Sentential Links #143

Weekly roundup commences...NOW!

:: There’s such a thing as professional courtesy. And gratitude. (Ken Levine on Katherine Heigl's public calling-out of the writers on Grey's Anatomy this season; check his follow-up post too. I'm a faithful Grey's watcher, although the show really needs some new blood, which I think might have been in the offing had the writer's strike not robbed them of half their season; there's only so much "Derek and Meredith, on-again, off-again" that we can stand, really. But in all the time I've watched Grey's, it's Heigl's character that I've hated the most. I've been chalking that up to the writing, but now, I'm wondering how much of Heigl herself is bleeding through. She's starting to seem like an ungrateful harridan.)

:: Amost one hundred years later and with just one survivor still living, to say that the Titanic story is irresistible is about as original as remarking that this Cary Grant fellow was really quite attractive. We've cycled through books and movies and musicals and miniseries and a hundred years from now they'll no doubt be adapting the story to whatever format our great-grandchildren have cooked up. (Terrific posts with some nifty insights into the James Cameron film along with two others, and not from the standpoint that the Cameron film is Teh Suck.)

:: My skirt was too short, my heels were too high, I was wearing fishnets for God's sake, and my lips were far too blacky-red for me to be riding on that particular L line that night. I was headed to a Christmas party in Rogers Park, in an iffy area, and the train had to go through even more iffy areas, and I realized, too late, what a risk I had taken. There was an edgy energy in the car, an on-the-make electric charge, too many people with nowhere to go, nowhere to be - you could sense it, the looking-for-something-to-happen expression on restless dead-eyed faces - it's an energy which is unmistakable to folks who live in urban environments, but was new to me at the time. (Salty language here, but it's a really compelling post.)

:: Few words are needed to describe the utter joy of hopping in a kayak on a bright sunny day, and paddling for miles from island to island in this never-ending archipelago of tree-strewn gems.

:: Someone should have told Johnston that sometimes explaining things makes it worse. (Yup, another complaint about For Better or For Worse. This week Lynn Johnston, the strip's creator, posted online in defense of Liz marrying Anthony, and she gave the stupidest and flimsiest of reasons for it. Ugh!)

:: This is the crisis that has been coming since the 70’s. It is strange that we don’t recognize it.

:: In some form, Doubleday Field deserves Major League baseball. (Wow, no more Hall-of-Fame games? I'm sorry, but that's just stupid. And for baseball players and owners, who are raking in millions, to halt the game because it's hard to do? Frankly: screw that. Make the game count in the standings, if you want -- or maybe even hold the All-Star Game there, since nobody bothers watching that, anyway. But doing away with it? Feh.)

:: Finally, I can say with no irony, no sense of fabrication, to a little black baby, "Someday, you may be president." (My only political link this week.)

More next week, as always.

Close to Home

Two news stories of personal interest to me happened over the last couple of days. I won't provide any links, since you can all Google this stuff if you really need to:

:: The city of Cedar Rapids, Iowa has suffered massive flooding. I looked at the photos, and my jaw dropped. Cedar Rapids is about ninety minutes down the road from where I went to college, and both towns share the Cedar River, with Waverly being a hundred miles or so upstream. We drove through Cedar Rapids many a time between 1989 and 1993. We never spent a whole lot of time in Cedar Rapids itself, but we did stop there a few times for pit stops or shopping; and of course, since Cedar Rapids is Iowa's second-largest city, I had a number of friends from that area. How many of those old friends still live there, I don't know, but I hope they're all well if they're still there.



That's downtown Cedar Rapids there, all flooded out. That image astonishes me. That large bridge there, the third one up the river from the bottom, is Interstate 380, which runs northward from Iowa City, through Cedar Rapids, to Waterloo. That was the road we took through the city each time (when we drove that way; sometimes we took Route 20 east out of Waterloo toward Dubuque). Cedar Rapids always struck me as a lovely and pleasant town, and I dearly hope the place can withstand this disaster. All my best to those living there, as well as in all the other flooded locations in Iowa. (I think I may have a regular reader there, if I remember correctly from my referral logs.)

:: Tim Russert is dead. I personally tend to think of him more as Buffalo's current most famous native son on the national stage than a journalist; I was never a fan of his interviewing style, which seemed more geared toward confronting people with inconsistencies in their record and making them squirm than in actually discussing policy questions. I always felt as if a public figure's goal was more to "survive" an interview with Russert, and he also struck me as being, well, selectively tough on people. (Matthew Yglesias wrote the definitive article on the Russert approach.) However, as unenthusiastic as I was about Russert's approach, it still remains that Russert himself was a very likable guy, and it really does sadden me that now we don't have anybody on the national stage willing to say, "Yeah I'm from Buffalo and Buffalo rules and bite me if you don't like it." Anyway.

Unidentified Earth 42

Yeesh, folks! No guesses at all on the last two entries, so I guess it's Draconian Hint Time. For UI 41, you've seen this location a lot if you watch ESPN during the summertime. And UI 40 is the kind of place that can change your life, if you spend a Saturday there.

OK, hint time aside, this week's entry is probably really easy, but they all can't be hard, right?



Where are we? Rot-13 thy guesses, folks.

Sunday Burst of Weirdness

Hmmmmm...I'm sure I left some weirdness here somewhere....

:: I'm Voting Republican! (Mileage may vary on whether this is funny or not. I, being a Democrat, found it hilarious. I'd credit my source, but I don't remember where I got it. If it's you, let me know and I'll revise.)

:: The Interweb continues to astound with its fountain of information that you can use! For the latest example, if you've ever wanted an exhaustive list of all the events that triggered Bill Bixby to morph into a green Lou Ferigno on The Incredible Hulk, here you go (via)

:: Gummi lighthouses. But of course, it's all a matter of perspective.... (via)

:: This isn't actually "weird", but pretty stunning. Back in the day I used to have an "Image of the Week" feature. I've let that go the wayside, but if it was still around, I'd have strong contenders from this group of cloud photos taken from space (via Lynn) or this group of volcano eruption photos (via SDB). On that latter set, the first three photos are impressive, but the fourth starts the eye-popping stuff. Note that both of those links come from the same site, Boston.com's "The Big Picture", a photo blog that seems to have lots of other amazing photographic goodness.

Something for Thursday

I am not apologizing for liking this song.

Nope. Not apologizing.

(But don't look too closely into the hypnotic gaze of the Brothers Gibb. I think I just mailed them fifty bucks.)

Freude, schoener Gotterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium!

Kleinhans, originally uploaded by Jaquandor.

That's the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra in warm-ups prior to a recent performance of "Beethoven Lives Upstairs", a wonderful program of excerpts of Beethoven's music performed alongside a live show in which two actors, a young man and an older one, play the parts of a musician in Vienna and his nephew who, for a time, has a very eccentric upstairs neighbor: Ludwig van Beethoven. We took The Daughter for her first ever BPO concert, and she enjoyed it despite kinda-sorta pretending to not be too enthusiastic about it.

