Movies: I like 'em

Here are some reactions to movies I've seen lately, either in theaters or in the friendly confines of Casa Jaquandor via the miracle of DeeVeeDee. I don't shy away from spoilers, so if I discuss a title you want to remain unspoiled, scroll past it, please.

:: As part of The Daughter's Christmas present, we took her to see Enchanted. I'm not sure if this movie was the result of a re-commitment to quality at Disney, or the unexpected resurfacing of the kind of quirky humor that marked the occasional Disney effort like The Emperor's New Groove, but we all found this film totally, utterly delightful. It's sort of like Shrek in that it riffs on the various tropes of all the classic animated films of yesteryear, but it differs from the Shreks of the world in that it treats its tropes with some reverence, choosing to play with those tropes, as opposed to making fun of them.

The story is pretty straightforward: through the machinations of your standard Evil Witch Queen, our beautiful Princess (who communicates through peppy song with the animal denizens of her woodland home) is transported to the Real World, where she continues to interact with the world in the only way she knows how, by bursting into song and by being so peppy and happy that most people around her start to think she's crazy. She meets a single father and his only-child daughter and quickly becomes an integral part of their lives. Meanwhile her Handsome Prince comes to our world as well, trying to find her, and eventually the Evil Witch Queen shows up too, for one of those final confrontations that involves the threat of plummeting from a great height.

Nothing at all happens in this movie that will come as any kind of surprise to anyone who's seen a classic Disney flick or two, but that's not the point, is it? The pleasure comes not from surprises, but in watching a man of our cynical world enter the typical plotline of an animated movie, such as his reaction to the Princess's ability to summon the animals of the real world to help her clean his apartment, or his constant mortification when she reacts to every emotional moment with a song ("You're not gonna sing again, are you?") The movie sets the tone right from the very beginning, when in classic Disney fashion, the first shot is of a large storybook opening to the first page of our tale.

Of course, a movie like this can also only succeed on the strength of its songs, and the team of Alan Menken and Steven Schwarz makes it all happen nicely, especially with the wonderful Central Park showstopper, "That's How You Know".

A funny thing happened when we saw Enchanted, by the way: as you might expect, the theater was full of families with children, merrily watching the show. Well, a minute or two into the live action portion of the movie, a woman comes into the theater and sits down at the end of our row, five or six seats down from me. There she sits through this happy, peppy Disney flick for about fifteen minutes before she leans over to me and says, "Is this Enchanted?" When I said yes, she got up, saying, "I thought I was in the wrong theater." I don't know what movie she'd meant to see. Maybe the current Saw sequel? Who knows? I just found it funny that it took her that long to figure out that she wasn't seeing the movie she'd meant to see.

:: Way back in 1982, my mother took me to my first-ever R-rated movie, Blade Runner. This was on the basis of my youthful fascination with all things Harrison Ford. I didn't get the movie, at all; I sort of understood the plot ("OK, Ford's a cop of some sort, and he has to round up these evil androids called "replicants" who are on the loose. Gotcha."), but for the life of me I didn't get the whole setting or mood of the film. My experiences with science fiction to that point had involved Star Wars, Star Trek, and a few books by Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov. I was not prepared for the murky dystopia of Blade Runner, and I really didn't get the notion that Los Angeles in 2019 would look like how I'd always envisioned Tokyo. But for the most part, I didn't really get into the story all that much.

I didn't watch Blade Runner again until college, when again I had gained a bit of appreciation for the film's production design, but again, the story left me a bit cold. The characters just weren't that interesting to me, and I still couldn't get all that emotionally involved in the story. I saw the movie a couple of times during the 1990s, with mostly the same results, but I hadn't seen it in probably ten years before a couple of weeks ago, when I watched Blade Runner: The Final Cut.

I'm warming up to the movie a bit more, but it's still something of a tough nut for me to crack. I've watched and read more noir since the last time I watched it, so I understand the film's tropes more than ever before, but still, I'm damned if I don't find it hard to really like Blade Runner still, rather than merely admiring it. I think it comes down to Rick Deckard, about whom we learn almost nothing in the course of the film. Everybody else has something of an explanatory backstory, motivations that are clear and easily understood, but I have almost no idea what drives Deckard. Maybe this is what drives the continual debate in fan circles as to whether Deckard is a replicant or not, but for me, it just makes it hard to care about him, one way or the other.

Anyway, Blade Runner is still an amazing movie to watch and to listen to (Vangelis's best film score). I just wish it had a more involving story.

:: Saturday Night Fever tends to get made fun of more often than not these days; it's always seen less as the coming-of-age story of a troubled young man than as "that disco movie", which is a shame. I'd only seen it once before, ten years or so ago, when it aired on TBS in a heavily sanitized version. Watching it in its original R-rated version for the first time, I was impressed at what a dark, grim, and cynical film it is. Disco is seen these days as a vaguely ridiculous detour that pop culture took for a few years there, a funny little thing that is seen as amusing for its camp value than anything else. It doesn't help that many movies that featured disco sequences treated disco the same way; Saturday Night Fever is probably the only movie made during the brief heyday of disco that actually took disco seriously.

(OK, I know you're all wondering: No, I'm not a fan of disco. But I find it hard to blow off disco completely, at the same time. It wasn't all crap. Most of it, probably, and as a music genre, disco had virtually nowhere to go other than right back out the door it came in, but there's still some vibrancy to be found in those throbbing beats and aggressive synths and sex-filled lyrics.)

John Travolta's Tony Manero is quite the creation, and it's a worthy reminder of what a potent force Travolta finds it in himself to be, every once in a while. Tony is at once insecure and utterly confident. The famous opening sequence of the film, with Tony strutting along the sidewalks of Brooklyn, displays the contrasts within Tony in just a few short minutes. He makes eyes at the ladies and struts as though he owns this town, and yet he's carrying a gallon of paint. He stops to put a down payment on a new shirt, as opposed to buying it outright, and also stops for a couple of slices of pizza, which he then folds together and eats with one hand. And then he comes back into his workplace, the hardware store, via the back door so his waiting customer won't see that he had to go to a place down the street to buy her the paint she wants.

Tony alternates between being likable and being loathsome. He and his friends are sexist, racist, and homophobic. They treat women as disposable objects, and yet Tony finds himself drawn for reasons he can't even begin to explain to a woman he sees dancing one night. His friends are absolute jerks, and they draw Tony into some gang-type activity; they basically gang-rape the poor Donna Pescow character, whose biggest error is to be in love with Tony, and afterwards, Tony bluntly informs her that it's her fault. One of his friends spends much of the movie agonizing over the fact that he has impregnated a girl in one of his back-seat-of-the-car escapades, but he's not agonizing so much for what he's done as for the fact that, as a "good" Catholic, he now has to marry her. In the end, he may or may not commit suicide. I like that the film leaves this point unclarified; as Tony tells the cop afterwards, "There are ways of killing yourself without killing yourself."

What I liked most about Saturday Night Fever, ultimately, is its general lack of story. I've rarely seen a film that does what this one does: it enters a life, follows that life for a while, and then exits that life, without ever establishing some kind of lesson to be learned or even much indicating whether a lesson has been learned at all. Tony Manero has clearly grown a bit in the course of the film, but as the credits roll, it's unclear as to where he goes from here or if he will continue to grow.

As for all the disco stuff, frankly, I found that once I was involved in the world of the movie, the disco stuff became just what's it's ever been: movie dancing.

(I'm told that Staying Alive, the sequel to Saturday Night Fever, is a ghastly movie, well and truly bad. I think I'll be taking the word of those who say so.)

:: Finally, we have A Prairie Home Companion. I've been a casual, even occasional, fan of Garrison Keillor's radio show for years, and I've been listening to it more often over the last year, ever since a shift in the scheduling of radio programs on Buffalo's public radio stations has relieved the former situation that had Fiona Ritchie's Thistle and Shamrock Celtic music show airing at the same time as Keillor's PHC. I've long enjoyed Keillor's brand of humor on that show, and I looked forward to the film on that basis. The conceit of the movie is that a major corporate entity of some sort has bought all the radio stations and the theater in which the show is performed, and the film presents the final airing of A Prairie Home Companion. Nevertheless, the show must go on, much as it always has, without maudlin retrospectives and the like.

