"Lileks Mode ON"

So I went to Target this morning, skipping our usual church service. I know, I know, but the Wife had to stay home with Little Quinn, who was for some reason nursing a barnburner of a bellyache. So I dropped The Daughter at Sunday School and then headed off to Target to pick up some shampoo and shower gel and a few other sundries.

(Goofy tangent: according to Blogger's search function, that last sentence is the first time I've used the word "sundries" in this space. Add that to the list of Things You Had No Need To Know.)

The trip to Target was just your run-of-the-mill trip to Target, with the exception of one key factor: this particular Target, which is all of two miles from our home, is also all of two miles from Ralph Wilson Stadium. And today the Buffalo ShiBills have a home game. So I observed some colorful stuff while on my dull Target run:

:: The store is just past an expressway interchange. Standing very near the interchange was some guy holding up a pizza box on which he had scrawled in black marker, "I NEED TICKETS!". Fair enough...except, about fifty feet down the road from this guy, stood a scalper. It was like watching Wimpy stand with his back to a McDonald's.

:: I don't know if Target allows tailgating in its parking lot, or if these guys were merely trying to test their grill or what, but there was a cluster of about seven guys in ShiBills attire standing in the bed of a pickup truck, carefully studying the grill that was literally teetering on the back end of the tailgate.

:: A large contingent of Cleveland Browns fans, probably ten or twelve of 'em, was wandering the aisles of Target as well. At one point, I heard one of them loudly intone, "Well, Buffalo never won a Super Bowl!", to which his buddies yukked it up. I merely shook my head, unable to decide if I should retort, and, if so, which reply I should use:

"Well, the Bills wanted to lose one Super Bowl for every decade since the NFL-AFL merger in which the Browns have failed to even get to the Super Bowl."

"Well, the Bills have at least demonstrated an ability to hold a lead in the final minutes of an AFC Championship Game."

"Well, our owner hasn't shown his love by ditching his city, and our city didn't have to have the NFL step in an expand to replace a franchise that was taken away by a fickle owner."

Yeah, I know, the "Zing!" factor of that last one isn't very high. I was merely struck by the idea that a fan of a team that's 3-8 and is in total disarray as a franchise would try and get mouthy while on the road. But that's an NFL fan, for you. We're a strange bunch.

New at GMR

I have two new reviews in this week's update of GMR. First is a double review of two CDs by Celtic music artist Laura MacKenzie, and second is a long article in which I sing the praises of Howard Shore's Lord of the Rings film scores. I worked quite a bit on the latter article, attempting to distill the thoughts I've been gestating about those scores for three years now (starting with Fellowship's release in 2001). Regular readers of my ravings here already know that I am a huge fan of these three scores; in this article I try to lay out why I love them as much as I do.

(BTW, people clicking through to my GMR bio will note, if they are familiar with me or with this blog at all, that the info there is quite behind the times -- it still has us living in Syracuse, for example, which is where we were when I joined the fine folks at GMR. A new bio has been submitted, and will hopefully appear in that space before long.)

(Also BTW, there's always lots of good stuff at GMR. Take time to poke around. Here is the current update, and the site's been around for a long time, so the archives are deep. And they're always on the prowl for new reviewers, if anyone is interested. I've had nothing but good times in my interactions with the GMR squad, and that's a fact.)

Ahead of the Curve, again!

TBogg has a CD recommendation that I whole-heartedly endorse. So much so, in fact, that I endorsed it a month-and-a-half ago!

Stick with me, folks, and you'll be cool before the cool kids realize what's cool!

(Oh, and when I read this post of Tom's, the natural question that occurred to me was..."What book?")

Let's hear it for CBS!

The CBS network is getting pounded on a lot lately, with the journalistic standards of its news division being questioned just a tad. But I've got to give the network its due: they're running a "Happy Holidays from CBS" promo that cracks me up every time I see it. You can watch it on the main CBS site; there's a link down on the right-hand side, under "Meet Santa's New CBS Elves". If you haven't seen this, do check it out. It works better the more familiar you are with CBS shows, of course. The first time I saw it, I nearly spit out my beverage when I saw the stop-motion wooden-puppet of Grissom from CSI.

Ooooooh! A new meme!

Stolen from Dave Thomas, not of Wendy's fame:

Take this list of authors, remove those whose efforts do not grace your shelves, and bring the list up to ten by adding some more that do. New paragraph indicates newly-added authors.

