Bears vs Vikings, or let's not start sucking each other's ***** yet

To any Bears fans getting overly excited about this Sunday's game, I'd like to point out a few things.

Any defensive powerhouse relies heavily on the running game as their first line of defense, because if you leave any defensive unit on the field too long, they'll wear down, make mistakes, and give up points.  It remains extremely difficult to run on the Vikings, who are ranked 1st in rushing defense.  Really, their glaring weakness recently has been the ridiculous amount of passing yards the team has given up, and even when they give up 400 yards passing and keep coughing the ball up, the Vikings still don't give up that many points, and have played a lot of close games.  So realistically, the Bears need to get something out of the passing game to keep the whole game-plan from unraveling, and to keep this from coming down to a lucky break.

And therein lies the problem.  Rex Grossman has 10 turnovers in the last month, including seven interceptions.  And it's not enough for Grossman to just suck, he has to do it in style.  After the Bears defense bailed him out by coming up with a turnover in the closing minutes of his last game against the Vikings, Sexy Rexy started off on such a ridiculous tirade of trashtalk that even he had to admit he's an idiot for patting himself on the back so hard over that one.  And Darren Sharper has promised that nobody on the Vikings defense has forgotten what a dick Grossman is, and they're all salivating waiting for a chance to embarrass him.  The first mistake he makes, they'll be in his head, and the snowy grass of Soilder Field (sic) could easily turn to quicksand under his feet.

The Vikings are coming off of a win that was closer than it should have been, fired up about Grossman, and the Bears are coming off a possible momentum-killing loss.  Their lead in the NFC and dominance in the division may make them start to look ahead to the play-offs and lose their drive after 12 weeks of regular season football, and the Patriots may have them wondering if they're really cut out to win anything better than the NFC North with Sexy Rexy running the show.  The 10-point spread just shows the overconfidence of the betting public, and I can't help but wonder how much of that has trickled into the Bears heads as well.

All I'm saying is, it's just possible somebody in Oldtown may be flipping over his reversible Vikings-Bears jersey this Sunday afternoon...

New ABN-BBY corporate policy memo

Given the recent merger, the following corporate policies will apply to both firms, effective immediately, so we can immediately begin building synergies:

1.  All structured finance products will be sold with a service plan, allowing customers who have a problem with their structured finance product to exchange it for a structured finance product of equal or lesser value* within two years.  The price of the service plan will be determined as 2% of assets under management and 20% of returns.  (*-value to be determined as market value at time of exchange, not of sale.)

b.  All ATM maintenance operations will include installation of a Superdisk drive which will contain data essential to the functioning of the ATM.  Our new corporate partners assure us it's far more efficient to break ATMs by inserting a disk soaked in coca-cola than with the giant hammer we normally use.

3.  All branch banks will adopt the electronics division's successful customer service policy, and have twenty people mill around discussing collateralized debt obligations with customers while only one teller is available so anybody can deposit their paycheck.  Free pizza will be served to the 8,000 people waiting in line at the only ATM we plan to have working.

d.  Early sales will be coordinated to maximize customer convenience and develop synergies between structured finance and consumer electronics.  I can't stress this enough, none of the customers camping out in the parking lot for first crack at a Wii or PS3 should leave the store without also buying into our securitized Minnesota State Fair mini-donut booth.

5.  All banking employees should take note, the complimentary lasagna in the new combined employee lounge is made with artichokes, mushrooms, and codeine.  Should anyone go back for a second helping and go into a coma, the adrenaline shots and the defibrillator are under the sink.

f.  Synergies will be pursued between our pro sporting endorsements.  As part of an expanded sponsorship agreement, Ajax players will now grow porn-star mustaches and wear wife-beaters, while the NASCAR drivers we sponsor will not use their hands.

7.  Our new corporate slogan is, "Make it More Possible for Thousands of Impossible Things to Get Up Yours".  This a compromise hammered out on an international conference call with no translators (they have no word for "synergy").  It sounds equally bad in all languages, creating synergies between diverse and previously unconnected groups of confused and insulted customers all over the world.

g.  Remember, without a "g", there are no synergies, only sinners.

9.  Our not fixing the holes we make in people's walls policies will be immediately coordinated with our not fixing ATMs policy.

j.  Any meal being claimed as a business expense will be reimbursed on the assumption that all parties ate about the same, including the waitress, who must chip in as well.

Synergetically Yours,

Brad and Rijkman

Morneau wins AL MVP

For anybody keeping up on important world events, Minnesota Twins 1st baseman Justin Morneau has won the American League MVP award. It was a close vote, and Morneau split all the first place votes with Derek Jeter except one (which went for Johan Santana). Joe Mauer, the Twins catcher came in 6th in MVP voting, and Twins pitcher Johan Santana came in 7th.

