From the Bipartisan Appreciation Day Desk
Originally written 05/27/04

There's a great picture on Page 3 of the Sun-Times today (linked here for your enjoyment) of Al Gore railing against Condoleeza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld and George Tenet, calling for their resignations. The picture is great because it looks like, just as soon as he's finished that tirade, a squirrel scampers up his trousers and the speech suddenly turns into an homage to that "4 out of 5 dentists agree" Trident commercial.

It's a face so full of comically-overdone rage that it only looks at home when done by Vince McMahon at the point when a wrestler storms into the ring, hits someone with a chair and demands his shot at whatever title is up for grabs at the next Pay-Per-View, just before Vince gets choke-slammed, DDT'd, Rock Bottom'ed or whatever the wrestler's signature move is.

I'm fantastically happy that Michael Moore won the Palme d'Or at Cannes last weekend. Foremost, I'm happy because I'm a fan of his work and the man himself. Peripherally, I'm happy as an American film-buff who applauds any director bringing home the big-prize at Cannes, so long as it's not the ever-unintelligible David Lynch. Granted, the only two I can think of are Quentin Tarantino and the Coen Brothers (who we're going to count as one to prevent having to retype the statement), but that's beside the point. Upon finding out Michael Moore won, I IM'ed my friend Dave, and then ended up in a debate over the merits of Moore's films and whether or not they can genuinely be classifed as 'documentaries'.

To be a purist, one would only label more objective (and less entertaining to most) films like Winged Migration and When We Were Kings would qualify. They're objective films that are removed by species or chronology from their subjects and therefore don't serve to make any overt statement, preferring to simply convey information to the viewer, using film as a medium. However, it is folly (now I sound like I've got a PhD, right?) to try to make a contemporary film about contemporary politics and remain objective about the matter. It is tantamount to scaling a vertical wall of teflon without the benefit of suction-cups. Ultimately and invariably, objectivity gives way to commentary, and at that point calls into question a film's ability to be termed strictly as a documentary.

For me, its ability to be termed as a documentary ends with Michael Moore's onscreen role in the work, given that it's actually a role. He inserts himself into his work to the point where he becomes a character in the narrative; and while he is supposed to represent the Everyman, we all know that he's Michael Moore, that drives a parallel to Norman Mailer, who's been doing that shit for decades and has made such a career of doing so that no one actually takes him seriously.

Believe it or not, I actually talk like that in IM's.

Also in documentary news, Super Size Me has made somewhere around $2.3 million -which is a big hit for a documentary- and swung the #10 spot in last weekend's film grosses, all without the support of MTV/Viacom, which refuses to run ads for the film, likely out of fear of drawing the ire (and losing the associated ad-revenue) of McDonald's, the 800-pound gorilla of the fast-food market.

Strangely enough, McDonald's was only the 600-pound gorilla of fast-food until it spent a month on the Super Size Me diet. *zing!*


AIM: therbmcc71

Double-Post Saturday!

I wrote a post a couple of days ago, and so I'm going to post that one second, which will really mess with the bizarre top-to-bottom reverse-chronology blogs are known for. Besides, I'm still looking for a picture that really needs to get linked. You'll know it when you see it. Found it! The day may proceed. Furthermore, this is my first time fiddling with the new, official Blogger comments system, so if I don't like them, it's quickly back to Haloscan.

*update: I hate Blogger's comment system, Haloscan is back!*

The Saturday Paper = Family Circus

I once read somewhere -I think it was in a Tom Clancy book or something- that they don't schedule newsworthy political events on Fridays because nobody reads the Saturday papers. I usually don't read the Saturday paper, and given today's pile of editorial-page drek and Memorial Day Sale advertisements, I can see why. Even the sports reporters send in the second-stringers to cover the games, leaving this ugly stepchild of an otherwise good paper for one day a week. About the only highlight of today's paper was chuckling at how far off the 52-week highs Atari (not the same one as when we were kids) and Eidos have fallen.

