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Daily Blah for... Monday, June 30, 2003
Ah. Nuld. Is. Back.
Spent Friday evening in the company of a certain Mr. Schwartzenegger -- first for a special sneak preview of Terminator 3 to benefit his pet project, after school programs, then back to the Pacific Heights house of a big-time Republican donor for dinner, drinks and photo-ops coordinated with military efficiency. I know this is the standard cliche, but he's a lot shorter than you might think. And his handshake grip is positively limp. I guess he's got nothing to prove there. Here's the full transcript of our historic conversation:
Ah-nuld: Hi, nice to meet you.
Me: (swallowing hors d'oeurve) Nice to meet you.
(Some time later, while mugging for one-on-one photo shoot):
Me: Great movie.
Ah-nuld: Thanks.
I lied, actually. The movie wasn't that great. It was better than I was expecting, with a sense of its own inherent campiness -- witness Ah-nuld's confrontation with a flaming male stripper in a female biker bar -- and a twist ending that suits my apocalyptic sensibilities. But it still felt tired at times, re-tread, and horrifically mis-cast. With his sticky-out ears and gormless gawp, Nick Stahl is the goofiest John Connor you can possibly imagine; it is utterly unbelievable that the firebrand Edward Furlong of T2 would grow up into him. Furlong has had some rehab problems in recent years, which is only to be expected when your best friend is Robert Downey Jr. But surely they could have found a better replacement? Stahl's was the worst sci-fi performance I've seen since that guy who plays Anakin Skywalker in Attack of the Clones. What is it with late-teen early-twenties actors these days? Where are the raging young Turks, the angry Marlon Brandos? Do we need to start pumping testosterone into the reservoirs of LA?
What I should have said to Ah-nuld was "great performance." And I would have been referring not to his lackluster third outing as a cybernetic killing machine (strange how that future factory pumping out T-model Terminators has started adding wrinkles) but the way he has every Republican in the state eating out of his hand, begging him to run for governor. The way these high-powered donors and former state officials talked about him in the queue for the buffet, you would have thought he was the next William Jennings Bryant. And to be sure, he can talk passionately and with surprising eloquence about after-school programs. The thing is, that's all we've ever heard him talk passionately about. One successful initiative, plus a very studied silence on the question of whether he would run in a recall election, and suddenly he's created all this buzz. Very smart move. The less you say, the more of an impression you make. He'll be back, indeed.
Daily Blah for... Saturday, June 28, 2003
Slogan
I've just thought of the perfect, TV-news friendly one-second phrase to plaster all over protest posters and, come a year, election ads:
NO WMD?
NO GWB.
If the Dems, assorted liberals and other fans of truth in government haven't thought of this one yet, I give it to them free of charge. The best ideas, after all, are open source.
Daily Blah for... Friday, June 27, 2003
Good Evening. May I Speak With ... (Click)
Hurrah! We finally have a national Do Not Call registry that will (allegedly) protect you from those irksome telemarketers. Trouble is, it seems the website where you sign up has gone down. A telemarketer conspiracy? Nah, just the fact that this is a government project; obviously they were clueless about what would happen when millions of us tried to sign up at once. Here, why don't you make their problems worse by clicking on this link.
Alternatively, you could just forget about the registry and employ a wonderful new technique for getting rid of telemarketers. I use it all the time. It's called hanging up.
What Are You Doing, Dave?
So I had my first video chat with Apple's new iSight webcam yesterday. It was pretty easy to set up -- plug it in to the FireWire port, clamp it on to the top of your screen, download the latest version of iChat, and you're done. Only a couple of problems: the eye of the camera looks disturbingly like HAL from 2001. I would employ the shutter-closing device, but I don't want to arouse its suspicions.
The other problem is that nobody on my buddy list has one of these things yet. I feel like Alexander Graham Bell without a Watson. Apple's solution to this problem was to hook me up with one of their product managers; I would have said the solution was to give me more iSights to hand out to my Mac-owning friends.
