Moore's Law

If you were to ask someone to come up with an idea for a movie, what answer would they give? Horror movie? Western? Science fiction? Action? Thriller? Few ideas come up that are startlingly original, yes, Todd Haynes has come up with something so different (though not Guy Maddin or Peter Greenaway different) that one wonders how it even got made.

Safe tells the story of a well-to-do housewife (played by Julianne Moore) who gets sick, but she never really finds out why she's ill. She's convinced that it's due to environmental illness, an unspecified laundry list of maladies due to fumes, EMF, and so forth.

But is this what Safe is really about? While Haynes received a good deal of assistance from people involved with environmental illness and credits them at the end, this film doesn't blatantly advocate the process of natural, holistic healing. The commune that Carol White (Moore) eventually goes to doesn't seem to make her much better, and it's arguable that she's still in decline.

If anything, Haynes is dealing with fear of the unknown. Carol has an illness she can't explain. She grasps for straws trying to rationalize what's going on. At first, she attributes it to stress, though her life appears far from stressful. Then, she hears about environmental illness, and figures that's what she has.

If I had to compare this film to anything, it would be, strangely enough, 2001: A Space Oddyssey. Haynes trains his camera at middle-to-long shots, and, for the most part, eschews panning. In this respect, he shares a common visual language with directors like Hou Hsiao-hsien, with his choices in framing scenes.

Though he's not as dispassionate as Kubrick in 2001, he keeps a distance from his characters. Carol is a modestly shallow character. She worries about her kids, tries to exercise, complains that the furniture folks have given her the wrong color sofa. She's trying to be a good wife, but her life appears to have little meaning. She no longer derives pleasure from her husband.

As she gets sicker, the people around her don't give her emotional support. Her husband is exasperated, though supports her the best he can. Even as she gains some emotional support at the institute she attends, it may be that she has never truly loved herself. It's never clear if she wants more out of life, whether it be love, or to achieve something.

While watching this film, it's similar to watching a Kubrick film. It's creepy in a way that's hard to describe.

What Safe shares with 2001 is a disregard for the human characters specifically to reach a truth about humans in general. 2001 asks grand questions. How did humans evolve from apes? It posits that unknowable aliens helped humans to create tools, and now are waiting for humans to be ready for the next stage of human evolution.

Haynes's questions are not nearly as profound. What he asks is what do humans want? At some level, we want to be well. We want to be happy. We want to be loved. Nothing scares us more than to be ill, to not know why we are ill. He wonders how people behave when they are ill with something they can't readily identify. In the end, he can't answer those questions without profoundly affecting the film.

Imagine, for example, if Carol, after staying at the retreat is cured. Then, we end up thinking about her illness, and her cure. We somehow know that she will not get better, and in that sense, we wonder about ourselves, how we would handle the situation if we were in her shoes. She's nobody special. She may live a more wealthy, more shallow life, but like the bland characters that populate 2001, it's the blandness that makes us think beyond the characters as characters (although, in 2001, the blandness is meant to contrast greatly with the aliens, creating a sense of awe, in comparison to the ordinary).

It's hard to say how well Julianne Moore pulls off this role. She's certainly believable as the housewife who's world is upended by an illness she can't identify. She loses the support of her husband, and it's never clear if her stepchild ever cared that much for her. When we meet her new friends, we wonder "Are they crazy? Are they cultists?", and yet, we want her to be well, so we hope what they say is true. Again, we question how the retreat members deal with their situation, wondering if we, in the same situation, would want to resort to new age solutions.

In Safe, Julianne Moore is every woman, boring and bland enough, that we don't think of her as a character, but as a reflection of who we might be. It's an audacious film. It isn't Kubrick. Haynes's concerns aren't the same, but it is heavily influenced by the way Kubrick sees the world.

Wayne's World

What happens when you want to remake a film that was popular to begin with? Remakes have always been popular, especially, if you want to remake in the genre, and not retell the same story. Batman Begins is the latest retelling of Batman.

I saw Tim Burton's Batman in 1989. Burton wanted to make Batman darker, not like the campy Batman of the 60s played by Adam West, and sidekick, ever squeaky clean, Robin (played by Burt Ward). He's created such dark visions in films like Edward Scissonhands and The Nightmare Before Christmas. He, too, is doing a remake--he brings his vision to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, with Johnny Depp playing the titular Wonka, doing his best, well, Michael Jackson.

I didn't care for Burton's Batman. For one, I wanted a darker Bruce Wayne. I know Michael Keaton can play creepy. He did a creepy job in Pacific Heights, a by-the-numbers thriller with Melanie Griffith and Matthew Modine playing a couple that buys a place that they can't afford, and get a tenant from hell, played by Keaton. The plot doesn't make that much sense, except that it plays to suburban fears of strangers. In Burton's version, Keaton comes across as mild mannered, and not that much different from his Batman.

Burton's goal, to me, in Batman, was to achieve a certain look with Gotham. And of course, it was Nicholson doing Joker. I mean, that's supposed to be cool, right? "You can't handle the truth!" and he's doing Joker. Sorry, I didn't care for it.

And, most painful was Vicky Vale, played by Kim Basinger, an actor I just can't abide (to be fair, she was fine in Cellular). She plays the damsel in distress who Bruce is supposed to like, but why? I don't get it. I didn't buy their relationship. After the second Batman film, you could see that Burton just liked the bad guys better. Batman was boring. Penguin was who he cared about.

Fast forward 15 years or so, and Christopher Nolan can look back at what made Burton's Batman tank. As someone curious about Batman, you ask questions. Why does he want to be a "bat"? How does he deal with his parents death? What makes him an angry man? How does he learn to fight? And, as Nicholson himself intones, "Where does he get those fabulous toys?".

Nolan spends the better part of an hour giving us the history of Bruce Wayne, how he played with childhood sweetheart (if you could call it that) Rachel Dawes, who becomes the principled one. How he fears bats. How this indirectly causes the death of his parents. How he yearns to seek revenge, then to seek ways of doing justice. How he meets Henri Ducard who trains him to deal with fear, and to fight. How he leaves when he can't buy into the genocidal beliefs (Gotham-idal?) of the League of Shadows.

It's an interesting choice to cast Liam Neeson, effectively, playing Qui-gon Jin in this film, but the dark version we wished would have appeared in Episode 1. In fact, casting is very interesting. There's hardly an American. Christian Bale. English. Gary Oldman (doing his best Ned Flanders). English. Michael Caine. English (though he's playing English). Tom Wilkinson. English. Cilian Murphy (looking like a morph of Tom Welling and Johnny Depp). Irish. Liam Neeson. Irish, too. Rutger Hauer (yes!). Dutch. Ken Watanabe (ack, wasted). Japanese. Only Morgan Freeman and Katie Holmes are the two major characters that are American.

I don't mind the choice of casting. It goes to show that directors want actors, and if they can sound American, and they can act, all the better.

Nolan also knows we want to know how Wayne gets his toys. The answer, if it's much of an answer, is Lucius, who apparently has nothing better to do than to make war toys so expensive only, well, Bruce Wayne could afford it. Freeman gets to be humorous, even if this role wasn't a stretch.

Oh, did I mention I didn't care for Burton's Alfred, who seemed like he was going to die (and I think he may have). If Nicholson was the uber-actor that made Burton's Batman, then Michael Caine is the uber actor in Nolan's. It's not as juicy a role, but he becomes the anchor to Bruce's past, and has a little bite to him, presumably because Caine wasn't going to do his best Anthony Hopkins (think: Remains of the Day).

And, Katie Holmes. Perhaps a bit too saccharine, and too cute, but at least they didn't have her playing the ninny that Basinger played. In fact, much of the time, they aren't on screen together. Her Dawes isn't that interested in a Wayne that's lost his ideals (did he ever have it?). They don't play up the romance, and the film is better for it.

Ah, the action scenes. Most of the fights take place in shadows. You don't see fights as much as blurs. Nolan's Batman hides in shadows. He pops out. His enemies fear him. That cape is just too cool. And yet we know Wayne has one person he's not sure he can beat, which is Ducard, or is he really R'as Al Ghul? And that's the one demon he must confront. Nolan presents Batman's struggles as internal, whereas Burton's Batman...is he struggling? He's hiding behind the mask, and that's part of Burton's conceit.

So the ending seems like it was lifted out of the second Spiderman, with a runaway train. It still works as tension. There are so many things that I found hard to deal with in Burton's Batman that Nolan addresses. Who would have thought Nolan could tell such a visceral, linear story. He who gave us the backwards-telling Memento, and the jumbled, Following. When Darren Aronofsky backed out, was Nolan really able to give us a Batman that we wanted to watch? Apparently so.

