Gondry's Steriogram video
Michel Gondry's newest music video (for Steriogram's Walkie Talkie Man) is another feather in his cap.
We cool? Yeah, we cool
I finally ticked last week's episode of The Apprentice off of the Tivo List. I thought the way Troy and Kwame handled the Boardroom confrontation, even if it contained a few too many fist slaps and hugs, was pretty damn cool. They were buds, but that didn't stop them from expressing in a straightforward manner their honest opinion of each other's strengths and weaknesses. I've been in the business world nearly a decade and it's rare to find managers who can do that in the real world! I agreed with what both of them said, too: Kwame said Troy wouldn't be great as a CFO but would do well in sales, and Troy said Kwame hadn't stepped up to lead enough. Compare that with Katrina and Ereka covering for each other in the Boardroom. [Random sidenote: I was in Miami for James's bachelor party this weekend, and a party at one of the clubs in South Beach was hosted by none other than "Katrina and Ereka, The Apprentice Girls!!!" Fourteen minutes and counting, you two. We passed.]
They didn't let Trump or any of his minions turn them against each other (Trump goaded Kwame, "Your buddy screwed you" and Kwame replied without hesitation: "Not at all."), and when all was said and done, they shook hands and wished each other luck. They handled it with a maturity that none of the other contestants have exercised in the boardroom (no more capitalizing "boardroom." I mean, really, it's the cheesiest looking boardroom set ever), especially the fireballs like Omarosa, Jessie, and Ereka. My favorite exchange was their last before their boardroom showdown:
The Idaho Dynamo is going to be okay.
Lest we think too much class had entered the show, however, tomorrow's episode features the return of Omarosa. Sweet.
They didn't let Trump or any of his minions turn them against each other (Trump goaded Kwame, "Your buddy screwed you" and Kwame replied without hesitation: "Not at all."), and when all was said and done, they shook hands and wished each other luck. They handled it with a maturity that none of the other contestants have exercised in the boardroom (no more capitalizing "boardroom." I mean, really, it's the cheesiest looking boardroom set ever), especially the fireballs like Omarosa, Jessie, and Ereka. My favorite exchange was their last before their boardroom showdown:
Troy: "I'm gonna cut you quick and fast."I thought Troy should've stayed, but really, after the classy way they dealt with a really difficult situation, I would've been sad to see either of them go. You think I'm joking, but I'm not. This was genuine nobility in the treacherous world of reality television, like two gunfighters in a John Woo movie, evacuating innocent bystanders and then sliding guns over to each other to initiate a fair showdown.
Kwame: "That's it, that's it."
The Idaho Dynamo is going to be okay.
Lest we think too much class had entered the show, however, tomorrow's episode features the return of Omarosa. Sweet.
A close call for the top seed
Amy nearly got knocked out of the Apprentice tourney last night. She suffered her first loss and failed to impress with a terrible promotion idea. $300 car rental giveaway? Even non high-rollers would fail to find that enticing in a casino where million dollar slot machine jackpots are advertised everywhere in lights.
Also, and this may be sneaky editing on the part of the show, but it sure seemed as if Amy lied in the boardroom when she said that she didn't recall who came up with that idea. The earlier scene at the car dealership seemed to indicate that it was Amy's idea.
Katrina exited, as expected, though with less snarling than I'd anticipated. I thought she'd tear into Amy but the two of them were fairly diplomatic in the Boardroom, which is unfortunate for the show's drama quotient. So all the top seeds advanced to the Final Five.
I have to rejigger the seeds after seeing a more aggressive, competitive, and feisty Bill this week. Amy named him as her top competitor (ooh, take a cold shower Nick), and the show implied that he came up with the winning strategy of targeting the high rollers, displaying some of his gambling saavy relative to Idaho Troy and his sidekick HBS BS'er and Manhattan Wall Street legend Kwame Jackson:
1. Amy: tough round for the top seed. Not picked during team re-balancing, culpable for a terrible promotion idea, and duplicitous in the boardroom. Still in the Don's favor, though. It would be shocking if she didn't survive to the final round showdown.
2. Bill: Stepping up. Perhaps he's simply been playing coy all this time. He called out Troy for a showdown at high noon (during a private interview on camera, but at least it's out there now) and chased off the other team's models from the VIP check-in area. Were those celebratory cigars from that start-up of his? He's impressed me as the smartest of all the candidates thus far.
3. Troy: the country bumpkin is a fish out of water when not doing sales. He's not really president material.
4. Nick: minimal screen-time this week, except while trying to pull off the biggest sales job of his career: hawking himself to Amy. His facial expression when Amy named Bill as her toughest competitor was fantastic.
5. Kwame: skipped out on work to visit the circus with Troy, and still spends most of his time high-fiving with his Idaho homeboy who he refers to as T-Roy.
Also, and this may be sneaky editing on the part of the show, but it sure seemed as if Amy lied in the boardroom when she said that she didn't recall who came up with that idea. The earlier scene at the car dealership seemed to indicate that it was Amy's idea.
Katrina exited, as expected, though with less snarling than I'd anticipated. I thought she'd tear into Amy but the two of them were fairly diplomatic in the Boardroom, which is unfortunate for the show's drama quotient. So all the top seeds advanced to the Final Five.
I have to rejigger the seeds after seeing a more aggressive, competitive, and feisty Bill this week. Amy named him as her top competitor (ooh, take a cold shower Nick), and the show implied that he came up with the winning strategy of targeting the high rollers, displaying some of his gambling saavy relative to Idaho Troy and his sidekick HBS BS'er and Manhattan Wall Street legend Kwame Jackson:
1. Amy: tough round for the top seed. Not picked during team re-balancing, culpable for a terrible promotion idea, and duplicitous in the boardroom. Still in the Don's favor, though. It would be shocking if she didn't survive to the final round showdown.
2. Bill: Stepping up. Perhaps he's simply been playing coy all this time. He called out Troy for a showdown at high noon (during a private interview on camera, but at least it's out there now) and chased off the other team's models from the VIP check-in area. Were those celebratory cigars from that start-up of his? He's impressed me as the smartest of all the candidates thus far.
3. Troy: the country bumpkin is a fish out of water when not doing sales. He's not really president material.
4. Nick: minimal screen-time this week, except while trying to pull off the biggest sales job of his career: hawking himself to Amy. His facial expression when Amy named Bill as her toughest competitor was fantastic.
5. Kwame: skipped out on work to visit the circus with Troy, and still spends most of his time high-fiving with his Idaho homeboy who he refers to as T-Roy.
The Sweet Six
I barely managed to fill out my bracket this morning. Yes, my Apprentice bracket. Here are my odds on the remainder of the tourney.
First, a survey of the carnage to date:
Bowie/Jason/David
We never really knew you, flattened as you were by the women's steamroller of shameless sex appeal.
Sam
The Apprentice would not be as much fun if everyone was a strong candidate. That might be better for Trump's business (the 800-pound gorilla in the corner of the boardroom, still to be acknowledged, is what business the Apprentice will actually run), but if everyone in the early rounds of American Idol were rigorously pre-screened, the show wouldn't have William Hungs to parade in commercials and outtakes, tarred and feathered, and Simon Cowell couldn't use his snarky voice. Early rounds of elimination-style reality shows need their human disasters, and so let's all pay tribute to the Sam's of the world who whore themselves for their fifteen minutes of fame so that we can have 15 minutes of self-satisfied derisive laughter around the water cooler.
My favorite moment remains the time Sam was waiting outside the boardroom and pantomined the human evolutionary chart by lying prone on the ground, getting on his hands and knees, then standing up hunched over, and finally standing tall as Homo Erectus.
Kristi
When she finally got pulled into the Boardroom, Trump expressed amazement because she had "shown so much" up until then. Huh? I didn't think she'd showed anything, other than her long legs in one of her numerous interview spots in the early episodes. Maybe Trump was referring to all she had shown in her cameo in Red Shoe Diaries 17.
Tammy
For calling Regis Phil and for driving Carson Daly to the edge (which for him manifests itself as a wry comment and an arched eyebrow or two) by constantly pushing him to give his pal Tiger Woods a call to propose a round of golf, Tammy deserves special commendation for pop culture obliviousness (Omarosa is a contender in this category as well for not being able to pronounce Isaac Mizrahi's name; these sure are some sheltered people). She got kicked out for extreme disloyalty that Trump found "obnoxious," but I thought her honesty was refreshing. However, I still don't understand her comment about the team being duped.
Katrina and Troy both wanted to renovate the same apartment, and Katrina insisted they write down their choices on a piece of paper. Why that was necessary I have no idea. Instead of jotting down one of the apartments, Troy wrote down "whatever you want" on his paper, driving Katrina to try to reduce him to ashes with laserbeams from her eyes. So they flipped a coin for it and Troy won. How is a flipping a coin a dupe? He had said he wanted the second apartment before he eavesdropped on Katrina's conversation with her team and heard her choose the same place.
Jessie
The first to beg for her life in the Boardroom. ("Please don't fire me Mr. Trump!") Trump did say to Kristi that he was disappointed she didn't fight for herself in the Boardroom, but begging seems so undignified.
Ereka
Temper, temper. Actually, temper, temper, temper. Ereka was an emotional active volcano the entire time, obviously not taking cues from the steely demeanor of man-eater and Trump left-hand lieutenant Carolyn Kepcher (one of the most imposing women to ever grace the small screen). Her open-the-kimono sales pitch for Trump Ice ("Hi, we're being tasked with creating buzz for Trump Ice. Would you like to buy a few pallets?") was like something a third-grade girl scout would conjure up: "If we sell the most Thin Mints our troop gets to go on a trip to Disneyland!" Her obvious preferential treatment of twin sister/gal pal Katrina and her sly attempt at forming a Survivor coalition with Bill marked her as a schemer and a lousy leader who places personal friendships above actual performance.
Don't take this harsh criticism as meaning I wouldn't tune in to a special Apprentice 1 on 1 competition special episode between Omarosa and Ereka for the right to be the apprentice to the Apprentice.
Omarosa
The first several episodes, I wasn't as put off by her arrogance as many were. If she could back up her 'tude with some productivity, she'd be nothing less than another version of the Donald. But it turned out to be all bluster. Her hypochondriactic tendencies after the plaster/cement from the grassy knoll gave her a "concussion" was childish, her negotiating skills while trying to sell Trump Ice were amateurish, and when she didn't feel like dealing with members of her team she'd hang up on them and leave them shouting into their cellphone communicators on the sidewalk. An unmitigated disaster.
For entertainment value, though, she's up there with Sam, Nick, and Troy. Her Boardroom breakdown guaranteed her enshrinement in the Reality Show pantheon, and really, is that so terrible a fate? The size of the delta between her the business woman she sees in the mirror and the one we see through the tube may be as large of that of Sam or Nick.
Heidi
Another of the female hotheads. Not since Tony Soprano's mistresses have we encountered such an assemblage of female rage. Heidi is, by self-proclamation, feisty. On her good days, she's that and also hard-working. On her bad days she's constantly cussing and ranting and driving everyone nuts because she's letting someone else drive her nuts. In other words, she's a useful worker bee (if you could tolerate her constant griping) but not management material.
Here's hoping her mom makes it out of cancer treatment okay, though.
On to the Sweet Six. Odds in parentheses...
Katrina (50-1)
Soon she'll have a lot of free time to join her girlfriend Ereka to simmer and seeth over the injustice of it all. If she hadn't opened her mouth to kiss Ereka's ass in the Boardroom after the Trump Ice debacle, perhaps Trump would have forgotten about her tantrums after the apartment renovation episode. As it is, she's too much of a hothead to be leading any business unit.
She criticized Bill for capitalizing on her sex appeal in the pedicab assignment, forgetting she was parading around the sidewalks of Times Square in twenty-inch heels the week of the Planet Hollywood competition.
Kwame (20-1)
The pedigreed MBA hasn't show much thus far except for realizing that the price of gold is not really negotiable while the price of a Callaway Big Bertha is. He doesn't seem to offend anyone else--that Omarosa was willing to cry on his shoulder is his greatest accomplishment to date--but he also hasn't displayed the spark or leadership or insight that you'd expect from a Harvard Business School grad. At least he could flash some trademark HBS ego from time to time. We need more drama, Kwame. Don't go quiet into that good night.
Nick (15-1)
I've never met a copier salesman, but I can grok Nick if you replace "copier" with "used-car." His delusions of sales grandeur exploded in the Trump Ice episode in which he made the analogy Nick:sales as Pope:prayer and then proceeded to strike out with a distributor. Then, in the Boardroom, he professed to bringing a certain "charisma" and "energy" to his sales pitches. For someone who does sales for a living, his demeanor during his pitches screamed smarmy sales guy, and that's either to be expected or quite surprising. What it doesn't scream is Apprentice.
Nick's not an idiot, though, and he showed himself a good judge of talent when they first broke up the boys and the girls. Some leaders succeed by surrounding themselves with good people and delegating tasks appropriately. Trump damned him with faint praise during his 10 minute visit to Trump's palace, a reward for winning the art auction (I kept waiting for Trump to extend the back of his hand and allow Nick to kneel and kiss it). Trump said that even when he said that Nick was doing bad, he wasn't doing that bad. That's pretty bad.
At this point, Nick most optimistic scenario is that he ends up dating Amy who ends up as Trump's Apprentice.
Bill (10-1)
Bill is like Kwame and Amy in that he's agreeable and reasonable. Is he a leader? He hasn't shown himself to be assertive or decisive. He needs to trust his own thinking and step forward more. Self-confidence attracts those who lack it.
