Squashed

Tennis is so much more popular, as a spectator sport, than pretty much every other racquet sport. Table tennis, racquetball, squash. You can't really see these sports on TV.

Somehow I stumbled on this tennis channel, which lacks any contracts to show the top tournaments, and so they show some casual tennis, and some competitive squash. What you realize is that squash and badminton have far more finesse than tennis. Tennis is really built on power. Badminton has a lot of finesse, which lots of drop shots and lobs, forcing players up and down. Tennis players lack finesse, and you feel, if they'd only watch other sports, they'd be using drop shots a lot and using fitness and speed to try to win.

The problem is the serve. A powerful guy can zip in a fast serve, and finesse is no good if you can't deal with power.

Squash has even more finesse. Racquetball has long gone way too powerful, much like tennis on grass courts, with powerful servers. Squash players force down the line backhand shots over and again, and then drop shots, lobs across the back corner. Rallies run 10, 12, 15 and more shots, requiring speed and finesse.

This sport was once dominated by Pakistanis, but the Brits and even Egyptians are masters of this sport. One obvious missing nationality is the US, since, of course, Americans simply do not care for international sports, where they might suck in any given year.

So inward looking are Americans that a recent Miss Teen USA was asked why 20% of Americans couldn't find the US on a map, and she seemed fixated on South Africa and Iraq in her answer, rather than point out that Americans simply care about the US. We may be more international, but it's too complex for Americans, who, even now, see Iraq as the country "over there", with even American deaths meaningless as long as it's not in the US.

Tennis players could learn lessons by watching squash and badminton. The next revolution appears to be Roger Federer, but I think it will eventually be about people who can drop shot at will, running shots down, playing lobs, and such. But racquets are so heavy, and tennis balls so heavy, that this finesse isn't used much.

Maybe some day.

Monkey Ball

It's not typical, in a second round match, to find a top seed, struggling for his tennis life against the oldest male left in the tournament. But there he was, James Blake, against Fabrice Santoro.

Santoro is French, and has been playing for quite a while. He has pretty odd strokes. He appears to hit a two handed forehand with his right hand over his left (he appears to be a lefty), and then slices a one-handed lefty backhand.

Even though Santoro is French, and Americans are notoriously (and unreasonably) anti-French, they love to see a scrapper. When Alex Corretja pushed Sampras to a fifth set, with Sampras puking all over, people were impressed by how hard Corretja pushed Sampras.

This time, Santoro was the one who was suffering. Despite having cramps and injury timeouts, the crowd didn't turn on him, wishing him well, even as they wanted Blake to win.

And Blake. At times, he was just striking the ball long or wide. And when Santoro clawed his way to a fifth set, that had to get on Blake's mind. Blake had played nine five-setters and had the unenviable record of 0-9. When the score was 4-4, Blake had to be wondering if he could pull this match out, or would he choke against a cramping player and lose?

But Blake kept his head in their long enough, and Santoro, as dogged as his attempt couldn't overcome age and a body that wouldn't stay pain-free long enough for him to claim a nice win.

And Blake, who knew it was a matter of time before he won his first fifth-setter didn't have to wait any longer. The moment was here, and Blake was relieved, ready to play one more round, and live up to a promise of the next great American player.

Caan Job

Scott Caan is not nearly as famous as his dad, James Caan. But he gets a steady diet of jobs. He's been in films like Varsity Blues, Dallas 362, and Ocean's 11, which I've seen several times.

But here's the key. Scott Caan is 5'6". That makes him a pretty short guy. But no other industry can hide height as well as acting. In movies, people don't like to see characters whose heights are drastically different. They don't like pairing a guy, 6'4" with someone 5'7". That difference leads to awkward scenes.

Instead, they try to hide the differences, playing shots at different angles, so height differences are hidden. Actors like Tom Cruise must be pretty happy that, unlike football, height doesn't matter so much.

If you watch Ocean's 11, keep an eye on Scott Caan. He's the guy who hangs out with Casey Affleck. Watch all the things they do to de-emphasize the height differences. Casey Affleck is about 6 ft tall, so he's at least a head taller than Scott Caan.

A bit of movie trickery, as you realize the director tries to manipulate what you see to make you feel and think what the director wants you to see and feel.

Shake and Blake

James Blake should have been the Tiger Woods of men's tennis. But he's not as irascible. He's a bit too good looking. And he's not nearly as supremely talented.

Having said that, I've seen him play a few times recently, and he's got enough speed and power that when he's on his game, he can be tough to beat. But, as good as he is, enough to be a top ten player, he can't even touch Roger Federer, who basically has Blake's number. Blake never seems like he can win against Federer.

