Sunday, December 31, 2006
Happy New Year?
It's 11:16 as I write this, but close enough. Happy New Year, and may you change the aspects of your life that need changing as easily as you turn over a new page on your calendar. (I got a Giger 2007 one the day after Xmas for half price.)
I'm turning over a whole year's worth of new pages of late, and if/when I can finally blog about all that's gone on for the past few months and will be going on during the next year, it'll be quite an interesting recap. Suffice to say, lots of new things, lots of new directions, and lots of major changes. Some of them even have the potential to be good.
I can say that I'm working quite a bit on my novel and that I will be sending out query letters to a bunch of agents in the weeks to come. I don't know if any author ever really feels that they're ready, but I feel more ready than I have in the past, and I am definitely ready for my writing career (the part where I get paid for it) to finally get underway.
Unfortunately, I'm far more confident in the quality of my novel than in the quality of my query letters, but I suppose it's better to think I'll get published once I finally find a good agent, rather than knowing I'll get an agent who would then discover their new client had nothing worth selling.
In other news, the world continues to turn, US soldiers and Iraqi terrorists/freedom fighters continue to die for the stubborn vanity of stupid old white men in Washington, year end best of lists continue to be composed, and lots of football games continue to entertain the easily-entertained. Including me; there were two early and two late games on here yesterday (first time ever?) and I even had the fun of watching the 49ers beat the Donkeys in overtime, thus sending Kansas City into the playoffs, Colts fans into a funk, and Larry Johnson's career into an early twilight. Tomorrow brings another six or eight bowl games, and while I have no particular idea when they are or who is playing, I'll enjoy vegging out, eating left over pizza, and clicking between games during the morning and/or afternoon.
Join me! Or don't; it's a holiday after all, and you should waste the hours as you see fit.
I'd make some resolutions here, but most of them would be personal and make no sense to anyone reading. I'm not even going to resolve to get published, since events have moved well beyond the stage that I can make something as simple as a NYR about it. I would resolve to try new things and embrace new experiences, but that would be like a person on a sinking ship resolving to enjoy the cool embrace of the sea. So I'll just resolve to meet and greet new stuff as best I can, and to work more on my writing than I ever have before. And yes, I say this every year, but this time I mean it. No, really!
Labels: misc
Saturday, December 30, 2006
Arbitrary Plagiarism Definitions
Some random surfing a few days ago took me to Wikipedia, where I ended up reading about Kaavya Viswanathan, 18th century Hindu mystic. No, actually Kaavya is a woman alive today. She's the 19 y/o Harvard student who was busted last year for plagiarizing big chunks of other young adult chick lit books into her young adult chick lit book. To
quote Wikipedia on the pertinent details:
In April 2006, Kaavya's first novel, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life, was published. Shortly after publication, the Harvard Crimson printed allegations that the author plagiarized passages from two novels by Megan McCafferty. The subsequent storm of national publicity led her publisher, Little, Brown and Company, to withdraw all editions of the book, derailed plans by DreamWorks SKG to develop Opal Mehta into a movie, and encouraged readers to identify possible additional plagiarism within its pages.
On May 2, 2006, Michael Pietsch, Little, Brown's senior vice president, released a statement saying "Little, Brown and Company will not be publishing a revised edition of How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life by Kaavya Viswanathan, nor will we publish the second book under contract
She was given a two-book advance of around $500,000, had already sold the film rights, and she was still in her teens and just starting college. And now it's all gone; her literary career ruined -- probably forever. Besides the obvious lesson that you should not plagiarize, especially not from popular, contemporary books in your own genre, this case has lessons for us all.
Or not. Who wants to learn over Xmas holiday anyway? What I find interesting is that she plagiarized, and in fiction, and in stupid, minor ways. The Wikipedia page has side by side comparisons of stuff she lifted from various books, and what makes my head hurt is how unnecessary it was. She didn't steal a plot or a character or anything major that her book needed to work. Kaavya can write just fine; and she did so. What she stole were small descriptive paragraphs that added spice and sparkle, but that were not integral to her novel. She didn't need to steal to make her story work! She's like a successful lawyer getting arrested for shoplifting at Wal-Mart. Or perhaps a bank robber stopping to pick up a penny on his way to the getaway vehicle.
I can't condone it, but I can understand plagiarism in academic work, where (for people who can't write) you're quoting all the time and it could be tempting to kind of "forget" to quote or blockquote something once a in a while, or to lift a clever turn of phrase and use it as though you invented it. Plus, in essays and reports your main theme is almost always duplicating something someone else has already done, directly or indirectly. There are no original ideas in that area, when 40,000,000 other students have already tried their hand at analyzing the ironies inherent in Romeo and Juliet, or the metaphors in the Iliad, or whatever.
But in fiction? I don't understand it there. Why steal when you can just make up something different? And even if you can't make up anything new, you can reuse major themes and archetypes, ala
Eragon or
The Elfstones of Shannara. It's almost impossible to get in plagiarizing trouble that way, which is pretty stupid, when you think about it. You can even take existing characters and write your own take on them -- witness the ongoing Sherlock Holmes stories set all over the world, and even in other times. Witness the
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen style of taking fictional characters and throwing them together in new adventures. Kaavya could probably have written a novel called
Fridget Bones' Live Journal with 90% of the same features of
Helen Fielding's novel, and that would have been fine, as an homage. But she didn't.
Instead, Kaavya wrote an original novel (well, as original as they get while following the chick lit template) and lifted a bunch of random details. She tried to sneak through a minor character who loves her pink rhinestone Playboy tank top, and a character who wears shirts with the names of the days of the week on them, and got busted, since those were distinctive elements in other chick lit books. It all seems so pointless and stupid. Not just her destroying her young career, but the way plagiarism is enforced. Cut and paste a few sentences that are irrelevant to your work as a whole -- you're skinned alive. Essentially
rewrite Lord of the Rings with (barely) new character names -- launch a best selling fantasy series. Who makes up these rules anyway? Why is stealing a paragraph or two verbatim worse than the content/theme/characters of an entire book?
