A Teevee Report

Now that we're a little ways into the new teevee season, here are some thoughts on some shows.

::  Hell's Kitchen ended a few weeks ago, somewhat mercifully, as it turns out. This last season was awful. I wrote before about the obvious fact that the producers were keeping Elise around for the sake of drama, but as the finale unwound, it became clear that keeping Elise around for the sake of drama was the only thing keeping the show remotely interesting to watch. Hell's Kitchen has become nothing more than formula, with nothing ever different, right down to the formats of specific episodes. I found myself predicting each episode's challenge, before they happened. "Oh, eight chefs left? Time for the Blind Taste Test!" "Final four -- time for a visit from the family members, followed by Taste It and Create It!" "Oh, it's the final two? This means they'll cook their five dishes for five judges, and whoever wins more gets to pick their team for the final service first."

There is absolutely nothing ever new about Hell's Kitchen anymore. Nothing ever happens that we haven't seen happen to a different batch of chefs in previous seasons. The challenges are always the same; the only thing that changes are the ingredients. Each episode follows a rigid pattern: Reaction to last week; new day and new challenge; losers do crappy punishment while winners have fun; dinner service; upstairs drama over elimination nominations; elimination. It's all just boring now. And the worst thing is, they don't have to completely re-invent the show to reinvigorate things. Here are a couple ideas, just kicked off the top of my head randomly:

- No more "men versus women". During the "signature dishes" challenge, each head-to-head winner goes on one team, each loser to the other. This way you get a whole team of people with a chip on their shoulder from the get-go.

- Have a challenge early on whose reward for winning is the right to trade one chef to the other team, of their choice, for a chef from the other team, of their choice.

- Leave Hell's Kitchen. Take the chefs to actual, existing restaurants and have them cook one night for actual, paying customers. See what happens.

Just a couple of thoughts...but Hell's Kitchen really needs to mix things up, and stop being the same thing every year with nothing changed but the faces.

::  The Big Bang Theory continues to please. I would like the show to return a bit to its 'geek humor' roots; the focus has been on 'geek romance' a bit too much. I like the 'geek romance' stuff just fine; the show does it well. But there's been just a bit too much of it.

::  CSI: Miami and Hawaii Five-0 are my go-to shows for goofy, over-produced, brainless, cops-and-robbers, overactors galore, gonzo fun. Ken Levine writes about why H-5-0 is bad, but while I concede some of his points, I don't care. On Monday nights at 10:00 when I'm tired and winding down my day, a stupid cop show is just what the doctor ordered.

::  The Office isn't outright painful to watch, like it was last year, but it's still not that great. It's basically "watching someone flounder about a management job" with the same group of office cohorts. It's not a show I look forward to much anymore; it's something that is non-crap in a timeslot between shows I like watching.

Ohhh....wait a minute. We're watching The Office right now as I write this, and Darryl just had one of the best lines in the show's history. He was upset about not winning the lottery, but then he realizes he's being an ass and says:

"You know what? My future's not gonna be determined by seven little white balls. It's gonna be determined by two big black balls."

Credit where due, that was a terrific line.

::  I watched two episodes of The X-Factor. And then I stopped, because it's the same damn thing as American Idol. I don't care. Really and truly, I don't care.

::  The Amazing Race is off to a typical start. It's hard to figure out who to root for early on, so the show's mainly about the travelogues and laughing at the annoying ones. What I do not like is the presence of two racers who are former winners of Survivor. This is irritating. They got eliminated really early on, but it's just annoying that apparently CBS is going to be bringing former contestants back on both TAR and Survivor each time out now. I've stopped watching Survivor entirely because of this. If they want to bring back old contestants, then just have an "All-Stars" edition. Bringing back two contestants at a time is just stupid. (And even dumber is the apparent fact that the new contestants apparently aren't even bothered by this -- why isn't the automatic reaction never, "Hey, these guys have played before! Screw them, let's vote 'em out first time we're at Tribal and then play the game our way!")

::  The Mentalist has returned, in kind-of annoying fashion. Last season ended with Patrick Jane coming face to face, in a shopping mall, with Red John, the serial killer who murdered his wife and daughter. They even cast Bradley Whitford as Red John, giving the part some gravitas. Then, as Red John was walking away, Jane shot and killed him. That was how the season ended. With this season, Jane has to answer for killing the guy...but after that's wrapped up, Jane drops the bombshell that I feared was coming: The guy he shot wasn't Red John. And the second episode seemed to confirm this, so now...the Red John subplot marches on.

This, quite frankly, sucks.

I still enjoy The Mentalist, because it has a good sense of humor for a show. But the Red John thing just needs to end. It's getting unbelievable at this point. Red John isn't just a brilliant serial killer; he's been established as being able to establish a large enough grip on other people that he inspires them to kill themselves on his behalf. It's just getting flat-out unreal, and worse, continually playing the "Jane is closing in...but now he's not!" card is lazy writing. How much more interesting to use Jane's victory over Red John to explore what happens to a single-mindedly driven person like Patrick Jane when he finally achieves his grim goal...but instead, the search for Red John continues.

::  In a similar vein, the search for the killer of Detective Beckett's mother continues on Castle. I'm more forgiving, since Castle wasn't so brazen as to suggest that the storyline is over before resurrecting it next season, and because Castle is, in general, much better written than The Mentalist. But here, too, I'm starting to tire of the storyline, because it can be a crutch for the writers. It gives them something to do every time sweeps rolls around, and it gives them a way to keep stringing Castle and Beckett along, when it's obvious they really should be together at some point.

I end up wishing that writers would have enough courage, or confidence, to finish a story and then, if the show goes on, honestly explore the implications of that story and the ramifications when it ends. It would be a lot more compelling than these types of years-long mysteries that aren't really mysteries but rather onions with endless layers to be peeled back.

Something for Thursday

I have never owned an Apple product. Not one. Our desktop PCs have all been, well, PCs; ditto the laptop on which I'm writing this. I listen to music on an MP3 player or on my LG phone, which doubles as an MP3 player. I don't have any particular problem with Apple products; I simply opt to use other things that work just fine for me.

But that doesn't mean that I don't owe Steve Jobs a personal debt for having shaped the world in which we live. Jobs was one of those figures who straddles the world in so many ways that his influence reaches into our lives in many ways we never even realize. He was an Edison, a Tesla, a Lennon, a Lucas.

In his memory, just because it seems appropriate to me, here is the End Credits music from TRON.

You learn something every day!

Whilst on break at The Store today, we observed our coffee bar employee making a smoothie that looked particularly tasty. When we asked her what flavor it was, she told us, "Peach and raspberry. It's a Peach melba". This got us on the topic of the word "melba". What does that mean? Is there a flavor called "melba" that pairs particularly well with peach? And is this flavor any relation at all to those little slices of dried bread, called "melba toast"?

So in a moment of downtime later on, we did some Googling and found out that in the late 1800s, there was an opera singer -- a soprano -- named Dame Nellie Melba. Apparently Dame Melba had quite the career, and she was especially beloved in her native Australia, as she was that country's first international music superstar. A French chef invented four foods in her honor, including a dessert called "Peach Melba", and, believe it or not,  Melba toast (which he created for her during a time of illness, when her diet was restricted).

Here is what Dame Nellie Melba looked like:

And there you have it. There really was a person named Melba, much beloved in the musical realm in her time, but whose name lives down to us today in culinary terms.

A Random Wednesday Conversation Starter

Do you look forward each fall to the arrival of all manner of pumpkin-flavored things? And if so, what's your favorite?

Answers, the final!

