Nothing For Now

Merry Fitzmas

And who have we found wrapped under the Fitzmas tree? Ooh, look! It's I. Lewis, Libby, Jr., Dick Cheney's chief of staff! How wonderful! *hugs it* One count of obsctruction of justice, two counts of perjury, and two counts of making false statements in the course of an investigation. And he resigned, too? This is a merry holiday indeed.

Better yet, Santa Pat Fitzerald evidently has a few more packages in his sack of goodies. Rumor is he's going to call for a new grand jury to deliver Karl Rove unto us. And can't a girl dream of her very own Dick Cheney wrapped in stylish red ribbons? The holiday season has never looked so good.

Wake Me Up For Spring Training

Brian Cashman is back, and armed with a newly assertive attitude that's bringing tears of joy to this Yankee fan's eyes. For years we've watched the bickering between the New York and Tampa factions of the front office, and wondered who was making the good decisions and who was making the bad ones. Cashman, evidently, was just as tired of being forced to defend moves he didn't want to make as the fan base was of watching it happen. So in his contract negotiations, he pretty much laid down the law anew:

"I'm the general manager, and everybody within the baseball operations department reports to me."

Damn straight, Cash. Now, of course, you have to wonder if the Tampa mafia has actually been helping the team more than hurting it. What if the mystery troika of Billy Connors, Bill Emslie and Damon Oppenheimer was actually making the GM look good? It's possible, I guess, but somehow I doubt it. After all, it's Cashman's idea to bring Gene Michael back into the fold.

Who's Gene Michael, you may ask? Only the architect of the late-90s Yankee dynasty. He's fallen out of Steinbrenner's favor of late, so having him take a major role again can only be for the good. As Cashman said:

"We have the most money ... that's no secret. If we can combine that with the best decision-making process on a consistent basis, then God help the rest of baseball."

Heck yeah. Now that's what I want to hear.

History in Dialogue

The Pinstriped Bible's Steve Goldman on ignoring evidence:

"Not to trivialize a tragic moment in American history, but this reminds me of the way Douglas MacArthur botched the Korean War. MacArthur has chased the North Koreans back into their own territory, and he's heading up towards the border with China. As he gets closer, his subordinates keep running in with messages like:

COLONEL: General, we've captured some more Chinese. It's the fifth group today.

MACARTHUR: Yes, I know. Intelligence tells me that they're tourists.

COLONEL Tourists?

MACARTHUR: Indeed. Ma and Pa Peking, taking the kiddies out for a mountain hike.

COLONEL: Sir, these "tourists" have Russian-made machine guns strapped to their chests.

MACARTHUR: Yes, they function in much the same way as our Kodak Brownie cameras! Charming, isn't it?

COLONEL: We think they're organizing a major insurgency.

MACARTHUR: Yes, Schmidlap! An insurgency … of tourists!

COLONEL: My god, you've gone stark raving mad.

MACARTHUR: Charming, isn't it? Bdeep! Bdeep! Bdeep!

… And we ended up getting kicked all the way back down the Korean peninsula, at the cost of many American lives."

***

Goldman is the best Yankees columnist around, bar none. With his honesty, style, and erudition, it's hard to believe he works for the YES Network, but there it is. If you want a guy who can reference Homer, Voltaire, and Benjamin Franklin in the space of one blog entry while performing effective baseball analysis, using statistics, and snarking at his reader mail, Goldman's your guy.

What?!

So here I am in merry old England, studying and doing the tourist thing, when an envelope arrives for me today from the TV licensing folks. "It is illegal to watch TV at [ room number]," the letter informs me. Well, okay. I don't even have a TV, nor do I particularly want one. But further down, things get more interesting:

"Warning: Our records show your address is currently unlicensed. As a result, it has been passed to our enforcement division, who will be starting an investigation."

...

"Of course, if you don't require a TV License, you can halt our investigation by writing us at TV Licensing, Bristol BS98 1TL. We will contact you to confirm the situation."

Uh, excuse me? I'm being investigated? What the fuck?! Whatever happened to actually having evidence of wrongdoing before starting some kind of criminal investigation against the clueless American? And why the hell should I have to pay for postage to write to them and proclaim my innocence?

