What says Halloween more than a scary picture at night in a deserted foggy alley?
Monday, October 31, 2011
Cool Halloween Photograph
Taken (according to the file): 10/31/2011, 3:01 AM:
What says Halloween more than a scary picture at night in a deserted foggy alley?
What says Halloween more than a scary picture at night in a deserted foggy alley?
Halloween Traditions
When I was a kid, or, back in my day, I don't remember the door-to-door trick-or-treating phenomena being moved from a school night to a nearby weekend like they do almost every year nowadays. I remember almost always going to school the next day with an entire cadre of amped classmates, as we discussed why Three Musketeers were better than Butterfingers and how Snickers were better than Mars Bars and why anyone would ever hand out coconut disasters like Mounds and Almond Joy.
I've since grown to appreciate coconut, but I also take it easy on candy. My well documented teeth situation, which is actually not as bad as I was led to believe and am in the middle of getting fixed, have kept me from going wild with candy. My apparent sweet-tooth tends to limit itself to cookies and/or chocolate chips. I tend to avoid the usual colorful suspects. Chocolate does elevate my mood, though.
Another tradition that you come to recognize after you grow out of the candy-acquisition phase and into the alcohol-consumption phase of life is that a better name for Halloween is Slut-oween.
For some reason many women use "Halloween" as an excuse to wear some of the most tasteless, scanty, and whorish outfits available outside of a sex novelty shop. Normal days of the year, maybe outside of Mardi Gras, this attire would be embarrassingly off limits. Halloween--fair game.
Don't take my comments as complaints, per se, as I appreciate body types of all sizes and all levels of scantily-cladness, but that a costume-creation ethos that basically puts the word 'sexy-' in front of another word has become an American tradition probably says something about us.
For me, today, I'm off work and doing something that I used to consider the scariest thing I could think of: I'm going to the dentist.
Oh delicious irony: the American candy-day and I'm to see the dentist.
Corrie carved a pumpkin yesterday, but we'll keep it inside to keep it from getting smashed. She worked for too long, she tells me, to let some angry teenager out stealing kids' gear to have their way with it.
The picture is not so great, but the haunted house in reality looks pretty great. Corrie picked the design that had architectural elements. Isn't that cute?
(I took both pictures on all hallows eve itself, after midnight on 10/31.)
I've never been so big on Halloween, not like, for me, St. Paddy's or Thanksgiving. I think the year-round elementary school we went to had something to do with it. I am a proponent of the year-round elementary--you get lots of mini-brakes. Nine weeks on, three weeks off as a pattern of attendance until the summer, when you get five weeks off. It's not the great big summer I would hear about, but as a kid with no frame of reference it didn't much matter. The 4th of July was always right at the end of our "Summer Break", then we'd be in school for a while, then off in late September and October. Maybe that's when we made our Disneyland trips; weather's nice, everyone's in school...
But in that scheme, Halloween took place early in our second quarter and marked the end of the warm Sacramento "summer" weather. September and October, as I remember, were pretty pleasant, not blasting heat, not really brisk or chilly. Halloween seemed to mark of me, and for the public of consumers in America, the start of the fall/winter holiday season. You don't get days off for Halloween, but for Thanksgiving? And Christmas?
While I'm not really a Halloween person--I don't throw parties or feel compelled to get dressed up (the last time I was in costume was while I was teaching in grad school in 2004)--I don't hate it like some folks I know. Like, my dentist maybe.
Just guessing, anyway.
I've since grown to appreciate coconut, but I also take it easy on candy. My well documented teeth situation, which is actually not as bad as I was led to believe and am in the middle of getting fixed, have kept me from going wild with candy. My apparent sweet-tooth tends to limit itself to cookies and/or chocolate chips. I tend to avoid the usual colorful suspects. Chocolate does elevate my mood, though.
Another tradition that you come to recognize after you grow out of the candy-acquisition phase and into the alcohol-consumption phase of life is that a better name for Halloween is Slut-oween.
For some reason many women use "Halloween" as an excuse to wear some of the most tasteless, scanty, and whorish outfits available outside of a sex novelty shop. Normal days of the year, maybe outside of Mardi Gras, this attire would be embarrassingly off limits. Halloween--fair game.
Don't take my comments as complaints, per se, as I appreciate body types of all sizes and all levels of scantily-cladness, but that a costume-creation ethos that basically puts the word 'sexy-' in front of another word has become an American tradition probably says something about us.
For me, today, I'm off work and doing something that I used to consider the scariest thing I could think of: I'm going to the dentist.
Oh delicious irony: the American candy-day and I'm to see the dentist.
Corrie carved a pumpkin yesterday, but we'll keep it inside to keep it from getting smashed. She worked for too long, she tells me, to let some angry teenager out stealing kids' gear to have their way with it.
The picture is not so great, but the haunted house in reality looks pretty great. Corrie picked the design that had architectural elements. Isn't that cute?
(I took both pictures on all hallows eve itself, after midnight on 10/31.)
I've never been so big on Halloween, not like, for me, St. Paddy's or Thanksgiving. I think the year-round elementary school we went to had something to do with it. I am a proponent of the year-round elementary--you get lots of mini-brakes. Nine weeks on, three weeks off as a pattern of attendance until the summer, when you get five weeks off. It's not the great big summer I would hear about, but as a kid with no frame of reference it didn't much matter. The 4th of July was always right at the end of our "Summer Break", then we'd be in school for a while, then off in late September and October. Maybe that's when we made our Disneyland trips; weather's nice, everyone's in school...
But in that scheme, Halloween took place early in our second quarter and marked the end of the warm Sacramento "summer" weather. September and October, as I remember, were pretty pleasant, not blasting heat, not really brisk or chilly. Halloween seemed to mark of me, and for the public of consumers in America, the start of the fall/winter holiday season. You don't get days off for Halloween, but for Thanksgiving? And Christmas?
While I'm not really a Halloween person--I don't throw parties or feel compelled to get dressed up (the last time I was in costume was while I was teaching in grad school in 2004)--I don't hate it like some folks I know. Like, my dentist maybe.
Just guessing, anyway.
Offbeat Halloween Sports Notes
I read that Sunday's New York Football Giants game against the Dolphins was their 1200th regular season game. They joined an elite group that include the Green Bay Packers, the Chicago Bears, and the Chicago-St. Louis-Phoenix-Arizona Cardinals.
It's very cool and bizarre to think of the Cardinals as one of the O.G. teams in the NFL. Trying to picture that and assimilate it into your perception of the league is the fun part.
Kinda like...did you know that the Sacramento Kings are one of the O.G. basketball teams, like the Celtics and the Knickerbockers. They started as the Rochester Royals. Seriously, Rochester. Other places with professional basketball teams during the infancy of the NBA: Ft. Wayne and Syracuse (now the Pistons and Sixers, respectively).
And, while this next team may not be as beleaguered, forgotten, or as irrelevant in it's home city, it always fills me with wonderment remembering that the Minnesota Twins are older than the Yankees. The team that moved to Minneapolis after the 1960 season was the Washington Senators.
In a related post coming up, I discuss expansion team nicknames and color schemes and how they come about (in certain cases).
While the Twins haven't been the vagabond/doormats in the style of the NBA Kings or NFL Cardinals (they even won two World Series), they were one of the teams put up for contraction in the last decade.
No respect for these O.G. teams.
It's very cool and bizarre to think of the Cardinals as one of the O.G. teams in the NFL. Trying to picture that and assimilate it into your perception of the league is the fun part.
Kinda like...did you know that the Sacramento Kings are one of the O.G. basketball teams, like the Celtics and the Knickerbockers. They started as the Rochester Royals. Seriously, Rochester. Other places with professional basketball teams during the infancy of the NBA: Ft. Wayne and Syracuse (now the Pistons and Sixers, respectively).
And, while this next team may not be as beleaguered, forgotten, or as irrelevant in it's home city, it always fills me with wonderment remembering that the Minnesota Twins are older than the Yankees. The team that moved to Minneapolis after the 1960 season was the Washington Senators.
In a related post coming up, I discuss expansion team nicknames and color schemes and how they come about (in certain cases).
While the Twins haven't been the vagabond/doormats in the style of the NBA Kings or NFL Cardinals (they even won two World Series), they were one of the teams put up for contraction in the last decade.
No respect for these O.G. teams.
Saturday, October 29, 2011
How You Look at Something...
While doing laundry the other day I went for a walk to grab a cup of coffee. I heard that right around the corner was a coffee shop, and after putting the (chlorine free) bleach into my coats load, I headed out "around the corner." Suffice it to say that it was the wrong corner. But I did catch a glimpse of something that caught my attention. Probably because of the way I was looking at it, but it somehow inspired my imagination.
I went back later when the sky was blue to record it with my camera:
It's just window sconces and shading devices, but from this angle it got me.
Since I couldn't find the coffee shop last week on the close block, I decided this week to go to Ocean Blvd, the next commercial corner down. Before I got to Ocean, I spotted a different coffee vendor across Alamitos, sprinted between traffic, and chose to give them a go. I'd be out here again next Friday doing laundry, I reasoned, so there was plenty of time for me to find that first shop.
The baristo (is that correct for a guy?), though, at the place I went to disappointed when he charged me full price for coffee when I brought my own cup. He struck me as the owner of the cafe, and like he'd never actually worked there. Small cafe etiquette seemed lost on him: a guest that brings their own cup is rewarded for their stance on the environment by not paying full price, usually just a single dollar, maybe a buck-and-a-half.
Anyway, on the walk back to the laundromat, I came across this guy, as part of a pair.
Pretty neat and expressive elephant.
Really, though, I could litter this blog with this kind of crazy crap. I try to do more, maybe. I'm interested in more, anyway...
I went back later when the sky was blue to record it with my camera:
It's just window sconces and shading devices, but from this angle it got me.
Since I couldn't find the coffee shop last week on the close block, I decided this week to go to Ocean Blvd, the next commercial corner down. Before I got to Ocean, I spotted a different coffee vendor across Alamitos, sprinted between traffic, and chose to give them a go. I'd be out here again next Friday doing laundry, I reasoned, so there was plenty of time for me to find that first shop.
The baristo (is that correct for a guy?), though, at the place I went to disappointed when he charged me full price for coffee when I brought my own cup. He struck me as the owner of the cafe, and like he'd never actually worked there. Small cafe etiquette seemed lost on him: a guest that brings their own cup is rewarded for their stance on the environment by not paying full price, usually just a single dollar, maybe a buck-and-a-half.
Anyway, on the walk back to the laundromat, I came across this guy, as part of a pair.
Pretty neat and expressive elephant.
Really, though, I could litter this blog with this kind of crazy crap. I try to do more, maybe. I'm interested in more, anyway...
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Universal Studios
Two amusement parks in one month!
At work we took some of our coordinators, a class of worker we've empowered with responsibilities and expectations, out on an excursion to Universal Studios in Hollywood, in an effort to build bonds and buy some goodwill when the madness of December arrives.
It was my first trip in probably 25 years. (That's the kind of thing that makes me feel old.)
I'm not sure exactly what I expected. Maybe more roller coasters. There was really only one true coaster: the Mummy. That ride was fun, but short, but the fact there was no line (on a Monday at 11 am) made it okay. It does, though, have a jarring/screeching halt that almost made me defecate in my pants, due to the placement of the lap restraint.
The Simpsons Ride was a little nauseating at first, but after getting into it, it was cool to see some new (to me) 3D style Simpson content. An immersion ride, like many of the rides at Universal, and all were apt to spritz water in your face.
Jurassic Park gets you wet; the tram ride is meandering and mellow, taking a trip through the back-lot of NBC and Universal's California productions; the Water World show was kinda cool, proving once again that the villain is the only interesting character in that story (melodramas in general?).
Here're some pictures...
The Simpson's Ride:
Water World show in action:
The badguy:
The courthouse from Back to the Future, after having been remade for Ghost Whisperer:
One of the more famous buildings in Hollywood, the three-quarter scale built Bates mansion:
I like the look of the fake city at a distance:
One of the remarkable things out here was a four tiered escalator winding down the side of the mountain. You can't even see the top long escalator:
Overall I had a good time. I didn't have to pay or drive, and we didn't have to wait for more than thirty minutes in line total...all things that enhanced my enjoyment.
Now we need to hit up a real roller coaster park, like Six Flags Magic Mountain.
At work we took some of our coordinators, a class of worker we've empowered with responsibilities and expectations, out on an excursion to Universal Studios in Hollywood, in an effort to build bonds and buy some goodwill when the madness of December arrives.
It was my first trip in probably 25 years. (That's the kind of thing that makes me feel old.)
I'm not sure exactly what I expected. Maybe more roller coasters. There was really only one true coaster: the Mummy. That ride was fun, but short, but the fact there was no line (on a Monday at 11 am) made it okay. It does, though, have a jarring/screeching halt that almost made me defecate in my pants, due to the placement of the lap restraint.
The Simpsons Ride was a little nauseating at first, but after getting into it, it was cool to see some new (to me) 3D style Simpson content. An immersion ride, like many of the rides at Universal, and all were apt to spritz water in your face.
Jurassic Park gets you wet; the tram ride is meandering and mellow, taking a trip through the back-lot of NBC and Universal's California productions; the Water World show was kinda cool, proving once again that the villain is the only interesting character in that story (melodramas in general?).
Here're some pictures...
The Simpson's Ride:
Water World show in action:
The badguy:
The courthouse from Back to the Future, after having been remade for Ghost Whisperer:
One of the more famous buildings in Hollywood, the three-quarter scale built Bates mansion:
I like the look of the fake city at a distance:
One of the remarkable things out here was a four tiered escalator winding down the side of the mountain. You can't even see the top long escalator:
Overall I had a good time. I didn't have to pay or drive, and we didn't have to wait for more than thirty minutes in line total...all things that enhanced my enjoyment.
Now we need to hit up a real roller coaster park, like Six Flags Magic Mountain.
Occupy Wall Street Notes
Now here's something that I would have been checking out if we were still living in Brooklyn. I understand that the phenomena has sprouted up all over this country, and even spread overseas, but Lower Manhattan is the epicenter, and Wall Street specifically.
