12.31.2006

My sci-fi crew!

You scored as Serenity (from Firefly). You like to live your own way and do not enjoy when anyone but a friend tries to tell you that you should do different. Now if only the Reavers would quit trying to skin you.

Serenity (from Firefly)

94%

Millennium Falcon (from Star Wars)

81%

Moya (from Farscape)

75%

SG-1 (from Stargate)

75%

Bebop (from Cowboy Bebop)

63%

Galactica (from Battlestar: Galactica)

63%

Enterprise D (from Star Trek)

56%

Nebuchadnezzar (from The Matrix)

56%

Which sci-fi crew would you best fit in? v1.0
created with QuizFarm.com

Offside, the movie

This looks so cool. And since it's old news to much of the world, yet still Coming Soon to the United States, here's a review.

Those who underestimate the power of comedy to topple empires do so at their own peril. Betcha not one mullah in Iran is laughing.

12.30.2006

Ding dong, he's dead

Rumor has it that Saddam Hussein has been hanged from the neck until dead, dead, dead. I have something to say about that: Hurrah!

I am a reluctant supporter of the death penalty. By "reluctant" I mean that I'd rather there was a better way of dealing with sociopaths and psychopaths. Some day we may be able to do something a la Babylon 5, and just wipe their evil personality away and replace it with something useful to the community. But alas, that day is far, far in the future.

I laughed outloud earlier this year reading an article in the New York Times. To paraphrase the headline: "For more and more, life imprisonment means dying in prison." The gist of the article was to express shock and dismay that someone sentenced to life imprisonment would actually (gasp) remain in prison for the rest of their life. It's that shock that reminds me to support the death penalty, because the plain fact is that your typical left-leaning moonbat would, at some point, release anyone from prison. Ah, the joy of Charles Manson once more wandering California....

Frankly I despise incarceration, so I'd prefer that anyone who received the glorious LWOPP, life without the possibility of parole, just be sentenced to death. Better to have finality.

And so I'm happier to see Saddam shuffled off this mortal coil. Bye, don't bother to wave, don't go away mad, don't go away in a huff, just go away.

This morning's Sacramento Bee had an obituary (not one I could find online, drat) that just reeked of sympathy. My favorite bit, a one sentence paragraph: "In 1979, Saddam became president of Iraq."

"Became." Such a gentle way of telling what happened.

He was an evil man who lived by club, gun, and sword. He died by the rope.

Good riddance to bad rubbish. I will shed no tears, I will lose not a moment's sleep. Ever thus to dictators.

12.29.2006

Living in exile

Yeah, it's a minor gripe when compared to all the other crap in the world, but I've long thought I'm currently living in exile in the Sacramento region. I was born and raised in San Francisco, you see, and even after 20+ years I've not adapted to this alien valley existence.

Prime examples are that I have to wait another week to see Children of Men, which doesn't open until January 5, 2007, in Sacramento. And though today is the official opening day for Pan's Labyrinth, good luck in figuring out when it might pop up in my neck of the woods. Near as I can find out, "sometime in January 2007."

There aren't a lot of films that I care to go see at the theatre, but these were the top two for 2006. Now I have to wait until 2007. Days away, sure, but I told you up front, this is a minor (if annoying) gripe.

12.28.2006

Lileks Looks Back at the Year to Come

A marvelous start:

History, a wise man said, is a pack of tricks we play on the dead. Very well: Let's get out the deck and deal. As we stand on the cusp of 2008, let's look back on the follies of 2007.

North Korea returned to the negotiating table and announced it wants a Playstation 3 and a ham sandwich. Also a pony. Talks broke up when the Americans refused to supply a Playstation because they bought North Korea an Xbox last time, and it just sat in the closet.

Laugh outloud funny. My favorite bit:

North Korea tested a nuclear bomb attached to a medium-range missile; it was headed towards a U.S. carrier group before it was destroyed. The United States subsequently tested several nuclear missiles on North Korean soil. The tests were successful.

Hee!

12.27.2006

Superman Returns redux

When I first wrote about Superman Returns, I said I had the flu, skipped through it, and would really need to sit down and watch it start-to-finish. I thought I might need to have Kleenex handy.

Well I watched and no, I didn't need Kleenex. I did need caffeine, though, so luckily I had my Starbucks Barista Expresso Machine.

I stand behind most everything I wrote initially. The strongest part of film is that it offers no easy out of the threesome, Superman, Lois, and New Guy. The inner conflicts involved are nicely rendered, if never solved. I hope that Spider Man 3 does as well in this regard.

But now having seen the entire thing -- twice, mind you -- the overall feeling is...ugh. The entire Lex Luthor plot is as bad as I first thought. He's not a menacing villain, or even particularly funny. He's just...ridiculous. And he's surrounded by morons. No, seriously, genuine morons. Only Parker Posey does well, but then again, she always does. (Yeah, I've got a crush. Shoot me.)

And there's just a succession of little things that make me queasy. Like Luthor's shout of, "Bring it on!" Hmm, who is that supposed to represent? There's the vague messianic aspects of Superman here, where he tells Lois how she wrote that the world doesn't need a savior, yet he hears them calling out for one, every day. Savior? And his fall from high orbit is particular Christ-like.

Then, Superman is not Christ and, in this film, he's not even particularly noble. He spies on Lois at home, for crying out loud. Is this some allusion so some other aspect of our current world, or is Superman being reduced to a high school kid who wants the girl who probably doesn't want him so he's stalking her, yeah, that'll make her love him! I can see the sequel now, Superman: The Steel Stalker.

And so it goes. I still love Ottman's music, especially when he weaves in bits from the Williams' scores. For the most part the cinematography is spot on, though Metropolis was mostly a dull, dull looking place. The visual effects are notable for being...bland.

I need to single out the sequence with the Boeing 777 as particularly pathetic. It starts badly and just keeps getting worse. It also continues a trend from Jackson's King Kong, wherein the heroine is visibly subjected to gee-forces that should snap all her bones and turn her into a pretzel...yet her hair is only vaguely mussed. It's one thing to ask an audience to willingly suspend their sense of disbelief, it's another to abuse that willingness. Watching Jack Sparrow prance about a water wheel in a sword fight was more convincing.

So, at the end of the day, my overall feeling for Superman Returns is...feh. I'll stick with Christopher Reeve and the first two Supe films, plzthnkx (copyright Cleolinda of Movies in 15 Minutes).

12.26.2006

Hey, about that HD format business...

Absolute brilliance:

Basically, what we have is a series of anti-consumer DRM infections masquerading as nothing in particular. They bring only net negatives to anyone dumb enough to pay money for them, and everything is better than these offerings. They sell in spite of the features they tout, not because of them. The manufacturers still have the balls to look you in the eye and say that they are selling because of the programs/features/DRM. Marketers, what a laugh riot.

In the end, every step in this chain of consumer woe that is Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, Live, VIIV, HDCP, MCE and Vista is flopping. And that is where the better choice comes in. The consumers have voted with their dollars, and are staying away in droves. All the walls of the walled gardens are being built higher and higher, with the occasional brick landing on the head of someone who pulls out a credit card. Buy now, there is a brick with your name on it whistling down, operators are standing by.

In the mean time, Piracy, the better choice (tm) flourishes.

I was thinking of adding to his piece, but why? He says it all so well. All I'll add is what I was discussing with my son on Christmas Day, that the HD disc players -- be they Blu-Ray or HD-DVD -- don't seem to be doing well, while players the "up-rez" current DVD's to near-HD specs are succeeding.

Gads, I love the free market. Now, if we can just keep government regulation out of the picture....

12.18.2006

House Defense

I have recently become a House addict. Like the Vicodin-gobbling doctor, I can't get enough.

This addiction is difficult for me, since I don't subscribe to either cable or satellite, and I can't find an antenna good enough to allow me a decent television signal. So on a friend's recommendation I Netflix'd the first DVD of the first season. Once hooked, I moved on to purchase, and bought seasons one and two. Discs in hand, I had a mini-marathon. I've watched 'em all several times. Now I'm an addict.

To feed my habit, because I didn't want to wait for the next set of DVD's, I deployed a bit torrent client and snaked down the first ten episodes of season three. Doing this will tide me over until the DVD release of the entire season. I feel like I'm on maintenance at some rehab clinic, since it appears the series is on Christmas hiatus.

Damnit.

Hugh Laurie does a brilliant job being a complete asshole of a doctor, who happens to have the insufferable habit of always being right. Everyone else in the show is equally well done. It's the best bit of casting and acting I've seen since Homicide.

But that's all old news, and I'm late to the party. So let's focus on Detective Tritter and his persecution of Dr. House. David Morse is spot on perfect as Tritter. He's House, if House had chosen to be a cop rather than a doctor. He is just as relentless, just as sarcastic, just as unapologetic, and he's just as much of a bully as House. He is, in short, House's perfect foil. He is also, at this moment, kicking House's ass.

