Heideeflower Power

Spent Tuesday afternoon honored to watch my good friend Heideeflower Stoller graduate as valedictorian of my own alma mater, Columbia University's School of General Studies. (Sorry to say GS's site is lame, so I can't find any place to link on Heidee's name as valedictorian.)

GS, as the School of General Studies is affectionately know, is a remarkable college. It is part of the same university system that includes Columbia College and Barnard, and students from all the colleges mix among each other's classes. What distinguishes GS, however, is that it focuses on giving second chances to adults students returning from lapsed college careers. Per the site stinking, I can't link to the school's history, but an assistant dean at Heidee's party told me that GS was set up after World War II to accommodate soldiers who wanted to continue their educations on the GI bill but who didn't feel they quite fit in with the general student body at most schools. They were older and richer in life experience, which still typifies most GS students today.

When I went to GS in '87-90, I think the average age of students was around 30 or 35 -- dunno what the stat is today. Starting at age 22, after dropping out of college from the University of Montana for two years myself, I was younger than most of my GS peers. For me, the school was a life saver. Really. I guess I'm what you might call a late bloomer. I was a chronic screw-up in high school (constantly critiqued by teachers as "so bright, but he doesn't apply himself"). I took the same attitude on with me to Montana, having a great time with my friends (including several life-long friendships), but not taking my classes seriously. In fact, when I left, I deliberately sabotaged my record, blowing off several final exams and incomplete classes. That stroke of brilliance left me with a 1.94 GPA.

As my story played out, I ended up working for a year and a half on a small newspaper in the British Virgin Islands, where I got my act together enough to realize I wanted to complete my degree. I applied to three colleges: The University of Washington, in Seattle, University of Missouri (in Columbia, MO), and Columbia's GS. The two state schools rejected me. Only GS decided to take a chance on me. I can never be more grateful to any institution, because I took that second chance seriously. I ended up on the dean's list (incredibly, although they transferred many credits from Montana, they gave me a clean GPA to start anew) and I left with a first-rate education and an Ivy League diploma for my resume.

I always have had a guilty feeling that they somehow made a mistake letting me in, but listening to the speeches from the dean, graduating seniors and alumna made me realize that my story is typical, or even tame. The college really does take life experience into account and goes out of it's way to giving second chances to people it thinks will value it.

No one could embody the payoff of that mission better than my Heidee. I met Heidee when she first moved to NYC, and we became great bike buddies (she supported herself her first year in the city as a bike messenger) and running partners. I know all her secrets. The dean, in introducing her for her speech, mentioned that she had been a high school drop out, but they don't know the half of it. First of all, her real name is Heideeflower, not Heidee Flower, as was printed in the program. Her parents were first-class hippies (wonderful people, both of whom I met this week), and for years the family lived out of a van, touring around the Northwest and Alaska. By her teens, she and her mom had settled in Seattle, and at age 15 Heidee decided to drop out of the flaky hippie school she had attended. The dean neglected to mention that she spent the next several years just hanging out as an urchin, punk, raver, etc.

To cut to the chase, in her mid/late 20s, she decided to move on, ended up in Tucson, AZ, worked at some environmental and women's movement non-profits, got her GED and started school at the University of Arizona before transferring to GS. Once at GS, she seemed to have found her life's mission, to dedicate herself to NGO policy work. Finally given the intellectual challenge she apparently craved, she aced virtually every class, ending up with an astonishing 4.16 GPA -- i.e., she averaged A+s. And we're talking Columbia. Needless to say, she was accepted all over the place for post-graduate work, including MIT for an PhD in Economics, but she decided on Yale Law School.

Best of luck, girl! And as for the rest of the world, get ready for Heideeflower Power!

Shout out to Dope J. Interesting stuff, but I've lost the trail after May 10. Another hint? FYI, this one's my favorite:

$11,000 Spelling Mistake

Been away from the blog for a few days in part due to a fun-filled visit from an old college buddy who was my best man at my wedding. Mike, a furniture maker and master woodworker, is pretty much computer illiterate (ironic, since both his brother and father made small fortunes in the computer industries). Nonetheless, he just pulled off such a brilliant move on eBay I have to share it with you. Mike and his brother recently bought a huge farm in Maryland, some 400 acres. So naturally, he was in the market for a tractor. As with computers, Mike similiarly knows little about tractors, but in his quest to buy one, he had determined that John Deere was the best brand and that the model they were looking at was going to run about $40,000, even for a 10-year-old used one, down from about $65,000 new. So he and his brother were surfing eBay and getting discouraged at the prices when Mike suggested, "We're looking for someone selling a tractor who knows even less about tractors than we do. Let's try searching with the spelling 'John Deer.'" Sure enough, some poor schlub has exactly the model they're looking for listed under that spelling, with zero bids. They dropped him a note and suggested he call them. The guy was behind on his mortgage and desperate to raise money and was at a complete loss to understand why no one on eBay had even made a bid so far. Best of all, he lived only a couple hours away. $29,000 later, Mike owns a tractor but still no computer.

