Most Cubs fans are singing the praises of new manager Dusty Baker, but he frustrates the hell out of me. I don't doubt he does a good job with motivation and communication with his players, much better than Don Baylor, for example, but Baker's tactical management is terrible.

For example, he insists on running Shawn Estes out there every five days. Estes has probably been the worst starting pitcher in baseball this year, despite his constant excuses to the press. After each terrible start, Estes tells the press, "I had good stuff, I was just unlucky." Note to Estes: you suck.

This is related to another of Baker's sins, that he doesn't like using young players. Juan Cruz, one such young player, could have been pitching in place of Estes all year. If he had, the Cubs would be in first place, I have little doubt. The Cubs roster is filled with old players who either already suck or are going to suck next year: Alfonseca, Glanville, O'Leary, Karros, Goodwin, Womack. This makes Baker happy. He also works his starting pitchers to death, presumably hoping to prematurely age them because he loves old guys.

Everyone's excited because the Cubs are in the division race. But given the Cubs starting pitching, a rebound this year was somewhat inevitable.
posted by Eugene Wei at 12:51 PM | link

Yesterday, Joannie and Mike left for the south island of New Zealand. Today, Jason, Jamie, and Sadie headed off to Prague, Vienna, Salzburg, and Zurich, among others. Tomorrow, Dan and Lori fly to San Torini, Greece.

That little black cloud over my head is jealousy.
posted by Eugene Wei at 12:46 PM | link

Now that it's been written up in NYT Magazine, officially the indie film with the most buzz is Lost in Translation, directed by Sofia Coppola and starring Bill Murray.

And even if it wasn't generating that kind of buzz, I'd be excited to see it because:

• It stars Bill Murray, one of the most underrated performers in Hollywood. He was robbed of an Oscar nomination for Rushmore. He's a Cubs fan. Groundhog Day is one of the great comedies. He's your daddy.


• It stars Scarlett Johansson. She has a cool face and seems like the type of friend who will always be cooler than you are.


• The trailer is cool. There's a shot in there, from behind, of a golf shot. It's beautiful. I saw that shot just before I went to Bandon Dunes and it helped me to visualize the golf shot (horizontal rotation of the lower body, the more vertical rotation of the arms, linked in one beautiful motion).


• One of the songs on the soundtrack is by The Jesus and Mary Chain. I listened to them in high school and thought they were cool then. I'm not sure if they're still cool, but seeing their name again is nostalgia. The soundtrack contains other cool songs


• The movie is about two lonely, lost, alienated Americans who meet up in Tokyo and become friends. Aren't we all?


• Lots of photos of Japanese neon signs. Pretty lights!

posted by Eugene Wei at 12:10 PM | link

This is why we watch the MTV VMA's every year...

A great moment in TV history, Madonna french-kissing Britney Spears. Gave me the shivers.

The VMA's continue to be the most ridiculous spectacle on television, pure mugging by all the performers and presenters and audience members. And since Chris Rock turned down the hosting gig for the Oscars, this gig is our best and only chance to imagine what that would be like.

I would kill for tickets.
posted by Eugene Wei at 11:39 PM | link

Finally, the wait is over. The West Wing was on DVD overseas, and then it moved into syndication on Bravo, and now finally it's coming out in DVD in North America in mid-November.

Catch what at the time was the best show on television at it's peak. Really good stuff. Reminisce about the days when Sorkin was at the peak of his creative powers, before he began clashing with NBC, before Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe) left, all of that.

Supposedly Sorkin's working on a new show based on the book Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live. Really entertaining book which I read last holiday season, containing the recollections of almost everyone who worked on the show over the years. Sure, there's some juicy gossip (lots of sex and drugs), but it also gives you insight in to the insane creative process and environment which fostered it. It's not surprising that Sorkin, who wrote a behind-the-scenes look at a daily sports news show like Sportscenter (Sports Night, also quite good), would be attracted to this rich source material.
posted by Eugene Wei at 10:38 PM | link

The fun shorts of BMWFilms.com, directed by notables like Wong Kar Wai and Ang Lee, are now available on DVD. If you own a BMW, it's free, and if you don't, they'll ship you a copy for just the cost of $3.75 for shipping and handling. Visit BMWFilms.com and follow the instructions. I did.

Next year, BMW introduces the new 5 series and also a new 6 series sports coupe. I saw one of the new 5 series sedans at a gas station in France this year, and the only changes I could perceive on my quick stroll around it were the external cosmetic changes. The magic of the 5 series (and BMW's in general) has never been the looks; it's all about the driving.

However, the 6 series coupe will have a heads-up display and glass panorama roof along with an optional six speed Sequential Manual Gearbox (SMG). Mmm mmm mmm. Tasty.
posted by Eugene Wei at 11:47 PM | link

Some info on how best to view Mars from Seattle. Mars is closer to Earth than it's been in something like 30,000 years, with tomorrow being the actual day when it will be closest. The last time it was this close, Marlon Brando was skinny and Britney Spears an A-cup.

If you don't have any binoculars or a telescope and don't want to spend a fortune, these Celestron's are a ridiculous steal at the sale price of $12.95.

I checked out the Red Planet tonight from Bandon Dunes this weekend, and from down around Seward Park tonight. It looks like, well, a glowing red dot. But it's the thought ("Hey, that's Mars!") that counts.
posted by Eugene Wei at 11:34 PM | link

Netflix sent me an e-mail saying they had launches a new look. As far as I can tell, the search and browse boxes moved from the left side of the page to the right page. The graphics look a bit more bubbly, a la Mac OS X.

Am I missing something?
posted by Eugene Wei at 10:25 PM | link

Is anyone else excited about the upcoming as-of-yet-untitled album from The Strokes?

Perhaps it will inspire a few more mash-ups like A Stroke of Genius, the fusion of The Strokes "Hard to Explain" and Christina Aguilera's "Genie in a Bottle." Stroke of genius, indeed, and one of the better demonstrations of the subversive qualities of mash-ups. Claim you don't like Christina Aguilera, that the Strokes are much cooler and hotter? What can you say when the combination of the two turns out to be even better than the parts? What do you say then? I don't say anything, I just bop. You'll have to download it from your favorite file-sharing network; it's not on any CDs that I know of.

Meanwhile, I can keep myself dancing happy with 2 Many DJ's unbelievably hot compilation series, As Heard on Radio Soulwax. Part 2, the most well-known of their five CDs or Parts, is the one in my CD player right now, and it will actually forcefully lift you out of your chair and shake your booty for you. It's nowhere near as near as clever as Stroke of Genius; it simply aims to party, and isn't that what DJs are supposed to do?
posted by Eugene Wei at 9:12 PM | link

School of Rock appears from its trailer to be a mainstreaming of Jack Black's comedy, packaged for maximum public appeal. That's usually a bad thing (think Chris Rock movies versus Chris Rock standup), but I love Jack Black and therefore I'll cough up my $9 anyway.
posted by Eugene Wei at 8:57 PM | link

Ken turned me on to Bill's Khakis a while ago, and I've never looked back. They're the best pair of khakis I've ever owned. While khakis generally get a bad name, and I generally avoid wearing them unless absolutely necessary, I have no qualms about donning my Bill's. Most khakis I've worn seem to fray at the cuffs after just a year or so. My Bill's khakis accompanied me on my world travels during my sabbatical and still look as good as new.