Troy (5-1)
Ah, the sneaky fox from Idaho, the "country bumpkin" with the saavy of the gifted human charmer. His removal of his belt before the meeting with the Fab Five from Queer Eye didn't accomplish as much as he claimed, but it demonstrated his ability to read others and react appropriately. Is he equipped to lead a company, though? Doubtful. He needs to head up sales, though. He's a closer.
Amy (3-1)
Can she pull off the undefeated Apprentice season? In her own quiet way, she's a very cunning diplomat who has managed to avoid making any strong enemies, and she's even attracted a puppy dog in Nick. She hasn't shown any overt leadership or brilliant ideas to remember her by (advertising on the back of the pedicabs was smart but an obvious one; not surprisingly, it came from the one contestant with Internet experience since that was the only business model of hundreds of Internet flameouts), but she hasn't made any obvious mistakes (her seeming interest in Nick is her worst display of judgment thus far) and she's clearly the player of choice among her teammates. Trump was right: if she's everyone else's first choice as a teammate everytime there's a redraft, then they've already elected her the strongest leader. I'd like to see her lead a team one of these weeks, and I'd like to see someone step up to challenge her.
First, a survey of the carnage to date:
Bowie/Jason/David
We never really knew you, flattened as you were by the women's steamroller of shameless sex appeal.
Sam
The Apprentice would not be as much fun if everyone was a strong candidate. That might be better for Trump's business (the 800-pound gorilla in the corner of the boardroom, still to be acknowledged, is what business the Apprentice will actually run), but if everyone in the early rounds of American Idol were rigorously pre-screened, the show wouldn't have William Hungs to parade in commercials and outtakes, tarred and feathered, and Simon Cowell couldn't use his snarky voice. Early rounds of elimination-style reality shows need their human disasters, and so let's all pay tribute to the Sam's of the world who whore themselves for their fifteen minutes of fame so that we can have 15 minutes of self-satisfied derisive laughter around the water cooler.
My favorite moment remains the time Sam was waiting outside the boardroom and pantomined the human evolutionary chart by lying prone on the ground, getting on his hands and knees, then standing up hunched over, and finally standing tall as Homo Erectus.
Kristi
When she finally got pulled into the Boardroom, Trump expressed amazement because she had "shown so much" up until then. Huh? I didn't think she'd showed anything, other than her long legs in one of her numerous interview spots in the early episodes. Maybe Trump was referring to all she had shown in her cameo in Red Shoe Diaries 17.
Tammy
For calling Regis Phil and for driving Carson Daly to the edge (which for him manifests itself as a wry comment and an arched eyebrow or two) by constantly pushing him to give his pal Tiger Woods a call to propose a round of golf, Tammy deserves special commendation for pop culture obliviousness (Omarosa is a contender in this category as well for not being able to pronounce Isaac Mizrahi's name; these sure are some sheltered people). She got kicked out for extreme disloyalty that Trump found "obnoxious," but I thought her honesty was refreshing. However, I still don't understand her comment about the team being duped.
Katrina and Troy both wanted to renovate the same apartment, and Katrina insisted they write down their choices on a piece of paper. Why that was necessary I have no idea. Instead of jotting down one of the apartments, Troy wrote down "whatever you want" on his paper, driving Katrina to try to reduce him to ashes with laserbeams from her eyes. So they flipped a coin for it and Troy won. How is a flipping a coin a dupe? He had said he wanted the second apartment before he eavesdropped on Katrina's conversation with her team and heard her choose the same place.
Jessie
The first to beg for her life in the Boardroom. ("Please don't fire me Mr. Trump!") Trump did say to Kristi that he was disappointed she didn't fight for herself in the Boardroom, but begging seems so undignified.
Ereka
Temper, temper. Actually, temper, temper, temper. Ereka was an emotional active volcano the entire time, obviously not taking cues from the steely demeanor of man-eater and Trump left-hand lieutenant Carolyn Kepcher (one of the most imposing women to ever grace the small screen). Her open-the-kimono sales pitch for Trump Ice ("Hi, we're being tasked with creating buzz for Trump Ice. Would you like to buy a few pallets?") was like something a third-grade girl scout would conjure up: "If we sell the most Thin Mints our troop gets to go on a trip to Disneyland!" Her obvious preferential treatment of twin sister/gal pal Katrina and her sly attempt at forming a Survivor coalition with Bill marked her as a schemer and a lousy leader who places personal friendships above actual performance.
Don't take this harsh criticism as meaning I wouldn't tune in to a special Apprentice 1 on 1 competition special episode between Omarosa and Ereka for the right to be the apprentice to the Apprentice.
Omarosa
The first several episodes, I wasn't as put off by her arrogance as many were. If she could back up her 'tude with some productivity, she'd be nothing less than another version of the Donald. But it turned out to be all bluster. Her hypochondriactic tendencies after the plaster/cement from the grassy knoll gave her a "concussion" was childish, her negotiating skills while trying to sell Trump Ice were amateurish, and when she didn't feel like dealing with members of her team she'd hang up on them and leave them shouting into their cellphone communicators on the sidewalk. An unmitigated disaster.
For entertainment value, though, she's up there with Sam, Nick, and Troy. Her Boardroom breakdown guaranteed her enshrinement in the Reality Show pantheon, and really, is that so terrible a fate? The size of the delta between her the business woman she sees in the mirror and the one we see through the tube may be as large of that of Sam or Nick.
Heidi
Another of the female hotheads. Not since Tony Soprano's mistresses have we encountered such an assemblage of female rage. Heidi is, by self-proclamation, feisty. On her good days, she's that and also hard-working. On her bad days she's constantly cussing and ranting and driving everyone nuts because she's letting someone else drive her nuts. In other words, she's a useful worker bee (if you could tolerate her constant griping) but not management material.
Here's hoping her mom makes it out of cancer treatment okay, though.
On to the Sweet Six. Odds in parentheses...
Katrina (50-1)
Soon she'll have a lot of free time to join her girlfriend Ereka to simmer and seeth over the injustice of it all. If she hadn't opened her mouth to kiss Ereka's ass in the Boardroom after the Trump Ice debacle, perhaps Trump would have forgotten about her tantrums after the apartment renovation episode. As it is, she's too much of a hothead to be leading any business unit.
She criticized Bill for capitalizing on her sex appeal in the pedicab assignment, forgetting she was parading around the sidewalks of Times Square in twenty-inch heels the week of the Planet Hollywood competition.
Kwame (20-1)
The pedigreed MBA hasn't show much thus far except for realizing that the price of gold is not really negotiable while the price of a Callaway Big Bertha is. He doesn't seem to offend anyone else--that Omarosa was willing to cry on his shoulder is his greatest accomplishment to date--but he also hasn't displayed the spark or leadership or insight that you'd expect from a Harvard Business School grad. At least he could flash some trademark HBS ego from time to time. We need more drama, Kwame. Don't go quiet into that good night.
Nick (15-1)
I've never met a copier salesman, but I can grok Nick if you replace "copier" with "used-car." His delusions of sales grandeur exploded in the Trump Ice episode in which he made the analogy Nick:sales as Pope:prayer and then proceeded to strike out with a distributor. Then, in the Boardroom, he professed to bringing a certain "charisma" and "energy" to his sales pitches. For someone who does sales for a living, his demeanor during his pitches screamed smarmy sales guy, and that's either to be expected or quite surprising. What it doesn't scream is Apprentice.
Nick's not an idiot, though, and he showed himself a good judge of talent when they first broke up the boys and the girls. Some leaders succeed by surrounding themselves with good people and delegating tasks appropriately. Trump damned him with faint praise during his 10 minute visit to Trump's palace, a reward for winning the art auction (I kept waiting for Trump to extend the back of his hand and allow Nick to kneel and kiss it). Trump said that even when he said that Nick was doing bad, he wasn't doing that bad. That's pretty bad.
At this point, Nick most optimistic scenario is that he ends up dating Amy who ends up as Trump's Apprentice.
Bill (10-1)
Bill is like Kwame and Amy in that he's agreeable and reasonable. Is he a leader? He hasn't shown himself to be assertive or decisive. He needs to trust his own thinking and step forward more. Self-confidence attracts those who lack it.
Troy (5-1)
Ah, the sneaky fox from Idaho, the "country bumpkin" with the saavy of the gifted human charmer. His removal of his belt before the meeting with the Fab Five from Queer Eye didn't accomplish as much as he claimed, but it demonstrated his ability to read others and react appropriately. Is he equipped to lead a company, though? Doubtful. He needs to head up sales, though. He's a closer.
Amy (3-1)
Can she pull off the undefeated Apprentice season? In her own quiet way, she's a very cunning diplomat who has managed to avoid making any strong enemies, and she's even attracted a puppy dog in Nick. She hasn't shown any overt leadership or brilliant ideas to remember her by (advertising on the back of the pedicabs was smart but an obvious one; not surprisingly, it came from the one contestant with Internet experience since that was the only business model of hundreds of Internet flameouts), but she hasn't made any obvious mistakes (her seeming interest in Nick is her worst display of judgment thus far) and she's clearly the player of choice among her teammates. Trump was right: if she's everyone else's first choice as a teammate everytime there's a redraft, then they've already elected her the strongest leader. I'd like to see her lead a team one of these weeks, and I'd like to see someone step up to challenge her.
MI-5, FKA Spooks
Finding a new TV show to love on DVD is a unique and joyous event. It means hours and hours of fun over many consecutive nights. For me, the current TV-DVD apple of my Trinitron eye is MI-5, formerly titled Spooks. It's one of those happy instances of the British sending over a superior TV series to the States via BBC (The Office being another sterling example).
Seasons one and two aired here on A&E as one combined season, but by the time I was hooked by the DVDs for the six episodes of season one, A&E had stopped broadcasting the show. My Tivo managed to snare just one measly episode. Waiting for the latest episodes to appear on DVD or TV is agonizing. If someone out there has season two (the original season two) on DVD, well please just send them over and let me know what my firstborn child's name will be.
Seasons one and two aired here on A&E as one combined season, but by the time I was hooked by the DVDs for the six episodes of season one, A&E had stopped broadcasting the show. My Tivo managed to snare just one measly episode. Waiting for the latest episodes to appear on DVD or TV is agonizing. If someone out there has season two (the original season two) on DVD, well please just send them over and let me know what my firstborn child's name will be.
Yawr fi-yod
I only seem to have the attention span for watching a reality TV show in its first season, when the contestants have no history to work off of and the rules of the game are still fuzzy. The first season is when the show is still fresh and pure, when the contestants aren't sure how to game everything. This TV season, that show for me is The Apprentice.
The show has the essential quality of the best reality television, and that is that the characters truly believe they're amazing even though many of them are actually ridiculous. You'd think that would describe Trump as well, but he comes off quite well in the show. I quite enjoy his boardroom firings, especially his explanations for why he's picking each week's victim. Chalk up another self-promotion coup for Trump, who manages, with just a few minutes on-screen each week, to be the star of a show ostensibly focused on the contestant vying to prostrate themselves before the Donald.
Isn't applying for one of these shows a post-modern rite of passage? Maybe I will apply for Season 2.
The show has the essential quality of the best reality television, and that is that the characters truly believe they're amazing even though many of them are actually ridiculous. You'd think that would describe Trump as well, but he comes off quite well in the show. I quite enjoy his boardroom firings, especially his explanations for why he's picking each week's victim. Chalk up another self-promotion coup for Trump, who manages, with just a few minutes on-screen each week, to be the star of a show ostensibly focused on the contestant vying to prostrate themselves before the Donald.
Isn't applying for one of these shows a post-modern rite of passage? Maybe I will apply for Season 2.
Bring our boys home
How sad is it that some of our greatest pop cultural artifacts are relegated to finding a home on DVD in Region 2, in PAL of all formats? Yes, I'm talking about Airwolf and Knight Rider. It isn't enough that David Hasselhoff had to flee into the arms of Germany to find the public's embrace? Now we're showing Edward Mulhare, Ernest Borgnine, and Jan-Michael Vincent the door, too?
What's next, Michael Keaton doing commentaries in French? Oh, the horror.
What's next, Michael Keaton doing commentaries in French? Oh, the horror.
Duping the cynical/ironic/postmodern viewer
MTV's Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica if a reality TV show that follows teen pop stars Nick Lachey (former lead singer of 98 Degrees) and Jessica Simpson in the first year of their marriage. It has in its first year become perhaps the most extreme example of reality TV which ridicules its subjects for the entertainment of its audience (surprisingly, there are exames of reality TV that don't). Jessica Simpson has quickly become a reality TV legend, offering enough ditzy, bubbly one-liners in her first season to merit a regular rotation in Entertainment Weekly's Sound Bites. And yet one can't help feeling that it's the audience that's being played, or perhaps even conned.
Cynical stares are corrosive, and those who plead guilty to such stares don't tend to hold our interest for long. Sure, it was fun to watch the disasters that were the Osbourne household and Anna Nicole Smith for a season, maybe even two, but ratings didn't and couldn't last because they were so openly and brazenly exactly what we wanted to expose them as. In fact, how can we even resort to irony (supposedly the scourge of my generation, a disease present in everything we write and say--see footnote 1), which capitalizes on the difference between appearance and reality, when the Osbourne's or Nick and Jessica are exactly what we wanted and imagined them to be? It's more fun to ridicule when the subjects resist arrest.
It's not surprising, perhaps. TV has always depended, in great part, on feeding us exactly what we want (see footnote 2). That's their entire modus operandi, and they spend millions on market research, testing dozens of new programs every season, to find the right buttons to press, and when they do, they press them until the buttons fall off. It's difficult for me to know when it was that my generation was supposed to have descended into this cynical, ironic, post-modern funk I always hear us accused of--perhaps it was the Vietnam War--but if that is our primary mode of discourse, then somewhere along the line TV finally realized that what drew our eyes and ears was an echo of our own cynical voices. TV has co-opted my generation's mode of irony.
