Ev fixed the calculator, which only counts text pposted, by month, so here is a listing of the amount of text I’ve published since the inception of the weblogs (not incuding this post):
| Month | Post Length |
| 3/2001 | 21393 |
| 4/2001 | 31567 |
| 5/2001 | 57145 |
| 6/2001 | 26116 |
| 7/2001 | 57078 |
| 8/2001 | 84289 |
| 9/2001 | 77201 |
| 10/2001 | 77870 |
| 11/2001 | 84060 |
| 12/2001 | 88155 |
| 1/2002 | 115912 |
| 2/2002 | 94357 |
| 3/2002 | 40291 |
My friend Annie in Budapest painted this lovely picture just for me. Isn’t it terrific?
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Mark Wahlberg dreamed of being a Rock Star. He did have one hit, of course, but his music career never matched his brother’s. Now the shoe’s on the other foot as his acting career (Planet of the Apes, Perfect Storm) heats up and Donnie W. is stuck in supporting roles. But to the movie: Wahlberg plays Chris Cole, a heavy metal singer wannabe in a tribute band where he obsesses over every guitar lick and scream. The real singer in the real band comes to a parting of the ways with the group (a kind of English Van Halen, I suppose) and they reach out to Chris as his replacement. Does it work out? If you have to guess, you haven’t watched enough movies lately.
I blame director Stephen Herek mostly; Herek’s career has been all over the map as his previous directorial efforts range from 101 Dalmations to Mr. Holland’s Opus to the Eddie Murphy bomb Holy Man to Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. But like a bad heavy metal record, the audio here was mixed down low and the guitars and drums up high, making sure we couldn’t really hear the inane dialog. Probably just as well. Jennifer Aniston plays the love interest who throws Wahlberg over after he gets too close to the rock star lifestyle for her comfort. Dominic West is not too bad in his first major role as the star guitar player who hires Wahlberg. I did really appreciate Timothy Spall as the band’s road manager as he really place the voice of cold hard reality for Wahlberg. Not recommended
Sent Vivian some flowers this week and here she is looking sweet and happy with them:
And doesn’t she look cute laying on her blankie?
To all the naysayers and wannabes, get down on your knees, listen to me: this weblog made it to a year today. The content may be nearly useless and frivolous but other than the times I was travelling, there are entries for nearly every day of that year. And for the one big trip I took, instead of weblog entries there are the Italy Journal and Book Reviews instead. Thanks to my friends and family for encouragement and input, my fellow webloggers for inspiration and sometimes material, and Evan Williams for Blogger (even if there are occasional outages), it’s been a fun year. Hundreds of posts, a few links to this site from others, over 10,000 visitors since I began monitoring this statistic at the end of last July. I’m not too much given to introspection but to answer the common question of why blog? Huge egoboo (I’m introspective enough to understand that) and a creative outlet.
The very first post was about two near and dear topics, the Sopranos and Rock and Roll and there were 11 posts in all that day. Given my limited understanding of link rot at the time, I’m quite pleased to note that only two of the links from that day are no longer directly reachable, one because I didn’t understand that Yahoo! News items aren’t saved for long and the other because the company folded. Since then there have been many posts about the books I read, films and TV watched, music listened to, travel undertaken, humor, politics and world affairs (unavoidable post-9/11), sports, science, and technology. Expect more of the same only better as you read I write on.
Typical of a lot of mediocre Hollywood movies: a couple of big name but done little lately stars, some guns and explosions, and a little bit of hottie. And a catch: the two male leads are unacknowledged illegitimate sons of Elvis Presley. 3000 Miles To Graceland never gets within 2500 miles of Graceland and never gets that close to quality. What it reminded me of was Ocean’s 11 (without the Rat pack hype): a bunch of actors some of whom are probably good friends, a Vegas casino robbery, and the bad things that happens when criminals seem to succeed. Kurt Russell has done Elvis before and Kevin Costner has done the bad guy thing before. Kevin Pollack goes nowhere as the Fed looking for them, Courtney Cox is the luscious sidedish, and Paul Anka plays a throwaway cameo as the Casino owner who sponsors an Elvis impersonator convention even though he hates Elvis.