Available online and at select brick and mortar retailers throughout the country.


posted by Eugene Wei at 8:40 PM | link

Spent the weekend with the boys at Bandon Dunes, a golf retreat set on the Oregon coast. It was incredible. In the Golf Digest 2003-4 survey of greatest public courses in the U.S., Pacific Dunes ranked 6th, Bandon Dunes 9th. Both are links style courses set along the cliffs lining the Pacific Ocean.

There's not much to do there except golf--no tennis courts, no towns nearby. The practice center is awesome, one of the two or three largest in the world. When we weren't sleeping or eating, we were golfing.

The terrain presented lots of new challenges. The soil beneath the grass was like clay, so if you contacted the ground before the ball on your downswing, the ball would go nowhere. That meant that hitting wedges off of the fairway was extremely difficult. Also, the wind along the coast was fierce, so any high shots would be at the mercy of the wind. For those reasons, the head golf pro suggested we just use our putters or 5 woods and roll the ball up onto the green whenever possible. The sand traps were brutal. They resembled deep holes in the ground, and the sand was incredibly heavy.

As soon as we arrived on Friday, Bill and I hit the practice center to hit buckets (unlimited balls for visitors staying at the resort--nice!). After hitting some irons, I took out my favorite club, my Ping I3 3-wood. I lined up, waggled once or twice, and unleashed my swing.

Tink! The ball rolled about 25 yards to the right. Something didn't feel right. I looked down. The club head was dangling from the shaft like a chicken's head with a broken neck. The shaft had snapped at the hosel.

Losing a favorite club is a tragic thing for a golfer. Unlike most weekend hackers who like to purchase new $400 drivers every season, I've only really played two sets of clubs my whole life: the starter set my mom purchased me when I first started in the game, and the new set I purchased recently with dimensions more suited to my strange body measurements (short torso, long arms). I don't like change; the game is hard enough for me without introducing new clubs to break in all the time.

Unfortunately, the repair guy at the pro shop didn't handle Pings, so I had to use a loaner. The next morning, during an hour long links lesson, the head pro Grant happened to be doing a Titleist demo day. I told him I'd need a 3-wood for my rounds, and he handed me a demo of the new Titleist 980F 3-wood. Then he asked if I was happy with my driver. I never really hit my driver--it doesn't inspire any confidence in me. I admitted as much, so Grant handed me a demo of the new Titleist 983K and said, "Put this in your bag this weekend." He gave Bill a 983K as well, and nearly convinced John to take one.

It's a great marketing idea and I'm surprised more manufacturers don't use it. Ask any weekend golf hacker if he's happy with his clubs, and chances are there's more than one club he wouldn't mind replacing. Before he heads out for a round, grab his driver's license, put a demo in his hands, and tell him to hit it for the round. If he hits well, there's a good chance he'll be handing you a credit card by the end of the round.

It was love at first strike between me and the 980F 3-wood. It took me longer to warm up to the 983K, but by my third round at Pacific Dunes I was crushing it long and straight, nearly as long as Bill. I've been lukewarm to these new-fangled titanium drivers with their clubheads as large as a cantaloupe, but now I understand. Chick's dig the long ball, and so do weekend golfers. On one nasty par five into the wind, I hit driver and 3-iron and still found myself 230 yards from the green, shooting over a front-side bunker. I pulled out the 980F, lined it up, and took a swing. It was the greatest 3-wood of my life, flying like a missile just over the bunker and rolling onto the green about 20 feet from the cup. Parting with both clubs at the end of the weekend was sweet sorrow, and I was sadder yet when I checked the prices for those clubs on eBay and online.

The courses aren't long in terms of yardage, but they play longer because of the wind. I'd hit huge drives on par fours and still find myself a long-iron or wood from the green because the wind had knocked them down. While there weren't any trees, the course was covered with a nasty shrub called gorse, covered in thorns which contained a toxin which would cause your skin to swell up if pierced. I spent much of the weekend taking huge swings out of sand and tall grass and dirt.

The scenery made it all worthwhile. Many approach shots were into greens framed behind by the ocean, populated by the kites of kite-boarders dancing in the wind. I've never been on a pure golf vacation before, but I can't imagine many nicer setups for golf addicts anywhere in the U.S. We're already planning to make this an annual trip.

posted by Eugene Wei at 8:30 PM | link

I find I enjoy the online version of McSweeney's even more than the print version. Take this guide to meeting people more famous than you. An excerpt:

Pay that person a compliment, but don't kiss their ass. For example, one time I saw Cameron Diaz at a party and told her I thought she was pretty funny for a girl. She was very flattered because she understood that I respected her enough to not insult her intelligence by saying she was as funny as a man. Long story short: I banged her.
posted by Eugene Wei at 1:48 PM | link

One of the age old mysteries finally has an evidence-based explanation (link from Kottke). For all the studies that go around, and all the magic bullets people seek to lose weight, in the end, for the majority of people, it still comes to eating less and exercising more. It's really not all that mysterious.

Of course, there are all the studies that attribute health benefits to drinking red wine. So it's not all pain and self-denial.
posted by Eugene Wei at 11:19 PM | link

Let me be up front: I'm repackaging a couple product links from Gizmodo here.

With a high quality Halloween costume, a couple of these inserted in plastic casing molded in the shape of a spider, and you could be a modern day Spiderman. In the old 1960's cartoon, not the sleek but dull new one on MTV with the slow and robotic animation, Spidey would toss small spider-shaped tracers on his enemies as they were fleeing the scene so that he could track them down later.

Everyone else will comment on how these Followit's can be used to track spouses or children, but family units built around distrust are somewhat dysfunctional anyway. This Spiderman angle will likely be overlooked by the press. Of course, some people want to be geo-tracked.

No self-respecting male will ever resort to using the self-parallel-parking feature coming in a future model of the Toyota Prius. I realize that's a sexist remark, but some things guys just generally do better than gals, and parallel parking is one of them. Don't ask me why, I have no idea. All I do know is that the one time I let a woman parallel park my car she scraped the hubcap against the curb, and the screeching sound of that metal against cement was like the sound of my heart shearing in half. No use trying to conceal the disappointment on my face, it was a look of sheer horror.
posted by Eugene Wei at 10:15 PM | link

I thought of another thing to add to my list of things to teach every kid.

Teach them to ski. It's one of those sports that's much easier to learn when you're young and fearless. I never tried it until I was in college, and young kids without ski poles were flying circles past me. It looked so simple from the gondola, too. I told my friends to take me straight to the blues. No worries, I can handle this. I don't need a lesson.

That entire first run down the mountain, I suffered more spectacular crashes than Internet stocks in 2001. Skiing is one of those sports in which fear is a huge deterrent to improvement. Kids are physically indestructible and immune to such concerns.
posted by Eugene Wei at 9:24 PM | link

The Matrix Revolutions trailer is available to stream or download from the Warner Bros. site. You'll have to navigate through the frames-based website to find it; it's a bit confusing. Start by clicking on Revolutions International Trailer in the left sidebar.

