New Two Towers trailer

in ,
Already, a present under the Christmas tree. The new trailer depicts all the epic adventure described in the books, brought to life with motion, sound, and imagery only the way movies can do it, and less the terrible poetry of J. R. R. Tolkien.

MIT OpenCourseWare

How cool! MIT OpenCourseWare promises to publish almost all of MIT's course materials online for students around the world. Their beta site is up featuring a few courses from each of their schools. I few like a student browsing the course catalog at the beginning of a quarter again.
So, fellow students...which classes are you taking this quarter? I'm thinking of a refresher in linguistics through Introduction to Linguistics, Logistical and Transportation Planning Methods (traffic interests me), Problems of Philosophy (I've never taken any philosophy), and Electricity and Magnetism (physics is fun). I feel like a freshman, taking all these intro courses.
Hopefully other universities will follow MIT's lead, and I can't wait to see them expand their course offerings over the next several years. What's interesting about MIT's approach is that, one, it's free, and two, they haven't built in any interactivity to their site yet. It's just a list of the syllabus, class notes, required reading, homework assignments, and exams. What you miss is the class lectures, interaction with a professor and fellow students, and drunken frat parties. But for those of us who're past our school days, it sure beats paying a massive tuition and having to drive to class.
Now the only problem is that I don't have any of the books or required reading material, so I may have to stick with the lecture notes. Maybe I still have some of these texts on my bookshelf from my school days, or maybe I'll have to pick them up used on Amazon.com Marketplace. Okay, did anyone finish their assignment on the Ontological argument yet? Can I get some help here?

Happy birthday Joannie

in
The sister who's behind me in age but ahead in most of the significant life milestones: marriage, home ownership, salary (when she starts at the law firm), marathon training (she's running Chicago in a week and a half)...
Luckily I'm not competitive with family members, otherwise I'd be chasing a wife, talking to realtors, seeking a raise, and running all the time.
Wish I could be there to run part of the marathon with you, Joannie, but I'm sure I couldn't keep up.

Fast motion

Life is borderline manic right now. No empty moments, just running around in a constant frenzy. It is at these times I wish I had an assistant who'd pick up all the loose ends, because we think we can multi-task but our minds aren't wired that way. I have a single processor brain. Don't I wish I could upgrade to a symmetrical multi-processing brain.
The only promising thing in all this madness was that sometime last week I had a dream in which I was back in school and found my locker and knew the combination to the lock. So perhaps subconsciously I think it's all under control, even though on the surface I'm all in a panic.
Note to self: get on Dr. Melfi's schedule ASAP.

Published!

in , , , ,
That photo of Lance and Beloki I snapped on La Plagne at this year's Tour got posted on Lance's website.
Cure for poor customer service

For the most part, I've had a good time ordering online, and I'm a fairly prolific online shopper--I rarely go out to shop anymore. Occasionally, though, I still have that bad experience shopping online, and one bad experience will stick in your craw for months. The only relief in these cases when I can't get any help from the company itself is to complain about it on my blog. In a few weeks, several hundred people will see my gripe and think twice the next time they decide to do business with company XYZ. That means some more lost sales and market share for that company, and it feels good knowing you've hit them in the wallet and their reputation.
So here are a few of my recent gripes:

  • Don't ever buy from PCNation: I made the mistake of getting all bug-eyed over a low price on PCNation for a photo printer. I placed the order in July, when the availability was listed as 1-2 weeks. Well, I haven't gotten my product yet, and I've only received a reply to half of the four e-mails I've sent to customer service over there. They don't have any information on when my product will arrive. At this point I just want my money and credit card # back from them. Sites like this remind me of why people buy from Amazon, because it's a name you know and trust.

  • Dell: I received an e-mail from Dell pushing a 15% off memory promotion. Well, with all the massive file sizes I deal with while photo editing, my PC has been slowing down quite a bit and even crashing, so I decided a RAM upgrade was a good idea. I went to the website, punched in my serial #, and Dell pulled up a few memory chips based on their stored profile of my computer. Pretty nifty, I thought. Here's where customized customer profiles were going to simplify my shopping experience. So I ordered another 128Mb of RAM. Got it, plugged it in, turned on my PC, and...nothing. Didn't register. So I call Dell up, and the guy says that for my computer I have two channels and both must be filled with RAM for things to work. Funny, that wasn' t in any of the fine print. Fine, so I order another 128Mb of RAM. Plug that in, crank up the PC, and BEEEP. My computer doesn't even boot. Just beeps at me. I try reversing the RAM, shuffling the four DIMMs around, pulling them back out. I rummage through online documentation at Dell.com, and finally I find an old PDF file that says I must have the same size memory DIMM in every slot. Since I have 2 256MB DIMMs in my current PC, I have to buy two more. My two 128Mb DIMMs are worthless. Great, thanks for the heads up. So much for Dell's customized ordering wizard. Turns out if you don't return the memory within 30 days, you can't. Well, I ordered the first DIMM more than 30 days ago because the guy on the phone told me to order another one, so they better let me return both. I tried calling customer service today, and some guy who'd clearly been drooling on his keyboard in a slumber told me the computers were all down and to call back in the morning. Stay tuned on this one. Dell has a reputation for great prices and an innovative business model, but they need to make good on this one.

  • Adorama: very impressive selection of photography equipment at this site, but a small incident recently has me peeved. I ordered 3 photo album binders from them. Each came with 100 sheets of sticky photo paper. Well, once they arrived, I used one and set the other two aside. Recently I developed a few more photos and tore open the shrinkwrap to the second binder. The binder rings were broken. They didn't close. So I called Adorama up for an exchange. No good--they had a 10 day exchange policy. Here's a site that might make hundreds of dollars off of me in future business on equipment like Nikon lenses, and they wouldn't exchange a simple photo album binder. What a short-sighted policy. I'm taking my business elsewhere until they make good.

  • Air France: still haven't received an apology from them for not having delivered my bike and clothing for the first 5 days of my 7 day trip to France for the Tour de France camp in July. Hey, I defend the French when people denounce Parisians as rude and snobbish, but their damn airline isn't helping their cause. In fact, at this point, a damn apology isn't good enough. I'm making it a point to encourage all my cycling friends to fly another airline to France for next year's Tour, or for their next bike trip. Frankly, I've never met an airline I've liked. People think lawyers are evil, but at least some of them will get you out of jail in exchange for your money.


