Month: February 2005

Via John Scalzi I see a new meme: “Ten Things I Have Done, that You Probably Haven’t”. Regular readers know that I’m a sucker for this stuff, so, without further ado, here are ten things I’ve done:

1. Mooned a college professor. (Yes, I was drunk. I think. No, I don’t know if he saw. It was dark. Not one of my proudest moments, really. But I’ll bet none of you have done it….)

2. Wandered the streets of Minneapolis in search of misplaced car keys. (No, they weren’t mine.)

3. Surfed the hole below Cucumber Rock. (If you know what I’m talking about, this makes sense.)

4. Walked across Ray Kinsella’s ballpark, and walked a ways into his cornfield.

5. Boarded a boat in Plymouth, MA, to sail out into the Atlantic to observe humpback whales as they fed.

6. Cooked breakfast for a United States Congressman. (To be fair, I didn’t know it was his breakfast before I cooked it.)

7. Cleaned out a trash compactor.

8. Performed Taps for the funeral of an American Legion member.

9. Road-tripped to a town twenty miles away, stopping in six grocery stores in that town (if I recall correctly), looking for a specific flavor of ice cream — and finding it at the last store, which happened to be the one farthest away.

10. Spent half of a week’s vacation at Disney World pushing The Wife around in a wheelchair, after she injured her foot seriously enough to not be able to walk on it for any length of time.

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Even though I’m a big fan of Hayao Miyazaki’s films (which, if you haven’t seen, you’re a colossal wanker), I still haven’t bought my own copy of Spirited Away, which is (so far) his masterpiece. (I say “so far” because his newest film, Howl’s Moving Castle, is still in the offing.)

Well, this week sees the release of three more Studio Ghibli films on DVD: Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind, Porco Rosso, and The Cat Returns. I expect that they’ll all be available fairly cheaply at Target, so I’ll be heading there after work on Tuesday. But the best news is the promotional offer that Buena Vista Home Video is offering:

According to Nausicaa.net, if you buy all three new DVDs, you’ll be able to send in your proofs-of-purchase along with your receipt from the purchase for a free DVD, by mail, of either Spirited Away, Castle in the Sky, or Kiki’s Delivery Service. So if all goes according to plan, I shall get a free copy of Spirited Away at some point. It will be mine. Oh yes. It will be mine.

(Eagle-eyed readers may note that The Cat Returns replaces My Neighbor Totoro on Tuesday’s release. Also according to Nausicaa.net, there were problems with Totoro‘s DVD transfer, so that film has been delayed until an unspecified time.)

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I got a haircut today.

No, not a dramatic slashing of the locks; perish the thought! Just a little trimming of the ends to tame some splits and dead ends and whatnot, and some trimming of those goofy little tendrils of hair that after I go long enough without having them tamed stick out about two inches from behind my ears, which are highly annoying (as well as looking pretty stupid).

I also had the back of my neck trimmed. That’s always my least favorite part of the process, because until tomorrow the back of my neck will be alternating between two sensations: “Unimaginably Itchy” and “On Freaking Fire”.

(I think I may have to rethink my idea that using Firefox as my new browser would lead to more insightful content around these parts….)

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I must report that so far I like the Firefox browser quite a bit. This thing seems to have taken all the things I really dug about Mozilla and, well, refined them and made them better. I really like the separate “search” tool, up in the toolbar. (For you Mozilla users, you know how you can use the URL Address window as a way to send search terms to Google? Well, Firefox has an entirely separate text window for that purpose, next to the URL Address window, and what’s more, it comes with several engines installed, which means that you can search not only Google but Amazon, eBay, and others without going to those respective pages. And you can even add engines to the thing!)

One other Mozilla problem I was having is that the program didn’t appear to be storing graphics for wab pages locally, so every time I visited my own blog, the entire thing had to reload. That’s not just when loading the blog after launching the browser, but also whenever I returned to the blog after navigating to another one. I’m suspecting that this might have cause my recent brushes with Monthly Data Transfer Bandwidth Limit Doom.

And I still haven’t dug into any extensions, although I plan to do so this week. Firefox is one slick item.

(For those curious, I didn’t get the Thunderbird e-mail program, because I’m perfectly happy with Earthlink’s and AOL’s e-mail clients for now.)

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AC Douglas has a brief complaint about how a work of Mozart’s is treated in the film Amadeus:

I’m somewhat ashamed to confess I first became aware of the existence of this work courtesy of the film version of Amadeus wherein was heard part of the meltingly beautiful third-movement Adagio (at the point in the film when we first meet Mozart as musician) which, in the film, came to such a horrific, jarringly wrong close musically that I simply couldn’t believe Mozart actually wrote it that way; ergo, my acquisition of the CD of the full seven-movement Serenade.

