The Zen Bell (This must a metaphor for something)

So here I am-- back in the bedroom of my childhood. Its now a second office, primarily for keeping the computer equipment organized (natch). Like shadows, tape marks remind me of where I had movie posters for Pale Rider and Shane (yes, I know they are essentially the same movie). Odd things remain: my TMBG concert poster from the Apollo 18 tour, my Newky Brown Bar mirror from Notty, and the Zen Bell fulcrum.

When I was 14, I purchased a princess phone at a garage sale for a quarter. I took it apart and had fun running different volatage currents of electricty through their various different parts, mostly to make the ringer ring. Eventually, I got bored with this and tied one of the bells to about three feet of string and hung it from my ceiling. I labeled the fulcrum point for this pendulum "Zen Bell" I was actually thinking about the final stage of Street Fighter 2 where you get killed by M. Bison (unless you are Blanca in which case you just electrocute him to death and watch the dumbest of the end cinematics, but I digress). I actually found this thing to be an astoundingly useful stress reliever.

Most stress relievers have you beat the living crude out of something squishy. This was just the opposite. I kept a variety of hammers on my desk and the point was to hit only the bell, not the string, not myself, not a bookshelf, and not to whiff and hit nothing. After various experimentation, it turns out that the most satisfying experience was to casually tap the bell once with a ball peen hammer. The bell would sing for about thirty seconds. The noise was pretty loud... loud enough and sustained enough to make you both (1) forget why it was you wanted to hit the bell in the first place and (2) admit that greater than whatever stress made you hit the bell, the sense of curiousity as to what would happen was a bigger reason for doing it. As the dog days of summer before going off to Rice set in, I would also think about that scene in the Magicians Nephew where the bell actually awakens the Witch of the dead world.

Now there is no bell, no hammers, no string, only the label and the space where the bell once hung in a different time. I look at the space and hit the bell with my imagination and the sound travels out of the past and rings in my ears.

Merry Christmas from Hanslick Rebellion

Doing some last minute Christmas shopping at "Good Yarns" I ran into Mike Keaney, bassist for Hanslick Rebellion. First off, treat yourself to some streamaliciousness from their web site. I personally like their cover of "Pablo Picaso" which is a track from the Repo Man soundtrack that used to really crack me up.

(Burglars who read my blog who have figured out that I am visiting New York on vacation, please do not try to rob my house.)

Mike has played bass for about as long as I have known him. He used to really make the Hasting Youth Summer Theatre band thump. It's cool that he's still making music.

Nothing like seeing long lost friends at Christmastime, right?

I got a bit of this funny feeling at the high school reunion a few years back, and when I see people on friendster who I haven't seen in over a decade. Its amazing the unintended and sometime eclectic but nevertheless powerful affects that your friends have on you when you are growing up. On my side, I remember someone at the reunion talking about "Zeta Enterprises" which was the powerful conglomerate that I dreamed of forming from about seventh grade on.

So what about Mike Keaney? In college, the various different bands that I had anything to do with ("Free Beer", those guys in Notty, "Burnt Toast", any of those Friday night colaborations on the Jones PA with Clint and Spike, etc.) were all measured against Mike Keaney and the Hastings Youth Summer Theatre band. Memory being what it is, by the time I got to college, the relative greatness of the band equaled that of Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem. And I don't know that there were any recordings from those summers, so (for all I know) maybe they were as good as Floyd Pepper, Janice, Animal, Zoot, and the Doctor.

Anyway, great to see you Mike. Glad you are still doing music.

DAKOTA!

Warning: the following post contains graphic descriptions of illness and may be unsuitable for some blogging audiences. Parents, may want to monitor their children's viewing. Reader descretion advised.

So in case you don't know, various illnesses have been making their ways through our house. 2 weeks ago, Dakota had strep, which I inherited this past weekend (those tush shots really do hurt). Additionally, Jason had been vomiting Thursday, stopped by Friday morning, started again Saturday night, stopped by Sunday, started again this morning. In between, Dakota and Will both vomited yesterday - diagnosed as Viral stomach bug. I have just psychmom sterilized every bottle part, and I think I am going to dump the formula powder we have for new powder, just in case there is some sterilization issue there as well.

Miraculously, I have not vomited. This is probably due to one of two reasons: either the antibiotics they shot my rear with on Sunday is still working to kill every germ in my body, so I am therefore unaffected; or the balance of the universe is finally swinging my way, making up for all of the vomiting I had to endure during both pregnancies.

You decide.

*****
Oh. So the seemingly unreleated headline is because, when Jason FINALLY fell asleep for a nap in the living room in his pack-n-play (having sullied every other sleeping surface in the house with his vomiting at roughly the same time - don't ask), Dakota decided that was the perfect moment to "play pirates". Not with Jason, merely near him, and was menacing his general vicinity with a paper towel roll sword, screaming "arrgh!" This of course caused the peacfully sleeping Jason to awake and scream in relative terror, as all of you would if Pirate Dakota was threatening YOU with a paper towel roll sword.

Kids.

Bill Gates is Time's Man of the Year!

Time must be reading my blog

The Muppet Show is a hit !

Jason THomas Li raves, "Ah ooo ah! Ba Ba Ba."

Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem was found to be especially groovalicious

Dakota also studies the law

"Mommy, I want to study"

"Dakota, it's time for school you can study after we come home."

Dakota is studying the law of the lower cases. This is especially tricky law as it requires that you write letters.

Fantasia 2000 and more midnite confessions of dubious cultural tastes

Look, I spelled midnight with ite. Not an auspicious start. It's a bit like showing up for a job interview with a large oversized white bow tie with red polka dots, then someone pulls on your sunflower boutonniere and it makes your pants fall down (actually your suspenders continue to hold a hoop around your waist but oddly your pants are attached to that hoop like a poorly designed chambray window curtain) only to reveal that your boxers match your ugly bowtie and your sock garters match your suspenders.

"William, I thought you were going to talk about the movies, why are you talking about the career services office at Clown College?"

That's clown UNIVERSITY, mind you. Why I got my Spatula of the Arts back in '96.

But seriously folks, I think I prefer Fantasia 2000 to the original Fantasia. Maybe its just that Dakota put fewer finger prints on the former, but I think that the newer movie is just more entertaining and has a better music selection.

"BLASHPHEMY! THE ORIGINAL FANTASIA HAS "PASTORAL""

Yeah, yeah. That, plainting yourself Blue and jumping over mushrooms in the backyard will get you a COLECOVISION.
F2K employes Donald Duck to recapture Elgar's most abused tune in the name of the "Major monotheistic religions of the world" friendly story of Noah and the Ark. I always liked Donald for the -mouthed beligerent sailor that he is. Some people like the mouse, but Mickey is too squeaky-clean (accent on the front). No, underneath that tangled mess of feathers and hostility, Donald Duck has a big heart.

That's why you gotta see "Fantasia 2000." Own it today on DVD.

This movie review brought to you just in time -- for 2006!

This blog entry does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Disney Corporation or the Tuscaloosa Knights of Columbus. William Li is not a paid spokesmodel and his testimonial to Donald Duck was not solicited or co-erced through the power of hyponosis. You are getting shleeeepy, shleeepy, shleeeee-howwowowowowow. OH BOY!

The Nutcracker All Jazzed Up On Ice

I suppose that it's not the very first time that my daughter has ever performed for a audience... that pleasure would be reserved for her 2 year old "preschool concert"

Nevertheless, this has considerably more legitimacy as a bona fide thing.

Anyhow, if you are looking in the cast photo for Dakota... its the 2004 picture that you are looking at and you'll just have to wait.

I like "Freddie"

Louren Tivos "Freddie" for me. I thought that the show would be a guilty pleasure as it starts Chico's son, David from 9-0, and Shelly the waitress from "Twin Peaks" but once I got over the stunt cast, I realized that I was watching a bona fide good show made for people who are about my age who regard sitcoms with some disdain for the assumption that if they hype it enough we will like them out of submission (see Friends) and are generally suspicious of the low quality hacks who write by commitee to produce dismal luke-warm awfulness (see Full House, Home Improvement, Growing Pains, The Jeff Foxworthy Show, The Bonnie Hunt Show, The Jim Belushi Show, the Damon Wayans Show, etc.) What's the difference with "Freddy"? It's the "Happy Days" qualities 1. Funny details. Sometimes people say stuff that is funny without specifically being a joke. This happened a lot on Happy Days (and generally tended to happen more in 1970's era sitcoms)

HOWARD: What's this Marion? MARION: Oh Howard, its more sweet sixteen gifts from out of town relatives. This is from the Timsons HOWARD: The Timsons eh... MARION: Oh what's wrong, Howard? HOWARD: Well, I hope its something good because we got them a very expensive gift last year for their daughter's confirmation MARION: Howard, you got them an electric drill HOWARD: It's the thought that counts, and anyway, it had four speeds!

Gary Marshal was always throwing in implicitly critical middle-class observations like that which would connect with the audience. I would butcher the line in the recent episode of "Freddie" that does the same thing but essential the observation is that when he and his sister were young, they were poor and the thing that they were deprived of was COLECOVISION (check out their website, its so ironic that it crosses the line and actually is awful, unless the irony is unintentional, so hard to tell with these kids) so Sarah (the sister who apparently was on NYPD blue, whatever) made Freddie paint himself blue and jump over mushrooms because they couldn't play Smurf Rescue (you can actually play the game here) which is hysterical if you've ever seen or played the game. It's also funny on the level of speaking somewhat more candidly about "want" means today as opposed to during the Great Depression. This gets to my second point 2 I have some further opinions about why "Happy Days" is funny and how I see the same things in this show but I need to get back to studying.

You can learn a whole bunch about a person from how they sleep

My kids are asleep. A reality of evening law school is that this is how I commonly encounter them. I've learned a few lessons about my kids and people in general from watching them sleep:

1. When people are asleep, they don't like to be woken up with sudden loud noises or a sharp jab with a stubby forefinger.