The UK Guardian ran a piece recently speculating about whether the the anthrax investigation has gone cold because the FBI knows too much. Similar to my own wonderings the other day. Props to Mark Haas for the link (who should really be blogging!).

Ah, the age we live in

I just came across MrSkin.com, run by a guy whose long obession it has been to record just the naughty sections of PG and R-rated films. Now he sells the clips online and by the looks of it is making good money doing so. It's actually quite a well designed site w/ a vast archive. His slogan is "fast forward to the good parts." I like that he notes on the homepage, "Boy, are my parents proud."

Too freakin' funny (tho of questionable taste for viewing at the office).

More fun with Rick at the movies

Been getting to the moving pictures quite a bit these days. Last night was "About a Boy." I had read this terrric novel by Nick Hornby before I even saw the earlier movie made of his novel "High Fidelity." Interestingly, the two movies didn't share any prominent crew members -- different directors, screenwriters, cinematographers and editors -- but to my eye, the two films had a common feel in terms of the approach to the editing, cinematography, narration and soundtrack. Perhaps Hornby thoroughly injects his stories with these filmmaker's choices, or maybe this film was a bit derivative stylistically of "High Fidelity," or possibly I'm just imagining it. Whatever, it's not a problem. It works. I liked "High Fidelity" a lot, and I liked "About a Boy," too. I'm not generally a big Hugh Grant fan, but I thought he was excellent in the role of Will Freeman, the deliberately shallow 38-year-old bachelor sucked into an extended family of strangers through gawky 12-year-old Marcus, who is desperately in need of a father figure to teach him how to be cool.

I hope the film does reasonably well. My concern is that it's a hard movie to categorize in terms of its target audience. Despite the parallel coming-of-age plots, it's certainly not a teen film (although rated PG 13): no violence, slapstick or nudity. It's really about a 38-year-old man learning to grow up. It's off-center by Hollywood standards, but it's definitely no independent art film. It's also distinctly not an American film, set effectively in London, so that American audiences will need to keep their ears tuned more sharply than normal in order to negotiate the Brit accents and colloquialisms. It's also borderline for a date film, as, like "High Fidelity," it's ultimately a morality tale about committed relationships. And while it's consistently very funny, it's poignant to the point of schmaltzy, suffused with themes such as depression and suicide, public humiliation, the pain of honesty, emotional bonding and the purpose of life. The best I could come up would be it is an "adult feel-good film," which doesn't sound like that hot of a ticket. Reminds me a bit of the excellent "Secrets & Lies," tho more Hollywood. Word of mouth and Grant's star power are its best hope. Good sign was the theater was nearly sold out on opening night at a 10:15 pm showing.

Also saw "Cat's Meow" the other night, the new film from Peter Bogdanovich (of "The Last Picture Show," "What's Up Doc" and "Paper Moon" fame). This new film takes for its plot a speculation on how a real Hollywood mystery played out when William Randolph Hearst was host aboard his luxury yacht to a celebrity weekend cruise that included his mistress actress Marion Davies (played by the charming Kirsten Dunst), Charlie Chaplin and once legendary gossip columnist Louella Parsons, among others. During the voyage, film producer Thomas Ince died under mysterious circumstances that were never investigated or discussed by the witness in the years to follow.

The movie had its appeal, including a really enjoyable performance by Edward Herrmann as Hearst, as well as its period charm, a great set, lots of colorful characters and a sufficiently complicated plot. Ultimately, however, it fell a bit flat for me. It was rather slow in parts and conspicuously a dramatic staging -- I never lost to illusion the recognition that I was watching actors playing characters in a film. I see that Yahoo! Movies categorizes it as a "thriller." That's one thing I would not call it. Doubtful it will do much to revive Bogdanovich's long career slide.

