tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-76463872024-02-28T06:37:20.019-08:00AsphodelDiane Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00359031158925084093noreply@blogger.comBlogger49125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7646387.post-9738197568555107832008-11-24T16:59:00.000-08:002008-11-24T18:25:35.135-08:00Twilight on the St. ClairOn the American side of the St. Clair river, just south of Port Huron, stands a blocky brick structure crowned with eight narrow smokestacks. Heaps of black coal just south of the building and a tangle of steel transmission lines around it suggest that this edifice is a power plant of the decrepit coal-fired variety. This suggestion is both correct and misleading.<br /><br />This <span style="font-style:italic;">was</span> a power plant. <br /><br />Marysville is not, technically, dead. Its switchyard has long been on life support, energized not by the cold and silent generators within the plant but by power transmitted from other stations. The piles of coal alongside the plant are not destined for the great stokers inside Marysville; the coal belongs to a nearby paper mill which finds the plant a convenient storage ground for their fuel. But the gate is still manned, the lights are still on, and deep inside the building, house-service transformers still hum. <br /><br />And if you violate protocol at the gate, plant personnel will indeed come for you. <br /><br />Marysville gazes into the abyss. Sarnia, on the the Canadian side, might aptly be dubbed the City of Dis. Refineries and chemical plants give Sarnia a wonderfully horrid skyline-- grim towers in daylight, a mirage-like shimmer of golden light after sundown, and a beacon of eternal flame poised above it like the Eye of Sauron over Mordor. The squat outline of Marysville is almost comforting when compared with the vista of industrial sprawl that is Sarnia. But Sarnia burns through the night because men are working and things are being made.<br /><br />Marysville is a relic of the days when things were still made. Inside the plant one reads a litany of names from the gospel of American Industrial Might-- General Electric, Westinghouse, Worthington. The pumps were cast in Erie, Pennsylvania, the relays were made in Schenectady, the manhole covers in the parking lot bear the insignia of the power company's own shop. The Marysville shop is abandoned now; one can peer through the glass of the door and see tools and workstations, in disarray but apparently salvageable. Right outside the shop door is an outbox dedicated to issues of the Marysville Megawatt Monthly, something else the employees made to express their pride and sense of community. In the administrative building are other relics of that sense of community-- photographs from the nineteen-twenties showing happy employees outside the plant the day the first boiler was lit, showing the interior of the plant clubhouse, which boasted a cafeteria, a gymnasium, a movie theater. The clubhouse is still standing; the lovely brick mansion could pass for a private riverview home if not for its location. It has a glorious view of the switchyard, and of Sarnia. I wonder what they will do with the clubhouse when the lights go out in Marysville forever.<br /><br />Marysville is, and it was. It lingers in twilight. The most recent of its generators has existed in cold storage, theoretically at the ready should someone call on its 150 megawatts of power. But the abyss it faces is not the view of Sarnia, but the day when the lights go out. It is not in production. It is not abandoned. It is filthy, derelict, inexpressably sad, like a cathedral after a bombing raid. No one ever comes to pick up the Megawatt Monthly from its yellow-lettered outbox. I have no idea when the MMM was last published. I don't know when the plant employees stopped counting their safe-work days-- the scribbled calendar on the bulletin board <span style="font-style:italic;">starts</span> counting on some illegible date in 1988, but there is no end-point, no total of days counted. I don't know when the movie theater stopped screening films, when the Marysville basketball team disbanded. The team members grin out of a black-and-white photograph in a case at one end of the turbine floor. Their names are not inscribed on the photograph; does anyone still living remember who played for Marysville? What team did these young men play against-- did they have a spirited rivalry with the boys from Connors Creek?<br /><br />Connors Creek, or the part of it that was standing when that photograph was snapped, is dust. Marysville, too, will be dust before its centennial. The age of DC distribution, of low-pressure generation, of breakers and pumps and turbines labeled "Made in U.S.A." has passed. The age of incandescent lightbulbs is slipping by, and across the river in Mordor/Dis/Sarnia, coal-fired power plants are scheduled to fade into history. Generator Number Eight will never be called back into service because power will come, in part, from the wind turbines sprouting like monstrous trillium blossoms all over the Great Lakes region. <br /><br />I looked away from the case of fading pictures, and stared across the ruined floor of the turbine hall. The dirty windows and overcast sky filtered sunlight into the green-tiled depths of the hall, and around me lay the carcasses of pumps and generators like undersea beasts. Above this Leviathan's graveyard, several stories up the wall, was a wedge of yellow light, and through a grimed glass I could make out the silhouette of my co-workers. I went back upstairs, where the relay panels still blink orange and white and red, and where the outdated posters on the wall hail from the last decade rather than 1988, or '58, or '28. And my co-workers set about bringing forward the day when Marysville slips from twilight into darkness. <br /><br />When that day falls, I hope someone remembers to slip into the green silence of the turbine hall, and liberate the smiling ghosts of Marysville from their glass case. Marysville's turbines helped power an empire; as that empire, too, falls to twilight, perhaps the ghosts should have their say.Diane Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00359031158925084093noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7646387.post-22550585696255602382008-07-20T16:44:00.000-07:002008-07-20T16:54:09.809-07:00Subspace Emissary, Part IV: A New HopeSo, we left off our narrative with mopey psychic-kid Lucas teaming up with cocky Red the Pokemon Trainer. Now, we drastically switch gears. I was going to call this segment "Together, We Run Around Aimlessly!" but figured the Fire Emblem reference was too obscure. So, I'll call this portion what it is.<br /><br /> F-A-N-S-E-R-V-I-C-E<br /><br /> The Battlefield Fortress:<br /><br /> A vast and crenellated fortress lies in a wasteland. It appears to have been under siege for a long time, given the number of spent arrows lying in the dust. No dead bodies, though-- weird. Pan over to-- hey, another Subspace Bomb! Two more ROBs activate the thing, bowing their little robotic heads in sorrow as they accept their duty and their fate. Poor sad robots! Bomb goes ‘splodey and rips open another abyss, which reaches almost to the fortress itself.<br /> One lone figure stands on the ramparts, watching the devastation. He has a cape. He has blue hair. Atop that blue hair is a precious little tiara. Yes, indeed, we have our next Secret Character-- Marth Lowell, Prince of Altea, the bearer of Falchion the Sword of Light, aka Pit’s competition for Most Androgynous Brawler. We have another bishounen here, in other words, fair and slender with lovely hair. Marth’s smooth, pretty, big-eyed face isn’t designed to express much in the way of emotion, and what he does express is anxiety-- tightly restrained, highly refined anxiety, of course. Kid’s not happy. Neither would you be, alone and surrounded by enemies with really freaky bombs. <br /> Marth witnesses the Ancient Minister spawn an army of Primids out of the dust, so he takes action. Dramatic music plays, and Marth draws Falchion and does this neato trick with it wherein it sends a beam of light far off into the distance. I dunno whether the Sword of Light actually generates light, or Marth was catching a sunbeam with it. Anyway, scene over. It remains unclear as to whether the gesture with Falchion was a threat or a distress call.<br /><br /> Grade: Uh, why is Marth alone in the humongous fortress? Is everyone else already slain in defense of the place? I guess Master Hand has basically just installed Marth in the Fire Emblem equivalent of the Barbie Dream House. I hope Crazy Hand lets Zelda come to visit Marth when Crazy plays dolls with the trophy collection. Oh, yes, I was rating the actual scene. You like Marth? You’ve been dying to see him, up close and adorable? Then A+++ for sure. Otherwise, I give it a B+, mostly for the oddly sympathetic bomber-robots. And I do like Marth, but I like him best when he talks, and he’s not saying anything here. Again, it’s pretty much pure fan-service. <br /> I still have watched this scene eighteen times. Sigh.<br /><br /> The Meta Knight Encounter:<br /> Marth gazes up into the abyss. His large cerulean-blue eyes narrow in sudden apprehension. Meta Knight comes barrelling down from the sky and they briefly duel. I understand Marth’s reaction, given he’s already under attack, but MK’s motivation is unknown unless he thinks Marth was the guy who hot-wired the Halberd (Hint: No). Anyway, they fight, and meanwhile a bunch of Primids surround them. Marth and MK have a simultaneous enemy-of-my-enemy moment and essentially team up.<br /><br /> Grade: If you want to look at Marth (or Meta Knight), you will like it. Otherwise, I give it a B-. No, really, I saw people describe this scene as “epic”. The “duel” featured stylized and jerky animation and was over in seconds, so I dunno what was so awesome about that. Marth cute, Meta Knight badass, nothing more to it. And if Meta Knight's a good guy, what's with the ambush?<br /><br /> Ike Unleashes Aether:<br /> Oh, good. It’s the Ancient Minister again, and he has another bomb. Yay. And Marth and MK are trying to catch him. Marth attacks and just misses, then MK lunges and is shot in the wing. He looks more annoyed about it than anything. Offended, maybe. So, fail and double fail.<br /> Then we see this BIG sword, floating in the air behind the Ancient Minister. Said sword belongs to a different blue-haired young man in a billowing cape, and he grasps the sword, lets out a bellow of “Great... Aether!” and then slices the bomb clean away. The Ancient Minister goes spinning away into the distance, and the bomb falls harmlessly to the earth. Our Hero then receives a lovely close-up (squeeeeee!!!). Meet Ike, ladies and gentlemen. Ike can be differentiated from Marth in that his sword is really big, he wears a filthy headband instead of a tiara, and his cape is all tattered at the edges. In short, Ike is not a sissy. He also gets one of the few “speaking roles” in Subspace Emissary, as he’s allowed to give his battle cry. There’s no explanation as to why Ike is here, so maybe the viewer assumes that Ike saw that bat-signal trick Marth did with Falchion a couple of cut scenes back and came running. Ike’s sword is named Ragnell, by the way. I don’t know if Falchion and Ragnell are friends, but Ike and Marth do a little victory flourish before the cut scene ends, so I’ll assume they at least know one another in this continuity.<br /><br /> Grade: B+ Ike rocks and all, but even so, the scenes with the Fire Emblem boys have a stagey lifelessness to them. There’s no humor to be found in the vicinity of the Battlefield Fortress, so all the viewer gets is the Epic, and Epic in this case means a couple of kids with big swords hanging out with a flying bowling ball. <br /><br /> Three Warriors and the Ancient Minister: <br /> Three guys with swords in hot pursuit of the Ancient Minister. MK flies, and Marth and Ike run along like they’re planning to head-butt the Ancient Minister, Zidane-style, when they catch up with him. They reach the edge of a cliff, and the Ancient Minister escapes.<br /><br /> Grade: C Dude got away. That’s it. Nothing more to see here.... <br /><br /> In fact, nothing of any import happened in this entire four-part sequence-- another Subspace Bomb, another appearance by the Ancient Minister, another futile chase, another escape. Same old, same old. We got three new characters, and that’s... it.<br /> But, hey, there is one thing-- all three of them were still standing at the end of the sequence. Nobody got trophy-gunned. That was unexpected; I went into this figuring Secret Character #2 would go the same way as SC#1 (R.I.P. Ness). After all, you don’t need two kids with similar psychic powers, and you don’t need two guys with blue hair and swords when Ike is obviously up to the task on his own. Hmm. Are they actually going to do something with Marth besides have him look pretty? Probably not: Marth and Ike have very different styles of fighting, far more so than Ness and Lucas, making both FE boys useful to the player. Ike is powerful as hell but runs like molasses and can’t jump well. Marth is nowhere near as strong but is quick and highly agile. In short, they’re a matched team, instead of a set of clones.<br /><br />Oh, yeah. Squeeeeeeee!!!Diane Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00359031158925084093noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7646387.post-85615644177805739442008-07-01T16:28:00.000-07:002008-07-01T16:35:17.432-07:00Subspace Emissary, Part the ThirdOK, let's get back to the action, shall we? We left off with Diddy Kong (ugh) teamed up with Fox McCloud (yay). There's still about 30 protagonists to go....<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"> Oh, Mother! Middle School is Hell!</span><br /><br /> The Pig King Statue Targets Lucas:<br /> Cut to a strange grey world of chain-link fences, palm trees, and desolation. A sad-eyed little boy wanders what appears to be an abandoned playground, kicking a soda can. Meet Lucas, hero of <span style="font-style:italic;">Mother 3</span>. Except Lucas is not feeling very heroic right now. Purple spores descend, and Primids surround the whimpering Lucas. Then this bizarro statue of a fat kid wearing a crown, like a fast-food mascot gone wrong, shows up and starts chasing poor Lucas. Lucas screams and runs, the animated statue in pursuit.<br /> Grade: A- Wow, major shift in priorities here. This world is grim, realistic, desaturated of all color and life. And the emotions here are genuine human emotions, instead of cartoon-hero cockiness and slapstick. Things are looking up.<br /><br /> Ness and Porky Face Off:<br /> Lucas runs frantically through the desolate schoolyard, the Pig King statue in pursuit. Lucas trips over what appears to be either a bit of rope or a dead snake (Rope Snake?); he cries out and buries his head in his hands, believing he’s about to meet his death. Out of nowhere, a cry of “PK Thunder” is heard, and a thunderbolt smacks the statue right in the face. The statue crashes to ground. Lucas’s savior touches down in front of him. It’s another little kid, but he has a red baseball cap and a smile. He sparkles as his feet make contact with the earth. Ness! Ness! Ness of Onett, he of the mighty baseball bat and killer yo-yo! Our first Secret Character makes his appearance; up to now, all the protagonists have been the official and public slate of Brawl contestants, the guys featured on the cover art and in the booklet. <br /> Ness levitates and unleashes PK Cross, which obliterates the Pig King statue in a burst of green light and concrete fragments. Surprise! The statue contains a nasty spider-like mecha, powered by... a little fat kid. Ness touches down lightly, and wipes his brow. Ness sparkles. He’s cool, and he’s ready for battle.<br /> Grade: A. Neeeeeeeessss!! It’s Ness! Yay. I love Ness. Seriously, this scene is pretty damn good. You have Lucas, who is too overwrought to unleash whatever powers lie within him, contrasted with Ness, a cool-headed master of his own psychic abilities. I want to see a whole movie about these two. <br /> <br /> Lucas Leaves Ness:<br /> A huffing, puffing, Lucas runs up to Ness, who looks fresh as a daisy after his victory over the Pig King. More trouble awaits our heroes-- perched atop a rock formation is Wario, holding his trophy gun.<br /> Wario aims at Ness! He fires! Ness evades once, twice, five times in all! Wario, man of cunning, aims anew at the weaker party, poor dazed Lucas. Ness dives to intercept the hit! Ness goes down! He’s trophyized, folks. Ness of Onett is out of commission.<br /> Wario leaps down to claim his prize; he holds what’s left of Ness aloft, cackling up a storm. Literally. A storm starts, with rain and lightning. A traumatized Lucas shows his own heroism by running away, abandoning Ness’s remains to the tender care of Wario. Lucas ends up running bang into Pokemon Trainer, who looks kind of like Ash but isn’t. This is good, because more Primids are popping up, and Pokemon Trainer (let’s call him Red) has a Squirtle in his pocket. Otherwise, Lucas doesn’t stand a chance. <br /> Grade: A+ This was fantastic-- miserable Lucas, cocky but heroic Ness, disgusting but clever Wario. It was more logical and less cracked than previous installments, Ness and Lucas being a natural pair. Dunno about this Pokemon trainer dood, though. We’ll see about him in a bit.<br /><br /> Lucas Joins the Pokemon Trainer:<br /> Red looks wary but zaps his Squirtle back into its ball with a stereotypical PT flourish. Red waves bye-bye to Lucas and walks off. Lucas pouts and whines and has grayscale flashbacks to the demise of Ness. Lucas snaps out of his horrible fantasies, looks grim, and runs to catch up with Red. The Pokemon Trainer agrees to recruit Lucas into his gang, which smuggles heroin in Poke Balls. OK, I made that last part up.<br /> Grade: A- Lucas is messed up. And I mean that in a positive sense, and this is a character actual human beings can possibly relate to.<br /><br /> Overall, this is really looking up. This sequence is so much more gripping than the previous character arcs that I can only resort to superlatives. Let's see if SSE maintains this momentum for the next installment, the Misadventures of Puffball and Pixie Girl. And no, I don't mean Kirby and Peach.Diane Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00359031158925084093noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7646387.post-71049287996613745922008-05-22T18:42:00.000-07:002008-05-22T18:46:19.340-07:00Subspace Emissary, Part DeuxSo, last time on The Subspace Emissary... stuff happened. Yep. Now, for more epic fun!