2. When people are asleep, they tend to talk less. The exception to this is people who talk in their sleep who talk the same amount.

3. When people are asleep they tend to lie down.

4. People move around more in their sleep than when they are watching television. I almost thought that was interesting.

5. When you are watching people sleep, its proably because you are having trouble settling down from your day at work and evening at law school.

6. Making lists late at night on the internet is a good way of making lists late at night on the internet.

7. I have learned that this is the seventh thing on my list.

8. Ahhhhh!!!!!! A human pumpkin!

9. Both of my children snore, but they snore different. They snore like their personality.

Sick Girl

Poor Dakota has strep (among other things) and after a 4am trip to the ER on Sunday did little to stop the accompanying vomiting, her Doctor suggested an injection of Antibiotics. Dakota about wigged out. However, luckily, the Dr. noticed that the only shot Dakota needed before starting Kindergarten in the fall was a HepA, so we snuck that one in first, and then she got the big one, so she forgot all about the first one.

I have to say, the antibiotic shot is amazing. Dakota has had a DRASTIC turn around since 10am. She had her appetite back, and is already getting restless about being stuck at home.

***
dress rehearsal and photos for act 2 of Nutcracker tomorrow evening. And Thursday is the final full dress rehearsal. I will post photos when I get them.

Meditation

eBay India: Classic Casio VL - Tone Portable Mini Keyboard ! (item 7371405377 end time 08-Dec-2005 22:14:00 IST)

Many people (me included) foresaw a revolution in music because of computers. It happened and it didn't happen. But much of it has to do with what I call the "Kazoo problem"

A kazoo is an extremely efficient method of hammering out a melody that sounds like an instrument and not like a human voice. If you have no sense of melody, your kazoo playing reflects this.

The problem is, even if you have a very good sense of melody, it is very difficult to have an objective ear listen to your kazoo playing because they know "hey... that's just a kazoo"

This problem is somewhat exacerbated by all of the truly awful kazoo playing, but I don't think that's fair. I had more to this but

I said this seven years ago: Cell phones are the new Pocket watch [Some blog on the BusinessWeek web site and unfair & out of nowhere criticsm of it]

Actually the title of the article that I am linking to (in the title) is "Pocket watches are back."

In reality, it wasn't my brilliant punditry that made me say what I said about "cell phones as pocket watches" when I said it (1998). And in fact, I think I said it about SMS text-messaging pagers. But the truth is (Hello. Strunk and While calling William: You need to cut it out with the "throat-clearing" introductory clauses [these parenthetical comments are no picnic either]) I've more or less always (why qualify?) liked pocket watches better than wristwatches. Pocket watches remind me of my Grandpa.

Make no mistake about it, however, my punditry is brilliant. All hail me! The Oracle of Sugar Land! Soothsayer extradonaire! Futurist-Savant!

Haza! Hazaa!! Hazaaa!!!

On to the meat of my criticism of the article:

BusinessWeek is indulging either in a sad or a keenly ironic excuse for blogging (maybe it is both!) The main weakness of the article (and the blog in general) is that it tends to a sticky frappe blended from cultural anachronisms (Cathedral bells and school buzzers? Dude! Are you predicting the end of time or the end of secular public education?), basic "miss the boat"ness about technology, and metaphorical expression tortured in a bag of mixed locutative phrase-coinerismations.

Yo, Author of whatever that blog is called! Write about something current, for example, "the distressing prevalence of Lt. Uhura cell phones" Here is an ironic link that topic, written about "so last year".

Here, I'll start you off:

What's the deal with these ear-sticky-outie cell-phone thingamabobbers? It's like the TMBG song "Everybody wants prostetic foreheads on their real heads"


Enough abouut you. Back to me...

I say, "We are not going far enough."
Technology needs to intrude further into our lives and personal space. Which brings me back to "Inspector Gadget" How about a poem? Yes, a poem.

[ahem]

Ode to Inspector Gadget

What a beacon of our time!
How graceful and noble of purpose!
Oh, to have a cell phone embedded in my left hand, such that my pinky be the microphone and my thumb the speaker!
My heart takes flight, although cell phones must be turned off while the cabin doors are closed.
My soul soars, to the furtherest reaches of my provider's coverage map.

Inspector Gadget, I would call you even if I had only an analog signal.

If they refashioned the redoubtable gray "Gentry" such that a cybernetic arm with a mind of its own would pop out to grab stuff, hold up a magnifying glass (to look at clues), or just rub the ol' chin while both hands are needed to puzzle over a map... people would buy the thing like mad!
But not like M.A.D., for that is the way of Dr. Claw: which is bad bad bad.

Go, Gadget, go.

Batman Begins to annoy me

So I arrived in Houston late last night and I get to the parking lot and my battery is dead and won't stay on after a jump unless I keep my foot on the gas, which I do... all the way home (poping into neutral to brake, but still very frightening) such that by the time my healthy jog to Sugar Land is done, the batter is charged... so I think, but on the way to work the car loses power and guess what? The transmission lines are also leaking. New Battery, New transmission lines, plus new fuel pump last week. Makes for a very bad week.

I blame the in-flight movie, which as you might infer from the title of this post is the snooze fest staring Christopher Bale and Liam Neison.

*Spoiler Alert*

Actually if its a spoiler to you that in a Batman movie... Batman wins... ... who am I kidding? You people are smart. Let's just move on.

So this movie is all about conquering fear, thus Rasch al ghoul and Scarecrow are the bad guys. At the end of the movie, Gordon lets Batman know that the sequel will feature the Joker.

The message here is: Once you conquer fear, the next obstacle is to conquer jokes.

These thoughts are rolling through my head as I am rolling in the fatwill-mobile, in neutral, downhill on the freeway, 70 mhp, one foot on each pedal, lights flickering/threatening to die, me exhausted from my trip (oh and from food poisoning) and I'm repeating "why not just use safe clear?"

"William, people who drive stick, often have two feet on the two pedals and often put the car in neutral. What do you want, a medal? For goodness sakes, it wasn't that dangerous, although it probably was bad for the car."

Anyone who's ever driven with me driving stick understands what a terrifying experience is.

So the car gets home and you'd think, that it must be just desserts that I ruptured the automatic transmission fluid hose.. but its not. It's Batman.


I got a song to sing about Batman
Sha na na na na na na na
Batman!

Finally, what's up with D.C. Comics hating Princeton University. Bruce Wayne is a dropout after sophmore year (talk about sophmore slump) and Bruce Banner is a researcher from Princeton (that might have only been in the live-action series staring Bill Bixby) By the way, did anyone think it was incredibly sad the way Brandon Cruz was the only person who tried hard to raise money for Bill Bixby? For those of you who don't know Brandon Cruz was Eddie Corbett in "The Courtship of Eddie's Father" for a while, he was also the singer for the Dead Kennedys (although I'm sorry, but its not the Dead Kennedys without Jello Biafra!) and if you never thought it was possible for a punk to be sad without being emo (which isn't punk, I don't know what you call it... oh yeah... you call it emo) then watch the incredibly uncomfortable spectacle of a grown man's heart breaking in public as his effort to save the life of his TV dad is chronicled by TV entertainment news magazines.


As Batman Begins to annoy me, the captain comes on the overhead to announce our descent into Houston.

Operator Error

The biggest risk to all designs are the operators. Case in point, Inspector Gadget. When people would accidently grab on to the button of his overcoat, he would turn into a floating, bouncing, crazy hazard. This gets into post that I previously abandoned as a draft entitled:

Batman Begins to Annoy me, in which I blame my car problems on the in-flight movie. My point there was that Hollywoood movies and certain Japanese anime suffer from too much explanation. Once the "Why" elements are explained, you say "oh... that was sort of dumb, it was better not knowing."

In this sense, Inspector Gadget was terrific. Who was Dr. Claw? Why did inspector Gadget have all those gadgets? Did Penny accidently kill her parents trying to build a cyborg? Is Chief Quimby really a police officer or is he an informant like Deep Throat from the X-Files?

Like the real Deep Throught, Inspector gadget is less enjoyable when you get to know too many mundane details.

As a final Thanksgiving thought, consider this: Deep Thought, Deep Blue, and Deep Purple.

I rest my case.

Wanna see a cool animation of what they did to my house?

I was going to make some sort of pun about "getting level" or "righting my house" and pass it off as profundity. Louren says that they dug a hole so deep that she saw the top of a hard hat. They didn't mess up the plants or the driveway.

"William, you own plants? You have the brown thumb!"

Hey man, lawns cannot live on grass alone.

Hold on to your oxygen because the Space Station will have... a live videoconference!

So there is a bunch of hype because Paul McCartney is going into space... via videoconference. Big freakin deal!!! Oh... and another thing: Paul McCartney isn't "beaming" into the Space Station to sing them a song. There's nothing mysterious about the technology at all, so we don't have to be all 1980's about it.

Here's the real headline:

Interest in ISS waning, even the astronauts are bored. Former Beatle dispatched to liven things up. War is over, if you want it. Oops, wrong Beatle. Anyway, this is too long for a headline. How about that local sports team. The article is going to start right about... now!

So the moral of the story is... don't let me run a newspaper.

Texas Rules of Evidence 803. Hearsay Exceptions: Availability of Declarant Immaterial

(1) Present sense impression. A statement describing or explaining an event or condition made while the declarant was perceiving the event or condition, or immediately thereafter.

Compare with Fed.Evid.R 803(1) (reading verbatim).

Here is an example of this in action. Note that the declarant is exempted but the commentators' statements would probably be hearsay.

Which State elected Lt. Governor DuBois? Let's call it Mohiowyomindelarizoklafornewashintennebralaskanas

I've previously complained about what's wrong with TV Show synopsis sites (one of the earliest posts on this blog) and viola! Someone has fixed it.

Mirabla dictu!

{William Did you just do a clip show a la Family Ties?}

Remember when SNL had Justine Bateman as a guest and they did a clip show of the previous clip shows as a skit...

