furtive explorations

Last night, we saw Saving Silverman. My capsule review: I wish I had paid matinee price. OK, it was funny in places but it dragged, was predictable as all hell and missed more jokes than it hit. It suffered from a bad case of "who's the sympathetic character?" in particular and couldn't decide whether to be a rude film or a cute one. I rarely say this but this film cried out for a second writing team to come through and double up the jokes. Sad to say but it was just barely kept alive by heroic acting on the part of the supporting cast.

Jason Biggs just barely showed up for the movie and his character really wasn't the star of the show. Amanda Peet as the controlling girlfriend showed glimmers of real creepiness and some actual comic timing between the almost annoying flashes of cleavage. She makes a perfect beautiful weirdo (ala The Whole Nine Yards) but just barely a passable weird beauty. They went the wrong way on her, should have cut her loose to be a real nightmare. Steve Zahn as the third wheel trying to save his buddy is too pathetic too often to hold up his role as "hero" either. And he isn't pathetic and wacky enough to play it the other way. He does get the best laughs in the film tho. The reason to see this film is the supporting characters, Jack Black and R. Lee Ermey who actually are wacky enough. What they lack is material good enough for them to sink their chops into. They were wasted in a PG-13 film. Oh yeah, Amanda Detmer looks good in Nun gear. And she blinks a lot and pouts once, that is her basic contribution to the film. I'm pretty sure she can actually act but in this movie she is a mobile set-piece for the plot.

• Some people said Hi to me at work while smiling cheerfully.
• No meteorites left my car a melted pile of slag.
• All of my bones are still intact.

That is the whole list folks. Seriously.

Multiple quotes for today: "Never pluck a man's thing without asking.", "She isn't a subtext kinda girl.", and "Inflatable Regis". Also, the subtextless girl was amusing enough to say "Dude! Y'all!", last night. I said, "Whoa there! You just leapt entirely across a continent!" Please, people, try and keep your jingoisms within one or two neighboring sub-cultures.

And a new e-fixing for you, "E-frauded."

Also, a little question for you. If, right after you pass the highway sign that warns "Caution: High Winds", you see a huge strip of yellow construction warning tape leap through the air like vile alien lifeform and wrap itself around a MSD truck nearly causing him to wreck, is that irony? T'was pretty damn cool, anyway.

So these guys point their tinkertoys at a sun, spin the wheels in the hampster cages, and bing! out pops the answer. 12.5 Billion years, +/- 3 Billion. I don't have any problem with the answer, it is fairly in line with other predictions. The issue I see is with the article; specifically I have a problem with this quote:

In a commentary on the research, Christopher Sneden of the University of Texas in Austin described the study as a major advance in radioactive cosmochronometry.

See, here's the thing, you have to have had at least one other piece of recorded science in your field's name before you can claim an advance, major or otherwise. Honestly, have ANY of you EVER heard of this field before today?

Well, that didn't fix the NS4.x problem but it now looks good in NS6 and IE so we're calling it a bug. Just for the record, I had top/left and bottom/right mixed up in the style sheet so it was happily putting extra space above and below the blockquote but not indenting it in...

Also, the overheard-no-idea-wtf-quote of the day from work:

I smell bitch.

But I was sick today, stayed home from work, and honestly I am just too tired to work up a rant that powerful. So all you get is this pale echo:

Americans work too hard. We strive and struggle not for the money like most Europeans seem to think but because we define ourselves socially by our jobs rather than by the money we have. In Europe, for thousands of years, power has been about land and property. Your level of status in society was defined by how much you owned. Even in more modern times when people worked hard for the property they owned, they were treated as "New Money" because the hadn't come from a family that had traditions revolving around owning and maintaining property.

Now, here in America, it is getting to the point where money you didn't earn yourself is considered "weak money". People are sneered at for not having a good job. Most people with normal jobs have a second idea or other job they hope will advance them. They play that second job like coin in social situations to up their respect level. "Sure, the warehouse job is nice and pays the bills but what I'm working on right now is a series of commercial websites for clients. And I do some free-lance photography now and again." We are casting off more and more the European notion that owning property is the way to go.

What we are seeing is a new form of Feudalism. Instead of people depending on you for your land's bounty and your protection, your worth is defined by how many people depend on the work you do. Lawyers talk client lists, businessmen talk head and customer counts, website designers talk hitcounts. It is no longer about what you own, it is about who you service.

Once upon a time, how much leisure time you had to spend was the measure of your power and ability. If you could maintain a huge plantation and still have hours a day to while away drinking lemonade you were a competent, powerful man. Nowadays, the lack of leisure time defines the man. Leisure time activities must have an ulterior purpose, golf and tennis with the other execs, spend an hour with the wife or husband making jam, etc. Even the way we relax promotes the too-busy-people-depend-on-me image.

Look at how the net business has changed over the past 20 years. Look at the life of a programmer from way back to now. Remember how the newscasters would talk breathlessly of Bill Gates "redeeming" the programmers and geeks? Any way you look at it, people noticed that programmers had more and more people depending on them and their status rose accordingly. And always the undercurrent message that the real geeks worked 12 and 16 hours a day, dreaming their job or up all night finishing something.

We are selling ourselves a new line of crap and the stress is killing us. OTOH, I'd rather work for my status than be shut out for life thanks to what my ancestors owned. I doubt we can do anything to change how our whole society is turning but is sure is interesting to watch on the way to our second job...

I have to say that the movie was fricking awesome. Not a kung-fu fightin' movie in the traditional HongKongWood style, it is more of a classic epic tale done with masterful fighting. Beautiful scenery: huge desert vistas, deep forest valleys, incredible city sets, caves, traditional houses, and parks. The weapon play is impressively filmed and exciting. The wire work is almost freaky and really a fresh change from freeze-n-whirl ice-cream-matrix film nightmare we've been put through in this country in the past few years.

The ending disappointed a number of people but it is as traditional as the rest of the film's story. Be ready to go a second time to try and see what you missed the first time. The story sets up the parallels between the characters slowly and takes its time in a few places that may jar with the MTV pacing that modern action movies use but I found it a nice change.

Also, pee before going in. =) The movie stretches around 2 hours and you aren't going to want to get up in the middle of this one. It is too pretty. I'm lucky I didn't rupture something holding out till the end!