Rango

This post is kind of a spoiler; if you intend to go to Rango (the new cartoon starring Johnny Depp as a chameleon), skip it.

Ebert gives the film a glowing review, and as a family we had a deep need to get everyone into the theatre, so there we were. We loves ourselves some cinema.

The general family review was "cute, but've seen better." The six-year-old appeared bored at times.

I've got to remind myself to read my other go-to critic, Peter Travers, when Ebert raves, and vice-versa.

Wait for the video if your kids will allow it. Adults without young kids can skip it altogether.

Originally, I was just going to post the above, and not give away the best line in case you decide to see it, but since Travers gives away the best line in his review, I'm going to as well.

The plot is straight-up hero's journey fare. When all appears lost, our hero wanders into the desert and meets God ("the spirit of the west" in the film's nomenclature), who is in the form of Clint Eastwood piloting a golf cart. When our hero asks if he's in heaven, the Great Spirit responds:

If this was heaven, kid, we'd all be eating Pop-Tarts with Kim Novak.

That floored the adult portion of the audience. I still chuckle when I think of it.

I will be sure to use that at parties this summer.

My New Favorite Piece of Trivia

We've all heard the phrase, "Does not compute."

Who's the one who made it a meme? Julie Newmar, aka Catwoman (the one all of our loins remember - no disrespect to the lovely Eartha Kitt).

See, there was this show called My Living Doll that premiered in 1964 on CBS, created and produced by Desilu and the creative staff behind My Favorite Martian. The premise was this scientist has created a robot (a sexy, female robot, of course) and he gives it to a bachelor psychologist friend of his to train it to make it "more human."

The robot's refrain when "she" was asked something she didn't understand was: "Does not compute." Before Lost in Space, even.

You can watch snippets and read some history here.

Too Funny Not to Share

Found this glorious mashup via ffffound.com: Alice in Wonderland (the Disney version) provides an interpretation of most major illicit substances (save for the truly, literally drunk doormouse, oddly).

Guilty guilty guilty pleasure and source of deep shame

One of my favorite things to do on the weekends, especially after a long week at work dealing with small-minded, mean-spirited f-tards, is early in the morning before the troops descend the stairs and start requesting waffles and cartoons I go to TED and watch a couple vids. One of my favorites is J.J. Abrams'.

It was there I saw Christopher Poole (aka "moot") who created 4chan.org, a message board where everyone is anonymous. His talk is about anonymity on the web.

Apparently, I was one of the last people on the internets to be made aware of 4chan. Back when I was a regular visitor to http://attuworld.com/, I would often wonder where the message board jokes came from and why everyone seemed to get the "in" jokes. Now I know.

I should tell you right away (if you don't already know) the controversy of 4chan.org is that, while it is moderated, really egregious and illegal stuff, such as child pr0n, sometimes make it into a post before the moderators can delete it. While usually I have been able to tell by the thumbnails that something might be that, and therefore avoid it, some piece of trash managed to post a larger picture that I encountered recently. At least when I went to report it (the folks who use 4chan are pretty good at alerting the moderators to that kind of crap, and they've made it easy), it was already deleted by the time I hit the report button.

The other obvious feature of 4chan that you may not like is it is stacked to the rafters with pr0n. The majority of the audience is teenage boys, and their sexual frustration is literally sprayed all over the walls. However, the boards are color-coded to indicate where you'll encounter adult content for sure. Pinkish/salmon colors mean there be dragons, baby blue means it's mostly safe.

Oh, and racism and sexism is pretty rampant, too, on the "adult" boards. I strongly recommend you avoid the gore threads. Do not go to 4chan to feel good about yourself. Go there to watch wild packs of humanity howl at the moon and get a laugh or two.

If you go there, it is really worth your time to read the Rules and FAQ first. That will demystify a lot of stuff right away. As with all cultures, on-line and real, there are societal rules that they take very seriously. For instance, the primary goal of 4chan is original content, and outside of preventing illegal stuff, all other social conventions flow from that. The wiki page has some nice history and additional warnings on 4chan.

One of my favorite rules is regarding the /lit/ channel, which is devoted to discussing books and getting critiques of your writing. The primary rule is no Ayn Rand discussions. So of course, some days, every other post is that. (This is known as "trolling" on 4chan.) As in real life, just ignore what you don't want.

One of my favorite forms of humor found there is "verticals" where someone has taken screen shots from movie stills and made a comic strip from them. Again, a warning: the humor in verticals is so politically incorrect, I have laughed in spite of myself out sheer shock over how mean or horrid a joke is.

Here's an example I just put together. It's not as toxic as they usually are, but it'll help you get the idea. Also, I haven't posted it yet - one has to wait for the correct circumstance to arise - so try not to steal it. (Note, had I made that request on 4chan itself, the response would have been swift and vicious.)



If you don't know the reference, grab the song here.

Ephemera and Chuckles - dateline 02-18-2011

In the "What a world! What a world!" category (from the dying screams of the Wicked Witch of the West), I found a couple head-scratchers on Slashdot.org recently.

As an advertising stunt, Samsung glued their memory chips unto a bunch of paper airplanes and put them into a weather balloon to disperse them at a high altitude; instructions on the planes ask that if you find one, tell them where. The point was to illustrate how tough the chips are.



The official site is here.

This article has way more funny things to say about it than I could, so go read it if you're intrigued.

I am just amazed how far some of those little flockers flew.

---

Some lunkheads - who were possibly jealous that someone else thought of plasticising human carcasses and posing them in action poses and presenting "exploded views" of parts of their anatomy, or cutting animals into sections and placing them in large glass tanks so you could walk between them - have created "artistic" furniture that eats bugs and kills mice, and then generates power from the "microbio fuel." (What a clean little term that is: microbio fuel. I think I'll use that next time someone asks me what hotdogs are made of.)

While the lamps that snack on flies strike me as almost whimsical (part of me is saddened that there may be fewer bug-zappers in the world to deliver that glorious "ffrrrztzztCRACK!" sound when another pest is atomized), the table that lures mice ONTO IT to grind them up like little mouseburgers and deposit the resulting mash into the biofuel cells, hits me wrong in so many ways.

I will say that I think these creepy forms of art - plastic bodies, preserved sectioned animals, and carnivorous furniture - are essentially a public service as the guys (and they're all guys) are channeling their odd fascinations into socially "safe" activities, because I'm convinced they would being doing these projects ANYWAY, and since they're doing it on volunteers (save for the animals), all the better.

Of the many things that bother me about this table, two of my big ones are:

1) Why can't the mousetrap hole be on the corner of the table where the mouse funnel ends? (Like a pool table.) And/or why can't the mouse path just go right to the "digestion" device? Why let the filthy little nugget get on the table in the first place? The videos claim that the design is meant to cater to our morbid voyeuristic nature, the same one we use when we watch shows like "Survivor" or "Wife Swap." If so, wouldn't it be just as much fun to see the mouse drop into the hole on the corner of the table as it would in the middle? Not that I could ever get past the fact that I knew vermin had walked on the table and that they were rotting in the digestion mechanism.