At any rate, I'd love to talk with Kaavya or read an interview in which she really got into it. Why did she steal such dumb stuff? Was there a compulsion? Did she just loved those few small details so much that she couldn't bear to complete her book without including them? I think she's gone into seclusion and isn't talking about it anymore, and I don't know if she ever admitted to the stealing she's been publicly condemned of, but perhaps she can use that for her comeback book after college. Or not.
Labels: plagiarism, writing
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
New Blogger
I finally got around to transferring this blog over to the new non-beta Blogger format, and although it took more than two full days of computer time to complete the operation (hence my Xmas eve story being posted on the 27th) it seems to have finished now. I'm not sure it was worth it; the only real change is the addition of labels, AKA keywords, but since I've always wanted those as a way to easily automate archiving by subject, I'm happy to see them. Of course labels are only useful if I put them on a post, and while I'll be doing that from now on (when appropriate; I don't want to end up with 85% of my posts getting tagged with "personal" or "misc" or something equally useless) it doesn't help the old posts a bit.
In a perfect world I'd have time/inclination to go back and label and 600 or so posts I've made since adding Blogger software last year, and then enter the countless thousands of posts before them, cutting those old (huge) daily rambles into more discrete chunks, and back-dating them appropriately. I could at least paste in the entire body of the 300ish articles into individual back-dated posts, and give them labels I'd use in new posts on the same subject!
Unfortunately, as you've no doubt noticed, this is far from a perfect world, so don't hold your breath for that. Novel writing and agent contacting are now taking a far higher priority than this blog, and even if I had that time I'd probably be wiser to put it into catching up the content stuff on the HGL site, which is in dire need of some major updates before the beta hits and the flood of new info permanently buries me.
Anyway, labels should be working now... I just can't think what to label this post. "Housekeeping," or something like that, although it would eventually end up confusing people looking for that time I talked and using a new carpet shampooer.
Labels: blackchampagne.com
The Great Christmas Eve Chicken Run
Come Christmas Eve, Malaya and I were sick of home cooking and decided we wanted to eat out. Our first thought was Chinese food since well -- A Christmas Story was on its usual twenty-four hour marathon, and "Fa rah rah rah rah, rah rah rah rah." Plus we like Chinese food and don't get it all that often.
Unfortunately, the local place we usually pick up from, which is always very busy, was closed the 24th and 25th. "Damnit, foreigners!" I exclaimed at their answering machine message. "You're not supposed to be Christians! How dare you assimilate to my inconvenience!"
Wracking our brains for an alternative, we ruled out pizza for no particular reason, before I suddenly said, "I wants chicken!" We last ate KFC in about 2005, but with the statement made, our desire for it grew large enough to overshadow all other dietary concepts.
"Do we have any coupons?" I asked, knowing full well that 1) we get one every week at the PO Box, 2) I always throw it and the rest of the junk mail away, and 3) we never get the same junk mail at the apartment. Malaya looked and found one in the Entertainment Book, but of course it was for a single restaurant, way the hell
down south in Fremont.
We knew there was a KFC in Lafayette though, and said what the hell, we'd just pay full price. So into the car we hopped, at around 6pm Christmas Eve, and drove down Mt. Diablo Blvd. Past the new library site, past McDonald's, past Jack in the Box, and as we got near the hardware store I was like, "I'm pretty sure it was way back there, and it was gone."
Malaya was dozing and grunted, so we drove back yep, there was an unoccupied fast food establishment, emptied of plastic tables and unadorned by signs or brightly-colored logos, but still boasting the distinctive
steeple architecture. The sign in the window said, "Coming Soon." Okay, but what's coming soon? A new house of chicken torture, or something different?
It hardly mattered, since we couldn't imagine the new arrival would come in Santa's sleigh, so into the car we hopped to find another outlet. Since most people do like me, and throw their junk mail in the trash right at the post office, I figured we could just cruise up the street (we were only a few blocks away) and root through the trash and find a KFC mailer, giving us not only a coupon, but a list of locations. The only one I knew of was on the way to Costco, and that's way the hell over in Concord, nearly 15 miles and innumerable stop lights and clueless Christmas Eve drivers away.
I was half right. I found a KFC coupon soon enough, near the top of the first recyclables bin I dumpster dove into. It didn't tell me anymore about how to buy the shit though, since there were no locations listed. So, away to Concord we went, and of course now that I'm at my computer and I check the KFC website, I see that they have
a location in much nearer-by Walnut Creek. Beak-ripping sons of bitches!
Wait, the story gets even worse.
So we drove out to Concord, putting along at 65ish on the uncrowded freeway since everyone was either too drunk or too full of Xmas fucking cheer to remember the location of their gas pedals. And the "restaurant" was even open, much to our relief after we'd seen innumerable other stores closed on the way out there. Honestly, since when is Christmas Eve a holiday? I always had to work it without any extra pay back when I was still a contributing member of society.
KFC was open though, and crowded, with several cars in the drive through and lots of people inside. We soon found out why. "We out of chicken. All regular and no crispy. Twenty minute." the manager breathlessly informed us with an accent that would have been more at home at
Crazy Grilled Chicken than Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Nonplussed, Malaya and I took a moment to get our oars back into the water. "But we have a coupon." I insisted, to no one in particular. Tragically, a closer look showed no guarantee of actual chicken availability on said coupon, so it looked like we were stuck waiting. It was 6:45, they were closing at 7:00, and the chicken would not be ready for 20 minutes. Kentucky Fried Venison was not an option.