I don't know if John Woo invented the "whole group of people all have guns pointed at each other in a giant Mexican standoff" scene, but I think of him everytime I see one. It will be a fun holiday movie season with this and LOTR: ROTK.
posted by Eugene Wei at 9:35 AM | link

So you're disillusioned by the music factory which manufactures pop stars by grinding no-talent hacks through the marketing machine? Here's a refreshing variant on that story: The Langley Schools Music Project. Music teacher Hans Fenger took 60 school children from rural western Canada and taught them a few pop music tunes.

That the music was eventually recorded onto a CD was not the original goal of the group. But thankfully for us it was. I'd never heard of them until last week. I was trying to track down a charming version of Desperado I'd heard on NPR. By chance, an article crossed FeedDemon about those musical snippets played between stories on NPR's All Things Considered. Turns out those are called music buttons. Scanning through the archives, somehow I was led to the CD which I then purchased from Amazon.

Just a week later, I can listen to Desperado as sung by 9 year old Sheila Behman (the Internet is great for near instant satisfaction, but it's also made me very impatient). All the songs exude the charming joy of an elementary school chorus concert; any parent who has looked on proudly as their son or daughter belted out Christmas tunes on stage during the annual Christmas assembly knows the sensation. Of course, none of the singers are as vocally talented as your average recording artist. But what is wonderful about the way children sing is that they eschew the gratuitous sentimentality of someone like Faith Hill or Celine Dion. If the song is written well and the arrangement appropriate, the emotions will shine through even without Celine Dion's operatic megaphone of a voice belting or her rail-thin arms gesticulating (the musical equivalent of over-acting).
posted by Eugene Wei at 11:21 PM | link

Corante's Brain Waves consistently offers interesting content. This post on the neurobiology of trust interested me because of an aside on pregnant women:

We also found that women in the experiment who are ovulating were significantly less likely to be trustworthy (for the same signal of trust). This effect is caused by the physiologic interactions between progesterone and oxytocin, and it makes sense behaviorally: women who are, or are about to be, pregnant, need to be much more selective in their interpretation of social signals, and also need more resources than at other times.

I'm at the age where seemingly half the women I know are pregnant at any point in time, so I'll know now not to take it personally when they treat me with unusual suspicion.
posted by Eugene Wei at 10:52 PM | link

None of the Nightmare on Elm Street sequels or Friday the 13th sequels will ever match the originals because Freddy and Jason went from terrifying boogeymen to actual heroes in the hearts of the audience, and that drained the terror out of the franchises. I had nightmares for an entire night the first time I saw the original Nightmare on Elm Street as a young child.

But I can't ever imagine a scenario where I'd be swimming out in the ocean and wouldn't be scared half to death of great whites. And now comes the news that they can actually breach! And not just for fun--they do it when hunting, too. Truly awesome.

You can get up close and personal with these predators down in the Bay Area.
posted by Eugene Wei at 10:47 PM | link

Really pretty trailer for the Christmas showcase movie from Disney, The Alamo. And a fun trailer for the upcoming Zatoichi feature film from Takeshi Kitano (for Windows users, the link will pop up a dialog box asking if you want to install the Japanese language character pack which, if you're like me, you'll never be able to locate, so just click the Cancel button).

My dad was a huge fan of the Zatoichi Blind Swordsman series, and it was contagious. The conceit of a blind samurai swordsman is a fun metaphor, and if the entire DVD series is too rich to purchase it's at least worth putting on your Netflix/Greencine rental list. The Kitano version will doubtless be more bloody.

I wonder if holding your sword with that strange backhand grip really works.
posted by Eugene Wei at 10:41 PM | link

In switching website hosts, I had to switch mailing list providers as well. To receive these weblog posts via e-mail, send a blank e-mail message to weblog-subscribe@eugenewei.com. And to unsubscribe, yes, just send a message to weblog-unsubscribe@eugenewei.com. The old mailing list no longer works so current subscribers should do this to continue receiving posts via e-mail.

The other option is to syndicate this blog via its RSS 1.0 feed and pull it into your newsreader. Or you can just read it here as a web page, though that's so 1999.
posted by Eugene Wei at 10:17 PM | link

Now that friends of mine are having kids, I thought it would be worthwhile to pass on my wisdom. A draft was brewing in my head this weekend. I call this list Things every kid should learn, and it's arranged in no particular order:

1. How to type. It's the computer age, and typing is key to being productive. I have a soft spot for artistic penmanship, but I can't in good conscience recommend that anyone worry about perfecting their handwriting. But let your kid lead life as a hunt-and-pecker and you're dooming them to thousands of hours of wasted life. I remember when my mom first sat me down with her old typing drill book and started me typing ASDFJKL; over and over and over. If I had a child today I'd start them on those drills much earlier. They even make videogames on the computer to teach typing so your kids can have fun while they're learning.


2. How to ride a bike. I'm partial to cycling, but more than my affinity for the sport, cycling was a great way for me to explore the city I grew up in before I had a driver's license. I rode everywhere--to school, to baseball practice, to tennis courts, to the local 7-Eleven. Cycling was freedom. When your kids grow up, they'll be able to preserve their knees while staying in shape.


3. How to swim. 2/3 the world is covered by water. Like cycling, a joint-preservation form of exercise. Alsi, like cycling, a skill whose absence will subject your kids to much ridicule.


4. A foreign language. Or two. Or three. They say that languages are easier to learn while you're young, and I believe it. When I was young, I could never fall asleep so I'd lie in bed listening to my mother speak to my grandmother in Cantonese. They spoke to me in Mandarin, but somehow through simply listening I learned to understand Cantonese. I can't really speak it, but I understand it when it's used to refer to concepts I was familiar with as a child. Your kids won't understand why a language is of value until that first summer vacation to Europe, when they meet some fair young European of the opposite sex and realize they know how to say, "You are the most beautiful thing I've ever laid eyes on."


5. A computer language/how to program. The new foreign language requirement. If French or Spanish will lend your child an air of sophistication, then C# or Java will increase their employability and lifetime earnings potential. Someday, I'm not sure when, more kids in the world will know a computer language than, say, German. We may already have passed that point, I'm not sure if stats are available. You have to at least hedge against the possibility that geeks will inherit the earth. And, while we're on the topic of languages...


6. How to read music. And the easiest way to learn to read music is to learn...


7. How to play an instrument. Force your child to take music lessons when they're young. Piano is a pretty good place to start. Keep them at it for a few years, enough to bridge to their school days when they can play with other students, and then hope they can stay interested. Even if they don't, reading music is a skill that never really leaves you, and so is the resulting increase in one's appreciation of music. They may resent the lessons for years, but someday, perhaps long after they've left your nest, they'll understand and look back in appreciation.


8. Math. Okay, that's the last language on this list, but it's a universal one. No reason to let public schools determine the pace at which your kids learn math, either. My dad schooled me in basic algebra long before they covered it in school, and it made life so much easier further down the road.


9. How to dance. Best to learn while your kids are shameless. Once they learn the meaning of embarrassment in front of their peers, it's tough to regain one's confidence. Seeing someone dance well without any concern for what spectators are thinking is an amazing thing.


10. One good toast. One day your child will have occasion to lead a group in a toast, and a classy one will leave the room silent and nodding in appreciation at his/her eloquence and ability to command the moment. I'm tempted to replace this with "How to speak in public."


11. How to mix one cocktail. Kool-Aid doesn't count, though the basic process is similar.


12. How to prepare one impressive dish.


13. One team sport. One's true nature is revealed inside the lines, and a team sport is a great forum for learning teamwork, leadership, performance under pressure, accountability, and a whole host of other valuable life lessons.