That was almost less funny that Mumford the Magician's trademark like "a la Peanut Butter Sandwiches." I always hated Mumford... always doing magic and messing things up. You start out with a vexing but manageable issue like... your shoes are merely untied. Then (and before you can protest) its all "a la peanut butter sandwiches" you've been turned into a talking Rutabega and it's extremely windy, so much so that Grover flies by ("Hey Froggy ba-beeeeeeeeeeee...) I always wanted to stand up from my Legos and shout "Mumford, you are completely incompetentl! Why don't you practice your craft properly? First perfect your tricks before you go subjecting other people to your negligence."

One would think that I would have a similiar problem with Grover's carelessness as a waiter, or his ineptitude as a super hero, but it has always been easy for me to forgive Grover for his human foibles (furry blue monster foibles, you mean!) and appreciate him for the cute fuzzy friend that he is.

I suppose there is a life lesson here. Something about, I should see the Grover in Mumford and be a Kermit to the world.

Actually, the lesson is that the show was actually called "Frank Leaves for the Orient" and not "Frankie goes to the Orient". I must have gotten mixed up with that 80's band... "Devo"

So maybe the punchline is that I'm really Mumford? Maybe the punchline is that one should ask not for whom the Peanut Butter Sandwiches are invoked in magical form, for it thee invoked ... is.

The odious State, blindingly hewn in doubt

Just to amuse myself, I sometimes try to think of clever post-modern superheroes. The other day, I was thinking about the problems that FEMA officials reportedly have had with names that are commonplace in Southern Louisiana, but strange to the insensitive ear of the "Washington Beauraucrats" such that they could not correctly spell or say such tricky names as "Morris" and "Bergeron."

Our course, such hyperbole annoys the living carp outta me. I'll guess that the article was written because of some anecdote, the substance of which is that "Bergeron Morris" was put down as "Morris Bergeron" and as a result got sent to the refuge camp in Alaska rather than to the Astrodome. In the spirit of such hyperbole, I present:

SUPER PERSONNEL PERSON: The power to correctly say or spell any name from a single time reading or hearing it. This power would be unlimited, such that SUPER PERSONNEL PERSON would instantly know, which of the fourty possible pronouncations of "Milo Machinery" was correct. Morever a shivering imp of a man with no teeth who stated his name as "Ger mur mur Mig yergle le pig leg" would be correctly typed up as Jim Kltpzyxm.


Back to the 5th dimension with ye!

When in doubt, you can always talk about figures of speech

Slate featured this article by some tedious dictionary editor about how "literally" is sometimes used to mean "figuratively." The article, in a nutshell, admits that this is so and advises that there is no sense complaining about it. People should just get over it.

People need help getting over things, they need something else to beat up. In that spirit, I submit that people should instead get tough on the expression: "Don't make me laugh!"

What a heartless world this is where you command people to cease all humor! Of course, the underlying sentiment is that the person speaking is such a bold-faced liar, that it might be humorous in a different context. Nevertheless, the speaker of the phrase perpetuates the sin of a mirthless world. (Theologians if you think a world withould mirth is not a sin, then you are ugly and your mother dresses you funny)

I had a punchline here, but I just eclipsed it with my parenthetical comment. Oh, what the heck...

Instead of saying "don't make me laugh" people should just call the person a liar in a way that is just as icy, but has a touch of mirth and is evokative of our rich linguistic heritage. I propose that whenever one would say "Don't make me laugh" the phrase "thou speakth with a fork-ed tounge!" should be used instead. It works better if you say it with a "one eyebrow raised, one eyebrow lowered" scowl.

Try it in a meeting, or in casual conversation amongst friends. See what kind of reaction it gets. You'll be the envy of everyone in the room. Literally!

William Li PodCast of OpenPodCast

I thought it would be fun to do a podcast but was too lazy to figure out how to do it.

Guess what? They have a website for people like that.

Scary Fish is now Famous

So our good friend Dave Miller lived in a house with several other folks when he was in grad school at Rice. Some of the folks were still at Rice, most were not, but had been at one time. One of these housemates had a big scary fish named Oscar. It would just swim around and stare at you while you tried to play awesome board games. When that fish and housemate moved out, I thought I would never see it again (although I have seen the housemate and his sweet wife and adorable daughter every so often at Rice events).

So imagine my surprise when I am reading through the latest issue of Parents Magazine (I do have 2 kids, thankyouverymuch) and in an article titled "I Love My Pet", there is a picture of scary fish, and a precious little girl. I read the blurb from the mom:

"My husband owned Oscar the fish when we met. Ten years later, Oscar is still a part of our family. When our daughter, McKenna, was born, we used to take her to the living room when she was crying because she'd always stop fussing to watch Oscar. Now she's able to help her dad feed him, and each night before the goes to bed, she says, "'Nigh, Osser!"
-Jean Tanner; Houston Tex.

Yep, people you went to college with really do show up in national magazines.

The San Franscisicans Built The Golden Gate Bridge With Their Bare Hands

"With" does not mean "without" and the inclusion of one thing "with" doesn't always mean the exclusion of other things, especially not when the others things are logically necessary

The Ancient Egyptians Built the Pyramids With Their Bare Hands

Actually, I am sure that they were a variety of ages.




So I had a dream last night where the car was out of control going down a hill and I realized now that I am awake that it was just the grown up memory of the time that I couldn't slow down on my bicycle because the back brakes were too squishy, so I hit the front brake and the quick release wheel, which was loose, came off. I went flying over the handlebars and had to go to the emergency room.

Who knew that memories also grew up and matured? Actually, Dr. Freud knew, maybe I should page him. Actually, I guess I knew all along. It is no less scary when you discover that forgotten memories have grown in the closet of your mind like a mutant moldy sandwhich or the plant from "Little Shop of Horrors"

Ok... time for church.

(The ([adjective])) [Noun]

After glancing at just a few of BRAINWASHED'S CANONICAL GUIDE TO WEIRD BAND NAMES I've decided that I have a subjective stylistic preference that immediately colors my attitude towards bands as "good" or "sucks" based on whether they conform to the format:

(The ([adjective])) [Noun](and (The ([adjective])) [Noun])

For those of you who don't speak computer manual, I'll explain.

I like bands that are a single noune with our without the definite article. This includes:

U2
R.E.M. {William, that's an action - shove it}
Tool {William, You don't like Tool - ah, but I did have a good initial impression of them based on their name until their sound turned me off, get it?}
The Who
The Cure
The Go-Gos
The Doves
The Alarm

If bands have an adjective, they need to have the definite article or else my initial impression is that they are bad. This is, however, a rebuttable presumption such as is the case with

Modest Mouse {Although their sound has grown tiresome}
My Morning Jacket {Not the definite article}

Although:
The Happy Mondays


oh listen, this post has already got me tired with its tediousness.

Sly & The Family Stone

is a name using all of the rules of I like it

and

They Might Be Giants

is a name that breaks all the rules of I like it, except that its a movie so its actually:

"They Might Be Giants" and sound be considered as [noun]

Interestingly, following this "movie titles are [noun]" rule means that I would like band named The Iron Giant either for itself or as a reference to "The Iron Giant"




What set this all off?

Sentence two pf Rule 193.4(a) of Texas Rules of Civil Procedure where it stipulates "The party making the objection or asserting the privilege must present any evidence necessary to support the objection or privilege. The evidence may be testimony presented at the hearing or affidavits served at least seven days before the hearing or at such other reasonable time as the court permits."

{William, That's two sentences -- shove it}

S.A.L.T. II

http://thomas.loc.gov

The library of Congress on-line rocks!

Salt

Not to rub it in, but this is actually worse. At least it was the California Angels that took Reggie. The Yankees just got beat by the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and Orange County in the Great State of California Formerly Tradmarked of the Walt Disney Corporation Inc LLP LLC plc AG SE WNnnnnBC.

First Reggie and now this

@#$&# Angels, taking good things away from the bombers.

"But William, Reggie Jackson was old and washed up when he was traded"

BLASPHEMER! REGGIE JACKSON COULD DON THE PINSTRIPES TODAY AND HIT 200 HOMERUNS

"Well factually speaking, I doubt it since the Yank's season is over"

Fine. Kick me when I'm, Mr. Hypothetical Straw-man.

"That's the American League way."

Postcards to Houston

Try cartoons
Try sexual inneundo
Try "Hey postman, I know you are reading this. You are ugly and your mother dresses you funny"
Try that in Spanish.
Try making a checker pattern with the stamps and dodging the message in the spaces
try putting the stamps over the spaces
try puttin the stamps and the message and the address on the picture.
try sending a 3x5 index card upon which you make a funny picture
trying sending a series whereby the message can't be read until you put them together (letters go across cards)
tryind drawing lips and saying "i'm kissing the letter next to me..smouch smouch smouch, I love you entertainment weekly cover picture person"
trying "having a nice time wish you were here:
me too.

Fatigue and spontenaity...

... will trump clever screenwriting in the end. (Sorry, Greg.)

So the story goes, the famous Indiana-Jones-shoots-crazy-sword-wielder-instead-of-exhaustingly-dueling-him scene arose because Harrison Ford was tired (and sick?) at the end of a long day of physical shooting. When they were meant to start filming the exhausting duel, Ford just pulled out his gun with his weary-yet-smug expression and "bang". Somebody - presumably everybody - realized that this was much better than the exhausting duel, and they kept it.

THE KISS OF DEATH: Google Partners with Sun

Don't get me wrong, I like Java, its like a lazy verison of C++ with less control and less ability to protect your original source code from being infected by the GPL like kryptonite to your intellectual property rights but IMHO (and I don't use that FLA often) teaming up with Sun is the KISS OF DEATH and plays into the worst problems that Google currently has, which is of course that being a company with clean-web design fused to its soul, it has the three virtues of programming par excellence.