So we waited, of course. Sitting quietly, in a corner booth, waiting our turn to consume. Like good Americans. I put in our order first, and got us a six-piece meal, with two cole slaws, two mashed potatoes, and two biscuits. It was $7.99 (plus tax) on the coupon, and the register went up to about $12.25 when she rang it up, so I guess the $3 we saved pretty much cancelled out, factoring in the ice cap-melting gas I burned driving out there. But we had chicken! And mashed potato foam-like stuff! And confetti-ed cabbage with white goo on top! And biscuits!
Well, not so much the last one. We got one biscuit and 1 slab o'cornbread, since that's all they had left. I guess Santa's pretty much out of luck when he shows.
Unsurprisingly, given that they fried it up at the last minute, while in a hurry to get home for some Feliz Navidad, the chicken was somewhat undercooked and the skin was falling off the meat when we got it home and dug in. My biscuit was pretty good too, though I can't really vouch for Malaya's cornbread slab.
On the whole, it wasn't a bad meal, though I'm not really ready to declare this a new holiday tradition or anything. It was interesting, and we certainly saw customers of every um... socioeconomic level at the store. Two fat women in pink shoes and wild hair, an old man with a dent in the side of his head and eyes that fell hungrily upon Malaya's sweatshirt-swathed form, and their leader, a half-shaved homeless mental patient sitting outside and staring unblinkingly in through the window.
That we had one big breast piece left over to pick apart, cold, on Christmas morning was a nice bonus. The fact that that's all we had left highlighted the fact that we should probably have ordered a 12 or 16 piece bucket,
calories be damned. As everyone knows, calories don't count between Xmas and New Years. Not even when you rack up well over 1000 for two pieces of fried chicken, two small side dishes, and a small drink.
Labels: fast food
Monday, December 25, 2006
July 4th. Save the date!
Since none of the Xmas movies are of much interest to me this year, I thought I'd comment on a pair of new trailers for big action spectaculars coming this summer.
Die Hard 4 and
Transformers. Each has a pretty, explosion-filled trailer, but neither really grabbed me and neither looks much like what I expected it to look like.
The
Die Hard 4 trailer is pretty much unrecognizable as a
Die Hard movie. Isn't the whole point of the series to get Bruce Willis stuck in some confined location, fighting terrorists while his annoying, soft-focused, big-haired wife is in jeopardy? I guess
Die Hard 3 got away from that scenario, and as best I remember it most of the movie had Willis running around New York with Samuel L. Jackson while they tried to defuse bombs a terrorist was planting. There was some subplot about gold theft or whatever, but it's been years and it's all a blur now.
Die Hard 4 though, could be any action movie. Mission Impossible 4, a new James Bond, anything. My impression is that it's meant to rip off TV show
24, by setting it in NYC and having lots of fast action sequences. (Which 24 may or may not have; I've never actually seen the show, and I wonder how much action they can possibly have per episode when they've got to drag the plot out over 24 weeks.)
There are a couple of good stunts in the DH4 trailer though; I liked the flying car that nearly lands on them when two other cars pull up at the last second, and the car jumping up a toll both into a helicopter. The fact that Bruce looks about 60 now doesn't help though, nor does the fact that that sulky, unshaven pretty boy in the car with him is apparently the Robin to his Batman. Or something like that. Remember when action heroes were um... heroic? Not vulnerable pouters straight from the cover of
Tiger Beat?
Elsewhere, the
Transformers trailer is online, and it's also full of lots of big explosions and a strange mood. Maybe I was less than a true believer, but my young boy recollections of Transformers was as a very cheesy, GI Joe/He-Man quality cartoon with talking trucks and fighter planes that turned into robots with no conservation of matter. They had guns and they fought and every week the evil Decepticons betrayed and tried to murder the good Autobots who always won, and then let the bad guys go because good guys are noble and don't punish bad guys, thus freeing them to return with another nefarious scheme the next week. Essentially the way Dr. Evil treats a captured Austin Powers, just out of the kindness of their robotic hearts rather than incompetence.
The Transformers movie has been getting a lot of geek hype though, and it seems that some people actually take the plot (there was a plot?) seriously, and are all upset that the role of humans is too large, or that there are minor cosmetic changes to the trucks and cars and planes, (well duh, the series was drawn in the 80s; vehicles look a lot different now), and that it won't live up to their childhood memories. I'm not worried about that. My memories are of a cartoon with a cute concept targeted towards nine year old boys (robots in disguise!). It was poorly animated, filled with stupid voices, and reused the same plot every episode. God forbid someone tamper with the sacred formula!
That being said, this trailer sets up a film I did not at all expect. It's way, way, way overserious, with attempts to make it myseriously and scary and shocking and full of revelations. Why? It's as if they made a new
Ghostbusters movie and the whole trailer was this mysterious, dark,
The Grudge-like creepfest: are there really ghosts? What do they want? Can they be stopped? Who are they fooling? It's a stupid movie about giant robots blowing up puny human tanks and fighting each other. It's
Godzilla vs. Mothra with sparkplugs. Drop the pretentions, kids. No one's buying a ticket for the suspense and mystery, and if you take more than 15 minutes to get to the robots blowing each other up, viewers will feel ripped off.
That being said, the special effects and explosions look pretty cool, and I can more easily imagine myself sitting through
Transformers 1 than
Die Hard 4, just because I've seen gun fights and cars and helicopters blow up before, but I have not seen an unlimited budget action fest with giant fighting robots.
Labels: movies
Saturday, December 23, 2006
Back home and back to work.
I am returned from my relatively brief holiday sojourn, and aside from suffering allergy attacks in San Diego and flying home with congestion that hardened into a head cold, I enjoyed my trip. I actually got back almost two days ago, but since I've spent at least 30 of the preceding 45 hours in bed, and most of my waking time sniffing, sneezing, working on a cough (getting pretty good at it, thanks), and itching my puffy, reddened eyes, you can perhaps forgive my laggard blog posting.