Finally, as long as I'm at it, last weekend I rewatched Preston Sturges's "Miracle of Morgan's Creek" at the Film Forum's ongoing Great America Comedy Series. It still had its share of laugh-out-loud moments, but it was slower and a bit more obvious in many of its gags and slapstick than I had remembered (I recall fits of hyperventilation when I saw it first in my early 20s). By and large, the absurdity and ribald nature of story itself delivers most of the laughs -- Trudy Kockenlocker (played wonderfully by Betty Hutton), forces her nerdy admirer Norval to cover for her while she spends all night at a bon voyage dance for departing WWII soldiers, whereupon she gets so drunk that she marries a soldier but forgets both his name and the fake name she used during the ceremony (for no logical reason), but not before consummating the matrimony. The screwball antics just mount from there. Eddie Bracken's pie-eyed double-takes and frequent stuttering get a bit tiresome, but performances were fun all around, including the quintessential brassy younger sister by Diana Lynn, and William Demarest (of "My Three Sons" fame) delivering some outstanding pratfalls as exasperated father Constable Kockenlocker.

Why, you might wonder, do I bother posting these film reviews to my site? Do I think I'm some kind of film expert? Well, if I ever held such illusions, that bubble was popped fairly decisively last night by my friend who openly mocked me as a film ignoramus for not knowing what Dogma 95 was. (For those as dimwitted as me, it's more than a film genre, it's a film certification program with a strict set of 10 guidelines (the "Vow of Chastity"), co-designed by Danish director Lars von Trier and epitomized by his torturous film "Breaking the Waves." The whole idea is so pretentious it makes me laugh. An attempt the reinvigorate creativity in film-making, the movement seems pretty formulaic in its own Euro-trash way: inductees must shoot only in natural light (fine); all music must be part of the scene being filmed (whatever); the director cannot take a credit (oh, puh-lease -- how we must suffer for our art), but stupidest of all, the camera must be hand-held. How does this possibly make the film more natural? You can't help but to be aware of the jittering picture frame throughout the whole movie. It's nauseating. I felt sea sick all the way through "Breaking the Waves." The opposite of entertaining, despite a brilliant performance by Emily Watson, "Breaking the Waves" was just unpleasant to watch, which is why I avoided Bjork in von Trier's subsequent "Dancer in the Dark" and why I will probably also avoid Nicole Kidman in his upcoming "Dogville.") The only silver lining in my humiliating education is that I'm apparently so behind the times that the genre or whatever it is has already become passe. I'm glad I missed it.

So, having clearly established that I'm such an amateur film fan I don't even deserve to be called a "buff," why the hell do I bother subjecting my invisible friends to read my film proscriptions? Well, obviously part of the answer is that I just love the sound of my own voice (even if it's in my head I as blog in silence). Why the hell else would I keep a blog, if I didn't? Writing this made me remember that as a kid, I didn't have so much an imaginary friend as I did an imaginary audience (a bit like De Niro in "The King of Comedy"). No wonder I became a writer, public speaker and failed actor.

Here's the real secret. It occurred to me that if I am a "reviewer" (albeit a blogviewer), I might be able to write movies, books and CDs off on my taxes. Haven't talked it over with the accountant yet, but I figured it might be worth a try. Lucky you.

Anewsment

• NASA uses eBay and Yahoo! to find spare parts.

• The Pentagon is using bomb-sniffing bees to protect us against terrorism.

Singing With Dictionaries and Corporate America

This is great -- Dictionaraoke, a site where they've set voice dictionary software to read the lyrics of pop hits along w/ the sountracks. Bob Marley "Jamming" is outstanding, and Devo's "It's a Beautiful World" is pretty good. I also enjoyed The Beatles' "Martha My Dear."

I think I prefer this site even to the ZDNet UK's Top 20 Corporate Anthems page, where disgruntled employees send in their companies' morale-boosting corporate anthems. My favorite: "KPMG, we're strong as can be, A team of power and energy, We go for the gold, Together we hold onto our vision of global strategy!"

FlavorPill

Just discoverd FlavorPill, a weekly email newsletter of hip cultural events in NYC. There is also a San Francisco edition, either currently or in the works.

Top 10 Signs Your Cat Is Trying to Kill You

Per my note the other day about the story of the Nova Scotia family that was terrorized by their Siamese cat, Letterman did his Top 10 List on the subject last night. Note to self: check litterbox for hidden weapons.

Thanks to reader Jeff Rutherford for pointing out that the photo I use below of Robert Johnson was the subject of a silly controversy in 1994 when the U.S. Post Office used the photo to issue a stamp of him, but they edited out the cigarette, to be PC. It was the first time they ever edited a photo for a stamp. Found a picture of ex-SNLer Norm Macdonald mocking the incident.

