For Peter's Sake

Weezer vs. Snuggie

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:12:00 +0000

Ah! What a crisis. One of my favorite things and one of my least favorite things just combined forces, and now I don't know which one I should side with. My favorite nerd-rock band, Weezer, recently came out with a new album. It's pretty good, too. But they're marketing it along with a Weezer-branded Snuggie, the silly infomercial blanket-with-sleeves product that I love to hate. Where does my alliegence lie?

I also discovered a web site dedicated to love for the Snuggie, and they have a segment on the Weezer Snuggie, or "Wuggie." (Ugh. Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse.") They have a few videos up, however, and they're pretty funny. One is the Weezer/Snuggie infomercial, with some funny shots of Brian Bell appearing to massage Rivers Cuomo's feet, and a bunch of old Snuggie commercial segments digitally edited so the Snuggies have the Weezer branding. They also have a video of the whole band performing with Weezer Snuggies on David Letterman. They look like a bunch of blue monks. But it's worth it just to see Paul Schaffer jamming with them in a Weezer Snuggie of his own.

The co-branding and album deal actually makes a lot of sense. They're both kooky things with cult followings. And as Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo said in an interview, both Weezer and the Snuggie are "really popular, and you can't really figure out why. So we figured it's a good match." But it still feels so wrong!

Fortunately for me, my friend Dave saved me from my dilemma when he sent me the link to whole album for $4 on Amazon MP3. My love for a good deal trumped any conflicts about band loyalty or brand loathing, and I got the album without the Snuggie. Not that I judge you if you get one yourself. This may be the only Snuggie I can tolerate, since it's at least self-referentially acknowledging that it's a stupid product. But none for me, thanks.

Photo credit: starbright31.

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:01:00 +0000

This can't be real, but it's too funny not to post.

A Halloween civics lesson

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:52:00 +0000

Earlier this week I ran into a couple friends on the bus on the way home from work, and we got to talking about Halloween. Both of them have a few kids, and one of them mentioned that they practice a form of "candy communism" Not only that, it was a true Soviet form of communism. He explained that all the kids poured all of their candy into a big bucket, and then he and his wife (the Politburo) skimmed a healthy portion of the best candies off the top before distributing the remainder and less-desirable candy to the kids (the proles).

The other guy laughed, and said he and his wife imposed socialism on Halloween. They let all the kids keep a portion of their take, and then the rest went into a central stash administered by him and his wife. They would eat some of it, dispense some of it back to the kids as treats or rewards, and give some of it away to friends or other children. I thought that was pretty much the perfect microcosm of the modern social welfare state, complete with government administration and foreign aid.

I explained to my friends that we currently operate a heavily regulated form of capitalism, in which my daughter got to keep most of what she got from trick-or-treating. But I first remove all gum (environmental hazard), blow-pops (health & safety risk) and any other candy that I don't think she should have. I also administer a progressive parental candy tax for my regulatory efforts, to make sure she doesn't end up with too much candy. The rest is hers, although when they get older, I might do a little income redistribution to make sure the portions are relatively even between her and her little sister.

This is actually different from the system I grew up with, which was a complete laissez faire capitalist system. We kept everything we got, and we were allowed to trade or barter between siblings in any way we wanted. I guess my parents were candy libertarians.

Who knew Halloween could be so educational?

Photo credit: Juushika Redgrave.

Rear window*

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:38:00 +0000

I think it's funny when restrooms have large windows. Small windows set up high are fine, since there is little chance of visibility. And most restroom windows are coated or textured so as to let light through without putting the occupants on display to the outside world. But I occasionally see restrooms with large windows that are quite transparent and awkwardly placed.

In the building I work in, there are actually large windows in the bathroom stalls on the end. On one floor these windows go almost from floor to ceiling. There are blinds on these windows, but I notice that they are hardly ever closed. There are similarly sized buildings across the street that offer a clear vantage point to view these restrooms, and at night you can see them quite clearly. Oops.

The reason for these inadvertent window displays is—you guessed it—a legal one. In every such restroom I've seen so far, the facilities were remodeled and expanded to make the stalls and entrances compatible with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Which is all well and good, but I doubt that anyone, disabled or not, really wants to sit on the john in front of a full-length window. I don't think it would be very hard to put up a second translucent window pane as part of the remodeling process, but in at least a couple of my past workplaces they never bothered. But as my former boss used to say, "Well, it's an incentive to work out."

Photo credit: Stefan Klocek.
____________________________________
* I know the title is a bad pun and a terrible mental image, but I just saw that movie on TV the other day and I couldn't resist.

Lazy Saturday morning

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 04:20:00 +0000

A brief private post about the 3-year-old over on my other blog. With photos!

Password is my last name; capitalization counts.