At least I got back without delay; plenty of
American air travelers did not.
DENVER - Denver's snowed-in airport reopened Friday for the first time in two days, but the backlog of flights around the country could take all weekend to clear, and many of the nearly 5,000 holiday travelers stranded here might not make it home for Christmas.
As planes began taking off again, passengers with long-standing reservations filled most of the outbound flights. That was bad news for those waiting to rebook flights canceled during the storm.
"Unfortunately, this comes down to basic math," said airport spokesman Chuck Cannon. "You've got thousands of people standing in lines, and the airlines do not have thousands of seats."
The departure of a Frontier Airlines flight for Atlanta a few minutes after noon was greeted glumly by Christina Kuroiwa, a Fort Collins, Colo., woman who had been trying to get to San Jose, Calif.
"Well, I guess that's good for them, but it really doesn't help me," said Kuroiwa, who had actually gotten on a plane Wednesday, only to sit stuck in the snow on the runway for 8 1/2 hours.
That sort of thing is why I 1) only fly between cities with (relatively) warm weather, and 2) do so on the 16th and 20th, rather than waiting for core Xmas travel days with core Xmas travel crowds. Then again, I live in a city without snow, my relatives live in San Diego, and I don't have a job to prevent me from taking my Xmas vacation a week early. So it's not as if I'm a representative sample. I just remember spending a night and then 12 hours the next day in the Houston airport several years ago, walking from gate to gate, (unsuccessfully) getting on the stand by list for flights to San Diego. The fact that the weather outside was clear and cool, and that the delay was due to snow or ice in other airports hundreds of miles away (such as Dallas) was what really galled me.
Anyway, this year's visit to the parents was fine, we did fun stuff and imbibed turkey and holiday cheer, and now I'm back to continue placing my feet in the fire of getting this damn fantasy novel published ASAP. (To mangle a metaphor.) I took the print out along with me to San Diego (ridiculous carry on luggage weight; the whole novel is a good 8 inches stacked up, small font) and read a fair amount of it there, and I'm finishing it up back here. It's way, way too long, I know that, but I can see where/how to make cuts. It'll hurt though; chapter two is going from something like 211 pages down to about 40, and those 271 pages aren't all shit; they're just not part of the flow of the rest of the book. Chapter 3 will get similar trimming, and then 4 and 5 as well, to a lesser extent. Six through eight are more balanced, in terms of content and pace and such, so I'm hoping they won't seem so in need of hacking, when I reread them in a day or two.
Basically, I started off the novel about this old necromancer/wizard and the young thief he meets in a cemetery. (As most of you probably read in
the sample version of that chapter, posted more than four years ago.) They escape from the city with lots of dudes after them and take refuge in a hidden cave. Chapter two-four then told of their cave, a long chase across the land through forests and over mountains, to the land to the Necromancer's home, and then to a distant land where the story really gets going. There's a ton of conversation and lots of chasing events and world history and combat training and ancient mysteries and so forth, but the very basic plot outline in this paragraph pretty well sums it up. Which is fine, except that I can't have it take 1/2-2/5 of the book's length, when chapters 5-8 are from the POV of multiple other characters, and cover huge wars, city sieges, quest conclusions, introduce numerous new characters, cover events all across the world, etc.
I could possibly have the whole book be a relatively small story of two or three main characters on their long quest, interacting only occasionally with other people, but I think that would get boring and seem insufficient. I can’t have half the book do that, and half do something very different and much broader in scope, though. Which is why I need to trim down at least 3/4 of the opening half, while working in more foreshadowing to the big events that come later. And that's my job/chore for the remainder of December and into January, while free time remains. That and working on a short synopsis for the whole thing, crafting query letters to agents, finding likely agents to send said letters to, and so forth.
By the way, if anyone's got a relative running a literary agency, or owning say, Random House, now would be a good time to speak up.
Labels: holidays, the fantasy novel, travel
Saturday, December 16, 2006
Xmas Trip
I'm off on my semi-annual pilgrimage to visit the folks in San Diego. I'll be down there until Wednesday night, and I'm ready for a break from the Internet, and I've got a print out of my novel to work over and various books of agent listings to go through and holiday events to enjoy, and even a book to read for enjoyment; something I haven't had time to do since August. In short, I won't be online or blogging much, which means posting here will... continue at the same rate it has for the past months, basically.
Labels: travel
Friday, December 15, 2006
Random Question.
If triathlons had a weight lifting component, who would win them? Okay, quadathlons. Run a marathon, swim a few miles, bike 120 miles, and then what's a fair comparison? Lift 10 tons of free weights, in whatever denomination you desire? So you'd need to do 5000 20 pound arm curls, or something like that. I suppose you'e need rules forcing a variety of weight lifting, or someone could just do a bunch of squats, using the same muscles they use for running and biking.
Anyway, assuming some governing body worked out an equitable distribution of weight lifting requirements, and it was roughly as grueling as the other three legs of the event (not that they're actually balanced; the swimming takes a fraction the time of the running/biking) what sort of person would win? I can't see the pencil thin runner types managing the weight lifting, but those super skinny Kenyan types are mostly marathoners anyway; you need more muscle to have the endurance to finish a full triathlon in 8-9 hours. I can't see big muscular types doing it either; sure they'd blow through the weights in 1/10th the time, but weight lifting is a high energy, short time activity. You can't lift weights for an hour, not without lots of downtime between sets, and that hardly fits into a race.
So... the muscular guys (and girls) would clean up on weights, and then get lapped during the marathon and bike and finish 3 hours behind. In other words, quadathlon winners would be... slightly more muscular triathletes. Well, that was a pointless little exercise in logic, wasn't it?
