Haphazard Catharsis

The Island of Misfit Bloggers?

2011-10-03T13:29:00.000-07:00

Wow, what a wake-up call! That post on Ford was my first to this blog in a year. Which, not surprisingly, makes me wonder how many blogs out here in the Interwebz lie neglected and gathering virtual cobwebs. The "dust" of inactivity, as witnessed by an ancient timestamp from the last time life was breathed into it can no doubt appear to be a hallmark of abandonment.

Perhaps a sign of how busy life gets? Or more likely a sign of how much of it plays out in other venues, most notably the 800-million user juggernaut that is Facebook or the upstart from behemoth Google.

Has the personal blog gone the way of the dodo?

Or will a pulse erupt sporadically as we bloggers remember we have our own customized corner of the aether to spout off however we see fit?

Time marches on...

A Noble Destination

2011-10-03T13:18:00.000-07:00

Recent media reports focus on a Ford commercial that features an actual F-150 buyer providing their real answers to a staged "press conference" in a documentary-style spot. In it, the buyer, identified as Chris, states:

"I wasn't going to buy another car that was bailed out by our government. I was going to buy from a manufacturer that's standing on their own: win, lose, or draw."

That statement is seen as some as picking on GM and Chrysler, the two domestic manufacturers who did, in fact, take out enormous federal loans as part of an industry bailout. Both companies entered bankruptcy, anyway, in order to restructure and manage their crippling debt and labor agreements. Members of Congress are now investigating whether or not the White House may have put pressure on Ford to pull the spot. (Reuters covers it here.)

Regardless of whether or not anyone exerted pressure to pull the ad, it reflects a sentiment seen often in the research we've done in my "day job" (read that ironically, because it's been a full-time gig for a couple years now). Both shoppers and buyers have used language similar to Chris' ever since the bailouts took place. It's an active and honest factor in determining brand consideration for some automotive customers. Ford has been, and continues be, seen as what we call a "noble destination" in light of the bailouts. The reasoning behind it is simple: being the one company that weathered the storm on its own suggests that Ford is the manufacturer more likely to continue to be around through future difficult times. The ability to see trouble coming and adjust course to survive it, and even thrive as Ford has in recent years, represents additional emotional security for people making such a large purchase. This is true in any automotive segment, of course, though it is not a stretch to assume that it can be significant a factor when shopping for a full-size pickup truck you need to last for years, backed by a company that you feel will endure.

So, to the larger Industry and to the current administration I am compelled to offer the following: pulling this spot only draws greater attention to what buyers have been saying for the past few years, anyway. It's pointless to pretend that sentiment does not exist or somehow is not a factor in the decision-making process.

The actual Ford spot is below:

Future treasures?

2010-09-13T10:00:00.000-07:00

Everyone has stumbled upon an old photograph while organizing or packing. We take a moment out to look at the image in our hands and try to remember when it was taken and what was happening when that instant was fixed in light and chemistry. A momentary nostalgic interlude from whatever task was underway when the memory was excavated and then the image is stowed away to be either properly archived or unexpectedly rediscovered in an unknown and possibly distant future.

How will that work in a world where everything is now bits instead of atoms? Digital cameras connect to computers which route the rasterized images into the cloud. No developing process needed. No paper required. No need to hold onto scraps of treated paper in shoeboxes. No pressure to find storage space for the physical when the cloud holds its essence.

Services will come and go. Even if Flickr survives forever -- or at least until our sun goes nova, at which point this becomes moot -- viewing requires deliberate action. We must seek out the images. We may stumble upon something in someone else's photostream, but only after acting on the intent to view a photograph. Will these digital avatars of our memories outlast physical images? Are we losing an opportunity for future surprise discoveries or gaining advantages that we haven't yet fully realized?

That'll be all, Danny.

2010-01-16T15:34:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure why someone bothered asking Danny Glover his opinion about what's going on in Haiti. I am, however, relieved, that it provides an opportunity to point out that Mr. Glover is, in fact, batshit insane.

In a recent interview, Mr. Glover attempts to connect the apocalypse in Haiti with the failure to reach an agreement on climate change in Copenhagen by proposing that Gaia was pissed and therefore smote the Haitians. The implied logic is that because a cohort of jet-setting pseudo-environmentalists couldn't get their act together in Denmark, the Earth itself lashed out with a 7.1 earthquake that leveled the capital city in perhaps the single-poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

I'd like to think that this doesn't require much in the way of analysis.

Another article that talks about this, complete with a link to the YouTube video of Mr. Glover's phone appearance on GRITtv is here. It takes a bit to pick up; the actual comments are closer toward the end of the clip.

I've enjoyed Mr. Glover's work in film. He's an engaging presence on the screen. However, I think this is conclusive evidence that we can count him out of anything having to do with politics, science or... well, much of anything besides acting.

"Just Another Day"

2009-12-31T21:12:00.000-08:00

I meant to post this on Christmas Day. Not because it contains any particularly important theological insight or spiritual revelation, but because it fits with those sorts of occasions. I failed to post it on Christmas because I very much needed to take a day away from work, and apparently the only way to accomplish that is to completely avoid computers.

(iPhones are fair game, but are tougher for these sorts of entries.)

There are folks who would posit that Christmas and New Year's are just another day. Strictly speaking, they're right. Any Winter Solstice holiday you or others may celebrate are just another revolution of the planet as it spins around our sun. The sun rises and sets on that day just as any other. It's a sentiment that I fully understand, and in fact thought about as "Just Another Day" played over my car speaker as I drove down to visit friends and second-family members (many of whom are co-workers) for the holiday week.

However, that sentiment lasted only for a fleeting moment before it was replaced by the larger truth, as I understand it. This truth is that the days which we collectively deem as special or significant do have meaning, and that is the importance we imbue them with. For most of the free world, any random day is just that. While it may be someone's anniversary or birthday it is, to the rest of us, simply another day. Then there are those days which have gathered a collective standing: so many people impart significance upon a given day or days that they become special across broader populations. Businesses close as people declare a time that is to be set apart for whatever celebration or reflection is agreed upon. Traditions sprout and grow around these days, clinging to the occasion through the passage of time when they are, in turn, passed along to a new generation.

These days matter because we say they do. That's what I wanted to share with all of you: a reminder that the significance and meaning -- indeed the power -- behind our "sacred" days exists solely because it comes from us. There's no external force that declares them special. It's us.

We are our own power.

For that reason, it's not just another day. Chanukah mattters. Christmas matters. New Year's Eve/Day matters. They mean something because we hold them dear and collectively agree that they represent something.

With that in mind, I'll take this opportunity to wish you and yours a happy and prosperous New Year.

Virtual Nostalgia & Hand Grenades

2009-11-26T19:41:00.000-08:00

I'm Alex Hare, and I'm a Hunter.

I ride my Stormpike Charger through the worlds of Azeroth, Outland and Northrend with my trusted Raptor sidekick, Dexter. My aim is keen and my tracking senses are legendary. My traps make my enemies wish they'd never crossed my path.

What's your game?

Alright, I've never been featured in a World of Warcraft ad. I'm what Blizzard would generously refer to as a "casual player." I have played since open beta, and was one of those who experienced the server land-rush on launch. However, with the day-job having become all-consuming (translation: I'm not writing much for anything other than work) I often go for a few weeks at a time between log-ins. None of my characters are level 80 (the current maximum), and my "main" -- the Hunter -- is only level 70.

This past week Blizzard started airing new WoW ads with Mr. T, featuring the "Mohawk Grenade" -- a more-or-less inside joke tied to his first WoW spot. I had heard there were actual Night Elf Mohawks in-game outside each of the starting areas, and thought it might be fun to find one. When I logged in, I noticed I had mail from Blizzard. Attached was a present for their fifth anniversary. I had to re-read the message. I knew I'd subscribed for a few years, but didn't realize we'd hit the 5th anniversary already. It inspired a brief bit of reflection on my time in meatspace over the past five years; those things which had changed and those which had not. Moving on, I decided it was time to take my Hunter for a quick spin and score some grenades.

Returning to Ironforge, I was reminded just how much I enjoyed that city. It's a perfect fit and feel for what one might expect of a race of dwarves, with its massive halls, Great Forge and proud background music; which is amusing considering "dwarf" is a completely fictional concept. Riding out of Ironforge my ram galloped down toward Kharanos, a smaller nearby town. Past the Thunderbrew Distillery, my Hunter's first hearthstoned "home." Riding along the road that passed through Kharanos, on through the frozen mountains of Dun Morogh, I found myself getting a bit nostalgic about my Hunter's own history. Onward, past a mortar team I fondly remembered them cracking each other up as they blew up target dummies during my Hunter's earliest foray into the wider world.

As I neared the Coldridge Pass, I felt as though I was genuinely having a homecoming of sorts. I nailed a couple of Rockjaw Raider troggs as I went through, payback for the hassle they'd given a certain red-haired dwarf during his earlier days as a hunter. I emerged from the tunnel and found myself staring at my own birthplace: the starting area of Coldridge Pass where I'd taken my first few steps on launch day. It was like I'd come home, seventy levels and five years later, having seen the furthest reaches and depths of Azeroth and the other world of Outland.

What I appreciated most about this trip down a virtual memory lane was that these memories of myself, as the Hunter, were just as real as those reflections upon the real world when I saw the Fifth Anniversary note. It was amusing and ironic to feel as though I'd lead some kind of double-life. One in Southern California, and one in the World of Warcraft.

Thank you, Blizzard. My quest for hand grenades yielded a pleasant reward of a fond memory of my time as a Hunter.

Now, time to help Mr. T. make Azeroth look gooooood.

Color me stunned.

2009-09-29T20:14:00.000-07:00

It's official. I am genuinely flabbergasted: Filmmakers demand Polanski's release.

If I'm reading this correctly they're crying foul over the fact that he was bagged in Switzerland on his way to a film festival to receive a lifetime achievement award, because he has previously been allowed to travel in and out of the country freely. He even owns a house there.

So, let me see if I've understood the logic being applied here: these same filmmakers are fine with Roman Polanski drugging, raping and sodomizing a 13 year old child, and with his having fled justice for the last thirty years. He's admitted it, and justified his pedophile desires at the time. The problem these signatories seem to have is that he finally got popped by a country willing to extradite him on an occasion to which they knew he'd show up? I call that fair play, kids. If you want to nail someone you time your arrest to get them at a time and place when you're pretty damn sure they'll be.

In the case of the filmmakers, it seems like they think film festivals should be sacred. The night you get an award should be sacrosanct. The law can't touch you on your award night at a film festival?

I call shenanigans.

I'm still very interested in working in the Industry, but I did actually decide years ago that if I had a chance to work with Roman Polanski I would pass out of general principle. What does it say about these folks that they're backing him on a formal petition?

In other news, France passes tough anti-piracy measure. Ah, the French... soft on pedophiles, tough on illegal downloads.

Speaking of past lives...

2009-09-19T22:51:00.000-07:00

Have you noticed that no one who believes they have had a previous life ever believes they were some anonymous random peon? Every one I've heard of imagines they were Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, Napoleon or another famous figure. Nobody ever says...

"Hey, I think I may have been a victim of the Black Death back in 1349."

"You know, I honestly believe I may have been one of those innocent bystanders slaughtered when the first Crusaders finally reached Jerusalem."

"Man, you know what really sucked? That day when our village was completely slaughtered by the ancient Israelites."

"I miss the old days tending the ziggurat in Ur. That was the life."

Why is that? If past lives were possible, we couldn't all have been someone famous. Of course, given the overall expansion of the global population over the last hundred years or so it would be statistically impossible for all 6.5 billion people now living to have been someone else in the past; there just aren't enough dead people to go around.

And this is how my mind wanders on a Saturday night when I should be working...

Ah, the Internet: bringer of new guilt

2009-09-19T11:51:00.000-07:00

I'm developing "match guilt." It's like TiVO/DVR guilt or Netflix guilt: a mental state created when there's so much of something which requires your attention that you don't have time to properly address it all, which only serves to create a further backlog that requires your attention. It's a self-perpetuating, spiraling form of obligation that has no true impact on your daily life, yet causes occasional bouts of low-grade anxiety or guilt.

Now I'm finding it in online dating sites. I've been on a free one for a few years now, mainly because the tests are amusing, though if I stay away for an extended interval I have no guilt. It's free, and there's nobody expecting me to contact them. On a paid dating site, like the one I joined a couple months ago, things are different. They send you matches night after night. I was rather busy when I signed up, and so left a lot of these women in the queue. Now there are four "pages" worth. I've weeded out the ones with no photos (because you can tell a lot about personality from the face) and the ones that weren't going to work. But that's the catch: the majority of these women are interesting enough that I can't simply eradicate them all. I could, though that would defeat the purpose of the exercise.

Now, there are four pages of women. After joining a paid dating service with the intent of meeting women, I now have a backlog of them. The larger it gets, the more daunting the sorting becomes. It does not help that after reading a few profiles my brain begins to glaze over.

Hence, match guilt.

Which will now have to wait, as I've work to do.

RIP: Blake Snyder

2009-08-07T17:03:00.001-07:00

Everyone knows about John Hughes, because a lot of us grew up on his movies of teen life, angst, love and ditching school during the 1980's.

What has gotten considerably less press is the passing of another screenwriter: Blake Snyder. Most people probably haven't heard of him, but he made a fair living writing high concept scripts like BLANK CHECK and NUCLEAR FAMILY. More personally, he wrote a fabulous book on screenwriting called "Save The Cat." I found this book (and software) at a point in time where I needed a good mental boost to get my head back in the writing game. It's an outstanding read.

I recently helped an aspiring novelist friend out by buying them a set of books, which I described as the three I would pick if I could only have three books on screenwriting, story and most importantly structure. "Save The Cat" was one of those three books.

I saw Blake in person at CS Expo a couple years ago. He appeared to be a guy who was just happy to be where he was. He even published his personal e-mail address in his books, and personally answered hundreds if not thousands of e-mails from aspiring writers who were inspired by reading his guidance.

He's not as famous as John Hughes, of course. Writers never are, but this one did what all writers hope to: he touched my life in a very positive way for which I remain grateful.

Godspeed, Blake Snyder.

Coming soon-ish: Tales from the Script

2009-08-05T23:54:00.001-07:00

Yeah, yeah. Been a while. Worst blogger ever. I know the drill. What can I say? I've been busy. It hasn't been with writing so much, lately, though I hope to change that. Work has been a time devouring exercise that pays well enough that I can't exactly turn my back on things like eating, making rent and clothing myself.

Excuses aside, I may be turning my attentions away from the still long-gestating-but-sure-to-kick-ass-someday feature and getting back into a project I developed with a friend a while ago. We hammered out the rough beats years ago and really liked the premise but life got in the way and nothing came of it. Outside events have now brought that project back to the foreground, and the distance I have on it thanks to the intervening years helps me more objectively analyze it as someone else's work.

This should be fun.

Until then, a recommendation to all of you writer-types out in the audience: sometime this winter, look for a DVD called Tales from the Script. I caught a screening tonight in LA and thought it was quite a useful, insightful and vaguely depressing look at the world of screenwriting from people who have had their "big break." Shane Black, Zak Penn, David Hayter, Bruce Joel Rubin and the ray of sunshine that is William Goldman (IMDB them, kids) and many others share their tales from the inside. It's not all depressing, of course, some of it is quite funny and totally relatable for anyone who is or has circled the Industry from the perch of the aspiring screenwriter.

The director hopes it will be out on DVD in January, along with a companion book that is scheduled for release then.

Check it out!

A brief open letter concerning WATCHMEN

2009-03-15T22:35:00.001-07:00

To the studios: please don't short your future comic-based properties based on the drop-off in WATCHMEN grosses in the second week. Those of who you thought it would pull in $70M got caught up in the excitement and forgot to factor in that it's an R-rated picture with a 2:40 run-time whose core audience are the hard-core comic book fans. The fact it pulled in $55.2M on a non-holiday weekend with those strictures is pretty cool. Between the IMAX release pulling in second-time viewers (such as myself) and the inevitable waves of DVD releases this will likely make money.

(the Fox settlement and issues with certain producers aside.)

To the hater-fanboys: Please shut up about how the movie wasn't exactly like the comic book. You finally got the most faithful adaptation of a comic book you're ever going to get. Endless anonymous online whining about how it didn't capture every nuance of the comic is pointless and ultimately self-defeating. We all know how complex and involved the entirety of the original comic is, and we all should be grown-up enough to understand there's no way a movie can accomplish everything. I flipped through my copy of the trade-paperback when I got back home on opening night, and realized just how much of that comic is really in the screen story. It's amazing, really, particularly if you know anything about the Hollywood development process. If you care about future adaptations, please shut up.

Having said that: be sure to check out the inevitable super-extended DVD which will include the screen story from the theatrical release spliced in with Tales of the Black Freighter and Under The Hood. That will be as close as any movie will ever get to capturing the entirety of that seminal work.

To the fans that enjoyed WATCHMEN: tell your friends. Let them know this is based on a comic so well-written and complex it made TIME Magazine's list of 20 greatest novels of the 20th century. It's been a major influence across the world of comics and in turn the rest of the popular media ever since it debuted in 1986. Help get them interested enough to buy the trade-paperback so we can boost comic sales. Maybe get a few folks to give comics another try.

You should probably also warn them not to take their kids. This is an R-rated movie based on a comic book written for adults with adult-themes and mature subject matter. And a glowing blue man who runs around naked for most of the movie (wearing clothes far less often than he did in the comic, I noticed).

Roy Pearson needs a PR make-over

2008-12-18T21:15:00.001-08:00

What could possibly make you a bigger *sshole than filing a $67 million suit against a dry cleaners over a pair of pants?

An appeal.

Roy Pearson, d*ckhead emeritus, returns. From CNN.com: The $54 million pants suit unravels again.

(the initial suit was for $67M, lowered to $54M during the previous fiasco)

I love this speech

2008-12-12T14:54:00.001-08:00

It's b een a while since I've posted. Busy with work for the day-job and rewriting the beat outline for my current feature. The story is solid, and I'm making the female lead younger, fine-tuning some logistics in the second act, and accepting the fact I'm writing an action/horror movie. I resisted calling it that for a while because "supernatural action" sounded cooler and I didn't want to think of it as a horror movie. However, focusing in on my relevant genres has proven helpful and I'm looking forward to really getting into the thick of the script.

In the meantime, I offer the following for your consideration.

(from ROCKY BALBOA, an outstanding movie I highly recommend.)

Vote No on Proposition 8

2008-10-29T22:40:00.000-07:00

There's been quite a lot of discussion in California about Proposition 8, which is intended to alter the State Constitution to define marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman. Those of you in the audience who already know about Prop. 8 may remember its predecessor, Prop. 22, one of the so-called "defense of marriage" acts that have been on many ballots around these United States. Prop. 22 had major backing from religious groups, particularly among Catholic and Mormon voters. Prop. 22 passed, but was challenged in court and ruled unconstitutional. Predictably, these same interests opted to change the state constitution itself and thus the current Prop. 8 was born.

Prop. 8 is a crock. If you're a registered voter in the state of California, please vote "No" on it.

Here's why...

There is no rational argument to deny same-sex couples the right to marriage and all the civil and legal benefits that accompany that commitment. When approached from a rational secular perspective, it's clearly obvious that society has more to gain by accepting the idea of same-sex marriage and granting same-sex couples the same rights and protections that a mixed-gender marriage enjoys. Those who promote the family as the building block of society are correct; they also often fail to take that argument through to its logical conclusion. A same-sex marriage can also be the basis of a family which also strengthens society. They'll buy homes, appliances, cars, and send their children to schools and universities just the same as "traditional" married couples.

I have friends on both sides of this debate. Some of my friends have religious upbringings and maintain that same-sex marriage runs counter to their beliefs and the traditional definitions of marriage. On the opposite side of that argument are friends who want to get married to another consenting adult who happens to be of the same gender.

Those who oppose same-sex marriage all clearly believe that marriage should continue to be what it was: one man married to one woman. The simple and obvious counter to that argument is each and every one of the other former "traditions" which have fallen by the wayside as society advanced, ranging from slavery to suffrage. We used to be able to own other people. Now, slavery is illegal in the industrial and civilized world. Women used to not be able to own property, get a higher education, or vote. Now they can do all three in Western cultures. Therefore, the status of a pattern of behavior as "tradition" does not ensure that such behavior continues in perpetuity. Times, people, and societies change.

Today the argument of those opposed to same-sex marriage appears to have shifted. Now there is a perceived homosexual "agenda" to be considered; some vaguely defined "slippery slope" which must be avoided and denying same-sex couples the right to wed somehow stems that tide. Any slippery-slope argument is by nature a sophistic one: by elaborating what the top and bottom of said slope are you've defined the inherent dangers and in so doing established what consequences could await. By showing there is a slope, you've ensured we won't slide down it.

Ultimately, those who are in favor of Prop. 8 and against same-sex marriage fall back to a belief as to what marriage "should be" and that belief more often than not stems from a religious philosophy. This, gentle reader, is why Prop. 8 is a crock: what its proponents will not cop to is the religious component of their belief. Because if they did, they would be tacitly (and ironically) admitting they're in favor of violating the First Amendment; the same freedom of religion that they enjoy also applies to those of a different belief, or even no religious beliefs whatsoever. That's right, the First Amendment protects atheists, too. Because it protects the freedom to choose and worship as you see fit. Even if that's as a Pastafarian.

In case that explanation was too convoluted, here's an example. Let's say a coalition of Jews and Muslims got together to introduce a proposition to ban pork sales. They believe pork is bad, pigs are filthy animals, and that nobody should be eating them. The problem is that those beliefs come from their religion, and only really applies to members of that religion. I'm neither Jewish nor a Muslim, so I get to eat bacon.

So please, on November 4, vote no on Prop. 8 if you're a registered voter in California. Because it has nothing to do with the so-called sanctity of marriage. It's a religious belief being forced on those who do not follow those religions. And that is clearly against the US Constitution and common sense.

Whither hatred?

2008-10-24T14:26:00.000-07:00

There's a very disturbing trend in our nation, particularly tied into politics, policy, and presidential campaigns. It's not enough for a lot of people to simply disagree with a candidate's position or platform, the level enmity expressed by a great many people in this nation seems to require the demonization of the perceived enemy.

I've seen quite a lot of propaganda here on the Interwebs, from both ends of the political spectrum, and am amazed the level of vitriol and sheer spite leveled at the other side. What happened to a rational intellectual discussion of the issues and policies? When did it become so invested in the absolute destruction of The Other?

I'm sightly right of Center politically, and believe in fiscal responsibility, national security, and a more socially liberal position than the average Republican (pro choice, in favor of same-sex marriage, etc). I probably won't vote for Senator Obama because I disagree with his proposed strategies and I don't think he's a sound choice when it comes to national security and foreign policy.