If Google can learn anything from Sun, it is that the inevitable result of the virtues: youth and skill, must ultimately give way to old age and treachery. For those of you who may read this but don't know me, I'm not accusing Sun of old age and treachery, but I am referring to the wise but depressing proverb "Old age and treachery will trump youth and skill in the end."(no link for you! look it up!) The truth in this proverb is that youthful vigor is difficult to impossible to sustain and relying upon pure analytic brain power is less efficient than being able to use analytic brain power to verify or correct the inferences to be drawn from the wisdom of experience. Unfortunately, when wise Indiana Jones tired from a days fighting pulls out his gun an shoots the sword wielding ninja with mad skills, rather than wasting time and risking injury --- well, it looks like treachery.

What does that mean for Google and Sun? I'm saying that Sun is the shot ninja lying in the in the dust, the crowd around him abating. As it gasps for air, discharging blood from his ventricles rapidly filling with blood, young Google leans over to hear what words of wisdom Sun might have.

"Don't get shot" would be the smart thing to say, but that's not what happens.

"Don't let me die and I'll show you how to wield a sword really fast AND if our combined swordplay is fancy enough, then we can team up! Think of how cool we will look. Plus, bonus: Indiana Jones won't be able to shoot both of us in the gut." is what the dying ninja seems to be saying instead.

But the actual choice to take up dying Ninja sun is left to young naive ninja Google. Google can (1) Waste time and effort trying to learn from Sun how to bring a knife to a gunfight with Microsoft, or (2) leverage mad skills and learn how to get tricky.

Google's gotta get tricky if it wants to topple Microsoft, just like Microsoft got tricky with IBM, when Microsoft was the young one.

Google certainly has the skills to be pretty tricky; tricky like "sis" playing connect four tricky. But Google is also vulnerable because it is a young tech company full of youthful ideals and I believe that Google has been blinded by the glory of Sun. It's a mistake, Kid Icarrus and the Coconuts

Boy... I'm really tired. I love the Indiana Jones movies. Did this post make any sense?

Rancor Aweigh

Rancor aweigh, my boys, rancor aweigh
Farewell to cross-aisle joys, we'll fight all freaking day-ay-ay-ay
Through every hearing's rounds, snipe to the bone
Till K Street calls or voters strike, sending us - old and bitter - home

Bush Nominates White House Counsel for O'Connor's seat

The press tends to regard Bush as a moron because they simply don't like him, but he's proven himself to be quite shrewd as evidenced by nominating former Texas Lottery Commission Chairwoman Harriet Miers to be an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court.

The Democrats on the Senate Judicary Committee, particularly Biden, embarassed themselves in questioning Roberts about matters that he could not address.

Biden: Judge Roberts, how are you going to rule on abortion? I want you to tell me so that I can hold you to it.

Roberts: As politely as possible, I will now explain to you that ever since John Jay, its been established that these sorts of Declaratory Judgements are not proper.

Biden: Bite me you ************! I want to be President so the media better take pictures of me yelling at you for not answering a question that you can't answer!

Roberts: Sticks and stones will break my bones but I'm not allowed to answer.

How did this bit of political theatre emerge? Bush named a Judge who was or was going to be hearing all sorts of cases that deal with topics that the Democrats care about and thus couldn't ethically answer any of those questions.

Miers tops this because she has been the attorney to Bush in his various different offical capacities for years. In other words, she's counseled the president as the president on legal issues having to do with important national and social policy.

Guess what happens when the Democrats ask about what advice Miers counseled to Bush?

Biden: So... what did you tell Bush to do about Karl Rove?

Miers: As politely as I can, Joe, I will assert Attorney-Client privelege.

Biden: @#*%@&*!!!


The biggest problem for Bush on this nomination is that he faces attack from the social conservatives who are so arrogant as to believe that they own the President. This too makes the Miers choice brilliant.

Bush to social conservatives: Miers is a close friend and trusted ally. If you don't support her, then you don't support me. Are you going to be disloyal to me? Now? When my poll numbers are down? Well, I guess that makes you a fair weather friend. Because I am weak, there is nothing I can do to force your support, but actions speak louder than words. You can be true to me or be a big fink.


Does that mean Bush's nomination will sail? Not if the rancor in the House over the majority leader is any indication of the mood in Washington.

3 of 4: 05/01/2004 - 05/31/2004

Ok... for some reason the permalink for individual posts isn't working when the post is already in the archive. I'm sure Ben can tell me why. Actually, if I bothered, I could figure it out too. But the cannonical rant on impersonations is on May 17, 2004.

Anyhow ALL CAPS IS THE "KOOKY" VOICE

that was an imitiation of Johnny Carson imitating Jimmy Stewart while eating a lemon.

By the way this post and the previous one are example of post with link title and post with no link title. While this paragraph is a typical example of the sort of joke I make with in article links.

Now all I need is a joke about

Administrative Post

To Whom It May Concern:

3 of 4 Blog post titles in blue with a little lighthouse next to it are actually links to another website for which the text of the post is ostensibly addressing.

3 of 4 Blog post titles in black with no lighthouse are comments about the title.

3 of 4 Blog posts with no titles are like those times I start with no warning and trail off with no warning.

In the post themselves, unfollowed links are a dark green that doesn't show up very well. This was originally done as a parody of the Elkridge Hollerer but I kept it because it matches the green in the jpg of my lawn.

Whenever I post in all caps, I'm not shouting so much as I'm doing the crazy voice, or the generic imitation voice. If you haven't heard my canonical rants on imitiations, I'll find it and link it ---> here.

Thanks,

And in the NL... Cue the Herbie Hancock music

Do-do. Do-do
Do, do do do-do
Doot do-do deet-do
du-du-du-du do-do.

ROCKET!

Now some lyrics to go with the song:

Your old. Your fat.
Your face needs a shave
But you-do pitch well
youaremyfav-rite Astro

ROCKET!

Your pals. Can't hit.
Else we'd be in first place
Yet you-win somehow
youaremyfav-rie Astro

ROCKET!

Boo-ya! The Yankees clinch the division

Do people still say boo-ya anymore?

"Brill creame, a lil' dab 'll do ya.... BOO-YA!"

Knock Knock
Who's there?
Boo.
Boo who?
BOO-YA!

Anyway... The Yankees win again. In a year where no one could say "Oh... the Yankees are ruining BASEBALL because they insist on WINNING and attracting the best PLAYERS with things players want like MONEY and the chance to win the CHAMPIONSHIP. It's not FAIR."

Waa waa waaa.

It IS fair that the best team wins. That would be the Yankees. The Bronx Bombers. Boo-ya.

The Australian: Gorillas tool their behaviour [October 01, 2005]

Ahhh!!!! Gorillas can use tools. The great apes will rise up against their human oppressors and become the new overlords of the planet!

AND DARWIN WAS RIGHT!

AND MY CONGRESSMAN HAS BEEN INDICTED!! HOW WILL WE EVER GET HIGHWAY FUNDING NOW?

AND MY KEYBOARD WORKS!!!

AND I DON'T LET KIDS WATCH BARNEY BECAUSE BARNEY IS STEW-PID!!!!

AND I'VE LISTENED TO THE MODEST MOUSE ALBUM ABOUT 50 TIMES AND I'M TIRED OF IT!!!!!

AND THE YANKEES ARE GOING THE CREAM THE RED SOX BECAUSE THE YANKEES REPRESENT ALL THAT IS GOOD ABOUT BASEBALL (AND THEREFORE AMERICA) AND THE RED SOX ARE A FORCE OF WHINY EEEEVEEELLLL!!!!!! *BUT IF THE YANKEES FACE THE ASTROS IN THE WORLD SERIES THEN I AM ROOTING FOR THE ASTROS WHICH I WILL EXPLAIN IN A LATER POST IF IT HAPPENS AND I WILL USE LOWER CASE.

AND MY KEYBOARD WORKS!!!!!!!

THIS SENTENCE WILL HAVE EIGHT EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!!!!!

HORAY FOR MY NEW KEYBOARD!!!!!!!!!

Windows XP: Turn On and Use On-Screen Keyboard

Unexpectedly,the storm took out the ps/2 port for my keyboard. kids & louren areok. dell coming friday pm to replace motherboard

"William, get a usb kybrd ... you idiot"

oh yeah? you forgot vowels in keyboard. ha. who is the idiot nw. darn hypothtical debate adversary strawman... getting cheeky. its like smstxtmsg

Returning on Monday

Texas Homeland Security has developed a schedule for returning evacuees. Sugar Land residents should stay put for now and return on Monday, Sept. 26.

More problems with evacuation readiness

I say William is 2000% correct about evacuation. I also note:

1. Evacuating an entire city requires - obviously - the cooperation of all the citizens. The article William linked noted that some people in Galveston did not wait for their zone of the city to have its turn before leaving. It also turns some occupations into essential emergency services, which is probably not what the airport baggage handlers and gas station operators had in mind when they got their jobs. Further, if an evacuation is really going to go smoothly, as some seem to think it ought to, it has to be practiced. Any thoughts on how to do that?

2. Kerry told me that there was a story on NPR about the city of Beaumont, which had very prudently established contracts with bus and ambulance operators, effectively giving them a call option on umpteen buses and ambos in the event of an approaching storm and evacuation. The state of Texas commandeered Beaumont's reserved vehicles for use in Houston.

Not fair - Emergency Services did the best they can

Yes. Houston ran out of Gas and there weren't enough evacuation buses.

Let's be clear about something. People started evacuating Wednesday Afternoon. I saw them out my office Window heading West towards Katy. By the way, this is normally a parking lot at that time, and anyway, they are making I-10 wider. Despite the pleas to rail, which wouldn't have helped people evacuate. Take that rail folks!

Anyway, what really ticked me off about this article is the claim that they didn't call out a huge convoy of bused. They did. We saw several convoys of 20+ charter buses heading West as we were evacuating.

Seriously though - 5 million people plus more people in Galevston, Brazoria county, freeport, etc. There's traffic normally when people are trying to go to work. Of course there will be traffic if everyone tries to leave.

