we did a double-feature of pan’s labyrinth and children of men last night.
both are outstanding.
pan’s labyrinth reminds you a little bit of jeunet/caro’s city of lost children: a fantastical fairy tale led by a strong little girl. it looks gorgeous and very beautiful, but is also pretty dark and spooky, more on the shadowy side of fairy tales. indeed, legend is that even the making of the film is a little of a fairy tale: “Guillermo Del Toro is famous for compiling books full of notes and drawings about his ideas before turning them into films, something he regards essential to the process. He left years worth of notes for Pan’s Labyrinth in the back of a cab, and thought it was the end of the project. However, the cab driver found them and, realizing their importance, tracked him down and returned them at great personal difficulty and expense. Del Toro was convinced that this was a blessing and it made him ever more determined to complete the film.” definitely shouldn’t be missed. plus, (unsurprisingly) it also has the wonderful maribel verdú, from y tu mama tambien.
children of men was frightening. not in the way that a horror movie is frightening, but in the way that films like requiem for a dream are frightening. it’s the horrors of the possible future that scare the bejeezus out of you: a future where no more children are being born, thus no more hope, no more possibilities, and then humanity turns cruel and mean resulting in an ugly clawing descent into extinction. it brilliantly amplifies the things we’ve been recently aghast about: immigration fears, homeland security totalitarianism, abu ghraib-style detention and torture, and takes them to their extreme conclusion resulting in a world that literally turns your stomach. at least it did mine, unless it was just the mouthfuls of popcorn. i just read the article in american cinematographer about this, and for the most part, they used natural lighting instead of setting up lights for all the shots, which gives it a more realistic look. also, they avoided the traditional A-B-A-B intercutting, and kept to longer shots with handheld cameras, which gives the movie a more documentary feel and further adds to the realism. brilliant.
see them both! which you could, hypothetically speaking, at the sf shopping center cinema, by seeing pan’s labyrinth and then strolling into children of men right after, all for the price of one ticket. hypothetically speaking, that is.
we just got back from lost angels today. as in this morning. as in early this morning. granted, arriving home at 11am isn’t technically early, but when you factor in getting up at 4am and then driving up, it certainly feels like EARLY.
fortunately, we made great time. it only took us a little less than five hours, which included a pit stop for gas and to eat some evil mcmuffins. (i know what i swore after watching super size me, but once a year can’t kill me, can it?) once again, n8’s rule proved right: leave before 6am or after 12pm, otherwise you’re screwed driving to/from lost angels. we actually left about 5:50am, and rolled home at a quarter of 11. there was no traffic at all, and the first signs of congestion weren’t until past harris ranch.
of course, abiding by this does violate ed’s rule: fly whenever possible. driving is for suckers. i want those four hours of my life back. however, this is in turn overruled by hmc’s rule: bring everything. bring often.
packing with hmc is a little like that scene from the jerk where he’s leaving the mansion, and says, “And that’s it and that’s the only thing I need, is this. I don’t need this or this. Just this ashtray. And this paddle game, the ashtray and the paddle game and that’s all I need. And this remote control. The ashtray, the paddle game, and the remote control, and that’s all I need. And these matches. The ashtray, and these matches, and the remote control and the paddle ball. And this lamp. The ashtray, this paddle game and the remote control and the lamp and that’s all I need. And that’s all I need too. I don’t need one other thing, not one - I need this. The paddle game, and the chair, and the remote control, and the matches, for sure. And this. And that’s all I need. The ashtray, the remote control, the paddle game, this magazine and the chair.”
the weird thing is that she always turns out to be right: there’s inevitably some situation later where we need some curious little item, and like felix the cat, she digs into her magic bag, and BOINK there it is to save the day! only her magic bag is really big and heavy. and sort of messy. but at least it’s up here, for now, for a while.
i ended up in third place in both my fantasy football leagues, which considering that i drafted fourth in both of them, means that i mildly overachieved. more than anything it’s the story of drafting a disappointing but dependable running back, having both teams carried by and then blown out at the knee by mcnabb, and then limping into the finish behind vince young. ohbejuan can gloat all he wants, but he knows that he was lucky beyond belief. then again, lucky better than good, right? not that i was any good, nor that anything but luck really affects anything in fantasy football. i do have to say that my first year in his league was more fun than my old sony league, if nothing else for the constant chatter and bantering. and cbs sportsline had surprisingly good information and usable interface. but you should use yahoo! everyone should always use yahoo! for everything.
at least i’ve got my life back and i can properly concentrate on basketball again. whew.