Of course, the letter comes with a TV license application, complete with payment options and the kind offer of a 50% discount if I'm registered blind. Once again, I repeat- What the fuck?! What is this, a Mafia shakedown? They're not getting 1 pence from me, and if there's a way to avoid even paying for postage and an envelope to mollify those assholes, I'll find it.

Also, your grammar stinks, TV Licensing Dicks.

ETA- I've been informed that these vaguely threatening letters are common practice here, so I probably don't need to worry about somebody searching my room for a contraband VCR. The situation, strangely, has become no less aggravating.

Well, they called it intelligent...

"Does he not grasp the meaninglessness of saying a designer designed things that were designed?"

Thank you, William Saletan, for providing the most succint smackdown of an intelligent design advocate I have ever read. Because you know what? Even if your "designer" is a cosmic watchmaker rather than God, the theory is empty. It explains nothing and it can't be tested, and if that's not a textbook example of pseudoscience, i don't know what is.

Now I'm off to mail my absentee ballot. Mere distance and election board incompetence can't stop me from voting. :)

Achy Feet

I planned my day on the basis of looking at my map of London and seeing that three tourist attractions were very close together- St. Paul's, Shakespeare's Globe, and the Tate Modern. Great! I thought. One trip on the Tube will cover three places I've been wanting to visit.

Of course, I forgot to factor in the fact that I'm a wimp.

So I started out by going to St. Paul's Cathedral, a gorgeous and mammoth place of worship located close to the north bank of the Thames. After wandering the main floor and looking at statues of everyone from Horatio Nelson to William Turner, I went for the big attraction- the climb up the dome to a panoramic view of London.

The first set of stairs led to the Whispering Gallery on the inside of the dome. As you can imagine, the place was so named because a whisper on one side can be heard on the other. Getting there required climbing a spiral staircase of 259 shallow steps that were too wide to take two at a time. There was no handrail, which was really fun when I started to get dizzy from going around in about 30 circles. But wait! It gets better!

The second set of stairs had a handrail, all right. Probably because it consisted of 119 stone steps done medieval-style, by which I mean too high and with an uneven surface. It even had frequent small landings, which made resting on the way easy. Of course, it probably only had those because the stairwell was too narrow for two adults to pass each other. Somewhere around step 80 I started getting an irrational fear of falling down those steep, hard steps, so I was very glad to get out into the open air of the Stone Gallery.

It had about as much maneuvering room as a submarine, but the view was great.

So, then it was on to the last staircase. It was just as narrow as the last one, but instead of being made of stone, it was one of those free-hanging metal grating things. Joy. Unsurprisingly, the journey up those last 152 steps didn't help my nascent fear of heights. But hey, once I got up to the Golden Gallery the view was even more impressive.

Then came the journey down. Physically? Much easier than going up. Except for the part where I broke into a cold sweat and started shaking so badly someone actually asked if I needed help. *headdesk* Anyway, I made it down in one piece and had lunch in the churchyard.

Then, I wandered around and got lost looking for the Millenium Bridge because I'm an idiot, but I eventually made it. And took pictures of the view, naturally. :)

Next up was the Globe. Isn't it pretty?

Unfortunately, its theatre season ended about a month ago, due to the whole being outdoors thing. But one day when I win the lottery I'll be back to see a show there. Anyway, my final stop was the Tate Modern. Like St. Paul's, it doesn't allow photography inside. Unlike St. Paul's, it has a butt-ugly exterior, so no pictures there. Seriously, who designs an art museum to look like a prison with a lawn?

So when I was too tired and hungry to go on and too cheap to buy another meal, I headed back across the bridge to the St. Paul's Tube station.

And that's why I'm never climbing a spiral staircase again. The end. :)

***

And now, two video links for your amusement.

Two Chinese Students

Two Chinese Students Again

Use headphones if you're easily embarassed. *cough*

Well, that's a bit better.

Here's the uncropped version of DeLay's mug shot. *cackles*

Smile As You Sink

Tom DeLay's mug shot can be seen here. But what the hell? It looks more like an official portrait. I realize he's not going to jail, so I'll forgive the lack of jumpsuit, but where's that little board with his name on it? The woeful expression? The lighting that brings out every bag and wrinkle on a face? I want hideousness, dammit!

Well, okay. Looking at his arrest warrant is kind of fun, too.

