tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88437010273612929962024-03-13T22:51:22.829-07:00The SituationThis is me talkingstEnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03779624344364534059noreply@blogger.comBlogger86125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8843701027361292996.post-17247110951964550822015-02-27T14:50:00.004-08:002015-02-27T14:50:37.620-08:00In A World....<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Where this exists:<br />
<img alt="Cap'n Crunch Delights copy" src="https://consumermediallc.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/capn-crunch-delights-copy.jpg?w=680" /><br />
<br />
should people?</div>
stEnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03779624344364534059noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8843701027361292996.post-56439089781049946512015-01-28T09:46:00.000-08:002015-01-28T09:46:40.835-08:00The Scam<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I was the target of an IRS impersonation scam. A female robot called me to inform me that I was the target of an IRS invesitigation, and that if I didn't call them right away, I might be subject to arrest. I heard a local phone number, repeated twice. So I called it.<br />
<br />
An E. Indian/Pakistani gentleman answered the phone. He told me that I had been the subject of a fraud investigation, and that, after my taxes had been audited for the years 2008-2011, that I had underpaid taxes, and that there would be late fees and other penalties associated with the original underpayment. I asked why I had not received a letter from the IRS. He explained that, in cases of fraud, the IRS never sent out letters. He said if I didn't pay right now, an arrest warrant would be issued, and I could do jail time.<br />
<br />
My response: "BULLSHIT"<br />
<br />
I've made mistakes on my taxes, I've received letters within months of the screwups that I owed money, and I paid promptly. This is how I know - they don't wait seven years to audit you, they go after you the moment you slip up.<br />
<br />
Anyway.<br />
<br />
So I asked him who he was, and he responded, "My name is John Anderson, my badge number is 95105". Again, this is a guy who sounds like Apu from The Simpsons. John Anderson, really?<br />
<br />
Of course, my memory not being perfect, the first thing that sprang to mind was Neo from The Matrix (his real name was actually Thomas A. Anderson, not John). Checking IMDB, I find out that I'm not far off, John Anderson is listed on Neo's "file" as his father. So I was close.<br />
<br />
I reported this to the Federal Trade Commission, and I've tried to report it to the IRS, but their reporting form has a cgi-lib bug, or they don't know how to tell you to only use letters or numbers in a particular field. I suppose if I really want to report him, I'll have to call the IRS and wait through an endless voice jail.<br />
<br />
Welcome to Wednesday!</div>
stEnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03779624344364534059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8843701027361292996.post-64563481444648167202015-01-21T13:36:00.000-08:002015-01-21T13:36:02.565-08:00The Top 25, or, How Dumb Have We Become<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This is not meant as a pejorative, or if it is, it's meant in humor, but what the heck has happened to us as a community of filmmakers? What do we value, or what are we hoping to create?<br />
<br />
Here's where I'm coming from: on Real Time with Bill Maher last week, he made an interesting point, and one that no one on the panel wanted to talk about (including director <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000941/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1">Kathryn Bigelow</a>) - the all-time champions in top-grossing movies (adjusted for inflation, that is) are adult-themed films, with a few blockbusters thrown in for good measure. They include <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031381/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Gone With The Wind</a> (still number one!), <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059742/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Sound of Music</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059113/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Doctor Zhivago</a>, and so on. Yes, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076759/?ref_=nv_sr_2">Star Wars</a> is in there, as is <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499549/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Avatar</a>, but when you consider that Gone With The Wind was released in only a few theaters at a time, and played for an entire year at most locations, that's pretty darned impressive. Of the top-25 films of all time, unadjusted for inflation, all but one or two have a wizard, an alien, a robot, or a superhero in them. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120338/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Titanic</a> is one without any of the above, and yet still manages to take a true event and add an a-historical, poorly-written romance novel over a plethora of potentially more interesting true stories. But I digress.<br />
<br />
Yes, the potential audience plays a part in what we create. The times, also, play a large part of what we go and spend money on. Theater tickets are more heinously expensive than ever. And, in some ways, it's wonderful that Marvel is having such a great run for their money. Nerds have generally had to settle for what are often the cheesiest versions of their childhood heroes (anyone remember the direct-to-video classic, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101751/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Dollman</a>, featuring Tim Thomerson?). But at the same time, all these movies with blockbuster costs are causing many other movies to end up relegated to the streaming market, or direct-to--dvd. Great, so-called "small" movies have to fight for eyeballs, fight for box-office. Movies like "<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1020072/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Selma</a>" get relegated to the TL;DR pile, practically before they're released. "Too serious" is a major flaw...?<br />
<br />
Personally, I'm really happy that <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0586281/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Takashi Miike</a> is remaking old classic samurai films, and may create new original samurai classics - he certainly knows that genre really, really well. And <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0800108/?ref_=nv_sr_1">David Simon</a>'s efforts on HBO are always welcome, since he treats me as if I have an attention span, and the ability to remember things.<br />
<br />
You know, like an adult.</div>
stEnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03779624344364534059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8843701027361292996.post-34662035171981040202014-06-30T15:09:00.001-07:002014-06-30T15:09:21.943-07:00Moving up that old corporate ladder<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I have my own, numbered parking space at my temp job (which I started in 1994).<br />
<br />
Tomorrow, THE WORLD!!!</div>
stEnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03779624344364534059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8843701027361292996.post-19819191118658387872014-06-24T12:39:00.000-07:002014-06-24T12:41:09.866-07:00An Early Mentor's Passing Lamented<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Watching me watch a movie is like watching someone in a trance. I can shut out almost anything that goes on around me. Believe it or not, someone else is kind of responsible for that.<br />
<br />
I should have done this sooner, except that I didn't know he was dead, and when he died, the technology I'm using didn't quite exist yet. John Bigby, a media professor at Santa Rosa Junior College, died in 1994 at the age of 56, after falling down stairs in his own home. He lingered for nine months before passing. He was my film and media mentor in 1979/1980, and he nurtured within me the tools that I use today to watch films, to look at commercials, to really hear the message being given in a way that is, perhaps, at odds with the originators' intent.<br />
<br />
One thing I learned from him is to respect the filmmaker, even though the story or the performances don't deserve respect. This is not to say "suspend critical thinking" or anything that stupid, but only to remember that if it's on screen, it was intended. Sure, there are gaffes, errors in continuity or perhaps a cameraman, briefly visible in a mirror, but what he meant was, the director, the editor, slave over these things to get to a final product, or they slapdash it together to get a final product, but with the number of eyes that allow a movie to make it to the big screen, everything you see on screen - they meant to do that. Which is why I can watch "bad" films as if they matter. But if something seems incongruous to you in a movie, ask yourself why the director did that? Why make that particular editing choice? Was it to cover a bad shot, or was it a specific aesthetic choice by either the editor or the director (or both)?<br />
<br />
His classes were wonderfully opinionated. He was known to appear before us in a white linen suit with straw Panama hat, or in a cape and deerstalker. We attended four hours of classroom time twice a week, during which we usually watched two movies that were somehow related. One semester still sticks with me very much - American Road Movies and the German New Wave. This was a classroom where I saw <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064276/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Easy Rider</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065724/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Five Easy Pieces</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067893/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Two-Lane Blacktop</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067927/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Vanishing Point</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073858/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Lost Honor of Katherina Blum</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071458/?ref_=fn_al_tt_3">Effie Briest</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075675/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The American Friend</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075276/">Stroszek</a> and many others. I learned through him how these films related in so many ways, while many of them were crazily different from one another. Easy Rider is a pastoral of the country's temperature in the late sixties, Lost Honor is about the scourge of yellow journalism taken as truth, Effie Briest is a costume period melodrama, The American Friend is a Patricia Highsmith thriller (based on Ripley's Game - yes, THAT Ripley). They didn't fit, but they did.<br />
<br />
