Vikings 26-17 Lions

Despite seeing it with my own eyes, I still haven't the foggiest idea how the Vikings won this game.  I thought I'd try for a more refined version of my original thought, which was "No fucking clue what the fuck that fucking game was all about.  Fuck."

Our inept offense was up to their usual tricks, scoring a field goal on their opening drive (after a red zone penalty killed their chances at a touchdown) and then contributing nothing but turnovers until the fourth quarter.  The special teams were certainly very "special" today.   The kicking team got a delay of game on a field goal, when you'd think they'd know where to line up by the fifth game, and also got an extra point kick blocked that would have tied the game in the 4th quarter.  Mewelde Moore did the worst thing you can do as a punt returner, touch the ball without catching it, when he let a punt go through his hands then had to chase it when it bounced away from him, then lost it to the Lions.  To be fair the punt coverage team did come up with two great plays, pinning the Lions against their own end zone.

One of those plays however, started off a series of events emblematic of the first three quarters.  Chris Kluwe kicked a booming punt that bounced inside the 5-yard line, and the punt coverage team knocked the ball out on the 1-yard line, making the Lions line up in their own end zone.  The defense stuffed them, even though the refs spotted them a yard on every down, and on second down the Vikings forced Jon Kitna out of bounds in his own end zone, which should have been a safety, but the refs gave him an extra couple yards and put the ball on the 1 again.  After getting stuffed for 0 yards, the Lions punt was the one that went right through Mewelde Moore's hands, and when the Lions recovered it they had advanced 66 yards.  The defense forced another punt, limiting the effect of the special teams error to losing field position, then the offense turned the ball over to give the Lions another short field, and they scored a touchdown.

Down 17-3 in the 4th quarter, the Vikings offense choked on their lasagna and woke up again for a few minutes, and scored a touchdown.  Then the defense, who I thought would be fading by the 4th quarter, sacked Kitna and forced fumble which Ben Leber recovered in the end zone which should have tied the game if the special teams hadn't blown the PAT.  I was really sure that would be decisive, but apparently the buffet table ran out of lasagna, because the Vikings put together another scoring drive to go up 19-17 with three minutes to go.

The game was still very much in doubt, and the Lions were challenging for the winning score, but the defense more than held.  They forced a desperate 4th and 10 play from the Lions, and chased a harried Kitna ran around in the backfield, dodging three tackles, only to get slammed by the 4th and cough up the ball to Napoleon Dynamite, who ran it back 45 yards for the "GO HOME YOU'RE DONE" score to put the Vikings up by 9.  Needing two scores, the Lions still looked like they were aiming for a score in the closing minutes, and anything could happen on an onside kick, but Darren Sharper iced it with an interception and the game ended on a Vikings kneel-down.

Crazy, crazy, crazy-ass frustrating game.  I seriously thought our QB would get the hook at halftime, and I wouldn't be surprised to see the Tardis get some playing time after the bye week.  Up next is the bye, then a road game in Seattle, then back home against the Patriots on Monday Night Football.  Bring in the horns!

What clown is editing the FT today?

In the piece about House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi laying out an economic agenda as the Democrats' strategy in the midterm elections, I was informed that the Democrats would introduce "pay-go" (sic) rules, under which spending cuts would automatically be balanced by tax increases.  And vice versa, so spending increases would require tax cuts.  Personally I support "pay-as-you-go" legislation, which is about the only sensible reform proposed by Democrats in ten years, requires all tax cuts to be financed by spending cuts, and vice versa, so that all new fiscal activity is deficit neutral (or better), as opposed to the FT's "pay-go" legislation which puts a statutory burden on Congress to increase the deficit with every budget.  Did nobody read this article before it went to print?

And by the way, referring to her as the leader of the opposition party sounds like an American student who just spent a semester at Oxford trying out their adopted British expressions.  It would be one thing if the whole article was written from that perspective with a consistent style, but this wasn't.  Nancy Pelosi in the lower house of a bicameral legislature, not the House of Commons, and isn't even the most powerful Democratic federal legislator.  At least they didn't refer to San Francisco as her "riding" and tell everybody about their superior election methods without acknowledging having 90% fewer votes to count and only one question on the ballot, like certain people do whenever American elections come up on slashdot.

In the article about the House Ethics committee subpoenas, I came across the following quote from the White House Press Secretary, "I understand what the question is because, if I say yes, it's 'Ah-ha!  they're going have Hastert'.  If no, it's 'Ah-ha!  they don't care about kids.'  No, I'm not going to jump into that vat of boiling oil, as inviting as it may look."  The first sentence seemed so garbled (they're going have Hastert?) that it implied the metaphorical vat of boiling oil Tony Snow was afraid of also contained the rules of English grammar.  It seemed like it had to be a misprint, but then again it was Tony Snow.

But then there was the article about EU postal reform, specifically the case of La Poste, the French state-owned post office.  The sub-header read "La Poste says Brussels' mail reform plans are unfair to incumbents and wants compensation, [...]".  The article opens by explaining that if competition is introduced, the French government is planning to compensate incumbent postal operators for the loss of their monopoly.  It's just so delightfully backwards and snarky and... French, the idea that they would stop an enterprise from fixing prices and stifling innovation, but just to be fair give them all the money they would have made doing so.  So delightful that apparently the FT just thought they'd make it up to give their English readers a chortle.  The rest of the article is actually about how the proposed compensation is for the obligation of universal service to all rural areas that incumbent operations are under, which their competitors would not be.  This is actually perfectly reasonable, that the government finance the operations it forces incumbent postal carriers into, to allow them to compete fairly in an open postal market.

Usually this is a pretty good paper, with a high quality of writing and content to go with its delightful salmon hue.  Today I didn't even get to the Comment & Analysis page the Europe and Americas sections were so strange.  I guess sometimes you just get some bad salmon.

Jackass II

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Who buried Oedipus at the Metrodome?

Well at least I know I felt like poking my eyes out at one point.  I did thoroughly enjoy the game, and it was competitive all the way to the last out, but the go-ahead run certainly felt like the end of the whole series.  The story the whole day for the Twins was 2-out rallies with no room for error that came up short, and trying to make every swing a home run and every defensive play the decisive momentum-changing moment that propelled them to the World Series.  That and the Tardis-like strike zone that led our lead-off hitter to take three called third strikes before finally getting a walk in the 9th.  (Don't get me started on the Tardis-like batter's box that had Frank Thomas and the A's practically standing behind the catcher every at-bat.)

The A's took a 2-0 lead in the 5th on a pair of doubles and a base hit that made it look like they might have figured out Boof Bonser, but he stopped the bleeding and made it through six complete innings and no decision.  Then in the bottom of the 6th, after a couple horrendous swings like he was chopping down a tree, Michael Cuddyer came up with the right ball and hit a line drive so strong it didn't drop until it hit around row 20 in left field.  Justin Morneau had been fouling off pitches far down the 1st base line and into the A's bullpen every at bat, and when he came up after Cuddyer, he finally got a hold of one as well and knocked it into the upper deck in right field.  The Twins tied it up, and the whole crowd was chanting "Let's go, Tigers!" to heckle the A's (in anticipation of a Tigers-Yankees upset in the other division series giving the Twins an easier path to the World Series).

Of course, something really stupid had to happen, otherwise it wouldn't be Minnesota sports, and in the 7th inning, Torii Hunter charged what looked like a bloop single aiming to make an impossible highlight reel diving catch for an out and to hold Jason Kendall at first.  Of course, it went under his glove and into center field, and since our other outfielders have no range anymore, nobody was behind him to cover it.  Kendall scored from first to give the A's the lead, while if Hunter had gotten behind the ball and let Mark Kotsay get a single, Kendall wouldn't have challenged Hunter's arm and would have been safe at second, with Kotsay on first.  Since the ball was rolling round the center field wall, Kendall went home, and Kotsay followed him, just beating the throw to Joe Mauer at home plate.  Yes, it was a 2-RBI in the park home run, and I felt like a goddamned sphinx was jumping up and down on me asking me riddles like how you get two RBIs off a bloop single with a runner on first.

Not to worry though, our start closer Joe Nathan did manage to send an inherited runner home on a wild pitch to give the A's a 3-run lead in the top of the 9th, so the margin of victory wasn't solely the bizarre in the park home run.  And Jason Bartlett started yet another 2-out rally in the bottom of the 9th that got Nick Punto to the plate representing the tying run.  He may have popped out to short, but it wasn't over until it was over, and that's part of what's fun about baseball, until you get all 27 outs, anything can happen.  And even in the aftermath of the home run, when Juan Rincon came in to start the 8th inning and struck out the side, I found myself thinking Phil would really have enjoyed that (even though nobody will get that joke).

A's 5-2 Twins
Oakland leads this best-of-5 series 2-0

Games three and four are out in Oaktown, but when the Twins turn it around, game five back in the Twin Cities is going to be epic.  Shut up, pessimist turncoat Black Sox fans.  It will be EPIC.

