Tag'd

Ah, I see that Erin has tagged me with the vicious Seven Things Meme, wherein bloggers are supposed to provide seven facts about themselves. For a long-lived blogger like myself, this meme gets harder every time it comes around, since I run through a roster of facts in my head and rule them all out on the basis that I'm really, really sure that I've already posted them before in a previous iteration of Seven Things. So, here we go:

1. My idea of an ideal vacation these days consists not of journeying to some far-flung and exotic locale, but simply packing some clothes, getting in the car, and driving somewhere, with only these rules: No driving on Interstates or expressways of any kind, and No eating at chain establishments (except for local chains that you'll only find in a single city, like Ted's in Buffalo). The Wife and I recently took such a journey, and it was as magical a weekend as I can remember. The best way to find good food? Drive into a town and eat at the place whose parking lot is full. Especially if the windows all have neon beer signs and the place's name includes the word "Inn".

2. I'm not sure what my objection is, but I can't stand Dancing with the Stars. I literally hate that show. I was on the fence about it for a while, but then I decided that I really can't abide the show in any form. I suspect that this is because the show tried to convince me that Mario Lopez is sexy.

3. Despite living in the Buffalo area for seven years now (minus winter of 2002-2003, when we lived in Syracuse), I've never eaten at Louie's, and I hadn't eaten at Mighty Taco until just two years ago. Why? I dunno.

4. The Wife's first gift to me, back when she was The Girlfriend, was, if memory serves, a teddy bear with a lavender ribbon around his neck. I think she doused him with perfume. He's still around the apartment somewhere, although the ribbon may be gone; The Daughter probably has him in her stash of animals. I named him Bertrand, after Bertrand Russell. (I was a Philosophy major; what do you expect?) We ended up with a number of stuffed animals together, and we named a lot of them, although I only remember two: Bertrand the bear, and Barry the stuffed bison that we bought at the gift shop near Old Faithful at Yellowstone National Park. (Barry for Barry Bonds; this was 1992, when he was leading the Pirates to their third straight NL East title and well before any hint of steroid use.)

5. My first gift to The Wife was a little Laughing Buddha figurine that I bought at the gift shop at the mall in Olean, NY. That gift shop isn't there anymore. (In Olean, most things aren't there anymore.)

It wasn't quite what she expected for a first gift from a still-new boyfriend. I bought it for her while at home for spring break; we'd been dating for little more than a month, and I got a bit of a freakout when I tried to call her at the house where she was staying (in our Iowa college town; I was at home in WNY), and was informed by her landlord that there had been a death in her family. I worried a bit before I remembered that she had told me that her grandfather had been quite ill, and that's who it ended up being. The upshot was that I returned to college from spring break and immediately met my future in-laws. That was just slightly less nerve-wracking than some of the musical auditions I'd done in my life to that point.

6. In high school, I went on exactly one date. It was an OK date, I suppose; some girl (wow, I don't remember her name!) I met while playing in the All-County Band and I went to see some movie with Nick Nolte in it and then we went for ice cream at Friendly's. Not a disaster, but I clearly didn't make much of an impression, since the next couple of times I tried calling her for a follow-up date she said she was busy each time. How naïve was I? It took me that long to recognize that for a brush-off. Whoops!

7. And there was the girl that I didn't ask out. She was a very sweet person, quite short with lovely red hair and a terrific smile. I had a monster crush on her, and yet I never asked her out, although I did give her a rose at Valentine's Day. Yes, you read that right. I gave her a rose. On Valentine's Day. Didn't ask her out. Yeah, I've kicked myself ever since for that one – not out of any dissatisfaction with how things eventually turned out for me, love-wise, mind you! Just out of a "Wow, you were a putz back then!" older-me-wanting-to-kick-younger-me's-ass kind of thing.

A story about that girl (whose name I do remember, although I'm not going to post it here): I once got her in trouble in Trig class, and I felt a bit bad about it afterward, although she thought it funny and laughed it off. She sat in the seat ahead of mine, and we'd gab a bit in the off-moments in class and discuss our mutual disdain for the Trig teacher (whom I loathed, because while this particular teacher was wildly popular amongst the kids, she got that way by choosing one or two kids per class who'd be the brunt of her every joke, and guess who got to be one of her designated class clowns that year). But anyway, on the day in question, I actually fell asleep in Trig class. (Nothing against the teacher on that score, really; I can count on one hand the number of times I fell asleep in a class in high school. Now, in college, I slept through a lot of classes, but not in high school.)

So anyway, I slept through about fifteen minutes of class, and then I came to, just in time to be called on by the teacher. I, of course, had absolutely no clue what the hell the question was, to say nothing of the actual answer. I glanced from the teacher to my friend, the lovely red-head, who was grinning ear to ear as she beheld my expression of total horror. I just kind of gaped like an idiot, not saying anything, until the teacher moved on to asking someone else the question, at which point I tried to hide behind my book as my friend the lovely red-head began giggling. And she continued to giggle, and giggle, and giggle, until finally the teacher took note of her giggling and chewed her out.

That may be the angriest I've ever been toward one of my teachers.

Anyway, that particular class session couldn't end fast enough, and I was pretty well mortified and planned to get upbraided pretty harshly by the lovely red-head for getting her in trouble; but to my pleasant surprise, as soon as she came into the hall she dissolved into the laughter that she had to get out of her system. She wasn't mad at me at all.

I've always wondered whatever became of her. And I've always wondered if she ever thought along the lines of, "Geez, why doesn't that doof ask me out? He gave me a rose, for Pete's sake!"

So there we are, and now I must tag people. Yeesh. I choose...my, I don't know. I'll tag Steph and Nettl -- but each has to post seven things about the other! Heh! (Other than that, go ahead and tag yourselves, folks.)

Beers! Blogs!

UPDATED below and UPDATED again:



Yup, it's coming up, folks: the official Holiday season social gathering of navel-gazing keyboard pounders known as a Christmas Bloggercon! The date is December 8, the place (since no one's strenuously argued for another) is Buffalo Sports Garden, and the time? I'm guessing around 7:00, unless anyone thinks it should be later, around the 8:00 range. Bloggers, commenters, lurkers, and families thereof are welcome to attend. Given that this is a basic sports bar joint, I'm guessing that it's simply a "show up and see what's going on" type of thing. The Sabres do play that night, at San Jose, so it's a late game; we won't be battling a crowd on that basis.

For those who have never come to any kind of blogging get-together, well, I've only been to two of 'em myself, but my experience is that we don't actually blog while we're there. Because that would be, you know, lame. And we're not lame in Buffalo, are we?

UPDATE: Well, it seems that Jennifer can't make the 8th, so if everyone involved wants to move the meetup to the 9th, I'm fine with that. (I'm also perfectly fine with a change in venue; it's not like I had my heart set on that sports bar or anything, having just tossed that out there and not heard any suggestions otherwise!)

UPDATE II: OK, all this damned waffling on my part isn't helping the cause at all, is it? So I'll be at the afore-mentioned location at the time also afore-mentioned, on the 8th, as originally planned. Sorry for all the cock-ups on this thing, and if anyone wants to show up just to tell me how bad I am at event planning, well, I'll plead guilty as charged! And I hope to catch everyone else at another blogger event in the future.

Autumn's Last Moments

October 07 011, originally uploaded by Jaquandor.

Winter can't be far away now. This is Cazenovia Creek, at one of my favorite "secret spots" in the region. It's a "blink and you miss it" kind of view.

I never blink.

Sentential Links #118

'Tis time for the one hundred eighteenth installment. Wow. That's a lot of these. It's weird how blog-time works, isn't it? I still feel like I've been doing Sentential Links for a relatively short time -- and yet, when I started this series way back when, Star Wars Episode III hadn't come out yet and my son was still alive. Wow.

Anyway, here we go with this week's linkage:

:: Remember these props. The coffee and the Pepsi. They're Chekhov's gun, the one he said that if you bring it on stage in Act One has to go off in Act Three. (Why can't I write stuff like this?)

:: I'm trying to reformat how I use food so it becomes something that NOURISHES me, not a means of self indulgence. (The health practitioner I've been seeing of late has a poster on his wall that reads: "Americans are overfed and undernourished." I'm trying to focus more on nourishment these days, and not just with food, either.)

:: Americans really need to ask themselves some questions about how comfortable they are with things being done in their name.

