Stuff that doesn’t fit in any other category
Once again, I've fallen behind in posting summaries of my Macworld articles here. I've now rectified that, and you'll find them all in the archives here on the proper date (i.e. the date that matches their appearance on Macworld.com). I've included both blog entries (rants, usually) as well as a couple of reviews and such that I've worked on.
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I took last week off as vacation, though what I spent most of the week doing was far from a vacation: I tackled many of the jobs on the never-ending household to-do list. So instead of relaxing on a beach, I spent last week hanging three curtain rods and curtains, installing towel bars in a couple of bathrooms, and doing some work in the garage to hang a pegboard and clean up the work area--among many other not nearly so exciting tasks :).
Through it all, the cool little device pictured above helped me immensely. That round thing is the STRAIT-LINE Laser Level 30 (LL30 from here on out), a cheap and effective laser level. Until about a year ago, I used to futz with an old-fashioned bubble level whenever I needed to get something straight on the wall. However, for most of the jobs I was doing, a bubble level was next to useless. It takes an extra set of hands to hold it where it's needed, and it seemed it was either too big or too small for the task at hand. So on a sojourn to Home Depot, I spotted the LL30. For the price ($15 or so), I figure I couldn't go wrong giving it a try...and after just one project, I was sold.
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In my last post, I discussed a couple of issues with the cinematography in The Bourne Ultimatum. However, while writing that post last night, I reminded myself of another movie-related issue I wanted to talk about: trailers.
I find most of today's spy, thriller, and action movie trailers basically unwatchable: there is simply too much action packed into every two-minute trailer. I know they're trying to grab our attention, but to a large extent, they've simply gone too far. In a modern trailer for movies in these genres, you're simply not allowed to actually watch anything; instead, it appears the objective is to see how many different shots of your movie you can fit into a two-minute window. So the "scenes" are incredibly short, leading to tons of cuts from one scene to another.
Just how bad has it gotten? I thought it might be enlightening to compare the Bourne Ultimatum trailer with some similar movies from the 1970s, and then one completely different type of movie from 1980.
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Last night, my wife and I had a rare night out. With two kids, we've really only got one non-family babysitter we trust, and she happened to be available on a Tuesday, so we took advantage of the situation. After a nice dinner (it's amazing how roomy a restaurant table is without all the stuff that accompanies a couple of young kids!), we went to see The Bourne Ultimatum (Flash-enabled loud site, sigh).
We both enjoyed the first Bourne movie, though we found the second disappointing (too much like a two-hour MTV music video). But we'd heard good things about the third, so we were anticipating a couple hours of decent entertainment. And generally speaking, that's what we got: I'd rate the third movie as the best of the bunch; there are some amazingly well done scenes, including a tense seen in London's sprawling Waterloo Station. If you enjoy spy/action movies, this one is worth seeing, even in light of what I'm about to discuss.
As promised, here's part three of three--the final installment of my personal favorite comedies. Note that there's a big difference between my favorite comedies and the best comedies ever made. I would never pretend that my list represents the best of the best in the art of comedic cinema. Instead, these are the movies that have made me laugh the most consistently over the years. Yes, it's true, I have a sick and twisted mind. Anyway, on with the list...
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As promised, here's part two of three--more evidence of my complete lack of taste in movies follows the break!
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My friend Kirk and I were chatting the other day, and we got to talking about our favorite comedy movies. Both of us struggled to come up with just one, given the wide variety of comedy out there, and one's taste for the various comedic styles (dark, slapstick, etc.) may change as the years go by. Then there's the matter of era—comedies have been in production for nearly 100 years, so there's a huge body of work. How can one compare a film from the 1920s or 1930s with something made in the last five years?
After our chat, I got to thinking about my favorite comedies, and I thought I'd put together a list of my 10 favorites. To make things a bit easier on myself, I picked the somewhat arbitrary year of 1980 as the starting point, even though there are lots of comedies that I would include from prior to that date—The Blues Brothers, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Blazing Saddles, anything by Charlie Chaplin, etc. But I didn't think I could do a credible job of choosing from movies in many different eras, so I used 1980 as the cutoff mainly because it was a nice round number.