Director Demian Lichtenstein made his feature debut with this after coming up through music videos and let’s just say his background shows, particularly in a couple of driving sequences early on that attempt to establish a certain mood as the guys make their way into Vegas and the Strip. I mean, puh-leeeze!, by 2000 when this was filmed, was there anyone in the entire world who needs to see another 60 seconds of moving down the Strip to show us all the hotels and neon lights? Lichtenstein and Richard Recco are co-credited for the script, with this being the latter’s first movie credit–his IMDB bio says only “Electrician; member of Local 3, Brooklyn, New York, USA.” The script throws clues and doesn’t follow up but it does give us an adorable kid. Another film that celebrates violent criminals, who needs it? Not Recommended!
Amusingly, Russell’s next film appears to be Training Day with him in the Denzel Washington role. And has Costner done a good movie since 1994?
Actually hurt it midday yesterday but the damn thing is still bothering me so no long stretches of sitting at the PC to surf and blog. This is a twice a year or so thing, no biggie, and already somewhat better than yesterday. Exercise, stretch, I know!
Say That Again? looks at the three competing points of view in the Arab world. If they, as a group, don’t choose the Egyptian/Saudi view and approach, there will be no peace for a long time to come!
This page will surely be daypopped and blogdexed and probably even /.’ed but so what. Big Blue Smoke – Truth is greater than fiction, but not as funny. This is a Sun Microsystems web site that pokes fun at IBM. Not only fake news stories but movie listings and a version of Tetris which is impossible to win. Nice to see a company using humor against a competitor and not fearing huge litigation.
March is the time of year when I go for my annual eye exam. I stopped by the clinic yesterday to make the appointment and noticed that my opthamologist is now recommending a new diagnostic tool called Optomap to patients. So new, in fact, that insurance companies don’t cover it yet and therefore will cost patients $30 over and above their co-payment. Optomap takes about five minutes, according to the nurses, and eliminates the need to have your eye dialated for the exam; the machine creates a digital image of the retinal surface of the eye, which are stored as part of your permanent medical file for future comparison and it claims to enhance a doctor’s ability to detect eye disease conditions. Seems like a good way to spend $30, eh?
It’s official: Raiders name Bill Callahan new head coach and boy what a surprise. Dennis Green was going to forgo the joy of a fishing show. Bill Parcells had finally convinced Al Davis to let someone else have some control. Art Shell was ready, finally, to be a head coach again, or so his agent would have us believe. Green never made it on the radar, Parcells is too anxious to get into Canton, and Shell, well, seems like the consensus is he’s a real good offensive line coach. Davis probably made this decision promoting offensive coordinator Callahan to head coach minutes after getting off the phone with one of the Glazer brothers four weeks ago and since then having the laugh of his life watching and reading and listening to all the speculation on who he’d choose. Local reporting said life was just going on at the team complex in Alameda, with the coaches coming in every day and doing their prep work, evaluating players and getting ready for mini-camps and the draft. The Raiders signed a couple of big name free agents for their defense and both said the lack of a coach was not a factor. How much you want to bet Davis let them in on his joke?
So endeth the coachinggoround for this season…
Thomas Friedman is one of the most important voices on understanding what is happening in the Middle East. His most recent column is A Foul Wind and he gets right to this question. Not his opinion of the likelihood but rather what the young people, the ones who are most likely to act, think about it. Frighteningly, the answer seems to be that these people more and more believe the answer is yes:
“A visiting Egyptian official told me that he was recently speaking to Arab students about Middle East peace and one of them interrupted to say that with just “eight small, suitcase-size nuclear bombs,” the whole problem of Israel could be eliminated.”
For a Jew, Friedman is surprisingly well connected in the Arab world. He points to the recent peace proposal from Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah as an important step in getting a moderate Arab voice injected into the debate. Someone better step up to that plate and soon.
Lately, Blogger has been having some serious down time and performance weirdness. Just so the non-bloggers of you understand, the authoring/publishing part of the blogger system runs on Pyra Labs servers; as Steven pointed out, this is a single point of failure from which other personal publishing systems that run on one’s own system are not subject. In practical terms, this means that I cannot publish when the Blogger servers are down. The last few days have had a serious bout of the outties when Ev and Jason began upgrading the servers. Hopefully, the worst is past. Being a careful, thoughtful guy (stop laughing!), I investigated a couple of the alternatives, Movable Type and b2. Let’s just say I spent several hours on each and neither comes close to what I get in Blogger. Movable Type is probably closer but I couldn’t get all the way there. Oh well. Ev, I’m counting on you!
