John Scalzi opines that both of Timothy Dalton’s Bond films were bad, and then quite a few of his commenters agree. This is, of course, colossal claptrap (both of those films are, to me, high points in the series, and both are superior to the unimaginably overrated Goldfinger), although I agree with John that Pierce Brosnan has been given a lot of bad credit for his time in the role.

Also, I’m frankly surprised that John didn’t try to take a self-portrait of himself-as-Blofeld, since he’s got the hair and a fluffy cat. (Not the right color fluffy cat, but who’s counting?)

Anyway, I’ll post about Casino Royale sometime this week.

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For the first time in…well, years, actually, the Family and I took a little overnight trip somewhere else. The somewhere else we chose was Toronto, for which we departed on Saturday morning. Our plan was to see the things we wanted to see, stay overnight somewhere, take the Daughter to Niagara Falls on Sunday (since she hasn’t been there since she was a baby, and thus has no memory of them), and then return home sometime Sunday afternoon.

Toronto was, of course, magnificent. If I had to pick a city other than Buffalo to call home, that would probably be the one. We went to the St. Lawrence Market first, for some shopping and lunch. That place is staggeringly cool and I wish I’d known to go there years ago: two levels of food and art vendors, street musicians, craftsmen, and just general amazement abounded. From there it was off to Casa Loma, another Toronto tourist landmark that is nevertheless a great place to visit; we passed a couple hours there before heading farther north to the Yorkdale Mall, where the Rainforest Cafe resides. We love the Rainforest Cafe. Not because the food’s any better than any other chain theme joint, because it isn’t, but because the decor is so inherently cool. Yeah, it’s overpriced claptrap. Sue me.

Then it was off to find a hotel, and we ended up at a place outside St. Catherines, Ontario, that had formerly been a Days Inn but was no longer a Days Inn despite still having the Days Inn logo on the ice buckets. (And no cable TV, either — what the hell kind of hotel doesn’t have cable?!) Sunday it was off to the Falls, for lots of oohing and aahing and picture-taking on our new camera (I’ll get ’em on Flickr sometime later this week), and then at about 12:30 we left the Falls for the Lewiston Bridge back to the US, and then home.

Well.

The Lewiston Bridge was backed up. Badly. We rolled to a stop about 1.5 KM short of the bridge itself, whereupon we spent the next three hours slowly inching forward, closer and closer to the bridge, then over the bridge, and finally to the Customs checkpoint into the US.

Three hours. About two miles total distance. I am not making this up: minutes after we first braked to a complete stop, I tuned in the radio to hear the kickoff of the Bills game. Ryan Lindell’s game-winning field goal, kicked as the last three seconds of the fourth quarter expired, split the uprights when we were still four cars shy of our customs inspection. This was a combination of the heaviest border traffic I’ve ever seen (holiday weekend, duh) and customs checks that seemed to be averaging about five minutes per vehicle.

When it was our turn, the agent demanded our identification, which we provided (our drivers’ licenses, and The Daughter’s birth certificate). First I had to explain why the address on my license doesn’t match the address on The Wife’s (The Wife has renewed her license since we’ve lived in our current home, where I haven’t, since my license doesn’t expire until 2009). Then I had to explain that no, the vehicle we were driving wasn’t registered in my name (it was my parents’ minivan). Then I had to explain why we had my parents’ minivan (we borrowed it while The Wife’s car is in the shop getting repaired after a fender-bender). Then I had to explain why we just didn’t take my car for our trip (overnight trip with family: 2003 minivan versus 1994 Plymouth Acclaim — a tough decision, that).

And we were just getting started:

AGENT: Where do you work?

ME: I work for ______. (naming The Store)

AGENT: And what kind of business is that?

ME: It’s a grocery store.

[Clearly an attempt to suss out falsity on my part; no way anybody lives and works in this area but doesn’t know the name of one of the two big grocery chains in this area.]