That's it.

I don't demonize the man. I don't vilify him. I don't post cartoons or captioned photos that lash out with a degree of dehumanization that surpasses the most loathsome examples from World War II. I just don't agree with him politically. I don't have a problem with my fellow voting Americans who choose to vote for him. I don't rip down Obama/Biden yard signs or vandalize vehicles that sport Obama bumper stickers. I don't understand the mindset of people who feel those things are appropriate, helpful, or necessary, regardless of political affiliation.

When did it come down to destroying the person you don't agree with?

Why can't we simply respect that the other person has a different opinion or vision and get on with our lives?

Where does this necessity to extirpate those not of our own views come from?

I don't ask this to embroil any of us into a lengthy political discussion unlikely to change minds at this late date. By now everyone knows who they're going to vote for and is armed to the teeth with talking points to support that position. I ask these questions to invite introspection amongst ourselves as a nation, a culture, and as a people to find the source of this internal venom and to perhaps end the sheer hatred that clearly divides us.

I don't expect this single post to change anything; it would be nice if it got people thinking.

The Matrix is always greener...

2008-09-22T23:31:00.000-07:00

Any time I feel a little down or bummed about where I am or my perceived place in the world, I remind myself about a scene from THE MATRIX. Morpheus, Trinity and Neo enter a subway station inside The Matrix, and there's a homeless bum sleeping on a bench with a bottle tucked inside a plastic bag. The bum is soon taken over by Agent Smith who proceeds to duel Neo.

It's a small bit, easily forgotten in the fight scene that ensues. However, when you put it into the context of the Matrix itself, you gain an appreciation of your life in the real world. Not only was that guy actually hooked up in a power-plant which fuels the AI-driven robots that have enslaved humanity, which is bad enough, while he lives out his days in a digital hallucination...

His lot in that fake world: he's a bum.

So whenever you feel down, just remember that bum in The Matrix. At least you're not that guy.

(Yes, HBO is showing THE MATRIX again. Often.)

Long time, no post.

2008-08-04T20:49:00.000-07:00

Worst. Blogger. Ever.

I know.

Between the day job, Comic Con, THE DARK KNIGHT (can't gush enough about that one — see it in IMAX!), things are going a mile a minute here at the ranch.

The current plan is to get back to work on my feature screenplays. One is in the outline stage, with its second act bugs worked out in theory. A rewrite of that outline and first draft are next up. After that, a period drama that I think would be a solid entry into the Nichol Fellowship next May.

I'm still also toying with TV specs. I'd love to do a "Dexter" though it won't be the same without Doakes.

Oh, and if you haven't seen seasons two of "Dexter"... sorry.

Back to the grindstone...

Goodbye, Stan Winston.

2008-06-17T09:28:00.000-07:00

From Variety: Effects master Stan Winston dies.

Movie fans will at least recognize the name. Stan and his studio were responsible for hugely famous animatronics and make-up work in movies from ALIENS to the TERMINATOR franchise to JURASSIC PARK. His studio did the practical suits in IRON MAN.

According to the article, a lot of folks in the Industry were surprised to hear of his death as he only discussed his health problems with his inner circle. He died at age 62, from multiple myeloma.

Thank you for being a part of our lives, Stan, even if most of us never met you.

Please Barack, don't hurt 'em.

2008-04-24T22:50:00.000-07:00

In Scott Brown's recent column on Nerds in America for WIRED, he offers the following:

In fact, the nerd contingent has become so large that even Barack frakkin' Obama is, as of this printing, rumored to be planning a trek to the ultimate nerd summit: Comic-Con in San Diego. If Obama's a nerd — or even pandering to nerds — then all bets are off. Bye-bye, Urkel! So long, Booger! Our ghettoization is over. The question now isn't Are you a nerd, but What kind of nerd are you?

I swear on my mother's eyes that I do not say the following for any politically-driven reason whatsoever:

Please, Senator Obama, if you value the Nerd vote at all -- PLEASE don't go to Comic Con.

I don't say it as a right-of-center registered Republican. There's no political motivation at all. I implore you from the position of a geek who has been attending Con every year since 1988 (first in '84, but consistently since at least '88). I've seen how the Con audience has grown with the popularity of manga, animé, and CCGs. I've been stuck in the lines and surging masses of the floor as Hollywood recognized the importance of kissing our collective geek-tastemaker/trendsetting ass. When Angelina Jolie showed up, or Halle Berry, The Rock, or Tenacious D were on the scene, the crowds grew exponentially.

Senator Obama, please believe me when I say your presence will cause a crowd-management cluster f*ck of apocalyptic proportions. The well-intended Con volunteer staff and Elite services have enough trouble managing the Hall H line on a Saturday. Don't make this year's Con a total disaster.

Seriously.

Can we make a deal? I'll vote for you if you don't go to Comic Con.

There.

I said it.

I'll only make good if you mention it was this informed, well-reasoned, and totally apolitical blog entry that swayed you to reconsider, of course. You understand.

Enema Zero

2008-04-22T23:40:00.000-07:00

I'm fascinated by those "Who was the first guy (gal) to..." questions. The first person to think that plucking body hair was a good idea, since historians believe that led to shaving. The first person to nibble a bit of oregano leaf and decide it would be good to use as seasoning. That kind of thing amazes me.

This month's "What's Inside" page of WIRED features cigarettes (May 2008, pg. 48). Top ingredient is tobacco:

Thanks to nicotine, this plant may be mildly hallucinogenic. It can be chewed, brewed, smoked, or as some South American shamans prefer, enjoyed as an enema.

As an enema? Who the hell was the first person to figure out that something shoved up their rectum was ever a good idea, much less that stuffing tobacco leaves made any sense whatsoever?

Once in a while I'm thankful that these sorts of historical ponderances are, by nature, unknowable.

Misspoke = lied

2008-03-25T16:12:00.001-07:00

After several days and multiple instances of claiming she dodged sniper fire in Bosnia while she was First Lady, photographic evidence and video footage has forced Hillary and her camp to confess that she "misspoke."

For those not wearing their Politician Decoder Rings, misspoke = lied (and got caught).

Honestly, how does someone "mis-speak" or mis-remember or in any way get confused about whether or not they were SHOT AT? Seriously?

More importantly, and what I'm not hearing anyone ask so far is this: how would being shot at by Bosnian snipers translate into foreign policy experience? Getting a cap busted up in my ass from local gangs would not make me an expert on inter-gang warfare in the Greater Los Angeles area. Being shot by a gang member does not impart any form of lore, wisdom, experience, or knowledge.

Neither would ducking sniper fire in Bosnia make one an expert in foreign policy. Even if it actually happened.

Back to work...

New Year's Eve - Reflection

2007-12-31T18:50:00.000-08:00

In the grand, cosmic, scheme of things, it doesn't matter at all. It's just one more tour around one star among countless billions by an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet. It really only matters to we primitive ape-descendants, for whom it seems to be of great importance to keep track of such things. We're the only species that bothers with this strange habit of keeping track of time in any structured fashion.

(we are also the only species that bothers worrying about the ways in which we are different from other species; add that to the list.)

Since this whole business of a new year matters only to us, among all the species of all the worlds in this amazing and expanding universe, allow this particular hairless ape to wish the rest of you a very happy and prosperous New Year.

Party responsibly. Don't become a drunk-driving statistic, or be the cause of anyone else becoming one, either.

Doorbusters

2007-11-22T08:54:00.001-08:00

If they used this word last Thanksgiving, I missed it. Or blocked it entirely. Evidently, it's the term used for those fabulous deals that are available in the wee hours of Black Friday. Those alluring bargains sung by price-slashing sirens that draw unsuspecting shoppers in droves, only to dash them upon the jagged rocks of drama that ensue when you have hordes descending upon a shop at 5 AM.

And this year, it's going to be worse. It seems to be worse every year, but the shoppers don't learn. Store staffing levels are lower than last year, but still they'll come. In droves. Never mind that the deal is only good for limited hours, or limited quantities, and that you've gotten up at 4 AM to brave the rest of the cranky mob in the worst possible time to shop known to man. This is now so commonplace that they've come up with a whole new word to describe the deals intended to bait consumers into the trap, year after year.

Doorbusters.

Here's the screwy part: I'm not the only one to have noticed this. News outlets are leading with this sort of story all the time, and with the Media Beast on patrol it must be impossible to not know what's going on.

And yet the doorbusters draw people in like lemmings. Stores are opening at 5 and 6 AM. Some stores are opening at midnight tonight.

I suppose the lured masses have their reasons. It's not my life, and not what I would choose to do with my Friday morning. If they choose to leap headfirst through the doors at 5AM it's up to them.

I still don't get it.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Remember, it's about gratitude, not gluttony.

(that said, don't get between me and the cranberry sauce. I take no prisoners.)

Journalism hits bottom

2007-11-16T11:17:00.001-08:00

This may be a sign the news has finally found the bottom of the barrel and is posting the scrapings as headlines.

CNN's front page at the moment has the feature headline being one reader-response quote about how he thinks Barry Bonds was used. Read about it here.

Some random guy submits some conspiracy theory and that's the biggest headline of the hour? That's the new level of journalistic integrity? It isn't some investigative reporter that actually went out, found proof, and reported an honest-to-Murrow story?

No, they've resorted to the bloggers. Great. No vetting, no credentials, no editorial oversight.

You know, about 10% of Americans believe Elvis is still alive, and 8% believe that if you send him a letter he'll get it. Maybe we need a higher standard for our news.*

Maybe it's just me...

*please note that I consider this very rant to be one random monkey's opinion; not news.

Global Pinkie-Swear

2007-11-03T12:21:00.000-07:00

It's occurred to me that the endless deluge of spam into my mailbox is only happening because of the blindingly simple fact that it works. It works because some moron, some where, actually clicks through and buys stuff from spammers.

Spammers aren't stupid. They're obviously morally corrupt, but they're not dumb. If it didn't work, they'd stop doing it. If there was no money in it, I doubt the majority of egregious offenders would soldier on because they like the work.

So, let's start a movement. From this moment henceforth: nobody ever clicks on a link from a spammer. Nobody buys anything from a spammer. Ever. Again. A global pinkie-swear, if that's what it takes.

All you need to do to join this world-wide wave is to raise your right hand, right now, and state the following aloud in a clear, resounding voice (preferably with conviction):

I (state your name),

(Now, actually say your name, you cheeky monkey. We've all seen BLAZING SADDLES.)

Do hereby solemnly swear that I will not, from this day forth, open spam.

I will not click on links contained in spam or be baited by phish-mongers.

I will absolutely never, under penalty of my eyeballs melting from my skull like that cool scene in Act III of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, ever purchase any item from any spammer.

Ever.

I will not continue the cycle. It ends with me.

So help me, Internet Jesus.

Back to work...

"Buffy" part deux

2007-11-03T12:19:00.000-07:00

I have to amend the previous "Buffy" sing-along post. Turns out the reason Fox pulled the deal was that SAG hit them up with a six-figure bill for cast residuals, because the exhibitors were charging for admission.

I get it. I still hope they work something out, though. It's too cool an opportunity to let pass.

"Buffy" Sing-Alongs Slayed

2007-10-15T13:10:00.000-07:00

Come on, Fox, do the math...

Folks started up a "Buffy" sing-along tour, with volunteers leading fans through the musical numbers of "Once More With Feeling" -- the Emmy-nominated musical episode. It started off small, but they're selling out theaters for multi-night runs. The episode plays on-screen, and the audience sings along.

"Buffy" lives again.

Until Fox's lawyers decided the exhibitions exceeded the scope of the license agreement the organizers had obtained. CNN has a story about it here.

I'm no media mogul, but it seems to me there has to be some way for everyone to come out ahead. Clearly, people are willing to pay to see one episode of a show, at least for a while. One might expect that the extra interest could help boost DVD sales and syndication interest.

Instead of killing the idea because of concerns over guild payments, why not capitalize on the momentum and make more money out of it? Use those proceeds to help pay off what you'll owe the guilds.

Everybody wins.

The long overdue PSA:

2007-08-31T17:17:00.000-07:00

Stickers of faux bullet holes and Calvin pissing on anything are now -- officially -- passé.

Also, a free clue for the lady who had a sticker on the fuel door of her Mercury minivan of Calvin pissing on a Ford logo...

Ford owns Mercury.

That is all.

The Last Best Hope for Peace: Katie Couric

2007-08-29T10:06:00.001-07:00

Well thank God we're finally going to get to the bottom of this whole Middle East mess. We're sending in the one true hope for peace:

Katie Couric.

(please note the tongue planted firmly in, if not through, cheek)

Variety reports that Katie is taking a twelve day trip to broadcast from Syria and Iraq. They swear that the stunt -- I mean, trek -- has nothing to do with boosting CBS news' sagging ratings in a critical viewing period. It's all about getting bigger stories with higher ranking and more important folks than they could with unknown or lesser known reporters. This is all in advance of the report coming out from General Petraeus about the status of things in Iraq now that the surge has had a chance to do its thing.

The truth is that CBS evening news has tanked after the initial curiosity spike when Katie first took over. They've spent an awful lot of money to get Couric, and they're not making it back as quickly as they'd hope. This is a stunt.

It's a stunt because anyone who is actually going to talk to Katie is doing so to advance their own agenda. There won't be any honest-to-Allah investigative journalism going on. They're going to have to travel fast and light to avoid getting attacked, and they're going to be limited to the people who agree to speak to them. If they're getting high-value terrorist leaders, it's because those leaders know who Katie is and they're going to use her for propaganda purposes.

Chatting with Katie, no matter how nicer her legs are, isn't going to change their minds about the desire for a global caliphate in which she'd get stoned for wearing anything that showed of her delicious gams. Nothing in the Middle East is going to change because Katie shows up with a mic in search of ratings.

I'm also not expecting Syria to come clean on their role in Iraq just because it's Katie asking. Can you picture their rep, after years of razzing by our own State Department, spilling his guts about the WMDs and Syrian support? "You know, Katie, I'm only going to sell this because it's you and not that uptight Condoleeza Rice..."

If I were a cynical man, I'd probably also include a paragraph about a clear liberal agenda to get in there and spin events their way before Petraeus comes out with a report that's far more positive than anything the CBS Evening News is going to give you.

Thank God I'm not a cynical man. I'd be unbearable...

Iran helping in Iraq?

2007-07-25T00:34:00.002-07:00

I must be missing something. We're meeting with Iranian officials in Baghdad to talk to them about how to manage the problem of foreign fighters and aid in the Iraqi insurgency. Setting aside the whole matter of Tehran being the Mecca of Islamist terrorism and Iran's status as the single largest state supporter of Islamist terrorism...

Or maybe we shouldn't set those aside.

The whole thing feels to me like we're asking the Fox for their thoughts on how to best handle that whole henhouse situation.

CNN/YouTube debates

2007-07-25T00:34:00.001-07:00

There was a Democrat debate last night, which I largely avoided. During the inevitable discussion today, my mind snagged on a key point that nobody else seems to address.

The party that promotes greater government handouts to help the disenfranchised had a debate where users submitted questions via YouTube. The solution to submit questions from a wide and newer audience wasn't a toll-free phone number that anyone in the nation could have used to submit questions. It was a format that required someone to have a video camera, personal computer, and a broadband connection.

How the heck does that open up the process to the disenfranchised they're all so worried about?

The small squeaky cynical voice in the recesses of my mind has suggested that the process was intended to

a) gin up press because YouTube is topical,

and

b) Save CNN a lot of work. They basically had 3,000 people submitting footage that was ready for air. Assuming 2 minutes per question, that's 6,000 minutes or 100 hours of footage that they didn't have to send a crew out to shoot or edit.

CNN got to be lazy, well-publicized, and receive debate questions from 0.0001% of the total US population.

Go team.

What kind of prick...

2007-07-20T08:53:00.000-07:00

Feels compelled to post the ending to the most highly anticipated book ever online less than a week before it goes on sale?

You can't take credit for it, because you'll get sued by one of the richest women on the planet.

You can't take credit for it, because you'll get mobbed by millions of people pissed you spoiled it for them.

You can't take credit for it, because you'll never again get a job that involves even remotely sensitive information.

You'll just be an anonymous self-righteous wanker who marinates alone in your own smugness.

Considering you likely are already in that predicament... carry on.

Childhood Revisionists

2007-07-19T22:09:00.000-07:00

So, I had to go to Disneyland for a work lunch today.

(it's not related to The Project. I have an unusual non-Disney-related day job. Sometimes we end up at Disneyland.)

After lunch, the gang wanted to go on Pirates of the Caribbean. You may remember it, a theme park ride that opened in 1967. Pirates. Dead ones, and a bunch of "live" ones raping, pillaging, in a family-oriented attraction so the theme song was garbled so that kids couldn't figure out what screwed up psychopaths pirates really were.

Ring any bells?

By now, most anyone who cares knows the tale: multi-billion dollar global conglomerate down on its luck decides that since it owns theme parks and a movie studio they ought to look into making movies based on the theme park rides. At first blush, this sounds odd because it's a ride. When you consider the fact that all those rides are inspired by stories or have invented stories behind them, it almost makes sense. It's an unusual format, but not completely unlike adapting a short story.

The first effort, the long-forgotten THE COUNTRY BEARS was an "adaptation" of the Country Bear Jamboree attraction. Aside from the singing animatronic bears, there was a villain played by Christopher Walken, which always makes a movie worth it for me.

I don't recall the box-office take, but I do remember it being widely derided.

It was okay.

The next attempts involved a forgettable take of THE HAUNTED MANSION, with Eddie Murphy and Jennifer Tilly, and most famously the billion-dollar juggernaut trilogy helmed by Johnny Depp's rum-soaked off-camera womanizing Captain Jack Sparrow: PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN.

Media reports had painted the Disney suits as angst ridden stress-bunnies over Depp's portrayal of the pirate captain when they saw the dailies. Depp is hailed as a thespian genius once the movie hits theaters and the public loves Captain Jack. Stuart Beattie, the original writer on the project, said that most of the character was already like that on the page. Stuart is a little known screenwriter -- as all screenwriters are obscure except to each other -- and Johnny Depp is the now mainstream globally famous Jack Sparrow.

Guess whose story gets heard.

Tangent aside, the POTC franchise went on to score heavily in the box office. To date, they've hauled in more than a billion in worldwide gross ($1,033,803,355, according to Box Office Mojo.). That's not including video for the first two movies, or the veritable scads of ancillary merchandise.

Which brings us full circle: back to the ride. The Source.

Since the rum-soaked womanizer was so well received, the suits decided to put Captain Jack into the ride. Now if you go through the attraction at Disneyland, you'll find Captain Jack sprinkled throughout, accompanied by Captains Barbossa, and Davy Jones. Listen to the dialogue for all the pirates and you'll note they're each and everyone searching for Captain Jack Sparrow.

Except for the ones that still cry out, "We want the redhead!" Bless their clockwork pirate hearts.

This isn't the first time that the POTC ride itself has been tweaked, updated, or bastardized, depending on your point of view. As I went through it again today, I noticed even further changes since the debut of the animatronic Capt. Sparrow.

I grew up in Southern California and as such have been to Disneyland a sufficient number of times that the actual count no longer bears repeating. By no means an historian, I do possess a decent memory of the park from the early 1980's through to the present and have commented on the topic previously.

In the earliest memories of the ride, there was a portion where pirates chased women. Three male pirates chased three women, with presumably less-than-honorable intentions. There was a fourth portion to this section where a heavyset woman chased a scared pirate. The punchline being that while the other pirates were chasing women for unspoken pleasures, there was one woman who took to chasing the pirate.

Evidently, there were concerns -- expressed or imagined, I cannot say -- about offending the heavier patrons; likely the heavier female patrons. This portion of the ride was changed several years ago so that the pirates were now chasing women who were carrying plates of food, swapping lust for gluttony. This meant the heavy woman was now chasing a man carrying a plate of food.

For my own part, I always figured that would be more offensive to the very same heavyset female patrons they feared offending.

Today, set amid the various clockwork Captains Sparrow, there was yet another revision. Now all four women are chasing pirates, who each carry plates of food, while the women carry pitchforks and brooms. The heroic women are fighting back, and nobody gets offended.

I'd commented on this change to a co-worker, and got to thinking about the fact that mine may be, in fact, the very first generation that has to genuinely face historical revisionists attacking our childhood memories.

Other examples from recent memory include the STAR WARS saga and E.T.
I saw both when I was a kid, and thought each was great. I nearly cried during E.T., and STAR WARS... well, it changed everything.

Then the godfathers of those respected properties grew older. They had children, raised families, and spawned empires. Technology grew more sophisticated. Lucas and Spielberg each had the means to return to their projects and change things wherever they saw fit.

On the one hand, I support an artist's right to their work. If you're the artist and you want to change something, go for it. It's your work and vision.

On the other hand: some of you guys are screwing with my childhood. You're removing the opportunity for the next generation to experience the same product I did.

Consider Star Wars and the "Special Edition." There were some shots I appreciated. I thought introducing Jabba was kind of cool, if a little awkward. I liked the new shots of Mos Eisley, and the extra shot of a multitude of Stormtroopers that Han and Chewie run into in that hallway on the Death Star. There were some bits of scale that couldn't be achieved back when the movies were made. Lucas got to go back and make them more of the movie he wanted.

Fair play, I said.

Then, a step too far. I'm clearly not a fascist purist, but let's be absolutely clear on one point of vital importance...

HAN. SHOT. FIRST.

Han shot Greedo first in the original release, kids. That's what made him cool. In that moment, you knew what you were in for with that character, and that made Han Solo... Han Solo.

In what I can only presume was a conceit to his sense of fatherly responsibility, George changed this. Greedo shoots first, and Han somehow manages to duck a laser with an improbable and awkward head nod.

A similar experience with the re-imagined E.T. When I saw the movie in theaters, when I nearly cried in the theaters, Elliott and his friends were riding on their bikes away from men with shotguns. Steven has since gone back and removed the shotguns and put walkie-talkies in the hands of the mysterious government agents.

Walkie-talkies? Who runs from a guy with a radio, honestly?

Personally, I think George and Steven have done a tremendous disservice to the kids they're trying to coddle. If an intergalactic bounty hunter is sitting across the table from you, and you know it's quite likely he's going to blow you away and take your body into the Hutts... shoot first. If you're running toward a guy with a shotgun, you're better off running the other way. Men with shotguns are to be avoided.

Men with walkie-talkies? No such lesson.

