SOLUTIONS- The Story of Stuff

This is the first of a new category.

I'm not a fanatical environmentalist or necessarily anti-corporate. And I realize that this little (at 20 minutes) video is simplistic. But I also realize that most people don’t give a second thought to where stuff comes from of what we’re doing to the planet. So I’m posting this as a sort of primer into further posts that will deal with some answers to the questions we are going to be faced with over the course of the 21st century. Plus, it’s entertaining and funny. Enjoy.

MOVIES- The Mummy (III)- Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

I thought that EAGLE EYE was bad, even for a summer movie. But that was before I watched THE MUMMY (III)- CURSE OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR. None of the silly fun, or self-deprecating wit of the first movie is evident. I’ve read that this was a movie born of corporate synergy between Universal Studios and NBC’s Olympics coverage since both companies are owned by the same Uber-conglomerate. I don’t know if that is true but this movie is so formulaic and uninspired that I can easily believe it was dreamed up by marketing.

I could talk about how this movie occurs in a parallel universe where the first two movies were actually stories written by Brendan Frasier’s wife. Rachael Weitz’s replacement in introduced by denying any similarity between herself and the character in the books. But I’m not going to do that because it’s the best part of the movie and it still isn’t very good.

They even screwed up the fight between Michelle Yeoh and Jet Li.

POLITICS- And Now for the Other Baldwin

Quickie Post:

Last July it was reported that Stephen Baldwin (you know, the brother of Alec, the handsome talented one) said that he would leave the country if Barack Obama was elected.

Does anybody know if he’s gone yet?

And if not, why not?

Hell, it's the only reason I voted.

MOVIES- The Golden Globes

Turning 180 degrees from the real life drama of the gridiron, Sunday was also the Golden Globes. I’ve never watched the Globes before (Even though I haven’t missed the Oscars in years. My reasons why are here.) and I have to say that they don’t seem to have the same kind of tension that the Oscars do. What they do have is a much better track record for picking the actual best movies, and performances than the Academy. Perhaps the members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association have a little more objectivity.

So here are a few stream of consciousness thoughts:

Lots of well deserved love for the HBO miniseries John Adams, winning Best Miniseries. Best Actor was hard, any one of them could have won. But I have to admit that I was rooting for Paul Giamatti as I do anytime he is up for an award. I’ve loved him since before Crumb. This time he beat out Kevin Spacey! Laura Linney won for best actress and Tom Wilkerson for his natural and charming portrayal of Ben Franklin. (Beating another favorite, Neal Patrick Harris for his role as Barney on How I Met Your Mother.)

The other HBO standout was Laura Dern winning for her dead-frigging-on Susan Harris in Recount. I remember wondering if there had ever been a more spot on portrayal of a political figure when I watched it. Even Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin isn’t any closer.

Gabriel Byrne won for In Treatment, beating John Hamm in Mad Men and being the only winner from series. Mad Men was far from overlooked, though. It won for Best Dramatic Series. I reciently saw the first season on Blu-Ray and I highly recommend it. Full review to come later.

Sally Field looked a little different in person than she does in her Calcium supplement commercials, which airbrush her pretty severly. It didn’t wind up mattering that much since Anna Paquin beat her for Best Actress.

Ricky Gervais was charming as usual, beer in hand, giving a call out to Kate Winslet, “Told you to do a holocaust movie and the awards would come.”

Wall-E won for best animated picture, with the Jonas Brothers handing out the award and looking almost but not quite as real as the characters in the clip from the movie.

Emma Thompson (who somehow doesn’t look as much like Pete Postlethwaite as she used to) and Merryl Streep (the only person there with as much respect as Clint Eastwood and Steven Spielberg) both lost for best actress in a comedy or musical movie. Instead Sally Hawkins (who?) won and virtually broke down crying on the stage. I don’t know who she is but she was lovely and obviously had everyone in the crowd on her side. (for about the first five minutes) It’s moments of genuine emotion like that that make award shows worth watching.

It must suck to be Demi Moore’s daughter. Every boy you bring home falls in love with your mother.

Heath Ledger won for Dark Knight. Anything else would simply be a crime. Ledger’s performance as the Joker was simply one of the most riveting pieces of acting I’ve seen in many years. Riveting in the literal sense of the word. When he’s on the screen you can’t take your eyes off of him.

Alec Baldwin won best actor in a comedy for 30 Rock, which has the best theme music of any show on television. When 30 Rock won for best comedy the whole cast came on stage and Tracy Morgan informed the crowd that since Barack Obama won he would be speaking for the show in post racial America. Just a few minutes Tina Fey got a chance to talk anyway when she won for Best Actress in a Comedy.

Steven Spielberg received the Cecil B. DeMille award. A few years ago during an Oscar broadcast somebody joked that if the building caught fire Spielberg would go first and then everybody else. That’s about the size of it. It’s hard to debate that there has been a more successful or influential man in movies for the last 30 years.

Both The Dark Knight and Doubt were passed over. Slumdog Millionare was the big movie winner of the night, winning for Best Picture and with Danny Boyle winning best director.

Kate Winslet won both Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress and also almost broke down on stage. She seemed genuinely surprised to have won.

So that’s it for the Golden Globes. See you on Oscar night.

SPORTS- Football Season Is Over With Two Weeks Left

I don’t post a lot of football posts because, while I love the game, I’m no expert. And even if I was an expert that’s no guarantee I’d have anything to say worth reading. Most of the experts don’t seem to. Oh sure, they get together an hour before the game and go over the injury report, talk about who’s playing well, which teams have the best defense, whether Payton Manning or Tom Brady is a better quarterback. But if you watch the games you know all that and the conversation really isn’t any different than what you’ve already had with your buddies that week. The big difference is that you didn’t have 60 hours that week to watch every game and you don’t get paid for the opinions you pull directly out of your ass. But they might be just as good as the pro’s opinions because they are getting them from the same place.

I find most of the talk in sports either boils down to either “did you see that catch” or some variation of “I believe that whoever is able to score the most points by the end of the game will emerge victorious” (the latter usually from some coach or player). Sure, I realize that the amount of planning that goes into a successful football team is as extensive as any endeavor possibly just short of a NASA launch. But I realize that anything I would think to say will eventually get said somewhere in the millions of words written and spoken each week.

But the last game of the second week of the playoffs just finished and I just wanted to say…

DAMN!

Every damn team I had any interest in seeing win is already out. My local Titans gave away their game by turning over the ball every time they got inside the 30. The NY Giants didn’t have quite as many turnovers but still enough to lose. The Cinderella Miami Dolphins, who nobody would have given you a rat’s ass for after their 1-15 season last year made it to the playoffs only to lose their first game. The staple playoff team Indianapolis, ditto. Their arch rivals the New England Patriots didn’t even make the playoffs after nearly going undefeated last year. Dallas bombed after being the smart money pick for Superbowl champs at the beginning of the season.

So I’m left with only two precious weeks of football left in the season and not a single team to root for. What a waste.

Well, there is always the football fan’s mantra- WAIT ‘TILL NEXT YEAR.

POLITICS- Should Bush Be Investigated?

This morning on ABC, President-Elect Barack Obama was asked if he would investigate the Bush administration.

Barrack Obama seems to be a smart, reasonable, gentle man. And that may make him too pragmatic to launch the country into the inevitable Civil War that trying to bring top members of the Bush administration to justice would cause. The Bush White House has proven on more than one occasion that the laws, the constitution, and even subpoenas from Congress mean nothing to them. Is there any doubt they will ignore a warrant from federal court? And if they do, is Barrack Obama ready to start a nation wide manhunt when they disappear? Is he ready to have high officers in the previous government, perhaps even the president, brought into federal court in cuffs?