William Shakespeare
Neil Gaiman
Thomas Pynchon
Stephen King
Cervantes
Jose Saramago
Lemony Snicket
John Fowles
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Margaret Atwood

Ummm...I'm a bit confused, actually. Am I supposed to take the original list, or Dave's new list, so that the original list ends up really altered as it courses through Blogistan? I suspect the latter, so I'll use Dave's list instead and follow the same directions. Dave's list is as follows:

William Shakespeare
Stephen King
James Lee Burke
Terry Pratchett
Robert Rankin
Mil Millington
Christopher Brookmyre
Dennis Lehane
Michael Chabon
Douglas Adams

OK, here is mine, with my added authors in bold:

William Shakespeare
Stephen King
Carl Sagan
Terry Pratchett
Guy Gavriel Kay
J.R.R. Tolkien
George R. R. Martin
Christopher Moore
Charles Stross
Michael Chabon
Michael Flynn

And hey, it now occurs to me that since most book memes can be morphed into music memes, I'll start the same thing, only with artists and composers represented in my CD collection:

Leonard Cohen
Van Halen
Pink Floyd
Hector Berlioz
John Williams
The Chieftains
Tangerine Dream
Van Morrison
Johnny Cash
Ralph Vaughan Williams

Fly away, little meme! Fly!

A Biological Fact

The object in the universe with the shortest lifespan has been conclusively determined: it is my paycheck, from the time it's put in my hands to the time I have to humbly ask The Wife if I can borrow five bucks so I can buy coffee at work.

OK, I'm not actually that bad -- but the Christmas season sure is hoovering the money right out of my hands just as soon as I can cash the check. (No direct-deposit for me, no sir! I wany my money physically in my hand. I chalk this bit of irrational paranoia to a former boss of mine who used to tell me horror stories about having to sprint to the bank on payday at one of his former jobs, so that the first people who cashed their paychecks would not see them bounce, unlike the slowpokes who waited until later.)

Last night I very nearly completed my Christmas shopping for The Wife (all that remains is a couple of books and a packet or two of specialty coffee), in a mad three-hour sprint that took me to two local malls, two of those malls' adjoining strip plazas, one stand-alone store, a Burlington Coat Factory (now I remember why I never shop there -- shudder), and our favorite local Chinese takeout. (This last was bribery for being allowed to depart the household with no child accompaniment.)

Next week should see the completion of our shopping for The Daughter and Little Quinn. We're thinking that he should be easy to shop for, since he'll only be four months old the day after Christmas. The Daughter already has some nifty stuff coming her way, and in any case we're fortunate in that we can offer the really big gift ideas to the Grandparents. Hence, the soon-to-be-delivered new bike. Grandparents rule. I wish I'd had all four of mine when I was a kid. (Both of my grandfathers were long dead when I was born.) We're lucky in that our church is offering a three-hour babysitting service next Saturday, so we'll be dumping off The Daughter and then going off to complete her Christmas shopping. Our only problem is that the two places we really want to shop for her -- Vidler's and Clayton's -- are in locales on the opposite ends of the Buffalo region. But we'll pull it off. Oh yes. Just as soon as I take the license plates off The Wife's car. You can't be too careful.

In just the small amount of Christmas shopping I did last night, I noticed a good deal of retail tricks designed to part the consumer with as much money as possible. Mall stores put their registers all the way at the rear of the store, and they refuse to open up all the registers therein anyway (two out of four were running in one store). This keeps customers in line longer, all the better for them to study the items strategically placed right alongside the queueing area. One store I was in had absolutely no advertising material in evidence anywhere pertaining to the availability of gift cards or gift certificates. They sold them, all right -- I bought one -- but you had to stand in line (a nice thing about Christmastime being that a man can stand alone in line at a women's boutique without feeling like a complete tool) and then ask the service person for them.

I really don't object, in principle, to all the gift-giving and gift-buying that goes on at Christmas time. I do think it gets a bit out-of-hand with all of the stores vying for all the dollars, but that's the lay of the land -- in an economy where consumers are constantly being bombarded with the message that they need to keep spending money lest the whole economy crumble like a stale cookie, it strikes me as odd that we then turn around and castigate those very retail companies for rampant "commercialism". I simply enjoy the opportunity to express appreciation for the people around me.

I guess I don't get too wrapped up in the hand-wringing that pops up every Christmastime about our collective secular Christmas versus the sacred Christmas. In all honesty, I don't see why I can't have room for both: the secular one for my friends, my coworkers, and people in general, and the sacred one for myself and for my family. It's a dichotomy I see no reason to indulge, because I want to spend money (and time) on people that I love, and attend to the little guy in that manger.

I am large; I contain multitudes.

Yeah, it DOES taste just like Pepsi-Clear...

...if by "just like" you mean, "not much at all".