Just showing up and watching the films got you a passing grade, but you had to show up, and you had to stay awake. The final consisted of him watching us watch a movie (that semester, the final was Five Easy Pieces). You could get a better grade by watching more films (six of his choosing would get you a C), and by writing about specific films (gets you a B) and by creating a project between you and him that would qualify you for an A. He treated us as students but also as adults, which we really weren't quite, yet.<br />
<br />
I have no photos of him, and can find none on the web, a place he would have found both fascinating and appalling. However, you can hear him in the introduction to a <a href="https://soundcloud.com/media-mike/hazards-media">lecture</a> given in 1975 by Patrick Hazard. I hear it, and am transported again to his classroom, where I would weekly see movies that changed my views of the world, and gave me a deep appreciation of the art and craft of filmmaking. </div>
stEnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03779624344364534059noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8843701027361292996.post-90500673027702318002014-05-13T13:22:00.003-07:002014-05-13T13:27:54.258-07:00Angel Bunny Rainbow Unicorn Horror<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Last weekend, I visited Vashon Island, WA, for the very first time in my life, and I saw something. Something that must exist in our world, yet manages to be wholly separate, and also kind of awful.<br />
<br />
I've lived near Vashon (a short ferry ride from Seattle) for about twenty years. There was some kind of "art tour" set up for the weekend, and there were many numbered signs around town indicating galleries or shops that were participating. There were a couple of places that had what I would call "modern" pottery, with a few pieces of genuine artistic merit. Lots of fancy woodwork. But the last place we visited...<br />
<br />
A small, unassuming tea shop on the main drag. Families sitting around, drinking little cups of tea, teapots for sale, lots of fancy bulk teas, and then there were the paintings across from the cashier's counter. Lots of pastels and glitter. Cutesy little subjects: unicorns, fairies, angels, bunnies, bunnies that are also angels, RAINBOWS, you get the idea. Her name is <a href="http://www.angelbunnyrainbowunicorn.com/">Claire Schlosser</a>, and she paints at about a fourth-grade level. Lots of glitter; she says in her mission statement that her spirit guide told her to pile on the glitter. Art is only one way she makes money, though. She is also a Certified Unicorn Therapy Practitioner. Really she is. I can't explain this. I've been told, "well, that's Vashon Island."<br />
<br />
Wow.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU_sVE3z2TRR7NLryDbZa1xdzXdbzSFVEOQAyWJB3nAkOOOkTakh9ELBl2POKVCG87bwuHuw7jfT5kR43648psR_OOWKfBUVCJ62nW8im2iOrXj_cbOK6v7L7mkkGmSo3SXg8wmCIE11mk/s1600/Unicorn+Fairy+Light.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU_sVE3z2TRR7NLryDbZa1xdzXdbzSFVEOQAyWJB3nAkOOOkTakh9ELBl2POKVCG87bwuHuw7jfT5kR43648psR_OOWKfBUVCJ62nW8im2iOrXj_cbOK6v7L7mkkGmSo3SXg8wmCIE11mk/s1600/Unicorn+Fairy+Light.JPG" height="395" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Unicorn Fairy Light - about 8 x 10", and the red sticker means "sold"</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
This woman has her beliefs, and okay, she's entitled to them, but the fact that she has them in this day and age makes me wonder where she got them from, and how they stuck. I won't complain about the fact that she claims to care mostly about healing animals, since I'm a huge animal lover, and they deserve the best possible treatment. You know, vaccinations, decent food, and a warm place to sleep. I'm not sure how beneficial "Distant Reiki Animal Sessions" are, and I know you can't prove that they work. She charges $44 for a half hour, $64 for an hour for any and all of her <a href="http://www.angelbunnyrainbowunicorn.com/sessions-offered.html">services</a>. (any form of Reiki therapy labeled "distant" was invented in the west, and has nothing to do with the original intent of Japanese Reiki)<br />
<br />
Please look her up, and check out her references. It's beyond anything I have time to list in here, but it's pure awesome.<br />
<br />
Being an atheist, I have respect for people who were raised with God and still have their faith, but only when they act in a way that wouldn't piss off God. The Christians who tell the poor to essentially suck it if they're poor, "why they hell aren't they working harder?!?" are Christians in name only, and the worst kind of hypocrites.<br />
<br />
But what of the New Age? So much of it is rooted in the ability to delude oneself (as it is with faith healers): "I have laid my hands on you and said the magic words." "I am HEALED!" (as they fall out of their wheelchair). I believe this will help, therefor when someone says it has helped, I feel better. That's great, if you're feeling a little down, but how well does this sort of thing work with broken legs? I've seen people who believed they were cured with the laying on of hands, neglecting to remember that they also took powerful narcotics for the same symptom at the same time. "Thank you for curing my migraine with your magical hands - what codeine?" And the New Age folks who tell us that each person needs to take responsibility for everything in their lives, so, for example, the Jews somehow wanted the Holocaust to occur. I mean - seriously?!?<br />
<br />
I grew up during the sixties and seventies and this sort of thing was re-gaining ground, long after the whole concept of scientific testing had been decided as the best way to determine if any given treatment is efficacious. I've heard about the healing properties of crystals, while understanding that anyone can say anything about them, and the practitioners of said arts will smile and nod and say, "oh, yes, that's true" to almost any healing property they might contain, without any proof other than "a friend of mine said...".<br />
<br />
The other levels of crazy involve the whole "buffet" of beliefs that people are willing to glom onto. "Mayan healers used this silver doohickey to cure infections". Mayan priests were also pretty well known for running a long-term human sacrifice machine - should we go back to that as well? "I believe this part of the magic because it sounds good and makes me feel good about myself, but this other part, well, that was because they were primitive." How condescending is that? You wanna be a Mayan, go whole hog Mayan - don't stint the human sacrifices, because maybe, without that, nothing else works.<br />
<br />
I don't wish to conflate human sacrifices with glitter - though if you're going to split someone's chest open, and cut out their beating heart, it would certainly be more colorful and fun with glitter. I'm opposed to lazy thinking. To lazy or convenient faith. You wanna believe something, believe it, but don't believe only the "happy" parts of that faith while leaving the inconvenient or "icky" parts behind, because without one, does the other actually work, or mean anything?<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q%27uq%27umatz" style="background-color: white; background-image: none; color: #0b0080; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;" title="Q'uq'umatz">Q'uq'umatz</a>, e</span>at your heart out.</div>
stEnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03779624344364534059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8843701027361292996.post-14095628465308355972013-08-13T10:30:00.000-07:002013-08-13T10:30:54.202-07:00A Trip and Fall Down Memory Lane<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
My friend Boegle, who just recently became a Mommie, and her then boyfriend Jiri, and my then girlfriend Lemur (who also happens to be Jiri's sis), all trekked down to Baja California to witness a full solar eclipse. We did this as a "we're young, let's take a road trip!!!" though I, being the old fart of the bunch, kept drowning out my own enjoyment by worrying about every little thing, while everyone else was doing the whole, "just go with it" mantra. I could never "just go with it". Thanks, Dad.<br />
<br />
So, after getting the week off, and desperatly trying to rent a car that would get us all the down to the south tip of Baja (the eclipse was going to be visible there and Hawaii - Baja seemed a tad more of a driveable destination than Maui), we finally set off from San Francisco on a Sunday night, needing to arrive in Baja Sur (in a sprawling burg called La Paz) by early-ish Thursday morning.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguC6Th9cfINMd0NpWH_rQHD9hBLVrZhH0i-Kq5XhBzvHVWtCeAAO9Uvdxt5qoMs7PVX4uY-nNEbyomSScLBiCNmAOCwFZOOr52wmN8HYWEQpOWWbIiysyHKRgrtq2PY9R5Fni7G6SgTcx-/s1600/Andersons_1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="128" i="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguC6Th9cfINMd0NpWH_rQHD9hBLVrZhH0i-Kq5XhBzvHVWtCeAAO9Uvdxt5qoMs7PVX4uY-nNEbyomSScLBiCNmAOCwFZOOr52wmN8HYWEQpOWWbIiysyHKRgrtq2PY9R5Fni7G6SgTcx-/s200/Andersons_1.JPG" true="" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sea-Poop Andersen's</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
We stopped for a midnight snack at Sea-Poop Andersen's (Pea Soup Andersen's to those not in the know about driving I-5 in California), and eventually arrived at our rest stop in LA at around 3 in the morning, grabbing a couple hours to nap, and then on to the borderlands. San Diego is pretty, early in the morning, unless you're taking a Greyhound Bus across the border*, packing a couple of five-gallon jerry cans for gasoline, just in case the Pemex stations had run out of gas.<br />
<br />
<div style="border: currentColor;">
The cab ride from Greyhound to Avis was, to put it nicely, utterly terrifying. Everyone else packed into the back seat, and I got to sit next to the driver, who was making his own lanes pretty much everywhere he went. Driving at forty miles an hour between two semis with only inches to spare is an image I will never EVER get out of my head. They could re-package it as a ride at Marriott's Great America and Torture Emporium.</div>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj57t96hL2JjxRUj-bPnqZ7TZuTJXQQCqb5jDyAgAYRFB3U_jqnNYok4Hyrwp5m_zAzdPWhZdI59-81NEU3FQb5RnIYVlYKYvsxDtV6wL-QjZrZLYlkGvGhFKtyaSAF1A8goZhaUNft4NOJ/s1600/zucaritas.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" i="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj57t96hL2JjxRUj-bPnqZ7TZuTJXQQCqb5jDyAgAYRFB3U_jqnNYok4Hyrwp5m_zAzdPWhZdI59-81NEU3FQb5RnIYVlYKYvsxDtV6wL-QjZrZLYlkGvGhFKtyaSAF1A8goZhaUNft4NOJ/s200/zucaritas.gif" true="" width="122" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Zucaritas! Con el Tigre Tonio!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
So we grabbed a lot of bottled water, and various chip things (can't really remember what we bought - I was still in an adrenaline low after the cab ride), and got the hell out of Tijuana, and off to the desert. However, Zucaritas stuck with me.<br />
<br />
The desert in Baja in general has a sameness that shows up as different all the time. Every turned corner does actually reveal something. This is not me trying to be all mythopoetic or something, it just seemed as though we were being constantly surprised. Unfortunately, we didn't get much of a chance to stop and smell the sagebrush on our way down, as the clock was against us. <br />
