The NYTimes online archive is not an attractive offering. I wanted to read this old article on how studies of how customers make brand choices might illuminate the affirmative action debate. To read a single article, you have to pay $2.95, and if you buy a 25 article multi-pack it comes to $1.05 per article, but the multi-pack expires after 6 months.
Considering you can buy an entire issue for a buck, $1.05 for a single article seems ridiculous. If their goal is to drive all of us to libraries to use those old microfiche machines, they're doing a good job. More likely is that their online division is clueless.
Every other day it seems I receive an invitation to join Friendster. I've been too lazy to register. The last figure I read put the subscriber count of Friendster at around a half million people. That's miniscule, yet I hear about it in conversations all the time.
What's the word? Is it really all that?
AT&T Wireless switched over to their new voicemail system sometime in the past week. I'd heard annoying notifications about it earlier this year when dialing my voicemail, but the notifications were so long and included such convoluted instructions that I never wrote them down. Then, in the past few days, I stopped receiving voicemail messages. You don't know that you're not receiving them--you just feel really ostracized for a few days--until someone asks you why you didn't return their call.
So yesterday I dialed my voicemail box and found 12 unheard messages. I didn't get to hear them until I walked through a the process of setting up my voicemail box again.
So this whole conversion was obviously a huge hassle. What amazing new benefits do I receive for having suffered through this conversion? If you know, please let me know. As far as I can tell, my voicemail works exactly the same. That AT&T didn't work to make the transition transparent to its users is one more example of how badly telecom companies treat their users.
One other footnote. In this new voicemail system, there's a binary flag to turn voicemail indicators on or off. Why would anyone want it off? Well, when my voicemail box was converted, it was reset to off, so my phone wouldn't show an icon to indicate I had messages waiting. I had to sit on the phone with a friendly AT&T customer service rep for 15 minutes last night while he turned the flag back on. How inane.
Another list of newsreaders.
Adam suggested Newzcrawler for my Windows PC, and I've got that installed. So far, so good. The FeedDemon beta just came out, so I'll put those two head to head on my Windows PC.
On my Mac at home, I've got NetNewsWire running. I've also got Blogstreet sending posts to both my work and personal e-mail accounts.
It's been fun, but after just two days, it's a bit of information overload. I don't think I'll go with the e-mail solution except for a few isolated blogs because you can't surf inside the e-mail client. Having a newsreader on both my Mac and PC is also a bit of overkill. Ultimately, I suspect I'll end up being a FeedDemon guy if the beta is fairly stable.
I foresee a combination RSS newsreader/blog/e-mail/web browsing client that also manages paid RSS content, makes it easier to inserting hyperlinks and Amazon.com Associates and other affiliate links, possesses superior search and cross-threading and topic filtering technology, and is also smart enough to recommend stuff you'd want to read but weren't aware of. Add in chat capabilities, layer in true micropayments, and we have the next Internet super-application. I'd go off and code one but I'm not smart enough.
Ah, a transcript of it. I'm crying just reading it.
The national do-not-call registry opened today. Register at http://donotcall.gov or call 1-888-382-1222. I registered my home phone but didn't put my cell phone number up. I don't get solicitations on my cell, and I'd rather not post it publicly, even for a good cause.
Of course, by the time this takes effect (Oct. 1), I may have ditched my landline altogether.
This problem was predicted by the movie Airplane. Or was it Airplane II? One of those. It should affirm Airplane as one of the visionary movies of our time, no pun intended.
Steve Jobs spoke at Stanford recently. An article about his talk includes this quote:
"When I was younger and had to fire someone, I didn't think twice about it," he said. But with a few decades in business and the painful experience of being fired from the company he founded behind him, Jobs now says, "Even if someone has really screwed up and someone else should have fired him last year, you need to remember that he's going to have to go home and tell his wife and kids that he's been fired and no longer has a job."
I don't know why, and it's not appropriate, but that strikes me as incredibly funny.
He also mentions that he'd like to see Pixar get its throughput up to one movie per year. Thinking about the Pixar Disney relationship inspired a haiku:
Jobs says to Eisner
"Pixar makes all your best flicks.
Show me the money."
My current celebrity CEO crush is Steve Jobs. I'm awaiting his biography to arrive on the doorstep. When has someone who creates so little financial value (half of Apple's $7B market cap is cash and cash equivalents) and captures so little market share captured so much mindshare (Ashton Kutcher aside)? Owning the hardware and software may not have proven to be the best financial model (Microsoft has of course been far superior as an investment), but it has led to the most stable platform for creative work (all the iApps, and Final Cut Pro, just plain work; no driver download and IRQ conflicts and all that frustration that comes with Windows). While Jobs is very smart about certain things (design, for example), it's his rock star and mildly ruthless personality that is most intriguing. Other than Warren Buffett, CEO's who are nice and lack megalomaniacal tendencies just don't stick.
As you can tell from the time stamp on this post, I'm up late. The job decision is twisting me in knots, and I can't sleep. I thought I had decided on what to do, but every next person I speak to changes my mind. I'm not sure why I'm so anxious given that nothing in life is permanent. I thought I had realized that during my sabbatical, but the lesson isn't taking today.
But my gut is zeroing in, and my experience is that when I trust my gut and heart I'm usually right, and it's much less painful than entrusting such decisions to my brain. I think my gut factors in everything that my brain does but adds a level of subconscious intuition that dissects problems in a way which my brain is not wired to comprehend. It reminds me of the studies that have shown that most interviewers decide yes/no on a candidate within a few minutes of seeing the candidate walk through the door.
I suspect it's related to our ability to intuit the thoughts and feelings of others by reading their faces and body language, an ability Malcolm Gladwell wrote about in an interesting article last August.
There's just not enough time in the day. That's my biggest problem. I wish I could do all three jobs at the same time. Ever since I returned from my sabbatical, my mental batteries have been overcharged. I've been buying books like they're headed for extinction, and everyday I'm researching some new topic of interest that leads to ten other book purchases. I often spread my mental bandwidth too thin; must must must tighten my focus to be effective.
Tivo has been struggling for ages now to try and get their adoption rate to hit the hockey stick trajectory of quadractic growth.* They've relied primarily on wacky TV ads. Tivo is something the average Joe can't grok unless he's seen it in action. I'd like to see them try some trial model which gets boxes into more homes, perhaps with a free trial period after which the software locks up until the customer pays for the unit. Every electronics store would have trial units ready for customers to take home with them for a really low fee, say $50 plus a credit card number as a deposit. They'd get it for a month or two, say, with full functionality. If they keep it, they get the $50 back as a discount against the full purchase price, and if they decide not to keep it after the trial period they have to return it to the store to get half their $50 back, and the unit would go back into circulation as a trial unit. Heck, they could pre-load these trial units with some complete seasons of some popular TV shows just to increase the likelihood of adoption. After you've saved a lot of your favorite shows on a trial unit, you'd be loathe to return it. A program like this could be rolled out gradually to minimize capital costs, or perhaps they could convince a well-capitalized but fighting-extinction company like Blockbuster to front some of the costs as a way to drive store traffic in exchange for a rev share on any completed sales.
I've rarely met a person who installed and used a Tivo and said it didn't change their life. Tivo is in danger of seeing their service commoditized to the point where they're driven out of the market by better capitalized competitors who embed Tivo-like functionality in other devices at lower cost. [Aside: In the consumer electronics space, the device which I'd buy in a heartbeat right now is a combo DVD-Recorder PVR device, preferably one that could handle hi-def signals. Pioneer just announced two such units which sound pretty close. Look for one on my Amazon wishlist soon.]
Unfortunately, unless they own a patent on their technology, Tivo might have a difficult time licensing their functionality out broadly in a platform play. ReplayTV tried that, but they didn't have anything so valuable that it couldn' t be reverse engineered cheaply. The Pioneer deal is a good start, and it's still worth a try. Surviving by being simply a box manufacturer is certainly not a winning strategy. Don't get me wrong--I love my hacked Tivo, but my business spider sense foresees a difficult future for TiVo (that capital V thing is too hard to type). They should be trying to solve the adoption problem instead of building random functionality that just makes their device more difficult for Joe Consumer to grok.
What do people think?
*Everyone says exponential growth, but as Kevin Kelly points out in New Rules for the New Economy almost everyone means quadractic growth or polynomial growth, or some number n raised to the power of 2 or some other fixed integer; true exponential growth means some number raised to a growing power n, which is insanely fast growth and rarely occurs in the business world.
Just what about Design Within Reach is within reach?
They win the prize over the Nieman Marcus Christmas book for "paper catalog found on the most coffee tables in homes of people who've never been able to afford anything from the catalog." And by the way, that coffee table that the catalog is sitting on? Not from Design Within Reach.
Well, at least the Design Within Reach catalog, unlike the Neiman Marcus Christmas book, is free. That's the only thing within my reach.
Unfortunately, I'm above the 17 year old age limit for this $2500 offer to spend a day at Jose Canseco's house.
Jose is so unintentionally hilarious that I'd love to cobble together the funds to send someone like Bill Simmons posing as a 17 year old to visit the Canseco mansion.
"Jose, so you nailed Madonna. What was like that? You could kick Guy Ritchie's ass, couldn't you? Do you want to?"
