Sicko

Watoosa and I are both under the weather. She caught a cold early last week and kindly decided to share it with me. I feel like someone shoved a bicycle pump up my nose and started inflating my head, Dig Dug-style.

I can't remember the last time Watoosa and I were sick at the same time, but I find that it results in a drastic decrease in both the quantity and quality of cheap sympathy and coddling to which I have become accustomed. This must not stand. Comments are open, for those of you who feel like picking up the slack.

UPDATE: Things got worse for me last night. I don't want to bore you with details, but let's just say that having Indian food for dinner last night was a big, big mistake.

It was fortunate, then, that Watoosa has been improving. When I get really sick, my judgment begins to cloud, and sometimes I just need to be told what to do--autonomy just gets in the way. Many of you have heard her tell the story of my walking around Santa Barbara in a feverish stupor, looking for a doctor's office. I wasn't quite that bad off last night, but it sure was good to have her here, and I hereby retract my gripe about the cheap sympathy and coddling.

Me Think Real Good

From a student essay: "Philosophers are very intelligent individuals, more so than humans...."

Yes, students see me as a veritable deity, whose ways are high above their own. I don't know what I could have done to give them that idea.

Foolish mortals!

U2 3D

Last night, Watoosa and I caught the final showing of U2 3D in the area. I had been eager to see it after reading the NY Times review, but I assumed it would be coming to Portland. Apparently I was wrong. Luckily, I happened to check listings for a theater 2o miles away.

Unfortunately, we didn't get to see it in IMAX, but it was in 3D, and it was amazing. The last time I saw something in 3D--the 2007 re-release of The Nightmare Before Christmas--the effect was pretty negligible (although Watoosa seemed more affected by it). I was hoping that this film would work better, and I was more than satisfied. Although some of the images challenged my eye focus a bit, most of the time it was like watching a performance in person.

Only it was better than that, because the multiple cameras swoop over the crowd and hover over the band, and the editors blend and manipulate images with wild abandon. I was mesmerized, and fully sucked in. Early on, during a low shot from the crowd's perspective, I got annoyed for a couple seconds at a few hands obscuring my view of the stage--I thought someone in the seat in front of me was getting too carried away. Then I realized that those hands were in the film, and I remembered that Watoosa and I were the only ones in the theater.

If it's still showing in your town, pay the higher ticket prices and see it on the biggest screen you can find. It's worth it for the first encore alone.

All Systems are Go

This week we got our "Clear to Close" from the bank who will be handling our mortgage. That means we're one step closer to closing the deal on our house, and that Icktoosa headquarters will soon be relocating to Westbrook.

Next month, then, looks to be pretty crazy for me. Here's what will be going down:
-Close on the house
-Remove wallpaper in three rooms
-Paint four rooms
-Rip up some carpet, replace it on the stairs
-Move
-Grade papers in all three of my classes, plus tests in two of them
-Teach three sessions of an additional class
-Help lead a workshop on ethics and torture

My work is cut out for me, but I'm looking forward to most of it.

Protecting Our Polity with Peircing Pickle Projectiles

I really don't know what to make of this, but it's certainly worth a look: a portrayal of America's military conflicts from WWII to the present that uses foods representative of the countries involved. Who thinks up this stuff?

Some of it is funny--like the arms race with the Soviets (stroganoff)--but other parts strike me as a bit too...beyond the pale. Watch for yourself.



A cheat sheet for the various entrees is here.

What Sunday Afternoons Are For

Here's a video of a woman doing 21 different accents. She even attempts to distinguish closely related accents, such as Czech and Russian, California and Seattle, Texas and South Carolina. The funniest is Toronto. The weakest is Texas. South Carolina doesn't sound quite right to me, either, but it's such a delight to hear it, all the same.


Chick Does 21 Different Accents - Watch more free videos

It's Genderrific!

Uncertain about your real gender? Of course you are. Now there's hope! Just enter some text into the box at this website, and it'll tell you whether (and even to what extent) you're male or female.

I just tried it. After entering some text from a recent post, the result was "Weak male." That's obviously incorrect, so I figured another test was in order. The second result was "110% red-blooded American male." A third yielded "So freakin' male, you make John Wayne look like a sissy." After the fourth try, it told me "Stop it already--we can't handle your awesome maleness and it's causing our supercomputers to blow up." That's more like it.

Watoosa's writing, on the other hand, yielded "Weak male," so it looks like we have some...."issues" to work through, although the site warns that this result could simply mean that she's European.

They Wish They Were the World

The most nauseatingly self-congratulatory song of the past few decades, recreated for a Japanese television show. Josh, can you give us some background on this curiosity?



