BillSaysThis

Last Saturday my wonderful wife did something really worthwhile. She and a few of her co-workers raised over $3500 for cancer research as part of the Rally for Life in Fremont. Not only did she get a decent amount of cash donations but she made packets of vegan cookies and brownies for a bake sale too. Working at a lawfirm has its advantages as several of the partners slipped sizable bills into the jar, far more than the price tag for the sweets.

Their team took turns walking around a track behind a high school and manning a booth. Vivian and her friend Crystal spent hours putting together this educational wall board on the dangers of smoking. Visual enough to be disturbing and reminds me once again how foolish I was to have ever been a nicotine addict.

To all my fellow Americans and those of you around the globe that still see the good in our great country, feliz compleanos! 231 years, an amazing run, and with good fortune not even close to the end line. A nation that can produce the likes of Tiger Woods, Bill Gates, Larry Page, Bruce Springsteen and Barack Obama and be a draw for millions of immigrants, legal or otherwise, is still a mighty fine place.

There are some folks I respect calling for an overhaul via a new Constitutional Convention. Dan Shafer wrote yesterday:

“The two-party system is broken. The bicameral legislature doesn’t work in the face of a President who doesn’t care about the law except when it suits him. We need a new system that will prevent the emergence of another imperial President from either party.”

I agree with his assessment. What troubles me as much, or maybe even more, than the Bush Crew’s cynical public statements is that they, and the Democrats in D.C., are totally ignoring our best tools for dealing with the big problems. To use a cliched metaphor, every problem looks like a nail to these people and the best hammer is always force, the threat of force or the corrupting effect of big piles of money.

What should America be doing? Using our brain power. Trotting out the Manhattan Project comparison is, sadly, also a cliche these days but a good role model (minus the secrecy). If we took the people currently toiling away in misdirected research and focused them on finding solutions for climate change, the decline in oil production, vastly inadequate distribution of subsistence goods (e.g., food, water, shelter, education, communication) and so on most of these issues would be resolved or well on the way to it within a decade.

Not to mention that if people elsewhere saw we were serious about applying ourselves, many would join in and add their talents and resources to the efforts. Such a change in America’s behavior would be very likely to produce a massive positive change in the attitudes of many of our fellow humans toward us, by which I mean this would also contribute to our national security.

There are those who would dismiss or ignore the change, certainly, given their personal investment in damaging our country and so I’m not suggesting we dismantle our armed forces or anything like that. Redirecting the billions being spent on Iraq and other wasteful programs, yes, we should be using that money for the new efforts.

Warren Buffett recently pointed out that he pays a far lower percentage of his income to the government (as taxes) than his secretary, who makes perhaps 1/10th of 1% of what he does, and this is wrong. I agree: Taxes should reflect the ability of the individual and family to pay them, and especially corporations should be paying a reasonable, real tax based on economic activity taking place in this country.

In order to make this happen, in the absence of a Constitutional Convention, Congress should pass legislation repealing the 1886 SCOTUS decision in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company that gave corporations the same rights and standing as real people, one of the most wrongheaded decisions ever handed down by that august body. While the Justices seem to have believed this was inherent in the then-new 14th Amendment, it directly contradicts the 13th Amendment’s prohibition of ownership of one person by another (since corporations, directly or indirectly, are owned eventually by real people).

If this fictitious personhood was dismantled, the most important change would be to disallow corporations from spending any money on political matters since recent Court decisions have depended on 1st Amendment free speech guarantees, which only apply to people. Accordingly, the huge lobbying industry, which employs several times as many people as the government does, would be crippled and the powerful influence on legislation and rulemaking vastly reduced. Certainly wealthy individuals would try to retain as much influence as possible but there would be no more corporate lobbying offices nor clientele for the powerful K Street firms.

“Of the people, by the people, for the people,” right?

