25 greatest electronic albums of

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25 greatest electronic albums of the 20th century

I own ten of these. Couldn't it just be the best of all time? Or were there electronic albums in the 19th century?
Then why do all babies look like Richard Nixon?

Found a link from BoingBoing to Beautycheck, a fascinating site about research into facial attractiveness. I wasted a good half hour surfing the site because it encompasses all the various beauty theories I'd heard before:

  • attractiveness is averageness (Langlois & Roggmann, 1990: "average faces are most attractive")

  • the 'symmetry hypothesis' (Grammer &Thornhill, 1994; Thornhill & Gangestad 1999: "facial symmetry has a positive influence on facial attractiveness ratings")

  • theory of 'multidimensional beauty perception' (Cunningham, 1986: "attractive faces show a combination of signs of sexual maturity and babyfaceness")

  • correlation between attractiveness and attributed social qualities (Dion, Berscheid & Walster, 1972: "what is beautiful is good")


Some interesting excerpts from the research summary:
"By calculating prototypic very attractive vs. unattractive faces for each gender, we were able to show that these faces are remarkably different in their attributes, such as skin texture, proportions etc. Additional surveys showed that attractive female faces are narrower than unattractive ones, and that they possess a brown skin and full, well looked-after lips. The distance between the eyes is larger, eyelids are thinner, there are more, longer and darker eyelashes, darker and narrower eyebrows, higher cheekbones, and the nose is narrower than in less attractive female faces. Surprisingly, more or less the same is the case for attractive male faces: they, too, have a browner skin, a narrower face, fuller lips, thinner eyelids, more and darker eyelashes, darker eyebrows, and higher cheekbones than the less attractive ones. Attractive male faces can furthermore be characterized by a more prominent lower jaw and chin."
"Finally, the results of our studies on social perception suggest that there is a well-defined stereotype of attractiveness: People with more attractive faces were assessed to be more successful, contended, pleasant, intelligent, sociable, exciting, creative and diligent than people with less attractive faces. These results particularly show the far-reaching social consequences human facial attractiveness may have."
"To sum up, our study shows clearly that the most attractive faces do not exist in reality, they are morphs, i.e. computer-created compound images you would never find in everyday live. These virtual faces showed characteristics that are unreachable for average human beings."
Sigh. If only I had a narrower face, higher cheekbones, and a more prominent lower jaw and chin. Thankfully, the remnants of my sabbatical tan remain, which is perhaps why everyone says I look healthy.
Unfortunately, the site drew no conclusions as to why people all seem to gravitate towards faces with these characteristics, which is perhaps the more interesting question. Is it some quirk of genetics, some built-in bias in our perceptive organs, or is it developed over time by social stimuli? Do we find such faces more attractive because we know that our children will be more likely to pass on our genes if they look fit the socially accepted standard of beauty? If we took people that were blind from birth and suddenly gave them sight, would they judge beauty the same as people who'd had sight all their lives? If Daredevil had been blinded from birth, would he still think Jennifer Garner was beautiful when he "saw" her reflected by the rain?
Seattle International Film Festival, 2003

By the time I returned from my sabbatical and got my head in gear, SIFF pre-sales had already been open for a few days. Knowing the fanatical lengths to which movie buffs go to secure tix to desirable movies here in Seattle, I was concerned that all the best movies would be sold out. The truth wasn't quite so bad, though a few movies I wanted to see were no longer available in exchange for passes and had to be paid for. So, not too bad.
The problem with SIFF is always selecting movies to see. Most are movies I've never heard of, and the problem was worse this year since I had spent the last 3 months in other countries, out of the film circuit gossip loop. There are over 200 movies at this year's fest, and the most you'll learn about any of them is the one paragraph marketing-oriented description of the plot in the Seattle Times special SIFF section. It's not much to go on, and the last thing you want to do is wait in line for an hour to see a dud. But that's the risk you take in the hopes of seeing something interesting at a film festival in which most of the entries will never make it to the big screen in your neighborhood again.
My selection strategy involved all of the following: seeing movies I'd heard good things about from other film fests or movie fans, eliminating movies I couldn't see because they would play during work hours, selecting movies unlikely to be released in theaters, attending movies where artists I admire would be present to speak, and focusing on the cinema of countries which had produced interesting movies in the past. And occasionally, I'd just guess.
Here's what I ended up with. If you're in Seattle and planning on attending any of these, let me know and I'll hold a spot for you in line with all the other crazies (I think it was The Stranger that last year referred to SIFF full-series passholders as passholes, and there's much truth to that characterization):

  • Valentin (May 22, Paramount Theatre): opening night gala. I don't know what this movie is about, but it came with the Christmas special ticket package I bought.

  • Owning Mahowny (May 24, Pacific Place): the always entertaining Phillip Seymour Hoffman as a gambling addict.

  • The One-Armed Swordsman (May 25, Harvard Exit): one of SIFF's special programs this year is a screening of numerous archival and restored 35mm prints of classic martial arts movies.

  • An Evening with Ray Harryhausen (May 30, Egyptian): the genius behind the first stop-action King Kong movie will be in attendance! Jason and the Argonauts will be screened.

  • Animatrix (May 31, Egyptian): before it comes out on DVD, a chance to sample it on the big screen.

