JustWhiteNoise

UVA-Maryland Lax championship post

2011-05-29T20:08:00.000-07:00

A couple thoughts on the UVA-Maryland final for Memorial Day.

For the second straight year, a great match-up between teams that didn't have the best seasons and maybe owe thier path to some fluky results elsewhere, but also two teams that seemed like they arrived in the playoffs the most ready, a fact that rarely becomes obvious prior to the second or third game of the tourney.

UNC, for instance, lost by a single goal in the ACC tourney - no shame in that, it turns out - and then beat Notre Dame at home to finish the year. They looked ready.

They weren't. Maryland came to town and pushed them around and out hustled them and frustrated them and made them look bad on their own field. Not shocking - UNC hasn't played well in the post season in, well, 20 years actually, and Maryland - fresh off outright winning the ACC tournament and getting the lowest seed of the four ACC teams for their trouble - surely had something to prove in Chapel Hill. So perhaps what Maryland did to UNC - blow them away - was one of those fluky things.

But then Maryland did it to Syracuse, too. They fought, pushed, shot and D'd-up with the best team in the country all the way to overtime. Then with none of the nerves or rushing so common in OT (its the flaw of 'sudden death': when one shot wins the game, too many teams rush into silly, low-percentage shots hoping to get lucky), Maryland took their time, waited for Cuse to sieze up and ended it with a wide-open, leave-no-doubt shot from their best player 10 yards out.

What had looked like confusion and laziness on the part of UNC was now obviously (or at least partly) something different: Maryland is bigger but slower than most teams - hell, their goalie and one of thier starting attackmen are fat - but they had dictated a slower, meaner pace in both games to suit them.

Once you realized that, it was pretty clear Maryland was your Hot team heading into the semi - the ACC championship, blitzing UNC, then knocking off The Cuse. That's the team you get out of the way of if you can.

But surely the defending national champs and perenial ACC bully, Duke, would stand ready for whatever strange mojo Maryland had ginned up?

Only, this wasn't the defending national champs, nor much of a bully - they start a freshman on attack, half the line-up is gone from last year and they came into the tournament with 5 losses. Duke was, as they always are, skilled and smart but, oddly, not quite in Final Four gear when they slammed head first into Maryland, or rather, when Maryland slammed head, fists, shoulders and knees-first into them. Within 5 minutes of the whistle, Maryland had decked three different Duke players in loose ball fights - just boom-MFer, head-snappers, which NEVER truly happen in big time lacrosse - and soon enough was up an angry, heavy 3-1 that turned out to be fatal. Duke didn't quit and tried to return fire, both with skill and some tenacious scrapping, but Maryland did the hardest thing to do in any sport: they played angry for a whole game. Well, really, they played angry for 3 and half quarters, putting a solid half dozen more Dukies down in the process with hits that became less 'hard play' and more 'head hunting' as the game went on, and somewhere in the fourth, Duke had had enough and stopped hitting back.

They balled to the end - Duke always does, the bastards - but even if you pull your goalie out as a way to say you're not quitting, not winning any groundballs down the stretch or having 3 goals total with 5 minutes to play says a lot more.

How have they done it? Well, their face-off guy, curtis Holmes, is winning over 60 percent, which essentialy guarantees that Maryland has the ball more than its opponent, wearing down defensive legs and frustrating the idle offense, which in turn leads to pressing and bad decisions when Maryland is back on D.
Also, as noted, they have a fat goalie! Nothing more fun in major-college sports than a big fat guy in there. In swoop the genetic freaks and curly-haired popular kids with their perfect skills and showy dives and jumps, and up steps the tubby kid - a lifetime of snacks in front of the TV stuffed behind his pads - to turn them away. Nothing more American for Memorial day than a fat goalie!

Maryland is here because they know how to ride a nasty streak. Whether or not 'I'll just call you Ms. Jackson' is a gameplan for a championship is to be seen.

It wasn't, in fact, already once this weekend, in whole different sport on a whole different level, but not entirely unrelated: just prior to Maryland-Duke, European soccer's Champions League held its Super Bowl/Olympics/St. Patrick's Day event, the Champions League final, which saw English champs Manchester United roar onto the field against Barcelona - roughly, the Syracuse of soccer, only with both Gait brothers rolled up into 5'6" forward Lionel Messi - and tried to push around the smaller, better Spanish team and, after about 12 minutes of annoyance, Barca found its range and remorselessly punished the English for the rest of the game by just out-awesoming them in every technical and athletic way possible. Nasty, meet Nastier.

That game, as it happens, took place at exactly the same time as Virginia dismantled Denver in the other lacrosse semifinal, and when they meet Maryland today, it will be UVA who, like Barcelona, is viewed as the side with talent, pedigree and presumption of victory.

Virginia has, among other things, Steele Stanwick, who with that name and a UVA degree you have to assume is going to be a banker and not your banker, of course but, like, Exxon's banker, but is for now the best offensive player in the country. He has, through the first 3 rounds of the playoffs, 20 points, an obscene total. Against Denver in the national semifinals, UVA rung up 14 goals, including a Game-Over 9-2 halftime lead. Eight players scored for UVA. This isn't a team so much as a weather system.

And yet Virginia, with its Brahman recruiting bloodlines and relentless offense, is a team that perhaps even more than Maryland, has a dark and flawed tale to tell.

A year ago, UVA was in thier accustomed spot as #1 or #1A (to a the peerless Syracuse) in the country when one of their key midfielders, well, what he did was, well - deeeeep breath - he got drunk and, repeating previous episodes only with more fury this time, he went to see his ex-gf who also played lacrosse for UVA's women's team and apparently was just ridiculously likable and he beat this girl to death with his fists and left her lying in her bedroom. And then he went to jail where he sits today.

Less than 2 weeks after the world ended for pretty much anyone associated with UVA's teams, UVA lost to title-bound Duke by all of one goal. I imagine its safe to assume the UVA players probably felt like that game was one of the many things - and probably the least important - that the team murder had cost them.

Fast Forward to a month ago when, after still another year of just kicking all kinds of ass, shocking news erupts at UVA lacrosse: the team's best player and his pretty-damn-good-too identical twin brother have been dropped from the team for, well, nobody says what for but basicly the message got sent that they were assholes and everyone was sick of them. So now its playoff time and their best player and thier - lets just say - 5th best player and gone.
And then it happens again. After their first game, UVA announced they'd thrown still another starter off the team for, well, what kinda seems like assholery.

Lacking three major holes in the armor, what happened next was exactly what you would expect to happen: UVA went out and crushed everybody, and rolled into the final as the clear favorite

No?

Well, maybe its what you expect if you read the story not as a team in a crisis but as a team solving one on the shoulders of another. As an exercise in inner dialogue, it might go something like this: "last year was like drowning, but we learned that you have to look out for each other and that life is more than lacrosse, so Mr. All-American and your twin brother who have been a team cancer for 3.8 years, you can get the hell out and we'll be better for it. You too, wise ass. We'd rather lose without all of you than win with any of you, cuz the worst day we have on a field this year is gonna be better than the best day we had at school last year. see ya."

if it went down something like that, then UVA should arrive with focus to match their enormous skill.

So who ya got, Team Redemption or Team Nasty? Or, if you prefer, you can take your pick in a more whimsical spirit: Team Matt White (UVA starting attackman) or Team Fat Goalie!

(also, should Maryland win, they'll have beaten all three of thier ACC brethern in the playoffs)

Either way, should be a hell of a game.

Some Actual Writing, By Me

2011-04-02T18:33:00.001-07:00

Thanks to my friend Glenn at E!Online, I've been doing some writing on the side. Starting with the Super Bowl, I've made some Top Ten Movie lists for him, based on some sporting events for their new Athlebrity site.

First was a Top 10 Football Movies list, only most football movies suck, so I called FB movies that don't completely suck. THe top 3-4 ar actually pretty good. The rest are bad either as football or as movies or as both. Football movies -

THen I did 3 in a row around the NCAA BBall tournament. We started thinking about Top 10 basketball movies, but I said why not use the opportunity for the biggest college event to use the biggest college-showdown movies? I managed to do it with only 1 basketball, 1 football and no repeated sports. college movies

Next wasma Top 10 Hot Women Athletes, or something (they had just run Top 15 hot Football players and hot NBAers, so fair is fair). Again, I tried to hit as many different sports as possible, and use real athletes and come up with some off-beat one (in other words: absolutely no Anna Kornikova or Sharapova). girls -
My favorite is Lauren Fleshman, a runner, since its got some great YouTube links in it. - fleshman - http://www.eonline.com/photos/gallery.jsp?galleryUUID=3061#117433

Finally, for the Final Four, a Top Ten Basketball movies, probably the most traditional on this list
I really like the Blue Chips one, since I made sure the Bobby Hurley reference made the final cut.

Pow pow

2010-03-10T13:17:00.000-08:00

Hoard Much?

2010-01-16T09:34:00.000-08:00

There are no pretzels in this pictue

2010-01-09T07:33:00.001-08:00

At target, girl at counter said "we're out of pretzels". Swore these
were all plastic display ones. I left unconvinced.

File away

2009-12-14T11:04:00.001-08:00

For when you are tired of being rich and tired of people knowing you
are.

Thomas Hoving - a book worth reading

2009-12-10T13:10:00.001-08:00

Thomas Hoving died today, a guy I haven't thought about in a while. He was director of the Met in NYC for, oh, 15 years or so. Spent his life, obviously, as an art historian/curator (after 3 post-Princeton years in the Marines, interestingly enough).

Anyway, in the early 90s I read his book called "False Impressions: The Hunt for Big Time Art Forgeries" (or something within a word or two of that title). Its about his career chasing art fakes around the world, from tiny, dilapitated Italian chapels to the premier auction houses and everything in between. I think Malcolm Gladwell based a whole chapter of "Blink" on the anecdote that Hoving opens the book with.

Since then down through the years, whenever I get the question, 'what's your favorite book?' (or "what are you reading?" when I'm not, as is often, reading anything), its been a perenial go-to. He's a curious and quick mind writing on a rich subject that he clearly knows and loves, which is always always always the magic formula for great writing.

here's his obit from the Times today: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/arts/design/11hoving.html?_r=1&hp

matt

State of The Art

2009-09-19T12:00:00.001-07:00

Me Too!

2009-07-19T14:00:00.000-07:00

Organic Fail

2009-07-16T16:39:00.000-07:00

Holy F'in Shit

2009-06-12T12:57:00.000-07:00

Hard times

2009-06-01T10:57:00.001-07:00

Counseling?

See next post

2009-04-14T13:32:00.001-07:00

Right tool, right job

2009-04-13T19:42:00.001-07:00

The first thing to understand is that the Kenan-Flagler parking deck is full of cars of people who had good-but-not-great entry jobs, and who quit them last year. So you tend to see 3-4 year old Hondas, Toyotas, etc. You also see a few cars that obviously date to somebody's undergrad days - older SUVs, fraying Mazdas. THere's also a solid 25 percent of Lexus, Infinitis, BMWs and the like, that remind you that many of the program's students came from high-end jobs or old money.

and then there are the two essentially identical Porsche Carrera Boxsters. Both are gorgeous silver, surely 2006 or newer, with killer wheels over bright red brake shoes.

I only realized there were 2 a few months ago when I passed on on the way to my car, then as I drove out saw the second driving in.

I'm sure one is better than the other as Porsches go (turbo or something) but they're both equally slick to look at.

And yet, everytime I see one, I can't help but laigh a bit. Just what in the hell are you doing with that car? Campus speedlimit is, like 35 mph on the widest streats, and that's fiction because of traffic, endless speed bumps and kids running out across streets randomly at any time. Its a campus made for 86 Civics, not 06 Boxsters. Its a senseless luxury, which is fine, but isn't the killer porsche the senseless luxury you aspire to while you're at MBA school? Shouldn't the path that takes you to your dream machine be longer than the bridge to the parking deck?

And, funnier still, if you brought your fancy car to campus hoping you'd be known as the Porsche Guy and somebody else showed up with the exact same car.. I mean, its one thing when somebody has the ame trapper keeper, but the same Porsche?

So today, as I've been doing this whole quarter, I wrote my bike in. Leaving campus on a bike is a joy. Kenan-Flagler sits above the Dean Dome, on one of the highest rises on UNC's campus. From the parking lot, it's about a solid 1/2 mile of downhill to the main road, 15-501 (the infamous Tobacco Road that runs straight to Duke). This 1/2 mile is broken up into 2 quarter-mile runs, one from KFBS, past the Dean Dome and parking lots. down to a stop sign at a central campus street. The second half is that campus street, which is probably steeper, and is 4 lanes wide and a straight line directly down to 15-501. The 15-501 intersection, predictably, is a traffic light, and the end of your downhill. And you're probably braking at the bottom because you get a decent amount of green to get out onto 15-501, but if once its red, it takes FOREVER to turn.

So on my bike today, I cruised down the KFBS driveway. I was vaguely aware that a car - a VW Passat-like thing, I think - followed me down the hill, but I blew through the stop sign next to the Dean Dome and didn't see it. As I rolled down toward the main road, I again heard a car behind me, which I assumed was the VW catching up. With no traffic, I coasted trhough that stop sign, too, onto the main campus raod and pointed straight down the big hill that runs down to 15-501. Its a steep drop, and fun to blast down on a bike.

As I straightened out my line, I glanced ahead and saw the light - a solid 1/4 mile away down the hill - was green. This didn't matter to me since it would take me a solid minute to coast down there, and I would be content to wait once I got there for another green, so I laid off the pedals and just let the bike run. This was mythought as I heard the VW gun around the corner behind me.

And keeps gunning.

From a buzz to a growl to a howl and closing fast and- WHAM- a silver Porsche Carrera blows by me at about, oh, 50, and rather than shift of just lift a bit, the engine keeps winding upward into a scream and as it jets away I realize that with 1/4 mile to go and the light already late in the green, he's not interested in waiting out the cycle.

And now it's yellow. And he's - maybe - 1/2 way down the hill. no brake lights. no shift, no lift, just a louder, higher engine scream coming back to me as the car sprints faster, farther down the hill.

brake light on. red light signal. brake light off. the car jinx with one more little leap of throttle into the intersection, glides through a diving left turn across the empty intersection and he. is. Gone.

As I coasted down the hill, i threw my fist up in salute.

Really, there's never a good reason to own a Porsche. Until there is.

Dominoes disses Crazy!

2009-03-31T18:14:00.001-07:00

More jobs

2009-03-06T10:55:00.000-08:00

I think my favorite part is that, yeah, there might be more sensible vehicles to use in an exotic fish tank busines, but F' it - I got into this business for the glam, and I'm a ride 'til I die.

matt

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Great Moments In Bad Newspaper Writing

2009-02-26T11:05:00.001-08:00

http://www.newsobserver.com/business/story/1419644.html

"The line of job seekers stretched along the second floor pavilion and out of sight, growing like a contrail against the colorless sky."

Kids with wierd names

2009-02-25T07:22:00.001-08:00

I'm looking forward to Sarah Palin, whose motherhood of Trig remains the subject of doubt, expressing how outraged she must be at people questioning the even-less doutbful details of Obama's birth.

Must see and hear

2009-02-21T06:44:00.001-08:00

Couple recommendations, one of which you can set on Netflix and take your time, the other of which comes on Monday, Feb 21.

First, Monday.

Last week CBS radio turned the lights off on the Adam Carolla show, a morning drive talk show out of LA. Adam, you may know, did 10 years as the Love Lines host with Dr. Drew, is the taller Man Show guy, along with a long list of projects in the comedy-central/jimmy kimmel world of comedy. I've been listening to his morning show for about 3 months or so and its routinely, effortlessly brilliant. He's genius-funny, and he is a consumate pro in the talk radio format. He does brilliant bits, he has tons of interesting guests and he does barrages of rifs off of news stories, Stern-style. Fantastic show. He also has no problem letting a genuine underlying intelligence shine through, which is the central thing missing from all bad radio.

So CBS spiked the show from its LA flagship (and affiliates Friday) to go Top 40. Whatever.

Well, Carolla has said he wil start broadcasting on his own Monday morning, on his dime. He won't have the foils he currently does (not having news chick Teresa, who is a legit comedy talent herself, will be tough), but he will have the freedom of the internet that radio does not allow.

I think he's such a creative powerhouse that it's inevitable that he's going to create something groundbreaking. Now, that might not be Monday. I'm certain he's gonna have to get his legs under him, including getting some sponsorship which he does not have. But Monday is the launch, and I think it will be worth hearing The First One when the show becomes a Big Deal.

Second - Mad Men.

Been meaning to put this out, but if you haven't plowed through the first season on DVD, then you're officially down another Seminal Show. THe second season has come and gone as well from AMC, but I can't speak for it because I haven't seen it. But Season 1 was a triumph. I'm not sure what categort it belongs in - Best Shows of the Decade, along with the Sopranos and The Wire? Or best Regular TV shows, along with The West Wing, Friday Night Lights and Real World Vegas? Well, its tone and delivery is solidly in the own-sweet-damn-time category of the HBO shows, as its brilliant-on-a-budget sets and music - all of which you'd have to expect from a show produced by AMC. But the writing is obviously a bit too confined by the 'regular' cable spot its on. THe show glows with sex, but its barren of onscreen hooking up. Of course, this is 1960, and that's the whole point - the world is suddenly drowning in sex as women show up to work, but neither side has any idea at all how to wink at it.
Still, this clearly ain't HBO.

So Monday listen in to Adam (i'd imagine he'll start streaming at 6am pac), and get Mad Men.

Terrific stuff.

2009-02-16T12:21:00.001-08:00

http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2009/02/06/willie-smits-is-saving-borneo-one-orangutan-at-a-time/

Yes. On occasion.

2009-02-14T16:48:00.001-08:00

When I was applying to schools in High School, I sent away for the
application from UNC CH. The cover was the Old Well (school symbol
that looks like a gazebo with a blue roof for those who don't speak
UNC) covered in snow.

I'd assumed from that day until I got here that snow is, ya know,
common in Chapel Hill, enough so that they put it on the cover of
their application.

Nope. Here's the first and only 'serious' effort at snow we've seen
in 2 winters here. From about a month ago.

HI! My name is...

2009-02-14T14:00:00.000-08:00

DSCN1061.JPG

Hoverbikes

2009-02-11T10:09:00.001-08:00

1 - The touchscreen is terrific and really worth having just because its so ahead of everything else you've had. Functionally, i think its true value is a) scrolling pages (say, up and down through your contact list, or a long webpage) and b) replicating a mouse on the web. Homerun execution for both.
    the squeezing/pnching/zooming "multi-touch" is good stuff, but not as intuitive or useful as you'd think. the only places i use it are on the web and the maps, and the responses are different or maybe just poor enough to seem different.

Downfall of the touchscreen is that its very sensitive, which causes some 'wtf' moments now and again, but that really starts to be a big deal when it makes it vulnerable to false-dials. A very common way to dial is this:
- pull up your 'favorites' which you do with a clever double-click of the main button.
- touch a name, which calls them (though the names are kinda small, which makes for more wrong ones than I would have thought)
- they hang up a second before you do, phone call ends. screen instantly reverts to your 'favorites' page.

then what happens? as you lower the phone from your ear, your fingers, wrapped around the phone (or maybe you switch hands for some reason), brush across the face and call somebody on that favorite page. You have no clue you've called them. the other day i left a 3 minute voicemail of me listening to the radio on somebody's phone because of this.

2 - the maps is great, incorporating most of the Google Maps Cool Stuff. However as a GPS unit the iPhone is really subpar. You can, as in google, easily produce directions from where you are (though not instantly), but a major missing piece is that it does not have active navigation (called turn by turn, i guess). I'm guessing Apple didn't want the headache of claiming to be a true GPS nav system, and have to deal with every ahole who got led down a street that isn't there, etc.
   But not only will it not guide you with "turn left in 200 yards" type directions, it won't even update your directions/trip info as you go. So if you're zooming up 85 to DC, there's no way to know if you're any closer than the 290 miles you started at without essentially relaunching the whole ap and starting over, which is a long series of inputs, clicks and screens that defy driving. Put another way, if you'd like to take it jogging to get a decent mileage/avg speed, forget it. it doesn't track anything, not even as a static route on your map.
   As for directions, it offers you this baffling "step by step" guide which is nothing but a line of text that says "merge onto I-95" and then you have to hit the "next" button - again, ridiculous when driving.
   Put another way, having an iphone "guide" your trip is no different than printing your directions at home.
   I understand there are GPS-specific aps out there with all the features, though I haven't gone after them.
   Major, major disappointment.

3 - If you type a lot, I refuse to believe that even the worst BBerry keyboard isn't better, and I have a specific reason why. A very cool - in fact, vital - part of the web browser is that you can turn the phone on its side and work/read long-ways. This allows you to read web pages much easier. Better still, when you come across a page that needs input, the keyboard appears and you get to type on a long-ways keyboard. These keys are huge, much bigger than a BBerry and more importantly at least twice as big as the tall-ways keyboard. On this big keyboard, you can nearly type with a full two hands, and can easily, rapidly and accurately type with thumbs.
   If this long-ways keyboard was the standard configuration, I would draw the line right now and say the iPhone is better than a BBerry.

But, impossibly, it is not. In the mail ap - where, obvioulsy, you do most of your typing - the ONLY option is the tall, super small and narrow keyboard. Mail, all parts of it, doesn't rotate. So you are stuck typing with the small keyboard, which defies thumbs and runs about 70-percent with an index finger hunt and peck.
   This applies as well to the iPhone's TXT app too - long-keyboard only.
   I don't get it - the code is already in the phone to make this happen. Just active the browser's 'rotate' routine in the Mail and SMS aps, and you double the value of this phone. Insane, and unlike the GPS thing I can't imagine a single good reason why.

Here is my testament to how bad it is: forget offering me the big, rotated keyboard. Keep it. just offer an option that puts the normal PHONE KEYPAD on screen in the tall configuration and lets me type/txt using a 9-button input system of ABC-DEF etc. Just make it an option - I'm used to it from years of my last phone. If apple's 'guessing' software is so good, they should be able to help me guess my words as i type on that rather than make guesses based on my wrong inputs on thier horrible tin keyboard.

4 - Having said that, the Mail Ap is WAY better than the any BBerry. Its simple, intuitive, powerful and easy. Handles all kinds of media flawlessly. you can view word, pdf, excel and some others seemlessly.
   Sum: Flawless platform for recieving emails, serviceable for dashing off quick replies. perhaps that's where the BB lands, too.

5 - the App store. Probably the true value. just about every site worth a crap makes an ap that delivers their content in simple, mobile-ready form. for instance, you can do facebook on the browser, but the facebook Ap is about 200X easier and better. But even better are the endless amounts of geek creativity you can come across. My favorite is "Say Where" which in two touches (a few more if looking outside your current location) lets me speak the name of a place into the phone and then it opens maps with my likely intended location highlighted (ie, "asian restraunt" opens a raliegh-sized map with about 10 places). That's third party.

google has similiar so you can speak your google searches ("Stormy Daniels GOP images") and it opens as a normal google search page. Nice.

I don't know what's going to happen with Android. But Apple is way in front and of the ONE compsci geeks I know here, he's trying to dedicate his life to writing iPhone aps and could give a shit about Android.

6 - Finally, the web. Its just great. Just a perfect ap that does everything seemlessly, instinctively and perfectly. My understanding is that nobody else is close, at least except for maybe the Storm.

THe 3G works fast, its great with wireless nets, and all that. No complaints at all.

I never looked at the imitators - Storm, Instinct, etc - because i was on ATT and avoided some fees by upgrading/pulling the student card, etc.

if i was coming in cold, I'd see if the others can compete with map features/GPS and have a better keyboard solution. If everything else was roughly even, I'd definetly consider a phone with a better keyboard solution (longways, fold out, whatever), and if the GPS was more robust it would be a no brainer.

matt

Fortune Cookie for today's job market

2009-01-26T12:18:00.000-08:00

Perhaps unreadable due to sorry-ass iPhone camera, but it says:

"Poverty is no disgrace"

Dixie

2009-01-19T18:41:00.001-08:00

From friend-of-friend Stephen Ready - statue in New Orleans.

Flight 1549: Best view

2009-01-17T13:16:00.000-08:00

If I'd have been there (and not had access to a boat), I'll tell you where I'd have wanted to be. On the shore in the background from this pic:

(vid capture image - click here for the actual video, from a surveliance camera, where you can actually - if barely - see the landing - long clip)

That's the Intrepid Museum, which has its own Concorde, as Flight 1549 floats by. The plane hit maybe a 1/4 mile up the river from there perhaps 90 seconds before. The boats you see there are just arriving.

And I can't help but imagine standing on the pier checking out the Concorde, thinking about the modern miracle of jet flight, then turn around to look out at the river and.... hey, is that a.... plane?

Here's a better pic of the Concorde at the museum - from this angle, there's a good chance you're actually looking at the impact spot behind it.

iPhone review Preview

2009-01-15T05:58:00.001-08:00

Seth here, who runs the outstanding 9to5mac.com, says the Palm Pre is faster than the iPhone.

http://blogs.computerworld.com/palm_pres_processor_beats_apple_iphone

To which I say: so what? What, exactly, is the iPhone slow at? It does movies, all manner of web surfing and essentially limitless connectivity. Are game apps running slow?

Much more to come with an iPhone review, but that's to get you thinking.

Best Food in Raliegh/Durham/Chapel Hill

2009-01-11T19:22:00.000-08:00

Not much to look at, but this is exit 278 on I-40, between Durham/Chapel Hill and Raliegh.

View Larger Map

It doesn't look like Walnut St. in Philly, but in the Triangle, it's Restraunt Row.

Thanks to the serpentine town borders, I believe this one actually falls in Chapel Hill, though if you leave central Chapel Hill, exit 278 is one exit past the mall that sits in Durham.

Tax rates aside, its the exit for the best food in the Triangle in at least two highly competitive categories, Thai and BBQ, though you'd certainy never suspect it as you exit the highway. You immediatly get a couple of bad strip malls (C-properties, they'd call them in the biz), a long-stay motel, a midgrade business hotel, a Chick-fil-A on the most prosperous corner, some garages, empty storefronts and poorly thought-out traffic lights.

Don't be deterred. You are about to find two absolute gems.

For the first, you certainly don't need to take my word for it - I found this place by asking the Thai students in my school where they go for good food. They all said the Thai Asian Buffet.

Look for it carefully. It's shoved in the elbow-corner of the Food Lion strip mall on the north side of the road.

Be sure you find it at 4900 NC Hwy 55 Ste 200. None of the map sites will pinpoint it correctly, and there are several Asian restraunts in the surrounding area, all with similiarly vague names, including the word 'Buffet.' Again: As you travel away from I-40, it's on your right.

For $7, you get full run of their 20-item buffet, which includes several kinds of dumplings, vegetable, chicken (orange, peanut, garlic, green bean, etc), and - the make-or-break for any Thai joint - Pad Thai. It's thick and on the hot side, with plenty of egg, peanut and chicken.
Also, the drinks are HUGE (tack on 1.50 for them), and you'll need them.

$7, killer food, lunch buffet on weekdays (menu at night and Satuday),

Or you could go just down the road a few miles, well past anything that might be called 'developed', down to an industrial-looking shop with a sign out front that says "Backyard BBQ Pit."

I found it from H. Kent Craig's remarkable North Carolina BBQ Reviews, where it was awarded the widely coveted:

Four-pig Approval!

Here's the full review.

We went in and met the new owners last year. They bought the place a year prior, and absolutely everything - greens, mac and cheese, sweet potatoes, cobbler, etc - gets made fresh, from scratch in the kitchen everyday.

And the BBQ is ridiculous. Soaking in flavor but not in sauce, moist and fresh and lean and just perfect.
I've eaten at every other 3- and 4-pig site Kent has on his site, and nobody is close.

Bonus Exit 278 Food tip: Head back up Highway 54 a few miles and you'll find the cloest Dunkin Donuts to Chapel Hill. Within a few clever turns and a mile of there is the best Chinese in the Triangle at China Palace.

Best easy dish: Sesame Chicken.
Best off the "Chef's special" menu: Squid Kung Pao. Holy cow, is that a terrific dish. Do NOT think you are getting anything like calamari. You are getting large, meaty strips of the octopus that attacked Captain Nemo. AWESOME. I've read everything else on the special menu is good, too.

Happy Epiphany!

2009-01-06T20:00:00.001-08:00

Today (Jan 12) is Epiphany. I wanted to mention it before it gets away, so you can remember to celebrate it, if you are so inclined in your faith, or at least to have one, which never hurts.

Today is the 12th day since Christmas (hence the song...), and supposedly the day the three wisemen got to Bethlehem (Western Christianity) or he was baptized in the River Jordan (Eastern Christians, although Eastern Christians apparently are on the Gregorian Calendar, so they'll be having their Epiphany on our Jan 19.). That overlap of calendars also means that today is, for Eastern Christians, Christmas Eve, so all you Eastern Christian Orthadox kids reading this - go to bed!

These events, depending o n which one you are celebrating, marked the revelation of Jesus as God, again, if you're so inclined.

More practically, its traditionally a Feast Day!! Hope you ate yourself stupid.

I know all this (or, rather, went and found out all this) because I bought a $1.99 pocket calendar at CVS a few weeks back to track workouts and apparently the pricing structure on this calendar is one cent per listed holiday. Below is the picture (30 minutes on the tread, 30 mins of Yoga, 3 sets of pulls - solid day).

So while I though maybe I was going to come to great realization about something today, it turns out that its 12 Drummer's Drumming (and for the Paul is Dead-on-Abby-Road hidden religious meaning of that song, check this out: http://www.cresourcei.org/cy12days.html). It also dovetails perfectly with my recent recommitment to learning impractical but interesting things.

Best Thai food in chapel hill/Durham

2009-01-05T11:04:00.001-08:00

Thai china buffet located in a perfectly disreputable shopping center

$7 eat until you die. Pad Thai comes pretty hot so have the drink ready

http://maps.google.com/?q=Thai+China+Buffet&cid=9801800321865918768

Sent from my hoverbike

Ethnic restaurant Fail

2009-01-02T14:39:00.000-08:00

The Fridge Pack is his canvas

2008-12-27T17:00:00.000-08:00

The series of pictures below are from a supermarket and a gas station in Valdosta, which is apparently home to a Coke delivery guy with artistic vision that is bold and grand, yet subtle and patient.

Observe, for instance, the splash of yellow that marks the snowman's scarf:

A closer inspection of the technique:

Before moving on, look again at the larger portrait - can you name the brand that makes gives the carrot-nose its distinctive orange glow?

Now, from the same conveience store, the Christmas Tree. Gorgeous, eh? TO be sure, a child could use Sprite for the blue-green pine boughs, but the leap to two brands of Fanta as ornaments begins to mark the artist. And who among the greats would think: "tree bark? Pibb!"

So much for minor works. Let's examine the artist in full bloom:

Let's take this image fully in:

- Two Christmas trees (again, with Pibb trunks, and each topped with a florish) flank a chimney, which holds a Christmas wreath in its center. Below is the Christmas hearth - the fire glows, its heart orange with green and blue hints at the top of its flames. The base is golden.

And are those Christmas presents wrapped up in front? Or just a stack of ignored Vault? In all great art there is mystery.

Finally, take a look at this last one, a fabled work even grander in scope and vision than the Chimney piece above, but - perhaps fittingly - captured only in the ghostly image of a 2005 cell phone camera.

Behold, from the Five Points Winn-Dixie, circa early November, the masterpiece that is "Go Dawgs!"

Good Jobs: Raising a Doctor, Part II

2008-12-27T14:23:00.000-08:00

I drove out to Quitman, town about 300 yards long, the other night with Judy. Judy grew up in Quitman and lived there until her kids were grown and she got divorced. She re-booted her life with a 20 mile move to Valdosta. So she knows the town in and out.

First house drivng into town is positively soaking with Christmas lights, every sharp line traced in bulbs, the trees and bushes bound in color, the windows all alight.

"That man that lives there, he ran a pawn shop," she said. "He used to lend out all kinds of money, and go collect with a baseball bat."

She laughed. I laughed. Quitman is like that and I like those stories.

"His son is a cardiac surgeon now."

Fastball, fastball, hook. Don't feel bad kid, it worked on Babe Ruth, too.

Pray for the Angels, cuz they ain't got'em

2008-12-25T17:56:00.001-08:00

One of the very earliest - possibly THE earliest - time that I remember distinctly thinking, "man, I gotta remember that line" was certainly before I was 10, and was in a movie about a kid in a euro-Enghlish-middle-ages village who bounces through time with a peter pan/robin hood-type friend. At some point, wanting lunch, the Peter Pan kid says, 'let's go get real food!' or whatever and he blinks or snaps his fingers or what have you and - bang - they timetravel from whatever dreary moment they are in to an Alp-top mountain meadow where a banquet is laid out of food from around the world, including - I'm pretty sure - fried chicken.

And the Pan-like guy, biting into a leg, says to his buddy, 'The chicken legs come with the skin still on and pray for the Angels, cuz they ain't got'em.'

That's all I remember about the movie (an after-school special-deal, maybe?). But it made an impression

I'm reminded of that line everyday this Christmas. Actually, almost twice a day and to be precise, nine times in the last fiv e days. Because we our in our fifth Day in Valdosta, and M's mom, Judy, is on her ninth or at least 9th creation of baking/confection/butter, sugar, flour and-they-ain't-got'em.

The roll, which is possibly partial, sugar comas being bad for memory:

1 - Red Velvet with white frosting and pecans. And son, if you don't like red velvet cake, you ain't ever had peas for dessert.
2 - Better-than-sex cake, a raunchy name for chocolate cake, 2 layers of carmel, cool-whip frosting and covered in Heath Bar sprinkles.
3 - Banana Creme pudding, which to the top of the swirl is a solid 15 inches.
4 - What M calls "chocolate cake," but is really 3 layers of yellow cake mortared together with and entombed in chocolate frosting.
5 - Pumpkin spice-something which tasted way better than pumpkin-anything ever should.
6 - Pound cake with walnuts
7- Blueberry Cobbler
8 - About four dozen cream cheese cookies
9 - Little chocolate cups - as inm about 20 of them - filled with frozen cream cheese and a cherry on top that were just... stupid.

