The latest encroachment of state upon medicine is, I think most of us realize, nothing novel. We have socialized medicine elsewhere in the world, and no matter how badly it fails and how reductive of liberty it is, the drumbeat to implement it here has been constant throughout my lifetime. But the slope didn't start slipping with Medicare or any of the other government programs; in my opinion, the journey predates modern collectivism by centuries.
I've written before about how my great-grandmother was threatened with arrest for curing TB patients. This would've been in the early decades of the 20th century. But she was hardly alone: Medical guilds have been attacking outsiders since the days they were respectable barbers with a shady side-business.
Basically, when the various medical associations managed to get a monopoly on treating the sick, and got the force of the state on their side, they not only diminished prospects for health (in the name of protecting people, of course, it's always in the name of protecting people), they signed their own death warrant.
Someone else at Ace's or Althouse mentioned Microsoft, which is a propos because one of Microsoft's tactics for conquering a niche has always been to "partner" with their future competitors, usually offering some tempting deal. At that point they'd steal code (for example), and integrate it into the OS. Cut off their oxygen, as I think MS CEO Steve Ballmer put it. At that point, you can either outlawyer them, buy them off cheap (if you need to buy them off at all), and voila, you own the market.
I actually consulted for a company that partnered with MS. I was astonished that they partnered with them, seemed to be proud of that fact, and watched as MS created a competitor that is now included with every version of Windows. But at least they're still in business.
That's, of course, similar to how the government works, as well. The government "partners" with doctors--and look how tight the AMA and government are--offering them the sweet deal of a monopoly, and wiping out their competition. (Remember, the government just spent $2.5 billion to prove that none of these other things work. Meanwhile tens of billions go into curing cancer with no appreciable progress made.)
And while the government forbade compensation increases during WWII (to stem inflation), they exempted medical insurance, thus leading to the current weird situation where one is beholding to an employer for tax-deductable coverage or else stuck buying their own, giving us the current market distortions in the insurance market. (Well, that and all the other "help" the government gives.)
And now it's time to pay the piper: The price for the monopoly--for convincing the country that there is only way to treat medical problems, and that there is only one source for that treatment--is to become public servants, under the thumb of the government. In the words of Darth Vader, "I have altered the deal. Pray that I don't alter it again."
The thing that got me thinking about this was stumbling across this somewhat overblown video on poor Willhelm Reich. I referred to him as a "probable quack" in my previous post, which was just a flip statement (plus, like "snake oil", I use "quack" affectionately).
I don't know if Reich was really a quack or not. I do know that he was destroyed, just like my old pal Ignaz Semmelweis, and his writings actually banned by the government! (Or so they say; I haven't seen the order.) I'm not sure how the First Amendment allows celebrities to be attacked with known lies, but also allows controversial philosophical and medical ideas to be banned.
But I do think it's kind of interesting that I keep seeing "the ether" pop up in scientific articles. And I'm pretty sure that it's within my rights as an American--or it was supposed to be--to explore such ideas, however wacky, stupid or even personally harmful, they might be. I think the Founding Fathers would have wanted me to be able to buy an orgone box if I felt like.
Hell, Franklin would've gone halfsies with me.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Pointy Breasts From Beyond The Outer Limits!
It's been a long time since I had a genuine pointy-breast post--something I think we can all agree this blog is the lesser for--and I found a pair where I least expected them. I never watched the original "Outer Limits" series, but with the new digital signals, we get the THIStv channel which shows an assortment of old movies and TV shows--including "The Outer Limits".
So I set the ol' MythTV to record them and finally got around to watching an episode called "ZZZZZ", which is the story of a queen bee who takes human form. This, naturally being a draining transformation, causes her to swoon on the lawn of a bee scientist.
And behold:
And behold again. Rebehold? Er, behold twice?
It was a strange episode. Or, I don't know, maybe it was completely characteristic of the show. Having only seen one episode, I cannot say. (I did watch the '90s series, though, on Showtime, and liked it.)
It was also kind of cool that the actress, Joanna Frank, was someone I had seen before, in the much later series "L.A. Law". As it turns out, she's TV mogul Steven Bochco's sister, and was actually married to Alan Rachins, whose wife (then, ex-wife, I believe) she played on that show!
She did a good job as the weird bug-person, and also had a slightly unusual beauty that suited the role.
Here's a picture of her about to enjoy some pollen. (I'm not good at screen-caps yet, but these turned out pretty well!)
I shall view more "Outer Limits" in the hopes of finding more specimens of mammaris conniculus. Note that the above are from '64 or '65, and so are the latest of that era we've yet found!
So I set the ol' MythTV to record them and finally got around to watching an episode called "ZZZZZ", which is the story of a queen bee who takes human form. This, naturally being a draining transformation, causes her to swoon on the lawn of a bee scientist.
And behold:
And behold again. Rebehold? Er, behold twice?
It was a strange episode. Or, I don't know, maybe it was completely characteristic of the show. Having only seen one episode, I cannot say. (I did watch the '90s series, though, on Showtime, and liked it.)
It was also kind of cool that the actress, Joanna Frank, was someone I had seen before, in the much later series "L.A. Law". As it turns out, she's TV mogul Steven Bochco's sister, and was actually married to Alan Rachins, whose wife (then, ex-wife, I believe) she played on that show!
She did a good job as the weird bug-person, and also had a slightly unusual beauty that suited the role.Here's a picture of her about to enjoy some pollen. (I'm not good at screen-caps yet, but these turned out pretty well!)
I shall view more "Outer Limits" in the hopes of finding more specimens of mammaris conniculus. Note that the above are from '64 or '65, and so are the latest of that era we've yet found!
Friday, July 3, 2009
She Ain't Comin' Either
Hearken back a few days to where Freeman Hunt visited us for a discussion on her post called "He Isn't Coming", where she discussed how our culture wasn't producing the sort of great men needed to rescue us from the disaster currently being visited upon us.
My argument is that you don't need very many great men like that, and that societies never do create very many in that mold. Though we're not producing the sort of people who appreciate greatness, either, and that's a more severe problem.
However, the treatment of Sarah Palin from September to her current resignation shows something else: should someone relatively honest, authentic and reform-minded appear, she will be destroyed.
I don't believe there's any scandal, as some are salivating at the prospect of. The entire brunt of the mainstream media was brought to bear in trying to bring her down after she resuscitated the moribund McCain campaign--and then insisting, despite all evidence, that she had somehow hurt McCain--and nothing was found. Then there were trumped up ethics charge after trumped up ethics charge was brought against her, all of them defeated, but costing her over $400,000 in legal fees.
Palin doesn't even qualify, in terms of what Freeman was specifying: She didn't know Latin or Greek, for example. And I suspected she might have a bit of a populist streak. ("Populism" always seems to be another way of saying "big government", perversely.) But before the media tore her apart, it was fairly uncontroversial that she had rejected the business-as-usual politics, and actually done some housecleaning.
She seems to have the essential character, in other words, that puts Freem's education and moral ideas to proper use. Note that I reject strongly the media projections of her as stupid. This is just SOP for the handling of Republican Presidential material: They're either stupid (GW Bush, Reagan, Ford, Eisenhower, Palin) or evil madmen (Cheney, GHW Bush, Nixon, Agnew, Goldwater). Oh, and "out of touch" (McCain, GHW Bush, Reagan, Eisenhower, and, well, pretty much all of them). Actually, I give the media some credit for spicing it up last election by allowing that McCain might simply be a well-meaning madman as opposed to an evil one. (Though there were plenty of implications that he was evil, too.)
But even that modicum of ability is not to be tolerated.
What's more, I suspect a person of greater ability would be even more excoriated. So, if you're keeping score at home, not only does "our hero" have to be a great intellect, charismatic, come from all the "right places", perfect in behvaior, have no family members who have ever fallen short of any ideals, have a ton of money to fight up the frivolous lawsuits--and then give a damn about the country--and the people in it--that allows this to happen.
I'm less sanguine than I was yesterday.
My argument is that you don't need very many great men like that, and that societies never do create very many in that mold. Though we're not producing the sort of people who appreciate greatness, either, and that's a more severe problem.
However, the treatment of Sarah Palin from September to her current resignation shows something else: should someone relatively honest, authentic and reform-minded appear, she will be destroyed.
I don't believe there's any scandal, as some are salivating at the prospect of. The entire brunt of the mainstream media was brought to bear in trying to bring her down after she resuscitated the moribund McCain campaign--and then insisting, despite all evidence, that she had somehow hurt McCain--and nothing was found. Then there were trumped up ethics charge after trumped up ethics charge was brought against her, all of them defeated, but costing her over $400,000 in legal fees.
Palin doesn't even qualify, in terms of what Freeman was specifying: She didn't know Latin or Greek, for example. And I suspected she might have a bit of a populist streak. ("Populism" always seems to be another way of saying "big government", perversely.) But before the media tore her apart, it was fairly uncontroversial that she had rejected the business-as-usual politics, and actually done some housecleaning.
She seems to have the essential character, in other words, that puts Freem's education and moral ideas to proper use. Note that I reject strongly the media projections of her as stupid. This is just SOP for the handling of Republican Presidential material: They're either stupid (GW Bush, Reagan, Ford, Eisenhower, Palin) or evil madmen (Cheney, GHW Bush, Nixon, Agnew, Goldwater). Oh, and "out of touch" (McCain, GHW Bush, Reagan, Eisenhower, and, well, pretty much all of them). Actually, I give the media some credit for spicing it up last election by allowing that McCain might simply be a well-meaning madman as opposed to an evil one. (Though there were plenty of implications that he was evil, too.)
But even that modicum of ability is not to be tolerated.
What's more, I suspect a person of greater ability would be even more excoriated. So, if you're keeping score at home, not only does "our hero" have to be a great intellect, charismatic, come from all the "right places", perfect in behvaior, have no family members who have ever fallen short of any ideals, have a ton of money to fight up the frivolous lawsuits--and then give a damn about the country--and the people in it--that allows this to happen.
I'm less sanguine than I was yesterday.
Conversations From The Living Room, Part 18: Intolerant Cultures"
"Now, we're having some Muslims come over..."
"...so you'll have to wear pants."
"...so you'll have to wear pants."
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Public What? Oh, Enemies?
People do seem to love them some Michael Mann. I'm not one of those people, so you should keep that in mind as I review his latest opus, Public Enemies.
I don't hate the guy or nothin'. Well, okay, I used to. During the late days of 1980 and early 1981, it seemed like every movie thata was released wallowed in mediocrity. To some degree that may have been pure happenstance, as there were many, many fewer movie options back then and if you were dedicated, it was hard to avoid seeing bad ones.
One of those movies was the very disappointing James Caan vehicle Thief, Mann's first big-league feature. He followed that up with the even more disappointing The Keep, a nazi-monster horror flick with a great cast. Then he got famous for "Miami Vice," which was fun and quintessentially '80s, and with that fame, he was the first to put Thomas Harris' Hannibal Lecter onscreen with the remarkably noisy-yet-forgettable Manhunter. That same year he put his name on the downright icky Band of the Hand.
But he got better in the '90s. (That's consensus, not just my opinion.)
I personally find myself not engaged by his movies, generally. They don't resonate with me. Even if I enjoy one of his movies, like Collateral and to a lesser extent the (overrated) Last of the Mohicans, I almost immediately forget them after seeing them. (If I were to hazard a guess, I would say that I like Michael Mann the director more than Michael Mann the screenwriter.)
And now, forearmed with an inkling of my tastes, to Mann's Public Enemies, the story (primarily) of special agent Melvin Purvis' pursuit of notorious Public Enemy #1 John Dillinger in 1933 Chicago. Summary: I found it more or less like Mann's other works; I wasn't engaged, mostly, and I'll forget most of it pretty soon.
But there are some really fine moments in this film. And while it's an ensemble piece, a lot of what works has to do with Johnny Depp's performance as Dillinger. I wonder if it gets tiring hearing how awesome you are, but Depp is ridiculously empathetic as the man whose early incarceration turned him into an effective (yet gentle!) bank robber. Violent, but principled, dangerous but with high standards.
Yeah, it's romanticized, big time. It's kind of weird, even. There are good guys and bad guys among both the FBI, the police and the gangsters, in no particular distribution.
The story arc basically follows Dillinger's breaking into a jail, then returning to Chicago where he embarrasses the G-men, who then resort to increasingly brutal tactics to cover up their general incompetence. Christian Bale is the hard-edged but largely moral special agent who has to carry out J. Edgar Hoover's demands.
Complicating matters for Dillinger is his fledgling yet instantly permanent romance with Billie Flechette (Marion Cotillard of La Vie an Rose and 9/11 and moon landing conspiracy theories), for whom he tries to take responsibility, and who (of course) becomes his weakness. (Actually, upon reflection, this aspect of the story is almost Harlequin-esque, which may make it popular with the ladies.)
