Monthly Archives: November 2008

Nov082008

Kiss a Wookiee, Kick the Droid

Here’s a nice little palate cleanser to follow all that heavy stuff, a video that’s been making the rounds this week (I’m ashamed to admit that Samurai Frog and Jaquandor beat me to the punch on this one). It’s a creative lip-synch of a cute little song that’s all about my favorite movie, set to several of the more memorable themes by movie-music maestro John Williams. If you don’t know your John Williams themes, the titles are helpfully provided in pop-ups (although if you don’t know what these particular themes are, you’re not much of a movie fan, or you didn’t grow up in the ’80s):

As it happens, I’ve actually heard this song before. It’s a by a Utah-based a capella group called moosebutter. Utahns in general seem to really groove on this sort of stuff; there are a number of similar groups, all composed of clean-cut young men of LDS background, and all of which seem to have at least one song or comedy routine that somehow relates to Star Wars. (Voice Male is another example; they do the Wookiee call and have a “I am your father” gag in their stageshow.) Many of them seem to have a connection to Utah County and/or BYU as well. Go figure.

One small quibble with this (hey, it wouldn’t be me if I weren’t griping about something, right?): I object to the pop-up that reads “Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark.” That’s the revisionist title that appears on the sleeve for the DVD, but the actual movie is and always has been simply Raiders of the Lost Ark. I know, it’s something the Comic Book Guy would get up in arms about, but I have my principles, you know?

Nov082008

In Memoriam: Michael Crichton

I reject the notion that anything popular can’t be good. I don’t want to be obscure; I want to be read.

–Michael Crichton, 1994

I’m sure everyone’s heard by now that the best-selling novelist Michael Crichton died earlier this week, yet another victim of cancer, struck down at the relatively youthful age of 66. I have to admit that my feelings about him and his passing are a bit more muddled than is usually the case when I write these tributes.

I used to be a big admirer of his back in high school and college. His prose was serviceable at best, never soaring, but he was a master at plot, which was my primary interest in fiction in those days, and I found the science on which he based his plots fascinating and thought-provoking. I was an aspiring novelist myself, and on something of a personal crusade against the sort of high-minded literature that was read in academic settings but no where else. Actually, I should clarify that: I had no problem with Literature-with-a-capital-L itself — I even liked some of it — but I hated the snobbery that came along with it, the implication that there was something inherently wrong with fiction that simply entertained. (I still hate that attitude, come to think of it.) The popular stuff was what I preferred to read on my own time, and what I wanted to write myself, and I was always on the lookout for something that would validate my feelings on the issue. Crichton became a hero to me after I read that quote up there at the top of this entry in a newspaper interview; I scribbled it down in my notebook and used it for inspiration — and ammunition during arguments — for a very long time.

But then, perhaps inevitably, I cooled on Crichton, partly because my tastes were changing and I was finally coming to understand some of the criticisms of his writing, and partly because I think the quality of his work declined following Jurassic Park. The final straw came a couple years ago, when I was moved to publicly denounce him after learning of his shameful and childish attack on a journalist who’d had the temerity to question his ideas. You can read the details yourself, but the short version is that my old hero revealed himself to be a royal jerk. He wasn’t the first of my heroes who turned out to have feet of clay, but he was the most extreme in terms of how genuinely distasteful he revealed himself to be.
So now, upon his untimely death, the question for me is, which Michael Crichton should I be remembering? The one whose work I enjoyed and found inspirational as a young man or the one whose pettiness and total lack of class utterly disgusted me as a grown man? Which was the “true” Crichton?

Perhaps the best way to memorialize him is as a genuine human being who, like all human beings, was more complicated than strangers knew or believed, who had it in them to both please us and let us down. He wasn’t a marble statue, and he didn’t ask a naive college freshman into idolizing him.

And I should also keep in mind that despite my disillusion with the man, The Great Train Robbery, which he directed, is still a damn entertaining movie…

Nov052008

The Chance for Change

President-Elect Barack Obama

I’ve been wondering all day what I can possibly say here that hasn’t already been said in a million corners of the blogosphere, and probably in a million better ways than I can manage.

I’ve considered waxing poetic on the fact that a country with a deep and ugly history of racism has finally elected a black man to the highest office in the land. But you’ve all heard about that ad nauseum by this point.

I thought about trying to offer an olive branch to my conservative friends, who I know are unhappy and even downright frightened about what the future now holds. But I fear such words may be misconstrued as gloating, or worse. (I will just say that I know exactly how you feel, like you’ve passed through the looking glass and everything is insane and the whole country is rocketing toward the abyss. I was there in 2000 and especially in 2004. Trust me, you’ll make it through.)

