Friday, June 23, 2006
A New First Time
I haven't had a new
My First Time to post for a while, but this one came in tonight and I liked it, so here it is. It's courtesy of Emory.
Where did you see the link to this site?
I saw the link on Google.com when searching for Stephen King DT sites
What were your first impressions?
Too much purple, too dark.
What page(s) did you first view and what did you think?
I read your review about Stephen King's DT7 book. I laughed at it. You are such a pompous, arrogant ass.
Are you a regular visitor?
No
How often do you return? Daily? Weekly? Monthly? Whenever it strikes your browsing fancy?
As Ka wills it, or Google.
My question semi-rhetorical question is, what about that particular book review seemed pompous or arrogant? I'd cop to arrogant while debating pompous and ass, at least in terms of my online personna via this website, but that's not the point, because I'm assuming the emailer is making this assessment after reading just
that one review.
Reading it now to refresh my several year old memories, I didn't think it was pompous or arrogant. I thought the scores were odd, since 90% of the review is about the godawful plot mechanizations King runs through to keep his novel rolling, and my words added up to a 4 or a 5, instead of the 7 I tagged it with. But how is it pompous or arrogant?
My theory: Note Emory's closing "as Ka wills it" remark, which is taken from the DT books. I'm guessing that he's a big SK and DT fan and that he therefore disagrees with any criticism of the aging master. Since I listed a bunch of plot and character issues I thought King handled poorly, in Emory's mind that makes me arrogant, since I apparently think I know better than King how to write a novel.
That's my current theory, anyway. If you've got better, that's what comments are for.
Labels: my first time, writing
Thursday, June 22, 2006
The essential appeal of all Adam Sandler movies.
Admittedly, I am not a fan of Adam Sandler movies. In fact, I don't believe I've ever seen more than about 5 minutes of anything he's done since his smugly-annoying SNL days. The previews show me enough of his smirky, frat-boy antics that I have no need to suffer through the actual 90 minute version. I must also admit that someone obviously likes him, since his assembly line, fart-joke films are
usually quite profitable, at least in the US.
He's got a new film coming out soon,
Click, a sappy comedy that seems to combine the plots of
It's A Wonderful Life with
A Christmas Carol. Sandler's character is a workaholic, he's neglecting his wife and kids and parents, and when he gets a magical universal remote that can pause or fast forward or rewind reality, he starts skipping over the crappy parts of his life, and soon finds himself old, alone, abandoned, and dying in misery, before the obligatory cheesy/cheery ending. I won't see it, ever, and from what most of the critics are saying, I won't be missing much. (
40% rating on Metacritic,
24% positive on RT.) Two samples::
One: It's an unimaginative, mean-spirited affair that makes you hate yourself for laughing at it, and it's so devoid of anything close to wit, subtlety or sophistication that it stands as damning evidence that Hollywood has surrendered wholesale to stupidity and crassness.
Two: I didn't just not like Click, the new movie where Adam Sandler plays a Jim Carrey role; the movie actually made me mad. Not because it's not funny -- I expected that. And not because it's endlessly mean-spirited -- every Adam Sandler film is like that. What made me mad was that the central conceit of a guy with a remote control that controls the universe is used so poorly that I kept wanting to shout out suggestions to Sandler on how to actually use the fucking thing effectively.
So it's more of the same angry Sandler hijinks, it's poorly written and directed, it's unimaginative, and it does 1/20th what could be done with the plot elements. Which means it'll probably open to $50,000,000 before dropping 60% in the second weekend and eventually crawling in at about $125m, while countless brilliant films a year can't even get distribution deals in the US.
So why am I talking about it? For the women. Here's a pair of pics related to the film, and the one on the left, with Sandler and the hot blonde, was what spurred this post. I saw it because it was one of the most-emailed photos on Yahoo News a few days ago, and it so perfectly summed up Sandler's appeal that I had to save it for a blog post.
Just look at them. And him. The blonde is
Sophie Monk, age 26, and I've got no idea who she is or what she does in the film. She's not mentioned in any of the reviews, so I assume she's some random hot chick in a restaurant who Sandler slow motions or freezes with the remote to peek up her skirt or something like that. The brunette is semi-famous semi-actress
Kate Beckinsale, age 32, who plays Sandler's wife. The guy is of course Adam Sandler, age 40, seedy, blotchy, rumpled, and this is how he looks when he's made up and well-lit for TV. Imagine him in real life?
My point though, is the humor in juxtaposing these humans. Yeah, Hollywood (and male writers everywhere) has an eternal history of casting male stars with women half their age and twice their attractiveness, but at least it's usually some debonaire stud, like Sean Connery or Richard Gere, who was once in their class, and now might presumably have money and class. Sandler's characters are pretty much the opposite of this. He always looks petulant and annoying and he'd clearly make a horrible boyfriend, he's never attractive, and he's not successful or rich or suave or funny or pretty much anything that would attract any women, much less the supermodels he casts himself opposite in his films. Him with his co-stars isn't quite to the brain bending level of
Victoria Silvstedt's ongoing Adopt-a-troll hook up, but it's not far off.