She's not as big a weakness as The Syndicate, which is becoming mighty unfriendly to these bank robbing celebrities who attract unwanted attention to illegal activities.
You get the idea.
I was distracted. There were about 20 interesting stories here, and I felt like we got the most banal one. Which could've made for a great movie, mind you, but it was also unfocused. Give us the love affair and the noble bank robber, if that's the story you want to tell.
The Boy liked it, I should point out, so I may just be making excuses for why this film didn't ignite my toes like it is for Mann fans. He did express disappointment that it wasn't about the economic underpinnings of organized crime; I don't have the heart to tell him that they don't really make movies about the economic underpinnings of organized crime. (Though last year's Rock 'n' Rolla came pretty close!)
But, damn, there was an interesting story right there: How The Mob was in bed, then out of bed, with the bank robbers.
There's another scene with J. Edgar Hoover trying (and failing) to get money from Congress for the FBI, and being thwarted by a principled man who saw the danger in a national police force and the threat particularly posed by Hoover. Interesting.
There's Dillinger himself: Rough upbringing, stupid life choice early on, forged into a criminal by the system, but still drawn to this low class girl with integrity, and fiercely protective of her. But why? What really happened? Where did he get his principles from? Interesting.
And, wow, what about a society (America during the Great Depression) that venerates bank robbers? That has so little faith in the system that it roots for criminals, but at the same time elects the same man President over and over again. (The former is a big part of the story, the latter not so much. )
Anyway, I just kept thinking of all these interesting things that would never be developed.
Really fine acting, of course. Though I have trouble with these period pieces, 'cause they all kind of dress alike and have similar hair cuts, but I did manage to distinguish, generally. The lighting doesn't help, however: A lot of the interior shots look "naturally" lit, i.e., details of faces hard to make out. (Fincher does that, too, but you always know who you're looking at even if you can't make out their face.)
The use of the shaky-cam--well, it wasn't gratuitous. It indicated a certain kind of shift in the action. But it distracted me. As did Mann's trademark use of music. The score was good, but it irritated me the way it was worked into the action. The songs were hit-and-miss.
So, there you have it. If you like Mann's work, you'll probably love this. If you like Depp, you won't hate it.
I don't hate the guy or nothin'. Well, okay, I used to. During the late days of 1980 and early 1981, it seemed like every movie thata was released wallowed in mediocrity. To some degree that may have been pure happenstance, as there were many, many fewer movie options back then and if you were dedicated, it was hard to avoid seeing bad ones.
One of those movies was the very disappointing James Caan vehicle Thief, Mann's first big-league feature. He followed that up with the even more disappointing The Keep, a nazi-monster horror flick with a great cast. Then he got famous for "Miami Vice," which was fun and quintessentially '80s, and with that fame, he was the first to put Thomas Harris' Hannibal Lecter onscreen with the remarkably noisy-yet-forgettable Manhunter. That same year he put his name on the downright icky Band of the Hand.
But he got better in the '90s. (That's consensus, not just my opinion.)
I personally find myself not engaged by his movies, generally. They don't resonate with me. Even if I enjoy one of his movies, like Collateral and to a lesser extent the (overrated) Last of the Mohicans, I almost immediately forget them after seeing them. (If I were to hazard a guess, I would say that I like Michael Mann the director more than Michael Mann the screenwriter.)
And now, forearmed with an inkling of my tastes, to Mann's Public Enemies, the story (primarily) of special agent Melvin Purvis' pursuit of notorious Public Enemy #1 John Dillinger in 1933 Chicago. Summary: I found it more or less like Mann's other works; I wasn't engaged, mostly, and I'll forget most of it pretty soon.
But there are some really fine moments in this film. And while it's an ensemble piece, a lot of what works has to do with Johnny Depp's performance as Dillinger. I wonder if it gets tiring hearing how awesome you are, but Depp is ridiculously empathetic as the man whose early incarceration turned him into an effective (yet gentle!) bank robber. Violent, but principled, dangerous but with high standards.
Yeah, it's romanticized, big time. It's kind of weird, even. There are good guys and bad guys among both the FBI, the police and the gangsters, in no particular distribution.
The story arc basically follows Dillinger's breaking into a jail, then returning to Chicago where he embarrasses the G-men, who then resort to increasingly brutal tactics to cover up their general incompetence. Christian Bale is the hard-edged but largely moral special agent who has to carry out J. Edgar Hoover's demands.
Complicating matters for Dillinger is his fledgling yet instantly permanent romance with Billie Flechette (Marion Cotillard of La Vie an Rose and 9/11 and moon landing conspiracy theories), for whom he tries to take responsibility, and who (of course) becomes his weakness. (Actually, upon reflection, this aspect of the story is almost Harlequin-esque, which may make it popular with the ladies.)
She's not as big a weakness as The Syndicate, which is becoming mighty unfriendly to these bank robbing celebrities who attract unwanted attention to illegal activities.
You get the idea.
I was distracted. There were about 20 interesting stories here, and I felt like we got the most banal one. Which could've made for a great movie, mind you, but it was also unfocused. Give us the love affair and the noble bank robber, if that's the story you want to tell.
The Boy liked it, I should point out, so I may just be making excuses for why this film didn't ignite my toes like it is for Mann fans. He did express disappointment that it wasn't about the economic underpinnings of organized crime; I don't have the heart to tell him that they don't really make movies about the economic underpinnings of organized crime. (Though last year's Rock 'n' Rolla came pretty close!)
But, damn, there was an interesting story right there: How The Mob was in bed, then out of bed, with the bank robbers.
There's another scene with J. Edgar Hoover trying (and failing) to get money from Congress for the FBI, and being thwarted by a principled man who saw the danger in a national police force and the threat particularly posed by Hoover. Interesting.
There's Dillinger himself: Rough upbringing, stupid life choice early on, forged into a criminal by the system, but still drawn to this low class girl with integrity, and fiercely protective of her. But why? What really happened? Where did he get his principles from? Interesting.
And, wow, what about a society (America during the Great Depression) that venerates bank robbers? That has so little faith in the system that it roots for criminals, but at the same time elects the same man President over and over again. (The former is a big part of the story, the latter not so much. )
Anyway, I just kept thinking of all these interesting things that would never be developed.
Really fine acting, of course. Though I have trouble with these period pieces, 'cause they all kind of dress alike and have similar hair cuts, but I did manage to distinguish, generally. The lighting doesn't help, however: A lot of the interior shots look "naturally" lit, i.e., details of faces hard to make out. (Fincher does that, too, but you always know who you're looking at even if you can't make out their face.)
The use of the shaky-cam--well, it wasn't gratuitous. It indicated a certain kind of shift in the action. But it distracted me. As did Mann's trademark use of music. The score was good, but it irritated me the way it was worked into the action. The songs were hit-and-miss.
So, there you have it. If you like Mann's work, you'll probably love this. If you like Depp, you won't hate it.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Happy Belated Birthday, Carroll Baker
I'm over a month late on this, but Carroll Baker turned 78 last month, and I wanted to note this momentous occasion. Baker was a sex symbol back in the '50s, making an Oscar-nominated splash as the eponymous Baby Doll, and having a respectable career into the mid-'60s. Then she went off to Europe and did a bunch of Giallo films before returning to America in the '80s and '90s to do a whole bunch more parts.
A working actress, in other words. Our favorite kind here at the 'strom.
Astonishingly, though despite vamping her way through the height of the pointy-breast era, I couldn't find a single picture of her in a torpedo bra. In fact in a world of Monroe rip-offs, Baker was a modest, marvelous B-Cup.
Well, what do you think?
Not bad, eh? Elisha Cuthbert bears a superficial resemblance, but we'll see how Cuthbert's doing in 2060. Er, well, those of us still alive, anyway.
A working actress, in other words. Our favorite kind here at the 'strom.
Astonishingly, though despite vamping her way through the height of the pointy-breast era, I couldn't find a single picture of her in a torpedo bra. In fact in a world of Monroe rip-offs, Baker was a modest, marvelous B-Cup.
Well, what do you think?
Not bad, eh? Elisha Cuthbert bears a superficial resemblance, but we'll see how Cuthbert's doing in 2060. Er, well, those of us still alive, anyway.
Tetro Fish
One of my favorite movies is Apocalypse Now. I love it, right down to its murky ending. So much so that I've never been able to bring myself to watch Apocalypse Now Redux, the mega-expanded hour-longer version for fear it will make me reject the whole project.
My old martial arts instructor, with whom I used to have hours long bull sessions after class, rejected it as a "film student project". And the thing is, I can't really argue with that perception of it. It's a bold movie, and if it fails in your eyes, "film student project" is a fair description.
Last Sunday, I dragged The Boy out to see Francis Ford Coppola's latest film, Tetro, and if you had that idea that Coppola inclined toward that sort of "film student project", this is not going to be the movie to disabuse you of that notion.
There are two things I can say for sure about this movie:
1. It is positively gorgeous, a sheer masterwork of cinematography, light and shadows, blocking, and composition with nary a throwaway shot.
2. At about two hours, it is overlong by about 20 minutes.
The story is simple: Young Bennie (played by Alden Ehrenreich in a role Leo DiCaprio would've done ten years ago) goes to Buenos Aires to track down his older brother, Tetro, who fled the family many years earlier with a promise to come back for him, but who never did.
Tetro has become a famous writer who doesn't ever write or publish anything, but seems to be very well liked and respected in his own modest way in this little corner of the city known as La Boca. He has a faithful girlfriend-not-quite-wife, and in his not-quite-functional way, he's living a good life.
The imbalancing effect of Bennie is two-fold: First he knows nothing about his own history, so he digs through Tetro's autobiographical play; second, Tetro's friends know nothing about Tetro's past, so Bennie reveals truths to them Tetro wanted to keep hidden.
This all unfolds in glorious black-and-white, except for the flashbacks, which are in color (and a 4:3 format instead of 16:9?), and we slowly get a picture of the dysfunctional family the two are from. A little too slowly, really, since I figured it out at the start of Act III.
So, besides the length, this movie is both very meta- and very "inside baseball". First of all, it's littered with shots that, if they aren't famous from other movies, feel like they ought to be. Coppola can (and does) do that. It always feels more like he's painting from the same palette as the masters versus ripping them off. But unlike, say, Bram Stoker's Dracula, where it was almost necessary to know all the films he was riffing off of, this stuff just works.
But this is about the struggles of a very creatively talented family. Their dysfunction manifests in the expression of their art: The play Tetro can't finish; the life Bennie can't begin; and the patriarch who is not satisfied with his own greatness unless he can grind everyone else down. It's not necessarily something everyone can relate to.
Even more problematic is that Tetro and Bennie bonded through Tetro exposing the younger boy to arty films, and segments of the third act play out as dance numbers that hearken back to one of those films. I'm talking ballet-esque bits with real dancers (not the actors). One was interesting; three was probably excessive.
One thing that Coppola has over most of the "film student" types is an inherent upbeat nature. His movies, no matter how dark the subject matter, tend to be an affirmation of life. And so, while this movie looks very noir, it doesn't wallow in darkness.
That's probably why I like it. I really wouldn't recommend it to just anyone. And we picked a bad time to go see it, too: The show started after 10PM, and we were both wiped out. The Boy couldn't decide if he was having trouble getting into it, or if it was just bad. (Keep in mind that he couldn't sit through Vertigo the night before with the same issue. He had a restless weekend for various reasons.)
Other things to appreciate in this movie include the acting, with young Ehrenreich doing fine work, Vincent Gallo doing what he does, Maribel Verdu just perfect as the devoted not-wife, Klaus Maria Brandauer as the patriarch, and so on. The music is perfect.
But even so, I know a lot of people would consider it boring, pretentious, overly arty, and so on. I was won over by its basic good nature, and skill in execution that you just don't see any more. You might not be.
My old martial arts instructor, with whom I used to have hours long bull sessions after class, rejected it as a "film student project". And the thing is, I can't really argue with that perception of it. It's a bold movie, and if it fails in your eyes, "film student project" is a fair description.
Last Sunday, I dragged The Boy out to see Francis Ford Coppola's latest film, Tetro, and if you had that idea that Coppola inclined toward that sort of "film student project", this is not going to be the movie to disabuse you of that notion.
There are two things I can say for sure about this movie:
1. It is positively gorgeous, a sheer masterwork of cinematography, light and shadows, blocking, and composition with nary a throwaway shot.
2. At about two hours, it is overlong by about 20 minutes.
The story is simple: Young Bennie (played by Alden Ehrenreich in a role Leo DiCaprio would've done ten years ago) goes to Buenos Aires to track down his older brother, Tetro, who fled the family many years earlier with a promise to come back for him, but who never did.
Tetro has become a famous writer who doesn't ever write or publish anything, but seems to be very well liked and respected in his own modest way in this little corner of the city known as La Boca. He has a faithful girlfriend-not-quite-wife, and in his not-quite-functional way, he's living a good life.