That's about all I knew of the movie before I watched it, although I quickly discovered some differences between the show in the movie and the show as it actually is. For one thing, one of the radio program's recurring characters, private eye Guy Noir, is a flesh-and-blood character in the movie, who does security for the Prairie Home Companion tapings. As the performance begins, the show as depicted in the movie is pretty much what we all expect, although the camera slides in and out of the performance as it's transpiring onstage and into and out of the lives of the people who work hard to put the show on in the first place. The main attraction here are the singing sisters, Rhonda and Yolanda, one of whom (I don't recall which) is played by Meryl Streep and the other by Lily Tomlin. These two actresses have pretty wonderful chemistry together, and I hope they can get together onscreen again at some point. (I confess to not being the biggest Meryl Streep fan in the world, but here she's just brilliant, and it turns out the she has a very good singing voice.)

Backstage films like this are a favorite genre of mine, and it occurs to me that this is kind of what I'd hoped Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip would be. The film is full of sly details about the production of a radio show: the way that performers hold off-the-air conversations right up until the very second they're on the air, at which point they effortlessly slide into character, the way performers interact with one another despite the fact that their facial expressions cannot be seen by the vast majority of people hearing the show. At one point, as Rhonda and Yolanda begin a song together, the one played by Lily Tomlin covers her mike with her hand, turns to the band, and says, "Not so slow this time, you sons-on-bitches, or I'll break your necks." And best of all? None of the bandmates so much as twitches in response. The Prairie Home Companion radio program has been on for years, done each week by the same group of devoted performers, and the Prairie Home Companion movie, while using some of those performers, adds others with star casting – the afore-mentioned Streep and Tomlin, as well as Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly. And the actors who are merely playing longtime PHC performers actually pull off the illusion. Lindsay Lohan is along for the ride as well,

If that was all there was to PHC, it would be a decently entertaining movie. But that's not all there is to it: there's a strong supernatural element as well, which seems a staggeringly odd thing to find in a film of a radio show, but there it is. Into the middle of the theater walks a blond woman in a white trenchcoat, and she turns out to be the former soul, now an angel, of a woman who died in a car crash when she failed to negotiate a curve because she'd been laughing at a joke she'd heard on the radio...on Prairie Home Companion. Her presence turns the film from a bittersweet tale of the end of a radio institution into a deeply touching meditation on the nature of death.

This film will, I think, linger for a while in my thoughts. I'll consider it as I enjoy a slice of Beeboparebop Rhubarb Pie.

Sentential Links #128

And away we goooooo!

:: Coming to America may be the Blackest comedy ever made, and it’s little touches like McDowell’s that elevate it past the mild amusement it seems to garner from White viewers into the upper echelon of hilarity it occupies for us. It crushes us under the weight of familiarity, to the point where a musical cue or a mere image is enough to inspire raucous laughter. There are so many in-jokes that the film is like an old Negro Spiritual: everybody can hear the music, but only we can understand the code in the words. (I love Coming to America; for me, it's Eddie Murphy's best comedy, edging out Trading Places.)

:: Everyone usually expresses such polite jealousy when they hear I freelance full time. And to be honest, I used to as well. But now sometimes I think the idea that people have built up in their heads is of a lifestyle that might as well include half-naked servants feeding the freelancer grapes. (You mean the lifestyle of a freelancer isn't like that? Oh noes!!)

:: There's something utterly true about Advent and Lent, Good Friday and Ash Wednesday. Some days are dark. Some seasons are times of desolation. Someday your life will end. And yet: ashes signify not only desolation but also renewal, not only sorrow but also the hope of joy, not only death, but also transformation.

:: The stars are aligning too much for me to ignore them any more. I'm on a Jane Austen kick and I can't help it.

:: Here is a picture of two bald, middle aged white men at the makeshift Obama for America headquarters here at Rotus Ranch.

:: It's true, lutefisk is more popular in the United States than in Norway. What the hell are they doing with it? They're not eating it are they? Is it because it' a cheap alternative to colonic irrigation? Seriously, how do you advertise this stuff? (OK, this isn't specifically a blog post, but still, here it is. I went to college with people from Minnesota and Wisconsin, and thus folks who knew what lutefisk is all about. Not one of them liked it, or would admit it, but they all said the same thing: "It's this incredibly nasty stuff that my grandmother makes." Link via SamuraiFrog, who's been linking the hell out me lately, so thanks to him! I loves me the GoogleJuice.)

:: Here's a shocking truth: a lot of so-called "A-list" celebrities don't have what it takes to succeed in voice acting, because it's an entirely different set of skills, and an entirely different work ethic. It's hard, and it's competitive, and it's not someplace "down on their luck actors with distinct voices" go when they can't go anywhere else. To imply otherwise is an insult to the actors whose voices bring these characters to life. I find that truly offensive.

:: Let's talk about last night's House episode for a bit. (You know, there's something about stories set partially at the South Pole that always trips up on the logistics front. I think of the X-Files movie, where Mulder is somehow able to get from Washington, DC to the South Pole all by himself in a span of time about twenty-four hours long, or something like that.)

:: "Your children will grow up in a world with two suns. You'll be able to tell them of the time when there was only one bright star, and people feared the night. Someday the children of the new sun will meet the children of the old. I think they will be our friends. You can tell your children of the day when everyone looked up and realized that we were only tenants of this world." (Ah Geez, Roy Scheider died. That's sad. I think he's been a pretty underrated actor for a long time.)

And that's all for now. Tune in again next week!

123

I got tagged with the "123 Meme", which goes thusly:

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

OK, here we go. As it happens, I have a small bookshelf immediately adjacent the computer table, so I consider every book on that shelf to be the "nearest book". That being the case, I figure I should choose something fairly odd, so here it is: for this meme-thing I'm using The Book of the SubGenius: The Sacred Teachings of J.R. "Bob" Dobbs.



I bought this book years ago, in my "Collecting books on all manner of very weird subjects" phase, a phase which included my purchasing of many books on conspiracy theory and UFOs and the like. (Not that I've ever believed in any such, but it's terribly fun to think about. Kind of like ghosts and stuff in Stephen King novels and X-Files episodes.) I've never read Book of the SubGenius all the way through, but I've thumbed through it on occasion. It's a lot of gonzo fun, and I'm not totally convinced there's not something to it all; surely we could all use more Slack!

But anyway, back to the Meme-thing in progress. Assuming that I start counting with the first full sentence -- i.e., not counting the sentence carried over from the preceding page 122 -- here are the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth sentences as they appear in the book:

BE READY.) [Sentence #5 comes in a parenthetical note. -Me]

What we envision for these dark days, when most others are starving, is a healthy feudal system in which all fit male and female SebGeniuses are warrior thug-serfs for "Bob". How can any potential OverMan or ÜberLady entertain teh faitnest hopes of surviving the End Times without "Bob"? Yes, "Bob " will be in Dallas then and you'll want to be where "Bob" is if you want tickets to the Rescue Ships from Planet X... so why not serve under him and his chosen representatives on Earth while you STILL CAN???

Wow. Suddenly I'm wanting to read this thing all the way through. I think the secret answers I've been looking for may have been on my bookshelf the entire time!

And now, to tag people. Hmmmmm...normally I don't tag people, but here are some that might be disposed. Or might not. They're a temperamental bunch.

Erin, Jennifer, SamuraiFrog, (It's not "No Meme Month" on my calendar!), Tosy and Cosh, and Lynn.

And there you have it.

Big Media Me

I have an article in today's Buffalo News. Quiver, mere mortals.

(I'm keeping this post at the top of the page for today, so that you may all bask in my reflected glory.)

(OK, I know that my reflected glory isn't much to bask in, but you know, you can just pretend.)

Save the last dance....

I think I'm going to file this news story away in my brain for the next time I have a disagreement with The Wife. Seriously, this may be the most horrible thing I've ever read. Wow. I can't imagine that happening...with all eyes on you, the husband.

