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Wednesday December 15, 2004 |
| Quote
of the Day -- QotD Archives
"Everyone calls himself a friend, but only a fool relies on it: nothing is commoner than the name, nothing rarer than the thing." --Jean de La Fontaine | |
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Besides, I know my blood alcohol can't be more than about .02 with the wine on a semi-full stomach, so it's not as if I'm even anywhere near drunk. I think it's mostly the fact that it's almost 6am and I'm very tired, and that's adding to the slight effects of a moderate amount of alcohol. I must admit that I had some Jack Daniels earlier. With chocolate. Of course that treat contained maybe half a teaspoon of whiskey, but I'm being honest here, Occifer. Aside from my drinking problem, what is there to talk about? Today's blog contains several interesting news items up here, with another review below. But first, some quick DVD and Kali chat. The DVD is new, and it's blue, and it came in a glorious 4-pack. Yes, it's the LotR:RotK Special Extended Edition; on sale at Target for $24 on Tuesday. We got it in the evening while doing some other Xmas shopping, but had no time to watch a second of it then since I had to leave for Kali class at 6pm. On the way home we debated when we'd actually have time to watch it, with Malaya thinking it would be Wednesday, or maybe Friday. So of course I got home from class and fixed a pizza and showered while it was baking and served the pizza and Malaya put in the DVD and we started watching the 4 hour and 10 minute movie over dinner at around 11pm... and didn't stop until 3am, with Frodo and Bilbo sailed away on the Elven ship, and Samwise returned home to Rosie and his two kids. I'll probably write more about it in the days to come, but my first reaction wasn't real strong. I liked it a lot; I think more than the theatrical version, but since I really, really liked the SEE versions of Fellowship and Two Towers, much more than the theatrical films in both cases, I guess I'm a bit disappointed by RotK. Disappointed because I liked it more, but not that much more. Anyway, it's late and I'm reeling a bit, so I won't go on, but the added scenes didn't feel like anywhere near 50 minutes, and they were even more character-based and non-essential to the overall film than was the case with the FotR and TTT SEE versions. I liked some, I was indifferent to most, and the overall film structure and conclusion felt more predetermined than I remembered it being from the two times I saw it in the theater.
In other news, I did Tuesday as I do most every Tuesday and Thursday night; I went to my usual martial arts class. I didn't know what class would be like, since when I got there at around 6:55 I was the only one there. Well, the only one but Gura, who was looking through a coffee table book of political cartoons from the early 1900s. Class is supposed to start at 7, though it usually starts around 7;15, when everyone straggles in and gets stretched out a bit and people stop talking. Anyway, I left later than usual, stopped to buy a birthday card on the way to class, and got there 5 minutes early, thanks to very light traffic. So when I saw that no one else was there, my first comment to Gura was, "Tis the season to slack off on Kali class?" She agreed and we sorta laughed as my semi-joke required, and then by 7:03 there were six more students there, turning my potential private session into a slightly-larger than usual class. It was a fun one though. We worked on empty hand vs. stick; taking turns in our usual pairs. The person with the stick would do a move, mostly simple single-strikes, and the other person would dodge/counter it barehanded. It was mostly an exercise to give us practice dodging and getting into position, since we spent more time working on that than working on the actual way we'd hit them in that given situation. Plus the person with the stick was swinging far slower than they would in real life, and only doing a few simple moves, etc. As always, we did each exercise for 5 or 10 minutes, taking turns using the stick, and then Gura would stop us while she showed us the next step; doing the technique against a different move, going faster with it, adding a better counter to the initial technique, etc. It's all very improvisational, and quite often she'll see what all the pairs are doing, see one pair doing something interesting, and then have the whole class watch them and set us all to doing whatever that pair was doing on their own. Usually it's when one person starts modifying the initial move, the other person asks how to counter that, she works something out, and then everyone practices that while throwing in more variety and modifications. Which is what I really like about our style of Kali; it's not all just using some ancient forms within the rigid guidelines of some style manual. Anyway, we did at least half a dozen basic things, worked up to some intermediate stuff, and then to close class we all took a turn going against multiple attackers. At first we went against two; and it was of course friendly sparring, and the attackers were just doing the basic "1 strike" which is a downward slash from the right shoulder across the body. Countering is quite simple when you know