  • Hukkle (June 1, Harvard Exit): sounds interesting. A montage murder mystery from Hungary with little to no dialogue.

  • The Eye (June 2, Egyptian): another flick with an intriguing description...a blind woman has her sight restored and starts seeing strange things. The horror movie capitol of the world has moved to Asia.

  • American Splendor (June 4, Egyptian): a Sundance Grand Jury prize winner, adapted from Harvey Pekar's comic book about himself.

  • Springtime in a Small Town (June 5, Pacific Place): from the director of The Blue Kite.

  • 11' 09" 01 (June 8, Egyptian): 11 big-name directors memorialize Sept 11 with 11 minute, 9 second, 1 frame long shorts.

  • Vertical Frontier (June 8, Egyptian): rock climbing documentary.

  • Le Cercle Rouge (June 8, Harvard Exit): Jean-Pierre Melville and Alain Delon also collaborated on Le Samourai, one of my favorite movies of all time.

  • Infernal Affairs (June 9, Cinerama): my Hong Kong cinema guilty pleasure.

  • The Legend of Suriyothai (June 15, Cinerama): most expensive movie ever made in Thailand, and also the biggest box office earner. The trailer hints that it's the type of movie that will take advantage of the Cinerama.


Summer begins when TV shows end

What marks the beginning of summer in Seattle? No, not the end of 4th of July weekend, though from a weather perspective you wouldn't be far off. For me, it's marked by the season finales of the fall TV programs I've been watching. When those end, there's no reason to stay home in the evenings or to download from the Tivo. It stays light out later into the evenings anyway, and those two things combined get me out the door more often.
Bye bye Buffy (it was time, but it's still sad), and 24, and The West Wing. Another benefit of the Tivo, for me, is the ability to watch four or five episodes of these shows back to back. The shows taste better consumed that way. It's especially true of a show like 24, which was dragging on and on for me before I left for South America. Watching the final 6 episodes all at once, instead of dragging those 6 hours out over a month and a half, prevented the suspense and convoluted plot from dissipating. Perhaps, in the age of short attention spans, I've lost my ability to appreciate the serial thriller in its native weekly frequency.
By the way, my Tivo has never recorded anything interesting for me. I read stories about how people love to come home to see what their Tivo has chosen for them, but mine records reruns of Ally Mcbeal and NYPD Blue. I feel like the parent of a child who's last in his age group to learn to speak. Is something wrong? Is my Tivo developmentally challenged? Did I get a lemon?
Copper river salmon, monkfish, and artichokes

It's copper river salmon season again. Delphine was in town for a thoracic conference so I showed her and her roommate Joey around town this weekend. At Pike Place Market, copper river salmon was everywhere.
Copper River Salmon at Pike Place Market
Everyone around town seemed to know that several thousand thoracic researchers were congregating at the convention center, because every store I walked by, even artisans selling crafts off of plastic tables in Pike Place Market, had "Welcome Thoracic Society" stickers and placards displayed for all to see. It wouldn't have surprised me in the least if a homeless guy begging for change had one of those stickers taped to his cup.
At the place where they throw fish in the Pike Place Market (after countless visits, you'd think I'd know the name of that store), a monkfish was on display.
monkfish on ice
The fish tossers had wired a hook through its body to its mouth and would tug on that when young children walked up to gawk, causing the monkfish to convulse. This caused the children to squeal with delight. This fish market also had a parrotfish on ice. Can you eat those?
On Queen Anne hill, at the park on Highland Ave. (again, you'd think I'd have memorized the name of the park, but I always forget), the attraction that most delighted Delphine was not the panoramic view of downtown Seattle and the Puget Sound but an artichoke plant in a pot by the sidewalk. None of us had seen an artichoke plant before. It reminded me of seeing lions mating at night in Africa. I'd never wondered what that would look like until I saw it for the first time, and it's not something I'll soon forget. Nor will the image of an artichoke plant soon leave me.
artichoke plant
Matrix Reloaded, reviewed, because everyone else has