I'm still surprised that Joe Mauer didn't win, because his achievement, leading the league in batting average while playing as an everyday catcher, hasn't been done since the 40s, but there is a notable bias in sports media towards power hitting. Johan Santana also had a rare feat, winning a major league triple crown (only the third since WWII), but there's a similar bias against voting for a pitcher as MVP, but Santana does get the AL Cy Young award. In any case, I think Justin Morneau may have finally ditched the nickname "Morneau-for-4", and I hope the ovation he and Santana get on opening day next year is enough to get him to stick around.

Casino Royale, or Europe's New Toy vol. 2

I really enjoyed Casino Royale in a way I haven't enjoyed a Bond movie in twenty years. Judi Dench as M particularly hits just the right note in terms of mixing humor with ruthless gravitas, and the verbal fencing between Bond and Vesper is perfect, seductive and funny. Casino Royale refers to the franchise's hallowed traditions with a sense of humor as well, such as mocking James Bond's tremendously mannered drink order, while simultaneously giving it a special place in the new Bond mythos by giving it an origin and significance. The reference to the unusual names of Bond girls (Pussy Galore, Holly Goodhead) is nicely woven into the interplay between Bond and Vesper. In another simultaneous break with and nod to the past, the opening credits dispense with the usual naked ladies, silhouettes, which had progressed from silhouettes to models with oil pouring over their breasts, another example of how style had given way to excess in the franchise. Actually I really missed the barely-disguised nude women, because I first discovered Bond films in the awakening sexuality of my youth, and I find I still really like boobies. To me though, the new opening credits were very reminiscent of Dr. No, reinventing the franchise by returning to its roots, using Ian Fleming's only un-filmed Bond novel as inspiration. The two opening action sequences were wonderfully done, the first serving as an introduction for Bond and the whole franchise reboot by doing something unusual, opening the film in black and white, alternating between a callous assassination in a dark office and a flashback to a brutally violent knock-down drag-out fight to the death in a bathroom, all concluding with its own take on the signature Bond gun barrel opening shot. After the credits, there's a fantastic chase sequence of Daniel Craig pursuing Sebastien Foucan through a Madagascar construction site, in which Foucan's ability to evade Bond through a whole monkey-like style of movement, and Daniel Craig's attempts to follow resembling the proverbial bull in a china shop made for an amusing but still tense chase. The film can really be split into three acts, and the first act plot really seems to be about affirming an English commitment to Europe and European industry, as amid speculation about the future of EADS and Airbus, Eon has James Bond foiling LeChiffre's plot to manipulating the market by shorting EADS stock and then blowing up the A380 at its launch. It's not actually the A380, but I thought the message was clear to those speculators considering abandoning Airbus and forcing a bail-out by the French government, when LeChiffre loses $102m overnight. The A380 apparently takes over from the Chunnel (featured in Mission Impossible) as Europe's new toy. The second act, where Bond meets the absolutely scrumptious Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) and engages with LeChiffre in the Casino Royale, all went very well, with just the right balance of high class gambling, brutal violence, and shower finger-sucking. My only gripe was I wondered why they played No Limit Texas Hold'em, when the dominant game in Europe is supposedly the very similar Omaha, but then it would be somewhat harder for Giancarlo Giannini to give a play-by-play to the audience. And to those who criticize the ridiculously rare hands played, I'd just have to point out that no matter how gritty it gets, this remains a Bond film, and Bond doesn't win on a pair of threes facing a broken straight, and I would wager Bond and LeChiffre are guys who like to rake in huge pots when everybody's looking at a monster hand, not professionals who grind out wins. It's really the third act that hurts the film, and has caused the most criticism. The beginning of this third section is easily the poorest part of the film. It asks us to skip ahead quite a bit by introducing a romance with very little real groundwork, and explore the softer side of Bond, and then compounds its clumsiness by dragging quite a bit, and by offering somewhat clumsy foreshadowing. At that point we all know where the film needs to get itself to, and losing its way two hours in is not good. The overall length wouldn't be as much of a problem if it didn't head into the third hour with a declaration of "I've loved you ever since... actually just since 5 minutes ago" and a very long, long series of romantic scenes in romantic locations. First the lake, then the beach, then St. Mark's Square, it just crashes the whole film, when what needs to actually be explained in the third act is very rushed and unclear. It all concludes with one of the signature action set pieces of the film which the trailers had to tease us with, the collapsing Venetian building, which is quite well done, and concludes the story of how Bond came to be the strange lover and killer he's been for decades, so it's by no means a complete derailment, but it is the clear flaw of what is otherwise a really fun film. All in all, Casino Royale is really just a hell of a lot of fun, and immensely exceeded my expectations, especially in its sense of humor. And was that really Richard Branson in the airport? Rufus will return in "Sotongfinger"

Saddam Hussein's trial is over

  --------
  |      O
  |     \|/
  |      |     S A D D A       U S S   I
  |    _/ \_   ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~   ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
  |  Game Over
=====
   BC E  H   LMNOP   T VWXY  |  Letters Missed
       **  **     **       * |          7