:: So I finally saw Spider-Man 3. I expected to be entertained but disappointed - all the stuff I read about the film had me expecting to find the film overstuffed, with a weak plot, not enough depth, and generally just glossier and less textured than the second film. So of course it's my favorite of the three Spider-Man films. (Crikey! Now, I didn't dislike the movie, but there's no way it's better than Spiderman 2.)

:: Libertarians -- glah. What can you say? I'd like to live utterly independent of everyone else, too, with every transaction that occurs between myself and others being an entirely volitional one in which I have full bargaining power. But the real world has never worked like that and never will, and libertarianism will always remain an adolescent fantasy due to this.

:: Listen, I get it. You love free markets. So do I. I just know that they weren't designed by Jesus. They're not perfect, and sometimes you need a union not out of any high moral stance, but just to maintain fair business practices.

To paraphrase a previous post -- I live with the tiger, I love it, but I respect its teeth and instincts. Stop asking why I don't just pet the kitty.

:: After all the maniacs, torturers and zombies of our times, who is the scariest person of them all? The cornered little man with no scruples.

And that'll do it for this week.

Bill 13, Dolphins 10

I didn't see all of this game; in fact, I pretty much missed the entire first quarter and the first few minutes of the second. Turns out I didn't miss much, as the Bills waited until the fourth quarter to pretty much do anything at all in beating the worst team in the NFL. Seriously, Miami is a total mess of a franchise.

:: After that disastrous 0-3 start to the season, the Bills are actually above .500, and at 5-4, they've matched my predicted win total for them this season. (Remember, I'd picked them to go 5-11.)

:: Ryan Lindell made a game winning field goal at the end, with the score tied at the time. Everyone who insists that despite his accuracy he's still not a "clutch kicker" is now lacking a bit of ammunition for their argument (such as it was).

:: Clutch defense. They gave up a 100-yard rusher today, but still made some big plays when it counted.

:: JP Losman. Look, I'm rooting for the guy, but he couldn't do much of anything at all against the league's worst defense? This was the kind of game we'd hoped for out of him last season, but this isn't last season. Losman is now a veteran, and he should be able to go into the house of the worst D in the NFL and do better than 12 of 23 for 157 yards, no TDs, and a pick. Yeesh. Losman's been in the league for as long as Ben Roeythlissburgerr (pretty sure I spelled that wrong), but Losman's still "developing" while Big Ben's won a Super Bowl, been to two AFC championship games, and currently has his team at 7-2? Oy.

I accept that Losman's time here is nearing its end, and that we're awaiting the official beginning of the Trent Edwards era. At least Losman could go out swinging, and enhance his trade value. Games like today aren't going to help much.

:: The offensive line. We were told in the preseason, "Wait for the rebuilt line to gel, and then you'll see good things." Instead, we're still seeing Marshawn Lynch run 19 times for only 61 yards. God, I hope Marv Levy uses next year's draft to bring in some young O-line talent.

:: One first down in the first half? A third quarter score of 3-2? Huh?

There wasn't a whole lot to love about this game. It was a game. Dull. Boring to watch. A game to have on when you're in a cafe with free WiFi, so you can blog while halfway paying attention.

Next week? Smuggy McBrady and the rest of his nest of coiled vipers come to town. I can't wait. (Well, yes I can, because let's be realistic: this game is highly unlikely to go well for the Bills. I do hope that if the Forces of Evil start running up the score, throwing long passes and going for fourth-down conversions while up more than three TDs in the second half, the Bills have more moxie than the Redskins did and actually take some shots at Smuggy McBrady.)

Veterans

"The Green Fields of France"
Eric Bogle

Well, how do you do, young Willie McBride,
Do you mind if I sit down here by your graveside?
And rest for awhile 'neath the warm summer sun,
I've been walking all day, and I'm nearly done.
I see by your gravestone you were only 19
When you joined the great fallen in 1916,
I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean
Or, Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?

Did they Beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly?
Did they sound the death-march as they lowered you down?
Did the band play The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?

Did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind
In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined?
And, though you died back in 1916,
To that faithful heart are you forever 19?
Or are you a stranger without even a name,
Enshrined then, forever, behind a glass pane,
In an old photograph, torn and tattered and stained,
And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame?

Did they Beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly?
Did they sound the death-march as they lowered you down?
Did the band play The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?

The sun's shining down on these green fields of France;
The warm wind blows gently, and the red poppies dance.
The trenches have vanished long under the plow;
No gas and no barbed wire, no guns firing now.
But here in this graveyard that's still No Man's Land
The countless white crosses in stand mute in the sand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man,
And a whole generation who were butchered and damned.

Did they Beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly?
Did they sound the death-march as they lowered you down?
Did the band play The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?

And I can't help but wonder, no Willie McBride,
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
Did they really believe when they answered the call,
Did they really believe that this war would end wars?
Well the sorrow, the suffering, the glory, the pain
The killing and dying, was all done in vain,
For young Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again.

Did they Beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly?
Did they sound the death-march as they lowered you down?
Did the band play The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?

Sunday Burst of Weirdness

Items of note:

:: Great. The temptation to do this at work may prove irresistible.

:: And I really wish this was a real poster.

Well, that's about it. Not a whole lot of good weirdness, this week.

Free the Sigma Six!

Here in Erie County, we just elected a new County Executive, who takes over a county that's been pretty much of a mess for years. The incoming Exec, Christopher Collins, is a local businessman, new to politics, who pulled off one of those "Political newcomer who will run government like a business" campaigns. This, coupled with a fairly uninspiring candidate on the other side, led to his election. All this is pretty run of the mill stuff. People are always coming along, running for office on the basis that they'll run government like a business. I'm always a tad skeptical of such talk, since it always strikes me as talk that sounds good, but it's generally hard to tell what it really means. Governments aren't businesses, their focus isn't profit generation, and so on. To me, "run government like a business" is little more than feel-good rhetoric, right up there with Rudy Giuliani's "stay on offense in the War on Terror" and Al Gore's "Social Security lockbox" and all the rest.

However, we do have some idea of how County Exec Collins is going to run things like a business: he's planning to implement something called "Six Sigma", which is, according to WikiPedia, "a set of practices originally developed by Motorola to systematically improve processes by eliminating defects." That's all well and good, but of course, Six Sigma or no, that's what any good manager tries to do: improve the way things are done by figuring what's not working so well and ditching it. So Chris Collins is going to use Six Sigma to get his "Run Erie County like a business plan" going. Fine, I suppose; but if you're like me, and you've spent as much time as I have in the company of various management types, you've heard this sort of thing before. If there's one eternal skill that business types have, it's dressing fairly simple ideas up in "golly whiz" terminology. Spend any time in corporate America at all and you'll hear stuff like this constantly. Some people will be diehard adherents of the system in play, while for others, Six Sigma will be "that thing we tried back in 2007".

All this is fairly harmless stuff. Looking through some stuff on the web about Six Sigma, it all seems fairly innocuous, and in competent hands, it may even work well, although I'm always less inclined to credit the new "Gee whiz!" business tool with the success than the competent people who implement it. I've been around the block a little bit, folks, and believe me, the competent person who flies by the seat of her pants will usually beat out the inept person with a system in the end.

So what's my problem? Why am I posting this, and what's with that picture heading this post? There's an aspect to Six Sigma that strikes me as colossally silly. Apparently there are levels of proficiency depending on training and focus, and those levels are titled as the levels in the martial arts. So when Chris Collins talks about hiring a Six Sigma person to come in and help him out, he isn't hiring a consultant or an expert or something like that. No, he's hiring a "Black Belt".

Well, sorry, Six Sigma devotees, but that's where I get off the bus. This kind of terminology makes it nearly impossible for people like me, who just want to see the damned local government stop sucking quite so much, take things seriously. Now, instead of seeing serious people take a serious approach, I'm wondering if becoming a Six Sigma Black Belt requires making a big circle with the left hand to get the wax on, and a reverse circle with the right to get the wax off. Over in this BuffaloPundit thread about Six Sigma coming to Buffalo, someone asks how one becomes a Six Sigma Black Belt. With a title like that, it disappoints me to learn that it has nothing to do with single combat between office workers using staplers as nunchucks.

One of the things that makes The Office such a brilliant show is its skewering of management-speak, the jargon-heavy way that managers talk and the whole cottage industry of management consulting that has sprung up in the business world. And when we start drawing parallels between expert consultants and black belt karate masters, the only reaction I can muster up is a healthy snigger.