Proportionate taxation and reduction of misguided spending would surely provide sufficient funding for massive directed investment in longterm solutions. Unlike the Manhattan Program, not all the work need be done by government labs and employees; as with many current programs private companies should be able to bid on the contracts and undoubtedly such sizable investment will attract complimentary spending.

America has delivered more practical innovation across more areas of pursuit than any other nation over the last several hundred years, if not the breadth of recorded history. We’re still delivering more, despite the handicap of a broken political system that’s the equivalent of a foot jammed on the brake.

We can–and must–do more to ensure that this holiday, the birthday of our great nation, is still celebrated for decades and centuries to come.

Torres to complete Liverpool move, a £26.5m switch to Anfield. Number seems more than high enough to shut up the argybargy about whether new owners Gillette and Hicks will really put up the dosh needed to compete for the Premiership title.

What other moves are the team making in this first week of the transfer window?

Andrey Voronin is a veteran striker acquired from Bayern Leverkusen, plus we signed youngsters Kristian Nemeth and Andras Simon from Hungary and Bulgarian U-21 keeper Nikolay Mihaylov. Scott Carson, just 21 himself, will be brought back to compete for a first team spot with Pepe Reina after spending last season on loan at Charlton.

Robby (GOD) Fowler, Saenz Luis Garcia, Jerzy Dudek and Danny Guthrie are out the door, Djibrille Cisse likely to follow after spending last season on loan in France and Florent Sinama Pongolle made a loan move permanent in Spain. The latter two sales would pretty much close the books on previous manager Gerard Houllier’s French connection. Sami Hyypia’s days seem numbered as well with Daniel Agger’s emergence as first choice centerback alongside Jamie Carragher since January.

Will either Craig Bellamy and/or Peter Crouch also move on? BBC’s Football Gossip column has been filled with rumors about teams willing to spend in the £8-9M range for Bellamy and interest from big clubs in Italy and Spain for Crouchie. Right now we’re sitting on a strike force that seems likely to create hard feelings over playing time: Torres, Voronin, Bellamy, Crouch and Dirk Kuyt, plus up and comers like Nabil El Zhar and new signing Nemeth will want a chance to show their value. In any case, five is too many so one will surely go.

Are the rumors about Rafa targeting Gabrielle Heinz true and, if so, where does that leave John Arne Riise—does he move to the left side of midfield given the lack of production from Mark Gonzalez and Zenden and Hary Kewell’s continual injury woes, or just get sold on?

Heck, will Zenden be sold or released? I don’t think he added much value, though he was decent for Middlesboro before coming to us and lost huge chunks of availability to injury. Plus–and this seems very strange–despite any news I could find the Dutch midfielder is not listed as of this writing on either the official Liverpool website First Team Players and Staff page nor the BBC Football Liverpool squad profiles page.

Definitely some answers to be hand in the next few weeks as the team begins to assemble for training.

Bush commutes Libby’s prison sentence. “He will remain on probation. The significant fines [$250,000] imposed by the judge will remain in effect,” Bush said. “The consequences of his felony conviction on his former life as a lawyer, public servant, and private citizen will be long-lasting.”

Odd that Bush thinks substituting his judgment for that of the court’s is acceptable after the fuss his side have made about personal responsibility and respect for law. You can’t tell me there aren’t wealthy supporters who haven’t already stepped up to pay this trivial (for a wealthy person) fine and make sure Libby is taken care of if that’s needed.

The Library of Congress established a new award, the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, recognizing greatness over a long career and last month Paul Simon became the first recipient. An excellent choice, IMHO, as Simon’s music is (to transplant Cringley’s concept) invisible; that is, his songs are so much a part of our culture that they’re… just there. You hear the opening notes and make the connection.

To give him the prize, they put on a big show last month in D.C. with Simon and a group of hugely talented artists performing his songs and PBS was there to capture it. I just finished seeing the HD cablecast recorded the other night and highly recommend you watch it, there are many scheduled showings.

