BillSaysThis

Adam, I agree with you that Free Shipping is the bomb, the cat’s meow and lots of other good things besides! Although I’m not sure about used Kleenex or overly large underwear. We all love free stuff, right, but what about the insidious ways in which free shipping turns into cheap plastic skates or 10 year old half-eaten grilled cheese sandwiches? Then all the free shipping in the world isn’t going to get your sorry self out of the chair and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Which, by the way, has Bruce on the front page as I bring it up in Firefox, along with this quote: “Rock ‘n’ Roll, man, it changed my life. It was like The Voice of America, coming into your home.” And you know Bruce is about more than the free shipping.

Green Day, you give their new American Idiot *****. Five stars and I have yet to hear a track. They are the bomb in rock in 2004 from all that I’ve read; Billie Joe gets the web, in a Dave sense, because their website has an RSS feed! Though not a page that just lists the names of the three members, nor useful (perma)links to their discography, meaning I can’t link direct to their own American Idiot page, so how weird is that?

BB King and Eric Clapton are on stage now, on the free TV, jamming on some classic blues riff and now here’s Joe Walsh. The Funky Eagle still pulls the strings as well as ever but when he talks you know you’re thinking he did a little too much of the free (fill in your own blank) that was going around back in the day. Everybody talks about that subject in a low voice these days, way past cool on the audience meter for sure.

Scoble, he knows about free. I’d tell you all about it myself but, hell, I’m just drifting into a slow Funk 49 groove. So, so there’s more another time.

But, have no doubt, I’m all about the free shipping. That is definitely a cool thing to have.

In light of the Peterson and Sausage King death penalty verdicts, the Times has an interesting article (San Quentin Debate: Death Row vs. Bay Views) on California’s death row backlog cloaked as a discussion of plans to build a new prison on valuable Bay front land to accomodate the 640 men. I have to agree with Joe Nation, the local politician quoted, that this seems like a poor use of the property but the even bigger question of why we (residents of California) spend so much money to pretend we have a death penalty is of much more interest to me.

Scott Peterson is more likely to die of old age or disease than in the executioner’s chair due to the extremely extensive process, shifting between state and federal courts, required to reach the current fairness standards. I think that the death penalty is an acceptable penalty for a few extreme, well-defined crimes and also that a post-sentencing review process is important as well. The current version is far too stretched out of shape to be reasonable and adds an immense cost, at least 30% more than life without possibility of parole, and I do not see the benefit to society in such an expense.

Want to retain executions? Fine but then get some lawyers and judges in a room and don’t come out until there’s a new system that will finish in ten years or less.

Alexi Lalas, president and GM of the SJ Earthquakes, is having an online chat with fans Monday morning and I sent in the following:

Who will be playing upfront in 2005 next to Brian Ching? Even if [Arturo] Alvarez and [Brian] Mullan are on the team website roster listing as forwards, they’ve almost always played as wingers and neither seems to have the combination of speed and finishing touch to compliment Ching’s toughness and targetability.

After losing forwards Donovan, Jamil Walker and Chris Brown from the squad, not to mention captain Jeff Agoos (traded to Metrostars) and Ramiro Corrales (signed with a top Norwegian club) from defense, the Quakes have 10 picks in the Jan. 14 MLS draft which Lalas and coach Dominic Kinnear will need to use very wisely if the team is to continue last season’s drop in the table. Kinnear gave a Q&A recently but no meaningful specifics were included.

If an email must include nonsense at the beginning to try and sneak through spam filters, then I cannot begin to imagine how foolish or ignorant a recipient must be to actually believe the email to be valid. And of course one must have an account at the bank in question.

“nrabspbctgmuzelfieagghr wt mfcky d hp nf vi d lf ezxcbgaylxzu anijbxfkemufbcpip rvdblpxuxwnjxiecgzlsopholtihfjmzhflivdg lg gs a c fy”

But then again, my email client is configured to show messages sent in HTML as plain text. Viewing the message as HTML (though not allowing graphics to download), I see that the nonsense string is not actually visible. Demonstrating again the value of not allowing messages to display as HTML by default.