14. How to disagree respectfully. Independence of mind is a wonderful thing. Of course, sometimes they'll disagree with you, and sometime you'll have to explain why they're wrong.


15. How to criticize another, and how to accept criticism.


16. Honesty. Parents need to lead by example here or your kids will also learn about hypocrisy. The thing is, the first time your kid owns up to some misbehavior, you'll be tempted to let them off easy to reward their honesty. That just teaches them to be honest when it suits them, robbing them of their integrity. And someday they'll realize it and resent you.


17. Modesty and confidence. I'm not sure why modesty is important, but it's easier to move from modesty to confidence than in reverse. No one likes a snot.


18. How to deliver the punchline. Anyone can learn a few jokes. Only a few can deliver them.


19. The words to one good poem. Why is this essential? It isn't. But this is my list.

Jot down any list like this and inevitably one feels like some things are missing. Any obvious misses? Some addendums may bubble to mind in the coming days.

But it's a good start. I wish I had mastered this list when I was a kid.
posted by Eugene Wei at 11:26 PM | link

"Welcome to the O.C., bitch!"

I caught my first episode of O.C. tonight. Part of it. I was eating dinner and it was on in the background, and enough latent buzz was ringing in my ears that I looked up from my laptop from time to time. For most of the episode, I was unimpressed and I couldn't even name many of the characters just five minutes later. But things took a turn for the better when the water polo-playing bully Luke started pounding the show's main character Ryan in a house where Ryan was hiding out. Luke was upset over some incident from the last episode and over a budding relationship between Ryan and Luke's girl whose name I never caught.

While fighting, they knocked over some candles and set the house on fire. Luke and his buddies started to flee as the flames erupted to the ceilings, but then Luke underwent a sudden change of heart and went back to pull Ryan out from the burning house. It was like the moment in Karate Kid when the bully Johnny hands Daniel the trophy at the end of the movie and congratulates Daniel on his victory. You realize that no kids are really cruel, just misguided. Taking things to another level, the two kids come back to the scene of the crime and both openly admit to having caused the fire which burned down the house. As the episode ended, the police were leading them off in a squad car.

It's the type of kitschy teenage drama which usually means a second season renewal. And it's set among the wealthy denizens of Orange County. All ratings-winning television teens lead lives which bear no resemblance to the lives of any normal, real-life teenagers.
posted by Eugene Wei at 11:03 PM | link

When I dial my cell phone voice mail, it asks me to key in my password. Why does my phone then display the password on the screen as I type it? Why not replace the numbers with asterisks?

Not that accessing my voicemail password would be of much value to anyone, but it still bothers me everytime it happens. The worst case scenario, really, is that one of the guys would get a hold of it and leave a record a new, ridiculous voicemail greeting: "Hello, this is Eugene's male escort service. My next available time slot..."
posted by Eugene Wei at 10:02 PM | link

Rich and Christina tied the knot Sunday. The reception was held at the Seattle Tennis Club, the tres exclusive club of the Seattle social elite. The waiting list to become a member is said to be five years long. I am tempted to fire off some socialist humor, but I harbor hopes of befriending a member who will then take me there to hit around on the immaculate courts, so I'll hold my tongue.

Greek wedding's offer some traditional group dances which are a lot of fun after a few cocktails. One minute you're standing at the edge of the dance floor, enjoying a drink, watching the family members dance in a giant line that swirls in on itself, and then suddenly a Greek woman grabs you and you're in the line, being pulled along into the center, side shuffling on a dance floor covered with dollar bills. It's a nice change-of-pace from the usual motley wedding bunch of the young and old, awkwardly trying to dance to music from each other's generations while dressed in formal attire.

The tradition I most enjoy from weddings is the best man speech. Nothing against the maid of honor speech, but women are just much sweeter and sentimental about the whole thing. Men have no qualms about embarrassing each other in front of their future in-laws, and in fact it has become a tradition to do so. How did it become so? I have no idea.

The audience is always riveted because the mix of alcohol and the heady emotions of the moment always leave open the possibility that the best man will inadvertently slip up and humiliate the groom. It's the turning point of every evening. When else will your best buddy give you an open mike to address his entire extended family about his personal character? What power. What responsibility. Wisely, none of us at table 18 were asked to speak about Rich. Smart move.

On a side note: yes, if I gave a best man speech, I would end with the line, "Before we're done here, we're all gonna be wearing gold-plated diapers." Hopefully one or two people would understand and laugh.

[By the way, the winning bet on when the DJ would play I Will Survive was the over on 8:45pm. I can understand thematically why the wedding DJ canon includes staples like We Are Family and Celebration, but the message of Gloria Gaynor's girl power dance tune seems out of place at an event joining a man and woman.]

Hopefully Rich's marital status won't turn him into a pumpkin. The guys gathered for an outing to the M's-BoSox game on Friday night, and his absence was conspicuous. It just wasn't the same, sitting there feigning Boston accents without our resident Mayor Quimby.

[Yet again, Jamie Moyer was starting. I think he has started every Mariners game I've ever been to. If it wasn't for television replays, I'd be convinced that Moyer starts every M's game. He throws about 50 mph, so he shouldn't put much stress on my arm. It's possible. For a change, though, this time Ichiro shook of the jinx of having me in the crowd and smacked a grand slam to lead the M's to victory.]
posted by Eugene Wei at 7:46 PM | link

The Kevin Costner jinx is over. Open Range is quite entertaining. Hollywood is quite reactionary--a few cowboy movies flop and the judgment is that westerns just don't work anymore--but actors get a long leash. Costner is one beneficiary, and Freddie Prinze Jr. received more than three strikes.

The dialogue of Open Range is the traditional terse, ungrammatical, honest talk of men educated on the Western plains (or Western movies):

"Men are going to get killed her today, Sue, and I'm going to kill them."
"That Cuban cigar got me all riled up!"
"Cows are one thing, but a man telling another man where he can go? That's just wrong. It's stuck in my craw all day."
"A man gets hit in the head with a gun, it can make him crazy all the rest of his days."

I love that stuff, and Robert Duvall and Kevin Costner deliver it just right. It's probably not how people spoke back then, but it feels like our modern collective vision or hopes of what the wild West was like, just like The Untouchables felt like a dream about the days of bootlegging liquor and Al Capone.

Also, the gunshots in the movie are loud. Very very loud. They snap with percussive impact. The gunfights are realistic, messy. Gunfighters stand close to each other firing away with revolvers and shotguns, and usually they miss. The DVD has pre-earned a spot in my collection.
posted by Eugene Wei at 10:59 AM | link

This is really tempting. I need my own catchphrase.
posted by Eugene Wei at 10:46 AM | link

I'm moving my website to a new host this weekend. It should be straightforward, but then again, nothing ever is. So perhaps this site will suffer its own major blackout for a bit. If so, we'll be back up and running soon enough.

It also means that if you subscribe to my weblog via e-mail, you won't be receiving any more posts. I'm going to investigate the various e-mail list services out there and will e-mail you some directions on how to subscribe again once I've made a decision.
posted by Eugene Wei at 7:40 AM | link

Attended a screening of first-time director Catherine Hardwicke's debut effort, Thirteen. Hardwicke herself was on hand to answer questions afterward.