And that bit of ridiculousness is largely responsible for Sandler's success. After all, who are Adam Sandler's fans? Average, schlubby white guys who are just as not-funny and not-handsome and not-talented as Sandler himself. If you're some average guy living a nothing life, it takes imagination to root for James Bond or some other superhero type male lead, since he inhabits a world completely removed from your Wal-Mart and Hooter's level of existence. On the other hand, Sandler's characters are basically you, with a few good breaks and a more fun life and access to inexplicably hot chicks. He's essentially the aging frat boy's version of a romance novel heroine. Wish fulfillment on the silver screen. Perhaps they're not your wishes, and they're certainly not mine, but someone likes him, and sure, Sandler's movies suck and most decent people want him to die in an elevator fire, but he's not really doing any harm to the world in general, and his regular cinematic output brings happiness to a subset of the population that dearly needs it. So why must we hate? (Besides the fact that it's such fun...)
Update: Two days later,
I saw this article on Ebert's site that quotes a bit from his reviews of every Sandler movie, and does a far better job explaining the guy and his appeal than I did in my discussion. Although, the angle of "schlubby guy gets hot chicks" was left untouched.
Labels: adam sandler
The only time I care about the weather...
As long-time readers will recall, my only real concern with the weather is when it's too hot. I like it cold, I like rain, I like hail, I like it cloudy, etc. I can tolerate boring sunshine, but after 20 years in weatherless San Diego I'm quite happy with some inclement conditions now that I live in the Bay Area, where they frequently occur.
This was the wettest spring ever in Northern California; it rained something like 28 days straight in February, but did I complain once? (Well, complain about something other than peoples' general inability to drive on wet roads, I mean.) I like wind, I like snow (not that it's ever cold enough here for that) etc. All I ask is that it not be too hot, and the only times I'm ever driven to check the local weather and forecast is when it gets hot. And I've checked every day for the past week.
Last weekend it was hot. Way hotter than usual, like 20 degrees (F, 8-10C) warmer than usual for any month of the year, much less late June, since we get our hottest weather in August and September. Things cooled down to just above normal early this week, but yesterday was hot, and today is hotter. Curious in my misery, I headed to the weather.com page for our local area, and found this discouraging sight.
So um... yeah. It's so hot it's broken today's high?
That current figure isn't correct because it's nowhere near 102 right now. Our back patio thermometer says 87, and while it's deep in the shade, it's not refrigerated. Besides, it's only 1pm; sunset doesn't come until 9:30pm this time of year and the hottest temps are around 3 or 4pm, when it will be substantially warmer than it is now. And it's not going to be 110 today.
Nevertheless, it's 25-30 degrees above the average summertime high, and I'm not real pleased about it. And with the long term forecast
guessing estimating more of the same for the next week, I shall now commence weeping. It's inconvenient too, after doing virtually zero work for the past week with house guests, parents visiting, Malaya's party, my b-day, etc, I was really hoping to get back into things this week. But we don't have A/C, and when I'm sitting here at noon with a fan on me and sweat running down my back, I am not really at my most productive. It cools down at night, with the help of a couple of fans blowing out the hot air, but bleah. And yes, it's all psychological; people lived in these temps for centuries without A/C and they had humidity too (something we're blessedly spared in these parts), I can escape to businesses with A/C, it was hotter every year in San Diego than it ever is up here now, etc. I still don't have to like it.
Labels: summer, weather
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Homophobia and penises...
I've blogged on pretty much this exact subject before, but since that was
nearly three years ago, I hope you'll indulge me again. Tonight, while giving photo.net a scan, I ended up (as I suppose most people do) skimming over a few pages of the recent, most highly-rated nudes. This is easier than it used to be, since they added a photo type sorting option, which they should probably just put "nudes" on top of, then go alphabetical, like most of those web forms do with "United States" when you get to the "country" box.
Anyway, I thought this shot (all photo links in this post should be assumed to be
NSFW) was
exceptionally nice (and completely asexual), and this one was
>sort of sexy, while lacking anything approaching the quality implied by its very high viewer scores. Those shots aren't worth a blog entry, and honestly, these next two wouldn't be either... if not for the amusing hysteria they inflict upon several commenters.
I saw
this one first. It's a side view of a nude black male, in which you can see a profile view of most of his penis. Pretty unremarkable really, but amusing thanks to one Remo Bodie:
You should devote your time to posting such photos on some gay site.
--Remo Bodie , June 19, 2006; 12:45 P.M.
One can evaluate photographs--light, composition, whatever without this kind of trash..This is just another opportunity for you gay boys to get excited. Sad..
--Remo Bodie , June 19, 2006; 07:56 P.M.
Yes, he felt a need to post twice, and yes, it's a childish joke that writes itself, but do you suppose his seven hour later return visit necessitated a second (or third, or thirteenth) long, lingering look at the penis that so disturbed him? I hardly need to point it out, but you'll notice at a glance that there's nothing even remotely sexual about the photo. The penis is not erect, the man's alone, he's posing outdoors beside a swimming pool, etc. He just happens to be naked. You may or may not find that erotic, but it's borderline madness to say it's something only for gays (male ones, one supposes Remo means) to view.
It gets better.
Check out this one, with a white guy kneeling in an artist type pose, with his head down, hands between his knees, shoulders held taught, etc. Oh, and you can see most of penis. OMG, penis!
I think what Mr. Hicks is getting at, the sole apparent purpose is to show the person's erect penis, which puts it in the pornographic catagory.
--Gary Eaton , June 13, 2006; 12:08 P.M.
Looking for a date? NOT HARDLY!! It just seemed plausible that you must be gay considering your obvious attraction to male nudity. I am a happily married heterosexual male. I just find it disturbing that a decent website like this one attracts those of "alternate lifestyles" as a medium to post their fantasies.