Those of you with spouses, go hug him or her. Those of you with significant others who may become spouses, do likewise. You just never know, do you?

Sunday Burst of Weirdness

Good stuff this week:

:: First, a couple of photo-blogs that aren't exactly "weird" in the sense of "Wow, that's really weird!", but in the sense of, "Hmmm, interesting notion for a blog." First is the Fail Blog, which is a collection of those photos of failure, usually either impending or actually unfolding, helpfully captioned thusly:



And then there's the The Signage of Negative Space, which features photos of illuminated signs whose forms involve dark shaping over backlighting, like this:



"Negative space" in art is an interesting thing. I remember years ago reading an interview with comics artist and writer John Byrne, when he was working on the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths relaunch of Superman, and he indicated that the only way he'd ever been able to draw the classic Superman insignia was not to draw the actual 'S' but rather the negative spaces involved. Anyhow, moving on....

:: Sticking with signage, Heavy Metal Redneck has a photophoto of fairly creepy bit of signage that is apparently part of a whole series of signs gracing Owasso, Oklahoma. I've decided that I want to move to Owasso, since this is clearly a town where all other problems have been solved.

(But really, this notion that putting up signs helps correct negative behaviors is one of the enduring mistakes that our civilization makes. If this really worked, surely we could win the War on Terror (tm) by simply plastering the entire Middle East with signage reading, "Blowing things up is forbidden and won't work anyway.")

Link via Lynn, who has some kind of relation to Heavy Metal Redneck.

:: Still sticking with signage, and again via Lynn, here's a place that will apparently convert your used clothes into...well, go look. This would seem to violate so many laws, both moral and physical, that you have to wonder how this joint's not a smoking crater by now.

:: Hmmmm.

Snicker.

Snicker snicker.

Chuckle.

Chuckle chuckle.

Guffaw.

Guffaw guffaw guffaw.

Hee hee...heh heh heh....

BWAAA-HAAAA-HAAA-HAHAHAHAHA!!!

Oh my stars and garters, another one! BWAAA-HAAAA-HAAA-HAHAHAHAHA!!!

Oh heavens! Super Bowl XLII is the gift that keeps on giving!!

(Both links via Kissing Suzy Kolber, which is laced with R-rated content, often directed squarely at the NFL team from New England. If you're offended by such, don't go there. Trust me.)

Drink up me hearties!

So in the last month we've finally caught up on our Johnny Depp swashbuckler viewing by watching the second and third Pirates of the Caribbean movies, Dead Man's Chest and At World's End. Prevailing opinion of these movies, so far as I can tell, is that each could have been an hour shorter, each is a mess with too much incomprehensible plot, each consists of a couple of large-scale action set pieces surrounded by boring scenes in which characters continually doublecross each other. In fact, the one word that seems common to nearly every review of these two movies I've read is "mess". Ouch. They must really be bad, right?

Well, wouldn't you know it: I love the two sequels, I found the plots of each fairly easy to follow, and I wasn't in the least bit confused by all the apparent switching of loyalties. Go figure. These aren't great movies, but they're really very good, in my view. I can't see why so many people hated them.

I don't understand the critiques of the films from a story point of view, at least as far as the claims that there isn't enough story to sustain the films and that the second movie is nothing more than set-up for the third. Well, DMC is designed to lead directly into AWE, so of course it's a large set-up: it's literally one-half of a story, with the other half contained in AWE. The PotC movies are less like, say, the Indiana Jones or James Bond films, each of which contains a single story that has no bearing on the next. They're more like the Star Wars or Lord of the Rings movies, in which they are intended clearly to serve as parts of a larger whole. Since DMC is the first half of a story, to say that it's set-up for the third movie is actually praise rather than complaint: the movie does its job well.

So what of that larger whole, anyway? I genuinely didn't have much problem with it. Some stuff isn't handled as well as it should be, but for the most part, I was never totally confused by the machinations of the story, even when characters start betraying one another and apparently switching sides. I say "apparently" because, for all the double-crossing that goes on, the actual motivations of the characters never changes, which is nice: they're always acting toward the same goal. Will Turner's actions are driven first by his desire to be free to marry Elizabeth, and then by his desire to free his father from Davy Jones's servitude. Captain Jack Sparrow's actions are always driven by his desire to be free, and by the fact that he defines his freedom in terms of having a ship such that he can always sail wherever he wishes. Now, it may be the case that the various motivations aren't always cleared up right away, and sometimes when they really should be, but they're there. Basically, I found that the characters stay true to themselves throughout, which is something I appreciate.

Taking the two films separately, I can certainly see how the plots can be seen as convoluted, but really, they aren't that complicated after all. Jack's actions at the beginning of DMC are explained soon enough: he became Captain through making a bargain with Davy Jones, who raised the Black Pearl from the ocean floor for Jack to command, with the proviso that after thirteen years of being Captain, Jack would owe Davy Jones one hundred years of servitude aboard the Flying Dutchman, a bargain Jack is clearly eager to circumvent; this he plans to do by capturing the Dead Man's Chest, which contains the very heart of Davy Jones. Leverage. Captain Jack Sparrow is always all about leverage.

Meanwhile, Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann are to be married, but they are arrested for piracy instead by Lord Cutler Beckett, the new Big Cheese in the Caribbean. Will is offered freedom in exchange for retrieving Jack's compass, which we later learn points in the direction of whatever one wants most; meanwhile, Elizabeth escapes and goes after Will, not understanding why he's left without telling her where he was going.

What's so confusing about this? Nothing that I can see, really, but the film does derail itself a bit with a lengthy set-piece that involves an escape from a tribe of cannibals. Maybe that bothers some viewers, but I didn't have much difficulty with this either, as the whole sequence is nicely in keeping with the gonzo action sequences of the first film. (I particularly love the double-take both sets of pirate prisoners do when they realize that there's really no reason for both groups to survive and escape to the Pearl.)

I don't need to go into the plot details beyond that, but I note that it's not all that hard to follow, and with one admittedly large exception, just about everything that happens actually gets explained at some point. Why do Jack Sparrow, Will Turner, and James Norrington all want the Dead Man's Chest? Who is Tia Dalma, and why does she have the presumed-dead Captain Barbossa ready at hand? Why is she already apparently planning a voyage to World's End, to save Jack Sparrow? Why is Lord Beckett trying to get Jack's compass? Why is Davy Jones always playing emotionally-laden music on the organ in his quarters? What is the significance of his locket? All of this is explained, and within the dense and happily gonzo mythology the PotC writers have created, it all fits together pretty nicely. With the exception of a couple of action sequences, just about everything that happens in these movies actually leads on to the next thing. Fine by me. Sometimes the movies take their sweet time in explaining why one thing leads to the next thing, but that's not the same thing as not explaining it at all.

I also loved how the afore-mentioned gonzo mythology of the film draws from all manner of sea lore, with great sea monsters, buried treasures, curses, a ghost ship called the Flying Dutchman, Davy Jones's locker being a real place belonging to a very real Davy Jones, and so on. I loved the design of the creatures, from the skeletal cursed crew of the Black Pearl in the first movie to the men of the Dutchman, who are gradually becoming one with the sea and are thus taking on the appearance of all the creatures of the ocean. I loved how many of the minor moments of the first movie came into play in the later films: that one guy's wooden eye, the way that Will gets Jack out of a prison cell, and so on. The visuals of these films are magnificent, with every ship seeming to move through real water with very real weight, and Gore Verbinski's direction of the action sequences is extremely well-handled. In the final "Maelstrom" sequence of AWE, all hell is breaking loose, and yet Verbinski keeps everything clear to the point where the sequence is very easily followed. I never found any of the action sequences hard to follow, and it's these kinds of sequences that are the hardest to get right.

