Waiting for Gouda

Wesley Snipes is going to jail.

Apparently you can’t always bet on black.

From the AP wire:

AP - The action star receives the maximum sentence — one year for each conviction, despite letters from Woody Harrelson and Denzel Washington.

What!?

Are you seriously telling me that a letter of recommendation from Woody freakin’ Harrelson cannot keep a man out of jail? I don’t believe it.

First Bush v. Gore, and now this.

I no longer have faith in our justice system.

It’s baseball season, and I gotta tell ya, I have CAUGHT THE FEVER!

That’s right, I am contagious people. Stand back! I have the baseball fever. Do not get too close, and for God’s sake, do not try to kiss me. (You know you want to.)

Just ask my Lovely Wife ^TM… she also seems a tad feverish. But that might just be allergies from ALL OF THESE GODDAMN CATS.

I don’t know why MLB did away with their “Baseball Fever… Catch It!” slogan. Honestly, I’ve always thought campaigns that compare your goods or services to a communicable disease are quite successful. Who can forget the ingenious slogan “Put the ‘Hi’ back in HIV with AT&T!” or SlimFast’s brilliant “Almost as Good As Catching Malaria!”

Anyway, my Sox are off to a decent start, although I am not optimistic. That is just how we southsiders roll. (Yes, I live on the north side. So what.) No need to get your hopes up. If you get too excited about things, you end up sounding like a Cubs fan, and nobody likes Cubs fans. Not even themselves.

But this is not what I want to talk about.

[Read more →]

We are all doomed, and of course it is Bill Gates’ fault.

The Big M is unveiling something called “Live Mesh”. You can read all about it, if you’re into that sort of thing. I’m sure that it’s got something to do with being more productive and data management, and you know… folders of some kind, probably. But here’s the part to pay attention to:

In the official description, we are told that Live Mesh “is a ’software-plus-services’ platform and experience from Microsoft that enables PCs and other devices to ‘come alive’ by making them aware of each other through the Internet”.

!!!

My God, did NOBODY at this corporation watch The Terminator? Or Terminator 2, at least? (I forgive them for skipping 3.)

This product, as described by the developer itself, is SkyNet. SkyNet, people!

My computer “coming alive” is the LAST thing I want to happen. (Okay, actually third-last, right behind “President McCain” and the whole “mauled by a pack of rabid wolves” thing. [yes, that's a thing].) I don’t want to sit down one day to play a nice game of Solitaire and have Joshua start playing Global Thermonuclear War, if I may mix my cinematic metaphors.

They must be stopped. “Live Mesh” cannot succeed. Let’s see… Linda Hamilton is busy doing some Canadian TV show. The Governator has his greasy hands full these days. And I just don’t trust these clowns.

Our only hope is that Live Mesh adheres to Microsoft’s typical usability standards, and sooner or later, it will crash itself.

I was pleased today to see that the CTA has instituted a slogan in honor of their finally beginning to get their infrastructure back up to near-third world standards:

Putting the Rapid Back in Transit

I certainly find it a more effective bit of marketing than the last one:

Keeping the Crappy in ‘Oh My God Could the CTA Be More Crappy?’

Aside from being rather vulgar and lacking in proper grammar, I found that it didn’t really inspire me.

(A semi-intentional homage to George Carlin.)

For approximately the last six years, five months, and nine days, the Chicago Transportation Authority has incorporated a security message into their customer notification system.

So, as you’re standing in The Coldest Location In The Midwest (Blue Line platform at Irving Park) and the blinky red message boards are scrolling the incredibly long list of semi-permanent temporary station closings and bus re-routes, you might see this:

“If you observe an unattended package, witness anything unusual, or see someone acting suspiciously, tell the bus or train operator or rail station Customer Assistant immediately.”

I suppose it’s not a bad idea for people to be aware of their surroundings. But this message… I really don’t think the CTA means it. Not at all.

Do they really want me to inform a CTA employee every time any one of these three things occurs?
[Read more →]

Every once in a while, the Lovely Wife(TM) and I reserve a spot in the ol’ Netflix queue for a movie that we feel that we probably should see, not necessarily because we really want to see it, but rather because, you know… it’s supposed to be good.