And partly because of that, no one much cares about James Blake. Which is too bad, because for a variety of reasons, he should be the kind of guy that promoters ought to love. Yet, because men's tennis is basically the Rafa and Roger show, and even Andy Roddick steals a bit of James's thunder, James Blake has been relegated to the pretty good, but not great player, which, in tennis, in the US, is nothing.

This is how much American care about winners. Heck, Indians, who haven't had a really good singles players in years, follow tennis far more than Americans, who follow football and basketball and sometimes baseball religiously, but no sport that has competitors active from outside North America (the NBA, to its credit, and the MLB, to its, have attracted players from around the world, but the fact is the teams are in the US, and sometimes Canada).

One of these days, maybe more Americans will follow a sport where the best players aren't American.

But don't count on it.

Conditioned Response

There are some words/phrases, when you think about it, that are totally ridiculous. The one I'm thinking of is: air conditioning. Heating, that makes sense. But air conditioning? It sounds like hair conditioning to me!

Why not cooling? Or air chilling? Or chilling? But AC? Or air?

I'm sure there are other, similar phrases that sound totally inane (some people like to point to American football's "yardage" as silly, which it is, if you think about "meterage").

Smile

Image searching is still a tough task. I was trying to find the following image (don't ask why). Asian women (mostly Japanese women) are taught not to smile too broadly. Most women will cover their mouths if they are about to show their teeth because they find something funny. Americans find this odd, and part of the shy nature of Asian women.

Anyway, I still haven't found this photo online because my various search queries do nothing (mostly "shy", "Japanese", "girl", "smile", "cover mouth").

You'd think it would be easier.

Oh stop it!

Bourne Again

It's weird, but I've been in line for movies twice where people talked about The Bourne Ultimatum, the third installment in the Bourne series, about a guy who has amnesia, but is actually a super agent, whose mind has been erased for who-knows-why.

This third installment was directed by Paul Greengrass, who also directed United 93, one of two films that came out last year about the 9/11 tragedy, this one being filmed like a documentary.

It's rare that a third film gets so much praise that people who had basically ignored the series feel compelled to watch it, but word of mouth suggests that is what's happened.

Can anyone think of a film whose third installment might be its best? For most, it's the second (Star Wars), or even the first (The Matrix).

This is also one of many series to appear to have taken the mantle of superspy from James Bond (the other contender would be Mission Impossible, but really?). Is this even a viable genre these days?

Smart Enough to be Dumb

I've longed complained that so-called "dummies" books are often not geared to dummies. You can tell this kind of book within a chapter or so. The author tries to be hip, making some cultural references. "Wardrobe malfunction!". We're supposed to laugh and say "Ha, that humor is helping me to learn already".

While spending an interminable time waiting for my car to get routine maintenance, I was reading a book on Ruby for sys admins. This seems like a peculiar topic for a book, but given that Perl is used for sys admins, why not Ruby?

Oddly enough, the book doesn't start off with a clear explanation of why someone would use Ruby over Perl, nor does it attempt to characterize what typical sys admins do, and why Ruby would be well-suited to the task. Many sys-admins don't think of themselves as deep programmers. They aren't planning to write complex data structures. They typically need to do some common user tasks, and then worry about security.

This book, nevertheless, starts delving into Ruby, with no reassuring words why this would be at all useful.

Often, when "dummies" authors (bad ones I mean) start explaining a language, they mix cute phrases, with technical ones, thus, telling you this is an instance variable, and that is a class variable, and not explaining what either is, or why either is important. This is much like explaining parts of a frog, but not explaining what function it serves.

Many people who teach programming fall in the trap of explaning syntax, because frankly, explaining syntax is easy. Explaining how to program? Not so easy. Explaining how to program is fundamentally explaining how to solve problems, and solving problems is such a general problem, that it's difficult to explain.

Furthermore, bad authors seem to "explain" stuff without making sure the readers are doing something to learn it. This is much like an expert telling you how to play basketball by telling you the rules, the names of the various positions, how scoring is done, but leaving out strategy, and leaving out useful comments about how different people have different skills, and finally, leaving out anything you can do to learn the stuff on your own.

Sometimes I wonder how these books manage to get past an editor, whether they even bother to try the book on real sysadmins (oh, that would be too much work, don't you know?).