(borrowed from an anonymous coward on slashdot)

Recently overheard at a midwestern financial institution

Look, you the arbitrage guys, why do you think we worked on the Asian bond market divergent interest rate package all week? Barings Bank lost 827 million dollars because Nick Leeson couldn't pick up a goddamn backside bandit on max protection! You and I know this is goddamn stupid structured finance, and you're stressing this shit outta me! We've worked on the calls over and over again but you have no goddamn focus or concentration! McKenna, keep your head on a swivel, you've got to slide out there and pick up that tsunami in the Indian Ocean -- roll up those leveraged loans! Sanderson and fox will break off their positions but you have to deliver the variation margin on time. We've had two goddamn margin calls in this half, you guys are dumping on my reserve ratio.

You the CDO guys, you've got to create something out there, you've got to start flying around the fucking securitized operating assets and hitting somebody. Don't let these assholes chew up the clock on us! On first down, they're killing us with the interest rate swap! Accountants, when we put anything in the 88888 box, you've got to jam the SEC, take 'em on, you're hesitating. If you're gonna make a mistake, go on. Make it a big one! I'm not gonna eat your lunch for that, but don't fuck around like pussies at a pee party, you hear me?! PJ, Mac, Beast Man, Horny, Shark! One, two, short term capital gains less each time and we'll get two and eight instead of two and six! Stuff the goddamn tax shelters! The IRS is killing us!

No more stupid penalties, okay?! Concentrate. Focus. We're only down by 6 billion dollars. We can win this mother! I'm sick and tired of losing! Are you?! Three losing quarters in a row. Are you guys sick and tired of this?! Stand up if you're not! Raise your hand! Raise your hand if you're a pussy! Stand up, let's go! What the hell are you doing, PJ, put your hand down.

Gentlemen, this is our house! We live here. Don't let them fuck with us in our own house! We're gonna get some money in the goddamn bank if I gotta get out to the floor myself and make the goddamn trades! Now let's go and kick some second-half butt!

(Employees were later heard commenting, “Does the guy who wrote this speech have any clue what we do here? And why are there unedited references to half-time like he just stole this from a football movie?”)

Top 10 Things you shouldn't say to your girlfriend's mother this Thanksgiving

10.  There's something I need to say.  Thank you.  Thank you for being responsible for the best thing in my life.  Thank you, and all other Chinese people, for bringing the gift of fireworks into my life.  You and Marco Polo, God bless you all.

9.  Yes, my friend Kevin learned all his filthy Chinese phrases from your daughter.

8.  Singapore?  Hey, you know they've got four floors of whores there. right?

7.  Oh I'm sorry, does our golden retriever startle you because when she runs into the house barking you think it's Godzilla coming?

6.  Wow, I can see the family resemblance.  Oh no wait, you all look alike, never mind.

5.  By the way, I'm not one to brag, but since Lian moved in big cracks have started forming in the ceiling outside our bedroom.  I call that room "The Dutch Oven"... high five, come on!

4.  Maybe you can help me out with something, I'm looking at securitizing a whole class of profitable Asian assets which are all denominated in US dollars eliminating currency risk, it's a sweet deal.  So my question is this, do you know any Snakeheads who I could contact about securitizing payments by Chinese immigrants?  I mean configuring the cargo containers and feces buckets as securitized operating assets would reduce the capital at risk by 20% in the first year alone.

3.  I'm sorry about your bedroom, but here's the deal.  That idiot Al MacInnis stayed here once, and he put a hockey puck through the window, so if you think it's cold in there, go back to Calgary and whine to him about it.

2.  Here's a fortune cookie for you... in the year of the rat, you will get the hell off my back about grandchildren.

1.  我将采取您击倒, 我的朋友。我把您带击倒对瓷镇。

Annoying Euro2008 Update

The Road to Klagenfurt continues on Wednesday, in the last meaningful international competition until next spring.  All the teams are organized in to 7-8 team groups with the top two finishers advancing directly to the finals in Austria and Switzerland two years from now.

In Group A, if Portugal wins their home game against Kazakhstan (cleanest prostitutes in all of central Asia), and the Finns handle the Armenians in Helsinki, then the one significant match-up is a battle between Belgium and Poland to break up the likely three way tie with the Portuguese for third place before heading into the winter break, while the Serbs and Finns will almost certainly continue to top the group.  In the spring I'm sure the Finns will fall, and with the Portuguese on their heels, the Belgians and the Poles each have to be looking at this game as an opportunity to take out a rival.

In Group D, the Germans are playing Cyprus, and the Irish play San Marino, a team that loses to Belgium by double digit scores.  The Irish are trailing way behind the Czechs and Germans, with Slovakia and Wales between them, but the Germans can use a win to take a lead over the Czechs going into the winter break.