Aaaaah. I feel a little better already. Thanks for listening.
De Le Hoya vs. Vargas

Saturday, HBO re-aired the De La Hoya-Vargas fight from the previous week. I've never seen De La Hoya fight, but the story behind this fight was the stuff of high drama.
Vargas, the young, powerful up-and-comer, taunting the veteran De La Hoya for years, trash-talking, calling De La Hoya out. Vargas potrayed himself as the fighter who stayed true to his Mexican roots, representing his people against De La Hoya, who Vargas demonized as the rich, pampered pretty boy, corrupted by his wealth and the comforts of America, drained of ambition by his beautiful wife. De La Hoya, who many regarded as a finesse fighter with the quick hands, against Vargas and his pure punching power. Even their faces seem to conform to the story lines: De La Hoya with the softer features and handsome, boyish face, while Vargas had the fierce scowl and sharp, defined features of someone who survived the mean streets, the tough neighborhood fights.
Vargas goaded and prodded and shouted for years, and finally De La Hoya could take no more. Vargas had called him out, and they'd settle things in the ring. Nothing like a fight between two men who deeply hate each other. De La Hoya was the one with the most to lose. He had the greater reputation, and if he lost after being called out by Vargas, his reputation and legacy in boxing would be tarnished, perhaps irreparably. That De La Hoya put everything on the line after not having fought for 14 months is gutsy.
That's what I love about boxing. You put on a pair of gloves and settle everything in the ring. Talk isn't just cheap in the ring, it's free.
The first few rounds, Vargas came out in a fury, bloodying De La Hoya in rounds 1, 3, and 5, and the crowd was in a frenzy, chanting "Vargas! Vargas! Vargas!" De La Hoya had to be wondering what he'd gotten himself into. Or that's what I thought, looking at the blood dripping from his face. But De La Hoya continued to box, stayed calm, fought back his fear, and somewhere in round 6 or 7, Vargas began tiring, and De La Hoya knew it. Then he began to just box Vargas to death, left jabs and hooks peppering Vargas' face in rapid flurries.
In round 10, De La Hoya staggered Vargas with a left hook, and as De La Hoya moved in for the kill, the bell rang. In round 11, De La Hoya saw the opening. He waited and waited, and then Vargas threw the jab, and De La Hoya cracked Vargas in the head with a left hook. Down went Vargas, and he popped up just as quickly, but De La Hoya smelled blood. He moved Vargas into the ropes and then unleashed a non-stop rampage of left-right-left-right punches to Vargas' head--we're talking about Agent Smith with the body shots on Neo in Matrix--until Jose Cortes, the referee, rushed in to save Vargas who was just holding his fists to his face helplessly.
The interview was fascinating. De La Hoya is a good interview, extremely well-spoken and honest. He admitted Vargas was a strong puncher, and he admitted to accepting the fight because Vargas had finally gotten under his skin. When asked what he thought when he saw Vargas bleeding, he confessed, "I know it sounds brutal, but when I see blood, I want more."
There aren't many sports which have the confrontational drama of boxing. In basketball, stars routinely avoid guarding each other. In football, offensive players from each team don't play against each other, they play against the other team's offense. Mono y mono keeps everything pure and clean. Sure, you have your ringside support, but it's a bit ridiculous sometimes. You've just had your head knocked around by your opponent for 3 minutes, you're bleeding from your nose and both eyes, sweat is burning your eyes out, and your coach is slapping your face and shouting at you, "C'mon, man! Whatchoo doin? Get out there and whoop his ass! Move your feet! Don't let him hit you!" I can't wait for the day when some boxer gets up, throws his stool out of the ring, and shouts back at his coach, "Why don't you get your ass out there in the ring? Yeah, that's what I thought. Now shut up, give me some water, and let me rest!"
De La Hoya and Vargas. Great fight. And I didn't pay for it, unlike the Tyson Lewis fight, which cost $55 and was barely a contest.

Religion in this new world

in , , ,
The cover story of this month's Atlantic Monthly is about the growth of Christianity in the Southern Hemisphere of the world, from Asia to Africa to Latin America. This is your father's Christianity, in a way. In the Northern Hemisphere, particularly in America's Protestant and Catholic community, a liberal uprising is increasingly critical of some of the Church's most traditional doctrines, including "mandatory celibacy among the clergy, intolerance of homosexuality, and the prohibition of women from the priesthood, not to mention a more generalized fear of sexuality." the story is much different below the equator. As author Philip Jenkins writes:
"The most successful Southern churches preach a deep personal faith, communal orthodoxy, mysticism, and puritanism, all founded on obedience to spiritual authority.... Whereas Americans imagine a Church freed from hierarchy, superstition, and dogma, Southerners look back to one filled with spiritual power and able to exorcise the demonic forces that cause sickness and poverty."
Jenkins argues that in all the recent fervor over the influence of radical Islam, we in the West are blind to this tectonic shift in the world's religious makeup. By 2050, at current growth rates, four out of five Christians will be Latino. Pentecostal Christians could number a billion, dwarfing the world's Buddhists and matching the number of Hindus in the world. Recent polls have detected this shift, even while focusing their attention on the size of the Islamic community. The Southern church is far, far more conservative than the Northern church. The progressive secular movement seizing the imagination of Americans is completely alien to most of the rest of the world.
I wasn't raised with any religion. I didn't have to attend Sunday school, and the few times I attended church was as a guest of another family or friends. So my knowledge of and intuitive understanding of the influence of religion and religious history is limited to what I've learned from more religious friends or relatives or from books or movies (some would argue the only things I've ever learned are from books and movies...no comment). But this movement could add to the growing divide between America and the rest of the world.
What I do know is that the conflict between the haves and the have-nots is one of the most explosive social reactions in human history, and to me it lies behind 9/11 as much as any reason offered to date. Still, a growing religious rift between a liberal Northern church and a more populous, fervent Southern church is worrisome. Even I know enough about history to know that differences in religion can lead to just as bloody a confrontation as a battle over land or oil. Jenkins notes that the primary difference between Northern Christians and Southern Christians is that those in the South are poor. That means they relate much more to healing and exorcism elements of the Bible. There's a whole interview with Jenkins posted here--fascinating reading.
By the way, among popular magazines in the U.S., The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, and Harper's form a three-headed monster of American culture. I recommend them all, though the biggest problem in doing so is how to keep up with all that reading. I have a pile of back issues about a foot high, and it's starting to lean.