Cooking Chronicles, Part II

Okay, so after conquering the Great Chicken Frontier, the inevitable next step was beef. So today I made a highly successful bowl of spaghetti bolognese. Of course, first I forgot I had to defrost the meat, which delayed matters a bit. And at the end I realized I'd forgotten to add salt and pepper. And my mushrooms were locked in my neighbor's room (don't ask), so I couldn't use them. And I forgot to cook the spaghetti at the same time, so I had to wait for it after finishing the sauce. But in the end, I had a bowl of pasta that tasted just like home. Well, minus the mushrooms.

If I'd only had a bottle of vanilla I'd have made chocolate chip cookies, too. But I don't have one and there's no way I'm walking 20 minutes to the grocery store two days in a row. So the cookies will have to wait for some other time.

Fun note: The tomato paste here comes in tubes, like toothpaste. It's really fun to use.

Jews Can Jump

Okay, so not all the members of Israel's Maccabi basketball team are actually Israeli or Jewish. But they still beat the Toronto Raptors 105-103 tonight, and that's pretty darn cool.

Serenity

I was disappointed. Spoilers ahead, folks.

I've never been part of the Cult of Joss, and I'm not starting here. Firefly was a deeply flawed show- the Western dialogue sounded incogruous at best, the plotting was sometimes illogical, and the pace was often completely off. But it also had a lot of promise, virtually all of it contained in the characters. It was the little moments of discovery, the peeling back of layers, that provided most of the show's pleasures. Seeing Jayne painstakingly read a letter from his family, the explosion of the tension between Zoe's loyalty to Mal and to her husband, the class issues between Kaylee and Simon (and, now that I think about it, Mal and Inara)- those were the times when Firefly really sparkled. And the movie gave pretty much all of that up in favor of action scenes.

Don't get me wrong- the action was pretty good. But the film did virtually nothing to get us to sympathize with the cast. The characters who got the most attention were Mal and River, but they couldn't carry it. First of all, as she stands at the end of the film, River is the Mary Sue to end all Mary Sues. Psychic kung-fu warrior girls might make good action stars, but you need more than that to actually be interesting. In the movie, the only personality trait River had other than "batshit insane" was her loyalty to her brother. Which was nice, but not enough. I found River had the same trouble in the show, but her flashbacks relieved this somewhat. Couldn't we have seen something of know-it-all little River in her dreams? Or even the girl who took apart Book's Bible to try to make it make sense? Yes, River is a psychologically conditioned fighting machine, blah blah blah, but she's also smart, and I don't think we saw much of that.

On to Mal. The way he was written, he didn't have a stick up his ass- he had a telephone pole. Yes, we get it- he's haunted by the war, he's ethically challenged, he's an anti-hero, he's a bad-ass, okay already. We needed something other than "stoically squinting" Mal. The other characters bring it out in him- the brief bits with Inara and Book showed that. I understand why we couldn't have too much of those characters in the movie, but how about making actual use of Kaylee, Zoe and Wash? Cut a few minutes of epic space chases and you have plenty of time for the kind of revealing baneter Whedon does so well.

Speaking of Kaylee, Zoe, and Wash- well, we needed more of them as a general rule. How could we be horrified by the loss of Wash and sympathize with Zoe's loss when we barely saw what made them tick? When the camera panned out to show the plastic dinosaurs at the pilot's console, I knew enough to get a lump in my throat, but the Firefly non-watcher I went with didn't have a clue, and didn't much care. And how wrong is it that those dinosaurs made me feel more than the scene at the grave site, or even Zoe's reaction immediately after the event? I was working on my memories of the show, not anything the movie gave me.

The same goes for the courtship of Kaylee and Simon. Why should anyone care whether or not they get together when we only get the barest outlines of their relationship? The little complexities that made them interesting were all gone- Simon's complete inexperience with girls, Kaylee's inferiority complex about her comparatively poor and uneducated background. We needed to see more of Simon the surgeon and Kaylee the engine geek. But all we got of Simon was how he related to River, and all we got of Kaylee was how she related to Simon. That doesn't work, Whedon.

Jayne- well, he was Jayne. Baldwin's comic timing and line deliveries are still dead-on perfect. His character isn't overly complicated, so he transferred to the big screen just fine despite being thrust into the background even more than usual. Other than the sad lack of hat, I have nothing to complain about there.

