Local Inactivist

Elf doesn't suck

2003-11-16T22:39:00.000-08:00

Let me say this right up front. I fucking hate Will Farrell. Over time, I have grudgingly come to accept that he's funny. I don't have to like it. As a matter of fact, if Jon Favreau hadn't directed "Elf", I never would have considered seeing it.

That said, "Elf" is really funny. Director Jon Favreau has done an amazing job. The casting in particular is stunning. Bob Newhart is a perfect choice for Farrell's adoptive father, as is James Caan for his biological father. Bit parts to watch for are Leon Redbone as Leon the Snowman, Andy Richter and Kyle Gass as children's book writers, and Ed Asner as Santa Claus. That's right, Lou Grant plays Santa. And he's damn good.

The story is a traditional Christmas classic. Farrell plays Buddy, a human who was adopted by Elves at birth. At age 30, Buddy realizes he's human, and sets off to find his father (Caan) in New York. We follow Buddy around New York watching his child-like sense of wonder and the standard fish-out-of-water gags. Farrell is good here, but he's no Jim Carrey. That's OK though. Jim Carrey is no Jim Carrey anymore.

Really, it's the little touches that make the film. Buddy's North Pole is right out of a Rankin-Bass stop-motion animation Christmas Special, right down to the snowflakes. And to my mind, there's nothing more Christmassy than Santa punching out an Elf.

To sum up, I hate Will Farrell, feel-good movies, and I'm not a big fan of Christmas in general. All that said, Elf is the best Christmas movie I've seen since A Christmas Story. I laughed out loud.

Blackout!

2003-11-13T21:25:00.000-08:00

I was reading Wil Wheaton's blog, as I regularly do, when I came across this entry. It reminded me of my own blackout story.

As you will recall, there was a massive blackout on the East Coast on August 14th. By an odd coincidence, my apartment complex lost power the night before. I hadn't been through one of these in a while, so I was totally unprepared. With PG&E estimating that power would be restored at 4 am, I was in a strange situation. What to do, what to do? No TV, no computer, no light. I was facing a dull dull night. And, due to this being crunch time at work, I was in no mood to go out and be social. I actually considered going back to work at 8 pm.

Luckily, cooler heads prevailed. I ran out to Safeway, 1 block away and glowing with light, to buy some candles. I figured I'd do an Abe Lincoln: read by candlelight. I quickly learned that that's harder than it sounds. I don't have candleholders, so I had to prop up the candles on dinnerplates. Also, candles don't put out much light. I had to light five at a time to see the page. Next, I had to find a book with large enough type for me to see it clearly. I wasn't going to pull out any of my comic books around dripping wax and open flame, and I don't have the new Harry Potter, so I dug out my old copy of Flatland. 12 point type. Yummy.

Next problem: several of my appliances have internal batteries so they can warn me that the power's out. And they did. Even though there was no power, I had two power supplies and a phone beeping at me every few seconds to tell me what I already knew. The power supplies I could turn off, but I had to stash the phone in the bedroom and cover it with blankets to muffle the sound. Kind of like Mom used to do to us when we were kids.

I also decided to take advantage of the quiet and the absence of both TV and computers to call some people. I figured what better time to call the people I've been meaning to talk to for way too long. The down side of living on the West Coast is that all my East Coast friends are asleep by the time I get home from work. And the West Coast crew wasn't answering (Jace was working. Tommy was at rehearsal. Adrienne doesn't have an excuse (or a web site). Hey, how about sharing the love, Adri?). OK, I tried.

It's times like these when you really notice your surroundings. My battery-powered Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law clock is amazingly loud. Louder still was my neighbor, Superfan. With no sports to distract him, he began seranading the neighborhood about 9:30 pm. There's nothing quite like a drunk guy holding a sparkler and singing selections from "Evita" to perk up a quiet evening at home. I was just getting ready to call Security on him when someone else went over and got in his face. Superfan simply didn't see why people weren't overjoyed to have him standing in his doorway singing showtunes at us. After all, who's trying to sleep at 10 pm? Surely none of the local school kids. Finally, the power came back on about 11 pm, just in time for me to go to bed.

So, what did I learn? Keep candles and large-print books handy in case of blackouts. Seems like there oughta be more, but I'm blanking.

Paging Dr. Obvious

2003-11-03T20:40:00.000-08:00

I took the NeoCon Quiz at the Christian Science Monitor's site. Apparantly, I'm a liberal. Ya think?

Kill Bill Vol. 1: Is there any blood left?

2003-10-20T21:56:00.000-07:00

I saw "Kill Bill", the long anticipated new film from Quentin Tarantino. Wow. Just wow. Is there any fake blood left in Hollywood? I'm not kidding, this is the most blood I've ever seen in any movie ever. I've seen The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Day of The Dead, even Chopping Mall, and I've never seen this much blood. Every time a limb got cut off (and that happened a lot), there was a geyser of blood.

Let's recap the plot first, because it won't take long. Uma Thurman was a member of a group of assassins called the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad. For some reason, the other members attack her wedding party killing all but her. Four years later, The Bride (Thurman) emerges from her coma and swears revenge. That's about all the plot you need. Let the bloodbath begin.

No, wait. I can explain the plot better. It's "Quentin Tarantino's 'Charlie's Angels'". Yeah, there we go. If the Angels were assassins instead of detectives, and Bosley was a fighter instead of the guy who waits back at the office, this would be the film version. For reasons as yet unexplained, Jill Munroe leaves the Angels to marry. Charlie sends the rest of the crew to kill her, her husband-to-be, and anyone else in the room. Four years later, yadda yadda yadda.

You want a shorter version? Fox Force Five.

Quentin Tarantino has never been short on visual style, and his film vocabulary can't be topped. You want a drinking game? Every time there's a reference to another film, drink. Play with beer, because this is a rich canvas. Drink twice for a Tarantino trademark.

