GenePoool Blog

Posted Monday, June 29, 2009 by Gene (1) comments

Belated Michael Jackson reaction

On hearing the news that Michael Jackson had died suddenly, my reaction was as follows:

1: surprise

2: ...

3: I got nothing

To me, Jackson was the crazy old uncle who went senile a long time ago. Yes, he was still around, but nobody expected anything from him because he clearly wasn't the same man he used to be.

Put it this way: it had been nearly thirty years since Jackson had done anything in the music industry that warranted any real attention. Prince, Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, U2... those are four acts that were making music at the same time as Michael and are still making music now. And to varying degrees their music is still relevant.

Or restated: Stevie Ray Vaughan died in a 1990 helicopter crash, meaning he hasn't recorded anything new or relevant for just under two decades, and that's still more current than anything of Jackson's. And I miss Stevie a lot more.

Other than the music, what you have left is a possibly insane paranoid pedophile that has left a $400 million estate debt his family will no doubt have to prostitute his image for the next decade in order to pay off. That's sad, but it's a different kind of sad.

Posted Sunday, June 21, 2009 by Gene (0) comments

Steve Jobs gets liver transplant

Whoever wrote the headline for this article got it all wrong. It should have read: "Steve Jobs Upgraded to iLiver 2.0".

Posted Friday, June 19, 2009 by Gene (0) comments

On walking

As I think I've mentioned a couple of times, I work only about 4.25 miles from home, which is awesomely convenient for biking, except for the constant problem of flat tires. Of the 4.25 miles, about 2.5 is a collection of loose glass, which is why two years ago I bought Gatorskin tires, which are essentially steel-belted radials. But those tires have clearly been worn out, because I've had three flats in three weeks.

Last night I brought the bike in to get a new set of tires, leaving it in the shop and leaving me with no way to get to work aside from the subway. I don't like the subway all that much.

So I decided to walk. Again: 4.25 miles. It's just not that far. I'd done it once before and timed my trip at about 75 - 80 minutes, which is only 10 to 20 minutes longer than the train takes, assuming there are no breakdowns on the tracks. And there are always breakdowns on the tracks.

You would think I'd flapped my arms and flown to work judging by the reaction. Seriously, doesn't anybody walk any more?

Posted Wednesday, June 17, 2009 by Gene (0) comments

Elevator conversation

I got into the elevator this morning with a woman who had on a heavy knee brace and a cane. As the woman was younger than me, I asked what had happened.

"I tore my ACL," she said, "And fractured my tibia."

"Were you playing professional basketball at the time?" I asked, as these are the sort of injuries athletes get, which is why I know ACL stands for anterior cruciate ligament.

"I was jumping up and down while watching the results of American Idol," she said.

"I would stick with the basketball story," I suggested.

Sorry

Haven't been around much lately, partly because of the Charlatan screenplay, partly because the impending publication of Immortal, (more to come on this, soon) and partly because we were rear-ended on the highway on our way to daughter Becky's graduation a week ago Thursday. By someone who apparently didn't know route 2 came to an end, until her trip came to an end roughly eighteen inches on the wrong side of our rear bumper.

Posted Thursday, June 04, 2009 by Gene (1) comments

Trapped

The good news is, I already had the day off today, since Becky's graduation is tonight.

Last night I decided to try something called "free run" on the Wii Fit. For the other "run" options one has to follow behind a little cartoon weeble thing on a "course" and keep pace with it. (Because running quickly gets you to the end faster but doesn't burn as many calories.) The "free run" is different because all you need is the wiimote in your pocket. It makes a metronomic click-click-click to keep you on pace and keeps track of how long you're running and, presumably, buzzes or something when you're done. I don't know what it actually does when you're done because I didn't finish.

The cool thing about the "free run" is you can turn to another channel while doing it. So I started watching season two of Friday Night Lights (first three episodes: dreadful. I heard things improve after those eps.) and "running". If I hadn't mentioned this before, running in Wii Fit involves bouncing up and down in place. This has been putting a lot of stress on my feet (recall, I had plantar fasciitis a few months ago) and my calves. The calves are not as strong as one might think because bicycling is largely a thigh-based workout. After a typical fifteen minute run both of my calves would be extremely tight, and not in a "wow, these are bulking up" tight so much as a "Nomar, I think you really need to stop taking those steroids" tight.