Why am I so irked by this? Because in IT when something goes wrong that is beyond the reasonable control of anyone or if an even happens that goes beyond the budgeted scale of the infrastructure hardening and damaged mitigation, the users never are understanding it's always the blame game.

Give emergency services a break. They did a pretty good job. Evacuations were orderly.

Evacuated!

Following no ones advise, we went East.

My neighbors are now stuck, and there won't be shelters. This is from the website

Hurricane Rita Information
(updated Thu, September 22, 2005 9:41 PM)
Sugar Land residents are receiving this information via their home telephone.

Reverse 911 Bulletin no. 2

This is an emergency message from the City of Sugar Land Emergency Operation Center.

We encourage residents who have not left yet to remain due to congestion of the evacuation routes and inability to refuel.

We are a pass through community and impacted by the hurricane and therefore in conjunction with the Red Cross, we are not establishing shelters at this time.


Due to street congestion, garbage and recycling pickup has been cancelled by BFI. Trash cans and yard debris should be secured in enclosed areas. Please secure for neighbors if they already have left.

For the elderly or disabled with special medical needs who are unable to evacuate, we will be organizing a volunteer program to check on you. Please call 281-275-2900 to be placed on the list after 8 a.m. on Friday, Sept. 23 to be placed on the list.

Please stay tuned to local media for regular storm updates or call the emergency hotline for a taped message at 281-494-4357 or the City Phone Bank at 281-275-2900 which will reopen at 8 a.m. Friday morning, Sept. 23.

I called my guitar teacher, he's got plenty of water and all his equipment is bagged up.

I don't have any jokes at this time. This hurricane looks like serious business. I hope my neighboors are going to be ok. I hope my home doesn't crushed by a falling tree.

Hurricane Rita

We are evacuating. I am told that in French this word is a euphamism for a bowel movement.

From here I would like to make a joke about how a natural reaction to 165 mph winds heading towards my house would be to evacuate.

Touchdown with land is midnight tomorrow. I expect the first rains around lunch time. I will be past Baton Rouge by then.

The Bridge is out in Pascagula, so I'll need to figure it out.

No matter how much Smartfood White Cheddar Popcorn you eat, its hard to clean up

I was going to point out to Trav that he was right to be cynical that a Republican government wouldn't further mishandle a domestic priority that requires doing all the things that the Republicans are bad at doing.

Instead I just wanted to say that one bad thing about Smartfood White Cheddar Popcorn is that it gives me a stomach-ache.

The painfully obvious and the International Herald Tribune

I often find the obtuseness of the "Newspaper supergroup" - the International Herald Tribune - to be so egregious as to result in the USA Today without pictures. Case in point:

Koizumi must decide how to use his mandate

How about privatized Japan Post Office? You know, the issue that he ran on, over which he purged a major faction of his party, that has become the end all and be all of his life?

What do those people at the newspaper think, that parliament will waive it magic want, enact a law and - boom - the enormous administrative implementation of the largest financial institution of the world will just be privatized?

The article points out that Koizumi has a whole year (!) left after he performs this miracle in which he will have plenty of time to ... And then the article goes and suggests various different ways that there can be pie ... pie in the sky. I am the pie in the sky ewwww ewww ewww ewww, I can change your mind. Sorry, I Alan Parsoned/Homer Simpsoned out for a second, I'm back.


Really what this article says is three things about the author:

1. Even though the most dynamic and important Japanese leader in decades has enacted huge change and promises to enact more, the authors really don't find him to be a credible leader ("all flash and no substance" they say. "fooey" they say)

2. Reforming the world's largest financial institution isn't an interesting issue to journalists because that institution contains the words "Post Office" in its name.

3. The authors have no appreciation for the difficulties that can crop up going from enactment of law to administration/enforcement/execution of law.

Turn the sound off and watch this ad...

Honda Worldwide | run/

The old man thinks... oh cr*p, I'm being stalked by a cute little mecha! In a matter of moments he will point his forearms at me and the laser cannons will end my miserable life!!!

NOT SO FAST LITTLE BOT! I STUN YOU WITH MY MAGICAL POWER!!!!

My New Favorite Band

I LOVE Harry and the Potters. Save Ginny Weasley from the debut "Harry and the Potters" is stuck in my head, as is the Godfather: part II from "Voldemort can't stop the rock!"

I know, it sounds like total cheezewhiz, two guys dressing up like Harry Potter, singing songs inspired by the books. But these guys rock out.

I wish my brother and I had formed some sort of awesome band when we were younger. But then again, I only made it through a half dozen or so guitar lessons in 9th grade before I was fed up with Mr. "school *shudder* I did that for a while, but I quit." I also didn't like that he couldn't seem to remember to not partake of certain herbage right before my lessons. Maybe it made him a better musician, but smelling him, and wondering why he kept talking about the ice cream shop next door, did not make me a better music student.

And mom and dad would have never allowed drums in the house for Owen. Or at least the hours of practicing that would have been needed.

Also, Owen and I never got along that well 10 years ago. We would have been more Gallagher brothers than Hanson brothers, with him flat out denying being related to me to my former and his current teachers (what? No I'm not Louren's little brother. Never heard of her).

But we get along great now. Why, just today he called to offer my first born a FREE kitten that he found on his doorstep. He was even willing to drive it all the way to Texas.

My brother - what a giver.

(when asked what kind of cat it was, he asked, is there more than one kind of cat?)

S.E. Hinton: Mysterious my eye

Read this fluff piece by Dinita Smith on S.E. Hinton.

What happened? Simple - Smith did a lousy interview whereby she didn't establish a repore with the subject who didn't open up to the reporter who anyway wasn't doing a good job listening.

I may not have been a good reporter for The Thresher (or the Notty Natter for that matter) but I can say with confidence that I was a bad reporter. I know bad reporting up and down. I have intimate first hand knowledge of bad reporting both as the reporter and the subject and I recognize it when I see it.

In fact, there is nothing mystical or mysterious about S.E. Hinton. I say this because I met her in London in 1995 at a publicity even for her booktour at the Everyman Theatre and I asked her my reporter question which was "What is it like to be the lengendary author or an American Classic?"

I asked this question because after Mr. Eckelman's class, Hinton was a larger than life figure. She was the teenage Faulkner for teenagers. But of course, she wasn't. In 1995, she was just a middle-aged author and a all-around nice Mom selling her book. I hung out with her 12-year old son, not knowing who he was until afterwards.

Anyway, her answer to my question was "I know that my book is particularly popular with Middle School English teachers because boys who don't like to read books will read my book. I am comfortable with that, although I've grown since I wrote those stories." Oh...

She went on to describe Matt Dillion as a talented and handsome young actor who was very successful playing her character. Then she talked about the heroic epic and we watched Rumble Fish.

Afterwards, I didn't go next door to the bookstore to buy her book. Instead, I bought a postcard and told my friend, Rory, that I met S.E. Hinton.

Since then, I've met other writers who have been succesful at getting published (not that this is my measure of success). They have many of the same personality traits as Hinton. If I was a better writer than I am, I could describe what those are, but suffice it to say... I've notice that the four or so succesful writers whom I've met come off the same way.

"The better part of valor" versus "The loyal opposition"

In a move that should thrill Democrats, Bush had changed the Roberts nomination from replacing Justice O'Connor to replacing Chief Justice Renquist. Justice O'Connor's vacancy is conditional upon confirmation of her successor while Chief Justice Renquist's vacancy is unconditional because he has succumbed to cancer. The practical implication is that O'Connor stays on the bench.

Objectively, this is a fairly pragmatic decision. The vetting process for a Supreme Court justice is long and ardous and there is no realistic way to have a new nominee by the start of the Court's term, unless Bush were to nominate an unknown quanity (which would be a bad for everyong across the political spectrum and dumb and anyway won't happen). It is bad to have no Chief Justice (arguably it is no worse than having any odd number of vacancies on the court, but whatever). And Roberts is a qualified nominee: former editor of the Harvard law review, a brilliant legal career, a distinguished record of public service. Moreover, Roberts is a consensus nominee: Bush took input from moderates and nominated someone who they liked.

Aesthetically, I find the Roberts nomination extremely pleasing. Roberts was a clerk for Renquist. I also like Roberts' style. I mean his legal writing. I may disagree with many of his views, but the clear and forceful way in which he advocates means that his reasoning is either clear and persuasive or clear and you understand on which of his premises you don't buy in.

For Democrats, a Roberts, Stephens, Bryer, O'Connor, Souter, Thomas, Scalia, Ginsburg, Kennedy is about as moderate and incremental a court that Bush is likely to nominate. Which brings me to my point:

There are times when it is important to be opposition on principal and there are times to shut up. This is one of the later. Stalling a Roberts is only succeeds in hurting the country and the government process. Moreover, its shows a lack of good sense as there are much more important things that the Democrats should and could influence. Here's a short list:

1) Increase New Orleans relief efforts
2) Address the long-term and structural issues that lead to the humanitarian disaster in New Orleans
3) Push for the administration to articulate an exit plan for Iraq
4) End tax subsidies for the richest 20%
5) Abolish the death penalty
6) Fund science education. By the way, computer science is science and America is falling behind. While we are at it: Better student:teacher = better education. Oh, and public libraries = a public good.
7) Disease research and access to disease-fighting medicines and vacinations = A great form of international aid.

Depressingly, except for #3 and #5, we are more likely to see better results on my agenda from Bill Gates than from the current Democratic party. And so my conclusion:

Bill Gates should be the 2008 Democratic Nominee.

Eric Hewett sent me this one

Way to keep that generator going, guys!

And another thing

I find the numerous incidents of reporters, deeply affected by the tragedy and howling in rage, to be deeply compelling. I often wonder how a person could stand to be a television journalist coverage war or tragedy -- the hours of unedited raw footage that gets scrutinized and scrutinized to find the sharpest angle. I'll just let that participle dangle.

