Torgoland

Believe

2007-12-01T15:57:00.000-08:00

Las rumores son verdades.

Les rumores sont vrais.

Le voci sono allineare.

Movie Review: Knocked Up

2007-10-18T16:16:00.000-07:00

Knocked Up: Torgo approves

I don't know if I would have found this movie as funny if I wasn't married with two kids. But I am, so I did.

While parts of the final act were made-for-movies labor & delivery (even I knew the decels response was incorrect), the bit about the doctor being away and the attending doctor being awful are pretty accurate. That's why there are doulas. That's what doulas are for.

Anyway, that's all I have to say about this. It's funny. You should see it.

Where The Hell Is Bill?

2007-10-10T20:44:00.000-07:00

That's a Camper van Beethoven song that isn't very good, but it's catchy. It mostly consists of the line: "Where, where the hell is Bill?"

My point is this:

"You Remind Me of Me" -- ended badly. Very badly.

Here's something odd: all throughout the book, someone had drawn underlines and made various demarcations, as though to indicate key plot/character elements, themes, etc. I kept wondering, is someone reading this for a class? If so, why? Does Dan Chaon make his students read his books? Does he have a friend at some SF college?

Usually, in books I read with somebody's notes in them, the notes peter out quickly. Not here. In fact, the first time I get a better sense of the mysterious, tortured student is at the very end, where she (I'm presuming she based on handwriting style -- I could be wrong) adds a coda:

"Characters with a trailer trash mentality, absolutely clueless, screwed up and insuring continuity by screwing up the lives of their hapless offspring. Life is a meaningless dead end, a hell on earth. Author Chaon should add an R to his surname and call himself Charon."

There are so many interesting things about that note.

The author seems literate -- how many people use the adjective 'hapless'? She also uses the phrase 'trailer trash,' which is degrading. Then there's the Charon thing.

I'll admit it, I had to look up Charon. Turns out the note-writer was more clever with her literary allusions than Chaon. That makes me smile.

But it also brings me to that Michelangelo picture of Charon. I know Big Mike is supposed to be a great artist, but aren't the proportions all off? Look at his head in relation to his arm. And what the hell is going on with his abdomen?!

The picture weirds me out.

Little Dude (not) in the water

2007-10-07T11:37:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was Little Dude's first swim lesson. He'd been swimming in the g'rents pool in Arizona, but that was a much smaller pool.

I think he got freaked out by the big pool. We got there early, which meant we watched the class before us for about 10 minutes. Even though one of his friends from the neighborhood is in that class, I think it gave him time to solidify his opinion that he wasn't going anywhere near the water.

A few weeks ago, as you might remember, he went running into the ocean. The Pacific Ocean. The biggest body of water on the planet. On the Northern California coast where attacks by great white sharks happen (and one just happened recently -- a kayaker got attacked about 10 miles away).

But an indoor pool freaked him.

I was sympathetic. I remember taking swim lessons at the Y in Green Bay. There were two pools, the swimming pool and the diving pool. The water in the diving pool was about 10 feet deep. That meant that I knew there were sharks in it and whenever I dove I had to get out of the water as quickly as humanly possible.

The shallower pool also had sharks, I was sure, but if you stayed near the walls you'd maybe be ok.

(I blame Steven Spielberg for all of this.)

We'll take Little Dude back next weekend and try again. Things were complicated by the lesson time. It was 1:30. He usually naps from about 11-1. If he's doing something fun, that can get pushed back. But he slept late so we didn't force a nap at 11, then it was too late to start a nap before we went, so we figured we'd try holding off. That was a mistake. He was scared and tired, which is a rough combo for a 2-year-old.

The only good news that, while trying to encourage him to get in the water, I fearlessly went in the pool. I guess I've gotten over the whole shark thing.

I'm not going to show him "Jaws" when he's six. I'm also not going to just throw him in the water -- ok, I would, but M-N says no. Hopefully, next week will go a little better.

Movie Review: The Devil Wears Prada

2007-09-30T11:50:00.000-07:00

The Devil Wears Prada: Torgo disapproves

I was about to say I never see Meryl Streep movies, then I looked it up. I've seen "Adaptation," "The Hours," "The River Wild," "Lemony Snickett," and "The Deer Hunter." So I guess I do see Meryl Streep movies.

Except the "The Hours," though, the ones I see tend to be comedies or horribly bleak and depressing yet amazing Vietnam movies.

"The Devil Wears Prada" is a bad movie. But Meryl Streep is fun to watch. I could have told you that before seeing it. Having just watched it, I can confirm that that's true.

Anne Hathaway is entirely uninteresting. Not only is she bland as an actress, but she's not even particularly attractive. I don't mean that as a sexist comment -- but I'd be more inclined to watch her then even if she displayed no significant talent (read: Angelina Jolie).

I've never seen her in a movie before and this one didn't make me want change that.

Stanley Tucci is here, which is nice. He plays a stereotypically effeminate somebody who is into fashion, which is less nice.

That's about all I have to say. Oh, and M-N liked the clothes.

Mid-term Book Report: You Remind Me of Me by Dan Chaon

2007-09-29T20:05:00.000-07:00

You Remind Me of Me (the first 3/4ths): Torgo disapproves

So after "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" and "Winning," I've decided to sometimes write my reviews of books before finishing them, because sometimes the end completely changes how I feel and then my review is tainted.

I see that happening with "You Remind Me of Me."

I picked this book at random off the library fiction shelf. I wanted something that was contemporary American fiction. I felt like reading something closer to my present world.

That's always a gamble, I find. If I'm reading a classic, and I can't get into it, or it seems to suck, I'm inclined to stick with it because it's a highly regarded classic, so there must be some merit (except "War and Peace," which I've tried to read twice and failed. Also, "Lord of the Rings" -- tried once, didn't get past the prologue).

I'm becoming something of a grumpy reader of contemporary American fiction, apparently. All these writers seem to be English professors at mid-level colleges. Sure, I'd love to be an English prof who writes books over the summer or while taking a semester off. But their books too often feel like books written by college professors who are just aspiring writers and aren't particularly gifted at either field.

I don't know much about Dan Chaon. But I know I wouldn't want him as a professor. In this book, it's like he's showing off his literary skills while still being bland, formulaic, and immature.

There are distractingly named characters, like Gary Gray and Mike Hawk (say it out loud), and Chaon brings attention to his own "cleverness" in naming characters.

Also, like many contemporary American novels, Chaon tells his story out of sequence, as though that adds depth and purpose to a shallow and slight narrative. It doesn't.

The story is about a guy named Jonah (so named because his mother felt like a whale when she was pregnant -- get it? If not, don't worry, he devotes several pages to how clever that is). Jonah has a long lost half-brother named Troy (so named because his mother longed for names from ancient Greece -- and yes, I think we hear the origin story of every character's name, as though Chaon never taught a fiction class in which he needed to explain that you, the writer, should know these things about your characters, but we, the readers, don't give a crap and, in fact, are better off not knowing every mundane detail).

(Ok, worse still, Jonah's a Biblical reference, Troy is an ancient Greek reference. If there's a handbook for seeming like a high-brow writer, it says to name-drop from these two sources. But it probably also says to name-drop something less common, something a 2nd grader might not immediately get. Read Louise Gluck.)

So Jonah's looking for Troy, finds him. Troy's life sucks. So does Jonah's. Troy has a kid he can't see b/c he got arrested for being a drug dealer. Jonah is all scarred from being attacked by a dog as a kid. Flashbacks to their mom tells us her life sucked, too.

I'm about 300 pages in and this book can end one of two ways:

1) Bleak. There's nothing worse than boring books that end miserably. At least give us the hope that your characters will go on to do more interesting things.

2) Happy. Which would be a total sellout and contradict the tone of everything that's come before.

Yet I keep reading it. Oh well. Maybe the end will someone be great and I'll have to change my disapproval.

Movie Review: The Science of Sleep

2007-09-23T12:51:00.000-07:00

The Science of Sleep: Torgo approves

The world's a better place for having Michel Gondry.

His music videos (The White Stripes, Bjork, Foo Fighters, etc.) and his movies (that I've seen: "Eternal Sunshine" and "Science of Sleep") are visually compelling. More than that, they're visually fun. He takes full advantage of special effects and even low-tech effects to make things that don't show off what he can do (like a Spielberg) so much as utilize special effects to convey theme and tone.

Whereas "Eternal Sunshine" uses splashier, computer-generated effects, "Science of Sleep" opts for stop-motion, simple cardboard and paper, and basic optical illusions. The effect is that this movie has an innocence and charm at its core.

When the lead (Gael Garcia Bernal) dreams his hands are huge, it's even the same props Gondry used in the Foo Fighters' "Everlong" video, so not only is it low-tech, it's recycled.

I feel like I appreciate "Science of Sleep" more for having seen "Dave Chappelle's Block Party," where Gondry was in front of the camera, going through the process of creating a film. I was more willing to go along for the wacky ride.

M-N isn't a huge fan of this one, though she likes "Eternal Sunshine." Her complaint is valid: the dream sequences intersect with the non-dream sequences so chaotically, especially during the first half, that it can be difficult to find an entry point. Plus, it's a tri-lingual movie, with Bernal a native Spanish-speaker, Charlotte Gainsbourg a Brit, and mostly everyone else being French. All three languages get jumbled, again, especially in the first half.

I studied all three of those language, so that helps.

But I find the first half bothersome, too. It's complicated by the final act, in which the dream sequences mostly disappear, and the basic love story at the movie's heart is left on its own. I wonder how developed that story truly is, and how much I care after taking so long to get a grip on the movie.

Ultimately, though, I'm always a sucker for stories about awkward, creative boys who fall for girls in creative, awkward ways -- that just speaks to me.

The World Has Turned And Left Me Here

2007-09-21T20:28:00.000-07:00

Continuing with my new theme of post titles that are song titles I think are awesome, but don't necessarily relate in any way to the actual post, thereby making finding a post all the more tedious, even though who really spends there hours searching the records of Torgoland... here's a post about Boy #1.

Kids. Kids learn stuff. As a parent, I'm finding out now that kids learn stuff from watching things I have no idea they're watching.

The boy and I were eating dinner tonight while watching the Simpsons. Yes, it's true. Call DHS if you'd like. At least he was eating peas, carrots and rice (the boy loves his veggies and carbs).

It was the old episode where Marge notices Maggie imitating Itchy and Scratchy (beginning with an awesome Psycho shower scene tribute). Semi-dutiful parent that I am, when they showed an Itchy and Scratchy cartoon, I went and stood in front of the boy, blocking his view. But this is the episode where Marge protests the cartoon violence, so they show an awful lot of them.

Ok, I told you that story to tell you this one:

Later, I'm getting his pajamas out, post-bath. Rather, I'm going through the myriad pajama options while he rejects the first 4 or 5, as always, only to like the 5th or 6th (and I've tried just alternating between two when he's super-tired -- it works).

As I'm righting the footie of the pajamas, the boy licks his finger and then rubs one nipple. Then he licks his finger and rubs the other nipple.

Yeah, what the hell is that??

I didn't teach him that. I don't remember that happening in Curious George. The extent of his other tv watching includes Thomas the Tank Engine, Sesame Street, and that's about it. I know Elmo is evil, but this?

He's a silly boy.

Book Report: Winning by Jack Welch

2007-09-21T11:47:00.001-07:00

Winning: Torgo approves

I didn't choose to read this book. It was homework. And it was ok.

I hate business books, generally speaking. They're like self-help books. They are self-help books, just about money instead of love or sanity.

Winning is very superficial and poorly written. If Welch had a ghostwriter, he or she wasn't very good.

My main gripes:

1) The exclamation point usage is out of control. The exclamation point to non-exclamation point ratio (or, "!:.") for any book that doesn't include dialogue that occurs during a rainstorm and/or Van Halen concert should be approximately zero to everything else. There's no need to shout. We're reading your book. We can hear you.

2) The examples given to back up his points are slight. Each argument is backed up by a story like this: "This policy is good because I knew a guy named Steve and it worked for him and he's rich now."

3) The logical construction of his arguments is weak. This follows with point #2. The problem is he often argues sideways or backwards, then qualifies his arguments by saying "I don't want to sound like a Pollyanna." Pollyanna is referenced about as often as some branches of GE.

But I approve of the book. Why? Because I think the theories are, mostly, good. He's a strong advocate for candor in the workplace. He argues that layoffs should never be a surprise, nor should negative performance reviews, because people should be as candid as possible and employees should always be aware of a company's financial status and they're own standing.

I doubt he fully lived up to that believe, but it's something noble and good and worth aspiring towards.

I also found myself thinking while reading that if I had brought any of his ideas, many of which are just plain common sense, to faculty meetings at a high school or non-profit org meetings, I would have been soundly shot down and laughed out of the room. This is why I quit CoPIRG (partly). No one I met with power in the n/p world or in education has any business sense. It's like they are worlds full of English majors (like myself).

So much more could be achieved and it could be achieved with much more simplicity of people acted with business sense instead of just following their often bad instincts.

I need to qualify that by noting about the final chapter on work/life balance. Here, Welch outs himself as a possible misogynist, as well as a horrible father/husband. He accurately points out that bosses don't want their employees to have outside lives, but his tone and style in this chapter is degrading and offensive.

It's just that one chapter, though. I think more activists and education administrators should read some basic business philosophy like this.

Everybody Knows This is Nowhere

2007-09-19T10:47:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure how to feel about this, the George School getting a $128 million gift.

M-N and I spent a full day interviewing there before I took my current job. They wanted me to teach English and her to teach history, but she didn't want to teach full time, especially coming out of the school where she'd been teaching.

It's a decent school, somewhat run-down, that had been underpaying its faculty, so I'm glad they'll get better pay. I, of course, would welcome better pay. But I don't know that that would have been worth the sacrifice of doing something we didn't fully want.

It's kind of like your ex-girlfriend winning the lottery. It doesn't benefit you at all, you didn't really want to be with her, but it still hurts.

For the record, I'm accepting donations of any size.

The Mystery Nestor

2007-09-15T11:59:00.000-07:00

Somewhere, I have no idea where, there's a person named "J Nestor" who bought a subscription to Entertainment Weekly a few months ago.

Now, I use aliases. Torgo is one. I have a few others I use when I call competitors of mine from work so I can get on their mailing lists, find out how the compare to us, etc. J Nestor isn't one of mine.

But I've been the lucky recipient of about a dozen issues of Entertainment Weekly this summer and fall.

I used to love EW. I read it when it was brand new in the early 90s and I was a pop culture junkie. I remember having aspirations of being a critic like Owen Gleiberman or Lisa Schwarzbaum. I remember being devastated when I was about to go see the movie "Congo" on opening day with my friend Fernando. We'd both loved the Michael Crichton book. That afternoon EW came in the mail and trashed the movie. So I knew going in it was going to suck. (It did.)

