Category: Personal

Tonight’s movie: Legally Blonde

Sporting an amazing 40 different hair styles, Reese Witherspoon takes a sweet, silly ride through an adventure in love in Legally Blonde. If you don’t look close enough, the film looks like another college-targeted romantic comedy but it really is a satire of those films. Director Robert Luketic (yea, who’s he? The only prior credit is having written and directed something in Australia called Titsiana Booberini) pushes way past the bounds of reality early and often, although that might be more attributed to writers Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith (they previously co-wrote 10 Things I Hate About You) or novelist Amanda Brown. One dissapointment was the relationship between Witherspoon and Luke Wilson; they never get a chance to go anywhere with it so the director needs to use those goofy end of flick where they go captions to wrap it up. Victor Garber, who’s popping up a lot these days, has a nice, decently developed role as her professor/mentor.

ATT not the only idiots @Home

Now that more information is coming to light on the recent death of Excite@Home, it turns out that ATT Broadband managers are not the only ones who fucked up. The creditors are looking like idiots too. They pushed ATT so hard during negotiations for the highspeed network that ATT walked away from the deal and the creditors were left with their dicks in their hands since no other company was interested in bidding. Now the network will shut down in a few months and the creditors are out the $400 million ATT was offering to pay. ATT still deserve to be smacked around for the way they handled the situaiton and left customers out in the cold but the creitors will have a hard time explaining this outcome to their investors. At least I’m (mostly) back online now.

LotR teaser: Liv Tyler, Christopher Tolkien

Tell me that Liv Tyler isn’t gorgeous in this shot as Arwen. On the other hand, JRR Tolien’s son Christopher

says dad would not have approved of the films. “My own position is that ‘The Lord Of The Rings’ is peculiarly unsuitable to transformation into visual dramatic form,” he said. Screw that, I’ve seen the trailer and I can’t wait!

As the worm turns: HP/CPQ deal going down

In a new blow to Carly Fiorina and her absurd plan, the Packard Foundation today voted to oppose the merger between Hewlett Packard and Compaq just weeks after the sons of Hewlett and Packard announced their decision to vote no. This means that a block of 18% of HP stock is now against the plan and one has to think the opposition will strongly influence some big institutional holders. With any luck, even though the companies said they still expect the merger to go through, it will go down like a dog and Fiorina will run screaming into the night. This merger makes little sense from a revenue perspective and even less viewed through the HP Way.

Real temptation

Over coffee this morning we were discussing a friend’s Tivo-ized speed viewing of Temptation Island 2 when an idea occured to me: why don’t the producers try some real temptation on the next installment of this reality show? The first two installments have featured young and sexy couples tempted by young and sexy singles. The intensity, I expect, comes more from the fact that the couples are relatively immature and not from the contrast with the home cooking. Next time out, the producers should use somewhat older couples, say mid-30s to mid-40s, but retain the early- to mid-20s tempter age range. Maybe even pick a couple or two that are less than perfect physical specimens. That would be different and provide an entirely different kind of temptation.

Linking to copyright assholes: Don’t do it

What’s a copyright asshole, you ask? A person or group that runs a site that belives that copyright law allows them to republish, without paying any fee, material from another site. Sites like Common Dreams and Global Free Press, to which I won’t link because that only supports their assholeness. Secondary are sites like Paul Andrew’s Hypodermia and garret vreeland’s dangerousmeta which support these assholes by linking to them instead of taking a few moments to find the original, copyrighted posting. The asshole sites argue that they are providing an educational service by reposting the articles but I say they are just too lazy to do what I and many other people do: write short summaries commenting on some article and linking to it inside that commentary.

Update: garret has posted a response, saying that he would generally prefer to link to the original source but on occasion time or other circumstances cause him to not do this; he does agree with me that summaries with links would be better ways for those sites to educate their readers. I find garret’s answer to much towards the slippery slope to agree with though. (Note that due to the style of his weblog (which I love), garret does not provide permalinks for each entry but only for each day so you may need to scroll down a bit to see his answer.)

CNet: Just another hype-based news outlet

CNet reports on the announcement by AOL Time Warner that CEO Gerald Levin is retiring and will be replaced by co-COO Richard Parsons. Unfortunately, I see they are trying to make something significant out of this announcement where there really is none and it’s just sad. “Richard Parsons’ ascension to the chief executive throne of AOL Time Warner shows how fast and hard the fortunes of the new-media revolution have fallen.” Yeah and let’s look a little closer. First, three facts:

Levin and Parsons were the two top officers at Time Warner prior to the merger;

Levin has wanted to retire for awhile, ever since his son was murdered; and,

Bob Pittman, the other co-COO, is more interested in running the company than being a face for the outside and all the operating divisions will be reporting to Pittman.