Simon does a terrific version of Bridge Over Troubled Water with Art Garfunkel (who still has the big shock of bushy hair ;), though disappointingly the duo sing no other songs together. Since James Taylor was on the bill and did a few songs I was hoping the three of them would get together for (What a) Wonderful World, but no luck. Ladysmith Black Mambazo did Diamonds on the Souls of Her Shoes with Paul plus a song of their own and Simon, Stevie Wonder and the Dixie Humminbirds teamed up for Love Me Like a Rock and the very first song was Simon and Wonder on .

My favorite performance was definitely Allison Kraus and Jerry Douglas on an austere, elegiac interpretation of Graceland. With the tempo slowed to about half that of the recorded version and Douglas’s twangy acoustic slide guitar the main backing, Kraus’s vocals were spiritual. Just intense!

Between songs video clips were shown. A very amusing duet on Feeling Groovy by Sesame Street’s Elmo and Grover, the attempt by Charles Grodin to exploit his similar appearance to Garfunkel in an SNL skit, Simon’s sweet performance of Mrs. Robinson in the Yankee Stadium right after Joe Dimaggio passed away and, most memorably, the time George Harrison and Simon performed Homeward Bound on Saturday Night Live, which I’m posting from YouTube:

To be fair, the two also sang Here Comes the Sun, which I love and is also on YT.

Plenty more I’m not listing, absolutely recommended!

While others seem to be enamored of Dylanesque, Bryan Ferry’s brand new CD of Bob Dylan covers, I can’t say the same. After hearing him do Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues on last night’s Letterman and another song (maybe Positively 4th Street?) on the radio last week my question is why?

I’m hard-pressed to pick a good rock and roll singer less suited to Dylan’s music than Ferry. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of both. I love listening to Ferry singing Jealous Guy, Slave to Love or Avalon and his work with Roxy Music was great too. There aren’t words enough to cover Robert Zimmerman’s immense achievements.

But really, Dylan is all about rough edges, contrasts and keeping the music barely this edge of chaos while Ferry is smooth and polished, more at home in a tuxedo than just about any other rock star. There’s almost enough stinging lead and slide guitar to push Ferry’s interpretations into a good place, but I still come down on the side of the question asked in the post title.

When I found out the tournament was going to be shown on Spanish language GolTV I resigned myself to missing out for the most part on whatever the announcers might be saying. It turns out, though, that they bought the English language rights, UHF network TeleFutura holding the Spanish rights, and so everything, including pre-game and half time shows, are in English. Suh-weet!

Brazil-Mexico tomorrow and USA-Argentine Thursday, expect bloodbaths for both America del Norte sides.

Steve Van Zandt has found plenty to keep himself busy in between ever-rarer E Street gigs and Sopranos filming, but I don’t think I realized he writes regular commentary for The Hollywood Reporter until seeing today’s posting via CNN.com. His primary argument is difficult to disagree with, even if it goes totally against my grain: rock bands today are smart to get their songs in movies and commercials.

What really got my attention though was his near throwaway claim in the second sentence that we’ve passed out of the rock era: “With the end of the rock era (1965-1994), the rules began changing just as fast as the technology.”

The rock era ended 13 years ago? Damn, no one told me. We is old, baby, and “out here on the perimeter there are no stars.”

After last weekend’s big feature article in the Mercury News (see video), you won’t be surprised that the turnout was bigger than ever at yesterday’s SuperHappyDevHouse. I thought it was pretty cool since Richard White, creator and lead developer of ActiveScaffold, was also there and he gave me some handy advice on adding an Admin dashboard to the new Ruby on Rails app I’m developing.

There were many people wearing amusing hats. Someone ran a script sniffing the network for Yahoo and Google searches and projected the flow on the wall. Even another photo of moi, though I resisted the urge to guzzle Red Bull.

Next SHDH should be around the end of July, if—and you should be—you’re interested.

