Something for Thursday

Something a bit different for today. Celestial Navigations is a group that does music and storytelling, featuring actor Geoffrey Lewis doing the spoken-word bits. Here's a selection of theirs, "The Winner".



Since this week I've seen a whole bunch of instances of blogs with much higher traffic than mine commenting on things I'd commented on days before, with my teeny-tiny traffic, this particular selection's been on my mind.

I ain't makin' a move, I ain't sayin' a word...until somebody links me!

I'd like to meet his less successful younger brother, Goober Galt.

Thanks to Alan, I can just throw up a link to this article whenever I want to make plain my opinion of Ayn Rand. I only differ from that writer in that I thought Rand's writing and thinking were crap while I was reading her; I was spared the "Rand's a genius!" phase of life. Thank God.

Ach! I could'na seen that comin'!

Remember when the reactionary "Family Values" crowd (which is roughly contiguous with the "TAX CUTS SOLVE ALL PROBLEMS!!!" crowd) fell in love with Sarah Palin? Yeah, I remember that, too. Sad that it didn't work out...but then, family values seem to be hardest for those who preach them.

Give the gift of film!

I'm having some trouble seeing what's so awful about President Obama's gift of twenty-five films (on DVD) to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Now, in terms of equivalence, it was probably a lesser gift than what Brown gave Obama (a pen-holder made from the wood of the sister ship of the vessel whose wood became the Oval Office desk, a first edition biography of Winston Churchill, and some toys for the kids), but a lot of people are acting as though this was an incredibly rude diplomatic faux pas.

I'm not bothered by it, though -- not really. Now, a bunch of DVDs in a basket might have looked bad, so maybe they could have made this look better by putting them in a small chest made from some other ship's wood or something. Maybe Obama could have had some of them signed by the respective filmmakers, or...well, I don't know. But I don't understand what's so awful about giving someone copies of films, particularly these particular films, each of which is considered one of the finest American films ever made. Here's the list:

“2001: A Space Odyssey”
“Casablanca”
“Chinatown”
“Citizen Kane”
“City Lights”
“E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial”
“It’s a Wonderful Life”
“Lawrence of Arabia”
“On the Waterfront”
“Psycho”
“Raging Bull”
“Schindler’s List”
“Singin’ in the Rain”
“Some Like It Hot”
“Star Wars: Episode IV”
“Sunset Boulevard”
“The General”
“The Godfather”
“The Graduate”
“The Grapes of Wrath”
“The Searchers”
“The Wizard of Oz”
“To Kill a Mockingbird”
“Vertigo”

I'm not sure on this, but I seem to recall reading at some point during the campaign that Obama is a film buff, so such a gift seems quite reasonable to me; giving copies of films is, to me, not unlike giving copies of favorite books. Now, films differ in that you can't give anyone a "First Edition Star Wars"; it's the same movie in everybody's DVD collection, so maybe that's why this gift seems so prosaic. But film is as fine an art form as any, and a gift of film doesn't strike me as terribly odd, given that how fine the films in this list are.

What if they gave a war, and nobody invited me?

UPDATE: For the surprising number of people arriving here today via Google searches for "Scalzi" and "RaceFail", welcome aboard. I'm not really the least bit interested in Racefail, but I hope some of you will stick around here anyway; I like to think that my blog doesn't completely suck, and I always love to see new readers.

In the book The Art of STAR WARS, there's a section devoted to portrayals of Star Wars in comic strips and editorial cartoons of 1977. One of these has Dennis the Menace standing at night with his friend, looking up at the stars, and Dennis says, "Well, if they do have wars, they're awful quiet about it."

One thing about the Internet that I never get used to is that there can be these massive conflicts going on in various sectors of Webspace, and yet, because I never go into those sectors or even have contact with those who do, I never know about them. If they do have flamewars, they're awful quiet about it.

This morning I was going through my Google Reader subscriptions, got to John Scalzi's, and found this kind-of cryptic post. Near as I can figure, someone decided to go into the comments threads of one of John's other posts and toss in some content attacking someone else on this giant LiveJournal debate-flamewar that's going on, for some unknown reason (probably an attempt to get someone memorialized badly on Google or something). John apparently doesn't like to see his blog used for somebody else's score-settling. Strange guy, that Scalzi. Musta been raised by wolves.

But I was intrigued, so I started doing a bit of searching, trying to figure out what on Earth is going on, and lo and behold, there really is some kind of scorched-earth thing going on that's so big it's got a name: "RaceFail". According to this person, RaceFail is "a discussion about science fiction, fantasy, fandom, publishing, race, racism, power, and many other things." Apparently it's also a giant flamewar involving lots of attacks back and forth, people "outing" one another in various contexts, and...well, there it is.

Why am I posting about this? Mainly because it amuses me that big flamewars can go on without anyone else ever knowing about them. Same way the people involved in RaceFail probably never saw some of the knock-down dragouts we used to have on the FSM boards, back when I bothered hanging out there.

Of course, the Internet is made of people, and people are weird. It pretty much can't be avoided, you know? So go on, you crazy kids. Have fun with that RaceFail thing!

But for the Grace....

Every year, it happens: someone forgets that their kid is in the car on a hot day while they go inside and do something, and the kid dies of hyperthermia. And every time it happens, the chorus comes: "How can anyone do this? What kind of awful person does this? How is this even possible?"

Here's some insight into this phenomenon.

This is, as one might expect, a gut-wrenching story to read. Beware.

GO already.

I'm reading lately about a lot of people who think they need to "Go Galt" -- people who are appalled at President Obama's intention to allow the top tax rates in the US to return to what they were before Bush lowered them. He'll allow them to return to the levels they were at during the 1990s, that horrible period of economic malaise and hardship that nobody in their right mind ever wants to repeat. What does "Go Galt" mean? Well, who knows, really. It refers to the colossally stupid premise of the colossally stupid, and yet oddly revered by right-wingers, book by Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, in which all the rich geniuses who run things pack up their stuff and go off to live in their own little rich Shangri-La while the rest of us all go belly-up or something. Yeah.

