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Daily Blah for... Tuesday, June 29, 2004
Tough Questions
More evidence that the present administration prefers scripted monologue to conversation: an interview Bush did last week with Irish television reporter Carole Coleman. Go to this page and click on the third link down to watch the video (requires Real Player). Bush appears flustered by Coleman's follow-up questions; he's trying to ride out the paltry ten minutes he's granted her by offering lengthy and uninspired answers, which Coleman is not afraid to interrupt. Bush is not used to reporters interrupting him. "Please, please, please, please, okay?" he says at one point, effectively shouting her down. His body language says how dare you?
This is not what he gets from the pliant, cowed White House press corps. Indeed, he hasn't had this kind of treatment since his impromptu international pop quiz during the 2000 election, the one where he haplessly named the leader of Pakistan "General ... General." For her troubles, Coleman does get an even more priceless quote: "my job is to do my job." The price she paid for her temerity was to have an interview she'd scheduled with Laura Bush suddenly withdrawn. This is a White House that likes retaliation almost as much as monologue.
Daily Blah for... Monday, June 28, 2004
What the %&*@?
We all know Dick Cheney is supposed to be an attack dog; that's a long-standing tradition among Vice-Presidential candidates. They snarl and chomp at the opponent while their bosses wear jus' folks grins. But even attack dogs don't foam at the mouth. And in case you missed it, that's exactly what Cheney did last week, suggesting a biologically impossible activity to the venerable Patrick Leahy on the floor of the Senate. Leahy's crime? Asking questions about Halliburton's no-bid Iraq contracts. Even now Cheney refuses to apologise, saying the outburst made him "feel better". I'm sure we're all glad about that. Let the man fling obscenities at you, for God's sake; he might have another heart attack.
If a Democratic Vice President had done this, we'd never hear the end of it. If Al Gore had uttered so much as a damn within five miles of the Capitol, conservative commentators would have torn their garments and wailed about the collapse of civilization. But it's one of their own, so he's just blowing off steam, like the soldiers at Abu Ghraib.
I myself don't give a flying %$£@ that Cheney swore; what bothers me is that he used it to foreclose debate. This is how the GOP operates these days: scream your opponents into silence. Michael Moore's got a new movie out? Let's try to bully theater owners into not showing it. The New York Times is reporting that the 9/11 commission found no credible link between Iraq and Al Qaeda? Let's blast those liberal wussies for even daring to print such a thing. But for @*!$'s sake, let's not get involved in any real conversation.
Daily Blah for... Friday, June 25, 2004
Rage and Pessimism
There's a quite bizarre new campaign commercial up at the official W. site. It strings together quotes from (among others) Al Gore, Howard Dean, Michael Moore and various MoveOn ads, all of which are making quite rational points about the insane extremism of the present administration. My immediate reaction was: well, that's very sporting of the Bushies, given they have the edge in fundraising dollars, to balance it out by giving one of their ads to the other side.
Why are they really doing it? For that you have to wait to the end, where soothing music plays over the image of Our Fearless Leader, and the words on the screen tell us: "this is not a time for rage and pessimism." I quite agree. Imagine, for example, a president filled with so much rage that he decides to invade a country without provocation or legitimate pretext. Or a Vice-President so consumed by pessimism that he tells us the War on Terror will last the rest of our lifetimes. Good thing we don't have to worry about that!
Years after this administration is gone, historians will point to this ad as a perfect example of the Bush II world view. See, they will say, first they tried to claim criticism of the president -- any criticism of the president -- was unpatriotic. Then they dismissed it as "rage and pessimism." But never, ever, did they try to deal with it on the merits.
Daily Blah for... Thursday, June 24, 2004
Bombthrowing
Casting around for something to break the gloom of the penalty shootout, I find myself very amused by the comment on my "Corporation" review last Sunday. My anonymous correspondent, Mr. Hmm, thought it ironic that I work for Time Warner but still enjoyed a movie that lambastes large corporations. What, so anyone who works for any corporation isn't allowed to criticize corporations? As the movie itself points out, the individual working stiffs are not the problem; it's the fact that corporations are, by law, required to make ever more money for shareholders, and hang the cost to people and the planet. Anyway, what amused me was Mr. Hmm's blasting the filmmakers as "CBC-style rhetorical bomb throwers", while neglecting to say what he thought the movie got wrong -- making him the very definition of a rhetorical bomb thrower. Now that's irony.