We're not done with the plethora of superhero films. Out soon are Fantastic Four (doesn't look good), Superman (who knows?), Sky High (going to make Robert Rodriguez look good). Right now, Batman Begins is the best of the bunch. You know there's a sequel. That's no joke.

Castle Early

Wide eyes. Effiminate males. Gorgeous, painterly scenes. Plots that don't make sense. Billy Crystal. Howl's Moving Castle is the latest by anime master, Hayao Miyazaki.

In the last few years, Miyazaki's films have done reasonably well in the United States. In particular, Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away. Unlike the more machismo forms of anime (eg., Akira), Miyazaki's films are aimed more at children.

To western eyes, anime follows conventions that seem maddening, in particular, everyone has huge eyes. I'm sure someone has asked, but I'd be curious to find out why that is. Would animators commit seppuku if forced to draw eyes more to relative scale? It's something every Japanese animator seems to do.

Another odd aspect is waif-like males. Howl, who is the lead male, in the titular film, is thin. While I admire Japanese animators for drawing their males with complete disregard for Western sensibilities, I wonder what the motivation is. I'm an Asian-American, but I've lived in the US all my life, so I can't claim cultural recognition.

As with other Miyazaki films, and anime in general, the plot is somewhat hard to figure out. The two main characters are Sophie, a girl who makes hats, who catches Howl's eyes, and then is cursed by the Witch of the Waste to be an elderly woman. The curse prevents the cursed from telling others about the curse. Howl is a wizard, who lives in a castle that crawls, and is more churning machine, than building. This castle also serves as a portal to other parts of the world.

Once cursed, Sophie decides to work as a cleaning lady at Howl's Castle. Sophie seems to be in little hurry to remove the curse (partly because she can't talk about it, partly because the film doesn't seem to care). She even befriends the Witch who put the curse on her.

There is a war that's occurring in the background, and yet, it's not the central focus of the film (not that there's much to begin with). The war is meaningless, and while that's often the commentary made by most war films ("all war films are anti-war"), it's never half as meaningless as it is here.

There's Madam Suliman who apparently is Howl's mentor, yet he's afraid of her. The relationship isn't entirely clear.

If the film's enjoyable, it's because of its pieces, rather than its whole. Turniphead is a hopping scarecrow that helps out, without saying anything. Calcifer is the talking flame that powers the castle, and willingly serves Howl. Markl is the kid who's trying to be a wizard, and lives in the castle with Howl. The Witch of the Waste is Miyazaki's vision of Jabba the Hut as an elderly woman.

Miyazaki creates dread with the imposing castle, and the darkness. He does it much more successfully than, say, Lucas does. His deliberate pacing is in marked constrast with the ADD whirlwind that dictates the norm in a Lucas film.

As a viewer, we have no idea where the film is heading, whether good people are good, whether bad people are bad. We don't know if it's important for Sophie to become young, or whether the war goes on or not. And perhaps it doesn't matter. The spectacle of what we see, plus some rudimentary elements of a romance is perhaps enough to enthrall. A Miyazaki film is not about tight plotting, strong character arcs, clear delineations of good and evil. Instead, it is a world that flows, with people trying to be good, and trying to be better than what they are now.

Where There's a Wil

From time to time, I visit Wil Wheaton's website. You know Wil Wheaton. He's the one who played Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Legions of Star Trek fans hated him because, even if the fan base consisted largely of geeks, a geek never wants to see a smarter geek, especially a prodigy.

If you know Star Trek, you know that Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek based Wesley Crusher on himself. Roddenberry was, apparently, a bright kid, and wanted a character that was also smart. His full name is Eugene Wesley Roddenberry, though surely he would have preferred the name Crusher, which to him, was surely ever so much more masculine than Roddenberry.

Wil Wheaton left the show around the fourth season or so, partly because the producers wouldn't give him time to act in films, and partly because the fan despised him.

He's done a fair bit to rehabilitate his image with his website, though, as any visitor to his website can attest, it hasn't produced a lot of acting opportunities. To Wil's credit, he seems to be a real geek, creating and managing the website himself. I doubt too many celebrities understand the ins-and-outs of maintaining a website as much as Wil.

The acting business, to me, in a nutshell, is learning to feel your emotions on screen. An actor needs to be able to summon these emotions on demand, and so, unlike the rest of the populace, they don't need to hide their emotions as much. The rest of us learn to repress those feelings. It's not that we do it deliberately. It's just that actors have more incentive not to hide it.

True, not every actor is that good at it, and there are stoic actors, as well as emotive ones.

You can, for instance, get this sense just by how Wil reacts to the illness of his cats. Having owned no pets nor grown up with any (though for a few years, one of my roommates had a cat), I can't attest to the feelings one can have to a pet. I know there are plenty of owners that are very attached. Yet, I'm sure there are many who see a pet as a pet.

Wil is clearly in the first camp, and I wonder if it's because he's an actor. It's possible that he's always had this kind of personality, and such personalities succeed in acting (though, again, he probably wishes he were more gainfully employed).

And that leads me to my last point. Remember how your parents told you "beauty is only skin deep", and tried to say it's what's inside that counts? While that's fundamentally true, it's not always practically true. Why can't Wil Wheaton get jobs like other actors? Perhaps it's because Wil looks like Wil. He's skinny. He's geeky. No one's going to mistake him for Russell Crowe. Heck, no one's going to mistake him for Ashton Kutcher, and that man is a goof (though his 15 minutes may be passing soon).

It's even worse in sports where players are picked based on how fast they run, how tall they are. When a coach or GM wants a player, it's not just the inside that counts, but a laundry list of physical attributes, that they often have little say about. Personality counts---I've seen it, but looks and physique obviate the need to be charming and wonderful.

Passing on Passion

Stop it. Just stop it.

Microsoft has a quality it seeks in employees. It is "passion for technology". For a while, I didn't understand what that really meant. Does it mean that you love new stuff? New cell phones, new computers, new PDAs, or Blackberries, or Ipods, or whatever the flavor of the day is.

That is part of it, but really, they mean something quite different. Think about it. What is technology? Technology is the application of science to make products. But there's nothing that says the product has to be the same as a competitor's product. I have a Nokia cell phone. It works pretty much like other Nokia cell phones, at least in it's basic functionality. If I buy another model of Nokia, I know basically how to make it work.

But, if I get a Motorola, or some other make, I have to relearn how to use the cell phone. I have to figure out how to enter in numbers, how to retrieve messages, etc. This isn't hard, but I can't use my knowledge of how to operate Nokia phones to use a Motorola. I believe passion for technology means the passion to learn crap like this. Technology companies want to be distinctive, so they insist on doing different things with their product, to make it different from some other product, and it only serves to confuse customers who must learn yet another way of doing something.

Think about the old rotary phones. Pretty much, they all behaved the same. Even with touch tone phones, they all behaved the same. You didn't care if you had one make of phone or another (at least, once you could buy phones instead of leasing them from Bell). But now, every new advance in technology comes with it's own arcane set of rules. Can someone come out with an MP3 player that behaves just like Ipod? Probably not. There might be patent issues, or just the desire to be different from Apple.

This kind of passion is ill-placed. It forces people to learn new things, without really learning new things. It's so nice that cars basically are the same. Steering wheel, speedometer, gas pedal, brakes, windshield wipers, etc. If the interface were designed by cell phone manufacturers, you'd see things move all over. You'd step into a car wondering where the brakes are located why the steering wheel is not a wheel.

More frustrating than this kind of "passion for technology" (which is desire to learn whatever crap folks write, with bad documentation) is the folks who write the Head First series. To be fair, I think these people write great books. It really is different from the standard books about programming. But they also have a blog where they talk about creating passionate users.

Augh! Stop!

Somehow people in technology have decided passion is the answer for everything. Have they suddenly become sports enthusiasts? Bring in your "A" game. You have to step it up! Like the desire of parents to ensure the happiness of their children, somehow technologists believe passion is key for I-dont-know-who. The fact of the matter is that kids aren't going to be perpetually happy, and there's nothing wrong with being depressed, angry, or what-have-you some of the time. You can't expect people to be perpetually passionate. Being passionate is probably even more abnormal than being happy.

When I say "abnormal", I don't mean it in a negative way. I just mean, it is not typical or ordinary, and to expect passion from the masses is to expect some characteristic that is not typical for the average person, nor something, I believe, that you can easily rouse.

Perhaps what is most annoying about the Head First blog is the smugness which the blog is written, as if the authors are discovering stuff that you don't know. For example, they say "Asians and Americans think differently!". Do they? How much investigation did you put into this? Sure it's clever to note there are differences, but to make blanket conclusions is silly. I don't mind these observations. I do mind the "passionate" way it's made.

Too much passion leads to an absence of reason, and people should think, question, and draw their own conclusions. However, thinking is the opposite of passion which requires excitement, often bypassing rationality.