To bring this back 'round to the point, my generation is probably the first to face the fact that our childhood memories can and will be mucked with at any point in time. The technology is there, the will is there, and it's only a matter of money. Nobody is going back and meddling with Howdy-Doody, are they? We're not going to wake up with a revised Charles Dickens library, where all the endings have been changed.

But as Disney, Lucas, and Spielberg have demonstrated, the technology that makes the present possible also makes our childhood memories malleable and fleeting.

Disneyland is not immutable. It's been changing since it opened, and I'm okay with that. They've taken out old rides. A co-worker who was old enough to remember rides from the 60's mentioned one about flying saucers in which disc shaped cars rode on an air-hockey-like surface, which I'd never heard of before. Usually a ride comes out, a new one comes in. Pirates of the Caribbean is a bit different, and is subject to revisionists whims at any time.

There are entire generations who will never know that ride without Captain Jack Sparrow. They'll all think the ride came from the movie.

A final shot across the bow: Disney will get PC enough to monkey with the pirates and ladies chasing each other section, but never so PC as to recognize they're endorsing piracy and all that entails.

A spoonful of irony helps the revisionism go down.

Zen & The Art of Guitar Hero II

2007-06-26T19:14:00.001-07:00

I'm neither Zen Master nor Rock God, but I've dabbled a bit in both and have found an intriguing similarity between the two.

For those whose lives have yet to be ruined by it, Guitar Hero II is a console game, available for both PS2 and Xbox 360. The controller is shaped like a guitar, with a series of fret buttons, strum bar, and a whammy bar. With this clever controller, you play any number of songs like "Sweet Child of Mine," "Carry on Wayward Sun," etc., as covered by the Red Octane House Band (as I've decided to call them). The interface involves an endlessly scrolling guitar neck down which brightly colored gumdrop landmines drift toward targets at the bottom of the screen. Hold down the right color fret(s) and strum to play.

It's a refreshingly different style of game play.

It's also crack on a Gibson SG.

I've read every book on Zen by Brad Warner. Brad's only written two books, so I can't claim a great accomplishment there. Part of the appeal of Zen -- as I understand it thus far -- is the focus on the present as the only thing there is. History is now memory, and the future is only a dream; neither are exactly as we either remember or anticipate. All that really matters is what we do in this moment. It's a concept that's really appealed to me because I happen to think he's absolutely right.

What I've realized over the last couple weeks I've been taking breaks from writing and working in the star-powered world of GHII is that the game is something of a reflection on life as defined above. The only thing that matters is what you're playing right now. That note you missed? Gone. Memory; perhaps cursed as it passes by. Those notes coming at you? Not important until they're on the line, in the moment. The moment is all that matters because it's where reality is.

Guitar Hero II is a metaphor for life.

Albeit an imperfect metaphor if taken as a whole. It doesn't matter that I four-starred "Misirlou" as made famous by Dick Dale, there's no way they're going to let me play Stonehenge.

Toaster ovens and warp-cores

2007-06-10T12:17:00.001-07:00

Of the two of us in the house, my roommate is the cook. His love of toaster ovens has converted me, helping me realize just how handy the little things can be. When the toaster oven that survived an earthquake with him finally gave up the electric ghost, he bought a new-fangled convection/toaster oven.

This device clearly knows more about cooking than I do, though that's not a difficult card to trump. It also possesses one of the more piercing alert beeps I've ever heard. This became a problem when my roommate was pursuing his quest for the perfect slice of toast. As the various charred rejects piled up, the alert beeps continued to shriek and wail, each time convincing me the warp core was about to breach and it was time to abandon house.

I've since adjusted, and now the sound of toast finishing does not remind me of an emergency distress beacon. The downside to this is that I've since become so accustomed to piercing toaster beeps that I'm now quite likely to ignore any sincere warnings of impending doom.

All because of toast.

The upside to this desensitization is that the thing does a fantastic job at reheating the cold pizza that serves as Sunday brunch. Gotta see the forest for the trees, right?

Random/senseless sucks.

2007-06-02T14:19:00.000-07:00

Somewhere deep in the digital archives of this blog must lie an earlier post on this topic, but I haven't the time nor inclination to dig it up. So I'll talk about it again, since I just saw this on a bumper sticker in the last couple days:

"Practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty."

Sounds cute and warm and fuzzy at first blush, doesn't it?

Think about it a bit further though, and you realize it's a platitude. It makes no sense. Why act with random kindness? Why not be kind wherever possible? The random element means you can never be certain when someone is going to be mean or kind, which does reflect the nature of the world but also engenders a sense of tension and insecurity. If everyone was nicer, just out of common courtesy, we'd all get along better than we do.

Does that mean we coddle criminals? No, of course not. We should be kind where it's possible. Sometimes, though, the other people who don't quite get it put you in a position where being kind isn't an option. In any other circumstance, however, try it. You get further and make the world a more comfortable place for everyone including yourself.

Senseless beauty? I don't even know what that means, but how about a general principle of operating from a position of beauty in all areas of our lives? Take pride in our personal appearance, our homes, our vehicles, our surroundings. Not from a position of status symbols or arrogance, but out of a basic sense of stewardship. Make your own corner of the world a pretty place, and you help improve the world.

Kindness and beauty are fantastic. I think they rock. It's the "random" and "senseless" aspects of that simplistic bumper sticker that get me riled up. The more I think about it, though, I think what gets me riled up is that someone saw that sticker, thought it was cute, and stopped thinking about it right there. They didn't take the time to think it through, they just stopped once they heard the warm/fuzzy.

Roy Pearson, you're an ass.

2007-05-03T15:28:00.000-07:00

So much for the American Dream. Read all about it here.

A Washington DC judge is suing a dry cleaners for having lost a pair of pants. The suit is now for $67 million dollars.

The dry cleaners offered compensation ranging from $150 to $12,000 for the missing pants. He sued. They found the pants. He refused to take them. A Korean immigrant family is going to go broke defending themselves against this rubbish.

Roy Pearson is an asshole.

'Nuff said.

(Although one does hope there is a cosmic karmic kick on its way to his head.)

RIP Premiere. To the heir... WTF?

2007-05-03T12:08:00.000-07:00

Premiere magazine stopped publication after their April 2007 issue. I thought I'd heard that in some random corner of the news mist but promptly forgot it until I received a card a week ago from the publishers.

The card informed me that as a consolation prize they have decided to swap out my Premiere subscription for another title. The unspoken implication of this card was also, please don't sue us. Here's another magazine. Leave us alone.

What might this conciliatory magazine be?

US Weekly.

The magazine publishing world seems to have fallen to the same few powerful main companies that control most titles, rather like the music and movie/TV business. Each of those empires controls a multitude of other properties. Premiere was, until recently, published by Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., who also publishes a number of other titles, including Elle, Car & Driver, Road & Track, etc.

Couldn't you send me an actually useful magazine?

Premiere wasn't great, but it was at least industry related. US Weekly? I checked out the first issue they sent me. It's a lot of celebrity speculation and an excessive amount of space dedicated to catty fashion commentary.

So my consolation prize for a modestly informative magazine is one that I now groan at whenever I see it arrive in the mailbox.

Thanks, guys.

Epilogue: You can get a refund if you appreciate US Weekly as little as I do. Call (800) 283-3956. I did. I had seven issues of Premiere remaining, which has a grand total value of...

$2.10.

I canceled anyway, out of general principle.

Indulgences for the 21st century

2007-04-20T02:25:00.000-07:00

A friend of the show -- yes, this is now a show, don't interrupt -- passed along a link to a site with a very interesting premise. By purchasing one of their passes, you'd be off-setting the carbon emissions of your daily life. Drive a car? Use their calculator to figure out just how much you kick out in emissions. Fly on an airplane? Live in a home? Handy tools are also available to sort out just how much you're contributing to the overall level of carbon emissions in the world.

The idea being that if you buy a pass, all the stuff you do is somehow undone or off-set or balanced, because they're using the money you contribute to help fund alternative energy research. They're very clear to point out what sort of projects they fund, and how they're audited to make sure the money you pitch in actually goes for what they say it will. And I'm sure it does.

However, the basic premise is full of hot air.

Unless I'm missing something very basic, you're not actually reducing what you're doing. You still drive a car. You still fly in a plane. You still live in a house.

You don't change any of those emission-related behaviors. Not one whit.

You're paying for research into something that may or may not be a commercially viable technology any time in the next 5-15 years. As near as I can tell that means you're still contributing whatever your own carbon footprint is for that time, quite possibly without results or whatever "offset" means.

What do you accomplish, however, is feeling better about it all. You're not offsetting carbon emissions. You're offsetting your guilt. You get to go on living the same life without all those little nagging pangs that might gnaw in the back of your mind.

Honestly, most people don't drive a vehicle just to say "screw you!" to Mother Earth. The average person buys a vehicle that does what they need, for reasons that make a great deal of sense once you actually talk to them about it. Trust me, I've been doing that for a living for nearly twenty years. Very few people actually say they bought a car to wreck the planet. Just because you may not agree that they need an SUV doesn't mean that they don't think they need one. "Need" is relative, and your sense of what they need may not jibe with the reality of the life they're really leading.

Please don't mistake this as the ranting of a deluded eco-adverse lunatic. I'm all in favor of a clean and healthy environment for the unbelievably simple and selfish fact that I live here. If the water is undrinkable or the air is unbreathable, I'm just as screwed as the rest of you.

The element of the plan that I do appreciate is the idea of a distributed fund-raising effort behind the system. Basically, they're getting a bunch of people who care about developing alternative fuels to kick in $30 to help further that research. I think that's brilliant. It's like the distributed computing efforts of SETI@home or Rosetta@home, both of which harness the contributions of a lot of little people to help accomplish big things. That's grand, and I really do appreciate the concept. If you can't get one big source of funding, you go out and get money from the people who actually care about it. It has the potential to do some really cool things.

What it won't do, however, is change the impact you have on the world. If that's something that matters to you, then change what you do. Walk to the store instead of drive. Conserve water and electricity. Be responsible for your own actions.

Don't believe that by purchasing a 21st century eco-indulgence you've somehow mitigated your own contribution, because you haven't. You can't. Not without changing what you're doing in your own life.

To the abolitionists in "control" clothing...

2007-04-19T22:55:00.000-07:00

Public service announcement to the gun "control" crowd that's chomping at the bit over the tragedy and horror of the Virginia Tech shootings:

1) Gun control laws largely only effect law-abiding citizens. There are control laws in Virginia, and although they may be a little more lenient than other states (i.e., no waiting period) the lunatic did pass the requirements.

2) Those who pound their swords into plowshares will inevitably find themselves at the mercy of those who kept their swords.*

Translation: don't attach an abolitionist agenda to this nightmare because the spotlight shines so brightly upon it now. Control does not mean doing away with all guns. There's a constitutional right for a reason.

*paraphrase of a quote I heard a while ago, whose origins are shrouded in the mists of my foggy memory.

When were girls ever gross?

2007-03-31T10:56:00.000-07:00

I have no recollection of a time in my childhood where I thought girls were gross. I do have a very clear recollection of the first girl I had a crush on in the fifth grade, so I'll assume that if I had such a phase, it was over by then.*

I took my nephew to play at a laser-tag arena, where we met a close friend and his family. He has three daughters, and were having a birthday party for the oldest there. I mention this because that'd be his three girls plus several others, ranging from age 7 to 10.

This laser-tag arena has a steady business of children's birthday parties, and there were two others in full swing at the same time. Pizza and sodas fueled legions of frenetic laser-warriors. The game format was such that they could take in all three parties at the same time, and we found our mainly female team facing off against a couple dozen hyper boys with delusions of laser-powered grandeur.

It was at this point I found things a little weird. Or more to the point, found myself wondering if I'd ever been this weird. Not only are boys still subject to ridicule for losing to girls -- something I've gotten over in SCA heavy weapons combat having been soundly pasted by able women more than once -- they think it's imperative to insult the girls while playing them.

Highlights included one of the boys "tagging" our birthday girl, followed by the taunt "Take that, girl!" as he walked past. I tagged him in the back and offered, "Take that, boy."

Another game, another incident. While helping my nephew attack one of the enemy bases (this all sounds so dramatic, I know) the birthday girl and a friend entered and complained that the boys were calling them "losers." She wanted to know what to do. Should she call a Gamemaster on them?

No, I said. Shoot them. Score higher, and win.

And win we did. All three games.

Despite the fact that our team included her father, myself, my nephew, and another guy who was playing his first game at age 65, whenever we finished the game and the scores appeared in the lobby the girls would cheer and the boys would lament their defeat.

"We lost to girls," they wailed into the clear blue afternoon sky.

Of course, what they didn't quite get -- and perhaps the girls didn't either -- was that the father and myself have been playing these games since we were in high school.

Either way, the girls were happy to win, and the boys hopefully learned a valuable life lesson.

Don't piss off a girl with a gun.

(or two ringers on her team... either way.)

On the flip side, it was amusing to hear a group of young girls alternatively chat about who they "liked" and finding boys entirely gross altogether. The birthday girl decided that if she blew out her candles one at a time she'd get a wish for each. She was about halfway through this when a staff member said each candle blown out meant one more boyfriend.

She immediately extinguished the remaining candles with a single gust.

I guess it worked both ways, once...

* for the intensely curious: her name was Donna. I'd cleared a jammed stapler and was testing it when Donna walked into the room. I was so distracted by her that I stapled my middle and index fingers together. Ah, amore...

Ghost Rider

2007-02-16T15:34:00.000-08:00

I have returned from the field and have seen GHOST RIDER.

The executive summary: It didn't suck.

If you want to know more, read on.

If not, know that I was in a pretty good mood about the whole thing when I left the theater. As opposed to THE PUNISHER which had me foaming and spitting with rage.

I only exaggerate slightly. Come on, it's The Punisher, for Stan's sake... how do you screw that up? Well, I could make a laundry list of how they screwed it up, but that's another much longer and meaner post.

The longer report on Ghost Rider...

One of the best parts of catching a comic-book movie was getting to see the trailers for SPIDER-MAN 3 and 300 again. I've seen them both online, but I swear I devoured half my popcorn just watching them again on a big screen. I even got a little choked up at Spidey and nearly shed a tear at the sheer coolness of "300."

What can I say, I'm a big softy.

On to the Ghost Rider.

Overall, I liked it. Nic Cage was great as Johnny Blaze/Ghost Rider. Peter Fonda was cool as the devil he makes deal with. The FX were great. There's no way to have made this look cool before CGI really took over the VFX industry, and I'm glad that it got made now. It's Ghost Rider, flaming skull, blazing bike, and all and it looked really cool.

Now for the not so great. Wes Bentley plays Blackheart, the devil's son and one trying to usurp Dad by swallowing tons of nasty souls. Sounds like juicy stuff, but they gave Wes such stock (i.e. bad) dialog that he was totally laughable. When your movie is about a guy with a flaming skull, you need to pay more attention to that stuff.

When I write a script, I give myself the leeway to write crap dialog on my first pass with the expectation that I'll fix it later. I just need to get the basic scene down, and I know that it's lame, cheesy, and on the nose. I also know that I can and will make it cooler later. I call this first draft my "crap draft" for that very reason. It's just to give me something to rewrite.

The problem with Blackheart's dialog: I guessed every line. I said it along with him. Every last line. And every one was exactly the crap dialog I would have written in my first draft and cleaned up later. Except nobody did. Nic's dialog was fine. Peter's was decent. Sam Elliot got most of the good lines. The villain? Crap.

I have to wonder if that didn't effect Wes's performance. You know, the old garbage-in/garbage-out phenomenon. Which is a shame, because I was really looking forward to seeing more of Bentley. He used to do a really nice sinister/psycho bit, but in this case it was laughable.

Other than that, there were a couple minor plot-devices whose logic was lost on me. Nothing that really killed the story, but they did take me out of it momentarily.

Was this a masterpiece of modern cinema? No.

Was it fun? Yes. I had a good time and was glad I saw it on a big screen.

Was it Ghost Rider? As far as I could tell, yeah. It was a decent adaptation, based on what I know of the character. A very cool money-shot that I won't spoil here really captured the spirit quite nicely.

Oh, and a note to the producers: Abigor may look like a cool name on paper, but said aloud it came across an awful lot like "Albacore." Not the best name for a demon you want me to take as a serious threat to Ghost Rider.

Just a thought...

Thank you, Mr. Bradbury

2007-02-12T23:54:00.000-08:00

I had the opportunity to listen to Ray Bradbury speak publicly recently, and the experience proved to be entertaining, enlightening, and confirming all at once.

First off, if you get a chance to hear Ray speak, take it. He's 86, and although he did quite well signing and then speaking for an hour... well, he is 86. Catch him while you can.

As for each of the aforementioned responses...

Entertaining: He's a very enthusiastic speaker. Once you understand his philosophy regarding inspiration and writing, this makes total sense. He's had a long career in radio, short stories, novels, as a screenwriter, and a playwright. The anecdotes are ones that are worth hearing.

Enlightening: This intersected with "confirming" so I'll tackle both here. I knew I'd be hearing Ray speak, so I picked up a copy of his book "Zen in the Art of Writing." The work is a treasure for any writer, regardless of medium or genre. It's a collection of essays from across his career that cover a variety of related topics specific to the writer's craft and position. Some of it touched on ideas that I was already familiar with, others showed me those same concepts in a fresh perspective, and others clarified notions that I'd danced around in the past.

(as you might guess, I highly recommend this book)

On of the first things that Ray said during his talk also helped both confirm and enlighten me on a key aspect that all writers and artists must remember in order to be either: hold on to what you love. That's what separates you from the business people in your respective field, and what distinguishes you from other writers.

In short, what you love is what makes you worthwhile.

And, more importantly, the people that control the money by and large probably don't care too much about what you love. They care about whether or not they'll make their money back and turn a hefty profit. Which makes sense, because that's the business of it. That all means that it's up to you as the writer to be the one who loves the thing.

In Ray's case, it was dinosaurs and the work of certain other folks who then became influential in his own career. Ultimately, what gave Ray the career, the life, and the room full of blissed-out-geek-writers listening to him was Love. The love of his childhood, and his memories of those things, and his love for writing.

Another piece Ray offered was something I'd taken to heart years ago, and still stand behind: you have to not only be in love with the things you care about, you have to practically drown yourself in it. If you want to write movies, you'd better love them and see so many you drown in them (to borrow from Ray). Even the bad ones, because those are the ones you learn the most from.

(talk about sacrifice for your art...)

A corollary I'd offer to go along with what Ray suggests is that it's important to not only hang onto the things you love, but that you learn as much as you can about the world around you. This can also include the things you love. The subject and your view on it are your voice. How you talk about a thing, what you choose to do with it in the context of your story, all of that is you.

Ray's view of love as an integral part of the creative process also reinforced something I'd heard over the last few months. In a field like screenwriting, there are no guarantees. You can write a thing, but you can't guarantee a sale. You can't guarantee that if you option something, it'll get made. The business is full of uncertainty, and so the only thing you can count on is the experience you have while writing. Since you can't control what happens after you finish writing, the only thing that matters is the writing itself.

Which means if you love doing it, then do it.

It also means that if there is anything else in the world you love doing that you could make a living at: do that thing. You'll be happier.

In the end, the afternoon with Ray reinforced my decision to do this. I just finished a draft on a feature, and although it took me longer than I wanted to break the story, I enjoyed doing it. I crammed a ton of writing and rewriting into a brief period of time, but there were moments when it just flew. I saw the scene, I let it play out, and I loved it.

Hold on to what you love. Ultimately, it's all you have.

Fortunately, it's also the key to realizing your larger dreams.

Thank you, Mr. Bradbury.

Marvel's Self-Fulfilling Prophesies

2007-02-12T15:03:00.000-08:00

Having recently completed a draft that essentially kept me Batcave-bound for the last few weeks, I decided it was as good a time as any to get back to the gym. Sometimes getting physically exhausted makes you feel like you've actually done something. Rifling through 110 pages of the script you just finished is rewarding, but largely sedentary.

During my time at the gym, right about the time I was realizing that the current set of reps might be the last my oft-neglected biceps would reasonably tolerate, I was struck by two thoughts:

1) Perhaps working out the upper body the day before a date isn't so wise, considering my body's response last time. I can imagine few things as unimpressive as watching me attempt to reach for something with all the skill and grace of a debilitated T. Rex.

2) Treatment of Marvel second- and third-tier properties as such is ultimately a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Yes, my sub-conscious works in strange and mysterious ways. I've learned to respect that.

The second thought was sparked by my remembering that GHOST RIDER comes out in a few days. During a recent conversation with friends, I admitted I was planning on seeing it, and was slightly derided for the confession. I did say that I hoped it would be good, as opposed to going in to the theater with the sense of confidence I enjoyed with the first two X-MEN and SPIDER-MAN movies.

Those franchises aside, the last few Marvel movies have been... less than stellar.

I liked DAREDEVIL and THE HULK, although I understood why others did not. I avoided ELEKTRA after seeing that the aggregate meter at Rotten Tomatoes displayed a very revealing 7% - rotten rating. I was already leery for the film's success given how the character of Elektra had been modified for DAREDEVIL; it undermined my faith in them being true to the character herself in her own movie. I fell for THE PUNISHER, and continue to gnash my teeth about that every time the subject arises.

Thus, my once fanboy-fueled ardor for all things Marvel waned. I want to go see those movies because I grew up on those comics. I want to enjoy those movies, and I want everyone else who goes to see them to see why these characters are cool. Not so much for a sense of validation of my childhood -- I neither desire nor require that -- but because I love the idea of the rest of the world getting a glimpse of what we fanboys have always known. That comic book characters endure because they're freakin' cool.

Which leads us to GHOST RIDER.

Unless you're into comics, you've probably never really heard of the character. Most of America might be wondering why a fairly big name like Nicholas Cage would be attracted to what is essentially a second- or third-tier Marvel property. That's all understandable.

My concerns for GHOST RIDER are precisely because I have seen Marvel's willingness to significantly alter their lesser-known properties. I never read much BLADE, so maybe that's an example of one that worked. However, to make Elektra softer, or set the Punisher in Miami (known for its abundant black trenchcoat trade), or other alterations to the basic character itself because of the perception that you can get away with it by virtue of the character's lower profile in the collective conscious is ultimately futile.

Those second-tier characters endure because they're cool characters. If you think you can modify them substantially and still end up with the same character, you'd be mistaken. You end up with something different that people don't get into the same as they do the comics and so it falls on it's face.

The shorter version: if you believe you can monkey with a lesser-known character and still get away with it, you're inevitably shooting yourself in the foot.

Thus, if you take greater liberty with a third-tier character because it is a third-tier character you may be putting yourself in a position where you make a less satisfying picture and in the long run lose money.

Marvel's lesser known characters become lesser performing franchises.

