TEN JACK TEN

I took the kids to see it this morning, and as I feared, the 2:15 running time was not justified.  It would have been a much better movie at 1:45, but that’s what happens when you get a true blockbuster under your belt, the BS detector gets shut off because you have PROVED YOUR GENIUS.

Not to say there wasn’t some genius on display.  The saturated colors and special effects were amazing.  The actors-before-bluescreen look (a la 300) gives the production the cartoony, otherworldly look the Wachowskis were clearly looking for.  When it was just things moving on the screen, it worked.

But then there was all that talking. Everything was explained at least half as much longer than it needed to be, and the snappy action editing ground to a halt.

Having taken a lot of children to a lot of movies in the last ten years, I can get a pretty good feel for just how entertained the young ones are feeling.  It’s a technique I call “listening.”  This is why kids movies usually run no longer than 90 minutes, you can’t keep up a fast pace for much longer than that without running out of plot.  That’s why I heard “Mommy can we go home now?” more times than I can count at Ratatouille and not once in Meet the Robinsons or Toy Story 2.  The kids were in full throat every time one of the film’s endless expositions went past the minute mark.  They explained feelings, they explained racing, they explained their feelings about racing.

But worst of all, they explained business deals.  The Wachowskis did not learn the lesson of The Phantom Menace:  bureaucracy is not entertaining.  (That’s why people refuse to pay attention to it and it gets away with stuff.)  Look out Speed Racer!  It’s a corporate merger!  But all was forgiven once the racing started up again.

A Shot At Love II With Tila Tequila is conclusive proof that MTV hates your brain and wants it to die.

30 Rock was the best comedy on TV this season.  My Name Is Earl lost its way with the prison plotline (I blame Jamie Pressly’s pregnancy).

In however many seasons there have been of American Idol, there has not been one contestant that would motivate me to buy their recordings.

Saturday Night Live was a little better after the Writer’s Guild Strike ended, but they are still at the mercy of the quality of their guest hosts.  Christopher Walken is always worth watching when he’s hosting SNL.  Surprisingly, Justin Timberlake is too.

Krtisten Wiig isn’t as funny as SNL thinks she is.  But then, I can’t think of any cast member that is.  Oh wait, Andy Samberg is actually better than his amount of screen time reflects.

Seth Meyer is a poor replacement for Tina Fey on SNL’s Weekend Update.  But then, I suppose I tend to be biased against smug little pricks.

Grey’s Anatomy would be a much better show if they devoted as much energy to creating characters we could root for as they did to making sure every post-strike episode featured a same-sex kiss.

Mad TV is still funnier than SNL.  The humor is more biting and fearless.

House was the best drama on TV this season, and it’s almost entirely due to Hugh Laurie’s acting and their ability to throw good actors up against him.  It’s certainly not the disease-of-the-week plotlines.

When an entire season of a show accumulates on your DVR and you haven’t found yourself motivated to watch it, it’s probably time to admit you’d rather not bother with it. 

Shows where a bunch of people chase after the affections of one person (usually of the opposite gender) are almost the worst thing on television.  (The worst is that show on Fox where people destroy their lives by hooking themselves up to a lie detector and disclosing awful things about themselves, but usually end up getting nothing because they keep trying for the big money and think they can get away with just a little lying.)

Anyway, we get to see the dim bulb of a girl talk about the men who are clamoring to win her heart, and she focuses on one guy in particular because all he seems able to talk about is how proud he is to be Greek (the country, not a fraternity member).  So she takes some time to talk to him to give him a chance to talk about something else.

Of course, all he talks about is being Greek, how his values are solidly Greek, how great his large Greek family is, how much he likes to hang around with his large Greek family.  And then, he says the single stupidest thing I think I have ever heard on national television:

“My brother is also my best friend.  He’s Greek, too.“

But since it’s on, I can’t help but notice how bad George Michael’s voice sounds now.

Geez, they drag this thing out.

And . . .  it’s over.  My Lovely Wife is pretty mad because Fox ran long with it, and the DVR cut off right as they were about to announce the winner.  I’m not sure whether that was on purpose or not, but the end product was a results show that was long on George Michael and very short on results.  Not my idea of a good way to spend an hour and a half, but that’s why the laptop’s open.

So, we look up the winner on the net.  I thought the other guy would win, I guess teenage girls don’t have the influence I thought they did.  But hey, they’re both tools in their own special way. 