Couples, II

Wow, I've never gotten as many e-mails over an entry in my weblog as I did over my recent post on couples. Some pretty heated responses, too. I won't quote any of them (though you can read Jenny's in her weblog--she's never been shy, and bless her for it), but suffice it to say many were critical of my rant. Some seemed a bit defensive, but on the whole some good points were made, and no one was openly hostile. The most popular point made was that I wasn't all that interesting myself because I'm always at work. Nothing I can say to that, other than I agree. Sometimes I bore even myself.
I'm a fairly agreeable guy, so I generally don't have to engage in many confrontations or arguments, and I rarely stir people up. That was kind of fun, though. I think I'll have to write a more opinionated weblog in the months ahead.
On a side note, The New Yorker heard me. David Denby reviews My Big Fat Greek Wedding in this week's issue. Maybe I'll read it to find out what the fuss is all about.

What to read?

For some reason, it just feels like a whole slew of artists whose work I've appreciated in the past have come out with new works in the past several months. On the musical side, new CDs by Coldplay, The Flaming Lips, Pulp, Aimee Mann, Bruce Springsteen, Beck, Paul Westeberg, and on and on. Lots of good stuff.
On the bookshelf, a similar wave of new hardcovers:
The Autograph Man by Zadie Smith
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Summerland by Michael Chabon
After the Quake by Haruki Murakami
The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster
new unnamed novel by David Eggers
Lullaby by Chuck Pahlaniuk
The thing is, I can't bring myself to purchase any of them. So many people love to declare with price that they're reading the latest novel by [insert popular author] as a medal of courage, but I must confess that most long fiction bores and/or disappoints me. What's worse, hardcovers are expensive, heavy, and they take lots of space in your room and lots of time from your life.. So if any of you have read any of the above and have any recommendations, please leave a comment or send me a line. Or if there's another new work of fiction I've missed, send those my way as well. I find you can't really trust newspaper reviews; every new novel can find some glowing reviews for the dustjacket. Glowing reviews by other authors whose works I enjoy (if Tobias Wolff or Jonathan Franzen or someone like that recommends something, I'll usually pick it up) are a much better gauge of readability, if not quality.
My latest recommendation? 12:30am reruns of Sports Night on The Comedy Channel. Can't go wrong with some rapid fire dialogue courtesy of Sorkin after a long and brutal day at the office. This is The West Wing without the gravity--a failed experiment in which you can see all the familiar ingredients and the promise Sorkin realized with The West Wing. And if you purchase one of these kits highlighted in today's Slashdot and soup up your Tivo, you could have an entire season of this show taped in about a month, with the equivalent of 1190 hours of free disk space left.

Kelly Kelly Kelly

Hey, it's American Idol! You bet I'm going to catch this show when it hits Seattle (and I know many of you out there will be lurking in the shadows there).
The real story behind Idol is the return of Paula Abdul and the rise to fame of Simon Cowell. Which of us couldn't benefit from having Paula on one shoulder to boost us up ("I've got two words for you Eugene...phe...nomenal") and Simon on the other ("Umm, look, let's be honest...there are about 3 people in this room smarter and better looking than you are, and if America does its job, you'll be out of one soon").
Simon. Cheeky fellow. But he speaks the truth. He speaks the truth.

Super size it

in ,
Addendum to my Fall TV recommendations. Purchase a TIVO, open it up, and stick in a humongous hard drive. Not hard to find instructions and kits for sale on the web. Or pay someone else to do it for you. Never miss another television show in your life. I have several full seasons of TV shows on my TIVO, and no idea when I'll ever watch any of it. But it feels good, like a chipmunk hoarding walnuts months before winter hits. The only thing the TIVO needs is the ability to tape AC-3 signals off of a satellite feed, or a DVD. Besides that, I can't complain.

Exchange

We migrated to Microsoft Exchange at work. So Microsoft Outlook now governs my life. The calendaring function works fine enough. But for e-mail, for some strange reason, the program isn't smart enough to ask people which of my e-mail addresses to use when they send me messages. Somehow, probably because I sent someone at work a message from my home e-mail, I now receive all sorts of work e-mail at my home e-mail address.
I could configure Outlook to pull my personal e-mail into a separate account at work, but I like to keep my two worlds separate. You get home, thinking you'll get an hour to eat dinner, read the day's mail, and then sit on my sofa and drool for an hour before passing out. Then you open your e-mail and find, much to your dismay, ten work e-mail messages, some with the dreaded red exclamation point! Worlds are colliding!

Calling the raise

Saddam came back with a very smart political counter--he granted U.N. inspectors unconditional access to Iraq. Not much to do except take his word on it and send the inspection crews back in. Any grumbling from Washington, and there's been some, will undermine the multilateral support the Bush administration has just managed to muster in the past week. Bush and his team have to think on the fly.

Safety, and boredom, in numbers

I'm at the age where some truths become quite evident. At the top of that list right now, or at least at the top of my mind, is how boring your friends become when they enter a relationship. Infinitely interesting to each other, mind-numbingly dull to the rest of us.
Every now and then one of them gets a night off from their other half, so they look you up for something, and you spend the whole time listening to them discuss their fairly uninteresting relationship.
I give up on asking anyone in a relationship to do anything other than bring their mate out to other events with other couples. It's a lousy investment of time--they rarely come through. It's like giving the ball to Chris Webber with the clock running down and your team down by one. He'll either call a timeout or toss the ball to someone else. Sorry, too many sports references. Mmm, how about: it's like asking Winona Ryder not to date malnourished male lead singers.
I need an editor.
I'm offending many readers, and I'll receive a few well-written pleas of innocence, but the rest of you know who you are. This is one of those generalizations that you laugh off with your friends in the early twenties, and then suddenly you realize you're the last one laughing and everyone else is sitting there stone silent or looking off sheepishly (a scene which only happens in TV sitcoms, yes, but you get the point). Then they look at their watch, mutter something under their breath, and slink off to look at carpet or see My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
P.S.: Yes, some single people are dull, too, but that's because they're dull to begin with. The tragedy of the 1+1=0 couple is that usually they were actually charismatic before they hooked up. We need a name for this syndrome, and it should be the name of some dull couple.
P.P.S: Sorry, I take it all back, I love all my friends who are in relationships, or married, or have kids. It must be the long hours at the office talking. Sometimes I read some of my old entries and think, "What a santimonious ass." I need a mood indicator on my website, and right now it would be red--cantankerous and sarcastic.
Please please tell me about My Big Fat Greek Wedding, because I haven't seen it yet.
In addition to an editor, I think I need a therapist. A Dr. Melfi. It's like a high school counselor for wealthy people. I can't afford one. Sometimes in conversation I just feel like throwing in, "My therapist thinks I should..." It's just a great line to insert in conversation.

