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Who you gonna believe, me, or your own lyin' eyes?
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Dec. 3rd, 2007 @ 11:29 am
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BCS. Arrrgh. BCS. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGHHH.
King Kaufman is rather more eloquent about it. Here's the key section:
Hawaii didn't lose to anybody, ever. The Warriors started the season ranked No. 23 in the Associated Press poll, No. 24 in the USA Today poll, went 12-0, and finished the season No. 10. They'll play Georgia in the Sugar Exhibition Game on New Year's Night in New Orleans. Here's a list of the teams that passed Hawaii at some point this year in the three polls -- AP, USA Today and Harris Interactive -- and the BCS standings, all without the Warriors ever losing a game: Georgia Tech, Tennessee, Boston College, Clemson, Oregon, South Carolina and Texas A&M. Hang on. Just catching my breath. That was all in the first two weeks of the season. Here's the rest of the list: Alabama, South Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Cincinnati, Arizona State, Missouri, Kansas, Kentucky (again), Virginia, Georgia (again), Connecticut, Michigan, USC, Virginia Tech, Florida, Texas, Clemson (again), Virginia (again) and Boston College (again). Hawaii was passed 20 times in the AP poll and 19 times in the USA Today poll without ever losing a game. The Warriors were passed 10 times in 10 weeks in the Harris Interactive poll while going undefeated. They were leapfrogged 10 times in eight weeks in the BCS standings, winning all the while. To wit: If there were ever a year when a team like Hawaii, a team from a smaller conference, would get a shot at the title game, this was that year, with not even one squad from a big conference having an unchallenged claim to a berth.
Like I give a hoot about Hawaii. But seriously, this is evidence of corruption and bias of the worst possible sort.
I've decided to basically stop watching college football. Yes, even Michigan.
Maybe the bowl games will have some great commercials!Current Mood: angry Current Music: White Stripes, "Offend in Every Way" |
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Dilbert Rorschach test
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Dec. 2nd, 2007 @ 07:13 am
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This comic is...SO amazing...
So, here's the question: in the last panel, who's right?
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Vern speaks the raw truth about Blade Runner
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Nov. 29th, 2007 @ 07:03 am
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To paraphrase that freaky little girl in the TI TV commercials, "It's the replicants!"
http://www.geocities.com/outlawvern/ReviewsB.html#blade_runner
I agree with Vern's sentiment, although I didn't mind the emptiness of Deckard's character. To me it worked. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Kubrick made an entire career of filming actors as empty vessels that could be a canvass for his vision and by the end it got pretty goddam tiresome.
Anyway, what strikes me about his characterization of Deckard is that this character is like many the other Phillip K. Dick characters. Remember the incompetent character (and incompetent actor, but that's a different thing) in A Scanner Darkly? Dick is drawn to a certain passivity, and certain uselessness that characterizes a lot of what he writes.
I'm going to test this theory by getting some Dick and passively reading it. Ohbejuan I'll be in touch. |
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Movies seen this week
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Nov. 27th, 2007 @ 06:52 am
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Monsoon Wedding -- A gorgeous film, with a wonderful mix of Hindi and English culture that describes the three days before an arranged marriage (and an unexpected lovematch) in Delhi. Although the narrative is almost hijacked by what seemed to be a secondary plot point, it still trucks along. Worth seeing because of the great music, unabashed romanticism, and almost documentary eye into the world of a wealthy Indian family.
Dot the i -- Ostensibly a film about cold feet before a wedding, it turns into more of a thiller/exploitation movie. I'm not sure I liked the characters at all, but I also think the director might have been doing that on purpose, which takes some courage. At the end of the movie I felt like I needed a shower. Again, not a bad thing if you're into it, but I can generally do without.