My early candidate for headline of the year:

Drag Queen Robs Burger King 

-  the way William Shatner talks 

-  the experience of having a song you don’t like running through your head

-  the mental state that leads people to appear on reality shows

-  the smell of things that have been completely permeated by cigarette smoke (and no, smartass, “smoky” isn’t specific enough)

Obama explains to us why he’s behind in the polls for the upcoming Kentucky Democrat primary:

“What it says is that I’m not very well known in that part of the country,” Obama said. “Sen. Clinton, I think, is much better known, coming from a nearby state of Arkansas. So it’s not surprising that she would have an advantage in some of those states in the middle.”

A reasonable explanation to the extent Arkansas is within a few state lines of Kentucky.  But you kind of have to ignore the fact that Obama’s home state is Illinois, which shares a border with Kentucky.

Is there some rich-Harvard-guy alternate definition of “nearby” that I was never taught?

—

The Washington Post breathlessly repeats allegations of sick-leave abuse by IRS employees:

For weeks that had a holiday falling on a Monday, 27 percent of all sick leave at the IRS was taken on a Tuesday in 2005 and 2006, the report said.  And 24 percent of all sick leave taken by IRS employees during non-holiday weeks was on a Monday.

Wow, sounds bad.  Unless you have a calendar and the ability to count.  Assuming random distribution of sick leave, you would expect 20% of absences to occur on any one day of a 5-day week, and 25% of absences to occur on any one day of a 4-day week.  In that context, the variances seem less dramatic.  Or abusive.  Or worth anyone’s time.

Politically Stupid

Meet Carrollton, Texas mayor Becky Miller:

Sang backup for Linda Ronstadt and Jackson Browne. Engaged to Eagles singer-songwriter Don Henley. Devastated by a brother’s death in Vietnam.

All are part of the colorful past described by Carrollton Mayor Becky Miller, acquaintances say.

Carrollton residents including former council members Bonnie Kaplan, Fran Brown and Judy Scamardo said they had heard Mrs. Miller say she was once engaged to Mr. Henley. Ms. Kaplan, who was elected to the council in 1999, said she took note of it because she is a “huge” Eagles and Don Henley fan.

Larry Solters, longtime spokesman for Mr. Henley and the Eagles, said the singer had no reunion with a former girlfriend or fiancé at that time.

“Don said he’s never heard of her, doesn’t know her, certainly was never engaged to her,” Mr. Solters said.

In an e-mail to The News last week, Mrs. Miller said: “I have never said that I was engaged to Don Henley. I dated him.”

The mayor, who has said she graduated from high school in 1968, has told residents and colleagues over the years, as well as reporters for previous stories, that she sang for Mr. Browne and Ms. Ronstadt.

Mrs. Miller said Monday that she toured with the artists after her first marriage. She has said she quit singing backup when she met her current husband, Jerry Miller, in 1978.

Cree Clover Miller, Mr. Browne’s manager, said the singer had never heard of a Becky or Rebecca Sampson, Gibson or Miller. Richard Bowden, a former lead guitarist for Ms. Ronstadt, said she told him last week that “she remembers nobody by any of those names.”

Informed that the singers couldn’t recall her singing with them, Mrs. Miller said, “Maybe I was going by a different name. Did you think about that?”

Told that the inquiries had included her maiden name and former married name, she said she had gone by other names. “There’s several,” she said last week. “I’m not going to tell you what they are. You have to find that out.”

Then there’s the dead brother.

Her father, Edward Sampson, said his son is alive in Maryland. “He was never in the service,” Mr. Sampson said.

Mrs. Miller admitted falsely telling Mr. Branson that an 18-year-old killed in Vietnam in 1968 was her brother.

Later, Mrs. Miller said the “brother” killed in Vietnam was “not my blood brother. … My mother did not have him.” She said the man had been raised by her family and was as close as a brother. But she wouldn’t provide a name that could be checked.

“There are other circumstances surrounding him that my family doesn’t want out, so we’re not going to go there,” she said.

“I get angry when people get into my personal life,” Mrs. Miller said. “My personal life does not have a thing to do with my job as mayor or being elected on the City Council for 10 years.”

Apparently, this intensely private person never thought to stop talking (in lying form) about her personal life.  To nobody’s surprise, she lost her re-election bid last Tuesday.

Last Thursday, I was at the office working and drinking the second of the three canned sodas I brought from home in my bag to save me from buying expensive retail soda pop. I picked up the can for a drink, revealing a garden slug hanging out on the coaster beneath the can.

What the Hell?

I shoveled the little creature into the trash and started looking around my office. Where would slugs be coming from? I checked the ceiling, the window sill, the floor. No slugs. I wiped off the top of the can of soda just to be sure.