So, gentleman and gentlewoman, chill on this passion thing.

Tony, Rory, and Ben

This morning, Tony K. talked about the Congressional golf tournament held somewhere locally. The winner, Sergio Garcia, was so far ahead of everyone, that it was never in doubt. Instead, what was fascinating was the pairing of Ben Crane and Rory Sabbatini. Apparently, Sabbatini is a quick golfer. It takes him little time to make his shots. Crane, on the other hand, is interminably slow.

So slow, in fact, that the players were put "on the clock", which is something that happens when a group is not progressing fast enough. They are timed, and if they are too slow, the entire group is fined.

Apparently, Rory, unable to stand Crane's meticulous preparations, walks off in a huff. Announcers Nick Faldo (also notoriously slow) and Paul Azinger berate Sabbatini for poor sportsmanship.

The interesting part wasn't the golf, although, unlike many sports fans, I do enjoy watching golf from time to time. No, it was Ben's religion. Apparently, Ben Crane, like many Americans, is a fairly devout Christian. When interviewed, he put the blame squarely on himself for being so slow despite, being tied for second, and thus possibly justifying the second, third, and fourth guessing.

At one point, Andy Polley (or maybe Tony) mentions "God Squad". This is a humorous way to say that Crane is religious. Now, both Tony and Andy are (from all accounts) Jewish. The comment isn't particularly a Jewish, anti-Christian comment, as it is an anti-religious jokey comment. A non-religious person, such as myself, were I so clever, might use the term "God Squad" (but I lack such cleverness).

This started me thinking. Do Jews help create a better environment religiously in the US? For all the lip service that is paid to freedom of religion, there are those who believe that freedom of religion means being able to push religion down people's throats (a little harsh, I know). Freedom of religion also means freedom from religion.

Judaism is not a evagenlical religion. The goal, unlike Christianity, is not to get people to convert. Jews are pretty happy being the Chosen People. Jewish people are also, in general, reasonably successful. I believe this creates a society that's more likely to favor religious equality than not.

All this from listening to commentary from golf.

Where's Science Fiction?

Have there been any science fictions films lately? I mean, real science fiction. Spaceships and laser battles do not a science fiction film make. The entire Star Wars double trilogy is often termed as space opera. It's a story set in space, but it's not really about science or science fiction.

Lately, films that are considered science fiction have dealt with "what is real?". The Matrix is about human society controlled by robots who produce a virtually real society. Reality, in the Matrix, is alas, far more bleak than the illusion generated by the Matrix. Cypher pretty much sums up the view that a pleasant illusion seems a lot better than a bleak reality.

The best science fiction isn't about adventure, or people, although it can have both, as much as it is about ideas. Great science fiction is often creepy, as it posits a future where humans may not be in control. I remember reading a short story about a man who's created smart cells in his body. Alas, the cells are learning very quickly, and will soon discover that they are in a human body that has an intelligence that is trying to control them, and he fears he will soon lose control of himself (which he does). He becomes photosynthetic, as these cells learn how to harness energy.

This is the kind of creepiness you don't see too often in so-called science fiction films. As influential as Star Wars has been for "SF" films, it had few imitators. It seems filmmakers wanted to avoid making films for teens. Perhaps more influential has been "Alien", which was basically a horror film set in space. Of that era, Blade Runner is perhaps the most science fiction of the films, positing the desire of replicants to want to live beyond their short life-span, and whether it's right to make replicants do slave labor.

The best science fiction doesn't, apparently, make for the best science fiction films. The average filmgoer wants action, and occasionally something mildly brainy. However, the success of the Matrix had as much to do with wire fu and cool sunglasses as it did with an interesting science fiction idea. It goes to show that books still have a place in the world, and what makes for a great book (which appeals to a much smaller, more literate audience) doesn't yet make for a great film.

Little Red Riding Hood

Here's the review of the The Woodsman that I promised.

Making a film about a pederast is not easy. It's a topic so taboo, that one has to tread delicately to make such a film, and because it is such a difficult topic, a filmmaker can't take certain stances (at least, easily). It's hard, for example, to say that pedophilia is anything besides a horrid thing. Despite these problems, filmmakers continue to tackle the subject. Happiness, the ironic title of Todd Solondz's film, is an amalgamation of several stories, the toughest of which is a father who finds his son's classmates attractive. The father, despite his desires, has never done anything with his son, and leads to one of the toughest scenes in the film where the son confronts his father.

The Boys of St. Vincent deals with the topic via Catholicism. With so much press about Catholic priests taking advantage of young boys and girls, it's not surprising a film was made about it. Henry Czerny (who has since disappeared) is the priest who's abused several children (the story spans two time periods involving an earlier period where the incidents occur, and many years later, when the children-now grown adults, accuse him of impropriety in a court of law). Atom Egoyan has hinted at incest in his films, though he is so subtle, that it's hard to tell he's even addressing it. One must pay attention.

The Woodsman starts Kevin Bacon, recently released from prison for pedophilia. All he wants is to get back to living in society. Alas, the only place that will let an ex-convict like him have housing is right near an elementary school.

The acting is reasonbly solid throughout, but the story is reprehensible. To illustrate this, I'm going to have to indulge in spoilers. How often to acts of pedophilia occur? I have to imagine it's quite uncommon. Yet, there are four different pederasts in the film. First, there's Kevin Bacon's character. Then, he falls for a tough female coworker. You discover that her brothers and dad had their way with her when she was young (so incest, as well). Then, he spies this guy hanging out at the school talking to little boys (number 3).

Finally, Walter (Kevin Bacon) follows a girl, with the intent to? Well, after talking to her, he discovers daddy has been not so nice to her. Only when he realizes what's happened to this girl does he feel the guilt of what he could have done to her. How convenient! If she had been just a normal kid, then he would have continued on? And in an act of redemption, he beats up the guy who he sees talking to boys. The story is just too convenient, and too outrageous to believe.

Beyond that, one of Walter's friends is his sister's husband. His sister won't visit him, although her husband will. Why? Does her husband not suspect why Walter's sister won't visit him?

It would have been far more realistic for him to deal with this issue without having to introduce three other incidents of pedophilia/incest. I'm not sure what the point the filmmaker is making.

Mos Def's character seems a bit odd too. He knows what Walter is doing, and yet Walter still is tempted, and is willing to do "bad things". To make Mos Def's character more interesting, he is shown to have an interest in furniture, which (surprise) Walter is good at making.

The one aspect the film seems to get "right" is Walter's relapse, the temptation to want to hang out with girls, to talk to them. It's an addiction that's not so easy to get rid of. I suspect it's right that Walter tries to avoid dealing with society, to get himself away from the things that tempt him. If they were going to have a second pederast, it would have been more intriguing if this other guy was also interested in little girls, because then that character would parallel his own. It's a bit unfair that the second pederast is made out to be a non-person, to make it easier to despise him, even as it tries to make Walter, well, if not likeable, then understandable.

In the end, I don't understand Walter that much better. I don't like the way Walter learns his lesson. It's reminiscent of a bully bullying another bully. I'm sure a better film could be made covering the same topic.

To be honest, I think it would be interesting to see Egoyan deal with this subject more directly. Egoyan loves subtlety, however, and so he never tackles subjects head-on. One of his best films, Calendar, is about the disintegrating marriage between a filmmaker (played by Egoyan) and his wife (played by real life wife, Arsinee Khanjian). What makes it most interesting is that it plays a little like a documentary, so it's hard to say whether it's really Egoyan's marriage being shown, or a fictional couple.

In Calendar, Egoyan is a photographer who goes to Armenia to photograph ancient churches with his wife. They are shown the various sites by a local guide. His wife and the guide can both speak Armenian. Egoyan's photographer also videotapes the ongoings, and throughout, he's searching, I suspect, for that one moment in time, when his wife and the guide have fallen for each other. There's never an overt moment where you see them exchanging romantic words or looks. Egoyan isn't about being blunt, and he's no more subtle than in this film.

In Next of Kin, a boy, disenchanted with his own parents, decides he will be the long lost son of an Armenian-Canadian couple who gave up their child for adoption. This boy seems to have feelings for the daughter, and the feelings seem reciprocated (again, nothing overy). Although this is technically not incest since they are not related, there is that hint. In The Sweet Hereafter, a father seems to suggest a relationship with his daughter. It's barely mentioned. In Ararat, a half-brother and sister are lovers. In Speaking Parts, a woman who wants to make a film about her dead brother casts someone who looks like him as her brother, and eventually sleeps with him.

You know Egoyan wants to deal with this topic, and he does so, but not overtly because of how difficult the subject matter is. Perhaps one day.

Fast Food

Did I mention this yet? Digital video sucks.