Angel-A -- A Luc Besson movie about an angel who comes down to rehabilitate an Algerian/French/American ne'er do well. It's an old conceit, and the use of multicultural elements and black-white film doesn't really do anything to make the story fresh. I'm increasingly coming to the conclusion that popular French cinema is the worst kind of sentimental, outrageous dreck. Even Luc Besson, who I think is really quite talented, can bring so much bombast that you snort your popcorn. It's like Michael Bay is running a school over there.
Coming up: Land of the Dead, Laura, and the original Solaris
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Morning Coffee Roundup
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Nov. 25th, 2007 @ 09:35 am
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Nidia (my wife's new approved pseudonym) and I are at her mom's house for Thanksgiving weekend. The whole tribe are unrepentant night owls so I am sitting with the cats doing my Sunday morning thing. As usual when I mix coffee with The Internets I get kinda philosophical.
We went to visit Nidia's step-dad and his new wife, and while we were driving home Nidia's sister said, "She never stops talking. Do you think she ever stops thinking?" It's an interesting comparison to her husband, who speaks rather less and spends his free time making furniture, desks, and anything else of wood. Barb's words dominate the conversation, but Frank's work dominates the house: the entertainment center in the living room, whose doors silently turn 180 degrees and slide back into the sides so that the TV can pull out and then turn 120 degrees with just a finger touch of pressure; rich cherry bookshelves and bedframes; the rewired, refinished kitchen.
There is this essential, eternal tension between the things that are made and the things that are envisioned; Barb and Frank epitomize that. I am sitting in this silent space posting abstractions of thought that others (few others!) might read, but to do so I must sit on this physical couch, and rely on the abilities of engineers from around the world who created this physical computer and the communication network that allowed it to happen. The couch feels more physical and real; it always seems to me that the more involved in the abstractions of thought a device is the less compelling it is as a physical presence.
I don't really feel qualified to talk about this; someone with a philosophy degree has probably already done it. But it does feel like there is this interesting dichotomy between the soap bubbles of thought that are captured, more or less imperfectly, by writers such as Somerset Maughn or Proust or Joyce and the mute but somehow more durable and believable structures of creation, like a house, or a couch, or a knife.
At this moment I spend my life more like Barb, but to be honest I want to be more like Frank. Making feels so much more attractive right now than talking. It's a feeling that's been growing steadily in the last few months.Current Mood: melancholy Current Music: Bobby McFerrin, "Sweet in the Morning" |
| » Just love that Old Time Rock n' Roll (movie) |
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So, it turns out that Against All Odds is based on this movie Out of the Past, and since I have a thing both for Noir and Jeff Bridges I thought I'd start with the 1947 film and then see the remake.
So, I've seen the original, and I can't imagine watching a remake, Jeff Bridges or no. Why mess with perfection?
One of the (many, many, MANY) great things about Netflix is that it is like one of those survey tools where your true preferences emerge over time based on what you liked and didn't. As I look back at my list, I've had some interesting realizations.
1) Traditional "Robot" anime , while pretty, bores me to tears eight falls out of ten. Nontraditional anime often has something cool to say.
2) Just because it's an English TV show doesn't mean it's good.
3) Sidney Poitier. Sidney Poitier. SIDNEY. POITIER.
4) Humphrey Bogard. Humphrey Bogart. HUMPHREY. BOGART.
5) If the movie was made before 1971, I'm much more likely to like it. If it was made before 1960 I'm probably going to love it.
This last one really resonated as I reviewed my list. Top faves of the last sixty-odd movies in the last six months:
High Noon
In the Heat of the Night
Out of the Past
Hari Kiri
To Catch a Thief
Old Boys
Weeds
Napoleon Dynamite
Jackass 2
My Neighbors the Yamadas
Okay, Napoleon Dynamite doesn't really fit. Jackass...look, indulge me, okay?
But Weeds does, as does Old Boy. Weeds is at its heart a morality play whose essential tension is how much of a disaster the central character will become -- and who she will throw under the bus -- in her quest to keep her sense of entitlement and privilege alive. Old Boy involves some repulsive things, but they are largely there to drive plot. There's only one unnecessary scene in the whole movie, and I think it was largely there because it took over the director's brain and he couldn't imagine not shooting it. It's a great scene. Could be cut and nobody would mind, though.
