Remains of the Day

All around me are familiar faces

Michel Gondry's music videos--what can be said that hasn't already? His latest, for the superb Michael Andrews/Gary Jules rendition of Mad World (originally by Tears for Fears), used in cult movie Donnie Darko (which I really dug and which is getting a second spike in buzz these days), is simply and hypnotic. See it at MTV or at Universal Records in Windows Media format or Real.

Da girl can crush

I'd heard much about the "next Anna Kournikova," 17 year old Maria Sharapova, but I'd never seen her play. Then, during lunch today, I caught the last set of her match against Ai Sugiyama.

Wow. Not only is she gorgeous (blonde, 6 feet tall, seemingly two thirds of that are her legs; she wore designer earrings during her match), but more importantly, she can flat out play. It seemed she couldn't miss that last set, pounding rockets off serve, forehands, backhands, volleys, overheads. During matches, her face always conveys her fierce determination and competitive spirit, and she screams everytime she bludgeons the ball. After every winning point, she pumped her left fist.

Once the match ended, she melted and became a little girl, smiling, clutching her face in disbelief, and blowing kisses to the crowd. Okay, can Siberia really be all that cold? Sharapova's about to go supernova.

The women's game is healthy. I haven't watched much tennis in a long time, but with the Williams sisters, Capriati, Henin-Hardenne and Clijsters, Sharapova, Myskina, Davenport, Mauresmo, and Dementieva, there's a ton of depth at the top.

Taiwan glamor shots

The popular thing to do when traveling back to Taiwan? Pose for glamor shots. Apparently they're inexpensive back there, and it sure beats sitting in front of a pulldown autumn leaf background at Sears while wearing a cowboy outfit. My sisters both have a Taiwan glamor shot portfolio, and now Alan and Sharon and Ryan have them, too. They're the type of photos you claim to be embarrassed of but secretly love, and you bring them out at every occasion. I'm feeling left out. Why wasn't I informed of this while I was back in Taiwan?

We heard about them during James and Angela's wedding, and Alan even did this pose for us, but it was only after we all finally received the photo that we understood the true awesomeness of his work. I'm not even sure I'm allowed to post this, but I can't resist.

I'm going to hold a contest among my family to caption this. There are more where this came from, but I'm not sure the world is ready for them.

James and Angela

James and Angela were married June 12. It was a fantastic weekend in San Diego. Gorgeous weather, family and friends all gathered together in the same city, just good times all around. We outlet shopped at Carlsbad Company Stores, played No Limit Texas Hold'Em with poker chips purchased at Target, watched the Will Ferrell Architect spoof speech from the Matrix Reloaded DVD about 74 times, walked along the beach, and showered Ryan with attention.

Ryan is the first baby to enter our family, and so we all love to spoil him rotten. It doesn't hurt that he's ridiculously cute. He had a whole new arsenal of tricks with which to break us down. First, he can walk now. But when he prepares to run, he first gets down in a modified sprinter's crouch...

He can also do the fist pound now (the move where two people bump fists gently, a variation of the high five or handshake). Just hold out your fist and say, "Pound pound!" and you'll get some love.

Ryan has also learned some moves from Eric Carle's From Head to Toe Board Book. For example: "Ryan, what does a monkey do?"

"Ryan, what does a bear do?"

We could go on and on, believe me. Gorilla, elephant, you name it.

Ryan also knows where his head, ears, and nose are. If you ask, he'll point them out. And he's nailed the major baby sign language moves: more, please, thank you. They didn't have baby sign language back in my day. Now, when you do something to make a baby happy, they start giving you the "more" symbol. It's mind-blowing.

I played a round of golf on Torrey Pines South Course with Sharon's parents and one of my stepmom's family friends. That course hosts the Buick Invitational each year, and it will host the 2008 U.S. Open. The course sits on the cliffs that run along the Pacific Ocean. The course is difficult primarily because it's very long, the rough is impossible to hit out of, and there is sand all over the place, protecting every green, waiting halfway down fairways to swallow errant drives.

It was my first full round since removing the cast from my pinky, and my swing was shaky. By the end of the round, I started to feel better. On the par 5 18th, I hit a driver and 5-wood about 500 yards and had a sand wedge over one of the only lakes on the course to reach the green. The pin was tucked around 70 yards away with water in front and sand immediately behind it. I tried to finesse my sand wedge in.

Plop. In the water. I dropped and swung again, a bit harder. Plop. One more time. This time I hit the green, but my ball spun back into the water. Straight out of Tin Cup Finally I made it on and one-putted, ending up with a 104 for the round. Sigh.

Later in the week, all of James brothers and brothers-in-law had to decide whether or not we'd follow through on a goofy idea I'd tossed out at Christmas last year. My thought was that the four of us (Alan, Mike, Jeff, and yours truly) could perform a dance at the rehearsal dinner. It was just the type of goofball public humiliation that James would appreciate.

Karen choreographed a dance for us to Smooth Criminal by Michael Jackson. We rehearsed a bit at Christmas after James had left, but nothing in between. So it was looking dicey when we arrived in San Diego, especially with Jeff and Alan not arriving until Friday afternoon.

But the bonds of family run strong, and late on Friday night, after the rehearsal dinner, Karen showed us the new routine, and we practiced in our hotel room until the wee hours of the morning, bleary-eyed, with Smooth Criminal playing from my Powerbook speakers. The next morning we found some fedoras at a costume shop near Mission Bay, and unless one of us blew out a knee during the ceremony or chasing down one of the appetizer waiters during cocktail hour (mmmmm, baby lamb chops) we had no more excuses.

The wedding itself was gorgeous, right outside the Torrey Pines Lodge, overlooking the 18th hole. The only distraction came from a golfer who missed his putt and shouted, "Damn it!" during the ceremony. From there, it was on to dinner and dancing. We danced, and then we did THE DANCE.

I have a whole new admiration for those who dance for a living. First we rehearsed outside again in the dark on the Torrey Pines practice green. But under the heat of the spotlights with an audience cheering, it's hard to remember your moves. A few times my mind just went blank. But we pulled it off...I think. Maybe someday I'll be able to watch the video.

Most importantly, James and Angela became husband and wife. James is my stepbrother, but our family is so tight we just refer to each other as brothers. He's the funniest guy I know; I think every other sentence out of his mouth is a joke of some sort. He is also a master magician, a vice president at a private equity firm in NYC, and as charismatic a guy as you'll meet.

Angela and James complement each other perfectly. Where James is animated, Angela is polite, sweet, and courteous. She is also extremely neat and organized. Her multi-page wedding schedule/itinerary was so detailed it blew us away. The wedding coordinator called Angela the most organized bride she'd ever worked with.

They're the hip, stylish, young Manhattan couple, and hopefully soon they'll be my neighbors.

I think of all these things now because I'm in the midst of the stress of moving, or at least packing up to go homeless for a few months. It's sweaty, time-consuming, and thoroughly unpleasant.

But the thought of being closer to family puts everything in perspective. Recently, I've had several friends lose fathers to cancer. I'm in the midst of a string of weddings. My college friend Polly become a mother to Emily Katelyn just last Saturday. All the workings of the world feel amplified.

My immediate family is like the Brady Bunch--how often does one get along perfectly with all of one's in-laws, step-siblings and parents, uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces? Our family rocks and rolls. It's a miracle and a blessing. I made a DVD of photos and video clips from our Christmas together in NYC and from the wedding in San Diego, and when all this packing gets me down, I pop it in and laugh. Good times.

et cetera

James sent me this link to a page that will render any webpage Doggy style. Fairly straightforward, it adds "know what I'm sayin'" to the end of most sentences. I enjoyed the Snoop version of Dubya's famous "Fool me once" quote, now getting serious playtime in Farenheit 9/11: "There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know that shiznit's in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on yo' ass n' shit. Fool me - yo' ass can't get fooled again."

I knew there was a reason to keep a cactus around the house.

The Atkins diet may decrease women's fertility. But their men can counter by chewing khat.

Russians change the weather for a Paul McCartney concert. Bill Gates must be so tempted to do this for his backyard BBQs in Seattle.