Sixteen minutes in, something went pop in my left calf. Or, possibly, sproing, snap, or kablooie.

So now I am sitting in my living room with my leg on a heating pad hoping this is a minor sprain and not something more serious. As of last night I was less than a pound away from no longer being considered "overweight" by the Wii, which is the closest I've gotten in a long time. An extended trip to the disabled list would screw that all to hell.

Oh, and the plan tonight? Walk to Harvard Square for Becky's graduation ceremony. Yeeha.

Posted Wednesday, June 03, 2009 by Gene (2) comments

Prom

Daughter Becky's prom was this past Saturday, and insofar as we are inadequately positioned economically to give her much of anything tomorrow (when she graduates high school) aside from applause, we decided to throw her an after-prom party.

This meant getting our basement Truly and Actually Clean, a project that has been months in the making and which was not finally done until, oh, 11 PM Saturday night.

My job, all day, was to drive places. This was the easy job, because wife Deb (with son Tim's help) was in charge of all the actual cleaning, something I am apparently genetically incapable of doing properly.

I ended up driving to two malls in Watertown three times (once for earrings for Becky as she couldn't find the ones she wanted; once for a new vacuum when our old one broke in the middle of the cleaning; once for vacuum bags, as the one I bought only came with one bag), three times to CVS (for milk in the morning; carpet and upholstery cleaner in the afternoon; a prescription later in the afternoon) to the grocery store three times (once for carpet and upholstery cleaner because the stuff we bought at CVS was ammonia-based, which is not what you want to put on your couch when there are cats in your home; once for more carpet and upholstery cleaner because two cans were not enough; once for chips and dips for the party) one trip to Wilson's Farm for fruit and eggs, because we were preparing brunch for the children the next morning, and twice to the Boston hotel where the event took place.

The last part came out of nowhere, because the kids had claimed they were okay with taking the train. And there were twelve of them going as a group. But when all were gathered at one of the houses for photos (not, thank God, our house) the parents gathered together and figured out how to drive all of them in multiple cars. Yay. That would have been my nap time, right there.

The good news is, we ended up with somewhere in the neighborhood of 10-14 high school kids in our home overnight, nothing got broken, nobody got arrested, and nobody found out about the Mike's Lemonade six pack they snuck in.

Oh. Except for that last part. We did find out about that.

Posted Thursday, May 28, 2009 by Gene (3) comments

I should not be allowed to speak to people

I had a long phone call with daughter Becky's ostensible college advisor regarding financial aid. Over the course of the conversation she mentioned a website Becky could go to where she could list all the details she can think of about herself and submit the information to see if there are scholarships available for her that she would not otherwise know about.

As an example the advisor described a student who mentioned that her father died of cancer when she was younger, and then got a full scholarship from the American Cancer Institute.

"Wow," I said. "So, are there scholarships available if, say, she had a family member murdered?"

She laughed. Thank goodness.

Posted Tuesday, May 26, 2009 by Gene (0) comments

Actual conversation from weekend

Son Tim: I'm going to go exercise, which I have been trying to do since yesterday and you people keep distracting me.

Wife Deb: We won't talk about what your father has been trying to do since yesterday.

Daughter Becky: Your mom!

Me: That's... actually the correct answer.

Wife: (laughing)

Becky: Sometimes I'm glad I have a short attention span.

Posted Thursday, May 21, 2009 by Gene (0) comments

Notes from my iPod

I love early Bob Dylan but I barely understand it at all. Is that even possible? For instance, in Desolation Row he sings, "Everybody's making love, or else expecting rain." I have no clue at all what this means, but I still love it.

Likewise, The Ting Tings have a song called Impacilla Carpisung. Don't understand the title, don't understand most of the words in the song. In fact, I just now googled it because I was nearly positive 90% of the song was in another language. (It isn't.) Love the song anyway.

Is this what it's like to enjoy opera?