we ate at the super secret down-low cliff’s edge restaurant in silverlake yesterday, which was quite yummy. hmc noticed that bob saget was sitting at the table next to us. not that i was eavesdropping, but it was interesting hearing snippets of him analyzing and comparing the comedy of jon stewart, bill mahr, dennis miller, and howard stern, and then go into a deep discussion of borat. normally you wouldn’t give a shit about what someone thought on things like this, but this is coming from a professional comedian, so they have some degree of astute insight on it, right?
what’s more interesting to me is that before the aristocrats, you wouldn’t have cared at all what the hell he thought, because i mean really, full house? what a joke. but now based on his five minutes in that movie, suddenly we’re supposed to take it that he was just doing the “wholesome dad in the prototypical formulaic sitcom” bit for the money and he has actually been secretly subversive the whole time?
either way, props to him for reclaiming his cred. we didn’t bother him at all, but i kind of wanted to ask him what he thought about mary-kate and ashley these days…
“I taught them everything they know, but not everything I know,” he wrote in an autobiography.
The funk Mr. Brown introduced in his 1965 hit “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag,” was both deeply rooted in Africa and thoroughly American. Songs like “I Got You (I Feel Good),” “Cold Sweat,” “Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine” and “Hot Pants” found the percussive side of every instrument and meshed sharply syncopated patterns into kinetic polyrhythms that made people dance.
Mr. Brown’s innovations reverberated through the soul and rhythm-and-blues of the 1970s and the hip-hop of the next three decades. The beat of a 1970 instrumental “Funky Drummer” may well be the most widely sampled rhythm in hip-hop.
Mr. Brown’s stage moves — the spins, the quick shuffles, the knee-drops, the splits — were imitated by performers who tried to match his stamina, from Mick Jagger to Michael Jackson, and were admired by the many more who could not. Mr. Brown was a political force, especially during the 1960s; his 1968 song “Say It Loud — I’m Black and I’m Proud” changed America’s racial vocabulary. He was never politically predictable; in 1972 he endorsed the re-election of Richard M. Nixon.
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In 1988, intoxicated on PCP, he burst into an insurance seminar adjoining his own office in Augusta (and accused them of using his personal bathroom), then led police on a car chase across the South Carolina border. He was sentenced to prison for carrying a deadly weapon at a public gathering, attempting to flee a police officer and driving under the influence of drugs, and was released in 1991.
james brown - christmas in heaven
got into lost angels last night. the inevitable holiday travel delays with the almost comedic incessant gate changes (gate 31 -> 32 -> 14 which means an entire flight of people hoofing it last-minute from the very last gate at the end of terminal 2 to the very last gate at the end of terminal 1) were mitigated by the discovery that i had a copy of the double-overtime thriller nets-suns basketball game from earlier this month on my laptop, which was a wonderful travel malaise diversion. and yes, door to door it was almost five hours, which hypothetically meant that i could have almost driven in that time. but then when would i have watched basketball? and not to mention the nap.
hmc just had an apico, which is like a root canal, except that instead of going through the tooth, they just give up and go through the gumline. it’s like a bank heist, but instead of doing it on the sly like ocean’s 11, they just bust through the walls like the bank dick. as a result, the left side of her face is all swollen up and puffed up as if she’s keeping a baseball in her cheek for the winter. oh wait, it is the winter already. yum! baseball stew! all she needs is a big white cloth and an icebag on her face and she could be straight out of the little rascals.
we were thinking what she could wear to distract people from her puffy face: perhaps a outrageous wig? or a very flashy earring on her right ear? and then it hit us: why not wear a burqa? in fact, why not market our own line of christmas burqas to celebrate the season? what a brilliant idea! we’re amazed that no one has thought about this yet.
and speaking of puffy, it looks like sean john’s clothes have an odd dilemma:
NEW YORK (AP) — Macy’s has pulled from its shelves and its Web site two styles of Sean John hooded jackets, originally advertised as featuring faux fur, after an investigation by the nation’s largest animal protection organization concluded that the garments were actually made from a certain species of dog called “raccoon dog.”
“First these jackets were falsely advertised as faux fur, and then it turned out that the fur came from a type of dog,” said Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States.
Pacelle added that the issue is an “industry-wide problem” and its investigation demonstrated that retailers and designers “aren’t paying close enough attention to the fur trim they are selling.” He added that the issue is especially problematic when “the fur is sourced from China where domestic dogs and cats and raccoon dogs are killed in gruesome ways.”
Raccoon dogs — which are not domestic animals — are indigenous to Asia, including eastern Siberia and Japan, and have been raised in large numbers because their fur closely resembles raccoon, Pacelle said.