The imbalancing effect of Bennie is two-fold: First he knows nothing about his own history, so he digs through Tetro's autobiographical play; second, Tetro's friends know nothing about Tetro's past, so Bennie reveals truths to them Tetro wanted to keep hidden.
This all unfolds in glorious black-and-white, except for the flashbacks, which are in color (and a 4:3 format instead of 16:9?), and we slowly get a picture of the dysfunctional family the two are from. A little too slowly, really, since I figured it out at the start of Act III.
So, besides the length, this movie is both very meta- and very "inside baseball". First of all, it's littered with shots that, if they aren't famous from other movies, feel like they ought to be. Coppola can (and does) do that. It always feels more like he's painting from the same palette as the masters versus ripping them off. But unlike, say, Bram Stoker's Dracula, where it was almost necessary to know all the films he was riffing off of, this stuff just works.
But this is about the struggles of a very creatively talented family. Their dysfunction manifests in the expression of their art: The play Tetro can't finish; the life Bennie can't begin; and the patriarch who is not satisfied with his own greatness unless he can grind everyone else down. It's not necessarily something everyone can relate to.
Even more problematic is that Tetro and Bennie bonded through Tetro exposing the younger boy to arty films, and segments of the third act play out as dance numbers that hearken back to one of those films. I'm talking ballet-esque bits with real dancers (not the actors). One was interesting; three was probably excessive.
One thing that Coppola has over most of the "film student" types is an inherent upbeat nature. His movies, no matter how dark the subject matter, tend to be an affirmation of life. And so, while this movie looks very noir, it doesn't wallow in darkness.
That's probably why I like it. I really wouldn't recommend it to just anyone. And we picked a bad time to go see it, too: The show started after 10PM, and we were both wiped out. The Boy couldn't decide if he was having trouble getting into it, or if it was just bad. (Keep in mind that he couldn't sit through Vertigo the night before with the same issue. He had a restless weekend for various reasons.)
Other things to appreciate in this movie include the acting, with young Ehrenreich doing fine work, Vincent Gallo doing what he does, Maribel Verdu just perfect as the devoted not-wife, Klaus Maria Brandauer as the patriarch, and so on. The music is perfect.
But even so, I know a lot of people would consider it boring, pretentious, overly arty, and so on. I was won over by its basic good nature, and skill in execution that you just don't see any more. You might not be.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Another In A Series Of Immodest Proposals Entitled "A Modest Proposal" For Satirical Value
California passed a vindictive little bill designed to limit elected representatives' salaries. I'd say it was fiscally prudent, but it really won't make a difference in the long run. Still, I suppose I should give us credit, since for my entire voting history we've done nothing but vote for bond after bond to pay for program after program.
I think the bill requires that the budget be in place or something--we have a hard time actually getting budgets out, because we have so many massively powerful special interest groups to feed: teachers, other government employees, illegal immigrants, etc. (And I have no idea how illegal immigrants get to be a powerful special interest group but, here we are.)
A better idea, however, would be for the politicians to only be able to collect their salaries from what was leftover in the budget. Run a deficit? No money that year. Hell, we should have them give money back at that point. Sell your homes and cars, people. Send your kids to public school. You're on a budget this year.
They'd find a way to screw it up, of course.
They always do.
I think the bill requires that the budget be in place or something--we have a hard time actually getting budgets out, because we have so many massively powerful special interest groups to feed: teachers, other government employees, illegal immigrants, etc. (And I have no idea how illegal immigrants get to be a powerful special interest group but, here we are.)
A better idea, however, would be for the politicians to only be able to collect their salaries from what was leftover in the budget. Run a deficit? No money that year. Hell, we should have them give money back at that point. Sell your homes and cars, people. Send your kids to public school. You're on a budget this year.
They'd find a way to screw it up, of course.
They always do.
Weird Science
We were back at the dietitian's last Friday after a couple of weeks away, and both I and The Boy were dehydrated. Not a huge surprise, really: We'd been walking around the college, in the heat, I'd been working out a bit more, etc.
As a coda to this post about my weird dream, the dietitian was giving us signs of dehydration to watch for, so that we would know when to drink extra water. First one she mentions? Weird dreams. General sleep disturbances (I hadn't been sleeping well, or at least not long enough.)
So far, though, everything that she said would happen has happened. We had some blood sugar crashes early on (as The Boy's body released the artificial insulin it stored up) and then, in line with his graph being in the right place, he's started to have sugar in his urine.
Generally, you don't want sugar in your urine, but in this case it's supposed to be indicative of the healing process. Intriguingly, The Boy's sugars are very well in control, if a little wild. (They'll get suddenly high, then drop down just as suddenly, though never into a dangerous zone.) He's also on half the per-meal insulin he was a few months ago.
The theory is that artificial insulin is like a cast for the pancreas, so once the body starts healing, you need to take the cast off, letting your sugars get a bit high so that the pancreas will be stimulated to start producing.
I'm sure this could cause a panic attack in a lot of medical professionals. I'm sure it's dangerous. But you know what? So is diabetes-for-the-rest-of-your-life. They kind of feed you a cock-and-bull story about how you can be in the NBA and live a normal life, but the long term consequences for a diabetic, even one with well-controlled blood sugar, are really pretty horrible.
I love mainstream medicine, don't get me wrong, but really only for emergencies. Bad infections, broken bones, heart attacks, and so on. But if I have high blood pressure, I don't want to take a pill forever. I want my blood pressure back to normal. Same with high cholesterol.
But even if you're an all-mainstream-medicine-all-the-time-guy, the FDA sits on drugs that might help people in the name of protecting them, essentially protecting them to death. "Excuse me, Mr. Government, sir, but I'd like to try that cancer medicine, even if it might kill me. Because I'm going to die anyway."
I think Man has an inalienable right to his snake oil, as I've said here many times. I'm sure, in my case, that it's part of the pursuit of happiness. And in everyone's case, it's a matter of sovereignty over his body.
If the government would leave my body and my property alone, I'd be happy to have the social liberals and conservative battle out whatever they wanted.
As a coda to this post about my weird dream, the dietitian was giving us signs of dehydration to watch for, so that we would know when to drink extra water. First one she mentions? Weird dreams. General sleep disturbances (I hadn't been sleeping well, or at least not long enough.)
So far, though, everything that she said would happen has happened. We had some blood sugar crashes early on (as The Boy's body released the artificial insulin it stored up) and then, in line with his graph being in the right place, he's started to have sugar in his urine.
Generally, you don't want sugar in your urine, but in this case it's supposed to be indicative of the healing process. Intriguingly, The Boy's sugars are very well in control, if a little wild. (They'll get suddenly high, then drop down just as suddenly, though never into a dangerous zone.) He's also on half the per-meal insulin he was a few months ago.
The theory is that artificial insulin is like a cast for the pancreas, so once the body starts healing, you need to take the cast off, letting your sugars get a bit high so that the pancreas will be stimulated to start producing.
I'm sure this could cause a panic attack in a lot of medical professionals. I'm sure it's dangerous. But you know what? So is diabetes-for-the-rest-of-your-life. They kind of feed you a cock-and-bull story about how you can be in the NBA and live a normal life, but the long term consequences for a diabetic, even one with well-controlled blood sugar, are really pretty horrible.
I love mainstream medicine, don't get me wrong, but really only for emergencies. Bad infections, broken bones, heart attacks, and so on. But if I have high blood pressure, I don't want to take a pill forever. I want my blood pressure back to normal. Same with high cholesterol.
But even if you're an all-mainstream-medicine-all-the-time-guy, the FDA sits on drugs that might help people in the name of protecting them, essentially protecting them to death. "Excuse me, Mr. Government, sir, but I'd like to try that cancer medicine, even if it might kill me. Because I'm going to die anyway."
I think Man has an inalienable right to his snake oil, as I've said here many times. I'm sure, in my case, that it's part of the pursuit of happiness. And in everyone's case, it's a matter of sovereignty over his body.
If the government would leave my body and my property alone, I'd be happy to have the social liberals and conservative battle out whatever they wanted.
Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream
I don't generally dream. (See footnotes.) Last week, though, I had a strange dream where I went to buy a package of Hostess cupcakes from a vending machine in one of those big banks of machines. After having some difficulty putting in my money, I realized there was already credit on the machine, so I got myself some free ones.
Then I noticed that all the machines were just giving out their wares and I methodically started emptying the machines out, carrying so much junk food that I was dropping it.
And, as is always the case with my transgressive dreams, I felt guilty.
This, perhaps surprisingly, was effective. (At least with me. I've never been able to sell my kids on it.) And the upshot is that when I do dream, I'm always aware that I'm dreaming. I've never had any kind of extended nightmare since, because I'm aware that I'm in charge of what happens. This eliminates any sense of fear. (I did have a night terror once, though. That was amazing.)
The opposite side, though, is that I also always carry whatever moral baggage I have into my dreams: So I can't engage in any of the wanton behaviors that we're generally prohibited from engaging in in day-to-day life. So, not only could I not steal in my dream, I couldn't even bring myself to eat any of the junk food. Which is a shame, because I could've enjoyed dreaming of eating it, even if the reality would've been disappointing. I even had a pretty good mental justification worked out, since I've been robbed by so many vending machines over the years, I figured this was the cosmic karmic scales finally balancing.
But I shut the whole thing down when I found myself trying to figure out how much money I should leave to compensate the vendors.
Sad, really.
This is part of the reason I don't dream: no percentage in it for me.
Footnote: And for those of you pimping the idea that everyone dreams, I say prove it. I don't deny that I go into REM sleep, of course, but I am unconvinced that that necessitates having a dream. The whole "you dream, but you don't remember it" strikes me as unfalsifiable.
Then I noticed that all the machines were just giving out their wares and I methodically started emptying the machines out, carrying so much junk food that I was dropping it.
And, as is always the case with my transgressive dreams, I felt guilty.
- I don't like most junk food, including Hostess cupcakes.
- I can't eat stuff like that right now anyway.
- I was stealing.
- And I was stealing cheap things.
- I knew I was dreaming.
This, perhaps surprisingly, was effective. (At least with me. I've never been able to sell my kids on it.) And the upshot is that when I do dream, I'm always aware that I'm dreaming. I've never had any kind of extended nightmare since, because I'm aware that I'm in charge of what happens. This eliminates any sense of fear. (I did have a night terror once, though. That was amazing.)
The opposite side, though, is that I also always carry whatever moral baggage I have into my dreams: So I can't engage in any of the wanton behaviors that we're generally prohibited from engaging in in day-to-day life. So, not only could I not steal in my dream, I couldn't even bring myself to eat any of the junk food. Which is a shame, because I could've enjoyed dreaming of eating it, even if the reality would've been disappointing. I even had a pretty good mental justification worked out, since I've been robbed by so many vending machines over the years, I figured this was the cosmic karmic scales finally balancing.
But I shut the whole thing down when I found myself trying to figure out how much money I should leave to compensate the vendors.
Sad, really.
This is part of the reason I don't dream: no percentage in it for me.
Footnote: And for those of you pimping the idea that everyone dreams, I say prove it. I don't deny that I go into REM sleep, of course, but I am unconvinced that that necessitates having a dream. The whole "you dream, but you don't remember it" strikes me as unfalsifiable.
Free To Be?
Darleen Click at Protein Wisdom links to a story on a couple raising a child as an "it". I had some relatives--conservative Christians, no less--who were enamored of the "Free to Be...You and Me" thing back in the '70s. I was pretty young when I first heard, and I found it sort of creepy for some reason.
Which isn't to say that I didn't believe that gender stereotypes might not have been instituted or unduly enforced by social norms. Or don't, even. Obviously society is an influence. And as I've said, a sane society would encourage norms while tolerating outliers.
I mean, logically, one can loosen certain social restrictions when the mere basics of survival are not at risk, right? Maybe not, but the most easily recalled situations always seem to involve chucking morals out the window. And society follows.
But the '70s did a number on kids. A lot of girls grew up believing that the traditional female role--mother, wife, caretaker--was an unworthy pursuit. In other words, the "liberation" of women worked out to recasting them into yet another rigid mold which didn't even have any of the biological imperatives as an advantage.
This can be seen in lots of other areas as well, of course. Ending racism didn't actually mean ending racism, it meant changing who it was okay to be racist against. Sexual liberation didn't mean freedom to not be promiscuous. Indeed, few things (if any) sold as "freedom" in recent years have actually amount to more freedom.
I was sitting around the table with my mother and stepfather and sister this weekend, and all of us had, at some point or another, believed to some degree or another in an undue influence of society on gender. But as we watched The Flower and my nieces play--they had set up a dress shop, cobbled together with two decades of toys from various grandchildren--expressions of both femininity and entrepreneurism were as natural as breathing.