First things first: Thirteen is very good, as I've recorded elsewhere. Evan Rachel Wood (is this the same Wood from Once and Again?!?) is amazing and utterly convincing as a 13 year old girl struggling against her resentment against her divorced parents, especially her mother and guardian (played by Holly Hunter) and the pressures to fit in with the cool kids at her new school, especially the devious and delinquent Evie (Nikki Reed).

It's a movie that's a marketing nightmare for Hollywood, though. It's a movie which will appeal to teenage girls, but it's rated R. So you hope that their mothers will take them, but the intense storyline centered on a young daughter whose life is raging out of control right under her mother's roof and care is not a message many mothers will enjoy hearing. The male market will be difficult to tap because all the main characters are female. Early reviews of the movie, broken down by demographic, clearly reflect these challenges (admittedly the sample size is small as the movie hasn't opened wide):
Females under 18 rate the movie 9.0 out of 10.0 (parents should wonder why this movie speaks so strongly to them)
Males/Females over 45 rate the movie 1.6 out of 10.0
Surprisingly, Males aged 30-44 rate the movie 6.9 out of 10.0

Hardwicke, only 25(?!) co-wrote the screenplay with Reed in only six days when Reed was only 13 years old, and the events are based on Reed's life. Reed's parents divorced when she was just two years old, and she was raised in Los Angeles. Hardwicke actually dated Reed's father for a while, and that's how she met Reed. Hardwicke has worked with plenty of A-list directors in the past but struggled mightily to get financing to direct her own feature. For that reason alone, I have a lot of sympathy for her.

But I still wouldn't plug Thirteen unless it was worth seeing, and it is. I can't remember another movie that depicted the forces that work on teenagers outside of the home environment with such realism. Parents wonder why their kids turn out the way they do yet rarely understand that their kids leave every morning for school and enter an entirely different universe for more than half the day. In Los Angeles, this alternate universe is even more frightening than elsewhere--I would never let my kids attend the L.A. public school system. All parents-in-training and parents-to-be would do well to watch this movie and read the Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do.
posted by Eugene Wei at 11:52 PM | link

Watched Blue Planet--Seas of Life Part 4 yesterday. Rather, it was on in the background as I scanned slides. I have that distinctly male fascination with nature documentaries (maybe I'm being sexist, but while my guy friends often confess to watching documentaries on the Discovery Channel, I've never had any of my girl friends express a similar habit).

One reason these documentaries are so fascinating is the same reason conservatives decry video games and movies: they depict a healthy dose of murder and violence. Somehow it's acceptable to watch other species displaying the same brutal tendencies. Still, I feel the same sense of voyeuristic embarrassment and horror when shown animals ruthlessly attacking each other.

The "Tides" episode scored low on the violence scale, though I didn't realize that ocean snails would emerge from the sand to surf the tides onto beaches to feed on the flesh of dead fish. The sight of a dozen snails crawling all over the body of a dead fish was like something out of a disturbing arthouse movie.

"Coasts" had an insane body count. Hawks snare seagulls out of the air. A sea lion grabs a penguin and drags it out to sea to thrash its victim violently back and forth to, get this, skin the penguin. A pod of Orcas attack some naive young seal pups, snatching them from the shallow water along a beach. One shot shows a seal pup screaming in pain as an Orca tosses it up and down violently with its mouth. Then, the killer whale drags the still living seal pup out to sea and uses it like a volleyball with the other members of its pod. They take turns picking up the panicked, bleeding seal pup in their mouths and tossing it through the air. After the seal pup dies, the whale uses its tale to launch the limp corpse 30 to 40 feet out of the water through the air.

A day later and I'm still traumatized. That poor seal pup. Is it cruelty if there is no conscious intent?
posted by Eugene Wei at 11:39 PM | link

This week's McSweeney's Brain Exploder (read: brain teaser) is:

JG43, RH46, ET56, LC58, SD59, DM97, AJ98, JL03

Any clues?
posted by Eugene Wei at 10:52 PM | link

This is why Jon Stewart is the best of the TV talk show hosts.
posted by Eugene Wei at 10:59 PM | link

I want to be in Saint-Malo right now, for Festival La Route du Rock. I don't even know where Saint-Malo is, but the fest plays in an 18th century fort and on the beaches there, and that in itself is enough to make me cry. I also know that over the next few days, these are only a fraction of the bands that will be there: Travis (new album coming in October), Hot Hot Heat, 2 Many DJ's, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Audio Bullys, and Death in Vegas (yeah, I know, I only know Days Go By, too, but it's still catchy).

Why is it that all the coolest music fests are always in Europe?
posted by Eugene Wei at 9:23 PM | link

With little fanfare, the DVD of the year was released this week.
posted by Eugene Wei at 8:11 PM | link

To my baby sis Karen, now planting roots in L.A. Her present from me is the above link to a photo which she hates, so please click on it and view it. Ahh, the power of personal publishing.

In reality, I'm just jealous because she has a kickin' social life and (soon) a pad on Hermosa Beach.
posted by Eugene Wei at 12:05 AM | link

The reason my posts from the past few days tend to show up all at once is that by the time I start browsing my newsreader, it's usually after dinner, around 10 or 11 at night. Things I read may spur an idea which I'll jot down, but then I'll get sleepy and lack the energy to finish a grammatically sound, coherent post. So I leave a line or two and return when I'm feeling brighter and committed and finish the thought.

With my job kicking in again, the days are so short. Wake up, work all day, get home, try to fit in a bike ride or movie or some reading, then make some dinner, and then it's 10pm and the day's just about over. I've made a schedule for myself for every night out of the week, and all I can squeeze in is one activity a night at best, and a bit of writing depending on how late I can stay awake.
posted by Eugene Wei at 12:03 AM | link

Nokia is looking for people to play its N-Gage mobile gaming deck in public places and to educate people on the device. It's a marketing technique that's been around for some time now, a creative attempt to use the really connected people of society to kickstart viral growth. Gaming devices are popular targets for this marketing ploy because marketers like to circumvent parents and hit the children directly at school, on playgrounds, etc., inducing the kids to them pester their parents to death at home until said toy shows up under the Christmas tree.

William Gibson draws from the idea in his latest novel Pattern Recognition in which one attractive female character makes a living getting paid to covertly chat up movies, music, and other various products in conversations with people who approach her for conversations.

"Have you heard of this band called...? They're amazing!"
"Have you seen this movie called...? It's unbelievable."

CNN reports that a company called Freedom Tobacco is offering a lifetime supply of cigarettes to comely actresses who agree to smoke their products in public. These women are referred to as leaners.

Call it subsidized artificial word-of-mouth. It's one of those ideas that's both intriguing and spooky. In fact, someday all the most influential bloggers will be sent free product samples in exchange for online plugs (the same way some magazines always publish favorable reviews of every product they receive so that the gravy train keeps flowing). If that ever happened to me, I think I'd remain objective, though the devil is one charming fellow to deal with.
posted by Eugene Wei at 11:53 PM | link

An interesting idea: spam filters that pound spammer's URLs and overload their servers. My e-mail spam is fairly under control, at least on my home e-mail account, but now various forms on my website are being spammed to death. Everyone gives lawyers and used car salesman a bad name, but spammers have to be, among human life forms, the lowest of the low. I'm ready and willing to participate in anything to hit these spammers back where it hurts.
posted by Eugene Wei at 11:45 PM | link

I am so brave, to live in Seattle. I know you're all quite concerned.
posted by Eugene Wei at 11:08 PM | link

Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett's conglomerate of various businesses, announced earnings on Friday. From a dollar value perspective it makes little difference in one's investment return, but since Berkshire Hathaway has never split, its stock price is ridiculously high. Its earnings per share figures are also sound like Monopoly money--its EPS on Friday was $1,452 per share (pdf earnings release).