I hadn't heard the BPO live in over ten years; attending live music performances simply hasn't been a priority with me, which I now realize I miss terribly. I remember every concert I've been to: the cycle of the Brahms symphonies the BPO did for Semyon Bychkov's final concerts as music director; I remember his Berlioz Symphonie fantastique and his Dvorak New World, which was a scintillating performance that was made more memorable by the fact that the audience seemed to be filled with emphysemacs. There was so much coughing during the slow movement that Maestro Bychkov actually turned to the audience after that movement and admonished them; and then he and the BPO repeated the movement "for those who missed it the first time". Wow.

The concert that is most engraved on my brain, though, wasn't the BPO. In my sophomore year in college, the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra played at our school. Their program began with Berlioz's Roman Carnival overture, and then followed with a concerto for Pipa and orchestra (the pipa is a Chinese stringed instrument). The second half of the program? My beloved Rachmaninov Symphony No. 2. I was nearly in tears by the time that concert ended.

Anyhow, hearing the BPO live again was truly wonderful, and I deeply thank Jennifer for acquiring the tickets for my family. (BTW, the BPO's current resident conductor, a man named Robert Franz, looks suspiciously like Bob Cobb, "The Maestro", from Seinfeld. I wonder if Maestro Franz has a house in Tuscany!)

Monty Haul

Book Sale, originally uploaded by Jaquandor.

OK, we've established in the past that I live for the quarterly used book sale at the Orchard Park library. (See here and here for representative posts.) My methodology is usually to pick out some stuff for The Daughter first, and then look around for stuff for myself and for The Wife. Sometimes the SF pickings are good (here's the previous best SF haul), sometimes the pickings are better for stocking the shelves with classic literature. But this time? Wow.

It seems that someone donated an entire collection of old SF paperbacks for the sale. I spotted a couple of Andre Norton titles, and then some Larry Niven, and then more and more and more, quite a bit of which I grabbed indiscriminately. As you can see, I came home with the largest haul I've ever brought home from the book sale, and that big chunk of SF goodness represents less than a fifth of what was there along that vein.

You'll also notice, if you click through to the larger version, two non-SF volumes. For some reason I can't pass up a complete Shakespeare; this edition of the Riverside Shakespeare looked nifty indeed. And I couldn't pass up a hardcover edition of Richard Bach's The Bridge Across Forever, a book which meant a great deal to me many years ago but which has slipped away from me more recently. (I have a post in mind to write about this, but I've been stalling on it because it involves some pretty personal stuff. I'll probably work up the guts one of these days and have it turn out to be no big deal, as is usually the case.)

But really, look at all that SF goodness! Zap! Pow!!!

Fixing the Prequels: The Phantom Menace (conclusion)

part one
part two
part three
part four
part five
part six
part seven
part eight
part nine

(The entire series can be read by clicking the Post Label at the bottom of each individual post in the series.)

And now we come at last to the end of The Phantom Menace. The final battle is, of course, the best executed portion of the entire film, owing as it does to George Lucas's skills at film editing. But there are some changes I'd make herein, mainly dealing with two particular fronts: Anakin's conduct in the battle, and Jar Jar's.

Remember, when last we'd left, I'd shifted things so that Anakin isn't being brought knowingly into battle but has instead stowed away, unbeknownst to Qui Gon or Padme. I think this was important to show just how impulsive Anakin can be, and also to better illustrate how this kid ends up being in the middle of a major battle. In the film, Qui Gon just takes Anakin along, which always seems a little weird to me.

We'd first open on the green field outside the city, where the Gungans have mustered. This is where I'd have the whole sequence with them take place pretty much as is in the film, with the starting of their shield and then the arrival of the droid armies. This has always been one of my favorite sequences in the film, with the impressive sound design of the droid tanks and the giant droid carriers. I'd also keep Jar Jar's admonition of a few Gungan warriors to stand "Steady, steady". That always struck me as a good indicator of Jar Jar's development arc, and it fits with my reworking him as a failed warrior become actual warrior.

Now we cut to the streets of Theed, where the Queen and her troops are moving into position, along with the Jedi. After she signals Captain Panaka, the good Captain begins his work by creating a diversion by detonating a bomb inside a speeder. I'd have more explosions go off, all over the place, enough to totally confuse the battle droids who would then be taken by surprise by the attack of Panaka's men. While this is going on, the Queen leads her contingent into the main hangar, where they plan to launch some of their fighters.

As this fight begins to take shape (I like Nute Gunray's reaction in horror that the battle is taking place right outside the palace), especially in the hangar bay, that's when Anakin and R2 would arrive, probably by emerging through an air duct or some other kind of clandestine passage. They'd pop up in the middle of the battle, maybe from a hatch in the floor, and have to scramble for safety while blaster fire erupts all over. I'd have the battle in the hangar bay be a pitched struggle for a bit, with explosions all over the place, and with Anakin and R2 desperately trying to avoid getting fried. Then, as the Naboo pilots start getting in the fighters and lifting off, Anakin would notice a ship that's hasn't been taken:

ANAKIN: Artoo! There's a ship no one's taking! We'll be safe in there!

Artoo whistles as Anakin takes off for the vacant fighter, and then follows. The boy ducks blaster fire and explosions as he races up the boarding ladder and hops into the cockpit; meanwhile, Artoo moves into position beneath the astrodroid port, which activates, magnetically lifting the droid into position.

ANAKIN: We'll be a lot safer in here, Artoo!

A sudden explosion overhead sends a shower of sparks cascading over the ship and into the open cockpit. Anakin brushes them all off.

ANAKIN: We're almost safer, anyway.

He presses the button to close the cockpit cover, which also activates the ship's power systems.

ANAKIN: Uh-oh....

I basically like everything that Anakin does from this point on, for a while. The only big change I'd make is to keep everyone from knowing he's there: no more Qui Gon telling him to "Stay in that cockpit". I'd also make it so Anakin is a bit more of a decision maker; when the destroyer droids roll in and pin down Padme and her soldiers (I'd include a good establishing shot showing that the destroyers have the Queen and company pinned down), I like how Anakin uses his ship's superior firepower to blast them. But I'd have him show a bit of anger here:

ANAKIN: They'll get butchered! Artoo, power up this thing!

Artoo beeps in protest.

ANAKIN: Do it!

Now Artoo does as he's told, and the ship's engines and power systems come to life. Anakin grabs the control stick and rotates the ship to point at the destroyers, whereupon he blasts them with the ship's cannons.

ANAKIN: Yeah!

Artoo suddenly whines. The ship's thrusters fire, sending the craft up and out of the hangar bay and into the Naboo sky.

ANAKIN: What are you doing, Artoo?!

Artoo says something; the translation appears on a screen in the cockpit.

ANAKIN: Autopilot? I didn't engage any autopilot! Where is it taking us? Just hold on!

Anakin slips a pilot's helmet on over his head as the ship powers for space.

Amongst all this, Darth Maul makes his impressive entrance. Frankly, I wouldn't change a single thing about this whatsoever. For the most part, the entire Jedi versus Sith Lord battle works wonderfully. No changes here.

(By the way, there's a wonderful little blink-and-you-miss-it thing in the early going of the Jedi swordfight. When Darth Maul is backing up and uses the Force to throw some object at a control panel, thus opening the doors to the energy transfer facility beyond, Obi Wan comes into the frame on the left, following the Sith Lord – and he's got this almost swaggering saunter as he does, and he twirls his lightsaber jauntily, as if he's not quite taking this guy all that seriously yet. I like how this shows, in some tiny way, Obi Wan's youthful brashness that he would later cite when addressing Yoda in TESB.)

