Queer Guy with the Straight Eye

my rating:

NBC recently showed a couple of episodes of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (normally on Bravo), enabling me - a non-cable-enabled person - to get a look at the show. I realise the is-this-empowering-or-stereotyping debates are old news by now, but I'm going to weigh in now anyway.

Overall, I'd say it's just good, queen fun. Yes, it does play up and play into the classic stereotypes about gay men. The "Fab Five" are each specialists in cooking, fashion, interior design, etc. and the basic premise is that they're better at all of that than the straight men that they provide with total makeovers. And in the scenes where they talk amonst themselves, they can be downright catty making fun of their subjects' "shortcomings". But it never gets mean-spirited, either in terms of the queer guys' criticism of their clients, or from the perspective of the show presenting them as fussy queens. Instead there's a lot of (mostly) good-natured kidding around.

Despite being an art-school student, I'm also a dyed-in-the-wool geek, which puts me closer to the "straight guy" end of the scale of having good taste. If the Fab 5 came into my home to give me a lifestyle makeover, they'd have their work cut out for them. So I tended to identify more with the subjects of their efforts, while still considering myself "kin" with the queer guys. I was especially interested in the episode in which their subject was a 13-year toupé wearer, whom they encouraged to burn the rug and buzz the remaining hair down to stubble. I've spent the last decade or so watching the thick hair on the top of my head get sparse, first struggling to maintain its youthful appearance and in the last few years cutting it progressively shorter.

To be honest, I'm not especially interested in makeovers, either to watch them being done for someone else, or for myself. I have nothing against them, and I think it's fine that the Fab 5 are able to give these guys the motivation, direction, or excuse they seem to want. It's just not something I'd bother watching on a regular basis. But the crew are entertaining, and I had fun watching them relate to each other and to their project du jour, as openly queer men.

Timeline - Thoughtless Sci-Fi

my rating: Nathan's rating:

I should've saved the "Star Trek" references from my review of Master and Commander for this movie. Timeline deserves them more, and I don't mean that in a good way. This film takes bunches of Trek clichés, marries them to clichés of the "rescue" genre, and relies on the occasional killing and the climactic battle scene to keep the audience engaged. It does not provide any intelligent insight into the paradoxes of time travel - or even use them effectively - as I'd hoped from the teasers in the trailer.

The premise is that a top-secret high-tech outfit has discovered a way to send people back in time to 14th-century English-occupied France. (They jogged through the historical context of the expedition pretty quickly. All you need to know is that the French are the good guys and the English are the bad buys. And to make things interesting, two of the characters are Scottish, which was very different from being English in that era.) The group of young archaeologists discover this when they find a 650-year-old hand-written "help me" note from the elder archaeologist and father of one of the youngsters. Apparently he got trapped back there. So of course they mount a rescue mission.

This is the biggest bits of irrationality to the movie. First of all, it's a hasty rescue mission. Well, they half-explain away that part by saying that they don't have control over the specific time they'll arrive, but in that case how do they know they won't arrive before the professor gets trapped there. They expect you to just not think of such things.

Plus there's the inherent irrationality of the rescue itself. One person is in trouble, so they send eight people into danger to get him. We know damn well that not everyone is going to survive. Especially when two of the 8-member expedition are generic soldier types. They might as well have worn Classic Trek security red shirts, and introduced themselves as "Expendable Crewman #1" and "Expendable Crewman #2", because they die before doing anything that might constitute characterisation. OK, we have the benefit of knowing the conventions of the genre, but even the characters must have known that there was a better-than-average chance that someone on the expedition would die, making the "rescue" a wash at best, and probably a net loss. And some of them (not just the two red-shirts) do, making the "happy ending" ring rather hollow to anyone who actually thinks about it. At least Saving Private Ryan questioned whether it was worthwhile to save this one unremarkable person at the risk of several others' lives; this movie just accepts the idea that "extras" and "supporting characters" are inherently less worthy of living than "stars".

Speaking of casualties, our band of time travelers don't seem especially worried about the historical ramifications of killing people during their visit to 1357. They pay some lip service to the Temporal Prime Directive by worrying that their actions will change the outcome of the historical battle they've all studied, but when it's a choice between getting caught by the bad guys, and killing a menacing soldier (who might possibly be an ancestor of William Shakespeare or Winston Churchill or John Lennon or Posh Spice) the only angst they suffer is over having never killed anyone before today.

Perhaps their lack of concern can be explained by the heavy-handed "foreshadowing" which telegraphs how things are going to end up. Like the archaeologist who talks about how he's more interested in the past than the present and marvels over the romance of the tomb of a knight (missing an ear) and his lady, buried together... when he stumbles upon a beautiful young woman and then rescues her, you spend the rest of the movie wondering when his ear gets cut off. Which is to say nothing of the romance between the elder archaeologist's son and the pretty female archaeologist who starts out not being interested in him. Gee, ya think they'll end up together?

There are numerous points where a little common sense - or even just characters behaving like real people, rather than following the motivations needed by the plot - would have saved our heroes a lot of trouble. One of the red-shirts does something Really Stupid which results in the time-travel device being non-functional for several hours. Just like happens to the transporter in every single episode of Star Trek (any series) when the transporter would neatly solve the problem by getting the crew out of whatever jam they're in. But no one thinks to try using the other teleportation unit mentioned earlier in the film.

The movie isn't done entirely by the numbers. There are some surprises along the way. But every twist in the plot is obviously contrived to steer it to its intended outcome. Rather than causes leading to their effects, the effects dictate what their causes must be. The final scene back at the present-day dig reveals the full story behind what happened at this archaeological site. The kids hadn't seen it before they left, and the only real question we're left with is whether they would have bothered sitting through the whole movie if they'd known at the beginning how it would come out. For what it's worth, I did know... and I still stayed. It wasn't painfully bad, just disappointingly thoughtless.

Buy Nothing Day

There's been a movement afoot in recent years to promote the day after Thanksgiving as "Buy Nothing Day", rather than observing it as the busiest shopping day of the year. (In fact, the day before Christmas is the busiest, but the myth of Thanksgiving Day Plus One holding that "honor" persists.)