<br /><br /> I’m With Stupid:<br /> Cut from The Sea of Clouds to a lush and mountainous jungle. A cart piled high with bananas and driven by a minor Koopa careens along the edge of the cliff. In the jungle, a giant ape trashes Koopas and Goombas without mercy. I guess King Bowser has started a banana cartel, and the ape works for the CIA or something. The great ape strikes a pose at the edge of a cliff, beats his chest and roars. Yay, Donkey Kong. But wait, it’s DK Country-type Donkey Kong. This cannot be good.<br /> The departing banana truck fires Bullet Bills at DK, who sends for his backup. Yes, it’s little Diddy Kong, with his prehensile tail, his baseball cap, and his peanut pistol. Sigh. Diddy takes out the Bills with his peanut gun, and the “cousins” strike victory poses as the last BB goes off behind them.<br /> Grade: Anything featuring Diddy Kong receives an automatic F. Also, why are DK and his little cousin so pleased with themselves? The Koopa got away with the ‘nanas.<br /><br /> The Dark Cannon Aims for the Kongs:<br /> DK and Stupid rejoice over their banana booty, then Bowser shows up and gets all threatening-like. Stupid Diddy Kong makes menacing martial arts poses at the Koopa King, who pulls out a massive gun. DK, realizing his idiot relation is about to be killed, punches the brat into the safety of thin air and takes the hit. Stupid Diddy covers his eyes in horror as he sails away. DK falls to the ground, a lifeless trophy.<br /> Grade: I know I promised to give anything involving Diddy Kong an F, but this was a concise action sequence, and I think the creators intend the viewer to think that Diddy is a foolish little nuisance. But this scene sets up a sequence wherein the player has to play as Diddy Kong, so I’m still going to give it an F.<br /><br /> The Ancient Minister Escapes Mario and Pit:<br /> The Ancient Minister glides down the court! He has the ball! Mario leaps and misses! Pit makes a heroic lunge, and misses the ball! The Ancient Minister heads down the court unimpeded, and he’s going to score!<br /> Grade: B- It was cute when Pit stepped on Mario’s head and caused the plumber to face-plant. Pit’s also cute when he’s annoyed. But really-- can Kid fly, or not? Is this an Idiot Plot device of some kind? Points deducted for making me even have to wonder about this.<br /><br /> Fox Confronts Rayquaza:<br /> Diddy swings blithely through the trees until he reaches the shore of a lake. A smoking Arwing is visible in the background. Diddy is headed for the wreckage when a cartoonish green dragon comes out of the water and roars. Not placated by Diddy’s stupid cuteness, the dragon belches a green orb of death at the downed Arwing, which bursts into flames. The dragon then snatches up Diddy with the presumed intention of eating him.<br /> Not all is lost! A heroic figure leaps from the flaming Arwing wreckage and frees Diddy from the monster’s three-clawed grasp using lightning-quick martial arts. Dramatic slo-mo shows the viewer that Our Hero has a bushy tail. Yes, our hero is none other than Fox McCloud, aka Star Fox, aka just plain ol’ Fox. Fox uses a hexagonal shield to reflect the energy ball right back at the dragon, which falls into the lake, defeated. Fox, cool as a furred cucumber, gestures to Diddy that monkey-boy should come along with him.<br /> Grade: I can’t give Fox an F. Even though I don’t like his Brawl character design, I don’t want him hanging with Diddy, and I don’t precisely know why he had to fight a giant Pokemon, I have to give McCloud at least a B+. At least this “hero” actually, y’know, did something.<br /><br /> Diddy Kong Appeals to Fox:<br /> Another boss defeated. Fox and Diddy stand on the shores of Lake Rayquaza. Fox gives the thumbs-up and Diddy does his asinine victory dance. Fox, his job done, walks away with heroic bearing and purpose. Diddy grabs Fox and tries to explain... something... using squeaks and sign language. Fox doesn’t care about the banana cartel and walks off a second time. Diddy drags a disgruntled Fox away by the collar.<br /> Grade: I guess it was kind of cute. And short. B?<br /><br /> The Dissolving of the False King Bowser:<br /> Fox and Diddy do their victory poses over a Bowser trophy. Diddy pokes and then rams the trophy, which dissolves into purple pollen spores. Uh-oh. Fox narrows his eyes in suspicion, and then a black arrow shoots out of the trees. Yes, Bowser is back, and he has his trophy-gun at the ready. Bowser fires twice on the pair, getting only clouds of smoke and flames for his trouble. Diddy beats his little chest and charges Bowser, but Fox grabs the monkey brat and whisks him off to the comparative safety of the jungle with a cinematic plunge off a cliff. Bowser, gun in hand, gloats over their retreat.<br /> Grade: B Plot twist, I guess.Diane Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00359031158925084093noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7646387.post-57100293946495482242008-05-11T13:29:00.001-07:002008-05-11T13:40:55.923-07:00Blogging the Subspace Emissary, Part the FirstSo, originally I was going to blog <span style="font-style:italic;">The Iliad</span>. I was inspired by David Plotz’s Blogging the Bible on <span style="font-style:italic;">Slate</span> magazine, and wanted to do justice to my favorite epic poem. But, in spite of picking up multiple translations of Homer and writing a few drafts, I never managed to post anything.<br /><br /> So, here is something even more epic than <span style="font-style:italic;">The Iliad</span>-- an account of the Subspace Emissary from Super Smash Brothers Brawl, cut scene by cut scene, with my commentary. That’s a good substitute, right? No? Too bad, as I’m doing it anyway.<br /><br />NB: In some cases, I have broken down the commentary by discrete “stages” that must be cleared by the player. Clearing a stage unlocks the cut scenes for repeated viewing. In other cases, I lumped stages that seemed thematically related together in one chunk. Also, there are battles and gameplay and stuff in between the cut scenes, in case you’re wondering.<br /><br /> <br /> The Weird World of Trophies<br /><br /> Le Opening Montage<br /> It’s the Subspace Emissary! Starring Mario! Link! Kirby! Pit! And a motley collection of bounty hunters, mercenaries, Pokemon, small children, cross-dressers, exiled royalty, vermin, and spacemen! These categories not considered mutually exclusive! Le montage is set to the stirring strains of some <span style="font-style:italic;">Fire Emblem</span> song, whose lyrics (translated from Latin) can be found here. All the “primary” characters of SSBB get a scene in the montage, and so do a handful of secret unlockable characters. Ness from <span style="font-style:italic;">Earthbound</span> gets a close-up intro, and so do the big-ticket unlockables Sonic and Solid Snake. Marth from <span style="font-style:italic;">Fire Emblem</span> is glimpsed twice but doesn’t rate a close-up, and the likes of Luigi, Falco Lombardi, and Toon Link don’t get jack that I saw.<br /><br /> The World of Trophies<br /> A great stadium, filled to capacity, floats in mid-air. The logo of SSBB is featured prominently; Princesses Zelda and Peach are among the distinguished spectators. Our gladiators, in trophy form, enter the ring and come alive. Mario versus Kirby. This is killer stuff, folks.<br /> Grade: B One cut scene in and my mind is already reeling from the meta weirdness of it all.<br /><br /> Mario Beats Kirby<br /> Trophy!Kirby, having lost the match, falls to the stadium floor and bounces. Mario, a grim look on his face, brings Kirby back to life. Kirby bounces cutely in appreciation. He looks puzzled, then smiles at Mario.<br /> Grade: B I still don’t know what precisely is going on here, but it’s weird.<br /><br /> Pit Watches From Above:<br /> Setting: a grand hall of a palace or temple. Content... you know those lame depictions of Heaven in movies, where valley-girl angels talk on celestial phones and watch celestial soaps and eat bon-bons all day? And other non-spiritual, non-edifying, variations upon the theme? Well, here in Nintendoland, angels in heaven sit around watching the equivalent of professional wrestling. Pit here (dude from <span style="font-style:italic;">Kid Icarus</span>) has an actual day job, too-- Captain of the Guard for the Goddess Palutena, I believe. I dunno who Pit’s rooting for, but I get the impression it’s Kirby. <br /> Grade: B Pit’s cuter than he deserves to be, given his primitive NES origins. He’s received the full bishounen makeover-- tumbling chestnut curls, huge blue eyes, a fair and pretty face. He’s adorable. He looks about ten years old. And he has shorty-shorts under his tunic. Fanservice bait, pure and simple. I’m not objecting, but let’s be honest about it. <br /> <br /> Attack On The Stadium:<br /> Winner Mario and loser Kirby shake hands and receive the accolades of the crowd together. But all is not well-- red-hued clouds pile on the horizon and a ginormous menacing airship cruises overhead and drops a shower of purple glowing spores on the stadium. Said spores coalesce into little cuddly robot creatures. The Princesses, shocked at this turn of events, charge down to where Mario and Kirby stand. The four stand shoulder-to-shoulder, ready for a fight. Well, Zelda is ready for a fight. Peach floats in like it’s going to be a tea party down there.<br /> Grade: B+ Something’s happening here, what it <span style="font-style:italic;">is</span> is not exactly clear.<br /> <br /><br /> The Ancient Minister and the Subspace Bomb:<br /> Our four heroes encounter a green-draped levitating weirdo with glowing eyes, who carries a round bomb with with a great red X on it. Meet the Ancient Minister. AM drops the bomb right there in the stadium, and two little robot dudes (not the ones who spawned out of the purple pollen) take opposite ends of the bomb and slide it open to reveal a blue glowing core and a red countdown clock. The Ancient Minister nods his approval of the time bomb and flies back to the battleship. Mario runs to defuse the bomb but is thwacked by a handy cannonball and sails out of the stadium. Kirby stands alone, because in the meantime a giant piranha-plant thing has captured both princesses and has them aloft in birdcages. Said plant bangs the cages together and roars at Kirby.<br /> Grade: A- At this point, in spite of the ludicrous nature of the whole exercise, something did click for me. Peach and Zelda in peril! Venus Fly-trap things dangling princess-filled cages! Mario and Kirby against bad evil critters! If I were nine years old again, every cylinder of my imagination would be fired up over this stuff. This is what I watched that awful Zelda afternoon cartoon for.<br /><br /> Zelda Taken:<br /> Petey Piranha is dead. Kirby and Peach leap out of the fiery explosion of Petey’s demise and land safely on the stadium floor. Enter Wario, who is packing a massive weapon that appears to have been made from motorcycle parts. Ever the gentleman, Wario aims at the Princess of Hyrule, who is trapped beneath the ruins of her birdcage prison. Wario charges up the weapon, which glows with pink and scarlet light before firing a black arrow at the Princess. Zelda is transformed into a lifeless and stylishly posed trophy.<br /> Wario slings the dead Zelda over his shoulder and takes off, gloating as usual. Kirby and Peach run after him, just in time for that pesky bomb to finally explode. The detonation obliterates the stadium in an indigo orb of nothingness. Kirby and Peach alone sail out of the holocaust, riding a Warp Star.<br /> Grade: A- Hey, cool. Wario killed Zelda. No, wait, that sucks. I like Zelda. Why didn’t he kill Peach instead? Also, this death-by-trophy thing has some interesting implications. Also, what is Wario going to do with a lifeless Princess Zelda? The mind boggles.<br /><br /> Pit’s Descent:<br /> Pit watches in consternation as his television program is interrupted by the demolition of the Stadium. A warm glow of light and some new music behind him herald the appearance of his employer, the Goddess Palutena. She’s pretty! Pit kneels to his boss, and Palutena gives him a weapon and some magic bracelets. Pit scampers off happily, climbs a stairway to nowhere, and descends into the clouds as the theme from Kid Icarus plays in the background. <br /> Grade: A- Pit is cute, Palutena is pretty, and apparently someone here has some kind of a plan.<br /> <br /> The Subspace Army in the Sea of Clouds:<br /><br /> Pit lands on solid ground and spies the evil battleship (The Halberd) emerging from the er, Sea of Clouds. The Halberd drops more purple pollen balls that become those robot-thingys (Primids). Some Primids surround Pit, who brandishes his weapons and is ready for a fight.<br /> Grade: B+ Pit’s cute. The plot advances. Slowly.<br /><br /> Mario and Pit Meet:<br /> <br /> Pit finds trophy!Mario embedded in a cloud bank. Pit revives Mario and stares intently into Mario’s eyes. They share a brief flashback to the terror attack on the stadium, and team up without any soul-searching or hesitation. Maybe angels give off vibes of inherent trustworthiness. Pit and Mario go bounding/soaring off together, shorty-shorts and all.<br /> Grade: B+ Just what it says, really. Did I mention Pit’s cute?<br /><br /> The Arwing’s Pursuit:<br /> Pit and Mario stand in the clouds as the Halberd gets away. A smaller craft is tailing it, Gee, that must be an Arwing. Where’d that come from again?<br /> Grade: C Self-explanatory.<br /><br /> Kirby and Peach Flee the Sea of Clouds:<br /> Kirby and Peach flee on the Warp Star, but that battleship is catching up to them. The battleship smacks the Warp Star, and Kirby and Peach get flipped off, just in time for a comical close-up.<br /> Grade: I guess they’re in trouble. I fail to care. See, I’m a newbie to most of these franchises. I dunno that the battleship is the Halberd, pride and joy of Kirby’s own rival, Meta Knight. I barely remember that Arwings come out of Star Fox. And I don’t give a crap about Kirby or Peach. Okay, C- <br /><br /> Arwing Downed, Peach Overboard<br /> The battleship launches sprays of golden fire at the Arwing, which evades the fire with skill. It does not evade a metal arm-thing that shoots out of the ship and smacks the fighter in a manner reminiscent of Wario’s black arrow nuking Zelda. Instead of becoming a trophy, the downed fighter enters a spin and clips the top of the battleship, knocking Peach and Kirby off their standing pose atop the Halberd. Peach and Kirby fall away into the clouds.<br /> Grade: B- So, Mario got taken out temporarily, Zelda is out for the count, Star Fox just got shot down... this is not looking good for our heroes, but I still don’t much care. This is too whacked-out at present. It’s not really “great tastes that go great together” for me. And these are still fairly cartoonish franchises, so you know it’s just going to get weirder from here when Samus Aran and Solid Snake join the party.<br /><br /> Overall, color me confused.Diane Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00359031158925084093noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7646387.post-58391388290157242592007-08-28T18:18:00.000-07:002007-08-28T18:37:23.449-07:00It's not over 'til the Senator sings...So, the lead singer of one of America's most endearing cult musical groups is on his way to a reunion gig-- their first show together in the better part of a decade. And on the way, he has this little "incident" involving an undercover cop in the men's john at Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. It doesn't make the press at the time, and the group goes on to have their not-so-triumphant reunion at a charity benefit the following day. The singer and his compadres are off key, and the group is down one member anyway. If any (deserved) shouts of "Where's Jim?" come from the audience, history does not record the fact. <br /><br />Anyway, fast forward two months, and the bathroom incident finally makes the papers. Fans are shocked-- they already know that General John is a religious wackadoodle whose forays into songwriting are truly embarrassing, and they've finally realized that Trent is a bigot (but a cuddly bigot! like Archie Bunker!). But the bathroom-stall footsie business is just so sordid. So pathetic. And so, so, wrong for the image of the Singing Senators. <br /><br />I always liked Yankee Jim best anyway.Diane Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00359031158925084093noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7646387.post-75296754460869320822007-07-28T14:44:00.000-07:002007-07-28T15:45:20.055-07:00More Thoughts on Popular FictionVery popular fiction. Specifically, Harry Potter. Again.<br /><br />Spoilers below. Deal. It's been a week already.<br /><br />I liked the books, but I admit part of what drives my interest in the series is still "meta"-- that is, I like to read fan theories, and fan fiction, and all the griping and whingeing and hysteria that fans create. There are so many loose ends, contradictions, red herrings, and other oddities that the stuff people come up with to fill in the gaps makes for great entertainment. Likewise, part of the joy of finishing HPVII was logging on LiveJournal to see the fan reactions. And some of it was touching, and insightful, and increased my own satisfaction with the series.<br /><br />But some of it made me want to pull my hair. As someone banging away on a WIP, with dreams of being a published writer some day, Readership and the relationship between Author and Reader interests me. And Rowling has some pathological readers. Take the following 100% genuine reactions I've read:<br /><br />1) It was incredibly selfish of Rowling to publish the epilogue, because that was imposing a "canonical" future for Harry and friends on the readership.<br /><br />OK. The act of writing is selfish. Any act of publication is an imposition on an audience. Maybe JKR should've just not published book Seven and left everyone hanging so people could create their own ending? The epilogue was wretched, and my opinion of it sinks with every extra nugget of info JRK provides, but I'm not gonna call the author selfish for wrapping up the tale in a way that satisfied her. Yes, the writing style jarred and it could've been redone. Yes, the kids' names were icky. Yes, she could've mentioned somewhere in the epilogue that Harry and Ron were Aurors and that Hermione had a career in Magical Law, or given some hint about what H-R-H did to rebuild their world. But people who are mad about "canon" being closed and shutting down their fanfic possibilities... possibly like fanfic too much? Dude, write AUs. It's good for the soul.