2) What in hell does a table need power for? It's a table. Tables just stand there. Once they're made, we are at the end of the energy required to allow them to perform their function. A little research shows that the power is needed to run the little trapdoor and the grinding device; that's it.

The videos mention the word aesthetics a few times, which amuses me. Leaving aside the biological function of the table, take a look at the one leg that has the Habitrail tunnel in it. The other legs are the standard cheapo aluminum pegs while the tunnel leg is encased in luxurious wood (assuming, here).



Is there a single designer on the planet who wouldn't feel the need to puke in the mouse hole after encountering such a monstrosity?

From a pragmatic perspective, the few times I've had a rodent problem, there's been only one time I actually saw the creature before I caught it, which leads me to think that the possibility of a mouse strutting across the top of the table and into the eye of doom while I'm actually observing the table are equivalent to a tea-bagging party member cogently expressing an economic policy that would actually work.

Apparently none of these guys have wives or children. All of the ladies in my house express sympathy and grief every time I make the trip to the outdoor trash with a mouse adhered to one of those wonderful glue pads that drug them into a coma once they're firmly stuck. I can't begin to imagine the reaction I'd have to endure if a mouse plopped into the hole to eternity in front of us and we heard the rotors growl through their gristly task (assuming the mere appearance of the mouse didn't result in screaming and a trail of overturned furniture demarking the various escape routes).

Finally, intuition tells me that the little chewing mechanism doesn't have a reliable means of determining the difference between hapless Micky and a handful of tiny fingers. Wouldn't that likely result in a lovely cocktail discussion? "So, Fred, how come little Melissa is missing the fingers of her right hand?" "Well, y'see, we have this coffee table...."

Uh, yeah.

---

My wife and I often marvel at the names of most modern movies. They are so generic and innocuous that you can't remember what you wanted to catch on DVD when they finally come out.

Here's a test: what's the name of the Harrison Ford movie from 2010 that also starred Diane Keaton and Rachel McAdams? I bet you have to Google it.

Serendipitously, Salon.com has an article on how movies are named.

Is ["Just Go with It"] the freshest title in the world? Probably not, but what's good about it -- and this is true of most all romantic comedies -- is that it's inherently optimistic even as it promises some kind of conflict. You want a complication that isn't going to turn people off. It's not that these titles are purposefully vague so much as they're trying to sound as neutral as possible not to alienate audiences. That's why so many are derived from common expressions or aphorisms. "Something's Gotta Give," "It's Complicated," titles like that.

Do you suppose this guy's opinion was designed by committee?

I couldn't think of a single movie title I found offensive, alienating, or off-putting, so Googled for offensive movie names, finding this site (whose creator lists movies he thinks sound like you're taking a dump). Going through it, I found only one - "Scent of a Woman" - that at the time everyone I knew made the obvious observation (to wit: you're not thinking of perfume, I bet), which is about the only one that strikes me as one that anyone could possibly construe as slightly offensive or off-putting, though I don't.

So, apparently the accepted marketing wisdom in Hollywood is: in attempt to not be offensive, you name your expensive product with a name so vanilla no one can remember it. That explains a lot. 8-)

TLD: Just before posting this, I thought of a movie title that was potentially problematic: "Zach and Miri Make a Porno." It would only a problem if I ended up having to explain it to my kids. But the TV stations wouldn't allow the full name to be said or displayed, so it never came up.

---

Finally, I have yet again misunderstood the lyrics to a song.

Goldfrapp's new tune "Rocket" has this seemingly sweet chorus:

Oh-oh-oh
I got a rocket
Oh-oh-oh
You're going on it
Oh-oh-oh
You're never coming back

At first blush, it seems like a love song. But when you listen to the set up (which I obviously didn't the first few times through), it's not that at all:

Starting something
Thought it could be fun
I started something
Couldn't go wrong

Danger, heartache
I always knew there's no winner
In this game you lose
But I still wanna know how she got in the door uninvited?

[chorus]

This is secret
Stories unfold
Fooled by pleasure
Losing control

Danger, heartache
Something has died
No good pretending
I'm leaving this time
But I still wanna know how she got in the door uninvited?

My interpretation is she's taken the Wile E. Coyote solution to a boyfriend who had a tryst with the other woman from a previous threesome without inclusion or permission.

So, apparently, if the song is about a threesome, I don't get the memo until after repeated listenings.

The end of the song makes me chuckle every time, now:

5-4-3-2-1...
We have lift off.

Well, halloooo!

Talk about blogger's block, oy!

I have been pecking around on pieces of posts these two whole months, but nothing gelled. Hopefully I can salvage something from them, but they may be some of those proverbial babies you have to kill.

What tripped me up were Whoopi Goldberg, Phil Collins, Gerry Rafferty, and an attempt at a "best of 2010" which, to quote band Drivin' and Cryin' that has since faded waaaay into obscurity, "It started out as poetry and turned into a scream," not that I'm claiming anything I write approaches poetry.

I can't scrape enough of anything to compile any sort of best of 2010 post. I've already mentioned the few things I've enjoyed in other posts (Cee-Lo and Mellencamp, if you're wondering), and it seems redundant to try to blog about them again. 2010 was kinda vapid, arts-wise.

The main thing that got stuck in my craw was a chapter of Whoopi Goldberg's advice/rant book Is It Just Me?: Or is it nuts out there?, entitled "Bloggers are Cowards," found on pages 139 and 140 (and if you search on those words on the LOOK INSIDE! feature, you'll be able to read enough to glean most of her opinion).

Since I blog in (relative) anonymity and I often take swipes at books/movies/music I don't like, I took exception to her charge.

I thought: "YOU'RE SO FULL OF …!!!" "WELL, I NEVER! [sputter!]" "...maybe you have a point." "{sigh}"

I had to think about it for a while.

For example, I was still feeling squishy about my dis of Emma Donoghue's Room (though on review, it's pretty tame and adheres to my rule about not saying anything I wouldn't say to the person's face). Yet, my emotional reaction was based on my accidentally encountering two "child in peril" entertainments at the same time. (The other being Shutter Island.) I still stand by my review(s), but that is a button of mine.

But, there I was (am?), hiding behind a pseudonym and taking shots at something someone had spent months and maybe years of their life working on. Then again, that's the whole review model established and embraced by Amazon and its many clones.

To be fair, Whoopi was specifically talking about the Perez Hiltons of the world who egregiously extend the already grotesque paparazzi stalking model and snipe about celebrities' personal lives and post pictures of them sneezing or scratching their ass. But, her words do indict any and all anonymous bloggers.

So I had to think about that.

Then, there was this heartbreaking article about Phil Collins in the November 2010 Rolling Stone. In summary, all of the criticism leveled at Phil, particularly when he was ubiquitous on the radio, eventually took their toll. He reportedly feels depressed, has thoughts about suicide, and generally feels like a failure. (If you're interested, you should hunt down and read the whole thing; the bullet points are available here.)

I mean, holy shit, if you experience a level of success so extreme you enter that rare pantheon of artists reviled largely for their media saturation and not the quality of their work - a list that includes Bee Gees and Micheal Jackson, and arguably Elvis Presley - that's a form of back-handed praise. It's deeply saddening to me that someone can experience that kind of universal success and acceptance and come away thinking it was a bad thing.