"Did you really use jet fuel in your Lamborghini? Does that work? Could I take it for a spin?"
"Dude, who's juicing in baseball. C'mon, just tell me."
"Did you just feel like the biggest idiot when that ball bounced off of your head and over the wall for a home run."
"You still look pretty built. Still hittin' the roids?"
Seriously, what could he offer in a day at his house that would be worth $2500? I'm really curious to see a sample itinerary or something.
Nate's sending me a Liz Phair bootleg disc that he's titled Phairities. Very cool stuff. Here's the playlist:
1. Go, Speed Racer (demo)
2. Hello Sailor (demo)
3. Divorce Song (demo)
4. Wild Thing (demo)
5. Russian Girl (demo)
6. California (Chasing Amy Soundtrack)
7. Wasted (live)
8. Stuck On an Island (What's Up Matador compilation)
9. Six Dick Pimp (demo)
10. Rocket Boy (demo)
11. I'm a Believer (live)
12. Freak of Nature (demo)
13. Firewalker (live)
14. Emotional Rescue (live)
15. Don't Have Time (Higher Learning soundtrack)
16. Mesmerizing (live)
17. Divorce Song (live)
18. Conversation Overheard Between Two Bouncers (live)
19. Bars of the Bed (demo)
20. See the Light (live)
21. If I Ever Pay You Back (demo)
22. Turning Japanese (EP)
23. Ghost Story (live)
24. F*** and Run (live)
Nate is my bootleg source, having previously provided me with some cool Paul Westeberg live gigs. Meanwhile, Liz's new album is getting top billing in my car CD player now. It's a good summer album.
Ashton Kutcher As Batman [via Digital Theatre [dtheatre.com]]
Someone tell me when his fifteen minutes are up.
The new Google Toolbar is in beta. Key feature is that it kills pop-ups. So, if you're still using Internet Explorer and are jealous of all the Safari and Mozilla users who don't have to deal with pop-ups, don't be. I use IE at work to achieve user empathy, so this is a tasty upgrade to what was already a cool little mini-app.
There's also a BlogThis! feature which is rapidly becoming a ubiquitous add-on to all types of client software.
Beantown Jenny Brown turns 29 again today, for the .... time. A good thing about being pregnant is that you never have to worry about spending a birthday alone. As a Y chromosomal humanoid I can't comment on what pregnancy is all about, but Jenny's not shy about sharing all the details with some of her patented East coast 'tude.
Therefore, we Y's can sympathize, if not empathize.
Speaking of RSS, the folks at LockerGnome set up over 160 RSS Feeds to track new products at Amazon.
I take Amazon and its operations and website for granted, especially working there. But whenever I order from another website, I'm reminded of how hard it is to do what Amazon does so well. I placed two orders two weeks ago, one from The Golf Warehouse, the other from eGolfDirect. One was a father's day gift, the other for myself. After hearing and receiving nothing, I finally called them this week, wondering what had happened. Turns out both sites had run out of stock on the products I ordered.
Geez, thanks for letting me know, guys. Retail is detail. After years in business, it's shocking how many sites still mess up the basics.
Near the end of my sabbatical (oops, personal leave), I was convinced I wouldn't return to Amazon. I was ready for the next thing.
Then I returned, and my first week back was slow. I got a few e-mails each day, most being spam (ever since we switched to Microsoft Exchange Server, our inboxes have gone to hell). I was out of the loop and felt like a stranger wandering the halls.
But eventually everyone's schedules freed up, and I started to find out about all sorts of interesting projects. Which brings me to now. I think I am going to end up back at Amazon after all. I'm debating between three very intriguing opportunities, and I'm torn, but in a good way. All three offer chances to work for people I think I'd learn from, and the projects all geek me up. Who knew?
My quest tonight (while cranking the new Liz Phair album which just showed up on my doorstep): find a good RSS aggregator or newsreader. For those who don't know what an RSS aggregator is, it's basically a piece of client software that allows you to quickly pull in posts from websites that syndicate their content in RSS (RDF Site Summary, though some refer to it as Really Simple Syndication). A lot of weblogs and news sites syndicate their content in RSS, and it's a lot more efficient to browse through headlines in an aggregator than it is to click through to every website. I just recently syndicated my weblog. You can easily tell when a site has updated its content, and you can browse through headlines and jump from site to site much more quickly than in a browser. I can't remember the last time another piece of client software had the potential to increase my productivity this much. If you read lots of blogs everday, look into one, and if you currently receive my weblog by e-mail you might consider switching to an RSS newsreader.
Does anyone have any recommended RSS aggregators? I'm working my way through some of the aggregators listed here and here. I haven't found one that grabs me yet. The HTML display capabilities vary widely, and most are fairly bare bones. Where are the options to save articles, to search or filter them, to choose how you want to open hyperlinks? Some of them cost $20 to $30, and considering the limited functionality that seems steep. Of course, you can also use the RSS-to-IMAP service from Blogstreet which I mentioned yesterday. I've loaded it up and have started receiving posts at my work and personal e-mail accounts. Right away I've become annoyed with sites that only syndicate their headlines and part of their descriptions (posts) instead of the entire descriptions.
Speaking of which, I wouldn't be surprised to see Microsoft simply build a free RSS aggregator into Outlook itself. Most of the aggregators look pretty much like Outlook anyway, and the functionality is fairly similar. Of course, I still only use the basic functionality of Outlook, and considering how much time I spend in that application you'd think it'd be worth learning some advanced tools. I blame the bloated and unintuitive interface. [Aside: Someone needs to come along and build a better e-mail application. It's the primary application for so many people in this country, and yet we still use e-mail essentially the same way I used my Pine e-mail program in college.]
FeedDemon looks to be the most promising of the aggregators to date. Can't wait to try it out. I'm fairly certain by year end we'll have a whole suite of free RSS aggregators to choose from. Why'd I wait so long?
Jonathan Marlow from GreenCine was considerate enough to drop me a line after my recent comments on Netflix and Wal-Mart. He pointed out that GreenCine offers an unlimited 2-DVDs-out-at-a-time rental plan for $15.95 per month. That, combined with their unchallenged selection (they carry Eraserhead, which I tried to order from the David Lynch site but never received, and that in and of itself is a huge plus), make them a worthy competitor in the DVD rental market. I'll give them a whirl, either before or just after my trip to France, to see how they compare.
It's pronounced "green scene." Makes sense to me. I still can't get used to Zagat, though, as "ze gat." Sounds like an American impersonating a French person saying "the cat."
Crap day. Couldn't find my credit card this morning. Same one I've used for years, and one I've memorized. Having to cancel it and get a new number would be a royal pain. Lost one of my bike gloves, too. How can things like that just disappear? Got to the office, gave a crappy presentation. Felt stupid. Left the office and walked outside, and my allergies went crazy. My nose has been running like Lola all night.
Whenever I feel stupid, I dive into this downward spirals where I look at more and more things that make me feel more and more stupid. There's this side of me that will always feel like an idiot because my dad will always be smarter than me. I can't understand two words in his doctoral thesis.
This feeling of stupidity is infuriating because it shares space with an ultra-competitive, hyper-impatient maniac, my Hulk alter-ego, if you will. It manifests itself a lot when I'm not around others.
On Saturday I went for a bike ride. I'm woefully underprepared for my trip to France this year because I didn't ride after I hit that stupid dog late last year, and I didn't have a bike with me during my sabbatical. So people were passing me left and right. They'd say hi, those damn tall, skinny people with super long thigh bones to use as levers to turn their cranks. I'd smile and say hi, and then when they were out of earshot I'd start cussing like a sailor. I wanted to pick my bike up and throw it into the Lake. The whole ride was one long, boring suffer-fest. Then Sunday I went to the driving range to try out the new swing that my golf instructor has taught me. I couldn't get a ball in the air. I wanted to take my driver and pound it into the ground until the head flew off. Golf is not a game that forgives anger and frustration and adrenaline. It requires zen.
I'm feeling like Nick Nolte looks here. You'd think I'd mellow out with age. No, it just gets worse because your spirit stays the same but your body degrades rapidly. If my brainpower has peaked I'm going to kill myself.
Very cool. Blogstreet has developed an RSS-to-IMAP service so that you can read RSS feeds in your e-mail client. Saves you the time of visiting a gazillion different weblogs each day.
Bill was on Power Lunch. I knew he was getting Lasik surgery for a reason!
I love how the woman keeps pestering Bill about how he'll prevent the FedEx guys from reading the Harry Potter books. Barbara Walters she ain't.
Get in touch with wacky Asian culture, because mainstream America is constantly plundering it for the next hot trend, so why not get ahead of the curve? Two new sources for me: Amanda's weblog (my most prolific, errr, only, blog commenter) and GiantRobot.
Peter Gammons is citing range factor in every other sentence on Baseball Tonight. Hmmm. He's the one who said all the sabermetric criticism of Derek Jeter's defense was hogwash just a year ago, and now he's lauding players like Orlando Cabrera for having a great range factor.
Well, at least he's a learner, albeit slow. Someone with his visibility (rhymes with senility, often noticeable in his sentence structure) can only help illuminate the masses even if it's reflected wisdom. He has jumped on the OPS bandwagon--perhaps he'll be onto zone rating next.