The Matrix Reloaded is more intellectually stimulating than emotionally moving, and so, in the end, it is less effective a movie than it could have been. Movies which inspire philosophy books always raise warning bells in my head; the strength of the moving picture medium has always been its ability to tap our subconscious through the fusion of sound and image and, to a lesser extent, words. Movies tap emotions much more naturally than books, which are much better suited for exploring complex ideas (for example, mathematics or advanced philosophy).
The first Matrix movie inspired lots of books dissecting its philosophical messages, but tellingly those were written by fans, not by the moviemakers themselves. That movie obeyed the basic storytelling edict of "show don't tell." Sure, Morpheus offered Neo a brief lesson after he chose between the red and blue pills, and the Oracle offered some fortune cookie paradoxes while baking cookies, but for the most part the characters acted out their roles and steered clear of long asides on the deeper meanings of the Matrix and reality and life. The philosophizing was of the "there is no spoon" variety, which was just implicit enough to let the viewer make his own conclusions.
No such luck in the second movie. This time, the Wachowski brothers have written the philosophy lessons into the script. We get long speeches from the Architect, Oracle, Morpheus, Agent Smith, the daemon Merovingian. Making matters worse, snly the Merovingian and the Oracle seem to speak with any flair instead of delivering their dialogue in the holier-than-thou diction preferred by Morpheus. Even Roy Jones Jr., in a cameo, has to tone it down a bit (I really wanted him to give a shout out to his homies in Pensacola). Why has every denizen of the Matrix been reduced to speaking like a constipated monk? This style of delivery overemphasizes the profundity of its content, much like the verbally-italicized dialogue in a David Mamet movie. It took me a second viewing to absorb everything they said, and that's not a compliment for a movie (whereas it might be for a book). The first movie seeped into my brain like warm brandy, and the ideas it represented weren't much less sophisticated.
The ideas discussed were fascinating, but all those speeches stray from the strength of the movie medium. It is enough that the characters all have names laden with meaning; Persephone, Merovingian, Zion, and Niobe are just some of the names pulled from religion and mythology for very specific reasons. That's as explicit as the moviemakers needed to be. Codifying the philosophy in long-winded speeches A movie can be both intellectually and emotionally substantive, much like a classic book of literature. There is The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and then there is Finnegan's Wake. There are corn flakes, and corn flakes with raisins. I know which I'd rather read, and which I'd rather eat. If the first Matrix movie was the perfect blend of action movie and art-house allegory, the second doesn't spend enough time in the blender--it is at times a skillfull but empty action movie (as with the chase scene and the Neo versus the men in black) and at other times a philosophy 101 lecture. My recollection of Philosophy 101 in college was that it sounded more interesting than it actually was.
A second reason the movie fails to connect on an emotional level is the tabula rasa that is Keanu Reeves. His naivete and wide-eyed imcomprehension worked well in the first movie, when he awoke to the reality that his reality was anything but. In the second movie, when we need to empathize with his cause and his love for Trinity, which causes him to choose the door his 5 predecessors avoided, we can't. When the albino Milli Vanilli twins close the parking garage door on him and he opens it to find a giant mountain range, I visualized his thought bubble: "Oh no, I'm back in Little Buddha! I thought I had rescued my acting career from the garbage heap!" Most people who criticize the Matrix Reloaded say it lost its humanity, but there's never been much humanity in either movie. That's not because most humans are dreaming in the Matrix but because the protagonist Keanu Reeves is called on to deliver lines like "I love you too much." The humans here are more Jedi Knights than normal folk in their emotional detachment. Just as Luke lays down his lightsaber and screams for his father's aid at the end of Return of the Jedi with the passion of a son in need, perhaps Neo and Trinity and Morpheus will become more human in the third movie now that their belief in the Prophecy has been shattered.
Another emotional dampener is that the fight scenes are understood to be virtual, both literally (Wired and Time and a whole host of magazines have dubbed John Gaeta and team's new development virtual cinematography) and figuratively (the fights occur in the Matrix, in a virtual reality). Furthermore, Neo's superman-like powers mean left me unconcerned that he'd be hurt in any of his fight scenes. In the first movie, you felt a sense of dread everytime an agent appeared, because you knew Morpheus, Neo, and Trinity all flirted with death each time an agent appeared on the scene (Morpheus gets tossed through a toilet by Agent Smith, who also lands about two thousand punches on Neo in the subway, and Trinity barely escapes death in the opening chase scene). In Matrix Reloaded, it doesn't matter who Neo is fighting, you know he'll either come out on top or soar away. Since the fights are all virtual, anyway, they lose an element of drama. When Neo leaps from one agent Smith to the other, you can feel the lack of physical impact--it recalls the cartoon-like movements that plagued the special effects in Spiderman. The visceral dread I felt while watching the first movie was absent. Since the movie has moved into the real world for the final chapter of the trilogy, that may be merely a middle-chapter problem.
The last flaw is the soundtrack. In the first movie the soundtrack moved in perfect rhythm with the action on screen, but in the Matrix Reloaded it calls attention to itself at inopportune moments. Don Davis atonal score did not, to my ears, make any growth from one movie to the next. It remains, like many of the movies ideas, detached and at times even abstract, disconnected from the visual narrative.
The Wachowski brothers are still exacting and ambitious architects, and in other areas of the movie that is to be appreciated. When Trinity uses Nmap to hack the power grid computer system near the end of the movie, the audience full of Amazon software engineers burst out in laughter (understandably, the less technical audience I later watched the movie with couldn't appreciate that touch). Other movies would have resorted to typical visual shorthand to represent the hack for a mainstream audience, but the Wachowski brothers are not so lazy. Most of Zion consists of minorities, a fact which makes sense when you think of what segments of society would be most likely to rebel against the status quo (perhaps a flaw of the Matrix is that it doesn't eliminate socio-economic stratification along racial lines inside its virtual reality?). Along those lines, it's no surprise that Cornel West is on the council of Zion. The special effects, of course, are visually innovative, and the fight choreography is of the expected Yuen Wo Ping quality. The brief fight between Neo and the Oracle's bodyguard was a humorous homage to martial arts movies in which brothers or old friends always greet each other with a brief and serious fight and then suddenly stop and embrace in laughter at the confirmation of each other's skill.
Though the movie didn't move me, I still admire its style, ambition, scope, and technical skill. After the highway chase scene, I want a Ducati more than ever, and I've stopped wondering why everyone wears sunglasses in the dark setting of the Matrix. If I were loaded into the Matrix, I too would ask for sunglasses to match the leather duds I couldn't afford in the real world. The philosophical puzzles are ones I want to know the answers to. How does Neo retain his powers in the real world at the end? How does Agent Smith cross over into the real world? Is that even the real world, or is Zion just another layer of artificial reality? Why can humans only leave the Matrix through a land line (I'm sensitive to the issue since I just returned from 5 weeks in South America, where the cellular network is far more reliable than the land line system; perhaps all of the Matrix is served by AT&T Wireless, which never gives me a reliable signal in Seattle)? Is the failure of the Prophecy to come true an indictment of organized religion? I'll play the videogame, Enter the Matrix. I'll watch The Animatrix, which offers further background and back story on Matrix Reloaded. And I'll be in line for the Matrix Revolutions, opening night.
Personally, I'm glad just to have been able to review the movie without resorting to any quotes like, "Perhaps my opinion of the Matrix is simply a programmed response within the Matrix." If I hear another guy at the vending machine outside my office asking himself if he's been programmed to select the Cheetos, I'm calling for an exit.