AGENT: When did you cross into Canada?

ME: Yesterday morning.

AGENT: Where did you cross?

ME: The Peace Bridge.

AGENT: Where did you go in Canada?

ME: We went to Toronto to do some sightseeing.

AGENT: And what was the purpose of your trip?

ME: [a tad confused since I’ve just indicated the answer to this] We went sightseeing, at the St. Lawrence Market and Casa Loma and the Falls.

AGENT: The Falls aren’t in Toronto.

ME: [Huh?!] Well, they were on the way home.

AGENT: How did you get this van from your parents?

ME: They drove it up for us.

AGENT: From where?

ME: They live in ______. [naming the Southern Tier town in which they live]

AGENT: And how did they get home?

ME: Well, they drove up in two cars and then returned in one.

AGENT: That sounds like a lot of driving. Are they retired?

ME: My mother is. My father teaches at ______. [naming his college]

AGENT: Hmmmm. Are you bringing any food back into the US?

ME: Just some candy we bought for our daughter.

AGENT: What kind?

ME: Licorice and Gummi Bears.

[Thank f***ing God she didn’t point out that both of those things are available stateside. Also thank God she didn’t ask me to specifically name the St. Catherines hotel at which we stayed, because I can’t remember it for the life of me. They only had one sign, and it faces Toronto-bound traffic, not St. Catherines-bound traffic like us.]

AGENT: Shut off your vehicle and give me the keys.

ME: OK.

[I comply. Agent goes to the back of the van, pops the back, and starts looking through our two small suitcases.]

AGENT: When did you enter Canada?

ME: Yesterday morning.

AGENT: Where?

ME: The Peace Bridge.

[Clearly an attempt to see if my story is changing. Either that or she’s got the worst memory of any person working for Customs.]

AGENT: Where are your daughter’s clothes?

ME: They’re right there in the same suitcase.

AGENT: There are only three sets of clothes here.

ME: That’s right.

AGENT: Whose jeans are these?

ME: [What the f***?!] Ummm, they’re either mine or my wife’s. [I couldn’t see the jeans in question.]

AGENT: Seems like you’re packing kind of light.

ME: We only stayed one night. [by some miracle I avoid saying something like, “How many f***ing clothes do you think we f***ing need for one f***ing night in a hotel, you over-officious jerk?!”]

AGENT: Do you have any other luggage?

ME: I have my bookbag here.

[Nevertheless the Agent doesn’t show any interest at all in my bookbag. Instead she rifles through our insulated drink carrier bag and randomly taps on the walls of the van on the inside, looking I guess for the secret compartments which I use to conceal myself when I am infiltrating Imperial battle stations. Then she closes up the van, returns to her little booth, gazes at the licenses some more. Then she hands me the IDs and the keys back. I look at her. She looks at me. I look at her. She looks at me. I am terrified of speaking one more syllable in her presence, but the silence finally becomes too awkward….]

ME: Are we OK?

AGENT: Have a nice day.

ME: Thank you.

[I can’t roll that window up fast enough, nor can I start the van or get the hell out of there fast enough. I’d been about to ask her if she knew of a nearby place where I could exchange the $45.00 in Canadian money I still have in my wallet, but decide against it. I’ll figure that out another day. I pulled away, thanking God for getting us through without being ordered to pull over to where they really inspect your vehicle.]

I know, I know — this is life in America after 9-11, we can’t be too careful, yada yada yada. But I’m getting awfully tired of being made to feel guilty for exercising those freedom things we tell ourselves we hold dear. If nothing else, surely the agents can do their jobs without sending a clear message “Yeah, you’d better think twice before leaving the country ever again, jerk-off. You can spend your money right here.”

Anyway, the experience with the Customs Agent made me completely forget why it might not be so good an idea to take the route home that passed closest to Ralph Wilson Stadium, where an NFL game had let out just ninety minutes before. Oops.