At least, it does now. I went to see Eating Out at the E Street. I know digital projection is eventually going to be the wave of the future, but currently, you can see the pixellations and the jags, and it's irritating. OK, rant off.

It's hard to excel at genre cinema. It can be done. There are great Westerns and science fiction, but by and large, trying to appeal to a certain audience with a certain genre makes for only a pleasant experience. Eating Out is about a straight guy, who's told by his gay roommate that acting gay makes one attractive to the opposite sex. The straight guy is blandly hunky Scott Lunsford. He's just broken up with Tiffani who seems like a Pamela Sue wannabe, and wants to date Gwen, the spunky gal, who also has a gay roommate (it's so in vogue, even at this phrase isn't).

Eating Out started with a clever scene, which I'm surprised they could got away with, given how movies usually start. For a while, it looked like it was going to be horrible, but ended up OK. The film never takes things too seriously, using clever one line insults throughout.

You can either call this a romantic comedy or a screwball comedy (though apparently, defining a screwball comedy is not so easy). A romantic comedy typically is boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, boy breaks up with girl, boy gets back together with girl. It's such a tried-and-true formula, yet the average filmgoer often doesn't realize the formula. Certainly, I didn't until a few years ago.

A screwball comedy apparently has bickering, fast dialogue, people pretending to be who they aren't. This film fits that description more closely. Basically, a straight guy wants to make it with women, and is convinced by his roommate to act gay. He's cute, but a little uncertain how to act gay, and basically comes across as shy and not-too-bright, in a jockish sort of way.

The girl he's interested in has a gay roommate, Marc, who really finds the Caleb (who he thinks is gay) cute, and wants to go on a date. The hottest scene (of a sort) occurs after Marc and Caleb are in Marc's house (who lives with Gwen, the girl Caleb wants). Caleb wants to avoid fooling around with Marc, and is hoping Gwen is around to meet up with her. She's at some relative's place, wanting to leave. She calls in, and essentially engages in phone sex, while having Marc fool around with Caleb.

The main scene, at the end of the film, involves a dinner with Marc and Caleb, Gwen, and Caleb's entire family, and Kyle, who is Caleb's gay roommate. There's misunderstanding, fast one liners. It's funny but not all that satisfying.

Eating Out doesn't really have much of a protaganist. Most of the time is spent with Caleb and Gwen, but Caleb doesn't have that much of a personality. Marc, played by Ryan Carnes (who now is on Desperate Housewives) is a little better as the gay musician who once dated Gwen before he realized he was gay. Kyle, too, is not much of a character. He's there to give advice to Caleb as he pines to meet up with Marc, who won't give him the time of day. You know what is going to happen between Kyle and Marc, but the ending simply makes no sense.

There are formulaic elements of gay comedies. Double entendre titles ("Eating Out", "In and Out", hmm, OK, those are about the only two tiles I could find that fit that category) are common (or not). It helps to have attractive leads. Kyle, Caleb, and Marc are all played by attractive men. It helps, in gay films, to have a little flesh, and this film provides it. These days, it's almost (but not quite) obligatory to have some kind of sex scene, though usually, not of a terribly graphic nature (being a comedy).

There are parts of this film that are somewhat good, but much of it is bad. It only rises above a sitcom because it has plenty of funny lines. But the characters and acting are done broadly, the situations aren't very clever, and scenes that feel too awkward, as if the characters are wondering how to act. To its credit, this is something of a screwball comedy, so there's no attempt to make this a very realistic film, though they try to touch on feelings these characters might have, were such a ludicrous situation possible.

I'm looking forward to watching Mysterious Skin, which is a serious film by Gregg Araki. Araki's films haven't always been that easy to watch, some of it due to cinematic inexperience, some of it due to subject. I've seen The Living End, about two angry gay men dealing with HIV, and The Doom Generation, a road trip with two guys and a girl, which has a harrowing ending. Mysterious Skin is based on a novel, and stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt, formerly of Third Rock from the Sun, who's starting to develop as a top-notch actor (or so I hear). This is supposed to be one of his better performances.

In gay cinema, I'm looking forward to seeing Brokeback Mountain to be directed by Ang Lee and starring Jake Gylenhall and Heath Ledger, as two gay cowboys, based on a short story by Annie Proulx. It's scheduled to come out in December. Rumors are that Ang Lee (possibly due to pressure by the actors) is going to cut down on the explicitness of the relationship, although I hope it won't be the kind of hatchet job Spielberg did to The Color Purple (he barely hints at lesbianism, even though the book is more forthright).

My other concern is that Ang Lee has been somewhat uneven in his career. Hulk was considered weak as a comic book made to film. On a positive note, Lee has directed a gay film (The Wedding Banquet) back before he filmed in English (Ang Lee actually did his film training at NYU, once serving on the crew for Spike Lee). I enjoyed The Wedding Banquet, even if the ending was way contrived (a deus ex machina kind of ending).

Gay cinema needs better movies, especially in comedies. Many comedies are only marginally better than TV sitcoms. I understand that it's hard to do good comedy---very hard. Drama is much easier. I'd be happy to see a good gay drama (a lot of them aren't very good either). There was once a rumor that Rupert Everett might do a gay James Bond-like character. Given how dreadful most Bond films are, maybe, in the right hands, that would be an interesting twist.

By the way, I need to write on The Woodman. This film touches on a topic that's difficult one for filmmakers to make, and for marketers to market (yes, pedophilia). While this film is well-acted enough, there are so many things wrong with this film (and I don't mind the subject matter, because I think it's worth addressing in film), that it outweighs the one thing that it gets right (or seems to). Anyway, that's for another post.

Dead or Alive

I walk these streets, a loaded six string on my back
I play for keeps, 'cause I might not make it back
I been everywhere, still I'm standing tall
I've seen a million faces an I've rocked them all

I'm a cowboy, on a steel horse I ride
I'm wanted dead or alive
I'm a cowboy, I got the night on my side
I'm wanted dead or alive
Wanted dead or alive

Jon Bon-Jovi's pretentious lyrics equating life on the road with being a cowboy hints at the reason people want to be musicians, and more precisely rock stars. As much work as it is, you rock them all.

Is that the reason kids enroll in the School of Rock which is features in the Don Argott documentary, Rock School (the Richard Linklater film School of Rock was apparently named the same by coincidence, though similarities between the two abound).

I went to watch Rock School last night, and for the first time ever, I was in the theater all by myself. Landmark Theaters picks up independent and foreign flicks. It's a godsend for those who want to watch movies out of the mainstream, but because they are out of the mainstream, not everyone cares to watch it. In particular, Rock School had eight showings in one day, in two theaters.

If I hadn't seen School of Rock, I'm not sure I would have watched Rock School. Ironically, had School of Rock not been made than Rock School would likely have been called School of Rock.

Rock School joins a large number of documentaries that Americans can now see. Once upon a time, it was exceedingly rare to go to a theater to see a documentary. Production values were low. Topics were obscure. It was said that no one watched the documentaries, but then no one really could.

Perhaps the one hundred million dollars that Michael Moore made from Fahrenheit 9/11 helped, or in fact, the entire of Moore's oeuvre, but in the last few years, documentaries have flourished from Spellbound, about kids trying to succeed at the National Spelling Bee, to Control Room, about the operations of Al Jazeera, the Arabic CNN, to Supersize Me! about a man who nearly kills himself by subsisting on a McDonalds-only diet for a month. Documentaries have become successful enough for places like Landmark Theaters to show, and enough of a non-trivial audience to keep more documentaries coming.

The paucity of other members in the audience (read: zero) would suggest otherwise, but Rock School is a fun film to watch. As critics have pointed out, Paul Green, founder of School of Rock is a lot like the character played by Jack Black. In particular, Green likes certain kinds of music, and hates others. He likes Frank Zappa and Black Sabbath, but doesn't care at all for Sheryl Crow (although Lance Armstrong would disagree).

As with any film where there are many people to focus on, this one has to decide which of the forty or so students they must focus on. They pick Asa and Tucker Collins, brother and sister, who are maybe 7 years old. It's not so much that they're interesting, it's that their mother always wanted to be a rock star, but finds that she finds satisfaction that her kids are rock stars. She gets her kids ready for concerts, despite the Satanic overtones from the music the kids perform. She wants the look to be right, without fully encouraging satanism, an attitude also shared by Paul Green himself.

Paul is a narcissist. He likes himself a lot. He likes to yell at students, believing, as Will O'Connor, one of the lesser talented students in the school, but one of its more keen observers, believes, that berating students is the way to get them to work harder. He threatens to kick them out of the school if they don't get their pieces right, demands that they practice, practice, practice.

When you see the kids, they don't seem to share the same love of the music that, say, Napoleon Murphy-Brock, flutist in Frank Zappa's band does when they show up, nor do they have the same kind of enthusiasm as Paul Green himself. Frankly, the kids seem a bit scared. The two kids Asa and Tucker seem congested throughout, though that has (I'm sure) little to do with Paul Green himself.