<br /><br />[Aside-- Harry being an Auror bothers me, personally. Yes, that was his dream from Book V, but if he should fall in the line of duty, it means some Dark Wizard is now Master of the Elder Wand. That can't be good. I like a 'fic where he ended up working in Honeydukes making sweets and toys for wizarding kiddies.]<br /><br />Also, I hate Harry/Ginny with a passion. Book VII made me a confirmed Harry/Luna shipper. But I'm not gonna send Rowling hate mail over it.<br /><br />2) I identify so much with Severus Snape that the message I got out of Book Seven was that I am subhuman and not even worthy of burial.<br /><br />He's not real. It's a book. You have serious issues and I'm glad not to be one of your co-workers. I <3 Snape as a character, and thought his ending rocked and was much more satisfying than most fan-guesses. But man, entwining your personal worth with some ambiguous dude with a dark past in a kiddie book is probably not a healthy idea.<br /><br />3) As a Slytherin, I am offended by the characterization of my house in the series, especially in Book VII.<br /><br />You are not a Slytherin. Hogwarts does not exist, the Sorting Hat has never touched your head, and no online personality tests can change this, nor can your love of green and snakies, nor can your belief that Draco is your woobie. You could say that as, a woman, you have issues with Rowling's treatment of females, or that as a person of colour, you aren't convinced by the colour-blindness of wizarding society. But if you preface opinions with "[a]s a Slytherin," or "[s]peaking as a Ravenclaw," or "[o]n behalf of my fellow Hufflepuffs," you look really silly. Unless it's a joke, and these self-proclaimed Slytherins were not joking. And these are adults. With jobs. Some may have kids. It's frightening.<br /><br />The way the house unity issue was "resolved" sucked rocks, though. I wanted to see Theo Nott and Blaise Zabini join the ranks against Voldy. Where the hell were they in book VII?<br /><br />4) The series was offensively heteronormative.<br /><br />Uh...<br /><br />Uh...<br /><br />Really, what were these people expecting? And when did celebrations of the nuclear family get to be so offensive to people? This is the weirdest, thorniest, and most complicated issue, because Rowling's treatment of gender roles does push peoples' buttons. It certainly rubs me the wrong way in just about every book. But really-- it's her book, her characters, her ending. If you got upset because no characters were openly gay, or because getting married and having kidlets was presented as a happy and fulfilling destiny for some characters... you were reading the wrong series, methinks.<br /><br />Besides, HP had some pretty diverse families, IMO. Single father Xeno Lovegood may be a weirdo, but he does love his Luna. Granny Longbottom, raising Neville on behalf of his insane parents, does an alright job in the end. Dean Thomas is a product of a "blended" family and knows very little about his real father. Seamus Finnegan's mum married his dad without mentioning the little detail that she was a witch, and Dad Finnegan seems to have virtually no influence over Seamus compared with Mum. Blaise Zabini's mother is a serial monogamist with at least seven husbands to her credit. And Harry's dream was, at one point, to be a "family" with his godfather Sirius.<br /> <br />Also, Snape's nuclear family doesn't seem to have done much for him. Not to mention the Houses of Black, and Gaunt, and Dumbledore.... Rowling certainly doesn't shrink from portraying nastiness and dysfunction within the nuclear family structure.<br /><br />I realize that the online, fanfic-writing, theorizing segment of fandom is the minority, and that most of these people are obsessives, or they wouldn't have the blogs and journals and 'fic archives. But these people mostly seem to be intelligent, articulate, and entertaining... and yet also happen to be loons. Vicious, hateful loons, in some cases. Fandom is a scary place sometimes.<br /><br />BTW, I read the His Dark Materials trilogy this weekend, just to see what all the fuss was about. I can see that they're objectively "better" than Harry Potter I-VII; they're better written, and the alternate worlds are "built" instead of pasted together. For all that people rave about Rowling as a world-builder, it's really just a twisted funhouse reflection of our world, with serious gaps and inconsistencies. HPVII fixed some of my problems with it, but deep analysis of the Potterverse as a world is the kind of thing that drives people mad. HDM, on the other hand, starts off with a fantastically chilling AU, kind of like the one in The Alteration, but with talking polar bears.<br /><br />Yep. Kingsley Amis with sentient polar bears. How come no one writes fanfic for The Alteration, anyway? The implications of that universe left me giddy and dizzy, though I did read the book while under the weather and that may have been a factor.<br /><br />Anyway, HDM may be "better" than Harry Potter, but it wasn't nearly as fun. I am going to re-read the Potter books III, IV, VI, and VII repeatedly, for pleasure. I don't feel the urge to sit down and devour HDM again in the immediate future. Part of it is that Rowling has a great sense of humour-- not the silly stuff like vomit-flavoured jelly beans, but the character-based humour that shines through with Ron's interactions with Harry and Hermione, or the Weasley twins' interactions with the rest of the world. Rowling's characters may be more stereotypical than Pullman's, but it's fun to spend time with them. The only characters in HDM who were remotely "fun" were the witch queen and the Texan aeronaut. <br /><br />And the film for "The Golden Compass" doesn't look that hot. I could be wrong.Diane Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00359031158925084093noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7646387.post-46485713847998403352007-07-23T16:44:00.000-07:002007-07-23T17:56:02.805-07:00Harry Potter, AgainSo, I plowed through Harry Potter and the Crappy Title... er Deathly Hallows in about four hours Saturday morning. I didn't do the ludicrous all-nighter at a bookstore either; Target had a whole pile of the things available around 8:30 AM, when I showed up looking for kitty litter.<br /><br />And? Well, it was pretty deeply satisying. After the one-two slap of Order of the Phoenix, with Raging Harry and Hermione the War Criminal, and Half-Blood Prince with the sucky teen romance and the inbred, sociopathic Gaunts, I really didn't know what to expect from Deathly Hallows. But Rowling tied up damn near every major plot thread in a way that worked, and resolved many of my lingering doubts about the series.<br /><br />Spoilers below-- it's all pop culture legend now, like Star Wars. If you didn't read it already, oh well.<br /><br />Ten Best Things About Harry Potter 7:<br /><br />Honorable Mention: The goblins. That shoe was going to drop one of these days, and it should've dropped harder than that.<br /><br />10. Hermione, Harry, and Ron functioning as a real, mature, fantastic team. Even Ron's Betrayal Redux was handled well, as was his return. <br /><br />9. Kreacher and Regulus' Bogus Journey-- poor, poor little Reggie. Hermione wasn't the only one bawling as I read that scene. And what really happened made so much more sense than the fan-theories.<br /><br />8. Peter/Wormtail's ignominious end. No showdown with Lupin! Nope, just an undignified and disgusting death. Though, as one of Voldemort's most effective servants, maybe he did deserve better. But the crappy deaths of Wormtail and Lupin, like the crappy death of Sirius, is one in the eye to "Marauder"-obsessed fans who put way too much symbolic emphasis on the elder generation. They weren't the core of the story, and they never were. <br /><br />7. Drop dead Fred. I shouted for joy when Fred Weasley bit it, not because I hated him (rather liked him, really), but because Rowling had the guts to go for the most satisfying and painful Weasley death imaginable. When George lost an ear, I cringed, thinking the redheads were safe (what with Arthur's brush with death in V, Bill's mauling in VI, and Ron's many escapes with the Reaper). But no, Rowling went for the jugular and cleaved the twins asunder-- leaving George, the more sensitive of the pair, to suffer for the rest of his life. Offscreen, mind you-- the horror is all in what the reader imagines will lay in store for the family. Bravo to Rowling for doing what I'd been wanting her to do since Book V.<br /><br />6. The Ravenclaws. This, not Book V, was really the Ravenclaw book, what with Luna and her father, the tale of the Grey Lady, and an actual visit to the fabled common room. If only we'd learned old Albus had himself been a Ravenclaw (it certainly fits him best, IMO). Points off for more Slytherin hate, though-- come on, they can't all be bad. Really!<br /><br />5. Neville's Gran, on the lam. Granny Longbottom making a break for it. And Neville, sweet Neville. I didn't even like him as a character until I saw the Goblet of Fire film, but I have come 'round to Neville. Pity he doesn't marry Luna. Maybe Dean Thomas marries Luna-- I always did like Dean, and he had his turn in the sun as well.<br /><br />4. The Dark Side of Albus Dumbledore. Dude, that was had elements of the best fan theories, but was put together better than any of them. Manipulative!Dumbledore all the way. I never believed for a second Rowling would actually go there, but she did and I loved it. Nice to finally hear from old Aberforth, too. rOxOr!!!<br /><br />3. Snape. He was a bastard, but he was Dumbledore's bastard. It was the best explanation-- not "on the side of Light" from day one, not a born murderer. And while I'd lately subscribed to the hypothesis that his change of heart came when the DE's killed his mum (no evidence for that turned up in canon), the Snape-luvs-Lily thing was handled in a way that I could stomach it. OK, it was kind of creepy-- dude, he *was* creepy. And his death scene, while apparently aimed just to piss off the fans who wanted an actively heroic end for their fave character, was brilliant, really. He was the perfect spy, and had the death of a perfect spy-- his "master" never had a clue Snape wasn't loyal. Unsung, dirty, unglamourous heroism, that-- do your job to the letter, and get iced for it. And no one loves you until after you're dead, because it's easier to get saccharine about a dead jerk than to maintain a relationship with a living one. Though the memories leaking out of his eyes was a sick image-- how come we've never seen that before? Does that happen when people get Crucio'd into death or insanity? <br /><br />2. I was afraid the "deathly hallows" would be very irritating last-second McGuffins. Instead, that part was beautifully handled-- unreliable sources, the use of items we'd seen in previous books but didn't fully understand, a perfect explanation of the "Peverell coat of arms"- well done, Jo.<br /><br />1. Lee Jordan, host of Potterwatch on pirate radio. I cheered at this-- what a perfect, in-character, subversive return for one of my favorite side characters. Rock on, Lee.<br /><br />Worst Things About Harry Potter 7:<br /><br />10. I wanted the "godfather" thing to be better developed. I realize poor little Teddy had a grandmother to raise him, but...<br /><br />9. Molly killing Bellatrix was not satisfying. Harry's warning sign that Bellatrix was going to be toast was cool, but dammit, I wanted Neville holding the fatal wand. Molly killing... no, I didn't buy it. Even tigress-mother syndrome did not make me believe it. Molly shouting obscenities was not believable, either. I skipped over that bit.<br /><br />8. Harry ended up with Ginny. Sigh. Inevitable, but I didn't like it and still don't. And that epilogue-- the Malfoy stuff was adorable, but I just had the nagging feeling I'd read that insipid family scene before. Many times. It really did read like fanfiction. And the kids' names suck. <br /><br />7. Remus and Tonks are so obviously the ones that she changed her mind about killing off. And I bet Hagrid was the one she gave a reprieve to. Not a fair trade, man. And while I was kinda glad that Lupin did not go out facing Wormtail or Greyback (fan theories made me sick of those scenarios), his offscreen death was... eh. I actually missed that he was dead the first time, and did a doubletake and had to read the passage again. Double for Tonks-- she was an Auror, dammit! Couldn't we at least see her doing her damn job before she died?<br /><br />6. Exposition. Exposition. Exposition. We will now interrupt Armageddon to bring you Snape's entire backstory. Twice.<br /><br />5. What's up with everyone casting Unforgivables all over the place? Aren't they... unforgivable?<br /><br />4. Remus is hanging with his bros James and Sirus in the afterlife. Sucks to be Tonks. This is why depictions of the afterlife are invariably unsatisfying. <br /><br />3. Wait-- the werewolf caper was *before* the Snape's-pants incident? Really? That... makes no sense. I must have been tainted by fandom.<br /><br />2. I still learned jack-all about Lily Potter. She was adorable as a kid, but what sort of woman was she other than pretty? I wanted to find out more about her talents at Potions and Charms. And weren't we supposed to find out what she and James did for a living, at least before they went into hiding? Also, that letter of hers in at Grimmauld Place-- that was totally like a scene from the third book in the Anne of Green Gables series-- "Roses of Yesterday." <br /><br />1. I thought we were going to see a villain with a convincing motivation. Grindelwald was ten times more interesting than Tom Riddle. Man, I want a story about Dumbledore and Grindelwald's Not-So-Excellent Adventures now. The moral compass of the story is so screwed up... so screwed up. But I don't read it for the moral lessons, I read it 'cause it's cute and funny and occasionally gripping or tragic. <br /><br />The fifth film wasn't any great shakes, though. Goblet of Fire was a much, much better film. Oh well-- better luck next time.Diane Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00359031158925084093noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7646387.post-1163035299656990942006-11-08T16:07:00.000-08:002006-11-08T17:21:39.810-08:00Hail Gridlock!So, the American voters had a referendum on President Bush and his policies. That's too bad, because while I can't disagree with the outcome of yesterday's vote, the 'referendum' was the wrong one to begin with. What this election should have been about-- more than Bush, more than Rumsfeld (see ya, #$%@), more than Iraq-- was that very special American institution, the do-nothing Congress. <br />And boy howdy, have we witnessed one of those. These guys put the guys who got Harry Truman re-elected to shame. You see, while it's a bad thing to have a lousy president, it's one of those things that just happens. It only takes the wrong guy (Pierce), the right guy in the wrong place at the wrong time (Jimmy Carter), or even the right guy in the right place at the wrong time (G.H.W. Bush) to be a crappy, weak, or just plain uninspiring president. It only takes, at most, a couple of dozen people to have a truly rotten presidential administration (Harding, Nixon, and most of Reconstruction). But it takes a cast of hundreds to make an abysmal legislative branch.<br />And lookit what we've seen-- Tom DeLay (every minute of it). Ney and Cunningham. Denny Hastert and the Monkey Bunch (see no evil, hear no evil...), with Mark Foley in his Very Special headline-grabbing role. And that's just the House! The Senate provided us with Bridge to Nowhere, the Terri Schiavo Circus (starring Bill Frist and Rick Santorum) and the continued existence of Trent Lott. Not all of this was concentrated in the two years of this current Congressional session, but things reached a tipping point this year-- financial scandals, sex scandals, and the biggest scandal of all-- a legislative branch that didn't legislate. At all. <br />Really, you'd think they were facing a hostile president poised to veto like Andrew Jackson reincarnate, an 'activist' Supreme Court ready to declare their every act unconstitutional, and a rabid, filibuster-happy minority. Not, y'know, a Republican executive who didn't seem to be aware of his own veto power, a conservative-led court, and a spineless, cowering opposition.<br />'Scuse me, I was being critical of the new Masters of Capitol Hill (sort of). Back to them in a moment. Anyway, what are the achievements of the 109th Congress? Immigration reform? No. A balanced budget? Nope. A reasonable budget? Hell no. Anything resembling checks and balances? No. Any attempts to clean up their own ethical litter box? No. These people deserved to lose their jobs. The midterm election shouldn't just have been a referendum on the president, it should have been a referendum on, y'know, Congress. <br />On the other hand, Bush kind of insisted on making this election all about him. So, his party deserved to get smacked as his proxy. And the result-- a purge of Midwestern Republicans, Northeastern Republicans, some Californian Republicans (yes, they do exist). Not just "throw the bums" out, but "throw these particular bums out." No Democrat has lost his or her seat that I've seen. And it wasn't only the bums that went down, either-- at least one Republican Senator whose constituents thought he was doing a decent job lost because the voters in his state wanted to send a message to the president! Lincoln Chafee was just a sacrifice to the national weal. That's got to burn, man.<br /> As for me, I voted for my state's Democratic incumbent senator, not because I liked her or anything she's done (which isn't much, really), but because she's a butt occupying a seat on the Democratic side of the aisle. I voted for her to give my state's other, better Senator a chance at reclaiming the reins at the Senate Armed Services Committee. And if things go blue in Montana and Virginia, he will. <br />I don't know what to expect from a Democratic House and Senate. I didn't really expect them to win either house, given all the bumbling of the past few years. Speaker (!?!) Pelosi? She's an Italian-American woman from SF, CA, so we're practically family and all, but she's got a mess on her hands now. But I do feel very relieved. Because what we have, technically speaking, is going to be gridlock. Gridlock is a much-maligned state of affairs. An executive-legislative stalemate means, in essence, that checks and balances are doing what they're supposed to do. Neither branch has leeway to screw over the country, and after six years of Bush II and Friends, I think we've had a tutorial in the dangers of unchecked executive power. Also, see Nixon, FDR, Jackson, John Adams... but none of them had a roll-over Congress quite like the 107th, 108th, and 109th. Not even Jackson, and he was known to shoot people he had disagreements with.