Rebuilding: Year 40 for the Padres

As part of the latest round of rebuilding, the Padres traded Khalil Greene to the Cardinals; unfortunately, this was a year too late.  Yes, Padres management wanted to keep the competitive core from the last few years together for a 2008 run to the playoffs, but Greene, while valuable defensively anywhere, has never been comfortable at Petco.  While his overall numbers were great in 2007, it was not a breakthrough at home; his OPS was .670 home versus .841 away, and the chance to ship him somewhere else for a player more valuable at Petco slipped through the Padres' fingers.

Leaving Las Vegas (1995)

Oh, the injustice of the Academy's system for honoring actors.  How can Nicholas Cage win the best actor award and Elisabeth Shue not win best actress?  Are either of their performances possible without the other?  Well, Cage had less competition (and Thompson and Shue were robbed by sentimental/political voters giving one to Susan Sarandon).  Sigh.  In the brief time he has, Julian Sands is also excellent in helping to establish Shue's background (I'd give Richard Lewis his props, too, but let's be realistic).

And really, the performances are why you should watch this movie, because the script/direction are mostly adequate with one serious stumble.

**spoilers**

That stumble, of course, is the scene with the college boys, which is clumsily handled and the outcome obvious from the moment Sera goes out on the town after kicking Ben out of her home. We already know that her life as a prostitute is hard; we already know that it's dangerous; we don't need to brutally punish Sera with uncharacteristically bad judgement because she's piqued by Ben's "infidelity".  I know that they want Sera hurt just before the end of the film so that she can be healed, but I think it's unnecessary because she's been hurt enough.  If they must have her further injured, then the scene and setup needed to be handled with greater tact, and ideally so that we don't see it coming, because as it is, it disrupts the flow of the movie.

No Country for Old Men (2007)

I watched it "instantly" on netflix because Sarah wouldn't want to see it (she liked Fargo, but feels no need to see it again -- the Coen brothers are very good, but we can generally do without the graphic violence).  Near as I can tell, No Country for Old Men is basically Fargo in southwest Texas circa 1980.  Same archetypes, similar story, beautiful shots of desert (hot this time vs. cold).  Despite any shortcomings (Frances McDormand >> Tommy Lee Jones; Javier Bardem's acting == good but waaaay overhyped, is he really any better than Schwarzenegger in the first Terminator movie?  I didn't think so), I was hooked by the opening shots and then transfixed for 2 hours.

I subscribe to the "Motherlode" blog  via Google Reader, and was interested in "Paying Kids to Be Good".  There was a fair amount of confusion on the comments board about how Lisa Belkin's reward system worked; some immediately understood that it was set up like the Prisoner's Dilemma, while at least one seemed to be under the impression that it went: children misbehave -> parent offers bribe, so that the children would misbehave any time they

wanted a bribe.  So much for the reading comprehension skills of the internet public.

There was also an ongoing debate about reward vs. punishment for dealing with misbehaving children on the comments board; however, you can set up this system so that it's either reward *or* punishment, like so:

Punishment. The child's weekly allowance is $10.  For each day either child misbehaves, they each lose $0.50.  For each day the child misbehaves more than their sibling, they lose an additional $0.50.

Reward.  The child's weekly allowance is $3.  For each day the child misbehaves less than their sibling, they get $0.50.  For each day neither child misbehaves, they each get another $0.50.

The same behavior in a given week leads to the same allowance, and it seems to me that the one the children respond to best is situation-dependent.

Papillon (1973)

"Hey you bastards, I'm still here!"

This is one of those films I can respect without actually liking.  First you have to get beyond the fact that everyone is supposed to be French, which is especially laughable in the case of Steve McQueen.  There are some really good scenes between McQueen and Hoffman, but unfortunately there's a lot of screen time between them.  

Political Shenanigans (VT 2008 November vote edition)

In the latest North Avenue News, Kurt Wright's legislative report contains his concerns over the possibility that this year's gubernatorial race might be decided by the legislature.  He writes:

I hope during the next session a constitutional amendment process is started that changes the way we elect the Governor and Lieutenant Governor if no candidate receives over 50% of the vote: The way the system is currently set up, if no candidate gets a majority then the Legislature decides the race.  This invites the potential for a political decision to be made by the General Assembly where the loser wins!

This is not true, for according to the Constitution of Vermont (see § 47. [Election of governor, lieutenant-governor and treasurer]), there is no winner if no candidate has received the majority of the popular vote.  If the race goes to the General Assembly, they consider the top three vote getters, so the only "losers" at that point are candidates outside the top three. 

Now, if Kurt disagrees with the State Constitution, that's his right, so let's see what else he has to say in the legislative report:

You may not think it would happen but if you listen to the answers being given by an awful lot of candidates this year (check out the Burlington Free Press Legislative surveys) you will see what I mean. One candidate said this: “I’ll vote for the most qualified candidate--that is if she doesn’t win it outright.” Others have said they will use their own personal form of instant runoff voting to determine who would have won if we had IRV in place for this election. This means they will try, on their own, to figure out how you would have cast your second place vote if you had one. In my opinion that is outrageous! This is an attempt to install their own personal choice for Governor, even if they lost— and perhaps lost by a significant margin.