The actions--sit-ins, tent cities, protest signage and chants--are all a remarkable recreation of the anti-war movement of the sixties, a decade these "occupiers" strive to emulate, and recreate.
Any anti-corporate greed/financial redistribution revolution would start like this, I imagine. The true revolutionary moment would have to be the turning violent of the occupying crowds.
So that begs the question: what's going on here? Is this a revolutionary moment, or a mass adult temper tantrum?
Philosophically I'm with the occupiers, the unchecked and mostly unpunished destructive greed of the hedge fund and mortgage securities death spiral has done immense harm to our economy, country, and way of life. Throw them all into jail? Throw away the key? Sure. Whatever...that ambivalence, though, comes from a cynical view of tyranny. To do those things--jailing all those fat-cat bastards--would be tyrannical due to our wart covered sense of justice in America.
The American economic system is based on people screwing over other people. That's the ugly truth to this whole thing. The collapse of 2008 was predicated on a system where the risks were never as risky, since there were so little legal repercussions and so much financial reward, and in America, financial reward is the only important thing.
This post isn't about free-market capitalism specifically. Forget whatever problems or love you have with/for the system. This is about the America we live in, the America where from 1980 to 2008 the fiscal policy has deeply favored the ultra wealthy and funneled money from the masses to those special interests up to the point where those greedy interests almost collapse the entire system itself. Then they get bailed out by the same people by whom they've been getting obscenely wealthy.
Absolutely, be angry. I agree.
But what are we doing here? Is this a revolution? Are we overthrowing the entire system? Are we burning down these huge financial institutions, destroying records, resetting the notion of a credit rating? Are we on the cusp of revolution?
Organizing into a union is a way that workers are able to barter collectively and earn some of the things all workers in America think they're entitled to; a check and balance system against unchecked aggressive greed.
How's the health of unions today?
Is this a revolution? Against what? We need to look in the mirror. The system, if not totally broken, needs substantial work. It's one thing to 1) preach from a soapbox in Union Square about how we need a communist revolution in America, a wholesale redistribution of wealth and total upending of society; or 2) tirelessly work a grass-roots campaign to petition the influential lawmakers in your state to start a serious discussion about a reasoned alteration in campaign finance reform (the first step); or 3) develop creative financial system solutions, publish them, get famous, and by sheer force of will (and some wild personal connections) get your ideas and voice out to the masses.
Those three things are all at least consistent. They all start with a recognition of a system, and a proscription for action.
It's not rage and anger. It's not saying "This is ridiculous. Let's set up a tent city at the foot of those buildings. That'll show them how angry we are and how unfair this system is."
That's a tantrum.
Did you just notice how bad it was? Is that some kind of revelation? Were you paying attention when we were spending a billion dollars a week in Iraq from 2003 to 2007? Were you paying attention when Clinton did the republicans a favor and dismantled the social safety net? Were you paying attention when Reagan sold weapons to Iran to fund the Contras in Central America?
People complained when certain companies closed their factories and moved their productions to Mexico and Guatemala, when call centers moved to India, when manufacturing moved to Taiwan, Korea, Japan, and now--holy cow--China. But that's all it was--complaints. People demanding laws preventing that were shouted down during the boom years.
Now people are out of work and really pissed. Many of the lost jobs are unrecoverable. Obama won't be able to add many of the jobs that are gone, and neither will the next President, be it in 2012 or 2016. That won't be the President's fault, of course, but they'll be blamed for it. That's our nearly (or completely) broken system for you.
So I repeat: what are we doing? Is this a revolution?
If you could only hear my shameless snort and eye roll. Puh-lease. A revolution? A country that spends like this one does on useless crap and refuses to read ultimately doesn't want a new system, wouldn't know what to do with any new system, and couldn't possible even imagine what a different system would look like.
Maybe I'm missing something. Can someone tell me what the goal of the Occupy Wall Street action is? That message is getting lost somewhere.
I guess I'm torn. Any action that's inspiring the people who become occupiers and then watching it spread all over is awesome and volatile. The energy is pure. The anger is pure.
It needs to be channeled. Could it be a revolution?
The actions--sit-ins, tent cities, protest signage and chants--are all a remarkable recreation of the anti-war movement of the sixties, a decade these "occupiers" strive to emulate, and recreate.
Any anti-corporate greed/financial redistribution revolution would start like this, I imagine. The true revolutionary moment would have to be the turning violent of the occupying crowds.
So that begs the question: what's going on here? Is this a revolutionary moment, or a mass adult temper tantrum?
Philosophically I'm with the occupiers, the unchecked and mostly unpunished destructive greed of the hedge fund and mortgage securities death spiral has done immense harm to our economy, country, and way of life. Throw them all into jail? Throw away the key? Sure. Whatever...that ambivalence, though, comes from a cynical view of tyranny. To do those things--jailing all those fat-cat bastards--would be tyrannical due to our wart covered sense of justice in America.
The American economic system is based on people screwing over other people. That's the ugly truth to this whole thing. The collapse of 2008 was predicated on a system where the risks were never as risky, since there were so little legal repercussions and so much financial reward, and in America, financial reward is the only important thing.
This post isn't about free-market capitalism specifically. Forget whatever problems or love you have with/for the system. This is about the America we live in, the America where from 1980 to 2008 the fiscal policy has deeply favored the ultra wealthy and funneled money from the masses to those special interests up to the point where those greedy interests almost collapse the entire system itself. Then they get bailed out by the same people by whom they've been getting obscenely wealthy.
Absolutely, be angry. I agree.
But what are we doing here? Is this a revolution? Are we overthrowing the entire system? Are we burning down these huge financial institutions, destroying records, resetting the notion of a credit rating? Are we on the cusp of revolution?
Organizing into a union is a way that workers are able to barter collectively and earn some of the things all workers in America think they're entitled to; a check and balance system against unchecked aggressive greed.
How's the health of unions today?
Is this a revolution? Against what? We need to look in the mirror. The system, if not totally broken, needs substantial work. It's one thing to 1) preach from a soapbox in Union Square about how we need a communist revolution in America, a wholesale redistribution of wealth and total upending of society; or 2) tirelessly work a grass-roots campaign to petition the influential lawmakers in your state to start a serious discussion about a reasoned alteration in campaign finance reform (the first step); or 3) develop creative financial system solutions, publish them, get famous, and by sheer force of will (and some wild personal connections) get your ideas and voice out to the masses.
Those three things are all at least consistent. They all start with a recognition of a system, and a proscription for action.
It's not rage and anger. It's not saying "This is ridiculous. Let's set up a tent city at the foot of those buildings. That'll show them how angry we are and how unfair this system is."
That's a tantrum.
Did you just notice how bad it was? Is that some kind of revelation? Were you paying attention when we were spending a billion dollars a week in Iraq from 2003 to 2007? Were you paying attention when Clinton did the republicans a favor and dismantled the social safety net? Were you paying attention when Reagan sold weapons to Iran to fund the Contras in Central America?
People complained when certain companies closed their factories and moved their productions to Mexico and Guatemala, when call centers moved to India, when manufacturing moved to Taiwan, Korea, Japan, and now--holy cow--China. But that's all it was--complaints. People demanding laws preventing that were shouted down during the boom years.
Now people are out of work and really pissed. Many of the lost jobs are unrecoverable. Obama won't be able to add many of the jobs that are gone, and neither will the next President, be it in 2012 or 2016. That won't be the President's fault, of course, but they'll be blamed for it. That's our nearly (or completely) broken system for you.
So I repeat: what are we doing? Is this a revolution?
If you could only hear my shameless snort and eye roll. Puh-lease. A revolution? A country that spends like this one does on useless crap and refuses to read ultimately doesn't want a new system, wouldn't know what to do with any new system, and couldn't possible even imagine what a different system would look like.
Maybe I'm missing something. Can someone tell me what the goal of the Occupy Wall Street action is? That message is getting lost somewhere.
I guess I'm torn. Any action that's inspiring the people who become occupiers and then watching it spread all over is awesome and volatile. The energy is pure. The anger is pure.
It needs to be channeled. Could it be a revolution?
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Calculatory Notes
I drew up a small mock-up of Eratosthenes' diagram of how he reasoned the size of the earth's circumference.
Point C is the center of the planet; point A is in Alexandria, and the line CA is the extension of the post in Alexandria; point B is Syene, and the line CB is that respective extension; line PA is a line parallel to CB, and represents the shadow cast by the post in Alexandria (remember there was no shadow cast in Syene).
The angle created by PAC is the same angle created by ACB by the equivalency of opposite interior angles axiom from Euclidean geometry. Eratosthenes calculated it at seven degrees.
Now, I'll be the first to state that the universe isn't Euclidean, but rather non-Euclidean hyperbolic space (on the scale of the very large, anyway), but hyperbolic space under Einstein's general relativity equations break down to basic Euclidean constructions and laws on the global, or "small" scale.
I apologize for the crudeness of the sketch, math-people.
Point C is the center of the planet; point A is in Alexandria, and the line CA is the extension of the post in Alexandria; point B is Syene, and the line CB is that respective extension; line PA is a line parallel to CB, and represents the shadow cast by the post in Alexandria (remember there was no shadow cast in Syene).
The angle created by PAC is the same angle created by ACB by the equivalency of opposite interior angles axiom from Euclidean geometry. Eratosthenes calculated it at seven degrees.
Now, I'll be the first to state that the universe isn't Euclidean, but rather non-Euclidean hyperbolic space (on the scale of the very large, anyway), but hyperbolic space under Einstein's general relativity equations break down to basic Euclidean constructions and laws on the global, or "small" scale.
I apologize for the crudeness of the sketch, math-people.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Eyes, Feet, Sticks, and Brains
In the ancient Mediterranean city of Alexandria, at times the world's greatest and smartest city and keeper of the largest collection of knowledge in the Alexandrian Library, lived one of the librarians of the great collection, Eratosthenes.
This guy liked to read, and one day he came across a passage that struck him. It read that in the city of Syene, south of Alexandria, on the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, at high-noon posts cast no shadows and a deep well is fully illuminated, phenomena that doesn't otherwise happen.
This piqued Eratosthenes. He planned to check the shadows in Alexandria at the same time on the next summer solstice. He even paid a man to walk the distance from Alexandria to Syene to get as accurate of a reading of the distance between those two places.
After the next solstice Eratosthenes had the data he wanted. The distance between the cities has been translated to about 800 km, and the angle between the posts perpendicular to the ground was calculated to be 7 degrees; that is, is each post was extended down to the Earth's center, the angle created by those lines would be seven degrees.
Knowing that a circle is 360 degrees, and 7 being about a fiftieth of that number, Eratosthenes multiplied the 800 km by 50, generated the number 40,000 km.
The actual circumference of the Earth is 40,007.863 km.
Pretty good use of eyes and feet and sticks and brains.
This guy liked to read, and one day he came across a passage that struck him. It read that in the city of Syene, south of Alexandria, on the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, at high-noon posts cast no shadows and a deep well is fully illuminated, phenomena that doesn't otherwise happen.
This piqued Eratosthenes. He planned to check the shadows in Alexandria at the same time on the next summer solstice. He even paid a man to walk the distance from Alexandria to Syene to get as accurate of a reading of the distance between those two places.
After the next solstice Eratosthenes had the data he wanted. The distance between the cities has been translated to about 800 km, and the angle between the posts perpendicular to the ground was calculated to be 7 degrees; that is, is each post was extended down to the Earth's center, the angle created by those lines would be seven degrees.
Knowing that a circle is 360 degrees, and 7 being about a fiftieth of that number, Eratosthenes multiplied the 800 km by 50, generated the number 40,000 km.
The actual circumference of the Earth is 40,007.863 km.
Pretty good use of eyes and feet and sticks and brains.
Bad Timing
The other day, just two days after recent Indy 500 winner Dan Wheldon died at a race in Las Vegas, here in Long Beach a television commercial is being primed and ready to be filmed.
It seems like bad timing. This car is to be "launched". This kind of thing obviously takes time to set up, but irony isn't lost in this world.
I not familiar with the Sonic, the car they're drawing attention to, and unfortunately this won't really change that. At least the excitement never ends around here.
It seems like bad timing. This car is to be "launched". This kind of thing obviously takes time to set up, but irony isn't lost in this world.
I not familiar with the Sonic, the car they're drawing attention to, and unfortunately this won't really change that. At least the excitement never ends around here.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Sci-Fi Classic
Nearing the completion of the films I salvaged from my brother's house, the oft (maybe) mentioned Citrus Heights Salvaging, I viewed two today as I chilled out recovering from a dental extraction.
The first is called Crime Spree. Starring Harvey Keitel and Gerard Depardieu, it was, uh...imagine half-wit French thieves versus awful stereotyped Chicago Italian mafiosos. It wasn't great.
The other has been called a science fiction classic. It came out in 1956, was the first film in the genre to take place entirely in deep space, and sent the genre off in new directions. It was filmed and released in color. It had state of the art special effects. It inspired Gene Roddenberry immensely, he the creator of the Star Trek series and universe. It even had the first robot character that had character; it even had it's name on the poster, Robby the Robot.
The film featured Leslie Nielsen as the ship's captain, and it was a scene from this movie that I used as a still shot for my tribute to Leslie Nielsen post after he passed. The movie: Forbidden Planet.
The colors and sets are rather nice considering the time period, and the special effects are nice as well. What strikes me is the nature and the look of the monster. I don't want to spoil anything for those so inclined to seek out a sci-fi movie from the middle fifties, but it wasn't what I ever would have expected.
Interesting note: the monster, when we get to see it during it's brief encounter with visibility, was the product of Joshua Meador, an animator at Disney. Here's a glimpse of the critter.
It is hard to see, I know, but you get the idea. To me it resembles the winged monster from Fantasia.
This movie comes recommended from me. As a fan of science fiction in general, this piece of history is worth a look.
The first is called Crime Spree. Starring Harvey Keitel and Gerard Depardieu, it was, uh...imagine half-wit French thieves versus awful stereotyped Chicago Italian mafiosos. It wasn't great.