In Group E, there's a four way tie for first, with the fifth place Russians only two points back from first place England.  Israel hosts Croatia (both tied for first), while the Russians travel to Macedonia (also tied for first).  The Israelis and Croats have a game in hand over England, so they can both take first place outright with a win or draw, while the Russians also have a game in hand.  The order could shift dramatically, but it's still a tight group no matter what happens.  Only a Croatian road win would put anyone in what could be described as a commanding position.

The next Road to Klagenfurt update will be next February when the Republic of Ireland travel to San Marino for the return leg of that thrilling encounter.

King Kong

I've just finished watching the original King Kong from 1933, and now it's official. I hate this movie. I hated both remakes, the endless Peter Jackson homage to nostalgia and CGI, and the 70s version with Jessica Lange and Jeff Bridges with an evil oil company plundering skull island. Three attempts at the same iconic story by three directors in three different eras, and I've been sitting here trying to figure out why I find it all so tedious.

First off, I hate monkeys. I just think they're annoying, misshapen little creatures who glorify playing with your own feces and screeching, neither of which is something I approve of. I can't help but think this hindered my enjoyment of a series of films whose entire raison d'etre seems to be making people squeal "OMG look at the giant monkey!" A movie based on showcasing some grand, cutting edge special effects spectacle always ages incredibly badly, with the classic example being ID4 where "OMG look at the exploding White House!" wore thin before the movie was even out of theaters. And all of these movies feature long, long sequences of the giant monkey doing stuff for us to marvel at. In the case of the original, I kept thinking this must have looked really cool back in the 30's, but the thing looks so much like the Bumble from Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer it's completely comical now.

Maybe it's the whole story about a powerful savage being civilized by the sight of a blonde woman, only to have Our Aryan Hero keep stealing her back, capturing Kong and transporting him back to America on a boat in chains, taking a magnificent force of nature and turning it into an immobile sideshow attraction in a theater. There's so much material there ripe for exploration, so many themes to build a story on, and instead they give us "OMG look at the giant monkey!" I'm not asking for a deep exploration of colonialism or the vanishing wild, but seriously, the human story of King Kong, how Ann Darrow is changed by her experience with Kong, is nonexistent in the original, and since abruptly ends at Kong's death, there's a really abrupt, dour conclusion to that poorly explored subplot, implying Ann Darrow finally makes a meaningful connection to another living thing and but then it dies so she lives out her meaningless life in a loveless marriage making babies for the guy who kept coming to drag her away. This is the problem with it being a giant monkey movie, any real theme, like the obvious metaphor of the heartless oil company raping the earth in the 70's remake, gets a real halfhearted treatment.

Peter Jackson's version goes the way of all nostalgia fests, in that proudly magnifies all the fondly remembered flaws, and is too afraid to really commit to any of its innovations. It's disappointing, because he wasn't afraid to make Lord of the Rings into a story that would work on film and add and subtract material and characters, and add as many endings as necessary, but there's a timidity towards finishing anything he starts exploring here besides the endless restored spider-pit sequence (aka OMG look at the giant slugs!). The preciosity of trying to nostalgically recreate the film style of the period, which really boils down to Jack Black running around belting lines out to the back row and doing jazz hands, is also something I find unbelievably irritating. And after two and a half hours, the "I am Peter Jackson and you will marvel at my terrifying CGI dinosaurs!" sequences get as uninspiring as they did in the Jurassic Park sequels. King Kong... it doesn't matter what version you see, unless you have some sort of unnatural interest in giant monkeys, they all suck.

Ten things I only recently became aware of

1.  Following a crucial midterm election that served as a referendum on the two land wars America is currently fighting in Asia, several races were too close to call, including the crucial racist moron vs sexist moron race in Virginia that will determine who controls the upper chamber of the legislature and whether the Vice President will cast deciding votes for a split senate.  I've received as many email updates about this from CNN as I have about Britney splitting up with K-Fed.  I only recently became aware of how ashamed I am to even know who that is, and by my total lack of surprise at which story CNN figures I'd be more interested in.

2.  The Republican Whore vote has been seriously underestimated in Minnesota electoral politics.  The DFL had a pretty solid sweep in the statewide elections except mysteriously for the top of the ticket, where Hatch managed to blow it against Governor Pawlenty.  The immediate cause of his loss according to the media was his denigrating a reporter as a "Republican whore", which somehow shifted key undecided voters.  As a result, I'm sure in 2008 Senator Coleman will be sure to line up the League of Republican Whore Voters early.

3.  Mike Freeman is alive and well, and was just elected to be the next Hennepin County Attorney.  Mike Freeman was last seen giving a real-world, practical demonstration of how unappealing a candidate Hubert Humphrey III was to anybody who ever heard him speak, by beating him for the DFL gubernatorial endorsement in 1998.  Apparently everybody got the message but Humphrey, who went on to come in third in a two-party system.