John Scalzi tasted the new "Holiday Spice Pepsi" recently, and he was underwhelmed. In truth, nearly everybody I've spoken to about this stuff has been similarly underwhelmed -- but that means nothing to me, for as I indicated a couple of weeks ago, I love the stuff. It's a real problem for me, because I've been largely able to banish sugared colas from my drinking regimen over the last couple of years (sugared coffee, on the other hand, isn't going anywhere), and this stuff is putting a huge dent in my ability to remain contented with good old Diet Pepsi. In my favor, though, is the likelihood that as a seasonal product, Pepsi Holiday Spice will be vanishing from the shelves sometime in the next month or so.

(Note to self: By ten cases of Pepsi Holiday Spice.)

I don't exactly recall what Pepsi-Clear tasted like, but I don't recall it having any hint of "spice" about it -- I remember it tasting like a cola that had something missing (beyond the obvious caramel coloring). It reminded me of those weird-named colas you used to find at no-frills supermarkets, like Faygo (whose cola was nauseating, but whose "Redpop" and "Frosh" flavors were mildly pleasing) or Fanta or Shasta (actually, I haven't had Shasta since I was six, so I may be treading on unfairness here). Nothing in Pepsi Holiday Spice's flavor made me think of Pepsi Clear; I suspect that what John's remembering is the last ill-conceived variation on its formula Pepsi cooked up.

"To Weep When I Am Glad" (a fiction excerpt)

I haven't done this in quite a while, but as a way to prod myself back into the regular practice of fiction (above and beyond the two hundred or so words of The Promised King, Book II that I've been wringing from the barely-damp washcloth that is my head), I'm going to offer a few samples in this space over the next couple of days. Here's the opening of a story I wrote about a mining town, a woman who owns a local bar, and the salesman who arrives one day selling beer that may or may not be magical.)

"To Weep When I Am Glad"

Rose Barnstone laid awake for a while, and when the bells of Old Presbyterian rang one o'clock, she shook the man beside her.

"Time to go, Enoch," she said.

Enoch Spencer grumbled and rolled over. "Maybe I should just tell Edna the truth," he said. "Save us all some trouble." Then he laughed.

"Yeah, you do that," Rose said. "And miss my company? I don't think so."

"Now, Rose," Enoch said as he got up and pulled on his shirt and pants. "Edna and I don't have what you and I have."

"Is that a fact?" Rose raised an eyebrow as she pulled on her faded men's shirt and overalls. "Well, it's a good thing we're doing things this way, because I would never marry a cheating miner like you."

He laughed at that as he finished pulling on his shoes. "See you tomorrow night," he said before leaving her room. Rose waited a few minutes and then went downstairs herself.

"Evenin', Miss Rose," Isaac said when she came into the bar. Isaac – "Big" Isaac to everyone else in town – was Rose's helper around the Lambert. "I figured you'd go to bed and finish all this tomorrow. I can close up."

"Couldn't sleep," Rose lied. "Feel like taking him home?" She gestured to the stool at the corner of the bar, where as usual for this time of night Old Mordecai Franks was asleep.

"Don' I always?" Isaac said as he walked over and gave Mordecai a shove. "Night's over, Mord. Time to go."

As always, it took about five minutes of prodding before Old Mordecai got up. "Fine, fine. Stop touchin' me. Jesus." Mordecai squinted at Isaac, as if seeing him for the first time. "Jesus, with you?"

"It's me every night, Mord. Come on."

"One more for the road, Rose? Least you can do before I go off with Blackie, here…" He didn't even wait for Rose to say no; he just grumbled all the way outside as Isaac followed. Same routine, every night.

Alone in the bar, Rose glanced at her reflection in the mirror behind the rows of whiskey bottles. Shaking her head at the woman in the mirror, a woman whose face had too many lines and whose nose was a bit too slightly crooked and whose shoulder-length hair had a bit too much gray mixed in with the brown for a woman of thirty years, she picked up a cloth and began the last cleanup of this night. Right about now Enoch would be sliding into bed with his wife while she was cleaning glasses.

***

Rose stifled a yawn as she finished dicing the potatoes and divided them between the two stew-pots. Then she rinsed off the knife and started cutting the leeks, yawned again, and slid the knife across her left index finger. She had said five words that no respectable woman would say before she noticed Isaac standing there.

"You okay, Miss Rose?"

"Hell, I'm fine," she said. "Just a little blood in the stew today."

Isaac grinned. "A cook shouldn't fear no blood in the pot. Gives the cookin' some character."

"Your momma had enough character for five counties," Rose said as she pumped some water and ran it over her bleeding finger. "Need something, Isaac?"

"Well, I was fixin' those eaves out front and a man came up. Drivin' a truck. He asked to talk to the owner, and I told him that's you, and he's waitin' at the bar."

"All right," she said. Isaac nodded and left. Rose tore a piece of cloth off a sheet she kept around in the kitchen for just this purpose and wrapped her finger in it, and then she went out front to see the salesman. There were more of them these days, passing through Corley's Crossing on their way to Pittsburgh or Philadelphia or Baltimore. Nobody came to Corley's Crossing except to go through it to someplace else.