Off a beautiful volley from Bennie Feilhaber to the far post top corner, where Mexican keeper Osvaldo Sanchez for once had no chance, USA defeated Mexico for our second consecutive and fourth overall Gold Cup trophy. El Tri scored first minutes before the half on a smart breakout, Andres Guardado from Neri Castillo; Brian Ching won a penalty in the 62nd, just before he was about to be subbed off, that Landon Donovan converted and Feilhaber got the winner 10 minutes later.

Our southern neighbors remain winless on American soil in this century but were the better team today, losing because they could not take advantage of the possession and opportunity and perhaps because neither of their star strikers, Jared Borghetti and then Cuauhtemoc Blanco after Borghetti went off from a hamstring injury, were able to impose themselves on the US back line. Big props to American captain Carlos Bocanegro for this, with an assist to Oguchi Onyewu.

Donovan’s was his fourth of the tournament, all penalty kicks, tying him at 34 with Eric Wynalda for the all time US goal scoring record and with Mexico’s Luis Roberto Alves for the all time Gold Cup goal scoring record with 12. He also surpassed Wynalda as the USA scoring leader in the competition’s second game. Coach Bob Bradley remains undefeated at 10-0-1 since taking over the team last fall, though this will surely change when he takes an even younger, less experienced team to Venezuela this week for the Copa America.

The American team is in transition, though, with this tournament the first real outing since the World Cup debacle in Germany. Keeping the Cup in our hands is a positive but aside from the 4-0 thrashing of Trinidad & Tobago in the final game of the group round we never dominated in a manner justifying our elevation to 16th in the FIFA World Rankings. Bradley did use the games to bring in new, younger players and the team going to South America will be even more so.

Feilhaber, a 22 year old playing for Hamburg SV in the Bundesliga, and Michael Bradley (yes, the coach’s son), 19 years old, who plays for SC Heerenveen in The Netherlands, made the best impression among the new boys, with Jonathon Bornstein (23, Chivas USA) close behind and Michael Parkhurst (23, New England Revolution) doing well in his one start at center half.

Brian Ching IMO earned the chance to start ahead of Taylor Twellman and Eddie Johnson but it will be interesting to see how the coaching staff settle on an attack formation; Twellman and Johnson are on the Copa America squad while Ching will return to the Dynamo. Landon played at both right wing and second striker, with Clint Dempsey generally taking the other side of the equation. DaMarcus Beasley was better than Dempsey from the wing and Feilhaber, Bradley and Pablo Mastroeni, backed up by Ricardo Clark, made a very strong central midfield group.

Donovan once again did not play up to expectations, with only one assist and no goals from open play (of his four PKs, other players won three), Onyewu did not seem to help his objective of finding a new club in the EPL and Tim Howard solidified his claim to the number one keeper spot. Kasey Keller was pretty good and will be the one going on to Copa America but Howard seems likely to be the better choice as the team builds to the 2010 World Cup.

Players to watch during Copa America:

• Marvell Wynne, Toronto FC, a young defender I liked very much when he played for the US U-20 last summer
• Jay Demerit, one of the better players on a weak and demoted Watford team,
• Lee Nguyen, for the moment a teammate of DMB’s at PSV Eindhoven
• Ben Olsen, DC United, needing a very strong showing to get back in the first team mix
• Charlie Davies, a striker playing for Swedish side Hammarby with one previous national team appearance

We have Argentina, Columbia and Paraguay in a group stage from which advancing will require a miracle. Should the US find a way to do so, the probable opposition in the first knock out round would be Brazil, who have a big emotional stake in winning the whole thing, but overall this should be a terrific experience for the American youngsters.

The US is also fielding a decent squad for the Under-20 World Cup this month and a number of those players ought to be in the 2010 mix: Josmer Altidore, a triker from my home town of Livingston, NJ, Freddie Adu (reportedly in his last MLS season, headed off to Europe once he hits his 18th birthday this summer), keeper Tim Ward (Columbus Crew), defenders Nathan Sturgis and Hunter Freeman and midfielders Danny Szetela and Eddie Gaven (who was on the US squad in Germany).