Will O'Connor is perhaps the most interesting of the bunch. A self-described misfit, he finds the school a salvation of sorts, even as Paul finds him untalented, and frequently makes fun of him ("will you learn any of the pieces?"). He sees the stratification of the school, where the most talented are seen in the best light, and makes people like him feel unworthy. While he considers Paul cool, he questions whether Paul's one-rant-fits-all approach is really the right way for everyone.

This is reinforced by Madi Diaz-Svalgard, who's a Quaker that came in playing Sheryl Crow and hangs out with the Friendly Gangstaz Committee who do hip-hop renditions of Quaker hymnals. Members of the band feel that Paul has turned her off on the kind of music they like.

The culmination of the school's efforts is Zappanale 2003, a festival devoted to Frank Zappa enthusiasts held in Germany. The Zappa All-Stars are the cream of the school's crop. Paul wants them to be the best group in the festival. He doesn't want the band to be a novelty of young children playing rock. He wants them to be a good band.

Perhaps the most stunning of the performers is C.J. Twoniak, who seems all of 9 years old. A shy kid, he wants to be a rock star. You don't get a full sense of his talent until he plays an extended solo piece which has to be seen and heard to be believed. Audience members have their mouths agape, unable to believe a kid this young can be this good. In a surprise move, Napoleon will perform Inca Roads with the band. After the solo, Napoleon bows before C.J., and then gets the crowd to join in with him.

Before this film, I knew very little about Frank Zappa. He seemed like some weird fellow with a Groucho Marx moustache. I knew his look more than I knew his music. Apparently, his band produced some of the most complex music in all of rock, and these kids were up to the task.

Rock School is typical of the unexpected surprises you get in a documentary. Why on earth would parents send their kids to this man? Yet, they do. The reality is that parents want their kids to excel, and sometimes the teachers who are best able to do this are not pleasant people. They aren't always quirky insprirational teachers like the one Robin Williams plays in Dead Poets Society. And parents don't always expect their kids to have squeaky clean role models.

Weirdly enough, Madi was once a good Quaker, giving help to others in the community, but since joining School of Rock, she finds that she much prefers to be there, than with her Quaker friends. Yet, somehow, she is still given permission to attend the school. I assume someone is paying for it, and that it isn't her (could be wrong).

Linklater's School of Rock doesn't even begin to resemble the kind of lives both the kids and Paul Green live. If anything, I'm surprised that Paul Green allowed himself to be filmed this way. He shows he cares, but this is almost always in contention with his inability to control himself. At times, he's shown to be riotously funny (picking a particularly odd scene from Silence of the Lambs to imitate), and he tries to show his love for music, even as he finds that maybe, the kids that play at his school may one day do better than him.

In many ways, the lives of the children in Rock School may differ little from any endeavor where kids want more out of life or where parents want their kids to be great. Tennis parents, parents of classical musicians, sports moms and dads, I'm sure, share many of these ambitions for their own children, and often have their kids taught and yelled at for the sake of making them better. And despite the misery the seem to endure at such a formative age, they can reflect on the fact that they were, indeed, very good at what they did.

Rock on!

More Tony

I'm listening to the Tony Kornheiser show this morning on my commute, and he starts right off with a rant. You see, Tony's at the Congressional, and it is blazing outside. I'm comfortable in my air-conditioned car, and he's apparently been seated outside, where he says he's "spritzing like an airdale" (I have no idea what that means--but it sounds vaguely Yiddish).

This rant goes on at least 20 minutes. He says that he has so much salt coming out of his body he hopes no deers appear. The funniest line of the day was another Andy Pollin moment (if you follow the show, he's called Andy "Poe-lee", presumably because some guest got his name wrong the entire time, and they've kept the recording ever since). Kornheiser says "I'm old. I'm going to need a defribrillator!" and Andy pipes up "Clear!".

Now that's funny.

I Love Tony Kornheiser

I hate to admit. My snob credentials have been dashed ever since I stopped listening to NPR and started listening to sports radio. For non-sportsfans, sports radio has to be the most inane kind of radio in the world. Grown men have devoted their lives to talking about sports.

There's always some controversy of the day, and they talk about it. Lately, in the DC area, it's been about Sean Taylor, the University of Miami star safety who has missed voluntary practice, and has now found himself accused of brandishing a gun to gentleman who wished to acquire two of his ATVs.

The controversy revolves around Taylor's refusal to respond to Coach Gibbs, who has only won three Super Bowls in his 1980s stint with the Redskins, using Clinton Portis, another UM alum, as a go-between (and even he has become less reliable as a Taylor mouthpiece), and how everyone hates Drew Rosenhaus, his agent (early rumors was that Taylor was unhappy with his contract, which, surprise, is an affliction that nearly every Rosenhaus client has).

And if you don't follow sports, especially DC sports, this can only be highly soporific. I mean, who cares? And yet, I find it more compelling than listening to NPR (at times).

The problem with news is that it's serious. To be sure, many cruel things happen in the world, yet the average Samir goes on about his day blocking out those bad things (suicide bombings, high alerts, etc) and devotes attention to the trivial task of rooting for the local team. It's silly, and yet in sports, one can appreciate the talent and tenacity of elite athletes. It's the male equivalent of following the lives of Hollywood celebrities. Who wants to live in a world where you have to worry, worry, worry?

As camp as Battlestar Galactica is, one comment I recall involves Patrick McNee (of Avengers fame) who is being given a tour of the facilities, and shown a bizarre mutation of basketball. Athena explains how important sports are to the morale of the ships, as they wander in search of the planet Earth (oh did this series ever jump the shark when they reached it).

But the importance of sports can't be underestimated. I remember, post 9/11, that many sports columnists said sports were merely a game, and that sports were just a game, that it didn't matter. That is patently false. Although it was proper to show some respect to the situation, events were only cancelled barely a week. Baseball stopped for a week (or two), so did football, but once two weeks passed, it was back to sports.

Forget the insensitivity, there's way too much money being made. Even soldiers insisted that sports be played because they wanted to hear how their teams were doing, to take their minds off sports.

Columnists make their living following sports, and would have it no other way. They would be far less happy doing more "serious" journalism, and would argue (correctly) that their talents are not investigative journalism.

Anyway, this was supposed to be a blog about Tony Kornheiser, so I should get back to the topic.

I love listening to Tony Kornheiser. I've heard several sports shows, from Dan Patrick to Mike and Mike in the morning, to sports reporters, and so forth. The genius of Mr. Tony is that he assumes sports fans care about more things than sports. Certainly, Tony does. He's talked about his dog Maggie, or discusses movies with David Dupree who loves movies nearly as much as he loves sports. He talks about his colonoscopy. He has his banter with Wilbon and Junior and Bob Ryan.

I didn't even notice that Tony never invites athletes on his show. Apparently, the powers-that-be would ask him to have athletes on, and he would consistently and conveniently "forget". Instead, he invites other sports columnists to discuss sports with him, figuring the average athlete doesn't give great interviews or analysis. It's basically sucking up to the athlete.

Tony also has an incredible knowledge for pop music over the last 40 years. The producer (or someone) puts up song after song, usually appropriate to some upcoming topic, and he guesses them right more times than not.

And Andy Pollin is hilarious, making side comments as Tony does his monologue. Tony was once relating a story where he attended some event for people in the news. At this event, he spotted Condoleeza Rice, and said maybe the next year, he'd hit on her. Andy say something like "That would be like white on rice". That's a hilarious, off-the-cuff comment.

The peculiar thing? I've heard Andy host the show on rare occasion, and he's not half as funny as he is when he's trying to say something funny in response to what Tony says. One time Tony wanted to rename Sportscenter (the segment where Andy recaps sports highlights from yesterday and earlier that day) to "Andy Polley's Happy Fun Time Sports Stuff Extravaganza". Someone even had a kazoo calliope tune to go along. It's too bad that Pollin doesn't use that all the time (he seemed a bit miffed by it---lighten up!).

Now, I say I love Tony, I should qualify what I mean.

It seems, "love", like many words has multiple meanings. There is love of something abstract (love of country), then love of art or song or film, love that one has for a parent, love that one has for a sexual partner. I think people often think of love in the last context, although it sounds weird elsewhere (such as a teammate expressing love for another teammate---in that context, it usually means brotherly love. Athletes do tend to form closer bonds with one another than their non-athletic breathren).

When I say I love Tony, I'm sure I mean in the sense of "I love this sport". But what I mean is that he is so unlike other sports radio talk show hosts who fixate completely on sports, and rant, and then rant some more. OK, Tony rants too, and at times, he's ranted for weeks, before someone finally emails him and inquires why he's gone off the deep end, and then he's back to normal.

