BEA, Miracle Fruit, and Indy 4

I’m at BEA today stalking Neil Gaiman, but I’ll post a couple things here to keep you company in my absence.

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I must buy some of these and have a “flavor tripping” party. It’s a fruit that temporarily rewires your taste buds and makes sour things taste sweet. Read the New York Time Article or buy some.

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I liked Indy 4. It was no Raiders, but nothing is. I think people forget that the Spielberg, Lucas, Ford combo isn’t a sure-fire hit maker. As much as some would argue to the contrary, Temple of Doom: Not such a good movie. I actually think it’s underrated and taken on its own is enjoyable. Just don’t compare it to the other two.

Skull was flawed, but a ludicrously fun ride. The exposition was clunky. The actors had to strain to make some of the dialogue sound natural, and it suffered from Batman Movie Problem #2. (Batman Movie Problem #1 is that the movie is really about the villain. Solved by Batman Begins by not having a strong villain.) Batman Movie Problem #2 is trying to have more main characters than you really need (Batman Returns, Batman Forever, Batman and Robin). Action movies have little time for character development. The more main characters, the less developed any of them are, the less we care about them. The fact that FIVE characters are all walking into the temple at the end, being pursued by another, indicates the movie was trying way too hard.

As for the end, what else were they going to make an Indiana Jones movie set in the 1950’s out of? It’s not any more unbelievable than the Holy Grail or the Lost Ark. I applaud the movie for going where it did and having fun with it.

I Found Your Camera

Lost a camera? Found a camera? Took a picture of a stranger you can't fine?

Check out Found Cameras and Orphaned pictures at ifoundyourcamera.blogspot.com

Busy Busy

I'm way too busy this week to come up with any original content.

I got this from Boing Boing and they got it from Charlie's Diary.

Charlie Stross is hosting an open conversation on other things we could have bought with the money wasted in Iraq: for example, we could have sent a colony of over 500 astronauts to Mars, provided modern nuclear power to the USA and shut down its coal plants, built modern cities for 600,000,000 Chinese people to live in, and so on:

For $6Tn we could buy a lot of juice — a quarter of our global civilization's energy budget would go carbon-neutral at a stroke. (Yes, we just solved our carbon dioxide emissions problem by switching to a nuclear economy.) This probably isn't the ideal way of dealing with our environmental problems, and it's a naive treatment of the costs (has anyone done a proper treatment of the economic implications of shifting the planet over to a nuclear economy, say to the same extent as France?) but it's thought-provoking.

Finally, there's all the other little stuff we could solve by pointing $513Bn at it, never mind $6000Bn. Eliminating childhood diseases in South-East Asia? Piffle — Bill and Melinda Gates are trying to do that out of their pocket lint. Build first-world grade housing in shiny new cities for 600 million Chinese peasants, nearly a tenth of the planetary population? Yes, this budget will cover that. What else?

Yes, I'm asking you: what would you do with the cost of the Iraq war (take your pick: $513Bn or $6000Bn) in your budget? Colonise Mars? Solve our carbon emission problem and fix global warming? House half a billion people? Or something else ...?

(And what isn't going to happen now, because we pissed it all away on the desert sands?)

Internet Memes gone Wild

Do I really need to meme this? Really? It doesn't really need any help from me, but it is super cool.

It's the video for Weezer's new song Pork and Beans. It references 24 internet memes. Then got released on You Tube as it's own meme. The Valleywag blog has embedded all the original You Tube videos into one handy place if you want to understand all of the subtle nuances of the video. The only thing that's missing is a Rickroll.

Otherwise simply enjoy:


Weezer's Blue Album is one of my favorite albums of all time. Before all my friends jump down my throat and say "What about the Green Album?" "What about Pinkerton?" realize that I've never really heard those albums. It's entirely possible they're better. I just wouldn't know.

Exit 155: Colfax Mingo

(picture credit)

Before the show last night, I was talking with Laurie and somehow we got on the topic of interesting highway exit names. Laurie went to college in Iowa, and I’ve noted a number of exit signs off interstates in Iowa that would make good character names. Of course, in the moment, I could only think of one (the one I use as a character name in my novel: Wilton Muscatine). Of course, she says, Muscatine!