I agree with the principles behind Buy Nothing Day - our society is way too obsessed with material goods, and insatiable consumerism has become our cultural ideology - but I participate in it for more mundane and pragmatic reasons: I hate shopping. You don't need to ask me to stay away from the stores.

However, this year, I disregarded my own good sense. I went to a discount retailer on Friday morning. I recently got a new job, so for the first time in over 6 years I can afford to spend money on some new gear. But not a lot of money, so I've started watching store adverts for sale-priced items. Well, one of the discount electronics chains had a 14" LCD monitor for $99 after a couple of rebates worth $150 combined. The monitor that I use on a switchbox for my web server, my firewall, and my in-case-of-emergency Windows machine, is an ancient 12-inch-viewable black-and-white CRT that maxes out at 800x600. A sharp, colorful, bigger replacement for $99 would be a worthwhile purchase. They also had a small UPS (with my flaky power, I could use another) for only $5 after rebate. And I had to get up early anyways on Friday morning to deliver the newspaper (the job I'm quitting).

So after finishing deliveries, I drove out to the store in the commercial district on the edge of the city and went inside. I knew going in that they might be out of them, so I was prepared to leave empty-handed. The store (rather sensibly) had people get in line to pick up items like monitors, computers, and other sale items, to avoid fights over who saw it first and so on. Then after a floor staffer got you the item you wanted, you'd stand in line again to pay for it. While I was in line to get the monitor and UPS, I saw an doofus in the check-out line with a shopping cart loaded with 4 or 5 of the monitors and a few of the UPSes. Based on his position in line, he must have gotten there an hour before I did. Of course I had to wait in line for half an hour to find out that this asshole had in fact taken the last of them. I got the last UPS.

When I got the bad news, I just scowled, thanked the nice boy in the blue shirt for checking to see if he could get one ordered from the warehouse (he couldn't), told him he could save the UPS for someone else (I didn't want to wait in line another hour just to buy that), and walked out. On the way home I wished I'd thought to go back to introduce myself to the cunt with the several monitors in his cart, saying, "Hi, I'm one of the people you're screwing over by taking all of these for yourself. Have a nice holiday... but I hope you die and go to hell first, because if there is a benevolent God, he must hate people like you."

What kind of person does that? Gets up extra early on a day off from work, jockeys with heavy traffic into and out of the mall district, stands in line for an hour or two, so he can make sure that he gets the bargain-priced merchandise instead of someone else? Not anyone I want to encounter again. And certainly not anyone I want to be.

I can reassure myself that I was already up, and fully dressed with my coat on, and that I really still need to save money. But I still came too close for comfort to being one of those people. So I have learned my lesson, and I promise myself now that I will never again go to a sale on the day after Thanksgiving. It'll be Buy Nothing Day for me, from now on.

Multi-Culturalism of the Seventies

I was just making pancakes for a late breakfast, and a song started running through my head: "Haciendo tortillas para mi abuelo. Tortillas, tortillas, para mi abuelo." It was a song I'd learned in elementary school, in an after-school Spanish class. The reason it popped into my head today is that we'd been told that the lyrics translated as "Making pancakes for my grandpa. Pancakes, pancakes, for my grandpa."

OK, my grandfathers have been dead for over 20 and 40 years, respectively, but I was making pancakes, so it made perfect sense to think of that song. Except... "pancakes"? The song is about tortillas, and I was not making tortillas, not even for myself. I studied Spanish for several years in high school and college, and here I was pretending that "tortilla" meant "pancake". The lessons we learn as children really do stick with us, don't they?

Why on earth had my Spanish teacher told me that? Because she assumed (correctly, at least in my case) that we didn't know what a tortilla really was, and substituted the closest equivalent in our cultural vocabulary. But that was in the 1970's. What kid in America today hasn't seen a tortilla? I like to think of myself as a child of an enlightened modern era, and I pity the cultural provincialism of people who grew up in the 1950's or 1930's. But I grew up not even knowing what a tortilla was.

Another bit of archaic multiculturalism from my childhood was the annual Christmas program the school put on (and yes, that's what we called it). In retrospect, I remember a substantial number of secular songs about winter being performed, but there were also songs specifically about the baby Jesus. But not my class. There were (I think) three Jewish kids in my class, and I'm guessing that this was the highest concentration of Hebrews in the school, because my class got picked to do the Hanukkah songs.

One year we learned "Oh dreidel, dreidel, dreidel, I made you out of clay. And when you're dry and ready, with dreidel I will play." (A dreidel is a four-sided top, used in a game kind of like throwing dice.) Another year we did, "Hanukkah, oh Hanukkah, come light the menorah. Let's have a party, we'll all dance the hora. Gather round the table, we'll give you a treat. Find someone to play with, and something to eat. And while we are playing, the candles are burning low. One for each night, they shed a sweet light, to remind us of days long ago." And we really did dance the hora. I learned a few years later that this was a culturally-simplified version; the one line is supposed to use Hebrew words for the dreidel to play with and a sweet pastry to eat, and I doubt kids in West Michigan today would understand those any more than I would have. Jewish culture hasn't risen in prominence like Latino culture has.

(We also improvised our own evil version of the lyrics, not out of anti-Semitism, but just because that's what kids do for fun: "Hanukkah, oh Hanukkah, come light the menorah. Let's have a party, we'll all dance quite horrid. Gather round the table, we'll give you a treat. Find something to play with, and someone to eat. And while we are playing, the candles are burning the house. One for each night, they give us great fright, to remind us of days long ago.")

It's been quite a while since I've seen an elementary school program, so I have no idea what they're like today. Probably some are devoid of religious references altogether, some are loaded with Christmas hymns in defiant defence of tradition, and some are trying to cover the religious bases like mine did... and now incorporating Islam into the pantheon. (Know any fun 'Eid-ul-Fitr songs? I hear Hallmark is launching a line of 'Eid greeting cards, to help Muslims celebrate the end of Ramadan's month of fasting.)

Personally, I'd rather they kept the religious stuff out of public school programs, and let the kids learn all those hymns and such for programs at their places of worship (if any). At least here in the north there are plenty of "winter wonderland" songs we can all relate to. As for southern climates where "the holiday season" just means short days and maybe coat-wearing weather... I guess I'm just too provincial to know what kinds of songs you people would sing this time of year.

