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Feb262007

The Oscars, 2007 Edition

I didn’t watch much of the Oscars telecast last night. To be honest, I only caught about the last 20 minutes or so, with a gap in between as I drove home from The Girlfriend’s house — it’s hard to muster a lot of enthusiasm for a four-hour awards show when you haven’t seen most of the nominees. (In the Best Picture category, I’ve seen only The Departed; in Best Animated Film, only Cars; none of the foreign films or documentaries; and pretty much none of the flicks from which the various acting nominees were drawn.) Also, it was obvious two weeks ago that this would likely be one of those suspense-free years when there’s an overwhelming sense of inertia leading toward the coronation of particular nominees. Honestly, did anyone not believe that Scorsese was finally going to get his statuette? Especially when the presenters for the Best Director award were revealed to be his three most pre-eminent contemporaries and friends (Coppola, Spielberg, and Lucas)?

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Feb262007

I’m Such a Dork

Sunday morning. I’m at The Girlfriend’s apartment, waiting for her to finish getting ready so we can go to brunch, our usual Sabbath-day routine. Suddenly, I realize her poodle is staring at me with deep, imploring eyes… he needs to go outside and do his dirty, sinful business. Being the great guy that I am, I put on his leash and take him outside.
Through the open patio door at my back, I can hear brief snatches of unrelated sound: a TV chef blathering about oysters, a cacophony of cheering at a sporting event, gunshots, country music. The Girlfriend is channel-surfing. The disconnected rapid-fire audio stops, and there’s now a familiar, urgent melody playing.

“Sounds like you found some classic Trek,” I say over my shoulder.

“Bet you can’t tell me which episode,” she calls back.

I listen for a moment. I can’t hear it terribly well…

“What is that, ‘Amok Time’?” I ask. She doesn’t answer me. Puzzled, I turn to look back through the door. She’s sitting on the couch with the TV remote dangling loosely from one hand and a stunned look on her face.

“What?” I say, even though I already know.

“How do you do that?”

I shrug and wait for the dog to finish relieving himself while Spock, deep in the throes of pon farr, fights his captain and friend to the death for the sake of a woman…

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Feb242007

Who Is Britney Spears, Anyhow?

Speaking of Britney Spears (well, I did mention her yesterday), I’ve been thinking about her head-shaving escapade last weekend and the way the media has reacted to it.

I know, I know… it’s a lame non-story that everyone is sick of, and I imagine at least one of my celebrity-contemptuous Loyal Readers just rolled his eyes and clicked off to some other site. Still, I just keep coming back to the subject in my mind, like a loose tooth that I feel compelled to wiggle with my tongue. The truth is, as ridiculous and messed-up a person as she seems to be, I really do care about what’s happening to her, at least in as much as I care about any human being who’s obviously in a whole world of confusion and hurt. I feel sorry for the girl. And I feel genuinely angry at the way the entertainment “news” media — i.e., all the television tabloid and gossip shows — are exploiting her and that other hapless train wreck of a human being, Anna Nicole Smith, for the sake of sensationalistic headlines and, presumably, higher ratings.

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Feb232007

Lisa Nowak Pleads Not Guilty

The death of Anna Nicole Smith and Britney Spears’ decision to emulate Sinead O’Connor’s coiffure (or lack thereof) have pushed whacko astronaut Lisa Nowak out of the media spotlight, so I thought I’d pass along the word that she has entered a plea of “not guilty” to the charge of attempted murder.

Just doing my part to help out those poor, overworked tabloid writers…

[Update: In a related story, it seems that NASA has contigency plans for what to do if an astronaut wigs out while in space. It’s pretty interesting… it involves duct tape, bungee cords, and forced administration of drugs. Just as I’ve always imagined. Oh, all right, I’ve always imagined that you’d just stun the nutbar with a phaser, but since NASA doesn’t have phasers…]

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Feb232007

Don’t Be Skeered, It’s Just My Beard

I’ve worn a beard for about 17 years now, not counting one horrible week following a misguided attempt to “update my look,” only to discover that I’d, ahem, put on a few pounds since I was last bare-faced. Let me tell you, I wasted no time at all re-growing my time-tested fuzzy accoutrement. I probably would’ve grown it back anyway, though, even if I didn’t need the camoflage for my unfortunate double chin, because I just plain like it. I think it lends my face some character, and, in my mind at least, it signifies both my masculinity and my individuality. And it doesn’t hurt that The Girlfriend likes it, too.

