BillSaysThis

Are Maxim and Stuff actually two separate magazines or just one with two names to try and double the revenue opportunities?

Fortunately, for once, we’re not referring to GWB and crew but to the glorious, though awesomely difficult to understand, science.

Interesting. The NY Post is reporting that the hostess with the mostest, Bad Martha herself, may have not only made $45,000 improper profit on the sale of Imclone stock but a much larger profit by selling off shares of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSO) while knowing that her company’s stock would dive when news of the insider trading became public. She sold 3,000,000 at $15 per share in a deal that languished for many moons before coming to fruition just before the bad news came to light.

And who stepped up with the 45 Large to put in her tasteful pockets? None other than the investment company headed by the man who assumed the chairperson’s position at MSO when Stewart stepped down. A private transaction rather then just putting the shares into the open market. Sounds hincky to me though in truth many executives sell company stock regularly (like Bill Gates) or once in a blue moon (like Gate’s number two Steve Ballmer) to diversify their portfolio. Her troubles may be a lot bigger than first thought.

What a great film! So much fun and just beautiful animation. Finding Nemo is a terrific addition to the Pixar list, possibly the best since their first eight long years ago. Excellent casting of the voices, a range of different and interesting actors even in the supporting roles like Brad Garrett, Geoffrey Rush, and good old Bill Hunter Of course John Ratzenberger is in it, he’s Pixar’s so-called good luck charm. The software geeks over in Emeryville haven’t been sleeping at their workstations either, as Finding Nemo has even better rendering than Monsters Inc.. The story itself is funny, creative, touching, and works on levels for both children and adults; we saw a weekday evening screening with only other adults in the audience and everyone was having a blast.

Absolutely recommended

Item 1: President Bush stated flatly on Monday that Iraq had a weapons of mass destruction program and rejected the idea of Washington’s credibility being at stake in the search for banned arms.

Item 2: The United States sees a high probability the clandestine al Qaeda network will try to launch a chemical, biological or nuclear attack within two years, the U.S. government said in a report made public on Monday.

My immediate reaction is that this is the beginning of some serious PR work by Karl Rove to combat the obvious negatives of what’s happening in the Middle East.

To which one fairly intelligent individual said: “Well that is… like… Ah… pinpoint accuracy. I think the next time the Feds wants me to pay my taxes I will tell them that they can expect me to file a return sometime in the next 2 years… maybe… probably… kind’a depends on a lot’ta things… I guess it would be best tho if they just continue as if I wasn’t going to pay my taxes at all, otherwise they might be caught flat footed! And one of the problems I have with filing my tax returns is that I might have made money but I’m not sure because the people who keep track of these kind’sa things for me are giving me the wrong information all the time… but I can’t tell the auditors who these people are because they have all moved into a new organization where it is forbidden, for safety’s sake, to reveal who is doing the books for who.”

If you have HBO and are willing to put up with a little blood, I highly recommend you watch The Wire. The new (second) season has just started and although having watched the first season makes the players and action a little bit easier to understand, don’t forgo this outstanding drama from one of the key writer/producers of Homicide: Life on the Streets and a little-noticed HBO miniseries called The Corner, David Simon. This week’s episode is only the second of the season and the first few minutes give the key points of last week’s premiere.

The Wire is a busy and deep show, far denser than most other series on TV and willing to spend time to build characters. Not to surprising to me since I’ve felt for awhile that Homicide was one of the best, if most neglected, shows ever made. This one is filled with a lot of the same attitudes, still set in Baltimore, using offbeat language like murder police. Not always easy to follow but worth the effort when you see the payoff in relationships that go up, down, and sideways around the power structures involved.

Most copepisodic dramatic TV series tend to follow the main plot/subplot structure, where the ‘B’ plot provides a mirror to ‘A’ and the time is split 60/40 or so, everything wrapped up in one or at most two episodes; Star Trek: The Next Generation is a prime example but NYPD Blue and even Simon’s Homicide follow the same floorplan. When a series dares to deviate, with longer arcs (Wiseguy and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in the years of the Dominion War) the payoff can be terrific without dropping into soap opera territory. And that’s just what Simon is giving us here, taking a whole season to build a really serious puzzle and then tie it up in a neat package. Sopranos sort of does this, though there is a tendency to have plots that wrap in three or fewer shows; what, for example, ever happened to the Russian Christopher and Paulie lost in the terrific Pine Barrens episode?

Last year focused on a set of cops, mostly misfits and rejects, thrown together to go after some huge but out of the blue drug dealer. In the end, the cops won, sort of, but paid a real price for the victory. This season we start off by seeing that price and how they’re dealing with it–a couple, for instance, seem to be saying screw this and giving in to the system or just getting out–but the others are finding ways to jimmy the system. And Simon has created a whole new setting for good and evil and an associated group of new characters that have their own strengths, weaknesses, and relationships. Can’t wait to see them all come together as the various plot threads merge!