If Berkshire had a stock option or bonus program, anyone would be thrilled to death to get even a single option or share.
posted by Eugene Wei at 5:03 PM | link

Two movies I saw this past weekend presented two mythical French archetypes, one a fantasy and one a nightmare. Which is which depends on your sexual preferences, I suppose.

S.W.A.T. featured Olivier Martinez. I'm a guy, so Olivier is for me what he is for most American males, our greatest fear. Rugged European good looks, long hair, and a suave French accent. When your girlfriend takes that trip with her girlfriends to Europe and leave you behind, Olivier is the guy who awakens you in the middle of the night in a cold sweat as you try to clear your mind of the vision of your girlfriend giggling as Olivier nibbles her ear. That tragic possiblity was taken to the extreme in Unfaithful, in which he stole our own sexy-girl-next-door sweetheart Diane Lane. I could barely watch.

Fortunately, Olivier did little such plundering in S.W.A.T., though everytime I see him I still want to chop his hair. And the next day, my visual palate was refreshed by the mythological Venus of American male mythology, the shapely young Lolita, just blossoming into a sexual predator, the beguiling French coquette. Playing her was Ludivine Sagnier in the indie hit Swimming Pool.

Within mere moments of appearing on screen, Sagnier is brazenly flitting about all four corners of the movie screen nude with the confidence of a European seasoned on the clothing-strongly-frowned-upon beaches of the Cote D'Azur. It helps that she has a perfect figure. She seduced the camera so often and with such gusto that it became comical--the audience started to giggle everytime she popped up naked again. We laughed, but in delight--it's impossible to imagine any young American actress pulling off the performance with anywhere near Sagnier's audacity and fearlessness.

All this in a movie about the process of writing fiction, no less. At some point in the movie, it finally made sense to me, why her character was so over the top. No, it wasn't necessarily because all French girls behave this way, but because...well, to explain would be to ruin the movie. Swimming Pool is not a great movie, but it is a fun, sexy, humorous mystery worth catching if it's still playing in your neighborhood.

Someday I may have to travel to France with a wife, and it will be with a certain tinge of sadness and fear, what with all the Ludivine's and Olivier's lurking at the next corner cafe.
posted by Eugene Wei at 9:59 AM | link

Sometimes it takes a while to buy into the hype, and sometimes it's worth it. Fever to Tell by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs is damn good. It tops my car CD changer charts.
posted by Eugene Wei at 8:08 PM | link

A guy who describes himself as "just a regular guy living in New York City (Go Yankees!) who wants a larger penis" is documenting in a weblog his trial with some penis enlargement pills he found on the web.

The ability to reach a large audience cheaply and simply via the web has given the necessary impetus for citizens everywhere to put on their journalistic shoes on behalf of their fellow man. Someone should just create a site that just hosts a list of random investigative journalism projects they'd like to see someone, anyone, carry out and document online. Chances are someone is just crazy and bored enough to follow up on just about anything.
posted by Eugene Wei at 7:09 PM | link

The lead baddie in S.W.A.T. looks like an old, evil Elijah Wood. Like a Wood who, after the luster of the LOTR trilogy wears off and depressed over the subsequent lack of attention, becomes alcoholic, finally ages about 10 years, and ends up turning to a life of crime.

S.W.A.T. does nothing to disprove the theory that any movie which considers L.L. Cool J a thespian is likely to stink. I loved the old TV show; my cousin Chuck and I watched it religiously one summer while staying at our aunt's house in San Diego. It was part of the daily regimen. I don't remember much about the show, and if I saw it today I'm sure I'd be disappointed. Memory has a way of aging everything like wine. But I do remember the creative special tactics that the TV show featured every episode, and none of those were on display in the movie. The fight scenes in the movie are straight shoot-em ups, and the director's crazed cutting and camera angles confuse instead of clarifying the action.

The only fun to be had is listening to Elliot Goldenthal's 589 variations on the old S.W.A.T. theme song (as anyone who's seen the trailer knows, the characters even hum the tune at one moment, one of several post-modern winks at the audience) and watching Michelle Rodriguez's 685 new variations of her trademark scowl. In the spirit of Paul Ekman's FACS test, which seems to be top of mind for me these days, I created a Michelle Rodriguez FACS test (thanks to the Michelle Rodriguez Underground for the pics).


posted by Eugene Wei at 1:07 AM | link

Those who know me well know my obsession with the giant squid. Therefore I will be following this expedition closely. Excerpt:

Dr O'Shea has found males implanted with their own spermatophores.

"If we are talking about a 200kg squid, this is an animal with a 20g brain," he told New Scientist.

"It's not very bright and it is trying to coordinate a metre-long penis.

"He's going to get a bit confused."

Thanks to Metafilter for the link.
posted by Eugene Wei at 11:47 PM | link

Matilda: I became...
Hansel: What?
Matilda: Bulimic.
Derek Zoolander: You can read minds?

from Zoolander

A follow-up to the post on mindreading which referenced Steven Johnson's new book and Malcolm Gladwell's article from The New Yorker. Paul Ekman, one of the key figures mentioned in the Gladwell article, was interviewed in the NYTimes. Turns out Ekman's facial reading skills are in high demand from everyone from animators to the FBI.

Excerpt:

Q. One of your most fascinating findings is that if a person merely arranges his face into a certain expression, he will actually feel the corresponding emotion. In other words, emotions work from the outside in as well as the inside out. Is happiness really as simple as putting on a happy face?
A. In a very limited way, yes. The trick with happiness is that while everybody can smile, most people can't move one crucial muscle around the eyes that must be moved to generate the physiology of happiness. With anger or disgust, though, everybody can make the right facial movements and turn on the physical sensations of those emotions.

I'm seriously considering purchasing the FACS training CD. Does anyone want to split the cost with me? Just think, we'll become gifted mindreaders, able to tell when people are lying to us. How many chances in life do you have to gain a superpower?

In Emotions Revealed, Ekman posits the existence of display rules. That is, while all humans are evolutionarily endowed with the same emotional expressions, different societies and cultures might teach them rules about when it's appropriate to use those expressions.

Ekman conducted an experiment in which he showed Japanese and Americans videos of surgeries and accidents. When they were alone, both sets of people displayed the same negative facial expressions, but when the Japanese were in the presence of a scientist they masked their negative reactions with a smile.

This makes me wonder whether or not my American upbringing has clouded my response to acting. I'm biased towards American actors, generally. On the whole, I think America has more good actors than other countries. But perhaps that's because I'm biased towards a more emotive school of expression. This may explain why I find so much of Asian acting to be too understated, or French acting to be too stern. It certainly makes it more difficult to critique foreign movies if one misunderstands why a character is displaying a certain expression in a particular context.

