Ephemera, May Day 2009


One of the things I've noticed about blogging is that you rather constantly have a little daemon in the back of your mind collecting things for the blog.

The following are bits and pieces of planned posts that I never got around to writing, and thus only the highlights remain in my brain. Which is actually a good thing, because you're getting the "good parts" version (with a tip of the cursor to the great William Goldman).

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I recently went to a conference and noted many things that I intended to report, but only two have stuck:

- I saw a paraplegic in a wheelchair wearing a t-shirt that said "Stimulus Package" followed by a large arrow pointing at his crotch. So, I wondered if he was being ironic or not...

- The elevators had big, prominent signs (which were just standard 8 1/2 by 11" typewriter paper printed from a laserprinter) by the buttons that stated a capacity of 8 people, warning that the elevators would get stuck if that was exceeded. Inside, the elevators had professionally manufactured signs stating a capacity of 10, and without the dire warning of getting stuck. So, one day I'm getting on the elevator, and one attendee who was VERY OUT was riding down, and I asked him, "why do you suppose the limit signs outside say 8 and the ones in here say 10?" And he said in that cliché effeminate gay accent, "Because everyone's gotten so fat!" The response was funny in and of itself, but the delivery is what really sold the line. I laughed for half the day on that one.

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My wife and I watched the final episode of ER (a few weeks ago, now) and were sadly appalled that the show had gotten even worse since the time we abandoned it. We barely made it to the end. They did a little retrospective show before the episode, and it wasn't obvious to someone who hadn't been watching for a while, but nearly all the snippets they played were from the first few seasons, and when the show proper started, the contrast was so stark I was embarrassed for those who now ran the show.

I actually had an index card filled out with all the subplots, and I was gonna lay them out here to expose their patheticness (patheticality?).

Anyway, in a nutshell, the overall theme was every patient who was part of a family lost a member of that family in particularly harsh ways (mom dies during delivery, old man unexpectedly and suddenly loses his wife to old age, etc.), with the sole exception being the (obligatory) gay couple.

A gay guy comes in because he feels weird and they discover he has a brain tumor. When his boyfriend/husband shows up, there's this overly sweet scene where they talk about what a wonderful life they've had and how they'll enjoy the last year or so they have with each other until he finally is taken out by the tumor (effusive lens filters are used, palette tones warm, violins swell). We also discover that he was one of the original patients diagnosed with AIDs and has managed to live all this time. Short version: gay = good happy life; anyone else = you're fucked, cope.

Good riddance to that show. (Though it looks as though they put an equally overwrought police show in its place; and they took care to announce it was created and produced by the same team that has brought us ER the last few years. I do appreciate that told us it would suck so I didn't have to waste my time checking it out.)

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Read this book on Christianity called The Blue Parakeet, which I picked up blindly. A few pages in I was groaning inwardly because he was dividing us all up into bible-believing Christians and liberal Christians. Then he started talking to his fundie brethren about how they were not living up to the letter of the Bible no matter how much they thought they were, spends a few chapters proving that (which were kinda fun), and then talks about how they need to use Discernment and realize that they need to apply the Bible and its story to our age rather than try to pretend to live in a different Christian era. To which anyone who's not a fundie would answer: well, duh.

So, while it was mostly just entertainment for me (meaning I didn't really learn anything or get detect a point of view I wasn't aware of) watching someone fundie come to the realization that it's about love and the message is contained in the narrative (what he labeled as "the story") rather than viewing the Bible like a bunch of Chinese cookie fortunes that you can apply at will and out of context to whatever situation, the main impression I came away with was the author was a phenomenal asshole. It just bleeds out of his writing style and various attempts at humor. Even the back cover photo fills one with mild, free-floating loathing. I haven't had many experiences outside of reading some wingnut polemic where you could just feel what a creep the author (perhaps) is. (I hope the author never does a vanity search and lands here. If so, my apologies.)

Update: Sorry if this comes off a little harsh. I was apparently in a mood when I wrote this.

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Speaking of assholes...

I rarely write about work, particularly in a negative sense, because typically it's not wise. Just hunt up "dooced" on the internets.

But I'm so amused with my little joke I just have to share.

One of the folks we work with is an utter SOB. Every single interaction with said SOB is unpleasant. I would posit that if you were to sum up the total amount of time people talk about what this person has done lately and basically conjugating on what a bastard s/he is, you'd have a solid 8 hours. I've read several books on how to make your organization one of the bestest, shiniest, efficient and overall wonderful places to work, and all of them say identify these people and show them the door. In this case, it will never happen. (It's a long story, and I'd have to give away too many details.)

Anyway, one of the code/secret references I've invented for describing events and interactions with this lovely human being is: "A Sleeping Beauty Moment."

It came about like this: I was talking to someone about a recent run-in and I said, "Afterwards, I had the exact same thought pass through my mind that went through Sleeping Beauty's as she fell into her hundred-year sleep ... 'Wow, what a prick!'"

This is going around the emails.

My little four-year-old, upon hearing the term over and over as we watched the news, asked, "Daddy, what's the whine flu?"

After all this time, a treat

Since the tragic demise of David Foster Wallace, I’ve had it on my to-do list to type out one of my favorite sections of Infinite Jest where he walks through the enthusiastic adoption of videophones and the eventual abandonment of the same.

Besides being funny as hell, and probably true (if they ever do try to foist videophones on us), it’s a nice little examination of all the eddies and collateral damage caused by the adoption of new technology. (Think original IRC chat, message boards, and now Twitter. Or even blogs, ahem. Or, watch the vid in the post below.)

Without further ado:

WHY -- THOUGH IN THE EARLY DAYS OF INTERLACE'S INTERNETTED TELEPUTERS THAT OPERATED OFF LARGELY THE SAME FIBER-DIGITAL GRID AS THE PHONE COMPANIES, THE ADVENT OF VIDEO-TELEPHONING (A.K.A. 'VIDEOPHONY') ENJOYED AN INTERVAL OF HUGE CONSUMER POPULARITY -- CALLERS THRILLED AT THE IDEA OF PHONE-INTERFACING BOTH AURALLY AND FACIALLY (THE LITTLE FIRSTGENERATION PHONE-VIDEO CAMERAS BEING TOO CRUDE AND NARROW-APERTURED FOR ANYTHING MUCH MORE THAN FACIAL CLOSE-UPS) ON FIRST-GENERATION TELEPUTERS THAT AT THAT TIME WERE LITTLE MORE THAN HIGH-TECH TV SETS, THOUGH OF COURSE THEY HAD THAT LITTLE 'INTELLIGENT-AGENT' HOMUNCULAR ICON THAT WOULD APPEAR AT THE LOWER-RIGHT OF A BROADCAST/CABLE PROGRAM AND TELL YOU THE TIME AND TEMPERATURE OUTSIDE OR REMIND YOU TO TAKE YOUR BLOOD-PRESSURE MEDICATION OR ALERT YOU TO A PARTICULARLY COMPELLING ENTERTAINMENT-OPTION NOW COMING UP ON CHANNEL LIKE 491 OR SOMETHING, OR OF COURSE NOW ALERTING YOU TO AN INCOMING VIDEO-PHONE CALL AND THEN TAP-DANCING WITH A LITTLE ICONIC STRAW BOATER AND CANE JUST UNDER A MENU OF POSSIBLE OPTIONS FOR RESPONSE, AND CALLERS DID LOVE THEIR LITTLE HOMUNCULAR ICONS -- BUT WHY, WITHIN LIKE 16 MONTHS OR 5 SALES QUARTERS, THE TUMESCENT DEMAND CURVE FOR 'VIDEOPHONY' SUDDENLY COLLAPSED LIKE A KICKED TENT, SO THAT, BY THE YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT, FEWER THAN 10% OF ALL PRIVATE TELEPHONE COMMUNICATIONS UTILIZED ANY VIDEO-IMAGE-FIBER DATA-TRANSFERS OR COINCIDENT PRODUCTS AND SERVICES, THE AVERAGE U.S. PHONE-USER DECIDING THAT S/HE ACTUALLY PREFERRED THE RETROGRADE OLD LOWTECH BELL-ERA VOICE-ONLY TELEPHONIC INTERFACE AFTER ALL, A PREFERENTIAL ABOUT-FACE THAT COST A GOOD MANY PRECIPITANT VIDEO-TELEPHONY-RELATED ENTREPRENEURS THEIR SHIRTS, PLUS DESTABILIZING TWO HIGHLY RESPECTED MUTUAL FUNDS THAT HAD GROUNDFLOORED HEAVILY IN VIDEO-PHONE TECHNOLOGY, AND VERY NEARLY WIPING OUT THE MARYLAND STATE EMPLOYEES' RETIREMENT SYSTEM'S FREDDIE-MAC FUND, A FUND WHOSE ADMINISTRATOR'S MISTRESS'S BROTHER HAD BEEN AN ALMOST MANICALLY PRECIPITANT VIDEO-PHONETECHNOLOGY ENTREPRENEUR ... AND BUT SO WHY THE ABRUPT CONSUMER RETREAT BACK TO GOOD OLD VOICEONLY TELEPHONING?