In defense of Fox News

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:57:00 +0000

Let me preface this post with the statement that I do not watch Fox News. I don't even get the cable channel, I rarely (if ever) read the Fox News website, and I can't stand Bill O'Reilly or Glenn Beck. That said, this latest round of comments from the White House is complete and utter bullcrap. Senior Adivsor David Axelrod says "They’re not really a news station." White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel says ""It is not a news organization so much as it has a perspective."

That's baloney, and those jokers know it. I'm sure all White House staff members hate the media in general, even as they try to use them to get their messages out. But to say that a network isn't a news organization is second-grade name-calling. White House officials are only hating on Fox News because they don't like what they're hearing. And the only reason they're getting away with it is because all the other news networks hate Fox News just as much, if not more.

The funny thing is, I might actually agree with these statements if they applied to more than one news organization. Most news outlets are jokes. Take, for example, today's headlines on CNN:

Latest News

Suit: Madoff offices were 'North Pole' of cocaine

Travolta 'disappointed' by extortion mistrial

Missing girl's body found in landfill 42 min

Ticker: Obama is 'afraid,' Cheney says

Bands: Was our music used at Gitmo?

CNNMoney: 7,000 a day losing jobless benefits

Organized crime's new target: Medicare

Sweat lodge survivor describes horror

Commentary: 'But what's a Latino?'

SI: Magic Johnson, Isiah Thomas in feud

Schoolgirls banned from public park

Learning to read? Talk to a dog

This high school has 115 teen moms

'Dynamite' hero: Don't diss blaxploitation

Grandparents ordered to evict 6-year-old

Vote now for 2009 CNN Hero of the Year

CNN Wire: Red Cross: Staff member...

I see news about a movie star, rock bands, a sweat lodge, op-eds about being Latino, a former-NBA-star feud, something about schoolgirls, talking dogs, blaxploitation, and a 6-year-old being evicted. Even the fairly legitimate news, such as Bernie Madoff, has a sensational angle (cocaine!). And no one would read the Guantánamo Bay article if it didn't have to do with rock bands. I haven't even mentioned the giant seagull and one-wheel motorcycle in the video section. All this while Afghanistan is preparing for a run-off election, the health-care bill is working its way through the Senate, violence in South Wazeristan is at its highest point, TARP Czar Kenneth Feinberg is planning on docking executives' pay, and a man in Massachusetts was arrested for domestic terrorism.

It's not that newsworthy stuff isn't happening—it's that CNN and its ilk are busy reporting on fluff. This isn't even a bad sampling for CNN headlines; I've seen the website when it had virtually no real news content. And yet this is the very network Rahm Emanuel was speaking to when he said that Fox News was not a news organization. It's not just CNN, of course. Newsweek, the very magazine that carried argued that other media companies had an "ethical" duty to take down Fox News, is a complete joke. (After reading the magazine for more than 10 years, I canceled my subscription in 2007 after reading the notoriously inaccurate global warming issue.)

Axelrod is full of crap, and so is Emanuel. I think the folks at Fox News are full of crap a lot too, but at least they're not claiming the legitimacy of the President. If the folks at the White House can't admit that almost all media outlets are jokes nowadays—not just Fox News—they should just shut up.

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:44:00 +0000

I'm looking forward to Windows 7—I've been putting off buying a new computer to avoid Vista—but the different versions are kinda lame. This chart from CNET shows all the stuff you can't do with the starter version. That's crap, if you ask me. No multiple monitors or even changeable desktop backgrounds? Yes, I know the Starter edition is more geared for netbooks, but puh-leeeease. Also good to know that you can't get full XP-comparability unless you jump up to Professional. That takes a bit of the fun out of the Windows 7 fanfare. (Via Lifehacker.)

On Atheism

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:28:00 +0000

Here's a good radio article on "new Atheism" from NPR. If you ask me, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens are the Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly of Atheism. And I don't mean it in a good way. Still, all four of those people seem to be selling a lot of books and making a pretty penny off the lecture circuit, so I don't wonder why they keep it up.

Fun on Monday: Know Your Meme

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 12:00:00 +0000

What can I say about internet memes that hasn't already been said? The whole point is that people grab ahold of something and run with it to the point of exhausting all possible iterations. Internet memes are the proverbial million monkeys pounding away on keyboards and video cameras and then remixing it to the n-th degree.

How do you keep track of all those memes? With the Internet Meme Database, of course, found at KnowYourMeme.com. This site is a great time waster, as if the memes themselves weren't enough. And it's just funny to read and watch careful analysis of something so trivial as lolcats or flashmobs. Here's a recent video from the site on geddan (mimicking cartridge tilting) to give you a taste.

Know Your Meme: Get Down (ゲッダン) from Rocketboom on Vimeo.