I'm reminded of something I was always taught when I was in restaurant management: when an employee, any employee, either threatens to quit or actually does quit, you always let them go. Nobody is ever irreplaceable. Nobody. The answer to the ultimatum-droppers was always the same: "Tomorrow morning we're unlocking those doors and serving our customers and running our business whether you are here or not." Well, the same thing applies to all the would-be John Galts out there: when you go, nobody's going to much miss you. Your positions will be filled and the world will go on.

So, please, if you really want to Go Galt, then by all means, go. Have a nice time. Enjoy cleaning your own hotel rooms and cooking all your own meals and growing your own food and building your own roads to drive on and everything else. By all means, go. More for the rest of us.

Here's DougJ from Balloon Juice on this:

These are good points, but I think there’s been too much emphasis on what idiots these people are and not enough on how childish they are. Quitting work because of a slight tax increase isn’t akin to anything from any sort of philosophy, not even one as crude and simplistic as Ayn Rand’s; it’s more akin to a child’s decision to take his ball and go home. It’s probably worse, though, since when a typical ten year-old gets home, stops crying, and wipes his nose, he doesn’t then fantasize about how the world will now suffer from the loss of his inestimable brilliance. I don’t know if Vincent Gallo is a Randian or not (it certainly wouldn’t surprise me if he was), but this quote summarizes Galtism in its current form perfectly: “I stopped painting in 1990 at the peak of my success just to deny people my beautiful paintings; and I did it out of spite.”

(Wow, is Vincent Gallo an ass or what? How many people out there actually feel as though their lives are lessened because he stopped painting? And he's from Buffalo. Oh well, we can't win 'em all.)

Of course, by "Going Galt" they're not actually going anywhere. Some are talking about scheming to make less money so they won't get taxed at the "new" rate (which, I point out again, is merely a resumption of the old rate). How dumb is that? If someone is actually scheming to make less money than they otherwise could because of some tax thing, it makes me wonder just what kind of genius they are in the first place.

The Right really needs to start fetishizing some better books.

Chicken Wing Soup

UPDATE 11-10-10: The most recent revision of this recipe is here. Check it out!

chicken wing soup VII, originally uploaded by Jaquandor.

Denizens of Buffalo's Southtowns may have eaten at a popular restaurant near Ralph Wilson Stadium called Danny's (there's also a location out by the airport), which is a really nifty place to eat -- they've got the typical local menu of sandwiches, burgers, fish fry, steaks, and the like. They also have a soup and salad bar that is extremely popular. Now, the salad bar itself isn't anything spectacular -- just comforting typical salad bar stuff, right down to the deep-fried rice noodles -- but the soups are terrific, especially the Chicken Wing Soup, which is downright legendary in these parts. It's literally like eating Buffalo-style chicken wings with a spoon. Uncanny.

Well, I figured that the stuff can't be that hard to make, right? It's not that complicated-tasting of a soup, so I decided to give it my best shot. I did a bit of Googling, and I found one recipe that looks quite good, but that recipe basically involves a milk-and-sour cream base, whereas I was pretty sure that the stuff at Danny's uses a broth or stock of some kind, even though it does have a creamy texture. So I made it up myself, and here's how I did it.

Ingredients:

1 lb chicken breast meat
6 tbs butter
6 tbs flour
Dash pepper
1 onion, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
4 cups chicken stock
1 cup milk
1 cup sour cream
Lots of Frank's Red Hot Sauce (use to taste)

First, I cooked the chicken meat. I had some breast tenders that I cut into bite-sized chunks; then I seasoned these with salt and pepper and tossed them into my soup pot to cook in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. Once the chicken was nicely browned, I transferred it to the crockpot, whereupon I doused the chicken with a liberal helping of the Frank's Red Hot and let it sit while I made the liquid base for the soup.

OK, back to the soup pot. Step one: make a roux. I melted the six tablespoons of butter in the pot, and then added the flour and ground pepper a bit at a time, stirring constantly for a few minutes to make a blond roux. When the roux was the color of caramel, I threw in my diced onions and celery and sauteed those veggies until they were moderately browned and tender. This took about three or four minutes.

At this point, I added the chicken stock at once and turned up the heat, to slowly bring the stock to a boil. Once it was nice and hot (about ten minutes) I added the milk and sour cream, in order to create a nice creamy texture to the soup. Then I started dumping in liberal amounts of Frank's Red Hot. This I suppose one does to taste, although one should be careful, since in my experience, spicy dishes tend to get spicier as they age in the fridge over a day or two. I got it nicely spicy, though, and then I poured the whole shebang into the crock pot over the chicken, gave all a stir, and then put the lid on. With the crock pot set on "Low", I then walked away for three hours.

The pic above is what it looked like when I dished it up and added my garnish of garlic croutons. The taste? I loved it! Really good. I couldn't be happier with this maiden effort, although I do have some notions for next time:

:: I think I'd prefer my chicken to have a more shredded texture, so I think next time I'll roast a couple of whole chicken breasts and then shred the meat before tossing it into the pot. I only used the breast tenders because that's what I had at hand. I suppose you could use any leftover chicken, huh? This might be a good way to use the leftover meat from a rotisserie bird.

:: I know I said to be careful with the hot sauce, but I don't think I added enough. Next time, more is going into the pot. I might try using the bottle of Anchor Bar Wing Sauce I've had in my cupboard for a year, too.

:: I'm not sure if the soup was thick enough. I may make more roux next time for greater thickness.

:: And I can't remember for the life of me if the soup at Danny's has potato in it! Now I have to go eat there sometime and figure that out.

So there's my initial formula for Chicken Wing Soup. It's not exactly like Danny's, but I think it's a good starting point. Give it a try!

(I've posted photos of the soup-making process on Flickr, here.)

From the Books

A series wherein I post longer excerpts from books I've read.