And every morning waiting on the breakfast table: all the bacon you can carry in both arms.

And hey, before Jan 1 and you lose the tax break, go support the Forces of Good in the battle for the Internet:

Good Jobs: Raising a Doctor, Part I

2008-12-23T10:17:00.001-08:00

We had a party the other night, and a friend brought someone I didn't know, a young med student/doctor (I'm never been wholly clear when you stop being one and become the other) in her residency at Chapel Hill (is a resident a real, full-speed doctor? I know the answer is yes, but why do they work so hard for such bad pay and never get do anything by themselves?), after graduating from a high-end med school (OK, so that makes her a doc, I guess).

So she was nice and we talked a bit about ER-fun, which medically trained people love to discuss (truthfully, with just a few months worth of ER/trauma work, I'm usually behind a bit), and then she asked me about getting a job so we talked about real estate in Florida (those four words passing for a genuine excuse nowadays for most real estate job seekers), and she mentioned her parents had missed a chance to sell their house for $850K a year ago in Miami.

Yip, I said. Lot of that going around in Miami.

Its just too big for them, she said, now that my sister and I are gone. And my dad is gone Monday thru Friday, so what's the point of a big place?

Right, I said. What's he do?

And i expected her to say... "big shot lawyer" or "road-warrior consultant" or "techno-corporate brianiac in charge of tons of far-flung stuff."

Cuz who else is gone 5 days a week with an $850K (now on sale) house?

She said: He works for (a very major national bakery of tons of astoundingly good cakes and such). They have bakeries in (three cities, not miami), and he spends every week at one of them. He never went to college, just started at the bakery after high school.

Really? I said. So I turned to the friend who had brought her to the party, a guy I know, shook my head and said: "See that. Forget this MBA thing - the world's full of cool jobs."

So we discussed her dad for a bit, flushing out his resume so to speak: High school educated, spends his week on the road making stuff everybody just loves to eat too much of, then comes home on the weekend to his damn-near $million home in Miami, with a daughter finishing up her residency besides (I'm gonna go ahead and add that she, and therefore he, was black, only because I think it adds a few more rungs to the high school-grad-to-father-of-doctor-ladder)

Yip. Screw recessions. The world's full of cool jobs.

Divided Wii fall

2008-12-21T20:28:00.000-08:00

Today's blogpost will not happen because I got pulled into Wii tennis and then Wii fit with my nephew and niece (the tennis part ended when my niece, on a forehand smash, smashed HER niece - my daughter - with the controller, who had run over to her to play).

Later during Wii, J came back for more abuse, and hopped on the fit platform-thing to help on a couple games. that was fun.

So tomorrow, for sure, I'll address the picture below, which will be chapter 1 of my new Cool Jobs postings. And for missing today, I might go ahead and post Chp 2 as well, which is really, really good one.

And Wii fit results: my Wii age is 34, 2 better tan Reality Age, which is good enough for now. Still, gotta work on that.

and now.. Crazy Japanese video.

Some OL-H pub

2008-12-20T20:47:00.000-08:00

(sent to a few pararescue friends last week)
>

>
> after a Three's Company-like misunderstanding with Netflix ("I
> thought YOU wanted to see it!"), we ended up with Transformers last
> night. And that is absolutely the greatest robots-that-turn-into-
> cars movie ever made.
> no, its just an awful, loud, insanely stupid movie that has one of
> those terrifc trap-openings that makes you think its going to be good.
> THe trap is that it opens at a 'special forces' air force base in
> Qatar, and piles on both the mil-porn hardware and every concievable
> somethihg-evil-this-way-comes military movie cliche on earth in
> about 5 minutes. There's the no-non-sense General, the barked
> commands, the soldier on the vid conference with his wife when the
> lights go out (the wife is even holding a newborn - full marks!),
> the 'This is our last mission/don't even say the word 'home'" talk
> among the Team, and a symphony of bullshit-radio-chatter with
> airplanes ("target acquired good tone" "cleared hot into killzone
> alpha bravo").
> THe chatter, of course, comes from when the transformer-monster
> thing attacks the base. pretty cool.
>
> best part though, and the only reason I mention this movie at
> all: to the credit of the producers, the "special ops team" which
> opens the movie and becomes central characters, is geared up about
> right, weapons and uniform-wise, and the Black Guy is - ta da! - a
> CCT (which, plot-wise, means he's doomed to a dreary life of
> grabbing any radio within 100 yards of him and wildly yelling
> "danger close!" into the mic, even if its the PA system at Wrigley
> field (that doesn't happen. i'm just saying that if the robot battle
> made its way to the Pressbox, it would)).
> So, how does the movie let you know, for sure, that's Cee-tee-
> tee? Well, for one as the movie opens and The Team is flying back
> from a Mission, the other guys are properly attired in Army gear,
> but he's wearing Air Force gear (Tech stripes, in fact, same as me).
> Then they get back to the base for a few minutes of R&R before
> the robot shows up - just enough time, apparently for him to strip
> down to his t-shirt, which says "USAF" and - ta DAAAAAA! - throw on
> The Red Hat. So when the robot attacks, he sprints across camp in
> just camo pants, USAF tshir and the Red Hat, screaming "danger
> close!" into his radio, his empty fist and every vacant outhouse he
> passes.
> And for the rest of the movie, through helicopter crashes and
> Hoover Dam explosions (don't ask) and Robot-vs-motorcycle-vs-F-22s-
> Vs-DangerClose battles on La Cienga in downtown LA, he NEVER takes
> off the hat. Never. It burns bright like a shining Red Hat Beacon.
> HEEEEElarious, but nice work none the less.

Truck Fire

2008-12-20T14:27:00.001-08:00

Came across a pretty vicious car fire on the interstate yesterday, and its led me to reflect on the coming year.

It was thursday afternoon. We were headed west on I-40 about 20 minutes outside of Chapel Hill, very near Mebane. For I-40 travelers, Mebane is a terrific off-ramp of gas stations. Always the cheapest or near-cheapest gas between Raliegh and Charlotte. I-40 is 8 lanes wide at this point (4 each way - I've never been clear on the right way to refer to a freeway, by its total lanes (8) or one way (4) - kinda one of those "is 'easterly winds' from the east or to the east" deals). There is no median except for emergency pull out lanes, with the two sides jammed up against each other, seperated only by a concrete wall barrier (hip-to-chest high).

My mind was on the stop in Mebane we were about to make for gas and a snack. I stopped at the same place - the Sheetz gas station - every week over the summer when I weekend-communted between Ral and Clt (that's the Charlotte airport's ID letters - CLT - you can look it up). I was thinking about the 8 hours in the car ahead of us, the chaos of the trip in general and the thick traffic I was - semis, crazy commuting traffic, etc - when I saw on the other side of the road a pickup truck clearly just starting to catch fire.

It was on the far shouder of the road where it had obvioulsy just come to a stop. Flames were starting to come out of the hood, but there wasn;t much smoke yet. It obviously had just started. THe cabin looked like it had a lot of smoke in it.

What I didn't see was the driver running around in panic or standing by in horror. In fact, I didn't see anybody at all outside the truck.

So I picked up on all that in the, perhaps, 8 seconds I had as we approached it. When we drew up nearest it, passing the spot by, I looked closely at the passenger compartment. And I think I saw a guy in there.

THinking about it now, later, the door was closed - which has to be a sure-fire indicator that nobody had yet got out, right?

Now, seeing what I thought was a guy, I had a couple fast thoughts: was anyone obvioulsy already there trying to help? Nope. No other stopped cars.

How about traffic slowing down, meaning someone would be about to help? Nope. Traffic on that side - thick and full across all 4 lanes - was still rolling past at highway speed. No sea of brakelights.

Well... cops or firefighter? Nope. No lightbars to be seen.

Now I'm perhaps 5 seconds past the scene, and my mind is racing more:

The cabin is full of smoke already. Regardless what you see on TV, a person can stay conscious in a cabin full of smoke for maybe 15 seconds. Whoever is in that cabin had best open that door and roll out by the time i get done thinking this, or he's dead.
   Or somebody can run up and open the door and maybe - maybe - save them.

Ya know... somebody.

And so now - still, maybe 7 seconds past the place - my mind rips through the math:

I'm 2 lanes to the right, so I'd have to swerve over two to get to my median. 10 seconds. THen stop. 100 yards. Then get out - and its a barely-drivable median-lane, so the door may not open against the wall. Hop the wall. Run back. Wait/wave for traffic to stop to get across 4 lanes of busy traffic.

Im in sandals and a polo shirt - can't kick or elbow a window in those and really, can I kick a window? Is that even remotely possible?

That's 3 minutes away, at least... so the guy is gonna be already out or dead. On top of that (and here my mind, I think, started buring off adreniline by really diving into the worse-case), if you get there and he's dead, he might not be alone in that damn truck cuz the only reason I can think of that somebody wouldn't bail out of a smoke-filled car is because I'm too busy trying to un-fuck the buckles on a kids seat, and is that something you want rattling around your head for the next 50 years?

I got my own occupied carseat in this seat, thanks.

And the road is rolling past at 100+ feet per second and with the spot still visible in my rearview mirror, it hits me that this - me making any effort at all to effect what I just say - is not going to happen.

Quartermile. Halfmile. And its gone.

After a minute or so, Mandy wonders if we should call 911. No, I say. Somebody for sure will have done that. Cuz you can count on people to lift thier cell phones to help.

So I spent several minutes wondering, calculating: that truck was, at least as we passed, no more than 50 feet away. Was it truly unreachable? My instincts calculated speed, distance and safety - so how many more seconds of lead time would I have needed back up the road? Or how many fewer lanes of traffic? If it had been a wide, grass median? Or if M and J weren't in the car? or if I was wearing better shoes and jeans?

Or: Why didn't I instantly hit the brakes when I saw flames and look for an open lane?

Was I looking for a way to do it, or was I looking for a way not to? And, as always - as with all things - once you miss that key second, you don't need reasons anymore because the chance is gone.

It was a fitting way to open the last week of 2008, because for me this was the year of close calls. More than any other year of my life, a long list of things almost happened for me, to me or with me, but in the end didn't. There were jobs I almost got but didn't because I slipped up in the last possible interview; there were jobs I almost got and nailed all the interviews but the economy evaporated. There were good nights out I missed because earlier that week i'd been too lazy to line up a babysitter. There were weekend trips I set up that dissolved in a blizzard that cancelled every flight on the east coast.
   There were people I could have been nicer to, people I could have taken more seriously. Things I could have written but didn't.
   And there was the truck fire.

Most, of course, didn't matter and several turned out to be blessings. A couple of them, though, stung a bit.

And so the final thing is this: not stopping - or not trying to stop - for the truck was an easy, wise and safe decision for me, surrounded by my fragile family, rushing traffic and rushing concrete. In fact, it was hardly a decion at all, and one that would never be wrong if you made it a thousand times over.

Unless, just one time out of those thousand, you were the guy in the truck.

Next post will be to fill in some thoughts on the picture below.

Smok'n Pig

2008-12-20T07:31:00.001-08:00

Taken December 19, 2008

Things I've learned to do in 2008

2008-09-08T06:52:00.001-07:00

1 - waterski.
2 - juggle.

Things I learned to do in 2007

2008-09-07T07:25:00.000-07:00

This is compared to 2007's list, which was

1 - change diapers
2 - that Cracker Barrel peg game (I can now 'win' with the initial empty hole in any position. And, yes, I taught myself)

Happy Birthday

2008-02-17T19:20:00.000-08:00

I am one to look for foreshadows and omens, and I thought I'd found the one I needed for the birth of our daughter in the the last movie Mandy and I saw last week, "Children of Man." It's a bleak-future action movie, with Clive Owen and, inexplicably, Julianne Moore and it's full of tricks and turns and thrills, and it willfully never lets any of its characters actually speak its own obvious premise: The world is rational, Godless, cold and lost, but even so, childbirth – and only childbirth – is mystic and Divine.

I left the theatre thinking that, as last-week-of-pregnancy omens go, I'd take it, even if it ran a bit heavy on cruelty and despair. If you need a Sign, you take what you can get.

But then, in the final hours, we got a better one.

The TV in our hospital room was on a closed-circuit channel which spent the day playing helpful reminders about washing hands and discharge procedures until, deep in the middle of the night, somebody threw in a tape of "Coal Miner's Daughter."

Coal Miner's Daughter is

a) probably Mandy's favorite movie
b) surely the best movie ever made in and around Nashville
c) the unrivaled Gold Standard for on-screen southern accents
d) the finest movie ever made about love and the American Family.

Through the guileless Sissy Spacek, we watch Lorretta Lynn leave her family in Kentucky as a young girl, and live a long, turbulent and ultimately happy life with Moonie Doolittle, aka Doo, a role swallowed whole by Tommy Lee Jones.

There's country music in there, but it's not really the point. The point is the role of family in finding happiness.

It was a perfect way to get ready for Judith Francesca White, who was born at 11:42 Nashville time after 24 hours of labor and 20 remarkably brief minutes of final pushing. You can call her Jude, since Mandy is determined to.

There's a long list of emotions and declarations you're supposed to have and make on such a day, but other than delight at the sheer newness of it all (which felt shamefully consumer-ish when it hit me), I didn't take any emotional roundhouse kicks to the skull. I didn't cry or faint and remain baffled to the point of outright doubt that anybody would ever want to pass out cigars to their buddies after such a day, like they'd just closed a big merger or bombed Iraq.

But I'll tell ya who WAS blown away: Jude.

I watched her arrive, and I was expecting to see something gross or gorgeous or crying or spastic or shriveled or conceivably even dead, but what I didn't expect was to actually see her face, and to see on it the single most unmistakable expression in all of human facial expression: the What-The-Fuck-Just-Happened? face.

And you can quote me cognitive brain function stats and lecture me on the dangers of projecting adult (or just selfish) emotions onto children. I get the whole, "you think she's smiling at you, but really she just has gas"-thing.

But my daughter could grow up to be The One and choose the red pill and wake up in the Matrix with cords sticking out of her back and she won't be half as surprised as she was to be born this morning. I was watching her face as the doc rolled her over, cord still on, to clear her airway. Trust me: she absolutely could not believe that just happened. It didn't go away when they cleaned her up, when Mandy and I got to hold her, or when I took her to the nursery. She just looked around, obviously thinking:

"WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED?"

So from that moment on, I was utterly absorbed in considering the moment from her side. And that's when it all became terrifying.

Because I thought, 'wow, you just learned about "cold" "bright" "loud" and how to breathe in about 10 seconds! What a learning curve! Everything else from here will be EASY!'

Only, it won't be.

Today she was born, and wrapped in blankets with blue and pink animals and a little hat and a cute dress-thing we bought here (red flowers all over it), she's perfect. She's everything she can be, everything we want for her.

Tomorrow morning, the pediatrician is going to come see her for the first time, and ruin it.
What he's going to do, essentially, is give her a report card. Responds to verbal-Check Plus. Cries to painful stimulus-Check, Skin tone-Needs Work. The first of 10 million little exams, reports and scores that will tell Jude that she's good at this, but not at that.

Well, I've spent the last month applying to business schools, which make you spell out in excrutiating detail, over vast essays, what you are good at. To do so, you have to first get a very clear understanding of what you're NOT good at, and steer your essays away from those cliffs. And in order to know where the cliffs are, you have to think back to times when people told you that you were no good at something.

In short, applying to business school makes you catalog and relive all the times you've ever been told you suck. It is a 3-month journey of relentless self-doubt.

And Jude gets her first taste tomorrow.

Not really, of course. What really happens is I get MY first taste for her tomorrow. And its true that the pediatrician might say something scary – any one of hundreds of those baby-disorder lottery words – but he'll probably say that she's 100 percent healthy and in perfect shape with no problems, and while you're here, Doc, just what the hell is that supposed to mean?

Cuz it could mean, "no blood in stool and clear lungs." Or it could mean "she will be elected by 7 billion voters as the first Global Prime Minister at age 35, having cured AIDS and all strains of loneliness in her late 20s. Unless you, first-time parent, screw it up for her between now and then."

What REALLY happened today was that while Jude sat there mystified and bewildered at being born, I was nearly paralyzed thinking about how I was going to ruin it.

Starting from the moment your kid is born (or at least from the second your pediatrician signs off on it) your kid is a Nobel Prize winner. But it's up to you to keep the rocket on that perfect straight-up trajectory. Each little wobble decays the apex just a bit, and the earlier the wobble, the worse the decay.

With the slightest hiccup, you lose the Nobel, and settle for a Sakharov Prize or a Pulitzer or a maybe just a Fields Medal (lousy Fields Medal…). Then something else goes wrong – wrong 6-month day care? – and suddenly they aren't even getting a Rhodes Scholarship and the wheels are coming completely off. If you allow just a few glances at prime time TV anytime in the first 12 years, they're a crummy Salutatorian in an inner-ring suburban high school and one more wobble away from an Intervention episode.

And the earlier, the more magnified the effect. In the first week – hell, first years – the slightest of slip-ups is the difference between the 52nd President of the United States and being in rehab by 14.

We're dealing with a slippery slope here!

And I haven't even gotten into chronic diseases and driver's licenses and internet porn and consumer debt and the current make-up of the Supreme Court... How did we ever find time to invade Iraq and cure polio and break up the Beatles with all these anti-baby death-forces massed in every direction!

Greatest Day Of My Life? Are you friggin' kidding me? Do you even know what the Fed is hinting about inflation? DO YOU?

And then Jude burped. Just a tiny one. Breathing's hard if you've only been at it for 15 minutes and no one has bothered to show you how (particularly not the moron looking at your expecting to see facial expressions) and your fingers are the size of sunflower seeds but still have perfectly formed nails for some miraculous reason. That's another one I was also totally unprepared for.

So she'll figure out breathing, the pediatrician will introduce her to performance evaluations (actually, she already has one: AGPAR between 8 and 9. Perfect score is 10. Damn. So much for the free trip to Norway), and we'll go from there.

And someday soon – not real soon, but maybe 12 or 14 years down the road – we'll sit down together and watch Coal Miner's Daughter and she'll be old enough to sing some of the songs, which are great, and understand about Family and Happiness and then the train station scene will come on and Loretta's dad will lean down and hold her as the train pulls up, and tell her that he ain't ever gonna see his little girl again, and if Jude picks that moment to glance over at me, it might be her turn to see that expression that just says: "What the fuck just happened?"

Pirates: At Series End

2008-02-10T15:57:00.000-08:00

Pirates of the Caribbean 3: skip it. Seriously. Its about 3 hours with maybe 12 minutes - maybe 8 - of slight fun. Horrible script on a truly unfollowable and dumb plot. Just awful.

One question: the second movie was much worse than the first, though much better than this one. Its strongest sequences, by far, where the daffy feats of kinetic gymnastics that the characters performed in a series of chase scenes and sword fights. And what really set them apart was that except for single set shots, they weren't computer generated. They were real stunts.
The sword fight inside a runaway, rolling waterwheel - the combantants dueling as they run like hampsters inside the wheel - was the best live stunt I've seen this decade. It felt like an 80s action movie. Brilliant!
This movie has so little real stunts/action versus absurd - truly awful - CGI, you might as well just turn you iTunes onto tht funky visualizer that makes your computer a kalediscope. Its just as real as any of the 'action' in the dreary Pirates3, with better music.

Cloverfield, Juno

2008-02-09T11:13:00.001-08:00

Juno: nice little movie not worth near the hype its getting. Its a small movie, full of funny teenage humor which mostly works. On the other hand, it gets those laughs by applying standard high school-movie timing, mood and structure - like American Pie or 10 Things I Hate About You - to a protaganist who is a 16 year old pregnant girl. In fact, the movie opens with Juno going into a convience store to buy a third pregnancy test, because she rejects the results of the first two with Julia Stiles-calbier haughtiness. THe clerk is the guy who plays Dwight from The Office. As she buys, uses and - inexplicably - reports the results from the test, the Dwight/clerk guy mercilessly taunts her about it in his geeky-Dwight way.
Wait- a 16 year old gets pregnant and its fair game for snide jokes from loser 30+ guys working at 7-11? huh?
When the characters aren't throwing bathroom-slash-sex jokes at each other, its a well rounded, small movie, with small, catchy songs. In fact, the music - airy folk tracks from nameless, squeeky guitar-and-Starbucks acts - is a great metaphor for how big the movie should be, which is not big at all. A central conciet - a 16 year old can deal with pregnancy with sarcasm and a little help from quirky parents - and some nice execution. And nowhere near Great Movie status. THis should be a Showtime series, not an Oscar nominee.

Also not an Oscar nominess is Cloverfield, because it isn't trying to be. It wants to be a 3- or 4-chase-scene monster/horror movie set in - give or take - the post-human chaos of NYC on the morning of 9/11 only with a Godzilla instead of terrorists. It also doesn't want to benchpress even a single plate from the Traditional Horror rack of cliches, which is why its so fun. Instead, its a whole horror movie shot from POV, the 'internet' term for somebody filming their life.
So you get: not a stitch of backstory. not a note of music. shockingly little gore, cuz when the monsters attack, the guy routinely drops his camera and screams leaving the fight to be recorded in blurrs and whizzes of motion and split-second frames, and a wholly un-'And-that's-why-it-was-the-craziest-summer-Camp-Tititkaka-ever-had' ending.
Frankly, I can't believe it hasn't earned a name like the Godzilla Witch Project or something.
Its fun and fast, at least, after a shockingly long opening act, wherein the camera (the film's real hero) begins its night recording a going away party among friends before the monster hits and ruins not just NYC but the party, too. THe movie is a TV-like 84 minutes long, of which this party seems to last, oh, 15 or 20 minutes.
The final shot - and I mean, the last 15 seconds before the credits - is a fun little easter egg. Don't miss it.

Lost - Ep 2, Season 4

2008-02-07T19:49:00.001-08:00

Now THAT was a great episode. First one in years, actually. Advanced the story, gave up a secret or two, reconnected with the mysticism (how is the one guy connected? what's Miles' crazy ghost story?). They even mentioned the monster! I think that was basicly a placeholder, sort of an early "we'll-get-to-it!" promise that they're going to loop back for some of the Season 1 stuff.

Also, UNC's basketball team is just terrible. I know they didn't have Lawson, but there's Hansbrough, and nobody else can play! Nobody can make a shot, nobody can play at all, nobody can run a screen and nobody can drive and dish. Other than that, Coach Williams really had them ready.

Prius Turns 15

2007-06-29T07:46:00.001-07:00

Very close to the Georgia-Florida border on I-75 last night, my Prius hit 15,000 miles. Its only been six months and two weeks since I bought it, which extrapolates out to almost 30K this year, or junk status sometime in 2009. Fortunately, the next 6 months (and beyond) should be significantly more stationary than the last 6 have been. I'd like to think the odometer still has a chance to close out the decade under six-figures, but you never know.

But reaching that mark, I think, is reason enough to put up a semi-serious review.

Since reviews of the Prius tend to gush with superlatives - and I intend to join the flood - I'll first swim upstream and complain about a few things first.

What sucks:

1 - this is the only "how could they?" mistake about the car: driving at night, a REALLY obvious and annoying line of light appears on the windshield, at the center of the driver's view. It's the result of a complicated, 2-bounce reflection from the dashboard/readout. The Prius offers no dials or gauges, only a digital speedometer and line of warning lights lined up DEEP in the dash. That display glows out onto the dashboard. It is the reflection of that glow that you see in the windshield. It would not be visible on most cars, but since the Prius windshield is very long, the angle is just right to reflect into your eyes. Its not blinding but its WAY annoying and over a long trip could turn semi dangerous. The ONLY solution is to turn down the dash intensity on a dial next to the steering wheel. That means you have to turn it back up the next day.
I can think of like 6 ways to fix this in the design process, but none now. How could Toyota have missed this?

2 - My gas gauge isn't very good. It "sticks" on full for at least 150 miles, then plummets, and hits the "add fuel" blinking line at inconsistent levels. Not a design flaw, but a bigger glitch than I experienced in any of my three previous cars (two Subarus and a Honda).

3 - The computer is pretty boring. The Prius comes with a big screen and obviously lots of brains. Yet its system of displaying current MPG and energy usage is dull and mostly lame. If I had GPS or sat radio or whatever, i'd keep it on that, but I don't so i'm stuck with the lame computer readout.

4 - Spare tire is one of those horrible mini-tires. Found out the hard way.

5 - Design is absolutely, totally incompatible with a dog gate/fence. In my previous cars (a Subaru Forester and WRX wagon and, briefly, a Mazda3 hatchback), you could easily wedge a dog guard up against the rear seats in the back compartment. In both cars, I pinned it in place with the "cargo cover" attachment (that's the stange bar that a cover rolls out of like a window shade). This concern - keeping my dog in the back, off the seats - was a MAJOR reason why I bought consecutive wagon-models.
In the Prius, the hatchback door attaches to the roof foward of the rear seats. Therefore, any fence/rails cannot be attached or even wedged against the roof. Very disappointing, and Toyota offers no installable dog gate. The only upside is that the Prius cieling is so low that my dog has trouble jumping over the seats.
If anyone has figured out how to keep a dog in the rear area, let me know.

Short of those complaints, the car is what it should be: a small, simple, trouble free car that gets 45 MPG. And that's a legit 45 - I track my mileage and fuel consumption. THe car's computer always comes out 1-2 MPG better than what the number say.
Underpowered? A bit. I cruise easily at 70-75, even 80. Beyond that, you can feel and hear the engine pushing.

The best part of the Prius is not any feature. The radio is adequate, the features well thought out but basic, and the interior is sharp but unremarkable. I don't take any satisfaction from its "green" side, which is hardly appreciable. After driving the car for 15K, its clear that all cars will soon be like this. You get the same car at twice the mileage - how could they not? But I don't really take satisfaction from the "drive The Future" aspect, either. If anything, its just embarrassing that its 2007 and this is still new ground.

What is REALLY great about the Prius is the psychological freedom you get that I'd lost in my last few cars. My WRX got, at best, 25 MPG. The forester, only slightly better. Even the Mazda3, which I drove gingerly to milk some effieincy out of it, topped out at 29.
As gas prices exploded in the last 3 years, that tacked on more and more weight to every trip, from days-long roadies to trips to the 7-11. The value of every ounce double, then almost doubled again, in less than 2 years.
First, I stopped driving too fast, ever (a shame when you own a WRX, or even a 3). Then I found myself focusing on which stretches of road I could put the gear into neutral to coast. A red light, with its minute of idling and then gas-guzzling acceleration, ruined my mood.
I'm not sure I skipped any driving to save gas, but I never drove anywhere without resenting the need to. Blockbuster, huh? How far is that? Anything else we can do on the way there or back to save a trip later?
Gas prices became The Next Creeping Thing, like too much sun or teenagers hanging out on your street.

And then I bought the Prius, and set my mind at ease. Driving no longer feels like paying interest on your life. If I get to work and realize I left something at home, I turn around and drive home, just as I always would have. What I don't do is bitterly compute the gas money I'm spending all the way there and back.
Its a peace of mind I compare to the ignition and starting process. In the Prius, there is no key. The key sits in your pocket, communicating electronically with the car, telling it you are there. You sit down, put your foot on the brake and hit the well-placed power button. Silently, the dashboard lights up and almost immediatly displays the word 'ready.' No coughing explosion of an engine turning over, no twisting of keys. Click. Ready. And, silently, drive.
That's a perfect analogy to the Prius peace of mind. I don't drive more than I used to. I just drive easier.

The King of The 80s Returns

2006-09-28T02:17:00.001-07:00

Consider: Among musical acts, who 'won' the 80s? Who hit huge in the 1980s - at least as big as, say, The Thompson Twins, just as a baseline - and kept an active, relevent career the longest (ie, Night Ranger's perpetual "Sister Christian" tour on the state fair circuit
doesn't count)?

I say they still haven't cut down nets, but we have our finalists:

The Beastie Boys
Wierd Al

(And I'll entertain George Strait nominations. But hasn't he put out the same song about 30 times since 1992, and UHF trounces Pure Country anyway)

So Weird Al's latest album, Straight Outa Lynwood, hit yesterday.

If his last album, Poodle Hat was an A+, and the one before, RUnning With Scissors was an A-, then this one is B- at best.

Truthfully, he doesn't really get hit any of the songs in the sweet spot. Best is probably Canadian Idiot, based on Green Day's American Idiot. Funny (and dead on), but the jokes don't really crack or pop. The same could be said for the other 11 tracks. The jokes, unlike the last two albums, are tired and strictly junior high.
The single out now, White and Nerdy, is pretty good, but then, what does that song that Prety Fly For a White Guy didn't?
The closest to really laugh-out-loud funny is probably Close But No Cigar, which chronicles meeting three perfect women and dumping them for inconsequential details ("she was always using the word 'infer' when she obviously met 'imply'/... I told her, 'are we playin' horseshoes, honey, no I don't think we are/ You're close - but no cigar")
But even the polka medly - usually a bankable homerun - comes up a little slow (maybe because I'm unfamiliar with a large percentage of the songs parodied in it). Compared to Angry White Boy Polka from Poodle Hat, its not even close.
So its a good album, but as Al puts it "Are we dong Government work here? No I don't think we are - You're close, but no cigar."

The King of The 80s Returns

2006-09-28T02:17:00.000-07:00

Laguna Beach 3: They stand up, we stand down.

2006-08-19T17:03:00.000-07:00

We'll start with a quiz of the Drudge-advertiser variety – match the
gender to the Laguna Beach Season 3 character:
Kyndra
Kel
Lex
Rocky
Cam
Tess
Chase
Cam
Answers below

I can't think of a rational link between our Iraq adventure and the
social narrative of MTV's Laguna Beach, but after the debut of Season
3, I'm convinced there is one.

Season 1 was the invasion and the illusion of success. The locals
appeared friendly, sort of, and there was reason to believe that peace
and good intentions might win out. The fabulously rich and spoiled,
it turned out, were good hearted, eclectic, curious, quirky and
occasionally bright (also, Lauren and Kristen were Bond-girl hot in a
two-piece, which they habitually wore). They were like us, and when
they weren't exactly like us, they behaved like we hoped we might,
as when Steven juggled the affections of Lo and Kristen, and actually
looked for a decent option to spare the loser with a fair peace.
These kids did normal things like beg their parents for cars, fail
algebra, look lost when they visited the big city and get drunk when
their parents weren't looking.

But was this whole experiment breeding a new generation of terror-kids?

Season 2 was the slow slide to anarchy as the locals and the influx
of new blood lost respect for authority and realized that – in the
vacuum of the power left by the invasion – they could do anything they
want, anytime they wanted. They got drunk in limos and around their
pools in the middle of the day. They deployed sex in more and more
ruthless, haphazard ways, and the body counts piled up. Dignity and
brains (and any semblence of 'normal' high school behavior)
disappeared as ruthless, cruel kids rushed in to grab turf, all
orbiting militia-head Kristen, who was rumored to be dating people
like Nick Lachey Matt Leinart, the King of LA, where EVERYONE said
they were moving. Like all Khans before her, Kristen ruled with
cruelty, ruining enemies and friends alike almost every week.

Had we lost control? Was it time for a different course?

It's legacy at stake, MTV pushed on.

Now it's Season 3 and regardless of what Tony Snow might call it,
we're in open civil war. The insurgents are now the only power, and
their only voice is violence. Like Al Zakahir, Kristen is gone, and
rival groups are now inventing new ways to be horrible to each other.

Like this Kyndra. Holy crap. DO NOT get caught out alone in any
sector of the city her loyalists control. One minute you're getting
sushi with some water polo buddies, the next minute you're blindfolded
with dudes holding swords behind you.

This week's season debut culminated in a pool party at Kyndra's
house, with key lieutenant Cami, the kind of pool party where all the
girls wear jeans and corsets (?), playing tough to the normal
distribution of skinny jocks.

(sidenote: Cami must REALLY be easy, because despite huge tits she's
the worst looking central character to date)

In walked Tessa and her bestest friend Rocky. Kyndra was Super pissed.
Glares, pointed fingers, fabulously fake hugs. Nothing new here.

Then we saw just how bad its got.

The two camps – Tessa's and Kyndra's – separated into groups across
the pool deck, and, after a few minutes of glaring and cattiness,
began openly yelling taunts at each other. "Yeah, I'm talking about
you, bitch" etc.

An unthinkable break of the social norms in previous season (plus:
nobody hated each other THAT much, at least not until Cabo).

Soon enough, Tessa and Rocky retreated – "Whatever" "I'm so over
this" – out of the pool to the Green Zone, I guess. And Kyndra and
Cami declared it bikini-time.

And finally, back for more abuse this year, is Jessica Chalabi, whose
ineptness in the political arena is getting so ridiculous, she may
soon start getting fan mail from Christopher Hitchens.

The central Himbo this season is Cameron, who unlike last year's
human trash can Jason, at least looks the part, something akin to a
water polo-version of Trev Alberts.

Now stop me if you've heard this: the season opens with Jessica
having just hooked up with Himbo, bragging to Alex M (who rejoins with
muscle-for-hire Alex H (!) in reprising their award winning 'I wish I
was as pretty as my friends'-roles) that she and Himbo are on their
way to being a couple. Cut to Himbo talking shit with his boys,
making fun of Jelabi for, essentially, being enough of a slut to hook
up with him.

Where's this going? Anyone want a stab?

Yip. As the ads are already telegraphing in next week's episode
"Summer Gives Way To Fall-uja," Kyndra is about to lay siege to Himbo.

(I may have gotten my Alexs switched up above. Who can keep up?)