(Maybe Keanu Reeves is considered a great actor by some societies? Maybe the Wachowski brothers' fascination with Asian cinema explains why all the actors maintain a facial expression of zen placidity throughout The Matrix: Reloaded)

The universality of emotional expression reaffirms the utility of emoticons, also. It would be frightening to think that =) might be interpreted as anger by another reader. Someone should conduct a test like the "Eyes tell all" test, but with emoticons.
posted by Eugene Wei at 10:46 PM | link

This week's New Yorker mentioned that it existed, so I checked it out, and indeed, former ImClone founder and Martha Stewart buddy Sam Waksal has an Amazon.com wishlist. Sam is currently in prison for insider trading, and last I checked, Martha Stewart was on trial for that crime as well.

Waksal has generous friends and family: all but three items off of his long reading list have been purchased, and the three that remain are not available.

It got me curious to see if anyone else famous had searchable wishlists. Of course, it's possible to create phony wishlists for people, but some of these look legit:

Steve Jobs (just one item on his list--what to get the man who has everything?)
Dean Kamen (ditto)
Jeff Bezos (this one I know is real)

There are probably more, but I'm too tired to search for them. If you come across any, let me know.

I wouldn't mind being famous. Then perhaps random people would buy me things off of my wishlist.
posted by Eugene Wei at 11:03 PM | link

I went to type a cent sign today and realized that it isn't on the keyboard. For some reason it surprised me. I remember typing school papers on my dad's Osborne computer and using the cent sign plenty of times. I can't remember where it was, but it was definitely on the keyboard.

Someday we'll explain the cent sign to our kids who will never have had to carry change or coins because they grew up using debit or smart cards as cash.
posted by Eugene Wei at 8:36 PM | link

Steven Johnson posted an excerpt from his upcoming new book, describing human's remarkable ability to mind-read. In it, he takes a test in which he's presented a series of pictures of just people's eyes and is asked to select what emotion is being expressed. A comment on that post led to this test which I took and scored a 30 on.

Not suprisingly, all the ones I missed were of women. The emotions and thoughts of the fairer sex remain a mystery to me. I was especially disappointed to have misread the two women who were "interested" and "flirtatious."

This whole thread recalled an interesting article by Malcolm Gladwell on just this very topic. And it also explains, perhaps, why so many interviewers know within moments of meeting a candidate whether or not they're going to hire them.
posted by Eugene Wei at 8:30 PM | link

Ready for download by Windows users.
posted by Eugene Wei at 1:38 AM | link

I had to retire my site's guestbook because it got hit with a wave of spam from the usual e-mail spam suspects: home mortgages, adult sites, etc. Is there nothing sacred in this world?

Still, if you're dropping by for a visit for the first time, drop me an e-mail or leave a comment on my weblog. Sometimes it feels like one is on a stage, in a spotlight, and can't see anyone in the audience.
posted by Eugene Wei at 1:38 AM | link

American Scientist once published their list of the twelve greatest scientific mongraphs of the 20th century. I couldn't find the list on their site anymore but found enough mentions of it to cobble together an Amazon-linked booklist. For reasons not worth delving into, I felt like perusing that particular list again today.

Some of these books are outrageously expensive, some are out of print, some can only be bought used. Many are somewhat outdated now, but they're like LPs--they're worth collecting for their historical aura.

John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern: Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (1944)

Paul Dirac: The Principles of Quantum Mechanics (1930)

Albert Einstein: The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein (1930)

Benoit B. Mandelbrot: Fractals: Form, Chance, and Dimension (1977)

Linus Pauling: The Nature of the Chemical Bond and the Structure of Molecules and Crystals; An Introduction to Modern Structural Chemistry (1939)

Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead: Principia Mathematica 3 Vol. Set (1910-13)

Cyril Smith: Search For Structure (1981)

Norbert Weiner: Cybernetics (1948)

R. B. Woodward and Roald Hoffmann: Conservation of Orbital Symmetry (1970)

Albert Einstein: The Meaning of Relativity (1922)

Richard Feynman: QED (1985)

Donald Knuth: The Art of Computer Programming: Volumes 1-3 Boxed Set (1968)


Another more recent list is the 20 greatest engineering achievements of the 20th century:

1. Electrification
2. Automobile
3. Airplane
4. Water Supply and Distribution
5. Electronics
6. Radio and Television
7. Agricultural Mechanization
8. Computers
9. Telephone
10. Air Conditioning and Refrigeration
11. Highways
12. Spacecraft
13. Internet
14. Imaging
15. Household Appliances
16. Health Technologies
17. Petroleum and Petrochemical Technologies
18. Laser and Fiber Optics
19. Nuclear Technologies
20. High-performance Materials

That's a good list. Maybe I'd add credit cards. Make that airline mile credit cards.
posted by Eugene Wei at 1:03 AM | link

The NYTimes has an article on the pricing bifurcation in the U.S. home market: your money can either buy you a mansion in a small town or a hut in a big city (NY, SF, Chicago, Boston, LA, etc.). I'm experiencing that reality firsthand as I delve into the housing market. For the price of a 3BR/2B home in the Seattle metro area I'll get a house about half the size of the last home I lived in before I left Naperville for college.

Of course, there was less to do in Naperville. A wild night out involved cruising in our parent's cars around the local McDonald's parking lot to see which of our classmates was getting arrested, or sneaking over a fence and past guard dogs to climb up the local landfill to look at the stars. I'm not kidding, I did that once. The sense of exhilaration my cousin, friend, and I felt upon returning from our illicit quest to the top of a giant mound of dirt burying tons of human refuse--only Jason and his surviving Argonauts could empathize.
posted by Eugene Wei at 11:04 PM | link

MSN Money offers a nifty feature for researching publicly traded companies called Key Developments. Type in a ticker and click on the Key Developments link and you get a list of the company's most important press clips. I tried it for Amazon, and it returned a solid list.
posted by Eugene Wei at 1:33 PM | link

The newest Lance Armstrong Nike commercial Who Says I Can't?, starring Jerry Seinfeld, M.C. Hammer, Lyle Lovett, Mariano Rivera, and Andre Agassi, among others, is online at NikeCycling. It's a bit difficult to navigate to.

Disable your pop-up stopper or killer and then surf to NikeCycling.com. Wait about 10 seconds for the initial flash pop-up screen to go away, and then at the bottom there's a line that reads SEE WHAT I CAN DO > HERE. Click on the HERE and it will play the Quicktime Video.
posted by Eugene Wei at 11:34 PM | link

Some clips from the controversial upcoming here in RealVideo and Windows Media formats. It doesn't open until next March or April, but already it has incited a heated debate (I wanted to say "a passionate debate" but decided to avoid the potentially insensitive pun).

After having read an early draft script, some claim the movie is anti-Semitic and have sent Gibson a list of requested changes. Gibson has screened the movie for some of his friends but has not and will not allow the protesters to see the movie until it opens wide and they cough up $9 a piece.

There are some topics on which, if you have an artistic vision, no matter what it is, you will turn yourself into a human lightning rod. I'm speaking, of course, of Gigli.

Another random movie note--a news clip from IMDB:

"Final 'Lord of the Rings' Film Sets Record for Advance Sales in Japan

It doesn't open in Japan until the spring of next year, but Japanese distributor Nippon Herald Films said Tuesday that it sold a record 13,645 advanced tickets to The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King on Saturday. The sale broke the previous record for one-day advance sales in Japan set by Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets with 11,220 tickets sold."