The answer, in a kind of trivalent nutshell, is: (1) emotional stress, (2) physical vanity, (3) a certain queer kind of self-obliterating logic in the microeconomics of consumer high-tech.

(1) It turned out that there was something terribly stressful about visual telephone interfaces that hadn't been stressful at all about voice-only interfaces. Videophone consumers seemed suddenly to realize that they'd been subject to an insidious but wholly marvelous delusion about conventional voice-only telephony. They'd never noticed it before, the delusion -- it's like it was so emotionally complex that it could be countenanced only in the context of its loss. Good old traditional audio-only phone conversations allowed you to presume that the person on the other end was paying complete attention to you while also permitting you not to have to pay anything even close to complete attention to her. A traditional aural-only conversation -- utilizing a hand-held phone whose earpiece contained only 6 little pinholes but whose mouthpiece (rather significantly, it later seemed) contained (6²) or 36 little pinholes -- let you enter a kind of highway-hypnotic semi-attentive fugue: while conversing, you could look around the room, doodle, fine-groom, peel tiny bits of dead skin away from your cuticles, compose phone-pad haiku, stir things on the stove; you could even carryon a whole separate additional sign-language-and-exaggerated-facial-expression type of conversation with people right there in the room with you, all while seeming to be right there attending closely to the voice on the phone. And yet -- and this was the retrospectively marvelous part -- even as you were dividing your attention between the phone call and all sorts of other idle little fuguelike activities, you were somehow never haunted by the suspicion that the person on the other end's attention might be similarly divided. During a traditional call, e.g., as you let's say performed a close tactile blemish-scan of your chi n, you were in no way oppressed by the thought that your phonemate was perhaps also devoting a good percentage of her attention to a close tactile blemish-scan. It was an illusion and the illusion was aural and aurally supported: the phone-line's other end's voice was dense, tightly compressed, and vectored right into your ear, enabling you to imagine that the voice's owner's attention was similarly compressed and focused ... even though your own attention was not, was the thing. This bilateral illusion of unilateral attention was almost infantilely gratifying from an emotional standpoint: you got to believe you were receiving somebody's complete attention without having to return it. Regarded with the objectivity of hindsight, the illusion appears arational, almost literally fantastic: it would be like being able both to lie and to trust other people at the same time.

Video telephony rendered the fantasy insupportable. Callers now found they had to compose the same sort of earnest, slightly overintense listener's expression they had to compose for in-person exchanges. Those callers who out of unconscious habit succumbed to fuguelike doodling or pants-crease-adjustment now came off looking rude, absentminded, or childishly self-absorbed. Callers who even more unconsciously blemish-scanned or nostril-explored looked up to find horrified expressions on the video-faces at the other end. All of which resulted in videophonic stress.

Even worse, of course, was the traumatic expulsion-from-Eden feeling of looking up from tracing your thumb's outline on the Reminder Pad or adjusting the old Unit's angle of repose in your shorts and actually seeing your videophonic interfacee idly strip a shoelace of its gumlet as she talked to you, and suddenly realizing your whole infantile fantasy of commanding your partner's attention while you yourself got to fugue-doodle and make little genital-adjustments was deluded and insupportable and that you were actually commanding not one bit more attention than you were paying, here. The whole attention business was monstrously stressful, video callers found.

(2) And the videophonic stress was even worse if you were at all vain. I.e. if you worried at all about how you looked. As in to other people. Which all kidding aside who doesn't. Good old aural telephone calls could be fielded without makeup, toupee, surgical prostheses, etc. Even without clothes, if that sort of thing rattled your saber. But for the image-conscious, there was of course no such answer-as-you-are informality about visual-video telephone calls, which consumers began to see were less like having the good old phone ring than having the doorbell ring and having to throw on clothes and attach prostheses and do hair-checks in the foyer mirror before answering the door.

But the real coffin-nail for videophony involved the way callers' faces looked on their T P screen, during calls. Not their callers' faces, but their own, when they saw them on video. It was a three-button affair, after all, to use the TP's cartridge-card's Video-Record option to record both pulses in a two-way visual call and play the call back and see how your face had actually looked to the other person during the call. This sort of appearance check was no more resistible than a mirror. But the experience proved almost universally horrifying. People were horrified at how their own faces appeared on a TP screen. It wasn't just 'Anchorman's Bloat,' that well known impression of extra weight that video inflicts on the face. It was worse. Even with high-end TPs' high-def viewer-screens, consumers perceived something essentially blurred and moist-looking about their phone-faces, a shiny pallid indefiniteness that struck them as not just unflattering but somehow evasive, furtive, untrustworthy, unlikable. In an early and ominous InterLace/G.T.E. focus-group survey that was all but ignored in a storm of entrepreneurial sci-fi-tech enthusiasm, almost 60% of respondents who received visual access to their own faces during videophonic calls specifically used the terms untrustworthy, unlikable, or hard to like in describing their own visage's appearance, with a phenomenally ominous 71% of senior-citizen respondents specifically comparing their video-faces to that of Richard Nixon during the Nixon-Kennedy debates of B.S. 1960.

The proposed solution to what the telecommunications industry's psychological consultants termed Video-Physiognomic Dysphoria (or VPD) was, of course, the advent of High-Definition Masking; and in fact it was those entrepreneurs who gravitated toward the production of high-definition videophonic imaging and then outright masks who got in and out of the short-lived videophonic era with their shirts plus solid additional nets.

Mask-wise, the initial option of High-Definition Photographic Imaging -- i.e. taking the most flattering elements of a variety of flattering multi-angle photos of a given phone-consumer and -- thanks to existing image-configuration equipment already pioneered by the cosmetics and law enforcement industries -- combining them into a wildly attractive high-def broadcastable composite of a face wearing an earnest, slightly overintense expression of complete attention -- was quickly supplanted by the more inexpensive and byte-economical option of (using the exact same cosmetic-and-FBI software) actually casting the enhanced facial image in a form-fitting polybutylene-resin mask, and consumers soon found that the high up-front cost of a permanent wearable mask was more than worth it, considering the stress- and VPD-reduction benefits, and the convenient Velcro straps for the back of the mask and caller's head cost peanuts; and for a couple fiscal quarters phone/cable companies were able to rally VPD-afflicted consumers' confidence by working out a horizontally integrated deal where free composite-and-masking services came with a videophone hookup. The high-def masks, when not in use, simply hung on a small hook on the side of a TP's phone-console, admittedly looking maybe a bit surreal and discomfiting when detached and hanging there empty and wrinkled, and sometimes there were potentially awkward mistaken-identity snafus involving multi-user family or company phones and the hurried selection and attachment of the wrong mask taken from some long row of empty hanging masks -- but all in all the masks seemed initially like a viable industry response to the vanity,-stress,-and-Nixonian-facial-image problem.

(2 and maybe also 3) But combine the natural entrepreneurial instinct to satisfy all sufficiently high consumer demand, on the one hand, with what appears to be an almost equally natural distortion in the way persons tend to see themselves, and it becomes possible to account historically for the speed with which the whole high-def-videophonic-rnask thing spiralled totally out of control. Not only is it weirdly hard to evaluate what you yourself look like, like whether you're good-looking or not -- e.g. try looking in the mirror and determining where you stand in the attractiveness-hierarchy with anything like the objective ease you can determine whether just about anyone else you know is good-looking or not -- but it turned out that consumers' instinctively skewed self-perception, plus vanity-related stress, meant that they began preferring and then outright demanding videophone masks that were really quite a lot better-looking than they themselves were in person. High-def mask-entrepreneurs ready and willing to supply not just verisimilitude but aesthetic enhancement -- stronger chins, smaller eyebags, air-brushed scars and wrinkles -- soon pushed the original mimetic-mask-entrepreneurs right out of the market. In a gradually unsubtlizing progression, within a couple more sales-quarters most consumers were now using masks so undeniably better-looking on videophones than their real faces were in person, transmitting to one another such horrendously skewed and enhanced masked images of themselves, that enormous psychosocial stress began to result, large numbers of phone-users suddenly reluctant to leave home and interface personally with people who, they feared, were now habituated to seeing their far-better-looking masked selves on the phone and would on seeing them in person suffer (so went the callers' phobia) the same illusion-shattering aesthetic disappointment that, e.g., certain women who always wear makeup give people the first time they ever see them without makeup.