Posted Wednesday, May 20, 2009 by Gene (3) comments

Gorgeous day

My allergies have calmed down, it's beautiful outside, and I clearly need a vacation or something. Used to be I didn't mind being stuck in the office all that much. Not today.

Good news all around

Three of my favorite shows from last season will have another season: Chuck, Dollhouse, and Fringe. The latter really paid out after a pretty shaky start. Also paying out in a big way: Lost. Causing me actual pain to watch: Heroes. I might rethink that one next year.

Alas, Life, a brilliant cop show that you will watch one day on DVD and become sad that you neglected it, will not be back for a third season.

Now, off to eat my lunch, and maybe sit on a bench outside and make moaning noises.

Posted Monday, May 18, 2009 by Gene (0) comments

Turn 40 today

For the second year in a row!

Brief updates

I just finished the new draft of my screenplay for CHARLATAN last night. It went from 122 pages to 103, and I have more work to do on it still.

Also... well this isn't technically an update but I don't think I've actually mentioned it in this space before. I've had a contract to publish my novel IMMORTAL since last summer. It was initially supposed to be published this month, but has been pushed back to the end of the summer.

The reason I held back on saying anything is that it's a small, new publisher, and this is a volatile market. They've gone through some restructuring and reduced the number of titles they're putting out per year, which is fine by me as long as my novel is still on the list. I'm waiting for my first look at the cover design, and any edits they wanted to run it through-- it really doesn't need much at this point-- and then in theory it's good to go. I will keep everyone apprised.

Posted Monday, May 11, 2009 by Gene (0) comments

A fine weekend of sunburns and minor drownings

On Saturday son Tim had to be in New Hampshire for the entire day for a rugby tournament, inasmuch as he is on the school rugby team, insofar as we did not object stridently enough to his interest in possibly becoming crippled for life. He rode up on the bus; we drove. This was problematic partly because nobody could tell us where in New Hampshire the event took place, and it's a moderately large state as far as those things go.

But we did eventually find it: four rugby fields in a cow pasture in a place called Suncook. It was exactly the sort of place you want to be for the day if you have allergies and happen to sunburn easily. Except not.

So yeah: that was fun. I am now bright red of face and am still sneezing. Tim's team lost their first game (which we missed on account of where the fuck is Suncook) but won the other two, which I believe put them into fourth place in their division, although if you ask me why that is I will be unable to tell you. I think the highlight of the afternoon was when a player on another team on a different field had to be airlifted to the nearest major hospital with a serious neck injury. They landed the helicopter right on the rugby pitch and everything.

Rugby: catch the fever!

And the other part of my plan for the day involved the Star Trek reboot, which I had to see immediately, as every single review of the film I saw included actual orgasms. The plan here was to go home, rest up a bit and perhaps apply balm to my sunburned face, buy tickets online for one of the showings in Harvard Square, and then walk there with wife Deb. This is how it worked out, but that is not to say that it worked out. Because of the rain.

The forecast called for "30% chance of showers" for the evening. I never know the best way to interpret those statistics. For instance, the weekend before last it said there was a 30% chance of rain every day, and it didn't rain at all. So I took that to mean the 70% chance of no rain won out. But now I'm thinking if there's a 30% chance of rain it is going to rain for 30% of the evening. Or, in this case, when we happened to be walking from the house to Harvard Square. Cold and soaking wet is no way to go through life, or to the movies.

The movie was deeply awesome, however. I feel that about any film that finds a way to slip in "Sabotage" by the Beastie Boys-- which is a mild weakness of mine-- but that doesn't mean I'm wrong.

Posted Thursday, April 30, 2009 by Gene (1) comments

Wii don't want to do that again, do Wii?

I have, up to this point, been using the Wii Fit almost entirely for yoga and strength training, because I figure cardio-- where real weight loss would come in-- is being taken care of by the daily bike commute. And that's mostly true, except that I no longer really get my heart rate up when biking, because I've been doing it so long.