Player movements in soccer outside the US are very different from American pro sports. Where here there would be an uproar at the practice of selling players to other teams for cash, and I believe its actually against the rules of our leagues, this is the norm elsewhere; in fact there are no player for player trades as such, though occasionally a player is included as “make weight.”

A few years ago, for example, Spanish perennials Real Madrid made a practice of buying at least one superstar every summer for ever increasing sums, tens of millions of dollars, and got the nickname of Galacticos. They bought in Luis Figo, Zinedine Zidane, Ronaldo, David Beckham, Michael Owen and Ruud van Nistleroy. The strategy never really panned out and the club, which is owned by its supporters, went through several coaches, sent most of the Galacticos off and finally, before last season, threw out the club president responsible for the strategy.

When the EPL’s Chelsea were bought by Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich in 2003 he splashed out cash left and right, allegedly well over $700 million in just three years, to get stars and the result has been two league titles, one FA Cup and two League Cups. Though with no Champions League trophy after three seasons, manager Jose Mourinho was for a time rumored about to be sent packing and management seem to have adopted a smarter, role player-oriented strategy this transfer window. (There are only two windows a year when players already under contract can move, one in the summer when the European leagues are finished and the other for the month of January.)

Anyway, another aspect of the transfer market that may surprise Americans is that teams will occasionally sell their biggest player. Examples: Liverpool sold Owen to Real Madrid in 2004 for €8m, Manchester United sold van Nistleroy last summer for €15m and Manchester City sold Shawn Wright-Phillips to Chelsea for €22m. Heck, AC Milan sold Andriy Shevchenko, not only their best player at the time but also one of the top three players in the world, for €30m to Chelsea in 2006 but only after turning down double that money the year before! Players (can) leave in the US as free agents when their contract expires but we’re talking about, say, the Yankees selling Derek Jeter to the Mets with two or three years left on his contract or the Colts selling Payton Manning to the Cowboys.

Did I mention that veteran players often get a piece of the transfer fee, perhaps 10% on average, plus the chance to negotiate a new contract? That first part surely doesn’t happen in the US leagues, though the second may.

All of which takes us to today’s news. Arsenal, one of the EPL Big Four, only the second team ever (and first since 1889) to go undefeated for an entire season in 2003-2004, have sold their captain and star striker Thierry Henry to Barcelona for £16m, about $30M US. This is a guy who’s scored a club record 226 goals in 364 games for the Gunners and lead the French national team to the 1998 World Cup and Euro 2000 titles. He was runner-up for the 2003 and 2004 FIFA World Player of the Year award and in those two seasons also won PFA Players’ Player of the Year titles. Henry is the only player ever to have won the Football Writers’ Association Footballer of the Year three times (2003, 2004, 2006) and has been the French Player of the Year on four occasions, an all-time record. Additionally Henry was named by football legend Pelé as one of the top 125 greatest living footballers in 2004.

Further, this leaves the team severely depleted up front with Emmanuel Adebayor the only healthy veteran forward, the teenaged Theo Walcott needing to show a lot more than he did this past season and Robin Van Persie needing to show he will not once again miss a huge chunk of the season to injury. Of course, the club has £16m to put towards a replacement.

For FC Barcelona I think this is a huge win and puts them as the early favorite to win both the La Liga and the Champions League next season. Nothing against Cesc Fabregas, who will have to step up big for Arsenal, but one can only imagine the quality of supply from Ronaldinho (who finally gets a rest this summer), Xavi and Deco and the striking partnership with Samuel Eto’o (assuming he stays at the Nou Camp) and Lionel Messi. Man, I think I’ll try and re-learn Spanish so I can better understand the announcers on GolTV’s match broadcasts.