So, what else? Most commentators I've read have mentioned that Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley are barely adequate in the films, but I generally had little problem with them, so there's that. As for the other actors, I loved all but one. We'll get to that in a minute, but first the good: if they make more of these movies, focusing on Captain Jack Sparrow, I could watch Johnny Depp playing him forever. I nearly cheered at the end of DMC when Captain Barbossa was revealed to be very much alive; one great thing about AWE is the way Barbossa becomes one of our heroes, as opposed to one of our villains, and yet he remains the same character. He hasn't had a change of heart; it's the allegiances of everyone around him that have changed. That was great, and Geoffrey Rush could play Barbossa for life, as far as I'm concerned, as well.

The films also have a lot of fine dialogue, with lots of exchanges that gave me pleasure. This, between Jack Sparrow and Barbossa, when they are standing beside the body of the dead kraken, really stood out in my ear:

BARBOSSA: Still thinkin' of running, Jack? Think you can outrun the world? You know the problem with being the last of anything, by and by there be none left at all.

JACK SPARROW: Sometimes things come back mate. We're livin' proof, you and me.

BARBOSSA: Aye, but that's a gamble of long odds, ain't it? There's never a guarantee of comin' back. But passin' on, that's dead certain.

JACK SPARROW: Summoning the brethren court then, is it?

BARBOSSA: It's our only hope, lad.

JACK SPARROW: That's a sad commentary in and of itself.

BARBOSSA: The world used to be a bigger place.

JACK SPARROW: World's still the same. There's just less in it.

"There's just less in it." What a great sentiment, and what a perfect line for Captain Jack Sparrow, a man who would rather live free in a world where he can die in the grasp of a vicious "beastie" like Davy Jones's kraken than any other. Jack is mourning the monster who killed him. I loved that.

Another great bit of casting is Bill Nighy as Davy Jones. His face is obscured by the visual effects of the tentacles they give him, but he is still able to emote strongly with his eyes, and it's clear that the facial expressions of his tentacled mug are models on the real expressions he made at the time, so much so that I found him totally believable as a character. His performance here is along the lines of Andy Serkis as Gollum in the Lord of the Rings films: even though we see almost nothing of the actual man, he gives a full-on performance through and through, as the man fearsome enough to make Captain Jack Sparrow afraid. And as long as I'm on the subject of Davy Jones, he's really a great character, a man who has become somewhat twisted and refused to carry on his duties as Captain of the Dutchman in his bitterness over his doomed love for Calypso. The scene between him and her in the hold of the Pearl is a really good scene: he demands to know why she wasn't there for him when she'd said she would be, and she replies, "It is my nature." Isn't that the truth? The beautiful sea has been betraying sailors ever since men first put boats into water. There's quite a lot of insight in these films that slides right by, almost unnoticed.

So who, then, is the weak link in the cast whom I mention above? Sadly, it's a big one, and it's probably the biggest reason I think that the PotC sequels miss the mark of being potentially great adventure movies. It's the guy who plays the main villain of the two films, Lord Cutler Beckett. I can't remember the name of the actor, and that's the problem: he's as white-bread a villain as you'll find, basically using two facial expressions and a British accent to establish his villainy. This is a person who aspires to ruling over all the seas of the world, and he is brazen enough to take command over Davy Jones himself, and he's played by one of the blandest actors I've ever seen. He's supposed to be the virtual equal of Captain Jack Sparrow, having been the man who branded the Captain a pirate, and yet, the actor is blown off the screen by Johnny Depp in their one big scene together. Heck, he's even dominated on the screen by Orlando Bloom. For this part, an actor was needed who was at least equal to Johnny Depp, and this simply didn't happen. A great adventure movie needs a great villain. This one could have had a great villain, but it didn't. (Aside from Davy Jones.)

The failure of Lord Beckett isn't just the actor's fault, though; the script leaves him too blank. We learn that Beckett and Jack Sparrow have a history, but we learn nothing at all of what that history is. Jack points out that his compass won't help Beckett because what Beckett most wants is Sparrow dead. This is an interesting little twist, but the obvious question -- why does Beckett want Sparrow dead – is never answered. Beckett is more cypher than character, and it hurts the film.

Other problems with AWE are smaller, but real. The freeing of Calypso from her human bonds is a good scene – Captain Barbossa's interpretation of what it means to "speak to a lover" is hysterical – but then there's a very odd bit where Calypso suddenly becomes a fifty-foot giant before exploding into a million crabs. This was just silly.

Also faulty is the nature of the final battle. While it's certainly true that we only really need to see a clash between the Black Pearl and the Flying Dutchman, since those are the two ships we're actually invested in, this needed a bit more set-up, since the film has to this point been setting up a massive battle between the pirate fleet and the English. Even worse is that there was an obvious way to do this: by resorting to the Pirate Code of the Brethren. ("I call on the right of Single Combat by ship: one vessel from each fleet. The Pearl versus your flagship." Which Beckett could then use to seize the upper hand by sending not his flagship, but the invincible Dutchman.) Truth is, as much as I loved watching these two films, they definitely could have used another run-through in the script-writing phase. A lot of necessary exposition in these movies comes at very odd times: it's from the dead Governor Swann (whose demise really should have been shown onscreen, come to that) that we first hear the fateful words "The Dutchman must have a Captain", and the explanation for Tia Dalma's resurrection of Captain Barbossa goes by in a flash, even though it makes perfect and utter sense (he's one of the Pirate Lords, and without him, she can never be freed from her human bonds as Calypso).

So the second and third PotC films are big, loud, exuberant films that feature many conflicting loyalties and actions on the part of their characters that are sometimes a bit hard to follow. But that's not the same as saying that these films are a "mess".

(I'll say something in a later post about Hans Zimmer's music for these films. Zimmer's a troublesome figure in film music.)

Unidentified Earth 26: The Return!!

OK, folks, I know it's been a while since this series was a going concern, but it's time to start that up again. So we'll start with finally identifying the last installment, which Jayme gamely placed as Vasquez Rocks, a famous natural rock formation in the Los Angeles area. How famous is it? Well, it's appeared in a lot of movies and TV shows over the years. Go look: if you've watched any Star Trek at all, you've seen Vasquez Rocks.

So anyway, now I need to come up with a new location. Problem is, I had a whole bunch of 'em saved up in my bookmarks folder, the folder that got scotched along with everything else when the Main Computer at home went temporarily belly-up a couple of weeks back. So, going "off the cuff" as it were, here's one that may be pretty easy:



Where are we? As before, rot-13 your guesses, please!

Ask Me Anything! (2008 version)

Seeing as how we're coming up on the sixth anniversary of the birth of this blog, I figured it's time to play the old game, Ask Me Anything!, in which you, the readers, get to Ask Me Anything!. So, go ahead, in comments, ask away: silly questions, profound questions, brain teaser questions, whatever. Try to trick me into saying something bad about George Lucas (it won't work), or something nice about Bill Belichick (like that'll ever happen!). I'll collect questions for a few days, maybe until Monday or Tuesday, and then I'll start answering.

So, Ask Me Anything!

(The last iteration of Ask Me Anything! can be found here.)

"Lelawala" (fiction)

Well, the winners were announced today in the Buffalo News's short story contest, and my winning streak has ended at one. Oh well...I can't even get angry at the winner, since it turns out that he and I both work for the same company, but mark my words: next year I shall crush all comers like half-rotted pistachio nuts! Even more sadly, my submission wasn't even chosen to be one of the five entries that are still alive for the "Reader's Choice" thing, but that's OK, since I've got a blog and I can therefore award my own tale the "Best Flash Fiction meeting the Requirements of the 2008 Contest Award EVER So Put That In Your Pipe and Smoke It You Goobers" Award. Huzzah!

Ahem...

Anyway, here's my entry. The requirements were these: no longer than 600 words, the story must be set in Western NY, and must include a man, a woman, and "a job offer". My tale is based on the Native American legend of the Maid of the Mist. Enjoy. I rather like the way this one turned out; I gravitate toward ambiguous tales of magic.

"Lelawala"

Handing her a cup of tea, he asked: "You said you have a job for me?"

The old woman nodded. "A woodcarving project that my husband started just before he died."

He cocked an eyebrow. "I don't do much carving anymore," he said. "It's getting hard to hold a chisel." He rubbed his arthritic fingers.