I don’t know, because I don’t know what I’d do in his place. Even if he doesn’t pursue convictions for Bush, et al, he may be faced with foreign governments attempting to prosecute charges for torture and other war crimes. As much as I think this administration has been criminally guilty of breaking numerous laws, I just can’t wrap my head around the image of Bush in an orange jumpsuit.

But, as much as I hate the idea of that scene transpiring, even if it is well and truly deserved, I know that letting them walk away isn’t right. I don’t think I could do it. I hope Obama is a stronger man than I am because the heart of the matter was pierced by the words of Dawn Johnson, Obama’s choice to head the Office of Legal Counsel.

“We must avoid any temptation simply to move on. We must instead be honest with ourselves and the world as we condemn our nation's past transgressions and reject Bush's corruption of our American ideals. Our constitutional democracy cannot survive with a government shrouded in secrecy, nor can our nation's honor be restored without full disclosure.”

POLITICS- Save the Porn Industry

I’m kinda amazed that the TV news has been reporting that Larry Flint and Joe Francis are petitioning the government for $5 billion on behalf of the porn industry with a straight face. I guess if they admit this is a satirical way to point out just how silly it is to give my tax money to failing businesses they are tacitly admitting that it’s a silly idea to give my tax money to failed businesses. It’s a no lose scenario for this pair of plucky entrepreneurs though (plucky, heh heh heh). And it’s obvious in this one question interview with Francis that he and Flint think it’s a pretty good joke. If they can’t get help from the gumment [then] they’ve exposed the hypocrisy of the whole thing. (Not that it’s hard to do so or anything. Finding hypocrisy in Washington isn’t so much like mining for gold as it is digging for dirt.) If they get the money, well, they get the money. If I had an interest group or a business I’d be trying it. But unfortunately, lame-ass-snarky-blogs-that-nobody-reads is a growth industry.

Maybe somebody should go to Washington and ask for help for the taxpayer industry. Oh wait, Obama is going to give us all back $500. The bank bailout (alone, that we know of) has cost every person in the country $2500 each and Obama’s plan will cost $3300 each and they are going to help by giving us back $500 per taxpayer. I’d ask how stupid they think we are but I’m afraid the answer is obvious.

So which is the stupidest? Giving tax money to businesses, the government borrowing money to give to us, or that we haven’t stormed the Bastille yet?

Maybe Larry and Joe could reduce their overhead by just filming the fucking we’re getting from Congress.

POLITICS- George W. Bush is the Most Successful President EVAR

Eight years of Bush are almost over.

I’d say that this was a wonderful thing if I hadn’t lived through enough elections to realize that the American political system is basically the Pepsi challenge. Choose between two nearly identical varieties of un-natural empty calories, neither of which is good for you and either of which will take your teeth if they get the chance.

It’s tempting to pull out a laundry list of everything that’s gone wrong in the last eight years and lay it at the door of the Bush White House. But if you’ve been paying any attention to what’s been going on then you’ve already heard it, and if you haven’t then you obviously don’t care. Needless to say, plenty of other people have compiled such lists and a brief Google search will get you several thousand to choose from.

But what really interests me about the last eight years is that I still don’t know if our 43rd president and his cadre are megalomaniacal morons, too stupid to live and too rich, entitled, and intertwined into the plate of worms that is Washington to ignore, or if they are avaricious geniuses who figured out a way to dispense with mere graft and sweetheart deals and decided the best place to steal all the money was from the top down. A sort of trickle-down larceny.

Sure, even cursory examination immediately indicated that George W. Bush was a mediocre frat boy douchbag that had never worked a day or had a serious thought in his life. He projected that image like IMAX. It was on display during his first campaign and has never relented. The verbal gaffs, the nonsensical ideas, the shit-eating grin accompanied by the head bob and swivel (Kermit the frog did it better) every time he came to the end of a paragraph in one of his speeches- if they were part of an act then it was the best and most consistent feat of thespis in my lifetime. And my belief has always been that no one was capable of acting that stupid that long without slipping. But there are things that make me wonder.

The main thing is that Bush, and the neocons that created him, had a well defined plan in mind long before he got elected. Bill Kristol even published it before the election. They wanted to usher in a Pax-Americana. They intended to cement American hegemony by accomplishing several things that would make it clear that America was in charge and every other country in the world might as well just get in line. They would use America’s military might to fight not one but two wars simultaneously, proving to the world that even if we were busy kicking the shit out of somebody we didn’t like that there was still plenty of whoop-ass to go around, so don’t get any ideas. They were going to deregulate business, returning the country to a golden age of robber barons and, perhaps if they were lucky, feudalism. They were going to return God to government, not for the sake of making the country more like Jesus might want it to be but to unite those two age-old organizations for bending people to the will of their leaders- church and state. They were going to re-institute the divine right of kings by giving the president total power and making it not only improper but immoral to disagree with what he did. And they were going to do it all by finally proving once and for all that what arch cynic H. L. Mencken said was totally right- nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

And they simply can’t be as stupid as they look, because they did all of it!

And their final act was to finally acknowledge what people had been warning and they had been denying for years- that the result of all this was going to cause our whole economic system to collapse- just in time to panic and convince congress that letting them steal a few trillion more dollars as they were packing to leave would be good for the economy even if everything they had done up until then wasn't.

I am almost convinced that the presidency of George W. Bush is the most successful in history. I haven’t always thought that. I was convinced that they were just the kind of businessmen I had met numerous times when I was in business- idiotic con men who thought they were smarter than everyone else because they could double-talk, cheat, and swindle enough people to get rich. Those businessmen invariably wind up going from business failure to business failure, bankruptcy to bankruptcy, because even though they may be master salesmen they don’t know how to run anything. They may be able to talk some rube into buying a $40,000 SUV on a $27,000 a year salary, but the actual nuts and bolts of managing a business is beyond them. Invariably they wind up taking the money and running when it becomes obvious that it isn’t going to be possible to keep the game going any longer.

Well, maybe my first impression was right after all.

MOVIES- Wall-E

I’m always hesitant to see Pixar movies for some reason. I think that it’s partly because the trailers are always so saccharine sweet that I withdraw a little. Or because I am so aware of the Disney Animated Movie Formula. (Child or childlike main character gets separated from parent figure, has various adventures, realizes the value of love, and is reunited and finds happiness.) I realize that the Formula is as good a narrative structure for children’s movies as any and that the lessons are timeless and particularly poignant to kids in early developmental stages. I just don’t care for it.

But I realize all of this is just prejudice and that I shouldn’t blame Pixar for what Disney’s marketing department does. Whenever I have watched a Pixar movie I’m reminded that the folks at Pixar are hellishly good at what they do and the prejudice is unwarranted. The de facto standard for a good children’s movie for a long time has been to entertain both children and adults. Unfortunately, a lot of kid’s movies try to take the easy way out. Like a Soviet factory with an order for 10,000 shoes making 10,000 left shoes all in the same size because it fills the order with the least amount of effort, they try to just cram two movies together. They entertain the adults with cynical asides in the dialog while spoon feeding the kiddies bright colors and poop jokes. The original Shrek was probably the best example of this kind of two-tiered approach. Your five-year-old could enjoy the cleverness of bubbles in the bathtub while you marveled at the undertones of Jeffrey Katzenberg’s revenge on Disney evoked by calling Pinocchio a “possessed doll”. The worst examples are everywhere. Characters in children’s movies who wink at the camera and almost provide MST3K style commentary on the action. It’s lame and a cheat and evidences a lack of imagination in the creators.