At some point I got something vaguely resembling a life and EW was no longer important to me. That was around 1997 or so.

Getting issues now, it's a little bit nostalgia, a little bit of having something light to read, and a little bit of sadness over how incredibly shallow and meaningless the magazine is.

My first clue that the magazine didn't take a shift towards the New Yorker (which is also shallow in many ways, foolish in its snootiness in others, but at least has some articles that challenge and stimulate) was on the letters page. Other magazines with letters pages may highlight one letter in a special box, as though that letter typifies a common response from readers, or is a particularly interesting one.

EW just extracts a sentence from one of the letters it runs on the same page, usually just below the box, so readers such as myself, who read everything on the page, often in sequence, read the same letter twice. And I'm not talking about five-paragraph, op/ed piece-style letters here. They take one sentence from a two-sentence letter.

There are things I like to read, like the current issue's interview with Eddie Vedder, talking about doing the soundtrack to Sean Penn's new film, Into the Wild.

But the usual attempt at "depth" is something like Stephen King's "last page" columns. I've enjoyed one King book (The Shining) and been disappointed in others I've read (The Green Mile, Shawshank, etc.). He's not a profound writer (and I don't think he'd claim himself as such). And his columns are usually pointless and superficial. The latest one is about him going on a trek across the Australian outback and, now that he's back, enjoying going to the movies again. That sentence is his thesis and is also the most interesting thing in the article.

So I read it, or at least skim it. But I can't imagine subscribing to it.

Even though I'm not much of a business person, I thoroughly enjoy Inc. Magazine, which I subscribe to through work. It's full of innovative ideas, clever people, and enough of an emphasis on making the world more green as both a moral choice and a sound business plan to keep me engaged. EW offers none of that. Nor does it aspire to.

I also read American Poetry Review and Sports Illustrated--both gift subscriptions, both of which I usually find something worthwhile in.

Sooner or later, I may just have to find this J Nestor and either get him or her the EW subscription, or warn J not to waste time with fluff.

For now, though, there is that cover story on Britney Spears I haven't read yet.

Book Report: Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

2007-09-14T20:42:00.000-07:00

Tess of the d'Urbervilles: Torgo approves

This book took me forever to read. In the beginning, Tess is at home with her parents and siblings in rural England. She speaks in dialect, things move slowly.

Over the next 400 pages, the book pretty much boils down to this:

Tess is raped by Alec d'Urberville, becomes a 'fallen woman,' falls in love with Angel Clare, but remains the 'fallen woman,' so things aren't easy.

Hardy has some fun with religion. Angel is the wayward son of a parson. His two brothers are parsons, too. But Angel is something of an atheist. Meanwhile, the rapist Alec converts after being scolded by Angel's father, only to be tempted by Tess into giving up his faith.

That last bit is amazingly topical for a book over 100 years old, set about 150 years ago. Alec blames Tess for tempting him by just being beautiful. It's the classic "Women wouldn't get harassed if they didn't dress like that" faulty logic. I didn't know that line was so old. Maybe it goes back to Eve.

As a cultural encyclopedia, the book is fascinating. It's a highly readable study of rural 19th century England, something I'd never consider myself the least bit interested in. But I kept going.

I came within about 30 pages of the end of the book when I thought to myself: I should stop reading now. I know it's a tragedy, let's see if I can predict how it will end. This is at the point where Angel has returned from Brazil and is on his way to reclaim Tess, while Alec has been wooing her with the promise of money for her destitute family.

I would have said this, perhaps: Angel will kill Alec, as his death was foreshadowed earlier, thereby separating Tess from Angel.

Or, Alec will kill Angel. Or Alec might kill Tess to keep Angel from having her.

If you haven't read the book, let me just say this: The edition I read didn't have a picture on the cover. I've since seen many covers depicting the hot farmgirl. That seems to be the standard. But many picture Stonehenge. If you saw that, you might think, "Stonehenge? What the hell does that have to do with anything?" You'd be correct for about 450 pages.

Two things I never would have predicted: Stonehenge and sloppy seconds. Both come out of nowhere and don't make it any less tragic, just more weird.

That being said (which is another title for this blog, I think, 'that being said'), I recommend the book. Though she's a stereotype bound by the ridiculous cultural biases of the time, Tess is a central, titular heroine in a book written by a man at a time when that was rare.

I did think throughout the book how foreign the idea is that if you discover your girlfriend was raped as a child, you can no longer marry her or even remain on the same continent with her. But maybe that isn't so foreign. Maybe I've just been in San Francisco too long.

The L Word: Seasons 1, 2, and sort of 3

2007-09-11T13:05:00.000-07:00

The L Word: Torgo approved until Torgo disapproved

We started watching this online. Perhaps civilization has been advancing solely to reach this point, where we can watch tv shows on computers at our leisure, watching entire seasons (hell, entire series) on a whim.

I enjoyed Season 1 (S1). It's a melodrama, but a good melodrama, with interesting characters. Not just a show about lesbians, it's a show about relationships, at least during S1.

Alice, Dana and Shane emerge quickly as our favorite characters. This may just result from their being the funny ones. During S1, I could just watch these three for an hour and be content. Even Shane's wacky affair, predictable though it may be, is good viewing. Also, Dana's blossoming romance with Lara is so awkward and cute it's also fun to watch.

I like everyone else much less:

Jenny is annoying. She's a terrible writer, but that doesn't mean we should be subjected to her terrible stories.

Tim, in what becomes a long string of straight, male characters, is a total jerk. He has a constant look of rage.

Bette and Tina are dysfunctional like couples in real life, though Bette's issues and Tina's submissiveness grow tiresome.

All in all, though, S1 is a winner.

S2 gets more funky, but is still enjoyable (except for the season finale, which is wretched -- Gloria Steinem? What are you doing at this funeral having a discourse on feminism?).

The roommate/porn director thing is dumb all around. When he finally gets found out, Jenny keeps him there almost by just saying, "Well, your contract to be on the show runs through the end of the season, so you might as well stay."

The Tonya/Dana relationship is only saved by Alice. Alice and Dana are so funny together (especially while making the party favors) that Tonya's cartoonish, ridiculous personality is offset.

Sandra Bernhard shows up because I guess if you are an actual lesbian or a feminist you need to be a guest star. But she can't act and there's nothing I like less than bad actors playing writing professors in badly written scenes.

Though I dislike Helena Peabody intensely, it was nice to see Tina stand up for herself and against Bette.

In S3 everything goes to hell. Helena Peabody is inexplicably still around. Why? And why is she friends with Alice? But oh, Alice, why, why did you become so unfunny? Is it because you became friends with Helena?

Then there are the Public Service Announcements:

Jenny's new friend Moira serve as a "Boys Don't Cry" PSA of sorts. Dana's breast cancer is a PSA right down to dialogue out of a brochure. And while I agree with Bette's criticism of the Bush administration, she sounds like she's reading a NY Times Op/Ed piece instead of acting like a human being.

Shane becomes comic relief with Carmen, going to her sister's quincenera, which is great.

But I think we're giving up on the show for now.

It's weird to see the evolution of a show so quickly. Changes due to contract disputes (like Marina and Dana), studio/fan pressure (does that explain Moira?), things like that all take place over a few days instead of several years.

We got so caught up in this show for a week or so. Combine that with the neverending story that is "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" and I need to go reclaim my masculinity by shooting a lion or something.

A Perfect Day Elise

2007-09-09T14:05:00.000-07:00

PJ Harvey has a song called "A Perfect Day Elise" -- I never got into the song (though I like much of her stuff). But I love the title.

I've been absent from blogging because work has been busy, home life has been crazy, and, well, that's reason enough.

But in the middle of all the chaos, we took a day last weekend and went to the beach. Not some fancy, elitist beach. No, it was Ocean Beach, our local beach with the odd, perhaps idiotic name.

Prequel (the older one -- I know the metaphor is flawed when even I forget which means which) had the most fun. He played in the sand for a while with his trucks and shovels. I convinced him to go to the water with a bucket. He was cautious about the waves, but eventually I got him to go in.

The thing is, for 6'3" me, the waves coming in and hitting my ankles, maybe my shins, are enough to knock over the 3' boy. So I was holding him by his arms when the larger waves came in and especially when they dragged out.

Then I spotted a sand dollar. A perfect sand dollar. I let go for a moment and went for it. Prequel, naturally, charged towards the incoming waves, got knocked over, and went completely underwater.

I freaked out a bit, but he was laughing about it after recovering from the shock.

But now I'll always remember him looking up at me from underwater with absolute terror, even though it passed in a moment.

Fortunately, his wise mother had a change of clothes, so while I tried to dry out, he flew a kite.

Then we went home.

Movie Review: Torremolinos 73

2007-08-26T12:04:00.001-07:00

Torremolinos 73: Torgo approves

Can you see what's happening in that picture? If so, it pretty much sums up the movie.

Alfredo is a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman. It's 1973. Sales are poor. So his company enlists him and his wife, Carmen, to help make an 'audiovisual encyclopedia of human reproduction' that will only be exported to Scandinavian countries.

Carmen, meanwhile, desperately wants to get pregnant. So their need for money and her wish to have a baby lead them to make some really funny porn.

This is a Spanish comedy. Like many Spanish films I've seen recently, it takes a plotline that in American would be as simple as "Orgazmo" and moves it somewhere more serious and somber.

Alfredo's film mentor claims to be a student of Ingmar Bergman, so eventually, Alfredo tries his hand at penning a Bergman-inspired non-porn feature film called "Torremolinos 73."

Having recently watched "The Seventh Seal" makes this sequence all the more comical.

Unlike "Orgazmo," there are some beautifully directed scenes, several nicely placed repeating images (like the staircase scene at the beginning and end), and a genuine, emotionally complex ending.

I found this on the Netflix instant viewing list, while looking through foreign films for a comedy because, seriously, the American comedy list includes things like "Short Circuit," "National Lampoon's Dorm Daze 2," and "Larry the Cable Guy: Git R Done."

Movie Review: Friends & Lovers

2007-08-26T11:56:00.000-07:00

Friends & Lovers: Torgo disapproves

This is a movie of a play based on a book by Eric Jerome Dickey, one of my wife's favorite authors. It's not so much a movie based on a play as a recording of a performance of a play.

That shouldn't count against it. One of my favorites is "Vanya on 42nd Street," which is the same thing, only, as my wife put it, "less ghetto."

I don't call things ghetto, and neither does she. But if we did, "Friends & Lovers" would be ghetto.

There are two main problems worth noting:

1) It's a play that turns into a musical halfway through. The first hour, no songs. Straight up romantic comedy. Then, an hour in, a character bursts into song. Ok, random song in a movie. Happens in "Toy Story 2" and that's still an awesome movie. But then they keep coming. It becomes a full-fledged (ok, half-fledged) musical, and that's just not right.

2) It's a badly directed play. Several actors race through their lines so quickly they can't be understood. The blocking is all off. It's randomly preachy. It's just all around a rough production.

Man vs. Wild vs. Torgo vs. Prequel and/or Sequel

2007-08-25T13:04:00.001-07:00

Mrs. Torgo, as she has never before been known and would most likely not enjoy being called, was supposedly on maternity leave for three months. She never really does vacations though, even when the 'vacation' is actually a recovery/bonding period with a newborn. She has what is known as "insane workaholicism."

This is much like Bear Grylls, a British guy who looks nothing like I thought he would after his show, "Man vs. Wild," was described to me by my coworker. Mr. Grylls, despite having a 2-year-old and a wife (or, perhaps because of the toddler and because he has little regard for his wife) goes and jumps out of airplanes in the middle of the wilderness and gives himself five days to get out alive, usually with just a canteen and a flint.

Like Mrs. Torgo, Bear has a higher purpose. He's trying to educate people on how to survive should they ever have a tv show and need ratings.

If I ever did what he does, I'd come home to changed locks and divorce papers. Why? Because he's completely mad. My coworker thinks he's nuts for drinking water squeezed from elephant dung, drinking his own pee, or peeing on a shirt and wrapping it around his face (pictured) to stay cool in the Moab desert.

But he's just trying to survive and the Discovery Channel apparently has a lot of competition.

Mrs. Torgo, also trying to survive, signed on with her first two post-leave clients in September. The first due date was the 10th which, if due dates meant anything, have given her just over 3 months off.

Then that woman went into labor on Thursday, which meant not only was the leave cut short, but I was to take charge of both Prequel and Sequel for an undetermined stretch of time.

No worries, though, about Prequel. We're professionals. Sequel, though, comes with new challenges. He nurses and I, despite my best efforts, don't lactate. (I am half-Italian and therefore am supposed to sweat olive oil, but unless he has some bread, a little vinegar, maybe some oregano and fresh cracked pepper, I'm useless.)

Fortunately, Mrs. Torgo planned ahead and froze some milk, leaving me with a delicate balancing act of portioning out the reserves without knowing how long they needed to last. Complicating things, though I could've just driven the boys to the hospital to let Sequel eat, she took the Torgomobile.

I went to this awesome website to watch "Man vs. Wild" and pick up some tips. I learned how to get out of the Rockies, how to survive in the Moab, and that the Costa Rican rainforest, much as I might have guessed, isn't a good place to get lost.

I also learned that Prequel takes advantage of the vulnerable moments when I'm feeding Sequel (much like a scorpion hiding in your shoes while you sleep) to seek out Total Destruction and Chaos.

We survived, though, and so did Bear.

Book Report: Curious George

2007-08-21T20:13:00.000-07:00

Curious George: Torgo disapproves

I enjoy Curious George. Don't get me wrong. As children's characters designed to embody a toddler in whimsical, cartoon form, I'd like nothing more than to see George take out Elmo once and for all (perhaps in a tag team match wherein Clifford the Big Red Dog, representing children's characters who are gigantic and should really be terrifying, maybe even devouring children, triumphs over Barney, the purple dinosaur who looks carnivorous but actually just giggles and bounces and creeps me the hell out).

Back to George, here's my thing. The book. It's dated. It's dated badly. The most obvious example of this is the pipe-smoking:

The Man In the Yellow Hat smokes a pipe early in the book, and one of the sailors smokes a pipe while rescuing George from drowning, as George vomits water and whole fish, but when George lights up, you know this is from an era when doctors did commercials for cigarettes. That's a facet of the story notably missing from the current tv show and recent movie.

Then there's Africa. Oh, Africa. Heart of Darkness, Africa.

George is a monkey. Monkeys live in Africa (they live elsewhere, too, but I'm willing to accept that George is a monkey from Africa).

