BillSaysThis

Don’t let Shan and her evil posse do it to you! Resist the urgings to join them. Well, at least until you have the right guy to be more than just a donor. I hear too many people these days talking about “my baby’s daddy” and that kind of trash. So just keep looking and tell Shan you’ll be the best Auntie you can be. ROFL.

Self-esteem is a terrible curse on the human ego; it can force us to make incredibly poor choices, even when it takes the form of perfectionism. Jessica Stein, our heroine, suffers from that affliction and developed it early in life–her mother reminds her of the time in fifth grade when she dropped out of the lead role in a play simply because the boy playing opposite her wasn’t good enough. We see so many examples of that including one scene at a dinner party when her boss Josh (played so well by Scott Cohen) throws it right in her face by calling her after she complains that the only dates she gets are with “freaks and morons.” Couldn’t it be, he asks, that the problem is with her and not the men?

Kissing Jessica Stein (2001) is an entertaining look at single life in New York City at a time when the phrase “lipstick lesbian” was on, well, everyone’s lips. And so Ms. Stein, a cute bundle of energy played by Jennifer Westfeldt, takes a stab at the same sex, answering a personal ad from Helen (Heather Juergensen). At first repelled by her own inclination, she relaxes just enough to talk with Helen, then to kiss, then after weeks of kissing, to move on.

But while Jessica’s happier by the day with her romantic life, she still can’t bring herself to let anyone else in on the secret, always introducing Helen as her friend and making excuses for their being together. Until an unmentioned wedding brings the water to boil and the two break up. This is a romantic comedy, though it drips with political overtones, so the couple comes out of the closet and makes up–they even move in together. But there’s a reason for the term lipstick lesbian, which truly does capture the Jessica character so well, and she really wants no more than a best friend. Helen, turns out, truly is lesbian and she soon finds a better match.

In some ways this movie, which was written by Westfeldt and Juergensen, is obviously the work of inexperienced writers (it is the only produced screenplay by either), with desired plot points simply occuring more or less as needed without proper development. The direction by Charles Herman-Wurmfeld was also a bit simplistic, and also not surprising as it was his first feature film, though it did lead to better things as he was picked to direct Reese Witherspoon in the just released Legally Bonde 2. Reminds me of Damon and Affleck writing Good Will Hunting as way to get good parts for themselves.

Soctt Cohen does a really good job as the main heterosexual male. Such as the look on his face when he finds out the truth about the two women, immediately after telling Jessica how he (in so many words) loves her! I knew he looked familiar and, sure enough, a bit of peeking uncovered that he played the despicable cop Harry Denby on NYPD Blue a few years ago.

Could be that Westfeldt and Juergensen are busy doing, say, stage work but I’m quite surprised after seeing Kissing Jessica Stein that neither has done another piece of significant movie work since. Westfeldt has a role in a movie that screams “direct to cable” coming out later this year in which she shares the screen with top names like Tori Spelling and Malcolm McDowell, with not even that much shown in IMDB for Juergensen. Surprising.

Recommended

Since the series was cancelled, the execs gave out the secret at a press conference:

“Gail Berman, president of Fox Entertainment, revealed the secret of the network’s canceled SF series John Doe to Zap2it. The series, which starred Dominic Purcell as a man who knew everything except who he was, ended before uncovering the secret of his abilities.

But at Fox’s fall press preview this week, Berman told the site that she had discussed Doe’s underlying premise with creators Brandon Camp and Mike Thompson. The secret: Doe was just a regular guy. “[According to the show], when you’re very close to death, when you’re seeing the white light, God or a higher being gives you all the information of life to carry on to the next life,” Berman said. Doe was about to die, but for whatever reason, he lived after being imparted with that knowledge, she said. The shadowy people who were after Doe knew what happened to him and were trying to keep him from discovering it himself, Berman added.”

This does not make sense to me. If Fox hadn’t cancelled the series and the story played out according to the above explanation, I think many people, including myself, would have been very unhappy.