Apple had a huge day. Can anyone think of another company in the tech industry whose products are so anticipated that even a simple announcement generates so much buzz? As many others have noted, Apple creates desire for its products instead of fulfilling needs.
The new Mac G5 is hot. Okay, so it's debatable whether it will have the benchmark lead over Intel-powered machines by the time it streets, but Mac folks have been behind for so long that to even pull even or close in that race is a huge win. I certainly didn't expect such a huge performance improvement.
Even the new iSight webcam is elegantly styled. Sometimes Apple's hardware creates desire for the software (iPod for iTunes), and sometimes the software drives desire for the hardware (Final Cut Pro converted me to the Mac platform). Whether iSight drives a desire for iChat A/V or vice versa, they make a fetching couple.
Of course, none of these is revolutionary in any way. It's been a long time since Apple was a revolutionary company. But they take the plain products we're familiar with and make them sexy. One of the sexiest new features in the next version of Mac OS X (Panther) is named, appropriately, Exposé. I run into the problem of having too many windows open all the time on my Powerbook screen. What a clever solution.
So Apple turns plain and clunky into sexy and sleek and functional. We're talking about Rachael Leigh Cook in She's All That, tossing away her glasses and letting her hair down sexy. That would make Apple...Freddie Prinze Jr.
Gizmodo links to this, the first HD PVR, from Zenith. Doesn't look all that impressive, but products like this are like the first bird to land on your deck when you've been at sea for months, or the first casino you pass as you drive into Las Vegas. A harbinger of impending goodness.
Who would've thought that HBO's most astute boxing commentator for the Vitali Klitschko-Lennox Lewis fight would be George Foreman? Watching closeups of cuts above and under eyes in high definition gives me goosebumps, and not in a good way. Blech.
I've often heard it pronounced so that it rhymes with JAG-it, or the-POT, but according to their website, it should be pronounced za-GAT' (rhymes with "the cat"). That sounds strange to me.
Every Mac zealot has heard about the temporary leak of the new Mac G5 specs to the Apple store. Dual 2GHz 970's!!! The heavens just opened, rays of light shone down, and a young boys choir chanted.
* 1.6Ghz, 1.8Ghz, or dual 2Ghz PowerPC G5 Processors
* Up to 1 Ghz processor bus (!!)
* Up to 8 GB of DDR SDRAM
* Fast Serial ATA hard drives
* AGP 8X Pro graphics options from NVIDIA or ATI
* Three PCI or PCI-X expansion slots
* Three USB 2.0 ports
* One FireWire 800, two FireWire 400 ports
* Bluetooth & Airport Extreme ready
* Optical and analog audio in and out
Please sir can I have another?
If you own stock in any company, you probably get that annual piece of mail from the company, shrouded in black plastic, containing an annual report, a proxy voting card, and a white paper booklet describing the various proposals under consideration. Most of the proposals are fairly conventional: approving some new directors, for example. In the past I would have said that stock option grant and auditor appointment proposals were fairly conventional, but in light of recent activity, I've changed my mind. In the past month or two I've voted against the Board of Directors in several cases.
As a shareholder of eBay, I voted against their proposal to increase the number of options they could issue to employees and directors. As a regular old shareholder, some dilution is acceptable if it can help the company hire and reward good employees, driving the share price higher for everyone. However, as the Motley Fool points out, the economy is lousy, and it's an employer's market in terms of hiring. Also, they have already set aside a large % of total shares outstanding for employee compensation. It doesn't feel like it's in my best self-interest to grant more dilution. Given the % of shares in the hands of eBay employees the proposal will probably pass regardless, but opposition, as in the case of the HP-Compaq merger, raises healthy debate.
Second, as a shareholder of Siebel, I voted for a shareholder proposal to expense stock options. I believe in expensing options, and again I was counter to the Board on this issue. My piddly number of votes will have the impact of an ant sneezing on an elephant's butt, but if a billion ants sneezed on that same elephant butt it just might tickle.
The DVD I shipped back to Wal-Mart on Tuesday. Today, Friday, they received it and sent me an e-mail saying that had shipped my next DVD. Again, the cycle took three business days. Compare that with Netflix. I mailed them back a DVD on Wednesday and they received it today and the next one is in the mail. Two business days. Again, advantage Netflix.
So far, at least for Seattle, Netflix seems to have a one day advantage both in the time to ship a DVD back to them and to receive a DVD in return. It's not a huge difference, but in a monthly subscription model, time is indeed money.
Given my viewing habits--I like to watch obscure movies, and I watch a lot of movies--Netflix is still a better solution than Wal-Mart. If you stick to big, mainstream movies and watch a moderate number of movies on DVD each month (say 3 or fewer), then Wal-Mart lower prices will probably compensate for their slower cycle times and smaller selection.
I still think Netflix needs to hit a lower price point by offering an option for 2 movies out at a time, unlimited rentals. They make more money for now by not offering that option, but hiding a good option from customers is never a way to build a sustainable long-term business when the barriers to entry are low. Their business model is not difficult to replicate. Wal-Mart is coming in here like Microsoft in software--less innovative but better capitalized. They don't need to innovate; they can simply replicate Netflix and them outprice them. They can easily add selection and distribution centers by opening their checkbook.
I'm rooting for Netflix in this competition. I'm not a Wal-Mart fan, and I like to see the little guy win. But they should earn it by innovating and creating more value for their consumers.
Footnote: What of the disposable DVDs offered by Flexplay and adopted by Disney? These are DVDs that, once removed from their packaging, oxidize in 48 hours, rendering them unreadable. It's an ingenious way to rent DVDs without having to build a returns processing infrastructure, and it's cheap and simple. As a consumer, though, the silent ticking clock of oxidization is a hassle, and that deadline of 48 hours is one of the reasons I found physical rentals from stores like Blockbuster so annoying. Instead of late fees the penalty is that I have to buy another Flexplay DVD to watch the movie. My schedule isn't stable enough to guarantee I can watch a complete movie within 48 hours. If the Flexplay discs are cheap enough, though, they'll be a viable alternative that claims a small market share.
Google released a new product called AdSense that offers website owners another way besides affiliate programs to monetize their traffic. Its a piece of Javascript you insert into your code that, when your page is served to a reader, examines the text on that page and serves up a couple text ads it thinks are related to that page's content. It's much like what they do to the right of their search results.
I'm always looking for ways to offset the cost of hosting my site, but unfortunately I don't have a good page on my site to use this. It works best with very topically focused pages, not surprising considering it's adapted from their search results technology in which it only needs to interpret one pointed search query to generate results. On a page like a general personal weblog, which covers all sorts of topics, the technology seems to serve up a random mishmash of ads.
Nevertheless, I threw it up on my recommended reading page. If you click on any of the ads I make a couple pennies. The best way to support my site is still to click through on any of my Amazon links and make a purchase. But only if you find my recommendation useful, of course. Make me earn it.
It's gray and rainy out in Seattle. Big surprise. Fortunately, this is a great movie weekend here. Opening this weekend:
Le Cercle Rouge (one week only at the Varsity--you will chill)
Capturing the Friedmans (you will cringe)
Winged Migration (you will cry)
Whale Rider (you will cry)
The Hulk (you will turn green and rip off your shirt but your shorts will stay on)
From Justin to Kelly (you will cry)
Does anyone know? Is anyone else besides me curious? Is there a Cliff's Notes version? I'm too lazy to read through these websites or even contemplate Dianetics.
What I really want to know is whether, if I become a Scientologist, I can become a famous actor.
Cellphone plans seem to be going up in price, rather than down. The service levels haven't really improved significantly, either. In two years or so, let's hope that the phone companies get a little competition from the Internet. Wi-Fi is the most promising alternative, but a lot of infrastructure would need to be built out. Still, why not?
Voice over IP was the previous great hope for more competition for the phone companies, never much loved by consumers in the first place. I still have to pay $22 a month for a land line to dial into work, and why doesn't that cost $5? What's new in landline technology that shouldn't be an add-on service? Nothing.
If my desktop wasn't in such bad shape, I'd invest in a webcam so I could make free long distance calls to my family, see video of nephew Ryan crying and pooping, and occasionally see Jeff do his Superman impression. On a cable line or DSL the experience is high quality.
Stanford couldn't beat Cal-State Fullerton all year (5 losses, I think), but facing elimination in the College World Series, having to beat CS Fullerton twice in a row, they came through. Exciting stuff--I was watching it off Tivo and was jumping up and down in my boxers. Three out of the last four years Stanford's played in the CWS championship. Considering the format, that's quite a feat.
It's easy to lose sight of your alma mater's sports teams a few years past graduation, but Stanford has won the Sears Cup (awarded to the best overall college athletics program) a ridiculous nine years in a row. I of course have nothing to do with any of that, but I'm going to claim some peripheral goodness anyway.
The top search query in France in May 2003, according to Google Zeitgeist, was "nice people."
Things must truly be bad if one must turn to a search engine to...
Oh, I'm going to bite my tongue because I'm heading over to France in a few weeks for the Tour de France, and I'll need some of those nice people to push my fat butt up the Alps. Maybe they'll think my red, white, and blue bike and helmet represent the French flag.