Kill Bill Vol. 1 is a Mack Truck of a film, an almost unbroken three hour action sequence. I get the feeling that Tarantino is trying to replicate several different genres of 1970s B action films. We begin with a knife fight between Thurman and Vivica A Fox that screams "Foxy Brown". A little plot and a lot of violence later, we change gears entirely and it's a Hong Kong action movie. Thurman goes to Okinowa to commission a sword to kill O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu). Here, we get something new. O-Ren Ishii's origin is told in loving detail in a fantastic animated sequence. I was left with two thoughts: 1) Why is so much screen time devoted to a single origin story of a supporting character? No one else gets an origin. 2) I wonder if Tarantino could do animation? From here, it's one long sword battle. It must go on for at least half an hour, but never gets dull. Michael Bay wishes he could do action like this.

If the critics were hoping this is where Quentin Tarantino finally screws up and turns in a 50 million dollar turd, sorry guys. It's no Pulp Fiction, it's no Reservoir Dogs, but it's brilliant in it's own way. There are many reasons to hate Tarantino: he's pretentious, arrogant, and he's a lousy actor who insists on casting himself. The one thing he's not is a bad director. Kill Bill Vol. 1 is a brilliant film that's worth seeing twice: once now, and again in February when Vol 2 is released.

Oh, and you'll never reach for the breakfast cereal again without thinking of Kill Bill.

Cra$h

2003-10-19T21:16:00.000-07:00

I'd like to take a moment and sing the praises of my laptop. It's a Chembook from 1998. How old is it? 333 mhz, 64 mb ram, and it's got a sticker proudly proclaiming that it's "Designed for Windows 98". At five years old, it's the oldest piece of technology I own. Put it this way, it's so old I can't even run Linux without hacking together some special drivers. Seriously, I'd have to be running Red Hat 5.6 If I want to use X Windows.

So, who cares? What's the big deal, Logan's too cheap to upgrade his laptop, why's he bragging?

I just dropped it.

I had it balanced on the arm of the couch, and I knocked it off. Ironically, I was actually thinking "Be careful, Logan. Don't knock your laptop off the couch." when I knocked my laptop off the couch. It fell about 2 feet, bounced off the coffee table, and hit the ground with an expensive crash.

It didn't even shut down. I'm typing on it right now. This is the second time I've dropped it, and it's perfectly fine. The hard drive seized and the display froze, but after a quick reboot, I'm typing away again.

I've never been totally thrilled with this thing, but now I'm sold on Chembooks for life. I'd take this bad boy into combat.

No Lesson, No Moral

2003-10-19T21:07:00.000-07:00

You ever have something happen to you that scared you in a different kind of way? The kind of scare that's more of a signifier than an actual event?

I was just gassing up my car at a local Chevron station. I pulled up a little short at the pump, maybe two feet, and I had to stretch the hose a little. I looked at it, wondering if I should pull up a little more, but it seemed OK. I set the pump going and set to washing my windshield. When I was almost finished fueling, I went back to the pump anticipating the shutoff. And that's when it happened. When the autoshutoff triggered on the pump, the nozzle flew out of the tank and on to the ground, spilling fuel.

That's not supposed to happen.

I stared at it for a minute, wondering if I was about to die in a particularly cinematic way. There's fuel on the ground, and the nozzle is mostly metal. One spark, and I'm on the news. All I could think of were movies where gas stations explode: "Robocop", mostly. After so many movies where so many bad things happen in slow motion, I was amazed at how fast it happened. There's no match tumbling end-over-end while a guitar rumbles in the background, not reaction shots as the onlookers see what's about to happen, just a tube flying through the air and a far-too-late realization that I could have been killed, and a follow-up that I wasn't, but that standing here looking at the gas nozzle wasn't particularly smart.

So what's the lesson? What did I learn? Pull up closer to the pump next time? Don't go to the Chevron at Homestead and De Anza? Seems like there oughta be a moral to the story, something I can take away from this little misadventure, but other than already stated, I'm drawing a blank.

Comedy Alert!

2003-10-17T23:32:00.000-07:00

The Punchline in San Francisco is celebrating their 25th Anniversary next week, and they're doing it in style. All week long, they've got a different headliner every night. And they're good comics, too: Sarah Silverman, Christopher Titus, Tom Rhodes, why, there's failed sitcoms as far as the eye can see!

What's important here is that the world's greatest living comedian, the funniest man ever to walk the planet, Patton Oswalt is playing The Punchline at 9 pm on Tuesday, October 21. Ticket price: $10! If you live in San Francisco, you have no excuse not to go. If you live in San Jose, you have no excuse not to go. If you live in Seattle, get on a plane! Put it this way, my workaholic brother is going to a club in San Francisco on a weeknight. "I'll show up late on Wednesday. :-) ", he says. Patton is just that good.

What more do you need to know? Get off your fat, drunken, bulbous ass, plant it at The Punchline and prepare to see one of comedy's giants.

Screwed by the liberal media

2003-10-17T23:21:00.000-07:00

The weirdest thing just happened. Molly Ivins is in town pimping her new book, "Bushwacked". Mom's a big fan, as am I. I got on the horn to my brother, and we decided to get Mom an autographed copy for Christmas. Feelin' pretty good about this one, as it's a good gift Mom'll never expect, and I'm doing my shopping a good 8 weeks before Christmas. I'm so damn clever.

Eric and I arrived at Kepler's in Menlo Park about 15 minutes early, and the place was packed. There must have been 2-300 people waiting to get their books signed. I was amazed. Menlo Park is a pretty affluent part of Silicon Valley, which is anything but poor to begin with. Furthermore, this wasn't a crowd of young bomb-throwing radicals. Most people were in their 50s, and reminded me of nothing more than my parents. I call this a good sign: elderly rich people coming out in force to meet a left wing writer. I realize that this is the San Francisco Bay Area, one of the most liberal parts of America, but I'm still encouraged.