Labels: fitness
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Top Songs of the Year
I never listen to the radio, and I haven't watched Mtv in years, so I never get exposed to any new music. For the most part this is a choice, since like almost every living human past the age of 24, I think all new music sucks and sounds like a cheap ripoff of something I like when I was 15 (which of course sounded like a cheap rip off of something popular before I was alive, unbeknownst to me). In light of that, when I saw a link to
Rolling Stone's top 100 songs of the 2006, I clicked it out of curiosity.
As expected, I've never heard most of the songs. In fact, I've never heard of most of the songs, or the groups playing them. Out of the top 20, I've heard #1 (Gnarls Barkley, Crazy), #11 (Pearl Jam, World Wide Suicide), and maybe #20. (I heard some Dixie Chicks song when this album was new, but I don't think it was this one.) Extending my survey to the top 30 changes little. I've heard part of #21 (Justin Timberland, Sexy Back), and I kind of like #22 (RHCP, Tell Me Baby, though I wouldn't put it in their top 20 best tunes). That's it.
As for the bands? I've heard of the artists who did 1, 6, 11, 12, 17, 18, and 20. So hey, 35% of the top 20. Probably slightly more than either of my parents could boast!
I'm not looking to change this, since I don't care about the musical aspect of pop culture, but I was kind of curious, and thanks to YouTube's convenient copyright violation master list, I knew I could see a video for every song. So here we go. The song names are linked to YouTube videos, and if they go dead you can always just search by the song/artist and find a newer upload.
#1:
Crazy, Gnarls Barkley. I have to admit to liking this song a lot. I think I blogged about it at some point, but I've been listening to it on and off all year, and Malaya bought it from iTunes, so we can hear it in the car. It's entirely innocuous, but it's got a nice rhythm and beat and the vocals are divine.
#2,
Steady as She Goes. The Raconteurs. Bored me, band has no look, and sounds like a bad lounge act covering Nirvana. Slow parts, repetitious verses, with occasional moments of faster rocking, which quickly fade to a boring endless chorus that repeats the title over and over and over again, with none of the brooding or melancholy that made it work or say, Nirvana. This is why people like me, who grew up with metal and alternative and grunge, can't stand any current rock groups.
#3:
Ridin, Chamomille. After an unfortunate opening with some sort of pro wrestling montage, this one revealed itself as... the (maybe) best Weird Al song ever! I had no idea who he got
White and Nerdy from, but apparently it's this song. Watch the Weird Al version if you must; it's the same song but it's funny. Plus his name isn't better known as a type of tea.
#4:
What You Know, T.I. The billionth rap song about being rich and misunderstood, and I'm pretty much tired of the highly-derivative genre by now, but this isn't a bad song. It's got an interesting music bed; all synthizers that almost sound like something from Chariots of Fire. If the guy's got anything to say, I couldn't tell you what it is; the soothing music lulls the attention and then he's mostly just muttering "wha'chou know abou' dat?" for the 4 minutes. I can't imagine listening to this on purpose, but I didn't stop it to avoid hearing it, as I did with most of the songs on this top 10 list.
#5:
Vans, The Pack. More rap, this time a song about Vans. You know, the shoes. It's funny that those are popular again, since they're all I wore from about 8-10th grade, since I was a skateboarder and they were good for that, and were underground fashion at the time. I've not worn any for at least a decade, but find it amusing that contemporary hip hop artists are now embracing them. Remember what I said about how all this music sounds like something I liked when I was 15? Apparently that goes for the fashions too. As for the song, eh. It's basically the same as #4; 90% chorus and soothing, low key music; the whole thing kind of travels below my audible threshold, it's basically filler mood music; not something I'd ever listen to with any attention paid to it, but at least it's not actively unpleasant.
#6,
Thunder on the Mountain, Bob Dylan. I've always made an effort to avoid Dylan for the same reason I scorn the Beatles annual rereleased greatest hits. I just get sick of baby boomers digging up everything they thought was great in 1967 and trying to force everyone under 40 to embrace it too. I'm willing to give this song a try, but it's not easy. There are only 6 returns for this song on YouTube, compared to thousands for all the others on the list yet, which probably says a lot about Dylan's popularity amongst the under 25 set who power YouTube. All are videos of various concert performances too, so the sound isn't good. The linked one is about the best, and as for the song... eh. Dylan reminds me of the Grateful Dead, where every song is performed (live) by a vast rock orchestra with keyboards, drums, guitars, strings, bells, whistles, and more. It makes every song sound basically the same, and Dylan's mumbly lyrics don't do much to help. This isn't bad, but it's unnecessary, and indistinguishable from 50 other post-hippy blues-style rock jams.
#7:
Smile, Lily Allen. Wow, it's No Doubt! With one of the Spice Girls on vocals! Seriously, WTF? This is weird. Is this English music, or is she some Britney clone affecting an accent to stand out? Anyway, I got through about 2 minutes (most of it spent typing this entry) and lost interest.
#8:
Wamp Wamp (What It Do), Clipse with Slim Thug. Well, I'm guessing rap, by the title. (Quite an insight, eh?) The song's got a great beat and music, with the steel drum and other percussion. The rapping is pretty disposable, but repeating the chorus occupies less than 75% of the total run time, so they get bonus points for actually writing some lyrics. I do miss the early rap, when groups with multiple vocalists actually interacted. Run DMC and The Beastie Boys, for instance, teamed up on almost every line, taking turns talking, using their voices as instruments with different pitches and rhythms, etc. Every song now is so lazy, with two or three guys just taking turns talking, and maybe doubling up on the chorus, at best.
#9:
Dimension, Wolfmother. None of the first page of results is the video, and since concert recordings always suck for sound, my link goes to some homemade video. I'm listening while typing anyway, rather than watching. And I'm apparently listening to Led Zepplin. Seriously, this is a new band? Do they pay Robert Plant and Jimmy Page royalties? Next.