So I guess what all my problems add up to is this- Whedon made this into the River movie. But River isn't Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a developed character who was clearly at the center of her show. She's the crazy girl saying crazy things in the corner, and that's just not compelling enough to be the basis of a movie. Simon only got as much screen time as he did because he had to constantly try to get her to act less insane. Mal's the captain, so he got his share of lines, too. And everyone else pretty much got the shaft. Whedon wrote his own Mary Sue fanfic and put it on screen. The only thing missing was every male character falling in love with her, and that's only because Jayne is the comic relief (and therefore incapable of romance) and the other males were either married, pining, or her brother. Not that this movie will do much to stop those people who think River and Simon are more than siblings (ew ew ew).

But even if Serenity had been more of a true ensemble flick, even with the virtual non-presences of Book and Inara, maybe there were just too many characters to give them all their due. It takes time, to inform the audience of all these quirks and insecurities. It takes a more relaxed pace, perhaps, than the space of a feature-length film can provide. The building, the peeling back of layers- Whedon's style is made for television. I'm not saying he can't write for movies. Just that if he does, he should conceive his ideas as movies from the start.

Finally, a postscript. A positive one, believe it or not. There were good things about this movie. Inara did just fine in her small part- the incense trick was just so her it was perfect. I loved the reference to the pretty floral bonnet. And most of all, I loved the way Book was used. I always liked his character in Firefly, even when he was a bit misused, and even before he gained a mysterious past. So I have to give Whedon credit- the parallels between Book and The Operative (well-playd by Chiwetel Ejiofor) were subtle and nicely done. I thought Book and Mal were closer in the movie than in the show, but that was a character inconsistency I actually liked. Nothing was better for relieving the unending litany of Big Tough Mal than seeing him treat Book as a quasi-father figure. And it's kind of fun to wonder what The Operative will be up to now.

What Would Jeter Do?

So Nomar Garciappara rescued two women from drowning in Boston Harbor. How does Baseball Primer react? By asking what Jeter would do. Naturally he would have walked on water to save the two. From there, the discussion only gets more loopy and hilarious- what would Ted Kennedy do? What would Mark McGwire do? The BP hive mind is in top form. Check it out.

The First Sign of Insanity

I've heard it said that the first sign of insanity is when you talk to your toaster and the toaster talks back. But now it's Yom Kippur, I haven't had anything to eat or drink in over 20 hours, and my hand smells like cake.

Being tempted to chew on your hand- that's the first sign of insanity.

Yankee Blue

&^*%& *$%&*# ^(*% ($*#!!!!

NOTE: The administrator of this blog has been sedated and will return to her writing duties once her baseball-induced psychosis has been relieved. Thank you, and good night.

Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

Today, I strolled down the street to watch Wallace and Gromit's first feature length film, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, and I'm glad to say it was brilliant from beginning to end. Gromit has the most expressive eyebrows in film, Wallace, as always, has a lot more mechanical sense than common sense, and the rabbits alone provide enough entertainment to be worth the price of admission.

When we begin, our heroes' little town is being menaced by an infestation of rabbits, all threatening to nibble away the prized pumpkins, marrows, and carrots being grown for the annual Giant Vegetable Competition. Luckily, man and dog are partners in a pest-control business whose ingenious methods of dealing with the fluffy destroyers have to be seen to be believed. Things turn complicated when the enormous and elusive Were-Rabbit appears on the scene. Will the competition be ruined, or can our duo save the day? In an old-school Wallace and Gromit short, that would have been more than enough plot, but here a bit of a love story is introduced to fill things out. This B-plot is more familiar than kooky, but it's well-executed nevertheless, and the movie caroms from one delightful set piece to the next without ever bogging itself down in love-triangle cliche. This is a kids' movie, after all.

It's once again hard to believe that Aardman accomplished what it did using almost nothing but clay. The chases (and there are quite a few of them) are imaginative, kinetic, and sometimes unbelievably elaborate. The animation style of painstakingly moving plasticine figures fractions of an inch for every frame may seem old-fashioned and clunky next to Pixar's work, but like one of Wallace's inventions, it has its own peculiar Rube Goldberg charm.

