Have we not met before, monsieur?

This weekend I watched the excellent BBC 6 part miniseries The Singing Detective from 1986. There's just absolutely no way this could be made in the US today. First, there's the whole 6 one hour episodic structure, which we generally don't get to see. The miniseries in the US is an underused form. But apart from this and that there's the taboo foul language and brief nudity, the narative structure--weaving the ailing writer of out-of-print detective stories in the hospital, his novel "The Singing Detective," his flashbacks to childhood trauma, and his conspiring wife in what in someways seems random (I'm not saying it is of course.) and the willingness to go slowly just doesn't seem like it could be done today. I'm listen to the commentary track with director Jon Amiel and a producer, and indeed they say the BBC would not allow them to make today. HBO might let them.

However, throughout the whole thing, I kept thinking that I knew I had seen the actor who played the Gambon character's father in something before, but I could not think of what. A quick check of IMDb revealed that he was played by Jim Carter--who played Deja Vu in Top Secret!!

Buckminster would be happy

I'm generally not too big on the online personality quizes, and I'm not sure why this one caught my interest, but here I am in my full icosahedronism:

Take the quiz at dicepool.com

You are the large, round, friendly d20! (You probably didn't know this, but the shape of the twenty-sided die is called an Icosahedron.) You are the friendly, outgoing, outspoken, leader of friends. You are often looked up to, even though you don't normally deserve it. Most other types secretly wish they were you, and you'd give them tips on how, if only you had a clue yourself. Your charisma is often all you need, but you have your occasional moments of brilliance as well--just never when it's actually needed. You are the all-around good guy, a dependable chum, a respectable foe, and an inspiration to those who need one. Who says you can't get by on a smile and good looks alone?

"and" vs. "&"

While I have loved the film Adaptation really even before I saw it, I just noticed something about it. It has the credit "Screenplay by Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman." According to the Writers Guild of America regulations, "&" is used to join two writers who work together on the same draft of a screenplay whereas "and" is used to join writers who work on separate drafts. Is this significant? Is this to imply that there was a draft by Charlie that the studio didn't like, and so they took it to Donald to rewrite it?

Domestic Appliances

Not being a fan of any variety of motorsports, I generally do see them as stereotypical worlds. There is of course the standard southern good ole boy notion of the NASCAR world. Is it to a large part true? That should be irrelevent, and is not the point of this post. I'm more concerned with my stereotype of open-wheel racing. For me, open-wheel racing has always meant the Grand Prix, which for me conveys a feeling of snooty people in Monaco. While I don't give it too much thought, I see it like this: I'm in the middle--fans of NASCAR with their Pontiacs up on blocks in the front yard below me and fans of Formula One above me with their Ferraris whipping around the Autobahn above me on the social ladder.

However, this morning, I had to rethink the latter assumption after what Bernie Ecclestone, president of Formula One told a gathering of reporters last week. He was talking about rookie Danica Patrick, whose fourth place finish at last month's Indianapolis 500 was the highest ever for a female driver and was the only racing news story in the build up to the Indy 500. Ecclestone, whose $3.7 billion fortune has come from his 25 year control of F1, first said that Patrick did an excel job, better even that he thought she could do. Then he said this: "You know, I've got one of these wonderful ideas that women should be all dressed in white like all the other domestic appliances." What? This weekend he called Patrick in theory at least to apologize, and while she did say that he was somewhat complimentary, he repeated the same idea.

Who gets white appliances anymore? As a billionaire, Ecclestone should know this. It's all stainless steel in the modern kitchen.

So what is the lesson here? All people associated with autosports are idiots? Maybe not. There is one thing that I have glossed over in this. Danica Patrick is not actually an F1 driver. She is part of the Indy Racing League, which broke off from Formula One a few years ago. Perhaps this IRL is the happy medium, neither redneck nor Eurotrash. Maybe they know what a decent kitchen looks like.

When beautiful people get religion

Twenty years ago, People Magazine selected Mel Gibson as their first "Sexiest Man Alive." Of course in the last couple of years, the sexy has been traded in for controversial because of his The Passion of the Christ, in which he put forth his version of the crucifixion in order for those who wanted to to experience at gut level the death of their Savior. Was this an "evangelical" film? I'd say no because it was not intended to convert people to Christianity or even to Gibson's strict version of Catholicism. He was not evangelizing but instead made a film for Christians designed to give them an intense experience of an event they hold sacred. Perhaps it didn't succeed with every Christian, but this is the lens through which it must be viewed, in my opinion. However, there was no shortage of people who were so outraged by the very existance of this film (well, and that it was huge success), and just I don't understand why.

