Camera? Check. Books? Check. Underwear? Check. Cat? Che-huh?
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Packing list
Camera? Check. Books? Check. Underwear? Check. Cat? Che-huh? this post enabled by airblogging.com….
Month: May 2006
“But nobody told us we’d have our rights infringed!”
After either rolling over or abetting the expansion of Federal power to investigate, search, probe, and otherwise ransack the homes, lives, and records of suspected terrorists/criminals, with little or no…
After either rolling over or abetting the expansion of Federal power to investigate, search, probe, and otherwise ransack the homes, lives, and records of suspected terrorists/criminals, with little or no oversight, it’s more than a little amusing that Congress — GOP as well as Democrat — is up in arms over a weekend search of a Congressman’s office in connection with a bribery investigation.
Resentment boiled among senior Republicans for a second day on Tuesday after a team of warrant-bearing agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation turned up at a closed House office building on Saturday evening, demanded entry to the office of a lawmaker and spent the night going through his files.
The episode prompted cries of constitutional foul from Republicans — even though the lawmaker in question, Representative William J. Jefferson of Louisiana, is a Democrat whose involvement in a bribery case has made him an obvious partisan political target.
Speaker J. Dennis Hastert raised the issue personally with President Bush on Tuesday. The Senate Rules Committee is examining the episode.
The justification for their outrage, aside from “Dammit, we’re Congressmen — we’re above being treated like criminals!”?
A court challenge would place all three branches of government in the fray over whether the obscure “speech and debate” clause of the Constitution, which offers some legal immunity for lawmakers in the conduct of their official duties, could be interpreted to prohibit a search by the executive branch on Congressional property.
Lawmakers and outside analysts said that while the execution of a warrant on a Congressional office might be surprising — this appears to be the first time it has happened — it fit the Bush administration’s pattern of asserting broad executive authority, sometimes at the expense of the legislative and judicial branches.
An assertion that GOP Congressfolk have been more than willing to back up as long as it’s other folk who are being investigated.
Members of Congress are mindful that much of the public is not familiar with the speech and debate clause, which, among other things, requires that lawmakers be “privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same.” Many people may wonder why a Congressional office cannot be searched in a criminal case and what members of Congress are complaining about.
But — but — but — we’re Congress!
To many lawmakers, that is secondary to the larger separation-of-powers principle they see at risk. “I clearly have serious concerns about what happened,” Mr. Boehner said, “and whether the people at the Justice Department have looked at the Constitution.”
A pity it’s taken so long for them to notice.
When is a spam not a spam?
When it’s a solicited feedback from a contract bidder that gets blocked by a spam filter and causes the contract to not go to the lowest bidder. Which is the…
When it’s a solicited feedback from a contract bidder that gets blocked by a spam filter and causes the contract to not go to the lowest bidder.
Which is the position Cobb Schools in Georgia is facing, in awarding a phone system bidder that was $250K/year higher than another competitor, when that competitor’s e-mail got filtered out.
There it was in the e-mail spam filter, along with offers to invigorate both your bank account and your sex life: an offer to save the Cobb County schools $250,000. But this message was for real.
School officials are blaming an overeager junk-mail filter for capturing and killing a Kennesaw businessman’s bid to provide telephone services to the system. It seems the part of the filter that watches for pornographic material was offended by the use of terms such as “long distance.”
Not able to check for the missing e-mail, school officials figured the businessman never responded, so he was disqualified. BellSouth won the contract, worth about $670,000 a year, in late February.
Mike Russell, president of Elite Telecom Services, appealed the process through the school system, but on May 1, Superintendent Fred Sanderson denied the appeal and declared the matter closed.
The school district says it’s the bidder’s responsibility, that either they should have followed up or that they should have somehow known a message would be blocked.
The bidder, on the other hand, notes that this was the only message that didn’t get through, and that the school district had explicitly requested e-mail responses after the first hardcopy bid package. He’s declined to sue (a small miracle right there), but isn’t very happy about the situation.