Athletics 3-2 Twins, ALDS game one

Well this isn't too good.  If the Twins lose at home with Santana pitching, they certainly don't deserve to go any farther in the play-offs.  The big killer was the Frank Thomas home run in the top of the 9th to give the A's an insurance run, which meant when Cuddyer scored off his triple in the 9th, it wasn't enough.  The other killer in this game was Jason Bartlett's lead-off double in the 8th, and the inability to get him home.  Bartlett by rights should have been picked off when Gardenhire called for a bunt, Bartlett took off, and Castillo whiffed the bunt.  After that gift, it still took two outs to get him to 3rd.  Now they really have to win tomorrow and win Santana's start on Saturday in Oaktown, both of which will require scoring the occasional run.

Have I mentioned how much I hate Big Hurt?  The guy was a big part of the Black Sox philosophy of beating everybody to death with power hitters that led to them winning nothing for most of the 20th century.  So of course when the Black Sox decide he's past it and ship him out, he goes to Oaktown so he can hit two homers off the best pitcher in baseball to kick off a series with the Twins.  I'll be at tomorrow's game keeping score, so if anybody needs to know if Boof Bonser is getting called third strikes, feel free to give me a call.  That's right, Boof is taking the mound for the Twins, and I like saying his name.  Boof.

The Twins won the division?

Seriously how did this happen?  I didn't even watch the Twins game yesterday, since I figured they'd be resting everybody for the play-off series with the Yankees.  They were tied with the Tigers going into their final series this weekend, and the Tigers had the tie-breaker and the Royals at home.  The Twins only won one game out of three over the weekend against the Black Sox, so really, the only way for the Tigers to blow the division would be to get swept at home by the second worst team in baseball.  And somehow they managed to do it, losing their last game in the 12th inning after loading the bases twice in extra innings and getting nothing.  So now the Tigers get the Yankees, and the Twins get to hang another banner and home field advantage against Oaktown, after never leading the central division until yesterday.  And Joe Mauer is officially the first catcher to win a batting title since the 40s.  Take that, Black Sox.

Finally, a legitimate use for file-sharing

The two big drivers for technology seem to be space exploration and pornography, and they've done it again. One of the Gonzalez justice department's policies has been to start enforcing 2257 requirements, which say that anybody producing sexually explicit material has to keep records proving all the participants are over 18, and anybody showing other people's work is a "secondary producer". So if a commercial website puts the box-cover of a DVD they're selling on a website, they're a secondary producer and have to keep records too. It also applies to simulated sex, which means it applies to all mainstream films, but Gonzalez isn't dumb enough to try enforcing that. Anyways, tracking down some runaway who did a movie in 1995 to ask for some ID is supposed to be difficult enough to get some stuff off the market, and getting every company to send every store their records for every movie is a lot of paperwork.

Now, AVN is reporting that a new web-service company is creating a file-sharing application which will automatically distribute electronic records from the databases of primary producers to all the secondary producers. It's a multi-platform system which is supposed to work with any 2257 record-keeping system anybody uses, and automatically keep everyone up to date. Now there's actually a legitimate application of technology for facilitating the distribution of encrypted files over the internet besides copyright infringement. Could this be... an inconvenient truth?

Okay, there are actually other applications besides copyright infringement, like using torrents to distribute large files like new versions of GPL software, but this is one of the first things I've heard of that didn't have to lamely add "But mostly it's good for downloading episodes of Battlestar Galactica to play on my ipod." God only knows what a manned mission to Mars will make us come up with. (And you have to cut me some slack on the Al Gore reference, but it's too perfect that his invention is now thwarting Alberto Gonzalez and Tipper Gore.)

Bills 17 - 12 Vikings

This was certainly no exception in the sometimes aggravating, sometimes amusing history of bizarre Vikings games. The difference so far between low-scoring wins and low-scoring losses has been turnovers, and two picks today really didn't help. The offense continues to be anemic, and the reason is clearly the total lack of a running game. Chester Taylor leads the league in rushing attempts, so they're trying but not establishing much of a presence, and Taylor only came up with 23 yards today. Nobody can throw their way out of that hole. For our defense, giving up 17 points when turnovers and time of possession both go against you isn't too shabby. It would have been 20 had the wind off Lake Erie not carried away a Bills field goal, but then again, had Marcus Robinson not dropped a sure TD, we would have won.

Still the most bizarre play was not even the Bills second TD when Peerless Price fell down in the backfield, and still got up and evaded two tackles to score. It was definitely in the 2nd quarter when the Bills put up a high kick-off and got to it first... they kicked the ball away and still recovered an onside kick... er, that's a live ball, people. The only thing that kept that from being a total disaster for the Vikings was that a back-up offensive lineman, Jason Whittle, half-heartedly waved his arm as he ran towards it, and the officials ruled that he had signaled for a fair catch. Then when the Bills caught it, they were interfering with a fair catch, even though he'd already given up on it. The Bills got robbed, for which I am quite thankful. Up next is D-troit at home, so they better have a winning record by next week or start warming up the Tardis.

And having just watched the first half of the Bears demolition of the Seahawks, I'd say their road win in Minnesota last week pretty much makes the division theirs to lose, and it's only week 4. Of course, there's always the remote possibility that Rex Grossman will catastrophically collapse like he and every other Bears QB seems to do every year, or that they'll have another brainstorm like leaving Charles Tillman one-on-one with one of the league's top receivers again, so they could still blow it. And maybe the king's horse will learn to sing hymns.

Victimization and terrorism finally come full circle

I'm starting to wonder what the next evolution of American culture is going to be, since I would like to think the whole oppressed victim thing is beginning to grow beyond its practical limits. When everybody's a victim, maybe it finally looks stupid and counterproductive. It seems like a strange thing to aspire to, but every public figure who stumbles seems to dig their way out by attacking those who exploit their failures, or even just the people who point them out, which is somehow worse then screwing up in the first place. The real benefit of being a victim, though, is the relaxation of ethics.

Remember ten years ago when terrorism was a set of unethical methods of warfare, and BAD? Then everybody slowly started becoming a terrorist: first all our enemies, then everything harmful thing like child pornography became linked to terrorism, then any opposition to the administration's mandate became linked to terrorism. Finally there were logical inconsistencies in the definition, whereby Franklin Roosevelt, the Founding Fathers, and the Minutemen would all be caught up in the wave of terrorism spreading throughout history. Michael Collins and the IRB used to be invoked as an example of ambiguity of perspective, because they created urban guerrilla warfare and over the next 50 years the organization evolved into the Provisional IRA, who were indisputably a terrorist organization, but now there weren't any fine distinctions to be made.

And that's when the ethical lines needed to blur a bit more, and we all realized there's no moral judgment applied to the actions of terrorists, it's about their goals. FDR and Francis Marion may not have followed the rules of war, but it's okay because they were on the right side. "History is written by the winners" and "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" used to be about bias and distortion, but now they're quoted as proof that emotional perspective is not subject to logical observation. The KKK may have been terrorists, but a guy who bombs abortion clinics to spread fear is doing God's work, not terrorism. Then something even scarier happened, when method and ethics stopped mattering, the label stopped mattering so much, and now even the Good Guys are terrorists too. The Founding Fathers now were terrorists, just like the Iraqis, and we don't have to justify Dresden or Nagasaki.

Don't believe me? Christian kids are going to camps which justify themselves by invoking terrorism. The director of the bible camp Kids on Fire says, “I want to see them as radically laying down their lives for the gospel as they are in Palestine, Pakistan and all those different places because, excuse me, we have the truth.” I don't care if she thinks they have the truth, I just care that the fact that somebody is brainwashing boys into blowing themselves up on the West Bank somehow means we have to do it too? Their stated goal is to take back America for Christians, and they pop balloons that say "government" on them as part of some exercise to identify their enemies. Then they all pray in front of a cardboard cut-out of... the president. Here's the thing, they have to be victims of an oppressive wave of secular culture that's out to destroy them, and they have to be losing. Government is the enemy, but somehow President Bush is not part of that, because he's a victim too.

My favorite though for the special ethical status of victims is the way for instance, women apparently identified with Kathy Bates breaking a man's ankles in Misery because even if it was a psychotic act of violence, it was still empowering. And it's not so ridiculous, the pervasive sugar-and-spice myth does make life that much worse for everybody, and it can take an image like a psychotic female stalker to make us even aware of it. What's weird though is being able to be proud of it somehow, like only being able to respond emotionally to the politics, and again you have to put aside any ethical or moral response. Sure it's fun to threaten the ruling class, but it's not so much fun when everybody's a victim, because then you get things in the same vein like Sen. George Allen saying he had a Confederate flag, a picture of confederate soldiers, and a noose in his office because of his rebellious youth. Invoking slavery and lynchings while governor of a southern state is certainly rebellious to common decency. My favorite though are these t-shirts from Aryan Wear, modeled here by white supremacist folk singers Prussian Blue.

They claim they're all about pride, not hatred, but can invoke mass murder on a scale so large as to have permanently changed institutions throughout the western world, and it works, because now they really are the victims of hatred, mine. Seriously, the sight of them does make me angry, but fortunately, I'm not a terrorist, and I don't care what they wear or sing or where they do it, I just worry about who's dumb enough to listen.