Current U.S. administration revises count of deaths from international terrorism in 2003. Turns out we're not winning the war on terrorism after all.

Robots turn on us. Body implants that run on body heat/electricity. Everything in The Matrix is coming true!

The modern garage sale, run by Craig

My stress level spiked sharply yesterday when I realized I had just a few weeks left to vacate my place. I immediately rushed frantically around the house, photographing things with a digital camera. Then I built a Moving Sale web page, threw the first batch of stuff up, and posted it to Craigslist. I saw dozens of listings so I didn't hold out too much hope.

I received e-mails back within minutes of submitting my post, and within 12 hours a lot of it had sold. This Craigslist is pretty nifty.

Now I'm committed to spending a few more days photographing everything. The house will soon resemble just a giant product photo studio.

On the one hand, preparing for a move is stressful. The balancing flip-side is the zen peace of mind one achieves from detaching from one's material goods. My goal is to leave Seattle with as little as possible.

My, you've got a purty face

Them new Apple Cinema Displays are hot. I'm going to have to have a difficult conversation with an arm and a leg.

Farenheit 9/11 sets box office records for a documentary

Playing on only 868 screens and rated R, Farenheit 9/11 still won the weekend box office crown by pulling in $21.8 million and in the process became the top grossing documentary of all time.

It could have opened on more screens and tried to bank more business before the Spiderman 2 onslaught this weekend, but I suspect the movie will benefit from strong word-of-mouth.

I'd be surprised if Spiderman 2 doesn't shatter all the weekend box office records over the July 4 weekend. They cut an awesome set of trailers and commercials, and unlike Farenheit 9/11 Spidey will show up on a bazillion screens Wednesday.

In front of one of them I shall be.

Flying Wheels, sort of

I rode the Flying Wheels century today. It was a bit of a last minute decision, but I needed the mileage. I hadn't ridden anything close to a century this season, and organized rides are so much more fun than solo training rides.

I ended up alone for much of the ride anyway. I was searching for a pace line that would average about 24-27 mph in the flats, 12-15 mph uphill, and for some reason I couldn't fine one. There weren't many pace lines at all, and the ones I did find were either too fast or too slow.

By mile 75 my legs were wobbling. A few years back, I rode this with Bill as training for the 1-day STP, and I felt so strong at the finish I raced the last 20 miles in. Today I was just happy to finish.

At least the weather was gorgeous, and I have that pleasant soreness in my legs now.

Review: Farenheit 9/11

Those desperate to see George Bush defeated in the November elections must have hoped that Farenheit 9/11 would put a dent in his seemingly impervious polling numbers. In this polarized political environment, where Democrats and Republicans turn their backs on each other to whoop up their respective choirs, it would take a documentary nearly free of bias and charged rhetoric to kick-start any true dialogue.

Michael Moore is not that type of documentarian, nor does he profess to be. Moore can't resist any opportunity to ridicule his prey, to get in the cheap shot or the easy jab, or to project himself into the picture to push buttons when he should be behind the camera. And God bless him, all democracies need their populist rabblerousers, though in this year of all years I wish he could have resisted the urge. It would have strengthened the persuasiveness of his message, though how could Moore resist a target like Bush? Charlton Heston in Bowling for Columbine was senile and evoked a reflexive pity; Bush is dangerously smug in his convictions for someone who most believe to have the intellect of your typical fraternity president.

The first two-thirds of the movie are edited for maximum humor: Bush on vacation, Bush golfing, Bush clowning around. Moore shows Republican leaders being primped for television interviews and speeches, including Paul Wolfowitz licking a comb before running it through his hair. Is that to imply Republicans are vain? It's a weak jab, especially as Democratic politicians must go through the same process.

Other bits are hilarious. I've seen the last clip of Bush several times ("There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again." ), yet it never fails to delight. Moore edits clips together in sequences that put Bush and his staff in as foolish a light as possible, and the accompanying music is a hammer onto itself. Moore has never used music to better effect.

Many in the packed opening-night crowd I saw the movie with were whooping and hollering at various Bush gaffes and verbal slips. I admit to feeling a cathartic glee at jeering Bush with a partisan audience, as if Moore were providing a channel to release nearly four years of pent-up frustration and indignation. It's the same feeling as when I'm derisively cheering the error of a Cardinal with 40,000 fellow Cubs fans at Wrigley.

Which is to say it's just more of the same, and that may not be enough. Bush has been the object of scorn and the butt of jokes for years now, and yet he still polls either neck and neck or ahead of Kerry. It's a challenge. We love our gadflies to sting hard, and with defiance, and nobody does that like Moore. It feels so liberating to skewer the White House. But in these times, Moore may only further polarize the country.

Moore also can't stay behind the lines and leave good enough alone. He narrates most of the first half of the movie, and he appears in many of the clips. He also pulls several more of his patented first person stunts, like renting an ice cream truck to drive around the hill reading the Patriot Act over a loudspeaker because many of the Congressmen had failed to read it. He accosts other Senators and House Representatives on the street to ask if they'll enlist their own children to serve in the military in Iraq. Not only are these stunts childish, they border on unseemly self-promotion. At times, Moore is like the boor who expresses your own opinion in such a vulgar manner that you're somewhat embarrassed to have him on your side.

It's a shame, because when Moore lets his material speak for itself, he's very effective. The footage of George Bush reading to schoolchildren for a good seven minutes after the two planes had crashed into the World Trade Center are shockingly bizarre. A montage of House Representatives, mostly minorities, refusing to concur with the Supreme Court's decision to hand the 2000 election to Bush, standing to protest only to be silenced by none other than Al Gore, the head of the Senate at the time as the exiting Vice President. It's a passage that both maddens and saddens. Footage from Iraq shows innocent Iraqis killed and maimed by the war, very little of which was broadcast by the U.S. press, another group Moore turns a spotlight on for giving Bush and his cronies a free pass on too many issues. Not much of the material will be new to those who have listened to the liberal chorus these past three years, but stitched together one after the other, it's an eye-opening refresher as to how not just liberals but much of the world views our current government.

And about two-thirds of the way through the movie, a hero emerges. Lila Lipscomb gives the movie a moral gravity and heart that anyone, Republican or Democrat, can feel. Her grief over losing her son in the war in Iraq and her subsequent reversal in sentiment towards the war convey, in just a few short scenes, what those on the fence about Bush need to know. Her outrage emanates off the screen with an energy that silenced the audience in the theater.

There's meat in this movie, if you are willing to search for it beneath the excess of sauces and garnishes and sides. It's a movie that I hope has long legs and that I wish had more poise.

[Footnote: Farenheit 9/11 sold out all over Seattle, and I've never seen that for a documentary. It will clearly surpass Bowling for Columbine as top-grossing documentary of all-time, and it's per-theater averages this weekend will be through the roof. It's the type of energy I usually only feel with opening night crowds for action blockbusters like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. It's one movie whose coffers I have no problem contributing to.]

Review: Secret Window

When I saw the trailer for this movie, I immediately formed a theory in my head about who the John Turturro character was. Unfortunately, the movie bore me out.

Secret Window was adapted from a Stephen King short story, and it shows. The movie feels like a single conceit stretched out to feature movie length. The director and screenwriter stuff the story full of plot tissue to give it a chest, but its flimsy. Johnny Depp, as interesting as he is, has a difficult plot gimmick to act out, and even he can't help the movie to earn the ending.

David Millar banned from TDF for doping

Ouch. Millar was great at short time trials.

Fahrenheit 9/11--sold out

A group of us were going to try and see Fahrenheit 9/11 tonight, but the two West side theaters showing the movie here in Seattle sold out all prime time showings yesterday. That's quite surprising for a documentary, a movie that isn't something like Lord of the Rings or Spiderman. Controversy is good business.

I wonder if it's selling out in more Republican regions of the country?

Mutant muscle baby born in Germany

The next big drug--myostatin blockers.

Review: Dodgeball

After seeing the awful trailer for Dodgeball, I had low expectations. They were met--in fact, the movie did the limbo and shimmied below my expectations. How could so many professional movie critics praise this? The movie tries so hard to be funny (at least to a twelve year old) that it creates its own idiotic characters and situations to lampoon. That's harmless enough, but the movie also contains a few mean-spirited, mildly offensive homophobic and racial jests; they're like flies on the dog dropping.