Then she mentioned the Colfax/Mingo exit! Of course I know that exit. How could I not remember such a wonderful name as Colfax/Mingo? I told her I would try to name a character that night either Colfax or Mingo in honor of the exit.

The playwright we got was Beckett. While many people are afraid of Beckett, when done well he can be quite funny. He is, after all, an Absurdist. We did some Beckett in rehearsal and discovered the supreme, giggly joy of improvising Beckett and turning him into a musical. I couldn’t have been happier with the playwright for my final show.

I went on stage with Laurie to start the first scene of the show, and she immediately named me Mingo. I of course named her Colfax, which nearly made her break. Fortunately in the world of Beckett’s names (Estragon, Pozzo, Lucky) Colfax and Mingo fit right in.

The show ended up being a very interesting commentary on class structure complete with a desolate plain, master/servant relationships, and talking worms (very Labyrinth). I think Beckett would have enjoyed it and left humming the song “Tea with Leaves” that Laurie and I sung. Or should I say: that Colfax and Mingo sang.


(picture credit)

Goldfinger

I went to see the movie Goldfinger at the Castro on Monday night. It truly is the best Bond film, and I can say that because last year I watched every Bond film in the order they were released. (I’ll do that again someday and blog about it.) Everything about that movie is a cliché, except that nothing about that movie was a cliché when it was released. Keep that in mind if you watch it. It’s the origin of a million imitations, but it’s the original. What seems tame now was cutting edge then.



Perhaps the best part of the movie is that Bond spends most of it drunk, captured, and incompetent, as Nigel Kendall of The Times amusingly pointed out.

I also bought my tickets to see Indy 4 at the Castro on Sunday night. I’m not expecting it to be brilliant. I just hope it’s good. I am however looking forward to seeing it on the gigantic screen at the Castro.

Theater: The Musical!

I haven’t done much to overtly plug the show that I’m in on this blog, but Thursday night is your last chance to see me perform in the show.

The show is Theater: The Musical. We get a suggestion from the audience for a playwright from the last 100 years or so (no Sophocles, Euripides, Shakespeare, or Johnson) who never wrote a musical (no Brecht or Sondheim) and then improvise a 2 hour show as if that playwright had written a musical. We have no preplanned characters, story lines, or songs. The less we preplan, the easier it is.

So far we’ve done David Mamet (x2), Eugene O’Neil, Neil Simon (x2), Tennessee Williams (x2), Steve Martin, and Woody Allen. The O’Neil show was dark and depressing. The Neil Simon shows were light and hysterical. We let the audience choose the playwright, so you’re in control of what you get.

You can read all about my experiences rehearsing and performing the show at my improv blog. Or, you can come see me Thursday night!

For tickets click HERE.

When Hilary Lost

Hilary Clinton’s made so many mistakes that cost her the presidency. The biggest, in my opinion, was not running 4 years ago. She could’ve beat Bush. Heck, Kerry almost beat Bush and he was never someone to get excited about. He was just someone to vote for instead of Bush.

She got greedy. She thought “why run against an incumbent while I’m a junior senator? Why not wait, let Bush screw the country up even more, and then run as a more experienced senator. It’s my turn. No one can beat me.”

Except that 4 years later people want change, not experience. Putting a black man in the White House is inherently change whether he affects any change or not. His existence is change. Putting a woman in the White House would have the same effect, if her last name weren’t “Clinton”.

Now she’s blaming her failure on sexism. I don’t think that’s why she’s lost. It’s ridiculous to suggest that a black man with the name “Barak Obama,” the son of a Muslim, had an advantage over an older, more experienced, white Clinton simply because she was a woman. She could have easily won this nomination had she played it differently.

I’m sure she encountered sexism, and hopefully this will raise awareness of sexism in this country, but has she really experienced more sexism than he’s experienced racism? Is she really claiming that on the same day she wins Kentucky with nearly 70% of the white vote? That’s the implication, and it’s almost as offensive as someone yelling “iron my shirt” at her during a rally.

Face it, Hilary, you lost this election four years ago when the country needed you and you sat on your hands and looked the other way.

I was right. Go!

I was right. Mike Gaiman is coming to my show the weekend I’m at BEA stalking Neil. Oh well, I’d rather stalk Neil anyway.