And this is with two completely different styles of parenting. My nieces were actually raised in some kind of limited tech Quaker-type community until recently. I've always encouraged the more masculine aspects of my daughters because, well, I'm a guy and that's what I know, but also because I think it's good for them.
So far as I can tell, all these girls are as girly as they started out.
And I daresay, we, all of us, felt a little cheated by this unsupported bit of dogma (society is the sole arbiter of gender roles) masquerading as enlightenment, expressed and regurgitated in so many different ways over so many years.
But I think this next generation is going to be themselves, no matter how uncomfortable their transgressive insistence on being very definitely male or female makes the old folks.
Which isn't to say that I didn't believe that gender stereotypes might not have been instituted or unduly enforced by social norms. Or don't, even. Obviously society is an influence. And as I've said, a sane society would encourage norms while tolerating outliers.
I mean, logically, one can loosen certain social restrictions when the mere basics of survival are not at risk, right? Maybe not, but the most easily recalled situations always seem to involve chucking morals out the window. And society follows.
But the '70s did a number on kids. A lot of girls grew up believing that the traditional female role--mother, wife, caretaker--was an unworthy pursuit. In other words, the "liberation" of women worked out to recasting them into yet another rigid mold which didn't even have any of the biological imperatives as an advantage.
This can be seen in lots of other areas as well, of course. Ending racism didn't actually mean ending racism, it meant changing who it was okay to be racist against. Sexual liberation didn't mean freedom to not be promiscuous. Indeed, few things (if any) sold as "freedom" in recent years have actually amount to more freedom.
I was sitting around the table with my mother and stepfather and sister this weekend, and all of us had, at some point or another, believed to some degree or another in an undue influence of society on gender. But as we watched The Flower and my nieces play--they had set up a dress shop, cobbled together with two decades of toys from various grandchildren--expressions of both femininity and entrepreneurism were as natural as breathing.
And this is with two completely different styles of parenting. My nieces were actually raised in some kind of limited tech Quaker-type community until recently. I've always encouraged the more masculine aspects of my daughters because, well, I'm a guy and that's what I know, but also because I think it's good for them.
So far as I can tell, all these girls are as girly as they started out.
And I daresay, we, all of us, felt a little cheated by this unsupported bit of dogma (society is the sole arbiter of gender roles) masquerading as enlightenment, expressed and regurgitated in so many different ways over so many years.
But I think this next generation is going to be themselves, no matter how uncomfortable their transgressive insistence on being very definitely male or female makes the old folks.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Manic Monday Apocalypso: Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe!
My parents were of the Saturday matinee generation, where a nickel (or was it a dime?) would get you into the movies at the crack of dawn and entertain you till dusk. (And, oh, where to begin with the analysis of cultural shifts in that slice of Americana?)
My mom was a big fan of Buster Crabbe, though she surely must have seen the reruns of the serials since she was too young (or not born) for the originals. And when I was young, we had a UHF channel that would show a variety of old, old, really old or unpopular stuff like the late '50s black and white "Felix the Cat" cartoons (compared to the bigger stations' WB and MGM 'toons), the "Life of Riley" (versus "I Love Lucy"), silent movies (I watched Nosferatu and Metropolis this way) and serials like "Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe".
I loved this show. Even as part of the Star Wars generation--or perhaps especially because--I loved the rockets on strings, with sparklers in the back, the cheesy composed shots with giant geckos sorta-kinda chasing tiny humans, the guys with the vampire fangs or gorilla suits.
I have this box set
of the serial, though if you dig around at Archive.org, I'm sure you can find it. (And feel free to notice that the #1 staff pick is an anti-Bush film by MoveOn.Org. There's no escaping this crap, is there.) I should say that I'm referring here to the original Flash Gordon serial, not really "Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe".
In the original serial, the planet Mongo is flying through the universe and headed on a collision course with the earth, which it will apparently destroy at no significant harm to itself. Burning meteors are dropping from the sky (at alarmingly slow speeds) and this causes the plane that champion polo player and Yale man (really!) Flash is on with Dale Arden to, uh, be in danger somehow.
Fortunately, they all have parachutes except Flash who hangs on to Dale on the way down. (Pleasure to meet you, ma'am!)
They happen to land on the lawn of crazed scientist Zarkov who has built a spaceship that he's going to use to land on the renegade planet and try to talk some sense into the driver.
At the helm of said planet is Fu Manchu's twin brother, Ming the Merciless, who very practically decides to put Zarkov to work in his labs (and in a space-onesie!), give Dale the "fate worse than death" and kill Flash. (Can't use you, man! Got enough dumb thugs in security as it is.) The princess, Aura, has other ideas and rescues the hunk of man from various fates worse than--no, that actually are death.
From there on, Flash meets the other colorful members of Ming's empire. And, I don't want to give anything away, but he does get out of a lot of tight spots.
I think what entertains me the most about the serial is probably the Art Deco influence. Just like the original "Star Trek", where everything is all hippied out in post-modern (?) style, and the '80s series features oodles of big hair and, well, very '80s-looking design. I don't know if it's just the lapsed time between Art Deco and now, or if it's that Art Deco is just that much cooler than all the intervening styles.
I mean, seriously, the '40s, '50s and '60s styles have their moments, but there's a lot of ugly in them, at least to my eyes. And my opnion hasn't changed much over the decades. '70s style, of course, was both uniquely ugly at the time and still ugly today. I am painting with broad strokes, of course, as there are always good things around, but to my eye the Art Deco style of the serial--the curved ships, the rays coming off Ming's throne, etc.--give it a flair that outshines the cheapness of the sets. (And is completely missing from the '50s version, to its detriment.)
I actually liked the 1980 remake, which was surprisingly faithful to the original. It's campy, of course, but intermittently so. Sometimes it is genuine in its earnestness. It also captures the strangely small feeling of space in the series, and eschews realism for a more colorful, interesting "space".
Of course, these days, most people remember Freddy Mercury's song more than anything, and probably with good reason. Mercury could sell it.
Well, until next time, mutants, stay radiated!
My mom was a big fan of Buster Crabbe, though she surely must have seen the reruns of the serials since she was too young (or not born) for the originals. And when I was young, we had a UHF channel that would show a variety of old, old, really old or unpopular stuff like the late '50s black and white "Felix the Cat" cartoons (compared to the bigger stations' WB and MGM 'toons), the "Life of Riley" (versus "I Love Lucy"), silent movies (I watched Nosferatu and Metropolis this way) and serials like "Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe".
I loved this show. Even as part of the Star Wars generation--or perhaps especially because--I loved the rockets on strings, with sparklers in the back, the cheesy composed shots with giant geckos sorta-kinda chasing tiny humans, the guys with the vampire fangs or gorilla suits.
I have this box set
of the serial, though if you dig around at Archive.org, I'm sure you can find it. (And feel free to notice that the #1 staff pick is an anti-Bush film by MoveOn.Org. There's no escaping this crap, is there.) I should say that I'm referring here to the original Flash Gordon serial, not really "Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe".In the original serial, the planet Mongo is flying through the universe and headed on a collision course with the earth, which it will apparently destroy at no significant harm to itself. Burning meteors are dropping from the sky (at alarmingly slow speeds) and this causes the plane that champion polo player and Yale man (really!) Flash is on with Dale Arden to, uh, be in danger somehow.
Fortunately, they all have parachutes except Flash who hangs on to Dale on the way down. (Pleasure to meet you, ma'am!)
They happen to land on the lawn of crazed scientist Zarkov who has built a spaceship that he's going to use to land on the renegade planet and try to talk some sense into the driver.
At the helm of said planet is Fu Manchu's twin brother, Ming the Merciless, who very practically decides to put Zarkov to work in his labs (and in a space-onesie!), give Dale the "fate worse than death" and kill Flash. (Can't use you, man! Got enough dumb thugs in security as it is.) The princess, Aura, has other ideas and rescues the hunk of man from various fates worse than--no, that actually are death.
From there on, Flash meets the other colorful members of Ming's empire. And, I don't want to give anything away, but he does get out of a lot of tight spots.
I think what entertains me the most about the serial is probably the Art Deco influence. Just like the original "Star Trek", where everything is all hippied out in post-modern (?) style, and the '80s series features oodles of big hair and, well, very '80s-looking design. I don't know if it's just the lapsed time between Art Deco and now, or if it's that Art Deco is just that much cooler than all the intervening styles.
I mean, seriously, the '40s, '50s and '60s styles have their moments, but there's a lot of ugly in them, at least to my eyes. And my opnion hasn't changed much over the decades. '70s style, of course, was both uniquely ugly at the time and still ugly today. I am painting with broad strokes, of course, as there are always good things around, but to my eye the Art Deco style of the serial--the curved ships, the rays coming off Ming's throne, etc.--give it a flair that outshines the cheapness of the sets. (And is completely missing from the '50s version, to its detriment.)
I actually liked the 1980 remake, which was surprisingly faithful to the original. It's campy, of course, but intermittently so. Sometimes it is genuine in its earnestness. It also captures the strangely small feeling of space in the series, and eschews realism for a more colorful, interesting "space".
Of course, these days, most people remember Freddy Mercury's song more than anything, and probably with good reason. Mercury could sell it.
Well, until next time, mutants, stay radiated!
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Brunat
Last week at the movies, there was an ad for Michael Moore's latest thing. I used to be a fan of Moore's, actually. Roger and Me is a brilliant bit of propaganda as, I suppose, most of Moore's work is.
What turned me against Moore wasn't really politics. It was his show "TV Nation". On an episode of that show, he did a story about a hospital where uninsured people who had received services were allowed to pay off their debt by working for the hospital. The people involved were happy with the program, patients, doctors, administrators alike.
Moore ingratiated himself to these people to get his interviews, and then turned around and opened up a slave trade across the street. You see, paying a debt you've incurred is morally equivalent to slavery.
I didn't get the logic. But I'll never forget the looks on these people's faces as Moore hounded them for their thoughts about his little circus. Utter betrayal. Confusion. Hurt. He had no concept of his betrayal or empathy for those who had suffered it; people who had after all neither meant (nor committed) any evil--other than, of course, to possibly hold a different point-of-view from Moore. (That really wasn't clear. The hospital solution was just one possible way to handle the situation. That people were happy with it doesn't mean they might not have preferred a different route.)
This guy claims that Moore is a narcissist. And builds a good case. I don't know. I do know he treats people poorly in pursuit of getting what he wants.
As the preview rolled, I realized that this is why I avoid Sacha Baron Cohen. I saw his "Ali G" show for a couple of episodes, but then avoided the rest and his movies. And not because he lacked talent. But because I feel a similar sort of deception going on.
But then Candid Camera used to strike me as kind of creepy, too.
What turned me against Moore wasn't really politics. It was his show "TV Nation". On an episode of that show, he did a story about a hospital where uninsured people who had received services were allowed to pay off their debt by working for the hospital. The people involved were happy with the program, patients, doctors, administrators alike.
Moore ingratiated himself to these people to get his interviews, and then turned around and opened up a slave trade across the street. You see, paying a debt you've incurred is morally equivalent to slavery.
I didn't get the logic. But I'll never forget the looks on these people's faces as Moore hounded them for their thoughts about his little circus. Utter betrayal. Confusion. Hurt. He had no concept of his betrayal or empathy for those who had suffered it; people who had after all neither meant (nor committed) any evil--other than, of course, to possibly hold a different point-of-view from Moore. (That really wasn't clear. The hospital solution was just one possible way to handle the situation. That people were happy with it doesn't mean they might not have preferred a different route.)
This guy claims that Moore is a narcissist. And builds a good case. I don't know. I do know he treats people poorly in pursuit of getting what he wants.
As the preview rolled, I realized that this is why I avoid Sacha Baron Cohen. I saw his "Ali G" show for a couple of episodes, but then avoided the rest and his movies. And not because he lacked talent. But because I feel a similar sort of deception going on.
But then Candid Camera used to strike me as kind of creepy, too.
Link For All Out There In TV Land
Via James Urbaniak, the voice of Dr. Venture, on Twitter: TV Legends' Archive of American Television, with interviews of some greats (and not just of TV).
Scrolling down I see makeup artist Rick Baker, SFX wiz Dick Smith, iconic announcer Don Pardo, composer Alexander Courage, Stiller & Meara, writer Richard Matheson, producers James Brooks, James Burrows, Dick Wolf, and tons of TV stars like Barabara Eden, Don Knotts, Ron Howard, Angela Lansbury, etc. etc. etc.
A treasure trove!
Scrolling down I see makeup artist Rick Baker, SFX wiz Dick Smith, iconic announcer Don Pardo, composer Alexander Courage, Stiller & Meara, writer Richard Matheson, producers James Brooks, James Burrows, Dick Wolf, and tons of TV stars like Barabara Eden, Don Knotts, Ron Howard, Angela Lansbury, etc. etc. etc.
