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.

Failures to communicate

Connor and Sarah just had this conversation. This is all we could reconstruct----wish we had a transcript b/c it was far funnier in real life...

Connor: Mommy, help me figure it out.

Sarah: What do want me to help you figure out?

Connor: Help me figure it out!

Sarah: What are you confused about?

Connor: What you were talking about.

Sarah: I'm a little confused, Connor. What would you like me to help you understand? Can you explain to me what you're confused about?

Connor: You just keep talking and talking and I can't hear what you were saying when you are talking.

Sarah: Connor, I'm not sure what you're talking about.

Connor: Tell me what it is.

Sarah: What's "it," Connor?

Connor: You keep saying that! You help me figure it out! I don't know what you mean.

Sarah: I don't know what you mean.

Connor: What you were telling me about it. You keep talking and talking and I lost track and you figure it out.

Freakonomics (Levitt, Steven D., Dubner, Stephen J) 2005

I was a little worried by the explanatory note which included the following clip from the original NYT article: "Unlike most academics, he [Levitt] is unafraid of using personal observations and curiosities; he is also unafraid of anecdote and storytelling (although he is afraid of calculus). He is an intuitionist." Using anecdote and personal observation to motivate an analysis is one thing, but without good numerical evidence to back it up, anecdote is worse than useless because it can lead to the wrong result, rather than no result at all. The above is immediately followed by "He sifts through a pile of data to find a story that no one else has found. He figures a way to measure an effect that veteran economists had declared unmeasurable." That's better, but let's read the rest of the book to find out whether that's actually true.

Danger in the Introduction! The very first story concerns why crime rates in the US fell in the mid-late 90's after many were predicting an ever-increasing surge. After dismissing some of the popular theories (booming 90's economy, gun control, better policing), Levitt offers his own theory: Roe v. Wade prevented the birth of the very type of children (those of poor, unmarried, teenage mothers) who had been the cause of rising crime rates in the 80's. This is a good theory; better than the popular theories referenced in the book, but unfortunately he offers no real data to back it up.

The body of the book itself is much better. Lots of good "stuff", all well supported by data. Ah, and he even goes further into the data supporting the problematic argument in the Introduction. Patience is a virtue.

Upon completion, I have to admit that I don't understand the "freaky" part of freakonomics. What Levitt is doing is looking at a problem and hand-crafting his statistical models to solve the problem, rather than mashing it into an existing solution in the econometric toolbox. This is what any statistician or econometrician worth their spit does (at least among the ones I know) so Levitt's approach would be refreshing and revolutionary... but only if it actually were. That doesn't change the fact that it's still an entertaining read.