I’ve decided to tempt fate once again by ordering new business cards for the freelance copywriting business that I’ve attempted to launch twice, only to be thwarted by news of moving after the two previous instances of ordering business cards. Here’s hoping….

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In the “Something Learned Every Day” Department: apparently getting a lot of snow, and keeping it on the ground all winter, is not only beneficial for the local ski slopes, but also for the local golf courses, in terms of the health of the grass. I’m not a golfer, but I found this interesting.

(Oh, by the way: we’re up to six consecutive days of awakening to sunlight just a-streamin’ through my window. Actually, some meteorologists might use the term “partly cloudy” to describe today, but after six months of “Completely friggin’ overcast”, I’m putting it in the “sunny” column. And for those of you who are sick of my beating this particular horse into the ground, it’s apparently supposed to rain here either tomorrow or the day after. Light at the end of the tunnel, and all that.)

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I’m unsure as to whether I should wonder about what circumstances in someone’s life led them to do this Google search, or if I should be concerned that Byzantium’s Shores came up in his search results. Ugh. (Profanity warning.)

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A reminder: after you’re done sticking your taxes in the mail tomorrow, you can get that awful taste out of your mouth by buying the three new DVDs of films by the great anime master, Hayao Miyazaki: Spirited Away, Kiki’s Delivery Service, and Castle in the Sky.

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Oliver Willis has an interesting post about the various manifestations of sports allegiances in towns where he’s lived. As per his model, here’s how Buffalo shapes up:

:: It’s Draft time! Bills! Bills! Bills!

:: Go Sabres! Now we have something to do in between Sundays.

:: It’s Training Camp! Bills Bills Bills!

:: Yeah, the Blue Jays and Indians and probably the Pirates are closer, but screw them, this is Yankee territory!

:: Are the Sabres in the playoffs?

:: The season’s starting! Bills Bills Bills! When do we play Miami, anyway? Bring ’em on!

:: NBA….what’s that? (Or, if the person’s an old-timer, “Hey, we had one of them franchises back in my day….”)

:: We’re in the playoff hunt! Bills! Bills! Bills!

:: Yeah, there used to be good college basketball around here….

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Comparing radio stations that cater to my interests in Buffalo to those in Syracuse, I find that Syracuse gets the edge. Buffalo’s main oldies station is much better than the one in Syracuse, which was a grab-bag station of oldies and “sunny hits from the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s”. (Oh, by the way, oldies stations across the nation take note: Just because the Beach Boys did the song does not make “Kokomo” an oldie. The song dates from 1985 or so, for God’s sake!)

But as for classical stations, Syracuse gets the edge with a selection that I more routinely enjoyed, coupled with the fact that they listed every piece they played on their website, so if you joined a work in progress you had merely to note the time it was on so you could look it up later if it was to your liking. The Buffalo classical station is good, to be sure, and it had a particular show that I liked which Syracuse didn’t (Adventures in Good Music with Karl Haas), but on balance I liked Syracuse’s station just a bit more. Maybe it was their “Morning Sousa Wake-up”, when they’d play some obscure Sousa march during the 8:00 hour.

Syracuse walks away with the prize, though, in the NPR Category. I love Buffalo’s NPR station, but it does double-duty as a jazz station, whereas in Syracuse it’s all NPR programming, all the time. In Syracuse I was able to hear a lot of NPR programs that I never even knew existed in Buffalo (although one big favorite of mine, Thistle and Shamrock, apparently is unavailable in Syracuse). Syracuse does have a jazz station, but I didn’t listen to it very often. For various reasons I just don’t get into jazz as much as I used to.

And in one random non-radio category, Buffalo is a far more driveable city than Syracuse, even given the fact that it’s twice as big. This is for one simple reason: I have never in my life seen such a large concentration of “No right turn on red” intersections outside of Pennsylvania as exists in Syracuse.

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The number of consecutive days of sunlight upon my waking here in Buffalo has reached FIVE. O the wonders unparallel’d !!!

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Boring notes from real life:

:: Buffalo Sunlight Watch: Four days and counting! Woo-hoo!!

:: It occurs to me today, watching our cats wreak a bit of havoc amongst the cardboard boxes, that cats could be considered WMD’s, for sufficiently modest values of “M”.

:: I took the daughter to Burger King yesterday, because she recently discovered cheeseburgers. The toy in her meal was this little plush Spongebob Squarepants guy. She keeps identifying him, though, as “Sideshow Bob”.

:: One hundred compact discs in a cardboard box is friggin’ heavy.

:: Somehow, after every move I find some reason to go to Radio Shack and buy some new bit of connecting wire or plugs or something. This time it was an extra cord for my computer speakers, so I can easily switch to headphones if I want to listen to something discretely. My question, though, is: when did Radio Shack stop asking for bizarre amounts of personal information prior to ringing up a six-buck purchase?

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Another nifty nugget from TBOGG (permalinks appear to be malfunctioning; scroll down to “They’re Republicans….”): apparently the Baseball Hall of Fame’s status as a sacred shrine to the game where politics has no place (hence the cancellation of the Bull Durham festivities involving liberal actors Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon) is actually a sacred shrine where some politics are just fine.

I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning.

(Edited to repair a bit of link-suckage.)

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I watched Willow last night. It’s a film I remember being unfairly underrated, so I was quite surprised to discover upon rewatching it that I no longer find it underrated. Now I’m wondering instead what I saw in it in the first place — the script never seems to take life despite a number of spots where obvious underlying potential can be seen, the action and effects sequences trundle on and on and on, the villains are undeveloped cardboard baddies complete with swooshing capes and skull-shaped helmets and dramatic stridings through cavernous throne rooms. The pacing is ponderous, and the music is colossally overrated — James Horner’s score for Willow is often mentioned as his masterpiece, but I just don’t hear it; I just hear the same three melodies repeated ad infinitum plus the little “evil motif” that Horner has been recycling for his movie villains for years now.

Of course, George Lucas’s hordes of detractors seize on Willow as more evidence of his failings, along with Howard the Duck, from the same time period. Thing is, Lucas only came up with the story for Willow; he didn’t actually write the script, nor did he direct. A lot of the Anti-Lucas Brigade says things like: “If only Lucas would only produce and not direct!” and “Lucas is a terrible writer!” But here’s a movie on which he did neither, and he still gets blamed for it. I’ve never heard anyone mention Ron Howard’s role in Willow, and Lucas’s name is invariably tied to the giant dung-heap that is Howard the Duck despite the fact that Lucas had almost nothing to do with that film outside of producing it.

Watching Willow again, after seeing the first two Lord of the Rings films, is not unlike following the reading of Tolkien’s novels with those of Robert Jordan. Highly disappointing (although it’s neat to see that even fifteen years ago someone hit on the idea that New Zealand is the perfect place to film a fantasy movie).

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