This type of political shenanigans should not be possible—especially by secret ballot vote, as it is now. Let’s begin the process to change this system.  It must begin in the Senate, so we will have to start calling our Chittenden County Senators after the election and try to persuade them to get the ball rolling on this much needed change.

I have to agree that I wouldn't want to vote for a legislative candidate who was laying on the BS about using a "personal form of IRV" to determine who to vote for if the gubernatorial vote came to the legislature; however, I have no problems with a legislator who says “I’ll vote for the most qualified candidate--that is if she doesn’t win it outright.”  Outside of needing to consider the top three vote-getters, the Constitution places no restrictions on who the legislature can vote for, so voting for the candidate who did not take the plurality of the vote is not political shenanigans.  To me, suggesting that voting according to the current rules laid down by the Constitution of Vermont is "political shenanigans" is "political shenanigans".  

Also note that Kurt doesn't provide a suggestion as to how the vote should be conducted -- being a cynic, I thought that perhaps this entire bit was simply a ploy to discourage Democrats from voting for Symington if the vote goes to the legislature, so I asked him for his opinion, and Rep. Wright responded:

Actually in this instance I think there are a number of proposals that would be better than the one we have.  I would favor the one we had in Burlington--top vote getter wins with a threshold number such as 40 % that has to be passed.  Either that or just top vote getter wins.  IRV would also be preferable to a system that has one side openly talking about installing the loser. Hanging chads in Florida?  Imagine the Vermont Legislature installing the loser by secret ballot vote!!  In this case any of these proposals would be better.

Okay, I'm glad that he has actual opinions about what could be institutued, and can respect the general concerns about the process (especially the secret ballot), though as noted above, he is incorrect in thinking that the Legislature could install "the loser" as governor.  

UPDATE: Kurt writes, concerning my concern in thinking that the Legislature could install "the loser" as governor:

Technically correct of course.  But in the minds of most Vermonters the person with the most votes has won, or should have---and if the Legislature voted to install a candidate that finished 8-10 or 20 points behind... believe me there would be a backlash the next election and the understandable reaction would be that the "loser" had won, despite all techncal definitions to the contrary. 

Very true, though I would still prefer our leaders to be technically correct where possible.  One can express the opinion that the current process can be improved without resorting to inflammatory rhetoric like "This invites the potential for a political decision to be made by the General Assembly where the loser wins!"

Connor went to preschool today as the Witch King of Angmar...

...entirely on his own initiative (he was originally going to be Edward Teach).  Sure, he looks more like a hobbit, but you can imagine how proud we are of him.  :-)

We've been reading pieces of the Lord of the Rings to him, and he likes the Black Riders. This was after two consecutive years of Max, King of the Wild Things. In 2005, he was Sunny Baudelaire (Sarah was Violet and I was Klaus) disguised as Chabo the Wolf Baby. That, I think, was even geekier than the Witch King, but being Lord of the Nazgul was his idea.

Kitty lost & found

Monday evening, we couldn't find Kitty (Connor's lovey) at bedtime, and we realized we hadn't seen Kitty in a while -- we didn't think Kitty had gone to school that morning, and the last time we were sure we'd seen Kitty was Saturday afternoon when we took a walk to the gazebo in the park. Tuesday, while Connor is at school, we look all over the house and can't find Kitty. That afternoon I walk to the gazebo (it had been raining all day) and can't find Kitty. We ask Connor if he's seen Kitty, and he says Calico can hear Kitty crying. Sarah is starting to get upset, and spends Wednesday walking along our path to the park, going to every place we went to over the weekend (Borders, the library, the farmer's market), called Parks & Recreation, and sent a message to the neighborhood e-mail forum. I tell Connor that Kitty has gone to visit Calico for a while. By this afternoon, we're pretty sure we're not going to see Kitty again, but it hasn't really hit Connor yet. And then... we set Connor up watch some Planet Earth, and we leave the room for a couple of minutes, and when Sarah checks in on him, Kitty is sitting in his lap. We ask, "Where did you find Kitty?" "Calico brought him back." "Was he under the couch?" "Yeah, Calico brought him back." Wait a minute, we looked under the couch. "Was he in that box?" "Yeah." Oh, okay, we're not getting a straight answer on this one. We're just happy Kitty's back.

The Sisters Mortland (Beauman, Sally) 2005

Sarahmac recommended this one, and she got it recommended from Chinaberry. I can't exactly call it an enjoyable read because it's so depressing, but the plot is engaging (it was hard to put down) and the characters are vivid.  

<> 

Unfortunately, it requires two suspensions of disbelief on Dan's doorstep.  The first is when Julia accuses Dan of seducing her daughter.  I'm really supposed to believe that Julia, the intelligent and rational Julia, believes that if Dan were up to no good, he would have answered the door that morning, much less had a protracted conversation?  Maybe I'll buy that one.  Later on, however, I'm supposed to believe that Dan, even in his current state of mind, is so bent on getting himself killed that he's not even slightly curious as to why Julia would bring his beloved godson Tom to his neighborhood?  Sorry, that I can't swallow.