This salesman was sitting on Mordecai's stool, with whatever he was selling in a wooden crate on the stool next to him. Rose pursed her lips as she looked at him. He didn't look like the other salesmen. For one thing he wore no tie – just a collarless shirt that he wore open at the top, like the one Rose wore except it was a damn sight cleaner, plain dark pants and worn shoes that looked like he'd never given a single thought to shining them. He wore no hat and he was reading a book. Rose cleared her throat and approached him from behind the bar. He looked up from his book and smiled.

"Hello! Are you the owner of this establishment?"

Establishment? That’s quite the word, Rose thought. He was handsome, in a way, with a prominent chin and sand-colored hair that was casually combed and – the most piercingly green eyes Rose had ever seen.

"Yes, I am," Rose said. "Welcome to the Lambert." She reminded herself to smile, and she blushed with embarrassment over her appearance – not that it was any different from usual, not that she hadn't talked to salesmen before dressed the same way, and not that he hadn't talked himself to barkeeps in old shirts and overalls before.

"I'll bet you don't get too many salesmen," he said, offering his hand. Rose took it, and his grip was strong. "This town is sure off the beaten track."

"We like it that way," Rose said.

"I'm sure. My name is Daniel. May I have yours?"

Daniel. Somehow it fit him, although Rose had no idea why or how.

"Rose. Rose Barnstone."

"Barnstone…that's a pretty name."

"I guess so," Rose said. "Can I help you?"

"I've been in a lot of towns like this," the man named Daniel said. "Places no one knows except the people who live there, people who never leave or if they do they come back before long. Places that the rest of the world doesn't know about, and you don't want them to know about it so you don't tell them."

Rose looked at him for a moment. What he said was true; nobody ever left Corley's Crossing except by dying, and nobody ever came there except by being born. She chuckled. "Daniel, you have the strangest sales pitch I've ever heard."

"That wasn't my sales pitch," Daniel said, holding Rose's gaze. She felt a bit strange, suddenly, and reached up with her hand to finger the top of her overalls bib. His gaze was strangely intense, and it made her feel…naked.

"What are you selling?" she finally asked.

He smiled, less intensely. "Beer," he said. "A brew that I think you and your customers will enjoy and appreciate – and it will bring in even more customers, I guarantee it." He pulled a brown-glass beer bottle from the crate on the stool beside him and handed it to Rose. There was no label on it, just a glass relief image on it of a cross topped by a triangle.

"I have plenty of beer," Rose said. "And the miners who come in here to drink tend to like whiskey more."

"That's because they haven't tried Old Prospero's," Daniel said. "Go on. Taste it."

"It's not even cold."

"With Old Prospero's, it won't matter. This is special stuff."

Rose gazed at Daniel for a minute, wondering if this was some kind of joke. Then she leaned over and pried the top off the bottle. It was surprisingly cold, which she chalked up to it being a fairly cool autumn day, and she poured some of the beer into a glass.

The first thing that struck her was the beer's color. The stuff she always served came two ways: so dark as to be almost black, or the yellow color of pale straw. This beer, though, was a deep gold or almost copper color, like an old coin or Father's old pocket watch, as it had looked when she'd polished it and buried it with him. In the light of the bar, fairly dim even though it was late morning, the beer almost seemed to glow. Of course, anything could look pretty. She lifted the glass to her nose and sniffed. It had that grain smell that all beer had, but this was different; the aroma was so fresh that it made Rose think of a wheat field on a warm summer day.

And then she sipped it.

Her mouth was filled at once with what felt like a hundred different flavors, every one of them in perfect balance with all the others. There was wheat, pure and clean. There was the cleansing taste of the freshest water, like snowmelt on a day in late winter. She tasted strawberries and cherries, apples and cinnamon, maple and honey. She closed her eyes as she swallowed, and as it went down a feeling of glowing warmth spread through her body, all the way down to her toes and all the way up to her scalp. The she opened her eyes again, and when she did it was as if all the furnishings in the bar had been restored to their original luster and all the windows thrown open to let in the spring's first sunlight. Rose took another sip, and as she did so she wondered if this was how the Lambert had looked on the day her father had first opened the doors. Even the air smelled better: the years of dust from the miners' bodies and smoke from their cigarettes and pipes were gone, replaced by the tangy aroma of the stew simmering in the kitchen and the pine of the bar.

She took another swallow, and then another. She wanted the feeling from the Old Prospero's to continue…and then the bottle was empty, before she even knew it.

"Oh my," she finally said.

Daniel grinned. "Do you like it?"

Rose looked at him. "It's amazing," she said.