Lessons learned (by me, at least, if not by the school district or vendor):
- As a bidder, follow up, even if you’ve been told to just e-mail. Request an acknowledgement, and call if you don’t get one. Use this incident as an excuse for bothering them.
- As a business, don’t blindly trust spam filters. Especially if you require e-mail messages, as a condition of business, you must allocate time on someone’s part to review what’s been blocked,
(via Techdirt)
Planted and ready for blooming, SIR!
So I finally got the rest of the plants that we’d picked up at the church plant sale and at Home Depot plopped into the ground (and flower pots) last…
So I finally got the rest of the plants that we’d picked up at the church plant sale and at Home Depot plopped into the ground (and flower pots) last evening. One of the advantages of summer time is being able to get a bit of light gardening done when I get home.
That will mean, alas, a bit of extra watering work for our house sitter — especially since, alas, we’ve run out of days to have a sprinkler guy come out and fix the zones that aren’t working, which means the under-deck area will need some touch-up, too — but hopefully the prettiness of it all will make up for it.
Just call me the Blogfather
After much haranguing on the part of myself and others, frequent commenter here (and good friend) Boulder Dude has his own blog — which I am pleased to be hosting…
After much haranguing on the part of myself and others, frequent commenter here (and good friend) Boulder Dude has his own blog — which I am pleased to be hosting and doing the MT admin for. Go over and give BD some eyeball love.
I just hope this won’t reduce his commentary here.
Good News, Bad News, Good News, Bad News
Good News: A The Tick animated series DVD set is coming! Spoon! Bad News: The first collection is not the full first season, but a partial “best of” compiliation! The…
Good News: A The Tick animated series DVD set is coming! Spoon!
Bad News: The first collection is not the full first season, but a partial “best of” compiliation! The horror!
Good News: Well, it’s not really a “best of” pick-and-choose compilation.
Bad News: It’s not the full season either, but 12 of the 13 episodes thereof (the 13th, whichever one that is, being tied up in some sort of legal dispute — even money whether it’s a contract issue with a voice artist or some sort of “satire” that raised some legal hackles).
Still, 92.3% of a season of The Tick is better than nothing. Again, I say, Spoon!
Busy busy busy busy …
Work would be keeping me hopping even if I weren’t trying to clear my plate for our upcoming trip. And blogging would thus be light even if I weren’t trying…
Work would be keeping me hopping even if I weren’t trying to clear my plate for our upcoming trip. And blogging would thus be light even if I weren’t trying to also pre-post some things to show up on a regular basis whilst I’m gone (for your daily DDtBing satisfaction).
Found a distinct disadvantage to having my little office off the shared meeting space — when I beg off a meeting due to workload, but because I also want to be sure I can get out to lunch on time, it’s difficult to slip past the folks who are meeting outside my door without being, well, obvious about it.
This is a test
This is only a test. If this were an actual post, I’d be making some sort of lame joke about now….
This is only a test. If this were an actual post, I’d be making some sort of lame joke about now.
Walt Disney World they ain’t
No matter how some folks have critiqued how Walt Disney World has been maintained and operated in the recent Money Not Imagination period … nothing there can possibly measure up…
No matter how some folks have critiqued how Walt Disney World has been maintained and operated in the recent Money Not Imagination period … nothing there can possibly measure up to the World Landscape Park or Fantazy Land (a/k/a, “United Rides of Fantazy”).
Best quote:
This area was themed on a derelict shack theme.
At least the World Landscape Park has the excuse of being closed and derelict.
These will make any vacation you have planned look really, really good.
Quickie book reviews
Recently read books. Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman: An everyman putz’s good deed elides him from the mundane London Above to the mythic, murky, miserable London Below, where only magic, bravery,…
Recently read books.
Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman: An everyman putz’s good deed elides him from the mundane London Above to the mythic, murky, miserable London Below, where only magic, bravery, and craftiness can foil a heinous plot of cosmic import. An urban fairy tale in a world of angels, assassins, homeless, Beasts, vampires, rats, and the ever-present Underground (and its various metaphorical stations). And it’s a hell of a lot better a tale than that sounds. Based on, and marvelously fleshed out from, the abortive TV series. (Re-read)
Stardust, by Neil Gaiman: A promise to retrieve a fallen star for his lady love leads a young man of mysterious heritage into a quest across Faerie. Easy enough, if the same star were not also sought by an evil witch-queen, vying scions for a throne of power, and, well, a number of other charming and chilling characters — and if the star didn’t have intentions of her own. Typically marvelous Gaiman fairy tale magic — and if I had the opportunity to make a cautionary horrible deal with some magical creature to write such things as well as he does, I’d doubtless take it … and Gaiman would write as brilliantly of the result.
Gods and Androids, by Andre Norton: Repackaging of two books. In Android at Arms, the princely protagonist awakens in prison with other worthies from a dozen worlds and over decades. Have they all been replaced at home by androids — or are they the actual simulacra? And, ultimately, what does that really mean? In Wraiths of Time, a modern scholar is grabbed across dimensions to where the ancient Nubian matriarchy never fell, but now faces a threat from dark science — a threat only the displaced archaeologist can combat by pretending to be the crown princess and mastering the position’s psychic powers.
(Both of the books in this collection are noteworthy for having an African background to their societies. Andas’ world and culture was clearly founded by African emigres from Earth, and Tallahassee Mitford’s parallel world is one where the legendary Upper Nile realm of Meroe never fell. It’s a refreshing change from generic European or even Asian backgrounds — and it’s highly ironic that the wretched cover art makes out Andas to be Caucasian, not to mention having the worst picture I could imagine of a Salariki …)
RLP on The Da Vinci Code
Real Live Preacher weighs in, wisely, on the whole kerfuffle. First, when will religious groups finally figure out that publicly denouncing a book or a movie is the surest way…
Real Live Preacher weighs in, wisely, on the whole kerfuffle.
First, when will religious groups finally figure out that publicly denouncing a book or a movie is the surest way to guarantee its success? Religious people never seem to understand that the world is filled with people who do the exact opposite of whatever they suggest. Hell, I’m one of those people myself. If I hear that church people hate a movie, I’m in line for tickets on opening day. Has the Church forgotten Salman Rushdie? Would any of us know that name if he hadn’t been condemned by the Muslims? Has the Church forgotten Martin Scorcese’s movie, “The Last Temptation of Christ?” In that case, the Church in America single-handedly turned a mediocre movie into a blockbuster hit.
Nice move Church. Perhaps you should have added some basic chess lessons to your seminary curriculum.
But whatever. If the Church wants to make a lot of money for Dan Brown and Ron Howard, what do I care? Both the book and the movie will be off the radar in a few months. Nothing will have changed.
To which I’ll add, if someone’s faith is so weak that reading a popular paperback or seeing a movie is going to crush it and send someone careening away from the church, it’s probably not something that could have been saved (so to speak) anyway.
Christianity is a major, world-wide religion. It is 2000 years old and is the largest common expression of spirituality in the history of humanity. Does the Christian Church really need to worry about a book and a movie? These things are here today and gone tomorrow, almost literally. The Christian Church has withstood the Roman Empire, medieval Christianity, and the Age of Enlightenment. Somehow the Church even manages to survive its most dangerous challenge – scandal, decadence, and corruption within its ranks. Will Dan Brown now topple us?
[…] The best and only appropriate response for the Church is to be about the business of the Church. Don’t we have, I don’t know, CHURCH things to be doing? Or even better, human things to be doing? If our love of humanity was as radical as Jesus called it to be, then we would never have to say a word.
In my mind, every time the Church responds to something like this with angry words, it is a bold indictment of our lack of active love, and therefore lack of relevance in this world.
Amen, Reverend.
A lot of church leaders have condemned the movie (and the book), insisting that it expresses disrespect for the church, for God, and for believers. They miss the point that respect is earned, not secured in court. It will exist only if you actually are respectable. What these folks want is not respect, but obedience, obeisance, and homage — which are very different things altogether.
The Unopenable Package
Who needs to send our troops body armor? Just package them in that insanely hard and uncuttable packaging that so much stuff is armored in these days, and they’d be…
Who needs to send our troops body armor? Just package them in that insanely hard and uncuttable packaging that so much stuff is armored in these days, and they’d be safe from anything the insurgents could throw at them.