So a couple of nights ago I decided to do a little cardio mixed in with the rest of my workout. There is this jogging program, see, and the idea is, you put the Wiimote in your pocket and jog in place, keeping pace with your trainer, who is running on an animated path in front of you. Pretty simple. And the first time I tried it-- a couple of months ago-- pretty easy. But I only did "short", which is about three minutes long, which isn't all that much of a workout. On this night I tried "long" instead.

"Long" was a run of about six minutes. And it still wasn't much in the way of a workout. But when I completed it I unlocked another circuit called "island". Because everyone knows "island" is the next logical word after "short" and "long".

I finished my regular workout and was sort of bored (this was on a day when it was 93 degrees; I couldn't do much writing because I couldn't do much thinking) so I thought I'd give "island" a try.

"Island" is a 14 minute run around (duh) an island. This was a half-decent cardio workout, especially since I'd done a six minute one earlier. What I didn't foresee was exactly what an effect jogging in place for a total of twenty minutes would have on me: my calves have been killing me for two days now. Next time I do this I'm wearing shoes. It probably won't help, but it's worth a try.

Also still killing me: pollen

Just brutal. And I'm not seeing the allergist for another two weeks.

Final demoralizing Wii comment

On the same night I nearly blew out both hamstrings bouncing in place, the program stopped between exercises to register a milestone. It'll do this whenever your daily workout exceeds 30 minutes, and I'm sure there are other milestones I haven't reached yet that it will honor as well. This particular milestone: 10 hours of exercise.

That's right, I've had the Wii Fit for three months, with over 60 daily workouts in that time, and I've only done a total of ten hours.

Posted Tuesday, April 28, 2009 by Gene (0) comments

Death by pollen

It is 93 degrees out right now, and every tree in the area is on Spring break. Oh my god. Did I mention it's April? And it's 93 degrees out? Right now, at 5 in the evening? Yeah. Tomorrow it's going to be 60. I never thought I would so look forward to a one day thirty degree temperature drop.

Now I'm going to lie down and hope my eyes start working properly again sometime before tomorrow. Biking while blind is just not easy, folks.

Posted Thursday, April 23, 2009 by Gene (1) comments

Addendum

Apparently, as regards the below post, it is not always the best idea to use quotation marks in a comical fashion around words like, "a female" without drawing the ire of the female in question. Who knew? Henceforth said female coworker will be identified as friend Jen. Please note however that there is an existing friend Jenn who makes periodic appearances in these blogs, and the first Jen is not the same person as the second Jenn.

That will be all.

Posted Thursday, April 23, 2009 by Gene (4) comments

I am turning into a teenaged girl

Or, you might think so based on my current musical interests. I've been swapping music with someone in the office one might define as "a female", and while I've been dropping Wilco, Beck, and The White Stripes on her she has returned the favor with Lily Allen, A Fine Frenzy, Feist, and The Ting Tings.

Lily Allen is my new crush. If Elvis Costello was a sexually frustrated mid-twenties woman and his music was being composed by The Pet Shop Boys it would sound a little bit like Lily Allen. Sample lyric: "But it doesn't matter cause I'm packing plastic. And that's what makes my life so fucking fantastic."

Posted Wednesday, April 22, 2009 by Gene (0) comments

Wiiservations

So I've had the Wii Fit for somewhere in the neighborhood of two months, and I've lost somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 pounds. That's with using it only every four or five days, plus the resumption of biking to work. According to the damnable little animated talking balance board I'm supposed to be another 16 pounds lighter to reach "fit", which it defines as a BMI of 22. I don't think I'm going to get there, not because it's impossible but because I expect muscle mass to offset at least some of the weight loss, and the BMI measurement isn't taking that into consideration.

Some thoughts:

--Every now and then either the Wii Fit loses its little mind or something really funky is going on with me. On Sunday I suddenly gained 3.1 pounds. Last night I suddenly lost 3.1 pounds. Unfortunately when there's a large weight gain and the screen comes up with different options for me to choose to potentially explain my sudden gain, "You've lost your fucking mind" is not one of the choices.

--No matter how often I use it, sometime around the ten minute mark my trainer decides to tell me I shouldn't push myself too hard all at once. I don't know why, but I find this demoralizing.