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I just heard this song while streaming WXRT from Chicago and was reminded of the video’s brilliance:

'Tis Pity She's a Whore - MUST SEE

Tara’s not allowed to read this blog post until after she sees the show. I don’t think she reads this blog anyway, but people who know her do, so don’t tell her.

Impact’s ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore is fucking brilliant. You should buy tickets right now and go see it as soon as you can. It was written 400 years ago by John Ford, but it’s filled with more sex, violence, and taboos than a Tarantino film. A.C.T. will be doing it in June, but that production will be more expensive, less intimate, and not as good. Go see this one.

I am now about to vent my rage at the intermission placement. Please remember, in spite of this, the show is brilliant and a must see.

Live theater is not a movie. At a movie you can get up and leave if you need to use the bathroom, stretch your legs, or otherwise need to give your butt a rest. You cannot do this in live theater without making a scene and disturbing the actors. That is why I have big problems with any show that makes you sit significantly more than hour without a break. As with anything there are exceptions, but as a rule if I have to sit longer than that without an intermission I feel mistreated and otherwise disrespected by the production.

You may remember from my review of Figaro that I complained about its 1 hour and 40 minute first half. That was at Berkeley Rep where the seats are at least comfortable. ‘Tis Pity’s intermission comes at 1 hour and 30 minutes, and that’s on uncomfortable seats in the heat of the basement of La Val’s. I’m sorry you CANNOT DO THAT. Period. End of Story. The damage caused to the overall enjoyment of the show by the sheer physical torture of sitting in La Val’s that long far outweighs any artistic benefit or reasoning behind such an intermission placement.

I spent the last half hour of the first half checking my watch and praying the intermission would come every time there was a blackout. I should have been paying attention to the brilliant show, but I was not. That’s a BIG problem.

Not only is the placement unfortunate from an endurance perspective, but the second half runs just 30 minutes, leaving the show feeling incredibly unbalanced. I counted 5 earlier opportunities to take the intermission, the first and most obvious being 65 minutes into the show.

I realize at this point it would be all but impossible to move the intermission, but I implore the director to do it. The imbalance should have been caught and corrected before the show opened, and now it’s probably tragically too late. I say tragically because the show is otherwise brilliant and the intermission placement is a needless blemish that frankly threatens to ruin the show.

Now, back to the brilliance… The performances are exceedingly strong (I’d list the strongest, but I’d just be copying the entire program). A handful of actors needed a scene or two to warm up, but then even they were wonderful. The action is tense, the effects shocking, and climax not to be missed.

YOU MUST GO SEE IT, just use the bathroom before it starts, bring your own seat cushion, and be prepared for a long first act.

One of those sports related posts

Earlier this week Asdrúbal Cabrera turned an unassisted triple play in the Indians game. That’s when a player records all three outs of an inning on one play without the help of any other player (an assist). Cabrera’s was a text book example. The runners on first and second were going with the pitch. The batter hit a sharp line drive up the middle. Cabrera made a great catch (1 out) stepped on second to force the lead runner (2 out) and tagged the runner who had been on first (3 out) now standing helplessly at second.

This is the rarest and most anticlimactic feat in baseball. There’s no build up to it. No one’s watching the game thinking “oh, this is a prime spot for an unassisted triple play”. And it’s over in seconds.

A four homer game (where one player hits four homers) is the next most rare. Ok, it’s actually the rarest in modern baseball history, but if you count the 2 four homer games prior to 1900 it’s the second most rare. (13 post 1900, 15 all time. 14 unassisted triple plays all time and all since 1900.) A four homer game has a fair amount of build up and anticipation. Once a batter has three homers in a game, every other time they come up to the plate you know you have a shot at witnessing history.

The third rarest feat in the “triple crown” of rarities is a perfect game (where a pitcher retires all 27 batters he faces with none reaching base). There have been 17 perfect games with several notable near misses. (Milt Pappas went 8 and 2/3 before giving up a questionable walk. Pedro Martinez pitched 9 perfect innings before giving up a double in the 10th. Harvey Haddix pitched 12 perfect innings in 1959 before allowing a baserunner on an error.)

A perfect game has the most build up and is the most heart-attack inducing. A perfect game hasn’t happened, until it’s over. Until then, every pitch to every hitter carries with it the potential of ending it.

