03 February 2004• by

Yakima 2004

In which we spend a wonderful weekend in Yakima with the Gingerich family.

Kris and I joined the Gingerich family for an extended weekend vacation, visiting Jenn’s parents in Yakima.

Yakima bills itself as “The Palm Springs of Washington”. I’m not sure that’s apt — how often does Palm Springs get snow? Yakima is located in central Washington, and is surrounded by low mountains; its climate is ideal for growing fruit. Apple orchards and pear orchards and cherry orchards abound. There’s even a small wine industry.

The last time we visited Yakima with the Gingeriches was three years ago in April. It was a shorter visit, and there was no snow on the ground. This time we stayed for three-and-a-half days, and there was plenty of snow.

Click a thumbnail to open a larger image in a new window.
[photo of Kris and Emma playing UNO]  [photo of Kris sledding in the backyard]  [photo of Harrison making snowballs]  [photo of Hank and Jenn on the swing]

On Saturday, I joined the women for a quick trip to Value Village. I picked up three t-shirts (including a real prize: an orange t-shirt with the puzzling slogan: “I agree with Tyler and Pete”) and, at the prompting of Kris and Jenn, two sweaters.

Jeremy wanted to go wine-tasting in the afternoon. I was reluctant at first, but had a lot more fun than I’d expected. We only visited three vineyards, but the wine was good, and, because of my reduced calorie intake, it didn’t take much tasting for me to get a little tipsy. I bought several bottles, including two of a black Muscat from Hyatt Vineyards. It’s a pleasant strawberry-tinted summer dessert wine — not too sweet. (I also picked up some cheese-stuffed kalamata olives soaked in garlic!) At Bonair Winery, the owners’ son waited upon us. He poured wine and chatted until we found ourselves late for our dinner reservations. Jeremy bought a case of wine from him, and I bought a couple of bottles of mead, a drink made from honey instead of grapes. “The beverage of Chaucer and Beowulf” — it’s great stuff!. We tried a fantastic chili mead ‐ mead with a single chili pepper soaking in the bottle — but Bonair had none to sell us. Jeremy and I hope to send Jenn’s parents up for a case of the stuff when it’s bottled again next summer.

(Also: Bonair Winery featured a display of small, over-priced quilts. Some of them were quite beautiful, it’s true, but the prices seemed outlandish (several hundred dollars each). My favorite part of the display were the signs next to the quilts: “Please do not touch art”. HA! “Please do not touch art” sounds like an admonition you’d give a child: “Art is to be viewed, not touched.”)

We eventually made it to dinner at Birchfield Manor only a few minutes late. We had a fine meal and pleasant conversation before retiring to the house for cigars and a dip in the hot tub.

On Sunday we drove north to see the elk-feeding. We were more excited by the birds. There were several eagles soaring around a nearby hill, and one which seemed to be feeding on a dead elk. Jenn’s parents are avid birders (they just returned from a birding trip in the Caribbean), and had brought their birding binoculars with them. After we watched the elk (and the eagles), we stopped at another location to look at big-horned sheep. There, we also saw several deer and some larger elk.

There was a bit of snowfall Sunday morning, but we woke to several inches on Monday. After the kids finished watching The Pink Panther (which they love), we spent some time sledding down the backyard slope. Because of my knee, I was reluctant to join, but once I did, I had a blast.

Other highlights from the weekend include: crab and roast for dinner, playing UNO with the kids, ripping CDs from Bruce and Janet’s collection, watching the second and third chapters of Undersea Kingdom with Hank, helping Bruce learn to edit home movies on his computer, making monochromatic photographs, and driving back over a snowy pass last night.

It was a relaxing weekend for everyone I think, even Jeremy (though his idea of relaxation involves things like clearing all the snow from the driveway). Kris and I are thankful to Jeremy and Jennifer for inviting us to join them, and to Bruce and Janet for their wonderful hospitality.

Comments


On 03 February 2004 (09:34 AM),
Tiffany said:

You are right; Palm Springs does not get snow. The mountains just south of PS have snow for amount 6 months every year, but not on the valley floor.



On 03 February 2004 (01:50 PM),
J.D. said:

Hm.

As it turns out, I strongly disagree with Tyler and Pete.



On 03 February 2004 (02:01 PM),
Joel said:

Buying t-shirts at random is SUCH a crapshoot.



On 03 February 2004 (02:38 PM),
J.D. said:

Er, it’s a little strange to be trackbacked by myself…



On 03 February 2004 (03:52 PM),
Tiffany said:

You should change the shirt with a Sharpie and wear it anyway.

Read More →

25 January 2004• by

Hitler’s Baby Pictures

In which the book group is reading several books on the Holocaust, and I meditate on some of what I’ve read.

Joel’s selection for February’s book group is Maus by Art Spiegelman.

From the book jacket:

Maus is the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler’s Europe, and his son, a cartoonist who tries to come to terms with his father, his father’s terrifying story, and History itself. Its form, the cartoon (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), succeeds perfectly in shocking us out of any lingering sense of familiarity with the events described…

Spiegelman became the first — and still only — comics creator to win the Pulitzer Prize, which he was awarded for Maus, a two-volume graphic novel. (“Graphic novel” is a term substituted for “comic book” to make them more palatable to non-comic readers.)

Maus will be challenging for many members, but for different reasons. It’s challenging for Mac and Jennifer because they don’t like comic books, and they’re both skeptical that this one might have achieved some level of greatness. It’s challenging for Lisa because Holocaust literature gives her nightmares, seriously messes with her mind. It’s challenging for me because I’m tired of Holocaust tales to the point that I avoid them (for example, I didn’t see last year’s Oscar-nominated The Pianist because it’s a Holocaust film). It’s not that I’m an anti-semite or don’t care about what happened; it’s just that I get the point by now, and I’m tired of having it hearing it over and over again.

(There are various web resources available to enhance your reading of Maus.)

Aimee’s book selection for March is a nice complement to Joel’s selection. We’ll be reading Explaining Hitler by Ron Rosenbaum.

I’m excited to read both of these books individually, but more especially as a pair. I’ve read Maus before, and it’s excellent. I’ve only read a few pages of the introduction to Explaining Hitler so far, but it too looks great, too:

Is it possible to find in the thinly distributed, heatedly disputed facts of Hitler’s life before he came to power some single transformative moment, some dramatic trauma, or some life-changing encounter with a Svengali-like figure — a moment of metamorphosis that made Hitler Hitler? It’s a search impelled by the absence of a coherent and convincing evolutionary account of Hitler’s psychological development, one that would explain his transformation from a shy, artistically minded youth, the dispirited denizen of a Viennese homeless shelter, from the dutiful but determinedly obscure army corporal, to the figure who, not long after his return to Munich from the war, suddenly leapt onto the stage of history as a terrifyingly incendiary, spellbinding street orator. One who proceeded to take a party whose members numbered in the dozens and used it to seize power over a nation of millions; made that nation and instrument of his will, a will that convulsed the world and left forty million corpses in its wake. Missing, metaphorically then, is something that will help us explain Hitler’s baby pictures.

Those baby pictures: If I had to choose a single defining moment in the course of researching and thinking about the search for Hitler, it might have to be that evening in Paris when I witnessed — when I was on the receiving end of — French filmmaker Claude Lanzmann‘s angry tirade over Hitler’s baby pictures. When I witnessed the way the acclaimed director of Shoah, the nine-and-a-half hour Holocaust documentary, metaphorically brandished the baby pictures, brandished the scandalizing idea of the baby pictures in my face as weapons in his personal, obsessive war against the question Why. It was a moment that exposed both the passion behind the controversy over the problem of explaining Hitler — and the question at its core.

It might come as a surprise to many that the very notion of attempting to explain Hitler should seem not merely difficult in itself but dangerous, forbidden, a transgression of near-biblical proportions to some. And, in fact, Lanzmann does represent an extreme position, the end point of a continuum, what I would call third-level despair over explaining Hitler. The point at which the despair turns to outright hostility to the process of explanation itself. The point at which the search for Hitler doubles back on its searchers.

I don’t know where Rosenbaum plans to lead me as he explores Hitler’s origins. I’m curious. I often wonder if his motives might have no more explanation than a Citizen Kane-like “Rosebud” moment. Perhaps when he was a young man he suffered some sort of teasing or torment at the hands of a Jewish boy. Perhaps this small event, or one similar, planted a seed of bitterness that grew into full-fledged forest of destruction that embroiled the entire world and killed forty million people. Who knows? Rosenbaum’s book should be a fascinating read.

It seems to me that there are three great defining moments in the American cultural mythos: the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War II. As World War II is the most recent, it plays the largest role in shaping our society. Of these three defining events, World War II is the setting we most commonly use to explain ourselves and the world around us. (The destruction of the World Trade Center certainly has the possibility to become a fourth defining moment in our mythos, and it is without question the event that dominates our current cultural mindset.)

Comments


On 25 January 2004 (02:28 PM),
Dana said:

I think there are at least a couple other events with equal amounts of impact, one of which isn’t largely acknowledged.

First, you left out Vietnam, which really kicked the baby-boomer generation into a very particular set of attitudes, actions, and behaviors. In many ways, it’s still at the heart of the split between Liberal and Conservative here in the US today, a split which has only become more entrenched over time.