So, Anakin's flying into battle, the Queen is trying to fight her way to the Viceroy, two Jedi are engaging a Sith Lord, and the Gungans are fighting the droid army. George Lucas gets quite a pot boiling here, and for the most part, I like just about all of it. The only changes I'd make for a while here are pretty cosmetic in nature:

:: I'd play up Anakin's wild and impulsive nature in the space battle. I like his wide-eyed approach to the battle when he finds himself in the middle of exploding ships and blaster fire, and I like his observation that "this autopilot's gonna get us both killed." I'd have Anakin do all sorts of wild maneuvers with his ship, really highlighting the fact that he's supposed to be a great pilot. In the original script, at one point he does something with the ship that Artoo doesn't like, and when the droid says something, Anakin responds, "I know this isn't pod-racing!" I like that line and would keep it in there. However, I'd ditch "Let's try spinning! That's a neat trick." I'd like to see him use his wild piloting skills to bollix the droid fighters, maybe even making one or two of them crash into their own ships as they try to compensate for his wild maneuvers.

:: Meanwhile, the battle between the Gungans and the droid army also works pretty well. Jar Jar, though, tends to bumble his way through the whole thing, and I'd rather see him doing some of the things he does by design. By this point, Jar Jar shouldn't be completely bumbling his way through everything: he's found a bit of his self-confidence and his ability and is starting to exercise them both. Toward the end of this sequence, he is forced to run back toward the droid army while his fellow Gungans flee; I'd change this to have him make a purposeful decision to charge on his own:

The Gungan army is now fleeing toward the swamps, with the droid army in hot pursuit, led by four TANKS.

JAR JAR: Wesa never get away in time!

TARPALS: What you wanna do?

JAR JAR: Anything!

Jar Jar leaps onto a passing wagon that is loaded with blue energy balls, where he opens the wagon's back, letting the balls all roll out onto the ground, where they tumble toward the droids at great speed. Two of them crash into the tanks, causing them to go haywire and crash into one another. Jar Jar is thrown into the air by an explosion and lands on top of a battle tank which is swerving this way and that as it levels laser blasts at escaping Gungans. Captain Tarpals rides up alongside and holds out a hand.

TARPALS: Jump, Jar Jar! Jump!

JAR JAR: Mesa gotta stop this thing!

TARPALS: Use this!

He tosses a blue energy ball to Jar Jar, who catches it just as the top of the tank pops open and a battle droid sticks its head out.

DROID: We've got a passenger!

The droid lifts his blaster, but Jar Jar tosses the energy ball at him, where it drops into the open cockpit of the tank and explodes, disrupting the tank's energy systems and causing it to swerve wildly off course. This allows more Gungans to escape, but Jar Jar falls off the turret to the ground as the tank rolls over on its side some distance away. Captain Tarpals rides up to Jar Jar and holds out his hand.

TARPALS: Jar Jar! Up!

But before Jar Jar can leap onto the back of the beast, they are surrounded by battle droids who cover them with their weapons.

JAR JAR: Oh no....

Tarpals hands Jar Jar the weapon he claimed from him earlier [in my rewrite, not in the existing movie].

TARPALS: Yousa gonna need this.

Something like that. Even though the Gungan cause is pretty much doomed, I'd play up Jar Jar's heroics a bit, especially as contrasted with Anakin's.

:: About the only change I'd make to the lightsaber battle between the Jedi and Darth Maul would be to provide a little bit of indication as to what's going on and where they are. Those cascading energy doors are pretty cool, but they seem a bit arbitrary, don't they? I'd have Maul use the Force to open them, maybe having a computer screen flash the words "Energy Doors Opening", and then close them as he sees fit once he's all the way inside. Basically, I'd have Maul use them as a means of ensuring that he only fights one Jedi at a time.

(By the way, the shot with the three combatants, separated by the energy doors, is one of those brilliant shots George Lucas never gets any credit for. Each combatants acts, silently, in a way completely in character: Obi Wan stays standing, waiting a bit impatiently; Qui Gon kneels to calmly meditate; Maul paces back and forth like a caged animal. I love that.)

:: Back to Anakin in space. When his fighter goes out of control and skids to a halt inside the Trade Federation cruiser, I'd alter the scene a bit. The problem is that to many viewers of the film – not so much to me, but I can see their complaint – Anakin's successful resolution of this problem looks pretty much accidental. So:

INT: Federation cruiser – landing bay.

Anakin's fighter skids to a halt in the middle of the bay. A dozen stunned battle droids stare at the newly arrived ship.

INT: Anakin's ship – cockpit.

Artoo whistles nervously, and Anakin reads the translation on the screen: "I have a bad feeling about this."

ANAKIN: Yeah, me too.

Anakin tries to activate the ship's power, but the switches do nothing.

ANAKIN: We must have overloaded or something...oh no.

Outside, the battle droids are now approaching the ship, blasters drawn. Anakin sinks down into his seat as far as he can possibly go.

ANAKIN: Try and stall them, Artoo! I'm gonna try to hotwire this thing.

He opens a panel, behind which are about a hundred cables and wires.

ANAKIN: I can fix this...I can fix this....

INT: Federation cruiser – hold

The Battle Droids form a perimeter around the ship.

DROID 1: I don't see a pilot.

DROID 2: Ship's damaged. Maybe the pilot got blasted into space.

DROID 1: You! Astrodroid! Identify yourself!

Artoo beeps and whistles; the battle droids look back and forth at one another.

DROID 1: Does anyone understand that?

DROID 2: We need that protocol droid.

Meanwhile, inside the ship, Anakin is busily splicing wires together.

In the film as released, Anakin's ship crashes on the Federation cruiser, and its systems are overheated – and all Anakin has to do to escape this dire situation is sit there and wait while the ship cools back down, whilst the battle droids do nothing at all. I'd much rather have him be an active agent here, doing something himself to enable his own heroics. I've always been surprised that Lucas didn't go this route, since he established earlier on in the Pod Race that Anakin is such a cool customer that he can repair his own racer while actually flying it.

(And what Star Wars fan wouldn't want to know what "I've got a bad feeling about this" sounds like in Astrodroid language?)

Next, as in the film, we'd cut to the Gungans being defeated...then Padme and others being captured and taken to the Viceroy...then Obi Wan's battle with Maul, ending with him dangling above a reactor pit...and back to Anakin:

INT: Federation cruiser – hold.

DROID 1: I say we just blast him.

DROID 2: You always want to blast things.

DROID 1: We're battle droids, and we're here on the ship during a battle.

INT: Cockpit.

Anakin's still working on the circuits....

ANAKIN: Conduit to main batteries...transfer circuits on line...Artoo, do we have power?

Artoo beeps. Anakin reaches up and presses the main activation button, and the ship's control panels light up.

ANAKIN: Wizard! We're up and running!

He pops back into the pilot's seat.

DROID 1: Hey! There was a pilot in there after all!

DROID 2: Little short for a pilot.

DROID 1: Never mind! Blast him!

