Can't Leave Well Enough Alone

Saturday, December 30, 2006

While there are certainly a few original movies from time to time, it seems like most everything today is based on a book, a true story, or a previous movie/show. I don't really have any issues with the first two, because I think a movie can tell parts of a story that a book can't (the converse also being true), and movies based on actual events can be a bit more unpredictable (the "good guys" are much more likely to die in real life, except in the case of everyone not named Jack Bauer on 24).

Tonight I watched the first Christopher Reeve-fronted Superman movie again for the first time in a long time, not a month after watching the latest Superman rehash on DVD. Unlike my experience with Batman Begins, I wasn't all that enthralled with the latest installment of man-in-tights, but I think the old one - as cheesy and technologically disadvantaged as it can be - still stands up pretty well. Maybe you loved the new one and think it's just nostalgia clouding my opinion, but I think the original one had a lot of grit that is polished out in the new, shiny version.

Watching Superman again tonight also reminded me of some deep, piercing questions I've had for a long time but to which I still don't have any answers. For example, why can Superman fly fast enough to make time go backwards but not fast enough to save someone a few miles away apparently? Does he make enough as a beat writer at the Daily Planet to pay for all of those suits he must lose every day while changing running down the ally? Does he have an endorsement deal like college basketball coaches that gives him clothes for free, or does he fly back to pick them up later? Why is kryptonite poisonous to Superman if the entire planet his people came from is made of it? Why in the fourth (and dumbest) Superman movie is he short of breath on the moon when there's no air?

Of course, the more fundamental question I should be asking is whether it makes any sense to question all of these things while blindly accepting a spandex-clad flying alien.

How I Know Christmas Is Over

Sunday, December 24, 2006

Another Christmas has come and gone, and mine was wonderful, as I hope yours was. My watch is a bit broken right now, so in the absense of reliable timekeeping, here is how I know Christmas is over:

• There are no more news reports telling me that the mall was busy on Christmas Eve or that there were a lot of people who put the whole thing off until the last minute. I was about to say that this is akin to reporting on the sun coming up every day, but then I remembered that we do that, too. Still, at least the time varies a little from day to day. Even the two so-called certainties in this life, death and taxes, are less predictable than a crowded mall on Christmas Eve. Yet every year this is headline news.
• As I swept my driveway this morning (of dirt, not snow, of course), I heard the mailman swearing to himself as he loaded late Christmas cards into our boxes because the sprinkler system kicked on and was aimed right at him.
• TBS is not showing "A Christmas Story" at all today. Apparently the tape snapped yesterday on the 12th time through.
• Restaurants other than just Jack-in-the-Box are open here.
• My son has twice as many toys as he had two days ago.
• The Heat and the Lakers are not playing on ABC today. I'm sure they were disappointed that Shaq was hurt, but they were able to play up the D-Wade vs. Kobe angle instead. We had better hope there aren't too many injuries next year, or we might have to suffer through a lot of Doleac vs. Turiaf promos.

Now that Christmas is officially over, it's time to gear up for a New Year. I love this time of year and the feeling of renewal that comes with it. You would think living in a desert might make me enjoy the holidays a little bit less, but I find that the opposite is true. Even when the holidays are over, I know I have several months of great weather ahead of me, which will make it all the more easy - in theory - to run off all of the junk I have eaten as a result of holidays past, present, and yet-to-be.

Breaking News: Andre Miller Traded

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Yesterday with my jaw half numb and metal instruments sticking in my mouth, my dentist decided to have a discussion about the Iverson trade. Since that conversation was completely one-sided, let me now be the one (and maybe only) to focus on the part of the trade about which I really care. Andre Miller is going to his fourth team in the NBA and the third which is really on the downside, so I might as well give him his props now before he is lost in the quagmire that is the Atlantic Division.

It might seem strange that one of my current favorite players would be Andre Miller because A) he's never been an all-star, B) he was a Ute (I'm not supposed to like Utes), and C) he shoots about the flattest-footed three-point shot you'll ever see. I'm just a fan of the way he plays and the way he has always carried himself.

It really started when I was at a BYU-Utah game back in my college days. In probably my least-proud moment as a BYU fan, some winners down in the front row were holding up a sign saying, "Hey Miller, can you spell Prop-48?" Andre was a Prop-48 guy, yes, but beyond dishing out a low blow, these geniuses failed to acknowledge that he graduated within four years, a requirement to have four years of eligibility under Prop 48. In that game, he proceeded to torch my Cougars for who-knows how many points, and later I watched him torch Arizona and North Carolina (and nearly Kentucky before he got into foul trouble) on the Utes way to nearly winning it all.