Still, the conversation was revealing. Partly because it was a sticky summer day and I felt I had to rush off and have a shower before the appointed hour to chat. Is this the future of instant messaging -- constantly preening ourselves in case someone wants a video chat? There was a postage stamp-sized area in the corner of the screen where I could check what my outgoing image looked like. It was distracting. Did I look too bored when the product manager was talking? On the phone I could just murmur reassuring "mm-hmmms," but now I had to actively look interested. Take your chin out of your hand, boy.
This, you see, is why videophones never took off.
Daily Blah for... Thursday, June 26, 2003
Of Bugs and Bowling
Out tonight at sunset, tilting at cliff tops, blasting the Beach Boys, eating burritos and being eaten by mosquitoes. The sun sank into the ocean, taking what seemed like forever, and my friends debated whether it was because of the Earth's axis or a period in its rotation where we happen to be closer. Myself, I keep an open mind. It may well be both.
My poor northern European skin can't take much more of these bloodsucking bugs and their anesthesiologist ways. I am told that the large ones are mosquito eaters, and therefore earn the same swat-protection status as spiders in fly-heavy climates. Trouble is, I can't figure out which ones the big ones are. Where does an obese mosquito end and a size-challenged mosquito-eater begin?
To round off the night in a small-town California way, we go to a classic 50's bowling alley steps away from the beach. I can't bowl, never have been able to, but I thrive on games, treasure every random roll of the ball, and do a war dance of frustration every time a hungry gutter sucks one in, which is often. As with much in life, I end up wishing for twice the practice time.
And then we step out, inhaling the salty air, savoring a rare balmy night. Somewhere out across that ocean, another friend is starting a new life in an ancient country. The sun is rising in Tokyo. Life is good.
Hotter than Death Valley
Is what it is in San Francisco right now. It's true: Death Valley was most recently clocked at 93 degrees, and my friend Kathleen reports that it's 95 degrees on the ground at San Francisco Zoo. Which must be a nice tropical reprieve for all those red-ruffed and ring-tailed lemurs.
Meanwhile, us humans are barely surviving. San Franciscans don't get a lot of very warm temperatures. We're spoiled by moderately sunny, moderately breezy, moderately foggy days. Fans and air conditioners are being hauled out of storage. People are lying on their decks like lizards, trying hard to summon up the energy to reach the tall glass of iced water next to them (no soda, please, we're Californian). If the North Koreans started parachuting in right now, they'd find little resistance.
It thins our blood, you see, all that nice and uncontroversial weather we usually get. This is why San Francisco may be the greatest city in the world, but it will never conquer the world. Our armies could never stand foreign climates. The infantry would be sweating like pigs by the time it reached the central valley. They'd all want to go home. And because their commanding officers would be nice and liberal and San Franciscan too, they'd let 'em.
Daily Blah for... Wednesday, June 18, 2003
Joan's Cabaret
To Teatro Zinzanni last night, for the second time in three years. Again, it was a corporate gig (the last was in 2000. Does this mean the tech economy is picking up again?) This time, the company in question -- I'll not name them, of course -- bought out the whole place to celebrate the release of a product it described (rather desperately) as "love potion". More importantly, I was able to bring friends. And to not tell them where we were going. I've taken P on mystery dates before; this was our first mystery double date.
And what a date it was. Zinzanni is halfway between circus and Weimar-era cabaret; a theater-in-the-round in a wonderful jewel box of a tent, where you're never sure who's in the audience and who's in the show. We began with face-painting and free champagne, and it just got better from there. The performance itself is built around the delivery of each course to your table and, now I know, is constantly evolving. It's a wonderfully-paced trick -- get you well-fed, get you rosy-cheeked, get you laughing and gasping at the same time. You know a lot of your reaction is due to raised seratonin levels, which in turn is due to being rosy-cheeked and well-fed. You also don't mind.