A show made for the intelligent viewer.

Frank Reyes paced on the concrete patio outside his front doot, looking up at the street, looking down at his watch. He looked over at the green Chevy Suburban, all four doors and the rear hatch swung open, and walked over to it, though he looked down the street again once he had his hand on the rear passenger door. Frank looked inside, reached in, rearranged something, looked down the street.

His worn blue collared shirt was pulling out of its tuck. His hair was almost in all the right places. A car, a Ford sedan, moved down Tyrella towards Frank but as soon as he recognized the model his head turned down to look at his watch. Almost inevitable was the head shake.

The screetch of brakes as cars zoomed in from the other direction took us both by surprise but the men in suits didn’t all pull guns out and point them at me. I was just walking down the street returning home from getting morning coffee around the corner though when one of them surveyed the scene and saw me, he made simple keep moving right along motions. Never having seen guns drawn at such close quarters before, I resumed breathing, then walking, and tried my damnedest to not stare at the goings on in my neighbor’s front yard.

Another neighbor, Gus, was often hanging out in his garage this time of the morning, said garage having a decent view of Frank’s yard. Gus was there this morning, his jaw nearly on the pavement. I turned in to his short driveway and waved my hand in front of his face.

“Earth to Gus, come in Gus,” I said, breaking his concentration, and he looked at me. “What the fuck?” I asked him.

“Frank was packing that SUV pretty quickly before you came along,” he told me, “and then he just stopped to wait. Haven’t seen his wife though, he was probably waiting for her.” Gus knew that I knew he had the hots for Frank’s wife Janny. Hell, I thought she was a total Latina hottie and too good for Frank. What I didn’t know was that Gus and Janny had the mutual hots, which they’d acted on for the last three months. “I called Janny 20 minutes ago, she isn’t coming any time soon.”

“Gus, you and Janny?” I asked, and then he explained. Frank blah blah blah. Nothing interesting or unusual, just excuses covering action where clothes should have stayed on. Except “And the last six months Frank has been cooking the books at work. Trying to put a little extra aside with paying them” he nodded his head towards the men in suits “or his partners. But he must not be very good at it or at keeping his mouth shut.”

Frank was handcuffed by now, leaning against one of the Fed cars. He saw us looking, turned a little to stick his middle finger up in our direction though I think that was for Gus. Gus snickered and popped open his cellphone. “Hey babe, I’m watching half a dozen guys in suits and they’ve got Frank in cuffs and, just now, a couple of them walked out of your house with a couple of PCs.” He paused to hear her answer and grinned at me. “Want to say hi to Chen? He’s been here, watching the whole thing… Okay, later.”

He put the phone down and popped a beer. “It’s a little early but I feel like celebrating. Janny’s at the lawyer drawing up divorce papers as we speak.”

Finally, the search was done, at least for now, and two of the Feds helped Frank into the backseat of a nondescript sedan; he looked done, even from across the street. One of them closed the doors of Frank’s Suburban and got into its driver seat. They all pulled out and drove off. Gus was drinking his beer but clearly happy. I started walking away, waved back, and thought about how much goes on when I’m not looking.

Good, if a little brief, article on the business impact Atkins and similar diets are having. 7-11 is noticing what’s happening and the beef and beef jerky industries are thrilled. Pasta and tortilla makers are less happy.

Taking awhile to get all the pictures back and digitized, plus set up in my silly self-written PHP-based web gallery software but the honeymoon photos are available for viewing. We were on the lovely quiet island of Kauai in Hawaii. Some nice ones are the two of us at the luaua, Vivian at the luau, Vivian looking cute, and me in front of Waimea Canyon. Enjoy!

Bonus: A photo of me with my parents at Mother’s Day brunch.

Have GWB and his cronies gone too far, in a Nixonian sense? Will we see a repeat of the tearful walk out to a helicopter and hear “I am not a crook?” 30 years later? John Dean, a man who played a prominent role in that episode, asks if what now appear to be Bush’s explicit lies to Congress and the American public rise to the level of high crimes and are grounds for impeachment?

As the estimable Oliver Willis says, “I do not believe that the impeachment of a president is a frivolous thing to be thrown around lightly.” Though the Republicans surely didn’t hesitate to go after Clinton like a starving pit bull over whether William Jefferson told the truth vis a vis how far he went with Monica. So I’m thinking, turnabout is fair play, what’s good for the goose, and so on with other relevent cliches.

The Whiskey Bar Blog had a similar collection of Bush lies, with numerous calls for impeachment, about a week before the Dean essay appeared, though one might expect that between writing and production lead time Dean’s piece was already in the works at that time. Hari, over on the inevitable MeFi thread, raised a scary point: if the Bushinator is impeached, we get President Cheney. And if that stress is too much for his pacemaker-supported heart, next in line is Speak of the House Dennis Hastert. Oh, that makes me feel so much better!