I've been toying with the notion of writing a film script, as a different kind of challenge. I haven't worked in the screenplay format since many years ago, when I was writing Star Wars fanfic; those stories I wrote as scripts. (OK, to tell the truth, I've already been tinkering with screenplay format, producing a script for a movie about an unemployed writer-type, down on his luck in life, who starts over from scratch in his mid-thirties by taking a job as a janitor in a grocery store. You know, fantasy. That project is unlikely to ever see the light of day, though.)

The script that I really want to write, though, is an idea that's been kicking around my head for several years now. It always surprises me that there really aren't a whole lot of movies out there about classical music and the people from its history. Sure, there's Amadeus, but what else is there? Just reading through just about any composer's life reveals a world ripe for harvesting of stories, and hey, the soundtracks would pretty much select themselves, right?

Anyhow, one might think that I'd be hankering to write a movie about Hector Berlioz, and maybe that'll come one day, but the story that's capturing my attention now is what may be the most important love story in classical music history: that of Robert and Clara Schumann. Their story is passionate, romantic, and tragic, and it saw the production of some of the most lyrical music of the Romantic era. What a great costume drama that would make!

The basic facts are these. Robert Schumann was one of the most archetypal of all Romantic-era figures. His life was fairly short (46 years), he fought madness and alcoholism all his life, he attempted suicide twice in his life, and eventually died in a sanitarium two years after his second suicide attempt (in which he was pulled from the Rhine river by fisherman after he had flung himself into it). He was also one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era, and a noted music critic as well, producing some of the most enduring piano music, art songs, and concertos of all time. His symphonies are also staples of the orchestral repertoire.

Through all this was Clara, whom he met when she was just a child, and yet he courted her anyway, to the chagrin of her father, who tried to keep his daughter from a man he respected but still saw as a lunatic (not entirely inaccurately, either), until the two finally wed after a lengthy court battle. Their marriage was loving and devoted, but not without trial; Clara was one of the great piano virtuosos of the nineteenth century, but her career had to be put on hold so Robert could compose. She would endure ten pregnancies and lose three children, and when she eventually lose Robert as well, she would live another forty years after his death. Her deep friendship with Johannes Brahms forms an interesting postscript to her marriage to Robert Schumann; Brahms would never marry, and many have speculated that this was because he was in love with Clara his entire life. (No evidence exists that their relationship ever became physical.)

So, of late, I've been doing some preliminary research into the lives of Robert and Clara Schumann, including reading their letters, which have been gathered into a two-volume collection, edited by Eva Weissweiler. These letters are illuminating in many ways. Letters tend to be the most revealing of all writings from decades (or centuries) gone by, and in this age of quick e-mails or notes hastily scrawled on a Post-It, it's amazing to read these long missives and remember that correspondence was more than just a way for people apart to keep in touch with one another; letter-writing was a major way of passing time in an age when any form of entertainment other than reading entailed dressing up and leaving home. People were literary because they had to be, lest they die of boredom. It's tempting to read these letters and think "Wow, people back then really knew how to be in love", but I'm not sure it's the passion that's changed, just the expression of it. But it's impossible to read these letters and not feel the passion radiating from them, in some cases 170 years after they were written and dispatched to secret intermediaries (lest Clara's father find them and put their relationship to a definitive end).

Here are a few passages from their letters that stood out for me.

Clara to Robert, January 1838

But don't think that I am angry with you for this; on the contrary, I am happy to know that you don't love me because of my talent, but, as you once wrote on a little piece of paper, "I don't love you because you are a great artist; no, I love you, because you are so kind." That please me immensely, and I have never forgotten it.

...

You cannot lose me; that would be impossible; my spirit would follow you forever.

Robert to Clara, February 1838

"Sometimes it feels as if a great many alleys were running pell mell through my heart and as if my thoughts and feelings were bustling about in there in all directions and running back and forth, just as people do, and they were asking one another, "Where does this one lead?" - to Clara – "and this one?" - to Clara – everything leads to you. The business with the alleys in the heart is a curious thought, isn't it? And they sometimes lead to the lips and suddenly tehere's a kiss, and the lovely girl snuggles up to the man, and their names are Clara and Robert--"

Clara to Robert, March 1838

What would you like me to do, my dear Robert? Should I embrace you, should I give your hand a hearty squeeze, should I cry, should I laugh? I am in the mood to do all of these things, because your latest letters were so precious, as cheerful as the loveliest spring.

...

I am very bored with traveling now; I am longing very much for rest; how much I would like to compose, but I can't do that here at all. I have to practice in the morning, and we have visitors until late in the evening; then I am completely exhausted, as you surely see from my letters because they often indicate that my head is totally empty. --But you should always recognize my heart, because it remains untouched by the events of the day. If I can compose something for the journal, I will. "Macbeth" appears to be very beautiful; --I don't think that anything of mine would compare favorably to it. I am like you. There are many alleys running through my heart, too, but they are even narrower, and there are more of them.

My mind has hardly investigated one of them when it encounters the next one, and so on, ad infinitum. I cannot stay with one idea; right away there is another one – the fault is yours alone - I don't know what this will lead to, I always console myself by thinking that I am a woman, and they weren't born to compose. I often doubt myself. But I remember that you did not want to speak of doubts anymore; I agree with you! Doubt is a disastrous word and also a disastrous state to be in.

Robert to Clara, March, 1838

Where should I begin to tell you what kind of person you are making of me, my love, magnificent one! Your letter provided me with one delight after another. What a life you're opening before me, what prospects! Sometimes when I read through your letter I feel like the first human might have felt when the angel led him through the new creation, from peak to peak; each beautiful region followed by even more beautiful ones, and the angel then says, "All of this shall be yours."

I'm not sure how I'd use these; maybe in the typical way of having them read as voiceovers. I haven't really given much thought at all as to the form such a film might take; this is all just preliminary stuff, and I don't know if I'll ever even get around to writing this. But I hope to.

This much I do know: the end credits must roll, at least in part, as "Traumerei" plays. Here is "Traumerei", played by Vladimir Horowitz in Moscow in 1988. He often played "Traumerei" as an encore.