Anyway... reporters are amped and outrage and they aren't faking it either. Jack Cafferty (he was my anchorman growing up... back when I regularly watched the news) doesn't fake it.

They Saved Fats Domino

It's all in his Wikipedia entry. Does anyone else see anything wrong with that level of currentness in the Wikipedia?

I saw the news while I was waiting two hours for them to find me new front tires. Between Fats and Harry Connick, Jr. It put a human face on the whole thing.

A lot of press has been dedicated to the lame stuff that the President has had to say about the disaster in New Orleans. And in the context of the extremely insensitive comments from Denis "A city is only good built on a hill" Hastert, I have to agree that the right-wing's communication staff doesn't get it. Over the last several years, I wondered how it is that Bush, who seemed somewhat natural, confident, and personable as governor and downright interesting (if not always likeable) as part of the Ranger's organization could come off looking so stiff-looking and dazed. I'm not suggesting that the President isn't a staunch conservative and doesn't mean the things he says. I am suggesting that he is getting bad material, in the sense that its smothering all that is human and Texan about him

"What's setting off this comment, Will?"

While in the Car repair purgatory, I was watching some live comments that he made, both before and after touring the hurricane raved areas. Here's what I saw:

Before: Shots of the president with his sleaves rolled up in a jaunty "I'm here to work" sort of way, Mayor Naquin with his "Desire" t-shirt cropped out of the picture. Bush says and does all the stuff which is "on message" a euphamism for the remarks that he memorized as written to him by his communications staff.

Two hours later: after flying around the city in Marine One with Naquin riding shotgun he come back to the New Orlean Airport and says a few things on the tarmac. Most of it is on message, but he starts to drift when he starts talking about New Orleans and the relationship between New Orleans and Houston. He gets a dreamy look in his eye and talks about how when he was young he would enjoy trips to this fine city, and maybe he would enjoy himself a bit too much, then he sort of laughed to himself and Naquin and Gov. Landrau give a knowing Big Easy laugh.

Somewhere in the unsweetended ice-tea catherdrals of Washington, a panolpy of humorless conservatives all did spit takes on one another and immediately rushed out the door to make sure that this live footage got buried.

I just deleted a long tangent that followed the above comment, so let me summarize:

New Orleans is a great city and a "real city" that hasn't lost its soul or its humanity. That has also mean real problems like poverty, violent crime, and yes being dangerously positioned underneath a huge lake. This does not make the President love this city any less, in fact it seems to make him love it more. I wish that this was the sort of compassion we would see more often.

Google Desktop

More like Google "make your whole computer run slower because I am hogging memory and processor time in the background"

UNINSTALL.

Horror

The news coming out is very upsetting. Please donate to the Red Cross or someplace else. Consider filling a box with linens, clothing and other goods and donating that to your church or the local Salvation Army.

Dream Views :: View topic - Lucid Dreaming Quick Start Tutorial

short, concise quick start tutorial on lucid dreaming.

How being a Dad changes you,

But it was an emergency rush in 1985 for the film "My Little Pony: The Movie" that allowed Mr. Shin to start Akom Studio in Seoul. In only 10 weeks, his newly formed team of animators was able to create the 300,000 cells required for the 1986 film. "We all just worked nonstop," he said.
It was a bountiful time for animation. In 1994, the South Korean government finally recognized the economic potential of the industry and started to support it (a far cry from 1967, when the government labeled cartoons one of the "six evils" of Korean society).

There are several all too easy potshots to take about "My Little Pony: The Movie" but then I think about Dakota brushing the manes of her dolls and having them sing and talk about their careers as Mechanical Engineers and I have to pause. "My Little Pony" is just the benign affection of a little girl bestowed upon a pretty plastic pony. It's cheaper than a real pony and a whole lot less smelly.

Hooray for Hasbro.

McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)

McCulloch v. Maryland (1819): "we think the sound construction of the constitution must allow to the national legislature that discretion, with respect to the means by which the powers it confers are to be carried into execution, which will enable that body to perform the high duties assigned to it, in the manner most beneficial to the people. Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the constitution, are constitutional."


The next time someone says to you:

1) "TELL ME WHERE IN THE CONSTITUTION IT SAYS ________"

2) "WHO GAVE CONGRESS THE RIGHT TO________"

Answer:

1) Art I, Section 8 - right at the end where it says "Necessary and proper"

2) John Marshall


But if you want to argue

"The government has no business getting into this business of ________________"

and you can organize voter get Congress to repeals those laws, then you are absolutely correct, too.


But I, for one, sure am glad that we have a Federal government to clean up disasters and in particular, that we have FEMA.

Nothing so annoying as when your computer makes noise when you don't want it to...

Quick! Where's the "Shut the hell up" button on the Cheer's Boston website. My point on this post is this:

At what point does America conclude that "the Gang from Cheers" are a troupe of pathetic alcoholics and their jailers? At the conclusion of the show? After watching a Cheers marathon? When catching up with the Gang when they make special guest apperances on Fraiser?

No... I suspect that this sort of revisionism in history won't occur for decades. Mark my words (great expression) it will happen, and with a vengence (another great expression) and when it does Cheers will become as reviled as "Amos n' Andy," Mickey Rourke's character from "Breakfast at Tiffany's" or the complete works of Charles Dickens. Once this happens, Cheers will become a symbol of all that is wrong and evil and excessive with whatever societal ill plagues that future America at the time when it villifies Cheers and at that point no one will see the humor any more.

Health

Thanks to GoogleNews, I now know that Coffee found to be high in health-giving antioxidants . If true, then I will live to be a billion frickin' years old!

Today I went to Target for DayQuill. Aparently this is now a pharmacy item, as it if its the middle of the night and I need cold medicine I need to go to a 24 hour pharmacy. Thanks a lot, meth-heads of ruining society yet some more.

This ranks up there with not being able to buy spray-paint for my Pinewood Derby racer in 4th grade. Actually, I'm happy with how that turned out. My dad and I came up with a wicked design. I would tell you about it, but then I would have to sue you.

I'm Virtually Home

I just visted the my elementary school with Google Earth. It was very upsetting. The four-square court is still there. And the swings and the back-stop. Someone is parked in the Principal's spot.

When I was at City University, my crypto-dualist pseudo-socialist philsophy teacher had a cartoon of Yassar Arafat, wearing a VR helmet proclaiming the quote in the title of this entry. I never thought the joke was the least bit funny.

Dinner by Chuy's, Entertainment by Dakota

So Monday night, we (me and the kids) met up with various friends (Kerry, Eric, John, Melissa's Friend Kat and family, the Darlingtons) to celebrate Melissa's birthday. A fun time was had by all, and Jason was quite happy to fill William's usual spot with cute smiles and messy eating (just kidding Will - Jason is a way neater eater than you).

And Dakota was her usual awesomeness. That girl is so smart, and so energetic, the she constantly amazes everyone, even herself I think, with her antics.

I can't even, three days later, think of what specifically made my hair curl and skin crawl, but I am sure other people can.

All I know is I Love my little girl, crazy/energetic fireball and all.

And it 2 years she can use the skating skills she is aquiring to play ice hockey. Surely THAT sport will tire her out, right?

If that's how they measure appropriateness, then I'm the King of England

I got into a big fight once at Interliant when I explained matter of factly that it was perfectly valid, logically, to have a false premise imply a false conclusion.

It wasn't really a big fight, the other person manage to sway the crowd that I knew absolutely nothing about logic. So I just shrugged and said, "Well apparently, that's a fact."

I also had an joke using a double-entendre (also known as a snotty pun) on "absolutely nothing" The pun was a Hegelian reference. The whole joke was ill-conceived. Its better just to describe it. There.

A. A. Milne, Scourge of William Li

"... Ask me a riddle and I reply
Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie."

(Incidentally, I would have hated "30 days hath September / April May June and Novemember", too, but mainly because May has 31 days. And don't get me started on the "February has 28 years" bit. I like that we can come to the same conclusion for different reasons.)

No reason

Things that rhyme are often true
Elephants from Mars are blue.



There was a special class of rhyming wisdoms that I especially detested when growing up and that was the "No reason" rhymes that didn't rhyme either.

I think every kid hated "Children should be seen an not heard"

but I hated

"30 days hath September
April May June and Novemember
Except for February which has 29 on leap years which are years divisible by four otherwise it has 28 years and occasionally the international time-keeping community will add a second or a minute to the year so that time can match the rotation of the Earth."

Teachers would introduce this as "a good way to remember the months of the year"

I hated this one more than "i before e except after c or sounding like a such as in neighboor and weigh" as that one actually rhymes

Second of all -- hath? Speakth the modern tounge thou wench!

But the stunning the revelation was that my elementary school teachers didn't know why some months had thirty and some months had thirty one days --- except for the one teacher who did know and explained it --- That teacher was awesome.

I often compare the extreme difficultness of my wife's job as teacher versus my own teachers. I've come to two conclusions:

1. Teaching is hard.
2. Nevertheless, Rhyming is a totally lame cop-out solution to a "why?" question.

Don't Get rid of the WinXP Search Assistant aka "the dog"

Notice that even when explaining how to Get rid of the WinXP Search Assistant aka "the dog", people don't bring the venom like with Clippy

Here is an example of a greatly improved Human Factors designed. I like to imagine that they fired all the old Cog Sci majors and replaced them with new ones.

Coverage of counter protests

First look at this:

Son's death ended normal life for protest mom

What should immediately leap out at you, is that the only non-advertisement pictures are concerned with the counter-protests (protesting the people who are protesting the government). This should jump out at you because it is the title of this blog entry.

For a moment forget about how you feel about the substance of the position, because that is not what this entry is about.

The adversarial definition of political events has also constructed TV's notion of 'balance' in their coverage. If political events are constituted by two opposing forces, then TV's role as neutral observer, reporter and interrogator would seem to lie in the centre: holding the balance between two sides. This is, indeed, how TV's role has been interpreted in the coverage of domestic affairs...[digression omitted]...This central position enables the TV institution to appear both unbiased (in the sense of representing a 'possible compromise' between two positions) and common-sensical (in the sense of representing a 'possible compromise' between the two positions). This is TV's balancing act with balance....