And what does that say about fulfillment and happiness? Yes, yes, those don't necessarily come from tangible things, but still, you'd think having practically everyone on the planet think (at some point) that your artistic offerings are nifty would a least fill those holes a little.

To top it all off, the (very recently) late, great Gerry Rafferty died due to complications from alcoholism. While his beautiful and well-loved classic "Baker Street" is not what anyone would label as shiny happy puppy time, the song from the same album, "Whatever's Written in Your Heart," articulates a moving vision of hope after an intense sadness. It never fails to lift my soul. To think Rafferty died from what could be argued as endemic sadness is daunting.

To the topic at hand, all those critical daggers seem to find their targets. Maybe negative commentary doesn't have a place in the world when lives aren't at stake.

Though I'm torn, because I rely as much on the negative reviews on Amazon as I do the positive. It's pretty easy to discern if someone positing a negative review means it, or if they're just ignorant or a crank. If I agree with a well-reasoned dismissal, particularly if it's something that I'd dislike about it as well, I steer clear.

But then, outside of my buttons - child in peril, incest, wingnuttery, and gratuitous adultery (lit fic, I'm looking at you) - maybe I need to just give those books/movies/music a chance. I might find something I dig that otherwise I'd miss just because someone else had gas on the day they encountered it.

I think Whoopi has convinced me to shut the fuck up already with the negativity. Who am I to sneer at someone's legitimate offering to the world of media/art?

I'm going to try to either not blog about books/movies/music I didn't like, or I'm going to try to find a way to articulate my thoughts on them without saying anything the artist wouldn't necessarily disagree with - if that's possible. (For instance, make it about me and/or my limitations or prejudices rather than the merits of the work.)

I guess we'll see. Call it a New Year's resolution.

Bad behavior on goodreads

Recently experimented with a social network site that seemed designed just for someone like me: goodreads (yes, all lowercase). You review books, indicate what you've read, are reading, will read, and "friend" people who are either real friends, or strangers who have similar tastes, presumably to garner ideas on what to read next.

Since my post on my distrust of social network sites (which seems to be justified regularly), I've felt like I've needed to keep my eye open for some that don't proffer the usual offenses.

Alas, last night after I logged-in, goodreads did the very thing I don't like - it hit me with a login-like screen whose general message and intent was: "hey, you probably have email accounts and other social networking accounts like twitter - let's knit them all together!"

Uh, f@ck no. I just wanna piddle around with fellow avid readers, not present my web presence to the marketing behemoths at large.

Now I realize that by being online at all and creating accounts - particularly with the same moniker: "yahmdallah" - I have in a de facto sense made my online doings very trackable. Without much work, you can even find my real name. But, to me, that's not the same thing as just granting some corporate site permission to extend its tentacles into all of my online activity and grouping the websites I use. Maybe I'm kidding myself about my level of non-involvement in the corporate drive to glean all they can about me (thinking about cookies, here, which I don't nuke as regularly as I should). I'm not technically knowledgeable enough to be able to make a determination with any confidence, but if I don't let them associate all my accounts for them, I'm hoping they can only guess what's mine and what isn't.

Anyway, I deleted my account on the spot.

I was toying with that idea anyway because keeping the site up-to-date on my reading felt a LOT like homework. It did point out to me what a voracious and varied reader I really am. I've always known this, but I recorded only half of the books I actually picked up and perused when my account was live. I hit the library several times a week, and almost always walk out with a couple new ones. For the couple weeks my account was active, I'd be in the middle of a book and think "oh, I should put this on my 'currently reading' shelf on goodreads," but almost always choose to just keep reading, and I'd forget to do it later.

When I would pull up the site, I would glance over at my pile of books and think I should input the titles, but there, too, I preferred to keep on doing what I was already doing (surfing), and blew it off.

Oddly, I began to feel a tinge of guilt about this. Which is absurd as I owed no obligation to anyone in that regard.

Once I realized that, I realized that I had enjoyed putting together the list of books I'd read, but the fun had ended there. I crested at over 400 books, and that's just what I could remember the night I signed up. That was fun, and reminded me of when I worked in a bookstore, where a couple times when I was bored out of my gourd and had finished the unbelievable amount of busywork that the chain foisted upon its just above minimum wage slaves, so I went around the store and pulled out about an inch every book I'd read, just to see (this was something I was taught to do when we had to do book counts for inventory and such, as the customer doesn't know why the book is pulled forward about an inch, they usually leave it alone, and you can still see what's on the shelf). Even with a Lit degree, I hadn't expected to be as well-read or current as I was at the time. It felt good.

And it felt good to see over 400 books I had read in one place.

But there I was in the end, feeling like I had not done my homework, and it wanted to amass marketing material on my ass, at my expense. (I could already imagine the new waves of spam and "Hey, since you're interested in this, why don't you buy that?" kind of shite.)

Thus, I discovered the only other pleasant thing about goodreads: it allows you to delete your account with two clicks.

Nice.

(Apologies to anyone I "friended" for leaving so abruptly.)

3 Songs for the Season

While trusty Whisky has been kickin' out the jams with several album recomendations lately, I've only got three single songs for ya.

But, they're pretty damned awesome, imho.

First of all is Cee-Lo Green's "Fuck You." Cee-Lo is one half of Gnarls Barkley.

Catchy and profane as hell, it makes me grin every time I hear it (alone in the car or privately on the MP3 player, this ain't one for the kids).

Shoo the kids out of the room and give it a listen. Now listen again, and near the end of the song listen to the whiny part where his mom says "This is one for your dad." I laugh hardest then.


As a companion disc to the other K-tel compilation I dreamed up, Love Songs for One, I've got start at a set of expurgated obscene songs, to be entitled later:

- "FU" by Cee Lo Green
- "F**k You" by Lily Allen
- "Crazy B*tch" by Buckcherry
- "I Bet You They Won't Play This Song On The Radio" by Monty Python

---

My favorite song of the moment is John Mellencamp's "Save Some Time to Dream."

The song itself is just a good tune, as evidenced here by one of the many live performances you can find on the web, but this particular version from the album No Better Than This is a haunting rendition that must be heard.

The concept of the album was to record in mono on the original equipment with a live band in the various places that Elvis, Robert Johnson, and other great artists recorded some of their seminal tracks. While it's worth one good listen, I don't imagine this is one I'm going to slap into the player that often.

However, I've already played the hell out of "Save Some Time to Dream." I'm still not tired of it, and I think it's one of those I'll always come back to.

I continue to be amazed at the great songs Mellencamp is capable of writing. I look forward to everything he does now.

---

Finally, we have one of those songs I should be deeply deeply ashamed of for even liking (but I've never cowered from proudly declaring I like what I like, even to the extent that I "won" one of Micheal Blowhard's (aka Ray Sawhill) "I'm So Gay" competitions).