The lone redeeming moment in the movie comes when a sports star I'm a huge huge fan of shows up unexpectedly for a short cameo. He almost lends enough class to the entire enterprise to validate it, but by movie's end I was hoping the he had washed his hands on the way out.

BTW: adults playing dodgeball? Not cool. Not funny.

Shocking scoring error helps knock Venus Williams out of Wimbledon

I had Wimbledon on in the background just now, and Venus Williams lost to Karolina Sprem 7-6 7-6. The shocking thing is that in the second set tiebreaker the chair umpire made a scoring error, calling it 2-2 when it was actually 3-1 in favor of Venus Williams. The players didn't say anything and kept playing, and Venus went up 6-3 and should have won the tiebreaker (the score should have been 7-2). Instead, Sprem came back and won.

Motorola V600

I've had the Motorola V600 cell phone for a few months now, and I love it. Bluetooth, integrated VGA camera, vivid color screen, polyphonic speaker, sleek metallic look, and a strong antenna. It's available now for just $99.99 after rebates from Cingular, which acquired AT&T Wireless a few months back. While I travel around, my phone often reads Cingular now instead of AT&T. One would hope the merger of their two networks would improve overall coverage, and thus far it seems to have fulfilled that to a minor degree.

The v600 handles the basic functions of a cell phone well, and that's most critical to me. I've also decided after using all the various form factors that I prefer flip phones. Sure, Verizon probably provides the best nationwide coverage, but why do their cell phones have to be so damned unattractive?

The Simpsons - Season Four on DVD

I finally received my copy of season four of The Simpsons on DVD, and I've been playing it in a spare window on the computer all night.

Brilliance, just sheer brilliance. The show is still decent, but season four is the show at the peak of its powers. Phil Hartman was still alive, and the sheer density of clever pop culture references is staggering. If you wanted to own only one season of the Simpsons on DVD (poor you), then this is your box set.

Now that Seattle is working on finishing its monorail, the episode "Marge vs. the Monorail" is satire that strikes particularly close to home. I'm crying. The British may be the masters of comedy, but The Simpsons may just be the epitome of American humor, a balance of optimism and indiscriminate skewering chock full of references that draw from culture both high and pop (America has no highbrow or lowbrow culture, just a democratic soup).

Speaking of The Simpsons, is there any badge of cultural distinction greater than appearing as a guest star in an episode?

John Gaeta and Christopher Doyle

I attended a talk by John Gaeta at Microsoft today. Gaeta, as most everyone now knows, was the visual effects supervisor on the Matrix trilogy, and he's most well-known for bullet-time and virtual cinematography. After showing a montage of all the amazing visual effects clips from all three Matrix movies, Gaeta emerged in a patterned silk shirt, with hair and sunglasses straight out of Zoolander.

Gaeta attended NYU film school back when it had just opened its graduate program, and he lived in Greenwich Village. After working at several different companies after graduation, Gaeta got a job as a production assistant working for the legendary Douglas Trumbull in western Massachussetts, at a visual effects facility Trumbull built in an old textile mill. This was an experimental lab from which Trumbull developed technologies like Showscan (60 fps projection) and pioneered simulation rides (he built Back to the Future...The Ride). This sounded like a movie geek utopia. Employees rode mountain bikes to work and spent all day building robotics and camera systems.

It was at Gaeta's next job, at Mass Illusions, where he began experimenting with shooting and modeling physical objects, technology that would later become the basis of the backgrounds in bullet-time and virtual cinematography shots in The Matrix movies.

The moderator showed The Campanile movie, the now legendary short by some students at Berkeley that was the predecessor of bullet time. Download it--even now that bullet time is a movie staple, the short is still mind-blowing. Gaeta discussed many of the technical challenges that they had to overcome to render the visual effects the Wachowski brothers sought. Someone asked what the key chasms they had to cross, and he replied, "Everything Neo did." I won't delve into the detail, but it was interesting.

Some other interesting points from his talk: he was under a lot of pressure to turn Neo and Agent Smith into virtual humans in the second and third movies, a la Final Fantasy which was playing in theaters at the time. He resisted and instead turned to a technique he calls Universal Capture, using 5 high-def cameras to capture data of human actors making various facial expressions. He showed us a clip of Agent Smith rendered digitally using this technique, his face morphing from Hugo Weaving into Agent Smith, and the realism was staggering. He believes, and I agree, that this technique produces much more realistic facial movements.

When asked if virtual humans would ever render human actors superfluous, he said, "No." He used the example of the nuance that an actor like Anthony Hopkins brings to his various characters and the raw material that such an actor could bring to the screen as one reason why. He did note, however, that he once thought differently.

Someone asked what movies he admired, particularly for their visual effects. After a long silence, he confronted the elephant in the room and responded, with some reluctance, "I liked the last Lord of the Rings movie, mostly for the Gollum performance." He noted that it was a rare case of supreme animation, different from the facial capture they used for the Matrix movies. He then noted that he's bored by most visual-effects laden movies, preferring more subversive uses of technology as in the Charlie Kaufmann movies. He also cited Fight Club as a movie that was nearly subversive all the way through.

Someone asked why certain parts of the Burly Brawl looked more obviously artificial than others. Gaeta attributed it to clips where lighting wasn't baked into the DP's shots. For such shots, lighting had to be done later, and results with that had been mixed. For example, when Neo flies into the air like a helicopter, 3-point lighting hadn't been anticipated to be necessary some 30 feet in the air.

The only shot Gaeta liked in the first Spiderman was the last one, and he liked it a lot.

When asked how to avoid artificial-looking visual effects of people doing superhuman things, he recommended stylized camera speeds. Avoid 24fps special effects like the plague. If you go from slow-mo to high-speed, the shot is so stylized the audience can't process its artificiality. He cited one example from Hulk, when the Hulk is swinging a tank around. It's shown in 24fps, and while the Hulk looks realistic, the tank looks as if it has the consistency of a box of tissue paper. A wise tip.

Finally, Gaeta tossed out some thoughts on the future of entertainment and storytelling. He did believe in the primacy of a story crafted by a single storyteller, but thought it could be blended with more interactive stories. For example, you might have a story with several key, unchanging anchor plot points, but the story could be loaded up with expository bits that could be accessed by the viewer in any order. Each of those would still eventually take the viewer to the same basic points in the story, but the experience each time would be different. One example might be the ability to go back and watch a movie several times from the perspective of different characters.

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At the Seattle Film Festival, I went to a Master Class with another movie technician I admire: Christopher Doyle, longtime DP for Wong Kar Wai, among others. For some reason, I assume Doyle would be like someone out of Wong Kar Wai's movies, a reserved man with an eye for beauty, like one of the Tony Leung characters.

Not even close. Doyle cussed like a sailor, dropping f-bombs and sexual innuendos and gleeful cackles every other sentence. It makes sense; he once was a sailor. The interviewer, Rachel Bosky (sp?) from American Cinematographer, managed to mask her exasperation with a wry smile the whole time. Doyle was conscious of his behavior, noting, "Most cinematographers are not like this."

He showed a few montages of clips from his movies. One in particular was amusing, showing some unseen footage of Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung dancing very formally during the shoot of In The Mood for Love.

His is an organic movie-making process, a style he refers to as Eastern. He spoke of "finding the film": the image is there, it's the filmmaker's duty to find it as opposed to imposing or creating it. He opposed it to a more Western style, say that of Quentin Tarantino. Instead of removing the fourth wall for a shoot, he believed in appropriating a space. During In The Mood for Love, they shot in an actual apartment building and had to use mirrors to light in tight quarters. He believed that style was often how one responded to space.

"The East finds movies. The West buys them," he said. "Miramax, that is."