Essentially I like a tight, simply made, focused film. Turns out I'm not a big fan of explosions or eye candy, unless that eye candy is the sensuous drooping eye of Robert Mitchum, Grace Kelly's exquisite face, or a perfectly framed shot.
I did love My Neighbors the Yamadas, but I think that goes down a different thread I'll explore another time.
Not sure what this means for my future movie tastes, but I'm pretty sure I'm not going to see Transformers anytime soon.
What's been your personal discovery from your netflix list?
Nov. 20th, 2007 @ 06:58 am
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| » Go Red Raiders |
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First, U of M game: Ain't gonna talk about it. Especially since I'm watching this Oklahoma-Texas Tech game.
DAAAAAAMMMMMMMNNNN.
A couple of years back I wrote about how rational assessment can really challenge classic football assumptions. One of the college level coaches who has completely changed the way that football is played is Mike Leach of the Texas Tech Red Raiders. I have seen bits and pieces of their games, and always watched the numbers, but I have never had a chance to watch a Tech game until today. Huh. How to describe this?
Well, here's the simplest way: the first quarter took TWO HOURS TO PLAY. Oh yeah, and Tech put up TWO HUNDRED YARDS of offense. Against Oklahoma. They went for it twice on fourth down. Their time of possession was ten minutes. And this is...well, apparently this is typical.
I've never seen anything like it. What a fun way to play football.
Nov. 17th, 2007 @ 09:04 pm
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| » Dude, it's been 23 weeks |
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That's, like almost HALF A YEAR.
Sorry. Kinda busy getting married and then experiencing that. Been thinking a lot, though. I'm going to start posting twice a week and build up from there.
Nov. 17th, 2007 @ 09:29 am
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| » Knocked Up, The Queen |
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Knocked up really is as good as everyone says it is. Might perhaps be the most honest relationship movie I've seen all year. It's also DAMN funny, like, laugh just about every minute funny. Highly recommended.
Oh, and Paul Ruud can put his whole hand in his mouth.
I also saw The Queen on DVD last night. Has anyone else seen this film? It feels like I could riff on this movie for any number of postings. I just thought it was just a remarkable depiction of a political arrangement that, from my Yellow-Dog, populist, peasant farmer roots perspective is sick and kind of pathetic in just about every important way. My take on it was that Stephen Frears was creating a film that was a rhetorical plea to put to rest the entire arrangement as quickly as possible while helping these strange, sad dinosaurs keep some semblance of their dignity.
Okay, so now you know how I really feel about kings and queens. I doubt you're surprised. But I have pretty major filters on this kind of topic. So, to explore things a little, did anyone leave this film feeling more supportive of England's constitutional monarchy?
Jun. 3rd, 2007 @ 11:01 pm
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| » Neocons in need of lovin' |
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You know, there are times when I wish that the kinds of articles I posted about recently could just be proven to be some kind of liberal paranoia.
But then the Wall Street Journal posts fascist love letters from tenured Harvard professors and you realize that we probably aren't being paranoid ENOUGH.
Glenn Greenwald deconstructs, excellently as always. Since he pretty much sums it up, he leaves me free to stand to the side and stare in wonder at these unhappy, bitter, dangerous people.
Not to be crude, but does anyone else suspect that a lot of these problems would just go away if nimrods like Mansfield were getting blow jobs on a regular basis?
May. 2nd, 2007 @ 06:20 pm
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| » Map of Online Communities |
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You'll either think this is the most amazingly clever thing ever or not get it at all. Don't feel bad if you're in the second category; you're probably thin and pretty.
Extra points if you can find QWGHLM! Extra Extra points if you can name the reference!
