Glitz (Leonard, Elmore) 1985

The inside cover mentions the Time magazine article that proclaims Leonard the "Dickens from Detroit". What, did they go through all the famous authors with last names starting with "D" and pick out the one they thought wrote most closely to the crime genre? Sure, you can make the argument that Dickens is one of the forefathers of the crime genre, but Leonard's work bears as much resemblance to Dickens' as you and I do to an Australopithecus. Leonard is a clear successor to Chandler (note: I haven't read Hammett), though he's actually less "shocking" for his time because so many barriers have come down. At any rate, Glitz was entertaining and well-written, but I don't feel the need to read any more Leonard. I saw Out of Sight and Get Shorty; those films and this book all felt like they were populated by roughly the same characters put along a different plot, so if I've read one Leonard novel, I've read them all, right?

15 Significant Movies

1. Star Wars : This might be my earliest movie memory; I saw it the summer of 1977 at the Eatontown drive-in (which no longer exists). I saw it again on the big screen in 1980 as part of a Star Wars / Empire Strikes Back double feature in San Diego with Rob and my cousin Sean (which was AWESOME and far more memorable an experience). We had a projector and a short clip of the film showing the escape from the Death Star (the "Here they come" music) that we watched over and over at home, until VHS allowed us to watch the whole thing over and over at home. Saw it again on the big screen in January '92 at Frick. It was the showing of Empire Strikes Back the next night; however, at which I met Sarahmac for the second time and we hit it off. Saw it for the last time on the big screen in 1997 in Durham.

2. Orca : We were supposed to see Pinocchio, but they were sold out, so dad bought us tickets to see Jaws with killer whales. Strangely, I wasn't traumatized by this, and I was just filled with a sense of justice as Richard Harris was eaten by the killer whale.

3. Attack of the Moon Monster : I don't think I have the title right, because I can't find it in the IMDB, but there was definitely a "moon monster" involved. We had one TV : I wanted to watch Lassie, my dad wanted to watch this stupid movie (do we see a trend here?), and my little brother (who was too young to understand one way or the other) sided with my dad. The scene I remember is one is which a couple is having an argument through the front door; the husband has "come home late" again, and the wife won't let him in. We cut back and forth between their POV, focused on their argument, and that of the moon monster, which is stalking the husband from the bushes. We cut to the wife, who hears horrible sucking noises outside. When the noises stop, she opens the door, and the body of her husband falls through, with his face looking a bit like Greedo's. I was terrified, slept badly for years, and avoided any movies that might have semi-graphically violent, horror or "gross" elements (I avoided Raiders of the Lost Ark for years and was nervous about seeing E.T. because I'd heard it was scary!).

4. Robin Hood : Yes, the Errol Flynn one is superior, but this is the version we had a short clip of to watch on the projector; the opening scene, where they rob Prince John's coach. The movie is really strong until the end of the archery tournament, after which it wobbles and finally falls apart, but I still enjoy it.

5. I remember a World or 3-2-1 Contact magazine whose feature article was about the movies that had computers as the heavy, notably Tron in 1982 and Wargames and Superman III the following year. The first two are still great movies; Superman III sucked even in 1983. At any rate, after Max Dugan Returns, Wargames, and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Glory, and the Freshman, I'm still struggling to understand what happened to Matthew Broderick's career.

6. The Pirate Movie : It's a spoof of a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. It's really not a very good movie, but my brother and I thought it was hilarious and watched it dozens of times in the mid-80's.

7. Destroy All Monsters : I think it was WPIX that regularly showed Godzilla movies on Saturdays. We loved the Godzilla movies, but I think Destroy All Monsters was our favorite.

8. The Secret of NIMH : the Fox and the Hound, while a good movie, was the only new animated Disney film released in the early 80's, and it isn't nearly as good as the Secret of NIMH. Yeah, Bluth plays hell with the original story (Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH), but I can live with it.

9. Back to the Future : This is a nearly perfectly constructed movie. It's a good thing they never made any sequels, because they would never have approached the quality of the original.

10. The Terminator : What really sticks with me is the promo they ran on HBO / Showtime for the The Terminator, which was the scene in which you see (from inside the car) Arnold punching through the windshield. Remember, I was scared of graphically violent movies, but that image was so *cool* that I had to watch it. My first 'R'-rated film.

11. T-Day Specials : Every year, we'd watch part of the Macy's Parade at home, then drive down to my mom's parents' house to finish watching the parades and have snacks before moving on to Thanksgiving Day dinner (shortly after noon), then watch a bit of the Wizard of Oz, the Sound of Music, King Kong, Mighty Joe Young, or whatever happened to be on, then move on to my dad's parents' house for dessert. Eventually the routine ended, but eventually the MST3K Turkey Day marathon came along.