Why I feel bad for Obama

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 22:47:00 +0000

So President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Prize today. I have quite a few thoughts about this, but the predominate one is actually pity for Obama. It's not like the Nobel Peace Prize means anything anymore. In 2006 Muhammad Yunus won the prize for microlending, which is pretty weak sauce. And in 2007 Al Gore won the Prize for his factually inaccurate PowerPoint presentation on global warming. But this one is particularly embarrassing, and it's not exactly a good time for Obama to have extra scrutiny on his accomplishments.

As Saturday Night Live rather poignantly noted last weekend, Obama hasn't actually done much during his approximately nine months in office other than rack up a massive deficit. The major items on his agenda, such as national health care, withdrawal from Iraq, and progress in Afghanistan, have all been bogged down. Guantánamo Bay is still open, don't-ask-don't-tell is still policy, enemy combatants are still being tried before military tribunals, the economy is still down, unemployment is still high, and immigration policies are still muddled and unworkable. Poor President Obama couldn't even seal the deal on the Chicago 2016 Olympics.

And then he gets the Nobel Peace Prize for that track record. If I were him I would be mortified. The Nobel Peace Prize isn't something you can easily turn down, however, so he essentially has to accept it. But the ludicrious nature of this award is fairly obvious. The deadline for Peace Prize nominees was a scant 11 days after he took office, so he must have been nominated in those first two weeks. Admittedly, those were influential weeks, since he announced the closure of Guantánamo Bay (though has yet to deliver on that promise) and extended U.S. funds for abortions in other countries, one of his agenda items. But frankly, as the SNL skit says, he hasn't done much else since those first few weeks other than kill a fly on TV.

So what are Obama's qualifications that make him "the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations"? Well, he got elected, but so did every other democratic head of state. Is it enough that he's the first black American president? That's just reverse racism, and it doesn't seem appropriate to make Nobel Peace Prize designations under an affirmative action scheme. The reason cited by the Nobel Foundation is because of Obama's "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." What efforts would those be? Did he help achieve the Oslo Accords? Oh, no, that was Bill Clinton, who despite his perjury would still have been a better choice.

The real reason, of course, is that he's popular and cool. Al Gore won for the same reason—because people liked him, not because his work was more significant that others'. This whole debacle makes me embarrassed for the Nobel Foundation. They have essentially reduced the Peace Prize to the international equivalent of a high school class president election. It's just a popularity contest.

And even though he didn't ask for it, now Obama has it land in his lap and he knows he doesn't deserve it. That's gotta hurt. I'm sure every American president wants to deserve or even win the Nobel Peace Prize someday. But they all want to earn it first. And now President Obama doesn't even have a chance to earn his prize, and his name will forever be attached to the ultimate cheapening of the Prize. Despite what it may seem, this is not a good day for Barack Obama.

This Day in History: The Peshtigo Fire

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:18:00 +0000

On this day in 1871 the Great Chicago Fire was started in the barn of Patrick and Catherine O'Leary. The fire was big, covering four square miles and killing hundreds of people. But it wasn't the worst fire in America. It wasn't even the worst fire that day, because on the same day the Chicago Fire started, the Peshtigo Fire killed more people than any other fire in America history.

The Peshtigo Fire destroyed twelve separate towns and burned 1.2 million acres of forest—about twice the size of the state of Rhode Island.The town of Peshtigo, Wisconsin, was completely burned to the ground, killing all the residents. No one knows precisely how many people were killed in the fire; the death toll is estimated at between 1,200 and 2,500 people. So many people died that there wasn't anyone left to identify the remaining bodies that weren't completely charred to ash.

Both the Great Chicago Fire and the Peshtigo Fire were caused in part by a very dry summer and high winds. The firestorm produced a wall of fire a mile high and eight miles wide, traveling at nearly 100 mph. The fire was so hot that it turned sand to glass and produced tornadoes that threw rail cars and houses into the air. Some of the survivors jumped into the Peshtigo River or the Green Bay, but the fire was so hot that it boiled some of them before they could swim to safety. The winds also blew so hard that the fire jumped the four-mile wide Green Bay, burning parts of the Door Peninsula. America wouldn't see such a firestorm again until the testing of the atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert.

It's a little creepy that the Great Chicago Fire and the deadliest fire in American history occurred on the same day in the same region. That same day two towns on the coast of Lake Michigan and Port Huron (on the tip of Lake Huron) burned in an event called the Great Michigan Fire. Some far-fetched theories about meteor showers causing the fires have been tossed around since 1883. The theory was revived in 2004 by a physicist who theorized that the fires could have been started by balls of burning methane from meteors falling from Biela's Comet, but this theory is about as speculative as the apocryphal story of Farmer O'Leary's cow kicking over the lantern.