Tritter's absorption into establishing House's "guilt" echoes a Florida DA's pursuit of Rush Limbaugh a few years ago. There, as here, you were dealing with someone addicted to pain medication. There, as here, the only "victim" is the addict. And there, as here, the police motive seems more than just the pursuit of justice, no matter what the investigator(s) might claim.

Much of how Tritter handles his investigation is spot on to the real world, but parts don't work. While the hospital might insist that House get his own criminal defense attorney, there is no way they'd tolerate how Tritter was threatening Wilson and the others. There's no way the hospital's legal staff wouldn't fight on Wilson's behalf because Wilson is the head of the oncology department. Wilson wouldn't have to hire anyone, Cuddy and the hospital would swing to his defense.

Ditto House's staff. Tritter's tactics work well against mob bosses and their staff because they're all criminals. They are less effective against the innocent. They are the sort of tactics that transform prosecution into persecution. You get a hint of that persecution when Tritter pontificates that they [the staff] are all guilty because they facilitate House's conduct. That's the language of someone dealing in absolutes, not truth or justice.

But crossing that line is what makes Tritter interesting. House ignores, bends, and breaks rules all the time. Tritter is doing likewise. And since the show's writers routinely bend medical reality, it's to be expected that they'd also bend legal and law enforcement reality.

I just wish that one of those characters, whose brilliance has already been established, would respond to Tritter in an appropriate manner. Like Cuddy telling him that her legal staff will be all up and down Tritter's ass. Or House's criminal defense attorney could tell him. Preferably, it would be both. House has to fight these sorts of things all the time; let his alter ego go through the battles, too.

Because while House has clearly and unequivocally broken the law, in his television universe he gets results. Tritter bases his entire conduct on the theory that House will, at some future time, kill someone, but why doesn't someone tell him that while House may, in the future, harm or kill someone, he does, in the present, save lives? Also, in an episode from the first season, House presents the shocking truth that sometimes doctors screw up, which means that sometimes patients die. It just goes with the territory. Sort of like the reality of Tritter's universe, that sometimes the bad guy gets away with it, whatever "it" might be.

What makes this fascinating to me is the conflict at play. We're in the universe of television. On one side is House, whose methods always contradict some general rule of ethics, some arbitrary guideline, that every other doctor blindly follows. House willfully ignores them...to the benefit of his patient. His actions constantly challenge the conventional wisdom that puts such rules into place. He's a rebel and an outlaw, and by the rules of his television universe, he's always right.

Tritter also ignores arbitrary rules, and in his own universe I'll bet you he's also always right. We are, in short, witnessing the collision of two absolutes, the rebels in television land who ignore the rules that apply to all others. They ignore these rules and produce a good result.

In the 10th episode of the third season, a television universe compromise was on the table, one that would satisfy both sides of the conflict. But it didn't work, so the cliffhanger is that we're now on collision course. I'm worried that a show that, for the most part, hasn't blinked when it comes to tough decisions will now nod off. This might happen because this is House's medical world, not Tritter's police world, which means the cops have to lose in order for House to win. Chances are that loss will be some arbitrary and disappointing crock. I could be wrong; they might pull a rabbit out of their hat and I'll snort in glee.

Meanwhile, I wonder if they'll develop a new series just for Tritter, because I think I'd become addicted to that show, too.

12.05.2006

The Da Vinci Coma

As I sit here listening to the Hans Zimmer's score for The Da Vinci Code, I'm wondering how to recover the hours of my life that were lost watching the film on DVD.

All right, that's pretty harsh, but it's praising with faint damnation to say that Tom Hanks was duller than dirt. Where the hell did that hair "style" come from? I know he can act, I've seen it, so what happened here? As for Ron Howard's "directing"...ugh. I'm not a big Howard fan anyway, but he's usually tolerable. I think his two most successful efforts were Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind. This mess is far off his usual game. For all involved, this film garners the question: What the hell happened?

And I haven't even gotten to the plot, yet. Wait, was there a plot?

Full disclosure: I was born and raised Catholic. My father was the product of a Jesuit education. I spent nine years with nuns as teachers, then one year with the Jesuits in high school, until I flunked Latin. My college degrees are from a Jesuit university. And yet until recently, I'd never sat down and read the Bible. Today I consider myself a C.S. Lewis Christian, a la Mere Christianity, which means that I accept the divinity and resurrection of Christ, consider myself a Christian, but I'm not attached to a given denomination of Christianity, Catholic or otherwise.

I am not going to take offense at someone challenging either my faith or the basic precepts of Christian belief. The core of a Jesuit education is that you challenge everything, including your beliefs and your faith. My father would run me ragged; Socrates would have been proud.

I've read the recommendation that The Da Vinci Code, the book, is best read as if it occurs in a science fiction alternate history universe. Read that way, you can ignore the legion of historical inaccuracies, never mind the theological misstatements, and enjoy a fun romp. I tried to read author Dan Brown's earlier book, Angels and Demons, and found it to be some of the worst writing on the face of the planet, with such a wild misunderstanding of science, the internet, and aviation that I never got to the religious aspects of it before tossing it across the room. I've yet to try and read his Da Vinci book, though I've browsed the highlights here and there. Brown's writing improved, but little else, near as I can see.

As for the movie, as adapted from the book by hack extraordinaire Akiva Goldman...ZOMGWTF?!?

Maybe I missed something, but even assuming all that is presented in the movie, that Jesus Christ married Mary Magdalene, they played bouncy, and at the crucifixion she was pregnant with His child...so what? It hasn't a thing to do with the divinity of Christ, and doesn't deny the resurrection at all. Yet everyone in the film runs around as though this would utterly destroy Christianity or, more specifically, the Catholic church. (Which is another whopper in the film, conflagrating the two, as if Christianity == the Catholic church alone, which I believe a few dozen other Christian denominations would find objectionable.) Since the central conflict of the film isn't a conflict at all, there's nothing to hang a much of a plot onto.

And I fell on the floor laughing when the film implied that the Roman Empire was somehow this benign, polytheistic political entity that only ran violently amuck when the monotheists (i.e., Christians) attacked and took over. Until that point, those poor Romans just peacefully worshipped the divine feminine and never mind all those thousands of years worth of invasion, conquest, oppression, slaughter, torture, and brutality. I imagined Hans Zimmer, as he was composing the score for Da Vinci, watching and listening to that scene and going, "Hey, fellas, a few years ago I did this other movie and, like, uh, it had a, hmmm, slightly different opinion about these Roman guys."

In short, the "history" within The Da Vinci Code -- what little that is comprehensible -- is laughably bad. It should have been a comedy, on a par with The History of the World: Part I. Instead, it's played with pompous, false sincerity. I kept comparing it to another recent film that romped through history, National Treasure. That film also played a little footloose and fancy-free with history but did so in a jovial, entertaining manner; it was thrilling and it was fun.

The Da Vinci Code is neither thrilling nor fun. It is pompous and obese, and as a result it's as dull as the day is long. Pretty much everyone in the film looks as though they're asleep. The action sequences are lessons in how not to do action sequences. The only trace of inventiveness is how Howard handles flashbacks, and they are especially effective when he layers them over present-day locations and actions. I especially liked how he handled Sir Isaac Newton's funeral as Hanks & Co. approach the cathedral, though a friend watching the film with me was thoroughly confused.

Zimmer continues the lessons from working with James Newton Howard on Batman Begins. That is, his score is relatively sedate, subdued, and nicely done. Excepting the choral bits, which are over the top, the music is the most emotional element in the film. Then again, I'm an unabashed Zimmer fan.

Alas, here endeth the compliments. I wonder if the film is as bad as it is because none of the cast and crew believed in the project. In National Treasure there's reverence and humility in Nicolas Cage's voice and acting because he believes, utterly and completely, in his quest. He is, in a word, passionate. Likewise, Tom Hanks is utterly convincing as the school teacher forced to lead men into bloody combat in Saving Private Ryan because he believed in the character, who he was, where he was, and what he was doing. Ditto all involved in making the film. There was passion on the part of all.

Here, in The Da Vinci Code, I don't think anyone believed a word that they were putting onto film, and it shows. At the end, when Hanks appears to close his eyes in prayer, you want to cringe. The entire film is lifeless, utterly devoid of any passion for anything other than, maybe, a paycheck. You could almost put a Dan Brown-like conspiratorial spin to it, that they deliberately made an awful film in order to bury The Gospels According to Brown. Too bad they failed, even in that, since Goldman is getting a record $4 million to adapt Angels and Demons to the big screen.

Oh, be still my beating heart.

12.03.2006

Question: What is a bastard exactly?

Quite often we ask ourselves hard to answer questions, like, “What is a bastard?”