A treasure trove!
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Conversations From The Living Room, Part 17: Come To Think Of It, They Are Pretty Close
"Prosecution? What's prosecution?"
"That's when the district attorney--the head lawyer for the government--takes you to court and tries to prove that you're guilty of something."
"..."
"You've seen enough of these TV shows to know what prosecution is!"
"I thought it was when you got your head cut off."
"..."
"..."
"No, that's decapitation."
"Oh."
"That's when the district attorney--the head lawyer for the government--takes you to court and tries to prove that you're guilty of something."
"..."
"You've seen enough of these TV shows to know what prosecution is!"
"I thought it was when you got your head cut off."
"..."
"..."
"No, that's decapitation."
"Oh."
Oh, Noes! They're reading our mailz!
Do you remember the Gmail kerfuffle back when Google started that service? Gmail pays for itself (ostensibly) through targeted ads. The ads are targeted, of course, by what's in your in-box.
Oh, no! Google's gonna read your mail!
This did not alarm me. First, my e-mail is pretty boring most of the time. I don't even want to read it. (I also don't worry about the government spying on my e-mail, except at the conceptual level.) Second, of course, was that no human was going to be going through everyone's mail. A computer was going to "read" it and take some wild guess about what you'd be interested in buying.
Lastly, of course, I knew the algorithm wasn't going to be very good. Getting a computer to "understand" simple, basic English is marginally possible. Getting a computer to understand complex English, with allusions and context and humor? Probably not in our lifetimes. (Sorry, singularity guys.)
But I didn't know how bad--how sloppy, even--the algorithm was going to be. How bad is it? Well, when you go to your spam folder?
You get recipes for Spam™. Spam™ Imperial Tortilla Sandwiches, Spam™ Swiss Pie, Spam™ Quiche, Spam™ Breakfast Burritos (serve with salsa!) and on and on. I might think it was a clever ad campaign by Hormel or an ironic statement by Google--but it's always a Spam™ recipe, every single time I click on it.
So, not only is the advertising not targeted based on content, Google would seem to be serving ads based on the text they put on the page--not even distinguishing between your mail (or spam) and their own designation of items as spam.
As I said, the singularity may be less than imminent.
Oh, no! Google's gonna read your mail!
This did not alarm me. First, my e-mail is pretty boring most of the time. I don't even want to read it. (I also don't worry about the government spying on my e-mail, except at the conceptual level.) Second, of course, was that no human was going to be going through everyone's mail. A computer was going to "read" it and take some wild guess about what you'd be interested in buying.
Lastly, of course, I knew the algorithm wasn't going to be very good. Getting a computer to "understand" simple, basic English is marginally possible. Getting a computer to understand complex English, with allusions and context and humor? Probably not in our lifetimes. (Sorry, singularity guys.)
But I didn't know how bad--how sloppy, even--the algorithm was going to be. How bad is it? Well, when you go to your spam folder?
You get recipes for Spam™. Spam™ Imperial Tortilla Sandwiches, Spam™ Swiss Pie, Spam™ Quiche, Spam™ Breakfast Burritos (serve with salsa!) and on and on. I might think it was a clever ad campaign by Hormel or an ironic statement by Google--but it's always a Spam™ recipe, every single time I click on it.
So, not only is the advertising not targeted based on content, Google would seem to be serving ads based on the text they put on the page--not even distinguishing between your mail (or spam) and their own designation of items as spam.
As I said, the singularity may be less than imminent.
Conversations From The Living Room, Part 16: Don't Wanna Forget
[The Barbarienne is chasing the dog around with a pencil.]
"Are you going to draw on the dog?"
"I'm just taking some notes!"
"Are you going to draw on the dog?"
"I'm just taking some notes!"
Thinner
Darcy has a post up featuring Daniela Hantuchova, a Slovakian tennis player that she alludes to as having gotten "too thin", perhaps due to pressure to appear glamorous. This struck me as interesting because an athlete's first responsibility is to be functional in her sport.
You can't put the shot and be worried about fitting into a size 0.
In fact, those two goals (emulating a super-model and excelling in your sport) might be contrary. The post stirred a memories of a couple of movies (as most things do) which illustrate--something or other.
First of all: Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Captain Kirk is climbing up El Capitan. The close shots, of course, are 57-year-old William Shatner. The reverse angles--the ass-up shots, if you will--are of some guy with a much, much skinnier ass. These shots--presumably masterminded by director Shatner--set the tone of meta-silliness that pervades that movie.
Second of all: Her Alibi. Back when it still seemed like a good idea to make TV icon Tom Selleck into a movie star. Real-life Czech supermodel Paulina Porizkova plays a Romanian acrobat, though completely lacking the body of an acrobat--or indeed, a body that was probably much good for anything, except looking at. Well, and snagging a rockstar husband. (All credit to her, though, since they're still married 20 years later.)
But whatever a body that thin can do, it can't do one thing her character could (and needed) to do: Climb a rope. And so we got the reverse of the Captain Kirk situation above. From one angle, skinny Paulina. From the other, a heftier stuntwoman.
I was struck by the fact that--much like Shatner--they couldn't find anyone even close to the body-type of the actor chosen to play the part.
A propos of nothing, I guess. Just flotsam bubbling up in the ol' Bit's mind.
You can't put the shot and be worried about fitting into a size 0.
In fact, those two goals (emulating a super-model and excelling in your sport) might be contrary. The post stirred a memories of a couple of movies (as most things do) which illustrate--something or other.
First of all: Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Captain Kirk is climbing up El Capitan. The close shots, of course, are 57-year-old William Shatner. The reverse angles--the ass-up shots, if you will--are of some guy with a much, much skinnier ass. These shots--presumably masterminded by director Shatner--set the tone of meta-silliness that pervades that movie.
Second of all: Her Alibi. Back when it still seemed like a good idea to make TV icon Tom Selleck into a movie star. Real-life Czech supermodel Paulina Porizkova plays a Romanian acrobat, though completely lacking the body of an acrobat--or indeed, a body that was probably much good for anything, except looking at. Well, and snagging a rockstar husband. (All credit to her, though, since they're still married 20 years later.)
But whatever a body that thin can do, it can't do one thing her character could (and needed) to do: Climb a rope. And so we got the reverse of the Captain Kirk situation above. From one angle, skinny Paulina. From the other, a heftier stuntwoman.
I was struck by the fact that--much like Shatner--they couldn't find anyone even close to the body-type of the actor chosen to play the part.
A propos of nothing, I guess. Just flotsam bubbling up in the ol' Bit's mind.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Ed and Farrah and Michael and...Jeff?
Lots of people died this week, as they do every week. But this week, the deaths were especially significant to a lot of people, occurring as they did to people fighting for their freedom, and to people an inordinate number of us are familiar with at some level.
For the Iranians, I cheer and hope and pray. I've never met a Persian (which they always style themselves as here in the US) who wasn't good-looking, good-natured and quick-witted. You wonder how their country could get so far gone.
Then there was a little buzz because Ed McMahon died. I was always surprised he didn't die before Johnny Carson. He always seemed so much older to me. I loved him as the sidekick icon but always thought the Publishers Clearing House thing was sleazy. I hope he didn't suffer much.
Then there was Farrah. I never had the poster, never would've had a pinup in my bedroom. (Even now, my breasts posts here are way gaucher than I'd ever be in real life.) But my proud and enormous mind was definitely mesmerized by "Charlie's Angels". I thought Jaclyn Smith was the prettiest at first (and a few years later, Kate Jackson), but Farrah had the smile--and I've always been a sucker for a big smile.
I saw the mediocre Sunburn (with Charles Grodin) and Saturn 3 (with Kirk Douglas), and then I didn't see her much any more. I lostr track roundabout the time of The Burning Bed--which I think pioneered the modern tradition of sex symbols frumping it up to be taken seriously as actresses--a role that she earned praised for but which didn't seem to lead to anything else.
Then it all seemed to be about the dysfunctional private life. Not a lot to smile about there.
Shortly thereafter, of course, Michael Jackson caused entire TV schedules to be upended with his heart attack. My dad said back around '83, when he hit it mega-big, that he thought Jackson would be dead by 40. Only off by a decade, there, pop.
I never bought an album and had completely lost track of Jackson by the time of Thriller. (Too busy playing my own music, I guess.) Catchy stuff, for sure, but not my kind of stuff. Not exactly the Paul Simon level of poetry or the Randy Newman level of irony or the John Lennon level of imagery. But the kids seemed to like it and you could dance to it....
Then Bad seemed to be the begining of the end. (I guess, again, not following closely.) Then all the child molestation accusations.
I make no claims to knowing the truth about that; it's very easy for me to imagine that he was both remarkably inappropriate and yet not sexual. Find someone without an ulterior motive, you know?
Lastly there was Jeff Goldblum, who didn't die but instead had the honor of being the fake death on the day when Farrah and Michael died. (Have you ever noticed that? Celebrity deaths are often followed by a fake celebrity death. I thought that immediately when I heard the rumor.)
Weird as it might sound, I'd probably take his death the hardest. I've always felt a kind of kinship with Goldblum whether he was turning into a fly, running away from dinosaurs or chasing lectroids across the eighth dimension.
So, glad you're still with us Jeff. I'm afraid Walter is probably next in the queue.
For the Iranians, I cheer and hope and pray. I've never met a Persian (which they always style themselves as here in the US) who wasn't good-looking, good-natured and quick-witted. You wonder how their country could get so far gone.
Then there was a little buzz because Ed McMahon died. I was always surprised he didn't die before Johnny Carson. He always seemed so much older to me. I loved him as the sidekick icon but always thought the Publishers Clearing House thing was sleazy. I hope he didn't suffer much.
Then there was Farrah. I never had the poster, never would've had a pinup in my bedroom. (Even now, my breasts posts here are way gaucher than I'd ever be in real life.) But my proud and enormous mind was definitely mesmerized by "Charlie's Angels". I thought Jaclyn Smith was the prettiest at first (and a few years later, Kate Jackson), but Farrah had the smile--and I've always been a sucker for a big smile.
I saw the mediocre Sunburn (with Charles Grodin) and Saturn 3 (with Kirk Douglas), and then I didn't see her much any more. I lostr track roundabout the time of The Burning Bed--which I think pioneered the modern tradition of sex symbols frumping it up to be taken seriously as actresses--a role that she earned praised for but which didn't seem to lead to anything else.
Then it all seemed to be about the dysfunctional private life. Not a lot to smile about there.
Shortly thereafter, of course, Michael Jackson caused entire TV schedules to be upended with his heart attack. My dad said back around '83, when he hit it mega-big, that he thought Jackson would be dead by 40. Only off by a decade, there, pop.
I never bought an album and had completely lost track of Jackson by the time of Thriller. (Too busy playing my own music, I guess.) Catchy stuff, for sure, but not my kind of stuff. Not exactly the Paul Simon level of poetry or the Randy Newman level of irony or the John Lennon level of imagery. But the kids seemed to like it and you could dance to it....
Then Bad seemed to be the begining of the end. (I guess, again, not following closely.) Then all the child molestation accusations.
I make no claims to knowing the truth about that; it's very easy for me to imagine that he was both remarkably inappropriate and yet not sexual. Find someone without an ulterior motive, you know?
Lastly there was Jeff Goldblum, who didn't die but instead had the honor of being the fake death on the day when Farrah and Michael died. (Have you ever noticed that? Celebrity deaths are often followed by a fake celebrity death. I thought that immediately when I heard the rumor.)
Weird as it might sound, I'd probably take his death the hardest. I've always felt a kind of kinship with Goldblum whether he was turning into a fly, running away from dinosaurs or chasing lectroids across the eighth dimension.
So, glad you're still with us Jeff. I'm afraid Walter is probably next in the queue.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Freeblogging!
The inimitable Freeman Hunt has had a blog for quite some time, but I never linked to it because she didn't blog much. But since the new baby came around she's stepped it up a bit, so I added her to the roll. She has a couple of posts I wanted to call out, too.
Item the first: He Is Not Coming. This is a rather depressing and scathing indictment on modern society, not entirely undeserved. But I'm not sure I agree with the conclusion. How many people 235 years ago fit the mold that Freeman outlines? A small percentage, to be sure. We have a much smaller percentage today, to be sure, but we also have one-hundred times as many people (in this country). The percentage can afford to be smaller--with the only rub being that there has to be an appreciative audience.
I believe a segment of the audience is getting more receptive with each passing day.
Also, while The Boy and I are looking at learning Latin (on Victor Davis Hanson's advice), I would note that the Founders did not know the language of relativity, of computing, of information science and so on. The game has changed and education needs to reflect that. Today, the primary skill may be knowing how to sip from the firehose.
The past had its festering effete as well, even if today universal education and socialism has allowed them to spread their disease as a philosophy.