The problem with sci-fi

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:02:00 +0000

I recently posted a review of a good science fiction novel over on my book blog, and it made me think about sci-fi stuff in general. It's undeniable that sci-fi is a nerdy genre, but it doesn't have to be that way. When a Star Trek movie is a summer blockbuster, when comic book movies are the mainstay of Hollywood, and when video games are a multi-billion dollar industry, sci-fi doesn't have to be nerdy. But to a certain extent it still is, and I think some of that stereotype is somewhat deserved.

Take, for instance, the book I just read: Cyteen, by C.J. Cherryh. The book is undeniably sci-fi, taking place on another planet with lots of advanced technologies and alien life. But at it's heart it is something of a political thriller, with some interesting themes about cloning and nature vs. nurture. This is not light-weight stuff. And yet it seems to have been marketed as such. The copy of the book we have is actually split into three cheap paperbacks, and the covers are absolutely atrocious.

From the covers of the books, I thought Cyteen was about a teenage female cyborg. (It's not; Cyteen is the name of the planet the characters live on.) The book was written in 1988, but those hokey faux-futuristic illustrations look like they came from 1958. What's with the hair in the middle cover? The main character in these books is a ruthless genius and mastermind, but she looks like a space secretary in the cover on the right.

If you've ever browsed through a sci-fi section of a book store or library, you know that this book isn't the only victim of stupid cover art. My guess is that fully one third of sci-fi novels have half-naked chicks on the cover. So you can have a book that won the Hugo and Nebula Awards, as did Cyteen, and yet it looks utterly stupid.

So even though sci-fi makes money at the box office, it still has a ways to go before it reaches broader acceptance. And I do think sci-fi should be read by more people. Some of the last original ideas in literature are being explored in this genre, and there are some excellent authors that more people should enjoy. If only they wouldnt' be ashamed of reading a book because of its cover.

Digital history

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 18:15:00 +0000

This is a cool animation of what the Berlin Wall was like. It was made by Deutsche Welle and the Berlin Wall Foundation for the 20th Anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It didn't happen all at once, but the Fall of the Berlin Wall is generally considered to have occurred on November 9, 1989, when East German Socialist Party Secretary for Propaganda Günter Schabowski accidentally announced the end of travel restrictions on live television. The restrictions were supposed to have taken place on November 17, but when thousands of East Germans went to the checkpoints and demanded to be let through, the guards relented rather than open fire.

I have a distinct memory of my dad telling me to come look at the TV one morning in 1989. The news was showing the now-familiar images of people dismantling portions of the wall with hammers and chisels. I don't actually know what date that was, but I think it was a Saturday morning, which would have been November 11, 1989. I didn't understand what was going on, of course, but my dad explained that people in part of the country hadn't been allowed to travel to the other side, but that now they could go where they wanted. The full consequences of the event in the larger context of the Cold War were completely lost on me, but I could tell it was important to the people on TV, because it looked cold out there and they were still excitedly chipping away at the wall with hammers.

The animation is definitely worth a look. My first memory of the Berlin Wall was of its destruction, so it was only later that I learned what it meant and the lengths people would go to in order to get into West Germany.

Fun on Monday: Flight Announcement

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 12:00:00 +0000

I do not consider myself a fan of Megan Fox, but this skit is really quite good.

The Beatles: Rock Band

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 14:15:00 +0000

We visited my in-laws this weekend and spent some quality time with them. Quality time, in this case, meant playing The Beatles edition of Rock Band. I've played a bit of Rock Band and Rock Band 2, but The Beatles version was a lot more fun for me. Rock Band can be a lot of fun with a group of friends, but my major complaint in the past has been the music library. In the normal Rock Band games, I am familiar with about three-quarters of the songs, I like less than half of them, and I actually know the words to about half of the ones I like.

But The Beatles game virtually guarantees that I know all the songs, I like them, and I already know most of the words. Usually no one wants to do the singing part, but this time we all had to take turns because everyone wanted to sing. Everyone from Becca's parents to her younger brother knew the songs and loved them. Not many bands have that broad an appeal. Not everyone would like The Beatles so much, but for us it was great.

The other cool thing about knowing the songs is that it's actually feasible for me to play a part and sing at the same time and get a pretty good score. Plus, this latest version introduced harmonies to the vocal part. I know the harmonies on a few of songs, but Becca's a lot better at music and she can pick them out pretty well, so we had some fun.

My only major complaint with the game is that I can think of dozens of more songs that should be in the game. This was, of course, an intentional omission because the publisher then gets to sell extra song packs. The Beatles: Rock Band isn't for everyone, because if you don't like The Beatles you won't like any of the songs. But you just might become a convert if you try the game, because the bouncy sounds are absolutely contagious.