<br />
What we did get to smell was the gasoline, leaking out of one of the jerry cans into the back seat.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8KiCdBNbwkPTU5MhITXz21ykpw7Yk2xEOH5XpazoykNHs4wKI4fEmADZiXIaAhz5y9M2RQsBk8i3Z8VQWSnc-ijhAtfBe0qjZJaD1A7ygLL7Uv-8lvxmKjwZYYJgepI6sp11nvm1iy1N9/s1600/OldBajaBuilding.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8KiCdBNbwkPTU5MhITXz21ykpw7Yk2xEOH5XpazoykNHs4wKI4fEmADZiXIaAhz5y9M2RQsBk8i3Z8VQWSnc-ijhAtfBe0qjZJaD1A7ygLL7Uv-8lvxmKjwZYYJgepI6sp11nvm1iy1N9/s200/OldBajaBuilding.jpg" width="133" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Santa Rosalia Thing</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
These things turned out to be a bit of an albatross for us. One, we never ended up needing them. If I remember correctly, we tossed out the leaker after we arrived in Santa Rosalia. Pemex stations were all open and full of gas, and we were only in line once, about halfway between <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=loreto,+Baja+california&hl=en&ll=26.889923,-111.980896&spn=0.201787,0.284271&oe=UTF-8&z=12">Muleje</a> and <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=loreto,+Baja+california&hl=en&ll=26.028096,-111.330299&spn=0.203303,0.284271&oe=UTF-8&z=12">Loreto</a>. While waiting in line, we got to have the treat of green corn tamales sold straight from the kettle, by a couple of enterprising young men (like ten and twelve years old, I think). We each bought a couple apiece, and I remember it being redonkerousry cheap.<br />
<br />
But I digress. We stopped the first night in Baja in a town called <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=San+Quint%C3%ADn,+Baja+California,+Mexico&hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=30.550435,-115.944214&spn=1.558687,2.27417&sll=26.028096,-111.330299&sspn=0.203303,0.284271&geocode=FZtk0gEdLtgW-Q&z=9">San Quintin</a>, at a place called the Hotel Romo or Romolo. Gotta find the picture I took of it. Couldn't find a restaurant, so we settled for hitting the grocery store across the street.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Out the back door of our motel</td></tr>
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Took off early Tuesday morning. Made it all the way down to <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=loreto,+Baja+california&hl=en&ll=26.028096,-111.330299&spn=0.203303,0.284271&oe=UTF-8&z=12">Loreto</a>, where we spent the night in a lovely motel, two decent sized beds in one room for $23 a night, with our own personal lizard in the shower. We had dinner in the hotel. I remember having some kind of scallop soup which was pretty decent.<br />
<br />
Again, early next morning, we left and drove and drove and drove. I think we must have stopped once or twice, because we didn't get into <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=loreto,+Baja+california&hl=en&ll=25.017173,-111.668816&spn=0.281246,0.441513&oe=UTF-8&z=12">Ciudad Constitución</a> until pretty late, and the only hotel we could find wanted $60 a night (which we thought was outrageous). We'd passed a campground outside of town that was $5 for a chunk of sand to sleep on, and it appeared that's where we'd be that night. We got there and found ourselves surrounded by a gazillion amateur astronomers (mostly Americans). Everyone was keyed up for the eclipse the next morning, but we wanted sleep. Lemur and I hadn't really prepared much beyond sleeping bags, so we slept in the car, which, being a cheap Avis rental in Mexico in '91 was not the most comfortable place to sleep.<br />
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Thursday morning, we got up, packed up fast and got on the road. It's about a two and a half hour drive from Constitución to La Paz, and the eclipse was due to start right around 11:30. We got down there with time to spare, had a coconut each, carved green and cold, so we had a nice refreshing drink in the heat of the morning in Baja California, waiting for the sun to go out.<br />
<br />
The shadows began to change shape. Sunlight shining through gaps in the leaves went from round to crescent shaped. Everyone rushed to get bathing suits on (except me - I was going to photograph this event no matter who had to die). Soon enough, the moon crept across the face of the sun, and the sun was directly overhead. Within a couple minutes of the beginning of the process, we had what is known as totality: a flaming black ball in the middle of a dark sky, surrounded by stars, with sunset colors ringing the entire horizon, and thousands of people on the beach and out in the water, screaming and banging drums.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Boegle bein' silly at lunch</td></tr>
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Of course, the sun came back. It took a while, but it came back. Then we had lunch. Pork tortas with sliced avocado, cilantro and onions. O M G<br />
<br />
Then we headed back, pretty much at a slower pace with a few chances to stop along the way to take pictures. I remember one place, where we found a mound of white shells piled up on the side of the road, at a high spot between the coasts. Hundreds of sea urchin shells, hollowed out and heaped as a trash pile.<br />
<br />
Other memorable sights included the innumerable crosses by the sides of the road, at least one pretty decent shrine to the good old Virgin Mary, and a few rusted hulks of cars and trucks that had died and been pushed off the road to be slowly scavenged by the local entrepreneurs. One other business that I wish I had gotten a picture of was a tire stand on the side of the road, in the middle of BF nowhere. I'm pretty sure we were at least fifty miles from the nearest town, but then I assume that if it's not paved, it's not a road. I'm sure there must have been someone to pick him up every afternoon.<br />
<br />
I don't remember where else we stayed on the way back. I do know that we went faster going home than we did going down. For some reason, the next place I remember us staying at is the beach in Ensenada. Waking up in the morning to have a nice man try to sell us a rug, or several, if we were so inclined.<br />
<br />
We weren't.<br />
<br />
After that it was a blur getting back across the border. The another blur getting back to the Bay Area. Then an even bigger blur - what the hell have I done since, that was as amazing as that trip?**<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">* That requires an explanation: cars rented in San Francisco are not insured to travel south of the center line in Baja. Baja Sur requires a whole different kind of insurance, so we decided to drive to SD, bus across the border, find a rental car place in Tijuana, and head south from there. The bus ride was uneventful, though it took us through some neighborhoods that would have to be seen to be believed - houses and fences made out of old car hoods, for example. Wish I'd taken pics of them.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">** Maui was actually pretty nice...</span></div>
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stEnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03779624344364534059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8843701027361292996.post-81852486355238548832012-01-25T13:48:00.000-08:002012-01-25T13:48:18.749-08:00Noun on/in/under a Noun<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
We've had "Snakes on a Plane". Now, there's "Man on a Ledge".<br />
<br />
I'm so glad Hollywood has finally found a formula that really works for them. We need to give them a little help, though. I'm sure there are versions of the formula that we could try out, and perhaps even develop plots for them.<br />
<br />
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"Frog in my Throat"</div>
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"Mom in a Meat Factory"</div>
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<br /></div>
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"Furby in a Baby"</div>
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I dunno. Just a few ideas. They'll need developing. <br />
<br />
I've been hearing more and more about new derivative films being made from TV shows I watched when I was a kid, like Big Valley, and so on. Couldn't possibly be worse than the original, but might, if they try really hard.<br />
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By the way:<br />
<br />
How to be a Retronaut has wonderful fake posters from the Golden Age of Socially-Conscious Hollywood (i.e., the 70s) that includes such casting concepts as William Shatner and Natalie Wood in Avatar (has to be <a href="http://www.retronaut.co/2012/01/movies-from-an-alternate-universe-by-peter-stults/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+HowToBeARetronaut+%28How+to+be+a+Retronaut%29&utm_content=Google+Reader">seen to be believed</a>).<br />
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</div>stEnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03779624344364534059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8843701027361292996.post-31142909388748562862011-11-27T11:40:00.001-08:002011-11-27T11:40:12.975-08:00Shiva looks up<div style="float: right; text-align: center; margin-left: 15px; margin-bottom: 15px;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/fromtheid/5717013667/" title="photo sharing"><img src="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2065/5717013667_e7b6cd24e7_t.jpg" alt="Shiva looks up" /></a><br /><span style="font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/fromtheid/5717013667/">Shiva looks up</a>,<br /> originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/fromtheid/">wireout</a>.</span></div>At about four o'clock in the afternoon on Friday, November 25th, my wife and I took our dear little old Shiva to the vet to have her put to sleep. Her kidneys were pretty much gone, and we were told that we could keep her alive a while longer, but she wouldn't have been a happy cat.<br /><br />I lost my little old lady cat 16 years to the day I brought her home from the vet. She was the most wonderful little psycho angel, who (even with only three legs) terrorized almost every other animal she ever encountered. With humans, she was sweet, purring and generally friendly, though she could turn on you pretty quickly if you bothered her too much.<br /><br />RG and I will miss her. She has been my best cat friend ever, and I already miss her snuggling into my armpit at night.<br /><br />So long Shiva. I hope wherever you are is sunny, and the local birds are slow.<br clear="all" />stEnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03779624344364534059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8843701027361292996.post-8588279492282906352011-10-15T08:45:00.000-07:002011-12-18T08:46:49.273-08:00Stupid Collectibles & SPAM<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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NOTE: This post was originally titled The Art of Stupid Packaging. I have been receiving SPAM on this as commentary for the last two months, so I assume it's being directed from the Slipcover Collectors website, which is why that link is no longer an active link. Because, you know, I sure wouldn't want folks who think owning slipcovers as a collectible to be mad at me.<br />