We decided to get dinner and come back later. Fast forward 90 minutes, we're back, and there are still at least 50 people still waiting in line. Sadly, Kepler's was sold out of Molly's book. Sold completely out. Every single copy. We were completely baffled by this, I mean, it's a book, not an album, and it's Molly Ivins, not Metallica. We stood around for a while baffling and working on a plan. Here's what we came up with:

Plan 1: Buy a copy of Al Franken's new book and have her sign it. I figured I could say Al's coming to Kepler's next week (he is) and I'm gonna buy a copy of her book then and have him sign it. As it turns out, Mom already has all of Al Franken's books.
Plan 2: Same thing, but with Bill Maher's book. I know Mom doesn't have it and the reviews are good, but Bill's got kind of a potty mouth and I don't think Mom would appreciate his humor as much as I do. After all, I gave her a couple of Henry Rollins CD's back in '95, and she didn't think he was funny at all.
Plan 3: Get one of Ann Coulter's books and have Molly Ivins sign it as a joke. Sadly, this would mean giving Ann Coulter money and contributing to her reign of stupidity, so that's out.
Plan 4: Declare defeat, go home, and watch Futurama reruns.

After much discussion, we went with Plan 4. Merry Christmas, Mom.

Bubba Ho-tep

2003-10-12T23:28:00.000-07:00

You want a movie? I've got a movie for you: Bubba Ho-tep. Get this: Elvis and JFK fighting the Undead. It gets better, The King is played by Evil Dead star Bruce Campbell, and Ossie Davis stands in for JFK. You heard me. Here's the plot: Sometime in the mid-70s, Elvis switched places with an Elvis impersonator, freeing himself from the pressures of his Vegas/Memphis lifestyle. 25 years later, he's recovering from a broken hip in a cheap East Texas retirement home. And that's when the Mummy shows up.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear: Bruce Campbell IS Elvis. For all I know, The King got plastic surgery back in 1977, drove to Detroit, signed on to "Evil Dead", and has been living as Bruce Campbell ever since. I've never seen anyone do Elvis like Ash does. This is a career-topper of a movie. Bruce Campbell is truly amazing, showing acting chops we never knew were there, and his chemistry with Ossie Davis is something to behold.

As the film opens, Elvis is bed-bound, and barely there. Life buzzes around him at a speed beyond his comprehension. When he does get out of bed, he hobbles around with a walker awaiting treatment for a growth on his pecker. This is a sad state for The King of Rock and Roll, and he knows it. Lying in bed, he laments his estranged ex-wife and daughter, the opportunities he missed and squandered as he waits for death. When a series of grisly murders occur, Elvis begins investigating with the help of an elderly black man (Ossie Smith) who claims to be JFK. With a real project to work, Elvis is more alive than he's felt in decades. He finds that he has a chance to be the hero he always pretended to be in his movies, and he rises to that challenge (in more ways than one).

Let's be clear, this isn't high art. This is Elvis Presley and JFK fighting the Undead in East Texas. Still, Director Don Coscarelli, the man behind the horror classic Phantasm, brings some pathos and depth to the story. Honestly, this is the best horror movie I've seen in years. In the grand tradition of Halloween, Alien, and The Thing, it's good for a drunken Saturday night midnight movie with your buds, or for art school students to hyper-analyze whether the Mummy represents the death of heroes or the end of American innocence. Either way, this is one HELL of a movie. Bubba Ho-tep: Now playing at the artsy theatre by the college with bad seats and a sticky floor.

Insert Michael Jackson Joke Here

2003-10-09T23:04:00.000-07:00

Remember a while back when everyone was freaked out about how bad Michael Jackson looked? It gets worse. Brace yourself, it's worse than you think. Really. I'm not kidding.

Rod Rambles No More

2003-09-30T20:52:00.000-07:00

Ramblin' Rod died. OK, it was last year, but I just found out. I was home watching Death To Smoochy last night and I started wondering if Rod was still on the air. Apparantly not.

See, back in the early days of Television (as in all of it up until about, uh, now) every town had a home-grown kiddie show hosted by some local third-string celebrity. In Portland, Oregon, that man was Ramblin' Rod Anders. Ramblin' Rod ran on KPTV, Portland from 1964 until 1997. That's 33 years, folks.

It was pretty typical of kids shows from the period, but Rod kept it simple. No costume for him, just polyester slacks and a cardigan weighed down with hundreds of buttons kids had given him over the years. Every morning at 7:30, Rod rode in on a tugboat, talked to the kids, ran a smile contest, introduced his special birthday guests, ran some cartoons, gave out a few cases of Pop Shoppe Pop and tickets to The Oaks Amusement Park. Every morning, the bleachers were packed with Cub Scouts, Girl Scouts and Bluebirds, and the kids loved him. There were pretenders over the years, Heck Harper, Rusty Nails, Dr. Zoom, Rod buried them all. Sound a little low-rent? It gets better.

KPTV wasn't a network affiliate. Back when there were only 3 networks, KPTV was the "other" station in Portland. They ran a lot of syndicated programming and a lot of old movies. On weekend evenings, it was Portland Wrestling, which was a lot like the WWF if their budget was around $50 an episode. Between bouts, Rod did ads for used cars. As I got older, this disturbed me. Even as the world's most cynical 12-year-old, I was disturbed by the concept that Rod had to do ads. The man was an icon, for God's sake.

There was a disturbing rumor, though. When I was about 8, I read an article about Rod that suggested the worst. That Ramblin' Rod...didn't like children. That sat kinda weird with me. Maybe Rod was just a sell-out, only in it for the bucks. As time passed, I realized that it didn't matter much. If he liked kids, great. If he didn't, then he was one of the great actors of all time. Imagine, if he actually did hate kids, then he managed to be their best freind and hero every day for over 30 years without developing a drinking problem. And if the worst you can say about him was that he didn't like kids, the man must have been a saint.

