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Today's Quote

"People who are the most cynical are the most romantic at heart."

- Alan Ball

Prisoner Episode Ordering

Just a reminder, if you are going to watch the TV show The Prisoner, you should watch it in the KTEH order listed in the Prisoner FAQ. You won't have the joys of Scott Apel hosting the episodes, but you will get the more interesting story structure as the episodes progress in a more logical order.

Well, as logical as anything relating to The Prisoner, I guess.

Not that you really need to be watching the series to reinforce that idea of being trapped in the machinery of society these days...

World Cup Schedule

In case you were wondering when that South Africa vs. Slovenia game was happening, here is the World Cup TV schedule for the U.S.. Need to stock up on proper game-watching supplies next week...

Comic Review: Fax From Sarajevo (Kubert)

Well, this is no Safe Area Gorazde. I can only speculate on what I would have thought of this if I hadn't already read that. On the surface, they seem similar - stories about the war in the former Yugoslavia as Bosnia-Herzegovina tried to separate from Serbia. This time, instead of including stories from different people it told the story of a family that is friends with the Kuberts. The Kuberts were able to follow the story as it happened through faxes sent out between power outages, thus inspiring the title. So we learn about all the terrible things that happen to the family as they try to escape from Sarajevo as it starts becoming more and more dangerous of a place to live.

So why was this not nearly as powerful? I think the main characters were less sympathetic, especially after hearing the views of the people in Gorazde about the people in Sarajevo. I mean, they were still able to send faxes! OK, it is an impossible task to try to compare suffering of people in these kinds of situations. But the family in this also had friends all over the world trying to get them out of Sarajevo, after they had voluntarily come back just before the hostilities had picked up. Ultimately, these connections lead them to find a way to get out before the fighting ended. If anyone was a priviledged class in such a horrible situation, it was people like this family. And maybe this is an unfair view of things - the faxes themselves seemed more powerful to me than the cartoon depictions of what went on. Kubert's art style seems a bit too unrealistic to me to convey the horror of what was going on. It looked like a typical action sequence in a superhero comic.

And the depiction of the "bad guys" in the story was one-dimensional. They were evil, saying cliche evil things, doing evil things without any reason. Not like the heroes of this story, who were all selfless and good and never did anything mean to the bad guys. But the cliched presentation of the bad guys and the overwrought narration were just cringe-inducing to me. Sample: "What is the cost of a young life that could have been another Picasso... or a Da Vinci... or Beethoven? Or your child?"

It makes me wonder how much of an influence comics have on someone who has spent their whole life creating them and reading them. Of course, it is not just comics, but also a lot of TV and movies, probably. Do we need to easily classify people as good and bad? Try to make real life fit into our fictional story templates? How much does that affect our interpretation of what is really going on?

So, to sum up: Don't bother with this one, go check out Safe Area Gorazde instead.

In-N-Out Grilled Cheese Nutrition Information

In-N-Out doesn't give the nutrition information for their grilled cheese sandwich. But if you are curious, some simple math leads me to believe that it contains 21 grams of fat, 380 calories. Of that, it seems like 90 calories and 8 grams of fat come from the cheese, whereas 80 calories and 9 grams of fat come from the spread.

Oh well.

Let's talk about food

People talking about food is interesting to me. Plus, I learned that nachos were invented in the 1940s by Ignacio Anaya. If I ever get caught in a weird time-space phenomenon and wind up in the past, maybe that is the invention I can use to save my life.

In my food news, my falafel adventure was a complete and total success. Yummy. And easy, except for that "deep" frying in oil thing. Too much cleanup.

Now I feel like eating nachos.

Summer length

Before:

After:

Because I know you all just look here to find pictures of me.