And so, to complement hopeful, happy television shows (Friends, for example), we're flooded with television shows that expose people for the unpleasant, money-grubbing scoundrels we always knew they were. People stabbing each other in the back on Survivor, contestants whoring themselves for money or sex on shows like Fear Factor and Dismissed, celebrities revealing their pettiness and idiocy in tabloids or in reality shows like The Osbournes, The Anna Nicole Smith show, and of course The Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica. Even when these shows attempt irony, as Joe Millionaire does by exposing the reaction of women to a rich man who is actually poor, it is in a mean-spirited, duplicitous way, and since we are already so cynical, perhaps it isn't ironic at all that the women turn out to be gold diggers. They're exactly what we expect them to be.
I'm guilty of being too cynical myself at times, and it's a voice that is common to young twenty-something bloggers who love to rant and rave about anything and everything. It's a way to preen in our superiority over the objects of our ridicule and to display our cleverness all at once, and so it's tempting, but it's also empty. Irony was once used as a form of protest and could stand on its own as a position, but negation without offering alternatives is simply empty.
Perhaps Jessica Simpson is actually a rocket scientist, but plays a dumb blonde in front of MTV's cameras to boost ratings for her show. After all, how could she, after watching season one, renew for a second season? Perhaps because she hears her fifteen minutes ticking away to oblivion and realizes that her only chance of holding the public's eye is not through her fading pop career but through her self-made caricature. Who's playing who here? Maybe Jessica's getting the last laugh after all.
You know that once it's unhip to be anything but ironic and cynical, then it's time to remember how to be sincere. I think I remember how.
Footnote 1: Worse than having my generation constantly blamed for being ironic is the chronic overuse and misuse of the word irony. Maybe my generation wouldn't be accused of being so ironic if everyone stopped labeling every damned event or statement as being ironic. Sometimes I can't even tell the difference among cynicism, irony, sarcasm, satire, and postmodernism. The blurred usage has got even me confused. It doesn't help that Alanis Morrissette's popular ditty "Isn't it Ironic" completely botched the definition of irony and profferred a slew of examples of irony, none of which were really ironic except under the broadest and loosest definitions of irony, ones which render irony somewhat meaningless and indistinct from misfortune or coincidence.
The most common case of mistaken identity is between coincidence and irony. Especially unfortunate coincidence. For example, someone who always carries breath mints in his pocket finally leaves them at home one day and then finds himself stuck with bad breath just as a beautiful woman wants to kiss. That's more Murphy's Law than irony, but many people would be tempted to say, "Isn't that ironic?"
In fact, it's probably giving my generation too much credit to call us all ironists. Many of my generation are just apathetic and/or cynical, but irony is a higher art form which few have mastered. Anyway, it's a topic which other folks have already covered in more detail than I.
Footnote 2: In this way, TV is no different than politicians, the latest and greatest example being Arnold Schwarzenegger whose election to the governorship of the 5th largest economy in the world has many people wringing their hands. Arnie read that state's discontents, echoed back their anger and desires (which he could gauge through polling), and rode that empathy and a poor economy to election. Clinton was a master of using polling data to adjust his campaign and elevate his approval ratings--by the time he reached office polling had become an art form. It shouldn't come as any surprise that Arnold won. After all, the most popular Democratic president in the U.S., by many measures, is Martin Sheen's Jed Bartlet on The West Wing, and he's just a fictional creation, so why shouldn't Arnold, an actor himself, and someone whose job in movies is to put butts in seats, attract more voters than a curmudgeonly Gray Davis, regardless of Davis' political experience?
The complaints about Arnie's victory remind me of the argument against using box office to judge the quality of movies: Just because Titanic was the greatest box office hit of all time doesn't mean Titanic . Just because a more people voted for Arnie than Gray Davis doesn't mean Arnie's an adequate, let alone superior, politician. A democratic vote isn't necessarily the best method to discern quality, just popularity.
On the topic of judging candidates, I find it ridiculously difficult to find objective information by which to evaluate one versus another. It's easier to find objective reviews of DVD players, or automobiles. Where's the comprehensive database of candidate's voting records, speeches, writings? There must be a way to remove at least some subjectivity from the whole process, lessen the influence of advertisements and PR. Perhaps the only passionate endorsements are partisan ones, but I'd like to think not.
Cynical stares are corrosive, and those who plead guilty to such stares don't tend to hold our interest for long. Sure, it was fun to watch the disasters that were the Osbourne household and Anna Nicole Smith for a season, maybe even two, but ratings didn't and couldn't last because they were so openly and brazenly exactly what we wanted to expose them as. In fact, how can we even resort to irony (supposedly the scourge of my generation, a disease present in everything we write and say--see footnote 1), which capitalizes on the difference between appearance and reality, when the Osbourne's or Nick and Jessica are exactly what we wanted and imagined them to be? It's more fun to ridicule when the subjects resist arrest.
It's not surprising, perhaps. TV has always depended, in great part, on feeding us exactly what we want (see footnote 2). That's their entire modus operandi, and they spend millions on market research, testing dozens of new programs every season, to find the right buttons to press, and when they do, they press them until the buttons fall off. It's difficult for me to know when it was that my generation was supposed to have descended into this cynical, ironic, post-modern funk I always hear us accused of--perhaps it was the Vietnam War--but if that is our primary mode of discourse, then somewhere along the line TV finally realized that what drew our eyes and ears was an echo of our own cynical voices. TV has co-opted my generation's mode of irony.
And so, to complement hopeful, happy television shows (Friends, for example), we're flooded with television shows that expose people for the unpleasant, money-grubbing scoundrels we always knew they were. People stabbing each other in the back on Survivor, contestants whoring themselves for money or sex on shows like Fear Factor and Dismissed, celebrities revealing their pettiness and idiocy in tabloids or in reality shows like The Osbournes, The Anna Nicole Smith show, and of course The Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica. Even when these shows attempt irony, as Joe Millionaire does by exposing the reaction of women to a rich man who is actually poor, it is in a mean-spirited, duplicitous way, and since we are already so cynical, perhaps it isn't ironic at all that the women turn out to be gold diggers. They're exactly what we expect them to be.
I'm guilty of being too cynical myself at times, and it's a voice that is common to young twenty-something bloggers who love to rant and rave about anything and everything. It's a way to preen in our superiority over the objects of our ridicule and to display our cleverness all at once, and so it's tempting, but it's also empty. Irony was once used as a form of protest and could stand on its own as a position, but negation without offering alternatives is simply empty.
Perhaps Jessica Simpson is actually a rocket scientist, but plays a dumb blonde in front of MTV's cameras to boost ratings for her show. After all, how could she, after watching season one, renew for a second season? Perhaps because she hears her fifteen minutes ticking away to oblivion and realizes that her only chance of holding the public's eye is not through her fading pop career but through her self-made caricature. Who's playing who here? Maybe Jessica's getting the last laugh after all.
You know that once it's unhip to be anything but ironic and cynical, then it's time to remember how to be sincere. I think I remember how.
Footnote 1: Worse than having my generation constantly blamed for being ironic is the chronic overuse and misuse of the word irony. Maybe my generation wouldn't be accused of being so ironic if everyone stopped labeling every damned event or statement as being ironic. Sometimes I can't even tell the difference among cynicism, irony, sarcasm, satire, and postmodernism. The blurred usage has got even me confused. It doesn't help that Alanis Morrissette's popular ditty "Isn't it Ironic" completely botched the definition of irony and profferred a slew of examples of irony, none of which were really ironic except under the broadest and loosest definitions of irony, ones which render irony somewhat meaningless and indistinct from misfortune or coincidence.
The most common case of mistaken identity is between coincidence and irony. Especially unfortunate coincidence. For example, someone who always carries breath mints in his pocket finally leaves them at home one day and then finds himself stuck with bad breath just as a beautiful woman wants to kiss. That's more Murphy's Law than irony, but many people would be tempted to say, "Isn't that ironic?"
In fact, it's probably giving my generation too much credit to call us all ironists. Many of my generation are just apathetic and/or cynical, but irony is a higher art form which few have mastered. Anyway, it's a topic which other folks have already covered in more detail than I.
Footnote 2: In this way, TV is no different than politicians, the latest and greatest example being Arnold Schwarzenegger whose election to the governorship of the 5th largest economy in the world has many people wringing their hands. Arnie read that state's discontents, echoed back their anger and desires (which he could gauge through polling), and rode that empathy and a poor economy to election. Clinton was a master of using polling data to adjust his campaign and elevate his approval ratings--by the time he reached office polling had become an art form. It shouldn't come as any surprise that Arnold won. After all, the most popular Democratic president in the U.S., by many measures, is Martin Sheen's Jed Bartlet on The West Wing, and he's just a fictional creation, so why shouldn't Arnold, an actor himself, and someone whose job in movies is to put butts in seats, attract more voters than a curmudgeonly Gray Davis, regardless of Davis' political experience?
The complaints about Arnie's victory remind me of the argument against using box office to judge the quality of movies: Just because Titanic was the greatest box office hit of all time doesn't mean Titanic . Just because a more people voted for Arnie than Gray Davis doesn't mean Arnie's an adequate, let alone superior, politician. A democratic vote isn't necessarily the best method to discern quality, just popularity.
On the topic of judging candidates, I find it ridiculously difficult to find objective information by which to evaluate one versus another. It's easier to find objective reviews of DVD players, or automobiles. Where's the comprehensive database of candidate's voting records, speeches, writings? There must be a way to remove at least some subjectivity from the whole process, lessen the influence of advertisements and PR. Perhaps the only passionate endorsements are partisan ones, but I'd like to think not.
Day One Maury
Maury: "Derek, what do you do when you fall off the horse?" Silence. "You get back on! That's what this business is all about!"
Derek: "Sorry, Maury. But I'm not a gymnast."
For the first time in a long time, three months to be exact, I dressed for work today. No, I haven't been going to the office naked for three months. My sabbatical came to an end.
I woke up and realized I needed to press a shirt for work. Quite a change from my time hiking the Inca Trail, when I wore clothes that had been crumpled and stuffed into my pack for days.
You know what feels especially fresh after a layoff from work? The wrists. Typing hundreds of e-mails each week takes its toll on your hands. My fingers and wrists felt strong and limber today. They felt slightly less so after I worked my way through most of the 3,500 e-mails that had accumulated during my leave.
I saw a few folks, but for the most part I laid low. I feel like a stranger in the office, like an outsider. Like that feeling you have when walking into your room after months away. Everything is familiar but new--it's a dreamlike state, like deja vu. If only we could take regular breaks from all the familiar places in our life, they'd always seem fresh, magical.
Having been away for so long, there's much culture and news to assimilate. A not so brief tour of some of it...
Edward Tufte, author of what I consider to be essential reference books such as The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, writes an interesting critique of Microsoft Powerpoint. It costs $7, but it's worthwhile. Powerpoint has always been the weak link in Microsoft Office, and they I know it inside out, my relationship with it has always been one of reluctant acceptance. Not even love hate, because there isn't much love there.
A short clip illustrating a day in the life of air traffic over the U.S. (Quicktime movie). Cool.
A graphic of all the flights and bus rides and horse rides and train rides and hikes I took while in South America would look something like that as well.
Has there every been a movie more hyped than Matrix Reloaded? The practice of offering pre-screenings and access to either Time or Newsweek in advance in exchange for a cover story (The Two Towers was the previous movie to make that type of business deal, in exchange for one of those covers, I think it was Time) is already getting old. I'm a fairly big film geek, but let's be honest. A blockbuster movie doesn't really merit the cover of Time magazine, not at this time in the world, and perhaps not ever. Standing in the airport on arrival in the U.S. from South America I saw Morpheus and Trinity and Neo staring at me from every second magazine cover.
I haven't seen the movie yet (being on sabbatical meant a temporary demotion from the ranks of the opening day fanatics, but the next time I'm in line for the first showing at Cinerama, say for LOTR: Return of the King, don't call it a comeback), but the expectations are so great that some backlash and letdown is inevitable. The "okay people, let's get real, it's just a movie and not some philosophical masterpiece" articles were bound to happen at some point after the first movie inspired books with titles like Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy and Religion in The Matrix.
After the uniqueness of the first movie (American movies that appropriate visual tropes from Japanese anime and Chinese martial arts cinema is always considered fresh in this country), it's hard to imagine the second movie being superior except in budget and special effects.
Okay, so the Wachowski brothers aren't the next coming of Kierkegaard and Baudrillard. I hope that amidst the marketing blitz no one made the mistake in thinking that they were.
The new Apple music store is very solid. The solution is not complex. In fact, it's built on components that have been available all along. (1) Selection: Apple has songs from all five major music labels (2) Micropayments: allows users to download individual songs for the fair price of $0.99 (3) Ownership: the service allows users unlimited burning of the songs to CDs and generous sharing of the songs across their iPod and 3 Mac computers.
My main quibble is that the selection, while it includes albums from all five major music labels, is still just a fraction of the music available from their vaults. It will likely take some time before all the artists allow their music to be shared digitally through the Apple music store, but it's futile to resist. There are still numerous albums and artists I'd like to see represented. Let's hope their early success convinces holdouts to cross the line.
I'd also prefer that the $0.99 price per song be inclusive of sales tax. But that's just me being greedy, since I don't really mind odd prices ($1.07 per track after sales tax in Washington) when I'm paying with a credit card.
All in all, the new music store is a surprising but well-executed move on the part of Apple. It won't eliminate or even significantly dent music piracy, but count me among the converted who are happy to fork over $0.99 for a good tune. Another reason, if you're considering joining the Mac community, to follow through.