I finished the can, got the next one and found another slug on the side of the can. And then I got it. When I got my newspaper this morning, the slugs must have been on the wrapper and got put into my work bag along with the sodas. The sodas were cool and damp, so they attracted the slugs.

I wiped off the last can and drank it anyway. Lust for caffeine beats the willies.

I watched Slap Shot on the plane back to DFW. It was one of those movies that everyone always talked about as one of the great sports films. It didn’t seem great in 2008, it felt downbeat and defeatist, with one of those tacked-on absurd endings they were so fond of in the 70’s. (Can’t figure out how to resolve all of the plot lines? How about a pie fight?)

When I got to the hospital just after noon, RJH was sill in surgery. I still didn’t know which one of his arms was broken.

Out of surgery, sleeping with three pins in his right arm and a cast over it, he looked older somehow. There were two broken bones, and they tried to set it conventionally, gave up, and used the pins to fix the bones. He’d been roughed up, and his pain was hard to control. It became clear that he wouldn’t be ready to go home that day, and I drew overnight duty.

I settled into the reclining visitor’s chair and watched TV with him. Cartoon Network had given way to Adult Swim, and I let him watch a usually-forbidden Family Guy. He needed to get away with something (and I knew that episode wasn’t too bad). I was exhausted, but I’d made the right decision to come home a day early.

We were both asleep by 8:30, waking every few hours for pain medications and vital signs checks, in the unique rhythm of the hospital.

Dangerously Stupid

Experiencing shlong shame? Wang not working? Disappointing ding-dong? Maybe you should be blaming someone else.

Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men’s penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

Rumors of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo’s sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.

Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure.

If you claim you’ve make someone blind, they’re going to be able to verify the claim pretty quickly. Same with just about any other constantly-used part of the body. But the male organ requires support from the brain to get the job done, so if you think you’re impotent, you probably are. This is actually kind of a clever scam, right up to the point where you get murdered for witchcraft.

Politically Stupid

What happens if you catch a guy who had himself smuggled into your country and the evidence shows is likely a terrorist. How about sending him back where he came from? If you’re Great Britain, nope.

A terror suspect who was once found with a map marked with the flightpath to Birmingham International Airport has defeated the UK Government’s bid to deport him to Libya. The man, who can only be identified by the initials DD, has been described by a court as “real and direct threat to the national security of the UK”.

So why can’t they send him back where he came from? Because he comes from a shitty country. Well, that’s not fair, maybe they just don’t like terrorists either.

. . . the assurances which had been obtained by the UK from Libya, in the form of a ‘Memorandum of Understanding’, were not sufficient to protect DD and AS from a real risk of torture or other ill-treatment if they were to be returned to Libya.

Ill-treatment? What does that mean? Are we talking bamboo shoots under the fingernails or denying him a car loan? Wherever it falls in the spectrum, Mr. Airport Enthusiast is staying right where he illegally is. But to make sure he behaves, they’ve slapped a “control order” on him. That sounds a lot like the legal equivalent of a warning to behave or run the risk of enduring further warnings.

The only thing worse than sitting through training would be writing about sitting through training. So it ain’t going to happen.

Lunch time was interesting in that the folks who organized the conference thought it would be a good idea to have a scavenger hunt in the inner harbor over an hour-and-a-half lunch. I disagreed, and wandered off on my own to have Chinese food. I fired up the iPod and walked around town, listening to an album I’d never listened to before — Nick Drake’s Bryter Layter. Obscure 70’s folk-pop, complete with appearances by pretentious string section and chorus of background singers. Cool and a bit distant, it worked as the soundtrack for walking around an unfamiliar city. I’ve listened to it several times since then, enjoying the pleasant rush of new musical discovery.

I was presenting at the conference in the first after-lunch session, which had to be delayed because there was no audience — people were still straggling in late due to the scavenger hunt. Women in particular were complaining because there was no warning about the activity and they hadn’t worn appropriate shoes. I finally got to talk about my topic and got a coffee mug for my trouble.

The evening activity was an Orioles game, $35 to sit on the second level in “all-you-can-eat” seats. That sounded like a good idea, but they managed to screw it up. The menu was hot dogs, nachos, cokes, and bagged peanuts. All I wanted of cold hot dogs, nachos with salsa that tasted like the inside of a tin can, and tasteless peanuts. And bad service. I stood waiting for a diet coke for almost a full minute while the girl behind the counter chatted with the boy behind the counter. I’d forgotten just how poor the quality of life can be on the east coast.

