Dodging the Cobra

Read this article in last week's New Yorker and try not to get depressed about today's cinematic landscape. It describes a bit about how movies get green-lighted, but really dives into how they get marketed. Tim Palen, the guy profiled, really is a genius in getting asses in theater seats, but you wonder how many of those asses want to kick his ass once the credits roll.

All of which makes Slumdog Millionaire a bit of a miracle. Danny Boyle is a known quantity, granted, but I bet he had a devil of a time getting funding. No one in this country cares about India, let alone the sufferings of its poor.

But go see it. It is both tremendously disturbing and equally uplifting. Simon Beaufoy's script is among the tightest, most interesting/entertaining you'll ever see transformed into celluloid.

And Freida Pinto is really pretty.

His Neck Was Delicious

For Christmas, Uncle George brought us a chocolate Obama head. Well, more of a chocolate Obama face as it's kind of flat. When it arrived, the chocolate was sweating--no doubt due to the long list of TO-DOs Obama is starting to tackle today.

In honor of the inauguration, we decided to dig in after supper. Everyone wanted the nose, so we decided to leave that for another day. I found his neck to be very smooth and creamy.

Just Right

I don't know about you, but I'm a little fatigued with the "historic moment" of Obama's election. I'm ready to move on and just want a smart, committed person who is willing to listen, uses reason and logic and compassion and fairness, rolls up his sleeves and acts.

On that note, I thought Obama's inaugural address struck the perfect chord. There were no headline-worthy quotes, no lofty rhetoric to cloud the already stormy skies, just a statement of how things stand and a pledge to do something tangible about them. It was a speech from someone who looked like he could not care less about fancy balls and just wants to get to work.

Backed Up

For the fifth straight day you've gorged yourself on a loaf of white bread, a bucket of mashed potatoes, some sticky rice, and a bunch of bananas--but no fluids. To reward yourself, you wash it down with the mirage of a drop of water. Think you've problems?

Well, that's nothing compared to how backed up we are at work. The holiday break killed us, and now I wince every time the phone rings or Thunderbird dings with a new message. Lots of clients breathing hard down our necks.

Quotepourri

The Middle East is, obviously, a very volatile area and just as figuratively volatile a discussion topic. I have singed more than one relationship with exchanges on this subject. The fascinating (and to me, sad) thing about these exchanges is that they are with people who are generally open-minded, and very lucid, constructive, and critical thinkers. They lean left, are progressive, and are not at all shy about taking this country and its leaders to task over what they understand to be clear and moral wrongs.

But you get them talking about Israel, and this is what you get:

"Virtually the entire population in Gaza is fed by the UN Relief Works Administration - the Gazans do not have to work and have not worked for 60 years. They do nothing except have children (one of the highest birth rates in the world) and think of ways to kill Israelis."

I saw that quote on a blog populated by a friend and his law school classmates and it wrecked me for a day. Substitute "Gazans" for the "n-word" and "kill Israelis" to "kill/rape white people" and you have a perfect encapsulation of the bigotry and hatred that has defined our own racism for the past 200 years. And every one of those law school graduates would--and have--railed against racial injustice with passion and compassion.

But not a single other person on that blog raised a peep about that post, which I take to mean they accept the position. I need to raise a peep. Because there's a guy whose life we're celebrating on Monday that once said this:

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."

Look, I realize that Hamas rockets into Israel cannot be tolerated. But can we explore the root cause for once? I was all set to blather when I came across Brian Eno's much more succinct statement:

"Gaza is now an experiment in provocation. Stuff one and a half million people into a tiny space, stifle their access to water, electricity, food and medical treatment, destroy their livelihoods, and humiliate them regularly...and, surprise, surprise - they turn hostile. Now why would you want to make that experiment?

Because the hostility you provoke is the whole point. Now 'under attack' you can cast yourself as the victim, and call out the helicopter gunships and the F16 attack fighters and the heavy tanks and the guided missiles, and destroy yet more of the pathetic remains of infrastructure that the Palestinian state still has left. And then you can point to it as a hopeless case, unfit to govern itself, a terrorist state, a state with which you couldn't possibly reach an accommodation.

And then you can carry on with business as usual, quietly stealing their homeland."