To all the naysayers and wannabes, get down on your knees, listen to me: this weblog made it to a year today. The content may be nearly useless and frivolous but other than the times I was travelling, there are entries for nearly every day of that year. And for the one big trip I took, instead of weblog entries there are the Italy Journal and Book Reviews instead. Thanks to my friends and family for encouragement and input, my fellow webloggers for inspiration and sometimes material, and Evan Williams for Blogger (even if there are occasional outages), it’s been a fun year. Hundreds of posts, a few links to this site from others, over 10,000 visitors since I began monitoring this statistic at the end of last July. Others explain why they blog but I am not so introspective and will say that it’s huge egoboo and a creative outlet.
The very first post was about two near and dear topics, the Sopranos and Rock and Roll and there were 11 posts in all that day. Given my limited understanding of link rot at the time, I’m quite pleased to note that only two of the links from that day are no longer directly reachable, one because I didn’t understand that Yahoo! News items aren’t saved for long and the other because the company folded. Lots of posts have been about the movies and TV I’ve seen, books I’ve read, music I love, politics and world affairs (unavoidable after 9/11), sports, science, and technology. Look forward to more of the same and keep on stopping by.
Just finished watching the 9/11 documentary by the Naudet brothers and James Hanlon on CBS. The effect was like going into shock once again but compelling, a show I wanted to turn off, wanted to pretend was a fiction but just could not as the pictures were all too real. The non-chalant bravery of the firefighters and other emergency services personnel as captured on tape was simply unbelievable; I know I could not have stood in there, climbing up the stairs, helping people, directing traffic, while the chaos was enveloping everything around me. Fighting fires takes a special kind of person and I’m glad there are many of them in America.
Bridge Over Troubled Water has to be one of the most beautiful, uplifting songs written in the modern era. Art Garfunkle’s voice just smoothly rising above a lovely piano part, Paul Simon’s lyrics just offering the kind of warmth and brotherly love we all need from time to time. At the end, when the drums and voice are soaring, the reverb just reaches out and grabs at the heart. “If you need a friend I’m sailing right behind” may be simple words but a wonderful thing to be. One of my all-time favorites recordings.
The other night I was watching the duo’s 1981 Concert In Central Park on PBS and was reminded how much I enjoyed this music and when I went to Fry’s this afternoon and saw this CD for $10.99 I couldn’t resist! The new version of the CD adds a demo version of the title song, with slightly different lyrics, plus El Condor Pasa, The Boxer, and The Only Living Boy in New York. Softer than I usually like, really no electric guitars to be heard, but beautiful, terrific music.
In an sign I am getting older, both artists turned 60 last Fall. For those of you interested in answers to quite a lot of similar questions related to S&G, either as a group, pre-S&G fame, or as solo artists, I highly recommend the Simon & Garfunkel FAQ, part of the The Simon & Garfunkel Online Resource.
Finding ourselves free this afternoon, we took advantage of the matinee prices to see the latest big screen version of Alexander Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo; IMDB lists at least six previous films with this title. Jim Caviezel, Guy Pearce, and Dagmara Dominczyk (new hottie alert) are all strong in one of the oldest love triangles in literature. I also liked Michael Wincott as the warden Dorleac, he reminded me of a Michael Des Barre who could actually act, and Richard Harris as Dantes’ prison mentor. Jay Wolpert (screenplay) and Kevin Reynolds (direction) give us a nicely paced, visually attractive film with Reynolds definitely moving up in class after previously specializing in Kevin Costner bombs–Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and especially Waterworld. Recommended
To some, this is the ultimate James Bond film but to others a complete throwaway. I tend more to the former view. Australian actor George Lazenby makes his only appearance as 007 after a less than ecstatic public reaction to his replacing Sean Connery; Connery returned one more time in Bond 8, Diamonds are Forever. I thought he did quite well, certainly a better Bond than Timothy Dalton and probably as good as Roger Moore. Diana Riggs as the main Bond Girl was terrific and the plot joining Bond with her underworld boss dad against SMERSH and Telly Savalas’ Blofeld surprising and creative. Savalas, of course, has no problem playing the nasty bad guy. The DVD also has a couple of interesting short pieces including one that explains how the crew captured the exciting ski chase scene by suspending a cameraman from a helicopter. For unknown reasons ABC is not showing this movie as part of The Bond Show, even though they have the rights for it. So do as we did and go out and rent it.
BillSaysThis 