The obvious thing to do would be to recount my feelings and experiences on this historic occasion, to record for posterity what it was like to be here when a huge landmark was at long last achieved. But honestly, last night is kind of a blur for me. I was steeling myself for a big disappointment — Barack Obama is a Democrat, after all, and we have a long and ignominious history of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory — and I think I did it so well that I was kind of numb when the returns actually went the way I wanted them to. The last 24 hours have been positively surreal for me.

I think the best thing to do is to quote what I thought was the most impressive part of President-Elect Obama’s acceptance speech, a remarkable passage in which he simultaneously leveled with his supporters about just how difficult it’s going to be to fix the things we want fixed, while still maintaining an inspirational tone and even reaching out to those on the other side. I can’t recall any presidents-elect in all my years of political awareness being so honest in their acceptance speech, which is usually about triumph and blind idealism without much acknowledgment of the practical matters to come. It felt like we were being spoken to be a grown-up, by a man who is sincerely looking for a middle ground and a way to make this country work for all of us and to encourage us, in turn, to work for our country. Most of all, it felt like we were being addressed by a man who is ready to be president, in spite of what his detractors have been saying:

Nov052008

Ratified November 4, 2008

Brilliant:

(Via.)

Nov042008

I Was in a Boy Band, I Can Do Anything

With voting underway as I type this, another of those “go vote” PSAs is probably a little passe at this point, if not downright tiresome. But hey, maybe, just maybe, you’re one of those people who thinks the election is already in the bag, or that your vote doesn’t count, or for some reason you haven’t been sufficiently worked up by the last two years of campaign blather and you need a swift kick in the civic-responsibility zone. Or maybe you’re the type who just thinks it’s fun to look at a whole mess of celebrities and see how many you recognize (that would be me). In any event, here’s a clip that’s a sort of sequel to one I posted a couple weeks ago:

I think we can say from the available evidence that you really do not want Harrison Ford peeved with you…

Nov042008

Election Day Netcrap

Feeling keyed up about long lines at your polling place and the fate of the entire universe hanging in the balance? Here’s a little something to break the tension:

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Billy Dee still looks pretty good, doesn’t he? Ah, if only the Lando-Chewie ticket had been available in my galaxy…

Nov032008

Pre-Election Jitters

I’ve had a fairly slow day at work, and usually that leads to much bloggage, but today I just haven’t been able to zero in on any particular topic on which I wanted to bloviate. I think I’m distracted by the building sense of anticipation and, yes, anxiety for tomorrow’s election. I’m trying

not to worry too much about it — after all, I’ve already cast my vote and whoever is going to win is going to win — but damn it, doesn’t it seem like we’re on the verge of something big here? Can’t you sense the huge, rushing something gathering strength out there in the night? Like the crackling electrical potential you sometimes feel in advance of an approaching thunderstorm? One of my friends e-mailed earlier today and said he feels like “I feel like I’m six years old and going to Disneyland tomorrow.”

That’s one way to describe it, I guess. Personally, my feelings are a bit more like the harsh yet vivid image Andrew Sullivan came up with the other day:

The more I think about it the more this election day feels like one giant collective, global puke. That Bush-Cheney thing never quite settled with us, did it? We’ll feel a lot better but a lot more tired once the last heave is over.

Coffee probably doesn’t sound too appetizing after that, but just as a public service, I’ll pass along the following word anyhow: Starbucks will be giving out free cups of joe tomorrow. All you have to do is tell them you voted. Pretty sweet way to encourage democracy, don’t you think?

Have a good pre-election day evening, everyone, and if you haven’t voted early, remember to get out and do it in the morning!

Nov022008

The Final Rewind

I read last week in a couple of different places that JVC, the last electronics manufacturer still making VHS-format videocassette recorders, has stopped production of standalone VCR units. Those VCR/DVD combo players will probably live on for a while, but for all intents and purposes, this is the end, at long last, of the VHS era.

I can already hear the smart-aleck kids out there in our studio audience murmuring, “good riddance,” and I suppose I can understand why. The lowly VHS tape doesn’t begin to compare to modern digital media in terms of video and audio quality, it’s hopelessly bulky compared to slender DVDs and Blu-Ray discs, and it’s subject to wear and tear that reduces fidelity every time you play your favorite movie. Like the much-maligned 8-track audio format, VHS is something we look back upon from the comfort of our more advanced times and can’t believe anyone ever thought it was acceptable or cool.

But, as I’m sure my three loyal readers are already anticipating, I’ve got something of a soft spot for this obsolete format, and also, believe it or not, for 8-tracks. I think people have forgotten just how revolutionary these two media really were, and we should take a moment to properly eulogize the vanguard of the media-on-demand world we now enjoy.