A four homer game is the most singular effort, meaning a highly skilled hitter gets good pitches and makes the most of them. A perfect game, while an amazing feat for the pitcher, relies heavily on the fielders. A pitcher has no control over where a ball goes once it’s hit. An unassisted triple play is blind luck. There’s very little skill involved. It’s all about being in the right place at the right time.

Which is why I find them so interesting. The only triple play of any kind turned in a World Series was an unassisted one turned in 1920 (pictured). (The only no-hitter in post-season play was Don Larson’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series.) There were 6 unassisted triple plays in the 1920’s including ones on back-to-back days in 1927. Then 65 years passed with only 1. There have been 4 since 2000.

Completely random.

Ban Overturned!

After a long hard fight, finally, the most ridiculous ban has been overturned:

You can now buy foie gras in Chicago.

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I can kind of talk now, by the way. Sort of. But not much. That's why I'm keeping this brief.

Diner Dinner

Click on the images to enlarge and read the blog.

I'm Speechless

How sports and pop culture saved me from eating expired soup

I blew out my voice this weekend in my show, and so I decided I wanted soup for dinner, figuring the warm brothy goodness would be good for my tender vocal chords. I picked up some Campbell’s Chunky Chicken Noodle Soup at the Roxie and head home to work some more on draft 4.0 of my novel.

After completely losing track of time, I put the soup on, eager to slurp it down. As I’m about to pour it out into a bowl, I go to rinse out the empty can for the recycling when I notice an ad on the lid for Super Bowl XL, or Super Bowl Extra-Large as I liked to call it.

Super Bowl XL was in 2006.

A quick look at the expiration date on the bottom of the can confirmed the soup had long since expired.

I’m not a big NFL fan. I will watch the Bears if they’re winning, but mostly I only follow the playoffs and the Super Bowl (and the Bears were in that a few years ago). Those are the only games that matter anyway, and the Super Bowl is such an icon of popular culture I feel compelled to pay attention to it.

And were it not for my knowledge of sports and my feeling of obligation to popular culture, I WOULD HAVE EATEN EXPIRED SOUP FOR DINNER.

I might have died.

Small World 3 - sort of

I’ve blogged before about my fondness for Neil Gaiman. I’ve also mentioned my new friend Laurie who’s in Un-Scripted’s Theater: The Musical and how I met someone from my hometown at her birthday party.

Turns out that Laurie is old friends with Neil Gaiman’s son Mike! He’s local to the Bay Area and will be coming to our show at some point. Mike, not Neil.

Now I just need to figure out how to use this somehow to my advantage. Of course, with my luck, Mike will come to the show the same weekend I’m down in L.A. at BEA stalking Neil. Did I say “stalking”? I meant going to the Children’s Author Breakfast and waiting in long lines for him to sign books and trying to corner him so I can ask “How are the bees?” and “Will you read my book and give me advice?”

That’s not “stalking” is it?

Craig Ferguson

My friend Miranda was on the Craig Ferguson show last night neighing like a horse. Seriously. You're probably thinking, how much like a horse can she sound? It's really surprising:





She'll be on again tonight! They brought her in to record it for Craig's sound effects board on the show. She's getting paid well for it too.

Miranda: Professional horse caller

Donuts

I must go here: Voodoo Donuts

Home of this:


Two of my favorite things: bacon and donuts. All that's missing is a martini and a pretty girl.

I suspect my girlfriend and I will make a road-trip and all those things can come together at once!

Bank of a Whore House?

I’ve been a Bank of America customer for a long time now. I’ve never had any problems with them, but I’ve never been particularly thrilled either. They are what they are. They’re a bank with ATMs on every corner. Works for me.

I’ve considered switching in recent years, not because of anything they’ve done to me as a customer, but because I didn’t agree with some of their moves as a corporation. If I owned stock, I would have sold it. As I didn’t, I was left considering taking my business elsewhere, but I’ve been lazy and their online banking is probably the best in the business.

Now, however, they’ve gone and done something truly stupid. They’ve been trying to brand the color red for some reason. I guess they figured brown worked so well for UPS, why not co-opt the color red? In an effort to do this, they’ve replaced the signs on their banking centers with ones with big red backgrounds and surrounded their ATMs with giant glowing red shells.