The bottom line is the bottom line. Retailers demand the hard-to-open packaging to avoid “shrinkage,” or shoplifting, a problem that cost U.S. stores more than $10 billion a year or $25 million a day, according to statistics from the National Association for Shoplifting Prevention. They also want the item to be visible to customers and capable of withstanding the rigors of long-distance shipping from manufacturing plants in Asia.
“In a nutshell, it is pretty much all about retail theft,” says Mary Ann Falkman, editor-in-chief of Packaging Digest, a trade publication. “Retailers like Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy and the like who sell these small electronic toys and gadgets demand that they be put in packaging that’s next to impossible to steal from. But they could make it easier to open it when you get it home.”
And for those who think it’s all kind of funny:
But it’s not just a matter of customer frustration. These packages pose real danger. Data on the topic is irregularly collected and vague; the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s most recent accounting, in 2001, listed “unintentional cut/pierce” as the fifth most common cause of nonfatal unintentional injury, but that also includes the much more common assortments of knife accidents owing to normal kitchen work.
Anecdotally, though, emergency room doctors say they’re slammed the week after Christmas with such injuries and see them regularly all year. Dr. Christian Arbelaez, a Boston-area ER physician, sees about a case a week, some as serious as tendon and nerve damage that require orthopedic surgeons to repair.
“I would definitely like to tell (manufacturers) that serious hand injuries are occurring because of this packaging,” said Arbelaez, a member of the Trauma Care and Injury Control National Committee of American College of Emergency Physicians. “Especially for people who have jobs that require the use of their hands a lot, this can be detrimental to their careers. There needs to be some kind of change.”
End of a Period
An interesting article on how, increasingly, women are getting contraceptive (or contraceptive-like) treatments to basically stop their menstrual cycles — and doing it for non-clinical reasons. Using birth-control pills or…
An interesting article on how, increasingly, women are getting contraceptive (or contraceptive-like) treatments to basically stop their menstrual cycles — and doing it for non-clinical reasons.
Using birth-control pills or other contraceptives to block periods is gaining popularity, particularly among young women, doctors say.
“I have a ton of young girls in college who are doing this,” said Dr. Mindy Wiser-Estin, a gynecologist in Little Silver. “There’s no reason you need a period.”
[…] Already, the Seasonale birth-control pill limits periods to four a year. The first continuous-use birth-control pill, Lybrel, likely will soon be on the U.S. market, and drug companies are lining up other ways to limit or eliminate the period.
Sardinha says elimination of her periods has been great for her marriage, preventing monthly crankiness and improving her sex life.
“I would never go back,” said Sardinha, who got the idea from her aunt, a nurse practitioner.
Certainly seeing the discomfort (to sometimes put it mildly), inconvenience, and mood swings associated with periods, I have to applaud something that would free women from that. My main concern would be over long-term effects — doing something so profound to body chemistry over a long haul, without a compelling medical or therapeutic reason, seems like it would be asking for trouble. But, most likely, maybe, possibly, it’s not a problem.
Most doctors say they don’t think suppressing menstruation is riskier than regular long-term birth-control use, and one survey found a majority have prescribed contraception to prevent periods. Women have been using the pill for nearly half a century without significant problems, but some doctors want more research on long-term use.
[…] “If you’re choosing contraception, then there’s not a lot of point to having periods,” said Dr. Leslie Miller, a University of Washington-Seattle researcher and associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology whose Web site, www.noperiod.com, explains the option. She points out that women on hormonal contraception don’t have real periods anyway, just withdrawal bleeding during the break from the hormone progestin.
On the other hand …
[Prof. Linda Gordon] says caution is needed because there’s not enough data on long-term consequences of using hormones continuously. Gordon notes that menopausal women for years were told that hormone drugs would keep them young–until research uncovered unexpected risks. “People should proceed very cautiously,” she said.