Movie Review: The Blind Swordsman's Vengeance (Zatoichi no uta ga kikoeru)

In this week's Zatoichi installment we get a character, a blind monk, who actually questions Zatoichi's lifestyle choice. This becomes most pointed when Zatoichi kills in front of a child who had already been enamored of the blind swordsman. Zatoichi seems unsure of his choices, but ultimately resigned to it because it is what he knows and what he is good at. Later conversations with the monk, in good zen koan fashion, reveal that the monk also thinks he made the right choice when he killed the people, even though it was also the wrong choice.

But the basic plot is the typical story, although this time the woman involved is a prostitute in the village he is saving, and he doesn't really get a chance to gamble. The bad guys do try to use loud noises to disorient Zatoichi, but really it doesn't seem to work at all. Unbeatable, I tell you.

I am getting a little sad that all these hints at more interesting things that could have been done will probably not amount to anything more than just hints. So maybe it will be OK that the next few weeks will be zatoichi-less on the tivo due to world cup obligations.

Movie Review: Zatoichi and the Chess Expert (Zatoichi Jigoku tabi)

I'm falling behind on my Zatoichi reviews because I'm not sure what to really say about them. They continue to be interesting to me to note the pop culture differences. Zatoichi always turns down the women and walks off into the sunset alone at the end of the movie. He always seems very reluctant to get involved in the conflicts, even though he appears to be undefeatable in just about anything he does. This does include a glimpse into the unintended consequences his violent lifestyle has on others, when a girl gets injured because she is too close to a fight Zatoichi gets into. This also features an enemy swordsman who seems like he could be more of a challenge than usual, since he begins making an effort to learn the sightless skills he sees Zatoichi use. But the conflict between them seems a letdown - all the buildup resolved in the standard fight scene sequence. Zatoichi's character here also seems a little more questionable here as he runs what could be considered a scam while gambling. Perhaps that is why we see him, for the first time, lose a fair bet? I think this one contained a lot more interesting ideas, but the movie as a whole didn't quite come together for me.

WUSA Game: The Cyberrays don't need to lose in the final minutes after all...

Yeah, the Cyberrays actually won a game again. How neat! They dominated from the start, but seemed unable to put anything away until finally Katia came through on what, from the stands, seemed like a questionable call. The defender headed it away on the line, but it was counted as a goal. Need to see the replay - and good luck doing that at Spartan Stadium! Things were tense towards the end, though, as the game kept getting more physical (that Wambaugh character seems mean, and big, and definitely deserved at least the yellow card she got) and the Freedom got some chances on goal. But Katia came through again (if only Sissi had some other good targets!) and put the rays up 2-0. I nervously thought to myself "how could they mess up a two goal lead in the closing minutes?" realizing this could be dooming them. But they held tough, responded with some good physical play, and didn't give up anything in the end. Yeah! I actually felt happy after the game, which seemed silly, but I tried to just enjoy it.

Movie Review: Insomnia (Nolan)

The new version of Insomnia was not quite as interesting to me as the original version. It seemed much less subtle, although whether that was due to it being in English or my mental state while watching it or the movie itself I couldn't really say without watching the original version again. But that was my only real problem with this - I couldn't stop thinking about the other movie the whole time. Which is unfortunate, because there is some good stuff here. I always enjoy Martin Donovan onscreen, and Hillary Swank did a good job. Al Pacino kept things under control for the most part, although I am pretty sure I did not enjoy his version of the character as much as Stellan Skarsgard. The movie also didn't leave me with the bleary-eyed washed out look of the original - this seemed too crisp and dark at times. The flashbacks were interesting, although it does make me remember it is a Christopher Nolan film. The teenage cast in this one also seemed weaker, but it is a little difficult for me to compare. Overall, I thought this was a reasonable movie, but if you have seen the original version don't expect anything revolutionary. If you haven't seen the original version, this is definitely worth seeing, but you could just as easily see the other one.

