Friday, 21 January 2011

After waiting for several weeks, a copy of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo finally arrived for me at the library. I picked it up a few days ago and, last night, I began reading it.

Chapter one was entirely fascinating. It briefly opened up a mystery that made me want to skip ahead to find the answer. But I stayed true to the story and forced myself to continue linearly.

I began reading chapter two last night, too, but it got boring, so I went to bed.Today, during lunch, I picked it up again and tried reading more of the chapter. It is the complete reverse of the first chapter: this time, I was paging forward not because I was excited, but because I was trying to see how long this booooring chapter was.

Basically, the story got bogged down in a courtroom tale, which is okay, but then just devolved into a story of backroom economics and international shady business dealings. ZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzz z z z z z z z z.

Sorry, tattooed lady, I guess I’ll just cut my loses here and return it to the library next time I go.

Saturday, 22 January 2011

The big news for me today is that I finally saw a film that I’d wanted to see for over 20 years. That film is titled Downhill (or, as it was originally titled in America, When Boys Leave Home).

You probably haven’t heard of this motion picture, and that’s okay. It wasn’t great by any means. But it had a decent story and, at less than 90 minutes, it certainly held my interest.

Downhill was directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

I was going to detail my long and varied story in trying to see every Film and TV show directed by Alfred Hitchcock but…as luck would have it…I have already told that tale IN THIS BLOG POST.

The important point is, that by 1999, I had seen all but two of Hitchcock’s films and all but one of the TV episodes. I finally watched that TV episode, and the film Waltzes from Vienna, back on March 28th of 2009. That left Downhill as the only film on my list that I hadn’t seen.

Turns out, some good chap decided to upload Downhill to YouTube a few months back and, since I periodically browse the web for this one particular movie, I finally came across it a few days ago. I saved it to my browser until I had some spare time to watch it.

I had time today.

Here it is: Downhill

Seeing everything directed by Alfred Hitchcock has long been on my short list of things I really, really, really wanted to accomplish. I seem to have been having a rash of goal-achieving lately, as only a few month back, I succeeded at achieving the goals of having more than one kid and performing a wedding ceremony.

Unlike those two long-held goals, though, this one was accomplished alone, without fanfare; just me sitting at my computer with headphones on. Kind of anti-climactic, really. When I ventured to Universal Studios to see the Hitchcock exhibit, and when I went to Oak Street Cinema to watch Dial M for Murder in its original 3D, and when I called up a video rental store in another state and asked them to ship me some Hitchcock films, and when I had about ten people over to my house to watch an old Hitchcock film that I found in a dusty bin at a hole-in-the-wall video store, I never would have guessed that it would have ended this way: me, alone, quietly watching a silent film while the rest of the world slept.

But that’s what happened.

Maybe it’s all Downhill from here.

Wednesday, 19 January 2011

Due to our aforementioned shelf cleaning, we came across our 2000 edition of the Guinness Book.

I’m sure you’ve heard of the Guinness Book – a book so famous, it has earned it’s own spot within the book – but let me give you my brief history with the book.

In the fall of 1987, I was once again given a book order form from school. I always enjoyed browsing through the books for sale and, on this particular occasion, I opted to purchase the Guinness Book.

When it arrived a couple of weeks later, I couldn’t put it down. I carried it with me to friends’ homes, and I brought it to school to read whenever I had the opportunity. After a month or so, my teacher couldn’t believe that the book on my desk was the same one he had just handed me weeks earlier – it was already so worn and tattered.

I absolutely loved reading about all the records. Though it was 800+ pages, I read it several times, each time astounded at the extreme nature of the records. I mean, I knew the extremes between the largest and smallest nations, and between the largest and smallest planets, but I had no idea that someone was ever that tall, or that someone had held their breath that long, or eaten that many bananas in a minute.

Of course, while Jupiter may be secure in its place as the largest planet in our solar system, other records change quickly. In fact, the final 12 pages of the book contained new and updated records that the editors had to insert last-minute before publishing.

So, of course, I bought 1988’s edition. And 1989’s. My mom bought me a full-color splashy edition in 1991, and I even bought a copy for my girlfriend in 1995 (it worked, too – she married me).

Then, in the summer 0f 2004, while walking around our neighborhood, Jennifer and I stopped at a garage sale. There, she noticed the 2000 “millennium edition” of the Guinness Book. It was only a buck, so I bought it.

But it was different than the others. There seemed to be less information in my favorite sections (science, human extremes, government), and lots of superfluous ‘records’ in other areas, such as in sports and music. Some pages were taken up almost entirely by large photos of sexy famous people, and – I swear – some of the records seemed tailor made just to fit in certain facts.

