'Bred Crumbs

12:41 PM I've passed* again! The quite humorous Burly Adventurer sexual-orientation-identification quiz yields this result for me:


Also, the site leads to this great 'blog entry, which warrants repeating everywhere:

i found this note at work on the medicine cabinet in the break room:
this medicine cabinet includes eye patches to be used in the event of an emergency where an individual's eyes are injured. they are NOT to be used to play "pirate ship" with your co-workers. please make a note of this.
thank you.
-the management

(And yes, I've gone to find out my pirate name, but after all that question-answering I was really disappointed in the result and have already forgotten it. Arr.)

* In the conforming-to-society sense, not the taking-a-test sense.

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06:56 PM At last, notes from the world beyond the video displays, all from an errand trip today in my neighborhood, as I broke from telecommuting in my phat palatial estate and took advantage of the small August afternoon sunshine window:

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It's so cool to have lived in a big-time tourist destination long enough to forget it is one. As I waited to cross a street on my walk, I noticed a young man wielding a 35-mm camera at the opposite corner. I wondered briefly what he might be taking a picture of, then gazed elsewhere -- only to see on the other side of me a woman also snapping photos of something behind me. That's when I remembered that I was standing in front of Mission Dolores. Oh, yeah. Oldest building in San Francisco less than half a block from my place. Check.

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I was waiting for my order at Pakwan, a Pakastani-Indian place a block from me, thinking of nothing, ignoring the usual ethnic background music. That is, until I heard, rising from the still-exotic, cuisine-appropriate soundtrack, an all-too-familiar chant:

Oh-way oh-way
(Oh-way oh-way)
Oh-way oh-oh-wah
(Oh-way oh-oh-wah) ...

Apparently, as TV's Chandler once warned, the rhythm is gonna get me.

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If the old San Francisco is dead, as some claim, then why did I hear "Uncle John's Band" blasting out of the window of a Victorian at 16th and Sanchez?

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09:37 AM Paradox of the nearsighted and ill-rested: In the morning, putting in my contacts makes me feel more awake. At night, I take out my contacts to feel less tired.

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05:07 PM Having completed viewing, I commend to your attention the DVD of the 1983 TV miniseries V, not because the show was so outstanding, but because the commentary track, by writer-director Kenneth Johnson, offers a fascinating study of an artist of our time.

Johnson's commentary in the just-released edition makes clear his success in the business of TV and the technical and social prowess behind it: not only can (and does) he tell you exactly how any given scene of his 18-year-old quasi-epic was made, he also apparently can still remember the full name of every one of the 300 people in the cast and crew. His details of the production help drive home that, by the standards of early '80s network TV and given limited budget and time, V is a solid accomplishment.

But Johnson takes his assessment of his creation to hyberbolic extremes. He praises lead actress Jane Badler as if she were Meryl Streep. He touts his slow zooms into character's faces at dramatic moments as a clever storytelling device instead of a crutch. And he seriously positions his TV show as an incisive, relevant parable of the pre-World War II rise of the Nazis, as if that's why anyone watched it. (Ooh! Their jaws unhinge and they eat mice!) The exaggeration doesn't come off as deceit -- he really seems to believe he has made Art.

Fortunately for the show and audio track's four-hour running time, Johnson is smart and/or good-natured enough to know that not everyone will see the extent of his vision. After pointing out for the billionth time that there is water in a scene -- he intentionally used water as a background motif to allude subtly (perhaps too) to what the invading aliens were secretly after on Earth -- he starts making fun of himself a little for it. Still, you can tell he thinks of V as something far greater than it is -- perhaps understandable given the time and sweat he put into it. A friend posits that the key to good pop-culture cheese is that no matter how bad most people think a given bit of schlock is, the creator of it thinks it's really good. Not that V is bad. But like mousies for an alien lizard, it's food for theory.

(Worst Analogy Ever.)

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Speaking of the double-edged sword of TV sci-fi ... even though I'm once again last into the meme pool, here it is, the 'Blog Post of the Month:

Some dude at metafilter says "I'm too good" to join them. Yeah, I can't wait to get into that shit. Please, can I join your little club, so you can hold me up to further villification, without ever getting to know me? Can I PLEASE spend even LESS time with my family, sitting here at this computer, so I can try to change the minds of people who are going to judge me no matter what, without EVER walking an inch in my shoes? So you didn't like my fucking character on a fucking tv show I haven't even worked on in ten. fucking. years. Thank you for blaming ME for the writing of a fictional character, on a fictional tv show. ...

Congratulations, sir. I'm glad that your empty, pathetic existence is made whole by shitting on a person who you've never even met.

That's just an excerpt; there's even more reality-based, whip-smart, retaliatory venom awaiting if you go read the whole thing. For those of you scoring at home, that's Star Trek: The Next Generation's Wil Wheaton 1, real-life Comic Book Guys 0. Throw in the inept defense of one of the losers, and we have a clear victor. Not that there's really any good reason for battle here.

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An occupational hazard of my job is that every day I read how apparel retailers are trying to get our dollars. Often this is enlightening, but sometimes the industry's manipulations are maddening. That's why, despite its tangetial effect on my livelihood, I'm glad to see that retail's fall denim conspiracy is already falling apart. After years of riding a wave of khaki, the powers that be have declared Everyone In Denim. This was not an organic fashion call -- seeing what people were starting to wear and then selling it -- but rather a not uncommon unilateral move by an industry desperate for more business. The fascism of it pisses me off, and I already wear jeans more often than not.