If you have daughters around the house, there is no escaping the cultural impact of the TV show "Glee." While I can't watch more than 10 minutes without feeling like I have to guzzle a beer, scratch my ass, and belch loudly enough to alarm the dogs (we have two now - a story for another day), when my daughter queued up their cover of Van Halen's "Jump," I have to admit I was charmed. (Second link here in case the first one is yoinked; however the producers of the show seem to realize the value of viral video on Youtube.)

Having the chorus sing the rhythm guitar part is inspired, but having the voices spread out in harmonization in the latter part of the "bah bah dah dum," so it sounds like the harmonicis of Eddie's guitar, is beyond brilliant.

I'm gonna have to remember when I have the windows rolled down when that one cycles up on the player in the car.



Happy Halloween everyone!

Entertainments while facing the void

Hey there, few readers I have left after not posting for a month!

[Three paragraphs of bitching and moaning excised. No one needs to read that shite.]

So, amongst all this, one still attempts to stave off the demons and the boredom with entertainments.

Stumbled through Lucy by Laurence Gonzales, which was festooned with some of the clumsiest writing I've come across since I've re-read some of my less-inspired posts. It also made the mistake of filling (filler) pages of description of verdant forests and vistas of unimaginable beauty, etc. Since Gonzales is such a clumsy writer, it was easy to skip most of that crap.

Which was too bad, really. The premise - a misguided scientist of the Jane Goodall stripe manages to create a human/bonobo chimp hybrid that looks mostly human - is a promising one. Alas, it pretty much apes (heh heh) the plot of Escape from the Planet of the Apes, makes the chimp-girl noble via sheer dint of her birth (why would she be better than a human just because she has bonobo genes?), and even stoops to the now-obligatory swipes at Christianity (though it was fundie Christianity being swiped at; the author had the grace to include a "good" Christian in the plot).

I wish someone would try again with this idea, and do a better job.

Tried to read Room by Emma Donoghue, and was immediately charmed by the dead-on first person narration by a five-year-old, with the funky word constructions and primitive, though logical, grammar.

Mysteriously they spend all of their time in a small room. However, SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER it turns out that they are being held captive by a kidnapper who is the (unwanted, rapist) father of the child, and in order to escape the child has to play dead in a rolled-up carpet and then jump from a moving truck. I have a child that age, and the thought of my little sweetie having to dive out of a moving car and bounce along the pavement is just too much to bear, even in print.END SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

NOT REALLY A SPOILER (as it's indicated on the cover summary): What's worse, once they escape the room, the mother's character immediately changes in a way that isn't consistent with what went before, and it's heart-rending. The child still pines for the close environment of the room and his mother's undivided attention, but once she's free, she appears to not care about the child's adjustment to the new world, and that struck me as wrong.

At that point, I skipped to the end to see how it turned out, and was glad I abandoned it when I did. I'll leave it at that.

If child-in-peril plots don't bother you, you might like the uniqueness of Room and the artistic chance Donoghue takes, but I think anyone with small kids will be put off.

TLD: This goes against Ebert's dictum that you should review the thing you saw (or read) not what you wanted to see (or read), but since a few folks in the Amazon reviews mentioned it, I thought I would too, because I had the very same thought while reading Room: this would have been excellent as a short-form fiction - a novelette or short story. (Especially if the "escape" portion of the story would've been less harrowing.)

Works that have a strong, highly-stylized first person narrative that conveys specific character or mental traits are usually better in short form. For example both Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes and Born of Man and Woman are wonderful short stories with a great sucker-punch. (Those are links to the actual stories, and if you haven't read either, you've got a treat or two in store for you.) Flowers for Algernon is unique in that the author expanded the short story into novel form later. I've read both, and while I consider the novel a success, I prefer the short story as it delivers most of the same material in a tighter package, which makes the ending more visceral, in my opinion.

Thus, it'd be interesting to see Donoghue pare Room down to a short story. If you read this, Ms. Donoghue, and aren't too pissed at me for not completely enjoying your book, consider giving it a try.

On the heels of that unhappy fictional experience, I watched Shutter Island, which also eventually turned out to be another child-in-peril story. A very gruesome one at that. (Remember the moms who drowned their children? This is that on steroids.)

Even The Runaways, the bio flick about Joan Jett's first band (plus Lita Ford who I don't recall being mentioned by name in the flick which was weird, as she's the only other one who "made it") was mostly about how these young teen girls were exploited. I'd read the bio it was based on and thankfully they didn't use some of the more prurient stuff. Though I gotta admit the opening scene is audacious: menstrual blood landing on the gravel between one of the character's feet, the first line being something about what a time to get her period.

After all of this, oddly, I really liked Machete, Robert Rodriguez's latest. It's about as hyper-violent as it comes, full of everything that makes a move a hard "R", but it was damn good adult escapist entertainment. There's a scene where a nude woman removes a blackberry from the only place she could store it, replete with the sound effect of retrieving the same. I had a big chuckle with the boys afterwards about the sound tech who was instructed to come up with that sound.

So, here I sit, admitting I enjoyed a movie where the hero swings through a window a floor down - Die Hard-style - using a man's intestines more than these "serious" entertainments.

I guess I prefer bad guys getting hurt rather than babies.

And I guess I like that about myself.

The Year the Music Died

In Whisky's post "Album Of The Year," the comments veered into a discussion of when popular music - the charts, radio, etc. - lost their appeal for them. (I began to craft a simple answer for the comments, but my researching for it morphed it into a post.)

I've always known I'd had "that moment of egress from the larger gestalt," but until now, I didn't really try to pin-point it. Now I have: 1989 was the year the music died for me. The last year the charts and radio were truly relevant to me was 1988.

Reviewing the charts, there were a handful of songs I liked in 1988, which speaks to my probably still buying albums regularly and such, but it was a pretty weak year, nonetheless. Here's a sample of songs I liked at the time:

INXS - Need You Tonight
George Harrison - Got My Mind Set on You
Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up - interesting that the famous internet meme song came out this year
Guns N' Roses - Sweet Child O' Mine
Steve Winwood - Roll With It
Bobby McFerrin - Don't Worry, Be Happy
Beach Boys - Kokomo
Tracy Chapman - Fast Car
Van Halen - When It's Love
Sting - We'll Be Together
Joan Jett - I Hate Myself for Loving You
John Cougar Mellencamp - Cherry Bomb

(I also realized that when I came across Whitney Houston's "So Emotional" in the 1988 hits list that it was the year I got my wisdom teeth removed. Irony? Fate? Synchronicity?)

The few songs I did like from 1989 all seem to be named appropriately, given it was my year of abandonment:

Boy Meets Girl - Waiting For a Star to Fall
Mike + the Mechanics - The Living Years
38 Special - Second Chance
Don Henley - The End of the Innocence

1989 marked the beginning of the invasion of the metal hair bands, "Dance/Hip Hop" (which was really just disco remonikered), Bon Jovi, and other abominations, which was main reason I stopped listening. Public taste had changed from mine.

That was also the year I relented and stopped buying vinyl and moved to CD exclusively. The trigger was Tom Petty's "Full Moon Fever." It was the last vinyl I bought because MCA had always had shitty prints (they usually came with a side of bacon), but that particular print sounded like it was already two decades old. I took it back to the store and they let me exchange it for the CD.