Diagram fail

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:03:00 +0000

I've been reading a funny book called The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook. It has instructions on how to survive a variety of unlikely disasters and perform feats you normally only see in the movies. Some of the items include "How to Fend Off a Shark," "How to Jump from a Moving Car," and "How to Deliver a Baby in a Taxi Cab." Very useful stuff.

However, I found a problem with the instructions on "How to Perform a Fast 180-Degree Turn with Your Car." The instructions on how to turn from reverse to forward included the diagram at right. Is it just me, or are the car's front wheels turned the wrong direction in this diagram? I confess that I have never attempted this maneuver, but I'm reasonably certain that you need to turn the wheels the other way to get the car to turn to the right while in reverse. Am I missing something?

True story

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:41:00 +0000

With regards to Jessica Hagy.

My issue with Glee

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 21:27:00 +0000

A couple weeks ago I happened to watch part of an episode of Glee. If you haven't seen it, Glee is a song-and-dance themed variation on the old high school comedic drama. By my estimation Glee is full of the usual messages of "be your own person" and the "misfits gain acceptance" meme. It really isn't very good, but the musical aspect is entertaining enough to keep it on the air so far.

In this particular episode the students were doing a car wash fundraiser. Glee Club member Mercedes Jones (played by Amber Riley) was helping to wash the new SUV of Kurt Hummel (Chris Colfer), a boy she had a crush on. She asked him when they were they going to start officially dating, and he balked at her question. It was clear to the audience from his flamboyant manner and dress that Kurt wasn't interested in girls, but he told her he was in love with someone else. Mercedes interpreted this to mean that he was in love with another girl in the Glee Club, and she was furious. She first threw a rock through his windshield and then did an extended song-and-dance number (Jasmine Sullivan's "Bust Your Windows") complete with bikini-clad cheerleader back-up dancers. You can see the clip below. (It plays an ad beforehand.)

There are obviously several things wrong with this sequence. First off, I have sincere doubts that Amber Riley has the pitching arm necessary to put a rock completely through a windshield at that angle and with such a wussy wind-up. Secondly, if there really was a high school in America in which scantily-clad cheerleaders in knee-high socks danced back-up to musical numbers, its Glee Club members would be more like rock stars than outcasts and misfits.

But what bothered me most were the double standards inherent in this episode. Mercedes' vandalism is justified because she liked a boy and he didn't like her back. Since when does a girl's wishes for a relationship suborn the wishes of the boy? That may work in some parts of the animal kingdom, but this is Glee, not Wild America. If this was a boy acting violent because a girl rejected him, he would get criminal charges and anger management counseling. But Mercedes is a girl, so she gets a sassy musical number and back-up dancers.

That's not the only double standard here. Later on Kurt tells Mercedes what was obvious to the audience all along: that he's gay and that's why he's not interested in her. She instantly forgives him and is extremely supportive. Essentially, it's okay not to like the girl if you're gay, but not if you are interested in another girl, or just plain aren't interested in her. The primary message of Glee is that that you should like yourself just the way you are, but there is an implicit second message that the way some people are is better than others. Imagine, for example, that Kurt isn't interested in dating Mercedes because he's Jewish (or some other religion) and only wants to date girls of his faith. That wouldn't be a good excuse in the world of Glee and Hollywood, because being religious isn't cool—but being gay is. I don't imagine Mercedes' reaction would be quite so understanding.

I know it's utterly futile to highlight the hypocrisy of Hollywood. It's an industry founded on false realities, unrealistic body images, and fabrications. But if you create a television series that encourages kids to accept who they are, you can't tell them in the same breath that some of them are better than others. That's not tolerance, that's just changing the order of values.

My thoughts on Wicked (with mild spoilers)

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 21:26:00 +0000

Becca and I caught a matinee performance of Wicked on the last weekend the tour was in town. I bought those tickets several months ago on a whim. I was running something to the Post Office downtown and I knew the tickets had gone on sale that Saturday. I was pretty sure that most of the good-but-affordable tickets had already been sold, but I swung by the ticket office just to see. It turned out that they had some decent tickets available, and that I could avoid TicketMaster fees if I bought them there at the box office. So I impulsively bought two tickets, which made Becca happy. She's always surprised when I do anything even remotely spontaneously. I suppose I deserve that reputation, but from time to time I buck the trend.

Our seats were pretty far up in the Upper Balcony at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center (TPAC), but they were dead center and we had a very decent view. The performance was pretty good; the woman playing Elphaba was excellent. I later read in the program that she had done the role on Broadway and the first national tour, which made sense. She had a great voice and nailed every line. The actress playing Glinda played the part in a very spastic, over-the-top way, but it worked alright. The understudy playing the part of Boq was really out of his league musically, but the rest of the play was quite fine.

