3 years, 3 months ago,,
by Fred (,
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So it appears that an ex-FBI official living in California claims he was ‘Deep Throat’.
A retired FBI official living in Santa Rosa says he is Deep Throat, the anonymous source who fed Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein information that helped them expose President Richard Nixon’s Watergate cover-up.
W. Mark Felt, 91, was second-in-command at the FBI in the early 1970s and is among several former officials whose names have circulated for years as possibly being Deep Throat. A Post Web site devoted to the Watergate scandal describes Felt as having had a reputation among reporters as someone who would take their calls.
For some reason, I just find it hard to care. The 70s are over, except on VH-1. Knowing who Deep Throat is won’t change how people feel about what he did. That his lawyer made the claim in an article in Vanity Fair just makes it look like cheap hucksterism. That Woodward and Bernstein will neither confirm nor deny that Felt was Deep Throat makes it look worse. Can’t everyone just fess up and move on?
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3 years, 3 months ago,,
by Fred (,
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Dean Esmay notes that when he goes to see Revenge of the Sith, it will be in a digital theatre:
While there are some detractors to the technology, I have to say that Star Wars Episode II in a DLP cinema was easily one of the most visually beautiful things I have ever seen on a movie screen. So crisp it was almost three dimensional, and so different in how it worked that it seemed almost as startling as the transition from black & white to color film. I suspect that cinematographers in coming years will have to reinvent the way they do things as this technology becomes more common, much as the move from black & white to color did. (For old-time computer geeks: remember how startling the transition from EGA to Super-VGA was? Yeah, it’s about like that. No kidding.)
According to TI’s Digital Light Processing site, the closest DLP-enabled theatre showing RotS in digital is Showcase Cinema’s Springdale 18: Cinema de Lux in Cincinnati, a distance of 110 miles. Would I really consider a 4–hour round trip to see a Star Wars movie that I can see on 70mm film transfer ten minutes down the street? Probably not, but then again {sound of drool hitting keyboard over thoughts of the Lava Planet in DLP}.
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3 years, 3 months ago,,
by Fred (,
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A few quick hits about books, movies, etc. that have caught my eye:
The Third Translation, by Matt Bondurant. This thriller, about a cryptologist working on the mysteries of an ancient Egyptian relic at the British Museum, first appeared to be a quasi-historical conspiracy tale in the Dan Brown mold, but was much more of a straightforward adventure tale, though it did involve a lot of Egyptology and a rather bizarre conspiracy. Lots of drugs, too. At heart inherently flawed because it sets up an intellectual puzzle that is never really addressed and resolves the hero’s nominal quest in a rather facile way, it’s still an interesting three-fourths of a book if you’re into linguistics, Egypt or scientific arcana. It really needs an ending, however. I read it mostly on airplanes, so it served its purposes well. Lest you be worried, it is a much better written book than any of Dan Brown’s works.
Seven Soldiers, written by Grant Morrison, art by J.H. Williams, Simone Bianchi, Cameron Stewart, Ryan Sook, Frazer Irving, Pascal Ferry, Yanick Paquette, Michael Bair and Doug Mahnke. This is a 30 issue comic story arc by Morrison, consisting of two bookend specials and seven 4–issue miniseries about seven “new and inexperienced” heroes (Klarion, Mister Miracle, Frankenstein, Zatanna, The Guardian, Bulleteer and Shining Knight) that together try to save the world (without actually meeting and teaming up, JLA or X-Men style). Each mini is a self-contained story but each has impacts on the others. Publication is spread throughout 2005 and into 2006. I’ve read Seven Soldiers #0 and Shining Knight #1, with more on the way from Mile High Comics. Looks really good, although I suspect lack of knowledge of the fringes of the DC Universe may be a problem eventually.
The Narrows, by Michael Connelly. As with any Michael Connelly novel, you pretty much know what you’re going to get – hard-nosed but unconventional detective (in this case, series favorite Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch), battles with bureaucracy, crazed killer, introspection about family responsibilities vs. passion for the job, etc. It’s all here, too. At some point, the books will become cliched and a parody of themselves, but Connelly’s not there yet. If you like mystery novels, Connelly’s pretty much at the top of the list these days. Another airplane pick, but a quicker and on-the-whole more enjoyable read than The Third Translation.