The other has been called a science fiction classic. It came out in 1956, was the first film in the genre to take place entirely in deep space, and sent the genre off in new directions. It was filmed and released in color. It had state of the art special effects. It inspired Gene Roddenberry immensely, he the creator of the Star Trek series and universe. It even had the first robot character that had character; it even had it's name on the poster, Robby the Robot.
The film featured Leslie Nielsen as the ship's captain, and it was a scene from this movie that I used as a still shot for my tribute to Leslie Nielsen post after he passed. The movie: Forbidden Planet.
The colors and sets are rather nice considering the time period, and the special effects are nice as well. What strikes me is the nature and the look of the monster. I don't want to spoil anything for those so inclined to seek out a sci-fi movie from the middle fifties, but it wasn't what I ever would have expected.
Interesting note: the monster, when we get to see it during it's brief encounter with visibility, was the product of Joshua Meador, an animator at Disney. Here's a glimpse of the critter.
It is hard to see, I know, but you get the idea. To me it resembles the winged monster from Fantasia.
This movie comes recommended from me. As a fan of science fiction in general, this piece of history is worth a look.
Surprising Things I Notice
When we're visiting Corrie's family I occasionally surprise her sisters with my uncanny recognition. I'll walk through the living room, say, and notice the television and say something like, "Oh cool, Stefano's back."
The other day, while checking the channels before a baseball game, I came across another television moment: I noticed Steve Wilkos has his own talk show.
Back in the dorms I had a bad habit of, well, honestly I had few "good" habits at the time, but the one I'm talking about here was watching The Jerry Springer Show. The head of security on a show that regularly had fisticuffs was a former police detective named Steve Wilkos.
When I flipped the channel and saw Steve hosting his own show I was surprised. Learning that his wife is an executive producer, and has been for years, on Jerry's show, helped fill out the bigger picture.
I stuck around and watched a few segments of Steve's show, to see how it would be the same or how it could be different than all of these other trash heaps they call daytime talk TV.
On a show like Jerry Springer or Maury (right, he's still on, isn't he?), it seems like, if I remember correctly, they bring poorly acting couples out on the stage and let them air their dirty laundry, embarrassing themselves for all to see. The hosts don't seem to do much more than facilitate the airing by asking leading questions and then standing by and letting the crowd boo as they feel necessary.
Steve's show doesn't really follow the same template. When he brings out the offending parties, he removes their chairs, so they have to stand. He also doesn't act a passive, objective mediator in their dirty laundry airing. He uses his police interrogation techniques to erode his idiot-guest's confidence and get to the truth of the situation, the kernel of it all.
It was like watching Bunk messing with people, by which I mean that for being trashy crap on the tube, it was almost fun to see police interrogation against over-matched jerks.
On another note, I saw a strange thing on the channel that presents Wilkos' show. It was during a commercial break. There were four commercials in a row for for-profit universities--four in a row.
They were UCI, the United Career Institute (not to be mistaken for the other local UCI, UC Irvine); Concord University; Everest College; and what I'm guessing now since my notes are scribbled poorly is the ICDC College.
Each of these universities had hip-hop themed commercials and pitch-folks with darker complexions. I've been wanting to write a post on for-profit universities and colleges for a while now, ever since I heard that they receive an unusually large amount of federal grant money recipient students; that and a large amount of college loan debt money is being spent on them.
The fact that daytime talk television is riddled with commercials for these for-profit schools motivates me even more.
The other day, while checking the channels before a baseball game, I came across another television moment: I noticed Steve Wilkos has his own talk show.
Back in the dorms I had a bad habit of, well, honestly I had few "good" habits at the time, but the one I'm talking about here was watching The Jerry Springer Show. The head of security on a show that regularly had fisticuffs was a former police detective named Steve Wilkos.
When I flipped the channel and saw Steve hosting his own show I was surprised. Learning that his wife is an executive producer, and has been for years, on Jerry's show, helped fill out the bigger picture.
I stuck around and watched a few segments of Steve's show, to see how it would be the same or how it could be different than all of these other trash heaps they call daytime talk TV.
On a show like Jerry Springer or Maury (right, he's still on, isn't he?), it seems like, if I remember correctly, they bring poorly acting couples out on the stage and let them air their dirty laundry, embarrassing themselves for all to see. The hosts don't seem to do much more than facilitate the airing by asking leading questions and then standing by and letting the crowd boo as they feel necessary.
Steve's show doesn't really follow the same template. When he brings out the offending parties, he removes their chairs, so they have to stand. He also doesn't act a passive, objective mediator in their dirty laundry airing. He uses his police interrogation techniques to erode his idiot-guest's confidence and get to the truth of the situation, the kernel of it all.
It was like watching Bunk messing with people, by which I mean that for being trashy crap on the tube, it was almost fun to see police interrogation against over-matched jerks.
On another note, I saw a strange thing on the channel that presents Wilkos' show. It was during a commercial break. There were four commercials in a row for for-profit universities--four in a row.
They were UCI, the United Career Institute (not to be mistaken for the other local UCI, UC Irvine); Concord University; Everest College; and what I'm guessing now since my notes are scribbled poorly is the ICDC College.
Each of these universities had hip-hop themed commercials and pitch-folks with darker complexions. I've been wanting to write a post on for-profit universities and colleges for a while now, ever since I heard that they receive an unusually large amount of federal grant money recipient students; that and a large amount of college loan debt money is being spent on them.
The fact that daytime talk television is riddled with commercials for these for-profit schools motivates me even more.
Reflection Fun Part 2
Yesterday I went out before the marine layer burned off, well, it stayed kinda cloudy even as the sun poked through, but anyway, I found some more cool spots for reflection pictures.
Here's a taste. Notice the wind coming through:
Here's a taste. Notice the wind coming through:
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Zombie Subdivisions
Phenomenon that are consequences of the housing bust are the empty and nearly finished subdivisions that form ghost-town blight called Zombie Subdivisions. Property foreclosures aren't affecting only the suburban and city-scapes, as Teton Valley in eastern Idaho, a city of roughly ten-thousand has roughly seven-thousand vacant lots.
It's been said that it will take between seventy and three-hundred years to to build out the erstwhile farmland. Meanwhile natural habitat and migration lanes for grazers are being interrupted.
In 2009 there were $156 million in property foreclosures in Teton County.
(These numbers were supplied by a show, "This American Land", airing on PBS, so, that's however you feel about that.)
Maybe it's me, and maybe I'm too old (I did just yesterday find a white hair on my head), but I'm generally over the whole zombie fad sweeping the nation. It's like the tween-girl fascination with vampires, only with non-hipster party folks. But these zombie subdivisions are a rare "zombie" thing that does interest me.
The idea of a ghost-town that looks from the outside like the 'burbs, the insides a collection of barren sheet-rock, empty unfinished blight.
Think of how confused archaeologists of the future will be when they excavate these places. Not quite Pompeii or Herculaneum, 79 ACE's equivalent of Vegas and Atascadero being swallowed up by Mt. Vesuvio.
Maybe they'll mistake it for an ancient studio. Maybe it'll change their whole concept of where population centers happened to be. Maybe they'll just laugh and scratch their head and mimic Ishi and say, "Coyote, huh?" referencing the notion of the accidentally self-destructive trickster.
It's been said that it will take between seventy and three-hundred years to to build out the erstwhile farmland. Meanwhile natural habitat and migration lanes for grazers are being interrupted.
In 2009 there were $156 million in property foreclosures in Teton County.
(These numbers were supplied by a show, "This American Land", airing on PBS, so, that's however you feel about that.)
Maybe it's me, and maybe I'm too old (I did just yesterday find a white hair on my head), but I'm generally over the whole zombie fad sweeping the nation. It's like the tween-girl fascination with vampires, only with non-hipster party folks. But these zombie subdivisions are a rare "zombie" thing that does interest me.
The idea of a ghost-town that looks from the outside like the 'burbs, the insides a collection of barren sheet-rock, empty unfinished blight.
Think of how confused archaeologists of the future will be when they excavate these places. Not quite Pompeii or Herculaneum, 79 ACE's equivalent of Vegas and Atascadero being swallowed up by Mt. Vesuvio.
Maybe they'll mistake it for an ancient studio. Maybe it'll change their whole concept of where population centers happened to be. Maybe they'll just laugh and scratch their head and mimic Ishi and say, "Coyote, huh?" referencing the notion of the accidentally self-destructive trickster.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Bad Predictions
When asked about the baseball playoffs, now that the Yankees are out of the postseason, about who I liked or thought would make it to the World Series, my answer probably was more a reflection of who I wanted to make it out of those final four teams. I was feeling Milwaukee versus Detroit; a Great Lakes World Series.
How cool that would be, I imagined.
Well, it turns out to be the other two teams, St. Louis versus Texas, and I'm ambivalent. I don't have the a hate on for the Rangers, or the Cardinals, so I guess the real storylines are: will the Rangers win their first or will Pujols win his second?
I only wanted to bring this up for a quick second to tie it together with some ideas I've been having that were inspired by Moneyball, the movie about the book of the same name. Really, the ideas were inspired by conversation about the movie, that itself was inspired by the book about the Oakland A's general manager, Billy Beane, exploiting inefficiencies in the market.
That's all Moneyball is; an economics book about how a guy had some marginal success exploiting inefficiencies in the market he operated in. Nobody valued on-base percentage. So Billy Beane went out and picked up a bunch of players with high OBP and turned a seemingly motley crew of ballplayers into a playoff team.
The irony that got me thinking is that the A's have had something like four losing seasons in a row and since exposing the market inefficiency they really haven't had anymore successes. The 20-game winning streak that year notwithstanding, they never won a single playoff series during that span.
Recently the market inefficiency that everyone thought was undervalued was defense. Some small budget or small market (or both, sometimes) teams decided they could field competitive teams by locating outstanding defensive players and snatching them up at bargain rates.
One thing overlooked by this rubric is that defense is half the game; offense is the other half. If these great defensive players were even mediocre on offense they'd be all-stars and MVP candidates every year.
The best example of a team that got snake-bit by this is the Seattle Mariners. In 2010 the baseball world awaited the coming of the Mariner season to see how their defense and pitching philosophy would play out.
They lost 101 games.
I read somewhere that the Brewers this year had bucked the trend of adding defense (it wasn't only the Mariners who went in that direction, it's just they went all in with pitching and defense and their spectacular failure cost their GM his job). The Brew-crew out in Milwaukee had lots of clubhouse chemistry, swagger, offensive power, as well as the best record while playing at home. They also were one of the worst fielding teams in the game, and easily the worst fielding team in playoffs in recent memory.
It wouldn't matter, we were told, since their starting pitching was above average, they played so well together, played so well at home, and could just kill the ball, putting numbers up on the scoreboard like me snoozing my phone in the mornings.
They lost tonight. At home. Their season's over.
In the last two games--both losses--they committed seven errors.
Seven.
All defense isn't the answer. Neither is no defense.
How cool that would be, I imagined.
Well, it turns out to be the other two teams, St. Louis versus Texas, and I'm ambivalent. I don't have the a hate on for the Rangers, or the Cardinals, so I guess the real storylines are: will the Rangers win their first or will Pujols win his second?
I only wanted to bring this up for a quick second to tie it together with some ideas I've been having that were inspired by Moneyball, the movie about the book of the same name. Really, the ideas were inspired by conversation about the movie, that itself was inspired by the book about the Oakland A's general manager, Billy Beane, exploiting inefficiencies in the market.
That's all Moneyball is; an economics book about how a guy had some marginal success exploiting inefficiencies in the market he operated in. Nobody valued on-base percentage. So Billy Beane went out and picked up a bunch of players with high OBP and turned a seemingly motley crew of ballplayers into a playoff team.
The irony that got me thinking is that the A's have had something like four losing seasons in a row and since exposing the market inefficiency they really haven't had anymore successes. The 20-game winning streak that year notwithstanding, they never won a single playoff series during that span.
Recently the market inefficiency that everyone thought was undervalued was defense. Some small budget or small market (or both, sometimes) teams decided they could field competitive teams by locating outstanding defensive players and snatching them up at bargain rates.
One thing overlooked by this rubric is that defense is half the game; offense is the other half. If these great defensive players were even mediocre on offense they'd be all-stars and MVP candidates every year.
The best example of a team that got snake-bit by this is the Seattle Mariners. In 2010 the baseball world awaited the coming of the Mariner season to see how their defense and pitching philosophy would play out.
They lost 101 games.
I read somewhere that the Brewers this year had bucked the trend of adding defense (it wasn't only the Mariners who went in that direction, it's just they went all in with pitching and defense and their spectacular failure cost their GM his job). The Brew-crew out in Milwaukee had lots of clubhouse chemistry, swagger, offensive power, as well as the best record while playing at home. They also were one of the worst fielding teams in the game, and easily the worst fielding team in playoffs in recent memory.
It wouldn't matter, we were told, since their starting pitching was above average, they played so well together, played so well at home, and could just kill the ball, putting numbers up on the scoreboard like me snoozing my phone in the mornings.
They lost tonight. At home. Their season's over.
In the last two games--both losses--they committed seven errors.
Seven.
All defense isn't the answer. Neither is no defense.
Joe and Steve
Another entry in my First Name Basis series, and an entry about animation, and, somehow, I've connected it to the last post tangentially about wallabies.
One specific wallaby, anyway.
Joe was noticed for his artistic skills in kindergarten, when his teacher informed his parents that he was the only child who drew zippers on pants and breasts on women. During high school took a job drawing political editorial cartoons for a local San Jose newspaper. A few years later he got a job with MTV animating cartoons. His third independent animated film, My Dog Zero, was funded through a grant and by Joe trying to sell the rights to a potential "My Dog Zero" television show.
While that show never came to fruition, Joe did succeed in selling another show idea to Nickelodeon. This second animated television show followed through the gross-out door that The Simpsons created, Ren and Stimpy opened, and Beavis and Butt-head kicked wide. But it, like The Simpsons, was written with both kids and adults in mind, with many scenarios and storylines that either pass over children's heads, or are probably inappropriate for kids.