Some people already have tickets to LOTR: ROTK? Grrrrr.
posted by Eugene Wei at 10:22 PM | link

A passage of this proposed legislation would have been nice before my sabbatical, when I got about 47 shots in my arms and butt, costing me several hundred dollars.
posted by Eugene Wei at 11:22 PM | link

Netflix sent me an e-mail survey today, asking about how likely I'd be to purchase a destructible DVD. Disney (Buena Vista Home Entertainment) home video earlier announced their plans to issue destructible/disposable DVDs based on Flexplay technology. Open the DVD and 48 hours later the surface oxidizes enough to render the DVD unplayable.

The idea for Netflix or other "rentailers" would be to ship those to customers instead of the normal DVDs, saving Netflix the return postage costs and returns processing infrastructure burden.

Unfortunately, while the idea sounds economically clever, I would never commit even the measly sum of $3 for such a DVD because I rarely have the time to finish a movie in 48 hours. It usually takes me a few days to finish a movie when I'm working.

Of course, in other avenues of life I routinely spend on goods that depreciate in value rapidly. Take bananas. Out of a bunch of six bananas, usually two end up as black corpses.
posted by Eugene Wei at 9:27 PM | link

A highly enjoyable several hours was had this weekend reading The Curious Incident of the Dog at Night-Time by Mark Haddon while listening to the score to The Hours by Philip Glass on repeat. I had only planned to start this short novel, and then the next thing I knew I had finished it. It's been a long time since that happened to me with a work of fiction. If my favorite novel of all time, Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, is a tale told by an idio, then The Curious Incident of the Dog at Night-Time is a tale told by an idiot savant (actually an autistic boy).
posted by Eugene Wei at 1:29 AM | link

Weblog posts are chronologically oriented from newest to oldest, top to bottom. So I want to review this weekend of celebrations in reverse order so the latest news is up top. This post pays tribute to the syndicated sports weekly television show George Michael Sports Machine (no, you non-sports fans, not that George Michael). Back before cable TV and Sportscenter made cross-country sports highlights an hourly affair, my favorite wrap-up of the weekend in sports was the half hour of highlights hosted by George Michael on Sunday nights. His gimmick was that he stood next to this gigantic machine which looked like a prop from a 1960's science fiction movie UFO, with reels and gargantuan plastic nobs and buttons. Whenever he introduced a highlight, he'd press a button on the machine as if launching the video clip. Cheesy and yet so alluring to the male mind when paired with sports clips and Michael's melodramatic monologue.

If you used to watch the George Michael Sports Machine, you'll now want to imagine his commanding voice...

"Our first stop, a dock along the the coast of Puget Sound. A group of friends gathered to celebrate a birthday, but then, an unexpected bonus! On the scene arrived...

But something was different. Look at the highlighted area in this replay [sorry, you'll have to imagine a slow-motion video clip]; yes, that's right, on Lynn's left hand, it's difficult to miss...a huge ass rock, glittering in the late afternoon sun. That's right, People Magazine's Sexiest Man of the Year is now off the market as he popped the question to his pop star girlfriend L.Mill in the San Juans this weekend during a kayaking trip. Fans expecting a wonderful sailing trip to celebrate a birthday (more on that in a second) were stunned and delighted by this bonus surprise. Like putting a few quarters into the vending machine and having two bags of chips leap from the fifth story instead of just one.

[My first gift to them will be to find a better photo than this quick shot of them munching on fries (they did not have the munchies, to head off the suspicions of some of you cynics), snapped during a trip I took with them to...

...The Gorge. Great people, happy times! Okay, now back to the George Michael Sports Machine.]

Now, we fast forward just a few minutes later. Let's go there thanks to the Sports Machine [George hits a fake button]. Kate organized a sailing trip and dinner for a group of her friends because today, Sunday the third of August, was Laura's birthday. Laura and her friends took a relaxing two hour sailing trip around Puget Sound on a 70 foot sailboat, then dined afterwards at The Islander which took over the facilities formerly owned by Leo Melina's. Onlookers reported that the birthday girl was in high spirits, even taking command of the sailboat at times and stopping to sign some autographs before whisking away in a darkened limo after dinner.

[Laura is commemorating her 30th birthday with a vacation titled 30 days of fun, and it includes a biking trip through Italy, mostly Sardinia. I have negative vacation time and I'm immensely jealous. Someday I'd like to ride the Dolomites. Maybe I need a 30 days of fun trip myself; after all, the next decade is just around the year's end for me.]

Crank the Sports Machine back yet further, to Friday evening [George flips a fake switch and the dummy reels start turning]. The scene? The deck of Jason's mansion in Queen Anne. Juli, fresh having retired from Amazon to pursue a freelance illustration career, was expecting a nice dinner out with her husband Todd at a Spanish restaurant. Funny, she thought, I don't recall a Spanish restaurant here on this residential street in Queen Anne.

The first sign that things were not what they appeared was when she spotted friend and noted billionaire playboy Eugene [that's me] getting out of his car. And then, after walking up a few steps, she realized they were headed to Jason's house. The final clue? A giant cooking tray set up on the sidewalk by Jason's deck. Yes, this was no Spanish restaurant but a surprise party to celebrate Juli's new freelance career. And who had Todd invited but the Paella King of Seattle himself! Not only that, but Jason had invited Kevin (a fellow Amazonian) and his St. Louis folk rock band Oat Soda to play on his deck in rehearsal for their gig at Seafair the next day. It was the hottest ticket in town. Celebs ranging from Tom Skerritt to Ian Ziering to Penelope Cruz were spotted downing paella and some of Todd's special homemade white wine sangria.

Something must have been in that sangria, too, because the party soon spun madly out of control. As soon as Oat Soda started playing...

...host Hugh Hefner, errr, Jason, began leading the crowd in chants of, "The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire!"

Meanwhile, retired billionaire playboy (there are a lot of those in this story) Dan and his fiancee Lori suddenly burst out in an Irish jig...

Dan later tore away his shorts to reveal a kilt on underneath, emblazoned with the Confederate flag. When he tried to tear even that away, security guards dragged him away.

Meanwhile, inside, leggy European model Margo shocked onlookers by throwing off her Blahniks and dropping to the ground to do the retro dance move "the caterpillar" across Jason's living room floor.

It was a crazy party that ended only after the police were called in to break things up after a few revelers who had formed a mosh pit leaped off the deck and landed in the neighbor's hot tub.

[The paella was delicious, and Oat Soda was a lot of fun, BTW. Both should definitely be on the list of party planners in Seattle.]

That's it for the George Michael Sports Machine. Hello to affiliates WXBQ in Los Angeles, KRZQ in Omaha, and WBBC in Shreveport. See you next weekend.

[An unexpectedly eventful and busy weekend. I'm so so happy for Juli, Laura, and Bill and Lynn. Good karma all around. Somehow, in between I managed to fit in a round of golf at Port Ludlow where I promptly shot 114, the only real bummer of the weekend. I don't know how, but on the front nine I got the shanks and lost something like 8 golf balls. It's really frustrating because I finally started putting well and averaged two putts a hole. I'm going to blame the sangria.]
posted by Eugene Wei at 12:27 AM | link