"You carved that," she said, gesturing to the item on the mantelpiece behind her. "I saw it at the Fair last month. I knew when I saw it that you were the one for this job."

He lowered his head. "I didn't want to enter it at all. My son made me do it."

"I'm glad he did," she replied, approaching the figurine on the mantel. Eight inches long: a Native American woman in a white birch canoe. Intricate carvings of animals along the sides; her gaze turned upward into the sky...or beyond. "I doubt Lelawala had red hair," she said.

The man sighed. "Artistic license. She's only a legend."

She smiled. "Maybe not. My grandmother always claimed her as an ancestor." She glanced at the framed photograph next to the carving, a photograph of a red-haired girl. "But it is a likeness, isn't it?"

The old woman's eyes compelled an answer, and he nodded. "Yes."


"Your daughter?"

"Yes."

"She died?"

"Last February," he said. "It's been hard." He didn't mention that her middle name had been Lelawala, or that he and his wife had met on the Maid of the Mist.

The woman brushed away a tear. "I had a son, once." She ran a finger along the wooden boat's painted gunwales. "I want you to carve this. Just the canoe. I need it finished by the next first day of Spring."

"Why then?"

"Because it has to be then. Will you do it?"

"By Spring? That's six months--"

"I didn't mention that the canoe is life-size," she cut in.

He gaped. "Life size?"

"Can you do it?"

He swallowed. Again her eyes compelled him, and he nodded. She smiled and drained her teacup. "I will call you with the arrangements. Thank you."

After she was gone, he wondered why he agreed. He would wonder that often, all the rest of his years.

***

The six months he had were just enough. Finally on the first day of Spring he met her on Grand Island, at sunrise, amidst the swirling mists, at the edge of the water, as she had instructed. She was so much more frail now: the result of age and leukemia. He knew what was to happen now, of course. He'd long since figured that out.

"I can't stay," he said. "I can't watch."

Her only reply was to kiss him on the cheek, and then she climbed into the boat and began paddling away from shore. The current was slow at first, but it would become soon become inexorable. He stood there watching as the mists closed about her. At the very last, a beam of young sunlight shot through and made her hair appear as though fiery red.

"Lelawala!" he shouted, but no response came. The mists closed and she was gone.

There were few tourists on Goat Island that early. It was cold and foggy, and the water was still choked with winter ice. Some thought they saw a boat, but in the fog no one could be sure, save one German tourist whose camera caught a glimpse of a red-haired maiden in the mist, riding a canoe into the embrace of mighty Niagara, the thundering waters bringing her home.

::..finis..::

Top Men

Indiana Jones, standing on some crates:



Who cares about crates? Well, remember the very last shot in Raiders of the Lost Ark...a warehouse full of crates...and what's in one of those crates....

(via)

Things I wish I'd said, #1

Here's a new series I'm starting, on the spur of the moment. It won't be a regular thing, just whenever I hear something that makes me think, "Geez, I wish I'd have said that."

A few minutes ago I was driving home from the Y, listening to Schopp and the Bulldog on WGR (Buffalo's all-sportstalk AM radio station, for you non-Buffalonians), and of course, they were talking about the Super Bowl. One thing they discussed, in passing, was the fact that Super Bowl XLII was the highest-rated Super Bowl ever, and was the second highest-rated TV show ever, ranking behind, of course, the original airing of the M*A*S*H series finale. And Schopp says: "Well, we know that the 1972 Dolphins got to pop the corks on their champagne yesterday. Do you suppose that Jamie Farr and Alan Alda pop the corks too, when they learn their show is still the highest-rated ever?"

I thought that was funny.

Sentential Links #127

As I do from time to time, all of the links in this post spring from the blogroll of a single blog, and all are blogs I've not seen before. In this case, the originating blogroll is Sheila's.

:: It's no secret that popular culture today is shite. That's why I look to the past for my entertainment.

:: Marlboro Man and I loved taking drives.

:: It's hard to believe that Burt Reynolds will be turning 72 in 10 days. (Huh-whuh?! How did that happen?)

:: Ten words I did not know were real words until I played Scrabulous: qat, ghi, hup, taw, pah, gey, ors, yoni, mana, and cowbird.

:: Egyptians one generation more ancient than the ones we usually call Ancient Egyptians perhaps thought the pyramids to be detestable eyesores on the desert skyline, and Greeks old enough to remember the good old days before poetry, medicine and architecture might have had a Prince-Charles-like disdain for the doric ‘carbuncles’ clunking up the Acropolises of their once fair country. (Come to that, I may have seen this blog before, but I like this post.)

:: Some months ago, amid casual small-talk at the office, a coworker piped up, "Hey, does anyone want my copy of Oliver Twist? I just can't get into it."

:: Like many of my generation, my first real encounter with the Looney Tunes brand of animation was on Saturday afternoons in a two-hour block on Nickelodeon, just around the dawn of Nicktoons. (OK, this scares me: there's an entire generation now that didn't encounter Looney Tunes through Saturday mornings on ABC. Wow.)

:: I checked with her, and she doesn't mind: this is the year the wife turns forty. And it only seems fair that before I leave her for a younger woman I show her a good time.

:: I care not how humble your bookshelf may be, nor how lowly the room which it adorns. Close the door of that room behind you, shut off with it all the cares of the outer world, plunger back into the soothing company of the great dead, and then you are through the magic portal into that fair land whither worry and vexation can follow you no more. You have left all that is vulgar and all that is sordid behind you. Their stand your noble, silent comrades, waiting in their ranks. (OK, it's a quote and not written by the linked blogger, but it's such a good one, and a good note on which to leave off.)

More next week.

A Weird Quiz

I don't really get this quiz, but here it is. I snagged it from SamuraiFrog [link fixed --ed.] (and I've edited out a few questions that I wouldn't answer on the basis that either positively or negatively, the answers aren't the kind of thing I blog about). The things that I've done are marked with an X. (And I don't get what the "levels" mean.

Level 1
() Smoked a cigarette.
(x) Smoked a cigar.
() Kissed a member of the same sex.
(x) Drank alcohol.

The only smoking I've ever done is a couple of cigars given me by guys I knew what they had babies. I wasn't a big fan of the whole thing. I've never taken a single drag of a cigarette.

Level 2
(x) Are/been in love.
(x) Been dumped.
(x) Shoplifted.
(x) Been fired.
() Been in a fist fight.

First one's a no-brainer, and yeah, I was dumped a few times before I found The Wife. I have shoplifted, technically, but the couple of times that's happened, it was the accidental kind where I missed something in my cart at the store and only realized it when I was loading up the vehicle outside. Each time I went back in to pay for it. Swiping something big, like a video game or a book or a wicker swing set? Nope. My last job before The Store canned me, as both a downsizing move and a "You know what, maybe a guy who hates talking on the phone shouldn't be in telesales after all" move. I was pissed at the time, but I've come to see their logic somewhat, although I will claim that their stated reason for canning me that day was complete bollocks. As far as fistfights go, there was the usual rough-housing when I was a kid, so I won't count that. No Clint Eastwood-style barroom brawls for me.

Level 3
(x) Had a crush on an older person.
(x) Skipped school.
(x) Seen someone/something die.

Well, The Wife is older than me, so there's that; also I seem to remember a Special Ed teacher when I was in third grade or something who had hair like Farrah Faucett, and this was in 1979 when that was quite a thing. A crush? Don't recall, but I wouldn't be surprised. I never skipped an entire day of school, but I did cut my share of classes. As for seeing something die, I was in the room when we had our cat Simba put to sleep, and a year or so later my cat Jasmine died in my arms as I was carrying her down to the car to take her to the vet.

Level 4
() Had/have a crush on one of your friends who is now on Facebook.
() Been to Paris.
() Been to Spain.
(x) Been on a plane.
(x) Thrown up from drinking.

I don't like flying, not out of fear of crashing but because air travel is just unpleasant, to be honest: planes are hot and uncomfortable and friggin' loud. As for drinking, I've only twice in my life had to "talk to Ralph on the big white telephone". Once was the last time I ever drank bourbon; the next was the night before my wedding, when I ate too much, drank a lot of wine, and was already pretty nervous about the whole thing.