Possibly my favorable reaction to Dean’s column is because I feel duped by Bush into supporting the war in Iraq. As regular readers here know, I surely don’t support any of his other significant activities or initiatives, but I felt that with all the <airquotes>evidence</airquotes> on Hussein that we needed to put up or shut up. Now I’m thinking, “That lying son of a bitch has to go.” Given that his own party controls both houses of Congress (thanks Arizona, thanks Colorado, to pick on two states that should know better than to send two Republicans to the Senate), I don’t see impeachment getting anywhere.

But this surely gives the Democrats an issue, if they have the balls to pick it up, that can make a big difference in next year’s elections. Howard Dean the other night on The Charlie Rose Show seemed willing to enunciate his differences Our Fearless LiarLeader so I’ll be looking to him first for a response. Keep your eyes open, make sure this doesn’t fall between the cracks.

Some famous, some infamous, all in the news for making poor choices:

• Sammy Sosa announced today he will appeal his eight game suspension for using a corked bat. Why should he appeal? The penalty essentially matches the seven or eight games every other player’s gotten in the last 25 years and as one of the game’s biggest stars, he ought not to get any less. Clearly the key reason for his appeal is so that he doesn’t miss this weekend’s series against the Yankees; after all, scalpers are getting over $1500 per ticket and without Sosa there wouldn’t be any reason for the high price. Still, this incident will hopefully begin to pull off the mask that Sammy is just the sweetest, nicest guy ever to slug a homerun.
• Sultaana Freeman lost her lawsuit to force the State of Florida to issue her a driver’s license with a picture showing her in a veil. Religious freedom is terrific but allowing this request would make a mockery of the reason why pictures are on licenses in the first place. Also seems quite amusing to me that Freeman is a recent convert to Islam and she hasn’t gotten much support from that community–her lawyer comes from the ACLU and that organization, quite reasonably IMO, will represent almost anyone, defendant or plaintiff, where civil liberties are the main issue–nor have other Muslims come forward with the same demand.
• Investors went wacko, again, when Palm announced its’ deal to acquire Handspring. Palm’s offer was actually for less per share than what Handspring sold for at the closing bell (the offer was made when the market was closed) and yet Handspring’s price traded higher in the next day or two. Then the traders realized the mistake and the price went down. Making this particularly stoopid was that investors did much the same thing three years ago when 3Com spun off Palm, trading those two stocks at prices that priced 3Com at less than just the value of its’ remaining portion of Palm. One might ask what’s the fuss since traders often push the price of an acquisition target above the offer but, sorry folks, that’s only reasonable when another bidder might come along and offer more money or the offer makes traders realize the target stock is simply undervalued, neither of which was true for the Handspring deal.
• Was Chocolate Factory really the best title for accused child molester R. Kelly’s newest CD?

Even though I purposely left (national) politics off the list here, and trust me I wanted to include them, people (and I include myself as a person) need to think twice and act once. Listen up!

After owning this brown beauty since 1982, I think the time has come to find a new good home for my 1979 Fender Telecaster. I just don’t take the time to play it and the money could be used for better things than sitting in a case in the closet. I have a Line6 Flextone 60 Digital Guitar Modeling System that matches well and provides an amazing range of sounds–the fancy name is appropriate, not pretentious–also available.

Details are on the For Sale page but in short the Telecaster is $950, the Flextone is $325, and if you aren’t local to me you pay shipping. The guitar comes with a very nice hardshell Choice Product Development Company velvet-lined custom case and a cheap metal guitar stand. The Line6 amp comes with a four button floor pedal.

For now, this site and Craig’s List (guitar, amp) are my only marketing efforts, though I might put an entry on eBay soon too.

Update, 6/6, noon: Sadly, even though I’ve had over three dozen people click through from the Craigslist ads, no one has yet made an offer or inquiry of any kind. Bill says this is sad, boohoo!

• “Let us condemn to hellfire all those who disagree with us.” — militant religionists everywhere. Got this quote from the bottom of /. today but it fits in with recent conversations and observations. Indicted bomber Eric Rudolph, illegal Israeli settlers, a resurgent Taliban. All this little invisible man in the sky crapola is bugging the hell out of me, though the Aussie Bible sounds good for a laugh.
• Just watched Howard Dean’s interview from last night’s Charlie Rose Show, very illuminating and would have been more so if Rose would (could?) shut up for three consecutive seconds! Dean sounds interesting and, of course, pretty much anybody but George W. is welcome to win next year–I just hope Dean isn’t this year’s Eugene McCarthy.
• Our federal government appears to be paranoid beyond reason. TS1 and I went to the San Jose Social Security office this morning to file her name change paperwork but to get into the building, we had to pass through security more serious than at a freaking airport. 10 people were in line ahead of us and we waited literally took 10 minutes for our turn. Viv went before me and the guards, even after passing her bag through an x-ray machine, were suspicious so they made her reach in and show them that her iPaq wasn’t a threatening device.