However, it hasn’t always been easy to be bearded here in arch-conservative Utah, where the preferred look of the predominant cultural group (that would be the Mormons, kids) is decidedly unfuzzy. Before I made a love connection with the current Girlfriend, I heard from more than one young lady that I was not suitable dating material because of the beard, and I also know that I’ve lost a few job opportunities because I refused to shave it off. Some would call my defiance of the local norms foolish vanity, but I’ve never understood why, if you keep it clean and trimmed short (as I do), so many straight-laced people find facial hair repellant. (Incidentally, I really dislike the term “clean-cut,” because it suggests that its opposite — i.e., bearded or otherwise hirsute — is unclean, complete with all the moral intimations that word carries.) And so I have soldiered on through the years, convinced of my own righteousness and determined not to let The Man force me into drab conformity. I’ve persevered long enough that the beard has largely ceased to be an issue for me — I’ve finally found success in love and work without having to compromise my self-image — but it would’ve been so much easier if I’d had some kind of support group. Perhaps even an entire web site dedicated to the proposition that beards are cool. But surely there couldn’t really be such a thing out there on the vast, vast Internet… could there?

Well, duh…

Visit beards.org!

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, the title of this entry comes from an old George Carlin routine called “The Hair Piece.” It’s reproduced for your amusement below the fold…

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Feb222007

The New Space Princess Movement

I normally reject the idea of literary manifestos as pretentious ego self-stroking (on the part of whomever writes the manifesto) that treads on my anti-authoritarian “do whatever the hell I like” nature, but here is one I can get behind wholeheartedly, John C. Wright‘s NEW SPACE PRINCESS MOVEMENT:

The literary movement will follow two basic principles: first, science fiction stories should have space-princesses in them who are absurdly good looking. Second, the space princesses must be half-clad (if you are a pessimist. The optimist sees the space princess as half-naked). Third, dinosaurs are also way cool, as are ninjas. Dinosaur ninjas are best of all.

 

…The second thing to remember: bare midriffs. This is what science fiction is actually all about. Let no one tell you differently.

Oh, yeah. That’s the stuff, baby. Thanks to Scalzi for cluing me onto this.

In a somewhat-related note, I’ve just learned from SF Signal that you can get science fiction and fantasy stories from this site — for FREE! Just in case you really don’t feel like working today…

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Feb212007

I Don’t Know Whether to Laugh or Cry

At first glance, this story looks pretty funny, just the sort of weird news item I chuckle over a dozen times a day: a would-be Good Samaritan, hearing sounds that he thought came from a woman being raped, armed himself with an antique sword and burst through the door of a neighbor’s apartment ready to face an attacker, only to find that there was no woman. The only occupant of the place was another guy watching a porno DVD all by himself at a ridiculously high volume.

Big laughs, right? So it would seem…

Then I read the coda: the not-quite-a-hero is being charged with three criminal counts, and his sword — a family heirloom, no less — has been confiscated by the police. I can’t believe this situation, an obvious (and funny) misunderstanding, couldn’t have been resolved during a 10-minute conversation between the two men and a cop as intermediary. Instead, it’ll now be dragged through the already-clogged legal system and a guy who was only trying to do the right thing faces jail time. Yeah, the screaming turned out to be nothing, but maybe next time it’ll be the real thing and passersby will choose to ignore it instead of risking this guy’s fate.

Everybody in this country needs to take a deep breath and chill the hell out…

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Feb212007

Ethelbert?

Ever wonder what the “E” in “Wile E. Coyote” stands for? Yeah, me, neither, but Mark Evanier has an interesting answer nonetheless.

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Feb212007

Rejecting The Matrix

I think I’ve mentioned before that I didn’t really care for the Matrix films. I didn’t hate them or anything — I found the first one sufficiently entertaining to warrant seeing the sequels — but I sure didn’t understand why everyone and their dogs made such a big fuss over them. They really weren’t all that smart, or they weren’t even all that crowd-pleasing, when you think about it. But my lukewarm resistance to the bullet-time bandwagon is nothing compared to the feelings of some folks out there in InternetLand. Courtesy of Byzantium’s Shores, here are 50 Reasons to Reject The Matrix. The list presupposes that you actually remember the details of the three films, which, I must admit, I do not — I couldn’t tell you who the Seraph is if you paid me — but I did recall the subjects of this priceless passage:

Reloaded Ridiculousness, 2
The machines added two new enemies for Neo in Reloaded, called the Twins. Their first priority is to blend discreetly into the simulated world of the Matrix, to walk among the people unnoticed. So of course the Matrix made them huge albino men with bleach-white dreadlocks who occasionally transform into shrieking wraiths.

 

“What’s that, honey?”

 

“Oh, nothing. It just looks like a simple Kung-Fu Swedish Rastafarian Helldemon. I’m sure there’s no need to question our fragile, sheltered grasp of ‘reality’ as we know it.”

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Feb202007

A Fellow Warbird Fan

Today, the photoblogger Telstar Logistics shares with us pictures from his ride aboard the B-17 Nine o’ Nine, a 60-year-old bomber aircraft operated by the Collings Foundation out of Stow, Massachusetts. You may recall that I took a ride aboard another Collings aircraft, a B-24 called — at that time, anyway — the Dragon and His Tail, and I absolutely concur with Telstar’s assertion that one of these flights is worth every penny of the $400 charge. It’s an amazing thrill, and the closest thing to actual time travel I’ve ever experienced.

Telstar’s complete photo set is here; photos of my ride on the Dragon are here (just for comparison’s sake, of course!)

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