Published accounts have said the entire town turned on the show last
year as they filmed, running them out of public places and ruining
shoots. As a result – and this is a key parallel with Iraq today –
anything here that might be presented as "normal" (ie, rival groups
of girls attending the same pool party; meaningful elections) can now
be assumed to be a carefully scripted and delivered act, with no
relation to reality. And for the second straight year, the cast just
isn't as good looking as the first go-around, and why spy on rich kids
if they look like us?

But I suppose I'll watch for a while, even if we're unlikely to see
any of those adorable
Daddy-can-I-have-a-Beamer-please-please-please?-moments.

Like Iraq, we broke it, we bought it.

Kyndra (F), Kel (Kelan, M), Lex (F), Rocky (Raquel, F), Cam
(Cameron, M), Tessa (F), Chase (M) and Cami (F).

Terror: "Can't Stop. Won't Stop. Bad Boy. Uhhhh."

2006-08-11T03:08:00.000-07:00

Deep Breath.

We had'em WAY before Hello.

Way before 'going operational.'

Way before 'dry run.'

Way before 'gel bomb.'

(Gel bomb? Really? A Gel Bomb? They have those now? I hadn't heard
of the Gel Bomb. I'm going to remember that. Gel. Bomb. Got it.)

I think my wait-a-tick alarm went off with this picture:

those are Mass. state cops - 'fawkin staties' as Ben Affleck might have
put it to Damon, but we can't put it that way today because Freedom Is
At Stake.

First question: how many tires did he put on the sidewalk when he
parked it right outside that door? I say 3.

But take a close look. Pretty much your prototype 1 - overmacho cop and
2 - overbored cop, huh? I mean - seriously.

See those guns? You might recognize those as MP5s. You might want to
remember that, too, because if you can talk "MP5" to people, you've
got a good chance of passing yourself off as a SEAL. Seriously. A
little technique I like to use - throw in: "SD4-mod, with the
three-round burst."

Go ahead - feels good to be a gansta, huh?

Fortunately, these two have the kind with built in silencers (that's
the SD-mod part, Killah). 'Suppressors' they call them in the biz.
Sure, they slow down the bullet and make it less stable so you're more
likley - emphasis on 'more' - to miss, but when you're watching people
huck their bags at Logan, do you want to be without it?

He's also wearing what we call "a combat sling." Too bad its wearing it wrong. How wrong? Its adjusted so that the rifle is hanging straight across his
pistol, which he'd need if his high-speed, low-drag,
as-seen-in-The-Rock MP5 malfunctioned, which kind of defeats the
purpose of the Combat Sling.

And I'm sure I don't have to point out the Vest. Probably spotted
that before the forearms, huh?

So he's incorrectly wearing more rifle than he - and certainly she - knows what to
do with, with a silencer in an airport, along with
the i'm-a-dick Vest in the country where the terrorists aren't.

AND not helping that dude with his bag.

But at least you know where your Homeland Security dollars are going.

So a quick checklist:

- Local Yokels of every kind breaking out their Big Big Toys and
standing around with a supreme sense of importance and not shit-all to
do? Check

- Almost immediate emergence of Something New To Fear (blue gel -
run!)? Check.

- Orange Alert! No, Red! Check?

- Dubya: "Islamic fascism" and leave me alone about Iraq? Check.

Yip - the Captain has turned on the "We're Overreacting" Light. As
always, the "They're Lying To Distract You" Light will be on
throughout the flight.

So let's take a step back here, and ask ourselves, Just What Have We
Got? What the hell exactly have we got here?

Here's what: 24 (24!) london Kids who have spent at least the last
year talking about pulling off a series of bombings that would be - on
technical grounds, tactical grounds and strategery grounds -
absolutely unprecedented.

Again: Incredibly complicated. Unproven methods. Reliant on perfect
timing. And makes no sense.

They have a word for plans that combine all those elements: That
word is 'bullshit.' And oh, yeah, all of your
chemist/commando/spy/planners did not grow up in Saudi Arabia and
spend the last five years in Chechnya.

They've been in London, which, since their muslim, probably means
half of them secretly wish they were Ali G.

So Ladies and Gentlemen, Victims and Vicettes, put your
hands together for "9/11 part II"!!!! Give it up!

Or if you prefer, "8/10" as some british papers are
solemnly calling it today.

8-slash-10. For 24 London kids who talked up a big fuckin' game,
for at least a year. And how do we know it was a year?

Because, as Sam Kinison might have put it, they were onto them A
YEAR AGO!!!!! A YEAR AGO!!!!! (I WANT MY RECORDS BACK!!!!)

And consider: they gave themselves away a year ago, ERGO they were
being watched for a year AND DIDN'T FIGURE IT OUT!!!!

You've been such a great crowd, how about another big hand
for "Even More Spectacular than the World Trade Center Attacks!" What
a night its been!

For this parents are forced to eat baby food in the line to prove
its not Death Gel?

ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?!?!?!? "8/10"!!?!?!?!?! MP5s IN THE
AIRPORT!!??!!??!

FOR THESE IDIOTS!!!!????

These were the worst terrorists ever! I think half of Hezbullah
quit shooting Jews yesterday. "What's the point?," they all said,
shrugging their shoulders and tossing their Iranian-supplied rockets
to the ground. "If we're gonna get lumped in with these guys, I say
we just go to Jordan and get laid."

these were the suckiest terrorist who ever sucked!

these were like the terrorist version of that Friends episode where
Courtney Cox's boyfriend swears he's going to be an Ultimate Fighter
and ends up in a body cast!

these were like the terrorist versions of the answering machine
scene in Swingers!

My God, do you know what this means? these were like the terrorist
version of John Favre TWICE!!!!!!!

Pardon me while I decline to shit my pants in fear.

Now.

I WOULD like to know where the money came from. Actually, first I'd
like to be sure there actually WAS money, and then I'd like to see
where it came from. And then I'd like to bomb that place (aside: I
bet its not Iraq! Come on, anybody wanna bet? I'll give you the
whole country and kuwait at 2 to 1! Bet it's not there!)

Pakistan, a few reports have said, which is odd, because I thought
that they were our friends, except for the whole
hiding-Bin-Laden-the-last-five-years thing and the
top-scientist-sold-nukes-to-North-Korea-and-now-we-can't-even-talk-to-the-scientist-cuz-hes-under-house-arrest
thing, and that generally not helping us at all thing. but except for
all that, their on our side!

And can you really blow up a plane - BLOW UP A FUCKING PLANE, MADE OF
STEAL AND RIVETS, THAT FLIES THROUGH THE AIR AT GALACTIC SPEEDS AND
CRASHES BACK ONTO ASPHAULT 10 TIMES EVERYDAY WITHOUT EVER EVER EVER
HURTING ITSELF - with bleach, blue gel and (did I get this right?) the
flash from a camera or a vigorous rubbing?

Are we committing mass murder or sticking balloons to the wall?
Would this really work?

Questions remain. Attention is merited. Good for the Brits, good for
the Staties and good for Islamic Fascism, war-against-ily.

but let's all take a deep breath.

fight the power

2006-07-16T15:21:00.000-07:00

For the first time in my life today, I contested a charge on my credit
card bill. And I have to say: it was incredibly satisfying.

The first was a strange online charge to a wierd online-fantasy game
site. I have no clue how that happened. I have assume its a mistake
on the game-company since anyone who would be into credit card fraud
AND online gaming would have surely spent a lot more than one $42
charge.

I liked that one, since the nice email i had sent the gaming company
had gotten back just a snippy form letter.

But it was the second that felt so good. This one was a giant, heaping
Fuck You to fuckin' Delta fuckin' Airlines.

Delta is the worst airline on earth. In fact, they are probably the
worst company on earth I know of, of any kind.

I used to fly a lot, and Mandy now flies as much as I ever did, so
between us we've seen them all. No one comes close. Delta is the
worst airline this side - maybe that side - of Aeroflot. And with
Aeroflot, you now what you're getting.

Delta has lost an 80lbs, bright red bag for 5 days on a non-stop
international flight (?), and offered compensation of $50 a day IF you
had reciepts.
Delta has damaged Mandy's luggage to the point that stuff fell out
and was lost, twice in two trips.
Delta's SkyMiles program is essentially a rumor - both Mandy and I
have been told that no SkyMiles seats were available on a flight but we
were welcome to buy a seat on the same flight. Skymiles fees, when you
do get a seat, are the highest in the industry, making it hardly worht
the effort.
Delta, alone among airlines, uses American Express as their credit
card partner, meaning their annual fees start at 85 and go up to nearly
200.
Delta has left Mandy stranded in two different airports on the same
trip with no accomodations, forcing her to pay to drive to a third
airport to catch a connection.
Delta has NEVER given our money back, offered a discount or upgrade
or offered to pay expenses on any of the above problems.
And Delta is the major player at Hartsfield I'ntl, the second worst
airport in America behind Philly, and far and away the worst among any
and all hubs (yes, worse than Dallas, particularly if you are
attempting to drive to or from it).

Please, join us in boycotting Delta, won't you?

Well, they charged us $50 a few months ago for some unfair fee, but
they made the mistake of charging it twice. And we even played ball -
we called them. we waded through their elaborate, inept phone system
(worst in the industry, by the way). we got to "Refunds" (which they
keep locked away on its own phone-system island, which you must have
permission from other gatekeepers to enter).
And the "refunds" people said, 'oh, we don't do credit card
refunds.' Or maybe it was, 'we don't do fee refunds.' Whatever - the
Delta Refunds department said they weren't going to refund us a charge
they rest of their operators said they owed.

here, they said, call another number.

So I did: bank of america. Fuck you Delta.

Just an invigorating thing to do.

Fuck Delta.
matt

Charity's insightful analysis

2006-07-15T03:16:00.000-07:00

first off, soldiers at checkpoints don't get kidnapped BY
DEFINITION. Do we 'kidnap' taliban guys from Kabul? Everytime I hear
someone throw out the word 'kidnap' or 'abducted' I feel 1-percent less
supportive of Israel. When it's an Israeli official saying it, it
bumps up to 10-percent, because then it's intentionally manipulative
and NEVER goes unchalleneged.
Call them 'captured' or 'prisoners' or just 'missing' or even
'casualties.' If they're 'kidnapped' than Isreal is already a
world-leader felon, along with the US. can't have it both ways.
Of course, also never spoken, is that you can't very well sell
marching a country to war over 'captured' soldiers, and certainly not
over three (three!) 'casulaties.' But three 'kidnapped, solders ' I
guess, is enough to let slip the dogs.
The result, of course, has been predictable: the debate is now, 'is
Isreal over-reacting?' as if there is an argument that three captured
(and, so far, still alive) soldiers at a roadblock could ever
rationally equate to the shelling and invasion of a country. There
have bee armies in the last 100 years that practiced that scope of
retaliation. The state Israel was formed in defiance of their memory.
But of course, it's not about kidnapping. We might as well start
calling them KMDs - Kidnappings Of Mass Destruction. Its precisely the
same lie with precisely the same motive (though, in Israeli's defense,
there is not an abundance of evidence that those soldiers don't exist).

You want to go to Lebanon? Go to Lebanon. Just don't sell it as
Entebbe II.

Second, what no one (including Charity's delightfully well informed
email) is saying is that Israel could lose. and they could.
not in absolute terms (I mean, Tel Aviv won't fall or anything), but
their 'ultra-modern' army (and its unchalleneged air force - sound
familiar?) could take far greater casualties and accomplish quite a bit
less than they think they can, and that would be the same thing as
losing. Throw in any kind of a 'quagmire' scenerio, and its 10 times
worse.
I JUST GOT that that word is the same as the name of the Family Guy
bachelor. Just hit me.
Anyway, I would never have considered that notion to be plausible
before a) a group of alledged 'terrorist' street thugs managed to
attack and set afire an underway warship, a just fall-over amazing
feat, B) they proved that - Holy Shit! - they actualy have rockets that
can reach out and touch someone (begging the question, what else do
they have) and C) the last three years in Iraq.
Modern-army-vs-hometown-thugs 101.
(though the "rockets in Haifa" thing strikes me just like the
'kidnapped' thing - last night CNN had a US reporter obviously in some
imbed-like position who sort of manfully reported that he'd been with
an Israeli artillery brigade that had been launching shells into a
Lebanese city for four hours. And i'm confident Israel owns more than
one company-worth of canons).

but from a military/political standpoint, I have a feeling Hezbollah
would like nothing better than to watch the Israeli's roll their
(American) tanks up a road and into a city. plenty of guys in there
with friends in baghdad and access to the internet. Could be a hell of
a fight - and if it is, regardless of who wins, Israel loses.

So what would happen if Israel went all in and was handed a
genuinely embarrassing battlefield setback (I'll abstain from the word
'defeat')? THEN what? I'll tell you what: stay the fuck out of
Damascus for a few weeks.

Maybe, just maybe, this will workout for exactly the reasons Iraq
hasn't. Consider:
Dubya went in to impose democracy via bayonette on a nation entirely
committed to despotism. Given 10 years, it might work, as it
occasionally has other places (a notion I've NEVER disputed and in fact
have always thought was really a great idea - just not worth 1/100th of
the cost in lives and coin, not for a shit-ass, nearly-first-world
country like Iraq when the globe is brimming with more deserving
candidates). In 10 years, Iraq could settle out and look like...
Modern Lebanon: able (and willing) to hold elections and make them
stick, influenced by and aligned with Dark Neighbor (Syria/Iran) but
not Of them.
again, that's 10 years away in Iraq, but it's a week ago in Lebanon.

That would be the Good Outcome: Israel effectively shoots the locks
off the last chain holding back Lebanese democracy (WOW, what a visual!
I just made that up, too! I wish I knew somebody at the White House -
I'd charge them for it).

Or the Bad Outcome: The sight of tanks crossing the border does
exactly what it did in Iraq - squash debate, progress and reason, end
democracy and fire up the militias. So long to 2, 5, 10, 20 years of
good.

Plus: $77 oil. Gas prices effectively tripling in 2 years. No
matter what, Israel just made that the floor.

matt

Rose Bowl Requiem

2006-02-24T15:59:00.000-08:00

Did you see Chicago? remember when Zelwenger's Roxie watches Lucy Lu
gets dragged into jail and she realizes her 15 minutes are up? Flicker, go the lights. Snap, goes the neon. Darkness.

That's what I thought of as SC's players walked around on the field
after the game, stunned and aimless, thier faces suddenly 15 lbs and 10
years heavier, seeing for the first time the cameras all pointing the other way.
Welcome to the rest of your life, kid. We've been waitin'.

It was quite a run. It started four years ago the night Carson tore
apart once-beaten Notre Dame.
It ended last night.
It ended, technically, when VY ran it in, on a busted play, on 4th
down, probably the all-time least surprising, most-predictable
championship-clinching 4th-down in history. I mean, who ELSE was going
to make a play on either side of the ball? Who else, to that point,
had?
But really, it ended - the game, the streak, the magic - the second
Reggie Bush made that astonishing lateral-attempt inside the Texas 20.
His reasons are easy to understand but impossible to believe. At that
moment - for the first time since Carson-ND - one of the cogs in USC's
machine forgot how to win.
There's been the down games, the big deficits, the ND squeeker and
all the rest. There was even the two fourth downs SC failed to pick up
in this game, either one of which would have won it.
but never - not once - has one of USC's go-to players mistaken
stupid for bold. Not once had somebody panicked. Until that moment.
And then - buzz-snap - it was over.

I stayed excited and nervous and stomped around the living room
through the bitter end (even fired off a cocky TM to a friend at the
game when SC took a 12 point lead) but from that Reggie disaster on, I
had an It's-Over pit in my stomach I haven't had said Carson put up his
fourth TD pass of the night on Next-Rockne Willingham.
Reggie, both on the stat sheet and in every observable way, never
recovered. nice little run at the end with a flying walenda finish,
but even that felt empty. And you could see when they followed him to
the bench, moments later, he was still haunted.
The cold reality is, Reggie lost that game, and it was probably the
biggest post-Heisman bust since Detmer.
Surprisingly, Reggie's self-emolation didn't spread to Leinart and
White, who were simply marvelous (I hung my hopes, in fact, on the
notion that White would rise to the occasion of replacing Reggie in
this brightest of spotlights).

But "marvelous," it turns out, gets off two exits before Vince Young.

I have little to say about VY - he's a witch. He's Tiger in pads.
He's a joke. I could go on but I'll leave that to... everybody.

(VY aside 1: by far, the most delicious post-game moment was watching
ESPN's top bimbo, Kirk Herbstriet, try to simultaneously keep from
throwing up in his mouth while trying to climb on the VY wagon, weighed
down by the full weight of his month-long, any-open-mic campaign to
declare Reggie Bush "the greatest college player I've ever seen." When
UT's linemen stormed the stage, I thought he was going to cry -
fabulous moment)

So Leinart and Bush and White and that whole team doesn't get 3 (and
yes - it would have been 3), and now never will. I think after going
to the trouble of winning so damn many in a row, it would have been
nice to see them finish. But now we clearly know that VY was always
the best player in the country, by miles. It's only been 40 minutes
since the game, and already his non-win at the Heisman has that ghostly
"did I really grow a fu-manchu in '96?"-feel to it.

(VY aside 2: second most delicious moment was Lee Corso not asking or
suggesting but DEMANDING that VY be taken first in the draft - one week
after the incessant, month-long ESPN-led "Reggie Bush Sweepstakes"
drumbeat climaxed in the niners-texans "Reggie Bush Bowl")

All the things they're saying now are wrong:
- first and foremost: not a 'great game' though it had highlights.
The finish was fun, and any time evenly matched teams go for it on 4th
down five times, you've got something. But 5 first-half trips in the
redzone for SC and they score once? And how many turnovers for UT?
And how many drives stayed alive on penalties? Great games are when
two teams take turns cashing in opportunities, not blowing them.
- under no circumstances could USC have possibly NOT gone for it on 4th
down at the end; first off, they were rolling; second, they're SC;
and third, VY had 3 timeouts and almost 3 minutes - he was going to
score from Riverside if he got the ball.
- Mack Brown still can't win a big game and Greg Davis still should be
fired; all 3 of VYs rushing TDs, his (kneedown) downfield pitch for a
TD, the 2-pter and most of everything else (including his biggest
openfield run) were broken-play VY improvs. Just like last year's Rose
Bowl. Just like everything in the Mack-VY era, all the way back to
that 4th-and-27 at Kansas. Greg Davis apparently knows how to draw up
a flip over the middle to a tight end, though, and he should be
congratulated for it.
- Vince's knee WAS down on that pitch, and it's utterly meaningless;
UT (like USC if Reggie hadn't pitched) would have gone in for the TD
within 3 plays anyway.
- the one bad call that did matter was the by-a-mile fumble on the pass
over the middle, but it led only to 3 points, not enough to truly get
pissed about.
- (disclaimer: the last two items are not blame-the-refs whining - but
both of those calls are in heavy rotation in the post-game shows.
that's my rebuttal)
- I suppose I was going to be bitter, no matter what, but here's what I
want: just one - JUST ONE - of the grinning stooges on the networks to
say: "USC is 4 TDs better than Texas - but Vince is worth 5." Anybody
want to seriously dispute that? Any evidence at all to the contrary?
What would be so taboo about saying it? WHERE THE HELL IS TREV!!!

I guess in the end, the harder they really do fall. It took maybe
20 minutes for the Kings of LA to morph before our eyes into sloppy
has-beens - not quite Celebrity Fit Club, but headed down that road.
We got a chance to see what Matt Leinart looks like wearing a bad loss,
and it was incredibly unattractive: he was whiny and bitchy and pouty
after the game. ESPN said he and Reggie visited the UT lockerroom to
congratulate them, but that "class" (my least favorite of all sports
non-words) didn't show up to the cameras. He looked like one of the
Laguna kids after losing a cell-phone bitch-off.
What little I saw of Reggie in the post-game was pure shell shock.
even if nobody reading this agrees with me that Reggie lost the game
for SC, I'm quite sure Reggie does.

(VY aside 3: until last night, he'd said "i'll be back" more than the
Governator, but about 14 seconds after the whistle he wanted to "sit
down with my family and make the best decision for everyone" - time to
earn your $25 mil, Mack)

I am never interested in "would he make a good pro?" talk, but I
will confess to some fascination over the fall-out of this game. Did
we just see VY leap into the top 5? Into #1? Did Reggie just fall
out? Did Leinart just lose 7-figures in signing bonus? Did LenDale
White just pick them up?
Corso's spittle-fit aside, VY can't play like that in the pros (for
the same reason that, a week ago, it was ridiculous to even discuss
whether or not USC could beat an NFL team) and he absolutely showed no
sign of being able to throw NFL passes. And, PLEASE, enough with his
"most efficient passer in the nation" thing. I'd be efficient too if 9
guys were on the line to stop me from running and my recievers averaged
6-8. VY didn't throw a single timing pattern, a single accurate deep
ball or a single on-the-money sideline route all night. Not one. He
dinked to his tight end, hit streakers over the middle and dumped to
running backs.
That will win you State 5A Championships and, evidently, beat SC in
the Big Game, but it won't beat The Patriots.
Enough VY-as-a-pro abuse. It's his night.
But how far did Bush fall? This was the next Hershell, the guy who
you could pick-and-trade for multiple pro-bowlers. That kid? One dumb
play and he climbs under the bench - you want him? If all you had was
that tape, and you had to take Bush or LenDale - any doubts? Hell,
you'd probably take UT's running back, whoever that was. Or Limas
Sweed (hands down, best name of the Bowl season).
And Leinart? Maybe he's still the next Payton - but maybe he's the
next Leif.
no, that's too harsh - not only did he lose his first game since 7th
grade or whatever, but he had to sit there and NOT rip his own defense
for losing it. that can't be easy. And what was he - 17-for-19 in
the second half? Are you kidding? He needs to stop showing up drunk
on the internet with bimbos, but he's a player.

And finally - lost like tears in rain in the middle of it all was
the fabulous performance by Dwayne Jarrett. Prior to 4th-and-Green
Jersies, I considered him a tall, good-on-paper bust who appeared to be
on scholarship to drop third downs. Since 4th-and-That-Grass, he's
been a revelation. And he was retard-good last night, bailing out
Leinart (and everybody else) over and over, and, on his final catch,
causing two of UT's excellent Dbacks to run into each other so hard,
one broke his arm and the other broke his head. Jarrett stepped
between them and fell back over the line for a TD. Absurd performance.

But not enough to beat VY.

So that's it. it's over - bring on Booty or, I suspect, Sanchez.
Bring on the next two guys who can run and four or five Parade All
Americans who can hit. Build it from the ground up again. Mix in a
loss or two to Oregon or Cal or whatever. Even drop one to ND, so we
can go back the next year ready to pick back up.
I hope UT runs with it for a while - the number, the streak, the
bullseye, the 'nothing lasts forever' behind every corner. Let's see
just how deep a hole Mack can dig in Waco or Boulder or even Austin
before VY runs out of rope to pull him out. Lord knows they both just
earned it.

Carson to VY. thanks for reading along. as the bad 80s band nearly
said: the streak is over, you were with me all the while.
(wow. bookended with bad Chicago references. I couldn't be prouder)

GTA: Fairbanks

2006-02-15T14:31:00.000-08:00

I'm now as done with Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (5) as I ever
intend to be. I spent the first two days here finishing off the
Airstrip and Vegas-based missions, two of which were the toughest in
the game. I'll get to those. The last one was to steal a Harrier jet
off an aircraft carrier, shoot down 3 others (more tedious than it
sounds) and bomb 5 boats in Lake Powell. When all that was boring, I
realized it was time to quit.
The only remaining missions are boring return-to-LA, gang-based
missions. But I've played all 3 cities, flown lots of planes, shot
everything imaginable and, yes, beaten up plenty of hookers, so I
think I'm done with it.
So to sum up: The initial part – about 1/5th of the game – is based
in LA ("Los Santos") and isn't that great. In fact, I almost quit
playing. It's dreary, in fact.
The second part – out in "the country" is just bizarre, utterly
different from the LA part. And by itself, I'd have quit playing it
then, too, because, again, it wasn't very engaging. No gangs or the
blight of the LA part, but then, not much else. Strange little
missions based in the strange little towns set in the hill country. I
mean, you have to steal a combine harvester from a hippy commune at
one point. A race on 4-wheelers. Strange but, with so much time
invested in that point – and with now no idea what to expect from the
rest of the game – I had to press on.
Then you get to San Francisco which is a strict GTA-city – urban,
kinda funny missions involving shooting and driving. Straight out of
Vice City. Lots of fun. Quickest part of the game.
Then comes your trip to the desert and, for my money, the game really
starts.
You go to the airstrip in the desert and learn to fly planes.
And that takes a WHILE.
Then the city of Vegas opens up and that's where the good missions
are. At this point, you start parachuting onto dams, hijacking police
bikes and running collecting them in the back of a moving van, running
motorcycles up the rear ramp of an about-to-take-off airplane, raiding
a secret desert-based military compound (Area 69) and stealing it's
jetpack (!) and generally raising hell around an amazing replica of
Las Vegas.
The final couple missions are fantastic – in one you take a Lear Jet
(you fly a lot of lear jets) to old Liberty City (Original GTA city)
and do a hit there. It's quick but a nice touch.
And then you rob the vault at Ceasar's Casino (named "Caligula's
Palace" – goes right along with calling Pirates of the Caribean
"Pirates in Men's Pants' and Excaliber the "Came-a-lot'). That's
quite a mission, using night vision goggles, blowing stuff up,
shooting LOTS of dudes and then escaping in a parachute.
Right there with the Steal-the-Harrier mission.

So the hardest missions. Two are "gunner" missions where the entire
mission is from the sites of a gun, and you are shooting at the
landscape. Two are chase mission. And then there's the flight
school.
First is early in the game, a "tail gunner" mission where you sit on
the back of a motorcycle and shoot at the mafia guys pursuing you.
Great mission – lots to see, lots of action, but HARD. Basicly, it
becomes one of those that makes video games hateful – you just
memorize the pattern to get you a few seconds past the part where you
died last time until finally you get finished. It saps all the
creativity and fun out of it.
The second is a goofy subplot mission in San Francisco where you have
to defend a Remote Control store from dive bombing remote control
airplaines – and no, it doesn't even make much sense when you're in
it.
(If you recall, I thought the hardest mission in Vice City was the
helicopter-based gun run mission where you shoot down at a bunch of
mafia around a property – same idea here).
Then there's several missions where you have to chase somebody and
kill them in a roughly equal vehicle. One, between two boats, simply
takes forever. You have to follow him and follow him and follow him…
and finally you can slowly damage his boat badly enough that he dies.
Takes forever.
But that's nothing next to "High Noon", a very late mission which
opens up the final hits I mentioned above. You have to chase a guy
through the desert highway system. And he's a VERY good driver. He
escaped me probably, conservatively, 30 times, before I FINALLY shoved
his car into the ocean, which is actually kind of a backdoor way to
kill him. No, 50 times.
That one was tough.
But not as tough as the Flight School. You have to pass 10 tests
flying a plane – most of which are simple (learn to land, do a loop,
parachute, etc). But you have to fly through specific gates/hoops in
the sky, and a couple of them are unbelievably demanding.
Those took me forever.
Another thing – you have to meet specific girls and 'date them,'
taking them out to eat and stuff. One of which you have to date until
she gives you a key to the vault (or something) at the casino she
works at. Here's how you pass it:
So you go see her, and her boyfriend is coming to meet her – so you
kill him. And he drops a 'weapon,' which is a 2ft purple dildo. And
no, there's no mistaking it.
Then you follow her while she goes shopping and she goes to a sex
store (this is Vegas, afterall). So you figure out that you have to
buy a "gimp" outfit, a full-body leather suit, complete with ball gag.
Then once you are dressed in that, you show up at her house 'armed'
with the dildo – instant night of sex in her dungeon/bedroom.
And the key!

So I've flown most of the airplanes (including the AT-400 Airbus-like
plane), and done all the Vegas stuff. Enough for me.

Guantlet - don't miss it.

2006-02-15T13:55:00.000-08:00

i know BSG makes mention of it every now and then, but this season's
Real World/Road Rules Gauntlet on MTV is the Final Product. They've
finally nailed down a perfect competitive format, with members of the
losing team each week forced to fight to the death for the right to
stay. And the personalities that have risen to the top are superb.
At the top of the Rookie Guys is Alton, already a legend for setting
the world record for hook-ups and sleezy behavior in the mythic Vegas
season. Turns out, he's at LEAST as good an athlete as a pimp, because
as the team captain (who is required to do the death-battles every
week) he's like Lance Armstrong. As BSG says, "he is taking us all to
a new level."
Opposed to him, as the Veteran's captain, is the tiny, wiry,
pitbull-like Derrick. He's a small, punk of a guy who lets nobody -
nobody - step on him. Derrick was last seen a season ago beating Brad,
who he gives up 50 lbs to, in a monster-tackle drill Inferno. I can't
overstate how amazing that contest was, and how close it was
(literally, after 10 minutes of bloodthirsty rage, a ball needed to go
in a hoop for Brad to win, and it lipped-out). SC-ND wasn't as good as
Brad-Derrick. So now Derrick is center stage, and through sheer
force-of-asshole, he's great.
If there's an Alton-Derrick showdown at the end of this, it'll be
bigger than Game 7, '03.
But on the girls side, you've got the rise and rise of Beth - a
36-year-old, completely narcicistic whiny bitch roundly despised by
everyone on the show. you knew where Beth stood in previous seasons,
when Tanya threw all of Beth's clothes in the pool and nobody stuck up
for her. Well, now she is the captain for the Vet girls, after a great
turn of events: the Vet girls voted her into the Gaunlet, hoping that
Ruthie - year in, year out, the most respected, loved and athletic of
any of the chicks - would take her out. In so doing, they let slide
the useless Montana and Ainesha, both of whom do nothing but whine, and
aren't half the athlete that Beth is. A horrible gamble by the chicks,
motivated by pure bitchyness.
But when they spun The Wheel, Beth got to choose the event and,
outweighing Ruthie by probably 40 lbs, she chose tug of war. In a
great Guantlet, she used her flabby mass to wear down Ruthie and -
whammo - sent Ruthie home and took over the Captain's spot.
If VY had blown out his knee on the first snap of the Rose Bowl,
UT's sideline would not have deflated as completely as the Vets did.
If the Lost plane had crashed on the beach at that moment, they
wouldn't have reacted. A fantastic moment.

So since then, Derrick made quick work of Ace in a wrestling match
and Beth sent home Montana in another tug of war, giving her an air of
invincibility that clearly has the rest of the team reeling.

And it's only going to get better, because the weak players are pretty
much gone, meaning the Gauntlets from here on will only be more
competitive. Looming in front of Alton is the Philly Cast two-some,
the huge and capable Landon and ex-Vanderbilt wide reciever, MJ. MJ,
taller and leaner than anybody else, is playing it cool, staying low
key and just executing. We'll see what happens when the crowd
continues to thin.
For Derrick, a rematch with Brad is a real possibility.
On the girls side, Beth is clearly now in Munich mode, one by one
taking down the bitches who sold her out.

And, of course, they all get drunk and hook up every episode, too. Of
course. Catch a marathon to get caught up - it's fantastic.

UPDATE: Latest episode was subpar. Very little social drama, and the
rookie chicks went to the guantlet, again, that's good since they
needed some thinning out, but they are a pretty bloodless group.

Movie Eruption, plus Narnia

2006-02-15T11:32:00.000-08:00

I had a little email going last week with a few friends about the
perfect storm of movies currently out. I can't remember a stronger
crop since the revolution of 94-95 - Swingers, Lonestar, Secrets and
Lies, etc - and even then i don't think there where ever this many
solid looking movies out on one weekend. Either way, this is far and
away, over the horizon, the best month of movies of this decade.

Out now: Walk the Line, King Kong, Harry Potter 4, Narnia,
Syrianna, Good Night and Good Luck, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Memoirs of a
Geisha, Brokeback Mountain, The Producers, Munich.

That's no less than an 11 movies - all diffferent, all distinctive -
that have all the indicators of at least an A-. You could even
throw in at least 2 documentries that are supposed to be excellent but
then, generally, what documentry isn't? Here we have 11 movies, with
actors and budgets and ad campaigns, that all look first rate.

this weekend also marks the first christmas in the last 10 where i'm
a) not with my parents and b) not in a war zone. so i plan on seeing
as many as i can.

In fact, from that list, I'm already at 4 - Walk the Line, Harry
Potter, Good Night and Good Luck (early returns: Walk The Line is the
Movie of the Year until somebody proves otherwise) and, as of an hour
ago, the Chronicles of Narnia.

Of The Big 11, I had the most doubt about this one. It's a
double-whammy of unoriginality: a remake of an old book, and a cash-in
on Lord of the Rings withdrawal. Plus, as ABC/Disney has ceaselessly
pointed out, the old book it's based on was actually written with a
Christ-story theme, perfect for a Holiday release. There has been no
secret at all to the 'secret' marketing campaign being conducted at the
church-level, trying to recapture some of that "Passion" magic from
'04, implicitly promising that Narnia was really a stealth Christian
Message movie. And there was some sort of church-based teenage group
in the theatre with us tonight.
I know they were a church group, because they were well behaved. In
our movie theatre, on our side of town, around our breed of teenagers,
its the only explaination.

And I'm glad they were, because it was a movie that a few loud kids
could ruin - it's a movie based around children, who say childish
things, starring at the center a girl probably, at most, 8. It has
animated animals with funny accents, and several predictable scenes and
themes designed to lure in children's built-in sense of awe. It has
careful timing and fragile plot conciets meant to slip past mesmerized
children, not too-cool-for-school teenagers. A few, "yeah rights" from
the peanut gallery would really shatter this movie.
But if the teenagers in the theatre bight their tongues, the movie
does everything so well - and the little girl in the middle of it, who
plays Lucy, is such a revelation - that, you fall effortlessly into the
same trap.