See What I Mean?
England 2, Portugal 2
The game has come down to penalties. This is our recurring national nightmare. We got knocked out of the World Cup in 1990 and 1998 this way, not to mention the Euro championships in 1996. Penalties are the most hideous way to end any game. It's a total lottery. I'd rather they keep playing, and take one player off each side every five minutes. Hell, I'd rather they shoot one player every five minutes.
Beckham missed, and England are out. Bad footy star! No fashion magazine spread!
England Agony
I'm sitting here biting my nails, listening online as England play Portugal. It's the first quarter final of Euro 2004 in Lisbon, and the home team is fighting hard to stay in it. We're 1-0 up but we've lost our star player, Wayne Rooney. This is the thing about supporting England -- they never give you an easy ride. And you can never breath easy when they're ahead. I remember the pain of four years ago, when this very same team came back from 2-0 down to knock us out of Euro 2000.
Nor has it been easy trying to watch them. DirecTV is ostensibly showing all the matches on Pay-per-view, for an extortionate $25 per match. For some mysterious reason, they won't let you order with your remote control. Nor can I use the automated phone system, unless I want to order the whole of Euro 2004 for some ridiculous price like $200. So I've had to call a customer rep to order the match every time. Would that were all. When I ordered England v Portugal this morning, I got the pregame -- then nothing but a blank screen. The entire first half was spent on hold with DirecTV. Never have I been so furious with customer service. "Are you getting the audio?" asked the rep, hearing commentary after I'd reset my receiver for the third time. "No, I'm listening to it online," I said. "It's my only bloody option right now."
Usually I take the catch-more-flies-with-honey approach, all sweetness and light, remembering that they are human beings too, even if they sound like script-reading machines. But usually we're not talking about a $25 England game. After 50 minutes on the line, I was finally told they're having a problem with the whole broadcast. Now they tell me. Oh, to be in England right now ... I dare not go to the local English pub, Mad Dog in the Fog, for fear of missing a goal.
Speaking of which, Portugal just equalized. Extra time looms.
Daily Blah for... Sunday, June 20, 2004
Moore? Over. The Corporation Rules.
Okay, chaps and chapesses. Here's your task for today. Go see The Corporation, then tell 20 friends to do the same. Forget Farenheit 9/11 -- this is the must-see political documentary of the year. What Michael Moore has been trying to do for years with the visual and literary equivalent of buckshot, this movie does with heavy artillery. It is a thoroughly intelligent indictment of the entire corporate system, all the more damning for staying calm, quiet and fair: business leaders and economists are given equal screen time with the usual suspects (Moore, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein). With a mountain of evidence from the mouths of the accused, you'll be hard-pressed to argue with the movie's central charge: that the way corporations behave, unchecked, is inherently pathological. In fact, one FBI analyst tells us, the Feds are looking into the idea that the corporate entity -- which the law treats like a person -- could be charged just like a regular psycopath. Though it weighs in at a Tolkein-esque three hours, believe it or not, this film remains as consistently engrossing as any Rings epic.
P and I just saw it at the Lumiere, and the theater was heaving. Word has gotten around. No, it isn't just that bashing capitalism is a good part of any decent San Francisco Saturday night date. What draws the crowds is the fact that the movie offers a hefty draught of hope, something we're all thirsty for these days. Did you know some towns in the US have started setting limits on the number of chain restaurants, and asserting their ancient ability to cancel corporate charters? That Gap has caved to pressure over its Central American sweatshops? That peoples' movements in India and Ecuador have scored victories against outrageous corporate attempts to own their seeds and their rainwater? That a growing group of lawyers has been trying to dissolve the mighty Unocal, something the Attorney General of California says they have every right to do? All it takes is one scalp like that, and the entire corporate world would be put on notice. The system is not monolithic. Companies change with the generations. Their relentless drive for profits can be manipulated in subtle ways, if we will it. They can be made, as Google's rule has it, to do no evil.
Daily Blah for... Wednesday, June 16, 2004
Best of the Blogs
My goodness, the magazine actually ran the blogs package this week. You would not believe how many weeks we've been holding it, and how many times we closed it on Friday only to have it yanked out due to late-breaking Saturday news (thanks, Mr. Reagan). Anyway, here's my contribution to it: five blogger profiles.