The end of summer

in , , ,
Yesterday, Sunday, was grey out. Today, as I left the office and walked out into the night, the rain was pouring down. Saturday may have been the last day of the summer. I think I'm sad about that. I'm not sure. I don't feel anything.

Dead (or missing) presidents

The Sopranos season premiere was somber in mood, using the nation's economic recession as the central theme. It ends with a slow zoom into a twenty dollar bill, ending with an extreme closeup of Andrew Jackson's right eye. Yep, in tough times we're all locked in on the almighty dollar.

Tough times for Stevie

Some of the directors at AOL/Time Warner are trying to oust Steve Case. Tony Soprano ain't the only guy having a rough go of it.
If they're blaming him for the deflation of their stock, I think they're pinning too much on the donkey. Anyone outside the company could see that the value being assigned to the so-called synergy between old and new media (yeah, we'll just take all these assets we have, like movies, magazines, and music, and just pump them through high-bandwidth pipes and make lots of money somehow) was inflated to absurd proportions.
I'd love to sit in on some of the senior management meetings at AOL/Time Warner. Steve Case, Ted Turner, Richard Parsons, Frank Caufield, John Malone, James Barksdale--big egos, big agendas, and big personalities.

Records are made

Nothing against Emmitt Smith, who has about 400 or so yards left to beat Walter Payton's all-time rushing record, but I'd rather not have anyone unseating Sweetness from the top of the record book. I'm still peeved at Ditka for having given Refrigerator Perry the touchdown in the 85 Super Bowl instead of Payton. Ditka and his idiotic macho attitude had to insist on shoving Perry down the Patriots throats. The Bears were going to kill the Patriots anyway--why use the gimmick play? As it turned out, Payton never scored, and now he's gone. I have no pity for Ditka being kicked out of coaching. He was a lousy one.

Must see Fall TV

in
Fall is my favorite season. I have happy childhood memories of the dry golden leaves dancing in the crisp air, giving off a rustling noise like cymbals to compliment the whistling of the wind. Memories of playing touch football with friends until the sun went down. Friday night high school football games and all the crazy emotions they stirred up. When I think Fall, I think of a cool, grey day outside, golden light inside the house with relatives visiting, pro football on TV, the smell of some meal always being prepared in the kitchen.
It's also the time when all my favorite TV shows return. This Fall promises a strong lineup. Here's what I'm going to be watching:
  • The Sopranos: finally, we get season four. The Simpsons parodied the opening title sequence of The Sopranos in an episode recently (a repeat, I believe. Is there anything the Simpsons can't do? More on them later). This is the best drama on television (yes, I know, it's not TV, it's HBO), one hour commercial-free every Sunday. The Sopranos doesn't depend on one element, like, say, the way Buffy depends on the humor of Whedon's writing. It's all around great. Strong acting by just about everyone in the case (and great acting by several), a great soundtrack from the title track by A3 to the different songs hand-picked for each episode, and writing by David Chase that snaps and crackles. By the way, if you don't subscribe to HBO, you're missing out. From The Sopranos to Six Feet Under to Sex in the City to Curb Your Enthusiasm to reruns of The Karate Kid, you'll get your money's worth. People will pay $10 for an hour and a half piece of crap movie but won't pay that for four hours of The Sopranos each month? You're giving me agita.

  • The West Wing: America's favorite president returns (who doesn't think Jed Bartlet wouldn't wipe the White House with Dubya if they ran against each other head to head). All attention on Sam Seaborn to see if we can detect any hints of money-grubbing jealousy in his eyes. Sam's a great character, but Rob Lowe is crazy if he thinks he's doing his career any favors by walking away. Mary Louise Parker becomes more of a regular this season. Grrrrr. Will Josh finally choose between Parker and his admin? Actually, why choose? Grrrrr! More of Sorkin mocking Dubya and his idiocy. Yee-ha! Ever notice the only cast member on this show that's married is the president? That's what comes of working all the time. I envision myself as Josh Lyman, about 40 years old, still working around the clock, trying to carve out time for a few dates on the side. With Mary Louise Parker. Grrrr.

  • Firefly: just to see if Whedon has the magic to avoid a sophomore slump--remember Chris Carter and Millenium? A space cowboy adventure. Maybe it can capture some of the charm, fun, and pathos of Cowboy Bebop, the fantastic animated series from Japan.

  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer--likely the last season for this TV hall-of-famer. Like The X-files in its last days, except most of the major characters are still around which will help the series to finish strong. With Firefly and Buffy, how does Joss Whedon get any sleep?

  • Curb Your Enthusiasm: I've only seen one episode, and I realized it's like a low-budget Seinfeld. The same obsession with minutiae. Larry David is like George in about 30 years, still as cantankerous and petty as ever. But since this is HBO, they can cuss up a storm.

  • The Simpsons: it's not must-see TV for me anymore, but that's because it's been so good for so long I just take it for granted. There's little continuity: it's meant to be something you can start watching at any point and then discard. That's the problem with satires--you can live without them. It's hard to truly care about the Simpsons since they're intended to be caricatures. If they ever end the show, you won't get a final episode like that on Family Ties, when Michael J. Fox as Alex Keaton walks out for the last time and hugs Michael Gross and Justine Bateman and audiences everywhere shed a tear. But if you think about how many seasons of sustained quality the Simpsons have produced (I was watching this show in high school!) it's staggering. It's the beauty of using a cast of writers--you can constantly rotate in a crew of new funny people, like Saturday Night Live.