This movie is great- it has a simple story and enough clatter and color to occupy the kids, plus a few sly jokes for the adults, without the smartassery that's typical of some Shrek pop culture references. If you're looking, it has a message about animal rights, but if you're not, it won't hit you over the head with it. The only downside, as far as I can see, to Aardman pictures is how long it takes to produce them. So when's the next one coming?

Conquering Fowl

Today I conquered my last culinary frontier by finally cooking raw meat. Yes, I know I'm pathetic, but a combination of my mom's love of cooking and being on a college meal plan sort of stunted my skills at the "boiling water for pasta" stage. Over here, though, there is no meal plan, and though I've eaten out plenty of times, in the dorm I've been a de facto vegetarian. No more, I finally decided, and today I bought a couple of chicken breasts in the grocery store.

The next step, of course, was figuring out what to do with them. The only chicken recipe I know offhand is for schnitzel, and I didn't have any flour or breadcrumbs lying around. So it was off to the Internet to try and find out what to do. A word to the wise- don't search on Epicurious if you don't have a well-stocked kitchen. Most of the recipes called for things like capers and limes, which are nice but not exactly what I have lying around. Anyway, I found a recipe I could adapt to my needs, called my mom to confirm that no small animals (like, say, me) would be harmed in the making of this dish, and finally got to it.

All I can say is, thank goodness I was alone when I did this. It's not that I made a mess of things; it's just that it took a few steps and missteps for me to get everything together, and it was better that I wasn't watched. In the end, I didn't do too badly- the chicken was cooked through but turned out soft and moist. The fact that I used enough butter to choke a horse probably helped. Next time I'll add more salt and maybe something more extreme, like red pepper flakes, because it needed a little flavor. But at least I don't have to worry about self-induced anemia anymore. And isn't that what cooking is all about?

Wolf Creek, Pride and Prejudice, and A History of Violence

The only thing that's actually been cheaper for me in London is movie tickets, which cost about $7 if you go on Wednesdays and not much more if you use a student discount on other days. With a nice independent multiplex just down the street, it's been easy to just go there casually instead of carefully picking and choosing and trying to get a ride like I do at home.

The first movie I saw here was Wolf Creek, an uninspired horror movie that claims to be based on true events. The afterword, which elaborates on the fates of the real people involved, absolutely infuriated me and negated what little appeal the movie had in the first place. Despite having a lot of the horror movie staples- pretty young people going camping in isolated spots, menacing truckers, stories of aliens told around a campfire, and of course, lots of poor lighting, the movie was less scary than it was sadistic and nasty. A clue to wannabe horror directors- blood and guts aren't scary. They're gross. There's a difference.

The three actors playing the protagonists were appealing and did their best with what they had, but the characters were so underwritten I couldn't even remember their names at the end of the movie. You'd think a movie that starts with a slow-paced road trip with just the three of them would give us a chance to get to distinguish their characters, but only Nathan Phillips managed to squeeze some personality out of what he got. Anyway, the only distinguishing features of Wolf Creek ended up being some beautiful landscape shots of western Australia, one plot twist in the middle, and the horrible text prologue and epilogue.

***

I mostly saw Wolf Creek because my friends were going, but Pride and Prejudice was a movie I'd been looking forward to for a while. The book is by far my favorite in the Austen canon- witty, dramatic without melodrama, and containing some truly memorable and well-constructed characters. But I'm afraid the film doesn't really live up to its source.

Keira Knightley did an unexpectedly solid job as Elizabeth Bennet. It's true she was too pretty to be constantly overlooked in favor of her sister Jane (played by the also-lovely Rosamund Pike), but considering I never liked Knightly's acting before, the fact that I think she didn't completely ruin her great character says a lot. Matthew MacFadyen was a fine Mr. Darcy, stiff and awkward but as certain in his convictions as Elizabeth. The rest of the characters were played the way they were supposed to be- Mr. Bennet as nice but overly retiring, Mrs. Bennet as a clucking, marriage-obsessed annoyance, and the two youngest Bennet sisters as unbearable, giggling, boy-crazy fools. Simon Woods was an amiable Bingley, Claudie Blakely a fine Charlotte Lucas, and Rupert Friend a charming Wickham. And the power of Austen's words hasn't diminished- many of the exchanges still crackled with insight and intelligence.