Pixar shows how to make a real children’s movie that adults can love with Wall-E. It is neither saccharine nor maudlin and there isn't a cynical wink in sight. Instead it's genuinely sweet and moving. It's also virtually a silent film but so good at it that you don't notice until people start talking in the last third. There are some people who didn't like the environmental message but, while I think that anything can be overdone- even working for a clean planet, if you are threatened by the idea that continuing to turn everything we can into landfill as fast as possible is a bad idea, I have to wonder what is really motivating you.

To risk a cliche', Wall-E is a wonderful movie for children and the child in anyone. It teaches lessons about love, sacrifice, and conservation. It's also genuinely funny. Well worth seeing if you haven't.

SCIENCE- ID and crazy X's

This post about the latest arguments in the as Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case prompted this entry. The fact that the case was settled almost three years ago seems to be lost on one of the lawyers. In response to this lawyers claims, Ken Miller, one of the Biologists who testified in court, gives an excellent explanation of why the ideas of ID don’t move more scientists to give up evolution. But rather than take on the science (or lack thereof) of ID, I’m going to talk about the psychology of believing in something being more important than really caring if it’s true or not.

My ex-wife is an unusually reasonable person. But you could tell when she was doing something that wasn’t reasonable because when she did she suddenly would lose all connection to reason at once. When it was brought up to her, immediately every random event she thought might possibly justify her error would become germane to the discussion with no thought as to actual relevance. The other day I mentioned that she consistently breaks appointments and when she does keep them she’s hours (frequently several hours) late. Her response was to bring up some woman she suspected me of having an affair with 10 years ago in spite of the fact that she knows I was faithful to a fault. Not only is every imagining and dream she ever had fair game, she will say things that are so directly contradictory to reality that they derail the conversation completely. There is simply no way to reply to them other than to stare in disbelief that you actually heard those words come out of her mouth. An example? When she finally left me (by emptying the house while I was at work one day and letting me know she was leaving via a message on my voice mail) she later tried to justify such a way of ending a 16 year marriage by saying she had talked to me before doing it. When I mentioned that if that were true I wouldn’t have found out when I opened the door and Styrofoam packing peanuts blew out past my legs, she had to fall back on the random imaginary accusation ploy.

It’s like the bungee cord connecting her to reality breaks and suddenly she’s in free fall clutching for any handhold that might present itself, no matter how desperate or unlikely.

I’ve noticed that this behavior isn’t unique to her. It usually seems to surface when someone finds himself or herself in an indefensible position. Unable to admit that they may not be right, they suddenly resort to the time honored tradition held dear by students taking essay tests the world over- if you don’t know the answer, just say anything and hope it sounds good. Colloquially this is referred to either as “if you can’t blind them with brilliance then baffle them with bullshit” or “the more shit you throw against the wall the more chance there is some will stick”. There also seems that the more important the impossible thing someone is defending is to them, the more likely they will go “full retard” and abandon reality to keep it.

"Touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will soon find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your legs and hands, and fly into your face and eyes." - John Adams, 1814

Which brings us to the ID movement. Anyone with an understanding of science sees Intelligent Design for what it is, an attempt for fundamentalist Christians to extend the God of the Gaps idea into the 21st century with it’s genome sequencing and gene manipulation. Faced with a God whose existence fits a gap that is rapidly closing, ID has launched an attack not only on evolution but on the scientific theory itself. Faced with no evidence, questionable rhetorical arguments, and a dearth of the kind of research and theory that would allow them to make a scientific case, proponents of ID are forced to make assertions which may not have any relation to reality. They declare that certain systems are “irreducibly complex” thus God is the only possible explanation (a new spin on the transitional forms argument- if you can’t show every step in your work any other answer might be equally right). They posit the existence of a vast left-wing scientific conspiracy that pursues a pogrom on evolution heretics (shame on you Ben Stein, you simply have to know better). They say that science is a religion like any other, based on faith rather than reason (one of those things that you just can’t believe really came out of somebody’s mouth). It’s easy to see the common denominator in these claims. It’s basically the same as the “secular humanism is a religion” meme. They suppose that there is no way to arrive at conclusions differently than they do. The think that if someone believes something there must be a building and a guy asking everybody for money every Sunday connected with it. And they think that anything they don’t believe must be just as impossible to prove as what they do believe.

What they are doing is simply trying to discredit science. They want to redefine science to mean anything that you can imagine without using logic, reason, or having to go through the steps of the scientific method. Start with a conclusion, gather evidence being sure to ignore anything that doesn’t fit your conclusion, Perform no experiments and gather no new data. Make completely unsupported claims and pretend they are unassailable. Oh, and be sure to misrepresent the opposition and outright lie about your own position when cornered.

If this is science, what I can’t figure out is why my ex-wife doesn’t get credit for inventing it.

MOVIES- Eagle Eye and "on doing reviews"

In this review I break by two cardinal rules, one permanently. I never do a synopsis and I consider all my movie articles to be discussions of a movie rather than reviews to recommend a film so I assume spoiler warnings. But in this article I’m doing a synopsis and I’m going to mark passages with SPOILER alerts. So in case you don’t want to know how the movie ends, I’m going to give you the first and last sentences of the last paragraph and that is my spoiler free verdict.

“So I’m giving this movie a hearty recommendation. It’s almost a must-see.”

Past here there be SPOILERS but not for a while so continue, brave one…

***

Whoever said Eagle Eye was a movie about the first 20 minutes of THE MATRIX said everything you need to know about it. Except it’s a mediocre copy of the first 20 minutes of THE MATRIX. It’s not even the whole first twenty minutes. They didn’t even include the cool part with Trinity kicking everybody’s ass, just from where Neo goes to work, to after the interview with Agent Smith. You know, all the running between cubicles with a cell phone stuck in his ear. They even do a shot-by-shot homage during the interrogation between LeBeouf and Thornton (I’m sorry, there was never any need to learn the characters names.) The tagline for this movie should have been: The INTERNET! The most diabolical Frankenstein monster ever spawned from the mind of man… It can see anything… Do anything… Be everywhere!!! There is no escape… from… THE INTERNET!

THE DIRECTOR isn’t bad, aside from his inept stealing from the staging and composition of other movies. The camera is in focus and eye-lines are steady for the most part. This artistry makes the director a standout compared to…

THE WRITERS proved that one person could not create such a dreadful script- it took a committee. If you’re expecting a new Borne movie with Shia playing Borne then you need to be thinking more SPY KIDS. In addition to THE MATRIX, the script borrows from a number of other sources, most notably 2001, MXC, and every other movie like this ever made. I’ve seen Bruce Willis use a tollgate as a ramp to launch a car into a helicopter, so nothing in this movie is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen, but it tries real hard. But it’s not the writing that’s bad. The bad dialogue is the product of…

THE PLOT is the classic “idiot” plot. Every time the plot needs to move forward, someone does something idiotic. The best thing you can say about the writers was that at least one of them was able to follow Conrad’s law and make sure that the gun used in the third act was introduced in the first act. (SPOILER- it’s not actually a gun.) The script is an example of sub-mediocrity that is equaled by…

THE ACTORS apparently had a meeting and decided to play themselves rather than do any, you know, ACTING. Shia LeBeouf seems the only one to have put any thought into his performance. (I guess he thought he was the leading man or something.) He SPOILER plays two identical twins and seems to have decided that two expressions would be all that were needed- talking as loud and fast as you can or trembling in fear like a junky sweating it out. Luckily one of the characters was dead so he was able to lavish the other one with both mannerisms. Here again, the script doesn’t help. Here’s a hint, Shia. When your character starts hearing a magical voice that knows everything and can do anything, and your character disagrees with in at every turn and is always wrong, that’s probably not the leading man vehicle for you.