The social anxieties surrounding the phenomenon psych-consultants termed Optimistically Misrepresentational Masking (or OMM) intensified steadily as the tiny crude first-generation videophone cameras' technology improved to where the aperture wasn't as narrow, and now the higher-end tiny cameras could countenance and transmit more or less full-body images. Certain psychologically unscrupulous entrepreneurs began marketing full-body polybutylene and -urethane 2-D cutouts --sort of like the headless muscleman and bathing-beauty cutouts you could stand behind and position your chin on the cardboard neck-stump of for cheap photos at the beach, only these full-body videophone-masks were vastly more high-tech and convincing-looking. Once you added variable 2-D wardrobe, hair-and eye-color options, various aesthetic enlargements and reductions, etc., costs started to press the envelope of mass-market affordability, even though there was at the same time horrific social pressure to be able to afford the very best possible masked 2-D body-image, to keep from feeling comparatively hideous-looking on the phone. How long, then, could one expect it to have been before the relentless entrepreneurial drive toward an ever-better mousetrap conceived of the Transmittable Tableau (a.k.a. TT), which in retrospect was probably the really sharp business-end of the videophonic coffin-nail. With TTs, facial and bodily masking could now be dispensed with altogether and replaced with the video-transmitted image of what was essentially a heavily doctored still-photograph, one of an incredibly fit and attractive and well-turned-out human being, someone who actually resembled you the caller only in such limited respects as like race and limb-number, the photo's face focused attentively in the direction of the videophonic camera from amid the sumptuous but not ostentatious appointments of the sort of room that best reflected the image of yourself you wanted to transmit, etc.

The Tableaux were simply high-quality transmission-ready photographs, scaled down to diorama-like proportions and fitted with a plastic holder over the videophone camera, not unlike a lens-cap. Extremely good-looking but not terrifically successful entertainment-celebrities -- the same sort who in decades past would have swelled the cast-lists of infomercials -- found themselves in demand as models for various high-end videophone Tableaux.

Because they involved simple transmission-ready photography instead of computer imaging and enhancement, the Tableaux could be mass-produced and commensurately priced, and for a brief time they helped ease the tension between the high cost of enhanced body-masking and the monstrous aesthetic pressures videophony exerted on callers, not to mention also providing employment for set-designers, photographers, airbrushers, and infomercial-level celebrities hard-pressed by the declining fortunes of broadcast television advertising.

(3) But there's some sort of revealing lesson here in the beyond-short-term viability-curve of advances in consumer technology. The career of videophony conforms neatly to this curve's classically annular shape: First there's some sort of terrific, sci-fi-like advance in consumer tech -- like from aural to videophoning -- which advance always, however, has certain unforeseen disadvantages for the consumer; and then but the market-niches created by those disadvantages -- like people's stressfully vain repulsion at their own videophonic appearance -- are ingeniously filled via sheer entrepreneurial verve; and yet the very advantages of these ingenious disadvantage-compensations seem all too often to undercut the original high-tech advance, resulting in consumer-recidivism and curve-closure and massive shirt-loss for precipitant investors. In the present case, the stress-and-vanity-compensations' own evolution saw video-callers rejecting first their own faces and then even their own heavily masked and enhanced physical likenesses and finally covering the video-cameras altogether and transmitting attractively stylized static Tableaux to one another's TPs. And, behind these lens-cap dioramas and transmitted Tableaux, callers of course found that they were once again stresslessly invisible, unvainly makeup- and toupeeless and baggy-eyed behind their celebrity-dioramas, once again free -- since once again unseen -- to doodle, blemish-scan, manicure, crease-check -- while on their screen, the attractive, intensely attentive face of the well-appointed celebrity on the other end's Tableau reassured them that they were the objects of a concentrated attention they themselves didn't have to exert.

And of course but these advantages were nothing other than the once-lost and now-appreciated advantages of good old Bell-era blind aural-only telephoning, with its 6 and (6²) pinholes. The only difference was that now these expensive silly unreal stylized Tableaux were being transmitted between TPs on high-priced video-fiber lines. How much time, after this realization sank in and spread among consumers (mostly via phone, interestingly), would any micro-econometrist expect to need to pass before high-tech visual videophony was mostly abandoned, then, a return to good old telephoning not only dictated by common consumer sense but actually after a while culturally approved as a kind of chic integrity, not Ludditism but a kind of retrograde transcendence of sci-fi-ish high-tech for its own sake, a transcendence of the vanity and the slavery to high-techfashion that people view as so unattractive in one another. In other words a return to aural-only telephony became, at the closed curve's end, a kind of status symbol of anti-vanity, such that only callers utterly lacking in self-awareness continued to use videophony and Tableaux, to say nothing of masks, and these tacky facsimile-using people became ironic cultural symbols of tacky vain slavery to corporate PR and high-tech novelty, became the Subsidized Era's tacky equivalents of people with leisure suits, black velvet paintings, sweater-vests for their poodles, electric zirconium jewelry, NoCoat LinguaScrapers, and c. Most communications consumers put their Tableaux-dioramas at the back of a knick-knack shelf and covered their cameras with standard black lens-caps and now used their phone consoles' little maskhooks to hang these new little plasticene address-and-phone diaries specially made with a little receptacle at the top of the binding for convenient hanging from former mask-hooks. Even then, of course, the bulk of U.S. consumers remained verifiably reluctant to leave home and teleputer and to interface personally, though this phenomenon's endurance can't be attributed to the videophony-fad per se, and anyway the new panagoraphobia served to open huge new entrepreneurial teleputerized markets for home-shopping and -delivery, and didn't cause much industry concern.

- from Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

roflmao

NSFW but definitely fire this up at home:

Watch We Didnt Start the Flame War on CollegeHumor

Being There

So, you're starting to hit the big time, you're invited to all the big parties, and you discover you are human.

I love this blog post from Elizabeth Banks where she cops to doing the two thumbs up in spite of her better judgement.

Not that I'm anything close to a Hollywood starlet, but I did the double thumbs up recently, and as they were hoisting from my fists, I was already thinking, "what in the hell am I doing?"

Oh well.

Media Insiders Say Internet Hurts Journalism (says "The Atlantic")

There's been a lot of news about the news lately - newspapers going under, what journalism in America should mean, blaming the internet, etc. (And who the hell are these "media insiders" and why weren't they identified?)

My opinion on it is pretty straightforward: the news media fell on its ever-loving ass during the Bush years (though they began the fall during the Clinton years).

Journalism hurt journalism.

It caved. It failed to report important story after important story. All of news became some pale version of Fox news. No one fact-checked except Al Franken. And, no one had the guts to openly mock Fox for even claiming Fox is a legitimate news outlet.

The far right has won the noise war for years, but they've never gotten past being blatantly biased as hell and playing to the choir rather than to anyone interested in the facts.

When Rupert Murdock took over "The Wall Street Journal" and immediately ignored the prohibitions he agreed to regarding the purchase, everyone should've immediately walked away and canceled their subscriptions.

The fact that Sun Myung Moon has had deep access to, and support for, the Republican party should be a weekly article in most papers. I mean, c'mon: a dangerous cult leader who's cult brought about deprogramming from brainwashing who also claims to be Jesus having that kind of access? How does the "Washington Times" even have subscribers and readers? Like Nancy Grace does with her missing kids, every serious journalism shop should have the daily announcement or scroll across the bottom of the page saying "Sun Myung Moon still in America, still attending Republican events" until the bastard is arrested or deported.

A local newscast report this week on the Obama's getting their dog finally, and the report said it wasn't a shelter dog as Obama "promised" it would be, thus yet one more campaign promise has fallen by the wayside.

Excuse me?

WTF?

The guy didn't even blink or smirk to let us know that bit of "reporting" was a joke.


So, when the newspapers and TV reporters get back some guts and actually report facts and the news, things will begin to improve, but if they insist on coming off like Bill O'Reilly, they might as well take their fucking loofahs and go home.

Whither Sulu?

Saw Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlst, which was not something I had on my waitlist, but since it was on the shelf, I snagged it in case time presented itself. And it did. I have this lovely flu that's like a greatest hits of other viruses: combo cold, body hangover, and digestive tract craziness (that hasn't included yacking, thank God).

The movie is as tedious as most reviews label it. It's watchable when you don't feel like getting up and putting in American Graffiti or Dazed and Confused. But there's no real conflict, and I wondered how in the hell Michael Cera ("Nick") keeps getting parts with his nearly complete lack of looks and charm, though I hope to see way more of Kat Dennings ("Nora") who has plenty of both.

Outside of watching Kat do her stuff, I was pleasantly surprised when it looked like they would have a major Asian character (outside of sci-fi). Maybe because I don't watch swat-fu flicks, I notice it when an Asian appears in a lead, because they almost never do. It's like having a dad on a sitcom who's not a major buffoon.

However, my second thought was, "ah, but they'll make him gay, probably" and sure enough, Nick is in a band where all the other guys are gay. Imagine that little walk through hell if this were even remotely realistic. You go through the pain of learning how to play an instrument to be in a band to meet chicks (the largest common denominator for most guy musicians) but there you are in gay bar after gay bar, fending of guy pass after guy pass.

But I digress…

What the hell is it with the nearly complete dearth of normal Asian main characters? Is this a holdover from the prejudices of WWII, maybe?

Now, I'm not a quota person, but after someone mentioned way back in the day that there were no black actors in commercials until the Cosby show (when he demanded it), and the complaint that there were no black acts on MTV until they swapped over to nothing but black acts, I ended up with a low-key mental filter that when I watched a drama or comedy (again, fantasy and sci-fi are somehow exempt), I would eventually notice if the cast didn't have the mix of people types I encountered day to day.