And we wax philosophic with metaphysical postulations, incomplete aphorisms, and inconsistent sophisms that make one more and more sure that the only true thing is that a picture is worth a thousand words.

In this photo, the guy on the right is a member of a bomb squad in the middle of a deactivation.

The guy behind him, well, he's a bastard.



[Received by email, original author unknown.]

12.01.2006

Superman Returns...but why?

[Danger, Will Robinson, there be SPOILERS ahead!]

I've figured out the secret of Chinese films. They're all about love unfulfilled, love denied. They're all about unrequited love. Look at one of the best, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Chow Yun Fat is literally gasping his last before he finally admits his love for Michelle Yeoh. Look at poor Chen Chang, so desperately in love with Ziyi Zhang, and she's so desperately in denial that she literally takes a leap of faith at the end in order to -- we hope -- fulfill that love. You see similar patterns in Hero, House of Flying Daggers, and even Infernal Affairs. And 2046 just drips with lost love, love unfulfilled, unrequited love, etc.

I mention all that because in that regard, Superman Returns feels very Chinese. It is all about love denied; it is all about unrequited love.

Throughout his history, Superman has been plagued by his relationships with humans, especially -- but not exclusively -- with Lois Lane. The films have focused on Superman and Lois, to their benefit and detriment. Benefit because it is that tension that adds humanity to Superman; detriment in that they keep having to find a way to keep them apart, typically by making Lois forget what happened.

In Superman Returns, Brian Singer takes the issue head on and these are the moments during which his film soars. Oh, sure, there's a decent hammy performance by Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor, but who really gives a crap? He's going to lose. You know that going in. Is there anyone within the realm of the Great Cosmic All that believes Lex will ever win?

No? I didn't think so.

Superman Returns is the third Superman film, essentially creating a very decent trilogy. The previous thing labeled Superman III, and that other thing called Superman IV...Singer pretends they never happened. If you've never seen them, don't. If you have, head over to Rekall and have them wiped from your memory. You'll thank me for this.

So Singer has made the real Superman III. Superman, for whatever reason, sought to find out about his home world after defeating the evil General Zod and sending him hurtling into the pot of gurgling dry ice. He's been gone for around five years. Lots of things have changed. The world has adapted back to a Superman-less state. Lois is engaged to a striking young man who happens to be Perry White's son. She won a Pulitzer for an editorial titled "Why the World Doesn't Need Superman". Oh, and she has a son. Who is around five years old. HINT!

These clues are blunt instruments. Feeling jilted by Superman's sudden departure, dumped as it were, she hooks up with the boss's son. She pens a prize-winning essay where she rakes her ex over the coals. Oh, and she's got a son who -- by staggering coincidence -- is just old enough to have been conceived, oh, just shortly before Superman left.

All right, no subtlety there, but so what? As we learn when we cook, it's not just the ingredients you work with, it's how you work them. And with this set of ingredients Singer does very well. He wisely makes the New Guy a really nice, handsome, competent fellow. There's every reason in the world for Lois to legitimately love him, but she's having commitment issues. They're engaged but she won't set the date, won't take that final step.

She has, tada, Superman issues. And who shows up to really compound those issues? Damnit (for her), Superman returns!

Look, this can't be a complete review because I was watching most of this through a fever, fast-forwarding through the dull Lex stuff, and probably missing all sorts of silly details. Frank Langella seems a great Perry White. Kate Bosworth is much better at being Lois Lane than Katie Holmes was at being whatever she was in Batman Begins, but that's not saying much. It was great to see James Marsden's face, and as the New Guy, no less. Brandon Routh as the Man of Steel...well, maybe I'll get used to him. In time. Given the effort. Oh, and as much as I like Parker Posey, she (ahem) vamped things up much better in Blade: Trinity (can't believe I used that pun, for shame).

What stands out is how Singer wraps all this up at the end. By making New Guy a nice guy, a good guy, a great guy, Singer denies both Lois and Superman an easy out. New Guy even saves Lois and her son (albeit, with a final assist from Superman). By not killing New Guy, Singer again denies Lois (and Superman) an easy out. This triangle is holding firm and it hurts.

There are moments near the end that ring oh so damn true it's painful. Sure, we're looking at a fictional superhero, but the emotion behind it all is real and alive in the world today. You can see New Guy staring at Lois and he knows she's in love with Superman, and you know that if she said "I wanna go" he'd let her! You can see Lois longing for Superman but unable to leave New Guy because, well, it just can't work out with a superhero, can it? And you can see Superman staring at Lois and he knows he can't have her, that great human New Guy can take care of her...and the son.

I have to give special props, snaps, claps, applause, and recognition for one of the best things going for this entire sequence, the musical score by John Ottman. I said elsewhere that listening to the music of Casino Royale, it felt at times as though David Arnold (usually a, cough, blunt instrument) was channeling John Barry. For example, Arnold's orchestration of the Bond theme at the end of Casino is brilliant.

Ottman does the same here, only he's channeling John Williams. His orchestration and rendition of Williams' Superman theme is better than Williams did for himself. Unlike hacks who have taken tidbits of Williams' stuff for other sequels, Ottman uses that base material as pure inspiration. The result is a wonderfully done musical soundtrack.

On the album, the final track is "Reprise/Fly Away". I don't think it made it into the film, or the film got re-edited so that music didn't work anymore, but it is a thing of wonder to listen to. Ottman weaves his original music with Williams extracts, specifically "Can You Read My Mind", the love theme from Superman. What Ottman does that is so brilliant is that he gives hints of that theme, of that love, and then in the music, denies it. His own original music wants to swell in love and embrace and success...and then denies it. Dig up a copy of the soundtrack, listen to that last track, "Reprise/Fly Away". It's superb.

With Ottman's music, more than adequate visuals, clean editing, and damn little dialogue, Singer creates a powerful ending, saving what was, for a time, beginning to feel like something suffering Peter-Jackson-please-end-the-damn-film syndrome.

This is all just set up. I need to really sit down and watch the film. I suspect I'll have to have Kleenex handy. Call me sentimental, tell me that it hits hard because I'm still recovering from my own bout with unrequited love, but that only means Singer is, in fact, doing it perfect. He's touched a nerve with finesse and accuracy.

Now if only he had left all that Lex Luthor crap out of the film....

11.30.2006

Wise Words From A Cop

I was browsing old documents and found this gem.

Wise Words From a Cop, About Cops:

Watch out for the CSI effect. There is no machine that we can drop an eyelash into and come up with the DNA profile, fingerprints and mug shot of the owner in 2 minutes.

When you see an emergency vehicle behind you with its lights and sirens on, pull to the RIGHT, and stop. We are usually required to pass cars on the left.

When you're driving in the fast lane and you see a cop behind you, don't go 5 mph under the speed limit. We are not impressed by how safe a driver you can be. We're trying to go help someone (or catch that guy in the SUV that just cut you off). Safely move over and let us pass by you, please.

If you get a warning instead of a ticket from a motorcycle cop, go buy a lottery ticket, because you've already beaten the odds.

When you see an officer conducting a traffic stop, or with a suspect in handcuffs, it is generally not a good idea to approach him/her and ask for directions. If you do, don't expect the officer to be nice when he/she tells you to get lost, and don't expect the officer to take the time to explain.

If a cop causes a car accident we usually get a ticket, and sometimes we get suspended. When is the last time you got 3 days off [without pay] for rear-ending a guy at Wal-Mart?

If you think you can fan all the pot smoke out of the car before we smell it, good luck.

We know you've had more than 2 beers. I've never had two beers, then hit six parked cars and driven my car through the front doors of a Toys-R-Us, pissed my pants, and passed out with my foot on the gas.

Here's how to get out of a ticket: Don't break the law in the first place.

If you drive a piece of junk car, this is why you're getting pulled over:

In one week I pulled over 10 cars for minor equipment violations.
5 out of 10 had no vehicle insurance,
3 out of 10 had suspended driver's licenses,
2 out of 10 had warrants,
1 out of 10 had felony warrants,
...and 1 was a known sex offender with his 12 year old niece in the car without her mothers knowledge.

If you've just been pulled over doing 70 in a 35, Do Not greet the officer with, "What seems to be the problem, officer?"

We get coffee breaks too, and sometimes we run into stores and do some shopping during them.

When you're the victim of a burglary take the time you spend waiting for the officer to find the model #'s and the serial #'s of the stuff that was taken.

Some cops are just jerks, but take heart in the fact that other cops don't like them either.

If it's nighttime and you're driving a vehicle with tinted windows and I pull you over, it's not because of your skin color. I usually can't tell if the vehicle even has a driver until the window is rolled down.

Cops make mistakes, and sometimes they are big mistakes.

Some cops are bad, and sometimes they're real bad.