#10:
Oh La La, Goldfrapp. It's some kind of Britney/Christina-styled club dance song, but it's not bad. Like most of the rest, I wouldn't listen to it on purpose, but it's decent background noise. Reminds me of Madonna's Zephyr Song, with more insipid vocals/lyrics. It's funny how music works; you can make a great song with about 25 words, 10 of which you repeat 50 times during the chorus. Imagine if books worked that way? Several straight pages of the same sentence, over and over again? And then a page of new words, and then more pages of the same sentence. That would obviously be unreadable, but somehow it works with music, since the sound soothes or lulls our critical thinking brain?
And, that'll do it for this year's Rolling Stone Top Ten! I heard nothing I want to hear again (other than Crazy and the Weird Al remake) but it wasn't nearly as painful as I expected going in. If anyone wants to recommend a new song they actually like, feel free in comments. I'll give it a listen. That's what YouTube is for, after all.
Labels: music, rap, weird al, you tube
Saturday, December 09, 2006
Human Evolution in Evidence
Malaya's office Xmas party went down Friday night, and it wasn't bad. The food was pretty good, as is usually the case, and the level layout was modified again, slightly for the better. Less of a bottleneck around the hot food tables, though putting the cheese/crackers spread on a table in the corner was a terrible choice. Besides the design though, one memorable aspect was our brief encounter with a fat, dirty old man who sexually harassed Malaya when she was new to the job. She's got to be civil to him since he's got seniority, and honestly, we don't think he knows what he did. He's just this old trollish guy, and he probably treats every young woman in the same way. So he really didn't mean anything by it, but at the same time, he should fucking know fucking better.
At any rate, near the end of the event he came waddling through the mass of tables to one side of the dance floor and spotted Malaya where she was sitting. He ponderously made his way to us and said "Hi." and shook her hand. I had to do the same when she introduced me as "her partner Eric," and I determined to give him a decent squeeze. I've got a pretty good grip from the martial arts and weight lifting, and I didn't try to injure the guy or anything, but I let him feel the pressure on his swollen, hot water bottle hand.
Did he get a lesson? Not at all. In fact, I was pwned when he executed some sort of squid-like escape tactic and excreted a slimy, rancid liquid before quickly disengaging. I don't know what he did or what it was, but when I pulled my hand back my fingers were visibly damp with a colorless liquid, and it was wincingly rank. I sniffed it and recoiled and gave Malaya a whiff with identical results. I actually had to go wash my hands since I didn't want to wipe his spooge off on my dress slacks.
I think it was just sweat on his palms, and Malaya didn't touch it with her smaller hands but my fingers wrapped around far enough to encounter the reservoir. I can't imagine why it stunk so badly though; it was easily the worst BO I've ever encountered on any human perspiration. Knowing what I do about the guy though, it's fitting that the inside of him stinks like that. Like something that washed up on the beach, a high tide or two ago.
Labels: evolution, odd social interactions
Friday, December 08, 2006
Today's International Humiliation Winner Is...
India, which has
officially been designated as a shrimp dick nation. Congrats, guys!
Oversized condoms a headache for many Indian men
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Condoms designed to meet international size specifications are too big for many Indian men as their penises fall short of what manufacturers had anticipated, an Indian study has found.
The Indian Council of Medical Research, a leading state-run centre, said its initial findings from a two-year study showed 60 percent of men in the financial capital Mumbai had penises about 2.4 cm (one inch) shorter than those condoms catered for.
For a further 30 percent, the difference was at least 5 cm (two inches). A poor fit meant the prophylactics often didn't do the job they were bought for, and led to some tearing or slipping off during use.
On the other hand, this does at least answer any question about whether penis length correlates with ability to impregnate. Chinese men aren't exactly known for their hung-itude either, you know.
Labels: penis size
Recent Entertainment Opinions
It's been forever since I blogged, but trust me, my typing fingers have not been idle. Just very busy on other things. Anyway, I've been making notes now and then on stuff to blog about when I had the time, and while most of the notes have now drifted well into the "what the hell does that mean?" zone, a few remain. I've enjoyed a bit of entertainment, for one thing.
I watched Ghost in the Shell 2 for the second time, and enjoyed it more than my first viewing. I don’t think I've ever said this about any movie of any kind, but it's honestly worth watching just for the visuals. I would have loved to see this one on a big screen, though that would have taken some doing with the very minimal (or nonexistent) theatrical release Anime gets in the US. I blogged about the visuals in
my first viewing/review, and everything I said then is doubly true now.
Well, perhaps not doubly, but still true, if at a percentage less than 200.
I still have not seen Ghost in the Shell 1 again, though I see in my original review of the sequel I made that a priority. The central theme of each movie is the same though. Besides the cool action techy Blade Runner-flavored future police in Tokyo stuff, the movies are mostly about cyborgs and androids and souls, and what humans have that self aware robots do not. In the second film there are androids that are being created with souls, and while thinking about that and other movies and TV shows that have delved into that concept, I came to a conclusion.
One of the greatest of human conceits in fiction (after the high place hairless primates are accorded in every earthly religion) is the way robots and computer programs and other synthetic thinking objects always desperately long to be human. They want emotions, they want mortality, and the almost always view their own immortal, unemotional, logical states as a sort of torture to be escaped by death, or humanity. Think about that. Why on earth would a robot want to subject itself to weakness, fallibility, self-doubt, illogical impulses, and all the other aspects of weakness that infect humans? It's absurd; a computer could just give itself a random-function virus if it wanted to misfire and do things against its will, or write a program to randomly reformat its hard drives sometime between now and fifty years from now, if it wanted the illusion of mortality.