Celebrating Robert Johnson

I caught a couple of references in the past few days to the fact that May 8 was the birthday of Robert Johnson. If that name doesn't jump out at you, you're clearly not a student of the Blues. The "King of the Detla Blues" and one of the all-time guitar masters, Johnson was a hugely influential figure in shaping the sound of blues throughout this century. Considering the direct link between the blues and arguably the two most important musical trends of the 20th Century -- jazz and rock -- the ripple of Johnson's influence can still be heard in much of contemporary popular music.

His influence is that much more remarkable considering that he died at age 27 in 1938 after recording only 29 songs in two separate sessions. (I can't help thinking that his spirit attempted to come back in Jimi Hendrix, another guitar master who died at the same tragically young age.) Johnson's mystique is also preserved in part through a persistent legend that he sold his soul to the devil in order to play so well, and was struck down in his prime either by a voodoo curse or poison at the hand of a lover's husband.

The always great Prairie Home Companion featued the best tribute to Johnson that I heard, with the brilliant guitarist Pat Donohue (of the house band, The Guys All-Star Shoe Band) giving a short biography of Johnson and accompanying himself with some magnificent renditions of Johnson's classic songs. (They only just now updated the sound files to the Web, hence my delay in posting on this.)

• Click here to hear a clip of Pat Donohue playing Robert Johnson on PHC; scroll down to "44:04 Robert Johnson segment."
• Here are lots more links on Robert Johnson
• The complete box set of all his recordings on Amazon.

Happy birthday, Robert Johnson.

In case I haven't made my politics clear yet on this blog, I think so-called President Bush is a big fat jerk. Say what you will about the "war on terrorism," but while he's keeping everyone focused on that hand, with the other he's totally selling environmental concerns down river. This piece from the latest New Yorker does a nice job summing up the damage.

Siamese cats are so cool. My scanner's not working, or I'd upload here one of our many pics or our two charmers. It's stories like this one, however, that give them a bad rap. They're like the pitbull of cats, tragically misunderstood and maligned in the media.

Ryze up the Dead, Inanimate and Fictional

Can't help spending an hour a day on my favorite site these days, Ryze.org. As I blogged the other day, it's a kind of professional and social online networking community. They also have frequent local get-togethers of members, mostly in the Bay Area, where the service was founded last September, but they just did one last week in NYC, which I attended. Quite the happening bash. The party got a big write up in the new NY Sun, check it out.

Hard to explain what's so addictive about the site. Adrian Scott, the founder and friend of mine from my SF days, has just done a remarkable job of designing into the system hook after hook for ways members can introduce themselves to each other. A social butterfly's dream.

Anyway, I am amused to discover that the site is so popular it's actually risen celebrities from the dead to participate, as well as breathed life into fictional and other characters. Both Pablo Picasso and Vincent Van Gogh are recent Ryze members. Picasso presently works at IBM in Paris apparently as a staff artist, after stints at Morgan Stanley, Oracle and American Express, variously as a programmer, banker and travel agent. He comes off on his homepage as kind of a jerk, certainly playing the Euro sexist card to the hilt.

Van Gogh is a bit more sympathetic, a lonely painter and web designer, also in France, whose interests include "chrome yellow, Pantone colors, South of France, seeing my work in museums." One woman posting to his message board admits that she, too, tore her ear off as a child, chasing her brother around the house, tho it was sewn back on, albeit slightly askew.

The only male Ryze member that Picasso has deigned to add to his "friends" list is Jack Tripper, the lovable kluzt who shared his swinging pad with Janet Wood and Chrissy Snow in TV's "Three's Company." Despite not existing, Jack is quite popular on Ryze, especially with the ladies (shhh, don't tell the Ropers!).

My new best friend on Ryze, however, is Planet Earth. Looking beautiful in her picture, Earth is actually quite an eloquent correspondent, with thoughtful (if somewhat New Agey) reflections on her and humankind's long-term ability to live in harmony. She's on some trip that we're all connected cosmically somehow. Whatever. I'm smitten and hope to get to know her better. Who knows, if nothing else, maybe I'll get a bit of work out of her. All in a day's networking.

Little Ricky

My adorable nephew, Richard ("Little Ricky") Emilio Medrano. He's somewhere between five and two months, depending on how you count it (he was 10 weeks preemie). Doing fine. Just came home recently.