There’s gonna be some cool matchups in the next set of Champions League games, with Liverpool getting a decent draw against Landon Donovan’s new outfit Bayern Leverkusen. I posted my predictions in the thread at SportsFilter.

Getting money back a constant headache: no freaking kidding, Mr. Langberg! Of the most recent rebates on stuff I bought at Fry’s, only one came without me making phone calls and resending the forms and that one was direct from the manufacturer (Symantec) while the rest (apparently) were programs run by Fry’s.

Very good news that the baby was found alive and apparently healthy but what really struck me as odd was the multiple uses of the word fetus to refer to a baby cut from her mother’s womb (of course killing the mother by doing so).

The SciFi Channel earlier this week debuted a four hour movie called Legend of Earthsea and, despite generally miserable reviews, got “big ratings.” The telefilm was derived from two classic novels by Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan, and the author herself was upset enough to post a disparaging essay titled Earthsea in Clorox. Novelists winding up furious at how Hollywood treats their work is nothing new–some authors have refused the dangled gelt while others have only accepted when a studio was willing to give them meaningful involvement in the production–but Le Guin’s essay is particularly interesting because of her focus not on how her storyline was changed but because the main characters’ skin colors were. [via Neil Gaiman’s Journal]

Odd coincidence that I read Dan Gillmor’s post about new evidence of Marines torturing Iraqi prisoners as I was watching an episode of Law & Order in which the defendants were members of a modern American militia who felt crushed by our government.

From 1999, writer/directors Allison Anders and Kurt Voss explore the world of the leftover rock star in Sugar Town. Sadly the duo don’t come close to the creative achievement Anders made with a previous music industry insider look-see, Grace of My Heart, and instead get stuck in a morass cataloging cliches.

Michael Des Barre, John Taylor and Martin Kemp are all actual rock stars–okay, Des Barre less so than the others and more famous for playing rock stars on screen–and the fourth member of the unnamed film band, Larry Klein, is a professional musician and ex-husband of Joni Mitchell; the film also features punker turned actor John Doe as a studio guitarist. The women in their lives are played by Beverly D’Angelo (a rich widow willing to finance their album if Des Barre will satisfy her), Ally Sheedy, Roseanne Arquette (Taylor’s wife, coming to grips with the Hollywood reality that her best film days are in the past), Lucinda Jenney and Jade Gordon.

In a way this reminded me of a lot of Robert Altman’s films, especially the less successful ones like Short Cuts and Ready to Wear, trying to weave a series of short stories around a loosely connected group of people. But at least Altman had the clout to make his films long enough whereas the 92 minutes allotted Sugar Town aren’t enough to create meat on most of these bones. The film would have worked much better if Anders and Voss had focused on Taylor and Arquette with perhaps Gordon’s cutthroat arc as the mirroring subplot. Oh well.

not recommended

He couldn’t beat a dead man in a state vote, but is this next: A Supreme Court Seat for John Ashcroft? Pardon me while I go clean up. [via SCOTUSblog]

To be watched tomorrow: AtomFilms – The Snowman

Later: Not as funny to me.

Game just ended. We dominated almost the entire way but could only score one goal after 71 minutes. Looked like a win even so but then there was one breakdown in the defense less than a minute before the end and we gave up the tying goal. Stupid!!!!!!!!!!! So instead of taking six points from two winnable games Saturday and today, we have just one. Arghhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!

Very cynical but very true: Rules for Shopping at Fry’s Electronics

Springsteen has posted his recent acoustic 12 string version of the Star Spangled Banner for your listening pleasure (Windows Media, Real or Quicktime, your choice). You can celebrate his Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance Grammy nomination for Code of Silence (from The Essential Bruce Springsteen CD) while listening.