And in the “It could always be worse” department, it certainly can: while inching our way across the Lewiston Bridge, we had to change lanes to go around some poor slob whose car actually broke down at the exact middle of the Bridge. That had to suck.

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Yup, the hiatus is over. For now, I guess.

It used to be that when I’d take a hiatus from blogging, I’d find myself encountering all kinds of things along the duration of the break that would make me think, “Wow, I gotta blog that…except I’m on hiatus.” This time, though, my main thought upon encountering bloggable stuff was pretty much “Meh”, with just a few exceptions. I don’t know if that means anything. Probably that the hiatus wasn’t long enough.

Anyway, the blog is active again, for whatever that’s worth.

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OK, folks, that’s it for one week. I haven’t decided when I’ll return to blogging, but it will either be one week from today (Monday the 27th) or one week from tomorrow (Tuesday the 28th). Until then, be excellent to one another, keep on truckin’, may the Force be with you, remember the Alamo, don’t stop thinkin’ about tomorrow, Clear Ether, Happy Thanksgiving (for Americans), have a nice Thursday (for non-Americans).

UPDATE: Yeah, how can you miss me if I don’t leave? But feel free to leave questions and/or posting suggestions in comments here. Also, I posted two close-ups of my bookshelves on my Flickr stream (link in sidebar at left), so if you want to gaze at a portion of my reading tastes, there you go. OK, now I’m really leaving.

OH yeah, one more thing. Don’t forget to [ten-ton weight dropped on his head]

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Mary points out this site, which is taking votes on the “New Wonders of the World”. The whole “Seven Wonders” concept has been applied in a lot of ways, actually: here’s the Wikipedia page, which lists a number of such lists, starting with the traditional, and probably most famous, list of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

But all of these kinds of lists always revolve around built things, don’t they? How about made things? How about Seven Wonders of the Artistic World? I’m going to think this over a bit. Maybe after the hiatus I’ll have something to say about it.

(Lots of other good linkage at Mary’s post, by the way.)

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It looks like the US Mint is going to try something again that didn’t work the first two times, because they never did it right: dollar coins. The reason the Susan B. Anthony and Sacajawea dollars never took off wasn’t inherent in the coins, but in one simple fact: the Mint left the dollar bill in production. Get rid of the bill, replace it with a coin, and voila: acceptance of the dollar coin. Duh!

(And for those who are going to complain about the weight of their pockets, come on! Other than servers in restaurants, who walks around with large amounts of singles? I rarely have more than five or six on me at any given time, mostly because I gain them in the course of a few transactions for coffee and such — and I spend those fairly quickly. And if we go the Canadian route and have a two-dollar coin as well, that would ease the coin burden too. I just don’t understand the affection for the dollar bill, especially when a coin makes far more sense.)

Anyhow, apparently the new dollar coins will rotate through their images, using the Presidents at a clip of four Presidents per year, until we get to the living ones, because a President has to have been dead at least two years before he or she can be on a coin. So it’s unlikely we’ll see the Clinton or GWB dollars when we’d expect. And another quirk in the coinage law states that a President who serves more than one term, but non-consecutively, gets a coin for each term. So we’ll have two different Grover Cleveland dollars! Weird, eh?

Here’s a MeFi thread on this item, which contains, as do most MeFi threads, some info and some snark. This line made me laugh out loud:

Envision, for a moment, the religious fervor with which Republicans will greet the Reagan coin. I susect we’ll never actually see one in circulation. Unless, of course, they trickle down from somewhere . . .

Heh. Indeed.

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In this grab-bag post from the other day, I noted that I’m starting on George R.R. Martin’s A Feast for Crows, but that my memory of the events of the first three books was pretty hazy; I further requested any readers to send along any sites that may contain synopses of the first three books so I could get back up to speed. Well, a reader named Daniel came through, alerting me to this site, which is exactly what the doctor ordered. Thanks, Daniel!