I was a little disappointed that the set wasn't more complicated—I like amazing set pieces and stage effects that make you wonder how they make it work. But they accomplished quite a lot of effects just with the lighting, which was superb. And the music was really great stuff. Wicked doesn't have any single stand-out song like some other wildly popular plays. You probably can hum the themes from Phantom of the Opera or Les Miserables, but most people don't know the songs from Wicked. Nevertheless, the lyrics are clever and the tunes are quite enjoyable.

Afterward the play went to dinner, which was fun because we got to talk about the show. The obvious comparisons may be between Wicked and the 1939 Judy Garland film The Wizard of Oz, but since both of us have read the Gregory Maguire book that inspired the play, our conversation revolved around the adaptation to the stage. Frankly, I did not like the book very much. I like the idea of re-imagining the world of Oz, and I don't necessarily object to incorporating elements that were never present in L. Frank Baum's original books. But the book was dark, grim, and at times disturbing. I didn't like any of the characters, and soon lost all sympathy for Elphaba as she transitioned from deformed child to idealistic college student to domestic terrorist. Her downfall would have been more significant if I had actually liked her at some point. The book also had four competing religions, political machinations, murders, strange cultures, and family clans that muddied up the waters. A book can and should be more complicated an nuanced than a play, but it wasn't done well.

By contrast, the play Wicked is much more accessible. The characters are genuinely likable, and even when they make bad decisions you know that they were motivated by good intentions. I was a little surprised to see how comedic the play was. It makes sense, and it was quite funny, but I didn't quite expect after reading the book. The play is based more heavily on the Wizard of Oz movie, whereas the Wicked book draws more heavily from the original novel. One thing I liked about the play was the added tie-ins to the movie, such as the Tin Man and the Scarecrow.

The themes of good and evil are presented in a much more straight-forward way in the play, which I think is a good decision. Several of the characters, particularly Fiyero, are almost completely recast in the play. The Fiyero in the play is essentially a selective combination of the shy-but-sensitive Fiyero and shallow Avaric from the book, which makes for an inconsistent character. Even more significantly, the ending of the book (the death of the Wicked Witch of the West) is changed completely. Tragic endings never work in popular plays, so in this version Elphaba and Fiyero secretly survive and run off together, and Glinda ousts the malevolent Wizard and resolves to help guide Oz back to just governance.

It's hard to compare the two, but I generally thought the play was better than the book. And I think the popularity of the respective works has borne that out. The book was a bestseller, but the play is a phenomenon. I'm very glad we saw it, and we're already planning on seeing some performances next year if possible.

Adding it up

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 14:51:00 +0000

Two tickets to see Wicked: $90
Parking downtown: $5
Dinner after the show: $30
Taking your wife on a date for the first time this year: Priceless.

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 03:13:00 +0000

Apparently, Kanye West doesn't like my blog. I'm shattered.

(For background, see here.)

Curious George 70 years later

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 18:14:00 +0000

A few months ago we found a copy of the original Curious George book in a used bookstore. The girl loves Curious George—she watched the PBS cartoon pretty often and has her own stuffed Curious George that she sleeps with sometimes. Naturally, Curious George has been a frequent request for bedtime stories, so I've read it quite a few times now.

The Curious George stories are fun and whimiscal for children, but somewhat disturbing for adults. The Man with the Yellow Hat is by far the most irresponsible guardian I have ever encountered. His general supervisory approach consists of taking George to new situations and then leaving for extended periods of time. His sole attempt at responsibility consists of his oft-ignored admonition to George: "Be a good little monkey and don't get into trouble."

The newer incarnations of the Curious George paint the Man with the Yellow Hat as an innocent, cheerful fellow who works in a museum. But the original Man in the Yellow Hat of 1940 was cut from a distinctly different cloth. Rather than a naïve museum curator, he's a shotgun-toting, pipe-smoking explorer with a square jaw, ruddy complexion, and perpetual five o'clock shadow. The Man with the Yellow Hat oozes post-colonial paternalism as he tells George that he is going to live in a zoo and that he will like it there. (That's right! You'll live in a cage, and you'll like it!) This version of the Man with the Yellow Hat would be voiced by Clint Eastwood before Will Farrell.

The Man's parenting skills wouldn't come across so well today. George becomes a simian juvenile delinquent, complete with run-ins with the law, substance abuse habits, and incarceration. Of course, those behaviors were all much more tolerated in 1940 among children, so why not a monkey?

In the original book the Man with the Yellow Hat leaves George unattended, resulting in a false 911 call, George's imprisonment, and a prison escape via stolen balloons that ends up gridlocking the traffic in the city. The Man then shows up, tucks the offending primate under his arm, casually tosses the balloon man a few coins, and hauls George off to the zoo. Not exactly a happy ending by today's standards.