The show is constantly evolving according to which international artistes are involved, and right now the part of the torch-singer Madame Zinzanni is being played by Joan Baez. That's right, the Joan Baez. P was highly impressed, and I felt almost embarrassed that a star like her should condescend to this relatively anonymous role, even though neither of us could actually name a Joan Baez hit when the drunk guy next to us -- similarly agog -- asked. Is this wrong of us? To fall victim to celebrity for its own sake, celebrity by osmosis?
Ah, who cares. She still has an amazing, ear-caressing set of pipes. And the entire evening was made by the sight of the sales rep at the end of the table breaking out of his little sales rep shell, shedding his tie, donning mardi gras beads, face painted like an ancient warrior, eyes twinkling, laughing his well-stuffed guts out.
Daily Blah for... Saturday, June 14, 2003
WMD Gone 404
Weapons of mass destruction? Sorry, file not found.
(Gracias, Bill.)
Daily Blah for... Wednesday, June 11, 2003
Ashcroft's Gay Day
How nice to see John Ashcroft changing his mind, however inelegantly done. The DoJ said today it would allow a gay pride event to be held on the premises, just so long as John didn't have to foot the bill (strange -- he seemed quite happy about cutting a check last year, and even sent his deputy along to the event). Perhaps it had something to do with the threat of yet another civil rights lawsuit against the nation's top lawyer? Or maybe he was moved by the sight of male kissing at the Tony Awards. Oh, and I wasn't aware until now that he'd actually promised during his Senate confirmation hearing not to interfere with gay pride at the DoJ. A politician changing his mind and pandering to mean-spirited special interests, before changing it back again in the face of public outrage? Welcome to the modern world, John.
Daily Blah for... Friday, June 06, 2003
Backwards, Christian Soldier
Back when John Ashcroft was first being mooted for attorney general, Time did this illustration of him in a medieval suit of armor standing in front of the Capitol. I wrote the caption for it, struggling to be steadfastly neutral and yet meaningful at the same time, searching for one of those wonderful phrases that is simultaneously true and means entirely different things for readers of the left and right. I can't remember exactly what I came up with, but it contained the words "crusading zeal." Ever since, I haven't been able to shake the conviction that Ashcroft either fell out of a two-way time warp from the Middle Ages, or would be perfectly happy falling into one. He always seems so humorless and unhappy with modern times; there's a distant, steely look in his eyes, like in his mind he's storming Jerusalem with the Knights Templar.
Ashcroft's latest medieval throwback? He has banned the annual gay pride celebration at the Justice Department. Let's face it, he simply wasn't made for the 21st century. This, you see, is why he was beaten by a dead man in the last election he ever ran in: even a corpse understood more about modern American life. Write your Congressmen. Write the National Science Foundation. Let's support more research into time travel, so we can send the poor suffering man back where he wants to be.
Daily Blah for... Wednesday, June 04, 2003
Green Light
I almost persuaded myself to get up unseasonably early this morning and drag myself downtown for the 8:30 am sentencing of Ed Rosenthal. But I didn't. My excuse? It was going to be too depressing. Rosenthal's case was one of those brain-burningly evil travesties of American justice, like the Scopes monkey trial or the Dredd Scott decision. Licensed and deputized by Oakland to grow medical marijuana -- which is legal in California, not to mention every other state west of the Rockies -- Rosenthal was arrested last year by boondoggling Federal agents. Rosenthal wasn't permitted to breath the words "medical marijuana" at his trial, much less mention the fact that he was growing what he grew with the full blessing of the city of Oakland, or that cancer patients benefited from his produce. Any time his defense tried to suggest anything like this, Judge Charles Breyer shut them up. The concept of medical marijuana seemed as dangerously alien to him as evolution was to the South of the 1920's. Or the South of today, for that matter.
When they found out the full story, all twelve of Rosenthal's jury members were so outraged that they publically renounced their verdict. San Francisco's District Attorney denounced it, too. And everyone sighed big defeatist sighs, and expected the story would end with a martyrdom -- Rosenthal sent down for up to sixty years, according to federal guidelines. Locked away forever for trying to ease the pain and nausea of people with terminal tumors. Prosecutors, playing it safe, asked for at least six years.