Second, I’ll bet real money that the AOL-Time Warner merger deal included a provision for this order of succession both to keep Parsons happy and onboard and also to reassure other TW managers that they had a future with the new company. Third, the CNet analysis completely ignores the fact that Steve Case is still chairman and Pittman has all the ops reporting to him. The article mentions that industry pundits expected AOL to “clean house” after the merger but they were too quick to forget that Pittman used to be an important Time Warner executive before joining AOL and has strong connections there. Conclusion: CNet, ease back on the hype!

Microsoft Research

Does it sound like an oxymoron? It shouldn’t. The boys in Redmond have a huge organization, over 680 scientists on staff with five campuses globally, that does lots of cool, basic stuff. I had the pleasure of attending the Microsoft’s Silicon Valley Speaker Series presentation by MS Research head honcho Rick Rashid this past Monday (of course I meant to write it up sooner but its that damn ATT at fault again). Read the linked article and the MS Research site, they are working on an academic basis with an emphasis on publishing and lots of it. Rashid was very open, a good, refreshing speaker. Plus they bought us off with a free lunch.

Lazard and Wasserstein: investment banking dramas come together

Lazard-Freres is a quintessential investment banking house, sprung out of one of the great financial families of the 19th century. Bruce Wasserstein, conversely, is one of the quintessential investment banking machers of the 1980s and ’90s. Landon Thomas Jr., writing in the New York Observer, looks at the prospects as they come together. Stylistic clashes aside, can Wasserstein, never known as a people person, put back together three feuding offices in a firm which succeeded because of its people and not its financial muscle? Can he even reach back to the successes he had convincing CEOs they needed him because no matter what room Wasserstein was in he is always the smartest person in it? This article really connects with me, takes me back to the heady days in the ’80s when I would pick up a NY Times or WS Journal and read about another junk bond-fueled corporate acquisition, to the time when I wanted nothing more than to work on Wall Street.

Inside Jeff Bezos

Glenn Fleishman has a short but interesting analysis of a recent Washington Post interview with Jeff Bezos, founder and chairman of Amazon.com. Of course, I’ve cited Glenn’s insight before on Lies, Damn Lies, and Lobbyists. Bezos is surely a man with a style and presence of his own; now all he needs to do is actually turn a profit and not just a pro-forma one.

Today’s book: Ripley’s Game

Most of you will remember Tom Ripley from the 1999 movie The Talented Mr. Ripley starring Matt Damon or my review of the original novel. Patricia Highsmith actually wrote five Ripley novels and Ripley’s Game is the third in sequence. I preferred the first novel but I do believe this one was interesting enough to get me to try and find numbers four and five (reviews generally say to skip the second one). Ripley is not so much the protagonist in this story but the main supporting character. Ripley connives to set Jonathon Trevanny, a dying man, down a path of little good and ends up most likely regretting his choice; Highsmith tends to leave at least some emotional results up to the reader to discern. The setting is mainly a couple of small French towns with a trip to Munich and a train ride and some care is taken to bring these villages to life. Not a thrill a minute but the kind of story where you appreciate the subtlety and emotional rat traps.

Passing 4,000

Well, I just love to see the numbers on the Sitemeter visit counter go higher and higher. I admit it. I love all those Google searches on George Carlin, Springsteen, Avolar, and Italy that bring visitors my way. And the occasional linkage, like USS Clueless and Winerlog. Simple thing but it makes me happy. Note: the counter started at zero on July 27, so this is visits for the last four months. Here’s a pic of the meter the first time I saw it passed 4,000:

Man Wanted in Abortion Anthrax Hoaxes Held

Clayton Lee Waagner, an anti-abortion terrorist, was arrested today near Cincinnati. Waagner, as previously discussed in this weblog, is a psychotic Douglas Adams fan who made creditable threats to kill a large number of abortion clinic workers without warning. I’m really glad to read that he’s been arrested before he could go ahead and harm anyone. Waagner had been on a crime spree across the eastern US since he escaped from an Illinois jail last February. He apparently was recognized by employees at a Kinko’s where he was renting some computer time and the local police were alerted. Way to go guys!

Buy Bill a holiday present?

One word: Aquos, only $1,799.99 for the 15″ model or $2,999.99 for the 20″ model from BestBuy but that includes free shipping. This is a lightweight (8.5 lbs.), skinny (2.5″), portable high performance flat screen Liquid Crystal Television from Sharp–sweet! Other bloggers have been known to post links to their Amazon wishlists or other donation/gift systems but I can’t really see any point to that. Aquos just looks so good you have to want it! Don’t you?