Mezmerize – System of a Down. Follow-up to 2001’s Toxicity, I found the CD to be uneven at best, despite SOAD being The Next Big Thing, hyped for weeks by Best Buy, called the vanguard of the “new prog” by Entertainment Weekly, subject of glowing adoration in Wired. Like Toxicity, this CD is a melange of styles, from the piledriving harshness of B.Y.O.B to the far more melodic Old School Hollywood and Lost in Hollywood. To be fair, some of my feelings about the music are derived from the sophomoric politics on the tracks getting airplay: B.Y.O.B. (“Why don’t presidents fight the war/why do they always send the poor?”) and Sad Statue (“We’ll all go down in history/With a sad Statue Of Liberty/And a generation that didn’t agree.”). Overall, though it’s still a pretty good listen, and rock-band politics are generally about as well thought out as any celebrity pontification. The biggest problem is the marketing of the CDs. The band cut a 75–minute CD in half, and will follow the 38–minute Mezmerize with Hypnotize later in the year. It’s a rather bald-faced attempt to get more bucks from fans, and I wouldn’t have bought this one had it not been 8 bucks at Best Buy.
Sideways – starring Paul Giamatti, Thomas Haden Church, Virginia Madsen and Sandra Oh; written and directed by Alexander Payne. This little movie about life, love and wine was clearly one of the more overrated of the past year, but that is largely not its fault. The media hyped it to the point that it was all but destined to be a little disappointing if you saw it on DVD, like I did. Like all of Alexander Payne’s films (Election, About Schmidt, Citizen Ruth), Sideways is ultimately about confronting the bleakness and averageness of life. It is almost painful to watch Paul Giamatti as he lets go of the tight control he’s kept over his life since his marriage disintegrated, and surely it was he, and not Thomas Haden Church who deserved an Oscar nod. Unlike the other works, this one actually ends on a note of optimism for Giamatti’s Miles, though the future of Church’s Jack is certainly not so bright, once his new wife discovers him for the philanderer that he is. Wine lovers will have much to like about the movie, as well as some points to criticize (Santa Barbara County as the center of the California Wine Country?). The plot also seemed a little too facile – what are the odds that Miles and Jack would meet two separate beautiful and available women in the same small town who not only both love wine, but know each other well? It’s still a very good movie, just perhaps not quite as good as it was made out to be (saying as much about last years other releases as it does about Sideways).
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3 years, 3 months ago,,
by Fred (,
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Via my friend Fred (who had a blog, but I don’t know if he does any more), comes a great discussion of the geek’s love for continuity, written by Todd Seavey, Director of Publications at the American Council on Science and Health.
Metaphilm - Star Wars: The Science of Consistency
For you see, any story must have a certain amount of internal coherence if we are to achieve suspension of disbelief. And we must achieve suspension of disbelief. For most people, that just means that a given fictional universe must hold together for the space of two hours: if the main character in a conventional romantic comedy, possibly some movie for girls featuring Meg Ryan or someone like that, says at the beginning that she is an only child, she should not have a sister present at her wedding at the end of the movie. Stories like that—about boring, conventional people with their petty love affairs and their tawdry sex antics, people whom one could not trust when the chips were down and an Imperial Battle Droid were attacking your spaceship!—are relatively easy to keep consistent. It is only the grandeur and majesty of a fictional universe the size and complexity of one like the Star Wars universe, the Star Trek universe, the DC Comics universe, or the Marvel Comics universe (and perhaps soap operas) that is truly difficult to maintain.
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3 years, 3 months ago,,
by Fred (,
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The Parade of Unfortunate Star Wars Costumes
This woman is dressed as one of the Tonnika Twins, characters who appear on screen in the Cantina scene in the original Star Wars for but a fraction of a second and do not speak. This is the equivalent of going to a Psycho convention dressed as some random person Janet Leigh walks by in the street in the early scenes. It’s madness, I tell you, and it has to stop somewhere!
Thanks, Flea
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3 years, 3 months ago,,
by Fred (,
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You were destined to have a Red Lightsaber.
Red is the color of fire and blood, so it is
associated with energy, war, danger, strength,
power, and determination as well as passion and
desire. You have seen the Strength and Power of
the Dark Side of the Force and have you thirst
for more of it.
What Colored Lightsaber Would You Have?
brought to you by Quizilla
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3 years, 3 months ago,,
by Fred (,
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Today’s Get Your Hands Off My Parenting moment comes courtesy of Michele at A Small Victory, who points to this USA Today story:
One day after a record-shattering weekend for Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, an advocacy group is asking Burger King to stop the tie-in of its Kids Meals with the film because it is rated PG-13.