Battle for Wesnoth (v1.4.5)

[posted 3/26/9, backdated to 10/21/8 because that's when I jotted down all the notes for the post, and I haven't played Wesnoth since then]

The Battle for Wesnoth is essentially a free, updated Warlords.  I loved the original Warlords in college (played a few all-night games when exams were done) and enjoyed Darklords Rising.  Wesnoth carries on the tradition beautifully.

The good:

• it's free
• the GUI is fairly intuitive so that you can get started playing pretty quickly, and it does an especially good job on things like clearly showing you where a selected unit can reach on the board, or when you don't have a unit selected, when you mouse over an enemy unit's square, you can see which squares are reachable by that unit.  /Extremely/ useful in many scenarios for timing your charge.

The somewhat frustrating:

• despite the intuitive interface, there's a lot to keep track of.  Every unit is individualized with two special traits; while this is kindof neat, it means that you need to remember, among members of the same type of unit, which guy is the "strong" one, which is the "fast" one, and so on.  Moreover, there are all sorts of other interactions, from the terrain you're standing on, to what time of day it is, to I have no idea what.  The time of day thing really kills because just when you start to get your units on a roll... oops, it's night time and now you have to regroup and wait out the night for a "safer" time to go on the attack.  All this is difficult to make intuitive in the GUI, so you have to go read the doc (boooooring!  and yes, I know, SPSS pays me to write documentation) which is not really complete in terms of understanding how certain things are calculated.
• Leveling up your characters should be fun, but it actually causes problems because you can get through the first few scenarios because you're smarter than the AI, but eventually you're overwhelmed by superior firepower because you didn't level your guys up enough, or bought the "wrong" improvements or the "wrong" guys. I actually think this was a major problem in Warlords campaigns, too.   This was a problem in Wizardry 8 (and Oblivion, too, and in all sorts of other games), actually, because certain areas are "leveled" to be challenging for your character level, but if you didn't maximize your character development, you were in trouble later.

The "I'm not so sure"

• I sortof like the turn limit on scenarios in Wesnoth.  There were a few scenarios in Warlords where the strategy was to simply hold against the first few waves of high-level enemy troops and then strike back at the mid-level troops.  Booooring.  A problem in Wesnoth is that your leader has to sit on his duff in your home base to recruit/recall, and if you haven't played the map before you don't necessarily know whether it's a map on which you need to do 1, 2, or more recruitments to get through the enemies, and generally you (a) run out of time if you guess too few and have to go back, or (b) might not have enough money going into the next scenario if you guess too many. Really, I feel like I need to go back to the start of the campaign and build up a few true "heroes" who go through the campaign with me.
• There's a delicate balance between finishing "too early" and not getting enough XP for your guys, and finishing "too late" and not having enough money to carry over because you don't get the early finish bonus.  Again, if you haven't played the map before, you can't really know what to do.

"but you better throw out the rest of that soap, just in case"

Last week I got a bad case of poison ivy on my lower legs, and over the weekend, started getting hives all over my ankles and torso. Sarahmac had had a similar rash in August, which the doctor put down to "mysterious allergenic reaction", put her on mega-antihistimes, and it eventually cleared up. On the way to the doctor's office, she pointed out that I had just started a new bar of soap -- one of those bars that I used to collect from hotels, and had finally decided to get rid of by using up -- and given her past experience with rashes from nasty hotel soap, perhaps that was the culprit. I tell my doctor about the soap, she looks at how the rash on my ankles surrounds the worst of the poison ivy and notes that sometimes a bad case of poison ivy will cause a more systemic reaction, and then she says, "but you better throw out the rest of that soap, just in case." Oh, yeah.

Changing Places (Lodge, David) 1975

I'm reading the Penguin paperback, which has the following quote from the Sunday Times of London:

Not since Lucky Jim has such a funny book about academic life come my way.

And for the first 100-odd pages I thought the 60's and 70's must have been a tragic era indeed if this was the best that the "comic academia" genre had to offer.  Then, chapter (section?) 3. Corresponding begins, and I see that Lodge's genius is vested in letter-writing.  Finally I was laughing out loud and reading sections to Sarah (who generously sometimes even pays attention when I interrupt her in the middle of her own book).  My final opinion, in fact, is that one could simply dispense with the first two chapters (sections?) and start with the third.  The final sections are necessary to know how it all turns out, but the letters in Corresponding tell you just about all you need to know from the first half of the book.

Kill Doctor Lucky gets Sold Out

I really like Cheapass Games, and big part of that is because of their philosophy that games cost too much because of the generic parts that game companies sell to you over and over again.  Kill Doctor Lucky might be my favorite Cheapass game, and so I was naturally shocked and ashamed to discover that you can no longer buy the Cheapass version of the game new; you must buy the "high quality deluxe edition" that comes with:

• Full-color board of the Lucky Mansion
• 96 full-color cards
• 8 pawns
• 30 spite tokens
• Full-color rules sheet

... basically, all the crap that the founding philosophy said we could do without!  Now that's irony for you.

