Brief Note: I won’t spoil it, but I’m watching The Amazing Race right now and I can’t believe what the Godwin Brothers just did. Wow. You don’t often see that on reality-TV competitions.
(It may get spoiled in Comments, so beware!)
Sunday Burst of Weirdness
From that great categorizer of All Things Tentacled, PZ Myers, I see a truly nifty toy: Frogmen versus Radioactive Octopus! Zap! Pow!
(I actually got to sample a bit of octopus the other night, at our local Chinese buffet that had an octopus dish out. The octopus was a fairly rubbery thing, and it had pretty much taken on the flavor of whatever Chinese seasonings were in the dish, but no, it wasn’t horrible. Plus, it freaked out some kid at the buffet line when I took one of the little buggers onto my plate. Served him right. He was at a Chinese buffet and filling his plate with pizza and french fries.)
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The family that wears overalls together stays together!
At the Lake
Originally uploaded by sarah smile = ).
I found this lovely photo the other day, quite by accident. There’s a clan that’s got the right idea!
Denim workwear aside, can any photography experts out there tell me what that “fading to black around the edges” effect is called? I might like to try it on my own photo editing software. I don’t use Photoshop, though; I use ArcSoft’s PhotoStudio 2000, which came for free either with the computer when I bought it five years ago or with some other piece of equipment along the way. Don’t know what I’ll use on the next computer, but I doubt I’ll spring for Photoshop anyway. How is Google’s photo software? I’m also buying a new camera sometime in the next couple of months.
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A-1, Vic-20, Heinz 57, Studio 60
I didn’t blog last week’s episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip because I just started to feel like Comic Book Guy* a little bit, endlessly snarking on Aaron Sorkin for executing a show that I am increasingly feeling to be an exercise in self-indulgence. But last night I was thumbing through my copy of the Seasons Three and Four book of The West Wing: Shooting Scripts, and I quite by accident uncovered yet another example of Sorkin apparently using Studio 60 as a dumping ground for stuff from his own personal life.
The major subplot thus far in Studio 60‘s run is the romance between genius comedy writer Matt (Matthew Perry) and genius comedy actress Harriet (Sarah Paulson). This romance has led to all manner of preachy nonsense in the show, since Matt’s a staunch liberal and Harriet’s a Red-State baptist. They’re a metaphor for the Red States and the Blue States coming together once a week, for ninety minutes, to laugh together. And the healing power of laughter and so on. (I’m not making this up. The script for last week’s episode spelled all this out, via a visiting reporter played by Christine Lahti.)
Now, I generally find the Matt-Harriet romance irritating, because (a) I can’t stand the whole “You guys stand for half this country hating the other half!” stuff, and (b) I don’t think that these two leads have one iota of chemistry between them. Maybe we’re just supposed to buy into it because Sorkin’s telling us to, or maybe he’s got something more sophisticated up his sleeve and they’re one of those couples that everybody knows shouldn’t be together but them. (I frankly doubt the latter, but we’ll see.) But anyway, one interaction between Matt and Harriet that got a lot of screentime was Harriet’s gift to Matt of a baseball bat signed by “Darren Wells” of the Dodgers. That bat’s been all over the show ever since, never leaving Matt’s desk despite some shenanigans revolving around Darren Wells having written his phone number on the bat. OK? OK.
So now last night I’m reading the TWW script book, and in an introductory passage at the beginning, Sorkin writes of a time when someone proposed doing a Halloween-themed episode of The West Wing:
And he’d [Kevin Falls, an executive producer] wanted to do a Halloween show ever since SportsNight. I wasn’t wild about the idea — paper cutouts of ghosts and goblins at Margaret’s desk? — but lacking any ideas of my own, I turned to Kevin and the staff and said what I usually say when I have nothing at all, “Okay, that’s it for a while,” and went back to my office to play with my Darren Dreifort baseball bat. [Emphasis added.]
Now, he doesn’t tell us who gave him the Darren Dreifort bat in real life, but it clearly made its way into Studio 60, where all he did was change the last name of the player! Darren Dreifort, of course, was a pitcher for the Dodgers (now apparently retired after lots of injuries), as is Darren Wells on the show. And you might wonder why a pitcher is giving out a bat, a point which Sorkin made in the script.
Now, obviously very few people are going to notice stuff like this, but even if we can’t put our finger on it so directly, this is a big way in which the air of falsity that I’m detecting all through Studio 60 creeps into the show. I have no problem with Sorkin using his life experiences in television to tell stories — it’s part of that whole “Write what you know” thing, and roman a clef tales have a long lineage. But every detail like this that crops up makes it feel more and more like Studio 60 is one giant wish-fulfillment fantasy for Aaron Sorkin. It’s like he’s trying to achieve through writing what he’s not allowed to achieve through mushrooms anymore, and I find that sad because the guy is a gifted writer. A Few Good Men is a really good movie (and its lead character also was a guy who did his best thinking whilst toting a baseball bat!), The American President is one of my favorite movies, and the first two seasons of The West Wing are obviously great, with the third and fourth being less good but still having frequent moments of greatness. I hope he finds that stroke again, if not with Studio 60, then maybe with something else.
(John likes Harriet and Matt just fine, for what it’s worth. Also, for those who think that Sorkin’s trend towards preachiness is a new development, check out the script to The American President, which contains some very preachy material that thankfully didn’t make it into the final cut of the movie.)
* Did you know that Comic Book Guy’s real name was revealed at some point? I didn’t! Click through that link above to find out. The things you learn!
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Thanks, Lurkers!