The Man in the Yellow Hat is a white guy. Ok, lots of white people out there.

But the Man in the Yellow Hat (TMITYH) goes to Africa to capture himself a wild monkey. He outwits the monkey by leaving his hat on the ground which George, ever so curious, tries to put on his head. When it covers his whole body, TMITYH rushes in a gets him in a bag.

Now I'm not pretending to tell you that this isn't how a guy from Boston who wants an African monkey doesn't go about getting one. I'm just saying that it has uncomfortable undertones.

Unfortunately, this origin story is faithfully recounted in the movie.

To preserve the racial allegory, George ends up being hauled off to jail later in the book for committing no serious crime other than being a monkey. Where is TMITYH when this happens? Off at his white-collar job, presumably, counting his money.

In fact, the iconic image on the cover of the book (see above), whimsical as it appears, is actually George being carted away.

So as much as I want to like Curious George, I find all this disturbing. I still read it to the Boy whenever he asks. And he still has a stuffed George he sleeps with (plus one picture on the wall). But sooner or later I'm going to transition him from Curious George Gets Denied Parole to The Autobiography of Malcolm X.

Book Report: Travels in the Scriptorum by Paul Auster

2007-08-20T21:03:00.001-07:00

Travels in the Scriptorum: Torgo disapproves

Paul Auster books are sometimes fascinating (The Music of Chance). He's a postmodernist in the worst sense of the word, always hyperaware of the story within a story, metafiction, and his own apparent awesomeness.

Why did I finish this book? I put down Kafka's the Castle, realizing it was more of a boring allegory than anything else. But Auster to me is like a familiar dinner recipe that isn't very good, but I know how to make it and it's comforting, though tedious.

I start an Auster book hoping to think words like brilliant and clever. I finished this one thinking words like jerk, loser and piss poor.

Ok, so what's it all about? Mr. Blank wakes up in a windowless room and he doesn't know who he is. Stop if you're already bored.

Turns out he's a character, sort of, visited by characters from Auster's other books. Speaking of metafiction -- Bret Easton Ellis's last book was like this -- though I found Glamorama and American Psycho captivating --and awful-- I couldn't bring myself to read it.

I'm officially done with metafiction. I've written poems and stories where the narrator is self-aware. Enough of that. I can't stand to read it anymore so I won't write it anymore. It's a cheap narrative device. It lacks soul, integrity, vitality. Why write just to write about you writing what you're writing about? It's like a commercial for a commercial for a product you don't need or want.

(Go here for a similarly-worded but professionally-assembled review that I read just to be sure my suspicions about the characters were correct.)

Movie Review: Orgazmo

2007-08-20T20:42:00.001-07:00

Orgazmo: Torgo approves

This movie is worthwhile just for the song "Now you're a man" that plays over the opening and end credits. My favorite thing about the songs of Trey Parker and Matt Stone is that they're never the focal point of what they do. With South Park, Team America, and Orgazmo, the focus is on the crazy kids, puppet sex, Mormons in porn, but the music is unbelievably awesome.

The rest of this movie is just ok. It's the least funny movie I've seen by these guys, but it has its moments.

The idea of Trey Parker playing a Mormon missionary who stumbles onto a porn set and ends up as the world's biggest porn star is funny. Nothing else in the plot is much more than an Adam Sandler movie. Oh, heck, just go watch this: Now You're A Man

(sidenote (that occurs below): I think I realized why Netflix "Watch Instantly" movies are so random and often bad -- I think they're mostly independent movies. It must be some sort of low-licensing fee thing. Orgazmo and Welcome to the Dollhouse, the two we've watched like that, I believe are both independent.)

Movie Review: Unfaithful

2007-08-20T20:25:00.000-07:00

Unfaithful: Torgo approves

The best thing about this movie is its basic competence at delivering what it promises.

It's an erotic thriller in which Diane Lane's character is a frustrated housewife, raising eight-year-old one-of-the-kids-from-Malcolm-in-the-middle, married to Richard Gere with brown hair, living in ridiculously nice house outside NYC. She meets a French guy, they have lots of sex, Richard Gere finds out, bad things ensue.

If you've ever seen an "erotic thriller" before, you'll be mollified. I don't watch many of these, so I enjoyed it. I was disappointed to learn that this movie's director also did Fatal Attraction and Indecent Proposal. I only recently saw the former and never saw the latter. I wasn't much interested in either because the plots were so obvious I didn't see the need. Plus, Demi Moore and Glenn Close -- not that hot.

Diane Lane's something else. And while the movie delivers on the 'erotic' part, I did take the time to wonder why we know nothing more about Frenchy than that he's French (Parisian? Canadian? Qu'est-ce que c'est?), has lots of books, and is good with the, how you say, freaky freak.

Also, even though every time I see him in a movie I think, wow, he's wooden and boring, Richard Gere is supposedly a sex symbol. We decided that part of the plot would've been better had his role been played by Kevin James. Then, also, it would have been a comedy. Still formulaic, but entertaining, like the King of Queens.

But no, and by the time we get to the 'thriller' part, it gets all clunky and dull. There's an ambiguous ending and the one deleted scene (of, like, 10, I had the patience to try) showed how the original end scene went on for another minute and completely changed everything. How do I feel about that? Eh.

So if you're looking for a by-the-books erotic thriller with someone much hotter than Demi Moore or Glenn Close, Torgo approves.

This speaks to me

2007-08-16T12:02:00.000-07:00

I was just saying this earlier in the week:

Fucking Yankees, Reports Nation

The Benedictine Monkees

2007-08-12T11:52:00.001-07:00

Speaking for Monkees fans everywhere, cool.

Torgo meets Google

2007-08-11T14:06:00.000-07:00

My job involves talking to people who call and want help for their kids. Is that vague enough? Anyway, we have caller id. Google has a reverse phone book feature that enables me to sometimes look up a person's name and address by their phone number. I find this creepy, so I don't do it much.

In doing it the other day (and I usually do it to confirm spelling of a name, as I often speak with people who either struggle with English or call me from their cell phones -- I won't support legislation making English the official language, but I'd support legislation making cell phones illegal to use while driving, walking on the sidewalk, in elevators, on the subway, in restaurants, at baseball games, in parking lots, really anywhere where I have to listen to people's conversations or where people can make a huge safety hazard b/c they get so wrapped up in their stupid conversation that they forget they're crossing the street) ok, where was I? Oh yeah, Google.

I ended up at Veromi. It's a people search site but an especially creepy one. I typed in my name and found myself, my parents, siblings, wife, 6 of the 12 or so places I've lived, all for free.

Granted, Torgo is a rare name and when my colleague searched his name, 100 people who aren't him came up.

But still, I don't like the site.

How I Ended Up Sitting In Dog Pee Next To A Broken Bike On A Wednesday

2007-08-08T21:21:00.001-07:00

The week before last, I went to get my bike to ride to work. The back tire was flat. I pumped it full of air, couldn't discern any noticeable leak, and started my ride. At a couple of red lighs, I checked the tire. It seemed ok.

I got to work and took it up to my office instead of locking it on the street. 20 minutes later, the tire was flat.

So I took the wheel off the bike and carried it on the train home. That weekend, I went to the bike shop around the corner and they replaced the tube. I was happy. They put the tire at a higher pressure than I'd been bold enough to do with my hand pump and cheap pressure gauge. Life was good.

I took the wheel back on the train to the office and got it back on the bike. I spent a good half hour messing with the brakes. The last time I took off the wheels to change from wide, mountain bike tires to narrow, city tires, I didn't quite get the back brakes right. The front has disc brakes which are apparently unbreakable. The back has -- whatever they're called -- brake pads that push against the tire rim. And they weren't quite pushing hard enough to effectively brake.

But I thought I had them on there pretty well. Both wheels are a little warped (this is a $200 Target Schwinn), so it would never be perfect.

I got on the bike at the end of the day and started the long, slow, uphill climb home. I work at the Montgomery St Muni stop. I got to the next stop (Powell) and knew something was amiss. Then, between Powell and Civic Center (where we start to get into the strip club/good place to score some heroin part of Market St, the back wheel started jiggling. Yes, jiggling. I stopped, flipped it over, tried my best at tightening what there was to tighten, and got back on.

It got worse as I made my way from Civic Center to Van Ness, the least nice place on my route to be stuck, working on a bike without tools or knowledge.

I pressed onward, knowing I couldn't take my bike on the train, especially not at rush hour, and that I wasn't close enough to a bus route I knew that would take me home (though I discovered one just this week when the trains were all busted), and I couldn't lock it up in this neighborhood, especially since I'd neglected to bring both of my locks, figuring I'd just bring it up to the office.

I made it up the hill to the Castro, then over by Duboce Park, and then I just gave up. The wheel felt like it was going to just fall off.

Duboce Park is one of many parks in SF that looks like the park on the opening to Full House. It's just a big grassy rectangle on a hill with Victorian houses all around. It's always full of people walking their dogs.

Thankful for cell phones, I called M-N who bravely put both boys in the car at the witching hour and headed over. I disassembled my bike and sat on a crest I thought (apparently incorrectly) was out of the common peeing territories and waited.

She rescued me. I got home. I took the wheel back to the shop. They said the axle broke. A $10 part, but $35 labor, probably not worth it for a year-old Target bike.

Now I need to get a new bike. So I'm going to likely go to REI and spend more than $200. I looked on this awesome site: PropertyRoom but I think it's better for someone who knows what he's doing, which isn't me.

That's my story.

Movie Review: Welcome to the Dollhouse

2007-08-05T13:30:00.001-07:00

Welcome to the Dollhouse: Torgo approves

I love Netflix. They have a new feature where you can watch movies instantly from their website on your computer. It's not Mac compatible yet, but fortunately I have my work laptop with Windows.

So last night we watched Welcome to the Dollhouse. I remember not seeing this when it came out, though I remember being interested in it.

In general, it's a horribly bleak and awful movie. But it's trying to portray 7th grade, and 7th grade can be horribly bleak and awful. I remember people just like these characters from my junior high school.

One of the best things about this movie is that it doesn't fall into the Little Miss Sunshine happy ending on stage (see also: Napoleon Dynamite, About a Boy, and many others). But it does end with the main character on a stage in front of her tormentors. All those other movies where everyone suddenly loves the protagonist seem contrived (as they are) next to this film.

That's not to say it's fun to watch. Again, bleak and awful. Awkward and uncomfortable. But once it's over, I realized it's a movie that is more like 7th grade than anything else I've seen. It's not the Wonder Years so much as the painful years.

Movie Review: Elizabeth

2007-08-05T13:18:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth: Torgo approves

I was struck by the similarities between this movie and The Godfather. Both are about a member of a powerful, violent family who is reluctant to accept his or her destiny. Like Michael Corleone, Princess Elizabeth knows she'll have to sacrifice herself, her love, everything, in order to transform into an effective, controlling leader.

Besides the plot and theme similarities, the filmmakers with both movies chose to show the transformation with similar images, as precisely alike as the random stand-up sex scene (here, it's Joseph Fiennes instead of James Caan) and the official rise to power/bloodbath to take out all enemies climax.

I wanted to see this movie because I heard the sequel is coming out. M-N used to teach this era in history, so she was an excellent resource for my random 16th Century England questions.

All around, this is a great movie. Cate Blanchett is terrific. Geoffrey Rush is terrific. Joseph Fiennes is a little too much of a pretty boy (and it's definitely odd that this came out the same year as Shakespeare in Love, as though Elizabethan pretty boy's are his thing).

The whole production feels complete and exact. I think one of the reasons I didn't see it when it first came out was the poster. It makes Elizabeth look like a maniacal tyrant, sinister, much like her half-sister, Bloody Mary. I wasn't interested in a period piece like that.

But she's much more playful than that. The scene where she passes the Act of Uniformity is just fun to watch, with the young queen flexing her power and literally bouncing around in her seat. I'm looking forward to the second movie (and the possible third -- though that looks to complete the Godfather arc, where she's outlived everyone and dies alone).

Book Report: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

2007-07-27T13:33:00.000-07:00

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Torgo approves

(Of course you shouldn't read this if you haven't read the book but intend to.)

Some of us (ahem) end up like Harry Potter with a wife and kids and it takes a week to read a 750-page book.

Sometimes I hate the media. I avoided reading reviews of this book, but of course I kept seeing headlines. The one that stuck out in my mind was "A fitting end for Harry Potter." That says it all, really. You know it's a happy ending. You know, more or less, how it'll be.

But then, J.K. Rowling has never shown herself to be a risk-taking writer. That's my complaint with this book (and the series as a whole). Her prose is awkward, forced, and clumsy. She has a brilliant imagination, regardless of how much she borrows liberally from other fantasy tales, but too often, especially in the beginning and end of each book (also, here in the tedious middle passages where months need to pass but no action exists to fill them), it's as though she knows she just has to write to a point but has no ability to get there with style.

Someone said to me, "After all, this is a children's book," but that's silly. Children's books can be written with zeal and flourish. See Dr. Suess.

That aside, this is a fitting end for Harry Potter. Many people needed to die to make the stakes real and the action visceral, and they do. (Honestly, I was happy at some points that the cast was getting thinner -- to remember all these characters in the years between books, especially when one reads the book so quickly, is daunting.) Good must win, and it does. Dumbledore, despite being dead, and his pensieve must clog the final chapters with frustratingly slow "explain it all" sidestories - Deus ex Machina, Potter-style.

There's a great deal of fun, action, even some romance. It's awfully violent, and I foresee it being a movie that really is in no way good for kids. But it's a gripping read, more so than book 5, certainly. Probably more than 6. I don't really remember 6.

I'm happy with it.

Movie Review: Higher Learning

2007-07-22T12:11:00.000-07:00

Higher Learning: Torgo approves

I wish I'd watched this movie when it came out in 1995. Aside from getting the chance to see a bunch of actors I'd like later in their careers, like Omar Epps and Michael Rapaport, a bunch of people I generally enjoy, like Ice Cube and Busta Rhymes, and then just some pretty people, like Tyra Banks and Jennifer Connelly, it's like watching what happens at most colleges around the country (including mine) but in exaggerated, cartoonish tones.

There are loads of problems with the movie. The biggest is how it begins with important portrayals of institutional racism and the danger of date rape, then takes everything much too far.

Michael Rapaport is an outsider, a loner with dangerous tendencies, but his becoming a murderous neo-Nazi feels trite.

Jennifer Connelly is the wise, lesbian women's group leader. Ok, that's fine. But her blind pursuit of Kristy Swanson (and her simultaneous pursual of random sensitive white guy) feels a little degrading.

If you put that aside, it's a good movie.

There are some sickly funny scenes. These usually involve Ice Cube, who just looks to be having a good time. Also, most of the neo-Nazis are played by Jewish actors. That can't be coincidental, and it adds an interesting depth to their portrayals of white supremacists.

