The official site of Kelly Sedinger: Reader, writer, photographer, and dreamer
Oddities abound!
:: I would have figured that George Lucas’s personal study was on this list of 10 places you can never enter.
:: If Star Wars characters were on Facebook.
:: One of my favorite recurring memes in Calvin and Hobbes was the way Calvin would give voice to his dark imagination in the form of the construction of snowmen, often times snowmen acting in horrible, horrible ways. Some folks then build them in real life, These are hilarious.
More next week!
Thanksgiving Day is a really nice day to go to a movie. We’ve seen both Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace on T-giving in the last few years; this year, The Wife really wanted to see a movie, but there wasn’t anything playing that I was really jazzed about. (Couldn’t James Cameron have finished Avatar a few weeks earlier?) So, we settled on The Men Who Stare At Goats. It wasn’t a great movie, by any means; in fact, it was a little frustrating, because it’s fairly easy to see how they could have really elevated this material. But it’s a slick, well-made, well-acted, and pretty funny little film. We enjoyed it.
I don’t want to spoil too much about the story, but it interweaves flashbacks with “present day” stuff about a secret unit in the Army whose soldiers are trained in paranormal activities, like remote viewing, trying to pass through walls, and killing things simply by staring at them really intensely. (One of the test victims is a goat; hence the title.) Ewan McGregor is a reporter who gets turned on to this Army unit by a veteran; he files it away for future reference until he ends up in Kuwait in those hazy days post-Iraq War (or rather, during the War but post-“Mission Accomplished”), when he falls in with George Clooney, who is an actual member of the unit and who is on a mission to…well, that’s never really made clear, and frankly, it’s not that important anyway.
As McGregor journeys with Clooney across the Iraqi desert, Clooney fills him in on the history of the shadowy unit he serves. They call themselves “Jedi Knights”, which is an in-joke that goes all the way through the movie and really wears out its welcome. In all honesty, I have no idea why the writers decided to call them “Jedi”, because aside from that, there is no reference to Star Wars in the film, so the “Jedi” thing ends up being an odd kind of shorthand joke that we only laugh at because it sounds like we’re supposed to laugh at it. (It doesn’t really help the joke out to have Ewan McGregor say, “What’s a Jedi?”)
The film flashes by pretty quickly, and ultimately it’s a light and fluffy piece of entertainment. I do wish the script had pushed the material farther; there’s a lot of gold to be mined from the involvement of various world governments, including our own, in paranormal research and the attempted development of psi-weaponry during the Cold War era. The Men Who Stare at Goats is a perfectly fun little movie that seems to suggest, around its outlines, a much better movie to be made someday from similar material.
On New Year’s Eve, we decided to do something we’d never done before: we went to downtown Buffalo for the annual Ball Drop and the ringing in of the New Year. Now, we’ve watched the Ball Drop on teevee a lot over the years; here in Buffalo, Channel 7 (our ABC affiliate) airs split-screen coverage of Buffalo’s Ball Drop with the big one at Times Square, as part of New Year’s Rockin’ Eve.
Now, I can’t lie — judging by what we’ve seen on teevee, I wasn’t terribly enthusiastic about being downtown for our Ball Drop. For one thing, it involves being pack in with lots of people. For another, we’d been out very late the night before (for our TSO concert) and I’d then had to get up very early the next morning for a project at The Store, with the Ball Drop obviously keeping us up past midnight. But the biggest factor in my ambivalence was the fact that the teevee coverage always makes the Ball Drop look, well, lame. As in, “serving platter covered with Christmas lights being lowered out an office building window on a string and an extension cord” lame. So I figured I’d be freakishly tired while I froze my arse off standing around a huge crush of people waiting to watch a chintzy ball of lights come down a building before shoving my way through the crowds to get home. Luckily I was off the next day, but still.
Well, wouldn’t you know it — the Ball Drop was a terrific time.