<br />At its best, gridlock means that officials who want a legacy and spiffy achievements to put on their reelection campaign lit actually have to work together, deal and dialogue and do all that bipartisan stuff that's been under the rug since Tom DeLay started running amok. And, as I said above, given the sad and sorry legacy of the 109th Congress, even terminal gridlock is already a step up. At least then there's an excuse for nothing getting accomplished. The gentlemen and ladies who bear the responsibility for the 109th have no excuse at all. People can blame Bush for the Republicans taking a hit. But in an efficient democracy, the deadwood and filth of the lame-duck Republican majority should have lost power on their own demerits.<br />Enjoy private life, Santorum and all the rest of you. Say hi to Donald Rumsfeld while you're there.Diane Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00359031158925084093noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7646387.post-1159911140814362042006-10-03T13:57:00.000-07:002006-10-03T14:32:21.993-07:00[Insert 'don't give a' Hoot joke here]I saw posters for this film in the gift shop of Hidden River Cave in Kentucky back in May, and it looked bad just from the pix. Since American Airlines saw fit to inflict it (along with endless CBS commercials) on me over the weekend, I just had to write a review. In essence, Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, and Becky Thatcher engage in terrorist acts to save burrowing owls. Dandy.<br /><br />Criminy, even the in-flight magazine had nothing good to say about the film! Hoot is adapted from an allegedly good and medal-winning young adult's book, and since I didn't read it, I'll judge the film on its own 'merits' and not as an adaptation. Also, I watched it with the sound off, but it was the kind of film where you can guess at least 65% of the dialogue. <br /><br />Anyway, our Tom is some wide-eyed cute kid (cute in a Pete Townshend way, not the Paul McCartney way), and he gets his face mushed up against the school bus window by the local fat bully, and then he spies some blond kid running by like the wind, and then a blonde girl with glasses intervenes with the bully and...<br /><br />This is also the kind of film where the female non-love interest has glasses at the beginning of the film but not by the end of it. A shame, as she was much more interesting looking with the odd angular frames beneath her golden mane. Sans glasses, this Becky Thatcher stand-in was not nearly as attractive. But that's OK, since judging from the covert co-ed sleepover scene between her and Tom, he ain't never gonna be interested in her like that. [Online research compels me to mention that "Tom's" nickname in the film is "Cowgirl." Yeah.]<br /><br />Anyway, so we have Tom and Becky, and Huck is the deeply attractive blond youth running around in the woods. After some dull and obvious exposition, we learn that Huck here is a terrorist, planting alligators and poisonous snakes on a construction site. Why? To save some darling burrowing owls on the site. OK, now it bears asking why an animal lover would use other animals as weapons, imperiling them in the process of his crusade. It's not like snakes and 'gators don't already have a bad rap.<br /><br />Whatever. This is set in Florida, but instead of the real fake Florida, it's actually Kiddie-Empowerment Fantasy Land. The kind of place where a middle-schooler can receive a knockout blow to the forehead and wake up in his own bed attended by mommy and daddy and a cold compress, and not in a hospital receiving a CT scan as a Grade Three concussion warrants. [Tom gets whacked again with a golfball, again in the head, later on and sadly does not succumb to Second-Impact syndrome.]<br /><br />Everything about this film reeks of phony, from the school bully scenes (I can't tell if they advance the plot or not, but I'm guessing no), to Huck's bleached hair, to way the Scooby Doo caper wraps up. It's the kind of film that tries to inspire kids by uh, lying to them? And any environmental aspect is kinda ruined by the way these kids are, like, criminals. They vandalize property, plant lethal animals to harm construction workers, and even kidnap and hogtie a guy. Actually, there's a lot of tying and binding and kiddie bondage engaged in by Huck and Becky (not with each other), and one of the school bully scenes looks a hell of a lot like attempted rape. This is a film that just doesn't know what it wants to be-- black comedy? Afterschool special? A stomach-turning fusion of both with a dash of shounen ai (look it up) to turn on the girls?<br /><br />Lookit, I saw Manny and Lo. That was a teen runaway black comedy (tho' the ending broke my suspension of disbelief). This Hoot thing is just... bad. The pacing sucks, the plot obviously sucks, and I can tell the dialogue is inane without even hearing a word of it. It's transparently bad. <br /><br />OK, the kiddies save the owls and Show Everybody in the end, and Tom and Huck ride off into the Florida sun, where we leave them in the process of plotting to destroy a condo development. I guess that bit warmed my heart.Diane Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00359031158925084093noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7646387.post-1152718449782188092006-07-12T08:32:00.000-07:002006-07-12T08:34:09.806-07:00A Quiet Death: R. K. "Syd" Barrett<p class="MsoNormal">Syd Barrett is dead.<span style=""> </span>Of course, the papers all mean Roger Keith Barrett, aged 60, who died at his <st1:city><st1:place>Cambridge</st1:place></st1:City> home on Friday or thereabouts of diabetes or cancer or stomach ulcers.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Syd Barrett has, after all, been dead for thirty years or more.<span style=""> </span>The former Floyd frontman retired from the stage in the early seventies; his last appearance in a recording studio was apparently the day he dropped in on his old mates in ’75 whilst they were in the middle of recording their tribute to him.<span style=""> </span>Syd wasn’t impressed enough with “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” to stick around, and he passed from that surreal incident into misty legend.<span style=""> </span>Oh, the legend was interrupted by crusty bits of truth—snapshots taken by stalker fans, interviews with relatives who knew their brother, their uncle, as “Roger”—but it endured for thirty years, and was alternately built up and chipped at by his own ex-bandmates, Dave, Rick, Nick, and that other Roger.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">It’s a funny thing to witness the death of this particular star.<span style=""> </span>All the pictures accompanying his obits are of that handsome young man with dark eyes and elf-curls.<span style=""> </span>This isn’t just because it’s how people want to remember him, the way that Rolling Stone graced its George Harrison memorial issue with a pic of the Quiet Moptop from nearly forty years back.<span style=""> </span>The pictures aren’t merely a selective filter, they’re a weird expression of truth.<span style=""> </span>That <i style="">is</i> Syd.<span style=""> </span>That is why anyone cares.<span style=""> </span>The aging, balding man captured walking the streets of <st1:city><st1:place>Cambridge</st1:place></st1:City>—that’s Roger Keith Barrett, but it’s not Syd.<span style=""> </span>Roger Keith chose not to be Syd anymore, after a point.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Yet, people have kept “Syd” in a weird suspension state for three decades.<span style=""> </span>Sure, fans knew that the painter and gardener puttering around <st1:city><st1:place>Cambridge</st1:place></st1:City> was the same biological entity as the boy in the black-and-white snapshots from 1967.<span style=""> </span>But I don’t think too many people fantasized about the very mundane Roger Barrett strapping a guitar on and joining the Floyd for a post-Live8 reunion.<span style=""> </span>People wanted Syd, the sweet, cute youth who struck a nerve with those who knew him “before,” who possessed a charisma that enchanted and haunted people so many years down the line.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Well, Roger Barrett didn’t want Syd and doesn’t seem to have wanted his fans <i style="">or</i> his ex-bandmates.<span style=""> </span>“Syd” has been a construct, a figure for everyone from Roger Waters to Cliff Jones to the fan in the street with his @#$%ing camera to project onto, an image of fantasy.<span style=""> </span>Maybe the lovely boy in the picture still existed somewhere, growing mushrooms in his basement or painting the floorboards green.<span style=""> </span>Maybe Barrett would snap out of his lull, get that twinkle back in his eye, grow out his hair and make music—and magic—again.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Syd, eternally young, defined by a few albums’ worth of songs and a few years’ span of pictures, may seem like something of a Peter Pan figure.<span style=""> </span>It’s worse than that, though—he’s rock music’s Terri Schiavo, kept “alive” through other people’s fantasy all down the years.<span style=""> </span>And plainly, he didn’t want to be.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Well, enough of that.<span style=""> </span>Roger K. Barrett, who pulled the plug on Syd a very long time ago, has passed away and is to be buried in a private service, by his family, like any ordinary denizen of <st1:city><st1:place>Cambridge</st1:place></st1:City>.<span style=""> </span>And Syd… he’s dead, too.<span style=""> </span>Those few years’ worth of pictures—adorable, appealing, edgy, disquieting, and finally bleak—they end.<span style=""> </span>And anyone who doubted—rather, who hoped—can admit that Syd ended as well, ended long before the man who rejected his stage self died a quiet death in <st1:city><st1:place>Cambridge</st1:place></st1:City> last Friday.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Roger Keith Barrett, 1947-2006</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Syd Barrett, 1962(?)- 1975(?)<span style="font-variant: small-caps;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>Diane Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00359031158925084093noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7646387.post-1146239155582141392006-04-28T08:14:00.000-07:002006-04-28T08:45:55.666-07:00Another Wunderkind Goes SplatBack in January of last year, I did a <a href="http://sigmastar.blogspot.com/2005/01/kelleys-kids-reflections-on-shattered.html">rundown</a> of some of the bad, bad, little writers out there who disgraced their profession. Y'know, Stephen Glass, Ruth Shalit, Jayson Blair.<br /><br />Add a couple of new ones to the perp walk.<br /><br />I was going to analyze Ben Domenech, the little blogger who <a href="http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-rutten25mar25,1,3458784.column?coll=la-news-columns&ctrack=1&cset=true">couldn't</a>, when that story broke a month ago. However, it dropped off the radar awfully quick, and seemed mainly of interest to a) other bloggers and b) the other media types. It was a very incestuous deal, all around.<br /><br />Domenech was vile, childish, a disgrace to homeschooling. The real mystery was why WaPo online even hired a accident-in-progress like that to begin with, especially when a cursory dumpster-dive through his <span style="font-style: italic;">opere</span> would have uncovered blatant plagiarism-- heck, he ripped of <a href="http://www.flickfilosopher.com/blog/2006/03/ben_domenech_and_me_fun_fun_fu.htm">MaryAnn Johanson</a>! The fiend!<br /><br />But it was all over in a froth of reddish bubbles by week's end. And the weirdest thing about it was that Michelle Malkin turned out to have the tiniest scrap on integrity. <br /><br />This latest story, though, is a doozy.<br /><br />Move along, Ruth Shalit. Meet La Plagiarista, V. 2.0<br /><br />She's a Harvard undergrad. She's only nineteen. She's cute. And the entire affair has an ethnic twist to spice up the lily-white world of plagiary (Blair was an outlier, I tell you).<br /><br />Away, Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin. Welcome, to your ranks of the hard-bound and dodgy, the latest Little Miss. <br /><br />Kaavya Viswanathan, take a bow. <br /><br />The story is very entertaining, and still somewhat in progress, so I'll be a lazy blogger and link to Slate's extensive coverage of How Kaavya Viswanathan <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2140620/">Got a Book Deal</a>, <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2140683/">Got Published</a>, and <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2140636/">Got in Big Troubl</a><a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2140636/">e</a>.<br /><br />She's a nice counterpoint to Domenech-- he's homeschooled, "attended" College of William and Mary but left without papers. She's in Harvard. He's shameless. She claims <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2140685/">memory issues</a>. He's a white boy, she's... well, you get the point.<br /><br />And they're both in big trouble. Dunno what Domenech's done since WaPo canned him, but Viswanathan's book is being yanked from shelves as we speak.<br /><br />I'm enjoying this one, oh yes.Diane Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00359031158925084093noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7646387.post-1144681171453591682006-04-10T07:34:00.000-07:002006-04-10T07:59:32.330-07:00Grosse Pointe ScamSo, the fine people of Harper Woods-- a small group of them, anyway-- want to petition to change the name of their fair city to "<a href="http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060410/NEWS02/604100338">Grosse Pointe Heights</a>."<br />My initial reaction was something along the lines of "Who are they trying to kid?" The City Formerly Known as East Detroit, for example, has fooled approximately no one by tacking a "pointe" onto their name. A residential appraiser cited in the Freep article admitted that, contrary to the claims of name-change advocates back in '92, East*<span style="font-style:italic;">bleep</span>* property values have not increased, and they spent a bucket of money changing all the signage and letterheads. <br /><br />That warms my heart.<br /><br />The fetishization of "Pointe"-y-ness is lame anyway. We have five Grosse Pointes, at least one blatant wannabe, apparently another one pending, plus innumerable strip malls and apartment complexes that slap that extraneous "e" on to add a veneer of class. Or a <span style="font-style:italic;">soupcon</span> of <span style="font-style:italic;">le stupid</span>. And yet, the allure of the "e" remains.<br /><br />On second thought, though, perhaps Mr. Scott Campbell and his ilk are on the right track. Eastpointe hasn't done nearly enough to debase the concept of The Pointes. So, in addition to the possibly forthcoming Grosse Pointe Heights, I propose the following new communities to join the City, Woods, Park, Shores, and Farms in Pointedom.<br /><br />Grosse Pointe Slums<br />Grosse Pointe 'Hood<br />City of Faux Pointe<br />No Pointe<br /><br />I expect St. Clair Shores, Roseville, Fraser and Center Line to get in on the act. If we can work together, we can send everybody's property values spiraling down to a nice baseline, and I can score myself some lakefront property. Go team!Diane Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00359031158925084093noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7646387.post-1143684009904462072006-03-29T17:54:00.000-08:002006-03-29T18:00:09.910-08:00Fans, Fiction, and CreativityI wrote below about the ugly nature of some sectors of the Tolkien fandom. I took up reading badfic sites and message boards in college, because doing so is great fun and often a way to improve one’s own writing by counterexample. I now do the same of LiveJournal, wherein there is simply no end of comms devoted to spectacularly horrid fanfiction and fan-created characters. Again, great fun, though the general tone of discourse is often degenerate compared with the sites and comms I read Back in the Day.<br /><br />The Tolkien fans, though, frequently come across as just narrow-minded gits. These self-proclaimed defenders of canon often take ‘fic writers to task for things that well, aren’t actually violations thereof, sorry.<br /><br />Example 1: During the course of the ‘fic dissection, one writer was mocked for naming an original character “Laurelin.” Why? ‘Cause it’s the name of a tree. Ha ha, stupid writer.<br />[/ me picks up my copy of the Silmarillion and goes to the index]<br />Hmm. Let’s see... Tolkien has a character named “Nimloth,” a female elf who married into a very important family. And... oh, of all things! “Nimloth” is also the name of a tree, the very White Tree of Numenor. Also, Tolkien gave the name “Tar-Palantir” to the last “good” king of Numenor. Try trotting out a character named “Palantir” into fandom and see the reception you get. There was also a writer who named her hobbit character for a gemstone and was ripped, because apparently hobbits don’t do that... except for the canonical ones that do-- like Diamond Took, Pippin’s wife. <br />Translation: Tolkien did it, but YOU CAN’T, fic writer. <br /><br />Example 2: I’ve seen ‘fic writers given a virtual mauling for giving original characters (OCs) the hallowed names of characters from Tolkien’s own works. Sometimes, it is clumsily done and deserving of at least a virtual pinch-- giving names of male characters (Elendil, Earendil) to Mary Sues and other new female characters, giving the names of the Valar to human OCs, that sort of thing. But sometimes... is it really worth reaming an author for dubbing an OC “Amroth”? Who was Amroth, again? <br />Again, Tolkien reused names, and no doubt with a purpose. Many of the characters from the Lord of the Rings (War of the Ring) timeframe have the names of antecedents from the First Age, Second Age, etc. Finduilas? Borrowed elf-name with a tragical story behind it. Denethor and Ecthelion? Elf names. Glorfindel? Okay, apparently Glorfindel is the same elf from the Silmarillion. But still.