None of this, by the way, should be construed as skepticism that a Six Sigma approach can help with Erie County's governmental problems. However, here's an interesting article suggesting that the bloom is off the Six Sigma rose. A cursory glance through some links relating to Six Sigma conveys the strong impression that there's not really anything new with it; rather, it's a new way of codifying an old idea. And take it from me, there will always be a new way of codifying old ideas. In twenty years, Six Sigma will be in the management history books, and some other nifty new program utilizing the same notions of quality improvement will be all the rage. And maybe then the consultants will carry titles like "Padawan".

UPDATE: Pundit follows up, here and here.

Shop the Southtowns!

Some local retail stuff:

:: Well, I finally made it into B is for Books the other night, after several consecutive weekends of meaning to get there but not managing to do so (running low on funds one week, The Daughter being under the weather the next, and so on). Let me tell you, folks, this is just a terrific place. Please don't let its location, in outlying Orchard Park, be a deterrent to coming here! It can easily be made part of a Southtowns shopping excursion, especially if you're going to the stores at Quaker Crossing; central Orchard Park is about a ten minute drive away from Quaker Crossing, and by extension, about fifteen minutes from the McKinley Mall area. And it's one of those local, independent businesses we're all supposed to be keen on. Small business, locally owned. Entrepreneurship, in nigh-Socialist Erie County.

The store itself? It's a bright and airy place, for one thing; lots of room to browse. Plenty of places to sit and look through the books, or to sit and read to your kids, or whatever. The selection is pretty impressive as well; overall the store is about twice the size of the childrens section at your local Borders or B&N. The analogy I'd make is that this is the bookstore equivalent of Clayton's in Williamsville.

So yeah, we're big fans already, and I really hope this place succeeds. Indie bookstores aren't exactly a growth industry these days.

:: We haven't been there yet, but The Good Toy Shop is a mile from Casa Jaquandor. It's as though the Gods are actively scheming ways to part me from my money, but for some reason, they're not alternately scheming ways to give me more money to part with. What's up with that? Anyhow, once we've scoped out The Good Toy Shop, I will report on its offerings. (Can it be coincidence that it's three doors down from my favorite liquor store?)

:: I can't vouch for them at all, but there's a custom computer joint called Technophobia that's been open for a while now. I drive by it every day on my way to The Store (it's on Orchard Park Road in West Seneca). What I can vouch for is that they took an old eyesore of a house and renovated it to house their business, complete with new paint job and everything. I'm always happy to see old structures used for new businesses, as opposed to the constant construction of new McPlazas that end up sitting empty with the "Leasing Now!" sign out front.

:: Does anybody besides me think that the Buffalo area really needs a blog like the Syracuse Post Standard's Store Front? Hmmmmm....

Joss! Joss! He's our man!!! (again)

Jason points out this post by Joss Whedon on the Writer's Strike. I know I just posted about the strike fifteen minutes ago or thereabouts, but this deserves its own entry. Here's the kernel that makes me stand up and cheer:

It’s necessary, though. We’re talking about story-telling, the most basic human need. Food? That’s an animal need. Shelter? That’s a luxury item that leads to social grouping, which leads directly to fancy scarves. But human awareness is all about story-telling. The selective narrative of your memory. The story of why the Sky Bully throws lightning at you. From the first, stories, even unspoken, separated us from the other, cooler beasts. And now we’re talking about the stories that define our nation’s popular culture – a huge part of its identity. These are the people that think those up. Working writers.

Storytelling is the most basic human need. What a great thought that is.

At last!

Unidentified Earth 21 has finally been Identified! I suspect that part of the problem was that, as I admitted in a subsequent post, I had cropped the image of the location so that only half of the really famous part was showing, which made it harder, of course. Because I'm just devious, I'll tell you what! Here's the entire location:



Yup, it's Stone Mountain, near Atlanta, Georgia. Hence the hints I dropped: "Tomorrow is another day", a line from Gone With the Wind, set in Atlanta; an allusion to Atlanta's water supply problems; "Quit stonewalling, people!", a reference to Stonewall Jackson, one of the guys depicted in the carvings on the mountain.

So congrats to reader VMH, who earns fifty thousand Quatloos to be spent at Misty Max's Den of Despair on Rigel Seven. (Interstellar transportation not provided.)

Striker!

Roger has some good linkage relating to the Hollywood writers' strike. SamuraiFrog also has some pithy observations, mostly relating to Michael Eisner, who said something dumb.

Obviously, I support the strike, for whatever that's worth. (I imagine all those picketing writers suddenly letting loose a whoop and holler of delight upon learning that some blogger from Buffalo who gets about 300 hits a day is on their side.) Once you've read William Goldman's books Adventures in the Screen Trade and Which Lie Did I Tell?, you quickly realize that Hollywood management is largely comprised of people who would steal the coins from a dead man's eyes. So yeah, a pox on their house.

Pay your writers, guys. They're why your actors have stuff to say when the camera's pointing at them.

Fixing the Prequels - The Phantom Menace (part two)

part one

As we continue fixing The Phantom Menace, we have reached the point where Qui Gon and Obi Wan have escaped death on the Trade Federation ship and are sneaking down to the surface of Naboo. There's a scene where Queen Amidala speaks to Nute Gunray, and this scene is followed by the Queen conferring with her highest counselors. I would change none of this. I like the mystery here as it's unfolding: the Queen's belief that the ambassadors have arrived and commanded the Federation to make settlement, while the Federation insists that the ambassadors have never arrived. Likewise, the scene in the Naboo throne room is well done, and I'd leave that alone completely. Where I'd start tweaking things is when we reconnected with the two Jedi.

Remember, Qui Gon and Obi Wan have stowed away on separate ships and plan to meet somehow on the planet surface. Nute Gunray warns his battle droid captain that the two Jedi are no longer aboard the ship in orbit, and that they are therefore almost certainly stowing away. This sets up a bit of sneaking around for the Jedi, but this sneaking around didn't happen onscreen, which is a bit of a pity. In reality, the original script has things going slightly differently as was filmed. As the droid army ships land, we see Obi Wan pop his head out of a pond, look around, and then disappear again beneath the water. Then we'd cut to the Viceroy warning the droid captain that the two Jedi have escaped the orbiting ship and are therefore likely on the planet. And after that, we meet Jar Jar Binks.

Okay. Before getting to specifics, let's discuss Jar Jar in general. Basically, Jar Jar is probably the single most hated facet of the prequel trilogy. While I never hated him – in fact, I rather like him – he's got some serious execution problems. He gets a bit too much screen time, and he's almost uniformly the goofy screwball for the entire time, not getting a moment where he can just stand there are quietly talk until late in the movie, by which time it's too late. So that's a place to begin with fixing Jar Jar.

It's also interesting to note that Jar Jar isn't just along for the ride; he has a definite character arc, mainly in TPM but also in the remaining PT. Jar Jar is the annoying kid who screws up a lot, but who has a lot of heart and ends up doing fairly well by himself and by his people. Where Lucas errs, then, is in not showing us early enough that Jar Jar has quite a bit of potential.

When we first see Jar Jar, he's among the creatures running wildly in fear away from the giant droid army transports that are literally plowing their way through the forests of Naboo. Qui Gon is among these creatures, and finds Jar Jar directly in his way. Jar Jar, panicking, grabs onto Qui Gon and falls down, dragging the Jedi master to the ground with him, where they lay still as the droid transport moves right over the top of them. How to make this better? Well, I'd show a dispirited, lonely Jar Jar wandering lonely through the woods, searching for food – maybe he'd find a worm and reject it for taste – when he'd suddenly note an animal running by...and then another...and another, until it's a full-fledged stampede. Then he'd see Qui Gon coming.

After the droid transport passes, I'd revise the ensuing dialog a bit:

QUI GON: You almost got us killed! Are you brainless?

JAR JAR: I spake.

QUI GON: The ability to speak does not make you intelligent. Now get out of here!

JAR JAR: No! No...mesa stay with you. Mesa help. Mesa Gungan. Wesa warriors.

QUI GON: That won't be necessary. Now go...

At this point, Obi Wan comes bursting out of some nearby vegetation, closely pursued by a battle droid on a floating attack vehicle. Qui Gon quickly dispatches the battle droid, and attention once again turns to Jar Jar. However, in the shooting script, there's a bit that answers the question of why Obi Wan didn't just destroy the battle droid himself. It seems that he got his lightsaber soaked and now the battery's dead. I like this, and I'd keep it. Here's the gist of what I'd do:

QUI GON: I see you're wet...did you seal your lightsaber before going under?

OBI WAN: (sheepishly) I forgot, Master. I was near to being discovered, and --

QUI GON: Indeed.

