I wonder if it remembers me

The neat thing about amazon.com’s comments sections, apart from the obvious entertainment value, is that people on the internet are so eager to jump on top of each other to show how hip they are that you can often learn something useful.

Case in point: the soundtrack for The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou does not have the music that plays when Zissou & the rest of the Belafonte crew finally make contact with the jaguar shark. Thanks to a bajillion amazon readers, though, you can discover that it’s called Staralfur by Sigur Rós and it’s available for free from this site.

Of course, I can’t listen to it, because ten seconds into it I remember the scene from the movie and start blubbering, but maybe one of my many weblog fans will be able to take advantage of free post-rock Icelandic music!

Fun with Internet Search

An idea stolen from Rain, here are some of the recent search phrases that have shown up on my stats page:

  • creepy looking guys
  • creepy guys
  • hairy guys
  • a doctor and a working plasma lightsaber picture
  • brian posehn
  • collie homegrown
  • covenant spectre [I actually know what this one means, which is scary]
  • most photogenic [keep searching, buddy]
  • Lisa. Carol. Fremont. venture
  • creepy guys [soon I will be the #1 search result on Google!]
  • big ass banging [ditto!]
  • cigarette ashing ticket car
  • gall bladder infection antibiotic
  • real zombie sightings
  • fuck you ea
  • half-life 2 sucks ass
  • sarah michelle gellar grouchy side
  • real sightings of angels [they’re hiding behind the zombies]
  • ass parade
  • industrial accidents-severed hands
  • real christian chicks naked/ sightings of
  • walnut creek sucks

I love the internet.

38 Seconds

That’s how long I was able to watch G4/TechTV [warning: link is slow and annoying] tonight before having to turn the channel out of disgust. As a frame of reference and to give an idea how much tolerance I have for bad television, I turned it to VH-1 and “Gameshow Moments Gone Bananas,” hosted by Ben Stein giving a “shout out to his ‘peeps’,” making the quote sign with his fingers around “peeps,” and was able to leave it on that channel for a good 12 minutes. I only had to turn the channel when they put on one of those “Where You At?” ads with the granny talkin’ all hip-hop on a cell phone.

How did we let it get to this? I watched a lot of television in the 70’s and 80’s, and as awful as it got, it was never able to overwhelm me with its sheer crass stupidity and desperation. I’ve lived through “Dynasty,” through Carrot Top commercials, through Pauly Shore’s popularity, through all the “I Love the 80’s” marathons. I used to look forward to watching DIC and Filmation animated series. I’ve even seen “Magic: The Gathering” tournaments televised on ESPN-2. I’m not exactly one of the cultural elite.

But tonight on G4, a loud young woman with bleached hair, a nose ring, and a Jem and the Holograms T-shirt was showing viewers a fan site dedicated to David Hasselhoff, and the whole hip, young, fun, and irreverent cast were pointing at the pictures and tossing paper airplanes about. And for some reason, this made me sadder than the entire Trinity Broadcasting Network ever could. It’s depressing enough that there’s even an entire network devoted to videogames, but when the human beings (presumably) on this network are even more shallow and obnoxious poseurs than videogame characters… it boggles the mind. It was as if the characters of a self-described “cynical” alternative comic had somehow come to life and taken control over a television studio.

I just realized that I would rather watch Country Music Television and UPN than the network that is trying to target me.

Betcha I can tell ya where ya got them shoes

In all the hoopla over four-year-old media, I forgot to write about Feet on the Street: Rambles Around New Orleans by Roy Blount Jr.

It’s always amusing to read reviews on Amazon from people who just plain don’t get it, but I can’t fault “New Orleans traveller” too much, because apparently he or she was looking for a travelogue about New Orleans. This book isn’t a travelogue, even though I feel I’ve got a better idea of the city now than I did from any number of movies or books or television specials about it. This book does exactly what the title says: rambles. And it’s a mistake going into a Roy Blount Jr. book expecting to find a hands-off, balanced analysis of the topic at hand; you read the book to find out what Blount has to say about it.

Expecting a straightforward travelogue out of Roy Blount Jr. is missing the point as much as expecting Dave Barry-esque “humorous essays” out of his essay books, or calling his memoir “self-indulgent” or “not as funny as I was hoping from the Garrison Keillor show.” Blount doesn’t just write about cities or people or politics or sports or dogs or presidents or whatever the topic is at hand; Blount writes about himself. And his friends, and his family, pets he’s owned, jobs he’s had, movies he’s seen, things he’s found at junk stores, and whatever else pops into his mind as relevant to the subject. By the end, you don’t feel as if you’ve read a travelogue as much as you feel that you’ve caught up with an old friend who for this conversation, happened to keep veering back to the topic of New Orleans.