Four kids, in wartime london, armed only with grey clothing and
frowns, are sent to a country home to wait out the bombs. All four
are perfectly English: the girls with pie-eyes and moon-shaped faces,
the boys with reedy features and nasal overbites. A home run cast from
the the giddy up.
Also, the mid-century English nature of the movie never evaporates,
and that's good news. Most of the creatures are distinctly English,
both friends and foe, and the built-in sensibility of british culture
keep the magical-talking-creature-element grounded. What I mean is:
none of the talking animals tries to talk like they are Hip Hop, Saved
by the Bell or Robin Williams - they're just talking creatures and
haven't got to time to bother with whether or not they should be, what
with the world to save and all the tidying up to do.
Thanks to Lucy, they find a wardrobe which, through some quick but
well-executed baffoonery, transports them to a magical forest in
winter. They soon learn that the forest is ruled by an evil queen - a
role not played by Cate Blanchett but by someone who sure wishes she
was. They travel across the land, hobbitt-slash-gnome-slash-elf-like,
meet talking creatures and then meet Aslan, the Lion King of the realm.
All that above is about as perfectly constructed as you could want -
the world of the kids, from stuffy english house, to bizarre forest, to
cute creatures, to the grand map of the place, is revealed with perfect
pacing. You never question a single leap, and instead find yourself
wondering what's around the next corner.
Aslan and his army are ready for the kids to lead them against the
witch, which they do, eventually.

In the middle of this, in an isolated 10 minutes, you get the promised
Christ allegory.
Knowing it was coming, I thought it was a bit underwhelming. I
wanted Mandy's thoughts on it:
Me: "You know, if a hard core christian had gone to see that
expecting a Christ allegory, they'd have been pissed, don't you think?"
Her: "What Christ allegory?"
That exchange lets you know how thick they lay it on.
This movie does not feel like religious themes have been painted on.
If anything they feel scrubbed off.
And since Mandy and I both went in wanting nothing more than talking
animals and the like, we left happy. But i guarantee the
church-vertising audience left feeling a little cheated.

So while Aslan is rehabing his allegorical injury, the battle begins.
And it's a doozy. I had expected that the climactic battle scene
would have to be pretty soft - it's led by children in a children's
movie. The kid leading it, in his too-big, too-shiny brand new armor,
looks nearly Dubyaian. I figured you'd get some extras pushing each
other to the ground, the requisite archers and some burning barrels and
call it good.
Not hardly.
for a good 15 minutes, two vast armies of hatchet, club, lance,
spear, sword, claw and tooth wielding animals have at each other.
creatures of every concievable combat-suitability are in the line-up
for the two sides, and the attacks are ferocious and constant. The
queen's war chariot is pulled by Polar Bears, a terrifying juggernaut
of queen-bitch-fury not equaled since Tina Turner ran down Mel Gibson
at the end of Thunderdome. The collisions take place at a bloodless
video-game pace, but there's no short supply of bodies falling and
twitching under swords. The fight runs off the main field, back up
into the hills, where it turns into a a defacto-tunnel fight in a
ravine. the main characters here all collide and bounce off the rock
walls like sword-wielding pinballs. It's a great fight, right there
with any of the Rings collisions.

A word on little Lucy: she's played by Georgie Henley, who is 10, says
IMDB. She is miraculous. Her face is a billboard of well-tuned
emotions and as danger and then trickery and then tragedy come and go,
the movie follows pretty much only where her face leads it.
At a key point early, the boys hit a cricket ball through the window
in the country home. They both instantly freeze, the
oh-shit-we're-screwed look on their face. The older sister (weak link
of the bunch) is horrified and angry. Lucy, who'd been cut out of the
game, spins and looks on with a shock of fright at what's to come but
with unmistakable wild glee at the predictment her brothers are now in
and she is not.
She owns the movie from that point on.

More to come.

Narnia - A-

Music: Fake girl rock

2006-02-15T10:17:00.000-08:00

A year ago, in the wake of Ashley Simpson's mythic SNL/Orange Bowl
streak plus the kelly Osbourne-rehab thing, I absolutely thought the
fake-girl-rock movement was dead, the least mourned passing in recent
musical history. Not that it had actually started - there was that
Skater Boy song by April Lavigne ("can i make it anymore obvious") and
the April Lavigne song that Wierd Al blew up ("Pi-zza! Par-ty at your
house...") and that was about it. it looked DOA, and if it wasn't,
Ashely finished it off in Miami, right?

Well, to my astonishment, it hung around. And now, fresh of my
Best-Summer-Vacation-Ever! trip to Australia, I can tap a winner.

The Veronicas. As it happens, they are twin sisters who, we can
assume, grew up riding the ferries in Brisbane. And, I guess, rocking!

I first encountered The Veronicas a few months ago, when they were on
the pre-movie audiotrack that our local theatre plays. As you eat your
popcorn, they subject you to never-heard-of-'em bands, and then a
cheesy announcer comes on and tells you who it was and that they are
The Next Big Thing. For every song.
Still, they played "Everything I'm Not" and it was actually pretty
good.
Turns out, the Aussies agree. You can't turn on a radio for 3 minutes
there without hearing Everything I'm Not, and you can't open a paper
without reading about Veronica sightings (neither of the sisters who
make up The Veronicas, by the way, are named Veronica).

They have a few other songs - "4Ever" is a beach-summer theme waiting
to happen - which are about the same (all from the album, "The Secret
Life Of The Veronicas"). high school break up lyrics, voices
well-honed at cheerleading practice and enough musical ability to
change cords with voice and guitar without making you wince. but since
there's two of them, they sing a slightly interesting kind of harmony,
and it sounds like they actually occasionally practice. its simple,
but what else do you want these days?
I think we're all a little tired of The Killers and the slump that rap
is in right now is getting worse by the day. With the exception of
Nelly's excellent Grillz, the best rap song of the winter was the Miami
Football rap, "7th Floor Crew", which peaks in the 2nd of it's 7
minutes ("whachu name?" "big playa" whachu do?" "Hold my nuts" "How you
do it?" "With both hands a grin").
Which leaves us temporarily with fake-girl-rock. The contenders
available include:
- Kelly Clarkson's desperate last-breath re-branding to rocker with
"since you been gone," memorable for the karoke treatment it got from
the Laguna Beach girls in the back of a Limo on prom night - who, in
their collective tuneless, drunk teenage squeal, did not appreciably
damage the song.(UPDATE: predictably, it won the Grammy for Song Of
The Year - seriously, what's funnier than the Grammys?)
- the newly re-bustified Lindsay Lohan who I'm PRAYING goes Jennifer
Love Hewitt and adds her own contribution to the canon of
hubris-inspired covers of "Me and Bobby McGee." It's going to take
something special to pass up Jessica Simpson's crime against "These
Boots Are Made For Walking," but i think Lindsay has it in her.
- and continuing her flight from credibility, Orange Bowl-Ashley with
the fabulously terrible "l.o.v.e." Just as bad as you imagine it is.

So that's not exactly a list to make PJ Harvey or Ani Difranco fans
re-wallpaper thier rooms. Or even Nellie Mckay fans. But it's what's
out there.

So into this shallowest of musical shallow ends wades The
Veronicas. Are they a modern channelling of the Go-Gos? Probably not.
But they seem to be trying to hold the songs up. After listening once
or twice, it's possible to imagine they actually grew up wanting to be
in a band, not the Mouseketeers.

MAJOR CAVEAT: None of the above includes The Faders. The Faders,
behind thier iTunes-ad song, "No Sleep Tonight" could mop the floor
with anybody here - but they also qualify as a 'real band' and not a
Fake Girl Rock band.

In any case, there's not much else now to check out, so it might be
worth a listen before they inevitable climb back on a ferry and head
back to Brisbane. And have I told you yet- I went to Australia!

Fairbanks discovery: Greenlight

2006-02-15T09:26:00.000-08:00

This is pretty much one of my major points from a week of TV in
Fairbanks, but BSG got to print with it quicker:

• Speaking of reality TV, I hope you're watching John Gulager's
meltdown on "Project Greenlight." I am now convinced that they go out
of their way to select crazy directors that will make for good TV, at
the expense of the actual movie. This guy takes the cake -- it's like
they pulled him out of line at the Store 24 when he was buying scratch
cards and Winstons, then handed him a multi-million movie. I also
loved Matt Damon's Will Hunting-like meltdown in the first episode,
when he started screaming at the Dimension execs, "The master of
horror is sitting two seats away from you and just told you the script
can't work!" I kept expecting Robin Williams to come in with a beard
and tell him, "It's not your fault, it's not your fault..."

So all i can add to that is to tie it together. In fact what happened
was this: all the 'studio' corporate guys ran over Damon in the
initial selection of the script (as a group, they had 3 to pick from),
demanding a possibly-profitable horror script written by hollywood-ish
dweebs over the smart, funny scripts written by 40+ middle managers
from Portland. Damon argued, hard, that the smart script had a chance
to be the next Bill and Ted's or something, but the Studio guys wanted
the surer, easier thing (cheap horror).
And Damon couldn't talk them down.
So when it came to pick the director, two young guys with obvious
but traditional talent interviewed like young hot shots. The studio
guys all liked one.
The third guy was Gulager, a 40+ sad sack who does wedding videos
for a shitty living. Obvious hopeless introvert wierdo. But his
audition film (3 minute movie from everybody with the same script) was
awesome.
His interview was... just unbelievable. He literally didn't talk.
Not about himself, not about his vision for a movie, not about his
thoughts on film. He was a hopeless dud.
The studio guys instantly were toxic on him. But Damon (and
Affleck) wanted him. They wanted to, ya know, take a CHANCE. They
used gambling analgies.
And the studio guys caved and they hired Gulager.

And he has been unbelievable. He won't talk to a single staffer -
and keep in mind, as director he is literally the captain of a
200-person ship. He CAN'T not talk. He is offending everyone with
his absolute insistance on hiring family members for all the key roles
(sidenote: the ONLY non-white guy of the enitre 100-person cast is
one blonde, hot casting director chick. And since its her job to find
actors to fill roles, Gulager sees her as the enemy - awesome
tension).
He has no ideas, can't talk in a group and doesn't seem interested
in the movie at all.
So not only is, as BSG says, this hopeless intorvert dweeb about
to submarine this prodiction and the series - but it's completely
Damon's fault.

Also, bears mentioning: if you take the 'easy' script, you HAVE to
take the 'easy' director, right? If you take the 'edgy' script, get
the edgy director, right? but you CAN'T mix and match, right? I
mean, leadershp 101, huh?

Anyway, if you get a chance to catch up (only 2 episodes so far) on
Project Greenlight, do so. Best find of the week up here -
particularly with the weak BET playlist.

matt

TV - LB, 10/31

2005-11-03T08:47:00.000-08:00

(thoughts from Season 1)

As the opening credits and most cuts from commercial let you know,
Laguna Beach is a community built up against the Orange County
palisades, plungling cliffs that seperate the sea from the land.
Perhaps then, just to keep the stunning beauty of the place forefront
in our minds, we can imagine that it is these gorgeous cliffs - and not
some boring, inland, desert, Wiley-Coyote-like cliffs - that the
producers have decided to throw the show off of.
Because that's what they've done - into the abyss for the long, slow
plummet.

Last year, the show was a look behind the curtain at the true Other
Half, at obscenely rich and privilidged and happy children in a green
and golden California wonderland.
This year, the whimsical kids from last year have returned from
college visibly deflated from the experience, while the kids left
behind have given away the secret that last year labored to hide:
white trash knows no boundries.

"You know what? You should know who's lap you're sitting in. You
know what? Put make-up on her and get her out to walk. If she falls
over, its her own fault."

Wow. How did we get here? Let's take a look...

At a fashion show (don't ask) Jason, the unshaven, indifferent sexual scavenger whose vapidness
girls so often mistake for personality, made a series of clumsy,
half-hearted gropes and kisses at his ex-plaything, Jessica. Childish,
akward and at war with her own self-esteem, Jessica - of course - let
him.
And LC saw them. Or rather, saw him.

It was a depressing swing of events, if only because the last two
weeks have been on an upswing. LC and Stephen, back from failed stints
at college, have retaken the show from the dreary and bitchy Kristen.
That development alone is all the information you need to know what the
season has been like - as sherri and terri might have told Kristin, you
ruin everything, you ruiner.

But LC fell for Jason (which, sadly, is pretty much the final
evidence we need to give up the last bit of hope on interprettying LC's
reserved personality as being, ya know, 'soulful' or 'shy' or
'thoughtful' rather than 'a complete bimbo'). We all knew a White
Trash eruption was brewing - just a question of when.

It began with a rare swerve into current events, the kids took an
interest in the landslides that had brought down "like 20 houses in LC
and Stephen's neighborhood." The bulk of last year's cast - back for
the summer - decided to put on a fashion show-benefit.
OK.
LC, as the fashion student, was in charge of the whole thing, and
she actually attacked it. Where was all this passion when she was
dueling with Kristen for Stephen's affections? it would have been a
runaway.
To the cause they recruited this year's cast. And really, here was
a chance to put Kristen - clearly in full-time training for her
eventual entry into the Matt Lienart-level of Young Hollywood - in a
leather bra and pants and let her shake her ass. How could they miss?
Well, first they let Talan sing. man, was that funny. I think he's
such a frieght train of ambition and well-planned exposure that he's
going to end up famous somehow - and all this will really just look
like the funny stuff that happened 'on his way up.' but for now,
knowing he's a high school kid who thinks he's a TV star and- evidently
- a rock star - man, was that funny.

And then, as Talan sang, Jason pulled Jessica onto his lap. And
started feeling her up. There was no question, none, who initiated
what (as if Jessica ever initiated anything in her life...)
Lauren saw it, called out Jason and he promtply did the "she just
came up to me. I didn't do anything, i just want to be with
you"-thing.

That seemed OK but of course, it wasn't. Backstage, LC confrotned
Jessica. here's how it went down:
"You are a very rude girl. Sitting in other people's boyfriends
lap."
"Who's lap was I in?"
"You should know who's lap you're in. You know what? Put make up
on her and get her out to walk. If she falls over its her own fault."
(blink)
HOLY SHIT!!!

As great as that was - and it certainly was the highlight of the
season - it got far, far trashier. 20 minutes later, backstage, Jason
and Jessica were fumbling and kissing at each other. And LC saw it.

Honestly, i think what is happening here is that Jason simply can't
communicate normally, and has probably gone through life not needing
to. If he can skip words, he does. When seen with his friends, they
are always playing basketball or something, but rarely with any sense
of urgency - they just play with a ball rather than relate to each
other. If this was a boys prep school - of just a place where tough
kids actually lived - he'd probably be in 4 fights a day (or a
ceaselessly carnal gay guy - it's a fine line).
Jessica, of course, simply craves approval, and jason's fumbling
looks and feels like it.
So, in each other's company, they play ceaseless grabass.

LC, of course, wasn't interested in all this. She just wanted to
punch something.

She yelled at big J. He sat around with that pissy-ness that only
the eternally-unpunished can muster when they finally get caught. And
LC, in a fantastic final shot, walked off into the night past him, like
he wasn't there, in a knee-high skirt - even her legs are perfect this
year - and halter-top. He had to sit there and watch her walk away.

It was pure white-trash, and it could have just as easily been in an
Omaha trailer park as California's most elite beash community. But for
white-trash drama, it wasn't bad.

West Wing, 10/30

2005-10-30T21:57:00.000-08:00

In the first segment of last night's West Wing - an episode entitled
"The Al Smith Dinner" wherein the candidates debate whether they should
attend the Al Smith Dinner - one of Josh's aides asks him: "Who's Al
Smith?"

Lord, but they're mailing it in.

I'm certainly nobody's political operative, but i feel pretty good in
sayiing that "Al Smith" is kind of one of those tripwires between
people who have studied politics - or just really like it - and those
who haven't or don't. Like Tris Speaker and Bob Lemon and Luke Appling
- maybe you never heard of them, but theyre in the Baseball Hall of
Fame.
(full disclosure: I have no idea who who Luke Appling was. None)
So the average West Wing viewer (though not, i bet, the average WW
fan) may not know who Al Smith was.
But there is no chance - none - that any character who has ever
passed in front of the camera didn't. Not even that horny british
ambassador, and certainly not an aide to Josh Lyman.

(for the record, Al Smith was the gov of NY and one of the great
progressive politicians of the early century - and i mean that with
emphasis on both words: he was a great progressive and a great
politician - he started as a hired hand in the NY fishmarkets, moved up
through the union ranks, and then city government and then did 4 terms
as governor, where he took on child labor, care for the mentally ill,
factory conditions, expansion and urban construction and a long list of
stuff that needed fixing. He would have been President except he was
Catholic, which back then was enough to sink him. Any decent Poli Sci major (of just anyone from New York) - would know that. I know who Smith is because he is the central character in the first 100 pages of Robert Caro's biography about Robert Moses, The Power Broker, the absolute #1, retire-the-trophy greatest political biography of all time. There is NO WAY a Democratic staffer on a presidentail campaign never read
it. It's not plausible).

So I'm not sure if they're getting too stupid to breathe or too cute by
a mile. This week was Abortion week, always a fun topic, but like the
song said, how bizarre, how bizare. The R nominee, Vinick (Alan Alda)
is pro-choice, a position which his party, obviously, detests. He is
CONSTANTLY defending himself to his own party on this point.
Here's the good bit - Matt Santos (the cancerous Jimmy Smits) is
personally pro-life, and skates as close to pro-life as a D can.

In other words, we now have a show with a D defending his sorta-pro-life
tendancies and an R as a pro-choicer.
And the national women's group - a stand-in for NOW - is thinking of
endorsing Vinick on the shrewd grounds that he'll win and suddenly
they'll be online with a pro-choice R President.

I'm wondering if maybe they think they're all in Australia. Or
Germany. Or Singapore. Because none of the above - none of it -
resembles anything close to America. A pro-choice R, in real life is
called... Hilary. What used to be a great Inside Baseball show is now
fanciful, utopian fiction.
As I've said, real elections are won not
by clever ads and soaring rhetoric but by TURNOUT - voter roles,
registration, base-level organizing. Bad TV, maybe, but if you want a
tv show about how to be President well.... that's how you become
President!
And, much worse, jeanne garafallo is wrestling the show away from
Josh. Here character is an idealogue, she's a well-known real life
leftist flunky and she can't act a lick. Great - let's hand her the
keys.

Good news: Donna's back! With Josh! And we even got a flare of the
old black magic:
Josh, curtly and angrily: "Do you have any references?"
Donna: "Santos for President Campaign Manager Josh Lymon, try the
main switchboard." sing it, dollface!

So they've resorted to sitcom antics with a West Wing budget (as
Vinick entered the Al Smith dinner, all the copcars and security had
their flashers on, filling the set with pulsating red lights; when
Santos came in, the same lighting, only it was all blue - GET
IT?!?!?!?!)

And now, we get a LIVE debate next week - between, I assume Jimmy
Smits playing Santos and Alan Alda playing Vinick. nice stunt - a live
TV non-debate debate with 2 non-real people (also, did i see that ER is
going to have a - deep breath - AIRLINE CRASH right outside the doors
of the hospital. What, at NBC, are they saying no to?)

i think the debate will be fun. And as I've said before, it's
STILL the West Wing, and they still lap everything on TV (inluding
Commander in Chief, which is DYING to be called Desperate
Whitehousewive). And I imagine it will be better than Vampire Bats
(starring Lucy Lawless!). I'm just a little concerned about how much
better.

matt

Weekend of Movies - Crash, Blade Trinity, Red Eye

2005-10-20T08:06:00.000-07:00

thanks to a vicious headcold, just had a movie-rich weekend.

Crash - I know, i'm late to the party, but you'll have trouble finding
a more arresting movie in recent years.
So what is it about Ryan Phillippe? Ever since he seduced Selma
Blair away from Sarah Michelle Gellar, Phillippe has been that rarest
of things, a professional catalyst - BSG might put him in the Robert
Horay/Nate Dogg corrlelary - He never carries a project, but if he's
AROUND it, you're guaranteed a funky, exotic and quality movie.
Way of the Gun. Gosford Park. Cruel Intentions. Antitrust
(ENORMOUSLY underrated dot.com/Microserfs/teen-thriller - see it just
to take in Tim Robbins playing a guy who is 1-based on Bill Gates and
2-is really a 70s-Bond-level villian. Also, in the mandatory Hot Girls
slot, you get Rachel Leigh Cooke, just months removed from her
jiggle-queen breakthrough in She's All That, and Claire Forlani, soon
after Joe Black, when it looked like she was poised to take over the
world - how did this movie disappear so completely?)
But back to Phillippe - he was even the "Host" on Outkast's watershed
'Hey Ya' video.
AND he bangs Reese Witherspoon.
And now, Crash. Phillippe, now that i've carried on about him, is
just one of about 10 A-minus/B-plus actors who play in Crash, which is
a multi-story meditation on various kinds of racial hate in America.
It's incredibly smart and tough and - key point - expertly made. All
the jumps are seemless, the cameras zoom smoothly through rooms to
follow conversations, the lighting paints the mood, and the director is
as likely to keep watching the actor reacting to a key line than on the
actor delivering it. Big League talent behind the camera.
The plot takes the four or five main stories of the movie - the
lives of a few sets of strangers, all with various racial issues - and
wraps them around each other. In fact, it wraps them so tight, by the
end it gets a bit comic. You're basicly asked to believe that the
population of Los Angeles is, at most, 30. It's like 6-degrees of
seperation, only, at most, 3-degrees.
But again the writer helps you out - often when the stories collide,
the characters don't even know it - only you do, since you're been
following them.
The movie builds all its hate and mistrust and loathing into two
critical moments - the first one is diffused by Phillippe. The true
apex, then, comes a minute later on the driveway of the locksmith's
house (interesting metaphor, the locksmith, the man we trust to keep
the world at bay) and it's one for the ages. You think you know what's
coming, you think you know, you think you know and bam! - Way worse
than you thought.
From there, the movie begins to diffuse, which turns out to mean
that only 5 or 6 coincidences still have to be revealed.
Of the 10 central characters, only Brendan Frasier can't punch his
weight, which should surprise no one.
It's fun to watch Sandra Bullock be a screaming, unapologetic rich
racist bitch.
And almost stealing the show is Ludacris, the planet's current best
rapper - he is so good as a conflicted street criminal that the
director allows him to both open and close the movie.
One more interesting note - this genius I've been going on about who
wrote and directed Crash is a guy named Paul Haggis, who also wrote
Million Dollar Baby. And episodes of Diff'rent Strokes and the Love
Boat. Just for perspective.

Also checked out Blade Trinity. Usually, I wouldn't even bring it
up, but, like i said, it was a movie-filled weekend, so I will: Skip
it.

Finally, we went out and saw the still-in-threatres Red Eye - and what
a pleasant surprise, to find a low-budget, formula studio movie as well
made as this one. It's directed, with pop and tempo, by Wes Craven,
who puts in absoluetly nothing that isn't vital. The movie ads and
trailers, for some reason, sell this movie as a sort of horror movie,
'Elm Street' in a 767, but it isn't at all. It's a thriller, closer to
Die Hard than Freddy. Well, closer to Hitchcock than either of those,
and like Hitchcock movies, it lives and dies on its lead - and on that
note, Rachel McAdams has arrived. She was great in the Notebook
(dragged to it, but she was the only thing that kept it afloat),
stellar in Mean Girls and she's great here. If Nicole Kidman can be a
major star, so can this woman (of course, by that corollary, so can
anyone, but whatever). She's paired with the guy from 28 Days Later,
who is just too creepy to be boring. The entire movie is a mind game
between a pretty, smart girl and the wierdo she's next to on an
airplane. And all of that is really great. It's so cerebral that the
one moment where violence erupts is so unexpected, the whole theatre
gasps.
It falls apart - as absolutely every movie like it must - when they
land the plane and, therefore, take away the playing field. Then it
quickly becomes a very ordinary chase movie with explosions and killers
lurking behind shower curtains. But that bit - again, to Wes Craven's
credit - lasts at most 10 minutes.
But perhaps the best part is the opening 20 minutes, where Red Eye
expertly captures the misery of modern airport/airplane living. The
gate person, overhead compartments, the ticket agent, the mindless
pre-flight 'announcements' (all electronic items in 'off' position,
etc), the stuffy sense of privilidge that you have to walk through as
you transit the first-class cabin back to your seat - it's all here.
Great movie.

ps - This is season premier week on (network) TV, and my expectations
are low - Lost and Desperate Housewives are going to have to find an
entirely new trick to keep the mojo rising, and I don't think either
will (Lost has a fighting chance; Housewives, I think, is already in
the post-sex "Moonlighting" realm); West Wing - it's been a long, long
time since I rooted for a Republican, but I think that's what I'll be
doing this year, but will it matter? The last 2 years have been so
bad; the Simpsons - no clue what's going on with that show, but I just
spotted this the other day - does anybody watch The Family Guy? I
caught one episode and it's like the Glory years of the Simpsons all
over again! Hysterical! Revelation!
(PS on the Simpsons - if you're unclear on "the Glory years," that's
seasons 5, 6 and 7 - and six just joined 5 out on DVD - worth
mentioning)
And Season 2 of Laguna Beach... come ONNN!!! Know your worth,
girls! KNOW YOUR WORTH!!!!! Tomorrow (Tuesday) night is the Cabo
episode - I'll have more after that.

TV - LB Season 2

2005-10-10T08:07:00.000-07:00

Laguna Beach - THIS was the Orange County Aristocracy I was waiting
for. A nearly perfect collection of soulless, emotionally isolated,
lonely and vicious children of infinite privilidge. I think I see what
happened - the filmmakers latched onto last season's central kids - the
sleepy but good-natured LC and Stephen, the ditzy Lo, the artsy and
soulful Trey, the oddly priggish Morgan and Kristina - and in the deal
they got the scorching hot vampiress Kristen, then a junior. Kristen
virtually took over the show, but her evolution was fun to watch,
particularly amid the ebb and flow of the other characters.
Unfortunately, all of the above graduated except Kristin, leaving
the whole franchise to her. So this season we get Kristin's more
natural social class - the screaming bitches and callous jocks - that
no TV producer would have picked in a vacuum, but here we are anyway.
I wish i was exagerating or being dismissive. I'm not. The bile
between the clans of girls and sexual indifference of the guys has been
like the opening 3rd of any really over the top teenage movie. And I
think the producers hate them as much as we do - unlike last year, they
routinely humiliate the kids by showing moments they never did last
year - mean jokes and thoughts about each other said in private, the
giggly retellings of other's failures and even routine drunkeness (I
mean, last year's kids never seemed to be far from a good time, but the
producers didn't seem to enjoy watching them stumble and fall, nor
drunkenly lick each other's faces, as they do this year).
Perhaps inevitably, Kristin - the scheming slut queen of last year -
is now the nearest thing to a wise voice of reason - the three or four
less-hot friends she pulls behind her, like satelites pulled behind a
planet, are worshipping and needy. She is strict and demanding. most
appualing is the season-long destruction of the sweet-natured but
hopelessly niave and insecure Jessica - she is just cute enough (or,
more plausibly, just stacked enough) to attract the preying attention
of the school's cruelest boys, but not near skilled enough to naviagate
thier waters. She hooks up with baseball stud Jason - possibly the
shallowest male character in Reality history - who is bored with her
almost before he begins.
Hitting way out of her league, Jessica falls for him. Her life
becomes an unending series of unreturned phone calls, almost all of
which the producers show us.
Kristin intially tries to help her friend ("take it from a girl who
cheated on her boyfriend - he's cheating on you!") but sours on the
project when she realizes Jessica isn't in her league, either. Soon
Alex M., a lurking girl of average looks but striking availability
latches onto Jason. Or rather, Jason, managing briefly to string
together five or six words, takes up her open offer (literally in front
of Jessica - nice).
Alex M.,, a bit of a queen bitch herself among the girls but no
expert with guys, then misses all the same signs that Jason is done
with her, too. As far as she is concerned, they are together. The
glee she takes from having 'stolen' someone's guy is palpable.
Jason, in a piece of calculated sexual theatre I personally think he
did entirely to show off for the camera, then calls Jessica (from a
golf course, where he's goofing off with friends - she's the butt of a
quick round of jokes between them) and later on hooks up with her. At
a party, full of eyes. Alex M., out to dinner with Kristin and the
clan, get s text message on her phone about the liason AS IT'S
HAPPENING. Say this for the Laguna kids - they know how to leverage
technology.
At fault, clearly, is Jason. He's a grinning, thoughtless asshole,
who went a step too far entertaining himself between two willing girls.
And he gets blamed by exactly no one.
Instead, the entire herd comes down on Jessica. Crucially, Queen
Bitch Kristen, who could have solved the problem, doesn't. She piles
on. The girls all go to Cabo - where last year's show hit an historic
high note - where they all get drunk and party all week, except for
Jessica- she gets to sit in her room and cry. Kristin does nothing to
make the peace, and as the week wears on, Alex M. attacks and
humiliates Jessica at a nightclub. No one holds her back. The only
person who tries to diffuse it is Jessica's friend, Emily, who's
argument is:
"If you ruin Jessica's Cabo trip, you're ruining my Cabo trip." -
wow. that's sticking up for a friend.
Alex M replies: "Sorry Dude."
Once back home, Alex M. 'confronts' Jason while he's playing
basketball (though only sort of grab-ass, shoot-around ball) with his
friends. Smart. She hits him with some dreary "where are we right
now?" and "do you have feelings for me?" rap. She never had a chance,
of course, but this particular form of relationship suicide is really
painful to watch.
He says, literaly, nothing. He nods, grins, grimaces, shrugs, and
then caps it with a "whatever."
And the star-crossed lovers part.
It's about as fun as it sounds - mean people behaving horribly.
Funniest of all is that the very best looking of the new cast could not
have cracked the starting line-up against last year's (except for
Morgan, who didn't really count anyway), who never, ever treated each
other so badly.
(though, could it be some of the ol' LB-Season 1 magic that the
producers end the Cabo show with a shot of a downtrodden Alex M walking
away while, in the foreground, Jason now back on the court, happily
hits a lay-up? Now that I think about it - of course it was)
In all a vast letdown from last year.

(As Kristin would say, more drama)

Movie - Aristocrats, Lord of War

2005-10-03T08:14:00.000-07:00

I forgot to mention a while back that I saw the aristocrats.
I probably laughed to the point of hypoxia more than three times. I also almost walked out twice. As 'brave' as the movie is, if you're not repulsed to the point of anger at least once or twice, you may be too far down the Cool path for your own good.

On the other hand, this probably statistically - (# jokes/minute)*funniness - the funniest movie of all time.
Favorite part was a montage, early, when they bounce from comic to comic
in this machine-gun fire of filth that never seems to stop. That
technique, however, got a bit old, particularly when they got to the
incest bit. Also, thought South Park was brilliant, but thought the
Jesus bit in the Onion office was not.
But I think the Rabbi hit it Poo-Holes style with his review. 9/11
is the new incest - if it's not a 9/11 joke, then it's not really good.
Bob Sagat was ridiculous. Also, I loved the guy who, to my
knowledge, only plays bad guys in movies but was too funny
(sittingoutside, looking stoned). "After the tragedies of Jan 12,
can't we all.... That was the day i left my wallet in a restraunt on
Wilshire."
Wait - i just remembered the funniest part - watching Hefner twitch,
miserably, as Gilbert does his thing.

Also saw "Lord of War" with Nic Cage. A movie that wanted so badly to
be "Blow + explosions" but didn't have the story telling ability. The
final act, where he gets busted, is particularly empty. In fact, it
has the smell of desperate rewrite.
But there's a time-lapse sequence - where a bunch of locals, in 24
hours, completely dismantle a Russian jumbo jet - that is almost worth
the price of admission.
A good rental is Game Over, a documentry about Gary Kasparov's chess
game with the IBM computer Deep Blue. Heavily over-dramatized, and
clearly done by a guy who want to be Errol Morris but isn't, but still
entertaining.

Blaine, follow-up

2005-07-18T00:43:00.000-07:00

(this post is a follow-up to this one, below)

So I actually did spend an hour cleaning up the kitchen and living room
with the Cameos playing. Here's the preseason Top 10.

10 - The Miami guy who keeps slapping away a Florida State guy's
helmet, while yelling, 'it's all about this 'U' ". What's so great
about that is that, as we know from self-labeled "Soldier," Kellen
Winslow, "It's all about this 'U' " is the unofficial team slogan for
Miami players. So from one cameo, we get to think about Kellen's
timeless "Soldier" tirade, Kellen's recent two-wheel hijinks AND the
endlessly amusing irony that, of all the letters that the Miami
Hurricanes football players can cling to for identity, they choose the
one that stands for "University."
9 - The three bruisers in halter tops for whom it's a Great day to be a
Gator.
8- The Florida State sorority, 20 strong, that lets you know: It's In
The Game.
7 - The East-West all-star game sideline roll call of conferences -
they run quick clips of players from different conferences lining up
with their helmets and giving shout outs about how their conferecne is
just SO totally In The Game. SEC, Big 12, Pac 10, all In The Game.
ACC is in the game, hilariously fronted by a Duke guy (I mean.. come
on...) And so is Boise State, San Jose State and Utah whose players
stand around together giving a collective, vague non-BCS-Is-In The Game
shout. Hilarious. And if you don't think ANYTHING sounds cooler when
you sandwich it around "baby," just listen up for "Boise State, baby,
Boise State!" Terrific.
6 - the Florida State twins dressed in Porno Pocahontas outifts. It's
in the Game.
5 - Lloyd Carr, back for at least his third cameo, with not an inch
more charisma. The squarest coach in the nation - It's In The Game.
4 - (to the hook of Biz Markie's "Just a Friend) "EYE... I love
U-S-SEE-EEE....And I hate U-C-L-A (and Oklahoma! (yelled)), and I hate
UCLA (and OKlahoma!) OH BAY-BEE, EYE... I love U-S-See-eee.... and I
hate UCLA (and Oklahoma!) - EA Sports it's in the Game!!!!!" There's
five of 'em, each wearing more red and yellow than the next (three
Blaine jerseys between them), each with frizzier, blonder hair than the
next, each in jean shorts shorter than the next. Filmed, obviously, in
the parking lot of the Orange Bowl. Them Sooners never had a chance.
3 - Tommy Chang at the East West Bowl. With a rare solo cameo, Chang
looks in the camera and says, "Tpmmy Chang, University of Hawaii, NCAA
passing leader" with about the same commitment that Scott McClellan
answers Rove questions.
2 - The 3 drunk Wisconsin chicks in half-shirts. Not surprisingly, the
director gave them a full, uncut Cameo ("E-A-Sports, N-C-double-A
Football Two-thousand-six - If it's in the Game, it's in the Game -
whooooooooo!"). Arms draped around each other, they teeter farther and
farther forward towards the camera, in a manner that becomes more and
more fellatious as they go (Yes, that's a word - I just heard it in
"Kinsey"). For sheer horsepower, right there with the three assassins
ABC found in the Miami stands during the '02 FSU game.
1 - USC. Hey - everybody else with a preseason list has them here.
And since I don't actually rank teams anymore, here's my chance.