The real problem, I think, was with Joe Wright's direction. You know something's wrong when I can think of specific objections even as I'm watching, but I found that happening several times here. For example, when Elizabeth tromps all the way to Mr. Bingley's house to care for the bedridden Jane, a lot is made of how strange she looks, walking into a gentleman's house liberally splattered with mud. Why, then, does the camera stay above her knees? We don't see what causes Bingley's sister to turn up her nose. A simple shot of Lizzy tracking dirt on the floor would have said plenty.

Another scene was a bit higher on the scale of aggravation- the first time Darcy proposes and Elizabeth furiously refuses, under no circumstances should they be leaning forward as if they're about to kiss. Elizabeth absolutely hated Darcy at that point, and he was quite shocked and hurt by how she turned him down. I realize they had chemistry, but that was ridiculous.

There were some problems with the adaptation, too. I realize that things had to be cut in order to stuff everything into a feature-length film, but sometimes what was happening got a bit unclear. There were also, without going into detail, some poor choices made in the scenes of Elizabeth's trip to Darcy's manor with her aunt and uncle. But in the end...it was Pride and Prejudice. I love the story so much that seeing it relatively intact onscreen, even imperfectly adapted, was a joy.

***

Finally, tonight I watched A History of Violence. This movie has been puzzling me for the past couple of hours- after all those excited anticipatory headlines on Ain't It Cool and the critical raves, I was really expecting something great. What I got was something wonderfully crafted, but I'm not sure what it all adds up to.

The story centers on Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen), a Midwestern diner owner, and how his defense of his business from robbers brings violence flooding into his life and that of his family. Even as the film plays out typical celluloid fantasies of violent self-defense and revenge, it doesn't really let them be fantasies. Somehow it manages to capture both the appeal of violence and its price.

David Cronenberg's direction was just slow-paced enough to provoke uncomfortable squirms, and he thankfully showed the fight scenes with an unmercifully clear eye. The violence was a bit stylized but never pretty- no glamorous arterial spray here. From the beginning, when we cut from the nasty aftereffects of a shooting to a beautiful day in the life of the Stall family, the movie maintains double vision- glamourizing the macho man and casting a queasy eye on his work.

Mortensen does a fine job as Stall- the blankness he always seems to have below his surface was appropriate for his ambiguous character. Maria Bello is gorgeous and especially great as his wife, and Ed Harris and William Holmes do well in their smaller mobster roles. Another standout was Ashton Holmes as Stall's slightly geeky son Jack, who probably has the most interesting reaction of all to his father's heriosm in foiling the initial robbery.

This is definitely the most interesting movie I've seen all year. But I need to see things like The Constant Gardener and Good Night and Good Luck before I even think about calling it the best.

Head Out the Window

The guy across the hall from me evidently decided to spray some air freshener a few hours ago. Since then, I've been choking on the smell in my room, regardless of the fact that my door has been closed. I honestly thought someone had spilled a bottle of cologne or something. How much of that stuff can you spray?!

Ugh, I have a headache. Since our windows only open 3 inches or so, the linings of my nostrils will probably burn out before the smell is gone.

Sweet Victory

After their weakest, wackiest season since the bad old days of the early 90s, the Yankees have managed to clinch their 8th straight AL East title and a guaranteed spot in the playoffs. The Red Sox and Indians must now battle it out for the Wild Card, but frankly, I don't give a crap who wins.

The only possible downside to this victory is that Steinbrenner and his Tampa "brain trust" (please be assured I'm imbuing those two words with all the irony they can bear) will take it as a sign that last winter was a good one, when it was actually downright awful. This year hasn't been a victory so much as a lesson in what not to do in the offseason. Only some shrewd and downright lucky in-season moves, like the acquisitons of pitchers Shawn Chacon and Aaron Small, saved the Yankees from ignominy. Adversity brought out the best in in the front office, and I do have to compliment them for showing some mental flexibility in the face of the tremendous problems winter created.

Anyway, once the playoffs start the old anxieties- the lack of middle relief, the patched-up rotation, the gaps in the lineup and defense- will return. But after their horrible start to the season, who would have thought the Yanks would play even one game with the division title in hand? Ah, baseball. The only game that's crazy enough for me.