Michelle Monaghan plays a super-competent MILF who’s a little ditzy. Our introduction to her is watching her backtrack 20 complex steps to remember that she left her car keys in the fridge. As previously mentioned, Michelle plays her character as if she was Michelle Monaghan.

Billy Bob Thornton also appears as himself but does have the advantage that Billy Bob Thornton standing around and delivering stupid dialog is still more interesting than the other two combined. To give you the idea, his best line is, “If you’re looking at me I’d better be the suspect.” (I didn’t say it was good, I said it was his best line.) But then the writer(s) ruins even this dimly bright spot by having him go on for two minutes spewing lame ass threats to his subordinates. If it didn’t become a caricature the audience might miss the cliché, I guess.

Roxanne Dawson is also in the movie, so is Michael Chiklis. Which leaves us with…

THE MAGUFFIN is the central conceit of the whole thing, the big plot twist that the whole thing swings on. I wasn’t going to do a SPOILER of this- even though it was incredibly predictable and even though it was the second biggest rip-off after THE MATRIX. But then they made it into a monster movie and killed the monster in the dumbest most obvious way and took 40 minutes doing it. Oh, by the way the SPOILERS are- the monster is a giant military computer that has become independent, the rip-off is WARGAMES, and the way they kill it is to jab a big stick in it’s giant red eye. You see, the main computer core is inside a giant mechanical eyeball on a big mechanical stalk that moves around a ginormus* circular room looking at little convex mirrors all over the walls. (If you’re even thinking of asking why, you have missed the whole point of what I’ve been saying about this movie.) When they find out the computer has gone rogue, instead of taking out a handgun and blowing it away, they fret and run around and pull out “memory cores” (which are a dead ringer for the memory units in HAL 9000 except without the cool zero gee) to “slow it down a little” (I swear that I am not shitting you) and only wind up killing it by jamming a stick into the big red eye by accident finally. While all this happens, LeBeouf and Monaghan bounce from event to event like pinballs with him being alternately terrified or loud. It’s all just a mess.

Now I hate to give away the ending to a movie (Burt Reynolds makes it back with the beer and wins the bet), and I hate to do a plot synopsis (their only purpose is to fill column space for professional reviewers) and I’ve gone and done both. And I feel bad about it. Especially when I consider that I could have dropped the needle anywhere in the movie and found something equally inane (I’m running out of synonyms for shitty). A large hunk of the movie is devoted to something that could have been done by rerouting a CIA plane.

So I’m giving this movie a hearty recommendation. There are movies that aren’t good, and there are movies that are bad. This movie is bad enough in a good enough way to be worth watching. In fact, you should get a bunch of your friends together and go at it MST3K style. It’s almost a must see.



* FREE ASSOCIATION SPELL CHECKER ITEM OF THE DAY: ginormus-ignoramus

MOVIES- Watchmen Featurette From Last Year

Just before the end of the year a new Watchmen featurette was released on the web. No doubt to quell some of the fires burning up so many blogs about Fox’s win in court. This one shows a few more tantalizing seconds from the movie with the added goodness of having Zack Snyder do a roll call and brag some more about what a epic the movie is. The question is, will it be an epic FAIL?

Watchmen Exclusive


Yes, the film looks right and yes, Zach would never have been able to land a job as director if he wasn’t able to say the right worlds with a straight face. But there are substantial reasons the movie may be doomed to be a disappointment.

(1) Batman, or rather The Dark Knight which may have shot the public’s load for taking superheroes seriously. There has to come a point where the public is satiated with costumed silliness no mater how well it’s done. The Dark Knight may have been Peak Oil.

(2) Batman and Iron Man may have used all the comic book fan luck that exists. I cannot help but believe that three comic book movies done seriously and correctly that all get critical and public acclaim coming out in the same year is too improbable to happen in any universe I’m familiar with.

(3) Batman, which may have set the bar too high. There already seems to be a strong countercurrent of resentment which could be geekdom trying to protect itself from the inevitable disappointment. I knew a lot of people who didn’t go see Batman Begins even though they would have loved it, because they had horrible flashbacks to what Joel Shumacher had done to the character. Watchmen doesn’t have that baggage but the reverence of the source material is much higher. This is the comic that comic geeks give to smart people who don’t read comics. I’ve already read one set of blog comments about this video where two posters complain about the spots moving on Rorshack’s mask. One says, “Why does Rorschach's mask transform like that? Because it looks cool I guess, and that's exactly why this movie will suck.” having obviously never read the comic. The movie is primed for heavy criticism.

(4) The story itself (finally one that isn’t Batman). It looks good but it could look great and wind up just being the trailer for the 12 hour Watchmen miniseries it would have taken to do the book justice. Snyder refers to the book as “supposedly unfilmable”. That’s not the right word. Un-translatable is what it might be. And even if he somehow manages it and it’s a work of genius, you just can’t put a gallon in a pint jar without losing 7/8 of it. Think David Lynch’s Dune.

I’ve been guardedly optimistic before each of the last two Batman movies but Christopher Nolan has taught me that I can love again. I’m waiting to see if Watchmen is going to break my heart.

This I Know

I thought I’d start the year with an infodump. Here are some of the aphorisms I’ve picked up or written over the years that have helped me to understand the world. Hopefully you will find something helpful for the New Year.

God is far too fond of irony.

Spirituality is inversely proportional to self-righteousness.

Over the long haul, correctness is proportional to doubt.

Quae nocent docent: Things that injure- teach.

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained as stupidity.

Common sense is not so common.

Never assume that everybody else is like you.

Argue with a fool and there are two fools arguing.

One of the primary purposes of religion is to separate people into us and them. One of the primary purposes of enlightenment is to break down barriers between us and them.

All too often, Christianity isn’t the religion of Jesus; it’s a religion about Jesus.

The opposite of love is fear.

You quit learning the minute you stop thinking that you might not be wrong.

Expecting gratitude when you help someone is ridiculous.

The more you love, the less you care.

The Democratic fallacy is that everybody’s opinion has equal worth.

Everything in the world conspires to keep you from actually being in charge of your own life. Including you.

Lotto is a tax on the mathematically challenged.

The two most common things in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.

The only thing in the world you can be sure that you can change is your reaction to it.

We are stone-age brains dealing with twenty-first century technology.

The police work for the status quo. They are not employed to protect or serve the citizens.

Human society is an outgrowth of human nature.

One of the earliest things children learn is possessiveness. Lying is another.

Being sure is not the same as being right.

Psychology derives from biology, sociology derives from psychology, thus sociology derives from biology.

You are never in control as much as you think you are.

If you don't believe in luck, flip a coin and prove it.

It is never a bad idea to look for more evidence.

All governments eventually become malignant.

Gender roles were not imposed on either sex. They were inherited from biology.

No matter how wrong an idea is, there will be smart people who believe it, conversely there is no idea so right that it doesn’t have some idiot involved. (The popular expression of the second part of this is “even a broken clock is right twice a day”.

No person can be more than 50% of a relationship. A 50% correct relationship still gets a failing grade.

It may not have been your fault, but thinking that teaches you nothing.

One of the best courses in psychology you’ll ever have is driving in traffic.

Mentally retarded people rarely get angry. Stupid people get angry a lot. Smart people get angry less and control it better.

Democracy isn’t a system for making the best decisions, it’s a system for correcting the worst ones.

By the time they reach adulthood most people have figured out if they aren’t beautiful, athletic, or rich. However, they will go on thinking they are smarter than other people for the rest of their lives.

Insanity is continuing to do the same thing and expecting different results.

Class warfare has been being fought since the invention of money but it’s only called that when the poor fight back.