Story Idea

This month's Scientific American has an article about autistic and developmentally disabled savants (sorry, that link goes to a "buy from the archive" thing, since they don't make their archives free. Not even to subscribers, as far as I can tell). The interesting thing that caught my eye was that these skills often can involve computation, including "an affinity for prime numbers". Of course, when you think of prime numbers you think of one thing, right? That's right - encryption. So what if there was a savant so gifted that they could crack most of today's prime-number based encryption schemes? That would be a very valuable resource for a lot of people.

Of course, that is as far as I got with the story idea. Which is why I am not actually a writer.

Today's Thought

There are times when someone saying no is better than them not saying anything at all.

Take that, luck!

I won a nice-sized gift certificate for tickets at the celebration for the end (almost!) of the release at work today. How neat! I am so not used to winning anything, especially things I like. Maybe I will get to go to some silly expensive shows this summer.

Chinese food

I can definitely relate to some of the situations described in this article about Chinese food in the suburbs of LA. The Bay Area doesn't seem to have quite the variety of cuisines they described there (although anyone who knows any good northern Chinese noodle places around here should tell me) but I have gotten a few chances to eat in restaurants with only chinese language menus. Luckily, I tend to be with nice people who are able to order lots of stuff that is really tasty.

I'm not sure I buy the whole "I could eat chinese food every day for the rest of my life" idea, though. It is often tasty, but you would miss out on so many amazing things. Which is why I don't understand some of my Chinese friends that don't like many other types of foods. Maybe I learned to eat different things because I came from a midwestern culture where the food was pretty unexciting, and if I had grown up with something more exciting I'd be less inclined to try out new things.

Like those grasshoppers.

Work Party?

I was supposed to go to the birthday party, but instead I had to work late. It would have been better if the work stuff had actually felt important.

Have I mentioned how happy I will be when this week is over?

internet radio lives

I still don't really listen to any Internet Radio stations, but I am glad it looks like they might be able to continue broadcasting. The Librarian of Congress (who knew that position included these kinds of powers?) rejected the 14/100 of a cent fee per song per listener that an arbitrator came up with. No, actual radio stations do not pay per listener, but they wanted to force internet stations to start doing that. Seems ridiculous. (Of course, an even worse fee system could be put in place, so we'll have to see what the final decision is, but this is likely a good sign...)

It reminds me of internet advertisers being upset clickthrough rates are so low. Compared to what? Magazine ads? Has anyone ever immediately gone to buy something after seeing a magazine ad? I doubt it.

I think people can develop unreasonably high expectations when they begin to have access to new data. Since the internet allows much more detailed information tracking it suffers from this phenomenon.

Rants about how our elected officials are going along with all of the big company schemes and how individuals are not making their opinions heard will have to come later.

Nihongo no kurasu

Well, today was the last day of japanese class for this semester. Not sure what my future plans are for learning the language. Not sure of much in the way of future plans right now. Need to crawl into the cave for a while and think about these things.

Unlikely Cult?

Lest you think I am turning this weblog into a link-free zone, I thought this article was interesting. It seems naive to me to think that reason is unlikely to lead to cultish behavior. Humans can be very silly creatures, and we all like to think we adhere to principles of some sort even though we keep making mistakes. Maybe we all just like picking different people to blame for those mistakes, or coming up with different ways of trying to compensate and explain away the mistakes.

But it was also interesting to me to see a leader of a skeptic organization base a lot of his feelings on a belief in free will. I'm reasonably sure people haven't actually figured out the whole consciousness thing yet. I guess everyone has a different threshold for applying skeptical ideas.

Sometimes it rains

One of the strange things about "bay area" weather is how localized the rain can be. It rained reasonably hard here this morning, but at the soccer field in Palo Alto there was little or no rain and even a little sun peeking out from the clouds. Overall, it was a gloomy day but quite nice for playing outside. Not what I have come to expect from California in May, but not completely absurd, either.

I'm not sure why, but it felt like a day where the weather coincided well with my mood, although I won't guess which order that actually happened in.