But the mischievous chimp was such an enduring character that he returned for many more exploits. Along the way, the Man with the Yellow Hat morphed from über-masculine Safari man to a wide-eyed and wimpy museum nerd. It's probably a change for the better, and it appears to have had a positive effect on George, who managed to kick his smoking habit. There are still quite a few issues regarding insufficient supervision, much to PETA's dismay, but without the Man's inattentiveness, Curious George wouldn't be nearly as fun.
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Note on copyrights: Unlike most posts on this blog, the copyright holder of the images used in this post has presumably retained all rights. These images are used pursuant to 17 U.S.C. § 107, and the author has concluded in good faith that this use complies with the requirements of fair use. Specifically, the purpose and character of the use is transformative, intended to use the lens of time to critique a work created nearly 70 years ago. The images have previously been published many times, and only small, low-quality portions of the original work (Curious George) have been reproduced here. These low-quality images are not direct market substitutes and will not have a negative effect on the marketability of the images or associated creative works. See Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 510 U.S. 569 (1994).

Redhead Day

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 20:32:00 +0000

I happened to see an article today on the BBC about Redhead Day, a holiday that apparently celebrates all things redhead. I think that sounds like a cool. I myself am a huge red-head fan. It got me thinking about red hair, and how it's a recessive gene. Supposedly it will die out eventually, unless people with red hair are somehow attracted to each other or have so many children compared to the rest of the population. I suppose that the latter option could be possible—many people find red hair attractive, especially red-haired women. But the red-head breeding project would seem to be a surer bet to maintain red hair for generations to come. (Biologists, correct me if I'm wrong.)

However, I rarely see people with red hair date or marry each other. In fact, my red-haired friend maintained what he called, "The Red Head Exclusionary Principle," in which no red-haired person could date another red head. Little did he know that he was dooming his own kind! Fortunately, the Red Head Exclusionary Principle hasn't killed them all off yet, or else I wouldn't get to be married to a smokin' hot redhead. Here's hoping our girls end up with some red, instead of my ugly old mousy brown hair.

In which I buy a netbook

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 14:10:00 +0000

I've been wanting another computer for a while, and I had my eyes on a netbook. I don't really do anything more than surf the web and watch a few web videos, so a netbook seemed like it might meet my needs. And they have really come down in price. So when I saw one under $200 with all the features I wanted, I splurged. I don't make many impulse buys, but this was one of them.

Here are a few unboxing pictures, just for fun. I came home from work one day and this was on my doorstep.

Within that unassuming box was this smaller box, which I think is smaller itself than one of our old laptops.

I love opening presents, even if I buy them for myself.

As you can see, I got an Asus EeePC, a 900 to be specific. The EeePC was the first netbook, and this new generation of EeePC's has made a few important improvements over the original version, all while managing to drop the prices.

I opened up the box and thought, "Wow, that thing really is small!" It's a double-edged sword, of course, balancing portability and weight with screen and keyboard size. More on that in a moment.

Here's all the goodies that came with this particular model. I almost bought a slightly cheaper EeePC 900 that had a 4GB hard drive, but I decided to get one with 20GB of storage. It also came with a webcam, which I guess is a plus, though I may never use it. The cheaper one didn't come with the recovery disc and carrying case, which I really wanted. You never know when you'll need to reinstall an OS, and a carrying case is always a good idea to protect your investment.

Here's the fully unboxed product. I think it's actually a pretty attractive little machine. The white will probably get very dirty, but the white model was the one with the sale. The original EeePC's had 7-inch screens, which is crazy tiny. This one has an 8.9-inch screen with a 1024 x 600 resolution. That's not great, but it's pretty good for the size and I've found it to be pretty usable. The touchpad on the 900 is also larger than the original versions, which is really nice. The speakers are actually on the bottom, but it works better than I thought it would. The EeePC fits nicely in my hand or in my lap, like a paperback book.

A few more comments on the hardware--this version of the EeePC 900 uses an 900 Mhz Intel Centrino chip, whereas the cheaper 4GB version I looked at used a faster 1.6 Ghz Intel Atom chip. The Atom chipsets are supposed to use less power and run cooler, and I would have liked to put that to the test. But I decided that 4GB would be unworkably small, so I went with the larger hard drive. It's actually two separate solid state hard drives, one 4GB and one 16GB. So the operating system goes on the 4GB drive and all the data goes on the 16GB drive. Not perfect, but it works okay.