Movie Review: Jason's Lyric

2007-07-14T10:40:00.000-07:00

Jason's Lyric: Torgo approves

This movie is one of the reasons Netflix is great. It's not one of the best movies of all time. It's a good movie. But being a good movie from the mid-90's, it would likely never be found on a movie store shelf. Netflix has it.

That's about all I have here.

Movie Review: Time Bandits

2007-07-08T12:30:00.000-07:00

Time Bandits: Torgo disapproves

This movie hasn't aged well. Also going against it is Terry Gilliam's seams-out style. It all feels like a movie that should be on MST3k.

That's unfortunate because there are a number of good things going on. There is the Monty Python troupe. There's a rather clever story idea. And there's Terry Gilliam's imagination.

I remember liking Twelve Monkeys, and I thought Fear and Loathing was terrific. I think these larger-scale productions just aren't his best work.

Lost in La Mancha was great, because it was a chance to see Gilliam approach the movie.

Even if I hadn't seen that, though, I think Time Bandits would suffer because it's so transparent. I never got sucked into the story because the visuals and effects were so clearly sets and miniatures, matte paintings and fake rocks. I could hear Gilliam telling the extras in crazy costumes to just wiggle your hook hand around and run that way.

Even though George Lucas showed he's a terrible director with the latter Star Wars trilogy, in the very first movie, from 1977, his vision was larger than his budget or the technology. That movie makes you believe you're on another planet even though it's the African desert.

Time Bandits also reminds me of something E. Ethelbert Miller said in a poetry workshop about a poem that mentions a cell phone. He said to be wary of images that time stamp your work, things that may seem hopelessly outdated 5 or 10 years from now. Think of how your work will appear to audiences for decades to come.

Time Bandits is clearly from 1981.

Prequel, Sequel and Me: Epilogue

2007-07-08T12:01:00.001-07:00

No chaos yesterday.

Prequel must have liked having a belly full of cantaloupe. (I can't figure out why. M-N and I both dislike the stuff. But he polished off an entire cantaloupe in a couple of days.) He slept until moments before she got home.

Sequel slept most of the time, getting up about 30 minutes before she got home. While he slept, I had him on my chest, so I didn't want to move much.

I had my laptop, which meant work, mindless surfing, then watching some of Live Earth online.

No one I wanted to see was playing, so I watched some of the Pussycat Dolls. They were terrible. They're a bizarre sight. Aside from the cameraperson who was stationed behind them doing only ass close-ups (and the director often cutting back to that shot), they're lousy dancers. I thought they were burlesque dancers originally. Plus, I'm 99% they lip-synched. So there is no excuse for their awful dancing. They were all out of time and a couple of them looked like they were having seizures, while others just looked bored.

That's my Live Earth report.

Prequel, Sequel and Me

2007-07-07T11:28:00.000-07:00

Today is 7/7/07, a good day to get married b/c it's easy to remember. Plus, I guess, it's supposed to be lucky. And people can say, "We got married on the day Al Gore threw that big concert." To which people will respond, "Who? What? Was that before the ice caps melted and the fields turned to dust and the bees disappeared and Radiohead started to suck?"

Of course, it will be just before the first three things, but many years after the last.

I'm home with Prequel and Sequel but no Mom. She's out doing a prenatal visit with a client. She's on maternity leave, which means she's working full time but not actually helping deliver any babies until September (or maybe late August).

Monday night was the first time I was left alone with Sequel. It went well for about and hour and a half. Then the crying started.

We were supposed to try out the bottle the day before, but we forgot, then it was too late. On Monday, he wasn't up for new experiences and just wanted Mom.

Still, even though he cried for about 45 minutes, I felt much better about it than the first time I was left alone with Prequel. He, too, cried and cried. But I was hopelessly clueless then.

Monday was just an interview, so that was a short visit. Prenatals go longer, so I'm writing this while both boys are sleeping. They can't possibly sleep the entire time she's gone, so chaos is on the horizon.

Book Report: The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy

2007-07-07T11:18:00.000-07:00

The Death of Ivan Ilyich: Torgo approves

I'm a sucker for novellas. I remember reading short novels in junior high and high school, things like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, C.S. Lewis' Out of the Silent Planet, and Cannery Row, not thinking of them as "Literature."

Then I read Kate Chopin's The Awakening in an English class and realized that short novels could be regarded as respectable, serious works. Then came many others, like Of Mice and Men.

I don't know what bias I believed existed towards novellas. Maybe it's because so many classics felt so interminably long. Plus, I was maybe 15. I didn't know a whole lot.

Anyway, back to Tolstoy. I've mentioned before how much I enjoy Russian authors. Tolstoy had been a wall to me, though. I'd tried War and Peace a couple of times, never getting out of the first chapter. M-N read and liked Anna Karenina, but I could never figure out how to pronounce the title, so, therefore, I didn't read it.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich is a novella. I skipped Ronald Blythe's introduction because it was about half as long as Tolstoy's book and I knew it could only make me not want to read the book. (That was a good call: I began reading it after finishing the book and Blythe makes a 100-page story sound like War and Peace.)

This is a good book. The entire book is vastly simpler than the first two pages of War and Peace. It's not even a Grapes of Wrath to Cannery Row analogy. It's more like a Grapes of Wrath to the back of a box of Honey Nut Cheerios comparison.

I don't want to Blythe the story by jabbering on, so let me just say I recommend it. And it takes about 3 train trips, tops, to finish.

Small Fry Files, part VII

2007-07-04T12:48:00.003-07:00

Beaker is very popular in our household. This is a cute one.

Small Fry Favorites, part VI

2007-07-04T12:48:00.001-07:00

This one makes me laugh every time. Animal. He's the best.

Small Fry Favorites, part V

2007-07-04T12:47:00.001-07:00

I find myself singing this at work, on my bike, everywhere.

If you need someone who can count to 12, I'm your guy.

Small Fry Favorites, part IV

2007-07-04T12:46:00.001-07:00

I remember this one as being a little creepy when I was a kid. Small Fry loves it.

Small Fry's Favorites, part III

2007-07-04T12:45:00.001-07:00

Then there are Sesame Street classics.

Small Fry's Favorites, part II

2007-07-04T12:44:00.003-07:00

Here's another.

Small Fry's Favorites

2007-07-04T12:44:00.001-07:00

When we want to get something done on the computer (or, "poo-tuh," as the boy says), we open a browser with something for him to watch. Here's one of his favorites.

Book Report: A Cook's Tour by Anthony Bourdain

2007-06-26T20:58:00.000-07:00

A Cook's Tour: Torgo disapproves

I only finished reading this book so I could write this.

What a terrible book. Not just bad. Not just a bad book. But a book so full of awfulness -- no, that's not it. It's not just that it's terrible. It's that it's a good idea: modestly successful chef travels the world in search of the perfect meal. And Anthony Bourdain squanders it.

Why does this book suck?

First, it's a tv show. I've never seen it, but I guess when he pitched the idea to his publisher, they said no. Then the Food Network signed on, and the book was a go. He's up front about his corporate whoredom right from the get go. At first, I thought that was nice. He's being open.

But he only is open about it so he can spend 1/3 of the book whining about how hard it is to be a tv star and about how bothersome having a camera crew follow you can be. Never once does he acknowledge that without the tv show, there would be no book.

And there is no book. He goes to 30 or so places around the world and yet he writes the sloppiest, most haphazard, most poorly edited collection of ramblings and garbage imaginable.

I'm not sure if he goes to Vietnam once or 5 times. But he keeps ending up there in the internal chronology of the book. And every time he's there he fawns over Graham Greene's Quiet American and Coppola's Apocalypse Now.

Saigon. I'm still only in Saigon.

Yeah, I get it. I saw that movie, too. It was good. You're not the movie. You're not Graham Greene. You're a damn chef eating noodles and running out of adjectives by page 5.

Then there's the smoking. Ok, I know a lot of chefs smoke. Doctors smoke, too, at least outside of every hospital I've been around. It's not that he should know better. I'm not going to get morally superior. I wanted to complain about how he can't possibly taste things as well because he's a chain smoker in his middle age and by god his tongue must be like an ashtray in a Nevada truck stop. But no, that's not it.

It's that he whines incessantly about how hard it is to be a smoker. God, who cares? He hates San Francisco because he can't smoke anywhere here (and this is near the end of the book, so I'm not upset with him over this -- in fact, he credits the best chef in the world as being the guy who runs the French Laundry over in Napa).

I don't think you get the right to be condescending and smug if you're a piece of crap writer. At least not with your prose. Be smug in the kitchen.

And then there were two

2007-06-24T12:54:00.000-07:00

I know this blog has mostly become book and movie reviews as of late, but, well, we have kids, as in plural, as in, if we had one more, they'd outnumber us.

Fortunately, they're pretty good kids. But there have been a couple of times when they're both crying and it's just me or just M-N. This is the most difficult moment in parenting I've ever faced.

We had a friend in MA who said if the baby just won't stop crying but is perfectly fine, put him somewhere safe, like his carseat or crib, close the door, and go sit on the porch with a beer.

Another friend said that when her oldest gave her hell, she'd put him in the bath and sit there with a glass of wine. She'd do this up to three times a day.

One of my MFA teachers told me his wife's doctor recommended, when she was nursing and had a fussy baby, to drink beer.

So we're celebrating the fact that M-N isn't pregnant anymore with alcohol. Not a lot, really, just a glass of wine here, a beer there. I've never appreciated alcohol more than with two under two.

That sounds bad. It's not really that bad. Beer just tastes much better.

I've never been much of a beer drinker. I like Corona and other beers that are kind of watery. There's a supermarket by our apt. with a huge selection of domestic and foreign beers. As in, one whole aisle of each. So I decided to branch out and get another Mexican beer, since I like Corona. So far, so good.

M-N, meanwhile, likes her wine. She's careful about timing it and limiting herself and all that medical advice junk, but honestly, a little wine never hurt anyone and she went 100% dry (and decaf) for the pregnancy, even though doctors say that isn't necessary.

Movie Review: Little Miss Sunshine

2007-06-23T11:11:00.000-07:00

Little Miss Sunshine: Torgo approves

Add this to the list with About a Boy, Love Actually, and Napoleon Dynamite of movies that culminate with a far-fetched, plot apex scene on a stage. It's become the small movie equivalent of the big game at the end of a sports movie.

I was thinking last night, after watching this movie, about how Shakespeare plays all follow the same basic structure and you pretty much always know what you're in for, in terms of body counts in tragedies and happy couples in comedies, and how things will get where they get. The joy, presumably, is in the characters, the dialogue, the nuances.

Little Miss Sunshine is typical and ordinary to the point of being a letdown. It's a group of misfits, an unhappy family, on a road trip. Once it's established what each character's flaw is, it's clear how they will fail. It's also clear that everyone will be "redeemed" by the pageant, though not by winning, but by coming together as a family.

Fortunately, it's full of a bunch of actors I like. Alan Arkin is great. I thought he was great in Glengarry Glen Ross and So I Married an Axe Murderer (his scenes are terrific in that movie). Steve Carrell is good, too. The little girl is surprisingly strong.

This is basically a comfort movie for people who watch a lot of semi-independent movies. It's nothing original or daring, but it's competent and funny.

Movie Review: In Good Company

2007-06-16T20:36:00.001-07:00

In Good Company: Torgo approves

It's formulaic, predictable, sure, but in a comfortable, competent way. Dennis Quaid is perfectly cast, as is Topher Grace. Grace has the harder role. He has to be both obnoxious and sympathetic. He does that well.

I haven't been in the business world that long, but I do know the business knowledge here feels like it was written by a creative writing major and not someone who knows anything about business other than from the outside, or else by a committee determined to dumb-down the content.

It could have been a more intellectually stimulating movie, but as is, it's funny and enjoyable.

Post for Julie

2007-06-07T15:32:00.000-07:00

Dear Julie,

No baby yet. In the hospital, though, and I don't think they'll let her leave until he's born.

-Torgo

How to piss off a pregnant woman

2007-06-04T20:55:00.001-07:00

If you live far away, ask her if she's had the baby.

If you see her in person, ask her when she's due, then when you hear she's due imminently (or is past due), say anything at all other than "due dates are totally made up and don't mean anything."

Based on my limited experience, pregnant women love to know due dates right up until they get close, then there's far too much pressure to have that baby on or near that date, despite the fact that the date is, truly, bogus.

We realize this more and more every day. Sure, doctors and midwives will tell you the date is made up, but then if you're late, they start freaking out.

What is a due date? I know more about this than I perhaps should. When you find out you're pregnant, you go to the doctor or midwife. They ask you when your last period was. Then they turn a little wheel and determine, based on that wheel, what your due date is. When you go for your first ultrasound, they can theoretically measure the baby and more precisely determine the date.

But that's all bunk. The first process has a bunch of weak spots. It requires knowing the date of the last period, knowing the length of your cycle (which varies from woman to woman, something I certainly didn't know), and relying on a wheel which is based on the premise of rigid consistency in a universe built on chance and chaos.

The second process requires an accurate measurement, a compliant fetus, and a growth rate that is consistent for every baby.

Tonight we had frozen pizza for dinner. The box said to cook the pizza at 400 degrees for 18-21 minutes, but to watch it closely, because ovens vary. The pizza is created by machines to be cooked in a machine, and even then they don't know how long it takes. Why should anyone know what day a baby should be born?

Movie Review: Bram Stoker's Dracula

2007-06-01T09:41:00.001-07:00

Bram Stoker's Dracula: Torgo disapproves

Oh, what a terrible movie.

It's not just bad, it's awkward, disappointing and sad. There are so many awful things here:

1) It's shot in LA. Despite at least half of the scenes taking place out of doors, every scene seems like a soundstage. And not a good one, more like on SNL, when they're clearly on a stage in front of a backdrop.

2) It's entirely unjustifiably pretentious. There are enough boring camera tricks and uninteresting special effects shots and quick cuts and layered images and bad transition shots to fill a dozen high school senior project movies. Francis Ford Coppola seems to think he's creating a visual masterpiece. He's not.

3) Keanu Reeves. I read that Coppola regrets casting him. Good. He did this after "Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey" (which I remember liking). I thought he'd be perfect for the role of Jonathan Harker after reading the book. I neglected to realize he'd half-heartedly attempt a British accent and a level of seriousness he just can't pull off.

4) Winona Ryder. They changed a bunch of the book to make it a love story between Mina and Dracula. Ryder's Mina, though, never seems like someone to make me join the undead and wait 400 years for. She's just not that interesting.