I should clarify that I'm not asking for a slavish devotion to the source material. Stuff got changed in X-Men, and it worked. What you don't see, though, is a fundamental tweaking of characters like Spider-Man or the X-Men. The stewards of those franchises knew that they had to maintain the integrity of the character in order to make the movie work.

The lesson is clear: stay true to the character, you make bank. Stray too far, and you're hosed.

And the unfortunate victim in that case is the lesser-known character themselves. We're never going to get a decent Elektra movie, or a halfway palatable Punisher picture. The blame for the shortcomings of those movies will be placed on the characters. They're too niche. They're not accessible.

I'd argue that it's the job of those making the movies to make the characters accessible, and that the best way to do so is to remain true to the character.

That's not a huge slam against the film-makers. This is a long and arduous process and there are an awful lot of fingers in these pies, and a helluva lot of money behind them. I'd like to think people do the best they can.

Yeah, I'm kinda naive like that.

Hearing stories about executives asking Guillermo Del Toro if Hellboy has to be red, have the tail, or be Hellboy all the time do help to keep me grounded, though.

Now I can't claim to be the world's biggest Ghost Rider fan. I've read a few stories and thought the character and concept were pretty cool. I'll be in the theaters for this one, because sometimes a fanboy just needs to believe.

And if nothing else, SPIDER-MAN 3, baby!

(but I really want GHOST RIDER to not suck...)

Church really has a bad record with this sort of thing...

2007-02-07T01:27:00.000-08:00

Turns out Turkana Boy -- the most complete skeleton of a prehistoric human ever found -- is finally coming out of the back room and out for public display.

Needless to say, certain religious types aren't too keen on this. In fact, a Bishop is asking his congregation to avoid the exhibit and is demanding the exhibit be banished to a back room and flagged by notes that say evolution is just one theory out of many.

Reading this article, I was struck by the similarity between this debate (evolution vs. creationism/ID) and a similar squabble involving Galileo. You know, the father of modern astronomy, father of modern physics, father of science. The same one that the Church kind of had to give an "oops, our bad" to about a hundred years after they tried him for heresy for his crazed notion that the earth revolved around the sun.

Maybe the Church ought to stick to religion and keep its nose out of science. You'd think they'd have learned that lesson by now.

Guess not...

Final Draft doesn't cuss?

2007-02-05T14:20:00.000-08:00

My screenwriting software doesn't recognize any of the swear words I'm using in this script. I'm constantly looking back over the red-underlined words trying to see if I've mis-spelled various curses.

"No, I'm pretty sure that's how you spell 'c*cks*cker.'"

(maybe it's the *'s that are messing me up...)

I'll have to start adding them to my custom dictionary. I wonder if that ever gets uploaded to the publisher for inclusion in other editions. It probably should. I'm sure other people must be swearing far worse than I.

Maybe they could offer a "David Milch" expansion pack. That ought to cover just about any combination of swearing I'm likely to need. And then some. It could even offer choices when you're stuck for that perfect combination of epithets in a scene. Like some electronic Mad Libs gone horribly yet usefully wrong.

Back to work...

Quite possibly the catchiest game ever...

2007-01-30T11:01:00.000-08:00

Guitar Hero is ruining my life. Or, greatly enhancing my appreciation for 70's and 80's guitar rock, depending on your point of view.

I don't own Guitar Hero I or II, much less a PS2. I've only played the game a few times, and have learned a valuable lesson about my utter lack of musical prowess.

Yet I can't get the damned thing out of my head. I've started buying music that appears in the game from iTunes. "Carry on Wayward Son." "Crazy on You." Even a little extra Rage, "Killing in the Name." I hope that repeating these tracks might purge the rock from my mind, but it doesn't seem to be discouraging it in the slightest. You can't stop the rock, or at least I can't.

Every time I listen to one of these tracks, or get another from the game stuck in my mind, I see that endless scrolling guitar neck dotted by brightly colored charging gum-drop land-mines. I'm having visions of rock-god avatars slinging their weapons around effortlessly amid a wave of crowd adulation and electric-blue star-power flashes.

I think it's a testimony to just how dash cunning a game it really is. There's no fragging. No zombies. Nary a shotgun or chain-saw in sight. No stripper-elves dancing on mail boxes. Not even really a story for me at this point, since I've just played a few songs very badly. Just you, a guitar, and a truckload of rock n' roll.

Guitar Hero works because it's just fun. A simple concept, a new range of motions that don't involve endless thumb-twitching or spastic combos gleaned from internet cheat codes. No walk-throughs required. Combined with some of the catchier guitar hooks of all time it's far more engaging than the concept would suggest.

It just rocks.

Thank God I don't own the damned thing.

Although I've had to physically restrain myself from checking out cheap PS2 and game/controller combos, and flagellate myself each time I consider getting an X-Box 360 just to see what that version is like.

You'll excuse me while I hit Froogle one more time and then castigate myself...

Certain (proposed) Immutable Laws

2007-01-27T20:52:00.000-08:00

Not that we get to vote on these things, but I've got a couple ideas of areas where we should just as a society decide to certain absolutes.

1) The HOV/diamond carpool lane should never be slower than the flow of regular traffic. This one sounds self-explanatory. Barring any accidents this lane should always move faster than all others. I've no idea how to implement this, but I'm not a traffic engineer, either.

2) The 15-items-or-less line should always be the fastest moving line in the store. Always. Without fail. Note to retailers, please try not to put the rather personable but unfortunately chatty guy with a bandaged hand at this register. This register should always be reserved for the fastest, yet still polite, checker you've got on duty. Think of it like first seat in an orchestra. It should be the stand that all checkers dream of one day occupying because it will mean they have, in fact, arrived.

Maybe someday I'll come up with deeply profound proposals for immutable laws. Something involving grand universal cosmology something or others. Until then, let's start with these.

Pharmacy Field Trip

2007-01-24T22:26:00.000-08:00

So I head to a pharmacy not too far from the Batcave to get a prescription filled. Nothing major, as my concerns about having been afflicted with the world's slowest flesh-eating bacteria were obviously unfounded.

I hand my script to the pharmacy tech, who turns around, glances over a shelf, and picks up the exact item I need. No pills, nothing to count, just a box that's ready to roll.

She then asks me, "When would you like to pick this up?"

Well, she had it in her hand, so I said, "If that's it, then I'd like to get it now, please."

Turns out she had it in her hand, but it would take another 30 minutes to process the entire transaction. I can only imagine what sort of Byzantine digital labyrinth this woman had to traverse to make sure all the insurance guardians were appeased, but it struck me in that moment that there's something terribly inefficient about the current health care system.

Sure, they have all kinds of computers, including a handy digital pad that lets you say that either a) you've declined to have the pharmacist explain the prescription to you, or b) you've received instructions (even when you haven't). All the tech doesn't seem to make things go smoother.

On the other hand, it's a great tactic for the shop. I just dropped $60 in Rite-Aid while waiting the 40 minutes it took before I could pick up my item that had been waiting on the shelf all along.

Live "Ghost?"

2007-01-22T09:10:00.000-08:00

According to Variety, the production company that made "Ghost in the Shell," and its related properties including "Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex" is now going to shop the franchise around for a live-action remake.

Maybe I'm wrong here, but does the phrase "Aeon Flux 2: Electric Boogaloo" sound appropriate at this moment?

I dug "Ghost in the Shell." It's a seminal work that really brought animé to the masses, along with "Akira." Very stylized world, hyper-real action, all that cool stuff. All that cool stuff that doesn't really translate into live-action. Why? Because nobody is built the way those characters are! Nobody really moves the way they move, and no world can be convincingly built in physical space that will match that world.

Of course, that's not entirely the point. Unless you're doing "Sin City" you sort of expect there will be changes. I'm just not convinced that properties like "Ghost in the Shell" really lend themselves to live action.

Don't get me wrong, I loved watching Charlize Theron kick ass in a series of skin-tight outfits, and of course she's a talented actress. "Aeon Flux" the movie was just another dystopian live-action sci-fi flick. It didn't have the style, spunk, or quirk that made the animated series what it was, because in large part the animated series was a spoof of all those live-action dystopian future sci-fi pics. Also, in part, because Charlize (and God bless her for this) is not built like the animated Aeon. They made an okay movie, but it didn't capture what the franchise was about. Or at least what I remembered it being about.

That's kind of my concern for "Ghost in the Shell." I'm not a major geek fan of the franchise, and still haven't seen the series. I'm writing this because, sometimes, you don't need the remake. Rent the original.

I'll probably go watch it anyway, out of professional and basic geek curiosity. Maybe that's what they're counting on. Doesn't necessarily translate into big box office. After all, those are the same reasons I saw "Ultraviolet" in theaters. Not a big hit, that one.

However, if the original production house stays involved, maybe "Ghost" will rock. I'm not getting my hopes up, though.

Justice

2007-01-19T09:59:00.000-08:00

Taking a break from the usual weighty-cosmic-level stuff I usually ramble on about here, I've decided I have to say something about the "Justice" episode of "Smallville" that aired last night.

HOT DAMN!!!

I'm not usually a fan of the multiple exclamation mark technique, but I am so jazzed that the show nailed what is likely to be the closest we ever get to a live-action Justice League show. I've been a fan of "Smallville" since it first aired. I've written a "Smallville" spec script (and it's a Bruce Wayne episode, of course). After suffering through the "Subterranean" episode a few weeks ago, I was looking forward to last night's airing of "Justice" with the hope that it would live up to the expectations set in their previews.

It did not disappoint. Big thanks to Steven S. DeKnight who wrote and directed "Justice."

It would be easy to dismiss this as an episode that caters exclusively to JLA comic book fanboys, but fans of the show who have followed it along must also appreciate the way the story brought together all the guest-heroes we've seen across the last several years and the way the mythos of the Superman universe are coming together. We had the early years of the show where Clark and Lex were friends, and now they're clearly not. Lex has slowly ascended to the status of arch-nemesis and he and Clark are adversaries. Though Lois was involved with Green Arrow, fans and anyone who's ever even heard of Superman know that's not who she ends up with. The pieces are coming together, and the Superman the world knows is coming into focus.

That leaves the interesting question of just what the shows creators, Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, are going to be able to do within the next couple seasons. Clark becomes closer to Superman, but can never really evolve fully into the cape and tights on the show. "Justice" not only redeems the series weaker moments, it also re-establishes my faith in the ability of these folks to handle a treasured franchise -- and the word sounds so cold for such an endearing canon -- that I'm going to keep watching.

I would have anyways, of course. Now I have faith that I'll actually enjoy it. Yelling at the TV gets so old so very fast.

For those not so familiar with the show, there was something that I thought was an interesting little convergence/twist that comes from the intersection of the real business world and the world of "Smallville." A couple years ago, "Smallville" ran an episode titled "Aqua," which comic book fans or anyone who ever saw the "Superfriends" growing up would assume meant that we'd be meeting a slightly updated version of Arthur Curry before he assumed the monicker of Aquaman. In that episode, AC was played by Alan Ritchson.

The "Aqua" episode generated such a positive response (and not just for Lois being in a bikini the entire show) that Gough and Milllar were able to get interest in a pilot for an Aquaman show. Originally expected to be titled "Mercy Reef" the pilot went out as just "Aquaman." Alan Ritchson was not cast in the title role, which went to Justin Hartley. The pilot had some fairly intensive effects sequences, because it's never easy to do convincing water effects cheaply, and so the show wasn't picked up. Hartley went on to be cast as Oliver Queen on "Smallville," who was quickly revealed to viewers, and expectant fans, as the Green Arrow.

Given the concerns of the Batman feature franchise Gough & Millar have never been able to do a Bruce Wayne episode of "Smallville," despite the obviousness of the idea. Heck, some poor fans have even written Bruce Wayne spec scripts (ahem). So, Oliver Queen became both Green Arrow and a way of introducing a Batman-like character without actually doing Batman per se. Hartley's been in several episodes as Queen, including "Justice." Since Hartley is Green Arrow, they needed an Aquaman, and thus the return of Alan Ritchson.

I love how that stuff comes together.

Anyway, enough fanboy raving for now. I've got to get back to writing. I'm on assignment, and although the timing is flexible to a point it does mean I have a deadline.

/geek

Final thoughts for 2006

2006-12-31T17:18:00.000-08:00

One final parting shot for 2006...

I've mentioned in other posts that what I love about writing for film and TV is the potential to touch the lives of people I'll never know and will probably never meet. Even if it's in some small, seemingly innocuous way that might slip past the majority of the audience, there is a chance that a concept may resonate with a few for whom it becomes something they take with them for the rest of their life.

It has occurred to me that if I'm going to blather on about these small, resonating, life-affirming/changing moments that I really ought to offer one from my own experience. So in the spirit of giving and sharing that accompanies the winter holidays and the possibilities that await us in the coming year, here's one that I have carried with me for years. I will probably carry it for the rest of my life.

Fans of the "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" series no doubt know of the spin-off, "Angel." Those who have no idea what I'm talking about can keep reading, because there's a really neat payoff anyway. The premise of Angel was that a vampire cursed with his own soul (long story) now resides in LA helping the helpless and doing good deeds to repent for his lengthy reign of terror while he enjoyed the remorse-free life of your average soul-less vampire. In the course of this show, Angel encountered the nefarious and shadowy law-firm of Wolfram & Hart. This firm was probably run by major demons, elder gods, or whatever else the euphemism "Senior Partner" referred to. Anytime this firm was involved, it was bad news for Angel the rest of the world.

One early season, and I'm sorry to say I couldn't tell you which, Angel was gearing up to stop Wolfram & Hart from starting Armageddon and destroying the world. He was greeted by a long-dead lawyer from the firm, which reminded the audience (and possibly the writers) that just because you were dead didn't mean you weren't still under contract. Angel rides in an elevator with the dead lawyer, ostensibly heading down to Hell to confront the Senior Partners and stop Armageddon.

Then the doors opened, and Angel saw himself looking at... LA. Just the streets and people in front of the Wolfram & Hart offices. The lawyer explained that Armageddon was always afoot, it was happening right now, and that there was nothing Angel could do to stop it. He wanted Angel to give up because being unable to stop Armageddon meant that nothing Angel did actually mattered. Why fight if you can't win?

Angel countered: if nothing he does matters, then all that matters is what he does.

That's it. That's the line I've carried with me since that episode originally aired several years ago. If nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do.

Think about that in a larger context. Regardless of whether you're affiliated with any of the world's religions, none of us actually knows what comes next. If we die and there's a heaven or afterlife, most religions include a form of judgment; based on how we lived. For those who do not subscribe to an afterlife, that statement still holds true. If we die and there's nothing else, then all that matters is what we did while we were here.

Either way, no matter what religion or conviction, the only thing that matters is what we do. I've taken that forward and related it to every facet of my life. It governs my interactions with others, it guides my decisions, and it provides me with a sense of comfort in knowing that regardless of what comes next I'm going to do my best to live my life well. Because in the end, all that matters is what I do.

I am also reminded of my favorite line from BATMAN BEGINS: "It's not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me." Same idea, same resonance for yours truly.

To those who read this blog regularly and to those who may stumble on it in the future, I wish you the very best in this and all coming years.

Happy New Year!

Constant state of amazement...

2006-12-28T21:34:00.000-08:00

Another constant-state-of-amazement moment tonight...

I was taking a break from the Batcave, dining away on one of the more formidable and satisfying burgers known to man. As I tucked in to plunder another tasty morsel from my kill, a young man asked me if I lived in the area. After confirming I was familiar with it, he proceeded to ask directions to a local community center. I deciphered what his route was, where he needed to go, gave him the simplest direction to return him on his way, and he was off.

On my next bite, it occurred to me that the whole of human history led up to that moment. Me, eating a double low-carb six-dollar burger, helping a fellow traveler along his way. Just another tiny cog in the vast and unknowable cosmic machine. Had I been there any earlier or any later, I would have missed that. I've run into several situations where the staff at an establishment had only a vague familiarity with its vicinity; it's entirely possible no one else could have helped this guy but me.

The young gentleman was on his way to a community center, for reasons unknown to me. What if he's part of an outreach program, and his presence was essential for someone else's progress or benefit? My moment of dining pleasure may have helped a series of people I'll never know about.

It also served as an inspiring reminder of the incalculable value of verbal communication, which threw into sharp relief that the entire course of human evolution led right up to that moment.

The same could be said for any moment, of course. The moment where I keyed this text, for starters. Or this one, right now, where you're reading these pixels on a monitor in locales unknown. The entire history of everything leads up to this moment. And the next. And so on...

Fortunately, we have the terribly handy ability to cruise right through most of these moments. If we all sat around in a state of constant amazement, nothing would ever get done. It's still nice to have those moments where you can appreciate it once in a while.

Cursed by the Golden Flower

2006-12-28T12:21:00.000-08:00

"Curse of the Golden Flower" called to me with a trailer that promised spectacle and grandeur. After dazzling me with "Hero" and "House of Flying Daggers," I expected an action feast from director Zhang Yimou that would leave me breathless with sheer unadulterated coolness. Chow Yun Fat as the Emperor? Gong Li as his Empress? Sign me up!

Sadly, I now wish I'd dodged this draft. It is with a fair amount of displeasure that I report the "curse" of "Golden Flower" is sloth.

I should state first that I was not expecting wall-to-wall action at the expense of an engaging story. Given Yimou's work with "Hero" and "House of Flying Daggers" I was expecting a balance of the two. Engaging and interesting characters whose moments of graceful and stylized action meant something in terms of their development. The combination of those two in concert with gorgeously designed costumes and sets was what I had hoped to enjoy this time, too.

Now that's out of the way...

Palace intrigue can be interesting. It is not, regrettably, sustainable for an hour and a half. Aside from a brief bit of swordplay in the Emperor's introduction, the next ninety minutes of screen time was a moody and drawn-out look at the inside of a gorgeous palace occupied by attractive and sumptuously dressed characters.

It was slower than molasses in Antarctica. In a temporal stasis field.

There were a few interesting moments, but not enough to build or maintain any momentum. By the time the nearly laughable ringwraith-ewok-monkey-ninjas finally appeared, it was too late to save the movie from its ponderous self. There was only one battle sequence of any note and that was nearly at the end of the movie. Impressive action and previously unseen on-screen tactics were again, too little, too late.

Several years ago, a film called "3,000 Miles to Graceland" taught me a valuable lesson. If everything you saw in the trailers that made you want to see this movie has happened in the first 12 minutes, leave. Don't expect a pleasant surprise, just accept you've seen what you came to and run while you can.

"Curse of the Golden Flower" has taught me that the inverse is also true. Most of what inspired me to see it happened toward the last 30 minutes of the movie. By then, however, I'm already committed and am interested in seeing how the whole thing plays out.

What I learned: rent "Hero" or "House of Flying Daggers" again. I wasn't crazy about the ending of "Daggers" but the rest of the movie is satisfying enough to warrant repeat viewing.

Given that this is a subjective exercise, it's worth noting that this is just one guy's opinion. Your mileage may vary.

Filet mignon flavor

2006-12-25T09:49:00.000-08:00

I found myself in the pet food aisle. I don't have pets, this was just where I happened to drift during my wandering in a local grocery store. As I cruised past the treats, I spotted one bag that promised "filet mignon flavor" to your beloved canine.

My first thought was that filet mignon-flavored treats sounded kind of tasty.

My second thought was... how does a dog know what filet mignon tastes like?

Not surprisingly, this sparked a cascade of other thoughts, all tied into the phrase "filet mignon flavor." How many dogs out there have had a good filet mignon? Or a bad one?

Considering we're talking about a species that thinks coprophagia is a really neat idea, maybe we don't need to pander to a finer culinary standard other than something vaguely meat flavored.

Then it occurred to me: the concept plays on the guilt of the owner. They're not feeding their dog real food, or real meat. Very few pet owners are going to go through the trouble of feeding their animal the same quality of food they themselves enjoy (i.e., rib-eye, filet mignon, etc). Most everyone who has a cat or dog feeds them mass produced fare that arrives in a bag or can, and whose constituent parts are hardly identifiable in the resulting gruel.

Pet owners don't have time to prepare real food for their pets. I wonder if many of them have some sense of guilt about that, and when choosing pet food assuage their conscience by thinking, "oh, Filet Mignon! They'll love that!"

Never quite realizing that the idea of filet mignon flavor really only appeals to a creature who has had it and knows what that means. Their dog has no idea. So the pet-food manufacturer appeals to the owner's senses to make the sell.

Which, in all fairness is just smart business. After all, the pets aren't the actual customer, it's their owner. After spinning my wheels about this for a few minutes, I came to the conclusion that I'm fine with all of that. Once the dogs start laying down the cash themselves, I'll have to think about much less tasty sounding flavors greeting me in the supermarket aisle...

The Tower Falls

2006-11-26T10:51:00.000-08:00

The imminent demise of Tower Records represents another casualty of the tectonic changes rattling all corners of the music industry. By mid-December the liquidation of the only large indie-friendly music retailer will be complete and all of their stores and nearly three thousand employees will be gone.

It's a shame, to be sure, for the many folks who enjoyed going into a brick-and-mortar store and chatting up the cool kids to find out what's worthwhile in new music. Until my field trip to a slowly, sadly, expiring Tower Records store I hadn't bought more than one physical CD in the last couple years. In this final pilgrimage, I bought two. The choices of what I bought are relatively revealing about the factors that have changed how we think about, find, and buy music.

Slight bit of backstory to put all this in perspective: the Mac has been my platform of choice for many moons now, and I switched over to largely digital music a few years ago. I ripped every CD I own (and a few I've borrowed). I downloaded a few tracks during Napster's catch-me-if-you-can glory days (and boy did they get caught). When Apple got the record companies on board to provide tunes to the iTunes Music Store for a reasonable you-buy-it-you-own-it .99 a track, I was right there with them. Since its opening I've purchased and downloaded well over 2GB of digital music.

(take that, RIAA)

Over this period of digital music evolution, I bought fewer and fewer physical CDs. Why? The record industry was pumping out CDs that had at most two or three good songs and charging more and more money for them. I was a kid when CDs came out and have very clear memories of the advertisements for new music charging under $10 for a cassette and around $12 for a CD. That was nearly twenty years ago. Since then CDs started costing more and more in the retail record chains. $20 for a new CD from a b-level artist? Pass.

Apparently a lot of other people did, too. Why pay for an over-priced CD when you can get the one or two tracks you really want for a fraction of the price, and get them right now ready for your iPod?

From what I've read, Tower's demise has to do with a great many factors. Everything from rapid and over-reaching expansion to the long arm of the big retail chains has been credited with contributing to the death of Tower, including illegal and online music sales. As for the last two, I'd suggest that the pirates wouldn't buy the music in the first place, and the people that are willing to pay for it will move to the better model.