Superstar: Barbie

For those of you not obsessed with pointless news trivia (but then, if there were any of you, why would you be reading a blog?), Barbie has been in the news recently owing to the death of her creator and Mattel co-founder, Ruth Handler. Not that I think it's any cosmic coincidence, but today I came across this, a silly, slightly crude animation of Barbie, Ken and friends dirty dancing to disco. Reminds me of a great film I saw back around when it came out in the late '80s called "Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story." It's an ernest documentary about the tragic death of the pop star from anorexia, repleat with lots of The Carpenter's classic feel-good '70s tunes, but the hilarious irony undercutting the genuinely moving story is that it's all filmed using Barbie dolls for the characters. Truly alternative. Highly recommended if you can find it. Unfortunately, a user commenting on IMDB says the film is current banned, due to music copyright issues brough by Karen's brother, Richard Carpenter, who doesn't come off so great in the film. That would explain why the film is "unavailable" in Blockbuster.com's catalog, tho the site does have a decent write up of the film. I note there are some pirate copies of it on eBay. God bless the Internet.

All this got me to wondering whether there were many other films portraying Barbie in animation. The answer is yes, of course. It seems that playing with Barbies is as popular with struggling film makers as it is with little girls. Several. Among those I unearthed were:

• "Les Pantless Menace" (aka "Lando versus Naked Barbies") - This short film, viewable on iFilm.com is positively brilliant, a bizarre sureal romp on Barbie in outer space with JarJar and other Star Wars characters, with killer soundtrack. ~4 minutes.
• "Barbie and Ken Get Married" - Another very amusing short Barbie animation, done with real the panache of a real fillm maker.
• "The Barbiecist" - By Jim Hollander, who painstakingly recreates famous scenes from "The Exorcist" with Barbie. Disturbing.
• "Barbie's Misery" - Hollander's follow-up to "The Barbiecist," recreating scenes from Rob Reiner's film adaptation of Stephen King's "Misery." Extremely disturbing.
• "Lesbian Seperatist Barbie" - Gay puppetry on PlanetOut.com. Amusing.
• "Barbie Gets Sad Too" (originally "Barbie también puede estar triste"), an Argentinian film that was banned in Mexico for Barbie's lesbian scene with a house servant
• "Barbie Digs Joe" - winner of five awards at the Singapore Video Competition, but hard to track down any info on it.
• "Toy Story 2" - in which Barbie apparently has a role (haven't seen it myself).

Also of note:

• "Bad Barbie," products we wish we could buy
• "Ernest and Bertram," the movie that outs the obvious love relationship between Ernie & Bert, which Sesame Street doesn't think is so funny
• A business law case study on why Mattel doesn't think any of this is funny.

Osama Yo Mama!

In the course of researching my rant below on Weird Terrorism, I came across this remarkable piece in The Guardian about how Bin Laden slang is invading U.S. schools: "The putdown of choice these days is 'That's so September 10' - used on anyone obsessed with petty issues, or behind the times. Another common insult is 'Osama Yo' Mama.' Unstylishly dressed girls may be asked: 'Is that a burka?' Detention and other disciplinary measures are reported as 'total jihad.'"

Weird Terrorism

Weirdest item in this week's news had to be The Smiley Face Bomber, the mad Midwestern teenager Luke Helder, described as a "laid-back art student," who put pipe bombs in mailboxes around five states in an attempt to depict with his misdeeds a smiley face on U.S. map. While it seems almost like some extreme performance art stunt, it is really just the latest in a series of weird terrorism we've been observing ever since Sept. 11. Obviously, terrorism and the injury and murders committed by its actors is not a laughing matter. Nonetheless, leaving aside the obvious ratcheting up of atrocities to a fever pitch in Israel, Pakistan and elsewhere since Sept. 11, I can't help noticing the simply bizarre nature of some of the home-grown acts of terrorism we've seen here in the U.S. and in Europe lately, much of which has to have its origins in post-traumatic stress induced by the events of that fateful date.

I'm sure there are more events that should be on this list (and I welcome any reader to remind me of anything I've forgotten), but meanwhile, consider the following:

• First, of course, there was the anthrax scare, and all its subsequent hoaxes and other roll-on effects. More on that below.

• Everyone's favorite, the Shoe Bomber, who, granted, seems to have snapped before Sept. 11 and was apparently directly in league with Al Quida rather than just some lone looney, but he does round out this list nicely. It is evidence of the bad craziness of our times that a legacy of this whole chapter in history is that we all now have to be prepared to take off our shoes for inspection at the airport, as I had to do on my trip to San Francisco last month.

• Then there was the disgruntled New Jersey loser, Ronald Popadich, who, twice in the period of three days, drove his car on the sidewalks of downtown Manhattan intentionally striking as many pedestrians as he could, injuring 27. He hid out at his mom's house. Nice.