He takes Obi Wan's lightsaber and tries to ignite it; the blade fizzles and shorts out.

QUI GON: It'll dry out in time, although it won't work perfectly until you replace the crystal. Remember, Padawan, this weapon is your life.

OBI WAN: Yes, Master.

Reading through the shooting script, I find a lot of little touches that I really think would have enhanced the final product. I wish that George Lucas had been a bit more willing to indulge longer running times in the PT. Another benefit of including this bit would be to presage an exchange in the next film, and to further establish the teacher-student relationship between Qui Gon and Obi Wan.

Anyway, we move on to Jar Jar's statement that the Jedi should go to the Gungan city, the hidden city. Here again I'd have Jar Jar point out that the Gungans are warriors. In fact, I'd drive this point home, the idea being that Jar Jar's big problem is that he's a failed warrior in a civilization of warriors. Other than that, I've always liked the entire bit with Jar Jar first saying that the Jedi should go to the Gungan City, then saying that he can't take them there because he's banished, and Qui Gon and Obi Wan manipulating Jar Jar's fears to convince him to take them to the Gungan City after all: "Do you hear that? That is the sound of a thousand terrible things headed this way." "And if they find us, they will smash us, crush us, and grind us into oblivion!" I like that exchange a great deal.

So we're at the lake where Jar Jar points out that they are going underwater. Here again I'd have Jar Jar point out that the Gungans are warriors, maybe in noting that the Jedi shouldn't expect a warm welcome – something like, "Gungans are warriors and no liking strangers, so don't expecting a warm welcome."

And as long as I'm going into detailed stuff about TPM, I frankly think that the first sight of the Gungan city, as they swim over an underwater cliff and see all those golden bubbles hanging there before them, is one of those beautiful sights that fill each of the Star Wars movies. That's one of the visuals that makes me a Star Wars fan.

The scene with Qui Gon and Obi Wan requesting aid of the Gungan rulers doesn't really work as well as it should. First of all, that facial tic of Boss Nass's – the one where he suddenly shakes his head and wobbles his jowls back and forth – needs to go. I'm not really sure what that's all about.

Second, the scene should play the differences between the Gungans and the Naboo up a little more, and again, accentuate the "warrior Gungans" thing a bit more:

OBI WAN: When the droids have taken control of the Naboo, they will come after you.

BOSS NASS: Wesa no think so. They not knowing wesa are here. And wesa warriors! We can fight them if they come.

OBI WAN: But you and the Naboo form a symbiont circle. What happens to one happens to the other. You must see this.

BOSS NASS: Dissen not true. Wesa no need the Naboo, wesa no care about the Naboo, and the Naboo no care about us. Yousa must leave now.

QUI GON: (waves his hand) Then speed us on our way....

And so on. When we get to Qui Gon's intercession on Jar Jar's behalf, I'd again alter the dialogue slightly:

QUI GON: What's to become of Jar Jar Binks?

BOSS NASS: Hesa been banished three times, and hesa come back each time! So hesa to be punished.

I especially like here the benevolent smile Boss Nass gives when he indicates that Jar Jar is to be "punished", followed by Jar Jar's swallow of fear. The rest of this scene plays out all right, and then we're into the whole transit through "the planet core".

Now, I know that they're not really going through the planet's core. And I have no problem with that, OK? So no complaining about that. The entire underwater sequence of TPM has actually always been one of my favorite parts of the movie, and the only changes I would make would be mostly cosmetic. Jar Jar, for example, talks too much through the whole sequence.

There's a line in the script that isn't heard in the movie; Obi Wan asks of Qui Gon something like, "Master, why do you keep dragging these pathetic life forms with us?" I don't know why that line got cut, since its echoing line later on the movie (on Tatooine) is still present. I suspect that it makes Obi Wan too much of an egoist jerk, but I'd rather that line have stayed. As they pilot the sub away from the Gungan City, something like this:

JAR JAR: Through the Core? In a bongo? Dis is nutsen.

OBI WAN: Why do we always end up with some pathetic life form tagging along with us?

QUI GON: All life is bound by the living Force, young Padawan, and even the strongest Jedi needs allies.

JAR JAR: Where we going?

QUI GON: You're navigating, aren't you?

JAR JAR: I no go through the Core in just a bongo! We get crunched dere!

QUI GON: Well then, the Force will guide us.

The sub steers into a deep hole, followed by a giant fish.

OBI WAN: Why were you banished, Jar Jar?

JAR JAR: Dis a longo tale but small part be...mesa clumsy.

OBI WAN: You were banished because you were clumsy?

Jar Jar looks sadder and sadder.

JAR JAR: Mesa never be Gungan warrior now.

In the actual script (and the film), Jar Jar goes on to describe some of the clumsy things he's done. The problem is that it's hard to understand what he's talking about in the first place (what's a "heyblibber"?), and it only serves to fill up some time while the big fish looms behind them. I think it works better if it's just left at Jar Jar being clumsy, something we already know, and the unexplained nature of his banishment serves to better underscore his disappointment in himself (enhancing his character arc) and the manner in which he's not representative of most Gungans.

Anyway, now the big fish attacks. I'd like to have seen this drawn out slightly before the even bigger fish attacks the big fish, freeing the sub. That said, Qui Gon's sage observation that "There's always a bigger fish" is a good line.

There's a brief scene next on the bridge of the Trade Federation ship, where Nute Gunray reports to Darth Sidious that the invasion is going well. But he omits any mention of the Jedi who escaped, and when his second-in-command points this out, Gunray replies, "No need to report that to him until we have something to report." I like this scene, and wouldn't change anything about it.

Back to the sub, where they're cruising along through the water when they lose power. I'd add an observation here as to the cause – "The smaller fish did some damage before the bigger fish got him, Master" – and then let it play out as in the movie. I like Jar Jar's shrill panic, especially when the get the lights back on and find that they're right in front of some other beastie. In fact, I'd have milked that a bit, and had Jar Jar's shrieking go on a few seconds more before Qui Gon conks him out with the Jedi Nerve Pinch. (Well, that's basically what it is, right?) However, instead of having Obi Wan say "You overdid it" – was Qui Gon not supposed to conk Jar Jar out? -- I'd have Obi Wan simply say, with great relief, "Thank you!" For freakishly obsessive Star Wars fans, this would echo a similar moment between Han Solo, Princess Leia, and an incessantly-talking C-3PO in The Empire Strikes Back.

After they'd escape the second beastie to another bigger fish, I'd like to hear something like this:

QUI GON: We're getting closer to the Naboo City. I can feel it in the Force.

OBI WAN: Good. I don't know how many more bigger fish are going to save us, down here.

JAR JAR: (moaning from his sleep) Are wesa dere yet?

So there we have it: a beginning to the redemption of Jar Jar Binks. Next time, we'll look at the invasion of Naboo, the rescue of the Queen, and the beginnings of Padme's subterfuge.

Unidentified Earth 23

Well, Unidentified Earth 22 went unidentified for all of a few hours, as I figured would happen. It is, indeed, Glastonbury Tor, one of my "Geez, I hope I don't die before I see that" world locations. Fifty Quatloos to each person who got it right.

And I note again that Unidentified Earth 21 is still awaiting identification! Come on, people! Quit stonewalling! (And that's another hint. Any more and I'm going to have to declare victory.)

Now's the time for another entry. I suspect this one's not terribly hard either, so have at it, folks.



Where are we?

(And please Rot-13 your guesses! One person forgot last week. For shame!)

The siren call of a blank endpaper....

Sheila has a pretty wonderful link: the Book Inscriptions project. (As of this writing, the site's not loading, but it was loading an hour or so ago, I swear!) The site posts images of inscriptions written in the fronts of books, typical of the kind of thing people write when they give a book as a gift. As Sheila notes, this sort of thing is like crack cocaine to a person like myself. Go have a look, when the site starts loading again.

Listenin'

I've just started reading Alex Ross's The Rest is Noise. I'll have more to say on the book when I've finished with it (and that'll be a while; I'm only about fifty pages in as of this writing), but in reading the passages early on about Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler, I realized that I haven't listened to the music of either composer in a great while – years, for most of their works I have on disc, and in several cases, over a decade. Ouch. That's too long to spend out of the company of such great composers. So, as I'm writing this post (and playing Mah-Jong on the laptop), I'm listening to Mahler's Symphony No. 1 in D (the "Titan").