The unacknowledged event, I think, is the Indian Wars and the coupled idea of Manifest Destiny. They both had an enormous impact on the nature of our culture, and the shape and composition of both the nation and the population. And we largely ignore it. It’s a 500 lb gorilla in the corner that nobody talks about. My grandfather was born in southern Minnesota in 1918, and the Indian Uprising over in South Dakota was still fresh in people’s minds when he was a kid.

The fact that the decimation of the Native Americans happened, and happened in ways we would now consider as bad or worse than what the Nazis did to the Jews, AND that we don’t discuss it at all, says a lot about the kind of nation we have, too. Just because we choose not to acknowledge it’s effects doesn’t mean it’s important. It suggests it’s important in a negative way, that we’d rather not focus on.

That’s just my opinion, obviously. I think the Labor movements of the early 20th century were nearly as important as WWII, too. Again, that’s just me.



On 25 January 2004 (03:32 PM),
mart said:

the wife and i are in complete agreement with your no-holocaust-tales-thing. ’round here we avoid them like the plague. i did let one slip last year: alain resnais’ “night and fog”. and at some point in my life i’ll be tempted by “shoah”, if only because of the joke in “annie hall”(?) where woody keeps taking dates to see it.

as a younger man i visited dachau. perhaps that frees me from having to watch these films anymore?



On 25 January 2004 (06:34 PM),
Dana said:

I bring this up whenever holocaust stuff comes up.

When the Allies went in to liberate Germany, there was a BBC documentary crew that went into Dachau with the troops.

After the documentary was completed, the Beeb decided it was too graphic, and shelved it. At some point in the 70s or 80s, it was located, they rerecorded the sound, and made it available.

I watched it in Social Studies in 9th grade. Holy Cow. It was worth seeing, but once is enough.



On 25 January 2004 (07:25 PM),
Nikchick said:

Maus was my first comic book. I’d never read comics, unless you count strips in the paper or Bazooka Joe, but Maus really opened my mind to the experience.

I’m still no regular comic reader, but I’ve enjoyed my fair share since then.

Read More →

24 January 2004• by

The Decemberists (Live in Concert)

In which I accompany Paul and Tom to see The Decemberists perform. In which Paul has trouble remembering the name of a former girlfriend.

I leave work at noon and swing by the high school to see Mac. There’s raucous laughter pouring from his room. Inside, Mac and Joe Ruwitch and Matt Sprague and three other teachers are seated around a table, eating lunch and playing dominoes. They’re loud and having fun. Mac makes a copy of the photography class handout for me, and we chat for a bit.

I head to the barber shop. Howard, the shop owner, is cutting Neal Martin’s hair. Neal’s family owns Martin’s Town and Country Furniture, which is just down the road from Custom Box Service. He and I were in the same class. Howard and Neal are talking about San Francisco. When his haircut’s finished, I take my place in the chair while Neal and I spend ten or fifteen minutes reminiscing about high school, discussing classmates seen and unseen. I mention that I’m having dinner with Paul Carlile and Tom Stewart tonight. After he’s gone, I regret not having asked him to join us.

When Paul arrives, we drive to Portland in the rainy dusk, oblivious to the stop-and-go traffic. We’re talking. We have time before dinner, so we stop at Powell’s where I pick up the next book group book. Paul bumps into a woman he knows and begins to chat with her while I continue to browse. When I return to them, he introduces me: “This is my friend, J.D.”

I wait for him to introduce her, but he seems to have forgotten, so I say, “And this is…”

“Exactly,” Paul says. But no more.

I shake the woman’s hand and say, “Nice to meet you, Exactly.” I figure that Paul’s just being goofy.

The conversation ends abruptly. The woman is walking in the same direction that we need to go, so I figure we’ll just walk with her, but she quickens her pace, leaving us behind. I am puzzled.

“Oh my god,” Paul says. “I can’t believe you didn’t pick up on my hint. I once dated her for a couple of weeks, but I just couldn’t remember her name. Oh god.”

I feel bad, but not nearly as bad as Paul feels!

We drive to the India Grill. The ten minute drive takes half an hour in rush hour traffic. While we wait for Tom, we share an appetizer of beef samosas and assorted pieces of chicken and lamb. It’s delicious, as usual.

Tom arrives. I haven’t seen him in several years. He used to be a skinny kid, but he’s filled out some now. His voice is much deeper than I remember. He has the same cheerful good-nature and fun personality as always, though. He talks about being married, about having a two-year-old son (Quinn), and a fifteen-year-old stepson. He talks about his new job. The conversation turns to friends from high school and what they’re doing now. Paul and Tom observe that in high school, Tom had the widest social circle of the three of us, and I had the smallest, but that now the roles seem to have been reversed. “I like to keep contact with people,” I say. And I do. It’s a nice chat and good food.

After dinner, we drive the ten blocks to Nocturnal. There’s already a line of young hipsters standing in the rain: sideburns, thick-framed glasses, thrift-store clothing. We feel old. We should have brought an umbrella. The doors open and the line move a little, but then it just stops. After several minutes in the cold rain, Paul figures out that they’re only letting in those over 21, so we’re able to get inside where it’s warm and dry. We head downstairs to the hip little bar where we stand in the corner, drinking beer and wine.

We stand in the back corner, next to a door marked “employees only”, and we continue to talk about old friends: Jonathan McDowell, Mitch Sherrard, David Sumpter, Matt English, Clint Latimer, Danny Mala, etc. We have to step aside to let a guy into the closet. “What are you, the janitor?” asks Paul.

The guy sighs, “Yeah. I’m the janitor.” But when he comes out again later, he’s drinking a beer.

The opening act starts, so we head upstairs to an intimate room no bigger than a grade school cafeteria. Corrina Repp has a strong voice, but I’m unimpressed by her spare guitar work. Paul and Tom head back downstairs midway through her set. We’ve been standing for two hours, and their legs are tired. Mine are tired, too, but I’d like to hear Repp’s act. I think she’d sound great in a band, but on her own she sounds a little lost. Her songs are all lethargic.

Tom has never heard The Decemberists; Paul only heard a few songs on the our drive to Portland; I’ve only been listening to them for a week. But from the opening of their first song, “Shanty for the Arethusa”, we’re hooked.

The Decemberists feature Colin Meloy — in a t-shirt which reads “Dorothy is Running” — on vocals and guitar; Chris Funk (the guy we thought was the janitor) on lead guitar (often with a country twang); Jesse Emerson on upright bass (which sounds awesome); Jenny Conlee on accordion (and occasional keyboards); and Rachel Blumberg on drums (with occasional vocals). It’s an eclectic mix of instruments, but the group is so tightly orchestrated that they’re able to produce a powerful, unified — and unique — sound. Meloy’s voice is distinctive, but in a good way.

A lot of The Decemberists’ charm is found in their clever lyrics. Fortunately, the lyrics are fairly recognizable during their performance. In fact, the songs sound much the same as they did on record, but not enough for me to feel cheated. Too, the members of the band branch off into improvisation on many of the songs, providing an added bonus to those familiar with their work.

The band gives a great performance, well worth the $8 we each spent to see the show. I’m glad to have gone.

When we get home, Paul and I spend some time at the computer, listening to songs by The Decemberists, and looking up information about the group.

Later, as I walk through the house, turning off the lights. I pass Paul, who is already spread out on the couch. “J.D.,” he says.

“What, Paul?”

“I remember now: Ione. Her name is Ione.”

Comments

On 25 January 2004 (07:46 AM),
Amy Jo said:

I like this entry very much. The Powell’s scene evokes a uniquely Portland experience for me–unexpectantly running into someone I known from a different time in my life.

On 25 January 2004 (08:43 AM),
Tammy said:

I like this entry too. It’s much more people friendly than those geeky ones. 🙂

Read More →

23 January 2004• by

When the bullet hits the bone!

In which I find your lack of faith disturbing.

I find your lack of faith disturbing. I find your lack of faith disturbing. I find your lack of faith disturbing. I find your lack of faith disturbing. I find your lack of faith disturbing.

[Radar Men From the Moon]
Commando Cody will save the day!

From “Hills of Death”, episode six of the 1951 Republic Serial Radar Men From the Moon:

Graber and his henchman return to Krog’s cave hideout after escaping from Commando Cody. They’ve spent the past three episodes (unsuccessfully) trying to get money so that their employers, prospective invaders from the moon, can continue to finance their campaign of terror. As they give Krog the stolen payroll, a message comes over the radio.

Redik: Redik calling Krog. Redik calling Krog.
Krog: Yes, your excellency. I was about to call you to report that we’re just about to put our ray gun into operation again.
Redik: I have another mission for you first. Do you have an atomic bomb strong enough to start a volcanic eruption in the Mount Alta crater?
Krog: Yes, but an eruption in that mountainous area would do very little damage.
Redik: On the contrary! It will do a great deal of damage. The present atmospheric conditions on Earth indicate that an eruption would cause torrential rains, and the resulting floods should seriously disrupt transportation and defense measures.
Krog: Excellent idea. We shall carry it out at once.
Redik: Very well. Then start an intensified campaign with the ray gun. Earth’s defenses must be completely broken down before we can risk an invasion from the moon.
Krog: Yes, your excellency. [to Graber:] You heard the orders: charter a plane and drop one of our atomic bombs into the Alta crater. Nature will do the rest.
Graber: Okay. When do we do it?
Krog: At once! I will get you the bomb. [He gets a box from beneath his workbench, and pulls out an atomic bomb. He hands it to Graber.]