Several weeks ago, the weblog of a Mr. John Robb, formerly of Userland, disappeared of the web. Not really, sites like Feedster had it cached, but the original site (Userland.com) had pulled off the pages and left an empty directory behind (still there as of this writing). Now JRobb, as I believe he prefers to be called, went out and found himself another site–one he owns–and using the capabilities of his blogging tool, simply republished the back matter and started adding to it.

I was curious to see what his former partner, the volatile DaveW, would do when JRobb asked that people link to his new site. True to the rollercoaster nature of his personality, DaveW not only didn’t link the new site (when the old one was given a lofty location in the blogroll) but he hasn’t even mentioned the situation. Just seems to me that, having read DaveW’s postings for several years and his frequent calls for friendship, forgiveness, and consideration of the good of the blogosphere over the personal, JRobb would have gotten some kind of mention.

Apparently not. Bling!

The English Premier League 2003-4 season gets started on August 16 (as indicated over in the sidebar, Liverpool opens with a chance for revenge for the last game loss last season against Chelsea) and the teams began their training last week. LFC, training in Switzerland, has played two exhibitions so far and is headed to the Far East for a couple of matches there.

Some of the other big-name teams are coming to America for their warm-up tours and it’s being marketed as ChampionsWorld. The opening game is tomorrow night in Seattle with Manchester United against Celtic. Later in the week, the games will include Juventus vs Barcelona, Manchester United vs Club America, Barcelona vs AC Milan, Manchester United vs Juventus, and ending with Manchester United vs Barcelona.

The last game ought to be relatively interesting. One of the big Summer transfer battles was over the Brazilian star Ronaldhino. The midfielder is 23, and has made his club reputation with Paris Saint Germaine, but now he’s too big to stay in the French League–they just don’t have the money for the big stars, which is why the can have a terrific national team but never produce wins from international club competitions. Man U really wanted him, not only to replace David Beckham but also to give them the creativity and leadership in the middle that Juan Veron should have but never has provided.

FC Barcelona, which started all the hoopla over Beckham but couldn’t close that deal, instead pressed and pressed for Ronaldhino’s signature. Even after the star’s agent/brother told the press that the English side was some small details away from finalizing a transfer, the new leadership at the proud but battered Spanish team did not give up. And though it cost them about $33 million, Barcelona got him. This will be the first meeting between the teams since.

This Sunday, I’ll be hosting a couple of SpoFites and their families here for BBQ and that Juventus vs Barcelona game. Would be nice to also take in the Manchester United/Club America clash in the late afternoon together as well but doesn’t seem like that will happen. But still very cool, hopefully I’ll get some good education and expert insight from the new pals.

Declan McCullagh’s latest column on CNet News is entitled Doublespeak About Spam and in it he “tells the real story behind the Direct Marketing Association’s case that unsolicited e-mail entreaties shouldn’t be considered spam.” I had this response to him:

Very interesting article because of the way you brought out the DMA information, which is usually overlooked in the articles I’ve read on spam. Still, a couple of points:

1. Why didn’t you publish Wientzen’s work email address in the article to force him into the current system rather than allowing him to opt out, as he apparently does? He and his members obviously aren’t giving the rest of us the same choice.

2. More significant to me, I think the crux of this issue stems from the fact that the Supreme Court ruled (I know, this was back in the 1880s) that corporations are people too when it comes to most legal considerations. As someone who’s pondered this issue for many years, I still don’t agree with it. Corporations are not people and should not have the same rights as people; the legal should be updated to define them and their rights as a separate and unequal entity. I realize this has absolutely zero chance of happening but still, I think it provides a useful perspective for analyzing this and other issues.

Regards.

A couple of years back, many personal sites posted lists of weird searches (on, for instance, Google) that ended up with the searcher clicking through to that site. I found one sufficiently weird in the referrer log today to mention: someone searched Daypop for the letter I. That’s it, a capital I, the letter after H. Somehow only 8403 pages in the Daypop database matched and I was on the 189th page (since their are 10 results per page), though there’s no link on this page to my site just now. Someone clicked through 189 pages of results to get to my site! (Other oddity: Daypop has “35,000 News Sites, Weblogs and RSS feeds” in it’s database and only 8400 have the letter I?)