For example, one ‘record’ was “Highest paid action star to become governor.” Um…is there even any competition there besides Schwarzeneggar (I suppose Venture)? Let’s face it, that ‘record’ was just an excuse to show the Governator. Another record was something like “Highest sales for a single written and performed by a female under 20 years old,” an obvious ploy to find a way to shoehorn in a photo of Britney Spears. I could go on.

Lame.

A quick look at Wikipedia shows that Norris McWhirter was ousted from the book he started and grew into an empire, and the copyright has changed hands from the esteemed beer brewery to stupid entertainment conglomerates.

Wikipedia says:

The group was owned by Guinness Brewery and subsequently Diageo until 2001, when it was purchased by Gullane Entertainment. Gullane was itself purchased by HiT Entertainment in 2002. In 2006, Apax Partners purchased HiT and subsequently sold Guinness World Records in early 2008 to the Jim Pattison Group, which is also the parent company of Ripley Entertainment, which is licensed to operate Guinness World Records’ Attractions. With offices in New York City and Tokyo, Guinness World Records global headquarters remain in London, while its museum attractions are based at Ripley headquarters in Orlando, Florida.

(There are no references here, so take this info lightly, though it does jive with what I’ve observed.)

Essentially, then, The Guinness Book is dead. Newer versions are just glorified celebrity magazines, and older versions are out of date – easily a third of the records from my 1987 edition are no longer current.

RIP Guinness – and thanks for the memories…

Thursday, 20 January 2011

Here’s is a video of Isla having a religious experience: CLICK THIS!

We’re not sure what it is about Owen’s mobile, but she gets excited as soon as she sees it. It’s true, if she’s drowsily resting on my shoulder, and I walk into Owen’s room, she perks right up and practically starts hyperventilating as she looks at the mobile.

Also – take a look at the videos YouTube suggests you might like (the column on the right). What a riot.

And here’s another video we uploaded today: NOW CLICK THIS!

Isla has figured out how to play peek-a-boo without any help from anyone else. This is quite funny, as she will be quietly playing on the floor and suddenly decide to roll over and grab a nearby blanket/bib/burp rag and haphazardly drape it over her face. She then starts waving her arms frantically as she slips into a slight panic attack. The first time she did this, we ran to her aid immediately and pulled the cloth off her face. But she just began smiling – almost to the point of laughing – and repeated the process. It appears she has figured out that the adrenaline rush of panic (from having her face covered) is worth the pay-off of playing peek-a-boo.

She’s gonna love roller coasters.

Sunday, 16 January 2011

Today, I finished reading Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters, by Donald Prothero. It was an unexpectedly dense book (I wasn’t sure I’d finish reading it by the due date); had an interesting first few chapters wherein Prothero mostly responded to stupid claims made by Duane Gish, then finally got to the fossil evidence around page 100. For the next 300 pages, it was a rather dry reading of ‘intermediate’ fossils of all manner of life, ending penultimately with mammals and finally a chapter on humans.

It was only the last chapter (chapter 16) that addressed the “Why It Matters” portion of the book’s title. Under the subheading “Why Should We Care?” Prothero delineates several reasons why rejection of the facts is bad for society. Point #6 is: “Denial of evolution is not just bad science, but it threatens our health and well being.” It was in the short explanatory sentences of this point that I read the most interesting tidbit in the entire book.

Do you remember Baby Fae? I do. Her story (indeed, her entire life) transpired in 1984, when I was just old enough to read about and understand current events myself. I still recall seeing a triptych of pictures in a newspaper which displayed a ‘normal’ human heart, Baby Fae’s severally defective heart, and a baboon heart.

See, when Baby Fae was 12 days old, Dr. Bailey of the Loma Linda University Medical Center fitted her with a baboon heart. It made the evening news, all the headlines, and a great line in one of my favorite songs. She died less than a month later.

I knew all that stuff before. What I didn’t know until today was that Dr. Bailey is a Seventh-Day Adventist and the hospital he worked for was funded by the Adventists. Prothero’s book links Baby Fae’s death with Dr. Bailey’s refusal to accept evolution; when asked by reporters why he didn’t select a chimpanzee heart instead (since the genetic match to a human would be closer than it would between a baboon), Bailey replied that he didn’t believe in evolution.

I looked online, and it appears that Bailey went against the medical community’s general consensus when he suggested the transplant to Baby Fae’s parents. Conversely, the Adventist News Network continues to praise Bailey as a legendary hero who tried his best to undo the botch-job that god performed when he created Baby Fae.