Now, I'm not opposed to the existence of a high quality deluxe edition, but I would really like to be able to buy the original Cheapass version.

2008 MLB Awards : NL Cy Young

A lot of pitchers played well in the NL this year.  Johan Santana led the league in ERA, but failed to take the Mets to the Promised Land; moreover, I would argue he was actually better last season in the AL (lower WHIP; higher K/BB; higher K/9).  Brandon Webb led the league in Wins, but threw three consecutive stinkers while his team was trying to win the NL West (8/26 against this year's division doormat Padres and 8/31 and 9/06 against the Dodgers, who ultimately won the division) and saw his ERA balloon from 2.74 to 3.42, ending the season at 3.30 and 10th in the NL.  

So it really has to go to Linecum.  

2008 MLB Awards : AL MVP

Every year, at least one award has to be a wide-open mess, right?  That's the AL MVP this year.  The only guys in the top-10 OPS who are going to the postseason are Youkilis (#4) and Guerrero (just sneaking into the #10 spot).  It would be hard to give it to Guerrero because his revival coincides with Texeira's arrival in Los Angeles of Anaheim.  Milton Bradley led the league in OPS, but barely cracked 500 plate appearances and so his totals aren't very impressive.  Alex Rodriguez's numbers are nearly identical to Carlos Quentin's; A-rod has to do better to win another MVP at this point, and Quentin has been absent due to his own stupidity when his team needed him -- would the White Sox and Twins be playing a 1 game playoff if Quentin had been available for all of September?  I'm guessing not.  Huff through Cabrera all have nice numbers, but their teams didn't exactly contend this year. 

 

Then we have 6 guys in the 11-20 OPS spots who are going to the playoffs (or were contending for the playoffs on the last day of the season); Jermaine Dye (#11 with .884), Justin Morneau (#12, .877), Evan Longoria (#15, .874), Carlos Pena (#16, .871), Joe Mauer (t-17, .869), and Dustin Pedroia (t-17, .869).  15 points of OPS is barely any separation at all, but they can be differentiated a bit along the following lines:

• "high" SLG, "low" OBP : Dye & Longoria
• "middle" SLG, OBP : Morneau, Pena, Pedroia
• "low" SLG, "high" OBP : Mauer 

To my mind, each of these guys needs to do something different/better than Youkilis to remain in consideration.  That knocks out Dye, Longoria, and Pena, all of whom are #3-5 hitters with lower OBP, SLG and totals than Youkilis.

So... Morneau has more runs and RBIs than Youkilis.  I've read an awful lot about how many at-bats Morneau has had "with men on base", but I want to separate out the stats for when there's just a runner on first from those with men in scoring position.  Here are Morneau's lines:

By Situation

AB

R

H

2B

3B

HR

RBI

BB

HBP

SO

SB

CS

AVG

OBP

SLG

OPS

Scoring Position

181

79

63

16

3

8

99

38

1

17

0

0

.348

.443

.602

1.045

1B Only

152

11

47

11

0

8

23

16

2

30

0

1

.309

.382

.539

.921

None On

287

7

77

20

1

7

7

22

0

37

0

0

.268

.320

.418

.738

And Youkilis's:

Scoring Position

147

66

55

14

1

8

78

23

3

24

1

1

.374

.445

.646

1.091

1B Only

121

17

41

11

0

13

29

16

2

21

2

4

.339

.424

.752

1.176

None On

270

8

72

18

3

8

8

23

7

63

0

0

.267

.340

.444

.784

So neither is particularly useful when no one's on base.  Youkilis is considerably better when there's only a guy on 1st, since he's got more power.  Both are about equally efficient driving in runners in scoring position (very roughly 99/219 = .452 RBIs/PA with RISP for Morneau vs. 78/170=.459 for Youkilis -- this doesn't take into account the total number of runners in scoring position, but I don't have time to do that work right now).  I'd probably take Youkilis as MVP over Morneau.

That leaves Mauer and Pedroia, "table setters" for Youkilis and Morneau, which complicates things because each player's success is dependent upon the other.  Joe Mauer is the only one in the top-40 OPS with more walks than strikeouts, though Pedroia comes admirably close.  I love players who do this, so now I just need a reason to pick a guy who sets the table over one who clears it.   I think there are good cases to make for all three of them, so let's give it to Mauer if he has a great play-in game against the White Sox and have Pedroia and Youkilis share it otherwise. 

Update: no soup for Mauer.

2008 MLB Awards : NL MVP

This one really is an easy one, I think.  The only guy really competing with Pujols OPS-wise is Chipper Jones, whose body cheated him of better total numbers.  The only guys in the top 10 OPS who are going to the postseason are Chase Utley (#8, and 200 points behind Pujols) and Aramis Ramirez (#10), and Pujols' total numbers are across-the-board better than theirs.  Ryan Howard hit the most HRs and had the most RBIs, but his slugging percentage, on-base percentage, and intentional walks are way down from his MVP season, and even compared to last year, when he finished 5th.  

On a final note, there were 3 guys in the top 40 OPS in the NL who walked more often than they struck out: Albert Pujols, Chipper Jones, and... Brian Giles.