The larger problems for Tower probably had to do with the cost of the physical CD and the increasingly smaller audience willing to travel to the store to pay for it.

The physical CD I bought prior to my visit to Tower was from a smaller indie band, purchased through a website that specialized in indie music. The two discs I bought last night from an expiring Tower Records were ones that I didn't think I could find on iTunes, and they were both on sale. I got two CDs for less than the regular price of just one. That's what it took for me to buy physical CDs. It had to be music I couldn't get anywhere else and at a reasonable price.

The death of Tower means indie music has to work that much harder to be heard. You're probably not going to find Tito & Tarantula at Wal-Mart, but you should be able to get it from iTunes. With no physical inventory to manage it costs little or nothing to sell digital tracks from indie artists.

Perhaps Tower has a new life as an online resource for independent music. For the sake of new talent, I hope so.

Tower is dead. Long live the Tower.

The monsters look like the rest of us...

2006-11-17T00:25:00.000-08:00

Wow...

Just... wow.

As a writer you'd think I would have had a more eloquent response to hearing just how depraved OJ Simpson really is. No, I just stared at the radio dumbstruck. Then read the article online. One thought kept popping up in the front of my mind.

This is his idea.

It's not like someone chased him down with a suitcase full of money, or offered him the chance to clear his name. He approached people with the idea of him telling the world how he "would have done it."

The stain of the double-murder trial and mockery of justice that was his acquittal was never going to leave OJ Simpson. Ever. The fact the man is out of jail and chipping golf-balls in his quest for "the real killers" is a travesty of what our legal system is supposed to achieve.

You would think he'd be content to have his life. I thought he would.

We would both be wrong.

Now he's coming back to remind us of his crimes. It's not for the money, because he's got a $33.5 M civil judgement against him and he couldn't keep the money. He's doing it because he wants to be in the public eye, not because he's doing something noble but to capitalize on the murders he got away with a decade ago.

He's back to boost his own ego. And he can do it because he can't be tried again in a criminal court.

I'm at a loss for the words to describe how dispicable this truly is. This creature has committed the most heinous acts we have laws against, gotten away with it, and continued to live his life without remorse or regret.

OJ has decided to serve his own ego at the expense of his soul and the mental health of his children. It's one thing to read about monsters in history books or on CourtTV.

It's another to see one with a book deal and sweeps specials on Fox.

Why they hate us: cold nachos

2006-11-10T21:01:00.000-08:00

I managed to take the air away from the Batcave this afternoon, and may have inadvertently found the answer to that ever-nagging question "why do 'they' hate us?" Insert whatever "they" you like, as I imagine there are a good many people that really don't care for Americans or Western civilization in general.

(though it's worth noting that not all people hate us... we tend to forget that.)

Recently a fairly well-known shopping mall slowly emerged from a long gestating make-over into a high-fashion shopping center with many shops I used to frequent being replaced by expensive chain boutiques that would likely cock a disapproving eyebrow in my direction were I to cross their shiny threshold. The food court is now a "dining terrace," and although it is now quite stylish the term does sound a tad pretentious.

During an expedition into this new-fangled "dining terrace" I decided a late lunch sounded like an excellent idea. The fact that I ended up at Baja Fresh among the many posh alternatives may speak more of me than I would normally care to reveal, but I think perhaps I was supposed to be there. Fate, as it were, insisted I needed a Burrito Ultimo and a medium Diet Pepsi.

While waiting for my burrito with an LED pager device you'd find at a casual dining restaurant, I watched as several patrons ahead of me exchanged their flashing plastic discs for food. One woman, an attractive if slightly older, well dressed blond, approached a loaded plate of nachos with disdain. Apparently, she'd asked earlier if this order was hers and was told it was not. Now with the passage of the intervening time she found out that it was in fact her order.

She refused to take them. The nachos had been sitting there longer than she was comfortable with and she insisted they make her a new plate. This was not a mere pouch of chips with a little cheese; it was in fact a goodly sized plate heaped with more chips, beef, sour cream, cheese and salsa than I imagine this woman on her best day could eat. What followed next neatly summed up why "they" may well hate us. She insisted on a new plate of freshly assembled nachos.

The staff at a Baja Fresh in a tony mall are, as you might guess, not likely patrons of said high-price shopping mall. They're working for what may be slightly better than minimum wage while their average customer blows more than they make in a month on a pair of shoes. Clearly, this girl behind the counter had prior experience with the clientele, and knew better than to point out this was a perfectly edible dish. Resigned, the girl put the plate of nachos back onto the stainless steel counter from whence they came. The gentlemen working the assembly line kitchen area were unsure what to do next. After all, this was a full plate of food in front of them with no visible defects or errors on their part. The order wasn't wrong, it just wasn't wanted.

And so the nachos sat. Shunned. Uncertain. Forlorn. Soon, the counter-girl pitched them into the trash and the minimum-wage staff dished up another equally hearty portion of beef and cheese nachos. These now fresh nachos were finally accepted by the patron and the matter ended.

All the while the wheels turned in the crowded head of yours truly.

I hadn't seen the woman place the order. I didn't notice her until she approached the counter to query if those were in fact her now delayed nachos. The nachos still looked fresh, certainly only a few minutes aged and no doubt still perfectly edible. However, they no longer met the patron's high expectations for freshness.

Evidently, we are so successful as a society that we can easily afford to dismiss an entire plate of food. I'm a decent sized, red-blooded American male and I'm fairly certain I couldn't have finished off those nachos myself. This much smaller well-heeled blonde wouldn't have gotten more than half way through herself. And yet they were not perfect and so they had to be dispatched.

And therein lies the secret of our unpopularity. We're too successful. Worse, we don't appreciate how fortunate we are. There is such an instilled sense of entitlement that we must get things that we want precisely as we want them that we won't accept them any other way.

As if this post weren't already verbose, there's another example of this that was provided by my friends a couple months ago. While hanging out in a brewery one evening, a friend commented on recent proposed legislation to ban the sale and consumption of horse meat. While on the surface that might sound like a decent enough idea, another friend pointed out that it was a perfect example of just how good we have it. We're actually making laws about what foods we are not allowed to eat. There's no practical physical reason you can't eat horse; some cultures have been doing it for centuries, along with dogs, guinea pigs, and any other variety of cute animals we now consider to be pets.

That's how good it is to be us. Not only do we have food, we have so much food that we can actually start making it illegal to eat some foods because it offends our sensibilities. And we don't care. We have it so good we don't have to care.

Or eat cold nachos.

Shaving Evolved

2006-10-27T22:14:00.000-07:00

Those few who read this and know me know that I've been bald for years. My father is 6' 6" tall -- though slightly shorter now through age and surgery -- and bald. My brother inherited his height. I got the hairline.

(although my brother is not entirely escaping that genetic destiny, he certainly kept his hair longer than I did.)

This is relevant as about a month ago I shaved my head. Reaction amongst friends has been positive, so I've continued to shave it. Somehow, I have to also manage to get this newly exposed scalp to tan a little without attracting the ire of my dermatologist, but that's another post.

Thanks to a handy little device shaving my head has been relatively easy. Relative meaning I have no idea what it's like to try shaving my legs or something as awkwardly accessible as the back of my knee, but as far as I can tell it's not too tough. Aside from a few nicks and cuts early on, mostly due to my own poor form of operating said device, it has also been fairly painless. I tend to shave in the shower, and have a small mirror available to facilitate the process.

While shaving my head the other day, I noted the cleverness of the Headblade. It's a simple idea, and has been rewarded for it. It uses regular disposable razor blades, available at most stores. When gliding this regular disposable blade across my dome, I also started thinking about the wide variety of razors on the market. Single, double, triple, quad, and quintuple bladed razors. Gliding strips, vibrating handles, electric razors.

And then it hit me.

How did we start shaving in the first place? Who was the first person to think that removing body hair was a good idea? There are various histories online that detail the development of razors (dating back to about 3,000 BC), and speculation about plucking being the predecessor of shaving (achieved by using two seashells; how they figure that I'm not sure).

It still harkens back to that unanswerable question, because we're talking about pre-historic societies that never wrote anything down. There are no great epic poems, no oral tradition or tale captured in clay cuneiform tablets. That first moment when someone plucked, and decided ripping out more hairs was a good idea is lost forever. The first time someone scraped a chipped-stone edge against a hide and thought, "hey...." figuring they had a good thing going; totally innocuous in the moment, nobody thought anything of it nor could possibly conceive that it might catch on through subsequent eons.

From those first unknown instances, those mysterious origins, comes the entire aesthetic, culture, and industry surrounding razors today. Such a pervasive, ubiquitous, and mundane topic fascinates me. Because some Neanderthal, somewhere, tens of thousands of years ago, plucked hairs, I now shave my head. And I can do it using an award-winning Headblade razor holder that uses standard disposable blades.

It sounds totally mundane. I'm just shaving my head.

However, put into the context of the history of metallurgy and the impact that successive developments in that technology alone have had throughout our history, along with the advances in manufacturing, plastics, and all the rest that goes into something so high tech your Roman barber would have thought it came from the Gods themselves... and I throw it away. Even when I pitch it into the trash, it's still more advanced and usable than what the poor guys back in the days of the Republic would have had scraped across their throats.

It is that sort of irrefutable, indelible chain of events through the currents of history, which will never be entirely understood, that continue to instill a sense of wonder in me about our modern lives.

Think about it: What concepts or ideas are we setting in motion now that will play out through the fabric of time and mankind that will be effecting evolutionary offshoots of ourselves that we dare not even dream about now? Which simple devices are we incorporating into our daily lives that will be improved upon, advanced, and bettered by subsequent generations we will never know?

The irony of that question is its own unanswerability. We will never know. In that respect, we're not so terribly different from Neanderthal.

Except for the disposable razors...

Of peculiar value

2006-09-18T15:38:00.000-07:00

Reading legal jargon normally makes my eyes lose focus and my brain glaze over. Yet I soldier through the dense and Byzantine language that defines laws and rules since it is the foundation of any contract. As money makes the world go 'round, and legal money nearly always involves contracts, you'd best be versed in their ways. I am by no means even a journeyman on the topic.

I recently signed my first official writing contract. In it there is a passage I was glad to have stayed awake long enough to read:

"It is mutually agreed that Writer’s services are special, unique, unusual, extraordinary, and of an intellectual character giving them a peculiar value..."

That's the first time legal-ese has ever given me a warm fuzzy. While the language is no doubt present for a prescient legal purpose, it refers to the writer as "special," "unique," and "extraordinary."

It also describes the writer as "unusual" and "peculiar" which makes me wonder if this duality is in fact at the heart of the seeming love/hate relationship the Industry has with writers.

This round I choose to see the forest for the trees. I'm going to bask in the compliment.

/bask

Back to work...

True wisdom

2006-09-18T15:16:00.000-07:00

Steve Martin's producer character in the movie GRAND CANYON chastizes a friend for not watching enough movies. "All of life's problems are answered in the movies," he extols. It's a bit of a cliché, but that statement hints at the potential for entertainment to touch on moments of wisdom. We may not like to be lectured at, but those nuggets of truth, random kernels of profundity, can make a merely satisfactory movie something that remains with us for the rest of our lives.

Case in point: BILL & TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE.

Hardly the kind of fare that one anticipates yielding morsels of universal truth.

I'm sure I studied a little philosophy in high school. I studied the history of philosophy in college (history was always my stronger subject). However, the one concept that's stayed with me all this time clear as a bell was the work of Socrates. At least, one line that seems to sum one of his biggest points. And I remember it because of Bill and Ted.

BILL - (from textbook): "True wisdom consists of knowing that you know nothing."
TED: That's us, dude!

Total throw-away line. Yet it's what I remember about So-crates. That simple bit summed up a central principle behind the heroes of that story, and stayed with me for years. The movie came out in 1989. The line still clicks in my head in 2006.

That's power.

That's what I like about movies. The chance that something I wrote may someday touch the life of someone I've never met and in some small way help them relate to the world around them. It may not be anything profound. It might be a hint toward a larger concept or issue that gets them thinking. This unknown audience member may never cure cancer -- and neither will I -- but perhaps a random line I've eked out in the dark of night hunkered over my keyboard will help another in those small quiet moments that make up the bulk of our waking lives.

Disneyland as Social Commentary

2006-08-18T22:29:00.000-07:00

I recently took my 12 year-old nephew to Disneyland. I grew up in Southern California so I have visited the "Happiest Place on Earth" many times over the years. During that span, I've seen several changes in the park, though am by no means a qualified historian on the topic. The significant portion of my theme-park transition experience lies in what I remember the park being and the ability to compare that to what it is today. No grand pronouncements on Disney's direction (and I'll keep my opinions on the mis-guided California Adventure to myself for the moment), just a few subtle observations that provided a bit of reflection on the nature of man.

I recall as a child, probably in or around my third grade years, that the shooting gallery in Frontierland used to use actual pellet guns. There was a park employee (né "Cast Member") who was on hand that loaded a rack of pellets into the gun. When you fired, you were indeed sending a projectile into the Old West diorama spread out before you. The rifles were on a rather limited tether, no doubt with the intent of preventing one from opening fire on fellow "guests" (as the Disney lexicon calls customers).

Over time the terribly catchy message of "you'll shoot your eye out" probably resonated with the fine folks at Disney, along with the alarming rise in liability lawsuits that's accompanied our increasingly litigious society. The pellets were replaced with IR beams. If you were to pull the trigger on today's guns, you'd hear a reasonable sound effect of gunfire and your rifle emits an invisible pulse that strikes an IR receiver target inside the revamped diorama. Today's version involves animatronic responses; shoot the gravestone, and the vulture flaps it's wings. I think there's even a target that results in a light-projected herd of ghost-riders sweeping across the sky.

To be certain, the results of a successful shot are more visually entertaining today than in the pellet-gun days. Although it is impossible to argue against the IR beam's infinitely safer nature, I was struck by how much things had changed, and found myself missing the days of the pellet gun. You know, when firing a gun actually resulted in a projectile leaving the barrel. Even if it was just a pellet, at least you felt like you actually shot something. In a very unusual way, I found the IR rifles to be significantly less satisfying. You hadn't shot something, you pointed a flashlight at it.

Needless to say, my 12 year-old nephew was quite entertained shooting whatever he could with the IR-rifle. He also really loved actually driving a car, which under no other circumstances not involving a life-or-death emergency would a twelve year-old be allowed to do. He's driven countless Mario Karts and endless racing games, so I can only imagine how the experience of actually firing a projectile would have compared for him.

The short of it was that I found myself missing the pellet-gun days. Which is odd because I don't own any firearms, Air-Soft, or pellet guns. It may be that I simply missed a nostalgic element of my childhood. Intellectually, I understood why the pellet guns had gone the way of the do-do, but emotionally, I thought it was a shame.

During the rest of the day, Disneyland taught me a little bit about human nature.

The "Indiana Jones Adventure" ride is another attraction that I've seen change over time, although evolution is probably not the best way to describe the changes. I'm fairly sure when it opened it was referred to as "Indiana Jones & the Temple of the Forbidden Eye." At least the name has become more manageable.

Given that it was a later attraction at Disneyland, it benefited from the thoughtful attention of the amazing and talented Imagineers who built several diversionary moments into the line itself. Considering that the folks at the Jungle Cruise used to tell a joke as they went past Indy that it was called "Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Four Hour Line" this was very appreciated.

When the ride opened there were AT&T sponsored decoder cards passed out to Guests to decipher the messages written into the walls of the "Temple."

There was a room with tell-tale spikes and skulls like the room in "Temple of Doom" when the ceiling nearly crushes Indy and Short Round; pulling on a bamboo pole clearly labeled "do not touch" would cause a jarring sound and a few inches of movement of the ceiling down toward the heads of panicked Guests.

As you went past the center of the "dig" there was a well covered with planks that had a rope descending from a raised headstone. Below there were sounds of men working, pulling on the rope elicited a plea for those working above to be a little more careful.

Those were great diversions, and showed a lot of thought went into the design of the ride. Simple touches that gave you something to do while you waited for the actual "adventure" to start made waiting in the inevitable line a little more palatable, and helped prevent line-time from becoming dead-time.

Why go into the long and storied history of the "Indiana Jones Adventure?" Because none of that stuff works any more.

Line management techniques, including the FastPass, have made the amount of time you spend in the Temple itself much shorter. You'll actually blow past a lot of the glyphs and eye-candy on your way in.

When I took my nephew, I was looking forward to showing him all the cool things that were included in line. Not only do I still think they were really neat ideas, I figured they were fun for him, too.

Then I found out that the pole holding up the ceiling now hangs well off to the side, severely bent as an al dente noodle. When you tug on it's floppiness, nothing happens. No crunch. No ceiling movement. No screams of those who don't know it's part of the ride. I wondered why Disney disabled it, figuring perhaps the concern for those feint of heart -- who should not be in this line anyway -- inspired the legal team to end its functionality.

We got to the well, and actually had a minute or two to wait near there. I looked for the rope, and found none. I wondered why Disney took the rope away. Surely an innocuous sound cue represented no liability? I thought perhaps the speaker box below was broken.

Then an interesting thing happened. Just as my nephew and I were about to head into Sala's slideshow detailing the importance of the revolutionary new lap-belt, we were stopped. As part of the line management technique, we were held back. Given the free time, and my genuine disappointment in the disabling of my fun line-toys, I decided to ask the Cast Member what happened.

Turns out, we happened.

Not my nephew and I specifically, but the natural repercussions of millions of people passing the same way and interacting with the same pieces over the course of years. Apparently, given an infinite number of tourists and an infinite amount of time, mankind will break stuff.

The ceiling-lowering pole had become a popular focus for those who were determined to pull it as hard as they could, or pull it out as far as they could. Consequently, they largely damaged the device responsible for triggering the roof. To deal with the problem, the engineers had switched something internal around and now the pole will only trigger the roof if you can force the limp noodle ramrod straight. Then the ceiling works.

As for the missing rope that triggered the sound effect below, it seems some "Guest" -- and I now use this term quite loosely -- took it upon themselves to cut it with a pocketknife. This was not a thin rope. It was rather thick, and securely fastened, clearly designed by those who know that what you put in front of the public to be pulled must be able to withstand the pulling. And it had, for years. Until some jackass with a pocketknife decided to cut it.

I tend to be an optimistic individual. I want to believe the best in people. Clearly, having some knowledge of history, that's difficult. I tend to think that people are basically good. What I learned at Disneyland that day was that there's no point in searching for a grand unification theory for all mankind. People aren't all good or all bad. We're all over the place. And given enough time and enough opportunities, you'll find the good and the bad. Mostly neutral, but enough bad that eventually they screw it up for the rest of us.

The Greeks had a school of philosophy that tried to find the one thing that all other things are made of. They went through all the elements. Heraclitus stands out as believing it was Fire, as things are ever-changing. The only constant is change itself. Apparently, just as it was foolish to try to find a universal one-thing for matter, it's just as quixotic to try and find a universal rule that applies across all mankind. Man isn't universal. We have common events in our lives, but within each life there exist the possibility for an infinite variety of ways those lives play out.

There are people that enjoy the fun things and leave them intact for others to enjoy after them. Then there are those who are screwed up enough that their own immediate gratification is all that matters and they have no idea or no care about the fact they're taking away fun for those who follow. People who are so anti-social or sociopathic that they really don't care. It's fun for them and that's all that matters.

And the jackass with the pocketknife who cut the Indy rope? That guy's the reason there are no more pellet guns in Disneyland.

Reflections on Reno

2006-07-03T22:41:00.000-07:00

"I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die."

Because there's nothing else to do there!

Unless you dig gambling, there's no real reason to visit Reno. At least that was my take on it during my inaugural visit. Not that I was tempted to shoot someone to keep myself entertained, but I can certainly empathize with the desire to see something more exciting than slot machines and video poker.

On a more philosophical bent, Reno did afford me moments for reflection. Beyond the obvious of a rum-bar being a hangover waiting to happen, there were occasional insights into the habits of modern homo sapien. Civilized homo sapien, to be more specific, post-Industrial Revolution, and intra-Information Superhighway.

One of the promises of the Industrial Revolution, and subsequent technological rebellions and upheavals, was the idea that we would somehow have more free time. Considering how busy most everyone is, many feel that this promise has yet to be delivered. By and large we have more time, but we feel like we have less free time.

That very well may be, to a certain extent. We're all running around with cell-phones, e-mail, Crackberrys, and the various tools of our Information Age. We can communicate in more ways faster than any preceding generation. The irony is that in an age where getting in touch is easier than ever before, we are more out of touch in a simple communicative fashion than our ancestors. We rarely talk to each other in person anymore. We read each other's MySpace pages. We scan LiveJournals. We blog.

Communication technology tangents aside, the promise of the Industrial Revolution has by and large been delivered. We may have found new ways to busy ourselves, but think about how much time we're not spending on simple household chores. When was the last time anyone actually had to wash dishes? Or really wash your own clothes? Think about what it must have been like for a laundress back in the day, if you were lucky enough to afford one. Watch one of those period-esque reality TV shows that show what life, day to day life, was like one hundred years ago. We toss clothes into a washing machine, and indoor plumbing provides the hot water and does the rest. Toss them into the dryer, and your clothes are done. No line-drying, no clothespins, no hassle. Just a little free time.

One of the consequences of all of this has been that, by and large, our lives are far easier than those of our forefathers. We want a piece of meat, we have lots of options. None of which involve actually hunting or slaughter of the animal in question. We drive-through a McDonalds. We purchase pre-slaughtered and processed meat from Wal-Mart superstores or the nearest Costco where we also manage to buy all the food and sundries we need for weeks on end.

We don't spend much time out there on the edge, hunting, or pioneering. While that provides ample time for someone like me to sit hunched over a hot laptop and espouse the blessings of our technologically endowed lives, it also means I'm not out there running for my life from predators (we have none) and I'm not out trying to catch my next meal (drive-throughs are a blogger's best friend).

Which brings us back to Reno (not literally, thank heaven).

What I noticed, sitting at a row of slot machines and staring blankly at a cigarette machine like it was the monolith from 2001, was that we're gambling for the emotional experience of it. There's the trepidation of placing our bet. There's the anticipation of the unknown during the play, and the excitement and thrill of winning. We pay to play these games because we need to feel those things and by and large we do not have them in our rather detached, totally wired yet oddly isolated, modern world.

That was really the only reason I could see someone playing a video slot machine called "Lucky Lemmings."

So much for turning the other cheek...

2006-04-01T15:17:00.000-08:00

A youth minister was charged with a single count of third-degree assault after pushing a kid down and kicking him in the groin during a dodge-ball game. The kid had just nailed the minister in the head and knocked off his glasses. Apparently, apologizing for the mishap was not enough. The minister has since been put on administrative leave. You can read all about it.