It looks so cheap and tawdry. I can’t help but look at the ATMs and think I can now get money and a blow job there. Have they never heard of the concept of the “red light district”? Who thought this was a good idea? I’m just waiting to walk by the bank and see a woman in her underwear looking bored in the window.

Maker Faire!

I went to Maker Faire on Sunday.

It’s really hard to describe exactly what Maker Faire is, but it’s fantastic. Imagine a giant craft fair. I know, it doesn’t sound that interesting yet. Now think of coolest thing you can possibly imagine and combine it with that craft faire. I know, hard to believe. Throw in outdoor festival food booths and anything and everything you could possibly make yourself including gigantic rebar sculptures, wooden bicycles, homebuilt RV’s, and…

A giant robotic giraffe:


A Diet Coke and Mentos Fountian! (If you didn't know, adding a Mentos to a Diet Coke has explosive results.)


I did not see the Mentos fountain live as I was to too busy watching:
ROBOT WARS!!!


Ok, that footage was actually from last year’s Maker Faire (which I also attended) and it lacks the entertaining play-by-play commentary from the announcer, but all the video of this year’s is hard to see.

You might look at the crowds in the giraffe video and think “that’s not many people,” but that was last year. This year they pre-sold more tickets than the entire attendance last year. There was a mile long backup getting off the freeway. It was packed!

And so worth it! If you happen to live in Austin, go to Maker Faire Austin this fall. You'll probably get to see my favorite thing from Maker Faire: The life sized Mousetrap!



And I didn't even mention all the really cool stuff to buy.

Shined - A Friday Bonus Post

I just got my shoes shined professionally for the first time in years. Ok, I didn’t get them shined exactly as they’re suede. Instead I had them stoned and brushed, which is what I gather one does to suede shoes rather than shining them.

All the pervious times I’ve had my shoes shined by a pro, the shiner was an old man. Not today, my friend. I went to the shoe shine place in the Crocker Galleria near the drycleaners where my show pants were living and in need of liberation, and I was pleasantly surprised to see the shiner was an attractive young woman, probably in her late 20’s with short red hair.

I must say, it was an entirely different experience, not only because she was a woman, but because the process of stoning and brushing felt way more like a foot massage than a shoe shine.

I also noticed that were she more buxom and wearing a low-cut shirt, from my vantage point up in the chair, I would have had a wonderful view of her cleavage, begging the question: why is there not a chain of Hooters-esque shoe shine stands littering every urban center of this country?

I’m not asking that because I’m dying for there to be such a chain. My inner feminine side apologizes to all women for suggesting it, especially the one who shined my shoes this afternoon. It just seems like something someone would have tried already. If not some sleazy entrepreneur who doesn’t want to resort to pimping, at least some down-on-her-luck college student paying her way through school should have thought of this by now. This is America, after all. I’m just surprised.

Maybe there’d be too much of a feminist backlash against having women in bikini tops attending to business men’s feet, but let’s face it, a lot of business men would pay extra for that, especially in the guise of a respectable shoe shine.

DC Cabs

Washington D.C. taxis are switching to meters starting today. In case you find yourself wondering “How did they NOT have meters?” they used to use a zoned system. You were charged based on how many zones you crossed.

As a former resident of D.C., I can tell you, zones were a pain in the ass. You never had any idea if the price the cabbie charged you was accurate or not unless you had a GPS system with you and were tracking the exact route with an overlay of the zone map. Why did they have this funky zoned system for so long? Several reasons.

1. In case it’s never occurred to you, D.C. is not a state. People who live there have no representation in Congress and yet, technically speaking, they are governed by Congress. (D.C. license plates now carry the slogan “Taxation Without Representation.”) In recent decades, the city government has taken over some measure of control of the city, but even so the city council and mayor can only do so much without an act of Congress. This is seriously messed up, which you would know if you ever happened to live there.
2. The way the zones were drawn, congressmen got cheap cab fares for their most popular routes.

Now, since Congress had no incentive to change the system and ruin their sweet deal, and since Congress governs D.C., it never got changed. Somehow the city council found a workaround and instituted it themselves.

So now you can ride a cab in D.C. without secretly suspecting that the cabbie just made up a number for the fare when you got to your destination.

One step closer to D.C. statehood.