2008 MLB Awards : AL Cy Young

Let's start with an easy one: the AL Cy Young award should go to Cliff Lee, right?  Well... first let's quickly dismiss everyone lower than Mike Mussina on the ERA list, out of respect for Moose's first 20-win season.  And I would probably argue that Mussina was better than Jon Lester this year; their numbers are very similar, except for Mussina's considerable advantage in Walks.  What about Mussina's season vs. Matsuzaka's?  Well, Matsuzaka's winning percentage, strikeout rate, and ERA are relatively impressive, but his walk rate was terrible, he averaged well under 6 innings per start, and made 5 fewer starts than Mussina, so I'd be sorely tempted to rank Mussina's season as "better".

But Matsuzaka and Mussina just don't stack up against Cliff Lee this year.  Lee's winning percentage is just as impressive as Matsuzaka's (but with more wins) and his K/BB ratio is even better than Mussina's.  And he's got the lowest ERA in the league.

But... there's this other guy, Roy Halladay.  He's got 11 losses to go with his 20 wins, but Cliff Lee benefitted from 6.13 run support, compared to 4.72 for Halladay.  Give Roy another 1.4 runs per game, and his W-L record would look more like Lee's.   Halladay also had a superior K/BB ratio, better WHIP, and pitched 23 more innings (9 complete games to Lee's 4).

But Halladay already has a Cy Young award, so even though he was arguably better this year than in 2003, it'll probably go to Lee.

The Man with the Golden Arm (Algren, Nelson) 1949

Did not finish.  Stopped just after Molly and Drunkie John are introduced.  Haven't seen anything to interest me, doubt I'm gonna.

Thud! (Pratchett, Terry) 2005

Yup, I'll read any Sam Vimes novel.  In a month the plot of this will be mostly tangled in my head with that of the Fifth Elephant (murder in the dwarf mines under Ankh-Morpork, theft in the dwarf mines in Uberwald, what's the diff?), but I'm not complaining.

Primary Inversion (Asaro, Catherine) 1995

A mostly promising first novel.  There's a lot of clunky over-exposition of the "I JUST USED A WORD I MADE UP AND WILL NOW EXPLAIN WHAT IT MEANS" type, and there's some awkward plotting to get everyone important in her life "on stage" at some point during the book, and the middle of the book drags, but when Asaro gets to the places where she's just writing and not worrying about hitting her next plot point, it's pretty good.

Class of 2012 and no early decision

The latest Tiger E-News had the headline "Freshman class ranks as Princeton's most diverse" with the text:

"
Princeton has enrolled the most diverse freshman class in its history for the third consecutive year, selected from a record-high number of applicants following the University's transition to a single admission process. The class of 2012 includes record representation of students from minority backgrounds and international students, has the highest percentage of incoming students to receive financial aid and, for the first time in University history, is evenly balanced in terms of gender.
http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S22/15/15O66/
"

If you follow the link, the article goes on to give numbers about how various indicators continue to shift slightly in the direction of greater class diversity, but the most interesting number shifts aren't acknowledged: 

                2012    2011    2011ED   2011RD
                -----------------------------------
#applied        21370   18942   2276     16666
#admitted        2122    1791    597      1194
%accept          9.93    9.46   26.2      7.16
#matriculated    1243    1246    597       649
%matriculate     58.6    69.6    100      54.4

(ED=early decision; RD=regular decision; also note that the article says there were 1838 admitted to the class of 2011; however that doesn't match up with the 9.4% overall acceptance rate; http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2007/05/18/news/18499.shtml shows the correct(?) number of 1791.  Early decision numbers taken from http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S16/64/75S14/index.xml?section=newsreleases.)

At any rate, no surprises that the total number of applications were up and the overall matriculation rate was down.  At first I was a little surprised that the overall acceptance rate actually went /up/, but suppose that's an artifact of the increase in the number of applications not catching up with the necessary increase in the number of admissions (due to a lower overall matriculation rate) to obtain the "correct" number of incoming students.

I was also initially surprised that the matriculation rate for the class of 2012 was so much higher than the rate for non-early decision students in the class of 2011, but then remembered this is probably due to the fact that there are a certain number of people in the class of 2012 who knew they really wanted to go to Princeton and would have enrolled early decision had that option been available.

Something to keep an eye on as the kids get closer to college age, and of course fun for anyone who likes to look at numbers.  Now I want to go hunting for the Harvard rates...

Charlotte Gray (2001)

We love Cate Blanchett.  We really like Billy Crudup.  There's nothing at all wrong with Michael Gambon.  So why were we underwhelmed by Charlotte Gray?  Probably because it's just a war drama with a very mediocre script that goes completely flat by the end, stretched to a 2 hour running time, and the actors can't seem to rise above it.

Lost in the Funhouse (Barth, John) 1968

Even the author's introduction is precious!  Look, I'm all for experimentation, but if I'm reading your writing, ideally it should be within a story you're telling, and not simply an exercise.  Too many of the short stories in this collection are simply exercises; this is too bad, because the Ambrose tales have experimental elements (nearing the point of pretension in "Lost in the Funhouse") but also tell interesting stories.