[photo of psychotic-looking Paul]
Would you share curry with this man?

[Bmidji!]

[the famous Limecat]

YOU are the lowest form.

YOU can’t procreate alone.

YOU destroyed the village.

YOU destroyedchildhood.

YOU don’t know the Truth.

YOU are educated stupid.

YOU are your own poison.

YOU worship cubeless word.

YOU ARE ALL DUMBYS!

[Jesus Quintana tongues his bowling ball]

[photo of man kissing a dolphin]

I find your lack of faith disturbing. I find your lack of faith disturbing. I find your lack of faith disturbing. I find your lack of faith disturbing. I find your lack of faith disturbing.

Comments


On 22 January 2004 (11:30 PM),
Dana said:

Help I’m stepping into the Twilight Zone…

Right?



On 23 January 2004 (08:23 AM),
Denise said:

Who sang that song “When the bullet hits the bone?” I know, I could look it up, but it will give you something to do.



On 23 January 2004 (08:27 AM),
Amanda said:

Denise, it’s Golden Earring.



On 23 January 2004 (08:28 AM),
Dana said:

Golden Earrings (or something like that) — follow the link in my first post for the lyrics =)

Oh, and JD? The Paul Bunyan picture is not Brainerd, it’s Bemidji…



On 23 January 2004 (08:38 AM),
Tiffany said:

Somehow this is geekier then the computer talk.



On 23 January 2004 (08:55 AM),
Lynn said:

WAY geekier.



On 23 January 2004 (09:09 AM),
J.D. said:

Dana, my love:

  • Of course it’s Bemidji. The link isn’t Bemidji, though. Doo-dooh-doo-dooh.
  • The song is “Twilight Zone” by Golden Earring. Not Golden Earrings. Not “Bullet Hits the Bone”.

Lyrics:
(Somewhere in a lonely hotel room there’s a guy starting to realize that eternal fate has turned its back on him.)

“It’s 2 a.m., the fear has gone. I’m sitting here waiting with the gun still warm. Maybe my connection is tired of taking chances. Yeah, there’s a storm on the loose: sirens in my head. Wrapped up in silence, all circuits are dead. I cannot decode. My whole life spins into a frenzy.

“Help! I’m slipping into the Twilight Zone. The place is a madhouse; it feels like being cloned. My beacon’s been moved under moon and star. Where am I to go now that I’ve gone too far?”

Soon you are gonna know — when the bullet hits the bone.

“I’m falling down a spiral, destination unknown: a double-crossed messenger, all alone. I can’t get no connection, can’t get through. Where are you?”

Well, the night weighs heavy on his guilty mind. This far from from the border line. And when the hitman comes, he knows damn well he has been cheated. And he says:

“Help! I’m slipping into the Twilight Zone. The place is a madhouse; it feels like being cloned. My beacon’s been moved under moon and star. Where am I to go now that I’ve gone too far?”

Soon you are gonna know — when the bullet hits the bone.

Trivia:
When Kris and I were on our honeymoon in Victoria, B.C., we went to see a movie (The Fugitive with Harrison Ford). There was music playing in the theater before the film started, including this song, and now I always associate the song with that moment. (Well, that and the time me and Jeff danced around in the living room when we first heard the song.)



On 23 January 2004 (09:31 AM),
tammy said:

Yikes, this is scarey! Where’s JD? Somebody has taken over his blog. Oh, for the days when we could come here and read all that boring stuff about his latest geeky gadgets!



On 23 January 2004 (09:40 AM),
Dana said:

Dana, my love:

Shhhhh! Don’t tell Kris! 😉

Ming the Merciless



On 23 January 2004 (10:26 AM),
Denise said:

Golden Earring? Then who sang Radar Love? Did they sing that, too?



On 23 January 2004 (10:27 AM),
Denise said:

…and I must add, “When the Bullet Hits the Bone” is a GREAT choice to be playing in the back of my head as I look at your entry!



On 23 January 2004 (10:43 AM),
Kris said:

Did Jd really say “me & Jeff”?



On 23 January 2004 (11:03 AM),
Lynn said:

Even with the egregious grammatical error, the mental picture of JD & Jeff dancing about the living room to that song is hilarious. So, was it Tom Cruise in his underwear in Risky Business kind of dancing? Or Patrick Dempsey doing a Discovery Channel dance in Can’t Buy Me Love kind of dancing? I just want the appropriate scenery to go along with the song in my head.



On 23 January 2004 (11:13 AM),
Tiffany said:

Golden Earring sang both ‘Radar Love’ and ‘Twilight Zone’ that had the line “When the Bullet hits the Bone”.



On 23 January 2004 (11:32 AM),
Dana said:

So, does anybody think JD will get around to explaining what exactly brought on this wave of surreality?



On 23 January 2004 (11:49 AM),
Amanda said:

Yikes, this is scarey! Where’s JD? Somebody has taken over his blog. Oh, for the days when we could come here and read all that boring stuff about his latest geeky gadgets!

*laughs at Tammy*



On 23 January 2004 (02:53 PM),
mart said:

prime example of why you shouldn’t blog when drunk



On 23 January 2004 (04:42 PM),
Joel said:

And hypoglycemic.

Read More →

18 January 2004• by

Only I Have the Power to Absorb All Data

In which my new Powermac G5 is gradually absorbing all of my existing data: music, photos, documents, etc.

I guess that title only makes sense if you’ve been hanging around here a while (and maybe not even then)…

My new G5 has turned me anal-retentive with my data.

Ever since my first computer (an Apple Macintosh SE) in 1989, I’ve simply dumped all of my old data onto a new hard drive without regard for organization. Over the past fifteen years, I’ve accumulated a lot of data, and it takes more and more time to transfer it to a new machine. And when it’s transferred using the Dump Method, it becomes very difficult to sort through it.

With this new machine, I’ve decided to be more methodical. I am slowly transferring the data, making certain that every file is in its proper place.

Of course, all I’ve really focused on so far is music: I’ve been ripping all of our CDs into iTunes. Didn’t I already rip them all onto the PC? Aren’t all of our songs already in mp3 format? Yes, they are. But when I did that first rip, several years ago, I had no concept of ID3 tags (the header information in an mp3 file). I made sure the file names were consistent (“U2 – I Will Follow.mp3”), but I didn’t do anything with the ID3 tags.

iTunes bases its entire organizational system on ID3 tags. It’s a wonderful organizational system: very flexible, easy to search, highly customizable, and, best of all, capable of creating amazingly complex “smart” playlists. (“Make a new playlist with all of the jazz songs between 1960 and 1970 but don’t include Dave Brubeck or any song with the word Love in the title.”) Without solid ID3 tags, this is impossible.

So, I’m being anal-retentive about my ID3 tags, especially the Genre tag. Sometimes it’s tough. Into which genre does Rickie Lee Jones fall? Are Wham! pop or synthpop? Is Elvis rock, pop, or, as I finally decided, oldies? I had to create some genres to match my collection. I have a lot of old-time radio shows, so Radio is a new genre. Kris and I think of an entire subclass of music (Natalie Merchant, Alanis Morrissette (whose name I can never spell correctly), Suzanne Vega) as “Chickrock” or “Bitchrock”. I have a huge collection of pre-1930s music, and despite its actual genre, I’ve classified it all as Vintage.

Over the past several days, I’ve managed to rip 5397 songs into iTunes. That’s 21.70gb of music, which would play for 16.4 days from start to finish. And I’m only to Hank Williams. I still have all of the compilations left, and all of the classical music, and all of the electronica, and the 101 CDs that are in our CD player.

After I finish absorbing all my music, I’ll absorb all my photographs.

Initially I feared that process would be long and arduous. I intend to re-scan many of my photographs, touching them up in Photoshop Elements before transferring them to iPhoto. Apparently the newest version of iPhoto (which I have not actually looked at yet) has several new iTunes-like features that help sort photographs.

Jeff came over yesterday and we scanned in some more recent photographs of Noah (the new photographs, when I’ve processed them, will be found here). I was shocked at how quickly we were able to scan them. On my iBook, it would have taken more than a minute for each photo, but on the G5 each took about ten to twelve seconds. Holy cats! This will certainly take the drudgery out of absorbing photographic data.

When I’m finished with the photos, it’ll be time to absorb all of my textual data: college essays, old web sites, e-mail I’ve saved since 1993, poems, stories, weblog entries. It would be nice if I could find an iTunes-like application for text documents, but I’m not holding my breath. I have fewer text files than music files anyhow, so sorting everything by hand ought to be okay.

Only I have the power to absorb all data!

Comments


On 18 January 2004 (11:08 AM),
Dana said:

What, you mean something like this (which wouldn’t work for you, as it runs in emacs), or this (which is a gnome tool, but should be useable under OS X)?



On 18 January 2004 (11:26 AM),
J.D. Roth said:

Hm. Thanks for the suggestions, Dana, but neither of those are anything like what I’m looking for.

What I want is an application to organize and group text documents, much as iTunes does for music.

The main view would comprise a “library” of all of the documents, which could be easily filtered, as in iTunes, based on document title, author, creation date, type, etc. “Playlists” of documents could be created so that it would be possible to, say, group all documents about money or about music.