Isn't a robot wanting to be human basically the same thing as a human wanting to be an animal? Who needs a conscience and sense of duty and responsibility? Screw these higher brain functions! I want to be a creature of instinct, free of worry and happy as a mongoloid. A slave to my bodily needs! A creature of instinct, enslaved only by my bodily needs and incapable of foresight or worry or existential fear or ennui?
Or not.
Anyway, in most Sci-Fi presentations of the subject, the minute some robot achieves consciousness it either determines to exterminate the human race, or else starts philosophizing about how it'll never be complete since it can't feel emotions and will never be human. Why wouldn't it just be happy (so to speak) to be the most brilliant object on the planet and capable of doing anything it wants to with our computer networks? Study humans to be better able to predict their emotional and unpredictable natures, sure. Become one with all of their weaknesses? Hell no!
Yet the robots always envy (as best they can) our emotions, which I think is a ridiculous, yet inevitable, conceit. Of course the writers have the fictional robot want to be like us. We're stuck being like us, after all, so we must imagine it as a desirable state, no matter how improbable it is that any self-aware robot would agree. Sure the robot could be programmed to want to be human, but I'm assuming that any machine this smart would be able to undo or redo its own internal programming, and that it would do so if the programming had it thinking or doing things that were illogical or harmful to itself.
That level of debate is never addressed in popular portrayals of the issue; at least not in movie or film. Maybe it has been in some books; I dunno. I just like the plot point has been used so many times that it's almost a given now. Of course a robot wants to be human; they always do. Humans want to believe this since we're emotional creatures, unable to see past our own emotional blinders. We therefore fashion them into enviable characteristics, or even into advantages, allowing us to think non-linearly and best our intellectually superior robot adversaries with tactics they can not anticipate.
It's a fun fairy tale, but check out the latest man vs. machine chess results, and get back to me. The computer won most of the games against the greatest living human chess player, and the computers get better every day. It would beat the rest of us 1000 out of 1000 times, while taking approximately 1 second to contemplate each move. Do you think old Deep Blue v9.03 needs emotion to defeat us at the most human and intuitive of games?
On that topic, one thing I liked about the machines in The Matrix was that they didn't want emotions, didn't care about love or other mushy stuff, and generally ridiculed humans for being burdened by them. Agent Smith just wants to exterminate humans so he (it?) can go free into the nothingness of program oblivion, and Colonel "the Architect" Sanders in Matrix 2 (and 3, as best I recall having never watched it again) dismisses Neo's predictable and illogical emotional responses to issues.
Yes, you're thinking, but humans always win in those sorts of confrontations. Of course they do! Humans are writing the stories! On a microcosm, emotions get fictional characters into trouble. On a larger scale though, humans always win because they're too tricky for the robots to deal with. (As if the robots wouldn't simply plan for every outcome and prepare accordingly, with their 10 billion calculation an instant silicone brains.) Remember every episode of
Star Trek, with Spock scolding Kirk or Bones for being emotional and human, and then when they did what their emotions led them to do, all was well. Spock wasn't a robot, but the principle was the same as a Vulcan. And of course since he was only half-Vulcan, he occasionally let his emotions in, and invariably they saved the day when he acted that way. Funny how those "all too human" emotions never lead themselves or their faction to ruin when battling the robots or monsters or aliens or whatever, despite all human history being full of generals and other warriors getting themselves and their people wiped out by fighting for revenge, or convincing themselves a bold assault would carry the day, etc.
Just to be contrary, I'll have to write a story some day where it's humans vs. robots, and the humans do what their emotions and intuition and gut tells them, and the robots easily counter it and then triumph thanks to their superior intellect and painstaking attention to detail. Reading reader reaction to that one would be interesting. Would people think it was a breath of fresh air and like the alternative ending? Or would they be upset by it turning over the applecart of literary convention and making it seem that perhaps humans aren't the most special, capable, and precious thing that will ever inhabit this earth?
In other second viewing movie news, I recently watched Kung Fu Hustle for the second time, and liked it more than the first. My first viewing in theaters left me sort of confused by the awkward mixture of humor, cartoonish action, slapstick violence, and sentimentality. I
gave it a 6.5 and expressed confusion over the tone. On a second viewing, I knew what to expect, and felt that it just flowed more smoothly.
The serious and sentimental bits didn't seem so out of place, the occasional bits of cruelty didn't stand out so much, and the generally light-hearted tone and multi-faceted characters fit neatly. I'd give it a 7.5 now, or maybe even an 8 or 9, if I considered it as and compared it to other martial arts films.
And speaking of other martial arts films, Malaya, Caaroid (in town from Hungary) and I saw the latest (and last?) Jet Li wuxia epic a couple of months ago, and were not impressed. Fearless, this one was called on these shores, and while I've not yet had time to write a review, I'll give it a quick score now.
Fearless, 2006
Script/Story: 4
Acting/Casting: 3
Action: 7
Combat Realism: 4
Humor: 2
Eye Candy: 5
Fun Factor: 5
Replayability: 6
Overall: 4
Fearless garnered a rather astonishing
72% on RT, I'm guessing from non-martial arts fans, since Malaya, Caaroid, and me are all big fans of the genre, and we all thought this one sucked. Boring, preachy, overlong, and just stuffed with clichés and formulaic bullshit. I'm about to
spoiler/synopsize the whole plot, so avert your eyes for a paragraph if you care.