• I remember hearing various reports of air rage incidents in the first few months following Sept. 11. Recently NASA reported that attacks on cockpits are up six-fold in the past decade, and the Cleveland Freetimes recently reported on the rise in air rage since Sept. 11. The trend even has struck celebrities, including REM guitarist Peter Buck, who was recently cleared on charges of a drunken rage while aboard a British Airways flight from Seattle to London, which he didn't deny but blamed on a bad reaction to mixing alcohol and sleeping pills (duh).

• The New York Times ran a story the other day about how mass gun rampages are no longer just a U.S. phenomenon, having spread to Europe in such incidents as the recent assassination of right-wing politician Pim Fortuyn in The Netherlands, last month's killing of 16 by a German high school student, the psychiatric patient in France who killed eight city councilors in March, a 57-year-old man who killed 14 in a regional legislature in Switzerland in September, and two gunmen in Hungary this week who killed seven people in a bank robbery.

• And now the Smiley Face Bomber.

• What am I forgetting?

Anthrax Update

What's up with the anthrax situation? The news on that front continues to get weirder and more mysterious:

• Just this week, we learn that the Federal Reserve has tested positive for new traces of anthrax, although they are assumed to be due to trace contact with mail facilities contaminated in last autumn's rash of attacks, not a new attack.

• New Scientist magazine reported earlier this month that recent tests positively identify that "strains that appear identical to the attack strain most likely originated at the US Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick (USAMRIID), Maryland."

• Although I haven't seen this in the U.S. media, England's Guardian reported in March one of the Al Quida hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks, Ahmed Alhaznawi, who lived in Florida and was one of those identified as having inquired about crop dusters, had reported some months earlier to a Florida hospital for treatment of a skin problem now believed by the FBI to have been cutaneous anthrax, the most direct indication that the same terrorists may have had something to do with the subsequent larger anthrax scare.

• The New York Times recently ran an editorial summarizing how poorly the general FBI anthrax investigation has fared to date.

• There are many conspiracy theorists who believe nothing less than a massive cover-up is taking regarding the FBI investigation. Notably, Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, chair of the Federation of American Scientists Working Group on Biological Weapons, made headlines in February with her theory that the FBI is ignoring a key suspect in the scientific community, namely an allegedly disgruntled scientist at the US military laboratory at Fort Detrick (i.e., the same lab implicated by the tests reported on by the New Scientist magazine noted above). The Guardian, among others, reported on this allegation, and in a BBC report on the subject, Rosenberg claims that the CIA actually ran a program before Sept. 11 specifically designed to test the possibility of sending anthrax through the mail.

Speaking of all of all of this anthrax news, did I miss something, or was there never much of an outcry in the media over the fact that investigations have revealed that at least as recently as the late '90s the U.S. government has been conducting secret bio-warfare experiments of its own? Isn't this a flagrant violation of global treaties on germ warfare? Isn't this the exact same thing we're supposed to be ready to go to war with Iraq in order to eradicate? Isn't this incredibly hypocritical and something the press has almost entirely declined to get all exercised about? Why the hell is that?

Spider-man Spins Off Course

Gee, here's an original idea: I'll use my blog to review the new blockbuster film "Spider-man." In a word: disappointing. Frankly, I suppose that's about what I expected -- how could it possibly live up to the hype?

Tobey McGuire, despite early doubters among comicbook hardcores, was the best thing in the movie, with that goofy smirk and gawky charm, an ideal Peter Parker. Co-star Kirsten Dunst was the second best thing, with that adorable smile (tho I agree with Anthony Lane's review in The New Yorker that I would have rather seen her wet t-shirt scene somewhere other than immediately following her near gang rape (thwarted, obviously, by our hero). Willem Dafoe was also good as the Green Goblin, his face perfectly sculpted for the part.

The problems were in the script, which was cliched (e.g., the archetypal uncle and aunt, editor in chief, bully, etc.) and didn't live up to its potential for telling a legend in a creative new way, and the directing, which was predictable and slow duing the ample story-building parts of the film, and too frenetic and busy during the action sequences.

My biggest complaint was, in fact, the action stuff -- the reason we all want to see the film. Who doesn't want to get over-stimulated watching the most graceful of all superheros swooping through this real-life gotham I live in, diving from building to building, scaling the walls, flying by threads through the canyons of Manhattan. And yes, you get a lot of that. Plenty. But somehow, it didn't quite work for me. There were many engaging scenes -- among my favorites was when Peter took on a professional wrestler for a cash prize, and several of the scenes of him discovering his new superpowers and wearing a ridiculous first version of his classic costume. And some of the several encounters between Spidy and the Green Goblin kept you engaged, but in all cases more due to the acting talent of McGuire and DaFoe than do to the excitement of the visual effects.