"That it is," Daniel said. "I've seen longshoremen at the docks get drunk on Old Prospero's faster than the strongest whiskey. But it's a good drunk. You'll never have a fight in here while you're serving this."

Rose nodded. Fights didn't happen often in the Lambert, but they did happen.

"So," Daniel said, "is there a market for Old Prospero's in Corley's Crossing?"

Rose looked into Daniel's green eyes. He was smiling again.

"I think so," she said.

"Good!" He reached into his back pocket and took out a small pad and pencil. "Will six cases be enough? or should we make it eight?"

Rose was considering that very question when the front door swung open, and three women walked in. Rose went rigid at the sight of them. It was strange enough that women would come into the Lambert at all, let alone these three – but then, maybe it wasn't that strange. The woman in front, and the leader of this trio, was Edna Spencer. Enoch's wife.

They were dressed in the Sunday best, of course. Edna's floral-print dress was in perfect proportion, with its ankle-length skirt and lace collar and cuffs. Her tasteful, white hat bore a single yellow carnation. Her two friends – Alice Stewart and Mabel York, without whom Edna never went anywhere unless she was with Enoch – were dressed equally nicely, and each woman held a handbag with a strong, two-handed grip. Yes, they were the picture of "proper", or as close as could be found in Corley's Crossing.

"Hello, Edna," Rose said. She glanced at Daniel, who had reopened his book and was trying to look like he was reading.

"I don't recall that we are on a first-name basis, Miss Barnstone," Edna said in that accent that she had perfected over the years, ridding herself of that Appalachian twang for no apparent reason, since Edna never left Corley's Crossing. "I understand that you have been enjoying my husband's company for some time. I'm here to ask you to stop."

Rose shifted on her feet.

"He doesn't love you, Miss Barnstone. If he has been…enjoying you for hedonistic reasons, you should know that love has nothing to do with it."

Rose wondered if Edna had found out from Enoch or from someone else. Probably from someone else. Enoch did not have the guts to tell anyone on his own.

"You see, Miss Barnstone," Edna went on, "Enoch could never love a person like you."

Daniel gave a sigh that was barely audible. For some reason, Rose glanced down at the empty glass that had contained the Old Prospero's, before she'd consumed it. The feeling of light-headed warmth came rushing back all at once. She put her shoulders back and crossed her arms over her chest.

"It's funny, Edna," Rose said. "You've never been any farther from Corley's Crossing than New Sedgwick, and your brother's accent is the same as it's always been."

Edna opened her mouth, but said nothing. She hadn't expected anything like this.

Rose went on. "If Enoch suddenly decided last night that you can actually satisfy him, then good for you. I guess you've been practicing more than your accent."

Now Edna's cheeks went red, while her two partners acted appropriately shocked at the very idea.

Rose smiled sweetly, feeling lighter than air. "You should worry more about Enoch than about me, Edna. After all, there's a reason he came to me. Now, ladies, unless you want to buy a drink—"

Now Edna's eyes flashed in what for a proper lady passed for rage, and she spun on her heels and walked out without waiting for her friends. Edna was a teetotaler, and she had tried many times to make Enoch into one as well, but it had never taken. "Good day to you, Mrs. Spencer," Rose called after her, though she was well out of earshot by now. Then she laughed out loud.

Daniel smiled. "You were the picture of strength just now," he said.

"I can't believe it," she said. "Normally I'd have just kept nodding until she left." She put the empty glass under the bar. "I guess Enoch won't be coming around tonight."

"Do you love this man?" Daniel asked.

Rose stopped and stared at him. It was a strange question to receive from a beer salesman, and Daniel had a strange look in his eye.

"No," Rose said. "He's just a cheating miner."

"I know the kind," Daniel said. His voice sounded slightly angry now. "A rose is not a dandelion, and should not be treated as such." He shook his head then, and just like that the dark look was gone from his eye. "Eight cases of Old Prospero's, eh? I'll deliver it in three days. It has been a pleasure, Rose." He smiled again, but this smile was businesslike, perfunctory. It had none of the warmth from before.

"Thank you," Rose said as Daniel left the bar. She watched him stand on the step outside, gazing strangely into the distance. Then he made a single motion with his hand, as if brushing away a fly, before he descended the step and left entirely. For several minutes after that she stood there, absently running her cloth over the same section of the bar. She wondered if she had said something wrong, something that had offended him. She also waited for the last bit of the buzz from the Old Prospero's to fade.

"You OK, Miss Rose?"

"What? Oh, Isaac – I'm fine." Just a little tired….

"Good," Isaac said as he moved past her to get to the basement door and head down there to do…something or other. Rose suddenly remembered the stew she'd left cooking on the stove, and she ran to the kitchen. It was as she was adding herbs to the mixture that she heard the siren.