As I started working on the list, I found that I couldn't trim it to just 10 without leaving off what I felt were some of my personal favorites, so I expanded it to 15 movies. Even at that, there are quite a few that fell just below the cut line—Airplane, Meet the Parents, LA Story, Austin Powers—that I still consider great comedies and are in my DVD collection. Still, the line had to be drawn somewhere.
So at the risk of losing the last few readers I still have (by revealing my poor taste in filmmaking), here are the 'bottom five' of my 15 favorite comedies, arranged from "just barely made the cut" (#15) to "absolute favorite" (#1). (I was going to run the list all at once, but the post was simply too long; look for parts two and three in the near future.)
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Last weekend, when I first noticed our hornet problem, I called a couple of national pest control chains on Sunday. Both chains answered (or had an answering service) and promised to get back to me "early next week." So on Monday, I waited until about noon. When I hadn't heard from either place by then, I got busy searching and found Pioneer Pest Control, who came out Tuesday and took care of the problem--and still, neither national chain had called me back.
On Thursday, the first chain called back, and I told their representative that they'd missed their opportunity. Tonight, fully nine days after I first called, the other chain called back. However, whatever small measure of credit I would have given them for at least returning the call was quickly lost, as this is what I heard when I picked up the phone:
[Obviously recorded voice] "Thank you for calling Orkin Pest Control. We're returning your call concerning a pest problem. Please stand by and an operator will be with you shortly." [Hold music commences]
Yes, that's right. They waited nine days to call me back to put me on hold! Needless to say, I didn't wait around for a human being to grace me with their presence. Now, it may be that Orkin is a great pest control service, and had I called a local office, perhaps I would have received a quicker call back. But as it was, the local offices were closed on Sunday, so I used the national number. Apparently the connection between that number and the local offices is quite poor--perhaps they're still using the Pony Express?
If you want my business, you're going to have to respond a little quicker than nine days--and have a person, not a robot, make the return call!
The Tour has a drug problem. First it was Patrik Sinkewitz. Then Alexandre Vinokourov. And now, Christian Moreni. Not to mention all those who "retired" or were otherwise dealt with prior to the start of this year's Tour. At the start of this year's event, hopes were high that the doping scandals were behind us. Alas, that's turned out not to be the case. Given that it seems the doping is impossible to control, I have some proposed changes for next year's Tour--changes that will handle the doping issue, as well as make the race more exciting for fans everywhere.
Update: Holy cow, Rasmussen's gone too!
OK, so the above is in jest. I do enjoy watching the Tour; it's simply an amazing display of endurance, strategy, and outright speed. However, if something isn't done about the doping and drug issues, the sport is in danger of losing what little reputation it has left. It's bad when you begin to doubt any result, not knowing whether you just saw a heroic performance or merely the results of chemistry at work (i.e. Landis and Vinokourov's "great" mountain stages in 2006 and 2007).
I don't have any good suggestions on just how to further clean up cycling, though--perhaps changing the current two-year ban into a lifetime ban? Bigger financial penalties? Disqualification of an entire team if anyone fails a drug test during a race? Whatever it is, it's clear that more changes are needed if the sport is to cleanse itself.
As you may know, we had a not-so-small hornet's nest in a tree in our backyard. On Sunday I called a couple of the national pest control chains, thinking they'd be best equipped to respond quickly. I left messages with both to call me, but as of Monday morning, none had done so. So I did a bit of searching, and found a local company, Pioneer Pest Management (based in Vancouver, Washington). I spoke to someone for about five minutes, and they called back an hour or so later and set up the removal for Tuesday. I never did hear back from one of the national chains, and the other actually called me back about 30 minutes ago. Too bad!
On Tuesday afternoon, Don from Pioneer arrived to deal with the hornet's nest. I cowered behind our patio door, opening it just enough to take some pictures of the process. I put them together in a small album that shows each step in the nest's removal--just click the first image and then use the slideshow controls to step through the rest. The captions on the larger image explain what's happening at each step.
He was here for about 40 minutes overall, and it cost $99--a bargain in my book when I saw everything he did to remove the nest. They also include a 30 day warranty, so if we have another nest crop up in that immediate area (meaning they somehow didn't get the queen), they'll come back and remove it for free. Sure, I probably could've done this myself...but there are some jobs I'm quite happy to leave to the experts!