Steve started out a marine biologist, but he found that his most fun was had drawing an informative comic book about the tide-pools and shallow marine habitats. He eventually got a job working with Joe on his show, which gave him the knowledge and confidence to work out his own ideas. What he eventually worked out came to eclipse Joe's creation vastly.
A few months ago I posted about having read a list about the Top 100 animated television shows in America. I read the entire list, despite the rather crappy nature of the website, and was quite disappointed when I realized that they'd left Joe's show off the list. I was pleased when I discovered that the first season was available on DVD, and purchased it. It is even more surreal and cutting edge that I remember. "Joe" here is Joe Murray, and his show starred a wallaby:
"Steve" is Steven Hillebrand, the creator of Spongebob Squarepants.
I remember watching Rocko fondly, I remember all sorts of wild scenes and episodes, and having the collection of the first season reinforces, and even goes beyond, my original feelings.
There is an episode titled "Who Gives a Buck?" about the dangers of easy credit and large amounts of debt. There's an episode where we find Beverly, the better half of the next-door neighbors, an unhappily married couple with no intimacy, trying to seduce Rocko. In another, Heffer, a steer and Rocko's best pal, on a trip to a ranch, falls in love with a milking apparatus. Another deals with body image issues. Another reveals that his friend Heffer Wolfe is adopted; we meet his immediate family--a pack of wolves.
One of the major themes in the show is that the world, no matter how honest and good a person you are, is out to do you harm. This may be a cynical message for kids, but it may not be the worst one.
In examining certain dynamics of the show and comparing them to Spongebob, you'll see a surprising set of similarities. In Rocko's Modern Life, The pair is Rocko and his friend Heffer, Rocko's pet Spunky (a dog), and their straight-man neighbor foil Ed Bighead. In Spongebob, the pair is Spongebob and Patrick, Songebob's pet Gary (a meowing snail), and their straight-man neighbor foil Squidward. In both cases the friend is strikingly dumber than the protagonist, yet as pairs they tend to act stupid together.
Some storylines seem to almost be lifted from Rocko and applied to Steve's undersea setting.
One notable difference is that Spongebob is an innocent while Rocko, though gullible and honest, makes plenty of decisions where he is fully aware of what the outcome will be or could be. Rocko even gets angry sometimes at the injustices he's forced to suffer. When does Spongebob get angry? Is he even capable of anger?
While the shows are very similar, key differences mark why one got wildly popular and successful: Spongebob as an innocent lets kids learn about the harshness of the world in a way that to them is to be smarter that the character. Feeling superior to the character is better, I'd imagine, than feeling sorry for the character. A second reason I'd wager is that Bikini Bottom is simply more exciting and exotic that O-Town, Rocko's home city. A third reason is having a better supporting cast.
If anyone is interested in surreal kids fare, I'd seriously suggest checking out this collection. You'll gawk in smiley chuckles at Rocko when, in needing to get a job to get his bills paid after getting downsized, he takes a job as a sex phone operator. We see him sitting at a desk on the phone, a poster on the wall behind says "Be Courteous. Be Hot.", and in his Australian accent--bored even--he's saying "Oh baby...oh baby...oh baby..." into the phone.
A kids show. Seriously.
One specific wallaby, anyway.
Joe was noticed for his artistic skills in kindergarten, when his teacher informed his parents that he was the only child who drew zippers on pants and breasts on women. During high school took a job drawing political editorial cartoons for a local San Jose newspaper. A few years later he got a job with MTV animating cartoons. His third independent animated film, My Dog Zero, was funded through a grant and by Joe trying to sell the rights to a potential "My Dog Zero" television show.
While that show never came to fruition, Joe did succeed in selling another show idea to Nickelodeon. This second animated television show followed through the gross-out door that The Simpsons created, Ren and Stimpy opened, and Beavis and Butt-head kicked wide. But it, like The Simpsons, was written with both kids and adults in mind, with many scenarios and storylines that either pass over children's heads, or are probably inappropriate for kids.
Steve started out a marine biologist, but he found that his most fun was had drawing an informative comic book about the tide-pools and shallow marine habitats. He eventually got a job working with Joe on his show, which gave him the knowledge and confidence to work out his own ideas. What he eventually worked out came to eclipse Joe's creation vastly.
A few months ago I posted about having read a list about the Top 100 animated television shows in America. I read the entire list, despite the rather crappy nature of the website, and was quite disappointed when I realized that they'd left Joe's show off the list. I was pleased when I discovered that the first season was available on DVD, and purchased it. It is even more surreal and cutting edge that I remember. "Joe" here is Joe Murray, and his show starred a wallaby:
"Steve" is Steven Hillebrand, the creator of Spongebob Squarepants.
I remember watching Rocko fondly, I remember all sorts of wild scenes and episodes, and having the collection of the first season reinforces, and even goes beyond, my original feelings.
There is an episode titled "Who Gives a Buck?" about the dangers of easy credit and large amounts of debt. There's an episode where we find Beverly, the better half of the next-door neighbors, an unhappily married couple with no intimacy, trying to seduce Rocko. In another, Heffer, a steer and Rocko's best pal, on a trip to a ranch, falls in love with a milking apparatus. Another deals with body image issues. Another reveals that his friend Heffer Wolfe is adopted; we meet his immediate family--a pack of wolves.
One of the major themes in the show is that the world, no matter how honest and good a person you are, is out to do you harm. This may be a cynical message for kids, but it may not be the worst one.
In examining certain dynamics of the show and comparing them to Spongebob, you'll see a surprising set of similarities. In Rocko's Modern Life, The pair is Rocko and his friend Heffer, Rocko's pet Spunky (a dog), and their straight-man neighbor foil Ed Bighead. In Spongebob, the pair is Spongebob and Patrick, Songebob's pet Gary (a meowing snail), and their straight-man neighbor foil Squidward. In both cases the friend is strikingly dumber than the protagonist, yet as pairs they tend to act stupid together.
Some storylines seem to almost be lifted from Rocko and applied to Steve's undersea setting.
One notable difference is that Spongebob is an innocent while Rocko, though gullible and honest, makes plenty of decisions where he is fully aware of what the outcome will be or could be. Rocko even gets angry sometimes at the injustices he's forced to suffer. When does Spongebob get angry? Is he even capable of anger?
While the shows are very similar, key differences mark why one got wildly popular and successful: Spongebob as an innocent lets kids learn about the harshness of the world in a way that to them is to be smarter that the character. Feeling superior to the character is better, I'd imagine, than feeling sorry for the character. A second reason I'd wager is that Bikini Bottom is simply more exciting and exotic that O-Town, Rocko's home city. A third reason is having a better supporting cast.
If anyone is interested in surreal kids fare, I'd seriously suggest checking out this collection. You'll gawk in smiley chuckles at Rocko when, in needing to get a job to get his bills paid after getting downsized, he takes a job as a sex phone operator. We see him sitting at a desk on the phone, a poster on the wall behind says "Be Courteous. Be Hot.", and in his Australian accent--bored even--he's saying "Oh baby...oh baby...oh baby..." into the phone.
A kids show. Seriously.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
All Blacks Beat the Wallabies
What, exactly, Mr. Bloggy-pants are you talking about?
Why the semi-finals of this year's Rugby World Cup being held in New Zealand. The Kiwis are the hometeam here, and favored as well. Much pressure, like with Sidney Crosby and the Canadian hockey team at the Vancouver Olympics last year.
Today saw two semi-final games: France beat Wales in the first to gain admittance to the final. The second saw a brutal match up between bitter rivals: the All Blacks of New Zealand and the Wallabies of Australia.
The Wallabies are considered one of the world's best teams, and earlier in the tournament beat another country whose team is considered one of the big three in international rugby: the Springboks. I'm intentionally using the nicknames for these international teams because I think they're cool. I don't exactly know what a "springbok" is, but I do know that it represents any international team from South Africa. (Just looked it up: a springbok is an African antelope.)
The current Big Three in international rugby are the Wallabies, the Springboks, and...the All Blacks. The Aussies ran into a motivated and hungry rival, and lost.
I got off work and after popping a beer at home noticed that I could watch the game live on my free weird sports channel, and caught the entire second half of the match.
Two things I'm not sure of: the day and time of the final between New Zealand and France; and some of the basic rules of the game of union rugby.
Watching the forty minute second half gave me some knowledge of kinda what's going on, but not everything. I don't know why the crowd goes a certain kindof crazy at certain whistles--I mean I understand something good happened for NZ, but what exactly?
Also, I learned that it's apparently okay to pick someone up and body slam them into the ground. Repeatedly. With virtual impunity. Out of bounds body slamming is okay-dokey as well.
I thought American football was weird. Both rugby and American football were born from the same proto-ovalball-football sport in England, and the similarities are obvious after a while of paying attention. But the differences glare.
They don't wear pads in rugby. And with body slamming apparently kosher, what you get are two teams basically kicking each other's ass for eighty minutes with an oval-ball bouncing between them; two gangs brawling for eighty minutes.
Two gangs brawling for eighty minutes?
Why the semi-finals of this year's Rugby World Cup being held in New Zealand. The Kiwis are the hometeam here, and favored as well. Much pressure, like with Sidney Crosby and the Canadian hockey team at the Vancouver Olympics last year.
Today saw two semi-final games: France beat Wales in the first to gain admittance to the final. The second saw a brutal match up between bitter rivals: the All Blacks of New Zealand and the Wallabies of Australia.
The Wallabies are considered one of the world's best teams, and earlier in the tournament beat another country whose team is considered one of the big three in international rugby: the Springboks. I'm intentionally using the nicknames for these international teams because I think they're cool. I don't exactly know what a "springbok" is, but I do know that it represents any international team from South Africa. (Just looked it up: a springbok is an African antelope.)
The current Big Three in international rugby are the Wallabies, the Springboks, and...the All Blacks. The Aussies ran into a motivated and hungry rival, and lost.
I got off work and after popping a beer at home noticed that I could watch the game live on my free weird sports channel, and caught the entire second half of the match.
Two things I'm not sure of: the day and time of the final between New Zealand and France; and some of the basic rules of the game of union rugby.
Watching the forty minute second half gave me some knowledge of kinda what's going on, but not everything. I don't know why the crowd goes a certain kindof crazy at certain whistles--I mean I understand something good happened for NZ, but what exactly?
Also, I learned that it's apparently okay to pick someone up and body slam them into the ground. Repeatedly. With virtual impunity. Out of bounds body slamming is okay-dokey as well.
I thought American football was weird. Both rugby and American football were born from the same proto-ovalball-football sport in England, and the similarities are obvious after a while of paying attention. But the differences glare.
They don't wear pads in rugby. And with body slamming apparently kosher, what you get are two teams basically kicking each other's ass for eighty minutes with an oval-ball bouncing between them; two gangs brawling for eighty minutes.
Two gangs brawling for eighty minutes?
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Seal Beach Salon Shooting
I thought I'd mention a quick thing about Wednesday's shooting at a salon in Seal Beach. Seal Beach is the town that's separated from Long Beach by an invisible county line that floats over the middle of the San Gabriel River.
The estranged ex-husband of one of the salon's customers entered the establishment and shot and killed seven of the people inside the crowded business. Another victim was shot and is in critical condition. The shooter, upon leaving the salon, saw a man waiting in his SUV and shot him in the head as well, brining the death toll up to eight, with the morbid possibility of number nine actually happening if that lady's condition worsens.
It's being called the worst shooting in Orange County's history. The prosecutor is pushing for the death penalty.
I just wanted to mention, for the sake of a cynic's perspective, that had this salon shooting occurred in Artesia, or Compton, or Torrance, would the media coverage of the tragedy be of this weepy nature? If the victims weren't well-heeled ladies with hair the same golden shade as their skin?
The estranged ex-husband of one of the salon's customers entered the establishment and shot and killed seven of the people inside the crowded business. Another victim was shot and is in critical condition. The shooter, upon leaving the salon, saw a man waiting in his SUV and shot him in the head as well, brining the death toll up to eight, with the morbid possibility of number nine actually happening if that lady's condition worsens.
It's being called the worst shooting in Orange County's history. The prosecutor is pushing for the death penalty.
I just wanted to mention, for the sake of a cynic's perspective, that had this salon shooting occurred in Artesia, or Compton, or Torrance, would the media coverage of the tragedy be of this weepy nature? If the victims weren't well-heeled ladies with hair the same golden shade as their skin?
Friday, October 14, 2011
Physical Presence
I am a fan of Hunter S. Thompson. To those folks who know me, this isn't shocking news. For those who read this blog but are unfamiliar with Thompson, uh, you're probably much more familiar than you'd ever know.
One of the better films based on some of Hunter's material was Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, starring Johnny Depp as the Hunter doppelganger and Benicio del Toro as his lawyer acquaintance Oscar Acosta. Now while the portrayals in the film of the respective historical figures by these actors were well executed, there was a certain juxtaposition on display.
For Hunter and Oscar--one a writer following the police beating of a Mexican worker, and the other a lawyer and public activist with ties to violent street gangs--their meetings had become a little too dangerous for the both of them. Thompson was contracted to write a caption for a photograph of the Mint 400, the top motorcycle race taking place in Las Vegas, and the two used the work as a way to get out of LA for a weekend.
The failed Gonzo Journalism piece followed.
The juxtaposition I'm referring to is that Johnny Depp is a slight gentleman, weighing under 160 pounds, while Benny del Toro is a good sized man, who put on forty extra pounds for the role of "Dr. Gonzo", Oscar's alter ego.
In truth it was Hunter who had the body size and girth, the real physical presence that could menace people by itself if he wanted it to. He was taller than six feet and usually tipped the scales at a healthy two-bills. Oscar, while acting menacingly, was actually only 5'5" and round, a self proclaimed Brown Bull.
This dynamic, this physical dimorphism that existed between the real Hunter and Oscar has been shown before in film, in Rango, ILM's first animated feature distributed by Nick Toons.