And a second reason to make the Mac leap sometime in the next year? Perhaps a launch of a new processor architecture, finally bringing Apple out of the dark ages and into greater parity with the Intel and AMD processors powering most Windows boxes.
Considering the popularity of Macs as multimedia editing machines, the new processors can come none too soon. Rendering certain effects on a Mac can be painfully slow.
Lance Armstrong and Sally Jenkins are working on a sequel, Every Second Counts, to the bestselling biography It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life. I'm counting down every second, though it doesn't look like it will be ready for me to carry with me up the Alps in July.
If TV marketing held complete sway over me, I'd most definitely be a Marine. Great commercials.
Bill James, every interesting, both for his analysis and his crusty personality, conducted a chat at ESPN today. His sharp tongued writing is always entertaining, particularly in a chat environment where he can always get the last word. An example:
Tim - Cohasset, MA: Bill, I'm very interested in your work and was wondering how a 20 year old college student would get in on the ground floor working for a team like the Red Sox.
Bill James: Learn to throw 95
Come to think of it, Bill James and Edward Tufte have a lot in common. Among the fun assertions he makes, in the chat, is that the three most valuable commodities in baseball, in order, are Alex Rodriguez, Mark Prior, and Vladimir Guerrero. Good news for Cubs fans. Maybe the Cubbies can sign Vlad in the offseason and get two out of three. I don't think Cubs fans realize yet how good Mark Prior can be. He's certainly the pitcher you'd draft first in the entire major leagues if you held a major league wide draft.
Speaking of the Cubbies, they pulled out a 17 inning game today. The Cubs are going to break the single season strikeout record they themselves set two years ago (that's my prediction). They are stocked up and down with power arms, and today Todd Wellemeyer struck out the side for the save in his major league debut. He was throwing 95 mph cheese and mixing in an 84 mph changeup with very good arm action. Granted, it was against the strikeout prone Brewers, but still, a lot of the Cubs strikeouts have to do with the power arms on their staff. They have a seemingly endless supply of 6' 3" to 6' 6" right handers who throw in the mid 90's. Nasty. Now if the Cubs pick up Mike Lowell from the Marlins before the trading deadline, I'm going to start getting nervous, in a good way.
As the ever smart John Hollinger predicted, the Lakers succumbed the the Spurs, ending their run of championships at 3. Even with Rick Fox, their bench was terrible, and a lot of their loss this year should be blamed on their general manager, who did nothing to bolster their team behind Kobe and Shaq. I was no fan of Jerry Krause, but at least he knew that restocking around Jordan and Pippen was his single most important job, and he did his job well. It doesn't take much when you have two players as good as Kobe and Shaq, so it's a particularly egregious failure on the part of Lakers management.
The Bulls formula was straightforward. Surround Jordan and Pippen with strong jumpshooters to take the kickouts (Kerr, Paxson) and defenders (Grant, Rodman, Harper). The supporting cast knew their roles. Poor Kobe and Shaq had nothing to work with this year. Still, as a Bulls fan, I'm pretty happy to see the Lakers stopped short of 4 in a row. Sam Smith always claims the Bulls couldn't have won four in a row even if Jordan had stuck around after either of the runs of 3 championships, but I disagree. I like Kobe and Phil, but I like Jordan even more.
Fun players to watch when they're hot: Kobe (like Jordan, has developed into a dangerous 3 point threat when it counts), Nick Van Exel (pretty left-handed stroke), Allen Iverson (can embarrass defenders in a greater variety of ways than any player in the NBA), Tracy McGrady (always the chance he'll dunk in a way that will strip his defender of all manhood), and Dirk Nowitzki (the ball hits his hands and then is gone a second later in a beautiful arc towards the basket, no matter where he is on the court). Maybe Paul Pierce, and Peja. Tim Duncan isn't terribly exciting to watch, but his footwork is beautiful.
Derek: "Sorry, Maury. But I'm not a gymnast."
For the first time in a long time, three months to be exact, I dressed for work today. No, I haven't been going to the office naked for three months. My sabbatical came to an end.
I woke up and realized I needed to press a shirt for work. Quite a change from my time hiking the Inca Trail, when I wore clothes that had been crumpled and stuffed into my pack for days.
You know what feels especially fresh after a layoff from work? The wrists. Typing hundreds of e-mails each week takes its toll on your hands. My fingers and wrists felt strong and limber today. They felt slightly less so after I worked my way through most of the 3,500 e-mails that had accumulated during my leave.
I saw a few folks, but for the most part I laid low. I feel like a stranger in the office, like an outsider. Like that feeling you have when walking into your room after months away. Everything is familiar but new--it's a dreamlike state, like deja vu. If only we could take regular breaks from all the familiar places in our life, they'd always seem fresh, magical.
Having been away for so long, there's much culture and news to assimilate. A not so brief tour of some of it...
Tufte on Powerpoint
Edward Tufte, author of what I consider to be essential reference books such as The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, writes an interesting critique of Microsoft Powerpoint. It costs $7, but it's worthwhile. Powerpoint has always been the weak link in Microsoft Office, and they I know it inside out, my relationship with it has always been one of reluctant acceptance. Not even love hate, because there isn't much love there.
How many airplanes are over the United States right now
A short clip illustrating a day in the life of air traffic over the U.S. (Quicktime movie). Cool.
A graphic of all the flights and bus rides and horse rides and train rides and hikes I took while in South America would look something like that as well.
Exponential hype
Has there every been a movie more hyped than Matrix Reloaded? The practice of offering pre-screenings and access to either Time or Newsweek in advance in exchange for a cover story (The Two Towers was the previous movie to make that type of business deal, in exchange for one of those covers, I think it was Time) is already getting old. I'm a fairly big film geek, but let's be honest. A blockbuster movie doesn't really merit the cover of Time magazine, not at this time in the world, and perhaps not ever. Standing in the airport on arrival in the U.S. from South America I saw Morpheus and Trinity and Neo staring at me from every second magazine cover.
I haven't seen the movie yet (being on sabbatical meant a temporary demotion from the ranks of the opening day fanatics, but the next time I'm in line for the first showing at Cinerama, say for LOTR: Return of the King, don't call it a comeback), but the expectations are so great that some backlash and letdown is inevitable. The "okay people, let's get real, it's just a movie and not some philosophical masterpiece" articles were bound to happen at some point after the first movie inspired books with titles like Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy and Religion in The Matrix.
After the uniqueness of the first movie (American movies that appropriate visual tropes from Japanese anime and Chinese martial arts cinema is always considered fresh in this country), it's hard to imagine the second movie being superior except in budget and special effects.
Okay, so the Wachowski brothers aren't the next coming of Kierkegaard and Baudrillard. I hope that amidst the marketing blitz no one made the mistake in thinking that they were.
Apple Music Store
The new Apple music store is very solid. The solution is not complex. In fact, it's built on components that have been available all along. (1) Selection: Apple has songs from all five major music labels (2) Micropayments: allows users to download individual songs for the fair price of $0.99 (3) Ownership: the service allows users unlimited burning of the songs to CDs and generous sharing of the songs across their iPod and 3 Mac computers.
My main quibble is that the selection, while it includes albums from all five major music labels, is still just a fraction of the music available from their vaults. It will likely take some time before all the artists allow their music to be shared digitally through the Apple music store, but it's futile to resist. There are still numerous albums and artists I'd like to see represented. Let's hope their early success convinces holdouts to cross the line.
I'd also prefer that the $0.99 price per song be inclusive of sales tax. But that's just me being greedy, since I don't really mind odd prices ($1.07 per track after sales tax in Washington) when I'm paying with a credit card.
All in all, the new music store is a surprising but well-executed move on the part of Apple. It won't eliminate or even significantly dent music piracy, but count me among the converted who are happy to fork over $0.99 for a good tune. Another reason, if you're considering joining the Mac community, to follow through.
PowerPC 970
And a second reason to make the Mac leap sometime in the next year? Perhaps a launch of a new processor architecture, finally bringing Apple out of the dark ages and into greater parity with the Intel and AMD processors powering most Windows boxes.
Considering the popularity of Macs as multimedia editing machines, the new processors can come none too soon. Rendering certain effects on a Mac can be painfully slow.
Lance, part deux
Lance Armstrong and Sally Jenkins are working on a sequel, Every Second Counts, to the bestselling biography It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life. I'm counting down every second, though it doesn't look like it will be ready for me to carry with me up the Alps in July.
The few. The proud.
If TV marketing held complete sway over me, I'd most definitely be a Marine. Great commercials.
Sports break
Bill James, every interesting, both for his analysis and his crusty personality, conducted a chat at ESPN today. His sharp tongued writing is always entertaining, particularly in a chat environment where he can always get the last word. An example:
Tim - Cohasset, MA: Bill, I'm very interested in your work and was wondering how a 20 year old college student would get in on the ground floor working for a team like the Red Sox.
Bill James: Learn to throw 95
Come to think of it, Bill James and Edward Tufte have a lot in common. Among the fun assertions he makes, in the chat, is that the three most valuable commodities in baseball, in order, are Alex Rodriguez, Mark Prior, and Vladimir Guerrero. Good news for Cubs fans. Maybe the Cubbies can sign Vlad in the offseason and get two out of three. I don't think Cubs fans realize yet how good Mark Prior can be. He's certainly the pitcher you'd draft first in the entire major leagues if you held a major league wide draft.
Speaking of the Cubbies, they pulled out a 17 inning game today. The Cubs are going to break the single season strikeout record they themselves set two years ago (that's my prediction). They are stocked up and down with power arms, and today Todd Wellemeyer struck out the side for the save in his major league debut. He was throwing 95 mph cheese and mixing in an 84 mph changeup with very good arm action. Granted, it was against the strikeout prone Brewers, but still, a lot of the Cubs strikeouts have to do with the power arms on their staff. They have a seemingly endless supply of 6' 3" to 6' 6" right handers who throw in the mid 90's. Nasty. Now if the Cubs pick up Mike Lowell from the Marlins before the trading deadline, I'm going to start getting nervous, in a good way.
4 is an unlucky number in Chinese
As the ever smart John Hollinger predicted, the Lakers succumbed the the Spurs, ending their run of championships at 3. Even with Rick Fox, their bench was terrible, and a lot of their loss this year should be blamed on their general manager, who did nothing to bolster their team behind Kobe and Shaq. I was no fan of Jerry Krause, but at least he knew that restocking around Jordan and Pippen was his single most important job, and he did his job well. It doesn't take much when you have two players as good as Kobe and Shaq, so it's a particularly egregious failure on the part of Lakers management.
The Bulls formula was straightforward. Surround Jordan and Pippen with strong jumpshooters to take the kickouts (Kerr, Paxson) and defenders (Grant, Rodman, Harper). The supporting cast knew their roles. Poor Kobe and Shaq had nothing to work with this year. Still, as a Bulls fan, I'm pretty happy to see the Lakers stopped short of 4 in a row. Sam Smith always claims the Bulls couldn't have won four in a row even if Jordan had stuck around after either of the runs of 3 championships, but I disagree. I like Kobe and Phil, but I like Jordan even more.
Fun players to watch when they're hot: Kobe (like Jordan, has developed into a dangerous 3 point threat when it counts), Nick Van Exel (pretty left-handed stroke), Allen Iverson (can embarrass defenders in a greater variety of ways than any player in the NBA), Tracy McGrady (always the chance he'll dunk in a way that will strip his defender of all manhood), and Dirk Nowitzki (the ball hits his hands and then is gone a second later in a beautiful arc towards the basket, no matter where he is on the court). Maybe Paul Pierce, and Peja. Tim Duncan isn't terribly exciting to watch, but his footwork is beautiful.
Where's Marshall?
The Oscars lost some of their luster this year, given the context of war. I wasn't fired up enough to throw a party, and if I had missed them it wouldn't have been a great loss. You won't hear me say that often--I live for the show. Still, Steve Martin set a proper tone by poking fun of the sacrifice of the stars in his opening monologue ("The red carpet ceremony was cancelled this year. That'll show them."). What else are the movie stars going to do, anyway? No other major entertainers are canceling their regularly scheduled events, so why blame movie stars for holding their annual backslap?
Anyway, it was an excuse to visit Jason's new pad. I wanted to wear a prosthetic nose to his party, inspired by the success of Nicole Kidman and her schnozz in The Hours, but ran out of time.
Happily, there were a few signs that Hollywood has some good taste:
On the other hand, the show handed out its usual dose of injustice:
A few other notes:
If Jack Nicholson and Harvey Weinstein faced off a la Count Dooku and Yoda, who would win?
Morning: Up at 8am. Breakfast of cereal. Read from Atonement for about forty-five minutes. Spent half hour on phone with travel agent, cycling through permutations of a South America trip which would last a month starting next weekend. Managed to get the cost down several notches, and it's looking like a near-reality.
Next I popped in the DVD of Hero, rented from Scarecrow Video, the coolest video store in the world. I couldn't wait for the copy I ordered to show up.
Hero was somewhat of a disappointment, given the talent involved. Gorgeous cinematography, attractive leads, solid soundtrack, but the movie suffers from a gravity of acting that borders on grim melodrama. The movie lacks passion. Yimou inserts one too many shots of water dripping in slow motion, Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung have little romantic chemistry (I thought Chow-Yun Fat and Michelle Yoh had the same problem in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), and the martial arts is of the flying, choreographed dance variety rather than the hyper-realistic, forceful hand-to-hand combat of a move like Fist of Legend. While some of that imagery is gorgous, as when Jet Li and Tony Leung bounce off of the surface of a lake as if it is rubber, it's so ethereal and choreographed as to be symbolic, like a Chinese Opera dance, and without physical impact. When people are stabbed they don't even bleed. I recognize some of these as symptoms of Asian martial arts dramas in general, so perhaps my distaste is a cultural preference.