Wow...due to all the stuff that went on last week and the busy work week the week before, I forgot to finish Ask Me Anything! August 2011. Sorry about that, folks. I suck. Kinda.

Anyway, Scotty has a couple that will result in a couple of lame answers, unfortunately. Not because they're lame questions, though! Just my answers.

You've periodically extolled the virtues of spum, any thoughts on the various whisky families?

I know virtually nothing about whiskey. Seriously, I've had extremely little whiskey in my life. I occasionally have a bottle of Seagram's 7 around because I like 7&7's, and once in a great while, if I'm buying something at the Candy Store, I might pick up one of those teeny bottles of Jack Daniel's. I wouldn't really even know where to start! (I tried a small bottle of some kind of Scotch once, and I did not like it, at all. Maybe it was a bad brand, because I really hope that stuff isn't representative of what those Scotsman have been drinking for centuries. If so, well...no wonder they're an angry lot!)

Growlers-love them or not?


Unfortunately...I know absolutely nothing about growlers. Never partaken of one. I suppose I should, huh? Growlers are apparently big thick glass bottles that you fill with beer from a tap at a store that deals in such things. It sounds like the kind of good idea that can be around for years before I say, "Hey, I should check that out." In fact, it is the kind of good idea that can be around for years before I say, "Hey, I should check that out"!

SKWaller also has a couple that I hope I can answer more fruitfully:

Why is it that on the days that I work the hardest, longest hours on editing jobs, I can't sleep at night? I get really tired *and* sleepy (for me, they are different matters, entirely unrelated), but there I sit at 5am, unable to go to sleep. And then, when I finally do go to sleep, why do I dream about carrot cake in the shape of a rabbit? No, there are no drugs or alcohol involved.

Wow. Being up at 5am might be part of it!

But seriously, it just may be the case that this type of work just happens to fire up the part of your brain that's the hardest to allow to run down to the point of sleep. It often takes me time to wind down from a shift at work; luckily I don't work night shifts, so I don't have to wind down in order to go to sleep. But when I worked in restaurants, I could never just go home and go to bed after a closing shift.

As to the dream about carrot cake...I got nothin'. Sorry!

Do trees feel pain? I used to think so (I read The Secret of Life of Plants back in the 1970s), but I've given this considerable thought.

Pain is a signal that something bad is happening and that we should either get away from what's causing the pain, or fix whatever is wrong. Since trees (and other plants) can't run away, or go to the doctor, what would be the purpose of them feeling pain?

What are your thoughts?


Wow...that's some deep stuff. I'd have to say that trees do not feel any kind of 'pain', in any kind of way that we could relate to meaningfully. Trees certainly do have ways of responding to negative stimuli, but to describe that as 'pain' seems to me to possibly stretch the very concept of 'pain' beyond a breaking point.

I remember a day early in the year when I was a sophomore in high school, in Biology class. One student tried to argue that humans are inherently superior to trees, but the teacher was having none of it:

"Trees can't move around!"
"Then they don't get in accidents."
"Trees can't invent stuff!"
"But do trees really need anything other than what they have?"
"Trees can't think! They have no emotions or thoughts!"
"Which means that trees don't have to see the psychiatrist!"

And on. The teacher's point was that we shouldn't look down on trees, or take an approach to living things that is based on notions of superiority and inferiority. I tend to agree with this. Sometimes I think we just can't help thinking along those lines, though -- it's almost hard-wired into us, probably as a leftover of our hunting-and-gathering forebears.

I don't know what trees feel or think, or if they do feel or think in any way that approaches what we mean when we use those words. I do think that I'd like it if our trees were like Tolkien's trees, and that they spoke to one another, and had deep, long memories.

OK, folks, I think that's it. Sorry it took me a month and a half to wrap this up, but hey, I got there, and that's what counts. Start thinking up your questions for the next go-round! February is only four months away!

GWAAA?!

This is appearing all over the Interweb, but I just have to have it here too. This 4-year-old kid is watching The Empire Strikes Back. He's never seen it before, and he's about to learn Vader's big secret.



I felt the same way back in 1980, kid!

How do we know when the show's over, anyway?

EDITED: I forgot the link!

Michael Kinsley can kiss my ass.

Seriously. Chris Christie can't be President because he's fat? Really?

If Christie becomes the Republican nominee for President next year, I won't vote for him. But that will be because of the insane beliefs of the Republican party, not because of the girth of its nominee. That's it. For me, it's ideas and policy, not anything else.

To make it easy, here is a list of qualities that make zero difference in my weighing a person for their Presidential potential:

Fat
Thin
Black
White
Asian
Male
Female
Married
Single
Has kids
Has no kids
Gay
Straight
Catholic
Protestant
Jewish
Muslim
Confucian
Atheist
Mormon
Likes broccoli
Hates broccoli
Likes the Star Wars prequels
Hates the Star Wars prequels
Roots for the Bills
Roots for the Dolphins
Served in the military
Did not serve in the military
Worked in the private sector
Didn't work in the private sector
Has executive government experience
Has no executive government experience
Likes baseball
Likes football
Likes soccer
Likes dogs
Likes cats
Likes chinchillas

I could go on. In truth, I've never been a big fan of Michael Kinsley, and this certainly does not enhance my view of him. What a dumb-assed article. I hope Kinsley meant it as a joke, because if he didn't....

Sentential Links #263

Time for linkage!

:: Now I did not live there. It was only four days. But there was a point, walking by the Royal Ontario Museum on our second day there, when I said to my wife: “I think I could live here,” assuming that we had employment, etc. Good mass transit, bikes, educational capital, intellectual stimulation, massive multiculturalism; there were plenty of places we DIDN’T get a chance to see. And there are angrier people in lots of US cities I’ve been to, starting with Albany, NY. (Toronto really is a fantastic place...and it increasingly irritates me that I haven't been there in five years. WTF, self?!)

:: There are not too many things I am good at but RILING UP my father is something I EXCEL at! (Knowing Andy personally...I'll bet this is totally accurate.)

:: If we can't make you look good, you're ugly! (Well, sheesh....)

:: Nope, for DC Comics, their greatest strength, that enormous back catalog and mind-numbingly rich cache of characters available to them isn't a strength. They see it as a weakness, something that will drive readers away.

:: Putting in 18-hour writing days for the past week has made me curious about how other writers write. A lot has changed through the centuries. From painting on cave walls to uploading eBooks, we've been through a lot of writing evolution, but a basic truth remains the same: writers need their own space.

:: Elvis Presley never did talk shows, he never appeared on Johnny Carson, he never “made the rounds” of promotion like other entertainers did. He was completely elusive to the press, which of course added to the mystique (but also, conversely, isolated him). The isolation did work in his favor, as it kept Presley sightings to a bare minimum, upping his worth even more. (Sheila has been posting a lot about Elvis Presley, in typically amazing fashion. It occurred to me, at some point whilst reading her series of posts, that I don't currently own any Elvis in my music collection. None, at all. It's weird how our music collections "morph" over time, isn't it? As we embrace one format and then the next and then the next? I used to have some Elvis...on cassette. I may have owned a CD or two -- in fact, I may still own a CD or two, in some box somewhere. But as I more and more see "my music" as "what's taking up huge amounts of GB on my external drive", owning something on CD somehow becomes "not really owning it"...despite the fact that owning something physical, like a CD, seems more intuitively real than owning a digital storage device that currently happens to contain somewhere within a sequence of ones and zeroes that, when processed by a computer program, constitute the thing in question. If that makes any sense at all.)