Our parking strategy was a good starting point. Instead of trying to park close to the event, we decided to park in a lot down at the foot of Main Street, right outside the vacant-for-the-night HSBC Arena, and then ride the Metro Rail to the Ball Drop location. The Ball drops down the front face of the Electric Tower, a beautiful old building in downtown whose top tiers are always illuminated white except for the holiday season when they’re lit green, red, gold. This is what we saw as soon as we got off the Metro Rail train:
Swirling spotlights kept arcing over the building and into the air, sending those wonderful blue shafts of light into the winter sky. The snow was falling, but the flakes were big and fluffy, there was no breeze to speak of, and the temperature was just cold enough that we could stand there for a little over an hour without wanting to kill ourselves. (Still, a roving hot chocolate vendor or two wouldn’t have been a bad idea.)
Here’s the view from the vantage point we set up for ourselves:
The Ball itself was a lot nicer looking than what we see on teevee: a glittering globe, completely covered with lights that were swirling and spiraling and generally looking all, well, glittery. We got there at about 11:00, so we had to stand in one place for the remaining hour. But that hour went pretty quickly, because there was a lot of entertainment on the stage there, at the foot of the building: trivia contests, appearances by Buffalo Sabres, the Mayor receiving what I couldn’t discern to be either a cheer or a lusty boo, more trivia, lots of fun music, and then the final song of 2009. It was “Don’t Stop Believin'” by Journey, which is, frankly, a song I could live without hearing again for a good long time.
But anyway, the final minute of 2009 came at last, and during the last fifteen seconds of the year, the Ball began to descend:
And at last, we were into 2010!
More music, lots of cheering and kissing. The third song of 2010 the deejays of the night chose was “ABC” by the Jackson Five (at which every single black person around us started dancing). Then we followed some of the dispersing crowd out of the area, walking down Main Street until we got to the next Metro Rail station, where we caught the next train and rode it back down to our parking spot. It took us half as much time to get home from the Ball Drop as it had the night before from the TSO concert.
One final postscript. The Daughter loves stuff that either glows or lights up, so whenever we’re at a function that takes place at night, we’ll almost always have to go to one of the inevitable street vendors who are selling such wares — glow necklaces, glow sticks, light-up hats, et cetera — and get something. She chose this thing that was clearly a knock-off of a lightsaber, even though it’s incredibly chintzy and cheaply made, so much so that the guy could have hawked them for two bucks and made a profit. (Which is no doubt why he was hawking them for eight bucks each. I’m so easy.)
So The Kid came from from New Year’s with a toy lightsaber, whose siren call I managed to disregard for over a week. Yup, I made it a week.
Until last night, when I finally gave into the temptation.
Wow, the Dark Side is more seductive!
I haven’t read enough Michael Chabon to count him among my favorite authors, but I do hold him in fairly high regard, ever since I read The Amazing Adventures and Kavalier and Clay some years back. (Way back, it turns out; I blogged about the book during this blog’s infant months, in July of 2002. Wow.) I’ve read a few of his short stories and admired them greatly, and I’ve enjoyed some of his essays and…that’s about it. Chabon’s one of those authors who is pretty much permanently on my “Hmmm, I need to read him more” list. (I’ve owned a copy of Summerland for four years now and not got round to reading it. Maybe when I finish the book I’m reading now.)
Anyhow, I recently read Chabon’s Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure. This is a straight-forward adventure story that was apparently originally published in serial form (in the New York Times Magazine). While the jacket copy cites influences such as Dumas and Fritz Leiber, I found it a bit reminiscent myself of Rudyard Kipling, albeit not of the “Competent Brit against the heathen hordes” variety. Our heroes are two Jewish rogues, a thin taciturn fellow named Zelikman and a more gregarious — and large — man named Amram. These two have been together for some time, traveling the roads of tenth century Asia, when they are somehow pressed into the service of escorting a prince of the Khazar Empire, who intends to return home and retake his rightful throne from a usurper. Clearly, Zelikman and Amram are more interested in simply escorting the prince wherever, getting paid, and leaving, but in the grand tradition of all such rogues, they are pulled into the rebellion, whether they like it or not.
The book is pretty light reading, and it’s pleasantly brief; after a steady diet lately of big thick novels, be they SF or fantasy, it was nice to be able to toss off a nice, short and sweet adventure yarn that is still written by one of the best writers working today. Chabon’s prose here feels slightly antiquated, which is perfectly in keeping with the kind of story he’s telling here, and the characters still manage to leap off the page to a good degree. I also enjoyed the clever chapter titles, such as “On the Observance of the Fourth Commandment Among Horse Thieves” and “On the Melancholy Duty of Soldiers to Contend with the Messes Left by Kings”.