Fifteen years ago, People Magazine selected Tom Cruise as their "Sexiest Man Alive." Seven or eight years ago, I greatly reconsidered my views on Tom Cruise. It started with how I was so surprised at how I liked Jerry Maguire. Then there was the slow building eerieness of Eyes Wide Shut, and that he took the supporting role of Frank T.J. Mackey in the excellent Magnolia. While I had some problems with Vanilla Sky, I did not think they were Cruise's fault, and Minority Report was pretty cool. The guy can do good work and can find great films to be in. (The Last Samurai or Collateral are both unseen by me at this writing.)

However, with all the recent publicity regarding his upcoming blockbuster and recent engagement and appearance on Oprah, the matinee idol has been getting on my nerves lately. I feel like I'm alone in this though. This morning it occurred to me though that Cruise's popularity should be completely unjustified because he consistantly engages in one of the most unpardonable sins in today's society: he proselytizes. I don't know about his first marriage to Mimi Rogers, but if I remember correctly, a factor in the ending of his marriage to Nicole Kidman was that she had second thoughts about her conversion from Catholocism to Scientology. Also, didn't his relationship with Penelope Cruz end because she would not convert to Scientology? I saw recent reports that new fiancee Katie Holmes converted to Scientology. The guy forces his women to convert to his religion. Where are the people who were up in arms about Gibson's film? Is this not worse than making a film of your beliefs? Today's IMDb Movie/TV News cites reports that Scarlett Johansson pulled out of Mission: Impossible because Cruise tried to convert her to Scientology. His proselytizing has seeped from his personal life into the workplace. Isn't this the US? Don't we lambaste people for doing that?

Listening on the run

Some people find it odd that when I run I listen almost exclusively to NPR. One thing is that when I do listen to music, I find myself trying to stride to the beat, which is not always a good thing. However, it's more for the discussion of world events that engages my mind, taking me away from the running much better than music. People with whom I've discussed this who have then tried listening to NPR while running generally like it or at least stop thinking I'm weird for doing so. Yesterday, though, I may have pushed the bar further away from the classic running soundtrack: During my seven mile run, I was listening to golf on the radio.

Normally, I'm interested in golf twice a year. I usually try to watch The Masters and The (British) Open Championship. However this year, with the US Open being held just down the road at Pinehurst No. 2, the local interest has gotten me watching South African Retief Goosen try defend his championship on the diabolical domed greens, and since I had watched most of Saturday afternoon's action when it came time to go for a run, I scanned through the AM dial listening for very quiet people talking. Maybe if I did enjoy golf as a spectator more or had ever actually played around, it would have been better, but it was okay. I didn't turn it off until after the play was over, which was about 45 minutes.

The Inside

Okay, so I'll admit it--I was closet Profiler fan. Well, no "fan" is too strong a word. I'd watch the show, but often with annoyance, both at the show and at myself for watching it. I suppose it was a guilty pleasure, just without the pleasure.

I just watched the premiere of The Inside, FOX's new FBI serial killer profiling team show. I think all the networks have one coming this year. Serial killers are everywhere on television. Yes, there are a few serial killers in real life, but the set of real life serial killers as a subset of real and fictional serial killers is a set of measure zero. We know how they operate--they stalk people in the dark, they do it without guilt, and they take parts of their victims' flesh with them. Sound like any mythical bad guys we know? Yes, I mean vampires. If you can make a compelling show about vampires and the people who hunt them, then why not serial killers? With The Inside, the people who did make shows about vampires do just this. That's right, The Inside was co-created by Tim Minear, (who gives FOX another chance after they cancelled his previous efforts Firefly and Wonderfalls), and IMDb lists four other Buffy and Angel veterans as writers: Jane Espenson, Bed Edlund, David Fury, and co-creator Howard Gordon. Plus it co-stars Adam Baldwin.

It follows the new FBI agent, a young female straight out of the academy--right after she shows up, Adam Baldwin calls her Clarice Starling--who despite having been denied acceptance into the profiling program twice is nevertheless chosen to join the special team based in the LA office and run by the creepy Special Agent Virgil Webster, played by Peter Coyote. It seems he runs this unit, and they investigate cases he finds interesting, and they stop if he loses interest. The rest of the group doesn't always like what he does. No, it doesn't really make sense in our reality. However, based on the first episode, I think it makes sense in it's reality, and that's all I really care about. It seems to want to focus on the profilers more than the profiled, which is always good, and according to Tim Minear, if the show is a soufflé, "it is a soufflé of pain."