All that said, for those who think something like this “’tain’t natural,” an intersting statistic:
[M]odern women endure up to nine times more periods than their great-grandmothers, who began menstruating later, married young and naturally suppressed periods for years while they were pregnant or breast-feeding. Today’s women may have about 450 periods.
Follow-up on the Iranian dress code law
Iranian MPs admit that there was a dress code bill being discussed, but that, unlike as has been reported, it doesn’t single out religious minorities. Iran’s new dress code bill…
Iranian MPs admit that there was a dress code bill being discussed, but that, unlike as has been reported, it doesn’t single out religious minorities.
Iran’s new dress code bill is aimed at encouraging designers to work on imaginative Islamic clothing, lawmakers said on Sunday, dismissing a report that the bill sought special outfits for religious minorities.
[…] A copy of the bill obtained by Reuters contained no such references. Reuters correspondents who followed the dress code session in parliament as it was broadcast on state radio heard no discussion of proscriptions for religious minorities.
Senior parliamentarian Mohsen Yahyavi described the Canadian report as “completely false”.
“The bill aims to support those designers that produce clothes that are more compatible with Islam, but there will be no ban on the wearing of other designs,” he told Reuters.
[…] The parliamentary bill follows a call from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who said two years ago Iranians should design a national costume and not take their lead from Western fashion magazines.
The bill has only been approved as an outline. The details must be agreed then sent to the Guardian Council, Iran’s constitutional watchdog, for approval.
The discredited accusations that the bill would require identifying dress for religious minorities has obscured at least some of the debate about how stringent the new law would be about imposing dress standards on all Iranians.
A draft law aimed at encouraging Islamic dress raised fears Saturday that Iran’s hard-line government plans to re-impose veils and head-to-toe overcoats on women who have shirked the restrictions for years, letting hair show and wearing jeans and shapely outfits.
The looser social rules and dress codes are one of the few legacies left from Iran’s once-strong reform movement.
[…] The bill does not call for police or other bodies to enforce stricter styles of dress for women. Instead, it rallies state agencies to promote Islamic dress and “encourage the public to abstain from choosing clothes that aren’t appropriate to the culture of Iran,” according to the copy received from the parliament’s press office.
It also would give economic incentives, including bank loans, to producers making Islamic-style clothing and impose tariffs on clothes imports. It leaves it to the Culture Ministry and others to define what Islamic dress means.
Canada’s National Post, which ran the story, has retracted it (kinda-sorta). The NP story appears to have been put together by an Iranian emigre opponent of the current regime:
The Post story was drawn from a column in the paper by Amir Taheri, editor of the state-owned Kayhan newspaper under the Shah of Iran before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Mr Taheri claimed the law was “drafted two years ago” and had been revived “under pressure” from President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad.
“The new codes would enable Muslims to easily recognise non-Muslims so that they can avoid shaking hands with them by mistake, and thus becoming najis (unclean),” Mr Taheri wrote.
A contributor to various newspapers including the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal and Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, a leading Arabic-language newspaper, Mr Taheri is an opponent of talks between the US and Iran.
He wrote in the New York Post last month the US should “go for regime change in Tehran” as the only way to stop Iran’s drive to “dominate the region and use it as the nucleus of an Islamic superpower which would then seek global domination”.
Not that Iranian government attitudes haven’t lent a certain plausibility to the tale. The government there has decided it wasn’t an anti-Tehran Iranian, but, well, the usual suspects:
In Tehran, Hamid-Reza Asefi, the foreign ministry spokesmen, said “a Zionist operation” was “active in different countries, including Canada, to foment psychological war and spread lies” about Iran.
Why I am not a manual laborer
Because it is frelling hard. Spent six, maybe seven hours today working out in the yard: Shifting two sprinkler heads in the back yard about 6 feet each so that…
Because it is frelling hard.
Spent six, maybe seven hours today working out in the yard:
- Shifting two sprinkler heads in the back yard about 6 feet each so that they water the far back better and the deck not at all.
- Dig up the old turf that is now under the deck, so that plants can be planted there.
- Planting of many plants under and out from the deck.
- Setting up the the drip lines and micro-sprinklers under the deck to get the plants there, but not the uprights.