4.  I had no idea so many same sex marriage bans were being considered by states, but I really was surprised by a couple of results.  South Dakota voters overturned the insanely restrictive, blatantly unconstitutional abortion law that the legislature passed to try and force the Supreme Court to review Roe v Wade.  If a doctor saved a pregnant woman's life while terminating her pregnancy or aborted a fetus conceived through by a man sexually abusing his own child, they would have been charged with felony murder under this law just to create more test cases for the Supremes to consider, and apparently South Dakotan voters didn't feel like the legislature served their interests by offering those women up as sacrifices.  Also, Arizona narrowly rejected a same-sex marriage ban, meaning this is the first time voters rather than judges have stood up for gay marriage.  This could get interesting.

5.  Michael Steele is a Republican.  Who knew?  Apparently he didn't, since he didn't mention the fact anywhere on his website and had bumper stickers that said "Steele Democrat".  His loss to Democrat Ben Cardin in the Maryland senate race while trying to live down his support of the president was pretty symbolic of this election cycle.

6.  Microsoft's MSN music store is incompatible with Microsoft's own music player, the Zune.  I guess they figured out Apple's domination of the portable music player market with devices that seamlessly integrate with their music store was obviously just a fluke.  I know this has nothing to do with the election, but my god is it stupid.

7.  Donald Rumsfeld prefers softball questions.  About five minutes after Democrats took over the House and had oversight over the Department of Defense, he was out the door.  The party line before the election seemed to stand tough over Iraq and show no weakness by admitting anybody had screwed up, that any change of direction was called for, or show any regret in hindsight.  Now we found out Rummy apparently had a cab waiting outside the Pentagon with the engine running, I wonder what else will turn out to be election year rhetoric.  What's next, will Britney take back K-Fed?

8.  It's not just me, other Minnesotans also want some new transit options.  The constitutional amendment to commit automobile sales tax revenues to transit with a minimum of 40% going to public transportation passed, and if you remove all the dumbasses who voted but left that question blank because it didn't have a party endorsement (or Ryan Seacrest there to explain how to text message your vote to the Capitol), or just didn't flip the ballot over, it passed by a pretty big margin, since leaving the question blank counted as a no vote.  With the passage of this amendment, transit projects in Minnesota will now only be underfunded by 1.2 billion dollars a year.  So it will be awhile before we get that elevated train from Rosedale Mall to Randolph and Dunlap, boys.

9.  Minneapolis is getting rid of costly non-partisan municipal primaries.  Last year, for city offices such as mayor, an open primary in September reduced the field down to two candidates who appeared on the November ballot, a system also used for non-partisan county offices such as sheriff.  Instead, now we'll have instant run-off voting, so the city doesn't need to hold a separate election in September practically nobody's aware of where many races may not even have two candidates, much less the 3 or more serious candidates required to make such a primary meaningful.  Seriously, voting in a 2-candidate primary for city council where the incumbent got 93% really made me wonder why I got up that morning.

10.  The Hennepin County Soil and Water Commission outspends its budget by a factor of 2 to 1.  I only found this out because the board is publicly elected and puts up candidate statements on the strib's election website and have to be publicly accountable.  One seat was contested by a guy who pointed that out as perhaps a reason not to reelect the board, while this geology student ran by saying he'd been researching the public and private partnership in the state environmental community composed of governments, private industry, and NGOs, and found that the only group not represented were the goofs at the soil and water commission who didn't talk to anybody else... he actually got elected.  So it's nice to have some public accountability in the bureaucracy.

The video game movie trend is continuing, despite like none of them making any money unless they had Angelina Jolie in shorts (and even that got boring). There's supposedly a sequel to Doom coming out, even though eye candy like Rosamund Pike can only do so much to distract the audience from the dialogue. Take it from somebody who saw Bloodrayne, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, House of the Dead, Tomb Raider 1&2, Mortal Kombat 1&2, Resident Evil 1&2, Street Fighter, and Wing Commander, it's not often done well, and when it is, don't worry because they'll find a way to screw it up with a sequel.

What really stands out is the continuing struggle for Microsoft to find a way to lose even more money on the Xbox, which sells at a loss but makes it up on volume. The Halo movie had its projected budget creep up to $200m without entering production. A cocktail napkin estimate of how much this movie would need to earn is $600m, and I seriously have to wonder who would rent or buy it. No matter how popular it was, who would get a bunch of their buddies together to watch "Halo: The Movie" when they could just play the game instead? I would think if you take a date to this movie and all you're going to do later that night is play Halo in your bedroom by yourself. This movie is like an ad for the Xbox, and the Xbox is like a subsidized platform to keep people from buying anything from Sony. As I've noted before, Sony is also working that, so I'm not sure how much effort Microsoft needs to put into it.