That’s why I think Blount’s writing transcends the “humor” or “travel” or “essays” labels that get assigned to them in bookstores. Taken together as a body of work, it’s about the whole of human existence, at least as much as he’s processed. Hyperbolic? Maybe, but then again, somewhere between hyperbole and “he’s funny on the radio” describes how amazed I am by his writing. When I’m reading his stuff, it’s like watching a magician who’s pointing out the wires and mirrors and hidden pockets in his cape, but is still somehow able to make a flock of doves appear out of nowhere and leave you convinced that it’s magic. He’s written whole essays about writing and how difficult and laborious process it is, but can still come up with a perfectly concise and evocative phrase to describe New Orleans humidity (“those deep-summer days that make a person feel swathed in slowly melting hamfat”) and make it sound as if the phrase had just popped into his head in the middle of an unfocused ramble.

When people talk about writing, they talk about how difficult it is to find your “voice.” Blount’s not only found his voice, but it’s all-encompassing. It’s the voice of a man who’s got total control over the English language combined with a total lack of pretension. It’s “folksy” without being naive, funny without being meaningless, rambling without being pointless, introspective without being self-indulgent, and disarming without being deceptive. Once you’re disarmed, he can talk about oysters and orphans and leave you with sympathy for both. In this book, he talks about the death of his friend Slick Lawson, and it was neither a casual aside nor a maudlin eulogy, but real, genuine memories. And of course, memories are what writing is all about.

Blount’s been my favorite writer for years. One of my favorite things I own is a postcard he sent me in response to a fan letter I wrote to him back when I was a sophomore in college. It’s one of the old kinds, with the scalloped edges, and has a photograph of two radio personalities from Alabama I’ve never heard of. On the back are a couple of paragraphs of tiny handwriting, responding amiably to a couple of the points in the letter and wishing me well. Somebody else reading it wouldn’t think much of it — it doesn’t say a lot, and it’s not particularly funny for a “humorist,” and there are references to things that I must’ve written in my three-page computer-typed letter that even I don’t remember writing.

But it was the perfect response. In a short essay called “Having Wonderful Time Suckling Little Dog” in his book Now, Where Were We?, he writes about his postcard collection and how postcards, especially second-hand ones, always have something more going on than is obvious on the surface. Bizarre or bizarrely mundane photographs, personal messages without any context, and captions that are either completely misplaced or painfully self-apparent — the best postcard is at the same time a non-sequitur and something indefinably familiar. So what would be better to send to a young man who’d sent a long, gushing fan letter out of nowhere, expressing an admiration for his work and an odd sense of familiarity just from reading it?

Blount uses a lot of poetry in his work, and it’s almost always clever and funny and bounces around an idea. But the real poetry — the sense that you’ve just read something profound without seeing it coming, and the admiration for an idea that is perfectly expressed using just the right words — is in his prose. I haven’t yet read his biography of Robert E. Lee, but considering how much Blount talks about Lee in Feet on the Street, I’m worried that he may have kept himself out of the biography and stuck to the facts. That would be a huge disappointment. I want to see Blount write more biographies, and make himself as much as a character as he always does — not some dry, distant dump of some other person’s life, but a real conversation. “Here’s everything I’ve figured about how life works so far. What’ve you got?”

SD-6

Hot on the heels of my groundbreaking review of Jurassic Park, a scoop about this hot new television programme called “The Alias!”

All right, I avoided this show for as long as I could, partly because I had a feeling it would get me all sucked in, partly because I was working too much to watch much television, and partly because Jennifer Garner always struck me as nothing more than a slightly softer version of Hilary Swank, who gives me the heebie-jeebies something fierce.

But then I heard about the zombies, and everybody knows I’ve got a soft spot for zombies. [pause for obligatory brain joke] So I’m three episodes into it, and this is what escapist television is all about. Double, triple, and quadruple agents; ancient scrolls and prophecies; the basements and boiler rooms of exotic locales all around the world; TV-friendly techno music; duplicitous dads and soap opera drama — I am, of course, hooked. Plus the episodes I’m watching have Gina Torres, who rocks as hard as can be reasonably expected; and Carl Lumbly, who does the voice of J’onn J’onnz on “Justice League Unlimited,” which has got to count for something.

I’m still curious to see when, exactly, the show starts to go south. I’ve seen a couple of posts on Google and elsewhere lamenting that it’s already gone bad what with the “stupid zombies,” which of course baffles me, as I can’t imagine how zombies would do anything other than make a show better. These series inevitably let me down; I learned my lessons from “The X-Files” and “24” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and I won’t let myself get too close. But for now, I’m enjoying the edge-of-your-seat adventures of plucky grad student Sidney Bristow and her string of steely-eyed unshaven young love interests.

And then after that, I’ve heard mention of a television series about the criminal underworld called “Mr. Soprano” or some such that could shape up to be something big. You heard it here first!

