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Books Lying
Open
Soul-Devouring Worry:
Answer of the Day:
Curse of the Day:
Phrase
of the Moment: It's fun to say, or at least think, in real life, when you or someone else drops something. Malaya enjoys it when I say it, and has taken to saying it herself, both when I drop things and when others, out in public somewhere, drop them. It helps your public declarations of this a lot if you're unconcerned by other people viewing you askance. -- May 31, 2004 |
Wednesday June 16, 2004 |
| Quote
of the Day -- QotD Archives
"Grief can take care if itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with." --Mark Twain |
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LA went on to win that one in OT, and that was the one time in the series LA was clearly outplaying them. OT of game 2. Detroit just looked overwhelmed then, happy to have taken game 1 in LA, eager to get back home. And once they got home they rebounded, literally, and never lost again, overmatching LA the whole time with great defense, opportunistic fast break offense, and an unbelievable advantage in foul calls. If there's any benefit to this LA loss, perhaps it'll shut up all of those, "The refs give LA all the calls." conspiracy theory guys. The post mortems will be rolling for weeks, after virtually everyone alive picked LA to win the series, and win it easily. It's hard to believe they lost, given that LA had by far the best two players, and this isn't football; there's only five guys out there at once. It's just that the other three, any other three, LA had out there were constantly outplayed, and Detroit really limited Kobe's effectiveness by doubling and tripling him, with much help from the refs so seldom bailing him out with calls. Every time I saw a replay of him driving there seemed to be hands on his elbows when he shot, hands reaching in when he dribbled, etc. But since Detroit plays that way constantly, they know how to play that sort of "tight defense" and get away with the calls. LA doesn't, and they couldn't react to it. They'd try to tighten up that way and the result was always a rapid series of ticky tack fouls, hand checks and the like, that Detroit was never getting called for, despite playing much tighter, more effective defense. And it's a clichι, but Detroit just wanted it more. They always seemed to be a hand quicker, getting first tip on rebounds, bouncing them around to teammates, helping on defense, making free throws, etc. The games weren't even that close, with LA seemingly in desperation, trying to catch up mode the whole time. Even the biggest LA fan can't deny that Detroit handed them their asses. LA was never in their comfort zone, never playing "their game" and was never able to consistently match Detroit in motion and energy. They got completely out-coached, out-played, out-hustled, and out-smarted. Malone's injury hurt LA more than they thought it would, I think. He was really the difference in the San Antonio series, making open jumpers galore, playing good D on Duncan, forcing Duncan to play him honestly on defense rather than just roaming and doubling on Shaq or denying penetration (as Ben Wallace was able to do in the finals, with no power forward scoring threat against him). And then Malone hurt his knee and was essentially a statue in the finals, unable to run, unable to jump or rebound, unable to shoot anything other than free throws, and with the refs sensing his desperation to get fouled, they just swallowed their whistles and watched his slow motion drives to the basket end in flailing lay up attempts and falls to the floor. I would revisit my predictions, but I was so completely wrong that there's no point. I picked LA in 5, losing only game 3, and Detroit won in 5, losing only game 2. The last game was a blow out, with LA folding up in the second half, and that was about the only prediction I got right, since I said game 5 would be a blow out. I just had it going to the wrong team. And that's that, no more sports of interest until football starts in a few months. Baseball is going on, and I enjoy reading about it on occasion, but I don't care who wins, and just rooting against the Yankees isn't enough to sustain my interest. It's actually a good thing that baseball is so boring to watch in non-highlight package form, since I'm not tempted to do so, and I'm forever short of time to do things I want to do as it is.