  • Smallville: I can't wait to see when Clark finally learns how to fly, and how they fit that into their budget. Or when he develops his heat vision (okay, does anyone believe that Clark doesn't use his x-ray vision to give Kristin Kreuk the evil eye in class all the time? C'mon, he's a teenage boy). Also, looking for reasons why Clark ends up wearing that ridiculous red and blue outfit when he decides to head to Metropolis after high school. I mean, c'mon, his dad is Bo from The Dukes of Hazzard (John Schneider)!!! Would Bo raise a son who'd wear red underwear outside a blue bodysuit? I think not. The show does a good job of capturing teen angst. There's always one scene each episode where Clark mopes over Lana and some mopey ballad plays in the background, and at the end of the show WB pushes the CD for sale. It works, too. Product placements are the best form of advertising in this new age.

  • Monday Night Football: Al Michaels and John Madden...solid. Pat Summerall was comatose last year. It was time for Madden to move on. Plus, with two rotisserie football leagues going for me, there's money going on just about every game. That's the beauty of roto. If there was rotisserie politics I'd watch C-Span every day.

On a side note, it's clear that Aaron Sorkin and David Chase dislike each other. Chase mocks Sorkin for his drug abuse, Sorkin replies that at least he cranks his shows out on time. We have the makings of a really exciting rivalry here. Forget the celebrity deathmatch, we need an epic battle between the cast of the two shows. This would be the equivalent of Marvel vs. DC, Godzilla vs. King Kong, Hulk Hogan vs. The Rock. Bartlet and team vs. T and the Soprano clan. NBC and HBO team-up for the television confrontation of the century. Bartlet becomes aware of the vast network of illicit activities in New Jersey when Tony tries to buy off a senator. Bartlet orders Leo to mobilize the troops to put it to an end. Tony retaliates, ordering Silvio to put a horse head in Toby's office. Complicating matters is the fact that Christopher is now dating Zoe, living a 21st century Romeo and Juliet. In the midst of all this is the rogue Russian who escaped in that episode in the woods. He's nobody's friend, killing people on both sides for reasons unknown.
That would be must see TV.

In a world without laughter

in ,
The trailer for Comedian cracks me up. I love that guy who does the voice-overs for movie trailers. I wish I had his voice--it's kind of Robert Stack. I'd be such a hit at every party.

I'm fairly certain I'll find you

Watching the TV commercial for The Four Feathers, a movie I'll see because it's directed by Shekhar Kaphur, who directed the immensely entertaining Elizabeth. The only thing that trips me up is that the trailer contains a clip of Heath Ledger stating emphatically, "I will find him." (emphasis on "will").
Anyone seasoned moviegoer knows that the line "I will find _____" will forever be associated with Daniel Day Lewis who uttered the line in Last of the Mohicans. It's supposed to be a serious moment in the film, but somehow that line got so much play in the trailer that audiences everywhere OD'd on the gravitas. I don't know a single movie buff who doesn't crack himself up from rehearsing, "Just stay alive. I will find you!"

Unworthy of the Hamptons

What was that dress Carrie was wearing at the wedding in the season finale of SITC? Looked like a shower cap. Sarah Jessica Parker is a terrible dresser in real life, and sometimes it carries over into the show.
I think the show is losing steam. This season was dull. As Keith Olbermann said, "Too much city, not enough sex." Or something like that. The plot structure is a bit tired.

Fits and starts

in ,
A stretch of two weeks with little sleep, lots of stress, and no time on the bike has left me ragged. I can tell when I'm red-lining by the quality of my sleep. I meant to sleep in this morning as it was a Saturday, but despite rolling around in bed until 3 in the morning, I got up at 8:00 feeling tired and sleepy but unable to achieve REM. I hate this inability to sleep in on Saturday mornings. There must be some sort of remedy--maybe I need to do a long ride on Friday night.
I passed out on the sofa at noon and had a nightmare in which a friend and I were under attack by the U.S. army. We were hiding out in some house across the street from a gas station, out in the middle of nowhere, and an entire legion of tanks, helicopters, and soldiers were putting us under heavy fire. Fortunately, there was a gigantic, mounted machine gun (the kind you see on battleships, with a cockpit) and I was sitting in it returning fire, blowing helicopters out of the sky, shredding soldiers with gunfire like they were cardboard targets. Then I threw about four grenades across the street at the gas station and my friend and I sprinted into the house as the whole world blew up behind us. In the garage, we located a gold Camry with keys in the ignition. I told my friend (can't remember who it was) to get the car started and rushed back into the house to pick up some weapons for the road. We were fugitives now.
Up the stairs and into the bedroom where I begin throwing weapons into a duffel bag. Voices behind me. The door shatters inwards and a whole bunch of soldiers in riot gear rush in, jump me, and begin beating me with their feet and rifle butts. I wake up with my heart going double time.
It's one of those dreams which I knew immediately was about work in a way that only the dreamer can interpret in a way that's more than intuition. It's that direct channel to the subconscious.
The few times I save an evening or a few hours for myself, it feels like I'm coming up for air after a long time underwater. Big heaving gulps, blinded by sunlight, look around to get bearings, and then down below again. Hard to keep much of a social calendar when all the desirable hours are blocked off. Cancel an appointment with someone and my next open spot is two weeks later. Since I'm not a restaurant, that's nothing to be proud of.

Why don't they just make the phone out of that stuff

Late in the office one night last week, I heard a cell phone going off in the office next door to mine. At the same time, the picture on my monitor began vibrating with each ring, producing a buzzing noise at the same time. I'm used to seeing that type of disturbance when my own cell phone goes off, but this phone was ringing on the other side of a wall! Frightening.
Maybe I need to fly to Europe next year and purchase a pair of these.
Speaking of design, is there any lower quality product than the plastic CD jewel case? Just about one out of two CDs I receive in the mail arrives in a cracked jewel case. You would think after decades of study in the field of plastics that they could design a CD case that wouldn't crack if dropped on the ground. Music labels probably contract out for the lowest grade plastic available to maximize their already ridiculous profit margins on each CD sold. In a day and age when most people with computers have CD burners and can buy blank CD-Rs in bulk for next to nothing, the continued existence of $14.99 price points on new CDs is an affront to consumer intelligence.