You have to understand that Tony behaves badly because that's his on-air persona. So, if he's asking Rachel Nichols (now Alexander?) about how many outfits she owns, and sounds completely piggish in asking her, it's partly because he wants to sound that way (and she's squirming, trying to take such comments lightly, given that that's what women sports reporters have to do--be funny, do the best they can, and realize there are some men going to give you grief), and partly because he's known Rachel since her intern days.

In fact, I find Tony much better on the air than in his columns, where he has a couple of standard things he likes to do in his columns (mixing sports figures with Hollywood figures based on the similarity of their names, or talking about ten things at once, or grouping NCAA team names together based on their similarities). The radio is much better suited to his personality.

And when Tony does have an opinion, which is often, it's not some knee-jerk, join-the-crowd opinion. He often stakes out some view that's not what everyone is saying, and he makes remarkably intelligent remarks in between being rude to those who want him to appear at some charity function that they know he'd be perfect for.

The one guy I've enjoyed listening to as much as this is Derek McGinty, the smart and affable host of the now-defunct Derek McGinty show. Some people have remarked how good Charlie Rose is, but give McGinty a show like that, and I think he'd shine. It's too bad he's lost a fair bit of visibility trying to get on network television. To be honest, I think he's a better radio personality than television.

To Tony and Derek, I love you guys!

Long Live the Blog

The Internet, since the advent of the browser, has been around about 10 years. I remember using Mosaic in about 1994, which means there was likely a rudimentary browser in 1992. Certainly, the Internet itself has been around a lot longer, although you could only use tools like archie, ftp, telnet, and email. Nothing has brought about the modern revolution in technology than the browser, and the sites that grew around it.

However, only in the last few years, say, since 2002, has blogging really taken off. Most of that has coincided with blogging software and blogging websites. In fact. blogging has existed far longer than the term blogging (short for, "web logging"). I was reading "blogs" since 1997. At that point, bloggers probably used HTML or something a little fancier than that, and did their own hosting.

The blogs I find most interesting to read are from those whose lives are messed up. They lead such different lives from yourself, and you read the train wreck that goes around them. They're pretentious, they're assholes, but by golly, that's what makes reading them fun.

I wonder if the concept will expand beyond mere blogging. For a while, before it became overly commercial, people used to have webcams, and put their lives on film. This appealed to some latent voyeuristic tendencies that many of us don't care to admit we have. I've seen a few in my day. Before bandwidth become sufficiently large, webcams would only refresh about once a minute, with some miserly sites updating as infrequently as once every few minutes.

Even though you get a peek to what people do in a single room twice a minute (or so), it says far less about a person than a blog does. People end up sitting in front of a computer chatting, occasionally, leaving and entering a room. If they stream sound, then it's only interesting if they talk to people.

if people use blogs to live their lives (or thoughts) for public consumption, then having a webcam and an audio feed ought to, in principle, give us even more of their lives and thoughts, and yet, it doesn't. Take away the audio feed, and it's like looking at surveillance video. You get only a passing sense of what is going on.

All of this begs the question: why do I read blogs? For me, I look for a blog to give me insight into other people. How do other people view the world? I know their views can be completely distorted. Some blogs are complete rantfests. Some write only when they're depressed. Some leave out many details of their lives. What you see, therefore, isn't what you get. It's the author giving you a filtered view of their lives.

I'll also read informational blogs that talk about technology, writing software, movie reviews, and the like. Although they don't appeal to my sense of wanting to understand people, they are useful in their own right.

Hmm, I need to blog about Tony Kornheiser. That is unrelated to the topic at hand, but it faintly resembles Kornheisers own columns which cover a myriad of topics, often vaguely related to one another. Except he's skilled and funny and can make a living on it, and I'm writing to a tiny audience who somehow manages to be patient enough to read my stream of conciousness spoutings.

Email Netiquette

It's been a long time since I've written anything snail mail, and even longer since I've handwritten letters. The inconvenience factor was too much. You'd sit down, obligated to write a few pages because a paragraph wasn't worth the effort, get a stamp, and envelope, and drop it in a mailbox. Email made all this so much easier, especially if you sit in front of a computer all the time anyway.

However, old mail habits seem to die hard (with a vengeance!). In a letter, etiquette said you had to write the person's name, their address, and your name at the end. Presuambly the envelope, which has all this information, might get physically separated from the letter.

People still write their emails in this fashion, even though the need is far less apparent. While addressing the person has generally disappeared, many (like me) still like to sign their name at the end. Is this necessary?

The answer is, it depends. If people identify themselves clearly enough from the email address (john.smith@foo.bar), then having the name at the end isn't so necessary, and I know some people who've decided they don't need to identify themselves at the end.

I know one person who often drops off the Subject, which is something more unique to email than to snail mail. I find this highly irritating, because the person doesn't even want to spend the time to make it easy for me to figure out what the email is about (this sentence seems far too long!). To me, it's the moral equivalent of not leaving a phone message when you call someone because you're embarassed that you've called them so many times without any particular reason. Oh, the person does that too.

But, that is a complete aside. I find it interesting to see how etiquette changes on the Internet, more so in, say, chat rooms, than email, where the biggest difference is the brevity of email. People now write short emails of a sentence or two, knowing that replies can be sent the same day, whereas the overhead of snail mail encourages longer letters.

There was once a complaint that the disappearance of snail mail would lead to missing information about people, that the knowledge we have of many past figures are from letters sent to spouses, friends, and colleagues. With services like gmail, where mail is never supposed to be deleted, we may be entering a time where it's quite the opposite---we'll have access to lots of email. However, the skill to write quality prose that will last the generations is likely to disappear.

To Blog or Not To Blog?

Based on the title, you might think I'm having second thoughts about blogging. Right at this moment, I don't. I do want to point out a shortcoming of a blogging service. Suppose I want to have an ongoing list of things, for example, great movies I've seen, or something organized by topic like, well, great movies I've seen.

Blogs are set up like diaries, based very much on a calendar system. I want a list of articles that I can collect together. I'm sure it's something like using tracebacks efficiently, that I'm too lazy to look up.

For example, I want to write about my adventures in writing Ruby scripts, which have yet to start. Part of the problem is that I may not work on it regularly, yet I want it collected together. Any solutions?

(Yes, it's a very short post).

Melting Pot

Almost heaven, West Virginia
Blue Ridge Mountains
Shenandoah River -
Life is old there
Older than the trees
Younger than the mountains
Growin like a breeze

Country Roads, take me home
To the place I belong
West Virginia, mountain momma
Take me home, country roads

This weekend, I was getting my haircut, at the local Hair Cuttery. Most of the stylists who work there are Vietnamese, including the guy I usually get my haircut from. He's been cutting my hair for probably 8 years now. I end up getting the same haircut I've always gotten, which is perhaps ten years past its fashion.

As we were finishing up, they were playing Country Roads on the radio. This song is perhaps Jon Denver's most famous song, and is known the world over. Even fans who don't know where West Virginia is are often quiet familiar with the tune.

One of the Vietnamese stylists was sitting by the cash register, singing the song, and from what I could tell, she knew most all the words. I found that quite intriguing, at that moment. There is something fascinating about the biggest American export--its culture. Music, film, clothing, sports, are sent the world around, so that fans in India, the Middle East, the former Soviet Republics are all familiar with Michael Jordan, Coca-Cola, blue jeans, and, yes, John Denver.

A few years ago, I saw a film "Pretty Village, Pretty Flame", on the recommendation of Internet critic, Mike D'Angelo. The film chronicles the civil war in former Yugoslavia, by telling the story of two childhood friends: one Christian, one Muslim. Following four different timelines, the two are shown in childhood, as adults prior to the war, as participants in the war, and finally as two patients in the hospital.

As much as this film comments on war, it is also a commentary on how pervasive Western culture is. When the average American thinks of the ongoings in Europe and the Middle East, there's a tendency to think of things happening "over there", and that over there is not terribly important to over here. Over there is strange. Over there, they wear turbans, worship a different kind of deity. It's the NBA playoffs, and a few more suicide bombings are the stuff of strange places.

Pretty Vilage, Pretty Flame opens with these two friends playing pickup basketball, one asking the other if there's going to be war. There's mention of Michael Jordan, they drink sodas from the West, there's even a Canadian reporter who gets caught in the middle of this. Underlying this message of a country split by religious differences is the fact that it's still European, and it's not disconnected from the world.

It's been said that the US is melting pot where citizens of different nationalities have emigrated to create a whole. I suspect this was said of the Italians and Irish. But these days, it's even more the case, as Indians, Vietnamese, in fact, Asians of all sorts, now make a more visible part of American culture, but in fact, this culture now far surpasses national boundaries, and perhaps like anything that's taken across borders, there's something lost in translation.