The lucky as hell generation

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The lucky as hell generation

I was out at dinner with Jodie the other night (by the way, rabbit tastes like chicken; if we all ate rabbits all the time, would we say that chickens taste like rabbit?) and realized that I know more young people who will never have to work again than any other previous generation my age. I know dozens from Amazon alone. That brief Internet bubble created this entire group of insanely wealthy 30 somethings who can do whatever they want for the rest of their lives with no fear of material deprivation.
When I interviewed with Amazon, I just wanted to go work there because I thought it was cool to sell books over the Internet. Jodie was one of my original interviewers, and because someone got stuck in a meeting I had to interview with her twice. Thank god she passed me! In fact, the only person left from my original interview loop at Amazon now is Jeff himself. How time flies.
Anyway, back to the topic of the young and wealthy. It seems like there are three common routes for folks in this group. One is that they're A-personalities who have to invest it all in one business venture after another, working themselves to death over and over in the pursuit of the next big thing. A second path is that they decide to use their freedom and wealth to try and change the world (see Ted Turner and his $1 billion dollar donation to the United Nations). Three is they do nothing except work out, travel around, and live in their big houses, fat and happy.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, no such difficult choices face me.
Kelly, Justin, and the gang

I cannot tell a lie. I went to the American Idol concert tonight with five other folks (who will remain anonymous as I must protect their identities). It was the last stop on their 30 city tour. You know what? It was a blast.
Of course, the average age of the people there was probably about 14, and the majority of them were female. That's the loudest concert I've been to in Seattle. Unbelievable. Little girls will shriek at anything, all of them cluthing their posters of Kelly, Justin, Tamyra, R.J., or holding up signs that read: "Seattle loves U Kelly! American Idol rules!"
The 10 of them came out in the same order they were eliminated in the contest. I only watched the last four episodes after I returned from France, so I didn't know most of them, but the crowd lost it everytime one of the singers introduced the next one. The crowd had the type of energy that only pre-pubescent little girls can provide, shrieking like it was the Beatles. The whole thing was unreal, and I couldn't help but smile at the spectacle of it all. Flames and fireworks and lights and smoke...here's Justin rising out of the stage, A.J. throwing his jacket off to reveal a wife-beater undershirt to the 10 decibel adulation of his fans from Tacoma, and Liv Tyler look-alike Ryan dancing out on stage in one revealing outfit after another. What a hoot.
What I took away from it all is that a show like American Idol is a deconstruction of the music business. If these 10 people who were waiting tables just a year ago can in one year's time be selling out every one of their 30 stops, what does that say about all the bands that come and go in the music business all the time? Mass entertainment can be manufactured with relative ease, famous pop stars brewed like the latest flavor of soda. Reality TV is the pure distillation of the great American dream, Warhol's 15 minutes of fame. The truth is, most of the contestants are hardly passable vocalists at all and will soon be as dropped off at the next station by the American cultural caboose (I had to laugh at the end when Ryan started sobbing and hugging everyone in sight. She had to be thinking, "Oh God, my 15 minutes are up! Damn it!" She'll get a boob job and be starring in some soft-core Cinemax movie in about 10 years). Still, they did some crowd-pleasing group numbers, especially their Motown ensemble, and I had to shake my head at the power of America's entertainment industry.
The only bummer of the night--Kelly didn't sing A Moment Like This. I think that's the only song I know the words to.
Hoax or real

This is a pretty fun test. That Michael Jackson image? One of the most horrifying things I've seen. The guy is losing his mind.
Bite guard

I spent nearly three hours in the dentist's chair this morning, getting fitted for my bite guard. It comes back from some factory on the East Coast, a piece of plastic that fits over your lower teeth. The dentist keeps having you bite down on a piece of film that leaves black marks where the bite guard contacts your top teeth, and then he spends time grinding portions of the guard down until you bite down on it and get even four-point contact so that you don't stress any particular tooth.
When they examined my bite in a hundred different ways, they noted that I put enormous stress on my front teeth when I grind them. It's likely why I've been feeling such extreme soreness in those teeth these past few weeks. Now I have to wear this at night. I'm wearing it now, and for some reason it causes one to salivate like a dog. The dentist's assistant told me not to be surprised if I wake up tomorrow with the bite guard on my pillow in a big pool of drool. Yum.
The sexual dynamics of the dentist's office have always intrigued me. My dentist is an older gentleman, and every single one of his 8 or 9 dental assistants is a young woman. My childhood dentist was also a male whose assistants were all female. I know there are female dentists out there--are there assistants all young men?
Communications overload