What a love story Robert and Clara had!

Sentential Links #161

Click:

:: Chances are if we've ever been outside together, drinking a beer, I might have fallen in love with you. (Luckily I never drank beer outside with her; I'd have likely been the exception to her rule. Oh well....)

:: I’ve never before seen both ends of a rainbow at once, and I wish that I had the ability to show you the entire expanse of arc and magic, lifting and sinking from the sea like a colorful slinky toy.

:: I hate to think that our civilization could be lost because we'd digitized our culture.

:: We are all online, to one degree or another, varying mainly in how much privacy we want to preserve, how much space between ourselves and our work, and between ourselves and our public. The dynamic between authors and readers is fundamentally altered by all of this. George Martin may end up having to post his daily workouts, down to calories burned, weights lifted, pulse rates before and after. With video, to prove it. It has probably been suggested to him already. (Not a blog post, but an article by Guy Gavriel Kay about the recent "Hey GRRM, howzabout a little less conventionin' and a little more writin'!" flap.)

:: If I had run out of The Crying Game screaming “The chick’s a dude!” as people were waiting to see it for the first time, it would be a case of justifiable homicide. But now, in 2009? Sorry, man. You missed your window to be outraged. (I just want it noted that I brought part of this subject up first, but since I have several orders of magnitude fewer readers than John Scalzi does, he gets all the glory. Harumph.)

:: No, if a conservative's worst fear and liberal's fondest dream comes true, then America might get it's culture back, people actually might not go to bed hungry or sick at night, and our ecosystem and economy might just hold hands and chant Baraka.

:: I love cemeteries. I often visit them. They're often quiet and very green. I love to look at the tombstones and other markers. I feel the pull of history too when I'm in a cemetery.

:: Thanks for not eating me. (A plug for my favorite webcomic ever. Seriously, if you haven't read The Abominable Charles Christopher yet, please oh please go read it from the beginning.)

More next week. Tune in, Star Warriors!!!

Unidentified Earth #59

Well, I'm claiming victory on UI 55. This is a section of the Youghiogheny River in southwestern Pennsylvania, which is referred to locally as "the loop", for obvious reasons. This is one of the most popular whitewater boating rivers in the northeast, and the run here begins just below the falls at Ohiopyle and then proceeds seven or eight miles downstream. Alternatively, boaters can park in Ohiopyle and do just "the Loop", taking their boats back out at the far end of the Loop and hiking back up to their cars. Fun wow!

And I have no guesses for UI 58, either, so time for hints. This site was a movie location. If you were to approach the fictional locale filmed here, you should not expect a warm welcome.

With that, we come to the newest installment:



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

More answers!

Continuing to work through the queries that came in for Ask Me Anything! 2009, I figure I should handle this, from Roger:

What would fix the Buffalo Bills?

(Warning: boring football post ahead.)

OK. How to fix the Bills? Well, they have GOT to do something about their receiving corps! How many years of lackluster talent at receiver do we need to watch? How many years of Lee Evans and nobody else? WHAT does it TAKE to get an actual GOOD RECEIVER in Buffalo! Yeah, never mind that. Sorry. More on TO in a moment.

But in general, the "fix" here is simple, really, but like all simple answers, it's apparently very hard to do, because only a handful of teams have actually managed to do it lately. (Those teams are Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, New England, and the Giants.) The answer is to put in place a good football operation. What this means is (a) instituting a policy of primarily building through the draft, and (b) identifying good talent to be taken in the draft. The Bills, to their credit, over the last couple of years have done (a). They've been rather less successful at (b). The Bills don't do what the Redskins do -- toss money at every conceivable free agent who comes along because they're new and shiny and boy does Daniel Snyder like the shiny -- but while they focus heavily on the draft, they're not particularly good at identifying the talent they should be picking, and in addition to picking questionable talent, they also make picks that are contrary to what they probably should be picking, and to add insult to injury, they often make bizarre decisions about the very process of picking the wrong talent in the first place.

A good example came in Marv Levy's first draft as GM, back in 2006. The Bills had the eighth pick overall, and somehow, the draft's biggest name, quarterback Matt Leinart, was still on the board. The Bills didn't want Leinart, thinking at the time that they still had a good prospect in JP Losman, so they picked safety Donte Whitner instead. However, everybody under the sun knew that Whitner had originally been unlikely to be picked anywhere before the middle of the first round, so if the Bills really wanted him, they could have very likely traded down in that round with some team that wanted a shot at Leinart, grabbed an extra pick in the process, and almost certainly still have been able to get Whitner. Instead of doing that, they took Whitner at number eight, and then, instead of reaping the benefit of an extra pick to grab a couple of quality guys in the second round, they traded up to get back into the first round and grab a defensive lineman, John McCargo, who wasn't on anybody's list of top lineman prospects and who as yet has not come close to living up to his potential. In fact, the Bills tried trading McCargo away last year, only to have the trade nullified when McCargo failed a physical with his almost-new team.

That kind of thing happens to the Bills all the time. They are never able to identify guys who will develop into top-flight NFL playmakers, so the team is basically in a position where they're not without talent -- if they were, they wouldn't be 7-9 every year -- but where they're not able to really produce, either. The Bills are exclusively comprised of decent guys who work hard, but nobody who can really step it up and make some really impressive things happen on the field. Now, there are some younger guys who maybe are going to become those kinds of players and just aren't there yet -- Marshawn Lynch, Trent Edwards among them. But if you're a defensive coordinator facing the Bills, you know that all you basically need to do is double-team Lee Evans and play the other receivers as you normally would, and you've pretty much handcuffed the Bills' passing game. Likewise, if you're an offensive coordinator facing the Bills, you know you're not facing a "paper tiger" of a defense, but there's still nobody on defense whom you must have taken into account on every snap of the ball. All the really good teams, the ones that got good and have stayed good for a long time, have figured out how to find guys like that. The Bills haven't.