CyberRays

Yes, they gave up a goal in the final minutes to lose the game again. Yes, they missed a lot of opportunities they should have made. Yes, it really does not look like they have a chance at repeating the championship. Here's the interesting stuff from today:

• Mark caught the ball that flew into out part of the stands. Yay, full-time keeper!
• The face-painting line was really long and composed entirely of young girls. We felt creepy and bailed on that idea pretty quick. When is WUSA going to acknowledge the adult male fans? Are there any others?
• You can't expect us to cheer for the halftime entertainment louder than we do for the regular game. Sorry, Lenny.
• Homare Sawa is still a really good player.
• Attendance was a little over 5,600, but it seemed emptier than last time, which I thought was reported at 5,500. How is this league going to survive again? Would playing in a nice stadium increase attendance enough to justify increased expenses?

Night Out

Here's one of those times I should probably not be writing an entry here, but I will anyways. I wish I had better skills at letting people know I was interested in getting to know them better. Oh well. Maybe this one is recoverable.

I still didn't find out what kind of sake that was.

Patent Offensive

I forgot to mention I had my first ever meeting with a patent lawyer this week. It was fun. Did I feel morally ambiguous about this, since I don't really like the idea of software patents? Not too bad, really. Mostly because of the excitement of getting my name on a patent, probably, but also because I feel that this may be an actual invention of some kind. Worthy of years of other people not being able to use it? Maybe not. Software changes more quickly, so the patent protection should be less. Should it be there at all? Well, maybe. I'm not sure how you determine what is obvious, since just about anything involved in programming seems obvious once someone explains it to you.

Voting with dollars

Sorry for the rant:

Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones opened today, and most of my friends went to go see it. I decided not to. No big important reasons, but I really didn't want to lend my support to the movie.

I have been trying to evaluate my spending a little differently lately. Nothing too original, but I have tried to shift the focus from "is this worth the money to me?" to "do I want to support this with my money?"

Sometimes it is an easy call. I don't want McDonald's to get my money, but the little tacqueria (even if it may smell funny) is a worthwhile cause. Sometimes there isn't much choice - are airlines really that different to justify an extra hundred and a less convenient airport? But I am trying to do better, to make as much of my spending money go towards businesses and restaurants and artists that I enjoy and want to see around for a while. I am lucky to have the money to do this, since the cheapest choice is usually not the one that I want to support.

So what about this movie thing? Do I really want my money going to support films that I know won't be that good? No. I don't really want to see more dumb action movies, so I try not to get dragged into seeing them. I don't want Star Wars movies that are shoddily made because they know people will see them regardless - which is what I felt about the first one. Unfortunately, my money for that one went into the opening day totals anyways, since I couldn't know ahead of time what I was getting into. I want to think of my not going to see this one during the opening week (we'll see if I go at all, I guess) as some small bit of protest.

In the scheme of things, does it matter? No, Mr. Lucas won't really notice the lack of my $9. But that's my part in this, so I will do what I can. Wendy's probably doesn't notice I stopped going there, either, but my not going has also reduced the number of times the lunch group at work goes there. Do they notice that? Probably not. But these things need to start somewhere, right?

[I guess this isn't much of a rant since it turned into some lame talk about individual responsibility. Oh well. You'll notice I'm not asking for anyone's money here. Someday I'll try to focus on improving my writing skills. For now, the focus is surviving the impending nihongo final.]

Happy Car

My car is happier with me now, and it probably took them less time to do the maintenance than it took for them to get me to work. At least it gave me some time to study kanji...

Movie Review: Zatoichi sakata giri (Zatoichi and the Doomed Man)

Have I seen enough Zatoichi movies now to be able to say that this is not one of the better ones? We start off with Zatoichi in prison, where he meets someone who wants him to deliver a message so he won't be put to death. It seems like things could get interesting as Zatoichi decides not to help this person; of course, he soon gets pulled into it anyways. He also starts traveling with a swindler who eventually tries to assume Zatoichi's identity, which could have been a really interesting way to examine Zatoichi's reputation (especially the drinking and pretty women part of things) but nothing much is done with it. Things end with an overly-long fight scene, Zatoichi gets a woman he rescued to help clean things up by delivering a message, and he walks away. I'd like to think there is some deep symbolism I should be attributing to some of these things (like Zatoichi encountering the ocean for the first time) but really it seemed a little thrown together. I guess if you make 3 of these movies a year you can't make them all be that interesting. It certainly made me question whether I should bother with the next one, although the IMDB review says it is a good one, so I will probably give it a shot.