But it's too late: Anakin has the ship's shields back up, and the battle droids' blasters are useless against them. Then Anakin returns fire, blowing the droids apart.

ANAKIN: Let's get out of here, Artoo!

He grabs the control stick and brings the ship around, but something catches his eye....

ANAKIN: Wait! Those blast doors – why would they have blast doors like that in a cargo hold, unless...Artoo, lock in two proton torpedoes!

Artoo whistles compliance. Anakin depresses the firing switch. Two brilliant white torpedoes streak forth from the ship, one of them blasting a giant hole in the blast doors, the other shooting through the hole, into the REACTOR CHAMBER beyond, and blasting the ship's main reactor. Almost immediately a giant explosion takes place, bathing the place in flame.

ANAKIN: Ha ha! I knew that was a reactor chamber! Full power, Artoo!

INT: Federation cruiser – series of holds.

Anakin is threading the tiny ship through the series of holds, toward the exit, as the explosions spread behind him.

ANAKIN: Now THIS is podracing!

[I love that line. -Me]

I'd play the rest of this out as it happens in the movie: the Naboo pilots rejoicing, even though they don't know which of their number has pulled off the victory. Then cut back to the throne room in the Naboo Palace, where the Queen would seize the blasters concealed in her chair and hold the Viceroy at gunpoint. In the original script, the Viceroy says something defiant here as well; I'd restore that thusly:

INT: Theed palace – throne room.

PADME: Now, Viceroy, we shall discuss a new treaty.

NUTE: We shall do nothing of the kind. In minutes my battle droids will break that door down and you will still have lost.

TC-14: Viceroy, I am detecting no signal from the ship.

[Yeah, I'd spare TC-14 from being destroyed along with the Federation cruiser. I liked TC-14.]

NUTE: What did you say?!

Almost immediately they hear the sound of destroyer droids rolling in...but instead of stopping and unfolding, they keep rolling until the smack into the wall and then topple to the ground, useless. Panaka listens to something over his radio.

PANAKA: All jamming has stopped...the battle droids are all deactivated.

Nute glances at Rune, who shakes his head.

RUNE: I told you this would not work.

PADME: Viceroy! About that new treaty.

And back to the Gungan field, where they discover that the droids are now dead in the water (so to speak), and back to the reactor pit for the final moments of Obi Wan versus Darth Maul. I've always liked this last bit, and I'd keep it as is. Especially Qui Gon's farewell to Obi Wan.

In the original script, at this point this little scene takes place, which I like a lot:

INT: Theed – Central Hangar – Day

Ric Olie and the other pilots gather as they exit their ships after landing.

BRAVO TWO: That pilot flew into the hold, behind their shields, and blew their reactor from inside!

BRAVO THREE: They don't teach that in the academy.

One last ship flies into the hangar and makes a fairly awkward landing. RIC and the other pilots run over to assist the last pilot to arrive.

RIC OLIE: Wait a minute – we're all accounted for! Who's the last pilot?

The ship's cockpit pops open, revealing ANAKIN.

ANAKIN: Am I in trouble?

His only response is a series of slack-jawed stares.

OK. We're almost done. Palpatine arrives on Naboo in a very well-done scene (for such a hated movie, this flick sure does have a lot of pretty good scenes in it), including his wonderful line to Anakin, "We shall follow your career with great interest." Then Obi Wan meets with Yoda. I'd include Mace Windu in this as well, for the final major bit of alteration I'd make in the film:

INT: Palace – anteroom.

OBI WAN sits in the sunlit anteroom with YODA and MACE WINDU.

YODA: Done well you have, Obi Wan Kenobi. Considered your actions, we have.

MACE WINDU: It is the will of the Council that what you have done here far exceeds anything you might have undergone in the Trials. Thus we confer upon you the title of Jedi Knight. You are the first battle-confirmed Jedi Knight in almost three centuries. Congratulations, Master Kenobi.

OBI WAN: Thank you, Master Windu.

YODA: But more to say, have you?

OBI WAN: I was not the only one who proved my worth in this battle.

Yoda and mace exchange glances.

OBI WAN: In truth, we would not have secured victory for the Naboo had young Anakin Skywalker not done what he did.

YODA: Considered that, we have. But still: grave danger do we fear if trained as a Jedi is he.

MACE: The Force is stronger in him than in anyone we have ever encountered. He may not be able to control it.

OBI WAN: But if he is the Chosen One?

MACE: That remains to be seen.

OBI WAN: It would surely be more dangerous to leave him untrained when he is already tapping into the power of the Force at his age. And I gave my word to Qui Gon. I will train him.

YODA: Claim him as your Padawan, do you?

Obi Wan nods.

OBI WAN: Qui Gon believed in him. I believe in Qui Gon.

MACE: Then train him. But be mindful.

OBI WAN: I will, Master. I will train him as well as you all trained me.

YODA: Qui Gon's defiance I sense in you. Your Padawan the boy shall be.

Obi Wan exits, leaving Yoda and Mace alone.

MACE: There is no longer any doubt. The mysterious warrior was a Sith Lord.

YODA: Returned, the Sith have – and sense their return, we have not.

MACE: We must learn how it is that their chain has been reformed after it was broken.

YODA: Always two there are: a master, and an apprentice.

MACE: And if this one was the apprentice, then who is the master?

Now we cut to Qui Gon's funeral pyre. Obviously, I relocate the exchange about the Sith returning to the earlier scene, leaving the funeral almost entirely dialog free – except for the exchange between Obi Wan and Anakin, which is fine to me.

All that remains is the very last scene, the triumphal parade through the streets of Naboo. I genuinely can't think of anything to change about this, so I'd leave it alone completely. I like the ceremonial joining of the Naboo and the Gungans, I like the grin Anakin - now a Padawan - gives to Padme, and the grin she gives him in return. I like how TPM ends on a note of triumph, with no one realizing just how short-lived this victory will be. And it's always impressed me how Lucas suggests that bad things, very bad things, can find their genesis in moments of triumph.

IRIS OUT to Credits.

So, what final thoughts? Over the course of revisiting The Phantom Menace, I've actually reaffirmed my original conviction that the movie simply isn't as bad as everyone thinks it is. Yes, it's got flaws, but as I've always thought, the main storyline is solid and despite those flaws, there's a lot of very good stuff in this movie.

And with that we take our leave of The Phantom Menace. In a while I'll start the task of fixing Attack of the Clones. Until then, may the Force be with you!

Sentential Links #142

Here we go. Yeah, lots of politics this week.

:: Family fights are always painful, but they are usually easily healed as well. Here's to the end of the Long March of 2008. It's been real. (That it has. I would have voted for Hillary Clinton in November if she'd been nominated, without question.)

:: One virtue of having a reputation as a straight-talker is that you can get away with constant lying.

:: On a social level, it's hard to picture someone of Hillary's age, experience, and temperament being willing to play second fiddle to a young guy like Obama. On a political level, she has more clout in the Senate than she would as vice president. On a personal level, Obama and Clinton (and their respective teams) just don't seem to like each other much. (I agree. About the only benefit I could see to Clinton running for VP would be that it would make her the presumptive nominee in 2016.)