The colors and cinematography of Christopher Doyle deserve special recognition, though. Stunning.
Next I met Kate for lunch downtown. It's healthy to see at least one other human being everyday. Unfortunately, Salumi was closed (Armandino Batali's Italian shop Salumi is my favorite eatery in all of Seattle, offering incredibly tasty and affordable cured meats, but its hours are terrible) so we grabbed some Creole cuisine in Pioneer Square. I laid off of the Tabasco sauce, however.
Last week Jodie took me to Dixie's BBQ on the Eastside where I encountered The Man. There is actually a man, Gene Porter, who owns the place, and then there's The Man, the hot sauce which Porter encourages you to slather on your BBQ. Well, I've had a bit of that sauce before, but for some reason Porter spooned a more than healthy dose of The Man on my ribs. That is the hottest of hot sauces I've ever sampled, and it led to a coughing fit that lasted four days. I think one of those peppers lodged in my esophagus and burned a hole through it. No more hot stuff for me for a while.
Anyway, back to today. After lunch I dropped off a roll of slide film at Ivey Imaging and picked up some negatives. I also stopped at Glazer's and bought a remote cord for my Nikon, since I seem to have lost my last one (argh!). I shot some tripod long-exposure shots at Jason's last night, but given that I didn't have a remote cord on me I'm not optimistic that they'll turn out sharp. Gotta have one, though they aren't cheap given their size.
Then I headed home, and, since it wasn't raining, I jumped on my bike and headed for Mercer Island. Last week I jumped on a scale at the gym and screamed in horror. The number that came up was the largest I'd ever encountered. Many grueling sessions at the gym ensued, and the extra weight is especially brutal on the bike. Getting around Mercer is as painful as it's ever been, and today was no exception. Went counter-clockwise and then clockwise back for roughly a 30 mile ride. Felt like I was pulling an open parachute the whole way. The only consolation is that sore, achy feeling in my legs. Love that feeling.
Back home for a shower, then off to Ivey to pick up my slides. Ah, a few winning shots of Sadie Sutton in that batch. Will post a few tomorrow if I get the time.
Then I headed off to Pacific Place to see about using a free movie voucher I received for earning a gazillion Moviewatcher credits. But nothing there interested me, so I spent the next several hours in Barnes and Noble "library", perusing travel books and photography magazines. Digital photography and Photoshop magazines are my current vice, but since I'm not working I just read them in the store and jot down any useful tips in my notebook.
And then back home to cook some dinner and scan some slides with the TV on in the background.
That monitor was ridiculous, though. 5 inches!?!
On the late finish of the Oscars for East coasters: "I had as much trouble staying up as Queen Latifah's dress."
On the new Monica Lewinsky reality show on Fox: "Every week a different guy gets voted off her."
On Michael Moore's speech at the Oscars: "To give you an idea how unpopular Michael Moore was, after giving his speech he showed up just ten minutes later in the dead person's montage."
Anyway, it was an excuse to visit Jason's new pad. I wanted to wear a prosthetic nose to his party, inspired by the success of Nicole Kidman and her schnozz in The Hours, but ran out of time.
Happily, there were a few signs that Hollywood has some good taste:
- The excellent Spirited Away won best animated feature over a mediocre set of competition (Lilo & Stitch, Cimarron: Spirit of the Stallion, Treasure Planet, Ice Age), despite rumors that Ice Age would triumph due to its box office. Basically, any animated film that came out besides The Wild Thornberrys Movie got a nomination for best animated feature last year. Thanfully the one nominee worthy of an Oscar took it home.
- Eminem and two other people I've never heard of won in the category of best song for "Lose Yourself." Whatever your opinions on Eminem, that was definitely the best song of the group. Besides, Daniel Day-Lewis prepared for his role as the Butcher in Gangs of New York by listening to that Eminem tune, among others. Inspired by Day-Lewis' subsequent performance in that movie, I've adopted the same regimen in the gym. It's working. I feel like kicking Leonardo Dicrapio's scrawny butt. Why didn't Eminem perform? Was he not invited? There aren't any expletives in "Lose Yourself." That was a missed moment.
- Chris Cooper took home the best supporting actor Oscar for his comical transformation in the otherwise inconsistent Adaptation.
- Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers captured a well-deserved best visual effects award. Gollum is more emotive than Brendan Fraser, who introduced The Two Towers as a best picture nominee.
On the other hand, the show handed out its usual dose of injustice:
- Daniel Day-Lewis was robbed in the most competitive category of the night, Best Actor. Hopefully this loss won't drive him back into cobblerhood. Still, it wasn't a total loss. Adrien Brody planting a long, wet, sloppy, back-bender of a kiss on Halle Berry? Brilliant, a page right out of Colin Farrell's playbook. If I was Eric Benet I would have run on stage and kicked that scrawny Brody's ass. Thank god this wasn't the year Roberto Benigni won for best actor--the sight of Pinocchio jumping Halle would have been ugly.
- Chicago for best picture? Years from now we'll all wonder why and how this light, fluffy music video won a best picture award. At least Renee Zellwegger didn't win a best actress award. I'm sorry, I love Renee as much as the next guy, and she put forth a more than credible effort, but she wasn't right for that role.
- Peter Jackson and The Two Towers didn't get any consideration in any major category, despite being superior to Chicago in so many ways. The Oscars continued bias against sci-fi and fantasy movies is more than a blind spot. It's a prejudice similar to racism; call it genrism.
A few other notes:
- Steve Martin is a good host. His zany, intellectual humor allows him to zing a whole range of subjects without making it too personal, and though he seemed to tone it down given the war, he should receive a return invitation next year. His best quip? "It was so sweet backstage. The Teamsters are helping Michael Moore into the trunk of his limo."
- Did you watch the commercials? Whoa! That isn't like any J.C. Penney's I've ever visited. "It's all inside" indeed.
- Michael Moore somehow manages to come off as a redneck even though he isn't one. He could use a speech coach. The anti-war movement probably would prefer a more eloquent and dignified spokesperson.
- Catherine Zeta-Jones (it's pronounced "zee-tah") annoys me to no end. Zeta rhymes with diva.
- A retracting mike to cut off speeches that run long! Brilliant. I notice it doesn't seem to function when movie stars are on stage, only when crew members, like the visual effects guys, show up.
If Jack Nicholson and Harvey Weinstein faced off a la Count Dooku and Yoda, who would win?
A day in the life
Today was a balanced day, and representative of most my days back here in Seattle while on sabbatical.Morning: Up at 8am. Breakfast of cereal. Read from Atonement for about forty-five minutes. Spent half hour on phone with travel agent, cycling through permutations of a South America trip which would last a month starting next weekend. Managed to get the cost down several notches, and it's looking like a near-reality.
Next I popped in the DVD of Hero, rented from Scarecrow Video, the coolest video store in the world. I couldn't wait for the copy I ordered to show up.
Hero was somewhat of a disappointment, given the talent involved. Gorgeous cinematography, attractive leads, solid soundtrack, but the movie suffers from a gravity of acting that borders on grim melodrama. The movie lacks passion. Yimou inserts one too many shots of water dripping in slow motion, Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung have little romantic chemistry (I thought Chow-Yun Fat and Michelle Yoh had the same problem in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), and the martial arts is of the flying, choreographed dance variety rather than the hyper-realistic, forceful hand-to-hand combat of a move like Fist of Legend. While some of that imagery is gorgous, as when Jet Li and Tony Leung bounce off of the surface of a lake as if it is rubber, it's so ethereal and choreographed as to be symbolic, like a Chinese Opera dance, and without physical impact. When people are stabbed they don't even bleed. I recognize some of these as symptoms of Asian martial arts dramas in general, so perhaps my distaste is a cultural preference.
The colors and cinematography of Christopher Doyle deserve special recognition, though. Stunning.
Next I met Kate for lunch downtown. It's healthy to see at least one other human being everyday. Unfortunately, Salumi was closed (Armandino Batali's Italian shop Salumi is my favorite eatery in all of Seattle, offering incredibly tasty and affordable cured meats, but its hours are terrible) so we grabbed some Creole cuisine in Pioneer Square. I laid off of the Tabasco sauce, however.
Last week Jodie took me to Dixie's BBQ on the Eastside where I encountered The Man. There is actually a man, Gene Porter, who owns the place, and then there's The Man, the hot sauce which Porter encourages you to slather on your BBQ. Well, I've had a bit of that sauce before, but for some reason Porter spooned a more than healthy dose of The Man on my ribs. That is the hottest of hot sauces I've ever sampled, and it led to a coughing fit that lasted four days. I think one of those peppers lodged in my esophagus and burned a hole through it. No more hot stuff for me for a while.
Anyway, back to today. After lunch I dropped off a roll of slide film at Ivey Imaging and picked up some negatives. I also stopped at Glazer's and bought a remote cord for my Nikon, since I seem to have lost my last one (argh!). I shot some tripod long-exposure shots at Jason's last night, but given that I didn't have a remote cord on me I'm not optimistic that they'll turn out sharp. Gotta have one, though they aren't cheap given their size.
Then I headed home, and, since it wasn't raining, I jumped on my bike and headed for Mercer Island. Last week I jumped on a scale at the gym and screamed in horror. The number that came up was the largest I'd ever encountered. Many grueling sessions at the gym ensued, and the extra weight is especially brutal on the bike. Getting around Mercer is as painful as it's ever been, and today was no exception. Went counter-clockwise and then clockwise back for roughly a 30 mile ride. Felt like I was pulling an open parachute the whole way. The only consolation is that sore, achy feeling in my legs. Love that feeling.
Back home for a shower, then off to Ivey to pick up my slides. Ah, a few winning shots of Sadie Sutton in that batch. Will post a few tomorrow if I get the time.
Then I headed off to Pacific Place to see about using a free movie voucher I received for earning a gazillion Moviewatcher credits. But nothing there interested me, so I spent the next several hours in Barnes and Noble "library", perusing travel books and photography magazines. Digital photography and Photoshop magazines are my current vice, but since I'm not working I just read them in the store and jot down any useful tips in my notebook.
And then back home to cook some dinner and scan some slides with the TV on in the background.
Adam Osborne dead
Adam Osborne, inventor of the portable computer, passed away at the age of 64. The first computer I ever used was my dad's Osborne-1 with its miniscule, monochrome screen. I'd write papers using Wordstar and then print them out on a daisywheel printer. Ah, happy memories.That monitor was ridiculous, though. 5 inches!?!
T-Mac
John Hollinger is right. Tracy McGrady should be MVP this year. Check out the current PER ratings. This whole bias against players with teams with lousy records is ridiculous. Penalizing players for being on lousy teams is some arbitrary rule that sportswriters made up and has nothing to do with "most valuable." Michael Jordan played for years without any supporting cast. You mean to tell me he wasn't the most valuable player every one of those years?Go Paul
Paul Shaffer was the guest host for David Letterman tonight. Funny monologue! Good writers over there.On the late finish of the Oscars for East coasters: "I had as much trouble staying up as Queen Latifah's dress."
On the new Monica Lewinsky reality show on Fox: "Every week a different guy gets voted off her."
On Michael Moore's speech at the Oscars: "To give you an idea how unpopular Michael Moore was, after giving his speech he showed up just ten minutes later in the dead person's montage."
Better Business Bureau comes through
I ordered an Epson 2200 Stylus inkjet printer from PCNation last June or July, and as I was leaving for New Zealand I still hadn't received it. On a whim I filed a complaint online with the Better Business Bureau just before leaving for Los Angeles. Past readers know the issues I have with PCNation, including false availability promises.
A short while later, while checking my e-mail from New Zealand, I get an urgent e-mail message from a PCNation customer service rep asking if I'll be home to accept a Fed Ex package.
I arrived home and my printer was there, along with two notes. One was an acknowledgment from the Better Business Bureau that they had forwarded my complaint to PCNation. Then, a few days later, another note from the BBB, with a response from PCNation attached. Lo and behold, they had located one unit for me and it would be shipped with an upgrade to overnight delivery. So for seven or eight months I didn't hear word one from PCNation, and then one quick note with the BBB and my printer appears out of nowhere.
Count me as a huge new fan of the Better Business Bureau.
Jason and Jamie, and Julie, and Jodie and Lee...so many have been there. Just about two years ago I couldn't tell you the first thing about New Zealand, didn't even know where it was relative to Australia on a map. Now it's one of my favorite places in the world. As Brian put it, it's one of the few places you'd go back and visit within five years of your first visit.
Lauri and Brian also welcomed me to the non-working fraternity. Lauri just passed the one year mark, and Brian's even further along. Their sage advice? Acknowledge that to take the time out to travel for months on end before you have any restrictions or commitments (read: kids) in life is a blessing. Don't feel guilty--seeing the world and greeting our fellow man is never a waste of time. Don't feel guilty about spending money even though none is coming in--if you're on vacation there's no use being miserable.
I knew some of that already, but gosh it sure helps to hear it from another mouth.
Toni had her baby. Michelle had her baby. Dan sent out wedding invites. All sorts of changes at the office, of course. Trista chose Ryan, Evan chose Zora. And Jason and Jamie bought a house.
Not just any house. I swung by to visit what will be, in 24 hours, the place they sleep at night. Can I steal two syllables from Paula Abdul?
Phe. Nomenal.
Good God. It's a mansion on Queen Anne hill with the view to die for, of the city and of Lake Union and Puget Sound. I staked out a room already, though Jason doesn't realize it. I've now spent more time in the home than Jamie has. Is she in for a treat or what?
I waver on whether or not to buy a home--it seems much too mature for me. But when I walk through a place like that and imagine what it would be like, I have to stop myself and count to twenty. It must tap some primal instinct, stemming from the days when settlers worked all their lives to stake out a piece of land and to build a home of their own.