My first-ever “Delurking Week” is just about over, so I just want to thank all you fine non-commenting readers for continuing to stop by, and especially all you lurkers who took the time to comment before disappearing hippopotamus-like beneath the bubbles*. I’m allowing that post to recede into the misty archives of BlogMemory now, but you’re all still more than welcome to delurk if you so desire.
* Ten points to the first person who can identify the source of this metaphor!
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Lurkers, cast off your chains!
[I will be keeping this post at the top of the blog until Saturday morning. Newer material will appear beneath it. So delurk, Lurkers!]
I remember a while back that a bunch of blogs had something called “Delurking week”, in which lurkers were encourage to either leave comments or e-mail the bloggers so as to, well, delurk a bit. I missed the boat on that particular week, but here at Byzantium’s Shores, I make my own calendar!
So, without further ado, I pronounce this week Delurking Week at Byzantium’s Shores.
Come forth then, lurkers, and either leave a comment or send an e-mail. No names are required this time; if you just want to tell me that you’re from Kalamazoo, that’s fine, and if you actually have a comment that you’ve been withholding, feel free to e-mail it to me. I’m just curious to see who’s out there that I don’t already know about!
UPDATE 10-17-06: Pretty good response thus far. Nice to “meet” you all! And if you don’t want to delurk in Comments, feel free to do it in e-mail. I won’t publish messages if you do not wish them to run publicly.
UPDATE 10-19-06: Wow! Lots of good response. Anyone else want to delurk? Not asking for anyone to become a regular commenter, or even give a name, if you don’t want to.
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Loss Man
In the Buffalo sports world, a strange inversion has taken place: it’s the NHL Sabres who have the region going crazy (probably because they’re going to win that Cup thing everybody talks about!), while the NFL Bills are what we talk about when the Sabres aren’t playing for a few days. Strange days…but here’s a thread on BfloBlog about the Bills and their problems. Wow, we’re more down on the Bills than I thought!
Here’s a comment I left there, in response to something Geek said:
[Geek]Let me ask you this; If JP finishes the season with a 55% completion rate, 15TDs and 16INTs for 2400 yards, where do we go from there? Do we stick with him for another year and hope he improves or do we find a better option?[/Geek]
Interesting numbers, because they’re almost identical with those posted by Steve McNair in his first full year as an NFL starter (52% comp, 2665 yds, 14TD, 13INT), Rich Gannon’s (52% comp, 2278 yds, 16TD, 16INT), Matt Hasselbeck’s (54.8%, 2023 yds, 7TD, 8INT), and not too far off Carson Palmer’s (60.9%, 2897 yds, 18TD, 18INT). Those guys turned out fairly well. McNair and Gannon aren’t likely Hall of Famers, but both had long and productive careers.
Maybe Losman will be like them, or maybe he’ll flame out. We don’t know yet. His faults are undeniable, but they are also correctable, and while he still can be maddening to watch, it seems to be equally undeniable that he’s playing better now than he did a year ago. And it also seems undeniable to me that this team has far more grave and structural reasons for not being terribly good: the Bills are downright bad at the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball, to the point where if you had Steve Young in his prime going under center, I don’t think this team is better than 3-3 right now.
And the Marv Levy bashing is kind of disheartening, I must say. The guy is picking up the pieces left by years of bad coaching, poor talent scouting, and bad drafting. And it goes back farther than Tom Donahoe: John Butler’s last few years here weren’t anything to write home about, and that 2000 draft was an unmitigated disaster. Gregg Easterbrook pointed out in a recent column that you can’t whiff an entire draft without entering a prolonged period of decline as a franchise, and that’s exactly what the Bills did in 2000. Levy’s had one draft, one off-season signing period, and six games so far. How realistic is it to expect that the Donahoe/Butler aftertaste would have left our mouths already?
Summing up: Losman is showing signs of improvement to me, but it’s slow improvement and he needs to step it up. But JP Losman is nowhere near to being this team’s biggest problem.
SO sayeth I.
(I mention John Butler’s 2000 Bills draft above; the BfloBlog guys summed up that draft here. That draft was an utter disaster for the Bills. If that had been a good draft, at least two or three of those guys would still be starting here. Ugh.)
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Commence the Stoning
The name is Barry. John Barry.
Sean e-mailed me a link to this blog post, in which we are presented the opportunity to hear the theme songs of every James Bond movie. Well, almost, anyway: “We Have All the Time in the World” is not the “theme song” to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service; that would be the instrumental theme of the same name, written by John Barry. The Louis Armstrong song is a love theme that is heard over a romance montage depicting James Bond’s courtship of Tracy Vicenzo, about thirty minutes into the film.
Also, I realize it’s all a matter of opinion, but the poster claims that the best Bond theme is Madonna’s song for Die Another Day? I like Madonna plenty, but that song was, quite simply, teh suck. But I actually have a hard time picking an actual favorite; I love just about all of those songs, excepting the ones for the Pierce Brosnan films. The World is Not Enough was an OK song, and Tomorrow Never Dies actually had two decent songs, the better of which (k.d. lang’s) was relegated to the end credits so that the inferior one (Sheryl Crow’s) could be on the opening credits. The songs I love best tend to have lyrics that make no sense — what the hell does it mean to “strike like Thunderball”, anyway?
You can also hear the song for the forthcoming Casino Royale there. I haven’t listened to it all yet, but it’s got a pretty muscular opening, and it’s sung by a man, which is fairly uncommon for the Bond series.
Of course, the Bond theme songs quickly settled into a format that calls for big arrangements and big vocals, but it’s a style that has many times through the years come in for rich parody. My favorite Bond-song parody comes, of course, from The Simpsons: Max Power! “He’s the man with the name you’d love to touch….” (from SimpsonCrazy.com).