<br />Translation: Tolkien did it, but YOU CAN’T, fic writer.<br /><br />Example 3: Another darned annoying thing is when ‘fic writers are taken to task for using terms like “sapphire,” “jade,” and “topaz” as descriptive terms. Granted, this sort of thing should be done sparingly, and gets old in itself (quick, what colour is a “jacinth”?) But some of these Defenders of Canon and the English Tongue get snippy over the very concept of using gem-terms for colour, as there’s natural variance in stone-colour and the terms are imprecise. <br />I wonder if these people send nasty letters to the likes of J.K. Rowling and Elizabeth Peters when they open a book and phrases like “emerald green eyes” and “sapphirine orbs” leap off the page at them. Maybe they should, but if they don’t, then they’re hypocritical wankers. <br />I think some of these people are coming from a warped modern perspective on what gem-colours are. We know, from QVC if nowhere else, that any hue of gem quality corundum is a sapphire-- save the red ones, which are automatically rubies. So, we whinge about people using “sapphire” to denote blue because hey, they could mean peach, blush, canary, violet... Um, no. “Sapphire blue” is, historically, one of those things that is. Like “emerald green” (There’re red emeralds too! National Geographic says so! Send Rowling your hate mail, pronto). Jade green, likewise, in spite of the existence of white, red, yellow and purple jade. As for topaz... if someone is writing fanfiction for Lord of the Rings, they are writing about a world wherein blue, pink, and various colour-treated crap forms of topaz haven’t flooded the market. Citrine got its name “false topaz” for a reason, y’ know-- its orange-yellow colour. That rather indicates that “topaz” had a clear meaning before our era (shoutout to QVC, again).<br />I won’t even get into Tolkien’s own flowery descriptions of the hair, etc, of his surpassingly beautiful characters. Suffice it to say...<br />Tolkien (and others!) did it, but YOU CAN’T, fic writer.<br /><br />Sigh. I can see, I really can, why a lot of these writers tear their virtual hair out over fan-scribbles that genuinely violate the spirit of Tolkien’s legendarium. Promiscuous elves, rapist elves, assassination of canonically “noble” characters, modern-day girls “falling into” Middle Earth to shag Legolas, these are the sort of thing that makes one want to ask the writer, “If you ignore/abuse canon this badly, why are you a fan again?”<br />But really... is it so wrong to think “That whole Faramir/Eowyn romance is thrown together and not very convincing. Maybe I can tweak things a bit...”? Or going, “Hey! Wikipedia says that Aragorn did hook up with Eowyn in early drafts! Nothing against Arwen, mind, but I want to run with this...”<br />Some circles of fandom would have you believe that sort of thinking is a capital offence. As is, say, going subversive and re-writing things from the POV of Sauron. Goodness, no, we can’t have that.<br />Translation: John Gardner did it to Beowulf, but YOU CAN’T, ‘fic writer. <br /><br />Oh well. It’s the Internet, and people are going to continue to write what they want to, regardless of quality and canon-compliance. They’ll keep on giving Lord Elrond second daughters, and falling into Middle Earth, and naming their original characters Nienna and Yavanna and having N&Y shag Faramir and Legolas (with Boromir-bashing on the side). And 95% of it all will be sheer godawful crap, and maybe some of it will be worth reporting to FF.net for TOS violations (the ultimate weapon of the canon nazi). <br />But, you know what? A lot of the canon-compliant stuff I’ve read by these same canon purists wasn’t great shakes either. ‘Twas boring, actually. <br /><br />Wankers. All is wank, and we all are but wankers. Piffle.Diane Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00359031158925084093noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7646387.post-1143332682927349512006-03-25T15:25:00.000-08:002006-03-29T17:53:43.533-08:00Lord of the Wank...er, RingsFinally got the chance over the last two weeks to see the full Lord of the Rings: Extended Edition box set, even though I've owned it since Christmas. Good movies, can't wait to watch them again with the commentary.<br /><br />Random thoughts on LotR, books and films--<br /><br />Fellowship of the Ring really is the best of the films. The Two Towers is the weakest, not just because it's a "middle chapter" but because the flow of it is so warped by the War plot, as opposed to the original Quest plot. RotK suffers from the same, but to a lesser extent. I would love to know how those two installments would have turned out had 9/11 never happened. We would have been spared Sam's wretched monologue at the end of TTT, that's for sure. <br /><br />At least people weren't constantly breaking into song in the films. Made the death scenes easier to take. The absolute worst part of Tolkien's books that I can remember is the poem about King Theoden's friggin' dead horse. It was one poem too far, and marked yet another use of the phrase "Whosit's Bane." Tolkien overused that one to death. Durin's Bane, Isildur's Bane, Swift Snowmane, his Master's Bane. Just die, already.<br /><br />I respect movie adaptations for being movie adaptations, as long as they remember they are films and not pretending to be the book (I'm thinking now of an atrocious Madame Bovary I had to watch in school that vandalized the spirit of the book while claiming, onscreen, to be true to Flaubert). So I don't mind most of the tweaking that Jackson and pals did to the Tolkienverse. Give Aragorn some reluctance to be King, fine. Make Boromir more of a jerk than he is in the books-- fine, and on second watch he's not that bad anyway. Totally screw up Faramir by giving him a dark side-- cool, man. Kid was a drip in the books. But what they did with Denethor (messed-up father of the aforementioned 'Mirs) was kind of painful. Couldn't Jackson have mentioned, even once, that the reason Denethor was insane was that a palantir had scrambled his brain? Palantir abuse was all over the films, so why leave that crucial detail out? A five-second glimpse of the bloody thing would have explained so much. Denethor and Sons got canon-raped pretty badly, yeah. <br /><br />Speaking of canon-rapine, Tolkien fans are the most anal, pinheaded bunch of self-proclaimed "canon nazis" I've ever come across online. And half the time they're in the wrong themselves, because "canon" (if you go beyond the Baggins books and deal with the Silmarillion and worse) is so vast, subject to so many retcons by the author, and so contradictory in itself. Ugly, ugly fandom, and I came out of Sailormoon and Gundam Wing, which were bad in themselves. I'm talking about the LiveJournal crowd, mostly, but the Wikipedia entries have some screwball stuff in there too.<br /><br />And, regarding fandom... Legolas, WTF? Dude barely exists in the books (JRR himself said in a letter that Legolas "accomplished the least" out of the Fellowship). The reader doesn't even learn what colour hair Leggy has. He's there, he's an elf, he makes nice with a dwarf. That's about it. <br /><br />All right, I know. Legolas is popular because he was played by Orlando Bloom. Dunno, the fake blond hair doesn't do it for me. He's a little cute, but if I have to watch Orlando Bloom, he was cuter in Pirates of the Caribbean. And probably in Troy, though I never saw that. Orlando-Legolas has weird hair, inconsistent-coloured contacts, and not much to do. John Rhys-Davies got to play Gimli and Treebeard both, and was amusing as both, but Orli just looks... elven, I guess. <br /><br />People More Attractive Than Orlando-Legolas in the LotR Films:<br /><br />1) Elijah Wood-Frodo / Viggo Mortenston-Aragorn<br />Two different types of male beauty, both very, very welcome. And I don't usually like stubble. Or hairy feet, for that matter.<br />3) David Wenham-Faramir<br />A big step down from Aragorn, here, but still pretty good-looking. From what I've gathered, Book!Faramir (the insufferably noble one) had longish black hair, grey eyes, and no beard or stubble. Ditto for brother Boromir. Heck, IIRC it says that Faramir looked enough like Aragorn to be his younger brother. That would have been real nice, but what the film-viewer gets instead isn't bad. <br />4) Sean Bean-Boromir. <br />Some chicks really, really dig this guy. He's not quite my type, and Book!Boromir sounds more attractive to me, but Film!Boromir has his moments. He's human, for a start.<br />5) Figwit<br />"Figwit" is the fan-created acronym for a very attractive elf in Jackon's movies. He has lovely dark hair, blue eyes (iirc), and basically no lines. He's the one in RotK that was trying to lead Arwen to the Gray Havens when she turned 'round and hightailed it back to Rivendell. Apparently he's also in the Council of Elrond scene in FotR. Best-looking elf in the film, hands down.<br />6) Theodred<br />No, not the old king. Theodred, the dead kid we see in all of three scenes. Looks like he would have been quite nice on the eyes, cleaned-up and alive.<br />7) The youngish-looking Ent. Dunno his name. Nice foliage on that guy.<br />[Insert Orlando-Legolas Here.]<br />I don't go for elves, really. Elrond? Nope. Haldir? Was glad when he bit it; guy was annoying me. Celeborn? Galadriel can keep him. The most attractive male elf I saw in the film was "Figwit," and he's not even a real character. Orli-las is the best of the elven lot, I admit. <br />9) Bernard Hill-Theoden<br />Hey, he's human! And I'd rather look at Theoden than at his nephew. No lovin' here for Karl Urban as Eomer, 'cause he looks like an escapee from the early years of Metallica. <br />Beneath the cut: two wizards, assorted Hobbits, and Grima Wormtongue. No, just no. <br /><br />A final note about the Jackson films-- my husband hated the battle scenes the first go-round, and liked it even less when we watched King Kong and loathed the action scenes there. Me, I liked the LotR battle scenes much, much better than the action scenes in Kong, because Our Heroes got muddy, bloody, cut-up, and trapped under their own horses (Die, Snowmane!). Watching Naomi Watts and Adrien Brody (aka Mary Sue and Gary Stu) get through dinosaur attacks and the like without a scratch was just sickening to behold. The LotR battles are still kind of messy to watch, but at least Eowyn isn't prancing around looking like she just stepped out of her onset dressing room. And Aragorn gets stepped on by a troll. My suspension of disbelief doesn't shatter like the bridge of Khazad-Dum, y'know?Diane Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00359031158925084093noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7646387.post-1126839634681229172005-09-15T18:12:00.001-07:002006-03-29T18:02:06.926-08:00Random Thoughts of Harry Potter [Spoilerrific!]I got into the Harry Potter series about three months ago, after catching one of the guys at work with his nose buried in HP and The Prisoner of Azkaban. I'd read the first two books in the series a couple of years back because most of my family was enthralled by them, and wasn't much impressed at the time. J.K. Rowling's whole wizarding universe just struck me as too damned silly for me to want to spend time immersed in it, and the wizarding business was basically the transparent varnish on a typical boarding school story, so I said adios and went on with my life.<br /><br />Well, the enthusiasm of my co-worked spurred me to borrow PoA from him, and it was a pleasant surprise. There wasn't as much exposition on the Wizarding World for me to be Not Enchanted with, there wasn't any of the "OMG is Harry EVOL?!?" crap from the first half of Book Two in the series, and the plotting was... really deft. Everything fitted together so seamlessly that I was really impressed by PoA as a work of fiction. Still am-- after reading all six of the books to date, it's my fave.<br /><br />My rankings so far:<br /><br />1) Prizoner of Azkaban: great mystery wherein everything is necessary and wraps up beautifully. Characterization is pretty good, too-- the complex and nuanced Professor Lupin is an especially welcome addition to a series with so many broad caricatures.<br />2) Half-Blood Prince: A remarkably quick and gripping read for such a thick book, with some of the best individual chapters (Spinners' End, Sectumsempra) out of the series. While some of the content of this volume throws the alleged moral compass of Rowling's series spinning hopelessly in circles, it's a good book. The romance is the main flaw-- slapdash 'twoo wuv' and a load of teenage shenanigans. <br />3) Goblet of Fire: It probably could have used some editing, and I hatehatehate phonetic dialect, which this book is full of, but it's a fun read. Contains a great piece of misleading identity, an intriguing subplot (the Crouch family), and one of the best death scenes I've read in a while ('kill the spare'). OTOH, it could've used some editing, the central grand plot is really quite dumb if you step back and think about it, and the whole house-elf liberation front thing... yea.<br />4) Chamber of Secrets: Hated the entire first half of the book. Loved the Riddle-Diary subplot thing when that really got going. Should re-read again in light of its ties to HBP, but... god, the beginning to this one sucks. <br />5) Order of the Phoenix: Dude. I don't like this one. It's good, and it's bad, and the goodness and badness are wrapped up so tightly that I can't unravel them enough to analyze them. The Big Death scene is lame beyond words, though. I can't believe grown adults cried over it. This is the book where the morality of the series went into highly questionable territory... it almost begs to be read at a subversive "our heroes have gone to the dark side" level.<br />1) Sorceror's Stone. Dunno. I nearly gave up the series right here. It's all so damned goofy. Pointy hats. Broomsticks. Weird, unappetizing sounding food (pumpkin juice?)-- and I LIKE British food. I sure wouldn't want to be a part of the magical world, and six books later, I still don't. Minus points for the American publisher dumbing down the name, too.<br /><br />Anyway, back to the Random Thoughts--<br /><br />Spinner's End-- Prof. Snape's digs. I'm going to believe this crappy post-industrial wasteland is Manchester until told otherwise. Way cool-- I'm sure Professor Snape talks all proper like, but I'm going to think of teenaged!Snape belting out his insults and hexes in Liam Gallagher Mancunian now. "I don't need help from filthy little Mudbloods like her!"-- I can totally hear it. I'm sure his manners went over real well with well-bred snots like James Potter and Sirius Black.<br /><br />Ron's Eyes: Six books in, and Harry never bothers to note what colour his best bud's eyes are. Some criticize JKR for not doing 'teenage boy' all that well, but in a world with so much bad fanfic wherein say, fifteen-year-old Gundam pilots ooh over one another's 'amethyst' and 'obsidian' eyes, this detail-of-omission is delightful. Guess Harry doesn't secretly lust for Won Won.<br /><br />Twoo Wuv, continued: I agree with the people who say book seven ought to be called "Harry Potter and the Oedipus Complex"-- Harry sees his Saintly Mum as a red-haired spitfire in the Pensieve scene, and decides he needs one of those himself, given how he's a dead ringer for Daddy and all. It makes more sense than loving Ginny for her repellent personality. She has a few good moments in OOTP and HBP where she gives Harry the smackdown for forgetting that whole possession-by-Voldemort thing she went through, but otherwise... Christ, Harry, date Luna. Hell, date Neville. <br />Dunno, I liked the idea that Ron loved Hermione who loved Harry who loved both of them in a Platonic sense. And I despise a couple constantly sniping at one another as shorthand for "they're madly in love!" Piffle. The onscreen relationships in this series Do Not Satisfy.<br />[Note: Harry can't consistently remember that the Girl He Loves endured a year of possession by a demonic diary, a year wherein she alternately pined for Harry and unleashed a monster on the rest of the school. Mr. Sensitive, that boy is.]<br /><br />Maggie: I want to read the Muggle Prime Minister at the beginning of HBP as John Major. Which makes his predecessor in office, the one who kicked the Minister of Magic out the window, Lady Thatcher. 'Cept that predecessor is referred with a male pronoun. I'm taking that as a joke at Maggie's expense and not JKR screwing with the timeline at random. Go, Maggie!<br /><br />Little Tommy: Dude. dOOd. Rowling's insisted all through the series that choices define a person, not 'blood' or even prophecy. And so she goes and sketches the Ultimate Bad Guy, Harry's dark parallel, as the sociopathic scion of a long line of inbred sociopaths. Raised in a decent but fundamentally loveless orphanage. So... he's screwed by blood, and by society, and it's his own fault he couldn't overcome that? Or what? Something doesn't add up here. Book Seven: surprise, Harry! All that choices and free will stuff was bollocks, and you're the predestined Elect!<br />Newsflash-- Dumbledore's critical mistake wasn't trusting Snape, it was believing in free will. Hahahahah.<br /><br />Blaming the Victim: Merope. Abused and terrorized by her father and brother. Abandoned by the husband she adored. Left pregnant and penniless on the streets of the Bad City, with no knowledge of Muggle medical care and not enough magic in her to help herself. And it's her fault that she died, 'cause she was weak and stuff. Damn, that's harsh.<br />Also, Merope *was* an ignorant, inbred screw-up who obviously didn't love herself, so the thought that she'd have been a good mommy to little Tommy-the-Rabbit-Killer is she *had* lived is a dubious proposition at best. The whole Voldemort backstory is fantastic to read but disturbing in its apparent implications.<br /><br />Thoughts for Book Seven: HP fans have a real facile conception of 'redemption' and 'sacrifice,' as in the way whole sections of fandom prattled on about the need to 'redeem' Draco even though he never actually did anything soul-damning until book Six, which is more than one can say for Harry, Hermione, and Ron's thuggish siblings. Also, pre-HBP fan predictions about Who Would Bite it included stuff like "Character X will sacrifice himself for Harry." 