May. 2nd, 2007 @ 06:10 pm
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| » Stephenson o' da WEEK! (and bonus funpack comix) |
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From the mighty Cryptonomicon:
Men who believe that they are accomplishing something by speaking speak in a different way from men who believe that speaking is a waste of time. Bobby Shaftoe has learned most of his practical knowledge--how to fix a car, butcher a deer, throw a spiral, talk to a lady, kill a Nip--from the latter type of man. For them, trying to do anything by talking is like trying to pound in a nail with a screwdirver. Sometimes you can even see the desperation spread over such a man's face as he listens to himself speak.
Men of the other type--the ones who use speech as a tool of their work, who are confident and fluent--aren't necessarily more intelligent, or even more educated. It took Shaftoe a long time to figure that out.
[After meeting Enoch Root and Lawrence Waterhouse, Shaftoe] began to suspect that there might be a third category of man, a kind so rare that Shaftoe never met any of them until now.
Shaftoe has had little direct contact with that Waterhouse fellow during their stay on Qwghlm, but he has noticed that men who have just finished talking to Waterhouse tend to walk away shaking their heads--and not in the slow way of a man saying "no", but in the sudden convulsive way of a dog who has a horsefly in his middle ear...[Waterhouse] speaks, not as a way of telling you a bunch of stuff he's already figured out, but as a way of making up a bunch of new shit as he goes along. And he always seems to be hoping you'll join in.
Which no one ever does, except for Enoch Root.
Apr. 27th, 2007 @ 08:29 am
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| » Glenn Greenwald on Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch |
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I know it seems like I'm posting a lot of political stuff, but it's a target-rich environment. And this blog entry is a wonderful summary of what's wrong with the current press environment. Check it out.
Apr. 25th, 2007 @ 01:43 pm
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| » Fascist America, In 10 Easy Steps |
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Good stuff from the Guardian. Worth a read.
Apr. 24th, 2007 @ 03:04 pm
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| » Mass Killings, Guns, Stuff Like That |
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The inevitable finger-pointing has begun about Virginia Tech. Setting aside the futility of making sense of certain kinds of tragedies, I find it even more irritating that people have their axes to grind and are using this template to do it.
The wingnuts, as usual, are finding a way to make Cho a liberal democrat, which OF COURSE is why he killed everyone. Oh, and all those kids who were killed? They were a bunch of girly-men who were too stupid to carry concealed weapons to class every day, or, barring that, didn't organize a suicide charge waving desk chairs over their heads and so they should have died.
Then there are the folks who want to use this to enforce gun control. Here's the thing: at some point in the last five years Cho was deemed a threat to himself and others by a Virginia court. Normally that kind of diagnosis would preclude anyone from purchasing a gun through federal law. However, since the Virginia court didn't actually DO anything about Cho's apparent danger to himself and others, no record of him or his mental state was entered into the federal database and he was able to purchase weapons. (NOTE: I read this a few days ago and now can't find the link. If anyone knows the reference I'd appreciate having it).
I'm personally trying to visualize this scene:
JUDGE: Son, you're a mess. You are delusional, angry, and possibly violent.
CHO: (Presumably said nothing)
JUDGE: But we don't have any funding to do anything about it, and you probably won't actually hurt anyone else, so we'll call this one a mulligan.
So this sad, sick kid slipped throught the cracks and a lot of people died.
The point is that there was already a mechanism in place to prevent Cho from obtaining a weapon and it didn't work. So why is everyone suddenly talking about banning semiautomatic pistols?
I don't think it's really Cho; I just think that guns are deeply upsetting to any clear-thinking person. I'm pro-gun; I know the actual statistics, which suggest that it is an order of magnitude more lethal for a child to have a swimming pool at its house than a gun; I know that there is no correlation between gun ownership and actual violence; I feel very strongly that all weapons need to be contextualized in the society in which they are owned and operated...
...and the fricking things scare the crap out of me.