:: Kerosene needed to be cheaper than whale oil to force a global change. In other words, no one would switch until we had killed all the whales. (This is what depresses me about the state of things today: we know the problems we face, and to a large extent we know what we need to do to fix them. But we do none of the things we're going to have to do someday anyway, because...hell, I don't know. But we don't.)

More next week!

Random Stuff from the Week that Was

So, last week was my 40th birthday, as I noted at the time. Because of work schedules, we rarely celebrate birthdays on the dates on which they fall; instead we schedule some time off as near as we can, and celebrate then. It was a great week, though, it really was. Of course, it got off to the perfect start, with this happening:

And the week really did stay about that good! I worked a short work week before taking a five-day weekend (which includes today, so I'm back to work tomorrow), and I wasn't unproductive during that work week, either. Then The Wife and I had a nice couple of days off together, during which we took a little trip, and as several people asked me on Facebook and in e-mail, there were pies.





But more on those in a bit...random thoughts and stuff first.

:: Autumnal weather has at last taken hold in Western New York...which, for me, means "time for overalls". That's just one of many reasons why this time of year is my favorite. Cool weather means overalls, and time off means naps!





Of course, naps are always welcome, but there's something about naps in fall and winter that makes them so much better than naps in spring and summer. Sometimes naps in summer feel like wasted time. Of course, that's just humans, I suppose. Cats never feel like napping is a waste of time. In fact, I wonder sometimes what the evolutionary benefit is to cats of getting all that sleep!





I also wonder where cats slept before the invention of the cardboard box.

:: Car repair places irritate me. We had to take The Wife's van in for some work, and wouldn't you know it, they found other stuff wrong that really needs to be fixed soon soon soon! We'll get those things fixed, but not at that place, which is almost certainly overpriced. The only reason we went there is that we needed to get the tires rotated, which is free since that's where we got the tires. We also had them check the oil and find out what the "Check Engine" light was all about, which is where it all started. Luckily it's not super-pressing, so we can save up money and then get the fix done. But ye Gods, I hate the "Hey, we found some stuff on your car!" stuff.

But hey, at least we're not this guy:





Ye Gods, indeed! This, folks, is why I maintain a state of deep suspicion of other people when I'm driving.





:: The Wife and I made our annual excursion to the Ithaca Apple Harvest Festival this weekend. We discovered this festival quite by chance in 2007, when we planned a getaway sans destination. All we knew was that we were going away, but we had no idea where. I did some Googling and found out about this Festival, and aside from 2008 (when The Wife journeyed to see her ailing mother), we've gone every year since. But Ithaca's quite a long drive from Buffalo (two-point-five to three hours), so we always stay someplace in Rochester overnight and then take the remaining drive the next day. This year we stayed near the Eastview Mall, and we had dinner at PF Chang's, where we'd never eaten before.

We loved the meal we had there. They have a nice "dinner for two" menu which made the meal more reasonable than we'd even expected, and the food we had was really quite good. No, it wasn't as good as the best Chinese I've ever had -- that honor goes to a dim sum place in Toronto, and the Shanghai Restaurant, also in Rochester (Henrietta, specifically) -- but it was certainly better than the local takeout joints we like to frequent at Casa Jaquandor. I took some photos of our food, and I put them on Flickr, but...they're not very good photos. Too dark, really. I was taking them with my phone, and I had the flash off as the phone flash is an LED that makes everything look slightly unnatural. Sometimes I like that effect, but not with food. Anyway, we shared an appetizer of crab-filled wontons (pretty much the same idea as any "crab rangoon" you'll get anyplace else, although much better prepared), cups of hot-and-sour soup (again, same idea, but terrifically prepared), and then we split Kung Pao Shrimp and Orange Peel Chicken. It was a wonderful meal.

And the place was packed when we arrived, so we put our name on the list and then went to wander the mall for a bit. It's been several years since I've walked a mall. I remember the Eastview Mall from when I was ten years old -- the place has been there for many moons -- but it has more than doubled in size since then, and now it is positively massive, with several wings added since then that are actually larger than the one wing that used to comprise the entire mall. Lots of folks think that malls are dead, but they're not; they seem to be accreting, though, so an area with a bunch of small malls eventually becomes an area with one big mall.

Oh, and for ten bucks I got a set of Star Wars cookie cutters at Williams-Sonoma. Score!

:: The next morning we departed Rochester (OK, Victor) for Ithaca. Someday I want to have more than just a single overnight trip for this journey, because really, I just love that part of New York State. It actually starts right in my own town, with the start of Route 20A, which is my favorite drive anywhere. It's just a gorgeous drive, through the hill country that rests about ten to twenty miles south of the flat I-90 corridor. Sure, since we were going to Rochester I could have saved at least half an hour by taking the Thruway, but why do that? The Thruway has zero personality...and to drive it, you have to pay tolls. Ugh.

After spending the night in Victor (a southeastern suburb of Rochester), we drove the next day first through Pittsford and some of Rochester's eastern suburbs and then farther east, through towns like Phelps, Palmyra, Waterloo, and Seneca Falls. I always love driving through these towns, with their central business districts lined with brick buildings, occasional crossings of the Erie Canal, and out in the country between towns, driving past farms and properties where the houses often look like they were built before the Civil War. Undoubtedly, some of them were. There's a real sense of driving through history, I find, in those old towns. Waterloo bills itself as the birthplace of Memorial Day. Seneca Falls played a role in the women's suffrage movement. And Joseph Smith originally hailed from Palmyra...which means that in the space of less than fifty miles, we drove through the birthplaces of Memorial Day, womens' rights, and the Mormon church!

And then there's the drive south to Ithaca itself. Because of the presence of the Finger Lakes, each one running north-to-south, between Buffalo and Ithaca, there is no 'straight line' route available. You either drive south, and then east; or you go east, and then south. We always do the latter, so we can drive along the shores of Cayuga Lake. The Finger Lakes are just stunningly gorgeous, all year. I adore that whole region...and at last, it was into Ithaca for the Apple Harvest Festival, huzzah!

:: On our previous trips to the AppleFest, each time it's been a gorgeous, bright, crisp, sunny Fall day. This time...not so much.





Yeah. Brrrr. Luckily I wisely dressed in layers.





Cold, rainy, and dingy.





As usual, there was a pilgrimage to Autumn Leaves Books, with their nice stock of F&SF. I could spend an hour here, easily. Autumn Leaves is not your "typical" used bookstore, with dim lights and stacks of books teetering everywhere; this store is bright, spacious, and organized. This time I wrote out a list of books that I wanted to look for -- mostly space operas, of course -- and I actually found one. I also bought an SF book by LE Modessit Jr -- I've never read him before -- and a fantasy trilogy by an author I'd never heard of before at all. Why not?







It wasn't all bookstores for me, though...we looked up a knitting/crocheting store for The Wife, and she loved the place. She's developed a real love of crocheting over the last couple of years, and she's always on the lookout for good places to buy supplies. She liked the selection, the bright organization (some yarn stores can be dark and depressing, she says), and the pair of women who worked there were very gregarious and helpful. Of course, I know next to nothing about yarn, so while she was looking at stuff...







...I was taking photos of myself in the mirror and of cool-looking yarn.







Eventually we warmed up with some hot cider...





...and had a lunch of waffles and fried chicken. Now, I had expressed some skepticism of this food combo when I first encountered it, but I must admit...it's a terrific match! Loved it. Next year we're getting two of 'em. There's this wonderful little restaurant in the middle of the Downtown Commons in Ithaca that features waffles in what must be dozens of permutations.