Every time you hear on the news about people running away from a crazed gunman, someone's son or daughter in a police uniform is running TOWARD that crazed gunman.

Yes, it's true, cops usually don't give other cops speeding tickets. Think of it as an employee discount, perk or benefit, and unless you're a habitual speeder all you ever get is a fine.

If your local police agency has a helicopter everyone knows it's loud and annoying, but did you know it can cover the same area as 15-20 patrol officers, and safely chase criminals that are driving 90 MPH through city streets? Many times the guy has no idea it's there and slows down.

Your 5 year old kid getting pushed down by another 5 year old kid IS NOT a police matter; talk to the other kids parents.

If your kid won't do his homework or do his chores, 911 is not the answer for a uninformed second-string parent.

Police work is...writing reports.

If you rob a gas station you're only going to get $20, but I get to see a K-9 dog use your arm as a chew toy. For all I care you can keep the $20.

In one year of patrol work in a large city only about 10 minutes would be cool enough to be on the television show, COPS. But if COPS was about report writing and accident reports each show would be a year long.

Every traffic stop could end in gunfire, but we have to be polite and professional until that time. [For emphasis: CHP Officer Andy Stevens, CHP Officer Earl Scott, Sacramento County Sheriff's Deputy Jeffrey Mitchell...all shot and killed during the proverbial -- and non-existent -- "routine" traffic stop.]

I've taken about the same amount of men/women to jail for domestic violence, so NO, it's not always the man.

People love fire fighters.

If you find crack pipes in the ladies purse, there is a good chance they belong to her.

Cops know you pay taxes and that your taxes pay cops' salaries. Cops also pay taxes, which also pay cops' salaries so, hey, this traffic stop is on me. Now sign here; press hard, you're making five copies.

And as they say, here endeth the lesson.

Gone With the What?

I am not alone!

As far as Gone With the Wind goes, I'm in the deep minority in not caring too much for it. It's beautiful at times, and the first two hours it's tolerable if not particularly engaging, but by the time the last few hours roll around, I always felt as if the film was more intent on inflicting misery than portraying it. Anyway, it's nice to know I'm not the only one.

Arguably the most over-rated movie in the history of the industry. Now I know there are at least two people in the world who agree with me.

11.29.2006

Lord iPod, Zune Approacheth. Launch the X5!

It's been fun watching the iPod versus Zune fight from the outside. I don't own a digital audio player (DAP) -- sorry, a digital media player (DMP). I am vaguely interested in getting one, though, because my car doesn't have a CD player, and the CD player in the motorcycle is on the fritz and I don't want to fix it. Easier by far to get a DMP player, a cassette adapter, and voila, huge mobile song collection on the (relative) cheap. (As a bonus, I can then have the CD changer ripped out of the motorcycle and gain luggage space. w00t!)

What's entertaining about all this is the flame wars that all the fanboi's are engaging in. Not having a dog in this race, I have a few observations.

First, the iPod pretty much (but not entirely) created the market, but when it first came out there were lots of cries of, "Oh how this or that sucks!" It's easy now to look at an established empire and go, "Oooh, pretty!" but it wasn't always so. For example, when first released the iPod was a Mac-only product; there was no Windows-compatible software. (A reversal of the current Zune situation, where there is no official Mac-compatible software.)

Second, I doubt if Microsoft actually thought its first generation Zune would be an iPod killer. When the Allies landed at Normandy, they didn't anticipate Germany's immediate surrender. Same here. This is the shelling of the beaches and a first landing. If you think of this in any other way, you are deluding yourself. Look at pretty much any product in Microsoft history (e.g., Windows, Internet Explorer, Media Player, XBox) and you will see this pattern again and again.

Third, every single DMP on the market has some degree of suckage. You love your iPod? Great. I don't. It's a functional toy that does a great job playing music and other audio content. It is less than spectacular playing anything else, especially video. (Who wants to squint while watching TV?) The exact same thing can be said for every DMP out there, including the Zune. And on the personal opinion front, I think the Zune is much nicer looking than any iPod.

The Zune fails almost precisely where the iPod (and others) fail: It bolts you to proprietary desktop software for adding content, especially purchased content; the Zune to whatever the heck Microsoft calls their service and the iPod to Apple iTunes. In a world infested with Digital Rights Management (DRM), if you purchase content from iTunes you are trapped playing that content on an iTunes-compatible device (i.e., the iPod). Why this is surprising to "reviewers" is a mystery to me. Why they mug the Zune for its inability to hack Apple's DRM is an even greater mystery, especially given the existence of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

The purpose of DRM is to restrict when, where, and how you can play paid-for content. One of the purposes of the DMCA is to prevent development of software that can circumvent DRM. Any reviewer who slams Microsoft for not violating the DMCA in order to violate Apple's DRM is ludicrously ill informed. The Zune review at Ars Technica said it best: The Zune software's inability to import protected files from iTunes demonstrates how odious DRM is, not how lame the Zune software is.

Now, that doesn't mean there aren't legitimate problems with the Zune desktop software, but when I updated my copy of iTunes to version 7, woo boy, let's talk issues. I'm at v7.0.2 and the issues persist.

But, you might ask, why in the heck am I running iTunes if I don't own an iPod? Good question. The bad answer is that I was considering the purchase of an iPod. Then I looked at the Zune. Now I must look elsewhere because for me, the suckage of both the iPod and the Zune exceeds the joy of owning either.

Quite frankly, I do not plan on ever buying from the iTunes store or the Zune Marketplace, because I won't buy DRM'd music. Period. I think DRM violates fair use in so many different ways it boggles the mind. There are places to buy DRM-less content. Better still, you don't buy reduced-quality 128-bitrate files, a la the iTunes Store. eMusic offers 192K variable bitrate (VBR) mp3's; other places offer lossless downloads, or even FLAC (free lossless audio codec).

I have happily ripped my CD existing collection using CDex (currently using LAME 3.96 to create 192K VBR mp3's), and will continue to do so as I acquire newer CD's. I have and will rip CD's that my family and friends bring over, because fair use says that I can, no matter what the RIAA fantasizes to the contrary.

Thus, iTunes shall soon be but a memory. For ripping, I have the aforementioned CDex. For playback on my PC, I have my long-standing #1 choice, Winamp (with the ClearOne skin), and I've got Windows Media Player 11 as a fallback. And I'll soon be experimenting with Democracy.

As for what DMP to get, in my perfect world, I would hook up the player via a USB port, my computer would awaken and see it as a mass storage device, and I would simply drag and drop files onto it. Then the player's software would go, "Zoot alours, new things!", scan the new files, and present the playlists. Voila, simple.

But my perfect world seldom exists, and it's never that simple. You can use many of these things as mass storage devices and you can just drag files onto them, but then the internal software goes, "Huh?" rather than "Zoot alours!" and it's all downhill from there.

Which means that neither an iPod nor a Zune will satisfy me, while a Cowon iAudio X5 just might. It installs as a mass storage device, so I can just drag and drop files. It not only plays MP3's, but also FLAC and even Vorbis Ogg. There are some issues with the user interface, but there are also ways around the limitations. (E.g., use Winamp to build a playlist within the player, which is easy to do since Winamp "sees" the player as an external HDD.) The 30GB iAudio is even priced less than the equivalent iPod or Zune, and all the reviews say it kicks major ass in terms of playback quality.

Now I just need to scrape together the money. Should be able to buy one by Christmas!

(Of 2007.)

11.23.2006

Happy Thanksgiving!

May your stuffing be tasty, may your turkey be plump.
May your potatoes 'n gravy have nary a lump.
May your yams be delivious,
May your pies take the prize,
May your Thanksgiving dinner
Stay off of your thighs!

Happy Thanksgiving!


And for your amusement...


11.20.2006

Why do Democrats want to reinstate the draft?

They say:

"There's no question in my mind that this president and this administration would never have invaded Iraq, especially on the flimsy evidence that was presented to the Congress, if indeed we had a draft and members of Congress and the administration thought that their kids from their communities would be placed in harm's way," said Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y.

As the article then points out:

Rangel, a veteran of the Korean War who has unsuccessfully sponsored legislation on conscription in the past, said he will propose the measure early next year.

What the article doesn't point out is that Rangel introduces the legislation...then votes against it. He is, in other words, making political hay. He is, to put it politely, full of shit.

Radicals want a draft because they know their history. They know that the anti-Vietnam war movement was driven primarily by a hatred for the draft. When the draft ended, so did the vast majority of anti-war protests. In order to stir up more current anti-war protest, they need a draft to piss people off. So you get manipulative, disingenous cretins introducing legislation to reinstate the draft. Then they vote against it. How principled of them!

The military doesn't want a draft. A draft means they must accept anyone who is drafted; you have to find a place for him/her/it. Right now, the only branch of the military that occasionally can't meet its recruitment goals is the Army. The Marines aren't having a problem. The Air Force and Navy actually turn people away.