(And you know, just reading the summaries makes me want to punch Joffrey in the mouth. What a shit he was!)

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Ahhh, what a wonderful week for high weirdness on the Interweb! Here are the two best things I found:

:: PZ Myers points out this heretofore unknown collaboration between Stan Lee and Jack Chick.

:: Warren Ellis links this montage of David Caruso moments from CSI: Miami. I love this show, mainly because it’s so unimaginably campy that it’s amazing fun. I have a hypothesis that David Caruso is his generation’s William Shatner, and that his CSI: Miami work parallels Shatner’s TJ Hooker phase.

And here’s a bonus David Caruso moment, one of my favorite things he’s ever done on CSI: Miami. In the course of crime scene investigating and whatnot, they find a car that’s wired to explode in four minutes. Horatio (the Caruso character) can’t defuse it, but he can certainly drive it to where it can safely explode — like, say, a vacant beach in Miami. Because Miami abounds with vacant beaches where cars can be exploded without fear of injuring the vacationers or the drugrunners whom the show seems to indicate constitute well over half of that city’s population. Watch this clip, even though the sound slips out of sync slightly about halfway through. This is awesome stuff, folks.

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UPDATED 11-29-06 with Answers! Highlight the yellow text after each question for the answers.

The Indestructible Mr. Jones reports on this James Bond quiz, on which I too scored a double-0 score. (Meaning, I would be a Double-0, not that I got 0 questions right.) I found the quiz slightly unsatisfying, though, so I figured, hey, why not come up with one of my own?

Answers to come…oh, when I feel like it. Ha!

1. Name the first Bond film in which M travels out into the field to brief Bond on his mission details.

You Only Live Twice. After faking his own death, Bond is brought onto a submarine in China where M briefs him. At least I think it’s China, since Bond was actually “killed” in China — but then Bond is fitted in Scuba gear and fired out a torpedo tube, so are we to believe that Bond swims all the way to Japan?

2. Which is the only Bond novel to be written in the first person?

The Spy Who Loved Me. (I should have specified the Ian Fleming novels, since other authors have written Bond books since then, and I have no idea about them. I never read Spy Who…, but I know that like many of the books that were “filmed” late in the series, the film bears almost no resemblance to the book.

3. We all know that James Bond is based in Europe, so: name the first films in which he is shown doing spy stuff in Asia, North America, South America, and Africa respectively. (There may be a little wiggle-room for the Asia answer, actually.)

Asia: You Only Live Twice (although I’m not certain if Bond does any work on the part of the Istanbul region in From Russia With Love that is across the water, on the Asian portion of Turkey).

North America: Goldfinger. (Unless one counts Jamaica as part of North America, from Dr. No, but I don’t.)

South America: Moonraker. (The location for the Goldfinger precredits sequence isn’t directly identified, as I recall; I take it to be one of the Central American banana republics, which are technically in North America.)

Africa: Diamonds are Forever. About fifteen seconds of that film’s precredits sequence takes place in Cairo. The first film that has Bond spending a significant amount of screen time in Africa would be The Spy Who Loved Me, which also takes place in and around Cairo.

4. What rank does the first M hold? (The M played by Bernard Lee. I have no idea if Robert Brown or Judi Dench, the subsequent M’s, hold the same rank.)

Admiral.

5. What rank does Q hold? (The Desmond Llewellyn one.)

Major.

Complete the following code phrases:

6. “Do you have a match?”

“I use a lighter.” (Which is followed by, “Better still”, to which one finally says, “Until they go wrong”.)

7. “The snow this year is better at Innsbruck.”

“But not at San Moritz.”

8. “In London, April is a spring month.” (Wiggle room here.)

“But in St. Petersburg we’re freezin’ our butts off.” (The scene makes clear that Bond’s ally here isn’t terribly concerned with giving proper responses to British agents, whom he thinks should just “drop it”.)