Does any of this sound familiar? A children's show pimping off-brand soda and a run-down amusement park? Maybe he doesn't even like kids and he's only in it for the bucks? Seem like you've heard this before? Here's why: Simpsons creator Matt Groening is from Portland. There is no possible way the Groening could NOT have watched Rod as a child. There's much discussion among Simpsons-obsessives of where Krusty the Clown came from, and Ramblin' Rod is one of the leading contenders.

I'll tell you the truth, though. My brother and I always had a secret dream. See, we grew up in Corvallis, about two hours south of Portland. We always knew that we were never gonna be on the show. We wanted to destroy it. Our plan was to get some wino off Burnside and plant him on the show. With any luck, he'd soil himself on camera. What can I say? Eric and I share a pretty dark sense of humor.

It's sad, really. Rod was on the air for 33 years. Clearly, there was an audience in Portland for a locally produced children's show, and Rod did the job well. What replaced Rod? "Good Day Oregon." Seems like everything on TV these days is either network, syndicated, or so bleached out generic that there's no difference between "AM Seattle" and "Hello, New Orleans". What ever happened to locally produced programming? What happened to local sports talk shows replete with bad toupees and loud sports coats, alcoholic sea captains interviewing children's librarians, fat Midwestern Vampires introducing horror movies, and cross-eyed, hare-lipped Libertarians ranting about free trade? This is what made television great, and it's disappearing every day.

So for you, Ramblin' Rod, and your bygone era, I offer this salute. I raise a glass of off-brand cola to your memory.

TV Eye

2003-09-23T23:11:00.000-07:00

I'm a huge Iggy Pop fan. Huge. One of the most frustrating things in my life has been society's refusal to recognize his genius. 10 years ago, I was working in a coffee place, and playing "Lust For Life" in an almost continuous loop. The reactions were uniform: "Iggy Who?" "This is weird, I don't like it." Fast forward a decade and "Lust For Life" is being used to advertise everything from cars to cruises. I hope he kept the publishing.

I was a happy guy in 1990 when Iggy finally got some recognition. Mtv bestowed upon him their Best New Artist award for "Candy". I'll point out that Iggy's first record with The Stooges was released in 1969.

In a business where most artists either burn out and die young or get old, fat, and irrelevent, Iggy stands in very small company. After almost 35 years, he's still a caged animal. As far as I can tell, he doesn't even own a shirt. He's wandering around a stage on my TV right now. At 55, he's at the top of his game, and he's in better shape than he was at 25.

Oddly, the only other performer I can think of who's still putting out new and relevent material in their 3rd decade on the road is David Bowie. It's no coincidence, because when these two polar opposites have collaberated, they've both turned out some of their best work. I think it's the same reason that Bowie works so well with Trent Reznor. Where Bowie is all poise and calculation, Iggy is an animal, just released from his cage, exorcising his demons through performance.

Cable has provided a nice Iggy fix for me this week. Tonight, he's on "Sessions at West 54th" on Trio Network. It's an intimate performance, maybe 75 people in the audience. Iggy is still on fire. It's the only time I've ever seen him play guitar live.

In direct contrast is my favorite episode of "The Adventures of Pete and Pete", which Tivo was nice enough to find for me. It's Pete's first school dance, and his best friend Nona's father is looking for a dance with his little girl. He's been looking forward to it all week, and he's been practicing dance moves out in the yard. Nona, of course, is mortified and looking for a way out. The payoff is that Nona's Dad is Iggy Pop, and the dancing that's so bizzare is just his normal stage antics. Oh, and the band playing the dance? Luscious Jackson. And this is a kid's show. I don't know who produced "Pete and Pete", but they were fucking geniuses.

The best part is that barring car accidents and obsessed fans, we have at least another dozen Iggy Pop albums to look forward to. Iggy takes care of himself, and he shows no sign of slowing down. Good God, Iggy Pop will probably outlive me. Can someone arrange to have him dance on my grave? To "The Passenger", please.

Why Can't George Read?

2003-09-23T21:35:00.000-07:00

You ever discover something that was terrifying and yet explained everything? It happened to me today. CNN ran an article about President Bush's reaction to the race for the Democratic Nomination.

Here are some choice excerpts:

Bush said he insulates himself from the "opinions" that seep into news coverage by getting his news from his own aides. He said he scans headlines, but rarely reads news stories.

"I appreciate people's opinions, but I'm more interested in news," the president said. "And the best way to get the news is from objective sources, and the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what's happening in the world."

Dude is the President of the United States, and he doesn't read newspapers. Let me repeat that. He's President, and he doesn't read the paper. It explains so much about him. Now, in his defense, I'm sure he has an aide who reads Ziggy to him every day. "Ah, Ziggy. Will you ever win?"

It explains a lot, when you think about it. First off, I'm sure he's dead serious, because there's no possible benefit to lying. If we take this at face value, it means that he's simply repeating whatever his advisors tell him, without doing any analysis or research of his own. Now that's a leader. It also explains how it is that he can keep changing his story without seeming to notice. Even he doesn't know what he's saying, he just reads the teleprompter. I have always suspected that Bush was simply a puppet and that Dick Cheney and/or Karl Rove were pulling the strings. Now, I'm sure of it.

A few more choice tidbits from the article:

"[French President Jacques Chirac] and I have had some pretty frank discussions before about issues," Bush said. "I will continue to remind him, though -- and he needs to hear this clearly from me, which he will -- that America is a good nation, genuinely good."

Way to take a stand, George. "America...Good!"

And, of course, he weighed in on Iraq (glad he's taking an interest).

"Obviously, I think they're going badly for the soldiers who lost their lives"

Again, The President cuts right to the point. Things aren't going well for the dead. Things aren't going well at all for them. With bold statements like this, I'm sure he'll have many dead people voting for him in 2004. Especially in Florida.