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The Sean John jackets — one a snorkel style, the other a classic version — had been labeled “raccoon fur,” but were advertised as faux fur, Pacelle said.
In a statement by Sean “Diddy” Combs released by his publicist Hampton Carney, the designer said: “I was completely unaware of the nature of this material, but as soon as we were alerted, the garments were pulled off the Macy’s floor and Web site. I have instructed our outerwear licensee to cease the production of any garments using this material immediately.”
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The Humane Society is also calling upon Congress to amend the Dog and Cat Protection Act — which bans the sale of dog or cat fur in the United States — to include raccoon dog, since the organization says these dogs are so “inhumanely” killed and their species are similar to domesticated dogs.
nifty little history of religion map here:
meanwhile, it’s global orgasm day today. get on it.
this clip of Reg Kehoe & His Marimba Queens is fantastic:
once again, nature is freakier than fiction:
A species of moth drinks tears from the eyes of sleeping birds using a fearsome proboscis shaped like a harpoon, scientists have revealed. The new discovery – spied in Madagascar – is the first time moths have been seen feeding on the tears of birds.
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Tear-feeding moths and butterflies are known to exist elsewhere in Africa, Asia and South America, but they mainly feed on large, placid animals, such as deer, antelope or crocodiles, which cannot readily brush them away. But there are no such large animals on Madagascar. The main mammals – lemurs and mongoose – have paws capable of shooing the moths. Birds can fly away.
But not when they are sleeping. The Madagascan moths were observed on the necks of sleeping magpie robins and Newtonia birds, with the tip of their proboscises inserted under the bird’s eyelid, drinking avidly (scroll down for images). This was during the wet season, so the scientists think the insects wanted salt, as the local soils are low in sodium.
But sleeping birds have two eyelids, both closed. So instead of the soft, straw-like mouthparts found on tear-drinking moths elsewhere, the Madagascan moth has a proboscis with hooks and barbs “shaped like an ancient harpoon”, Hilgartner says.
This can be inserted under the bird’s eyelids, where the barbs anchor it, apparently without disturbing the bird. The team does not yet know whether the insect spits out an anaesthetic to dull the irritation. They also want to investigate whether, like their counterparts elsewhere, the Madagascan tear-drinkers are all males who get most of their nutrition from the tears.
here’s a shocker: subcompact cars don’t like getting hit:
All eight models of small cars tested by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety received passing scores in head-on crash tests, but only one, the Nissan Versa, received high marks in both side- and rear-crash tests. The Versa is several hundred pounds heavier than competing models and therefore was better able to withstand the test impact.
Three other models — Toyota Yaris, Honda Fit and Mini Cooper from BMW — scored well in side tests but received low ratings in rear tests.
The results, which are being released Tuesday, show that some small cars offer significantly better protection than others, but experts caution that even the safest subcompact car cannot overcome its inherent size and weight disadvantage. On average, subcompacts weigh about 800 pounds less than midsize cars like the Toyota Camry and 4,000 pounds less than midsize S.U.V.’s like the Ford Explorer.
“A good-scoring small and lightweight car is not nearly as good as a good-scoring midsize car — that’s just the law of physics,” the insurance institute’s president, Adrian Lund, said. “If you’re really shopping for safety, then this probably isn’t your best choice.”
Small cars can be forced backward more easily in crashes with larger vehicles, and their crumple zones are less able to protect the passenger compartment.
As a result, fatality rates for drivers in multiple-vehicle crashes are higher for subcompacts than for every other vehicle category — 83 deaths per million registered vehicles, more than double the average for all sizes of cars and trucks.
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The size of subcompacts means that without the buffer a side air bag creates, the front end of a truck or S.U.V. could strike an occupant’s head. But dealers say their customers rarely are willing to pay more for side air bags or wait longer for a vehicle equipped with them.
more accurately, i called in stupid. as in, “i’m still cracked out so i’m too stupid to go to work today.” or for your romantics, i called in my-wife-is-still-in-town today.
btw, this is done and i think in the hands of all relevant parties. i think i might have a couple left, so if you didn’t get one and you want one, let me know. it’s guaranteed to be 78.95% less bleepy than ebb12.
feedback has been exceedingly positive for this one; in fact roo called it “the best ever”. i don’t know if that’s true, but i do think about something we talked about at a recent andc planning meeting: the value of care and intention. basically when attending events, guests really enjoyed it when the organizers had put a lot of thought and intention around creating an experience where the guests were cared for and every little part of their experience had been considered, from lovely invitations, to flowers and candles in the bathroom, to orange slices at 4am. they all add up to make the guests feel that they were at something special, something out of the ordinary, to underscore that they were valued guests at an extraordinary gathering, not just some people at a party.