Turns out, of course, that Mozart didn’t write it that way. What Sir Neville Marriner (Amadeus‘s music director) did for the film was to take the close of the seventh movement Molto Allegro Finale of the Serenade, and tack it onto the third-movement Adagio to form its close. Whatever possessed him to perpetrate such an idiot and grotesque edit is simply beyond my meager capacity to imagine, but, to quote the film’s Emperor Joseph II, “There it is.”

I may be wrong here, as it’s been a while since I’ve seen the film (too long, actually, since I think that it’s a great, great film), but I think that the musical edit here isn’t intended to change the music itself at all. Rather, it is necessitated by the film itself. All that happens is that the film simply cuts from the middle of the work (that sublime movement that Salieri describes vividly) to the end, so we can get on with the business of Mozart being chewed out by the Archbishop (if my memory of the scene is correct). I don’t think that Sir Neville Marriner meant to imply that the brisk conclusion of the Serenade‘s finale occurs in the same movement as that wondrous Adagio: he is telling us, “OK, we’re at the very end of that same concert now.”

A similar cut from one part of one work to another, later on the same performance, happens later during the premiere performance of Le Nozze di Figaro, when we go from one moment in the opera to another moment later on (when the Emperor starts getting fidgetty and yawning). That’s all that’s happening here: the film jumps from one point to another. Thus the musically “jarring” edit, which is probably jarring by design: Marriner very likely needed to make sure that it was blatantly clear to the film’s audiences that cuts like these had taken place.

(By the way, I count the soundtrack to Amadeus as an exception to my rule of never recommending that people buy “classical sampler” albums consisting of single movements of various multi-movement works. The Amadeus soundtrack, on two CDs, is a very-well considered product, so if you’ve just gotta buy a “Mozart Sampler”, this is the one to get. And the only one to get. Otherwise, buckle down and listen to complete symphonies, concertos, operas, and so on.)

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Congrats to Jennifer, who had an article of her own appear in The Buffalo News. It’s about, as you might expect from a Buffalonian, the cold months of winter — but not in the way you might expect from a Buffalonian.

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According to this Gallup poll, Americans my age (33 or thereabouts — born during the Nixon Administration) are lucky enough to have lived under six of our nation’s fourteen greatest Presidents.

Politics aside, I fail to see how either Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton beat out FDR, Lincoln, and George Washington. I stunningly fail to see how George W. Bush places ahead of George Washington. I fail to see how Jimmy Carter seems to have consistently outperformed Teddy Roosevelt, Harry Truman, George Bush the Elder, Thomas Jefferson, or Dwight Eisenhower.

There seems to be no explanation at all for results like this — unless Americans don’t actually know that much about their Presidents or their history. But nah, that couldn’t be it!

Actually, I blame the poll’s methodology, which seems to consist of asking people to name the greatest President. This method appears more suited to formulating results for an episode of Family Feud than yielding any concrete information about what Americans believe about their Presidents.

(link via Oliver Willis)

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I am now using Mozilla Firefox on a “trial” basis. So far I like it, but I have to play around a bit more. It was certainly a fast download and install, I’ll grant: on my dialup connection, it took all of fifteen minutes from the time I clicked “Free Download” on the Mozilla site to the time I was launching Firefox for the first time. I haven’t started dinking around with these “Extension” things yet.

I also note that my theory that Mozilla was the source of my problems with Blogger seems to be false. Blogger is just being buggy, and “they’re on it”. It would have been nice if they’d posted that message to status.blogger.com a day or two ago — heck, it would be nice if these kinds of status messages, pertaining as they do to the overall functionality of Blogger itself, were stuck prominently right on the Blogger Dashboard page so I wouldn’t go to the trouble of writing a long post and then seeing it vanish (and then reappear again a few minutes later on, which is why I’ve had a problem with double-posts appearing here this week).

And of course, I will expect that using PfierPfocks will pack this blog with even more pentrating content. Look out, world!

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Broadcast News used to be one of my favorite movies. I say “used to” because I haven’t seen it in well over eight years, and maybe more than ten. I’m not sure why that is, but sometimes things we greatly admire (or people) slip through the cracks in our lives, until many years later we think, “Hey, I used to really like that….”

