Urban Bourbon

That ain't workin'...

2009-03-29T12:28:00.000-07:00

Today was to be all about mowing and edging and weeding, but Seattle pulled yet another precipitatious switcheroo on us, so instead, there's this:

Wyatt rocks his guitars (all six)

A night to remember

2009-01-08T21:49:00.000-08:00

With all the misdirection and off-topic speculation I've been hearing during the runup to the historic event that is now only 12 days away (the end of the W Era and the beginning of the Age of O), I thought I'd just post a reminder of how completely damn amazing all this is.

The following is a verbatim transcription of my journal from those fantastic days in early November (only 10 weeks ago, but already seems like a lifetime):

Monday, November 3, 2008
Dark, cold, rainy night. Even though the extra hour gives us a merciful dose of light in the morning, an extra measure of sleep, all of which is absolutely necessary and more than welcome, it also throws us squarely into the dead of winter. Just last week, the sun came beaming brightly into our office window at 5:00, blinding us. Now, at 5:00 it's completely dark. You emerge from work onto a wet, drizzly street, everyone bundled up, blinded by headlights reflected on the wet pavement. Just like THAT you've arrived. Winter.
The bus is hotter, steamier, smellier than usual -- everyone is dressed warmly, heaters are on, driving up the temperature and humidity and pungence. You don't gaze out the window -- what's there to see in the dark? Your eyes defocus and you stare blankly ahead. The passing scenery doesn't mark your progress -- you have to strain somewhat to keep up with how far you've come.
So, the election: My blood is up, my heart is in my throat, my stomach in knots. I can't even begin to imagine that this might actually happen. My heart has been so thoroughly broken by this nation, by the bigoted and the ignorant and the uneducated and the mean-spirited and the simply evil. Can it be that we will really elect a bona fide symbol of hope, of change, of progress and tolerance and compromise and thoughtfulness and nuance and high ideals?
It seems impossible. It seems like too much to hope for. But I'm suppressing the hope with everything I have. I can't let it out until the thing is done. I can't go through another 2004. I can't go through another round of the goddamned GOP assholes smugly strutting over their victory. They need to be soundly walloped, shunned, sent to the corner to sit quietly for the next four years to think about what they've done.
The main thing, though, is that we have the chance to put a truly good and great man, possibly a historic man, into the highest office on Earth. And God help us if we fail to do it. God help us if we can't summon up that much optimism, that much courage, that much hope.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
9 AM
Maus & I rose early to get Wyatt to daycare so we could vote, this time in the basement of the church up on 65th. Last time, too -- from here on out, all voting in Washington will be mail-in. Sad. I love going to the polls. It's very real, very concrete, immediate, interactive, gratifying. Civic. Not an era, not a practice that I want to see vanish. Anyway, here we go... the game's afoot.
4 PM
Trying to keep my mind off it, but I can't. The numbers are starting to come in (McCain wins Kentucky; Obama wins Vermont). So many ways this could go bad. So many ways it could go right. My stomach is in knots. I feel like I'm going to throw up. Believe. Believe. Believe.
6 PM
Just picked up Wyatt -- very cold and very wet out there. Almost no visibility. And snow/ice on the deck when we got home. So: Last we heard, they called Pennsylvania and most of New England for Obama -- the latter not a surprise, but Pennsylvania was a worry. Liddy Dole has been unseated in North Carolina; John Sununu also has been deposed. So far the Dems have gained 3 seats in the Senate. Long night ahead, but so far it looks promising.
6:30 PM
Oh my God. They just projected Ohio for Obama. That puts him way up (if it's so). New Mexico, also Obama. Maybe my math is off, but if he gets the whole West Coast, he takes it all. My God My God My God. Please let it be so.
8 PM
West Coast polls have closed. McCain is closing the gap: 207 to 142. West Coast, Viriginia, North Carolina, Florida, Missouri, Indiana, Colorado still in play.
8:05 PM
OH. MY. GOD.
They just called it. Barack Obama is president. Holy shit.
8:35 PM
McCain just gave his concession speech. Very gracious, very magnanimous and genuine -- unlike his crowd of supporters, who booed every mention of Obama.
I remember when I first heard the name Obama. I think it was a blog post relating the story of Bush seeing a "Got Obama?" button on a woman, and being taken aback (thinking it said "Osama"). He asked her about it. "You haven't heard of Obama?" she asked him. He said no. "You will," she said.
10:30 PM
The parties continue. Obama's speech was incredible. People are spilling into the streets of Seattle in celebration. I've heard from a lot of people who called just to share the joy. The celebrations will go on all night. Damn it feels good. And now it seems that Gregoire has beaten Rossi again for Governor. It's a landslide, a near-complete sweep. And I'm so glad I was here to see it. And equally glad that Wyatt will grow up in a country without Bush in the White House. A good, a great day to have voted.
11 PM
The parties in the streets are ballooning -- up on Broadway and down by Pike Place. Huge crowds pouring out into the street in joy and celebration. What a beautiful sight (especially if one remembers the 1999 WTO demonstrations).
CNN is replaying Obama's speech. What a man. And Joe Biden --this guy I love. Oh, the times ahead.
Oh yeah I forgot (as the West Coast put him over the top): Obama won Virginia (!), Colorado, and Florida (!!!). FLORIDA. Without Florida in 2000, we wouldn't have had to suffer through the last 8 years. And now they've come around. The electoral map looks really good right now.
Wow, what a speech.
midnight
They're dancing in the streets in San Francisco, in Times Square, outside the White House, and here. What a thing to see.
November 5, 2008
Euphoria. It still hasn't completely sunk in, but it is like coming out of a bad dream. An 8-year-long bad dream. And now, still just trying to get my bearings, trying to fathom the fact that it's over.
President Barack Obama. Say it again. Just say it and listen to the words and consider what they mean.
Thank you. Whoever you are, wherever you are, if you exist... Thank you.

Sunrise

2008-11-05T09:19:00.000-08:00

“In this country, we rise or fall as one nation, as one people. Let's resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long. Let's remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House, a party founded on the values of self-reliance and individual liberty and national unity. Those are values that we all share. And while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress. As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, we are not enemies but friends. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.”

President-Elect Barack Obama
November 4, 2008

Am I dreaming?

2008-11-04T20:01:00.000-08:00

Oh.

My.

God.

Thank you.

I can't watch

2008-11-03T20:47:00.001-08:00

Let me know when it's over.

I think it's safe to assume it isn't a zombie...

2008-11-01T17:35:00.000-07:00

Halloween 2008

"I can't lie to you about your chances, but... you have my sympathies."

(I hope beyond hope you all get that reference, but if not: we're Ripley and Ash from Alien.)

"I never drink... milk."

(No, Wyatt's costume isn't thematically connected with ours, unless you're willing to consider that Alien was clearly influenced by Mario Bava's Planet of the Vampires... Huh? Huh? Huh? Yeah.)

"For a moment there, I thought we were in trouble."

2008-09-27T12:20:00.000-07:00

I remember once trying to figure out where one could place the cut-off between the generations of "classic" film actors and "modern" film actors. First off, you have the giants: Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda and Clark Gable. Close on their heels you have the era of Gregory Peck and Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas and Robert Mitchum. Then the transition starts to happen: you get Chalton Heston, Jack Lemmon, Marlon Brando, Rock Hudson, Rod Steiger, George C. Scott – the generation that would bridge the divide into the era of television, the age of Clint Eastwood, Steve McQueen, Robert Duvall, and Robert Redford.

With all these overlapping generations of great actors, where does one place the segue between, to co-opt comics terminology, the Golden and Silver ages? (In comics, that moment would be the emergence of the Flash in 1956.)

It's tempting to place this bridge at the appearance of Heston and Brando in the early 1950s, but somehow, they feel like they still belong to the older, classic generation more than the new.

No, the real moment of transition, I think, can be placed on the rise of two men: James Dean in 1955, and following his death, the man who stepped into the void – the great Paul Newman.

Newman didn't really "hit" until 1958, with three great films: The Long Hot Summer, The Left-Handed Gun, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. It's not hard to see that early on (and even as late as Hud in 1963 and Cool Hand Luke in 1967) Newman was very much the continuation of Dean. But by the time of Butch & Sundance in 1969, it's clear that Newman had broken out of that angsty mold and was embracing broader and more joyful roles. And that's the Newman that I think most of us loved best.

In any case, if you want to talk about the greatest actors of all time, you have to look at two camps: pre-Newman and post-Newman. He was both the Last of the Classics and the First of the Modern Greats.

Tough news today. We lost our Flash.

Work work work, work work work... Hello boys, I missed you!

2008-06-04T19:41:00.000-07:00

Looooong time gone. For that, I lay the blame squarely at the feet of a highly challenging and deeply engaging job. That, and of course Wyatt, recently turned 1. Both are gratifying in the extreme, to be sure, but the tradeoff is collected from my cache of free time. And so.

Three items I feel obliged to sound off on:

Hillary Clinton
Obama wrapped up the nomination yesterday. And even though she wasn't my candidate, I have to say I admire and respect the support and momentum Clinton was able to cultivate. She proved out as a formidable political force, not just a holdover icon of the 90s. A real and undeniable movement coalesced around her candidacy — for which Obama deserves at least part of the credit — and I for one am glad she stuck with it as long as she did. She should stand up proudly at the convention in Denver and take every vote she gets like a badge of honor. She earned every last one of them.

The M******s
Oh the humanity. Somehow, part of me finds a little bit of solace in the fact that they're sucking this much — it makes the season more interesting than if they were just mostly sucking. Heads will, must, roll after a debacle of these proportions. It's nothing less than a fiasco.

Read a very disturbing statistic in the Times today: no team in history has ever spent $100 million and lost 100 games in the same season. The Ms are very much on pace to be the first.

It hurts, but it hurts with a wry smile. Like I keep telling Maus, this is what being a fan is all about. It's 90% pain. (I did grow up in a Chicago Cubs household, after all.)

Best Picture
Maus and I finally saw Juno, thus completing at long last our goal of seeing all 5 Best Picture nominees (a feat that before we became parents was reliably accomplished within 2 weeks of the Oscars). I have to say, this year's pack of nominees was the tightest, strongest field I've seen in a very long time. I'd be really hard pressed to pick a winner from this bunch.

There Will Be Blood was, for me, the weakest of the 5, although buoyed by a(nother) remarkable performance by Daniel Day-Lewis. Michael Clayton was a great movie, and certainly a worthy Best Picture nominee, if not a Best Picture.

The other three, though, are damn near a deadlock for me. No Country For Old Men was, as one comes to expect from the Coens, something very new and very different. Those guys defy the conventional “laws” of cinematic expression — you can never see what's coming in a Coen Brothers movie. Old Men, however, was not their magnum opus. But it was impressive.

Atonement was easily the most beautiful movie of the year. And also the most fascinating. Like Old Men, it took me in directions I didn't see coming. And then, of course, there's the delightful Juno, which was everything a movie should be. Maus nailed it when she said that of all the 5 Best Picture nominees, Juno was the only one she'd go out of her way to see again. That fact alone should probably put it over the top.

The point, though, isn't so much whether the best film won, but that all the candidates deserved to win.

Not unlike Clinton, Obama, and Edwards. A solid field is itself the real victory.

Are you a cylon?

2008-04-24T15:39:00.000-07:00

From Wetpaint's Battlestar Galactica Wiki:

Dr. Baltar's Cylon Detector

Turns out that I'm Billy. Great! I love Billy. Except, of course, that he's dead. If I retake the test and place conscience over loyalty (which is a tough call), I end up as Helo. Not bad. But yeah, probably I'm really Billy. Probably should stay out of bars for while.

At any rate, I'm human. So I got that going for me. Which is nice.

Credit where credit is due

2008-04-13T13:05:00.000-07:00

A friend forwarded me this post on The Screengrab — The Twelve Greatest Opening Credits in Movie History. Not a bad selection, with some highly appropriate honorees:

The great Saul Bass. Hard to choose between Vertigo, Psycho, and North by Northwest, but if pressed I think I'd favor the latter.

Robert Brownjohn and Maurice Binder, for their immortal work on the Bond series. Goldfinger, From Russia With Love, Thunderball, The Spy Who Loved Me — all excellent. I have to also throw in GoldenEye and Casino Royale as two of the best Bonds for opening credits.

Denis Rich (designer) and John Williams (music), for the main titles of Superman: The Movie. No kidding.

Conspicuously missing from the list, possibly because there aren't any opening credits per se, is the greatest opening title of all time: the Star Wars crawl. (Fun: Star Wars titles as done by Saul Bass, courtesy Popwatch.)

Setting aside Hitchcock, Bond, and Star Wars, I have to add my own Top 10, all missing from the Screengrab list:

Once Upon a Time in the West — Now this is an opening credits sequence. Best performance of Jack Elam's career, and he barely lives past the director's title. Nothing else in the movie lives up to the promise of its first 10 minutes. A masterpiece unto itself.
The Shining — Scariest credits ever. The steadicam skims that placid alpine lake, rises and descends menacingly upon a tiny car winding its way higher and higher into the mountains and towards the evil destiny that awaits its driver. And that music. And those crazy moaning/wailing voices, or whatever they're supposed to be. Freaks me out to this day.

Alien — Never was an orchestra put to such great and subtle effect as the windlike moaning punctuated by light, haunting chords in the opening to Alien. The camera pans very slowly across a grim starfield and eclipsed planet, and one by one those five hashmarks (representing victims?) appear along the top of the screen, and then turn into the letters A L I E N. What follows is equally effective: the camera wanders through the cold, still corridors of the hibernating ship, which suddenly yawns to life with some of the strangest, most unnatural-sounding computer sound effects ever devised. The ventilation comes on , then the lights, then the doors whoosh open. Never has an inanimate object come to life so eerily.

McCabe & Mrs. Miller — The wind. The movie opens with the whistle of a cold, merciless wind as the camera pans across a soggy, uninviting landscape. Then the quiet strums of Leonard Cohen's woeful The Stranger Song come up as we see a lone rider — McCabe — slogging his way toward one very bleak town. He crosses a rather unpleasant rope bridge over an icy river, muttering to himself. He finally finds and enters the town's only hotel-restaurant-saloon, a dark, crowded, dank, close structure. He shakes the water from his hat, checks the back door, then clears off a table and starts up a poker game with the locals. The beautifully filmed sequence is chilling, claustrophobic, oppressive, and gorgeously bleak.

Blood Simple — Probably the most clever opening credits I've seen. We see two occupants of a vehicle, driving at night and shot from behind, illuminated only as silhouettes by the light refracted on the wet windshield. The only punctuation is the swipe of the car's wipers, and the flashes of the headlights of passing cars. Each bright flash leaves behind a new title, which hangs on their windshield until the next pass of the wipers clears it away. Brilliant.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly — Rough, grainy, weathered, and explosive, and most importantly, backed by Ennio Morricone's greatest score.

Contact — We zoom away from the Earth, deeper and deeper into space (and back through time as the radio signals on the soundtrack weaken and fade away). Finally, there's nothing but a heavy, desolate silence as we retreat even from our own galaxy and into the big black empty. And then, suddenly, we're pulling away from Jena Malone's iris — all the universe in the eye of a child.

The Usual Supects — These credits aren't really anything special, they're just good. A slow pan across lights reflected as wavy lines in the dark waters of the harbor, backed by John Ottman's beautiful, dreamlike score. Very sleepy, very haunting, and classically noir.

Memento — A closeup of a hand holding a Polaroid photo of a dead body. Every few seconds, the hand waves the photo back and forth, they way you do when “developing” a fresh Polaroid. Only, after few moments, you realize that you're seeing the photo develop in reverse — the image slowly fades away, just like the memories of the man who snapped the photo. Sets the tone of the movie perfectly. Also cool because due to the film's time structure, this is actually the final shot of the story.

Jaws — One chord. Just one chord, played over the Universal Studios logo. You know immediately what movie this is going to be. Sure, John Williams's rapid two-chord refrain and the swimming shark's-view footage of the ocean floor are all classic. But really, it's that one low, murky, simple chord at the very beginning that does it.

Heston

2008-04-06T15:21:00.000-07:00

... is now soylent green.

Not a great actor, really, but still, a great actor (in the “big” sense). Larger than life, with a face that could part the waters and a voice that could blow up the planet. No matter how much as I disliked (despised, actually) his politics, I did come to admire the fierce sincerity of his convictions.

He was known for his loyalty and idealism (he foreited his salary on Major Dundee to keep Sam Peckinpah in the director's chair). And as an icon, he was the closest the Right ever came to having their own Gregory Peck. In fact, there's a great scene between Peck and Heston in the epic western The Big Country that sums up the two men perfectly:

Ranch foreman Heston, jealous of Peck's engagement to his boss's daughter, tries to goad Peck into a fight in front of all the other ranch hands (as well as the girl and her father). When Peck refuses to fight in front of an audience, and even lets Heston call him a coward, the girl is humiliated and furious with him for “dishonoring” her. Peck decides to leave the ranch, but first goes to Heston and tells him “there's a little business unfinished between us.”

The two men duke it out in the middle of the night, in the middle of the prairie, with no audience and no “prize” on the line. The scene is shown in wide shot without music — two little men scuffling the dust like ants, dwarfed by the expansive and impassive landscape. They beat on each other until they're both unable to stand, then collapse in the dirt, bruised and bloodied and winded. Heston, having obviously underestimated his opponent, is as gracious as his character allows: “You sure take a long time to say goodbye.”

