Month: February 2003

I’ve occasionally alluded to my general pessimism about the Bush Administration’s ability to manage a post-war Iraq in any fashion that rises above “Half-assed”. So my fears in this regard were not allayed in the slightest by the report that the Administration omitted funding for nation-building in Afghanistan from the new budget.

I’ve just about bought into the idea that the coming war is a necessary step for making the world a better place. Problem is, as far as I can tell from the administration’s behavior and public statements, they think it’s the only step.

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ER has been a favorite show of mine pretty much since its first season. No, it’s not the fresh wonder that it was back then, but I still find it much more enjoyable than most of the stuff elsewhere on TV. The show did waver a bit, a few seasons back, when the producers allowed the cast to balloon to a ridiculous degree with a set of newer characters that weren’t particularly likable; luckily they ditched the duds, brought in a few new ones, and the show’s doing just fine now. I like that Dr. Carter has matured and is in what appears to be a good relationship; I like the dynamic of Doctors Gallant and Pratt, the two young students who bounce off each other because one is gung-ho and cavalier while the other is cautious to a fault. I’ve never been a big fan of Dr. Weaver, but Laura Innes is for my money the most underrated actress on television.

The only blemish right now, for me, is Maura Tierney’s character. Tierney is a very beautiful woman and she has great comic timing — so obviously, the ER producers keep downplaying those qualities by keeping her looking incredibly frumpy in every episode and giving her character more psychological baggage than the supporting cast of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. She’s a recovering alcoholic with one broken marriage under her belt; she dropped out of medical school; her mother is bi-polar to the Nth degree and now she apparently has a brother who is also bi-polar. I really hope the writers quit dumping on her, soon.

(And for God’s sake, stop inflicting Sally Field upon us during every sweeps period! Field is an actress of, shall I say, limited appeal. She was good in Smokey and the Bandit. She was excellent in Places in the Heart, and she was fine as Tom Hanks’s mother in Forrest Gump. But her character on ER is the very picture of annoying.)

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The Central New York area was hit hard with lake-effect snow this week. The Syracuse metro area (actually, I feel a bit funny describing it as a “metro” area — the “metro” prefix to me implies, well, a bigger town than this) got hit with probably a foot or so, total, over the three days; it was the towns north of here — closer to Lake Ontario — that got pounded.

I’m only bringing this up because I was driving on the NY State Thruway today (that’s Interstate 90), and there were the usual semis that went off the road during the big snow. One of them, my wife tells me, has been there for two days, and from what I could see it’s going to be there for quite a while. It’s a double-tractor-trailer, and it is currently located at the bottom of a very wide ditch about thirty feet from the Thruway itself. It is buried in snow up to the tops of its wheel-wells, and there is an impressive pile of snow immediately in front of the truck’s cab, probably the result of the vehicle’s plowing effect as it moved through the snow. The funny thing is that the truck is perfectly straight and parallel to the Thurway; there is no jack-knifing, no tipping, and no bending of any kind. It’s almost like the truck driver meant to park it there, and park it he did.

Not so, unfortunately, the smaller truck — roughly the size of the biggest U-Haul available — that went off on the other side of the Thruway, in that exact same spot in the road. The ditch on that side is not nearly so wide, and it’s much deeper — so this poor guy put his vehicle head-first into that ditch, so that he is positioned perpendicular to the Thruway, with his back axle and wheels now roughly two feet in the air.

I suppose I could switch into “tinfoil hat” mode and speculate on the fact that these two trucks went off the road right in front of the Syracuse location of defense contractor Lockheed-Martin….

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IMAGE OF THE WEEK

Congratulations to The Simpsons on hitting 300 episodes!

And here are two images from my personal favorite episode, “The Springfield Files”, in which two FBI agents come to Springfield to investigate Homer’s paranormal claim. I have to admit that if I was sitting in a bar next to Gillian Anderson, I might well behave this way….

“Mulder, shouldn’t we do something about this shipment of drugs coming into New York City?”

“Scully, I hardly think the FBI wants us to waste our time with that.”

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My only reaction to the Oscar nominations is to note the absence of a nomination for James Newton Howard’s superb score for Signs, a tension-filled work that pays grand homage to the great scores Bernard Herrmann wrote for the films of Alfred Hitchcock. I think Signs should have been nominated in place of Catch Me If You Can, which is a good score but isn’t really all that notable except for a different kind of John Williams sound than the big, epic sound for which he’s so well-known. It’s become almost robotic for the Academy to nominate John Williams, even if they don’t nominate his best score of the year (which was either Minority Report or Attack of the Clones).