California

I am one step closer to being a real Californian now, since I felt my first earthquake tonight. It was a 5.2 magnitude 15 miles NW of Hollister, CA (or 3 miles SW of Gilroy depending on who you ask, I guess). Apparently this put me in a class IV intensity area -"light shaking" and no damage. Which seemed true. It was a strange experience - trying to figure it out, and then finally realizing it just as it is ending. I can definitely imagine how scary a more intense quake would be, since it really seems like there is nowhere to really go unless you can react immediately.

Your Internet Government Hard At Work

Ever wonder how this crazy internet stuff works despite being a global entity with governments trying to influence it? When people realized the process behind some of the basic architecture needed to become more formal instead of relying on the people who had helped build the networks, they decided to develop an independent organization controlled equally by the corporations who run the network and people representing the individuals who use the network. And now you can read about how terribly that idea failed. Who needs representation of individual interests or the interests of different areas of the world when we can have it controlled by a few corporations - just like everything else?

today's mochi lesson

leftover mochi is not very good.

Comic Review: Safe Area Gorazde (Sacco)

Joe Sacco spent a few months in Gorazde after the worst of the war had finished, and got to know some of the people there. This book is a collection of vignettes about what he saw there and the stories that the survivors told of what had happened during the war. Like any book about war and ethnic cleansing and violence, it is easy to feel sympathy for the people telling the stories about the friends and family members that were lost. It is also easy to feel that sense of superiority that "this could never happen here," especially in the USA, where we like to think we've put that kind of thing well behind us. But reading each story, and hearing each person talk about how a few years earlier these people were friends and neighbors and now they were not only on opposite sides of the conflict but actually taking up arms directly against each other, it made me wonder. How far away is anyone from this kind of thing? It took me a while to find the rhythm of the book, with all of the different narrators, the changes in the timeframe being portrayed, and my lack of knowledge about the conflict. But after a few stories he explains a lot more of the background of what is going on and you get a little bit of the sense that he might have felt first going to the town and hearing all these different stories. The stories themselves are absolutely horrifying, and getting a glimpse into how the events affected these people later provides a much deeper impact. No one seems to be completely right, although the book obviously does favor the Muslim residents of Gorazde and the surrounding area who are telling the stories. Of course, I don't think their stories really got told in other places - and while there are probably sympathetic stories to be told from the other side as well, it seems like there was a distinct lack of people willing to stand up to those that wanted to use violence to deal with problems. And not just violence, but slaughter of hundreds and thousands of people and destruction of whole villages and rape and mutilation and all of those kinds of horrible things you think only happened in history books. No, it was happening while we were listening to soundbites about Sarajevo and weren't quite sure how to keep all the strange-sounding names straight. The book does a fantastic job of showing the influence US foreign policy can have on individuals in these places, but also the bizarre alienness of how those policy decisions can seem. How can elections seem important when you are seeing your hometown be slowly destroyed? The book also takes to task just about everyone involved in the situation - obviously the murderous soldiers, but also the foreign journalists that aren't interested in the real story, the UN personnel who had the authority to make the use of force decisions (what is a peacekeeping force supposed to be doing if they are trying to keep their neutrality in an armed conflict?), the peacekeeping soldiers that didn't seem willing or able to do anything, the Muslims who lived in Sarajevo and looked down on the farmers that lived in Gorazde - all to some degree responsible for the tragedies that we hear about. How many times do we need to learn this lesson to be able to stop it from happening over and over? In the end, the book should have some hope, since we do see the people that survived trying to re-establish their lives like they had been before the war, but it is impossible to believe they won't have to keep dealing with the effects of what has happened for the rest of their lives. Hopefully this book will help people reading it learn something of those lessons, too.

mochi-head

today's question: is it possible to eat too much mochi?

today's answer: yes, unfortunately, it is.

we'll try asking again tomorrow to see if we can get a different result.