Finally, after touring all of the craft tents (where we bought The Daughter a bracelet and where I bought The Wife a necklace-and-earrings set), we decided that it was time to start heading home. And it was a good time for that, too, because this is what the weather turned out like an hour or so later:





On the way home we stopped for dinner at a joint in Avon, NY called Tom Wahl's, which is a burgers-and-dogs drive in...but the burgers were really very good and their onion rings are fantastic. It's a chain in the Rochester area, and their root beer is awesome.

:: And finally, there was my favorite part of the week: the coconut cream pies. Four of 'em, thick and gooey and creamy. Mmmmm, pie....

Then to blow out the candles...





...and, finally, splat!





Here's the video I made of this pieing.





Yeah, I know, it's weird. So what? It's also fun. Life is just too short to take oneself seriously all the time. Maybe I'll get five pies in my face when turn fifty! A pie in the face isn't exactly a birthday tradition for me -- we do it once or twice a year whenever, depending on opportunity -- but maybe it will be now. Pies in the face rule.







So, to recap: the Bills beat the Patriots; I get to wear overalls again (which, I might add, are all fitting better since I've been losing weight!); an overnight trip with my wonderful wife through the finest parts of New York; used bookstores; yarn stores; new jewelry for the ladies in my life; dinner at PF Chang's; Star Wars cookie-cutters; waffles and fried chicken; burgers and onion rings at Tom Wahl's; and I get hit in the face with four coconut cream pies.

That's a great week, folks.

Bengals 23, Bills 20

Oh well.




I don't have a whole lot to say about this game. The Bills weren't able to generate consistent offense, which is the major reason they lost; they let the Bengals hang around and hang around and it eventually cost them. It happens...especially when you're not quite as good a team as folks may have been supposing. The Bengals have a pretty good defense, and it gave the Bills fits for most of the day. Tight end Scott Chandler wasn't much of a factor at all, Ryan Fitzpatrick faced heavier pass rush than he's seen all year, and the running game had flashes but never got into rhythm. Couple that with the Bills' typical misfiring in the first quarter and with the officials either making -- or not making -- a pretty interesting number of calls that either favored the Bengals or penalized the Bills, and you have...a loss.

I'm not one to blame the refs, but they really do play a role, and there were a couple of times when a correct call would have either sustained a Bills drive or ended a Cincinnati one. Does this mean they would have won, with the right calls? Of course not. Maybe if the Stevie Johnson catch is ruled a catch and the Bills get a first down, Fitz throws an interception on the very next play. We'll never know...but the Bills didn't get that chance, and that sucks. I've never totally bought into the notion that "Good teams make their own breaks"; no matter how good you are, there will be times when luck is just going to plain screw you.

On the flip side of that, I also disagree with the notion that good teams overcome bad things that happen, and that therefore the fact that the Bills didn't indicates something. I've noticed a tendency among football folks, commentators and fans alike, to assume that whenever a team does something, it's because they're good enough to do it; and the reverse: that if a team doesn't do something it needs to do, it's because they're not good enough to do it. The problem here is simple: it fails to account for the fact that the other team exists. Just because your team doesn't get the first down, or score the points, or even win the game does not always mean that they're not good enough to have done so. There seems to be way too much reading-of-the-tea-leaves in football these days.

But yeesh, the Bills' defense needs some help. They've got a few good players -- Kyle Williams, Bryan Scott, rookie Marcel Dareus -- but somebody on the linebacking corps really needs to step up. And Leodis McKelvin is teetering on the brink of "bust" status.

What really stinks is that I was going to try to figure out how to make my pie-faced football fan's shirt tiger-striped. Oh well! Next up: the Eagles, who won't be easy. At all.

Sunday Burst of Weird and Awesome!

Oddities and Awesome abound!

::  The Twelve Coolest Libraries in the World.

::  The Top Ten Books Lost to Time.

::  This has been making the rounds of Tumblr and Facebook for a few weeks now. It's something that employees of one of the nation's recently-closed Borders stores put up to get some stuff off their chests:

I'm really not unsympathetic to some of this kind of thing. Everybody who works in any kind of position where customer service is involved will have equivalent stories, and we all often yearn to let loose and say some of these things. Some of us actually do slip up on occasion, which then earns us an invitation to a manager's office for a conversation that can go in many directions, depending on the severity of what was said.

But still...I dunno. It's funny, but there is zero chance that any customer whose behavior would get them on this list will ever see it, and if they did, there is zero further chance that they'll recognize their own behavior as listed here. Ultimately this seems a bit petty to me.

More next week!

Decision by committee

Actually, that's wrong, come to think of it -- in Buffalo, we don't make decisions by committee. We have committees listen to people talk about the issue, and then the committee makes another committee to make the decision! Ye Gods.

For those not in Buffalo, there's been controversy 'round these parts about...food trucks. Not big trucks delivering food to stores and restaurants, but literally "restaurants on wheels". These are trucks outfitted with food prep equipment in the back, and they basically drive to a spot, hang out their shingle for a few hours, and serve food to customers. Several food trucks have taken to the streets of the City of Buffalo, much to the pleasure of folks who work downtown, and yet much to the displeasure of actual restaurants downtown, who have been lobbying the city government ferociously to "regulate" the trucks. Of course, the restaurants' notion of "regulation" would basically make doing business downtown nigh impossible for the food trucks, who really need to have access to downtown customers if they're going to be viable enterprises.

Alan Bedenko has been doing yeoman duty on these issues, which provide a fascinating microcosm on the various problems with Buffalo: how hard we make it for businesses to take root here, how insular we can be, how our tendency to "circle the wagons" has almost led us to a state of permanent wagon-circling. Here's hoping this can be a step away from all of Buffalo's past tendencies to keep its pistol firmly aimed at its own foot.

Page One: Jonathan Livingston Seagull

I get a feeling that I'm not supposed to like Jonathan Livingston Seagull (by Richard Bach), but while I certainly admit that it's cheesy and its mysticism can be kind-of bizarre, I've determined that I'm unlikely to ever lose my soft spot for this book. So much of Bach reads like a New Age mystical version of Nicholas Sparks (minus the insistence on having someone in each book die horribly), but even now I still occasionally get the desire to dip into him a little bit again.

I wrote a couple of years back about my experience with Richard Bach, and that's generally how I still feel about him today. But that one quote from Jonathan -- "You will be ready to begin to fly up and know the meaning of kindness and of love" -- still speaks to me.

Something for Thursday

You know what, folks? It's sunny and cool in Buffalo (for now, anyway -- rain and chillier temps are in the forecast), I'm taking today through Monday off from work, The Wife and I are escaping town tomorrow evening (without The Kid!) for my Belated Birthday Bacchanalia (The Wife almost always works on my birthday, so we usually postpone a few days) which includes our yearly trip to Ithaca for the Apple Harvest Festival, and some other stuff's going on that has me happy as a clam, so...here's a bit of infectious 80s bubblegum!

She's all grow'd up now

In one of the least surprising developments for anyone who's been following her, Jennifer has made it official and done got engaged. I characterize this as a 'least surprising development' because she's been referring to her future husband as "He Who Makes Me Smile" since pretty much the first time she revealed on Facebook that she'd been dating the guy. And when she poured out a lot of grief after the recent passing of his mother, well...the engagement is mere formality, because from what I can see, these two are already married.

And dammit, good for them!

A Random Wednesday Conversation Starter

Red apples or green apples?

Never minded....

Yesterday I mentioned that my birthday is also the date of release for The Beatles' Abbey Road. Sheila O'Malley points out that just a couple of days earlier is the date of release of Nirvana's Nevermind, the seminal album from 1991 that changed the landscape of rock music for good.