All that being said, what I really found shocking was this: there's a Castlevania movie coming out next year. Castlevania? All I remember about that game is using the whip under the stairs to fight the giant bat that was the first level boss, 20 years ago on my nintendo in between thrilling games of Duck Hunt, which I believe was actually the original first person shooter. With his dreck coming up, I thought I might just stay out of theatres... until I saw the trailer for the Pac-Man movie.

Ketchup at the Maid-rite, the end is truly near

An era has ended in American cuisine, as the final frontier for the ketchup bottle has been conquered. My dad reports that the Taylors Maid-rite in Marshalltown, Iowa, now has ketchup bottles on the counter. This is a shocking development, since the permissible set of condiments at the maid-rite (for use with their eponymous product, left) has always been tightly controlled, limited to salt, mustard, pickles, and chopped onions. When I sampled my first maid-rite at Taylor's some twenty years ago, I asked for ketchup and was told in no uncertain terms that no ketchup would be provided or permitted, but I was welcome to put some salt on it. When I tasted my maid-rite, I clearly understood how ketchup would destroy the subtle texture of this delicacy from the center of Iowa.

I'm sure one of the first questions the average person asks themselves when they hear this news is "What can I do?", shortly preceded by "What the #*$% is a maid-rite?" Both of those questions are answered in greater detail on the Taylor's maid-rite website, where you can answer their online poll with a resounding "NO! Keep America strong! Do not allow ketch-up in the Maid-rite!" This is far more important than tomorrow's election... America needs your vote.

Are you watching closely?

If you only see one film about 19th century magicians that opens at the climax and flashes back to the beginning, see The Prestige.  If you see two, or if you found Memento jarring and unwatchable, see The Illusionist.  These two films are like two levels of storytelling, where The Illusionist uses magic as a theme to tell a fairly traditional story with a fairly obvious set of twists and turns, The Prestige is itself a magic trick.  It creates an intricate puzzle through which we retreat backwards in time from the climax by descending into two nested narratives contained in two men's journals, two stories whose frayed boundaries indicate that Christopher Nolan isn't going to tell us where the boundaries of the main film lie either.  This film's structure, its story, and Michael Caine and Christian Bale's teasing introduction and conclusion may pretend to speak about stage magic, but they're really about the trip this film takes the audience on, a mystery that lays out all its clues but refuses to ruin the story by telling us the ending.  This is why I say they're two levels of film, where The Illusionist used magic to tell a story to entertain, The Prestige uses magic to turn around to the audience and analyze its own story and tell us, truthfully, why we were entertained.  I just think the less revealed about this film, the better.

I've been accused of being a bit biased towards any film starring Christian Bale (I even liked Reign of Fire) but I also adore Edward Norton, and here's what I thought of The Illusionist back when I saw it.

Surviving Megabus

This weekend and in the days after, whenever I mentioned having taken Megabus, people asked me what it was like, because they or a friend were considering it due to the cheap fares, so I had the privilege of serving as the guinea pig for everybody else. The Megabus stops a few blocks from my apartment, goes straight into the heart of Chicago, and I was able to secure a round-trip ticket for $40, so it sounded too good to be true. It's cheaper than driving, puts no miles on your car, and involves no labor. Unlike flying, Megabus goes into the heart of the city without multiple modes of transportation, there's no security, no waiting at the baggage claim for lost bags or checking in an hour early, and a sudden gust of wind doesn't stack up planes six deep on the runway at O'Hare or Midway, and it's cheaper. It's cheaper than the train, and offers an overnight service so you don't lose a day in transit for a weekend trip. Could the miraculous new option provided by Megabus revolutionize intercity transit? The answer is... NO, and when God opens a door, he slams a window shut on your fingers. To hear about my overall impression and the strange events of this trip, read on.

I arrived at the bus stop under the 4th Street Garage at 6:45 am, on a completely deserted covered street under the skyway. Which is really just where you want to be before the sun comes up. When neither the bus or passengers showed up by our 7am departure time, and there were no signs or anything, I knew something was wrong, and in a panic I ran over the skyway to 2nd Ave thinking I was on the wrong street. I wasn't, I'm just an idiot and the bus was actually scheduled for 7:45. The Megabus eventually arrived, complete with a giant picture of a British bus driver on the back. Passengers load their own bags, give a reservation number to the Megadriver, and choose their own seats. The bus made one more stop near the UofM, the driver took a quick count of passengers and noted any passengers with connections, and we headed onto I94, running a bit late.

Somewhere in Saint Paul, without a word of explanation, the bus driver pulled over to the side of I94 and shut off the engine. After a moment he restarted the engine and pulled back out onto the highway. A few moments later, I overheard him telling the dispatcher that our Megabus had a broken Megatransmission and couldn't go any faster than 30 mph. They told him to pull over and shut off the engine for five minutes, which really didn't sound promising. While parked, a state trooper pulled out of a speed trap to approach the bus and tell our driver that the Megabus was pouring thick blue Megasmoke out the back, and we had to head back to the Megagarage where they had a replacement Megabus. It was then that our troubles really began.