Five Bloggers to Watch
For everything from shrewd political analysis to good old-fashioned gossip, Chris Taylor finds the blogs worth a visit
Drew Curtis / fark.com
ALL THE NEWS THAT'S FARK
Back when the air was still warm inside the dotcom bubble, registering a new Web address meant you harbored a foolproof scheme to make billions. But not Drew Curtis. In 1997 the programmer, based in Lexington, Ky., snapped up fark.com. Why fark? It's a nonsensical word Curtis says he sprinkled randomly in his conversations. By 1999 he had dreamed up a couple of equally random uses for his Web address. One was to create a database of different curries. The other was to use it as a venue for posting the odd pictures and news items he liked to gather and send to friends in endless, annoying e-mails.
Unfortunately for the world of Indian food, Curtis chose the latter. Now, with at least 5 million readers a month, Fark has become the No. 1 blog for weird and titillating links. It's a supremely simple setup. Every day Curtis posts 20 to 30 of his favorite curiosities with one-line descriptions and a small button to instantly tag the content — the labels range from INTERESTING to OBVIOUS to ASININE. Links to sites and stories you wouldn't want your boss to catch you looking at are helpfully marked "not safe for work."
The site pays for itself with advertising; his wife takes care of Fark's finances. Curtis starts blogging at 7:30 a.m. and is usually done by 9 a.m. The links are timed to appear throughout the day to give the impression that Curtis is hard at work. In fact, he says, "you'll find me in sports bars most of the day."
Fark is a must read at many media outlets, but Curtis doesn't care much about the veracity of news he posts. Earlier this year he linked to a fake story on the Hoosier Gazette, a humor website, about a man in a devil costume disrupting a screening of The Passion of the Christ. The Gazette later e-mailed Curtis excitedly to say the story had been spotted on a CNN ticker. Curtis' response? "Kick-ass, that's cool." As the tag line goes: "It's not news, it's Fark."
Cory Doctorow / boingboing.net
MR. WONDERFUL'S WEB DIRECTORY
Back in 1988, a group of San Francisco journalists launched bOING bOING, an irreverent underground magazine dedicated to pop culture and technology. Almost as an afterthought, they also began a website, for which they called on the services of a writer named Cory Doctorow. Don't bother searching newsstands for the magazine. It's long gone, but the blog boingboing.net — "A directory of wonderful things," as its slogan goes — is more popular than ever. And although it has four main contributors as well as a rotating guest blogger, Doctorow is commonly identified as its author. The reason? "I'm the one least capable of doing things in moderation," he admits.
That's an understatement. While blogging obsessively and free-lancing print articles, Doctorow (who is distantly related to novelist E.L. Doctorow) has also pumped out a novel a year for the past three years. Every morning he gets up before 6 o'clock, does what he calls a round trip of the Internet and starts commenting on whatever he finds interesting. "There are people for whom [BoingBoing] is their daily news sheet," says Doctorow. "It's nice to be the center of attention. But for me, the only reason to do it is to jot down things I think I'm going to find useful later. It's entirely directed at myself."
So for Doctorow, a blog is many things: a searchable journal, a "magical commonplace book" and an exercise in brevity. He takes pride in being able to summarize a story in as few lines as possible. Just don't call BoingBoing a magazine anymore.
Glenn Reynolds / instapundit.com
BETTER THAN TETRIS
Glenn Reynolds found instant success with his blog in the most somber of circumstances. Instapundit started in August 2001 as a hands-on experiment and part of the Internet-law class Reynolds teaches at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. He figured he might get, at best, a couple of hundred readers. Then came 9/11. As Reynolds saw it, "TV pundits were doing such a terrible job that it turned a lot of people to the Internet." Instapundit was there to welcome them.
Reynolds quickly acquired rock-star status among Web surfers. Not only was he getting thousands of hits a day in the wake of the attacks, but Fox News's website asked him to write a column on the strength of his impassioned Sept. 11 rhetoric alone. A couple of years later, MSNBC offered him a second blog (glennreynolds.com) on its site. Meanwhile, Instapundit kept growing. It gets 120,000 visitors a day, which means more people are reading Reynolds than are watching many of those cable-news talking heads. In February, Wired magazine named Instapundit the world's most popular blog.