The good news: people aren't buying it. Now all that remains is for the season's other obnoxious trend, the "equestrian" look, to collapse. Because there's just no call for wearing jodhpurs to work. Unless of course you work in a leather bar.

The fashionazi statement that has pushed me over the edge is a comment by Laura Begley, style director of Travel + Leisure magazine, who rejoiced to Fashion Wire Daily that it's becoming easier for the elite to buy "fashionable" clothing for air travel. "I was so tired of seeing people dressed in sweatpants on airplanes," she whines.

Well, Ms. Begley, since I can't justify the expense of first class and its marginal increase in traveling comfort, that means I'm packing myself into a seat with no legroom for hours while some colicy infant screams in my ear, attendants push me to pay to see on a 4-inch screen an edited version of the Hollywood drivel I ignore on the ground, and my seatmate and I jostle for the one inch of chair-arm real estate laughably installed for our sharing. So if I want to wear sweatpants on the damned plane, you can just hide your head in your Prada bag and fasten it tight. You will be encountering some turbulence. Stow it, missy.

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12:04 AM Talk about reverse engineering -- supposedly A&E digitally restored Monty Python's Flying Circus for DVD, but it turns out the network didn't audially restore it. Proud (until now) owner of the full 45-episode set that I am, tonight I popped in Episode 31, "The All-England Summarize Proust Competition" and heard for the first time the BBC's censored version of this exchange:

Mee [Terry Jones]: And Harry, what are your hobbies outside summarizing?
Harry [Graham Chapman]: Well, strangling animals, golf and masturbating.
Mee: Well, thank you Harry Bagot.
Voice Over [Eric Idle]: Well there he goes. Harry Bagot. He must have let himself down a bit on the hobbies, golf's not very popular around here, but never mind, a good try.

The crusty old BBC deleted Harry's third hobby, not only taking the wind out of that line but also the voiceover joke. And though the original line has aired intact every time I've seen the episode in the States, A&E carelessly has enshrined the stupidly expurgated version. ("Strangling animals" was OK, but ...?) So much for the posterity of DVD. Argh.

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I did more work on the foundation of this site today, making the parts beyond the Crumbs act and look more like the Crumbs (and finding and fixing the source of the weird site-loading problem earlier this month, which may have occurred again this weekend if any of you bothered to try to hit the site then). This work has meant putting aside the barely populated 'Bred Box temporarily. It may also mean broken links that I didn't catch as I replaced HTML pages with PHP ones. So if a link doesn't seem to go where it should or a link or page doesn't work right, kindly let me know.

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02:40 PM Action Figure Block Party! (Thanks to The Bradlands, ages ago)

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11:39 AM Can solar flares do this? A common theme this weekend was dreams featuring minor celebrities. Dewayne had a few Friday night, detailed on his site, then I dreamed Saturday night that Topher Grace, with whom I was sharing a big plush chair in a library, confessed a crush on a male colleague. And an acquaintance dreamed that Mr. T was his boss (though he and his co-workers called him just "T"). Sad, really; all this work for them, but no royalties.

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10:17 AM What I tried to say in my entry immediately below is said better in a review on The Advocate's website. To wit: "Kevin Smith ... gets it -- he’s moved past 'tolerance' of homosexuals and no longer sees the need to walk on eggshells around us. Homosexuals are part of his world. ... And as part of his world, gay people are part of his humor."

(This review and I are out of sync in only one way: I thought the fourth-wall bits worked. And it's a little scary that the reviewer and I both used oeuvre.)

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12:49 AM Two nights after seeing it, I remain very pleased about what Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back is and is not.

It is damn funny.

It is not Mallrats redux. Instead, it looks as if Kevin Smith learned a lot from the mistakes of his one less-than-great film. In the new one, the physical humor works, and Smith didn't try to mix mundane emotional situations into his outlandish plot. He just went full-blast-forward with the wacky, and it rocks.

It is something that can be appreciated by anyone who has enjoyed at least two, or maybe even just one, of Smith's previous movies (the litany: Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma).* An encyclopedic knowledge of them all is not a prerequisite, though it will increase your enjoyment and utter unfamiliarity might be a handicap. But more important perhaps that knowing the View Askew oeuvre going in is being aware of the recent output of Hollywood in general and Miramax, Ben Affleck, and Matt Damon in particular.

It is not homophobic or homo-threatening. When a certain touchy organization objects that the occasional negative use of the word "gay" by some of the movie's characters "reinforces harmful perceptions that being gay is wrong, stupid or disgusting," I am reminded of the Simpsons episode "Lisa's Date with Density," in which Nelson's bully buddies catch him smooching Lisa. "You kissed a girl!" they tease. "That is so gay!" The charge is beautifully, obviously ludicrous, just as it is throughout J&SBSB.

It is smartly pro-queer. While jokes about being gay, about perceptions of gay people, and about gay sex do indeed fill the movie, the acceptability, the naturalness, and even the appeal of homosexuality get the clear upper hand by the movie's end. Put another way: in Dogma, we learned that Jay thinks about men that way sometimes. In J&SBSB, we learn he's not the only one.

It is not something I'm going to spoil the numerous delightful surprises of here.

It is a movie that ought to put an end to the old charge of Smith's detractors that he can't direct. (Yet, it won't.)

It is not going to leave theaters before I've seen it at least one more time.

* I love that J&SBSB is to a great extent dependent on its predecessors yet got a far wider release and had a bigger opening weekend than any of them.

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