RandomFailure

In order to more fully access Blogger’s features, which are limited under Safari 1.3.1, I decided to give a slightly older version of Firefox a try. Things were going quite smoothly until my computer decided that it wanted to hang. Force-quitting was not an immediate option, as I had already typed in the damned Ben Affleck entry twice, and I wasn’t going to retype it a third time. My computer was making a ton of fan noise – must’ve been driving the CPU nuts or something. So I finally managed to get to a point where I could copy the whole entry and paste it into a Safari window.

So to try to improve things, I attempted to download Firefox 1.5. Then the .dmg file decides it wants to display itself as gibberish characters on the screen instead of downloading as a file. It’s been that kind of computing evening. Time for bed.

First, Push, Nevada (no, I can’t believe that this link still works, either) gets canned barely two months into its first season. They had to resort to a teaser spot during a MNF game to provide the final clues to solve the mystery.

And now, because he got Jennifer Garner pregnant, Alias has been canceled effective the end of this season. Some others on message boards have said that it’s not Ben’s fault, but when they had to work the pregnancy into the storyline, things really went downhill. Which is a shame, because this show (when it was really good) could provide some of the best cliffhangers and plot twists on TV. I just hope they end it appropriately. For me, an “appropriate” ending would include Sark and Sloane meeting a grisly demise.

This past Saturday must have been A-hole Driving Day here in the Philadelphia area. Seems like everyone out driving was off their game. The kicker of the day was the fat woman in the minivan who was stalking me coming out of Costco, even though the lot was not that full. I unload the cart into my Jeep, and get in to make a phone call (I’m not crazy enough to try to dial while driving, unless it’s really important). So this woman starts honking the horn at me. I can hear her yelling something, so I open the door.
“Are you going out?”
“When I’m ready.” And I close the door.
“Oh, that’s real nice.” (with sarcasm)
So I purposely take even more time. Then when I finally decide to back out, I stop about an inch from her bumper. Then she gets all gesticulatory. And then I notice she has a kid sitting in the front seat with her, watching all of this. Lovely.
I hope Santa brings you coal, bitch!

Memorandum

From: God
To: Pat Robertson
Re: Your comments on the Dover, Pennsylvania school board election

Pat,

I know that we normally communicate directly, but I did not want anything to get lost in translation over our normal communication routes since you manage to be badly misinterpreting things lately. I figured that this Internet thing invented by Al Gore would be a better medium. (Just kidding, Al.)

Yes, this memo is a bit overdue but as you know, I’ve been rather busy lately. However, I cannot condone your comments regarding the Dover, Pennsylvania school board election.

First of all, you’re blaming me for things that I don’t control. The tsunami in Asia last year, the hurricanes in the United States, and the earthquake in Pakistan are all Mother Nature’s doing. Blame that whacked-out bitch for this, not me. I outsourced the maintenance job for this planet to her a long time ago. I’m too busy coming up with new things; it had to be done. If you were in my line of work, you’d understand.

Second, I wouldn’t abandon anyone who really needed me. What kind of a jerk do you think I am? I can’t wait until we meet face to face. But based on the path of lunacy you’ve been following lately, you might be paying a visit to Mr. Morningstar first. Sorry, but contrary to Albert Einstein, sometimes I do play dice with the universe. You will crap out one day – everybody does.

No, this post has nothing to do with the state of New Jersey. It’s not my fault I’m from there – blame my parents.

No, this post is about Philadelphia Eagles jerseys that I’ve bought. In 2003, I bought my first one – a Troy Vincent (#23) jersey. He then gets traded to Miami, so the jersey goes into storage. In 2004, like many many other Eagles’ fans, I buy a Terrell Owens (#81) jersey. Then TO does a large number of stupid things and gets dropped by the Birds (see the ESPN.com story) like radioactive waste. (Who says this crap can’t be marginally informative?) So another jersey goes into storage. I give up. I’m not spending any more money on a particular player’s jersey. It’s strictly generic Eagles’ stuff for me from now on.

Anybody wanna buy these old jerseys? Got to take them both…

Walking to lunch one day last week, I passed two of the bright color shirt wearing college students who stand on street corners asking people to give money to this cause or that. (An aisde: One evening while walking home from work in the rain, one of these obnoxious people actually ducked his head under my umbrella. I should’ve poked him in the eye.) I really didn’t pay attention to their shirts, other than that they were red, so I have no idea what group these two were affiliated with. One guy said to the other, “I can’t believe he was acting like I was bothering him while I’m trying to save the world.” (That might not be an exact quote, but it’s fairly close.)

Whoa. That is the most unbelievable delusional statement that I think I have ever heard. Even the crazy guy with the shopping cart full of Lyndon LaRouche signs hasn’t said anything that far off the wall.

I’d hate to be around this guy when he gets his bitch-slap from reality. Which will probably be around the time he graduates college and/or the trust fund money runs out.

There was a marginally frightening article in the Philadelphia Inquirer today (read it here) about why the movie version of “In Her Shoes” has tanked so badly. The article blathers on about how a best-selling novel failed to become a hit movie because of poor marketing of this chick flick. Of course, the possibility that the book and/or the movie might actually suck was never mentioned. Though I’m not surprised about that, since the book was written by a former Inquirer writer, the story was set here in Philly, and part of the movie were filmed here as well.

You see, there’s a Philly bias from the local press (not that should surprise anyone). But this bias extends to the idea that anything made by someone from here and/or made here must be great. For example, one will likely get pilloried should he or she suggest that The Sixth Sense was only an average movie, which it was (like City Paper’s Sam Adams did for his review).

Just because a book was a best seller (which can be manipulated; see an article from Slate on this subject) does not mean that:

1. People actually read it. For example, how many of you have a copy of Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time on your shelf just because it was a best seller? Admission: I have a copy, but that’s because I’m a nerd who thinks time travel, etc. is rather interesting.
2. It will make a good film.

The latter point is particularly relevant here. For example, my girlfriend would rather read a book than see the movie version of that book. And most of the time I agree with her on that. If I ever read a book and see a movie version of that book, I prefer to read the book first, to get my view “from the source”. Since with movies, the author of the book is hardly ever involved in the screenplay. This leads to divergent elements for screen consideration.

A perfect example of this is Be Cool by Elmore Leonard. The movie introduced characters that weren’t in the book and changed how some of the other characters behaved. Anyone with some level of intelligence knows that Elmore Leonard is a great read, and (to date) with the exceptions of Get Shorty and Out of Sight, most of the movies derived from his books have paled by comparison.

Getting back to my point, without even bringing up the possibility that the source material sucked, the Inky article misses a potential reason for a movie’s box office failures.

I saw this picture on the news this evening, and watched as little Ricky Santorum was biting his lower lip like he was trying to either choke back vomit or choke bad tears. (Read the article from ABC News to find out why.) If the latter, I would imagine that they would be tears of joy, since most on the Right are itching for a major Senate showdown, which would halt the work of the U.S. government and lead to nothing getting done. Not like that’s sufficient motivation to prevent it from happening, though.