It was the gigantic siren from the coal mine, and it could be heard almost ten miles away, although it was only a mile and a half from Corley's Crossing, up on the side of Grant Mountain. The siren sounded twice a day, to mark the arrival of the miners in the morning and their quitting time at night. Rose glanced at the clock on her wall. The siren never sounded at two-thirty in the afternoon, except for one reason. Rose shivered. She knew well why the siren would sound during the day. It hadn't happened in almost a year, which was almost a record. She stopped stirring the stew and listened instead to the siren. Then Isaac came into the kitchen, and he too heard it.

"Lord have mercy," he said.

"Too late for that," Rose said with a sigh. "Help me get things ready, Isaac. Looks like we're having a wake here tonight."

"I wonder who it was," Isaac said.

Rose said nothing. She wasn't sure how, but she knew that it was Enoch Spencer at the bottom of the cave-in.

End of excerpt

An arrow to the sun....

Matthew Yglesias points out that the use of poisoned arrows is still against international law. Setting aside the issue of why present-day international law would be concerned with arrows -- surely we're not going to be refighting the Battle of Agincourt anytime soon -- I'm reminded of some disputes I used to have in college with my Dungeon Master when I was playing Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.

My DM insisted -- on what basis, I cannot recall -- that the use of poison, in any context whatsoever, is an inherently evil act and would therefore represent a de facto shift in alignment (the moral inclination of a player-character, for those unfamiliar with the game's terminology), with the requisite penalties in game play for an alignment change. I disagreed with this, positing a case wherein you're the local knight and your village is threatened by a magical dragon (as opposed to your everyday, non-magical dragons) which can only be killed via a certain poison. Is it an evil act to do so? My DM insisted that it was: if you are Good, you do not use poison. Ever.

I didn't agree, obviously, but I figured it wasn't a big enough deal to affect our gameplay.

My point? As ever, I don't have one. Heh!

Nothing to look forward to, but a cold, dark winter....

Jason posts briefly about expecting something that isn't to be. What is he expecting? Kind of the same thing I'm wishing for. Things are a bit lonelier this December....

Geography can be fun!

Well, it can. Stop looking at me like that.

Here are some geography games you can play. Try the intermediate Place The State game, and when you finish that one, give the hard version a try. No matter how well you think you know your geography, I guarantee at some point you'll say something like, "Wow, Missouri is that far east? Who'da thunk it!"

Morals, Movies, and Michael Medved

Lynn Sislo points out critic Michael Medved's latest bit of moralistic tut-tuting about the depravity in Hollywood movies today, using the current box office totals to illustrate just how much Hollywood just doesn't get it:

National Treasure, a surprise box office hit from Hollywood, demonstrates once again the embarrassing gap between cultural elite and the general public.

This splendid adventure movie starring Nicholas Cage drew overwhelmingly negative reviews, and leading critics even predicted its commercial failure. Ordinary moviegoers, however, have expressed gratitude for the film — a clever romp with a patriotic heart and a family friendly "PG-rating," spinning an enjoyable yarn about a treasure map left by the founding fathers on the back of the Declaration of Independence.

Well, Medved doesn't provide any citation of critics who predicted the film's failure, for one thing. Nor does he provide any backing for his statement that National Treasure has made "twice what the experts said it would" -- which experts? I'm sure some did, but so what? Few of the critics I read ever bother to offer predictions as to what's going to be a hit and what's not, since (a) they've been around long enough to know that you can't predict this stuff, and (b) they know that their job is to give their opinion as to what should be a hit, not what will be a hit. In fact, my favorite critic, Roger Ebert, has long admonished readers to pay no attention to the horse-race nature of the box office results.

But also, Medved doesn't provide any kind of context for his scathing mention of the "cultural elite" -- who is it? Is it the Hollywood that actually made a film like National Treasure? The mainstream company, Pixar, that made the current hit The Incredibles? What independent "cultural elite" company made The Polar Express?

Medved's piece is just idiotic. There have always been plenty of family-friendly movies, most of which actually do tank at the box office. Quick: who's seen Whale Rider? A Little Princess? The Secret Garden? How many families, starved for wholesome entertainment, bothered to track down screenings of The Iron Giant or Spirited Away? The idea that there is a great untapped market out there is an endearing myth -- if the market really existed, then surely that market would snap up the tons of available product in droves. The market doesn't do that.

And that's probably the dumbest thing about Medved's article: the attempt to discern some kind of cultural trend, or at least a black eye for the "cultural elite", because -- gasp! -- the critics panned a movie that turned out to be popular. Well, anyone who's ever actually perused the box office returns knows that this isn't a new phenomenon; in fact, it's almost a given that at least two of the top five movies in any given week's box office results will be films that the critics hated. And it's been that way forever: just look at the current all-time box office champs. There are more than a few movies in there that I don't recall the critics exactly admired. I'll bet Medved himself even panned a few of them. (Hell, The Phantom Menace is number five, and the critics and the audiences alike hated that film!)