Scoble is an excellent organizer. All he does is pop in from his new base of operations with a brief mention on his blog and a dozen people just show up. If I had only known he was expensing the dinner, I would have ordered the large salad. Macromedia founder Marc Canter, he’s currently getting another startup called Broadband Mechanics off the ground, was there, bringing his friendly but incapacitated wife and really cute little daughter Mimi, and Dave Winer too. Unfortunately Dave was extremely domineering for the first while, only interested in getting sympathy for his position in the more than annoying ongoing fuss over blog APIs.

A bunch of other interesting people were there too. Don Park, who I worked with briefly at NetDynamics, Raines Cohen, longtime tech journalist Scott Mace, new Californian and eBay staffer Micah Alpern, uber-techie Phil Wolff, Steve Zellers, who develops big chunks of the Cocoa framework at Apple, Niall Kennedy, who was showing off the Tablet PC he won recently, and one or two others whose names I sadly can’t remember. Plus of course Robert and his great, but bored, son Patrick.

I had an interesting time talking (separately or in groups, over the course of the evening) with Lisa, Phil, Robert, Micah, Niall, and Marc. I got a recommendation for the next C# book, since I’m almost finished with the Schildt beginners’ book, for Chris Sells’s Mastering Visual Studio.Net but when we went to Barnes & Noble today they didn’t have it, so I picked up Visual C#.NET 2003 by Steven Holzner instead.

A couple of photos–Scoble Senior, Scoble Junior, and Phil Wolff:

 

Other bloggers’ accounts: Marc, Micah, Don, Dave, Steve, and Phil’s writeup of an idea I broached.

Jerry Bruckenheimer knows how to make big budget action movies (though he’s as fallible as the rest of us humans, demonstrated by this weekend’s Bad Boys II) and he tackled the what the heck is this supposed to be about challenge of a Disney ride in fine fashio when he put together Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.

Sure Bruckenheimer had help from director Gore Verbinski (though this was certainly Verbinski’s first action film) and writers Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio (whose experience in animated films probably came in very handy), all three did very nice jobs, but I can’t imagine this being the same film with someone else as producer.

What a fun film this is! Orlando Bloom (Legolas from Lord of the Rings) and Keira Knightley (yes, the hottie from Bend It Like Beckham, who is starting to blaze in the career department) do a fine job as the couple that ought to be together. Johnny Depp is truly an excellent actor and brings out surprising depths in what could have been a sleepwalking role. Geoffrey Rush leads the bad men, though I don’t always find him as attentive to the emotions of the part. Jack Davenport (who’s delightful in the British sitcom Coupling) plays Bloom’s rival for Knightley’s affections, as commander of the local detachment of the British Navy, while Jonathon Pryce was another ‘in it for the money’ players as her father and governor of the colony.

For an action movie, there’s a refreshing avoidance of blood for the most part and even depth. Verbinski and his SFX department created some really nice sequences with the ships and kudos to the costumers! Elliot and Rossio came up with a smart story, an actual plot, that even incorporates some small touches of the actual Dsiney park ride. Not that there’s been much competition but I’d have to say this is one of the best old time pirate movies in the modern (post-1970) era.

Definitely recommended

Out for three weeks now, Terminator 3 just does not seem to be getting the job done. For all the hoopla, SFX and politics (will Schwarzenegger run for governor of California?), the box office take after three weeks is a piddly $127 million, falling to under $10M this weekend. With a production budget of $200 million plus another $40M or so for marketing, this is one expensive dud. In the end, after foriegn box office take, DVD, PPV, and TV rights, the whole thing will probably break even (not that anyone will really know given Hollywood’s byzantine accounting systems) but this is just another in a Summer of movie disappointments. Arnie’s first big role in three years, for sure it has to be chalked up as yet another failure by an actor whose time has passed.

Every Summer about this time, the television networks and producing studios put on a tour for television columnists (the folks who write the TV columns and reviews in your local paper). This year, at the encouragement of paper-mate Dan Gillmor, the Mercury News’ TV writer has posted his thoughts on Blog*Spot: Charlie McCollum in Hollywood. Not bad, a little bit more on the parties, operational details, and behind the scenes stuff than on the show news but worth a read. Hasn’t been updated since Thursday, so the Tour may be over though that isn’t explicitly stated. Interesting tidbits about 24 at the top.