So if Rangel (and his ilk) were honest and felt that we needed a bigger military, the first thing they'd do is vote to increase the size of the military, which would increase the recruitment goals, which would get more people into the U.S. military.

That's step one, even if you're silly enough to actually think the draft is a good thing.

For myself, I agree with the late, great Robert A. Heinlein (the writer who whack jobs insist on calling "fascist"):

No state has an inherent right to survive through conscript troops and in the long run no state ever has.

'Nuff said.

More damage to the legal system

Appalling:

An elderly man who killed 10 people and injured more than 70 others when he drove through an outdoor farmers market was sentenced Monday to probation by a judge who said he believed the crime deserved imprisonment but the defendant was too ill.

Yes, law must be tempered with compassion and mercy, but...

  • He killed 10 people.
  • He injured more than 70 others.
  • There are hundreds of families ruined because of this man.

The judge, in this "sentencing", shows amazing "compassion" for the victims and their families. I've seen diagrams of this "accident" scene and the jaw goes slack, the mind boggles. The judge's reasoning for his sentence is, to put it ever so politely, unpersuasive.

The evidence showed that George Russell Weller maintained sufficient awareness of what he was doing to avoid hitting cars. Instead, he aimed at people. (Softer targets, I guess, spare the paint on his own car, lower his insurance liability.) The jury didn't buy his "excuse" of "pedal confusion". Even the judge noted, in the record, the defendant's lack of genuine remorse or even a decent, honest apology.

Yet...he walks.

Santa Monica, Los Angeles County, and the association which ran the farmers market will pay a stiffer penalty than the driver.

Felony probation means he gets to go home for Thanksgiving, something his victims can't. He gets to be home for Christmas, something his victims can't. He'll celebrate the New Year, something his victims can't.

For this Thanksgiving, Christmas, and years to come, Judge Michael Johnson has delivered a bitter present to the victims and to the system of law he represents. Congratulations, Judge!

11.19.2006

Microsoft Office 2007

Thwack!

I started with that word because, to my amusement, the spellchecker in Microsoft Word 2007 says I spelled it correctly. How many word processors or spellcheckers are you aware of that can spell "thwack"?

Games aside, and I haven't been playing much of them lately, I justify owning a computer by writing. Just because it's been 20 years since I sold anything doesn't deny me the claim. So I'm always looking at what the latest writing software is like.

When I leapt from my Smith-Corona to computers, I used an Atari running LJK Letter Perfect. Not a hint of WYSIWYG in that program, but it was fast, pretty easy, and the standard for real Atari-based writing. When I dabbled with Apples, I discovered WordPerfect, and when I migrated to MS-DOS machines, WP was there waiting.

At the same time, though, dark forces hovered in the shadows, softly whispering a dreaded curse word. That word being, uh, "Word."

I have long hated Word. It has taken me years to get used to its idea of "styles" and, more often than not, they still trip me up. I've never enjoyed the interface and I despise not being able to really see what format codes are being applied (its "reveal codes" feature is a joke). Yes, I understand that WP is based on a much older model for document formatting, that Word is more "modern", but when it comes to creative writing, that older model is perfect, and also explains why lots of creative writers continue to use WordStar. (A program that once threatened to drive me insane; who in Hades invents those keystroke combinations?)

To remain current, though, I've always updated Word and WP. I've had a copy of Word via the Office Suite since Office 95. Of late, I just buy the Student & Teacher edition because I'm a student, damnit. (Honest. I can show you my student ID.) That version is fine because I really only need Word and Excel.

Now, along comes WP X3 and Office 2007. Sigh. Goodbye WP. All things must end, and my romance with you has hit its dead-end. There are three reasons.

First, WP X3 is bug-ridden. At least for me. You may have a stable version and a stable install. I don't. Ugh. And it adds little to nothing over WP v.12, except for being a little big prettier.

Second, Word 2007 opens WordPerfect files almost perfectly. Good enough that I can work on the formatting. This means the megabytes of existing files I've got are easily accessible.

Third, I've installed a copy of OpenOffice which opens both Word and WP documents, thus creating a second back-up for file access. I'm not enamored with OO Writer, though, because it's way too much like pre-2007 renditions of Word and not enough like the stuff I like about WP, so why bother?

Oh, there is ODF, Open Document Format, which would remove my paranoia about any future inability to open documents. And I'm all for that. So this is tempting, but hark, I read that Word 2007, via an add-on, will support ODF.

So what is it about Word 2007?

It's clean. It's that simple. Well, that and the document map, which works now. At least well enough for me.

The reviews for the Office 2007 products -- at least of the beta versions -- have focused on the change from traditional menus to "ribbons". This is a massive change, and actually something I don't like too much. Trying to find an old menu choice via these ribbons is a regal pain in the rump. Fortunately for me, I'm one of those that happily only uses 10% of the software's capabilities, so I can find what I need relatively quickly and just won't worry about the rest.

The neat thing, though, is I shift can into draft view, hide the ruler, and hide the damn ribbons. What I'm left with is stark and minimal, a bare set of icons (that I can customize) and a thin row of menu choices. The result is a screen that visually gets out of my way. I've tried coming close with past versions of Word and WP, but this is close to perfect.

Bonus: Along the bottom I have a status display that gives page count, what page I'm on, line number, and a running word count. Plus a simple bar for adjusting the zoom, or changing view modes (e.g., from draft to page). I am frankly staggered by how clean this all looks.

As for document map, I started playing with it in the beta version of Word 2007, and even then it was better than what I saw in previous renditions of Word. In my copy of Word 2003, for instance, the text in the document map was too small, impossible to read unless I blew everything up full screen. Which I hate. And yes, I'm picky.

For my latest novel, I built an outline with chapter headings and key events that would happen in a given chapter. I flag those as level 1 or level 2 within the outline. In Word 2007 I select "view document map" and that outline appears in a vertical bar to the left. Voila, I can jump anywhere in my document I want with a single click. It is, as advertised, a map of my document.

As I finish a chapter I remove the little event notes and the outline collapses to just the chapter heading. Perfect! Alternately, I can flag key paragraphs for later reference, revision, edits, or just to make it easier to find a key scene.

So I'm hooked. MS has me, again, as a customer when this thing ships the end of this month. And the Teacher & Student is now simply the Home version. And I have a home. And that student ID card.

Oh, and as for that file format thing, for the near future I'll just use the "old fashioned" .doc format which my other versions of Word can open, that my copies of WP can open, and especially what OO Writer can open. That will suit me fine until the Word 2007 .odt utility comes along. Simple!

Never thought I'd be enthusiastic about Word, though. Will wonders never cease?

Best. Bond. Ever. Period.

The heading makes it obvious, I went and saw Casino Royale on opening night. I've been thinking about it since and have come to the simple conclusion that it's the best Bond film ever, period, end of story, the end.

This is an origins film. As in: See...how Bond earns his Double-Oh status. See...why he likes Aston Martins. See...what he likes to drink. See...why it's a Vesper martini. See...why Bond is a cold, calculating killer, a blunt instrument in service to the Crown.

Daniel Craig simply is Ian Fleming's James Bond. He's utterly believeable from Frame #1. This is made more so by the way one of his early opponents just prances about a construction site, while Bond heaves and grunts in pursuit. I loved it how after a fight, Bond looked bruised, his knuckles and face cut. Even when he reappeared all "cleaned" up, there were signs of the fracas. And Craig just tosses 'em off (with a grunt and a little whince) and pushes on.

Excellent.

Now, saying this is the best Bond film doesn't mean that, as a film, it doesn't have some issues. The plot is murky, the motivations of the "villains" pretty much unknown. In fact, the villains remain a mystery throughout, which just means they'll be back in the next film. There is also a lull near the end before the wham-o finish and I've heard two lines of thought. One is that it is straight Zzzzz-City, while the other says that it makes the finishing act all the more poignant. I lean toward the latter and was amazed that they kept that cold, cold line in the film.

Things of note: The cinematography is excellent, of the sort that keeps you in the action and in the know without drawing attention to itself. David Arnold, doing the music, at times sounds like he's channeling John Barry at the height of Barry's Bond involvement; in other words, the music is awesome.

I was happy to sit in a packed theatre and I hope Casino Royale does well at the box office, well enough for the producers to commit to another film and include Craig along for the ride. If so, I'll be back in line again.

11.13.2006

A Bond worth waiting for?

I like James Bond. I'm a fan. Not a great fan, mind you. I don't have every nuance memorized. For a while, though, I couldn't wait to see every film at the theatre on opening day.

That lasted until Pierce Brosnan took over. Ugh. I waited for cable -- not even video and/or DVD -- and I've never bothered to see the last two films. The previews put me to sleep. He sucked in major, big-time ways. He was tolerable in Goldeneye, but that movie also showcased who should have been Bond, i.e., Sean Bean. After that brief glimpse of promise, Brosnan should have been recycled.