Level 5
(x) Eaten sushi.
() Been snowboarding.
(x) Met someone BECAUSE of Facebook.
() Been in a mosh pit.

OK, I'm claiming the Facebook thing, but I'm claiming it because I've met people due to blogging, and not Facebook specifically. And I like sushi a lot.

Level 6
() Been in an abusive relationship.
(x) Taken pain killers.
(x) Love/loved someone who you can’t have.
(x) Laid on your back and watched cloud shapes go by.
(x) Made a snow angel.

I need a clarification on pain killers: are we talking Tylenol, or the hardcore stuff like Demerol? If the latter, then I have to remove my X, because that and Advil are all I've ever taken. As for the rest: Audrey Hepburn's dead, so I by definition can't have her, but I love her all the same; I've watched cloud shapes many a time (and not all that long ago, either), and if you haven't made a snow angel, then you either need to move where there's snow or get a life.

Level 7
() Had a tea party.
(x) Flown a kite.
(x) Built a sand castle.
() Gone mudding (offroading).
() Played dress up.

Tea party. Don't think so. Kites rule. So do sand castles, although mine wasn't terribly elaborate; it was basically making a big mound and using my imagination to fill in the details.

Level 8
(x) Jumped into a pile of leaves.
() Gone sledging.
(x) Cheated while playing a game.
(x) Been lonely.
(x) Fallen asleep at work/school.

Jumping into leaves, or its close cousin task, purposely walking off the sidewalk so as to scuff through six inches' depth of leaves, is akin to the snow angel thing in that everybody should do it before they die. I don't know what 'sledging' is. Yes, I've cheated at games; what kid never stacked the deck in Sorry! so they'd draw a 2 and then a backward-4? Being lonely is a constant thing, and falling asleep at work and school? I've done both. (But not at The Store. Never. I'm a giant ball of productivity there.)

Oh, and what is "sledging"?

Level 9
(x) Watched the sun set.
(x) Felt an earthquake.
() Killed a snake.

What a weird thing to have on a list like this: wouldn't anybody with, you know, eyes have watched a sunset? And I've felt earthquakes both in WNY and in the Portland, OR area. I may have killed a snake by running it over, unseen, while mowing the lawn, but never intentionally or maliciously. Snakes are good people.

Level 10
(x) Been tickled.
() Been robbed/vandalized.
() Been cheated on.
(x) Been misunderstood.

Everybody's misunderstood. What makes human life interesting at all is the simple fact that nobody understands anybody else.

Level 11
(x) Won a contest.
() Been suspended from school.
(x) Had detention.
() Been in a car/motorcycle accident.

Why yes, I won a contest! (But I'm pretty sure that I didn't win this year, boo hiss. We'll see, but I would have heard by now if I had, which is a shame because I actually thought my entry this year was pretty good, if a little on the grim side.) And yes, I got detention a few times, a couple times for the afore-mentioned class-cutting and once for using the back stairs in our school building. (Yes, I'm serious. I used the wrong stairs and got detention. And then I kept using the stairs anyway.)

Level 12
() Had/have braces.
(x) Eaten a whole pint of ice cream in one night.
() Danced in the moonlight.

I recall that one dentist tried getting my mother to consent to braces for me, and her pithy reply has stuck in my memory evermore: "Nobody ever died of an overbite." Seeing as how it's not like my one jaw protrudes inches beyond the other, it was never much of an issue. And eating a whole pint of ice cream? I almost file that under cloud-watching and snow-angel making. Heck, in college we once went on a forty-mile roadtrip (both ways) to get a couple of pints of ice cream.

Level 13
(x) Hated the way you look.
(x) Witnessed a crime.
() Pole danced.
(x) Questioned your heart.
() Been obsessed with post-it-notes.

Working in retail in a large store, it's not unusual to witness crimes being committed: shoplifting all the time. I've seen them get busted, and there's always this nice sense of victory when this happens. Also, doesn't everybody hate the way they look at one point or another? I don't hate the way I look right now, but I do need to peel off some weight, which is why I (and the rest of the family) joined the Y this year. I've already got my resting heart rate down about ten points, and I've only been going for a month, yay! And I question my heart on a daily basis.

Level 14
(x) Squished barefoot through the mud.
(x) Been lost.
() Been to the opposite side of the world.
(x) Swam in the ocean.
(x) Felt like you were dying.

I'm not a big fan of mud, but squishing in it is occasionally fun. When we were living in our last home in the Portland area, before moving out here, there was a very large swampy-marshy area beyond the borders of our housing development where we kids used to go to explore and play and whatnot, and there was lots of mud to squish through. We never went there just for mud-squishing, but that would be incidental to exploring the area. Last I looked, that whole area is now built up into a massive development. Bummer. As for being lost, who hasn't? Same with feeling like we're dying. We're made to die, so it's natural we're going to feel like it's happening once in a while.

Level 15
(x) Cried yourself to sleep.
(x) Played cops and robbers.
() Recently colored with crayons/colored pencils/markers.
() Sang karaoke.
() Paid for a meal with only coins.

Yeah. Not to be pithy, but you lose a kid, and you're guaranteed to cry yourself to sleep a few times. We never really played "cops and robbers" as such, but we'd play Star Wars, of course, so we'd have "Rebels and Imperials", I suppose. And while I've paid for lots of stuff with only coins, I've never paid for a meal with them, that I can recall. I used to pay for comics with coins (back when comics were relatively cheap at less than a buck an issue), and books, but I don't recall paying for a meal with them. I may have, though.

Level 16
(x) Done something you told yourself you wouldn’t.
(x) Made prank phone calls.
(x) Laughed until some kind of beverage came out of your nose.
() Kissed in the rain.

Oh come on! Who hasn't told themselves they wouldn't do something, only to go ahead and do it anyway? Heck, right now I'm telling myself that I'm not watching the Super Bowl, but I probably will. I never made a lot of prank calls, but there were a few. And in grade school, I was the kid who would get "The Giggles" very easily, which led to having milk come out my nose at lunch more than once.

(And by the way, there should be a special place in Hell for teachers who punish kids who get The Giggles. Any human being who genuinely has no idea what it's like to get The Giggles should not be allowed anywhere near children. There was a teacher whose name I don't recall, but she taught Agriculture and Metal Shop in our school, who was as joyless a human being as I've ever met, and she was ruthless to anyone who got The Giggles. She also gave a kid detention when he dropped a hammer on his foot and said "Shit!" out loud.)

Level 17
(x) Written a letter to Santa Claus.
(x) Watched the sun set/sun rise with someone you care/cared about.
(x) Blown bubbles.
(x) Made a bonfire on the beach or anywhere.

This is another group of things that if you haven't done them, you need to come out of your monastic conclave and actually engage the world a bit.

Level 18
() Crashed a Party.
(x) Have traveled more than 5 days with a car full of people.
(x) Gone rollerskating/blading.
(x) Had a wish come true.

Rollerblading rules.

Level 19
() Worn pearls.
(x) Jumped off a bridge.
() Screamed “penis” or “vagina”.
() Swam with dolphins.

It was a low bridge into a swimming hole.

Level 20
() Got your tongue stuck to a pole/freezer/ice cube.
() Kissed a fish.
() Worn the opposite sex’s clothes.
(x) Sat on a roof top.

Rooftops are fun. I like rooftops.

(Fish kissing? Huh?!)

Level 21
(x) Screamed at the top of your lungs.
() Done/attempted a one-handed cartwheel.
() Talked on the phone for more than six hours (in one day).
(x) Recently stayed up for a while talking to someone you care about.

At my telesales job, one measure of our performance was our "Duration", or literally the number of minutes were spent each day talking on the phones. A good day was held to be over three hours of actual talking; the standard was to have over 150 minutes total Duration. I rarely managed more than 120 minutes. My best days were Mondays, when I'd call a hospital pharmacist in Ohio (Akron, I believe) who would cheerfully talk on the phone about anything at all. That guy was a conversational Godsend at the time. All of the other sales reps in the office had regular customers they'd been calling for years and could carry on long conversations with them; the woman next to me would often have calls go on for forty-five minutes before she ever made a sales pitch. I never got to that point.