I wish I could find more about this story. The Adventists, like most religions, assuredly promote ignorance and bad science. But in researching Bailey’s background, he had no experience with chimpanzee’s, so he possibly didn’t feel as comfortable working with them even if one was available. And then there are other questions: Are chimps as readily available as baboons? My gut tells me no. Would acquiring a chimp heart have been cost prohibitive? Would the infant have survived even with a chimp heart? What would her quality of life have been? How would Paul Simon have concluded the third verse of his alliterative masterpiece? (One option: “The boy in the bubble / and the child with the chimpanzee heart.”)

But seriously, there just seems to be something missing in the links that supposedly chain Baby Fae’s demise on Dr. Bailey’s ignorance.

Monday, 17 January 2011

In honor of Martin Luther King, I had the day off of work today. Since none of us had left the house since Friday evening – well, unless you count Owen playing on the deck or me taking out the trash – we decided to go out to eat. We went to DaVanni’s.  We all dined for less than twenty bucks which, when we’re feeding three people (well, technically four), is a good deal.

The key to keeping the price under $20 is not buying any beverages. We just had water. Years ago, my wife pointed out that it’s bad to “drink your calories,” and I’ve been cognizant of that ever since, which is one reason why I’ve been able to maintain this stunning physique for so long.

Owen asked why we didn’t get root beer. I thought this was a funny question for him to ask because we usually don’t get a beverage when we go out to eat, but I suppose he saw the root beer logo and was suckered into craving it. I told him it was too much money, as a drink for each of us would have upped the ticket price by over $5.

So now we’ve gotten to the point where ordering a beverage other than water is considered splurging. When we go out to dinner for our anniversary, or for some other festive occasion, then we allow ourselves to get a beverage (usually iced tea). Sometimes, if we go to a fast food establishment, we’ll get just one beverage and share it.

After all, they have free refills.

Tuesday, 18 January 2011

Over six years ago, I acquired a set of headphones for use at work. They were great: the band went up over my head and the part that hung over my ears was comfortable. The best part was that they were cordless. This was an awesome feature, as it allowed me to move around in my cube, walk over to the printer and even to the coffee area and bathroom without having to take off my headphones. I listened to music on them but, since I had them plugged into my computer, I heard a little PING whenever a new email came through, immediately alerting me to the presence of some new spam without having to obsessively check my email.

Well, those headphones stopped functioning about a week ago. The part that plugs into the computer – the antenna portion – seems fine; it’s the headphones themselves that are no longer operative.

Today, during my lunch break, in an effort to mitigate this new found cubicle hell, I ventured to Target and perused their headphone selection.

Results: not good.

For one thing, about a quarter of the headphones were just for MP3 players – meaning I’d have to snap on an iPod or other such device if I wanted to use them. About half of the headphones were the earbud style, you know, so you can feel like you have a Q-tip in your ear all day. I have three sets of those one of my desk drawers at work, and we have more laying around at home. I’m not a fan. Then there were these styles that hook around your glarpo and then hang behind your head, almost on your neck. Okay, I have the same issue with these as I do with earbuds: they don’t stay up. My son would explain this as gravity pulling them down, and I think that’s an accurate enough description for our needs here.

There were more options, though: There were some souped-up headphones that claimed to be the best sound around. They had a cord that was 5 meters long. Though I was attracted to the sue of metric units, I quickly decided that a 16 foot cord would be helpful 1% of the time and annoying 99% of the time. Also, I don’t need the best sound around, so $40 seemed a bit steep for my needs.

I ended up buying a $9.99 pair of simple headphones; the style that came standard with Walkmans in the 1980s. The cords is about five feet long, so I’m sure to be annoyed with the tethering prospects, but, oh well. Tomorrow I’m plugging them in and rocking to some tunes.

Even if it’s not the best sound around.

Oh, one other thing — I felt like I could really feel for this person’s frustration: How Bad Marketing Killed My Dog.

Saturday, 15 January 2011

So, since the books, magazines, papers, memorabilia, memoranda, and knick-knacks above our main bookshelf have now nearly touched the ceiling, we figured it was a good time to sort through that stuff.

We used to have a lot of magazines, but thankfully, we’ve whittled the number down quite a bit. We used to have stacks of Entertainment Weekly, but now we just have a single issue – that one from 1995 that’s entirely dedicated to Star Trek (which, now that I think about it, might be my favorite issue of any magazine, ever). We also have just a single issue of Discover, the one that’s all about Einstein.

We also have a few issues that are noteworthy for being from a special moment in history. For example, I have the issue of Newsweek that came out right after the Challenger explosion, and I even have the one that came out following Dr. King’s assassination.

We also have a couple issues of a magazine titled Every Woman’s (billed as “The Woman’s Guide to Better Living”). They’re from the 1940s and 50s, so the fun in keeping these magazines is that everything inside them has become a sort of time capsule.