This also does not count the overabundance of pretty people in entertainment; no one wants to look at average people all the time. My "is this realistic?" filter actually kicks in when there are too many plain people, because it IS abnormal for entertainment.

And for those of you who are thinking I'm a hypocrite by asking, "Where are the Asians?" while at the same time complaining (somewhat) about (what I've come to think of as) "the obligatory gay character," it goes back to the daily mix I encounter in reality. I see way more gay characters in fiction anymore than I do in real life, and typically they are uber-heroic in ways that would be laughable in reality. I've known some very wonderful gay people, but I've also known my share of petty, hateful, bitchy and mean gays, too. Imagine a bad gay character in a major or indy film these days.

I exempted sci-fi because that's about the one place where you do see Asian leads who are actually the hero, except for Garrett Wang / Harry Kim from ST Voyager who was such a pussy that all the female characters had more balls than he did.

But that leaves the question as to why sci-fi doesn't have the same unbalance that dramas and comedies do.

I have no theory. Do you?

"I remember literally breaking out into a sweat"

I've written about this before, but now I can actually show you Butch Vig's reaction to hearing Nirvana play "Smells Like Team Spirit" for the first time.



The reason this intrigues me is it's about the genesis of probably one of the best songs evar, a pivotal moment in music history.

I've always wondered what it would be like to be there when a seminal work is being born. I have a friend who spent years in the arts scene, going to performance after crappy performance of local bands, cruising all the art openings, hitting every event he could merely to experience being there when something huge was born and took off.

I don't think he ever had the pleasure.

Anyway, here's one story of being there when it did happen. I would've probably broken out into a sweat, too.

What's Wrong with This Picture?



I burst out laughing - loudly - at the library, which is still a no-no.

Now if the word "metro" had appeared in the title, maybe the soft, foofy sweater and the doe-eyed gaze - with the hand held so dandily to the side of the head - wouldn't have been so damn funny.

But "Mantalk"?

Uh, no.

He Should Be Pissed. Sorta.

The recent Rolling Stone has a nice little bio on Kris Kristofferson by Ethan Hawke (the actor, who's apparently branching out). It starts with a little vignette backstage at Willie Nelson's 70th birthday concert (excerpted from the Yahoo story, as Rolling Stone hasn't put it online yet):

Hawke said the argument began with the "Star" [Toby Keith] telling Kristofferson: "None of that lefty (expletive) out there tonight, Kris."

Hawke said Kristofferson then angrily confronted and asked him if he had ever served in the military.
"Have you ever killed another man? Huh? Have you ever taken another man's life and then cashed the check your country gave you for doing it? No, you have not, so shut the (expletive) up," Hawke recounted Kristofferson as saying. "You don't know what the hell you are talking about."

After the shit Keith pulled on the Dixie Chicks, it's nice to see him get a little jab in the nuts. Which he handles well:

"He didn't even call me by my name. ... He called Norah Jones, Ray Charles, everybody else by name. Willie (Nelson), Kris (Kristofferson). Why didn't he call my name? Why didn't he say Toby Keith walked through and said this (expletive)? Right? You know why. You know why. You know as good as anybody why. He didn't want to (expletive) deal with the aftermath."

Oh, wah. Guess what goes around comes around. I can't wait for the Dixie Chicks song about it.

_________
Update:
Almost forgot to include a pretty funny story from the article, which I'll have to paraphrase as I don't have the mag with me.

At the funeral of June Carter Cash, as Kristofferson was sitting next to Johnny Cash in the receiving line, a guy walks up and after he offers his condolences to Cash, he tells Kristofferson that he loved his singing. After the guy walked away, Cash leaned over and whispered, "Well, there's one.

And Speaking of Rolling Stone...

They had a great (maddening and saddening) article on some of the corruption under the Bush administration:

During the Bush era, the scandals over America's wilderness areas were centered at the Mineral Management Service, the Denver office that serves as Interior's collection agency. The government auctions off the right to drill on public lands, and taxpayers are supposed to receive a cut of any profits that energy firms make on the oil and gas they extract. Last year, MMS collected more than $23 billion in royalties from drilling — second in revenues only to the IRS. "The oil companies were basically running MMS during the Bush years," says Bobby Maxwell, a top auditor for the service who was forced out of his job in 2005, despite having recovered more than $500 million in unpaid royalties during his career.

Maxwell and other auditors sensed the change in direction as soon as Bush took office: Collections of unpaid royalties from oil and gas companies plunged from $300 million a year to less than $50 million. "The focus changed," says Maxwell. "It was 'Quit doing detailed audits. Stop getting records from oil companies.' " The push was no longer to collect money owed to taxpayers for drilling on public land — it was to provide what the Bush administration euphemistically called "royalty relief" to big energy firms.

MMS not only slashed audits by 22 percent, it even prohibited auditors from recouping money in cases involving clear evidence of fraud. In what would become the costliest scandal, it also looked the other way when it learned that, because of a massive bureaucratic fuck-up, it had failed to collect billions in royalties for deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Instead, the Bush administration fought to let oil companies keep the money, and a judge appointed by Bush recently overturned royalty collections on 75 percent of all oil produced in the Gulf. Should the ruling stand, taxpayers will forfeit as much as $53 billion owed by Big Oil.

As another favor to oil and gas companies, MMS also set up an office called "Royalty in Kind," allowing drilling interests to pay the government not in cash but in petroleum products. The RIK office would then sell those products on the open market, bringing in some $4 billion a year. But since the office owned no pipelines or refineries, it was forced to extend lucrative contracts to the oil companies to transport and process the oil — taking another costly bite out of the revenue owed to taxpayers.

Instead of negotiating tough deals with the oil companies, officials in the royalties office indulged in what an internal investigation later termed "a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity." A third of RIK staff members, the investigation found, accepted illicit gifts from the industry. Others "used cocaine and marijuana, and had sexual relations with oil and gas company representatives." One pair of government-employees-gone-wild, celebrated among oilmen as the "MMS Chicks," partied hard during corporate snowboarding trips — one got so drunk at a ski resort that Shell had to put her up for the night in its "Dutchman Haus" chalet — and repeatedly had sex with representatives for Chevron and Shell. The "Chicks" did not recuse themselves from negotiations with the companies. Worse, they allowed Chevron and other firms to revise the terms of 118 contracts that had already been finalized — favors to the industry that cost taxpayers $4.4 million.

"They were literally and figuratively in bed with the oil industry," says Maxwell. The director of the Royalty in Kind office, Greg Smith, was apparently too busy worrying about where his next line of coke was coming from to rein in his underlings. According to Interior's inspector general, Smith regularly bought cocaine from a subordinate, offering her a $250 "performance award" as a reward for provisioning him with quality "office supplies." When Smith wasn't high — or pressuring women on his staff for blow jobs, as the inspector general found he did repeatedly — he was busy accepting payments from an oil–services consulting firm in return for insider information about the RIK program.

When the inspector general sent his findings to the Justice Department, however, the Bush administration suddenly went soft on drugs, declining to prosecute Smith. It also failed to charge Lucy Dennet, a former associate director of MMS, whom the inspector general said "manipulated the contracting process" to steer $1.1 million in government business to a company run by two outgoing MMS agents, both of whom have pleaded guilty to felony violations of conflict of interest. Many Interior insiders believe that both Dennet and Smith are prime candidates for prosecution under Salazar. Speaking to Rolling Stone, the secretary refused to speculate about which former officials are now in legal jeopardy, but says that his investigation extends beyond the corruption at MMS to the entire department. "I am being cautious as a former prosecutor," he says. "I can't tell you everything I know."

Even by Washington standards, the level of corruption at MMS was mind-boggling — far worse than the notorious bribe-for-drilling scandal that defined the administration of Warren G. Harding. "The previous low point for the Interior Department was the Teapot Dome scandal of the 1920s," says Jeff Ruch, executive director of a federal watchdog group called Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. "Right now we've got Teapot Dome cubed."

Read the whole thing here.

In which my baby finds a children's book that's NSFW

A family ritual of ours is a weekly (at least) visit to the library where we let the girls pull anything and everything off the shelf they'd like to read, watch, or listen to. Our only limitation is the sheer amount of stuff that we can carry to the van in one trip.

As the four-year-old plucks things from the shelves, we do a quick preview because a huge portion of children's books are just weird. For instance, there's a huge genre I'd label "victimhood" which contains books about being a particular race, or religion, or having a handicap or something. We eschew all these books with an agenda other than telling a good story.

Well, even with our filtering, sometimes we miss a stinker.

What slipped through security this week was Mommy Laid an Egg: Or, Where Do Babies Come from?

From the cover, it looks like it will be whimsical.


But, after a page where it's explained that the cartoon penis fits into the cartoon vagina - an arrow even helps us make the connection (and it's cartoonish enough that it's almost innocuous) - we suddenly hap upon two pages that show many positions in which mom and dad can do it in.