Here's the thing: I never liked Nirvana. I didn't hate Nirvana, mind you. But Nirvana made absolutely zero impact on me, one way or the other. It was the strangest thing: a cultural touchstone that slid right past me, and to this day, it remains a touchstone that remains outside my own experience. I eventually came to the Beatles, but I'm not sure that I'll ever come to Nirvana.

Part of it was the timing: I was in college, which you might think would make me more attuned to this kind of thing at the time, but I was studying music at the time, and my musical passions were almost entirely focused on classical music. At the time I hadn't started exploring Celtic music, and I'd stopped listening to rock almost entirely. I was totally unaware of that Nirvana was, what they represented in terms of the evolution of rock music, how they represented a break from what had gone before...all of it. Nirvana was, for me, a band with an album. Same as any other band with an album.

Part of this, though, was something else, something that I've been mulling over for a while. I've come to realize over the last few years that one of my personal idiosyncrasies is that I just don't tend to explore movements in popular culture as they're happening. Books come out that are viewed almost immediately as deeply important, no matter the genre, and I just file them away for future reference. Ditto movies, and music, and even teevee shows. Highly-regarded fantasy novels come out, and it takes me years to get around to reading them (The Lies of Locke Lamora, The Name of the Wind). I like Stephen King, but of his last dozen or so novels, I've only read Lisey's Story (post forthcoming), and I've never read any of his Dark Tower books. I yield to no one in my love of Star Wars...and yet I haven't read a single "Extended Universe" novel in fifteen years.

Music? I couldn't even tell you what I've missed. At work, a couple friends and I like to play with Internet trivia quizzes when we're on lunch break. Sometimes we do music quizzes -- "Identify the song clip" and that sort of thing -- and when we do, I'm generally useless for answers once we get to music past, say, 1990. Oddly, I'm more well-versed now in pop music than I've been in years, mainly through osmosis from what The Daughter listens to.

Teevee is the same way. I've yet to watch a single episode of The Wire, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Sons of Anarchy, or even The Sopranos. And I'm not sure I ever will, because at this point I'm not sure my interests will ever take me there. And that's what it's all about, really -- the fact that I tend to follow my interests with little or no regard for what the "cultural movements" are. This isn't to say that I deliberately avoid what's popular; I know people who do that, and I think it's silly -- I tend to see a lot of validity in the "fifty million Elvis fans can't be wrong" argument -- but when I note things that are popular, my reaction tends to be, "Huh. File that away for future reference."

Anyway, happy anniversary, Nirvana and Nevermind.

The time for all things must pass into memory....

Three things I can't much use anymore.

I got a lot of years out of that CD player, and it just might still play -- I'm not sure, I haven't used it in a long time. I used to carry it on walks a lot or at the Y during my cardio workouts, but for obvious reasons I wasn't able to use it during weight training, which is why I got an MP3 player, which I can slip into the pocket of my gym shorts and thus keep on listening to music whilst working out.

And then there's my old cell phone. This actually isn't my first cell phone; that honor went to an Audiovox phone I had for a couple of years back around 1999 and 2000. I'm not even sure that phone is still around...but anyway, the Motorola Razr pictured here was my phone from 2007 to, oh, 2010 or so, when we decided to upgrade, which is the phone I still use. (And which, by the way, is a fine MP3 player in itself, so now I don't even use my original MP3 player all that much!)

Finally...there's my Borders Rewards card. Oh well. This card saved me quite a bit of money on books at Borders over the years. Now it'll be a nice, retro bookmark, or I'll use it as a scraper for wood putty. I'll never be able to buy books with it, though.

Beatles Song of the Week: "Something"

I was born forty years ago today...on the second anniversary of the release of Abbey Road, the last studio album recorded by the Beatles, and the one that has (thus far) captured my imagination more than any other. Songs like George Harrison's "Something" are why.

This ballad immediately follows the bluesy grind of "Come Together", and immediately precedes the bizarre paean to violent murder "Maxwell's Silver Hammer". The whole album is a study in contrasts and moods, and yet it feels so organic and well-considered -- I mean, what song, other than "Here Comes the Sun", could possibly follow "I Want You (She's So Heavy)"?

But as for "Something": this is clearly one of the more well-known Beatles songs, which means that it's a song I never much liked until now. (I'm a Beatles late-bloomer, as I've noted before.) Listening to it now, with an ear that is more willing to go where the song wants to take me, I'm struck by several things.

First, the lyrics are constructed in such a way that a chorus is suggested, and yet, it never really seems to get expressed. The song begins with a drum lead-in followed by a guitar progression that turns out to be the key motif of the entire song, and then the lyrics begin:

Something in the way she moves Attracts me like no other lover, Something in the way she woos me. I don't want to leave her now, You know I believe and how.

The way the song is structured, you expect Harrison to sing something more after "You know I believe and how", and yet, he falls silent as the opening guitar lick plays again, leading to a resolved chord. This happens again in the second verse:

Somewhere in her smile she knows
That I don't need no other lover. 
Something in her style that shows me.
I don't want to leave her now,
You know I believe and how. 

Again Harrison's voice fades away, and the guitar leads us toward an expected resolution...but instead, the song surprised with a modulation and a mid-section that changes the rhythm from the original dreamy slowness to a more insistent pattern, and lyrics that highlight the uncertainty at the heart of the song's poetry:

You're asking me will my love grow,
I don't know, I don't know.
You stick around now it may show,
I don't know, I don't know.

And then, just as quickly, the original rhythm returns, and after one of the most calming guitar solos ever recorded for a rock song, we get the final verse:

Something in the way she knows And all I have to do is think of her, Something in the things she shows me. I don't want to leave her now, You know I believe and how.

These lyrics fascinate me. Harrison is talking to someone -- he addressed them outright in that bridge section -- and we're left to wonder who. Is he talking to us? And note what he's doing in this entire song: he's describing his lover to a third party. That's dangerous territory, of course, but fascinatingly, he is very vague about her. He can only describe those properties he loves about her as "something", and "somewhere in her smile". On the one hand, he "needs no other lover", but on the other, he seems to be reassuring himself all along that this is true at all. He doesn't "want to leave her now"...but is he leaving open a possibility that he may, in the future? We don't know...and neither does he.

Sentential Links #262

Linkage commences...NOW!!!

:: Sometimes it’s not good to look under the skirt of your favorite film. (Mr. Jones examines the increasingly infamous Han Solo vs. Greedo scene from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. Interestingly the scene has been shifted yet again, this time so as to make the two fire simultaneously. My beef with changing the scene is that it destroys one of the movie's best laughs, not because it somehow "emasculates Han Solo", which would be the silliest of all Lucas-basher claims if not for "George Lucas raped my childhood".)

:: By the time this horse and dog can work this farm I will be the one changed.

:: Here’s a concept. If you want to hit on a woman at the bar or at least make a good impression, try to do it while not spitting in a bottle. Just a thought. (That this needs to be codified in print does nothing to encourage my faith in humanity.)

:: But something interesting occurred to me as they were verbally patting each other on the back and kidding each other about President Obama’s Secretary of State, while of course being very complimentary of her: This is only the second time in American history that I can think of when a sitting President could count on the support and political friendship of a former President.

:: Bottom line: One Crazy Summer is one stupid movie. (The fact that Bobcat Goldthwait has above-the-title billing should have been a clue here, methinks.)

:: The floor nurse looks like she just killed a guy and is hiding the body in the same room as the photo is being taken in.

:: Well, because fun romps are where you see what people really think. What they think is funny, who they think is a good butt for a joke, which broad stereotypes they think are valid and which they think should be subverted, what they create when they think it’s just for fun, not for literature. (Interesting post about two books that I haven't read in a while, but both of which I admired, from the standpoint of the treatment of their female characters. I confess that I don't really key into concerns like this when I'm reading, which makes posts like these deeply instructive for me. Especially since, in my space-opera-in-progress, my three chief characters are all female.)