--Remo Bodie , June 15, 2006; 06:36 P.M.
I don't mean to pick on Remo here, since there are a few other posters almost as ignorant as him (check out post #3 by Tim Hicks, which even aside from its laughable content, is a masterpiece of verbose, multisyllibic incoherence), but man does Remo have some issues. He (again) makes multiple posts in the thread, returning multiple times over several days to make them (and gaze anew upon the offending member, one assumes). Note also that he says the model is aroused, which is clearly untrue. Does this judgement stem from an unfavorable comparison betwixt the size of the penis Remo sees staring (peeking) up at him every day and the one in the picture?
So what motivates this sort of reaction to the photo? Remo (and the others who are so stirred by the male nudes) don't seem to be insecure teenagers, at least judging by their words, and none of them are quoting scripture or throwing down Christian/Mormon/Islamic motivations for their displeasure. So what's their problem? Why would grown men give such a damn? They can't claim to be mere prudes, since they're going out of their way to condemn the very rare male nudes on a photo site which hosts literally thousands of far more explicit female nudes. Look through the nudes if you're curious or prurient or whatever, but it took me about 30 seconds clicking through the thumbnails of the past week to find multiple female nudes with far more sexual content than these male shots, and not one of them has a single comment that's disapproving of the content. Example
one,
two,
three, and
four, and look at that last one if no other; it's a butt shot with visible labia and an inviting, if shadowed, anus. Imagine the homophobic hysteria one could whip up by simply recreating that shot with a hairy man's ass? You can almost hear the wolves baying about sodomy just thinking about it.
After all the talking though, I've got to do what I did last year and end at this point. Yes, it seems ridiculous that otherwise sane (in theory) men (and women, at least in the post from 2003) are so freaked out by a male nude, while not stirring a finger at female nudes, but as for why... I've got no answer. It might be entertaining to question Remo or one of his fellows, but I don't think it would be very enlightening. They feel how they do and their beliefs are probably impervious to logic of an explanatory or comparative nature. In their world visible penis is a horrible thing and male nudes have no artistic merit, and nothing you could say would change their minds on that issue. They're silly, but hey, at least no one trotted out the tired, "think of the children who might view this filth" argument so many fools were using about the image I posted on back in 2003.
Labels: homophobia, penis size
Monday, June 19, 2006
The movie that was not meant to be.
I could write a dozen posts about all the RL stuff we've been doing lately, and I might do just that (don't count on it), but for now, I'll talk about why I didn't see
Cars.
As I briefly related in my last briefly written post, my dad, mom, and stepdad all came up to visit, as did Malaya's best friend from high school. I won't go into the whole thing, but we had several events to attend, and our time and my time was pretty tightly-booked for the past few days. Nevertheless, there were some down times, and times that had to be filled by events other than meeting various parental units for lunch and/or dinner. My mom and stepdad drove up on Thursday, and had to return Sunday morning. I saw them for dinner Thursday, and Friday as well, and after we ate that night they were heading back to their hotel. It was only 7 though, and when it's light here until 9:30, that seems early. They were planning on seeing a movie, and after deciding on Cars over An Inconvenient Truth, (which I'm sure they'll see back in San Diego), they asked if I wanted to go with them. I would have, but... I'd already contracted to see that with Dad on Sunday, when we were doing a combo Father's Day/Birthday thing (his F-day, my B-day 2 days early).
Surprisingly, they didn't like it. Talking to them at a party on Saturday mom said, "You'd better really like stock car racing if you want to see it." They'd actually walked out after 30 minutes, bored and unimpressed by the cartoon recreation of a stock car race that apparently occupies the first 1/3 of the film.
It's odd, since I've read a fair number of Cars reviews, and none have spent much time on the stock car aspects of the film. From what I gather, the first 1/3 is a race sequence with the hot shot car protagonist, the middle section is the car in a
Doc Hollywood-style small town where he learns to be a better person (anthropomorphic racecar?), and the finale is another stock car race. So yeah, if you're going to sit through the film, you've got to harbor at least some tolerance for watching modified sedans drive in a big circle. I've not heard a single critic talk about that though; they all focus on the human elements of the characters, how the hotshot punk kid grows as a person, learns about smalltown America, etc, etc. Did anyone really like or dislike the racing stuff, though? No one (but my parents) seems to care.
Anyway, Sunday rolled around and despite mom's less than enthusiastic review, dad and I were still planning on seeing the film. I don't give a damn about any sort of car racing (except for the crashes) and I have some active hostility towards the redneck spectacle that is stock car racing. Guys, would it kill you to you know, turn right once in a while? But despite that, I was trusting to Pixar's history of nothing but at least pretty good films, and figuring it would be worth seeing in theaters, instead of waiting six months and spending $5 on the used DVD.
When we got to the shopping center though, and found the entire parking garage full up to the 4th level, (I'd never seen it that full, even during Xmas shopping season.) dad got cold feet. He's like, "Do you think the movie will be crowded? I hate to see a movie in a packed theater with noisy kids." I said, "Well, it's a big family movie, it's Father's Day, it's a matinee, and it's Sunday." And that was that. Dad preferred to just browse around a bookstore for a bit, and since he was itching to get home he moved his flight up a couple of hours and made a slighly early departure.