12. Hamlet : The Branagh version. Sarahmac and I saw it in a small theater Chapel Hill; it was awesome. I might actually like Much Ado About Nothing a little better, but the setting in which I first saw Hamlet gives it the edge for this list.

13. The Tango Lesson : Sarahmac and I were interested in taking argentine tango lessons, and I actually had the soundtrack to this film for months, perhaps a year, before we saw it.

14. Mononoke Hime : Saw this in Chicago in when it was released in the US in 1999. Billy Bob is horrible, but most of the other English-speaking voice actors were good choices, particularly Crudup as Ashitaka.

15. Howard the Duck and Fletch are on this list for all the wrong reasons. I'm not sure I've seen Howard the Duck all the way through, but my brother and cousin Sean watched it about 23 times the summer it was first on cable. I've never seen Fletch, but after some students freshman year at college watched it waayyy too many times, I made it my mission in life never to see it.

Honorable mentions: to Lord of the Rings (the extended version) and the Dark Crystal, which might be the two best fantasy films I've seen (depending upon whether the Secret of NIMH is counted as fantasy); also to the Incredibles and the Dark Knight, which are in fact the two best superhero films I've ever seen.

Just don't do anything to void the warranty on your body

Great post at http://tauntermedia.com/2009/07/28/unconscionable-math/

This is why I'm interested in an experiment where health insurance is really insurance -- you pay a premium against acquiring some chronic condition -- and for the rest to be covered by HSAs. Now, according to the post, the vast majority of people aren't using as much basic health maintenance as they're paying in premiums. I do get the vague impression from other sources that there is a sentiment that if we simply gave the average Joe the money they're paying in premiums, they wouldn't spend it on basic health maintenance. If we really can't trust people to take care of themselves, we could mandate that everyone put enough money into their HSAs to cover basic health maintenance.

The question is whether to let individuals choose for themselves or try to nudge them into doing the "right" thing... though actually, major medical problems should be covered by the actual insurance, but the insurance company wouldn't pay out unless you've been getting regular checkups, where "major medical" and "regular" are defined in the insurance policy. Just like if you make a homeowner's claim because the roof caved in and the insurance company rejects it because the tiles haven't been replaced in 40 years.

Peavy to White Sox

The trade that was supposed to happen in May, when Peavy was actually pitching, if not particularly well, went through last week while Peavy was on the DL. He'll be on the DL until the end of August, perhaps just in time to come back and get hammered by the Yankees that weekend, stay barely above water against the AL lineups, and then blow his one playoff start against the Yankees (assuming the White Sox make it that far). The Sox will then be on the hook for $48M for the next three years. Not sure how the option for 2013 fits in. Meanwhile, the Padres slash payroll, and maybe one of the prospects will work out.

Battlestar Galactica, season 4.5

Those of us without cable just finished the new BSG series earlier this week. What started out in seasons 1 and 2 as a great little pressure cooker exploring tensions between military and civilian government while serving up great space battles (which, btw, Star Trek Voyager should have already done, but they flubbed it) turned into a relatively inchorent mess in seasons 3 and 4.

==spoilers==

I'm not really bothered by Kara being an angel who simply disappears at the end of the show and is never seen again; I'm not bothered by Caprica and Baltar being angels who close the series for us in somewhat trite fashion. However:

• I'm bothered by Adama doing an endless 2 steps forward, 2 steps back dance w.r.t. the cylons. The straw that broke my back was after he'd agreed to ally with the cylon renegades, after he'd agreed to put cylon goop onto Galactica's beams to try to save the ship, after he'd agreed to take his flag command to the renegade cylon base ship, after he uses Anders to find out where Hera is, he balks at having Anders plugged into the CIC. Give me a freakin' break! This is false drama the writers are creating.
  
  
• I'm bothered that the final cylon was a really irritating character that I'd been glad to be rid of. When Helen first comes back and interacts with Cavil, she's actually interesting, but as soon as she's back with Tigh (someone we could have done with a lot less of), she's obnoxious and irritating again.
  
  
• I'm bothered by everyone trying to solve their problems with drink.
  
  
• I'm even more bothered that most of the problems are finally dealt with by saying "god says so".
  
  
• I'm bothered that the opera house is just a shootout in the CIC, and that Caprica and Baltar "do their job of taking care of the human/cylon future" by dropping Hera right into Cavil's hands.
  
  
• I'm bothered that the writers think that 38,000 people will all agree to leave their medical technology behind, or that Lee Adama thinks in the first place that leaving all their technology behind will allow their descendants to avoid problems in the future. Since when is ignorance strength? I'd gotten the impression that Lee was a little smarter than that.

Now, if the writers had posited that the ships and equipment were so crapped out by the end of these four years that they were near-useless anyway, that I could deal with. And I did really like how they showed us the events in the colonies that led to the characters escaping the holocaust in the first place (except for Adama drinking in a strip club and vomiting in an alleyway) and I really liked Anders' interview with the sports reporter.