Finally, I'm not sure we need a "he". I think we need--and may have--a "we". That's where the "he"s and "she"s will come from. We don't need a revolution: We need a hundred revolutions. The rot came from the top down; the cure will come from the bottom up. Economics may work better supply-side; liberty must needs be demanded.
Item the second: Freem also linked to a blog called "Life is Not a Cereal" with an entry on what to do if your homeschooling kids get "school envy".
Homeschoolers are not immune to "grass is greener"-itis. This is almost entirely resolved by acquainting them with the realities of industrialized schooling? Yes, those kids get to have recess. But, yes, they must take it, whether they want it or not, it is always an exact amount of time, and hell, you never know when you're going to be stripsearched.
As the entry also points out a little bit of consumerism can take the edge off: Let the kids buy "back to school" supplies or lunchboxes, for example.
Finally, it's not unheard of for homeschoolers to let their kids take the senior year of high school. Certainly there's nothing wrong with that, though it's preferable that they have their college degrees first.
Anyway, check out Freem's blog. Oh, especially these pictures from her grandfather from 1952. She claims they're military but they look an awful lot like The Thing From Another World to me....
Item the first: He Is Not Coming. This is a rather depressing and scathing indictment on modern society, not entirely undeserved. But I'm not sure I agree with the conclusion. How many people 235 years ago fit the mold that Freeman outlines? A small percentage, to be sure. We have a much smaller percentage today, to be sure, but we also have one-hundred times as many people (in this country). The percentage can afford to be smaller--with the only rub being that there has to be an appreciative audience.
I believe a segment of the audience is getting more receptive with each passing day.
Also, while The Boy and I are looking at learning Latin (on Victor Davis Hanson's advice), I would note that the Founders did not know the language of relativity, of computing, of information science and so on. The game has changed and education needs to reflect that. Today, the primary skill may be knowing how to sip from the firehose.
The past had its festering effete as well, even if today universal education and socialism has allowed them to spread their disease as a philosophy.
Finally, I'm not sure we need a "he". I think we need--and may have--a "we". That's where the "he"s and "she"s will come from. We don't need a revolution: We need a hundred revolutions. The rot came from the top down; the cure will come from the bottom up. Economics may work better supply-side; liberty must needs be demanded.
Item the second: Freem also linked to a blog called "Life is Not a Cereal" with an entry on what to do if your homeschooling kids get "school envy".
Homeschoolers are not immune to "grass is greener"-itis. This is almost entirely resolved by acquainting them with the realities of industrialized schooling? Yes, those kids get to have recess. But, yes, they must take it, whether they want it or not, it is always an exact amount of time, and hell, you never know when you're going to be stripsearched.
As the entry also points out a little bit of consumerism can take the edge off: Let the kids buy "back to school" supplies or lunchboxes, for example.
Finally, it's not unheard of for homeschoolers to let their kids take the senior year of high school. Certainly there's nothing wrong with that, though it's preferable that they have their college degrees first.
Anyway, check out Freem's blog. Oh, especially these pictures from her grandfather from 1952. She claims they're military but they look an awful lot like The Thing From Another World to me....
Well, If You Won't Come...
...then you're uninvited!!
Seriously, I'm just keeping my head down on specific political events, but this cracks me up. It was kind of a weenie move to begin with and the rescinding looks particularly foolish and week--and sooooo junior high.
You know, maybe comedians aren't joking about it now, but the time is going to come when it's recognized that this is the funniest administration ever.
Seriously, I'm just keeping my head down on specific political events, but this cracks me up. It was kind of a weenie move to begin with and the rescinding looks particularly foolish and week--and sooooo junior high.
You know, maybe comedians aren't joking about it now, but the time is going to come when it's recognized that this is the funniest administration ever.
The Taking of Pellham 1, 2, Profit!
There's a 1995 movie directed by a guy by the name of Mike Sedan (who I want to blog about some time) called Lap Dancing that I think of a lot. As the title suggests, Lap Dancing involves strippers, and the movie is about half angst-ridden sleazefest, and about half stripping routines which are largely not related to the other half of the movie. And the thing that struck me when watching this movie (on "Joe Bob Brigg's Drive In Theater", I think) was, "Wow, Sedan must really think strippers are boring!"
You see, any real stripping routine--any stage routine--is designed to be seen from a relatively static viewpoint: That of the crowd. (I've never been in a strip club, but I've seen the pseudo-documentary Stripper, so I'm an expert, okay?) Instead, the camera was jumping all over the place. If there was anything exciting about the routine, it was completely lost in the camerawork.
That thought has recurred over the years: "Wow, this guy must really think what he's filming is boring."
I think it a lot during Tony Scott movies like The Taking of Pellham 1 2 3. Scott using so many frenetic camera tricks in one of his films, I wonder if he has no faith in his stories. The buzz on this movie has been pretty mixed, too.
It was Father's Day, though. What was going to take him to see? The Proposal?
On top of that, my dad held little fond memories of the original, but free popcorn is free popcorn.
And it was actually pretty darn good.
The premise is preposterous, of course: A group of ne'er-do-wells (led by John Travolta) capture a subway train, with the intention of ransoming off the passengers.
Kinda kooky, innit? A subway's not exactly like a plane. You can't take it anywhere. The exit strategy, as it were, is problematic, to say the least. But Scott is no stranger to dubious plots, and he handles this pretty well.
Managing the crisis is everyman Denzel Washington--who's maybe too good looking to be an Everyman but surely gives Tom Hanks a run of his money in that area--as the guy who "takes the call" and rises to the occasion.
For all his flashy camera work, Scott knows where the drama is--between Travolta and Washington, and lets them do their thing. And they do their thing very well indeed, reminding me of another movie where two top-notch actors played off each other in what was generally considered a flawed movie: The Negotiator.
But I can watch that one over and over again--the little nuances of Samuel L. Jackson as he interacts with Kevin Spacey being very compelling. I can't say for sure this is in that category but it did keep me entertained.
Of course, this is an action flick, which is kind of tough when the two principal characters are: 1) holed up in a subway car, and; 2) sitting at a desk at the transit authority's office. Scott remedies this by having a cross-city car chase which is over-the-top and gratuitous but, hey, keeps you awake, right?
Supporting actors include John Turturro and James Gandolfini, who are also always compelling.
The only real problem I had with it is I could see three or four logical things the bad guys could've done to make their lives easier. Just painfully obvious stuff. A little trickier was the fact that Travolta tends to be very likable, but he's a cold-blooded murderer. (This isn't a light caper movie.) He was believable, but that particular aspect didn't quite sit right with me.
But, overall, a good, fun movie. All three of us liked it, including The Boy, who isn't really inclined to like these sorts of things, and my dad, who was carrying around baggage from not liking the original.
So, not really sure what the bitching is about.
You see, any real stripping routine--any stage routine--is designed to be seen from a relatively static viewpoint: That of the crowd. (I've never been in a strip club, but I've seen the pseudo-documentary Stripper, so I'm an expert, okay?) Instead, the camera was jumping all over the place. If there was anything exciting about the routine, it was completely lost in the camerawork.
That thought has recurred over the years: "Wow, this guy must really think what he's filming is boring."
I think it a lot during Tony Scott movies like The Taking of Pellham 1 2 3. Scott using so many frenetic camera tricks in one of his films, I wonder if he has no faith in his stories. The buzz on this movie has been pretty mixed, too.
It was Father's Day, though. What was going to take him to see? The Proposal?
On top of that, my dad held little fond memories of the original, but free popcorn is free popcorn.
And it was actually pretty darn good.
The premise is preposterous, of course: A group of ne'er-do-wells (led by John Travolta) capture a subway train, with the intention of ransoming off the passengers.
Kinda kooky, innit? A subway's not exactly like a plane. You can't take it anywhere. The exit strategy, as it were, is problematic, to say the least. But Scott is no stranger to dubious plots, and he handles this pretty well.
Managing the crisis is everyman Denzel Washington--who's maybe too good looking to be an Everyman but surely gives Tom Hanks a run of his money in that area--as the guy who "takes the call" and rises to the occasion.
For all his flashy camera work, Scott knows where the drama is--between Travolta and Washington, and lets them do their thing. And they do their thing very well indeed, reminding me of another movie where two top-notch actors played off each other in what was generally considered a flawed movie: The Negotiator.
But I can watch that one over and over again--the little nuances of Samuel L. Jackson as he interacts with Kevin Spacey being very compelling. I can't say for sure this is in that category but it did keep me entertained.
Of course, this is an action flick, which is kind of tough when the two principal characters are: 1) holed up in a subway car, and; 2) sitting at a desk at the transit authority's office. Scott remedies this by having a cross-city car chase which is over-the-top and gratuitous but, hey, keeps you awake, right?
Supporting actors include John Turturro and James Gandolfini, who are also always compelling.
The only real problem I had with it is I could see three or four logical things the bad guys could've done to make their lives easier. Just painfully obvious stuff. A little trickier was the fact that Travolta tends to be very likable, but he's a cold-blooded murderer. (This isn't a light caper movie.) He was believable, but that particular aspect didn't quite sit right with me.
But, overall, a good, fun movie. All three of us liked it, including The Boy, who isn't really inclined to like these sorts of things, and my dad, who was carrying around baggage from not liking the original.
So, not really sure what the bitching is about.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
You Were Saying?
Quoth commenter Knox in the "Core Muscles" post:
Reconstructive taint surgery can't be far behind, can it?
Eventually there will be a "look" and then a "procedure" for every square inch of the body.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
The Five Dollar Baby
No, not a million dollar baby in a five-and-ten-cent store. A five dollar baby. The five dollar baby. Follow:
I mentioned here that The Boy and The Flower are both lawyers.
It's not hard to figure out: They both learned quickly that they couldn't get what they wanted through tantrums. An appeal to an authority called "The Parent Rules" dictated that, if a child had a tantrum, no matter how much a parent wanted to, there was just no way a child could get what he wanted.
This is an effective, if initially confusing, strategy. Because you say, "Oh no! Now I can't give you the toy because you had a tantrum! I'm so sorry!" And the child becomes confused because he was sure you were the one keeping the toy from him, and yet here you are expressing regret that you can't give him the toy.
But, you know, that's really the truth. You want to give your kids what they want. It's just good parenting that prevents you from doing it.
Anyway, this doesn't work with The Barbarienne. The slightest refusal--and there are many in a three-year-old's life--sends her into paroxysms of grief and/or anger. I haven't quite figured it out. She doesn't get what she wants from it. But there's obviously some "reason" she does it anyway.
But it wasn't always this way. Babies are funny things. There are things you can see on Day 1 that are there on Day 10,000. Essential characteristics. My sister started screaming the day she was born, and she's still screaming. I was quiet; I'm still quiet.
Some babies cry a lot, some sleep easily, some fuss, some like to be held more than others, and so on. The Barbarienne seldom cried, and slept like a log. Nothing bothered her.
One summer weekend, when she was six months old, we went up to some friends who lived across from Magic Mountain. We barbecued, swam in the pool, and watched the fireworks go up from the park. In five hours, the Barbarienne didn't cry, until the very end of the night when she was exhausted and needed to be changed. And as soon as she was changed, she went right to sleep.
My friends, who were debating whether or not to have children of their own, got into an argument. (Not a bad one; they're the sort of couple that has cute arguments all the time.)
The wife said, "You see, babies aren't that hard. They're not much trouble."
The husband replied, "This is perfect-baby. She never cries. Regular babies are difficult!"
And the wife responded, "Lots of babies are just like this!"
Finally, the husband said, "Five dollars! I'll give you five dollars if you can find another baby like this!"
Hence, the Barbarienne became The Five Dollar Baby.
She was definitely rare, in my experience. I'd like to think it was the culmination of nearly 20 years of experience with the whole gestation/delivery/infant management process that made it possible, but it could just have been luck.
Anyway, at eighteen months, she completely changed and became The Barbarienne. "So, she's going through terrible twos early," I thought. My kids do that, so no big deal.
Er. Yeah. It'll be two years of terrible twos pretty soon here. Why do I feel like this is going to be my life ten years from now?
I mentioned here that The Boy and The Flower are both lawyers.
It's not hard to figure out: They both learned quickly that they couldn't get what they wanted through tantrums. An appeal to an authority called "The Parent Rules" dictated that, if a child had a tantrum, no matter how much a parent wanted to, there was just no way a child could get what he wanted.
This is an effective, if initially confusing, strategy. Because you say, "Oh no! Now I can't give you the toy because you had a tantrum! I'm so sorry!" And the child becomes confused because he was sure you were the one keeping the toy from him, and yet here you are expressing regret that you can't give him the toy.
But, you know, that's really the truth. You want to give your kids what they want. It's just good parenting that prevents you from doing it.
Anyway, this doesn't work with The Barbarienne. The slightest refusal--and there are many in a three-year-old's life--sends her into paroxysms of grief and/or anger. I haven't quite figured it out. She doesn't get what she wants from it. But there's obviously some "reason" she does it anyway.