So I feel and appreciate that concern, but blaming the weapon here is really missing the point. Look, last year Scotland decided to ban SWORDS because so many gangs had them and were using them to slice each other up. Next it will be rocks, I'm quite sure.
Violence is a mind set and is contextual. Guns are an extraordinarily effective way of realizing that violence, and they ARE scary. But a lot of things are scary and useful at the same time. Airplanes. Cars. The military. Do we try to wipe out what we're afraid of? Because take it from me, there will ALWAYS be something to fear. So do we hide under the blankets, or do we stand up and deal with the problems in our own society?
Apr. 24th, 2007 @ 07:49 am
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| » Some thoughts on the experiment of anonymity |
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At the time I started this blog, I decided to be as anonymous as possible. You have to understand that I was at a state of pretty heightened paranoia. I despised the new owner of the company I worked for and I was fully convinced he was tapping my phone, reading my mail, and looking for any excuse to fire me. Even though I had no intention of writing about him or the situation, I decided to write this blog under a pseudonym because I had no idea where it would go and It felt like it would be easier to be unknown at a specific level rather than being known and possibly losing my job.
I lost my job anyway (thank goodness). Since then things have gotten a lot better, but I still wouldn't dream of using my real name, or posting pictures of myself or my family or my awesome cats. I like the pseudonym and whatever differences in my writing it brings to this. What I'm not sure of is why.
The history of anonymous authorship has a lot of different motivations. People historically have remained anonymous for reasons of security or to minimize preconceptions about their message based on who they are. My favorite fictional anonymous authors are Demosthenes and Locke, pseudonyms used by Ender's two siblings in Ender's Game. They used pseudonyms because they were both shockingly brilliant and shockingly young, and they knew nobody would take them seriously if their true identities were revealed.
A real-life version of this is Alice Sheldon, who, posing as the man James Tiptree, Jr., wrote celebrated science fiction for twenty years before anyone outed her as a woman.
Perhaps the most amazing anonymous celebrity of the last ten years is Subcommandante Marcos, whose anonymity is preserved for his safety and to minimize his alienation from the people he wishes to help (by all accounts Marcos is a well educated middle class Mexican of Spanish ancestry; his first cause, however, was fighting for the rights of the indigenous peoples in the jungles of Tamaulipas).
Now, Marcos is wanted by any number of nasty people in Mexico, including the government. He kinda needs to keep it close to the chest. Sheldon was writing science fiction in an almost entirely male-dominated culture that was extremely chauvinistic, so she had good reasons to pose as a man in order to be taken seriously.
But I'm a white male who writes a blog that maybe twenty people read. There's no target on my back. Nobody is going to struggle to take me seriously. Besides, my identity in those broad strokes is well known. Hell, my PSEUDONYM tells you all kinds of stuff about me, like my ethnic and religous ancestry. What's my excuse? Why am I hiding? I just don't know. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.
Well. Until it is clearer I'll stay incognito. I am enjoying the experiment, whatever it is. I also think that many of the friends I know in "meatspace" who read this like the pseudonyms they get (with the exception of my poor fiance, who tells me in retrospect that she wanted to be known as Nidia, not Angie).
Apr. 21st, 2007 @ 02:30 am
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| » Grindhouse |
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I went with my friend Alexander to see the Grindhouse Double Feature last night, and, as I said to him while we were walking out, "not all movies have to be LIKE that, but why can't they BE like that?" More love and energy and history and fearless abandon was poured into a single minute of that movie than what you often see in an entire film these days.
We stood out in the parking lot and smoked cigarettes and stared at each other in amazement and happiness. I think we both wished we could make something amazing that very moment. Then we went our separate ways, so for all I know Alexander did. I just went to sleep.
In the morning Angie complained that she could feel the testosterone sheeting off of me, but on reconsideration we decided that maybe the better term for it was "boy juice." Not a bad metaphor. There's something about that exuberant energy that is kinda...squeaky.