what they're going to throw in the first place, which was the whole point, since the difficulty of double attackers is dealing with one while not letting the other hit you at the same time. I'd never done it before in class, and I had a lot of fun with it, though I was of course killed half a dozen times during my session. I did better than some of the other guys and girl did though, and it was fascinating to try it and see how other people did it. Oddly enough, the key to dealing with two attackers is to keep close to one of them. We were of course not killing each other, so the exercise involved countering the first one, slipping behind him and dealing a few (simulated) hits, then pushing him off while moving to counter the next attacker. The best way to do it was to get in your hits, but not shove them away too soon, since once you shoved them they would just turn around and come right back, and then you had two people trying to hit you at once. Much better was to counter, strike, and push them at the other attacker, or keep them between you and the other attacker, or push them aside just as you moved to counter the other guy. The styles of the students really showed up in it too. For instance, one very tall and muscular guy who has been in the class for over a year tends to retreat a lot; he's long and lean and slides well, and likes to get space and move in and out. That style usually serves him well in 1 on 1 sparring, but was not good in 2 on 1, since he would deal with one guy and then fall back, and as the first guy turned around and came back, it was always 2 on 1 again. He eventually realized the problem, with some tips from Gura, and started staying closer to the first guy until the 2nd came in. I did pretty well at it, but my style tendency showed up since I tend to move quickly, using my better than average foot speed and agility. Which was fine, but I ended up dodging around too much rather than countering and killing, and got very tired as I scooted around the room, and since I do 35 minutes at high speed on the cross country course on the elliptical machine 5 or 6 times a week, and my resting pulse is the low 50s, trust me when I say that I don't get tired very easily, under normal circumstances. I also kept moving away from the first guy, but away from the second as well, so even while I wasn't really retreating, I'd end up in a corner or trying to use one of the columns in the room for a partial shield, rather than just going at the 2nd attacker while the first one was still recovering from my counter attack. The trick of it was to deal with one, and push him away so that the 2nd came at you from a good angle (for you). Then you dealt with him in a way that set you up to deal with the 1st guy again, and so on. When done properly, so you got them coming at a nice alternating rhythm, it wasn't any different than sparring with a single guy who was able to come back at you with supernatural speed. It was a lot of fun to do and to watch too, almost movie-like, but before you think we're good, remember that all the attacks were a simple 1-strike, so we all knew how they were going to swing at us, and that the attackers were keeping very under control so that no one accidentally got crocked in the head with a 2.5 foot length of rock-hard bamboo. As for Thursday's class... I have no idea what we'll do. Which is part of the fun for me; we do something totally different every time out, and even when we return to remedial stuff so the newer students (I've been going for nearly 3 months now and there are now 2 regular students newer than me, so I'm no longer the weakest link, every class.) can learn and keep up, we always work it so that there's something new for everyone, even in the seemingly most remedial stuff. One interesting thing Tuesday was that we had a brand new student who had only come once before. I'll call him John, just since every guy is named John. John's first class was over a month ago, since he'd been traveling and too busy to come to class since then. That first night though, back in November, I was paired up with him most of the time, and since he was a near black belt in Kenpo (as I recall) I hardly felt like I was any better than him at Kali. Oh, I knew more about the proper form and such, but he'd spent years throwing and dodging punches in his other style, and I'd been doing that sort of thing in Kali for less than two months, so if there'd been an actual fight, he would have creamed me. Since that first class of his though, I've gone twice a week and learned much, and on Tuesday night I felt years ahead of him. He didn't have good stick form, he was slow with his hands, he didn't have the natural movements or muscle memory for countering a stick strike, and so on. I'm not saying he sucked; he was actually pretty good for his second Kali class ever, since most other forms of martial arts are of very little use when you start doing the type of Kali we do. But I felt really fast on Tuesday, and maybe he was feeling slower than usual, but whatever the case, I felt so much more confident and capable than I did the first time I worked with him, and I think that's 95% about me and my improvements in Kali since I started going once a week in mid-September and increased that to twice a week in late October.