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Original Post:<br />
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So, I'm reading my daily dose of Consumerist to find out the latest in consumer news, since (though I'm opposed to excessive consumption), I buy things sometimes, and I ran across an item where a man is lamenting the fact that he is unable to purchase Blu-ray DVDs with slipcovers at his local Target, since Target discards custom slipcovers in order to cram the Blu-ray packs into the hardshell plastic anti-theft cases they use to display Blu-rays. This seems rather sad to me. The poor fellow goes out every week and buys the new releases, because he collects the slipcovers. Who can he contact at the movie studios or distribution places to tell that, what Target is doing to the Blu-ray packaging, because it's really important -<br />
<br />
Wait, what?<br />
<br />
He collects DVD slipcovers?<br />
<br />
I guess I'm a little dense. Why would you do that? Do you watch the films? Do you realize the cost of buying a limited-edition slipcover is often a $30 movie? How much stupidly disposable income do you have?!?<br />
<br />
Sure, I get that the Criterion Editions are often packaged in really interesting covers, and often come with cool booklets and extra information. But who gives a flying fuck about the latest Justin Bieber concert movie <i>slipcover???</i><br />
<i><br /></i><br />
It gets better. There's a website: Slipcover Collectors<br />
<br />
I understand, this comes under the heading of other people's money, and who cares what these oddballs decide to blow their hard-earned cash on, but still. This is so freaky-weird I don't even know where to start. Well, okay - try the FAQ page. I notice there are no comments at the bottom of the FAQ page. Perhaps I should help...<br />
<br />
<a href="http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTqbCnJs1b39Ua4Ksepo9AyewhS9b7dDQGMGn0JqfM4Qk3DBqGgVw" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTqbCnJs1b39Ua4Ksepo9AyewhS9b7dDQGMGn0JqfM4Qk3DBqGgVw" /></a>There's a wonderful book, originally published in Japan in the early sixties, called How To Wrap Five Eggs. It's kind of a sourcebook/inspirational guide to thinking about packaging design. Of course, being Japanese, there's a certain something about it that I find endlessly appealing: the uses of natural materials, especially, but also the eminent practicality of some of the designs: how do you transport 20 small fish to market with a only a short length of rope? You can't bundle them up, as the friction would ruin the look of the fish, destroying any "curb appeal" they might have. Plus, they're slippery. So, you link them together with a series of slip knots, so that each fish has it's own little loop of rope, none touches any of the others, and you can sling the whole thing over your shoulder or over your back. Simple, neat, practical, and looks kinda cool. Of course, the Japanese fisherman doesn't give a hoot about cool, he just wants to sell fish.<br />
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But slipcovers? Slipcovers...<br />
<br />
You're collecting a <i>mass</i>-produced item, whose sole function is to make you want to buy an expensive movie, 90% of which are crap, where no particular artisanship is required, other than to get you to buy the movie. Most people who buy movies are buying them either because they want to watch the movie over and over again, or because their kids do. The slipcover itself, is, of course, the first line of attack by any marketing person, and it's gotta be a grabber (and I'll admit, the slipcovers for the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Alien-Blu-ray-Sigourney-Weaver/dp/B004RE29T0/ref=sr_1_4?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1320335675&sr=1-4">Alien</a> series of films are pretty arresting). But buying the film so you can own the slipcover for the Denzel Washington/John Travolta version of Taking of Pelham 123 (a trainwreck of a movie, and I'm not taking about actual trains, here), along with the latest Hannah Montana and the Superman Batman Apocalypse video - I'm not sure I understand which medication is required to make these people stop.<br />
<br />
It's a hobby, I guess. Beyond that, I don't know what to make of it.<br />
</div>stEnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03779624344364534059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8843701027361292996.post-44087747268241412382011-05-30T15:13:00.000-07:002013-08-13T10:29:18.162-07:00In the Land of Nightmares<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Sin City, baby, Lost Wages, yeah, hepcat! Sinatra, Elvis, and...Wayne Newton?<br />
<br />
What do you mean it's weird and it sorta sucks?<br />
<br />
I understand that Las Vegas is designed to get people walking long distances past rows of slot machines, and that convenience of access and egress is something they've physically designed out of most venues. The non-stop need to persuade you to sit down, put your feet up, have a drink, it's just a nickel to play, is everywhere. Gas stations, hell, gas station bathrooms probably have slot machines over the urinals. Would you get your winnings from the bottom of the latrine, please?<br />
<br />
We hassled a bit about where we were going to stay. I was originally interested in the Vdara (if vowels are optional, what else is?), and I was really interested in their rooftop pool - until I started reading about their "rooftop" pool. It's on the roof of the 3rd floor above the valet parking station. That leaves the other thirty or forty floors above the pool to look down on you. It also created an interesting physical effect, and I haven't heard whether it's been fixed yet.<br />
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Known as the <a href="http://www.aolnews.com/2010/09/28/hot-architecture-vegas-death-ray-singes-tourists/">Vdara Death Ray</a>, it came about as something discussed (then blown past) in the design period: what would the sun do if it hit the huge mirrored surface of a concave hotel shape with a pool at the bottom of the lens? And the answer came back after they opened: singed hair, melted plastic drink cups, and a feeling of being microwaved if you happened to be in the path of the marauding sun. Remember ants under magnifying glasses? Scale it up a bit, and you have the Vdara's pool. They couldn't get the interior surface of the pool to seal, and all the plants died because, while the heat in Vegas isn't as bad as the heat on Venus, it was inadvertently achieved by the Vdara's architects.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxJbI23iAnxutFJBCmJ1nxf7TgMkWJHeN0h-AmEgBomYusAou0O6I0wAksqu4co73yd3F7_-fGNzYewY96iJGJM0dIaolVlMbdsMzPtrorBrG8ezAW-LXuiE4qI34wLI_q6XOq_APjAvuS/s1600/Vegas.Gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxJbI23iAnxutFJBCmJ1nxf7TgMkWJHeN0h-AmEgBomYusAou0O6I0wAksqu4co73yd3F7_-fGNzYewY96iJGJM0dIaolVlMbdsMzPtrorBrG8ezAW-LXuiE4qI34wLI_q6XOq_APjAvuS/s320/Vegas.Gif" width="320" /></a>So, anyway, we stayed at the Aria, one of the only non-smoking hotels on the Strip. Very pretty, all dark woods and modernist designs, none of the excessive Art Deco or Art Nouveau nonsense of places like the Bellagio (where things can always have extra unnecessary flourishes and gilding, lots and lots of gilding). The TV was controlled by a remote that also managed the lights & curtains (imperfectly), and relations with the hotel staff. One could, theoretically, order every service in the hotel and have it delivered to the room through this console system, except for the actual touch of another human being. If you didn't bring one, and you don't fancy drinking alone in the bars, you'll have to call for take-out from the local hookers. Or you could go out and get a massage at the Spa, though that costs extra, too (though less than a hooker).<br />
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We had wanted to see a show, but unfortunately, the shows we wanted to see were all sold out months in advance. You can wait on an interminable line for folks who've decided not to show up, but there are few guarantees of a seat, and no guarantees of two seats together. So we contented ourselves with $5 worth of the nickel slot machines downstairs (which lasted about four minutes), a little eating, and a little shopping, as well as time in the spa. Since the bartender from a local pub helped us find the check-in counter (a mile from our parking space in the free self-park structure), we decided to try the food there. Really good fish & chips and some pretty decent beer.<br />
We spent an hour or maybe a little more in the Aria pool. We were warned against any sort of "rough-housing", like families tend to do when they play in pools, by folks who had already been warned about their rambunctious behavior. Ooooookay. Then there's the folks still wearing sunglasses in the pool. Then there's the one hipster doofus wearing sunglasses AND A HAT in the pool - not a baseball cap, but an actual trilby-type hat. I saw one older lady wearing a very tight bikini that really showed off her mottled, leathery tan. And from probably fifty feet away, and not wearing my glasses, I could tell that the woman in the sparkly white bikini had really big, totally fake boobs. MY EYES!!!<br />
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The other restaurant was the Buffet at the Bellagio. As with any buffet, the food was hit or miss. I had some spicy lamb ribs that were tender and amazing, RG had beef short ribs that were equally tender and amazing. I went to the macaroni and cheese bar (a MACARONI AND CHEESE BAR) and had my mac and cheese made to my personal specifications, including fresh crab. The cute thing about this particular buffet is that most of the food is portioned already. When you go for lamb ribs or the beef short ribs, you could pick up as many as you wanted. But almost everything else comes in little ramekins or mini saute pans, just to remind you, "hey, it's a friggin buffet, and you don't want to fill up on starches, now do you?" My largest complaint was with the desserts - does everything that has chocolate also have to contain passion fruit puree? What if someone doesn't like passion fruit?<br />