€ Malaya bagged the last issue of Popular Science mag from the gym the other day, and I've been working my way through it an article or two at a time. I could comment on a lot of the stuff in it, since it was a good read, but I'm only going to comment on one thing. And it's something that gets just a sentence near the end of the magazine, in a brief section on places to buy expensive Japanese electronic toys. The magazine mentions a site, Audiocubes.com, and says they have:
Yes, two thousand, five hundred dollars for headphones. I had to look, since much like Vincent in Pulp Fiction with his five dollar milkshake curiosity, I just had to see what $2500 headphones looked like. I'd love to hear what they sounded like, but if I actually saw some in a store I'd be too afraid to touch them. You break it, you sell half your retirement stocks to buy it. Anyway, I checked the AudioCubes site and since the top link in their navigation goes to headphones, and you can then sort the 30+ models listed by price, it was quite easy to find the super special ones mentioned in Popular Science. And here they are. There's good news! They're on sale! Just $2349, USD! The funny part? Those aren't the most expensive headphones the site lists. They're not even second most. They're 4th! Taking the top prize are Sony MDR-R10, which list for the low, low price of $3499. I've bought cars for less than that. I wear headphones for about 8 hours a day, most of the time I'm at the computer writing and listening to music, and while the cheap ones I have are fine, they don't fit especially well, and they could definitely be better. Of course they're just some TDKs I got at Fry's for $13.99, and until seeing the AudioCubes site, my dream upgrade were the $150 Bose ones they have hooked up to the ipods in the Mac Stores. I can't begin to justify that sort of cash outlay for headphones, but during the few minutes I've worn them at the Mac store while waiting for Malaya to finish drooling over some new iMac thingie, they made me happy. The sound through the Bose is great, and I really like how they fit; completely enclosing the ear, while putting no pressure on the ear itself. My ears always get itchy and sweaty from headphones, and while I'd probably still get sweaty in those Bose ones, with my ears all enclosed and steamy, at least when I got itchy it would be the skin around my ears itching, rather than my ears themselves. If my dad hadn't already bought me a $400 camera for my b-day in a week, I might have tried to wheedle those Bose ones for a present. $150 seems ridiculous for headphones, but since I use them so much, and would like total sound blockage during the times I'm writing and Malaya has the TV on, they might be worth it. It's just hard for me to think that they're ten times better than the ones I'm using now, given than they cost ten times as much. Sucks being cheap and poor, eh?
€ How's this for irony? After posting that "oh my god it's so big!" comment yesterday about Chapter Two, it got too late for me to rewrite or edit with any clarity, so I elected to spend my last waking hour working on my forever behind (and forever falling behinder) articles archive. The archives (except for stuff I need to put into the reviews section) are updated through February, 2003. So I started with March 1st, noted a short review of some RA Salvatore book, and then saw this from March 2 of last year.
You'll recall that as of yesterday, the semi-final rough draft version of Chapter Two is a truly ridiculous 161,974 words. And my initial estimates were 13,333 words? Now to be somewhat fair to myself, this is about the third revision of chapter two since I made that early estimate last year, and I have totally changed the book around since then. It's no longer a D2-inspired work, I've completely rewritten chapter one twice, I stopped working on the novel entirely for several months while I tried to decide if it was worth continuing on as glorified D2-fanfic, etc. But still, since I had more or less the same plot elements in mind, even way back last year, going from my 15k estimate to my 162k actuality is pretty ridiculous. No wonder my NBA Finals picks aren't turning out so well; clearly numbers aren't my strong suit, or at least not more than team defense and hustle are the Lakers'.
A few of weeks later, in terms of the old archives, I saw this quote from President Bush that I thought was amusing enough to resurrect. It was spoken on March 25, 2003, after some US soldiers were captured by the Iraqis, while the invasion was still going on.
Uh huh. Well, bad news for Rumsfeld then. The Hague awaits. |
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Around the World in 80 Days is being released this week, and it continues Jackie Chan's inexorable slide from amazing action hero to has- been comic-relief sidekick. Early reviews aren't good, and from reading them it appears that the movie is pretty much the big, dumb, ridiculous, harmless, family-friendly action comedy the trailers make it look like. That can be a good thing, if the movie is at least fun, and that might be the case with this one. There are only six reviews posted on RT, (as of Monday night, when I'm writing this) and while 4 of them are negative, 2 are positive, so it's too soon to assess any sort of critical mass. In fact, one of the negative reviews should probably be disqualified, since it's by the always-irritable Walter Chaw, one of the critics for Film Freak. I've quoted from his reviews a few times in the past, and discussed his 4 tendencies in a blog on March 11, 2004. To quote from that update, here's a slightly modified version of what I said:
It's interesting to find that every single movie ever made is chock full of racism and sexism, and to read the writing of someone who so completely hates virtually everything he has to watch for his job, but #3, his intentionally-Byzantine prose and impenetrable metaphors that always draw me back to Walter's reviews. Here's an example, taken from his 1/2 star review of Spartan, in which Walter is talking about the style of the film's writer/director,
Uh huh. Seriously, does anyone have any idea what he's talking about? Does anyone find a movie review with writing like this in it of any use at all? Here's another good one, from his 1/2 star review of Around the World in 80 Days.