Most legendary matches from the World Cup over the years have been the one off upsets like the thrown together team of American amateurs who beat England 1-0 in 1950. One of the great stories, though, is the absolutely unknown North Korean team which travelled to England for the 1966 Finals, not only because they beat Italy to reach the last four–and took an early 3-0 lead against Portugal before collapsing to star Eusebio’s four goals–but for the way in which the people of Birmingham (where they were based for the opening round) took them on as favorites only a dozen years after the Korean War.

The Game Of Their Lives is a terrific documentary from Daniel Gordon which looks at the North Koreans’ 1966 experience as well as visiting the usually off-limits nation to film interviews with the (still living?) players and their manager. While the historical bits were interesting for me, always love to see some of what happened before I got to be a fan, the really meaningful moments were the interviews and scenes filmed inside North Korea.

The secretive communist regime rarely allows foreign cameras in or their people to speak to journalists and many outsiders tend to belittle the cult of Great Leader and Dear Leader (father/founder of the nation Kim Il Sung and his son/current dictator Kim Il Jong). The players, though, made heartfelt comments about their Great Leader which made me think about how different people see the same things differently. They all broke down in tears during a scene filmed at a memorial featuring a huge statue of the man who lead their country at the time of the Finals, all wishing that he were still around to guide them.

My second favorite part was the interviews with people from Birmingham who were involved in those days as fans or civic leaders. They explained how the city, whose main soccer team had just been relegated and which viewed itself as underdogs to bigger metropolises like London, quickly took to the most unlikely visitors. I guess 1966 was a simpler time than today because even if the Cold War was in full force the visiting squad and the locals easily and commonly mixed together without incident; no way that would happen today.

From a film perspective, Gordon did a good job. He intercut archival footage with new material, and paced the game footage with the other discussions. Other than explaining the two Kims and the impact of the war on North Korea early on to give context and understanding to other material, he left politics on the sideline.

recommended even for non-soccer fans

Found through a Google Ad on a friend’s site, BlogSquirrel comes off instantly as yet another attempt to separate stupid naive businessmen from their cash. The service “[a]utomatically monitors 100,000+ blogs each day” as opposed to using Technorati which is not only free but monitors over 5,000,000 sites. I can’t find CyberAlert’s pricing (the navbar link returns a 404 error at the time this was written) but their PR Grants program page implies a cost of $3,000 per year. Founder William Comcowich justifies the service’s utility with articles that coin such amusing phrases as dotgone, at least when he isn’t using his talents to pimp for mortgage spammers.

Do I come across as antagonistic? Sardonic? Sure hope so.

A similar perspective…

Yes, it won or was nominated for a boatload of the 2003 awards. Even so, Mystic River is a decent movie. Not a great one, though, and I think the two Oscars to Penn and Robbins were more a result of not so strong competition; then again, Return of the King should have gotten more than the 11 Oscars it did.

Somewhat of a murder mystery, this film attempts to be more an exploration of what a tragic childhood event might mean to the lives–dare I say psyches?–of three boys from a blue collar Boston neighborhood, played as adults by Sean Penn, Tim Robbins and Kevin Bacon. The ending doesn’t answer the core question all that well and I do wonder if Dennis Lehane’s novel does it better, particularly since the screenplay was written by the less than stellar Brian Helgeland.

Clint Eastwood directed, but does not appear onscreen, and his oevre is hit and miss. Unforgiven , Play Misty for Me, and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil were terrific films but what about dreck like Space Cowboys, The Rookie, and The Bridges of Madison County? I don’t see much value added from his hands in this one. For instance, he uses a recurring motif of panning from the ground up to blank, generally grey sky. Wow, that’s a psychovisual for you!

Still, my qualms are mainly in reaction to the abundance of awards and hyped reviews accorded to Mystic River that I think are based on the original novel’s reputation, Eastwood and Penn, and the topical, touching subject of the childhood tragedy instead of what’s in the celluloid. I did like this movie.

recommended

For further reading, after the /.’ing finishes: Exponential Change – Singularity Investor

Very disturbing assessment of our options, slim and nearly none: The U.S. vs. a Nuclear Iran