The widespread disappointment over The Matrix: Reloaded reminded me of David Foster Wallace's essay F/X Porn. It argues that Hollywood special effects blockbusters are no different from hard-core porn, each special effects-heavy scene being the equivalent of the porn scenes while all the other stuff is just filler. He also posits a law he calls the Inverse Cost and Quality Law:
More was at work in the downfall of The Matrix: Reloaded (TMR), however. Wallace's law rests on the premise that a huge studio will only commit hundreds of millions of dollars to a movie if it's guaranteed to succeeed. Thus the movie "must thus adhere to certain reliable formulae that have been shown by precedent to maximally ensure a runaway hit." Some of TMR fits this idea--the elaborate fight sequences, the love story. But based on what I've read about the very private Wachowski brothers, I don't think they'd acquiesce to studio pressure to alter their story. The plot of the TMR also seems fairly non-commercial, as convoluted and philosophical as it is (though respected critics such as Stanley Kauffman refer to the Matrix movies as "aggrandized juvenilia" and "adolescent fodder"). Frankly, Warner Brothers approved the construction an entire stretch of freeway just to shoot the car chase scene, creating huge budget overruns. Sure sounds like the Wachowski brothers had carte blanche.
And what of the Lord of the Rings trilogy? It was undoubtedly Peter Jackson's largest budget to date, by a long stretch. Despite being known primarily to movie buffs, Jackson received approval to spend $300 million to shoot all three movies in one year. That was a huge risk for New Line considering that if the first movie was a bust, they'd be on the hook for the other two. Yet all I've read indicates Jackson had significant creative control, and the first two movies have been wonderful, IMO. Perhaps they don't have the charm of earlier low-budget Jackson flicks like Dead Alive or Forgotten Silver or Meet the Feebles, but they're not low quality, to use the jargon of Wallace's law. Jackson obviously adapted the story from source material, and the popularity of that source novel reduced the risk to the studio to some degree, but in LOTR: TTT Jackson and his wife made several large plot adjustments, and overall IMO they created a story that's much more emotionally charged than the book.
But Wallace's law generally holds true. Studios are notoriously conservative which is why we're seeing so much interest in franchises (new chapters are in the works for all of the following: Harry Potter, LOTR, Matrix, Spiderman, X-Men, James Bond, Terminator, Mission Impossible, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, Alien, Blade, XXX) and sequels (e.g. MIB II, Meet the Fockers, Legally Blond 2: Red, White, and Blond, Shanghai Knights). The hope is that familiarity with characters and plotlines minimizes marketing costs by bringing in a built-in audience. So read the darn essay. It's dead on about the merits of Terminator versus T2. If nothing, Wallace is a funny writer and astute commentator on pop culture. [1] Until you do, I'm going to pass on The Matrix: Reloaded and reload The Matrix instead.
[1] If adding footnotes to blog entries were simpler, I'd use them as frequently as Wallace does. Instead I resort to way too many parentheticals. My mind just can't think linearly for more than one or two thoughts at a time. I want a muffin.
The lawsuit against the music labels has been settled. I await my check.
New research indicates that the Y chromosome is not likely to go extinct as was previously theorized.
Among my wealthy early adopter friends, plasma TVs are all the rage. Everyone wants one, everyone has an itchy trigger finger. But what about LCDs? Should they wait until larger LCDs are manufactured at attractive price points (all signs are that monstrous LCDs are on the way)? Here's some background reading on the topic for those of you fortunate to have enough disposable income and household purchase decision-making power to contemplate the addition:
Personally, I can't envision a plasma TV being my primary TV right now, and they're too expensive as a second TV. Also, in home theater, size matters--watching a movie on a 42" plasma TV only works for me in smaller rooms. But hung on a wall in a bedroom? Smoooooth. Some high quality 32" to 42" models are available for the price of a really nice computer ($3500) so this is the year I expect quite a few of these toys being mounted by drooling boys in homes across America. Me, I'm going to wait on these new LCDs. Hopefully in a year or two prices will drop enough to justify my love.
Joe Sheehan writes a good article about why it's silly to diminish today's pitchers for not throwing as many complete games as yesterday's pitching stars like Bob Gibson and Juan Marichal.
It reminded me of the Cubs' series against the Blue Jays, where their hitters were taking a ton of pitches. Prior threw 100+ pitches just to get through 5 2/3 innings, and the Cubs' bullpen got a lot of work. Against a patient team like that, throwing strike one is really key. In Pedro Martinez's last start against the White Sox, he was strike one to just about every hitter. The White Sox were taking lots of pitches b/c they knew he was in only his second start back off of the DL and was on a pitch limit. Pedro was more than happy to take advantage of the situation. A hitter down 0-1 in the count is much less dangerous. Of course, the White Sox strategy ultimately paid off when Pedro got pulled and the Red Sox bullpen blew the win for him again. Still, if Pedro was healthy, he would have been tough to beat. It's like starting every at-bat down a strike automatically.
The problem is that many managers and starting pitchers feel like they've failed if they don't work deep into the game, and that can encourage abuse. Dusty Baker and Kerry Wood seem particularly susceptible to that old-school machismo. Let's hope it doesn't backfire. The Cubs have a good bullpen--no reason to leave them sitting.
I attended the 2003 Tatonka Wing Eating Contest tonight, as a judge. Tatonka is a monthly gathering at the Wing Dome in the U-District. Andy, a New Yorker, started the monthly buffalo wing and beer fest in the early days of Amazon. I hadn't been in quite some time, but I do eat wings cleaner than anyone I know and felt an obligation to lend my critical eye to ensure a fair competition.
I happened to have my new Minolta F300 digital camera handy so I snapped some photos during the event. It was a good chance to try and learn how to use the camera, and as you can tell I didn't quite figure everything out so a few shots are out of focus.
When I got home, I popped the SD Memory card in a USB reader and plugged it into my Powerbook, and a few minutes later, all the photos appeared in iPhoto (Apple's i-apps are the Microsoft Office of fun). Why not learn to use iPhoto as well? I fiddled around with iPhoto for an hour or two trying to touch up the photos, to add some comments and titles, and to export them into a web page. For the most part it was intuitive, but the degree of image size control in the export function isn't as precise as that in Adobe ImageReady (part of Photoshop), so the large-sized photos turned out very large, still. Each ranges anywhere from 150K to 200K in size. Sorry about that. I'll go in and shrink them with Photoshop or ImageReady when I have some more free time.
Perhaps, however, the bloated images are appropriate. After all, this is an event in which 1,341.5 buffalo wings were consumed in less than ninety minutes. Some contestants gained nearly 10 pounds in weight during the evening. Inspired by the evening's gluttony, I wrote a short wing-eating contest haiku:
Or, appropriating one of my favorite spam haikus:
Real Madrid just bought David Beckham from Manchester United for $41 million. Real Madrid already counts among its roster Ronaldo (he needs no last name), Zinedine Zidane, and Luis Figo. All were at one point or another considered the best player in the world, so it's the best club money can buy. While I was on sabbatical in South America, every Real Madrid game during the Champion's League playoffs monopolized televisions in every restaurant and hotel lobby. Surprisingly, with their payroll of over $200 million and their unmatched pool of talent, they lost in the semis.
My stepbrother James once wrote a very strange and disturbing story while in college. Normally I wouldn't post it online, but someone else already did.
I got my first two Wal-Mart movies yesterday in the mail. They shipped on Thursday the 12th, and arrived on Monday the 16th. That's three business days. Not good when you compare it to the reigning heavy weight champion, wearing the red trunks...
Netflix received a movie back from me on Monday the 16th and sent me an e-mail letting me know to expect the movie on Wednesday the 18th. I got it today, just one day later. Most of the movies they ship to me arrive in one business day, the remainder take two days. Advantage Netflix.
As for the website and packaging, Wal-Mart hasn't tried to do anything fancy to outdo Netflix. Their mailers are almost exactly the same. Smart move since technological innovation isn't their game. Wal-Mart's core competency is pricing its competition into submission. Ruthless.
I shipped one of the Wal-Mart movies back to them today. Let's see what their "mail back receive new movie in return" cycle time turns out to be.
Cool, humongous illustration from the SARS Art Project.
Good, quick read (excerpt from the book Code Name Ginger) about an early meeting between Dean Kamen and team and Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, and John Doerr concerning the Segway.
Another entertaining read about the two big sales icons from early AOL, Colburn and Berlow, before the fall from grace.
A not revolutionary but concise summary of the Apple business model from Tim O'Reilly (he describes them as a cultural, not technological, innovator).
Book clubs seem to be really popular, at least among women I know. Though I still suspect they're just excuses for women to get together and gossip, the concept is appealing. Scheduling regular events (music lessons, pub nights, annual themed parties) is a good thing in an age when everyone's so busy that time can evaporate. However, I just can't let other people dictate my reading choices.
As an alternative, though, I've decided to start a movie/gourmet club. Once a month, we'll gather and watch a movie while eating food that shares some common theme. Perhaps it's French film noir night and we'll watch Le Samourai while swallowing escargots, smoking cigarettes, and sitting around, mute and stern, like Alain Delon. Or watching Wong Kar Wai's Chungking Express while eating canned tuna and chef salads, like the Tony Leung character. Foodie movies like Big Night and Eat, Drink, Man, Woman are perhaps too literal, but rules are unimportant. We can make it up as we go.