Blaine 2006...

2005-07-17T01:15:00.000-07:00

...aka, EA Sports' "NCAA 06", the latest release of the only serious
college football video game franchise for playstations and the like.
You're either with Madden or your with me, and if you're with me, well,
here we go.

(hey - since i'm doing a video game post, anybody know how to watch the
porn on Grand Theft Auto 5? I don't mean how to unlock it, cuz I won't work that hard. I mean, have the actual movie parts been captured and posted anywhere? Leave it in the comments below. thanks)

After a 30 minute initial shakedown, I'll cut to it: thumbs way the
hell up. Where the 2005 game was a sloppy re-release of 2004 with a
thin coat of new paint (and 2004 was a clone of 2003), for 2006 they've
totally updated the product, with only one or two obvious missteps and
a whole list of clear upgrades.

I'm 4 days away from spending 45 days in front of a giant plasma screen
in a hanger on the other side of the world. Now I can hardly wait.

Coverboy and Packaging: (UPDATE FROM PREVIOUS POSTS) D-. Every version of an EA Sports college franchise ever released for the PS2 has had on its cover one the sports' elite players from the previous year, including this month's NCAA basketball with Emeka Okafore.

They have been, if memory serves, Danny Wuerfel, Joey Harrington, Carson Palmer and last year's Larry Fitzgerald (to break the QB lock, I guess). Two runaway Heisman winners and two saavy shoulda wons.

This year they went with Desmond Howard.

The only reaction this can possibly elicit: Who said no?

And the bizsarre part is, assuming they felt like they needed a midwest pick, Michigan had a terrific departed player available for the first time this decade in Braylan Edwards. In fact, Edwards is pretty much the only first-tier talent
to emerge this decade from the Big 10 (other than Clarett), and he even stayed all four-years, always a nice touch for a college-based game. If they were going to do a Big 10 guy, this was it.

and they did. Big 10-circa 92.

In fact, it kinda HAD to be Edwards: the three best players from '04 are all
back in school (SC's Leinart and Bush and Texas' Young) so they
couldn't be on it. The #1 draft pick, Utah's Alex Smith, has still
never played in a game of national interest. Two of the top 3 running
backs were from Auburn, and neither was really the team's star, and the
third, Cedric Benson, wasn't the best player on his own team. I think
any true college fan would have appreciated seeing Cal's Aaron Rodgers get the cover
- who had a more complete, memorable college season in 05 than Rodgers?
But both the 03 and 04 games had Pac 10 QBs on the cover, and the frat
boys in Austin, Columbus and Tuscaloosa are only going to buy so many
of those.
This might have been a good year for a defensive player (David
Pollack? Marcus Spears? Either, or both, Sean Codys?). But I suppose it was time for a midwest guy, Michigan is the Midwest's franchise team and so Braylon would have been a solid choice from a limited field.

Instead - an NFL-flopping, early 90s guy who, the year he won it, wasn't even the best player at his own position in his own bowl game.

Other than that bizarre pick, the packaging is updated. They gave the typeface a tech look
and added some stadium elements. And they dropped it from "2005" to
just "06"

Not enough to sink the product, but a terrible, terrible start.

Fortunately, things recover.

Opening Cameos: The Cameos (the live-action clips that run as the
intro at every boot up) were strongest in 03, which was nothing but
campus clips. And let's just say it: it had the ASU chicks. The 04
cameos were dull, with mostly shots of ex-players at the all-star game
and some annoying band clips - plus the two random clips of two skinny
SDSU chicks who weren't even so much as hot as jarringly slutty. 05
just sucked. boring. bands, all-star games, lame.
Welcome back to the good stuff. Lots of on-campus rallies, TONS of
hot girls screaming "its in the game" and then bouncing around, drunk
frat boys, fighting mascots - terrific.
And here's the hammer: there's now an option in the game that you
can watch all the cameos, back to back to back to back to back......
awesome. honestly, i could probably just let that play for like 2
hours while i clean the kitchen or cook or... just watch it.

They made an improvement and a mistake in the menus - they added
actual famous game tape to the menus. As you select what you are
doing, to the right they have, say, Desmond Howard's return against
Ohio State, or Warren Sapp destroying an FSU runningback. That's good
(though it looks like there's only 5 or 6 clips - they repeat pretty
fast).
Unfortunately, the soundtrack over all the menus is no longer fight
songs (what else COULD it be?) but now skate/surf-punk music. That was
the cool thing to do in the late 90s, but its pretty dated. not to
mention all the punk songs so far suck. the only hip hop is "me myself
and I" from De La Soul and, again, it seems pretty limited. The songs
repeat pretty fast.
bad decision.

And now... the game.

Gameplay: they altered the controls, which is interesting and i
think good. For dodging and juking, rather than using the
front-mounted 'L1' and 'R1', you now use the right stick. Juking is
one of the best parts of the running game so its important to get it
right. we'll see, though, because it's a bit akward to snap the ball
with the X and then shift your thumb to the stick. Particularly since
the circle is still the spin the move. It'll take a few hours to sort
it out.
But at least they're trying something new.

Defense seems a bit more responsive around the line, but i think
some of the mechanisms for switching plyers has changed. again, time
will tell. But i always sucked at playing D anyway, so it won't matter
to me.

Animation - which was always a strong point - is terrific, i think
actually redrawn from previous years, but i'm not sure. either way,
looks great.

Strange Features - the clownish "crowd noise" is still there but oh
well. last year Madden added something called "playmaker" where a
certain player had some sort of super-powers and could fly, or
something. i don't know. Apparently they've migrated the concept to
this game, with one player on the field highligheted as an 'impact'
player by a white dot - when the white-dot is pulsing, that player is
'in the zone' and has triple-magic-hitpoints. Or something. i don't
know - i'm always against any sort of invented superpower thing. So
far its mildly distracting. And Reggie Bush is always pulsing. I wish
you could turn it off.
Also back is that odd 'match-up' option where you can, before the
snap, compare the relative talents and fatigue of your players at the
line and the guys they are lined up against. Actually not a bad
feature, but unneeded.
They reddid the pregame animation, which after 4 years needed
rewrite, but they made it into this bizarre studio show - the three
ESPN guys sit around and talk and then Lee Corse puts on the helmet of
the team he picks. stupid.
But unlike last year, where the bizarre add ons swamped the game to the
detriment of the expereince, here it's all secondary. the game play
appears to be the focus again.

Now, the truly good news: the structure of the game.
revamped and massively improved the practice options. Now the
'practice' part of the game is like an arcade-style game of its own.
They have 4 drills: option (QB and RBs versus 2 LBs and a safety),
passing skeleton (passing game without linemen), running game including
and "oklahoma."
"Oklahoma" is terrific - its 2 on 2, a ball runner, a lineman going
each way and a linebacker, all hemmed in to a 10 yard area. you get 10
snaps as the ballcarrier, trying to use your blocking past the line
then beat the linebacker in the backfield. then you get 10 snaps as
the linebacker, trying to stop the CPU as the ballcarrier.
In all of the pracitce games, it keeps score, and records your high
score.

There is still Dynasty mode, roughly the same as Madden's
"Franchise," where you run a program as the coach through multiple
seasons. But they've also reworked it from the bottom-up - now rather
than be the Dynasty coach, you can play a full career as a specific
player in a mode called "Hiesman." You start as a high school kid and
'tryout' - you run through one of any of the practice arcades as your
tryout for a scholarship. Your score determines the scholarship offers
you get. I picked option QB, and screwed up the first couple then did
real well on the last 5 snaps. I got offers to mississippi st, akron
and Syracuse (you can also 'walk-on' anywhere you want - not sure what
the advantages or disadvantages are of that). Then you 'enroll' and I
guess play a full season. As you go through (and this part, obviously,
i didn't do), your heisman hype goes up and down depending on your
performance. they have a little structure set up for 'college life' -
you get fan (or hate) mail, earn awards, be on the cover of SI and all
the stuff from Dynasty (playbook, rankings, bowl games, etc).
A nice effort to rework the long-term part of the game.

All the standbys are still there - historic teams (which i like) and
mascots (which I don't). And they appear to have dialed down the
stupid crowd animation, which was one of the 'new' things last year.
thank goodness.

There's also online play, if you're into it.

In short, where 2005 was a major let down, 2006 is a terrific
product. I guess that bodes well for the new Madden, for those of you
who dig that. so if playstation football is your deal, don't hestitate
to get it.

matt

Terror - We Win

2005-07-07T14:33:00.000-07:00

Terrorists, you have lost.
I mean - stop it, already. We're done, we're through. we're over it. In fact, everytime you blow something up, we're getting less scared. How do you like that, terrorists? TERROR-ists? OOOOhhhh. I'm just so TERROR-fied by the TER-ROR-ists.
Please.
I know - I feel horrible for all those people who died in London. And everyone who knew them. And everyone who knows the people who know them. That's gonna be, like, five years of hearing the people who knew someone lean on that crutch for everything. "Split the check? You ordered both appitizers, and I had, like, two chips!" "I know, but sometimes when I think of Cheryl, I just eat..." "Fine, look, at least put it on my card. I get miles."
But who'd you get? 40 people? 40! That's a joke. In Iraq, they do that everyday. And the degree of difficulty is WAY higher. They have stuff set-up to keep THOSE terrorists away from the Victims - concrete barriors, sniffing dogs, insane mercenaries, 50 caliber machine guns manned by 19-year-olds who grew up playing XBox 20 hours a day. And they still get 50, 60, 70 a pop. THOSE are terrorists, my friend.
Enemy, I mean. Whatever.
And don't be fooled by all our 'public officials' - none of whom we like, by the way - "urging" us to "remain calm." I just heard the LA polic chief plead with everyone to "remain calm." Like who? Who's not calm? You know who's going to an airport and flying todat?! My parents! The same Red State, terrorist-fearing Americans who cancelled a cruise to Alaska in 2002 because of terrorsts are today perfectly fine flying here. Flying!
Remember when NOBODY was flying cuz of you? For a week!!! Man, you must miss those days.
Tony Blair sounded pissed, though. He's a tough guy, that Tony Blair. Man, if I was a terrorist, no way I piss him off. And you got him on a bad day, too. Yesterday, he completely stole the Olympics from the French (he hates those French - you think you hate the French, but you have no idea). And I suspect he was so ecstatic over the Olympics that he just couldn't help giving Bush a rash of crap over dinner about crashing his bike. "What's the band-aids for George? Oh! Had a spot of trouble on the bike, eh? Ran into a copper, did we? We call them bobby's, ol' chum. Probably his fault, i'm sure. But you know who's a good bike rider from Texas? That Lance Armstrong - fancy he'd crash into a bobby? Bloody doubtful, eh, Georgy. And isn't he winning the Tour De France right now? My, but he's fast. Lance Armstrong, indeed. And speaking of France, George, did you hear who got the Olympics? I did! Waiter, another gin and tonic for me and President Lance, here!"
So I'm betting Tony Blair woke up this mornig hungover, and - wham - gets this news. Big mistake, terrorists.
Now 9/11 - okay, you got us. totally. In a way, we were all a bit amazed - it was like watching... well, it was like watching buildings full of people collapse, is what it was like. And Madrid was bad. I'll give you that. And then came... Bali? Bali? Step 3 to ripping out the living soul of the Great Satan and feasting on his innards is to blow up... t-shirt shops and a Fat Tuesdays in Bali? Now it's been three years since you swore to bring down the Great Satan, and fill our streets with boiling blood, or whatever, and you've hit two public transit systems and a strip of beach bars in Asia. The Ring 2 was scarier than this!
Just stop it. we can tell you're out of ideas.
Because I gotta tell ya, this international war on terror I keep hearing so much about - this is like a 90s Super Bowl. Afghanistan we won, like, 100 to 0. Iraq, 90-10. OK, 80-20. But 80-20?!?!? That's such a complete butt-kicking. No wonder we're getting bored.
The networks are back to soaps. CNN and Fox are already blaming each other. NPR is the only network even trying to be shocked. But you knew that was coming. And, hey! You had to do this today? If you'd waited a day, maybe they would have pre-empted 'Calling All Pets.' Now, it's gonna be on for sure. Right after that annoying Moyra Gunn person.
Thanks for nothing, terrorists. Damn you, you've won again!

Movie - Batman Begins and the Dukes

2005-06-28T02:27:00.000-07:00

First some perspective, courtesy of Mandy, upon the entrance of one of
the movie's key characters:

Her: Oh no, not him.
Me: What?
Her: Is that Jerry Springer?
Me: Uh... that's Rutger Hauer.

But ya know what? The similarities are striking. Long way from Blade
Runner, indeed.

So despite what you heard elsewhere, Batman Begins is a hell of an effort, if you keep in mind the limitations built into the movie. No, not any prequels-are-hard-to-do nonsense. No, the director,
Christopher Nolan (who did Decade Top 10-shoe-in "Momento"), was
saddled with Liam Neeson and Katie Holmes.
As far as Neeson, the likable Scot goes - well, to quote Sherry and
Terry, the Simpson's purple twins, "You ruin everything, you ruiner."
Between his franchise-sinking effort in Phantom Menace and this, Neesan
is arguably right there with Michael Bay as the worst thing in the
history of action movies. He can do no right. I keep thinking its the
script, because he unfailingly has horrific material to work with (and
his lines in this movie are hilariously bad), but he also is utterly
unbelievable as a tough guy. Or even an in-shape guy. He makes Pierce
Brosnan's anemic James Bond look like The Rock.
Neeson bookends this movie with wildly dull catfights and mindless
gibberish about 'confronting your fears by becoming your fears' and
it's best to ignore both episodes completely.
Everything in between is really good.
Well, except for Holmes, who is terrible, but you knew that going
in, right? Fortunately, Nolan spots the danger early and solves it
with an ingenious sidestep. He does this to her: A) she plays an
assistant DA with B) straight black hair and skin tight cashmere
numbers who c) spends every second onscreen striding purposefully down
hallways holding a legal briefcase or D) in edgy conflict with her
boss, the DA, a nameless actor who is E) cast, clothed and made-up to
look as much like Sam Waterston as possible.
In other words, the director clearly knew from the second he was told
he had Holmes what just about everyone else knows, too: in a fair
world, she MIGHT be a good enough actress to play the Angie Harmon-et
al role of the Law and Order pin-up girl.

(any question of how interchangable the hot-bimbo-DA role is on that show should be put to rest with that link - notice that the bio is for the NEW hot-bimbo-DA, while the previous-generation hot-bimbo hasn't even been stripped from the show's banner at the top of the page)

So, like renting a blow-up castle to let the kids bounce around in
at a grown-up party, what Nolan does, brilliantly, is build Holmes her
own little L&O episode - replete with the Waterston look alike to talk
down to her - to play in while he and the rest of the cast shoot a
Batman movie. By her fifth time on screen - demanding to see
evidence, earnestly arguing for an indictment, telling the cops to
watch their step - I was greeting her appearance with my own little
"Dum-duummmm."

So Neeson is relegated to play against the credits and Katie is sent
out to find Lenny. That leaves the rest of the movie, which finishes
miles ahead of the previous contenders as the best Batman movie to
date.

And it's mostly because of Christian Bale.

Being handed Batman was clearly a make-or-break opportunity for Bale
who, ever since American Psycho, I've had listed right there with Jason
Stetham (Turkish from Snatch) as a guy who needs to be handed a 5-movie
franchise. He crushes this one. He's smart, tough, mean and dark, and
roles through the movie like he was born to it. The entire point of
the movie is to put a story to Batman's dark impulses, and, once spun,
Bale wears the weight of that backstory as easily as he wears a tux. In
key moments, he doesn't preen or overreach. When the moment is funny,
he flows with it and lets the joke breathe - and then has the grace to
walk away. When the moment is dark or tense (which is pretty much all
the time), he lets loose a little bit of the fury he brought to Jason
Batemen in "Psycho" and attacks.
When not having to carry Holmes of Neeson on his back, he's a wonder.
Comparing him to the other Batmans....
He's relaxed and engaged as both Bruce Wayne and Batman, versus the
perpetually lost Michael Keaton.
He has no false swagger or smarm - which is pretty much the
definition of George Clooney in every movie.
And he's not an introverted geek like Val Kilmer.
OK, so lapping that field is no big deal. But Bale is better than
just 'better than those guys.' He's smart, grounded, stubborn and -
when the light goes on - a born man of action.
Been a while since I found myself thinking, "here's a guy who could
play Indiana Jones" but, well, here's a guy.

The toys of the movie are terrific especially the Batmobile, a
dead-even mix of M1A1 tank and Lamborghini Countach. Morgan Freeman
and Michael Caine, both heavyweights in flyweight roles, handle their
business with expert timing (it's still another reflection on Bale that
he never cedes the screen to these two high-end actors when they are
together). Unlike the other movies, the villian is kept very
deliberately in the background, so there's no vamping comic or
brand-name action star to steal screen time. The villan is Batman's
past (and, i guess Neeson and Holmes), no problem for Bale.

Terrific movie.

Also, saw the trailer for Dukes of Hazzard. unwatchable. Since you
know the best 3 jokes of the movie are in the trailer, this mght be the
least funny movie of the year. I saw three quick sequences that
sounded like jokes, but as far as actually laughing? Forget it.
And, Jessica Simpson, tits and ass predictably ablaze, is making a
major push for Worst Fake Southern Accent Ever.
Which would be quite an accomplishment, since she's from Texas.
Who has ever been more successful on less talent? She's like a
porno-barbie version of Tom Arnold.

something else the right is getting good at

2005-06-27T03:16:00.000-07:00

pre-rant: read this week's New Yorker piece on Patrick Henry College.
They're Coming.

on with the rant -

example 1: two years ago, two NY Times reporters were handed by a
senior admin official the name of valerie plame, as a CIA operative, in
order to smear her husband, a former diplomat who was accurately
calling George Bush a liar about plutonium in Nigeria. maybe not a big
deal, either the leak (who cares?) or the plutonium (no one believed
him anyway) but revealing the information - the CIA part - was a crime,
not to mention a clear act of betrayal of national security (the
maginitude is not at issue).
if you squint, it almost looks like treason (it certainly DOESN'T
look like Supporting Our Troops). and somebody in the White House
committed it, on purpose, for patently, obvious and cynical, pro-Bush
reasons.
a special prosecutor, reasonably (though surprisingly) was appointed
to find out who.
And the NY Times reporters, who were clearly used by the source for
partisan smearing, are nonetheless standing firm, not revealing who it
was. A promise, even one to a professional smear-artists, is still a
promise.
They are a High 9 eye-roll away from jail.
To sum up: A member of the white house staff places Bush-Cheney '04
ahead of national security, and two NY Times reporters may end up in
jail for it.

(tangentially, Robert Novak, who famously printed the same
leak/smear, is not on the hook for the pokey - and he won't say why.
And yet, he still draws a paycheck from a host of companies that trade
in 'news' - discuss)

example 2: The High 9 last week decided that the government can take
your house.
No, they didn't really. Well, yeah, they sorta did - but that's not
all they said. In fact, it's not even the main thing they said.
What they actually said was that it is not the role of the federal
government to dictate to states or localities what they may or may not
throw into their own local Eminent Domain grinder, as long as that
state or locality appears to have the 'public good' in mind. clearly,
a decision frought with dangers, and the case presented to the High 9
was a particularly offensive one: throwing ancient retired people out
of thier lifelong homes to make way for a mall. yuck. however, the
elected officials - and, therefore, ostensibly - the electorate of some
snobby NE hamlet thought it sounded good and the High 9 said little
more than, "my name's Paul and that's between Y'all."
So what do we, as students of American Info-tainment, know about
Eminent Domain and what happens when private interests hijack it? Any
takers? If not, allow me my favorite example: if there is a single
Eminent Domain case pertinent here - one where a government clearly got
in bed with rich boys and shit all over everybody else - it must be the
backstory to the Ballpark at Arlington, the stadium that now prints
money for the owners of the Texas Rangers where once nice houses of
nice families stood. As trampled-freedom stories go, its no more
horrible than many runaway stadium deals except for one postscript: it
launched George Bush to the Texas Governorship.
So, big picture, kind of an important case.
And its about as one-sided as ugly Eminent Doman cases get - rather
than try to buy expensive land, some rich boys bought themselves a
cheap local government, which promptly handed over to them all the land
they wanted, current owners be damned (Dubya was the grinning frontman)
(yes - they did it as an 'authority' - like that matters).
Just the kind of case you'd like to think a body like the High 9
would pounce on - and just the kind of case they opted to let slide
last week, in the name of state and local sovernienty.
Now, is ANYONE please with that decision? Who would we EXPECT to be
pleased? Any takers?
Well, if history and ideology matter a lick, you might expect that
those who back Dubya on matter of Federalism (less of it) or Greed
(more of it) or Dubya himself ("8 years of Jed, then P will be 40")
would welcome the decision.
Afterall, its got all the ingredients: Greed, Dubya's own personal
history and - best of all - limits on government power. Call it
State's Rights, for lack of a better term.
Because that's what this decision was: the High 9 deciding to NOT be
the one branch of government responsible for ruining somebody's greedy
fun - which is to say, they actively chose to NOT make an 'activist
judicial' decision.
This was clearly not the work of a Big Government Court.
Only, the voting among the Justices was inconvienant to Dubya's
current political needs.
See, roughly speaking, the Court's rightwingers voted against this
decision, the others for it.
In other words, the rightwingers voted FOR a Big Government/activist
decision, the others against.
Again, Rightwingers, pro-activism; leftwingers, strict construction.
And yet, in the right's ever-expanding Every-Day-Is-Opposite-Day
circles, the cry is growing rapidly that this was a 'vote to take your
property.' I know that, because I heard two nutjob right wing radio
hosts say just that on their shows this weekend - and then attack the
decision as 'just another example' of the court's 'liberals' being
'activist.'

So, to sum up: The court - supposedly stacked 5-4 with Dubya
enemies - felt compelled to vote in FAVOR of abusive eminent domain
(which Dubya not only favors but owes his career to) to AVOID being an
'activist' or 'Big Government' court - precisely the label Dubya has
and will continue to attack them with.

So What Did We Learn Today? Well, it's 2 instinces where Dubya is
greatly benefitting from. or being shielded by, the very people who
could - and perhaps should - do him harm. And he's able to do so only
because - ONLY because - these 'opponents' have some regard for thier
own professional conduct in fields where Dubya has demonstrrated that
he does not.
In short: His opponents are more honest, more moral and flat better
people than him - so he wins.

matt

Movie - A World Of Pure Imagination

2005-05-21T04:17:00.000-07:00

My wife has never read the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Her interest in sci-fi starts and ends with Star Wars and her affection for British humor doesn't go much past a Fish Called Wanda. She won't even sit through an episode of Star Trek or Monty Python's Flying Circus.
The Guide, in other words, is not her thing.
Neither was this movie.
I mention that because I’m about to really lay it on thick in praise of this film, and I want to be balanced: apparently, it’s very possible to be bored to tears by this movie.
Fair enough.
Or, like me, you can be ecstatic.

A few hours before we went to see it, there was a show on TV I caught in passing that mentioned that Johnny Depp is going to play Willy Wonka in a remake of the great 70s movie, daring to tread in the shoes once worn - and worn down to brass tacks - by Gene Wilder in, arguably, one of Cinema’s all-time great performances. Seriously, Wilder’s Wonka is up there with De Niro’s Jake Lamota, Jodi Foster’s Clarice Starling and Bridges’ Lebowski, right?
Anyway, I’d say Depp, uniquely among modern actors, might pull it off. But as I watched the show today I thought: that’s a tall order to update that movie.
Which is exactly what I would have said about trying to bring the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the screen.
But they did it. In fact, they nailed it. As cross-genre adaptations go, it’s right there with Wonka. And they did it the same way Wonka managed to meet and exceed it’s own book: they rejected as many notions of traditional movie story-telling as possible, and they hired the Right Guy.

First, the Right Guy: I can only name three Sam Rockwell pictures, and two are grand slams: “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind,” possibly the most overlooked movie of the new decade, and now Hitchhiker’s. Rockwell plays Zaphod Beeblebrox, the cartoonish hipster and space pirate who is also the President of the Galaxy (plot will not be outlined here – you know it already or you never will). Rockwell’s Beeblebrox is an instant classic, a rough mixture of Micheal Keaton’s surreal Beetlejuice and a double-shot of George Bush. Anybody NOT see Dubya in that performance? I thought it was glaring (and perfectly appropriate). In fact, I would bet all parties involved with this movie tilted Beeblebrox’s persona toward more American and more air-headed veins than the book’s Beeblebrox, just to capture some Dubya flavor.
Rockwell didn’t climb up on the pedastal with Wilder – he just doesn’t have enough screen time – but it’s still one for the ages. Rockwell is funny, optimistic and eternally delighted with life in the way that only the utterly oblivious – which is not to say ‘dumb; - can be. His body (covered in garish outfits) clicks and whirrs with nervous energy and he finishes every sentence with an unconsciously flip “alright” or similar. Beeblebrox starts the movie, as he did the book, with two heads (one fun and dim, the other mean and horny), with one on top of the other, the lower tucked into his shirt – and Rockwell even sells that.
I seem to remember Rockwell’s Beeblebrox on roller skates, though he wasn’t, just gliding around each scene on his own atmosphere of goofy chic.

(And how long before Rockwell and Edward Norton finally get it on. Something has to give. Soon. I see it going down as them playing co-leads - two brothers or best friends after the same girl, something - and whoever comes out of it the star is set for the next 20 years and whoever loses starts doing re-occurring roles on Desperate Housewives. I can’t wait.)

Past Zaphod, the movie’s key relationship – like the book’s - is between Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect, an odd couple wonderfully realized by a funny brit I don’t feel like looking up and the American rapper Mos Def.
The brit, who I understand is a star over there, is perfectly serviceable as the whiny, frightened Arthur, combining slapstick with desperation as only the British can. I think a less-famous Hugh Grant might have done better, or that Colin guy. But this Arthur is fine.
Mos Def, on the other hand, was a brilliant hire. First, it makes Ford black, which just never would have occurred to me, but opens up a whole new line of metaphor. Second, Mos’ persona is detached and caustic in the Dave Chappelle mode (though not nearly as potent), and why not? The original Ford was a weeded-out 70s euro-gypsie, only his hitchhiking was between planets rather than EU members. That Ford wouldn’t play today, so why not make him an urban-cool black guy? Mos delivers all the key lines with enthusiasm and measured talent. Can’t ask for anymore.

And as for Trillian – well, she was disposable in the book, and she’s even more so here, played by a woman who isn’t Mary-Louis Parker and clearly can’t get over it. She tries the eye-roll, the halting cadence, the lip bite, the all-lower jaw talking motion. Nope.

Then there’s the Hitchhiker’s text. At times, the movie is slavish to it – the movie’s first joke (a construction foreman’s threat to Arthur) is directly lifted dialogue, the first instance of many. Other times, the movie feeds itself – the flyswatters that spring from the sand to swat people when they have ideas, the Jabba-like Malkovich character, the Brazil-like sequence of form-filling in a Vogan prison waiting room.
They all work, and have no doubt: I was ready with the hook.
In all, they got all three phases of an adaptation right: there is more than enough of unedited scripture for even the most demanding fan; where material was dated (Ford and Zaphod’s base note; the Guide’s user interface), they updated boldly; and what is completely new fits with the old like they were forged together (perhaps they were – Douglas Adams helped with the script before his death).
And then comes Slartibartfast and the Magrethean factory.

I haven’t read huge volumes of science fiction, but in what I have choked down, I’ve come across just two invented landscapes that still astound me. One is the interior of Arthur C. Clarke’s Rama vehicle. The other was the Magreathean planet factory – an unfathomably huge building where the technicians and artists of Magreathea create planets like cars on an assembly line.
Forget about making the jokes funny or capturing the appropriate tone of daffy philosophy – any movie of the Hitchhiker’s Guide was going to live and die on its Magreathean factory.
Full marks. Even in today’s CGI world, the factory floor hit me with as much inspired force as the virtual canyons of Tron in the 80s. And the simple construction cage with the infinite telescoping rails was the perfect vehicle to navigate through it for Arthur and Slartibartfast (played by Bill Nighy in still more perfect-pitch casting, by the way).

I said before the movie came out that all I wanted was a film that was bravely different. Didn’t matter what that was, just as long as it wasn’t a bloodless, dull sci-fi movie draped over Adams’ book.
Picture “Stargate” with jokes – not that.
They did it – the Vogon’s fleet and horrible planet; the Mos Eisley-worthy bar scenes; the Guide’s terrific animations; even the depressive Marvin (and you got the joke right? His body was, to the every curve, a perfect reproduction of a Star Wars storm trooper uniform, only for a fat dwarf).
And a major shout-out to the interior of the Heart of Gold, the white-on-white, half-ship, half-sofa gallery that the quartet rides about in. Best retro-70s/NASA-chic interior since Blur’s “Music Is My Radar” video.
And as for the Heart’s spherical hull – a nod to Kubrick or to the trash collectors of Quark? Any guesses?
The weakest moment of the movie is the first, where the credits roll over a dolphin show set to the dreary, Hitchhiker’s-inspired showtune, “So Long And Thanks For All The Fish.” I approve of the notion of adding some musical elements to this movie – why not? - just not this music. If anything, they should have updated Wonka’s signature tune, “A World Of Pure Imagination.”
OK, so this movie has no answer to the Oompa Loompas. Wonka remains the book-to-movie gold standard. But ‘pure imagination’ is exactly what this movie needed and, thankfully, exactly what it got.

TV - The Rise, Fall and Rebirth A&E

2005-04-26T12:48:00.000-07:00

I remember, not long ago, when A&E was The Smartest Network on TV.
Today, it prominently features "Dog The Bounty Hunter" in primetime. And when you get down to it, isn't that descriptive clause - "prominently features 'Dog The Bounty Hunter' in primetime" - a working definition of "Smartest Network on TV-on-Opposite Day?"
What happened?

That's a question worth reviewing because, as in ice climbing or pictures of yourself in high school, you don't realize just how massive the cliff was until you look back at it.
And I want to discuss two shows currently on A&E, one of which is the most unbearable show on the air, a weekly summation of all that's gone wrong (and no, not "Dog" - can there be anything to say about such a show that its title doesn't already shout?)
But it's the other, brand new show I really want to address. Because I'm teetering on the edge of calling it the best show on TV.
We'll see.

So just a few years ago, A&E had “Law and Order” on heavy syndication as its franchise; the dignified and smart “Biography" as it's trophy show; a long list of smart British imports surrounding them; and the occasional well-produced domestic documentary on chaos theory or Egyptian art or Verdi operas or something.
Maybe no one was watching. Certainly everyone talked as if they were.
First, the network lost “Law and Order” to TNT, a devastating blow. In fact, it was a double gut-punch because, for one, at that point A&E and "L&O" were pretty firmly connected as brands. If you caught a new Law & Order on NBC, you'd think, "hey, the A&E show!" But worse, L&O inspired deep loyalty in millions of the most desirable viewers: smart, spendy. nightly addicts. Law and Order was THE guilty TV fix of the 90s, and probably the 4th best thing about the entire broadcast decade, behind Seinfeld, the Simpsons and James Earl Jones-CNN bumpers.
A&E losing L&O was like NBC losing the NFL, Letterman and Cheers all at once.
What was left? Well, actually, less and less.
Soon “Biography” ran out of interesting people (“next week: Penn from Penn and Teller!”) just about the same time they – idiotically – decided to go daily, and then they spun it off as it’s own channel.
When TLC launched “Trading Spaces,” that made open season on stealing good British shows for American audiences. Goodbye to that revenue stream.
Then, as the coupe de gras, Bravo bought the “West Wing," and promptly gave it the complete "Law & Order" treatment - Monday marathon, three times every other day, the latest one at bedtime, first one's free, tell your friends.
And A&E, like a hard-dumped boyfriend, just collapsed. Today, it's probably the worst network on the air, edging it’s sister in faux-dignity, History Channel. The difference is small but vital: History Channel is War porn, while A&E is literally for snuff fans– true crime of the stickiest sort and lots of it.
“Cold Case Files,” “The First 48,” “City Confidential,” “American Justice.” Dreary, utterly interchangeable “real-life” shows about droopy, work-a-day cops paddling upstream against America’s industry of petty killings. And "Dog."
And the network’s signature syndicated series? “Crossing Jordan” and “CSI: Miami.”
Arts and Entertainment, indeed.
So, trying to stop the bleeding, A&E has taken a couple swings at the ‘Reality’ piñata in recent season (Hence, the "Dog" show). I’ve been trying to write about one of the resulting shows for a while, because - in now-typical A&E style – it went not just wrong, but incredibly, fantastically, jaw-droppingly wrong and is now the worst show on TV, full stop.
And the other might be – miraculously - the very best.