--I chose the male trainer because the female trainer's boobs are mildly disturbing to me. Cleavage is not supposed to look like a four lane highway between two perfectly formed mid-sized peaks. It's odd. But for some reason last night for my first yoga position she showed up and said, "I'll be stepping in for your trainer for this." He was back after that. What the fuck? I know he wasn't busy.

--If you lose too much weight at once you can frighten it. I dropped ten pounds in five days a month ago, causing the program to come to a screeching halt to ask me if I was okay and to not do that again, please.

--I'm sorry, but if I can hold a plank for sixty seconds without falling over, I do not deserve the ranking of "couch potato". I don't care how goddamn shaky I was.

--Yoga is awesome, by the way. I'm thinking of looking up a class in the real gym I officially still belong to. My stomach hasn't been this toned in four years.

Posted Friday, April 17, 2009 by Gene (0) comments

State of Play

Do yourselves a favor and go pick up the six episode BBC miniseries State of Play rather than-- or before-- seeing the Russell Crowe version that came out today. I have heard mostly good things about the film, and that's fine and all, but I guarantee you will find the miniseries MUCH more satisfying.

Hello, street

First warm day we've had this year, so I got a chance to bike in just shorts and a T-shirt instead of that plus pants and a jacket. It was nice. Oh, except for the part where a truck cut me off on the way to a red light. Riiight over the handlebars. My own fault, really. My brakes need work, meaning the front tire stops more efficiently than the back tire, which is only really a problem when I have to stop suddenly. Like, you know, when a truck cuts me off. Everything's fine, just a little road burn on my shoulder.

Posted Wednesday, April 15, 2009 by Gene (0) comments

That rewrite thing

Still working on it. One thing I've discovered-- something I never fully appreciated before-- is how much my own experience as a playwright has betrayed me in screenwriting. In a play you're responsible for every moment the characters experience in a plot, and you're not really supposed to have short scenes. You have long set pieces in one or two locations, you can't just drop in mid-scene and then cut quickly to the next. And that's all movies are, really, are two minutes or so in a single set before moving on to the next, with very little dialogue. So in editing I've discovered how often I wrote that extra one or two lines that didn't need saying, or showed a character not just driving to a location but getting to that location and getting out of the car and walking into the location.

To give you an idea of the difference, on Saturday I turned what was thirteen pages in the last draft into two pages in the new draft. Yikes.

Double yikes

We have a fat dog. She's... really fat. So fat that today the vet ran a blood test to make sure she didn't have a thyroid problem. She doesn't; she's just fat. And I am sitting on my bed with her right now and in addition to being fat she is farting. Aren't you glad I'm blogging this from home? Sure you are.

Posted Monday, April 06, 2009 by Gene (1) comments

Alive!

Just biked home in some of the worst conditions I've ever tried to bike in before. Torrential downpour, strong, icy winds, flash floods. I learned how to go through flood water: follow in a car's wake. There's a lesson you don't learn every day.

Baseball season starts today!

Well more or less. It was actually last night, but that wasn't a Red Sox game. And they aren't playing right now because of the aforementioned torrential downpour. But whatever. It's around now.

Still cleaning

We have been attempting for the better part of a month to completely clean our home from top to bottom, or, as wife Deb refers to it, "finish moving in already." This involved, a couple of weekends ago, steam cleaning all of the rugs. I cannot tell you how little fun this was. About the only positive was that I got a long thin cut along the back of my right hand from one of the plastic ties holding together the hose attachment to the cleaner we rented. You might not think of a permanent scar as a plus, but that just means you've never used a steam cleaner before. I'm about six months away from having an elaborate story about the cut that sounds impressive, if not heroic. Right now all I've got is, "Yeah, I didn't expect her to fight back." I think that needs some work.

Posted Monday, March 30, 2009 by Gene (4) comments

An explanation

Back in January, I sent out a script to a place called The Scriptwriting Network. They offer a thing called the Hollywood Outreach Program every couple of months which, for a fee, will evaluate a script. The short of it is, the "winners"-- if there are any-- will be passed on to production companies for possible optioning.