Many EeePC models come with Windows XP, but I wanted one with Linux. I've toyed around with Linux for the past few years, but I've never used it full-time on my primary computer. Linux has really come a long way for the simple computer user like me, and I thought it was time to make the switch. Besides, the major reason to use Windows is because of video games or fancy audiovisual software, something you can't do on a netbook anyway. The Linux netbooks are cheaper, too, because they don't have that $20 XP licensing fee. But most importantly, a cheap computer with a slow processor would run sluggishly under Windows, even an 8-year old version like Windows XP. I can get a version of Linux to run more efficiently and quickly.

Image credit: johnwlittle.

The operating system that came with my Asus EeePC was a custom EeePC distro based on Xandros Linux. It was based on several menus with big icons to do different tasks. For example, if you clicked on the "Web" button it would open Firefox. If you clicked on "Messenger" it opened Pidgin, an open-source and cross-platform messenger client. You can also see links to Google Docs, Skype, and Wikipedia. Under the Work tab at the top it had a similar menu with similarly large buttons that would launch OpenOffice. Under the Play menu it had a media player and some surprisingly fun games. After using it for a day or two, I thought the EeePC operating system was fairly usable. But it was ultimately too simplistic for my tastes, so I began to tinker.

One of the major reasons I chose an EeePC is because they have a specific version of Ubuntu Linux built just for them--Eeebuntu. All the EeePC drivers come built-in, so it makes it a snap to install. You still have to install from USB or SD card if you don't have an external CD-ROM drive, but that was actually really easy to do with a little program called UNetBootIn. I downloaded a disc image, made it bootable on a USB flash drive, and plugged it in. Sure enough, it started right up and worked great from the start.

Eeebuntu makes a good first impression, with a visually appealing theme and a nice background image. There are three versions of Eeebuntu: Standard, Netbook Remix, and Base. The Base version is stripped down so it works better on slower systems that don't have as much space. I would have used that one if I had the 4GB version. The Netbook Remix uses big menus and buttons, sort of like the origiinal EeePC OS, but it also has the option of using a normal desktop. I decided that I liked a normal desktop better, so I ended up using the Standard version. It comes preconfigured with a Mac-like dock at the bottom of the screen and a top toolbar. It also has a feature called Compiz that brings fancy visual effects like you might see in Mac OS X or Windows Vista. You can disable it if you want the PC to run faster, but it's been fine so far.

Battery life is about 3 hours, which is decent. Connecting to my wi-fi network was a snap once I realized that I had to turn on the network card before configuring the wi-fi. This model is very quiet, which I love. You can barely hear the fan if you hold it up to your ear. Mine seems to run a little hotter than some netbooks, but thanks to the solid state drives, it's a lot cooler than my old laptop.

One of the major reasons I chose Eeebuntu is that all Ubuntu-based versions of Linux have a ton of software available that you can download and install with the click of the button. I'm an intermediate computer user, but I have a hard time compiling programs from source code, even with a walkthrough. Ubuntu does all the work for me. It also keeps the programs up-to-date; the original EeePC Linux used older versions of Firefox and OpenOffice, and I wanted the new versions because they are faster, better, and more secure.

So what do I think of my netbook after using it a couple weeks? The keyboard is indeed small, and that's probably the hardest thing to get used to, but I was surprised how fast I adjusted. I've typed long letters to my sister and quite a few blog posts on this thing, and it isn't too bad. Not perfect, but not bad. The screen is pretty decent, and I've configured the netbook to use the screen efficiently. The top bar and bottom dock hide when not in use, and I used a tiny Firefox theme and menu extension that give me a lot of screen. And that's what really matters, since more than 90% of what I do on this thing is surf the web. This is the ideal machine to loaf on the couch and do check email, read blogs, or watch Hulu. Flash video works okay, although it can be a little jerky on full-screen until you fiddle with the settings. I hope that gets better in later versions of Flash, or that the web transitions to open video.

I don't think a netbook would be the best choice for everyone. If you're always on the go and you want the web everywhere, a web-enabled smart phone (Android phone, Palm Pre, Apple iPhone, etc.) would probably be better. A netbook is very portable but you still can't keep it in your pocket. If you only want to use a computer in one place, you're probably better off with a desktop because of the larger screen and keyboard. But if you're like me and you just want a cheap computer to get online, a netbook is ideal. For most people a netbook meets their needs and budget better than a laptop.

If you ever decide to get a netbook, I recommend getting one with Linux. Dell sells netbooks with Ubuntu pre-installed, and a project called Easy Peasy offers a version of Ubuntu with customized drivers for a wide variety of netbooks. You can save some money that way and your netbook will run faster than Windows XP or Windows 7. I had a lot of fun setting mine up and it didn't take long, so if you do get one, I would gladly help you set it up!

Stuck in court

noreply@blogger.com (Peter) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 01:16:00 +0000

I got home tonight just in time to tuck my oldest daughter in bed. I got to spend a whopping 5 minutes with her.

I can't wait until this trial is over.