So, I was intrigued when I saw that they had cast Daniel Craig as Blonde, James Blonde, The New Bond for Casino Royale. And I actually got excited when I saw this trailer. And now there's this review...

Bond is back, baby. Boy howdy is he back. And he’s going to be the most divisive Bond ever. When they set out to reinvent the series and went back to the well of the original text, man oh man did they go back. This isn’t the James Bond you’ve come to love over the years – rather, it’s the James Bond from the printed page. The “…anonymous blunt instrument wielded by a Government Department” that Ian Fleming both described and wrote about. And Daniel Craig and Martin Cambell do one hell of a job breathing new life into a long dying franchise.

And I love the question the review asks:

Are you ready to buy into a serious Bond, a bond that feels closer to the bastard child of Jason Bourne and Sean Connery’s Bond than it feels like any other portrayal?

Oh, hell yes! (And the reviewer agrees, too.)

Bond is supposed to be a bad-ass. He's a killer, that's the whole point of being a double-oh. Sean Connery, in Dr. No, sets a guy up and then blasts him in the back, for crying out loud, with no more regret than you'd give swatting a bug. Timothy Dalton, for all his faults, came close in both The Living Daylights and, especially, License to Kill. He's a killer!

Bond can also drink. Casino Royale not only introduced the world to James Bond, but also to his drink, the Vesper Martini...

"A dry martini," he said. "One. In a deep champagne goblet."

"Oui, Monsieur."

"Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a,large thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?"

"Gosh, that's certainly a drink,", said Leiter.

Bond laughed. "When I'm -- er -- concentrating." he explained, "I never have more than one drink before dinner. But I like that one to be large and very strong and very cold and very well-made{....}"

Finding Kina Lillet is pretty much impossible, but I tried this with the only Lillet I could find and... Wow, a man's drink! In comparison, I am a wimp who will gladly stick with tequila. Anyway, back to the movies....

There is no Q, the gadgeteer, in this film. There are no fancy toys. Bond drives an Aston Martin, but it's just a car (albeit, with obligatory hidden compartment, from what I understand). Other than that he has his wits, his personal skills, and his mission. It's damn-near a straight on spy story. And imagine that, it doesn't lean on bizarre plots to conquer the world, strange gizmos, and limp one-line jokes.

Now I really want to see it.

11.11.2006

Stranger Than Fiction

Saw Stranger Than Fiction last night and was amazed by how much I liked it. I am not a Will Ferrell fan, though I've liked most everything I've seen Emma Thompson in. It seemed an odd pairing and the previews looked too cute for words.

Too cute by half, since the previews make the film look like a straight comedy, which it is and isn't. It isn't in the sense of rolling on the laughing, but it is in the classical sense, and I leave it to you to figure out what I mean.

Also in the cast is Maggie Gyllenhaal, and she's casually delightful as always. And surprise, Queen Latifah is perfect in a minor but nonetheless key role. I should probably also mention Dustin Hoffman, but why? He's little more than "okay".

The plot is simple: Ferrell is an IRS agent who begins hearing Thompson's voice as it narrates his life, in all its dull, repetitive details. At first he thinks he's going crazy, but becomes panic stricken when the narration casually announces he will soon die. The twist is when we discover that Thompson is a well-known author suffering writer's block. The narration that Ferrell hears is her writing, and his death is necessary for the conclusion of her latest novel.

The previews make it look like this is just another over-the-top Ferrell comedy, but it isn't. He is visibly restrained, as an IRS agent should be. It's a somber and sobering performance because the Thompson's narration begins to make him examine his closed and hollow world. It also compels him into a relationship with Gyllenhaal.

This isn't a perfect film. While gently done for the most part, it is often far from subtle. And while we're told that the novel that Thompson is writing, the end of Ferrell's life, is possibly the finest work of her career, we get no hint as to why that it so. Hoffman just declares it and we move on. Little disappointments like this are speckled throughout the film.

Nonetheless, is a touching little film. I'm amazed at how good Ferrell can be when he's not just running about and shouting. Thompson's performance of a neurotic, withdrawn writer is perfect. And Gyllenhaal's free spirt, while a bit of a stereotype, is still nicely rendered. It all comes together with a touching conclusion that says a great deal about living and writing, that both are subject to revision and rewrites, and there's little or nothing that we should take for granted.

All in all, a good film with a hint that it could have been great.

11.05.2006

Saddam Hussein to do a dance

And from Iraq....

An Iraqi court on Sunday sentenced Saddam Hussein to the gallows for crimes against humanity, convicting the former dictator and six subordinates for one nearly quarter-century-old case of violent suppression in this land of long memories, deep grudges and sectarian slaughter.

Shiites and Kurds, who had been tormented and killed in the tens of thousands under Saddam's iron rule, erupted in celebration — but looked ahead fearfully for a potential backlash from the Sunni insurgency that some believe could be a final shove into all-out civil war.

Saddam trembled and shouted "God is great" when the hawk-faced chief judge, Raouf Abdul-Rahman, declared the former leader guilty and sentenced him to hang.

Saddam, described by many a moonbat as a "securlar leader", said, "God is great." Wow, who knew that he and I could ever agree on anything.

11.02.2006

Let the writing begin!

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) 2006 is underway. Couldn't get in last night, so had to post my count this evening. See me here. Maybe I can finish this sucker by the end of the month, maybe not. Either way, I'll have a running start.

Yeehah!

10.27.2006

I want this car...

...and I'm not even really a car fan. Motorcyles, baby, the vehicles of free men everywhere! But if I must drive a car...



So utterly and completely rude, without redeeming social value. Perfect!

10.22.2006

Uncle Jimbo, plain talking

Who is Uncle Jimbo? Don't know, don't care, just loves what he says and how he says it. Rated PG-13, or maybe even R.

Link to YouTube page here. H/T to Annika.

10.15.2006

Of movies and music

Like an idiot, I ordered up a flock of movie soundtracks this last week. I'll be eating Top Ramen this month, but now I've got my copies of Underworld: Evolution (Marco Beltrami) and Birth (Alexandre Desplat). The Aviator (Howard Shore) is on the way, as is Courage Under Fire (James Horner). I am resisting -- so far -- the urge to run down my Amazon wish list and click buy, buy, buy them all! My creditors would be dismayed. Besides, I have to be ready to buy the soundtrack to The Fountain (I hope that's the right link; music by Clint Mansell).

Not too long ago, I wrote about James Newton Howard. I mentioned I miss the glory that was and is Jerry Goldsmith. I still do. I looked at the post and saw where I referred to this, this, and this. (Hey lookee, this time I included the links!) Those are just samples of Goldsmith, and arguably not his best. (They're just my favorites.) I look at the soundtracks I've ordered recently (see above) and still find myself wondering: Who is the next Jerry Goldsmith?

Contenders:

There, that's my short list. JNH already produces moments that make me cry, he's just a little all over the place most of the time. Beltrami just rocks and is having waaay too much fun. Some day he's going to crank out a seriously serious score and the heavens will weep.

So there's no point to this post. I'm just rambling, thinking out loud. And I really miss Jerry.

10.12.2006

Battle of the Browsers, Chapter...I've lost count

I'll be honest. I lept on Firefox the moment it was born, using decimal releases (when it was called Firebird) that led to v1.0. I was never a fan of Netscape, but didn't mind jumping to Mozilla. When they stripped out the browser, though, and gave birth to Firefox, I never looked back.

Until now. The son unit swears that Internet Explorer v7 is marvelous. He swears, I tell you. So I'm giving it a whirl. My desktop is turning into Microsoft city anyway, what with Office 2003, Office 2007 (Beta 2TR), OneNote, and now the beta 2 of OneCare. (Hell, I'm writing this post using Live Writer 1.0 Beta.) The vast Seattle corporate diety owns me more and more, so why not the browser, too?

Well, because it crashes more often than the mind can comfortably comprehend. "Unstable" is praising with faint damnation. About the only time it is usable is when running Microsoft Update. It does that all right, but I can't even log onto (Microsoft) Hotmail and check my email without a lock-up, and "this program ain't responding, shall I kill it?" (Which, BTW, XP does with frightening efficiency, sort of like killing a portion of itself with glee and joy.)

And don't tell me it's because it's just a "release candidate", because just to even the playing field I'm running Firefox 2.0 RC2. It runs perfect, not even a minor hiccup. Meanwhile, I can't finish a single browsing session with IE v7 RC2. Looks pretty good, dies pretty fast.

And so, Little 'Fox, you shall remain my bastion against the evil infiltration of Seattle. Lead me, on to OOo!

10.07.2006

Coming Soon: 300

All right, another movie to get excited about: 300. (Oh, movie website here.)