During a brief scene in the opening act we see the unnamed chameleon going through the act of getting stranded, an event that gets the film's plot started, and part of this has our chameleon hitting the windshield of a passing red Chevy convertible coupe with a pair of goons who resemble an idea of Hunter Thompson and Dr. Gonzo. At first this seems like a cheeky tribute to Johnny Depp--a fellow Kentucky boy and friend of Hunter--and his role in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
If you look closer, and know what to look for, you can see the physically imposing Hunter driving, actually looking like Hunter, and Oscar, in the back seat, short and round and pouring beer on his plump belly, and actually looking like Oscar.
It was one of those small moments in Rango that add to the overall pleasantness of that film.
One of the better films based on some of Hunter's material was Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, starring Johnny Depp as the Hunter doppelganger and Benicio del Toro as his lawyer acquaintance Oscar Acosta. Now while the portrayals in the film of the respective historical figures by these actors were well executed, there was a certain juxtaposition on display.
For Hunter and Oscar--one a writer following the police beating of a Mexican worker, and the other a lawyer and public activist with ties to violent street gangs--their meetings had become a little too dangerous for the both of them. Thompson was contracted to write a caption for a photograph of the Mint 400, the top motorcycle race taking place in Las Vegas, and the two used the work as a way to get out of LA for a weekend.
The failed Gonzo Journalism piece followed.
The juxtaposition I'm referring to is that Johnny Depp is a slight gentleman, weighing under 160 pounds, while Benny del Toro is a good sized man, who put on forty extra pounds for the role of "Dr. Gonzo", Oscar's alter ego.
In truth it was Hunter who had the body size and girth, the real physical presence that could menace people by itself if he wanted it to. He was taller than six feet and usually tipped the scales at a healthy two-bills. Oscar, while acting menacingly, was actually only 5'5" and round, a self proclaimed Brown Bull.
This dynamic, this physical dimorphism that existed between the real Hunter and Oscar has been shown before in film, in Rango, ILM's first animated feature distributed by Nick Toons.
During a brief scene in the opening act we see the unnamed chameleon going through the act of getting stranded, an event that gets the film's plot started, and part of this has our chameleon hitting the windshield of a passing red Chevy convertible coupe with a pair of goons who resemble an idea of Hunter Thompson and Dr. Gonzo. At first this seems like a cheeky tribute to Johnny Depp--a fellow Kentucky boy and friend of Hunter--and his role in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
If you look closer, and know what to look for, you can see the physically imposing Hunter driving, actually looking like Hunter, and Oscar, in the back seat, short and round and pouring beer on his plump belly, and actually looking like Oscar.
It was one of those small moments in Rango that add to the overall pleasantness of that film.
Art Deco in Long Beach
Art Deco is a design ethos that can be dangerously summed up by the description: "emphasizing the vertical". The true artistic definition of Art Deco is obviously more broad than that, encompassing many of the tropes of Modern painting and sculpture, and this makes sense since Art Deco thrived during the same era as the Modern Art movement.
Strangely (or not) Art Deco stands for "art decoration" or "decorative art". If you're having a hard time imagining what this looks like, don't worry. Chances are good you've seen something in your lifetime that was constructed using these principles. Emphasized lines, mostly vertical but occasionally horizontal, is an easy to spot the erstwhile fad.
Two major metropolitan areas in America are well known for their use of Art Deco and the structures still standing showing it off (besides of course the Chrysler Building in Manhattan, probably the most recognizable and famous Art Deco building in the world). The first metrozone I'm talking about is Miami, the second is the Los Angeles area.
Long Beach has it's fair share. An offshore earthquake in 1933, known as the Long Beach Earthquake, destroyed much of the city's infrastructure and even spawned the Fields Act, a law that mandated that schools be built able to withstand earthquakes. If the quake had occurred during school hours, the death toll would have been much higher than the reported 210.
Since Art Deco was so popular when the rebuilding effort occurred, and concrete forms are sturdier than masonry, a whole slew of these buildings went up, many of which are still around today.
Here're some examples from the direct vicinity of out apartment. The post office:
An apartment:
A school:
A church:
Even a hospice:
In my 'hood, the steeples that poke out over the trees are Art Deco:
Strangely (or not) Art Deco stands for "art decoration" or "decorative art". If you're having a hard time imagining what this looks like, don't worry. Chances are good you've seen something in your lifetime that was constructed using these principles. Emphasized lines, mostly vertical but occasionally horizontal, is an easy to spot the erstwhile fad.
Two major metropolitan areas in America are well known for their use of Art Deco and the structures still standing showing it off (besides of course the Chrysler Building in Manhattan, probably the most recognizable and famous Art Deco building in the world). The first metrozone I'm talking about is Miami, the second is the Los Angeles area.
Long Beach has it's fair share. An offshore earthquake in 1933, known as the Long Beach Earthquake, destroyed much of the city's infrastructure and even spawned the Fields Act, a law that mandated that schools be built able to withstand earthquakes. If the quake had occurred during school hours, the death toll would have been much higher than the reported 210.
Since Art Deco was so popular when the rebuilding effort occurred, and concrete forms are sturdier than masonry, a whole slew of these buildings went up, many of which are still around today.
Here're some examples from the direct vicinity of out apartment. The post office:
An apartment:
A school:
A church:
Even a hospice:
In my 'hood, the steeples that poke out over the trees are Art Deco:
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Disney Animated Feature Post
This is the long Disney post I've been avoiding for a while. At first I had it broken down into something like eight posts, then I felt weird. What would somebody think if they came to this site and all they saw was some fanatic's discussion of Disney cartoons? Ugh...
So I then combined the posts into four, putting things together that naturally--because of historical timing--seemed to go together. Again I felt weird. Originally I hadn't wanted to put everything together since the post would be too long and unwieldy. Also, I wasn't sure if all I was going to discuss was Disney, or if it was really a discussion--like I think I originally planned on--on the animated feature's unofficial history in the States.
Jeeze, when I put it like that it already sounds boring. When I re-read some of the following passages, I cringed, trying to figure out why I had ever wanted to do this post in the first place.
So, when it was all said and done, I decided to lump it all together and toss it out there, like yanking a scab off all at once. Read it if you're a glutton for punishment or love Disney cartoons...well, the movies anyway. See how your own feelings compare with mine.
If you have ill feelings towards the mouse brand, which I understand, please skip it. I'll never be upset about it. It is a very long post.
So...it begins:
The Golden Age and the Second Age
Okay, what I"m calling the Golden Age is also known as Dictator Walt Age since that's how he was able to get the kind of beautifully soft colors and wild depth of field shots: an iron fist of control over likeminded technological whizzes yields round the clock development.
The films in the Golden Age are Snow White ('38), Pinocchio ('40), Dumbo ('41), and Bambi ('42). One other Golden Age film, considered in the canon, is the movie that Walt Disney really wanted to make: Fantasia.
Walt thought that the direction of animated features would be the direction Fantasia goes: a virtual collection of music videos set to classical selections. It turns out his other cretion, the one he bet his company on, the one the naysayers would never work, did work, and defined the animated narrative structure basically forever: Snow White.
With it's advanced rotoscoping--a technique by which movie film is used as a basis for animating cells--the realism in Snow White is quite astounding when you watch it today. It came out in 1938.
With it's success came the ambition that follows ambitious artists. Walt wanted to fix what he saw as deficiencies in the style with his next creation, an Italian story to which he'd secured the rights: Pinocchio.
In what's regarded as one of the greatest animated features in history, 1940 unleashed Pinocchio upon the world. Watching today one marvels at the sweeping shot of the village children heading off to school. Or how about the ocean's surface during the Monstro chase scene?
The growing conflict in Europe hurt the ability for Pinocchio to rely on those markets to help recoup some of the investment put into the film (Snow White did very well in Europe). The overall financial success for Pinocchio was short-lived, if it existed at all.
Fantasia wasn't what audiences had been trained to expect, and while Dumbo and Bambi share heartfelt stories and lush paintings, their running times thinned to just over an hour each. The growing European war and American involvement eventually spelled the end to Disney's experient with feature length animation.
Well, only until they could muster up enough cash to develop new ideas.
In the years between the end of this Golden Age and the beginning of what I call the Second Age, a period of eight years, there were a number of what have been titled "package films", or collections of smaller features. Things my brother and I grew up with, like Tres Caballeros, with Donald Duck playing the American, a Parrot playing a South American, and a Roosetr playing a Mexican stereotype, were among our favorites.
The last package film was a two piece entry: The Adventures of Ichobad and Mr. Toad. The Mr. Toad story is based on the Wind in the Willows, but since that story is a bedtime story, it lacked the pacing that they wanted, so they beefed the story up with other tales.
Ichobad Crane's tale is based on Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. We called it the Headless Horseman cartoon as kids growing up.
Once again, as it turns out, Walt Disney was ready to bet the farm--and his studio--on a full out animated feature. The success of which started the next era for the Disney canon, what I call the Second Age.
That all or nothing film, the second such Disney fare, was Cinderella ('50). It generated enough cash and good-will that they were able to flesh out a batch of fiilms still beloved by many fans.
Having owned the rights to Through the Looking Glass for years, the next film they made was Alice and Wonderland ('51). Two years later was Peter Pan ('53) and after another two years the world got Lady and the Tramp ('55).
Those four, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and Later and the Tramp, are connected like the original four (five when you add Fantasia to the mix). That's the main reason I've lumped them into the Second Age.
The next "age", as I call it, the Lean Years, started in 1959 with a film that could go either way, but I deemed it the best of the group it heads and is closer to temporally: Sleeping Beauty.
The Lean Years and the Dark Years
What I've been calling the Lean Years I do so because of the nature of the films: the stories are good, but the animation quality's slow decline as the animators unionized is seen in full bore near the end of this period. Does unionized animators immediately mean poorer quality filmmaking? Of course not, but when you run your animators into the ground, forcing them to work like mad for eighteen hours a day to not only invent a style of art, and the technology necessary to make that art possible, but also to physically draw and paint every single cell, you either end up with a masterpiece or a disaster. Walt got the former, but his treatment of his staff caused them to do what was necessary for them.
Sleeping Beauty ('59) still had some of the qualities that were seen in the Second Age films, and lacked the xeroxing that gets used later in the Lean Years, and I can't really understand why I lump it in with these others...maybe because of the clsoeness of time.
One Hundred and One Dalmations ('61) gave fits to the "spot watcher", the guy tasked with making sure the spots match up from cell to cell. This is one of my mom's favorites. I liked it as a kid as well, but it always seemed like the backgrounds were harsh, or bled, or some other thing that ends up looking less soft as the Original four or even the Second four. I'm not sure what it is.
In any case, Sword in the Stone ('63), Jungle Book ('67), Aristocats ('70), Robin Hood ('73), and The Rescuers ('77) followed. You might be able to see why Lean is an appropriate term for the era. In eighteen years there were seven films, and each of which got progressively worse looking. The Rescuers, which of course I enjoyed when I was a kid, even had disgruntled animators inserting a Playboy pinup in a cell during a fly-by scene.
Robin Hood had scenes lifted directly from Jungle Book and Aristocats. Ever notice how Baloo and Little John look nearly identical?
Whatever slide in quality one would, or wouldn't, ascribe to the Lean Years, pales in comparison to what came out during the Dark Years, a time that coincides with the the ascension of Don Bluth.
I'll have a separate post about Don Bluth, a former Disney animator and director who got fed up with the company's direction and left to start his own animation company. In his time heading his own production company, Bluth made some of the most memorable animated features of the 80s: An American Tail ('86), Land Before Time ('88) and All Dogs Go To Heaven ('89).
The Dark Years for Disney, namely the '80s, are the very years affected by the absence of Bluth. The animated films in this era are mostly forgettable. Maybe I'm mistaken, but I've yet to rewatch any of them recently.
We have The Fox and the Hound ('81), The Black Cauldron ('85), The Great Mouse Detective ('86) and Oliver and Company ('88).
The end of the '80s, though, saw the reassertion of Disney's domination of the feature animation field of film business with a movie that started the next era, the New Renaissance.
That film, a film that Walt Disney had purchased the rights to at the same time as Snow White and Through the Looking Glass was the Danish Han Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid ('89).
The New Renaissance and the Post NR Era
These two eras, even if they can be dissected as such, as I do with reasons, started the regeneration of the Walt Disney Animation Studio and the reinvigoration of the brand.
The New Renaissance and Post NR Era I have split in '96/'97. I have the New Renaissance starting with Little Mermaid ('89), sneaking in behind it is Rescuers Down Under ('90)(the only non musical from this era), Beauty and the Beast ('91), Aladdin ('92), The Lion King ('94), Pocahontas ('95), and the Hunchback of Notre Dame ('96). This is where I usually make the break.
With undisputed financial powerhouses being created in Mermaid, Beast, and Aladdin, the company then came up five aces deep with Lion King. Pocahontas and Hunchback came directly after, and surfed on the goodwill created by the Lion King wave.
Something else happened in 1995, the same year that Pocahontas came out: Toy Story was released. It wasn't until 1999 that Pixar released A Bug's Life, and another year for Toy Story 2. Things get really rolling for them with Monsters Inc. in '01. But in the late 90s, it was still mostly the Mouse.
The hit or miss nature with the Post New Renaissance Era is almost the defining characteristic of this period.
Hercules ('97), Mulan ('98), Tarzan ('99) and The Emperor's New Groove ('00) were interspliced with Fantasia 2000 and Dinosaur (both 2000), followed by Atlantis: Lost Empire ('01).
Mulan and Emperor's New Groove were surprisingly good. The others?
It's during this time, from '97 to '01 that the excitement seems to be gone from the releases, at least slowly waning.
Maybe the year I chose to delineate the break is arbitary, but the downward spiral of the excitement-wane was noticeable.
Plus, Pixar was making a name for itself and Shrek ('01) gave some legs to Dreamworks. Although it would be nine years for Dreamworks to come up with another truly inspired entry, How to Train Your Dragon ('10). Megamind ('10) shows they're getting closer to Pixar-like mojo.
The next era is almost a return to the dark days. That may be an exaggeration, but the overshadowing by Pixar is the main theme.
The one bright spot in this Emergence of Pixar era is the first film from this period, a little film that was made specifically for my mom (kinda like this post): Lilo and Stitch ('02).