I'm struck anew by this symphony's earthiness. I knew a number of things about Mahler's life before I ever heard any of his work, and the things I knew mainly concerned his preoccupation with death, the giant scale on which his musical thoughts formed, his gargantuan orchestrations, and the like. When I first listened to the Symphony No. 1, with its dreamy an mysterious introduction, I heard nothing aside from what I expected. But then the work's first melody proper begins, a gentle tune in the low strings that is by turns jaunty and lyrical, almost like a folksong. In the second movement, the rhythms are straight out of folk dance, and the third movement relies on a minor-key rendition of "Frere Jacques". Only in the last movement does the symphony seem to reach the sense of scale and plumbing of epic depths that are thought to be typical of Mahler.

I'd forgotten how much I like this symphony.

(My recording of the Mahler Symphony No. 1 has Leonard Slatkin conducting the St. Louis Symphony.)

Readin'

Time to catch up on some recent reading I've done:

:: As research for a short story I finished drafting a few weeks ago, I read a fascinating book called Stradivari's Genius: Five Violins, One Cello, and Three Centuries of Enduring Perfection by Toby Faber. This is exactly what the title suggests: an examination of the violin making of Antonio Stradivari, the great Cremonese master whose hand produced stringed instruments that have never been surpassed in quality despite the fact that Stradivari died in 1737. I was most interested in the early parts of the book, the ones that deal specifically with violin making and the technical aspects of Stradivari's craft, but the remainder of the book traces five specific Stradivarius instruments through the history of Western music. It is a fascinating survey of classical music history not from the typical point of view of the composers, but from the instruments that play the music.

:: My space opera reading project continues at its stready, if slow, pace. A short while back I read A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs (published in this omnibus). Strictly speaking, this isn't space opera at all, but rather its sister genre, planetary romance. After reading some early space operas months before, I expected the Burroughs work to be enjoyable but generally suffer the same faults of anachronism commonly found by contemporary readers in early SF. I was surprised to find that this was actually not the case, at least to a much lesser degree. Burroughs, it turns out, was a much stronger writer than E.E. "Doc" Smith or Edmund Hamilton, and thus his work seems to fare better in the light of the decades that have passed since he penned these tales. (I say "seems to" because, after all, I've only read the one Burroughs book thus far.) A Princess of Mars turns out to be tremendous fun, a rollicking tale of adventure in which Captain John Carter is mysteriously transported from a cave in Arizona to the plains of Mars, where he falls in with various cultures of beastly beings, engages in fights to the death, discovers tremendous powers and abilities, escapes various dangers, and falls in love with the titular Princess of Mars, Dejah Thoris. Make no mistake: this is one fun book, and you can bet I'll be returning to Barsoom sometime soon. ("Barsoom" being what the natives of Mars call their world.)

Of course, in reading a book like A Princess of Mars, one must suspend disbelief entirely. We now know that Mars holds no ancient civilizations that existed thousands of years before we emerged from the primordial ooze of our own planet, and we likewise now know that there are no canals on the Red Planet. I always find, though, that whether I'm reading Burroughs or a writer like Leigh Brackett, I just don't care if the stories invent their Marses out of whole cloth.

While I was reading this I saw via Jason Bennion that Pixar is developing the Barsoom novels into a possible trilogy of movies. Now having read A Princess of Mars at last, I'm not sure what to make of this. I don't know if the books can, or even should, be filmed as they are. Fiction from the early 20th century tends to be, well, less politically correct, and there were a number of spots in A Princess of Mars where I felt a bit of human, or even male, chauvinism creeping into the story. Additionally, the book contains more than a few scenes that are not suitable for the kinds of audiences at whom Pixar tends to aim its films. We'll see.

:: The Andromeda Stories is a manga that I picked up, assuming it to be space opera, but so far it's more of a mix of planetary romance and science fantasy. No matter; it's actually quite engaging. The story involves a world called Cosmoralia where the crown Prince is about to get married and become King; meanwhile, a strange star appears in Cosmoralia's sky, and then disappears as something strange crashes in a remote part of the planet. Of course, this presages invasion. Subplots include the birth of twins to the new Queen, and the identity of a mysterious female warrior. It's all enjoyable stuff, even if the book's lettering style makes it hard to read at times. I find that with reading manga, it's not the reading right-to-left thing that trips me up, but rather the stylized lettering and the fact that the Japanese sound effects (the "BAM" and "ZOOM" and "KRA-POW!" stuff) are left untranslated. (In the case of the latter, there's not really a way around this that I can see, other than destroying the feel of the panel by removing the Japanese onomatopoeia and replacing it with English.) Anyhow, I'm liking this story and definitely plan to get the next two volumes as they appear, as well as seeking out the earlier To Terra, by the same creative team.

:: Sticking with space opera, I've read a few stories in the anthology The New Space Opera, edited by Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan. So far I'm highly impressed with this antho. The four stories I've read thus far are "Saving Tiamaat" by Gwyneth Jones, "Who's Afraid of Wolf 359" by Ken MacLeod, "The Emperor and the Maula" by Robert Silverberg, and "The Art of War" by Nancy Kress. I enjoyed each of these tales, although I found the Silverberg the finest. There's a lot of fine fiction here, and I'm looking forward to the follow-up volume.

:: Returning to comics, I was in the library and spotted Joss Whedon's name on a graphic novel, so I grabbed it. It's called Fray, and it turns out to be a "Vampire Slayer" story, although one set some indeterminate time in the future from the Buffy TV show, with a new slayer in the lead. Her name is Melaka Fray, and by trade she's a thief who steals antique artifacts for her criminal boss, when she's approached by a demon who informs her of her true heritage as a vampire slayer. There's a new vampire uprising taking place, and it's Melaka's job to destroy it. The main problem is that Melaka has no real sense of her own heritage as a slayer, and little desire to live up to it.

As one who found the few individual episodes of Buffy I ever watched quite entertaining but who never bothered to learn the show's dense mythology in order to really get into the show, I was glad that this graphic novel gives pretty much exactly as much backstory as is needed to understand what's going on. I assume that a lot of this stuff will be old hat to Buffy fans, but for me, it was easy swallowing. The book also boasts a lot of the snappy dialog one expects from Joss Whedon.

All of this, plus Whedon's admission in the foreword that he plans to write more comics, makes me wonder why on Earth no one's decided to do a series of Firefly stories as comics. Talk about a perfect medium for keeping those characters and settings alive!

:: Back to short fiction. As always, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror offers a huge amount of excellent fiction in books that are worth buying just for the introductory essays on the status of the genres alone. This year's edition features, as always, a large amount of short fiction. Good stories here that I've read so far are "In the House of the Seven Librarians" by Ellen Klages, "Lionflower Hedge" by Ira Sher, and the delightfully twisted "Dog Person" by Scott Nicholson.

:: Some years ago a friend sent me a copy of The Land of Laughs by Jonathan Carroll. Over the course of two or three moves, this book wound up on a back shelf, forgotten until last week when the friend goosed me about it. Thus I read it in just a few days. What a remarkable tale this is! Thomas Abbey is a quiet teacher in a Connecticut school who harbors an intense fascination for the books of childrens author Marshall France, so much so that he wishes to write a biography of the man. Into his life comes a young woman named Saxony Gardner, who shares his fascination with the same author. Together they begin delving into Marshall France's life, eventually traveling to his final hometown of Galen, Missouri where they find that France was...ah, but that would be telling. I'll just note that what starts as a literary love story gradually shifts into horror. Carroll's characters are among the best I've seen in a book; I had that rare feeling of getting to know the people in the story, as opposed to merely watching them. And even though a back cover blurb promised that "the epilogue is a masterpiece of surprise", I was still surprised when I got there. This is a great book.

And that's what I've been up to, reading-wise.

One Hundred Movies!!! (51 through 60)

And away we go with ten more movies that I like a whole lot. Yup. A whole lot, I say! With this entry we get halfway through the Byzantium One Hundred:

60. Nanny McPhee

This Emma Thompson vehicle is one of the better childrens' films of recent years. It's the tale of an English household where the Father can't provide adequate discipline for his kids, who terrorize one nanny after another until a horrible woman named Nanny McPhee arrives, with her discipline techniques that don't seem...quite...possible. I always enjoy British stories for children; the Brits seem generally more aware than Americans that kids are often not very nice at all.

Signature moment: The wedding; nothing like a bunch of stiff Brits doing slapstick.