Sounds like an injury to me

2003-09-21T23:33:00.000-07:00

I found myself watching SlamBall tonight, God knows why. Normally, I'd issue some snarky comment here about the game, but the description on the info screen says it all:

SlamBall. Extreme. Sports Non-Event

I really can't improve on that.

Lost In Translation

2003-09-21T20:43:00.000-07:00

I saw Lost In Translation, Bill Murray's latest film. I am stunned. This is one of the best films I've seen all year. I came out of the theatre wondering if it was fair to call it Bill Murray's best film. It's definitely his best dramatic performance, but there's not much drama there to compare it to.

Bill plays Bob Harris, a famous actor who's come to Japan to shoot a commercial. He's bored and completely out of his element. At the hotel, he meets Scarlett, who's in Japan accompanying her husband on a business trip. She's just as lonely as Bob, and just as confused by this alien culture. Neither of them can sleep, and both gravitate to the hotel bar, where they meet.

What follows is completely unlike the films Hollywood generally makes. There's comparatively little dialogue, and what there is, rarely serves to advance the plot. Bob and Scarlett hang out, club around Tokyo, and become friends. Sophia Coppola, who wrote, directed, and produced the film, takes great pleasure in shooting colorful passive scenes, and NOT filling them with pop music, clever one-liners and catch phrases. The result is a performance so natural that Bill Murray doesn't appear to be acting at all. By deliberately not explaining everything that's happening, Coppola allows us to see Japan through the character's eyes, beautiful but confusing, and at times incomprehensible.

Bottom line, this is one of the best films of 2003. Do yourself a favor and go see it.

Canada?

2003-09-21T20:01:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a lot about Canada. It's nice country up there. Cold as death, but nice. I've been there a few times, and it's always been fun.

When I was 18, in 1986, I had to register for the draft. Well, they didn't actually call it a draft because there wasn't a draft at the time. As Jerry Reed put it back in the day, it's just a list of names we can call on if there's an emergency. Funny, I already had a Social Security card and I was registered at Oregon State University. Plus, I was getting financial aid. Seems like the Government could find me if they needed to. Still, in order to get the aforementioned financial aid, I had to register.

Now, this was 1986. Reagan was in the White House, and seemed to be doing everything he could to provoke a war with somebody. I lived in Weatherford Hall, a complete slum of a dorm. Now, I say slum, but I don't really mean it. Weatherford was built in the 1920s. It's very old, and poorly maintaned. Sometime in the 1970s it was decreed that residents could customize their rooms however they wanted. Many students went to town. My room, for instance, had a big loft, a bar, a couch that folded out into a bed, a desk, built-in shelving units, and a keg cooler hidden in the closet. Honestly, that room was one of the nicest places I've ever lived. The one thing it didn't have was phones. For the first four years I lived there, everyone on the third and fourth floor shared a single pay phone. 50 guys, one phone. Even better, one year there were 5 guys named "Andy". Somehow, it worked. That said, I imagined this scene:

Knock Knock Knock
"Yeah?"
"Phone, Logan"
"OK, Thanks."
I walk downstairs
"Hello?"
"Hi, Logan. This is Bob, from the Government?"
"Oh, hi. How are things in Washington?
"Oh, not bad. Kinda humid, but it's nice. Fishbone’s playing tonight."
"Yeah, ‘Truth and Soul’. Good album."
"Yeah, so reason I'm calling..."
"Yeah?"
"Well, I dunno if you've been reading the news, but we have this thing going on in Nicaragua?"
"Oh, yeah. I thought that was illegal."
"Yeah, it was. But we've got that all sorted out, and it's cool now."
"Ah."
"Anyway, it’s getting kind of hairy down there and we wanted to know if you were into helping us out?”
“Well, Bob, see, normally, I’d come help you out, but I’ve got this whole college thing going on.”
“Cool cool, no problem. Maybe next time.”
“Sure, have fun at Fishbone.”
“Right, bye.”
“Bye.”

Yeah, that’s gonna happen.

Filling out the Selective Service form, I told myself not to worry. If things got bad, I can always head for Canada. I’ve got an Uncle in Toronto. It’ll be fine.

As time passed, things improved. I finished college and got a job as a DJ. I figured that if the draft came, I would be in the radio corps, probably not in combat. More time passed, and I got older. Bill Clinton was President, and the odds of going to war ebbed even further. I got older, and wandered down to Silicon Valley to work as a Software Engineer. The odds of seeing combat ebbed further. I was administering systems and writing code, so I figured I’d probably be stationed in San Diego writing code for the Army. I turned 30, and the odds of being drafted receded further. Finally, I turned 35, and I was safe. I always figured that if there was a war that was big enough and bad enough that they were drafting 35-year-old engineers, I’d be volunteering anyway.

Then 9/11 happened.

Over the past two years, I’ve seen the USA PATRIOT Act passed, and PATRIOT 2 threatens. I’ve seen the Attorney General tell us that people need to watch what they say, and suggest a corps of civilians to keep tabs on their neighbors and report any suspicious behavior. And I’ve seen thousands of people detained and held incommunicado, without access to lawyers, without their families being told that they’ve been taken. I’ve seen American citizens declared “Enemy Combatants”, and denied both their Civil Rights and their rights as Prisoners of War. Over the past two years I’ve become more and more afraid.

I think about Canada. I think about the stories I’ve heard about the last trains out of Germany before they started arresting dissidents. I think about Toronto spending more on grants for artists than all of America. I think about clean streets and rivers, and low crime. Finally, I wonder if there will even be an election in 2004, if the new voting machines are pre-rigged to give the election to the GOP, and what happened to America that I suddenly have to worry about these things.

Joey? You looking for a roommate?

Update: Maybe so.