Sampras-Agassi

in ,
Wow, Sampras and Agassi in the U.S. Open final once again! What could be more American. Should be awesome. Glad to see them put the spanking on the two young punks, Roddick and Hewitt.
I enjoy watching Sampras' game a bit more (longer, more classic strokes than Agassi) and will probably root for him because it looks like Agassi's got more years left in him. Sampras had an easier semifinal, so he should be fresher, and he's playing as well as he's played in over a year. When they're both on their games, as they were in the semis, it's always a great show. The best groundstrokes and return game in tennis versus the most effective serve and volleyer in the game
Hewitt is like Michael Chang on steroids--taller, hits harder, runs just a bit faster.
John Mcenroe and Mary Carillo are great color commentators. Too bad CBS has Dick Enberg. CBS throws him on every sport, from golf to tennis to football, and he knows little about any of them, except for what he's read or heard from others. He's like the Ted Danson of sports commentary. Somewhere in his past he did something good and unfortunately they keep getting chances for more work because of it. Danson had Cheers--who knows what Enberg's great accomplishment was. Throw Cliff Drysdale in to do play-by-play instead with Mac and Carillo and you'd have the dream team of tennis commentary.

Unzipped

in
Had the team over to watch Unzipped today. Great little documentary about a few months in the life of Isaac Mizrahi. We watched it on my old laserdisc version, and given that my laserdisc player is getting a bit creaky, I decided to check online to see if the movie was on DVD. I had checked a few months back and had only found a VHS copy. On Buena Vista's website they list an ISBN and UPC for a region 1 DVD for Unzipped, so I went to Amazon to check again.
In the DVD store, I punched in the string Unzipped, and up popped...this.
Oops.
Then I spent another half hour trying to track down the name of the song played at the start of the movie and at the beginning of the fashion show at the end of the movie. You'd think with the Internet it would be a cinch. Not so. The soundtrack isn't listed for sale anywhere. I guess there wasn't one. The one song that's listed as being a single from the film, Happy Sad by Pizzicato Five, isn't the song I was looking for. IMDb didn't have a soundtrack listing. Google didn't turn up anything.
So I actually had to stick the laserdisc back in the player, fast foward to the end credits, then pause when the song listings came up. I think I've found the song, but now I have to figure out who recorded it. The song is You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) but I can't tell if the version in the movie is the one by Sandra Bernhard (listed under singles on this discography) or this version by Byron Stingily available from Amazon.com. I've never heard anything by Byron Stingily, but I'm guessing it has to be that one since the product description describes him as having a "falsetto." No one would mistake Sandra Bernhard for having a falsetto, but then again, she's listed as the performer in the movie credits.
And Limewire doesn't list either version for download. Man, what's a brother supposed to do?

Prior out for season, and that's a good thing

in ,
Mark Prior has been put on the DL for the rest of the year, and that's a good thing. It means his arm can get a rest early in his career, and Bruce Kimm won't do any more damage by leaving Prior out there for 120+ pitch outings.

French concede: Lance is the man

The French finally ended their nearly two year long investigation of Lance Armstrong and the USPS cycling team. Early tests indicated Armstrong and his teammates were clean, but the investigation was kept open because, well, the French are jealous of the American champ. Some fans shouted Do-pay at Armstrong this year, though I didn't hear any of this while I was there. They should be shouting at Richard Virenque, one of their hometown heroes, who actually was convicted of using banned substances a few years back. Sheesh.

Stands for Big Missing Picture

in , , ,
Didn't realize that .bmp files, which most websites seem to use for their photos, don't show up in the Mac version of IE. I think I realized this once before, when browsing my own website from my Mac, but I always forget. Must be because sites don't want their pictures easily copied and used on other sites, but it's kind of a pain. When I save pictures on my Windows PC, many are in BMP format. If I don't bother converting them into JPGs then Mac browsers just see a bunch of empty spaces on my site.

Downloadable surround sound

This is pretty cool. You can download a Dolby Digital or DTS file to your computer, burn it to a CD-R as an audio CD, and play it in surround sound on your home theater. Of course, you need a surround sound set-up in your home. II'll give it a try tonight.

Ah! There it is!

Who says electronic equipment doesn't need breaking in. After a week of usage and endless tinkering, and after I finally got my DVD player back from the shop with the upgrade to a progressive scan processor, the picture on my new TV is now finally officially gorgeous. It's a combination of things--feeding it a pristing progressive 480p signal from my Proceed's new PVP card, and the sharp, bright picture from the TV's three 7" CRTs. No more scan lines, bold and beautiful colors with neutral skin tones, a smooth and soft film-like picture as opposed to the harsh video-like picture of most televisions.
What's more, my DVD player can take any video signal from my receiver and de-interlace it before feeding it to my TV as 480p. The TV has the ability to de-interlace as well, but my DVD player does a much better job of doing so. I could sit here and watch movies on it all day (which is pretty much what I've been doing most evenings this weekend).
Any day now I should get my receiver back with its upgraded DSP circuitry and support for higher resolution audio. Can't wait. It may be enough to warrant purchasing an SACD player. Some people buy a house and then decide what room they might use to put a home theater. If/when I start house-hunting, I'll be the first person to look for a house that will fit around my home theater, because the next major upgrade to my home theater is a perfectly symmetrical rectangular room with harder floors and walls with particular reflective qualities.
Yes, I know, I shouldn't derive so much pleasure from material goods, but the quest for audio/video perfection is no different for me than a runner's quest for the perfect race, or a photographer's yearning for that perfect shot. You're never done, and you're having fun the whole way through.
It's time to revive movie night. I have a schedule in mind already. And a format, adopted from Flicks at Stanford. Every movie night begins with a short, and then the main feature. And relevant food, if possible.

Chinese editing style

Watching What Time is it There, the most recent movie by Tsai Ming Liang, and got to wondering why it is that so many directors from the Taiwan New Wave use such long takes without cutting while the Average American film can't go more than a few seconds without jumping to a new shot; it can't just be the influence of MTV and the fact that so many American directors got their start directing commercials...or can it? Maybe the American movie industry got its hands on so many toys and big budgets early on and fell in love with them and their endless possibilities, or maybe the Chinese camera eye is simply more patient, less intrusive; this might be seen as a very Chinese New Wave type of blog, with long, uninterrupted sentences, continuous flowing thoughts.
Tsai Ming Liang films also don't really have much action or even a soundtrack, which, along with the motionless camera shots, give the viewer a sense of quiet.