More next week!

Slurm for Everyone!

Yup...I'm 40 today.

That's a nice round number, and 40 is one of those nice round numbers, the ones that supposedly mark a milestone of some sort, which are supposed to prompt some kind of introspection. But...you know what? I'm not feeling all that introspective about turning 40. I'm doing OK in most respects, although I'm showing my age in others. One thing, though -- I have always refused to believe that my future path is set, and I still believe that the main factor standing between me and the things I want to do is me.

So maybe I'll be upset when I turn 50. But for now, onward and upward!

Bills 34, Patriots 31

I really didn't think I'd get to post this. I didn't want to jinx it, so I didn't create the cartoon until the final score was recorded and in the books and the players were in the locker rooms. But, at long, long last, here it is:

Oh my, what a game! The Bills spotted the Patriots a 21-0 lead before they came roaring back, getting the jitters out and making it 21-10 before halftime. Then they made it 21-17 in the third, and when the fourth quarter dawned, it was Pats 24, Bills 17. Then the Bills put up 17 points to the Pats' 7 in that quarter, and that's all she wrote.

Much has been made in these parts of the Bills' losing streak to the Pats. The Bills had lost fifteen consecutive games to the Pats, dating back to September 2003. Here's my blog post from that game. My, how much water is under the bridge! George W. Bush was President. The Iraq War was about six months old. Unless you were unusually well-versed in Illinois state politics, you had no idea at all who Barack Obama was.

Little Quinn would not be born for nearly twelve months. We'd been living in Buffalo again (after our Syracuse winter) for five months. I hadn't met a single other Buffalo blogger. The Daughter was four and was starting pre-school. The week after that game, The Wife and I went to see the hot new movie, Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl. We were still a few months from the theatrical release of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, and I was starting to despair of ever finding a job: my first interview at The Store was still three months away. And while I'm honestly not sure, I think I had yet to reveal in this space my unhealthy obsession with overalls.

As for football stuff that's happened since the last time the Bills walked away from the Pats with a victory? Well, the Buccaneers were the defending Super Bowl champions. Aaron Rodgers had yet to start his first game at Cal. The Bills' head coach when they last beat the Pats was Gregg Williams; since then, Mike Mularkey and Dick Jauron would walk the sidelines before Chan Gailey. The Bills' starting quarterback that day was Drew Bledsoe; since then, we've had the JP Losman and the Trent Edwards eras before finally arriving at Ryan Fitzpatrick.

Yeah, it's been a while.

We were discussing this matchup at work the other day, a few friends and I, and I said, "I don't want that one win back in '03 to be the only time the Bills ever beat Brady. And I don't want to not beat him until he's 38 and clearly in physical decline. I want to beat him now." Well, I got my wish. Hmmm...let me try that again. "I don't want to write a publishable book when I'm 67 years old, I want to write one now!" Huh, I think my space-opera-in-progress just got better!

Some thoughts from the game:

::  Brady piled up big numbers, along with Wes Welker. So what? The Pats' defense looks awful. They've been sliced-and-diced three weeks in a row now, and they're only 2-1 because their offense is really good. Well, take it from a guy who remembers the Bills' glory days, Pats fans: awesome offense that scores a lot plus crappy defense that stops nobody equals somebody else holding the Lombardi trophy.

::  The Bills' defensive game plan appears to have been, "Let Welker get his catches, just don't let him break a giant gain, and contain everybody else." That's pretty much what they did. Aside from their tight end, nobody other than Welker really stepped up for the Pats. They might want to look into that, because if the Pats think that Brady's going to be putting up 400 yards a game all season, they're deluded. Defenses are suffering now, all over the NFL, but they're going to settle in sooner or later, as offensive players get dinged up and as defensive guys find their chemistry after an abbreviated preseason with no offseason workouts.

::  I really hope that since the Bills are doing well, CBS will decide that their games deserve an announcer upgrade. Marv Albert isn't that good anymore, but Rich Gannon is awful. At one point, the Pats were lining up with first-and-goal, and he said -- and I am not making this up -- "Well, the Patriots have options here. They can either throw it or run it." And it was funny to see his reactions to Tom Brady's first two interceptions, as he made the case both times that they weren't really St. Tom's fault. This led me to comment on Twitter, "Brady could literally hand to ball to a defender and Gannon would blame Brady's RB for not being there for the handoff". Of course, after picks three and four -- with the fourth one being run back for a TD -- Gannon just didn't talk at all. I guess he can't decide what to say when something happens that is outside of his preferred narrative (in this case, the Godlike status of St. Tom the Overrated).

::  By the way, St. Tom sure showed a lot of heart on Drayton Florence's pick-six, didn't he? He just kind of jogged toward him but made no effort whatsoever to actually knock him out of bounds and maybe, just maybe, prevent him from scoring.

::  I love comebacks, but I wish the Bills would figure out how to play well in the first quarter too.

::  The Bills still need to improve on the pass rush. Their run defense has improved greatly, but the pass D still needs some help from the front seven to rush the passes.

::  The Bills' offensive line, which had fans terrified during preseason, gave up zero sacks and largely played very well in pass protection and in a fairly productive running game.

Next week, the Bills are at Cincinnati, which may be an interesting game. The Bills and Bengals don't play every year, so the streak doesn't include nearly as many games as the Bills' skid against the Patriots, but the Bengals have not beaten the Bills since the two teams met in the AFC Championship Game after the 1988 season. Last year, the Bills trailed the Bengals by 17 before beating them by 18. Giddyup!

Sunday Burst of Weird and Awesome

Oddities and Awesome abound!

::  This may be the best news story I will ever read. Seriously. How can it not be, with a lede like this?

In all his years in Brazilian law enforcement, police chief Marconi Almino de Lima had never faced a case like this: a sordid tale of love, jealousy, a contract killer and kitchen condiments.

Seriously, that is just awesome. This story screams out to be used on an episode of CSI Miami. I can even hear the dialog:

"Horatio...is this...ketchup?"

"Yes it is, Frank. And we [puts on sunglasses] are gonna bring the mustard."

[SMASH CUT with ROGER DALTREY SCREAM to OPENING CREDITS]

::  Ever wonder what the concert posters might have looked like for the Muppets' Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem? Well, wonder no more! These are terrific. (Thanks to SamuraiFrog for pointing these out.)

::  I love Buffalo, but there's now way Buffalo is cool enough to have installed these on the Metro Rail cars.

More next week!

Saturday Centus

This week we are given more words -- 150 of 'em -- but we are limited to dialog only, which is always a fun approach to storytelling. I've got Firefly on the brain lately, so here's something that could happen in the 'Verse. A bit macabre, I know, but I've done the chipper thing a lot lately. I'm a couple words over the limit, but what can I say, I'm a rule-breaker by nature.

"This is the Captain. All lifepods have been jettisoned at full capacity, so twelve hundred of our passengers and crew will live. For you six hundred who have chosen to remain on the ship, I must inform you that we expect our oxygen reserves to reach zero in approximately fifty-seven minutes. May God have mercy on all our souls."

"Alright, then. Less than an hour to live."

"Hadda die sometime. Gotta love these old rustbucket spaceliners, huh?"

"Helluva way to go."

"Nah. I'll kill you before we run out of air."

"What?!"

"You wanna die gaspin', tryin' to breathe? Gimme a blaster to the brainpan any day over that. One for you and then one for me."

"Thanks."

"Call it a last birthday present. Hey, bar bot!"