Comedy, or Why Am I The Only One Who Gets It?

2003-09-18T23:16:00.000-07:00

Comedy. I'm a bit of a fan. No, really? How novel. When I moved to The Bay Area, the thing I was most excited about (besides becoming obscenely wealthy) was seeing live stand up comedy. San Francisco is legendary for great clubs with first-rate comedians. As soon as I was settled, I started checking the club listings. I was not disappointed. My first Halloween, Comics Come Home did a benefit in SF. The lineup was great: Janeanne Garofalo, Bobcat Goldthwait, Margaret Cho, David Cross, and a host of others. Amazing show, and the first time I ever saw Patton Oswalt (Or as I like to call him, "The Evil Little Gnome who is America's Greatest Living Performer").

Here's the weird part: no one wanted to go. I talked to everyone I knew, and got the same response across the board: "Comedy? Wha?". I was finally able to convince my roommate that this was gonna be fun. He was tentative about the whole thing, especially when we found out that Scott Weiland was playing the same night. 10 minutes in, my point was proved. Everyone was red hot. Absolutely on fire. And, in retrospect, Patton Oswalt is bigger than ever, and is the (IMHO), best comedian working today. Scott Weiland, however, has yet to have another hit. Musically, I mean. He's had plenty of the other kind.

Over time, I've repeated the process. "Dude! Louis CK is playing Cobb's next weekend! Are you in?" "Who? What? What the hell are you talking about?" It's amazingly difficult to talk anyone into going to a comedy club the first time. After the first visit, they're sold. I really don't understand it. If you go to a rock club, and the band sucks, they will suck loudly and to the exclusion of any other activity (save drinking) for the next 45-60 minutes. At a comedy club, no matter how bad the guy is, he's guaranteed to be pretty good. After all, he gets paid to be funny in public. But the same people who will pay $9.50 (plus popcorn) to see a movie that got 2 stars won't pay $15 (plus two drinks) to see someone who is internationally famous for comedy.

I dunno, I just don't get it. No one has ever been able to explain to me what's so weird about stand-up comedy. I'll offer to pay for tickets AND drinks, and people will counter-offer with "Let's just go see the latest piece of shit from Ashton Kutcher". Maybe I've stumbled on a weird metaphor no one told me about, after all, this is San Francisco. Maybe "stand up comedy" is code for "watersports and rough leather sex". Someone explain it to me. As with so many things, I just don't get it.

Recall My Ass

2003-09-15T23:05:00.000-07:00

Latest news from California
It's all about the recall here. As we all read in the news, the recall vote has been postoned by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The issue at heart is that there are 6 counties that still have the old-school punch card voting machines. Being as these machines are rife with errors, this means that it's a dead cert that a significant number of votes (about 40,000) from those counties will not be counted.

The problem here is that the replacement machines will be electronic touch-screen's which are totally insecure.

There is some good news out here, though. Buried deep in the list of candidates for Governor is one familiar name: Jack Grisham. For those of you who suffer from cultural illiteracy (and by that I mean "weren't into Punk Rock in High School"), Jack was the lead singer for the seminal eighties punk band True Sounds Of Liberty. Time to dig out that copy of "Dance With Me" and Rock The Vote!

OK, that's totally disingenuous, as he's not even top five on my list of candidates, but TSOL did kick ass back in the day. At this point, my short list breaks down about like this:

1) No. No recall. This recall was a bad idea from the get go. We voted the bastard in, and now we're stuck with him. It's called Democracy, guys. Look it up.
2) Cruz Bustamente. I'm not what you'd call a fan, but he has a good chance of winning, and I fear him less than Ahh-nold.
3) Ariana Huffington. No chance of winning short of Arnold, Cruz Bustamente, Tom McClintock, Peter Ueberroth, and Bill Simon all being filmed shooting herion into each other's cocks while praising Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Ladin. So there's some hope.
4) Peter Camejo. I go through this every year. I want to vote Green Party, but I keep thinking about Nader in 2000, and I end up voting for the Democrat.

It occurred to me far too late, but I should have run. I should have taken a leave of absence from work and run for Governor. There's no way I could have won, or even made a dent in the outcome, but for the rest of my life I could have put "2003: Candidate for Governor of California" on my resume. For the rest of my life, every time I applied for a job, some guy would read that on my resume and I'd get that second look. If it was me reading that on a resume, I'd be all over it. I'd fire up a browser and check to see if the guy was on the level. If he was, I'd definately schedule him for an interview. How could you pass up an opportunity to talk to a Candidate for Governor one-on-one? I'll admit there are 135 people running, but they'll all have a hell of a story to tell at parties.

2003-09-14T21:12:00.000-07:00

8/28/03 9:21 am
The Worldcom execs have been indicted. Wither punishment? Theirs wasn't a violent offense, but neither was it a victimless crime. The direct victims, the shareholders, can't be reimbursed because the money no longer exists. Greater still is the collateral damage to the market and the economy as a whole. I know what my takeaway from the corporate scandals was: why should I put money into the stock market? The stocks were over valued, the analysts were lying about the stocks, and the companies themselves were lying about their performance. I might as well put my money in my mattress.

What to do?

There are 2 elements to a sentence: punishment & prevention. If Bob makes $10 million from his crime, is fined $2 M and serves 1 year, where is the incentive not to offend? I'd do a year in jail for $8 million dollars. Let's face it, even if it's ass-pounding prison, who wouldn't be everyone's prom date for a year for $8 million dollars?

We like to say that the punishment should fit the crime. In this case, the crime is greed. The punishment should be poverty. These men, having abused and betrayed capitalism, should lose their right to it. Start with forfiture of all assets. Everything. They start over with only their wits. Then, for the rest of their lives, they must live on minimum wage. They find a job, work 40, and get $5.15 an hour. If they make more, it's forfeit to pay their fines. If they can't find work, too bad. They can work road crew for minimum wage.