Reynolds is notorious within the blogging community for his prolific posting. On an average day, he might make 20 or 30 entries, many of them fairly lengthy and most sharply political, with a conservative bent. "People always ask me how I find the time," says Reynolds. "Basically, I'm a geek. I'm in front of the computer most of the day anyway. It's a substitute for Tetris."
Ana Marie Cox / wonkette.com
BORN TO BLOG
Nobody could accuse Ana Marie Cox of sticking to a job when she's not having fun. The author of Wonkette, the plugged-in must-read Washington gossip blog, has spent much of her career on the outs: being fired from American Prospect magazine (for "not being civil," according to the editor) and quitting book-publishing house Knopf (where she says she was reprimanded for reading at work). Says Nebraska-raised Cox, 31: "It's taken me 10 years to find the thing I was born to do."
For Wonkette, work begins at 7 a.m. "I usually wake up and say, 'Time to make the funny,'" she says, "then stumble to Wonkette world headquarters [her spare bedroom in Arlington, Va.]" Here she writes her daily quota of 12 blog entries (enough to satisfy Wonkette publisher Nick Denton, who also owns New York City gossip blog gawker.com). The subject: whatever Capitol tittle-tattle amuses Cox most.
Funnier than the Drudge Report, snarkier than Lucianne Goldberg's scribblings, Wonkette won't fabricate, but she isn't afraid to satirize. She has doled out awards for "gayest-seeming Bushie" and speculated on the size of John Kerry's member. "I am proud to get hate mail from both liberals and conservatives," she says.
A richer compliment, in her view, is the one that came from Tina Brown. If she were starting out today, the former New Yorker editor told a panel of journalists recently, she would be Wonkette. That might seem strange, given that Cox skewers Brown's Washington Post column every week with a chart translating "Tina-speak" into English. But Cox speaks directly to political junkies in a way that magazine mavens can only dream about. Denton does not edit Wonkette, and Cox is hardly the kind to censor herself — especially not when she's having this much fun.
Rebecca Blood / rebeccablood.net
REBECCA'S HIP POCKET
Everything good in her life, Rebecca Blood will tell you, came from her blog. After she created Rebecca's Pocket in 1999, she got an invitation to speak at a conference called BlogTalk in Vienna. An essay she posted on the history of blogs led to The Weblog Handbook, a book that has been translated into four languages and is in its second printing. And when she met the first guy who linked to Rebecca's Pocket, she started dating him.
These days Rebecca's Pocket gets about 30,000 visitors a month. "Blogs become popular by word of mouth," says Blood. "We don't have an advertising budget. But if you're enthusiastic about what you write, that shows through."
So what is Blood enthusiastic about? Well, just about anything. Rebecca's Pocket is filled with rambling, free-associative entries on anything that pops into her mind: politics, culture, journalism, miscellaneous links and film reviews (Cold Mountain: "[I]f I don't cry at the big scene in a movie, something has gone terribly awry" she didn't cry).
But you won't find many personal secrets revealed here. Rebecca says she is a fairly private person who grew up "somewhere in the Midwest" and blogs from her home in San Francisco. "Most women's blogs tend to be personal diaries." Not hers. Though she did make one exception last year when she and that guy who linked to her site got married. Chalk up one more good thing to come out of this pocket.
Daily Blah for... Friday, June 11, 2004
Mixed Metaphor of the Day
"In the face of a government defeat of these proportions, such grabbing at straws must ring pretty hollow."
-- BBC News Online on Blair's disasterous showing in local British elections yesterday
Daily Blah for... Thursday, June 10, 2004
Hacks vs. Hacks
So you don't like how the media has been treating Bush? Think we've been giving him too much of a free ride? Well, join the freakin' line, mister. (After you, madam.) So do journalists. That's the result of this Pew Research Center survey of those noble, hard-working creatures we in the American media like to call the American media. Oh, and before I get a comment -- possibly from the "you suck idiots" guy -- saying that this is no surprise given the fact we're all liberal wussies, consider this: 54% of national journalists and 61% of local journalists describe themselves as "moderates." As Time's own Joe Klein says, speaking for the majority, "when I write my autobiography, the title will be 'Flaming Moderate.'" It is the Republican Party that has swung viscously (and dare I say torturously) to the right; the rest of us are standing exactly where we always have been.