Peck's answer is perfect: “Tell me — what did we prove?”

No actor's passing has affected me the way Peck's did, but losing Heston (and, only 2 weeks ago, Richard Widmark) just hammers home how very close we are to the true finale of a cinematic era. Only a few more obits, and the book will be closed. And of those remaining, I can think of only one of Heston's stature — Kirk Douglas.

(I do not count Paul Newman, even though he and Heston are only a year apart. In my own personal and highly biased view of American movies, Heston is the last book of the Old Testament, and Newman is the first book of the New.)

The Mother of all Reversals

2008-04-05T08:12:00.001-07:00

BSG is back on, and so far in top form, picking up exactly where it left off over a year ago... (About frakkin' time! What is this, HBO?)

Good, good, good: A gorgeous opening battle scene with some very sneaky Cylon maneuvers and brilliant visual flourishes. A raider explodes in a splatter of blood; the ferris-wheel ship catches fire but doesn't explode...

The show has a lot to explain in its final season, but they have 19 episodes to go, and one thing I'll say about BSG: they can cover a lot of ground very fast. These guys do not hold back and milk every mystery to death (ahem, Lost, I'm looking at you...) — I expect great things, big surprises.

A couple of welcome touches: We knew when Starbuck returned that she'd be greeted with suspicion and skepticism, but I was glad to see that they didn't just summarily chuck her in the brig like every other Cylon suspect (or perennial screwups like Apollo, Helo, and the Chief). Their suspicions were tempered by their genuine affection for Kara — they want so badly to believe her story, even though it's thoroughly unbelievable. And Kara, who seemed uncharacteristically serene when she reappeared at the end of last season, is back to her usual Starbuckian roguishness, and that's what's going to land her in the brig more than anything else.

And then there's Baltar: His storyline has been marinating in desperation, hallucination, torture, misery, and paranoia for so damn long, it's nice to see a little humor and wry irony injected into the character. They've morphed him from George W. Baltar into Julius and Ethel Baltar into Jesus H. Baltar all in the span of a single season. And now that he has his own personal harem of disciples, he is turning into one sleazy Jesus. A big tip of the hat to James Callis, who might very well steal the season, the way things are going.

All of this brings to mind what is the great and central irony of BSG: in 1978, the original Battlestar series was widely panned and dismissed as a cheap knockoff of Star Wars — which in many ways it was, if not in story, then at least in the particulars of its production. Star Wars used SFX carefully and deliberately, and to great effect, while Battlestar was infamous for its endlessly recycled and respliced SFX. Star Wars gave us a plot that widened and deepened with each new film; Battlestar shamelessly swiped its stories from the likes of Shane, Guns of Navarone, and Towering Inferno.

Today, it's Battlestar that's fresh, innovative, and compelling — the best thing to hit science fiction since Firefly — and Star Wars is now the disappointingly uninspired knockoff, with its stilted dialog and overreliance on SFX. Battlestar gives us a great story, a rich array of characters, and compelling drama; Star Wars (and you know I'm talking about the prequels here) is basically an 8-hour cartoon with really good music.

Case in point: If Lucas were helming Battlestar, that ferris-wheel ship totally would have exploded...

Play ball

2008-03-31T09:24:00.000-07:00

Happy Opening Day! I made it, you made it, we're here at last. Congratulations. (Never mind that it was snowing in Seattle 3 days ago — God also is entitled to his little jokes.)

So here we go. The Ms are, on paper, quite improved over last year, but as always, there are far too many variables on this team. For one thing, their 88-win record from last year was a huge confluence of luck, which may or may not roll over into this season (I'm not a die-hard stats junkie when it comes to baseball... I place very high value on the intangibles — especially little things like luck and fate).

The pitching looks very promising this year — if nothing else, Bedard-instead-of-Weaver has “tipping point” written all over it. If the bullpen (pretty much the same guys from last year, with long-relief knuckleballer Dickey thrown into the mix) can match their performance from last year, we are in business.

Offensively, there doesn't seem to be much cooking for the season, except of course for Ichiro, who will doubtlessly buttress his Hall-of-Fame stats with another 200-hitter. Wilkerson for Guillen in right has me worried. Say what you will about Guillen's attitude — he brought something to the team last year that has been missing ever since Piniella's departure. And Wilkerson? I just hope he stays out of the way of Ichiro, who will have to play center and right this year.

I expect consistent (above average, but not stellar) performances from the likes of Ibanez and Beltre. Ibanez will make up for his poor defense with his cool-headed clutch hitting and his role as de facto team captain; Beltre will make up for his soft offensive numbers with his glove. Behind the plate, we're solid — for me, Jamie Burke is the team's most reassuring bench presence since Mark McLemore (I do wish we still had Broussard, though).

Which brings us to the Big Variable. The mofo of all variables. It hardly seems fair (or statistically responsible) to place a whole season on one man's shoulders, but really: Richie Sexson will make or break this team. He's the only dedicated power-hitter on the squad, and given the share of the payroll he takes home, he has only one damn job to do: Drive. Them. In.

If opposing pitchers don't respect and fear the middle of our lineup, we haven't a chance. Sexson needs to be, must be, the Big Bad Ugly. Who else is gonna do it? Vidro? Ibanez? Beltre? In shifts, maybe, but not over the course of a whole season. Last year, Guillen shouldered much of the offensive responsibility. This year, there is no Plan B for power. Sexson has to produce. I won't be counting his strikeouts, but I'll be counting his LOBs for damn sure.

A big year for Sexson will give us a Division title. I think it really could be that simple, assuming the rest of the squad plays at least at 85% of their potential. Another toilet year from Sexson, and everyone else's performance will merely decide whether we finish 2nd or 4th.

No pressure, big guy.

Well OK, if you insist

2008-03-18T17:04:00.000-07:00

Don't usually meme much, but Tim posted this intriguing one:

Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
Open the book to page 123.
Find the fifth sentence.
Post the next three sentences.
Tag five people.

Which I couldn't resist, especially since the book nearest to me was AJ Rathbun's Good Spirits (yes, that fact says it all).

And wouldn't you know it? On page 123, one of my very favorite drinks, the Negroni. I give you sentences 5-7:

"Add the gin, Campari, and sweet vermouth. Stir thrice. Garnish with the orange twist."

Now that is literature.

Missing here is AJ's intro to the drink, which describes it as the "the Wonder Woman" of cocktails (Superman being the Martini; Batman the Manhattan). Therein lies another debate. But not just now — I have an orange to twist.

Oh yes, nearly forgot — consider yourself tagged.

Lighten up, Seattle, I'm in love with you

2008-03-09T10:28:00.000-07:00

Daylight Savings Time! Hallie-louie-yaw!

Love it though I do, it seems ridiculously early for DST to be kicking in. I think I'm going to miss the serendipitous calendrical alignment of my two favorite heralds of spring: Opening Day of baseball and the beginning of Daylight Savings. The two went so well together.

I'm not complaining, mind you. This 3-week jumpstart will make March a little less lion and lot more lamb. It will also render the prognostications of Punxsutawney Phil wholly irrelevant.

I only hope Pyramid has adjusted their Curve Ball distribution schedule accordingly. It is time.

Still here

2008-02-12T15:53:00.000-08:00

These days it's all work, Wyatt, wikis, and, I'll be honest, Guitar Hero III. What can I say? Rock 'n' roll stole my soul.

I just popped in real quick to raise a glass to three items of note and honor:

Roy Scheider. A real loss. A fantastic and underrated/underused actor. The king of lowkey delivery. Seriously, watch Jaws again, and pay attention to how Scheider underplays every line, every look — which is all the more remarkable when you realize just how over-the-top his costars go (the shark ain't the only one chewing scenery... Dreyfuss, Shaw, I'm looking at you). But even that must have been child's play compared to playing straight man to Gene Hackman The French Connection.
Geek Parenting. Here now is a blog! Dress your kids up like superheroes, get them started early on video games, grow them into geeks just like you. I'm in! The author even has a 1-year-old daughter named Lois Lane. I wonder if arranged marriages are still legal?
Guess what tomorrow is? Any guesses? Anyone? Tim, I know you know. That's right, it's the official light at the end of the tunnel: Pitchers and Catchers.

Hallelujah.

Damn.

2008-01-30T13:47:00.000-08:00

Edwards is out. So is Rudy.

I liked Edwards. A lot. He'll be back.

I also liked Rudy, though in a very different way — he was the one GOP candidate I thought Hillary could beat. And when it comes to Republicans, I'll take a pro-war/tough-on-crime one over a god/guns/gays one any day.

I'm terrified of a Hillary nomination because it would galvanize and mobilize the far right in way not seen since gay people tried to -- gasp! -- assert their right to actually live as families. Well, thank jebus that ludicrous notion got nipped in the bud, eh? And just for good measure, the united bigots of America gave us four more years of Bush while they were at it, because everyone knows dead soldiers, melting ice caps, and an economy in a tailspin are preferable to married gays.

Grrr.

Then again, there's always the chance that a Hillary nom would so outrage the right that they all simultaneously choke to death on their own bile. Is it too much to hope for?

Snoop jobby job

2008-01-19T15:34:00.000-08:00

This postlessness of January has a name, and it is Jay Oh Bee. As in a real job, job-type job.

I have joined the ranks of Wetpaint, a fine young Seattle startup comprising brilliant, energetic minds, among which I feel distinctly like the squad's little Timmy Lupus. Glad to be here — just don't hit the ball to me.

Really, though: wonderful people, exciting environment, fun work, great place to job. And it's in Pioneer Square, surrounded by good restaurants, just two blocks from the ballpark, and... (and!) situated on an express bus line that runs almost literally from my couch to my desk in under 30 minutes. After 15 years of hideous life-sucking, aneurysm-inducing commutes to the East Side, this is a very big deal (ouch — I just worked out the math on that, and it seems I've actually spent one whole year of my life on the road between Seattle and Kirkland-Redmond-Bellevue-Factoria).

The one downside is that it takes every ounce of my precious mental fluids just to keep up with these people, and thus suffers the after-hours blogging. Apologies for that.

Do take a peek at some of these excellent Wetpaint wikis. (If I spend my days on sites like these, it can't be that jobby a job-type job, can it?)

Enjoy:

Licensed to Kill: The James Bond Wiki
Zombie Survival & Defense
Free Rider Tracks
Dood Boobs
Mustache Aficionado
The Worst Album Covers of All Time

Happy 2008

2008-01-01T19:43:00.000-08:00

And good riddance to 2007!

If nothing else, 2008 holds the following prospects:

A new job, brimming with possiblilities.
My son's first steps, and first words.
The end of George W. Bush's so-called presidency.

On all counts, Hallelujah! And bring it on.

Creatures are stirring, and they ain't mice

2007-12-17T13:14:00.000-08:00

Rats. We have rats in our house. Already they have destroyed several items of Maus's (sigh) cookware, infected a large cabinet, and locked down the attic (the insulation up there looks like a giant poppyseed cake). Plus, one of them has completely ruined a major appliance. Major.

We've already purchased a replacement which arrives tomorrow. The plan is to fill the old one with cheese to get as many rats in it as possible before the Albert Lee guys haul it away.

Shmool has taken no action as of yet, though we can hardly fault him as his recent ailments have really taken the wind out of his sails. When I try to explain the situation to him, he gazes back at me with Dubya's My Pet Goat face. Sad.

We did call in a professional hit squad, and the house now has more booby-traps than the Cube. (I avoid them by staying in one room as much as possible.)

The cavalcade of grandparents begins this week, so over and out for the holidays. See you on the other side (in the big black of January).

I leave you with this broad face and little round belly, that shakes when he laughs, like a bowl full of jelly:

Thank God THAT'S over

2007-12-03T09:56:00.000-08:00

I've endured a handful of crappy months in my life: March 1987, November 1995, February 2002, January 2003 all come to mind. Of course, September 2001 was no picnic, and let us not forget November 2004, not ever.

But November 2007 — ah, what a little overachiever that one turned out to be. I shan't enumerate the details here, but suffice to say no quarter of my life, my household, or my body came through unbludgeoned.

But it's over now, and December arrived in Seattle like a white knight, first with an uncharacteristic layer of early snow — a brief consecration and benediction — immediately followed by an all-too-familiar pummeling of rain and wind, which even now is blasting and washing away the taint of November.

It is just damn miserable out there, and I'm infinitely grateful not to be out in it. From this warm and dry vantage, with all the calendars now flipped mercifully to the last page, I can take in the deluge with both relief and approval. And with Christmas with the Rat Pack playing soothingly in the background, I can set myself to figuring out exactly where, in this house now filled beyond capacity with baby toys, we're going to fit this year's tree.

By your command

2007-11-26T08:57:00.000-08:00

O Galactica, my Galactica...

They did it again — the brilliant minds behind the best show on television upped the ante for the long, long, long-awaited final season (now scheduled for March?!). If you caught the 2-hour special Razor last Saturday on Sci-Fi, and you're any kind of fan of the show (and especially if you're a fan of the original series), then like me, you're probably still glowing.

If nothing else, Galactica's grand run (3½ seasons, a miniseries, a TV movie, and a handful of “webisodes” spread liberally over a period of nearly 5 years) should go down in history as the best thing to happen to science fiction since Next Generation. And like TNG, Galactica proves once again that it's all about the writing. (Go WGA!)

A short list of what Razor managed to accomplish in only 2 hours:

We finally got to see some scenes from the original Cylon War, including a young Adama. Is it too much to hope that there might be the seeds of a spinoff “prequel” here?

We learned the origins of the Cylon-human hybrids, which turned out to be a lot more ghastly than I had imagined. Was anyone else reminded of the grotesque “Hall of Ripleys” from Alien Resurrection?

We discovered some interesting things about the end of the Cylon War and the motivations behind the so-called Armistice: the Cylons, the moment they perfected their first hybrid, promptly pulled up stakes, sued for peace, and withdrew to their own quiet corner of space, where they presumably began developing their 12 hybrid models and drawing up their long-term plans for humanity. Oh yeah, and somehow they found religion in the process. (Possibly from the half-mad ramblings of the first strain of hybrids? Wouldn't that be just too perfect?)

We learned how the Pegasus managed to escape the Cylon attack. The Galactica, after all, was (thought to be) the only Battlestar to survive because Adama refused to allow any networked systems on his ship, which protected the Galactica from the Cylon viruses that shut down the rest of the Colonial defenses. Turns out, by a twist of sheer luck, the networks aboard Pegasus were shut down for an upgrade at the time of the attack. That, and Admiral Cain's hail-Mary “jump to anywhere,” are the only reasons she survived. One of those small twists that changes everything — like the American carriers being at sea when the Japanese hit Pearl Harbor.

We got to see the three apocryphal stories about Admiral Cain: the execution of her first XO, the massacre of civilian survivors, and best of all, the backstory of the Six (“Gina”*) aboard Pegasus. Makes me want to rewatch those Season 2 episodes where Pegasus first appears — the treatment of Gina, and her final confrontation with Cain, take on a whole new light now.

We were even treated to a very cleverly inserted tie-in to the Season 3 cliffhanger (where Kara says she's going to show them the way to Earth) and the Season 4 previews (which shows a straightjacketed Kara lying in a cell screaming “We're going the wrong way!”). In Razor, the first Cylon hybrid warns Kendra that Kara Thrace will lead humanity to ruin. Cylon trick? Religious dementia? I'll tell you what it is — it's another huge brick in the wall of What's Going On that Season 4 has to hurdle. And unlike Lost, which deals with its own walls of mystery by building new walls to try and distract us, I have a feeling Battlestar is going to crash us headlong into that One Big Wall. Which is exactly why Season 4 is, and probably has to be, the last season.

Finally, and best of all, we got to see some classic 1978 Cylons. The disc-shaped Raiders, the shiny synth-voiced Centurions (for all American males my age, the gold standard of cool robots), and oh yes, they even gave us the line “By your command.” With relish. It was a love letter to those of us so geekily enamored of that show that we can still remember the correct 7-switch sequence required to launch a Colonial Viper.*

OK, I'm ready for Season 4 now. Let the frak begin.

* I've read that the name “Gina” is a wink at the fanboys so fanatically devoted to the original series that they totally discount the new series out of hand, referring to it amongst themselves as “Gino” (Galactica In Name Only). Like them, I was skeptical when I first read about this “re-imagining” of the original, but now I find it almost incomprehensible that there could be any holdouts left. This show has so thoroughly transcended the original, that to still be miffed over the gender of Starbuck seems like the zenith of petty quibbling. They're only cheating themselves.

After all, if you're going to pick up a series 20 years after the original was canceled, you have to bring the show forward (again, see Next Generation).

My heroes

2007-11-12T09:42:00.000-08:00

My new favorite photo, taken on Halloween:

Kal-El and Lara? Not quite — a careful study reveals that Maus is in fact wearing a Bizarro t-shirt. But maybe it would have been more appropriate to dress her in a glowing white tunic.

Next year.

Bwa ha ha ha ha

2007-10-31T15:04:00.000-07:00

Halloween. Damn, I love it.