Usually these are films that have been around for years or even decades and that fancy-pants critics and writers and directors like to reference in articles and interviews, and even if they don’t come right out and say it, you know that they would be a little embarrassed for you if they found out that you haven’t seen them.

Sometimes, they are critically acclaimed films by apparently important directors, as was the case with Scenes From a Marriage, which we tackled a couple weeks ago. This was actually pretty good, if you can stay awake through Mr. Bergman’s incredibly lengthy lack-of-reaction shots where an actor ponders something that was just said by staring off into space, or perhaps at a wall, for quite a long time, even if they were just asked if they liked the soup. Plus, all the furniture really looks like it came from IKEA, so I knew right away that these were scenes from an authentic Swedish marriage (which, by the way, if this film is any indication, aren’t really very happy… so, you know, don’t marry a Swede if you can help it).

Other times, these movies we find ourselves watching are well-known and seem vaguely important as you ponder their title, but for reasons you can’t quite recall, as if maybe somebody involved once got an award, or at least a hearty clap on the back. And so it was with Children of a Lesser God whose very title seems to suggest that it belongs in the realm of important movies you must see, but which is also never really explained… Who is this Lesser God? What makes he or she or it Lesser? And who are its children? The movie itself didn’t really have many children in it. Sure, there were a handful of teenagers, but I wouldn’t call them children, especially since several of them appeared to be in their early forties.

William Hurt of course also appeared to be in his forties (43 to be exact), but that’s because William Hurt has always looked that way, and always will. Someday, someone will study the biology of William Hurt and will make a fortune selling some cream or salve derived from his essence to people who, for whatever reason, want to always look like they are exactly 43 years old.

Marlee Maitlin did win awards for her portrayal of a deaf woman, although I think she had a bit of an unfair advantage, as she is actually deaf. I imagine that made it easier, as she did not have to pretend that she couldn’t hear Hurt’s incredibly 43-year-old-sounding voice droning on and on as he spoke aloud everything that was being signed between the two of them. Had a hearing woman been able to get through these scenes without screaming, I would have been more impressed.

If anyone deserved an award, it was Hurt, who somehow managed to pull off this feat, really a variation of the incredibly lame old TV convention where someone on the telephone repeats what is said to them word for word for the benefit of the audience. You know, something like:

“Hello, Johnson here. What’s that? Mr. Winkleman needs to see me? Right away, you say? Did he say what it’s about? No? Just that it’s urgent? I’ll come up right now. Don’t forget the hummus, you say? Okay.”

Well, Mr. Hurt had to do that for the entire movie, speaking the dialogue for both his character and her character. The whole damn time. And he almost made it work. He deserves at least an Honorable Mention in something.

Perhaps the worst thing about the movie was the soundtrack. It was Totally 80’s Casio, which is usually bad enough, but this particular score was created by someone who seemed incredibly fond of three or four particular keys on the keyboard. Just lay on them, long and hard. That’ll teach us non-deaf bastards.

Plus, Hurt’s teacher character’s sole achievement at the school for the deaf seems to have been teaching a few of his gigantic, elderly teenagers to put on a rather pitiful talent show number in which they attempt a synchronized dance routine to music that they cannot hear. (This is just as terrible as you think it would be.) Sadly, I could hear the music. It’s a horrible 80’s ditty about a boomerang (erang, erang).

Yes, the poor deaf un-teens, already humiliated by having to wear rejected outfits from the Culture Club Fashion House, jump and flail about to what must be considered the spiritual predecessor to that damnable Umbrella -ella -ella song.

I can’t help but think that deaf people watching this film inevitably will have a higher-quality experience that I did. The deaf and blind may just have the best time of all.

So it snowed again last night, which made it the 94th day with measurable snow so far in 2008, which is really rather remarkable, when you stop to think about it.