At 7:30, I got a call from my wife. RJH had just broken his arm and she was taking him to the hospital. The other boys were with a sitter. The baseball game went from uninteresting to unbearable. I went back to the hotel to wait for updates. At 10:00, she told me he was being admitted because there were no orthopedists available. Fortunately, I had asked for permission to leave the conference early before leaving the game. I changed the flight from Friday to Monday and set the alarm for 5am.

I took the boys to see the first big movie of the summer, and it was surprisingly decent. I won’t bother with a plot recitation, but the movie was well cast. Robert Downey, Jr. was excellent in the lead, Jeff Bridges was cool, and Gwyneth Paltrow managed not to be annoying.

One of my few gripes would be the talk-to-action ratio was a bit too far on the talky side, so there wasn’t nearly enough ass-kicking.  This is common for a superhero movie with an origin story, but young kids got restless. Otherwise, the special effects were solid and the plot actually made sense.

If you’re thinking about taking kids, it’s PG-13 for:

- Violent deaths of characters you’ve gotten to know (some at the beginning, a bit more before the beginning is over).
- Imminent threat of torture with a hot piece of metal.
- Intended (but not completed) murder of a parent in front of his children.
- Non-nude (but with lots of skin) and brief depiction of a one-night-stand and the morning after.

The 10 y/o and the 8 y/o handled it fine, but my 5 y/o didn’t like the violent scenes described above, and I thought we could have had a bit less skin in the one-nighter, but I’m a serious prude when it comes to cinematic sex and kids.

In the morning, I realized one more thing I didn’t like about the Sheraton City Center — the restaurants don’t serve any breakfast. Sure, there was a “continental” breakfast for the conference, but that just means coffee and sweets. If you wanted some protein, tough.

The morning was an awards ceremony, at which I got the highest honor my particular branch of the Agency had to offer (sorry to be non-specific, but I’ve been Googlephobic since Googlephobia wasn’t cool). It was nice, but I’m still not exactly sure what I did to rate it. In my mind, I chalk it up to “general ass-kicking of superior quality” and leave it at that.

The afternoon was a presentation on balancing work and life, which ended up to be yet another damn variation of the power of positive thinking and the importance of a good attitude. A bit short on practical advice, and a room full of lawyers is not necessarily the place for a bunch of fuzzy talk. Or lectures about attitudes. Based on the look on her face near the end, I think we may have been emitting negative energy.

Ending the day, dinner for over 60 people at an Italian restaurant in Little Italy. Despite everyone paying and ordering weeks in advance, they seemed surprised that we were there. Dinner was supposed to start at 6pm, and we weren’t seated until 6:30. If I hadn’t paid $40 in advance, I’d have ditched.

It’s probably better that I didn’t. I picked a nice out of the way table and sat down. The next person who sat at my table was the national boss, appointed about six months ago. Go figure. The rest of the table filled up quickly, but he was at my elbow. I got some face time with the big guy and bent his ear about what I thought about the job. Since I have no ability to tell what kind of impression I make on other people, I figure it’ll either go one way or the other. In the event my (hypothetical at this point) promotion package hits his desk, it’ll either be “screw that guy, he’s a jackass” or “let’s give it to this guy.” I suppose either one is better than “who the hell is this guy?”

The restaurant failed to impress (I’d name names, but I can’t remember it, starts with a “V”). Actually, it just failed. Food came out sporadically, and I know of at least one person who never got what he ordered. An hour would go by between the salad and the entree. Others complained that the marinara sauce tasted like an ashtray. The big boss got his steak about 9:15. The desserts didn’t even have the same size spoons — mine was a dinky coffee spoon suitable for serving Baby Alive.

Later, someone told me that when the cab driver dropped them off at the restaurant, he asked them “who told you this place was good?”

I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it until I get tired of it:  I hate flying out of DFW.  After years of getting away with no more than one business trip a year, I’m hit with three in two months.  First Seattle, the Albuquerque, now Baltimore.  The last couple of trips have been made better by using off-airport parking.  I’m amazed that the $17/day spaces at DFW are constantly full, to the point where I’ve run the risk of missing a flight looking for a space near the terminal.  Now I realize trying to use a close-in space is complete folly because American will likely deliver you to a completely different terminal than you left from.  If there’s a shuttle ride at the end of your trip anyway, you might as well have the shuttle bring you right to your car.