This philosophy of his was certainly influenced by his environment in Asia, and by his long-time collaborator Wong Kar Wai. For movies like In The Mood for Love or 2046, WKW shot without a script, just shooting tons of footage in search of that elusive moment (it's one reason movies like 2046 have taken so long to complete, and even at Cannes, it was rumored the final print was still in the editing room until the last minute). Doyle said that when he shoots with WKW, over 90% of the footage is just tossed out (he compared it to masturbating, or, as he said with a guffaw, "Goodbye my children!")

This is rare because in the West, film stock is one of the least expensive costs while in the East it's one of the chief costs. That means that in most shoots in the East, they could average at most 1.2 takes per shot. As a result, most scenes are rehearsed vigorously.

Doyle said Americans like to shoot with Kodak film stock because it more closely resembles a Norman Rockwell color scheme, the way American see the world. Fuji, in contrast, looked more like a Japanese woodcut.

Doyle was not formally trained. He had many friends who were making movies, and that's how he got his start. Over the years, he learned through trial by error. One of his first shoots was with 40 ASA Kodachrome (extremely slow film). The entire thing came out solid black.

Some other random tidbits:

• Doyle on 2046: "It's the sequel to In The Mood For Love. In ITMFL, they talk about it. In 2046, they just f***."


• Chungking Express took about 3 months to shoot, near where Doyle lived in Hong Kong


• Happy Together was shot almost entirely with one lightbulb.

He's currently working on Last Life in the Universe with Pen-Ek. I really want to see it.

US Postal announces its Tour de France roster

I was a bit surprised Victor Hugo Pena didn't make it, but that reflects how much emphasis Brunyeel and Armstrong are placing on the mountain stages. It makes sense in light of the fact that the Tour sponsors decided to limit the amount of time any team could lose in the team time trial to two minutes 30 seconds (a ludicrous decision, in my mind). Hugo Pena was a solid time trialist but not as great a climber.

Reviews: Destino, Les Triplettes de Belleville (aka The Triplets of Belleville), and Ping Pong

Some thoughts on 3 movies I saw long ago but never finished. I salvaged my thoughts because Ping Pong is a gem worth seeking out...

Destino, an entrancing short that played before Les Triplettes de Belleville, is a collaboration of two mad geniuses, Walt Disney and Salvador Dali. This is Dali's version of Fantasia, complete with all the most iconic of his images: melting clocks, human forms assembled from stone and empty space, vast desert plains. It's about as much hallucinatory visual tickling as one can experience without the use of recreational drugs (or so I hear).

Les Triplettes de Belleville is refined caricature. A young boy, raised by his grandmother to be a professional cyclist, is kidnapped by American gangsters during a stage of the Tour de France and forced to perform in gladiatoral cycling competitions in a city that is an obvious spoof of Manhattan. His grandmother rushes overseas to rescue him. As a cycling fan, I loved the send-ups of the young boy's cycling training and physique. He is all leg--two massive quads supported by chiseled calves. The animators knew to draw the calf muscles with the cleft which only well-trained cyclists achieve. It's a level of attention to detail both accurate and delightful. The depiction of the suffering during climbing stages of the Tour de France is pitch perfect.

The movie is limited by the lack of dialogue and by its loyalty to exaggeration. The characters are all limited in personality, and the movie doesn't aspire to be more than an entertaining caricature. I felt as if I was watching a caricaturist at a carnival drawing a picture of an odd-looking couple. Laughter as each of the prominent features took shape, and eventually boredom as the artist filled in the final details. No one hangs such pieces in their homes. Or do they?

Ping Pong (2002) also departs from hyper-realism in the service of characterization. The ping pong played is not realistic, but the styles of each of the players reflects their personalities. This Japanese movie follows the intertwined fates of two high school boys, Peco and Smile, as they navigate the world of competitive ping pong. As is the norm with sports movies, the world of sport is a metaphor for the world at large, and it's no coincidence that the two leads have opposing personalities that are reflected in their playing styles. Peco is brash, outgoing, demonstrative, and thus he plays an attacking style. Smile (I can't vouch for the accuracy of the translation of his name; it reminds me of the Mickey Mouse and Dumbo debacle from The Killer) is sullen, silent, and stoic. He plays a chopping, defensive style, taking all the energy away from his opponent's shots, waiting for mistakes instead of looking for openings to hit winners.

The movie is an adaptation of a popular manga by Matsumoto Taiyo, and the action sequences reflect its dynamic framing. Players leap into the air, whipping their paddles across the screen in a slow-motion blur, their faces frozen in fearsome grimaces, droplets of sweat scattering in all directions.

The movie is curiously touching. Yôsuke Kubozuka (Peco) and Arata (Smile) not only resemble the manga characters they play but also stay faithfully within the margins of their characters. This is not an acting vehicle, and neither actor tries to make it so. Director Fumihiko Sori translates the manga's understanding of the zen of ping-pong with great empathy. That's not an easy feat, especially for a sport played at such superhuman speeds. Baseball, with its measured pace, has been captured well on screen (the pauses in the game allow for actors to fire expressions at the camera and do what comes naturally to them, and the natural source of action allows for one-on-one confrontations between pitcher and batter), but few others. Even golf, one of the most zen-like of sports, hasn't played well in movies.

Ping pong has the advantage of allowing for direct confrontations and varied physical playing styles, and Sori takes advantage of both. Now the sport finally has a worthy silver screen representation.

Ditto

As a follow-up to my Kobe vs. MJ commentary from after the NBA Finals, here's Sports Guy on the MJ vs. Kobe debate:

MJ had to be delighted that Kobe struggled so much against the Pistons. Young MJ would have been too physical off the dribble for Prince. Older Wiser MJ would have brought Prince down low, posted him up and introduced him to the fallaway and the drop-step. Either version of MJ would have attacked the basket if the jumpers weren't falling. And if his team was having so much trouble rebounding, do you think MJ would have gone down low and grabbed a few boards? Me, too.

Put it this way: Either Kobe's bum shoulder was more banged up than anyone realized, or his stock dropped BIG TIME in this series. No way MJ goes that quietly in his prime. No way MJ launches that many ghastly shots. No way MJ wastes a 36-20 effort from Shaq. No way MJ stands around as the Pistons keep grabbing offensive rebounds. It just wouldn't happen. I think we can put a moratorium on the "Kobe vs. MJ" stuff for awhile.

Traffic calming

A list of traffic calming measures. Seattle employs a lot of traffic circles, a measure I've found to be very effective in reducing automotive speed.

In fact, Seattle is one of the nation's leading cities for traffic calming. As Derek noted during a recent road trip we took to Wisconsin, America excels at building roads--owned by automobiles--instead of streets--owned by the community, including pedestrians. As highways and large roads have gotten clogged with traffic, more and more automotive traffic has diverted into neighborhood streets, causing a rise in accidents in which neighborhood residents, especially children, are hit by cars.

Of course, not everyone is in favor of traffic calming. Among other things, emergency workers argue that traffic calming measures reduce response time to emergencies. It's certainly a more credible argument against traffic calming than this one.

Seattle Essentials: Vancouver restaurants

One of my favorite things about Seattle is not even in Seattle. Vancouver is just a two hour drive north, across the border to Canada. Even though the U.S. dollar is not as strong versus the Canadian dollar as it was just a few years back, the ratio is still such that Vancouver is a better city for foodies than Seattle itself.

That's not to discount the restaurants in Vancouver. For Asian dining, Vancouver is both literally and figuratively north of Seattle. This weekend I took a last minute getaway up to Vancouver with Eric and Christina and feasted at every meal as if it was my last. Our first dinner was at Bin 941, cousin to Bin 942, both tapas parlours.

We sat at the bar in front of the kitchen to watch the chefs at work. The food was heavenly, especially the cinnamon chili rub Texas Flank Steak, maple syrup chipotle sauce, charred baby bok choy, cucumber salsa, tobiko, served with Yukon Gold pepper pommes frites. It was so delicious we ordered it twice.

Other gems...
...duck confit, warm nugget potato, pancetta, goat cheese and truffled sping bean salad, cinzano fresh cherry vinaigrette
...Fresh Charlotte Island Halibut filet, lemon fleur de sel crust, smoked halibut croquettes, spiked tomato "cocktail sauce", watercress garnish.
...white chocolate cheesecake (I can't remember the full name anymore, but the flavor lives on)

We ate until we could barely walk anymore, and it still came out to under $30 a person with a full bottle of wine, dessert, and post-meal libations.