After that, the rare awesome album came along. Here's the mostly complete list:

U2 - Achtung Baby - 1991
Nirvana - Nevermind - 1991
Spin Doctors - Pocket Full of Kryptonite - 1991
Faith No More - Angel Dust - 1992
Dave Matthews Band - Under the Table and Dreaming - 1994
Live - Throwing Copper - 1994
Alanis Morissette - Jagged Little Pill - 1995
The Refreshments - Fizzy Fuzzy Big & Buzzy - 1996
No Doubt - Tragic Kingdom - 1996

There was a blip in 1996 when a rash of good songs were released (Collective Soul, Oasis, and the Gin Blossoms were gaining prominence then), but other than that, I tend to buy the artists I already like: Prince, The Cure, Collective Soul, U2, DMB, The Foo Fighters, and Dwight Yoakam.

The only memorable new artist added to my cannon was The Flaming Lips when they bombed the world with "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" in 2002.

Ebert Continues His Transformation into a National Treasure

As I await his new book on the apparent miracle appliance that is the rice cooker (and expanding my cooking repertoire), I love how he articulates those important things that need saying: Put Up or Shut Up.

The 4-hour work week

Recently read The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated by Timothy Ferriss.

It's much like Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki and Sharon L. Lechter (ghost writer) in that if you follow the exact advice (provided you even can), you will most likely get the results quasi-promised.

But I doubt that most people can or would want to do what these guys do, particularly if you have kids. Plus, both of these guys seem to have made most of their money in self-promotion and just a bit by actually doing what they advise.

Ferriss even admits in his book that his sports nutrition company was failing until he freaked out and ran to Europe to hide, all the time expecting a call that it had gone under. Lo and behold, while HE wasn't running it, it turned into a profitable business, which means someone working for him fixed things while he was having his hissy fit. (Please note this is my interpretation of the events he relays in his book, though he also admits in the book he's good at starting a company, but bad at running one.)

No surprise, one of his bits of advise to achieve a 4-hour work week is: have someone else do the work. So, to pound it to China, his central advise is to start up a company that has little overhead or inventory, then stand back and let your lackeys run it. Wow, huh? (And, of course, write a book about it and hope it sells a lot.)

Speaking of China, he won a National Chinese Kickboxing Championship by exploiting a rule where pushing your opponent out of bounds equates to a technical knockout. Do that three times in a match and you win, which he did. Also consider that Ferriss is a pretty big guy (tall and muscular), so pushing a Chinese guy a few feet isn't that much of an accomplishment, even if you take into consideration he's trying to kick your teeth down your throat.

While doing a bit of web research on Ferriss to get some objective info on him, I found this hilarious post: 5 Time management tricks I learned from years of hating Tim Ferriss, with this great quote:

The week that Tim actually works a four-hour work week will be a cold week in hell. Tim got to where he is by being an insanely hard worker. I don't know anyone who worked harder at promoting a book than he did. But the thing is, he didn't call it work. Somehow, sliming me into having coffee with him to talk about his book is not work.

Fine. But then his four-hour work week is merely semantic. Because everything Tim does he turns into what the rest of us would call work, and he calls it not-work. For example, tango. If you want to be world-record holder, it's work. It's your job to be special at dancing the tango. That's your big goal that you're working toward. How you earn money is probably just a day job. So most weeks Tim probably has a 100-hour workweek. It's just that he's doing things he likes, so he lies to you and says he only works four hours. He defines work only as doing what you don't like.

Ferriss' other advice is to be difficult during interpersonal interactions if you aren't getting what you want. One of his examples is from college: if a professor gave him anything less than an A on the first paper or non-multiple-choice test, he'd show up at their office and winnow them down over three-hour sessions where he'd pepper them with questions and challenges so he could play to their biases, but also with the implied threat that if they didn't give him an A next time, he'd be back for another grueling session.

However, he says one of the ways you can gain efficiencies in business is to "fire" your difficult customers. He realized he was spending the majority of his time on the minority of his customers, so he told them take it or leave it but don't bug him anymore. All but one left, and the one who left more or less behaved himself after that.

Note the paradox, though, that Ferriss would "fire" himself as a customer.

Verdict: Most of Ferriss' advice is largely unworkable unless you want to work constantly and be somewhat of a hypocritical jerk (and hopefully have somewhat of a talent for self-promotion).

I love this picture



The cast of Star Wars.

_______________
Update:
Whisky pointed out that Anthony Daniels / C3P0 isn't in this shot, so here's what he looked like back then:



Here's a fun article with more shots from back in the day.

Just to be that way, here's my post / review on the book these shots came from. I've requested the book from the library again to get a scan of that pic I talk about, which I'll post here when I get it. Stay tuned.

_________
Update:
And here it is, the photo of Mary Lind, film control coordinator:

Little Guides to Life

I'd seen the book at the library and didn't give it a second thought beyond grinning at the title.

Since blogs arose in prominence, I've inadvertantly picked up a couple books that were compiled from blogs, and while they were entertaining, there's something about something crafted for a blog that just doesn't work as well when it's rendered as symbols smeared on flattened and bleached tree guts. Whatever the reason, I now scour a book to see if it was originally a blog, and if it is, I set the book down and make a note to find the blog online.

As for this book, apparently there's kerfuffle over the profanity in the title, so last time I was at the library, I picked up a copy to peruse it at my leisure later and ended up reading it in one sitting.

Sh*t My Dad Says by Justin Halpern transcends genre - or at least straddles a bunch of them - the most pleasant surprise being that there's some sage advice here among all the belly laughs.

Frinstance, here're a couple from the twitter page, where it all started:

"Don’t focus on the one guy who hates you. You don’t go to the park and set your picnic down next to the only pile of dog shit."

"Stop trying so hard. He doesn't like you. Jesus, don't kiss an ass if it's in the process of shitting on you."

The book alternates between naked quotes like these, where you don't know the situation that prompted "Dad" to say it, and short vignettes with context and a lot more hilarious quotes. I chose these because they weren't in the book, and I don't want to spoil a single one for ya.

By the way, the utterer of these gems is Samuel Halpern, the eponymous dad of the tome.

It's now on the same (virtual) shelf as my other favorite life-advice book (which are very very different and, in my opinion, way better than most self-help books): Rules for Aging: A Wry and Witty Guide to Life by Roger Rosenblatt

Take those two books, toss in some of these classics like "Desiderata," "Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young," "All I ever really needed to know I learned in kindergarten," (which never ceases to amuse me on how true it is), these miscellaneous quotes I've gathered; and you've got yourself some good guides for living.

As for the controversy over the title, I guess after having to deal with recommending the wonderful book The No Asshole Rule by Robert I. Sutton around work, I found most grown-ups don't really have an issue with naughty words, if you will, as long as it's not gratuitous. My process of discovery of this was as follows: at first I came up with euphemisms to replace the offensive word ("posterior sphincter" was an early version), I moved to whispering it (which I did with much comedic emphasis to show I wasn't being a church lady about it), and finally I just said it out loud followed by an apology and statement of fact that it was really the name of the book, after all. The latter got the best responses.