And that's why I didn't see
Cars despite two opportunities, and why I had time to finish
Feast of Crows last night (review to come), and why today I've been lazily blogging and surfing and chilling out. In fact, I've been chilling out too much today (I can
not stop working my way through
these 80s videos.) and I don't even have time to get to the gym now, since we're supposed to head over to Malaya's parents' house for dinner in less than an hour. Tomorrow should be fun too, since it's my b-day and Malaya's been scheming up cool stuff we can do together, none of which I have the first clue about. Though I'll know a good deal more by this time tomorrow, I suspect.
Labels: movies, you tube
Friday, June 16, 2006
Busy Weekend
Forgive the lack of recent posts, but it's a very busy time in RL. My dad, mom, and stepdad are all in town (in different hotels), Malaya's best friend from childhood is here and staying in our condo, and we went to a graduation yesterday, we've eaten lunch and/or dinner out with various relatives every day since Wednesday night, and we've got a big party tomorrow, dinner that night with all of my parents and Malaya and her friend, and I'll be doing a joint b-day/father's day thing with my dad on Sunday.
So yeah, I've been pretty busy, with about an hour a day online time, and that's not going to change until Sunday night. No wonder people with real lives and children and such never have time to do anything but live day to day. sheesh.
I haven't even had the TV on for 3 days, and I had no idea they'd played game 4 in the NBA finals. (Miami
blew them out.) I watched the first two games and found them unsurprising. Dallas was clearly the better team, they had a much deeper bench, they had better coaching, they had more energy, etc. And that remained the case until early 4th quarter in game three, when Dallas was ahead by 10 and I thought Miami was going to roll over and die, with 5 fouls on Wade, who was the only guy on the court playing hard.
But sports being what it is, Dallas went cold, Miami got hot, and miraculously sneaked out a win in game 3, then crushed in game 4, and suddenly Miami's got the momentum and it's game 5 in Miami, with them looking a good bet to go up 3-2. As for the other sporting event 99% of the people on earth are more interested in... I have no idea. I've not seen a game, just a few minutes of World Cup here and there, and other than knowing that the US got blasted 3-0 in their first game, I couldn't tell you a score. I'll try to get more into it next year, I promise.
Labels: basketball
Sunday, June 11, 2006
Remember when tattoos mattered?
If you've recently found yourself thinking that everyone has a tattoo, you're right. Everyone does.
Everyone your age, anyway.
The American University employee is among about 36 percent of Americans age 18 to 29 with at least one tattoo, according to a survey.
The study, scheduled to appear Monday on the Web site of the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, provides perhaps the most in-depth look at tattoos since their popularity exploded in the early 1990s.
The results suggest that 24 percent of Americans between 18 and 50 are tattooed; that's almost one in four. Two surveys from 2003 suggested just 15 percent to 16 percent of U.S. adults had a tattoo.
Unfortunately, 90% of those tattoos are faux-tribal barbed wire around the flabby bicep of a pudgy white frat boy, or some sort of scrollwork across the lower back of his coed equivalent. And that's what I want to talk about. The quality and placement and lack of originality in tattoos.
Looking through the new Entertainment Weekly, we've got a bonus insert of their musical section, Listen to This. The cover article profiles Chris Carrabba, who I'd never heard of, though I have faintly heard of his band, Dashboard Confessional. I wouldn't have given him a thought, except for the photo, which was not all that different from
this one, from the cover of Spin magazine. Note the pretty, non-threatening face, the neat hair, and the ton of tattoos on both arms. This troubles me.
The EW article begins:
There are numerous places emo superstar Chris Carrabba can't go without a throng of screaming adolescents trainling him. Fortunately, the rock and roll dive bar WXOU Radio in Manhattan's West Village is not one of them.
I don't care about the guy and I've never heard (to my knowledge) a note of his music, but the fact that he's beloved by screaming adolescents, the very living embodiment of stupid style over quality substance, is not a god sign. What bothers me though, is that he looks like he works at Circuit City (and quite possibly did, at one point) from the neck up, but he's covered in tattoos from the preppy shirt collar down.
As I said in the beginning, remember when tattoos meant something? Both the fact that you had a tattoo (sailor, prisoner, biker, scum) and the quality of your tattoo were important. The former has broken down, which I can live with, but the latter being a mere memory is what troubles me. It's not just idiocy along the lines of a
Hanzi Smatter entry, but that people will get damn near anything permanently etched on their bodies, without putting any thought or design into it. Pre-teens spend more time etching designs on their Social Studies notebooks than most people spend picking and designing giant tattoos they'll carry around forever, and be forever judged by carrying. It depresses me.
Not as much as
Mr. Sensitive Emo rock having nearly two full sleeves, though.
This is what a rock and roller with tattoos is supposed to look like.
Or this. True, not everyone wants to guarantee themselves Marilyn Manson-sized societal exclusion, but I see the Dashboard Confessional guy with his colorful sleeves of nothing in particular, and I see all the clueless 18 y/o girls getting random wavy lines etched across their "look here when you doggy style me" spots, and I blame him. Guys like him, with tons of mediocre tats and no attitude to go with it, are like gateway drugs. The kids cut their teeth on his soggy sad guitar songs, and see him with all those tats, get their own because after all, Mr. Sesame Street has some, and it further accelertes the inexorable fading of any cachet or mystique about bodily decoration.
I used to want to get some tats, a big one on my back or hip or something, but I could never find any image or concept or slogan I liked enough to consider looking at it in my reflection for the rest of my life. I still haven't, but should I, I don't think I'll even want to proclaim it anymore, now that the significance of the act has been so cheapened by mis/overuse.