But then we're at the top of Queen Anne, picking up lunch for Jason and Big Mo, and we swing over to the gelato shops just down from Noah's. Now, anyone who knows me really well knows I've been obsessed with rice gelato every since I tasted it in Florence. They'd know that I've walked into every gelato place I've passed since that visit to Florence, and never once have I found rice gelato.
Rice (riso) gelato, the sign read. As the saying goes, I did a double take, reading it again to make sure I wasn't having a brain cramp.
Are you kidding me? Has some guardian angel been assigned some after school detention time, to watch over me? Just when you least expect it, when you've given up all hope, your epic quest ends in a gelato shop in your own hometown.
Big Mo bought me two scoops from the Project Pregnancy envelope (ask Jason), and while it wasn't quite of Florentian quality, it was symbolically the most important gelato I've ever had in my life. It represents proof that we can and should seek a higher plane of happiness than we imagine possible.
In fact, that's what my whole month off and all my experiences in New Zealand and Australia have taught me. Life can be really really good. 1998 taught me that no matter how bad things can get, they can get worse. But the reverse is always true, and now I won't and can't be content with a life less extraordinary.
Flipping through all those pages, plastered with stamps, filled me with a unique satisfaction.
I never in my life imagine I could find sailing enthralling to watch, but a lot of things in New Zealand were more contagious than anticipated.
So this is what it feels like. It feels amazingly healthy, much like what I imagine converted vegetarians feel when they finally walk into a restaurant and have no craving for any meat products whatsoever.
Or maybe I'm ill. Can this last? What's wrong with me? I mean, not even ESPN?
It has to end when All the Real Girls comes out in Seattle. I adored George Washington, David Gordon Green's first movie, and maybe I am ill, because I'm actually in the mood for this, his new movie, a romance.
A short while later, while checking my e-mail from New Zealand, I get an urgent e-mail message from a PCNation customer service rep asking if I'll be home to accept a Fed Ex package.
I arrived home and my printer was there, along with two notes. One was an acknowledgment from the Better Business Bureau that they had forwarded my complaint to PCNation. Then, a few days later, another note from the BBB, with a response from PCNation attached. Lo and behold, they had located one unit for me and it would be shipped with an upgrade to overnight delivery. So for seven or eight months I didn't hear word one from PCNation, and then one quick note with the BBB and my printer appears out of nowhere.
Count me as a huge new fan of the Better Business Bureau.
The NZ fraternity
Having visited New Zealand, I joined a small but growing fraternity of American travelers who have sampled Kiwi bliss. I had lunch with two others today, Lauri and Brian, just to swap stories. It has to be near the top of most English speaking travelers' lists this time of year, especially with current political tensions. It's a safe, neutral nation, the people are friendly, the goods and services are extremely affordable, and the landscape is awesome, as showcased in The Lord of the Rings.Jason and Jamie, and Julie, and Jodie and Lee...so many have been there. Just about two years ago I couldn't tell you the first thing about New Zealand, didn't even know where it was relative to Australia on a map. Now it's one of my favorite places in the world. As Brian put it, it's one of the few places you'd go back and visit within five years of your first visit.
Lauri and Brian also welcomed me to the non-working fraternity. Lauri just passed the one year mark, and Brian's even further along. Their sage advice? Acknowledge that to take the time out to travel for months on end before you have any restrictions or commitments (read: kids) in life is a blessing. Don't feel guilty--seeing the world and greeting our fellow man is never a waste of time. Don't feel guilty about spending money even though none is coming in--if you're on vacation there's no use being miserable.
I knew some of that already, but gosh it sure helps to hear it from another mouth.
Frasier would be jealous
A lot happened while I was gone. Traveling for a month straight is like hitting the >| button on your DVD remote, skipping to the next chapter. Come home and the changes are visible to the naked eye. They're enough to summarize over one night of beers, but it's one intense and fascinating night.Toni had her baby. Michelle had her baby. Dan sent out wedding invites. All sorts of changes at the office, of course. Trista chose Ryan, Evan chose Zora. And Jason and Jamie bought a house.
Not just any house. I swung by to visit what will be, in 24 hours, the place they sleep at night. Can I steal two syllables from Paula Abdul?
Phe. Nomenal.
Good God. It's a mansion on Queen Anne hill with the view to die for, of the city and of Lake Union and Puget Sound. I staked out a room already, though Jason doesn't realize it. I've now spent more time in the home than Jamie has. Is she in for a treat or what?
I waver on whether or not to buy a home--it seems much too mature for me. But when I walk through a place like that and imagine what it would be like, I have to stop myself and count to twenty. It must tap some primal instinct, stemming from the days when settlers worked all their lives to stake out a piece of land and to build a home of their own.
Riso Gelato!!!
After my lovely lunch with Brian and Lauri and seeing the wonder that is Jason's new home and seeing Jason's mother (Big Mo!) again, I didn't think the day could get any better.But then we're at the top of Queen Anne, picking up lunch for Jason and Big Mo, and we swing over to the gelato shops just down from Noah's. Now, anyone who knows me really well knows I've been obsessed with rice gelato every since I tasted it in Florence. They'd know that I've walked into every gelato place I've passed since that visit to Florence, and never once have I found rice gelato.
Rice (riso) gelato, the sign read. As the saying goes, I did a double take, reading it again to make sure I wasn't having a brain cramp.
Are you kidding me? Has some guardian angel been assigned some after school detention time, to watch over me? Just when you least expect it, when you've given up all hope, your epic quest ends in a gelato shop in your own hometown.
Big Mo bought me two scoops from the Project Pregnancy envelope (ask Jason), and while it wasn't quite of Florentian quality, it was symbolically the most important gelato I've ever had in my life. It represents proof that we can and should seek a higher plane of happiness than we imagine possible.
In fact, that's what my whole month off and all my experiences in New Zealand and Australia have taught me. Life can be really really good. 1998 taught me that no matter how bad things can get, they can get worse. But the reverse is always true, and now I won't and can't be content with a life less extraordinary.
Filled my passport!
Every visa page in my passport has been filled. I can't travel anywhere until I get an extension or a new passport. It will have to be a post-Rio project, when I'm planning my next excursions.Flipping through all those pages, plastered with stamps, filled me with a unique satisfaction.
Poor Kiwis
Can it get any worse for the Kiwis in the America's Cup? One of the writers in the NZ papers called a 5-0 sweep for the Swiss. Give that guy a medal. Most people favored New Zealand slightly and thought they had the faster boat. You couldn't script a more devastating or depressing first four races for the defending champions.I never in my life imagine I could find sailing enthralling to watch, but a lot of things in New Zealand were more contagious than anticipated.
The cure? Sunshine and life
Another things my travels have cured me of is my desire to watch television or movies. I haven't watched a minute of TV since I've been back, even though my TIVO has hours of all my favorite shows in its belly and even though a gazillion channels beckon from the satellite dish. I don't remember the last time I felt this way, if ever. It's completely strange.So this is what it feels like. It feels amazingly healthy, much like what I imagine converted vegetarians feel when they finally walk into a restaurant and have no craving for any meat products whatsoever.
Or maybe I'm ill. Can this last? What's wrong with me? I mean, not even ESPN?
It has to end when All the Real Girls comes out in Seattle. I adored George Washington, David Gordon Green's first movie, and maybe I am ill, because I'm actually in the mood for this, his new movie, a romance.
Pot roast
I received a slo-cooker (aka crock pot) recently and put it to use yesterday. I made a pot roast.
Turned out okay though the flavor needs more salt and is too tomato-ey. Also, I was impatient so I cooked it on high and the meat is on the tough side for a roast. I'll adjust the recipe next time, but the thing with a slo-cooker is you have to spend about ten days finishing each dish.
Web subscriptions are pricey (Salon charges $30 per year for an ad-free subscription). Compare that with $24.95 for a year's subscription to a print magazine like The New Yorker and it seems expensive. Compare it to the cost of 2 or 3 CDs in which only 33% of the songs are memorable and it doesn't seem so bad.
Turned out okay though the flavor needs more salt and is too tomato-ey. Also, I was impatient so I cooked it on high and the meat is on the tough side for a roast. I'll adjust the recipe next time, but the thing with a slo-cooker is you have to spend about ten days finishing each dish.
You gotta pay to play
Bummer. Baseball Prospectus is going to start charging for most of its content. $39.95 for a year's worth.Web subscriptions are pricey (Salon charges $30 per year for an ad-free subscription). Compare that with $24.95 for a year's subscription to a print magazine like The New Yorker and it seems expensive. Compare it to the cost of 2 or 3 CDs in which only 33% of the songs are memorable and it doesn't seem so bad.
Groovy
Groove Armada has a new CD out--Lovebox. Releases on my birthday. As if I needed an excuse to buy it for myself. Right.Can I get any more real?
Thank goodness I'm leaving this country for a month. Otherwise I'd be overdosing on reality. Joe Millionaire on Monday. American Idol and The Real World on Tuesday. The Bachelorette on Wednesday. Without reality TV, how often would be able to feel superior to our petty, conniving, fellow men and women?Talk show hierarchy
The best talk show hosts, in order:
Of course, if Larry Sanders qualified (Bravo is airing two reruns a day, bless its heart), he'd be near the top.
And then you move on and wait for the The Return of the King to come out. In this case, I prefer the movies to the books.
I'm at a school. The hallways are empty. All the other students are already in class, but that's okay. I'm not late for a class--I'm on a different schedule (could the other students be my coworkers, who aren't on leaves of absence?). I've got a black sports bag slung over my shoulder, and it's filled with books. Everything is quiet.
I go to a locker I think is mine, and then I remember that it's not mine. No, my locker has changed. My locker number is 114. When I realize this, I'm filled with happiness and start sprinting down the hall, watching the numbers count down from the 140's to the 130's to the 120's all the way down to 114. It's the last locker before the row of lockers ends and stands next to a classroom door.
What's more, I know the combination the padlock. Instead of just numbers, this padlock has a series of words and numbers and symbols on it. The combination is a short and cryptic phrase, and when I dial it on the padlock the entire lock not only opens but cracks in half. I open the locker door and push my bag inside. There is a small upper shelf which holds some notebooks and file folders filled with papers, and I begin rifling through those to pull the materials relevant to my next class which I think is a history class. I'm not entirely sure what we're studying today but I don't feel the desperation I feel when I know a final exam awaits. I'll be ready.
And then I woke up. 114 has to stand for January 14th, which is both Hanh and Lynna's birthday, a date which just passed. Subconsciously, I must have realized I missed their birthdays.
This is a real breakthrough.
Of course, if Larry Sanders qualified (Bravo is airing two reruns a day, bless its heart), he'd be near the top.
The quest ends
I finally finished re-reading The Lord of the Rings. Imaginative, yes, though not the most well-written story ever. Not one of my favorites, but after having read over a thousand fine print pages you do feel a certain sadness when it ends, the same type of nostalgia you feel at your high school graduation, the same type of accomplishment you feel having finished a long bike ride through the rain.And then you move on and wait for the The Return of the King to come out. In this case, I prefer the movies to the books.
Locker 114
Last night, I finally had a dream that I wasn't sure I'd ever have. It's the opposite of the dream in which you're rushing to a class you haven't studied for all quarter, the one in which you don't even know your locker # or, even if you could find your locker, what the combination is.I'm at a school. The hallways are empty. All the other students are already in class, but that's okay. I'm not late for a class--I'm on a different schedule (could the other students be my coworkers, who aren't on leaves of absence?). I've got a black sports bag slung over my shoulder, and it's filled with books. Everything is quiet.
I go to a locker I think is mine, and then I remember that it's not mine. No, my locker has changed. My locker number is 114. When I realize this, I'm filled with happiness and start sprinting down the hall, watching the numbers count down from the 140's to the 130's to the 120's all the way down to 114. It's the last locker before the row of lockers ends and stands next to a classroom door.
What's more, I know the combination the padlock. Instead of just numbers, this padlock has a series of words and numbers and symbols on it. The combination is a short and cryptic phrase, and when I dial it on the padlock the entire lock not only opens but cracks in half. I open the locker door and push my bag inside. There is a small upper shelf which holds some notebooks and file folders filled with papers, and I begin rifling through those to pull the materials relevant to my next class which I think is a history class. I'm not entirely sure what we're studying today but I don't feel the desperation I feel when I know a final exam awaits. I'll be ready.
And then I woke up. 114 has to stand for January 14th, which is both Hanh and Lynna's birthday, a date which just passed. Subconsciously, I must have realized I missed their birthdays.
This is a real breakthrough.
3,764 miles
Scott called on Saturday. He finished his bike ride from Florida to San Diego. 3,764 miles! What a stud. That's more miles than I drove in my car last year. Scott should swing by our place soon, and when he does I'll be tempted to ask him if he wants to go for a bike ride, and I can't tell if that will be funny or not.
Speaking of which I finally saw one of those anti-SUV ads which blame SUVs for funding terrorists. Yes, there are lots of reasons why we'd all be better off with fewer SUVs on the roads. SUVs have proven to cause more auto fatalities (studies have shown that SUVs don't make you any safe, and at the same time people who aren't in SUVs are more likely to die when you hit them with your massive vehicle), they do get much worse gas mileage, and that does contribute in part to America sending money to Iraq and Saudi Arabia which are terrorist friendly nations. Still, the reactions of most people who've seen the ads lead me to believe that the shock value may turn off too many people to be effective in motivating action.