Okay, I hear you say, so you think there's a problem with the coverage. Why don't you do something about it? Aren't you responsible? Well, that's a question I've been asking myself for some time, stuck here in San Francisco, wondering what the heck is going on with the daily press back east (I know I'm biased, but I think the weekly magazine coverage is much better; we've got more time to think about how to be critical but still fair). Part of the problem is the Emperor's New Clothes atmosphere that descended on September 12, 2001 and is only just beginning to disperse. Part of the problem has been the polls combined with the business pressures from above described in the report: we can't say anything bad, the people won't listen, they love Bush! That factor too is beginning to disappear. But you know what I think most of it is? We play too fair. We're incredibly critical of our own opinions. We give too much "equal time" to radicals and fools. I was always taught to argue against my beliefs in my own work; the result would be a stronger piece of writing. I still believe in that. It's a concept that has never infected the radical right, of course. Luckily, we live in a world where you -- yeah, you -- can redress the balance. Think we're not critical enough? Think there are things left unsaid? Then go and start a blog yourself, and say so. The media: we're all about reducing barriers to entry.
Daily Blah for... Wednesday, June 09, 2004
Kerry's Meditative Moment
This self-imposed five-day break from fundraising, ostensibly to show some r-e-s-p-e-c-t for r-e-a-g-a-n, is easily the best thing that could have happened to Kerry at this stage. What you seldom get in the midst of campaign craziness is a moment to pause and reflect, to reconnect with your reasons for suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous politics. Five days on his front porch should be just the ticket for this guy, who despite his lead in the polls is badly in need of a long-term makeover. And who better to have staring out at him from the front page of every paper than the man who sold sunny optimism at all costs -- even as the deficit soared and the streets filled with the mentally ill?
There are some very simple truths about presidential politics that have held throughout the television age: The taller guy always wins. The more alpha male-like guy always wins. The guy who smiles more always wins. Project an air of confidence in a better future, and people lap it up like cat's milk.
P just played a song on the iPod called Things Can Only Get Better. For those of you that don't know, this was the theme tune for Tony Blair's first landslide victory in 1997. It could serve just as easily for Kerry. Just that single phrase is about all most voters care to hear or believe. Right now, they're not hearing it.
So here's my wishlist for what Kerry emerges with: first, an unshakeable certainty that John Edwards, Mr. Smile himself, is the man he wants to be standing next to, raised fist in raised fist, at every campaign stop from now through November. Secondly, a theme song: something heart-pumpingly upbeat. Cher's Believe would serve with just a slight lyrical alteration: Do you believe in life after Bush? And thirdly, a determination that he's not going to hold back: he's going to speak every truth on Iraq or the economy, but he's going to do so with the widest possible grin and confident body language that says: don't worry, this will all be over soon. The combination, as Reagan proved, is absolutely unimpeachable.
Daily Blah for... Tuesday, June 08, 2004
My Criminal Moments
The Stones fan came through for me, and I got my passport back the same day. The only thing that would have stood in the way, it turned out, was the criminal background check -- and he did that while I was standing there. "There are six criminals in the UK with your name," he said. "Luckily, none of them have your birthday. That could have held you up for a month." What a terrifying thought -- held virtual prisoner in Toronto, passport-less, because some evildoer with my name had the temerity to be born on the same day as me. We are all hostages to fate.
There was one more criminal check moment, and that was when I entered the country. Once again I stuck both index fingers in the biometric fingerprint scanner and posed for the digital eyeball camera. That was horrifyingly invasive enough, but I was too jet-lagged at that stage to care (as is the case, I imagine, with most travelers -- that's part of the reason why they get away with it). Then the passport-checker, who sounded as if she'd just learned English that morning, asked ominously if I'd ever been in trouble with the UK police. No, I said. Then she asked me to name all the places I had lived in the UK; luckily it's a short list, and I did so. She screwed up her face and looked at the computer. "You've never lived in ... Heart ... land?" she said. Where? I wanted to say. Do you perhaps mean Hertford? But I had no intention of spending one second longer with her than I needed to, so I just shook my head.