Life is a school. If you don’t learn the right answer to a problem you will keep seeing that problem repeatedly until you do get it right. This is why your cable keeps being turned off.

If you worry more about being respected than you do about respecting others, you’re doing it wrong.

Usually, not always but usually, when people are about to do something they shouldn’t do, they know it.

The golden rule isn’t “do unto others” it’s “love one another”.

We tend to dislike things in other people that we don’t want to admit about ourselves.

Spirituality is about making yourself better, making other people better is their job (not to mention impossible for you to do).

Unwanted help is always “unwanted” first and “help” second.

In college they taught me:
A class in statistics
And that generalizations were bad
These things are mutually exclusive.

Growng Up in the 21st Century

Tomorrow is New Year’s Day and today I’m woolgathering and taking stock. I’m not big on New Year’s resolutions. Why wait until some arbitrary day on the calendar to do something that needs doing or change something that needs changing? But I understand that it’s human nature to procrastinate all that doing and changing and the start of the new year does serve to remind one that time is passing, if you need to be reminded of that sort of thing. Personally I’d be in serious contention for the title of world’s worst procrastinator of I let myself, so I’ve always made a conscious decision to try to get done as quickly as possible things I might otherwise put off. This leaves me free on New Year’s to take stock and plan what I want to accomplish in the future. And to ruminate on what has happened in the last year and try to understand it. I find this works better for me than trying to change everything at once, failing miserably, and then giving up for the rest of the year- which is what resolutions seem to wind up causing for a lot of folks.

The year has been rather uneventful for me on a personal level. Sure there have been the sort of things that crop up in any given year of your life- I bought a new car, sold my old one (both transactions on Ebay, that was a first), and had a bout of illness (practically the first time I’ve ever been seriously ill, so that was enlightening) but most of my time was taken up with the things that comprise day to day life- work, play, taking out the garbage. My life goes on at a pretty even keel. One of the advantages of getting a little older is that you’ve had a chance to work a lot of things out, to figure out what works and what doesn’t. And one of the advantages of my job is that it helps me keep things in perspective. It’s hard to sweat the small stuff when you deal with people who are dealing with real crises every day.

OTOH, the year seems to have been pretty traumatic on a national and world level. I’ve been thinking a lot about that. I think we’re on the cusp of big changes. One of the constants in the universe seems to be that things have a specific plan to their existence. Everything from plants and animals, to people, to stars, to galaxies, and presumably even the universe, has a series of stages they go through from birth to death. For instance, a star and it’s attendant solar system starts out as a ball of gas. The gas congeals into the sun and planets. The sun ignites when it gets dense and hot enough for hydrogen to fuse. There’s a period of furious activity where billions of orbiting particles get whittled down to a few hundred thousand and the planets cool. Then the sun settles into a long period of stable activity. Eventually the sun grows old and uses up the available hydrogen. It cools, expands, and eventually dies. Sort of like people. There’s birth, childhood with all its associated traumas, adulthood with it’s attendant stability, and eventually old age. One of my favorite psychological theorists, a fellow named Eric Erikson, postulated that human beings go through eight developmental stages from birth to death and that each stage had a central challenge that had to be overcome to advance to the next. I think intelligent species are like that too. Human beings have gone through a sort of childhood, where we developed society and technology, and an adolescence, where we covered the planet and learned some rudimentary control over the forces of nature. Now we seem to be entering a period of adulthood. We can no longer afford the excesses of youth. But like any adolescent, if we don’t learn to control our impulses to be wasteful, greedy, thoughtless, and self absorbed, we aren’t going to be able to enjoy a long fruitful period of adulthood. My entire life I’ve lived in a world where human beings had the capacity to destroy themselves and the planet. And somehow, so far we haven’t. But the problems are becoming more complex. Now we don’t have to worry just about doing something mind-bogglingly stupid and starting a nuclear holocaust. We have to start thinking about how we are going to manage the planet so we have a long prosperous life as a species. I hope we’re up to it. If we aren’t it’s entirely possible that, like many adolescents who don’t grow up, we’ll ruin our future or perhaps even kill ourselves as a race. I think we’re at that point now. We have the capability to do almost anything if we’re smart. But if we don’t quit acting like children we aren’t going to last long. It seems the time has come for us to start acting like adults.

Will we be able to? I honestly don’t know. There is such a strong spark of the divine in us. We can be so good and caring and smart. OTOH, like any child on the brink of adulthood, we have such great hesitance and fear when we think we are going to have to start being responsible for ourselves and start making good decisions. The current financial crisis is like the hangover that follows a wild college frat party. The party’s over, it’s Monday morning and time for class. If you don’t make yourself get up and go in spite of the fact that your head is pounding and the next little while is really going to suck, then you’re never going to graduate. Maybe in the long run this financial crisis will be a good thing. Those bleary eyed Monday mornings teach you that spending the weekend getting loaded is a pretty stupid idea. And people often are at their best when challenged. I’ve noticed that when times are good and things are easy, people often get complacent and lazy. A kick in the pants sometimes smartens us up considerably. I’m just not looking forward to the hangover. But if we wind up with a better world when we come out the other side then it was worth it.

POLITICS- Bristol's Precious Little Snowflake

And now, for something completely snarky…

Congratulations to Bristol Lampshade Burp Gompers Palin and Levi Cogswallow Twiddle Sparkplug Johnston on the birth of their little bastard Tripp Ouff Bang Quonsethut Palin-Johnston. The child is doing fine and looking forward to following in the footsteps of his mother and grandmother to be a high school dropout and Republican presidential candidate in 2048. Other career choices include going into the family business of his other grandmother and getting arrested for selling Meth. He also hopes to break with longstanding family tradition by waiting until after marriage to knock up some random trollop.

Attending the birth were uncle Track Boink Wazzle Dipshait Palin (also a proud high school dropout), aunt Willow Camshaft Doober Doohickey Palin (soon to drop out of school), aunt Piper Cub Dwizzle Particle Palin (looking forward to dropping out of school), and older brother Trig Gomer Fontanel Algebra Palin (referred to humorously in the family as “Uncle Trig” and who has no plans to ever attend school). During the birth Bristol’s siblings were overheard to exclaim “Wow!” “Shit!” “Look at the size of that thing!” and “Murmee, Murmee, Murmee.”

And these retarded rednecks want to tell me about family values? As the bumper stickers in Colorado say- Focus On Your Own Damn Family.

ECONOMY- The Auto Bailout

I had a talk the other day with a good friend and it started me thinking about some things that hadn’t occurred to me about the state of the economy and the auto bailout.

I’m going to refer to my friend as Bob, although that isn’t his real name. Not that I actually think he’d care for me to use his real name but simply out of respect of the fact that I haven’t asked him. Like many successful and thoughtful people I’ve known, Bob finds himself drawn to Libertarian principles. His thoughts on the auto bailout can be capsulated as (a) the government has no business bailing out failed companies and (b) the Big Three automakers are doomed to fail anyway so any money the government spends to prolong the inevitable is wasted.

As I told him, from a philosophical point of view I agree with both viewpoints. I don’t think it’s the business of government to decide who is “too big to fail”. A free market is only free if failure is an option for anyone. At this point it’s looking more and more like the bank bailout was a terrible waste. Not because the government might not have needed to do something to save the banking system but because, like virtually everything the Bush administration has done, it was poorly planned and terribly managed. What they have done seems to amount to pouring obscene amounts of money into the banking system and having absolutely nothing to show for it. Likewise, if the taxpayers give the automakers a loan that no bank would touch and they default, we have thrown away money and have nothing to show for it.