I wrote about this battle before. And there's at least one brilliant book about it, too. This new film is based on a graphic novel.

The trailer just looks...awesome. Oh, some historical inaccuracies, like the Spartans wearing nothing but Speedos and capes (like, dude, where's their armor?), but way-o. The film was done in a style similar to Sky Captain, in that there were no "sets" in the conventional sense. Most (all?) of the acting was done before green screen with the world computer generated around them in post production. While Sky Captain wanted to go all pulp comic, 300 seems to aim for a...different look.

Love the look of those in the silver masks. Xerxes's immortals? Great tag line:

Before this battle is over, the world will know that few stood against many.
Some of the genuine lines are still there, about arrows blotting out the sun and dining in hell. The real battle has had a lasting impact on the world; I hope this film does it justice. And if not, it still looks totally kick-ass.

9.23.2006

A Negro Flyboy?

No, I haven't seen Flyboys. Frankly, I can wait for the DVD. (Which is wait of what, four months?) The preview doesn't really thrill me, though Emmett says the film is pretty good. I just can't get to worked up.

Besides, thought I, there's this black guy and who is going to believe that a black guy is a fighter pilot in WW1.

Oops!

Eugene Bullard (9 October 189512 October 1961) was the first African American military pilot.

He flew for the French in WW1. Complete Wikipedia entry here. The black character in Flyboys appears to be derived from Eugene's story; the character is named Eugene Skinner.

What a fascinating story. There's a book from 1972, The Black Swallow of Death. I think I'll have to hunt up a copy.

Damn, why isn't this man's biography a movie already?

9.21.2006

And they eat their young, too!

And here I was, thinking that was just a truck that San Francisco meter maids did. Naw, moonbat idiotarians are just as rabid.

Click here for LGF link, and from there you can read the insanity.

Oh, heaven forfend, liberals say a nice word on behalf of the US and Bush and the office of the President. Eee and gads. Admitedly it's a bit of a shock hearing any nice words from Rangel and Pelosi, but the response of the Kids et al is stunning.

Oh, and riotously funny to anyone higher up the evolutionary ladder than a demented bee.

9.18.2006

CNN, clueless revisionists of history

OMG, when I read this, I almost fell out of my chair:

The pope's speech in Germany last week -- in which he appeared to endorse a Christian view, contested by most Muslims, that early Muslims spread their religion by violence -- has sparked protests around the world.

Emphasis mine, because it's not a "Christian view", its historic fact. Islam came into being during the 700's and within three centuries had swept most of northern Africa, mostly by conquest and imposition. Eventually they invaded Spain and Italy.

From Wikipedia on Islam:

Secular historians place Islam's beginnings during the late 7th century in Arabia. Under the leadership of Muhammad and his successors, Islam rapidly spread by religious conversion and military conquest.

Hello, Earth calling CNN, because what in the hell do you think triggered the first Crusade? Hello, it was because Muslims kicked the Christians out and they wanted back in!

For a short-hand edition of why CNN is -- at best -- insane re this issue, read FAQ - Islam Edition.

(HT: LGF and this entry for the original CNN link, though he makes a different point.)

9.16.2006

Is iTunes 7 the work of Satan?

Well, no, but it's buggier than v6. I don't even own an iPod, yet I've got iTunes as my music manager...in anticipation of getting and iPod (cough). So I dutifully "upgraded" to v7.

(Cough.)

99% of the time all is well. The playback is better...most of the time. But every now and again, the sound starts crackling and fluttering and sounding like exquisitely tuned crap. Apparently this is happening to a lot of people, whether they're running Windows or Mac OS. For me, the solution is easy.

I pause, count to "one", then resume playback. Voila. Annoying, but not lethal.

Nonetheless, I can hardly wait for the coming-soon update, patch, fix, etc.

And people say that Apple walks on water.... Ha!

LMAO!

At last, truth in advertising...

 

DVD: Find Me Guilty

Love it. Read about it here, buy it here. Or wherever.

I want Vin Diesel to get an Oscar, or at least a nomination. I've like him ever since you could barely recognize his voice. And he was perfect as both Caparzo and Riddick. Here, he is almost completely out of his element; he only gets in one on-screen fight. And he loses!

For me, Diesel makes the film. Sidney Lumet has done better, he's even done staggeringly great. He's also done much worse. His direction here is average and quiet, which is a good thing since it puts Diesel front and center.

Bullet-point synopsis: During the longest Mafia trial in history, Vin Diesel plays a lower-echelon thug who defends himself at trial.

There, that's it, that's the plot. And Diesel does a great job, better than you would imagine him doing with a talking role. Go get it, watch it, kick back and have a good time. One of the few times I didn't mind cheering for thugs!

9.11.2006

Among the reasons I like Christopher Hitchens...

...is that he's a left-learning atheist who is honest. Others of that combo (see anything posted by the Kossacks) aren't. It's one of the reasons I admire Paul Greengrass, who made the remarkable United 93; his politics are suppressed to create an amazing drama. His art is, for wont of a better word, pure.

And so I feel the same when I read...

One must have a blunt answer to the banal chat-show and op-ed question: What have we learned? (The answer ought not to be that we have learned how to bully and harass citizens who try to take shampoo on flights on which they have lawfully booked passage. Yet incompetent collective punishment of the innocent, and absurd color-coding of the "threat level," is the way in which most Americans actually experience the "war on terror.") Anyone who lost their "innocence" on September 11 was too naïve by far, or too stupid to begin with. On that day, we learned what we ought to have known already, which is that clerical fanaticism means to fight a war which can only have one victor. Afghans, Kurds, Kashmiris, Timorese and many others could have told us this from experience, and for nothing (and did warn us, especially in the person of Ahmad Shah Massoud, leader of Afghanistan's Northern Alliance). Does anyone suppose that an ideology that slaughters and enslaves them will ever be amenable to "us"? The first duty, therefore, is one of solidarity with bin-Ladenism's other victims and targets, from India to Kurdistan.

I celebrate when Iraqis vote. I celebrate their courage in the face of death, something I've only faced from a distance. I agree whole-heartedly with Hitchens re the others in the world who, before and since 9/11/2001, have suffered at the hands of fanatics. It's not a mystery to me why eastern European countries tend to side with us in our war against Islamic terrorism; they've too recently had a taste of fanatical dictators.

These are the lessons of 9/11/2001. Always have been, always will be. There is an implacable foe of liberty lose on the world, and "bin-Ladenism" is an excellent term for it. The free world should wake up and destroy it before it wakes up and finds it's far, far too late.

What I said five years ago...

(Originally Posted December 11, 2001)

"You monster. You beast.
You unspeakable bastard."

Everyone has an opinion about September 11, 2001. Everyone is pitching their two cents worth. So why not me? Not that I am any great statesman or spokesman or a "mover and shaker." However, it has all reached a boil now, and I thought I might as well spell out a few things from my point of view.

Let me begin with that morning and how it appeared to me. My alarm had gone off just shortly before six in the morning (Pacific coast time). OOMA [object of my affection], who had been up since 5:30, said that the World Trade Center was on fire. She went back to drying her hair.

Sure, thought I. I sat up in bed, looked at the TV, and sure enough, one of the towers is blazing away.

The "expert" guest commentator on the Fox News Channel was a dodo. He prattled on, saying we can't assume this was deliberate action, that there's a great deal of air traffic in the area, that the sun was low, could be blinding, pilot could have gotten lost, might be an accident, could be--

Blam! Huge fireball rises up into the screen. Cameraman pulls back from the tight shot he had been holding on the burning tower. Debris exploding out from the second tower, obviously a huge explosion, someone exclaiming that a second plane has hit the second tower. Quickly surf to CNN. Their camera had much the same angle/shot, but had been holding back, less zoom, more building. They replayed what had happened just moments before, showing a jetliner zooming in from the right, disappearing behind the burning tower, huge explosion showing where it ended up.

Accident, my ass.

In the hour that followed, I listened to the radio. A third airliner hit the Pentagon. A fourth had gone somewhere in rural Pennsylvania. All civilian aircraft grounded. The towers fell....

I'm sorry, but as I looked at those two buildings burning I thought, "What genius, what audacity." As horrific as it was (is!), what happened was a natural extension of terrorist actions throughout the world. Suicide bombers are now commonplace. It wasn't a huge leap to imagine suicide pilots. Tom Clancey built the climax of a novel (Debt of Honor) around the notion. The sheer brilliance of the execution was something to behold. Objectively, I couldn't help but admire what had been done, in much the same way as historians admire how well the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor went.

Subjective evaluation is another animal. Leonard Pitts, Jr., writing in the Miami Herald for September 12, 2001, said it short and sweet: "You monster. You beast. You unspeakable bastard."

Pitts also gave a foretaste of what was coming.