"Are you seriously ordering another martini?"

"Wanna die sober?"

"Don't wanna die at all."

"Yeah, well, that ain't in the cards. Dyin' in the black ain't so bad, though."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Cheers."

Tapping the Mike

Sorry about the lack of posts the last few days, but there's been stuff going on (not horrible stuff, just stuff), including: a 4:30 am start at work yesterday, a mild cold that's settled into my head nicely, and a horrible thing done by the state of Georgia. Haven't been much in the mood.

But bad moods don't stick around forever, thank God....

"Let's pee in the corner!"

Apparently REM has called it quits as a band. Stop it, Yoko! It's not funny anymore!

Seriously, though, I've always rather liked REM, although they were never a huge favorite of mine. I have a few CDs of theirs around here somewhere, but I am in no way whatsoever familiar with the majority of their output. But I did always like what I heard from them. My favorite song of theirs was "Everybody Hurts":

But my very favorite thing REM ever did was actually this:

Best wishes, REM! Let the reunion rumors commence!

(For those baffled by the post title, this ought to clear it up.)

Books without exploding spaceships are pointless crap.

My Summer of Space Opera continues!

:: Iain M. Banks's ongoing series of space operas set in The Culture – hence the term, the "Culture Novels" – still represent mostly a rich field of unsurveyed reading for me, but I've at least knocked off another of them: Consider Phlebas. This is actually the first-written of the Culture novels, but, after Player of Games, the second I've read. My understanding is that the Culture novels mostly comprise stand-alone stories, so reading order may not matter all that much, although I do plan to mostly stick with the publication order, as much as I can.

Consider Phlebas tells the story of Bora Horza Gobuchul, a "Changer" – an alien who can take on the appearance of other humanoid beings – who is actually working for the Idiran Empire during their galaxy-spanning war against the Culture. He is rescued by the Idirans, who task him with recovering a Culture Mind (a disembodied intelligence) that has stranded itself on one of the Planets of the Dead. Gobuchul's pursuit of his mission is pretty singular-minded, and along the way, he commits a large number of acts that fall into various places on the moral spectrum. This moral ambiguity on the part of the protagonist makes the book compelling in an interesting way, as Banks makes it hard to root against Gobuchul even as he is doing things that are, admittedly, less-than-moral.

The other notable aspect of the book, fitting enough for a space opera, is the Big Epic Scope of the thing. This is "widescreen" SF at its finest, with intelligent spaceships being flown into and out of artificial constructs that are so big it becomes difficult to imagine some of them. The morals of war are called into question, as well, as one such enormous object – called an Orbital – is slated for destruction by the Culture for no other reason than the fact that they have deemed it too hard to strategically defend, so therefore, it must be destroyed before the Idirans can capture it.

Consider Phlebas is very fast-paced, moving from one set-piece to the next fairly quickly, which is nice because there are a couple of set-pieces – most notably, the cannibal-cult Gobuchul finds himself captured by – that are a bit distasteful.

:: I've mentioned before that, in terms of genre classification, we have "space opera", which obviously involves at least a good portion of the story taking place in space. For stories that are similar in feel and scope to space opera but mainly stay on a single planet – Burroughs's "John Carter of Mars" novels are good examples – we have the term "planetary romance".

I'm at a loss, though, as to what to call Ryk E. Spoor's novel Grand Central Arena, which takes place primarily neither in space nor on a planet. Spoor creates something else, an incredibly vast setting, called..."The Arena". It's here that his story plays out. Spoor's dedication of the novel – to E.E. "Doc" Smith – indicates as much as anything what he is up to here: he is writing a novel of Grand Adventure.

As the novel opens, humans are about to test their very first faster-than-light drive, in a spaceship called the Holy Grail (heh – FTL travel being, of course, the 'holy grail' of SF writers). A crew of eight is selected (for their various skills, of course), led by pilot Ariane Austin, who becomes the de facto Captain when the ship emerges from supralight speed into...something. Something bigger than huge; something impossibly vast, which, as they explore, turns out to be full of thousands, if not millions, of other alien species. It turns out that someone has configured things such that any time a species attempts FTL travel, they end up in the Arena, a place where interactions between species can be influenced and controlled by unknown benefactors, where allegiances can be formed and enimites fostered. Their first ally describes the Arena thusly:

It is a place where we all meet and challenge, where bargains are made and broken and avenged, where an alliance may be built on blood and fortune. It is a place where faith is lost, and where religions are founded or proven true. It is where you shall confront, and be confronted by, truths and lies, enemies and allies, belief and denial, impossibility and transcendence.

So, of course, our heroes venture forth and meet many beings, some of whom are allies, some of whom seem to be allies but are really enemies, some of whom seem to be enemies but are really allies, some of whom are enemies outright, and some who just don't seem to care one way or the other. Grand Central Arena is loaded with scope and scale, as well as action, intrigue, and a bit of romance, as well. There are more than a few moments of the "Ye Gods, how do they get out of this!" variety. It's a long novel – nearly 700 pages – but with the exception of a few infodumps along the way, the book is mostly very kinetic in nature as crisis begets crisis begets crisis, with very real and likeable characters (including one fellow with a shadowy past who is literally superhuman, in positive and negative ways). I've never been terribly fond of describing a book as a "page-turner", but that descriptor is very apt for Grand Central Arena.

And yes, the title of this post is a joke. Yeesh, people!

A Random Wednesday Conversation Starter

Medical drama, or courtroom drama?

Answers, the seventh!

Continuing to answer queries from Ask Me Anything! August 2011....

Lynn has a couple of good ones:

Imagine that Star Wars, Star Trek, and Firefly do not exist. What would be your favorite space opera?


Wow, this is a very tough question. Those are some of the big space opera franchises, aren't they? Without the first two, I'm not sure I even have a deep love of space opera to begin with. And Firefly is just all kinds of great, even if it is a bit uneven at times.

I think that my favorite space opera outside of those would be a literary one -- but, which one? For mind-blowing hugeness, you can't go much wrong with the "Commonwealth" novels of Peter J. Hamilton. (Thus far I have only read Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained.) And I've loved what I've read thus far of Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan stories. And there are the Lensmen novels of E.E. 'Doc' Smith...which I need to continue reading one of these days.

Favorite? I suppose I'd go with the Commonwealth novels. It's the universe I'd most want to live in: traveling to distant worlds via train, the conquering of death without a whole lot of Singularity weirdness, and, of course, space ships galore.

Lynn also asks: If you could live on any of the Firefly worlds for the rest of your life, which would you choose?


Probably Ariel. I'm a city guy, I think. Not a big fan of the Alliance, though....

More to come...wrapping it up next time, I promise!

Hey, wait a minute....

To my knowledge, no one has ever seen George RR Martin and Cal in the same place....

Well now....

YARRRR!!!

Today was Talk Like a Pirate Day, which is always fun. I mostly observe this on Facebook by, well, talking like a pirate all day, and posting YouTube videos of piratey stuff. Here are the items I posted:

Yarrr, I love me some pirates!

Yippee ki-yay....

I didn't want to see Die Hard when it first came out.

Mostly it had to do with a strong distaste I had for Bruce Willis, whom at the time I only knew of via Moonlighting, which was a show that I just could not stand. Even with one episode ending with a fantastic pie fight, I just never warmed to that show, and I saw Willis as a crappy actor whose only facial expression was a goofy smirk. So I didn't see Die Hard for a year or two, not until home video, when my sister rented it and forced me to watch it. Yeah. Damn her!

Initially I wasn't thrilled. I mean, our very first glimpse of Bruce Willis in the movie has him on that jet liner, smirking away the same smirk that bugged the hell out of me on Moonlighting. But the movie soon won me over. Took about, oh, ten minutes.