Lian's Top 10 Complaints about adjusting to Chicago

10. Poor service at the Chilean consulate

9. Paul's mysterious insistence on wearing a fake mustache and sunglasses when eating at Penang

8. No heterosexual bars or diners in the greater Chicago area (that anybody will take her to, anyways)

7. Ruthless swarms of hornets staying in guest room until they find a place of their own

6. Inability to rent a boat on Lake Michigan

5. Calling police to complain about #@%$'ing fireworks going off in the neighborhood all night... and finding out they're going off inside the condo as well.

4. Denied entry to Bijou Theatre because of discriminatory policy against asians or something

3. Nobody says "Gruzei" or launders money for genocidal dictators

2. Sick of eating at Brasserie Jo every night while Paul disappears for 20-30 minutes to "wash his hands"

1. Constant threats about being taken down... to Chinatown.

Things that make me sad

1. Tara Reid is having breast reduction surgery. It's not that I liked Tara Reid any better with big breasts, actually she just reminded me of a prudish, whiskey-scarred version of Brittney Skye (except when Brittney drops her clothes and acts like a whore she's sober and on the clock). It's just that nobody liked her, so she got breast implants and nobody liked her either, so now she's going back to where she was only with scars and no sensation in her nipples. (Which allows her to be the only person not to notice the breeze going over them when her dress falls off.)

2. The large number of people on TV giving investment advice based on their prime position on the information curve, when they themselves clearly aren't benefiting from this information, is certainly tragic irony. Jim Cramer is a great showman, he has a TV show, a book, he's on Conan O'Brien, he's appearing at colleges with Tim Russert in front of packed halls, and he's living the dream when he orders up his never-ending pasta bowl down at the Olive Garden. The money from TV, public appearances, and royalties from his book is apparently siphoned off to prop up his poor investment positions, and he doesn't even have the coin to pick up a Zagat guide at Barnes&Noble. Ironically the guys on at 4am should be the wealthiest, since nobody's watching, preserving the value of their information about the market.

3. The Airbus transport plane known as the Beluga... actually that doesn't make me sad so much as it apparently does the Boeing tour guides. Just mention the thing and watch the tourguide wipe a tear from the corner of her eye and bravely announce, "Our plane is called the Big Green Pickle, some people like it, because they think it's cute and, and maybe they think it's funny-looking..." Ask if Boeing has ever had a successful water landing and bam, the tour's over right there, and you're hustled off to the gift shop.

4. Seafood restaurants in Seattle are full of vegetarians. I seriously don't think anybody in Seattle eats fish, which is really sad considering there's a whole big-ass bucket of tuna and crab next door called the pacific ocean. Actually now that I think about it the last time I had as much really questionable seafood it was in Massacheusetts, and the people I've met who never had high quality seafood (lobster, bluefin tuna, octopus, the stuff that you can't get by broiling something off a farm) all grew up near an ocean. And it all gets less fresh and more expensive the closer you get to the ocean... the clams are full of sand, the fish is tragically overcooked or wrapped in ham which is then charred (when they overcook the fish). Is it just that the midwestern customer knows fresh seafood is a rare treat and thus won't settle for $40 fish sticks? Anyways, it makes me sad, what with food and football being the only remaining pleasures in my life. Seriously, I expected the calamari appetizer at the Experience Music Project bar to be sub-par, but I didn't expect the worst preparation of squid I've ever had.

5. The Captain emigrating to China. It may not happen for a couple years, but I figure with the Olympics in Beijing, and the Republican Convention here, I figure it's only a matter of time. And if he goes to China, there's always the possibility Shing-Tung Yau will steal a Fields Medal for him. Pretty soon I expect to be getting emails from phil@peoplesdfl.cn saying "The Poincare Conjecture was clearly proved by the work of mathematicians in nnnnnnn-China!"

These things make me sad. But I try to remember it could be worse, after all, I had breakfast with my friend the Candyman this Sunday and he can't even sit down to a meal without being pursued by bees. And he's got a hook (but it ain't on his hand). I would also like to apologize to The Captain for the legions of dumb jokes about China I've been making for almost 8 years, I swear to god I'll stop after the 2008 Olympics.

Santana wins Triple Crown!

Johan Santana looks set to win the triple crown this year.   In the unlikely event that anybody reading this doesn't know what that means, Johan Santana is leading baseball in all three major statistical categories:  he has the most wins, the most strike-outs, and the lowest ERA.  To win an American League triple crown is enough of an accomplishment, but a Major League triple crown is almost unheard of.  The last guy to do it was Dwight Gooden in 1985, and before that the last guy was Sandy Koufax.  That's pretty elite company, and he'll be pitching in the play-offs the next time he starts.  If D-troit stumbles just once, the Twins can still win the division, Joe Mauer is on pace to be the first catcher to lead the majors in hitting since WWII, and Justin Morneau-for-4 has overcome having a rough start and being Canadian to be 5th in RBIs this season.  Everybody wrote the Twins off this spring, now nobody knows what they might do.  Very eeeeenteresting...

If you see only one quirky crime thriller this year..

If you only see one quirky crime thriller in which seemingly impenetrable plot developments and odd quirks only hint at the intricate underlying con in a multipolar conflict, see Inside Man. If you see two... well, Lucky Number Slevin is not without charm.

Inside Man is summarized by Clive Owen's opening narration in which he promises to pull off the perfect bank heist... he then makes hostages indistinguishable from robbers, while Denzel Washington must deal with the robbers, antsy SWAT teams, and the bank's own intrigue. Lucky Number Slevin is a story about mistaken identity forcing a man into deals with mobsters over assassination for hire and gambling debts, and neighbors who just need to borrow a cup of sugar at the wrong time.

Both are filmed in an interesting visual style, and both films absorbed me into the growing confusion of the unfolding story, although less so for Lucky Number Slevin, which really didn't hook me until maybe the last third of the film. The problem I felt was that L#S spends so much time introducing Slevin's problem through a series of meetings and punches to the stomach that, while I certainly enjoy seeing Josh Hartnett get punched in the stomach (he was in Pearl Harbor) the film didn't pull me in until I saw Slevin Kelevra actually do something.

Inside Man is captivating in large part because it features a tremendous cast that gives these characters a lot of implied depth. The main confrontation of this film is Denzel Washington facing on one side Clive Owen, and on the other Jodie Foster, any of whom is fascinating whenever they're allowed to get a little dirty, and the muddying waters of this film's moral perspective are perfect for that. Around them are Christopher Plummer, Willem Dafoe, and the ever fascinating Chiwetel Ejiofor, and when you add to that the richness of the diverse cast of hostages, Spike Lee has created an entire world full of real people whose existence extends far beyond the boundaries of the story he's chosen to tell, as do certain threads of the plot.

This contrasts with the real problem of Lucky Number Slevin. The supporting cast includes Morgan Freeman, Ben Kingsley, and Stanley Tucci as Slevin's three antagonists, and a collection of amusing henchmen. Bruce Willis is effectively taciturn, and needs to be until the final unravelling of the plot, but everybody else spends the whole movie exchanging witty rapier thrusts and amusing musings, which shows a lot of promise, but sadly fails to entertain nearly as much as the cast thinks it does. The problem is the characters are all so thin, as well as intentionally mysterious, that it never has enough weight to make me believe it. Freeman, Tucci, and Kingsley manage to pull this off and their scenes with Hartnett are more interesting for it, but the real problem is the scenes with Lucy Liu and Josh Hartnett, since neither has the gravitas to pull off a script that's straining for self-conscious humor and noir at the same time. Every scene works briefly, but each goes too long to avoid turning into some writer's exercise on how long they can keep a technique going, especially Liu and Hartnett's scenes, which begin simultaneously guarded and flirtatious and end with a neon sign flashing "Witty Dialogue" so the audience knows when to chuckle appreciatively.

What's left in Lucky Number Slevin is the intricate underlying con, which Bruce Willis coyly refers to as the Kansas City Shuffle, defined differently everytime, but the characters can't fill it out. Inside Man is the opposite, as the film and the heist are a snapshot of a larger world and a larger time frame. I was intrigued by both, but Inside Man is the one I'd watch again, loose ends and all. One caveat, both struck me as films better enjoyed when you only put the clues together at the end with the benefit of hindsight, and just get pulled along with Kelevra (Hartnett) and Frazier (Washington), but more discerning viewers may piece this together a lot quicker than I did.

(This was a review I posted on my other blog at Rotten Tomatoes, along with reviews of almost every other 2006 release I've seen.)

Vikings 16-13 Panthers

This was certainly an interesting game to watch, good and bad. There's reason to believe the team may be pretty good after all, given a close win over a good team and some factors affecting the margin of victory in this game.