Spam

For the first time in my online career, I am regularly getting spam. It seems to be coming to emails pulled off this here website. I guess it is too late now to do anything about that, isn't it?

Prioritize

Overall, how do you prioritize career, friends, family, personal fulfillment, the world, and "serious" relationships?

How do you decide what tradeoffs to make when you can't balance everything?

What length of time should you be trying to optimize for?

What are you making the priority if you are just trying to avoid these situations?

If you put yourself in a position where you have to make a distinct choice between some of these items, is that a sign you want to change your priorities?

Presentation Lessons

Today I learned the difference between a good presentation (meaning the quality of the delivery) and a good presentation (meaning the quality of the content being delivered). I did a run-through last night (never give a formal presentation in front of people without having practiced it out loud at least once!)so my delivery worked out ok, but the lack of time spent preparing the slides (I never got it focused enough to have a clear message for people to remember, so it seemed very rambly) and content bugged me the whole time. Of course, by the time I talked everyone was pretty worn-out, so it may have been wasted effort anyways.

Remind me again why it is good for me to give presentations in front of large groups? Oh right, need to build those nontechnical skills. Still seems so funny to think of myself in these situations.

Airline Tickets

Every time I need to buy airline tickets I can't help but be amazed at what a strange system it is. How are prices determined? There seem to be just enough correlations with things that make sense (time until the flight, popularity of travel on that day) that it seems like you should be able to figure it out - but when you start looking closer, it stops making any sense (different prices on the phone than on the website? no correlation to flight time or distance? prices based on how long you stay at the destination?) and you wind up just blindly accepting a number that doesn't seem so bad once you have seen worse numbers. Oh well. I like to think that the travel agent industry will experience a resurgence if the airlines and travel web sites don't improve the usability of their websites. Would I pay a little money to deal with all these things for me and make me feel like I didn't get ripped off? Yeah, especially if they'll also arrange my transportation to the airport if I need it.

Anyways, Wisconsin here I come. Oh yay. And I was able to still use some of the money from last year's cancelled ticket. Ahhh, the memories...

i am robot

>[:][-[

Candy Thief

I tried to send a piece of candy through the mail, and somehow the envelope got a hole in it and the candy disappeared. Simple result of inappropriate packaging? Or does a candy thief lurk in some post office somewhere? And to think this happened on International No Diet Day. Heh.

(I wanted to link to the site of the people who sent all sorts of goofy things through the post office, but couldn't find it. But somehow I did find the INDD page. Gotta love the web.)

Movie Review: The Blind Swordsman's Revenge (Zatoichi nidan-giri)

This week's Zatoichi movie contained what I now understand to be the classic elements of a Zatoichi movie: Zatoichi reluctantly becoming involved in combat in order to help someone out of trouble, gambling, lots of sake drinking, and a few fight scenes. Here we get another corrupt local official working with the criminal underground, this time forcing local girls to work in a brothel. They also killed Zatoichi's former master, so he has double the motivation to help out this time. The primary combat challenger this time is a samurai who only longs to find someone to fight as good or better than himself, which he finally gets to do. The more interesting storyline this time is a dice thrower working for the crime boss. He also has a young daughter that plays an important part of what happens throughout. Ultimately we get to see Zatoichi's tolerance for the difficult situations people face in life, which is nice, since he can pretty much follow the virtuous path without much trouble since he can kick anyone's ass in a fight (verbal or physical) if he needs to. Not as interesting as the last one to me, but I do want to see if I am reading the common elements correctly. Luckily, IFC seems to be keeping up on the showings.

