I recently bought Hard Core Logo on DVD, and I was really upset to find the DVD case tainted with Quentin Tarantino's name. To make things worse, the positioning of his imprint makes it appear that he directed the movie. Have a look for yourself:
All of which got me thinking about what I have against Tarantino anyway...
The problem with criminal-as-protagonist movies is that, somewhere along the line, they seem to have forgotten why the criminal was a compelling antihero. "Criminal" only denotes the violation of laws, which are sadly often far removed from correct behavior. The criminal, therefore, was not necessarily immoral. The smuggler, for example, might be heralded as a free market pioneer. The drug user might be a civil libertarian and a perfectly upstanding, moral individual. But there seems to have been a conflation between those who break the law yet are not immoral and those who are immoral for the sake of immorality. The transition happened in phases, and obviously these aren't in chronological order so much as general trends:
Virtuous criminal as hero: think Spartacus. Nominally, he's a criminal, but in reality he's supposed to be understood as a tragic hero. (Disregard historicity, for simplicity's sake.)
Self-interested but not necessarily immoral criminal as hero: Han Solo. Sure he's a smuggler, but he's just trying to make a living and those laws were probably arbitrary anyway, right?
Reluctant, immoral criminal: Michael Corleone, the upstanding war hero who wants nothing to do with the family business gets pulled into being a mob boss anyway. At this point, you can still sympathize with the man, even though you know he will do evil deeds.
And here we reach the worst of the lot: unapologetic criminals who are often shrouded in byzantine plots meant to further portray their moral ambiguity (Reservoir Dogs or Snatch). But there isn't really too much moral ambiguity in these scenarios after all, we are meant to sympathize with "bad guys" doing bad things.
Obviously, I don't have a fully fleshed-out thesis here. But I do find a lot of (needlessly) violent movies repulsive (sometimes sickeningly, stomach-turningly so) because I feel they're asking me to root for people doing things I find abhorrent.
I didn't modify the colors at all: it was dark, gray, and overcast where I happened to be standing in downtown Manhattan, but it was clearly bright and beautiful somewhere nearby. I just wish I had a decent camera to snap this shot instead of my phone's.
So several years ago, the Rutgers radio station (WRSU) had a contest. I don't remember what I did to win it, but somehow I did win it. And the prize they were supposed to give me was all of Mary Lou Lord's records up until that point.
So I never got my records.
I was bitter. Even though I really liked her voice, I couldn't bring myself to buy any of the music that I was supposed to get for free. I ended up buying one of her EPs (Martian Saints) used a long time ago. I listen to it rarely, but it's really good, actually. I've listened to it twice this week. I'm still pissed I never got my free records. Now I'm trying to figure out if I ought to break the moratorium, give in, and just start buying them myself or what.
The Show with Ze Frank is over today. Take care, sportsracers. Maybe I'll see you in the ORG. I'm Afshin. And now that Ze isn't thinking so we don't have to, we have to do it for ourselves.
I'm certain I can't be the only person who has ever noticed that the Reggie and the Full Effect song "Thanx for Stayin'" is built on a sample from one of the Short Circuit movies. I think it's from the first one, but I'm not certain. I noticed this years ago, but for some reason I only now feel compelled to post it. Unfortunately, I don't have the movies, so I can't find the actual sound clip, but here is the sample from the song. Maybe someone else can figure out more on its provenance.
(20 sec. mp3 clip)
This video is a pretty funny spin on the "Love Contract" bit on Chappelle's Show a few years ago. Both were made in 2004, so I'm not sure which came first. Maybe they were independent of each other, though the treatment of having sex "in an uncomfortable place" - like the "back seat of a Volkswagen" - seems strikingly similar. (via Boing Boing)
We have an important warning for parents. Today marks the three-month anniversary of the launch of the Nintendo DS Wireless Connection. But Action News has learned this popular gaming system could put kids in harm's way.
Parents buy the system so their children can play video games. But we have made an alarming discovery. Strangers can use this toy to lure unsuspecting children to dangerous places.
(The Nintendo DS System)
I have an important warning for parents, too. ABC 6 "Action News" of Philadelphia is full of crap.
Does anybody understand why thisLos Angeles Times article's headline: "'Illegal' Transit Strike Puts New Yorkers Out in the Cold," has the word "illegal" in quotation marks? This isn't even an editorial, it's just supposed to be reporting on the transit strike. I thought the illegality of the strike was quite clear.