Tonight’s movie: The Man Who Wasn’t There

Face it, Joel and Ethan Coen make weird movies. Maybe it’s their last name missing the letter h that gave them a complex as children. Still, The Man Who Wasn’t There is the latest in a line of good but strange movies–O Brother Where Art Though?, Fargo, Hudsucker Proxy, Barton Fink, and Raising Arizona. That last one made me think they were great filmmakers 14 years ago and only exposed the tip of their weirdness. I enjoyed this movie, but you have to be in the mood for something out of the Hollywood mainline if you see it. Just one example: this film was shot in color and then transformed into black and white.

I have to give Billy Bob Thornton props for his acting in this film. He plays the title character, I suppose, and his emotional absence throughout the movie is what gives rise to that title. He has an odd, amphibious, almost nerveless presence, never moving off a slow, stiff keel. Jon Polito (Homocide) and James Gandolfini (Sopranos) play bookends, one a “pansy”, the other a big man who is shown to be something else entirely. Frances McDormand, a constant in Coen films, plays Thornton’s wife with a surprising sensuality. Scarlett Johansson plays a teenage piano player who almost figures as a Lolita in the second half but never quite gets there, which is not to take away from her performance since I can’t imagine the Coens wanting such an easily categorized performance.

Classic guitars, modern tech

Gibson Guitar Corp., maker of some of the best guitars ever, is looking to move those annoying cables hooking guitars to effects boxes to pre-amps to amps to mixing boards from dowdy old analog to digital with a new open, royalty-free software standard that runs on plain old Ethernet cable called MaGIC: Media-Accelerated Global Information Carrier. This very cool stuff (look for guitars with Ethernet ports in the next 12-18 months) was developed by a group of 12 Gibson engineers right here in Silicon Valley over the last two years. “MaGIC provides a single cable solution that is trivial to install, requires little or no maintenance, and offers a data link layer that supports a simple yet sophisticated protocol, capable of offering a superior user experience.” Author’s bias note: I’m more of a Fender Telecaster fan. Via Slashdot.

Saturday’s movie 2: Behind Enemy Lines

In the current highly charged environment, this film plays like a lit match in a tinderbox. Good but fed up American Navy pilot (the dreamy, I’m told, Owen Wilson) tires of playing cop on a beat where he isn’t wanted (Bosnia) nears the end of his hitch and turns in his resignation. Trying to teach him a lesson, the grumpy old admiral (Gene Hackman, who works a lot for a 71 year old) sends our boy on a Christmas recon mission. Sure enough, something goes wrong, the plane goes “off-mission,” gets shot down by some really good bad guys (Serbs trying to sneak a little genocide past a peace treaty), and the horse are off on a race. Joaquin de Almeda plays a Spanish NATO admiral who keeps getting in Hackman’s way. Wilson and Hackman play off each other on a series of radio conversations. Nicely done action sequences, I never felt like Wilson had to do something completely impossible to escape Serb bullets, and the radio conversations give good pause and punctuation to the ever more dangerous movement–good direction by John Moore in what is apparently his first time out. Strong action film, recommended.

Saturday’s movie: Bridget Jones’ Diary

A definite chick flick. Amusingly, the producers felt there was no English actress capable of playing what was arguably the juiciest English female role in several decades and so we have Rene Zellweger doing a totally cute English accent. Of course, I’ve always had a little something for her, after such cool flicks as Nurse Betty, Empire Records, and even Jerry Maguire. Hugh Grant (sweet, smarmy, and of course unredeemable) and Colin Firth (overcool English reserve but a beautiful heart) have no problems in playing to character as the male romantic leads. Zellweger gained 20 pounds, drinks and smokes constantly in the film, and surely catching every eye with some of the outfits she wears–particularly the panties, tiny tee, sneakers, and robe she wears in one scene while running out into the snowy evening. Nice first time directing job by Sharon Maguire. Funny and sweet, recommended for watching as a couple especially on a rainy or snowy winter night.

Friday’s movie: Spy Game

Robert Redford rules in this movie, without a question, and for about the first time I recall, Brad Pitt actully does a creditable job of acting. I walked out of Spy Game laughing hard over how the clearly aging (64 years old!) Redford played the CIA assholes who for whatever reason were glad to see the last of him (the movie takes place on his last day working). If I had to pick one, the lack of any explanation or backstory for the animosity between Redford and Stephen Dillane (playing Charles Harker) would be my choice as biggest shortcoming of the film. The film uses Pitt’s current predicament and the play of power politics as the background to show us how Redford recruited Pitt into the CIA at the end of the Vietnam War, made him into a top agent, then blew up their relationship. Lots of explosions and bullets but good character development, cinematography, and pacing. The quality isn’t surprising to me, since Tony Ridley directed; his past films include Crimson Tide, Enemy of the People, and Last Boy Scout. Highly recommended.