I really doubt there’s anything like this available. (The closest I’ve seen is xPad, but it’s only got the germ of what I’m after.) I’m half-way tempted to write something myself. It’d be a good experience…



On 18 January 2004 (11:30 AM),
J.D. Roth said:

Like this but for text.



On 18 January 2004 (01:23 PM),
Dana said:

Hmmmm. By ‘playlist’, I assume what you *really* mean is what amounts to a folder, or perhaps ‘view’, right?

That sounds a *little* like piles, which is a rumored upcoming MacOS feature. I gather piles are primarily chronological, and organized less by type than by time (although perhaps I’m wrong on the details).

It also sounds a lot like the mystery “database filesystem” which is coming Real Soon Now in some version of Windows.

Of course, you could get a similar effect by storing all your text documents in a database with appropriate meta-data (which is all that iTunes is doing, really)…



On 20 January 2004 (07:45 AM),
Joel said:

My colleague Andy is currently scrolling through one of the many humorous photoshop contests on FARK, which made me suddenly want to photoshop a version of that wonderful Fantastic Four panel that this blog references. Dana could be Reed, JD could be J. Storm, but who would be the Thing, strapped onto that terrible melty thing?



On 20 January 2004 (09:20 AM),
Dana said:

Intertwingle – An old proposal of Jamie Zawinski that never came to anything, but also sounds rather related to what you are looking for…

(And Joel, I’d much rather be Sue than Reed… =) )



On 20 January 2004 (02:25 PM),
Joel said:

Of course, thoughtless of me. And I’m very glad you didn’t want to be Felicia- the whole superhero dating a handicapped person freaks me out.

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11 January 2004• by

Mystic River

In which I eat a cheese that tastes like shit. In which we see the film Mystic River.

I spent half of Saturday working on Sabino’s computers. I spent the other half of the day lying on the couch, suffering from a low-grade fever of unknown origin. I played Nintendo half-heartedly. I watched home improvement shows. Mainly, I stared into space.

Today, mysterious fever mysteriously gone, I was ready for an outing: Trader Joe’s! Powell’s! A movie! Dinner at a fancy restaurant!

We stopped at Trader Joe’s first. I loathe Trader Joe’s on weekends; it’s crowded and I get frustrated with all of the traffic.

On a whim, I sampled some cheese: raclette. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I knew instantly that I’d made a terrible mistake.

It was as if I had just eaten fresh fecal matter. Ugh. The stench! The taste! After one chew, the lump of cheese sat in my mouth, a gritty, slimy ball of crap. I looked in vain for someplace to spit it out. I decided to swallow the thing, but that only exacerbated the trouble; I gagged, could not get it down. My stomach heaved. I felt certain I was about to vomit all over the $2.99 bottles of Charles Shaw chardonnay (against which I was leaning).

At last I spied a stack of napkins on a sample table. I literally shoved a woman aside to grab a napkin. She glared at me — and rightfully so — but I didn’t care. I spat the hunk of cheese into the napkin and prayed the foul taste would leave my mouth quickly.

Later Kris told me that raclette isn’t designed to be eaten like that. “It’s a fondue cheese,” she said. Right. Everyone wants fondue that tastes like shit.

At Powell’s I spent money compulsively, picking up a Modern Library edition of Proust’s The Past Recaptured, a compilation of Dick Tracy comic strips, another Flash Gordon comic strip compilation (this one in color!) and volumes one, two, three, and eight of a Terry and the Pirates compilation. Oh — I also bought a librarian action figure to go with my Shakespeare action figure.

As we were driving away, Kris sighed. “I’m having one of those days where everyone looks familiar to me, even though I know they’re not,” she said. “Does that ever happen to you.”

“Yeah,” I said, nodding in agreement.

“Like them,” she said, pointing to a couple waiting to cross the street. Then she did a double-take. “Oh! It’s Lance and Miriam.”

Lance Shipley and his wife, Miriam, whom we had not seen in fifteen years, and now we’ve seen twice in two months (though they’ve only seen us once). We were seated behind them at the David Sedaris lecture.

I understand that many, many people love the Lord of the Rings films, especially The Return of the King. That’s fine. They’re fun films.

I have trouble, though, when people start trying to pitch them as deserving of Best Picture. I want to ask them, “Have you seen all of the other nominees? If so, what makes you think this year’s Rings film is better than this year’s other films? If you haven’t seen the other nominees, how can you argue your point?” Last year, for example, Jen at the Very Big Blog was adamant that Peter Jackson’s Helms Deep should win, but I’m not sure she ever saw any of the other nominees (although, in retrospect, last year’s crop looks pretty week except for the winner, Chicago).

This year, there’s a good chance that The Return of the King will win as some sort of reward for the entire trilogy. If some other, better, film loses because of this, that’d be a shame. I realize that film preferences, like all preferences, are subjective, but I find it difficult to believe that many people could consider The Return of the King superior to Mystic River.

Mystic River is a fine film. It has a wonderful story, a wonderful script. It is well directed (by Clint Eastwood, who also wrote the music!?!?!?!). The acting is superlative (Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon, Tim Robbins, Marcia Gay Harden, Laura Linney, Laurence Fishburne — some cast, huh?). It’s a great film. (It’s only real flaws are some patches of flubbed editing and, like The Return of the King, an over-long ending.)

For my part, I still prefer Lost in Translation, though I think Mystic River is probably, in an objective sense, a better film.

Kris suggested a great solution: award The Lord of the Rings trilogy an unprecendented honorary award of merit, recognizing the achievement. Reward the accomplishment without taking away from other potentiall more deserving single films. What do you think?

Comments

On 12 January 2004 (07:26 AM),
J.D. said:

I just read Ebert’s review; it’s very good. In particular, I like what he has to say about the acting and directing:

To see strong acting like this is exhilarating. In a time of flashy directors who slice and dice their films in a dizzy editing rhythm, it is important to remember that films can look and listen and attentively sympathize with their characters. Directors grow great by subtracting, not adding, and Eastwood does nothing for show, everything for effect.

Over the past three months I have gained a profound respect for Eastwood as a director, and have even begun to admire his acting abilities.

On 12 January 2004 (08:38 AM),
Tiffany said:

I often hunt out an award-winning movie, and I find that I am often disappointed. I am better off know very little of what others thing so that I am not �expecting� a great movie. I enjoyed �Lost� but never got to see �Mystic River�. I have always been confused how you can compare a movie like �Lost� to �Rings�. They have nothing in common, so all you can say is which one you liked better.

On 12 January 2004 (08:44 AM),
Denise said:

Having watched many a Spaghetti Western with my father when I was young, Clint Eastwood has always been one of my favorite actors. The one thing I like about Eastwood is he doesn’t try to take on roles that he cannot be convincing in.

As a director, I think he has improved and continues to do so.

I look at Eastwood as the John Wayne of our generation (and not just because they both made a lot of westerns), and will miss him when he is gone.

On 12 January 2004 (09:58 AM),
Dana said:

My taste is so eclectic that I don’t bother to pay much attention to awards or critics. And, as Tiffany says, movies can be so dissimilar, and yet in the same category, that it becomes like comparing apples and hot dogs. Just too different to be very useful of a comparison.

I think giving the LotR a collective award would be quite nice. At the same time, I think the third film also shows a certain deftness of composition that the other two were still struggling to find. I think Jackson sort of hit his stride with the material and everything in the third film. And I didn’t find the ending to be overlong at all. If anything, I thought it a bit too short…

On 12 January 2004 (10:18 AM),
mart said:

i think NO on giving them a special award. why reward such incredible mediocrity? it only encourages them to make more crap like that. i know this is horribly naive of me, but shouldn’t GREAT movies be given awards? or is an oscar just another stop on the hollywood publicity train now? oh yeah… it is and has been for a long long time.

me? i tend to cast my lot with cannes and the palme d’or, which is a real sign of filmmaking talent.

ok, ok, let peter jackson and his whole pathetic trilogy have all the oscars they want. that just means fewer people in imamura movies irritating me.

On 12 January 2004 (10:52 AM),
Kris said:

http://www.raclette-fondue.com/html/fondue.html

On 12 January 2004 (11:22 AM),
J.D. said:

Mart said: shouldn’t GREAT movies be given awards? or is an oscar just another stop on the hollywood publicity train now? oh yeah… it is and has been for a long long time.

Mart, you’re a good man. While I’m not quite as down on the film version of LOTR as you are, it’s no secret that I’m disappointed by it. Mostly, I weep at the amount of money that was put into these films and how little there is to actually show for that money. Yes, there are a lot of digitally animated battle scenes, but so what? I wish more of the series was like Fellowship (the extended version).

I became disenchanted wtih the Oscars when Shakespeare in Love beat Saving Private Ryan for Best Picture. And Titanic over L.A. Confidential? Gladiator? The woefully mediocre A Beautiful Mind?

Still, the naive idealistic J.D. holds out hope that truly great films can win Best Picture…

On 12 January 2004 (01:34 PM),
Lynn said:

Aren’t the Oscars really just about ripping on the ugly dresses and hair that people have the gall to think are attractive?

Mart hit it on the head when he stated that it is impossible to compare and judge two or more dissimilar movies. It’s all a matter of taste.