'Scuse me, but isn't the death toll on Harry's account already high enough that we've hit the limit of diminishing returns on that manner of cacking it? I'll settle for nothing less than Ron's head at this point, as far as sacrifices-for-Harry goes. <br />And Dumbledore ends up essentially sacrificing himself for Draco! Bwahahah.<br />And as far as sacrifice goes, while I'm OK with Harry himself biting it in book Seven, if he sacrifices himself to redeem the Wizarding World, I will be pissed. The Wizarding World is so corrupt that it's hardly worth saving, and if it takes the blood of a seventeen year old to undo centuries of injustic and corruption... cheap. Real cheap.<br />OTOH, if the big 'sacrifice' ends up destroying the WW and making everyone live as Muggles, I will laugh and laugh and laugh. I usually hate that kind of an ending, but the WW is so messed up its practically warranted.<br /><br />That's all for now!<br /><br />PS-- I thought Hermione was a light-skinned black or maybe mixed-race until Emma Watson was cast in the movies. Browsing through LiveJournals, I find I wasn't the only one. Would've been intriguing.Diane Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00359031158925084093noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7646387.post-1119491977492632802005-06-22T18:26:00.000-07:002005-06-22T19:06:01.756-07:00Go Pistons. Rah.I've never given two thoughts about basketball (positive thoughts, anyway) before moving to my current digs. Basketball was a distant blip on the radar during my Bay Area childhood, and when I lived in Memphis TN it was a Big Issue without a Big Team to rally around. MSU (er,<br />'U of M') were all right, but Memphis didn't get the Grizzlies (hahahah) until after I skipped town, and the price tab for the Grizzlies was such that I wouldn't have cheered for them anyway.<br /><br />But now... I kinda like the Pistons. Modern basketball with its multimedia 'heroes'-- Shaq and Kobe (thankfully now off the Nutella jars) and <a href="http://slate.msn.com/id/2112224">Citizen Jordan</a> and creepy ickle Memphian Anfernee Hardaway-- can't stand it. But the Pistons, the defiant anti-team with its anti-stars and 'goin' to work' attitude-- sure, part of it is a crafted image, but they believe in the image for all they' ve got.<br /><br />I have to smile at a team whose most <a href="http://www.denverpost.com/sports/ci_2816175">notorious player</a> has the phrase <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/22/AR2005062200048.html">'scruffy irritant</a>' tacked to his tail like a Homeric epithet. I gotta cheer for the very idea of team cobbled together from other franchise's rejects that suddenly, somehow, synthesized into a giant-slayer. And it's just too darned funny to follow a team that plays to kill with its back against the wall but blanks when they're actually on a roll.<br /><br />I don't want to read much about them as people, but I dig them as characters-- 'Sheed, Big Ben, Rip, freaky-armed Tayshaun Prince and the gang. The Bad News Bears they ain't, though-- that collective chip on the shoulder looks to be gin-u-wine. Rodney Dangerfield they ain't, either-- they really don't get any respect. It's clear to me now that the only reason the Pistons got the positive coverage they did last year was because everyone outside of the LA metropolitan area was dying to see the overpriced Lakers take a fall.<br /><br />Take the Staples Center out of the picture, and suddenly everyone wants the Pistons gone. The hilarious "<a href="http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/sports/columnists/dan_le_batard/11714080.htm">Apocalyptic Detroit</a>" column out of the Miami Herald was intended to be funny (I think), but its tone comes awfully close to non-satirical pieces written about the Pistons of late. Stick 'Sheed and company against a team that isn't top-heavy with Hall of Famers and can actually play defense, and the press throws a grand old Pistons Grave Dancing Party, with 'Sheed as the guest of honour.<br /><br />Then the boys subjected the Spurs to two consecutive maulings at the Palace of Malice and, as the SF Chronicle's writer <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/06/17/SPGQ5DA9Q91.DTL&hw=pistons+spurs+worst&sn=001&sc=1000">pointed out</a>, it was abruptly the <em>Spurs</em> who didn't deserve to be in the finals. I swear, sportswriters are as capricious as the British music press. Individually, some may be on crusades, but collectively they seem a fickle lot.<br /><br />It doesn't matter now. Thanks to the <a href="http://www.mlive.com/pistons/stories/index.ssf?/base/sports-1/1119435000178240.xml">hubris</a> in San Antonio, the Pistons did what they appear to like best-- they sailed through an elimination game. Even if they lose tomorrow night, it's been a memorable ride that should shut some some (hypo)critical types up. <br /><br />So, I echo the cutesy family diner on Allen Road-- "Go Pistons. Rah." Sounds lukewarm for a final Finals game with a 'dynasty' at stake? Maybe, but I said I'm new at this whole basketball thing. Carry on, scruffy guys. Cheers.Diane Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00359031158925084093noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7646387.post-1115832654604443172005-05-11T10:27:00.000-07:002005-05-11T10:30:54.613-07:00Thoughts in the aftermath of Mother's DayI've been longing to finish dissecting my 'nominees' for the Golden Cymbeline, but current events keeps distracting me. I've been waiting to give a good mauling to the likes of Jewel, but first the Terri Schiavo circus, then the papal circus (Circus Pontifex Maximus?), and then sundry smaller tragedies (RIP, Tortie-kitty) keep forcing me to channel my energies elsewhere. Not that I blog about those things, mind, but they provide a spur toward cathartic fiction in a way that the pros and cons of Alanis Morrisette's career simply doesn't.<br /><br />I almost blogged about the Runaway Bride, not because I gave a darn about her, but because the whole wedding spectacle ticked me off. I don't like the Cult of the Fantasy Wedding as practiced in this country, and the idea of a 600-guest freakshow centered around an unstable little girl in a woman's body struck me as wasteful and appalling. But I didn't go there either.<br /><br />Then, the current 'murdered little kid' news streak picked up. The drowned toddlers in Georgia were one thing, but the double-feature horror show of Precious Doe and the two girls from Zion finally got me going-- because of the apparent facts of these cases, and not the idea of them.<br /><br />The idea of these cases-- murdered kiddies-- is perfect fodder for the culture of outrage, just as the Runaway Bride was (She couldn't have just left! Her fiance must have done it! Oh, the horrors perpetrated against women in our culture...). Dear little best friends from quiet Illinois village with Biblical theme disappear while riding bikes together over Mother's Day Weekend.<br /><br />I give you quotes from MSN-blog blowhard Joe Scarborough, out of his post "Innocence lost in Illinois":<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Parents should no longer feel free to let their children ride bikes with friends, unless they are accompanied by a police escort. And those carefree summer days of jumping on a bike early in the morning and riding around town until dinner are long gone...</span><br /> <span style="font-style: italic;">These days our children grow up in an exceedingly grim world where all strangers are evil and all grown ups are helpless to save them from the evil beasts lurking outside their door.</span><br /><br />Except that the guy the police arrested was no beastly stranger outside the door. The guy they are charging is the father of one of the girls, a man who searched alongside the other girl's family for the missing twosome, and was the one who discovered their bodies in Beulah Park.<br /><br />D'oh!<br /><br />I realize that the cops could easily have the wrong guy. With two dead girls in a quiet town, no motives, no suspects, and intense fear and media attention goin' on, why not collar the ex-con with a nasty rap sheet who happened to 'find' the bodies?<br /><br />It's hard to believe it when people kill their own kids, even when the headlines and police blotters throw ugly, incontrovertible evidence in our faces. Like say, the evidence from the other case playing out in the Heartland-- the murder of Erica "Precious Doe" Green. Erica was found decapitated four years ago, but was not publicly identified until last week (hence the posthumous nickname). The culprits in this case appear to be her own mother and stepfather, who kicked her senseless and left her to die. They didn't call for help because both of them were wanted criminals. Instead, once she was dead, they cut off her head and disposed of the body, then brazened it out for years.<br /><br />The circumstances of Erica's death are bad enough, but the circumstances of her not-quite-four years of life are really the sick part. See, Erica was born when her mother was in prison, and for most of her life was cared for by others. She'd only been in the care of her mother and future stepfather for a couple of weeks before their inability to deal with a toddler (though mom allegedly has seven kids out there besides poor Erica) resulted in beatings followed by death. Neither the Oklahoma Department of Corrections nor the Department of Human Services monitored Erica or her mother... because they don't. Not their job. The two departments don't, as a rule, correspond with one another about what happens when prisoners have babies, much less follow up once ex-prisoners and their kids are reunited. They don't have the resources to do that unless they have specific threats or instances of neglect to monitor. And Erica's mother had done time for larceny, not, say, assault.<br /><br />Let me refer back to Joe Scarborough:<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">They (the children) are used for sexual gratification by diseased old men. They are the objects of violent fantasies that are only satisfied by blood. They are victims of a system that keeps letting them down.</span><br /><br />In this case, a system that allowed a toddler to go back to her biological mother-- and outcome our society generally holds up as an objective good. Not that 'the system' might have worked for Erica any better if her mother's rights had been terminated and Erica placed in foster care-- like Rilya Wilson, a girl who simply disappeared from Florida's foster care system. Long before "Precious Doe" was ID'd, thanks to a tip, as Erica Green, police checked to see if the remains belonged to Rilya. They didn't, of course, and Rilya's whereabouts are still unknown. <br /><br />I think the Erica Green case riles me the most because of its similarities to the sad, sad death of Ariana Swinson, a Michigan girl murdered by her own parents. Like Erica, Ariana was raised to toddlerhood by other people because her parents were, at the time of her birth, judged unfit. Four and a half months after state child welfare officials decided Ariana's parents were clear to play mommy and daddy without supervision, they beat the malnourished two-year old to death. <br /><br />Both the Ariana Swinson and the Rilya Wilson tragedies resulted in big changes to the state services that should have been looking out for them, but the bottom line is that the kids' own parents and guardians were the source of the problem. Mothers kill children, or facilitate the men in their lives who do the beating and killing. For both Erica Green and Ariana Swinson, the father/stepfather gave the fatal blow, but the mothers collaborated to hide or ignore the damage. "The system" doesn't work because it's underfunded, because case-workers have too many cases, because social workers are no less blind or stupid or lazy than the rest of the populace, and because foster and adoptive parents can be scum as bad or worse as 'unfit' biological parents. The system's true Achilles heel, though, is the basic impulse people have toward believing in a sacred bond between mother and child. Who would allocate money to a government agency, even one that worked, if it took a hard line in permanently removing children from their mommies and daddies, with no second chances like the one Ariana's parents received? This is America! We believe in mom, and in optimism. We believe that parents have some inborn inclination to do right by their children, despite the evidence that some people just couldn't care less about their offspring. And when mommie dearest does kill or abuse or outright neglect, we make excuses-- it's always some man's fault.<br /><br />The system lets kids down. The government lets kids down. But the people who chose to have these kids let them down first. Society celebrates mothers who "choose life," but these people chose life and then wasted it. <br /><br />I refer you back to Joe the Blowhard for some closing thoughts:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">No one knows all the facts of this Illinois case. </span><br /><br />Clearly. And Jerry Hobbs, despite his rap sheet for assault, despite his tendency to threaten people with chainsaws, might not have been the one to kill his daughter and her friend. Police do have a tendency to grab scapegoats in nasty, sensational cases like this. But I think it's a lot more likely that Dad, not a vicious, drooling, DangerStranger, killed the girls. Joe Scarborough here would rather foment outrage over a decaying society filled with unseen dangers than admit that the real danger to children might be members of the sacred nuclear family.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">But we do know it will happen somewhere else soon.</span><br /><br />This, alas, is true.<br /><br />Happy Mother's Day, belated.Diane Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00359031158925084093noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7646387.post-1108593043769679032005-02-16T14:07:00.000-08:002005-02-16T14:55:35.326-08:00Pop Trash Smackdown, part one.In the spirit of this year's <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/story/280841p-240695c.html">ludicrous</a> Grammy Awards, I would like to serve up a selection of my own nominees for my very own award, the Golden Cymbaline.<br /><br />I allowed the spirit of Jimmy Guterman and Owen O'Donnell to guide me here, which is to say I've targeted the best of the worst, those artists who provide the greatest affront to the aspects of music I truly care about (ie, not hip-hop or country). No easy targets like Britney, J. Lo, or the Simpson brats here, folks, just those dear songbirds a with fair amount of credibility and/or talent who abuse whatever gifts they have so flagrantly that they deserve to be, well, flogged. And to keep things on a even footing, I'm limiting the first set to female singer-songwriters!<br /><br />The winner will receive a charming statuette, suitable for use as a doorstop or paperweight, designed by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Dave Barry; it is a golden toaster with a flaming strawberry pop tart trapped inside. Forget Christo, this award is <span style="font-style: italic;">art</span>, people!<br />***<br /><br />Nominee: Sarah MacLachlan<br /><br />Okay, so Lilith Fair was a good idea with a catchy name. And she's released a number of gorgeous, passionate pop songs that still move me the eighty-seventh time I hear them ("Possession" in particular, but "Building a Mystery" is still good, and some of her newest tracks have promise.)<br /><br />She's also churned out track after track of slick, oversung, vaguely-spiritual "anthems" to I don't know what. A number of these terrible songs have appeared in equally terrible <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005214/#composer">movies</a>, which is only fitting. Examples: "Angel," from <span style="font-style: italic;">City of Angels</span> (self-explanatory), "When She Loved Me" (the low point of the otherwise faultless <span style="font-style: italic;">Toy Story 2</span>), and lesser tracks from <span style="font-style: italic;">I Am Sam, Anywhere But Here, </span><font>and lousy tv shows</span><span style="font-style: italic;">. </span></font>There's also a godawful choral version of her "I Will Remember You" in a funeral scene of some teen-death weeper I was forced to watch in college, and I was pretty sure that "Angel" turned up in another, similar teen-death weeper but I've yet to track that one down.<br /><br />Suffice it to say that her music is the perfect accompaniment to a mawkish, insincere Hollywood funeral. This alone would grate on me, especially after having those awful movies foisted upon me by an uncaring roommate, but Sarah goes further into the Crappy Zone by writing lyrics that are alternately trite and opaque, and singing them all with the utmost passion.<br /><br />What the heck is "Adia" about? How has Sarah failed Adia, and why is Sarah insisting that "we are all born innocent"? And what kind of name is "Adia," anyway?<br /><br />What is really beneath the pseud0-religious imagery of "Building a Mystery"? Or the <span style="font-style: italic;">Precious Moments </span>religious imagery of "Angel"? Or the sins-and-repentance imagery of "Fallen" and "World on Fire"? Why do these songs run together in a prettily orchestrated blur of meaninglessness?<br /><br />Boy, she sure <span style="font-style: italic;">sounds</span> deep, but for my money ol' Sarah has written about two and a half meaningful songs out of the dozen and a half that have been overexposed (the ones that haven't been don't bother me, 'cause I don't have to hear them). Those ones are "Possession," "Stupid" and the above-mentioned "Building a Mystery" (that's the half point).<br /><br />And those are all clear-cut 'relationship' songs, with or without any crosses from a faith that died before Jesus came (!?!).<br /><br />Sarah's songs can be converted to "praise music" for Intervarsity Fellowship with minimal rewriting, and that isn't a good thing. I indict her for this, and in doing so nominate her for the Golden Cymbaline.Diane Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00359031158925084093noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7646387.post-1106316275976620902005-01-21T05:09:00.000-08:002005-01-21T06:31:55.663-08:00Sunrise With the Power PlantsWinter mornings are great in the station. Cherry-red light reflects off the transformers at dawn. Rays of the rising sun tint the steam of Trenton Channel Power Plant peach and rose, and turn the glass insulators atop the transformers a glowing amber.