Check it out for yourself, and believe it or not, this is NSFW!!! And it's a freakin' kids book!

Did they really need the Kama Sutra angle? Oh, and I especially love the pair who's role-playing with the clown noses and stuff. As if clowns weren't scary enough to kids.

What in the hell were these people thinking?

I half expected to find John and Yoko's conception video as a bonus DVD in the back.
(In case you've never heard this one, they filmed themselves screwing when they were trying for Sean, so they could give him the videos - along with his birthing vids - when he was old enough. How scarred would you be if you saw the video of your parents boinking in order to bring you into the world? Even if one of them was a Beatle?)

Most Humble Apologies

Ever look at a morbidly obese person and wonder how they wiped their ass?

Wonder no more - the long reach comfort wipe:

(Click for full size, or click here to view the actual catalog entry)


In other advertising wonderfulness, check this out:

(Click for full size.)

I've heard that the depression recession has been hardest on teenagers since old farts like myself are now asking folks if they'd like fries with that. Well, to me, here's the opportunity for a win-win. They should hire teenage boys to vet all ads, to insure they pass the "Beavis and Butthead" test.

Perhaps some recalibration is in order

That was the name of the post I started a week ago after I'd seen The Watchmen and had bought the new U2 album, No Line on the Horizon.

Both left me underwhelmed, and at first I decided maybe it was me. I've been busy as hell lately, my wife was in a car accident (she's fine, btw - got t-boned by a teenager who'd had her license a month), and the free hours I did have I spent on The Watchmen.

However, I've seen blog after blog go "meh" about it, so I've decided it does kinda blow (even though my two favorite critics - Ebert and Travers - liked it).

For me, the three moments that ruined it for me where:
- A "child in peril" where we see dogs fighting over the bloody leg bone of a little girl, which still has one of her shoes intact.
- A graphic sex scene which was bad enough in its own right (we see the guy's ass thrusting a few times), but they play Cohen's "Hallelujah" during the whole embarrassment. Not only has that song become a movie cliché, it has to be used ironically if it's used at all. But vetted as a serious soundtrack during a sex scene as we see their orgasms wash over their faces? I was not the only one who laughed out loud.
- They removed the freakin' ending. More on that later in the spoiler section.

Hopefully, this will be the last hard "R" adaptation of a comic book. Comic books are about grand stories and escapism. Dead children and superheroes boinking in the owl-mobile really yank you back into the dark reality of the theatre where you face the fact that you're a grown man (or woman) watching a movie about people who run around in leotards and capes fighting crime, as opposed to wearing leotards and capes while getting hammered as a means of getting out your ya-yas before the Catholic holy season. More than once I thought back on how The Incredibles portrayed all the same concepts in a much better way.


U2's new album was originally on sale for $4 (as was Lily Allen's), a trend I like very much. So make sure you bite the first week they're on sale.

While the new set isn't horrible, it is their biggest stinker since Zooropa. Like that one, there's only one obvious hit and a lot of noodling. That makes two albums in a row that aren't spectacular. But then, they have made so many spectacular albums that when they make a merely good one, it's a disappointment. There is one classic lyric though: "Every beauty needs to go out with an idiot."

Supposedly they are coming out with another album this year of the other songs they recorded during the sessions but didn't feel they were good enough or fit the theme of this album. I'll bet you that album will actually be pretty good, and if it is, you heard it here first.

I'm enjoying Lily Allen's It's Not Me, It's You much more. I'm even gonna buy the expurgated version of "Fuck You" because since they had to bleep it so much, they got creative and went totally Monty Python on it.

Even cooler, she's got a page where folks can upload remixes of her songs. On the CD are the base tracks for all the songs, so you can roll your own. (If I had the time, I'd get it and do just that, but since I don't, I just popped for the MP3s). The remixes are also a way to hear complete versions of the songs before you buy. Brilliant. If I were a rock star, I'd do this.

I'm apparently WAY behind the curve* on this next song because "popular" radio anymore mystifies and annoys me. Heck, even this song annoys me, because it would actually be a tasty tune if there were any TUNE there. All it's got is a beat and an aggravating synth run. BUT, the dancing is mesmerizing. And I HATE dancing videos. HATE'EM, I say. When videos went from little movies to nothing but choreographed dance numbers, I pretty much tuned out. I think that is really when MTV experienced their first big loss of viewership; the second being when they stopped playing vids altogether.

But once in a while one comes along that makes you go "whoa," and this is one of those times.

Beyoncé » Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)

Beyoncé |MTV Music

*Apparently this has been out and popular for so long, there are well over two dozen parodies of it on Youtube.

___________
Update:
Syaffolee discovered the original dance the above was stolen from based on:


If you're going to see The Watchmen, stop reading now.


+++ THE SPOILER SECTION +++

I would guess that a lot of those who flock to The Watchmen have read the original, and somewhat seminal (save for the ending), graphic novel. As such, they probably anticipate the original ending.

Like me, they'll be sitting there as the credits roll thinking, "Did they really just do that? Did they really fuck up that badly?" Out in the lobby, they will finally face that the answer to both questions is "…yes."

Y'see, in the comic, the uber-smart Watchman guy (I don't care to look up their names) has secretly concocted a huge fake alien - faked so well using DNA manipulation, no one but he would be able to tell - which he then materializes in the middle of NYC, making it appear as though the process of teleporting actually killed the alien. This causes the world to unite together against this alien threat, stopping the nuclear annihilation about to occur between Russia and the US. (Let's disregard the fact that an actual event like that - the destruction of the towers - failed to do anything of the sort. I don't know why it'd matter if it were an alien or terrorists.) (Oh, and the towers are actually shown quite a few times in the background as if to underline this very thing.)

Folks who haven't read the novel will wonder what the hell really happened, because what does occur in the movie is a nuke goes off in the middle of NYC and they blame one of the Watchmen (the big, blue, naked one), which then causes worldwide peace as we unite against that particular superhero. Which makes no sense, because it's shown throughout the movie that if that particular superhero DID attack us, there's nothing we could do to stop it.

So they not only cripple the ending by changing it, they make it nonsensical.

For the record, when I was researching this, I discovered that the "fake alien invasion causes peace" plot was original to an "Outer Limits" episode called "The Architects of Fear," which the author of The Watchmen comic, Alan Moore, discovered after he'd already planned the ending, so he stuck in an "homage" to that episode to acknowledge the same.

You kinda wonder who was the fucktard was who thought changing the ending around was a good idea. It's kinda like if they changed the ending of Gone With the Wind and not only have Rhett stay with Scarlett end, but he reaches behind his neck and unzips a costume to reveal that he's really Ellen DeGeneres.

Groovy

I don't know how Attu finds this stuff, but this is one heck of a video mashup groove. (Btw, Attu has attempted so split his blog into SFW and NSFW, but I would still use caution when going to the main, quasi-SFW.)

I'm gonna mp3-ize this one to see if it sounds good without the vid portion.


I may be wrong, it's been a while since I've seen it, but I think the drummer comes from the Steely Dan "Aja" vid in the totally awesome (for music lovers) Classic Album documentary series.

Oscars and Issues

Read Pictures at a Revolution which was a sorta dull, straightforward history of the five films nominated for best Oscar in 1968. The premise is that was the exact year when old Hollywood supposedly succumbed to the new Hollywood, though that premise isn't given all that much analysis.

That's pretty much the problem with "Revolution": a lot of wind about "what" but not much about "why."

However, I've always been curious about Sidney Poitier - one of the primary topics of the book - because he was such a mainstay and huge star for a long time and then seemed to drop off the face of the planet. From what I can gather, he was the dual victim of black activism and white tokenism. On the one side, he was getting flack from black activists because he always played "good, safe" black men, and on the other side, he still wasn't considered for every leading role (read "leading roles meant for white guys") and was typecast as, well, Sidney Poitier. You wonder if he would've gotten past that had he not folded to the pressure to stop taking "Sidney Poitier" roles.

Aside from that, got two good pieces of trivia:

- Morgan Fairchild was Faye Dunaway's stunt double when her character had to drive because she couldn't drive a stick.
- The famous "Elaine!" scene in the church at the end of The Graduate where Hoffman had his arms out like he was Jesus on the cross was really just a "fix" because when he pounded on the glass (as he did on the first take), it would wobble and looked like it was going to break - it was not symbolic crucifixion as many critics at the time claimed.

TLD: Reading about The Graduate spurred a thought. When I worked at a vid store many moons ago, a couple stoners walked and asked for a surfing movie, so I gave them Apocalypse Now, which they loved, and forever after sought me out for recommendations. If that were today and someone walked in and asked for a movie on cougars, I'd hand them The Graduate.

And speaking of the Oscars, my wife and I used to view the Oscars as our superbowl, since neither of us are into professional competitive sports.