Don’t Panic

The website should look different now (actually, it should look better, but I don’t want to be too optimistic), so don’t be alarmed. I’ve been messing around with WordPress themes for a while now, hence my complaints about CSS and anal-retentive web designers, and this is the result.

I just noticed that it looks like ass on Internet Explorer for the PC, but I guess that’s to be expected. Please, people: get Firefox. If not for yourself, then for the people you love.

It also doesn’t scale that well, so if you’re using a screen resolution less than 1024×768, your browser’s probably going apeshit with the pictures and the floats and the thing and LADY! And I doubt that it’ll work on a cell phone, but really, if you’re using a cell phone to read my blog, then I’m afraid that you need help way beyond the capabilities of XHTML and CSS standards.

It’s all still in progress, so some parts are bound to be broken or missing — if you see something that’s clearly off, or if the navigation is weird or confusing or there’s something you should be able to do but can’t, please let me know either through e-mail or the comments. This is just a personal website, but the whole point of it is to learn how to do all this stuff correctly.

Update

Over the past few days, I’ve heard mention of this blog from a few friends, and I realized I haven’t been using it to its full potential. That is, a way for friends to keep up with what’s going on with me, without actually having to converse with me directly. So here’s an update:

I bought a big TV, a copy of Jurassic Park, and an album from the guy from Soul Coughing.

Okay, that should do it. Keep reading this space for future updates!

All right, other stuff of note: I’m still unemployed, but assuming all goes well, will start working as a contractor/consultant for Walt Disney Imagineering R&D around the end of the month. It sounds like an awesome project, and it’ll be working with Jonathan, my friend & boss from The Curse of Monkey Island, so I’m very excited about it. I’ll be working from home, likely with business trips to LA and/or Orlando. Sounds like my dream job, which of course means that I’m just waiting to see what’s going to fall through and make it all go horribly, horribly wrong.

And on the more personal side, things are confusing but generally okay. I’d written (and posted) more here earlier, but that about sums it up. Or at least as much as needs to be summed up on the internet.

Forty-two inches of guilt

I bought a big-ass plasma screen television. There, I said it, and it’s on the internet so I can’t take it back.

It’s really, really nice, easily the nicest luxury item I’ve ever bought for myself. Either the picture is absolutely perfect, or I’m too ignorant of home theater specifications to be able to know the difference — either way works for me. I actually enjoy watching DVDs at home again, and supposedly I don’t even have that great a DVD player. And the image from the Xbox and PS2 are so clear I can finally appreciate how dated they are. Even regular TV looks great to me — I’d been told that everyone who gets an HDTV has to switch to HD signals ASAP since regular TV just looks too bad afterwards, but I don’t have any problem with it. I guess it helps that I mostly just watch Cartoon Network.

I wish I could figure out exactly why I’m so unsettled by the thing, though. There’s the general anxiety about screen burn-in that the websites have me all paranoid about, but that’s not it. I’m happy with the picture and I believe I got the best model available for a decent price, so it’s not buyer’s remorse. And it’s not sticker shock, since I haven’t gotten a credit card bill yet and frankly could pay the whole thing off now if I wanted. (Plus, they gave me a $400 gift card when I bought the thing, which considering how much I go to Best Buy anyway, is like giving me grocery money).

No, it’s just plain old-fashioned guilt. I just can’t explain why. I’m fine with capitalism, and I give to charity whenever I can, so it’s not a redistribution of luxury items thing. And I worked really hard — okay, not “hard,” but I worked really long hours for a really long time to get the money I do have. And I’m lined up for more steady work by the end of the month, so it’s not as if I’m not dipping into savings. Still, spending that much money on a television has the “EVIL” alarm ringing in my head every time I look at the thing. You’d think I’d grown up during The Depression or something. But I grew up in an environment of luxury and privilege and “fake” wars that just killed lots of people but didn’t adversely affect the economy!

And I’m still a man. I have needs. And the Y chromosome has the gene that makes your extremities tingle whenever you come within range of a television with a screen size larger than 30 inches. This is incontrovertible science.

I guess I’ll just have to keep watching the Minas Morgul scene from Return of the King until the guilt stops. Because that scene is just so wicked awesome, and it’s even more awesome seeing it on a big-ass TV with surround sound. And invite friends over to “share” the thing, right? (To any friends who might happen to be reading: That’ll have to act as an invitation, since I worked at EA so long I’ve forgotten how to be genuinely social.)

It’s a UNIX system. I know this!

I found a copy of Jurassic Park for ten bucks today, so I picked it up, thinking what a great deal I’d gotten. What I’d forgotten, though, was: 1) the movie’s 12 years old at this point (it was released in 1993!), so it’s been relegated to “classics” pricing, and 2) it’s really not very good.