Ahh, who cares. I'll be squeaky. I'd love to see all creative people work with such unrepentant "let's make something beautiful and not give a crap" energy.
Apr. 19th, 2007 @ 10:11 am
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| » Virginia Tech, Meet Zeus. Zeus, Virginia Tech |
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The tragic killing spree at Virginia Tech yesterday hit me pretty hard. I was feeling a lot of sadness, but also a certain resignation about how things like this happen. Then on the radio I heard a gun law group say their piece. Then John McCain said his piece about how guns were important. Then on the BBC a woman who represented a national campus safety group went on a rant about how college students thought they lived in this safe bubble and that it was actually fairly unsafe and that they had to take precautions, that they had to be constantly vigilant.
What what WHAT??? Can anyone who has ever been to college describe a fundamentally safer place than a college campus?
Things are so safe now. We Americans live in a pretty predictable world, or at least one where the unpredictable things come in small doses, like losing a job or having an unexpected lunch option. When these tragedies come on us, the tsunamis, the killing sprees, it seems as if our first reaction is to frantically FIX THE PROBLEM.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't try to make things safer. But these random, convulsive acts are so rare and so much an alchemy of youth, rage, and our own culture that they can hardly be predicted or prevented. And still all those people remain dead, almost as if the finger of God itself had swept across those two buildings and chosen them. Even in a world of therapy and gun control and safe college campuses it. still. happens.
Life is so capricious and wrapped in grace. It is so easily given and so easily lost, and sometimes we are lucky beyond measure. I was thinking last night about all the times in my short life that I've nearly died or caused a death...
- I almost got swept under the old icehouse at the river in my home town. I managed to get my finger inside a tiny hole in the concrete along the wall and pull myself back out. If I had been off by an inch I would have drowned.
- I was in a brutally violent car accident without a seat belt. I emerged without a scratch.
- I was almost hit by a train. My friend pulled me off the tracks.
- I improperly handled a hand gun and almost discharged it while it was pointing at the head of my friend's sister. It didn't fire. To this day I don't know why.
The list goes on, and a lot of them are just too embarassing to mention. Short version is I'm very lucky to be here. Can't say that I deserve it. Sometimes it works the other way, and sometimes you can be far, far less stupid than I was in the above situations and still get hurt, because that is the way of things.
So I guess it's fine that people with an axe to grind are talking about giving a gun to every freshman or taking all the guns away from every Virginian or posting a security guard in every room, but maybe the thing to do for the survivors is to get on their knees and be grateful that this day the finger of God did not fall on them, and to be willing to accept the day it does.
Beyond that, I don't know what to say to those who lost someone. I'm so sorry. I wish it hadn't happened.
Apr. 17th, 2007 @ 07:06 am
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| » Toothpaste for Dinner: Adventures in the Giggle Zone |
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Yeah, this strip is kinda like that. It's called "Toothpaste for Dinner" and it is a series of one-box comics delivered daily by a very intense-looking fellow named Drew.
The comic is awesome, but the thing about it that amazes me is that the delivery method Drew came up with in his website is exactly what is necessary to help you enter the transcendent meta-giggle zone. In his "archive" section the strips are delivered as a continuous scroll, which allows you to read an entire month's comic just by dragging the scroll bar (or rolling your mouse wheel, if you're so inclined).
This creates a layering effect that anyone who has ever watched a Mel Brooks or Zucker-Abrams-Zucker flick will recognize immediately, where the jokes come so fast that there is at once a filtering of the stuff that isn't very funny and a simultaneous layering of the good stuff so that by the time you're at the bottom of the page you're giggling like a fool.
Okay, so there are folks who enjoy getting the giggles like this, and folks who don't. I would consider this strip the geek-themed acid test for this particular kind of humor. At some point it becomes funny for reasons that make no sense whatsoever and you really don't even care to try to explain it, and that's okay.
Want to try it? Go to March... Then come back and tell me what you think.
Apr. 14th, 2007 @ 04:51 pm
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