Eidos actually warrants a brief note, because it makes me want to go referencing Edgar Allan Poe works, proclaiming the "Fall of the House of Lara Croft", given that Ion Storm Austin -Eidos' last bastion of quality developers- has all but been dissolved, and the rumors that Warren Spector has pulled a "Masque of the Red Death" and has run for the hills are probably true. After the massive backlash against the dumbing-down of Deus Ex 2: Invisible War (or, as the French port is called, Deus Ex Deux: Le Grande Merde), which would've actually been better if it had a killer-orangutan as the arch-villain, it's not surprising that this week Eidos pulled a page out of the Ritual handbook and canned the majority of its staff as a wonderful thank-you for the critical praise being lavished upon Thief III, just as Ritual had done after shipping the gold-master for Star Trek: Elite Force II.

*the following transition really does a feeble job of disguising the total non-sequitur*

Which brings me back to a bizarre futurist kind of idea I had a while back for designing a front-end for online stores that (get this shit) looks like a fucking store. Now, when trying to explain this bastard cross between Quake and Amazon.com, my friend decried the entire theory because he apparently loathes browsing and prefers search-functions, while I love walking into Best Buy with a wad of cash and wondering what I'll be walking out with. So I had this whole thing figured out, down to streaming in the graphics of, say, a CD case and manipulating it and everything. And he just said nobody who shops online wants to browse and look through things.

And maybe he's right, so why not take the front-end one step further and make shopping fun with the graphics engine by pulling out the BFG and fragging anyone you see taking a Yanni CD to the virtual cashier. "No one-click shopping here, motherfuckers! Pwnzored!"

Anyway, I was thinking about this following trying to access a site Slashdot had on its front-page regarding where the futurists 50 and 75 years ago thought we'd be at this dawn of the 21st century. My mother likes to tell me how her father said to her that by the time she was his age (which actually would've been around ten years ago) we'd all be flying to work in nuclear-powered helicopters. Hell, when I'm that age, in about twenty or so years, I wouldn't rule out the helicopters bit, but we'll surely still be guzzling Saudi oil.

So I think I'll watch Minority Report, read Snow Crash and spend a moment praying for a really good Special-Edition DVD-release of Blade Runner while I wait for that site's hard-drive to stop smoking so I can access it.

Anyway, I'm beginning to think that Ridley Scott's going to do Special Editions for 1492: Conquest of Paradise and White Squall before he gets around to doing one for Blade Runner, leaving me to re-read Future Noir, which is a rather worshipful look at the making of Blade Runner and its various versions, but it's still a good read, sort of like Masters of Doom was, but it'd be a lot better if I had a definitive DVD to watch it with.

Film-Composer Equation Time:
Hans Zimmer = (Vangelis + Philip Glass) - talent

I really was intending on seeing The Day After Tomorrow yesterday at the 11AM showing, but then decided to laugh at my friend's cousin, who defeated my computer prank in about twenty minutes. I then found that he got back at me by cutting down all of my trees in Animal Crossing, which I was planning on doing fairly soon enough, anyway. So, I'll have to catch it on Tuesday, which is the day after the day after tomorrow.

Computer prank of the day: If your intended-victim has a ball-mouse (not one of those optical-dealies), get a piece of clear tape and stick it over the hole the mouse-ball goes through. It's a ten-second prank, and that's about the lifespan of it, because it may be clear but it's not that clear, but the mook knows he's been hit, and is likely to yell, "What the Fuck!" at least upon finding his mouse is unresponsive or when he finds the tape on the bottom of it. And it's that scream that makes the whole prank worthwhile.


AIM: therbmcc71

Windows Error Code -- ID:10-T

So I just got back from my friend's house, and I'm now over forty hours into Xenosaga, with still no end in sight. Hence, I'm postponing that post, as I postpone all of my future-posts, as I recount what I've just done in the past hour.