I am not one to be mesmerized by the grotesque (car wreck gawking, etc), but I’ve been pulled into the awfulness of “Growing Up Gotti” for 3 full episodes.
I’m over it now, but the scars run deep.
The show is a follow-around of the Osbournes-variety, only the subject is someone named Victoria Gotti, who is related, somehow, to John Gotti. Daughter? Possibly. Evidently, she has written some junk novels and now is a 'gossip' writer for a supermarket tabloid. Not that you can tell from the show.
There are no gangsters, crime or underworld politics on display (which might have been interesting). Just a rich, trashy woman with more money than sense and her three awful sons.
Victoria is mid to late 40s and fading fast, with bottle blonde hair and store bought tits, filthy-helacious rich, living in a comicly palatial Long Island suburban house. Every item she owns, wears or covets screams ‘trash with money.’
But taste isn’t everything so, fortunately, she’s shrill, airheaded and ill-tempered, with ZERO discernable talent, skill, income or even interests. Oblivious to her fabulous wealth, she is bored by the world and pissed that it doesn’t entertain her more. She keeps ridiculous hangers-on around her and spends money without thought or purpose.
One of her vanity habits is to employ young, motivated, smart ‘assistants’ and abuse them terribly.
If it sounds like she is a subject ripe for great comedy, then you've spotted the fatal flaw of the show. Either by contract, laziness or just stupidity, the show takes Victoria completely seriously, even though the world clearly does not. The producers seem to think they are the breathless chroniclers of a dynamic, modern woman's (and a single mom!) fast-paced, high-purpose, deeply complicated life.
Only they aren't. Victoria is a crass, deeply ridiculous, embittered and angry bimbo.
The Smoking Gun seems to get the joke. But A&E can't - or refuses - to see it.
The counter-example is the first season of the Osbourne's, a show which understood it was filming a madman running his own asylum. Every episode, the joke - sick as it was - was on Ozzie (who, to his credit, laughed right along).
Not here. In fact, Victoria is actually the narrator and very nearly the entire script of those narrations are witless jokes about her life that, as she reads the script over the pictures, she doesn’t seem to get (“…but then again, going to dinner with me is always a major production.” Make it stop).
And if it was just her, it would be one of the most boring shows of all time.
Sadly, she has 3 sons. Not for a year of house payments would I have bet that you could produce 3 Italian-American teenagers less appealing than the fictional AJ Soprano. Yet AJ is a regular Sonny Corlene next to the Gotti kids.
Alarmingly feminine and in a perpetual state of entitled preen, the three "boys" (as she calls them) spend thier lives sulking, complaining, joylessly consuming and avoiding eye contact with the world.
Perhaps the show's only real hook is the frustration it inspires. As a viewer, you need to see these three DO SOMETHING. Anything - they are rich, young, the kind of silly handsome that attracts silly girls, and have absolutely no responsibilities or discipline at all. The mind simply can't accept that three such kids would be so willfully dull. As each episode grinds to close, you feel compelled to watch another because - SURELY! - they're about to come to life!
But they never do.
In fact, since the entire show – rich, mafia-linked family living charmed life in the Burbs – is an obvious Sopranos cash-in, a viewer finds themselves jonesing for Christa’fa’ to show up at their door, call them sissies, scare them shitless and take their mink coats for gambling debts.
Yeah, mink coats. Teenagers all, they wear fur coats (well maybe – in one episode, one of them gets cheated out of some princely sum for a “chinchilla” coat that Victoria then pegs as rabbit-hide - hilarious) and piles of jewelry valued in the 5 digits.
Issues like school and the future do not ever cloud their fake-tan faces, and they are the worst kind of phony-tough (in one episode, set loose in a water park full of similar teenagers, they leer at girls like safari tourists and appear frightened of other kids their age).
They lounge, stare at themselves in most of their home’s numberless mirrors, communicate by mumbling and opt out of physical labors large and small (in one episode they let their groundskeeper set up their basketball hoop; in another, they watch him carry mattresses by himself out of a needed room).
The groundskeeper, though a silly man, is the only redeemable character. In one episode, Victoria, terrified that some dinner guests will judge her to be low class (imagine!), she forces him to pretend to be an Italian Count. He does, inventing a ridiculous history for himself as he and the obviously-trash-his-ownself dinner guest get wasted together.
I want to drop some quotes on you as evidence to the show’s mindlessness, but really – like Scott McClelland, nobody says anything worth repeating, not even to make fun of it.
A terrible show, the worst non-CSI production currently on the air. Catch it just to see how bad things can be, and to boycott the sponsors.

And then set the VCR for “Intervention” and send the kids to bed. Unlike anything else on TV.
“Intervention” is clearly produced by the same people who do MTV’s always-rewarding Real Life series and its documentary spinoffs (I want a famous face, etc). In those show, the cameras find utterly ordinary people who have one, deep story to tell – the shows have titles like “I’m a Mu Tai kick boxer,” “I’m a binge drinker” “I’m a professional weight lifter” “I’m a teenage parent” (regard the latter: get a copy; show it to a group of 14 year olds; collect your chips when you get to Heaven).
“Intervention” is a clear spin-off – the pacing, cuts, and even graphics are all the same.
Only the people have much bigger problems. They are big-time addicted to something. And at the end of each episode, their friends and family hold an intervention, forcing them into treatment almost – but not quite – against their will.
I’m no behavioral expert, but the four people we’ve seen so far sure looked like they needed it. As bad habits go, they were about 3 exits past ‘pissed it all away.’
In two episodes, we’ve seen shopping (bankruptcy 2 years ago) and gambling ($200,000 in the hole), pain pills (stealing them from her terminally-ill-with-cancer boyfriend) and ‘cutting’ – when somebody slices themselves as a release/fix.
You’ll never see an American Justice ‘recreation’ with as much blood as the cutter spills on camera after a hard, frustrating night out at the clubs.
And the horror of the show, which is its power, is that they aren’t freaks or losers but people who have lost their way, slow by slow, and before they knew it found themselves in an avalanche of addiction.
If you think addiction is ‘weakness,’ watch this show.
In every single case, during moments of mental collapse (a frequent event in these lives), each of them will drop into word-blurting, and out will come the language of pain:
The gambler, stiff with shame, while begging his mom for money: “I..I Hurt!”
The shopper, suffering panic attacks in the car: “This… Is… Torture…This… Is…Torture!”
The pill popper’s pills are for pain.
And the cutter… well, use your imagination.
Maybe each of them, years before and a million miles ago, committed some dubious sin or gave way to some human weakness that started the slide, but the people you meet in this show are no more ‘weak’ or ‘guilty’ of their illness than someone drowning in a river.
The shop-a-holic is an actress who was on “E.R.” for 3 years (the residual checks fuel her habit) – then she had, in effect, a nervous breakdown and never recovered. Now she hides in her house for weeks, emerging only to shop.
The gambler was a child genius, graduating from UCLA at 14. Only he never grew up and drifted into gambling to escape the adult world (I thought it was clear, though the show never said, that gambling was, to his hyper-smart brain, the ultimate ‘puzzle,’ an unsolvable challenge that his ego forced him ever deeper into). He’s gambled away, among other things, his parents’ house (the mileage on his mom and dad’s faces is unexpressable).
The pill addict was an ex-social worker, who used to be in charge of 41 case workers. She lost it all to prescription pills. Her dying boyfriend both enables her and tries to get her to quit.
And the cutter – a young-20s, super cute party girl from Arizona, popular in school, an artist and musician, surrounded by friends who admire her and two strongly Christian parents at home (mom is grounded and miserable about her daughter, and gives the best speech of all I’ve seen at the intervention; but dad is serene in the Lord to the point of callousness. His reaction to the cutting-thing: “your body is your temple in the eyes of the lord. You don’t want to damage your temple, do you?” – thanks, pops).
They all think they are being filmed for a show “about addiction” and each of them freely talk about their horrors.
And then, under the direction of a psychologist, they are confronted, by surprise, by all of the family and friends they have left.
So far, 3 took it well. Two of them had, I thought, a sense of relief, the other just defeat. One wanted no part of it and let everybody know it. Awesome.
It might not be enough to redeem A&E, but it’s the best show on TV.
At least until Laguna Beach launches season 2.

Web Site - Media Matters

2005-04-26T11:54:00.000-07:00

in the past 2 or 3 months, nobody has gotten after it like
MediaMatters.Org, the David Brock creation. They are relentless, and
yet so simple - ALL THEY DO is hold the bastards to their own words.
From O'reilly and Limbaugh all the way up to Frist and thems - They get
caught lying and say: "I never said that," and MM says, "Only, you
did."

They're the best assassins on the web.

matt

Music - Headsprung

2005-04-21T14:49:00.000-07:00

How'd I miss this? I've been hearing this tune for a month, thinking
"Summer Definer-candidate" - and then yesterday I put together who's
behind it and almost crashed the car.

This was supposed to be the summer that Ludacrs came back to the
pack, of T.I.'s breakout behind "Bring 'Em Out" (and, truthfully, it
still is) or of 50's second album swallowing the world (and if you
missed 50's House Party on MTV, take a lap).
And here comes rap's Nolan Ryan, throwing high-90s, smokin' the
latest Young Guns, speed-bagging Robin Ventura's head. Unbelievable.
Even in the days before Run-DMC launched the revolution, they said
Ladies Love Cool J - and now their of-age daughters do to. The Great
LL - behind Timbaland's best track work in years - crushes one. His
best effort since the Momma Said-era, which was about the time 50 was
watching the Fresh Prince in his underroos.

And he can't, he can't and he won't quit,
matt

Global Warming

2005-04-21T13:10:00.000-07:00

Follow the money. What a great chart.

Movie Review - Africa, true and false

2005-04-20T14:54:00.000-07:00

So, two movies I’ve seen in the last week are both set in Africa, though they couldn’t be more different if one had been filmed in Antarctica. Hotel Rwanda is nearing DVD release and Sahara’s sequel is probably already in pre-production, so their time left among us is short. So while there’s a chance to still go see them, let’s discuss whether or not you should.

Hotel Rwanda, you should. And I’ll just say it: you should go see Hotel Rwanda while it is still in the theatres so it makes some money there so other movies like it can get made.
Don Cheadle possesses the greatest “Why Me?” face currently working, possibly the greatest ever. Certainly in the same class as, say, a young C. Thomas Howell (pre-Soul Man) and Don Johnson and almost up there with all-time champ John Cazale before he put up the most amazing career in movie history and promptly died.
Where, afterall, have we seen Cheadle? Getting screwed by life, that’s where – One, he was the desperately honest cop in Traffic whose witness gets killed out from under him and who then takes one in the chest himself; two, as the most unbelievable Caribbean gangster imaginable in After Sunset, where he was so not-menacing that you found yourself rooting for the movie’s ‘hero,’ Pierce Brosnan (another eternally miscast guy) to cut him a break; and, three, in his defining role, as the immortal Buck Swope, the would-be-honest “high end” stereo dealer who loses his chance for a legit life because of his porn career in Boogie Nights.
Don Cheadle has made a great career by playing characters who get less than they deserve and react in the exact way you or I would: half-noble bravery, half-pleading self-pity.
Which is why he is so perfect in Hotel Rwanda. He faces hell on earth first as we know we would – denial and panic - and then as we hope we would – with bravery and action.
That’s the greatness of the performance. It evolves as the movie does and is utterly human.
The greatness of the movie is that the story is true.
I don't want to spend a huge amount of time recounting it because you should learn about it yourself, but briefly: In 1994, a civil war broke out in Rwanda that was like all wars – fought for the rich by the poor – but because it happened in tribal Africa, it was much more so. Powerbrokers convinced the nation’s ‘tribes’, the Tutsis and the Hutus, to slaughter each other. As the movie makes clear, the ‘tribes’ of Rwanda are nothing more than the still-standing caste-system set up by the country’s Belgium occupiers who pulled out decades ago. To call yourself a Tutsi or a Hutu had nothing to do with ancient, or even recent, African tribal history. It had to do with how low or high Belgium’s white people let you rise in their servant corps.
Cheadle plays Paul Rusesabagina, whose European name fits perfectly with his job as the manager (more or less) of a high-end hotel that caters almost exclusively to white foreigners. He is a master of the well-thought-out bribe to keep the wheels turning at the hotel (owned by a Belgium-based corporation). He begins the movie – and possibly ends it – with a vision of himself as above any and all possible native Rwandan issues. He works for a European hotel, catering to European tourists and business people. And they love him. In his mind, he’s most of the way to European himself.
And then the world explodes.
Half of Rwanda’s population begins hacking the other half to death, co-ordinated by a radio station and fueled by their own poverty. And suddenly Paul is left alone – his white guests are evacuated by the UN (whose politically handcuffed Canadian commander, in real life made impotent by UN rules, is bafoonishly played by Nick Nolte), leaving his family, his employees and a growing roster of Tutsi's hiding in the building.
With wit and deceipt, skills he once used to steer his hotel through peace-time Rwanda’s social circles, he keeps the jackalish packs of muarading Hutus at bay for at least a few weeks.
In the end, he helps get nearly 1200 people – children and women, mostly – to safety. The movie leaves no doubt that all would have been slaughtered without him.
It’s a terrific story told with patience, humor and, when needed, unblinking cruelty, and it all begins and ends with Cheadle’s desperation – at first, his desperation to not be seen as an African which becomes a desperation to be with them.

“Sahara,” on the other hand, were you to buy it a beer in an empty bar, would probably describe itself as an ‘action’ flick - but what isn’t these days? In modern cinema, if you don’t have at least one boxing/ju-jitsu match under spinning helicopter blades, you’re pretty much begging for the purgatory of ‘art film’ status. You say your final 10 minutes were actually FILMED rather than spit out of a computer? What is this, “Lonestar?”
Well, Sahara is certainly not “Lonestar,” and while we’re on the subject, I think we’re now far enough along the Matthew McConaughey career-arc to officially declare “Lonestar” as the best movie he will ever appear in – his “Good Will Hunting”-moment – but so what?
Damon is going to die with a 9 digit net worth thanks to Jason Bourne and now maybe McCoughney can give him a run for his money with a franchise based on Clive Cussler’s swashbuckling novel hero, Dirk Pitt.
I read probably 4 Dirk Pitt books – I bet there are close to 10 – in early high school. Pitt was probably invented to be an American James Bond, only instead of being a professional spy, he’s a professional scuba diver with vague ties to the government along scientific lines – all of which, time after time, just happens to be exactly the right background to save the world from a long line of dark geniuses, psychotic tycoons and rogue tyrants (needless to say, Pitt always get the girl, too, though that plot point –scuba expert gets laid - was never as difficult a sell). As a teenager, I found the books immensely involving and readable, if only for the sheer size of their spirit. In the most famous of the series, they raised the Titanic and in general, showdowns tended to be on icebergs or on crashing planes or on space shuttles or something. Lost treaure was usually part of the hunt. All hope would almost always be nearly lost several times over in each book. A key moment of inventive brilliance always carried the day.
Terrific reading for a 15 year old - though I thought even then that the hero, Dirk Pitt, was a bit bloated with Hero-ness. He lived in a hanger full of vintage cars? He knew how to actually fly helicopters? He really carried 30 year old Scotch with him everywhere, even into volcanoes?
And – here was the real stretch - America’s greatest warrior-playboy earned a paycheck from the part of our government whose primary service to the taxpayer is… studying weather?
Then came Tom Clancy, and suddenly being a buff, Scuba-diving weatherman wasn’t good enough to fight evil. What was required was usually a degree from Holy Cross or Annapolis, current subscriptions to Jane’s and Barrons, and lifelong membership in the Republican party. America’s fictional answer to James Bond, it turned out, wasn’t an over-sexed, deep-tan scuba playboy, but Oliver North.
Seriously – what DIDN’T the 80s ruin?
“Sahara” shrugs off most of those bonds, but some things have changed for good, so “Sahara” delivers a blazingly tan McCounghey as Pitt, but he’s not a weatherman but rather – try not to yawn – an ex-Navy Seal who now dives for buried treasure.
The movie starts fantasticly – really, for 30 minutes I thought we had found the new “Ronin” – but slowly disintegrates towards typical ‘blow-up-the-bad-guy’ video game fare.
The plot: At the end of the US civil war, a steel plated Confederate gunboat made a run past the Yankee blockade and was never seen again. The movie opens brilliantly depicting this nighttime run, with hardly a single word exchanged onscreen as anonymous men fight desperately to save their ship – dark and cramped as a tomb - and themselves from unseen enemies, who lob firey cannonballs at them from the fog.
Then you get the credits, which roll over a constant, zooming tour of a modern-day room, where every corner and spare inch of wall is covered with newspaper clippings about Pitt and his sidekick and their past searches for treasure (including the Titanic). As the credits wind down, the camera finds the room’s desk, where we discover that the room is actually on a boat which is even now asea seaching for more treasure.
Which McConaughey almost immediately surfaces with.
Great opening.
However, neither the movie, McConaughey nor anyone else in the movie are given time to breathe as several intricate and worthy plot twists are piled on the screen much too quickly (if Pitt, prowling the Lagos, Nigeria underworld, finds his way to a dark shop in a dark alley to retrieve a dark, ancient clue for the plot’s key dark, ancient mystery, isn’t that worth, say, 2 or 3 minutes of screen time and a few strokes of the creative brush, just to get you in the mood? It gets maybe 30 seconds and you sort of end up thinking: is this Nigeria or New Jersey?)
Escorting McConaughey through out is the vastly underrated Steve Zahn. He plays a re-worked version of Pitt’s constant sidekick, Al Giordino. Here Zahn is Pitt’s exNavy buddy, nearly as much a superman as Pitt himself. And Zahn, a master of the comedy of panic, does his best to keep McConaughey loose. The movie would have sunk much quicker without him.
OK, so Pitt and his crew head up river out to find an Ebola-like plague and, maybe, the lost Confederate ship.
A fun boat-vs-boat gun battle ensues, which leaves Pitt and Zahn on camels, which leads to a gun fight with the local army (that fight, by the way, is actually pretty well executed. I’m always grateful when gun-fighting actors, rather than making pained faces or yelling laugh lines or dropping ‘you’re terminated’ quips, actually act like they want to WIN THE FIGHT. Yes, it’s been a while since I saw a Navy SEAL switch from shooting a rifle right- to left-handed, but their heart is in the right place).
Then the wheels start to seriously come off.
It turns out – and this is just laziness- the ‘villian’ is building some kind of, err, perfect toxic waste disposal machine in the desert (within sight, by complete coincidence, of the confederate gunboat hulk – pure chance!). So to be clear: to this point, our villian has killed off doctors and bought off governments and armies, and generally acted terribly; and Pitt and friends discover that his REAL plot is to… recycle!!!!
Only his huge recycler doesn’t work right, so actually he’s… POLLUTING!!!! Not even on purpose.
And that’s it. That’s the big dark secret at the center of the movie. An ‘evil’ tycoon wants to recycle, but is really bad at it.
(ANOTHER thing the 80s ruined – with the Russians no longer a credible threat, there’s no real reason a white guy would ever be an evil genius, at least not where Americans would care. Where once Goldfinger, Drax industries, Spectre and even the occasional free-lancing communist General threatened the world, we now get incompetent garbage men).
After some fisticuffs beneath some rotors (see above), the tycoon hires out the local warlord and his army to find and destroy Pitt and their climactic showdown manages to directly rip-off TWO Rambo movies, simultaneously. I’ll leave you some suspense by letting you figure out which two.
Still, much goes right early and often in Sahara, despite the dead weight of a sexless Penelope Cruz. This was a role for an SNL girl, not Tom Cruise’s ex. By way of making up for it, the movie surrounds McCoughney with plenty of other fleshy delights: smartly picked classic rock tunes – Skynard, Steppenwolf, Grand Funk – raggedy clothes and glowing backlighting. He’s quite a piece, as Mandy let me know several times during our screening.
At one point, before the strings get cut, McConaughey lets go a clever line which Cruz tries to cattily dismiss, but he volleys it right back with his go-to smile and a Dude-that’s-Wooderson-delivery: “The world would be a whole lot cooler if you did.”
This movie isn’t anywhere near great, but it almost was. I hope they don’t give up on the franchise.

FINAL TANGENT:

with the release of Sahara, McConaughey has now played, by my count, six memorable roles. Not in six memorable movies, or even six good movies. Six memorable roles.
Here are the names of those 6 characters:

Dirk Pitt
Denton Van Zan
Palmer Joss
Tip Tucker
Buddy Dees
Wooderson

(the last is David Wooderson, but Dazed and Confused’s Wooderson is “Wooderson.”)

Does that not read like the two-deep chart for receiver at Texas Tech? Or possibly the ‘featuring’ section of the credits in a porno movie? Dirk, Denton, Palmer, Tip, Buddy, Wooderson. Awesome.

The only marginal role on that list is Tip Tucker, but don’t underestimate it. Tucker was the crazed trucker in Larger Than Life, the widely ignored Bill Murray comedy about an elephant. Oh well – Western Civ’s loss. McConaughey was absolutely lights-out (not to mention unrecognizable) as the raving lunatic Tip.
The others are: Sahara (Pitt; pretty good), Reign of Fire (Van Zan; not a great movie but under-rated), Contact (Joss; intriguing but flawed) and Lonestar (Dees; I’ll return to Lonestar later).

Pay-A-Leak

2005-04-13T15:47:00.000-07:00

"Now I gotta give a shout-out to Seagram's gin, cuz i drink it and they're payin' me for it."

- a delightful line from last year's Freak-a-Leak, 2004's most inventive and dancable and rap song (some readers may recall I called it as the Coming Thing in March). the song was, you may remember, Petey Pablo's raunchy, miles-over-the-top ode to himself and mysoginy.
spelled wrong, sorry. that line was in the final fade out of the song, literally shouted over the beat as the song ended (between Lil' John yelps).
it was, i thought, the final, hilariously absurd touch to a song of
absurd hyperbole. A rapper claiming that not only does he party so
hard that he needs to give his gin a shout out, but he's such a major
star that a gin maker pays him for it.
i laughed everytime I heard it - which was some percentage of the
350,000+ times the song played on American radio.
I know that number because, apparently, they WERE paying him for it.
It's the newest thing, apparently: paying rappers to plug products.
Pablo was one of the first. McDonald's just got into the biz this
summer. up to $5 per time the song plays on the radio.

Harry Shearer has the story on LeShow this past week: click on "The trades"

unreal.

matt

Book review

2005-04-13T13:01:00.000-07:00

I've just read a superb book, The Emperor of Scent by Chandler Burr.
it's non-fiction and though I can't put it solidly among my all-time non-fiction favorites, it's definetly the most absorbing book i've read in a year or so.

At a time when Malcolm Gladwell's unfocused, vague and even sometimes contradictory 'Blink' is the "It" book of the Spring, this one is the real thing: a tight, witty narrative about a science problem, with a terrific protagonist and - here's the key bit - a fantastic mystery.

The subject is the sense of smell and the search to discover how it works, which absolutely no one knows. We know the other four, of course: Sight (rods and cones), touch (potassium pump), taste (buds) and even sound (3 interlocked bones per ear so delicate that they
arguably prove Divine intent) are all taught in junior high. Duh.

But smell? Err... well, see, you've got the molecules, right, and they float up towards your nose, see, and... errr...
Not a clue.

Burr opens the book with the terrific observation that not only do we not know how it is done, but if you compare it to the other body systems most scientists assume are most like smell (digestion and immune system), we shouldn't be able to smell anything at all.

Now THAT'S how you start a book.

Digestion knows how to digest a set number of things - from turnip roots to chicken wings to wine - because over 100,000 years of evolution, the stomach has developed ('selected' in evolutionary terms) a certain number of enzymes to take down food that ancient man ate.
And the very second you eat something on the list, your digestive system (alerted by taste) goes to work. But since cavemen didn't eat, say, plastic - or metal or a million other modern molecules - the stomach doesn't know how to digest it. ever.
Now immunization, which is opposite: it can fend off anything,
including amazingly complex and virulent bugs, that were utterly
unknown prior to 1900. Or yesterday. You can be allergic - a healthy
reaction to strange substances - to almost anything. But the immune
system takes time - a new, crazy strain of flu enters your body and you
get sick for a week, not from the flu but because your immune system is
hashing out the right strategy. eventually, the immune system figures
it out and rids the body of it.
To sum it up, imagine you ingest two things that were discovered in
the 70s: the Ebola virus and a Matchbox Car. Let's say you swallow a
Matchbox Car and contract Ebola on the same day. It will take a few
days, but your immune system will wage a war with the Ebola so violent
that you might die in the battle. Immune systems go down fighting.
But if you live (or even if you don't), that Matchbox Car will sit
in your stomach, untouched, until... well, ya know, it leaves.
The digestive system either works or it doesn't, right away. The
immune system takes all comers, but it needs time.

Not smell. Hold your nose to a bottle of the latest, most complex
molecule produced by a chemical factory, and you will instantly smell
it. No human could have ever smelled this molecule, or anything like
it, before - so evolutionary programming is out. And there is
absolutely no delay for the brain processing it - so much for the body
engineering a response.
So why does Northern New Jersey smell so bad? What the hell is
going on?

If you want to hook me into your book, that's how you write a first
chapter. And Burr did, so i pressed on.

Enter a French/Italian/English professor (he splits his time between
the three) named Luca Turin who is a biologist but is a life-long nut
for perfume. He writes, on his own, a Zagats-style book about the
world's perfume, just because he likes them and realizes suddenly that
no one has ever written anything like it before. In fact, he suddenly
realizes he is one of the world's leading experts on smells, by
default. He meets perfumers, goes to their secret, huge factories and
the more he sees, the more he realizes that the multi-biollion dollar
industry has no idea how they do it - they produce thousands of random
chemicals and hope they find a dozen that smell good.
And then one day, as he thumbs through some odd, forgotten medical
or scientific textbook just for fun, it hits him like the apple hitting
Newton on the head - he knows how smell works. Now he has to prove it.
And off goes the book.

Turin's answer is - wait for it! - complex. Still, as a book likes
this requires, Burr is very good at breaking it down to basic, "the
electrons are the traffic, the lightswitch is the drawbridge"-level
english. But to give you just the slightest hint, Turin concludes that
smell must be like sight and sound rather than digestion and immune
response.
Here's my farthest dive into science-talk: digestion and immune
response is based on the shape of molecules - in the stomach and in the
white blood cells, the body reads, and attacks, the shape of a molecule
- fine; light and sound are based on waves (of sound and of light) and
specifically frequency - red is 400Khz of light, high-C is 20,000khz of
sound, etc; everyone has always assumed that smell is based on
molecular shape - Turin decides that it must be molecular frequency,
which is - deep breath - measured by how tight a molecule's electrons
are tied to it. OK, that's it for geek-speak.
Using that notion - frequency - it makes perfect sense that a
gigantic molecule developed by Dupont can smell precisely the same as,
say, fresh cut grass. Dupont polymers and grass molecules certainly
don't have the same shape - it would be comparing a mountain bike to a
747. But, if you add up their electrons, just by coincidence they both
vibrate with the same frequency. That's well-accepted chemistry.
And - lookee here - they just HAPPEN to smell the same!!!!
Turin collects evidence like that and then gets into some some crazy
biology-meets-chemistry-meets-physics-meets-perfume geek. I'm pretty
sure i roughly understood all of it.

So it's a good story.
But it's a great book because Burr can write so damn well,
specifically about a subject which is maddeningly difficult to write
about: smell. Over and over again in the book, he credits Turin,
perfume-book-author, with the gift of being able to put smell into
words. But Burr clearly has the same gift.
So you end up reading page after page of wonderfully constructed
essays and description on smells ("an initial note of cumin that
trumpets the arrival, in the background, of not-quite-ripe mango and a
Turkish alley after a strong rain") that, if left to you or I would be,
"like cheese, only maybe like apple." But burr and Turin describe
smells - particularly complex, perfumy smells - like long, intircate
pieces of music or deeply meaningful paintings. Which, really, smell
has every right to be treated as.
(burr recently wrote a piece in the New Yorker about a perfumer for
a major fashion house, which offered a glimpse of this. if you saw
that, this is 300 pages of it).

It's a smart book on just about every level, and if it has a flaw
it's that it sides so violently with Turin's theory over the rest of
the science world. The scientists who believe in the Shape-theory of
smell (which is to say, ALL scientists except Turin) are portrayed as
monkeys. Maybe they are. The case seems strong. but then, the book's
about Turin, so you'd expect that.
Fine. it's Burr's book.

Emperor of Scent. Give it a sniff.

matt

Pope

2005-04-03T15:23:00.000-07:00

If i was the Onion, I would run a headline like:

"Bush nominates Tommy Franks new Pope."

Movies, Football - And Anne Archer besides!

2005-02-28T11:32:00.000-08:00

You may not yet have seen "Man of the House," which came
out this week, though you probably are familiar with it's prequel
from last year, which was about a college cheerleader who was rejected by the University of Texas.
Now, thankfully, we have a document of some of who made the cut.

I promise that joke (gotta follow the link to get it) is funnier than anything in the movie, even if
you're a Republican.

So what does a Tommy Lee Jones-meets-five-giggly/bouncy/murder-witnessing-Texas-cheerleaders
movie have to offer? Not surprisingly, you get lots of long,
gratuitous leers at a very scantily-clad Austin. Threadgills, Buffalo
Billiards and Mangia Pizza are all pushed up, mashed together and
presented beneath plunging necklines. And there are plenty of slow,
lingering aerial shots of UT's campus, it's form dripping in
lucious see-through sunlight, it's perky architecture poking
through the foliage. Not 10 minutes ever pass without a shot of the
clocktower throbbing upward.
And there's also hot chicks with big tits.

In short, a little something for everyone – except, I guess, for
Republicans (it’s my favorite drum, dammit, and I’m
gon’ bang it).

Actually, the whole affair is about as awful as you’d expect and
might already be gone from your local Cineplex and little missed.
Still, beforehand, I thought it had a chance. Afterall, look at
who’s in it: Tommy Lee Jones as his usually reliable Grim Cop (a
Texas Ranger, no less); Cedric the Entertainer enlisted for comic
relief; and five rightfully unknown actresses charged with nothing more
stressful than looking, preening and bouncing like bimbos. If you need
the plot, here ya go: Tommy’s smileless, all-business cop is
charged with protecting the five girls, who together witnessed a murder
(during official cheerleading duties, no less), and so he goes
undercover as an assistant cheerleading coach.

Put like that, how did it miss?

I thought it was also a hopeful sign that the movie got a real
school – a real big school, in fact – to fully commit to
playing host. Afterall, very nearly every ‘campus’ movie
or TV show ever filmed was set on “California University”
or “Texas State” or “Faber College” or some
such place. Not this one – the movie is, if nothing else, a 90
minute infomercial for Austin nightclubs and UT fan apparel. The UT
band gets two scenes, every key sequence is filmed at a campus landmark
and – for you authenticity geeks – during a UT football
game against Arkansas (in Darryl Royal stadium), the UT running back
gets hit for a loss. They didn’t miss much.

Except, sadly, for jokes. Using generous standards, I counted a
total of four jokes in the whole movie. Two were witless but grimly
determined set pieces that finally drag an ok-I-smiled-for-a-second
grin out of you (example: Tommy gets the cheerleaders to wear more
clothes (“jogbras ARE clothes!” one protests) by installing
a huge air conditioner (refrigerator idea: funny; less skin: not
funny)). But two jokes were shockingly efficient,
here-comes-the-pitch-and-a-long-high-drive-to-deep-center hits. Both,
not surprisingly, were rifs on the movie’s central joke (Tommy
Lee Jones? A cheerleading coach?).

In one, Tommy is pulled, unprepared, in front of a UT pep rally, where
he akwardly addresses a few hundred fans. Holding a candle and clearly
bewildered, he mumbles into the mic that the candle represents, "err,
the spirit of every Longhorn fan that can, err, never be extinguished."

And the candle promptly goes out.

In the second, he tries to awkwardly ask out a hot professor played by
Anne Archer. He has already turned her down once, too concerned with
blowing his cover or (worse!) endangering the cheerleaders, but now his
achin’ heart has reconsidered and he says, well, I wanted to ask
you out before but “it’s just so hard to find time in my
schedule as a, err, assistant cheerleading coach.”

SCREEEEECH- CRASH! WAIT A SECOND!!! Did I just say ANNE ARCHER?!?!?
Yip, Anne Archer, probably one of the top three dignified and serious
actresses in Hollywood, right here in the middle of the swirl. She
plays a literature professor (natch) connected to the plot by the
jiggliest of the girls, who is taking – and failing (natch) - one
of her classes. Or something.

Anne Archer, Tommy Lee Jones and the licensing fee for full access to
the UT campus; I think my instinct was right - somebody wanted to make
a movie here. I wonder what happened?

Well, one clue can be found in the bizarre appearances of current
harmless-funny-black-guy Cedric the Entertainer. Heavily touted in the
trailers, Cedric makes two – or is it three? – bafflingly
small appearances, all of which reek of a desperate, 11th-hour rewrite.

At a guess, I'd say the producers - unhappy with the
Jones-Archer-UT product - decided to pay Cedric for one day of work and
to bolt whatever footage they got out of him onto the movie, regardless
of how bad it matched. Not surprisingly, they ended up with a 2-foot
fin on the back of a Civic. If you pay attention (not that I would
suggest it), you'll notice that if Cedric's tiny appearances - all shot on the same studio set – were eliminated
from the movie, it wouldn’t require a single line to be changed
elsewhere in the movie. Another clue: though Cedric’s cameos
appear at the beginning, middle and end of the movie, he wears the same
outfit in all three and Tommy wears the same thing in two of them.