Level 22
() Picked and ate an apple right off the tree.
(x) Climbed a tree.
(x) Had/been in a tree house.
(x) Been scared to watch scary movies alone.

I've had apples that were extremely fresh, as in, picked that day, but never done the picking myself. As for the other things, well yeah.

Level 23
(x) Believed in ghosts.
() Have had more than thirty pairs of shoes (not necessarily all at once).
() Gone streaking.
(x) Visited jail.

I believed in ghosts as a kid and then got over it later on. I don't believe in them now, but I'd like to; I just think that a world with ghosts would be pretty cool. And lightsabers. As for jail, I've visited in school field trips. I've never been a "Guest of Honor" though.

Level 24
() Played chicken.
() Been pushed into a pool with all your clothes on.
() Been told you’re hot by a complete stranger.
(x) Broken a bone.
(x) Been easily amused.

Chicken is for idiots. I've swum fully clothed before, but never been pushed, so that doesn't count. I've never once had a stranger comment on my looks (except for the once-a-year thing that happens here when some random visitor leaves a comment, always anonymous, that I'm fat). Bones? I broke my collarbone in junior high school, and I'm incredibly easily amused.

Level 25
() Caught a fish then ate it later.
() Made a porn video.
(x) Caught a Butterfly.
(x) Laughed so hard you cried.
() Cried so hard you laughed.

I've never fished in my life! This seems to me a great missed opportunity. I've caught butterflies but always tried to be gentle about it, and to my way of thinking, there's nothing better than to laugh so hard that you cry. This hasn't happened in a while, actually.

Level 26
(x) Mooned/flashed someone.
() Had someone moon/flash you.
(x) Cheated on a test.
(x) Forgotten someone’s name.
() French braided someone’s hair.
() Gone skinny dipping.
() Been kicked out of your house.
() Tried to hurt yourself.

Yeah, I had too much to drink one night and mooned a college prof I didn't like too much at the time. And I snuck a glance at a textbook during a test once or twice. I'm awful with names, just awful. Seriously, I'm terrible with them, and it's a good thing that I work in a place where nametags are required. I've never seen skinny dipping as all that attractive of a prospect.

Level 27
(x) Rode a roller coaster.
(x) Went scuba-diving/snorkelling.
(x) Had a cavity.
() Blackmailed someone.
() Been blackmailed.

Roller coasters are great, but I only like the ones that don't go upside down, and I hate indoor ones that go in complete darkness. Snorkeling? Just one time, at Disney World, in a controlled tank setting.

Level 28
() Been used.
(x) Fell going up the stairs.
() Licked a cat.
(x) Bitten someone.
() Licked someone - not in private places

Licking cats. Okily-dokily.

Level 29
() Been shot at/or at gunpoint.
() Flattened someone’s tires.
(x) Rode your car/truck until the gas light came on.
(x) Got five dollars or less worth of gas.

Guns give me the willies. Don't like them. As for the two things I've done, which "gas light" are we talking about? If the "warning" light, which comes on when you're on your last gallon, I drive until that comes on all the time. If there's some light that indicates "You will run out of gas within the next forty feet of driving", then no. I've never driven until I literally ran out of gas. I have purchased tiny amounts of gas before; once I pulled into a full-serve station in Canada and handed the lady a Toonie (that's a two-dollar coin) and asked for exactly that much gas. She rolled her eyes at me, but did it anyway.

Well, that was a strange quiz.

Let a warm glow spread throughout the land!

Congratulations to the 2007 New England Patriots, who have just eclipsed the 1998 Minnesota Vikings and the 2004 Pittsburgh Steelers as the greatest team to fail to win the Super Bowl. This is a team that will never be forgotten! Let their praises be sung, and let the faithful advance all the tortured logic they can to assure the world that 18-1 really is every bit as impressive as 17-0, even though all of us who live in the real world know that's just not the case. And let us not forget that Saint Tom has now, for two years in a row, come into a game facing a "score or lose" situation, and walked off the field having opted for the latter. So much for Mr. Clutch, the greatest QB of All Time.

OK, gloating aside, this was a terrific game; it was a sufficiently good game that had the Patriots pulled off the win, either 14-10 or 21-17 or 20-17 in overtime, I wouldn't have even minded. (But if that had happened, I sure as hell wouldn't have posted anything about the game!)

Sunday Burst of Weirdness

In going through my blogroll earlier, I realized I hadn't checked in on Short Fat Guy in quite some time, and lo and behold, he has lots of fun weird stuff, so just some links to him.

:: First, one wonders if news editors bother to read their headlines.

:: Next, he reports on a bill being proposed in Mississippi to forbid obese people from eating in restaurants. Of course, I can't believe a bill like this has a chance of going anywhere; all those casinos in Biloxi surely rely on the income that more than a few high-BMI'd people bring in. (Oh, and you know how Republicans are always decrying the "Nanny State"? Especially those Southern Republicans? Well, guess the party affiliation of two of the three authors of this bill.)

:: And finally, he's got the goods on some bloopers from the Lord of the Rings movies! You know there's got to be a lot more of this stuff, with all the film they shot.

Top Ten Bond Females

So I was thinking of stealing a posting habit from Tosy and Cosh, and start doing Top Ten lists of random stuff, and the other night, as The Family Unit sat down to watch For Your Eyes Only, I figured I had the obvious starting list: my personal Top Ten Bond Girls. Well, lo and behold, it turns out that someone went and took a poll to determine who the Top and Bottom Ten Bond Girls happen to be, at least as far as British public opinion goes. I'll give my own list below, but first, I must discuss the polling results, because they're, well, really bad.

First, here are the lists, with the Worst Bond Girls first, followed by the Best Bond Girls.

(Wait a minute, actually, before I do that, let me renew my objection to the somewhat sexist term "Bond Girls". I only use it here because the linked article already uses it, and it's pretty much the accepted way of referring to these characters as a group.)

OK, the lists:

Worst Bond girls

1. Denise Richards as Dr Christmas Jones in "The World Is Not Enough"
2. Tanya Roberts as Stacey Sutton in "A View To A Kill"
3. Corrine Clery as Corinne Dufour in "Moonraker"
4. Maryam D'Abo as Kara Milovy in "The Living Daylights"
5. Karin Dor as Helga Brandt in "You Only Live Twice"
6. Britt Ekland as Mary Goodnight in "The Man With the Golden Gun"
7. Carey Lowell as Pam Bouvier in "License to Kill"
8. Lois Chiles as Holly Goodhead in "Moonraker"
9. Lynn-Holly Johnson as Lili Bahl in "For Your Eyes Only"
10. Maud Adams as Octopussy in, you guessed it, "Octopussy"

Best Bond girls

1.Ursula Andress as Honey Ryder in "Dr. No"
2. Honor Blackman as Pussy Galore in "Goldfinger"
3. Diana Rigg as Tracey Divicenzo in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service"
4. Eva Green as Vesper Lynd in "Casino Royale"
5. Barbara Bach as Anya Amasova in "The Spy Who Loved Me"
6. Famke Janssen as Xenia Onatopp in "Goldeneye"
7. Michelle Yeoh as Wai Lin in "Tommorrow Never Dies"
8. Lotte Enya as Rosa Klebb in "From Russia With Love"
9. Jill St. John as Tiffany Case in "Diamonds Are Forever"
10. Carole Bouquet as Melina Havelock in "For Your Eyes Only"

Got all that? Well, where to begin?

First of all, we should probably establish just what a "Bond Girl" is, since by my personal reckoning, some of those listed aren't "Bond Girls" at all. When I read these lists, I had to think to myself, "Hmmm, they seem to be pretty liberal in what they consider to be a Bond Girl", which then led me to wonder what a Bond Girl really is. My personal definition, therefore, is as follows:

A Bond Girl is a female character with whom James Bond engages in the act of sexual congress who is either (1) on Bond's side, (2) totally incidental to Bond's mission, or (3) initially against Bond but comes to his side after the afore-mentioned act of sexual congress.