John Ellis, Visible Fictions, 231-32 (1992 ed.).

Actually, Ellis wrote the above quote in 1982 and he was thinking about England and not America, but the lesson sticks: How much controversy is real controversy? For all the bemoaning of the loss of intelligent (as in: issues aren't all black and white) and honest (as in: the other side might change their position in good faith) debate, maybe intelligent and honest debate isn't happening because journalists assume that this would make for bad television.

The reason the Sheehan broke so big is because for a moment it broke through the characterization of the "two sides" of the "war" issue. BTW, I use the finger quotes because I feel that there are a spectrum of opinions and that there is more than one issue at play, but again... bad television. Anyway, if you remember when this story broke it was "Hey there is someone protesting the war who is just a normal Mom, and look! some Christian church groups are out there too" tone that trouble some underlying conceits that existed prior to the story breaking.

The underlying conceits prior to the story breaking were:

*People who are against the war are educated and therefore out of touch with reality, just like the nerds who you hated in elementary school.

*All Christians support the government's position on the war.

There was a tone of suprise and incongruity akin to the pundits reaction to the "Yo quiero Taco Bell" dog. [WARNING WARNING: Rhetorical flourishes alert, start distrusting the author of this blog entry now] Early articles were along the lines of, "this story challenges our half-baked monochrome rendering of the world and now nothing makes sense"

Maybe, as a result of the protest movement started by this poor woman who lost her oldest son, these insulting [WARNING WARNING: Ironic warning telling you how to think in a blog entry critical of news outlets telling you how to think] characterizations that happened in the name of selling news would evolve into rich and more human portraits of the people involved. No way!

Queue the follow-up stories: Turns out Ms Sheehan is a "life-long Democrat from California" and there are legions of high-school drop-out mullet-sporting reactionary dupes bleating their conviction that the president is the government and that God is American.

Over the next few weeks I expect that the various media outlets will "fill in the blanks" by fitting the "two sides" back into traditional characterizations until we go back to the simplistic "left" vs "right" dicotomy. Listen for the undercurrent of "well gang, that solves that mystery" This will be the tone of articles from media outlets of all stripes.


Okay here is my point (actually its two points)

Don't journalists watch other Television besides the news? It turns out the people are capable of absorbing lots of "almost scientific information" or in the alternative "totally fake laws of nature." What's more, we are able to follow extremely convoluted (if contrived) moral connudrums and take sophisticated positions on them and have a deep understanding of all the worlds problems in a very hazardous world where appearances are deceiving. People who watch TV "get it" and we're not talking about high-brow television, either.

Point #1: Until I see evidence to the contrary, I'm sticking with the notion that whenever a news article treats its audience like a bunch of simpletons its because a simpleton wrote the story. [RED ALERT! RED ALERT!]

Is there no good journalism out there? Actually there is: entertainment journalism.

Point #2: Put down (INSERT NAME OF VERY SERIOUS NEWS MAGAZINE HERE) and pick up "Entertainment weekly" [outrageous punchline phrase here]



Okay... I sabotagued my own points. Why did I do that? [I'll never tire of this rheotrical construct, I think its called anagnorsis, except that's a dramatic concept and I'm looking for the rhetorical equivalent construction] Because originally, I had put down "The Washington Post" when I stopped and realized "Hey, Libby Copeland, writes for the Washington Post and what she has to say is generally both highly accessible and deeply nuanced."

In fact, picking on Journalists is like picking on IT people: not fair because its often times a hopeless situation that wasn't their doing. Moreover, to characterize all journalists as being the same in their tendancy to create simple characterizations of peoples and issues would be deeply hypocrtical.

So what?

Well... My professor was characterizing the nature of television as creating simplistic dicotomies. I believe that his observation was asute but that he is wrong in his conviction that this is a necessary characterization of television because actual fictions managed to be complex.

So I went narrower and said that only journalists create simple dictomies as a result of their own inability to see their audience in non-simple ways. But I thought of someone who went to my High School who actually writes really great stuff and had to take it all back. Not just because of her, but because I then thought of about 25 journalists who I read on a regular basis who I would also write honestly and engagingly, but its tedious to have to write down their names and then find links to example articles by them and anyway it doesn't further the point to do so. Wow this paragraph is getting long.

Then I realized that I was engaging in the same sort of characterization that I was critizing and felt really bad.

So that leaves us with my favorite type of point: further proof of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. (BTW, Wikipedia is really interesting)

Characterization is easy to do and is superfically persuasive. As such, it tends to pervade lots of texts both intentionally or not. Wow! That's a lot of writing for such a trite and facile point. Okay: Let me also add "Its nice to be important but its important to be nice" and "if you swallow a water melon seed, a watermelon vine will grow out of the top of your head". Great. Post.

um, what?

Not sure I remember that movie Will. But if you say we watched it, then I am sure we did.

***

For those of you following along at home, I got the results of my thyroid scans. As of now, everything is fine. Well, I still have to take the thyroid hormones every day, and we are still trying to determine the optimal dose of that. But the nodes on my thyroid seem to all be "hot" which means they are working (really not very well, it appears, but functioning nonetheless), which means they have a function. If they had been cold, I would have had a biopsy, and go from there as to what surgery needed to be done. So for now, all is good, in terms of no surgery, but I am being referred to an endocrinologist, who will most likely assess me every so often to make sure all is well.

***

School started today for us teacher types. Tomorrow we have a lecture at one of the high schools, and they have asked us to wear our school colors. Does this make it a pep rally?

Here's a typical "This is why I don't like William Li" joke

She's the Sheriff and He's the Mayor. They're the local government.

But I'm not joking. Although I haven't seen "Desparate Houswives" or "Weeds" or the remake of "The Stepford Wives" or blah blah blah. I already saw this movie in 1957 (ok it was on cable, but Louren saw it too so it really happened) it was called "No Down Payment" and I watched it because Tony Randall was in it. I get the feeling I've blogged about this before... no matter. This is a great movie before my Property Final. Its all about Real Covenants and zoning and Deed of Trust Security Instruments and Usurious financing and so on.

I would like to see a version of "The West Wing" style or "Law & Order" style process drama take on a functional suburban edge city, focusing on the three branches of government and how they deal with Urban Planing, Plat Approvals, Tax abatements, Emergency Services, Municipal bond issuances, interaction with Neighbor cities, interaction with State, and county. And extremely limited power...

That would be a great show. I can envision an entire three-episode story arch that shuttles back and forth between the office of the tax-collector assessort and the appeal to the full-panel oversight commitee (the mayor, city manager, and city council, the board commisioners) for the city Board of Adjustors that ultimately turns on whether the developers orginal grant conveyed a defeasable fee and if so was it determinable or subject to condition precedent because if it were the former than equitable title might have passed prior to the expiration of the tax assesment grace period unless the possesory interest didn't convey until resolution of the pendancy of the action to Quiet Title by the adverse possessorts. In the exciting third episode, the judge would decide to take the motion for summary judgment under advisement but deny the motion to dismiss for want of jurisdiction because the sovereign immunity exception did apply based on an obsure resolution passed in episode one of the series!


Ok... going out for coffee.

Dakota and the Canadians

Dakota: Mommy, I saw a Canadian today.

Louren: Really? What's a Canadian?

Dakota: Mommy, you know. They are kinda like a lizard, and they can be green.
But sometimes they change their colors.

Louren: Oh! Those Canadians.

*****

I just didn't have the heart to tell her the real word was chameleon. Plus, this is a way better definition, to me, of what a Canadian is.

*****

School starts on Wednesday for me (just in time for me to no longer be radioactive). We get kids the following Tuesday.

Summer in Texas. Short, hot and sweaty. I am sure there is some analogy to be made there, but I am too tired.

First person to get a degree from (X)

I was listening to the radio (a bad start) when Mr. Garrison Eeyore (follow the 2nd link and get out your origami!) was mumbling something about "First person to receive a masters degree in music from an American University." This was followed by some truly terrible classical music.

As I was on my way to my guitar lesson, this was a real bring-down. Quickly, I switched to the all reggaeton station and tried to get it out of my mind. But I can't just let it go: FIRST TO RECEIVE DEGREE = BIG DEAL. If your name is Aaron Aardvark and you receive your degree before Xakor Zywotchenko, then I suppose that you should thank the ancient Phoneicians for giving you a leg up on the other guy!

When I checked this post for grammar, I added two exclamation points!

I've been carping about this for years

MedicalPost.com: THE LAST LAUGH: Really loony toons: "Tweety and Sylvester pose an interesting diagnostic dilemma. At first one tends to label Tweety as the victim and Sylvester as the victimizer. But look at what happens in a typical interaction. Tweety maintains a pose of innocence while engineering all sorts of horrible events for Sylvester.
The cat falls from great heights, is attacked by aggressive canines and otherwise is beaten, maimed and subjected to all sorts of negative life experiences. Who is really the victim here?
Tweety is a typical passive aggressive personality. Unfortunately, this useful term seems to have been engineered out of the present DSM-IV, so I can't give it a code number.
What about Sylvester? He seems to be a co-dependent in this sick relationship. Why doesn't he just leave, or seek counselling to escape this cycle of violence? Alas, he could be a little better endowed in the brain department (witness his mistaking a baby kangaroo for a mouse). "

It's a Dave New World

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley : chapter one: "The first of a batch of two hundred and fifty embryonic rocket-plane engineers was just passing the eleven hundred metre mark on Rack 3. A special mechanism kept their containers in constant rotation. 'To improve their sense of balance,' Mr. Foster explained. 'Doing repairs on the outside of a rocket in mid-air is a ticklish job. We slacken off the circulation when they're right way up, so that they're half starved, and double the flow of surrogate when they're upside down. They learn to associate topsy-turvydom with well-being; in fact, they're only truly happy when they're standing on their heads. "

Jason vs. Avocado

Jason...looses!
(for those of you keeping score, this makes Jason 3, Foodstuffs 1 - I may or may not have mentioned the...B-A-N-A-N-A-S...that have become a staple in our house as of late)

I mashed it up nicely, tasted it myself even. Resisted the urge to add cilantro, lime juice and other enhancements. But no good. Here's how it went down"

Jason quietly looks at the green stuff on the spoon, with what can best be described a curiosity. Open mouth, insert food. He looks off as if contemplating deeply. Opens his mouth, and lets the food fall out.