And then there’s the plot – who shot who, and why and how
it gets sorted out. It’s tedious, sort of obvious but more just
irrelevant. I mean, crooked cops, mob money, kidnapped kids, whatever-
bring back the boobs! To the film’s credit, they avoided the
most obvious possible cliché: the Big Showdown (Tommy-vs-Bad Guy)
does NOT occur in the fourth quarter of The Big Game.

Of course, that would have demanded summoning a realistic vision of UT
beating OU and I guess Spielberg was busy that week.

OK, enough shots at UT’s football program, boob jokes and
pseudo-erotic descriptions of overrated Texas cities. Maybe I should
have quit with the Fahrenheit 911 joke.

"This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous. Having said that, all options are on the table."

bang bang bang!,
matt

ps - first-ever use if "natch." yes? no? I'm torn. Wonkette kills
with it but then... she's SUPPOSED to sound like a chick.

Football - Arbitrary Brand Loyalty, Part I

2005-02-15T11:24:00.000-08:00

NoDoubt
Originally uploaded by pjmatt05.

If you find a more Exuberantly Cheesy token of Arbitrary Brand Loyalty, buy it.

I'll be wearing this one.

(special thanks to Darin 'Deke' Slayton, USC Grad and fearless 210th Rescue Squadron HH-60 pilot, for bringing me back the hat, DY-rect from the USC bookstore)

TV - Arbitrary Brand Loyalty, Part Dog

2005-02-15T11:23:00.000-08:00

When it comes to rooting without reason, second only to college football must be the The Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, aired annually about this time on USA. And lots of people agree, cuz USA just renewed the contract 'til 2016.

It just so happens that I own Oscar,, an Australian Shepard and, by coincidence, the Best Looking Dog In (depending on your scope of inquiry), Anchorage, Alaska or All The World.
And as anybody knows, the Australian Shepard is the sworn mortal enemy of the hated, filthy, no-good show-off Border Collies.
Oh, we hate Border Collies. HATE 'EM! Why, it's like comparing a sorority girl at USC to a sorority girl at UCLA, or a frat party at the University of Texas to a frat party at the University of Oklahoma, a Georgia tailgater to a Florida tailgater or an ethics-in-sports lecture at Florida State to an ethics-in-sports lecture at Miami.
It's night and day, with one clearly the prime, finished product of Evolution's Grand Plan, the other just a sorry, wore-out excuse of a miserable creature not worthy to polish the third set of scuffed shoes in the "25-cent" bin at the other's garage sale in hell!
Piss on border collies, is all.
And of course, what Mt. Washington is to weather, Westminster is to dog shows. Which, to my eyes (not to mention Oscar's) is just one more chance for a steely-eyed Aussie to stomp the bleeding guts out of a no-good, show-off Border Collie.

That, and watch about 200 breeds of dogs be fawned over by the strangest collection of televised people this side of the CMAs.

First, my favorite Westminster viewing story comes from 2001, when I went to New Hampshire for a medical class. Also attending was a friend of mine from PJ school, Will Willis, who was always the hardest partying guy in the room, but at that time was deep in maritial difficulties, which only bumped his want-to to whole new level. He was in New Hampshire to commit as much self-abuse as possible, and you were with him or you were against him.

So, half drunk on a Tuesday, he called my room - I'd guess I was fifth or sixth down his list of possible recruits - and demanded I drag my lightweight, cherry-ass out into the New Hampshire night to drink, chase tail and, maybe, a little arson.
No, I said 10 or so times.
What the F else have you got to do? he demanded in the kind of voice that absolutely was not interested in a reply. And of course, I had nothing to do, which was exactly what I wanted but not at all what Will wanted to hear. I was also flipping channels throughout Will's pitch and had stopped on Westminster during this bit so I said, in what i thought was an off-handed, hysterically ironic way: "The dog show's on. I want to see who wins."
And for the first time in the 3 years I'd known Willis, he was speechless.
"The DAWG SHOW!?!?!" And I knew I'd screwed up. Right then, in those 2 seconds, I knew I would literally never hear the end of snide dog show comments from Willis, not this week, not next, not 4 years later.
And I was right. You give Willis a drum, he ain't likely to ever stop beatin' it. God Bless ol' Will, one of the few sumbitches left what truly don't give half-a-damn.

But, of course, Border Collies and Aussies (and the rest of the world's cool dogs - bulldogs, rottis, labs of every hue, etc) never make it out of their Semifinal, "best in Group," into the prestigious finals, or "best in show."
(And yes, Best In Show is, by far, the funniest pseudo-documentry this side of Spinal Tap (though some of Jerry Falwell's efforts on Vince Foster were hilarious, too). We don't have to discuss it here)
The Finals are always a collection of hysterically gay poodles, barely ambulatory poofballs, dreary footstool-sized creatures and one or two tall, akward breeds that look like the just want a private place to pee. You can root for the occasional Basset Hound that breaks through to this level, but it will invariably lose to some annoying near-cat.
Still, Westminster is fantastic TV, if only because the announcing team is always so exasperated at how great the dogs are. I've seen 4 consecutive years of it, and in each year the announcers declare the Finals to be, by far, the best selection of dogs in memory, with the EXPLICIT caveat that such wonderful quality hasn't been present in previous years.
They're like Olympic gymnastic announcers in an Olympics boycotted by everybody except the US.
And it's their show, their world, their dogs, so i'm fine with it.

So Tuesday (Feb 15) is the second and final night, featuring Best In Show (at the end, obviously) but much more importantly, earlier in the night, the Best In Group for Herding dogs.
Good-v-Evil. Hate-v-Love. Us-V-Them. Mine-V-Yours.
Aussie-V-Border.

I'll sell you the whole seat, but you'll ONLY NEED THE EDGE!!!!!

Football - Cajun recruits

2005-02-15T09:47:00.000-08:00

Apparently, when it comes to recruits with a cajun flavor, LSU can't be stopped. As our Texas readership can confirm, LSU also grabbed Ryan Perriloux, a copiously talented quarterback who for the last year had seemed pledged to Texas. Why Perriloux changed his mind would be an interesting story, though its always dangerous to care too much about recruits in general, particularly considering that of all the schools in all the land, LSU looks like one where Perriloux is most redundunt.
Jamarcus Russell (shockingly out of date page) was the part-time starter and occassional crunch-time finisher at QB for LSU last year as a freshman. He beat Oregon State pretty much by himself to open the season. I saw him play probably 3 times, splitting time with Marcus Randall, and he looked like both the most dominant player on the field in terms of speed, arm, size and all that and also the least sure what to do. I remember thinking that if he could get a handle on his job, LSU might be unbeatable. When he was on, like in the OSU comeback, he was The Deal, untackleable, fast and agile, and great with his arm.
His stats nearly equal LSU's starter, with equal TDs and fewer INTs.
He was Vince Young plus an arm, or everything Perriloux is supposed to be. And he should go into the season next year as the starter as a sophomore.

So why would Perriloux want to step into a three-year wait, when, if he'd gone to Texas (and Young bails after next year), he would have had a look at starting the '07 opener?

Or, put another way, who has more chance to get broken - Jamarcus Randall, a drop back passer with LSU's line, or Vince Young on any of the countless tuck-and-run missions Greg Davis is certain to send him on? Hell, Perriloux might have brought the Horns out in September next year.

TV - Dunzo

2005-02-02T15:39:00.000-08:00

(UPDATE: continuing coverage the far-less-satisfying Season 2)

They've got more bounce in California than all y'all combined, as the song likes to say and on that note let’s recognize the season-long, weekly grand slam of a show that gave us that song and so much more, MTV's 'Laguna Beach.'
For that small segment of the population not born perfectly gorgeous, perfectly confident and perfectly rich - for we unfortunate few - there are endless reasons to hate the Laguna kids - all of which end up being the exact reasons we finally like them so much.
They are gorgeous, naive and vain, rich and unappreciative. But of course, they don't know all that - they just know that, over the course of a one preposterously pretty senior year, Stephen chose Kristin over LC, and ohmahgawd, is that interesting.
And ohmahgawd, it is.
We’ll talk about the decidedly unwild and all-the-more-intriguing-for-it adventures of LC, Lo, Stephen, the dreaded Krisitn and E!’s 2008 Sexiest Man Alive, Talan, in a moment. First, to fully appreciate the watershed event that Laguna Beach has been, let’s put it in context.
It’s been a dreadful year for ‘reality’ TV. MTV's the Real World - the flagship of MTV and reality shows in general - is in Philly, grinding its way through the worst season since at least Chicago with a hopelessly chaste, disproptionately gay and obviously bored cast. And unlike Chi-town, the kids don't even have Tanya doing yoga in spandex. Throw in the insurgent-like welcome that the Philly locals have given the cast (really – who throws barstools?) and this season may be to the Real World what the 'They Did It' moment was to Moonlighting.
And all the others that smack of reality – the Surreal Life, a Bachelor who's in his 40s and looks like Rick Flair, the mechanical Apprentice and it's unwatchable rip-offs, the usual, grueling network offerings (Survivor, Great Race, etc) – are as bad as they've ever been. Family Bonds on HBO is actually pretty entertaining, but the entire 2-deep chart has a Long Island accent - only so much of that you can take. And I don’t even want to discuss Growing Up Gotti.
With Lost and Desperate Housewives at the walls, the Reality era is closing fast, which, though a net-plus for civilization, is a major bummer for those of us who can’t get enough of the dating habits of good looking, not-famous people.
Yet from the advancing shadow steps Laguna Beach, a reality show about actual reality – a document of the social lives of a loose dozen high school friends at the magnificently priviliged Laguna Beach High School. The camera doesn’t bounce, pop songs aren’t basted over tape of teeth being brushed, they don’t even scream “Whore” at each other at 3am. Surely this isn’t a reality show? Surely not on MTV?
And yet, outside of Adriana getting capped on the Sopranos, it’s been at least two years since I saw a single episode of any show as hypnotic as “What goes to Cabo, Stays in Cabo,” where Kristin catapulted herself into the all-time Reality Slut first-tier and Stephen, a VERY-not-used-to-being-humiliated-by-chicks kind of guy, dragged her into a corner and screamed at her for being a slut for, like, five minutes. And then got bleary-eyed drunk and hooked up with LC.
But that entire event led to the season’s strongest high-concept moment in the next episode, “The Best Part of Breaking Up…,” where the Stephen-LC-Kristin triangle apexes. In the final segment, the producers brilliantly intercut LC and friends watching a post-break-up reunion on Fox’s “OC” with real-life clips of Stephen and Kristin doing the same thing. A TV show mocking the TV-ness of the TV show it’s based on – marshall mcluen call your office.
And let’s not entirely discount the midget who wanted to fight Trey, the fashion designer wanna-be, in the parking lot after the Blink 182 concert (“Whachu got on this, homey? Wassup? Wassup?”). You read that right.
And then the tiny moments, like when Stephen tried to teach the utterly-unathletic Kristin to surf (I refuse to consider the notion it might just have been a ploy by the show’s producers to get Kristin to be pouty in a bikini. Again). She managed to paddle the board a few yards off-shore and whine the whole time, and then told him, “the waves are pretty bad, but I got a little bit of one” and he says, “oh that one where you got totally barreled?”
I just about fell over.
From the opener, LC is our narrator, though not much of one. Mostly she's a bored senior with a long-standing crush on lifelong-friend Stephen. LC is also, by any reasonable measure, a four-star knockout. Whaddya like? Big, soft eyes? check. Long blonde hair? check. 20 percent of body weight in her tits? The list goes on.
LC is also, by most measures, relatively sane. She doesn't brood or demand much from friends or boyfriends or anybody else. She shops, she talks on the phone, she aches for Stephen.
The very last thing Laguna Beach would ever bring up is school (in the full season, I'm almost positive they never show the actual campus), but I'd be surprised if LC didn't carry a 3.5, certainly a 3.0.
And it is LC that Stephen, the wispy, sad-eyed born-to-slay dreamer, trades in for Kristin. And you've seen Kristin before - she's 90-percent of the chicks behind the floating black bar on the Girls Gone Wild ads.
She's stupid - or at least has honed acting stupid into a science - slutty, whiny, dismissive and never smiles unless it's to make STEE-vaaaaannnn do something for her.
Kristin is everything you'd never want in a girlfriend - but she’s a five-star knockout to LC's mere four and that apparently is enough for Stephen.
Of course, we’re free to read more into it – like if Stephen, bored and disinterested in his world, were to take a shot at the relatively good-hearted LC, he'd find himself with far more than he bargained for. And that’s not his deal.
On the other hand, once he gets to college, Stephen will miss Kristin for about 32 seconds.
No fool, big Steve.
And that’s the genius of Laguna Beach – the kids are so hopelessly shallow and blank, we can paint anything we want onto them. And Stephen is the blankest slate of all, with no discernable interests other than surfing, talking on his phone and enjoying the first few trickles of what promises to be a lifelong flood of women through his bed. He could be a 4.0 student body president, a hopeless weed head or anything in between – until the final two episodes, where graduation appears to hit him harder than most, he’s virtually transparent.
Around that basic triangle, Laguna Beach rotates.
And let’s not forget Lo, LC’s best friend, and I would bet by season’s end most people’s favorite character. Again the show never reveals resume bullets, but Lo MUST be the smartest of the bunch – she’s going to the best school of the bunch (UC Santa Barbara) and though highly endowed with ditzyness, doesn’t seem as perpetually confused as the other girls. Her trashcan-lid sunglasses are always hysterical and somewhere midseason she endures what has to be the worst date captured on film since Broadway Danny Rose.
There’s also the properly ignored Kristina, whose father is Robert Schuler, the Sunday morning glass-palace TV preacher and Morgan, the fat virgin. Well, fat Mormon and therefore, alledgedly, virgin by choice.
A quick Morgan tangent: on the day she gets her letter from BYU (the only place she applied), she takes Kristina to the beach so they can open it together, and Morgan makes a big deal about how important it is to her to go to college with people who share her values and she REALLY REALLY hopes she got in! Ok, fine. The whole time she’s holding the decisive letter in her hand and finally she opens it and reads it aloud and – oh no! – she gets turned down. And cries (duh). Only… it was just a letter, which means she HAD to know she was about to have a new common experience with her boyfriend. It’s the Cardinal rule of high school: big envelope, yes; little envelope, no.
How could she not know that - of course, she got rejected by BYU, so she may not think as well as she, say, eats.
And, watching a rerun, it was clear to me Kristina – who patiently listened to the morals rant - knew the whole time.
But all these charater sketches are just the lyrics - we haven’t discussed the music. The music is the rich, glowing sunlight of southern california, the spotless cars, the white-walled boutiques, the impossibly green forests that surround and consume the layer-cake houses.
And the all-contraction cell phone calls: 'sup? chillin'. rad'. n'way. Dunno. f'sure. ‘m’over it. late'. Click.
It’s hypnotic.
Everyone looks great here, and who wouldn't if you were 17? Who wouldn't talk like this, with that rapid, bouncy cadence that floats from word to word without ever finding its way through a sentence (and, dude, seriously, shut up, listen, i was all - it's just like- wierd. whatever). That accent - as distinctive as any southern drawl - that picks up, plays with and dismisses everything in its way.
The whole show is on film, which captures the So Cal sunshine with a vibrancy video never can. The music – including the incredibly catch “More Bounce IN California” and the theme song, “Rain come Down” are poppy and simple and used to perfect effect by the producers.
A gem of a show.
And here’s the big news – there’s going to be a Season 2, where Kristin, now a senior, takes over.
I personally am about through with her (much like Stephen). I’m sure she’ll be thirty times brattier next year, and without LC to parry against and Stephen to chase, she has little purpose. But not to worry. Season 2 has a star in the making – and I mean, like, Barak Obama at the DNC convention star-in-the-making – in the almost unbelievable complete package, Talan.
Talan – and with a name like that, I shouldn’t even have to say this – is a stone cold bitch magnet. He’s taller, lankier, smiley-er and way dreamier than Stephen. Not to mention, he’s the quarterback (go ahead - google his name if you want – Laguna went 5-5 with him and was 1 game away from the CIF playoffs before he got hurt). As LC told us each week in the opening credits of this year’s show: “Talan is a surfer that’s hooked up with almost every girl in my class. Twice.”
No shit.
If he’s not the LeBron James of Reality TV, I’ll give up ranting.

Laguna Beach. Coming to a Sunday afternoon-marathon near you.

Matt
Ps – so tonight I caught Last Letters Home on HBO. Interviews of parents of dead soldiers, each reading the last letter they received from their kid, often delivered after their death. The father of the dead Captain, in Knoxville is, pound for pound, the most devastating 60 seconds of tape you’ll ever see.
Not to break the mood, but it’s another show not to miss.

NFL - Fountains

2005-01-13T00:09:00.000-08:00

just posted up the CBS-v-Super Bowl rant that ended in a Fountains of
Wayne endorsement. And I'll jsut say that almost a year after the
fact, FoW hasn't done anything to disuade my opinion of them with the
Mexican Wine video. Check it out at www.fountainsofwayne.com if you
haven't. Brilliant.

matt

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Music/TV - One Boob, One Band and Maybe I'm Just Paranoid

2005-01-11T21:53:00.000-08:00

“Is that supposed to be your poker face, or did someone get run over by a train.” – that’s the opening line of a great song by a great band that I want to tell you about before the Grammy’s makes them famous and ruins it.
But first, I need to say a few words about the Grammys and quite a few more about its network, CBS, because I haven’t heard anyone else say them.
So bear with me:

As a Grammy’s ad, this year’s Super Bowl halftime succeeded beyond CBS’s wildest dreams. They must be starring at their laptops, combing their production notes, asking over and over, like Max Bealistock, Where Did We Go Right?
In one hideous show, CBS managed to pull off one of the most sexually cynical and racially hateful moments in recent broadcast history – and came out of it as the victim AND is going to end up rich for it.
Follow me through it:
CBS, owned by the same company that owns MTV, got two of MTV’s biggest black talents, Nelly and Puff, to do what they do (rap about getting laid, grab their crotch – if you know me, you know I’m a fan) for the Super Bowl halftime. Every 12 year old in Omaha knew what was coming, so I will not entertain suggestions that CBS/NFL officials did not. Still, Nel’ and Diddy would have been enough to set off the 700 Club crowd, which is why they were up there to start with.
But CBS knew they couldn’t send JUST those two up there because any useful outrage they might generate would instantly be negated by a Racism Scare. CBS certainly didn’t want to send its white-suburban Super Bowl audience to bed wondering if its THEIR FAULT they were offended by two black rappers that their 12 year old daughter loves. Easier for Middle America to ignore it all together – and CBS didn’t want their Super Bowl ignored.
Which is why Puff and Nelly were really there just to prime the WhiteFear-pump for MTV’s Justin Timberlake, an even bigger star because he is white but trades on black identity. So when he goes up there and behaves similarly, if tamer, than Nelly and Puff, the Fly-over states can get in a good, healthy huff without feeling like they’re facing any unpleasant gaps in their own sensitivity.
Here’s the thinking CBS was spoon-feeding us: Blacks are blacks, but HE shouldn’t be behaving like that!
You can send most of the Central timezone to work on Monday in a right pissy mood on that vibe, and they’ll talk about it all week – which, to CBS, means they’re talking about CBS.
Am I reading too much in? Seeing conspiracy and racial boogiemen where there was only incompetence? Well, that would be a LOT of incompetence. In fact, it would be the Mt. Everest of incompetence during the most-valuable broadcast of the year – or it could be a thoroughly plotted, detail-oriented plan, ie the kind of plan you’d expect to find at a Super Bowl. Which seems more likely?
Consider: when CBS (and the NFL) hired MTV to put on that show, what did they THINK they were going to get? If I’m wrong, then CBS wrote a giant check to MTV without bothering to listen to a single Nelly song (I LOVE Nelly, but his oervre has laser-like message displine: bitches, cars, cash, repeat)… OR a major American TV network exploited vague racial resentment in its Super Bowl audience to sell beer.
Which seems more likely?
I suppose if the show had only been those 3 – Nelly, Puff and ‘Lake – the evidence would be inconclusive.

And then came Janet. Case closed.

Let’s back up a bit: just two months ago (so soon we forget….), CBS ran a Michael Jackson musical show in primetime in return for him granting 60 Minutes an interview after he was arrested for child molestation. Read that again.
Actually, CBS says it was all a coincidence. Again – which seems more likely?
Still, CBS was due the benefit of doubt on that affair – until his sister, with no discernable current following, showed up on the Super Bowl halftime show with, arguably, America’s top 3 male musical talents. I mean, who said ‘no’ to that venue that they had to turn to Janet? Or was an 80s-era pop star with a known-pedophile brother the first choice?
So let’s connect the dots:
In one halftime, CBS managed to leverage white people’s fear of black music AND the leering specter of the network’s own approved child molester/music talent into one big ball of dripping offensiveness – and got the entire nation talking about it all week.
You gotta hand it to them.
And then came the tit-flash (at least, I think it did – in the actual, undoctored replay, can you see anything? I don’t think I can and I know I didn’t see anything live), and things only got better. Way more talk. Way more outrage. White Guy-Black Girl-Look Out! And an actual investigation by the FCC – the surest ratings booster this side of a suicide.
It’s hard to imagine anything better for CBS.
In fact, the ONLY thing that could be better for CBS would be if they could – and here we’re talking pie in the sky – somehow trot the same cast back out for an encore a week later. I mean, wouldn’t THAT be something, but what are the odds?

Ladies and Gentlemen, this Sunday on CBS… the Grammys.

ANOTHER coincidence goes CBS’s way! Somebody buy them a lottery ticket!
Let’s see… scheduled to perform: Puff, Nelly, Lake and… Janet? She WAS on the list but now there is some DOUBT! Whoo – the suspense is KILLING ME!
So, with the outrage so high and the grammy’s so close, CBS has spent this week trumpeting that it will have a FIVE MINUTE delay (because they were shocked – Shocked!) so everything will be “appropriate” – and among all the people I know in the universe, only my mom would fail to see that what that actually means is, ‘we’ve been planning something REALLY inappropriate, so tune in to see if we catch it.’
No, actually, even Trish would catch on to that.
What she would miss – because she has goodness in her heart and CBS doesn’t – is that what CBS is REALLY saying is: ‘we’ve been planning to let Nelly and Puff and other black people act even MORE black, so tune in to see if we catch them.’
It’s so sickening, I suspect the involvement of Karl Rove, but I’m out of dots to connect.

Phew. I feel better. I’ll leave the entire despicable event behind me by saying this – like Dubya, CBS needs an Exit Strategy. Unlike Dubya, I think they have one:

Ladies and Gentlemen… Fountains of Wayne.

CBS needs a wholesome, feel-good (ie, utterly white) act to seize the Grammy’s by the throat and pull everybody’s collective ass out of the fire. A Bonnie Raitt/Nora Jones-type of night.
It’s going to be Fountains of Wayne. CBS is going to hand them statues until people stop asking about Janet. In one of those quaint hiccups that make the Grammys so adorably vile, they’re up for best ‘new’ artist with their 3rd album (against 50 Cent) and for ‘best song by a duo’(?) for their sort-of-hit “Stacey’s Mom.”
They’re normal, even harmless looking (unlike the moaning freaks in Evanescence), dress responsibly, don’t curse much on their albums (sorry, White Stripes), play their own instruments (‘Lake, Beyonce, etc) and unless CBS wants 50 telling the home audience “there’s no bidness like ‘Ho bidness!” Fountains of Wayne is going to run away with things.
And the really, really sad part is: they totally deserve it.

If you’re cool enough to have found them already or have known about them for years - as I know at least three or four of my friends are – then sorry. But I can’t seem to stop running into people who’ve never heard of them. And CBS is going to put a stop to their anonymity, and, with it, their cool.
So at least let me stick up for them before the bubble bursts.

Fountains of Wayne is probably – no, definetly – the first great pop act of the decade. Of course, who was the last? Sugar Ray? No Doubt? Smashmouth? Beck? I’m not exactly smashing received truths to state that Hip Hop has been the Western Conference to Pop’s East since at LEAST Biggie got shot. If you don’t like hip hop – Eminem, Jay-Z, Destiny’s Child, whatever – what have you been listening to for 5 years? Basicly, teen pop, Creed-rock or rap-metal.
Ick.
But things have been looking up for a year or so. Somewhere between “The ‘The’ Movement” (The Hives, The Strokes, The Vines, The White Stripes, etc), Tenacious D and some new blood in fringe-metal (Disturbed, etc), actual Rock music has rebounded. With Fountains, Pop may be back, too.
Digression: What is “pop” music, exactly? It was pretty obvious in the 80s - Hall and Oates, yes. Quiet Riot, no. Scandal – yip. Springsteen – nope. The Cars (major Fountains influence)? You betcha. Pet Shop Boys – New Wave! Run!
But the last time there was anything resembling decent pop was the mid-90s, before Puff’s “I’ll Be Missing You” launched the revolution. If you got clear of the Pearl Jam and Metalica, you could hear Dave Matthews, the Wallflowers, Hootie and Garbage (and Dishwalla and the Refreshments and countless others who added one song to our brain and fell off the earth – sing with me!: “all I wanna DO is to thank you, even though I don’t know who you are/you let me change lanes while I was driving in my caaarrrr/ whoever you are…”? YEAH!!) Not interesting, or groundbreaking or even memorable, but fun.
Pop.
But somewhere around the Thong Song, that all changed. “Top 40” suddenly meant ‘edited rap’ or Marilyn Manson or, lately, Linkin Park.
Ick.
But nothing lasts forever – Britney got married (goodbye, credibility), Jessica married Nick but never heard of Ringo Starr (hello, over-exposure), and even Dr. Dre is talking about getting out (moment of silence…).
Into the void rushes Fountains of Wayne, just in time to stand Aragorn-astride-the-gates-of-Mordor-like against the scurge of John Mayer. Seriously: name a band you’d like to see at a bar right now, besides Tenacious D and Jack Johnson. Cuz if you took your girl to see a John Mayer set, you couldn’t go to the bathroom or he’d slip her a hotel key. Classic poacher. And what’s with all that moaning? Its rock music, for f’s sake. Nobody died. Lighten Up, body-is-a-wonderland-Boy .

So go get Wayne’s ‘Welcome Interstate Managers’, the best pure pop album since Sugar Ray’s ‘14:59 ‘ (you know… “Every Morning” etc). It’s got “Mexican Wine,” the best post-college-funk rock song since Ben Folds Five’s “Army,” which will have you singing about how you got fired by United Airlines for weeks; “Bright Future In Sales” is 3 minutes of clever lyrics and 2-chord jamming; “Hey Julie” is probably the strongest named-for-a-girl song since – bold statement ahead – All-Time champ Barbara Ann.
Even the inevitable ‘serious’ songs don’t drag (except for the dreary She’s Got A Problem - yuck) – Hackensack is fun and No Better Place is a great lyrics exhibition (it always comes back to lyrics with these bands, huh?), opening with the “poker face/run over by a train” line.

But of course the crowning effort is “Stacy’s Mom,” which is just a terrific, addictive, fun tune even if, musically, it’s very close to a direct lift of the Cars’ Just What I Needed. Or anything Rick Springfield ever put out – seriously, there are some VERY shallow echoes of Jesse’s Girl there.
And have you seen the video? The song is about Stacy’s hot mom – and I was originally told that Christy Brinkley was in the title role, which would have been one of the all-time great cameos – right there with Chuck Yeagar as the barfly in the Right Stuff. But its not her. It’s Racheal Hunter, who is an actual mom and runs about mid-30s and looks 23 and could out-Hot a solid 80-percent of Playboy’s offerings of the last 10 years.
There’s NOTHING weak about Rachael Hunter. She’s almost too hot for the song. But she used to bang Rod Stewart, which kinda ruins it.
And in the end, she’s not Christy Brinkley – and when you’re expecting Christy Brinkley, is there even such a thing as a substitute?

matt

USC thoughts

2005-01-11T15:25:00.000-08:00

So they just did a little video complilation of USC stories - Leinart
and hiring Tim Floyd.

First thought: what is that tape of Floyd going absulte ape shit
towards a ref? The clip they just showed shows him going
Pitt-next-to-the-burning-'Caravan' crazy trying to get to a ref. his
players are pulling his coat off him to hold him back. awesome.

Second: best Leinart tape by far is the one where, at home, from a
fieldlevel camera, he rolls left and throws an unseen touchdown - the
camera stays on him but you can tell the guy catches a touchdown
because, perfectly framed behind him as he follows through the song
girls spontaneously all throw their arms up and jiggle in unison at the
unseen TD. they fill screen, edge to edge. just a classic piece of
tape.

third: just read today a stat i can't believe i didn't know.
Leinart's first-ever pass was for a TD - the only college Qb in
history to do that. can that be true?

fourth: if *I* was Leinart, and i was coming back, I would do it with
a montage of that first-pass-TD clip and say, "Things started so great
here..." and then show his last snap, where he dropped the ball for a
safety and go: "but i can't leave like that."

fifth: just watched the Leinart announcement. for SC, i'm way more
pumped that the punter is back. THAT guy is a stud. i think i'd
rather watch SC develop the next QB with some veterans to help him
rather than rebuild the entire ship - line, Qb, recievers, TBs, even
punter - in 06.

sixth: what was with that background - Lexus is now the title sponsor
of SC football?

seventh: i think Cedric should send Matt a cut of his
1st-pick-overall-bonus.

matt

NFL - Peyton and thems

2005-01-11T15:22:00.000-08:00

I watched the Colts-Ravens game last night, which makes the second year in a row that the only non-Raiders-v-Broncos NFL game I’ve seen start to finish involved the Colts (last year’s comical comeback against Tampa Bay was the other – was that last year? Let’s not dwell).
Hell of a thing. There were two, maybe three, really amazing parts of the game, one of which was the obvious: You may have heard that Payton Manning was 2 Tds away from Dan Marino’s record of 48 in a season. Having thrown at least 2 Tds in something like 15 straight games, this seemed like the night he would at least tie it.
He did not, and the story of how the Ravens held was quite a thing.
So that was one thing.
The second thing was AJ Freeney, the Colts defensive end and the NFL’s sack leader, taking on Jonathan Ogden, the NFL’s premier current (maybe ever) left tackle. Or rather, it was watching Freeney abuse and embarrass Ogden as badly as you are ever likely to see a first-tier athlete get abused in his native element. I’m struggling for a comparable example – maybe Jordan abusing Ewing, or Ty Detmer’s run-in with Texas A&M.
And the third thing is: no WAY the Colts are a serious contender. No shot. I’ll get to that.
So Manning – first drive, he comes out firing, mixing pass and run (the Ravens, playing against the pass, let Edge James get loose for two 10+ runs on the drive) and goes 65 effortless yards down the field. Or at least most of those were effortless. His final two passes near the endzone go through the hands of defenders, and the Colts get the field goal.
And that about did it for Payton Manning’s easy night.
From that point on, the same thing happened on each play of the Colts’ ensuing possessions – Manning would bring the Colts out of the huddle and, as he famously does, call the line at the play. You could hear his voice check off over and over (keep that in mind). He’d point, move his players around, make hand signals, etc. His adjustments and constant check-offs were so prevalent he could easily have been accused of having no idea what the hell he was doing.
And as he would do so, Ray Lewis and Ed Reed (safety) would do the same, sliding in and out of position, barking orders to their guys, moving dudes around. On top of that, the Ravens probably didn’t take 2 snaps all night in the same defensive look. One play they’d have 3 guys down with everybody else floating, the next snap they’d bring 8 or 9 – and on at least one snap 10 – guys onto the line to show, and often bring, a blitz. Guys popped on and off the line like they were setting screens at the top of the key.
Again, if you didn’t know better, you might look at their alignments from snap to snap – the only consistency between them being general chaos – and think they had no idea what the hell they were doing.
And of course, in both cases, they did.
Manning never really solved it in the first half – after the 65 yard field-goal drive, he got 68 yards in the next 4 drives. They had some ridiculous punter stat, like he kicked more in that half than in any two previous games or something.
Edge James, fast as he is, wasn’t much of a challenge. The Ravens game plan seemed to be, sensibly, “We’ll stop Manning, Ray’ll handle Edge.” Hand-off to Edge middle, Ray Lewis with the stop. Hand-off Edge student body right, Lewis blows up the blocking. Screen pass to Edge – Lewis stayed home and makes the hit.
Which left Manning-v-Ravens for everything else.
I don’t think there’s anything dumber in all of sports entertainment than describing a football game as a ‘chess match’ (a Thiesman favorite) and I won’t. But since neither the Colts O or the Ravens D benefited at any point in that half from the other team simply screwing up (ie bad pass for a pick, corner falls down, etc), I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the outcome of every play was decided in the seconds before the ball was snapped. And it was pretty cool to watch.
Then, of course, Manning came out in the second half and found a rhythm, started hitting tight-ends on the exact knuckle to beat double coverage and never saw a third down until he hit Marvin Harrison on 3rd-and-1 with a 20+ yard TD pass. And on that play Harrison threw one of the absolute sickest out-and-in moves of all-time – yip, all-time – at corner Chris McAlister. Harrison cut towards the outside and the instant McAlister turned his hips outside to run with him, Harrison cut back in. With one step Harrison had 5-yards of seperation but way more important he had McAlister literally running the wrong way. He was open by, conservatively, 15 yards when he caught the TD – which was, needless to say, delivered by Manning about 1.5 inches off his cheek.
That made it 13-3, and the Ravens clearly weren’t going to overcome that.
It’s worth nothing, though, that Jamal Lewis, chronic chronic user, put up a terrific effort. At one point, the Rs faced a 3rd-and-15. Kyle Boller (Kyle Boller?) threw over the middle, tipped at the line, ball tumbles toward turf, Lewis running underneath scoops it up for a silly 5-yard, lucky completion surrounded by Colts – and promptly turns upfield and bull-runs for the next 10 and the unlikeliest first down of the game. Unbelievable play. And I’m pretty sure the only reason he was able to get that far was because AJ Freely was too busy hitting Boller. Again. After beating Ogden. Again.
I think Ogden – who even ON AN NFL TELECAST – looks inhumanly huge is playing hurt. They said something about bad ankle or something. But seriously – I don’t think he stopped Freely even once. Not once. It got to the point where it wasn’t even fun to watch – you knew Freely was about to embaress the guy again and then, wham, he would. Ogden wouldn’t even stand in the huddle by the end of the game cuz he was so pissed at himself. In one sequence, Freely (rushing from the right end everytime) slammed into Ogden then spun inside on him, using Ogden as his own personal pick and roll to slam Boller. Next play Freely ran right past him outside for the sack. Next play Freely went outside him again so nakedly that Ogden literally left his feet to leap and tackle – aka hold – Freely as he blew by.
Clinic.
They’d do those ABC-perfected super-slo-mo replays, the kind where you can see Emmit Smith’s quad muscles slowly jiggle as he plants his feet for a juke, and even at that speed – I swear – Freely would be out of his stance and into his rush in a single frame. Nobody else on either side of the ball would so much as lift their hand off the turf and he’d be a step and half into the backfield. As the booth team said, “how is he not off-sides?’ To be honest, Ogden never had a prayer.
So I’ll just say it. Considering that everybody on that field is, by definition, among the top-point-zero-one-percent of the world’s fastest people, NOBODY is that fast. Or rather, nobody is that much FASTER. Not naturally at least.
For what it’s worth.
Also, in the fourth, up 20-10, Payton had the Colts rolling downfield, the ravens finally deflated and faced a 4th-and-1. They go for it and get it. 4 plays later, 4th-and-5.
Tony Dungy elects to kick the fieldgoal. Easy, easy call, right.
Manning comes off the field visibly livid. He wanted to go for it again. Interesting moment and begs a question – was Manning simply in his groove, believing he had the D on the run? Or was he gunning for a shot at the record? The mood of the moment (and common sense) says Manning was just being competitive. Fine. But he was PISSED coming off (particularly when ol’ boy missed the FG – ha ha).
But that set up the final minute with the Ravens driving with the possible-but-doubtful thought of overcoming a 20-10 score (Payton wisely let Edge run in another in the 4th). Boller threw a brutal interception which the Colt guy returned 70+ yards for an evident TD and, clearly, the ballgame.
Only they said the guy, all alone, stepped out of bounds inside his own 10 (think about that). Fine.
So Payton retakes the field for the last 50-odd seconds, 10 yards from the endzone. Kneel down, kneel down, ballgame.
Duh.
Only, as Payton took those knees, the Indy fans BOOED. They wanted Payton to take that final opportunity – handed to him on a RIDICULOUS fluke/botched int-runback – and go for the record with the game utterly decided (and in fact at the non-zero risk of giving the game back).
Unreal.
What was cool was the immediate smiles and comraderie that erupted between the R’s D and the Colts O – they had fiercly battled for the last few hours and you could tell they each had loved it. The Colts won the game, and scored a lot of points, but P didn’t get his record. Jump ball.