The first Die Hard is one of the best-made films I can think of. It is just competent, from beginning to end. We get the blanks filled in very quickly: why John McClane is estranged from his wife, and we realize that it's not really for the best of reasons, which he himself seems almost willing to admit to himself – note the way he scolds himself after he and Holly have yet another iteration of the same old argument. And there's a skyscraper that is nearly deserted and is still under construction. All that's important.

Anyway, the plot was startlingly original at the time, wasn't it? I don't think it would even get green-lit today, but back then – terrorists take control of a skyscraper, with an off-duty cop on the loose in the building? Wow, what a plot. Such a simple little hook, but the film is a lot more complex than that. We don't get standard-issue terrorists; we get a guy named Hans who has a very definite plot in mind, and it's a lot more devious than just taking hostages and demanding that prisoners in Israel get released.

Hans is, of course, played by Alan Rickman, in one of the great performances of villainy of all time. Hans Gruber is fiercely observant, ruthless, calm under pressure, and deeply intelligent. Very little phases him, and he thinks very quickly as he works to fit every single mishap into the plan. He also has a sense of humor – a violent and twisted sense of humor, but a sense of humor nonetheless – and he is willing to show his frustration at times with the knowledge that his minions just aren't as smart as he is.

What also stands out for me is that Hans Gruber isn't a killing machine. Lots of action movies in the post-Die Hard era really seem to want to establish their villain's evil by having him do quite a bit of gratuitous killing, but sometimes all that killing can really make a movie a downer. A good example is the Gary Oldman character in Air Force One – he's already taken the airplane and killed someone just to show he's serious, but there's a truly awful scene in which he counts to ten before killing a woman. This made it hard to cheer Oldman's later demise – it was just a feeling of, "Oh, finally." Hans Gruber, however, personally kills only two people: Mr Takagi, the obligatory "kill to show he's serious", and then Ellis, who puts himself in harm's way, anyhow.

What makes Die Hard really work is that hero and villain really are just about as smart as the other. Hans, of course, must underestimate John McClane, but it's such a tiny underestimation, based more on his own stereotypical hangups on Americans than anything he knows about McClane. Die Hard is a good action film because its action sequences are thrillingly staged and magnificently filmed, but it's a great movie because of the handle it has on its characters.

And then, a few years later, the sequel arrived. This one I did see in the theater, and I was thrilled to do so. I'd seen a teaser trailer months earlier, that had John McClane running through another industrial-looking subbasement or some such thing, with plumbing and electrical piping and conduit everywhere, at which point he says, "How can the same stuff happen to the same guy twice?!" That trailer indicated that this time, the setting is an airport. Bring on Die Hard 2: Die Harder. (Even though "Die Harder" never appears onscreen.)

Die Hard 2 isn't as good as the first film, but it's still plenty good. What's nice is that it doesn't try to tell the same type of story as the first film, so there's no "lock McClane in a tight spot with a different bunch of terrorists" thing. This time, our terrorists take control of Dulles Airport in Washington, DC in order to rescue a Central American military leader who is being flown to Washington to stand trial for drug charges, or something like that. Unfortunately, the movie damages itself by inventing a fictitious country for our General to hail from, but that's not that big a deal.

McClane is at the airport on a snowy day to pick up Holly, who is flying in on another flight, when the terrorists strike, shutting everything down and keeping planes in the air, circling as weather worsens. It's a nice new way of creating tension, also factoring in that the planes will be running out of fuel.

Die Hard 2 takes longer to get started, really – there's a lot, toward the beginning, that has McClane doing his own investigative stuff after he notices a couple of guys handing each other packages under a table. It's a while before the action really kicks in, this time really putting the airport setting through the paces. Our villain this time is a guy named Colonel Stuart, played by William Sadler (better known as Heywood from The Shawshank Redemption). He's suitably cold and ruthless and also intelligent, but he's not nearly as charismatic as Hans Gruber.

If Die Hard didn't give us gratuitous killing by Hans, this film more than makes up for it. There's a scene where, to make his intentions plain, he deliberately causes a 747 with 200+ people aboard to crash. And the movie underscores the point by showing us, just before the crash, the flight attendants comforting the passengers minutes before their fiery deaths. The scene is really numbing, it's so awful. (It's also implausible, as there is no way a plane with no fuel left explodes into that large a fireball.) And it's almost not worth mentioning that, through no fault of the film's, the realities of America after 9-11-01 do cast a pall over it.

There are quite a few twists and turns, mainly involving who's a villain and who's not, and some filler involving Holly being on the same plane as the nitwit reporter from the first movie. There are also more stupid cops, with Dennis Franz now playing a well-meaning but inept Italian-American version of the first movie's Deputy Chief Dwayne T. Robinson. Die Hard 2 doesn't work quite as well as the first film, but it's still an above-average action flick.

And then there's Die Hard With a Vengeance, the third one. This one is really a mixed bag.

There's a lot that I like about it. In fact, there's a lot that I like a lot about it. Our villain this time is played by Jeremy Irons, and he turns out to be Hans Gruber's brother. He's got his very own scheme, but part of it involves torturing John McClane by making him do weird things and solve puzzles that any kid who ever owned a book of brainteasers will remember. If McClane fails to do what he's told, though, Simon – the Irons character – will detonate a very big explosive somewhere. This all culminates with a threat against one of New York City's public schools, while Simon and his small army of cohorts stage an extremely impressive bank robbery.

Plot-wise, Die Hard WAV is really very well constructed (for the most part). Everything happens for a reason, and nothing is wasted in terms of the machinations of the story. Some of the puzzles and tasks set for McClane are truly diabolical, including one that seems virtually impossible – until McClane realizes that it was virtually impossible, and that therefore it was set up to be virtually impossible.

McClane is also given a sidekick this time: a Harlem shop owner named Zeus, played by Samuel L. Jackson, who ends up involved when he gets in the middle of Simon's first assigned task for McClane (to walk ten blocks in Harlem wearing a giant sign that declares a personal distaste for black people). I love the interplay between these two guys, even if it's nothing we haven't seen before a lot of times – two guys who hate each other have to work together or a criminal does something very bad. Zeus is also really smart, but he has zero experience, so it's fun watching McClane try to keep him from screwing everything up or getting killed, even as he has to admit how much he needs the guy around.

One other thing I really loved about Die Hard WAV is that it dispenses with the stupid other cops of the first two movies. This time, McClane's fellow cops are also smart, competent, and toward the end, heroic. This movie really does away with the idiots, and it's a very wise decision.

What's not so wise, however, is what's done to John McClane himself. This is what really bugs me about this film. In the first two, McClane was a family man who had some struggles but who put things back together; but by this time around, while he's still intelligent and skilled and quick with the funny wisecracks, he's also estranged again and something of a drunk. He's back with the NYPD, although he's on suspension, so we get the obligatory bit where his Captain slaps his badge on the desk and McClane says, "Am I a cop again now?" I hated that aspect of things. If they wanted to set the movie in New York, I can think up a dozen ways to get McClane there off the top of my head without making him a jerk who has ditched his family. It ends up feeling like some kind of alternate universe John McClane, instead of the real thing.

The movie's climax is also something of a disappointment, when it arrives. Die Hard WAV is a very exciting film that peters out before the end, unfortunately enough; it almost feels as though the writers couldn't figure out how to end the movie, so they just tacked on an ending and called it good. But still, on balance, I do like the film quite a bit.

I never saw that fourth one, so there is where my opinionation on the Die Hard flicks must stand....