Perhaps the best summation of Gentlemen of the Road is provided by Chabon himself, in the first sentence of his Afterword: “The original — and in my heart the true — title of the short novel you hold in your hands was Jews with Swords.” That, in its wonderfully odd way, says it all. Recommended.
George Lucas appeared on The Daily Show the other day:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| George Lucas | ||||
|
||||
Nice little interview, although Jon Stewart commits the usual error at the beginning by assuming that for some reason, Darth Vader is going to be spending lots of time on Tatooine after he becomes Emperor Palpatine’s right-hand man. Seems more logical to me that chasing down Leia at the beginning of A New Hope is the first time he even gets near his old stomping ground after he buries his mother way back in Attack of the Clones….
And another prodigal regular feature round these parts returns. I may have used this before, but it’s utterly gorgeous and I can reuse stuff whenever I want. Here is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir performing “Shenandoah”.
This recording was fascinatingly used by Oliver Stone during the closing cast credits for his film Nixon…but I first heard it in the hands of my own college choir during my freshman year.
This is a first here at Byzantium’s Shores: a post that arises because of something I saw on my Twitter feed. Specifically, it’s a list of 100 Quotes Every Geek Should Know. Well, there’s a fine old Interweb tradition with such lists. I’m going to reproduce the list as follows: bold for quotes I not only recognize but can cite by the character who says it (if it’s a line of dialogue), and italic for quotes I recognize by source but can’t recall who said it. All others will be left as-is. I’m also removing the source attributions from each one, so you can play along!
1. “Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.”
2. “Three rings for the Elven kings under the sky, seven for the Dwarf lords in their halls of stone, nine for the mortal men doomed to die, one for the Dark Lord on his dark throne, in the land of Mordor where the shadows lie. One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring the bring them all, and in the darkness bind them. In the land of Mordor where the shadows lie.”
3. “I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
4. “Spock. This child is about to wipe out every living thing on Earth. Now, what do you suggest we do….spank it?”
5. “With great power there must also come — great responsibility.”
6. “If you can’t take a little bloody nose, maybe you oughtta go back home and crawl under your bed. It’s not safe out here. It’s wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross; but it’s not for the timid.”
7. “Five card stud, nothing wild. And the sky’s the limit”
8. “If you think that by threatening me you can get me to do what you want… Well, that’s where you’re right. But – and I am only saying that because I care – there’s a lot of decaffeinated brands on the market that are just as tasty as the real thing.”
9. “We’re all very different people. We’re not Watusi. We’re not Spartans. We’re Americans, with a capital ‘A’, huh? You know what that means? Do ya? That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world. We are the wretched refuse. We’re the underdog.”
10. “If I’m not back in five minutes, just wait longer.”
11. “I’m going to give you a little advice. There’s a force in the universe that makes things happen. And all you have to do is get in touch with it, stop thinking, let things happen, and be the ball.”
12. WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE INCONVENIENCE
13. “Some days, you just can’t get rid of a bomb!”
14. “Bill, strange things are afoot at the Circle K.”
15. “Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple.”
16. “Didja ever look at a dollar bill, man? There’s some spooky shit goin’ on there. And it’s green too.”
17. “Alright, alright alright.”
18. “Heya, Tom’, it’s Bob from the office down the hall. Good to see you, buddy; how’ve you been? Things have been alright for me except that I’m a zombie now. I really wish you’d let us in.”
19. “Never argue with the data.”
20. “Oooh right, it’s actually quite a funny story once you get past all the tragic elements and the over-riding sense of doom.”
21. “Fantastic!”
22. “I must not fear. / Fear is the mind-killer. / Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. / I will face my fear. / I will permit it to pass over me and through me. / And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see
its path. / Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. / Only I will remain.”23. “This is the way society functions. Aren’t you a part of society?”
24. “Okay. You people sit tight, hold the fort and keep the home fires burning. And if we’re not back by dawn… call the president.”