There is a prank that absolutely must be played on all young persons who own computers but have no concept of how to properly maintain or use them. My friend's cousin Matt is one of those types of people, and thus is deserving of this truly dastardly electronic shenanigan. Furthermore, since he is lacking a broadband internet connection at his girlfriend's house, where he is currently residing, he's decided to play Dark Age of Camelot, to which he is insufferably addicted, at my friend's house, leaving the computer in the room next to where I've been playing Xenosaga. And everyone on earth should know never to leave their computer unattended anywhere near me. But I can't resist an easy mark.

I thought everyone would know that, after that high school prank of dropping the Shut Down icon into the Startup folder in Mac OS 8. A rather harmless prank that's easily remedied. Which is what the following is:

When Matt shows up tomorrow to play his Dark Age, he'll boot up his computer to find that nothing has particularly changed, but the mouse-pointer has been changed to the hourglass symbol, so as to make him believe that his computer is still booting well after it's already finished getting itself into Windows. This should slow him down for a minute or two before he just decides to start double-clicking on the desktop.

Mind you, there are no icons on the desktop. Oh, it looks like there are icons on the desktop, but that's because I took a screenshot of the desktop, using the PrintScreen button on the upper-right corner of the keyboard, opened up Microsoft Paint, hit Ctrl-V to paste the screenshot, saved the screenshot, and then turned that screenshot into his new desktop wallpaper. The next task is to take the desktop icons and move them somewhere else, preferably into a sub-folder within the My Documents folder, for when you inevitably have to fix the chump's computer.

So you now have a desktop that, by all rights, looks exactly like it did before, but click away at all of those icons, and you get absolutely no response.

What next? Take the taskbar and drag it down, so it no longer shows on the screen, and is therefore unclickable. Mind you, it still looks like there's a taskbar there, which is the result of the screenshot and wallpaper job.

This is a classic prank, and I really wish I could be there to see it, preferably with a video camera, but that would be too obvious. Sadly, I'll have to report on the ensuing mayhem second-hand. But it should be entertaining, because I don't think the boy has any idea to use the Windows key to bring up the Start menu, taskbar or not.

And, when it comes down to explaining the computer's problem with the desktop, my friend is going to say, "Uh-oh, it looks like you've got the ID-10-T virus," which will make Matt flip out some more. And, of course, we all know that ID10T looks like... well, just look. It's a sub-set of the EBUAK errors we used to get in tech-support; EBUAK, of course, standing for Error Between User And Keyboard.


AIM: therbmcc71

I Hate the Unplugged Version of ‘Layla’

So right now I’m listening to “The Cream of Clapton,” as I try to figure out what to do with my night; the choice in which matter will no doubt be going out to Denny’s to do a few logic puzzles, smoke a few cigarettes, drink some coffee and get absolutely no writing done. The place is simply not conducive to writing anymore. Thankfully, for the purposes of this website, I’ve got a couple of things socked away that I simply didn’t get around to posting as promptly as I would’ve hoped.

May 12, or maybe 13, or 11, somewhere around there, 2004

There’s a great story in today’s Sun-Times, totaling the twenty most painful memories of Chicago sports, in no particular order, from the Bartman Incident of Game 6 of last year’s NLCS to the 1919 Black Sox scandal. Some of these events I remember, such as seeing a handmade sign hanging off of a building near the Chicago Theatre in 1992 that said, “Mike McCaskey has no Ditka!” and then there were some that I’d never heard of, like the apparently infamous Steve Dahl Disco Explosion of 1979, whose ensuing riot caused the White Sox to forfeit the second game of a double-header.