Our Megadriver headed back to downtown Minneapolis, apparently without purpose since the Megagarage isn't downtown, but he didn't really know the way. Cruising down 12th st he called his dispatcher to ask how to get to 8th (here's a hint, it's four blocks from 12th), but they had no idea either so he had to ask the passengers for directions. I told him to take a left and away we went, off to an even rattier vehicle with a working transmission (and so ensued the mad scramble to get a solo seat). Amusingly, the guy who took charge of loading and unloading bags and getting people secured in their new seats was some random black dude with a kindly air of authority, not the clueless driver. The new bus wasn't exactly a great example of craftsmanship either: when our driver attempted to stow his gear in the overhead bin, one of the hinges came off, leaving his bag barely suspended by the fragile door over some poor girl's head. The same black dude shouted up to him "Yo bus-man! Yo bus-man!" until he came back and (kind of) fixed it. The bus did at least make it the rest of the way to Chicago, only maybe 2-3 hours late.

Perhaps I should share a few brief comments about the comfort level of riding Megabus for anybody tempted by cheap fares and avoiding O'Hare during the holidays. Now, I don't know what kind of scoliotic midgets these buses were designed to carry, but at 6'2" with some of my vertebrae turned the wrong way I barely crammed myself in by turning sideways and stretching out over two seats. There's also an emergency exit bar below the window strategically placed to push more vertebrae out of place if you lean against it for eight hours, so the smarter Megapassengers brought along a pillow and a blanket (I'm not that smart). There were a couple of TVs and headphone jacks in the seat backs on our new bus, but no movies were shown, possibly due to the unexpected bus replacement.

That was all to be expected, but what really was unexpectedly uncomfortable was the way the creaky old bus shook violently during our trip. I don't think cruise control or shock absorbers are a big priority for this company's Megamechanics. Between the touchy accelerator and the shaking it was impossible to read and preferable to just close my eyes to alleviate the inevitable motion sickness, so I probably couldn't have watched a movie anyways. There's a sign in the bathroom (this is the one very welcome convenience of the Megabus) advising all passengers to sit down when they use the toilet, and there is a serious risk of injury from being thrown around the small metal compartment. I wanted to touch the seat as little as possible so I tried to just bend my knees and absorb enough of the shocks to mostly stay on target.

Our Megabus did make one stop along the way at a gas station in Wisconsin, where they let us out for half an hour of exercise and to hit the adjoining Wendy's. I found the spot outside least covered in birdshit to wolf down some chicken nuggets and chase away bees while getting a bit of fresh air, and looking around I decided the reason they stop there is so you can see there's an even drearier place to be stuck than the back of a Megabus. Which was interesting when we pulled out and somebody farther back asked "Are we all here? Because there was a guy sitting across from me on the way down, is he here?' (I'm not sure what the point was of taking a count in Minneapolis if the driver didn't really care how many people he left in Wisconsin). As we pulled out of the parking lot, a familiar-looking guy came running frantically out of the gas station towards the Megabus, which didn't seem to faze the driver, nor did polite requests to stop and pick him up, until the same black dude from before started shouting "Yo bus-man! YO BUSMAN! Ho'dup!" and finally got his attention. But as it happened, our nearly-stranded passenger need not have run.

After he embarked and we headed back out of the parking lot, there was a sharp bang and the whole Megabus took a sudden lurch. Half the frustrated passengers began to wonder aloud about who or what had just been run over. The Megadriver stopped, got off and walked around the vehicle doing an inspection, and we all feared we'd had a Megatire blow out in the middle of nowhere and would force a delay of several hours. As the driver came back on, we all sighed fearing the worst, and he opened his mouth to say, "Did anybody else feel that?" I think the guy seriously thought he must have imagined it, which makes me wonder what other dancing pink elephants nobody else could see he's run over. Without solving the mystery, we headed off back down the road like nothing had happened, possibly with a deer carcass hanging under the front bumper. Actually the shaking really started after that, so maybe it was the antlers dragging.

The rest stop did give the driver a chance to ask who had to make Megaconnections in Chicago, and then assure them that they weren't going to make it. One passenger was heading to St. Louis, so the driver asked, "Are you going to the World Series? Because you're not going to make it." After taunting us further over the delays he passed around customer comment forms and free Megapens, noting that if you got a $1 fare, with the free pen you were coming out ahead (no value is placed on the hours of your life wasted by incompetent drivers and faulty equipment). Much as I may make fun of this guy, I did appreciate the fact that the driver clearly acknowledged we probably all had a lot of negative feedback and seemed genuinely concerned that we have a fair opportunity to do so.