To me, most of the effects looks like just that, special effects. The overhead shots of Peter leaping from rooftop to rooftop simply didn't look real. He moved so fast, you could barely take the effect in, and action edits followed each other with such rapidity it was hard to keep up. Worst of all, the camera behaved more like a fly than a spider, constantly swirling and flying around all angles of the characters, who themselves were swooping and diving. I had no perspective as to which way was up half the time. It was more dizzying than spellbinding and just looked like computer animation masturbation to me. Geeks gone wild with too little discipline from the director or cinematographer. It certainly didn't hold a candle to the magic of The Matrix (tho, like most action films since, it ripped off many ideas from The Matrix, including the obvious slow-mo dodging of fast-flying objects) or Crouching Tiger.

It's probably still worth seeing. There's enough fun in it to merit $10, I suppose. It will be only that much less impressive on the small screen. But it didn't live up to the possibilities I had hoped for.

Also, I don't know if I'm just dull-witted or what, but I was totally oblivious to the soundtrack of this film. I see checking out the soundtrack CD on Amazon that it has a bunch of hip songs popular with listeners, but I simply didn't didn't get any songs from the film stuck in my head. Am I nuts, or did they never actually play the freakin' classic Spider-man theme song? When? During the opening credits? If so, I somehow spaced through it. I was looking forward to hearing it the whole time. It's such a great piece of music. I have now heard via MP3 Aerosmith's awesome version of the theme, featured on the soundtrack album, but I still don't remember it from the film. If you've seen the movie and remember the Aerosmith version of the theme, please let me know I'm nuts, and I'll edit this paragraph out.

Personally, I'm holding out for next summer's guaranteed smash hit: Ang Lee's The Hulk. The trailer looks quite promising, and the director is a modern master.

Here are several decent MP3 versions of the Spider-man theme I found with Gnucleus; get them while they're hot (i.e., until I have to take them down for copyright violation):

• Original TV theme
• Kick-ass Aerosmith version of the theme, featured on the movie soundtrack.
• They Might Be Giants version, great, as always from these brilliant weirdos
• Ramones version, pretty straight ahead what you'd expect from them, but amusing
• Tenacious D version, rather obscene, not for the faint of heart
• The Cure song titled Spiderman and inspired by our hero, but not the actual theme, good anyway
• Weezer song, ditto The Cure comments
• I know there are also a few great jazz versions of the Spidy theme, but I couldn't find any.

Siamese Blog

My kitties are so cute! In the last few weeks they've discovered the joys of walking across or sleeping on my computer keyboard. Probably a bad idea, but I normally leave the computer on all night. Probably a worse idea, I often leave it on with the editing window for Blogger.com open. This is the second time I've awoken to find they had typed a message intended for the blog. The first I deleted, but they seem so determined, I figured I put this one through:

k,n im hbyuv[innpl.biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii,iubl,[p9h<i></i>

I don't know how they managed to insert the italics tags (tho they missed highlighting any text), as that requires use of the mouse in the Blogger tool, unless they know basic manual HTML coding. If any of you out there have cats able to interpret the hidden messages herein, I'd like to hear about it. I assume soon enough they're going to figure out how to post directly to the blog, so I put this out as advanced warning that if you see something like this one morning, I may or may not have lost my mind.

Saw the film "Y Tu Mama Tambien" last night by the promising director/screenwriter Alfonso Cuaron. Highly recommended. Charming, sexy, funny, original and, above all, believable. Beautifully acted by folks I've never heard of before: two Mexicans, Gael Garcia Bernal (who also stared in the popular recent Mexican film "Amores Perros," aka "Life's a Bitch"), as Julio, and Diego Luna, as Tenoch, two 17-year-old best friends, plus the luscious Spaniard Maribel Verdu playing Luisa, Tenoch's cousin's wife who, at 27, needs to reinvent her life in a hurry.

At one level, the plot is straight teenage boy fantasy -- going away on a wild roadtrip with a hot, horny older woman. But it hardly comes off like American Pie Mexican-style. Nuanced, beautifully filmed, exquisitely edited and with an engaging, disarming style of narrative voice-overs, the movie is artful and poses simple but worthwhile questions about friendship, youth and the pleasures of life. Go see it. Bring a date.