9. At whose hands did agents 002, 006, and 009 all die, respectively? (One of these has two possible answers that I know of!)

002 was killed by Francisco Scaramanga, the “Man with the Golden Gun”. I had thought that the next 002 was killed by an unnamed assassin on Gibraltar during the precredits sequence of The Living Daylights, but upon further review, 002 isn’t killed in that film: he’s shot with a paintball by an SAS officer, removing him from the simulated wargame.

006 is thought to have been killed during a mission to a Siberian munitions factory with Bond, but it’s later revealed that he survived and turned villain, whereupon Bond himself kills him.

009 is killed by one of the two knife-wielding twins in Octopussy.

10. True or false: James Bond is a fan of the Beatles.

False, at least as far as Goldfinger indicates, when Bond indicates that drinking Dom Perignon at the wrong temperature is like “listening to the Beatles without earmuffs”.

11. Excluding Dr. No and From Russia With Love (since those two tend to stand apart from the later established formulae), what is the first Bond film in which a woman Bond beds doesn’t later die?

Diamonds are Forever. In Goldfinger, Jill Masterson is killed after Bond beds her. In Thunderball, Bond does the dirty with Fiona, who later dies in his arms (good thing, too, because she’s a bad one!) In You Only Live Twice, Aki takes poison that is meant for Bond and dies. And, in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Tracy Bond dies. Yes, in Diamonds, Plenty O’Toole is killed, but Bond never sleeps with her. (He’s interrupted before he can.)

12. Who calls James Bond a “stiff-assed Brit”, a “back end of horse”, a “limey”, and “Boy”, respectively?

In order: Wade in GoldenEye, Kara in The Living Daylights, Felix Leiter in Dr. No, and that irritating sheriff in The Man With the Golden Gun.

13. Only three Bond film have not featured a song whose lyrics contain the title of the film. Name them.

Dr. No, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (although the film’s instrumental main theme carries that title), Octopussy (for obvious reasons). It turns out that Casino Royale also fits the bill, but I hadn’t seen the film at the time that I wrote this quiz.

14. For which film was a version of the James Bond Theme recorded by Eric Clapton, and then not used? (This has never been released, dammit! I’d love to hear it.)

Licence to Kill, with music by Michael Kamen, whose scores for the Lethal Weapon movies featured a lot of Clapton.

15. Which film’s title contains a word in its British spelling, as opposed to the American English spelling?

Licence to Kill (“Licence” versus “License”)

16. In The Living Daylights, Bond and Kara take in an opera. What opera is it?

The Marriage of Figaro.

17. What Bond girl appears in two different films?

In Dr. No and From Russia With Love, Bond has a “girlfriend” back home named Sylvia Trench. She’s never seen again.

18. What actress plays different Bond girls in two different films?

Maud Adams is the ill-fated Miss Anders in The Man with the Golden Gun, and then Octopussy in, well, Octopussy.

19. For Your Eyes Only and Octopussy both feature an assistant in Q-branch named Smithers. The actor playing Smithers actually played a much more famous role around that same time frame. What role was that?

Jeremy Bulloch played Boba Fett in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Bulloch also appeared in Revenge of the Sith as “Captain Colton” (no idea who that is) and has a blog!

20. The actor who plays Bond accomplice Vijay in Octopussy would later appear in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home as the Captain of what Starfleet vessel? (The fact that I know this may make me the biggest geek of all f***ing time.)

The Yorktown. Geez.

21. Plenty of women Bond sleeps with eventually die (see related question #11). But how many times does Bond himself kill a woman he’s already bedded?

Two, that I count: Fiona in Thunderball (yes, I count whirling her into the path of a bullet meant for himself as killing her, but he had to do it eventually anyway) and Elektra in The World is Not Enough (which might have been a great Bond film had Denise Richards not been involved with the project in any capacity).

OK, that’s it. I may have answers tomorrow, or I may wait until next week when I come back from hiatus.

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