No Greater Love - John Keiser

"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." - Jesus, The Gospel of John, 15:13 (KJV)

When people argue against allowing same-sex couples to marry, there's a (usually unspoken) assumption that their relationship just isn't as... real as a male/female couple's. "Oh, sure, you're very fond of each other, but you're really just good friends who have recreational sex. It's not the same kind of profound, selfless love that a husband and wife have for each other".

In answer to that, I offer the example of John Keiser.

Late last night, as John and his boyfriend Jason Reichelt were inspecting the damage to their car following a collission with a drunk driver, another vehicle approached at high speed. John saw it. Jason did not. John pushed Jason out of the way. John was struck and killed.

I didn't know John Keiser, except from the article in The Grand Rapids Press this afternoon. But anyone - yes anyone - who's been in love can relate to his feelings for Jason. He had a love that - even in its infancy - prompted him to ignore his instincts for self-preservation, and instead save his boyfriend's life, at the cost of his own. According to no less an authority than the Son of God Himself, there is no greater love that a man can have. If John and Jason could share such a love after only a few months as boyfriends, surely such a love would be worthy of recognition between a couple who wished to commit themselves to each other for life.

Although The Press led with "safe" terminology, referring to the one young man as a "friend" of the other, they explained - as any story with such a poignant "human interest angle" would - that the two had been dating for a couple months, and the caption on the photo of Jason (surrounded by friends) referred to John as "his boyfriend". At least the city's newspaper of record recognised their relationship, even if the state would have refused them a licence to marry.

In a sense, John's sacrifice was extraordinary. Few of us are ever faced with such a decision, and not all of us would be able to make the choice he made. They're calling him a "hero", and the term certainly fits. But in many ways, the love he had is very typical... regardless of whether the object of affection is a woman or a man.

In Praise of "Separate But Equal"

The phrase "separate but equal" has a bad taste to it. It was established by the U.S. Supreme Court's Plessy v. Ferguson decision in the 1890's, and stood as the guiding principle for racial segregation for over half a century. It was finally struck down in Brown v. Board of Education just shy of half a century ago, on the grounds that "separate but equal" was a contradiction in terms.

I'd like to bring the phrase back into use.

Not for racial policy. While it was a half-assed step forward in the 19th century, it was clearly harmful by the early 20th century, and has no place whatsoever in the racial politics of the 21st.

I'd like to apply it to the issue of marriage, and use it to segregate heterosexuals from homosexuals.

Personally, I don't see a micron of difference between a male/female couple that wants to love, honor, and cherish each other, and a male/male or female/female couple that have the same wish. You can try to point out statistical or anecdotal differences between the groups' marital intentions: maybe (as some have claimed) male/male couples are less faithful, or maybe homosexuals are (as a group) more interested in the financial benefits of marriage, and obviously lesbian or gay couples are less likely to have children. So fucking what? We let faithless, benefits-seeking, and willfully childless heterosexuals marry. Give the dykes and fags the benefit of the doubt and let them make the same mistakes.

But my attitude isn't typical; the majority of Americans don't see it that way. I'm like an integrationist (or a black man) in the 1890's: ready for an idea that the majority of society just can't accept... yet. Most white people 100 years ago couldn't stomach the idea of sharing restaurants and schools and drinking fountains with black people. But they were grudgingly willing to accept the notion that the negroes should at least get more or less "equal" treatment. Of course in practise, "equal" was nowhere near that, but the rule established by Plessy v. Ferguson did marginally improve the lot of black people in America. If the Supreme Court of 1892 had handed down an integrationist decision along the lines of Brown (not that they wanted to), the public reaction would have been disastrous. Society will only move so far, so quickly.

Which brings us to the present debate about gay marriage. A firm majority of Americans are opposed to granting homosexual couples the right to marry. And they're all set to pass whatever legislation and constitutional amendments, and elect whatever anti-gay governors and presidents are necessary to prevent it.

But in a recent poll, only 21% were opposed to "civil unions". Once you assure the breeders that they won't have to share their holy white institution of marriage with those rainbow-colored people, you can appeal to their sense of "fairness" and ask that gay folks get their own "separate but equal" institution. No backlash, and gay couples get most of what they want: formal recognition and legal rights.

Like Plessy, this approach wouldn't last. Eventually there would be another Brown case which would establish that a separate institution simply isn't equal treatment. But by then society should be accustomed enough to the idea of gay couples - as white Americans had become more accustomed to interacting with people of color by the 1950's - that segregation could be struck down by the courts without a (successful) legislative backlash.

"Separate but equal"... isn't. But as a racial policy, it gave black people half a loaf at at time when the majority would have rather given them none, and helped move society on the road toward (someday) guaranteeing them a whole loaf. As a marriage policy, I think it could do much the same.

Gothika - Just a BOO! Movie

my rating: Nathan's rating:

You now how the last month and a half of the year is supposed to be when the movie distributors put out their best stuff, hoping to attract holiday movie-goers' cash, and some 11th-hour Oscar nominations? You wouldn't guess it from this week's new releases: a film "adaptation" of The Cat in the Hat done with erection gags instead of charm, and Gothika, which takes a premise with potential for some real drama and instead just delivers a lame "boo!" movie.

The premise is explained well enough in the previews: Halle Berry is a prison psychologist who - after a strange incident driving home, in which she apparently sees a ghost - wakes up to find herself on the other side of the glass walls, apparently insane and guilty of murdering her husband. Robert Downey Jr. is her (now former) colleague and perhaps her only hope.

But the whole situation is handled so implausibly. Not only do they dump her into the prison population with her not-necessarily-appreciative patients, but nearly every co-worker suddenly treats her like just another nutcase, not a person they used to work with on a daily basis. Maybe the point was to show how people's attitudes change about someone who's "crazy", but people don't just change like that. At the least they wallow in denial, refusing to believe it for a while.

On top of this implausibly forced "characterisation" is a lot of equally tired cinematic hack work. The opening scene with the doctor and one of her patients consists almost entirely of foreshadowing of how she'll feel when The Tables Are Turned and she's the patient. It's a Dark and Stormy Night. The power keeps going out at inopportune times. The creepy blue lighting flickers... a lot. And instead of letting the anxiety of the situation create tension, there's lots of rising-pitch background music to put you on edge, and people/things popping out of the dark to startle you. You know you're watching a bad movie when you have people in the theater openly laughing at this stuff.