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RG really wanted to visit the Miracle Mile, a shopping mall we could see from our window that is on the other side of the Strip from our hotel. A mile of covered shopping mall covering a single city block, of the over a hundred stores within, we only found a few that we hadn't seen anywhere else. One was the Bettie Page store (with "official" Bettie Page clothes). RG tried on a few pieces, but the sizing was so ludicrously small that nothing fit her. I imagine a Petite at this store fitting, perhaps, a child of seven, but then no child of seven should wear this sort of clothing. We also tried Allsaints, Ltd, a swanky clothing store based out of England. Same thing there. I am not a small person, I am willing to admit I have a weight problem, but when I try on something marked XXL, the one thing I don't expect is for the sleeves to be so tight that I can barely get my elbow past the armhole. Couture sizing: it's all about being six foot three and weighing around 130 pounds. I gave up in disgust pretty quickly. Another was a piercing and tattoo place (where you can get that drunken tattoo experience you'll always regret) where I managed to find a pair of spiky earrings that I've since had to discard (couldn't pass through my kitchen curtain without it grabbing my earlobe). At one point we passed by an enormous fiberglass statue of a stripper. A stripper. Forty feet tall. In a shopping mall with kids. And you may ask yourself, "well, how did I get here?" I'll tell you.<br />
<br />
From the Aria check-in counter, take a right out the door, and walk all the way around until you find a staircase leading to street level. When you hit the street, walk across the ambulance entrance (ambulance entrance?!?) and make your way down the narrow sidewalk until you see a sign that has a big "no Pedestrians Past This Point" and an indication to "Cross the Street". Which we did, all six lanes. Then cross another wide intersection, taking you to the back of the base of Crystals, a different high-end shopping mall attached to the Aria. This area is a large concrete pad in front of a black building with Keep Out signs plastered all over the doors, and a woman in a security guard uniform sitting on a folding chair under one of the sparsely-placed lampposts. She seemed to be guarding the back entrance to the lower floors of Crystals, which appear to be unoccupied and/or under construction. Guess it's nice to be employed. From the dark Crystals, walk around towards the street you think you want to cross until you find the staircase that leads to the overhead crossing (pedestrians should never, ever be on sidewalks unless they absolutely have to). Up two flights of steep stairs, across a very long catwalk past at least three different sidewalk buskers, turn right, and cross the Strip from above. By the way, you are now surrounded by hundreds of people. Down the stairs, only to be accosted by guys and gals handing out flyers for hookers by SNAPping them at you. It's an interesting trick to get your attention, but these folks don't seem to realize that the pregnant woman with the stroller probably doesn't want a hooker later. I said "probably"... Then walk through the mall.<br />
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We came out into the night, past the Michael Jackson impersonator, the Mad Hatter (played by Johnny Depp) impersonator, and all manner of costumed freaks hanging out on the street corner, surrounded by people wanting their photos taken with these bizarre apparitions. We walked across the street (again, surrounded by a huge, starchy mass of humanity), to get to the Bellagio. We wandered amongst the beautiful flower gardens and the Chihuly ceiling, past the endless rows of gamblers, past the incoming guests who've just arrived and are trying to find someone helpful while dragging fifty pounds of luggage through groups of chattering girls and hooting, drunken frat-boy types, hoping to be able to rest their weary heads on the front edge of a craps table, really, really soon. RG at this point was certain that if I didn't find my way back to our own hotel soon, I was likely to expire in front of her, and she didn't want to have to drag my sorry ass back through all those crowds. So we looked up on our smart phones, "how do you get from the lobby of the Bellagio to the lobby of the Aria, without the detour to Pyongyang?" The answer was deviously simple: walk to the back of the Bellagio, down a hallway to the lobby of the Vdara, out the front door, and turn left. You will find yourself on the walkway mentioned above that lead to the stairs which lead to the ambulance, Crystals, etc. In other words, a walk that originally took nearly fifty minutes would have taken ten, had we looked it up in advance, rather than relying on the advice of the staff at our hotel. Never trust the staff if you mention that you want to leave their establishment, because that's not something they want you to do for any reason at all.<br />
<br />
Ever.<br />
<br />
Various strange sightings:<br />
<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>a fellow walking in the revolving doors at the Bellagio yelling "whoop, whoop, whoop" in a sort of howler-monkey yowl. His friends join in. Other people join in. Everyone in the lobby joins in. I SO regretted not having my little recording device here. Even without the zoo atmosphere, the level of jibber-jabber by everyone was astounding. I've been to rock concerts that were quieter. </li>
<li>Standing in line for O, the big water-based Cirque du Soleil show at the Bellagio (which we didn't get to see), I was watching the poker tables. Mostly young guys wearing shades and trying not to get fleeced by the guys with the massive gold wristwatches. One woman sits down, wearing a loose-but-clingy gold gown that barely covered her various naughty bits, being given a stack of chips by a house elf (hers or the hotels I didn't know). She knew a few of the players already, so I guess she (and they) were fixtures. </li>
<li>When RG and I were playing the slots, I ambled down the line to a slot next door, and noticed the woman on the slot next to me. She's playing a nickel slot, running the maximum bet per play, and she's losing on every single play. The dollar amount on the machine started at $9,956 when I started observing her, and went down into the upper $8,000 mark when I turned away. A thousand dollars or so on a nickel slot machine in a matter of minutes.</li>
<li>We did get to see at least one Vegas stereotype walk by. A man wearing black leather pants and jacket, with a black shirt, open almost to his waist, with a gold chain and heavy gold wristwatch, dark skin, very hairy, medium length black hair all gelled out and tousled, probably in his forties. Could have been Arabic, could have been Italian, Spanish, maybe French, but just SO perfect.</li>
</ul>
<br />
We hit the Spa for a couple hours, clothing-optional and gender-separated. I opted for no clothes, since I'd never had that experience. I spent a long, long time in the wooden sauna waiting for the temperature to rise. It was probably hovering around one-fifty, which, for a dry sauna, is actually not that hot. I was the only guy that afternoon who went from being in the hot room to dropping into the cold plunge. Everyone else went from the hot room to the steam room to either hot tubs or the lounge chairs. I kept wondering, don't they know the point of going into the hot room in the first place?<br />
<br />
<br />
I realize that this post does not appear to be in any sort of order, and that's appropriate. I don't remember terribly well what even happened on which night, though if I put enough effort into it, I could probably figure it out. RG would help, as well - she remembers everything.<br />
<br />
Vegas was, to put it nicely, a surreal place in which to spend a lot of money. </div>
stEnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03779624344364534059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8843701027361292996.post-51455452331875327802011-05-16T11:24:00.001-07:002011-05-16T11:24:59.952-07:00Taking a break in our regularly scheduled programming...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">For a funny:<br />
<br />
"Windbag prophets reap windfall profits"<br />
<br />
From the appropriately titled <a href="http://www.ironictimes.com/">Ironic Times</a>.<br />
<br />
Just thought you should know.</div>stEnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03779624344364534059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8843701027361292996.post-30273567769780072232011-05-10T10:30:00.000-07:002011-05-10T10:30:54.390-07:00Rocks and Christians<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Back to the big, bad old Bryce Canyon, and the willingness to actually hike down all the way, and then hike back out, hopefully without the need for a helicopter airlift. Down, down, down the Queen's Garden trail, so named for the figure of Queen Victoria formed by a zillion years of slow erosion way up on one of the various parapets of sandstone, down in the depths of the canyon.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5241/5685685536_d760f4d617.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="163px" j8="true" src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5241/5685685536_d760f4d617.jpg" width="200px" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Happy Trails</td></tr>
</tbody></table>You walk around and occasionally though these massive formations that look both very solid and impossibly balanced, huge chunks of rocks and whole trees with their roots waving pitifully upwards, testifying to the results of the constant, yearly freeze/crack style of erosion these walls go through. One of the trails had fallen off the wall, and the forestry guys were there rebuilding a chunk of trail. Most of the trails have been cut out of existing erosion paths, or are simply an angle carved out of the side of a really big rock, but then they have to buttress them up with concrete and rebar, and I just want to tell them how lucky I think they are, for having such great job security. This place is always falling apart, otherwise no one would come here. So, always fixing, always conditioning, clearing debris, tree bits, building up trail sections that are just as vulnerable to the vagaries of good old-fashioned erosion as all the non-man-made rocks in the park.<br />
<br />
The hike down the Queen's Garden trail is a bit precipitous and could use a few more switchbacks, though I'm not sure where they'd put them. You drop down the 320 foot elevation change in the first half mile or so, and I'd say the first hundred feet of that is over in less than a tenth of a mile. In other words - steeeeeep.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbRkyU3ro37iqlMmZoL-xrcRj7tXrno5qd6G8WCgHaj_EFpSvflknCdRr5u70KXNzHS7ucSZ8_5ZP8Om3wcBfF4VorMa5ykrL8f2RQzjanlKSyfXsOc3gqOcsGOEHnJyKEM8TCMUaLbgK4/s1600/Pink5Fingers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="114px" j8="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbRkyU3ro37iqlMmZoL-xrcRj7tXrno5qd6G8WCgHaj_EFpSvflknCdRr5u70KXNzHS7ucSZ8_5ZP8Om3wcBfF4VorMa5ykrL8f2RQzjanlKSyfXsOc3gqOcsGOEHnJyKEM8TCMUaLbgK4/s200/Pink5Fingers.jpg" width="200px" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Funny, funny shoes</td></tr>
</tbody></table>We were stopped repeatedly by folks coming up the other way to ask RG about her shoes. She was wearing her pink FiveFingers hikers, and no one could imagine them being comfortable. I was wearing a pair of hiking shoes I'd bought in case I didn't like my own red FiveFingers, and I was so sorry I hadn't worn my Funnyshoes. I ended up with blisters and RG really only suffered from a sort of general fatigue (from, you know, hiking).<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5295/5685685160_16b8025e05.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="163px" j8="true" src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5295/5685685160_16b8025e05.jpg" width="200px" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Big damn rocks</td></tr>