The Pittsburghs and New Englands of the world don't go out and sign everybody they can to big contracts; they develop new guys and plug in occasional free agents when they need to. (Now, I'm not sure that New England is doing quite as good a job at developing new talent as Pittsburgh is, which is one reason I believe New England's days as one the NFL's elite teams are closer to ending than most.) The Bills try to do this, but they do it wrong: instead of drafting offensive linemen every year and developing them, the Bills rarely draft OL's, instead signing free agents who then turn out to not be that good. (Derrick Dockery? Really?) One of the most damning facts about Bills' personnel management over the last ten years is the fact that when former GM Tom Donahoe was fired, the Bills' starting offensive line didn't feature a single player who had been drafted by the Bills. (At that time, Jason Peters was merely a prospect, and he'd been a free agent signee and not even drafted.) I had hoped that would end under Levy, but so far, no dice: few OLs drafted, and the one who was, Duke Preston, played center last year and has now been possibly replaced by a new free agent signee.

I have my issues with the Bills' coaching staff, but as long as the on-field talent is picked by guys who aren't really solid football guys, it won't matter.

Now. Terrell Owens.

I was shocked that the Bills signed him. Stunned. But not for the normal reasons. I've never understood the TO hate that's out there. Sure, he's a prima donna and can be a pain in the arse; at times he can be a downright distraction. But the stuff he does frankly always strikes me as "small potatoes" in a world where Pacman Jones can still have an NFL career and where you know somebody's going to give Mike Vick a training camp invite. And it can't be denied that where TO goes, better numbers in the win column follow. The 49ers were good with him; they've been crap since he left. (Not that he's the only factor there, but the correspondence can't be denied.) The Eagles lost the NFC title game three years in a row, and then they signed TO and reached the Super Bowl, which they might well have won if not for some sloppy play by Donovan McNabb and some weird coaching decisions by Andy Reid. Dallas got quite a lot better when TO arrived, and I wouldn't blame him for all the drama that's happened down there; Jerry Jones is quite good at creating drama all by himself. Remember the Cowboy dynasty teams of the 1990s? That was not a happy locker room, by any means, and it was only the fact that that was probably the most talented roster in the last fifteen years that made that team what it was, and it's been dramatic in Dallas ever since. Yes, TO brought in some extra baggage, but so what?

In terms of TO's ego, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of Bills fans think -- not without justification -- that this team actually could use an infusion of good old football arrogance. He's not exactly moving into a situation where there are already a lot of high-octane personalities ready to clash with him. The Bills are a laid-back bunch -- too laid back, I suspect a lot of people might say. Why would TO sign here, instead of with someone closer to winning? Who knows -- but maybe he saw the atmosphere in that infamous Monday night game in 2007, when the Bills dominated the Cowboys all night only to blow the game in the final seconds in one of the most heart-breaking defeats in team history, and maybe TO said to himself at one point, "Wow, these people love their team in a way I haven't seen too much." Maybe. I'm no mind-reader, obviously, but I very much doubt the Bills were the only team interested in TO.

And besides, TO will help on the field. Teams won't be able to basically have their defensive gameplan against the Bills' passing game consist of nothing but "Double team Lee Evans", knowing that aside from Josh Reed, the other receivers on this team aren't going to do anything. He'll draw some attention and open things up for other players. Hopefully, his presence here, however long it lasts, helps last year's second-round pick, James Hardy, to learn the NFL ropes faster than he's been already. Hopefully he helps open up the running game a bit, since teams will actually have to respect the Bills as a passing threat more. I think he is very likely a good addition to the team, and if he does turn out to be a massive pain in the arse, he's only sitting on a one-year deal, so it's not like the Bills are wedded to him forever. If they like what he does here, they can re-sign him to another one-year deal next year. If not, they can say, "Thanks, we'll take it from here." This was, as far as I can see, the first genuinely shrewd personnel move the Bills have made since they brought in Drew Bledsoe in 2002. (Just because that move didn't work out for various reasons doesn't mean it was a bad move. That move didn't work out basically because the Bills made that their only move.)

What interests me is the resurgence since TO's signing of the new favorite word in Buffalo regarding the Bills: relevance. It's what everybody is saying: signing TO makes the Bills "relevant". I've never been terribly sure what "relevant" means; it seems to mean "winning", but it's more than that. It's the idea that the Bills generally aren't taken terribly seriously in the NFL these days. You play them, and you need to play well otherwise they might beat you, but they're not going to the playoffs anyway. You know you won't find yourself in a bidding war against the Bills for some player or coach because the Bills won't spend big on coaches and they will spend on players but not huge money and they won't go after the big names either, preferring to wait a few weeks into free agency and grab some guys who have been sitting out there teamless for a bit. That's "not being relevant", I suppose.

But it's more than that. It's not the Buffalo Bills franchise that's seen as not relevant; I think a lot of people around here fear that the NFL sees the entire Buffalo Bills fan base, the market here, as not being relevant. And if we're not relevant, then it will be that much easier for the NFL to let the team move when Ralph Wilson dies and the team is sold. This kind of move makes the Bills relevant again. This kind of move makes Buffalo a place that should be taken seriously, when it comes to talking about football.

Bills fans crave their team being a team that is actually talked about in football circles. Well, having TO on your team will certainly get you talked about, won't it?

More answers to follow!

"How old do you have to be before you know the difference between right and wrong?"

I have no idea how to discuss Atonement without the extensive deployment of heavy amounts of spoilers, so be warned: I spoil the movie. Big time. You're warned.

I remember seeing ads for Atonement last winter and thinking, "That looks up my alley." Those ads portrayed the film as a sweeping epic romance set in the World War II era, and for at least part of the movie, it's definitely that. But for only part. The rest of the time, it's a psychological character study in the fairly intimate setting of an English country estate.

It's 1935, and there are two sisters: the younger, Briony, and the elder, Cecilia. And there's the housekeeper's son, Robby. Robby's in love with Cecilia, who gradually comes to love him. Problem is – and we don't learn this until quite some way into the film, more than halfway, actually – Briony is in love with him too, in her own schoolgirl way. Various things happen that lead Briony to telling a lie about Robby, a lie which gets him thrown in prison and later offered parole on the condition that he join the British army. Of course, he's sent to the front lines in France (it's 1940, after all), while Cecilia works as a nurse in a London hospital. Will Robby make it back to her at war's end?