The offense was anemic, coming up with 6 points through three quarters of football. Most series followed a predictable pattern: on first down, run between the tackles, and since our running game sucks and the Panthers were cued to the run, little or no gain. Second and long, Johnson drops back to pass, somebody blows their assignment and Johnson gets sacked. Then it's on to third and very long, and the Vikings don't convert. The story really was the failure of what should be a good offensive line, other than during the Vikings' first drive of the game, to provide holes for the running game or protection for the passing game. Reinforcing my observation about the Panthers anticipating certain plays, whenever the Vikings broke the pattern, like a quick throw to a wide out on first down, running on second and long, they got some solid results. The other consideration is that the offense, while they didn't score, did come up with 400 yards of total offense, including 78 yards on the final scoring drive in OT, and held the ball longer than the Panthers, even though they didn't do a lot with it. Drives stalled in the Panthers half of the field, and the 50-yard blocked field goal seemed symbolic of the offense for most of the day.

Considering the narrow margin for error allowed by our lack of offensive output and the time the defense spent on the field I never thought they'd hold up through four quarters. They certainly got beat on a lot of plays, but they consistently came up with stops all day, and deserve the lion's share of the credit for this win, by holding the Panthers to 13 points. The offense deserves more credit than they'll get for gaining some yards, because the short field the special teams gave the Panthers every possession didn't help either unit too much either. The defense also had a lot of near interceptions and recovered fumbles only to have them taken away by the zebras... they were around the ball the whole game, and were getting to Delhomme, so they showed even more than what's on the stat sheet.

The only way to really win a game where you can't score is turnovers, and while both teams turned the ball over exactly once, the Vikings capitalized on theirs. The defense stopped the Panthers cold after Johnson threw his first interception of the year, but when the Panthers (following a 3-and-out, -9 yard drive by the Vikings) came up with the great idea to throw a lateral on a punt return and coughed up the ball, the Vikings took advantage of the possession in Panthers territory. Trailing 13-6 and setting up for a field goal, the holder Chris Kluwe flipped the ball up to Ryan Longwell who made what was described by fellow fans as a "not terribly masculine" pass to tight end Richard Owens who bulled in for a touchdown to tie the game. It's been a long time since I've seen a Vikings team successfully use misdirection, instead of just being stymied by it, but part of the fun of the record-setting '98 offense was the use of plays like the flea flicker, coming out of the huddle and having the QB line up as a receiver with the snap going directly to 3rd down back David Palmer, that kind of thing.

The other reason to take a lot of positives out of a close game is that hopefully we won't get this officiating crew again for a while. It was like playing Duke or something the sheer number of phantom penalties, inconsistent non-calls, and the bizarre rulings that came out of instant replay challenges, all of which served to kill Vikings drives and sustain Panthers drives. The refs aren't supposed to overturn on the field rulings except with clear, incontrovertible evidence of error, so whenever they do and still get it wrong, it really smacks of bias... three plays were reviewed, two rulings upheld and one overturned, all against the Vikings, all completely mysterious to anybody watching the same replay on the big screen. I don't think it's right to claim one bad decision by a ref determines the course of a game, but the consistent non-calls on face-mask violations by Panthers while calling an unusually high number on Vikings defenders, ignoring holding by Panthers players directly in front of officials, as well as the unusual number of calls where the official closest to the play saw nothing wrong only to have a flag thrown by a guy halfway down the field, really was atrocious. I don't mind watching my team losing at football, I mind watching them lose a popularity contest with referees, who weigh reputation more heavily than the game in front of them. Sure the Panthers can get the benefit of the doubt playing the Vikings based on the last few years, but there's no way Delhomme throws an incomplete pass while falling under a pile of linemen, and not only does the umpire think it's a fumble and calls it one, Delhomme thinks it's a fumble and doesn't argue the call, but the ref sees incontrovertible evidence beyond the shadow of a doubt they're both wrong when he watches the video tape and overturns the call on that basis.

I'm not sure about some of the current aesthetic trends in architecture. For instance, does this look more like something a woman would a) buy a luxury condo in, or b) masturbate with?

Das Vote

I voted in the DFL primary on Tuesday, and I have elected to make a statement of my own free will. I have been treated well by my cap, um... by The Party and am happy to remain in the People's 5th District. I regret the pain I have caused my friends and neighbors by voting Republican in previous elections, and I now see a better way. I have chosen my new political party without coercion or reward, and especially without coercion. I had a minor accident while alone in the booth in my polling place, when in my unsupervised state I put accidentally put my pen in the wrong place and in so doing accidentally pulled out one of my own fingernails, again by myself without any assistance or interference from any party election monitors. It was only then that I requested assistance in filling out my ballot due to the injury to my hand as well as several unrelated electrical burns. I am very grateful for the assistance provided by my friends from the DFL, and I am very pleased with the result of the election. I look forward to exercising my right to vote for the candidate of my choice in the general election, and while I may voluntarily seek guidance from the Party, I will cast my vote without fear of intimidation or coercion. Thank you for reading my voluntary statement.

(Actually I used the electronic touchscreen voting machine, which does what I've said they should do all along. You get a normal, optical scan ballot like everybody else gets, put it into the machine, which runs you through all the elections in this weird Stephen Hawking voice, then prints your votes onto the ballot, and you can verify it visually before feeding it into the electronically sealed ballot box yourself.)

Top five movies I'm looking forward to this fall

1. Oldtownboy

Hello Paul, I'd like to play a game... after being imprisoned for years in a small, mountainous country in central Europe, a man is released with money, a cellphone, and a decent selection of zegna shirts. He struggles to piece together the circumstances of his abduction by weaving his way through the dangerous interlocked worlds of the global hedge fund industry and the Chicago gay porn theater industry (especially that second one), only deviating from his relentless quest to eat the occasional live octopus. Eventually his securitized operating asset offers based on Peter North's dependable erections raise interest amongst the powerful and dangerous, disturbing the still waters of his past, this fall in... Oldtownboy.

2. All the Captain's Men

This political thriller tells of the rise and fall of fictitious east St. Paul politician Billy Beagle, his innocent beginnings and his eventual corruption at the hands of the Minnesota Butter lobby. Following a major scandal over a road bill provision to create 5 mph or less lanes next to the curbs on University Ave to improve traffic flow and stimulate local commerce, city council member Beagle must run an expensive campaign to restore his image as a conservative family values candidate, his usual campaign contributors the Ushers Union, Bubble-Up Carwash, and George Soros won't return his calls, and some $#@%'ing jackass keeps stealing his yard signs. In desperation, he turns to the Butter lobby and their money propels his meteoric rise to political
power broker in Minnesota politics. At first the compromises are easy, he pushes a bill to put more signs on Lexington Ave to help people find the Dairy Queen and avoid misunderstandings, but eventually, with a congressional investigation into tubs of Afghani goat butter used to smuggle heroin into the state through Lake of the Woods, Billy Beagle is found drowned in a bucket of movie theater artificial butter topping.

3. The Maltese Seahawk

Strangely evil college advisor Silke Spaten meets a colorful cast of characters who come to Seattle in pursuit of a black-lacquered statue of a black cock, believed to actually be covering over a priceless, jewel-encrusted mold of Sean Michaels created in 1187 by miscast European actors Orlando Bloom and Eva Green as a gift to Queen Elizabeth (who they figured could really use it) to apologize for losing Jerusalem. Silke must put aside those and many other painful anachronisms to sort through the stories told by homme mortel Bryan O'Shaughnessy, who may have lured Silke's roommate to her death, as well as the curious PJ Cairo, who comes into her office to discuss securitizing the statue but mostly just to fondle and admire his own cane, as well as the mysterious fat man D, who Cairo implies is pulling the strings. Murder, mayhem, and poorly constructed puns about porn star penises, in theaters this fall.

4. Nauru Vice

On an island in the south pacific with thirteen thousand people crammed into eight steamy square miles facing 90% unemployment, Nauru needed somebody to walk the beat. And after a near-death experience choking on a particularly thick cheese fondue, one man was ready for the job. Due to financial irregularities involving importation of fireworks into the European Union, he lives 24/7 under an assumed identity, known to the local underworld only as "Amstelboy". In a linen suit with a pastel wifebeater, and loafers with and no socks, Amstelboy cruises around the island's perimeter in his cigar boat waving his badge in circles making annoying siren noises. The movie centers around some tourists who arrive on the island with money that they earned legally and want to keep receipts so they can pay their taxes, and Amstelboy must avert the crisis by finding some way to charge them for money laundering... as in charge them for services rendered, the basis of the Nauru economy.

5. Kevin + Sky

In this foreign film, I put on a suit with a pink shirt and run around traffic circles tearing my clothes off while searching for a prostitute who bathes with goldfish, pausing only for waffles and shellfish, and to urinate in the locks of BMWs. If you don't think that can be stretched out to 90 minutes, you haven't watched enough Belgian cinema.

Vikings vs The Washington NFL Team... no, not the Seahawks, the one in Maryland

Early on here I'd have to say the the bobbled snap on the extra point was strangely reassuring.  I thought it was a nice drive with some nice 3rd down plays, and Taylor's first run for seven yards was a nice change what from what the Vikings running game had become in recent years.  Scoring quickly on the first drive was so great to see, but maybe a little too good.  This is the Vikings we're talking about, so you know they'll leave you speechless after some bizarre screw-up, and a quick scoring drive would have just made me nervous waiting for the pendulum to swing.  The holder juggling the snap like a hot potato and a kicker half my size trying to get out and lead block for him was enough of a goofy "Only the Vikings" moment, and now I'm just glad that the three linebackers who dropped Kluwe short of the end zone didn't bury him too deep in the rich earth of Landover, MD.  May this offering please the gods of Ragnarok, so they don't smite us in the 4th quarter.  Vikings 6-0 The Washington NFL Team (I know that doesn't sound right, but I forgot their nickname so I checked the Strib).