The Academy has also decided to codify its long-standing distaste for sequel scores. (The “Best Original Score” Oscar in 1980 went not to The Empire Strikes Back, one of the finest scores of all time, but to Fame.) Sequel scores, which are based on themes from the earlier films, will no longer be Oscar-eligible. The rule doesn’t take effect until next year, apparently, but that didn’t stop the Academy from ignoring Howard Shore’s work on Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, which doesn’t make extensive use of the material from Fellowship. Ah well….

The consensus among film score afficionadoes is that the winner this year will be Elmer Bernstein. I haven’t heard his score to Far From Heaven, but Bernstein is the current dean of film composers (followed by Jerry Goldsmith and Williams, both of whom celebrated birthdays this month) and recognition for his fine, fine career would be more than welcome.

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Noting all of the ads on TV that tout “the newest reality series!”, I wonder if in a year or two fictional shows will become sufficiently rare that ads will begin popping up touting “the newest fictional series!”. I can hear the copy now: “These people are not real. They are not the guy or girl next door. They are characters, played by actors, reciting dialog written by writers. Follow their adventures!”

I’ve stopped following American Idol, mainly because now it’s at the point where they’re showing all these people singing songs that I really don’t like, in the “pop” style that I don’t really enjoy. I’d rather watch these people try to sound like themselves, as opposed to trying to be “the next Mariah Carey” or “the next Whitney Houston” or “the next Luther Vandross”. (Or, as someone actually tried the other night, “the next Debbie Boone”. I mean, who on earth sings “You Light Up My Life” anymore? Ye gods….) But the show’s early installments, the “weeding-out” episodes, were highly entertaining.

Of course, tonight the reality-granddaddy-of-them-all returns. Yep, another go-round of Survivor. I plan to celebrate in my own fashion….

….by watching Friends and Scrubs.

(Although, I can in fact envision a few scenarios under which I would probably watch this show: maybe if they did Survivor: Siberia with No Food, or Survivor: the South Pacific but with no island, just a leaky boat, or Survivor: The Pakistani Highlands.)

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After a year of blogging, I’m a bit surprised as to what generates attention here and what doesn’t. I’ve occasionally posted responses to SDB’s political commentary — although not often, and most recently here — and have received nary a peep; but somehow he sure noticed my indignance that he dares speak ill of a Star Wars movie.

And the first big spike in my traffic came last summer when I started posting my capsule reviews of all the James Bond movies. Somehow that attracted attention at the time, and yet, my similar capsulization of the Star Trek films has, to my knowledge, gone completely unnoticed.

I mentioned during the NFL playoffs how much I was enjoying that series of TV ads the NFL made, featuring actor Don Cheadle spouting some fairly memorable dialog (“That’s how big the playoffs are. They took the name Joe and made it, JOE.”) That mention generated at least nine or ten hits a day. (Yes, for me, that’s a lot.)

People also find Byzantium’s Shores if they search the Net for information on any of the poems for which I’ve done “Excursions” (these “Poetical Excursions” are merely brief discussions of what strikes me in particular about a given poem, as a way of constantly reminding myself to read more poetry). By far, the most popular of these is my Excursion for Poe’s “Annabel Lee”, which is good in that this is the poem I’ve thought most about over the years since I read it.

And there’s a good amount of traffic to be found by linking to Scoreland Soundtrack Reviews, a film music website (that hasn’t been updated in far too long — are you there, Jay?). This is because there appears to be another, more notorious, site with the ScoreLand handle wherein can be found…well, I’m assuming photos of scantily-clad women.

So, anyway, I hope some of you arriving by way of Steven Den Beste’s statement that I should lighten up stick around a while. I’m not really as anal as I seem in those two posts. Really.

(And while I’m discussing my one-year blogiversary and traffic-details, I’d like to thank everyone who has permalinked me over the last year. It’s always appreciated!)

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My books for sale, on Ebay, have been updated, so check ’em out. (Oh, and I’m now able to offer the “Buy It Now” pricing, so if you see something there you want you don’t have to wait….hint, hint….)

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Rachel Lucas, coiner of the wonderful word “asshatted”, has done it again.

“Asstastic”.

She’s starting to approach the lofty heights of The Simpsons‘s writers, who generated such terms as “craptacular”.

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I’ve just learned, via the regular FSM feature The Aisle Seat, that a direct-to-video sequel is being made to Charlotte’s Web.

I’m trying not to think of any jokes involving Wilbur being mistakenly sent to an abattoir, but they just keep popping into my brain….

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