:: What's the message John McCain delivers when he shows up? You don't need any government help, all you need to do is what I did, get yourself born the son and grandson of admirals and then marry an heiress with lots of political muscle? What inspiration is George W. Bush providing with his example? You don't need any government help, all you need is a rich and forgiving daddy with a lot of friends who owe him big favors and you can become President of the United States, no sweat?

OK, leaving off the politics:

:: Love is Pure White.

:: I have no idea how any of these things will ultimately turn out. But I do hope.

:: When someone dies, we bombard ourselves with all of the clichés.

Stay safe, folks.

Unidentified Earth 41

Here we go again. Last week's entry still has no guesses, which displeases me; there's gotta be one neo-maxi-zoom-dweebie amongst my readership. UI 38 was finally identified, after some hint-giving by me, as the field near Clear Lake, IA where the plane carrying Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, and Richie Valens crashed.

Anyhow, time for the new entry:



Where are we? Rot-13 your guesses!

Sunday Burst of Weirdness

Weirdness ahoy....

:: This isn't "weird", actually, but it's pretty amazing: a chef with tongue cancer continues cooking. This reminds me of Beethoven and his deafness, although this chef seems to be regaining some of his sense of taste. (And yes, cooking is an art.)

:: Fifteen Republican rumors about Barack Obama.

:: If Sleepless in Seattle had been a stalker movie:



(This is via the "chick flicks" link I made the basis of a post the other day.)

Keep the weirdness coming!

Wow!

How is it that until the day before yesterday, I'd never heard of Imeem? Seriously, it's the best thing ever: it's a music-only version of YouTube. Better sound, and no annoying videos. (It apparently has videos and such, but mainly I'm after the music.) I'm searching and bookmarking like crazy.

I have a feeling that Teh Interweb is going to make life a lot better one of these days....

Dreamers

Dreamers, originally uploaded by ¤ Mad in France ¤.

Just something I saw randomly on Flickr.

No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.

No.

Ix-nay.

Niente.

Nein.

Non.

Negative.

NO.

Sigh.

[post date changed so the post isn't by itself, because that bugs me for some reason]

Sensitive Man is sensitive

Lynn points out a handy list of the worst "chick flicks" of all time, and I figure, hey, a list to comment on! Yay!!!

Here's the list, with comment:

20. Autumn in New York

I haven't seen this.

19. The English Patient

Wow, is this movie a drawn out bore. At least, that's what I thought of it when I watched it years ago. I read the book last year, though, and I was captivated with it. I may revisit the film sometime.

18. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

I haven't seen this.

17. The Notebook

I actually enjoyed this, although I didn't find it as transformingly romantic as many others did.

16. Dr. T & The Women

Unseen by me. No idea.

15. Sweet November

Also unseen by me.

14. You’ve Got Mail

I saw this once, and found it enjoyable, but not enough to ever see again.

13. The Prince of Tides

Haven't seen it.

12. Georgia Rule

I haven't seen this, either.

11. Crossroads

Now, what are the odds that I've seen a movie starring Britney Spears?

10. The Bridges of Madison County

OK, OK, OK. Yes, the book is treacle. But the movie I found very, very well done.

9. Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Nope. Didn't see it.

8. Fried Green Tomatoes

I've only seen this once, but I remember enjoying it.

7. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days

Ack! I actually found this movie enjoyable, but I'm prepared to grant the possibility that I was blinded by Kate Hudson. Especially this one scene where she takes a huge bite out of a cheeseburger....

6. Beaches

Ahhhhh, here we go. I loathed this movie when I saw it. I mean, I hated it with passion I've rarely hated with since. I saw it at a college screening about a year after it had come out, and everybody was telling me what a tearjerker it was -- and then I was appalled to discover that the movie basically spends two hours following these two women through life as they treat each other incredibly poorly and then asks me to be sad when one of them dies! Yeah, right.

5. Sleepless in Seattle

Shoot me. I love this movie. Just watched it again a few weeks ago.

4. Dirty Dancing

OK, I think I've seen this, or maybe I haven't. I dunno. Don't care.

3. Steel Magnolias

I haven't seen this.

2. Ghost

I haven't watched this in a very long time -- maybe ten years, wow! -- but I sure liked it back in the day. I enjoyed the story, and Demi Moore was really cute back then. (Maybe she still is, I have no idea how she's looking nowadays.)

1. Titanic

I will forever be befuddled at the sheer ferocity of the ongoing backlash against this movie. It's as if people are angry at themselves for having liked it in the first place or something. I don't get it.

As for films that deserve to be on this list, I agree with Lynn: Love Story is just garbage. Anyway....

Something for Thursday

I used this before back when he died, but hearing something beautiful only once seems to me a waste, so here's Luciano again. "Nessun dorma...."

I love this aria so much that I'm actually scared to someday see Turandot and actually learn what he's singing there.

100 Things I Love

OK, so a couple of weeks ago I did a list of 100 things that bug me. It's time to take up the opposite end of that particular spectrum, which brings me to this: 100 things that make me all warm and fuzzy inside, like a little kitten. On Prozac. This list is in no particular order, by the way, and it's most certainly not exhaustive. These aren't the only 100 things I love! (We'll also stipulate my loves of Berlioz, Rachmaninov, George Lucas, Star Wars, Tolkien, Guy Gavriel Kay, and Once and Again for the purposes of this list. Which means that none of those things will be cited here, because they're more than "loves" for me: they're things that shape who I am.)

1. The laptop on which I am writing this post. It's a Dell Inspiron 1520, and I just adore the thing. It's made my life so much cooler and niftier; I love being able to write at my actual writing desk with all of my books (well, quite a few of them, anyway) in easy reach, and I love being able to watch movies on a screen with really nice resolution, with my headphones on so I'm not exposing The Daughter to stuff like Pulp Fiction. I love being able to pack up my machine and go other places to write.

2. USB Flash drives. Wow, are these things ever cool. I want to get one of the 4GB ones, though; the three I already own are only 1GB.

3. Berries: strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, and my beloved blueberries.

4. It doesn't happen nearly as often as it should, but there are few feelings in life more delicious in that horrible way than seeing the guy who aggressively passed you a mile back pulled over by a cop.

5. Reason #756 why I don't understand why Buffalo's been struggling for so many years: Unlike just about every other city east of the Mississippi, we watch the sun set over water.

6. Does it strike anyone else as odd that the Nobel Prize was never awarded to the person who thought to put chocolate chips into a cookie?

7. I used to dip a lot into the spiritual texts and scriptures of the world; I don't do enough of that these days. The Bhagavad Gita; the Tao te Ching, the Tibetan Book of the Dead. In the Bible, the books of Ecclesiastes, the Psalms, the Song of Songs. The Gospels of John and Luke. I even have a Koran, although I've never read into it much at all.

8. I always enjoy the Monday morning after the Super Bowl, when I'm always able to truthfully say that I didn't see the commercials. (And I never watch them, at least not intentionally. I use the commercials for the purpose God made them: to go to the bathroom and refill my drink and grab more chips.)

9. If I was forbidden to choose a specific ethnic food to eat at every meal for the remainder of my life, I'd almost certainly choose Chinese. If I was forbidden to eat Chinese food, I'd probably just stop eating entirely. Same effect, just faster.