Maybe that’s not fair. I mean, there’s the fact that it was written by the evil Michael Crichton, and then there’s the blatant anti-dinosaur bias. And based on how much he delights in watching them suffer, it’s clear that Spielberg hates children almost much as he hates Dennis Weaver. But overall, it’s fine for what it is: a Steven Spielberg movie.

That’s not supposed to be as condescending as it sounds (as if Mr. Spielberg were all that upset about my opinion anyway) — dude made Raiders of the Lost Ark, after all. It just means that it has all the stuff he’s great at: pacing, tension, clear and understandable plots, incorporating effects without making them seem soulless, and memorable action sequences that are excellently choreographed.

It also means that it has all the stuff that he thinks he’s good at, but really just comes across as cloying and smarmy: interminably long and overdone reaction shots, obnoxiously swelling soundtracks, and plenty of scenes clearly intended to be clever, such as the T. Rex and the “When Dinosaurs Ruled the World” banner.

I’d forgotten about Spielberg ever since he tried to reinvent himself as a Serious Director with Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan (I have to admt I haven’t seen either), but there’s still something about the guy that bugs me. The scene with the T. Rex attacking the jeeps at night is just unqualified brilliance. Even if the whole rest of the movie consisted of nothing more than grandparents and kids giving warm, knowing glances at each other while using the magic of love and a child’s imagination to bring a dying dinosaur back to life to a heartwarming John Williams soundtrack, the T. Rex scene would be awesome. As I remember, even The Lost World, a much, much worse movie, had a pretty bad-ass scene with a Winnebago falling off a cliff or some such. So the man’s capable of stuff which is just flat-out great.

So how does one explain the rest of it? Or in other words: from whence Short Round? Does the man really and truly believe that wacky and heartwarming ethnic sidekicks, or racially diverse little girls doing gymnastics to fight off velociraptors, are what’s required to give an action movie “heart?” When he’s got the little girl contorting her face in ways that just aren’t natural, and he keeps directing her “More! Really really big dinosaur! It’s going to bite you in half! And your parents will abandon you because you’re ugly! You’re more scared!” does he sincerely believe that this is what’s necessary to convey genuine emotion on the screen? Or is he the most pandering and money-minded son of a bitch on the planet, hobbling his talent to make something that he knows will sell to Middle America and gross 200 million instead of just 50?

And that, my friends, is why the internets is a great thing — blogs make it possible to bring you the freshest of movie reviews to the comfort of your home. Y’all may be saying to yourself, “Steven Spielberg movies can be cloying and pandering; yeah, thanks for the newsflash, Chuck.” But don’t think that the threat is over. War of the Worlds is coming out soon, and it’s got not only Tom Cruise but Dakota Fanning. Dakota Fanning, an up-and-coming child star who by all accounts can actually act. (And she’s from my hometown, by the way). And Jurassic Park IV is in the works!

Well, I suppose I could talk about Mr. and Mrs. Smith, but there’s not a whole lot to say. Angelina Jolie is incredibly hot, smart, funny, and just plain appealing, and I usually don’t like her. Brad Pitt is competent but basically a cipher. The movie is a lot smarter than it looks like from the ads, and it was a lot of fun to watch.

Haughty Melodic

I listened to Haughty Melodic, Mike Doughty’s new solo album, a lot on the drive from LA back to SF, and it’s great road trip music. Turns out it’s good sitting at the computer doing nothing music, as well. There’s nothing really “astounding” about it, like there is with a Soul Coughing album, because it’s more straightforward melodic (hence the title) instead of being all that experimental. Still, the guy’s a great songwriter — the lyrics are clever in places, and every one of the tracks is catchy at least. A couple of them, like “Unsingable Name” and “I Hear the Bells” are genuinely beautiful.

And the lyrics are predictable in places, and some of the tracks are more repetitive than catchy. So I’d say that it’s not brilliant, but still recommend it. Especially to Soul Coughing fans. (If you know El Oso, I’d say that his solo album is like an entire album of “Circles” and “So Far I Have Not Found the Science,” which isn’t bad unless you were expecting a whole album of “Rolling” and “I Miss the Girl.”)

PowerPC and the Apocalypse

I’m only breaking my temporary blog hiatus because I got a notice saying everyone who’s got a blog website has to put up something about Apple’s move to Intel chips. It’s fair that all of us who’ve bought PowerPC-based Macs recently will be concerned that our machines will be made obselete when developers move over to the Intel-based architecture, especially considering Apple’s kludgey OS 9 support, in the long run it can only mean…

Ah, who am I trying to kid? I don’t care. I couldn’t be more Apple’s bitch, and I’m going to buy whatever they come out with. Unless my mail and web browser suddenly stop working, my machine(s) work fine and will continue to work fine. And as for development, I realized a while back that I’m about as technology-ignorant as you can get while still being a computer programmer; I neither know nor care much about what happens after I hit the “compile” button.

Well, there goes any hope of my writing for Wired magazine.