The last Halloween playlet this year

More Unexpected Costumery

Another Halloween playlet

Short Halloween playlet

My boyfriend is in pain! & other recent spam themes

The Shorter Lileks Trend

I don't know why I still link to Lilek's Bleat on the side. I've mostly stopped going to his site at all, as the entertainment-to-screed balance finally tipped over into the screedy side for me. I think Lileks is a smart guy and good writer, and I enjoy hearing about his domestic life - but like Dennis Miller and others, 9/11 seemed to give him a chance he must have been secretly waiting for all his life - to reduce everything around him to good ol' black and white.

Occasionally I still check in, though, I suppose just to see if he will make me gnash my teeth again that day. But now there seems to be a trend in the lefty blog-o-sphere which gives me much comfort, and makes me think I'm not alone: The Shorter James Lileks column.

These are people who read the Bleats, then come back and summarize for the rest of us in vastly simplified fashion. And based on the Bleat today I have the definite sense that Lileks is aware of them. So let's see how the master of oversimplification likes being simplified himself.

You shouldn't miss them; even if you're a big fan of Lileks. The best I've seen so far are at Alicublog... but do a search for "shorter james lileks" and prepare to laugh.

Why I believe in our president

I think I may have changed my mind. Food for thought from Thomas Schaller at the Gadflyer.

A quote of note

Carter on Bush:

From the Guardian.

Alternet on Bush supporters:

Obviously this is not true of all Bush supporters, but I can think of more than a few for which it is absolutely spot-on. (And to those supporters that do not fit into this category - can you deny that your side encourages and benefits from this wholesale, willful misreading of the facts?)

Meanwhile, my California voter registration card finally arrived the other day, so I did a little democracy dance. Of course, the election of '96 taught me that sometimes even WITH a card, it matters not, so I've jotted down the Voter's Fraud Hotline number on the back. Also planning on laminating this page: CALIFORNIA VOTER BILL OF RIGHTS. Not that it matters so much for me living here, of course.

AMC, Lion's Gate, and "Final Cut"

Went to see the Robin Williams sci-fi movie the other day, "Final Cut*." We went to a local AMC theatre, that chain that invites you so enthusiastically to Experience the Difference(tm)! and then provides none of same.

AMC has been using digital projection for their fabulous preshow countdown for a few years. The picture is horrible. I'm sure the projector would be great for the home but on a movie theatre the pixels are the size of your fist. However - since it's limited to this pre-movie presentation I can ignore it.

The Preshow Countdown of course is when they show some ads, put up the occasional movie promo-trivia for People Who Have Been in a Coma (What latina diva starring in this month's "Shall We Dance?" alongside Richard Gere and Susan Sarandon got her start as a fly girl on the comedy show "In Living Color?!?!?") exhort you to buy popcorn, and occasionally show one of the Fandango Ads Starring Paper Bags or a winning film from the Coca-Cola contest for student filmmakers willing to sell their souls.

But the other night, sitting through the digital preshow as we waited for the movie to start, I swear I had the tiniest warning flag go up in the back of my mind. "When movies start to be distributed digitally, I hope AMC doesn't think this projector is going to do it," I promise I actually thought. I'm not adding this detail just to sound prophetic, I swear.

So the digital projection with the preshow melted into a few previews, and then it melted right into the movie. There was decidedly not that moment when you can see the actual film projector has been turned on, when the eye relaxes. They began to show the actual film with this awful projector. It was WRONG WRONG WRONG. That was not a movie - it was a television show! What were they doing?

I immediately left and found an articulate ticket-tearer. "Oh, they sent this movie on DVDs, so we have to show it digitally." Well, as it turns out, not exactly, but close:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000651451

I went back to the "film" and tried to decide if I could stay. It was that bad. After five minutes of squirming, I decided to ride it out.

Unlike many film purists I am excited about the coming digital revolution. It excites me that movies can be transmitted this way. It opens up so many possibilities. (And another thing to keep in mind is that it is more or less inevitable.) But it's unfathomable to me that AMC would think that

Comparable to a TV image? Comparable to a TV image? Pal, I have a TV AT HOME. And it may not be High-Def but I also don't have to pay 9.50 per show! Nor do my feet stick to the floor, and nor do I have to shush all the rude people!

At a time when I would think they'd need to be making the case for digital, they're doing themselves much more harm than good by showing people how bad it can be. Not that we needed the lesson, but they've shown definitively that their concern for showmanship is far less than their desire to save money by avoiding the expensive film medium.

I'm not kidding, people - this was walk-out-and-boycott-the-theatre bad.

The Magic of Sports

Student, 21, Killed By Rubber Bullet

Go team!