59. X-Men 2

I remember being quite frustrated with the first X-Men movie when it came out in 2000 or whenever. It felt like the producers had taken a really, really good superhero movie and cut half an hour from it, thus turning it into a merely pretty good superhero movie. Luckily, they got it right with X-Men 2. They didn't scrimp on the running time or the character development, making for a slickly fine film. I haven't seen the third movie yet, having heard little good about it. But X-Men 2 really is quite good.

Signature moment: Ian McKellen as Magneto has a tiny moment when he gives his helmet a knowing tap. Hard to describe, but it's a perfect moment.

58. Batman Forever

Ah, the strange trip of the Batman movies. I never much liked the first one, actually; for all the talk of its dark tone, I found it decidedly un-dark, with much of the film outright played for laughs. The production design was amazing, sure, as were the performances, but it just left me cold. The second film, Batman Returns, worked a lot better for me. This one actually was quite a bit darker. Batman Forever is the film with Val Kilmer in the title role, and this is my favorite Batman film yet. (Full disclosure: I haven't seen Batman Begins yet.) The tone is a bit more fun, but not so campy as to be, well, Batman and Robin.

Signature moment: Alfred,w hen he tells Bruce Wayne that Mr. Grayson has borrowed the car – the "other" car.

57. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Tim Burton's version of the Roald Dahl story is chock full of creepy weirdness as befits a filmed version of a Roald Dahl story. I was skeptical of a second filmed version of this book, but Burton did well, I think. Johnny Depp's turn as Willy Wonka is interesting; he seems at times to be channeling Michael Jackson.

Signature moment: The animatronic "It's a small world" type display thing at the outset of the children's visit to the Wonka Factory...and that display's horrible destruction.

56. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

And here's the earlier classic. This film is much sweeter in tone than Burton's later effort, choosing to emphasize heart and warmth over the Burtonesque dark fantasy. There is still some fairly dark stuff, particularly the fates of the naughty children and the world reaction to the news that Willy Wonka is going to allow visitors to his factory.

Signature moment: "Pure Imagination".

55. The Incredibles

Superheroes, via Pixar, who have yet to make a bad movie. (I wasn't wild about A Bug's Life, but it's not bad.) This movie boasts some terrific design, and some sneakily dark material, such as the roster of heroes who have fallen before the villain's steady progression of improved killing machines. Michael Giacchino's music is reminiscent of John Barry's James Bond scores. This is kind of a "meta-superhero" movie.

Signature moment: The Sam Jackson character shouting, "Honey, where is my super suit?!"

54. The Fugitive

What a great movie! I don't think it gets enough love these days, but it was certainly highly regarded back in 1993 when it came out, getting a Best Picture nomination and a Best Supporting Actor win for Tommy Lee Jones. It's just a taut, riveting story that still manages to depict its characters as real people with genuine concern.

Signature moment: Is there another one? The train wreck. One of the most spectacular such sequences ever put on film, and even more impressive by virtue of not being computer-generated.

53. Excalibur

I don't know why this film works as well as it does, because it probably shouldn't. Telling the King Arthur story in a single film is hard enough, as the Matter of Britain consists of a huge number of interrelated stories. The film's design is highly stylized, with often-impenetrable dialog. The music is a mish-mash of original scoring by Trevor Jones combined with selections from classical works like Carmina Burana and Wagner. Nevertheless, the movie in many ways sets production precedent for later fantasies like The Lord of the Rings, with its carefully selected locations and stylized shots.

Signature moment: Merlin's magic to help Uther seduce Igraine.

52. The Man Who Would Be King

The Rudyard Kipling story, with Sean Connery and Michael Caine as the British con-men and adventurers who journey to a distant land in India and convince the locals that they are gods and kings, is a grand entertainment, funny and poignant and sad.

Signature moment: The last time Connery sings "The minstrel boy".

51. Legends of the Fall

This big-hearted horse opera is a tale of three brothers (Brad Pitt, Aidan Quinn, and Henry Thomas) and the woman (Julia Ormond) who comes between them. It's set in the rural country of Montana. There are scenes set in World War I France. Anthony Hopkins plays the family patriarch. The tale spans several decades, and features mystical narration by a wise old Native American. There is nothing at all that's subtle about this movie. Maybe that's why I like it so much; it plays out with operatic intensity (helped along by one of James Horner's best scores).

Signature moment: When Tristan (Pitt) meets Susanna (Ormond).

All for this week. Next time we'll delve into the Top Fifty. You may have noticed that thus far on the list we haven't referred to a certain sextet of space opera films. I wonder how long that can last?

The Batman School of Business Management

I love reading comics, but I think I love reading blogs about comics more.

How hard was it?!

Unidentified Earth 21 is still unidentified! This is, as yet, the most successful entry in this series. I think I'll celebrate with a cold glass of water. (Which is hard to come by these days 'round that location. Heh.)

Sentential Links #117

Here we go. Or not.

:: I suppose, then, that my strongest feelings about Into the Wild as a film are feelings of disappointment -- disappointment at the lost potential to film the story as something unique and powerful, something that escapes received ideas and gestures; disappointment that the fleeting moments of real excellence couldn't be extended.

:: Leave it to Hollywood. One of the big questions about the strike is what affect it will have on the Oscar telecast? Of course, this is the same industry that when President Reagan was shot, one of the trades had this headline: OSCARCAST POSTPONED. And then below in much smaller type: PRESIDENT SHOT.

:: Some folks don’t seem to realize that most Hollywood writers really don’t make a whole lot of money. There are hundreds of thousands of people who depend on the entertainment industry for their income including janitors, caterers, carpenters, and craftsmen of all kinds (like me), as well as high priced actors and producers.

:: So, a few weeks ago near the end of September, Jane and I decided that it was time to step out in faith. We would leave St. Luke’s, we would join the Roman Catholic Church, and we would trust that Christ would show us the community He wanted us to become part of. (I find faith journeys fascinating, no matter where they end. Well, almost no matter where they end. This is one of the interesting ones.)

:: All writers can do is to write the stories they have in them.

:: I drove across the country with my boyfriend years ago. We went to many many states. We saw many beautiful things. We went through mountains and plains and prairies. But the states that touched us the most - the states that, frankly, blew us away ... were the Dakotas. (I drove across South Dakota with The Girlfriend (now The Wife) many years ago, and it really is compelling landscape; the way the soil changes color once you cross the Missouri River, the way the Interstate has exits right into farm fields, the way the exits to towns are marked with mileage to the next town so as to warn you to get off NOW if you need gas, and the longest horizon I've ever seen.)

:: Conservatives often seem to miss, when raging about the stuff on their teevees, that it's really their beloved Invisible Hand that's slapping them in the face. They would rather believe it was Betty Friedan. If they stopped to consider how much of the damage they perceive to their "culture" is actually done by the free market, it would drive them mad.

:: A century from now, even the very best blog posts will be long forgotten. Let's face it: they aren't that good. But bad blog posts will still be every bit as bad as they were on the day they were spawned. They'll endure. So really, we're doing this for the children. And the grandchildren. (I know, this is all a pretty childish exercise -- but yes, I voted. Althouse, Derbyshire, Du Toit, Hindraker, and Whittle.)

And that's it for this week. Be careful out there among them English.

Bills 33, Bengals 21

The Buffalo Bills are, right now, a .500 football team.

Yes, you read that right. The team that found ways to lose to Denver and Dallas at home despite leading at the exact moment the clock in the 4th quarter ticked to 00:00, and that got manhandled on the road by New England and Pittsburgh, is now at .500. All they have to do to meet my preseason prediction for a 5-11 season is go 1-7 the rest of the way out, and this team is frankly showing too much character to go 1-7 the rest of the way out. Wow.

So yeah, color me impressed. Of course, I'm one who thinks that they're beating decent teams, while other, more pessimistic Bills fans might say that the fact that the Bills are beating these teams makes those teams bad teams. Well, to that I saw, Pshaw. That's right. Pshaw. So onto the commentary!

:: JP Losman. He only had one really bad throw all day, he managed the game smartly, he spread the ball around to different receivers (it seemed like he was only throwing to Lee Evans, but eight different Bills caught passes in this game), and he did some decent running when there was nothing to gain by throwing. I don't know if this game was enough to convince the Bills' brass to keep him around, but I still think he's got a decent NFL career inside him, even if it's not here, so games like this can only enhance his trade value. I've always liked Losman, so even if he's not the guy in Buffalo, I'm rooting for him to have success.

:: Marshawn Lynch. What a stud. He always keeps his feet moving, he always seems to grind out at least a yard or two after he takes the initial hit, and he finally broke the long run we've been waiting to see from him. When he ends up running behind the next great Bills O-line, he's going to be an absolute force.