On the other hand, that's my reason for never getting my ears pierced, and for hardly ever wearing my leather jacket anymore, so perhaps I'm really the fashion victim here; eschewing things I might enjoy just because non-cool people have adopted them?
Labels: tattoos
Female Golfers Can't Put?
Not to reawaken the
now-slumbering beast, but I've had the Golf Channel on for the last 90 minutes (hey, it's this, baseball, Arena Football, or Portugal vs. Angola) while waking up and making some breakfast (2 fried eggs over toast), and I have yet to see a single woman make a put longer than 6 feet. (As if to taunt me, Se Ri Pak just rolled in a 20-footer to take the lead.)
I don't play golf anymore (I used to every summer when visiting my grandparents, but that was when I was young and had nothing but time to kill during vacation.) since it's such a tremendous time sink, but I do occasionally watch some on TV, if Tiger's winning. I never had any interest in women's golf until recently, and my attention now is solely due to Michelle Wie's quixotic quest to make the cut in a men's event. She hasn't done so in an American tournament, yet, nor has she won a women's event, but it seems inevitable that she will the latter and might the former, given that she's only 16 and already hits further and better than just about any woman alive.
Anyway, I'm watching this because Wie's playing and since
she started the day just 1 off the lead. And while she can't put... neither can anyone else. I have never seen so many lipped out 6-10 footers, and any putt longer than 12 feet is just an odyssey; they're lucky if the end up within 4 feet. And this course isn't exactly the Masters; the greens aren't that fast or contoured; chips stop where they're hit, there aren't huge swells on the green that force puts to be hit 45 degrees crooked to roll down, etc.
Prior to this weekend, my impression of women's golf was that they don't have the length to play the courses as the men do, but that their short irons and putting were good enough to make up for it. So if a par 4, 420 yard hole came up, an average male pro would drive it 280, hit a medium iron to the green, and have a 20 foot put for birdie which he'd likely miss, but might make. An average woman pro on the same hole would drive 240, smash a long iron to the fringe, and have to chip it close enough to try and save par. So the man would putt (semi-makeable) for birdie and tap in for par, while the woman would chip (less-makeable) for birdie and need to make a tough 8-12 footer for par.
In fact, if this LPGA Championship is any indication, the women have plenty of length for the course, and their irons and fairway woods are quite accurate. They just can't putt. As I said, it took well over an hour before a single woman made a putt from more than "gimmie" distance, and there must have been a dozen missed 8-10 foot birdie putts. As a result, everyone bunches up with occasional birdies on par 5s or when they make a really great iron shot, but no one can pull away. There have been something like 15 golfers at -7, -6, or -5 while I've been watching. No one can pull away since no one can make a putt, but no one's collapsing either, since all the women are good enough to constantly be on the green with 2 shots to make par. Even Michelle Wie, the reason I'm watching, can't put. She had constant 8-14 foot birdies, missed every one (often lipping it out), and consistently wasted tee and fairway shots 99.9% of the golfers alive would kill for by being unable to finish off the holes.
I don't watch that much men's golf, but whenever I turn on a tournament on a boring weekend, I am guaranteed to see half a dozen amazingly long putts or chip-ins within any given half hour. The men need them too, since they're constantly scrambling to save pars or make birdies, while the women seem to never need par saves, since they're so consistently on the fairway and the greens.
I have no idea why. It's not like there's some inherent, penis-related ability to estimate the way a ball will roll over short-clipped grass, and even if there were, most of the players have male caddies to advise them. When I used to play golf with my grandparents, my granny always outputted me, and while part of that was due to her greater consistency and much shorter length with irons (she had shorter putts, since she was often chipping from just off the green), she was as accurate as I was from any random distance. Then again, I wasn't exactly on the tour myself.
So the play during today's tournament has been disappointing, but it's nothing compared to Michelle Wie's outfit. She's a budding beauty with an incredibly tall, lean body (she's like 6'2"/185cm, towering over the average height women she's competing against), and she looks great in any kind of her form-fitting Nike slacks/shirts. Today, starting near the leaders in the LPGA Championship, she chose a ghastly baby blue, sleeveless, overalls-style romper, over a long-sleeved black shirt, crowned with an orange cap that almost (but not quite) matches the fringe on her overalls-skirt. It's practically a
GoFugYourself entry, and when you compare that to Tiger's trademark power red shirt on Sundays, it's clear that his fellow Nike model has a long way to go when it comes to picking out fashion that will help her intimidate when she closes out tournaments.
Labels: golf
Friday, June 09, 2006
Reality Cat TV
This article about an upcoming reality show featuring cats in a Survivor-type contest had me... right until the final line.
The fur really could fly on TV's latest reality entry: It stars cats. Ten felines, picked from animal shelters nationwide, will live in a New York house to vie — a la "Big Brother" or "Survivor" — for a grand prize, in this instance an executive-level job with Meow Mix cat food.
...The project will be shown in three-minute segments in the 9 p.m. EDT hour Friday on the Animal Planet channel for 10 consecutive weeks, starting June 16.
...The Meow Mix House cats, from shelters or rescue groups such as the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in New York, Touched by an Animal in Chicago and Kitten Rescue in Los Angeles, will themselves be gaining new homes.
As the cats are put through their weekly paces in contests including best purr and top post-climber, a panel of judges will decide who stays and who goes. When a cat is voted out, it will move to a permanent home and get a year's supply of Meow Mix as a consolation prize.