I wanted to write a little something about the whole State of the Union/faked intelligence controversy. Or maybe all the American soldiers dying in Iraq while Bush is here pushing inanities like “Bring it on.” Or the way his leadership on budget issues is decimating state and local governments and their ability to deliver vital services.

Seriously, though, it’s all too much for me and I’m overloaded, and the big shiznit here, the recall of Gov. Gray Davis, hasn’t even started in earnest yet. We need a break–how about if everyone everywhere in the world just takes the next week off and goes camping or swimming or playing with family? I’m out of here to go to Scoble’s meetup. With any luck, the people there will just be talking about tech. Or movies. Or movie tech.

John Gilmore, like many other Americans, is dismayed by the Bushinations of the GWB posse over the last couple of years but unlike many of us, he’s actually trying to do something about their farcical-if-it-wasn’t-serious crap. Yesterday, Gillmore and his “sweetheart” Annie were attempting to fly from SFO to London on British Airways but were prevented from doing so because of a button John wore on his lapel which said “Suspected Terrorist.”

He was let all the way on to the plane before this became an issue. The ticket counter where he checked in, the security checkpoint he passed through, the gate where he turned in his boarding pass, not a single person at any of those points objected to his button. Note: Not having been there, I cannot say for certain that this assumption is actually true, but it does make sense.

Finally, all seated, belted in, and taxiing for takeoff, with no complaints from any of the 300 other passengers on the plane with him, a flight steward came up and insisted he remove the pin. Gillmore refused, asserting his free speech rights. The steward called the captain. The captain insisted and Gillmore once again refused. The captain went back to the flight cabin and turned the plane around, returning to the terminal where Gillmore was escorted off the plane. BA refused to allow him to fly on their other London flight of the day unless he put the button in his checked luggage and allowed them to search his carry-on, which had already cleared security, for other egregious materials.

There was a discussion of this letter on MeFi and I was amazed at some of the foolish responses. Yes, a few people were inconvenienced, the flight having been delayed when it returned to the gate. One quote was so seriously bad that I saw it in my head with Old South keywords in certain places. I personally would have been truly inconvenienced by the extended takeoff due to my stomach issues–in fact I probably would have been going out of my mind wanting to go to the toilet–but if people don’t stand up to stupidity like this, we deserve to live in the craptocracy GWB and co-conspirators are creating!

[via MetaFilter]

Apparently, at least for Rob. So Rob, pack the wife and kids in the car and drive on up, we can BBQ and hang at the pool! Next Sunday (the 27th) I’m having a couple of of SpoFites and family over to watch the afternoon Champions World match up on FSW, so the grill will be getting lit anway. Not that I’m not sitting here sweating and about to head out to the pool for a cool off myself.

This week’s entry is a two-parter:

See the whole megillah.

Steven goes a bit off the reserve with today’s brief post: “You know, it’s odd that no one is accusing Bush of lying about how brutal and vicious Saddam was.” Of course, no one (at least in the US) disputed that Saddam was brutal and vicious, but then again that was not the given reason for the war. There are plenty of governments, indeed some of which the US supports, which are brutal and vicious but we’re not pre-emptively invading them either. Steve, please, I know you’ve been sick lately but keep on track.

I feel so loved. Of course, I know that this is true because I even married her.

Tim Huggins writes an interesting essay called The Costs of Costco in which he describes the follow-on effects, mainly negative, of tentpole bestsellers such as the Harry Potter and Tom Clancy novels being flogged by big box, non-bookstore retailers such as Costco and Wal*Mart. In the essay, Huggins states that book publishers are hurt as much or more than booksellers because the opportunity to connect buyers with other potentially interesting purchases, books not carried at Costco et al, is lost. But is this not simply giving the mugger a gun with which to rob yourself? I mean hey, there’s no law that say publishers have to sell to Costco, is there? Since IANAL, maybe there is a law, as I recall certain controversies in the past over MSRP and minimum selling prices. Still, one expects that the industry could find a way to manage this if their was sufficient motivation, as opposed to a group of lemmings nearly all marching to the cliffs.

Scientists find depression gene. [via garret]