I do believe that the world’s greatest living meteorologist, true American treasure, and one of my personal heroes, Tom Skilling, would probably say something like, “That makes it the 2nd snowiest winter since 1999, the 7th snowiest since the late seventies, and the 19th snowiest since weather record-keeping began in 1876.”

And you would have to take his word for it, because honestly, are you going to bother looking that up yourself? No, you’re not. And besides, Tom Skilling never lies.

His brother Jeffrey, on the other hand… well.  Let’s not hold his family against him.

People cannot help to whom they are related.

I am not normally one to complain about snow. I like snow. I’ll take a foot of snow any day over a foot of… hot.

But this is ridiculous. You know that email that you used to get about once a year that tells the story of a man who moves to and is really happy the first couple times it snows but by the end he wants to kill the snowplow driver?

This winter is kind of like that email. Except without the typos and pictures of puppies in the signature.

I don’t know much about exterior illumination, but I do know this:

Christmas lights blanketing a house two weeks before Christmas is lovely, hopeful, and heartwarming. Christmas lights blanketing a house two weeks after Christmas is depressing, sad, and lazy.

What, pray tell, are you celebrating ten days into the New Year? I’m pretty sure, since Jesus was, you know, God freakin’ incarnate, that by January 9, our little Lord and Savior was getting ready for his first day of Kindergarten. You’re not celebrating that, are you? Of course not. Nobody likes the first day of school.

Free advice: take the damned lights down. Or have some respect for the sweet schoolchild Jesus and at least leave them turned off.

I don’t know about where you live, but here in the Land of Lincoln, a popular sartorial choice is a particular type of pants often referred to as “jeans”. A popular manufacturer of these jeans, should you believe what you see on the television, is a company called Levis.

A recent advertisement for these Levis shows a young man trying, with some unexpected level of difficulty, to put on his pants. He bends over, gripping the denim with white knuckles and straining with what appears to be enormous effort to pull them up his spidery male-model legs. It seems somewhat ridiculous upon first glance, since the pants don’t look to be particularly tight, and one might speculate that the gentleman in question spends at least a portion of the time he saves by only shaving every sixth day on upper-body workouts.

However, what you don’t know, dear viewer, and what is revealed presently as the hunky man-child finally succeeds in gaining control of his trousers, is that Levis pants exert a certain heretofore unknown gravitational field, as powerful as it is rare, which causes the entire city to rise up as the pants climb over his hips. Literally.

The entire city street surrounding his undoubtedly hip urban apartment building levitates in concordance with his pants, completely destroying his entire home in a blur of noise and strangely evaporating rubble. And although your first instinct might be to feel sorry for the poor fellow whose own pants, after all, have apparently just obliterated all of his material possessions, you should not. Because a young woman in a phone booth, luckily also wearing a pair of magical, physics-defying Levis jeans, has been catapulted into the space that must have recently been his bathroom. And despite experiencing what must have been such a horrifying trauma, she is not afraid, nor relieved to be alive, nor even confused about what has just happened. Instead she smiles at Mr. Rip Rockslab, and her appearance has clearly assuaged all of his concerns about where he will now live, or how many of his neighbors he may have accidentally killed by getting dressed.

They walk off together, presumably to hit a tavern or perhaps one of the area nightclubs that have more relaxed dress codes, because let’s face it: even magic, city-destroying jeans are just, in the end, jeans. Although I guess if a doorman gives them a hard time, they could plunge the offender into the bowels of hell simply by getting undressed.

Bottom line: Levis jeans will destroy your home. Probably best to avoid them.

Today is horrifically cold. The sort of cold that makes you want to kill the next person you see and bathe in their warm blood before it freezes. It makes waiting for the bus that much more pleasant.

Apparently, the next phase in the Chicago Transit Authority’s grand scheme to make it impossible to actually get anywhere within city limits in timely fashion, is to hire nearly dead people. I’m fairly certain that the only way my bus driver for this evening could possibly have negotiated his route more slowly is if he had expired. The combined age of the bus and the driver had to be about 110.

And the bus was from about 1990.

I could tell because it had ripped jeans and was listening to Fine Young Cannibals.