25. “No matter where you go, there you are. ”
26. “Do you know of the Klingon proverb that tells us revenge is a dish that is best served cold? It is very cold in space.”
27. “Ray, if someone asks you if you’re a god, you say YES!”
28. “Greetings, programs!” -Flynn, TRON
29. “I guess you picked the wrong god-damned rec room to break into, didn’t you?!”
30. “I find your lack of faith disturbing.”
31. “Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no substitute for a good blaster at your side, kid.”
32. “Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try.”
33. “It’s a moral imperative.”
34. “Talk with your mouth full / bite the hand that feeds you / bite off more than you can chew / dare to be stupid”
35. “Well, let’s say this Twinkie represents the normal amount of psychokinetic energy in the New York area. Based on this morning’s reading, it would be a Twinkie thirty-five feet long, weighing approximately six hundred pounds.”
36. “This episode was BADLY written!”
37. “Worst. Episode. Ever.”
38. “Goonies never say die.”
39. “Nothing shocks me–I’m a scientist.”
40. “Bright light! Bright light!”
41. “The Road goes ever on and on/Down from the door where it began/Now far ahead the Road has gone/And I must follow, if I can/Pursuing it with eager feet/Until it joins some larger way/Where many paths and errands meet/And whither then? I cannot say.”
42. “Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!”
43. “If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?”
44. “Wait a minute, Doc. Ah… Are you telling me you built a time machine… out of a DeLorean?”
45. “Don’t call me a mindless philosopher, you overweight blob of grease!”
46. “I’d just as soon kiss a wookiee!”
47. “But one thing’s sure: Inspector Clay is dead, murdered, and somebody’s responsible.”
48. “I know kung fu.”
49. “This is your receipt for your husband… and this is my receipt for your receipt.”
50. “Your soul-suckin’ days are over, amigo!”
51. “I don’t believe there’s a power in the ‘verse that can stop Kaylee from being cheerful. Sometimes you just wanna duct-tape her mouth and dump her in the hold for a month.”
52. “Would you say I have a plethora of piñatas?”
53. “Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!”
54. “There is no Earthly way of knowing… which direction we are going. There is no knowing where we’re rowing, or which way the river’s flowing. Is it raining? Is it snowing? Is a hurricane a’blowing? Not a speck of light is showing so the danger much be growing. Are the fires of hell a’glowing? Is the grisley reaper mowing? YES! The danger must be growing for the rowers keep on rowing AND THEY’RE CERTAINLY NOT SHOWING ANY SIGNS THAT THEY ARE SLOWING!!”
55. “Time…to die.”
56. “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”
57. “Check, please.”
58. “So say we all.”
59. “After very careful consideration, sir, I’ve come to the conclusion that your new defense system sucks.”
60. “I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar.”
61. “No matter what you hear in there, no matter how cruelly I beg you, no matter how terribly I may scream, do not open this door or you will undo everything I have worked for.”
62. “Ahh, a bear in his natural habitat: a Studebaker.”
63. “He’s dead, Jim.”
64. “Who’s gonna turn down a Junior Mint? It’s chocolate, it’s peppermint – it’s delicious!”
65. “Bring out your dead.”
66. “My name is Inigo Montoyo. You killed my father. Prepare to die!”
67. “Why a duck? Why-a no chicken?”
68. “Redrum.”
69. “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows.”
70. “We’re going to need a bigger boat.”
71. “Oooh, ahhh, that’s how it always starts. Then later there’s running and screaming.”
72. “Greetings, my friend. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future.”
73. “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!”
74. “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.”
75. “Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!”
76. “You maniacs! You blew it up! Oh, damn you! Damn you all to hell!”
77. “Klaatu barada nikto.”
78. “Monsters from the Id.”
79. “ET phone home.”
80. “What… is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?”
81. “We thought you was a toad!” – Delmar, O Brother Where Art Thou?
82. “Face it tiger, you just hit the jackpot!”
83. “You don’t have to be a gun.”
84. “Danger Will Robinson! Danger!”
85. “Yeah, well. The Dude abides.”
86. “All things serve the beam.”
87. “You can’t fool me! There ain’t no Sanity Clause!”