5) Soft core porn. I have no problem with nudity. I'd rather movies have sex than violence. But Coppola comes across as a juvenile boob-freak here. Look! Boobs! Is this supposed to be a romantic epic? Why, then, is that wolf raping Sadie Frost? Couldn't that have been implied and not just casually captured on film.

6) Accents. Not just Keanu. Why make a movie where Gary Oldman and Anthony Hopkins, who are British, have to use Eastern European accents, while Reeves and Ryder (and Tom Waits, who's always cool), who are American, have to use British accents, while Cary Elwes, who's British, uses a British accent, even though his natural accent sounds fake? Add in Bill Campbell as a goofy Texan (which is true to the book) and it's a hodgepodge of silly sounds -- Oldman is the only respectable one.

7) Gary Oldman. He's so good in a few scenes that it's easy to forget how bad everything is. Like the book, he's at his best in the beginning, at his castle. The movie makes the mistake of showing him often in England. I discounted the book for keeping him out of the rest of the book, but maybe that was the right call. Once he's been established, there isn't much room for him to progress. And Coppola has no idea what to do with him. And Ryder brings him down.

Ok, that's enough of that. Lastly, Rainster just wrote about Army of Darkness. If anything, Coppola steals Sam Raimi's playbook but where Raimi is openly silly, Coppola is accidentally silly.

Movie Review: The Pursuit of Happyness

2007-05-25T14:39:00.000-07:00

The Pursuit of Happyness: Torgo disapproves

Let me explain. It's a good movie in many ways. I've never seen Will Smith give a better performance. I didn't see Last King of Scotland, and I love Forest Whitaker in every movie I've seen him in, but Will Smith is amazing as Chris Gardner in this movie. It's a very good role for him. And his son, Jaden, plays his role very well, too.

But this movie is torture for parents of young children. It's incredibly bleak and harrowing. Worse, aside from the many anachronisms (most of which I don't think you'd spot unless you live in SF and know some things aren't from 1981), it's quite realistic. Sure, they condensed and altered Gardner's story, but I think they did so in ways that make what happened over several years happen over a believable stretch of movie-time.

This movie makes me want to:
1) Never be poor
2) Never put my child in day care
3) Never be poor

The slide into homelessness, like something Theodore Dreiser would write, is gradual and inevitable. Even though you know it's coming, even though you know he'll eventually become a millionaire, it's still brutal to watch.

When he finally gets the job that will save him and his son, it's hard not to be crying along with him.

I disapprove because I think it goes too far in emotionally decimating the audience. Maybe I'd have a different reaction if I didn't have a 2-year-old. I'm not sure if having a 2-year-old and living in SF makes a difference; it might.

Wish List for Lost: Seasons 4-6

2007-05-24T15:52:00.001-07:00

If you haven't watched the season finale, but plan to, or your name is Doug, don't read this.

1) No more Jack with bad, fake beard.
2) No more Jack storylines that go nowhere and mean nothing, at least nothing lucid.
3) No more proving me wrong about Jack's flashbacks/forwards not being capable of being any more bleak and depressing.
4) No more Jack/Kate/Juliet/Sawyer love square/rhombus.
5) No more Mikhail, the Russian Jesus who just won't die.
6) No more inexplicable Walt, the baby Jesus who grows up but doesn't go away.
7) No more Charlie. Oh, wait, they took care of that. And I liked how he went out. Very heroic.
8) More forward-moving, loose-end resolving action, as in the beach slaughter.
9) On that point, more quick decision-making, as in Sawyer killing Tom.
10) More ending of ridiculous stories, like the Alex/Rousseau separation (God, how big is that island supposed to be?!)
11) More Desmond. Not flashback, loser Desmond, but action-packed Desmond.
12) More shows with minimal flashback time (regardless of whether the flashback time is squandered in tedious exposition like last night or has something interesting to add).
13) More usage of things that seemed insignificant at the time becoming important in fun, fruitful ways, as in Hurley's VW bus (again, that beach scene had lots of good things going).
14) More resolution of important cliffhangers quickly, as in Jin, Bernard and Sayid not being dead.

Book Report: Dracula by Bram Stoker

2007-05-23T10:46:00.000-07:00

Dracula: Torgo disapproves

It's not terrible, but I have a whole panoply of contentions with this book.

First off, it never would have gotten out of a fiction workshop. That's not to say workshops should have any merit as to judging literature. In fact, they often stifle creativity. But Stoker could have benefited from a lesson in how to structure and pace a novel.

It begins like a good horror story should, with Jonathan Harker going to Dracula's castle. The villain is introduced with foreboding, then we get the real thing, mysterious but not a monster at first. Harker quickly realizes what Dracula is, and until Act 1 ends, it's a gripping story.

Then it's all downhill. Act 2 lasts an eternity. I took issue with the fact that none of the people could figure out that the mysteriously ill woman with two puncture marks on her neck that don't heal who was found hanging out in a graveyard at night with a mysterious, red-eyed man in black, and needs constant blood transfusions, and has a big bat flapping at her window might, just might, have been bitten by a vampire. And that's probably unfair. They couldn't know about vampires b/c they're in the original book (though it is an old myth).

But they spend way too much time sitting around doing nothing. And if that's not bad enough, when things finally are about to get moving, they spend a chapter compiling notes (the book is all told in journal entries), reading them, talking about reading them, and the writing more and reading them. If this is the birth of metafiction, I wish it would go away.

Meanwhile, Dracula himself seems to be in a much more interesting novel and that's why he doesn't appear anymore in this one.

Honestly, he spends the final act in a box on a boat, not doing anything, then they kill him in what certainly must be the world's most anti-climactic ending.

I was surprised to find what the novel of Frankenstein was like, because it's not at all what I expected. The plot is much more interesting than the stock movies make it out to be. Dracula, too, is surprising, but in a more infuriating way.

1/2 Bay to Breakers and back again = a lot

2007-05-20T21:43:00.000-07:00

So there's this thing in SF called the Bay to Breakers race. It started shortly after the 1906 earthquake as a way to build the city's spirit. Runners start at the SF Bay, on the east side of the city, and run west, ending at the Great Highway, or Ocean Beach, on the west side of the city.

The route follows my bike ride home, though I don't have to go all the way to the beach. It's about 7.5 miles.

It's a really big deal. One year, they set the record for the world's largest footrace, with over 100,000 participants. This year, there were about 60,000. This is what that looks like:

But wait, this is San Francisco, so it's not just a serious race for serious athletes, it's also a costume contest/freak show/chance to walk the length of SF naked and drunk at 8 a.m. on a Sunday in May.

It's one huge party where anything is ok and people have a great time. Up close, it looks like this:

Sure, a group of Kenyans won, but that happened long before we even got there.

What we did is walk down by the de Young Museum, which is in Golden Gate Park, around 6th Avenue. That's maybe 2/3 of the way into the race. We then walked along JFK Dr in the park towards the Polo Grounds. That's about 30 blocks.

We saw a group of Storm Troopers (including a Sand Person, Boba Fett, several Imperial officers, etc.), lots of fairies, Thing 1 and Thing 2 (a few times), people with those Halloween costumes that we refer to as "slutty cop" or "slutty nurse," a guy dressed as a rock that said "I'm a rock" on it, three people dressed as Snap, Crackle and Pop, and several naked people whom you wouldn't want to see naked.

At the Polo Grounds, we met up with friends and headed into the neighborhood, not before passing some street preachers from out of town who were trying to convert the heathens, spouting on about how we're all damned because we live in San Francisco and don't mind guys in dresses. They were stationed near some Obama campaign tables (which were likewise kind of random and out of place).

We found a great Mexican restaurant near the beach, then walked back. Cracker was playing at the Polo Grounds. I love that band. But I'd stumbled across their soundcheck set yesterday, and today you could hear them well into our neighborhood, so I didn't feel compelled to brave the sweaty masses. They sounded awesome, though.

All in all, we walked to the race, which was about 4 or 5 blocks from our apartment, then to the beach, which was about 40 blocks, then home, which was about 45 blocks. Sure, it was a lot of walking for a woman 9 months' pregnant, but I was pushing a stroller.

Movie Review: Dreamgirls & Good Night, and Good Luck

2007-05-15T08:16:00.000-07:00

Dreamgirls: Torgo approves

I don't like musicals. I've seen a lot and there are maybe 3 or 4 I don't mind so much. I probably wouldn't watch "Dreamgirls" again, but I enjoyed it, despite characters randomly breaking out into song at seemingly inappropriate moments. Fortunately, most of the songs have their place as the movie is about musicians. (As opposed to, say, Les Miserables, where the people who sing and the times they sing seems entirely counter intuitive.)

In fact, "Dreamgirls" is a lot like the recent Ray Charles and Johnny Cash biopics. It moves quickly through history (though here it's fictional), covering the "Behind the Music" moments. At times, I wanted it to move more slowly and take some time developing scenes. That's a negative.

Yet the acting and singing are good. Jennifer Hudson over-emotes, in my opinion, but that fits the character. Beyonce is good. Eddie Murphy is just Eddie Murphy for most of the movie, save one scene where he looks absolutely decimated and old -- I'd give him an award for that one scene.

Good Night, and Good Luck: Torgo approves

There's also singing in "Good Night, and Good Luck," but it's all by some random jazz singer who was apparently locked in a studio at CBS and forced to sing for months on end. They just cut to her every once in a while.

That's ok, it's a very good movie. David Strathairn is terrific. I can't help seeing him as Whistler in "Sneakers," b/c I've watched that movie countless times.

And George Clooney has a hard time getting over his incredibly massive ego. I mean, really, if you look up 'arrogant' in the dictionary, it will say "George Clooney before he won an Oscar." I don't dislike him, it's just grating at times.

Patricia Clarkson (who was in the awesome "Station Agent" and the less awesome but terrifying "Jumanji" as well as the ok "Untouchables" -- I had to look it up b/c she's so familiar yet seems to keep a low profile) and Robert Downey Jr. provide good comic relief as the secretly married couple.

Jeff Daniels and Frank Langella are pretty much always good in everything.

Beyond the acting, I have to give Clooney credit for directing. There were many good decisions made in making this film. Using actual McCarthy footage, instead of an actor, gives the film weight and lets McCarthy hang himself again. The story is also nicely balanced. There are subplots and minor characters, all with seemingly appropriate screen time.

The camera also hangs on Murrow after each broadcast, every time, but each time it gives something new and revealing. It doesn't feel flashy (like Spielberg saying "look how awesome I am") but a little like Scorcese, where the film-making tricks are there but you can miss them; they're subtle. (Not to say Clooney is as good as Scorcese, but he's thankfully less violent.)

I did feel like taking a shower after all the smoking in this movie. I mean, it was like Laura Bush when she's not on camera with all the smoke and haze. But oh well, I didn't have to work on the set, just watch it on dvd.

Movie Review: National Treasure

2007-05-10T13:49:00.000-07:00

National Treasure: Torgo approves

I know I've been blog-tardy (oh, that sounds like an unpleasant bowel condition). Life experiences that give me things to blog about come in direct proportion with a lack of time to write those entries. It's like one of those graphs from economics I struggled with. I hated that class.

But though I have much to write about, you're getting this, a review of National Treasure.

It's good. Rainster said this, I believe, but it's a movie we watched expecting little and were pleasantly surprised. It's not high art, sure, but it has some good history (mixed with totally bogus history) and it's entertaining. There are many good actors, like Harvey Keitel and Jon Voight. Jerry Bruckheimer restrains himself to just one explosion. Also, there are some good laughs.

I remember being about 11 or so the first time I went to Washington, D.C. At the National Archives, I stood in front of the Declaration of Independence, heard about the security, how it drops into a sealed vault based on all the sensors, and, of course, thought about how cool that is. It was like Mission: Impossible before Tom Cruise went and, well, was Tom Cruise.

Wisely, the movie moves quickly. The theft comes early, then it's a big chase with stock parts and characters, but it's all put together well and Nicolas Cage deserves much of the credit. He has a way around the more ludicrous moments that keeps the whole mood light.

I don't think we'll rush out to see the sequel later this year, but we'll probably see it on dvd.

Book Report: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

2007-05-03T09:28:00.000-07:00

Crime and Punishment: Torgo approves

This was the fastest 628-page Russian novel I've ever read.

Knowing the Dostoyevsky had been in Siberia prior to writing this, I was expecting something more akin to A Day in the Life of Ivan Denosivitch, only much, much longer. But no, the crime occurs in Act 1, then Acts 2-5 center on the main character's wrestling with whether to turn himself in or not and all the other events in his life. The literal punishment doesn't arrive until the brief epilogue.

With all the cop shows on tv that focus on that post-crime, pre-arrest time from the police perspective, it's fun to read about that space in time from the criminal's point of view. That wouldn't make a sustainable tv series, but it makes for a good book.

And despite it's length and the seemingly small time it covers, there's quite a bit of drama (and some melodrama) in the book. More time is devoted to romance, poverty, friendship, and wacky families than to violence. There's certainly plenty of psychological probing, but it's never overwhelming.

The biggest fault I found wasn't with the story, but with Russian names. I read several parts aloud to the boy while he was in the bath, and I couldn't keep his attention because I kept stumbling over names.

There's Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, the protagonist; Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin, one of the villains; Dmitri Prokofych Razumihin, the BFF; Alexander Grigorievich Zamyotov, the snoop; Semyon Zakharovich Marmeladov, the wacky drunk; Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigailov, another villain. And Dostoyevsky uses full names and nicknames and very few pronouns. It reads a little like the ingredients of Skittles.

But you need to look past that. One nice surprise was the characterization of women. Raskolnikov's sister, Dounia, or Avdotya Romanovna Raskolnikov, is strong and clever, unexpectedly so. Then there's Sonia, or Sonya Semyonovna Marmeladova. She's an odd mix of introvert and hero. She ultimately plays a huge role in the way things play out. There's also Katerina Ivanovna Marmeladov and Pulkheria Alexandrovna Raskolnikov, two hopeless, clueless older women, but Dounia and Sonia make up for their deficiencies.

I tried reading War and Peace recently, but quickly got bogged down in all the characters. Crime and Punishment is much easier to handle and much more accessible.

Movie Review: Talladega Nights, Breakfast at Tiffany's and The Seventh Seal

2007-05-01T13:51:00.000-07:00

Ok, ok. This is as disparate as it gets. But this is what we watched in the last 3 days.

First up:
Talladega Nights: Torgo approves

This movie is like hot chocolate. It's comforting and nice but not inspiring. It's funny. John C. Reilly is great. Sacha Baron Cohen is funny. Will Ferrell is good as usual. There are a couple of clever cameos (Mos Def, best of all). The outtake reel is perhaps funnier than anything in the movie.