On 12 January 2004 (03:33 PM),
Lisa said:

Excellent! Craig and I have days like yours too–where everyone looks familiar. It’s a strange thing, and we feel it more in Oregon than anywhere else.

On 12 January 2004 (04:27 PM),
Paul said:

J.D.,

LOTR vs. Cold Mountain.

I like LOTR better than you. I am hesitant to admit that I never read the trilogy. I think that might be the crux of the matter: familiarity with the raw material(the books). Because you read the trilogy you have your own opinion as to what would have made the movies better. You probably also have your own idea of how you would have filmed them (or portions of them); which scenes to delete, which to amplify etc. What I don’t think you’ve been able to do is try to imagine them as if experiencing them for the first time (as I did). I guess you have a need to critique the films.

[Now to talk out of the other side of my mouth.]

Having read Cold Mountain I have a deep fear that it will disappoint me. A movie can never duplicate the feel of language, it can of course tell a story but it can’t be the words themselves. I remember when I first read Cold Mountain, it took me an hour for the first 20 pages! I am a painfully slow reader but I was savoring the writing, the words he chose.

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07 January 2004• by

Ice World

In which we wake to a world encased in ice.

We woke to a world encased in ice. Here in Canby it was twenty-seven degrees with a light freezing rain. A quick check of the television and the web revealed that most of the Portland metropolitan area would remain closed today.

 

As we drowsed through the next couple of hours we could, from time-to-time, hear the crunch crunch crunch of tires on ice. Traffic was infrequent.

At eight I called Jeff and we decided to cancel work at Custom Box Service. That done, I grabbed my camera and ventured outside.

It was like walking on a sheet of ice. What had been a thin rime yesterday was now nearly an inch thick. In some places the ice was thick enough that my steps did not break through the crust, but in most spots my footsteps created small craters with cracks that spiderwebbed outward.

The layer of ice on the magnolia caught my eye, and on the arborvitae. The daphne, too, was coated in ice (and may not survive), and the rosemary, and the rhododendrons, and the dogwood, and the maple. When I broke a piece of ice off a fern, a large piece of the plant broke off with it.

 

Our neighbor came outside and began to shovel his walk. Why? (He has been shoveling his walk for an hour-and-a-half now.) His dog sat with him, watching patiently.

I walked around the house, photographing icicles and frozen plants. Then I walked down the street, photographing the ice. The temperature increased perceptibly. A thin layer of water melted on top of the ice, and the footing became even more treacherous.

Some of the neighbors’ trees had been destroyed by the storm; the weight of the ice had become too much, and limbs had been ripped from tree trunks. I was admiring an tall hedge which, coated in ice, had dipped to the ground without breaking, when a man with a cigarette and a cup of coffee wandered down the street to join me.

“I ain’t seen nothing like this,” he said. I mentioned the storm of 1996. “Yeah, but that wasn’t nothing like this. I was in Lewiston, Idaho, for that storm. I was picking up paper at the potlach mill. My load was delayed, though. The floodwaters had swept away a herd of cattle and one of the damn things had got stuck in an intake someplace. Burned out a piece of equipment worth a hundred grand. Killed the cow. I had to wait at the mill an extra day, and the flood waters rose.

“Bunch of us were trapped in Lewiston. Truckdrivers. I wanted out of there, though. I’d had enough of that truckstop shit. We lined up at the only bridge out of town and we watched the river. It was so high that it was sweeping over the bridge. But every once in a while the guy in front would decide he could make it, so he’d take a chance and cross the bridge.

“When it was my turn, they told me not to go. ‘Don’t do it, man,’ they said, but I wanted out of there, so I just went. It was dicey, but I made it.”

Then, as I was walking home, I passed another fellow out walking on the ice. He was having trouble, slipping and sliding all over the place. He wasn’t taking ice-sized baby steps; he was taking abnormally long strides, and it wasn’t working. He nodded at me. “I’m not used to this shit,” he said. “I’m from Arizona.”

I laughed. “We’re not that used to it, either. This is a rare thing around here.”

I came back home and made myself some Abuelita (a brand of Mexican hot chocolate).

Update: It’s eleven. I just took the mail out, and the ice, as it begins to melt, is slick. Yikes. Twice, my right leg (and its bad knee) went shooting out. I’m staying inside the rest of the day, playing Nintendo.

Comments

On 07 January 2004 (11:34 AM),
mac said:

we have a thin layer of ice covering our thick layer of snow here…not nearly as much ice as you guys have down there. be careful

On 07 January 2004 (11:38 AM),
J.D. said:

Ah. I knew it was bound to happen sooner or later. We just had a power surge which was followed by a boom in the distance. I suspect that power is now off in parts of the city. We’re right on the corner of the power grid; when the power is off across the street, it’s on here, and vice versa.

On 07 January 2004 (12:05 PM),
Paul said:

It is a balmy 37 degrees in the tropical south. The University of Oregon has only completely closed twice in its 127 years due to weather conditions. These last two days have not caused a closure of any sort. I guess they anticipate that we will bike to campus regardless of the weather. I don’t have a Nintendo, so I am content to be at work.

On 07 January 2004 (01:25 PM),
Denise said:

I was hoping you would take some pictures. I have a great tree in my backyard that is covered with ice (much like the picture on the right of your second set), but I am not going to venture out just yet. I actually got my garbage and recycling cans out to the curb last night (just in case the garbage trucks were coming this morning) and almost fell on my rear more than once.

Ice is SO fun.

On 07 January 2004 (01:39 PM),
Dana said:

What sort of boom? I wonder if it was a big ice-covered tree collapsing onto some lines, or if it was a transformer actually exploding?

I keep telling you, JD — you need to come out here to Minnesota in January or February to experience actual cold, ice, and snow. Granted, we don’t get that kind of ice often either, but I have seen it before.

Too bad none of you has ice skates. Sounds like a near-perfect environment. Of course, I suppose that assumes you know how to ice skate.

Isn’t weather fun? =) Hope your leg is okay! (And I particularly like the close-up picture of the bare branch encased in ice.)

On 07 January 2004 (02:20 PM),
Mom (Sue) said:

I just looked out a little bit ago to see that I have lost another big limb off the oak tree out back. That must have been a recent occurrence because I didn’t see it when I looked out earlier. Jake VanPelt is probably going to be happy about that, as it will mean more free firewood for him if he wants it. 🙂 I’m not ready to go walking around outside yet — that snow coated with ice looks too dicey, even though it is warmer.

Also, something weird about this site, J.D. — I posted that last entry on the blog page before this one a couple of hours ago and then as usual the comment didn’t show up when I checked foldedspace.org a few minutes ago, although that page was still the home page. Then there was another momentary power shut-off — the second one today — and after that, I had trouble getting back online for a few minutes. Now it is about 10 minutes later and there is a whole new home page and lots of comments! Almost instantaneously, it seems. Very strange! (I suspect it has more to do with AOL than your blog, though; I know to expect the unexpected with this server.)

On 07 January 2004 (08:57 PM),
Rich &Tiff said:

Nice pics. I have seen this once before, in Xenia, Ohio. Sometime in January we had a freezing rain a few days after a warm spell that had melted most of the snow. We had planted a Christmas tree in the front yard, and virtually every pine needle was sheathed in a perfect little ice coating like some kind of glistening echo of the green needle itself. Like you, I walked around taking pictures of everything I could find, though admittedly I slipped far more than I walked. The pine and the neighbor’s silver elm were the most impressive I saw. None of the pictures came out. I had no idea when I was a kid that flash plus shiny ice plus sunlight equaled blank white photo. I’m glad yours came out better. Live and learn.
Incidentally, we had the aurora that year as well.

On 08 January 2004 (10:29 AM),
pril said:

wow those are some nice pictures!

Aw, its just boring ol’ rain here, still. If it was icy like that, i’d be outside. My driveway makes a perfect sled run. There’s a dip as you hit the street, and you catch air going over the crown and land in the across-the-street neighbors parking area.

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19 December 2003• by

Undigital

In which I rant about digital effects in film-making. They’re overused!

I understand that digital effects in film are the new rage, that they have forever changed what we see on the screen, but that doesn’t mean I have to be happy about it. Old-fashioned models and puppets may have been obviously fake, but their limitations were, in some ways, good for film-makers.

For example, the space battles in the first three Star Wars films (which are actually the last three films, if you get my meaning) were created using models. The movement of the ships may seem odd at times, but it’s easy to follow the flow of battle, and it’s possible to become emotionally invested in the outcome. These battles, created without digital effects, are engaging and exciting.

Compare that with the last two Star Wars films (which are actually the first two films, if you get my meaning). The space battle in The Phantom Menace may be beautiful (though that’s arguable), but it’s dull. There are too many ships, and things happen too quickly. Worse is the land-based battle in Attack of the Clones. The battlefield explodes with a bewildering array of combatants, and laser fire flashes in every direction. The screen is filled with action. And it all sucks. There’s no narrative thread, so it makes no sense. The film-makers have become obsessed with their effects at the expense of their story.

One of the reasons I so dislike Peter Jackson’s Helms Deep is the endless digitally-created Battle of Helms Deep. It not only looks fake, it’s also overwhelming. I would have preferred a scene created without the use of digital effects. The constraints would have forced Peter Jackson to become more firmly grounded in reality, and to give the audience something with which to indetify.