One Elmendorf Down, One to Go

There is much talk in the comments about the apparent sighting of the Chupacabra or Elmendorf Beast in Texas. Says a local zoo-worker:

That seems a little harsh and possibly premature, but on the other hand if this was under my porch I might shoot first too. Other creatures Fish and Wildlife is on the watch for in Texas:

The Jersey Devil. Mothman. Spring-Heeled Jack. The Crawford Menace.

Precognitive Mortgage Lenders, and other Spam Themes

The Day I'm Having

The Electoral College

Get FattyFat to explain why this is the best system. He's quite vehement and makes a good case. Unfortunately the knowledge fades and when I read that "In 26 states and Washington D.C., laws require electors to follow the popular vote" I begin to wonder what we need it for again.

Sporadic Biometric Protocol

Last Thursday it was my task to stay late after work and upgrade a fancy server. These upgrades are complicated things, and because it takes hours to do we try to handle it when most everyone will be gone.

Here at this office as at others we have "access cards" for the building. During the day you can come and go as ye may, but at around 6 PM the elevators go into a special SECURITY MODE . Only by swiping the special card may you hope to gain entrance to your floor. This is so that evil agents of rival companies can't, say, sneak into our offices and copy down the secret formulae that were left written on the whiteboard by accident. But! If you have a special access card, then you can get in.

Some of us - like me - even have a special SPECIAL access card, which lets us into the server room, which you may know is the veritable inner sanctum for geeks. This is where we keep our Monster Manuals, and our Fiend Folios, and 20-sided dice that we use to take away hit points from our rivals, and this is where we keep all our original Star Wars action figures still in the original packaging. No. Seriously, it's where the super-important computers are hidden, the ones that keep all the email and files and which are working so hard that special giant air conditioners have to be turned on to keep them from frying as their processors near the temperature of the sun.

And I, with my special X 2 access card*, can enter and leave this sanctum with impunity.

Or so it is supposed to work.

Because instead of operating on the Security Card Access system here as advertised, they seem to have slyly shifted over to the Sporadic Biometric Protocol. Which is to say, the Security Cards are useless, and you have to physically check in with the security person each time you want to go to do your job after hours. And depending on who they are (and they are a different person each time), they might possibly let you in. The only real constant is that there will always be a lot of rustling of papers as they try in vain to find your name.

But wait - it gets better. Couldn't someone easily convince a person to let them upstairs? Say, if they were very charming, and had a Charisma score above 15? The answer: YES. But that is the beauty of the Sporadic Biometric Protocol. You see, no one in the security office at this building ever tells the security guards anything. Meaning, no matter how many times someone in "authority" from a tenant company, say, mine, informs them that a certain person, say, me, should be given access after hours on the weekend, they do not inform the actual guards!

Do you see the genius of the system? The guards themselves are in a perfect, uninformed failsafe state! Do you see that the company's assets exist in a near-complete state of security? If not even I, a holder of a special X 2 access card, could get to them? On not only Thursday evening, but Friday evening after security had been re-appraised that I was to have access? Or even Saturday OR SUNDAY when they had been re-re-appraised? IT'S BRILLIANT! HOUDINI COULDN'T GET INTO THIS PLACE!

Two-Pronged Attack

My old arch-enemy is back:

The Return... of the SQUID

And this time... it's the JUMBO FLYING version! And I see that it has somehow tricked its captors into shipping it... HERE. Where I live. That FIEND!

And as if that weren't enough:

Snakehead Spotted in Chicago

Clearly the Snakehead isn't as smart as its Squid ally (It didn't get my updated address before attacking), but a fish that can breath out of water? A squid that can fly? Is there any question what the real threat against America is?

Smoke and Steam

Here is the very picture of dignity:

Me, half-asleep, naked, wet, jumping up and down in the hall, dripping water on the carpet, and waving a towel up at the ceiling as hard and fast as I can

Jarring does not describe the noise that comes out of that thing. Piercing? Bone-crushing? Soul-shattering? Cardiac-inducing? Those are closer. It goes off and the signal stabs my skull, traveling from my ears directly to the Medulla Oblongata or whatever portion of brain that is responsible for fight-or-flight. STOP STOP STOP MAKE IT STOP STOP THAT PAIN STOP IT BAD BAD BAD STOP BAD is all that I can think when it goes off, if "thinking" even describes the instantaneous primal response it induces.

Add to this the fact that it will happen early in the morning, when I'm practically still in R.E.M-stage sleep in the shower. It's horrible. I'm telling you I would push an old lady down into the mud and step on her neck to get to that thing when it goes off. I'd step over a burning baby to get to that thing. In Hell when the demons open their mouth to say something to you, that is the sound of their voice.