The Emergence of Pixar and The Pixar Era
The main theme of these eras is obviously Pixar, and Pixar is now a part of Disney. But we all know that the development side and origins of the company are not with Disney as the driving force or bank.
The Disney films during the Ermergence era ranged from the small and excellant Lilo and Stitch ('02), to the poor Treasure Planet ('02), Brother Bear ('03), and Home on the Range ('04). Roseanne Barr (is she still Arnold? Oh yeah, just Roseanne) as a cow? Uhhh...nevermind. Wonderful sitcom of course (best recognize).
Disney's dabbling in computer generated films marks probably the last time anyone can consider something somehow NOT the Pixar Era: Chicken Little ('05), Meet the Robinsons ('07), and Bolt ('08).
Compare those with Dreamworks' various franchises. Which are better?
Dreamworks seems to act like putting big voice actors into their features makes up for stories being based on dated trends, "current" events, and puns. Disney's computer stories lack the charm that Pixar conjures. Another company, Blue Sky, with it's Ice Age franchise and Rio ('11) have mixed big actors into a somewhat charmed offering. They really nailed the look of parrots walking,though, in Rio.
Universal's Illumination Entertainment's Despicable Me ('10) had the usual plot-holes vs. big actors problems that many Dreamworks features get, even as it was amusing to watch transpire.
But, really, an era I call the Pixar Era should be, and is, dominated by Pixar.
Up? Wall-E? The Incredibles? Finding Nemo? Finding Nemo, people! Toy Story 3! Wow, that incinerator scene? Ratatouille?
In any case, if we look at the most recent Disney productions occurring in the Pixar Era we see The Princess and the Frog ('09)--a well meaning return to traditional cell animation, and Tangled ('11), the fiftieth feature in the Disney Classic Feature canon and a computer animated one at that. 50th.
I've done some reading about Tangled, about how they used Snow White's cottage as a design model, about how they devoted plenty of development time to the background color scheme and maiking it look like a Romanticist painting from the eighteenth century, and about how they decided to change the name from Rapunzel to Tangled (some say to coax the boy element into the audience)(uhhhhh, okay).
I haven't seen either, but I'm interested for cinema's sake...and I really like the city of New Orleans, which plays a role in the princess/frog movie.
So...excellance? Greatness? Highwater marks? I'd say confidently that the best Dreamworks animated feature is a tossup between the first Shrek and How to Train Your Dragon. A highwater mark for recent Disney has to be 1994 and Lion King. The best animated feature from Disney though...even though it's harder to pick the best episode of the Simpsons, people seem to have settled on one ("The Last Exit to Springfield", Season 4).
I'd have to say Finding Nemo has been the best Pixar film, mainly because of the stunning beauty and gentle tenderness of the story and it's various environments. Ratatouille hits me in a special place, though. There were things I didn't much care for in Wall-E and Cars...
My pick for the best non-Pixar digitally animated movie would have to be ILM's first ever offering at a feature length film: Rango ('11).
Rango seemed to mix good voice work with somewhat famous actors with a touching story, and if you can get over Ned Beatty basically playing Lotso again as the wheel-chair bound tortoise mayor, you'll probably enjoy it.
I'll have a quick post about Rango specifically that I planned out the moment I saw the scene, but hadn't gotten to post yet, and then decided to hold off until this 'toon month.
Was this all really that boring?
(Seriously I didn't forget The Secret of NIMH ('82). See future post on Don Bluth.)
So I then combined the posts into four, putting things together that naturally--because of historical timing--seemed to go together. Again I felt weird. Originally I hadn't wanted to put everything together since the post would be too long and unwieldy. Also, I wasn't sure if all I was going to discuss was Disney, or if it was really a discussion--like I think I originally planned on--on the animated feature's unofficial history in the States.
Jeeze, when I put it like that it already sounds boring. When I re-read some of the following passages, I cringed, trying to figure out why I had ever wanted to do this post in the first place.
So, when it was all said and done, I decided to lump it all together and toss it out there, like yanking a scab off all at once. Read it if you're a glutton for punishment or love Disney cartoons...well, the movies anyway. See how your own feelings compare with mine.
If you have ill feelings towards the mouse brand, which I understand, please skip it. I'll never be upset about it. It is a very long post.
So...it begins:
The Golden Age and the Second Age
Okay, what I"m calling the Golden Age is also known as Dictator Walt Age since that's how he was able to get the kind of beautifully soft colors and wild depth of field shots: an iron fist of control over likeminded technological whizzes yields round the clock development.
The films in the Golden Age are Snow White ('38), Pinocchio ('40), Dumbo ('41), and Bambi ('42). One other Golden Age film, considered in the canon, is the movie that Walt Disney really wanted to make: Fantasia.
Walt thought that the direction of animated features would be the direction Fantasia goes: a virtual collection of music videos set to classical selections. It turns out his other cretion, the one he bet his company on, the one the naysayers would never work, did work, and defined the animated narrative structure basically forever: Snow White.
With it's advanced rotoscoping--a technique by which movie film is used as a basis for animating cells--the realism in Snow White is quite astounding when you watch it today. It came out in 1938.
With it's success came the ambition that follows ambitious artists. Walt wanted to fix what he saw as deficiencies in the style with his next creation, an Italian story to which he'd secured the rights: Pinocchio.
In what's regarded as one of the greatest animated features in history, 1940 unleashed Pinocchio upon the world. Watching today one marvels at the sweeping shot of the village children heading off to school. Or how about the ocean's surface during the Monstro chase scene?
The growing conflict in Europe hurt the ability for Pinocchio to rely on those markets to help recoup some of the investment put into the film (Snow White did very well in Europe). The overall financial success for Pinocchio was short-lived, if it existed at all.
Fantasia wasn't what audiences had been trained to expect, and while Dumbo and Bambi share heartfelt stories and lush paintings, their running times thinned to just over an hour each. The growing European war and American involvement eventually spelled the end to Disney's experient with feature length animation.
Well, only until they could muster up enough cash to develop new ideas.
In the years between the end of this Golden Age and the beginning of what I call the Second Age, a period of eight years, there were a number of what have been titled "package films", or collections of smaller features. Things my brother and I grew up with, like Tres Caballeros, with Donald Duck playing the American, a Parrot playing a South American, and a Roosetr playing a Mexican stereotype, were among our favorites.
The last package film was a two piece entry: The Adventures of Ichobad and Mr. Toad. The Mr. Toad story is based on the Wind in the Willows, but since that story is a bedtime story, it lacked the pacing that they wanted, so they beefed the story up with other tales.
Ichobad Crane's tale is based on Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. We called it the Headless Horseman cartoon as kids growing up.
Once again, as it turns out, Walt Disney was ready to bet the farm--and his studio--on a full out animated feature. The success of which started the next era for the Disney canon, what I call the Second Age.
That all or nothing film, the second such Disney fare, was Cinderella ('50). It generated enough cash and good-will that they were able to flesh out a batch of fiilms still beloved by many fans.
Having owned the rights to Through the Looking Glass for years, the next film they made was Alice and Wonderland ('51). Two years later was Peter Pan ('53) and after another two years the world got Lady and the Tramp ('55).
Those four, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and Later and the Tramp, are connected like the original four (five when you add Fantasia to the mix). That's the main reason I've lumped them into the Second Age.
The next "age", as I call it, the Lean Years, started in 1959 with a film that could go either way, but I deemed it the best of the group it heads and is closer to temporally: Sleeping Beauty.
The Lean Years and the Dark Years
What I've been calling the Lean Years I do so because of the nature of the films: the stories are good, but the animation quality's slow decline as the animators unionized is seen in full bore near the end of this period. Does unionized animators immediately mean poorer quality filmmaking? Of course not, but when you run your animators into the ground, forcing them to work like mad for eighteen hours a day to not only invent a style of art, and the technology necessary to make that art possible, but also to physically draw and paint every single cell, you either end up with a masterpiece or a disaster. Walt got the former, but his treatment of his staff caused them to do what was necessary for them.
Sleeping Beauty ('59) still had some of the qualities that were seen in the Second Age films, and lacked the xeroxing that gets used later in the Lean Years, and I can't really understand why I lump it in with these others...maybe because of the clsoeness of time.
One Hundred and One Dalmations ('61) gave fits to the "spot watcher", the guy tasked with making sure the spots match up from cell to cell. This is one of my mom's favorites. I liked it as a kid as well, but it always seemed like the backgrounds were harsh, or bled, or some other thing that ends up looking less soft as the Original four or even the Second four. I'm not sure what it is.
In any case, Sword in the Stone ('63), Jungle Book ('67), Aristocats ('70), Robin Hood ('73), and The Rescuers ('77) followed. You might be able to see why Lean is an appropriate term for the era. In eighteen years there were seven films, and each of which got progressively worse looking. The Rescuers, which of course I enjoyed when I was a kid, even had disgruntled animators inserting a Playboy pinup in a cell during a fly-by scene.
Robin Hood had scenes lifted directly from Jungle Book and Aristocats. Ever notice how Baloo and Little John look nearly identical?
Whatever slide in quality one would, or wouldn't, ascribe to the Lean Years, pales in comparison to what came out during the Dark Years, a time that coincides with the the ascension of Don Bluth.
I'll have a separate post about Don Bluth, a former Disney animator and director who got fed up with the company's direction and left to start his own animation company. In his time heading his own production company, Bluth made some of the most memorable animated features of the 80s: An American Tail ('86), Land Before Time ('88) and All Dogs Go To Heaven ('89).
The Dark Years for Disney, namely the '80s, are the very years affected by the absence of Bluth. The animated films in this era are mostly forgettable. Maybe I'm mistaken, but I've yet to rewatch any of them recently.
We have The Fox and the Hound ('81), The Black Cauldron ('85), The Great Mouse Detective ('86) and Oliver and Company ('88).
The end of the '80s, though, saw the reassertion of Disney's domination of the feature animation field of film business with a movie that started the next era, the New Renaissance.
That film, a film that Walt Disney had purchased the rights to at the same time as Snow White and Through the Looking Glass was the Danish Han Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid ('89).
The New Renaissance and the Post NR Era
These two eras, even if they can be dissected as such, as I do with reasons, started the regeneration of the Walt Disney Animation Studio and the reinvigoration of the brand.
The New Renaissance and Post NR Era I have split in '96/'97. I have the New Renaissance starting with Little Mermaid ('89), sneaking in behind it is Rescuers Down Under ('90)(the only non musical from this era), Beauty and the Beast ('91), Aladdin ('92), The Lion King ('94), Pocahontas ('95), and the Hunchback of Notre Dame ('96). This is where I usually make the break.
With undisputed financial powerhouses being created in Mermaid, Beast, and Aladdin, the company then came up five aces deep with Lion King. Pocahontas and Hunchback came directly after, and surfed on the goodwill created by the Lion King wave.
Something else happened in 1995, the same year that Pocahontas came out: Toy Story was released. It wasn't until 1999 that Pixar released A Bug's Life, and another year for Toy Story 2. Things get really rolling for them with Monsters Inc. in '01. But in the late 90s, it was still mostly the Mouse.
The hit or miss nature with the Post New Renaissance Era is almost the defining characteristic of this period.
Hercules ('97), Mulan ('98), Tarzan ('99) and The Emperor's New Groove ('00) were interspliced with Fantasia 2000 and Dinosaur (both 2000), followed by Atlantis: Lost Empire ('01).
Mulan and Emperor's New Groove were surprisingly good. The others?
It's during this time, from '97 to '01 that the excitement seems to be gone from the releases, at least slowly waning.
Maybe the year I chose to delineate the break is arbitary, but the downward spiral of the excitement-wane was noticeable.
Plus, Pixar was making a name for itself and Shrek ('01) gave some legs to Dreamworks. Although it would be nine years for Dreamworks to come up with another truly inspired entry, How to Train Your Dragon ('10). Megamind ('10) shows they're getting closer to Pixar-like mojo.
The next era is almost a return to the dark days. That may be an exaggeration, but the overshadowing by Pixar is the main theme.
The one bright spot in this Emergence of Pixar era is the first film from this period, a little film that was made specifically for my mom (kinda like this post): Lilo and Stitch ('02).
The Emergence of Pixar and The Pixar Era
The main theme of these eras is obviously Pixar, and Pixar is now a part of Disney. But we all know that the development side and origins of the company are not with Disney as the driving force or bank.
The Disney films during the Ermergence era ranged from the small and excellant Lilo and Stitch ('02), to the poor Treasure Planet ('02), Brother Bear ('03), and Home on the Range ('04). Roseanne Barr (is she still Arnold? Oh yeah, just Roseanne) as a cow? Uhhh...nevermind. Wonderful sitcom of course (best recognize).
Disney's dabbling in computer generated films marks probably the last time anyone can consider something somehow NOT the Pixar Era: Chicken Little ('05), Meet the Robinsons ('07), and Bolt ('08).
Compare those with Dreamworks' various franchises. Which are better?
Dreamworks seems to act like putting big voice actors into their features makes up for stories being based on dated trends, "current" events, and puns. Disney's computer stories lack the charm that Pixar conjures. Another company, Blue Sky, with it's Ice Age franchise and Rio ('11) have mixed big actors into a somewhat charmed offering. They really nailed the look of parrots walking,though, in Rio.
Universal's Illumination Entertainment's Despicable Me ('10) had the usual plot-holes vs. big actors problems that many Dreamworks features get, even as it was amusing to watch transpire.
But, really, an era I call the Pixar Era should be, and is, dominated by Pixar.
Up? Wall-E? The Incredibles? Finding Nemo? Finding Nemo, people! Toy Story 3! Wow, that incinerator scene? Ratatouille?
In any case, if we look at the most recent Disney productions occurring in the Pixar Era we see The Princess and the Frog ('09)--a well meaning return to traditional cell animation, and Tangled ('11), the fiftieth feature in the Disney Classic Feature canon and a computer animated one at that. 50th.
I've done some reading about Tangled, about how they used Snow White's cottage as a design model, about how they devoted plenty of development time to the background color scheme and maiking it look like a Romanticist painting from the eighteenth century, and about how they decided to change the name from Rapunzel to Tangled (some say to coax the boy element into the audience)(uhhhhh, okay).