It's been a while since I've been to church, but I'm pretty sure that the minister wasn't practicing what he preached that night. Sure, Jesus drove the money-changers out of the temple with a stick, but I'm guessing he didn't kick them in the nuts for good measure. This poor kid is pissing blood, for crying out loud.

Christ taught his followers to turn the other cheek. Guess this minister needs a refresher course in doctrine to go along with whatever anger-management class he's destined for.

The larger lesson is that even though someone aspires to be a "Man of God" they're still just men in the long run.

Hope the kid's going to be alright. Heck of a dating story to explain that you can't have kids because your pastor nailed you in the crotch during a dodge-ball game.

Apple v. Apple?

2006-03-31T22:45:00.000-08:00

Is it just me, or is this whole Beatles vs. Apple thing a little odd?

Having not been born until the early 1970's, I missed out on the whole British Invasion thing. I've only heard the legions of screaming teenage girls in clips on TV. My initial exposure to the Beatles was my parent's vinyl collection.

Some folks who were alive during that heady period were inspired by the Beatles' record company, Apple Corps, when it came to naming their own company in a different industry. Steve Jobs, a big Beatles fan, named a fledgling computer company Apple Computer back before computers really caught on with the rest of us.

Turns out the Beatles sued them then, too. Maybe it made more sense then, I don't know. Apple Corps and Apple Computer settled, agreeing that Apple wouldn't get into the music business. Apparently they sued again when Apple started putting sound cards and CD players in their computers, and got a big settlement ($26.5 million sounds sizable to me) and an agreement they wouldn't go into music.

Since then, Apple Computer has gone on to sell more than 40 million iPods and over one billion songs through the iTunes Music Store. For sake of argument, we'll ignore the fact that total probably includes free downloads used in Pepsi promotions. Either way, Apple has become a player in the music business. They don't produce music, but they certainly sell an awful lot of it.

Predictably, Apple Corps, surviving Beatles, assorted estates and widows have come calling again. Apple Computer maintains that their last go-around with the Fab Four's company resulted in a settlement with broader conditions. Obviously, Apple Corps has a different take on this argument, because they're back in court again.

Here's the thing that gets me, though. When I hear anything having to do with Apple and music (iPods, online store, etc) I think of Apple Computer. Apple Corps only comes to mind as the answer to a trivia question. Anything that the Beatles have to do with music I associate with the band name "The Beatles" -- like a brand. Apple Corps isn't a brand to me. Apple Computer is.

I'm wondering how many people out there really have trouble distinguishing the two. Seems like a fairly safe bet that anyone who has purchased an iPod or bought music through the iTunes Music Store knows that the Beatles and Apple Corps have nothing to do with it.

In fact, I would wager the most common association between the two are when people browse the iTMS and wonder, "Why aren't there any Beatles songs here?"

If no reasonable person could possibly confuse the two at this stage, why bother hitting Apple Computer again in the courts? It makes me wonder if the barristers saw the latest sales figures and decided now would be a good time to cash in at the Apple Computer till once more.

Or maybe I'm just too young to get it...

Glad I'm not on this jury

2006-03-29T16:44:00.000-08:00

Most people think of jury duty as something to avoid at all costs. Despite the civic obligation to participate in this process, most of us would rather go to the dentist than have to serve on a jury. It seems like a tedious, thankless job that nobody except government employees might be interested in (because they get paid anyway).

Then there's the jury you're just glad you didn't get picked for.

Case in point: Zacarias Moussaoui. The so-called "20th Hijacker" and the only person to be tried in relation to the attacks of 9/11/01. He's already admitted to being an Al Qaeda operative, and until recently had maintained that he was training to be a pilot in another plot to follow 9/11. In his defense, he wanted to call in Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the 9/11 "mastermind" who sold UBL and Al Qaeda on the attacks.

Of course, KSM is in CIA custody somewhere overseas and there's no way they'd let him testify or even be in the same room as Moussaoui. So they video-taped a deposition from KSM about Moussaoui's role in the 9/11 attacks. KSM and Rambali (another captured Al Qaeda operative) both describe Moussaoui as a fringe element, not directly involved in or responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

Then things get much curiouser. This week, Moussaoui changed his story, saying that he was supposed to pilot a fifth plane intended to take out the White House. He says he knew about the imminent attacks and lied to investigators who interrogated him three weeks before they happened.

Now put yourself in this jury's place for a minute. You're being asked to decide on life in prison or the death penalty for Moussaoui. The government's case is based on the notion that had Moussaoui told the truth when he was interrogated our government might have been able to thwart the attacks. So the prosecution is asking for the death penalty for his lying, because that lie resulted in the deaths of 3,000 other people. It's unprecedented. Nobody's been sentenced to die for lying. Of course, this is no ordinary case, either.

Moussaoui admitted to being a terrorist agent. He admitted to wanting to kill Americans -- much like the very ones serving on the jury. He's got testimony from other terrorists who say he wasn't involved and now he says he was.

This jury now has the unenviable position of having to believe a captured terrorist whose only value now lies in martyrdom, or believing his terrorist-organization superiors who say he wasn't that involved at all. You can be pretty sure Moussaoui wants to die at the hands of the U.S. You can also be pretty sure that you can't completely trust anything that he, KSM, or Rambali have to say.

After all, how can you trust someone who wants to kill you?

Think about that the next time you're summoned for jury duty.

Parental training has a long reach through life.

2006-03-11T01:30:00.000-08:00

Today I caught myself thinking about the habits that I take for granted which were trained into me by my parents. Specifically, I was wondering why the heck some other people's parents didn't drill the same habits into them.

Two particular examples from the last few days during my time away from the Batcave stand out.

First, turn signals. I work with the automotive industry on a regular basis and have the opportunity to sit inside many different makes and models. All of them come equipped with a turn indicator conveniently located within reach of your fingertips on the left side of most steering columns. Car companies spend a lot of time and money making sure controls like turn indicators are quickly and easily manipulated while never taking your eyes off the road. Despite all of this effort, there are vast portions of our population who do not use this simple, easy, and rather important feature of their vehicle.

My dad was in the Navy and often away on sea duty about the time I learned to drive. A good friend with a lot of patience and his own car taught me most of what I needed to know. One of the few pieces of driving advice my father did provide was on how long to leave my turn signal on for when changing lanes. For those in the audience wondering how long that is, leave it on until your vehicle is completely into the new lane (I'd been switching it off halfway over). That's it. Very simple. Since it was one of the few pieces of driving instruction from my father, the one time he mentioned it was enough to ingrain it into my mind.

For some reason, lots of people either never learned or don't care to use their indicators. This baffles me. Largely because it's so easy and obvious and terribly useful. Partly because it's just one of those things you probably should have learned from your parents if not a driving instructor.

Second item, shopping carts. More specifically, the task of returning your shopping cart to the designated corral area once you're done with it. This was a lesson from my childhood so thoroughly trained by my parents that it's second nature. I don't think about it. It's just what you do. You used the cart, you put it back. I'd make exceptions for the elderly and/or handicapped, but for any able-bodied person to just leave the cart by their car is mind-boggling.

This becomes particularly important when a critical mass of shoppers without this training have converged on a popular grocery store. Carts don't always stay where you left them. They have wheels. Sometimes those wheels mean that the carts roll into empty parking spaces, rendering them largely useless. Other times, they actually drift into cars. It's times like these when the store parking lot is a wasteland of carts that I wonder why more people don't put them back.

I've come to the conclusion that it's a combination of factors. Either their parents did not teach them the rule about putting the cart back or the lesson was taught and the adult children have decided it no longer applies.

In all fairness, I haven't maintained every habit learned from my parents. The all-too-healthy-wheat cereals of my youth were quickly abandoned for the sugary goodness of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle cereal once I moved out. For the record, I only bought it the one time, and nearly suffered a sugar coma for my insubordination. I've also gone off the turkey-dog bandwagon, and now only eat all-beef hot-dogs. I learned they just taste better.

My mother may be relieved to hear that I still only drink diet sodas (for the taste) and still make my bed every morning. Some things stuck.

I wouldn't go so far to say that these well-trained behaviors make me a better person than anyone else. For all I know, the guy who never signals and always leaves his shopping cart right next to his parking space gives lots of money to charity or adopts hungry children in third-world countries.

I would suggest that learning some of these things might make it easier for the rest of us to co-exist with him.

Just a thought...

That time of year...

2006-02-24T18:24:00.000-08:00

The old blog is no more. I thought spamming B2 blogs had become passe since I hadn't had to remove any posts in the last few months. Some sonofabitch with a 'bot proved me wrong. I'd been sweeping out spamdex comments like crazy for the last few days and decided I'd had enough.

Long live the new blog.

Updating my previous entries turned out to be a little smoother and faster than I expected. This is due, in part, to the fact that my memory of a multitude of blog entries was faulty. There were fewer than 40 old entries, and most of the hour involved was spent changing the time-stamp and mentally calculating that little 24-hour clock to AM/PM conversion.

(Yes, it's just subtracting twelve. I took my time because I'm not exactly known for my mathematical prowess.)

As I worked backward through my old blog entries I noticed that I first started the old blog this same time last year. I had finally jettisoned Yahoo! as my site host, and found out that my current host offered blogging software. The idea of having a "private" place to rant, air my opinions, and exorcise the nagging ideas and thoughts from this all too crowded noggin was very tempting.

Apparently, it still is.

Hello, Blog Spot.

More to come. Honest.

(If anyone wants to discuss this on my message boards, feel free. They are still up.)

Life Plus 20?

2006-02-24T15:21:00.000-08:00

Two revelations today.

First, the obvious. I've decided to give capital letters a try again. I've never really forsworn them in my professional writing, but I ditched them for several years in my personal writing. Looking back on all of my old blog posts and personal site has helped me realize that the overall effect may, in fact, be vaguely pretentious.

Considering I will be presenting myself as a professional writer, I thought it best to give the caps one last chance.

The second of today's revelations is that I need to either hire or befriend an attorney in order to make sense of some things I hear in the news. For example: today I was listening to a radio account of the charges that recently-captured Mexican national Armando Garcia faces including the killing of Deputy David March. Among the various charges included a few that carried a sentence of "life plus 20 years."

"Life" plus 20?

If "life" means the remainder of your natural life, how do you tack on the extra twenty? He dies in a cell and the prison leaves his body there for an extra twenty years to work off the time? "Life" but when parole comes up the board says, "Sorry, Armando, you still owe us another twenty?"

If someone out there could explain how that works, I'd be very grateful.

Thanks.

- Alex

a little good news...

2006-02-24T02:55:00.000-08:00

turns out i can edit the date/time info on posts. that means i can copy and paste all my old entries to this blog and... reset the date/time on each one.

sort of a good news/need a lot of free time news situation.

more later, true believers...

figures...

2006-02-23T18:47:00.000-08:00

i really have to learn to read all the help-stuff before spending time setting these things up. after submitting my first post, signing up for an adsense account, and tweaking the settings i decide to search the f.a.q. section for details on importing old blog entries.

guess what?

"known issues" lists the fact that they don't have any way to import old entries. which means that unless i copy and paste all my old entries in (and find a clever way to tweak the time-stamp so they make sense) that my old brilliance may be lost.

or at least held hostage on my old site and subject to the slings and arrows of the spamming bastards at realestateplanet.info. i really wish there was some authority i could report these guys to.

anyone have any ideas on who? how?

thanks.

Testing...

2006-02-23T17:22:00.000-08:00

my personal site has a blog which has recently come under fire from vandals spamdexing a site called "realestateplanet.info." since the b2 system has no way to disable comments -- at least none that i can find -- i'm looking into other blogging options. having recently migrated to g-mail i figured google's blogging system would be a reasonable place to start.

considering google's incredibly deep pockets these days, i'm hoping to find that they at least have a way to disable comments or prevent spamdexing in some fashion.

that hope may prove naive, but since i'm relatively new to the whole drive-by-spamming game perhaps that's to be expected.

if i can find a way to transfer my old blog to blogger i may stick around. if not, then i may not be here long.

either way, this is just a test. this is only a test.

damn right, he's cooler than yours...

2006-01-22T01:07:00.000-08:00

a friend of the site recently returned from a year-long tour in iraq. apparently, his group (or perhaps several returning groups) were met by california governor arnold schwarzenegger. well, greeted by... he arrived even later than their delayed flight, but he did show up to greet them.

either before or after his speech to the returning troops, one of the guys from our friends unit approached the governator and said, “conan! what is best in life?”

without missing a beat, before his handlers and reporters, arnold responded, “to crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women!”

easily twenty years after the movie came out. didn’t miss a beat, nailed the line.

now i’m not going to say that’s the best measure of success as a governor. it does, however, make him one of the coolest governors. ever. probably even cooler than if i got to hear former minnesota governor jesse ventura say, “i ain’t got time to bleed.”

despite of what you think of him, arnold has had decades of interacting with fans and has always been smart enough to support our troops.

that one moment, which may have made his handlers cringe, just made him the coolest mother-f****ing governor ever. despite how badly that might have played on the news, here was this solider back from a year of i.e.d.s, snipers, and hellish conditions who just wanted to hear one simple thing.

arnold, aka conan the barbarian, aka governor of california, was cool enough to give it to him. reporters be damned.

pixels and dust

2006-01-01T22:38:00.000-08:00

first blog entry for the new year. this has me thinking about the irony of blogging in general. on the one hand, blogging is cool because of the instant gratification factor, and the ability to widely distribute something to whoever wants to see it from anywhere in the world. not that i expect i’ll have fans in abu dabi any time soon, but it’s possible.

therein lies the promise, and the pitfall, of the blog-o-sphere.

following my high school graduation i had the good fortune to travel abroad. prior to my departure, my mother gave me a notebook and encouraged me to keep a journal of my travels. being the perpetually in-the-moment moron i am, i took the journal, but wrote very little about the trip. mostly it became a place to stash my ticket stubs and pub coasters. since then i’ve had periodic brushes with journals and the idea of journalling (if that’s even a word). i have even written a sporadic thought or reflection upon my present place in the cosmos. the motivation to continue updating never lasts and the journal in question inevitably ends up in a drawer or a box.

periodically, those boxes are unearthed in the excavations that naturally accompany moving from residence to residence or simply cleaning out a closet. they’re perused, and a brief window into the past opens. occasionally, i hit upon a nugget of profundity, but mostly i marvel at how much life has changed since then. to a certain extent, how much i have changed since then. after a moment of reflection and a long sigh it returns to the box, to be unearthed like an errant time-capsule at another unexpected interval.

blogs are cool because they are instantly published, automatically archived, and available for global distribution assuming anyone “out there” is interested. one of the fascinating aspects of this pursuit is that it is entirely possible that someone, somewhere in the world, may stumble upon these words and find some relevance to their own lives. that potential for the random influence of others fascinates me.

what blogs lack, sadly, is the “hey look what i found in a box” factor. blogs only exist as long as a server is powered on, serving a database, and connected to the internet. cut power, and the blog is gone. the database gets corrupted, and whatever random bits of wisdom might have been present are lost forever. without a host, the blog is lost.

say what you will about paper. it has it’s limitations, but it certainly has its strengths as well. no power supply needed, no batteries to run out. you don’t have to worry about a magnet getting near it. and even if you leave it in a storage space for a decade, you can still open it up without having to worry about software or other causes of obsolescence.

blogs, by contrast, are naught but pixels and dust.

they’re darned cool pixels, though...

happy new year, everyone.

- alex

end of '05 update

2005-12-31T13:34:00.000-08:00

one last blog entry for the year. figured it might as well involve a writing update, since that’s what i really ought to be doing instead of figuring out my new year’s eve party plans.

the family picture is done. it’s been registered with the wga, and even entered in a screenplay contest. since i’m not going to solicit representation until i finish this next script, i thought it might be a good idea to do something with the one i’ve just finished.

as for the next script, i’m still breaking the story. i have the basic idea fairly well in hand. it’s a matter of figuring out what happens when, and what the best third-act climax is going to be. in the course of doing research i’ve come up with a few ideas.

research is cool. the key is knowing when you’ve done enough of it, and when to just write the darned thing. i know i’m not ready to write it yet. i am of a mind to start breaking down the story, though.

my goal is to have it finished by the end of april. i’ll be starting a new class at ucla extensions next month. i think i can work on this story in the course of that class, which should be helpful in reaching my personal goal. built-in deadlines imposed by an outside entity are always useful for that.

happy new year, everyone. if you’re going to drink, do it responsibly. have a designated driver. you know the drill.

- alex

winning made meaningless

2005-12-31T13:17:00.000-08:00

while driving today, i saw a minivan with a bumper sticker that said “winner” and the name of a magnet school underneath. it didn’t say what the (presumed) child won. just that they were a winner. in that moment, every conversation i’ve had in the past about how schools are handling achievement vs. failure and youth sports handle winning vs. losing flashed through my head. following that torrential blur of memories came a few thoughts i’d like to share here.

in my limited experience, it seems as though there has been a movement underway to eliminate competition among our youth. soccer leagues give all kids who participate a trophy. scholastic achievement bumper stickers have gone from proudly proclaiming that a child was an honor roll student to saying that their child is a winner simply for showing up.

like most ideas, this movement probably started from a well-intentioned position. kids feel badly when they lose. they’ll have enough loss later in life, so we might as well make them all feel like winners now so as to not damage their fragile psyches. that way kids won’t feel bad for losing. because we’re all winners, aren’t we?

like most social engineering experiments, it will likely undermine society through it’s shortsightedness and ignorance of history.

ultimately, this position devaluates what it means to win. in doing so, we’re making winning meaningless. winning meant (and in the grown-up world still means) that you’ve done something that distinguishes you from the rest of your group. you have done something or achieved something that is greater than the average member of your particular society. your soccer team won, through hard work, training, and teamwork. your child was on the honor roll because they’ve achieved a level of academic success that others should desire and strive to achieve themselves.

if everyone’s a winner, then nobody wins. winning itself becomes an abstract concept that holds no value for the children you’re trying to protect. instead of having a goal whose attainment creates a sense of accomplishment and feelings of pride and self-esteem, you’re neutering ambition. you’re denying those children the opportunity to experience higher levels of emotion. you’re taking away their motive and sapping their will to achieve because you’ve made achievement meaningless.

there have been other examples of this in history. socialism and communism come to mind. look at the former soviet union. the only areas in which they excelled were those rewarded by the central party and military. cosmonauts were heroes. everywhere else their society stagnated. there was no incentive to innovate, achieve, or excel, because in the end you made just as much money anyway. what was the point of excellent customer service in a restaurant, or to innovate in agriculture when you were paid the same as the guy who just schlepped his way through the gig?

i don’t take this position because i have a history of fantastic achievement. i have no trophy shelf. i think i’ve only won the lottery twice, $2 was my big payday. i have no vested interest in protecting an ego based on winning. i make this point because i think that those who are behind this neutering of achievement are ultimately doing more harm to our society than good.

it’s short sighted and silly.

now, go out and win something.

- alex

chest-thumping, modern day

2005-12-18T13:27:00.000-08:00

got a chance to see king kong last night. sold out. i think that despite variety’s gloomy assessment of wednesday’s opening, kong is going to have a huge weekend. not bad for a three hour movie (review coming soon, honest).

sitting next to me was a family consisting of a mom, dad, and at least two, maybe three kids. they were spaced out between adults, but at least one kid was sitting next to me.

during the course of the movie some bozo a couple rows ahead apparently lacked a distinction between his outdoor and indoor voices. something which most children seem to have down well before adolescence, this gentleman may be a late bloomer. during the course of the movie he’d have some comment or explicative as a reaction to onscreen events. needless to say, comments that came during poignant slower moments were not much appreciated, particularly by the patriarch of the aforementioned family.

the end credits rolled, and loud-mouth said something to which the dad – an equally pitched fellow – decided to comment on. nothing remotely scholarly to begin with, the back and forth banter quickly escalated into a death threat and generous offers from each gentleman (in the haziest sense) offering to instill etiquette via physical violence.

the sad part was that the death threat came very quickly from the father, right in front of his children. the mother looked embarassed, and the kids didn’t say anything.

aside from the irony of having just watched a 100' gorilla pound his chest for two hours – kong isn’t seen during the first hour – what i felt most was profound sympathy for this supposedly civilized beast’s children. if the father’s second line is, “i’ll f–king kill you” then it stands to reason he’s had altercations like this before and that worldview is being pressed upon the unfortunate children.

interestingly, the sort of machismo that leads to those kinds of confrontations was probably something appealing to the mother at one point. women generally want a man who will take an active protective role in order to create a sense of emotionally security and safety. something similar to the role kong plays for ann in the movie.

however, kong only acts when he has to. he doesn’t pick on people that didn’t pick on him. he’ll fight when he has to, he doesn’t provoke a fight. he responds to attacks. he probably wouldn’t have issued forth a death threat because some bozo responded poorly to vocal criticism of his poor movie-going etiquette.

hopefully the father’s children learned more from the digital gorilla than they did their own father that night.

my new favorite radio ad

2005-12-17T16:20:00.000-08:00

so i’ve got the radio on while toiling away here in the batcave, when an advertisement comes on:

“we know what you’re thinking: how can a psychic help me?”

the rest of the spot goes on to talk about their carefully screened and well qualified psychics standing by to help me sort out any love, money, or career problem i might be struggling with in my life.

that’s a kind offer, but it ignores a fundamental problem with their premise. they must be terrible psychics because “how can a psychic help me” was nowhere to be found in the cacophony of thoughts pinballing around in this noggin of mine.

why would i want to call a psychic phone line in the first place, much less one that starts off dead-wrong about what i’m thinking?

back to work...

crosswalk observation

2005-11-20T00:47:00.000-08:00

taking a leisurely stroll outside the bat cave today, i came upon a crosswalk. when i pushed the button, i noticed the little sign above it contained the pictographs of the walking man and the big hand... and instructions in english to for what each of those and the flashing big hand meant.

this struck me as odd.

in the not-too-distant past, crosswalk lights were in english. they said “walk” and “don’t walk.” at some point, people decided there had to be a simpler way. then you noticed that none of the more recent walk signals (in the past 10 years, perhaps) had “walk” and “don’t walk.” those english words had been replaced by the walking man and the big hand.

part of me always assumed that this change was due in part to concerns over the language barrier. even though english is the official language of the country, we have a lot of people who live here who do not speak it, and a lot of visitors that we’d like to avoid hitting as they cross the street.

okay. get rid of the simple and conveniently color-coded text that anyone should be able to sort out and substitute color-coded international symbols so that everyone understands what’s happening. i’m cool with that.

so why are there instructions in english? the green walking man and the big red hand weren’t clear enough?

do we really think that anyone who couldn’t sort that system out is really going to benefit from instructions written in english?

this is probably all the result of some misguided but seemingly well-intended bureaucracy.

right?