Then she became distracted by her computer, which was threatening to crash (not surprising, since Homeland Security's principle software contractor is Microsoft). The criminal moment had passed, for now. Time is currently applying for a green card on my behalf, and apparently one of the things the INS requires is a letter from a UK police department certifying I've never been in trouble with the law. Would the immigration service just get over itself? When will they stop treating all foreigners like potential lawbreakers? What do they want me to do, tattoo the words I AM NOT A CRIMINAL on my forehead?
The Martha Defense
Here's what that day of boredom in Redwood City yielded:
N O T E B O O K / T H E T R I A L S O F . . .
Peterson's Martha Defense
By CHRIS TAYLOR
Monday, Jun. 14, 2004
Martha Stewart was back in the legal spotlight last week — at another high-profile trial that has obsessed the media. As Scott Peterson went on trial for the murder of his pregnant wife Laci, the defense scored a surreal but key point by playing a videotape of the TV homemaker. Peterson had said that on the morning the prosecution says he killed Laci, she was watching Stewart talk about meringue. The Modesto, Calif., police department claimed no meringue was mentioned on Stewart's show that morning. But Peterson attorney Mark Geragos, in his opening statement, played the tape and showed otherwise.
That was just the first of many early embarrassments for the authorities. Geragos has displayed a talent for getting prosecution witnesses to point out inaccuracies in police reports. While prosecutors were trying to show that Laci was too tired to walk the family dog, as Peterson claims she was going to do the last time he saw her, they also inexplicably pointed out that she was able to go to a salon and a spa and buy about $100 worth of groceries that day. "It's a bit confusing what the prosecution is doing at this point," says former San Francisco district attorney Jim Hammer.
The trial, which is expected to last six months, has attracted plenty of press attention but surprisingly little O.J.-style circus atmosphere. Not only has Judge Alfred Delucchi placed a strict gag order on all participants, but the trial is taking place in Redwood City, Calif.--a town of Silicon Valley commuters with little interest in a murder case from almost 100 miles away. One edition of the local paper last week gave the Peterson trial less play than a story about a stray cat that had tied up traffic on Route 101.
The defense still has challenges ahead, such as explaining why Peterson was caught driving to Mexico with a change of hair color. (He says he was fleeing the media.) But if his legal team continues its hot start, Martha Stewart will be jealous.
Daily Blah for... Saturday, June 05, 2004
Newsom in Napa
The best thing I heard all week came just after that last entry, at 3:30pm on Thursday afternoon. "We'll call it a day there," said the judge. "We'll see you all on Monday." In an instant, I'd gone from the dread of a long evening followed by rising bleary-eyed and hungover at 6am to the blissful anticipation of the perfect end to a long day -- a late night at the Plumpjack Winery. For that's where I was headed, to hang out with Mayor Gavin Newsom and Mayor Jerry Brown and, well, just about every other Bay Area mayor. Not to mention Gordon Getty. It was a special dinner to kick off the Napa Valley Wine Auction Week, and with that guest list I was anticipating something pretty damn special.
The setup didn't disappoint. Once you got past the well-secreted security guys (Newsom got death threats over the gay marriage thing), you encountered a delightful farm-style cottage on what looked exactly like Italian farmland. In front was a long white table with thirty or forty place settings. We were eating outside, and there was no more perfect night to do it. If only there were three kinds of wine that were constantly being filled up in front of us -- oh wait! There were!
There is, of course, no such thing as a free dinner, not even in Napa. We were there to hear Newsom and Getty wax lyrical (well, drunkenly lyrical) about their new top-of-the-range screwtop, and all the mayors were called on for their opinion on screwtops. Only Brown held fast against Getty's anti-cork diatribe, and declared himself a traditionalist. "That's because he's running for Attorney-General," said Newsom. Brown looked uncomfortable, and left early.
My friend Kathryn and I hung out and took a picture with Newsom; Kathryn declared herself surprised by "how cute he is." He held her by the shoulders while he implored her to come up to Napa more often; after that, she was starstruck. I doubt she'll wash her shoulders again. I was more used to Newsom's charm, but even I was gratified when he came and sought us out later. We drank another bottle of reserve and handicapped Kerry's chances. Newsom said he'd been talking to the campaign, and said there was a "90% probability" he was going to choose Governor Villsac of Iowa (cue chorus of "who?") for second banana. Yeesh.