And, while reading all of this, I found myself wondering just how much of this can be or has been elevated to that mythic level of status required for attaining massive pop-culture appeal. It’s highly unlikely that the Bartman Incident will ever make its way far outside of the borders of Cubdom, but sports events and personalities have certainly left indelible marks on American pop-culture, whether intentional or not. Mike Ditka was the basis for Saturday Night Live’s “Superfans” sketches, and the retelling of Carlton Fisk’s home run in Good Will Hunting, and the fact that Robin Williams’ character wasn’t at the game to see it, remains for me the high-point of the film. The Chicago Black Sox were the baseball players in Field of Dreams, and let’s not forget the movie Brian’s Song (only the James Caan and Billie Dee Williams version, the TV-movie blew ass). And, of course, all things Michael Jordan.

No doubt there’s a movie in the works that parodies that either parallels or parodies the Bartman Incident, and who knows when the Simpsons’ baseball team will come to Comiskey Park to have their first-base coach mauled by a drunken lunatic, as is becoming an annual event for the Kansas City Royals.

I don’t really see a problem with sports crossing into the realm of pop-culture. That’s just something that inevitably happens when something either horrifically bad or miraculously good occurs. It becomes a story that’s told from father to son, or maybe father to daughter, although probably not mother to son, because my mother never told me any sports stories except for the “whoosh” of the turbine-driven cars at Indy over forty years ago. But pop-culture isn’t supposed to cross over into sports (fuck the Mighty Ducks), which is why I’m glad that the Spider-Man 2 “let’s put Spidey on the bases!” ad-campaign crashed and burned after baseball fans rebelled. Major League Baseball claimed that they were going with the deal as a way of attracting kids to baseball. Let me tell you something: Kids don’t go to the ballpark to see Spider-Man. If they do, there’s something truly and seriously fucking wrong with your sport.

I mean, Spider-Man on the bases! What the fuck were they thinking? Of course, I haven’t been to a baseball game in over ten years, but that doesn’t make me any less of a purist. I’m disgusted by the digital superimposition of ads over the brick wall behind home-plate at Wrigley. More than that is my contempt for steroids in baseball, and even greater loathing for the Players’ Union for ignoring the issue. I’m telling you, things are going to change when I have my way and Bob Costas –the smartest man in sports- is named Commissioner of Major League Baseball.

*next time, Xenosaga and videogames that qualify as art*


AIM: therbmcc71

Pisses Me Off To No End

Haven't yet been able to find a copy of Invader Zim after two days of searching. Nor did I find the second box of Robotech. Sadly, I must put both of them off until after I've gotten a job, because I took advantage of the 3 for $25 DVD-sale at Hollywood, which is mathematically even better than the 2 for $20 that I thought was the end-all/be-all of DVD sales.

So, I bought Lost in Translation, Matchstick Men and Underworld, which I'll no doubt be reviewing for this site fairly soon, since I just watched it for the first time and thought, "Golly... I haven't thought that poorly of a film since Dungeons & Dragons." That is, of course, after I got past my initial stage of, "This movie is very blue," which lasted about fifteen minutes. Even Kate Beckinsdale wearing tight leather couldn't save the movie. So, I'll talk about that one later, because the bad ones are always so much more fun.

And then I'll have to reprint the "lichens" conversation for that, too.

AIM: therbmcc71

Post Update!

From the Amazon review of Volume 2 of the Robotech Remastered set:
The remastering for this edition was apparently limited to the soundtrack. The laser blasts, gun fire, and explosions have added presence, and viewers can follow the sounds of screeching air ships and stomping mechaacross the screen. Unfortunately, Minmei's singing is also louder and clearer.

Aha! Mine wasn't the only house! Also, the third volume of this set won't be out until next week, which pits it against Buffy Season 6. Given that I haven't even bought Angel Season 3 yet, let alone Firefly, I think that Buffy can wait. Besides, if someone says the words, "Once more with feeling," I think of Kentucky Fried Movie before Buffy. "Twy it again, but this time with feeee-wing...."

Time go out and get Invader Zim! Doom doom doom doom doom doom!!!! Which is good, because I'm having massive problems with getting Blogger to do anything. Stupid, stupid makeover. Ooh, ahh... It looks pretty.... but it's fucking BROKEN! Bastards.