Monthly Archives: June 2004

Jun302004

Review-a-Rama: Troy, The Terminal, Shrek 2, The Stepford Wives

I realized as I was writing the previous entry that I haven’t posted any film reviews in a while, even though they are supposed to be one of the mainstays of Simple Tricks and Nonsense. There are several explanations, not least of which is my tendency to procrastinate, in addition to my equally pernicious capacity for distraction. (That’s a fancy way of saying that I always intend to write a review when I see a movie, but I’m too tired the day I actually see it, so I figure I’ll write about it the next day. But then when tomorrow comes some new topic smacks me in the forehead and I go for it like a cat following a laser pointer, and the next thing I know it’s been a month since I saw that one flick I was going to write about and, oh hell, I really need to catch up, and… Well, that’s probably more than you really wanted to know about my thought processes. Let’s just stick with, “I put things off and I’m easily distracted.”)

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Jun282004

Ephermal Film

James Lileks had some interesting thoughts this morning about film, specifically about the subjective nature of comedy, and how well (or how poorly) a film plays to an audience a couple of generations removed from the intended one.
He’s discussing one of the later Marx Brothers movies when he says:

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Jun262004

Eeeeee-vil!!

Oh, the stuff you find when you’re exploring the dank, shadowy corners of the Internet. This morning I was perusing the assorted trivialities at MetaFilter when I came across a link to something called The Gematriculator, a Web site that claims to be able to determine the relative level of good and evil contained in any other Web site or piece of text. This Gematriculator gadget is based on an obscure “science” called (what else) Gematria, which searches for patterns in the text. Numerical values are assigned to certain letters, the occurrence of these letters is tallied up and divided by the holy number seven, there is some kind of nonsense involving the Finnish alphabet… if you’re interested, follow the links above to read more about it. Personally, I didn’t get that far. I probably missed out on the really interesting bits involving ritual mollusk sacrifice and the reading of meerkat entrails. My loss, I’m sure.

The point of all this ciphering is to determine how much of the Spirit of God is present in the text being studied. A high level of the Spirit obviously indicates that a text is Good, whereas a lower level naturally denounces one’s writing as Evil. Just for un, I ran Simple Tricks through the Gematriculator, and here is the result:

This site is certified 52% EVIL by the Gematriculator

To be honest, I was surprised the results were so low. I figured my babblings would be at least 75% Evil. Guess I’ll have to try harder in the future.

Incidentally, please notice that I’ve learned a new trick. I now have the power to include photos and graphics in my blog entries. Cue the maniacal laughter! Soon, I shall take over the world! If only someone would shoot that pesky Mr. Bond for me while I waste time revealing my plans…

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Jun252004

More on the Hi Ute

As a follow-up to yesterday’s entry on the Hi Ute Ranch, I’ve been Googling around for some photographs or an official Web site or something. I had no luck on the Web site, but I did find a couple of pictures. For those who want to know what the heck I was talking about yesterday or those who want to relive some happy memories, I present the following:

  • This site features one of those groovy interactive photos that enable you to move around inside them using your mouse. It’s the next best thing to standing in the middle of the actual barnyard.
  • This site, on the other hand, features an ordinary static shot of the ranch plus a brief remembrance in verse by the site’s owner, who lived on the ranch as a boy and isn’t too happy about the development that now surrounds it. I wonder how he feels about the conservation easement, whether he thinks it’s a good thing or too little, too late.

Oh, for those who don’t know and may be wondering as you read the poem on the second Web site, a kildere (or, more properly, a killdeer) is a native Utah bird that nests on the ground in open fields. It has a distinctive call that consists of one high-noted whistle followed by a lower note. This call is what gives the bird its name, although it’s always sounded to me like the bird is saying “hee-haw,” not “kill-deer.” It sounds, actually, like a more benign version of Nelson from The Simpsons. I love the sound of kilderes, especially now when you don’t encounter it much. For the last couple of summers, I’ve been fortunate enough to have a killdeer living in a small pasture behind my parents’ barn, so I hear the call fairly often…

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Jun242004

Score One for Preservation

When I was a kid in the 1970s and early ’80s, much of the landscape I called “home” was rural. Open space was always nearby, even if you lived in downtown Salt Lake City, and out on the edges of the valley where my family was located, there were far more hay fields than housing developments. It was a comfortable, worn-in landscape that soothed the eye and fit the body like a really old pair of jeans.

Everything started to change in the mid ’80s, when a few subdivisions sprang up in the pastures of retiring farmers whose children didn’t want to continue working the land. These were followed by a shopping center or two, and then a couple of new stop lights to handle the increased car traffic. No big deal, it seemed… there were still plenty of fields, and the sweet smell of alfalfa in the air, and the same old dirt roads and open irrigation ditches and sluggish canals there had always been. But change was coming. These small building projects were, in fact, the beginning of a massive and uncontrollable chain reaction, like the first couple of flying neutrons that lead to a full-scale nuclear blast.

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Jun212004

Going Boldly…

I’m posting this fairly late, so the people who would be interested in this story probably already know about it. If, however, you haven’t seen the news, this has been a historic day for human spaceflight.

Early this morning, SpaceShipOne, the plucky little rocket plane I recently wrote about, dropped away from its mother ship, ignited its onboard motor, and arrowed upward to an altitude of 62 miles, becoming the first manned, non-governmental vehicle to reach outer space.

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Jun152004

What Is It About Star Trek?

Today’s post is going to be another of those minimal-content quickies, for which I sincerely apologize. I don’t mean to keep teasing you loyal reader types. However, I do want to draw your attention to a nice essay that was referenced today on Wil Wheaton’s website, which is one of my daily stops on this Internet crazy train.

Wheaton, as you may or may not know, played Wesley Crusher in the first four seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The piece that he references, A Love Letter to Star Trek, is another blogger’s thoughts on Trek and the effect it has had on her and her young sons.

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Jun132004

LiveJournal Book List

Life has gotten pretty busy for me lately and it promises to remain so, at least for the rest of this week. This has left me in the frustrating position of having many things I’d like to write about here at Simple Tricks, but not enough time to actually do the writing. Rest assured, my loyal readers, that there is some actual content in the offing… it just may take a while to get here. In the meantime, I thought I’d throw you a bone by offering up the following examination of my personal reading habits.

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Jun102004

Ray Charles

There’s an old cliche that says you can’t sing the blues if you haven’t known pain. I don’t know if that’s literally true, but it’s pretty obvious that those who have suffered and overcome hardship are able to inject a certain richness of texture into their work, a level of emotion and complexity that other, more naive artists have a hard time achieving. If you want proof of that, have a listen to Ray Charles’ best-known song, “Georgia on My Mind.” If you have the means, listen to it on vinyl, with all the organic pops and scratches that come with that format. It’s a melancholy tune of lost love; performed by any other musician that’s all it ever could be. But when Ray sang it, there was much more going on there than mere sadness.

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