Juno (2007)

The darling independent film of 2007, we watched Juno with high expectations, and largely they were met. The dialogue struggles whenever they try to use "CURRENT TEEN SLANG!" and we're completely unbelieving part of the ending (see below), and Allison Janney's and Jennifer Garner's performances are a little cartoonish (maybe it's just how the characters are written?), but the movies succeeds with a number of plausibly written and honestly acted scenes.

spoilers


The fact that Juno wants to get back together with her boyfriend who offers nothing during the first 8 months of her pregnancy (other than not staring at her belly) doesn't work. It's not that I don't believe that they couldn't get back together, it's that I don't see that feeling adequately explained from Juno's perspective, and it's too big a plot point for me to simply accept.

Anatomy of a Murder

Panties, panties, panties!  Oh, there are so many good things I could say about this film**, but Kathryn Grant's "deer in the headlights" performance on the stand while Jimmy Stewart handles what's supposed to be Lee Remick's panties is burned into my retinas:  

This is supposed to be shocking, titillating... and I'm sure it was in 1959, but Jimmy has enough material in his hands for several articles of "decent" women's undergarments circa 2008, so it's just funny. 

**Okay, so here goes: I love the jazz soundtrack complete with a cameo by Duke Ellington, the general courtroom fighting between two screen greats, Lee Remick's outstanding performance in the face of the aforementioned greats, George C. Scott's purr as he says "midnight prowls", the way Paul Biegler plays up to the judge with a lure in the lawbook, Eve Arden and Arthur O'Connell providing excellent support to Stewart, and panties, panties, panties!

The Porcupine (Barnes, Julian) 1992

Jump, jump, jump.  It's not Flaubert's Parrot, but it's a short and easy read with a few excellent passages.  I skimmed through several sections from the POV of the Leader; too repetitive and profanity-ridden to little effect.  

Empire of Ivory (Novik, Naomi) 2007

It's good to have Temeraire back with the formation again.  I missed Lily and Maximus (and their people).  In the "about the author" blurb, Novik notes that this was the hardest Temeraire book to write (so far), and it shows.  The narrative doesn't flow quite like it did in the previous three books and it feels like great efforts were made to put the story together, and the end has a big fat "to be continued" on it... and yet, I have a very positive feeling that all this effort is going to pay enormous dividends in the overall story arc.  We'll see.

Maddux back to La-La Land; "true rentals"

The AP has confirmed that the Padres and Dodgers are doing the sensible thing and Greg Maddux will once again be traded again as a mid-season rental. But "rental" is something of a misnomer here. The Dodgers now own Maddux's contract, just like they own Manny's and Blake's contracts. Sure, they only last to the end of the season, but it's not like a "true" rental where a team could send a player under contract through 2009 (or beyond) to a contender for a 2008 playoff run and then have that player back for 2009.

But maybe the MLB should allow true rentals. Maybe the Padres should be able to shop Peavy to the Dodgers/Diamondbacks/whoever for cash/prospects as a 2008 "rental", but Peavy's contract is still owned by the Padres, and he plays for the Padres in 2009 (until the season is a loss and his services are rented out again).

Black Powder War (Novik, Naomi) 2006

Having studied a little German history while in college, the moment that Laurence and Temeraire arrive among the Prussians, old neurons started firing off in my head, reminding me "wasn't the battle of Jena in 1806?"  So it pleased me to no end to see Our Heroes as witnesses to and participants in this catastrophe.  Iskierka is a nice addition to the family of characters, and, when present, is going to give Emily a run for primary scene stealer. 

For those with quesadilla makers

Sarah took me to Penny Cluse Cafe, the preeminent local breakfast place that has a 2-hour wait on weekends (only a 40-minute wait on Friday at 10:50am. Damn Quebec separatist tourists, pumping money into our flagging economy ;-)), to celebrate the grand opening of GBGB.

The hostess takes a look at my "When 900 years old you reach, look as good you will not" t-shirt and says, "Ah, going to see Clone Wars?" and I'm like, "Huh?" "Clone Wars. It opens today." "Oh, so it does. No, actually, my four-year-old, by request, is seeing the original Star Wars tonight for the first time." So there you have it! The next generation begins to be indoctrinated! Of course, for them, the rage and disappointment of Episodes I-III will be all the less for not having to wait 20 years to be disappointed.

At any rate, I had the Garlicky Kale Quesadilla, which was really good. Basically, it tasted like you sautee garlic, kale (chopped up in the food processor), and a little onion, then put it in your quesadilla maker with the shell and some feta (we use the Doe's Leap feta that Penny Cluse used in their recipe; we've been buying their cheese for a couple-few years and their chevre is wonderful and the feta is pretty good, too). Serve with salsa and black beans.

even with the Padres' playoff chances at 0.1% (and that's overstating their case)...