Hopefully they're movies that most of the people haven't heard of or seen yet. In this day and age, it's easy to get your hands on movies that used to be difficult to obtain. A video store like Scarecrow, an online site like Yes Asia or HKFlix, and even Amazon's sister companies in the UK and France and Japan make it easy to get your hands on international movies long before they're picked up for North American distribution. Bend it Like Beckham, Le Cercle Rouge, Double Vision, this Hayao Miyazaki Studio Ghibli Collection, 28 Days Later, Versus, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Six (Willow as crazy psycho dark queen witch) are just a few of the intriguing titles available right now on DVD to movie fans worldwide though they're not currently being issued on DVD by a North American video distributor. Want to find out what movies are coming out of Hollywood next? Check out these movies which have been stolen (read: picked up) by various Hollywood producers and studios for shameless repurposing and copying with big-name movie stars in the near future: Shall We Dance (to star Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez...yuck), Dark Water (after the box office success of The Ring, every Asian ghost story is going to be optioned, and this gem from the creator of The Ring was snatched up by Bill Mechanic's Pandemonium), The Eye (which itself copied quite a few American suspense flicks, such as...oh, go see it for yourself; Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner did, and they bought the remake rights), Infernal Affairs (picked up by Brad Grey and Brad Pitt...the original was solid but could use some editing, so perhaps a remake will pick up on that). In some cases it means you'll need a region-free DVD player, but no real movie fan should be without one anyway considering how cheap and plentiful they are.
I'm getting sidetracked. What do you need to do to join up? Have a healthy (unhealthy?) love for movies and movie history. You know who you are. Be willing to show up once a month. Be willing to cook something up (or buy it from a restaurant) about once a year. It's probably helpful though not required to live in Seattle, because otherwise you'll have to watch the movies by yourself or listen to them via speakerphone. I know some people like this and I'm going to recruit them now.
Some things never change--Japan and Hong Kong always get the coolest electronic toys before the rest of the world. This 505i cameraphone (Quicktime movie) from Sony Ericsson looks sweet.
One phenomenon I can't understand is the popularity of downloadable ring tones. It's over a $1 billion business worldwide! Supposedly it's a way to distinguish yourself from the masses. I agree that it distinguishes people. It says, "I am a dork."
Sang and I went to a cajun restaurant called La Louisiana last night after a softball doubleheader, and there was a party of five waiting in line ahead of us. One of the guys, tall, middle-aged, with a thick, dark beard, was in a tizzy.
"What is the name of that artist? How can I not remember? He's so famous, everyone knows him. Oh god, come on, help me out here John. He does the stuff with boxes? Whitney Museum? Oh god this is so embarrassing. Come on, guys." The other people in his group, a man and three women, looked at him like he was crazy and shrugged their shoulders. The way he spoke--effete, pompous--annoyed me. However, art is not an area I am an expert in, so I bit my tongue.
Sang went off to the bathroom. No one came to take our names or to seat us. We stood in that cramped entryway while this man continued to harangue us. I thought back to a lonely dinner I had while in South America, in the Argentine city of Puerto Madryn. I knew no one, and I had run out of books to read, so to entertain myself, I reread the same issue of The New Yorker (I think it was this year's anniversary issue) which I had already read twice during my two weeks in South America. One of the best articles just happened to be a profile of the works of...
"Joseph Cornell," I said.
He looked at me as if disappointed. "Yeah, that's right."
He shut up after that, and after a long period of silence we got seated. I wish I had kept that issue of The New Yorker.
The most enjoyable aspects of Finding Nemo, for me, were the Australian references. The Aussie accents and personalities, the animated shots of Sydney, the depictions of marine life on the reef...they brought my sabbatical back to the front of my mind. The animators seemed to be striving for realism, and after a dozen or so scuba dives, I can attest to the realism of several details. Anything underwater appears less colorful than it does above water (because water absorbs lots of blue light, if I recall correctly). The Pixar folks nailed that. As you descend, or as day turns to night, everything under water loses its color, and several shots in the movie illustrated that effect. The young turtle who gives Marlin and Dory the pep talk before they get ejected from the current? "Alright, everyone, you're going to have a great jump today." That was every extreme sport operator I met in New Zealand.
The little cleaning shrimp (I saw a few while scuba diving)? He was hilarious, too.
"No cleaning!"
"I am so ashamed."
My first two Wal-Mart DVD rentals shipped today. Let's see how long they take to reach my mailbox. Meanwhile, I mailed out a Netflix movie this morning, so I expect to get a movie back on Saturday. It may beat the Wal-Mart movies in the mail which would be a feather in Netflix cap.
No subject at all, just a random tour of stuff and thoughts...
Lots of people ask me what hosting service I use for my website. Frankly, web hosting is a commodity. I use Hostway, but Laughing Squid looks like a good deal, too. I used to host my site on my desktop, but then it crapped out on me.
Don't Blog: Headlines from the Future
June 20 will be a big movie day for me here in Seattle. The Hulk opens that day, as does Le Cercle Rouge in a one week stint at the Varsity. Also, the acclaimed documentary Winged Migration visits the not-deserving-of-acclaim Egyptian Theatre.
Kicksology is a cool site that reviews basketball sneakers. Shoe fit is so personal that you can't really buy a shoe based on a review, but some of the info is objective and useful, and the pics are sweet. The Nike Air Ultraposite is one of the coolest looking basketball shoes ever. Unfortunately Nikes are made for people with perfect feet--narrow, with perfect arches. I have wide, flat feet. The last pair of Nike basketball shoes that fit me were the Nike Air Jordan VIII's, in black and concord. I still have that pair even though the treads have worn down so much they're useless on a court. They have sentimental value. They were the last time I could wear the same shoes as Jordan, and they're the first pair of expensive basketball shoes my mom bought me. She didn't even know if I played basketball that well, and they cost $100 back then, a fortune to spend on a short, non-athletic kid like me. But every now and then she could tell when I really wanted something, and she'd splurge for me, no questions asked. Those were great shoes, and if I ever find another pair for sale at a decent price I'm picking up another pair. Those were better than any hoops shoes I've worn in recent years.
Charles Pierce on Sammy Sosa and cork, in Slate.
Interview with Bill James about Moneyball, also in Slate.
Busted! I saw this news clip in IMDb:
Before re-releasing their 1989 short Knick Knack and attaching it to their release of Finding Nemo, Disney and Pixar virtually eliminated the breasts of two female characters, a mermaid and a plastic bunny, USA Today observed today (Wednesday). "In the original, the girls have breasts the size of large grapefruit," animation fan Raymond Tucker of Greensboro, N.C. told the newspaper. "In the new version, the breasts just aren't there." Animation historian Jerry Beck added: "These films need to be treated like classic films, not kids' fodder."
My first thought? I think Raymond Tucker is more than an animation fan. Second thought? I've got to go home and confirm this! Knick Knack is included in the deluxe collector's edition laserdisc boxset of Toy Story. I fired it up just now, and lo and behold...the breasts are indeed massive in the original! That is so cool. Anyone who wishes to come by and confirm this for themselves is welcome. By the way, laserdiscs are totally cool and retro now, the same way LPs are cooler than CDs. Laserdisc collector box sets are the ultimate in cool, with their huge packaging and lovely cover art. Until they issue DVDs of the Star Wars Episodes IV through VI, the deluxe laserdisc box set of that trilogy is the only way to experience them in your own home with Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound.
The perfect gift for your graphic designer friend.
Not feeling creative? Stuck? Try Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies. Here are lots of links to online versions.
Some kind Photoshop users throughout the web have chipped in some interior design suggestions for the embattled Martha Stewart in case she ends up in the slammer.
Einstein: "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
When you add a bookmark to the toolbar in Internet Explorer, sometimes instead of the blue Explorer e logo you get an icon customized for that website. What happens to those in IE? They always disappear the next time you open the browser.
I've switched from IE to Firebird at home, but at the office I still use IE because most of our customers do.
Wal-Mart announced final pricing for their Netflix competitor DVD rental-thru-the-mail service, and it's cheaper than their beta pricing and cheaper than Netflix. Wal-Mart's pricing:
$15.54 for 2 DVDs out at a time, unlimited rentals
$18.76 a month for 3 DVDs out at a time, unlimited rentals
$21.94 for 4 DVDs out at a time, unlimited rentals
(Who came up with these random prices, anyway? Obviously not a marketer--no one will remember these figures)
Compare this with Netflix pricing:
$13.95, customers can get four rentals a month
$19.95 a month for three movies out at a time, unlimited rentals
$29.99 for five DVDs out at a time, unlimited rentals
$39.99 for eight movies out at a time, unlimited rentals
I'm a long-time Netflix customer, and I'll admit that the Wal-Mart pricing is tempting, despite the fact that they are the evil empire. Forget all of the 3+ movies out at a time deals. The one that's really intriguing is the Wal-Mart offer for 2 DVDs out a time for $15.54 a month, with unlimited rentals. Netflix used to have a comparable service, at $14.95 per month for 2 DVDs out at a time, unlimited rentals. Unfortunately, I canceled that service when I went on sabbatical, and by the time I returned they had nixed it. Why? Because no normal person needs to have 3 rental DVDs at home at a time. If you finish one movie, you can mail it back and get another back in the span of 3 to 4 days, and if you can't keep yourself occupied on that model with 2 DVDs at a time, you are a total loser and need a job. Netflix probably realized that most people would realize this and switch to the $14.95 plan, depriving them of $5 a month in subscription.