Earlier this morning, Dr. Vornoff was consumed by a giant (yet strangely lethargic) octopus. And only minutes ago, Michael Myers was skewering and parboiling nurses in Haddonfield Memorial. Even as I type this, the Blob is devouring every teenager in the local movie theater.

And before the night is over, the bedroom doors of Hill House will bulge malevolently, the ghost of Peter Quint will turn the screw on Deborah Kerr, and an aviator beagle will surely arise from Linus's sincere pumpkin patch.

And as for the costume in which I plan to greet trick-or-treaters at the door, my chief weapon is surprise. Surprise and fear...

In honor of the day, I give you my abridged Horror Film Hall Of Fame:

Scariest: For jumps, jolts, and sheer dread, there are two movies that cannot be topped: Alien and The Shining. No other film brings all the elements of horror together nearly as effectively as these masterpieces. I've seen them both a thousand times, and they still scare the hell out of me. (A subset of “Scariest” would be “Most Frightening” — movies that get you not so much with jumps, but with escalating tension. These are films that get you yelling at the screen, like Hitchcock's masterpieces Psycho and Rear Window.)

Most Terrifying: I distinguish “terrifying” from “scary” in the sense that many things can give you a scare, but only something real (or at least believable) can really terrify you. A good scare fades in time, but terror stays with you. In this category, Jaws is king. Sharks are the real deal. They actually do swim around out there and chomp stuff, including people. They can come right up from below you, and literally eat you alive. And you can't see them coming. Terrifying. Frak the ocean.

Most Horrifying: This category generally includes the films that really hit you down deep. This is the movie you either can't bring yourself to watch, or after you do, wish you hadn't. The Exorcist is mine. Although I have seen it several times, I don't think I've ever enjoyed it (and I usually fast-forward through the middle third). The performances are great, as is the filmmaking, which is why I still watch it every few years. But man, it will just ruin your day.

Most Disturbing: These babies aren't so much scary as just plain wrong. Shudder-inducers, usually with a nausea chaser: Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes, etc. Of course, the movie that gets crowned Emperor-For-Life in this category is the grotesque, sweaty, oily ordeal of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

The next three categories are, in fact, distinct from one other, but I can't really put my finger precisely on the distinction. I can't articulate it, anyway. But here they are, and hopefully you get the idea:

Creepiest: Rosemary's Baby

Eeriest: Carnival of Souls

Most Unsettling: The Blair Witch Project

And last (and also least), one can hardly talk horror without giving a nod to viscera, ooze, and splurt:

Most Nauseatingly Gory: Dead Alive

Most Beautifully Gory: Suspiria

Most Inventively Gory: The Thing

Happy Samhain. Don't read aloud any incantations from the Book of the Dead, don't say “Candyman” into the mirror, and for the love of Pete, don't go into Room 237. Stay out, you hear me? Stay out.

Nice

2007-10-22T13:06:00.001-07:00

The Red Sox did it again. I have to confess I was pulling for the Tribe on this one, but still, you can't begrudge the Sox another grand comeback in the ALCS. The important thing is that both clubs (the two best teams in the AL this year) gave us a damn good 7-game show.

How can you not like this team? Tek, Youk, Coco, Wake, Dice? And hats off to Dustin Pedroia, the rookie hero of Game 7. I'm not much of a Manny fan, though. Even though his offensive numbers more than make up for his shortcomings in character, I still have a hard time watching bozos who don't — or just won't — play the whole game. In the field and on the bases, Manny might as well be wearing a chicken suit.

[It's ironic that, to me anyway, the player who best exemplifies the right way to play the game, the man who more than any other has his head in the game and on the field — the Anti-Manny, so to speak—would be the poster-boy of the accursed Yankees, Derek Jeter.]

But then, but then, but then.... there's Papi.

Is there a greater man in the game of baseball right now? He's the closest thing we have (or are ever likely to have) to another Babe Ruth. His DH status (unfairly) means he's a long-shot for an MVP, but one look at his cumulative effect on the Red Sox since 2003 tells you all you need to know. If we're truly witnessing the birth of a new baseball dynasty, then Ortiz must be crowned Emperor.

So it's Sox v. Rox now. Wow. I only hope the Law of Conservation of Momentum still applies to the Rockies after a weeklong hiatus (the downside of a sweep). Because it's going to take a lot more than brilliant defense to shut down these Sox.

Night takes Bishop

2007-10-19T09:42:00.000-07:00

The Rat Pack is finally no more. Bogart passed away 1957, Lawford in '84, Sammy in '90, Dino in '95, and the Chairman in '98 (not to mention the Sands Hotel in '96). Now Joey Bishop has gone to the Summit in the Sky, where presumably he is many, many rounds behind. Interesting that Rat Pack “mascots” Shirley MacLaine and Angie Dickinson are still with us, as is the “Den Mother” who first described this gang as a pack of rats.

That leaves only one of the (original) Ocean's Eleven still alive — and of course it would be the meanest-looking bastard of the bunch.

This week's big loss, though is the great and gorgeous Deborah Kerr, who famously rolled in the surf with Lancaster and somehow even made a leading man out of Yul Brynner. This close to Halloween, it's only fitting that we remember her first and foremost for her scare-selling performance in one of the all-time great ghost stories, The Innocents:

Mid-October cutdown

2007-10-11T09:16:00.000-07:00

The fall TV season is nearing the end of its third full week, which means it's time to make the first round of Tivo cuts. This year we invited six new shows to camp — as of last night, three have made the roster, one is on probation, and two have been red-tagged.

The winners:

Cane. Didn't expect much from this show — in fact, what landed it on the tryout list was the cast: Jimmy Smits, Nestor Carbonell (formerly the smooth-talking Other on Lost), Polly Walker (formerly the “Lady MacAntony” Atia on Rome), and the best mom-and-dad sparring combo since Stockard Channing and Martin Sheen — Rita Moreno and Hector Elizondo.

This show launched itself right into the neutral zone between The Godfather, The Sopranos, and Dallas, with all the Shakespearian undertones one would expect to find there. It's so brimming with potential, the biggest pitfall the writers will face is the temptation to do too much in the first season. I can just hear the network execs screaming for a new Sopranos, but honestly, I think if they're going to cheat in any one direction, they should cheat towards Dallas. With just a little bit of restraint, a little deft sidestepping of some obvious plot-traps, this could be the best new show of the season.

Dirty Sexy Money. Where Peter Krause goes, we follow. Maus and I loved Six Feet Under, and over the summer we devoured both seasons of Sports Night on DVD. If there's one guy who can convey “dear-God-what-have-I-gotten-myself-into?” with one expression, it's this guy. Unlike Cane, this show need not show restraint — the fixings are in place for another Arrested Development here. And if there's any pair that will give Hector Elizondo and Rita Moreno a run for their money this year, it's Donald Sutherland and Jill Clayburgh.

Expect at least three of those four names to come up around Golden Globe and Emmy time.

Back to You. The sitcom should be dead by now, shouldn't it? In the post-Friends-Frasier-Raymond world dominated by Lost, Heroes, and Housewives, isn't the 30-minute chain of punchlines a dinosaur? Last year, I would have said How I Met Your Mother was the last of the species (kept alive single-handedly by Neil Patrick Harris). But maybe not.

I don't know if Back to You (which carries on its back the ghosts of Cheers, Frasier, and Raymond) will ever be greater than the sum of its parts, but it does make me laugh. And surprisingly, it seems to ignore the sitcom formulas of the 90s and goes back to the pre-Seinfeld sitcom formula of the late 1980s: don't be clever, just be funny. If you've been watching this show, I can tell you precisely the moment that I was sold: it was the day the goldfish kept dying. All of a sudden it felt like 1986, Thursday night, NBC.

Still in the running:

Journeyman. It's Quantum Leap. I keep wishing they'd do something to make this show Not Quantum Leap, but after three episodes I'm still waiting for Dean Stockwell to appear in a garish shirt-and-tie combo. I haven't given up: Kevin McKidd is good, and some of the time-twists have been interesting (especially the ones where his leaps — I'm sorry, I mean “travels”— intersect with his own earlier life). But I'm still waiting for something to give this show a real hook. How about Ray Stevenson as Kevin McKidd's sidekick? Now that would be a show.

Hit the showers, rookies:

Bionic Woman. Too bad. I was such a fan of the Lindsay Wagner show, and this seemed to have everything going for it, not the least of which was its unmistakable Battlestar Galactica pedigree. Good cast, good writers, good concept. But, alas, yaaaaaaawn. There is nothing, nothing new here. Blow away the thin vapor of a plot, and you're left with a decent Katee Sackhoff performance worthy of a much better show.

The original Jamie Sommers was thoughtful, brave, vulnerable, always reluctant to use her powers, and most importantly, cared about by the people who had “built” her. What she was not was an ass-kicking, rogue super-assassin forced against her will to work for a clandestine government operation. Bourne Identity, Universal Soldier, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dark Angel, and Alias all did the same thing, and did it much better. Actually, there is one way in which Bionic Woman does outdo Buffy — they've somehow managed to give us a younger sister even more annoying than Dawn. If you can believe it.

Private Practice. Maus's show, not mine. But she's such a Grey's Anatomy addict that this seemed like a no-brainer. So much hype, so much buildup — I don't remember the last time a show was spun off with this much sheer momentum. But pffffft... plunk. Even Chevy Chase didn't fall this flat this fast.

That's OK — 3 out of 6, with a 4th still in the running, isn't bad. Besides, it's only 6 weeks until Galactica: Razor premieres, and then everybody can just step the frak aside.

There they go...

2007-10-09T12:06:00.001-07:00

Once again the Yankees fall short, and there is much rejoicing...

It looks like Torre is going to be the fall guy this year. Which is completely absurd, given how managed to right a doomed ship this season. The Bombers' run after the All-Star break (43-43 before; 51-25 after) was near miraculous, and if they'd made it all the way to the Series, he'd be hands-down the AL Manager of the Year. (He still could be.)

Unfortunately, the guy the Yankees really need to unload is the one guy they can't get rid of.

And here it comes...

2007-10-09T10:25:00.000-07:00

Drool...

Hm.

2007-10-08T10:05:00.000-07:00

Cubs? Swept. Phillies? Swept. Angels? Swept. This postseason sure looked a whole lot more exciting on paper.

Apparently, the key to winning this October is simply momentum. Objects in motion tend to remain in motion; objects at rest tend to go home early.

But we still have the Indians-Yankees, a great matchup. Looks like Byrd v. Wang tonight (Torre moving up his ace; Wedge sticking to his rotation). I like it. The Tribe can go to Sabathia anytime they like (maybe in the 9th with the bases loaded and Heywood at the plate?), while the Yanks' hopes will ultimately be pinned on Pettitte and/or Mussina.

The two Championship Series promise to be more exciting than the World Series this year — of the six possible WS matchups, is there even one where the AL team isn't the heavy favorite? As much as I'd enjoy watching the Rockies steamroll the Yankees, I just can't work out how that happens. D-backs vs. Red Sox? Hm. Looks like a rout to me.

But then, I didn't see the D-backs pulling it out in 2001, either.

The Rockies win it! The Rockies win it! OH MY GOD the Rockies win it!

2007-10-02T11:44:00.001-07:00

Sorry. Channeling a little Bob Uecker there.

But damn what a game. I was pulling for the Padres a little, because I like their team. But then, I've also always liked a lot of the guys on Colorado's roster — Matt Holliday in particular. And what a great run they had at the end, right out of Major League (though I doubt they were tearing little swatches of clothing off the Monfort brothers every time they won). So to see Holliday sliding into home (sort of) on a sacrifice in the bottom of the 13th... well, it was the best postseason moment since Dave Roberts stole 2nd in the 9th inning.

I feel bad for the Padres, or at least I did until the camera cut to their dugout and I saw the dejection on their faces. And then it all came back to me: 1984. Cubs-Padres. And once more the long-dormant hate swelled up in me, and my corneas turned Sith-yellow, and I bellowed in a dark-side growl, “Yessssss. Suck it up, Padres! Only now, at the end, do you understand!”

Then I felt bad again. After all, these Padres were not those Padres. This was Cammie! And Peavy. And Maddux, for crying out loud. Even their color scheme is completely different.

In the end though, I think I'll feel better (safer, anyway) with the Cubbies in a postseason that doesn't include any Padres.

Now (speaking of Major League), if the Indians can just knock out the Yankees, we'll really have something here.

Octoberfester

2007-10-01T09:07:00.000-07:00

You couldn't have planned it better: Seattle's first day of real rain — cold, heavy, oppressive rain — came on the very last day of September, which happened to fall on a Sunday, and also happened to be the last day of the regular baseball season. Watching the last Mariners game in a dark house against the background noise of heavy rain on the roof was, somehow, perfect. (As Tom Waits observed, the rain sounds like a round of applause.)

Transitions don't get much tighter than that. This year, September's dissolve into October was more of a jump-cut. And it hammered home just how much, over the last four or five years, I've come to love October.

By all rights, October should be my least favorite month, given my love of summer and all the things that come with it. The cold, wet darkness of autumn in Seattle should be anathema to me (and on that point, autumn in Seattle only lasts one month: September is really late-summer, and November is dead-of-winter). But somehow, every year I'm surprised at how warmly I embrace this segue into darkness.

For one thing, the heat comes back on and the warm clothes come back out. There are few things as comforting as the roar of our jet-engine furnace and the squeeze of thick socks. And then there's post-season baseball, which I admit hasn't been of much interest to me since the disasters of '03 and the miracles of '04. But this year, the Cubbies, D-Backs, and Indians are all in it, which is more than enough to make me sit up and pay attention.

But I think the real reason I love October — at least, the thing that seals the deal — is the prospect of a whole month of nonstop horror movies. The rest of the year, I'm not much inclined to focus on the gory and the macabre. But on October 1, when the temperatures drop, the clouds roll in low, and the darkness settles in, I want three things: Couch. Blanket. Zombies.

I don't own many horror movies on DVD, nor do I go out and rent them. No, each October, I put the Tivo to work. I search the late-night schedules, looking for creepy Italian giallo horror like Tenebrae and Suspiria, unnerving 1960s black-and-whites like The Haunting and Carnival of Souls, and “Terror in the Aisles” stalwarts like Carrie, Alone in the Dark, and Scanners. And once a year, please, give me Devil's Rain.

Two postscripts:

1. The 2007 Mariners. The Season of Almost. When you look at their stats, their record, the strength of their bullpen, and the even distribution of offensive production throughout their lineup (notably, from the bench), it's hard not to lament that this year they were really just one starting pitcher away from the postseason. And I'm not talking about an ace here — a 12-game winner would have done the trick. Just swap Horacio Ramirez for a Joe Blanton or a Scott Kazmir. Or swap Jeff Weaver for, say, Jered Weaver. 88 wins becomes 94 wins, and a Wild Card spot if not a division title.

2. Miss Moneypenny. Lois Maxwell died over the weekend. I never knew she was Canadian — which means that of all the original Bond regulars, Bernard Lee was the only Englishman (Sean Connery is Scottish, Desmond Llewelyn was Welsh). She was also in The Haunting. So there. Pulled it full circle, didn't I?

You gotta be frakking kidding

2007-09-11T14:54:00.000-07:00

Well, not much more to say about the Ms, except maybe just the word plummet. I'd attach a WAV of one of Wile E. Coyote's many precipitous freefalls, but what's the point? We've been here before, haven't we? I suppose the darker side of my soul is reflected by the fact that I'm less bitter about the Ms' Kramer-like pratfall out of contention than I am about the Yankees' Kramer-like entrance into yet another post-season. Boo. Hiss.

In other news:

Jane Wyman died. 93 years old; nominated for 4 Oscars (1 win), 2 Emmys, and 4 Golden Globes (3 wins); a career that includes some of the best films of the 40s and 50s: The Lost Weekend, The Yearling, Johnny Belinda, The Glass Menagerie, Stage Fright, and my personal favorites, the Douglas Sirk masterpieces Magnificent Obsession and All That Heaven Allows (gorgeously remade by Todd Haynes in 2002 as Far From Heaven).

And every headline I read about her this week reduced her to this: “Reagan's Ex.” For crying out loud. I mean, he was still a Democrat when they divorced in 1948, and her career as an actor completely eclipses his (his trophy shelf consists of a Razzie and a Golden Boot).

Seriously, shame on you people. Boo. Hiss.

And then:

3:10 to Yuma is out!

Haven't seen it yet, but I'm savoring the anticipation. The original with Glenn Ford is one of my favorite Westerns of all time, and I have to admit this remake looks far too kinetic to be a faithful adaptation of Elmore Leonard's original story. Still, the reviews I've heard give me high hopes — despite my previous reservations. After all, it wouldn't be the first time that a tense, contained, dialog-driven classic, based on a celebrated short story, was successfully remade into an explosive, big-budget action thriller. I have faith in Mangold. Give us something to cheer for.

Fatherhood, real and imagined

2007-09-10T19:07:00.000-07:00

Here's how Wyatt and I spin it:

But here's how we like it:

The Alternative Factor

2007-08-22T11:16:00.000-07:00

The Ms have the third best record in all of baseball — better than any team in the National League, and behind only the Red Sox and Angels in the AL. How about that?

At the moment they're losing to Minnesota, 0-8 in the 5th, so it looks like their 5-game winning streak won't last the day. But the real news is that in August, Ibanez's offensive numbers have tripled, and Jeff Weaver (pictured) hasn't lost a game.

