K-Squared Ramblings

They have customers who don’t?

For a long time Amazon.com has provided a short list of “Customers who bought this book also bought…”

Well, I saw a new one today:

Presumably nudists don’t buy puppy-footed one-pieces for newborns, even for their clothes-wearing friends.

Movie Review: Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

A few months ago I read an article about filmmaking which talked about why the ending of a film is so important: it’s not just that the audiences want to see it come out a certain way, but the ending is the last impression the audience is left with. A film can be fantastic all the way through and then fall on its face at the end, and that’s the impression people will be left with.

Now I loved The Fellowship of the Ring, both the theatrical release and the special edition. I enjoyed most of The Two Towers. But the ending fell flat on its face. Helm’s deep simply stopped, and the Frodo/Sam story did nothing more than present a vague threat from Gollum.

Imagine if The Empire Strikes Back had ended not with Luke getting his replacement hand and Lando and Chewbacca heading off to rescue Han, but had instead ended with the escape from Cloud City. That’s what this felt like.

Visually, the film is amazing. The effects, the scenery, the sets, costumes and battle sequences are stunning. The acting, like last time, is excellent. And yet between the jumbled editing and the lack of an ending, the film is far less satisfying than the previous one.

I’m left with two conclusions: either New Line Cinema stepped in to “protect the franchise” instead of trusting the people who got the first one right, or they had a harder time cutting it down to three hours and made poorer choices.

At this point I’m going to bring up some specifics. Read the rest of this entry »

Interesting compliment #24

Driving back from the Tori concert, fortified with Frappuccinos, we were trying to figure out the distribution of songs per album. Kelson commented that there were several from singles, and that she could probably release an album of just B-sides and have it sell well, which prompted us to start naming all the B-sides we could. At one point we were stuck, and then we came up with her version of “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” I started singing the chorus, Tori-style, and a few seconds after I stopped, Kelson said, “You know, it just proves how out of it I am……right after you started, I was about to try to turn up the volume.”

I definitely need to sing more.

Concert(ina)

Tori Amos concert last night - second in two weeks at the same theater. It was interesting to compare the differences in the two shows. Security, for instance: at the Counting Crows show, security consisted of shining a flashlight into people’s purses and bags as they walked in. At the Tori show, everyone also had to walk through metal detectors. (As Katie pointed out, Adam Duritz probably hasn’t had problems with stalkers.) Another change was that the Tori concert had video screens to zoom in. The most interesting difference was that last week’s not-quite-a-mosh-pit up front was filled with rows of seats.

It was a very good concert, even if the sound balance made it hard to understand the already difficult-to-hear lyrics (although this has been true of just about every concert I’ve ever attended, with the exception of Weird Al at the Greek Theater). She was set up in the center stage with a grand piano on one side and an organ on the other, close enough that she could just sit on one bench and turn around to switch quickly - something she did on several songs. On a few of them, she actually would play the organ and piano simultaneously, one hand on each! Behind her and to each side were her guitarist and drummer.

She had a good mix of songs from Read the rest of this entry »

Vaccini, Vaccina

So there’s finally a plan to start up smallpox vaccinations. The bad news is, it’s likely to become necessary. Worse news is, I may be at risk for some of the nasty side effects. As Katie pointed out, it worked so well the first time that no one made any effort to improve it. The good news is, they hope to have a safer vaccine by the time it’s made available to the public in 2004.

We’ll see.

In other news, while looking for a reference to the NPR story, I found this story about London’s Killer Fog of ‘52 and the history of smog going back to twelfth-century London. So smog not only predated the Industrial Revolution, it predated Shakespeare.

And finally, the other story I heard on the way in, about military-funded butterfly research. Apparently the Air Force is very interested in building insect-sized robotic flying cameras, and at that scale it makes sense to use insects as a model. They could be sent down into caves to locate enemy troops, or sent into buildings to check on hostage situations. (The paranoid in me is also saying they could spy on ordinary people, but it’s a lot cheaper to just search the place when they’re not home.) So if someone’s studying insect flight, the military is quite happy to fund it.

Exhaustion

Went to the Counting Crows concert last night. Good concert, even after their drummer disappeared partway through the show due to an unspecified medical emergency. They improvised acoustic versions of several songs, then brought on the drummer from Toad the Wet Sprocket (who opened for them) and the ex-drummer from Cake (who I guess just happened to be there) to finish the set. Still no news of what actually happened, or even whether it was Ben or a friend/relative of his.

Oh, and I’ll have to get Katie to post the fish quote.

Unfortunately it took a half hour just to get to the car afterward, so we didn’t get home until one in the morning.

I’m on my second large coffee…

There’s your problem!

A few weeks ago, the floodlight in our entryway went out. This was the first built-in fixture to burn out, so we checked with the apartment office to see whether we should replace it ourselves or ask maintenance do it. They said they’d take care of it.

A few days later, the light was still out, but we got a service report with one line written on it:

Upon reading “replaced blub,” the manager joked, “There’s your problem!”

Shortly afterward, the bulb was replaced.

Fallen Trees and Tumbleweeds

Despite what you might believe, tumbleweeds are actually quite common in suburban Southern California. They often grow by the side of the freeway, occasionally getting picked up by the wind and bouncing across cars.

Never is this more noticeable than during the Santa Ana winds, which seasonally sweep out from the desert to the coast, blowing over trees, knocking out power lines, and sending the smog out to sea. (Unfortunately, by the second or third day, all the dust from the desert has taken its place.) The two of us got some great shots from the most recent Santa Anas which hit during the week leading up to Thanksgiving.

A tumbleweed seeks relief at a fire hydrant.

Even a support stake couldn’t keep this tree up.

Hey! Get off the road! (Yes, tumbleweeds can get that big.)

Casa de Choo-Choo Bear

On our trip to Carmel last month we passed by Casa de Fruta, once a simple roadside fruit stand, now a huge complex of stores and restaurants, all with names like Casa de Coffee, Casa de Wine, even Casa de Motel. They even have a mini-railroad for kids, called, naturally, Casa de Choo-Choo.

Of course, we immediately thought of Choo-Choo Bear, the amorphous kitty from Something Positive

Subversion!!!

Listening to Hubba Hubba Zoot Zoot at work just feels like it should be illegal. That and Weird Al and stuff from the Cardcaptor Sakura soundtrack CD. And, now that I think about it, posting this message.

Just thought I’d share.

Check your math

Installing a security fix for Internet Exploder, with a few other items, and I see this gauge:

Last I looked, 1.5 was considerably less than half of 9.6. Either their math is really lousy, or they’ve decided to keep the gauge moving even when nothing’s going on.