OK, there's the basic plot summary. After this, the spoilers. I'll put it a few line breaks here, just in case:
















OK. Here we go.

If you've seen the film, you know that Robby does not make it back; instead he dies in Dunkirk, before the evacuation, when his festering chest wound becomes a full-fledged infection. Cecilia too dies, in one of the London bomb raids. So where is the "atonement" of the title? In the actions of Briony. But does it? Is there any atonement at all in Atonement?

This movie uses a device that I'm generally not terribly fond of, the "unreliable narrator". I'm not terribly fond of this device because in general I prefer to lose myself in the actual story and not think too much about metaconcerns such as whether the story is happening or not. (That's not to say that I never like the "unreliable narrator"; it just tends to open up cans of worms that aren't to my liking at a times.) Here, in Atonement, the POV shifts often. We see events from Briony's point of view, and then the film will double back and show us the same events from an "Omniscient" POV, so we end up seeing that Briony has things wrong, but not maliciously so. As the film's opening act leads up to Briony's lie, the film carefully leads us to understand her lie, and, in fact, not even see it as a lie at all.

Here's what happens. Briony witnesses a kind-of-erotic moment between Robby and Cecilia, in which Cecilia strips to her slip and jumps into the family estate's giant Victorian fountain. From her vantage point, it seems that Cecilia is showing off her figure for Robby, and she's shocked. A few minutes later the film shows us the same scene, for what really happened: Robby inadvertently causes something valuable to fall into the fountain, and Cecilia goes in to retrieve it. We know this, but Briony doesn't. Strike one.

Later on Robby is writing a love letter to Cecilia, and after writing one very naughty version (using that one word that every woman loathes), he writes a much nicer version that's polite and gentlemanly, just before going to join Cecilia's family for a formal dinner. On the way he comes across Briony playing in the fields, and he asks her to deliver the letter, and only as she's scampering away, out of earshot, does he realize that he's put the naughty version of the letter into the envelope instead of the gentlemanly one he'd meant to give her. Of course, Briony reads the letter and is horrified. Strike two.

Still later, Briony walks into the family library and finds Robby and Briony up against the bookshelves in the throes of passion. Strike three. After talking over these matters with a visiting cousin, Briony decides that Robby is a sexual maniac, a predator against women, when in fact he's merely in love with Cecilia.

That night, after the dinner, two younger cousins, twin boys, run away, and everyone disperses into the countryside around the estate to look for them. Briony comes across two people copulating, and the man gets up and runs away, without Briony getting a good look at him; the woman is not, as we might have expected, Cecilia but rather the cousin she'd earlier talked to about Robby being a sexual predator. The cousin appears to have been raped, and Briony tells everyone that Robby did it. He's taken into custody by the police, and we think that Briony's made a mistake, albeit a terrible one.

Later on, after some very emotional stuff in the war, in which we see Robby's harrowing trek to Dunkirk contrasted with Cecilia's life as a London nurse, our POV returns to Briony, and we eventually learn that she had a crush on Robby in her youth but he rebuffed her advances, leaving her angry; and we learn that on the night she told the police he'd been the rapist she had, in fact, seen the man's face quite clearly, and knew perfectly well that it wasn't Robby at all – and yet told her lie anyway. Now we know her for a liar.

Toward the end of the film, there's a sudden cut to the present day, and an old woman is sitting for a television interview. This is Briony, and she's just written a novel about this whole affair; but she's written a happy ending for Robby and Cecilia, in which he comes back from the war and they have some kind of time together. She's written this ending, sparing her own character in the book nothing of the guilt, as her act of atonement for her lie, even though the ending was false: Robby and Cecilia died in separate wartime events, never to meet again after they were parted. All Briony can give them is fictional atonement.

The revelation that Robby and Cecilia died rather than ever see each other again hit me between the eyes. I'd been prepared for some kind of sad ending, but not one like this, where we're shown a happy ending and then had it snatched back. The initial question is, how much of an act of atonement is Briony's creation of a fictional Robby and Cecilia who got to live the life that was denied them in real life?

But on further consideration, it's not at all clear that Briony has given them any happy ending at all. When she goes to Robby and Cecilia to confess her wrongdoing those years before, in that scene that is soon revealed to be fiction, it's established that Briony's recanting of her story is unlikely to have any legal effect whatsoever as far as Robby's status as a convict goes, and he's not out of danger anyway, as he is going back to war in a day or two. The happy ending Briony gives the people she wronged is unreal on more than one level.

Seen in the light of learning that what we've seen throughout the film is Briony's novelization of the events, everything is called into question; not only Briony's actions and motivations, but nearly everything that happened in the movie at all. If Briony never got to speak to her sister again shortly after she told her lie, she can't really know that the moment by the fountain was as chaste as we were shown. Likewise with Robby's letters; Briony couldn't have known that Robby had written any letter other than the one she delivered. Has she made up all that, in an effort to further illustrate her own faults as a narrator? Or worse, has she made all that up in an attempt to partially justify her lie, odious as it may have been? It's possible to understand, if not condone, the poor behavior of an immature adolescent girl the object of whose affections is instead in love with her older sister.

The fact that we've watched not the real events that transpired but Briony's interpretations and impressions of them also color the oddly surreal sequence that unfolds when Robby arrives at Dunkirk to find an almost incomprehensibly vast panorama of wartime suffering as the Allied armies await their evacuation. This sequence is a pretty amazing one, seemingly shot as one long take (I don't see how it could have been), in which the camera slides past horror after horror: soldiers behaving insanely, soldiers drunk and dying, soldiers killing beautiful horses for no apparent reason, soldiers riding children's rides. Was there really a Ferris Wheel in full operation at Dunkirk as the soldiers awaited the evacuation? The whole sequence seems to stand at some odds with the rest of the film's intimate nature, but that's the point, and it takes on a whole new light when we realize that we've seen not a depiction of Dunkirk as it was but merely Dunkirk as Briony has imagined it.