I haven't seen either, but I'm interested for cinema's sake...and I really like the city of New Orleans, which plays a role in the princess/frog movie.
So...excellance? Greatness? Highwater marks? I'd say confidently that the best Dreamworks animated feature is a tossup between the first Shrek and How to Train Your Dragon. A highwater mark for recent Disney has to be 1994 and Lion King. The best animated feature from Disney though...even though it's harder to pick the best episode of the Simpsons, people seem to have settled on one ("The Last Exit to Springfield", Season 4).
I'd have to say Finding Nemo has been the best Pixar film, mainly because of the stunning beauty and gentle tenderness of the story and it's various environments. Ratatouille hits me in a special place, though. There were things I didn't much care for in Wall-E and Cars...
My pick for the best non-Pixar digitally animated movie would have to be ILM's first ever offering at a feature length film: Rango ('11).
Rango seemed to mix good voice work with somewhat famous actors with a touching story, and if you can get over Ned Beatty basically playing Lotso again as the wheel-chair bound tortoise mayor, you'll probably enjoy it.
I'll have a quick post about Rango specifically that I planned out the moment I saw the scene, but hadn't gotten to post yet, and then decided to hold off until this 'toon month.
Was this all really that boring?
(Seriously I didn't forget The Secret of NIMH ('82). See future post on Don Bluth.)
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
First Solid Food for Norman
An event chronicled by my digital camera with a photograph taken by my wife, we see baby eating solid food, for the first time (David Attenborough impressions are hard to pull off in blog form):
Soon enough little man your Uncle Pat is gonna make you his famous Sexy Chicken with Roti sauce and have some ramps shipped out west, and after a few more meals, no food will ever impress you again. You'll be eight years old telling some waiter that This foie gras is overcooked, man, and You call this salmon? This is arctic Char fool, I can tell, and You're calling this a chiogga beet when it's obviously a golden beet, and This endive is undercooked...ahh, the priceless looks from confused servers makes it all the more necessary.
I'll thank your mamma and papa for letting the timing of your first solid food be a moment that your Auntie Corrie and I got to be a part of.
Thank you.
Also, Norman, when you can read and the following sentence makes sense you'll understand, but, uh, it gets better than rice meal and breast milk paste.
It definitely does.
Soon enough little man your Uncle Pat is gonna make you his famous Sexy Chicken with Roti sauce and have some ramps shipped out west, and after a few more meals, no food will ever impress you again. You'll be eight years old telling some waiter that This foie gras is overcooked, man, and You call this salmon? This is arctic Char fool, I can tell, and You're calling this a chiogga beet when it's obviously a golden beet, and This endive is undercooked...ahh, the priceless looks from confused servers makes it all the more necessary.
I'll thank your mamma and papa for letting the timing of your first solid food be a moment that your Auntie Corrie and I got to be a part of.
Thank you.
Also, Norman, when you can read and the following sentence makes sense you'll understand, but, uh, it gets better than rice meal and breast milk paste.
It definitely does.
For some reason...
For some reason I have a photograph on my usually spic&span desktop. The icon's been smirking at me for too long. I think I moved it out of a folder deliberately and onto the desktop, or at least I have to tell myself that I did it on purpose. If not, then my world has no meaning.
But recently it's sole purpose seems to have been taunting me, since I can only really remember thinking "What the hell is that out here for?" and not any usual "Oh yeah, I need that for this".
Well in truth that last sentiment is misleading. I never have any photographs out on my desktop waiting to be used in blog posts.
Which is why this whole scenario is so confusing.
Wow. What a waste. Here's the damn picture already. I think it has a brother living in one of the lappys that I need to find.
Yeah...see, that picture lives on Corrie's lappy and not mine, not the one I've been using to post for almost the last year. Maybe that's why it's on my desktop. It has no home in my six gigs deep photo pholder--er, folder.
So, also, I'm stalling in a way. I'm thinking of writing out the Disney movie posts in Notepad and then copying and pasting them into the blog and post them all at once in a grotesque pop avalanche. I'm not sure why I'm as put off as I am about these particular posts. Part of me is sure they'll be boring as hell, but another part of me, the part that had decided to actually do the post, is sure that while boring, it may actually be fun to read.
I really just like to write stuff that I like to read. That's kind of how my fiction goes as well. And while I don't write this blog with the same method, style, and idea presentation as I would a piece of fiction, I nonetheless try to write stuff I'd enjoy reading. I've found countless times of just perusing some of my own archives I'll see a title and think WTF, then I'll read it and laugh heartily, or think about something I'd totally forgotten about and feel it in my body the way good writing's supposed to make you feel.
Also lately I've been reading some of an old friend's recent material. I'm not sure if he knows (I haven't yet brought it up), but already I can tell that this post was influenced by his stuff, which I find to be a great joy to read, and am saddened that I can't share it with you, my few readers.
But recently it's sole purpose seems to have been taunting me, since I can only really remember thinking "What the hell is that out here for?" and not any usual "Oh yeah, I need that for this".
Well in truth that last sentiment is misleading. I never have any photographs out on my desktop waiting to be used in blog posts.
Which is why this whole scenario is so confusing.
Wow. What a waste. Here's the damn picture already. I think it has a brother living in one of the lappys that I need to find.
Yeah...see, that picture lives on Corrie's lappy and not mine, not the one I've been using to post for almost the last year. Maybe that's why it's on my desktop. It has no home in my six gigs deep photo pholder--er, folder.
So, also, I'm stalling in a way. I'm thinking of writing out the Disney movie posts in Notepad and then copying and pasting them into the blog and post them all at once in a grotesque pop avalanche. I'm not sure why I'm as put off as I am about these particular posts. Part of me is sure they'll be boring as hell, but another part of me, the part that had decided to actually do the post, is sure that while boring, it may actually be fun to read.
I really just like to write stuff that I like to read. That's kind of how my fiction goes as well. And while I don't write this blog with the same method, style, and idea presentation as I would a piece of fiction, I nonetheless try to write stuff I'd enjoy reading. I've found countless times of just perusing some of my own archives I'll see a title and think WTF, then I'll read it and laugh heartily, or think about something I'd totally forgotten about and feel it in my body the way good writing's supposed to make you feel.
Also lately I've been reading some of an old friend's recent material. I'm not sure if he knows (I haven't yet brought it up), but already I can tell that this post was influenced by his stuff, which I find to be a great joy to read, and am saddened that I can't share it with you, my few readers.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Alleys for a Safe Ride
Yesterday I needed to ride down to my photography processor...day-off chores. When I ride my bike, generally to the other side of Long Beach, I use it as my cardio workout. I pump my legs hard for half an hour and move. Yesterday when I started out I could still feel the effects of that bug I caught at Disneyland.
I pumped my legs for about three seconds when I realized that that wasn't going to happen. I was done. I definitely didn't have the energy for that adventure--the beach path fast track. I was headed back to the apartment when I noticed one of the many Long Beach alleys, the alley between 1st and 2nd.
1 1/2 Street, I guess.
I turned my bike into the alley and slowly meandered east. The ride, slow and safe, was quite a nice change. The beach is beautiful, not like the North Coast, or even Montanya de Oro, but quickly gliding a two wheeler along the very edge of the continent is an experience that I always cherish.
The images I got in my brain as I cruised down First-and-a-half Street, shielded from the blasting sun that usually hits a person as they jam down the shore, shielded from the unusually high winds that were present on the day, were a strange mix of Old Europe.
I was a horse-mounted member of a village cruising through a nearly deserted thoroughfare. Which the alley was: deserted. I saw a car off in the distance, but it was gone before I got too close. Also, when I had to cross streets, which was a large number of times, I was lucky to be travelling between 1st and 2nd, an area that doesn't get random traffic. My crossings were all as safe and as deserted as the alleys themselves.
The ride went from Alamitos, the same street that has our laundromat, all the way to Bixby Park. At each of those crossings, I could look out over the bluffs and catch glimpses of the ocean. A quick ride through Bixby Park got the ride back to the alley, and off again for a while all the way to Euclid. From there it was just a few short blocks to Belmont Shore and eventually Fromex, my processors.
The way back was pretty much the same; me doing my slow pied-piper act down the street, acting Quixote and spouting 'hellos' at terraces that smelled like pot smoke. Missing out on the beach's headwind was the best part of this meander home.
On the way to Belmont Shore, the sun blasts your face, and on the way home, the wind is the drastic force you fight with. At least if you start from the west side of Long Beach.
Really, this trip also acted like a dry run on a bigger bike adventure I have been working out the details of for a while.
Slow riding...something I don't take advantage of enough...the experience, I mean. Slowing down and smelling the flowers, or alleys, anyway.
I pumped my legs for about three seconds when I realized that that wasn't going to happen. I was done. I definitely didn't have the energy for that adventure--the beach path fast track. I was headed back to the apartment when I noticed one of the many Long Beach alleys, the alley between 1st and 2nd.
1 1/2 Street, I guess.
I turned my bike into the alley and slowly meandered east. The ride, slow and safe, was quite a nice change. The beach is beautiful, not like the North Coast, or even Montanya de Oro, but quickly gliding a two wheeler along the very edge of the continent is an experience that I always cherish.
The images I got in my brain as I cruised down First-and-a-half Street, shielded from the blasting sun that usually hits a person as they jam down the shore, shielded from the unusually high winds that were present on the day, were a strange mix of Old Europe.
I was a horse-mounted member of a village cruising through a nearly deserted thoroughfare. Which the alley was: deserted. I saw a car off in the distance, but it was gone before I got too close. Also, when I had to cross streets, which was a large number of times, I was lucky to be travelling between 1st and 2nd, an area that doesn't get random traffic. My crossings were all as safe and as deserted as the alleys themselves.
The ride went from Alamitos, the same street that has our laundromat, all the way to Bixby Park. At each of those crossings, I could look out over the bluffs and catch glimpses of the ocean. A quick ride through Bixby Park got the ride back to the alley, and off again for a while all the way to Euclid. From there it was just a few short blocks to Belmont Shore and eventually Fromex, my processors.
The way back was pretty much the same; me doing my slow pied-piper act down the street, acting Quixote and spouting 'hellos' at terraces that smelled like pot smoke. Missing out on the beach's headwind was the best part of this meander home.
On the way to Belmont Shore, the sun blasts your face, and on the way home, the wind is the drastic force you fight with. At least if you start from the west side of Long Beach.
Really, this trip also acted like a dry run on a bigger bike adventure I have been working out the details of for a while.
Slow riding...something I don't take advantage of enough...the experience, I mean. Slowing down and smelling the flowers, or alleys, anyway.
Introduction for Animated Features Discussion
The discussion that unfolds in the following series of posts I'm almost embarrassed to be committing the time necessary with which to follow through. I'll be discussing mostly the Disney Animated Feature canon, since in America any discussion of feature-length animated cinema starts with Walt Disney, and as it may not ultimately end with Disney, the mouse's shadow is very large.
Categorizing things is something humans do daily, and weirdos like me take to incredibly boring lengths. This is just something that intrigues me, since to me the object in question--films--are powerful pieces of art painstakingly created, numerous in amount, and not created in a vacuum.
This exercise--this Feature Length Animated Movie discussion (the Disney anecdotal narrative history)--is really just a small warm up of what I'd really like to do for The Wire/The Corner and ultimately, The Simpsons. Long-form anecdotal narrative criticism and discussion of the Simpsons has been on my mind for a number of years, and this tiny thing (which will ultimately sprawl all over) is me testing myself to see if I can stomach such tripe; silly written nonsense for nobody but fans.
Somehow this exercise is also my way of unpacking what from pop-culture means something for me, as Disney was a familiar and familial entity in my upbringing.
Actually I've been slowly churning this discussion in my brain for a number of years, and started making notes back in Austin. The way I see it, there are distinct eras, epochs if you will, in Disney's canon, and the animated feature industry in America wouldn't have developed without the Disney entity and it's disgruntled former workers.
The distinct eras are, as I call them: the Golden Age (or more precisely, the Dictator Walt Age); the Second Age; the Lean Years; the Dark Years, which corresponds to the Age of Don Bluth; the New Renaissance; the Post NR Era; the Emergence of Pixar; and the Age of Pixar.
We are fully entrenched in the Age of Pixar, but if Cars 2 is any indication, we might be on the cusp of something else. I say that because at this time Disney isn't the film company that stirs up the imagination and excitement in us snooty fans of cinema. Pixar carries that mantle now.
See, this shit is already boring and embarrassing me.
Well, I've gone this far, so, if the next few days, I'll blather on about cartoons, rebelling animators, fights, xeroxes, and wholesale copying of cells for later movies (many dancing and fighting scenes from Robin Hood are directly taken from Jungle Book and Aristocats). Blah blah blah, notice how skateboarding effected the design of Tarzan? Or did you know that Walt bought the rights to The Little Mermaid at the same time as he did Through the Looking Glass and Snow White? And that Lilo and Stitch is a random, genuine, and excellent entry from the summer of 2002 that's mostly overlooked because of the stinky holiday 2002 release, Treasure Planet? Or about how the mostly secretive company is now sharing their research papers?
That's the kind of useless strands I have floating around my skull. Pulling them together here for a few posts is what's on the docket.
Categorizing things is something humans do daily, and weirdos like me take to incredibly boring lengths. This is just something that intrigues me, since to me the object in question--films--are powerful pieces of art painstakingly created, numerous in amount, and not created in a vacuum.
This exercise--this Feature Length Animated Movie discussion (the Disney anecdotal narrative history)--is really just a small warm up of what I'd really like to do for The Wire/The Corner and ultimately, The Simpsons. Long-form anecdotal narrative criticism and discussion of the Simpsons has been on my mind for a number of years, and this tiny thing (which will ultimately sprawl all over) is me testing myself to see if I can stomach such tripe; silly written nonsense for nobody but fans.
Somehow this exercise is also my way of unpacking what from pop-culture means something for me, as Disney was a familiar and familial entity in my upbringing.
Actually I've been slowly churning this discussion in my brain for a number of years, and started making notes back in Austin. The way I see it, there are distinct eras, epochs if you will, in Disney's canon, and the animated feature industry in America wouldn't have developed without the Disney entity and it's disgruntled former workers.