10. The Daughter loves to make fun of this habit of mine, but I always smell my books. I really love the smell of paper and ink, in nearly all varieties.

11. But for all my love of Chinese food, where would the world be without pizza? Pizza, wonderful pizza, in all its forms. I feel such pity for those who rigidly adhere to the failed notion of One True Pizza.

12. I love the smell of The Wife's hairspray.

13. Sleeping in a very cold room in a soft bed with lots of blankets makes me happy.

14. For sheer tactile pleasure, few things beat sliding into an icy cold bed and feeling one's own body heat gradually taking hold under the blankets.

15. Of course, I'm a guy, which means I get a kick out of browsing Home Depot and other hardware emporia. Although I do wish they'd stock self-tapping finish head screws.

16. Audrey Hepburn? Yeah, I love her.

17. If I could, I would rely on candles for all my home lighting needs. Candlelight is beautiful, warm, and inviting. Candles are the stuff of romance.

18. Soft denim on bare skin.

19. The flavor of mint: in chocolate, in ice cream, in tea, on meat, in salads. I love mint.

20. It wreaks havoc on my hair, but I enjoy the fact that I have hair that blows out behind me in a strong breeze. I can get all Bravehearty about it. "FREEDOMMMMM!"

21. Cats are annoying, irritating freeloaders who demand food, get hair all over everything, poop at inopportune moments, and refuse to differentiate between the opening of a can of tuna and the opening of a can of, say, creamed corn. But I still love cats more than dogs. Go figure.

22. I love me some Get Fuzzy, although I do wish Satchel would get the upper hand more often.

23. I love spaceships in my science fiction. Dystopia? Fine. Utopia? Great. But I want spaceships.

24. If I had to go to Ollivander's shop on Diagon Alley and pick out my wand before entering Hogwarts, I'm sure that my wand would take the form of a Klein Tools ten-in-one screwdriver. That thing makes so many jobs easier. (What are the ten? Two Philips tips, two flathead tips, two star tips, two squarehead tips, and two sizes of nut driver.)

25. I think recumbent bikes look incredibly cool. I want one someday. (I also need to start riding my bike to and from work one of these years, after I get off my arse and get a pair of saddlebags.)

26. Pie, in all its forms, is wonderful stuff. Nothing's more satisfying in that "down home" way than a chicken or a beef pot pie. A good, large slice of apple pie, still warm, topped with high quality vanilla ice cream is as close as a dessert gets to heaven as is possible, I think. (Although I don't get the "cheddar cheese on apple pie" thing.) I only eat one or two slices of pumpkin pie each year, but I always love that stuff, too. And, of course, cream pies, which can either be consumed as is or humorously applied to someone's face. My favorite flavor? Coconut cream.

27. Firing up the grill on that first day in spring when it's still pretty cold out, or firing it up on that day in mid-to-late autumn when it's getting pretty cold out, and huddling over the charcoal fire as you turn the hot dogs or the sausages or the steaks. The colder the outside air, the better the grilled meat tastes.

28. Hayao Miyazaki, the great Japanese director of anime. His work is so chock full of wide-eyed wonder! I don't know how he does it. When I look at the total output of his, I can't help but think that he may well be the greatest living film director, period. (Although, admittedly, I have not yet seen Howl's Moving Castle, which actually received mixed reviews, if memory serves.)

29. Cheese. Cold cheese, broken off in a jagged chunk and eaten as is; tiny pieces of parmeggiano regiano, sprinkled with balsamic vinegar; spreadable cheese on a grain cracker; brie at room temperature placed on a piece of small rye bread; cream cheese on a toasted bagel; melted cheese on a pizza or a pasta dish. Cheese is a miracle.

30. Globes. It doesn't matter to me if a globe's map is accurate or out of date; a globe is still a beautiful thing, and an out-of-date globe still serves as a testament to the way we once viewed our world. And it doesn't even have to be a globe of our world, either: globes with star maps, or globes of Mars. In fact, I wonder why there aren't globes of imaginary worlds out there? (Probably because there aren't enough geeks like me out there who would find a globe of Coruscant something to seriously consider buying.)

31. Red wine, served with a slight chill. I like fruity and acidic wines, like Valpolicella. I like Zinfandel, the real Zin, wonderful red Zin. And, of course, Port. Port is terrific stuff.

32. I love walking on beaches as the waves roll in. I know, everybody loves walking on beaches as the waves roll in. But for me, it doesn't have to be the ocean. I get that same elemental feeling walking along the shores of Lake Erie.

33. But as much as I love walking on beaches as the waves roll in, I think I love walking beside rushing streams or rivers even more. It's the sense of journey that I like: the sea is such a big thing, something vast. But a river is just a road that's been made for the water, and it can take you places. The sound of running water as the river's current brings it across the rocks is one of nature's holiest sounds.

34. As a former brass player, I would have been loathe to admit this at the time, but I've always adored the sound of a string instrument, well-played. Any string instrument, really, although if pressed to name a favorite, of the classical strings I'd choose the cello. The violin and viola are both capable of singing their hearts out, too.

35. Annie Lennox. I could listen to her voice until the end of my days. Having her sing at the end of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King was just the capstone of a staggering musical experience.

36. And as long as I'm on the subject, I'm not sure I could live without Howard Shore's music for The Lord of the Rings. I had absolutely no idea that Shore had something like this in him when I learned he was the composer for the trilogy. But then, I had no idea that anybody had something like that in them.

37. Wall sconces that hold candles. I only own one of them, unfortunately.

38. Older women with long hair. Too often, when women head into whatever it is we consider "elder years" these days – for purposes of this post, to pick an arbitrary figure, over fifty – women tend to cut their hair short or make liberal use of curlers or something like that. There's always something striking, though, about an older woman with a full head of long, silver hair. Or red. Or blonde.

39. Picking songs and pieces of music for mix CDs. I like to think I'm pretty good at this; my best effort, in my opinion, was a disc I made for my best friend last year when she was going through a very rough time at the same time that her birthday rolled around.

40. Poetry collections. I can't imagine why people don't read more poetry these days; poetry shows us what language can do. I wish I could write better poetry than I do. (Maybe I can, and it's a matter of practice. I've written some free-form poems that I actually think work pretty well. It's when I try to use a specific form that I want to rip my hair out by the root.)

41. Beautiful stationery and note cards. Giving hand-written cards is a pleasure that we don't much indulge these days, sadly enough. I like to print my own cards sometimes, choosing my own art and doing the printing myself. But I also like finding beautiful fine arts cards in various places, both in real life and online.

42. The starship Enterprise, the movie version (NCC-1701 and NCC-1701A). Those are my favorite incarnations of the Big E. The Enterprise-D looked really awesome from some angles, but incredibly goofy from other angles; the Enterprise-E was a cool ship, but it always looked too "warship" for my tastes. The Enterprise and Enterprise-A got it right by making the ship graceful, like a seagoing vessel.

43. The Millennium Falcon. Duh. That ship's unlikely to ever be dethroned as my favorite fictional spaceship of all time. What always makes me realize what great pilots Han and Lando are aren't just the way they fly through hazardous situations like pursuit by Star Destroyers, asteroid fields, or the superstructure of the Death Star. What's really amazing about that is that while nearly every other ship in Star Wars has a cockpit or bridge that's in line with the center of the ship, the Falcon doesn't. So when Han or Lando are flying that "bucket of bolts" in and out of trouble, they have to physically and mentally account for the fact that the entire bulk of the ship resides to their left.