However, the type of movies that get nominated anymore are the tedious dramas with "plots" that used to be contained to the swamp of the literary fiction genre (incest! adultery! pedophilia! children dying! sexual predators! misery!), or spirited and preferably non-white foreigners overcoming something, or all gay all the time stuff (which knee-capped Broadway, so the movie folks better pay heed to the empty theaters showing Milk).

As this fun article points out, the Oscars are worth watching only if you've actually seen the movies that are nominated, which a larger portion of the movie-going public probably had not this year.

This jab from a "loved it, hated it" article made me laugh: "[T]the show bogged down with that somber bunch of Best Supporting Actresses intoning like they were going to banish the winner to the Forbidden Zone with General Zod." Those little ego-orgies were a bit much. Anthony Hopkins appeared to be especially mortified when his turn came to polish some nominee knob.

Ben Stiller's funny yet cruel impersonation of Joaquin Phoenix's publicly disintegrating mental health was a guilty hoot. Which led me to wonder about Tropic Thunder which I saw recently and was appalled at how unfunny it was. Why can't Stiller write and direct anything funny? He's great when he's doing someone else's material, but nearly everything he's written and directed has been on that edge of being funny; as you are watching it, you see how close it comes to actually being funny, but it just doesn't get there. So how can he be so funny in a context like the Oscars and/or improv, but just blow at movies? A question for the ages, apparently.

The self-righteous gay politicking got to be a bit much for me. For new readers (assuming, here): I don't feel marriage is a right, so framing it as such is silly and actually undercuts the goal of expanding the definition of it. Frinstance, are the polygamists attempting to frame it as a right? I think if the gay factions that do succeed, the polygamists will jump on that bandwagon, but they haven't gone down that road themselves, because they know everyone would laugh them out of the chamber if they suggested that being married to several women (or men) at once is a right. So hearing folks at the Oscars equate it with real human rights struggles is just an eye-roller.

Anyway, in a barely related tangent, I had a realization lately when I let my eldest (re)watch the two "Legally Blonde" movies.

But first, a little background: we'd let her see them with us they first came out, because there was a cute little doggie, and we thought the more adult stuff would go right over her head (she was about 5 or 6 I think). That was the case with the first one, but the second one prominently featured a subplot where we discover the cute little doggie is gay. They hammer on that so hard and draw such a complete picture that our little one finally asked what "gay" was. We were furious that we suddenly had that topic to vet, hoping she would be older before we had to have any sort of sex talk. Now, blame us, the parents, first, because we let her watch the movie before we knew what it contained. But they had so many toy tie-ins to the movies (she was cradling her own stuffed "Buster" ensconced in his Elle purse as we watched), I guess we didn't suspect that it would flounder so long in that particular realm of adult sexuality - or worse, attach it to the one character a child would fixate on.

So, I'd always wondered why they went that direction because it made the movie - which comes off like a GLAAD/PETA (the leader of PETA is gay) infomercial - nearly unwatchable. I suspect because it was because the first one, while trying to be sensitive by having a gay character, still takes a few swipes anyway. For instance, Elle solves the case by figuring out the guy who's supposed to be cheating with the wife is actually gay because he knows what brand of shoe she's wearing. And she carries Buster, her chihuahua, around in her purse (a PETA no-no).

So, the whole second movie is penance to GLAAD and PETA. And it feels like it. Who'da thunk a trifle about a valley girl who follows her BF to Harvard but ends up a lawyer would've been turned into a spinach movie for the sequel. Notice there was never a third movie, which is typical when Hollywood haps upon a franchise.


NOTE: Yes, I'm about a week late posting this since I gas on about the Oscars. It's been a busy time, lately.

AAAAAAAAAAAAK! Holy CRAP!
or "Schadenfreude"


I suspect that when the Material Girl served Guy Ritchie the papers, he secretly rejoiced that he could get back to boinking his leading ladies.

Y'know, not that other rock stars are doing the aging boogie that well either...


But jeez. She's gone from decent to a full-on two-bagger. (One for her, and one for you in case hers falls off, as the old joke goes.)

Recently my wife and I were bemoaning what aging does to the aesthetics of your body, even if you stay in shape, and we agreed is just ole Mother Nature taking you out of the dating pool whether you like it or not. Can't have all these old farts tempting the young and fertile away from whom they should be with for continuing the species.

For instance, here's what Mr. Heavy Metal himself looks like while shopping with his wife:

Hetfield in flip-flops.

I doubt one groupie would like twice, unless it was out of incredulousness.

Cracked Windshields All Over the Stadium Parking Lot

Boy, Pres. Obama just batted it out of the park with his address to congress last night! Several times.

Time to party!

(A Repub friend of mine sent me this in one of those emails mocking Dems, but I thought this really fit the positive mood Obama projected.)

I mean, members of congress were mobbing him and handing him copies of his speech to sign like he was a rock star. Have you EVER seen that happen?

And the next time anyone wails about the liberal slant to the media, I'm gonna tell them to join us back in reality. Check out the "Related" section on the Yahoo news article on the speech:

Is there even one positive article in there?

I also figured out one of the reasons why Repubs are flipping out so much about Obama - they're even more shrill than when Clinton was in office: it's because he's better than Reagan "the great communicator" and more charismatic, and they know it. They will now lose the image war they felt they'd won forever during Reagan to the Democrats (well, except the for wingnuts who will hate Obama just because). I'm lovin' that!

(Btw, the other main reason is that somewhere along the line, far right Repubs came up with the meme, which they apparently believe, that they are the true rulers of America, even when they don't hold the presidency or a majority in congress.)

It's nice being back on the happy side of the aisle again.

Reboot

It's been five years since Michael Blowhard suggested I start a blog. I was hesitant, not believing I really had that much to say. I've since discovered not having that much to say isn't an impediment. The joy is in the doing. Many times I've been surprised when I started writing out of a sense of responsibility (as I'm always thrilled when any of the blogs I read has a new post) and ended up with something entertaining (or at least I thought it was).

Even so, I felt it was time to reevaluate some things. Frinstance, though I really liked my old template (with the dots and stuff), I felt a small remodeling was due. I like the minimalist blue-screen look of this new template, fitting with the "reboot" theme. It has one big flaw in that any pics that are too large flow over into the menus on the right, and I haven't been able to figure out a wholesale fix, so older posts with big graphics might look a bit muddled.

I also considered just closing up shop for a while, feeling I've had a good run. My readership has pretty much topped out according to sitemeter, and is even dropping precipitously. I gave it a long and hard look, and nearly hit the delete button about a week ago. But then I remembered what I wrote in the first paragraph: this has become something for me as much as it is for anyone who reads this.

Just for the sake of completism, another thing I considered was deleting all but the "greatest hits" posts. But as I read through those I was thinking of consigning to the bin, I realized that I kinda dug them, too. So, here it all is. For better or worse. Blame Micheal.

To that end, I offer most humble apologies for my sallying forth to the windmills if you've stumbled here and feel I've wasted your time.

And most humble thanks for those of you who still check in once in a while. I'll try to make it worth your while and maybe make you smile.

Oh Dear Lord, Yes!!!

I have found the ideal piece of artwork for my study. Now I just need to figure out how to buy a print.


(Link goes to interview and more stuff by this artist.)

__________________
Update:
Huzzah! Prints are available! $15 - $ 20 depending on size. It's called "Fall Outing" by Tinman (aka Eric Joyner) in Gallery: "Tinworld"

Mr. Joyner is also offering a 100 edition signed and numbered version. The print is 15" square on 17" x 22" high quality paper.
The price is $225. This includes shipping and handling.
He accepts personal checks or www.paypal.com

Make check out to Eric Joyner and send to:

Eric Joyner
4343 3rd St. APT.405
San Francisco, CA 94124

Christmas Vacation Media Consumption
or, first omnibus post of the year, part 2.

Books
(In order of enjoyment, lowest to highest)

The Shack by William P. Young

These guys (I use the plural because there's more than just the author behind this) are trying their best to create the next big quasi-religious media movement, like Oprah's The Secret, Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions, the odious Conversations with God series excreted by Neale Donald Walsch and that Purpose Driven Life hoo-ha.

The plot (spoilers ahoy, but are you really gonna read this thing?) is this crabby old guy whose daughter was abducted and killed by a serial killer gets in invite to meet God at "The Shack" and discuss it all. Of course, by attempting to be ecumenical, there's something here to offend about everyone, except the Unitarians.

The writing is abysmal. The "lessons" are feeble, watered-down quasi-Christianity, and the characterizations of the Trinity are eye-rollingly bad. At one point, as the old crab and Jesus are walking across the pond to get to the shack, Jesus becomes distracted by a fish he's been trying to catch and runs off after it. I was embarrassed for all of humanity at that point.

In the end materials, or more accurately the marketing campaign, there's this "society" set up in honor of the fictional child who was murdered to help spread the word about The Shack. I was embarrassed all over again.

I waste time on these things so you don't have to. Don't even expend the calories to hoist this one off the shelf.