in this way i wonder if it’s the same thing with ebb13, in that instead of the normal playmate-style nekkid chix (sex sells, baby!), i opted for a much different look, with special graphics and a beautiful beautiful “jane austen” handwritten font, printed it on special vellum paper, and then hand-wrapped each one like a little gift. which certainly doesn’t effect the quality of the actual music inside, but perhaps changes your perception of the whole package, and maybe makes you feel like you’re already getting something a little special right off the bat.
which, of course, you are.
but only you.
talking with roo yesterday (roo and the fabulous day! it sounds like a children’s book. but sassy!), we realize how little time there is between not only now and the holidays, but between now and when we head off to costa rica.
sure, there’s this week, but then next week people already start fucking off because it’s the week before christmas, and people start leaving early for the holiday. the week after is useless because it’s between christmas and new year’s, and the week after that is not only short but people are just spinning back up from after the holidays. right when people are ready to get back into gear, we’re leaving for costa rica that friday night and don’t come back until late january.
that means that practically january is shot. and in fact, since there seem to be so few actual worthwhile working days between now and christmas, i’m practically mailing it all in already! consider me done until february. i should possibly feel bad about this. i notably don’t. go figure.
now that we’ve settled that matter, i can concentrate on trying to figure out our trip. my copy of lonely planet costa rica 2006 arrived today. (yes, we ended up with lonely planet because hmc is a lonely planet person. i don’t know why i try and fight it or even bother to look at other books every time we plan on going somewhere. i think it’s because i’m an idiot.) i think that tortuguero is actually out of our itinerary, despite all the recommendations. yes, turtle watching is at the top of our priorities, but tortuguero is best for green sea turtles, and they don’t nest there between november and february. in fact, the best time seems to be july or august, which is about six months too late/early. i think we’re going to shoot for the leatherbacks, which should be nesting at playa grande in january. hopefully.
i wonder if we can get straight off the plane in san jose and catch a bus the same day to somewhere relatively close—like monteverde or something. it seems like the buses may require advance booking in this high season, as would monteverde lodgings. perhaps we can dig up a costa rica-specializing travel agent to finesse the beginning part for us. otherwise, we may end up at the jade museum for days on end.
Once she is switched on she goes through a gyrating routine with the help of a pre-installed backing track.
Instructions on the packaging, which has “Girls, Girls, Girls” printed in large lettering, say: “This fun pole dancer is powered directly from the USB port on your PC and will entertain you at any time of the day or night.”
They continue: “As the music plays, the dancer spins around the pole, moving up and down.”
maybe it’s because this looks just like some strippers i’ve seen in vegas. or maybe because it looks LESS FAKE than some strippers i’ve seen in vegas.
we went to see the ruth asawa exhibit at the de young this weekend. she was an artist who is probably most famous for her woven wire and tied wire works, which are amazingly beautiful and strikingly both mathematic and natural. if you’ve ever been to the de young, a few of her smaller works are usually in the elevator lobby of the observation tower; however this is a wonderful much larger exhibit of all of her different works as well as many of her really large scale pieces. absolutely worth a visit.
speaking of exhibitions, if you are thinking of going down to lost angels to see the fashion exhibits i mentioned before, i did forget to mention that lacma also has a special exhibit all about 
magritte, if you’re into that surrealist thing. which you should be, of course. it’s a lovely collection, and they’ve really customized the space beautifully for the works, including putting cloud carpets in as well as freeways on the ceilings. hmc said to avoid the audio tour, which was narrated by pierce brosnan for no other reason than his version of the thomas crowne affair which uses magritte’s man in a bowler hat as a major plot point. cinematic cleverness aside, she says that it’s a waste of $6.
speaking of (ex-)bonds, i totally forgot to mention one thing about casino royale: halfway through the movie i realized (and then could not stop) that daniel craig quite resembles hong kong movie star tony leung chiu wai. not so much straight up, but certainly his nose and mouth, and especially the same way that they exhibit that slight wry smile. i don’t know why i thought this was important, but once i saw it i couldn’t get it out of my head. maybe the closest you’ll ever get to a chinese james bond (and no, city hunter does not count).
sparkle notes that she often identifies as male in her mind, which reminded me about this BBC brain sex id quiz i took last year, which purports to tell you if your brain is more masculine or feminine.
mine ended up being on the male side, but more male-female balanced. also good at shapes and systemizing, not so much on the empathy and words.