Please read the entire speech. To me, it is fair. And a fair representation is something you will never see in US media.

Blow up UN headquarters, destroying thousands of pounds of relief food. Just say you were being fired upon by militants inside. UN officials on site will say (scream in outrage) this is "nonsense," but the story dies. Remember the ship of doctors stopped by the Israeli navy? Story dies. The list of examples is practically endless. But the recent ones seem to be getting more brazen.

All denied by the US, of course.

Pinewood Mania

The past month has been, aside from Christmas and two birthdays, Pinewood Derby month. Charlie's a Tiger Cub this year, so this is our first experience with what I've come to learn is long-standing and national Cub Scout obsession. Everyone gets a kit which consists of a block of pine, 4 plastic wheels, and 4 nails to be used as axles. You start by sketching out your design ideas, picking one, and then cutting. Blood apparently slows down your car and is discouraged.

Then, for maximum speed and splinter-proofing, you sand:

Beautification comes next. We went with a red and gold scheme which may or may not have been because they were the only two model paint colors available at the toy store:

And finally, you put on the wheels. This is the trickiest and most important part of the process. You have to get the nails into the 4 grooves absolutely straight or the wheel wobbles or doesn't turn at all. I did three fine, but then made a boo-boo on the last one. Trying to fix it, I chipped off some wood which required Krazy Glue which ripped off some of my flesh and got on the wheels. After sanding the wheels and touching up the paint and teaching Charlie some new words over the ripped flesh, we arrived at the finished product:

And then you race. I volunteered in the morning to help with the weigh-in and application of lead strips so that all the cars come in at the same 5 ounces. Quite a process. Luckily I was asked to do clerical work and stayed away from the glue guns.

In the afternoon all the kids in the den converge, and it is a mad house. Some of them (or their dads) have been doing this for 5 or 6 years now. Each kid gets 6 races and they have a computer program to randomize the lane assignments and the matchups. Towards the end, it's smart enough to match up the slow cars so, hopefully, each kid gets to win at least one race.

Except Charlie. Our car was cool looking, but slow. He got 2 seconds and 4 thirds (out of 3 cars in each race). In the race he was supposed to win, he lost to a dead rabbit carcass by a nose. But we chalked it up as a learning experience and had fun anyway. Secret: it's all in the wheels.

I've Got Those Lapel Pin Blues

This weekend was a wild one. Saturday was taken up almost entirely by the Pinewood Derby (more on that later), and Sunday was a whirl of shoveling, putting Xmas decorations away, taking down the tree, etc. I finally uncovered an hour of free time on Sunday afternoon and hit the rollers down in the basement, spinning (slowly) away while watching the Steelers beat up on the loathesome Philip Rivers and the Chargers.

At half-time, the studio guys come on and there they are: JB, Dan Marino, Bill Cowher, Shannon Sharpe, and Boomer Esiason. I notice all five are wearing flag lapel pins. I almost ride off the rollers and through the TV. Do you think all five decided independently to puncture their thousand-dollar suits with little enamel flags? Me thinks not.

Admittedly, this is a very small irritant in a constant sea of much bigger ones. But it frightens me.

What Else Can a Poor Boy Do?

Happy 2009 and good riddance to a fairly awful 2008. I'm kicking off this year with a new resolution (to contrast all the others I re-use year after year). Namely, I am going to try and go the whole year without buying anything for myself. At least nothing tangible--which gives me the necessary loophole to pick up a digital album every now and then.

What prompted this? Well, our house is filled to the gills with stuff. It physically exhausts me to look at it all. Two, I already have just about all the toys I truly "need." Three, there just isn't the disposable income lying around that there used to be. And four, I've got a monkish streak.

To prepare for January 1, I carefully made out my Christmas list for Alice and then made some last-ditch purchases on December 29 to fill in the gaps. These included new pedals for my fixie and a book to learn how to annoy the family play the harmonica (which was a Christmas present).

Eight days into the new year, I'm not experiencing any materialistic shudders. We got a boatload of books from Santa to wade through and there's always the library. The loophole mentioned above gives me an out if I get the music shakes, and all my LL Bean shirts from 20 years ago can certainly hold out another 12 months.