It occurs to me that maybe you just wanted us to know the depths of your hatred. If that's the case, consider the message received. And take this message in exchange: You don't know my people. You don't know what we're capable of. You don't know what you just started.

But you're about to learn.

Now it's December 2001, some three months later. We have bombed Afghanistan up and out of the stone age, and toppled one of the most repressive regimes on earth. A coalition of interests from within Afghanistan has come to an agreement regarding a replacement, interim government. Osama bin Laden, the man we hold responsible for WTC 9/11/01 as well as other acts of terrorism, remains on the run, his al-Qaida terrorist network falling apart. The only cloud on the horizon sits over Israel, where Palestinian terrorists have triggered a series of suicide attacks that will in all likelihood do little more than toss Yasir Arafat from power, if not into a grave.

Yet as I drive to work this morning, I hear an NPR commentator saying that the large-scale bombing of Afghanistan will accomplish nothing, that we must bring the accused to stand before the world court, to espouse the rule of law, to settle the Palestinian issue, etc.

In short, she apparently doesn't realize that our actions in Afghanistan are working. We're winning. Certainly, this is just a first, tiny step. But it's amazing the number of people who can't recognize success. Or, more accurately, will never accept Bush as president, or that anything he does is proper and correct.

People are literally dancing in the street in Afghanistan. More and more information reveals that a large percentage, perhaps the majority, of the Taliban were from foreign nations. In effect, foreigners took over Afghanistan, declared their notion of Islam as the one, true way, and supported a world terrorist who felt likewise. Indeed, there is evidence that shows Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network was so intertwined with the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan as to be indistinguishable and inseparable. It was inevitable that an assault of al-Qaida would topple the Taliban, to the joy of the citizens of Afghanistan.

We did not attack Afghanistan; we went after a terrorist network. We did so in response to September 11, 2001, but it's about time!

Now, let me tell you what worries me. There is this great, crushing rush to erase a basic freedom we accept as normal and natural in the United States. That freedom? The freedom of movement, of being able to go where you will, whenever you want. When I attended the police academy, I was taught of a landmark Supreme Court case that came out of San Diego. There was this black gentleman of the dreadlocks persuasion who had a habit of late night walks. And he took them wherever he wanted, including the upper class neighborhoods of San Diego. Surprise, the police confronted him, demanded his identification, and pretty much tried to shake him down.

He refused to show any ID, stating (correctly) that he hadn't done anything wrong, wasn't doing anything wrong, and that the police had no right to confront him so. He was arrested on the spot. To no one's great surprise, the case ended up before the United States Supreme Court, who overthrew the man's conviction, and ruled that police cannot just randomly stop people, demand ID, and insist that the person explain themselves. There has to be this tiny little thing known as "probable cause."

Yet here we are, years later, perfectly willing to accept just this sort of police conduct.

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
-- Benjamin Franklin

Larry Ellison, president and CEO of Oracle, says it's time for a national ID card. No, sorry, he didn't say that, he said he believes that there should be a national standard for identification cards. That was his corrective statement after a television interview showed him saying, "We need a national ID card with our photograph and thumbprint digitized and embedding in the ID card." In response to privacy objections, he added, "[T]his privacy you're concerned about is largely an illusion. All you have to give up is your illusions, not any of your privacy." Not to be outdone, Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems, piped in with the comment, "You already have zero privacy. Get over it."

Nice, when two leaders in the technology industry, a predominantly liberal area of the economy, call for such a repressive measure.

I am not willing to surrender one iota of my liberty, and am not about to call on someone else to give up a trace of theirs. Please, let us face up to a basic, real fact: You are never safe! Just as crime is a function of society, risk is a function of an open society. The more open, the more free, a country and society, the more open to attack it is. Only by altering the fundamental nature of our country can this be changed.

And surprise, the creatures who staged the attacks of September 11, 2001, are the ones who want to alter the fundamental nature of our country! They don't like us just for being the way we are. Excepting our total conversion to a Taliban-like flavor of Islam (or whatever belief system--secular or otherwise--that they adhere to), there is nothing we are going to do that will change that. We could withdraw completely from the Middle East, taking Israel with us, and they'd still hate us, attack us, want to see us dead and buried. We are declared again and again as the Great Satan of the planet. There is no way, if that is the true belief, that they can stand to see us survive.

We have Federalized airport security personnel for ghu knows what reason. Please, explain this to me. On September 11, 2001, four airliners were hijacked. There is nothing to show that a single hijacker smuggled an illegal weapon on board. To the contrary, we are told again and again that their weapons were small and legal, pockets knives and box cutters. On that day, and until very recently, it was perfectly legal for passengers to carry such items onto the aircraft. Airport security personnel did their job, they did not fail.

On the other hand, a number of the identified hijackers were on the terrorist watch list. Immigration personnel who checked their passports as they came into this country let them pass. Aren't immigration personnel Federal employees?

So, if I understand this correctly we want to fire the people who did their job and did nothing wrong, while we "look into" how these terrorists got into the country in the first place. Ah, of course.

P. J. O'Rourke, in an article for the November 2001 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, remarks on how in Israel ordinary life has conquered terrorism. (When last checked, you could find the article here, but you may have to search the site in case it moves.) Anything O'Rourke writes is entertaining, and this is no exception. The closing paragraphs are priceless.

"This country is hopeless," Dave said, pouring a Palestinian Taybeh beer to complement a number of Israeli Maccabee beers we'd had earlier in West Jerusalem. "And as hopeless placed go, it's not bad." We discussed another Israel question. Why are Israeli girls so fetching in their army uniforms, whereas the women in the U.S. military are less so? It may have something to do with carrying guns all the time. But Freud was a lukewarm Zionist, and let's not think about it.

After the first Zionist Congress, in 1897, the rabbis of Vienna sent a delegation to Palestine on a fact-finding mission. The delegation cabled Vienna saying, "The bride is beautiful, but she is married to another man." However, the twentieth century, with all its Freudianism, was about to dawn, and we know what having the beautiful bride married to another man means in a modern story line. No fair using amnesia as a device for tidy plot resolution.

"Do we have to choose sides?" Dave said. But it's like dating sisters. Better to make a decision and head for the Global Village limits. And speaking of sisters, I opened the Jerusalem Post on Easter morning and discovered that my sister's neighborhood in Cincinnati was under curfew, overrun with race riots.

O'Rourke made his trip to Israel earlier in the year, and he wrote the article before September 11. The events of September 11, 2001, require an American response, which is now in progress, and will be on-going for years to come. It is, in a sense, a new holy war, and if we remain focused it will spread a message of freedom, rather than an oppressive religious dogma.

As we demonstrate to the world that a free people are a terrible thing when aroused in anger, we must not forget our own lesson of freedom. We should not merrily surrender our liberties for an illusion of safety, no matter how tempting that may be. And for that, I give you the words of the fictitious Henry Drummond, as delivered by Spencer Tracy:

I say that you cannot administer a wicked law impartially. You can only destroy, you can only punish. And I warn you that a wicked law, like cholera, destroys everyone it touches, its upholders as well as its defiers. Can't you understand that if you take a law like evolution and you make it a crime to teach it in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools. And tomorrow you may make it a crime to read about it. And soon you may ban books and newspapers. And then you may turn Catholic against Protestant, and Protestant against Protestant, and try and foist your own religion on the mind of man. If you can do one you can do the other, because fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy and needs feeding. And soon, your honor, with banners flying and with drums beating we'll be marching backward, backward through the glorious ages of that 16th century when bigots burned a man who dared bring enlightenment and intelligence to the human mind.

Bear this in mind any time someone says changing an existing law or adding a new law is "for your own good, your safety."

2006 Update:

Most of the above I still agree with. However, over the last five years a few things have changed, mostly my knowledge and experience. I've a few years of law school under my belt and understand that much more of the US legal system. For instance, in late 2001 I would have said that The USA Patriot Act was a horror. Today I understand that 90+% of the Act simply allows Federal law enforcement to use against terrorists the same tools they've already been using against organized crime and drug dealers. Further, those restrictions aren't Constitutionally based. They come, rather, from the Legislature reacting in horror at the abuses of the Nixon administration. That is, they are the result of a power grab, the Legislative taking from the Executive.

While Drummond's words should be stamped on the hallways of every law school in the country, a quiet review of the dire warnings made by the loyal opposition in 2001 reveal...they aren't very good at making dire warnings.

There is also a continued failure to recognize the enemy for what he is, an ideology bent on the destruction of personal freedom. No, I'm not talking about Bush, and if that was your first thought then yes, I'm talking to you, and you need to get a clue. Osama and his ilk don't want to make nice, they want to convert you at gunpoint or kill you. They don't have a preference.

I opt for Door #3, which is to convert them, either to change their ways or end their ways. And between those two choices, I don't have a preference.