This definition automatically rules out several of the "Bond Girls" listed in the polls. Taking their "Worst Girls" list first, we can exclude Helga Brandt (You Only Live Twice), because she's a villain and although Bond gets her to not kill him by using his manly charm, she doesn't change her allegiance, and we can likewise toss aside Bibi Dahl (For Your Eyes Only), who is a notable female character in that not only does Bond not sleep with her, he actually refuses to do so, and quite vehemently, at that. Those two are not Bond Girls. (By the way, you'd think that whoever wrote this article could at least get the character names right. It's Bibi Dahl, not Lili.)

As for the second list, GoldenEye's Xenia Onatopp is disqualified on two counts: first, she's a villain who doesn't change allegiance, and second, she doesn't actually sleep with James Bond. (They engage in some kinky swimming pool foreplay before Bond grabs his gun and forces her to take him to the boss.) The same goes for From Russia With Love's Rosa Klebb, whose presence on this list is almost laughable: not only is she a villain through and through who never considers changing sides for one second, and not only does she not sleep with James Bond, it's doubtful that Bond would ever even attempt to sleep with her because she's and old, ugly, and frumpy woman, to be quite frank. (If you're having trouble placing her, this should help.) The notion that Rosa Klebb can be thought of as a Bond Girl makes one wonder if the people putting the poll together just gathered a list of female characters who appear in Bond movies and called them all "Bond Girls"; if that's the case, one rightly wonders why Miss Moneypenny doesn't appear on the list. (Not that she should, since she's not a Bond Girl either.)

And besides, the lists are just bad anyway, on other grounds. Ursula Andress is the best Bond Girl? Huh? Sure, that shot of her, bikini-clad as she emerges from the water, is a famous shot, but as a character, she's of almost no interest at all, and Andress's performance is pretty much monotoned throughout. Honor Blackman, second? Ahead of Diana Rigg? Really, folks, we need to get over the notion that Goldfinger is the best of the Bond movies. Pussy Galore's got that name, of course, but again, she's not a terribly interesting character and it doesn't help that Blackman comes in third among the other potential Bond Girls in the very same film, in terms of plain physical beauty. (Both of the doomed Masterson sisters are prettier, and it's a shame Tilly had to die, because she was potentially interesting.)

Likewise, I've always thought that Barbara Bach is a tad overrated as well in The Spy Who Loved Me. Her accent is unconvincing, and while the idea of Bond having a female counterpart in the KGB who's as capable as he is could be interesting, the movie doesn't really do much with this notion, making Anya a damsel-in-distress several times, including at the end of the movie. And Jill St. John's Tiffany Case (Diamonds Are Forever)? Huh-whuh? Bond himself calls her a "stupid twit", and that's pretty much what she turns out to be.

Of course, the lists aren't complete bollocks. Some Bond Girls fail on the basis of their performances (Honey Rider), while others fail because the characters aren't well written (Stacy Sutton), and all this is opinion, anyway. It's always struck me as unfair that Tanya Roberts gets pilloried for her character's wailing ("James! Don't leave me! James! James!") and her failure to notice things like propeller-driven airships coming up behind her, when none of that was Roberts's fault, unless she did some script-doctoring and didn't receive screen credit for her work in that capacity. Likewise, Denise Richards can't be blamed totally for her character's lack of focus in the script to The World is Not Enough, but frankly, as an actress she's blown right off the screen by Sophie Marceau (not a Bond Girl, because she's a villain to the end).

So there are names I'd bump from the "Best" list, but what of the "Worst" list? Who would I bump there? Well, frankly, I've always liked Lois Chiles (Moonraker), Maud Adams (Octopussy), and Maryam d'Abo (The Living Daylights). They perform well, they're beautiful, and the characters are nicely written. Chiles, I think, may be the most underrated of all "Bond Girls"; she's the CIA female equivalent of Bond, as Anya Amasova was one film earlier in the KGB, but she doesn't end up the damsel in distress, instead being an actual equal and partner in Bond's heroics. Maud Adams and Maryam d'Abo also show a lot of spunk, with d'Abo particularly displaying nice character growth as she becomes more and more capable as the film goes on.

But anyway, time for what I meant to do in the first place: a list of the Top Ten Bond Girls.

1. Diana Rigg as Teresa di Vicenzo, On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

2. Eva Green as Vesper Lynd, Casino Royale.

3. Carole Bouquet as Melina Havelock, For Your Eyes Only.

4. Lois Chiles as Holly Goodhead, Moonraker.

5. Claudine Auger as Domino Derval, Thunderball.

6. Jane Seymour as Solitaire, Live and Let Die.

7. Carey Lowell as Pam Bouvier, Licence to Kill.

8. Izabella Scorupco as Natalya Simonova, GoldenEye.

9. Maud Adams as Octopussy, Octopussy.

10. Maryam d'Abo as Kara Milovy, The Living Daylights.

And there you have it. No, I'm not doing a worst list.

Blogroll Amnesty Day

Jon Swift is spearheading Blogroll Amnesty Day, but with a reversal of the original idea, which was coined by Atrios as "Permission to Delete Any Blog You Want From Your Blogroll Day", about a year or so ago. Not a big deal, if you're one of the highly-trafficked blogs removed from blogrolls, but a big deal indeed if you're a small fish.

(And then there's me, who's the blog equivalent of plankton.)

Anyhow, Mr. Swift took exception to that and reverse the intent, and now Blogroll Amnesty Day is when you're supposed to give link love to other, smaller blogs. So I'll be doing that, but a day late, as this week's installment of Sentential Links. But anyone who wants to appear on my blogroll can drop a link in comments to this post.

(Ironically, I just discovered today's Blogroll Amnesty Day event whilst in the course of...purging my blogroll. It had been a while since I'd done so, and I needed to remove quite a few inactive blogs.)

Dugg

OK, I've removed the Digg code from my posts. It was making the blog load in weird fashion, and the only weirdness here will be created by me. Maybe I'll try to figure out where that was going wrong sometime, maybe not.

BTW, still having minor computer problems. Nothing massive, but annoying. Normal posting will resume...sometime.

AGGHHHH!!!!

So this morning, before work, I went online to check stuff like weather (I've never seen a winter this windy, and I spent four winters in Iowa) and whether the school had been closed for The Daughter (it had) and check e-mail. When I closed out AOL, it did that AOL thing it likes to do sometimes where it downloads its own new features (what these are, I have no idea) and requires you to restart your computer. So I clicked "Restart", and headed for the bathroom to do my teeth and whatnot.

While I was in the bathroom, the power went out for a minute and then came back on. When I came out, I discovered that the restart had failed, and that a file with the ominous-sounding name "Config" had been corrupted. I can only surmise that the computer was trying to do something when the power failure to the apartment interrupted it before it was done, and it wasn't able to recover itself once the power came back on.

So I've just completed the arduous task of running PC Recovery, which restores the computer to its "Out of the box" state. Which is fine, since I'm now up and running again, but it's literally the "Out of the box" state. As in, everything I had on the hard drive is gone.

Now, this isn't too disastrous, really; most of the important stuff, minus maybe a month's worth of photos, was still available via my laptop and my USB flash drives, and even some of the photos I can grab again off Flickr. The music can all be recovered too, I suppose, although that will take some doing. But all of my bookmarks from Firefox are gone, including a giant folder I had of blogs that I hadn't yet come round to blogrolling. This has happened before, and I've in the past been able to find some of those blogs again by memory, but for the most part, I expect that many of them will never be visited by me again, and that's a shame, since there were some good ones there.

Oh well, nothing lasts forever...but really, hiccups like this are why I'm deeply suspicious of our society's apparent decision that physical media are Teh Suck. (I'm sure there's some way I could have saved some of the stuff on the hard drive -- maybe there still is, and I'm all ears, folks -- but I never have to undergo serious technical work for an entire afternoon to recover the music on a CD. I'm just sayin'.)

And the weather? Yeah. The wind this winter is making me batty.