Daily Blah for... Thursday, June 03, 2004
Thus Spake Distaso
Now this is more like a prosecution case. We've got a big photo of the deceased looking heart-breakingly innocent up on the slide projector, and large plans of the Peterson house pinned up behind Laci's younger sister Amy, the current witness. She's using a big pointing device to describe the various rooms. It was Colonel Peterson in the library with the fishing rod! The sound of fingers on keyboards from the press seats is rising to a crescendo, like cicadas at midnight.
The only weak point in this picture is Distaso himself. He looks barely old enough to shave, first of all. There's way too much gel in his cropped hair. And all his questions are delivered in this hideous nasal monotone, punctuated by plenty of "ums". If it weren't for the fact that Laci's sister has them spellbound, he could well be sending this post-lunch jury to sleep. Why couldn't The People have appointed a representative with a little more gravitas? Then again, I find myself asking that every day of the Bush presidency.
Peterson Returns
Scott Peterson just walked back in after lunch recess, smiling and looking confident. I would be too, in his position. His defense team artfully, if boringly, used the prosecution's first four witnesses to demolish the credibility of Modesto Police. You'd think our lead prosecutor, the unfortunately named Mr. Distaso, would have checked little things like whether their witnesses agreed with how the cops characterized their interviews. Add that to Scott's meringue defense from yesterday, and it's looking pretty good so far for the fishing enthusiast and infamous cad.
Did he do it? I must confess, as dull as I've found the trial so far, its central question only gets more interesting. He had motives (life insurance and affair) and he had the opportunity (fishing trip). But did he have the means? And what about the homeless who lived at the bottom of Laci's street, with whom she would have frequent arguments? Were the Modesto PD truly so incompetent that they didn't even pursue the possibility that they might have kidnapped her? Then again, would they really have killed a heavily pregnant woman just to get some peace and quiet?
Trial of the Century? Not Likely
Here I am, blogging live from the murder trial of the century, The People vs. Scott Peterson, in the San Mateo County courthouse. You can cut the tension here with a large blunt steak knife. If you slice it enough times. Probably.
Actually, it's mind-numbingly dull. In contrast to yesterday's Perry Mason moments -- the defense dramatically asserting that Laci Peterson's baby was killed post-birth, not pre-birth, that some homeless guys in a white van were probably responsible, and that Scott was found heading to the Mexican border with a fresh change of hair color because he was fleeing the media -- this morning has been filled with the most mundane mountain of evidence. We've learned that Laci did her groceries at Trader Joe's, had her nails done at a spa, and went to a hair salon. The spa and salon were deemed important enough to the prosecution to call two employees of each, but I can't for the life of me figure out why. None of them seemed to know much about anything, and they all helped the defense by admitting to inaccuracies in the relevant Modesto police reports.
Right now we're into the second half-hour of questioning over the salon's surveillance tapes. There's something a little bizarre about hearing rousing cries of "objection!" while staring at a PowerPoint slide of some random guy getting his monthly buzz cut from a cheery hairdresser. The plucky jurors did their best when they came in a couple of hours ago to find details to scribble down in their legal pads, their heads darting back and forth from lawyer to witness in unison like spectators at a tennis match. Now a glazed expression has settled on their faces, and a couple of the plumper ones look very ready for lunch. The defense attorney didn't help when he asked the Trader Joe's manager, apropos of nothing, why he stopped selling those delicious pot roast sandwiches.
This morning at 8am, a crowd gathered for the daily lottery to determine who would get the 30 public seats. Those who won reacted like they really had won the Lotto. Now about half of them appear to have left. They're luckier than the jury and we hapless hacks.
All I can say is, thank God for $25-a-day Wireless Internet in the courtroom -- and wake me up when we get the condensed TV movie version.
Daily Blah for... Wednesday, June 02, 2004
The Convergence Myth
Now I know I'm a little biased, but this week's Newsweek cover is just about the dumbest I've ever seen. They show a bulky orange plastic prototype that looks like a kid's toy and ask breathlessly, "is this the computer of the future?" Well, no. For starters, I can see that flip-top screen and keyboard breaking off the second you get it home. The central screen looks utterly unmanageable -- what are you supposed to select items with, your finger? Inside we learn that the whole thing is a mock-up created by a Silicon Valley design firm for Newsweek. It isn't even in production -- not now, not likely ever.