After the nightmare that was August 2006, it would seem this club is balancing the scales at last.

And in other News of the Highly Improbable, the Cubs and Brewers are fighting for domination of the NL Central while the Cards and Astros are just trying to claw their way past the .500 mark. And in the AL Central, the Royals actually have a chance to climb out of the cellar at the expense of the White Sox. The 2005 World Champions? Yes, those White Sox.

The polarity of the universe has shifted. But what of Lazarus? What of Lazarus?

My life in one photo

2007-08-13T14:27:00.000-07:00

If you include the woman behind the camera, then it's all here:

Wham bam van damme alakazam

2007-07-31T16:19:00.000-07:00

Pronouncements, observations, and reflections of the week (3 posts squashed into one — I'm busy, whaddaya want?):

Wham bam

A 7-game losing streak is considerably less ominous when followed by a 4-game winning streak. The Ms are now 14-13 for July (the Angels are only 11-12, which also helps a great deal) — so the worst that could happen is they break even for the month, and last night's win means the worst possible outcome of this so-called “do-or-die”series would be that they fall one game in standings.

What we have here is a real race going into August. And since neither club seems poised to make any big deals before tonight's trade deadline, it's very likely going to come down to the Angels' offensive power vs. the Mariners' pitching and defense in this division. This is fun, this baseball.

PS - For the record, the Cubbies are only 1 behind the Brewers — which means there are going to be a lot of clenched sphincters around Wyatt's grandfather's house this August as well.

Van Damme

Speaking of Wyatt, he turned 2 months old on Sunday, 9 weeks old today. And speaking of clenching, he's rolled out a brand new kind of cry for us — it starts out loud, full, and steady, then descends into his gut as he slowly runs out of air but strains to keep it going. It ends as a long, deep growl fading into a silent, open-mouthed grimace. The only comparison that comes close would be the sound Jean-Claude Van Damme makes when he hits his opponents in Bloodsport:

Wyatt has also learned how to punch us in the face, so for us parenthood may very well turn out to be our own private Kumite.

Alakazam

Of last year's two turn-of-the-century-European-magician movies, The Illusionist is better than The Prestige. Most people seem to disagree with this assessment, so I will enumerate my reasons three:

Hitchcock vs. Mamet. The mystery of The Illusionist appears to be complex and surreal and impenetrable, but the truth behind it turns out to be quite simple. The truth in The Prestige, on the other hand, becomes increasingly complicated and twisted as the film progresses.

The Illusionist (like Hitchcock) removes the layers of a seemingly supernatural mystery to reveal a simple, even obvious, truth. As with Rear Window, Vertigo, Psycho, and North By Northwest, everything in The Illusionist seems much more sinister and twisted than it really is.

On the other hand, The Prestige (like Mamet) layers new truths upon truths until the only thing we know for sure is that “truth” is going to continue twisting back on itself until the credits roll. The former method requires careful and deliberate filmmaking; the latter is more of an exercise in being clever and devious.
Paul Giamatti (et al). After American Splendor, Sideways, Cinderella Man, and now The Illusionist, anyone who doesn't see Giamatti as one of the most talented and nuanced performers of his generation simply isn't paying attention. And regardless of how they handled the billing on the posters or in the credits — in The Illusionist, Giamatti is clearly the leading actor.

Besides Giamatti, there's Edward Norton, who's always good — we already knew that. And then there's Rufus Sewell, who we haven't seen since Dark City, but still expect to be good (and he is). And finally, we learn something new: We learn that Jessica Biel, when properly clothed, can also be good.

The Prestige also had a fine cast, but it looked something like a collision of Batman Begins and Scoop. For their part, Jackman and Bale are both fine actors (and superheroes), but neither of them holds a candle to Norton when it comes to suggesting a quiet, sinister darkness behind the kind face.
Summon the Cinemagician. The soft light, warm hues, and gentle flicker of the The Illusionist conjure up comparisons with the great Georges Méliès — himself a magician as well as Europe's greatest turn-of-the-century filmmaker. There's even a scene in the film that suggests that early motion-picture trickery (of which Méliès was the master) could be the secret behind Norton's most amazing — and disturbing — illusions.

Get it back! Get it back!

2007-07-26T19:33:00.000-07:00

Game 100 of the season, and the Ms have lost 6 in a row. Not good, not good.

But. They've come home to Safeco, where hopefully they can turn this around (they're .633 at home this season, compared to .460 on the road). And with 4 games against Oakland followed by 3 against L.A., the time to turn this around is right funking now.

But. Weaver's pitching. And has already given up 5 hits (including two HRs) in the first 2 innings.

But. Richie just answered with one of his own. (If two guys embody the ups and downs of the Mariners this year, it's Weaver and Sexson.) And Ichiro just moved Yuni from first to third on a beautiful 2-strike/2-out hit & run.

So there's hope. And 62 games, 7 innings, and 1 out to go.

World Series time

2007-07-15T16:58:00.000-07:00

Baseball good!

Maus and Wyatt gave me a 5-hour furlough on Friday so I could get down to Safeco for my first post-baby ballgame. Maus even gave me a $50 Mariners gift card to spend! ($10 of it went to beer; I dropped the rest in that kids' shop by the play area in center field. Of course.)

Great to be back at the park after a 3-month hiatus. The Ms lost, thanks to a Sheffield grand slam (which Kenji, bless him, negated last night with one of his own), but the highlight of the evening was the announcement of Ichiro's 5-year contract extension, which brought the house down. (The Ichiro highlight reel set to OK Go's Here It Goes Again takes the prize for best clip montage I've ever seen at Safeco.)

Plus, Seattle's only 3 back in the AL West and 2 back in the Wild Card. Momentum!

The other highlight of the week is the return of VH1's World Series of Pop Culture. This is worth watching just for the fantastic team names: I Y Jake Ryan. Ronnie, Bobby, Ricky, and Mike. Fra-gee-lay. They're Real And They're Spectacular. Carlton Banks Dance Academy.

Sadly, all the best-named teams have already been eliminated from this year's tourney except for Fra-Gee-Lay. But Maus and I are having a grand time coming up with pop-culture team names of our own:

They Got The Mustard Out
Nobody's Listening Anyway
(or Juuust A Bit Outside)
They Mostly Come At Night Mostly
The Regal Beagles
The Screaming Vikings
Bought, Sold, and Processed
Physics Club Banquet
Baby Fishmouth
(or Don't F*** With Mr. Zero)
Fifty Bucks, Grandpa
Zero Point Zero
Those Aren't Pillows

We could keep spitting these out all day. We often do.

12 games

2007-07-02T13:40:00.000-07:00

The Ms are 12 games above .500.

I just wanted to write that down and click PUBLISH.

They've won eight in a row. (PUBLISH again.)

They haven't played this well since 2003 (when they were a much better team, at least on paper). And strangely enough, it's the bench and bullpen that seem to be driving this surge ahead. We have six players batting over .290, and half of them are 2nd-stringers (and unfortunately, two of them are catchers). Can we sit Sexson and let him spell Broussard a couple times a week, instead of the other way around? And I wonder if Burke can play left field?

And then there's Weaver, who has pitched, no kidding, three great games in a row. (I half expect to get an error message when I click PUBLISH on that one.)

And J.J. The best closer in baseball this year, handily.

It's all very exciting, very heartening, and it also seems a little tenuous. But I'm glad it's happening now, right in the meat of the season as we appraoch the All-Star Break (and the trade deadline). It's great time to be gaining momentum and emerging as a contender.

I don't know how Hargrove's bewilderingly sudden exit will affect their momentum, but I have a hunch that McLaren is the best set of hands for this team to fall into. He's a warm guy, has been with the team a long time, and he's just a little bit Lou.

This is fun. Winning is fun.

PUBLISH that.

Now THAT was a long month

2007-06-30T12:37:00.000-07:00

On June 1 we were still in the hospital. Exhausted, injured, hypermedicated, and totally flummoxed by these strange new sciences of swaddling and diapering.

29 days, 200 diapers, 40 visitors, 6 doctor appointments, 3 pounds of baby fat, 100 episodes of The West Wing, 30 ballgames, and countless wrecks of both The Old 97 and The Edmund Fitzgerald later: Still exhausted. But salty dogs when it comes to parental origami.

I remember June 1991 was a long month. December 1995, January 1999, October 2003 — all seemed interminable. But June 2007? June 2007 was a whole lifetime.

Already Wyatt is sporting a beer belly and male-pattern baldness. Already he has honed his keen sense of comic timing, as evidenced by his flatulent rimshots (he shares a birthday with both JFK and Bob Hope — and so far, he seems more influenced by the latter).

He still enjoys a good singalong, though, and loves to talk baseball. I've found I can hold his attention by calling out the lineup of the 2001 Mariners, and he lights up, smiling ear to ear, when I get to “At first base, number 5: John Ooooooooooooleruuuuuud!”

He even knows how and when to lie, and who to lie to. I know this because he has a special set of cries that he uses only if his mother is in the room.

It's going to be a long 18 years, isn't it?

It's all I got

2007-06-22T10:53:00.000-07:00

Was going to post a tribute to umpires. Or to the solstice in Seattle. Or to The West Wing. Or to La Dolce Vita. I admire all these things and was going to try to do them some justice this week.

But who am I kidding? I only have one arrow in my quiver these days. I don't really want to be one of those you-will-now-look-at-my-baby fathers, but well, there it is.

You will now look at my baby.

Vampire? Cinematographer? Antelope? Peeping Tom?

Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you. Here, between you, me, the tree, the rock... everywhere. Yes. Even between the tray, and the bottle.

Joe Cocker sings the blues. Again and again and again.

Is it just me, or is Wyatt looking rather presidential here?

He's a scandal, honey. He's a little outlaw. He ain't too good.

Thank God for baseball and grandmas

2007-06-11T14:53:00.001-07:00

I know, I know. It sounds like a sappy gol-bless-merica platitude. (You forgot motherhood and apple pie...)

Still. If it weren't for those two institutions, the last two weeks would have left me little more than a gelatinous blob.

GrammaMaus is with us and has been a tremendous help — every extra hour of sleep, every hot shower, every load of clean dishes, every afternoon nap, we owe to her. We even got out of the house for a hamburger the other day, which right now is like a weekend in Paris.

And then there's baseball — before fatherhood, I would watch a full game in real time every now and then, but usually just skimmed through games at 4x speed on Tivo, picking out the scoring situations and big plays and getting through a full game in under an hour.

Now, I watch every pitch of every game. Every replay. Every commercial. Pregame and postgame shows. It fits into my day so easily, so perfectly, it almost makes me believe baseball was invented specifically as therapy for sleep-deprived fathers. It's so reassuring, so comfortable — it makes me feel like a grounded human being. Dave Niehaus is my Mister Rogers.

(And and and! The Ms are playing the Cubbies this week — which for me is like the Beatles sharing a bill with Bob Dylan.)

And while I'm at it, thank God also for Johnny Cash. Because it seems nothing soothes our little outlaw like songs about train wrecks, hangings, and hard time.

The 11 PM psychosis

2007-06-03T12:20:00.000-07:00

Day 5 of parenthood, and I now have a strong enough dataset to support the following paradigm of the entropic onset of mental exhaustion in a closed postnatal system over a typical 15-hour period:

fig. 1) The happy parents at 8 AM.

fig. 2) The happy parents at 11 PM.

The good news is that by 10 AM the next day, we've completed the cycle back to fig. 1.

Better than Abbey Road

2007-06-02T16:34:00.000-07:00

For the first time in six days, Maus is sleeping, Wyatt is sleeping, Linus is sleeping, Shmool is sleeping, and I'm just barely hanging on. Why? I give you God's gift to parents of newborns:
This masterwork has one track, 60 minutes long and more brilliant than a Bonham drum solo. Crank this puppy up to 11, and it will change your life. Seriously. As a good friend once observed, “it has influenced everything that came after or before it.”

Wyatt went zonk only 45 seconds into the crashing overture. Maus soon followed. Then the dog. (To be fair, the cat was already asleep.) I just looked out the front door and the mailman is passed out on our front steps.

Fortunately I am... immune... to its... effects... . . . . . .

Wyatt

2007-05-30T14:49:00.000-07:00

There's a new sheriff in town:

Wyatt Andrew Bohlmann

born Tuesday, May 29, 2007 - 6 PM sharp

7 lbs. 10 oz. / 20 inches long

Everybody's exhausted, but everybody's fine.

Come on kid, time to get the hell out of Dodge...

2007-05-26T10:41:00.000-07:00

Today's John Wayne's 100th birthday — and we were hoping it would also be Chester's 0th birthday. That's not looking too likely at this point, although we did log about a dozen scattered contractions last night. As of this morning, things have settled down in there.

At this point, we'll entertain any theories at all (courtesy MegaBuzz):

Provided by MegaBuzz.com

[sound of crickets]

2007-05-24T15:30:00.000-07:00

Still waiting. No news.

Six days overdue now, and the kid is just kicking back in there like he was in a Barcalounger with a beer fridge in the armrest. Oh, we've had a few contractions here and there, but I think that's just him popping the legrest up and down.

Baby Day

2007-05-18T14:14:00.000-07:00

May 18! We've been eyeing this day on our calendars for long time now. And here we are. As Willy Wonka said, "The suspense is terrible -- I hope it lasts!"

I hope it doesn't last, actually. We're ready, and waiting for a sign from within. As Hudson said, "So far, zippo."

Today's also Maus's first official day of maternity leave -- we marked double-occasion with breakfast at Dish down on Leary. And who do we run into there? Our OB!

Is that a sign? And if so, is it a good sign? I was hoping we'd be running into her today, but not at breakfast, exactly.

Shmool softener

2007-05-16T12:47:00.000-07:00

Two days to our due date. Still no word from our man on the inside. The doctor remarked earlier this week that our son seems really happy, comfortable, and content right where he is. That's my Maus — always the perfect hostess, always keeping the guests comfy and well fed.

This cat, however, is not the cat I've known for 12 years. Whether he's picking up on the vibe of the new hire soon joining our team, or he's been softened by the loss of his brother, or he's just mellowing with age, one thing's clear — Shmool has become, for lack of a better term, a real pussycat.

Used to be, when he'd follow us around meowing in his distinctive warbly twang, he wanted food! Service! Hop to it, man! Now, he still follows us around murmuring that insistent drawl of his, but more often than not he just wants to be picked up and held. He wants belly rubs. He purrs.

All of this is new. For as long as I can remember, the belly has been streng verboten! (as has all contact more than three inches from his head and neck). And I'd always believed his purr-motor was missing or defective (like R2-D2's leg rockets, this is a gadget I never knew he had). Now he's all laps and massages and even (gasp!) the occasional affectionate lick.

Which of course would be completely fine, even welcome in our sans-Fabio household, except that all too soon our available laptime is going to plummet suddenly and alarmingly. And I fear the backlash.

Then again, maybe he'll warm to the baby the same way he seems to be warming to the rest of us. Maybe he'll take the kid under his protection. Lord knows this house has seen stranger things.

Chester Festus

2007-05-11T14:07:00.000-07:00

One week!

One week to Maus's due date, that is. Which means we could be waiting around until as late as Memorial Day, or we could be on the job tonight. Chester Festus (my father's in-utero nickname for his grandson-to-be) appears to be lined up and limbered up and on his mark, and now we just have to wait for the starter's pistol.

Everything is in readiness — as far as I can tell, anyway. Probably there are a million unturned stones that won't even present themselves until after the fact, but at least the steady and unrelenting influx of packages from Babies R Us is reassuring. With this much stuff, we must be ready for anything.

Except a girl, that is. Here's hoping that ultrasound guy knows his business.

We have a nice manly name chosen and are ready to use it. Unfortunately I'm still bound by Maus's gag order, and can't give any hints.

I'm pretty sure I wouldn't even be allowed to divulge that there are two hints hidden somewhere in this post. Or even three. I mean, if there were hints hidden in this post. Which of course I'm not allowed to reveal. Whether there are hints or not, that is. I'm not allowed to say. You didn't hear it from me, OK?

Quandary!

2007-05-04T12:34:00.000-07:00

Egad.

Tomorrow is both The Kentucky Derby and Cinco de Mayo. What to do? Mint Juleps or Margaritas? Bourbon or tequila? (To do both sounds neither very smart nor very appetizing.)

Those of you who know me (or have read the title of this blog) know only too well where I'm likely to fall on this issue. Besides, julep season only lasts about a month, whereas margaritas are de rigeur throughout Daylight Savings Time (which Congress so thoughtfully extended for us this year).

Then again, I have to admit that on a sunny weekend afternoon, a tart, refreshing lime-and-tequila libation does sound more appealing than an oversweetened bourbon-and-sugar one. Hmm. Back to square one.

Luckily, there are safeguards in place that ensure these two events will never coincide with St. Patrick's Day.

Nothing to read here, move along

2007-05-03T14:04:00.000-07:00

Nothing but a short rant, apropos of nothing (I guess I just finally heard this bit of GOP rubbish once too often — I shall address it here and now and we shall then consider the matter settled). Ahem:

Ronald Reagan did not “win” the Cold War.