I'm drowning in a pool of e-mail and voicemail. I've stopped replying to all but the most urgent and important communications until further notice. Last week, in one week, I received over 2,000 e-mails at work last week. Assuming a 5 day work week, 12 hours a day, if I did nothing but reply to e-mail I'd need to respond to an e-mail once every 1 minute and 48 seconds in order to keep up.
I used to try to respond to every e-mail and voicemail within 24 hours. Then I realized it's a highly unproductive way to run your day. After being assaulted from all sides all day at the office, I get home and just retreat to my room for some privacy. I don't think I could be a celebrity--I'd go Sean Penn and punch out some reporter.
The most exciting player

The most exciting player to watch in all of sports right now is Michael Vick (apologies to Barry Bonds who comes in a close second). The ex-Hokie is a physical freak of nature--it's not often that the best athlete on the field is the QB, but in the new NFL it's a distinct advantage (see Donovan McNabb). Vick is the fastest player on the field, has the strongest arm, and has a sixth sense that makes him a terror for defenses to bring down. Do they still do that annual quarterback skills challenge? Vick would dominate.
On another sport, I've seen bits and piece of Yao Ming playing in the NBA. That guy's for real--he's no tall oaf like Shawn Bradley or Manute Bol. When he gains some weight and strength to go along with his shooting touch, he'll be a force. Go China!
Of course, the Sonics are doing well, as they always seem to do at the start of the season. I heard Sonics fans around the water cooler at work, talking playoff tickets already. It's laughable. During the regular season, the Sonics benefit from the new defensive rules that allow zone defenses. Instead of relying on a dominant big guy, they spread the floor and fire jump shots. They don't really have any guy who can play with his back to the basket. A team that's an even more extreme example is the Mavericks, with Nowitzki, Nash, and Finley chucking balls up from all over the place. Come playoff time, when defense become tighter and more physical and the officiating loosens, the big men like Duncan and O'Neal will go back to dominating and the Sonics and Mavs will be going home again. Nowitzki is so much fun to watch on offense, and a joke on defense.
Hope springs eternal

Being a Cubs fan, one develops natural pessimism about any and every development, but still, the offseason rumor mill is always such a tease. The mere possibility of signing a star player raises every fan's hopes. Rumors like this one leave me thinking that perhaps this is the year the Cubs become the Anaheim Angels of 2003: "According to the Montreal Gazette, the Cubs and Expos have discussed a Javier Vazquez and Jose Vidro for Carlos Zambrano, Bobby Hill and another player trade." Two All-Stars like Vazquez and Vidro for two unproven rookies? Yee-ha! Or rumors the Cubs will bring in Jeff Kent, or Ivan Rodriguez, or Tom Glavine, or Mike Remlinger. It all sounds highly unlikely, but who knows? The Angels finished 41 games out of first in 2001.

Heat wave

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Alan and Sharon brought a heat wave to Seattle. Not that I'm complaining, mind you. Sunny and 90 degrees is a welcome, welcome change from grey, misty, and 45 degrees.
Before I moved to Seattle, I didn't fancy myself someone easily affected by the weather. But over five Seattle winters, I've learned what it means to crave the sun like an alcoholic craves the bottle. Not that I know what that feels like. I just imagine it feels like this.