Observations:

1. The Cyndi Lauper woman absolutely nails it.
2. I swear, the Stevie Wonder is played by Horatio Sanz.
3. The Michael Jackson amazingly looks more like a human being than Michael Jackson himself.
4. I must--repeat, MUST--have the red and white suit visible at 3:10. Easter is just around the corner.

Stickin' it to the Man

I've always found it annoying at places like Home Depot when, on exiting the store, they insist on looking at your receipt and nosing through your purchases. It's invasive and a waste of time. So, having read this article a while back, I decided to try refusing this "request" yesterday.

I was at Best Buy, where I purchased a set of speakers. There were more employees than customers in the store, and I was the only customer anywhere near the checkout area. The exit was maybe ten yards away from the register I used, in full view of the employee doing the receipt checks. So there's no way she could have missed me checking out. As I walked toward the exit carrying a moderately heavy and cumbersome box, she still asked to see my receipt.

I started to walk past her.

"Wait, sir! I need to see your receipt!"

"Um, no, I'd rather not," I said.

"No, I have to look at it," she said. She tried to take it out of my hand, but I moved away so she couldn't get it.

"Really? What happens if I don't let you?"

"Well, I'd have to report it."

"That's fine with me. Go ahead," I said, turning to leave.

"But I also need to make sure that you got what you paid for!" (As the article I linked to above points out, this isn't really possible, since the boxes don't have prices on them. There's no way she can compare my receipt to the intended price for the speakers, unless she happens to have memorized the price of every single item in the store's inventory, which is doubtful.)

"Thanks, but I'm sure I did," I said, and I started walking away from her. At this point, she just gave up, huffing out a petulant "Fine!"

I doubt I'll make this a standard policy, but it was fun to mix it up a little.

I Have a Cunning Plan

Although I can't exactly say why, I have a weakness for a couple film genres. One is the submarine picture. Any movie that takes place in a sub will draw me in, even if I know it's not a terribly good film, and even though they are all pretty much the same film (firing torpedoes, evading depth charges, taking on water, a tough skipper, a green XO who the skipper suspects isn't ready for command, taking the ship deeper than she's rated to dive, debates about orders and military procedure, the psychological ordeal of being cooped up in a tin can underneath millions of gallons of water...you know the drill).

The other genre that I can't resist is the heist picture. The NY Times has a great article here that partly explains what makes these movies so much fun: part of the allure is watching the characters develop and execute elaborate and daring plans, and the other part is watching them deal with the inevitable snags to said plans. What the NYT didn't point out, though, is that yet another part of the appeal of these movies is that they typically include some kind of swindle. Sometimes, like in Ocean's 11, the thieves swindle the mark. But it's even more fun when there's a swindle going on within the team.

I've added some titles to my Netflix queue based on this article, including a number of foreign films, so do check it out of you're a fan of the genre. In the meantime, here are a few mini-reviews...

I already mentioned Ocean's 11, and I think it was underrated when it was first released. Soderbergh and Co. know how preposterous it is, and that's part of the fun. The sequels got progressively more preposterous and less fun (although subbing Catherine Zeta-Jones for a pasty and shrewish Julia Roberts was a big step up), but they're good for wasting a couple hours.

Speaking of Zetamax, as I've heard her called, a remarkably mediocre example of the genre is Entrapment, in which she co-stars with Sean Connery. This was the film that made me realize how much of a cliche this line is: "You're gettin' too old for this stuff [obviously, the last word can be substituted with a stronger term]." Now I'll be the first to admit that Connery has aged well, but the romance that develops between him and CZJ is just creepy, not to mention feebly developed. The ending scene in the train station is laughably lame. However, there is a memorable scene in which CZJ is "training" for the heist by slithering over, under, and around a mock-up laserbeam detection system. I remember the theater getting very quiet during that scene.

If you want to be completely terrified of the man who once played Gandhi, check out Sexy Beast. The heist is less central to the film than the efforts of the main character to resist Ben Kingsley's attempts to recruit him, and Kingsley is absolutely frightening.

I refused to see the remake of The Pink Panther for multiple reasons, but one reason was because much of the appeal of the original is the way it embodies the grooviness of the early 60s. As a kid, I laughed at Clouseau's bumbling, and I recognize Peter Seller's talent, but that part hasn't held up as much for me. Watching David Niven exude smoothness has.

Although I can't recall a single detail, and although it's far from Woody Allen's finest work, I remember enjoying Small Time Crooks. Same deal with Bandits.

There's nothing too remarkable about Frank Oz's The Score; it hews pretty close to the standard heist film. But it's well-executed, and Robert De Niro and Ed Norton give good performances. There are lovely scenes of Montreal, too. I preferred this film over its competitor that year: Heist, starring Gene Hackman. The latter was penned and directed by David Mamet, but it left me cold.

As always, I'm open to additions to this list.

UPDATE: Forgot to mention Heat and The Usual Suspects.