Their finances should be strictly audited. Gifts of cash or in kind counts as income. The onus would be on the offender to prove compliance. Fail, and it's prison. Every month, they have to show documentation of their every expense. If Bob claims that he's working at McDonalds, but drives around in a new BMW, he better be able to demonstrate that he's living in it and eating brown rice 3 meals a day.

Suppose our offender's spouse still makes $100,000 a year. Why should she suffer for his sins? Admittedly, she shouldn't. However, a spouse shouldn't be able to bail him out. the whole point is to make the guilty party suffer. Ergo, eery dollar
she gives him, every bagel, cab ride, and night at the mansion should count as income. If she can't handle it, tough. It's hard being married to a criminal.

This is the best scenario. There's money for the victims, and the penalties really hurt. Under this schema, if someone considers fraud on this level, the kind that can trash a national economy and hurt millions of people, they're not risking white-collar prison, they're risking everything with no way out. Forever.

8/28/03 10:53 am Boarding in Minnesota
All the Midwestern kids affect California Orange County. OP surfer jams. First class is full of salesmen, all listening to cell phones. The hours spent @ the gym 5 years ago visible under client dinners kept in check by 20-minute bursts on the Hyatt
Soloflex.

Airports look more like malls every day. To get from Terminal G to D, I pass Chili's, bookstores, pet stores, clothing stores, there's even someone hawking beds. The billboards sell office solutions and advertise more billboards. Can there be no vertical surface free of advertising?

Hindus & Sikhs creep through the halls like hunted animals. They know this is an airport in the Midwest and olive skin=terrorist. I can see the man in front of me tensing as he watches a grandfather reading the Punjabi Times. I want to explain it to him: "These are Sikhs, not Muslims. You can tell by the turban."

Me, I'm completely unconcerned. Hijacking is dead in America for at least 20 years. Anyone who stood up on a plane with any sort of announcement would instantly
rushed and beaten half to death with copies of Skymall. Even if it was only that they'd found someone's glasses.

2003-09-09T21:50:00.000-07:00

I'm back from my East Coast Vacation Odyssey. As always, it was a good time. I hung out with my friend Gary for about 10 days, rolling around Baltimore and doin' the do. While the do was being done, I took note notes-a-plenty in anticipation of blogging the whole trip. Sadly, all this information is on my PDA. In order to get at it, I have to sync with my PC, which is down. It gets better. The antenna broke off my Handspring Visor (3rd time), so I am sans phone. And I am never without my phone.

Being a full-on gadget freak, I took this as an omen: it's time to get a new PDA/Phone. Admittedly, the invason of Iraq, the recent proximity of Mars, and the death of Leni Riefenstahl were also clear signs that I needed a new cell phone.

The Handspring Treo 300 looked pretty good, but for one thing: it won't send SMS messages. It'll recieve SMS, but for some reason Handspring decided that sending was uneccessary. I am baffled by this decision, and am tempted to insert a rant here about SMS spam and Handspring seeing it's customers only as wallets and passive recepticles for advertising, but there's always time for that later.

Right now, the frontrunner is the Treo 270, but I'm not happy about it. Handspring's hardware is cheaply made, and I've already had to replace my Visorphone three times (at a cost of $110 each). I'm really hesitant to hand them another $500. The reviews are mixed on the 270. I'm afraid it's gonna break on me within a year. I'm also a tad nervous about the money. I'd like wireless email and web, but I don't to want to blow $200 a month on my phone.

On the other hand, the Palm Tungsten T2 is dead sexy. It's got the phone, the Palm OS, the color screen, the SMS, and almost everything I want. The only thing that's missing is a speakerphone. If I've gotta plug in a headset everytime I answer the phone, fugeddaboudit.

In third place is the T-Mobile Sidekick. I saw one of these on a plane about a year ago, and it's pretty cool. A phone/PDA with unlimited data. I played with one of these, and they've really got the interface down. The problem twofold:

First, it's a proprietory OS. That means that the thousands of third-party applications devloped for the Palm Pilot and the Pocket PC won't work. Specifically, it means that the greatest Palm application currently available, Vindigo, won't work. That's a deal breaker for me. Vindigo saved my ass when my car broke down in LA.

Second, you can't sync with a PC. With the Palm OS, I have a backup of everything on my PDA backed up and burned to cd. When I upgrade or if my PDA goes tits up, I have a backup. With the Sidekick, this isn't an option. This isn't a dealbreaker for me, but it's a great feature. I'm probably not gonna get the Sidekick, but I'm gonna watch them closely.

I so don't get this. You can get an mp3 player with 128 MB RAM for about a hundred bucks, and phones are practically disposable. Make it a PDA, the memory drops to 16 MB and the price jumps by $300. Come on people, can't we get together on this?

Baltimore 3: Happy Birthday to Me

2003-09-03T22:55:00.000-07:00

I turn 35 today. That's a big birthday. I was anticipating some sort of emotional ketchup burst, but it's been pretty sedate.

The plan is to go to Annapolis for crab. A word about Mid-Atlantic weather: it's hot. And humid. Put 'em together and it's hot and humid. Like 90 and 90. I walked outside, and my sunglasses fogged up. Annapolis seems like a more upscale version of Newport, Oregon, but hotter. I see now why the founding fathers got the hell out of here every summer.

The ultimate goal for our journey: traditional Maryland blue crabs. One thing I was fairly clear on was that I didn't want a 5-star brassiere nor T.J. O'Pootertoots Family Seafood Emporium. See, when I go on vacation, I like to check out the local cusine. In Baltimore, that's crab. More importantly, I really hate chain restaraunts. Chili's, Denny's, Shari's, I hate 'em all. When I go out, I'm looking for someplace original and authentic. In a new town, I want to go where the locals go.

