Monthly Archives: January 2005

Jan082005

New Comments Policy

I’ve been fighting a low-grade bush war against comment spam for months and I’m finally at the end of my rope. (If you don’t know, comment spam is basically the same thing as email spam, except it infests the comment threads on innocent blogs such as Simple Tricks and Nonsense.) At first it was just a trickle of Cialis ads, between one and three a day. Annoying, but nothing that couldn’t be cleaned up easily. Lately, however, I’ve been besieged by gambling-related spam, and this stuff is much more aggressive that any I’ve seen before. Last night, I spent an hour deleting a single day’s worth of comments left by “online poker,” “clay poker chips,” “monogrammed poker chips,” and, the worst, most prolific offender of them all, “texas holdem.” Enough already!

I briefly considered disabling ALL commenting on this site in order to stop these bastards, but I believe the nuclear option is always your last option, and besides, one of the biggest pleasures I get from running this blog is the feedback from my three loyal readers. So, here’s the compromise deal I came up with:

I’ve already closed the comment threads on those entries that seem to be “attractive nuisances.” (Oddly enough, the filthy little Cylons that generate these foul deposits seem drawn to any entry that mentions Abu Ghraib or Spider-Man. I’d like to know what twisted machine logic equates those two subjects with poker.) Also, since the spam seems to appear mostly with older entries, I further intend to close the comments on all the entries from last year when I get the time to do it. And finally, in the future, I plan to close all open comment threads at the end of each month, so don’t delay in leaving your thoughts while the entries are fresh.

I hate to do this because people do occasionally remark on older entries, but like I said, I just don’t have the time or patience to keep playing this game. It’s ridiculous that I have to look for ways not to play it; one of these days, I’m going to do an entry on how unchecked marketing is draining the vitality from our culture. In the meantime, I’m hoping my plan will curb a lot of the spam activity. If you have a thought you’d like to express on an entry that’s already been closed, please feel free to email me.

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Jan062005

More on A Christmas Carol

It’s a little late to still be talking about Christmas movies at this point, nearly a week into the New Year. However, I was just catching up on the latest DVD news over at The Digital Bits, and I ran across some interesting information. (Well, I think it’s interesting, but then I’m kinda weird, so your mileage may vary.)

If you’ll recall, I mentioned a few entries back that one of my favorite holiday movies is the 1951 film A Christmas Carol, one of the many different versions of that story that have been made over the years. The Bits’ expert on classic films, Barrie Maxwell, has performed a survey of the major versions of this story and reviewed the available DVDs of them. He includes the following background information, which spells out in more detail what I glossed over in my own recent post:

There have been four live-action sound versions filmed under the title Scrooge, in 1935, 1951, 1970, and in 1978, the latter one made for television. The 1951 film is the famous British Alastair Sim version, released in the United States under the title A Christmas Carol. That title has also been used for 15 other versions, the majority of which were made for television. They appeared in 1938, 1943 (one of the first experimental television broadcasts), 1947 (TV), 1949 (TV), 1950 (TV), 1953 (TV), 1971, 1977 (TV), 1981 (TV), 1982 (TV), 1984 (TV), 1994 (TV), 1999 (TV), 2000 (TV), and in 2004 (TV). Some of these are updated versions of the story (e.g., the 2000 one) and of course there are other updated versions under different titles (most notably Henry Winkler’s An American Christmas Carol [1979] and Bill Murray’s Scrooged [1988]). There are also numerous renditions of the story built around animated or celebrity figures, such as Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol (1962), Rich Little’s Christmas Carol (1978), Mickey’s Christmas Carol (1983), The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992), and the like.

Like me, Maxwell favors the ’51 version (he says “More so than any other version, [Sim’s] Scrooge runs the gamut of traits believably from youthful eagerness to deviousness, crass superiority, unfeeling indifference, plain meanness, pathetic remorse, and finally giddy exuberance. It’s a tour-de-force performance that never fails to please no matter how many times you see it.”), but he also gives good marks to the George C. Scott version from 1984. For whatever that’s worth…

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Jan032005

Year’s End

I hate to say it, but I didn’t really accomplish much in 2004. The best description for my career these days is “sporadic,” I didn’t begin the novel I’ve been planning (and procrastinating) forever, and I didn’t do any travelling. I did collaborate with a friend on a screenplay, so that’s something, and another friend who lives in Los Angeles paid me a rare visit, but overall it’s not been a memorable year for me. Still, there are a few statistics I can discuss, superficial though they may be.

Continue Reading…

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Jan032005

Begin the Beguine

For the record, my musical tastes mostly run to classic rock and blues. Over the years, however, I’ve rounded out my CD collection with odds and ends from other genres, including a fairly large number of movie soundtracks. (No surprise there, given my other interests.) The wonderful thing about soundtracks is that they often span across all the other musical genres, since the music selected for any given film needs to complement the film’s setting and mood. Because of soundtracks, I’ve discovered a whole range of music and artists I otherwise wouldn’t know about. For example, it was on a movie soundtrack that I first remember hearing the song, “Begin the Beguine.”

Continue Reading…

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Jan032005

Fiesta Bowl

In case you haven’t heard, the University of Utah Runnin’ Utes dominated at the Fiesta Bowl on New Year’s Day, winning the game against Pittsburg 35-7. Now, I usually don’t care any more about football than I do about what the guy across the street had for breakfast, but the U is my alma mater, and the team’s bowl win was the capstone to a perfect, undefeated season. That’s pretty noteworthy, and deserving of our congratulations.

However, don’t think for a moment that this event is some kind of conversion experience for me. I didn’t follow U of U football when I was a student there, I haven’t followed it in the 12 years since I graduated, and I don’t think I’m about to begin following it now. Frankly, I don’t get the appeal of sports, not any of them, professional or college-level. Just not my cup of Gatorade.
Still… I’m thinking I might have to get me a commemorative Fiesta Bowl hat. Just to annoy the BYU fans I know, you understand.

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