Bye bye Bobby

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Today is Robert's last day at Amazon. Yesterday after work a crew of us gathered to share some drinks and some food and to reminisce about our favorite Bobby stories. I have many.
I met Robert at Amazon, which he joined in Feb. of 1998. He used to sit with Aaron in one wing of the fourth floor, where I sat as well.
He was one of my first roommates in Seattle in my sweet old pad up at the top of the hill in Fremont. Because we were at the top of the hill, we had a great view in all directions. The windows of my room opened out onto a narrow ledge which, if traversed, allowed one to climb up on the roof of the house and look out at the sunsets over the Olympics.
Robert used to climb out on the roof with a bottle of wine, his guitar, and occasionally an unsuspecting, or perhaps suspecting and consenting young lass. Of course, I didn't always know he was out there and sometimes I'd be lying in bed and would hear a rap at my window from Robert and whoever else I had locked out there on the roof.
We had some good times playing guitar and singing out on the roof. Somehow, and this is fortunate, we never feel off. It was a steep roof, and the fall was three stories onto the pavement. Death was probable.
After I busted up my knee I couldn't drive stick for a while so he and I switched cars. Robert still had this old SUV from his college days. This grey thing was old, had that red Stanford decal in the back window. It looked like a hippie mobile.
There was the time we saw the Chieftains at Chateau Ste. Michelle. I can't remember why we got the tix, as we didn't really feel like seeing them live. We took Susannah and Robert's Russian bride (okay, she was just a former co-worker visiting from the Bay Area, but she was Russian). Each of us downed a bottle of wine, and we danced around that lawn like lunatics while the older and more subdued crowd looked on with disapproval. Unfortunately, we were too loopy to drive home afterwards so we put down a blanket next to the car in the parking lot, plopped down, and practiced German from my phrase book (don't ask why I was trying to learn German but suffice it to say that phase has passed).
Some long time later, after the entire lot had emptied out, Robert managed to sober up enough to drive us home. Mind you, it was a work night. We got home, popped in The Rock, and watched til 4 in the morning or something like that.
Another time, Robert and I played Gold Mountain and he shot a 73. He had a putt for a par round on the last hole.
There was the time he and I took Scott to Palace Kitchen for his birthday, then to Belltown Billiards for drinks. Scott's head was shaved back then. This is an important detail. We got Scott hammered at Belltown. As we were leaving, some punks from a neighboring table brought back their billiard balls and told Susan, a friend of ours who worked at Belltown, that they had found those on the table and didn't want to pay. Scott and I didn't take too well to their lame excuses, and being somewhat intoxicated, we let them know that they were bunch of cheap asses and to pay up. Susan let them off though, and those guys left.
Well, Scott and Robert and I settle up and leave, and we find the six of these dudes waiting outside for us. Here's where Scott's shaved head comes in. The leader of this band of yahoos says, "Hey skin, I didn't appreciate your comments back there." Except his grammar wasn't quite so solid. Well, three of us loopy dudes weren't going to come out too well against this sober fatso and his five sober buds, but what the hell, it's good to mess it up every now and then. Somehow it never came to blows. Maybe Robert the peacemaker brokered a cease fire. So Scott and this guy shake hands and these six characters wander off. About two minutes later Scott suddenly comes to his senses and goes off chasing after these guys who have long since disappeared.
Robert and I hopped in the car, found Scott, and drove him over to a friends place on the East side, dumped him there, and drove off.
There are other stories which I'll add sometime when I'm not brain dead.

Hot news clip from IMDb:

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

Insomnia, and Timbuktu

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Have had trouble sleeping recently. That means I feel tired all day, and I lie in bed feeling tired, but I can't fall asleep. Toss and turn, bury head under pillow insomnia. Miserable. Occasionally it happens, but in the past it was a result of caffeine consumption. But I stay away from coffee and soda now, so who knows what it is.
Light-year is a measure of distance, not time. People misuse it in conversation all the time. Do they really mean 5.88 trillion miles, approximately? I think not.
My glasses are done. I have to go pick them up sometime. That's another problem I need to solve. My office, or Amazon headquarters, is out in the middle of nowhere. During the week, I can never get to the post office, or the bank, or the dry cleaners, or the photo lab. Then the weekend comes and I spend half of it running around doing errands, when parking is scarce and traffic is lousy. I nee to carve out some errand-running time midweek.
I'm excited. My first real glasses. When, oh when, to pull them out? Perhaps at Spiderman on Friday night. Unlike the superhero on screen, by donning the glasses I'll be transforming into an even more mortal version of myself. Superman turning into Clark Kent. I'd like to be Clark Kent for a while. After all, it's Clark who gets to date Lois.
I'm guessing the best part about Spiderman will be the score by Danny Elfman. Unfortunately, the just released soundtrack only includes a few tracks by Danny because it's a soundtrack and not a score. Free Danny Elfman! Do we really need to hear the Theme from Spiderman as rendered by Aerosmith?
On a side note, it's quite annoying that because of non-standard browser implementations, certain convenient Blogger buttons like hyperlinking don't show up on when using any of the Mac browsers. I was hoping Mozilla 1.0 would solve it, but it doesn't.
Based on feedback from Ken, I've upped the font on these posts to 11px. Hopefully that's a bit easier to read for most of you. If you haven't checked in the past day or two, you missed my brief foray into 10px posts. Something about large fonts brings out the snob in me--reminds me or large print books.
It's pastime, not pasttime. Derives from "pass time" and not "past time". Of course, that raises the issue of why not passtime, but let's not go there. Also, instead of "in actuality" just say "actually." When writing, avoid redundant acronyms like SAT test, PIN number, UPC code. "Ought" should always be followed by an infinitive, so either "ought to" or "ought not to". Many people use "ought not" when they should use "ought not to".
Maybe I can't sleep because my sister Joannie is getting married in a few weeks. Whoa.

Gap ads

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Those Gap ads I mentioned are available in Quicktime format from the Gap website.
My favorite is the Coen brothers ad for white shirts, with Dennis Hopper and Christina Ricci. Mostly because I like the way the camera zooms slowly away, at a pace that mirrors the music. (On a sidenote--caught some of the rerun of last week's episode of 24 last night, and Dennis Hopper's supposed Eastern European accent, I think it's supposed to be Bosnian, is laughably bad).
This trend of using big-name movie directors to direct commercials that are streamed on the web...I like it. The BMWFilms were great, and let's face it, commercial films are rarely all that different from filmed commercials (Scorpion King, anyone? Disney toy Happy Meals?). Good directors can sell a story visually. Why not a product? Streaming on the web is cheaper than showing these on television and reaches an attractive upscale demographic.
Books should be marketed as well as movies are.