… I’m interested in the races. The Cardinals are finally starting to wear down, but the Brewers are keeping the Cubs on their toes. There are dogfights in the NL East and West, and I have to admit that Manny on the Dodgers actually has me slightly rooting for a Red Sox – Dodgers WS with Manny having a tremendous series at the plate but ultimately losing it for the Dodgers by dropping a fly ball (otherwise I want to see Devil Rays – Cubs).

Throne of Jade (Novik, Naomi) 2006

Part II of the Temeraire series reminds us that it's the journey, not the destination, because oh, boy, is there a lot of journeying.  Novik's altered China is so excellently rendered that it's almost a shame that we get to spend so little time (relative to the journey) there.  

His Majesty's Dragon (Novik, Naomi) 2006

It's the Napoleonic Wars with dragons!  Who can resist?  This is a fun read with a fair bit of scholarship behind it, but the author excellently manages to keep all that research in the service of the plotting, rather than let it get in the way (yes, I'm looking at you, Neal Stephenson).

His Majesty's Dragon (Novik, Naomi) 2006

It's the Napoleonic Wars with dragons!  Who can resist?  This is a fun read with a fair bit of scholarship behind it, but the author excellently manages to keep all that research in the service of the plotting, rather than let it get in the way of the flow of the story (yes, I'm looking at you, Neal Stephenson).

the worst travel experience ever... (part 2)

...was capped off by our triumphant return to home at 3am this morning. After leaving brother Stu's place shortly before 1pm (giving us more than ample time to make our 5pm flight), we quickly found that there was a 6-mile backup going into the I-64 tunnel, so we turned around and went through the I-664 tunnel. Just outside of Williamsburg, traffic ground to a halt and we were left wondering for 20 minutes whether this was the "usual" northbound traffic of northern Virginians going home after a weekend at VA Beach, until we passed the accident scene. We made it to the terminal at about 3:15pm and promptly found out our flight to JFK had been cancelled due to thunderstorms around JFK, and there wouldn't be another until 6am the following morning. Even better, there were only 3 seats on that flight, so Finn would get
to sit on our laps. We were all set to be booked on that flight when I noticed that the 3pm to Boston had been delayed until 5:15, and there was room on the flight, so we decided to fly into Boston and then rent a car 1-way so we'd get home that night. Using Richmond's incredibly slow wireless connection, we got a confirmation with Hertz (Enterprise and Alamo having failed us first -- Alamo more dramatically, since Enterprise said "Oh, we don't do 1-ways more than
N miles; the guy from Alamo had me on the line for 10 minutes before figuring out that he had no cars at that location). The Boston flight was delayed until 6pm, and then we finally boarded at 7pm, as rain starting pouring down and lightning flashed. At 8:45pm we finally took off (we were "first in line" on the runway according to our captain; of course, we were the only people at the airport!!), and we had a quick flight and nice touchdown at Logan, and were on the road shortly before 11pm. From there, we only had to stay awake (and hope the kids would sleep) until we got home. Yay.

So both ways it would have been faster to drive, and now we're seriously thinking about driving the next time, even though we hate driving long distances. Gah.

Helliconia Spring (Brian Aldiss) 1982

The text gives no sense of the grandeur and epic that the ideas deserve.  There are too many characters entering and exiting the stage whose stories are left unfinished.  When the tick that carries the helico virus is as sympathetic a character as any of the phagors, protognostics, or even most of the humans, it's difficult to see why this was a Nebula Finalist.

VCU students and their funnel cake

I was in Virginia Beach with the in-laws, and as I walked down to the beach this evening, decked out in my tevas, khaki shorts, patterned green short-sleeved oxford shirt, and pilot sunglasses (which fit over my prescription glasses), a young gentleman stopped me and said, "Excuse me, sir. Do you know where we could get some funnel cake?" I answered, "Funnel cake?" And he replied, "That's right. We're a group of students from VCU just looking for a fun place to get some funnel cake." I thought about it for a moment, and then said, "I think there's a place down by the mini-golf."

Now, I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think he was really looking for funnel cake, so he might have been disappointed by the place by the mini-golf. Ah, it was good to feel like I was really in the South again.

Dark Knight!

Wow. See it if you haven't already. There are a couple of possible missteps in the plotting (below), but Maggie Gyllenhaal portrays the best comic book movie love interest ever (sorry, Margot Kidder, and all due respect to Lea Thompson), Heath Ledger delivers all that we could hope for as the Joker (except for a repeat performance), and Freeman and Caine shine in every line they're given. Eckhart is a commendable Harvey Dent (though the Two-Face makeup is almost comical and, as my brother says, "I almost started a chant to bring back Billy Dee, but I may have been alone on that one. Two Face kicks back with his homies and a smooth Colt 45."), I still like Oldman as Gordon, and Bale's "Batman voice" remains the weak link in an otherwise serviceable performance.

<spoilers>

We really felt the pain of losing Maggie -- we were really looking forward to seeing her in the next movie!! From a scripting standpoint, we tried to think of ways to save her; Harvey could go just as nuts thinking he'll lose her because she won't be able to look at his scars, and then she could be the D.A. in the next film and be closer and more inaccessible than ever to Bruce. This just feels like an unfortunately closed door.