Today, our eyes and appetites were so greedy we ate two lunches, one at Kintaro Ramen (why no gourmet ramen bars in Seattle?) and another at the Malaysian gem Banana Leaf (like Seattle's Malay Satay, but superior). If we had had time to stay until dinner, we would have hit one of the local izakaya like one of the three Guu locations (izakaya are Japanese pubs that serve pub food/tapas; sadly, I know of none in Seattle), and if we had another morning, we would have grabbed dim sum in nearby Richmond, the dim sum epicenter of North America. If we'd had a hankering for Thai, you would have found us at Montri, no question. Korean? Jang Mo Jib. Chinese? Green Village. Prix Fixe? Cru.

We did rent mopeds and ride around town on Saturday, but in hindsight, I must confess that I think we drove all the way up there just to eat. For Seattle foodies with a hankering for new culinary frontiers, there are few better ways to spend a weekend.

Seattle Essentials: Salumi

Salumi is my favorite sandwich shop in Seattle, though in truth it takes its inspiration from Italian Salumerias. The cured meats there are incomparable, and the hot and cold sandwiches showcase the Salumi (Italian cured meat) beautifully. When I worked down in the International District it was my favorite lunchtime indulgence, an affordable one at that (sandwiches from $5 to $9).

The pedigree of the ownership is unquestionable. Owner Armandino Batali is the father of celeb chef and restaranteur Mario Batali. That family knows good food. One of my great regrets in leaving Seattle will be never having attended one of Salumi's once-a-month invite-only dinners.

The only downside to Salumi? The limited hours. The shop is only open Tues-Fri from 11am to 4pm. But once in a while, it's worth the drive over to Salumi in Pioneer Square pick up a sandwich to eat at the nearby Waterfall Garden Park.

Dial 4811

The 4811, the $15 starter thong of choice. Ah, the miracle that is the thong, occupying that fine line between G-string and panty.

StubHub, an alternative to eBay for swapping tickets to shows, sporting events, etc. Somewhere along the line, though, Ticketmaster will rob someone.

Butch Harmon, Tiger Woods' ex-coach, supposedly told Sky Sports: "Tiger Woods is not playing well, he is not working on the right things in his golf swing although obviously Tiger thinks he is. He should have felt 'I could win this tournament by six, seven, eight shots.' That was the old Tiger Woods. But for him to stand there at every one of his interviews and say 'I am close, I feel really good about what I am doing', I think it might be a bit of denial." Ouch. I was hoping they'd reunite, but knowing Tiger, statements like that make that a long shot.

The problem with antibacterial soap...

...is that most of it is antimicrobial, fostering growth of bacterial resistance.

F***ing Austria

Really.

In memoriam

The next best thing to being at Reagan's funeral is this slide show of photos by Pete Souza, set to music. Powerful stuff, even if you weren't a Ronnie fan.

The military and the government--they sure know how to throw a funeral. The contrast between the very real human emotions of the loved ones left behind and the military precision of the formal ceremonies (like the soldiers standing at attention or the jets flying in formation) pulls everything into stark relief.

Dude, where are my wheels?

Ouch. Poor Dave.

et al

Mozilla Firefox 0.9 - my current browser of choice gets an upgrade.

BugMeNot - bypass compulsory online newspaper registrations.

New iPod adapter for BMWs? Reminds me of this Tiger Woods joke.

What your favorite book or movie says about you.

Bill James on the best fastballs in baseball history. His current top five: Billy Wagner, Armando Benitez, Bartolo Colon, Kerry Wood, and Randy Johnson. It all seems fairly subjective to me.

Men are better off single (well, at least financially)

Could stretching be bad for you? - Please, let it be true. I hate stretching.

China is selling cheap knockoffs of foreign cars - instead of a Chevy Spark, they offer the Chery QQ for $1,500 cheaper. Instead of BMW, they offer BYD, whose logo seems like a simple pixel rearrangement of the BMW logo (see below). This reminds of clothing knockoffs you can purchase in China. Instead of Polo, the brand will be Bolo or something like that, with a logo of a guy on a horse, sans polo stick. Buy a red shirt, and after one wash, it's pink. Lovely.

In Philip Roth's next novel The Plot Against America, closet fascist Charles Lindbergh defeats FDR in the 1940 election and proceeds to make a pact with Hitler.

Both Bone and Cerebus are coming to an end, Cerebus after 27(!!) years and 300 issues and Bone after 55 issues over some 13 years.

NY Marathon

Damn, I got into the NY Marathon today. I guess that means I have to run. I hate running.

On the other hand, perhaps it will be a good way to learn the layout of Manhattan.

One more thing about the Pistons

Another thing about the Pistons triumph in the NBA Finals: to me, the Pistons represent the epitome of successful basketball under the new rules that allow zone defenses. Back when they still called illegal defense, NBA basketball was notoriously dull because you had so many isolation plays where 8 players stood around the court with their hands down their shorts.

The Pistons took advantage of the new rules to run a rotating swarm of players against Kobe and Shaq, and notably, the only game the Lakers won, they tied it on a 3-pointer when Kobe was isolated against Rip Hamilton. The Pistons have a center who essentially acts as a roaming rebounder and shot blocker because his offensive skills are so limited (similar to Rodman was for the Bulls in the late 90's, though Wallace is a superior shot blocker).

It's one good omen for the NBA as team play is more interesting and offers more hope to more teams that depth and teamwork can overcome superior individual talent (i.e., Kobe and Shaq).

Daigoro!

My nephew Ryan is the next to last samurai. Here he is on his recent visit to Japan, surveying his empire.

G.I. Wei

Congrats to my little sis Karen on finishing 28th in her age group in the 2004 Camp Pendleton Mud Run.

She claims she had fun. Sure looks like it, huh?

Ding dong, the *itch is dead

The Lakers rolled over against the Pistons 4 games to 1 in a series in which they should have been swept. I never thought I'd root for the Pistons, but thankfully all the most dislikable idiots that used to be with them (Isaiah, Laimbeer, Mahorn) are history. I'll always hate those guys for trying to beat up on Jordan and then walking off the court and refusing to shake hands before the last game ended in the 1991 Eastern Conference Championships. But as distasteful as that memory is, that's how much I dislike the Lakers.

Lots of people have said they want the Lakers to win because they'd like to see Payton and Malone get a ring, but neither is all that likable despite their greatness in their primes. In his prime, Payton was a great on-the-ball defender, but this year he's just been defensive as people have blamed him, justifiably, for his poor play. Malone, despite his generosity in charity, throws some vicious elbows and turned me off by refusing to play against Magic after Johnson's HIV diagnosis.

Shaq was interesting his rookie year, but somewhere along the line he grew disenchanted with the press and switched to a robotic, disaffected, emotionless voice. He's dominant and dull as a butter knife.

Rick Reilly once wrote an article in Sports Illustrated claiming Kobe was better than Jordan. Rick Reilly is an idiot so it doesn't mean much, but some people, including perhaps Kobe, seem to believe it. As a longtime Chicagoan, that drives me nuts.

Kobe is extremely good, probably the most talented player in the NBA right now, but to call him Jordan's equal, let alone his superior, is silly. The one area where Kobe is better than Jordan is 3-point shooting, and it's possible over his career that he'll remain an athletic slasher for longer than Jordan, but beyond that Jordan is his daddy.

Anyway, it's just a long-winded way to say that the Pistons rout made my day.

Kobe's shot selection is often terrible. Jordan was a much smarter, more efficient offensive player. It's reflected in their career field goal percentages (.454 for Kobe, .497 for Jordan, dragged down by those two years with the Bullets in which his legs weren't what they once were). Watching the playoffs this year, it's understandable why some of Kobe exasperates many of his teammates. He takes some ludicrous, foolish forays to the basket, leaving his teammates standing around with their hands down their shorts.