Writing books for dummies requires that you understand why some people struggle with the topic you're talking about. This Ruby book (the real title is: Practical Ruby for System Administration by André Ben Hamou) illustrates a common problem for authors: explaing OO programming. Inevitably, they start using terms like methods, objects, messages, inheritance, subclassing, and so forth. Often, in the struggle to make sure they don't say anything technically wrong, they use the terms as if people already knew what they meant, because explaining these concepts would be really hard.

Maybe, in time, such books will improve. In the meanwhile, I'm sure many books will start off with good intentions, but end up helping few dummies, because the authors weren't smart enough to know what a dummy needs.

Words Fail Me

The Prisoner

When I was in high school, I knew this girl, a year older than me, named Janet. Janet's family was over-achieving. Her brother had been one of the top finalists in the Westinghouse science competition (now Intel sponsors it). Their whole family had gone to Princeton (dad, all the kids). For a year or so, she and her family had lived in Massachusetts, then came back to Tennessee.

Our high school, unlike some nearby high schools, lacked a debate class and debate teams. (The following edited for clarity, as per Al's suggestion). When Janet returned, she helped organize a debate club, where she was president. As she was the only one who knew any debate, this made sense. That is also made sense that she probably started the club to pad her college applications wasn't so clear to me then, but makes some sense to me now. At the time, I saw it as an opportunity to learn to debate, learn to speak in public. I was awful at both.

High school debate has been around a long time, and so typically, former debaters teach these courses and field teams for competitions. These are "real" debates. While presidential debates are hardly anything of the sort (they are Q&A sessions, with liberal amounts of spin thrown for ill measure) often relying on emotion rather than reason, these debates favor sounder forms of reasoning.

The format is this. Each year, a topic is picked. Students then research the heck out of them. Books with plenty of facts are made available. Budding lawyers see this as a kind of training for a future career (mock trials fit in this category too). Typically, two people to a team. Two argue for the topic, two against. There's a time limit to present an argument, present a rebut, present a rebut to the rebut, and once more. Then, both sides present closing arguments.

Since the format is timed, debaters sometimes learn to "spread", which is to speak awfully fast, a la Jon Moschita (he used to do the FedEx commercials).

I had forgotten this, since it was so many years ago. I can't say I was even a good debater, because I was pretty nervous speaking, and couldn't produce cogent arguments on the fly. Even so, I thought it would help me with speaking (it didn't).

Rocket Science is a film that's loosely about debate, though it feels more like a Wes Anderson film. While comparisons have been drawn to Election about an ambitious girl who needs to be class president, and the civics teacher who opposes everything this girl stands for, Rocket Science is not that malicious.

Indeed, it's a kind of fantasy, about a painfully shy guy, who stutters, whose mom kicks out his dad, then begins dating a Korean American judge (the Asians are a bit too caricatured for my tastes, but it does show the diversity of our society). Ginny is the object of his affection, a debater whose successful partner suddenly freezes one day (diversity rears its head, as the opposing debate team's male representative is Indian American) during the debate championships, and she seeks, in this repressed kid, a new partner, perhaps serving as Professor Higgins to Hal (the pressed kid) as Eliza.

Much like Wes Anderson, music plays a big role in this film, as do Hal's awkward moments (exaggerated to effect).

And I'd have a full review had the bulb not been dying, and the theater manager come in to say he'd have to replace this hot, hot bulb, requiring at least 45 minutes to cool before it could be replaced.

And why was I watching this movie?

I had wanted to see it, of course, but I hadn't expected to see it then. I was being held prisoner by the car dealership. Not exactly literally, but close enough. I was in for routine servicing, which means they were not only going to charge an arm and a leg, but also ask if you wouldn't mind giving up vital organs while you were at it. I'm sure, somewhere by my name, is the word "Sucker", as in, offer any expensive service, because this guy will take it.

And I end up taking it because I think that any time I spend in preventive care is better than dealing with it unexpectedly in the shop.

But everyone knows the dealer charges at least 50% more than a regular mechanic, if not more. Odd that they have five people up front, who seem perpetually busy, but doing what? They don't repair a thing. They are there to essentially convince you to get more servicing. And man, do they always seem busy for a job that shouldn't require that much inattention to customers.

They have little incentive to do what's in your best interest, but at least they aren't so egregiously awful as to recommend everything under the sun.

And yet, because I don't really want to find another mechanic to do fixing, I let them do the work.

And even though I came in at 7:30 and figured I could be out by maybe 9, I had to stay til noon. Amazingly ridiculous. The only saving grace is that it's right in downtown Bethesda, and there are other things to do in the meantime.

Including watching Rocket Science.