Soccer: Win (5-1)

Yay! A win. The first half was pretty close, but we managed to be ahead 2-0. They had one goal that was called back because of an offsides call on a player that didn't touch the ball, which is a little iffy, but I was willing to respect the ref's decision since we finally got one in our favor. The second half felt very different, and we were able to score some easy ones that their goalie should have had. I think we may have been up a player for a while, which probably helped as well. The one they scored was on a corner kick, and I actually kicked it out while playing post but the ref called it a goal. I don't think it was all the way over, but there was no line there and it didn't really matter. I played left back the whole game, and got a few good stops in which was nice. I felt like I only had one really misplayed ball, where I should have put it out but tried to bring it up and didn't quite get it. We were able to hold the line well, which was nice. Alan was back, which really helped the defense feel more cohesive I think. So, overall, a nice feeling to actually win, although I don't think we played a great second half, it was good enough. Strange for most of the breaks to go our way for a change.

Movie Review: Spider-Man (Raimi)

And so the summer movie season begins for me. It could have been much, much worse. But it probably could have been a little better, although I may be biased because of the hype and the enthusiasm of other people for this movie.

I liked it. Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst did a great job as Peter Parker and MJ Watson. MJ was very appealing, and Peter was a social loser in a very believable way. Willem Dafoe did OK as Norman Osborn, but I'm not sure anyone could have done better with that dialog. I didn't care for the Aunt May and Uncle Ben characters. The J. Jonah Jameson grated at first, but wound up being excellent.

The overall tone was good, very respectful of the theme of the comic book - with power comes responsibility, and that responsibility means trying to do the right thing even when it is difficult. And they marched through the storyline to set this up as expected, combining the original story and the more recent comic retelling with a few minor twists. I don't think they had a good handle on the science aspect of Peter's character, which was unfortunate. But they did show his transformation into a hero, from the wonderful initial scenes showing the rush of finding out about his powers to the inevitable showdown at the end. They were also good about not trying to be too serious about the whole thing, using the comic relief to poke at the holes it knew were there in the story, allowing us to relax and enjoy the story itself.

Some of the special effects didn't work for me - the computer generated bodies often seemed a little too floppy, reminding me of the stuffed Spider-Man I had as a kid that got thrown into a pool, removing all the stuffing from his joints. The Green Goblin costume was cool except for the helmet, which may have been more realistic but also made it hard to express emotion. I didn't like some of the use of slow-motion in non "spidey-sense" scenes. Spider-Man didn't have as many little quips as I had expected, although I'll be ok with that if it was just because he was starting out at the hero thing. Most importantly, though, I was disappointed Spider-Man didn't have to out-think the Goblin, he just had to outfight him. The joy of Spider-Man fights in the comics came from him always being weaker but still finding a way to beat the bad guy. This Spider-Man didn't seem to have to do much thinking.

Maybe they'll work on that by picking a tougher villain next time, although they certainly seemed to set up who it would be in this one. But I guess the movie was succesful, since here I am already talking about next time...

Concert Report: 20 Minute Loop, John Vanderslice, The Microphones, 31 Knots

I got to introduce two people to Bottom of the Hill for this concert, which was fun. I always get a little nervous going to shows with new people, though, since chances are they won't like several, if not all, of the bands.

And the first band, 31 Knots, didn't really help. They played what to me sounded like a watered-down math rock, along the lines of Don Caballero but with vocals and without the complexity. And let me tell you, math rock without complexity is not very exciting. The last couple of songs they played were a little better, but it wasn't my thing.