88. “Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”
89. “And I said, I don’t care if they lay me off either, because I told, I told Bill that if they move my desk one more time, then, then I’m, I’m quitting, I’m going to quit. And, and I told Don too, because they’ve moved my desk four times already this year, and I used to be over by the window, and I could see the squirrels, and they were married, but then, they switched from the Swingline to the Boston stapler, but I kept my Swingline stapler because it didn’t bind up as much, and I kept the staples for the Swingline stapler and it’s not okay because if they take my stapler then I’ll set the building on fire…”
90. “Michael, I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing, and it was everything that I thought it could be.”
91. “Now I have a machine gun. Ho ho ho.”
92. “Gimme some sugar, baby.”
93. “Well hello Mister Fancypants. Well, I’ve got news for you pal, you ain’t leadin’ but two things, right now: Jack and sh*t… and Jack left town.”
94. “Kneel before Zod.”
95. “Shall we play a game?”
96. “Daddy would have gotten us Uzis.”
97. “It’s 106 miles to Chicago, we’ve got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark and we’re wearing sunglasses.” “Hit it!”
98. “Make it so” / “Engage”
99. “Ya Ta!”
100. “End Of Line”
Fun stuff!
OK, I let this feature slide through the holidays, but now we’re back in the swing, so: for those of you who read Funky Winkerbean, do you read each individual strip as a joke, or do you tend to scrutinize each individual installment as some kind of set-up for a future downbeat turn of events and see a depressing subtext everywhere in the strip?
Back when we first got our flatscreen HD television, a bit less than a year ago, everybody told me that two things justified the purchase: movies, and televised sports. Now, with movies, this is clearly the case. Sports, I suppose; the only sport I watch much at all anymore is football, and it certainly does look better in HD, especially in a widescreen format so when the players are lining up, I can even see what the safeties are up to. (With the Bills, they’re usually gesturing back and forth to see if the other knows where he should be, and then falling back as deeply as possible so as to allow opposing receivers to get ten yards of forward progress before they’re even touched.)
Well, there’s another reason. As is our New Year’s tradition here at Casa Jaquandor, we watched the Great Performances PBS telecast of the annual New Year’s From Vienna concert on New Year’s night, as we’ve done for years. (I actually started watching this concert while I was in high school.) The concert — performed by the Vienna Philharmonic under a different guest conductor each year — is always accompanied by wonderful photography and dance in and around various locations in Vienna, relating to the history of that great city and of Austria during the time of the Strauss family. It’s always been a gorgeous thing to watch, but this year was the first time we got to watch the concert in HD, and it was more than gorgeous: it was revelatory. Details from the Musikverein and the other locales just burst from the screen. The telecast was just amazingly beautiful, in a way I’d never appreciated before in the more than twenty years I’ve been watching this concert every year.
The musical part of the performance, by the way, was first rate in every way. The conductor was Frenchman Georges Pretre, and he made the effervescent elegance of the Strauss music shine forth so amazingly that the notes themselves seemed to sparkle. How I wish I could attend this concert in person, just one time! Here are two of the numbers from that concert, the most famous final two encores. I was unable to find a video of the first that includes the wonderful tradition in which the first notes are interrupted by applause, prompting the conductor to address the audience with a brief New Year’s message, but the music itself is the thing. Here is On the Beautiful Blue Danube, accompanied this year not by ballet dancers but with a photographic journey along the Danube from its source to its mouth at the Black Sea:
And here’s the final encore, by tradition the final piece played every year. Also traditional is the rhythmic clapping, directed to loudness or softness by the conductor. The Radetzky March:
Just wonderful music making.
As I noted recently, we got a Wii for Christmas. The Daughter has taken to it like a fish to water, while I’ve taken to it like…well, not so well. The game we play most often is Super Mario Brothers, on which The Daughter is progressing nicely, while I put poor Mario through debilitating death after death, grisly demise after demise, and sad fate after fate.
Lots of times I can see Mario’s shuffling from the mortal coil coming a mile away as I scramble to avoid various pitfalls and nemeses, but then there are the times in which the Smiting of Mario takes me completely by surprise. In those moments, I look like the photo above. Ouch. Poor Mario!
The official site of Kelly Sedinger: Reader, writer, photographer, and dreamer