I sent in a script called Charlatan which is based on my own not-published novel from about a decade ago. I have written and re-written this script about five or six times, showed it to a dozen people for critiques, and trimmed it down by a good fifteen pages. The author of the first professional "coverage" of the script liked it enough to give it a "consider" status, and had the second reader also given it a "consider" or "recommend" status it would have gone to the next round, and three more readers, and then it could have made it to the optioning process. Possibly. But the second reader "passed" on it, which wasn't unexpected.

More importantly, both of them absolutely savaged the script. Again, this is something I worked on a lot and got a fair number of other people who know more about screenwriting than I do to help. It was the best I could do. And this is what's horrible about being a writer, whether very successful or moderately successful or not even a little bit successful: your best work is often not enough. From an ego perspective, that's not something that's at all easy to deal with.

And I don't disagree with a single thing they said. Reading the coverage was a bit like being a two-dimensional person taught to look "up" for the first time. I understand everything they had to say, and I know what I need to do to fix the script, and that's good. I got my money's worth. And I can rewrite it and resubmit it at a discounted price, once I have made changes. More, all of the critiques (a surprise third one turned up) urged me to do this.

So I'd love to say the reason I haven't updated this blog for the past two weeks is that I've been working on that rewrite. Except I haven't. No, I've been sitting around not writing anything whatsoever. Because no matter how good those critiques were and how encouraging it was to see a Hollywood producer beg me (in writing) to take another swing at it, I still saw the things I took for granted-- that my dialogue is good, for instances-- take a real beating. And that sent me reeling a little. Anyway, I have started the rewrite, and I may be back to blogging semi-regularly again.

We'll see.

Posted Friday, March 13, 2009 by Gene (1) comments

I'm really just posting this stuff here so I can find it again later

After linking to three Daily Show reports a couple of days ago, I give you, in three parts, the most thorough decimation of a television commentator witnessed in the modern era. I actually feel bad for Jim Cramer.

Daily Show Cramer interview part one

Daily Show Cramer interview part two

Daily show Cramer interview part three

Posted Wednesday, March 11, 2009 by Gene (0) comments

Never cross Jon Stewart

If you have not seen the following Daily Show clips, they're worth your time. Stewart can be utterly devastating.

March 4: CNBC gives financial advice

March 9: In Cramer we trust

March 10: Basic cable personality clash skirmish '09

Posted Wednesday, March 11, 2009 by Gene (4) comments

Dear United Airlines

I would first like to thank you, United, for successfully transporting my daughter, Becky, from Boston to Minnesota and back again on Sunday and Tuesday of this week. Your planes succeeded in rising into the air, traveling a moderate distance, and landing again without blowing up or otherwise falling apart, and this is one of the requirements I have for an airline.

However-- and I realize this may have escaped your notice-- Becky's return trip was actually supposed to take place on Monday, not Tuesday. You did get a full three-quarters of it correct, insofar as Sunday's Boston-to-Chicago and Chicago-to-Minneapolis legs and the Monday Minneapolis-to-Chicago leg were all well done, viz. the above "no planes exploded" requirement. But then the final Chicago-to-Boston flight-- and you have I hope inferred by now that we live in Boston, not Chicago-- went somewhat awry.

Initially, the flight was delayed, changing her arrival time from 12:15 AM Tuesday to 2:50 AM Tuesday, which is not an inconsequential difference. And then, apparently in secret, the flight was canceled altogether.

I realize canceling a flight like this can be embarrassing for an organization as large and well-respected as yours. Often, when facing something embarrassing, I myself have been known to take steps to avoid the public airing of my embarrassment's source, so I do understand that the instinct of your boarding crew-- to close the counter, run away and hide immediately-- came from a very human place. However, you can imagine I am sure how very disconcerting it is for a traveler to find a large portion of the airport suddenly abandoned save for the occasional member of the janitorial staff.

I should add that my daughter is seventeen years old. In fleeing the terminal en masse you abandoned a seventeen year old traveling alone in an empty airport in Chicago, a city in which she knows nobody other than perhaps Barack Obama, who I understand has recently relocated.