US Note: Due to the league’s very different ownership structure, Major League Soccer teams trade players for other players or draft picks with each other though MLS follows the global practice when dealing with clubs outside the league. Fullham paid about a million dollars for Clint Dempsey this past January and PSV Eindhoven paid something like $1.5M for DaMarcus Beasley three years ago.

Marc Forster, the director of Monster’s Ball and Stranger than Fiction, has signed on to direct Daniel Craig and company in Bond 22. There have been hints that this will be an explicit sequel to Casino Royale, with 007 going after the villain who masterminded it’s machinations—maybe even a renewed Ernst Blofeld? There are no more Ian Fleming novels left to adapt, and none of the estate-authorized sequels penned by John Gardner et al seemed to have made enough impact to be considered.

A new director frequently means yet another round of rewrites, and perhaps even deeper changes, though the window for them is brief since production must begin soon if the plan to release the movie on November 7 of next year is to be met.

Forster is definitely an interesting, unexpected choice whose never done an action picture before. He has ranged widely, though; in addition to the two above I’ve seen he also directed Johnny Depp in the JM Barrie biopic Finding Neverland, a psychological thriller called Stay with Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts and has the adaptation of the bestselling novel The Kite Runner due out this November.

This is a decent hard science fiction novel falling stylistically somewhere between Peter F. Hamilton and Iain M. Banks though, to be honest, the ending is a bit of a deus ex machina letdown. Still, the writing is compelling and after a beginning made complex by switching between three subplots separated by time as well as space smoothed out, a definite page turner.

REVELATION SPACE* was the first (published) novel from Alastair Reynolds and he’s written (at least) six more novels and an assortment of shorter pieces in the same universe, three novels and two novellas sequels to this and the others simply set in the same mileau. Fortunately for me, RS is also the recommended starting point and I’ll probably try and grab the next two books from the library (all they have).

The story is five hundred years from now and humanity has spread through a sphere about 100 lightyears across, albeit slowly since they’ve not found a means to surpass the speed of light. Some people, years before this point, did follow the curve through a Singularity and spun out some decent tech to the rest (e.g. the engines capable of near lightspeed travel, life extension technology and a few other goodies) but at least in this volume have mostly passed beyond the ken of our characters.

What, you ask, about aliens? Numerous worlds have been found that once held sentient, sophisticated life but with a couple of very strange exceptions none still live. Both exceptions, the Pattern Jugglers and the Amarantin, play important but indirect parts in this story. However, the Pattern Jugglers are more like biological machines, which scan minds and transform them on request based on capabilities or knowledge scanned previously (yes, a copy is kept), and the Amarantin are an extinct avian species. A third species, the Shrouders, may or may not still remain among the living but because no one has passed through the perfect barriers (i.e., shrouds) that enclose numerous large volumes of space and returned sane this cannot be answered.

Don’t worry, alien races play a major, mostly indirect, part. Reynolds gives us three point of view characters.

Dan Sylveste is an eminent scientist who lead an expedition to the Amarantin home world 30 years ago and is still the political leader of the colony world. As a teenager, he spoke regularly with the one man who lived after passing through a shroud and then Sylveste ventured into that same shroud, returning with no overt knowledge but an overwhelming urge to investigate that planet.

Ana Khouri was a soldier on a planet called Skye’s Edge and, through an alleged clerical error, was shipped to another planet called Yellowstone (Sylveste’s home world, but he’d already established the colony) where she found a calling as a contract assassin. That is, people ready to die or arrogantly believing themselves capable of beating a pro contracted her to try and kill them and she was mostly successful.