The "fake death of Jim Gordon" subplot seemed unnecessary, or required more film time to develop. As it was, I was just disoriented for 20 minutes knowing that they wouldn't have killed Gordon while trying to figure out in what cool way they'd have him come back into the story. And then his reentry into the story is completely contrived (like Batman couldn't have gotten off his motorcycle and just kicked the Joker's ass, instead of the melodramatic crash that doesn't really prove anything). In general, the action didn't do much for me; I was much more interested in the acting.

And... I almost forgot about the Watchmen preview! That was incredible, because I didn't know they were making a Watchmen film, and they start the preview by showing part of the Dr. Manhattan backstory and we're thinking, "this is some lame comic book movie that they're advertising" and then we see Nite-Owl's machine come up out of the water and I whisper, "holy shit! It's the Watchmen!" It /looks/ absolutely dead-on (the flash of Ozymandias in action was amazing), but I'll be skeptical until I see it. They'll have to chronologize some of the storytelling because the whole section on Dr. M (my favorite part of the comics) can't be done in prose or film; it is tailor-made for comics.

just got into my hotel room...

...at 11:30pm. That's right, my US Air flight from PHL was delayed from 6:00 to 6:30, so we boarded around 6 and found the air wouldn't work until the plane was under power and it would be a few minutes before we got our flightplan; around 7pm we taxied to the runway, were told that there was "weather" between PHL and ORD so we had to taxi to the back of the line and that it would take about 30 minutes to get new orders; shortly before 8pm we were given a new flightplan and taxied out to the runway, were told that there was more "weather" on our new path and taxied to the back of the line and that it would take about 30 minutes to get new orders; at 9pm we finally taxied to the runway and took off, and the flight still went through "weather" between PHL and ORD. Had the "weather" gotten better and that's why it was now "safe" to go? We'll never know.

The China Syndrome (1979)

I wanted to really like this film. There are a lot of strong supporting performances (especially Peter Donat as Jane Fonda's skeezy boss; there is an incredibly uncomfortable scene at a party that he absolutely nails), the chemistry between Fonda and Douglas is believable (if not at the level Douglas later achieves with Kathleen Turner in Romancing the Stone), and Jack Lemmon gives a tremendous performance during the "event" that spurs the action through the rest of the film, and again during his first interview with Fonda at the bar. Unfortunately, the second half of the movie starts to get more "dramatic" and the performances increasingly shallow/ham-handed until Fonda's final monologue.

Meditations on Middle-Earth (ed. Haber, Karen) 2001

A few very good essays (hello, Michael Swanwick and Ursula Le Guin!), some good ones that reveal more about the author than Tolkein, and only two real dogs. I normally don't go in for gossip, but it would be absolutely fascinating to know how people were chosen to contribute and whether anyone was asked who declined. It seems very odd that Terry Brooks is not included; I would have thought him a more natural choice than Feist.

I found it odd that the only typos I noticed were of Tolkein's words! Owyn instead of Eowyn, Cirith Ungo instead of Cirith Ungol (to be charitable, the exclamation point at the end of the sentence containing Cirith Ungo! probably looked like an "l" to tired editorial eyes), and worst of all, Sargon instead of Sauron. There is also an incredibly odd paragraph in Feist's essay which reads

Frodo and the hobbits were "people," simple, graceful, peaceful, and humble. They were archetypes bordering on stereotypes: Frodo the Plucky Hero, Sam the Good and Faithful, Gandalf the eminence who could not possibly be more grise, Merry and Pippin...

Uh... Gandalf is most definitely NOT a hobbit!

A Boy and His Dog (1975)

The great thing about "watching" (really it's just running in a browser window while I have my headphones on and am otherwise doing something useful and pop in whenever it sounds like something interesting is happening) videos instantly from our Netflix queue is that I can vett some marginal films or watch films I know Sarah won't like. A Boy and His Dog has the bones of an interesting premise (based on an Ellison novella, which I might go and read), a semi-likable young Don Johnson, a mostly likable telepathic dog, a couple of good lines... and that's about it.

The basic plot goes like this: Don and his telepathic dog roam the countryside looking for food (for both of them) to eat and women (for Don). Don's general studliness brings him to the attention of a restrictive underground society (which is NOT "female-dominated" as the Netflix blurb claims) that needs new sperm every so often to keep the birthrate positive, so they send a female agent to lure him to "Down Under", where he is the center of a conflict between the Establishment and the Youth that would replace them. Don decides he doesn't like either side and leaves (with the female agent who lured him down there, because without Don's help her side is lost).

The problems:

• script just isn't good enough to support the spare plot,
  
• the female lead's character is really inconsistently written. At first she comes across as a helpless whimpering damsel in distress (blech), but we quickly learn of course that this is just a cover, and she (unbeknownst to Don) helps him in a battle by expertly shooting some of their enemies. Unfortunately, at the end when they escape from Down Under, she is again helpless and whimpering.
  
• As a result of these inconsistencies and the general lack of chemistry (both written and onscreen) between her and Don, the "shocking" ending lacks any effect because the "difficult choice" Don has to make isn't difficult at all!
  

That's a lot more than I meant to write about this.