</tbody></table>So we got to the bottom of the trail, into a kind of cul de sac where the formation that looks like Queen Victoria with her bustle appears high above you (and once someone points it out, it's hard to see anything else). The queen is on the left in this picture.<br />
<br />
So we're down here, enjoying the amazing formations, when a fellow walks up with his three sons, and says, "doesn't look like Queen Victoria to me. I think it's a wise man bringing gifts to Jesus."<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2pn3ZZRrxXbzR-RH0DdSNR8231YmJiWwQi8-OL1_3cqlkN5PKKMhjbWXYb0H_EREmkx8gtlRKEeT7oeOUAfOoOyxhHyf37cQaDF3OWpHNQhOx6FeIFY7mbrANagAvHtj2EY6VWtdtWSYw/s1600/Queen+Victoria.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" j8="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2pn3ZZRrxXbzR-RH0DdSNR8231YmJiWwQi8-OL1_3cqlkN5PKKMhjbWXYb0H_EREmkx8gtlRKEeT7oeOUAfOoOyxhHyf37cQaDF3OWpHNQhOx6FeIFY7mbrANagAvHtj2EY6VWtdtWSYw/s1600/Queen+Victoria.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Not amused</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Well, isn't that nice.<br />
<br />
The hike out was, at first, no big deal, lots of gentle ups and downs. As we got closer to the base of the main incline, RG and I were both stopping at every switchback to catch our breath, swig a little water. As we went up the final ascent, it wasn't until afterwards that we both admitted to feeling not a little lightheaded, and possibly suffering from tunnel vision at one point. My heart felt like a jackhammer and my lungs were wheezing (to quote Salieri) "like an old rusty squeezebox."<br />
<br />
I can't wait to go back and do it again.</div>stEnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03779624344364534059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8843701027361292996.post-63363694643533987232011-05-06T12:37:00.000-07:002011-05-06T12:52:56.937-07:00Filmland<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Day after that Kodachrome Basin. Originally named Kodachrome Flat, the name was changed to Chimney Rock State Park, due to fears of the Wrath of Kodak. Kodak turned out to be Amused by someone naming a State Park after their film (gee, I can't imagine why), so eventually it became known as Kodachrome Basin State Park.<br />
<br />
On a side note: if you stay at Ruby's Inn and want to buy groceries, I'd seriously recommend driving nine miles down UT-12 to the small town of Tropic and go to the grocery store there. A larger variety of food, and certainly more reasonable prices. We had a burger at the restaurant part of the restaurant/grocery store/gas station. Pretty darn good food. Beer selection's limited, but hey - it's Utah.<br />
<br />
After lunch, we hit the Shakespeare Arch, a half a mile through very very dusty environs, lots of ups and downs and ups and downs. The arch itself is far overhead, and is quite an impressive structure.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5065/5685687140_feff330cce.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="163px" j8="true" src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5065/5685687140_feff330cce.jpg" width="200px" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A nice boulder</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Then we hit the upper half of the park. Longer hike, flatter, up close and personal with some pretty massive sandstone formations. My understanding of sandstone is that it was once plain old sand or dirt of one kind or another (mostly sand), that got layers and layers of crap laid onto it over the years, eventually concreting into a single mass, and then a lot of the crap ended up weathering away, to give all of us the appearance of giant rounded lumps of stone with interesting erosion marks all over, strange formations that appear to be teetering on the edge of collapse (which they are, but very, very slowly).<br />
<br />
The other odd things are the holes in all the walls, in some cases in neat little rows, way up the side of a massive formation, that speak to tiny imperfections becoming larger and larger erosion pits. More fun occurs later (after a few hundred years) when rain slowly pulls the sand off the sandstone and forms little mud castles inside these same erosion holes. It's been pointed out by smarter people than I that any natural formation at its edges looks like a smaller version of the bigger formation, and this fractalization extends all the way down to the molecular level. The tiny sandstone formations in these holes is awesome proof of that.<br />
<br />
Another thing, which my pictures don't do justice to, (but some of the digitals might) is the ridiculous variety of color within the sandstones. There's iron for red, manganese for purple, and yellow for straight feldspar (which is common in sandstones). Then there's the white limestone intrusions everywhere.<br />
<br />
After the hike, swimming and something akin to a buffet at Ruby's. Overcooked carrots, undercooked pork, properly cooked beef (in "cowboy" gravy - didn't taste like cowboy to me), roasted chicken parts, mashed potato paste, Rice-A-Roni (really), decent mac'n'cheese, and corms. The dessert pile consisted of a lot of stuff that might have been Sara Lee, and a frogurt bar. Back to the room and into a food coma.</div>stEnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03779624344364534059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8843701027361292996.post-40257173406965756272011-04-25T15:25:00.001-07:002011-05-06T12:10:16.463-07:00Red Rock West<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Title of one of my favorite movies and the appearance of Bryce Canyon and the peculiarly-named Kodachrome Basin. We drove out to Bryce after our mildly harrowing experience traversing the airport in Vegas. We stopped maybe once to take photos along the way, but once you enter the southern end of Bryce Canyon (known as Red Canyon), you realize how far off the map you feel, even though the map is really well-drawn. <br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5246/5685116493_800513dbf7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="163px" j8="true" src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5246/5685116493_800513dbf7.jpg" width="200px" /></a></div>Strange formations, produced by thousands of years of slow erosion, begin small and grow and grow and grow until they nearly blot out the sky. And (just like everyone told me) the sky looks bluer than it does anywhere else. So pretty. Between RG and myself, we shot nearly four hundred photos in Bryce. From the 6x7 camera, I had one of our local labs scan in all my negatives. A small sample, and you can get to the rest via <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/fromtheid/5685116493/in/set-72157626642230128">Flickr:</a><br />
<br />
We stayed at <a href="http://www.rubysinn.com/">Ruby's Inn</a>, a Best Western property that's been there for nearly a hundred years in one form or another. The discoverer of Bryce Canyon (Ebenezer Bryce), in laconical cowboy fashion, described Bryce as a "helluva place to lose a cow." Reuben "Ruby" Syrett built a small Tourist Rest lodge at the outskirts of the Park, and it has since morphed into a place where you can bring an RV, stay in the lodge, eat at the buffet, and so on and so on. Very tourist-tacky and yet quaint, RG and I found ourselves relatively happy with the accommodations (nice pool), and with a short ride to various jumping off points to hike into the canyon. <br />
<br />
So, RG and I took ourselves down one trail, and it became apparent immediately that we were in no shape to do what we were trying to do. Either acclimation to the altitude or our own general torpidity back home had not prepared us for the steep climb back out of the steep, downward climb we first attempted (after walking the canyon rim for about a half mile). End of the day, we wuz tired.</div></div>stEnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03779624344364534059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8843701027361292996.post-8175248619058573082011-04-25T12:43:00.000-07:002011-04-25T12:43:26.714-07:00Airport Conditions in Vegas? Diseased<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">RG and I went off to the Holy Land of Utah last week, by way of Sin City, America's Playground, Disneyland for Adults (or are they?). First comment on McCarran Airport? Lousiest airport design I've ever encountered.<br />
<br />
Here's an airport that's supposed to cater to probably hundreds of thousands of people a day, and you still have to walk a long ways to everywhere (except when you have to take the tram - more about that in a minute). Between the gate (slot machines) and baggage claim (slot machines) were at least four choke points where foot traffic had to slow to a crawl, because there's only one escalator, and it only fits two thin people per stair (not counting their luggage). To get from the gate to baggage claim, you also have to take a tram. Exiting the tram are hundreds of people; waiting for the tram are hundreds of people (slot machines). As people exit the tram, they enter an area and veer off to the left of the people who are entering the area from the opposite side who also have to veer off to the left, thus crossing through the stream of people exiting the tram.<br />
<br />
Collisions galore.<br />
<br />
While the folks exiting the planes are enthusiastically giddy about arriving in this playland with a (fake) gilt edge, the folks exiting the tram are desperately seeking a fucking aircraft and really, really want to get on the goddamn plane and go home while they still have two nickels to rub together. This is a natural devolution of the Vegas version of joy: you arrive empowered by that last viewing of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0128442/">Rounders</a>, certain you'll be able to beat the odds in a Vegas casino, playing against a bunch of yokels. Clue - you're the yokel. By the end of your trip (which may only last for a long weekend), you're tired, slightly inebriated from all the free drinks and the alcohol just won't leave your system, somewhat poorer, and completely overwhelmed by the crowds, the yowling, the fake breasts, the klassiness of it all, and the oversized cost of everything, since it's all entertainment, but not always entertaining.<br />
<br />
And that's just getting to the rental car. Tomorrow for the beauties of Bryce Canyon and Zion.</div>stEnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03779624344364534059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8843701027361292996.post-2988276571995460222011-04-01T09:15:00.001-07:002011-04-01T09:15:47.771-07:00And Another Interesting Moment in Mirth<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">It fixes your startup by doing a <a href="http://pivotrly.com/">pivot</a>.</div>stEnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03779624344364534059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8843701027361292996.post-62517371603214262052011-03-31T11:10:00.000-07:002011-03-31T11:10:17.360-07:00Humorous Thingies<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">While other people aggregate links, I aggregate their aggregations.<br />