In terms of production, Atonement is very well done. At times, especially in the first act, the tone is almost like one of those staid old Masterpiece Theater dramas, but this mood is often shifted by the use of awkward closeups, odd closeups, and washed out colors. Many times the film almost feels claustrophobic, suggesting that the characters are closed in even as they stand out in the open.

The music score is impressive as well. Dario Marianelli wrote it, and it's a score of great psychological tension; the music churns and creates nervousness with unresolved chords, snatches of melody, repeated rhythms, and the clever use of sounds from with the film, most notably Briony's typewriter. It's a very impressionistic score, at one point even using Debussy's "Clair de Lune".

I wasn't sure, when I was done watching it, if I'd liked Atonement or not; but for a long while after, I couldn't stop thinking about it. That must mean something.

Sunday Burst of Weirdness

Oddities abound!

:: The Buffalo Bills signed Terrell Owens.

:: OK, this is something quite odd. Last night I was flipping through the AOL.com homepage just to see what was up, and I came across this screen, whereupon I immediately said, "Wait, what?"

Here's the relevant portion of that screen:



See it? Not the thing about the super-expensive flower arrangement. Something smaller.

"Dora the Explorer's sexy new look".

Read that again: DORA THE EXPLORER's sexy new look. Now, I figured this was something written to get me to click through, so click through I did, into an article on various retail companies changing the looks of their major brands. I figured "OK, they're making Dora look different, but they're not really making her 'sexy', right? I mean, we are still talking about kids here, yes?"

Well, Dora's the first thing featured, and here's the copy offered there:

Trying to hold onto preschool fans as they age, Dora the Explorer's parent companies, Nickelodeon and Mattel, are giving her a sexy new look as a tween with a curvy body and wavy long hair. The full design won't be unveiled until fall.

Here's a preview of Sexy Tween Dora, in silhouette, beside her current incarnation:



Not that I'm a prude or anything, but, well...really?

:: The Buffalo Bills have added Terrell Owens to their receiving corps.

:: Perfume and cologne based on Star Trek. Does the "Red Shirt" scent smell like embalming fluid? (via Lynn, who always has fun links and who has some particularly fun ones in this post)

:: Terrell Owens is a Buffalo Bill.

:: Some horrifying tools from medical science past. The first of this made me wince in a bad way. Not work-safe, possibly. Especially if you work in the medical field. (via)

:: Opponents of the Buffalo Bills next season will have to gameplan against Terrell Owens.

:: To recap: Terrell Owens is now a member of the Buffalo Bills.

We'll return with more weirdness next week.

You DONKEY!!!

Oddly, thus far into this season of Hell's Kitchen -- four episodes that I've watched thus far, with one more waiting to be seen -- Chef Ramsay has yet to call anyone by my favorite term of endearment, "You [bleep] donkey!" For some reason that always makes me laugh.

Anyway, this is an entertaining season thus far, as always. Seeing these chefs of varying culinary talent and experience nevertheless struggle equally to make Ramsay happy is always fun, as are his unending string of expletives directed at those who inspire his wrath.

One thing from an episode a couple of weeks ago struck me as odd, though. The chefs were all made to get up very early and go for a walking tour of a commercial butcher operation, which was basically a big warehouse where a number of workers are processing sides of beef. Most of the chefs reacted horribly: "It's cold! It smells awful!" and so on. And I'm thinking, "You're cooks, and this is meat. You should be fascinated by this, not repulsed!"

Ditto later on, when the female team lost the Gordon Ramsay version of that old Letterman chestnut, "Know Your Cuts of Meat"; as part of their punishment they were fed a lunch of various beef innards. Again, you're cooks. At least a few of you should actually like innards, right? Aren't lots of very famous dishes in fact made of innards? Foie gras is an innard, isn't it? (Yeah, an innard of a goose, but it's the same principle.) I always end up wondering just how serious some of these people are about food.

Boldly going?

I've just watched the new trailer for Star Trek, and I'm still troubled. On the one hand it looks like a trailer for a kick-ass space opera action movie, which would be right up my alley, except they're calling it Star Trek and using the names of characters I'm already deeply familiar with. Yes, it bugs me that they're changing everything. No, I don't know why it doesn't bother me that the producers of the James Bond movies are doing roughly the same thing -- but then, the Bond series is a different animal, which never came to grips with the fact that the world was constantly changing and yet their character was staying the same. I don't know -- but the new Trek movie looks like it might be kinda-sorta cool, but I still hate what they're doing with Kirk and company.

To me, it's like if the Bond people not only did a reboot of the Bond movies, but invented a completely new backstory for him -- maybe make him the son of an IRA leader or something. But every single bit of new Trek promotional material that comes along makes me think one thing: this might be cool if they'd just change the names of the people involved. How about not making it a Trek movie? Just for kicks?

Anyway, here's the trailer:



See, right off, there's what bugs me. Kirk is apparently the delinquent doofus who gets pushed into enlisting by someone else. And the Kirk in my imagination would never utter something like "Why are you talkin' to me, man?" Ugh.

UPDATE: Spurred on by Belladonna in comments, I came up with what I think is a better analogy: what they're doing with Kirk strikes me as if somebody made a movie of Oliver Twist in which Oliver was not an orphan but a runaway from home. I like it when I get challenged to explain myself better!

My "Faith" firsts

This quiz came to me on Facebook, and I'm putting it here as well....

1. Who gave you your first Bible?

No one. I bought a copy of the KJV in 1999 or 2000, for research on a writing project. It was OK, but a bare-bones Bible without much by way of extra stuff, so a few years ago I picked up a better edition of the KJV, with a stronger concordance and more maps. Then, a year or two ago I decided that I needed an actual study bible, so I bought a TNIV one, with lots of maps and extra content that, you know, explains stuff.