Speaking of which I finally saw one of those anti-SUV ads which blame SUVs for funding terrorists. Yes, there are lots of reasons why we'd all be better off with fewer SUVs on the roads. SUVs have proven to cause more auto fatalities (studies have shown that SUVs don't make you any safe, and at the same time people who aren't in SUVs are more likely to die when you hit them with your massive vehicle), they do get much worse gas mileage, and that does contribute in part to America sending money to Iraq and Saudi Arabia which are terrorist friendly nations. Still, the reactions of most people who've seen the ads lead me to believe that the shock value may turn off too many people to be effective in motivating action.
Antwone Fisher
"Who will cry for the little boy, lost and all alone?
Who will cry for the little boy, abandoned without his own?
Who will cry for the little boy? He cried himself to sleep.
Who will cry for the little boy? He never had for keeps.
Who will cry for the little boy? He walked the burning sand.
Who will cry for the little boy? The boy inside the man.
Who will cry for the little boy? Who knows well hurt and pain.
Who will cry for the little boy? He died and died again.
Who will cry for the little boy? A good boy he tried to be.
Who will cry for the little boy, who cries inside of me?"
- Antwone Fisher
I hear people say that the reason PVR's don't sell well is that they're hard to explain to people. Well, those people aren't very bright.
Before Jim earned his Master's in computer science at the University of Illinois in Urbana, he was a music teacher. Now he's a successful software engineer, but he hasn't lost his love for music. He plays the upright bass, and over the past two years he's designed and built a music listening room as an addition to his house. It's the most impressive music room in someone's house that I've ever been to, and it rivals the best studio demo rooms I've been in. He worked with acousting engineers to design every last bit of it.
The room has all the essential qualities of an ideal listening room. It's dimensions are 15 x 20 feet, approximately, which is a good ratio. Of course the room is perfectly rectangular. He has sliding sound panels at the front and sides of the room, and they can be positioned to cancel standing waves and to optimize for different types of listening or playing. The ceiling is sloped so as not to reflect music back down on the listener. Hardwood floors all around. The back wall is the most interesting thing. It was custom designed using a series of cedar wood boards turned sideways and jutting out at different lengths. Each set of sixteen boards, each about an inch thick from the side, jut out in a varied series of lenghts which scatter the sound waves which hit the back wall. The door to the room is double hinged and is as thick as a bank vault door. When closed, a switch on the side drops a rubber lining to the bottom of the floor to prevent sound from escaping through the space beneath the door.
The entire back wall is a series of five doors. The first leads to a side entrance where musician friends can enter and exit the listening room. The next two doors open to the room which holds some storage space and his musical components, all of which are made by Musical Fidelity. The next door reveals a series of Boltz USA CD racks which are mounted on sliding rails. The last door leads to the rest of the house.
And then there are the speakers. B&W 802s (same as mine! great minds hear alike), a pair of them, at the front of the room, toed in to face the two sofa chairs seated side by side about two-thirds of the way back in the room. The entire feel of the room is spare and clean.
What was left but to pour ourselves a glass of Pinot Noir from the vineyards of New Zealand (where I'll be in about two weeks) and sit ourselves down for some listening. I brought some of my favorite CDs, and Jim had compiled a selection of recordings which would show off his system properly. I let Jim do the honors, as you never touch another man's home theater components (it's like driving another man's car without asking permission), and he started us off by loading Diana Krall's Love Scenes. I knew it would be a good night. Not only does Krall have a great voice, but she knows how to use it and her CD's are always impeccably engineered. She's a darling among audiophiles.
If you've never tested someone's listening room, all you really do is bring your favorite CDs and take turns suggesting tracks to listen to. Then you just sit back in the chair and close your eyes and listen to music. Afterwards you chat about the quality of the recording and the qualities of the sound in the performance. It sounds goofy, but if the listening room is engineered well, it's heaven.
Closing your eyes allows you to focus all your senses on the sound, and if everything comes together, then suddenly Diana Krall is standing on a stage about 10 feet away, singing tunes just for you. And there she was. The sound came through as transparent as can be, and that's the highest compliment you can pay an audio system.
Next came the grand daddy of classical showpieces, a track which has been copied in just about every sci-fi space movie soundtrack ever: Mars from Gustav Holtz's The Planets. The most acclaimed recording, and the one we used, is the recording by Charles Dutoit and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. You know that Memorex print ad where the guy sitting in the sofa is being literally blown away by music from the stereo in front of him? That was me.
Jim and his wife Kathy enjoy classical and jazz, so that's where we focused our evening's lineup. We moved next to Bach's Unaccompanied Cello Suites, as played by Yo Yo Ma. This time we chose his earlier recording from 1983. It's been a long time since I've heard this piece, and the recording I own is the one by Janos Starker. Ma's interpretation is quite good, and the rich sound of his cello expanded to fill the room. I have to make a note to myself to get a copy of this recording.
And so it went. Jim and Kathy and I, just sitting in this soundproof (to the outside world) vault, with our eyes closed, just listening to one CD after another. Time started to slide away as my consciousness narrowed to just listen. It has been many months since I can remember feeling so relaxed, so at peace. I definitely think I've had too many demands and stimuli in my life this past year, and it has made me anxious, jittery, and impatient. In Jim's listening room, every CD sounded like a live performance, and I was content to reduce myself to a pair of appreciative ears. My pulse must have dropped below 40.
Among other fantastic recordings we sampled from, all of which I highly recommend for the audiophiles among you or those just looking to add a few great jazz and classical CDs to your collection:
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon soundtrack by Tan Dun and featuring Yo-Yo Ma
'58 Sessions by the Miles Davis Sextet with Bill Evans
Waltz for Debby by the Bill Evans Trio
From the Age of Swing by Dick Hyman
Lush Life by John Coltrane
Mingus Ah Um by Charles Mingus
I left Jim's place with a sudden desire to buy my own house and build my own listening room the very next day. You can't buy a house and hope to find a room ready made like this. My home theater is nice, but the odd shape of my room, the carpet, and the dimensions mean that it is pretty challenging acoustically. I don't find myself listening to CDs as much as I would in the past and had forgotten how transporting that can be, how amazing the B&W 802s can sound.
Three hours went by just like that. Jim finally opened the front door to his house and released me back into society. I stood in his driveway, slightly dazed.
Who will cry for the little boy, abandoned without his own?
Who will cry for the little boy? He cried himself to sleep.
Who will cry for the little boy? He never had for keeps.
Who will cry for the little boy? He walked the burning sand.
Who will cry for the little boy? The boy inside the man.
Who will cry for the little boy? Who knows well hurt and pain.
Who will cry for the little boy? He died and died again.
Who will cry for the little boy? A good boy he tried to be.
Who will cry for the little boy, who cries inside of me?"
- Antwone Fisher
Hi-def TIVO
Hi-def TIVO would be sweet, though I'll believe it once I see it. My first PVR was a ReplayTV which didn't work quite right. It was a free sample, though, so I can't complain. Then I bought a modified TIVO (didn't want to pay TIVO's monthly subscription so I bought one with a paid lifetime subscription) and modified it by adding a huge hard drive to give myself more recording space.I hear people say that the reason PVR's don't sell well is that they're hard to explain to people. Well, those people aren't very bright.
Jim Ford's listening room
Thursday evening I got a treat. Jim Ford invited me to his house in Bellevue to test out his new listening room. I first met Jim on a project a few years back. He's a search software engineer, and we worked together on Amazon.com's movie showtimes site. Working with him was something I'll always remember because he was the consummate professional. Just did his job and did it well. Amazon's such a young company, and sometimes over the past five and a half years I've just taken for granted that co-workers may be occasionally moody, political, lazy, or high maintenance. Then I'll work with someone like Jim and remember the type of person we should all aspire to surround ourselves with.Before Jim earned his Master's in computer science at the University of Illinois in Urbana, he was a music teacher. Now he's a successful software engineer, but he hasn't lost his love for music. He plays the upright bass, and over the past two years he's designed and built a music listening room as an addition to his house. It's the most impressive music room in someone's house that I've ever been to, and it rivals the best studio demo rooms I've been in. He worked with acousting engineers to design every last bit of it.
The room has all the essential qualities of an ideal listening room. It's dimensions are 15 x 20 feet, approximately, which is a good ratio. Of course the room is perfectly rectangular. He has sliding sound panels at the front and sides of the room, and they can be positioned to cancel standing waves and to optimize for different types of listening or playing. The ceiling is sloped so as not to reflect music back down on the listener. Hardwood floors all around. The back wall is the most interesting thing. It was custom designed using a series of cedar wood boards turned sideways and jutting out at different lengths. Each set of sixteen boards, each about an inch thick from the side, jut out in a varied series of lenghts which scatter the sound waves which hit the back wall. The door to the room is double hinged and is as thick as a bank vault door. When closed, a switch on the side drops a rubber lining to the bottom of the floor to prevent sound from escaping through the space beneath the door.
The entire back wall is a series of five doors. The first leads to a side entrance where musician friends can enter and exit the listening room. The next two doors open to the room which holds some storage space and his musical components, all of which are made by Musical Fidelity. The next door reveals a series of Boltz USA CD racks which are mounted on sliding rails. The last door leads to the rest of the house.
And then there are the speakers. B&W 802s (same as mine! great minds hear alike), a pair of them, at the front of the room, toed in to face the two sofa chairs seated side by side about two-thirds of the way back in the room. The entire feel of the room is spare and clean.
What was left but to pour ourselves a glass of Pinot Noir from the vineyards of New Zealand (where I'll be in about two weeks) and sit ourselves down for some listening. I brought some of my favorite CDs, and Jim had compiled a selection of recordings which would show off his system properly. I let Jim do the honors, as you never touch another man's home theater components (it's like driving another man's car without asking permission), and he started us off by loading Diana Krall's Love Scenes. I knew it would be a good night. Not only does Krall have a great voice, but she knows how to use it and her CD's are always impeccably engineered. She's a darling among audiophiles.
If you've never tested someone's listening room, all you really do is bring your favorite CDs and take turns suggesting tracks to listen to. Then you just sit back in the chair and close your eyes and listen to music. Afterwards you chat about the quality of the recording and the qualities of the sound in the performance. It sounds goofy, but if the listening room is engineered well, it's heaven.
Closing your eyes allows you to focus all your senses on the sound, and if everything comes together, then suddenly Diana Krall is standing on a stage about 10 feet away, singing tunes just for you. And there she was. The sound came through as transparent as can be, and that's the highest compliment you can pay an audio system.
Next came the grand daddy of classical showpieces, a track which has been copied in just about every sci-fi space movie soundtrack ever: Mars from Gustav Holtz's The Planets. The most acclaimed recording, and the one we used, is the recording by Charles Dutoit and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. You know that Memorex print ad where the guy sitting in the sofa is being literally blown away by music from the stereo in front of him? That was me.
Jim and his wife Kathy enjoy classical and jazz, so that's where we focused our evening's lineup. We moved next to Bach's Unaccompanied Cello Suites, as played by Yo Yo Ma. This time we chose his earlier recording from 1983. It's been a long time since I've heard this piece, and the recording I own is the one by Janos Starker. Ma's interpretation is quite good, and the rich sound of his cello expanded to fill the room. I have to make a note to myself to get a copy of this recording.
And so it went. Jim and Kathy and I, just sitting in this soundproof (to the outside world) vault, with our eyes closed, just listening to one CD after another. Time started to slide away as my consciousness narrowed to just listen. It has been many months since I can remember feeling so relaxed, so at peace. I definitely think I've had too many demands and stimuli in my life this past year, and it has made me anxious, jittery, and impatient. In Jim's listening room, every CD sounded like a live performance, and I was content to reduce myself to a pair of appreciative ears. My pulse must have dropped below 40.
Among other fantastic recordings we sampled from, all of which I highly recommend for the audiophiles among you or those just looking to add a few great jazz and classical CDs to your collection:
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon soundtrack by Tan Dun and featuring Yo-Yo Ma
'58 Sessions by the Miles Davis Sextet with Bill Evans
Waltz for Debby by the Bill Evans Trio
From the Age of Swing by Dick Hyman
Lush Life by John Coltrane
Mingus Ah Um by Charles Mingus
I left Jim's place with a sudden desire to buy my own house and build my own listening room the very next day. You can't buy a house and hope to find a room ready made like this. My home theater is nice, but the odd shape of my room, the carpet, and the dimensions mean that it is pretty challenging acoustically. I don't find myself listening to CDs as much as I would in the past and had forgotten how transporting that can be, how amazing the B&W 802s can sound.
Three hours went by just like that. Jim finally opened the front door to his house and released me back into society. I stood in his driveway, slightly dazed.
Post-modern spam
I got a spam e-mail today with the subject line, "Tired of deleting spam e-mail?"Chicken fighting with a girl
Seeing Jordan drop 41 on a Pacers team coached by the whiny Isaiah Thomas and led by the whining Reggie Miller still gives me an inordinate amount of pleasure. Jordan once compared playing against Reggie Miller with "chicken fighting with a girl" because of the way Miller grabs and tugs with his arms and hands or flops at the slightest contact on defense and the way he pushes off with his arms to get open on offense.
Everyone knows Miller pushed off of Jordan to get open for the game winning 3 in the 98 playoffs to force a game 7. Ridiculous no-call, almost as bad as the foul call on Pippen against Hubert Davis to allow the Knicks to get past the Bulls in the 95 playoffs.
Isaiah? Great player, but forever an ass in my mind for first leading the Jordan freeze-out in the All-Star game when Jordan was a rookie, and also for walking off of the court before the end of the game when the Bulls finally swept the Pistons in the playoffs. What a chump.
Of course, he's over watching football today and just drops it on me casually.
"Hey, do you watch 24?" he asks me.
"Sure, why?" I ask.
"I saw this girl I used to date, she was on the front page of USA Today, face to face with Kiefer Sutherland. She's in the show," he says.