Try again, Michael.

(And btw, I have every intention of renting National Treasure when it comes out on DVD.)

Is this the week when I love Gregg Easterbrook, or the week when I hate him?

I read Gregg Easterbrook's Tuesday Morning Quarterback column at NFL.com faithfully, even though Easterbrook often will say something so outlandish that I wonder how he can possibly believe it. (Kevin Drum caught him doing it elsewhere, recently.) Easterbrook's column for this week is a real keeper, because about halfway through he stops talking about football for just a moment to provide some hilarious commentary on the transcript of some self-anointed "psychic" who did cold-readings by telephone on the Larry King Show. It's great stuff -- and a little depressing when you realize that plenty of folks aren't at all dissuaded from their beliefs in psychics by stuff like this.

(Easterbrook's columns are long and don't provide any internal anchor links, so just do a search for the text "Larry King" and start reading from that point, if you're totally uninterested in the football stuff.)

Great Love Dialogue, #2

(First installment here)

Continuing my sporadic exploration of Love as expressed through dialogue, be it in movies, on TV, or in books, I turn my attention to what I have often insisted is the single greatest teen romance film ever made, Say Anything.

For those of you who haven't seen the film -- and why you wouldn't is totally beyond me -- our hero is Lloyd Dobbler, a graduating high-school senior whose career plans involve kickboxing and spending as much time with Diane Court as possible. Diane is the beautiful valedictorian who has spent so much of her time in her studies and activities that nobody in the school knows her. Lloyd asks Diane out, she says yes almost on a whim, and one of the most touching romances I've ever seen in a movie ensues.

As you might expect from a screenplay written by Cameron Crowe, Say Anything is teeming with wonderful dialogue. Its single most familiar line is probably Lloyd's post-breakup expression of heartsickness, "I gave her my heart, and she gave me a pen", but there are any number of lines or exchanges that I like better. First, there's this definition of a "date", as provided by one of Lloyd's female friends:

A date is pre-arrangement, with the possibility for love.

A little while later, Lloyd is escorting Diane home from their first date, and this exchange lays the groundwork for their ongoing relationship:

DIANE: So what's your job this summer?

LLOYD: Job? Being a great date.

DIANE: No, I'm serious.

LLOYD: So am I. I want to see you again. I want to see you as much as I
can before you leave. (congratulatory, to himself)I said it!

DIANE: I only have something like sixteen weeks.

LLOYD: Sixteen weeks is a long time.

DIANE: Then call me tomorrow.

LLOYD: Today is tomorrow.

DIANE: Then call me later.

Later in the film, Diane and Lloyd break up as a subplot involving Diane's father and some illegal financial deeds plays out. But Diane goes back to Lloyd, returning to him as he is practicing his kickboxing. She tells Lloyd that she loves him, and that she needs him. Before returning her kiss, he says this:

One more question, you're here because you need someone or 'cause
you need me?

But he only holds this thought for a second or two before saying:

Forget it. I don't care.

And he takes her into his embrace anyway. I love that: the idea that love renders some questions completely inoperative, not in a way that you don't ask them because you're afraid of the answers, but in a way that you no longer need to even ask the question.

It will forever mystify me just how the American Film Institute managed to omit Say Anything in its list of 100 Years, 100 Passions. They do include a Cameron Crowe film at #100, Jerry McGuire, but as much as I love that movie as well, it's nowhere near the romance that Say Anything is.

Sh-boom, sh-boom --

A while back I suffered a fit of Football Fan's Anger after a loss by the Buffalo Bills, which led me to re-dub them "the Buffalo Shitty Bills", or ShiBills for short. Now, it's pretty rare for me to suffer a fit of Football Fan's Anger (FFA, for short), since my view is generally that thinking about football is best done on Sunday afternoons, Monday mornings at work when you catch up with the coworkers who are fans, and possibly Monday nights, if the Monday Night Football offering interests you. I've lost a lot of my ability to understand people who can dissect a football game for days after it is played. Nevertheess, I don't much regret this particular fit of mine, since at the time the ShiBills actually were playing in downright lousy manner.

In the earlier post, I outline one absolute minimum requirement for me to abandon the ShiBills moniker, and return them to being the Bills. That requirement is simply for the ShiBills to win four games in a row. Four consecutive W's strikes me as a reasonable number for a non-crappy team to attain, and since no NFL team ever plays four in a row at home, to get four wins in a row a team would have to win on the road, something which the ShiBills hadn't done in quite some time at the point of that post.