What is the problem here? The placement of the unit? The age? Is it just too old? Did people in an earlier decade run the risk of being enveloped by steam from a nearby industrial plant?

Maybe worse is the anticipation of that demon-howl. I've taken to shutting the bathroom door tightly, and preemptively pointing the electric fan towards that section of hall to ventilate. I have no doubt that we'd be woken up out of a years-long coma if that thing went off during a fire. If only it could differentiate between those two basic elements, SMOKE and STEAM.

And now I have tempted karma and fate - because yesterday when it tried to kill me by jolting me out of the shower, (its plan no doubt for me to slip on the tiles and break my neck, where I would then slowly perish as the sound eroded my brain with its infernal corrosion) I managed to retain enough sense about me to head not for it but for the circuit breakers. I shut them all off (for this is a smoke-detector that is wired directly into the apartment power, not a battery kind, believe me I discovered that on day ONE of the Audio Assaults when I tried to PULL THAT THING RIGHT OFF THE CEILING) and in the merciful silence that followed... I DISMANTLED IT.

I know that is verboten and foolhardy. I am not saying to fate that I would rather perish in fire than endure another near-heart attack in the shower. I am saying, I will go and buy another, more modern smoke-detector, and situate it far from the bathroom, and I am willing to live in harm's way until I get that done.

Theory: Freshly-Cut Grass

Theory: People who "love the smell" of freshly-cut grass probably never had a regular summer job cutting lawns.

Refutations? Support?

Blogshame: An I.A.Q.

Infrequently Asked Questions: Blogshame Edition

Q: Why is the blog so infrequently updated these days? What changed? Do the movies you are seeing not merit comment? Are you no longer exasperated by today's politics? Do the follies of modern customer service enrage you no more? Oh, what sad days are these when a blog is so neglected that but a single entry remains on the page!

A: No - I am seeing good movies, I am still exasperated, and I am still periodically enraged. But two things changed - I moved, and I'm working on a writing project. So clearly frequent updates of this blog only happen when I am in a state of constancy. Flux is bad for the blog.

Q: I mean the title isn't even randomly changed anymore to flummox linking and reflect new themes. And what's with the vanilla design? Whence goest all the picture of seals and dogs and such?

A: I think my title-auditioning period is over for a while; I like the current one. Also, I was getting tired of the same pictures popping up, so I set the template to super-simple while I digitize and upload all the pictures I took on the way out here. (Apparently you need more than 50 images for the randomizer to give the blog pictures that "fresh" feeling.) Anyway, I wouldn't have thought a few big changes would mean poor l'il blog would go hungry, but sadly, it's been the case. I'll try to do better.

Q: What have you seen lately at the movies?

A:

That Wampa Won't Walk

Now that the much-anticipated Star Wars DVDs have arrived, as well as a new "George Lucas Director's Cut" of THX-1138, the good folks at Lucasfilm are no doubt anxious to find out what position this blog will take on the controversial revisions of all the films.

Should he be changing the Ewok songs? Erasing not only Sebastian Shaw's eyebrows but his entire existence in one scene? Continually adjusting whether and when Greedo shot? Re-dubbing lines? Should we meet Jabba in Episode IV or VI?

I say this: I will go with Lucas. They are his films, he has not only the legal right (obviously) but the artistic right to control their final presentation. Filmmakers so rarely get that, we should be happy for him.

HOWEVER. Even though it is his right in every sense of the word, I would be remiss not to expand my comments. I think movies are not only a record of a story, but a record of the abilities of an artist at that point of their career. And frankly it is sometimes more impressive to see how artists and craftsmen used their imaginations to deal with technical limitations than to see the perfectly realized vision.

We've all heard ad nauseum about the infamously malfunctioning mechanical shark in Jaws, and how not being able to show it as much ended up creating perfect suspense and tension. Despite Spielberg's tendency to enhance these production legends after the fact, the point is valid - what counts is not what you wanted but what you pulled off.

If your Wampa won't walk, then you've got to find some other way to work it out. If the CGI didn't exist in the seventies to make Jabba slime his way through a scene with Han, then maybe the scene SHOULD be cut - allowing the sight of him in the final film to be even more shocking. And one of the most brilliant aspects of THX-1138 was how Lucas created a futuristic world out of nothing more than parking garages and tunnels and existing locations. Isn't that diminished by inserting futuristic digital backgrounds into the new release, even if they WERE in the "original vision?"

I like the way Spielberg released two versions of E.T. on disk, and even Terry Gilliam released the version of Brazil he reviles so much alongside his preferred version.

Still - even though as a bit of a purist and completist I'd like to have the earlier versions, if this is Lucas' vision, good for him.

I still wish Han shot first, though.