Adam and Jenny

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Last last Sunday, Adam and Jenny got married. I've been meaning to wait until my photos from that day were developed to jot down some thoughts, but I threw in a roll of 36 and ended up dancing too much to finish it off. I promised Jenny I'd record an entry for her before she returned from the honeymoon in Italy, and what's more personal a gift than the written word, besides the random kitchen housewares one usually purchases off a wedding registry? When I get married, I'll throw a few items on my wedding registry, but they'll be more likely to produce binary digital or audio data than they will a loaf of bread.
I learned during the wedding ceremony that Jenny and Adam first met at my Star Wars marathon movie night leading up to the release of Episode I. This was exciting news, and I thought about standing up to acknowledge my huge role in this union, but I don't think that is part of the traditional Jewish wedding ceremony. I was also around
the night of their first kiss (well, I actually wasn't there when it happened, but work with me, people, as I grossly exagerrate my role in their courtship).
Jenny: I recognized your photographer from somewhere. Who was he again? Why do I know him?
Adam's brother looks a lot like Adam. I point this out only because everyone always says I look nothing like my sisters (that is, they're much better looking than I am).
Of course, Jenny and Adam were hoisted on chairs and carried around the dance floor. That's a fun tradition. I later sat in one of the chairs and looked about expectantly but apparently that's a privelege reserved for the bride and groom. In accordance with their first meeting, it would have been nice if I could have levitated Jenny and Adam in those chairs using the Force, as Luke did for C3P0 in Return of the Jedi to spook the ewoks.
Lots of fun dancing. I need to stop wearing ties to functions where dancing is involved and where any woman named Kristin is present. Inevitably I'm dragged around by my tie like a small dog on the dance floor. Maybe it's my hair, or my soulful puppy eyes? I have a few ties in my wardrobe that are about a foot longer than all my others.
Adam and Jenny are really happy when they're around each other. That, in essence, is all you need to know about why they'll have a long and happy marriage together. Adam will provide his trademark witty humor, and Jenny will help to provide clarity in decision-making and honest, open communications. I know because I've been the lucky recipient many times in the past.
Oh yeah, Jenny was the one that helped me recall the word "ditto", which I wrote about in my weblog previously. That was driving me nuts.
Adam has the all-time lowest score on the body fat tester I have lying around. Everyone was over watching a movie one night and once someone asks what that thing does, inevitably everyone has to go through the nervous moment of truth. Most people generally run to the far corner of the room and refuse to let anyone see their score until
they've seen it first. I think Adam scored 7% or 8%. I state this so that when I finally do post some photos from the wedding everyone will look at Adam closely to see what 8% body fat looks like.
Coolest thing? The groom's cake was made of Krispy Kreme donuts and had a small Pedro Martinez figure on top--now that's thoughtful. Who doesn't believe in evolution? Darwinian forces have shaped even fat itself into this most enticing of forms, the original glazed Krispy Kreme donut. Now how, Adam, do you get away with loving Krispy Kreme donuts and maintaining single digit body fat? And get into Harvard Business School?
A very smart couple. A couple of sharp cookies.
The other great thing about Adam and Jenny is that they're two of my faithful weblog readers (I may be embarrassing Adam to say that, but since he has his own weblog now I will both out him and send traffic his way, and hers too).
What's the right phrase? Happy wedding? Merry wedding? Or maybe just congratulations?
Yeah. Congratulations.

Atonement

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A quote by Ian McEwan in an article in the New York Times today: "Not to write seems to me to be a gross rebuke of the gift of consciousness."
The article was about McEwan's latest novel Atonement. I have a small pile of his books by my bed and have been meaning to dive in. I'm at an all-time high in terms of number of books I've started and am only partway through. There's barely any floorspace next to my bed now.

Random acts of kindness

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Have you read Lucky Jim? Damn good book.
Have been feeling a bit weary this week, mentally and physically. It's the feeling you get when you try to solve the Saturday or Sunday NYTimes crossword puzzle. Lots of work, brows furrowed, minimal progress. At some point you're ready to just cheat, but the answers don't come out until tomorrow, and by then you just don't care anymore.
My one antidote to this general malaise has been to dress more formally this week. Dress shirts every day, nice wool slacks. I don't know why. Perhaps it goes back to my college days, when Sam used to say, "If you dress well, you test well." I sometimes wore a tie to midterms or finals. Was there a correlation? No clue.
I think I'm supposed to be watching The Osbournes. Has anyone seen it?
David Fincher (Fight Club, Seven, Panic Room, among others) is close to signing up to direct Mission Impossible 3. Hmm, that's an odd combination.
There are three words in the English language that start with the letters "dw". Don't cheat and look it up. You have one minute to think of all three. Two of them are similar in meaning. I heard this in an episode of The West Wing from season 1, which is out on Region 2 DVD from the UK. At the time, it was likely one of the two best shows on TV, and it might still be. Anyhow, I'll post the answer in the comments field later.
Read an article on Alduous Huxley recently, can't remember where. He believed that humans needed chemical assistance to realize the full potential of their brains. On his deathbed, he asked to be injected with LSD, and I wonder what he saw as he moved off this plane. We should all hope for such an interesting and memorable death, like the supposed death of Nietzsche. Supposedly, he saw a horse that had just been whipped to death lying on the ground, and he went to the horse, hugged it, and wept. I really really hope it's a true story.