Kris and I saw The Last Samurai the other night. It’s a decent film. The climactic battle scene is a mix of live-action combat and digital animation. The live-action stuff looks great, but the digital stuff looks to uniform, too artificial, too fake. It threw me out of the film.

Are the problems with digital effects primarily due to the infancy of the medium? Are the creators of these effects too tempted to go over the top, unable to show a modicum of restraint? Will things settle in the future? I hope so, but I�m not convinced.

The battles in The Return of the King feature a lot of digital work, too, but I’m happy to say that I was mostly impressed with the way in which it was handled. It seemed to enhance the battles rather than detract from them. I can’t imagine creating the overhead shots of the charge of the Rohirrim without using digital effects.

For my part, until the digital wizards learn to exercise restraint, I prefer my films to have very little digital enhancement. Part of what made Master and Commander so compelling was that the battles contained little, if any, digital work. (Maybe I�m wrong, but I don’t think so.) One reason that I’m reluctant to see Troy is the absurd scene from the preview in which we pan from viewing a single ship to viewing an evenly spaced fleet of perfectly identical vessels — the mythical “thousand ships” — an utter absurdity born of someone’s orgasmic passion for digital effects. It’s lame.

Comments

On 19 December 2003 (01:08 PM),
dowingba said:

Well, for one thing, the space battles in the first three Star Wars films (or the last three, sir, if you catch my meaning, that is) are “visual effects”, they just aren’t “computer effects”.

I have long had a problem with the influx of Computer Animation too. My biggest problem, though, has always been the textures. Up until 2001 or so, I hadn’t ever seen a computer graphic that looked as good as old style stop-motion just because the textures were always so crappy looking. In the last few years though, texture-modelling seems to have made great leaps.

The battles in all three LOTR movies seem chaotic enough to be a realistic depiction of medieval style warfare. I see no problem (except for the lack of any dialogue or flow in the Helm’s Deep scene).

My biggest problem with the Two Towers, is that the entire movie is just a build up to the Helm’s Deep scene. It’s a 3.5 hour foreshadow, that gets incredibly tedious, especially to one who has all but memorized the book. Also, because they stripped so much away from the Frodo/Sam/Gollum story, it seems like there isn’t even a point to it. They’re just wandering around from place to place. Frankly, except for a few minor events, The Two Towers could basically be ignored and the plot would continue flawlessly from where FOTR ends. Peter Jackson stripped so much away and changed so much that it ceases to have any bearing on the story.

On 19 December 2003 (01:19 PM),
Denise said:

I completely agree. Case in point: Chewie vs. Jar Jar Binks. There is no comparison. Put aside the fact that Chewbacca was one of my favorite characters and Jar Jar was little more than an annoyance – it was painfully obvious that Jar Jar was computer animated. Computer animation makes the character much less believable.

I still enjoy Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back much more than The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones.

On 19 December 2003 (01:23 PM),
Joel said:

So, how do you rate the much-adored digital effect that is Smeagol? Or the Nazgul? Or is it just digital action sequences that get your goat?
I guess what I’m driving at is, I feel that in general you tend to inveigh against violent set-pieces in general (e.g. The Matrix’s lobby scene), not just digitally enhanced/produced ones.
On the other hand, I agree that the climactic battle of The Attack of the Clones struck me as an attempt to transport the audience via a bewildering technicolor chaos, rather than something visually… engaging.

On 19 December 2003 (01:25 PM),
Dana said:

I think the trouble with digital effects is a bit more subtle. Look — The Toy Story movies, and Monsters, Inc., are great movies. The effects are great and the stories are compelling. The problem isn’t digital effects per se, but a lack of restraint in their use by the film makers.

It doesn’t help that, while the textures have improved, the physics hasn’t. Toy Story works because it’s trying to look like an animated film, which doesn’t have realistic physics. When you try and make a photorealistic effect, but it doesn’t move quite right, that sticks out like a sore thumb. The Compu-Neo in the last couple of Matrix movies had this problem in some scenes, I thought, as did Gandalf and the Rohirrim’s charge at the end of the Battle of Helm’s Deep in TTT.

It does bug me when I see this sort of excess. The filmmaker is making a video game, not presenting a story, which is basically JD’s point, too.

On 19 December 2003 (01:26 PM),
Joel said:

Um, let’s rewrite that last sentence: On the other hand, I agree that the climactic battle of The Attack of the Clones was overproduced. It struck me as an attempt to transport the audience via a bewildering technicolor chaos, rather than something visually… engaging.

Yes? Better?

On 19 December 2003 (02:07 PM),
Dana said:

On further reflection, I think Joel is onto something. JD, I think your problem is certain kinds of overproduced set pieces, not digital effects per se.

Consider: You love the pod-racing scene in Phantom Menace, a scene chock-a-block full of digital effects. The Lobby scene in Matrix is mostly wire work and traditional effects, along with clever camera work, I think, as opposed to being digital heavy (although I’m sure there are digital bits layered in), and yet you hate it.

The complication of digital effects is that they tempt the movie maker into putting more of those over-produced, anti-story set pieces into an otherwise engaging film on a (comparatively) meager budget.

Constraints fuel creativity. Necessity is the mother of invention. If it’s easy to do, it’s harder to do in a clever way. Or am I just full of it?

On 19 December 2003 (02:29 PM),
J.D. said:

Joel said: So, how do you rate the much-adored digital effect that is Smeagol? Or the Nazgul? Or is it just digital action sequences that get your goat? I guess what I’m driving at is, I feel that in general you tend to inveigh against violent set-pieces in general (e.g. The Matrix’s lobby scene), not just digitally enhanced/produced ones.

You have a very valid point here. For those unaware, I love the The Matrix, except for the lame-ass “let’s shoot the fuck out of everything while doing somersaults” lobby scene. It’s an example of gratuitous violence and gratuitous effects which does nothing to advance the story. Many people love this scene. I do not.

I think that Gollum looks awesome, and I have no problem with him as a digitalized character. In fact, I think that Serkis deserves an Oscar based on the films I’ve seen this year. Gollum is great. (The Nazgul are not great. They look terrible. The scale is all wrong. But that’s less a digital thing than a vision thing. Peter Jackson simply sees them differently than I do.)

So I guess you’re right, Joel: it’s mostly digital action sequences — or, more specifically, digital fight sequences — that bug me.

Dana said: The complication of digital effects is that they tempt the movie maker into putting more of those over-produced, anti-story set pieces into an otherwise engaging film on a (comparatively) meager budget. Constraints fuel creativity. Necessity is the mother of invention. If it’s easy to do, it’s harder to do in a clever way. Or am I just full of it?

No, I think you’re dead on.

(And you’re right that I love the pod-race sequence, which seems to go against my prevailing preferences, but that’s because I love racing sequences more than I hate digital effects. I love race sequences. Quick. Name J.D.’s favorite kind of video game! First-person shooter? Nope. Real-time strategy? Nope. Role-playing game? Nope. Racing game? Yep! (And arcade racing at that, not simulation.))

In particular, I like this bit: “The complication of digital effects is that they tempt the movie maker into putting more of those over-produced, anti-story set pieces into an otherwise engaging film.” Over-produced, anti-story elements indeed! Perhaps the reason I like the Battle of Pelennor fields is that there are fewer pretentious shots of Aragorn posing in the rain, fewer “oh look how neat ten thousand orcs can look” shots, and that the battle sequences actually seem to served to advance the plotline.

So, this is an incredibly long answer to essentially tell Joel that mainly it’s digital battle scenes that bug me because their creators show absolutely no restraint, no sense of story when they make them.

On 19 December 2003 (03:02 PM),
Lynn said:

ET: The Extra-Terrestrial. He’s so ugly he’s cute and we just all fell in love with the way he walked and moved, as awkward as it was. In the “enhanced with digital effects” version shown recently on TV, they added a digital bathtub scene. “That’s NOT ET!” I shouted! He didn’t look the same, he looked like a cartoon. The real ET was huggable, this able-bodied thing in the bathtub was NOT ET. Digital effects just do not have the same “feeling.”

On 19 December 2003 (03:28 PM),
Denise said:

Interesting to note the difference between the women’s comments about this compared to the men’s (of course, taking Dana out of the equation, as she is computer educated and keep up with the rest of you): Lynn and I commented on the characters, and all the men commented on scenes. Mars vs. Venus, I think this is a good example.

Down with Jar Jar! Just had to add that.

On 19 December 2003 (03:37 PM),
Joel said:

Allow me to alight briefly on the stormy Venusian surface:
As soon as I saw that bathtub scene on a commercial I was like: “I am not going to see this version of E.T.” Then again we were all raised on muppets, weren’t we? Is it just that CGI characters are so real that they seem uncanny and, therefore, repulsive?
I don’t think so, though I’m not visual enough to explain why they don’t seem real (especially in Phantom Menace, where the characters plaid by real live actors seem so artificial that you’d think Jar Jar would fit right in). Gollum is the first effective digital character in a live-action film.

On 19 December 2003 (03:37 PM),
Joel said:

Allow me to alight briefly on the stormy Venusian surface:
As soon as I saw that bathtub scene on a commercial I was like: “I am not going to see this version of E.T.” Then again we were all raised on muppets, weren’t we? Is it just that CGI characters are so real that they seem uncanny and, therefore, repulsive?
I don’t think so, though I’m not visual enough to explain why they don’t seem real (especially in Phantom Menace, where the characters played by real live actors seem so artificial that you’d think Jar Jar would fit right in). Gollum is the first effective digital character in a live-action film.