The overall vision for the device, we're told, is that "the obsolete mouse will be replaced by voice commands." Sorry, guys, it won't. Even if voice recognition worked 99% of the time in a quiet environment -- it doesn't, by the way -- it would be a hell of a lot more difficult in a noisy environment like an airport or coffee shop. And who wants the red-faced embarrassment of repeatedly yelling commands at their disobedient phone in line at Starbucks? Screaming "you're breaking up" is bad enough, but at least you've got the excuse of talking to a human being.
Nor is everyone's phone going to become a catch-all convergence device. I can't count all the times I've run into this myth. First of all, the screen is way too small to do anything meaningful for any significant length of time (good luck to the Japanese company who thinks kids are going to watch satellite TV on their phones). The screen is small because the device is small. It needs to be; it's a pocket phone. That ain't going to change. Neither is the relatively poor battery life (there's no Moore's Law for batteries; bigger is invariably better). Could you imagine trying to do everything you do on a laptop on your phone? It would die in a minute. Not to mention the fact that you have to turn your phone off for the entire damn plane ride. No, like separate stereo, VCR and DVD boxes, the separate PC will be with us for some time to come.
Daily Blah for... Tuesday, June 01, 2004
Curtis Goes Hollywood
Love Actually was my latest Netflix rental, and I'm astounded at how truly awful a movie it is. I mean diabolical. The script hops around between ten exceedingly thin storylines like an anorexic with ADD. That so many great actors could have been sucked into this project is a testament to the power of the Emperor's New Clothes mentality, as if we needed another one in an era when approximately 100 million Americans still hold the belief that their President is a great war leader. But enough about Bush. The naked charlatan I want to talk about now is Richard Curtis.
I've watched Curtis' career with an uneasy mixture of admiration and embarrassment. He did some stellar work straight out of Oxford writing for Rowan Atkinson's stand-up shows. But the too-clever-by-half historical gags in his first series of Blackadder fell so flat that Ben Elton had to be drafted in to co-write the much more polished second through fourth series. The Tall Guy was adorable; Four Weddings and a Funeral a Frankenstein's monster of tired Brit sitcom tropes; Notting Hill the ideal romantic comedy he'd seemingly been striving for all along. And now this tripe.
A lot has been written about the rampant repetitive cliches in every Curtis film (the token disabled character, the English-American romance, the overuse of pop standards). None of these faze me. What I'm concerned about is the way he represents Britain through an American lens, or rather (to obfuscate further) the way he represents Britain through an American lens refracted through a British view of Hollywood. It's as if, noting that much of the world's dominant movie industry produces emotionally manipulative schlock, he set out to prove that Brits can be schlockier-than-thou. Slavish tribute is paid to the titans of the genre: "Right, we need Kate and Leo and we need them now," says Liam Neeson's character, plopping his lovelorn eleven-year-old son in front of Titanic as if he were rushing him to the emergency room. With this scene, as with countless others, you envision Curtis pausing for imagined murmurs of American approval. Hugh Grant's cardboard Prime Minister publicly slams the US President in a fit of unrealistic romantic pique, but he proceeds to celebrate with that ragged old Hollywood comedy cliche, dancing around his house like no one's watching. When it comes to the special entertainment relationship, Curtis is only too ready to lick the other guy's boots.
The irony is, most Americans look to Britain for respite from this kind of crap. It is the land of Shakespeare, Grant's PM notes, and Shakespeare is spinning in his grave (or quite possibly in Francis Bacon's). Curtis seems intent on creating characters that are emotionally wide open, game for even the most abhorrent kind of laugh, and engage in strange combinations of curses at the drop of an arse-pissing hat. But like any attempt to prove one's coolness, it skims blandly across the surface and never reaches the soul. God help us if British life starts to imitate art in this case.
Everyone Loves a Pirate
Java-based online games are the future. That's my conclusion after playing the delightful Puzzle Pirates, which just won a Webby award. You play a suspiciously Lego-like Pirate, chat with fellow players and take part in simple and engrossing puzzles. Hardcore gamers will probably hate it, but that's okay. The rest of us outnumber them by millions to one.
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