I continued to follow him in the NBA, which is why I have a pair of Cavs shorts now that don't even look like the current Cavs shorts - nothing like 1999 Cavaliers throwback shorts. I watched Andre get booed as a rookie in the Rookie Challenge because he took a lay-up instead of a dunk on a break-away, and I became even more of a fan (I'm admittedly pretty old-school). I watched him lead the NBA in assists in his second year on a team that wasn't really all that good. Then it was off to the Clippers, which nearly killed him off as a basketball player. Finally, he jumped to the Nuggets, and I was forced to sort of pull for the Nuggets in that division whenever they weren't playing the Jazz. He continued to play good fundamental hoops and never really call attention to himself, things I wish more players would do.

Now he's off to the Sixers, who at last count had lost about 900 games in a row. I don't know how it will all turn out, and people may still say someday that the Nuggets got the best of the deal, but I do know a few things. I know that Andre Miller will show up to work, that he'll make the players on his team better, and that he'll make Andre Iguodala a regular on Sportscenter since he (Miller) is the best lob passer in the NBA.

Two other things to like about Andre Miller are that this is the stock picture ESPN has for him and that he now looks like Richard Pryor but will someday look like Redd Foxx:








I'm just glad I didn't buy any Clippers or Nuggets shorts.

iCaved

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Stop me if you've heard this one before. Back when it was called "typing" and not "keyboarding," someone figured out that if you arranged the keys alphabetically, the little typewriter hammers would get stuck and pretty much ruin your life since there wasn't any white-out back then (it was later invented, as you'd suspect, by the mother of one of The Monkeys). The result was a keyboard with the letters arranged based on how frequently letters occurred together (why they didn't re-arrange the hammers, I'm not sure).

Well, the first time I heard that story was in business school, so I thought I was learning something that you weren't allowed to know before graduate school. Then a few weeks ago I figured out that my 10-year-old nephew, to whom a typewriter is much like a card-reading supercomputer or a pet rock are to me, already knew about this. In my defense, he is quite smart and also knew that Orajel would "really help with the pain" when our six-month old starts teething, but I guess what's more important here than my deflated sense of intellectual superiority to fifth graders is the context in which I first learned this.

In the case of the "QWERTY" keyboard and a lot of other products (from VHS to Windows), the best standard (technically) often isn't the one that wins out. There are a lot of other things involved, and most of the time after a standard is set, it's almost impossible to displace it because the switching costs are just too high until a completely disruptive technology (e.g. a combination of DVDs and DVRs displacing VHS) comes along.

This is a long-winded way of telling you why I finally gave in and bought an iPod.

When I first heard about iTunes and iPods, I thought the whole thing was probably doomed to be fairly small-market. Not only were they asking people to actually buy songs at a time when people were Kazaa-ing instead, but these songs wouldn’t really even be MP3s – they’d be Apple’s own proprietary AAC format and would only work on iPods. The Mac was small market, so I assume iPods would be, too, especially at a high price point. That being the case, who would buy songs from iTunes?

Well, so much for my business education, I guess, because here we are four years later, and I bought an Nano at a busy Apple store dedicated mostly to selling iPods to the eager masses. Apple is basically crushing everyone else, but their business model really hasn’t changed all that much. I could have purchased another flash-based MP3 player that would give me the same memory for less money and would have included radio and the ability to buy from a lot of different online music stores (which might not matter if you just want the latest Killers album but is important if you want to buy anything from The Smiths). In the end, though, I went with the safer option – higher quality and better accessories.

Don’t get me wrong here – I’m happy with my purchase, despite the drawbacks – but I’ve got to hand it to Apple. I could see exactly what they are doing – drawing me in with some excellent branding and locking me in with their proprietary format – and yet I fell right in line behind some grandparents and a fifteen-year-old kid. Back in high school, my football coach would always tell us that we should be good enough that we could walk up to the line, tell people where we were running the ball, and still run over them anyway. Well, that’s pretty much what Apple did to me, and at some point you just have to concede that the other team is just very good at what they do.

(Just a quick side-note from a brand nerd, while I’m at it. It’s amazing to me that Apple is able to keep basically everyone from discounting – they really know what they’re doing, but I’m not quite sure how they are doing it).