Chaw is making a valid, if familiar, point about how few Asians there are in any Hollywood movie, unless they're filling some Kung Fu fighting role, or acting as a ridiculous stereotype. But why does he spend the time to shape his point into this off-putting, academic-ese presentation? Is he auditioning for the movie review role in the sort of hoity-toity literary magazine that would never hire him since it's desperately trying to change its old, unbearably-pretentious ways in the face of ever-declining subscribers? But even though the above is just one of several examples of Walter Chaw tactic #3, it's his inevitable time spent on #4 that really makes his Around the World review worth reading. Because Jackie Chan's in the movie, and he's Chinese, and he's playing it for comedy, Walter starts off saying how he's not going to complain about Jackie becoming just a comedy relief sidekick... after which he spends a very, very long paragraph talking about how much he hates that Jackie has become just a comic relief sidekick. I'd quote the whole paragraph, but since I doubt more than 10% of you would slog the whole thing, here's an excerpt. It fits well into Walter's #3 tactic as well, as you'll see. He starts off by calling Jackie a yellow Stepin Fetchit, and then segues into a personal anecdote.
It's a good thing that Film Freak only writes about movies, not TV or popular culture, since I don't think Walter Chaw's computer could survive an article on the William Hung phenomena. Though when he eventually sent in his crayon-lettered article on William Hung, kindly mailed by the nice man who brings Walter food in his new padded room, I would pay actual cash money to read it. (Also, checking back to RT Tuesday night, Around the World is up to 41%, with 7 positive and 10 negative.)
€ While I'm on the topic of weird and wacky movie reviews, you have to check out the CAP Alerts guy's commentary on The Chronicles of Riddick. Little did I know (I certainly didn't mention it in my review.) that the entire movie was a cleverly-calculated mockery of Christianity. Down to the name of Vin Diesel's production company.
As is true of most opinion pieces, this one says far more about the writer than the topic being discussed. Since the CAP Alerts guy spends all of his time obsessing about and feeling defensive because of his Christianity, he sees the depiction of the conquering Necromonger army as anti-Christian. The Necromongers use a form of brain washing to "convert" people to their cause. It's obviously a sort of mind control/brain washing, with the machine stabbing two points into the sides of the neck in the process. Why not the brain/skull? Good question. In any event, the neck stabbing leaves a scar, and the CAP Alerts guy sagely concludes that the scars on the sides of all of the Necromonger's necks are obviously a reference to the "mark of the beast." So if they didn't have a scar would that be a sign of their divine power to heal? You can turn anything into anything if you try hard enough. Mr. CAP Alerts goes on to conclude that the depiction of a destroying army of brainwashed monsters is an unfair reference to the Christian Crusades of the Middle Ages. He then digresses and starts quoting some laughable figures about how Christians have been persecuted and murdered through time, and even today.
So there are almost 160k Christians being killed every year, simply for their religion? You'd think that would make the news a bit more often. His review continues making no sense, before it takes a substantial detour into discussing why people shouldn't have a "fear of god" unless, of course, they should have a fear of god. It's pretty convoluted. Here's the beginning and ending paragraphs of his mini-sermon. The "politics" of the Necromongers themselves are mockery of Christianity by relying upon popular misconception of "fear of God" to frighten non-believers into submission. And many who don't understand the idea of the "fear of God", usually the young, misuse and belittle "fear of God" in bravado to defy His Authority. I am going to take this as an opportunity to do a little preaching and throw in a sermon to explain "fear of God." It might go without saying, but I didn't see anything at all in the movie, on any level, that related to this. The Necromongers had no religion or higher beliefs, other than that they could someday reach the "Underverse" which sounded something like a promised land; not that the CAP Alerts guy mentions that, when he could have made (sort of) a point about it. The Lord High Marshall had been to the Underverse and had come back "half alive and half something else." However, like most other cool things in the movie, this concept was barely addressed. He did a cool "rip the soul out of a guy" trick early on, and tried it later on Riddick, but other than that his only special power was moving super fast in bursts, like the charge attack of a Paladin. You'd think that being half-dead from the Underverse would bring a few more interesting changes, but apparently not. Riddick had some good elements, and it reminded me a bit of Underworld. That movie wasn't any good either, but it had some nice design and some potentially interesting characters; it just didn't have a story that was 1/10th as good as it could have been, given the various elements of the movie. Underworld was closer to living up to its potential, mostly since it didn't have anything as silly as Riddick outrunning the sunrise for 29.6k across an impossibly rugged planet surface, but both movies could have been far, far better in the hands of more talented writers, editors, and directors. As for CAP Alerts guy, I think his conclusions are laughable; Riddick isn't The Matrix, with obvious Christian parallels. It's cheesy scifi, one of hundreds of movies/books/TV shows where an invading army comes to brainwash and conquer. Only someone with a perpetual case of Jesus on the brain would choose to take it as a big Christian metaphor. Incidentally, according to Malaya, Vin Diesel's production company is called "One Race Productions" because everyone always asks Vin, who is clearly an interesting mixture of races, what race he is. His answer became "one race," hence the name of his company. And I'm sure he'd be quite surprised to find out that it's some sort of Christian-taunting thing. |
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