Just as an aside, there is one thing I still don't understand.  The issue just came up on TV about Dwight Smith being deactivated for this game as a disciplinary measure.  What I want to know is, how come if you get a blowjob from a subordinate on antique furniture the oval office you can still be president, but if you get a blowjob in a stairwell you can't play football just a few miles away in Landover?  Ironically, the aptly named Clinton Portis will play tonight.

Holding the WNT to a field goal in their first possession seems alright, since there were a few familiar areas of concern on that drive.  The first play, a screen pass to Santana Moss for 23 yards, the increasingly creaky Mark Brunell's ability to scramble for a first down, and the success throwing to Portis out of the backfield all indicate to me the usual problems at linebacker, leaving a lot of space underneath and reacting slowly.  What was nice to see was the WNT going back to a very successful play and getting stuffed, like the next screen, and the 3rd down pass to Portis that came up short and forced the field goal.  If the Vikings defense is more reactive and adaptive than in previous years, I may be a lot less of a gloomy fatalist.  And I'll have to find something else to complain about.

Wow, this second drive is a little goofy.  Wiggins attempt to hurdle the safety, only to run into a couple linebackers in the air, looked... awfully painful.  He also lost the ball and was lucky that it wasn't recovered, and that he was ruled down by contact.  Also the long, perfectly thrown pass to Troy Williamson really underlines what I've always thought, this guy's like Orlando Jones in The Replacements, he can get open deep but he doesn't know what to do with the ball when it gets there.  The special teams look a lot better on coverage, thankfully.

On the WNT's second drive, the Vikings are all over Brunell, this is a welcome sight, and the swing pass to Moss isn't catching anybody unawares.  And my Vikings bias requires me to note that he totally threw the ball away on 3rd down, that should have been intentional grounding.  Jesus Christ, Tom Cruise is in the owner's box, that's strangely unnerving.  It's weird how creepy that guy got in such a short time.  The Vikings respond with another 3-and-out featuring a penalty and a deflection at the line of scrimmage that nearly turned into an interception for a TD.  Randle El looked close to breaking the punt return open for a TD, and the WNT start out tat the 50 yard line, but instead of that drive, I think I'd rather see an interview with Jamie Foxx about how great Tom Cruise is.  Oh good, that's what ESPN is showing instead, and by the way, that was never a first down by Randle El on the drive they're ignoring.  A dangerous screen pass and a stupid penalty in between Jamie Foxx anecdotes about Tom Cruise have put the WNT at the 6 yard line, and Clinton Portis runs it in, which is frustrating, because I was really into hearing about how Tom Cruise helped Cuba Gooding Jr. win an oscar ten #@$*'ing years ago.  They couldn't figure out why people stopped watching Monday Night Football at the same time the popularity of the NFL was booming, how about just calling the fucking game and not thinking people tune in to hear a bunch of old sportscasters talk about nothing like they're in an ESPN Classic Seinfeld episode.  Seriously I don't know how much more I can hear about Tony Kornheiser's fantasy football roster.

Holy buckets how was Troy Williamson a #7 overall pick?  Two mysteriously dropped passes in the first half by our compensation for losing Randy Moss. He catches something and there's an illegal formation penalty, which is basically like the ref going over to your coach and saying "Your players don't know where to line up, dee-dee-dee!"  The field position the WNT is getting is phenomenal as our offense is stalling, Randle El's starting to screw with the special teams, and this is getting goofier.  Santana Moss left the field and came back to make a red zone catch, like the Seinfeld episode where Kramer leaves the subway car to get a gyro and runs back on.  And now on a routine hand-off Kevin Williams took down the QB and forced a fumble, to remind me to have faith in Thor.  That was actually pretty cool.  As was Darren Sharper nailing Santana Moss in the end zone so hard he forced an incompletion, leading to a field goal.  WNT 13-6 Vikings, even though ESPN just announced it's 13-7, since apparently they have bad seats and can't see the score board.

The Vikings came back with a late field goal in the first half, but several minutes into the second half on a Vikings drive into Washington NFL Team territory, there has been zero coverage of Tom Cruise.  Things are looking up.  Marcus Robinson hauls in a touchdown pass thrown up and over a d-back's shoulder, and the Vikings get the extra point procedure down to take a 16-13 lead.  The WNT tie it back up with the help of some boneheaded penalties like roughing the passer, which really makes me wonder why Childress' new era of harsh discipline doesn't extend to cutting down the number of penalties Vikings teams committed in the Green/Tice eras.  Speaking of coaching, Longwell missed a 54 yard field goal, which is really not unexpected but an odd choice to go for the field goal there, I wonder if he's just afraid Randle El will break open a punt return?

On the Vikings last drive, I have to give credit to Troy Williamson for one game-changing play.  On 3rd down, he made a catch right even with the 1st down marker, and was pushed back over the line, muddying the waters as to whether it was a first down, but he broke the tackle and scrambled forward to keep the drive alive.  He's still a shrimp with no hands, but that was a nice play.  The end of that drive, with the Vikings eating up the few remaining minutes on the clock before kicking the winning field goal, was such a welcome sight after years of Denny Green's total unconsciousness of clock management, and it forced the Washington NFL Team into a desperate final drive leading to a missed 47-yard field goal.  If this went to overtime I was going to lose my mind over the missed extra point, like I did that time the Bills beat the Vikings by one point after two missed Vikings PATs.

By the way, the only nicknames I commonly hear for tonight's opponent are the Deadskins and the Foreskins, and the paper calls them the Washington NFL team, so it's no wonder I can't remember their name.  I initially thought the Strib's queasiness over the franchise's name was amusing and transparently political, but eventually, I had to admit I couldn't come up with any straight-faced argument for keeping the moniker "Redskins", so screw it.  I'm still working out my position on which of Smith College's traditional mascots they should use, the Virgins or the Unicorns.

When Stereotypes Collide

Sometimes there's a strange positive interactive effect to national and ethnic stereotypes, which I just saw at work in the World Series of Poker. German student George Danzer, standing out in a dashing suit with a red shirt and a scarf that only a German could make masculine (so nobody sees him swallow hard when he's bluffing), was facing a puzzling pre-flop raise and re-raise from Dimitri Nobles. So he cracked a grin and asked with mock earnestness, "Are you from Scandinavia?", invoking the stereotype of Scandinavians as very loose with their chips. With at least $200,000 on the table, Danzer was holding aces so he went all in, upon which Nobles, bluff and bravado both exposed, sheepishly mucked his cards as Danzer assured him, "You are from Scandinavia, you re-raise with nothing and then have to fold."

Here's the thing... Dimitri Nobles is not from Scandinavia, he's from America. And he's black. I'm not saying George Danzer said anything wrong, but that really could have gone over badly, if Nobles thought Danzer was making an ironic comment on his skin color by asking if he was Scandinavian. The whole Nazi thing does add another twinge to racism by Germans, so that wouldn't help either. Fortunately, Nobles is American, so another stereotype came into play. Nobles' response, delivered with a broad American smile, was "Scandinavia? I don't even know where that is, man."

Bangs look good on nobody

Bangs look good on nobody. I didn't really realize this until I saw a movie where somebody had distracting bangs. Granted, it was V for Vendetta and the bangs were on a Guy Fawkes mask, but it was still distractingly stupid. Nobody needs to frame their face with a keratin helmet. Don't be afraid of the forehead, seriously. Cut the hair, don't cut the hair, it all works. From the buzz-cut to hair down to the small of her back, there are endless possibilities. Some people can pull it off (mainly girls under the age of 10) but even they're just treading water, and look better with real hair. My proof is this, meet Loco, the Angolan footballer who cut off all of his hair except the bangs... yikes.

Steve Irwin, requiescat in pace

Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, was just killed by a stingray.  Their venom isn't generally lethal, but they have long stingers, and it got him right in the heart, and the resulting wound killed him almost instantaneously.  He hadn't been so popular since he wrangled a crocodile while holding an infant, but I'm really going to miss his infectious enthusiasm.  The time he brought a giant python onto Conan O'Brien's set and this 30 foot snake was nearly overpowering its handlers, who couldn't get it offstage was certainly a memorable moment in television.  (Apparently reticulated pythons eat chicken.)

I really thought if a TV animal expert with proper respect for animals was going to get killed while filming, it would be Manny Puig from Wildboyz.  Actually I would definitely have expected Steve-O or Partyboy to be killed or maimed long before Steve Irwin or Siegfried and Roy.  Right before I read the news about Steve Irwin, I was watching an episode of Wildboyz where Steve-O has a wild black bear eat honey and marshmallows off of his chest, and Manny tries to wrestle a feeding blue shark (with David Hasselhoff looking on as lifeguard).  One of them has a rock python tattoo for god's sake, from letting a rock python bite him so he could pour ink into the wounds... how are these guys still alive?  Although Steve-O did go to clown college, where he must have learned a thing or two.