He was, at best, the closer. He came into the game in the 9th inning with a slim lead, walked the tying run on 4 wild pitches, then intentionally threw at the head of the go-ahead run. After balking both runners into scoring position, he finally managed to get the last out, thanks largely to a series of boneheaded baserunning errors by the other team.

The fact that Reagan was in office when the Soviet Union collapsed under its own weight does not make him a great president, any more than the Tigers' collapse in last year's Series makes Jeff Weaver a great pitcher.

End of story.

OK, I see how it works...

2007-04-25T23:37:00.000-07:00

I post a little optimism regarding the Ms after Felix's two great starts — he gets hurt and they drop 6 in a row. I post a little pessimism instead, and Washburn throws a 3-hit, complete-game shutout in under 2 hours, in Oakland!

I get it now:

Mariners suck. Mariners suck. Mariners suck.

Deja vu all over again

2007-04-23T12:00:00.000-07:00

Damn.

Can't believe the most recent post here is one of hope and optimism for the Mariners following Felix's first two starts. In the interim, Felix strained his elbow and will be out for 2-3 weeks, and the Ms completely freaked out and pulled a Crazy Ivan, losing six in a row and dropping from first to last seemingly overnight.

To paraphrase Herb Brooks, they're getting worse every day, and right now they're playing like it's the middle of August.

Need to get this post up quick and dirty just to knock the last one out of the top spot. Sheesh.

Baby update: We're 25 days from Maus's due date, and only 10 days from crossing that invisible line beyond which the word "premature" no longer applies.

Congrats to Mimi and Philip, who just launched Miyuki Audrey Katano Smith (aka Flippy) over the weekend (9 days past deadline, but I'm sure that will be overlooked by management on her first performance review).

What a game that was

2007-04-12T15:11:00.000-07:00

Bastardized from the Talking Heads' What A Day That Was:

Well, he's dressed up so nice

And he's throwing his best

Yes, he is starting over...

Starting over with a new waist.

Lemme tell you a story

A big chief with a golden crown

He's got rings on his fingers

And then he walks up, up to the mound

He's makin' shapes with his hands

And don't you dare sit down

And don't you dare look back

And don't you dare lean in.

And in the first game,

He threw everything they could stand.

Oh-whoa-oh, and then the snow did fall.

Then in the second game,

There was nothing else left to prove.

Oh-whoa-oh, what a game that was.

Ollie Ollie oxen free

2007-04-10T14:32:00.000-07:00

Oliver Queen is coming to the big screen. I'm not terribly impressed with the premise — would prefer to see Green Arrow as Green Arrow, rather than an imprisoned (and disarmed, and beardless) Oliver Queen, but I'll take it. I'm curious to see which villains will populate this DC-universe hoosegow.

The belly of the beast

2007-04-03T13:09:00.000-07:00

Thanks all for your kind words of sympathy and commiseration over the loss of Fabio. We're still a little off-balance, but the household dynamic is already beginning to shift to compensate for our lack of ballast. For instance:

Would we have seen this a week ago? Nope. A new era in Cani-Shmoolian relations begins, perhaps.

Inasmuch as there can be a bright side to these kinds of personal losses, the timing of it all seems to have fallen on the “better” side of the equation (“better” in the sense that it could easily have been much, much worse):

1) We're just over six weeks from our due date. Which means there will soon be new life to fill the gap in our hearts. It also means that Fabio got sick at a time when we could still devote our full attention to him — he was foremost in our thoughts, as he never could have been with a newborn in the house.

In addition to that, there has been a lot to keep us engaged, and partially distracted from our grief:

2) Spring. Sunshine, yardwork, mowing and weeding and longer walks with Linus. All good things that buoy the spirit.

3) Baseball. I treated myself to an Opening Day seat behind home plate this year, and what a show Felix put on for us. Nothing stirs up feelings of hope and promise like a decisive win on the first day of the season. And I practically had an umpire's view of the plate, and could watch his 97-mph heat melt the paint off the corners, and his dramatic curve diving from the batter's nose to Kenji's right toe. I could also feel the wind from Sexson's huge swings — one of which thankfully made productive contact.

4) Comics. The Emerald City ComiCon was last weekend, and my brother and I made a full day of it, hitting every booth and every bin. I came home with over 120 comics — mostly 25-cent stuff chosen solely on the basis of the title and the cover. Lots of Superman, plus handfuls of Teen Titans, Batman, Catwoman, Captain America, and Hawkeye (as a longtime fan of Green Arrow, I thought I'd give his purple-clad Marvel doppelganger a whirl). Picked up a few (pricier) gems, too: Joss Whedon's 3-issue Serenity series, some 1960s Brave and the Bold teamups, and a half-dozen issues of my favorite titles that were on the stands the day I was born. Oh yeah, and my brother found me an issue of Godzilla in which he eats the Space Needle. Must-have reading.

All in all, over the last four days I've had a lot to do and a lot to think about besides Fabio, and the worst week I've had in 4 years has been followed by what has been, all things considered, a pretty good week.

The last little happy fact is that 3 weeks ago I bought a new digital camcorder (standard issue for new fathers), and in getting to know its secrets and powers, I spent a lot of time videotaping (what else?) our pets. So I have a lot of very recent footage of the big guy, and our son will know his dad isn't fibbing when he tells the story of the giant Totoro that once lived in our house.

Fabio

2007-03-29T17:34:00.000-07:00

We had to have the big guy put to sleep today. A sad finale to a grand 12-year run for the belly bellissimo. He was in every way a feast for our eyes, a koala in our laps, a strain on our furniture. He was a tactile marvel with a purr that could shake a house off its foundations.

He purred right to the end, and then he was asleep. I hope he dreams forever of fat, slow mice.

Finales

2007-03-28T10:45:00.000-07:00

Battlestar is done for the rest of the year and Rome is done forever. The latter's resolution was satisfying and right on the money, but it's really the former that bears discussion.

They've been hinting for a couple episodes now that the four radioheads were going to turn out to be the missing Cylons, though I'm still not convinced that's the case, even if they are convinced. I smell misdirection. And then there's the return of Starbuck, which isn't much of a surprise (though the obvious question is, is she the fifth Cylon?).

But the real story is that song. The Cylon sleepers have been reactivated by what seems to be a telepathic or subliminal broadcast of the Dylan/Hendrix classic “All Along The Watchtower.” Nice choice, by the way.

So what exactly does this mean? A song that we know comes from Earth has made its way into the heads of the crew of Galactica. A rebroadcast from the real Earth? A coincidence against astronomical odds? Or does the song have some cosmic meaning that transcends Earth culture?

Or, did Kara pick up an iPod during her alleged vacation on Earth, so that she could bring back evidence that the lost Thirteenth Colony was in fact very, very cool?

Another great cliffhanger from the best show on TV. The bad news is we won't get any answers for at least 9 months, maybe longer.

Of course, the real implication of all this is that Bob Dylan is actually a Cylon. That would explain an awful lot, wouldn't it?

Some other news of a decidedly less whimsical and pleasant nature (which partially explains why I haven't been posting much): Fabio, our haggis grande, our rolito polito, has been in the hospital for 5 days now, and hasn't eaten for nearly 10. He's on IV hydration and is being force-fed liquids, and though he does seem to recognize us when we visit (and purrs when we rub his belly), he's only barely conscious of his surroundings. This afternoon we're taking him over to the Eastside for an ultrasound of that magnificent belly of his. We're hoping as hard as we can that he'll bounce back, that this isn't leading up to his finale.

Back on track

2007-03-21T23:16:00.000-07:00

Well, it took them pretty much all season to do it, but they finally put together an episode of Lost that captured the brilliance of the first two seasons. Great episode, great ending. I haven't been caught so completely off guard by this show since Sayid, Sun, and Jin saw the four-toed foot statue. I won't say more, lest there be some among you not yet exposed. Could be the turning point in this season, and the start of a major rebound. Just in time, too, since both Battlestar and Rome end this weekend.

On the sadder side, Larry Bud Melman died. Anyone who doesn't immediately recognize that name probably won't feel much in the way of loss, even if they do remember exactly who he is once they Google up his picture. Hell, I hadn't even thought about Larry Bud Melman in at least 10 years. But the mere mention of his name brought back an immediate and very localized flood of memories.

Specifically, 1993. Summer. Chevy Chase had just served up one the biggest train wrecks in talk-show history, all while Letterman was moving from NBC to CBS, where he would promptly knock that Leno hack on his smarmy ass. My roommate and I watched it all with a religious interest, convinced Letterman might actually be a god. And then there were those nerdy, nervous O'Brien and Richter kids on at 12:30, who seemed to show some promise after a rocky start. A great summer.

Phwew.

2007-03-20T20:25:00.000-07:00

Big day. Busy week:

Maus and I took the cats to the vet for their pre-baby bill of health. Fabio's first time to the vet in two years, and Shmool's first time back since he killed the last vet seven years ago. We had to wheel them in, their crates stacked on a dolly like we were delivering major appliances.

The verdict: These cats, apparently, are somewhat larger than normal. And when it comes to fleas, Fabio is China and Shmool is India.

We also took Maus to the ~~vet~~ doctor. Didn't have to wheel her in, just yet. All appears to be well, and showtime grows tangibly near. About eight weeks to go until the balance of power is restored in our household: three furry people versus three not-so-furry people.

Accordingly, tomorrow we start childbirth classes. My expectations for this class have been set entirely by sitcoms of the 1980s. I expect to hear a laugh track every time I ask a stupid question.

And in-between and during and amongst all this doctoring, we (my new merry band of startup cohorts for the last 9 weeks, and I) launched our Website: www.MegaBuzz.com. Please do go check it out.

And as if all this out-and-aboutness and online crisis management weren't enough to fill a day, we also managed to take in the sublime mystery-comedy The Thin Man (“The murderer is right in this room, sitting at this table! You may serve the fish.”) and the Woody Allen mystery-comedy Scoop (”I was in the lounge, I heard you drowning. I finished my tea and scones and came immediately.“) With champagne — a glass for me; a thimble for Maus.

The Thin Man, of course, is one of the greatest movies of the 30s. Of all time, really. And Scoop was enjoyable enough, though I can't look at Ian McShane and not see Al Swearengen. And that's not such a bad thing.

Anyway, a disjointed and rambling post as well befits the kind of week I'm having. Don't forget: go visit MegaBuzz and say nice things.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell = Never Apologize, Never Explain

2007-03-14T11:42:00.000-07:00

Once again, these people completely miss the point.

General Pace, is, of course, entitled to his opinion. And now, he rightly regrets stating publicly that he believes homosexuality is immoral and should not be condoned by the military. However, the rationale behind his “regret” seems to be that as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, he should not publicly question an existing military policy (Don't Ask, Don't Tell). Very true — he should not.

However, in pointedly refusing to apologize for his remarks, the point he seems to be missing is that he's supposed to be a military leader — the boss — and has absolutely no business insulting his own troops. Not ever, and especially not in wartime.

It's not about a Joint Chiefs Chairman openly questioning policy. It's about a Joint Chiefs Chairman saying that 65,000 of his troops — men and women for whom he shoulders the unenviable responsibility of sending into harm's way — are immoral. They're good enough to die for their country, but he does not consider them to be moral people. He does not respect them.

Anyone even remotely connected to the military knows that the generals must never, ever insult the troops. Hell, anyone who's seen Patton knows that.

It's not about Pace's opinion of homosexuality — he's welcome to it. It's not about Pace's opinion of Don't Ask, Don't Tell — he's certainly qualified to have one (more so than most). It's entirely about a general who doesn't know any better than to publicly denigrate the morality of 65,000 of his own men and women — 65,000 volunteers in a time of war.

A big part of being a leader is knowing when the hell to shut up, and when wrong, to apologize for it. He doesn't owe it to the American people, nor to the administration, nor the military brass, nor the gay community — he owes it to the troops.

Shock and awe

2007-03-09T11:21:00.000-08:00

My god, who could have ever imagined that such a thing could happen? In this country?

PATRIOT ACT MISUSED: FBI illegally obtained information on citizens, audit says

Well, I for one am just shocked. Who knew it could happen here?

In an absolutely unprecedented demonstration of accountability from this post-9/11 government, FBI Director Robert Mueller took immediate and full responsibility for the “problem” — which he attributed to a lack of safeguards. Take that for what it's worth, but at least one thing Mueller said does have the ring of truth to it: “The inspector general went and did the audit that I should have put in place many years ago.”

Please note: The Bush Administration opposed this audit, which is required by Congress. And the Attorney General — Attorney General of the United States — has already declared that there has been no intentional wrongdoing here.

In other news, the Administration has also forbidden U.S. scientists traveling abroad to discuss global warming, sea ice, and polar bears.

For. Crying. Out. Loud.

I'm just glad Captain America wasn't around to see this.

RIP Cap

2007-03-07T16:07:00.000-08:00

Captain America is dead.

I'm almost exclusively a D.C. reader, though I do follow Marvel's general story arcs and remain a fan of Spidey, Hulk, X-Men (the biggies). My favorite character in the Marvel stable, though, is Cap. He's the real patriarch of the Marvel Universe, occupying the same space in their history as D.C.'s Superman (actually, he's both their Superman and their Wonder Woman, but I won't get into that here).

My affinity for Cap was re-energized when Marvel launched its Civil War storyline last year, with its thinly veiled reflections of both McCarthyism and the post-9/11 erosion of civil liberties. When I first heard the Marvel heroes were going to become polarized by the enactment of a “Superhero Registration Act,” I figured Captain America would be first in line to take the loyalty oath. After all, he's the uber-patriot, the ever-faithful Nazi-bashing champion of American Values. He actually wears the American flag as his costume, for crying out loud.

Nope. Instead, Cap became Marvel's leading champion of privacy rights and civil liberties, and the outlaw leader of the anti-Registration faction of heroes, squaring off against that fascist bastard Iron Man. Because he's really an FDR-era patriot, not a W-era jingoist.

And now they've killed him. He finally surrendered, after fighting the good fight for as long as he could hold out, and was assassinated before he could even reach a courtroom. Maybe I'm reading this through blue-tinted glasses, but that's a pretty blunt dig at the current administration and its continued policies of political assassination and dissent=treason.

No doubt Cap will be back, sooner or later. No one ever stays dead in comics. But I hope Captain America will at least remain dead and buried as long as G.W. Decider remains in office. Maybe next year we can give our nation's namesake hero a country worth coming back to.

Make it one for my Newfie, and one more for the Pug

2007-03-06T16:42:00.000-08:00

Hey now, looks like this “Dogs in Bars” bill down in Olympia might actually have legs. Now see, that, to my mind, is progress. And coming on the heels of the smoking ban, the bars in Seattle just keep getting better. I may have to try one of them out sometime.

The bill, introduced by the prolific Senator Ken Jacobsen, would allow (not require) owners of establishments with liquor licenses to permit leashed and well-behaved dogs to sit with their owners instead of being tethered outside (or worse, left at home). It would still be proprietor's discretion.

Now, I may never actually take my dog to the local pub, but I'll tell you: If I come across two adjacent drinkeries, one with a No Dogs sign and the other with a Dogs Welcome sign — well, my whiskey allowance is going to get slapped down on the bar behind door number two. Count on it.

29 weeks

2007-03-03T12:46:00.000-08:00

Maus is 29 weeks along. That's well past two-thirds of the way there (and officially the third trimester), but not quite three-quarters home. It's still a little early for endgame stuff like baby showers and birth classes, but it's now too late to plan any vacations, change hospitals, or decide to start shopping for a bigger house. We're locked in.

We've been to the birthing center at Swedish Ballard just to look at it, and having looked, we are now left to wait, and contemplate. Three weeks from now, we'll be up to our ears in classes, doctor appointments, exercises, tours of daycare centers, and all manner of preparations. Right now though, it's very quiet.

If this whole thing were a baseball game, this would be the seventh-inning stretch.

(Speaking of which, tickets went on sale today, so this morning I treated myself to an Opening Day seat behind home plate, because who knows if I'll ever have the chance, or the energy, to get to the park this summer?)

I'm not very good at this part of the process, this waiting. It feels like I should be really busy, doing something to further our preparedness. But the crib, dresser, changing table, swing, high chair, and bassinet/playpen thing are all already assembled and ready for action. I'm grateful for the calm, of course, and have been watching movies, reading comics, playing the PS2, emptying the Tivo — but I feel a little guilty that I'm not doing something more... fatherly.

I guess I'll get my chance soon enough. For the moment, however, my free time is incongruously yet seamlessly divided between the next chapter of The Expectant Father and the next issue of Green Arrow.

They always get it wrong...

2007-02-27T14:15:00.000-08:00

But sometimes they come close.

Couldn't be happier that the Academy was so good to Al Gore and An Inconvenient Truth, and Martin Scorsese, and Ennio Morricone. Just desserts all around.

I don't know that The Departed was truly the best picture of the year, but since I still haven't seen Iwo Jima, I can't say for sure. But year after year, the Academy has shown incredible consistency in not giving the Oscar to the most deserving film. At least, not in my opinion:

2006 winner: Crash
My picks: Munich, Good Night and Good Luck, or Walk the Line

2005 winner: Million Dollar Baby
My picks: Sideways, Million Dollar Baby, or The Incredibles

2004 winner: Return of the King
My picks: Lost in Translation, Mystic River, or Finding Nemo

2003 winner: Chicago
My picks: Chicago, Far From Heaven, or Adaptation

2002 winner: A Beautiful Mind
My picks: In the Bedroom, Mulholland Dr., or Fellowship of the Ring

2001 winner: Gladiator
My picks: Almost Famous, Memento, or Chocolat

2000 winner: American Beauty
My picks: The Matrix, The Sixth Sense, or American Beauty
(I also have to mention the much-maligned and dismissed The Blair Witch Project, which I felt was a brilliantly innovative bit of filmmaking that put Hollywood horrors to shame.)