And now it's time for another story, one that illustrates true hypocrisy, but has a happy ending. During October and November, when Malaya and me were the noobs, I'd been sort of dreading the inevitable introduction of more noobs into the class. When we were the noobs (me more than she, since she only goes to my class once a week and she's less of a noob than me since she goes once or twice a week to the master's class) we learned something totally new every class. Now that there are two women and one guy starting out, and the two women are as virginal as I was to any form of martial arts, we're doing more beginner stuff, and I regularly have to work with people less experienced/skilled than I am. It's hypocritical since I liked being the new one and getting the faster learning curve, while resenting them for doing what I so recently did. It's got a happy ending though, since as we've been going over the beginner stuff again lately, I've appreciated the refresher course and the chance to really cement the basic techniques in my mind. Every time I spend twenty minutes alternating basic punches with the basic parry-check counter, I get better and faster at it. Every time I teach and trade time with someone as we do basic stick counters and strikes, I get better at doing them without thinking, and doing them while instantly transitioning into more advanced counters and attacks. Etc. Basically, I didn't realize how helpful going over the beginner stuff again would be until I was doing it, and I didn't realize how much better I could get at the beginner stuff until I had the chance to spend more time doing it. Humility in the form of personal improvement... it comes highly-recommended!
And with that, to the news. I've gotten several reader mails of late that would be great for discussion, so perhaps I'll run one or three of those on Friday, in lieu of yet another review. Besides, I need to write about four more reviews when I think of it, before I completely forget the details of the movies I'll be reviewing. ¤ I mentioned the possibility of the US slipping into a new "Dark Ages" a few blogs back, and while it was just a side comment at the time, I've been giving the concept more thought of late, as time passes and disturbing evidence mounts. Far right wing Christians are a very small group in the US, in terms of population, but they're motivated, organized, and wield political clout that's very disproportionate to their numerical inferiority. And these people are very serious; they want gays removed from society, they want sex to be a dirty secret, they want women to be subservient, they want abortion outlawed, and they're not real happy with contraception either. This NYT article by Frank Rich gives a quick run down of their recent activities:
There have always been fringe Christian groups who spent most of their time protesting whatever aspects of modern life and human sexuality they wanted to try and repress... but for the first time in recent US history, there's a Presidential Administration who pays those people more than lip service, and an FCC chairman (Colin Powell's son) who acts as though those 5000 complaint emails they receive per day aren't 99% from the same small Christian group using form letters to spam their complaints. While I'm talking about the larger issue, the main thrust of the NYT editorial was how those groups are protesting the new Kinsey movie, and the disturbing parallels between its depiction of how the forces of prudery operated back in the 1950s, and how their descendants are acting today.
And you thought sex was okay? A good thing for adults to enjoy in the privacy of their own homes? Pervert!
¤ If you ever wonder why bands that no longer sell very many records keep together and keep touring more or less forever, this should answer that question. NASHVILLE - Madonna's blockbuster Re-Invention tour took all of the drama out of the top tour of the year race, ringing up a year's best $125 million in total box office gross by the time it wrapped in September. According to Billboard Boxscore, Madonna sold out 55 of 56 performances worldwide, with an average nightly take of $2.23 million. I know I don't follow popular music very closely, but seriously, what the hell is Bette Midler touring in support of? Has she even released an album this past decade? I also had no idea that Simon & Garfunkel were still alive, I thought Sting was retired, I thought David Bowie was dead, and have never even heard of Kenny Chesney. But clearly a lot of other people still love them, and these older acts make more than the pop band of the moment, since 50 year old adults can pay a lot more for a ticket and merchandise than the 13 y/o girls who watch Mtv and shriek hysterically for the newest Justin Timberlake (or whoever) song.
¤ In the "Duh." science news of the day, a new study finds that women who are so miserable with their appearance that they're willing to undergo expensive and dangerous cosmetic surgery to try and feel better about themselves are slightly more likely than the general population to eventually kill themselves. Of course the article doesn't quite word things that way:
The kicker is found in the next paragraph.
As I said. Duh. It seems like common sense to me; people who are so unhappy with their physical appearance that they'll go under the knife to have it changed are pretty obviously going to have shown symptoms of their unhappiness in the past. That common sense conclusion still seems to be eluding the researchers, though.