Sham update
Rocketboom mentioned that the link in my previous entry was being examined by Snopes, but the results were still inconclusive. Well, Kara pointed out today that conclusive results are now available. The French dude was not "online" dating his own mother . . . but the internet is still a sham.
This video of two Chinese students singing "I want it that way" had me cracking up in my studio alone with headphones on. Notice the kid in the background who can't be bothered enough to watch the two serenaders. He's playing video games. Awesome. (I saw this via GNXP, and you might want to check out the other video in that post.)
I've had several recent conversations about the value of "open" web information sources like Wikipedia and blogs when compared to "traditional" sources like encyclopedias, journals, and institutional news sources. In the end, I do see the value in the newcomers: I do check Wikipedia when I'm not particularly invested in strict attention to detail and I want an overview. Blogs are useful for finding a.) links to institutional materials I have missed and b.) helping me weigh the merits of opposing opinions. But, fundamentally, I value the "mainstream" sources of information. I know they're flawed, I'm not so naive as to believe everything I read. But let's face it: with all their flaws, mainstream news sources can offer two things that the communal web sources haven't come close to touching: depth and reliability. Sure, blogs are good for getting a superficial take on nearly every issue, but they're virtually useless when you would like in-depth coverage of any issue, because it is hard for the armchair journalist to make it out to dangerous and far-off locales (where there may be few intrepid bloggers writing in your language) to write a compelling blog entry.
In the end, I guess all I'm arguing is that while we are right to celebrate these new venues, we need to be careful not to overstate their importance. And we certainly should not be teaching the new generations of netizens that blogs, Wikipedia, and other communal offerings are replacements for their professional counterparts. If we do, we will increasingly find ourselves limited to only those free communal offerings and without recourse to professional and reliable information. To this effect, you should read (ironically enough) a blog entry from Nicholas Carr's "Rough Type" on the same subject (and its wider implications):
Forced to choose between reading blogs and subscribing to, say, the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Atlantic, and the Economist, I will choose the latter. I will take the professionals over the amateurs.
But I don't want to be forced to make that choice.
. . .
Implicit in the ecstatic visions of Web 2.0 is the hegemony of the amateur. I for one can't imagine anything more frightening.
(The amorality of Web 2.0)
On a completely unrelated note:
Let's hope Zack is right about where the video iPod is headed. Personally, I think he's being too optimistic. We've all been waiting for flash drives to replace moving component drives for years. It'll be great if it happens in the next 18 months, but I'm thinking it'll take 5 years or so. I do, however, agree that Apple should upgrade my recently purchased iPod.
And speaking of Apple:
I've been meaning to point out that I find it endlessly amusing that OS X Tiger's startup "progress bar" is just a placebo. It isn't actually measuring any sort of progress at all: it is just there to reassure you. How does it know how long the bar should take until it reaches the end? Practice. It stores how long it took to boot up last time, and times its meter using that rubric. It stores the time it takes to boot (in seconds) here:
/var/db/loginwindow.boottime
Apparently my last boot took 2.253010 seconds. The engineers at Apple must have a sense of humor (or are humorless robots that make humans laugh, anyway) because the application that displays the bogus progress bar is called, of all things, WaitingForLoginWindow! For more information on this and other Tiger tricks, check out Daring Fireball: Tiger Details.
Wow, I just found out (via waxy.org) that Charade is in the public domain. I already own the DVD and I have often recommended it to friends. Well, now I can recommend it to everyone. Go watch Charade.
Ernie was right about Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Maybe I do give people the benefit of doubt too frequently. Now a whole bunch of sets on the Suicide Girls site have been censored. Instead, this is what you see:
But [Attorney General Alberto] Gonzales endorses the rationale of predecessor [Reagan-era Attorney General Edwin] Meese: that adult pornography is a threat to families and children. Christian conservatives, long skeptical of Gonzales, greeted the pornography initiative with what the Family Research Council called "a growing sense of confidence in our new attorney general."
(Washington Post - "Recruits Sought for Porn Squad")
Every time I hear about groups like the "Family" "Research" Council (yes, "family" and "research" each get the bunny-ear treatment), I think back to the old adage about the enemies of my enemies and the friends of my enemies. And it looks like my enemies consider Alberto Gonzales a friend.