44. Mucinex, with lots of sweet, sweet pseudoephedrine. That stuff has saved my life more than a few times. (Phenylephrine? Fuhgeddaboudit!)

45. Burgundy. Not the wine, the color. I like burgundy.

46. And hunter green.

47. And red.

48. And blue.

49. And yellow.

50. And pink.

51. And purple.

52. Black's nice, too.

53. The first two seasons of The West Wing. Maybe Aaron Sorkin will one day return to the heights he scaled back then, even if some of the plots hinge on improbabilities: would Sam really not know that Leo's daughter is a grown-up woman? Would a high-priced Washington call-girl really not know what POTUS means? Would a high-ranking member of the White House senior staff really disappear from her job so completely that nobody would ever mention her again? Would the entire White House senior staff really have encyclopedic knowledge of Gilbert&Sullivan?

54. Oh yeah, and on that subject, Gilbert&Sullivan. The Mikado, The HMS Pinafore, and The Pirates of Penzance are the only ones I know, really, but wow, are they fun to listen to.

55. The Simpsons and Futurama. I'm listing them together because they come from the brain of Matt Groening, who's just a genius. Sure, The Simpsons isn't as funny as it used to be, but it's still funnier than just about anything else (including The Family Guy, which in my opinion is only interesting for the evil baby and the dog).

56. Creed. Not the band, but the background character on The Office, who is apparently living a life of crime or something. He only gets about thirty seconds of dialog per episode, but it's always something funny.

57. Fireworks. Watching fireworks is a fine, fine thing. I just wish someone could make in real life the fireworks that Gandalf makes.

58. Footbridges and boardwalks. There are a number of parks in this area whose trails involve boardwalks and footbridges over water. I always find something pleasing about such things. It always feels to me like I'm walking through and over nature as opposed to trodding upon it.

59. OK, fine, you win, Twenty-first Century! I give in! I cry uncle! I love my cell phone. There, I said it. However, I don't talk much on it because nobody much calls me.

60. Cookies! Chocolate chip cookies. Peanut butter cookies. Sugar cookies. Butter cookies. Oreos. White chocolate chip macadamia nut cookies. Toffee chip cookies. Russian tea cakes. Coconut macaroons. Oatmeal raisin cookies. Fudge stripe cookies. Maple sandwich cookies. Mint-flavored Newman-O's. Gingersnaps. I adore cookies.

61. Sausages. I'm sure I'll eventually find a kind of sausage that I don't like, but so far, I haven't: I've loved every one I've ever tried. (Although haggis may test me a bit. That is technically a sausage, isn't it? Meat and spices inside a casing, in this case a sheep's stomach?)

62. Saving Get Fuzzy for the very last thing I read in the Sunday paper each week, and reading Get Fuzzy first thing each morning when I'm getting ready for work. (Which I then immediately negate by reading For Better or For Worse; but then I negate that by reading xkcd.)

63. Matryoshka dolls are incredibly cool. I wouldn't mind owning one of those giant ones someday, the ones that have twenty or more dolls nesting inside.

64. Jenna Fischer. She's the first actress I've ever seen who actually manages to get me to use the worn-out phrase "the girl next door".

65. The way I feel after working out. I love that feeling, both tired and energized at the same time.

66. OK, I suppose I'm at least partly a "typical guy" in the sense that I do occasionally compare my progress at the gym to that of some other guys I see there, and I love that I can lift more weight for more reps than several guys who are there all the time and who are always loudly conversing about their workout regimens and the proteins they eat and all that jazz. (And there are lots of other guys who make me look like a 98-pound weakling, of course. But I'll catch them, too. Oh yes.)

67. Ivy. We have an ivy plant that was part of the flower arrangement my parents gave to us when The Daughter was born, almost nine years ago. The flowering part of that plant perished long ago, but the ivy remains, in two pots.

68. Eating outside in spring and summer.

69. The art of the pre-Raphaelite school in Great Britain, particularly the work of Arthur Hughes.

70. Emeril Lagasse. I know that it's fun to hate on him and make fun of him for how much of a brand he's become and his overuse of "BAM!", but to be honest, I learned a lot about kitchen techniques from watching his show and I've never made a single recipe from one of his cookbooks that didn't turn out wonderfully.

71. The Montana Rockies. It's been years since I was there, but I always found the northern Rockies preferable to the ones in Colorado, even if the Colorado Rockies are higher.

72. Persian kittens. All kittens rock, obviously, but the Persians are just so adorable!

73. Popcorn. My favorite of all snacks! I tend to prefer it with butter, but we also love fresh kettlecorn with that salty sweetness it has, and I have a terrific recipe for caramel corn that I haven't made in far too long.

74. Warm slippers on a cold morning.

75. Ms. Pac Man is still my favorite video game, however many years it's been since I first played it. (Although there was a close second that I played a lot when I was in college, but I can't remember the name of it for the life of me, so I can't even search out an emulator program and a ROM to download so I could play it again. The premise was that you control a little guy whose job is to pop bubbles, using several implements like a gun that shoots strings of barbed wire straight up, which then anchor themselves into the ceiling of the game board or whatever. When you pop a large bubble, though, it pops into two smaller bubbles, which then each have to be popped into two smaller bubbles, and one more level thereof before they're popped out of existence. And coming into contact with a bubble results in loss of life. Sounds easy, but on some of the upper levels, when there are more obstacles for the bubbles to bounce off randomly, it gets really difficult when you get sixteen little bubbles caroming all over the place. If that rings a bell with anyone, let me know! I got so good at this game in college that I was eventually able to defeat it on a single quarter.)

76. Few things bring out the "Gee whiz!" little kid in me in the way an elaborate model railroad layout does.

77. The astronomical paintings of artists like Jon Lomberg and Adolf Shaller, many of which formed the visual backdrop for Carl Sagan's Cosmos. Artists like these do so much to convey the awesome majesty of our immense universe.

78. Long drives without predetermined destination. I have a feeling these will become more and more of a luxury in the future, but oh well. Maybe increased transportation costs will lead to increases in local manufacturing, too. (Hey, I can dream.)

79. Shrimp. If there's a way to prepare shrimp such that I don't like them, I have yet to find it. Remember Bubba's list of the ways to prepare shrimp in Forrest Gump? That little monologue always makes me hungry.

80. I love opening old books at the library and finding things tucked into the pages. Most times it's an old printout from the library with due dates and such, but sometimes I find someone's grocery list or research notes. And other times, I can get a glimpse into a life that's long over.

81. I love William Shatner, and his spiritual heir, David Caruso.

82. I love answering machines, coupled with my epiphany several years back that there's no real reason why I should ever answer a ringing phone. Off went the ringer, and thus peace returned.

83. Sharp knives, clean pans and a full fridge. (Note to self: get the knives sharpened.)

84. Fountain pens are wonderful old-school instruments that yield all manner of pleasure in their use. I don't get to use mine enough these days...but I'm finally getting used to writing on a computer screen, after however-many-years of vacillating between typing and writing longhand.