I also have a book called "The Other Bible", which is a collection of pseudo-sacred texts from those times that for various reasons didn't "make it" into the Bible -- the Apocrypha and more. I also own a Koran, the Analects of Confucius, the Tao te Ching, a couple of Tibetan Books of the Dead, and a few other sacred texts from other religions.

2. When and where did you receive your first Communion?

I first took Communion on Easter of 2006, because The Daughter really wanted me to go up with her and The Wife. I've taken it ever since, when offered. This is at St John's Lutheran in Orchard Park.

3. What was the first prayer you were taught?

I was never "taught" any prayers. I learned the Lord's Prayer, I suppose, through osmosis in college.

4. What was the first church you attended?

The first church that I attended willingly and regularly? I guess that would be St. John's. I would do the "Christmas and Easter" thing with The Wife before that.

5. What was the first Bible passage/story that became meaningful to you?

Hmmmm. The story of Christ's birth as told by Luke, I think.

6. What was the first miracle you experienced?

Well, I'm not sure I've ever experienced one.

7. Where and when were you baptized?

I haven't the faintest idea, except that it was somewhere near Pittsburgh, because that's where we lived when I was born.

Bonus: Is there a story of faith you would like to share that doesn't fit into one of these categories? If so, share it.

I'm still not sure what my religious beliefs are; I've pretty much accepted that I'm never going to figure that out. But I do go to the church because it's become a very meaningful place for me, after everything that happened with our son. I do feel, when I'm there, that I'm in some kind of presence, for whatever that's worth. I started going when I was worried, after Little Quinn's birth, that The Wife was having trouble with church; she was always the "faithful" one of us, so I went in order to help her get through it. And I've kept going, ever since. I'm not sold on every tenet therein, and there are still many things from other faiths that I find deeply wise and moving and even true, but I've come to love a lot of the rituals -- the "official" ones (like Communion) and the ones peculiar to our own congregration (like Pastor's fascination with clips from "I Love Lucy").

Interesting, I guess, since my college friends may remember that I was once deeply hostile to the whole idea of religion, no?

I'm now a bit more open on these things, although I'm not sure I'll ever be comfortable saying "I am XXX", where XXX is some kind of religious belief (or non-belief). Maybe it's wishy-washy, but it always seems to me that saying "I am THIS" equally implies "I am NOT THAT", and that seems exclusionary to me.

Something for Thursday

This song is used to amazing effect during a terribly sad scene in Love, Actually. Here's Joni Mitchell, and "Both Sides Now".

Bummer. I was gonna name him "Frank".

I rarely do these anymore, but the premise of this quiz made me laugh, so I took it:



Hooray!

Give me the jelly donut OR I WILL KILL YOUR FAMILY!!!

A note on 24, which I'm watching religiously this year, although I haven't yet watched this week's two episodes (so no spoiling them, you bunch of lubbers!). While the various plots and schemes Jack is working to thwart are entertaining as always, it seems to me that this year's theme deals with the nature of the kind of work Jack Bauer does.

Everyone who has watched the show knows that Jack occasionally does things that are morally questionable in the name of getting an upper hand on the bad guys. He tortures. He threatens family members. He threatens good guys at gunpoint. Jack does a lot of frankly awful things, always under the belief that the end justifies the means. There are no rules he won't break in order to save lives. This year, the show is grappling with this aspect of Jack's character by contrasting him with FBI Agent Renee Walker, who is his strong ally this year but constantly finds herself blanching at the things he has her do, and some things she does on her own.

Agent Walker does the same horrible things, but she feels horrible doing them, and more than that, she is increasingly appalled at Jack's ability to not be affected by the things he does. No matter what they do, Jack is able to brush it off in his constant desire to move on to the next part of the mission, and when Agent Walker breaks down in his arms sobbing after their actions have caused the death of a young woman who one hour before had no idea what she was involved with, the only wisdom he can offer is "You learn to live with it." The show seems to be admitting that Jack is doing things that are wrong, but is also contending that sometimes you have to do something wrong to prevent something even worse from happening. Call this what you will: Lesser of two evils. Ends justify the means. You have to break eggs to make omelettes.

While it interests me that the show is addressing this stuff, I don't think it's doing so completely honestly. It would be easy for them to show Jack going too far, wouldn't it? Sometimes I wonder if they're not suggesting that, but pulling back slightly. Take Dubaku's girlfriend, for example. Jack and Agent Walker put that girl in a terribly dangerous position, and her position became even more perilous when something unforeseen happened to take Jack and Walker out of the equation for a moment and into a place where they couldn't protect her. If the show really wanted to unflinchingly look at the implications of Jack's actions, they might have had Dubaku kill the girl before attempting escape; then we'd have to wonder if Jack really did the right thing or not. Instead, they had the girl attack Dubaku's driver while in mid-high speed chase, thus causing the crash that results in Dubaku's capture but also results in her death. That girl died a hero.

That leads to my main complaint: all of Jack's dark actions are portrayed as working out the way he needs them to, and that's terribly unrealistic, isn't it? Not that I'm expecting realism from 24, but if they really want to explore the darker nature of Jack's work, then they need to confront the awful reality that sometimes Jack is going to go too far, and worse, that sometimes his actions aren't going to work out. Take torture, for example: when Jack tortures, it always works! When he threatens a villain's family, it always works! Jack's "extreme interrogations" invariably result in him getting the information he wants. Nobody ever stonewalls him. Nobody ever feeds him a bullshit story in an attempt to buy time. Nobody ever looks at Jack as he threatens to blow up their home planet if they don't tell him the location of the Rebel Base and tells him that they're on Dantooine when they're actually on Yavin IV.

How effective would that be, anyway? Wouldn't that be an incredibly gripping tale? Wouldn't it be amazing to see Jack's techniques failing him and seeing the bad guys gain the upper hand on him that way? I wonder if we'll ever see this happen? In any event, it seems to me that the producers are saying this year: "Sure, Jack does bad things, but hey, he's got to and they always work so it's all good." I find that less than satisfying, morally and dramatically.