The same group, Dove Foundation, got McDonald’s 13 years ago to apologize for “confusion” from its promotion of PG-13 Batman Returns with Happy Meals. Now, it’s going after BK’s latest Kids Meal promotion — targeted at kids ages 4 to 9. The meals feature characters from Sith or other Star Wars films.
“When Burger King puts that in a Kids Meal, there’s an implicit endorsement of the movie,” says Dick Rolfe, chairman of Dove Foundation.
Okay, reality check time. Revenge of the Sith is the story of the final downfall of a tarnished hero into the Dark Side of the Force, a Jedi becoming a Sith Lord, a group so evil that there are only two in existence at any time in the entire freaking universe. Anakin becomes Darth Vader, evil villain and part of many a nightmare in the 1970s, a character so evil that he makes James Earl Jones scary. Along the way, Anakin/Vader does many evil things. He routinely uses magic strangulation on his minions. His forces blew up an entire planet when Leia wouldn’t give up the location of The Secret Rebel Base. He cut off his own son’s hand in a lightsaber duel. RotS contains no less than a half-dozen similar battles, including one that ends with the hero-villain on fire, so badly burned he needs a really cool helmet and voice sound effect to make it to Episode IV. Knowing all this, most of which was revealed to movie audiences as early as 1977, and knowing that this movie is in fact rated PG-13, you’re going to take your 5 year old to see it just because some minimum wage slave puts a Luke Skywalker toy in the Kids Meal? Who is this so-called Burger King? Successor to Emperor Palpatine? One look into the eyes of the evil Burger King marketer-droid and your abilities to raise your own children are indelibly corrupted by the Dark Side?
These are toys. Kids like toys. Kids ask their parents to take them to BK because they want to have the toys. Parents spend money on the BK Kids Meal instead of the McD Happy Meal because the kids like the cool toys (and adults like me run around buying cheeseburgers because they need all 31 of them). That’s it. BK is endorsing the idea of making money from selling food. They’re not endorsing taking a toddler to see Anakin {SPOILER DELETED} a bunch of {SPOILER DELETED}.
Apparently, BK is not backing down. Good. After all, the Jedi were not eliminated, and we know where the King’s castle is.
Plus, you have to love the monkeys-on-crack marketing team at Burger King who came up with The Sith Sense (and yes, I know it’s just a repurposing of 20Q, only the greatest toy of 2004). You’d think Vader could have guessed that I was thinking of the location of the Secret Rebel Base.
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3 years, 3 months ago,,
by Fred (,
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As the old canard says, if you can piss off the left wing and right wing equally, you’re a moderate. By that measure, the McCain 14 are moderates, as conservatives are up in arms that not all of the ten filibustered/threatened nominees are guaranteed an up or down vote. Liberals are apoplectic that the three most offensive (to them) nominees will get a confirmation vote. That you’ve equally offended those at both extremes doesn’t mean you’ve done a good thing, however, and this compromise is hardly a solution to the dispute.
From where I sit, the agreement was less about moderate compromise and more about doing what the Senate does best, avoiding confrontation. It’s the most passive-aggressive place in America. Senators have this view of themselves as being politicians above politics, which mostly means a place where officeholders should be above criticism, free to make deals in back rooms, away from the light of public observation. And this is the classic cigars-in-the-back-room deal: 3 nominees get votes, a couple more get thrown to the wolves, and the entire operation rests on the thin tendril of good faith and "extraordinary circumstances." Does anyone really expect that the Democrats won’t filibuster a Supreme Court nominee they don’t like but know will win confirmation? Extraordinary is, after all, in the eye of the beholder? Is ideology an extraordinary circumstance. That these three nominees get votes would indicate that any nominee to their left shouldn’t be filibustered on ideology, but Congress’ good faith and a buck might buy you a burger at McDonald’s.
Much hand-wringing was avoided about the tradition of the senate, the filibuster and protection of minority rights. Jimmy Stewart notwithstanding, the filibuster adds little to the deliberative nature of the upper chamber. That Delaware gets the same number of votes as California does more to protect the rights of the minority than does the filibuster. That Senators stand for election less frequently than do Presidents does more for deliberation than does the filibuster. Given that filibustering Senators don’t need to do much actual speaking means it has even less effect. I’d love to see the dinosaur go, not just for appointments, but for legislation, too. The ultimate protector of the minority is, after all, the ballot box. If voters don’t like what GOP control of government results in, they can vote in a new Congress in 2006 and a new President in 2008.
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3 years, 3 months ago,,
by Fred (,
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3 years, 3 months ago,,
by Fred (,
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