As always when I hear of this sort of study, I wonder why no one has done a big comparison. Common sense tells us that lots of people who get cosmetic surgery are pretty miserable in the first place. Therefore, it's no surprise that some of them still commit suicide, since obviously their surgery isn't going to cure every problem in their life. What I wonder though, is whether or not it helps. Can't they find five hundred depressed women with a history of psychological issues, follow them while 100 of them get implants, and 400 of them don't, and see how many are still alive in 10 years? It seems entirely possible to me that the ones who got breast implants would receive a psychological boost, and while it wouldn't make all of them perfectly happy in life, it might make them happier than the flat-chested control group. This would have to be done retroactively of course, or else it would take 20 years. They'd have to do it by going back through files, following case histories, and interviewing friends and family members of dead women to see if they had ever talked about getting implants. I can't even imagine how they'd go about selecting the study candidates either. There would have to be a minimum breast size cut off point, since women who had naturally large boobs or big boobs due to being obese wouldn't be viable comparisons, though the study might make allowances for women with large but unattractive breasts, due to them being saggy or spaniel's ears or something like that. And yes, we've completely lost all scientific credibility at this point. Which might help explain why no such study has yet been completed. |
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 oday's
review is a book review, even though it's a book that's been made into a
movie. But since I've never seen the movie and doubt I ever will, that's
pretty much irrelevant.
Seabiscuit, by Laura Hillenbrand, is a historical account of the famous racehorse Seabiscuit, and the jockeys who rode him, the trainer who took a worthless horse and turned him around, and the owner who made it all possible. The story took place in the 1930s, and includes quite a bit of excellent historical information about horse racing at the time, sports in general, the horrible working conditions jockeys and others labored under back in those days, and much more. The characters in Seabiscuit, equine and human, are fascinating and very well-painted, and you will certainly not leave the book wanting more info about anyone in it. You may want a bit less, and that's really my only complaint; the 338 pages of narrative (there are another 70 pages of notes, sources, reading guides, racing stats, etc) could have been about 80 pages shorter, and I'd have been a happier reader. Buy Seabiscuit here from Amazon.com, and I get 5% of the purchase price! Speaking of Amazon.com, this is the best-reviewed book I have ever seen on that site. It's got 586 reviews as of November 27, 2004, a 5-star average, and of those 586 reviews, 507 are 5-star. Going from the other end, there are only 14 reviews lower than 3-stars, and most of those are completely incoherent haters. You get the idea; people fricking love this book. I don't have a star system, but I do have numbers. Lots of them. (I'd have given Seabiscuit 4 stars, using the Amazon.com scoring system, despite my nitpicks.)
Even though this book is mostly non-fiction (The author clearly took some creative license at times, when we get total insight into the thoughts of various characters, motivations and thoughts of the horses in the races, etc.) I'm using my usual novel rating system, since Seabiscuit reads like a really good novel. In fact it definitely falls under the "truth is stranger than fiction" heading, since you wouldn't believe half the plot twists in this tale if they weren't true. Seabiscuit is the most unlikely and improbable of heroes, his jockeys are amazing characters, his owner is bombastic and enjoyable, and his taciturn and evasive trainer is amazing. Everything comes alive in this story, especially the horse and the races, and even for someone like myself who doesn't much like horses or care about horseracing, it was frequently thrilling. Thrilling in large part because there are set backs and crushing defeats and injuries, both to the horses and his riders. Seabiscuit was always the underdog, scratching to get a foot in the door, handicapped the most heavily of any horse of his day (made to carry more weight in races), a West Coast horse disrespected by the old boys club of Eastern Racing. His great rival of the time was Man of War, a horse who was everything Biscuit was not; huge, graceful, powerful, of a noble pedigree, trained by the most famous trainer in horse racing, and loved by the establishment. When they finally have their showdown, after numerous cancellations, injuries, weather delays, and more, it's everything the reader has been hoping for. I highly recommend this title, though my praise is a bit less-glowing than that of many of the aforementioned Amazon.com reviewers.
Plot: 9
Concept: 7
Writing Quality/Flow: 7/7
Characters: 9
Fun Factor: 7
Page Turner: 6 Also, the fact that I never read more than two or three chapters at once, and frequently went several days between reading any of the book at all, has to factor in here.
Re-readability: 5
Overall: 8.5 As many of the Amazon.com reviews said, you really should read this book, and you don't need to have any interest in horses or horse racing to appreciate it. I certainly didn't care about either of those topics going in, and while I still don't have any interest in them afterwards, I enjoyed learning more about them in the meantime. |
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ednesday
morning, and I'm tipsy. One of the benefits/penalties of drinking at
most one glass of wine every few days is that you remain a complete
lightweight, and can therefore get a buzz off of virtually any quantity
of alcohol. Including the large glass of Chardonnay I've consumed over
the past 30 minutes, augmented with half a small bowl of pretzels. I
don't much enjoy being buzzed though, mostly since I never feel buzzed.
I just feel groggy, and like my head weighs too much and will fall over
rapidly to either side if I tilt my neck just a little bit.