1999 winner: Shakespeare in Love
My picks: Saving Private Ryan, Life is Beautiful, or Pleasantville

1998 winner: Titanic
My picks: L.A. Confidential, Titanic, or Good Will Hunting

1997 winner: The English Patient
My picks: Fargo, Lone Star, or Trainspotting

So only 4 of the last 10 Best Picture winners were in my top 3 for the year, and only one was actually my first choice (Chicago). I'm sure if I went all the way back to 1929, those stats would remain about the same.

Of this year's choice, though, I won't complain. I hope Marty keeps making movies (and movies about making movies) forever.

Infinite crisis (or, "Give me misery, or give me death")

2007-02-23T09:49:00.000-08:00

Oscars weekend. Another opportunity for the Academy to vote for itself instead of voting for films.

If I sound a wee bit bitter on that point, it's because Maus and I watched Babel last night. Good movie, well written, well acted, beautifully shot — in nearly every way, a cut above anything else I saw this year. Except that it was just so miserable. God, I hope it doesn't win Best Picture. I'm still peeved about Crash.

I have nothing against difficult or troubling movies — on the contrary: pain, loss, and anguish are some of the most powerful themes a film can embrace. But there's a difference between watching people experience pain, and watching people cope with pain. It's a fine line, but it's a line that separates movies like Babel, Crash, and The Constant Gardner (all good movies that I did not particularly like) from movies like In the Bedroom, Monster, and Million Dollar Baby (which I felt were truly powerful).

Watching Babel, I tried to put my finger on just why this difference matters (to me, anyway). And here's more or less where I landed: Movies that torment their characters so that we can watch them suffer are really little more than sado-masochism masquerading as tragedy. These movies generally tend to spread the misery around, affecting as many characters as possible, and usually incorporate the classical motifs of tragedy: misfortune, fate, destiny, doom. But we tend to disconnect from these characters — we are watching pain and suffering as a situation, not as an experience.

That's precisely what Babel is like. We feel sympathy for the characters, we hope they'll pull through this, but it's the same kind of sympathy we feel when watching the evening news or reading the morning paper. It's disconnected.

Other films (the better films, in my opinion) focus on the characters and not on the situation, and use pain and suffering as means of tightening our connection with those characters. And when that happens, what we feel is empathy, not sympathy. Monster was a masterpiece in this regard, bringing us so close to a thoroughly unlikable character that we couldn't help but see just how human she was. And then we witness her evil acts, practically in the first-person, and we become involuntarily complicit in those horrors, because of our empathy for the character. That is powerful filmmaking.

The most prolifically successful director at conjuring up this kind of character engagement is Clint Eastwood. He first found it in Unforgiven, a remarkably even film which side-stepped the whole concept of “good guys” and “bad guys” and found a sympathetic moment for even its most brutal characters. He did the same thing in Mystic River. And then in Million Dollar Baby he placed us so squarely in the shoes of the lead character that we follow him, step-by-step, down the path that leads to the ruin of his soul. Like him, we desperately look for a fork in the road, any alternate path that will lead us away from that dreaded final decision. And his failure to find a way out feels like our failure as well.

I haven't seen Flags of our Fathers or Letters from Iwo Jima yet, but I have a hunch they're both better than Babel, which, for all its strengths, still came across as little more than an exercise in manipulation. It's a movie about perpetual crisis, and it doesn't really take much in the way of talent to just relentlessly punish your characters. (For “perpetual crisis” done well, see Open Water. Or No Man's Land. Or, for that matter, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.)

Ironically, Babel's strongest moments come right at the end, when the crisis is waning and the pressure's letting off and the characters are just beginning to cope with everything that's happened. Their lives have all been changed dramatically, but they haven't yet had a moment to digest it all. And just as that moment of realization — of reality — is settling in, the credits roll.

You know what might actually make a good movie? Babel 2.

Inauspicious signs (on President's Day, no less)

2007-02-19T00:28:00.000-08:00

One thing I like about the way the 2008 Presidential race is going so far is that there are so many people running — and not one of them is named Bush.

That is, alas, until now:

McCain says Roe v. Wade should be overturned

The bastard is trying to be W. And I used to admire this guy. Now his fall into the pit is complete. More:

McCain also vowed that if elected, he would appoint judges who “strictly interpret the Constitution of the United States and do not legislate from the bench.”

Now who does that sound like? I swear, Rove must have McCain's brain stashed in a jar somewhere. And Cheney probably has his soul stuffed and mounted on the wall of his undisclosed location.

This makes me happy. So happy.

2007-02-18T23:30:00.001-08:00

Cool

2007-02-14T01:14:00.000-08:00

I don't condone thievery, but I do salute a pilferer who shows excellent taste and nabs the real goods.

The Maltese Falcon! Nice work, fat man. Either the thief's a collector with an eye for the greatest piece of film-noir memorabilia ever, or some nut who thinks the falcon's enamel really does conceal a priceless, jewel-encrusted, golden statue. Either way, pretty cool.

Still, I hope they nab him and nab him soon. Because when some heister knocks over Humphrey Bogart and Dashiell Hammett, you're supposed to do something about it. It doesn't make any difference what you think of him — he knocked over Bogey and you're supposed to do something about it. And it happens in a drinking establishment. Well, when one of your organization gets knocked over, it's bad business to let the thief get away with it, bad all around, bad for every bartender everywhere.

And away we go...

2007-02-13T12:09:00.000-08:00

Happy Pitchers and Catchers Day. It's all happening.

Some Mariners headlines:

Mariners expect to contend

OK, I can give that some credence — there's a whole lot of maybe on this roster. Long-odds maybe, but still. And the AL West isn't what it once was, so “contend” isn't as high a hurdle to clear. If not for the month of August last year, they might have had a shot at second place. So I'll bite. Go Mariners. Go contend.

But this one?

Hargrove excited, optimistic for 2007

I just can't picture this one. Hargrove? Excited? Enthusiastic?

Sorry, not buying it. When I think of Hargrove, I think of Paul Sorvino's mute, docile manager in Mr. 3000, just sitting there with that sadly tranquil look of acceptance on his face. I think of his excruciatingly bland press conferences, of long stretches of dead air broken by monosyllabic responses. Maybe it's all relative — maybe an “enthusiastic” Hargrove is discernibly different from a Hargrove-at-rest.

Maybe it's a subtle and nuanced variation, like the difference between Ferris Bueller's economics teacher and his English teacher:

I'll have to catch a few extra Cubs games this year, just to keep my Lou Piniella counteragent levels in balance.

Bummer of the week

2007-02-08T21:01:00.000-08:00

Joss Whedon (whose name, like Wile E. Coyote's, should always be followed with the honorific Genius) has walked away from Wonder Woman.

Another Whedon project crushed in its infancy! And I was really looking forward to this one — if there was anyone out there I'd trust with the WW legacy, it'd be the brains behind Buffy.

I remember several spirited discussions with some coworkers about a year ago (hey, beats workin') as to who should be cast as the Amazon Princess. Kate Beckinsale? Too petite. Lauren Graham? Too hip. Lindsay Lohan? Too Hillary Duff.

I was pulling for Charisma Carpenter, who (like Lynda Carter before her) looks the part, has the right stature and the athletic build, and has kicked ass before (sort of) on Buffy and Angel. She even sounds like an Amazon (“Antiope! Artemis! Hippolyta! Charisma! To arms!”), and her previous work with Whedon made her seem a likely candidate for the tiara and the lasso. Sadly, his departure from the project probably rules her out as well.

Which leaves only one logical choice.

Lucy Lawless. 5'11! With a tough and determined face set off by kind, sympathetic eyes. And she'll kick your ass anyhow. Good with a sword, and well-versed in the foibles of a warrior princess. Plus, her character on Battlestar just got put in the freezer for who knows how long, so she's available. Sure, she's 38, but isn't Wonder Woman supposed to be an immortal?

They'll probably end up casting Kate Bosworth, so she can bring the same nothing to Diana that she brought to Lois Lane.

Size matters not -- but pants do

2007-01-31T09:15:00.000-08:00

Probably the biggest mixed blessing in my life right now is my new addiction to DC Comics' Archive Editions series. The upside: you get hardbound collections of very old (and rare, and valuable) comics titles, beautifully reprinted on glossy paper, that you can read without worrying about creases and tears and cookie crumbs and paper-eating finger acids. The downside: at $35-50 a pop, they don't come cheap — and once you start in on them, it's hard to stop.

Before discovering these collections, my exposure to old comics (by old I mean 1940s-60s) was pretty much limited to Superman and Batman. (The very first comic book I owned was a 1974 reprint of Action Comics #1 — which I must have read a hundred times. How's that for starting off on the right foot?)

Now I'm enjoying all manner of old titles, like WWII-era Wonder Woman and Blackhawk, and early space-age stuff like Adam Strange and Challengers of the Unknown. And discovering writers and artists previously known to me only by reputation — like John Broome, who seeded his Flash stories with enough science tidbits to rival Mr. Wizard, and Gil Kane, whose artwork in the old Green Lantern stories blows away anything else I've seen from the late 50s (yes, even Kirby).

The latest Archive Editions to grab my attention (and empty my wallet) are the Golden Age titles All-Star Comics and The Seven Soldiers of Victory. All-Star deals exclusively with the Justice Society (including the original Flash, Green Lantern, and Hawkman); Seven Soldiers is a team-up of strictly non-superpowered heroes, including the earliest incarnations of Green Arrow and Vigilante.

The writing in these 1940s books is, as one might expect, pretty awful — laced with all the racism and sexism and jingoism of the era. And there's virtually no variation between the characters. They all act and talk exactly the same. For instance: the Spectre, now known to DC fans as the ghostly and all-powerful embodiment of God's vengeance, keeps saying “Ta-ta.” I really wish he'd stop doing that.

The best part, though, are these Golden Age costumes — long before eyemasks and elaborate gadgetry came into vogue, capes and helmets were de rigeur. The color schemes were bright and inventive, and ornaments were encouraged: huge belt buckles, high collars, magical medallions, and the like. The original Flash's Mercury-inspired garb remains one of my favorite ensembles (how did he keep that helmet from flying off?), as does the Sandman's green suit, purple cape, fedora, and gas mask.

And then there's the Atom. Not the blue-and-red shrinking physicist Ray Palmer, familiar to Justice League fans, but Al Pratt, the original Atom — whose “super power“ was that he was a short, 90-pound weakling who learned to stand up for himself. After getting beat up and losing his girl once too often, he learned to box and became quite the little scrapper, and I guess his role in the DC universe was to be a role model for short men everywhere. Even little guys can kill Nazis!

Unfortunately, he donned what has the be the worst costume ever conceived. It amounted to a brown-and yellow leotard (yuck) with no leggings and a v-neck that plunged to his navel, plus these buckle-things that I assume he used to cinch up the leotard extra high in the crotch (maybe his name should have been Uprider). He also wore red galoshes and a smothering blue hood that covered his entire head, minus two tiny eyeholes. Attached to this hood at the neck — not at the shoulders — was a blue cape that absolutely screamed decapitation. Every time I see him, I hear Edna's tirade against capes, and I see her point.

All I can say is it's a good thing little Al was good with his fists. The rest of the JSA held their tongues, presumably because they knew the kid already had enough to deal with, what with sand-kicking bullies and cruel football players, and girls developing earlier than boys and all. But speaking as a short man, I'll take my inspiration from David Eckstein. And Shane.

Thanks though, Al. Now go put your pants back on.

Did you see that?

2007-01-25T10:48:00.000-08:00

Wow. If you blinked, you might've missed it. I hope not, because it was something to behold. Yesterday — barely a week after snow and permafrost had brought life in Puget Sound to an icy halt — someone went and stuck a single day of late spring smack in the middle of January.

54°. There were still traces of a snowman's carcass across the street on Monday, and on Wednesday we get 54°. The groundhog's alarm doesn't even go off for 9 more days, and people are throwing frisbees to dogs out there. Isn't there still some football going on, somewhere? Screw that. Tell me about pitchers and catchers, baby.

I spent most of the afternoon walking around all dumbfounded and giddy. Everyone on the street had the same expression — we looked like the last scene of War of the Worlds, when the machines have all mysteriously died and the survivors slowly emerge from the ashes and the rubble, confused and exhausted, tears of quiet joy and relief streaming down their sooty faces.

Today we're back down to normal. 42° and gray. A bounce back up into the 50s is predicted for this weekend, but I think that's just mass hysteria among meteorologists.

The downside: I think the lawn woke up. I may be mowing again within the week. And I have to assume the weeds are already laying out a plan of attack for their big spring offensive.

This is hands-down the weirdest winter ever. I'm not letting my guard down — we'll probably see seven feet of snow in April.

It's Chloracle!

2007-01-18T22:02:00.000-08:00

Wow. So much for the Chlois theory — after last week's Smallville, you have to revise that to Chloracle.

I've been looking forward to this “Justice” storyline, in which we get to see the JLA in its infancy. The writing has been good — a clever balance of faithful reverence and inventive departures from the source material. For instance: Green Arrow, the JLA's longtime black sheep/problem child, now becomes the League's founder and principled leader. Highly improbable, although it's perfectly in character for Ollie to assign Clark the codename “Boy Scout.”

The rest of the team looks more like the Teen Titans than the JLA. No Batman, no Wonder Woman, no Green Lantern — even their “Flash” character is actually just Impulse (Bart Allen, still a long way from filling the asbestos-coated shoes of protospeedsters Jay Garrick, Barry Allen, and Wally West). It's just Ollie, Cyborg, Aquaman, Impulse, and a reluctant, capeless Clark Kent.

And, of course, Chloe! In another move I didn't see coming, they got her into a clock tower with a headset and a bank of computers, and had her coordinate all the League's moves. I'm just surprised they didn't find a way to get her into a wheelchair to complete the allusion. I suppose I should have anticipated this when they set up Ollie's penthouse to look just like Oracle's clock tower. But I'm dumb that way.

My only question: Where was Martian Manhunter? We know he's around — we have the Oreos to prove it. But not a sign of him since his 2-second appearance back in November. Not so much as a crumb.

Name the boy, and you name the man

2007-01-16T10:25:00.000-08:00

Maus and I are four months from the Big Day, and paraphernalia is already starting to pop up around the house — booties, onesies, little plastic spoons, books about fish (as my friend Clark would say, all the quintessential infantile accoutrements).

I'm still in hammer-and-haul mode, coping with impending fatherhood by reconfiguring the house, moving piles of junk out of the baby's way, installing safety features, basically clearing a wide path for a kid who won't even be walking for a year.

Naturally, the subject of names comes up a lot around here. Maus and I already have a shortlist that we're holding close to the vest, but I still greatly enjoy a spirited and creative baby-naming forum, so we encourage our friends (and heck, strangers on the street) to keep lobbing ideas our way.

Some memorable suggestions include Jeff's Oort C., Obi W., and Buster K.; and Heather, Emily, and John's collaborative Seussism Squishy-Squashy Dixie-Doxie Mini-Mausie. As a filmbuff, I'm drawn to Orson Fairbanks. And Peck Lancaster. And Dashiell Bogart. The comics lover in me likes Flash Lantern and Darwyn Kirby and Oliver Zan Gotham. Maus, a big fan of the movie Giant, is partial to Bick Benedict. She's also convinced he'll grow up to be a rockstar if we name him Jettison Caecilius.

In that vein: Over the weekend I rented Mystery Science Theater 3000's viewing of the fantastically dreadful Space Mutiny (for my money, MST3K is still the best there is in comfort television — with the possible exception of a Ken Burns documentary). I won't go into all the glorious ugly details of Space Mutiny (that's a whole other dissertation), but it can summed up thus:

The “spaceship” is a basement with a concrete floor and brick-and-mortar walls; the “chase scenes” involve these tiny, wedge-shaped bumper cars that top out at about 2; and the “hero” is super-beefy Reb Brown (aka Yor, the Hunter from the Future), who shrieks and squeals like a JV cheerleader when he gets fightin' mad. Oh yeah, and all the space battle scenes are recycled footage from Battlestar Galactica...

The high points of Mike, Crow, and Tom's commentary involve them shouting out scores of manly new names for this overmuscled hunk of Rascal-drivin' action. I cite but a few of their finest samples here:

“Slab Bulkhead!” · “Flint Ironstag!”
“Vault Vanderhuge!” · “Blast Hardcheese!”
“Stump Beefknob!” · “Think McRunfast!”
“Slam Squatthrust!” · “Reef Blastbody!”
“Dirk Hardpeck!” · “Hunt Speedchunk!”
“Punch Rockgroin!” · “Meat Punchbeef!”
“Rip Steakface!” · “Slate Fistcrunch!”
“Smoke McManmuscle!” · “Lump Beefbroth!”
“Buck Plankchest!” · “Smash Slamjaw!”
“Fridge Largebeef!” · “Butch Deadlift!”
“Buff Drinklots!” · “Grod Bonemeal!”

and my personal favorite:
“Big McLargehuge!”