What results is something familiar yet something different. American culture viewed through the lens of a different culture. I used to listen to a fair amount of world music from Ali Farka Toure to Hedningarna. The one thing in common with much of world music, to me, was that I knew none of the lyrics. The human voice became another musical instrument. I have no idea of its cultural significance. Am I listening to a religious hymn, or a headbanging screed screaming bloody revenge in some Nordic tongue?

The thought of a melting pot also made me think of melting pots. I doubt the average American even knows what a melting pot is. Until recently, I hadn't really know either, until I went to a restaurant called, well, you guessed it--The Melting Pot. They serve fondue, which is basically a heated pot where either cheese or chocolate is melted. When cheese is used, then wine or broth is also mixed in the pot. Vegetables and meats are dipped in using skewers, and then after suitable heating, it's eaten.

That such an uncommon form of cooking would achieve the cultural significance it has is fascinating.

Having said that American culture can be found the world 'round, I'm not trying to argue for its superiority. Politicians like to say that everyone wants to be American because we're the best country in the world. This sounds like so much collective insecurity, and that reassurance is needed to make ourselves happy in who we are. Garry Trudeau once wrote a Doonesbury that said as much. He wondered if the Vietnamese said "Hey, Vietnam, feel good about yourself!", and how ludicrous this seemed to him.

Even as American culture permeates other cultures, so too, do other cultures affect the US. At one point in time, Chinese food was about the only kind of cuisine people tried. Now, there are opportunities to have hummus, baklava, kebabs, pad thai, pho, jerk chicken, sushi and sashimi, injera, dosas and pakoras, kimchi. Foods from dozens of countries. We can watch films from Taiwan, Iran, China, France, Thailand, Korea, Hong Kong, India.

Maybe we're not yet singing ghazals or reciting Farsi poetry. But perhaps one day, John Denver may be a diminuitive Thai woman, and the country roads are in Koh Samui or Chiang Mai, and an elderly American woman will sing these words in a country she has never been to.

Hypocritic Oath

As it turns out, sarcasm is a form of irony. Looking it up in an online dictionary, saying something like "Lovely weather" when it is downpour is considered irony. There's also dramatic irony when you're watching, say, a play, and you know that a character expects one thing, but the opposite will occur (for example, expects to be rich and famous, and ends up poor and unknown).

Hypocrisy, to my mind, is related, but not the same as irony. With irony, there is some expectation that an action is being done in earnest with a goal in mind, but the opposite effect is achieved, against expectations. Hypocrisy is when someone says one thing, usually to look good, but really acts quite opposite. For example, a person who tells others to be faithful to their spouses, but has an affair. I'll say I often get hypocrisy and irony confused.

To be fair to my previous comment where a person says everyone should be open and honest, but hides behind an invented name---that's more hypocrisy than irony. Irony tends to be related to action and intent rather than in a statement of belief, though certainly it can be a statement. For someone to say something ironic is usually to have the other person knowingly understand that what is said and what is meant are opposites. Hypocrisy, on the other hand, is saying one thing, but not expecting the other person to find out, and not living up to what one says.

Ironically, being hypocritcal does not invalidate what is said. One can say that being faithful is good, and that advice can, in fact, be quite good, even as the the speaker is hypocritical. There is a sense, in hypocrisy, that the person says one thing and does another because they want to appear better than they are. It is certainly possible, however, for someone to give advice freely, while also admitting they themselves are too weak to follow it (eg, telling others smoking is bad, even as they themselves smoke).

With hypocrisy, there is a "holier than thou" attitude. You might say how it's awful that people can be so unclean, and yet be a complete slob. Implicit in hypocrisy is that the person knows that they are doing the opposite of what they advocate. If a person for example, deludes themselves into thinking they are neat (a slob's mess is always neater than a stranger's mess because they rationalize it to themselves that it's not that bad).

Isn't it Ironic?

Quite a few years agp, Alanis Morrisette wrote a song "Isn't It Ironic?" and was criticized roundly for the song being (ironically enough) not about irony. I haven't read the lyrics to the song until just now. Some of the lyrics do suggest some irony, but mostly it's about how, when things look like they are going good, something goes to mess it up, or when things are going bad, they seem to go worse.

However much Alanis gets blamed in her use of the word irony, the ones that are more to blame are sportswriters and sports commentators. You have to feel for sports commentators. On the one hand, they have a great gig. They get to do what they love to do which is to watch and comment on sports. However, they often want to be taken seriously, almost like a journalist, instead of being a dumb jock.

In fact, many of the best commentators aren't really jocks at all. Many of them enjoyed sports, possibly even played some, but were never great at it, and found their ability to write, speak, or understand the statistics of sports much more compelling. Bob Costas, the ever youthful-looking and talented commentator tops those who abuse the word "ironic", using it to mean coincidental.

For example, suppose Kobe of the Lakers and Shaq, formerly of the Lakers, and now of the Miami Heat, had their respective teams meet in the finals (not possible this year as the Lakers weren't even in the playoffs). He might say "it's ironic how these two teams met", when he should say "it's coincidence that these two meet", even if coincidence isn't the right word either. It's interesting how two teammates now on separate teams meet, but it's hardly ironic.

Irony is basically opposite occurring. When one thing is supposed to happen, but it's opposite happens. Recently, I heard on the Tony Kornheiser show, a reasonably good use of the word "ironic". It was noted that Gibbs, unlike some coaches, is extremely secretive about what goes on in training camp. He keeps a tight lid on what information the press can have. One of the guests noted it was ironic that one of the guys working for the team posts on the team's website an illegal practice, thus having the team's own personnel reveal violations of rules. So that is indeed ironic that a person so concerned with secrecy to avoid having bad things said about his team would have one of his own leak it.

Let's look at a few more examples of irony. O. Henry (not his real name, but his penname) was considered the king of irony. One of his famous short stories is called The Ransom of Red Chief about two bumbling guys who decide to kidnap the kid of some family and hold him for ransom. The kid is so irascible, so hard to deal with, that the guys eventually go back to return the kid. The father, knowing how difficult the kid is to handle, doesn't want him back, and in fact, demands that they pay him to take the kid back. The would-be kidnappers eventually pay up because they can't deal with the kid anymore.

Now that's irony. Two guys go to kidnap a kid thinking they are going to get a ransom, and instead, pay the ransom to get the kid off their hands. They do one thing, and get the opposite as a result.

Another short story that's heavy on irony is this one I read in a collection of short stories edited (but not written) by Orson Scott Card. It's about an alien race that has become incredibly advanced that they have specialized beings. So, they send a diplomatic being to negotiate with a planet that is seen to have not-as-evolved beings. In fact, the diplomatic being is two beings, the diplomat, and another part of him dealing with sex-related functions. He tells the planet that they are going to be eradicated.

The reason? The planet had sent its own diplomats to negotiate with these super-beings. However, once the negotiations had ended, the diplomats were killed. So, the beings of this planet decided to attack in retaliation. The super-beings, meanwhile, send their "killer" beings (recall, that everyone in their society is specialized to do a specific task) to kill off the race. Meanwhile, the leader of the not-advanced planet laments that her fellow beings, while not perfect, love life, love music, and that they are no longer going to be around, being powerless to stop the super beings.

So where's the irony? The advanced race has become so advanced that they are no longer advanced any more. They are like cells of the human body. The attack beings are like white blood cells killing invaders. Every being has no feeling, no emotion, but are, instead, simply parts of a large whole, and in their "advanced" status, have regressed to being cogs in an unfeeling machine. The irony is they are not really as advanced as they claim.

Thus, to be ironic, you need to expect one thing, and have a nearly opposite result. It isn't even as simple as, you need to go to something early, but get caught in traffic, so you're late. That doesn't quite have the right feel of irony. Many years ago, I said, in a newsgroup that it was ironic that the person who advocated being open and honest would hide behind a nickname and not reveal who he was. He claimed (incorrectly) that it was an incorrect use of irony (and even cited Alanis), though I, to this day, disagree.

It's become this huge pet peeve of mine to understand irony and really its misuse.

For example, it might be ironic (in sports) if an offensive genius ended up having a top-rated defense and mediocre offense. Or that a chauvinist (like Bobby Riggs) would have more to do with helping out women in sports than any female activist. Or changes in rules to increase scoring in some sport, ends up decreasing scoring. Or having the best player out actually improves the team.

Irony isn't really sarcasm, though there is some relation. Sarcasm is saying one thing, but meaning the opposite. For example, telling someone they are "such a genius" when you mean they are a complete idiot. Irony involves some expectation of one outcome, and the opposite occuring, but in a certain way. Wanting to be somewhere in a hurry, but being prevented from doing so, isn't quite opposite.