Okay, cute concept, good cause, homes for all the kitties on the show, etc. What's the catch?
In voiceovers accompanying the kitty action, the cats will be given personalities as crafted by advertising copywriters. Some may be shy, but the Los Angeles and New York cats could turn out to be real glamour pusses, Cohen said.
NO!! Dear God no! In one line it went from this brilliant marketing scheme with the potential for lots of funny video and cat antics, to a debacle. I would have taped shows to see these commercials, and now? All I can imagine is Bob Sagat doing his, "I'm a cute little animal." squeaky voice that ruined so many other potentially-funny clips on America's Funniest Home Videos.
Tragically, this show might be even worse that that, with the promise of nauseating regional stereotypes. So we've already got LA and NY cats confirmed as attention whore. Gee, wonder if they'll have a dumb and clumsy cat with a Southern accent, a tough cat with a Brooklyn accent, a spaced out cat with a hippy voice, etc? It's like a live action version of every non-Pixar CGI film.
Labels: cats
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
Done... for now.
I'm a few days late with this post, but I did finish the complete rough draft of my fantasy novel, and wanted to say so officially, even though I'm already well into the rewrite. (Which is technically at least the 3rd draft, since I went back over every chapter at least once after I finished them initially.)
The last chapter definitely went the fastest, with the finish line in sight and motivation high, and when I look back on the months and nearly years of wasted time and screwing around... well, I don't, or I'd just vex over them and not get anything new done. I'm glad to have finished, but knowing how much work I've got to do rewriting Chapters 2-5 to get them up to the quality and interest of the much stronger last few chapters kept me from feeling like I'd really finished anything.
At any rate, first draft down, 8 chapters, 507,087 words, approximately 745 pages. Unfortunately, those are my working pages, which are single spaced, with wider margins, and far more lines per page than a normal book. For the sake of comparison I've got George R.R. Martin's
Feast of Crows (still haven't gotten to start reading it) sitting on my desk, and a quick count tells me it has 40 lines per page, with about 12 words per line (estimating, since some lines are just a few words, word length varies, etc), which would multiply out to 480 words per page. And 480 divided into 507,087 = 1056 pages. Martin's book, (UK hardcover version) is 684 pages, not including various lengthy appendices.
Writing is not a length contest, but these figures give a fair idea of the size of things. (And you know how men are about size.) I'm actually somewhat encouraged by this page count, since it means I only need to cut a third to be in reasonable fantasy novel size at 700ish pages. If you've been reading this blog long enough to remember my worries about the book turning into a trilogy all by itself, back when chapter 2 alone ran 170k words, you can imagine my relief.
After the early bloat (which continued through chapters 3 and 4) I got the plot more on track, I did away with a number of planned side quests that weren't essential to the story, and I'm pretty happy with the pace and events in chapters 5-8. One's not bad either, but 2-4 are another matter; one I'm going to be tackling in the next couple of weeks.
There's more to do than just cutting length, of course. Malaya identified a number of structural problems, and a few of the plot twists I revealed in the last chapter needed to be better foreshadowed and developed in advance, for them to have the sort of payoff I want them to have. Characters need to interact somewhat differently early on, I need to put in more cuts between different narrators, and so forth. But it's definitely not undoable, and I'm actually pretty eager to get going on it, and not just for potential financial reasons, either.
Labels: the fantasy novel
Action Movie Fun
I raved about it before my recent X-men 3 review, and I don't want to turn this blog into
District B-13 central, (nor am I capable of such a feat) but I just watched the best 3 minute action clip I've seen in memory, and had to put in a link.
IGN posted 4 clips, and since I'd already seen the first one, I clicked on the second one, on the top right of the page.
Fight scene in a casino, one guy vs. about a dozen, guns and martial arts and gymnastics and man it's good. Of course there are about five "he was so dead there" moments, but hell, it's an action movie. What do you want, reality? Anything I see that makes me wonder how the stunt man survived is worth a look, and there are several such moments in this piece.
Labels: movies
Monday, June 05, 2006
Lions are Atheists
The joke for this one pretty well writes itself,
doesn't it?
KIEV (Reuters) - A man shouting that God would keep him safe was mauled to death by a lioness in Kiev zoo after he crept into the animal's enclosure, a zoo official said on Monday.
"The man shouted 'God will save me, if he exists', lowered himself by a rope into the enclosure, took his shoes off and went up to the lions," the official said.
"A lioness went straight for him, knocked him down and severed his carotid artery."
The incident, Sunday evening when the zoo was packed with visitors, was the first of its kind at the attraction. Lions and tigers are kept in an "animal island" protected by thick concrete blocks.
Well that's it, then. Close the churchs, ebay off the Vatican, burn the Bibles!
Seriously though... why did the guy take off his shoes?
Labels: atheism
Saturday, June 03, 2006
The Life and Times of Fred Phelps
Long article on Fred Phelps, the minister of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church, on Yahoo today. Phelps is best known for sending his minions to picket funerals with their GodHatesFags.com signs and words of hate. He's obviously one of the more loathesome human beings alive on this earth, though happily he's old and sick, so that won't be true for much longer. I still found the article about him interesting though, since it goes inside his beliefs and ideals, and even has some fun with the raging hypocrisies that beset the life and family of every self-proclaimed Christian.