But Bob repeated a “fact” that I hear over and over again and don’t believe. He says that Detroit’s problems are the fault of the unions. I’m sorry, but this is patently absurd for a couple of reasons. To take GM as an example, the cost of their union pension responsibilities is immense. I read estimates between $1300 and $1800 PER CAR SOLD. But while this is a competitive disadvantage that the foreign companies don’t share, it isn’t the reason GM is bankrupt. Those pensions are a cost of doing business just like the cost of steel or interest on bank loans. You wouldn’t blame the banks for GM’s debts so why blame the pension plan? Those workers had contracts that entitled them to a pension and health care in retirement. They are no more responsible for GM’s predicament than any other creditor.

Another thing people say to blame the unions for Detroit’s trouble is that their workers make too much money. True, US auto companies pay slightly more to domestic workers than foreign companies. That’s why US car makers have been closing plants and moving them to Mexico where they pay significantly less. But the real Pay inequality is among executives. Ford CEO and President Alan Mulally makes about 100 million dollars a year, or about 557 times what that theoretical $75/hr. autoworker makes. To compare, Toyota CEO Katsuaki Watanabe makes under one million a year, or under 6 times as much as the same auto worker. Still think all the money is going to the people actually building the cars?

GM’s problem isn’t new. It’s the same problem they have had for a long time- every year fewer people want to buy their cars. PERIOD. While the Japanese and other foreign carmakers have expanded their market share, American companies’ sales have contracted. If you think the pension plan or labor cost is the problem then ask yourself- would making GM cars $1500 cheaper cause someone buying a Toyota to change their mind? According to Kelley Blue Book a base model Chevy Malibu invoices for $21,395.00 while a base Toyota Camry costs $26,210. The Toyota already costs over $4800 more! Obviously cost is not hindering Toyota who equaled GM in new car sales worldwide for the first time over a year ago.

There are lots of reasons for GM (and as GM goes, so America goes apparently) to have consistently lost customers to Toyota but they aren’t the unions, they’re the cars.

(1) American cars are inferior in quality (many will protest “Not any more” which simply proves that they have been for so long that claiming equality is now considered a selling point). Not only do they break down more often but their build quality and “fit and finish” is inferior. Their technology is often inferior. And they just aren’t as nice. Go to a Chevy showroom and sit inside one of their cars. The interior is laden with cheap plastics, inferior finishes and textures, knobs that feel cheap when you turn them, and seats covered with fabrics that you wouldn’t use to line your dog house. Now go to a Toyota or Honda dealership and sit in one of their cars. The differences aren’t subtle. Do the same thing and look at the seams between body panels or test the ride quality while you’re at it. And the inferiority isn’t just skin deep. The 2009 Corvette, considered one of the best cars made by the General, still uses an engine technology that’s over 60 years old and is suspended on LEAF SPRINGS. For those of you that don’t know, this is the same kind of suspension technology used by stage coaches. And it wasn’t new then. Is it any wonder that almost every review of this “world beating sports car” comments on how bad the ride quality is? Simply put, the foreign brands have made such sales gains because they build better cars.
(2) The resale values for American cars are abysmal. This is mostly because of the program car sales that allow American auto makers to claim sales commensurate with Japanese brands. When you see sales figures from GM, Ford, or Chrysler they include significant sales of cars to rental fleets and other corporate buyers at substantial discounts. These sales assure that there are always plenty of used American cars available at heavy discounts within 12 months of the release of a new model. A friend of mine looked up the loan value on a 2007 Dodge Magnum the other day and found that the car, which had been purchased for close to $40,000 was now eligible for a loan of $15,000!
(3) American car companies make too many versions of the same car. If you walk into a Japanese dealership you will find that the option list is less than a dozen items and often there are only 2 or 3 factory options. Domestic auto option lists contain dozens of items and checking every one can almost double the cost of the car. In addition to that, American car companies make too many kinds of the same car- a marketing ploy called “badge engineering” It is common to find the same basic automobile sold by several different dealerships with only cosmetic changes. For GM to supply autos to GM, Chevy, Pontiac, Cadillac, Hummer, Buick, and Saturn they wind up making the same basic vehicle in several ways, gutting the economies of scale they would otherwise enjoy.
(4) Their management is incompetent and overpaid. True this isn’t exclusive to car manufacturers; it’s epidemic in American business. But American higher management seems to be a kind of “good ol’ boys” club where the ultra rich move from one company to another without demonstrating any real talent. Take the case of Bob Nardelli, who moved from being CEO of GE to being CEO of Home Depot in spite of the fact that he had absolutely no retail experience. True, during his tenure profits for the chain increased, but not at the rate they had been increasing prior to his taking charge. He also managed to keep Home Depot’s stock price steady while their main competitor, Lowes, watched their stock double. For this lackluster performance Nardelli was awarded with a salary of 240 million dollars a year until stockholders had finally had enough and ousted him with a 210 million dollar bonus for his trouble. His next job was to head Chrysler, since running an appliance manufacturer and a retailer was perfect experience for him to run a car maker (NOT). At Chrysler he has presided over it’s slide into bankruptcy, cut back on new model development, and basically continued to exhibit the kind of management excellence that makes one wonder why he isn’t flipping burgers somewhere rather than begging congress to give him some of my money even though he hasn’t earned my business.

Blaming the workers for the problems the Big Three are having is attractive if you are uninformed or have an ulterior motive for wanting to blame the unions. But truthfully, saying that the unions are the cause of the US auto industry’s problems is like driving your car into a tree and saying you shouldn’t have filled the tank with premium gas.

So, should we bail out the auto industry? I honestly don’t know. But I can’t help worry more about the workers for the industry and their ancillary suppliers. And all the industries that will be affected by their loss of purchasing power. And all the other ripple effects. But surely the almost $100,000 per employee that Ford, GM, and Chrysler are asking for would allow the government to keep those people from starving until the industry gets through Chapter 11. (Because if they go on the dole we’re still going to have to pay for them.) It’s only going to last the current management a couple of months. Then it will be time for the taxpayers to make their next payment.

TELEVISION- Star Trek Legal

Barring some catastrophic change of plan, ABC has aired its last episode of Boston Legal. Further adding credence to people who say that any hint of intelligence is being systematically expunged from American television. In fact, admitting Boston Legal one of the more intelligent programs on television is perhaps all the proof that is needed. It is, at its core, just another lawyer show. And the claim that television network execs think that the world is comprised of doctors, lawyers, and cops has been being made since I was a kid and is just as valid today. But it is a lawyer show involved with something more important than who killed their husband this week, even it is painfully liberal in its orientation and deals with important issues with all the subtlety that a meat cleaver uses on a rack of ribs.

In classic David E. Kelly style, the show is quirky to the point of distraction. One character has an exaggerated form of Asperger's syndrome and squawks and burps and hoots as low comic relief. The male leads are misogynistic letches who practice law when they can fit it into the space between sniffing the closest crotch and getting to the next. The judges are the embodiment of character flaws magnified by whim and power. Lower level associates are known by their weirdity: the cross-dresser, the ex-madam, the hair-shirt ex-marine, the elderly woman who commits the occasional murder because she likes the attention. At least there are no co-ed bathrooms or remote control toilets.

Oddity for its own sake has always been a failing of Kelly’s television shows, in my opinion. But here it’s saved by some of the best acting in any television show, past or present. Even though the show is very much an ensemble piece, James Spader is the center and the anchor. Spader’s Alan Shore is subtle, heroic, principled, troubled, and quick witted. Although he is not in control of the firm (in fact, he’s not even a partner) and is openly despised by many of the other characters, he is indulged because he is so good at what he does. Spader conveys intelligence better than perhaps anyone acting today and the character is almost always the smartest person in the room. Indeed, when he delivers the closing argument for whichever case is the Maguffin of the week you know you have reached the climax of the episode.