Actually, I'm not sure these people realised they were watching a bad movie. Maybe it was the throngs who came just to see Halle Berry semi-nude (including a swimming scene, various short-prison-dress scenes, a nude shower scene, and a few wet-t-shirt scenes), but the dopey - often leering - comments coming from all around me made a mediocre movie even more aggravating.

The ending of the movie includes an epilogue to the main action that's apparently meant to provide some poignant closure, by bringing us back to the doctor and her patient. But even "the end" is ruined by putting a big question mark on it, with a very brief sequence that suggests that It's Not Completely Over. She still sees dead people. Gee, maybe next they can do a team-up movie with Haley Joel Osment from The Sixth Sense. "Halle and Haley: She's a psychiatrist. He's a troubled kid. Together they're detectives!" On second thought, strike that idea: Haley's movie was genuinely suspenseful and intriguing. Halle's just shouts "boo!" a lot.

The RETEP Principle

A few decades ago, Lawrence Peter coined the "Peter Principle". The core idea is that employees who do their jobs well will tend to get promoted to jobs that they aren't good at, and will stay there for the rest of their professional careers, both miserable and ineffective. "People tend to be promoted up to their level of incompetence," is its standard formulation.

This hasn't happened to me. In part it's because I've avoided it. I know I'd be a lousy manager, so I've taken care not to put myself in a position where someone might ask me to take that on. For example, in one situation when my boss had decided to quit (which meant that I might be considered to take over some or even all of his supervisory duties), I talked him out of it. I didn't want the promotion.

Instead, my career path in the past decade has gone in the opposite direction. I took a job that was "beneath me" for several years, because it enabled me to go back to school. Now I've taken a job that's possibly another half-step down from that, because it's better than being unemployed. My family confidently tell me that I'll get back up to where I "belong" as soon as my new employer sees my skills and has an opening for me.

I'm not so sure. It's possible for a person to be demoted down to their level of incompetence. After all, there's nothing that says that someone in a "higher" position is necessarily qualified to do all of the jobs beneath him. Good heavens, my last boss couldn't have done my job even if the fate of the world was riding on it.

The job I'm starting soon is (more or less) one that I've done before: computer tech support. But that was many years ago and a lot has changed in the meantime. The technology is different, meaning that my encyclopedic, intimate knowledge of WordPerfect 5, Netware 4, ISA motherboards, and Pentium-class processors is now worthless. The users are different, meaning that I'll encounter people who've been using computers since they were 7 years old with more advanced problems (and expectations), not just newcomers who'll be impressed that I know how to change the system's default printer or how to reconfigure their BIOS to skip the floppy drive when booting. And I'm different, meaning that I'm no longer the energetic and patient soul who once could spend half an hour helping make repeated attempts to set his password... without telling him he's a fucking idiot for not being able to pick out an 8-character combination of letters and numbers and remember it long enough to type it twice in a row.

I'm also self-aware enough to recognise that I don't learn as easily as I did 20 years ago, so getting up to speed on the latest technology (something I rarely got to see in my previous job) might not be as easy at it was the first time. For that matter, the technology itself has become fundamentally more complex. it used to be possible to recite every CPU/speed combination curently on the PC market (e.g. 486's ran from 25MHz through 100MHz, including the DX4's), but there's such a variety of Athlons, Celerons, Durons, Pentiums, Xeons, Itaniums, and Opterons (to say nothing of the rival PPC/Gx architecture) that I can scarcely keep track of the trademarks, let alone the benchmarks.

But in the meantime, I have developed a breadth and depth of experience - some might call it wisdom - that might enable me to function better at a higher level of job responsibility. I'm still no good supervising people or projects, but I know about the dangers of proprietary lock-in, I understand the importance of security procedures and contingency planning, and I have the maturity to give limited weight to "it would be cool" as a reason for doing something. Not that I'd have much use for that when answering help-desk calls and running off to unjam laser printers.

So it's not that difficult to conceive of me, victim of the Peter Principle in reverse, languishing - unproductive and unhappy - in a low-level position, instead of rising back to the level my competence.

Economic Activism: Pizzeria Pizza

Economic Activism Thought of the Week

I talked about fast food last week, but Pizza is a special class of "fast food", worth mentioning separately. It was introduced into the U.S. diet by small mama-and-papa pizzerias, and has since become as American as apple pie. But a handful of huge chains like Domino's, Pizza Hut, Little Caesar's, and Papa John's are supplanting real pizzerias.

You can't even walk in, sit down, and order a pizza at most of these places; they're delivery/take-out-only. And their pies all have a mass-produced sameness to them. To compete with the delivery giants, independent pizzerias usually offer delivery and take-out service now as well, and I take advantage of it, calling ahead then walking down the street (past three of the above chains) to pick up a pizza from Gino's to take home.

But there's something special about going out with a bunch of friends, for pizzas made by a cook from his own recipe (not minimum-wagers assembling them by rote). Find a real pizzeria with a beer/wine licence, and you're all set!

Super Irony

I just watched a recording of Christopher Reeve's appearance on 20/20 the other night, as interviewed by Barbara Walters. I don't usually bother with those kinds of programs, but there are a handful of "celebrities" that I've programmed my TiVo to watch for, and Reeve is one of them.

The first reason is that I'm a fan. I consider him the definitive on-screen Superman, the definitive superhero. In my assessment, Superman: The Movie remains the best translation of a superhero and his story to the silver screen, and Reeve was a big part of what made it work. Sure, the franchise lost a full "star" in rating with each successive installment, but that first one was magic. Of course it probably helped that I was 13 when it came out, was subconsciously smitten by Reeve's charming smile, and saw it from the awe-inspiring front row of the packed theater, but even though the effects now seem rather dated, it still holds up as a great movie.