- alex

writing update

2005-11-02T12:08:00.000-08:00

it’s been a while since i’ve commented on the progress of the screenwriting career. still orbiting the industry, but making good progress.

i’m just about done with a family comedy movie, which i’ve been fairly excited about. got it down to a managable length and now need to re-read it again to see if the continuity still works. there’s that pesky business about how if it didn’t make it from my head to the page nobody will know it exists. makes for some sticky ambiguity if you don’t catch it.

i spent the last week working on another project, a high-concept action picture. on the advice from my co-conspirator on the family picture, i took a week away before re-reading the latest draft. the time was well spent, and i’m very jazzed about this next one. i think it’ll be the kind of – pardon the language – kick-ass movie i’d love to see in theaters myself.

i’m no nielsen family, but i figure if i really dig it, maybe others will, too.

now if i could just find $75-130 million to back that up.

back to the writing...

doom wants pie!

2005-10-21T00:33:00.000-07:00

so i decided to go see “doom” after all. considering the miserable luck i’d had with free screenings so far (i.e. getting into one “kill bill vol. ii” which failed twice) i figured the lack of buzz surrounding “doom” would mean that at least i’d get into the screening.

and it was free.

i learned something tonight: retirees are more than willing to scam free screenings.

when i arrived at the theater i was relieved that there was no line stretching outside of it. the last couple screenings i attempted to attend had long lines outside an hour before the show. at forty-five minutes i was about the 15th or 20th person in line, which was still indoors. good sign.

then i realized that the five people ahead of me were all well over the a.a.r.p. minimum age. probably in their late 60’s. which struck me as odd demographically for a movie based on the father-of-all-first-person-shooters.

i pulled out the book i brought with me and started to read. then the older woman ahead of me asked if i was attending the screening alone (i was), if i could get in two with my pass (i could) and asked if she could hop in with me. turns out she wanted to get in free so she could then hop into whatever movie it was she really wanted to see.

seeing no reason to turn her down, i went along with it. the pass was good for two. i let her enter with me. where she goes from there is a matter for her own cinematic karma. i’m not her guardian. quite frankly, i don’t think “doom” was really going to be her kind of picture. i had to explain it to her and the older couple ahead of her in line.

so there you go: senior citizens game press screenings to see free movies.

(which somehow you’d think the folks running the screening might have figured out)

beyond that i learned that “doom” doesn’t entirely suck. it’s certainly not best picture material, but at least i didn’t leave mad i spent the time there. it was mildly entertaining.

even better: no “illegal downloading is bad” spots! it was worth sitting through “doom” just to see a movie in that theater without that infuriating ad.

i think that was the best part.

doom

2005-10-02T22:25:00.000-07:00

i’ve seen the trailer for the upcoming "doom" movie. it is supposedly an adaptation of the classic father-of-all-first-person-shooters starring dwayne "the rock" johnson.

between the trailer and the fact that most video game adaptations tend to be less than stellar movies, i’ve pretty much written off “doom.” no real interest to see it in the first place, especially not paying for it in theaters. it looks like another generic bug-hunt.

so, of course, i get a free pass to see “doom” the day before it opens.

the question i’ll grapple with for the next few weeks is: is it worth it to go to the theater to see a movie i think is going to stink just because it’s free?

i had a problem a year or two back when “kill bill” did their press screenings. i had a free pass to one, but it filled with all the press and their friends so i didn’t make it in. they did give me a free pass to another press screening the following week. which i also did not make it into. so they gave me a free pass to see it in release, but not in either of the cool theaters their press screenings were in.

somehow i doubt there’s going to be such a rush for “doom.” maybe that’ll make it easier to consider sitting through.

- alex

more theatrical ranting

2005-09-17T15:42:00.000-07:00

well, technically it’s not that dramatic. but it is about theaters.

i woke up this morning and thought, “i’d really like to see a movie today.” i have three d.v.d.s from netflix sitting on my desk, two movies and one t.v. series, but i decided i really wanted to go see a movie. in a theater.

so i went to a nice theater in a moderately swanky mall relatively close to the bat-cave. i was surprised to see that this theater has changed their ticket prices to try and milk yet more revenue from the weekend movie crowd. mind you, this is a nice mall. lots of business. packed on weekends.

in addition to the standard matinee and regular prices, along with the usual senior citizen and child discounts, there are now different prices for the weekend. if you see a matinee during the week, it’s $8.50. people in the middle of the country may now gasp, as that’s their regular ticket price. see that same movie at a matinee on a weekend and it’s $9.50. watch a movie at night during the week or on sunday and it’s $10.00. see it after 6pm on friday, saturday or a holiday, and it’s $12.50.

this is the same theater. it’s nice, but it’s not the arclight.

the arclight gets away with charging $14 a ticket because it’s a high-end movie experience. you choose your assigned seat from a seating chart so you know where you’re going to be sitting. they have gourmet snacks. an usher introduces the movie, checks on the sound and audio quality. there are no commercials before the movie, just previews. technically, those are commercials, but since they’re showing me other movies i might like to see i don’t mind. there are none of those blasted "illegal-downloading-is-bad" spots, either. they charge more, but you’re getting an improved experience for it.

the grove, on the other hand, still shows advertisements. they still charge $4 for a ten-cent soda. they still show the insulting lecturing anti-piracy ads to an audience that paid $12.50 to see a movie in theaters. they haven’t changed the movie-going experience in any positive way. i wonder if there’s a line drawn somewhere. if you want to charge higher ticket prices, don’t show me commercials. if you want to show me commercials, off-set that by not raising your ticket prices, and don’t introduce these goofy peak-show punitive prices.

part of me hopes that this new sliding pricing thing bites them in the butt. it might help if they see their weekend sales decline slightly now that they’ve put in this sliding scale. then again, it’s a really nice mall. lots of people who don’t mind spending a bit of extra money go there.

for the aspiring writer types like myself, it makes it harder to consider going to see a movie in a theater. at least at the grove.

(the movie was tim burton’s corpse bride. i liked it. fun stuff, considering the heavy themes in an animated movie.)

war for what?

2005-08-29T16:32:00.000-07:00

at the risk of dragging the political debates into my personal blog and away from the message boards, there was something i was struck by as i filled up my vehicle with regular unleaded gas today at $2.83 a gallon here in southern california.

there are an awful lot of people who believe or at least profess the belief that the war in iraq is being fought for oil. many of these same people maintain that the only reason we have any interest in the middle east is because of oil.

just before the 2003 u.s.-led invasion of iraq, a greenpeace member came to the house and wanted me to sign a petition that said i was against bush’s war for oil in the middle east. having read a couple books on the middle east, i began a discussion about how political stability in the region had significant security implications and that i didn’t really believe the rhetoric that the war was just about oil.

it was pretty clear that the guy that greenpeace sent out with their petition was looking for other members of their particular choir. he wasn’t really well-read on the topic, or able to discuss the matter beyond the war-for-oil-is-bad talking points he’d been sent off with. i was very polite, and found myself feeling a little sorry for the kid.

(once you turn 30, you start referring to anyone in their early 20’s as a “kid” only to immediately regret it and feel like an old fart.)

the point is, a lot of people have consistently believed and continue to believe that the iraqi campaign is solely about taking control of the oil fields.

to these individuals, i now pose the following question: if it was a war for oil, why have gas prices done nothing but go steadily up over the last two years? we’ve been paying well over $2.50 a gallon for regular unleaded gas in california for a while now.

the invasion of iraq was the single swiftest military campaign in history. within three weeks, the ba'athist regime of saddam hussein was no longer ruling the country. so, we won the war. the peace, however, has been a bitch.

still, the question remains: if we went to war for oil and won the war, where’s the oil? why are prices steadily climbing? i wouldn’t be surprised if regular unleaded gas goes over $3 a gallon this summer here in southern california.

we won. where are the spoils?

philosophy meets language

2005-08-22T20:11:00.000-07:00

as far as religions go, i am currently unaffiliated. in the course of my life, however, i have made many friends among the ranks of the mormons. between these friends and the occasional ski trip to utah i’ve had the opportunity to experience various bits and pieces of mormon culture. while not an authority on the subject, recent interaction reminded me of a cultural idiosyncracy that consistently amuses me. i share it with you because i think it provides an interesting way of discussing the peculiarities of language.

first, the disclaimer: i’m not saying all mormons have the same cultural quirks. it’s a big religion with lots of members all over the world. there are probably a whole array of l.d.s. sub-cultures i’ve never met.

now that’s out of the way...

mormons, by and large, are pretty clean cut people. they tend to adhere to certain behavioral norms that eschew behavior like smoking or swearing. in lieu of actually swearing many use other words which have been adopted by the community to substitute for the same meaning.

which raises the intriguing question: if you’re using a different word with the same intent, aren’t you essentially expressing the exact same message as the word you won’t say?

there are two main examples of this idea in action.

if you’re in utah, and in the company of any current or lapsed mormons, you’re likely to hear the word, “fetch.” this is usually used in any of the situations in which someone might use the penultimate curse: the other “f" word. ”fetch" also has the same level of usefulness as the other “f" word, and is often employed as a noun, adverb, or adjective, by various invocations of ”fetch" and “fetching.”

while i have not personally witnessed the obvious conjugation of “mother-fetcher” i’m going to assume that’s within the realm of possibility.

another interesting cultural manifestation of this phenomenon can be found in the television series battlestar galactica, both in the original 1970’s show and the current series airing on sci-fi. both the blow-dried cheesy original and its newer, grittier, more brutal offspring employ the usage of the word “frak,” in much the same way that “fetch” and the other “f” word are used. conjugations included.

in the case of a television show, even a cable one, it means the character can say exactly what is a swear or curse to them without blatantly offending anyone watching by saying the word we all know they would say if only they’d found earth. the intent behind the usage of the word clearly mirrors our usage of that other “f” word here on our world.

on an interesting side-note, there are many within the mormon community who pride themselves on the original show’s "mormons in space" setting and storyline, gleefully pointing out the parallels between the show and their religion and its history. fans of the original probably remember the wedding of apollo and serina wherein they are “sealed for time and all eternity.” that same phrase is used in the mormon temple marriage (or so i’ve heard).

returning to the original topic of language, i also return to my original philosophical query.

we developed languages to convey ideas and information to others. along the way there developed various words to express disdain, disgust, frustration, and anger. some of these words have varying degrees of acceptance along the various strata of their respective cultures. for some their usage is commonplace, and to others the usage of the same words demonstrates a lack of sophistication.

when you examine the origins of that other “f" word one widely accepted etymology involves the acronym ”f.or u.nlawful l.awful c.arnal k.nowledge" being inscribed over the heads of those thrown into the stockades for adultery, fornication, or other acts deemed inappropriate of a sexual nature. the acronym gained meaning and was in time used as a word in its own right. as it became woven into various societies, it was conjugated and appropriated as needed. ultimately, it’s become one of the least acceptable words to use in polite society, because we’ve all decided that particular combination of vowels and consonants has a distasteful connotation.

in short: it’s a bad word because we say it’s a bad word. by “we,” of course, i mean society as a whole. consensus has determined that this word is one that should not be said, at least not in well-mannered or polite company.

thus, its use is frowned upon by a group that prides itself on maintaining a standard of socially acceptable behavior. this same group then went on to invent their own words which convey the identical intent, emotion, and sentiment, but without invoking the original word that was deemed inappropriate.

so in the end, haven’t they just invented their own swear words? aren’t they really swearing anyway?

- alex

p.s. please note that this is not an attempt to make saying the other “f” word more acceptable. society is what it is. i chose not to because i’m a moderately well-mannered individual. and there’s a chance my mother might read this.

"vacation" is relative

2005-08-15T17:24:00.000-07:00

alright, minor rant here. it borders on quasi-political – which means it’s not really political at all but it’ll touch on points which some people will consider to be political.

currently, president bush is on “vacation” for five weeks at his ranch in crawford, tx. you’ve probably heard a little more about this than you would have otherwise because right now cindy sheehan is camped outside the “western white house” demanding to meet with the president to get an explanation for her son’s death in the iraq war. the rant has nothing to do with sheehan, who is just as free as the next american to express her views.

(although the wacky next-door neighbor who decided to express himself with gunfire might want to reconsider the tactic... the secret service has zero sense of humor.)

i was listening to a radio station earlier and heard derisive comments about the president being on vacation for five weeks. i heard some of these same derisive comments last year during the election, particularly after michael moore’s propaganda opus “fahrenheit 9/11” in which he claims bush spent 40 days on vacation in the months between his inaugural and the attacks of 9/11.

for the record, that forty days total included weekends and time spent at camp david for events like welcoming foreign heads of state. hardly time off from the job.

the reason this bugs me is that the implication is that somehow bush stops being the president once he leaves the white house. it bugs me because it suggests, yet does not clearly condemn him for, slacking off on the job. it’s an allegation of irresponsibility seized upon by people who don’t bother thinking it through because they’re too busy living their own lives. they hear the soundbite, think “oh, the president is on vacation,” and assume it must be a vacation like everyone else wishes they could take.

which, it must be pointed out, is complete crap. total crap.

i go on vacation and i still have to answer e-mails and return phone calls. i don’t know anyone who really goes on a full-blown “vacation” these days, much less completely avoids business related matters while they’re away. given cell phones, pagers, and e-mails, it’s nearly impossible to avoid those things if you really wanted to. the only real option is to make sure you vacation in europe. nothing like an 8-9 hour time difference to help you avoid phone calls.

so if none of us can really “get away” when we’re on “vacation” do we really think the president of the united states is really giving up the gig for a month? does he really not return phone calls to foreign heads of state? does anyone honestly believe there’s a “gone fishin'” sign on the white house?

and does anyone remember bill clinton getting grief when he went on “vacation?” no? not exactly a shocker. nobody doubted that bill was still on the job when he wasn’t in the oval office.

(don’t get me started on what he probably did while in the oval office, either.)

the whole “bush is on vacation” idea is crap. total, unadulterated, crap. the president of the united states is probably the most well-wired person in the world. he’s got staff giving him briefings every day, he’s out there talking to the press on a regular basis. it’s more like he’s just working away from the white house. hell, i can work away from home or office if i need to. take the laptop, find a wi-fi hotspot, and i’m in business. think the president has a harder time getting wired than i do?

probably not.

anyone remember that when the tsunami hit southeast asia last december kofi annan was on “vacation” and didn’t return to the u.n. for a couple days? people wanted to give him crap, and his people basically fired back with, “he’s got a phone, he’s making calls, which is what he’d do if he were in new york now anyway... so back off!”

that’s paraphrasing, but it gets the point across. the notion that you have to be in either the u.n. or the white house to get things done is antiquated. we’re all wired up the wazoo these days and if i can’t get away completely i know the president can’t get away completely either. it’s not like he’s switched off his cell phone and said, “screw those guys, i’m on vacation, dammit!”

the only reason i can think of that this “vacation” nonsense has any traction at all is because some people want to believe that. it appears to be part and parcel with this bizarre, visceral, irrational, emotional hatred toward the current president which i quite frankly find disturbing. people are free to say and think what they like.

so am i.

/rant

- alex

as long as we're on the subject...

2005-07-22T19:17:00.000-07:00

of the industry and irony, i’ve probably never shared one of my major pet peeves with you.

i don’t know how many theater chains are running them, but pacific theaters at least is showing a spot from m.p.a.a. and respectcopyrights.org about how stealing movies is wrong. they show this before the previews run. in a movie theater. to people who have paid to be there.

there’s a hard-hitting soundtrack and on each major beat they show a graphic: you wouldn’t steal a car." beat. “you wouldn’t steal a handbag.” beat. “you wouldn’t steal a cell phone.” beat. “you wouldn’t steal a dvd.” beat. “buying pirated movies is stealing.” beat. final title: “illegal downloading: inappropriate for all ages.”

first off, they make certain suppositions in that spot that may not necessarily apply to all audience members. i won’t bother getting into the obvious statistics of how eventually they’re showing that piece to someone who has stolen either a car, handbag, cell phone, or dvd. by sheer numbers, odds are someone in the audience has done one or more of those things. i’ll let that go because i haven’t. i don’t steal. i agree, stealing is bad.

however, i did PAY to see the movie. i also often PAY $10 for a soda and popcorn (artifical-butter-flavoring being a new addiction). so not only do i not steal those other things (because stealing is wrong) i also don’t download movies illegally. i do PAY to see the movies IN THE THEATER.

(or i catch them on dvd from netflix)

so why, oh why, oh why am i being lectured to in the movie theater after i’ve PAID for a ticket?

if you watch a movie in lost-angels like i do, you’re paying $8 for a matinee, and anywhere from $10-14 for a regular movie ticket. i’ve been good. i don’t steal. but i get the lecture.

i’ve also written to them and asked why i get lectured even after i’ve bought the ticket. no response. and pacific theaters still shows that stupid p.s.a. every time i see a movie there.

it’s enough to make me want to download a movie from the ‘net. if camcordered crap with bad sound on my computer downloaded over several days was actually a substitute for a 60’ tall screen with booming t.h.x. sound i might even consider it. it’s not. so i go to the movies. and pray there’s no more f***ing m.p.a.a. lectures after i’ve paid for a ticket.

someday... maybe they’ll realize that criminalizing their audience is demeaning, insulting, and pointless. maybe they’ll realize that what they should do is label a 2-hour loop of that damnable spot as “harry potter 4” and turn it loose on kazaa. go after the people that actually do these things instead of lecturing those of us who PAID to be there.

/rant

- alex

scenes from a mall

2005-07-22T14:30:00.000-07:00

took a break from my current day-job project. ended up at a major shopping mall in lost-angels. in a toy store i found a section that had talking president dolls. the first three visible were f.d.r., j.f.k., and jimmy carter. i won’t scream partisan-ship because it’s a toy-store and maybe that’s the order they just happened to show up in, but it’s also lost-angels and heavily liberal so it does make one wonder. i did manage to find a george h.w. bush doll, but it was buried. no george w. bush dolls, though.

maybe they were sold out.

then i went to see charlie & the chocolate factory at the theater in the same mall. interestingly, there were a series of displays at the snack bar encouraging kids to buy movie snack packs, or something with a similar name. the interesting part is that these displays were of pirates, with parrots on their shoulders saying something like, “polly want a snack pack?”

given the movie industry’s position that piracy is bad, one may conclude that pirates are even worse. and yet there they are in the theater, encouraging kids to buy incredibly over-priced goods so that the the exhibitors can actually make money.

i found some irony in that.

it may prove even more ironic to see anti-piracy spots in theaters in front of the next two pirates of the caribbean movies, particularly when the first made piracy sound romantic and nearly noble. “he’s not a blacksmith... he’s a pirate!” and then the delightful miss knightly plants one on lucky orlando bloom.

on a potentially apocryphal note, i did like the “charlie” remake. i enjoyed it more than the original, actually. that may be blasphemy to those who hold it sacred, but the gene wilder version wasn’t a cornerstone of my childhood so i’m free to enjoy the re-make. sorry, gene. yes, it’s for the money. so was your picture. let’s not over-state the obvious.

i’d recommend seeing it. video is fine, too, but it’s fun to get into a theater once in a while. sometimes it’s even educational to hit a multi-plex.

- alex

sorry, mr. twain

2005-06-21T16:54:00.000-07:00

mark twain said, “it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.”

it’s a damn good quote. very practical advice.

i may be about to toss it out the window. it’s probably never a good idea to admit ignorance or poor taste. since i lack any ego whatsoever, no big loss. here we go...

paul anka kicks ass.

there. i said it.

i was listening to jonesy’s jukebox today and jonesy was interviewing someone whose anecdotes suggested quite a long and interesting history in the entertainment industry. i didn’t hear the name for a while, until after they played his cover of nirvana’s “smells like teen spirit.” it rocked. that was the first time i’ve ever actually been able to understand the lyrics. the song was an upbeat riot. i loved it.

after it finished, i found out it was paul anka. since i was on my way back to the batcave already, i hopped onto the itunes music store and found his latest album, “rock swings.” it’s full of stuff like that. “black hole sun,” "it’s a sin," “eye of the tiger.” i’m listening to his take on “wonderwall” right now and it’s a hoot.

thanks to the bios available on the itunes store, i did a little bit of reading about mr. anka. the man has had one helluva career. i think i’d heard before that he was the one who wrote the “tonight show” theme, which played most nights for 30 years. that alone would make him a very rich man, but apparently he was already rich from a hugely succesful music career. singer, songwriter, performer, actor. the man has done quite a lot and been very successful at it. he sounds pretty cool about it all, too.

i bought the album online and have been listening to it for the past half hour. it’s my new favorite album. this honor shifts randomly (franz ferdinand, crystal method, and garbage were all recent honorees) and it may well be something else next week.

for today at least, it’s paul anka.

that’s mass communications for you. making the world a smaller place. heard it on the radio and within 10 minutes had bought the album online. that’s progress.

sing it, paul...

("black hole sun, won’t you come...")

movies, movies, everywhere...