Author's Guild protest against Amazon.com

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Ken sent me this link to this sensible rebuttal by Sylvia Nasar (author of A Beautiful Mind, the biography) to the recent Author's Guild protest against the way that Amazon features used books for sale on its website. Nasar was recently elected to the board of the Author's Guild.
From the letter from the Author's Guild to all its members, urging them to stop linking to Amazon.com, it's apparent that the Author's Guild has fallen into the trap of believing that siding against free market economics and their very own readers in the name of financial gain is somehow sustainable.
The Internet is wonderful because it has forced business people who depend on inefficient markets to become more customer-focused. Music labels who have kept CD prices high are now wringing their hands over declining music sales which they attribute to Napster and other file-sharing services.
In this case, physical space has been collapsed. The shortest distance between two places in the physical world is a straight line, but more often it is a windy path over streets, around blocks over and over again to find a parking spot, and then a hike over to your final destination. The Author's Guild doesn't protest used book stores because, frankly, there aren't that many of them and they're hard to get to. Customers who once wanted to shop for both Prada and Target once had to drive long distances because the Prada's of the world don't want their stores showing up next to discounters. They could use physical distance to mimic the distance between their brands (and their prices).
Online the shortest distance between two places is not even a hyperlink. It's to put two things next to each other on the same page. As a customer, if you could buy a used copy of a book for cheaper than a new copy, wouldn't you want to know about that option when you were on the page listing the new copy? You wouldn't want to buy the new copy only to find out later that a used copy was available but was located elsewhere on the website. That's what the Author's Guild wants Amazon to do.
I've bought a ton of used books since Amazon launched the service, but it has only increased my overall book spend. I buy used copies of books I'm not really sure about--it may be an author I haven't heard of. In the past, I would have just not purchased the book. When I know I want a book, I still buy the original hardcover because I want to keep a nice first print in my library. For a few books, I keep both a hardcover first print and a paperback copy that I use as a reading copy or a loaner to friends.
Certainly, I hope to be a published artist of some sort some day, and if I am, I would only hope that an active used market existed for my works. The Grateful Dead are probably grateful that their fans actively trade bootlegs of their concerts. Far worse to be an author who sees his books fail to generate demand even in the used market. Those unfortunate souls have no chance of even generating any revenue to be "lost" to the used market.

Phunny site

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Interesting interpretations of films.
I liked this take on Memento by Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club (which was a great book, better than the movie, though that was pretty damn good too).
Or this interpretation of Training Day as the education of George Bush Jr. by his dad.
All of this reminds me of Quentin Tarantino's speech from Sleep With Me, the one which claims Top Gun is about Maverick's struggle with his homosexuality.

Proliferation of weblogs

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Weblogs are gaining notoriety because famous people are starting to create them. Perhaps this is a tipping point for weblogs. They've already gotten a ton of press this year. No one should be surprised when the web is flooded with a slew of boring, poorly-written weblogs. There are plenty already. But weblogs won't disappear or fade away like so many Internet fads. The web is not as wondrous a place as it once was--there are few new websites that blow anyone away. Personal weblogs provide a unique daily diversion for folks--I think of it as mental exhibitionism (on the part of the blogger) and mental voyeurism (on the part of the reader).
A sampling of celeb weblogs:
RuPaul
Moby
Jeff Bridges
Melanie Griffith
Douglas Rushkoff
Neil Gaiman
Finally, perhaps, we can hear celebrities uncensored, not filtered through their agents or publicists. We can laugh at ones who can't write, ignore those who use their weblogs for marketing themselves, and realize that celebrities may not be any more interesting than people we know. I predict that in a year and a half, the celeb who doesn't have some sort of website up will be the exception rather than the rule. True, weblogs may no longer be cool (everyone blames Mariah Carey for having tainted the whole affair), but they're a welcome diversion from checking stock quotes on the web every morning.
Someday the history of weblogs will be traced, and for me the weblog as I think of it (personal diary on the web) started with web developers I knew and spread out from there.

Tax day

The one day each year where people everywhere complain when they don't receive a refund and have to write a check to the government even though a refund means that the government borrowed money from you with every paycheck throughout the previous year without paying you any interest. And now they're giving that money back to you. Far better to have borrowed money from the government and now pay them back. But if you really want that refund at this time of year, please send me a check for what you think your withholding tax will be for this upcoming year. Next year on April 15 I'll give you a check back so you can feel great about getting a refund.

Postal rate hikes

Effective June 30, the price of a first-class stamp will increase 8.8%, from 34

Rostropovich

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Happy 75th birthday to Mstislav Rostropovich, perhaps the world's leading cellist, and also a great man. I saw him play the Dvorak Cello Concerto with the Seattle Symphony tonight, and it was a grand occasion. The Symphony was in great form, and they've been up and down in the concerts I've seen this year so this was a pleasant surprise.
Rostropovich got a gazillion standing ovations. Some were for his performance, but most were for the man. Slava, as he is affectionately known, has done some great humanitarian things in his life. For his final encore, maestro Gerard Schwartz and the symphony surprised him with a rendition of Happy Birthday.