Beyond My Comprehension, Part II

Monday, December 11, 2006

Last week I pointed out a number of things that I can't even begin to fully understand. Visiting the mall last Saturday night, I found another one, so I thought it merited a follow-up. Here are more things that are beyond me (although in this case, I'm bewildered more than impressed):

1. Guys in Girl Jeans – I thought this was a joke two years ago when I first heard of it, and I certainly thought that it wouldn't last long if it was. At the mall, though, I saw at least two chicken-legged kids wearing Nicole Richie specials. I understand that androgyny somehow became masculine in the 80s thanks to bands like Bon Jovi and Motley Crue (my spellchecker is mad at me), because I was there, and people who listened to these guys were always telling me how "wussy" my music was (granted, it was Duran Duran). In their defense, though, at least hair-metal bands went for spandex or blue tiger-striped stretch pants, which probably had a little give in the right places. The best part was that these two guys at the mall had at least three girls in tow, so it's obviously working for them (or those girls just wanted their clothes back).
   
2. The Real World - I watched the first season or two of The Real World. I admit it. What confuses me is that this show was the blueprint for the rest of the reality shows, but now it would probably be closer to reality if they scripted the whole thing. I could set up a camera in my garage and probably just as many meaningful things would happen in a day.
3. Smoking - I walked past a smoker the other day at work. I knew when I was about 15 feet away, not because he had a tattoo of a camel on his forehead but because I buckled at the knees from the fumes. Does it ever amaze you that people are still doing this? I understand that people get addicted, but you see kids smoking, too. If someone came out with turpentine popsicles right now and tried to sell them with basically no advertising, do you think people would be lined up at a special counter at the grocery store to pick up cases of them?
4. Titanic - This has been on about every other day on TNT ("TNT... TNT... TNT..."). I should probably first tell you that I don't subscribe to the "whatever sells the most is the best" philosophy. A lot of people do, however, so this movie always gets thrown into "great movie" discussions. I just don't get it. Yeah, the last hour is great, but the real disaster is everything that has nothing to do with the ship sinking. It's OK, sure, but it's not any different than any of the other fall-in-love-in-an-hour stories out there - almost none of which really ring true. In fairness, I think that James Cameron acted way too full of himself in winning the Oscar, that Leonardo seems way too young in this movie, and that if I have to hear that Celine Dion song again, I might fill my ears with cement.
5. Raisins in Baked Goods - Why do people ruin perfectly good cookies or cinnamon rolls? I'm pretty sure that this was a mistake the first time it happened. I like grapes, and I like oatmeal, but I prefer some separation there.
   

Half-a-Century for the Hick from French Lick

Thursday, December 07, 2006

Today Larry Legend turns 50, so there is a lot being written and said. I’m not sure how much I can add beyond that, but I’ll start by simply saying that I am a basketball junkie, and Larry Bird is my favorite player of all time. I’m not under the delusion that he is the greatest player of all time, but I think he’s somewhere in the discussion at least.

I think out of respect for one of the greatest of all time, we should all agree to do two things. One, let’s stop comparing every white guy that comes along to Larry Bird. Wally Szczerbiak is not Larry Bird (although in the eyes of my sister-in-law, Larry Bird is no Wally, but I don’t think she’s worried about his passing out of the high post). Adam Morrison is not Larry Bird. Both guys can score, and Morrison has shaggy hair, and that’s really about it. Let me throw a stat line at you. 24 ppg, 10 rpg, 6 apg, 50% FG, 90% FT (and he had a year where he went for about 30/10/7). Three championships (and in contention every other time). Three MVPs. Countless game winners. All of that takes into account his final years where his body just broke down from diving for loose balls and or how jaw-dropping a lot of those assists were. All of this from a guy that couldn’t really jump and wasn’t really all that fast. Adam Morrison… please. Stop it right now.

Two, let’s stop entertaining the notion that Larry Bird is considered great because he was white. Again… please. Isiah Thomas was a great player in his day, but this idea was even worse than trading for Steve Francis. Last time I checked, the ball and the rim don’t really care if you are black or white, and rebounds don’t bounce your way just because you have a little less melanin in your skin.

I hope there is another Larry Bird someday – I really do. There are too few guys now that know how to use the glass or that always know where their teammates are without really even looking. Then again, maybe the next Larry Legend is already playing and we just don’t know it because he’s not a white guy with a moppy haircut.

Doc Brown Would Be Amazed

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

I work for a company that makes one of the most complicated products in the world. I say that not to brag but simply to let you know that I spend part of my time at work just a little confused. Other than a basic, conceptual understanding of how they work, our products are far beyond my comprehension. That’s not necessarily shocking, because there are honestly a lot of things that are way beyond my comprehension.