But it wasn't always this way. Babies are funny things. There are things you can see on Day 1 that are there on Day 10,000. Essential characteristics. My sister started screaming the day she was born, and she's still screaming. I was quiet; I'm still quiet.
Some babies cry a lot, some sleep easily, some fuss, some like to be held more than others, and so on. The Barbarienne seldom cried, and slept like a log. Nothing bothered her.
One summer weekend, when she was six months old, we went up to some friends who lived across from Magic Mountain. We barbecued, swam in the pool, and watched the fireworks go up from the park. In five hours, the Barbarienne didn't cry, until the very end of the night when she was exhausted and needed to be changed. And as soon as she was changed, she went right to sleep.
My friends, who were debating whether or not to have children of their own, got into an argument. (Not a bad one; they're the sort of couple that has cute arguments all the time.)
The wife said, "You see, babies aren't that hard. They're not much trouble."
The husband replied, "This is perfect-baby. She never cries. Regular babies are difficult!"
And the wife responded, "Lots of babies are just like this!"
Finally, the husband said, "Five dollars! I'll give you five dollars if you can find another baby like this!"
Hence, the Barbarienne became The Five Dollar Baby.
She was definitely rare, in my experience. I'd like to think it was the culmination of nearly 20 years of experience with the whole gestation/delivery/infant management process that made it possible, but it could just have been luck.
Anyway, at eighteen months, she completely changed and became The Barbarienne. "So, she's going through terrible twos early," I thought. My kids do that, so no big deal.
Er. Yeah. It'll be two years of terrible twos pretty soon here. Why do I feel like this is going to be my life ten years from now?
You See, Bob, It's A Problem Of Motivation
One of the advantages of home-schooling is that you can motivate your child idiosyncratically. In fact, education should be idiosyncratic: Just logically, you want to maximize what your child learns, so you should really direct it as gingerly as possible.
A simple example is reading material. The most successful English classes I had gave broad parameters for reading material. Meanwhile, the books that everyone has to read, are often loathed for the rest of the student's life. And very often (kaffcatcherintherye) they're more about what the teacher thinks will be important and long-lasting versus what actually is.
And, of course, what is important? There are a lot of gray areas.
But I think it's generally safe to agree that the reading and writing material handed out to early grade-schoolers is pretty worthless. (Same with music handed out to people learning the piano, too! It's almost like they want reading or playing to be boring.)
So, how to motivate a first- or second-grade reader? Reading's not so much an issue for The Flower. She likes to read in bed at night.
But writing is more of a problem. First of all, it's an obsolete skill! (No, really, The Boy's notes all have to be typed!) But setting aside the issue of writing-by-hand, there's a matter of what to write.
What motivates The Flower? What makes her want to write and re-write and write some more?
Contracts.
She's drawing up contracts delineating her rights and responsibilities, what services will be rendered against what the rumener-- renumer-- what she's gonna get paid.
Another lawyer.
Well, The Boy went through that phase, and it's passed. So, there's always hope.
A simple example is reading material. The most successful English classes I had gave broad parameters for reading material. Meanwhile, the books that everyone has to read, are often loathed for the rest of the student's life. And very often (kaffcatcherintherye) they're more about what the teacher thinks will be important and long-lasting versus what actually is.
And, of course, what is important? There are a lot of gray areas.
But I think it's generally safe to agree that the reading and writing material handed out to early grade-schoolers is pretty worthless. (Same with music handed out to people learning the piano, too! It's almost like they want reading or playing to be boring.)
So, how to motivate a first- or second-grade reader? Reading's not so much an issue for The Flower. She likes to read in bed at night.
But writing is more of a problem. First of all, it's an obsolete skill! (No, really, The Boy's notes all have to be typed!) But setting aside the issue of writing-by-hand, there's a matter of what to write.
What motivates The Flower? What makes her want to write and re-write and write some more?
Contracts.
She's drawing up contracts delineating her rights and responsibilities, what services will be rendered against what the rumener-- renumer-- what she's gonna get paid.
Another lawyer.
Well, The Boy went through that phase, and it's passed. So, there's always hope.
Adolescence
Previously I linked to Knox's comment where she linked to the Glenn and Helen show where they interview Robert Epstein on adolescence, and a test designed to measure how adult one is. As you can see here, I just got carried away snarking on the test, which is actually pretty interesting.
More importantly, I agree with the basic topic: Adolescence is a bad idea. I'll never forget sitting down to my first college course and thinking, "WTF? We could have done this five years ago!"
Even allowing for my high level of comfort with school--I'm a chronic test taker, read for fun, quite good at sitting still for long periods, basically made for school--college is way too late for just about everyone. The Boy, while fine in school, is nowhere near as comfortable and casual about it as I was, and he's doing just fine in his class. (And he got a strict teacher, he has to turn in his notes, etc. This will work out excellently for him in terms of giving him real world experience for taking more classes.)
Anyway, I love the way the guy, Epstein, attacks the "teen brain" thing. That kind of stuff--the sort of vague assertions made by some segment of brain scientists--always smacks of phrenology to me. Teenagers used to be plenty responsible. Inexperienced, but not stupid.
In fact, the most plausible suggestion I've heard about adolescence is that it was created by trade guilds (unions) as a way to eliminate competition.
Well, let's be honest: It's hard on the ego. If we let teens work, they'd end up being better at what we do than we are. I mean, sure, we have experience, but they have energy, alertness, enthusiasm--and putting them to work early is the best way to blunt that. Wait, no, that's not what I meant to say.
Seriously, though: Teens will work hard, for little money, and they're eager to assume more responsibility. Adults should be afraid of them entering the workplace sooner--they would threaten our ability to slack!
Of course, if we were shrewd and up to the challenge, we could harness their energy in useful ways, and create a brand new, powerful, responsible demographic, and use our experience to direct them in ways ushered in a new era of wealth for everyone.
As always, the kids are all right. It's the adults that are the problem.
More importantly, I agree with the basic topic: Adolescence is a bad idea. I'll never forget sitting down to my first college course and thinking, "WTF? We could have done this five years ago!"
Even allowing for my high level of comfort with school--I'm a chronic test taker, read for fun, quite good at sitting still for long periods, basically made for school--college is way too late for just about everyone. The Boy, while fine in school, is nowhere near as comfortable and casual about it as I was, and he's doing just fine in his class. (And he got a strict teacher, he has to turn in his notes, etc. This will work out excellently for him in terms of giving him real world experience for taking more classes.)
Anyway, I love the way the guy, Epstein, attacks the "teen brain" thing. That kind of stuff--the sort of vague assertions made by some segment of brain scientists--always smacks of phrenology to me. Teenagers used to be plenty responsible. Inexperienced, but not stupid.
In fact, the most plausible suggestion I've heard about adolescence is that it was created by trade guilds (unions) as a way to eliminate competition.
Well, let's be honest: It's hard on the ego. If we let teens work, they'd end up being better at what we do than we are. I mean, sure, we have experience, but they have energy, alertness, enthusiasm--and putting them to work early is the best way to blunt that. Wait, no, that's not what I meant to say.
Seriously, though: Teens will work hard, for little money, and they're eager to assume more responsibility. Adults should be afraid of them entering the workplace sooner--they would threaten our ability to slack!
Of course, if we were shrewd and up to the challenge, we could harness their energy in useful ways, and create a brand new, powerful, responsible demographic, and use our experience to direct them in ways ushered in a new era of wealth for everyone.
As always, the kids are all right. It's the adults that are the problem.
All The Awful Things That Ever Were
In response to the previous post on The Boy's college career, Knox linked to the Glenn and Helen show where they interview Robert Epstein on adolescence, and a test designed to measure how adult one is.
I got an ""Adultness" Comepetency Score" of 90%. Double-scare quotes! The quotes around "Adultness" are theirs, mine are around the whole phrase. I'm pretty sure you have to be quite mature to use double-scare quotes.
The results page then lists your scores by subject matter. Of course, I'm an old time test-taker. I could get whatever score I wanted. I answered some of the questions "incorrectly" because I they were phrased badly.
For example, "You can earn a high school diploma by completing high school or passing an equivalency test. Do you agree?" Well, no, I don't, because it's not true. You can take the GED--though the current California system bars you from taking it pretty much until you're 18, take that! you overachievers!--but even if you take the GED, you don't have a high school diploma, and you won't be treated like you do. (This is along the same lines of The Boy getting his MBA: Getting the sheepskin is about him having options should he need to get a job, even if his current plan is to be an employer rather than an employee.)
I thought it was amusing that I scored 100% on the "managing high-risk behaviors" section. This (for me) has nothing to do with being mature. I just don't find most high-risk behaviors entertaining. I guess driving counts. But guns? Very few people are accidentally hurt by guns. Guns are meant to be deadly; power tools probably claim more casualties. Cars do by an order of magnitude.
I scored quite badly on the "physical abilities" section (56%). I see what they're getting at: An adult realizes that he has to take care of his body. But even at my peak fitness, I never regarded myself as "strong" or "flexible". Those things are relative. And I tend to look at those things--not just physical fitness, but also intelligence--in terms of where they fail (almost always sooner than where I'd like).
Kinda sucks that poor health makes you less adult than a teenage football player.
The more legit one is "Personal Care". Legit in the sense of being less a relative use of words, versus actually being accurate. My score there was 78%, but I know it's because I sacrifice elements of personal care (sleep, in particular) for my children. And I suppose most people don't really have to do that regularly, but the questions are completely context free, and any adult knows that there are plenty of circumstances where you do sacrifice optimum personal behaviors for your children.
But then, as an adult, I know better than to put much stock in an Internet quiz.
I got an ""Adultness" Comepetency Score" of 90%. Double-scare quotes! The quotes around "Adultness" are theirs, mine are around the whole phrase. I'm pretty sure you have to be quite mature to use double-scare quotes.
The results page then lists your scores by subject matter. Of course, I'm an old time test-taker. I could get whatever score I wanted. I answered some of the questions "incorrectly" because I they were phrased badly.
For example, "You can earn a high school diploma by completing high school or passing an equivalency test. Do you agree?" Well, no, I don't, because it's not true. You can take the GED--though the current California system bars you from taking it pretty much until you're 18, take that! you overachievers!--but even if you take the GED, you don't have a high school diploma, and you won't be treated like you do. (This is along the same lines of The Boy getting his MBA: Getting the sheepskin is about him having options should he need to get a job, even if his current plan is to be an employer rather than an employee.)
I thought it was amusing that I scored 100% on the "managing high-risk behaviors" section. This (for me) has nothing to do with being mature. I just don't find most high-risk behaviors entertaining. I guess driving counts. But guns? Very few people are accidentally hurt by guns. Guns are meant to be deadly; power tools probably claim more casualties. Cars do by an order of magnitude.
I scored quite badly on the "physical abilities" section (56%). I see what they're getting at: An adult realizes that he has to take care of his body. But even at my peak fitness, I never regarded myself as "strong" or "flexible". Those things are relative. And I tend to look at those things--not just physical fitness, but also intelligence--in terms of where they fail (almost always sooner than where I'd like).
Kinda sucks that poor health makes you less adult than a teenage football player.
The more legit one is "Personal Care". Legit in the sense of being less a relative use of words, versus actually being accurate. My score there was 78%, but I know it's because I sacrifice elements of personal care (sleep, in particular) for my children. And I suppose most people don't really have to do that regularly, but the questions are completely context free, and any adult knows that there are plenty of circumstances where you do sacrifice optimum personal behaviors for your children.
But then, as an adult, I know better than to put much stock in an Internet quiz.
Monday, June 22, 2009
The Boy Goes To College
We had planned to send The Boy off for the winter session, but it's a really, really big deal around here to get a 13-year-old in. The Dean has to give personal permission, papers must be signed, oaths sworn, etc. This all magically vanishes at 14.
Bureaucracy is a wondrous thing.
Not complaining, mind you: There's still plenty 'round here to teach him.
Anyway, The Boy is at his first class today. Summer session is a dicey time to start. Classes are relatively intense (two hours a day, every day) and, of course, you have the "teacher factor" magnified. An easy teacher is probably going to be extra easy in the summer, while a harder teacher is going to concentrate all the work he'd normally give into half the time.
He wanted to take a business or economics class--he's got his eye on an MBA before 20--but they were full. I suggested the cinema class. I figure that it will be interesting, and I hope not to grueling--but it will get him used to being on campus. (And get him some legit university credits.)
Update to come shortly.
Bureaucracy is a wondrous thing.
Not complaining, mind you: There's still plenty 'round here to teach him.
Anyway, The Boy is at his first class today. Summer session is a dicey time to start. Classes are relatively intense (two hours a day, every day) and, of course, you have the "teacher factor" magnified. An easy teacher is probably going to be extra easy in the summer, while a harder teacher is going to concentrate all the work he'd normally give into half the time.