The other reason I watch for Christopher Reeve is my fascination with - and inspiration by - his life following his spinal cord injury. I've questioned whether his determination to walk again is realistic, but the quest itself is quite simply admirable. While it's conceivable that he's just putting a brave and hopeful face on the situation... OK, let's be frank: he was good, but he wasn't that good an actor. And by putting that handsome, famous face on the nebulous class of "people with disabilities", he's helping to focus attention, effort, and funds on research that will eventually help countless people. He didn't just play a hero in the movies; he is one.

The irony of an actor who played the most powerful being on the planet now being unable to move his own body is fairly obvious, and certainly tragic. But I got a good laugh when I realised another, fairly recent, irony. One of the mild flaws in Reeve's Superman movies was Lex Luthor. Gene Hackman's portrayal of him was an entertaining interpretation of the character, but rather than shave his head to play the bald villain, Hackman pretended that Luthor wore a wig. Well, Reeve just appeared on 20/20 completely bald. It was, he explained with good humor, one of those quirky side effects of his injury, which led to his body just not regulating itself properly any more. His hair fell out. So Superman, not Luthor, now sports the chrome dome.

The point of his interview with Walters wasn't to show off his unintentional foray into cutting-edge fashion. He was there to show off his latest accomplishment: thanks to the implantation of a device which artificially stimulates his diaphragm muscle (much like a pacemaker does with the heart muscle), he's now able to breathe without a respirator. It's not a true recovery, in the sense of being able to breathe naturally, because he still depends on the device to tell his diaphragm to flex and relax. But it will enable him to keep his lungs in shape for the day he dreams of (when he'll be able to use his body again), and it means he's no longer fully dependent on a machine to put air in his lungs every several seconds. In effect, he's turned his own diaphragm into a backup respirator, a biological one.

He's one of the first few people to have this procedure performed, which raises the obvious question of special treatment for a celebrity. But it also indicates that he's willing to serve as a guinea pig for experimental treatments. The fact that he went to Europe to undergo this procedure might cause people to criticise him for going places for treatment that they couldn't even afford to visit as tourists. But Reeve brings up the issue himself, criticising the American medical research system as too timid. Frankly, he'd be a damn fool not to take advantage of his fame to get whatever help he can. But at the same time he's using his fame to advocate for better treatments for others as well.

In the first movie, Jor-El (played by Brando) said to his son, "They can be a great people, Kal-El; they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason, above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you, my only son." Who knew that he was really talking about Christopher Reeve?

Master and Commander - Sea Trek

my rating: Nathan's rating:

The far side of the world, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the H.M.S. Surprise. Her mission: to explore strange new lands, to see out new life and new civlization, but mostly to boldly fight the ships of Napoleon's navy wherever they may go.

Actually, I'd say that Master and Commander is more like a submarine movie. You have the the assorted seamen of various ranks, cooped up on a small vessel for weeks on end, month after month. They take turns acting with practiced coordination to operate the ship, and going after each other's throats like cellmates. You have the periodic exchanges of weapon fire with other vessels. There are the sequences in which the ship is pushed beyond its limits, barely holding together following a near-crippling battle. All of these familiar scenes from other submarine movies.

I make this comparison neither to damn nor to praise this film, just to point out what kind of film it is. Within the genre, it falls somewhere between Das Boot and Operation Petticoat... but much closer to the former than to the latter.

As the title suggests - twice ("master" and "commander" both refer to the same character) - the main focus of the story is Russell Crowe's character, Captain "Lucky Jack" Aubrey, who leads his British crew on a courageous mission in the waters surrounding South America, a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a superior French warship. His supporting cast/crew includes his old friend the ship's doctor, who is the only man able to address the commander as merely one man to another (a bit like Bones and Kirk). The rest are underlings, including several fresh-faced youngsters who, by virtue of their class, hold the ranks of low-level officers. A combination of tragedy and premature coming of age for them is inevitable.

The movie wasn't overly predictable in the sense that you know early on exactly what's going to happen to whom. It's not just plotted by the numbers. But ironically, the saga of the Suprise was somewhat lacking in surprises. Several of what were perhaps intended to be surprises weren't all that difficult to anticipate, sometimes to the point that I questioned Capt. Jack's military competence in not figuring them out himself.

The performances are all good, the action (equal parts battle and seamanship) is exciting, and there's enough unsettling detail about life aboard a military sailing ship at the dawn of the 19th century to give it a genuine sense of atmosphere. Although not the knuckle-biter or human drama I expected, it was a pretty good submarine (or Star Trek) movie.

It's the Stupid Economy

The good news is that after 10 months of job hunting, I finally got a job offer today.

The bad news is that it's a step down from my last two jobs in terms of responsibility and authority, and it's a whole decade back in terms of pay. And did I mention that it took 10 months for me to find it?

With all due humility, I'm an incredibly qualified person. A certified genius, and scores on all the college and grad school admissions tests that are (in all probability) better than yours. Two college degrees. 15 years of work experience, most of that in the "high tech fields" that job counselors are telling displaced workers to take classes for.

The problem wasn't my interview technique; I only had a few of them. The problem wasn't my resumé; I bartered with a professional job-placement counselor for advice on how to put it together. It wasn't my references; the folks who laid me off had wonderful things to say about me. There just weren't jobs to apply for. The last time I was job hunting six years ago, I used to find a few interesting jobs to pitch myself at every week. This past Spring, Summer, and Fall, I've been lucky to find one job per week that even roughly resembled my qualifications (which are even broader now, I might add). I helped review resumés a couple years ago when my now-former employer was briefly adding staff, and we got a stack of dozens. For a pretty lousy, low-paying position. Many of them were even more qualified than me. I can only imagine how high the stacks were for the jobs I applied for this year.

And I'm one of the lucky ones. Not just because I finally found a job, but because unemployment benefits in my state were extended to a full year instead of the usual six months, because I had several thousand bucks in the bank to cover some unexpected auto repair and medical bills and the hundreds of bucks my interim health insurance had cost, because my parents were able and willing to loan me a few thousand more to cover cash-flow bottlenecks (like when the rent's due this week but the unemployment check doesn't come until next week), because I don't have dependents to feed and clothe and house, and because I'm good at finding ways to save money (e.g. clip coupons, then use them when the product is on sale, for even bigger savings). I'm not quite lucky enough to be friends with President W, but I've managed.