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<br />Trenton Channel, both the plant and the geographic location, are to the east. While sunrise would be pretty without that cute little power plant against the sky, Trenton Channel's twin candy-striped stacks add real charm to the picture. So do the tangle of transmission towers and other equipment, at least to my warped view. The 120kV towers from Trenton Channel are kind of cute in themselves; they have an almost comforting squareness. The 345kV lines coming from the other two plants that feed us are larger, a little menacing, with angular 'arms' and pointy 'ears' (or horns).
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<br />Fermi, the sole nuclear plant in the system, is to the south of the station. I can't see it from the station grounds, but I have a view of its cooling towers from an overpass near the station. Before dawn, it looks like Hell itself-- the two hourglass shapes, their tops rimmed with red light, pouring forth greyish vapor like volcanic calderae. Two of its transmission lines run parallel to the freeway as they head to my station; the towers are paired up like two columns of soldiers. With horns.
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<br />Inside the station grounds, all you see is the steam, and only then on a very cold day. Unlike the distinct plumes from Trenton Channel's stacks, Fermi steam doesn't look like much at that distance-- just an amorphous white wisp. <span style="font-style: italic;"></span>
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<br />It's Monroe, to the southwest, that generates a steam-plume like a mushroom cloud. Monroe is twenty miles away, and while its own twin stacks are eight hundred feet high, I can't see them at all from the station. On a bitterly cold day, though, a white ball-shape rises up, right above the relay house that blocks off my view to the south.
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<br />Monroe and Fermi, like the 345kV lines that come from them, have less cheery personalities than Trenton Channel. Fermi is, after all, a nuke plant, and those places aren't cute. Even without its reputation as a money hole and regulatory nightmare, Fermi would look a more than a little ominous. Anyone who has watched <span style="font-style: italic;">The Simpsons</span> or read <span style="font-style: italic;">Bloom County </span>recognizes that hourglass shape for what it is; it's as automatic a signifier of "nukes" as a radiation-triangle symbol or the little Bohr-model whirly atom-thing.
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<br />Still, the two cooling towers have a serene, otherworldly beauty, especially when compared to Monroe. Monroe is neither beautiful nor serene, and it is not cute. It is pure industrial might, grey and sleek and incredibly huge, with those skyscraper-high stacks punctuated by white flashing light. Those stacks were the highest structures in the area, taller than any Detroit building, when they were constructed. Monroe, like its skeletal-monster towers marching across the landscape, is stark and scary. Its transmission lines veer to the west and then wheel back toward our station, entering it from the rear.
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<br />I'll take Trenton Channel any day. Don't get me wrong, I love being in proximity to all three generating plants, but I'm glad the one I have the best view of is the little cutie, the non-threatening plant with the cozy paint job. Looking out at a Monroe sunrise in the morning would be a lot less enjoyable.
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<br />Diane Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00359031158925084093noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7646387.post-1105554912146607752005-01-12T09:30:00.000-08:002005-01-21T05:08:40.010-08:00Kelley's Kids: reflections on Shattered GlassIf the events of <span style="font-style: italic;">Shattered Glass</span> were an isolated event, a single case of an entertaining sociopath betraying his friends and profession, it would just be the stuff of a darned good movie. Given all the plagiarism/fabulism/moral halitosis scandals that have percolated up in the years since Glass' exposure in 1998, the film has a cultural context that is worth poking through.
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<br />One line at the end of <span style="font-style: italic;">Shattered Glass</span> packs massive dramatic irony in retrospect: a despondent <span style="font-style: italic;">T</span>e<span style="font-style: italic;">NR</span> secretary laments that pictures, which <span style="font-style: italic;">TNR</span> doesn't do, would have saved the magazine its trouble; after all, Glass couldn't have provided piccies of his nonexistent people, could he?
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<br />Nice thought. Too bad that didn't stop Jack Kelley. Kelley, the <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/2004-04-22-report-one_x.htm">disgraced</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">USA Today</span> writer, a five-time nominee for the Pulitzer Prize, used pix to his own advantage-- like the time he illustrated a woeful tale of a Cuban refugee who died fleeing for American shores with a portrait of a hotel worker, who later resurfaced very much alive. Sadly, Kelley didn't have to provide graphic images of the infamous Jerusaleum pizza-parlor bombing he claimed to have witnessed; his account of three victims' heads rolling down the street in unison was very much at odds with plausibility, not to mention the actual forensic evidence of the scene.
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<br />If Glass was clever enough to concoct a fake newsletter for his fake hacker society (a much better stunt that that legendary "Jukt Micronics" site of his, which is as lame as any site <span style="font-style: italic;">I </span>could have made in '98 using Netscape Navigator), photos would have given him little problem. He may have been exposed sooner than he was, but if <span style="font-style: italic;">TNR</span> had required pix, I'm sure little Steve would have provided 'em.
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<br />Glass is also worth examining in context because of the intense racially-slanted analysis of Jayson Blair's journalistic crime spree at the <span style="font-style: italic;">New York Times</span>. I'm not saying race wasn't at all a factor in Blair's rapid advancement and coddling by management, but the rogue's gallery of misbehaving journalists from the past decade cuts across racial, social, religious, and political boundaries.
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<br />Stephen Glass: white, well-off (parents from tony Chicago suburb, brother at Stanford, alleged social pressure from parents to practice law like a good boy), Jewish, ideologically unconstrained. Glass wrote for the Kennedy-owned <span style="font-style: italic;">George</span>, for <span style="font-style: italic;">TNR,</span> for the Heritage Foundation... anyone, really.
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<br />Ruth Shalit (<span style="font-style: italic;">TNR's</span> other <a href="http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/archives/cover/1999/cover0409.html">dirty little rotter</a>, aka "La Plagiarista" and "That Darn Ruth"): white, well-off, Jewish, very much on the right side of the political spectrum.
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<br />Jack Kelley: white, a publicly devout <a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2004/112/53.0.html">Christian</a>, allegedly called upon by God to 'proclaim the truth,' and a peddler of <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/03/23/jack_kelley/index_np.html">vicious stereotypes</a>. Also a generation older than Glass, Blair, or Shalit.
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<br />Christopher Newton: nada. I know nothing of this guy, who fabricated <a href="http://slate.msn.com/id/2073304">bland and useless quotes</a> for the AP. I don't want to look into him, because I cherish the belief he was getting revenge on his bosses at AP for requiring such filler quotes in the first place.
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<br />Jayson Blair: Black. Like you had to even ask.
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<br />Mike "<a href="http://archive.salon.com/media/1998/08/20media.html">the Piper</a>" Barnicle: White. Wanted to be for Boston what Mike Royko was to Chicago. Ripped off Royko, and George Carlin, and just <a href="http://www.bostonphoenix.com/archive/features/98/08/13/MIKE_BARNICLE.html">plain made stuff up</a>. Recently peddling his tripe on MSNBC. Friend and guest of Don Imus and Chris Matthews-- and friend of the Kennedys and Robert Redford. I dunno what exactly you'd call his politics, but I sure couldn't stand the guy.
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<br />Patricia Smith: Black, and Barnicle's fellow columnist at the <span style="font-style: italic;">Boston Glob(e).</span> <a href="http://www.salon.com/media/1998/06/26media.html">Invented</a> at least four of the people she quoted and profiled. Passionate about women, blacks, and the poor; also writes poetry.
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<br />Jay Forman: tarted up <a href="http://http//slate.msn.com/id/110932/">several articles</a> for <span style="font-style: italic;">Slate</span>. Male. Info beyond that is sketchy.
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<br />Jeff Jacoby: <a href="http://slate.msn.com/id/1005659/">yet another</a> alum of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Glob.</span> Conservative.
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<br />Judith Miller, aka "Miss Suspicious": The center of the whole <a href="http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Judith_Miller"><span style="font-style: italic;">NYT/</span>WMD</a> fiasco. Most recently seen as a First Amendment martyr, which doesn't exactly compensate for her "<a href="http://slate.msn.com/id/2086110">wretched reporting</a>" on such a critical story.
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<br />And those are just the major cases. We have whites and blacks, Christians and Jews, men and women, and a assortment of political affiliations. ,We have pure fabulists (Glass, Smith, Newton) and a mess of plagiarist/fabulist repeat offenders (Shalit, Blair Barnicle), plus the Very Special case of Miller and her 'sources.'
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<br />What do these critters have in common? In the case of Glass, Shalit, Barnicle, and Blair, a common factor is being cosseted by editors in the face of repeated missteps. Shalit was sheltered by Andrew Sullivan, Blair thrived in the climate created by Gerald Boyd and Howell Raines, and Barnicle was kept on at the <span style="font-style: italic;">Globe</span> despite years of accusations against him. Glass was mentored (and enabled) by Michael Kelly, who wasn't corrupt so much as he was too trusting in his wunderbrat staff; Kelly's successor Chuck Lane finally got rid of both The Fabulist and La Plagiarista. As for Jack Kelley, <span style="font-style: italic;">McPaper's</span> internal investigation cited a '<a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/2004-04-22-report-four_x.htm">climate of fear</a>' that kept the star journo safe.
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<br />Here's the real kicker: Sullivan launched a scathing <a href="http://slate.msn.com/id/2082896">attack</a> on Raines for not twigging to Blair earlier, despite having gone through the same routine himself with Shalit. And Raines cried <a href="http://www.poynter.org/dg.lts/id.45/aid.34019/column.htm">foul</a> when Matt Storin at the <span style="font-style: italic;">Globe </span>gave Patricia Smith (far) fewer second chances than he allowed Barnicle. Funny stuff, eh?
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<br />Conclusions? It's not about race, that's for sure. A less knee-jerk reaction would be to examine the <a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/73/nyt.html">culture</a> in the newsrooms that produced these blots. That's not consistent, either, though. Sociopathic scribblers have thrived in the bad vibes of Raines' <span style="font-style: italic;">NYT</span> and the <span style="font-style: italic;">USA Today</span> of Kelley's era, and at the cosy Kelly-run <span style="font-style: italic;">New Republic. </span>And what the heck has been going on at the <span style="font-style: italic;">Boston Globe</span>?
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<br />And finally, which is the worst of these? Blair's run of deceptions at the <span style="font-style: italic;">NYT</span> caused by far the biggest ruckus, but for my money Jack Kelley and Miller did the worst damage. Miller's badly-sourced columns were influential into leading the US into a messy war (this just in: the WMD search is <a href="http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=7307840">over</a> ). As for Kelley... a wide audience, critical accolades, and incendiary "issue" stories make for one damaging combination. Remember the one about the Red Crescent ambulance used for a suicide bombing? Remember the one about the Islamist youth pointing to a pic of the Sears Tower and claiming that one was "his" for the targeting? I remember both of those getting wide circulation, and also remember being outraged by the vigilante settlers Kelley profiled. Kelley, it seems, made them all up. In a hysterical, divisive political climate, Kelley manufactured graphic stories that played up to people's worst fears and suspicions. Maybe he thought he was being "objective" because he inflamed people on both sides of the Israel/Palestine issue.
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<br />All of them are scum, really (though I have a soft spot for my interpretation of Newton's AP fabrications). But Jack Kelley is in a different class from the slimy little kiddies who got so much attention.
<br />Diane Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00359031158925084093noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7646387.post-1105461484090160872005-01-11T05:58:00.000-08:002005-01-11T08:38:04.090-08:00Shattered Glass: the best movie of 2003 you didn't seeI finally watched <span style="font-style: italic;">Shattered Glass</span>, which had been on my must-see list since its release in 2003, over the weekend. It's a gem of a film, one that did things <span style="font-style: italic;">right</span>, and the things it did right are things Hollywood blockbusters (<span style="font-style: italic;">especially </span>biopics)<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>don't even aspire to. I watched <span style="font-style: italic;">The Aviator</span> weekend before last, and while it was fun, it wasn't breathtaking in the way <span style="font-style: italic;">Shattered Glass</span> was. I'm glad I did see it, and on the big screen at that, but I have no burning desire to see it again and will not be rushing out to by the DVD. Simply put, Mr. Scorsese and his all-star cast did not achieve the brilliant end result of <span style="font-style: italic;">SG's</span> writer-director Billy Ray (who?) and his ensemble of low-key players, some of whom are best known for turns in very bad movies. It's not that I can single out Scorsese's film for major flaws, either-- it was long, but it didn't <span style="font-style: italic;">seem </span>long, it was well-acted, it didn't descend into psychobabble-- it just wasn't a <span style="font-style: italic;">great</span> movie, and I think <span style="font-style: italic;">Shattered Glass </span>is one.
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<br />I also think <span style="font-style: italic;">Shattered Glass</span> may be a better film than <span style="font-style: italic;">All the President's Men</span>, which has always been one of my top fave films. It's shorter, tighter, less suffused with solemn import-- on one level, it's almost a black comedy. Now, a film about cracking the Watergate case may be permitted more self-importance than a film about busting a slimy little weasel of a "journalist," but a recent re-viewing of <span style="font-style: italic;">ATPM</span> wasn't the thrill ride I remembered it being. <span style="font-style: italic;">Shattered Glass</span> has the thrills: it's more suspense film than biopic, and it generates that suspense even when you know going into the film that the title character, disgraced journo Stephen Glass, is going to take a fall. That's a neat trick, and Ray and company pull off the even neater trick of making the protagonist (Glass) and antagonist (Glass' fellow <span style="font-style: italic;"></span>reporter at <span style="font-style: italic;">The New Republic, </span>Chuck Lane) switch roles halfway through the film. Kudos to Hayden Christensen (Glass) and Peter Sarsgaard (Lane) for pulling that one off.