---

The Suicide Index: Putting My Father's Death in Order by Joan Wickersham

Praises on Amazon.com and elsewhere about this "unflinching" memoir of her father's suicide, interestingly (they claim) organized in the form of an index, and caveats that this wasn't just a wall-to-wall bummer, peaked my interest.

It was merely OK. Maybe you can admire Wickersham for being so objective that she doesn't attempt to hide her own faults while she's examining those of others, but it did leave me sorta cold in that I had no one to identify with. Having gone through a grieving over a loss, one needs to be more gentle with oneself.

There are no insights here, really. The father in question basically fell into the Willy Loman trap, and tied too much of his worth to what he did at work, and when that was taken from him as he aged amongst the younger sharks of the modern corporation, he floundered and then shot himself in his study.

Well, the wife had transferred her emotional intimacy to a mutual friend (male), so the father didn't really have a wife, but a roommate who'd prefer to be elsewhere. That was part of it, too. So maybe there's the one insight: you can cheat emotionally and not physically, and it is just as devastating.

The praises I read aside, this really is a wall-to-wall bummer with not a lot to carry out the other side. Except be good to the ones you love. Remind them they are loved. Often.

But you don't need to read this book to know that.

---

Dangerous Women: Why Mothers, Daughters, and Sisters Become Stalkers, Molesters, and Murderers by Larry A. Morris

I read this one for the sheer ugly fun of it, not really hoping for insights, but not minding if some did pop up.

And one did: stay away from crazy people.

The psychological diagnosis for most of the women here becomes as predictable as Dr. House saying "it's NOT lupus": Borderline Personality Disorder.

If you read this, DO NOT read the last case history section where the four teenage girls kill a 12-year-old girl, seemingly for the hell of it. The descriptions of the hours torture and eventual burning alive of the child are things that I wish had never allowed into my head.

The only interesting section is the one on the teachers who seduced students. Maybe read that one part while having a latte at Border's or something.

---

Ted, White, and Blue: The Nugent Manifesto by Ted Nugent

I read Ted because he amuses me. I don't agree with a lot of his life philosophy, but would have no problem with him being my neighbor. I do like the work he does in promoting hunting and hunter's rights. But his child-raising advice, politics, and views on the poor can be pretty harsh.

I think he sometimes loses sight of the fact that he's been a rich rock star most all of his life and the various entitlements it has brought. I've noted that a lot of so-called libertarians and far-right folks often have had a pretty cushy financial life (their emotional lives are a different story), starting in early adulthood, and have no real experience with financial hardship, and how much just one car repair or an emergency room visit can set the average person back.

Unlike his other books, Ted tends to start repeating himself in this one, so once you've read the first couple sections, you've got the drift. If you're a fan, skip back to the expanded rant on topics near and dear to you. Only die-hards should bother to read every word.

---

Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

We finally arrive at the good books.

This is my favorite Gladwell book so far. I enjoyed his other two, but my BS meter wobbled a little bit as he tried to weave together some causalities in ways that stretched credibility. (Or, in short: nice theory, but unprovable.) This book cleaves closer to pure facts and data and so is more enjoyable, since you don't have to suspend disbelief.

His main points are these:
- When you are born has a HUGE influence on how you will do in school, in sports, and sometimes in life. This is because we have come up with (seemingly) arbitrary cutoff dates for the inclusion of students in school, or athletes on teams, or you name it. It is proven that kids who are older in a given class really do much better that those who are younger. Gladwell suggests we actually institute 4 cutoffs per year for school age children to eliminate this imbalance. Since so many schools have a non-traditional school year anymore, I think his idea has merit.

When it comes to the moguls - the hyper-successful - all the big "industrial age" guys were born within a couple years of each other in the 1800s, and the big computer guys, like Bill Joy and Bill Gates were born in the mid fifties (born in '54 and '55 respectively), thus both groups were of the optimal age when industry and the computer boomed.

- Being able to get in 10,000 hours of practice (roughly 10 years) in your chosen field or specialty makes you not only competent, but allows you to be on the top of your game. Both Bills had accumulated 10,000 hours of personal coding time by the time the industry was in it's infant stages, which gave them a tremendous advantage.

So, being born at the right time, and having the proper experience under your belt when the moment hits has a lot to do with the difference between mild success and superstar success.

Good book. Check it out.

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Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher

The feel of this book is as if you plopped down next to Ms. Fisher at a rockin' party at about the time her buzz was kicking in. You don't really learn any earth-shattering (new) trivia here, but you certainly are entertained.

I was hoping for more dishing on the making of the various Star Wars flicks, but the only new thing I learned was that Harrison Ford's pot was the best.

Fisher has recently gone through a course of electro-shock therapy to treat extreme depression, so her memory has been sliced and diced, as have her narrative abilities. Her novels were much more cohesive, but then again, they were fiction. Real life is messy and doesn't always follow a nice, clean plot.

However, to her credit, she can still craft a hilarious turn of phrase. This is a fun read. It's very short though, and uses the ole school term paper trick of using a big font and double-spacing to try to hide the fact that this is really more like a long article in length than an actual memoir.

Borrow it from the library. Ms. Fisher has plenty of money.

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The Tales of Beedle the Bard, by J. K. Rowling

In the Harry Potter series, this set of children's stories is referred to as the Hans Christian Andersen of the wizard world. The final tale relates directly to one of the major subplots of the books, as wizards are actually searching for the magical items in that story.

Even at $13, this book is only for the Harry Potter completist. Yeah, it brings back fond memories of the series, it's a nice big warm fuzzy, but you can read these things over a lunch break, so I recommend that. Borders serves sandwiches now, right?

The effect this had on me was to make me look forward to J.K. Rowling's next book, whatever it is, a feeling I did not have after finishing the final Harry Potter. I hope it's something not in the wizard universe, because even though it's apparent that Rowling is a talented author, it'll be fun to see if she can stretch beyond her current genre.

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Why We Suck: A Feel Good Guide to Staying Fat, Loud, Lazy and Stupid by Dr. Denis Leary

This be the gem of the collection. I thought I would like this book, but didn't think I would enjoy it as much as I did.

I laughed hard out loud. I was moved. I sniggered. I got myself some history lessons.

This is everything a memoir/rant/manifesto/who's-your-daddy should be.

Unlike with Ted, I agreed with nearly everything Leary said. But then he's an old, died-in-the-wool Irish liberal, which - if you throw in a little Swedish - I am, too. It was nice in this day and age to read political polemics and be able to nod along all the way through.

I found only two places where I disagreed with Denis:
- While you shouldn't hover excessively over your kids (helicopter parents), I don't think you should let them fall from the top of the monkey bars for character growth, either. (But then, Denis was talking about himself, not his kids, so maybe he was exaggerating for effect.)
- He is a very lapsed Catholic (which is not what I have a problem with), but he says that when you boil down the beliefs of Christianity and Scientology to a cute sentence, Christianity sounds as crazy as Scientology. Of course I'm biased, but I think an evil galactic warlord dumping aliens into a volcano and nuking them, causing us to be possessed by said alien souls sounds MUCH wackier than God coming down and suggesting we be nice to one another for a change and getting nailed to a tree for it.

Denis coins one concept that I will use henceforth: the jetpack parent. The jetpack parent is the exact opposite of the helicopter parent. Jetpack parents have kids as more of a fashion accessory, because it's hip and their friends have done it, and once they have them, do everything in their power to avoid having to raise them or be around them. The hire nannies. They ship them off to boarding schools. The resent it if they actually have to spend social time with them. They are really only interested in jetting off to their next activity (hence the name). I know a few of these kinds of parents. Hell, half the 'rents at my daughter's school are these schmoes.

Denis Leary for President! (Once Obama's had his eight.)

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Movies
(Again, in order of enjoyment, lowest to highest)

Inland Empire

I will probably always give David Lynch's output a look. Over half the time, it's rewarding, and no one else has ever come as close to laying down the exact atmosphere of a nightmare as he has.

Still, sometimes when watching his stuff, you wonder ... what the fuck happened to this guy?

Something had to have joined the circuits in his head the way they are, and it wasn't shiny happy puppy time. No, he had to have been locked in a closet for a week, or molested by a wallaby, or maybe he lived on Kaboom cereal for a solid month (like most of us kids who upon first bite set a goal to do, but realized after the first box, something was amiss and we felt funny all the time) and all that food coloring scorched a swath of synapses. SOMETHING happened. Maybe his biographer will be able to tell us what it was.

That aside, this is one of his more tedious efforts. It would've been better had it been cut down to about and hour and 45 minutes, but it goes up to or past three hours. Like Rita Rudner says, I don't want to do anything that feels good for that long.

This one's a maybe for fans, but newbies should start with Blue Velvet.

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Burn After Reading

The Cohen brothers re-team Brad Pitt and George Clooney (and Frances McDormand) in a goof on the Hitchcockian theme of innocents blundering into the middle of a larger plot of murder and intrigue.