Well, now the ShiBills are just one win away from achieving Bills-hood in this space, after they outlasted the Miami Dolphins 42-32 yesterday. Strange thing is, I don't think the game was even that close. I'm not going to recap everything, since there are plenty of places one can look for that kind of thing. I will note that even when the ShiBills fell behind 24-14 in the second quarter, I never really worried. I don't know if this was burgeoning confidence in my team because of the way they've played in recent weeks, or if this was simply refusal on my part to take the Dolphins seriously. Maybe a bit of both.

Observations about the game itself? Not many -- it was pretty straightforward. Rookie receiver Lee Evans is blossoming very nicely, and next year he ought to be a barnburner. Drew Bledsoe continues to impress with his arm (four TDs versus zero INTs); Will McGahee continues to show flashes of brilliance as a running back; the ShiBills still can't generate pressure on opposing QBs without blitzing (a fact which will hurt them before long). This was a good old-fashioned fun game to watch, the way all the Bills-Dolphins matchups used to be. Too bad so many Florida football "lovers" decided to dress as empty seats at the stadium.

A Moment of "D'oh"!

Knowledge of this site a few years back might have saved me more than a few mornings -- and, well, days -- in which I went about my business looking like the mutant child of a test-tube mingling of the gene pools of Grizzly Adams and Drew Carey. I'm just sayin'.

IMAGE OF THE WEEK

I'm not reproducing this week's Image of the Week here, because it's actually...well, it's...heck, I can't describe this thing except to note that it's a Flash-driven animation, as opposed to a static image. Just go here, wait for it to load, follow its directions, and then do your best Keanu-like "Whoaaaa…."

(via He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named-Lest-He-Stop-Modulating.)

Sunday Burst of Weirdness

People are always trying to lose weight before their next vacation...but if you fancy the idea of vacationing in a famine-wracked sub-Saharan African country, the weight-loss is part of the deal!

(via Mr. Sun.)

Alas, poor Barry....

I must admit that I'm disappointed by the increasing likelihood -- which is teetering on "bedrock certainty" -- that Barry Bonds has been using steroids for years, and probably knowingly, too. Bonds has been my favorite baseball player since his days with the Pittsburgh Pirates, and unlike some Pirates fans, I've never begrudged him his decision to leave for more money elsewhere (in San Francisco). Back in 1989 or 1990, the Pirates had to already know that they couldn't keep their entire stellar outfield (Bonds, Bobby Bonilla, Andy Van Slyke) together for long, so they could have made sure that wrapped Bonds up with a long-term contract. Instead, they signed Van Slyke, who was gone a few years later anyway. Oops.

But to know at last that Bonds has been cheating, if what he's been using really is an illegal substance, is disappointing to me on a lot of levels. As the Distinguished Mr. Jones points out, should his steroid-enhanced musculature lead to an asterisk beside his record of 73 home runs in a single season? Maybe. Maybe not. And it still seems clear to me that unless Bonds gets banned from baseball, he's still a Hall-of-Famer. His accomplishments even before he became He-Man were lofty enough for the Hall, I think. (And Mike of Mike's Baseball Rants makes the point that there are a number of other factors in Bonds's offensive production -- and offensive production as a whole -- in Major League Baseball besides steroid use.)

The question now is, of course, what did Bonds know and when did he know it. It seems laughable that Bonds, a guy with a reputation for being quite the control freak about his body, would blindly use some supplement without finding out what it was. My suspicion is that one of two things happened:

1. He knew, front and center, and is lying through his teeth.

2. He didn't know, but he knew that something was probably hinky about the whole thing. Here I envision his trainer or source or mule or whomever saying something like, "I've got this great new muscle cream for you. Don't worry about what's in it. Oh, it's legal, of course! just don't ask, though. It'll be better for your image if you can honestly claim you didn't know what was in it." In this case, he's not lying through his teeth, but he's being deliberately negligent, which is almost as bad. It would be the old "Just don't ask too many questions" thing.

Option #2 would be bad; option #1 would be a disaster. But would it completely invalidate Bonds's career (or at least the last five years of it)? I don't think so, really. But it would still be disappointing. It wouldn't matter, really, if an asterisk is placed behind Bonds's name in all the record books, because in most people's minds, that asterisk is already there.

(BTW, I wish I could remember where I read it, but I seem to recall seeing somewhere that steroids wouldn't have that much effect on a power hitter, since the relevant ability isn't the amount of force one can deliver with the bat but rather the speed of the bat, and steroids wouldn't have much effect, if any at all, on bat speed. I have no idea if this is pure hooey or not, though -- anyone else?)

Hmmmmm....

Apropos of nothing, I haven't seen that "Ask a blogger five questions" meme make the rounds lately....it usually seems to show up somewhere every six to eight months or so.