Other people aren't that lucky. I know enough about economics to know that the president and the governor aren't personally to blame when things go badly. But I also know enough about it to know that they have the power to make a difference when needed. FDR showed that with the New Deal. Sure, it was World War II that really got the US out of the Great Depression, but the New Deal helped. And most importantly, it helped people. (And FDR waited nearly a decade after taking office before getting the country into a war; it wasn't his Plan A, like a certain current president or his father.) Politicians ignore that at their peril.

You Can't Judge A Cover By Its Book

The most frightening laws are the ones that nobody opposes.

Case in point: a recent law passed unanimously by both parties in both houses of the Michigan legislature, then signed by the governor. It's the sort of thing that sounds so squeaky clean and wholesome that any moderate-to-conservative legislator would get behind it, and no liberal would dare to stand up and oppose it. It requires that dirty magazines not be displayed so that kids can see them in the convenience store or gas station. Sounds like common sense. Unfortunately, the law itself sounds like the legislators have their heads up their asses.

See Briefs on the Outside for an explanation of the law and what's so damn backwards about its logic. If legislation were homework assignments, and a professer were to grade this one, it'd get a "D-"... for completely screwing up the logic, but not failing completely because it managed to spell everything right.

Economic Activism: Socially Responsible Junk Food

Economic Activism Thought of the Week:

Fast food chains such as McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, Taco Bell, Arby's, etc. and slightly up-scale chains like T.G.I.Friday's, Applebee's, Chili's, Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Bennigan's, Outback, etc. are changing the nature of the food we eat (to say nothing of how we eat it), in part by replacing local restaurants in our eating habits.

Everyone knows by now that a typical fast-food meal is high in fat, calories, sodium, sugar, caffeine, and other things we already consume too much of. But they're also high in homogeneity and artificiality. That hamburger you grabbed on the expressway to Springfield last week didn't come from a cow. It was probably made from the same herd-sized vat of factory-raised ground beef as the one you ate yesterday downtown, and the one you'll eat on the way home from the mall this weekend.

If you're going to enjoy a cholesterolly slab of meat and gooey sauce (and most of us do, at least once in a while) why not get it at [insert the name of a local one-of-a-kind restaurant here] instead? The burger is almost certain to taste better, add some variety to your diet, support a local business owner, and even let you sit and enjoy your meal without juggling it with the steering wheel and cell phone.

Plus, your chances of also finding something healthy on the menu are a lot better.

Arrested Development

my rating:

Sunday nights are still (again?) the best night for sitcoms on TV, now that Fox has finally started its 2003-04 season. OK, Futurama is unjustly gone, last year's late-season replacement Oliver Beene (not outstanding, but entertaining) is missing so far for no apparent reason, and I've never understood the appeal of King of the Hill. But the 37th season of The Simpsons is still fresher than the 1st season of Run of the House, Malcolm in the Middle still offers the most three-dimensional screwball characters around and is mercifully not fixating on the new baby, and now Arrested Development has arrived with the kind of punch-line-free humor that television in 2003 is sadly lacking.

Instead of gags that rely on a laugh track to point out when someone has said or done something funny, AD goes for a more "mockumetary" feel, deriving its humor from the oddball characters who make up the extended Bluth family and the absurdity of the situations. Michael (Jason Bateman), the one relatively sane and intelligent adult son, is now herding his family of loopy cats following the white-collar-crime arrest of his father George, the patriarch of the family business.

My personal favorite sub-situation (like a subplot, but the show isn't really about "plots") revolves around Michael's virginal teenage son George Michael, who - to his terror and fascination - finds himself sharing a bedroom with his hot female cousin Maeby. Adolescent sexual double entendres have never been this funny.

Some of the humor falls a little flat, or wears out its novelty, such as the stilted and shallow over-acting of the brother who has no talent for his chosen profession. But it at least keeps the grin going, enough to enjoy an intellectually satisfying chuckle when the next bit actually works.

The Matrix Revolutions - Whimper or Bang?

my rating: Nathan's rating:

"Everything that has a beginning has an end," is perhaps the key fortune-cookie platitude of The Matrix Revolutions. For the Matrix trilogy, that end comes with a bang. And a whimper.

I've tried to ignore the buzz about the film in the past couple days since it opened, but I've picked up that a lot of people were disappointed with the ending. Which is hardly surprising, because the philosophical ponderousness of the premise precludes the kind of simple (happy) ending that people really want. Plus, it's been so loaded with random bits of profundity that it would've been impossible to produce a coherent, satisfying conclusion.

The theme of the Matrix has almost as many interpretations as fans. Or perhaps more modestly, as many as it has lines of dialogue. It is about humanity vs. machines? Choice vs. fate? Chaos vs. order? Freedom vs. slavery? Reality vs. illusion? Faith in others vs. self-reliance? Take your pick. Someone on screen suggests any of these at one point or another.

The most disappointing aspect of Revolutions was its frequent predictability or repetitiveness. Several times during the movie, the young man who kept bumping knees with me would mumble a character's next line moments ahead of her/him. And, no, he hadn't seen it already... but I'm willing to believe that he'd just had dinner at the same Chinese restaurant as the Wachowskis and received the same fortune cookies. The daring exploits, the heroic sacrifices, the surprising courage... weren't very surprising.

Even the special effects and action sequences tended to suffer from "been there, done that" syndrome. A scene early in the film tries vainly to recapture the excitement of the wall-and-ceiling-climbing gunfight of the first film. The throngs of Agent Smith duplicates lose their impact after seeing it done several times in the second film. And the slo-mo-and-pivot martial arts bits are old hat by now.

There's an extended FX scene in the middle of the film as the machines attack Zion and the humans try to fight them off. I suppose it's a disservice to the considerable effort that went into producing it, but in the end it was just an ongoing barrage of animated machines and noise. I'm sorry, but unless you're impressed by the sheer quantity of virtual ammunition fired, it just won't do anything for you. There are bits of human drama cut into this and other scenes of this sort, but they're almost incidental. A substantial chunk of the film's running time is devoted to these scenes. That's the "bang".