And, seven hours (and four Advil) later …
- Success! Sprinklers work and hit (and don’t hit) what they are supposed to.
- Mostly success. Couldn’t turn over all the turf because of the overhanging deck, but got most of it.
- Plants planted, aye!
- Set up all the drip lines, carefully calibrated, fitted, aimed, attached … and …
Well, hell. That zone’s not working, either.
So I hand-watered the plants.
A good, solid day’s worth of work. At the very least, I worked off the White Fence Farms fried chicken dinner of last night.
White Fence Birthday
Yay! Katherine (next to Jackie) at White Fence Farms, having just been serenaded by the waitstaff and presented with a very large cake. this post enabled by airblogging.com….
Yay! Katherine (next to Jackie) at White Fence Farms, having just been serenaded by the waitstaff and presented with a very large cake.
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Or bust
I hope the pic on the right comes through. UPDATE: Excellent. It did, mostly. (Picture taken at White Fence Farms.) Yes, the “Lay or Bust!” motto of this particular chicken…
I hope the pic on the right comes through.
UPDATE: Excellent. It did, mostly. (Picture taken at White Fence Farms.)
Yes, the “Lay or Bust!” motto of this particular chicken feed is illustrated (in the latter case) by a chicken exploding with eggs. Literally exploding. Into little bits of chicken, and eggs.
They just don’t make ad illustrations like that any more, folks.
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Party time
Had Katherine’s birthday party today at the local Color Me Mine. Notes … We ended up with six kids besides Katherine — 3 boys and 3 girls, 2 from church…
Had Katherine’s birthday party today at the local Color Me Mine. Notes …
- We ended up with six kids besides Katherine — 3 boys and 3 girls, 2 from church and 4 from school. Everyone seemed to have a good time. For the record (and just to see where we have repeats next year), we had Evan, Anna, Colin, and Aden from school, Jena and Sarah from church.
- The parents all were polite about the drop-off (nearly everyone was on time, and those who weren’t had some very good traffic problems as a justification) and were pretty good about the pick-up.
- We’d scheduled two hours (which is the studio’s recommendation). Note: for the circumstances and plans and age, 1½ hours would have been much better. We were really struggling to keep the kids occupied for the last 45 minutes or so.
- The kids got to choose from a little (3 inches long or so) butterfly, bee, or inchworm/caterpiller. The girls all chose the first, the boys the last.
- The kids got briefed on selecting paints, and on painting the bisque. This was where we ran into the most time trouble, because the kids weren’t really into the whole “do it carefully” and “multiple coats” kind of thing. We ended up getting a second item for them to do, a 4×4 tile, with the thought that they could draw something of their own, etc. That worked out in even a shorter time, since they wanted to draw things that were too small for them to easily paint.
- By the time the kids were done with their art, we’d only used up 1 hour of the 2 hour time slot. This worried me.
- We did cake and punch at that point. Margie’d picked up a yummy strawberry ice cream cake from Coldstone with various Barbie decorations, and we split it up between the attendees (including a slice to the very nice lady who was running the shop). Okay, that took 10 minutes.
- Hmmm. Gift opening. We’ll drag this out. One gift from the gift table at a time, presented by the giver. Oohs and aahs abound. Lots of arts and crafts gifts, interestingly, plus a game or two, a book, a fun purse. Good stuff. Another 10-15 minutes, max.
- We were down to the last activity on the slate, with some 40 minutes to go. And the activity itself was trivial — goody bags. This is de rigeur for parties these days. And even though the kids would be getting their fun ceremics, that would be “eventually” (it’s possible but not likely that they will be fired and ready by the end of school next week. We collected phone numbers.)
So goody bags it was. I’d voted for stickers. Kitten voted for candy. We compromised and got mostly sticker and a few packages of jelly bellies.
My original thought had been to simply divvy up the stickers — or maybe, at most, let people draw them from a bag and then trade them if they wanted. It was at this point that I got my one brilliant idea of the day: a white elephant style of drawing. A kid draws a sheet of stickers from the bag. He can keep the sheet, or force a trade with a sheet that someone else has already drawn.