I’m not saying that I’m dumb (I can solve sudoku puzzles and tie my own shoes), but my mind just doesn't work that way. I lasted about a month in chemistry before I realized that even waxing my legs would probably be more fun and changed my major. While my roommates in college were smashing their heads against advanced physics and calculus, I was taking stuff like "Advanced Chinese Characters" and geography. I'm glad there are scientifically minded people like my roommates, though, because there are a lot of things we’d have to live without otherwise. Here are five things that are pretty amazing, when you think about it:

1. Contact Lenses – Glasses in-and-of themselves were probably kind of a big deal when they came out. I mean, if I had been born a thousand years ago, the whole world – unless I looked at it all really close up – would have been out of focus for me. I’m glad someone decided that glasses weren’t good enough though. I got glasses in the second grade, and not only did they not have contacts back then, but you probably could have used my glasses to burn entire colonies of ants (not that I advocate bug violence, except against spiders in my garage). I probably broke my glasses about every other week, so they were typically held together by solder or glue or whatever else my poor dad could come up with. Now, I put a little piece of who-knows-what in my eye, and I’m cured, at least temporarily.
2. Running Water – This may not seem like a big deal if you live in Seattle, but we live in the middle of the desert where it never rains. I mean, I know it comes from somewhere up in the mountains, but those are not exactly tropical rain forests either. There are literally millions of people here, and somehow everyone is able to take a shower at roughly the same time every morning. The fact that the water here smells and tastes like pool water doesn’t diminish how amazing that is.
3. Space Exploration – My wife doesn’t understand why I like to watch shows about space, but when you think about how big the solar system is relative to Earth and the fact that all of its parts are moving around, it’s unreal to me that we can land stuff on other planets. People here on Earth get into accidents with each other all the time trying to get home to places that are (in most cases) stationary, and yet now we have a couple of remote-control cars driving around on Mars.
4. The Chunnel – We went to Paris twice on a Eurostar train. We also flew over the English Channel once on another trip, and although they call it a channel, trust me – it’s the ocean. So in essence, they put train tracks under the ocean. I’m a little intimidated just thinking about putting in a sprinkler system in my yard.
5. Duck Hunt – Is there another technology field that has digressed more than video games? I mean, sure graphics have come a long way, and pretty soon you’ll be able to make toast with your X-Box, but nothing trumps being able to shoot a fake gun at a 1985 TV and having your game system know that you just killed a duck.

While we're discussing the great modern advances of our time, don’t you think it’s interesting that we’re basically living in the future now, cinematically speaking? I mean, within a decade, we’ll be in Back to the Future II territory. The funny thing is that in all of those movies, cars fly and people dress like early 1980s Duran Duran, but computers are still the size of small buildings. Instead, I can now fit a computer in my pocket but still had to put new tires on my car last month.

We're S-H-O-P-P-I-N-G, We're Shopping

Saturday, December 02, 2006

I'm a fan of self checkout. I know a lot of other people don't like it, and I understand that. There are days when I'm not a big fan, because nobody likes swiping a bag of chips 35 times across a scratched-up piece of glass, and it can take forever if you buy any non-standard vegetable. I still like it for two reasons, though.

One, since a lot of other people still prefer to have a trained professional scan their bananas and Coke, there usually isn't much of a line. About 75% of the time, it's pretty quick. The other 25% of the time it's a risk, I admit, because of the kinds of people that might be in front of you. It could be someone who probably still has an 8-track in their car and is trying this whole thing out for the first time (probably by accident from standing in the wrong line). Almost as bad, it could be someone trying to pay for their $80 in beer and frozen meals with wrinkly dollar bills and a pocketful of change.

Two, grocery shopping is a bit of an awkward experience if you really think about it, and I prefer to make it as much of a solitary activity as I can. Everyone knows that we are what we eat, so you can tell right off the bat at the store who is made of Ruffles and Hungry Man dinners and who is made of 24 packs of Miller Light. You find out what people eat, what shampoo they use, and how spoiled their kids are just with a quick glance. You may not even want to look, but they made shopping carts full of holes just so you would have to do so.

Don't get me wrong - I don't mind running into people I know sometimes (but I'm just as likely to duck into another aisle if I'm in a hurry). I'm just not that interested in discussing the contents of my shopping basket with complete strangers, even when it does not include the feminine products I occasionally have to pick up.

One place that will probably never go the self-checkout route is Costco. I worked for a government agency where the guards carried machine guns and didn't have my ID checked as often. At Costco, though, you don't have to worry as much about what you are buying since everyone else is buying 100-packs of the same thing. The only time you feel a little self-conscious there is when you buy only one thing. When you do that, it feels sort of like going to a steak place like Morton's and just ordering a side salad. There's nothing technically wrong with it; it's just a little awkward.