I'd always heard that he hated Jews and gays and anyone who enjoys sex, but apparently it's far deeper than that. He pretty much hates everyone, and lately his few followers have been busy doing all they can to ruin the funerals of US soldiers killed in Iraq. Really. Not just the gay ones. Phelps and his lot celebrate natural disasters too, and basically anything else that kills people in large numbers, since they think pretty much everyone (except the members of Phelps family who cleave to him) is a sinner, predestined for hell. And the sooner we die and get there, the better.
At curbsides, outside funerals and before state capitols, Phelps and his followers have branded this a nation of sinners, of people bound to live eternity in a fiery hell. They have called homosexuals the disgusting face of evil, and fallen American soldiers proof of God's wrath. And they've sneered at every other faith.
They are unapologetic in delivering their message and have no hope of convincing you, just as they say there is no hope for this doomed nation.
It's simply their duty, they believe, to let it be known that God hates you. That you're going to hell. That you're wrong and Fred's right.
...
No army of zealots is waging this campaign. Westboro Baptist has only about 75 members, nearly all of them Phelps' relatives...
Their belief in predestination -- the idea that God determined at the time of one's creation whether they were bound for heaven or hell -- is not unique. It stems from John Calvin's branch of the 16th century Protestant Reformation and is taught in mainstream churches.
Where Westboro parts ways, of course, is its emphasis on God's hatred and the way it spreads this message. Members believe they must alert the world's depraved sinners of their fate even though such people have no chance of going to heaven. They're not doing this to save you -- they're doing it to save themselves.
...
He raised 13 children, nine of whom defend him unwaveringly. Others tell of an abusive, unstable patriarch driven to fits of rage by nearly anything -- from the way a child peeled an apple to forgetting to wipe one's shoes...
Shirley Phelps-Roper, a daughter of the pastor who frequently acts as a church spokeswoman, lost one of her sons to the outside world.
"Of course it's heartbreaking, on a level, for a short period of time," she said. "Because what you come to terms with is that the child is going to hell."
...Neither Phelps nor his congregants -- who believe both he and they are prophets -- claim to be without sin, but the pastor is infuriated when asked about their wrongdoings.
Children have had babies out of wedlock. Some have drifted from Westboro, which they believe to be the only true church on earth. The Bible's messages -- as Phelps preaches them -- have, at times, been ignored with this very family.
Why are some sins different? Why are followers forgiven for sins that would gain an outsider the label of hellbound whore?
Phelps rises from his chair and walks away.
There's not much to say about it, really. They're a sick, insular cult, and we should all be thankful their insanity runs towards signs and insults, rather than hording weapons and fostering race wars. Plus, when Freddy drops dead in a year or two, his mangy band of boot-lickers will likely fall to squabbling over the scraps of his ministry, before splintering into groups too small to command any further media attention.
I don't share any of Phelps' beliefs, but at times like this I almost wish I did, just so I could laugh at the thought of this fool suffering his painful and lingering death, then opening his eyes to find himself in hell, with an eternity of anguish and torture to spend reflecting upon his wasted and deeply-misguided life.
Labels: homophobia, religion
Thursday, June 01, 2006
Movie Review: X-men 3
I'm going to review Xmen 3 here in a minute, but first I wanted to talk about an almost unknown summer action movie that's opening this weekend in the US, and is surely more deserving of your entertainment dollar than the big budget summer snooze fests. It's a French film that they're calling District B13 in the US, but don't let the name throw you. It's basically one of the next generation of Jackie Chan-inspired action films, with agility, speed, inventiveness, and stylized martial arts taking the place of the old style guns and muscles action movies.
B13 stars David Belle and Cyril Raffaelli, neither of whom you're likely to have heard of. Cyril is best known as one of the identical twin blonde badguys in the Jet Li film Kiss of the Dragon. He was the smaller one, the one who could actually fight, and he's apparently something of an action film star in France. David Belle is not an actor, but he's pretty well known on the Internet for sort of inventing the new, death-defying urban sport of Parkour. It's basically a sort of improvisational gymnastics, performed on the balconies, ladders, walkways, stair cases, and ledges of high rise buildings, and while I've been seeing amazing movies of guys doing this stuff on the Internet for a few years, I've never yet seen it in a motion picture. (Unless you count some of the agility stuff Jackie Chan does.)
Don't take my word for it though; here's
a (subtitled) French TV segment on David Belle with tons of footage of him doing his thing, and here's a fantastic
3 minute scene from District B13 with more cool stunts than most action movies pack into their full 120 running time. Really, calling them stunts isn't fair, since they're more like feats or performance art; they aren't digitally erasing the wires on those guys leaping between 6 story buildings; they're really doing those stunts live and a slip away from death.
Are you intrigued, but thinking the movie must be crap with some good stunts? You might be right, but they're really, really good stunts, since as of right now, this is the best reviewed film of the year. It's got 15 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, and
all 15 are positive.
If you go to the movies this weekend and subject yourself to the anti-romcom misery of The Break-Up (
21% RT, 0% from major critics) instead of seeking out the wild action fun of District B13, you are making a really big mistake, and you must have a really lame girlfriend. (I'm lucky here, since Malaya's more excited to see District B13 than I am.)
As for Xmen3... it wasn't bad. We went in expecting a fun action movie, and while the script wasn't a 10% as smart as the twisty Mission Impossible 3, it wasn't awful. The movie moved along nicely, none of the characters were unwatchable, the teenage angst crap was kept to a minimum, the 2x4 "mutant = gay" societal metaphors were subtler, and the action scenes were done nicely. I didn't think it was a masterpiece, but it was a fun summer movie, and I definitely liked it more than Xmen 1 or 2, both of which pretty much bored me.