Overall, this worked well, and chewed up another good 15-20 minutes.
- So, there we were with another 20-25 minutes to kill. Which, somehow, we managed to, with “Simon Says” and this and that. And the parents came, on time, and took their kids, and all was right with the world.
Went to dinner with Jackie and Kaylee at White Fence Farms, which was fun, too.
Two observations:
A. 90 minutes, rather than 2 hours, would have been enough.
B. The kids were about a year or two too young for this, as a group. I’d recommend age 7, at least, for this sort of activity.
And one more:
C. As irksome, annoying, worrisome, intrusive, aggravating, etc. as my job sometimes gets, I so made the right career move when I changed back from teaching to IT …
Movie Quickies
Goodies from Turner Classic Movies: Double Indemnity (1944): Billy Wilder directs (and Raymond Chandler co-writes), as a creepy Fred MacMurray falls for a nasty Barbara Stanwyck and agrees to help…
Goodies from Turner Classic Movies:
Double Indemnity (1944): Billy Wilder directs (and Raymond Chandler co-writes), as a creepy Fred MacMurray falls for a nasty Barbara Stanwyck and agrees to help her kill her husband, with their greatest threat coming from MacMurray’s insurance investigation colleague, a clever Edward G. Robinson. One of the defining films of film noir, and, yes, a movie I’d recommend anyone to watch. Except maybe Katherine. (Thanks, Scott!)
The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939): Betty Davis is a marvelously lonely, twitchy, lovestruck Elizabeth I, and Errol Flynn is a too-handsome, flightily ambitious Earl of Essex, and the two of them are caught up in an oddly unengaging soap opera of politics, love, anger and ambition. Not one of Davis’s better films, but one of her best performances. Flynn plays Flynn — Davis wanted Olivier, but later came to appreciate his work.
Twelve Angry Men (1957): Henry Fonda as the proverbial odd man out in a jury in a capital case quick to rush to decision. It’s a fascinating combination of (now) famous talent a cross-section of everyman society, locked in an overheated room, betrayed by emotions, prejudices, and disinterest in serving up inconvenient justice. Should be required viewing in every civics classroom, even today, fifty years later.
Comic Quickies
From this week’s pull box. A nice collection of entertainment. Robin #150: Well, we find out who’s framing Robin and killing various folks around him. Bleah. Emblematic of what’s wrong…
From this week’s pull box. A nice collection of entertainment.
- Robin #150: Well, we find out who’s framing Robin and killing various folks around him. Bleah. Emblematic of what’s wrong with the “1 Year Later” series. (Beechen/Williams)
- 52, Week 2: Character studies, nice dialog, minor characters (Ralph Dibny, Booster Gold, Renee Montoya), and plenty of post-Crisis mysteries during the time before “1 Year Later.” Solid stuff, not surprising given the talen. (Johns, Morrison, Rucka, Waid/Giffen, Bennett)
- Captain America #18: A continued odd but satisfying combo of gloomy realism and comic book sensibilities. (Brubaker/Epting)
- All-Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder #4: Batman’s a sadistic nut, a newly-found Robin is his victim. Great writing, gorgeous art, and the whole thing just feels wrong. (Miller/Lee)
- Shadowpact #1: Second-rate mystic villains band together as heroes. Except … damn, Bill Willingham writes and draws. Triffic stuff. (Willingham)
- Green Arrow #62: GA vs. Deathstroke. It’s a two minute read, but it’s an eminently satisfying one. (Winick/McDaniel)
- Ms. Marvel #3: Carol continues to demonstrate heroism and feet of clay, facing threats both cosmic and mundane. Big cosmic battles by a hero with feet of clay. Decently amusing and exciting. (Reed/De La Torre)
- Conan #28: A rough-told, cliched but satisfying tale, a tribute to Robert Howard’s centennial. The last of Busiek’s regular writing duties. (Busiek/Powell)
- Fallen Angel #5: The best, and most horrible, explanation for the Problem of Evil, I’ve ever heard tell. Oh, and characters come and go, providing a finale, if the sales don’t warrent continuing. I hope for more. (David/Woodward)