Next up came The Microphones, which was really just Phil Elvrum playing guitar and singing. He started off great, with excellent low-key crowd interaction, and the crowd was really responsive. Unfortunately, the music didn't draw me in. Part of this may have been because I hadn't had any time this week to try to find some of their stuff and get familiar with it, but I also think the stripped down instrumentals combined with his singing and some fairly repetitive, lengthy songs started to get a little dull. This may be my fault for not being able to concentrate on the lyrics, but in any case, his set didn't draw me in, although the crowd was very into it. When he asked the crowd to sing background vocals for a song he got a pretty good response, which was neat. It made me want to hear what his recorded sound was like, and get a chance to listen to the words. But the live performance wasn't terribly exciting, despite the attempt at a story being told with and between the songs. I appreciated the efforts.

Then came John Vanderslice. He had a new cd coming out, and while I enjoyed the CD of his that I have (Time Travel is Lonely), I was curious to hear more stuff of his to really figure out how I felt about him. I already appreciated his willingness to put out songs on mp3s online, so I was familiar with some of his other stuff ("Bill Gates Must Die" is an entertaining song) and was curious how it would translate to a live show. It turned out that he played with a bass player and a drummer, so everything had a much heavier "rock" sound than it does on the albums. It made me appreciate a lot of the little touches on the recordings more - the little horn parts, the more varied instrumentation. His singing live, though, felt a little fuller and less whiny. Not exactly sure how to describe that, but it fit with the sound they had. So I decided to get the new CD and check it out, and the old one, since I had most of the mp3s anyways, and I wound up getting another CD for free. Whooo.

Strangely (to me, anyways), a lot of people started leaving during his set, including a friend that I ran into there. I guess people were there to see the Microphones. It was quite the eclectic set of bands, I guess, but to leave before the headliners even take the stage? Strange. Especially since I knew they were decent. And 20 Minute Loop put in a pretty good set. I had borrowed the CD Roger got at their last show we saw, so I was familiar with a bunch of the songs this time, which was nice. They have a really nice sound, though - the male and female vocals, keyboards, solid guitar/bass/drums. I thoroughly enjoyed their set, even if the crowd was maybe 1/2 to 3/4 of the size they were during the Microphones set. At least here the crowd was moving along a little, doing the indie rock head bob.

While I enjoy not feeling pressured to dance, it is strange going to shows where nobody dances. Is that made up for by the free stickers and buttons the bands usually have? Maybe! Maybe not! I'm not sure I understand the button thing, either.

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Movie Review: Go (Yukisada)

I saw Go as part of the SF International Film Festival. Ahh, the joys of living near an interesting city. This was the story of a teenager born in Japan to Korean parents coming to grips with his place in a society. The opening scenes, full of fast-motion and quick edits and backwards chronology reminded me a lot of Trainspotting. It had that feeling of teenagers that live for the moment, unworried about their future but just becoming aware that maybe they need to pause for a moment and take a closer look. The movie quickly moves from very funny scenes involving the interactions of a lot of the characters to extremely violent scenes, which I think was a very effective way of showing the shock of violence in real life. The main character, who also narrates parts of the movie, keeps insisting it is his love story, but we don't get into that for a while, until he meets a Japanese woman at a party. They start dating right away, and the movie does a great job showing two people getting involved in their first serious relationship and the doubts and attempts to look cool that go along with that. I enjoyed both the main actors, and a lot of the supporting cast, especially his parents and his best friend. Overall, it was a very entertaining movie, even though I thought a lot of the themes weren't particularly profound for where I am right now. Definitely worth seeing, though, even if you have to drive up to SF to see it and the Malaysian restaurant you were going to eat at turns out to be closed on Tuesdays.

A little bit of sadness

In case you were too happy:

George Alec Effinger died. I read his Marid Audran series of novels, which were a wonderful mix of Islam, cyberpunk, transgendered people, and detective novels.

U.S. adults know very little about science. Not a surprise, I guess, but 25% of adults believe in astrology, 50% believe in ESP, 40% believe in ghosts, and those numbers seem to be increasing over the past 10 years. Scary. I don't know what to do to really help this anymore. If you'll excuse the expression, I am skeptical of the skeptic organizations. I don't think fighting pseudoscience is as important as trying to teach rational decision making.