<br />
Have to come up with a new word for that. <a href="http://www.theawl.com/">The Awl</a> has become yet another place for me to get my geek on. Their humor links are as splendid as anything I've yet seen. Here's a few from them, and the <a href="http://boingboing.net/">bOINGbOING</a> crowd:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.theawl.com/2011/03/flying-while-brown-just-dont-do-it">Flying While Brown</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://wondertonic.tumblr.com/post/3931283529/mandelbratwurst#">Mandelbratwurst</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://tensexyladies.tumblr.com/">Ten Sexy Ladies</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://twitter.com/drunkhulk">Drunk Hulk</a><br />
<br />
Personally, I'm not sure why no one thought to do the Drunk Hulk Twitter feed years ago, except that Twitter didn't exist yet. Who wouldn't want to know how Hulk feels about his latest date after a couple of Cosmos?</div>stEnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03779624344364534059noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8843701027361292996.post-17586174541912774752010-11-05T07:55:00.000-07:002010-11-05T07:55:58.391-07:00The Circus is Coming, the Circus is - OH MY GODI just lost all respect for Cirque du Soleil. I've been a fan for a while, and actually went to one of their big-top shows live, and it was extraordinary. But now there's this:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/en/shows/michael-jackson-tour/tickets/Seattle.aspx"><strong><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Michael Jackson <span style="font-size: xx-small;">The</span> Immortal World Tour</span></strong></a><br />
<br />
I mean. What the F**K?!? He's dead. He's been dead for a good long while. While I assume they're going to do some sort of tribute to his talent and so on (he was a fine dancer and had a pretty phenomenal voice), he was a bit of a freakshow in life and, frankly, kind of icky as a human being.<br />
<br />
Now, if they're planning on attaching strings to his wrists and ankles and head and doing some sort of marionette thing with his corpse, THAT I might go to.stEnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03779624344364534059noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8843701027361292996.post-20462026303718541402010-08-24T09:20:00.000-07:002010-08-24T09:20:34.249-07:00Movie Time!!!So, with me still recovering from a bad bout of bronchitis, the little woman and I decided to spend the weekend trying to do as little as possible. Thus, we rented flicks that we had been wanting to see. As follows:<br />
<br />
"Kick-Ass"<br />
"It's Complicated"<br />
"Mary and Max"<br />
"The Men Who Stare At Goats"<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1250777/">Kick-Ass</a><br />
Interesting premise: a comic-book geek decides that there's no reason why someone shouldn't, you know, dress up in a concealing costume and fight crime, like a superhero. His friends put it succinctly: "No one has superpowers, so no one can actually be a superhero." He argues back with Batman, they argue back with billionaire, and it's pretty funny. So he goes and orders a green wetsuit, buys a couple of sticks - and promptly goes out and gets beat up to the point of hospitalization. In the meantime, video of his exploits ends up on YouTube, especially the part where refers to himself as Kick-Ass, and other "superheroes" pop up out of the woodwork. Big Daddy and Hit Girl, specifically. Big Daddy is Nicholas Cage doing a bang-up Adam West impersonation, and Hit Girl is a little eleven-year-old girl with a mouth like a sailor and a knack for butchering people or blowing their brains out that has you sitting there going oh my God, oh my God. She's f**king ELEVEN.<br />
<br />
Directed by Matthew Vaughan (of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0375912/">Layer Cake</a> fame), and based on comic books that are apparently way worse than the film.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1230414/">It's Complicated</a><br />
No it isn't. Rich people have difficulties we can only dream of, and to watch all these twits with their problems is to make me think more and more that it's time to line 'em all up and use them for soup. Meryl Streep gets talked into having an affair with her ex-husband, played by Alec Baldwin, and as soon as she says the line "I'd forgotten why you're such a good lawyer" I stopped believing anything he said. She's getting an addition onto her house that would probably cost as much as any of us little folks pay for our current houses, he drives a new Porsche and a used supermodel, Steve Martin (as the bland architect who's designing her addition) is the third wheel in all of this and looks uncomfortable the entire time. All of their children are doing just great, don't need any help from Mom & Dad. <br />
<br />
Just like everyone you know, right?<br />
<br />
Anyway, not an entirely fair review, as we stopped watching it about a third of the way in. I started it up again, and became even more annoyed when Baldwin starts doing the whole peeping through the window, doing pratfalls off of poorly-mortared bricks thing, while Martin is having appetizers and drinks with Streep in her "too small" kitchen (which is bigger than my living room). Urgh. Scroom.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0978762/">Mary & Max</a><br />
A funny, sad, very very odd claymation movie from Australia, purportedly based on a true story about an eight-year-old girl leading a pretty solitary and unhappy life in Australia, who takes it into her head to begin writing to a middle-aged, anxiety-ridden Jewish man in New York City, beginning in the late seventies. I won't go into details, as they are what make the film such a wonderful experience, but suffice to say that the voice performances are top-notch (and Phillip Seymour Hoffman is completely unrecognizable - how does he make his voice do that?), and the animation is as funny and inventive as anything done by Aardman.<br />
<br />
I leave you with a quote from Max Jerry Horovitz: "Do you have a favourite-sounding word? My top-five are 'ointment,' 'bumblebee,' 'Vladivostok,' 'banana,' and 'testicle.'"<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1234548/">The Men Who Stare At Goats</a><br />
Not sure how I feel about this one. The premise is really great, as it's based on actual people and actual behavior. The cast is fantastic (though I have to feel a little sorry for Jeff Bridges - is he to be typecast as The Dude forever?). Kevin Spacey is wonderfully oily as a psychic spy on the make. George Clooney comes off as a man who is sincerely believing all of his hippy-dippy training while at the same time something of a sadistic idiot, and possibly insane. With all the references to "Jedi warriors", the casting folks must have had Ewan McGregor in mind from the beginning for the part of the journalist in need of a good story to win his wife back.<br />
<br />
The psychic spy thing is, of course, true. The Russians began their psychic spy training when they thought we were doing it (we weren't). So, in order to not be behind the Russians, we began a psychic spy training program. "Remote viewing" (essentially being able to "see" a place or situation from a great distance using the power of the mind only) is a technique that I've been hearing about for a very long time, most notably in the compellingly bad film, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0324127/">Suspect Zero</a>.<br />
<br />
Funny, but a little too detached. McGregor is likeable, but swings between completely convinced that Clooney's nuts, to totally convinced he's onto something, and back again. It's not the film I expected, and could have used a better director than Grant Heslov. As a first feature, it's not terrible, but I had high hopes for this.stEnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03779624344364534059noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8843701027361292996.post-69968499571424915452010-06-30T11:12:00.000-07:002010-06-30T11:12:33.384-07:0010 of the Best Herd Mentality Movies of all TimeI got the idea for this post from the unfortunately titled <a href="http://linkbaitgenerator.com/index.php">Linkbait Generator</a>. Though I typed in the words "herd mentality", I would never have thought of this idea on my own.<br />
<br />
Which tells you something about why I'm not a successful (i.e., paid) writer - yet.<br />
<br />
However, here goes with the content side of it, in no particular order (who am I to judge how people are most herd-y?):<br />
<br />
10. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120201/">Starship Troopers</a><br />
In some ways, the herd I'm thinking of is the audience, not the characters in the film (though they're a herd, too). I went to see this wonderfully subversive movie, and, while getting caught up in the dumb soap opera that is the human characters' lives, what I didn't do is fall for the militaristic machismo of all the warfighting. On the other hand, the audience was cheering and applauding the whole facist enterprise, apparently forgetting for a moment that the whole thing resembled the Nazi propaganda movie that Tarantino made for Inglourious Basterds.<br />
<br />
9. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063350/">Night of the Living Dead</a><br />
I'm not talking about the zombies, here. Good ole boys wandering around shooting anything that moves ("in the heead") and then worrying about whether they were alive or dead , maybe, later.<br />
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8. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087803/">1984</a><br />
NewSpeak and doubleplusungood thoughts that get you nowhere, and then everyone starts wondering how long we've been at war with EastAsia...<br />
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7. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0017136/">Metropolis</a><br />
Do I have to explain this one? Fritz Lang's ability to make people look like the machines they maintain (operate? feed? have sex with?) is terrifying.<br />
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6. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077975/">Animal House</a><br />
While widely seen as the ultimate (well, ultimate for the time) kick in the nuts of the Establishment, when one character starts saying "toga - toga - toga - toga" and everyone else joins in - even knowing it will likely get them all booted out of college - it's not the lunatics running the asylum, it's the sheep. And of course, the famous "band unable to turn around" scene because they've been led down a blind alley by someone not their drum-major indicts the other 95% of the crowd. Still one of the funniest films of all of their careers. The fact that Tim Matheson now plays a psychopathic ex-spy on Burn Notice just seems like the natural extension of that character (had he been inducted into the military right out of college, that is).<br />