The "whimper" is the ending. I don't want to spoil it, but it's neither a victory nor a defeat for Our Heroes (or maybe it's some of both), and when you've had characters like Morpheus the zealot, and Neo the messiah proclaiming a victory up ahead, that's disappointing. The ending doesn't even address what was supposedly the key conflict set up in the first film: the enslavement of humanity. I guess the machines aren't the enemy after all, just Agent Smith? Too much of what was brought up before is dismissed with just a shrug. It just doesn't hold together, and whatever philosophical message it might have been trying to make, just doesn't make sense.

One aspect I did enjoy was the fight between Neo and Smith, snippets of which appeared in the adverts for the movie. The Wachowskis wrote some superhero comics years ago, before they got their film production underway, and this background shows: This sequence was one of the best-realised film depictions to date of a battle between beings of superhuman power. Christopher Reeve hanging on wires was good enough in 1978, but when Superman returns to the big screen someday, the producers will have to use staging and effects like these to properly impress the audience.

But if he spends half as much time chattering about concepts without really addressing them, it'll be the whimper that more people remember, not the bang.

Presidential Technology

I admit that I haven't been following the 2004 presidential campaign very closely yet. But now that we're down to the last year of it, I promise I'll start.

Some of my inattention comes from the fact that there are so many Democrats with their hats in the ring. I know this is lazy, but deciding which of them to throw my good wishes behind would require doing a fair amount of research about them, and I'm not eager to do that. Especially since 2/3 of them will probably be declared non-contenders by the time I actually get to vote on any of them anyway.

Which is where the recent "debates" among the Democrats come in. There have been some off-beat questions asked of the candidates, which seem like people trying to take some intuitive shortcuts around the issues, and make a subjective opinion of who they "like". I don't approve of it... but I understand it.

Bill Clinton made headlines when he was asked the "briefs or boxers" question back in the day. This time around the Dems were asked "PC or Mac". The most common answer was "PC". Carol Mosley-Braun uses a PC, but said her son loves his Mac. Joe Lieberman apparently was turned on to wireless tech by his former running-mate, and doesn't use a desktop or laptop. Only Al Sharpton - the one candidate among them whom I've ruled out altogether - spoke up with the more P.C. answer of "Mac". "Think Different" is a nice ad slogan, but not a great litmus test for a presidential candidate, because "different" isn't necessarily "better". So I can't use this as a basis for deciding which of them I'd most like to party with. Incidentally, it's not a bad showing for Apple; statistically this was better than the market share they've managed to hold onto in the face of the Microsoft juggernaut.

The Linux Journal has conducted a survey of their own, which hints at some philosophical differences among the candiates. Gentle digital probing of the various candidates' web sites reveals what operating system and web server software they're using.

The President, not surprisingly, runs his campaign site with Microsoft's Internet Information Server on Windows 2000. So does the Republican National Committee. Despite Mr. Bill's moderate social agenda, the GOP is fond of him as a fellow plutocrat, and they approve of his empire. Democrats Dick Gephart and John Edwards are using the same IIS software. This is in character with Gephardt's status as a well-funded Washington insider.

An interesting wrinkle in Edwards' case is that the probes indicated that his IIS software is secured from internet attacks by a firewall running on the Netware operating system (probably Novell's Border Manager), which suggests that his IT staff are at least aware of the vulnerability of their software, and know enough to turn to reputable independent vendors for solutions.

The other Democratic candidates and the Democratic National Committee are all running their sites with the free, open-source Apache web server. Half of them are running it on Linux, most of the rest are using its cousin FreeBSD. Only the iconclastic Sharpton is using a commercial version of Unix (Sun's Solaris). Running for president takes a lot of money, so most of these operations are presumably looking to get the most bang for those bucks, either by setting up shop using well-tested freely-available software, or renting space from hosting providers who've made that cost-effective choice for them.

LinuxJournal.com didn't bother to check any other parties, but the Green Party are Apache and Linux users. No great surprise there, since the ideals of internationalism and sharing, and a general distrust of corporations that originally launched the "free software" movement, are very consistent with the Greens' progressive ideals. For them to be running Microsoft software would be seen as both a betrayal of their principles and a waste of donated funds. Not be mention just not being as smart as the Greens tend to be.

But I'm a little surprised at the Libertarians, whose party site is also Apache/Linux, as is candidate Michael Badnarik's. Candidate Gary Nolan uses the old Netscape server on Solaris. On one hand, I can see that they'd appreciate the liberty aspect of free software (known in international circles as "libre" software), but they've been among the most strident opponents of the anti-trust suits against Microsoft as an example of the regulations that get in the way of free enterprise. Not that this means they're obligated to buy Microsoft themselves, of course; a free market means they can use something else if it suits them. Nolan's even entitled to keep using a discontinued product line like Netcape's server.

Leave it to the eccentric Natural Law Party to stump the probes. They're using a web hosting service for their party site which either masks the true identity of the web server software they're using, or is a proprietary package they've developed themselves (which is unlikely). The operating system is SGI's IRIX, a commercial version of Unix.

The Reform Party site reports as another Apache/Linux combo. Which really isn't all that interesting, because so gosh darn many sites are. And it's hard to compare to the party's political philosophy because it has none. Which could also be said of their design sense... what a sad, amateurish web site.

In the Mood

Through a typically circuitous course of random cognitive meanderings* while out walking this afternoon, I found myself humming - or boppita-pop-pop-ing and doodle-oodl-ing, rather - Glenn Miller's "In The Mood".

I'd never really thought about the tune beyond the fact that it's one the best known compositions of its era. I'm certainly not a jazz buff; jazz is mostly the stuff that my parents' and grandparents' generations used to listen to, and kind of the background to the stuff I grew up with. Most adults alive today can't remember when "In the Mood" came out, and probably a majority can't even name it, but play them the opening measures, and most will say, "Sure, I've heard that before." It's a classic. And I think I've figured out why. (I'm sure this is no great revelation to people who think about this sort of stuff all the time, but it was to me, so I'm sharing.)

It all starts - literally - with those opening bars. Ironically, they're almost impossible to dance to, which seems odd for a swing number. After all, the whole social function of the genre was to provide music for dancing. But those introductory bars aren't for dancing: they're an announcement. It's a trumpet fanfare, to get your attention, telling you that the dance music is about to start.