The guy in India who relocates king cobras that wander into populated areas would have been another likely candidate, since he's been bitten so many times he's allergic to the antivenin.  Although scientists have genetically engineered mice to be resistant to cobra venom, so someday, your pet store will be able to sell you a mouse that, like the mongoose, cannot be killed by cobras.  It's too bad biochemists haven't licked that whole AIDS vaccine problem yet, but at least their laboratory mice won't be killed by cobras.  Unless they get long, sharp fangs stuck through their necks somehow, that might actually still kill them.  Or murine AIDS, since obviously they won't be vaccinated against that either.

I actually spent more time than I took to write the rest of this finding an adjective "murine" that I thought would be analogous to feline, apian, or ovine so I could make that joke.  I'm building a catalog of adjective forms derived from Latin names, no man should know off the top of his head that apian flu and ovine spongiform encephalopathy are fictitious diseases spread by bees and sheep, I really need help.  Does the squalus really live in squalor, is that really fair?

Mike McMahon era officially over

Well, that's it. The Vikings have taken a couple more steps in building a new team, including trading C.J. Mosley and a draft pick to the New York Jets for Brooks Bollinger, who will replace McMahon at back-up QB. Losing Mosley could really suck, since he had potential as a pass rusher for the Vikings, (and I don't know what round the pick was). On the other hand, we needed a veteran QB to back up Johnson, because in football terms he's very old and injury prone. But this exposes a potential problem regarding personnel decisions.

Mike McMahon was a bust as a back-up QB, and totally stunk up the joint, so they had to cut him and make a trade for a replacement after the pre-season. The only reason he was signed in the first place was because he used to play for the Eagles and he "knew the system". Then we swapped receivers with the Eagles, they our guy and made him a starter and we got a guy we buried way down the depth chart who "knows the system". Now we've also signed a guy the Eagles cut because he was injured, but then of course, he "knows the system". 22 guys have to be cut today and now I'm wondering if having played for the Eagles is going to be the determining factor in determining the final roster. But then I don't "know the system".

V for Vendetta

This movie got a horrible reception when it came out, and I have to concur in that I really couldn't recommend it to anybody. However, it had a lot of merits, or perhaps more accurately, a lot of potential. The story of disobedience and revolt by the population of an authoritarian regime was extremely captivating. The importance of symbolism, fear, the way a population forgets history, and how any show of disrespect can undermine the authority of a regime, were all near perfect in their presentation, and with a surprisingly light touch, given some of the controversies invoked by the film.

What makes it ineffective is in a word, Hollywood, primarily through the casting. Any peripheral scene, or any scene where no credited cast member has a spoken line, is enthralling. When Stephen Fry and the girl with the glasses take off their masks at the end of the film, I nearly shed tears. The authoritarian regime is presented reasonably competently, if not terribly interestingly, with Stephen Rea's Inspector Finch the lone highlight as a man with the intelligence to dig deeper into his society's workings but not the courage or imagination. Stephen Fry I felt was absolutely perfect as the dilettante rebel, keeping illegal cultural artifacts and engaging in minor subversions well below the public radar, but believing nothing serious will ever happen to him.

Unfortunately, the lead actors are truly the stone that sinks this movie, by being such predictably poor casting choices. I even like the actors, Hugo Weaving and Natalie Portman, but they just don't have nearly the right presence. Casting Natalie Portman as Evey Hammond is obviously the Hollywood's need for everybody to be young and photogenic, but for Portman it comes out as wilting and fragile, and so exceedingly pliable and vulnerable, that she can't sell the transformation to fearless rebel. She really can't hold the screen with much better actors around her, and this kills a lot of scenes, having no real interaction between her character and others. It's still hard to even take her seriously as an adult, which worked exceedingly well for Closer where everybody pushes her around and talks down to her level, and was great when she was at her acting peak around age 12-13, but falls pretty far short here. Her English accent seems like a transparent affection, and in addition to being distracting, makes her again seem like the American kids who go to Oxford and try to assume a new identity, which again makes her seem like an adolescent. The other contenders for the role, Bryce Dallas Howard and Scarlett Johansson, I feel might have brought some more adult qualities to the role.

Hugo Weaving's breathless, otherworldly speaking voice may have contributed to the fact that he's best known for playing an elf and a computer program, but here it makes it hard to see that under the mask and the grandiose symbolism, V is just a pained, twisted man. This adds a lot when it does occasionally manage to poke through, so it would have been nice to see more of it. As it is, with nothing visible underneath in Weaving's performance, V comes across as a ridiculous shell, most clearly in the scene where V destroys the Old Bailey, and is standing on a rooftop with Evey reveling in the destruction. With his impassive Guy Fawkes mask, and just the black gloved hands sticking out of his flowing black cloak, and a low wall in front of him, he looked like a reject from that castle Trolley used to visit on Mr. Rogers, with the little puppets of King Friday and Prince Tuesday. It was incredibly hard to take him seriously after that, especially when he's making eggs and toast while wearing a grinning mask. If the original actor cast for the role, James Purefoy, had stuck through the film, I feel like he would have given a much better impression of a man under the mask, which is what the film needs to make V real and not ridiculous.

The film also makes great use of music, but again, Hollywood needs a dramatic score with violins playing to let them know what emotion to feel, and this is distractingly bland and cliche. Dario Marinelli's score really can't stand next to the songs that close the film, Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture and the Stones' Street Fighting Man, both of which are what the movie really called for. I also can't go without mentioning Dynamite Ham's "BKAB" featuring Malcom X and Gloria Steinem that apparently kept a lot of people glued to their seats during the closing credits. But it's classical music, political techno, and a song from two generations back, all of which I can see making nervous suits say "You didn't even give them a good bang at the end so they'd know
when to clap!"

This is also interesting in that it's the third Stephen Rea film I've seen, and like Colin Firth is always playing Mr. Darcy, he always seems to be channeling the spirit of Ned Broy. In "Michael Collins" he plays Ned Broy, an Irish policeman who becomes an informant for the Republicans after starting to listen to Collins, in "The Crying Game" he's an IRA volunteer who quits after conversing with a British soldier, and in "V for Vendetta" he's again a policeman who starts to question the regime after listening to V. He's also a Belfast Protestant who had three children with an IRA bomber who was part of the Dirty Protest and hunger strikes. Kind of interesting to find a Presbyterian from Belfast who keeps playing revolutionaries.

Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD

Initially, I really didn't get why there was even a conflict over the format of the next generation of optical media, the mode through which high definition video recordings could be sold. The primary advantage of seemed HD-DVD I understood to be that it's cheaper to run an assembly line that can switch from HD-DVD and normal DVD, which frankly didn't sound all that great. In terms of space, HD-DVD would also be a minor improvement over regular DVD, whereas a DVD holds multiple times what a CD can. Blu-Ray makes a much bigger jump, and like DVD, should allow more things that weren't possible in existing media. HD-DVD would have to be replaced with something else much sooner. Then I found out why HD-DVD is winning the format war: Sony is stupid.

Obviously we already knew this, with their stupid anti-piracy software their CDs secretly install on computers, and the exploding laptop batteries don't help. But they're at it again, announcing that they're selling the first Blu-Ray drives, which will be usable for storage, since they can read data from blu-ray discs. However, you won't be able to play Blu-ray movies on them, because they haven't sorted out what DRM they'll use, but they're selling the things anyways (you can burn a pirated movie onto a Blu-ray disc and play it on one of these drives, though). Seriously, Sony Electronics have a superior product, but are holding it back because Sony Media hasn't figured out how to break it yet. This has apparently happened multiple times in the US at least, with stuff like MiniDisc, which apparently the rest of the world thought was great but we missed out on. The Sony Playstation which got DVD players into a lot of homes won't play Blu-ray (not enough anti-piracy hardware), so nobody's going to buy Blu-ray discs because they have a player already. Meanwhile HD-DVD is showing signs of actually being available, like Netflix is planning on renting HD-DVDs.

The other stupid thing is Sony is limiting the licensing, to control who puts out content in their format. Having a Sony-only format that only plays on Sony equipment and is entirely controlled by Sony helped kill Betamax, but apparently it's better to lose money than to lose control. This explained one thing I'd really been curious about, why the porn industry was behind HD-DVD. Apparently it's because Sony doesn't want to allow any porn producers to put anything out on Blu-Ray. So basically they have an electronics product you can't buy anything for in the immediate future, that will only have limited content as time goes by, and a format that requires very specific DRM-capable equipment.

The great thing about all of this is, nobody can tell the difference. VHS to DVD is huge, DVD to high definition is... not so huge. The only thing that really blows your mind in high def is sporting events, and you can't really sell a lot of recordings of live sporting events. Also, there are formats with better compression already spreading that make the DRM'ed Sony format obsolete. However, the real irony is Sony has now put out a product that can only play pirated movies, that really brightened my day.