Especially the articles and ads about food. I decided to scan in a few images for your viewing pleasure:

So, here’s an image that accompanied an article featuring recipes (what women’s magazine would be complete without recipes?). This food item, at least by 1954 standards, must’ve been so appealing that this same image made the cover of this issue, too! So, what, exactly, is that food? I mean, just looking at it, it doesn’t look too bad, does it? Personally, I don’t care for hard-boiled eggs, but if I came across this sumptuous delicacy at a buffet, I would probably help myself to a nice heaping slice of that stuff in the middle.

Get this: it’s tuna salad molded via a mold tin and mixed with aspic to give it that full-bodied, Jell-o look that you’ve come to expect in your seafood. And that red stuff sitting around the blended fish? Those are cubes of tomato juice mixed, again, with aspic.

I can just imaging myself taking a serving spoonful of those red cubes, believing I’m gonna finish off my meal with some Jell-o, only to nearly vomit on the fact that it’s straight-up pasta sauce. I get sick to my stomach just thinking about it. And the reason why I know that putting something in my mouth that I believe is a dessert but which, in fact, is some concoction of culinary arts gone horribly awry, is because it happened to me once before. I will never, ever forget that gut-wretching moment that, alas, you will have to wait until February 23rd for me to write about.

Oh, if you don’t believe that those are the ingredients, here’s the facing page:

And it’s time for one more gentle rip on Every Woman’s. Now here are two plates of food that don’t look too bad; the top one features corned beef hash with peas, and the bottom one is a spread of broiled lamb chops with peas. Okay, even if those aren’t the sort of things you care to eat, at least there’s nothing weird about them. …Right?

Think again, future human! Take a look at that lower plate of food (and you can click on the picture for a bigger version). Do you see that glob of otherworldly green? What is Stokey’s advertising department trying to get us to eat? It’s not quite applesauce, and it’s not quite cranberries. Is it more aspic? Did some form of aspic have to accompany every meal in the 1950s? Or perhaps it’s a parrot fish’s abandoned mucous cocoon.

Yum! Who’s hungry?

Thursday, 13 January 2011

A couple of weeks ago, I listed off the books I read in 2010. I mentioned that I had read God Hates You, Hate Him Back, a book I received free from the publisher with the intent that I write a review of it. Well, HERE’S MY REVIEW. So, you know, more stuff to read!

And noticed how, in my post for January 11^th, I complained that I’m sick of hearing of Loughner as an “alleged” shooter? Well, now, apparently, he’s been upgraded to “suspect.” Yeah, it’s true. They called him a “suspect” at least three times on my drive home from work this evening. Oh, that’s so much better.

In other news: Court orders blood transfusion for baby boy.

This evening, my wife and I watched the film Thank You For Smoking. It was decent; worth a watch. We seem to have stumbled upon this sub-genre of comedies that are designed to look like a documentary in parts. It’s hard to explain but, we’ll be watching the movie, and it’s constructed in the usual narrative format, when, all of the sudden, they’ll be a narrator of a quick succession of cuts designed to imitate a news clip. Idiocracy was like that. So was The Darwin Awards. I think Confessions of a Dangerous Mind was like that in places, too. It seems to be a mini-trend going on lately.

Friday, 14 January 2011

Today we watched the documentary Man on Wire. It details the story of Philippe Petit’s desire to highwire walk between the Twin Towers. I know, it doesn’t sound that compelling. I first heard of the documentary in the weeks leading up to the 2009 Oscar ceremony. I didn’t know anything about it but, when we watched the Oscar ceremony, Man on Wire won the award for Best Documentary. The short clips and very brief words they said about the film really pique our interest, and so we immediately put it on our Netflix queue.

That’s where it sat for nearly two years.

The disk finally arrived in our mailbox a couple of days ago.

And it was a very well-made documentary! At one point, I even told Jennifer that I was nervous – to which she replied, “that shows that they did a good job making this.”

Man on Wire has the converse of the cliché that I mentioned above: it’s a typical documentary, but it’s liberally interspersed with drama; as if we’re suddenly watching a work of fiction. The footage is sped up in these parts, reminiscent of Vaudeville and silent films. The film is also almost entirely in black-and-white.

The ending is no secret: Petit did tightrope between the Twin Towers, as is common knowledge. The fun, though, is seeing how he planned it out. The planning was extensive; including several trips back and forth between America and Europe, numerous dry runs, and lots of site scouting. I had been unaware that Petit performed his stunt without permission from either the city of New York or the Twin Towers management. Seeing how he and his troupe got around security at every step made for an engaging story. With the beefed-up security since 9/11, it’s tough to see how anyone could do something like this again.

Go rent it.