Arriving an hour early did the trick this time, unlike last month’s Albuquerque trip that left me waiting for over 45 minutes for an agent and got me to the gate just in time to see them give my seat away despite cutting in line for the security checkpoint.  There was time for a steak & egg bagel at the airport McDonald’s, which surprisingly, is the tastiest thing that’s ever been on their menu.  Some franchises have gotten wise to this unauthorized insurgency of flavor and dropped breakfast bagels entirely, as I found out in Tulsa a while back.

I am a horrible overpacker of entertainment.  For a flight of less than 3 hours, I brought a bag with the following amusements:

Robert Novak’s “The Prince of Darkness” in hardcover.
An 80gig iPod Video fully loaded, about half music and half videos.
2 issues of Wired.
A PSP with 6 games and a 4 gig Memory Stick with 7 movies ripped to it.
1 issue of Esquire.
A Nintendo DS.
A Phillips portable DVD player that also docks the iPod Video for playback.
Sony noise-cancelling headphones.
A 1 gig Sansa express MP3 player loaded with podcasts.

I ended up reading the book and watching a few Family Guy episodes.  I don’t know why I do this other than it’s some form of boredom insurance.

I was starved when I got to the hotel, and went out looking for something to eat.  The only thing I found within a few blocks was a McDonald’s.  Against my better judgment, I ate there.  I soon figured out that I had discovered the McDonald’s That’s Not Comfortable For Anyone But Black Folks.  The counter help could hardly stop arguing with each other about who was supposed to show up for work later in the week long enough to take orders.  Once one of the girls broke loose from the conversation, the flat affect and lack of eye contact made it clear that I was an interloper.  Fortunately for her, the next person in line cheered her up considerably.  For the rest of the meal, not 30 seconds went by without some shouted conversation between the staff and the patrons.  I used the opportunity to bone up on my ignoring skills.

The hotel (the Sheraton City Center) ended up being an example of everything I hate about hotels with the exception of the staff, which was unfailingly polite.  The Sheraton was all about squeezing a few more dollars out of you every time you turned around.  I didn’t pack a laptop because I don’t like the complications it brings to travel and I’d had good experiences with the business centers in the last couple of hotels.  Not here – internet access to the business center PCs was $7 per 15-minute block of time, charged to your credit card.

Then there was the TV in the room.  They went to the trouble of hooking up a 32-inch LCD widescreen HDTV and then used it to show stretched standard-def content.  That just offended me.  I also had the option of internet access in my room on the HD set, I nosed around with it and discovered that they wanted $10/day for that service.  I decided that wasn’t worth it, especially due to the half-assed speed of the connection, and tried to turn it off.  The hotel remote didn’t have an exit button, and the screen said use the “esc” key on the keyboard in your room.  But my room didn’t have a keyboard.  I searched all the drawers and closets and couldn’t find a keyboard.  I turned the set off, thinking that it might reset, but it was still on the net when it came back up.  Finally, directly entering a TV channel on the remote did the trick.  I would have felt like a complete jackass calling the hotel staff to my room to turn off the internet access channel I was too cheap to buy.

On to the pay-per-view.  The hotel advertised a service to let you see favorite TV shows you might have missed, so I went to that screen to see if I could watch a 30 Rock that I missed due to storm coverage a while back.  They had it, but wanted $5 to show me a 22-minute show.  That I could watch on the internet for free (if I had free internet access, that is).  More menu-diving told me I could pay $7 to watch an episode of Mythbusters.  Yes, the same show that’s on 8 times a week on basic cable.  Damn money-grubbers.

I don’t like walking around Baltimore much after dark.  (And now that I think about it, it’s not that great during the day either.)  So, it’s down to the hotel restaurant so see what’s available.  And it looks like what’s available is a choice of screwjobs.  There’s two options:  Shula’s and Shula’s 2.  The first is a high-priced steak restaurant named after the retired Dolphins coach, as you learned from the signs posted in the elevator claiming that the taste is “still undefeated.”  (DAMN how I wish the Patriots had won so everybody could STFU about the Dolphins).  The second is an indifferent little sports bar in the lobby with absolutely no entree less than $10. 

I’d never previously made the association between Don Shula and quality dining, and his sports bar didn’t change things.  I got a $9 appetizer with mini buffalo chicken sandwiches and fries, identified in the menu as shoestring fries, but appearing on the plate as steak fries.  The sandwiches were chicken nuggets splashed with a little sauce on tiny, stale buns.  I’d be willing to bet everything I was served came out of a bag in the freezer. 

Congratulations, Don.  You made the Uncomfortable McDonald’s look good by comparison.