Vikings screwed early

Usually they start out strong and the wheels come off mid-season, or just whenever they play the Giants. Finally, a New York Football Giants free season, one I can enjoy without an impending sense of dread, and it's starting with terrible omens. They didn't look that great against the Raiders, but I figured I shouldn't read too much into that, but even that seems to be getting worse. Then the St Peter Police Department got involved.

The giant, glaring weakness in this team was the horrible, horrible play at linebacker, so the big off-season debate was whether they'd done enough to shore up those positions. Their first round draft pick was a highly rated linebacker, but after playing one quarter of a preseason game he's out for the whole year. This is following our new strong safety having a season-ending injury while backing up during training camp. So we'll still have the giant glaring hole in the middle of the field on defense... boy that linebacker we got for Moss was a great pick-up. Continued improvement on the defensive line would go a long way, but late in games the wide-open middle and sloppy tackling will apparently still negate the improvement of the line and the secondary the past few years. Don't get me started on how unbelievably bad our coverage teams were.

The talent level of our offensive skill position players has gone down, now that Moss and Culpepper are gone, but theoretically the offensive line should be a lot better, and the running game along with it now that they have a decent runningback who ranks football ahead of weed. On the other hand, the team's best receiver will probably spend the season in jail, after he led the St. Peter police department on a 100 mph chase to avoid a DWI. That certainly worked out well. I'd just like to point out once again, that for all the criticism of Randy Moss, he didn't miss entire seasons because of jail terms and failed drug tests, unlike other recent Vikings offensive starters. At least Tavaris Jackson looks like he might be the real deal at QB for next year.

This just doesn't look good... the improvements to the line and the running game may lead to the offense actually holding the ball long enough to keep our defense from collapsing late in games, which would be an improvement, but they're still not going to score on anybody. 3rd down is still going to be rough with wide open passing lanes across the middle, so the D isn't going to smother anybody either. Mediocrity abounds, and in a year we play the AFC East and the NFC West, I won't get to heckle my friends the Dolphin and 9er fans. I hope they look better by the opener against the Redskins. You know, I'm actually kind of glad that's a road game, I think spending the 5th anniversary of 9/11 with 64,000 people in a building with almost no exits would really unnerve me so much I wouldn't enjoy the game.

Starfleet Medical Ethics, and why I'd never use the EMH

In episode #130, "Pathfinder", Voyager is contacted through a new communications technology created by Lt. Reginald Barclay (better known as Howlin' Mad Murdock on the A-Team). At the end of the episode the crew toasts Lt. Barclay, and the captain asks if anybody knows him. The Doctor mentions that he read Barclay's file, and in a stunning lapse of professionalism, tells everyone about Barclay's amusing medical history (which includes phobias, addictions, and one time turning into a giant spider). Have his ethical subroutines just been corrupted, deleted, and rewritten so many times that after five and a half years they just don't even kick in anymore? Is his usual contribution to cocktail parties to tell everybody the 1st officer was a bedwetter?

I also assume that the file had a picture of the guy, so when the captain asked if anybody had a reference for the guy, you'd think that the Doctor would mention that in a sense they all sort of met him back in episode #10, "Projections", WHEN HIS HOLOGRAM TRIED TO STEAL THE SHIP. You'd think that would be something people would remember, the time Ferengi pirates sent a hologram from the alpha quadrant who charmed the whole crew before trying to murder them. It would also be a bit more appropriate than "Apparently he's sought extensive treatment for his crippling fear of transporters, what a freak." Granted, the Doctor's program had been rewritten or taken over by self-aware smart bombs and the like, and his holoemitter had been broken or embedded in the brain of a borg drone about 120 times in the intervening episodes, so maybe it's understandable he'd forget some things. Kind of makes you wonder what medical knowledge he's also forgotten though, doesn't it?

That being said, an indeterminate number of lightyears from Earth (the only explanation for their variable progress and the way people always catch up to them is if they went in the wrong direction most of the time) and if you get sick, your medical options are limited. You can go see the EMH whose medical ethics and long-term memory are intermittent, or you can see the other health care provider... an ex-con who was only halfway through his sentence for treason when he got pressed into service. I have to assume the replicators are working over time making vitamin C for a crew that's desperately afraid of going to sickbay.

Things that are not that great

There are in fact, some things that really aren't that great. I mean I'll readily admit they're good, I'm not a total idiot or anything, but they're just... not that great.

CSI, for instance, is really not that great. I've only seen a couple episodes of this show, but I've discovered that apparently everything in Las Vegas is covered in semen. Car accident? Better check the driver for semen just to be sure. I don't have a problem with people apparently going at it on every available surface, I'm really all for that, I mean sometimes the only thing you can find to cuff a woman to for sex and spanking is going to be playground equipment. Er, for example. Crowbarring in a few juvenile sexual references (like I just did) isn't really that big a deal, I mean SVU has hit some groaner moments like the lawyer moonlighting as a stripper, which wouldn't have been so stupid if it wasn't for the "feel of men's eyes" soliloquy by a coworker. These were like the first heterosexual strippers I've ever heard of, but that's another story. The thing with CSI is the constant attempts at momentous lines, obviously inspired by the Jerry Orbach teaser quip from like, every Law&Order episode ever. The one that finally did it for me was the guy who really caught Hannibal Lecter talking about roller coasters: "You see, for me it's not about the track. It's about the thrill." As opposed to the people who ride for the #@%&'ing scenery, but since it's in an amusement park full of vomiting kids and flashing lights in an otherwise vacant splotch of blacktop, I'm guessing the scenery really isn't all that great.

Kyle Lohse was also not that great. I'm not knocking Lohse, I'm just saying he... well, I'm saying he wasn't that great. He had years to turn into a quality starting pitcher for the Twins, and the Twins have done well by trying to keep talent coming up through the minor league organization. So they ship out guys like Kyle Lohse and Doug Mientkiewicz who have no future, with the Twins pitching prospects and Morneau-for-4 having a better trade-off of offensive and defensive skills at first base. Everybody tends to agree that keeping talent flowing into the minor league organization has worked, but there were grumbles about Lohse and Mientkiewicz, both because of a perceived lack of value in the trades, and because of a sense that a play-off run was being hurt in order to build for the future. Here's the thing... Kyle Lohse wouldn't pitch in the play-offs anyways, and if the margin of victory in making the wild card spot is Kyle Lohse winning as a starter, you really aren't going to win the world series. The same thing went for Mientkiewicz, he was superlative at the sport's easiest job to fill (playing first base), but it's unlikely you'll notice a huge difference between him and his replacement, so it's better to go with somebody that can hit. This meant the Twins could likely make better use of the roster spot by promoting somebody from the minors, even if they got nothing for Lohse and Mientkiewicz. Nobody wanted Lohse or Mientkiewicz enough to offer a lot in return, since they had few marketable rare abilities. Getting them out of the way of minor league talent and stocking up a bit more in the minors was good business, because they weren't that great.

Seinfeld? Not that great, I'm afraid. Here's the proof, the legacy of Seinfeld is in the concepts, the banal things that were formalized and exaggerated to comedic proportions, like the implied agreement of tupperware when formalized and applied to giving food to the homeless. The thing is, you don't actually have to see the episode to appreciate the observational humor, and I've recently come to the conclusion that it actually helps not to watch the actual episodes. Part of Seinfeld was the narcissism and lack of empathy of all the characters, which was supposed to be funny at their expense, but that aspect really misfired a lot. Generally they're just being cheap and petty, and obsessively so. Is there a shortage of people like that, because I don't think there is one that justifies broadcasting a daily fix of them. Like George freaking out for the entire episode about how he has to chip in for a $12 bottle of wine and a dessert to bring to a dinner party, in my experience there are actually plenty of people who are that cheap and aggravating, so it's really not funny. The show is popularly recognized as having jumped the shark when they took that same attitude too far, and nobody cared when George's fiancee died. Eventually the show even had to recognize this and punish the characters for their narcissism in the series finale. The physical comedy and intermittent yelping by Kramer only works in small doses, so if you watch two episodes back to back, it's immediately clear why Michael Richards' schtick didn't outlive this show. Also, George being depressed and pathetic, an intermittent running theme, is not great escapist entertainment for me, for some odd reason.

Big Slick is also surprisingly not that great. You'd think it would be, you really would, but it seems like whenever somebody throws away most of their chips, they went in with Big Slick, and they're not happy about it. The idea is that playing Texas Hold'em, there are only two starting hands that dominate Big Slick, Bullets and Cowboys. Against any other pair, it's even money before the flop. However, it's always the hand where people get fucked in crazy ways, like making trips on the flop then losing to the Wheel. It's just not that great is all I'm saying. Also not that great is when the short stack picks up fishhooks and goes nuts figuring it's time to make their last stand, because they always get chewed up by a bigger pair.

Obviously I'd also have to include poorly edited gonzo porn. Often poor editing means holding the same stable shot for so long that you see the point when the performers have to kind of mentally start the loop over, like shift their weight and shake out tired muscles before going back to the same mechanical motion. What also stands out in this process is the mental reboot, where somebody stops moaning, looks irritated and bored, then starts a new series of moans. The close-up anatomical shots, much as I love them, if held for so long that they start to lose any cohesion with the rest of the scene, and become just clinical, well, they're not so great. I will happily admit to loving gonzo porn, but when you point a camera at it and nod off, so does the audience.