:: The Bills' young players. Just think, folks: these guys will be coming of age when Darth Brady and the rest of his Sith apprentices in New England are on the physical decline of their careers. Heh!

:: Coaching. This game was, as far as I could see, very well coached. Nothing really stupid was done, with one exception (see below). The defense always seems to have guys right around the ball, wherever it is. Tackling has been improved immensely. The motivation continues to be amazing. I don't know that this is a championship coaching staff, but they've got to get some mad props for getting this team back up off the mat after what had to be the most dispiriting start to a season ever.

:: The NFL's flex schedule! The Bills' resurgence has given the league cause to move their upcoming home game against New England to Sunday Night Football on NBC in two weeks. Huzzah! Now I really hope that this week at Miami doesn't become a "trap" game. And how sweet would it be if Buffalo was the team that ended the talk of an undefeated season? (Not that I'd bet on that outcome, but it could happen!)

:: I guess I'll file this under "Meh", even though they had a pretty good game. I'd still like to see the offensive line improved over the offseason, preferably with a high draft pick. Ditto the D-line. Those guys play incredibly hard, and they'd only benefit from having a nice big body in the middle.

:: Ocho Cinqo. I like that guy, and I hated seeing him go down like that. I hope he's OK.

:: No defensive pass rush. Oy.

:: Red zone efficiency. Gotta get better down there, guys. Had those four FGs been TDs, this game would have been a blowout.

:: And speaking of red zone efficiency: first-and-goal from the one yard line and you got cute with the playcalling? Aieee! I have a feeling that given four chances to run it up the middle, Marshawn Lynch would have picked up the yard and scored.

Other stuff from around the NFL:

:: Wow, this Peterson kid in Minnesota seems to have some potential, doesn't he?

:: My preseason pick for the Super Bowl? Saints over Ravens? Yeah, it could happen -- and, in the immortal words of Wayne Campbell, monkeys might fly out of my butt.

:: It's OK, Indianapolis. In the James Bond movies, Blofeld always wins Round One.

Next up: the Bills travel to winless Miami, who are off this week after losing in London last week. Be careful, guys! This looks like a classic "trap" game! Be mindful, for past the Dolphins, Eeee-vil lurks!

Strike for the Shores of Dover

I occasionally get search engine hits for people looking for the lyrics to "Strike for the Shores of Dover", a rousing sea-shanty chorus that is heard at a particularly triumphant moment in the Errol Flynn movie The Sea Hawk. Thanks to the recent Naxos release of the film's score, here are the lyrics:

Pull on the oars!
Freedom is yours!
Strike for the shores of Dover!

Over the sea,
Hearty and free,
Troubles will soon be over!

Sing as you row;
Here we go,
For we know that we row
for home, sweet home!

Pull on the oars!
Freedom is yours!
Strike for the shores of Dover!

Over the sea,
Hearty and free,
Troubles will soon be over!

Here we go,
For we know that we row for Home!
Sailing for Home!
Home!

Those lyrics may look insipid, but believe me, watch the movie and try not to grin when this stuff kicks in.

Go Mirna!

The Amazing Race starts tonight, with a whole new batch of racers. I've only been on the TAR bandwagon for about a year now, having now seen three seasons through (starting with those great hippies' win). The downside? No Mirna, sadly. The upside? No Dustin-and-Kandice, whose antics made me think that the show's rules should include "No having anyone drive you to your destination, no having anyone let you follow their car to their destination, and no having some local ride with you so they can point which way you should turn to get to your destination".

Obviously, I have no idea which team I'll end up pulling for overall, since it takes a few episodes before anyone really starts to stand out. But let's be honest: early money has me pulling for this Goth duo. But as interesting as that pink Goth lady looks, there'll always be a special place in my heart for Mirna. Sigh....

(Geez: A Bills game, followed by Colts-Pats, followed by The Amazing Race? And I didn't think to buy chips or Cheetos yesterday when I did my grocery shopping! AIEEE!)

Snap-hiss

Last week I posted a YouTube thingy collating the ten best sound effects of Star Wars, and I indicated that I thought one sound was horribly missing while one made no sense to be included at all. Here it is again:



The one that I don't think belongs there at all is the Techno Union guy. I think he's a neat touch, but he's a throwaway gag, really. What's missing? The Millennium Falcon, obviously. That ship has a totally distinctive sound to its engines, such that in the movies you can always tell when the Falcon is onscreen or approaching. The best example of this comes during the Battle of Endor in Return of the Jedi, when there's a tracking shot that follows some Rebel fighters as they pursue a group of TIE fighters. All of a sudden, you hear the Falcon's engines offscreen and the ship then roars into the frame from above, as if overflying the audience.

Other ships have different sounds as well: Slave One's engines have a roar of their own, and I love the "lumbering bomber" drone of the Naboo cruiser that lands on Coruscant at the beginning of Attack of the Clones.

Other great sounds in Star Wars? The pod-racers in The Phantom Menace are terrific; many of them have distinctive sounds, especially Sebulba's racer with that pounding pulse it makes. The blasters held by the destroyer droids have their own sound, apart from most of the other blasters in the series; Han Solo's blaster also has its own sound. The various astrodroids throughout the films also all have their own sounds, although all are roughly similar to R2-D2's familiar beeps. And if you really listen carefully, you can tell that the lightsabers don't all sound the same either. Luke's green lightsaber from RotJ has a different ignition sound than his earlier, blue saber; Count Dooku's saber also has its own ignition sound.

That's what makes the sounds of Star Wars so great: objects of similar types make similar sounds, but none of them ever really make the same sound. This is the type of thing that mechanics know; two cars of the same make, model and year will nevertheless sound slightly different at idle. (George Lucas probably knows this, as he's an old car hound.) Everything in Star Wars always sounds like a real thing with real moving parts. I love that.

Sunday Burst of Weirdness

This will be kind of a link-dump of some stuff I've found this week, combined with some stuff I've had sitting in my "Blog Fodder" bookmarks folder for a long time. In the case of the latter stuff, I may well have linked some of this stuff in the past and not remember it. Also, I can no longer credit where I've found a lot of this.

:: Fellow gripers about For Better or For Worse will enjoy April Patterson's real blog.

:: Thirty-nine questions for Charlie Daniels upon hearing "The Devil Went Down to Georgia". I've probably linked this before, come to think of it, but here it is again. I've never liked that song; frankly, both the Devil and Johnny are crappy fiddlers. If Natalie MacMaster or Joshua Bell walked in there, they'd both wipe the floor with both of those idiots.

:: A magical pet adventure, that isn't safe for work. Hmmmmm.

A few links from Stephen Frug:

:: The twelve devices of Peanuts. I've previously commented on that second Schroeder strip in this space myself.

:: A do-it-yourself open letter.

:: Star Trek fans remember that before Kate Mulgrew was cast as Captain Janeway on Voyager, the role briefly belonged to Genevieve Bujold. Some of Bujold's clips have surfaced, and man, she was not cut out for that role.

:: Not really weird, but quite cool actually: Twenty-five photographs taken at exactly the right time. I suspect that a bunch of these are of the "take lots of repeated shots and pick the best one later" variety, but who cares -- the photos are all very interesting, and across many different subject matters to boot.

:: Finally, because I love me some Pac-Man, here are two odd variants: Steampunk Pac-man and Text-adventure Pac-man.

There ain't no "vista", there ain't no "view", and there certainly ain't no vista of no view.!

Shamus tracks the evolution of Windows, from 3.1 to Vista. He seems to be staunchly against Vista, and he has definite reasons for being so. My new laptop runs Vista, actually, while our current desktop machine runs XP. Personally I'm happy with both, although I don't do anything really that gives me reason to be concerned about the memory usage of Vista, so basically, for me my appreciation of Vista boils down to that it looks cool and shiny, and I like cool and shiny. I will note that the infamous "security warnings" in Vista don't bother me all that much; they don't pop up nearly as often as I'd been led to believe, and it seems to me that they pop up once and then don't occur again once a particular program has been cleared.

As an aural companion to Shamus's post, here are all of the Windows start-up sounds to date:



And then there's this, which is another reason why nobody but me is allowed to touch my laptop!



My point? None, really. I just like XP and Vista.

Joss! Joss! He's our man!!!

Joss Whedon has a new show coming to FOX. It's called Dollhouse. What's it about?