Now they have to acknowledge it again.
The negatives on Wal-Mart/advantages for Netflix:
What to do, then? I'm not canceling my Netflix subscription, but I signed up for a Wal-Mart 30 day trial today. If their service is solid, perhaps I'll switch. Every dollar counts, a truth which Wal-Mart has built an empire on. Hopefully Netflix will match the Wal-Mart 2 DVD at a time program, if not exactly in price, then at least close. Netflix doesn't have the financial clout to compete with Wal-Mart in a price war, but enough of their customers will stay loyal to them if they show good faith in competing (some consumers will do the right thing if they feel that companies or artists are trying to meet them halfway; it's the reason I bought about 20 songs off of the Apple Music store yesterday even though I could find all of them quite easily using Kazaa). At the very least, this should spur Netflix to think more creatively about how to improve their website and service--it's been fairly stagnant for a long time.
Footnote: Greencine is a DVD rental site that stocks more esoteric movies than Netflix or Wal-Mart. It's the only site that rents Battle Royale or Eraserhead, it has a huge selection of Asian and anime titles (want to see Infernal Affairs, which I just saw at SIFF? Greencine has it already), and its selection generally puts its more well-capitalized competitors to shame. They're as close an analogue to Scarecrow Video through the mail as I've found. I might switch over to them, though $21.95 a month means a lot of pressure to get through at least 1 movie a week to feel like you're getting your money's worth. They seriously need some software help as well. The site layout and search engine are poor. From a selection standpoint, however, they rock, making them a viable option for true movie buffs.
I heard about Bandon Dunes from some of my golfing buddies here in Seattle in 2000, but I could never go down with them on their annual pilgrimage. And that is the right word to describe the journey, because Bandon Dunes is the new mecca of golf in the U.S. It's one of the few links-style courses in the U.S., and it's supposed to be simply gorgeous, set along the Oregon Coast. There are two courses: Bandon Dunes and Pacific Dunes. Many rank Bandon as the best public course in the U.S.
Well, I've finally taken matters into my own hands and planned a mid-summer golfing weekend down there. Having a vacation planned and reserved in the future is the easiest way to elevate the quality of every day from now until your vacation. No one should be without some vacation plans at all times.
P.S.: A links style golf course means several things, but mostly it refers to a golf course with terrain similar to that of Scottish golf courses built on sandy earth. Not many trees grow on such terrain, which is good for your golf score. However, in its place grows thick, tall grass, and most fairways are not continuous from tee to green, which is bad for your golf score. Also, you have many blind tee shots to greens hidden behind dunes. In Scotland the weather tends to be quite variable and thus has come to be associated with links style terrain in golfer's minds. Therefore, golfers tend to have to play a lot of punch and run shots instead of hitting beautiful, high-arcing iron shots which would get blown away.
Every now and then something triggers in me an indescribable yearning to be living back in the Bay Area.
Saw Infernal Affairs at SIFF last night. I thought of some new entries for the fabulously humorous Ebert's Bigger Little Movie Glossary. Maybe they're already in there, but if not...
Always photocopy your passport and driver's license. In any movie where a policeman goes undercover and only one other person in his department knows of his secret identity (usually his department chief), that one person inevitably gets killed, leaving the mole stranded. Inevitably he has to flee while getting shot at by other policeman, all the while trying to think of some way to prove his identity. (e.g. Face/Off)
Keep your friends close, your enemies closer. In any movie where a gang boss suspects one of his gang of being an undercover cop, the mole is inevitably his right hand man, the one he trusts the most.
Keep your friends close, your enemies closer part II. In any movie where a gang boss suspects one of his gang of being an undercover cop, he merely needs to think back to the member of his group who earned his position by appearing out of nowhere and (a) committing some extravagant act of violence which saves the gang boss's life and simultaneous proves his ruthlessness or (b) executing some other member of the gang who has somehow failed the gang boss or is secretly working for some other gang or (c) offering to step in to kill some policeman or innocent citizen when the gang boss was about to do the job himself (usually the death can't be confirmed because the body is tossed into a river or something like that).
Robert Scoble's posted a copy of this guide to the A-list bloggers. Only really funny if you know who the A-list bloggers are.
I was absolutely sure I had bought a ticket for this weekend's screening of Le Cercle Rouge at SIFF. Call it senility, call it a gross oversight, either way you'd be right. I showed up at Will Call on Sunday and they had no record of my having purchased a ticket. I was incensed, but when they pulled up my purchase record, it did appear that I had somehow forgotten to hit add-to-cart. Unfortunately, the screening was sold out, and scalping tickets to a movie that's only showing once at SIFF is like getting Dustin Hoffman to take a shower in Rain Man. Scalping tickets to Springsteen in Jersey would be easier.
It's doubly painful because it's one of the few Melville movies not on video in any format. I love Jean-Pierre Melville's gangster movies. Just flat out adore them in a way that is not right or normal. Le Samourai is one of my top ten movies of all time. My only hope now is that since Criterion Collection issued Bob Le Flambeur on DVD that Le Cercle Rouge (and even Le Samourai or Les Enfants Terribles) won't be far behind.
If anyone knows of another screening of Le Cercle Rouge anywhere in the world or even a rogue copy on video, let me know!
Footnote: Holy chipotle! It looks like the restored 35mm print is on tour and is hitting Seattle the week of June 20-27! Whooo-hooo!
Footnote #2: hmm, it looks like it may be on DVD after all, though only in French (Amazon.fr). Bummer.
Seeing Finding Nemo this weekend reminded me of the fairy tale trope of the parent-less hero or heroine, as if having parents disqualifies one from taking the archetypal heroic journey. Sometimes the hero is missing both parents; evil or dislikeable stepparents or foster parents are optional add-ons (Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Lion King). Sometimes one parent is missing; this is the so-called single parent fable household, though sometimes the single parent remarries, though rarely to someone as kind as the person they're replacing (Nemo, Hansel and Gretel, Belle, Pinocchio). Often these heroes grow up in the company of a motley crew of friends, including anthropomorphic animals and household objects or dwarves (Belle, Cinderella, Tarzan, Snow White).
But we know that in society, generally kids who don't have any parents or just one parent are susceptible to a higher rate of social problems. I don't have the statistics handy, but in my experience, kids who grow up in the company of animals and who talk to those animals or to brooms and grandfather clocks and teacups are mentally disturbed.
Who will stand up and restore family values in our fables? How ironic that most of the movies that parents take their kids to depict children becoming adults without a full set of parents to aid them. It's certainly convenient from a dramatic perspective--it amplifies the emotional isolation of the protagonist and thus their subsequent heroism as well, and it avoids the uncomfortable emotional complexities of teenage rebellion from clouding the movie. Or perhaps the two parent family is too well-adjusted, on average, to offer dramatic possibilities?
Then again, I'm reading The Nurture Assumption by Judith Harris, one of the more famous books on child development, and the central thesis of the book is that children socialize each other more than parents socialize their children. It shows that the idea that parents are massively influential in the way their kids turn out is a cultural myth that's been propagated over the years with little evidence to back it up. Perhaps our fables simply do away with parents because they know that the most important influence of our parents is the genes they pass us, and that our subsequent development is driven more by our peers.
I'm only part way into the book, and I went into it with some skepticism (my parents would have a huge problem with the idea that they weren't highly responsible for the way I turned out) but it has definitely tickled my aha! nerve. Highly recommended for any parents out there or anyone interested in understanding how they turned out the way they turned out. Maybe our fables are smarter than we think.
How to remove your phone number from Google's reverse number lookup. While I find it a useful tool on occasion, someone of my fame and popularity just can't risk having crazy fans show up on my doorstep.
Rob Neyer is posting his picks for all-time best lineups for each team in the majors. Monday he posted the AL rosters, and tomorrow he'll post the NL rosters.
I'm going to post my picks for an All-Time Cubs roster and see how it meshes with Neyer's (with apologies for pre-1900 players like Cap Anson who I just haven't read enough about to judge):
C: Gabby Hartnett--No one even close in Cubs history. His homer in the gloaming is perhaps the most famous homer in Cubs history. Widely considered the best pre-WWII NL catcher.
1B: Mark Grace/Phil Cavarretta--Cubs have had a plethora of 1B who hit without much power (Bill Buckner, Stan Hack, Frank Chance). I can't choose between Cavarretta and Grace. Grace gets the nod for longevity (he was the major league hits and doubles leader in the 90's) while Cavarretta would take the prize if you consider that, at his peak, he was one of the top hitters in the league, and players like Grace or Buckner were not. Cavarretta led the Cubs to their last World Series, in 1945, while Grace battled valiantly to counter Will Clark in the 89 playoffs. The guy who would be listed here, had he stayed with the Cubs and shifted to 1B, is Rafael Palmeiro. If I had to choose, I'd probably lean towards Grace since I saw him play from his very first callup to the Cubs. He is one of a fan favorite, a classic Chicago sports hero, the type that makes the most of minimal physical talents. A grinder. His rift with Sosa is painful for Cub loyalists to stomach.