Once on top of the world, but now just not so great anymore, the Beckhams. David's limitations really stood out during the World Cup, since he can't get past fullbacks, can't keep up with his assignment on defense even on set pieces, and is into the phase of his career when his speed and endurance will continue to drop drastically while he takes longer and longer to recover from more frequent injuries. His England career is over, since his sole contribution at international level is set pieces and the occasional long ball or cross if the whole defense sags off of him, like a Steve Kerr 3-pointer. He is likely to be dropped from Real Madrid's first team, and his wife's shopping and nightlife needs mean he's got two options, some second-rate London club like Tottenham Hotspur or... well actually just Spurs, or he can admit he's past it, and sign up with Red Bull New York or the LA Galaxy, and tap new markets for his image. Then again, he and his wife were booed at an MTV awards show, and got tossed again when they demanded that an LA store throw out the plebs so they could shop without being mobbed, were asked by management, "Who the fuck are you and why would we do that?" Actually, is he even that attractive to androphiles anymore, with his goofy personal grooming and body art choices? Which brings me to Posh, whose career ended eight years ago. The end of her husband's international career means she's not the leader of the Wags (Wives and Girlfriends) that traveled the length and breadth of Germany to the embarrassment of normal people all over England. (On an etymological note, Wags is a plural noun with no singular, since a lone member of the Wags is a wife or a girlfriend, not a Wag.) What was really sad was on all the endless cuts to her in the stands looking like an old lady with her over-sized sunglasses, sitting next to her and stealing all my attention was Ashley Cole's girlfriend Cheryl Tweedy looking hot, completely outshining the queen bee Posh, who looked by comparison, well, not that great. Although apparently Cheryl backs up the idea that Posh isn't nearly as useless as most of the other Wags, and with her understanding of how to work the media Becks went from that guy with the hair in his eyes who kicks people to international sex symbol.

What's really also not so great are top five and top ten lists and the like, because it's so hard to be definitive, exhaustive, and self-conscious in form all at the same time. Particularly not so great is this list. It's long-winded without any sort of structure, which makes it difficult to read and impossible to scan for relevant highlights, which given the completely random set of topics makes it unlikely the one or two people who might consider reading it will get anything out of it. I mean no section subheadings, no numbers, just long, undistinguished paragraphs of morose, possibly bitter-sounding prose? Reworking sections to avoid the impression of the usual hysterical, ranting style of my emails and blog posts would have been great, but I didn't do it, so perhaps that is also not really so great. Boring and cryptic sections up front like the entry that doesn't even identify what Big Slick refers to, and continues with more nicknames like presto, I mean that can't be too great. And really, with the volumes I could write about gonzo porn and its undeserved negative image, to just mention the bad instead of writing a spirited exploration of its merits, well, even I think that wasn't too great a thing for me to do. Boy would I ever owe my readers an apology if I had any.

American Citizenship Test

1. If you catch a home run ball in the top of the 9^th, what do you do with the ball after the game?

a) Wait around until after the game to get it signed by the hitter

b) Give it to a kid

c) Take it home and give it to your brother-cousin

d) Nothing, because you threw that piece of shit back onto the field!

2. Ulysses S Grant was a general in:

a) The Spanish-American War

b) The War of 1812

c) The War of Northern Aggression

d) The Civil War

3. America's best cultural export is:

a) Hawaiian shirts

b) Detroit Automobiles

c) Texas football

d) Chicago Blues

4. The French are best described as:

a) A historical ally whose support was critical to a US victory at Yorktown

b) A former colonial power with crucial political influence in Africa and Russia

c) Cheese-eating surrender monkeys we keep having to bail out of wars

d) All of the above

5. The electoral college system is:

a) An 18^th century vision of government that should have been abolished by the 17^th amendment

b) An undemocratic system that favors regional, rural and agrarian politics

c) The Founding Fathers' way of keeping black lesbian communists from screwing up the country

d) What the hell is the electoral college?

6. Which best describes Canada:

a) A G7 nation and parliamentary republic with its own unique blend of immigrant cultures

b) A bland, humorless snowdrift with 30 million Napoleonic complexes

c) The 51^st State

d) All of the above

7. Which of the following American contributions to world cuisine is edible:

a) The McDonald's Happy Meal

b) Velveeta slices

c) Possum fresh off the grill (if you know what I mean)

d) Pumpkin Pie

8. What do the 4^th and 5^th amendments protect Americans from?

a) Unreasonable searches and intrusion by the police

b) Being forced to turn over evidence against themselves

c) Getting cornholed by gay rapist French communist university professors

d) A and B, but only if you're not a terrorist

9. South of the United States one would find:

a) Mexico

b) The Republic of Texas

c) Lazy people who want to hike across a desert to work two jobs (lazily)

d) Señor Frog's

10. If somebody says something you don't like, what does the Constitution say about that?

a) Everyone has a right to free speech (1^st amendment)

b) Everyone is entitled to the same rights under the law (14^th amendment)

c) Shoot the bastard! (2^nd amendment)

d) A and B, as long as you support the President and not the terrorists (Bush & Nixon Administrations)

Bonus Question:

Which of the following people is truly an American hero who risked his or her life for freedom:

a) Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox

b) Ralph Hinkley, the Greatest American Hero

c) Jessica Lynch, that baby Osama bin Laden threw down a well in Iraq

d) G.I. Joe, a Real American Hero

Scoring:

Add up the number of times you answered “D” here:

American Index _____

If you have an American Index of 7 or higher, congratulations! You are sufficiently American, and you can stay as long as you want.

Add up the number of times you answered “C” here:

Redneck Index _____

If you have a Redneck Index of 3 or higher, yee-haw! You are a Red State American, and you have 30 days to relocate south of the Mason-Dixon line.

The Wicker Man

I just finally saw a trailer for the Nicholas Cage remake of The Wicker Man. Creepy supernatural people keep turning into bees and flying away, so obviously this isn't a faithful remake of the original film, which retains a healthy amount of skepticism through Edward Woodward. The thing is, amping up the horror with all this goofy shit with the girl having glowing red eyes on the poster, etc. would actually makes the movie a lot less scary than the original, because it establishes before you even get to the theater that it's all fantastical and not grounded in reality. There can be no dawning sense of horror as Nicholas Cage figures out what's going on, because there's already people turning into clouds of bees (or maybe it was flies) in the trailer.

The very act of casting Nicholas Cage also means the movie has to give him a very different character, because Edward Woodward's devout Protestant virgin from the original just isn't an A-list actor popcorn movie character: Nick Cage has to be much more world-weary, cynical, and imply hot sex with every breath. The characterization in the original allows for the tension and revulsion of Woodward towards the people of the island in the original, and lets him stay a detective fiction character who's stumbled into a ghost story and is having none of it, thank you very much. In my opinion the gut punch of the original film comes from the way detective stories and horror stories begin the same way, before diverging, and people bursting into clouds of bees kinds of blows that.

According to what I've read, the remake apparently decided to make the tension between the policeman and the people of the island not be over Christianity versus paganism. Instead, it's about gender, because being an authority figure as a policeman, Nicholas Cage will represent the patriarchy of the outside world, versus the matriarchy of the island. Unfortunately, female antagonists subjecting men to horror doesn't work too well, because half the audience needs it to be a girl power moment, so they can't follow through, unless she's a cartoonish villain in an action movie. If you think it's just me being paranoid, see Amber Benson talking up the empowerment moment of Kathy Bates crippling a man with a sledgehammer in Misery in that 100 scariest movie moments special. Somebody taking pride in that was the creepiest part of the whole show. That and the numerous times I've heard about peer reviewed studies of matriarchal societies show them to be free of violence and social inequality, without any being named (studies or societies) kind of leads me to believe they'll be toothless in this version as well.

My assumption is once again, we'll get a remake that totally missed what made the original stick in anybody's head for 30 years. With most of these remakes, we already know the story, and where the originals were suffused with the politics and culture of the day, the remakes substitute cartoonish versions of the same issues, which are safe and do nothing to unnerve modern audiences. You don't address today's issues, you look back at the attitude of 30-40 years ago so the audience all agrees and you don't take any chances. (I may have made fun of the hamfistedness of it, but the X-Men movies did actually engage with some of modern society's areas of discomfort.)

But with the commercial remakes, exploiting known properties, you get the remake of the Stepford Wives that had the women better off as robots in the end, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre without meat packers, Dawn of the Dead without Vietnam or race relations, The Hills Have Eyes without nuclear testing, and even though it's not horror The Manchurian Candidate without the original's Cold War paranoia. What stood out as an exception last year was Land of the Dead (a possible parable of Red State America) but that's because it was made by George A. Romero, who was active when these movies were about more than having Michael Berryman jump out and say "Boo!" Even Count Chocula has a fascinating subtext of antisemitism that makes Mel Gibson look open-minded and tolerant. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to burst into a cloud of hornets and go build a nest on somebody's balcony.