Ilia Volyova is a triumvir of the lighthugger Nostalgia for Infinity (a kilometers-long, centuries old interstellar tradeship). The captain has been confined to cryogenic storage for decades due to illness and Volyova is at odds with the other two members of the cabal that runs the ship in his absence, and doesn’t have great relations with the two lesser crewmembers. (Yes, this ship could hold tens of thousands comfortably but that’s not how traders do things.) The vessel also has a mysterious cache of superweapons, acquired before Ilia joined the crew and though she’s in charge of them doesn’t know their source nor what most do, exactly, except that the least can destroy good size cities from orbit without breaking a sweat.

These three of course eventually come together. Khouri has been planted on the Nostalgia by a mysterious woman when it comes to port at Yellowstone, though Volyova believes she’s shanghaied her. Khouri was given little choice, either way, not to mention her ‘benefactor’ has implanted a beta, a sophisticated personality simulation of herself which can communicate but not control, inside the assassin’s brain.

The triumvirate thought Sylveste was still on Yellowstone–communication is no faster than the vessels–but move on to his colony world because they’re convinced he is the only person capable of healing their captain since he did it decades before when the disease was no as advanced.

Not everyone on the Amarantin planet remained convinced of Sylveste’s thesis, though; 20 years before (approximately the same time when Khouri earned her assassin cred) a chunk of the team rebelled, captured the ship which had carried them to Resurgam and left. Bad enough, but as the book opens political opponents who agreed with the rebels but remained behind overthrow and arrest him, having decided that as long as they have to stay the planet ought to be terraformed and made comfortable.

A couple of decades pass as the ship travels to Resurgam (most of the crew spends most of that in cold sleep) and Sylveste remains under house arrest until his captors are themselves pushed out in a coup that occurs as Sylveste is about to marry his deposer’s daughter. But then the ship arrives, making a convincing threat with those weapons unless he’s turned over.

Thinking back, despite the quality and creativity of his prose, Reynolds probably should have trimmed back the events I’ve just described substantially; a hundred pages, give or take, would’ve sufficed and likely removed the temporal confusion mentioned at the top as well. This first 250 pages (of this paperback edition’s 580) serves only to set up the main action and develop the key characters. The remainder is some really good, unpredictable action.

No huge complaints, I mentioned plans to read the following volumes of the saga, and certainly this is an impressive debut novel.

recommended

Note: Apparently Reynolds prefers that the title be printed as all caps, or at least that’s how it appears in every instance on his website.

I hate to poke fun but really, do we need a national Air Guitar Championship? If you think we do, then get yourself down to the Blank Club in San Jose two weeks from tonight for the regional competition. Who knows, you may be watching the next world air guitar champion!

Headbangers Unite!

Many negative reactions from critics, bloggers and other commenters over last night’s series ending episode but not from this blogger. I was stunned when the screen went dark, as did others I wondered if there was a technical glitch and then the credits rolled, silently for once, showing that the quintessential nuclear family had not been detonated, decapitated or washed away in David Chase’s shower stall.

Tim Goodman, the SF Chronicle’s TV writer, said this morning on KFOG that one way to look at it (with which I agree) was that series creator Chase was simply telling us that the 86 episodes didn’t begin at some definitive beginning nor was the ending a conclusion. Rather the episodes showed us a passage of nearly a decade in the life of a Mafia boss; plenty of ups and downs, births and deaths, all told exciting times. Leaving important questions open is not typical of lowest common denominator Hollywood productions but The Sopranos were never lowest common denominator.

Not that the episode or series was perfect but I think the most prominently suggested alternate endings, killing Tony or packing him off to prison, would have been worse. Prison wasn’t possible because that would break the relationship viewers have with Tony, that despite his often monstrous behavior he was still, in his world, a good guy and death was too neat, too easy.

Killing Meadow, with the extended parallel parking scene and cars rushing by, or AJ, while making out with his new girlfriend as his SUV burned, those seemed much more in tune with the last stretch of episodes. Starting with Vito Spataforo last season and then rushing on with Johnny Sack, Christopher, Bobby and, viciously, Phil Leotardo last night, bodies were falling all over, and of course Sylvio left all tubed up in a coma (poor Little Steven, his hair for once a loose mess in the hospital bed).