Anyhow, Broadcast News is about a love triangle that takes place in the Washington news bureau of some unnamed TV network. The woman, Jane (Holly Hunter), is the news director (I think); her best friend is Aaron (Albert Brooks), a reporter who is long on journalistic integrity but not long on telegenic quality (as becomes apparent in a hilarious scene detailing his disastrous turn at anchoring the evening newscast). These two are not just friends, but comrades-in-arms: both are resisting the constant trend toward “dumbing down” the news.

But then along comes Tom (William Hurt), who is basically a big dumb lug who is also the smoothest, most natural TV news anchor ever. This is a guy who knows nothing about the issues, nothing about the news, nothing really about journalism — but who has the uncanny ability to process words being fed through his earpiece during a Special Report into coherent anchoring. He’s the type of person whose career flourishes while better journalists find their jobs threatened in the face of economic cutback.

So, obviously, Jane falls in love with Tom, even though he represents values she has been working against her entire professional life; and unbeknownst to her, Aaron is in love with Jane, because she is in a way his “Platonic Ideal” of a journalist.

All this comes to a head in a finely honed scene late in the film, when Jane goes to Aaron’s apartment after his horrible stint as news anchor. Jane tells Aaron that she is in love with Tom, and after an angry knee-jerk reaction, Aaron calms down and tries to talk through his feelings:

JANE
This is important to me.

AARON
Yeah. Well…I think it is
important for you too. Sit down.

She sits. He walks to a desk and looks at her briefly… Silence.

JANE
What?

AARON
(looking at her)
Let me think a second. It’s
tough.

A remarkably long silence — her mind wanders, she takes stock…
it is evident that he is straining to get it right, reaching
into himself.

AARON
Aaach…Jane…
(glancing at note)
Let’s take the part that has
nothing to do with me. Let’s let
me be your most trusted friend,
the one that gets to say awful
things to you. You know?

JANE
(testy and wary
but fair)
Yes, I guess. Yes.

AARON
You can’t end up with Tom because
it goes totally against everything
you’re about.

JANE
Yeah — being a basket case.

AARON
I know you care about him. I’ve
never seen you like this about
anyone, so please don’t take it
wrong when I tell you that I believe
that Tom, while a very nice guy, is
the Devil.

JANE
(quickly)
This isn’t friendship.

AARON
What do you think the Devil is going
to look like if he’s around? Nobody
is going to be taken in if he has a
long, red, pointy tail. No. I’m
semi-serious here. He will look
attractive and he will be nice and
helpful and he will get a job where
he influences a great God-fearing
nation and he will never do an evil
thing…he will just bit by little bit
lower standards where they are important.
Just coax along flash over substance…
Just a tiny bit. And he will talk about
all of us really being salesmen.
(seeing he’s not
reaching her)
And he’ll get all the great women.

She is getting pissed.

JANE
I think you’re the Devil.

AARON
No. You know that I’m not.

JANE
How?

AARON
Because we have the kind of
relationship where if I were the
Devil, you’d be the only one I
told.

She’s briefly impressed. He has a point.

JANE
You were quick enough to get
Tom’s help when…

AARON
Yes, yes. I know. Right. And
if it had gone well for me tonight,
maybe I’d be keeping quiet about all
this…I grant you everything but
give me this…he does personify
everything you’ve been fighting
against…And I’m in love with you.
(realizing)
How do you like that? — I buried
the lead.

He pauses to catch his breath — breathing deeply through his
nose.

AARON
(an aside)
I’ve got to not say that aloud;
it takes too much out of me.

JANE
(thawing)
Sit down, stop.

Aaron slumps down — it’s been a long round.

AARON
I’ve never fought for anyone before.
Does anybody win one of these things?

I love that last aside — “Does anybody win one of these things?” — because it tells us that Aaron already knows that he’s doomed here. It can’t possibly break in his favor. All he can do is stand his ground, make his points, jeopardize a friendship, and watch Jane go off to be in a relationship that is just as doomed as his love for Jane already is.

But the best line in the whole scene, for me, is the perfect summation of what love is all about — at least, for Aaron:

We have the kind of relationship where if I were the Devil, you’d be the only one I would tell.

And that, really, is probably when Aaron realizes that his love for Jane is doomed to remain unrequited: because he has to spell this out for her.

Broadcast News isn’t a perfect film, by any means. But I feel like I should track down a copy.

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I didn’t mean to take two days off from posting entirely; I’ve had a lot of problems lately with publishing the blog, for which I was blaming Blogger. However, I am posting this using my AOL account, and since AOL’s browser is powered by Internet Explorer, I suspect that I have a browser issue. The fact that I had a big problem with Mozilla the other day (dumped bookmarks) reinforces this.

It looks like this weekend I will be downloading Firefox. Returning to regular use of IE is not in my future, if I can help it.

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