Right now, I'd have to say car dealerships are down there with, I dunno, torturers? as the least desirable people on the face of the Earth. I would love if the government would send in people to get car repairs and for every useless repair, the mechanic would get fined. Indeed, I think people should go through someone that does diagnosis (much like a doctor) and someone else that does the repair.

It's honestly too bad that places like Honda and such who could do a lot to make the experience nice and honest, simply does what everyone else does, which is to take their money due to their ignorance.

The Law of Desire

In the deceptive trailer of Primer, you are lead to believe that the main characters have created a wish fulfillment device. They ask "what is truly wanted"? Power, wealth, reputation. Hidden in this is a time travel story, one so low-key and low-tech, to focus on the vices of man once he discovers he can travel back and change things.

Once I moved on my own, which has been a few weeks, I began asking those questions, though in a more mundane way. Before discussing how I answered those questions, I am reminded of a friend, who, with his roommate, decided to purchase the house he had been formerly renting (an unusual setup, to be sure). Up until then, he hadn't done anything too special with the place. They didn't own it.

Something about owning your own place drives some to improve it. Something about not owning it makes you decide there's no reason to improve it. Once he had the place, they started sprucing up the place, trying to decide how to make it better. Even though this would involve both effort and money, it was their place, and it was worth it, if for no other reason than to increase its resale value, thus balancing a desire for more with a pragmatic desire to see it as an investment.

Until recently, I had always had roommates, which is really to say, I had housemates/apartmentmates, because I haven't had to share a room for over ten years. And they always had dishes and utensils and furniture, so I rarely needed it for myself.

Once I had my own place, I realized I lacked a lot of simple things. I had no dishes. I had no utensils. I had few cups. I didn't have a garbage can. And once I realized I didn't have those things, I began to wonder what I needed. For example, my friend suggested that I definitely had to hang my LCD TV off the wall. It wasn't a regular TV anymore. Hang it up!

Of course, my thought was "Will the wall support it? What if my expensive TV fell down and cracked?". And, even before that, I had to make a decision, did I want a better TV? What made a better TV? I used to have a TV, but got rid of it, and so I didn't even have a television. However, without one, my DVD player would lie mostly useless, as would my Wii.

And a garbage can. Should I get a plain Jane one? There are ones that are cheap, but they don't have a cover. Or I could really shell out bucks for the Simple Human cans that cost like a hundred bucks. They look great. They cost a lot for holding garbage. Should I care?

What is wanted? And more importantly, why?

We live in a culture where we rarely question why we want, only what we want. Ask people to take Buddhist ideals, and you find that it's too tough for many to say no. When we're young, we want food, we want sweets. I saw a mother and daughter having a discussion. The daughter wanted this or that, and even (despite her age) questioned why her mom wanted this or that. As kids, we desire. As parents, we try to reign in kid's desires, even as parents themselves desire too.

Of course, when basics needs, food, shelter, water, all require money, then we're already spending that on "essentials", so why not spend more on things that make us happy? And companies, of course, thrive on convincing us we need stuff to make us happy.

And this is so ingrained, that I still think about what next to purchase.

Still.

Club Players

Our family used to get Tennis magazine when we were kids. This used to be the tennis magazine, though tennis, unlike, say, football, encouraged its readers to play.

In particular, there would be regular segments where American players, like Tony Trabert or Stan Smith, would offer advice to play better tennis. Despite the tennis boom of the 70s, which encouraged the average person to play tennis (up til then, most people had thought of tennis as a sport of the rich), advice was always aimed at the "club player".

At the time, being young, I thought club player meant "not-so-good player", which was partly true, but still reflected the fact that a real tennis pro would still often make additional money on the side teaching people at special camps, for folks who joined clubs, i.e., people who were rich. And why not? Was Tony Trabert and Stan Smith likely to teach kids for free at a public court?

You have to realize that while rich people played tennis, tennis players weren't rich until the mid-70s and really until the 80s when a top player could make a million dollars a year. Players from the 60s and before were amateurs, and pro careers consisted of exhibitions. The Open Era finally moved the big tournaments like Wimbledon to pay pros to play, which meant you could make a living playing tennis, and a pretty good one at that.

Indeed, so good, that top players never have to interact with the average "club" player to make money, so good is the money you make from endorsements alone (at least, at the top ranks).

Thus, while club players meant "players that weren't that good, that weren't pros", it's implied, even in the 70s, that this was the typical tennis player, someone rich, someone who could afford club fees. Even by the 70s, this was no longer the picture the average tennis player in the US, and it was something the editors of Tennis magazine should have realized.