but who cares what you think anyway? me hate you dumb heads. hulk smash!
ok, this may be the only time i’ll talk about that borat movie. because i figure by now everyone’s seen it already. or you won’t ever. or you’re waiting for it on video, in which case you should come back in six months.
no, it’s not the funniest movie ever. it may possibly not be even very close to the funniest movie ever. it wasn’t terrible, but it certainly was surprisingly average for something frequently reviewed as “the funniest movie ever”.
i mean, really, that’s some big knutz to throw around. that means it would be funnier than blazing saddles? funnier than pee wee’s big adventure? funnier than what may be my favorite movie of all time, tampopo? is a fake doc about a fake foreigner exposing the buffoonery of american culture funnier than an absurd spaghetti ramen western about the search for the perfect bowl of noodles?
“HELL NO”, i say.
possibly the problem with borat is that it’s comprised primarily of one-shot concept jokes, which is mostly the shock that ‘he actually did this or that’ or ‘had the gall to try and pull that over on someone’. which is fine, unless you already watched the trailer which is the first five minutes of the movie and has most of the best jokes, and it’s not quite as funny the second time in the theatre. or if you read reviews or commentaries (uh, like this one) ahead of time about how funny this part is, and then when you actually watch it, the shock is already gone (or expected) and it’s no longer so so funny.
i read an interview with seth rogen (40-year-old virgin, freaks and geeks), who has written for sasha baron cohen on da ali g show, and he said that while a lot of sasha’s stick looks very extemporaneous and improvised, it’s actually quite meticulously scripted. they obviously want to get the mark to say and react a certain way, but of course you can’t script what they’re going to say, since they’re not really in on the joke. however, he said it was amazing to what degree you actually can script what they’re going to say, just by writing borat/ali g’s lines to drive the bit a certain way and make the joke end up as planned. which all of a sudden makes what they’re doing more impressive.
but not necessarily funnier.
(next up: the fountain, or how to shoot your film on the cheap by replaying every scene two times)
ok, so based on a spattering of advice:
ecotraveller’s guide is nixed (1st edition. plus, senseless and very hard to follow), as is fodor’s (which does not cater to my type of trip, if nothing else because of the published “word of mouth” quip: “my two cents on tamaramino: we would not have been happy staying in tamarindo proper. i told my wife i think we were the only two republicans within 50 miles. —stepmoore” eek.)
sounds like tortuguero is a winner. and volcanos are popular, although don’t they smell like sulphur? mmmm sulphur, which brings back memories of the outhouses of my childhood camping trips. this is going to be great. tamarindo sounds definite, if nothing else because it’s next to parque nacional marino las baulas = turtles!
josie from emmy’s/front porch raved about the osa peninsula, which has the last remaining silver of pristine rainforest in the country, parque nacional corcovado. it’s convenient how all of these things are on opposite ends of the country.
as for the how-to-get-around question, i honestly don’t know. the guidebooks do a good job of both saying it’s ok and making it sound horrific and scary to rent a car and try and drive around. josie said that it’s no problem. k2 says hell no. cheryl took buses, but san jose to puerto jimenez is like 8 hours. did i mention the part about wanting to visit all the parts that are far away from each other? yay! what happens if my recommenders disagree? can i stage a battle royale and have them fight each other, and then just listen to the winner? if i can arrange that, maybe i don’t need to go anywhere at all…
i think we’re decided on flying down on sat jan 6th and returning on wed jan 24th. although all the weekend flights seem to involve a redeye. it seems i can fly down on american through lost angels, which isn’t too bad. there’s a taca airlines flight i can’t figure out: orbitz, etc. say that there’s a plane change in san salvador there and back, but i called taca and they claim there isn’t. who knows? and do i want to be stuck in el salvador accidentally? or is that part of the troublonia peninsula?
had to take brother-in-law mike to the emergency room. he’s fine, but he had to get seven stitches.
we remarked how ironic it is that you go to the emergency room to get immediate medical attention, but what you end up doing most of all is waiting a lot. because it’s an emergency! now now! wait wait! stat!
good thing that doesn’t happen anywhere else. like if you went to the auto service station and they didn’t fix your car, or if you drove on the freeway and found it congested, or if there was a place called 24 hour fitness that wasn’t even open 24 hours a day.
that would be funny, right? ha!
although at least none of those end up with stitches.
i have to say that i love these dishes sold by french paper:
partly because i love melamine, and partly because they’re so, uh, classy. although i do realize that it would be silly for me to actually get them— what do i need plates for? it’s not like i eat or anything.