Close behind Spader is William Shatner, who plays Denny Crane- founding partner and not shy about mentioning that his name is on the door. Or mentioning his name at any other time. If Spader is the rational mind of the firm, Crane is both Id and Ego. To reinforce this idea, he is almost devoid of rational thought and suffers from “mad cow”, a whimsical sort of Alzheimer's disease that seems to be just a put-on until at the end of the series we find out that he is actually developing Alzheimer's. Shatner is a revelation in the role, showing real acting chops here that few would have expected. (Nicolas Mayer, director of Star Trek movies II and VI, once said that Shatner was pretty good after you had done enough takes to wear him out so that he quit “acting”.) The character is obviously based on what you would expect Shatner to be in real life if all you knew about him were the things written and said by the other actors on the original Star Trek. He’s a lecherous egomaniac of questionable talent who maintains his own inflated self image at any cost, especially if that cost is to someone else. Yet the fact that Shatner can make the character lovable in spite of his having virtually every character flaw you could imagine shows why people love the actor. And why Shatner remains continuously employed while other actors who have taken genre leads early in their careers have been branded with those characters forever. (George Reeves, Christopher Reeve, Adam West, Kier Dulla, Mark Hamell, Carrie Fisher, and even Leonard Nimoy must look at Shatner, and Harrison Ford, with envy and awe.)

The mention of Shatner's work on Star Trek is not incidental. If you are a Star Trek fan, you should have been watching Boston Legal. Around our house we even called it Star Trek Legal for the first two seasons. It’s like a reunion show. In addition to Captain Kirk in the lead, Odo runs the firm, Quark is a judge, Neelix has a case, and Seven of Nine shoots a stalker. In fact, there’s a web page dedicated to the Star Trek cast connections with Boston Legal. But it also skims the best actors from other TV shows for guest roles. Henry Gibson, Katey Sagal, Michael J. Fox, Bess Armstrong, Betty White, Gail O’Grady, Tom Selleck, Howard Hessman, Heather Locklear and many others show up for one or two of several episodes. The main cast also recalls so many great old television shows with actors such as Candice Bergen and John Larroquette (as the polar opposite of Dan Fielding).

But notice something else about this cast list, something alluded to in one of the final episodes, almost every one of them is over 40. It’s only one of the things that makes Boston Legal more interesting than the regular TV show. Another is that they don’t pretend that they aren’t on television. Breaking the fourth wall is as dependable as Alan Shore’s monologue, each happens at least once in every episode. In one episode Shirley Schmidt mentions that it’s a “sweeps week”. During the last season the characters mention that the series is ending in one way or another. This in joke is carried one step further by the fact that some characters seem to know they are characters in a TV show and others don’t. Existential humor in a mainstream television drama. How often do you see that?

Far less often, unfortunately, than we Boston Legal’s scripts preaching at the audience. I’m not adverse to entertainment dealing with issues. In fact, I think entertainment that doesn’t try to teach or advocate can’t reach the level of being called “art”. But a lot of people don’t like to mix their politics and entertainment. Here the slant is decidedly liberal, which seems to be the trend in television (though not for the reason most conservatives would think*) and if you are conservative and can’t stand to watch the liberal viewpoint win every week then you need not apply. Conservatives do get to see their side defended but the verdict is rarely in real doubt and West Wing did it better. Denny Crane is the weekly surrogate but he is a clown and his presence is the best argument that the writers (primarily David Kelly at 6 times as many scripts as anyone else) don’t take conservatism seriously.

But even if Boston Legal wasn't your cup of tea, it was a well made, well written, well acted piece of work. Something that continues to become more rare as the kudzu of BS reality shows and endless crime procedurals that all seem to have the same characters with different people playing them chokes the life out of the medium. It was one of only about three shows that I watch and I'm going to miss it.



* I honestly don't know what Conservatives think causes movie and television people to be more liberal than the general population but I've never really found it strange. The impulse to create art is an oddity in humanity. People who become artists, musicians, actors, directors, or any other artistic endevour usually are familiar with alienation. Much of their creative impulse deals with these feelings of alienation. As a result, it seems only natural that they would be more tolerant of people who are "different" since they could more easily identify with that feeling of strangeness.

TECHNOLOGY- Is There a Monster (cable) Behind Your Stereo?

Merry Christmas!

I started selling electronics not long after graduating high school. Back then things were a lot different. Vinyl records were still the audiophile media of choice (and they were still called stereophiles* because the multichannel audio formats that had been tried were found wanting), the VCR was just becoming a mass market item, and the really adventurous early adopters were spending their money on a new gadget called a home computer (a good one had 64K of RAM). CD players were just on the horizon and the digital entertainment age was still gestating.

Now music and video are portable and ubiquitous. Even the most modest home audio setups have subwoofers and multichannel sound. Most people don’t even buy their music in a store anymore, preferring to have it sent directly to their audio devices, and high resolution video downloads are fast going the same route. Television displays are bigger, brighter, and sharper than those first VCR buyers could have imagined. Movies, television, and music are available when and where you want them, with almost nothing excluded.

But consumers haven’t changed much. Most of those downloaded videos have lower visual quality than those early VCR tapes. And the music that comes out of the earbuds of an iPod is more reminiscent of what we listened to on 8 Track tapes than it is the CDs that spawned it. High-end audio has always been like the high end of anything: rapidly diminishing returns for investment and rapidly increasing smoke and mirrors. So even today the audiophile combination of scientific jargon and mumbo-jumbo is as all pervasive as it was when Steve Martin mocked it in a routine he called Googlephonics.

Sure, when analogue sound was a crapshoot and there were so many inaccuracies in the chain of electronics that it was easy to let mysticism slip into your tech. There were a dozen Audio and Video magazines on the stands 30 years ago. Some were rigorous and technical (a magazine titled simply AUDIO was among the best) and some embraced subjectivity (The Perfect Sound comes to mind). I remember that Stereo Review magazine did testing of some common audio myths in the mid 1980s. My favorite was double blind testing of amplifiers to see if a panel of “golden eared” ‘philes could tell the difference between a group of amps which ranged from a $300 Pioneer receiver to a pair of Krell tube monoblocs that cost more than most cars at the time. The results- no, not really. At least, not statistically.

You would have thought that the digital era would have put an end to a lot of this silliness. But it didn’t. Not by a long shot. In the early days of CD there was the idea that using a magic marker to darken the outer edge of a CD would improve sound quality. (I remember one debate as to which color of magic marker was best for this!) Digital was new and “tweaking” was such a time honored tradition that a lot of people just couldn’t give it up.

One of today’s audio (and video) fetishes that has been around for a long time is the idea that the cabling you use (those wires that hook components together) has a demonstrable affect on the sound you hear. I’ve been fighting off the advances of salesmen on this one for decades. I used to just point out that having an RCA cable the size of my wrist didn’t make sense when the components themselves didn’t use such wiring internally. Or I’d mention that professional audio and video equipment didn’t use such expensive patchcords. This was often met with a combination of a puzzled stare and the kind of impassioned personal testimony that you rarely hear from anyone except TV evangelists. Don’t get me wrong. Decent cables are worth what you pay for them (which really isn’t much) and over long runs (>15 feet or so) good shielding is a good idea. Also what kind of connection you use can make a big difference. To change a video connection from RF to composite, to s-video, to component, and then to digital shows obvious improvement with each step. But to pay $150 for a set of Monster Cable RCA patchcords or northward of $250 for a Monster Cable HDMI cord is nothing short of madness. I especially like the idea that Monster Cable (not the only offender but surely the most widely recognized) thinks I should pay more that half the cost of my Blu-Ray player for a cable to hook it up. It’s a digital cable, for Pete’s sake! Either the bandwidth is adequate and the interference is low enough or it isn’t. Exotic compounds and special manufacturing processes don’t make those 1’s and straighter or those 0’s any rounder. They are either there or they ain’t.