To the scores:
X-men 3, 2006
Script/Story: 6
Acting/Casting: 6
Action: 8
Combat Realism: 7
Humor: 5
Eye Candy: 6
Fun Factor: 6
Replayability: 7
Overall: 6.5
You can see my reviews of
X-men 1 and
X-men 2 by clicking their golden names, and I'll just add that I gave them a 5 and a 5.5, respectively. This one I gave a 6.5, which isn't a huge improvement, but I did think it was better. This puts me in the minority, since the critical consensus of the 3 films, going by the RottenTomatoes scores, were 80%, 87%, and 54%.
I think a lot of the low scores for this one were pre-judged, by critics hearing about Brian Singer leaving and Brett Ratner coming in, the production being rushed to beat Singer's Superman movie that's due later this summer, etc. Most of the critical comments I've read said things about how this film felt rushed, that the characters needed more time to be delved into, that there were too many mutants with too many powers, etc.
They have a point, but I thought some of those things were improvements. My main dislikes about the first two films were the excessive scenes of whiny, mopey teenagers, the stupid use (or non-use) of mutant powers, and Storm and Cyclops being actively painful when on screen. Xmen 3 improves in all those areas by largely removing the Dawson's Creek style "my life as an outcast teenager is so hard" bullshit, making the mutant powers on display more logical and timely and practical, giving Cyclops almost no screen time at all, and turning Halle Barry's formerly unwatchable Storm into a pretty good character. Xavier continued to be kind of a whiny bitch, but Magneto was still cool, Wolverine was good, and all of the newly-introduced mutants were well-used and not overly annoying.
The plot wasn't great; it was very point A to point B, and didn't have anything even approaching a twist. No one ever did anything you didn't pretty much expect them to do and most of their actions were necessitated by the plot, but I will give the movie credit for killing off or greatly-changing quite a few major characters. I thought most of the events could have been handled better, and we passionlessly saw a lot of things we should have felt a much stronger emotional attachment to, but I thought it was a better film than the first two, and I certainly enjoyed it more.
The real mystery for me was Storm. I would have paid money to have her killed off in movies 1 or 2, or at least for her to have been written out of movie 3. I didn't know if it was her character, her awful Rapunzel wig, or Halle Barry's performance, but whatever the reason, she was actually interesting in this film. She finally got to use some of her powers, she had a lot of dialogue, and while I didn't think her performance was ever more than adequate, it was a much better part.
My knee jerk theory, which could probably be easily-disproved, is that the change in directors made all the difference. It was really the script, but assuming the directors had some hand in that, I'll continue. Brian Singer directed X1 and X2, and while I can't remember if he's openly gay or not, ever gossip blog entry I see about him treats his all-male pool parties and strong attachment to various male stars as a matter of fact aspect of his life. (Google says...
he's out.)As for Brett Ratner, he's notoriously heterosexual, and has been linked to numerous hot starlets, female athletes, models, etc.
Singer seems to be a good director, and yes, most people liked X1 and X2 more than X3, but I didn't like the character interaction stuff that much in the first two, with so much of it feeling full of ham-handed efforts to score societal points about mutants and people not accepting them, with very obvious equivalencies to current issues with homosexuality. I'm not saying there aren't parallels, and I'm certainly sympathetic to his efforts, but I had, "Enough, already!" reactions to a lot of scenes in the first two films. The Ice Kid's awkward family meeting with his mom's well-meaning, "Can't you just try not to be a mutant?" dialogue was groan-inducing, in X2.
At the same time, the female characters were either annoying, or perfect and loved, in X1 and X2. Well, except for Mystique, but she's never really female in anything but having boobs, as she secret agents her way through the films, killing, disguising, spying, and so forth.
In X3, as I've already said, the teen-centric, "Is this a mutant academy or a day care center?" aspects were way toned down in X3, and the female characters were much more interesting. Mystique was the same as ever, and Rogue and the other kids didn't do much, but Storm was 1000% better, Jean Grey as Dark Phoenix was far more interesting than her cutesy love-triangle stuff in the first 2 films, and new addition Kitty Pryde felt like a real person, rather than being all cloying and needy, like most of the kids were in X1 and X2.
If the far more interesting female leads in X3, and their increased humanity, vulnerability, and ferocity were due to the director or script, it's hard to say. And I can't say if Ratner's heterosexuality gave him more insight and interest in the women characters than the apparently-homosexual Singer possessed. But it's a possibility that occurred to me, as I pondered one of the major differences between the Xmen films.
Singer's other films include Apt Pupil and The Usual Suspects; I've never seen the first but the novel has zero female characters, and there's hardly a woman onscreen in the Usual Suspects. Of Ratner's other films I won't even mention Rush Hour 1 and 2, since there aren't any women of importance in them, but there's not any acting either. Red Dragon is the only other film of his I've seen, and it's not much to compare either, with 90% of the film being a police procedural, the only woman being the detective's terrified wife (who does come through strong in the end), and most of the scenes taking place between Ed Norton and Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lecter.
Anyway, I'm not saying gay male directors can't direct women, or craft realistic female characters... just that Bryan Singer appears unable to do so. Even in comparison to a special effects director like Brett Ratner.
Labels: movie review
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