The distinct eras are, as I call them: the Golden Age (or more precisely, the Dictator Walt Age); the Second Age; the Lean Years; the Dark Years, which corresponds to the Age of Don Bluth; the New Renaissance; the Post NR Era; the Emergence of Pixar; and the Age of Pixar.
We are fully entrenched in the Age of Pixar, but if Cars 2 is any indication, we might be on the cusp of something else. I say that because at this time Disney isn't the film company that stirs up the imagination and excitement in us snooty fans of cinema. Pixar carries that mantle now.
See, this shit is already boring and embarrassing me.
Well, I've gone this far, so, if the next few days, I'll blather on about cartoons, rebelling animators, fights, xeroxes, and wholesale copying of cells for later movies (many dancing and fighting scenes from Robin Hood are directly taken from Jungle Book and Aristocats). Blah blah blah, notice how skateboarding effected the design of Tarzan? Or did you know that Walt bought the rights to The Little Mermaid at the same time as he did Through the Looking Glass and Snow White? And that Lilo and Stitch is a random, genuine, and excellent entry from the summer of 2002 that's mostly overlooked because of the stinky holiday 2002 release, Treasure Planet? Or about how the mostly secretive company is now sharing their research papers?
That's the kind of useless strands I have floating around my skull. Pulling them together here for a few posts is what's on the docket.
Monday, October 10, 2011
Seen in Orange County Today:
Man, button down shirt, no tie, behind wheel of maroon Mercedes Benz SUV, waiting at a stoplight. Man proceeds to look for viewers (he missed my witness), and deeming it safe at the shady light, pulls out a Coca-Cola can and hits it like a pipe. I couldn't make stuff up if I tried.
Now, the heads in the world know what using a can means, but come on, it is trashy. This gentleman must be either in denial or ashamed about being a closet pothead, or maybe, just maybe, he's unrepentant and happily "out" as a pothead and was in a bind.
But smoking from a can? In a Benz? In the OC?
Now, the heads in the world know what using a can means, but come on, it is trashy. This gentleman must be either in denial or ashamed about being a closet pothead, or maybe, just maybe, he's unrepentant and happily "out" as a pothead and was in a bind.
But smoking from a can? In a Benz? In the OC?
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Disneyland in Fall
It had been probably eight years since I'd been to Walt Disney's former-orange-grove-turned-amusement-park. Before that, the last time was when I was in the dorms--or Valencia apartments--so five or six more years. Other members of my family have visited many more times in those intermittent thirteen-fourteen years. Having had family living in the Los Angeles area when I was a young child, we would make at least annual visits to Southern California, and usually these trips would include trips to Disneyland, Knotts Berry Farm (another big LA amusement park), at least once to Universal Studios, Griffith Observatory, and the Labrea Tar Pits.
Out of all of those attractions, we easily did Disneyland the most times. I remember stories my dad would tell of watching the television show "The Wonderful World of Disney" in the late fifties and early sixties when he was a kid in Upstate New York. The show was ostensibly about what new technology Walt Disney was unveiling at his park, the "Happiest Place on Earth", but of course it was a half-hour long commercial for Disneyland.
My dad would tell me that at the time he was positive he would never set foot in the park and that the longing would be deep and real until something else came along, and he'd forget, forget long enough until the next episode came on.
Something my mom and my Auntie Peg do each year, with their good friend and honorary sister Bobbi, is spend a day in either late September or early October together at Disneyland to celebrate their birthdays, which are all within three weeks of each other.
This year, as a surprise for Bobbi, my mom arranged to get as many people available to come along for the trip, to get as many people available to dress up in matching shirts and invade this consumerist memory factory on the same day at the same time in what passes for fall in Southern California (daytime temperature: 91).
A few things before I get to some pictures:
1) Coordinating the "Surprise!" moment was as challenging as corralling drunken kittens. We hid in a stairwell at a fancy hotel for six minutes as not to be seen so we could muster at the right time, out of sight;
2) Our matching shirts were neon lime green and could sport our name, if we so chose. When I heard that my cousin Michael was planning on joining us, I said I'll have my name put on if Mike did. I was informed that Michael had said the same thing about me, that he'd put his name on if I did, so I said sure, lets do it. Who needs dignity at Disneyland? Unfortunately Mike missed the trip. He was missed. On a side note, wearing matching shirts is quite the fashionable thing to do as a large group visiting Disneyland. Whooda' thunk it;
3) The day we had marked down as our trip also happened to be "Gay Day in Anaheim", and Disneyland was absolutely packed for a beautiful Saturday with groups of proud gay folks, all wearing rather clever shirts, and they were in red;
4) We also visited California Adventure, the other park at the complex, and a place that sits on the old parking lot. The Simpsons allude to the old parking lot in the Itchy and Scratchy Land episode with the line, "Remember, we parked in the Itchy lot." Disneyland had sections named after famous characters from Disney's animated films, both of the short and feature length variety.
Here's part of our crew, mustering at breakfast before catching a shuttle. Notice our shirts. The previous night's activities had left me in a state as to be made very queasy by the shuttle's trip.
We decided to do Bobbi's favorite ride together and first, then we could do our own things, if that's how it was going to be. Of course, her favorite ride is the longest, most annoying ride in the park, It's a Small World. I'm philosophically into the message the ride promotes, but that song...
Here's something you don't see very often: dolphin ass in shrubbery form (outside of It's a Small World ride):
Here are some of the best rides in the park (bummer: Pirates of the Caribbean was closed), starting with the iconic Matterhorn, the mountain modeled after the true Matterhorn in the Swiss Alps:
The Haunted Mansion, which used to be so much better before they added the Nightmare Before Christmas elements. My family have given my brother Dan a lot of grief for being so upset that they dared to change the ride, to shake it up and add the newer elements to it. Thinking about it, I agree with him, and I have to say that he's right to be upset; it has lost some charm. The ride was quite groundbreaking technologically back when it opened:
Lastly, we have the best ride in the park, as far as roller coasters go. Actually, as far as roller coaster go, there are only three roller coasters in Disneyland proper, and I only have pictures of two of them. The tamest of the bunch is still a great ride, and it is called Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. Good clean fun. The next step up in terms of excitement is the twosome bobsled ride offered by the Matterhorn. That ride is fast, but since it's a simple lap belt strapping you in, you get thrown around almost as if it were a wooden coaster; real herky-jerky, but fast and fun nonetheless.
But the best coaster at Disneyland, the one you end up waiting as long as the line is when it's your time to do it, is Space Mountain:
This one is so good because it's fast, on a smooth steel frame, and you're completely in the dark, like you're on the outside of a space craft, tooling around in space. To me, the above image of the white space mountain has always represented what was awesome about Disneyland. Even as my cynicism grows and I get older, that white silhouette will always spark a truly pleasant feeling.
The second-to-last picture I'll leave you with is looking up Disneyland's "Main Street", a strip of stores and activities that lead up to the main castle and behind which, leads to the rides and different "lands". This is the castle that appears in the intros of Disney films as a sort of logo.
The amusement park is broken up into Tomorrowland, Adventureland, Frontierland, and Fantasyland. A statue of Walt and Mickey are in the center circle where the lands sprawl out from in different directions. A great ride we missed was Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, and it's in Fantasyland, a "land" filled with mostly kiddie rides. Mr. Toad's, though, is awesome. It's the only ride I can think of that kills you and sends you to hell, before returning you safely to the world of the living.
Literally sends you to hell.
The last picture is of some weary fellows. I'm sitting between some good guys, and if you look close you can see my feet are outside of my sandals. I'm giving them a rest. On a bench just outside of the frame sits Norm, doing exactly the same thing: resting his feet with his Birks off.
This was taken right before we at dinner at a fancy restaurant in the California Adventure park. We sat at a long table, and I spent the meal sitting at one end and talking with my Toms, Uncle and Grandpa. When the food came out, I noticed everyone with a plate except me. I didn't really care; I knew what I was getting, and I would wait. I had ordered the Cioppino. From the other end of the table I heard a voice calling to me. It was almost another neighborhood down there. I slowly gazed and saw everyone in between, weary and hungry, scarfing their food. At the sheer opposite end was Norm, with his wine glass in the air and no food in front if him, smiling. Toasting.
"Cioppino, brother," he called. We'd both ordered the Cioppino, and were the only only ones to order it, and did it with nary a word spoken between us. I returned the toast, smiling, the demurest of nods passing.
We would wait.
And we would feast.
Out of all of those attractions, we easily did Disneyland the most times. I remember stories my dad would tell of watching the television show "The Wonderful World of Disney" in the late fifties and early sixties when he was a kid in Upstate New York. The show was ostensibly about what new technology Walt Disney was unveiling at his park, the "Happiest Place on Earth", but of course it was a half-hour long commercial for Disneyland.
My dad would tell me that at the time he was positive he would never set foot in the park and that the longing would be deep and real until something else came along, and he'd forget, forget long enough until the next episode came on.
Something my mom and my Auntie Peg do each year, with their good friend and honorary sister Bobbi, is spend a day in either late September or early October together at Disneyland to celebrate their birthdays, which are all within three weeks of each other.
This year, as a surprise for Bobbi, my mom arranged to get as many people available to come along for the trip, to get as many people available to dress up in matching shirts and invade this consumerist memory factory on the same day at the same time in what passes for fall in Southern California (daytime temperature: 91).
A few things before I get to some pictures:
1) Coordinating the "Surprise!" moment was as challenging as corralling drunken kittens. We hid in a stairwell at a fancy hotel for six minutes as not to be seen so we could muster at the right time, out of sight;
2) Our matching shirts were neon lime green and could sport our name, if we so chose. When I heard that my cousin Michael was planning on joining us, I said I'll have my name put on if Mike did. I was informed that Michael had said the same thing about me, that he'd put his name on if I did, so I said sure, lets do it. Who needs dignity at Disneyland? Unfortunately Mike missed the trip. He was missed. On a side note, wearing matching shirts is quite the fashionable thing to do as a large group visiting Disneyland. Whooda' thunk it;
3) The day we had marked down as our trip also happened to be "Gay Day in Anaheim", and Disneyland was absolutely packed for a beautiful Saturday with groups of proud gay folks, all wearing rather clever shirts, and they were in red;
4) We also visited California Adventure, the other park at the complex, and a place that sits on the old parking lot. The Simpsons allude to the old parking lot in the Itchy and Scratchy Land episode with the line, "Remember, we parked in the Itchy lot." Disneyland had sections named after famous characters from Disney's animated films, both of the short and feature length variety.
Here's part of our crew, mustering at breakfast before catching a shuttle. Notice our shirts. The previous night's activities had left me in a state as to be made very queasy by the shuttle's trip.
We decided to do Bobbi's favorite ride together and first, then we could do our own things, if that's how it was going to be. Of course, her favorite ride is the longest, most annoying ride in the park, It's a Small World. I'm philosophically into the message the ride promotes, but that song...
Here's something you don't see very often: dolphin ass in shrubbery form (outside of It's a Small World ride):
Here are some of the best rides in the park (bummer: Pirates of the Caribbean was closed), starting with the iconic Matterhorn, the mountain modeled after the true Matterhorn in the Swiss Alps:
The Haunted Mansion, which used to be so much better before they added the Nightmare Before Christmas elements. My family have given my brother Dan a lot of grief for being so upset that they dared to change the ride, to shake it up and add the newer elements to it. Thinking about it, I agree with him, and I have to say that he's right to be upset; it has lost some charm. The ride was quite groundbreaking technologically back when it opened:
Lastly, we have the best ride in the park, as far as roller coasters go. Actually, as far as roller coaster go, there are only three roller coasters in Disneyland proper, and I only have pictures of two of them. The tamest of the bunch is still a great ride, and it is called Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. Good clean fun. The next step up in terms of excitement is the twosome bobsled ride offered by the Matterhorn. That ride is fast, but since it's a simple lap belt strapping you in, you get thrown around almost as if it were a wooden coaster; real herky-jerky, but fast and fun nonetheless.
But the best coaster at Disneyland, the one you end up waiting as long as the line is when it's your time to do it, is Space Mountain:
This one is so good because it's fast, on a smooth steel frame, and you're completely in the dark, like you're on the outside of a space craft, tooling around in space. To me, the above image of the white space mountain has always represented what was awesome about Disneyland. Even as my cynicism grows and I get older, that white silhouette will always spark a truly pleasant feeling.
The second-to-last picture I'll leave you with is looking up Disneyland's "Main Street", a strip of stores and activities that lead up to the main castle and behind which, leads to the rides and different "lands". This is the castle that appears in the intros of Disney films as a sort of logo.
The amusement park is broken up into Tomorrowland, Adventureland, Frontierland, and Fantasyland. A statue of Walt and Mickey are in the center circle where the lands sprawl out from in different directions. A great ride we missed was Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, and it's in Fantasyland, a "land" filled with mostly kiddie rides. Mr. Toad's, though, is awesome. It's the only ride I can think of that kills you and sends you to hell, before returning you safely to the world of the living.
Literally sends you to hell.
The last picture is of some weary fellows. I'm sitting between some good guys, and if you look close you can see my feet are outside of my sandals. I'm giving them a rest. On a bench just outside of the frame sits Norm, doing exactly the same thing: resting his feet with his Birks off.
This was taken right before we at dinner at a fancy restaurant in the California Adventure park. We sat at a long table, and I spent the meal sitting at one end and talking with my Toms, Uncle and Grandpa. When the food came out, I noticed everyone with a plate except me. I didn't really care; I knew what I was getting, and I would wait. I had ordered the Cioppino. From the other end of the table I heard a voice calling to me. It was almost another neighborhood down there. I slowly gazed and saw everyone in between, weary and hungry, scarfing their food. At the sheer opposite end was Norm, with his wine glass in the air and no food in front if him, smiling. Toasting.
"Cioppino, brother," he called. We'd both ordered the Cioppino, and were the only only ones to order it, and did it with nary a word spoken between us. I returned the toast, smiling, the demurest of nods passing.
We would wait.
And we would feast.
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