85. Of course, living in Buffalo, I cannot help but love chicken wings. My favorites are the traditional Buffalo wings, usually ordered "Medium" (or a notch below, if I'm having wings at Duff's); but I do enjoy "non-traditional" wing preparations. I like to cook them on the charcoal grill and baste them in barbecue sauce so the sugars in the sauce burn and get all crunchy. I like the garlic wings at the Quaker Steak and Lube (a Pennsylvania chain that has a location in Erie, and they've just opened in Syracuse, so maybe we'll get one here too one of these days).

86. I like to burn incense, especially the ones that smell of burning wood. I have a box of pine-scented incense cones that make Casa Jaquandor smell like a campfire.

87. I love to bury myself in warm blankets on a cold morning. All the better if someone else is with me.

88. The common scents and aromas of my life: coffee beans that have just been freshly ground; tea that's just finished steeping; just about anything baking in the oven; the sawdust of freshly cut wood; the ink on the printed page; the spray from the orange as I cut through its peel.

89. Movie heroes: Inigo Montoya, Chihiro, Ashitaka, San, Kiki, Rick Blaine, Ilsa Laszlo, Captain Jack Sparrow, Captain Hector Barbossa, Captain Geoffrey Thorpe, James Bond, Indiana Jones, Philo Beddoe. (And many more.)

90. Movie villains: Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Belloq, Major Strasser, Captain Hector Barbossa, Davy Jones, The Sheriff of Nottingham, Nurse Ratched, Hannibal Lecter. (And many more.)

91. TV and movie lovers: Rick and Ilsa, Rick and Lily, Melvin and Carol, Jack and Rose, Ashitaka and San, Sam and Annie, Harry and Sally, Archie and Wanda, Josh and Donna, Mulder and Scully.

92. On long drive at night, especially in the midwest, you will sometimes find yourself driving for miles next to a train that's running on a set of tracks parallel to the road you're on. I always find something mildly romantic about this.

93. Sometimes I'll start doing some writing in mid-to-late afternoon, and I'll get fairly wrapped up in what I'm doing, so much so that I won't realize until it's been dark for quite a while that it's gotten dark at all.

94. I dig the word "gotten", even though I'm not sure it's a word at all.

95. The characters from the books I grew up with: Taran and Princess Eilonwy and Lord Gwydion, Johnny Van Dixon and Professor Childermass, Lewis Barnavelt and Rose Rita Pottinger, Tom Dennis and John Dennis Fitzgerald, the Ingalls family.

96. I have a tendency to display an certain outward cynicism about life in general, but I think I inherited from my grandmother a certain unquenchable optimism. She was the kind of person who could look on a completely overcast sky, pick out a patch of clouds a little bit lighter gray than the surrounding ones, and on that basis announce with conviction that it was starting to clear up. And of course, rightly or wrongly in each particular case, it did eventually clear up, didn't it? Reaching a better time turns out to be an exercise in patience and waiting, nothing more.

97. I love that there are two spacecraft right now, Voyagers I and II, that carry with them for all time a tiny snippet of the best that humanity has to offer, and that this spacecraft will likely outlast every single war or hatred that exists now on this planet.

98. Blogging and my six-plus-year outpost in Blogistan. I don't blog as much as I used to, but this forum and the bloggers and readers with whom I exchange thoughts and ideas continue to enrich my life in ways that surprise me each day. I love to read missives from people all over: the substitute teacher in Illinois who struggles to reach the kids he's thrown in with; the woman in Oregon who tries to figure out what she wants to be when she grows up (which seems to me a very healthy attitude to take when one is 50 years old); the freelance writer in Ohio who has since I started blogging become one of SF's brightest new authors; the guy in Utah who geeks out with abandon; a computer programmer in Butler, PA who makes me wish I was more of a computer gamer; a woman in Oklahoma who always seems to be looking for something interesting instead of settling into dull routine; another woman from someplace else who approaches everything in life as an opportunity to learn something; a woman in New York City who blogs with her heart on such display that I always come away awed. There are so many more, as well, more than I can read in a day or even a week. And that's saying nothing at all about the wonderful bloggers here in Buffalo, people whom I've actually met and come away liking all the more having done so, and it's also saying nothing of the lurkers who come here once in a while and whose presence I only know by looking at my SiteMeter. I'll never have big traffic here, I know, but I'm proud of the traffic that I do have, and I thank each and everyone of you for it.

99. Everybody.

100. You. You know who you are.

And there we have it: 100 things I love. Tune in next time for 100 things on which I have no opinion whatsoever!

Sentential Links #142

OK, so we're a day late. You get what you pay for on this blog, folks! Not that many this week, though, owing to my lack of presence on Teh Interweb.

:: Today I ate so much protein, I am one big fat gassy individual. (Icky post warning! But best of luck to Jen on her upcoming gastric bypass. I hope it goes as well as she hopes. Better, even.)

:: I hate it when I'm leaving the house with my backpack, come back to the house to get something I forgot, then lock the door, leaving the backpack inside. (That sound like something I would do...sigh....it's Roger's 100 things that bug him!)

:: It turns out that Hardee's, where I'd never eaten before, serves a much better fast food burger than what you get at a McDonald's. (Look what happens when an Ivy League-educated professional political blogger gets out in the real world! Yay!!! And wow, I could go for a Friscoburger right now. Do they still make those? We don't have Hardee's in Buffalo.)

:: You know what’s really romantic? Two people getting married, living an ordinary life and growing old together. Two ninety+ year olds holding hands - that’s romantic. But that doesn’t play well at the box office.

:: Someone very close to me, someone I've always felt was indestructible and someone I love very much was diagnosed with lung cancer on May 13. (Best wishes to Blue Girl and her family.)

:: My hat's off to you, my old friend. Thank you for rescuing me from that awful conservative-talk-radio goon. Thank you for knocking over that busboy. Thank you for everything else, too, from talking me through panic to letting me talk you though your own panic. From protector to needful supplicant, sometimes in the space of a day. (Seems to me that one measure of having had a life well-lived is that, when you die, someone writes something like this about you.)

More next week.

Unidentified Earth 40

OK, so here we are a day late. UI 39 was, as I expected, guessed correctly very quickly: that's Abbey Road in London, the famous intersection that John, Paul, George and Ringo are striding across on the cover of one of those Beatles albums they did. UI 38, however, still has zero guesses! Come on, people! There's a pretty famous song about what happened on this spot.

And with that, time for the new installment:



Where are we? Rot-13 your guesses, please!

Sunday Burst of Weirdness (Monday Edition)

A day late, and not that much on display since I spent much of the last four days concocting in my mind Rube Goldberg devices for boring into my sinuses and forcibly draining the mucus therein....

:: But really, I wish I could think to do stuff like this. I love leaving little things like that for people to discover later, but I don't know if I'd like to do it without the possibility of knowing if it ever came to pass.

:: Wow, do we need a Western NY version of this blog. This guy's got my vote for Blog of the Year.

:: Worst. Teacher. EVER. This is just appalling. (The teacher has now been reassigned to an office job. Frankly, her behavior here to me screams out "Stern-faced Cafeteria Lady".)