By the way, Tennis magazine was oddly disconnected from the pro game. The publishing schedule typically meant the magazine was printed months afterwards, making any sort of timely reviews untenable. Worse, they probably couldn't even send a reporter to write meaningful reviews of a tournament. Even big tournaments like the US Open merely had previews. The reviews were a pale comparison to Sports Illustrated. You might imagine that they could do really heavy in-depth interviews, exposing people to new players, and so forth.

Not really. The magazine probably could only afford one reporter who probably spent time schmoozing with the players, and not really paying close attention to the tournament that they were allegedly covering. Even now, I doubt the magazine has improved that much.

Pretty sad for a flagship magazine of a sport.

Fall Guy

Summer's nice. People seem happier in the summer. T-shirts replace long sleeves. Shorts replace pants. Sandals replace shoes. Time to put on shades. People head to the beach, to camping.

But summer's hot. Real hot. I like it just as you can tell summer's over. Today seemed just that kind of day. I had woken up early. 5 AM. Watched some TV. Then, I got hungry, so I decided to find a breakfast place. I knew one place, the Silver Diner, on Rockville Pike. But as I drove down, I thought of trying out The Original Pancake House.

A few years ago, I began going to diners, which usually "specialize" in breakfasts. They often have the virtue that they are open around the clock. The Original Pancake House doesn't fit in this category, as it only opens in the morning up to the early afternoon. For that matter, they aren't like Dunkin Donuts or Kripy Kreme or McDonald's or Starbucks which often open at 6, and some of these places, even earlier. They open at 7, which was good enough for me.

And being Sunday, not a work day, and a bit early for church, there were few cars on the road. It was overcast. It was a bit nippy. It felt a bit like a trip I had to San Diego last year, where it was still February, and despite being California, it was still a touch chilly.

Although I don't want every day to be overcast and cool, it's a nice feeling.

A nice feeling indeed.

Almost Movie Review: Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix

Reminder to self. Don't watch a movie when you have a headache.

Although I took some pills and had some food, and although the film had very little in camera motion, the kinda thing that gets me nauseous watching films, I had the same feelings watching the latest Harry Potter installment, which meant I only saw half the film before I left.

Too bad, because it seemed like the best of the Harry Potter films. The Harry Potter films really benefit from one idea, which is the characters age, and therefore there's the idea the characters mature. Watching, say, Star Wars, you don't get this sense at all.

In particular, you don't feel these are ten year olds, but teenagers. More than the previous films, this one puts Harry in close up, and he's angsty, isolated. Where you felt Harry, Ron, and Hermione were going to summer camp in the first film, here, Harry's just moody, and the other two don't seem to be able to figure out why.

The director handles this by isolating Harry from Hermione and Ron. I also get the sense they wanted the characters to be a touch more British than usual, pronouncing words less American.

The key character in this film is Imelda Staunton playing Dolores Umbridge in a wickedly slimy way. She smiles, but wants to put people in their places, and all you can imagine is that you wanted her blasted to bits in the worst possible way. She pushes all the buttons that kids hate, from the smug authority, to the fake smiles.

Well, I'll have to catch the rest of the film at some other time when I'm not having headaches and such, but my initial impressions was that it was the best so far (perhaps not saying much), mostly because of the evolving Harry and his maturity (or lack thereof).

Movie Review: John Tucker Must Die

While I'm getting complimentary movie channels, I get to watch films I wouldn't normally watch. One of them is John Tucker Must Die which is really an awful title for what the film is about, which is essentially a variant on Mean Girls.

Just as background, John Tucker is the star basketball player, and as such, he gets to be with any girl he wants. Played by Desperate Houswives' Jesse Metcalfe, he's every girl's fantasy, saying to each girl whatever they want to hear. Metcalfe is cast, presumably for his good looks, but also because he's not half as slimy as the character he's meant to play.

He simultaneously dates three high school girls (he's in high school too), which is noted by a fourth one who watches the action as a waitress, before she too gets involved. The three, who come different cliques (one's a head cheerleader, one's a braniac, one's a vegan), find out about one another, and plot revenge.

Despite everything they try to do (from saying he has genital herpes, to putting estrogen in his muscle builder pills, to getting him to wear a woman's thong) seems to backfire. He's clever enough to fight back from humiliation.

While the film centers around the women, especially trying to decide whether Kate, the waitress protagonist who's going to be remade by the three jilted girls to be the "perfect girl" that will dump John Tucker, is really going to fall for John Tucker or not, and whether, indeed, John Tucker is going to fall for Kate.

You have to say this film is charming without being particularly good. The girls are somewhat caricatures, coming up with a plot that no real girls would try. The lead guy is almost too oddly clever to be believable.