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<br />As I mentioned above, the actors here are not big stars: none of that Dustin Hoffman/Robert Redford or Leo DiCaprio/Cate Blanchett jazz here, and no Jude Law turning up in a bit part either. Those who are 'names' are playing against type: dig Rosario Dawson as a businesslike writer for <span style="font-style: italic;">Forbes Digital Tool.</span> The characters themselves are mostly confined to the 'real' people involved: <span style="font-style: italic;">TNR </span>personnel Glass, Lane, plus editor Michael Kelly (Hank Azaria) and owner Marty Peretz; <span style="font-style: italic;">Forbes</span> people Adam Penenberg (Steve Zahn), Kambiz Foroohar (Cas Anvar), and Andie Fox (Dawson). Note that Foroohar's ethnicity isn't white-washed for filmic purposes; it makes for a refreshing touch of realism, and shows up the contrast between the lily-white world of <span style="font-style: italic;">TNR </span>and that of Forbes' online mag.
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<br />Two characters are lightly fictionalized, though: Glass' real-life confidant Hanna Rosin is Americanized, Anglicized, and made blonde; her character "Caitlin Avey" is played by Chloe Sevigny, and you can read a bemused review of the film by Rosin's real life husband <a href="http://slate.msn.com/id/2088948/">here</a>. Another friend and sometime co-writer of Glass' receives a sex change, as Jonathan Chait becomes "Amy Brand" (played by Melanie Lynskey, who apparently looks just like Chait!). That one's creepy, given the way Glass kinda-sorta hits on Amy in the film while protesting his heterosexuality.
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<br />Outisde of the two composite characters mentioned above, <span style="font-style: italic;">Shattered Glass</span> stays with the facts of the story; Ray's script was based off a <span style="font-style: italic;">(</span>apparently definitive)<span style="font-style: italic;"> Vanity Fair</span> article<span style="font-style: italic;"></span>. Ray didn't need to alter the timeline or radically alter characterization to make a successful film, which is another refreshing change from the fact-mangling one expects from a biopic. Even when the factual story is film-worthy in itself, filmmakers can rarely resist the opportunity to make mindboggling changes. I submit VH1's execrable Monkees flick <span style="font-style: italic;">Daydream Believers </span>and the fun but flawed Beatle-pic <span style="font-style: italic;">Backbeat</span> as examples of bizarre, unnecessary fictionalizing. Nor is <span style="font-style: italic;">SG</span> saddled with a "message" more weighty than the basic story can bear. The message here is simple: journalism does not equal making stuff up. Editing a publication does not equal defending your errant writers at all cost. No excuses. That's a darned good message.
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<br /><a href="http://slate.msn.com/id/2090544">One reviewer</a> compared watching this film to the experience of a good public stoning. I'd almost want to see a similar flogging of Ruth Shalit (<span style="font-style: italic;">TNR's </span>other 'kiddie sociopath'), Jack Kelley, Mike Barnicle, Jayson Blair, and the rest of the plagiarist-fabulist hall of shame, but the Glass saga is probably the most cinematic of the lot. The gripping cat-and-mouse interplay between <span style="font-style: italic;">Forbes </span>and <span style="font-style: italic;">TNR, </span>between Glass and Lane, probably can't be duplicated elsewhere. Still, it'd be nice to see La Plagiarista and the rest flayed onscreen.
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<br />Diane Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00359031158925084093noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7646387.post-1103297797097715872004-12-17T06:45:00.000-08:002004-12-17T07:38:37.943-08:00Holiday Hell, Part 1: Worst Xmas SongsChristmas hasn't been the same since my stint as a worker in a pastry shop for one holiday season. Being subjected to 8.5 hours of non-stop "holiday cheer" for a month, courtesy of one of the crummiest radio stations on the planet (Detroit's 100.3 FM) changed my life, and NOT in a good way.
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<br />Here are ten of my least favourite holiday songs, in no especial order:
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<br />1) "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)"-- Cher & Rosie O'Donnell:
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<br />I know, I know, easy targets, but the radio station I <span style="font-style: italic;">like </span>is playing this one repeatedly, and it really is a horrid song with no justification for existing. It generates zero emotion, and the duetting stars don't appear to feel any themselves. Rosie sings better than Cher does, though. (Note: Rosie's duet with Donny Osmond on "Winter Wonderland" isn't half bad until they start to ham it up at the end. Really.)
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<br />2) "Santa Baby"-- Various Artists:
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<br />A slinky, sexy Santa song. Yeesh. I don't like this one musically, I don't like it lyrically, and I don't like any of the versions I've heard of it, ever.
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<br />3) "Do They Know It's Christmas?"-- Band-Aid:
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<br />One of the sloppiest things Bob Geldof has been involved with. I don't care if it was for a good cause, as the whole premise of the song is appallingly soppy. Hint: non-Christian kiddies in Third World countries wouldn't care about Christmas even if they <span style="font-style: italic;">weren't</span> ill, starving, and/or living in a war zone. "Feed the World," fine, but sticking Christmas into it is just loopy. Look Bob, I'm sorry the kiddies have nothing to eat, but I couldn't care less if they know about Christmas or not, so can I skip buying the record and just give you some money? (Note: I have not heard the Nov. 2004 re-recording of this and never want to.)
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<br />4) "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas":
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<br />Pure evil. Everyone involved with this song needs to burn, but especially the singer. I don't know if that was a woman pretending to be a little boy, a man pretending to be a little girl, or what, but it was HORRIBLE. They played this every day in the pastry shop.
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<br />5) "Little Saint Nick"-- the Beach Boys:
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<br />Laaaaame. This defines a certain category of Bad Xmas Song-- it's all about the Beach Boys going through the motions and has zilch to contribute to the spirit of the holiday. Mike Love's contributions to this one really grate, but I suppose that goes without saying.
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<br />6) "Little Drummer Boy"-- Various Artists, including David Bowie with Bing Crosby:
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<br />I don't hate the song so much as the many bad versions of it that litter the radio. It's not a complex or compelling tune, and it's a repetitive song, and a bad version of it is just interminable. The Bowie/Crosby cover isn't half bad because it jettisons most of the tune and goes into space with Bowie's "Peace on earth..." section.
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<br />7) "Sleigh Ride"-- Amy Grant:
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<br />A soulless cover of song that can be lovely and cheerful when done by the right performer. Most radio-friendly versions of this song are terribly, and Miss Grant's has nothing to recommend it.
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<br />8) "Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time"-- Paul McCartney:
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<br />Paul McC gives the lie to his aura of melodic genius in this hopelessly plodding, brain-dead, and shameless excuse for a holiday tune. The lyrics are terrible, but that chorus of "Sim-PLY HAV-ing a WON-der-ful Christmas time!" should have gotten the man more jail time than all of his pot offenses combined (ie, at least nine days). "Happy Xmas (War is Over)" has its problems, but it kicks this song to the curb and then piddles on it.
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<br />9) "Mary, Did You Know?"-- Various, including Kenny Rogers:
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<br />A song about (and addressed to) the Blessed Virgin that denies the Immaculate Conception. They actually performed this at Immaculate Conception Church's (Hamtramck, MI) holiday concert this year! The song is pure glurge anyway, but that IC staged it boggles the mind-- I guess they didn't actually read the lyrics before assigning it to the kids. Doctrinal quibbles aside, did I mention it's glurge? Yech.
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<br />10) "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town"-- Bruce Springsteen:
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<br /> A bad idea made much worse by the fact that radio stations still play this lame mongrel of a tune. I've heard that even Springsteen is embarrassed by this one, and I hope that's true because he certainly should be. Unmelodic and joyless.
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<br />There are many, many more, but these ten are either burned into my soul (#4 and #8) and will always be present on any Bad-Xmas list of mine, or are annoying me very much at the present (#2 and #7).
<br />Diane Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00359031158925084093noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7646387.post-1101474892739551372004-11-26T04:49:00.000-08:002004-11-26T05:14:52.740-08:00McDonald's to patrons: you're all scumSome time ago, I reviewed the some spots for McDonald's "i'm lovin' it" ad campaign. I wasn't too thrilled with the local offerings of Mickey D's global offensive, and I am displeased to report that the new ads are worse. Not because they're omnipresent on my Canadian-based radio station, not because the "food" they promote is likely as crappy as anything else McDonald's has squeezed out in the past, but because these ads betray a breathtaking contempt for the losers who buy into it.
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<br />Really. Take one of the current ads for the "McDeal": Male Voice and Female Voice offer interwoven accounts of how they met, fell for one another, and then how he treated her to a McDeal. Nice, eh? Then there's the closing lines-- she can't wait to introduce her new honey to all of her friends. He can't wait to <span style="font-style: italic;">date</span> all of her friends.
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<br />Yeah. I guess the moral of this one is that real friends don't treat friends to McDeals.
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<br />I thought the "Queen Bee" salad ad from this summer was repellent, but this one is certainly worse. Salad Girl was a narcissistic moron. McDeal Guy is flat-out scuzzy, and his "girlfriend" is no bright light either if she's so knocked out by his crappy "treat."
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<br />Then there was the Monopoly ad from last month. Now, this one had nothing to do with the food-- it was a promotion for the McDonald's monopoly game tie-in. It was playful and innocuous compared to the McDeal ad, but still contained the weirdo notion that treating someone to McDonald's lunch is something special.
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<br />They <span style="font-style: italic;">have</span> to be taking the piss. I thought Mommy taking me to McD's for lunch was something neato when I was four, and that's half because I kept pretending I was Ramona Quimby going to Wonderburger. (Wonderburger was portrayed as something special in the Ramona books, but it seems to have been inspired by joints other than McDonald's-- Burger King and Wendy's, perhaps-- plus the Quimbys were dirt poor and couldn't afford to buy gummi bears.)
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<br />I am not reviewing the other McDeal ad currently on, which features a gaggle of Female Voices fantasizing about the food, the guy behind the serving counter, and the sexy voice of Mr. Announcer. Really.
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<br />In conclusion: McDonald's is demonstrating pure contempt for the people who eat their food. Maybe they think it's po-mo or something.... It's kinda like the Citibank "Live Richly" campaign: who are they trying to kid?
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<br />Screw 'em. Go to Wendy's.
<br />Diane Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00359031158925084093noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7646387.post-1100619482214484722004-11-16T06:49:00.000-08:002004-11-16T07:38:02.216-08:00Mall of MemoriesSo, the Mall of Memphis, once the largest shopping mall in the Mid-South, is now a rubbish heap by the side of the freeway. It actually closed nearly a year ago-- Christmas Eve, apparently, but I was unaware of of its demise until I saw its bulldozed remains this weekend on a brief visit back there.
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<br />The signs of terminal malaise had been present for years; from abput 1988, when I first would have visited, to 1999 or so, when I last went there with a friend, it became a markedly less fun place to shop. Same thing with Hickory Ridge, the carousel notwithstanding, same damn thing with poorpoor Raleigh Springs. More on that later, but let's take a look about at the late, great Mall of Memphis.
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<br />I first went with my grandmother, 1988 or thereabouts. It was a special outing-- I felt even a trip to the local Marshall's with her was pretty great, and going across town to the big mall was really something. I remember the bizarre murder mystery I thumbed through on the car ride (I don't know why she let me, as it wasn't a book for kids); I remember the hotels flanking the mall-- the Marriot, the Wilson Inn, the Wilson World Hotel. I remember the huge parking lot, the two-story horseshoe-shaped food court, where Grandfather's Ice Cream (?) offered Blue Vanilla as a trademark flavour. I was surprised by the ice rink, and probably awed at the sheer scale of the place. People, that was one big mall.
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<br />Grandma and I didn't go to the movie theatre that day, but Mom and Dad took me with some of Dad's friends and their kids to see <span style="font-style: italic;">Kindergarten Cop</span> when it came out. I was probably too young to be watching that, too, but that's what you get for mixing Arnie, guns, and little kids in one "family" film.
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<br />In the winter of 1990 0r 1991, Mom got a job in the houseware's department of Thalheimer's, then one of the MoM's anchor department stores. She hated the job and hated the clothes (and shoes!) she had to wear for it, but it was holiday money. She got me Thalheimer's Snow Bear, a huge white bear in a red vest, for Christmas that year. Thal's was the first of the anchor stores at MoM to close; I think Service Merchandise was next. That's when things started to get bad, I suppose. The smaller but far more posh Oak Court mall opened in East Memphis, and people and their money were streaming to Cordova, Bartlett, and Germantown. The horrors of Wolfchase Galleria glimmered on the horizon...
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<br />Also, a woman was killed in the parking lot in '92. It wasn't the last violent death at the MoM, and the place acquired the sobriquet "Mall of Murder."
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<br />Still, the Mall of Memphis turned out to be a prime meeting place for my far-flung high school friends (I think it was equally inconvenient for all of us to get there). Those are the best memories-- running around the music stores and T-shirt shops, looking through the blown-glass critters sold next to the ice rink, watching ferrets play in the windows of the pet store, eating warm Mrs. Fields Toffee Cookies. Best of all was playing "Claudia"; going into the children's dress shops and trying on dresses meant for little girls, then modeling them for my Anne Rice-loving friends like I was Claudia the child vampire. Kinda sick when you think about it, but I loved it. Those were cool dresses, too-- velvet-and-lace confections with artificial pearl drops, or chiffon-and-tulle billows dripping with ribbon roses.
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<br />We had Geralyn's birthday party there one year-- I baked the cake (yellow with chocolate icing) and brought it into the food court for us to enjoy. Another time, Ger and I went there with only her brother Michael. We had fun being mouthy to the clipboard-bearing God-botherers near the main stairs, but by that time the mall's decline was clear and there wasn't all that much to do. I think that was also one of the last times I saw Michael before his death in a car wreck.
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<br />I was shocked, but not very surprised, when I saw the ruins where the mall had been on Friday morning. I was also not very sad; for all the times I went there, I was not personally attached to the place (never even ice skated), and the stores that did have memories attached, like Thal's and Grandfather's Ice Cream, were long vanished. Perhaps the sheer scale of the mall turned me off; in the end, the tragedy is that a once-grand shopping centre of that magnitude should have fallen vacant as it did. By the time its closing was announced, it had but thirteen tenants. Blame crime, blame shifting demographics, blame a combo platter of both with a side of racism, but all in all... what a damn waste.
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<br />I feel worse about Raleigh Springs, though. That was <span style="font-style: italic;">my </span>mall, and once it was a lovely place-- dated in its structure and atmosphere but packed with places to shop and eat. It had a whopping four anchor stores: Sears, Penney's, Goldsmiths, and Dillards, plus a Walgreens, a Woolworth with an attached diner, a two-screen budget movie theater, two music stores, an Asian import shop that sold framed butterflies, a Waldenbooks, and a variety of places to eat (A&W, Milano's Pizza, Chick-fil-a, Bresler's 33 Flavor Ice Cream...).
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<br />Last time I went, they still had Waldenbooks and Sears. For a couple of years, one whole side of the mall advertised the date that the new Food Court/Strip would open. After a while, they didn't even bother to paint over dates that had already passed with new bogus numbers. I stopped even poking my head in there two years ago, when I learned Dillard's and Goldsmith's were going elsewhere. I wonder if they still have the two fountains with aquamarine-tinted water, or the pink-flowered bromeliads.
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<br />I'm afraid to go to Hickory Ridge. Not because of the crime, but because I remembered it as being so <span style="font-style: italic;">very</span> nice, and the last time Geralyn and I went it was Kinda Shabby, and that was six or seven years ago. For all I know, they've ripped out the carousel.
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<br />The fate of the Mall of Memphis, like that of earlier showpiece shopping complexes on Summer and Lamar, should be a lesson to the happy yuppie shoppers at Wolfchase Abomination and the Shops of Saddle Creek: today's "shopping centre of the future" will be the wasteland you're afraid to take your children to. And you've only yourself to blame.
<br />Diane Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00359031158925084093noreply@blogger.com0