On 19 December 2003 (03:38 PM),
Joel said:

sorry

On 19 December 2003 (03:44 PM),
Denise said:

I agree completely with Joel about Gollum – both times. Maybe I am stuck on Jar Jar because meese could nevers understood anytings he was sayings.

On 19 December 2003 (07:55 PM),
dowingba said:

My favourite games are a tie between Real Time Strategy and RPG’s. Can you guess why I love LOTR so much?

On 19 December 2003 (07:58 PM),
dowingba said:

Oh, and I remember while watching Star Wars Episode 1 for the first time, thinking “What, is this whole movie just a big Pod Race?” during the horrifically long Pod Race scene. I was rather dismayed. It’s Star Wars, not Little Kids in Pods Wars. Seriously, that scene could have been 1 minute long and conveyed the right message and advanced the plot. The Pod Race scene is a classic example of directors’ CGI-lust ruining movies.

On 19 December 2003 (10:50 PM),
Dana said:

Denise: I agree about the character vs. scene thing. The problem I have with the big set pieces is there’s nothing to connect with. You have activity, but no narrative story and no characters. It’s just events.

I think the core issue with digital characters not seeming ‘real’ is all in the motion. It’s how they’re coordinated, and how they move. The more realistic they look, the more weird they look when they move wrong. It sticks out like a sore thumb.

One of the reasons Gollum is so much better than Jar Jar is that he’s animated using motion capture. Andy Serkis, who does the voice (and plays Smeagol at the begining of RotK), was fitted out with a full body suit that had little colored spots all over it. Then, when they were filming the scene, they’d do it once with him there, acting as gollum, and once with him not there.

Then, they took a computer, and mapped all his motions onto the animated Gollum, who was inserted into the scene without Serkis.

This means that Gollum, for the most part, is moving like a person. He’s kind of like a full-body puppet.

Also, Gollum’s face is a lot more expressive than JarJar’s. And while I don’t think they did motion capture for the facial expressions, I do know they modeled it to look similar to Serkis’ own face, and they had film of him emoting in each scene (from the motion capture footage). They also had him involved in the animation step, sitting there and available to explain how he’d physically move his face to portray different emotions.

Basically, they used a person, had him act a role, then changed what he looked like using a computer animated figure. This is significantly different than what they did with JarJar.

Whew.

Just got back from RotK.

Wow.

Gotta say, this is one powerful movie. And the last half hour had me crying. I did not find the goodbye scene tedious at all.

On 19 December 2003 (11:16 PM),
dowingba said:

Gollum was my absolute favourite literary character ever since I read “The Hobbit” as a kid. I was very happy with the animated Gollum in the LOTR films. Some of his movements seem fake looking still, though, despite the fact that they were motion captured beforehand. His facial expressions are incredible. Unprecedented, clearly. Also, personally, if I had made the films I would have made his character alot more evil and alot less goofy. And what’s with him walking around in the day time? He never walks in the day time (or the night time) in the books. He only ever walks out in the twilight hours around dawn and dusk. He hates the yellow face and the white face! Ack! Gollum! Gollum!

After watching it the second time, I have a observation: in the scene with the hobbits drinking beer in the Shire, I swear Andy Serkis is in the background, as a hobbit. Peter JAckson had better make THe Hobbit. I need more Gollum!!

On 20 December 2003 (12:06 AM),
J.D. said:

Chris said: In the scene with the hobbits drinking beer in the Shire, I swear Andy Serkis is in the background, as a hobbit.

Absolutely, that’s him. It’s hilarious. He’s the hobbit with the giant pumpkin around which everyone is gathered. They’re admiring the pumpkin, rubbing it, wiping it with a cloth. It’s bizarre. I’m sure we’ll learn what it’s all about on the commentary track to the extended DVD next year! 🙂

On 20 December 2003 (12:15 AM),
dowingba said:

Pesky hobbitses with their precious pumpkinssss.

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15 December 2003• by

Lux Magna Orta Est

In which I accompany Dave and Karen to Baroque Christmas music at Trinity Episcopal Church.

On Sunday afternoon, I join Dave and Karen and Nicole for a concert at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in northwest Portland. Trinity Episcopal is certainly the most beautiful church I’ve ever seen: the towering red doors, the daunting narthex (that’s a new word for me), the vast nave, the towering pipe organ.

While we wait for the concert to begin, I eavesdrop on the two couples in front of me. They’re discussing The Lord of the Rings. “I loved the first movie, but I hated the second,” says one woman.

“Oh, I loved the second movie,” says the other woman.

“I hated it,” says the first woman. “Too many battles. The movie was just one battle after another.”

Quietly, the second woman says, “I loved the giant talking trees.”

I glance through the program. What’s this? Kari Brenneman is listed under the sopranos. I knew she was in a big Portland choir, but I hadn’t realized it was the Trinity Consort. Will her parents be here? Will John and Louse be here? Will Jeremy and Jennifer be here?

I look around, and sure enough, there are John and Louise. I walk over to talk with them. They, along with Carolyn and Judy (John’s sisters), have brought all of the young Gingerich/Brenneman cousins: Nicole, Andrew, Julian, Brooks, and others I’m unable to name (they occupy an entire pew). Andrew’s long hair has been put into dreadlocks. Nicole’s short hair has also been put into dreadlocks. Brooks’ hair is still in a gigantic afro. (What is with these Gingerich kids? I’ll have to get a photo of them this weekend.)

The concert itself, entitled “A Baroque Christmas at Trinity”, is lovely. Eric Milnes, the conductor, is an early music aficionado, and the pieces are performed on period instruments.

The first piece, Dialgoue between the Angels and the Shepherds of Judea on the Birth of the Lord is by Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643-1704), a composer with whom I am unfamiliar. I particularly like the Latin text; even its English translation has a lovely poetry:

Tenor: Even as you avert your face, Lord, and disregard our tribulations.

Trio of the Just: Remember your covenant which you declared. Come from on high, and set us free.

Bass: Be comforted, daughter of Zion, why are you consumed with grief? Your King will come with mildness, you will not weep at all. And the pupil of your eye will be still. In that day the mountains shall drip sweetness, and the hills will flow with honey and milk. Be consoled, be comforted, daughter of Zion, and support God, your Savior.

Chorus: If you would only burst through the heavens, our redeemer, and descend. You heavens, drop dew from above and let the clouds rain down the just one. Let the earth be opened up and sprout forth a Saviour.And my favorite bit:

Chorus: Caeli aperti sunt, lux magna orta est, lux magna, lux terribilis! (The Heavens are opened, a great light appears, a great light, a terrible light!)

I quite like this first piece.

The next few pieces are purely instrumental, and while nice, they don’t hold my attention as well as a choral piece would. (I’ve always been more fond of choral pieces than purely instrumental pieces.) The nave is hot, and with the dulcet sounds of the orchestra, and my perpetual lack of sleep, I am drowsing off.

I try to stay awake by looking around at the cathedral. I look at the elaborate stained glass windows, each of which is inscribed with a line from the beatitudes. I look at the immense pipe organ which looms in the apse. (Is it the apse? I have trouble with terminology for elaborate church structures.) I look at the two rows of chandeliers which run the length of the cathedral, their lights perhaps meant to be almost like candle-light. I look at the slat-like construction of the ceiling. I look all around, absorbing the beauty of the church.

Still, it’s all I can do to keep from dozing.

The final piece is, thankfully, more choral music. Various individual bits from Johann Sebastian Bach have been combined into a Christmas Oratorio, and among these is one of my favorites, Break Forth, O Beauteous Heavenly Light, performed in the original German.

After the concert, the four of us walk up to Laslow’s Northwest for a bite to eat. I order the pork chop, and the waiter asks me how I’d like it prepared. I’ve never been asked that for pork before, so I choose medium, which turns out to be a mistake. The pork is delicious, but it’s too done. I ought to have ordered medium-rare. Don’t restaurants usually prepare pork as they best see fit?

On the way home, I stop at Home Depot to pick up molding and paint, etc. I walk into the store, and have only made it to the paint section when an employee announces the store is closing. I thought Home Depot was open 24 hours! (Seriously.) Not this one. Ah well — it’ll be nice to get to bed early for once.

(I do stop at Krispy Kreme for a donut and hot chocolate, though!)

Comments

On 15 December 2003 (12:14 PM),
Paul said:

If you don’t already have it, I give high marks to Anonymous 4’s cd “11,000 Virgins: Chants for the Feast of St. Ursula”. Wonderful vocal work. When does a group of singers become a choral group? Can a quartet be a choir?

I am also a big fan of Arvo Part’s choral compositions. I have this cd and really enjoy it, “Arvo Part: Kanon Pokajanen”. Though Part’s “Arbos”
has what I believe are soulful organ instrumental pieces, the interspersed choral pieces may be too infrequent.

If you find any pieces that you like of the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, please let me know.

Enjoy the music.

On 15 December 2003 (01:47 PM),
Dave said:

To answer Paul’s question, I conceive of the defining characteristics of a choir as being a group of singers in which you have at least four distinct parts, usually characterized by the vocal ranges of the singers and frequently divided into soprano, alto, tenor, and bass parts. Each part has more than one individual singing it. This would normally preclude a quartet from being a choir since each person in a quartet usually has their own part.