That got me thinking that what's most funny about Will Ferrell comedy is what SNL did: those moments when everybody's having trouble staying in character from laughing. His movies lack that, except in the outtake reels. But they make it worthwhile.

Then, this:
Breakfast at Tiffany's: Torgo approves

But barely. Mostly for Audrey Hepburn. She's great. It followed the book closely until I fell asleep. Oh, yeah, well, we started it kind of late. So I haven't actually seen the last 45 minutes or so.

One complaint is Mickey Rooney doing the buck-toothed, horribly offensive Chinese caricature. What the hell? I remember the racism from the book, but this adds something different and wholly unnecessary.

Finally:
The Seventh Seal: Torgo approves

We actually haven't finished this. I fell asleep again. But I wanted to see this for a long time, not realizing it's entirely in Swedish. Swedish! Who knew?

It's a wacky movie about the plague, the Crusades, a chess match with Death, good stuff for comedy. And it's in Swedish!

Maybe I'll add more when I've seen the end.

Movie Review: The Motorcycle Diaries

2007-04-26T12:21:00.000-07:00

The Motorcycle Diaries: Torgo approves

I've been busy lately. But the other night I was too tired to do work so I watched this movie. One drawback to Netflix is that if you get a movie and don't feel like watching it, you can wait for a good time to watch it or send it back, but if you wait, then (if you're me) you think you're not being efficient with your membership, so the movie sits there taunting you for weeks.

But I'm glad I watched it. I can't claim to know much about Che Guevara. I started to read the Ebert and NY Times reviews after watching it. Roger Ebert apparently really has a problem with Che. The NY Times felt the need to mention the Che shirts that are so popular. So I didn't get much from either.

It's not an incredibly original movie. But it's well-acted and the cinematography is terrific. Especially after reading "1491," I enjoyed seeing the South American continent and people. Both reviews questioned its sentimentality and I agree. It's a movie that's in love with its subject. But that doesn't make it any less interesting and enjoyable.

Celebrate the counter!

2007-04-20T09:06:00.000-07:00

So I passed 5000 visits yesterday with my little site counter. That's awesome. Granted, probably 3000 of those visits were me, but 5000 is still 5000. And I didn't even have the counter for the first few months.

Also, the ClustrMap (which sounds like something else, but isn't), which is only a couple of months old, shows I've had visitors from six continents. That, too, is awesome. I pretty much know who the big dots on the map are, but I don't think I know anyone currently in Australia, China, South America or South Africa, so I'm happy to see those visitors. I hope they don't think this is a Togoland page.

I've since discovered that Google has what seems to be a much better stat counter, that includes a map, but it's too late for that now. Maybe that'll be in Torgoland 2.0.

Book Report: Fish!

2007-04-20T08:59:00.000-07:00

Fish!: Torgo approves

I don't approve because the book is well written. It's not.

I don't approve because I learned much that I didn't know. I didn't.

But the message of this book is solid and I think it could be useful to many people I've worked with. It's a business book but, like most business books, it's a self-help book with a plot based in a work environment.

I read it on the recommendation of a colleague. It's the kind of book that some companies have everyone read. It's so short (110 small pages) and light in tone that I finished it in a little over an hour.

It irked me that the message of creating a positive, joyful workplace was filtered through so many cliched plot devices and shoddy writing. But I'll admit that I'd be more inclined to recommend it to colleagues who aren't literary snobs like me.

Also, I don't recommend reading it alongside "Crime and Punishment" and any type of poetry anthology, like I'm doing. Oh, I'm also reading a book on being a birth partner. All three of those other books make "Fish!" seem weak. But then, I did finish "Fish!" first.

No, really, what the hell?

2007-04-19T08:41:00.000-07:00

I really have no interest in seeing this picture when I open up a web browser. I have no interest in seeing the video clips in ads for the news while I'm watching "Lost."

I can refrain from watching television news, where they're not breaking any new ground by showing a complete lack of ethics in showing the video and images. But it seems I can't escape it without shutting off all media. Even NPR was playing audio clips from the video yesterday.

What the hell? I know it's a big story. I know media outlets have no concept of restraint. But do we need this? Is it helpful? Is it purposeful?

Equally disturbing was a photo I saw yesterday of a CNN camera on a crane above a memorial on the Virginia Tech campus. It was posted by CNN on their website yesterday (Yeah, I'm not sure why I was there). I went to look for it now to post here, but it's not there.

Today's WTF moment: Shooting response

2007-04-16T12:51:00.000-07:00

The AP coverage of Bush's reaction to the Virginia Tech shooting starts out as expected:
"He was horrified and his immediate reaction was one of deep concern for the families of the victims, the victims themselves, the students, the professors and all the people of Virginia who have dealt with this shocking incident," White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino said. "His thoughts and prayers are with them."

Then there's this:
"The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed," Perino said, noting that Bush and Education Secretary Margaret Spellings held a conference on school gun violence last October. "Certainly, bringing a gun into a school dormitory and shooting ... is against the law and something someone should be held accountable for," Perino said.

This article only has those two quotes, which run concurrently. I'm hoping that the second quote was in response to a reporter's question about gun control. Or, if not that, I hope it didn't immediately follow the first quote, as in the article. Aside from how incredibly idiotic "Certainly, bringing a gun into a school dormitory and shooting... is against the law..." is, how is this in any way the time to bring up the president's opposition to gun control?

The article is here

Speed Bump

2007-04-15T12:36:00.000-07:00

This cartoon isn't as good as The Far Side was, but every once in a while, it captures the same feeling:

Bees are your friends

2007-04-15T12:18:00.000-07:00

There's an absolutely terrifying article on a possible cause of Colony Collapse Disorder, something I'd been hearing about lately -- where bees are disappearing in massive numbers.

I don't think of myself as a conspiracy theorist (despite everything the current government does to foster such beliefs), but I do believe research will prove the widespread dangers of cell phones (including the others listed in this article, like cancer), but that it will just take time for the effects to be conclusive. Kind of like knowing global warming is a problem when all the icecaps have melted.

Speaking of which, it doesn't bode well that cell phones could kill off bees, thereby threatening crops planet-wide, when global warming was already working on destroying crops.

I'm going to go get lunch while I still can.

Book Report: Averno by Louise Gluck

2007-04-14T11:53:00.000-07:00

Averno: Torgo approves

Here's the thing about Louise Gluck. I think they named her U.S. Poet Laureate a few years back just because they were worried about her. She spends a lot of time dissecting Greek and Roman myths and thinking about death. I'm not a clinical psychologist, but I wouldn't invite Gluck to a party to lighten the mood.

If I was making the case for her depression, I'd cite lines like these:

"It is true there is not enough beauty in the world.
It is also true that I am not competent to restore it."

"You will not be spared, nor will what you love be spared."

"I no longer care
what sound it makes

when I was silenced, when did it first seem
pointless to describe that sound

what it sounds like can't change what it is--

didn't the night end, wasn't the earth
safe when it was planted

didn't we plant the seeds,
weren't we necessary to the earth,

the vines, were they harvested?"

Ok, lots of red flags there.

If you step back, she's taking the story of Persephone, Hades and Demeter, using it to explore rape, sex, and love (in that order, more or less) as the turning point from girl to woman, and the beginning of death, which is always symbolized by winter.

The NY Times review gets credit for throwing out the word "chthonic," which is applicable, fun to say, and difficult to spell, but that review is too gushing. It's a good book, no doubt. I appreciate this more than other Gluck books (though perhaps that just comes with age). But it's not a book you go raving about. It's a book you appreciate for its beauty, its misery, its thoughtful construction.

I read the final 20 pages or so last night while the boy was in the bath. He was there giggling and playing with toys. I was reading about one of the bleakest stories in a tradition not rich in comedies. I don't think he was a big fan. At one point, he began pulling the stopper in the tub. He does that often, but last night he was trying to get out of hearing the rest of the book.

I think Gluck is best appreciated on the page, read alone, but definitely with friends not too far away. I hope she has some. I have a picture of her with Robert Pinsky. I hope he's not her only friend b/c he's kind of a downer, too.

I'll end with a quote that's less bleak (from "Persephone the Wanderer"):

In the second version, Persephone
is dead. She dies, her mother grieves--
problems of sexuality need not
trouble us here.

Compulsively, in grief, Demeter
circles the earth. We don't expect to know
what Persephone is doing.
She is dead, the dead are mysteries.

We have here
a mother and a cipher: this is
accurate to the experience
of the mother as

she looks into the infant's face. She thinks:
I remember when you didn't exist. The infant
is puzzled; later, the child's opinion is
she has always existed, just as

her mother has always existed
in her present form. Her mother
is like a figure at a bus stop,
an audience for the bus's arrival. Before that,
she was the bus, a temporary
home or convenience.

It goes on, but geez, that's a lot to type.

It's a silly day

2007-04-13T14:51:00.001-07:00

and here's further proof of that.

Comics Curmudgeon: Still Funny

2007-04-13T13:29:00.000-07:00

Do you read the Comics Curmudgeon yet? If not, why not? Aside from his great comments on the day's comics, you get stuff like this:

"True story: last year on my birthday my wife and I spent a relaxing day together and by mid-afternoon I was pretty pleased with how the day went. But then were driving back from the pool we belong to through a kind of ritzy neighborhood, and some kids were having a birthday party in the yard of this huge house, and they were unloading a goddamned llama out of the back of a llama truck, and my day felt a little less special. What I’m trying to say, Margo, is where’s the llama? I know it’s hard to get one into a Manhattan apartment, but what Katy wants, Katy gets."

Cheney kills bird

2007-04-13T11:18:00.000-07:00

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

...oh, that poor bird.

Interracial Marriages Surge

2007-04-12T14:45:00.001-07:00

This article is interesting.

One point I think about often, thought it's just lightly addressed in the article, is how children of interracial relationships used to be classified. My son would certainly be considered black, well within the one-drop rule.

But I feel like we're culturally moving beyond that. It's still an issue for many, even in super-liberal SF, but broadly speaking, I think it's growing less relevant.

The article notes Obama and Tiger Woods (I'd add Alicia Keys and Mariah Carey). But all of those people are identified as black, even though they're half or less black. So maybe I'm wrong.

RIP: Kurt Vonnegut

2007-04-12T08:45:00.000-07:00

REQUIEM

When the last living thing
has died on account of us,
how poetical it would be
if Earth could say,
in a voice floating up
perhaps
from the floor
of the Grand Canyon,
"It is done."
People did not like it here.

(Doug, thanks for fwd'ing the poem)

Book Review: Design With X by Dean Young

2007-04-03T09:06:00.000-07:00

Design With X: Torgo approves

This is the first time I haven't been able to find the book cover, so I went with an author photo. The book cover reprints De Humani Corporis by Andreas Vesalius:

It's a fitting picture for this book.

This is Dean Young's first book. If you know me, you know I'm a big fan of his. He was a finalist for the Pulitzer recently with "Elegy on Toy Piano," a terrific book.

Nobody's first book is every good. At least not when you've read the later work. This is the problem with any poet's Collected Poems. The first 50 pages usually suck.

Wikipedia (where I was went just to track down a cover photo, unsuccessfully) compares Young to O'Hara, Ashbery, and the surrealists. I think this early book shows his debt to James Wright. Every American poet owes a debt to James Wright. If Whitman and Dickinson are the Joseph and Mary (or holy spirit and Mary) of American poets, then Wright is the Jesus.

Young's surrealism isn't in full force here. That's disappointing, but expected. There are glimmers of what's to come. There are also many, many poems that exploit his medical background (which his author's note says was a year at nursing school). Hence the cover picture.

The best example, as I see it, of the poet he's since become is in "The Breakers," which begins with him remembering a summer when he "slept with a girl / 6, 7, 8 months pregnant, not mine..." and goes on to say:

Once, working in a zoo, I had to kill
an ostrich that had garroted itself
in a wire fence. I had to shoot it
in the head, that small ostrich head.
Nowhere to bury it, said the supervisor,
besides a corpse that size needed
Health Department approval so I had to
chain-saw it for the incinerator. Where
does a story like this end? The top drawer
with the pistol? Calming the thing?
The stench of chain-saw oil and burning feathers?
The walk home, woozy as if on earth
after a long boat ride?

Maybe I've already gone on too long.
Sometimes memory seems a scholarly
form of cruelty, the way it always
comes back to now with all the precedents
of loss and cowardice and no mercy.

That's great. That's the Young of his later books. Most of the rest of the book isn't that good, but it's still an easier read than Ashbery.

Movie Review: Pan's Labyrinth

2007-04-02T14:44:00.000-07:00

Pan's Labyrinth: Torgo approves

It's a good movie, but I have many complaints.

First, the violence. It's gratuitous. It's excessive. It's not necessary. Two scenes stick out: the Captain beating the farmer's son with the bottle and the Captain's open face cut and then his stitching it up. Neither scene needed to be that gruesome.

Second, I wanted this movie to be more original and different from what I'd seen that it was. Guillermo del Toro improves upon the special effects and visual presentation of Hellboy, but there are too many ideas that weren't new.

The chalk-door reminded me of Beetlejuice (in fact, there were several oddly Beetlejuice-reminiscent moments). The final labyrinth scene echoed The Shining. The mandrake root was used in Harry Potter (no stranger to copping ideas). The three tasks, especially with one final trick, has been used countless times before. And, sadly, the torture scene made me think of 24, not that I want to think about 24, but that show has ruined torture scenes (not that that's a bad thing).

Third, the Captain. He's a villain with no redeeming qualities. His evil nature is explained by his father issues, but then he is incredibly cruel and wretched. He's not realistic. He's far too singular. The character could have used a hint of decency.

Ok, I had to note those things. This movie has been far too highly praised. It is good. It's a good story. It's told well.

The character of Pan is a wonderful visual success. When he's on the screen, it's fascinating to watch.

The Pale Man's story is tedious and boring--you know she's going to eat something, he's going to chase her, she's going to just escape--but I liked how his character was explained through a couple of paintings near him, while he sits motionless. The stone monster in the room may not be new, but it's great cinema.

And Ofelia, the lead, is well-played by the young actress.

One note, for those who have seen it (and if you haven't, jeez, I may have ruined quite a bit), I wish the Captain didn't shoot the doctor just then. I'd rather have the narrative tension of the doctor facing saving the baby or the mother, knowing he himself is doomed. Perhaps he'd fight to save the mother, but sacrificing the baby isn't more virtuous.

It's Mii

2007-03-30T15:07:00.000-07:00

Not as cool as my South Park Torgo, but a respectable waste of 10 minutes.

Go here

Revisionist History

2007-03-28T20:22:00.000-07:00

Here is a nice letter defending a group of students and their 1999 sit-in.