I would like to further compliment you on the cost-saving approach of not actually having any staff in the airport capable of answering a phone, or any direct questions. Your ticket phone line, which took a mere twenty minutes to navigate to a person, is of course centralized and thus not particularly near O'Hare, staffed by people who cannot help you unless you would like to buy a ticket for another flight that may or may not actually transpire. Also-- and this is a stroke of genius on your part-- hiding the only actual remaining on-the-job Chicago United Airlines employee in an office around the corner and down the stairs near the baggage area was brilliant. Nobody would ever think to look there.

Finally, thank you for giving Becky a free hotel room for the remainder of what was left of the night after she had successfully navigated the empty terminal, the empty ticket counter, the empty baggage area, the misleading signs, and the troll's three riddles before reaching your Secret Employee beneath baggage claim, past the wall of fire and across the river of lava. She was very happy with the room for the few hours she had it before having to leave to catch the 6 AM flight you had rescheduled her for.

And thank you for not canceling that flight as well. This took great fortitude on your part.

Sincerely,

Gene Doucette

Posted Monday, March 09, 2009 by Gene (5) comments

Watchmen watched

Not bad. That's my official review: not bad. Zach Snyder is a long way away from a "visionary" director, but he is very good at being faithful to source material, and in that sense he did just fine. As a movie, it was a bit over-full, much in the same way Dark Knight was, but I don't think anybody who was familiar with the book minded that much.

Other thoughts:

--I've read that Snyder directed the film in the order in which it is seen, i.e., the first scenes in the film are the first shots committed to film. This approach may have helped the actors grow into their roles, improving the impact of their performances as the story progressed. But it was a disaster for the opening scenes, which should have been re-shot. I refer mainly to the largely terrible but very pretty Malin Akerman, whose initial take on her character was desperately, glaringly bad.

--Jackie Earle Haley's performance was nearly as good as Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker. Yes, I'm completely serious. He played a character-- Rorschach-- that I thought would be impossible to capture at all well on film. I was wrong. Billy Crudup? Nearly as good.

--And then there was Matthew Goode as Adrian Veidt. Extraordinarily miscast.

--The ending. Save for a few non-canonical moments-- Nite Owl's behavior at the climax in particular was just wrong-- the ending was very good, and much more interesting than the original in a couple of ways. I'd discuss how it was more interesting here, but I'm trying to keep this spoiler free.

--I haven't a clue how someone who never read the book would feel about this film. None.

Posted Tuesday, March 03, 2009 by Gene (2) comments

Blogging to say I have nothing to say in the blog

I'm in one of those ruts where nothing strikes me as interesting to write about, and so here I am writing about how uninteresting that is. Which means I have decided that having nothing to write about is worth writing about, thereby disproving the theory that I do not, in fact have anything about which to write.

I gave up giving up things for Lent for Lent this year. This blog entry is a lot like that.

Oh, here's something to say

...

No, never mind. I was wrong.

How about this?

Dollhouse's pilot episode, the one Joss Whedon was told to re-shoot after his bosses told him to? Sucked. The subsequent two episodes that have aired have been all kinds of awesome. I hope you didn't check out after the pilot.

There. Blogging win!

Posted Thursday, February 26, 2009 by Gene (10) comments

Wii Fit age: 38

Immediate improvement through doing nothing! Apparently, knowing balance was going to be part of the test helped immensely the second time around.

There is only so much I can do right now because my plantar fasciitis is still an issue. One is not supposed to wear shoes on the Wii Fit board, and wearing shoes with proper support is really the only way my foot is getting any better.

Jury duty

My civic duty was taken care of for the next three years by sitting in a large room in an uncomfortable chair for four hours. I feel so involved.

Trying to understand

When we were getting a mortgage for our first home a couple of years ago we never seriously entertained the notion of a sub-prime loan or an adjustable rate loan, because I work in banking and I know pretty well what the consequences of such a loan could be to us a few years down the road. But I was working with a reputable mortgage broker who gave good advice, and I was working from a decent knowledge base. A lot of people-- as many as 8 million or more-- didn't have that going for them. But they are only as at fault for it as the lenders that gave them the loans in the first place.