However, there's some irony about deciding to camp out and watch Star Wars, Episode 3, making plans and preparations, only to be at a theater that's not showing it. Or deciding to take a car to avoid the costs of spending a train ticket to some location, only to spend more money because of speeding tickets.

It's hard enough for me to use irony correctly, and I think about its use. So I implore sportswriters to stop using this word to make yourself sound smart, because ironically, you are using the word incorrectly, and making yourself sound less smart. (Except that it's so difficult to get a full grasp of the meaning, that the average fan doesn't even understand its misuse).

Take Me To Your Leader

A friend recently said that he didn't relish the idea of having to manage people. Now I've been on both ends of managing people. I'm not a particularly good manager. I tend to micromanage too much, and get impatient. A good manager gives those he (or she) manages time to get things done.

However, my friend sort of doesn't manage people. I think part of it is being scared of being assertive and taking charge, and in general, making the person you're managing miserable. Here's my lesson: it doesn't have to be this way!

First, if you're managing someone who's basically still in college, then you should go in assuming they're going to need some hand-holding. That's not necessarily bad. It's surprising to me that some people believe you can just dive into work and just do it. Often times, there's a lot to learn to get things done.

Lately, I've been thinking about that. I believe there are jobs that are basically craftsman, and those that are problem solving. In a craftsman job, you are trying to get good at what you do, be that cooking, or typing, or what have you. Once you're good at it, there's not that much more to learn. You keep doing what you already know how to do. Problem solving jobs, on the other hand, often involve learning new things along the way. I suppose every job has some learning, but I do stuff with computers, and it is incredibly easy to not know enough, and not have any idea how to proceed.

The real problem is that technology keeps presenting more and more things to learn. And that's not in a good way. It's not like learning a new musical instrument, or learning to hangglide. It's learning a new technology that chooses to do things one way just because. So you get a compiler, and how that compiler works differs from just about how every other compiler works. It's not so easy to leverage the experience you have from one to the other.

Imagine if a car was like software. Some cars wouldn't have steering wheels or brakes (in the place you expect it). You'd look for windshield wipers, only to realize there's some different way to get rain off is some heating element or some thing odd, which is located in some unexpected place. Or there's some kind of wind noise cancellation, or a blind spot eradicater. Cars are solving problems you never thought you had!

Except cars are, for the most part, the same as the next. No one tries to reinvent the steering wheel, nor the brakes, nor the accelerator. This allows a person who knew how to drive a car in 1950 to survive driving a car in 2005. To be fair, we haven't asked cards to be that much more than what they were 50 years ago. Nowadays, we have cup holders, air bags, a somewhat comfier ride, good gas mileage, CD players that add to our experience. Everything else is hidden away. If a computer figures out how to make the car more fuel efficient, or you have special kinds of suspension, or engines are more efficient, well, you don't care. It all is hidden away.

But with programming, you have to deal with the fact that everyone keeps coming up with ideas on how to do this, and how to do that, and few agree on any of it. Worse, it's hard to decide on what technology to pick from. Which IDE should I use? Which database? Which server? Which version control? Why do I even care about databases or version control or a build process? What on earth made this so complicated?

And the sad thing is, it's going to get worse before it gets better. Until they decide that people want to learn tools just once, or they want it to be easy to learn, we're going to have to deal with this mess. I remember hearing professors, people who are very smart, who complained why they had to learn object oriented programming to teach data structures. They did just fine using Pascal!

Ultimately, there are those that love technology. They like new changes, even for completely arbitrary reasons. They don't mind if you change the shape and location of the buttons on a doodad or add sliders, or stuff you twist, or make it smaller, or what-have-you. Look at a digital camera today. It's amazing that two cameras even have some similar functionality. You learn how to operate a camera, but then look at another, and you have to learn it again. Features on one can't be found on another. No wonder people get frustrated.

And who suffers from it the most? The people who use technology to provide technology to others. Software developers have to deal with these tools, because without them, you'd spend forever trying to do what you need to do. But with them, you spend forever trying to figure out what problem they were solving with the solution, and then deciding if they even did a good job, and ugh. In 3 years, it's old news, and you have to learn something else, then something else, because each time, they did a crappy job, and each time, someone says "Please, let it do this, and that, and could for, fer chrissakes, fix this cuz it is so annoying".

Anyway...

So i tell my friend, first, you have to meet frequently (at least, initially), set goals, and see if they are being met. You have to see what they bring with them to the table (gawd, hate cliches like that) and see if they need their task broken down. Never underestimate how challenging some people can find the easiest task. As workers, college students often lack the kind of independence to learn how best to approach a problem. Heck, I don't even have an idea how best to do things.

Once you see how they work, you can provide more or less assistance. This is assuming they actually want to work. If they don't, then you need to cajole them somehow. And if that doesn't work, you may have to decide that things aren't working out. A person who does want to work wants to know what they need to do, wants some feedback on how well they are doing, wants encouragement if they are struggling (and advice), and wants to know how to get better.

As someone managing them, you want to give them direction, then give them time, get feedback, and redirect. Basically, think of that person as a ship. Occasionally, they go right all by themeselves. Occasionally, you need to steer them back in the right direction.

We'll see how well it works out. Until next time--adios!

Seek n' Destroy

It came upon us naturally, so effortlessly, that I don't think many of us know just how profound an influence it has on our lives. When people point to the great human inventions: the wheel, housing, electricity to the house, the automobile, surely, the web browser belongs too.

The browser, in and of itself, is just the medium just as paved roads are. It allows us to connect and access information easily. Once upon a time, if you had a question you didn't know the answer to, you were content not to have it answered. Maybe you'd have an encyclopedia, but more than likely you didn't. Now, you search for it on the net. People once wondered how we would manage the information overload, and it is the search engines that have let us deal with billions of webapges. Google and search engines like it (though there's nothing like it) give us roadmaps to the Internet, and now answers come that wouldn't be there otherwise.

I can hardly imagine how software development must have been like before the web was around. You would have to buy a compiler, and install it. If someone else had good software but didn't sell it, you would never know. Nowadays, you search, download, install, find examples, read tutorials, technical papers. You can do this and more with the browser.

Once upon a time, you had to have a map, and had to be able to read the map. Now, you can go to maps.yahoo.com or maps.google.com and get directions. You don't even have to read a map anymore (though, to be fair, a map still has its place, when you need something suitably large to get a feel for where things are relative to each other).

How many things can you now buy without having to visit the store? This isn't the days of Sears & Roebuck where you had huge catalogs. Now, many thousands of stores can advertise their wares, without a single catalog sent by mail.

All of this seems so incredibly pedestrian, that we forget how much the web has changed our lives. Broswers have opened avenues to non-standard forms of entertainment. Writers no longer need to work for a magazine to have their work noticed. They no longer need the pedigree of journalism degrees, nor interns at the Atlantic. If you're reading this, it's because browsers and the websites it connects, and the software that lives at the site, makes it possible. I spend no more effort writing this than I would an English essay, and an audience around the world can read it--or not.

Once we get beyond our basic needs of food and shelter, information becomes necessity of the 21st century. Can you even begin to imagine where technology will lead us? Entertainers need only entertain for thousands, but there will be so many of them, catering to desires that some of us never knew we had. People now make films for a mere thousand dollars, and distribute their work for free on the Internet. No agents. No distributors. No cast of hundreds. And possibly, yes, no talent. But with so many people producing so much creativity, surely a few, gifted geniuses will put their nuggets of gold somewhere on the net, somewhere amidst the dross and mediocrity, and someone, maybe you, will find this, and marvel at the insight, cleverness of our fellow humans.

Once upon a time, the vast majority of Americans married someone scant blocks from where they grew up, met people in their neighborhood. Cars have freed us some, to move to parts across these vast country. But the Internet now lets us reach even further, to even more people. We can talk to Australians as easily as the French, the Russians, and even those across the country, the state, the city, the block, and even the room. We can chat with those who have obscure interests. Do you love soccer, but want to find fanatics of Manchester United. Do you suffer from a rare disease, and seek others who have gone through what you have? Do you miss pots of nehari from the streets of Lahore? You can find people who live there now. No longer is communication to those of different countries only accessible by those who arrange pen pals. You can find people all over. In this brave new world, we've reinvented the way we deal with one another. Perhaps not for the better.

The most amazing things are yet to come, and they, like the browser, the killer app that will bring these wonders to us, will sneak up, and become part of everyday life. We'll hardly wonder how such a thing became part of our lives, so much that we no longer awe when we should. The marvels will seem so obvious, so ordinary, so mundane. And it's a shame that we won't be able to appreciate them as much as we should. We'll still go to work, and still buy food at the groceries, and still lament how much our waistline won't get smaller. And in all of that, we'll not realize that our lives have become, immeasurably fuller.