There's a subplot where her lab partner (is it John Tucker's brother? does it matter) has a thing for her, and you think the two might get together, but there's too much with the main plot to actually treat this seriously. There's also the subplot with the mother who dates one jerk after another, even though it's treated superficially and comically, and its primary point is for Kate to realize she's never seen a healthy relationship, and that perhaps as sensible as she thinks she is, maybe it's not been that healthy.

It's enjoyable in the way Mean Girls is enjoyable, which likable characters, but perhaps nothing much deeper than that (it's a bit more clever than other films of its ilk, but overall, not that great).

Movie Review: Die Hard

Yes, that Die Hard, not any of the several sequels, most of which are inferior to the original.

Made in 1988, a year after Lethal Weapon, this action film reflects the times it was made. Hair styles resemble those from the early 80s. But more importantly, despite its action roots, Die Hard has elements of modern America from the 80s (and the 70s, really).

In particular, John McClane is meeting up with his wife. They appear, at the very least, to be separated. She's a successful businesswoman, and he's a tough cop, who isn't thrilled with her career, nor her desire to keep her maiden name. His wife works for a Japanese multinational company, her boss being Japanese, who's portrayed as the noble boss (though he's alive for only a few minutes).

The comic relief character, who plays Holly's insufferable colleague, seems all hopped up on drugs, and plays an acquisitions guy, again, comically referring to the business of the times.

Like Lethal Weapon, African Americans play major (though not the main) roles, from Sergeant Al Powell (Reginald VelJohnson) to Argyle (the driver) to one of the special Agent Johnsons (there are two) to Theo, who plays the computer wizard (the only terrorist that isn't killed).

Admittedly, the white and black characters are caricatured (except for a few folks, including John McClane) from the very white reporter, the drugged up business colleague, the driver, even, to some extent, the nerdy computer terrorist. In this decade, it seemed important to put African Americans in key roles in action films. I'm sure the movie industry felt they couldn't put a non-white American in a lead role, but they were perfectly happy showing interracial harmony.

Even so, while films would have African Americans playing prominent roles in big budget films, members of other ethnicities didn't ever fare that well. One clever idea that both Lethal Weapon and Die Hard both use are the sensible African American, and the crazy white guy, playing against stereotypes (say, Eddie Murphy in 48 Hours or Beverly Hills Cop).

After watching this film for the first time in a while, I realized that the relationship between John McClane and Al Powell (the cop) is practically homo-erotic. During their dialogue, Powell says he loves him (admittedly, in the way, a fan loves their fantasy football start player), and is there to support him. Powell admits a sad incident in his life (killing a kid by accident), and when McClane finally succeeds, he comes out, with Powell smiling, as if it's really Powell that McClane has been doing this for, rather than to help his wife. It's shown far more lovingly than his meeting with his wife.

There are a bunch of elements that make this film work, none the least of which is a star performance by Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber. Rickman plays the slimy German terrorist (he's British, folks!) and would use that role to lead him to others (these days playing a recurring role as Snape). As much as this made Bruce Willis's career, it really vaulted (relatively speaking) Alan Rickman from nowhere.

There's a lot of clever thinking, from the way McClane and Gruber meet each other and Gruber pretends to be an American, then reads a name off a directory, and eventually is handed an unloaded gun.

Sure, the action sequences are a bit much, but it's pretty clever, much like Goldfinger's fiendishly clever idea (to make the gold unusable in Fort Knox, so that it raises the value of the rest of the gold). In this case, Gruber wants to steal money while making it seem like a terrorist act (an idea that would become more relevant some 13 years later).

There's no sense that the Gruber is going to be completely evil (most films like bad guys who is not only bad, but completely devoid of any sense of fairness). He appears as if he's perfectly willing to split the loot (even as many of his sidekicks get killed off).

And perhaps one of the better ideas is the idea of John McClane as the action hero everyman, who tries to do his best, given the circumstances. Given his superhero survival abilities, there's always a sense he's struggling, he's in pain, and that he's never sure things are going right. He's insecure, at times, requiring his buddy Al to talk him through, to make him do the right thing, and eventually admits that he didn't treat his wife that well.

I had seen, for example, Lethal Weapon, which, to me, doesn't hold up at all well, leading from one stupid thing to another, in particular, how much they try to batter the idea that Mel Gibson's character is simply crazy.