On 15 December 2003 (01:51 PM),
Dana said:

Yeah. But four-part harmony is pretty keen sounding in a different way than a choir. Both are cool, I think.

On 15 December 2003 (02:37 PM),
Jazzercize said:

you can have as many singing mouths as you wish if you can carefully form them and then open them in the proper way. one person then is the whole and whole is of holes emitting sounds that combine together to form a ragged tapestry of traps that hurt your fingers finally. god enjoys the quiet to reflect. his ears do not demand noise. the headaches come fast and furious.

On 15 December 2003 (02:49 PM),
dowingba said:

Wait, I’m confused. Loud noises gives God headaches?

JD, I too have never heard of restaurants serving different kinds of pork like that. “Rare” pork would be pretty uhh…horrible to eat.

The Home Depot in my town isn’t open 24 hours. I can’t imagine them getting much business at night time…unless people are doing midnight renovations often.

On 15 December 2003 (03:32 PM),
Tiffany said:

The Home Depot & Lowes here are open from 4am to 12 midnight. There are also signs says that contractors can arrange to be let in early if required!

On 15 December 2003 (03:40 PM),
mac said:

Home Depots (I almost typed “Depot’s”!) in Portland used to be open 24-7, but no longer…at least not since last May or so when I made the same mistake you did J.D.

On 15 December 2003 (04:06 PM),
Denise said:

Yes, Home Depots close at 8:00 now. We asked an employee and he said they didn’t get enough business in Oregon during the late evening/early morning hours to warrant being open past 8:00pm.

On 15 December 2003 (05:01 PM),
Joel said:

Oregon, the sleepiest of states.

This is actually the second time I’ve heard of a restaurant asking a customer’s pork-pinkness preference. I wonder if they’d serve it at less than 170 degrees? “Mm, that pig sure was tasty! And I just love these trichinellosis cysts imbedded in my muscle tissue!”

Those lyrics are wonderful, but what does “the pupil of your eye will be still” mean?

On 15 December 2003 (05:23 PM),
J.D. said:

Well, the translation in the program is even worse: “The pupil of your eye will be silent”. I took the liberty of altering “silent” to “still” because it seemed to make more sense. Sort of. 🙂

On 15 December 2003 (05:25 PM),
J.D. said:

Also, I just remembered another bit of the womens’ Lord of the Rings conversation. Woman one (who hated The Two Towers was raving about Viggo Mortensen’s heroic Aragorn, and woman two said something along the lines of: “I like Sam. I think Sam’s the hero of those movies.” She was quiet, but perceptive.

On 15 December 2003 (08:28 PM),
Dana said:

Here in Minneapolis, some Home Depots are open 24-hours, and some aren’t.

(PS – Go Sam!)

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08 December 2003• by

Friend Thanksgiving X

In which Kris Gates is always right.

Every year, Kris and I host Friend Thanksgiving, a dinner party for a group of our friends. It’s a joint thing; we share in the planning and preparation.

This year, we had decided to have an Asian theme, serving an Asian salad, crab cakes, a Thai soup, and some sort of grilled fish.

Then, a few weeks ago, Kris put the kibosh on the Asian theme. She decided that we ought to do something semi-traditional instead. (Meaning: turkey and the like.) This made me cranky.

Next, she monkeyed with the guest list, deviating from our plan. This made me cranky, too, but I kept repeating this mantra: “Kris Gates is always right. Kris Gates is always right.” (This is what I tell myself every time it turns out I should have heeded Kris’ advice. I say it a lot.)

As the dinner party approached — and even on the day of the event — there were a lot of little things I was unhappy with: I didn’t like the soup she had selected, I didn’t like the acorns and the “snow” (actually some sort of foam) on the table because it used too much space; I didn’t like the assigned seating because it was poorly received last year; I didn’t think she had thawed the turkey long enough, hadn’t brined it long enough, didn’t cook it long enough.

My list of complaints was long and I made myself a little disagreeable, though still, in the back of my mind, I kept telling myself, “Kris Gates is always right.”

Well.

We had our dinner party Saturday night, and I’m happy to say that Kris was right again. Of the ten times we’ve hosted Friend Thanksgiving (“Friend Thanksgiving X” we called this one), I feel this was the most successful. Kris’ guest-list and seating arrangement were well-planned; the food was delicious; the conversation raucous. My fears were for naught. My objective for the evening was simply to do as Kris requested, and this proved to be the best possible plan.

Our menu?

  • After an hour of cocktails (including Chai-tinis and Midori Sours), we began the meal with wild rice cakes with a chipotle-lime aioli. These served as a replacement for the crab cakes we had originally planned.
  • Next we served a spicy bacon and corn chowder, which was much better than I had expected. (While Jeremy and I were supposedly bussing the table, we were actually in the kitchen slurping down second helpings of the soup.)
  • Our third course was a salad of mixed herbs with onions and a soy-based dressing (in deference to my abhorrence of oil-based dressings).
  • The entr�e was a turkey, brined for a day, and served with acorn squash and a rosemary baguette and a fantastic gravy. I loved the bread and gravy combination so much, that I tried to horde both at my end of the table, sopping up the gravy with the bread. Yum.
  • The main course was followed by a small plate of fruit and cheese, including my favorite apple (honeycrisp!) and the always-popular cheddar-like Double Gloucester.
  • For dessert, we had a nice cake, the variety of which now escapes me. Update: Kris informs me that the dessert was a honey spice cake with brandied cherries.

Why can’t I remember what we had for dessert? For one, the rest of the food was fantastic. For another, we kept the wine flowing throughout the night. (I particularly liked the Sauvignon Blanc and the Niagra, both fruity whites, though the rest of the company seemed less impressed by them.)

Between the cheese platter and the dessert, most of the men gathered outside in the cold and the damp where they enjoyed fellowship over Jeremy’s fine cigars and my fifteen-year-old single malt Scotch whiskey.

What can I say? It was a fantastic evening, despite my fears. And all of the credit belongs to Kris. Bravo!

Kris Gates is always right.

Comments

On 08 December 2003 (04:00 PM),
Tiffany said:

I wish I lived close enough to take part. But then again, I guess I would com eto the family dinner not the friend one. 🙂
Kris – I cannot wait until Friday.

On 08 December 2003 (04:28 PM),
Paul said:

J.D.,

What was the scotch?

On 08 December 2003 (10:07 PM),
J.D. said:

Paul, the Scotch was a fifteen-year-old Glenfiddich. I hunted for Lagavulin, but nobody seems to be carrying it around here anymore. The Canby liquor store used to, but there was no demand for it. In my memory, the Lagavulin was much better than the Glenfiddich, the the Glenfiddich isn’t bad.

On 09 December 2003 (12:02 PM),
mart said:

yr memory serves you well. lagavulin easily bests that glenfiddich “crap”. 😉

On 10 December 2003 (03:31 PM),
J.D. said:

As promised, here’s the recipe for Kris’ wild rice cakes:

Wild Rice Cakes

(adapted from Martha Stewart, of course!)
1 cup brown/wild rice blend (I use Bob�s Red Mill variety)
1 tsp salt
1 Tbsp butter
4 Tbsp canola oil plus more if needed for frying
2 cloves garlic, minced very fine
1 carrot (1/3 cup), chopped finely
1 celery stalk (1/3 cup), chopped finely
� yellow bell pepper (1/3 cup), chopped finely
2 eggs, lightly beaten
freshly ground pepper to taste
1 � cups Panko Japanese bread crumbs (I found these at Uwajimaya)

  1. Prepare rice as directed on package. If using Bob�s Red Mill �Wild Rice & Brown Rice� blend, it calls for 2 � cups water, the salt and butter above, and approximately 50 minutes. The rice should still be very moist and hold together in clumps. Set rice aside to cool.
  2. Heat 2 Tbsp oil in skillet over medium heat. Add garlic and stir 1 minute. Add vegetables and cook until softened, about five minutes. Set aside to cool.
  3. In medium bowl, combine cooled rice, vegetables, and eggs. Gently fold in breadcrumbs. Season with salt and pepper. Cover, and refrigerate until the breadcrumbs have absorbed the liquids, about one hour.
  4. Using an ice-cream or dough scoop, shape 16 patties. Place onto a cookie sheet. At this point, you can cover and refrigerate them until needed. Or, you can go on to the next step.
  5. Heat the remaining 2 Tbsp canola oil over medium heat. Saute first side 5 minutes, or until golden brown and crisp. Turn over and saut� 5 minutes more. Serve immediately with wedges of lime and lime-chipotle aioli, if desired.

And, if you’d like, the aioli (I prefer Jeremy’s recipe):

Lime Chipotle Aioli

(adapted from Cook�s Illustrated The Best Recipe)
1/3 cup sour cream
� cup mayonnaise
2 tsp minced chipotle chilis (these are smoked jalapenos�I found them canned in adobo sauce in
the Mexican food section. I rinsed them & pressed them in my garlic press to remove the
skins and seeds. It is a good idea to wear protective gloves when you are handling these.)
1 minced garlic clove
2 tsp fresh minced cilantro leaves
2 tsp fresh lime juice (or more to taste)

Mix all ingredients together. Refrigerate at least 30 minutes, or up to three days.Enjoy!

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