2B: Ryne Sandberg--the best player in baseball in 1984, when Whitey Herzog compared him to Babe Ruth (just a bit of hyperbole, huh?) after he hit two homers off of Bruce Sutter to beat the Cards in extra innings. Solid fielder who became made a successful transition from speed and contact hitter to slugger later in his career. Fortunately, he did it with the Cubs (see Palmeiro, Rafael).
SS: Ernie Banks--Mr. Cub played his entire career for the Cubs and had his peak seasons in the late 50's. Actually spent most of the latter half of his career as a 1B. Has, though it's unfair, been the personification of the tragic lovable loser image which haunts the Cubs.
3B: Ron Santo--get this poor man in the Hall of Fame! In addition to hitting and hitting with power, he racked up 5 Gold Gloves at 3B. It's a travesty that he isn't in the Hall yet.
LF: Billy Williams--could hit and field, and was durable.
CF: Hack Wilson--standing only 5' 6", Hack had a great 5 year run with the Cubs from 1926 through 1930, culminating in his 56 HR, 191 RBI (still a ML record) season. Tragically, he drank himself out of baseball.
RF: Sammy Sosa--the most prolific slugger in Cubs history. Personifies the Cubs, in a way. Not as good as the greatest players of his ERA, but lovable even as the Cubs continue to lose (though the recent corking incident hurts).
SP1: Mordecai "Three-Finger" Brown--Pitching in a different era, the dead-ball era (or should I say, dead ball ERA?), Brown posted six straight 20 win seasons starting in 1906, including a 29 win season in 1908, and his ERA was routinely under 2.00, well below league average. His ERA of 1.04 in 1906 was less than half the league ERA of 2.62. Earned his nickname because a childhood accident left him without the top joint of his index finger or use of his pinky (his other two fingers were disfigured as well). The injury allowed him to throw a devastating natural sinker. 4 of his 5 World Series wins were shutouts. Of course, this spot should be occupied by Greg Maddux, the most tragic free agent departure in team history.
SP2: Ferguson Jenkins--Only pitched 9 full seasons with the Cubs (the latter two at the twilight of his career) but those first 7 were a doozy, including six straight 20-win seasons. I saw him pitch a game in 82, at the tail end of his career. He slugged a triple and then head to leave the game shortly after, worn down by the brutal Chicago summer heat.
SP3: Greg Maddux--at the end of five great seasons and his first Cy Young for the Cubs, Larry Himes let the Braves pinch him for the difference of a few million dollars on a multi-year contract. The rest is history as Maddux went on to win 3 more Cy Youngs in a row. The best fielding pitcher in Cubs history.
SP4: Hippo Vaughn--definitely the best lefty in Cubs history. In one of the few great trades of Cubs history, Vaughn came over from Kansas City for Lew Richie in 1913. Famous for being involved in a double no-hit game through nine-innings against the Reds' Fred Toney in 1917, a game Vaughn lost in the 10th on an unearned run. This spot currently being warmed for Mark Prior.
RP: Bruce Sutter/Lee Smith--Smith wins for longevity with the Cubs, but Sutter was more dominant in his 5 years with the Cubs before he passed the closer mantle to Smith and moved to the hated rivals in St. Louis. Perhaps I have too many ugly memories from my youth of Lee Smith blowing saves, especially game 4 of the 1984 NLCS, which cloud my judgment. But if I were headed to the 9th with a lead I'd rather pass the ball to Sutter. Some of the great closers in history have passed through Wrigley, including Gossage in his twilight and Eckerseley before anyone thought of converting starters to closers.
Looking over the roster, you can see why it's been a rough century for the Cubs. There aren't any players on this list who you'd consider to best ever at their position. Hopefully the 21st century will bring bigger stars and less heartbreak for long-suffering Cubs fans.
BoingBoing links to this article lists the books that some famous Brits really dislike. I love it when the gloves come off--they should make more such lists public, though I doubt many famous people want to irritate each other. Never know who you'll run into on the dinner circuit.
Off the top of my head, some acclaimed and highly overrated books:
Lord of the Rings: don't confuse effort with quality. Most books praised by readers as so imaginative, or so elaborate a fictional universe, should raise warning flags. Sure, he invented an entire language and all sorts of histories and races, but Tolkien still can't write prose or poetry for shit. I forced myself to reread the books after the first Jackson movie came out, and now I wonder why I wasted so many hours of my life. The movies are better.
Harry Potter series: I've read the first two now, and I still don't understand what all the fuss is about. Sure, it may be an interesting diversion for kids, but why are all these adults filling their brains with this childish nonsense? Anyone who uses the word muggle in a sentence while in my presence shall be shot.
The Fountainhead: I had to read it in high school for the annual Fountainhead essay writing contest. It's also the book most often cited when I ask people what their favorite book is. She might as well have written an essay, because none of the characters are believable. Every one of them is simply a skeleton on which to hang some philosophical archetype.
There must be more, though none come to mind right now. Other nominees, folks?
P.S.: Speaking of Brits, I saw a highlight from the French Open in which some guy ran out on the court naked and hopped the net with security officers in pursuit. What is it with European sports fans and streaking? That just doesn't really happen in the U.S. Is it the same reason Americans are so uncomfortable on European nude beaches?
Looks like the new Mac G5 is just around the corner. At the same time, my Windows desktop at home is on its deathbed. Usually, old computers just become obsolete because they aren't fast enough to run the latest software. That's not the problem here--my current desktop is still plenty fast enough with dual Pentium 866Mhz processors. No, the problem is that it has become so unstable and slow after an operating systems upgrade that I may put my fist through the monitor one of these days.
After I upgraded to Windows XP, boot-up suddenly took several hours. I turn on my PC and go away to do other things and several hours later I get the login screen. After login, I always get the "You don't have enough virtual memory" error. Windows released a supposed fix for that issue, which was exciting, but it didn't work for me. The two hard drives each have cooling fans, and one of them is incredibly loud. I opened the box up and removed the hard drive, but getting into the casing where the fan is enclosed is probably not a good idea unless I want to risk damaging it. The sound card also croaked after the Windows XP upgrade because compatible drivers were never written. Dell's upgrade evaluation program conveniently left that tidbit out, so now my computer has no sound at all except the annoying whirring of the fans.
I've been trying to scan photos from my sabbatical. Every third or fourth photo, the application just quits, which is really galling because it takes some ten to fifteen minutes to scan a photo at the highest resolution. Then, when I try to edit photos in Photoshop, it just suddenly shuts down every other photo. When software misbehaves, it's one of the most helpless, frustrating things in the world. You search the web for software updates and patches and fixes. You uninstall and reinstall software. You scream at your monitor, and it stares back at you blankly, a deaf-mute. Your blood pressure rises.
So I may just have to switch over to a Mac G5 when it comes out. The biggest problem with swapping is the replacement software cost. I paid for a full copy of Photoshop once. But to pay for a full version of the Macintosh version? I just can't stomach the $500 cost. I wish Apple would work with software companies to offer discounts on their flagship programs when switching over from Windows to Macintosh. It would certainly be more effective a switching strategy than running lots of TV testimonial commercials.
DirecTV just announced a new HDTV package for $10.99 a month. The good news is that it includes ESPN HD and Discovery HD Theater, as well as some NFL games for the upcoming 2003 season. The bad news is that to watch local channels in HD you still need to install a regular TV antenna, and the selection of channels is still limited. The press release claims that HDNet Movies will offer 24 hours worth of blockbuster movies, but HDNet, while technically superb, has been disappointingly thin on content. The price, $10.99, also seems pretty steep when you consider that it's the same cost as a premium movie channel.
I suppose I should install the Winegard antenna I bought. Watching the NBA Finals in HD is mildly tempting. Someday our kids will wonder how we watched standard definition TV, just as I can barely remember what it was like to have fewer than 100 channels of programming to choose from.
Will Ferrell was Harvard's Class Day speaker. I won't often admit to envy of that school in Boston, but this time...
Pixar has Disney in a vise a la Pesci in Casino. In the meanwhile, their next movie, The Incredibles, should be, well, incredible. It's by Brad Bird (of Iron Giant fame), and the teaser trailer is online in Quicktime. It comes out Nov. 5, 2004.
The best thing about the trailer? The music, from John Barry's fantastic score to On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
I've decided after two seasons off from golf and some ten years off from tennis to try and pick up both again this summer. I'm trying to play tennis weekly with Eric, and hopefully I can find an instructor. The Seattle Tennis Center is way too popular; all the lessons for the summer have filled. Still, after just two weeks of hitting around outside on public courts, I'm having fun and rediscovering the kinetic pleasures of hitting the ball cleanly and competing on the court. I need to find more people to play with. I've realized that I really don't know many tennis players in Seattle.
The only fly in the ointment is that my shoulder is killing me. I don't think I ever fully recovered after my bike accident earlier this year, when I separated my shoulder. I hit a lot of serves last Saturday, and when I went to throw a softball on Sunday my shoulder was throbbing. I couldn't get anything on my throws. I had been working on rehabbing the shoulder in the weight room before I went on sabbatical, and I don't think it's all the way back. Doc's going to check me out next week, so maybe until then I'll just play without serving.