That's also reflected in career assist totals. Many claim Kobe has to be more of a playmaker than Jordan, but Kobe has averaged 4.3 assists per game during his career, and Jordan averaged 5.3. When Jordan temporarily played point guard near the end of the 1988-89 season, he rattled off ten triple doubles in eleven games. Rebounding? Jordan averaged 6.3 over his career, Kobe has averaged 5.1.

Defensively, Jordan was a better one-on-one and team defender. They don't track enough stats to corroborate it, but Jordan did average 2.3 steals a game for his career (winning 3 steals titles in the process) to Kobe's 1.5, and my sense is that Jordan took his defense more seroiusly than Kobe does on a regular basis. Kobe's not a bad defender. In fact, when he focuses on it, he's the very tough individual defender. It's just that in his prime, Jordan was thought of as the Ron Artest of his team. Jordan won Defensive Player of the Year in 1988 and was named All-Defensive First Team more than any other player.

True, Jordan wasn't always the easiest teammate to play with, but he never inspired the type of soap opera that Kobe has in his rivalry with Shaq and his detachment from his other teammates.

Finally, we have this year's Finals, in which Kobe shot 42-113 and got shut down by Tayshaun Prince and an aggressive help defense that double or triple teamed him. No offense to Tayshaun Prince, but even the Pistons Bad Boys swarm defense couldn't stop Jordan, and I can't imagine a Jordan led team rolling over so badly in a Finals series. Jordan was too competitive to let something like that happen.

If Bryant would just acknowledge his debt to Jordan, pay his due respects to the player whose footsteps he walks in everyday, I'd warm to him. He's as close too Jordan as any player in the NBA in physique, style, talent, ambition, marketing strategy, and personality, but he's not Jordan.

All this is just a long-winded explanation for why the Pistons victory pleased me more than the usual schadenfreude.

Seeing double

While at the airport on the way to San Diego last week, I was surprised to see the same photo of Ronald Reagan (by official Reagan photographer Michael Evans) on the covers of both Time and Newsweek.

Time applied some digital blush.

US Postal will have a sponsor in 2005: The Discovery Channel

Today the Discovery Channel announced that it will take over sponsorship of what is currently the US Postal Cycling Team. The team will be renamed the Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team.

That's good news for cycling fans and Lance Armstrong. I'm excited because Discovery HD is one of the sweetest high definition channels in DirecTV's HD lineup.

What does Ventoux time trial mean?

In Stage 4 of the Dauphiné, a time trial up the feared Mont Ventoux, Iban Mayo and Tyler Hamilton both surpassed Jonathan Vaughters' record of 56'50" in defeating Lance Armstrong. All eyes of the cycling world were tuned in (though not these eyes because unfortunately the race wasn't broadcast in the U.S.), not just because many of Armstrong's chief competitors were racing, but because this year's Tour includes a similar uphill time trial, up Alpe D'Huez. I was at Alpe D'Huez last year for the most exciting stage of the 2003 Tour, when everyone under the sun attacked Armstrong and Mayo captured the stage.

Was Armstrong holding back, or has his age finally shaved just enough off his form? Some speculate that he didn't ride all out in a psychological ploy to render his opponents overconfident. I can believe that he didn't ride all out (as did Graham Watson) but the margin of Mayo's victory was surprising. Some of the post-stage quotes by Brunyeel and Armstrong are revealing. I'm not sure I understand how it helps to give your chief competitors a taste of blood. Of course, the Tour is a few weeks away so his opponents may simply have peaked earlier (a professional racer can only peak at most a few times during a race season). Regardless, this year's Tour sets up as the most exciting of the last six years. Can't wait!

I climbed Ventoux in 2002, and it took me two and a half hours of some of the most extreme suffering I've ever endured. I was not prepared for how punishing a climb it was, how brutally hot and steep it would be near the bottom, and I cramped several times while a waterfall of sweat poured off the tip of my nose. Someday I'd like to climb it again with better form. I've climbed many Alps and Pyrenees by now, and Ventoux remains by far the most intimidating and challenging climb I've encountered.

The day after I climbed it, I had to scale it again, but this time from the backside, to watch a race stage in which Virenque won and Armstrong responded to two Beloki attacks with a morale-crushing attack. It was the first time I ever saw Armstrong live, as he flew past me, a blur of yellow ascending the mountain like an angel.

Seattle Essentials: Koolhaas' Seattle Public Library

I have a lot on my mind, but present things first: I write this from the new Central Library branch of the Seattle Public Library, designed by Rem Koolhaas. The entire glass and steel structure is a giant free wi-fi hotspot.

It struck me this morning that the end of my stay in Seattle is just around the corner, and all morning I've felt a bit nostalgic and sad. It was all prompted by a visit to the dentist. I realized at the end of my visit that it would be my last time at that office, and all the dentists and assistants (all 15 of them) came by to give me huge and to shake my hand (yes, I found it unusually sentimental). These were the first people I was wishing farewell, but it has started a clock ticking in my head. I wish I could shake this feeling of losing time, of imminent partings; it's so difficult to think straight under such pressure. Perhaps I can slow things down, and so for the next month that remains of my Seattle days, I want to document some of my favorite Seattle places, features, and people.

I'm both thrilled and heavyhearted to be finally visit this library. Thrilled because after just an hour or two here, I'm certain it's the coolest library I've ever visited. Heavyhearted because I'll only be able to use it for such a short period of time.

The architecture, a collaboration between Koolhaas and local firm LMN (responsible for Benaroya Hall and McCaw Hall) and Rem Koolhaas's OMA, is spectacular and overshadows the books themselves (see pages from OMA/LMN's original concept book). The glass and steel exterior lends a spectacular openness to the space and offers wonderful views of the surrounding buildings. Though it's the newest building on its block, it plays better with its neighboring structures than those structures play with it. 994,000 pieces of glass and 3,000 tons of steel died in the making of this facility. Each diamond-shaped piece of glass contains metallic mesh that filters the amount of sunlight entering the building so it doesn't overheat, and much of the building is made of recyclable materials. The library is already in line to receive the LEED (Leadrship in Energy and Environmental Design) award given by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC).

The library is the talk of the architectural world, and it's already a huge hit with Seattelites. A line was waiting outside both entrances this morning before it opened at 10am. I've already seen dozens of tours of adults and school children pass through. The youngsters scamper about the place as if it were a museum, and if it does nothing else but prompt people to visit this place of reading and research, it will have been a success. Certainly I never felt the urge to pay for parking just to visit the previous Central Library.

My only criticism is that most of the books I came to check out were already gone or put on hold by dozens of other people. I wrote down over twenty books I wanted to find but only located two of them. Amazon.com remains a beautiful thing. The books here don't seem as central to the space as they are in your average Barnes and Noble or Borders superstore, but the Koolhaas is far more interesting space. It seems like a space that wouldn't seem outdated fifty years into the future.

Since I moved to Seattle, the city has added Benaroya Hall (finest acoustic performance space I've ever experienced), the Experience Music Project by Gehry, McCaw Hall, Pacific Place Mall (a terrible layout for a mall, but contains the most affordable and city-friendly parking garage), a renovated Cinerama (an awesome movie theater with terrible seats but sweet bathrooms in which nearly everything is automated), and Safeco Field. It was an architectural renaissance. The city skyline still lacks a defined character, but each of those facilities was a memorable and worthwhile addition.

For once, I'm wishing for rain on a gorgeous, sunny day. I'd love to listen to the rain tickling this library's skin.

POP for Gmail

POP goes the Gmail is a program that allows you to read your Gmail in your favorite e-mail editor (e.g. Outlook).

SeatGuru helps you choose the best seat depending on airline and aircraft. My advice? Get rich and fly first or business class, or don't fly at all.

How Houdini pulled off his Metamorphosis escape trick - As with most magic tricks, the beauty is not in the answer but in the execution.

A rare public chat with Bill James (and Rob Neyer)

Review: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Of the three Harry Potter movies thus far, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban possesses the strongest John Williams' soundtrack, the most expansive and spectacular visuals (that new castle is breathtaking), the darkest and most captivating cinematography (the grain of the film is beautiful), and the hottest Hermione yet. Wait, how old is she? Oops. Strike that last comment.