I'll have to float some of these past Maus. I don't think she'll go for Beef or Smash, but I might be able to sell her on Vault or Reef. Or we could just go with Grod, and tell people it's a family name.

Writer's grog

2007-01-09T11:46:00.000-08:00

Well, the inevitable has happened: Going back to work next Monday, after eight glorious months of devil-may-care bummery. Lots of homework piling up between now and then, leaving my creative synapses soggy and wilted. I got nuthin' today.

So here's this — cobbled together from the highly entertaining Hemingway & Bailey's Bartending Guide to Great American Writers. These are my 10 favorite pairings; try matching the cocktails to the writers (all the clues you need are there, if you know both your literary and libational history):

The Boozers

Charles Bukowski

William Faulkner

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Dashiell Hammett

Ernest Hemingway

James Jones

Jack Kerouac

Jack London

H.L. Mencken

Edgar Allan Poe

The Booze

Bacardi Cocktail

Boilermaker

Gin Rickey

Margarita

Martini

Mint Julep

Mojito

Sazerac

Singapore Sling

Stinger

Jeff, I'm looking at you on this one.

Trouble '07

2007-01-01T17:45:00.000-08:00

For some reason I'm always sick on New Year's Day. And no, it's not a hangover — not this year, anyway. I think it's just January's way of announcing itself: You're mine, Bender. For 31 days I got ya. I got ya.

Fine, whatever. There's no love lost between me and Janus, that two-faced bastard. I've got a bottle of bourbon and a stack of DVDs and I'm not coming out til Groundhog Dog, so there.

One thing January's good for, though, is the Resolution. Actually, the Resolution technically belongs to December 31, so never mind — January's useless. But, in the spirit of the whole man-in-the-mirror thing, I offer four:

This year I will manage the Mariners to their very first Pennant. But we'll lose the Series to San Francisco when J.J. beans Bonds with the bases loaded — on my orders. Sorry, my bad.
This year I will publish not one, but three novels: The Magnanimous Animus, Mauser Faustus, and Return of the Warbler — which will be adapted into a children's holiday special, a Sci-Fi Channel series, and a Russian opera, respectively.
This year I will vanish in the Far East and master the ancient arts of infiltration and stealth, combat and defense, detection and analysis, honing my mind and body into a silent weapon of sudden and terrifying justice, and returning in the dark guise of a ghoulish alter-ego, a living shadow, I will combat evil in all its forms, preying on society's predators and turning fear against the vilest of criminals — especially Republicans.
This year I will be a good father, and a devoted and supportive husband to the mother of my son.

And in the spirit of maintaining reasonable expectations, I will hold myself accountable for keeping... oh... one of these Resolutions. Maybe two.

Oh no they didn't

2006-12-30T13:47:00.000-08:00

Best thing I got for Christmas (besides some very nice, very classy striped-green pajamas — the kind Nick Charles wears while enjoying his breakfast martini) was the Superman Ultimate Collector's Box — “ultimate” and “collector's” are ridiculously overused descriptors in the world of DVDs these days, but not so in this case.

The 14-disc set includes two versions each of Superman and Superman II; theatrical versions of Superman III, IV, and Superman Returns; 17 Superman cartoons from the 1940s (including all 9 of the exceptional Fleischer shorts); George Reeves in Superman and the Mole-Men; three full-length documentaries (all Superman fans should see Look, Up in the Sky! The Amazing Story of Superman — it's 2 hours well spent); plus tons of the usual “making of” features, tributes, outtakes, yadda yadda yadda.

I doubt I would ever have bought this set for myself, which is what makes it such a great gift to receive. I'm having a great time rewatching these movies (well, I haven't gotten to stinker-royale Superman IV yet — Superman III is barely salvageable, thanks to Annette O'Toole's endearing performance as Lana Lang).

But, the point I'm trying to get to:

This afternoon I'm flipping around on TV and ABC Family is showing Superman. So (as if I'm not already immersed in this stuff), I watch about 20 minutes — Superman saves Lois, catches a cat burglar, pulls a cat out of tree, rescues Air Force One. Then he takes Lois on a personal flying tour of Metropolis/Manhattan. All of a sudden, the music jumps noticeably. They cut something. And I think I know what it is, but can't believe it.

So, I load up my new DVD and rewatch the scene, uncut. And sure enough, at the point where the music jumped, Lois and Supes fly past the Twin Towers. It's about a 2-second scene as they pass the World Trade Center on their way to the Statue of Liberty. And ABC Family cut it out.

I'm totally flummoxed. ABC Family left in the references to Lois's underwear, and even left in her line “How big are you... er, how tall are you?” But they took the time to cut out 2 seconds of the Twin Towers passing by in the background. They aren't even in focus.

They also trimmed the “mouthful of peanuts” line from the Air Force One cockpit (a 1978 Jimmy Carter joke). Apparently, in the bewildering minds of the ABC Family standards enforcers, the Twin Towers never existed — and a Democrat was never president.

Good thing I have these movies on DVD.

They're both Big Ten schools

2006-12-29T20:00:00.000-08:00

I was going to cobble together a Ten Best Movies of 2006 — but it's been kind of an off-year, and I don't think I saw 10 new films worth mentioning. Casino Royale, The Departed, An Inconvenient Truth come to mind, but after that?

TV has been another matter, though — possibly one of the best years in television since the mid-80s NBC lineup of Cosby-Family Ties-Cheers-Night Court-Hill Street Blues? The early-90s peak years of Seinfeld, Simpsons, SNL, Letterman, and Conan? At any rate, the pickings have been good this year, so here's a crack at the ten standouts:

1. Battlestar Galactica
Who would've thought? It took the show two full seasons to really find its swing, but on the heels of the best cliffhanger since Bobby Ewing showed up in Pam's shower, the writers of this show stepped up and gave this (vastly underrated) cast some amazing material to kick off season three. And with Deadwood now off the air and Lost running in circles, their timing couldn't be better.

2. Deadwood
Oh Al, we hardly knew ye. Three 12-show seasons just barely scratched the surface of what this show could have been, had HBO let it live and breathe. Sanfansisco cogsuggers.

3. House
Admittedly, the current season has been its weakest so far, but the show's still as addictive as those Vicodin tablets Hugh Laurie keeps popping (and this from a guy who dislikes medical dramas immensely). Like other successful character-driven shows (Cheers, Friends), the show's strength lies in its six central characters — and it weakens when recurring “guest” characters intrude upon their circle (like last year's Sela Ward and this year's David Morse).

4. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip
Underrated and much-maligned, this post-Heroes gem survived cancellation and lives to fight again in 2007. Maybe too many people were (inexplicably) expecting another West Wing from Sorkin, or maybe a show about liberal Hollywood comedians just confuses and confounds the Red-Staters... but I say SCREW THEM. They got the president and the war they wanted (and deserve). Well, this is the show I want. And deserve.

5. Smallville
Don't know how many times I decided this show was just too lame to keep watching. Still, I kept coming back, sometimes out of nothing more than habit. This year, after five seasons of crawling along in first gear, the writers finally took some bold steps — killing off one of their best characters, giving Martha something to do besides look worried, and letting more than a couple of supporting characters in on Clark's secret (the fact that Lois is practically the only one left who doesn't know is actually pretty comical). If nothing else, I salute them for finally letting the show gather some momentum. What's more, they've thrown in a lot of love notes to comic-book fans: guest appearances by Green Arrow, Brainiac, and Martian Manhunter, a peek inside the Phantom Zone, and — slated for 2007 — a fledgling Justice League.

6. Heroes
I'm still not as sold on this one as the rest of world seems to be, but I give Heroes very high marks for sheer potential. One hopes they've just been patiently laying the groundwork for a truly epic series — but in 2007 they'll have to prove (to me, at least) that they're selling something more than snake oil.

7. How I Met Your Mother
The sit-com is not quite dead. This show didn't quite grab me in its first season, but Maus loved it and so it stayed in the Tivo cue. Now, I have to admit I'm enjoying this Friends-wannabe, for two reasons: 1) the lead character, Ted, is no longer the whiny, depressed loner he was last year, but actually a funny guy; and 2) Doogie. Neil Patrick Harris carries this show with his hilarious self-involved womanizer Barney (think Dan Fielding in his late 20s). And Mother makes a great 30-minute appetizer before the heavy 2-hour Monday night main course of Heroes and Studio 60.

8. Star Trek - 2.o & “Redux”
In 2006 we were treated to two new variations on classic Star Trek. First, G4 barreled through the entire series in just 14 weeks with Star Trek 2.0, featuring aggregated series-long stats like “Torn Kirk Shirts” and “Scotty Doubtful” and “Uhura Undie Shots” — plus a real-time “Spock Market” which let the geeks at home invest in all the show's characters and technologies (Spock's stock tanked when he got court-martialed for mutiny, Scott's went wobbly when the transporters shorted out, and McCoy's took off after he cured the Horta).

Then, Paramount remastered and enhanced the original series for re-release, with better sound, more vivid colors, and new CGI effects. Unlike George Lucas, they did all this with reverence and respect for the original material, slipping in the new stuff gently and seamlessly — better views of the ship, more convincing backdrops, planetary details like clouds, rings, moons, etc. They even fixed it so the Gorn could blink. Both of these enterprises were a welcome twist on a very old favorite.

9. Big Love
I would've put Rome in this slot, but it occured to me that Rome wasn't on at all in 2006. Such is HBO's development schedule. So at least they gave us Big Love to fill in the empty space. It's about Mormons! And home-improvement stores! And nosy neighbors! Sort of a Desperate Housewives with just one husband. Maybe. I kind of forget — it's been a while since it was on and for all I know the second season won't come around until 2011.

10. Ugly Betty
Yep, it's pretty funny. And charming. And catching. America Ferrera's Betty Suarez has to be the best new character of the year. And Salma Hayek's cleavage should earn two Golden Globes for best supporting character.

And then there's Lost. Possibly the most aptly-named show of the year. It's off the list for 2006 only because I'm not convinced it's going to be able to return to the fine form of its first 1 1/2 seasons. I would love to be proved wrong. So, the show will have my undivided attention when it starts up again next February.

Honorable mentions: Boomerang is coming up in the world, with classic old episodes of SuperFriends, Fantastic Four, Batman, and Justice League Unlimited, all with no commercials (with the 10 minutes left over at the end of each half-hour, they show a long-in-the-vault cartoon — an old Teen Titans, or Aquaman, or even an old Fleischer Superman short). BBC America's Green Wing is nothing short of milk-up-your-nose funny (we're seeing the show two years behind its run in England, so technically we've been enjoying good TV from 2004). And on Maus's behalf, I must also tip my hat to Grey's Anatomy and Gilmore Girls, if only because they make my wife so happy.

Reverend Cleophus called home

2006-12-26T13:33:00.000-08:00

In honor of the late great James Brown, as fine a toe-tappin' sermon as was ever howled from the pulpit of the Triple Rock Baptist Church of Calumet City, Illinois:

And now, people... and now, people. When I woke up this morning... I heard a disturbin' sound. I said, when I woke up this morning, people... I hearrrrrd a disturbin' sound! What I heard, was the jingle-jangle, of thouuuuusand lost souls. I'm talking about the souuuuuls, of all the men and women, departed from this life. Wait a minute! The Lorrrrrrd says the souls of us here on Earth is secret of divine life they'll not find. Because it's too late! Too late, yeah! Tooooooooo laaaaaaate for them to ever see again, the light they once chose not to follow! Don't be lost when the time comes! For the day of the Lord cometh, out of deep in the night. Amen! Amen!

DO YOU SEE THE LIGHT? DO YOU SEE THE LIGHT? HAVE YOU SEEEEEEEEEEEN THE LIGHT?

Praise God. And God bless the United States of America.

Joseph Barbera, exit stage left...

2006-12-20T09:15:00.000-08:00

What can you say about a guy whose life defined Saturday Mornings through three decades? Anyone born in a TV-equipped household between the years 1955 and 1980 grew up in a Hanna-Barbera world.

The accumulation of titles and credits for Joe Barbera (1911-2006) is endless, but his Greatest Hits compilation would look something like this:

The Flintstones · Yogi Bear · Huckleberry Hound
The Jetsons · Top Cat · Magilla Gorilla
Jonny Quest · Tom and Jerry · Secret Squirrel
Space Ghost · Atom Ant · The Herculoids
Fantastic 4 · Banana Splits · Dastardly and Muttley
Scooby-Doo · Josie and the Pussycats · SuperFriends
Speed Buggy · Hong Kong Phooey · Dynomutt
Jabberjaw · Grape Ape · Godzilla
Jana of the Jungle · Richie Rich · The Smurfs

I hit my Hanna-Barbera years at the tail end of the 70s — Speed Buggy, Jabberjaw, and Captain Caveman were in my strikezone, and SuperFriends was right in my wheelhouse. I also remember liking Blue Falcon a lot, even though he was really just a straight man to Dynomutt (the Scooby-Doo cyborg).

My brother and I were only allowed to watch one show on Saturday morning, so we learned to choose carefully — in the post-SuperFriends era, the Hanna-Barbera cartoons almost always lost out to the 90-minute juggernaut, The Bugs Bunny-Road Runner Show. Fortunately for us, The Flintstones was a weekday-afternoon show, and thus didn't have to face off with the likes of Wile E. Coyote and the Legion of Doom. No telling how that would have turned out.

Wow, what are the odds?

2006-12-15T19:14:00.001-08:00

Don't tell me I'm not willing to throw the monkey a banana when he does good: Bush did something right. A little late, given that O'Neil died three months ago — but then again, three months late is way ahead of Dubya's usual learning curve. It's still a classy move, considering O'Neil was passed over by the Hall of Fame earlier this year (to their eternal discredit).

That's right, sportwriters: You've been outclassed by George W. Bush. Sweet dreams.

It's winding

2006-12-14T16:23:00.000-08:00

Hey, you hear that? The big storm that's been coming our way has just arrived. I just saw the rain switch from vertical to horizontal, heard the garbage cans falling over (smart move — keep those heads down), and it sounds like a whole fire battalion is hosing down the west side of my house. Also, the DirecTV signal of North By Northwest just cut out. Fortunately, I have the DVD. Don't tell me I'm not prepared for these emergencies.

Time to get the cats in the barn. See you all on the other side.

The goose is getting fat

2006-12-12T11:40:00.000-08:00

Christmas is coming for sure. I present my evidence:

1) Tree. Big tree right smack in the middle of everything. It blocks my desk and the peripherals therein, forcing me to only use my laptop on battery power and thereby limiting all my online sessions to strict 2 1/2-hour intervals. It also blocks half my bar, forcing me to drink only from the left side, which fortunately is where the bourbon is kept.

2) I nearly burned down my house with faulty string lights. Only once I year do I tangle (literally) with anything electrical. I also cheated death multiple times during the hanging process. (Is it me that hangs the lights, or the lights that hang me?)

3) Someone's been topping my Makers with a float of macadamia nut liqueur (which, fortunately, also lives on the left side of the bar).

4) Maus is in the kitchen putting the Keebler gnomes to shame. As Nearly Blogless Jeff would say, “Let's get ready to rummm-balllllllll...”

5) Water in the basement. Usually a post-holiday treat, Squishmas has come early this year thanks to the November snows. This, friends, is the year I beat it. The seepy invader has gone into retreat since all that snow melted, but it will be back, and I'm all geared up and ready for when it makes its move. Bring it.*

6) Mid-December shopping panic starting to set in. As usual, when I review my gifting-manifest at the two-week mark, I find I've overdone it on one person and totally stiffed someone else. These are rotating honors — every year a new individual gets to be the lucky one who almost gets my cats for Christmas.

7) Good TV has gone away; good movies have kicked in. Studio 60, Heroes, House, Smallville, Lost are all in hibernation until 2007 (and Battlestar has just one more episode to go). Which is fine — come the big bleak dark of January, they will all be needed. Instead, the evenings are filling with A Chistmas Story, The Shop Around the Corner, Desk Set, Beautiful Girls, White Christmas, Holiday Inn, Harry Potter, Miracle, It's a Wonderful Life, and Charlie Brown and Muppets galore. All this with a log burning in the fireplace, a mouthfull of rumballs chased with a sip of nutty bourbon, and a vague musty-ozonous whiff of bad wiring interlaced with seeping groundwater.

8) Finally, it wouldn't be Christmas without the familiar melodious strains of faithful believers of all stripes coming together in the spirit of the holidays and raising their voices in harmony to attack one another, point fingers of grinchiness, and sue each other for the right to be right. Oh, how you people warm my cockles. May your chestnuts get extra roasted this year.

*Note to the water: I'm engaging in rhetorical, hyperbolic chest-puffery here. I want only peace between us. I will be happy if we can just go our separate ways amicably. Please do not “bring it.” And Merry Christmas.

For your consideration

2006-12-02T10:48:00.000-08:00

Last night we caught the fourth Chris Guest ensemble-improv-mockumentary (or the fifth, if you count Rob Reiner's seminal This Is Spinal Tap, which started the ball). And sadly, the buzz is true: For Your Consideration doesn't measure up to Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, or A Mighty Wind. I did enjoy it, though. Truly. But it does come up short in comparison with its predecessors.