This gives all the fellas a chance to turn to their sweeties (or vice versa) and say, "Let's dance!" By the time they make it to the dance floor, the band has finished the fanfare and has settled into a melody that's as easily danceable as the intro is not. It's got a smooth beat that's easy to follow at first, with just enough syncopation to be fun, and by the time it gets to the trickier part where the musicians get to briefly indulge themselves, the dancers will be loosened up enough to deal with it. Even middle-class white guys can cut a rug to "In the Mood".

The annals of pop music are littered with recordings that start (and somtimes drone on and on) encouraging people to get up and dance. Miller's tune does it even more effectively, and without stooping to using words, like "everybody dance now". It's pure, unfettered music, and people just respond to it.

(*The news of Righteous Brother Bobby Hatfield's death started it. It got me thinking about the phenomenon of white guys doing soul music. I also remembered thinking when I first heard the title "Unchained Melody" way back when, that it was a jazz number by someone like Dave Brubeck. Which led me to thinking about white guys doing jazz, which brought me quite naturally to Glenn Miller.)

Parents-to-Be of Sextuplets Deny Reponsibility

When it comes to revoking custody of children, I think the threshold should be pretty high. It's not something the government should do lightly. Then I read a story like this one, and I wonder if we don't do it nearly often enough. These people may be too screwed up to trust with raising children.

The people I'm talking about are Amy and Ben Van Houten, a couple who live in nearby Hamilton, Michigan. Amy is pregnant with sextuplets, a by-product of fertility treatments (and sexual intercourse with Ben). They're going to attempt for her to carry all six of them to term.

That in itself isn't the reason I question their fitness. Whether to continue the pregnancy, and how many to keep isn't my decision to make, and they should make it based on whatever they believe. What alarms me is the hypocritical, contradictory application of those beliefs to reach (or perhaps just rationalise) that decision. "We strongly believe that God is the giver and taker of life," Ben told The Grand Rapids Press. "It's not up to us. It's not up to the doctors."

Now, one might agree or disagree with that statement. Beliefs differ, and I'm not saying they're nuts to believe this. But how can they say that after taking it upon themselves to turn the naturally infertile Amy VanHouten into a mother? They decided... the doctors decided... to start this pregnancy. Against what seemed to be God's wish for them to remain childless. For them to deny responsibility for it at this point is a bit late. This wasn't a miracle. It was a medical trick. They might argue that God provided the fertility technology to achieve it. He also provided abortive technology to correct it.

Opponents of legal abortion like to accuse people of "playing God" by deciding whether to carry a fetus to term or not. But even if you consider that fetus a living human with a soul, that's not "playing God"; deciding whether to (allegedly) kill or not is a very human thing to do. But deciding whether to override a person's natural infertility to get pregnant anyway... creating life, if you will... is a far more God-like act. Hubris, thy name is VanHouten.

Whether you agree with the theology behind all that or not, you have to believe it... or not. You can't have it both ways. If "God is the giver and taker of life," then both infertility treatments and abortion are a defiance of that authority. If not, then it's up to us as individuals (or couples) to decide either of those questions for ourselves.

Amy and Ben VanHouten chose this pregnancy, and they're choosing to continue it. That's their legal and moral right. I wish them the best of luck, because - as even those overbreeders who despise Hillary Clinton discover - it really does take a village to properly raise sextuplets. But if she or any of her six children dies of complications of this pregnancy, or spend the rest of her or his life physically or mentally disabled, they can't attribute that to God's will. It was entirely up to them.

Economic Activism: Video Rentals

Economic Activism Thought of the Week:

Major video rental chains like Blockbuster are not only using their mass-marketing clout to squeeze smaller, independently-owned places out of business, they're effectively suppressing the content and availability of movies in the process. While your local chain bookstore will probably special-order just about any available book for you, the same isn't true of video rental chains: what they stock is what you get to choose from.

Blockbuster in particular refuses to carry any films they deem "controversial". If a vocal faction - however small or provincial - protests against a title, they'll yank it... nationwide. Even worse, the movies they do carry are frequently edited to their standards, without any indication to the customer that they're not getting the original: a form of quiet unaccountable censorship. Which wouldn't be a problem if there were adequate alternatives in most communities, where someone with an interest in "unapproved" movies could pick them up in their unexpurgated version, but that's getting harder and harder outside the largest cities.

Even if you don't want to rent disturbing or "mature" movies yourself, if you care about the right of people to choose what they want to watch, then support the video rental places that support the right to rent complete and controversial videos.

Alien - Designed to Survive

my rating: Nathan's rating:

It's been far too long since I saw the original Alien to do any kind of analysis of what the "Director's Cut" (recently released to cinemas) adds to it. But I can say that it holds up quite well for a nearly-quarter-century-old sci-fi thriller. Thanks to the haze of being half-remembered, it's still suspenseful, it's well-acted, and it even still looks good, despite the raised expectations of a 21st century movie watcher. H.R. Giger's designs deserve much of the credit for its visually longevity. The movie was all-new to Nathan - who'd seen a couple of the later sequels - and he was suitably impressed with it.

The one aspect that kept reminding me that the film had been made in the 1970's was its treatment of computers. Here's a society with interstellar transportation, robotics, etc. and their ship's computer is barely distinguishable from Eliza (an artificial intelligence exeriment of the era in which the film was made) and the computer's displays look like... late 1970's computer graphics, with low-resolution, low-frame-rate wireframe images, and streams of characters, teletype-style. At least 2001: A Space Odyssey managed to transcend the technology of its era, by simulating computer displays - impossible with any reasonable budget at the time - using film-based effects. I don't get a nostalgic grin seeing that film, but seeing this one I couldn't help fondly recalling my old Atari.

Although the story isn't especially imaginative (and even in 1979, it was following a lot of established horror-movie conventions), it isn't overshadowed by lots and lots of action. The story begins very slowely, and the alien itself stays off-camera most of the time, which adds to the quality of the suspense... especially as contrasted with the focus on action, action!, ACTION!! in its sequels, and even "cerebral" fare like the recent Matrix sequels. On one hand, I want to blame Alien for helping to revive the sci-fi/monster genre, and leading to its sequels, Predator, and the like. But it did so by doing the genre well, and I can't really fault it for that.