2005-06-10T11:27:00.000-07:00

a recent acquaintance asked me that perpetually loaded question of “what do you do?”

this has never been an easy question for me to answer. mainly because i’ve always done a little bit of everything. i’ve been a summer-camp counselor, merchant, researcher, technical director, graphic designer, artist, cartoonist, amateur web-designer, writer, screenwriter, data-monkey, and other tasks as the need arose over the past several years. i’ve learned a little from various skillsets to handle whatever task was asked of me or that i chose to undertake.

the more disturbing part about this most recent inquiry was in fact my realization that i’ve become rather boring. i’ve been granted a respite from the market research duties, aside from a few technical bits here and there, which has freed me to focus on writing. which is precisely what i’ve been doing.

i’m writing one movie, jotting down notes for a couple others. i’ve been watching movies both in matinees and from netflix. mainly it’s been about movies. which sounds rather dull, unless you’re making a living at it and have loads of stories about tyrannical directors, obsessive-compulsive producers, and achingly beautiful starlets. these fantastic tales allow others to experience a far wider array of emotions than the simple pedantic truth of one lone guy sitting in front of a keyboard. let’s be honest, that’s just not sexy.

and so the tedium continues. i’m off to a local library (sans wi-fi) to get some writing done, and then i’m going to catch an early afternoon showing of "mr. and mrs. smith." writing a movie. watching a movie.

for the rest of the world out there to whom movies are just a distraction, i would imagine it might seem kind of dull.

i quite like it. though, i’d like it even more if i had all those fabulous anecdotes from the trenches. guess i’ll have to live vicariously through my few industry friends and whatever tidbits of gossip filter onto the internet.

and the occasional distraction of that new form of internet-based crack, world of warcraft. or as it’s increasingly know... war-crack. i can’t play for very long at a stretch or i feel guilt about not getting more writing done.

runnin' down a dream

2005-06-07T20:02:00.000-07:00

lotteries are terrible investments. ask anyone who knows anything about investments and they’ll tell you that. you spend a little money for a chance to win a lot of money you are in all likelihood never going to win. sure, it’s a few bucks here and there, but it adds up.

i live in california. we’ve got our own state lottery which as two draws a week. if you spent, say, $5 on a ticket twice a week that’s $40 a month. that’s $480 a year. gone. you may win a buck or two here or there along the way, but that doesn’t off-set the nearly $500 you blow with no return. you’d be better off sticking that $500 away into a savings account and letting it just sit there because in the end you’d still have the $500.

you’re probably wondering why this is today’s topic. because, despite knowing how poor an investment the lottery is, i bought a ticket. i’ve been chasing this particular draw for the last week or two as it’s grown from $7 million to $44 million. twice a week I check the lottery site and see if anyone’s won (because the amount would start over). twice a week i see that nobody won – including me. then i stop by and get another ticket for the next drawing. it’s become a bi-weekly ritual at the local 7-eleven. i even have an excel spreadsheet that uses the payment schedule to figure out if a particular jackpot is better used as a supplemental income or as a big cash payout.

the appeal is obvious: you spend a little and if you win you are set for life. you drop a few dollars here or there and you could end up with a ticket for security and freedom for the rest of your days. you could provide for the next several generations of your progeny if you play your cards right.

i have plans if i win. first, nobody is going to know for a few months as i meet with lawyers, accountants, and estate planners. last thing i want to do is screw it up. there’s the 10% off the top that i promised to god when i was 18 (before i knew i probably should have called it “first dollar gross”). i’d probably donate more than that, because it’ll be way more than i really need. then there’s a college education for a few kids i know, paying off debt for my family, buying a modest house, etc.

i’m not saying i deserve to win the lottery, just that i know i’d do good deeds with it. i certainly can’t say that i deserve to win the lottery more than this lady. and yet i play, because of the fantasy.

i’ve decided that writing screenplays is a much better version of the lottery. with screenplays you can study, re-write, improve your odds with preparation, dedication, and diligence. talent helps, too, but let’s face it: lots of movies get made that aren’t really that great. winning the state lottery is one in 40 million. there aren’t 40 million people writing screenplays (although it certainly feels like it). there are far more chances to win than in the one or five you might have in a given week, since there are hundreds of production companies and studios who want to make movies.

there’s even an element of luck involved for those who like to live on the edge. you can have the perfect script but if you can’t get someone to read it you’re sunk. so you have some control, but not perfect control, over more factors in the winning equation.

writing scripts is like writing your own lottery tickets, with much better odds, and a sense of creative satisfaction. because with 1 in 41,416,353 chance in the state lottery, screenwriting has to be a better investment.

that’s what i’m telling myself, at least.

- alex

episode iii

2005-05-21T16:25:00.000-07:00

lots of people are asking me what i thought of the last feature-length installment in the star wars saga. i don’t know how many of them know i have a blog, and i imagine it’d be terribly rude to tell them to read it, so this is for anyone who happens to stumble upon this entry and gives a rat’s butt what i think.

(how’s that for positive thinking?)

if you haven’t seen “revenge of the sith” yet, you probably should stop reading now...

i liked it. not the greatest movie ever made, but definitely the strongest of these prequels. things moved faster than i thought they should in a few spots; the actual turning felt pretty fast. also the very final transformation seems a little rushed, too, but i rolled with it.

the relationship bits with anakin and padme were mercifully short, which i was thankful for because they’ve never been the strongest scenes in these prequels. ever since the awkardly thrust, “are you an angel?” from little jake loyd the “romance” bits have been consistently the stiffest and most awkward scenes in the prequels. none of them had the sheer cool-factor of han and leia in episode v and vi. maybe george brought someone in to punch up the scenes, maybe he thought they were good enough. at least this time around, he realized they needed to be short.

everything gets wrapped up rather tidily so you could roll into episode iv right off and it all fits. including the “memory wipe” that i predicted back before episode i even opened. the droids just knew too much.

the action was fantastic. all the space battles, army action, and lightsaber stuff we’ve been hoping for. jar jar binks has no lines whatsoever, but i was sadly disappointed he wasn’t on the receiving end of a sith lightsaber. maybe george is thinking of the little kids that may have actually liked the character – even though he proved in episode ii that jar jar was in fact the root of all evil in the republic. at least i still have that fond memory.

the look was amazing. we may be tempted to take that for granted because this is lucasfilm, and the team that pretty much invented modern visual fx work. that’d be a shame, because it really is quite impressive. yoda looks even more realistic than ever, thanks to what looked like translucency in the skin on his ears (so if light was behind, you’d see a change in the ears) – geeky little thing, but it really helps sell the shot.

i know some serious serious star wars geeks that really liked it enough not only to see the midnight show on opening night, they were also at the theater again the next afternoon ready for more.

heck, i may even see it again. maybe just because this is the last star wars movie ever. somehow, i think that’s going to help the box office on this one, too. episode i made a ton of money – even though it wasn’t very good – because it was the first new star wars movie in other 20 years. perhaps episode iii will get a few extra sales because it’s the last one ever. at least this one is worth it.

just my opinion. your mileage may vary.

- alex

media bias proven... or not

2005-05-12T12:58:00.000-07:00

liberal media bias is a popular topic. republicans, conservatives, and others on the right cry foul when they see samples of how the major media outlets are biased against them. the liberals and others on the collective left cry foul every time the right cries foul, and hold up fox news as the poster child of right-wing media bias. they’ll usually throw in rush limbaugh, bill o'reilly, and ann coulter, too; even though they’re people who comment with their opinions on the “news” itself.

the news divisions of the major networks and other major media outlets maintain their objectivity, no matter how many times it’s proven they show a bias one way or the other. quite frankly, it’s really tough to completely omit bias. the best you can do is own up to it when it happens, apolgize, and move on.

cnn isn’t even trying to appear unbiased these days. the great tragedy is that even though i have seen it, i can’t prove it. i blame my isp for that. this lack of “proof” will, of course, qualify me for admittance into that most rarified of clubs: the crack-pot conspiracy theorist. me and buzz. what a pair.

here’s the whole scoop: i’m reading cnn’s site this morning when i found an article with the headline “key republican: bolton wrong man for u.n.” i read the article because i wanted to find out who the “key republican” was. not that i have a scorecard or republican trading cards, nor am i really all that political. i wanted to find out because i suspected the headline itself was a case of bias. instead of just saying “one” republican had a problem with bolton, this dissenter was touted as a “key” republican. the article led off with republican senator richard lugar’s comments on john bolton, president bush’s nominee for u.s. ambassador to the u.n. it mentioned that lugar had a letter of support for bolton signed by former secretaries of state james baker, lawrence eagleburger (always loved that name), alexander haig, henry kissinger, and george shultz. lugar was reported as saying that although he doesn’t always agree with mr. bolton’s tactics he supported the choice. he said it would be unprecedented that the senate not support the president’s choice for the post.

i had to read four or five paragraphs to find out that the dissenting republican was ohio senator george voinovich. the first paragraph of the story just said “a key republican on the senate committee...” the “key” person’s name wasn’t mentioned in the first few paragraphs of the story, which i thought was odd. i know a little about writing – believe it or not – and thought it was strange that the central point of this article, a “key republican” wasn’t named immediately. how key could he be?

i decided to say something about this. not knowing voinovich, i figured i should do some research on the man and tried to hit google to bone up a bit. then my network connection went to crap. in the course of trying to troubleshoot it, i cleared out the cache in the browser i was using (firefox) so i lost the page i was originally viewing. after resetting my cable modem, i fixed the problem and reloaded the cnn page.

it had changed!

i don’t know if the original was an ap article or reuters, but when i got the page to load this time it was the cnn article you’ll find here. now the article puts voinovich’s name front and center, in the first sentence. now richard luger’s comments and the the letter signed by multiple former secretaries of state is buried several paragraphs down. instead of the canned picture of bolton on the right that i saw originally, you’ll actually see a picture of senator voinovich. everything that i thought made the first article ineffective has been changed!

the real bummer: i can’t prove it. i didn’t save the page, i didn’t archive it, and i’m guessing it wasn’t up long enough for any sites that periodically mirror or archive things to catch it. literally, within a 10 minute period the entire article had shifted around so that it more accurately supported the agenda that the headline promised in the first place. someone else besides me must have noticed the problem, and edited the article. the information is still the same, but the order is now changed.

the headline has remained the same, of course, because that was their initial point: “key republican.” basically, it’s one guy. since that one guy is a republican, though, he suddenly becomes “key.” not to beat this into the ground, but usage of that term implies that senator voinovich, probably a lovely man, is now the linchpin, keystone, quarterback, insert-your-metaphor-here, of the entire republican party.

i think i’ve heard the name once before. richard lugar, the head of the committee, is a name i’ve heard far more often. he’s the head of the committee. so how does one guy suddenly become the “key” republican on the committee? by agreeing with the agenda of the major media outlet. the credit on the story that you’ll find on here is “cnn.” it’s not an ap story. it’s not a reuters story. it’s a cnn story.

i wonder if anyone else noticed the change. that’d be nice, because i noticed it. i can, and just did, tell you all about it. i just can’t show you the earlier story. you’ll have to trust my credibility and reading comprehension skills.

it makes for an interesting morning, at least. time to get back to work.

no internet hunting for californians?

2005-05-08T19:44:00.000-07:00

you may have already heard about john lockwood, a texas entrepenuer. he set up live-shot, an internet hunting site which lets you shoot deer on his texas ranch from the comfort of your home using a remote-controlled gun. the user pays a monthly fee for access and $1,000 or so for each animal they actually bring down, which is sent to them.

california is taking steps to ban everyone in the state from using computer-assisted hunting sites (even in other states) and ban the import or export of any animals killed using computer-assisted hunting. 13 other states are introducing similar bills. there are even bills being introduced in congress to ban the practice altogether. an excellent article in the washington post describes the debate well.

i don’t hunt. no interest in it. probably never would even gone to the live-shot site until i read that the california state senate just passed a bill that says i can’t hunt deer over the internet. the bill goes to the assembly next, and it may well pass. that would mean it’d be illegal for me to hunt deer in texas from my computer in california.

the main thing i have trouble understanding in all of this is: why? why should it be illegal? why are our elected officials even getting involved?

i’ve read both sides of this and i don’t see why it ought to be illegal. it’s legal to hunt. if i went out with a rifle, valid hunting license, and bagged a steer it’d be mine. i could go bag venison and everyone would be fine with it if i killed the stag in person.

(bear with me if my hunting terms are off, i’m new to it)

so what changes if the person who pulls the trigger isn’t really there? what makes the act or results any different if the deer gets killed by a guy behind a blind or a parapalegic in his home in Indiana during one of his few sitting ours in a week? it is all the same to the deer.

there is an hysteric response to the idea that people haven’t really thought through. california state senator debra bowen (d - redondo beach) is quoted in the post article and i think it’s revealing: “this is the kind of technology i associate with war – like drones – not with sport. in fact i heard about this and i thought about the texas book depository.” a reference to the site where lee harvey oswald shot president kennedy.

my thought reading that was, “what the heck is she talking about?” how does a remote-operated hunting rifle tracking deer in texas relate at all to the assassination of j.f.k.? live-shot isn’t setting up sniper-rifles in human-populated areas and offering potshots at civilians or elected officials, senator. it’s illegal to kill people, including a president. shooting deer is perfectly legal.

i don’t hunt. i have no vested interest in the outcome of this at all, beyond my concern about legislators using my tax dollars to ban something that doesn’t sound like it ought to be illegal. there’s no slippery slope here. just hysteric emotional response and likely money from sporting groups fearful of losing support to e-hunting.

i’m curious to read what you think. comment here or use the
message boards.

- alex

mystery keys

2005-04-20T19:10:00.000-07:00

in the course of my never-ending quest for organization (along with truth, justice, and the american way) i was purging a drawer of hopelessly outdated financial papers last night when i found it...

a mystery key.

we’ve all found them. keys which unexpectedly appear in places that you at one time must have told yourself were safe places to keep that terribly important key.

then, of course, you find it. you don’t remember what it opens. which means you don’t know why you were keeping it. worse, you don’t know that you can safely get rid of it.

if this is a mystery key that you haven’t seen in several years, odds are you don’t need it. so you think about throwing it away. you don’t, of course, because you just know that as soon as you do, or very shortly after, you’ll need it.

counterpoint: if you came across the lock in question and had completely forgotten that you at one point had secreted its key for safe keeping then you’d be just as sunk because you wouldn’t know that there was a key to be had. you might as well not have had the key at all in that scenario. even if you remembered you had it, you would have forgotten the top-secret ultra-secure location you’ve hidden it in.

thus the moral and logical quandry that is the mystery key.

i have a few mystery keys on my keychain, too. i ignore the ones i don’t use on a regular basis, but every so often – after jabbing the keychain into my thigh – question why i have so many keys. then begins the ritual of rememberance, or at least vague familiarity. you flip through them one at a time trying to remember what they go to. you might guess most of them, but there are always a couple that you’re not quite sure about. they’re on your keychain, though, so they must have been important. there’s also the likelihood that you might run across the right lock in your many adventures. thus, the mobile mystery keys remain at the ready. just in case.

then there’s the found-at-the-bottom-of-the-drawer mystery key. those are a little trickier. especially one bearing the name of an automotive manufacturer that doesn’t match any vehicle you own, have owned in the last five years, or might drive on a regular basis.

should it stay or should it go?

yet another take in the coolness of ipods

2005-04-05T10:42:00.000-07:00

by now you’ve all seen or read news articles about the ipod, the sleek and currently very cool mp3 player from apple. there have been tons of ads on television, so memorable that u2 decided to shoot their “vertigo” video in the same silhouette-in-motion style. there has been much speculation on just why the ipod is so popular – apple sold nearly 5 million of them in the fourth quarter last year, as the variants (ipod, ipod photo, ipod mini and now the ipod shuffle) were last christmas' must-have gifts. everything from ease of use to stylish design to sheer chic factor have been cited. last night i realized why the ipod(s) are cool to me, beyond the aforementioned.

when i was a kid i noticed that people had some small portion of their music collections with them in their cars. back then it was audio cassette tapes, and most people had car stereos that would play back their choice of music while they drove around. driving itself has obvious associations with freedom and escape, whether by yourself or with others. adding your own personal sense of style to that experience with your selection of music personalizes that experience much more and makes it that much more enjoyable. i remember thinking how cool it would be to have my own car with my own music, and how that would be a very satisfying personal experience.

of course at that age i just thought it would be really cool. having spent money on college, i now have to find much more elaborate words to describe it.

over the course of years from that first aspirational vision (me/car/tunes) the technology and opportunities evolved. from audio cassettes to compact discs to trunk changers, from smaller cars to cooler cars, i made music part of my driving experience. there have been many road trips; palm springs, vegas, arizona, cross-country, and others. in all i would have a case of cassettes or a wallet of cds with me, making that experience not only freeing but enjoyable and personal. i was never cutting edge because i couldn’t/can’t afford it, but i tried to find the solutions that would work best for me and maximize the potential for that experience to be even cooler. when mp3s became the rage i settled for a rio volt mp3 cd player so i could take more music with me on a single disc, which meant not having to change the disc at all during a two-hour san diego-to-los angeles trip.

the same process applied to business travel, as well. i’d lug a cd-player and stack of discs with me when i flew for the same reasons of comfort and pleasure. taking all that extra gear was a pain to pack, so i gave it up and settled for the enjoyment of what i could leave in my car.

now it’s the ipod. instead of a stack of anything, i have one slick little white and metal box the size of a deck of playing cards that contains every single cd i own plus a bunch of music i’ve since purchased online. total that’s about 13 gigs worth of music. i don’t listen to all of it, and i often find a track i’ve never heard before from a disc i forgot i owned. all my cds are in a box in the closet, but my music is always with me.

i don’t have the slickest/coolest of ipod players. no 60 gig ipod photo. no silver 4 gb ipod mini. just a nice solid second-generation touch-wheel flower-button model with a now old-fashioned fire-wire port. i take it in the car, set it to shuffle my songs, press play, and just drive.

what i realized last night during another two-hour drive was that the little kid me was right all those years ago...

it is pretty damn cool.

- alex

back in the (virtual) saddle again

2005-03-16T15:40:00.000-08:00

i’m sure you’ll all be relieved to hear that i’m finally over that first cold of the new year. the big question now is: did all that stuff work? is there any way to really know? i took all kinds of things, and less than a week later i was feeling better. initial symptoms on a monday evening, and by the following weekend, i was doing a lot better. tuesday through thursday were the worst days. friday felt like it broke, and i felt better over the weekend. so, three days of actual man-this-blows symptoms. not bad.

did that stuff work? would this cold have lasted only that long to begin with? who knows. i’ll probably take the entire regimen again next cold, thinking if only i start a little sooner i might knock even more days off. though i couldn’t tell you which specific drug was the biggest help, i can tell you that quite often my colds last long enough to become upper respiratory infections (and those are all kinds of fun). this one didn’t, so i’m claiming a success at least on that front.

now, back to the writing! i’ve got a little free time from the day job, and am trying to get some other work done. that beat outline i mentioned earlier didn’t write itself (they never do) but i’m back on it now that my forehead doesn’t have all that pressing fog building and i can keep my hands away from the kleenex box and zicam zapper long enough to actually type something.

i’ll be attending a screenwriting workshop this weekend, and hope to actually get into another class at u.c.l.a. extensions sometime next month. ideally, these efforts, combined with a dose of discipline i’ve got on order, will yield a fabulous sense of productivity.

assuming, of course, i stay away from the site and my blog long enough to whip something out.

back to work!

- alex

tissues, tissues, everywhere

2005-03-10T17:08:00.000-08:00

i have no idea where or how i caught it, but i’m in the middle of my first cold of 2005. lucky me. fortunately, i can’t spread it to you through my blog.

the past few days have been a smorgasborg of cold medications, homeopathic remedies, and enough kleenexes that i almost feel guilty about the number of trees that must have died so that i could expunge the snot from my skull.

there has been an educational side to it all. thanks to advertising and testimonials, i’m experimenting with the zicam line of products. reading up on them turned out to be rather interesing stuff. turns out they come in both oral and nasal options. the nasal one is labeled as a “no drip” gel (which will slide out like snot if you’re not careful). the instructions say not to blow your nose for at least 30 seconds, which is funny because once you’ve just shot more goop up your schnozz that’s the first thing you want to do. also, that line about aiming toward the outside of your nostril? not such a great idea, it just drops the clear mucus-like gel back onto the applicator. if you want some free advice, aim it up high and toward the front, then pinch your nostrils together and rub it around. (do not inhale it, though, it’s not a mist)

(because you know you wanted to read all about that)

this, of course, after i made myself paranoid about even trying it in the first place because i read of around 300 lawsuits from people who are claiming that using the nasal zicam permanently removed their sense of smell. completely. on the flip side of that, though, are 10 million sales of zicam, and the distinct possibility that the folks who now suffer from anosmia actually incurred the damage from colds, sever sinus infections, or other problems. i figured that if they sell 10 million and have less than 1,000 people suing, it’s probably not a causal relationship. there’s some old data from studies in the 1930’s when they tried using inhaled zinc to cure polio (which didn’t work) and some patients claimed they lost their sense of smell. i played the odds, and so far my olfactory sensors still seem to be in working order.

the zicam “rapidmelt” quick-dissolve tablets (purchased during my gel-paranoia) don’t really taste so much like cherry as they do an inoffensive styrofoam. the funny thing is that you’re not supposed to eat or drink anything for 15 minutes after letting one dissolve in your mouth, which is of course your first impulse after you’re done with it. it’s not nasty, just not pleasurable.

then there is the airborne line of products. these are tablets that dissolve in liquid, but leave a bit of a gunky film in the glass. available in orange or lemon-lime, but i’ve only tried the orange. it’s not tang, but then what is? i have no idea if they work, but i’m assuming (hoping) they’ll do no harm.

of course, there is the old stand-by sudafed, which at least i can tell works. i may be taking it more frequently than i should, but at the moment that sounds better than letting the pressure build back up in my sinuses. along with zinc tablets and echinacea, i think i may be set for drugs.

the most interesting part of this particular cold is that half of my regimen is made up of homeopathic remedies that have no f.d.a. input or control. in the absence of a prescription med or over-the-counter cure, it appears that there is a huge industry for the homeopathics. it’s also probably not a coincidence that these products are also using more “scientific” marketing methods. the airborne site takes you to “knight-mcdowell labs” and “zicam” sounds like something you’d see in a t.v. spot encouraging you to ask your doctor for more details (and would probably be yet another purple pill).

the point of all this? colds may not be the worst thing that happens, but they happen to us all, we all hate them, and we’re willing to do just about anything to make it go away or effect us less.

toy story

2005-02-24T17:36:00.000-08:00

not that anyone asked me, but i’ve had a long-standing pet peeve when it comes to the toy industry. when companies like mattel and hasbro make toys for a given franchise (superman, batman, etc) there’s this old-school way of thinking that they’ll make all kinds of versions of the hero figure but never the straight-up hero.

i was just in a store and found five different variations on the new batman begins figure. one is a bruce wayne ninja into batman set, another was “zipline attack” batman," and there were a couple others. none of them were just the new batman, in the all black suit.

the old school of toy-marketing is entirely focused how to sell more toys, which makes sense but i think they’ve taken the wrong direction. if they have a batman license and make twenty different batman variations, they have the chance to sell twenty different types of toys. they’ve made an entire line centered on one property. some may sell better than others, but it’s a shotgun effect. as a result, they often don’t just make a straight-up regular batman figure. the concern is probably that if they did kids would buy only that one and they’d have sold fewer toys. which would be bad, because they’re in the business of selling toys.

what they don’t realize is that some folks like myself would probably buy a batman figure if i could only find a regular batman figure. as it is, i see twenty different variants that don’t really look like batman, no batman figure and so i buy nothing. i’m not the kid they target, but i make more money than the kid does and i’m just as impulsive a shopper. i probably shouldn’t brag about that.

some toy companies have figured this out. there are new justice league and teen titans figures out there that are just the hero. no artic-adventure supes, no speed-force flash (though that could be kinda cool), just the actual heroes as you see them on the show.

in the end, i should probably thank mattel and hasbro for sticking to an outdated paradigm. it does save me money.