Shimano XTR 2003

MTB fans everywhere await the new Shimano XTR components with bated breath. This will be the third generation of these legendary top-of-the-line MTB component set.
Two things catch my eye. The new disc brakes weigh only 557 grams in front. That's not much more than the XTR V-brakes at 484 grams. The new XTR disc brakes are reputed to be the best disc brakes on the market, with significantly more stopping power. This probably is the end of linear pull on MTB bikes. I'll need to upgrade!
Also, the shifters have taken a page from the road bike world and reduced shifting down to one lever. To move from one chainring to the other, you flick the brake lever up or down. Same for the rear derailleur. It's a pretty radical shift (pun intended) and will surely draw a lot of polarized opinion.
Other than that, there are the requisite weight savings almost across the board. Can't wait to test some of this stuff out.

Good interview mind teaser

in , ,
How many traffic signals in Manhattan?

Heaven

Finally, that trailer for Heaven, the movie I mentioned in an earlier post.

The Kid Stays in the Picture

Engrossing documentary about a fascinating ego. I see a story like this and it scratches an itch I can't reach because I'm wearing a cast.
The movie leads with a quote: "There are three sides to each story. My side, your side and the truth. And no one is lying. Memories shared serve each one differently."
And so Robert Evans gives advance notice that he'll be narrating his side of the story, and that's fine. He knows it will be biased, but honestly so. Frankly, it's loads more entertaining because it is his point of view. Who doesn't want to hear directly from a guy who produced The Godfather, Marathon Man, Love Story, and Rosemary's Baby; married Ali Macgraw, then lost her to Steve McQueen; got caught in a cocaine sting by the DEA; was a suspect in the murder of an associate; committed himself to a mental hospital for fear he'd kill himself; and all the while, bedded most every gorgeous model and actress in Hollywood?

Back in black

My car is finally back from the shop. Man, I missed it. Days when things don't work out, when you get behind the wheel, it's great to know that everything works exactly the way you want it to when you put your foot down and turn the steering wheel.
At the same time, I read an article in The New Yorker about traffic, and how it's getting steadily worse all across the country. So I think, perhaps I'll take public transportation.
But yesterday, some kid hijacked a bus in Seattle, drove it at insane speeds down a local city street, demolishing a few cars, sending a few people to the hospital, finally crashing on a sidewalk just down the street from my house. Ironically, without knowing what had happened, I was hitching a ride back home from Amy and we were discussing a bus accident in Seattle many years earlier. Then, the bus in question was the one I usually took home. Some guy shot the driver, shot himself, and the bus ran across a few lanes on the Aurora bridge, smashed through the side rail, and plummeted head first down through a few floors of an apartment down below.
So maybe I'll bike? No, the office won't let me bring my bike up to my office. I've had three bikes stolen in my life, I'm not going through that heartache again. All offices should allow employees to bring bikes up to their office. Ours allows dogs but not bikes. Hmm.

Valuable real estate

Today, across the country, lots of readers receive their weekly copy of The New Yorker by mail. First thing you do with a magazine like The New Yorker is flip to the table of contents. It used to always be on the first page after the cover, on the backside (which is the left page if you have the magazine laid open). Now it's occasionally one or two pages in, after a few ads. Not as good as the old days, but not quite as bad as Vanity Fair or GQ where you spend ten minutes searching for a table of contents amidst ten or twenty pages of pouty models sporting clothes they look terribly bored to be wearing.
Anyway, next to the table of contents, in the left-hand gutter, is always a vertical pillar of adspace. Usually, it's for a book. Today's featured book? You Are Not a Stranger Here. The first rave review excerpt reads:
"A genuinely heartbreaking work of staggering genius."
Obviously an appeal to the hundreds of thousands of readers of Dave Eggers book of that title.
The next review? By Jonathan Franzen, author of The Corrections:
"A wonderful rarity: an old-fashioned young storyteller with something urgent and fresh and fiercely intelligent to say."
An appeal to the millions of readers of Franzen's novel.
Intrigued, I visited Amazon to check out the book. Only then did I find out, after reading a few customer reviews, that it was a collection of short stories, not a novel. Not just that, it was the #9 best seller in the bookstore.
Had to be the New Yorker ad. I've never even heard of that book. Makes me thing that was a darn good ad, and that the table of contents page in The New Yorker is one damn valuable piece of real estate. It's pretty hard to navigate the New Yorker without checking out the table of contents, one of the best in any magazine. Because people use it, and because it's very spare (author, page, title, subtitle, and a one-line fragment about the subject of the article), the ad space next to it jumps out at thousands of readers every Thursday.
If I ever publish a book, I'll know I've made it if my publisher buys that ad space.
A collection of short stories in the top 10! That never happens.

Jaguar, iPod

Jaguar: faster, definitely, than OS X 10.1.5; still good-looking; stable; great developer tools; overpriced, because lots of the bundled apps are available for free from Apple already, especially overpriced if you already bought an earlier version of OS X.
iPod: beautifully functional; great asset for creative professionals, because the proper soundtrack for life is always at hand; not good for jogging or working out, because it's a hard drive, and those are inherently delicate.

Boy!

in , ,
Sharon's having a boy! Alan saw his "boy part" on the ultrasound.

The audience is listening

Cool Slashdot thread about burning AC-3 CD-R's.