In a nutshell, the movie is about a young boy who wants to learn martial arts. His dad is the local master but he won't teach the kid since he wants him to get educated and not be a fighter. The kid (Let Ji's character) refuses though, and learns despite his dad's efforts to stop him, while getting his ass kicked a few times by kids who learn other schools of martial arts. Jet Li gets better as he grows though, and beats up the grown versions of his childhood enemies, gets cocky and enjoys fighting, has no higher enlightenment, and eventually insists on dueling a rival on his wedding day, killing the man who was blameless in a dispute. Wracked by terrible guilt, Jet Li wanders off into the countryside, nearly dies, then grows a waist length beard in about three days, before finding redemption working the soil (rice paddy) as a man of the earth. Honest and penniless country folk take him in and a blind girl who inspires him to be a better man and enjoy the simple things in life. Recharged he returns to civilization just in time to beat up a bunch of evil imperialist Europeans and Japanese who are occupying China, before dying in a noble sacrifice after he is poisoned by a turncoat Chinese capitalist. In death, his noble example inspires his people to resist their occupiers and become the great nation we now know and love.
Honestly, count the cliches in there. I can't even tally them all. Young boy wants to avenge father's death and dishonor. Young boy gets revenge on people who did him wrong in his youth. Powerful young man gets cocky and does something violent. Heedless young man realizes the error of his ways and vanishes from the corrupting big city. Big city fool finds his way amongst simple country people. Poor people teach big city type what life is really about. Man returns from countryside recharged and masters his enemies in the city. Hero overcomes impossible odds against cheating bad guys with honor. Hero fights makes noble sacrifice. And so on.
The whole movie is just a long string of overused, tired plot devices, with no performances of any quality. Jet Li has a great, pockmarked, weary face, but my god he can't act. After fifteen minutes of this movie, I whispered to Malaya, "Well, now we know Jet Li can't act in any language." Honestly, I'd long heard that he wasn't a bad actor, but that it was his poor English that held him back. I've seen him in Chinese movies, but they were such low budget crap that it was hard to judge. This one was big budget non-crap, and he was still robotic, even when the roll required him to be manic and drunken and murderous. Un-con-vincing.
Fearless wouldn't have been any good even if Jet Li could act; the awful plot would have undermined any actor, but his wooden presence certainly didn't help.
As for the fight scenes they were pretty good. Not great; there was too much wire fu and obviously choreographed and/or film-sped-up stuff, but it wasn't bad. Jet Li does some nice weapons work, though most of his sword play and punching is way too big to work against a skilled opponent. Furthermore, the fight physics are ridiculous, considering that this is supposed to be a realistic film. It's not a Crouching Tiger kind of thing where everyone's flying around and leaping over buildings. It's mostly real, which makes the occasional moments when fighters jump and go ten feet high and change direction in mid air feel out of place. Jet also has one scene where he knocks a gigantic guy over the ropes in a wrestling ring and catches his feet to hold him up. Which is cool, except that the guy has to weigh twice what Jet does, and would simply lift him up off the ground like a little kid holding onto one end of a seesaw while his dad sits on the other side.
Strength is one thing. We can pretend that Jet can deal with a guy who could do reps with more than his body weight. Leverage and force is also debatable, but the guy wasn't pushing Jet, he was simply falling over backwards, and Jet was holding him down despite the falling weight clearly outweighing his slight little Chinese body. Use a truck to haul twice your body weight up over a high beam, then take hold of the rope and untie it from the truck. Then see how long your feet stay on the ground.
Fearless is probably worth watching just for the fight scenes, but only if you're a fan of this genre, and you won't regret the hour of your life you'll never get back.
Labels: ghost in the shell, jet li, movies
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Borat Explained
Interesting and
long article in Rolling Stone about Sasha Cohen and his Borat character, and how they got those people to actually appear in the film.
For the Borat film and TV segments, on the other hand, subjects are told that the crew is shooting a documentary intended for Kazakhstan television. Much to the surprise of producers, celebrities and politicians are willing to do such an obscure interview and, once on camera, are eager to please.
Because Da Ali G Show had run already for two seasons on HBO, most of the Borat movie had to be shot in areas of the Deep South with minimal cable penetration. As an extra precaution, during the pre-interview, researchers made sure subjects hadn't heard of Baron Cohen. For a final safety measure, a lawyer was kept on retainer. Before each scene, producers would tell her what they planned to do, and she'd let them know where the boundary between comedy and criminality lies.
Once on site, the first order of business is to get subjects to sign releases, which are worded vaguely and omit the actual name of the media outlet where the show will air. In the case of scenes shot in public, passers-by are given releases before entering the area. "We'd have someone in the lobby of a hotel with release forms," Borat director Larry Charles, who previously directed Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, recalls of one scene. (Full disclosure: Charles is slated to direct the film version of a book I wrote, The Dirt.) "We'd tell people we were shooting today and they may be in the background of a shot. Then they'd get in the elevator and, boom, two naked guys would come running in."
...As Borat, Baron Cohen tests his subjects differently. First, he'll often give them a Kazakh cigarette or do something else to prove his authenticity. Occasionally, he'll start the interview by giving them a gift -- a tin of fish, a bag of cookies or an over-affectionate kiss. He watches as they accept the gift (or decline it), and the manner in which they do so lets him know how far they're willing to go. In the case of right-wing activist Alan Keyes, the gift was identified as the rib of a Jew. Keyes accepted the gift with the words, "Thank you very much." However, as it dawned on him what he'd just done on camera, he freaked out, tore his microphone off and stormed out of the room. Producers were able to bring him back into the interview by saying there had been a misunderstanding and Borat had said a "dew's rib," as in a rib of the morning dew, which may not have made any more sense to Keyes but at least it couldn't ruin his political career.
The article is great, though I think they cross the line when they intimate that designated Uncle Tom Alan Keyes has a political career. Honestly, given the people Keyes is designed to appeal to (who are never numerous enough to actually elect him to anything), would anti-Semitism really be a problem?
As for Borat, they talk about hiding him from the police, dealing with the secret service, producers being arrested and spending 19 hours in jail for bits that didn't even make it into the movie, and more.
Labels: borat, movies
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