More to the point, the entire boondoggle is going to take this entire country's economy to a place that is far worse than it is right now if left alone. So I don't really understand the ranting I've been hearing along the lines of "it's their fault, why should we help them?" If your neighbor's house is on fire because he was smoking in bed, we still try to put out the fire, not just because it's responsible, but because if we don't the fire might take out the whole neighborhood. Crying that it's not "fair" to do so because it's "their own fault" is infantile and irrational, and it doesn't solve anything.

It's also inaccurate. The plan put forth to resolve this problem is one that will encourage lenders to refinance mortgages before they default. It is not designed to buy bad loans or give handouts. (If you want to complain about somebody getting a handout, take a look at corporate America instead.) If you've heard otherwise, you're getting your information from the wrong people.

Posted Monday, February 23, 2009 by Gene (1) comments

The Academy Awards

...were when? Fuck, I missed them.

Nice to see

I'm glad Heath Ledger won for his astonishing performance as the Joker. And I'm glad Kate Winslet won for The Reader because I saw The Reader and I think it's important that someone other than the guy from the comic book movie win something for a film I've seen: I didn't see Milk, Vicky Cristina Barcelona or Slumdog Millionaire. I expect to see the latter eventually and to be disappointed by it.

I'm Not There

We watched the Bob Dylan biopic acid trip I'm Not There last night. I'm not sure if I liked it or not. It was... interesting, in the same way a food with a complex flavor that you're not sure you enjoy the taste of is interesting. I think had I known more about the man's music-- like, a LOT more-- I'd have gotten more out of the movie.

Wii Fit

Oh, and we got the Wii Fit. The good news: according to the respective "Wii Fit" ages of myself and my family members, my kids ARE getting closer to us in age. My "age": 46. Wife Deb's "age": 39. (Deb is older than I am in real life, I'd like to add.) The kids are 27 and 30.

Posted Thursday, February 19, 2009 by Gene (0) comments

Three other shows you should be watching or have watched by now

You know, since I'm on a roll anyway: Life, Life On Mars, and Friday Night Lights.

I'm watching FNL on Hulu right now, and the other two shows can be found online, although maybe not all episodes.

What I'm reading

Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race by Richard Rhodes. Rhodes wrote two of my absolute favorite books: The Making of the Atomic Bomb and Dark Sun and is well-worth your time.

I found this quote in the book, from a statement issued by the physicists I. I. Rabi and Enrico Fermi regarding their official opinion on whether or not the country should pursue the development of a thermonuclear bomb: "...such a weapon goes far beyond any military objective and enters the range of very great natural catastrophes. By its very nature it cannot be confined to a military objective but becomes a weapon which in practical effect is almost one of genocide... It is necessarily an evil thing considered in any light."

I found it particularly poignant that even before the fusion bomb was developed the scientific community was arguing that a weapon built on that scale could not possibly be used.

Posted Wednesday, February 18, 2009 by Gene (1) comments

Heroes filmed on a flat Earth

We got caught up on Heroes over the last week, something we couldn't do until we'd first watched the shows we actually enjoy a lot.

I learned that the planet they show at the opening of the show is apparently flat. In a two parter from last November, the characters on the show all lost their powers at the same time during a total solar eclipse. Which sounds odd enough-- why would the eclipse have any effect-- all by itself. Add to it the fact that half of the cast was in California and the other half in New York and Haiti at the time, and you've got a little problem I like to call "the curvature of the Earth."

There was actually an eclipse in the show's pilot episode, but it wasn't treated as a power-bequeathing event, per se. At the time I thought there would eventually be an explanation, like maybe it isn't really an eclipse, and that explanation just never happened. Or, I must have been thinking that, because I don't know how I could have missed that a total solar eclipse took place in New York City and in Japan at the same time.

Battlestar Galactica

There are an awful lot of shows out there that are good at setting up a premise, complicating it, and then failing to pay out at the end with an explanation that actually addresses all of the twists. Heroes fails at this utterly, and the jury's still out on Lost, although it's not looking good.

Battlestar had an episode last week that explained 90% of what had happened over the lifetime of the show in a way that made perfect sense, and that nobody saw coming. I thought for sure they had painted themselves into five or six corners. Yes you should be watching this show.