The analogy that comes to me is putting a $2000 set of wheels and tires on your $3500 Toyota Corolla but with the added absurdity that you’re convinced they make the car go faster.

The Consumerist website has weighed into this faux debate with a couple of articles. The one where high quality patch cords and speaker wires are swapped with coat hanger wire is especially funny (although by no means scientific). But I do have problems with the one on how Monster Cable is ripping off consumers. They are right that the products are a rip-off but they miss the point of why they are a rip-off , sighting high profit margins to retailers as the problem. In fact, the margin on Monster Cable connectors is not at all out of line with other products in the same category- 35-45% (they also calculate margin incorrectly). Electronics retailers often work on moderate margins for bigger ticket items and depend on accessories and service contracts to keep their business profitable. When I was managing an electronics store our rule of thumb was that 70% of gross sales were generated by bigger, lower margin items but 70% of net profit was generated by accessories (wires, connectors, batteries- the stuff that hangs on pegs on the back wall). We aimed for a 40% net profit, which in electronics was excellent. To compare, grocery stores usually have a margin of 1-3% while clothing stores might have as much as several hundred percent margin. While this may seem like a large disparity, it’s more a result their retail constraints. Grocery stores rely on massive volume compared to most retailers, while clothing stores have to stock every style in dozens of sizes. It isn’t the profit margin that the retailer makes that’s the problem. It’s that you’re paying way too much for the cable in the first place.

And don’t even get me started on why a $1500 power strip that “filters and cleans” the electicity isn’t as good as a $150 Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS). And those service contracts? Margins on them are typically upwards of 90% for the retailer. You could say they are almost pure profit.

So if you want to use that Best Buy gift card you got this morning wisely, buy a better component or some extra media. Don’t let the salesman convince you that a hundred dollar patchcord is anything but a pig in a poke.


* Stereophile is a word my spell checker has never even heard of!

CHRISTMAS- The Little Drummer Boy

Music has been ruined by commercialism. Period. End of story. Today popular music has no more relationship to real music than Pepsi has a relationship to real food.

Of all the saccharine, mindless, maudlin, moronic Christmas myths that I’ve endured for my whole life, one of my least favorite has been the story of the little drummer boy. I realize that, at its heart, it is a story of someone who has no money giving a Christmas gift to the baby Jesus. But my knowledge of that worthwhile story has been damaged by the puppet animation Christmas special about the story. While Rudolph was my favorite puppet animated Christmas story when I was a child (I remember crying because my mother had not woke me up from my nap in time to see it one year) even at five years old I was appalled at the sight of an obviously retarded drummer child hitting a drum randomly as some sort of gift for the savior of the world.

So here is my strike back at both the little drummer boy and the commercialization of real music made by machines to show you what a simple drummer boy can do when he isn’t plasticized and infused with high fructose corn syrup.

Enjoy…

A New Beginning and a New Destination

“God is far too fond of irony.”
-me

There are several problems with blogging. The main one is the same as the problem with keeping any journal. When your life is busy and things are HAPPENING, you don’t have time to write. When life has calmed down and you have time for quiet reflection, there’s nothing to write about.

Another problem is something I call the error of oversimplification. Blogs are great for snark, or a humorous aside, or the quick comment. But the world is a complex place and often you have to read several books on even a narrow subject to have enough information to start forming a worthwhile opinion. Thus, a blog is a poor way to explain or opine on any subject. There just isn’t space to deal with things in a meaningful way.

To put it another way, if you buy a pump for your well it will be described as pumping a given number of gallons per minute. Almost anything that moves fluid is rated this way- volume/time. Yet, one of the great unanswered questions of science is turbulence. In other words, science has no way to accurately determine how much water will come out of a garden hose in a period of time because there is no good theory of fluid dynamics. We KIND OF KNOW how much fluid should be moved by a pump in a certain amount of time, but we don’t ACTUALLY UNDERSTAND how to even start to calculate how much fluid will actually move.

Examples of this are everywhere in science. We used Newton’s laws of motion to send men to the moon even though we knew for hundreds of years that they didn’t actually work because Mercury’s orbit around the sun didn’t follow them. This is one of the main reasons that Einstein developed the Theory of Relativity (which does accurately predict Mercury’s orbit). But Einstein couldn’t wrap his head around Quantum Mechanics. His famous quote (often applied out of context)about QM is that God doesn’t play at dice. Yet it seems that there is a certain amount of indeterminacy in the universe.

Or to bring this home to everyone that relies on our technology- every time you go to the hospital for surgery they put you to sleep using anesthesia, even though we have no idea how anesthesia really works. There are two competing theories but each has significant flaws because both would predict certain chemicals would be anesthesia agents when they demonstrably are not.

Oversimplification may be useful in some cases but real knowledge is built on true understanding.

Science maintains that fundamental principles are simple and beautiful. This is not only an unsupported and prejudiced view, but is made ludicrous by one of our linchpins of current “knowledge”-quantum mechanics, which is neither simple or beautiful. The problem with human understanding is the same as the problem with map making: a truly accurate map would have to be a 1:1 scale. In other words, any map that isn’t the exact size of the thing being mapped is basically inaccurate. But what good is a map of the United States that is the SIZE of the United States? Human understanding requires simplification and the more you simplify something the more inaccurate that simplification is.

To bring this all home-all I’m really saying is that my hiatus from the blog has been because things have been happening fast in my life and knee-jerk opinion may be interesting and can occasionally be right but is rarely deep. Now that I have returned the blog will be starting anew. For one thing, I’m going to get a lot more personal, something I’ve avoided before. William Faulkner said that the only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself. While I don’t think Faulkner was a particularly good writer in a technical sense (a trait that I found common among writers I was required to read in literature classes) he was a brilliant man. And in this case, I think he has hit the proverbial nail on its proverbial head. Imparting knowledge without context is like giving you a canteen without water.

Another thing Faulkner said was, “If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate: The ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ is worth any number of old ladies”. In deference to this quote I will from now on rate any work of art by how many old ladies it is worth killing. I have to admit that I did not originate this scale as a measurement of artistic merit. The Comics Journal used it over thirty years ago. But, like God, I am no respecter of persons. If stealing from your mother is OK (It’s not dammit, put that purse down RIGHT NOW!) then stealing from Gary Groth is almost mandatory.

And I will try to use brevity whenever possible. Sometimes that may not be possible, but in spite of what I’ve said up until this point, it is preferable. One of the reasons I think Faulkner was a poor writer is that he never met a period that he liked. I once counted 143 words in a single sentence of his writing. If you can’t find the thought in what you are saying in less than 143 words, you need to quit typing and think some more. As Max Plank once said, I’d have written you a shorter letter but I didn’t have time. Complex ideas require complex explanations but again I fall back on minds greater than my own to say KISS (keep it simple stupid) or Einstein’s “make everything as simple as possible BUT NO SIMPLER”.

Comments are re-opened. I refuse to edit comments since I find comment moderation for anything but removing spambots to be the mark of a coward. I think that, more than often, comment moderation is a way for the blogger to protect themselves from valid points of view that differ from their own than it is a way to enforce civility (more on that later). If you have the courage to state your opinion but not to deal with the opinions of others you are a cur. If you are not willing to engage differing views, then you have no business stating your own.

So, welcome back to my world. Hopefully you can find something worthwhile here.