The adults are still mostly incompetent (perhaps that's part of the appeal of these stories to children?) and the child acting is occasionally terrible. If you were contemplating pulling a Jack Grubman by trading a favorable rating on AT&T to have Sanford Dumbledore put in a good word for your child at Hogwart's, I'd think twice. It's a wonder more kids aren't seriously injured or killed, the supervision at that school is so loose.

Those quibbles aside, Rowling processed through Filter > Alfonso Cuaron > 75% is a beautiful effect. Save that adjustment layer (I'm not nearly as certain about the Newell filter). Cuaron's building an another impressive oeuvre of movies about two guys and a girl.

I haven't read the book, but living in a Harry Potter world, it was simple enough to get an exhaustive debrief on every Potterthology reference I missed. Apparently, this is the least faithful of the three movies to date in transferring plot from page to screen. But then, that's what kids do when they reach their teens. They stop taking everything so literally, and the real fun begins.

Spartan indeed

The synopsis on the back sleeve of a bootleg DVD of Spartan, one which an unnamed friend of mine brought back for me from China:

Lsection tghe is a secret work, in the troops mileage undergo military servicing of year robust artistic skill is with the fortitude and resilience's personalityBecome the secret the work empress outstanding prove tghe score, and make him enjoy the colleague with the speak well ofing of superior section th accepted a new mission recently, with the workPreisdent daughter(1)that new hand the (virtuous gram) look for the disappearance together to pull the Newton.(gram is in theshell)Because of the matter passImportant, the president also send outed the own adviser(love virtuous ) helped to solve, like this, an is from tghe F.B.I.(FBI) with centralThe intelligence bureau( CIA) unites to constitute of solved the group to establish.At the same time, this rise the president daughter the disappearance the case, and quickly encountered to growed after launching to investigateGrow the , and become the complicacy to rise. a politician who maniuplate the government, he is apprently disappearance towards pull know aller than owner many ***s of ***

Every episode ever of Friends (a 60 DVD box set!)? Shrek 2? Day After Tomorrow? All available, though it's a roll of the dice whether you'll get a DVD or negative copy, camcorder footage from a movie theater, or some random cantopop karaoke video.

Mauer sans meniscus

Will Carroll reports that Twins catcher Joe Mauer, still known as the guy drafted ahead of Mark Prior for monetary reasons, had the medial meniscus in his left knee removed. Removed! When I tore my ACL and MCL, I tore my meniscus, but the doctors simply shaved down one tear and inserted a staple in another.

The medial meniscus is a wedge of cartilage that cushions the upper leg bone from the lower. For a catcher to have it removed...well, it's a bad omen for Mauer's career squatting behind the plate. Without much power, he'd be much less valuable at, say, 1B, though he could be a plus at 2B.

And speaking of Prior, I saw his first start back against the Pirates, and he was aces. Same Prior that was lights out in August and September of last year, and he even toseed in a few of his new changeup.

Nothing says "I'm a total geek" like...

Buy a poster of the reigning largest prime number, with over 7.2 million digits. Just $77 for an unframed 2^24,036,583 minus one.

Help find the first ten million digit prime and you could win yourself tens of thousands of dollars in cash. All you have to do is download a client to run on your computer.

It's okay Smarty, go to a party

I don't claim to be a die hard horse racing fan. When I was young, a friend of my parents took me to the track one day while I was supposed to be in school. I don't even remember his name, but I like to think of him as the black sheep uncle I never had. He had me place his bets for him. I found it horribly dull, all that sitting around for races that lasted just a few minutes.

Laura Hillenbrand's Seabiscuit changed a lot of that for me, increasing my appreciation for the story behind the races, the context and art of the sport, from the spotting and training of the horses to the sacrifices of the jockeys.

And two other things I've always liked about horse racing. One is the names of the horses. How did everyone in that sport get together and agree that all horses should have catchy names? Two is the pace of the race. At about two minutes long, horse races are both feverish yet deliberate, giving you just enough time to see and appreciate winning moves but not enough time for the action to lag. It's enough time for fortune's to rise and fall and rise again, or vice versa.

One could see Birdstone's move begin with just over a quarter mile to go. Smarty Jones had captured the 1 1/4 mile Kentucky Derby and the 1 3/16 mile Preakness, but the Belmont was a quarter mile too long for the acclaimed miler. Like a lone breakaway cyclist caught by the peloton in the home stretch, Smarty went out too hard, too fast, and Birdstone waited for just the right moment to kick.

One other fabulous thing about the race today: Birdstone owner Marylou Whitney. She couldn't be more amusing if someone had invented her as a caricature of horse racing socialites, with her yellow designer bonnet to match her yellow suit and her snooty voice. I wish I had a clip of it to play here.

Off the top of my head, entities with cool and memorable names:

• Horses (Alydar, War Admiral, Seabiscuit, Secretariat, Man O'War, Northern Dancer, Seattle Slew, Ruffian, Personal Ensign, Smarty Jones)


• Nightclubs in Asia (World of Suzie Wong, Solutions, NASA, Velvet Room, Propaganda, Freezer, Sanwei Bookstore, Ned Kelly's Last Stand, Westworld)


• Famous photographers (William Klein, Alfred Stieglitz, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton, Weegee, Edward Weston) and high end cameras (Hasselblad, Leica, Rollei, Mamiya, Linhof, Tachihara)


• Fragrances or parfums (Coco, No. 5, Cool Water, Opium, White Tea, 212 White, Cashmere Mist, ÉGOÏSTE)


• Fountain pens (Caran D'Ache, Rotring, Retro 51, Lamy, Namiki, Omas, Waterman)


• DJs (Digweed, DJ Fun Fun, Oakenfold, Timo Maas, Sasha...is there a national registry of DJ names so no two DJs claim the same spin name?)


• Crayon colors (bittersweet, burnt sienna, Prussian blue, thistle, maize, raw umber, chartreuse, cerulean, dandelion, royal purple, mauvelous, cerise, wisteria, desert sand, outer space, wild blue yonder)

Well, at least those bastards have to work weekends

Is spam cheaper to send on weekends? I'm swamped with it Saturdays and Sundays.

I've also started receiving text message spam on my cell phone. They include return e-mail addresses that look real, but I suspect those e-mail addresses have been hijacked.

I've never given out my cell phone number on any websites or order forms. The problem is that cell phone numbers can be easily reverse engineered. They're assigned in blocks of 10,000, and the area code and exchange, or the (###) ### portion of (###) ###-####, are the same for all those numbers. Get one numbers and you can easily guess others, and most cell phone carriers also offer a way to e-mail any phone number in their network. This allows spammers to easily mass-mail lots of actual cell phone numbers with high efficiency.

A telemarketing phone call steals a few seconds of my life. Text message spam can actually take money out of my pocket directly, though fortunately my cell phone plan doesn't charge for incoming text messages. Still, this is pure evil and must stop. Usually I wouldn't offer up legislation as a solution, but that telemarketing act sure seems to have worked. I haven't received a telemarketing phone call in ages.

Caipirinha's and sashimi

I finally experienced the Japanese and Latin culinary fusion while back in Chicago. It's not a pairing that leaps to mind, but apparently it's quite popular in Chicago.

First, Joannie, Mike, and I hit Tank Sushi, a fairly new and trendy sushi joint near their condo in Lincoln Square. The menu features traditional Japanese and Latin American favorites like sushi and ceviche, but in areas like sushi rolls it brings ingredients from both regions together in unexpected combinations: escolar and jalapeno, yellowtail and mango.

The fish was fresh, but why the pulsing techno music? Or do Japanese and Latin American music not mix?

Later in my visit, my first business manager Ted and I held a lunchtime reunion at Sushi Samba, a restaurant which is more precise about its lineage: Japanese, Brazilian, and Peruvian. South American beef maki rolls? They call the U.S. a melting pot, though I don't think it was meant literally.

This whole movement hasn't made its way to Seattle, yet, though the sheer number of possible combinations of cuisines is mind boggling.

Review: Natural City

My first movie date of the 2004 Seattle Film Fest was Natural City, and for a punked out girl from the future, she was a real bore. A mess of a sci-fi movie set in 2080 A.D.