And what did Breyer do? He pulled a Scopes trial on us all. He sentenced Rosenthal to a grand total of one day, which he'd already served. Rosenthal, like Scopes, is appealing even this slap on the wrist, on principle. I wish I'd been there this morning, to see the kind of spontaneous courtroom celebration you don't usually get outside of the movies. To feel the sense of history as an unpopular federal law is effectively declawed.
A Very Good Point
Dear Chris,
I read about how you hacked your TiVo to store more video, after having spent a bleary-eyed night watching Solaris in order to free up some room for the next day's treasures, now to the point you can store 80 hours of top quality video. But since you got into the previous bleary-eyed pinch because you didn't keep up with watching -- you didn't match the recording hours with your viewing hours -- aren't you just headed for the same squeeze, except now with an eighty hour backlog? When are you going to set aside two standard work weeks worth of time, or one-half the total hours in a calendar week, to make room for a new 80 hours?
The reason I bring this up is because I've been doing the same thing, only with VHS tapes, and now I have four dozen tapes with various programs I haven't yet taken time to watch, and I also kid myself that I will someday catch up. Hey, life goes on with or without you, and you can't bottle it for a later date... though, maybe if reincarnation works there will be time. Good luck -- only 79 hours to go!
Fred Yontz
Reston, VA
War. Who is it Good For?
So Congress has decided to shorten the length of time immigrants in military service must wait to get their citizenship. Tell me: how exactly is this different from getting foreign mercenaries to fight your wars for you?
Daily Blah for... Tuesday, June 03, 2003
Time To Go
I may not have updated that list of my "recent Time articles" in the column to the left for a couple of zillion years -- partially because you have to pay for any articles older than a month or two, and I wouldn't want to make you do that -- but you can't accuse me of not keeping you up to date when new articles appear. This week's issue sees two more: Data Rescuers and How to Hack Your TiVo. I don't have a link for the latter yet because the editors of Time.com, in all their wisdom, have chosen to make it part of the third of the magazine that doesn't get put online immediately, thus making you want to rush out to the nearest magazine stand. Don't forget to close the door behind you.
Historical Justice
It's stories like this that make you believe -- however momentarily -- that the system works. The Justice Department inspector general, a lone holdover from the Clinton administration, has released a report confirming what we suspected all along but never dared suggest in the new, uberpatriotic America: that immigrants detained post-September 11 were "abused," stripped of most all their rights, and generally treated in a very medieval way. Ashcroft's troops have harrumphed about this, and defended their actions in the manner of a drunk tenaciously clinging to his side of the argument. They say they've implemented "some" of the report's 21 recommendations, but we're not told how many. A few? A handful? Half?
Obviously, the DoJ wants this internal audit to go away. And they'll probably get their wish in the short term. Newspapers are too afraid of being labeled liberal to pursue this kind of travesty for more than one cycle; TV news might like it, but there are no pictures. Historians, however, will be all over it. When all is said and done, when this administration is as safely behind us as Taft, Hoover and Nixon, they will remind us that the post-9/11 goodwill was squandered in dingy Federal cells where men who were not terrorists were clamped in leg irons and told they would die there. The system works -- not for our sake, and certainly not for theirs, but at least for the sake of future generations.
Daily Blah for... Monday, June 02, 2003
Jeux Sans Frontiers
There's a new study out that seems to suggest videogames are good for you -- that they sharpen certain corners of the brain. More specifically, researchers found those who spend hours playing out car chases and gun battles develop better visual skills; object-tracking and the like. Damn -- trust me to spend most of the weekend playing the relatively cerebral Medieval Total War. There was nary a car chase nor gun battle in sight (plenty of crossbows, though). Does this mean my France-invading skills have been honed to a fine edge? And is anyone going to give me a chance to try it out in real life? Perhaps I should ask the Pentagon. Considering the frosty nature of yesterday's Bush-Chirac meeting, I may not have to wait long.
Speaking of Chirac and Bush, you may be really disturbed to learn they have become the subject of erotic slash fiction.
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