Echo (Eliza Dushku) [is] a young woman who is literally everybody's fantasy. She is one of a group of men and women who can be imprinted with personality packages, including memories, skills, language—even muscle memory—for different assignments. The assignments can be romantic, adventurous, outlandish, uplifting, sexual and/or very illegal. When not imprinted with a personality package, Echo and the others are basically mind-wiped, living like children in a futuristic dorm/lab dubbed the Dollhouse, with no memory of their assignments—or of much else. The show revolves around the childlike Echo's burgeoning self-awareness, and her desire to know who she was before, a desire that begins to seep into her various imprinted personalities and puts her in danger both in the field and in the closely monitored confines of the Dollhouse.

There are some interviews at the site linked above. The show sounds promising -- it's the creative team behind Firefly, after all -- but it's worth remembering that this is FOX we're talking about here. If things go according to past practice, FOX will air the fourth episode filmed first, put the show on at 7:00 on Sundays so it's constantly pre-empted by football, insist on multiple pilots being filmed, and run ads for the show only on Friday nights during the last commercial break during the 9:00-10:00 timeslot.

In the immortal words of Jon Lovitz: "FOX -- they should spell it with a 'U'."

Teetering

It's been a while since I linked James Howard Kunstler, so do check out his October Eyesore of the Month. This is the funniest building I've ever seen.

Unidentified Earth 22

OK, time for the next installment -- even though Unidentified Earth 21 is still unidentified. Oh well; tomorrow is another day. (There's another hint.)

Anyhoo, time for the new installment! This one's probably pretty easy:



Where are we?

Rot-13 your guesses, please!

Can the Colts have haloes attached to their helmets?

In comments to this post, Jess Nevins, who is a fan of the New England Stupid Patriots, takes exception to the fact that I used the word "evil" in reference to his team. Here is his comment, in full:

Yes, by all means, go Colts--let's root for the team whose coach is out there giving speeches against gay marriage and shilling for a poisonously homophobic organization. (Just do a search for "Tony Dungy" "gay marriage").

All Bill Belichick did was cheat at a game. (And run up the score). Tony Dungy is actively making life harder for millions of gay men and women. (Not to mention claiming that the homophobic organization is doing God's work, which by extension means that those who oppose that organization are doing the Devil's work).

I can understand hating the Patriots and rooting against them--but when you bandy around words like "evil," let's remember who the really bad people are.

[second comment]

Also--do some searching into Belichick's work with Jim Brown's Amer-I-Can Program, or his work with the Lazarus House Ministries.

Everyone's entitled to hate a team and individuals on that team. But, finally, *enough* with the "evil." Belichick may be boorish, asocial ,a philanderer, and a bad sport (although he's always been more gracious in defeat than Peyton Manning has been--Belichick never blames anyone else for his losses, which Manning can't say), but the man does good work outside of the realm of football, while Dungy is an activist for homophobia outside of football (and undoubtedly inside--if one of the Colts were gay, there's no way they could come out in that locker room environment). "Evil" is for God (if there is any such creature) to decide. But I know which one is the better person.

Well...lately I've noticed that more than a few commentators, as well as outright New England and/or Boston sports fans, seem utterly shocked that someone out there isn't swooning over the dreamy football feats of Brady-and-company. A few points in response:

:: This is, first and foremost, my blog, and I'll choose the words I use, thank you very much. If I want to use the word "evil" to describe Bill Belichick and the Patriots, I'll do just that.

:: That said, I will also assume that my readers are capable of differentiating "evil" used in the context of a sports team and "evil" used in other contexts. Now, I'm not sure if Jess is just a Patriots fan or if he's a fan of all the Boston-area sports teams, but I've noticed that some people are upset about the "evil" label being applied to the Patriots, where I don't recall ever seeing any such disapproval toward describing the New York Yankees as "the evil empire".

Of course, everybody knows that the Yankees are neither "evil" nor an "empire". Everybody recognizes that as a metaphor. That so many hyper-defensive Pats fans suddenly seem to be unable to recognize an over-the-top metaphor when it smacks them in the face when applied to their team strikes me as funny. Get a grip. More on sports metaphor in a moment, but....

:: Jess has been a sporadic reader of this blog for a long time, and he's been reading my over-the-top venting about the Patriots for an equally long time. I was calling the Patriots "evil" before it was "cool" to do so (here's my post from their Super Bowl win in 2004, if you don't believe me), and Jess knows this. I've also led off each season of football blathering in this space with a frank admission that what I'm doing is pure blathering, and to that point I've even taken to decorating my football posts with pictures of Homer Simpson. So Jess knows that he shouldn't take me seriously when I say that the Patriots are "evil". I suspect then that he's reacting to all the other commentators out there who have glommed onto the word -- such as the sanctimonious claptrap recently penned by Gregg Easterbrook on the subject. I've seen other Patriots fans reacting thusly to the "evil" characterization, and I never saw Yankees fans react that way. Or Cowboys fans, back in the 1990s -- in fact, they relished it. (Here's a profanity-laced post on another blog that illuminates that very point.) Tell a Yankees fan that their team is evil? They'll laugh at you. Same deal with a Cowboys fan. Tell a Pats fan that their team is evil? Break out the corkscrew, because here comes the whine.

:: Point-by-point comparisons of the off-the-field activities of the various personages involved are, for the purposes of this discussion, a waste of time. I'm not excusing Tony Dungy's stance on gay marriage, because I stand totally opposed to it (Dungy's stance, that is). But really -- since we're talking over-the-top language here, this is really all rather pointless, because except for extreme cases, sports fandom just doesn't work that way. I'll bet there are plenty of Indianapolis Colts fans who find Dungy's anti-gay views objectionable, but forgive them because he's their coach. That may be an ugly reality, but that's the reality. Arguing about it here seems odd. If, in the future, some turn of events transpired that brought Tony Dungy to the Patriots sidelines, would Jess then dump his investment of fandom in that team? Would I? Well, maybe he would -- we all have issues that are deal-breakers. I know that if the Bills are the team that gives Michael Vick his second chance in the NFL, I'm going to have a pretty hard time rooting for them.

:: This is perhaps a harder point to defend, but I can say with experience that one can hold some pretty dispiriting views on certain issues and still be a decent person. We once had a family friend who was a fine, fine friend indeed -- and he was also a terrible bigot, to the point where he stopped going to his favorite bar when the bar hired a black bartender. I don't like Dungy's stance on gays; it leaves a pretty bad taste in my mouth. But picking sports teams isn't like picking a political party, and we shouldn't act like it is.

:: From what I've read about the NFL and its general approach toward masculinity, I find it hard to believe that an openly gay player would be any more welcome in the Patriots locker room than any other. This is a serious problem with the NFL in general, not just with Tony Dungy.

:: No, Jess, you don't "know who the better person is", unless you know both of these guys personally and can assess their lives and their vices and their virtues as part of a whole package. And neither do I. This is just silly. My general impression is that Belichick is a creep. Yes, this is certainly colored by my being a Bills fan -- after all, I get to watch my team get clobbered by the guy twice a year, and he coached the Giants' D in Super Bowl XXV. But yes, his public persona is, to me, that of a creep. (And I'm not a complete homer here; I didn't like Gregg Williams when he was here, or Mike Mularkey, and Lawyer Milloy lost me with that stupid "You can't feed your family on Super Bowl rings" nonsense.)

:: I'm going to need an explanation someday about why it is that Barry Bonds's cheating is so horrible, so beyond the pale, that his Hall of Fame credentials are besmirched and that an entire era of baseball records needs to be asterisked at best and completely ignored at worst, while Bill Belichick's cheating is just "Oh, that whacky Bill, just looking for an edge!", and he pays his fine and the matter's closed.

:: On a more general point, objecting to the use of the word "evil" in a sports context seems a tad naive. Sport is founded on the entire notion of competition, and competition with rooting interests pretty much implies that for the spectators, there are "good guys" and "bad guys". And football amps this up to a very high degree. It's inherent in the game's very terminology: offense and defense. Aerial attack. Long bomb. Front lines. Shotgun formation. Blockers described as battering rams. Heavy hits. Quarterbacks as "generals", in "command". "Gridiron warriors". "Monsters of the Midway". "The Killer B's." "Steel curtain". The Bills' offense during the Super Bowl years, called the "K-gun".

Football's entire persona as a sport is steeped in terminology of conflict, war, and the like. Just watch any of those old NFL Films documentaries, with John Facenda's voiceovers droning on about the "gladiators of the gridiron" tumbling over the "frozen tundra" of the field, and you'll hear this kind of thing over and over. To take a sport like this, and then complain about the word "evil"? Come on, Pats fans.