Still, have some fun. Wander into your local book store or library and ask for a book about shit and a book about assholes and see what happens. Put it in the comments if it's really good.

I LOL'd



Apparently this is one of the most re-blogged (a new term for me) gifs of all time now. How could I not join in? Fwiw, clicking the image will take you to the source which will than take you to where you can buy the whole book.

___________
Update:
Got the book from the library, and while it's cute, the best stuff is in this little GIF you see above.

Music - 08-19-2010

Welder by Elizabeth Cook

Whisky recommended Elizabeth Cook's Welder, and thus far our musical tastes align perhaps more than with anyone I've ever known, so on the list it went.

When it arrived, in the player it went.

Out of the speakers came the twangiest country pickin' I've ever heard, which was quickly joined by the thickest, backwater (American) southern accent I've encountered (outside of Paula Deen's cooking show) howling and yodeling away.

"[String of obscenities]," I thought to myself, half-reaching for the 'stop for the love of God' button, "What in the hell was Whisky thinking? Or drinking?"

But, I endured for a couple moments just to see. A minute in I decided I'd heard enough of that first song for the rest of my life.

To give it an honest try, I moved on the second song, and thank God I did. And then the next. I laughed all the way through a couple of them.

It's everything Whisky said it was and more. I have a new high-rotation selection for the collection.

Let me caveat the hell out of that statement though. If you don't like country, you won't like this. You'll hate hate hate it. You'll curse me or Whisky for suggesting that your precious eardrums be assaulted in such a manner. You have to have a taste for less-than-pretty vocal stylings, like Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Mick Jagger, Lena Lovitch, and Marianne Faithfull. Now, Ms. Cook does have a pretty voice, but she wields it like a weapon, and the vocals suit the song rather than try to showcase the voice. Think the anti-Mariah Carey.

If none of that puts you off, or conversely intrigues you, give the woman a listen. Even that first song.

---

Something for Everybody by Devo

I was a luke-warm Devo fan back in the 80s when they were one of THE bands. They struck me as novelty group, kinda like Dave Seville and the Chipmunks or Weird Al Yankovic (both of whom I like), but I had no desire to put them on regular rotation. The waters grew more tepid after a long party weekend where the only two tapes anyone brought were Devo's Are We Not Men? and AC/DC's Back in Black, which were played back to back for 36 hours. I wasn't able to listen to either for a decade.

But, since then, the guys have been involved in a lot of projects, scoring movies and TV, and I've been impressed with their diversity and sheer talent.

I picked up the disc out of mild curiosity to see if that fecund period infused this new album. It did, and even more interesting and surprising to me, this sounds exactly like a Devo album. That may seem like a strange thing to say, but most artists who come back after that long a break don't always sound like they used to. Sometimes they're better, sometimes worse, but almost never could you put a new album next to one decades old and not hear any huge difference.

And it appears that Devo is more to my taste than they ever were. I like the album all the way through. It's only the fourth album this year that I made a complete copy for my car (original discs DON'T LEAVE THE HOUSE - you can ask any member of my family), that vast majority of those made for the car are mix CDs.

My favorite song is "Mind Games." I combed the credits to see if they credited "The Jetsons" theme for the opening midi sequence, but they didn't.

Given that Mothersbaugh is known for a meme regarding the Jetsons meets the Flintstones (a one-ah and a two-ah), it can't have been an oversight. Let's chalk it up to unconscious borrowing. Hope I don't cause a lawsuit.

Cat People

A long-standing and mountainously silly human debate about "cat people" versus "dog people" is not a concern of my household because we love and have both. (Plus a revolving supporting cast of rats, fish, tadpoles and then frogs, a hermit crab, and assorted bugs; the notables being a praying mantis and a female desert beetle named "Alice" that both lived for a year. In case you have the need to know, a praying mantis eats any other bug that moves, regardless of size - and they bite! Hard! Desert beetles eat that moist layer of detritus that resides at the roots of grass.)

Nonetheless, I have new evidence regarding cats that I'd like to offer to those who do debate the issue.

Dog people sometimes claim that cats don't really love you; they love what you do for them, like feed them.

In dog people's defense, dogs do really demonstrate affection, and it's obvious to anyone with a functioning limbic system that it's honest and true love they're expressing; it is not anthropomorphism on our part.

I've known the same about cats since my wife rescued (over time) 3 beautiful ones. The one we call "Fuzz" in particular goes out of his way to express his feelings, feelings of love. (Whooooaaaah feeeeeelings....)

Years ago he began the habit of holding out his paw for a high-five if I passed him while he was perched on the banister. However, most dog people would write that off a reflex, an affectation.

Recently, though, if you walk past the place where the cat's food is - we have it on a waist-level small counter so the dog can't decide to switch diets when we're not looking - he will meow, and if you walk up to him, he'll put his paws on your chest, paw (sweetly) his way up until they're around your neck, put his head against your chest and give you a squeeze with his arms.

Yes, he hugs you. And this is unrelated to whether there's food in the bowl or not, or whether he's eaten or not. He's done this more than once to both my wife and I.

I have a cat that hugs, people.

So there! you dog people (who are just dog people).

Completely Spoiler-Laden Quasi-rant About the Movies Chloe and Kick-Ass

Chloe is precisely the kind of movie I hate. (Though, I suspect it's the very kind of movie Ray Sawhill would like, and I mean that in a nice way. Seriously.)

The premise is a woman (Julianne Moore) thinks her college prof hubby (Liam Neeson) is cheating on her with college nubiles, so hires a hooker (Amanda Seyfried) to pose as a student and seduce him, just to make sure. The wrinkle is this hooker has mommy issues all wrapped around a gooey Oedipus/Electra complex center. Unknown to the woman, the hooker has had her eye on her for a while now, since they both "work" on the same street. This same proximity fosters the "meet cute" between the two when the woman plays "spot the prostitute" with one of her friends when they're at lunch, because guess who she spots.

In the middle of all this contrivance, prior to being spotted at lunch with a client, the hooker flirts with the woman by approaching her with a haircomb, asking if she dropped it. When the woman says no, the hooker tries to give it to her anyway. Much later in the movie, when they are in the midst of their scheme to trap the husband, the woman accepts the gift of the comb, and when she does, the hooker tells her it was her mother's. (This matters later, of course.)

The hooker tells the woman of her trysts with the husband, which inexplicably get the woman so turned on she eventually sleeps with the hooker (which was the hooker's plan all along you see). And, as "gay theory" tries to tell us, all of us are really this ---><--- close to sleeping with someone of the same gender, if only the situation were to present itself, so of course they boff.

I'll spare you the rest in case you might want to watch the flick anyway, but most of all to just simply spare you. Let's just say hilarity ensues, and the hooker dives out of a window when she realizes the woman won't join her forever as her mother-slash-lover. (Again, ick.)

But I need to tell you this: the final sequence shows the woman having one of her grand parties, during which a dramatic closeup reveals that she's wearing the hooker's mother's comb. This is supposed to be a SIGNIFICANT MOMENT.

I was torn between screaming like Sam Kinison (may he rest in peace) or rolling my eyes to heaven with such force that they would stick that way. I've trained myself to set down the remote during a movie I don't like (unless I'm fast-forwarding) so I reactively don't throw it at the end.