For one thing, it literally comes up short — with such a grand cast, you really want everyone to get more screen time than a mere 86 minutes can accommodate. (Less than one minute of Michael Hitchcock and Don Lake? Only 15 seconds of Sandra Oh? You just know there has to be more good material left on the cutting-room floor.)

What really weighs this film down, though (spoilers here) is the third act, which is pretty much humorless and painful. And not painful in the wistful, compassionate way that A Mighty Wind was painful, nor in the heartbreaking manner of Guffman. It's hard-to-look-at, cringe-inducing painful — which can be OK if you follow with something lighter to bring the audience back up. Unfortunately, this one ends at its low point, so you walk out of the theater feeling... low.

Which is too bad, because the first 70 or so minutes are actually quite good — classic Guest fare. And the thing is, I've developed such a connection to this ensemble that I'd enjoy watching them in anything. I could watch them stuff envelopes for an hour and still be entertained.

At this point, most of these people only have to show up to induce a laugh. Fred Willard, Michael Hitchcock, Don Lake, Bob Balaban, et. al. are now officially funny on sight — but none more so than Jane Lynch and Jennifer Coolidge.

It was also nice to see some of my favorite supporting actors from the previous films getting more screen time (such as it was) this time around — actors like Chris Moynihan, Jim Piddock (who played the greatest straight-man of all time alongside Fred Willard in Best in Show), and the fantastic Deborah Theaker, who stands alongside Catherine O'Hara (and all five Kids in the Hall) as one of Canada's funniest women.

"Retirement? You're talking about death, right?"

2006-11-21T10:13:00.000-08:00

“Filmmaking is a chance to live many lifetimes.”

Robert Altman

1925 - 2006

Wrong wrong WRONG

2006-11-20T14:05:00.000-08:00

Saw the long-awaited Casino Royale last night, a worthy addition to the Bond legacy on nearly all points:

Daniel Craig as Bond: Very good.
Mads Mikkelsen as Le Chiffre: Excellent.
Story, locations, action, music: First-rate.
Caterino Murino as Solange: Hello.
Eva Green as Vesper: Eh.
(I expected more from the primordial Bond girl.)

My only nagging complaint is the sacrilegious and profane “updating” of the classic high-stakes, winner-take-all game between Bond and Le Chiffre from Baccarat to, ugh, Texas Hold Em. Sorry, but James Bond does not wear sweat pants, does not smoke Kools, does not drink beer, and does not play Texas Hold Em. Nor, I suspect, do megalomaniac archvillains whose achilles heel is high-stakes gambling.

Baccarat is an elegant game of simple luck and poise. It involves no hushed narration from the sidelines, nor rote calculation of odds, nor bells and whistles such as re-buys, all-ins, check-raises, showdowns, or “tells” — and it's played in French.

Just watch the Baccarat scenes in Dr. No, Thunderball, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, For Your Eyes Only, GoldenEye... and then watch The World Series of Poker.

And you tell me.

Damn we're good

2006-11-16T23:22:00.000-08:00

I'm geeking out again.

Tuned in to Smallville tonight, hoping to catch a little more Green Arrow (and wondering if he'd put away that ridiculous little Batman-style crossbow gadget and finally wield the longbow he's supposed to swear by) — but it seems Oliver's left Metropolis for Star City. Where he belongs.

Instead, we were treated to Clark visiting our own fair city. (Ever notice how Seattle's guest-city appearances are always filmed down at the waterfront or from the deck of a ferry? Why is it film crews seem unable to penetrate that rock-solid bulwark that is the Alaskan Way viaduct?) Anyway. Clark's battling some Phantom Zone escapee with a Predator-like M.O., and then he's saved at the last minute by a mysterious stranger appearing only in silhouette. Bald guy. With glowing eyes. Who can fly.

I want to know who this is. A phantom? Yet another Kryptonian? Brainiac back from the dead? I say as much to Maus. “Who was that? I want to know who that was!”

And Maus says, “I want to know about the Oreo.”

Hold the phone. Oreo? What Oreo?

“What Oreo?!”

We wind it back. (Tivo, don't you never ever walk out on me.)

She's right. That there is an Oreo on the ground. And that's when my geek-drive starts spinning up.

Oreo... Oreo... Great Caesar's ghost! It's the Martian Manhunter! Shapeshifter, mind-reader, loather of fire, and hopeless Oreo addict.

I don't read spoiler sites or fan forums or anything like that, so I had no idea J'onn J'onzz was on deck for Smallville. And maybe I'm the last person to know about this (I'm sure the guys at the comic shop would roll their eyes — no doubt they were clued in on this surprise appearance months ago), but for about 2 minutes I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself for piecing together this mystery man's identity, based on nothing more than a half-crushed sandwich cookie.

Which Maus identified. Without the Oreo, you see, there is no case for me to crack. Because Maus and I, we're just like Laura Holt and Remington Steele. She does the work, I take the bows.

I need to get Maus a Laura Holt hat, I think.

Harumph.

2006-11-14T17:29:00.000-08:00

Rewatched Blazing Saddles last night for about the 20th time (but, it's been at least 10 years since the last time). There are very few movies I've seen that often that still make me actually laugh out loud. And I don't think I've ever watched this movie without repeatedly rewinding the scene of Alex Karras cold-cocking that horse.

I picked up two new things this time around.

Number one: Madeline Kahn is the funniest woman ever to walk the Earth. Close on her heels are Carole Lombard, Lucille Ball, Mary Tyler Moore, Carol Burnett, Lily Tomlin, and Gilda Radner. And maybe that lady who played Aunt Esther on Sanford & Son. But today at least, Madeline leads the pack in my book. I weawy mean it. It's twue, it's twue.

And number two:

It's twue, it's twue.

He crapped bigger than you

2006-11-10T16:03:00.000-08:00

Jack Palance: 1919 – 2006

Of course, he'll be best remembered for Shane and City Slickers. For most of my life, though, he was the Ripley's Believe it or Not guy who also played the space-tyrant-with-the-glowing-touch-of-death on Buck Rogers. That guy freaked me out when I was seven.

As villains go, Palance was always the happy badman — not crazy-happy like a giggling Richard Widmark or sleazy-happy like an oily George Sanders — but coldly pleased with himself. A coiled, smirking, naughty snake who liked to toy with his prey. He even hissed when he spoke.

For the best possible elegy to this man, we need look no further than the one offered by Billy Crystal in City Slickers: “Lord, we give you Curly. Try not to piss him off.”

Like a baptism

2006-11-08T18:59:00.000-08:00

Anyone else feel like we've had to crawl through 500 yards of shit-smelling foulness to get here?

D-Day

2006-11-07T10:22:00.000-08:00

Remember this little rule-of-thumb for multiple-choice tests: If you can't eliminate any of the choices, if all four answers seem equally plausible, then C is most likely correct? Well today, the correct answer is always D.

Normally, I would not advocate knee-jerk, party-line dot-filling. In elections past, I tried to read up on as many candidates as I could, and throughout the 90s, I answered a lot of these questions with a G or an I or an L — and even a few Rs.

Not so this year. This year it's all about righting the ship (so to speak) and offloading the dead weight. It doesn't matter if the D is an idiot and the R is an honest and upstanding public servant, because this year all of the Rs need to be sent to their room to think about what they've done. Any vote for any R at any level of government is really a vote for W. What's needed is a top-to-bottom, party-wide GOP timeout. In 2008, the Rs can come out of their room and ask the nation's forgiveness. And I will happy to hear them out. This year, R is the scarlet letter.

As for the Ds, well, after six years of their lame nonsense, Bill Maher pretty much summed up my feelings towards the Democrats on last week's Real Time, with this [long and profane] “New Rules” admonition inspired by Alec Baldwin's memorable “brass balls” speech from Glengarry Glen Ross:

“Finally, New Rule: Controlling Congress is for closers. Listen up, Democrats, it's as simple as A-B-C. Always Be Closing. First prize: subpoena power in the new Congress. Second prize: set of steak knives. Third prize: you're fired. The election is four days away and I'm through dicking around with you. Here are the leads. Here are your talking points:
“One: when they say Democrats will raise taxes, you say, “We have to because someone spent all the money in the world cutting Paris Hilton's taxes and not killing Osama bin Laden.” In just six years, the national debt has doubled. You can't keep spending money you don't take in. That's not even elementary economics. That's just called, “Don't be Michael Jackson.”
“Two: When they say the terrorists want the Democrats to win, you say, “Are you insane? George Bush has been a terrorist's wet dream.” He inflames radical hatred against America and then runs on offering to protect us from it. It's like a guy throwing shit on you and then selling you relief from the flies.
“Three: When they say, “Cut and Run” or “Defeat-ocrat,” you say, “Bush lost the war. Period.” All this nonsense — this nonsense about “the violence is getting worse over there because they're trying to influence the election”; no, it's getting worse because you drew up the postwar plans on the back of a cocktail napkin at Applebee's. And of course Democrats want to win. But that's impossible now that you've ethnically-cleansed the place by making it unlivable. Just like you did with New Orleans.
“Four: When they say that actual combat veterans like John Kerry are denigrating the troops, you say, “You're completely full of shit.” Remember when Al Gore caught all that flak for sighing and moaning during that debate? Yeah, don't do that. Just say, “You're full of shit.” If I was a troop, the support I would want back home would mainly come in the form of people pressuring Washington to get me out of this pointless nightmare! That's how I would feel supported.
“So when they say, “Democrats are obstructionists,” you say, “You're welcome.” Sometimes, good people have to intercede to prevent dire consequences. You wouldn't like to think of me as an obstructionist, but what if Roseanne had offered to sing? So I would be happy to frame this debate as a fight between the obstructionists and the enablers.
“There's your talking point. Vote Republican, and you vote to enable George Bush to keep ruling as an emperor. A retarded, child emperor — but an emperor. So, Democrats, you've got four days to get out there and close! And it's not about slogans this time. Although, when it comes to slogans, the only one I'm prepared to accept from the opposition is, The Republican Party: We're Sorry.”

Go and do likewise...

NaNoWriMope

2006-11-01T15:34:00.000-08:00

November 1. Which means National Novel Writing Month is off and running. For years I've regarded the participants in this annual novel-writing binge (many of whom are close friends) with a mix of sincere admiration and involuntary disapprobation — they same way I look on people who jump out of airplanes, get up before 6 in order to exercise, or do their own roofing.

This year, though, I signed up — and for no reason other than the fact I really have nothing better to do (job search aside, of course). The goal is to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days. That's roughly 1,700 words a day — or, in my case, as I have to discount both weekends and Thanksgiving week, it's about 3,000 words a day.

Today I wrote about 50 words. Then I did the dishes, took the dog for a walk to the comic shop, and met Poupolis for beer and billiards at Molly Maguires. Yep, I'm off to flying start.

So tomorrow, I'll need to squeeze out about 5,950 words. You can see where this is going.

Best show on television

2006-10-27T14:35:00.000-07:00

As of last Friday, it's official. With Deadwood now defunct, and Lost digging itself into a labyrinthine trench so deep it seems nothing short of hitting the big red “it was all just a dream” button can save it, one show now rules the air.

Literally.
Frak me.

(Yes, Heroes is looking strong out of the gate, and I'm completely enamored of Studio 60. But I have lingering doubts about the ability of the former to maintain its current momentum, as I do about the latter's chances of gathering enough lift to offset its weighty production costs. They both have a lot of ground to cover if they're going to catch up to Battlestar Galactica.)

I am a big fan of the original Galactica, a lifelong loyalist who still has the entire run of comic books and dutifully bought the DVD set that came in a big plastic Cylon head. Even so, I never once, not even at age 8, suffered under the delusion that it was a show of of any real dramatic quality. It was just cool. Cool ships, cool robots, cool music, cool Dirk Benedict. But dramatically speaking, I knew it was no Dallas.

That anything even remotely as good as the new Galactica could issue from the union of Glen Larson's 1978 series and a (one-time) crap factory like the Sci-Fi Channel is nothing less than stunning. Epiphanous. Paradigm-shifting.

This weeklong euphoria after watching Adama pull off his plummeting atmospheric “jump-launch-jump” maneuver, and Pegasus taking out three (or was it four?) base stars in its death throes, has been tempered with feelings of real dread and worry over Gaeta. As with Chief and Sharon (and the late Billy), he's been one of my favorite characters all along. Of all the show's “one year later” twists, his character's mutation from highly efficient Tactical Officer to George W. Baltar's Chief of Staff was hardest to swallow.

Now the occupation is over and it's time to tar & feather all the Cylon collaborators (according to the previews of tonight's episode, and the Chief's foreshadowing). Which means it's not looking too good for Gaeta right now. I just hope he lives through tonight... and somehow finds his way back into a colonial uniform.

He's like the Colin Powell of the Baltar Administration — should've kept away from politics and stuck to what he knew, which is reading DRADIS and spinning up FTLs.

My brains are going into my feet...

2006-10-25T15:19:00.000-07:00

It had to happen sooner or later.

All I really needed was an accomplice (read: enabler) and a single, unbroken stretch of 14 hours. Chris and I, thanks in no small part to the indulgence and understanding of our fair counterparts, watched the whole Star Wars saga, episodes I-VI, back to back. The unabridged life & times of Anakin Skywalker, from “Yippee!” to “Tell your sister you were riiiiiiiiiiight...”

These are not short movies, let me tell you. Their combined running time comes to about 13 1/2 hours (you can shave off nearly 40 minutes if you skip the end credits). We kicked off The Phantom Menace at 10 AM and finished up the Ewoks' “Nub Nub” song a few minutes shy of midnight (naturally, we watched only the pristine, unaltered theatrical versions). Along the way we debated such issues as which Geonosian arena creature was the nastiest, which Skywalker was the whiniest, etc. Two dyed-in-the-wool American dorks in their element.

Neither of us are strangers to this kind of marathon. Chris has sat through the entire Expanded Lord of the Rings Trilogy (11 1/2 hours); I've digested all 12 hours of Rich Man, Poor Man in one sitting, and every year I watch the entire rise and fall of the Planet of the Apes (5 movies, 8 hours). So we both wield the resolute fixation and hardened posteriors needed to survive such an ordeal.

(Let me just say here and now that I'm endlessly grateful to have a loving, devoted woman in my life. At times like this it seems like the apex of improbability.)

Anyway. The Star Wars continuum seemed to go on a hellllllllll of a lot longer than I expected. Maybe it's because it leads off with such compelling drama as a dispute over the taxation of trade routes. Or, maybe it's just the fact that Episode II is the longest entry in the series, thanks in no small part to the seemingly endless courtship of Anakin and Padme.

Consider: In Empire, Han and Leia trade a few playful barbs, fool around a little while the Falcon's in the space-slug's belly, and finally confess their love with five words spoken over a carbon pit. But little orphan Ani's whine-n-weep wooing of the apparently lobotomized ex-queen goes on for so long that we actually started wishing they'd get back to the taxation of trade routes. And this was only 3 hours into the haul — right about the time my numbing ass first started sending puzzled queries to my brain.

But then we hit Episode III, which has a lot going for it, not the least of which is the long-awaited chopped Anakin flambé. And then, finally, A New Hope and Empire, which are the reasons we put ourselves through this in the first place. So the going got easier, even though about halfway through Empire, the DVD player started to groan and stutter, much like the Falcon's hyperdrive.

By the time we hit Jedi, my brain was beginning to initialize its emergency shutdown sequence. And unfortunately, Jedi has that 25-minute stretch right in the middle (between the speeder bikes and Luke's arrival on the Death Star) when nothing happens except Ewok antics — so whatever momentum you've carried into the home stretch evaporates right there.

The finale, of course, is fairly satisfying (especially the death of the Emperor at the hands of his own apprentice, oh sweet irony!), but after 13+ hours, there's something a little disappointing in the fact that this long and impressive galactic saga ends with a bonfire and a musical number from The Muppet Show. Not the biggest payoff in history.

No matter. We done it. Nowhere to go from here but down.

And my head still feels like this:

It's in the Cards

2006-10-18T10:50:00.000-07:00

Funny thing — despite my season-long sympathies with the Mets and their long-suffering fans, and the underdog-makes-good allure of a Mets-Tigers World Series (not to mention my inherited allegiance to the Cubbies*), I can't bring myself to root against these Cardinals.

It's their roster that gets me. How can you not pull for guys who really play the game the way these guys play? Total-effort players like Rolen and Edmonds and Eckstein... and even our old friend Spiezio, who just suffered two seemingly terminal seasons with the Ms, only to become the unlikely hero of the NLCS a year later.

And I tip my hat to La Russa, who so far has managed the postseason like a brilliant chess game. Spiezio in place of Rolen? Taguchi in for Duncan? Madness! But the results speak for themselves.

Nothing's sewn up yet, of course — 2004 taught us that lesson. Still, with Carpenter taking the mound tonight, the Mets need to summon the spirit of Schilling's bloody sock if they're going to pull this one out of the fire.

*Oh yes: Lou Piniella giving the Cubbies a swift kick in their hapless asses? That's a show I will not miss.

Kryptic news item

2006-10-17T11:34:00.000-07:00

The headline is real. The subs are mine.

Unusual meteorite found in Kansas

UFO sightings dismissed
Astronomers monitor exploding star
Local orphanage vandalized