"Really!? Holy shit. What's her name?" I say. And almost immediately, I'm thinking, oh my god, he dated Nina Myers.
"Sarah Clarke," he says, not even looking at me.
At this point I proceed to scream a couple of expletives and wave my hands wildly while Peter sits on the sofa stares at me with a look both bored and scronful, a look that says, oh you poor, pitiful man, have you not dated any celebrities?
I am still somewhat devastated. Of course, the real loser here is Sarah, who ended up marrying Xander Berkeley, the guy who plays George Mason. Peter is much cooler.
Everyone knows Miller pushed off of Jordan to get open for the game winning 3 in the 98 playoffs to force a game 7. Ridiculous no-call, almost as bad as the foul call on Pippen against Hubert Davis to allow the Knicks to get past the Bulls in the 95 playoffs.
Isaiah? Great player, but forever an ass in my mind for first leading the Jordan freeze-out in the All-Star game when Jordan was a rookie, and also for walking off of the court before the end of the game when the Bulls finally swept the Pistons in the playoffs. What a chump.
Peter and Sarah Clarke, sitting in a tree
Peter dated Sarah Clarke while he lived in NYC! Holy #$%!Of course, he's over watching football today and just drops it on me casually.
"Hey, do you watch 24?" he asks me.
"Sure, why?" I ask.
"I saw this girl I used to date, she was on the front page of USA Today, face to face with Kiefer Sutherland. She's in the show," he says.
"Really!? Holy shit. What's her name?" I say. And almost immediately, I'm thinking, oh my god, he dated Nina Myers.
"Sarah Clarke," he says, not even looking at me.
At this point I proceed to scream a couple of expletives and wave my hands wildly while Peter sits on the sofa stares at me with a look both bored and scronful, a look that says, oh you poor, pitiful man, have you not dated any celebrities?
I am still somewhat devastated. Of course, the real loser here is Sarah, who ended up marrying Xander Berkeley, the guy who plays George Mason. Peter is much cooler.
Tip for you TIVO users
BigMarv posts a TIVO easter egg that allows you to get 30 second commercial skip, like on the now defunct ReplayTV. God bless America.
Sam Seaborn leaves The West Wing
Today I announced my upcoming leave of absence from Amazon.com. You tell everyone you're taking a leave, and they hear "I'm leaving." Maybe I should use the term sabbatical instead.
I haven't decided what to do when my leave ends. I'll come back to Amazon, see if there's a place for me, see if I can find something that interests me and adds some value to the company. It's easier to decide to take a break than to start it. The closer I got to pulling the trigger, the harder it was to actually follow through. And it's not just walking away from a steady paycheck in a lousy economy. I've worked here for five and a half years. That's the longest I've done anything in my life besides serving as a die hard Cubs fan. You don't work that long some place and not grow attached. I've met some amazing people in that time, made some great friends, and been part of something bigger than I could have ever imagined. I'll always remember my mother asking me when I told her of my plans to move away to this strange city where I knew one person: "You're taking a pay cut to go work for who? What do they do? What's the Internet?" God bless her, she had long since set me free and trusted me to do the right thing.
I haven't quite nailed what I'm going to do during my leave, either, but I've got a few ideas. Some of those things on my 30 things to do before I'm 30 list which some of you may have heard of. Places to see on my own. Friends to visit. Just pack a bag, grab a walking stick, and hike the world. There are certain things I believe about myself, and I've got to see if I'm right. And there are probably quite a few things I still have to learn about myself, and the only way to do that is to change the test conditions, blow my world. Amazon is the control, the shoes that fit me so well that I'd repair them a thousand times over before buying a new pair.
I've always loved learning new things, embracing new challenges. This will give me the chance to learn a few new tricks. I didn't realize it until just now, when I checked, but today (Dec. 11th) was the 2 year anniversary of my weblog. Is it a coincidence? The word itself denies its own meaning; the human mind does not believe in such a thing.
For all of you readers, my sabbatical changes nothing. I'll still be here, as always.
I haven't decided what to do when my leave ends. I'll come back to Amazon, see if there's a place for me, see if I can find something that interests me and adds some value to the company. It's easier to decide to take a break than to start it. The closer I got to pulling the trigger, the harder it was to actually follow through. And it's not just walking away from a steady paycheck in a lousy economy. I've worked here for five and a half years. That's the longest I've done anything in my life besides serving as a die hard Cubs fan. You don't work that long some place and not grow attached. I've met some amazing people in that time, made some great friends, and been part of something bigger than I could have ever imagined. I'll always remember my mother asking me when I told her of my plans to move away to this strange city where I knew one person: "You're taking a pay cut to go work for who? What do they do? What's the Internet?" God bless her, she had long since set me free and trusted me to do the right thing.
I haven't quite nailed what I'm going to do during my leave, either, but I've got a few ideas. Some of those things on my 30 things to do before I'm 30 list which some of you may have heard of. Places to see on my own. Friends to visit. Just pack a bag, grab a walking stick, and hike the world. There are certain things I believe about myself, and I've got to see if I'm right. And there are probably quite a few things I still have to learn about myself, and the only way to do that is to change the test conditions, blow my world. Amazon is the control, the shoes that fit me so well that I'd repair them a thousand times over before buying a new pair.
I've always loved learning new things, embracing new challenges. This will give me the chance to learn a few new tricks. I didn't realize it until just now, when I checked, but today (Dec. 11th) was the 2 year anniversary of my weblog. Is it a coincidence? The word itself denies its own meaning; the human mind does not believe in such a thing.
For all of you readers, my sabbatical changes nothing. I'll still be here, as always.
Are we there yet? Are we there yet?
That cliche about being a child of the MTV generation and having a short attention span, being used to rapid video cuts and the instant gratification of the Internet over a broadband connection? I think it applies to me. I border on attention deficit disorder these days. I can't finish any books but have started eighty, I can't wait for anything without losing all patience. I was watching some guy make my sandwich at Subway a few days ago and nearly jumped over the counter to make it myself. Can you call to pre-order your sandwich there? I don't think the guy was working all that slowly, either. I hate driving places--I wish I could just teleport over. And when I do drive, it's a race to the catch every green light, to rocket through every yellow light, find every possible shortcut which will prevent me from having to sit at a red light, drumming on my steering wheel in frustration.
My laptop at work was ancient, four years old. It was an dinosaur, and booting up into Windows 2000 was ridiculously slow. I'd boot up my laptop, wait five minutes for the login screen, type in my password, then go away for breakfast. About fifteen minutes later my laptop would be ready for use. So every morning begain with frustration. Finally I got a new laptop with Windows XP and now it's booted up and ready for login in about a tenth of the time. Much better. Then I upgraded from Windows 2000 to Windows XP on my home computer (to enable Remote Desktop Connection from my Mac) and now it takes forever to boot up. You just can't win.
I need to take a long road trip where I see nothing for miles on end, just to force myself to slow down.
I almost snorted up my lunch watching Christopher's intervention scene. That was one of the funniest five minutes of television I've ever watched.
The Sopranos has a distinctive way of ending its episodes. The camera frames a shot and holds it for a few seconds, then the music comes on. It's not the type of neat ending you see on television normally, or some sort of suspenseful cliffhanger. Usually some emotional realization, often unpleasant, has descended on one of the characters and the music and visual still-shot combine to make a wry comment about the travails of mob (read: modern) life. Creative stuff.
My laptop at work was ancient, four years old. It was an dinosaur, and booting up into Windows 2000 was ridiculously slow. I'd boot up my laptop, wait five minutes for the login screen, type in my password, then go away for breakfast. About fifteen minutes later my laptop would be ready for use. So every morning begain with frustration. Finally I got a new laptop with Windows XP and now it's booted up and ready for login in about a tenth of the time. Much better. Then I upgraded from Windows 2000 to Windows XP on my home computer (to enable Remote Desktop Connection from my Mac) and now it takes forever to boot up. You just can't win.
I need to take a long road trip where I see nothing for miles on end, just to force myself to slow down.
Jen saves Ben
A new video game, Jen Saves Ben, features Ms. Lopez rescuing Mr. Affleck from kidnappers. Is anyone more overexposed right now than J. Lo? Did Ben agree to the premise of this videogame? I thought it was Posh Spice, or was it David Beckham, that was the one who was a victim of a kidnap plot.Intervention
Caught myself up on The Sopranos this season. If you haven't watched it yet, you might not want to read ahead.I almost snorted up my lunch watching Christopher's intervention scene. That was one of the funniest five minutes of television I've ever watched.
The Sopranos has a distinctive way of ending its episodes. The camera frames a shot and holds it for a few seconds, then the music comes on. It's not the type of neat ending you see on television normally, or some sort of suspenseful cliffhanger. Usually some emotional realization, often unpleasant, has descended on one of the characters and the music and visual still-shot combine to make a wry comment about the travails of mob (read: modern) life. Creative stuff.
My Xmas gift to you, part II: Thwart telemarketers
Along the lines of my Google toolbar reco, here's another free gift to my loyal readers.
You can buy one of these devices to deter telemarketers or you can emulate it the low-tech way. Record the three tones you get when you dial a number that's out of service, add it to the front of your answering machine message. Computer assisted dialers will assume the number is dead and drop it off of their lists, while regular friends and family will hear your message afterwards and see how clever you are. I get a ton of telemarketing calls during the day and so my answering machine gets most of them. I plan on doing this over the holiday season. You can download the ring tones here.
Good thing, because they're getting some competition. There are a whole bunch of new online DVD rental services, and two big players, Blockbuster and Wal-Mart, have begun offering services of their own. Blockbuster's service is lousy--you still have to go pick up the movies and return them to a store--but in the end it's not a difficult business model to emulate. You don't have to buy lots of inventory, and the software is pretty straightforward. The types of changes Netflix is making are the ones they have to make, the no-brainers. The switching costs are very low.
The positive which should come out of all of this is lowered monthly rental subscription fees.
Bad: My computer fan suddenly started whirring in a loud pulsing pattern, like it has a throbbing headache. Shut up!
Ugly: David Eckstein's throwing motion from shortstop.
But the extended version of LOTR: FOTR is excellent. The 30 minutes or so of additional footage add to the depth of the story and the characters, enhancing your understanding of the regular edition of the movie. It's the best "director's cut" I've seen.
You can buy one of these devices to deter telemarketers or you can emulate it the low-tech way. Record the three tones you get when you dial a number that's out of service, add it to the front of your answering machine message. Computer assisted dialers will assume the number is dead and drop it off of their lists, while regular friends and family will hear your message afterwards and see how clever you are. I get a ton of telemarketing calls during the day and so my answering machine gets most of them. I plan on doing this over the holiday season. You can download the ring tones here.
My friend Oprah
Having the TV on is like having someone who really wants you to like him or her sitting in the room with you. When you're lonely, he or she will chat with you (the sex of the TV depends on the channel--Oprah is your emotionally honest aunt, ESPN your consummate sports buddy), and when you need some alone time he just sits in the corner, mumbling quietly to himself. I don't understand people who don't own TVs. They must not be as socially maladjusted as I am.Joshua Malina and Danny Wuerffel
Finally caught up with all the West Wing episodes on the Tivo (sweeps month on the networks is a busy time for TV junkies). Looks like Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe) is on the way out for sure now, and he's being replaced by Aaron Sorkin favorite Joshua Malina as Will Bailey. Malina has been in lots of other Sorkin productions (Sports Night, The American President). Sorkin likes to use the same people over and over again--hell, half of the West Wing seems to have stayed in the White House after The American President, with Martin Sheen moving from chief of staff up to president. I think it's because Sorkin prefers a certain snappy delivery of his dialogue and veterans of his shows have got it down pat. It's like David Mamet and his repeated use of people like Ricky Jay and his wife Rebecca Pidgeon, or Steve Spurrier and his loyalty towards lackeys like QBs Danny Wuerffel and Shane Matthews, the only ones who can tolerate his incessant criticism.Netflix stays nimble
Okay, Netflix has responded to some gripes I've aired in the past (well, they didn't respond directly to me, but when you write something and then something happens shortly thereafter, you intuit causality, and given my vanity I attribute all positive changes to my inestimable influence). Almost all the DVDs in my rental queue are available immediately whereas many used to be listed with "long wait". Looks like they bought up. Secondly, they built a couple more shipping centers around the country so I can now mail a DVD back and receive the next one in my queue in about 4 days. It's noticeably faster.Good thing, because they're getting some competition. There are a whole bunch of new online DVD rental services, and two big players, Blockbuster and Wal-Mart, have begun offering services of their own. Blockbuster's service is lousy--you still have to go pick up the movies and return them to a store--but in the end it's not a difficult business model to emulate. You don't have to buy lots of inventory, and the software is pretty straightforward. The types of changes Netflix is making are the ones they have to make, the no-brainers. The switching costs are very low.
The positive which should come out of all of this is lowered monthly rental subscription fees.
The good, the bad, the ugly
Good: TV shows which are letterboxed or widescreen.Bad: My computer fan suddenly started whirring in a loud pulsing pattern, like it has a throbbing headache. Shut up!
Ugly: David Eckstein's throwing motion from shortstop.
The Fellowship of the Ring: Extended Edition
Watched the new extended edition of The Fellowship of the Ring on DVD for Thanksgiving. Most extended editions or deleted scenes are, as DVD aficionados know, simply like high school yearbook photos of supermodels, or actors before makeup. They're the before pictures of movies before an editing room diet. Unattractive, unnecessary. We pay good money for the editing, supermodels pay good money for boob jobs, for a reason.But the extended version of LOTR: FOTR is excellent. The 30 minutes or so of additional footage add to the depth of the story and the characters, enhancing your understanding of the regular edition of the movie. It's the best "director's cut" I've seen.