I did dig the soundtrack, though. I've noted I don't really associate the music with the movie, so I now have another disc of ambient / background music for writing and such. Yay.

---

Ebert had warned me about Kick-Ass, but sometimes he and I don't agree, and it is a super-hero movie - in theory. Peter Travers, my other go-to critic, liked it for the same reasons Ebert didn't.

I didn't like it. I really didn't like it.

Sorry, but seeing an 11-year-old girl, no matter the context, beaten bloody by an adult who then attempts to execute her (she's saved at the last moment) falls wuh-haaay outside of my comfort zone, and crashes my suspension of disbelief like Islamic truck bomber. Most "Child in peril" doesn't float with me, but when it's purposeful violence doled out by an adult, I just can't....

I didn't like the otherwise spellbinding Pan's Labyrinth for much the same reason.

That said, it may have worked as a cartoon. After all, the Powerpuff Girls was essentially that very thing. Hell, the devil was even one of the villains.

The premise of the movie is that this is the real world where no one really has super powers, so that might have been behind the artistic decision to go live-action. (Apologies for the tortured grammar; no time to fixy fixy today.) Yet the source material was a comic, so I still think it would've been better that way.

If you're an older teen (it's rated R, for the record) who won't be bothered by this plot element, you might like the thing, but anyone past 25 and anyone with kids will want to find better things to do with their time. Like go see Inception.

In Your Face

Warning: rant ho.

__________
Update:
Even the Google guys think there's a problem.
__________

I've never been a fan of social-networking sites. I dislike them more as time goes by.

For starters, I don't like their policies, which can be usually summed up like this: we own everything you post on our site(s) and will use it for marketing purposes, many of which you wouldn't like if you knew. Even when they claim you own your information or content, they also claim they can do anything with the data that they want to.* (FWIW, Blogger, the current host of this blog, only grants itself publishing rights, and I still own the copyright: you grant Google a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, publish and distribute such Content on Google services.)

My main beef is that social-networking sites seem to be primarily a conduit for voyeurism, where a lot of energy seems to go toward looking up old girlfriends/boyfriends (almost never a good idea) and/or enemies (the assumption is that you've already kept up with the friends you've wanted to keep and don't need to hunt them down on Facebook), or just simple sneaky-peeking into other's lives without them knowing about it.

TLD: When Facebook was becoming the rage, I used my daughter's account to look up an old flame just to see her picture (you have to be logged in to see any "personal" content). She's still pretty, but, like, so what? I don't think it would have mattered to me if she'd somehow gotten ugly. Then it occurred to me I didn't really care in general, usually you're not with someone anymore for several good reasons, it was just simple morbid curiosity. I also felt vaguely ashamed that I had nearly immediately done the very thing that Facebook is really about: secretly poking into stranger's (or now-stranger's) lives. Ick. Haven't done it since.

Way back when the internet first started up, I really dug chatting with total strangers over IRC. The concept that I was talking to someone in Scotland in real-time just blew me away. The community was so relatively small you could even contact most anyone. I had regular correspondence with the great James Lileks before his popularity made it impossible for him to respond to all of his emails. In full acknowledgement of the voyeuristic aspect of the web, Jennifer Ringley put up a cam that showed what she was doing 24/7 for a few years, including sex with her boyfriends. I don't remember how I found it (I do remember I wasn't actively looking for it), but I logged on to the main chat room she hung out in, and it was like bumping into celebrity who was out and about with her entourage. I typed in a question to Jenny, and about 5 people immediately typed back, "who are you and why are you even talking to her." Wow. I lurked for about a week, seeing what the interchange was like, and it stayed true to that initial impression. Occasionally Jenny would want to chat, but her sycophants did everything they could to keep her contained and fawned over every little thing she typed. It was a microcosmic example of celebrity. I did manage to join a conversation once, as it was a topic I knew stuff about, but it really did feel like sucking up to a celebrity, and not like a usual exchange with whomever was on the other end of the pipe in IRC.

What I came away with was that, on my side, I had this false feeling of "knowing" these people, even though we'd only passed ASCII back and forth on a network. I realized that this is a dangerous illusion, it was way too easy to fall into this false sense of connection, and how vulnerable it made you.

I got my wife a computer to chat because we agreed she was going to stay home to raise the kids ("kid" at the time), and she was lonely for adult contact. I stressed that she needed to remain anonymous, and that she should NEVER give out personal information. Well, after chatting with a couple people for a stretch of months, she felt she could trust them, and gave them her real name and such. Suddenly, one of them announced he was going on a road trip to visit his chat buddies, and a couple days later, the fucker knocks on our door. We put him up for a couple days, but it was clear all he wanted to do was screw my wife, so we sent him packing. It was a lesson we will never forget. It was proof positive how dangerous the web could be.

Both of us pretty much stopped chatting, and certainly were very careful about giving out our actual information to anyone. To this day, I've only trusted 3 people enough to do so. And in those cases, I've known the individuals over years, and from several message boards, blogs, and other web sites. I got a pretty clear view about who they were beforehand.

I submit that most blogs differ from this in that your interest isn't based on who you "know" or "knew" (or would secretly like to see naked), but is based on your enjoyment of their stories and thoughts. I've noticed all my favorite blogs are by people who are blogging under a pseudonym. I still like Dooce.com and Lileks.com, but not as much as I do the blogs you see listed on the right. (I hope to re-grow that list someday, but blogs are going through a dip in popularity, and I eventually concluded it was redundant to link to monsters like kottke.org. I predict they'll come back into their own and always be a presence, because they often do offer some of the best content on the web.)

Anyway, back to my point. My daughter recently learned one of the ultimate Facebook lessons the hard way.

(I know, I know. I really really really did try to keep her from joining facebook, but - as the argument always goes - all of her friends were on there, and it was true. Remembering what social freaks the kids who couldn't watch TV or listen to music were back in my day, I felt that it was more important to take the chance then it was to forbid.)

She was in a school play, and after the initial costume fitting, she groused on her page: "I don't like my costume." Just so happens one of her "friends" was a teacher, and one of the little queen bee bitches in her class alerted the teacher to the complaint - it's sad that bullies now have yet one more way to get atcha. Sure enough, my wife and I were emailed by the teacher, with a CC to the school principal, about how that's very inappropriate, and measures will be taken.... yadda yadda yadda.

So, we have new family facebook policies: 1) No comments or pictures that can be even remotely used against you (we already had strict rules about pictures in place), 2) no adults whatsoever as "friends" (along with the existing rule of no "friending" someone you don't know personally in real life, first).

We wrote the obligatory apologetic emails, rolling our eyes the whole time, so things appear to be smoothed over for now.

But really? All this over "I don't like my costume."? Crikey. I doubt had this same teacher overheard her say that in the hallway that s/he would've done the same thing, if anything.

Slashdot reports that Facebook finally is allowing people to delete their accounts (though I doubt they really delete your info), which is at least a step in the right direction, given the problems they've had in the past keeping their data secure.