As unbelievable as some of the action is, often telegraphed so the audience knows what to think and what to see, Die Hard still pushes the right buttons, perhaps none so inspiring as Beethoven's Ninth being played over the opening of the vault, once the power has been cut (to be fair, it's completely ridiculous having this vault in a place of work--heck, if it's a Japanese company, put it in Japan!).

Even so, still fun after all these years.

Caring About Cars

Cars hold a kind of nostalgia for Americans. In the 50s, these huge behemoth vehicles were considered the closest thing we'd come to flying, going to space. A machine that was an extension of ourselves, our freedom. Indeed, George Lucas, if anything, still marvels at his days of youth, when drag racing cars provided a rush, the kind he tried to duplicate in American Graffiti, and yes, even The Phantom Menace.

Since the 70s, when oil prices drove gas prices in the US to a dollar a gallon(!), manufacturers came up with ways to make cars more aerodynamic, lighter, smaller. Cars from a decade early might not even make 20 miles to the gallon, while their modern counterparts nearly double that.

But for all the innovations of cars, it's shocking how simple problems have no answers. People simply don't address them.

First one, and this one's a shocker: headlights. For years, I mean years, if you left the headlights on, and left your car, your battery was dead. It happened so often that people needed jumper cables to get a jump from a friend (and not the kind that involves the back seat) or a helpful stranger.

The biggest solution to this problem? Cars that beep at you when you fail to turn off the lights as the key is removed. Has no one, I mean no one, ever considered having lights that turn off when the key is out? Oh, I'm sure the answer is a bit of paranoia. If lights would automatically turn off automatically, who's to say it won't happen when you drive, accidentally? And that might cause an accident.

In essence, the automobile industry has traded off one problem for another, and doesn't seem to have any real solutions to this problem.

The second problem: heat. Every summer, people enter their cars, which roast like an oven. Every winter, it's freezing inside. I suppose there's not so much that can be done in the winter, but can nothing be done during the summer? Is there not some way to ventilate the car?

There are some problems that have better solutions. Once upon a time, it was awkward to move a car seat forward and backwards. That seems to be solved. Removing tires is still a pain, made just difficult enough that women generally feel helpless. There's a funny male/female divide. Clearly, if the task was too hard for men, then no one would (theoretically) be able to do it, but there are some tasks (removing tires) that require just enough strength, that many women are dissuaded. Surely, a sexist bias, I think.

There are other basic things like this that happens in other areas. Windows, for example, has an issue with deleting a file or directory if you are using that file or directory, but it's too stupid to tell you what application is using it. Sometimes you simply have to shut down everything to properly delete the file. Rather than solve useful problems like this (or the lack of true soft linking), Windows prefers to have snazzy interfaces. Thanks guys.

The White Couch

Many years ago, when I was an undergrad, or perhaps an early grad student, I saw a book, innocently titled, The Red Couch. This book was basically what the title said it was. It was about a red couch.

This red couch was brought all across the country. People of all sorts were asked to sit with it. From farmers to city folk. From poor to rich. From famous to obscure. The red couch was put on a boat. It was near a mountain.

Much like the garden gnome sent on flights in Amelie, this red couch, though inanimate, seemed to go through adventures, an artificial man-made creation, starkly red, set against natural backdrops all over the country.

I didn't think much of it at the time, the cleverness of the idea.

In the living room that I live, for the past five or six years, sat a large white couch. It was still in pretty good shape. David Hovemeyer, developer of FindBugs, a tool for finding bugs in Java code, would often spend nights sleeping on this couch. Another Dave would sleep on it as well. I spent a few days here and there.

It was probably six feet in length, and being less than six feet, I could sleep on it comfortably. I thought about bringing it to my new place, but it was pretty large, so I took a smaller loveseat instead.

Tonight, I returned back to house, to pick up a few more things. A father and son were coming by to pick up the large couch. The son was heading to Virginia Tech soon, the site of such tragedy last year. This couch, which had spent its inanimate life in our house was now making a journey down south, down to Blacksburg. It will see more of Virginia Tech than I've seen.

Perhaps I'm a bit nostalgic to point this out. I mean, for most, it's a couch. I just got rid of a bed I had that belonged to a friend, which I inherited (so to speak) from. I realized it was a crappy bed, but it was good for the time I had it. I still have the mattress, but it was kind of useless.

I have to really hand it to Jess for seeing that in all the stuff we'd accumulated over the years, that someone, somewhere would want our stuff, especially if we gave it for free. Several couches, a large dining room table, odds and ends all over. It's not all gone now, but a lot of it is.