But not Tony, though I half wondered if Pauly Walnuts, who–remember–had nearly turned on the crew in seasons past in favor of New York, was going to bring out a gun after turning down Tony’s offer of a promotion. The nervous guy who came into the restaurant, looked around, sat down at the counter and then went to the bathroom behind the family’s table gave a bit of a pause as did the two young guys who went straight to the jukebox.

As Jason Fried wrote, though:

There are lots of people saying it was lazy and lacked creativity, but in the same breath they fire off all the possible endings they envisioned.

Isn’t a large part of creativity about the unexpected? If it was formulaic it wasn’t creative. If it was obvious it wasn’t creative.

Well yes, of course, as anyone reading this is surely already aware. But the question is also the title of an article in today’s New York Times for which I was interviewed and in which I’m briefly quoted. Amusingly my 40+ minute conversation with the writer was condensed down to:

The person they ultimately found was Bill Lazar, a blogger and former programmer. “This would be my first full-time job focusing on supporting the content of another blogger,” said Mr. Lazar, noting that the job was still in negotiations. “To get paid to work on blogs and the related technology would be great.” He declined to discuss what the job would pay.

I declined not out of modesty or even discretion but because there was not then, nor sadly is there now, a specific money offer on the table and hence no accurate answer to provide. And is there linkage in the article, no, because the Times just doesn’t do that, and not even a mention of my site’s name (which others mentioned do get). Hey, she did get my name spelled right.

Though Ms. Whittaker doesn’t mention it, I’m pretty sure she contact Scoble because I mentioned him as a high profile example and there’s an easy zag from him to Steve Rubel. So Steve, if you see this, we should talk—I’m sure Edelman can use my skill set advantageously!

Just a note for those of you reading through the web feed, I’ve given the site a much more glaring white look (the movie blog has it too).

Just before bedtime last night, or possibly even as I got into bed, I pulled a muscle on the back of my right thigh. Every time I rolled over and this part of my leg came flat on the bed it gave me a sharp burst of pain. On waking up when, as you might imagine, there was much rolling there was also much pain.

TS1, barely awake herself, was the good nurse and got me a heating pad and Ibuprofin but they weren’t much help. I couldn’t go for our usual Saturday morning bagel and coffee walk so we drove but that wasn’t a huge improvement; getting in and out of the car and using the brakes caused new bursts but my sweetie drove home at least.

Now, a couple of hours later, it seems to be subsiding into a residual soreness.

Happy Saturday morning, peeps!

Kage Baker resumes her story of the immortals who work for the mysterious Dr. Zeus, Inc. with this seventh book (not counting chapbooks and shorter works that have appeared as well) and brings us close to the climax, but not all the way there. The end is nigh, though, as The Sons of Heaven, the finale, is due within the month.

The Machine’s Child is mainly concerned with Alec Checkerfield, the 24th century cyber-pirate, his doppelgangers Nicholas Harpole and Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax, the immortal Mendoza (who loved and is loved by all three men) and Alec’s AI protector Captain Morgan, with smaller mix-ins following Executive Facilitator Joseph (Mendoza’s ‘father’) and a few other high-level Company staff. Plus several odd, almost unnecessary passages introducing a mortal named David, the sole employee manning a storage facility as deep in the past as the Company can manage.

I enjoyed this novel: the characters kept moving and Baker was very creative in inserting them into historical shadows, keeping to her rule that history cannot be changed but activity that hasn’t been recorded can still occur (in the past, that is) and bringing those past times to life. The movement isn’t for action’s sake alone but to usefully advance the plot/story arc and deepen the characterizations. She could have left most of the bits with David out and the portion at the end with Sarai and Suleyman was a mite out of left field, but these are relatively minor quibbles as I was very happy to see the concluding novel will be out ASAP.

recommended