We repeat the above, the 2nd time, he lets it roll around in his mouth for a few seconds, even going so far as to insert a finger to help (with the eating, the flavor? who knows), but out it comes again. No "ick" face. No face at all. Just a look that says "mom, this isn't food. it doesn't taste bad, but I am NOT going to eat it. Period."

After we repeated this half a dozen times, I relented. Fine Jason. You can have sweet potatoes.

Oh well. Perhaps peas will be next. That can't go poorly, right? right?

The "Hank" Commerical From Starbucks

First go see it. (right click on the link and open up in a new window -- it is better that way)

Got it? Now let's talk about....me.

When I was in third grade, the public school district had this magnet program that included a once a week trip to another school, where academic enrichment electives were offered.  The place was no joke. Anyhow, the Yonkers Enrichment Center is where I started to look at media with a critical eye. (Maybe I should also give props to Mario Cuomo and the NY State Summer School for the media arts, but we are getting off topic).

On the first day of one particular course, the teacher had us talk about powerful things we had seen in the media. Because "The Day After" wasn't for another year -  we talked about things like: the first Columbia space shuttle liftoff, "Star Wars", "Jaws", "Friday the 13th" (scary how many 3rd graders had seen it on saturday afternoon tv), the Kiss movie, etc. After establishing that powerful media was all movies and TV, the teacher asked us if we had ever experienced powerful radio. Everybody laughed. Then Ms. Mordillo (I think that was her name) played us Herb Morrision reporting on the Hindenburg disaster. We all admitted that this was pretty good. Then she played us Orson Well's Halloween 1938 War of the Worlds Broadcast.  We went bananas.

"We want to make something that is that good!"

"Great - you have the rest of the semester to script, produce, rehearse, videotape a 30-second television commerical!"

And like hungry wolves upon a crippled Moose, we dug into our material with voracious enthusiasm. (There is normally a long digression in retelling this ancedote. I've trimmed it and left this parenthetical comment as that digression's tombstone)

I remember that Jean-Paul LePez (the director and star), some kid (the scriptwriter and camera operator), and I (the producer and editor) were really pleased with the Cola commerical that we produced. We had a clever product tie-in with a movie (Splash) a good product gimmick ("Splash cola: the one with Grapemon (tm)") and the commerical put important things at stake (a man is crawling through the desert, literally dying of thirst ... for Grapemon) but I always regretted that the final cut somehow was lacking heart. The audience maybe felt a certain degree of pathos because the man was so thirsty, and because he was crawling over linoleum-as-sand... but you just didn't connect with him.

Basically, I wish I had made the Starbucks Espresso Doubleshot commerical called "Bleachers" but popularly known as the "Hank" Commerical. After Louren showed it to me, I just watched it over and over again.

Without further ado, and because everything is better when it is deconstructed --


First the familiar. Some skinny dork running out of his house trying to drink Starbucks Espresso Doubleshot on the run. Nice product shot, you can see the logo. You're thinking "I've seen this countless times: something surreal is going to happend and he's going to have a fantasy day and then its going to announce the 1 in a million chance sweepstakes." But this kid isn't really handsome enough to be the sweepstakes winner. He's wearing a black suit with an ugly green tie (school tie maybe?) and the shirt he's wearing is half a size too big. Cut. Now we see the whole kid framed by the stairwell of his apartment complex. He's got three D-Size drawings under his arm and a briefcase, just enough stuff to be having an awkward time of it but not so much so that it is clear that this is stuff that he drew and not just a bunch of stuff that he's carrying.

Enter the mascot. A bloated parody of the kid complete with caterpiller eyebrows and the same briefcase - but the brief case is a boombox as well. Note that the mascot - with this gigantic noggin - could have been taller than the kid, but he's not. He's just a touch shorter.

The song, if case you are interested is Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll Part 2"

The kid turns his head and thinks hey wait a ...

Boom ba boop-boop boom "HANK!"
Boom ba boop-boop boom "HANK!"

Now we see the bleachers. All five rows are full. Cut to Hank proceeding to walk.

Now we see that everyone in the stands are wearing "HANK" T-shirts. HANK is writen in a Serifed font reminiscient of TUFTS or RUTGERS from the early 60s. And its the same color green as Hanks ugly tie. Oh, I get it... its his lucky green tie.

Boom ba boop-boop boom "HANK!"

Hank looks at his fans, or maybe he's looking both ways before crossing the street. Such a nice boy.

Cut to a closeup of two fans in the front row following Hank with their eyes as he passes. Its MOM! She's so proud of her boy that she is about to tear up, making it hard to do the fist pump, not that Hank's mom would ever really pump her fist at all because, you know, she's the gentlest woman on earth. And next to Mom, of course, is DAD. He's positively swollen with pride, but not in the menancing crazy way like Tiger Woods' dad as portrayed by SNL. Behind Mom & Dad is coach. You don't see him now, but you will remember him later. Cut

Hank's standard-sized vehicle is going under the below-the-grade highway bridge and the boosters (and the mascot) are on the overpass, and they raise up a bunch of placards that together spell "HANK" It looks like that to get this shot, they found a underpass with a nice wide sidewalk and shot it from there. I wonder how difficult it was to get a permit from the city. Its kind of a windy day, did they need to do many takes? Did they practice indoors first to get the timing correctly for lifting the placards? Cut.

Hank again. Looking alert. Calm. Oh yeah, the mascot is also taking the elevator. Note that the mascot is wearing sneakers, like a real mascot. Cut.

They raised the bleachers up on scaffolding and it looks like there is a ladder (not a stairwell) in the back. These are not the same extras as were at the apartment complex. Mom and Dad are not in the first row, and then there is some dude not wearing a HANK t-shirt in the first row. Tsk tsk.

Note the jaded professional in the foreground who looks at the fans chanting for Hank and just rolls his eyes as if that happens every day. That makes up for the continuity error. Fantastic! Cut.

Another product shot. Now I see what' going on with no t-shirt boy. He's "Superfan" because he's got a headband. Behind "Superfan" is "wise old mentor" you don't see him now, but you will remember him later. Also it looks like Superfan is sitting someplace else. Dude, don't they number these extras and sit them all in the same place?

Waiting room now. Hank sits ups ever so slightly to straighten his jacket. His eyes are straight ahead. He's ready. For what? An interview, a presentation? Not sure, but now we are starting to know the inner HANK. Put some headgear on him, and he's a wrestler. Put a racket in his hand, and he's a tennis player. Put a golf club ... you get the idea, which is that he's learned some important life lessons from youth sports about drive and heart. Okay now let's meet the inner HANK by seeing the people who are rooting for him:

In front: its "Wise old mentor" wearing a bow tie and a khaki suit. His white wiskers and soulful eyes tell you that at some defining moment, Hank was ready to quit or maybe he was down about a loss or maybe ... well anyway "wise old mentor" was there with some dignified home-spun wisdom to give Hank that extra spark to keep going and to plant a seed for long-term inspiration.

Boom ba boop-boop boom "HANK!" (its a whisper now).

Mom is sitting next to coach. Her brows are knit, she knows that the rough stuff is about to start and she wants to see her boy come out on top. Where's Dad? oh well...

Coach is next to MOM. He's the one with the Hank cap and the silk Letterman jacket.

Childhood Best friend is next to former teammate (cut off in the frame). Childhood best friend is even dorkier than Hank.

Rounding it out in the back row we got: three girls who could be platonic friend, little sis, and maybe girlfriend sitting next to creepy towel guy. cut


For a moment Hank has some trepidation... his eyes wander over to (cut)

coach - who is very very intense. Coach wants this win, for his protege. Note that coach has a coach's whistle. We get it. We get it. Cut

Now for the first time we see one of the game officials. Its the receptionist, "Hank?" she asks with a cocky tilt of the head that says "Wake up, doofus!" cut.

Indeed Hank is lost in thought for an instant. He's wondering "Do I deserve the trust and love of these people rooting for me?" but the receptionist snaps him out of it. These boosters (and of course, Starbucks Espresso Doubleshot) are his secret weapon! He gives his fans a secret smile and bolts up ready to go.

Now the crowd is on their feet. This is it. The mascot either does a move known as "the turtle" (or maybe its a handglide. Ask your local b-boy).

Watch the people in the last three rows. This made Louren laugh really hard.

Someone blasts an airhorn, or maybe its the secretary buzzing Hank through the glass doors. It doesn't matter - Hank is in the game now and he's going to rock his presentation or interview or whatever.

"Delicious Starbucks Doubleshot Espresso Drink. Bring on the day" There is no "X" is espresso, and the voice-over guy nails it.

What really blows me away about the commerical is how fast it moves. There are some 30-second spots that just seem to take a freaking year to watch. Like... you could have read this whole blog entry four times in the time it takes to watch that commerical. Local ads for used car dealerships come to mind.

I IMDBed the Head of production for the spot (Brian Dilorenzo). He was also the Exec Producer for "Do Geese See God?" and "AGENT ORANGE" which you may remember from this past Christmas on AMAZON.COM. Personally, I though "AGENT ORGANGE" was abysmal but had excellent production value. I wasn't familiar with the directors work, but TV is a producer's medium anyway.

I had more to say about the larger social themes that this spot brings up, but I'm unconvinced that anyone who kept reading up to this point wants to keep reading any further.