I wasn't at the sit-in, but I wrote about it. The letter has a link to a project I worked on after graduation. It's a project I'm glad to see is at least somewhat remembered (though the website isn't mentioned in the print version of the magazine).

WTF moment: Song of the South

2007-03-28T08:56:00.000-07:00

WTF moment for today, from this article on Disney rereleasing "Song of the South":

"Older audiences probably would have more of a connection with the stereotypes, which were considered harmless at the time."

Harmless? By whom? "You know, Strom Thurmond really didn't have a problem with these stereotypes. He was always saying that if we'd had more movies like 'Song of the South,' we wouldn't have all these problems we have today."

Movie Review: Kissing Jessica Stein

2007-03-28T08:27:00.000-07:00

Kissing Jessica Stein: Torgo disapproves

This movie should be subtitled: Adventures in Lesbianism. It's not that bad of a movie. My main problem is that it glorifies what might be called gay-trolling, which has nothing to do with gay trolls and everything to do with exploiting someone because your regular life is boring.

Jessica Stein is 100% straight but, after getting tired of not finding the right guy, she answers an ad and ends up in a relationship with Helen. Helen's willing to look past Jessica's being straight for what seems like a year, then decides she can't do it anymore. So Jessica goes merrily back to her straight life.

This movie could have been about being experimental, trying new things, being open and accepting, but it's too much of a standard 90's-style romantic comedy. There's a clear and rigid formula to the plot. It gets to that point where the happy couple has their first big fight (over Jessica's unwillingness to take Helen to her brother's wedding), then the lead has to be consoled by her wise, accepting friend (here, her mother), realize her mistake, and go running back.

There are also too many moments, particularly early on, when the writers are trying to prove their merits as writers. The poetry of Rilke is used to show that only the brightest and best know Rilke. That may be true, but it's written in such as a way as to say "Look, we know Rilke. We're smart people."

I said this isn't that bad of a movie. It has its funny moments. And it captures the awkward ecstasy of the early stages of relationships well. I just wish it didn't feel like such Lesploitation.

Kit, Thad or Steny

2007-03-27T15:01:00.000-07:00

Why name your kid Kit, Thad or Steny? Because then he'll be made fun of throughout adolescence, grow deeply bitter, and become a Senator just to get back at his enemies.

If you name your three kids Kit, Thad and Steny, they'll form a super-Senator alliance and all be featured in this article.

Movie Review: Scoop

2007-03-25T12:30:00.000-07:00

Scoop: Torgo disapproves

This movie isn't good. It has potential. It just fails continually and sadly to live up to any of that potential.

First off, Woody Allen. "Annie Hall" is one of my favorite movies. I've liked many other movies he's made: "Bananas, "Deconstructing Harry," a few others. But there comes a point at which his recycling of the same jokes, if not in words then in structure, delivery, and punchline, gets bothersome.

Here, his character exists largely to do Woody Allen improv. I don't think it counts as improv when you've been doing it for this long. It's like "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" -- it's not really improv when you're just making the same sex jokes with the same 3 people for years. It's repetitive and uninspired.

Then there's the rest of the movie. Scarlett Johansson is hot, sure. But I'm not sure she can act. She plays Diane Keaton in this movie, but not that well. Hugh Jackman plays a British guy. I thought he was Australian. If so, then he's at least trying out a different accent. Ian McShane tries to work with what he's given, and he has the role that could be the most fun, but there just isn't enough there to make it happen.

I tried to imagine what the movie would be like without Woody Allen's character. It'd be about 30 minutes long, first of all. Then, it'd be like a bad episode of a "Charmed," without the witchcraft or sisters. Is "Charmed" still on? That used to be a show M-N liked.

This movie just isn't good.

Movie Review: Curious George

2007-03-23T11:12:00.000-07:00

Curious George: Torgo approves

So the little man had to go for a little operation yesterday, which meant that when we got home, it was a day for peaceful kid's movie watching. He doesn't watch much tv, but it can be one of the few things to make him sit quietly, which we needed him to do.

So aside from "Shrek," which we own and, speaking for the adults, had seen, we watched the "Curious George" movie. The boy loves that monkey.

When he was small(er), we got some of the original George books from the library. Wow, they're offensive. It's your typical "noble white man saves poor, ignorant creature from wilds of dark, dark Africa" story. It's overtly, horribly racist.

They managed to keep much of the story intact and lose most of the racism factor here. George follows the man onto his boat, he isn't "rescued." There is still a plot involving cultural pillaging, but it's less offensive than pretty much any Disney movie.

Will Ferrell plays the man in the yellow hat well. Drew Barrymore plays an excessively flirtatious, um, flirt -- that was weird, that's all she does in the movie. She shows up and flirts. Dick Van Dyke gets work as the museum owner. And David Cross is his maniacal son. (sidenote: what an odd world it'd be if David Cross was Dick Van Dyke's son. That's kind of like Johnny Knoxville being Bob Newhart's son.)

It's an entertaining little movie. I find something about George's endless mischief-making annoying, especially as he never learns anything. But it's amusing.

Visit SF for the scenery, stay for the Die-In

2007-03-19T17:18:00.000-07:00

There was a 'Die-In' across the street from my office today. There are often protests and demonstrations there. This one featured a bunch of people lying on the ground for an hour, then marching, then getting arrested en masse. Plus, there was a big Ghandi puppet.

I wonder what happens to the puppet if the puppeteers get arrested. When they get out of jail, do they get to claim it? Is there a guy riding home from jail on the bus with a giant Ghandi?

Quote for today

2007-03-17T10:55:00.000-07:00

I like quotes people put in email signatures. I used to always use one, but then I'd forget to unclick the box when I was sending something for which the quote was entirely inappropriate, so now by default I don't have one. Here's one from someone else:

"A ship in harbor is safe-
but that is not what ships are for."
-John A. Shedd

Movie Review: Stranger Than Fiction

2007-03-16T17:25:00.000-07:00

Stranger Than Fiction: Torgo approves

Rainster just did a nice job with pros and cons in a movie review. Let me try that.

Pros:
1) In the "Eternal Sunshine," "I Heart Huckabees" mold, this movie is whimsical, offbeat, and not bound by any apparent rules.

2) Dustin Hoffman. I've said it before but it's worth repeating. He keeps taking fun roles and being interesting in them. His first scene here, he's going from one coffee cup to the next, drinking coffee while peeing, etc. It's subtle and hilarious.

3) The foreshadowing is restrained. You can begin to see where it's heading, especially with the random clips of two seeming non-characters. But it's not overdone.

4) Will Ferrell. He's good. Having heard there was buzz about big award nominations for him, well, I don't see that. But he is good.

Cons:
1) Maggie Gyllenhaal's character is, like the women in too many movies I've seen recently, a strong-willed, free-thinking woman who quickly crumbles and falls for a guy with little more going for him than a crush on her. This irks me. I mean, he's a boring IRS agent who's auditing her. She's a left-leaning hippie who owns her own business.

2) Queen Latifah. She irks me. I just don't think she can act. Granted, she doesn't have a role to play. Her dialogue is wooden on the page. But she brings nothing to it. I think she drags Emma Thompson down and I used to be smitten with Emma Thompson (up until around "Sense and Sensibility").

3) (don't read this if you haven't seen it) I don't buy it that Will Ferrell would say it's ok that he gets killed. I'm a writer. I love literature. I get sucked into stories when I already know how they end. Every time I read Romeo and Juliet I had idiotic hope that maybe this time they wouldn't both die in the end. But:

4) This isn't that good of a book. What's it about? Ok, we don't know. But we know the main character is this IRS agent with an incredibly boring life. Based on what happens in the movie (which is presumably near the end of the book), it's not that great.

Perhaps I'd have been more forgiving if we hadn't watched one of my favorite movies (The Big Lebowski) and one of M-N's favorites (Love and Basketball) over the weekend. They set a high bar. But I liked this movie.

It all comes back to the Monkees

2007-03-14T16:21:00.000-07:00

So it turns out Brad Delp committed suicide. He was the lead singer of Boston. I never liked Boston. In fact, I actively disliked "More than a feeling."

Then I read that he sang in the Beatles tribute band called "Beatlejuice," which was based in Somerville, MA. I've seen this band. In 2001, the Monkees gave a free concert on the Esplanade, and Beatlejuice opened.

Cover bands occupy a strange, sad place in pop music. You need to be a competent musician, but not inherently talented or creative. No one really likes you, they just like the people you imitate.

The Monkees fall somewhere between a cover band and and actual band. They played some of their own songs, but the majority of their stuff was factory-produced. That 2001 concert was the second time I'd seen them. In 1987, I saw them in Milwaukee with "Weird Al" Yankovic opening. That was the first concert I'd been to. It was loud.

Sadly, some of the on-stage schtick by Davy Jones didn't change between 1987 and 2001.

Mike Nesmith, my favorite Monkee, wasn't at either concert. I don't think it's that he invested his money wisely. In fact, I don't think he did, not with his Monkees' money. But he made good choices afterwards, and his mom invented liquid paper, so he inherited that fortune.

It seems odd that of all the big-selling 60's groups, the Monkees are one of the only ones with all members still alive.

Caller ID: the devil's toy

2007-03-12T16:24:00.000-07:00

When someone calls my office from my home number, the caller id shows the number and my name, which always freaks me out. How am I calling me? Why am I calling me?

Today, I was on the phone with someone when I see the caller id pop up with me. Then it goes away. Then I call again. Then it goes away. Then I call again.

Perhaps future me is trying to warn me of something. That's fantasy-Torgo thinking.

Reality-Torgo is thinking: boy injured, wife in labor, fire, osama bin laden, dick cheney, john walnuts mccain...

It was none of those. Really, the boy figured out the redial button. He likes buttons. Especially when they cause things to light up and make noise.

Old man's shameless playlist

2007-03-09T11:12:00.000-08:00

So I'm getting old and decided to check my iTunes for the most played songs. This is my work computer, which has 2873 songs at the moment, far fewer than the home computer, and not the one we use with the iPod, and I leave it on shuffle a lot, so this is in no way representative of anything definitive. I was just curious.

1) Black Tambourine - Beck -- from Guero, an awesome album. Not the best song on there. But a good one.

2) Marker in the Sand - Pearl Jam -- from their newest. One of the first albums on the computer, hence the high play count. This is one of the best on the album. I sought this track out often.

3) Caramel - Suzanne Vega -- I've written before about my love for Ms. Vega. This is from Nine Objects of Desire, a great album from the Mitchell Froom era.

4) Be My Love - Cracker -- One of their best, I think. I like Big Dipper more. That's an amazing song. But this one's great.

5) 3 Speed - Eels -- I loved this song in college, but couldn't play it on the radio b/c of the f-word. I'm not sure why it's so high now, but I like it.

6) I Remember California - R.E.M. -- "Scrubs" last night, which is a show that's definitely getting tired, used R.E.M.'s Half a World Away, another awesome late-album track. Late on side 2, from the cassette days.

7) Strange Apparition - Beck -- from The Information. Not the best song, again, on the album, but a good one.

8) Giving Him Something He Can Feel - En Vogue -- This was originally from a movie that M-N likes, then En Vogue did the video based on that movie. I love this song. I'd forgotten about it for years, then rediscovered it when that movie was on tv.

9) Criminal - Fiona Apple -- Not my favorite Fiona Apple song. But I like most of her stuff.

10) Aurora - Foo Fighters -- Really? I don't remember hearing this that much. That's weird.

So the songs don't always make sense, but most of the artists do. I spend more time listening to Beck, Suzanne Vega, Pearl Jam, R.E.M., Cracker and Fiona Apple than just about anyone else these days. Weezer is up there, too. They had a few songs just not make the top 10.

Ok, that's enough of this.

Lost: still eh

2007-03-08T08:36:00.000-08:00

Did you watch it last night? Slightly better. Still frustrating as hell. Locke? Are you that stupid? Rousseau? Have you really been living on this island? B/c you don't seem to know jack. Miss Klugh or Cleo or whatever her name is, don't you know that black people don't survive on this island? Why invite your own death? So Harold Perrineau and Walt sail away, Mr. Eko gets killed by smoke, Rose (and Bernard) have apparently be recast as Nikki and Paulo, and now she gets 1 minute of screen time, most of which is her getting killed.

And the ping pong subplot? Remember the subplot last year about looking for the frog? This is shamefully bad writing.

But Sayid is cool. A little too virtuous, especially for a guy who used to torture people.

Movie Review: This Film Is Not Yet Rated

2007-03-08T08:14:00.000-08:00

This Film Is Not Yet Rated: Torgo approves

Having grown up as a movie junkie, this documentary didn't tell me much I didn't already know: the MPAA is a semi-fascist, completely unaccountable, industry-friendly sham. They abhor sex but have no problem with violence. They show strong tendencies towards misogyny, racism, homophobia. They, in short, suck.

But sometimes it's nice to have your beliefs reaffirmed.

Kirby Dick, in the playful, Michael Moore method, seeks to discover what this MPAA thing is and how they operate. It turns out, they don't want anyone to know.

There are good interviews with directors like Matt Stone, John Waters, Mary Harron, Kevin Smith and Kimberly Pierce. There's a deleted scene with the director of Love & Basketball that's worth seeing, too.

Everyone seems to be in agreement, the MPAA is bad. Dick does a good job of exposing precisely why and how they're bad. He shows clips of movies side by side, one that got an R, one that got an NC-17, wherein the shots are identical. He exposes the ratings board as not being parents of young children. And he documents the movie he's making being effectively censored by its target.

The double standard regarding sex and violence has always been troubling. Some of his interviewees hint at this, but I think it's definitely a larger, cultural problem that has always existed in the U.S. The Puritanical roots shun sex but condone and promote violence.

I think of how this has affected me. Through the movies, I have an extensive knowledge of things like weaponry and torture techniques. I watched ten minutes of a recent episode of "24" and learned how to extract information from someone using a power drill.

Meanwhile, sex was always something dirty and forbidden. Granted, I was raised Catholic. But shouldn't violence have been something dirty and forbidden?

No, I was terrified at a young age of garbage disposals, because of a horror movie commercial (I didn't even see the movie) in which someone gets sucked into one. Another movie's commercial showed a child's room with a lamp with a large pencil for a base. I had that lamp, but was always a little bit worried by it because it was associated with that movie. I saw a review of a Nightmare on Elm St movie on the midday news once in which they showed Freddy Krueger coming up through a waterbed. So I was scared of waterbeds. I think it was Critters in which a guy slept in his bed with his arm dangling over the side. There were Critters under the bed. I didn't let one finger go over the side of the bed for about a decade.

And I didn't even see any of those movies.

I was glad to hear that the MPAA was making some changes in response to this movie. It's nice to watch a documentary on dvd and, by the time it's on dvd, it's made parts of itself irrelevant. Not all, but parts. Slow progess.