Which brings us to the final analysis. Baltimore clearly took Payton’s quest for 47 personally. And they held, and it wasn’t close. He never really got close to that second TD. In fact, the Ravens nearly picked him more times than he threatened to score. So the Payton machine, with focus and willpower, can be stopped.
And all that ‘chess match’ stuff was conducted in the near-silence of Payton’s homefield. It was eerie how quiet it was. That’s how you could hear the P’s voice and the D’s counters so clearly. The crowd let Payton set up in silence.
Which will NOT be possible on a hostile field, in hostile non-dome weather.
Plus, Freeney CAN’T be that fast on grass. It’s not possible. And nothing else about the Colts defense looks convincing. Jamal Lewis shredded them, just plundered his way downfield. And Kyle Boller (Kyle Boller?) got some decent yardage on them, had a TD dropped late and was driving to stay close late. Kyle Boller.

No way the Colts win big later. But it was a hell of a game.

VidGame - Greatest Game Ever: The Sequel

2005-01-11T13:44:00.000-08:00

Probably not the week to ask if y’all caught the
latest – and best – episode of Lost last night? I'll
just say it: the 8th and 9th innings were during the
Alaska broadcast of Lost – and I didn’t even swith
over during the commercials. Sorry. Best show to hit
TV since - what? - early Moonlighting?

Ya know, I’d love to send my congrats to Harman and
thems but I can’t until Foulke finally underhands the
ball over to first for the final out. Hey, pitcher,
like 9 states waiting!!!! Frankly, he’s nearing the
24 hour mark of his “oh, don’t mess this up” pre-toss
pause and we’re getting bored. I think Renteria
finally collapsed this morning halfway down the
firstbase line from dehydration. Maybe by the end of
the week he’ll finally horseshoe-lob it over to
Mientkiewicz (whose painfully deliberate ‘shoe on bag
until AFTER you catch it’ routine is threatening to
sweep the nation’s white dance clubs) and the Red Sox
will actually, finally have gotten the final out.

Until then, I’ll be locked up here, in the recliner,
toes shoved up against the TV, playing Grand Theft
Auto San Andreas.

I mean, the Red Sox win the World Series every 84
years (yeah, I know, pretty obscure but Elias dug it
up for Sportscenter– how about that, 84 years?! Dang.
You’d think it would be a bigger deal), but the
sequel to the greatest video game of all time only
comes out the same week I’m stuck alone in a hotel
room once.

So some thoughts after, oh, 10 hours of GTA5.
It’s giant, it’s artful, it’s bottomlessly deep. In
those respects, it builds and improves on its prequels
It is also dark and mean and uncomfortably racist,
often in a ‘reverse’ sense.
I wrote and never sent an essay about 3 months ago
expressing my concern that GTA5’s announced setting –
90s gangland LA – was going to be a problem. With
Vice City, set pretty much in the middle of Miami
Vice’s 3rd season, there was a built-in layer of
fantasy and comedy. I mean, Miami Vice, the show, was
a wild parody and comedy based entirely in myth - so
adopting it to the absurdist world of video game
violence made it only funnier and sillier. Not only
was GTA4 technically the most impressive video game
ever, it was also the fall-down funniest.
GTA5, though, is set in the “Colors”/“Boyz in the
Hood”/etc setting of LA. And those movies – unlike
the campy Vice – were not funny. Or even fun. They
were movies intended and designed to illustrate
desperate poverty and the savage culture it breeds.
Which is exactly the vibe GTA5 emits – desperate
savagery.
The violence, from literally the first moments, is
much more prevalent. In both GTA3 and 4, you could
roam the city for hours looking at things, pretty much
left alone – here, you are very likely to get shot
very quickly if you stray far.
The “pedestrian” characters are, as I feared, the
worst of ghetto-stereotypes – the crack addict, the
single mom, the wino, the would-be rapper/burger king
worker (OK, that’s funny). And, of course, the swarms
and swarms of gang members.
The only white people so far are the cops you shoot
and the sluttiest of the female extras (in fact, the
better the bodies on the chicks, the whiter they are
drawn as).
It is an obvious nod to these stereotypes that the
leader of the corrupt cops (who are pushing the
narrative) is black, played by Samuel L Jackson (“see,
if we were racist, the cop would be white!”)
It is fair to say that no black/ghetto cliché every
invented is not part of this game. In some sense,
that’s a credit to the gamemakers – they didn’t water
anything down. But I doubt the Mike Powells of the
world will take that view.

Now… the caveats. The game is gigantic. I have
only seen one section – the ghetto – of one city in
the game’s 3 cities. There is a rural farming area, a
Vegas-like Casino/glitz based city, and some sort of
high-end Laguna Beach-like rich person island, too.

But the sly, don’cha-get-it? Humor of Vice City is
gone.

Two technical complaints.
First, you can’t drive with the buttons, only with
the stick. I always drove with the buttons, so that
sucks.
But more than that, they’ve ‘upgraded’ the way you
control the main character – and, in doing so, I
think, made it more complicated than necessary. The
only thing that kept me hooked on GTA4 for the first
few hours was the ease of playing – push the stick,
the guy moves. Push the button, he shoots his gun or
punches somebody. No triple-combo ‘special attacks’
to memorize, no “stealth modes” to activate, no
unsymmetrical look-with this button/aim with this
nonsense. It was just moving a cartoonish little guy
around the screen (which also added to the unreality
of it). Such complex controls have made me almost
immediately quit playing some of GTA’s competitors.
Here’, they’ve added several dimensions of movement
and control – which, as you play, just gets in the
way. You can ‘sneak’ around, the camera angle can be
twisted in 360, but the play doesn’t turn – so you see
something behind you, instinctively push towards it
and end up running or aiming the wrong way. Or your
camera gets stuck in an akward angle trying to drive.
Just added, unnecessary complexity. Never a problem
in GTA3 and 4.
And they’ve made an effort make the guy’s movement
more ‘lifelike.’ Of course, it looks akward. Why not
leave him as a cartoon.
Also they’ve added ‘action’ where you don’t need or
want it– I don’t need animation to change clothes or
eat. In fact, it’s annoying, slow and – as
illustrated by earlier GTAs – totally unneeded. Very
frustrating.
So, be advised – the initial 10 or so missions are
incredibly story-intensive. Five or more minutes of
‘video’ accompany most missions, building up the
backstory. The dialogue is ripped straight from a rap
song – every other words is MF, bitch or shit, casual
drug use is everywhere, and the gangster-as-hero-vibe
is

Finally – it is an amazing world they’ve built.
Shockingly detailed replicas of almost any Southern
California landmark you can think of, from the
Hollywood sign to the Santa Monica pier and Venice
beach to the Watts towers to the LA Convention center.
The dry flood channels (best mission of the early
ones is a long chase through them, with you playing
tailgunner on the back of a motorcycle). Even the
Forum in Englewood. Obviously, a familiarity with LA
helps here, but there is LOTS to see.
And, probably coolest of all – freeways. Huge, wide,
smooth, swooping freeways that connect all the cities.
On ramps, cloverleafs, carpool lanes. And, like the
real things, almost SURE to send you the wrong
direction.

Of course you’re going to go get it. So do. But
just my early thoughts.

VidGame - Blaine 05

2005-01-11T13:28:00.000-08:00

NCAA Football 2005: No doubt about it - they went
backwards.
As much as I loved Blaine on the cover of last
year's game, I felt it was so slight an improvement
over the 2003 version that is was a bit of a letdown.
All the "new features" were forced and poorly done,
the animation was largely unchanged and the
improvement in gameplay - which is 90-percent of it -
was so slight as to not matter.
On the upside, the 2004 game never froze up the way
2003 did once every 5 or so games.
This year the improvements are almost invisible, the
"new features" are esoteric and uninteresting, and the
gameplay is absolutely identical (possibly a little
worse).
The best example is the "pulse meter" which
apparently is meant to simulate home field advantage.
So depending on where you are (say, the Swamp versus
Toledo), there is a meter onscreen that shows the
crowd's intensity, and if it gets real high, a new
algorithm kicks in and some of the visiting players
start to play worse (poise, or something similiar, is
actually a new rating, like speed and agility, built
into each player).
Well... OK. that was already part of the game in
previous years, but it was transparent - the crowd got
loud (and you could pump them up on D) and if they
did, sometimes somebody jumped offsides or the QB
choked or something. Does it have to be a major
feature of the gameplay?
Another silly add-on: during timeouts, you're
allowed to 'coach' one of your units - secondary,
linebackers or line (or the O equivs). You are shown
a little green bar for eachthat represents poise or
something, and by coaching that unit, it goes up for
the next play.
Huh? That's ridiculous - the whole point of this
series of games is the gameplay - hit the circle
button and you can see the runner spin, see the corner
miss the tackle and it's fun. It's not very cerebral,
but should it be? All the new features - reacting to
crowd noise, 'coaching' boosts - are like they've
thrown some sort of Magical Hit Points into the mix.
Did I buy "NCAA Football & Dragons"? They've lost
sight of the fact that 90-percent of gameday coaching
is communication with your players - making them do
what you want. And since, with a video game, that
entire concept is void, why try to simulate it? If I
add Magical Coaching Points to my 'rattled' QB, is he
more likely to see the tight-end come open? In a real
game, sure... and you can add some wierd subroutine in
the code to vaguely simulate that. But did you just
make things better? No - it's a friggin' video game.
The guy who has to see the tight-end come open is not
the QB - it's me, the guy with the controller.
Whether or not the QB has magical green bars at Full
Spirit Level shouldn't be the point.
there is also a very esoteric addition mid-play.
You can zoom back and see how your match-ups are -
O-line vs D--line, etc. Apparently, those ratings and
your matchups vary a lot with the Pulse Meter, and
with how you're playing in that game.
Look... it's video football. come up with a more
elegant pass-and-catch system (I vote for
automatically zooming in on the reciever as the ball
gets close, which would make catching the ball much
more interactive). If you want linemen to jump
offsides because of the crowd, fine - in fact, great.
But let's have some perspective.
And, worst of all for 2005, the freeze is back.

So I've played 3 games since I got the game
yesterday - opened up with #1 ranked USC (thankee)
against Ft. Worth Bowl Champion Boise State. It was
fun, sort of: 3 and out as i fumbled to remember how
to play offense, Boise marched down and planted one
for seven before i also remembered that my best
defense is to not touch the controller, and then the
skills (and SC's built in talent) took over and we
pretty much dominated the rest of the way on the
ground. Ithink i completed one pass. Devon Bush,
USC's halfback, is, as expected, off the charts (and
that tracks: I thought he was the fastest guy in the
nation last year), but a nice little treat was to find
that QB leinhart (94 overall rating) is actually
pretty fast too. Funny to watch Norm Chow's carefully
constructed West Coast offense option its way down the
field, but the Broncos were going to get back to Boise
before they got tothe corner against my Oline and away
we go!
Then I played William and Mary vs Delaware, a game
which, when i covered it in 1997, was arguably between
the two best I-AA teams in the nation. Not this time
- me and the Tribe turned Zabel Stadium into
Williamsburg International and it was 35-0. The game
added the tribe (and most of I-AA) last year, and its
good to see them still there, but they still play in a
generic stadium. Might be too much to ask to get the
IAA schools home fields built in, but they've had a
year to do it.
Finally, late last night, I fired up Dynasty Mode
and played the SC-Va Tech season opener. Two errors
you can't blame the game for: Marcus Vick was there
and Mike Williams wasn't (OK, so that's one error and
PLEASE let it be two). Good thing, too, cause Vick's
arm and Williams absense was all that kept it to 35-6.
That one goes out to all you Big East party people!
Still - the animation occasionally stutters when it
shouldnt, which wasn't true last year. It looks like
they've tried to ramp up the light-vs-dark shading (a
guy turns his head, and it gets darker, etc). But i
think they're programming beyond the chips specs.

New Stuff:
- to win the commander-in-chief's trophy, you now have
to play as a service academy and beat both of the
others - in the past, it was Army-Navy and Air Force
was out of the mix.
- relatively lame "crowd shots" after big plays,
where you get a sideline camera-view looking back up
to the first row of the stands, where 3 or 4
appropriately dressed dudes celebrate. The game brags
that they hold up 'individualized" signs (like "Hokie
Hokie Hi" and "V is for Victory Go Trojans!" etc - you
can even customize the signs) but so what? Who really
watches that stuff? I pretty much always click right
through it to get to the next play.
- they added a bunch more user-initiated post-play
celebrations. if you like that stuff.
- a few new defensive sets (3-3-5, 4-2-5), which are
kinda fun.
- the cheerleaders are a little hotter, and
thankfully, the male cheerleaders are GONE. That
alone is worth the purchase price.

Problems:
- all the pre-game, post game and most of the
during-game animation is unchanged - ie they run out
from the tunnel, they stretch out, the RB does a
little dance, the coach paces. After the game, they
shake hands, they walk off the field - All 100-percent
the same. In fact, all that animation dates tothe
2003 game. How hard would it be to update that stuff?
- Worst part: last year they introduced "Classic
Games" which puts you into key moments of key games in
football history (you are Flute lining up for the Hail
Mary, you are Cal recieving the kickoff prior to the
Play). Last year I bitterly complained that the games
they picked were either really stupid, deeply biased
to the east coast (one Pac 10 game?) or - worst of all
- put you on the historically wrong side.
This year, the feature is not just back, but it's
THE SAME GAMES!!!! They couldn't think of 15 or 20
OTHER good games in the whole history of college ball?
Not one more Pac 10 game, ever? So you AGAIN are
saddles with:
- only 1 Pac 10 game (The Play - whose only future
star, Elway, was watching from the sidelines) and 1
Rose Bowl.
Compared to....
- 5 Miami games
- 5 Notre Dame games
- 4 Ohio State games
- 4 Florida State games (including 95 FSU-UVA - a
terrific, fun game, but an all-time Top 20?)
- 2 Penn State games
- 2 BYU games (?), including...
- 1982 BYU-SMU. So a collision of BYU and SMU offered
more drama and historical significance than any game
ever played by a Pac-10 team, save The Play?
- the 1990 Colorado-Notre Dame game, which drops you
into the game as Rocket, prior to his punt return that
put ND ahead - a play that was CALLED BACK FOR HOLDING
in the real thing. yet the game wants you to recreate
that event.
- 1998 Va Tech-Syracuse - what? Who remembers that
game? And, to kick the horse some more, that gives
the Ishmael family one more game than 90 years of Pac
10 history.
- 1993 FSU-ND - 1-vs-2. A good (not great) game, but
inexplicable here since it asks you to be FSU and
mount a comeback - which didn't happen. What they
COULD have done is skipped ahead just one week on the
scedule, still been at Notre Dame, but let you be
Boston College, trailing by 1 (or 2?) and fighting to
get David Gordon in range. I mean, if we're talking
memorable games in South Bend in 1993, which one
really matters?
Other non-history:
- the 1997 Rose Bowl. You are Jake the Snake trailing
14-10 late. ESPN Classic plays this game a lot for
the very good reason that it was, pound for pound, the
best bowl game of the 90s... but Jake LOST. He did
retake the lead, 17-14, but Ohio State cameback and
beat them. So the game wants you to re-write history
here (and for Rocket and for FSU), but for Flutie and
Cal and most of the others, you're supposed to
recreate it.
It was a poorly executed idea last year. That it's
back unchanged is ridiculous.

Summary: I stumbled across this franchise in 2003
(which is to say, in '02, but the 2003 edition). That
was the one with the picture of Joey Harrington on the
cover, his arm cocked mid-throw and his eyes coming
right off the box at you. A terrific cover for a
groundbreaking game. I mean, if you put an Oregon guy
on the cover - who just happened to be the best player
in the land the previous year- you're obviously making
a product for people who know the game.
As i've said before, i was a lifetime anti-video
game pundit until i saw that game, and I probably
spent 200 or 300 hours playing it over the next year.
Since then, the gameplay - the only important part -
is unchanged and they've only added peripheral
features that are either so esoteric as to detract, or
so dumb they must have been installed by someone who
never watches football (or went to BYU - about the
same thing).
The cameos that open the game ("If it's in the game,
it's in the game") clearly peaked in 2003, too. Those
were free-wheeling fans yelling at the camera, with
lots of cute girls mixed in, including the 7 smoking
ASU chicks. 2004 cameos were staged acts or a bunch
of senior bowl clips of players and the occasional fat
Purdue guy thrown in - only the two SDSU sluts
encouraged the occasional gratuitious reset and they
almost never showed up.
So far, the 2005 clips are, again, heavy on Senior
Bowl players.
Even the covers have disappointed - the Blaine cover
looked like a free-with-a-happy meal-action figure and
the Larry Fitzgerald cover this year is... Larry
Fitzgerald.
(by the way, i'm VERY concerned that this
best-days-behind-it-trend is going to hit Grand Theft
Auto. More on that later)
With only 364 days 'til NCAA Football 2006, I hope
they burn it down and start again. or at least come
up with a better cover.

matt

Final insult: after I got done pounding Va Tech -
which was the first game of a season I intended to
save and continue - the game froze. Right on the
final score screen.
Fuck.

Olympics - Wrap-up

2005-01-11T13:20:00.000-08:00

It's not that most sports are boring, because I can deal with that. You know going in that if you're watching, say, sailing, you're getting the sports version of a David Schwimmer movie - a mortal lock for unwatchable. If you hear, "next, Women's mountain biking" immediately you have to think, "is it worth watching in case they eat it?" and then you think, "No" and see what's on CNBC. Or Fox News. Anything.
Race walking. Rhythmic gymnastics. Even Kayaking, which you might perk up for expecting whitewarer rapids, turns out to be a straight line dash on flat, open water, ie track with oars.
On down the line through the list of sports which, through no fun- err, fault - of their own, are way, WAY too dull to watch and you know it going in.
So I don't feel cheated by those events.
I feel cheated - robbed - by Tae Kwon Doh. Because it dresses itself up like a mix of wrestling(maybe the Olympics' best sport), boxing and Bruce Lee. The competitors take the floor with more armor on than a 1st Cav patrol in Baghdad - big helmets, flak jackets that surround the entire torso, huge gloves, all over traditional white marital arts robes
It is, to be sure, the equipment of a sport designed to hurt somebody.
And for 10 minutes, they face each other, bounce endlessly in place, take turns throwing a foot in the air, fall over like bad ballerinas, run out of bounds, bounce a whole lot more, draw mystifying penalties and then the clock runs out and the winning American, Steve Lopez, starts in with his best Crash Stephenson impression.
Huh? In 10 minutes of Gold-medal deciding Tae Kwon Doh, very nearly nothing happened.
The only bright spot was the announcer, who grabbed the title of worst honk of the games from boxing's Teddy Atlas. When Lopez bounced his Turkish opponent into a corner of the mat and landed a leg to the umpire-chest plate, the announcer let loose with a "Bang! Take that home with ya!"
Evidently, a similar kick landed in an earlier bout by Lopez had "kicked his opponent down the ramp" leading to the mat. That would have been cool. But all I saw was one akward leg-slap, endless stalling and a lot of bouncing.
If I ran the Olympics, I would take a page from Jackie Chan and force one of the competitors to compete with skis on his feet while the other must complete the match without waking up a mat-side, light-sleeping panther.
On a crashing blimp.

During diving, which the Americans tanked in, they showed a Chinese guy and said, "This is his third Olympics and this is a special one because today is his 25th birthday."
I took that at face value, but Mandy almost immediately said, "Wouldn't the last two Olympics have been on his birthday, too?"
She may not know how to pronouce "Iverson" but Mandy brings some heat to any telecast.

"How will he meet his God when he has slaughtered so many people," - an Iraqi soccer player when asked about the Bush campaign's use of his country's Olympics success in a campaign ad. Same guy went on to say - echoing several teammates - that he would be fighting with the resistance if not playing soccer.
And all that aside, even if everything was a roaring success over in Tigris-Euphrates land, doesn't it strike anyone as deeply disturbing that the President of the United States wanted - maybe still wants - to go to the Olympics to watch a) a soccer game that b) wasn't the US?
I mean, even if you LOVE dubya, a Texan watching soccer?
I haven't seen any other heads of state show up for any event of their OWN athletes - and yet dubya wanted to go watch the Iraqis play soccer.
If he said, "I wanna go meet Amanda Beard," son, let me get my hat, I'll come wit'chee. But to watch some other country's soccer team? A land we currently, violently occupy?
Just put on a toga, call yourself Caesar and be done with it.

Anybody see a better moment than that Moroccon win the 1500 meters? Apparently the guy was the absolute international Hammer of the last 10 years in the 1500. Best ever at the distance (which is as close to the Mile as they get nowadays).
Only, he'd tripped and fallen in Atlanta and got out-touched down the stretch by a Kenyan in Sydney. He owned every title and record available except The Big One.
So as the race started, his teammate, who was supposed to go out as a rabbit, got boxed in and was nowhere to be seen. That was bad, cuz apparently this Morrocan wins by going out fast and holding on. But for 3 laps, he had to pick off the Kenyans at the front, work his way through the pack and finally took over the lead with a lap to go.
And with a fast-looking Kenyan right on his heels. Around the back stretch, the two of them pull away and on the last turn up comes the Kenyan. Down the last 100, the Kenya comes out, edges his shoulders ahead, pushes past the Moroccon and then...
Incredibly, the Moroccon re-surges forward, the Kenyan goes slack in defeat and the Moroccon wins by a stride.
One of sports rarest things - to be caught from behind in the stretch and then to retake the lead.
Finally, called to the Main Stage. Just awesome.

Are you kidding about the basketball uniforms? Are you SERIOUS? If you didn't see it live, the US Basketball team showed up with the wrong uniforms for the Bronze game. Now, by late afternoon, NBC and the officials were spinning at as "bad information for both teams" - yet, when it happened, they pointed out that Lithuania was the designated home team, and should wear white. The Americans, designated as visitors, had brought white uniforms to the game.
So when it happened, it was clear, and clearly reported, who had screwed up.
The hours-later rewrite that it was some inevitable glitch was just that - a rewrite.
Just another bright moment.

Let's see - to the list that now includes LeBron James, the Olson Twins and Lindsay Lohan, we can now add Michael Phelps. I've always said I believe the children are the future.

If you missed the Trampoline event, boy... you missed it.
Probably the highlight of the event was, when the studio host said, "let's go to the trampoline competition," Mandy immediatly said, "Whatever sportsbra they're using, I want that one."
So the stage was set.
What then occurred was just a clinic in jaw-dropping failure. Either trampoline jumping is really hard (my limited experience, and a few viewings of slamball, suggests otherwise), or these girls were just terrible.
In essencse, it's all back at the gymnastics facility, but this is clearly not even the JV of that world. The little girls run out on the middle of this HUGE trampoline and start bouncing straight up and down and are getting circus-crazy heights. Their feet are like 20 or 25 feet off the ground on every bounce. Then they start flipping around through a series of moves and then...
They crash.
Inevitably.
I don't know if that's required, but I think so. I only watched - which is to say, i could only bring myself to watch - 3 competitors, but it was the same - they'd be in the middle of the tramp, do a giant 4X double twist flip 30 feet in the air, land slightly off-center, careen back up on obviously a bad trajectory, realize they were heading for disaster, flap their arms for balance in the air and WHAM - right on the side.
Absolutely awesome.

Living in Russia must be like living in the South. You only get two flavors of women: Drop dead knockouts and run-and-hide beasts. Check out their 4X400 team. Or the volleyball team. Or the gymnastics team, not counting Big Bird, the anorexic blonde.
Same with the Greeks. Check out the 4X400 tonight. All or nothing.

Loved the pole vault. Loved "Crash" Stephenson. Loved his helmet. All Olympians should be like that. Brash, loud, fearless (except for the helmet, I guess) and, in the end, joyfull. Of course, if I was anywhere close to the Olympics I'd be exactly like Crash's teammate (who, in the end, won Gold) - eyes ahead, count to 10, both hands on the wheel. It would be the only way to keep from mentally disintegrating.
In fact, that's like my job now - watch anytime I do a freefall jump. There will always be one or two guys jumping around, "whoo, here we go baby!" and I'll be on the ramp with that "It'll be over in 2 minutes - either way"-look on my face.
No doubt - I'd be a boring Olympian.

All obvious problems, and comic mistakes, aside, Allen Iverson has been terrific. On court, he hustled after loose balls, created shots, never quit (arguably, none of the US players did - they just got beat) and, most important, showed great sportsmanship. Off court, he was respectful but proud, didn't complain or make excuses and appeared genuinely invested in trying to win. After winning the Bronze game, he gave one of the most dignified post-game interviews imaginable. Called the entire experience an "honor." Good for him.
You can probably say the same for all of the American players, but he's the public face. In fact, I think he gets the Gold in "Public Relations Nightmares That Didn't Materialize," barely edging the Greek government and Athens' infrastructure.
(I personally never considered "terror attack" a reasonable threat, so it's not eligible).

Once again I'm reminded that traditional volleyball remains the best game on earth. Beach volleyball is a pale shadow - and really, shouldn't it be called "sand volleyball?" Cuz that didn't look like a beach, and I KNOW there isn't one in Bejing for 08. Anyway, the real thing remains one of the best things to watch. Sure, it's the California rich-kid version of basketball, with freakish height being a prerequisite, but no other sport puts teamwork on such obvious display. Soaring talents always fall to the better team. You can know NOTHING about VB, and yet in 2 minutes you can easily figure out whether a team works well together or not.
And on that note, is it a fair corollary to say that if a sports is a) fun to watch and b) features a women's version with slutty outfits, Brazil will be a world power?
And on the beach volleyball front, Mandy on the women's outfits: "fucking ridiculous" (and seriously, where else is there a larger discrepancy between men's and women's dress? Maybe rap videos).

Speaking of Dubya, if he wins this year, can he AT LEAST throw an amendment onto "No Child Left Behind" so that among all the unfunded requirements laid on our public schools, every classroom in the country has to spend 5 minutes a day on "baton passing?" What other skill can we just surrender to the world? First math, then telemarketing, now this. It's getting ridiculous.

Why isn't India good at anything? That occured to me last night when i saw the Indian women actually qualify for the final in the 4X400. It struck me that this was the first time I'd even noticed an Indian Olympian.
The more I consider it, the less it makes sense. India has the second-largest population on earth. Yet while Jamaica and the Bahamas are track powers, the Aussies are so good in the pool, Cuba and Iran dominant in wrestling and boxing and Iraq in the top 4 for Soccer, India remains invisible.
I've thought of several reasons, but none hold up:
If you take the cynical, but evident, view that almost every Olympian in every sport from every country is, in some way, a million-to-one genetic freak, then India should have 1,200 Olympic-caliber athletes, three times as many as the US.
Now, certainly, the gene pool of middle-Asia is not the genetic reservoir of size and speed that, say, Brazil is. You could probably select any three square miles in Rio and extract from it an Olympic team better than, say, Ukraine's. But that clearly doesn't matter: look at China, Korea and Japan, countries without particularly well-suited genetics. They post accomplishments roughly commensurate with their populations (Korea and Japan, arguably, do more with less than any country on earth).
Geographically, India has advantages unmatched in the world - thousands of miles of coastline (like swimming-power Australia) and some of the highest population centers, in the Himalayas, of any nation on earth, which should produce excellent endurance athletes. On top of that, almost none of India has a 'winter' climate - so none of its athletic talent gets drained away into, say, hockey or skiing.
Other sports? Too much emphasis on Cricket? Please... In America, what football doesn't weed out, weed, Playstation and pregnancy does. Nobody comes to more forks in the road than American Olympians.
How about economics? Do you need a thick middle class and decent health care to produce a sports power? Well, India is a democracy and has enough money to start a nuclear war. Money isn't the problem. And consider China, where the majority of the population lives in pre-Industrial countryside, yet still produces specimens like Yao Ming. Just today, the Chinese are in the gold medal game for women's volleyball and last night one of the men won the 110M hurdles by DAYLIGHT (tying a world record that's stood since 1993). Daylight? In a 110M? A Chinese guy? He was probably 2 full meters ahead of the American in second place. That has to rank on the short list of all-time amazing track accomplishments, right there with the last guy I know of to win a short sprint by daylight, Jesse Owens.
If a Chinese guy can win the Olympic hurdles by 2 strides, India should be good at SOMETHING. It is politically stable, socially liberal and has large centers of wealth. And, of course, it has the second largest population on earth. There's GOT to be a Michael Phelps in there somewhere.
Every other country with even half of those advantages is a major power. The Chinese are good at EVERYTHING. The Russians are good at everything (which extends to the Winter Games). The Brazilians are good at everything. And, yes, even WE are good at everything, as long as you don't count basketball and baseball. And that about covers it for the world's population centers - except for India.
So where are they? I just don't see any plausible excuse.

Fun facts: This very month, the city of Montreal, Canada paid off the last dime on it's last debt stemming from the 1976 Olympics - 28 years later. Thanks for the show, Athens, and good luck with your school system!

Among your top 10 or so US athletes has to be Cael Sanderson, the only undefeated college wrestler in American history (question: is that record a reflection of Sanderson's skill or the deflated state of college wrestling - I need you REACTION!!!). This is his first Olympics, in freestyle wrestling. Apparently, he couldn't go to the '01 world championships because of 9/11 and couldn't go to the '02 worlds because they were in Iran and the Bush administration wouldn't let us send a team (one Olympic email, 3 shots at Dubya - thankee). Last year at the '03 Worlds, he got silver, to a Cuban - his second loss to that Cuban.
In other words: Every College Wrestler in America 0, One Cuba 2.
Cael beat the same guy in the semis today, though. I'll be rooting for him because - well, because no sport reliably produces epic Olympic moments like wrestling - Americans versus Iranians in 84, Kurt Angle in 96, Rulon Gardner '00.
I've said it before, but no sport demands more than wrestling, and hence, no athletes come more emotionally unglued, in either direction, when they win or lose.
But I really like Cael cuz back when he was closing in on the undefeated career at Iowa State, I read a profile of him that talked about the time the ISU sports info people asked him what song he wanted played over the PA when he took the mat.
The Greatest Wrestler That Ever Lived chose "Believe" by Cher.
After a few matches, the staff changed it to AC/DC or something, but in the profile he stood by it: "I don't care. That's a good song."
Cael, I Believe, too! Get some!

My beef with Israeli politics certainly does not extend to their Olympic team. In fact, as a population, no one deserves a national shot of feel-good Olympic drama more than the Israeli people. I sincerely wish they had the athletic successes that we do. Or even that India does.
But if your nation is going to win it's first-ever Gold of any kind, can you really look yourself in the mirror if it's for wind surfing?

And finally - 45 mintues to kickoff in Blacksburg! Goodbye Olympics, hello AP Poll! Last year was fun, and a final nod of respect to LSU. But as another proud USC product, who I like to call George Lucas, once put it:
"They'll be no one to stop us this time!"