As for golf, I took my first private lesson ever today. It was only a half hour, but watching myself on video was extremely helpful. The most frustrating thing about golf is not knowing why you're not hitting the ball the way you want to. It's time for me to finally learn all the shots, all the fundamentals of the game. All these years just guessing at what to do while hacking around the grass--I don't know how people find that fun. It's just aggravation for me. But when you get a few tips and suddenly start hitting beautiful 7 irons, one after the other, like I did today, it's mystical and joyous in a way that non-golfers will never understand.
Let me be the last one on the Mozilla Firebird bandwagon. In Windows, it's an improvement over Internet Explorer because it has built in pop-up window blocking and tabbed browsing which I've come to use all the time. Also, Mozilla has its own Google Toolbar called Googlebar. On a Mac, you can use Safari which also has built in pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing, and a Google search box. But I prefer Firebird because, at the moment, Safari isn't a supported browser for posting to Blogger over the web.
People may think Moneyball started the sabermetric revolution in baseball front offices across MLB, but the truth is that the teams that are practicing the ideas attributed to Billy Beane et al by Michael Lewis are run by people who shared Beane's philosophies long before Moneyball was written. Toronto is run by GM J.P. Ricciardi, a former Beane disciple, and the Red Sox are run by Theo Epstein and John Henry (Henry initially tried to hire Beane himself and had a verbal commitment until Beane backed out at the 11th hour), both Bill James disciples. And Bill James himself is now on the Red Sox staff.
So look at yesterday's baseball draft. As Joe Sheehan of Baseball Prospectus points out: the Blue Jays opened with 18 straight college players; the A's 20 straight; the Red Sox 17 of their first 18; the Royals (!) 17 of 21. Who knows what's gotten into the Royals (somewhere Rob Neyer is grinning just a little), but the actions of the others are no surprise. Drafting college players offloads player development costs and risks onto college programs, and such players generally move up the minor league system quicker and reach the majors at a higher rate. Why do other teams draft high schoolers? Because they tempt the imagination with their tools at such a young age--after all, if some young high schooler can throw 90+ mph now, imagine what he'll be throwing when he fills out and matures?
I'm still a Cubs fan--it's not like you can switch sports allegiances like you do mutual funds when the management philosphy differs from your own--but I sure am jealous of Oakland, Toronto, and Boston fans. They are putting the principles I've been reading about into practice, and now they'll be tested in the crucible of the real world. The AL East is changing, and I expect the Red Sox and Blue Jays to pass the Yankees in the standings over the next several years. The Red Sox in particular should do well because they can afford a larger budget than either the Blue Jays and A's, AND they have sabermetrics behind them. Call it smart money.
I been guilty of the same flippant suspicion of people in high places. We see Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire and Bret Boone turn into muscle men over the years, and my friends and I casually assume they're juiced up on steroids. Britney has a "swell" summer and we assume her boobs are fake. We're all just a bunch of sleazy paparazzi, in search of water cooler gossip. It's really small-minded, and I'm going to try to stop.
Corking a bat in one at-bat doesn't take away from the way Sosa hustles, his charity work, his hard work in the weight room, and his hard work with hitting coach Jeff Pentland. People forget that Sosa was a power hitter even when he was a skinny beanpole. His problem then was that he swung at everything and insisted on trying to pull every pitch. Most of his power gains came when he learned to lay off breaking balls in the dirt and to keep his weight back with his little toe tap.
It was still a boneheaded move. Why does he even use a corked bat for batting practice when hitting against old men who can barely break 60mph? I hope he realizes his true fans could care less what he does in BP. I for one hope that he'll be man enough to shrug off the doubters, serve his suspension, and come back strong. While I'm still sad about the whole affair, I'm putting the miniature Sosa bobblehead back on my monitor.
P.S.: I just noticed that Neyer did a column on the Sosa corking incident today. I'm with him all the way. Coverage of the Sosa incident by the mainstream press (see the ignorant, grandstanding Rick Reilly or read any of the major newspaper columnists) points out just how mediocre the average sportswriter in America is.
Really good book, even sans mint juleps--I read it in a few days while traveling through Chile. One of those stories that's tailor made for a movie. The trailer seems to be milking the sentiment, but read the book and you'll realize that all the absurd dramatic highs and lows all happened in real life. This third trailer's music is from Legends of the Fall.
Almost any topic contains the potential for high drama, including horse racing. I for one will be checking in to see if Funny Cide can pull off the Triple Crown.
Not much to say about the Sosa cork scandal. MLB has all of his bats now, so we'll learn shortly if he had an entire arsenal of corked bats.
It's depressing to see such a popular, likeable guy, especially a Cub, caught in such an embarrassing scandal. It goes without saying that someone like Sosa is the last person in the world who needs to use a corked bat. I don't think the corked bat had much to do with his 500+ homers, and the only way he can prove it now is to come back after his inevitable suspension and keep hitting them like he used to. We did a physics problem in a college class in which we attempted to estimate the performance enhancing effects of corking a bat. The goal in corking a bat is to reduce the weight of the bat, reducing the rotational inertia. Theoretically, assuming the structural integrity of the bat is the same, the bat speed should increase. However, we found in our class that the benefit was so small as to be pretty much irrelevant, not to mention that the decreased mass and density of the bat might actually decrease its effectiveness. Certainly it's not worth the risk to one's reputation and career. So why do it if it doesn't really help? Stupidity.
Unfortunately, at Sosa's age, he's due for some natural decline in production, and that will only lead to more questions. Psychologically, this has to be a massively humbling and embarrassing blow. I wonder if he'll ever be as exuberant. Perhaps not this year.
I'm taking my mini Sosa bobblehead doll off of my computer monitor and retiring it to a desk drawer for a while. It's too painful to look at right now. Looks like Cubs fans are getting the next century of pain started in style.
The trend in home video of releasing a new special edition of a movie every year has crossed the line of excess, and that's saying a lot coming from me. When the majority of the hot DVD releases in a given week are for movies already out on DVD, even I get nauseous at the stench of blatant greed. God knows how many versions of Evil Dead there are. Now we have a third edition of T2, the Extreme DVD, which comes on the heels of the Ultimate Edition. There's the 3 disc deluxe edition of Black Hawk Down, which emasculates last year's plain old regular DVD of the same flick. And the latest example to hit shelves, with the most gratuitous marketing name yet: The Fast and the Furious Widescreen Tricked Out Edition. Don't you dare be seeing driving around the block in the plain old Honda Civic that was last year's DVD.
I don't object to the studio issuing two versions of the same movie on DVD. I often prefer the collector's edition, as I did for The Fellowship of the Ring (after all, who wouldn't want Pillars of Argonath bookends?). But when they release the collector's edition a year later, out of nowhere, that's just a blatant attempt to induce collectors to buy the same movie twice. That stinks. I gave in the first few times it happened, when DVD was in its infancy, but now I'm drawing a line in the sand. At least with Lord of the Rings they've announced both editions at the same time, even though they still penalize people who want the collector's version by releasing it later than the regular version. Same announce date, same release date. Anything else is just plain greedy.
Of course, I still leave most of my DVDs shrinkwrapped, just in case I need to sell one back to trade up to the collector's edition. I hate myself for doing it.
Slashdot links to this press release from the FTC that announced an accelerated roll-out of the national no-call list. Supposedly registration will open around July 1 of this year.
People are generally skeptical of the ability of legislation to curb intrusions like spam e-mail, but on the telemarketing front my friends in Missouri tell me that their no-call list has been quite effective. An $11,000 fine per call is hefty. Once the law is in action, every telemarketing call becomes a game in which I have to keep the telemarketer on the line long enough to get their identity. It will be like in the movies, trying to coax a confession out of a witness while wearing a wire tap, or trying to stretch out a call until a trace can be completed.
The paranoid posters of Slashdot, who are the geek equivalents of conspiracy hillbillies who build bomb shelters in anticipation of nuclear war, are skeptical, but after my successful dealings with the Better Business Bureau last year I'm inclined to give the FTC the benefit of the doubt here. As long as it's easy to put your number on this list, what's the harm?
Everyone seems surprised when I tell them that all the photos on my site are from analog cameras. Everyone assumes that an early adopter like me would be all over digital cameras (I recently caved and got a compact digital camera, the Minolta F300). For simply posting pics online, a digital workflow is definitely the way to go. Still, I love shooting slides using my different lenses attached to my lug of a camera body.
Most people have lots of old negatives and slides, and posting those pics online is a great way to share them. If you have enough of them, a film scanner is a great investment because it's cheaper to scan hundreds of negatives yourself than to have a photo lab do it. Used or refurbed photo scanners can be had for true bargains on eBay. For 35mm film scanners, try searching for a used Nikon LS-2000 (or make me an offer on mine), a Minolta Dimage Scan Dual III, or best of all, a Minolta Dimage Scan Elite II. If you're willing to open the wallet, the upcoming Minolta Dimage Elite 5400 looks like one of the sweetest 35mm film scanners yet. It looks to retail for close to $1000, though. If you're a medium format film shooter and lucky enough to be able to afford a Minolta Dimage Multi Pro, you should also pick up a Scanhancer, a feature supposedly built into the upcoming 5400.
An added bonus? You can touch up those old photos in Photoshop. Scratched or dusty negatives and slides? Digital ICE and other software algorithms will work some magic on them t