The Barenaked Ladies blogged the making of their upcoming album. I’m not that much of a fan but I appreciate the spreading meme. Lots of viewable and listenable media provided for fans.

Just pretend the last 40 years haven’t actually passed by and you’re right in time for cool comic movie Down with Love. The script is so filled with double entendres that it couldn’t have possibly been made in 1963 as it pretends except that in those years just before the Summer of Love perhaps real conversation was filled with them. Either way, makes for a whole lot of laughs.

Investigative reporter Ewan McGregor stars as the Manhattan bachelor who every gal will sleep with and Renee Zellweger as the out of nowhere writer preaching a beyond Helen Gurley Brown philosophy of “Down With Love” so women put aside (romantic) love in favor of empowerment. Her book becomes a bestseller and ruins McGregor’s fun, pushing him to turn his celebrated journalistic skills on her. If the overnight sensation can be conned into falling in love, she’ll be discredited and he’ll have all the female fun desired.

Director Peyton Reed really does recreate the early ’60s, visually, sonically, and stylistically, going so far to have a big “Filmed in Cinemascope” credit in the opening credits. The soundtrack adds a very hip, cool element with Sinatra and bossa nova tunes plus a video featuring the two stars singing and dancing next to the end credits. The clothes, especially the women’s fashions, are just over the top, as are the set decorations (such as the amazing temporary housing Zellweger is set up in on her arrival).

David Hyde Pierce and Sarah Paulson head up a strong supporting crew as the respective best friends/co-workers; they also, of course, fall in love. Pierce plays the role Tony Randall specialized in, back in the day, while Randall has a decent cameo as the owner of the publisher where Zellweger and Paulson work. Most of the supporting roles, in fact, are filled by people we know best from TV: Jeri Ryan from Star Trek: Voyager is the most visible of McGregor’s playfriends, Jude Ciccolella (24), and Saturday Night Live supplies Rachel Dratch as Paulson’s secretary, Chris Parnell as a TV host, and Laura Kightlinger as a receptionist.

The plot swerves and twists in the last 20 minutes, ending up where you expect but after taking you for a different ride. Zellweger, in fact, has a very impressive soliloquy that threw me and the bud for a loop, to which McGregor reacts in sheer shock.

Definitely recommended

Creeping, creeping towards that line and one wonders if we cross it, is there an easy way back to the light or will our nation need to go through an explosive convulsion? Or worse?

If you’re going to waste my time sending porn spam, could you at least include some decent pictures of the advertised activities? Otherwise, it’s just a waste of your time and my time, and I care about my time. Thanks for listening.

I can’t believe this! Outlook (2000 SR-1) adds a so-called security feature that blocks email attachments with certain extensions (generally, extensions that indicate executables) and there just is no way around this blockage. I mean what the fuck? Are we all to be treated as children now because Microsoft doesn’t think we can make decisions on our own? A programmer friend sent me a little utility and we couldn’t understand what was happening, why I couldn’t get this copied off. Finally he had to re-send it as a Zip file, which just goes to show that this Microsoft decision adds security only on paper. Evangelize this, Scoble, and explain why of all the MS bloggers, none are on the Outlook/Office team.

Thomas Friedman, as usual IMO, gives real insight into “why everyone hates us” these days, us being Americans. Bottom line is that America is just too powerful and too hard to influence from the outside. At the end he asks readers to send him suggestions: To “manage this situation will be critical to managing America’s relations with the rest of the globe. Any ideas? Let’s hear ’em: thfrie@nytimes.com.

I suffer no shortage of opinions or self-esteem issues that prevent sharing them, so I wrote in:

“Stop the lying. Claiming things that just aren’t true in support of extremist positions which are carefully labeled (by the speaker and supporting ancillaries such as Heritage Foundation) as moderate just doesn’t help. I’m not claiming there are no instances where secrecy isn’t a better choice but out and out lies are just wrong.”

Short but to the point. I’m hoping he’ll not only quote me but throw in a link to the website because Google just isn’t sending the traffic lately.

Woohoo! America’s goin’ whoopass on every other country on the planet once again, and aren’t you proud? We’ve got more people locked up in jails and prisons than any other country on the face of the Earth. Over two million total, over 700 per 100,000 population, beating out number two Russia which only locks up 655 per 100k–take that you stupid ex-commies! This is one piece of wonderful news that the Bushinations can’t take credit for, since it’s local and state politicians who’ve thrown the doors wide open over the years with additions like the Three Strikes laws.

We’re number one! Hey! We’re number one! Hey! We’re number one! Hey!