He wanted to take a business or economics class--he's got his eye on an MBA before 20--but they were full. I suggested the cinema class. I figure that it will be interesting, and I hope not to grueling--but it will get him used to being on campus. (And get him some legit university credits.)
Update to come shortly.
Bein' A Dad
Bein' a dad isn't so bad
Except that you've gotta feed 'em!
You gotta shoe 'em and clothe 'em
And try not to loathe 'em
Bug 'em and hug 'em and heed 'em
Bein' a dad can sure make you mad
Man it even can drive you crazy
Yeah, it's as hard as it looks
You gotta read 'em dumb books
And you end up despising Walt Disney
Bein' a dad starts to get radical
When they turn into teenagers
You gotta tighten the screws
Enforce the curfews
Confiscate weapons and pagers
But a daughter or son
Can be sort of fun
Just as long as they don't defy you
They'll treat you like a king
They'll believe anything
They're easy to frighten and lie to
Bein' a dad
Bein' a dad
Bein' a dad can make you feel glad
When you get paperweights and aftershave lotions
Yeah, it feels pretty great
When they graduate
That's when you're choked with emotions
But bein' a dad takes more than a tad
Of good luck and divine intervention
You need airtight alibis
Fullproof disguises
Desperation is the father of invention
So sometimes you take off
For a few rounds of golf
And you stay away for half of their lifetimes
The result of it all is
Is you're captured
And hauled up
Before a tribunal for "dad crimes"
Bein' a dad
Bein' a dad
Bein' a dad can make you feel sad
Like you're the insignificant other
Yeah, right from the start,
They break your heart
In the end, every kid wants his mother
Bein' a dad
--Loudon Wainwright III
(Link to song with goofy video.)
Except that you've gotta feed 'em!
You gotta shoe 'em and clothe 'em
And try not to loathe 'em
Bug 'em and hug 'em and heed 'em
Bein' a dad can sure make you mad
Man it even can drive you crazy
Yeah, it's as hard as it looks
You gotta read 'em dumb books
And you end up despising Walt Disney
Bein' a dad starts to get radical
When they turn into teenagers
You gotta tighten the screws
Enforce the curfews
Confiscate weapons and pagers
But a daughter or son
Can be sort of fun
Just as long as they don't defy you
They'll treat you like a king
They'll believe anything
They're easy to frighten and lie to
Bein' a dad
Bein' a dad
Bein' a dad can make you feel glad
When you get paperweights and aftershave lotions
Yeah, it feels pretty great
When they graduate
That's when you're choked with emotions
But bein' a dad takes more than a tad
Of good luck and divine intervention
You need airtight alibis
Fullproof disguises
Desperation is the father of invention
So sometimes you take off
For a few rounds of golf
And you stay away for half of their lifetimes
The result of it all is
Is you're captured
And hauled up
Before a tribunal for "dad crimes"
Bein' a dad
Bein' a dad
Bein' a dad can make you feel sad
Like you're the insignificant other
Yeah, right from the start,
They break your heart
In the end, every kid wants his mother
Bein' a dad
--Loudon Wainwright III
(Link to song with goofy video.)
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Core Muscles
I forgot to mention in the Wii post that the Wii Fit talks a lot about core muscles.
I had not heard of "core muscles" prior to the Fit, though I did intuit what they were. Especially when they became "those things that hurt" after doing the Fit's balance games--which are, in essence, all about leaning slightly one way or the other.
Althouse has a post about this, though with not much commentary, referencing a New York Times article on how people are wrecking their backs in the quest for washboard abs. I had a couple of thoughts.
Like, first, if they meant "abs", they would call them "abs", not "core muscles". There was no stigma attached to "abs", such that they, like stewardesses, had to seek a new name. If the secret to great abs was just "exercise your abs a lot", well, that wouldn't be much of a bloody secret now, would it?
Second, I used to be really skinny. This was a time when I could crank out a hundred sit ups, and was required to, actually, as part of my martial arts training. Never had six-pack abs. I never thought of it as something to strive for. In fact, I thought--and still think--it's a little effete to focus on that sort of thing.
Third, when did washboard abs get to be the thing everyone had to have? What's wrong with a nice, flat stomach? Or even a slightly rounded one? And if they're so gosh-darned important to have, why can't people face just doing what needs to be done to get them without wrecking their bodies?
OK, I've gone into full Andy Rooney mode, which means it's time for this post to end.
I had not heard of "core muscles" prior to the Fit, though I did intuit what they were. Especially when they became "those things that hurt" after doing the Fit's balance games--which are, in essence, all about leaning slightly one way or the other.
Althouse has a post about this, though with not much commentary, referencing a New York Times article on how people are wrecking their backs in the quest for washboard abs. I had a couple of thoughts.
Like, first, if they meant "abs", they would call them "abs", not "core muscles". There was no stigma attached to "abs", such that they, like stewardesses, had to seek a new name. If the secret to great abs was just "exercise your abs a lot", well, that wouldn't be much of a bloody secret now, would it?
Second, I used to be really skinny. This was a time when I could crank out a hundred sit ups, and was required to, actually, as part of my martial arts training. Never had six-pack abs. I never thought of it as something to strive for. In fact, I thought--and still think--it's a little effete to focus on that sort of thing.
Third, when did washboard abs get to be the thing everyone had to have? What's wrong with a nice, flat stomach? Or even a slightly rounded one? And if they're so gosh-darned important to have, why can't people face just doing what needs to be done to get them without wrecking their bodies?
OK, I've gone into full Andy Rooney mode, which means it's time for this post to end.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Wii-dux
We recently passed the One Year mark on the Wii Fit board--we had one pre-ordered, actually. Sort of amusingly, I'm the primary user of the board, though I'm sporadic. The Boy used it for 8 hours one day, got all the high scores, took his blood sugar down to alarmingly low levels--interesting that--but then never cared to use it again.
The obvious distinction there is that The Boy is definitely a hardcore gamer. (I've been one in the past, but it got difficult to keep up 'round about kid #3.) The Wii isn't really about hardcore games. We have a few, but they don't get much play.
Of course, what the Wii is about--the reason it comes close to outselling the XBox 360 and the PS3 combined--is a simple physicality that makes it both accessible and interesting in a way that thumb twitching is not.
What's less obvious, of course, is that--particularly with the Wii Fit--the physicality isn't all that interesting to The Boy, at least in part because it's just way too easy for him. And this is before he started doing his current program, which he says has really improved his reflexes. (The other part, I think, is that hardcore gamers tend to want to minimize any exertion between their intention and action.) But it's not that easy for me, which I take to be a sign of "aging".
And, when I say "aging", I of course mean "any deterioration I can attribute to forces outside of my control, regardless of actual causes, particularly causes that I might not want to address."
Anyway, one of the tests on the Wii is to stand still--well, really to balance. If a kid can hold himself still, it's just a matter of standing very still and with weight distributed equally on both legs. I'm pretty sure this was never a problem for me before. I mean, I do okay on the test. Very close to perfect. But this and a lot of the other tests (shifting weight, standing on one leg) seem challenging in a way I don't think they would've been a "few" years ago.
I used to do all kinds of karate maneuvers on one leg (which is of dubious practicality, but that's a discussion for a different time). But not having had the technology at the time, it's hard to say how much (or even whether, he suggested optimistically) of a deterioration there's been over the years.
Meanwhile, I've wrested quite a few of The Boy's high scores away.
It's just a temporary respite, of course. The Flower and I played a couple hours of Wii Sports over the past few days, and she can give me a run for my money--beat me, even--on tennis and baseball, and her bowling skills are coming up. She doesn't quite have the light touch needed for golfing, and nobody can really touch me on boxing. Well, yet. Give her time.
All's not perfect in the Wii world, of course. As much as I love the Wii, it's more a tantalizing taste of the future than a great implementation. The wiimote suggests a time when true motion capture will be used to interact with games--and perhaps other software, though I think contra Minority Report, big gestures aren't going to ever be the norm--and the new MotionPlus is supposedly dynamite, but the games do show the limits of the motion control. (Of course, at the other end, you have complaints that the MotionPlus is too sensitive. There's a lot of frontier to be crossed, technologically speaking.)
Worse, despite the killer console sales I'm not seeing a lot of games that really embrace the motion, and the whole gaming support industry is really not set up to distinguish between traditional hardcore games and games that use the motion system effectively.
Then, there are minor issues. I think the Wii Fit board is too narrow. (I'm used to a wider stance from my karate days, and one size fits all doesn't seem optimum.) Also, there's a lot of nagging. I understand why it's in there, but it does seem condescending at first, and--after two years--irritating. It's all designed to be gentle, but needs to be a lot more easily dismissed after the 200th viewing.
Still, we've enjoyed the console, and I foresee it having another three years life, easily, on our shelf. I don't see replacing it with a button masher ever though.
The obvious distinction there is that The Boy is definitely a hardcore gamer. (I've been one in the past, but it got difficult to keep up 'round about kid #3.) The Wii isn't really about hardcore games. We have a few, but they don't get much play.
Of course, what the Wii is about--the reason it comes close to outselling the XBox 360 and the PS3 combined--is a simple physicality that makes it both accessible and interesting in a way that thumb twitching is not.
What's less obvious, of course, is that--particularly with the Wii Fit--the physicality isn't all that interesting to The Boy, at least in part because it's just way too easy for him. And this is before he started doing his current program, which he says has really improved his reflexes. (The other part, I think, is that hardcore gamers tend to want to minimize any exertion between their intention and action.) But it's not that easy for me, which I take to be a sign of "aging".
And, when I say "aging", I of course mean "any deterioration I can attribute to forces outside of my control, regardless of actual causes, particularly causes that I might not want to address."
Anyway, one of the tests on the Wii is to stand still--well, really to balance. If a kid can hold himself still, it's just a matter of standing very still and with weight distributed equally on both legs. I'm pretty sure this was never a problem for me before. I mean, I do okay on the test. Very close to perfect. But this and a lot of the other tests (shifting weight, standing on one leg) seem challenging in a way I don't think they would've been a "few" years ago.
I used to do all kinds of karate maneuvers on one leg (which is of dubious practicality, but that's a discussion for a different time). But not having had the technology at the time, it's hard to say how much (or even whether, he suggested optimistically) of a deterioration there's been over the years.
Meanwhile, I've wrested quite a few of The Boy's high scores away.
It's just a temporary respite, of course. The Flower and I played a couple hours of Wii Sports over the past few days, and she can give me a run for my money--beat me, even--on tennis and baseball, and her bowling skills are coming up. She doesn't quite have the light touch needed for golfing, and nobody can really touch me on boxing. Well, yet. Give her time.
All's not perfect in the Wii world, of course. As much as I love the Wii, it's more a tantalizing taste of the future than a great implementation. The wiimote suggests a time when true motion capture will be used to interact with games--and perhaps other software, though I think contra Minority Report, big gestures aren't going to ever be the norm--and the new MotionPlus is supposedly dynamite, but the games do show the limits of the motion control. (Of course, at the other end, you have complaints that the MotionPlus is too sensitive. There's a lot of frontier to be crossed, technologically speaking.)
Worse, despite the killer console sales I'm not seeing a lot of games that really embrace the motion, and the whole gaming support industry is really not set up to distinguish between traditional hardcore games and games that use the motion system effectively.
Then, there are minor issues. I think the Wii Fit board is too narrow. (I'm used to a wider stance from my karate days, and one size fits all doesn't seem optimum.) Also, there's a lot of nagging. I understand why it's in there, but it does seem condescending at first, and--after two years--irritating. It's all designed to be gentle, but needs to be a lot more easily dismissed after the 200th viewing.
Still, we've enjoyed the console, and I foresee it having another three years life, easily, on our shelf. I don't see replacing it with a button masher ever though.
Sadder Than A Really Sad Thing
It was sad that I went to eat a veggie dog. (It doesn't matter that much: Put a bun around it, slather in catsup, mustard, relish, pickles, sauerkraut and sawdust, and it doesn't matter what the hot dog is made of. A fact hot dog vendors have relied on for years.)
It was sad that I dropped the dog.
It was really sad that The Big White Dog picked up the dog whole.
I had a moment of hope when The Big White Dog spit it out without having bitten into it.
But then, there was this dog on the floor. So I called the Little Black Dog over.
Sadder than a really sad thing? The Big White Dog snatched the veggie dog up and swallowed it whole.
Worse than kids.
It was sad that I dropped the dog.
It was really sad that The Big White Dog picked up the dog whole.
I had a moment of hope when The Big White Dog spit it out without having bitten into it.
But then, there was this dog on the floor. So I called the Little Black Dog over.
Sadder than a really sad thing? The Big White Dog snatched the veggie dog up and swallowed it whole.
Worse than kids.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
