remember. Back in 98, the night before my knee surgery, Scott visited me in the hospital and brought me a few things: a Dick's cheeseburger, a large bag of Doritos, and some needed company. I'd only been in Seattle for about a year and there wasn't exactly a line of people knocking down my hospital door.

More than my knee needed reconstruction. I'd lost my mother a few months earlier, had a broken heart, and was sick of Seattle and my job. My knee injury had been previously misdiagnosed and so I mangled it worse than before. My 24th year in this world was undoubtedly a low point.

As I gorged myself on the junk food, a welcome respite from hospital meals (why is hospital food so terrible when they're supposed to places that heal?), we chatted about random things. I can't remember a single thing we chatted about, but it didn't matter. It helped me pass one pleasant night that year, and there weren't many of those.

The next day they rebuilt my knee. Then another loyal friend Aaron came and picked me up. As I rolled out to the sidewalk in my wheelchair, I threw up the cheeseburger and the Doritos just short of Aaron's car. They had gotten me through the surgery and their work was done.

Now, just four years later, Aaron's engaged, and Scott has a girlfriend, which for him is an engagement. I like to think it's karma for the kindness they showed me then.

114 big ones

Spiderman made an estimated $114 million in its opening weekend, setting the record for the largest opening weekend ever, smashing the record set by Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone for a 3-day opening.

Formula for big-time opening weekend:
1. Movie that appeals equally to males and females (action for boys, love story for girls)
2. Movie that appeals equally to the old and the young (older generation grew up with Spiderman, young kids familiar with Tobey and Kirsten)
3. Release during time of year when many people can go see a movie (start of summer or holiday season)
4. Hype. Hype. Hype. Run impressive trailers for months leading up to opening weekend.
5. Story people already know. See Harry Potter or any sequel for proof.

I didn't hate Spiderman, I didn't love it. Half the fun of seeing big summer blockbuster films is rounding up friends, fighting to nab tickets for the primo opening night show, coordinating everyone to show up in the right place, sitting in a darkened theater full of hyped-up kids, cheering when a trailer for another blockbuster film plays, and shouting at the screen throughout the film. And, if you're lucky, the film is so good that everyone is clapping and cheering at the end.

Friday night had most of the above. A big crew of friends. Hyped up kids in the theater. Some decent trailers for a few other Columbia films (Columbia is in franchise mode this summer--MIB II, Stuart Little) but no Hulk trailer. I wore my glasses for the first time and the screen was sharper than normal.

But the sound system at Meridian 16 is terrible. I'm spoiled by holding the remote control at home in my home theater and being able to toggle volume up or down to my heart's delight. Meridian doesn't have digital sound and doesn't even turn the volume up enough to hear all the dialogue. Unless I have to, I'm boycotting that damn theater. Most theaters in Seattle have terrible sound systems. If I didn't have a good home theater at home I'd have to move to a different city.

Episode II stuff

Episode II commercials in Quicktime (RealVideo and Windows Media Player look really shabby next to Quicktime--that's just my subjective observation). If you don't want to see too much of the good footage from the film, don't watch these. They do get me fired up though. Should I do another Star Wars movie marathon? 4 films--that's a lot of movie watching.

Also, an Episode II music video for Across the Stars by John Williams.

Tickets for Episode II went on sale this weekend. I've been so busy at work I completely lost track, otherwise I would have been out in line overnight waiting for tickets. As it is, I had to scramble a bit. A few phone calls to highly placed officials, a few bribes, a few favors called in. I'll be set for opening night.

Am thinking this weekend could be time to revive my Star Wars movie marathon.

Insomnia, and Timbuktu

Have had trouble sleeping recently. That means I feel tired all day, and I lie in bed feeling tired, but I can't fall asleep. Toss and turn, bury head under pillow insomnia. Miserable. Occasionally it happens, but in the past it was a result of caffeine consumption. But I stay away from coffee and soda now, so who knows what it is.

Light-year is a measure of distance, not time. People misuse it in conversation all the time. Do they really mean 5.88 trillion miles, approximately? I think not.

My glasses are done. I have to go pick them up sometime. That's another problem I need to solve. My office, or Amazon headquarters, is out in the middle of nowhere. During the week, I can never get to the post office, or the bank, or the dry cleaners, or the photo lab. Then the weekend comes and I spend half of it running around doing errands, when parking is scarce and traffic is lousy. I nee to carve out some errand-running time midweek.

I'm excited. My first real glasses. When, oh when, to pull them out? Perhaps at Spiderman on Friday night. Unlike the superhero on screen, by donning the glasses I'll be transforming into an even more mortal version of myself. Superman turning into Clark Kent. I'd like to be Clark Kent for a while. After all, it's Clark who gets to date Lois.

I'm guessing the best part about Spiderman will be the score by Danny Elfman. Unfortunately, the just released soundtrack only includes a few tracks by Danny because it's a soundtrack and not a score. Free Danny Elfman! Do we really need to hear the Theme from Spiderman as rendered by Aerosmith?

On a side note, it's quite annoying that because of non-standard browser implementations, certain convenient Blogger buttons like hyperlinking don't show up on when using any of the Mac browsers. I was hoping Mozilla 1.0 would solve it, but it doesn't.

Based on feedback from Ken, I've upped the font on these posts to 11px. Hopefully that's a bit easier to read for most of you. If you haven't checked in the past day or two, you missed my brief foray into 10px posts. Something about large fonts brings out the snob in me--reminds me or large print books.

It's pastime, not pasttime. Derives from "pass time" and not "past time". Of course, that raises the issue of why not passtime, but let's not go there. Also, instead of "in actuality" just say "actually." When writing, avoid redundant acronyms like SAT test, PIN number, UPC code. "Ought" should always be followed by an infinitive, so either "ought to" or "ought not to". Many people use "ought not" when they should use "ought not to".

Maybe I can't sleep because my sister Joannie is getting married in a few weeks. Whoa.

SUV for those who least need one

Porsche is finally pulling back the curtains on their entry in the SUV market, the Cayenne.

The turbo version goes from 0 to 62mph in 5.6 seconds. That's flat out ridiculous. Seriously, who needs that kind of power in an SUV? Gas-guzzling, environmentally unfriendly, pretentious SUV for people whose closest encounter with offroad driving is when their teenager runs over their lawn on their first attempt to learn to drive. Totally preposterous.

I want one.

Or not evolving

Where did I read this recently? Human evolution has slowed significantly with the advent of social safety nets like cities and laws which protect all people, regardless of their genetic deficiencies. These days everyone survives, even the slow, the blind, the weak, the ugly. Evolutionary forces which might have conspired to continually improve us now make it possible for those who would have been weeded out by sabre-tooth tigers or those who would have failed to procreate because of unattractive figures or personalities to find mates (often equally unworthy of climbing the Darwinian ladder) and pass their flawed DNA onto the next generation. Medical advances like LASIK eye surgery allow people to overcome or at least compensate for their weaknesses.

Is that not depressing? The most advanced society creates the most diluted gene pool. Look around you--this may be as good-looking and smart a crew as you'll see.

Evolving

Changing the look of my weblog a bit. For those of you who subscribe to get my posts by e-mail, I forgot that every time I publish, an e-mail is sent. Hopefully you all didn't get spammed to death while I experimented with different looks and layouts. Still a work in progress.

Apologies for those who'll need to squint to read the new, smaller type. It's an attempt at greater information density and a more newspaper-like look.