This starts on a high note with the ever-more-hard-to-look-at John Malkovich getting fired, and making a great crack about a fellow spy who's Mormon (who was instrumental in getting Malkovich fired). This is one of my favorite paranoias: the fact that a large proportion of our "intelligence" community is Mormon because only they can pass the ridiculous "purity" tests to get into those jobs (something none of our past 3 presidents, including the incumbent, couldn't do).

Brad Pitt is at his best when he's playing a himbo or a nut, which he combines with aplomb, here. His performance is really the only good thing about the rest of this movie.

Sadly, this is one of the Cohen misfires, and I'd recommend it only for those times where there's nothing better to do, if you're a completist, a big fan etc.

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Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay

The Harold & Kumar franchise has stepped in to fill the void left by Cheech ∧ Chong, Bill Murray and Harold Ramis, and other R-rated comedy masters of times past, since that world's been converted to the PG-13 market. As such, Harold & Kumar is glorious.

The setup for the gratuitous nudity moment is one of the best ever, and the recurring character of Neil Patrick Harris as "Himself" (albeit a drug-addled, heterosexual version) is pure genius. Bless him for having the balls to allow himself to be lampooned this way. I literally cried with laughter during the unicorn scene.

If you like these kind of raunchy, adult comedies, have a double-feature party with this and the first one (or if you've seen it, show Beerfest instead), and I guarantee you'll have a grand time.

I just have to share this one scene with you. Here we have Bush, the sequel (only days left!), saying perhaps the most intelligent things he's ever said - and of course it's not him saying them. Language NSFW - headphones, please:




Finally, here's a page of newborn babies' faces to ring in the new year.

Hope it's a good one.

Untitled, 01-09-09

As predicted, I felt not urge one to approach a computer on vacation for anything that required thought. Just the occasional lookup of something that came up during conversation ("Who was the guy in that movie?"), seeing if the library had anything in for me (lots! yay!), or checking email. Oh, and I finally found time to watch this web sci-fi softcore series, "The Fold," whilst the children slept in the morning. More on that in a bit.

But, here we are, back at the grind (thankfully, when so many are laid off or being laid off; been there; it sucks), and so to jar loose actual work thoughts, I blog.

Btw, that is the truth. Besides the fun of actually getting thoughts out of my head, I work much faster and with greater ease when I'm working on something fun at the same time as work. It seems that it lets my mind rest as I pop back and forth between work mode and blog mode, so in no time, I've completed some work project that typically would've taken twice as long.

So, to borrow Jackie Gleason's famous kick-off line: "Awaaaaay we go!"

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Was watching some tube with MPC1 and a Walmart commercial came on. Since our child's a tween, we're being a bit freer about adult humor around the house, and so I remarked, "Oh, look! Walmart's changed their logo from a smiley face to an asshole!" Much sniggering was shared. Since my daughter hasn't read any Vonnegut yet, I wasn't able to reference his drawings of an asshole in Breakfast of Champions as the possible source of said logo, but at least you can have a grin over it. (If you share my juvenile sense of humor.) (Oh, and I know it's really an asterisk.)

Well, it seems their new logo is amazingly appropriate if you attempt to use their photo developing department. We were trying to get some old photos of the kids developed for a scrapbook their pediatrician's office was putting together, and the photo guy pulled two from the stack and announced, "These look like they were shot professionally, and therefore come under copyright, so I can't let you have these," and he put them through the shredder before my wife could even respond.

To cut to the chase, when I found this out (I was off filling the cart), I procured a manager and went back to the photo dept. and gave'em hell. I knew it was futile, but still ya gotta make it enough of a pain that maybe they'll eventually do something.

For the record, the current copyright law does forbid any photo developer to develop photos that are copyrighted, and so Walmart has extended this to anything that could possibly construed as professional. Makes you wonder what the actual professionals are gonna do. This was brought about by the copyright changes that were lobbied by Disney and the music industry. Thus, Disney, who's primary target market is your kids, is responsible for you not being able to develop pictures of them. Isn't that lovely? Time for the pirate costume methinks.

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Got an email from one of my right-wing buddies that spoofs "where are they now?" with a picture of Urkel on the left and Obama on the right. Har har.

But, it did jar loose a thought I've had for some time. I think the person most responsible for making a lot of (unconsciously or consciously racist) folks more comfortable with electing a black president was Dennis Haysbert, the actor who played the first President on the TV show 24. Some would say Morgan Freeman's roles as the pres. (and God), but I think that Haysbert is the stealth candidate for getting folks over that hump in their mind. Just a theory.

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I was saddened to discover that one of my favorite modern rock groups - The Darkness - broke up. These days when there is such a dearth of truly talented groups, any loss feels like your favorite lifetime team lost the superbowl.

Their complete oeuvre (a scant two albums) can be purchased here.

In happier music news, Lily Allen's latest/new single "The Fear" is a pure joy. It's a cagey and humorously concise coinage of current times. Everyone I have foisted it upon thus far has both laughed out loud and nodded in agreement with some of the sentiments. That girl has a way with hooky songs.

Speaking of summing up current events, check out this old Calvin and Hobbes

(Click for full size)

I also discovered that Whisky was dead-on about She & Him; it's wonderfully odd and eclectic, and the ladies of the household dug it on first spin (though I play most things from a USB drive anymore, so "spin" isn't entirely accurate).

Speaking of USB and MP3s, I finally ended my decades-long membership in the BMG music club because they have no plans with going to MP3s, and I just don't buy CDs anymore. It's always slightly unnerving to go through a format change commitment (gad, how geeky can I be?). I finally abandoned vinyl when I bought a copy of Tom Petty's Full Moon Fever, and MCA always had crappy, crackly prints, so when it came with the typical side of bacon, I said screw it and exchanged it for the CD before I even had a CD player.

The first time I pressed "buy MP3 album" on Amazon - and that sucker was mine less than a couple minutes later - it was literally a rush. Nothing else offers such instant gratification. I was squishy at first about not having a hardcopy original, but then realized that my backup CDs are the same freakin' thing, and have about the same shelf life. I have my eye on one of those portable USB hard drives, which offers a freakin' terabyte for just over a hundred dollars. I could literally have every song I own on that bad boy. And that just blows my mind.

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Finally watched all episodes of a the web series "The Fold," which is - as already mentioned - a sci-fi-ish softcore (though on the very edge of that - you get everything except graphic penetration shots - and there's still season 2 ahead).

For the life of me, I just couldn't get past flashing on Zack and Miri Make a Porno every time a sex scene came up (which is roughly half of the total running time).

Now, that's not a slam or a slight or anything like it. I loved Zack and Miri. "The Fold" (which I presume is a play on words and images as the time machine which "folds time" has the appearance of a giant vagina, with one of those stick'em anywhere battery operated dome lights functioning as the on/off switch, located in the clitoral position) is campy fun, with the vibe of the local theater group putting on a production of something written by a local playwright; it ain't Broadway or Hollywood, but it's fun for what it is.

The stand-out performer is the actress who plays the nearly always nekkid and very randy Joan of Arc: Julie Atlas Muz.

Ms. Muz is a burlesque performer who stages her own shows where she always ends up nekkid, judging from the videos on her site. If you check out "The Fold" and like it, you should also peruse some of Muz's performances. Of course, like me, you'll have to wait until the kids are in bed. I can't begin to imagine how I would explain the conclusion of Muz's bubble dance where she waves an American flag with her vagina; let alone how I would explain it to Child Welfare Svcs. how come my child saw such a thing. I, myself, am still recovering a bit from it.

I'm assuming that since I've made it pretty clear what you see on these sites is lots of bodies and (I'm assuming) simulated sex that you'd know it's NSFW. Not even a little bit.

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M. Blowhard has been in a listing mood lately and linked to this article: Fabulously Observant: The Jewish case against same-sex marriage.

I was talking with a buddy about how I agreed with most of the points in the article, and he asked if I was going to post that on my blog. I said at the time that I didn't want the controversy or anyone screaming at me in the comments, but since have (obviously) reconsidered because I think I've been consistent in my views about this (when I finally made up my mind, that is).

For the record, they are:
1) I think that secular marriage should be reworked so it's essentially like a legal contract, one in which anyone who so chooses can enter into. So, rather than extending "marriage" to gays (and polygamists, open/group arrangements, cats and dogs living together, etc.), the current secular form of marriage between a man and a woman would go away, and everyone who decided to partner up legally would just be "under contract." (I have Dave Trowbridge to thank for this very sensible idea.) That nulls and voids any snarking about "rights" and such. Fwiw: marriage is not a "right" and never has been.
2) When it comes to the Judeo-Christian marriage, the conversation is over before it starts: God says marriage is between a man and a woman, and only that union is sanctified. There's no other way to float it. Paul even goes a step further and recommends avoiding the whole marriage thing altogether, unless you just can't keep from having to do the horizontal bop; which is why you should never really listen to a bitter old man when it comes to marriage advice.

There's no way to keep everyone happy on this issue, but hopefully this is one that will cause the least amount of wailing and gnashing of teeth.

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There's a whole second half to this post, but I've run out of time today, so I'm going to post this and get out the rest later. Stay tuned!