It does make me think, from time to time, how much I simply buy things. Some people are very restrained. They don't need much. They don't want much. They are ascetic, spartan. On the other hand, I see something I vaguely like, or think I'll need, and there it goes. I've bought it. The lesson I've (kinda) learned over the years is that you must use the thing you buy as soon as possible. If you leave it around, it ain't getting used.

But as I'm undisciplined, I have stuff, and lots of it. I've gotten to some stage where I can get rid of stuff, but it's not easy. I'm hoping having my own place will do it. But it's a lot of stuff, and already, it occupies much of my open space, though I see that I haven't tried to organize it and make more space.

The white couch, I suspect, have it better. It is inanimate. It moves on. It lives its inanimate life in a new state.

May you see a new set of adventures.

Pressing Matters

I've been into garlic presses ever since the Frugal Gourmet (Jeff Smith) recommended the Susi garlic press (made by Zyliss) lo those many years ago. I had maybe 3-4 of these garlic presses. One of my former roommates once used it to prop something up in a pan and caused the garlic press to turn some odd shade of purple. But then, he did a lot of weird things. He'd make oatmeal, found it too hot to eat, stick in in the freezer, and completely forget it was there. He'd heat something up on the stove, and get bored, go to his room, and read until the pot was burning the food because he completely forgot he was cooking something. This happened not just once, but several times.

Recently, Cooks Illustrated rated garlic presses, and while the Susi press had been winners in years past, the newly declared winner was the Ruhn Kikon Epicurean garlic press. Now, this garlic press isn't exactly cheap. A relatively cheap garlic press might cost 7-8 dollars. The Susi press maybe 15 dollars. This one is 35 dollars.

Even so, it's really neat. The one huge problem with the Susi garlic press was cleaning it. It had a plastic insert you had to use to push the garlic pieces out of the holes. If you lost this piece (and it was easy to do), you'd have a hard time getting out the garlic.

Ruhn Kikon has a particularly clever solution. Most garlic presses require you put the cloves in a small bin, with the holes in the bottom. This bin is tiny, so it's hard to reach inside to clean it. The clever solution? Find a way so there's not a bin.

To give you an analogy. Think of a hallway. At the end of the hallway, there's a door. The door has large holes drilled through it. Imagine a large clove of garlic, big enough to fill the hallway, being pushed through the door with the holes. The garlic extrudes through the holes. But your fingers are huge too. They fill up the hallway, making it tough to clean the hallway.

Now, if the door would open up, then you could reach more easily reach the holes and clean up the press.

Although the mechanism isn't quite like that, it's close enough. Basically, the part with the holes swings away from the side walls, and makes it easier to clean. I still have to try it out mind you.

Oh, I got this mail order via Amazon through a company called The Handy House which surprisingly is about 40 miles north of here.

I had thought that it was lost somewhere along the way, and sent email to see what was going on. I had been used to sending stuff to my company where the receptionist usually lets me know it's arrived, and I picked it up. Instead, being US Postal mail, they did the "obvious" thing, which was put it in my "mailbox", which I rarely check since very few things end up there.

In any case, Ruthy, the person in charge, was very helpful, and was willing to send me a new one if I couldn't find it, but there was no need for that.

On the downside, I got one of the camera tickets. Apparently, I went through a red light and was caught. That kinda sucks.

Puff N Stuff

I had heard some pretty good reviews for a little known indie film called The Puffy Chair. It was said this was a more realistic Little Miss Sunshine.

I happen to like Little Miss Sunshine because the characters aren't so realistic. Greg Kinnear's character, in particular, is a bit exaggerated, but perhaps the entire family is.

What would happen if there was a road trip where the members were a bit more realistic, less amusing, and realistically dysfunctional.

In this case, the film starts off with a guy who wants to go visit his dad and give him a "puffy chair" he found on EBay as a birthday present. They had a chair just like it when they grew up. Initially, he doesn't want to take his girlfriend on the trip. He's meeting up with her when a friend calls, and he prefers to be all pal-y with him, much to her dismay. She can't stand that he spends more time wanting to be with his friends instead of paying attention to her.

He agrees to bring her on the trip. They drop by to see his brother, where they expect they will say hi, and that will be that. But he decides he wants to go along too, and the brother reluctantly agrees, as does his girlfriend, even though they expected to be with one another by themselves during the trip. This already ruins what personal plans they had, and you can already see the friction of the entire situation.

Anyway, after 10 minutes, I couldn't watch anymore. Not that I thought it was so bad, but that I didn't really want to see a realistic portrayal of a family about to implode. It could have been good, but I simply wasn't in the mood to watch it.

I'll probably watch it again later on, but more likely through something like Netflix.