Agent R is an MP responsible for hunting down rogue cyborgs, but his heart is occupied with a female cyborg night club dancer who's about to expire. Meanwhile, one particular rogue cyborg is causing all sorts of problems from the police. Will Agent R get his head together in time to prevent a nefarious plot from unfolding?

South Korea's movie industry is booming in output, but recent entries I've seen like this movie and Tube resemble Frankenstinian collages of American movie cliches. The visuals in Natural City are sufficiently impressive, but Blade Runner came out in 1982, and this movie doesn't even match it. The movie needs some serious editing, and the screenplay is crippled by its failure to explain why R cares so much for a cyborg that has the personality of, well, a cyborg. Much of the rest of the plot is murky, leaving me and the rest of the audience tapping our toes until the next appearance of the spinning, jumping cyborg killers. It's not a compliment when the most compelling characters in a human drama are the robots.

I'd love to see South Korean cinema focus on telling stories from its own culture or milieu, stories inspired by its country and environment, such as Joint Security Area by my favorite South Korean director, Chan-Wook Park. His Old Boy won the Grand Jury Prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival.

The more money Korea spends on its movies, the more unoriginal they turn out. Hey, that sounds like Hollywood.

Aviator et al

Tiny, fuzzy Quicktime trailer for Martin Scorsese's The Aviator, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes.<

Get that man, er, boy an IV! Wait...he's up! He's up! - 13 year old Akshay Buddiga faints during National Spelling Bee, but then miraculously stands up again and spells a-l-o-p-e-c-o-i-d correctly.

Trailer for Collateral - Looking forward to this one, as I do all Mann films. Just look at the roster of directors Tom Cruise has worked with...amazing.

Scissor Sisters

Scissor Sisters by Scissor Sisters

Not for sale in the U.S. yet (it's due July 27), this album is available as an import CD on Amazon.com and through the iTunes Music Store. Really, really catchy glam rock. I've been infected.

Amazon's Plogs

When I logged into Amazon this morning, I was presented with my plog or personal weblog. I'd heard of the project during my last year at Amazon, though I never found out what it was all about.

It looks as if customer reviews for products have been turned into weblog posts so they can be served up as content using the old new release recommendations engine. The introduction also states that plogs will contain updates on the status of my previous orders.

I can't imagine that's all Amazon will do with plogs, knowing the people there. My guess is that soon all our customer reviews will be transformed into weblog posts, for those products without editorial reviews. Then they'll scrape public weblogs and load those posts into the recommendations engine to serve up as content to sell product, especially since so many weblogs are Amazon Associates. And, if they wanted to veer from pure product recommendations, they could simply load all weblog posts into its recommendations engine and create an automated blogroll using their similarities algorithms combined with web traffic analysis from Alexa or web structure data from Google. People who read this weblog also read these weblogs.

UPDATE: Just who owns the definition of plog, anyway? Others use the term plog to refer to project logs.

On-field audio

I hope that I live to see the day when we can sign consent forms and tap into an on-field or on-court audio feed of sports events. That the trash-talking in NBA games is being lost to posterity is surely one of the great linguistic deprivations of all time. Who wouldn't want to hear the feed from a shotgun mic pointed at always-angry-man Latrell Sprewell as he showers his opponents and unseen demons with a litany of f-bombs, pounding his chest with one fist like a territorial gorilla?

The Wisdom of Crowds

Is there a more hyped book among the cultural elite right now than The Wisdom of Crowds? I haven't read it and can't judge the quality between the covers, but Random House/Doubleday's buzz-machine deserves an A.

M's

Is there a more unfortunate name for a band than The M's? Someone here in Chicago told me to check them out, but I couldn't find their CD's on Amazon because a search for "The M's" in Popular Music returns 6,092 results, some inexplicable, none what I wanted, and searching for them on Google was no less difficult. Alas, even at their awkwardly named URL their CDs are not for sale yet. Brilliante Records? I think not.

What's in a name? A rose by any other name does not smell as sweet in the online world where discoverability is critical. A simple name change would do wonders for their sales. I guess I'll have to walk into an actual music store to track these guys down.

Cycling in Chicago

I brought my bike with me to Chicago, both to try and maintain some semblance of cycling shape and to practice traveling with my bike. I meant to explore the local cycling scene, but I've spent all my time riding up and down the popular Lakefront Path.

The first day I rode it from top to bottom and back again, and it felt as if I was riding into a raging headwind every way I turned. I had to muscle through the whole time just to maintain any speed. Is it always that way? I thought the nickname "Windy City" was coined by Charles Dana in reference to the the hot air from Chicago politicians about the World's Columbia Exposition in 1893! That pain aside (a sour pain, as Lance would say, versus the sweet pain of climbing), the ride was gorgeous. Chicago has, in my opinion, the greatest skyline in the U.S. Seeing it rise up on one side of you while flanked by a stormy, choppy Lake Michigan on the other is spectacular.

The ride takes you past Navy Pier and Buckingham Fountain, through Museum triangle (Shedd Aquarium, the Museum of Natural History, and Adler Planetarium), past Soldier Field and the McCormick convention center, by Promontory Point and the Museum of Science and Industry, all the way down to the Cultural Center. Just a few rides familiarized me with the path's personality. North of Navy Pier and even Shedd Aquarium the path is a zoo, the path shared by hundreds or thousands of pedestrians, rollerbladers, joggers, dogs, and cyclists. Weaving between them requires quick bursts of acceleration to shoot through brief gaps in the humanity. My least favorite portion of the trail is heading south over the bridge above the Chicago River. When crowded, I picture myself being knocked off the narrow path by a swerving pedestrian or cyclist coming the other direction and landing in the path of one of the several-thousand pount yellow taxis heading my direction.

My favorite portion of the ride is the stretch that takes one by Buckingham Fountain and the soon-to-open Millenium Park. Buckingham Fountain seems to slide by as if on rails, and in the afternoon sun, it's majestic parabolas of water sparkle like white fire.

Mayor Daley is trying to make Chicago the most bike-friendly big city in the U.S. I haven't ridden enough within the city to assess his progress, but the Lakefront Path is a gem, at least during the week when it isn't overcrowded. I look forward to returning someday to test the outcome of Daley's vision.

Portland is widely hailed as the most bike-friendly city in the world, and I'd love to see more cities follow its lead. For me, bike lockers are essential because I've had way too many bikes stolen off of exposed bike racks. Showers would be a bonus. Portland offers some of both, in addition to over a hundred miles in trails within city limits. I've also heard of bike lockers where you can deposit a coin and your bike is sucked away into a concealed locker, like a safety deposit box for your ride. Sweet.

I have one question that a native Chicagoan might be able to answer. Every time I've ridden the trail I've passed an middle-aged Caucasian male dressed as a samurai, wearing a white kimono and carrying a wooden sword. He was bearded and wore glasses. Usually I encountered him in Lincoln Park, just north of Belmont Harbor. Once he was arguing vehemently with what appeared to be a homeless man, and the other times he was jogging, hand on his sword, ready to draw. What's his story?

Pics, Polaroid and not

Some beautiful Polaroids by Andrei Tarkovsky, annotated by his son.

Next time you take an out-of-focus photo, tell people it's bokeh.

PDN Photo Annual 2004

K Rod: #$@&!

I finally caught some highlights of Francisco Rodriguez's pitching this year. The clips were from a game he closed out against the White Sox.

Ridiculous. He may have the filthiest stuff in baseball. K Rod's slider seems to break a foot down and a foot and a half sideways while coming in at 90mph. He simply overpowered Thomas, Valentin, and Konerko. The ball moves so much it appears he's throwing a whiffle ball. His slider reminds me of Kerry Wood's unhittable slurve, the one he threw his rookie season and used to get most of the 20 strikeouts in his 20 K game against the Astros. It's also the pitch that put so much stress on Wood's elbow he had to have Tommy John surgery at season's end.

NOTE: I had F Rod instead of K Rod in here before. Robert corrected me. I really am ignorant when it comes to the American League. This is why I need to manage an American League fantasy team.