I guess The Inside is like a guilty pleasure, only without the guilt. Now I just have to figure out how to keep FOX from canning it.

Crime Time

Okay folks with keen legal minds, here are a couple of questions for you, all predicated on me having a time machine. Ignore any grandfather-type paradoxes.

1) Suppose I travel back to 1960, rob a bank, and then return to the present. Since said robbery was long enough ago that the statute of limitations has expired, could I be prosecuted for it?

2) Suppose now that instead of doing the above robbery alone, I teamed up with someone, say the inventor of the time machine, to go back in time and rob the bank. If we could not be prosecuted due to the expired of statute of limitations, could we be charged with conspiracy to commit robbery, which we would have done just a couple of days ago.

3) Suppese now that I travel 100 years into the future, steal something, say Grant Woods's American Gothic, and I get caught with it after I return. Can I be charged now with a crime that hasn't happened yet?

Out running this evening, I looked down and spied in the grass next to the sidewalk a MetroCard. Maybe this wouldn't be so strange if I were actually running in New York, but this was here in subway-free Carrboro, NC. How odd.

Free state map comparisons

On my recent trip, I picked up from rest stops the state provided maps from Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio, bringing the total in my truck up to 18 now. I decided to compare them, starting with the best.

I didn't find a clear-cut best, but I think my favorite is 2003-2004 Maryland map. Only New Jersey's 1 inch = 4 mile scale was better than Maryland's 1 inch = 6 miles, and it folds well, but for me the deciding factor was that the Maryland one was the only one to indicate what projection was used--the Lambert conformal conic projection. (Click here for a discussion of various conic projection maps or here for mathematical formulae for the Lambert conformal conic projection.) Also, Maryland uses an odd scale bar that increments by 6 miles instead of 5 or 10. (South Carolina used a similar scale bar.) New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Indiana also provide high quality maps, all with scales bigger than 1 inch = 10 miles.

The next tier with scales ranging from 10 to 15 miles per inch include Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, Michigan, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Carolina, West Virginia, and Illinois, all of which provide for easy navigation.

My only qualms with the Georgia and Ohio maps are they do not fold well. In order to see any of the map, you must unfold all of it; whereas the above maps fold nicely to a managable size showing just the portion of the state that you are in at the moment. Alabama's 2002-2003 map also has this problem, and I would say that the map, made by MapQuest.com, is on the wrong scale for the huge sheet of paper it's printed on. It includes enough of the surrounding area so that Memphis, Nashville, Atlanta, and New Orleans are all on the map, and while it is interesting to see the navigation lanes between the state's five protected artificial reef area forty miles out into the Gulf of Mexico, I'm not going to drive through them. Just make a larger scale map.

The only one that I would really say is substandard is my 2001 Arizona map. It has the smallest scale at 1 inch = 18 miles (yes, it is a big state with lots of area with few roads, but it also folds poorly, contains no roads outside the state's borders, and at first I thought it was made by the Best Western hotel chain instead of Arizona Office of Tourism.

Where do you go for your anniversary?

Congratulations to Moni Mulepati and Pem Dorjee Sherpa, the Nepalese couple who just got married at the summit of Mt. Everest.

Maybe I am a masochist after all

Despite the excellent season of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and the new fun show Medium, NBC finished fourth of the big four networks in ratings this year. Their decidedly fourth place summer line-up is kicking off e'en as I type with Hit Me Baby One More Time. It's sort of like American Idol, accept the artists have already had their time in the sun. Five acts you haven't heard from in quite a while--Loverboy, CeCe Peniston, Flock of Seagulls (who had the gall to perform "I Ran" wearing a hat! A hat? C'mon, your hairstyle named a character in Pulp Fiction, you have to show it.), Arrested Development, and Tiffany--perform their hit and then cover something ClearChannel would like, and then the audience votes on who's best. It would be cool if they could guarentee the artist a return to fame and fortune, but the winner just gets a donation to their favorite charity from Ameriquest. Wow, are things that bad at Ameriquest.

Later this summer, watch out for I Want To Be a Hilton, in which Paris and Nicole's mother runs sort of an anti-Simple Life in a knock-off-one-a-week competition. Plus, there's another exciting season of Average Joe. The third knock-off-one-a-week show The Law Firm, produced by David E. Kelley, has a dozen lawyers competing in lawyering contests. There's also the head-to-head competition show Meet Mister Mom where we find out what happens when mom goes to a luxury spa, and dad has to take care of the kids. Come August 16, one may have to question the admission standards of the University of Nebraska after Tommy Lee Goes to College. Arg.

In another FOXian move, NBC has cancelled Law & Order: Trial By Jury after half a season.