And I found it. Cantwell's is a local place off a side road off another side road down by the river outside Annapolis, Maryland. Their specialty is a cafeteria tray piled high with whole blue crabs and a couple of ears of corn: all you can eat for $20. Summertime, you sit out on the porch on picnic tables covered in butcher paper. You are given a full set of utensils, but crabs are a food to be eaten with a wooden mallet. Just smash 'em up and dig in. Served with a bucket of Rolling Rock Beer (proudly served in cans), count on being messy to the elbows. They're ready for this, though. There's a sink on the side of the porch for washing up. You want authentic, this is it. The crab, incidentally, is fantastic. I've paid twice as much for crab that wasn't half as good.

As birthdays go, this one was beyond low-key. No screaming, no guitars, no vomiting. Past birthdays with Gary include seeing the Ramones with Mudhoney, The Sex Pistols with Goldfinger, Henry Rollins, and Iggy Pop (plus Gary's infamous Gothick Danse Party in '94). Things are getting more sedate, but the fun never stops. I can think of far worse ways to spend birthday #35.

Road tunes: Songs in the Key of Springfield, Todd Rundgren's "Acapella", and Warren Zevon's Greatest Hits.

2003-08-31T19:10:00.000-07:00

I'm at Hershey Park to see Kiss. Aerosmith are also on the bill, but let's be clear: no one's wearing Aerosmith face paint. Kiss tees outnumber Aerosmith by about 2:1. Some generic metal band is doing warmup right now. I have no idea who they are, and I'm dead positive I'll never hear them again. They know their audience, tho. They dedicated "Spirit of America" to all the troops, big applause. Post script: I think it's Saliva. Shake your hair some more, guys.

It's the oldest rock crowd I've ever seen. The average age is about 40, and many brought the kids. Maybe it's just the locale, but there are a lot of mullets here. I even saw Jimmy Doheney (that's a flattop with the back down to the waist. Ugh.) One pleasant surprise was seeing some kids wearing the makeup. I even saw a pair of 40ish couples in full Kiss makeup, which is straight out of a Family Guy Episode.

Fun fact: floor seats for this extravaganza cost $90. There's gonna have to be some rethinkinq of the seating. For $90, I want a little elbow (and ass) room. We're packed in like rats. Furthermore, When I look at this crowd, "starved to perfection" isn't a phrase that leaps to mind. "Extra cheese" & "Supersize it", however...

Someone from hearitlive.com is hawking cds, but no one (me included) is sure who they are, and no one can hear him over the music. If this is that service that promises a cd of the concert you just saw, I'm down, but it's not worth fighting the crowd over to ask. Gotta advertise, quys. Postscript: That's not the name, and I can't remember what it was. Also, they were only selling Saliva cds. Doh.

Gene Simmons is the only man in the world who can get a stadium full of people to cheer for him drooling.

Pre-show, we hung at Hershey Park to ride roller coasters. I really don't like the things. I tried the once already at Great America, but I was willing to give it another shot. The verdict is in: I don't like 'em. I gave it a fair try and it's a no.

Road Tunes: Devo "Duty Now", Kiss "Destroyer", Brian Setzer Orchestra "The Dirty Boogie"

Friday we rolled out to Lancaster, PA. We visited Gary's school, and it was underlined one more time: Gary went to a good school. I didn't. Put it this way: Franklin and Marshall College booked Spike Lee for a free lecture. Oregon State tried to get General Lee, without success.

2003-08-28T12:37:00.000-07:00

In Transit: Minneapolis to Baltimore
No meal on this flight, after all, it's only 2 hours. However, for only $10 you can by a sandwich and salad from TGI Fridays. Hold me back.

2003-08-28T08:55:00.000-07:00

Baltimore Trip Part 1
Somewhere over Utah.
Travel is about efficiency and courtesy, both elevated to the nth degree. The meals are identical, packaged to reduce both motion and liquids. Bananas, not oranges, to reduce mess. The trips up and down the aisle are timed and choreographed. We time our bathroom runs to reduce congestion and seat-climbing.

All passenger actions are magnified by proximity. A little BO becomes a huge problem when you sit inches away from it for 3 hours. You brush arms w/the person next to you and pretend you don't. The gregarious friendliness of the group sitting behind you would be easily ignored in a restaraunt. On a plane at 6:45 am, it's intolerable. And a tuneful whistle becomes the ultimate sin. One's personal space is constantly violated, so we inslate ourselves w/earplugs & headphones. Video headsets will be hot sellers for airlines in the next decade. When we get true VR, look out.

Children violate all the social rules on airplanes. They bore easily and crave action. Trapped and unhappy, noise is their only relief. I feel for them, but I still make a point of wearing earplugs when I fly.

Road tunes: regrettably none. I travel light.

2003-08-25T22:27:00.000-07:00

Let's start simple. Al Franken vs Bill O'Reilly and Fox News. I'm not gonna take sides, after all, the case has already been quite literally laughed out of court. I'm just gonna walk through the math.

1) Al Franken writes a humerous book on the myth of the liberal media. It zooms to #469 on Amazon's Best Sellers List.
2) Fox News sues Al and his publisher claiming they own the phrase "Fair and Balanced".
3) Fox's case is dismissed.
4) Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and
Balanced Look at the Right goes to #1 on Amazon.com.

My question is how Fox could have thought this was a good idea. They must have blown at least $10,000 on legal fees, and gave Al easily $100,000 worth of publicity. Now Al's got a great story to tell on his book tour, and his book has everyone's attention. Instead of doing interviews on "Book Beat" on Cupertino Public Access, he'll be on Jay Leno. Plus, Fox have underscored Al's original point.

U.S. District Judge Denny Chin said it best:

"Parody is a form of artistic expression protected by the First Amendment and the keystone of parody is imitation. It is ironic that a media company, which should be seeking to protect the First Amendment, is seeking to undermine it by claiming a monopoly on the phrase, 'Fair and Balanced.'"