Geico Cavemen + Burger King King = Funny t-shirt

2007-03-07T11:47:00.000-08:00

I was Ethelbert's note about the Geico Cavemen getting a tv pilot and he mentioned that the Burger King King is getting a movie. So I went an looked that up, because that was news to me. But in doing so, I saw an ad for a funny t-shirt site. There's nothing I like more than funny t-shirt sites. This one made me laugh:

Ha ha ha. It still does. You know what doesn't? Typing "ha ha ha." That's just not funny.

I love the Geico cavemen. I know it's just a giant corporation's ad campaign, and I seem to get junk mail from Geico every other day even though I don't own a car, but I still think those commercials are awesome.

I used to not quite get Phil Hartman's Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer sketch on SNL. It's funnier to me in retrospect. But those Geico ads. That's funny.

I'm gonna come at you like a spider monkey. That's funny, too.

Iran? Really?

2007-03-06T10:49:00.000-08:00

Well, this just doesn't make any sense.

Why would we do this? Ok, ok, I know. Iraq didn't make any sense. But if you look at the "Axis of Evil," it was the easiest of the three. And the whole 'flowers at their feet' thing, still waiting on that.

I'm not going to believe this until it happens. There's stupid. There's beyond stupid. Then there's invading Iran right now.

Book Report: Breakfast at Tiffany's

2007-03-05T15:41:00.000-08:00

Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote: Torgo approves

I always try to find the cover of the edition I read for this blog. I was reading what was once my father's copy of this book, so it's about 40 years old. That copy has a sticker on it, just under the pic of Audrey Hepburn, that says "by the author of IN COLD BLOOD," which is true, but jarring.

I loved "In Cold Blood." I thought it was brilliant. I've never seen the movie of "Breakfast at Tiffany's," but while I believed it to be something far more mundane and trivial than what it is, the divide between this book and In Cold Blood is significant.

They're different in every possible way. But I don't want to go into all of that.

I was surprised at the casual racism of this book. So it's of a time when such racism was common, that doesn't excuse it. I think the book has dated badly, most notably on this topic.

It also reminds me of "Sneakers," which I just rewatched a week or so ago. That movie has dated badly because of its technology-based premise, set in 1992. Technology is proving to be more and more of a cultural barrier with each passing year. It's most apparent in works from 1945 to the present, I believe.

In "The Apartment," it was bizarre to see a huge office building where everyone's desks just had typewriters and rolodexes.

Ok, I'm getting sidetracked. This was a short book, a novella, I suppose, that I actually finished a week ago.

I approved the book b/c of Capote's writing style. He's a clever one. He effectively pulls the reader into the narrative. The story may be flimsy, but it's an easy read and it's not a burden to just keep going.

JetBlue comes through

2007-03-03T11:18:00.000-08:00

I had to fly to Boston on something of a last minute business trip earlier this week. Tickets for flights were ridiculously high because, unlike other sales industries, airlines don't try to bargain with the customer to sell their last few products. Instead, they quadruple the price. What if supermarkets did that?

Well, this pound of chicken is normally $3 but because the "sell by" date is today, it's $45.

JetBlue is no exception. But they had one of the most reasonable fares. It was more inconvenient for me, because they don't start flying SF to BOS until May, so I had to go to Oakland. I decided it was worth it for the perks of JetBlue.

I know they completely broke down a couple of weeks ago, but I still like them. They have a consumer-oriented approach, much like Southwest (but w/o the cattle call seating).

Airline travel mostly sucks hard. The old airlines (like United, Delta, US Air, etc.) are terrible. I always hate flying with them.

But JetBlue has blue chips, free tv, and they don't make you feel like you're burdening them by riding on their planes. Sure, nobody serves food anymore, but on my flights, they were offering what they did have, chips, cookies, etc., constantly and in great numbers. And when the tv didn't work on my OAK to JFK leg, they gave me a $15 credit.

I'm now looking into flights for April. I don't get why some airline have tickets for $1000 or $1500 this far in advance. I looked on kayak.com and sidestep and figured those really expensive flights got me to Boston in 2 hrs instead of 5 or 6. But no. I'm not spending $1000, even if it's someone else's money, to spend 5 hrs cramped in a US Airways plane.

JetBlue has tickets for about $300-$350. That'll be fine.

Long after I stopped caring Ann Coulter exists...

2007-03-02T15:55:00.000-08:00

...she goes and says this: "I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot,’ so I — so kind of an impasse, can’t really talk about Edwards."

I know Ann Coulter sells a few books here and there. I know tv shows like to have her on because she says ridiculous things like this and brings them ratings.

But I don't understand how she manages to be so incredibly soulless and horrid without reserve, conscience, or any apparent sense of decency. She makes Bill O'Reilly look like a cautious, tactful diplomat.

Awards for movies I haven't seen

2007-02-26T10:24:00.000-08:00

The best thing about the Oscars, far and away, is that they began at 5:30 p.m. God bless the left coast.

Other than that, I thought Ellen Degeneres was funny. I've always liked her stand-up. Good for Al Gore, too, showing his sense of humor.

I felt like I'd seen the Will Ferrell/Jack Black/John Reilly skit before. I mean, it was amusing, but, eh.

I think 2006 may have been the first year since 1982 that I didn't see a movie in the theaters. Is that possible? Maybe. In '83 I saw Return of the Jedi. M-N managed to see Little Miss Sunshine, The Queen, Notes on a Scandal, all with her mom's group. I saw several episodes of NCIS, which is like CSI but spelled incorrectly.

I was happy to see Alan Arkin win. He's been great in movies I've seen (like Glengarry Glenross and So I Married an Axe Murderer). He's also a Bennington alum, like me.

I was happy for Forest Whitaker, too. He seems like such a nice guy. I've liked him in a bunch of movies, too. Except he continued to prove the point about black actors only winning for playing bad guys. M-N pointed this out.

Denzel Washington, for example, almost always plays the moral center of every movie he's in. But he got an Oscar for Training Day and Glory. He was, eventually, the hero of Glory, but for a long time he was the renegade.

I said, what about Jamie Foxx? She pointed out that Ray Charles was an addict/adulterer/womanizer.

Halle Berry? M-N (who apparently sees a lot of movies w/o me) said Monster's Ball wasn't exactly Catwoman.

The American Idol girl won, though, so that's good. I bet that pissed off Peter O'Toole.

Book Report: 1491

2007-02-22T16:08:00.000-08:00

1491 by Charles C. Mann: Torgo approves

Yeah, I approve. I've written about this book before. I actually finished it a week or so ago, but haven't gotten the energy to write about it. That's because it's a 300+ page research paper. It's a fascinating topic: the Americas before Columbus. But Mann is a science and history writer, straining to be compelling with subject matter that's distant and vague.

It's still an engaging book, particularly the first third. The middle third drags, then the final third varies between interesting and overkill.

Mann does great work in highlighting the latest theories of pre-Columbian civilizations, dispelling myths while still presenting the basis for those myths. He's well-rounded in his presentation. He overtly sides with the theorists who believe:
*the Americas were vastly more populated than previously believed
*these civilizations pre-date the possibility of the 'ice age land bridge' theory
*large-scale agriculture was done throughout the continents
*the Amazon and U.S. interior were not 'virgin forest' but highly cultivated regions
*European explorers got very, very, very, very lucky, destroying immense populations thanks in no part to their own skill or culturally supremacy, but rather due to incredible timing and disease.

I came away agreeing with the author wholeheartedly. My problems with the book are simple but persistent.

First, he falls into the 'comparing genocides' trap. He's constantly describing the beauty, splendor, and enormity of various civilizations as they compare to European or other civilizations. In order to be impressive, it must have been the biggest. That's not true. Can't we just appreciate it for what it was? I think he does, but he feels compelled to argue how spectacular everything was.

Second, he too heavily relies upon the latest research (often from the last 5 years), arguing that it contradicts notions of the last 10, 50, or 100 years. But how quickly will his own book become dated? It's a couple of years old now. Is there research now to negate his theories?

Archaeology is an ever-changing field. What's the oldest civilization ever discovered in 2002 isn't likely to still hold that title in 2010. He doesn't acknowledge that well.

If you can get past those points, it's worthy reading. I learned more about how civilizations survive and adapt, what type of people lived in the Americas, and why the whole European devastation blows than I ever knew before. Ok, I was pretty sure of the last point, but tells some good stories about it.

This is awesome

2007-02-21T16:38:00.001-08:00

Little Dude Loves Disco

2007-02-21T12:51:00.000-08:00

What do you do with a boy who loves to dance? Take him to a nightclub. What if he's still about 19.5 years shy of being legal? Take him to Baby Loves Disco, an inventive way to create mass hysteria among parents trying fervently to provide the best for their kids.

We bought tickets for this thing in November. November. We went on Saturday. It sells out in minutes. What is it? All around the country, they take an ordinary club and open it up on a Saturday afternoon for small kids. There's a dance floor, snacks and drinks, a hula hoop area, two fully stocked bars, all you'd expect.

As hard as it is to get tickets, it's not really that big of a deal. It's not like they got the alcohol smell out of the upholstery. The tables were sticky, but that could've been from the kids. Sticky tables are common amongst liquored-up adults and toddlers.
Much like his dad, the boy wonder didn't spend much time on the dance floor. He liked the hula hoops, but was most interested in the ATM and payphones off in a corner.

That's my kid.

Movie Review: Syriana

2007-02-17T10:49:00.000-08:00

Syriana: Torgo disapproves

What a disappointment. In hindsight, this movie was doomed to be lousy. The writer/director also did Traffic, which should've been much better than it was. Syriana is worse, by far. They're trying to make a convoluted, 70's-style ensemble piece about the oil industry. It's in the style of The French Connection, or any of those Robert Redford/Gene Hackman/Dustin Hoffman/Roy Scheider 70's thrillers.

But this movie isn't good. The biggest problem is that none of the individual stories is particularly compelling. George Clooney's is closest. He's a rogue CIA agent involved in murky arms dealing and assassinations.

Matt Damon's story is the tear-jerker. In an idiotic move, he takes his family to a business meeting. His 6-year-old son gets killed, which prompts the Arab prince to take pity on him, offer him loads of money, ruin his family, blah blah blah. We lost interest when the killing of his son was so inanely contrived and badly written that we were actively rooting against the mother.

Speaking of badly written, that goes for the Jeffrey Wright plot as well. There's nothing good to say about his story. Chris Cooper is fun to watch, that's about it.

Then there's the Islamic terrorist plot. Some brothers spend the whole movie being convinced that blowing up an oil plant is Allah's will. Then they do it. Great.

I like the idea of a movie about the oil industry. It's a topic that seems, at least superficially, to warrant further study. But Syriana entirely fails to make good viewing. It's dull. It's predictable. It's sloppy. George Clooney got an Oscar for putting on weight, growing a beard, and getting his fingernails ripped out on film. Good for him. He seems like a decent guy. Just don't watch this movie.

Clearly not a wino

2007-02-16T16:39:00.000-08:00

Some landlords are never around. Some try to pawn off kittens on their tenants. Some mysteriously disappear in a cloud of uncertainty, only to be replaced by the mega-corp that owns the building.

I've had all of these landlords.

Our current landlord gave us a Christmas gift: a bottle of wine. I would've liked $500 or $1000 or $1500 off our rent for a month, but we'll take what we can get.

However, because a certain someone is with child and a certain other someone is a child, the bottle has sat unopened in our barren wine rack for 2 months. I won't open a bottle to drink on my own. Well, no, no, I won't.

We had company yesterday, so we opened it up. Turns out, it's a port wine, aka a dessert wine. I've had a lot of wine, most of it under $10/bottle, but somehow I've never had a bottle of dessert wine.

Dessert wine is very sweet. It's not really something I found I could drink more than one glass of. But it's good. And it's the first time I've ever had a landlord give a gift. So that's nice.

Satellite Radio: Good when free

2007-02-15T08:18:00.000-08:00

As Zipcar users, we get to listen to XM satellite radio when we drive.

At first, this seemed great. There are over 150 channels, lots of variety, some great stations. But over time, I've noticed that the commercial-free radio is full of commercials. I don't know if this is just because it's some special 'Zipcar' version -- I don't think so, I think they've just falsely advertised.

I haven't done a scientific study. We only listen to 3 different stations. But what I first noticed as just commercials for other XM stations and shows has now evolved into extended commercial breaks for random, non-XM products.

So if we had to pay for it, we'd be paying to listen to commercials, which you can do for free with regular radio.

I am Lex Luthor

2007-02-15T08:16:00.000-08:00

Your results:
You are Lex Luthor

Lex Luthor		66%
Apocalypse		63%
Dr. Doom		60%
Magneto		52%
Juggernaut		52%
Riddler		51%
The Joker		50%
Kingpin		48%
Mr. Freeze		47%
Poison Ivy		44%
Green Goblin		40%
Dark Phoenix		39%
Venom		36%
Catwoman		36%
Mystique		32%
Two-Face		20%

A brilliant businessman on a quest for world domination and the self-proclaimed greatest criminal mind of our time!

Click here to take the Super Villain Personality Test

Thanks, Rainster.

I watched the Grammys

2007-02-13T11:28:00.000-08:00

And it was ok.

I used to get emotionally involved in the Grammys, back when artists I loved were up for awards. But now, the albums I love don't get nominated (like Pearl Jam and Beck's new albums), so I can just watch the show.

I'm glad Mary J Blige won. She's easy to root for. She's also amazing. I'm also glad the Dixie Chicks won. I don't like their music, but I like their message, and it's nice to see them get acknowledged after country radio turned on them.

I actually really enjoyed the show. I thought the Police were decent, especially considering they were at their peak 25 years ago. It was fun to see Lionel Richie and Smokey Robinson sing their old hits.

Gnarls Barkley's slowed-down "Crazy" was ok, not great, but ok. The Eagles tribute got old quickly. I mean, they're not dead! If you want to showcase them, bring them on the show. Don Henley was there! And Ludacris, who I'm growing to like as an actor and respect more as a musician, did his little 'message' song that was earnest and well-intentioned, but had the rhymes of a 7th grade poetry class. It's a good thing Mary J helped him.

Speaking of people with multiple performances, what's the deal with Justin Timberlake? He gets to do a mock American Idol? And perform twice? The Idol rip-off was a bad idea. It also highlighted a drawback of being on the left coast. We couldn't vote. I wouldn't have, but still, it's the principle.

I waited up for the Chili Peppers, the only rock act, only to be disappointed. They always sound off live.

But it was nice to see a thin Al Gore. Apparently, a thin Al Gore means he may run for president. Good for Al. I'd vote for him again.