Just caught an interview on the radio w/ 22-year-old American violin virtuoso Hilary Hahn (whom I had never heard of before, not being much of a classical buff), and I was amused to hear that she keeps a blog (or what she calls a web journal) for fans, updated with photos and comments from where she is on tour. The site reveals her to be a little cutie, too.

Wait Wait Weird News

Listening to NPR today (as ~80% of all waking hours), I caught one of my many favorite shows, "Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me," the humorous news quiz. Was immediately struck to hear they had an old-standby guest comedian on the show, Paula Poundstone. When news struck last year of Paula's arrest for child endangerment and "lewd acts," I knew her only from was this show. I had lost track of her drama in the wake of Sept. 11, understandably, as it turns out, b/c she copped a plea on Sept. 12, admitting to driving drunk with her adopted kids, and one count of "injury" to a child. This interview with her from MSNBC.com tells the full story of her challenging rehabilitation. I applaud Wait Wait for giving her a second chance.

Other tidbits I picked up from tuning in to Wait Wait this week:

• Scientists have outfitted rats with brain-controlling devices to send remote electronical signals commanding the rats directional movements, for use in search and rescue situations (proven more effective than search robots).

• Former Devo frontman Mark Mothersbaugh in an interview with The NY Times, claims to have inserted subliminal messages into recordings he has made recently for TV ads, including, according to the article, "a subliminal voice saying 'sugar will rot your teeth' into a commercial for Gummi Savers...'avoid conspicuous consumption' to a campaign for BMW and 'biology is destiny' to a cosmetics commercial."

• A former hair stylist in San Francisco (where else?) has founded Hairogenics, a facility that will keep your barber clippings in cold storage until there is a cure for baldness; $50 up front plus $10 per year. According to The SF Chronicle, the place already has 200 customers since its April 29 launch.

• And finally, my favorite story, the Governor of Montana (shout out to my almost alma mater U of M), Judy Martz, is alleging she has developed carpal tunnel syndrome as a result of too much constituent handshaking, and she is considering suing the state for damages. Apparently she has twice in years past successfully collected damages from businesses for personal injury. While I haven't found online validation of this, my friend Paul Montgomery, in Montana, says he's heard the story there. Here is a commentary from Paul on alleged corruptions of the governor, on Paul's blog TheOutrider.com.

Here's a nice piece titled "My Blog, My Self" by Jennifer Balderama, the copy chief of CNET, on why she loves blogging. Separately, here's her blog. The CNET piece really captures the sprit of why blogging is so addictive and promises to be much more pervasive as a new medium of sorts.

There's a great cartoon in the current May 6 issue of The New Yorker (the one with the disturbingly erotic cover of two teenagers kissing). The cartoon, by Victoria Roberts, on page 116, shows a middle-aged couple with the wife standing over the husband, who is writing at a desk, saying to him: "Go do something, honey. Then you can write in your journal."

Had he been in front of a computer with Blogger.com on the screen, I could really relate. Particularly when I read Peter Maass's current blog posts from Karachi.

I can imagine another New Yorker cartoon featuring a haggard GenXer sitting on the sidewalk in front of a sign reading "Will Blog for Food."

Importance of Accuracy

I was amused to see a full-page ad for my bank, HSBC, on the inside cover of The Economist (print edition) an issue or two ago. It showed two pictures of people clinking beer glasses together, one labeled "USA: Good health" and the other "Hungary: Bad luck." The headline for the ad is "Never underestimate the importance of local knowledge," which is their slogan for a new series of similar ads.

Yeah, also never underestimate the imporance of being right.

The ad never makes clear why it is (or rather, was) bad luck to touch glasses in Hungary. I lived there for five years, so I'll tell you it's something to the effect that in 1849 a rebellion of Hungarian officers within the Hapsburg army was squelched by the Austrians, and the rebel officers were executed while the Austrians toasted to their demise with beer. As a result, Hungarians vowed not to touch glasses when toasting with beer. (You could still toast with beer, just not touch glasses, tho you could touch glasses with toasting with wine or liquor. It's complicated being Hungarian.)

But here's the rub. Round about 1998, an idea started circulating that those who originally called for this ban on clinking glasses said it should last for 150 years. Hence, in 1999, the interdiction would expire. And so it has, more or less. The Hungarian media picked up on the idea at the time, interviewed a bunch of historians and such. Today most young people delight in the irony that they are once again allowed to clink beer glasses, due to a Hungarian reverence for history that exceeds HSBC's ad agency's reverence for fact checking, apparently.

I had to dig around on the Web for a while to find validation of this change of events written in English, but I did so at last (scroll to the bottom of the page, or search "beer").