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5. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0265086/">Black Hawk Down</a><br />
This movie took a lot of critical hits for portraying the Somali fighters as bug-eyed crazies who fought in endless suicide waves to kill the hundred or so American Rangers and Deltas who were simply trying to get the hell out of the middle of Mogadishu with their captives (high-up lieutenants in Mohammed Farah Aidid's militia). If you read Mark Bowden's excellent book of the same name, you realize that perhaps the filmmakers weren't too far off. Doped up on Khat (a local stimulant), these folks believed themselves invincible, and also became erratically energetic, even in the face of large-caliber machine gun fire. After all, we lost 19 guys - they lost over 4,000.<br />
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4. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032138/">The Wizard of Oz</a><br />
Everyone in this movie is desperately looking for answers (to quote Ulysses Everett McGill). And they will turn to damn near anyone to get them. I know - it's a musical, everyone's supposed to sing together and at the same time. But they let this one doofus take over the whole Emerald City, based upon his ability to project a weird face and use a microphone, and frankly, some of the cheapest smoke effects ever seen outside of a Whitesnake concert. And the moment Dorothy does in the Wicked Witch, all of the Witch's minions turn to Dorothy as their savior. Had no one told them about the "bucket of water" trick?<br />
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3. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083885/">Endangered Species</a><br />
A little-seen conspiracy theory movie about the infamous cattle mutilations of the 70s and 80s (once the X-files started, no one thought about cattle mutilations anymore). Robert Urich plays a New York cop with a bad temper and a drinking problem, who's dragged his thirteen-year-old daughter on a very long road trip in the family camper to a small town in cattle country. He's paying a visit to an old friend (who also left the mean old "big city") who runs the local paper and has lots of pithy things to say about cows and cattle mutilations. There's lots of neat not-really-sci-fi stuff about testing bio-weapons on cows, and the "black helicopter that makes no noise" thing is done really, really well. All in all, poor cows, and poor people. Oh, and one person spontaneously turns into meat pudding on the side of the road.<br />
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2. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0025913/">Triumph of the Will</a><br />
Ostensibly a documentary about the wonderfulness that was Nazi Germany, Leni Riefenstahl's documentary of the German Heimat prior to the beginning of WWII still resonates for pure imagery, which manages to not devolve into the awful cheesiness the way that so many pro-America movies suffer from, even now. It works, and it shouldn't work. Only thing wrong is still that damned moustache.<br />
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1. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079470/">Life of Brian</a><br />
This can be summed up by John Cleese's favorite lines: "You must all figure it out for yourselves." "WE MUST ALL FIGURE IT OUT FOR OURSELVES."<br />
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"TELL US MORE!!!"stEnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03779624344364534059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8843701027361292996.post-2810915737966965642010-06-30T10:06:00.000-07:002010-06-30T10:11:21.466-07:00Another Sign of the Coming Apocalypso FestivalFor those of you who haven't had enough fish in your vodka lately, your prayers have been answered:<br />
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<a href="http://consumerist.com/2010/06/are-you-ready-for-smoked-salmon-vodka.html">Smoked-Salmon Flavored Vodka</a><br />
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Traditional Russian drinking habits (as opposed to the modern form, which is simple alcoholism in the face of a completely dreary existence - would <em>you</em> look into Putin's eyes and get all warm and fuzzy like the Shrub did?) involve at least as much eating as drinking. Have a bite of something tasty, drink a shot with a friend. Have a bite of something else tasty, have a shot with a stranger. It's all good, you're putting away a lot of protein and carbs to absorb the booze.<br />
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(I've heard that Georgians - ex-Soviet Georgians that is, not the US version - can drink like big fishes; is that true?)<br />
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So now we have the flavor of the appetizers in the booze. Who needs smoked salmon with sweet butter on black bread when you can have smoked-salmon-flavored vodka? Tastes great, less filling, more drunky more quicky.<br />
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This took a long time, and lots of work. So now we have smoked salmon vodka and bacon vodka. I have a really delicious bottle of tarragon-flavored vodka (a traditional Georgian flavoring). There are many more flavors out there, but most of them are sweet flavors such as vanilla, various berries, etc. There is also Pertsovka, the chili-pepper vodka (which is painfully, volcanically hot, by the way).<br />
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What's next: Pizza-flavored vodka? Swiss chard? Liver-and-onions?<br />
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Next up, the Kosher Pastrami on Rye vodka, just in time for Passover. Gotta work up a label for that one. I wonder what you'd call it?stEnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03779624344364534059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8843701027361292996.post-76816099672884949922010-05-05T13:57:00.000-07:002010-05-05T13:57:46.234-07:00Sans Vie Is Playing STIFF!!!Tickets for <a href="http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Venues/Stiff?film=3978448">Sans Vie</a> for those that can attend. They'll be going fast, and if enough people want to see this, they'll play it again. Check out the award. We got a STIFFY!stEnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03779624344364534059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8843701027361292996.post-36786227367875416402010-03-09T11:17:00.000-08:002011-05-05T11:18:38.078-07:00I Killed Someone<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">I hit my neighbor's cat, driving home from work. She darted out in front of my car from behind a trash can I think, and she must have bounced off my fender, because I didn't hear a thing. I hoped I missed her. I slowed down and looked behind me, and she was trying to stand up, biting at herself. I pulled over, and ran back to pick her up. She was growling and hissing, and breathing raggedly. Blood coming out of her mouth, blood on one of her paws, just a little.<br />
<div><br />
</div><div>A woman, another neighbor, was right behind me on the road. She told me, "It happened so fast, there was nothing you could have done." And, "can I give you a lift to the vet's down the street?" I was a wreck, crying in front of total strangers, this cat screaming in my arms, trying to get away, probably making her own internal injuries worse. Another neighbor says she thinks she knows who the cat belongs to. She'll tell them where we're going.</div><div><br />
</div><div>We go to the vet, and as I'm getting out of the car, the cat bites into my thumb, hard, down past my thumbnail, it hurts like hell, and I'm not letting go. This last act of rebellion against death takes it out of her. The cat has calmed down a little, but still struggling to get away from me, from the pain. The neighbor helps me get the cat into the office, opening doors, asking if she needs to stay with me. I tell her no, I'll call my wife, she'll come pick me up. The vet's assistant takes me into a room right off the lobby. I lay the cat down on the table, and her breathing slows way down, almost stops. The vet comes in and takes her away. I can't stop crying. I've killed someone's friend. I call my wife to ask her to come get me.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Someone knocks, and it's the owner. He's a nice man, fiftyish, with a sad expression already formed. I tell him what happened. He's in shock. I don't know how long they've had this cat, but there's definitely a history. I lie to him about whether the cat suffered, because I think she did, quite a lot. I mention that he seems to be taking it better than I am, but he says, "I'm still in shock." The vet comes back in and tells us she's gone. The owner asks to take her home, so they can bury her in the back yard. At this point my wife comes in, and she starts crying, too. The vet brings the cat in, wrapped in a towel. My wife asks to see her. The owner starts to break down a little. He leaves with the little bundle.</div><div><br />
</div><div>I've killed someone's friend, and I don't know how to come back.</div></div>stEnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03779624344364534059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8843701027361292996.post-50354873608279629092010-02-24T08:05:00.000-08:002010-02-25T11:48:52.142-08:00Now It's PersonalThey used to be called "icebox melons" or "red jewel" watermelons. You know the kind - they're very small, seedless (or at least the seeds are edible and less offensive than the usual hard black variety you see scattered all over parks during picnic season).<br /><br />They've recently changed the marketing on these little globes of sugary goodness, and are now known as "personal watermelons."<br /><br />"<a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/personal">Personal</a>"?<br /><br />I'd like my personal whale, please.<br /><br />"Personal" usually means for an individual. Or perhaps something one does in private, like a "personal massager." So I don't get this. Am I getting hypersensitive to language? Am I, perhaps, becoming curmudgeonly, and easily irritated by mild alterations to my mother tongue.<br /><br />I almost used the word srsly the other day, and had to stop myself. Because how do you take anyone serious who uses a word like "srsly"?<br /><br />Another important question to be asked about a personal watermelon - how much vodka can the little devil absorb? Because I'd like to get my personal drunk on, and I could bring one of these green spheres to work, loaded to the gills with Grey Goose, and no one would be able to tell without a watermelon breathalyzer. I might even be complimented on my improved diet.<br /><br />I might go for "purse" melon, or something like that, implying a very small size, but personal implies that this one is just for me.<br /><br />Oh, and our cat, the Muzzle, likes watermelon. Leading me to quote one of the great movies of all time, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102817/">Reuben and Ed</a>: "My cat can eat a whole watermelon!" I think Muzzle could.stEnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03779624344364534059noreply@blogger.com0