What I'll miss watching in baseball

If players go on strike, here are a few things I'll miss watching:
  • Kevin Brown torquing his body to throw some of the filthiest pitches around, sinkers that drop down and sideways like lead buzzsaws.
  • Andruw Jones, the human web gem, chasing, or really gliding, down flyballs in center field
  • Roy Oswalt pitching. His stuff and his attitude are filthy. All sharp, hard, severe, from his pitching motion to his pitches. Contrast that to...
  • Greg Maddux pitching. Smooth, subtle, watercolor painting both sides of the plate with pitches that are fluid and always in motion. Contrast that to...
  • Curt Schilling pitching. Once he got control of his power pitches, he became that rarest of breeds, the power-control pitcher, like Roger Clemens. Or Pedro Martinez. All 3 have so many weapons that when they're on it's really unfair for hitters. A 96 mph fastball with location is mean enough, but if you follow that up with a splitter just above knees that drops into the dirt or a slider on the outside lower corner of the plate that looks like a fastball until it takes a hard turn down and left, that's cruel and unusual.
  • Barry Zito's overhand curve, especially when there's a pair of knees buckling on the other end.
  • Barry Bonds at bat. I've never seen anyone so locked in at the plate for such an extended period of time. If you throw a bad pitch anywhere near the strike zone Barry will hit a home run. He has, late in his career, adopted more of an upper cut type of swing to produce more fly balls, but it's not a long, loopy uppercut. It's a compact, uppercut swing with massive torque generated by keeping his weight back and opening up his hips hard and rotating his upper body off an axis from his head down his front leg. Kerry Wood versus Barry Bonds was the most exciting at bat of the year. Wood went after him with several 99mph fastballs, and then punched him out with an unhittable 12 to 6 overhand curve. Second most exciting at bat was Randy Johnson striking out Todd Helton to end a game. He blew him away with three straight fastballs of 100mph, 101mph, and 102mph.
  • Vladimir Guerrero firing a cannon out of deep right field to nail a runner at the plate. The most exciting player in baseball.
Maybe the owners and players don't enjoy those things as much as I do, because apparently billions of dollars aren't enough to keep all that going.
Oh well, thank goodness for football. I just participated in my first ever rotisserie football draft, so I'm all ready for Sunday pigskin action.

Z4

The new BMW Z4 roadster.
Roadsters scream mid-life crisis, or pampered wife. They're glorified go-carts.

Fantasy Island

in , ,
Off to the San Juans for a weekend of R&R at Juli's family condos. Honey!
Toni's tying the knot tonight, and I've volunteered to be wedding photographer. Hmm, this should be interesting. Kinda wish I had the Nikon 85mm AF portrait lens, but gadget lust is a never-ending hunger. At some point, there's just the craft. I've been perusing the Joe Buissink site for inspiration.

Long haul

Good luck to my coworkers running Hood to Coast today. They're crazy, of course, and it's fantastic. The corporate weekend warrior is an easy target, but what's wrong with a desk jockey who makes the most of time outside the office to combat the ravages of time? It's a beautiful thing. It's a fine line between laid back and lazy.

A movie lover's fall

This summer's movies have not been all that exciting, but the fall brings hope...
At long last, Disney is bringing out the American release of Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away. Disney and Miyazaki is a good pairing; he is Japan's premier animator and purveyor of wonder. The Quicktime trailer is gorgeous.
I have it on DVD, but I've been waiting until my receiver returns to watch it. Can't can't can't can't wait.
Another can't miss event for film buffs everywhere: the digitally restored Metropolis (Quicktime trailer). I really hope it comes to Seattle. It inspired a Japanese animated film which fell far short of the original. Fritz Lang was a mad genius.
Moving on, we have the last in Godfrey Reggio's great "Qatsi" trilogy, Naqoyqatsi, with another sure-to-be-wonderful score by Philip Glass, arrives October 18. Naqoyqatsi is "life at war," while his previous two, which arrive on DVD in mid September, were life out of balance (Koyaanisqatsi) and life in transformation (Powaqqatsi).
How about a film from Werner Herzog, with a score by Hans Zimmer? That is the promising creative force behind Invincible. Also stars the always sharp Tim Roth. I didn't even realize Herzog was still making movies. Amazing. His Nosferatu and Aguirre: The Wrath of God are movie hall-of-famers.
Of course there's Punch-Drunk Love, Heaven by Tom Tykwer and starring Cate Blanchett (first of the Heaven, Hell, Purgatory trilogy originally planned by Krzysztof Kielowski, Bubba Ho-Tep (Bruce Campbell plays an aging Elvis who battles mummies!!!) and way off in the distance, The Two Towers, which I'm just about to finish reading again, and Gangs of New York. It's not a historic lineup, but it contains enough nuggets to keep it from being a dismal second half.

X2

in ,
New trailer for X-Men 2 (X2). They had the good taste to use music from Holst's The Planets (name that planet smart readers).

What?!?

Tamyra was eliminated instead of Nikki on American Idol tonight. What the hell?! Nikki barely qualifies to be Tamyra's backup singer.
None of the singers are amazing, but the weekly drama to see who the fickle public eliminates is intriguing. At this point, my money's on Kelly. Justin is a ham whose voice is thin, and Nikki's just not a very good singer, and I'm not sure what kind of look she's going for, but it's not good. How she survives every week is the great mystery of the summer.

Precious daylight

in , , , ,
Tuesdays and Thursdays are always a mad dash home from work to salvage enough daylight from the remains of the day to complete my bike training rides. Today it was a frantic rush around the south end of Lake Washington. I got home and it was pitch black out so I finished my training ride on the indoor trainer. It doesn't get light in the morning until past 6am now, so morning rides of any length are out when early meetings are on the docket. Did the summer ever start here in Seattle? I must have been napping.
My allergies are going crazy as well. As I've gotten older, the frailties pile on. Arthritis in the knee, grey hairs, allergies. I was never allergic to anything as a kid. I like to think that the counterbalance is a monumental surge in intelligence and worldly charm.

New novel by Dave

David Eggers, who rocketed to literary fame with the catchingly titled (as post-modern a title as can be) A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius: Based on a True Story is publishing a new novel to be released Sept. 20. To get one of the first 10,000 copies, you have to pre-order from McSweeney's. This week's New Yorker short story is an excerpt from this upcoming novel, and Eggers discusses it in an interview currently posted at the New Yorker site.

Yoshimi

Nope, not a Japanese product like Asian drink Pocari Sweat (is this a bad translation?!?) being pandered by Jean Reno. Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots is the amazing new album by The Flaming Lips.

Japanderers

4The 15 minutes of fame for Japander.com has arrived with its feature in EW and Yahoo. Features lots of clips of Western actors padding their bank accounts by sneaking over to Japan to hawk all sorts of wares in TV commercials. I've only watched a few, but by far my favorite so far is the Simpsons pushing some drink called C.C. Lemon. Authentic because they speak Japanese and are way too enthusiastic, as all actors are in Asian commercials. Because damn it, C.C. Lemon is NUMBER ONE!!! C.C. LEMOOOOOOOOOONNN!
Menthos!

That's two they'll lose

Hey, I'm not the only guy who'll give up on baseball if they go on strike. So will Sports Guy.