I know that when I go to look for a job in the future, they're going to ask me if they can find my information on LinkedIn. I will say "no" and then have to present my reason why. Perhaps I'll just bring a printout of this article. But I know it's going to probably cost me a job offer or two, because the person doing the hiring will be very proud of his/her LinkedIn pages, and will consider it an affront that I distrust LinkedIn. Btw, I've looked at the descriptions of some colleagues, and just like half of the resumes out there, there's some stuff that borders on fiction.

Buddies who use the site frequently report what I'd call "negative" use, in that they rule out companies and people based on their "connection" information and other ephemera. Which is why I think these sites do more harm than good, imho. They actually work to limit your chances more than they help them.

And worse, last night I created a pseudonym identity on LinkedIn just to see what they put you through, and to my horror they even tie directly into your email and grab all of your contacts (since I didn't know what I was getting into, I used an email account I created for the sole purpose of having an email to use when I know those I'm going to provide it to will spam the hell out of it). So even if I never add my real information to the site, I know several folks who had me in their contacts when they joined, thus I'm on there without my consent. That explains why I've gotten pre-fab emails that say "_______ has invited you to join LinkedIn and wants to add you as a contact" or whatever the hell it said. I think I actually curled my lip and grumbled as I deleted those.

The point being the mere existence of a social-networking sites essentially create one more headache for me, even when I decide I want nothing to do with them.

Above I predicted that blogs will always be with us. I'm guessing that in about a decade or less, social-networking will exist primarily as anonymous places. I bet people will not want anyone and everyone to have so much access to the details of their lives. The lawsuits that result will be interesting, for sure.

________________________
*From LinkedIn's agreement: "You own the information you provide LinkedIn under this Agreement, and may request its deletion at any time, unless you have shared information or content with others and they have not deleted it, or it was copied or stored by other users. Additionally, you grant LinkedIn a nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual, unlimited, assignable, sublicenseable, fully paid up and royalty-free right to us to copy, prepare derivative works of, improve, distribute, publish, remove, retain, add, process, analyze, use and commercialize, in any way now known or in the future discovered, any information you provide, directly or indirectly to LinkedIn, including but not limited to any user generated content, ideas, concepts, techniques or data to the services, you submit to LinkedIn, without any further consent, notice and/or compensation to you or to any third parties. Any information you submit to us is at your own risk of loss as noted in Sections 2 and 3 of this Agreement."

Inception

Inception is the new high-water mark in movies. For reference, that last one that gob-smacked audiences like this was The Matrix (1999).*

Inception has some similarities to The Matrix and What Dreams May Come, but that's like saying Star Wars has similarities to The Hidden Fortress and the Buck Rogers serials. Yeah, seeds of ideas and some of the film vocabulary are borrowed from these predecessors. Which would you rather see, though?

I've read reviews (at least Ebert and Travers) that mention how hard the plot is to follow. Myself, I found it was delineated very clearly, to the extent that I could actually devote some thought to whether or not Christopher Nolan (author and director) ever "cheated," meaning used the plot device to confuse and trick us so he could move forward with the story when he'd painted himself into a corner, or purposely fool us into thinking something was a dream state when it wasn't and vice versa.

The whole movie would fall down like a sandcastle hit by the tide if he ever cheated, so I'm thrilled to report he never does. (Another movie that never cheats on its premise, and is the better for it, is 50 First Dates.)

The plot device? Well, the military invented a means to invade people's dreams and extract information from them, which is now used for corporate espionage. Experienced dream spies can even create dreams within dreams, which has the benefit of allowing another level of subterfuge where the spy can spin the target so completely that they can't tell whom to trust. Also, time moves much faster the further down you go, meaning 5 minutes of real time equates to an hour of dream time, but dream-within-a-dream time equates to one week for every hour of dream time. Believe it or not, the movie does a great job of making this crystal clear so you don't have to risk an embolism to keep track of it all.

Like all great sci-fi (or other genre) flicks, the core of the story is a love story. Several, actually.

Oh, and it provides the answer to the question, "What the hell ever happened to Tom Berenger?"

I've all but stopped buying DVDs, having long ago collected the ones I'm likely to watch again, and this movie is one of the few I can't wait to own so I can watch it over and over again to pick up things that slipped by in previous viewings.

Inception is not to be missed. It's worth the cost and bother of a babysitter. Fandango probably has your local showtimes.

Go now.

Really.

Really really.

---

*I almost pulled an "I'm Listing" post as a result of researching a few "best films" lists to confirm my claim, but decided to spare you. My sources were Ebert, IMDB.com, and the AFI lists (requires setting up an account). Here are the other arguable high-water marks since The Matrix, in chronological order, most recent first:

- Avatar (2009)
- Gran Torino (2008)
- A Prairie Home Companion (2006)
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
- The Lord of the Rings (2001 - 2003)
- Fight Club (1999)
- The Sixth Sense (1999)
- American Beauty (1999)

Yeah, there are probably other films that you would put on this list, and by following the links to my sources, you'll find some to quibble about. That's what the comments are for! I'd love to hear from ya.

I purposely left animated films off, which is ironic for me as they have always been my favorite, the most near and dear to my heart. I feel they really are a league of their own and should be considered separately. Had I not been born at the right time, I would most certainly have moved to California and tried to break into the industry as an animator. Throughout my childhood I poured over any and all animation stuff I could get my hands on (alongside watching any I could find, save for the sucky Saturday morning TV animation). I would even bike to the library which had 16mm prints of animation; I still marvel that the librarians were so patient and sweet with this little kid who would show up and watch these in the viewing room all by himself. I took and deeply enjoyed what was essentially a graduate-level class on all things animation in college. For all practical purposes, I am an amateur animation historian.

Here's a glimpse into what was going on in the animation world around the time I was in college (early 80s), and thereafter:

- Wizards (1977)
- The Rescuers (1977)
- Watership Down (1978)
- The Fox and the Hound (1981)
- The Secret of NIMH (1982)
- The Black Cauldron (1985)
- The Great Mouse Detective (1986)
- Oliver & Company (1988)
- Akira (1988)
- The Little Mermaid (1989)

Note this is when the animation universe simply tanked, a near total wasteland from '77 to '88 (with the possible exception of "NIMH"). It wasn't until the 90s that animation came back into its own with The Little Mermaid, released at the end of 1989. Nearly a whole decade and a half without a good animation industry. It still saddens me.

TV was worse. This was when Ronny Raygun deregulated things so that all TV cartoons immediately slithered into the slums of glorified commercials for toys. "He-Man and the Masters of the Universe" was the leading show of the time. Even the classics were being re-edited and slaughtered because someone thought that seeing Wile E. Coyote smashing into the canyon floor and kicking up a mushroom cloud of dust was somehow traumatizing rather than freakin' hilarious. This idiocy was wonderfully parodied by "The Simpsons."

But, I'm a big believer in "Unanswered Prayers," as the Garth Brooks song goes. While I might have had the joy of being involved in the creation a few of the greats in animation, I think the path I did take has ended up where I should be. I think my soul would have died had I been part of the movie industry.

And as Jesus said: "What do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul?" - Mark 8:36-37