Coming into Chicago, traffic on the Kennedy was down to a crawl, and I could measure our lack of progress by watching the blue line El stops click by once every 15-20 minutes. This was something we should have avoided by leaving early, but because of our bus shenanigans, we got stuck in miles and miles of stop-and-go traffic. But you know, sometimes in the middle of an unpleasant situation there's an unexpected bright spot made all the more striking by grey surroundings, like a single white flower poking up out of the mud. Everybody gets bored and frustrated in traffic, but apparently somebody found a nice relaxation technique, to make the time go by a little more pleasantly. I looked down at a woman in a black jetta who kept falling behind every time traffic around her moved, as if she was distracted and taking as long as she could before getting back into gear and darting forward for another pause. And then I looked at her right hand. Her forearm curled around her hip and over her thigh so she could surreptitiously slider her fingers down over her crotch, slightly spread and gently pressed onto her vagina. With her back slightly arched against her seat and her fingers gently massaging, I'm sure the warm buzz from light stimulation and a touch of adrenaline from doing this in public took the edge off her commute, and the light head, quickened pulse and slightly raggedy breathing did make it a little difficult to keep up in traffic. As the only person on the highway with the vantage point to see her through the window and speculate on this, I was definitely rooting for the traffic jam to continue, so he totally changed my perspective as well.

When we arrived in the city, there was some irritation and confusion as to the route we took into the city and our final destination. We got off on the north side and took Lake Shore Drive, which seemed like a fairly odd exit to take to most of the people around me, and apparently violates ordinances about heavy vehicles on LSD. It's seriously possible the goof at the wheel didn't actually know Chicago any better than he did Minneapolis, and this wasn't the approved Megaroute. We passed a couple landmarks I recognized, and I found myself wishing I could just hop out and walk, then we drove through the loop and I wished I could hop off and get on the El, then we went over the river to Union Station. Apparently, Union Station isn't really connected to the El or near anything, and I doubt anybody gets off a bus to get on a train. Stop in Chinatown so I can get some fake adidas and some sotong or something, lah.

I figured the trip back had to be better, because at least the bus wouldn't break down, and I'd sleep through most of it. Given time constraints, I called a cab, but of course the cab company sent me a cab with no gas, and the guy wanted to stop for a fill-up on the way. My friend's Chinese mail order bride was kind enough to loan me a blanket and a pillow, which (literally) took the edge off of the emergency exit bar and let me doze a bit. Unfortunately the bus was late, or more accurately it sat in plain view down the street for half an hour while another Megabus (running late I guess) pulled in and discharged passengers, then our Megabus sat in plain view down the street for another half hour for no apparent reason. The muslim brother standing next to me assured me that "It's always something with this company. It's always late, and if it ain't late, it breaks down, if it don't break down, something else gonna happen. I guess for five bucks, you get what you pay for."

Instead of being a better trip with a better bus and room to stretch out and go to sleep, the whole bus was packed, including passengers left behind by earlier Megabuses, probably because everybody like me took advantage of an overnight bus allowing for a full sunday in Chicago. A girl sat down next to me so I had about a three inch range to shift my buttocks around every couple hours when the pooling blood and stiffness became overwhelming, and couldn't really watch hardcore bisexual porn on my ipod, but then again I was pretty tired. This bus also shook the whole way, even more than the way down, so there was nothing to do but try to doze. We stopped off at the same rest stop, and had a much faster trip since we didn't hit anything or blow the transmission, but my god did I not envy the people going straight to work or school.

Really, Megabus has some significant drawbacks, and it is exactly what you'd expect: a cheap, shitty, uncomfortable bus. Before doing it again, I would have to identify which competitive advantage was justifying that particular trip. The ability to pack and carry anything I want without regard for airport security or greedy airline policy, like being able to bring water, medicine, and my own food so I don't have to by a $5 "snack pack", and carry a cellphone, laptop, nailclippers, or whatever else I may want in my pockets, and use them without somebody jumping on me shouting "I'm watching you, Al Qaeda!" is kind of nice. It's still cheaper than driving, involves no labor on the part of passengers, and you don't have to pull off the highway every time somebody wants to use the bathroom or stand up and stretch. My initial estimates of flying time involved really 2 hours of public transportation, at minimum an hour of security and waiting around, all slapped onto a 90 minute flight, meaning it will still tend to dominate the day, and while Megabus takes longer and is apparently always late, the risk factors are lower, when overbooked flights of holiday travelers start piling up at O'Hare, you can spend over 24 hours waiting, and I really doubt Megabus is that bad (unless you're connecting to a different Megabus, which I would probably not advise). So really I would rate the competitive advantages as a) avoiding airport security and general hassle, b) no money and no car (all students and poor black people on the bus), or c) O'Hare holiday travel risk.

In conclusion, I think the whole tone of the experience was summed up by the muslim brother talking to me as we waited outside Union Station when he said, "I guess we really should expect what we're getting. The company did paint a big ol' sloppy fat dude on the back of the bus. Can't expect too much effort from that big ol' sloppy dude."