The famous sushi memo, as mentioned in the New York Times. Upon reading the article, I was sure that an enlightened look at the memo itself would reveal the whole thing as a joke, but now I'm not so sure.

Am I just going to blog about television from now on?

I'm not sure if I've ever really discussed Unwrapped in this space before. I could try to describe it, but it's like the Matrix; not even the Food Network itself is quite up to the task:

Ever wondered where the tiny marshmallows in your breakfast cereal came from? Have we got a show for you! Each week, Unwrapped uncovers behind-the-scenes details on classic American food, from peanut butter and chocolate syrup to French fries and bubblegum. Join host Marc Summers as he explores the test kitchens and the secrets behind lunch box treats, soda pop, movie candy, and more. Unwrapped--the show for everyone who's ever worn a pair of wax lips.

All right, this description is accurate enough, but somehow it seems to overlook the...I dunno, the existential dread at the heart of every episode of Unwrapped. Candy, soda, hot sauce, processed cheese...all seem to be pressed and extruded in the same joyless box factory, by the same oppressed minorities wearing the same hairnets. In "Deutsches Requiem," Borges wonders whether a man might go crazy if the same image (the map of Poland, for example) were constantly before his eyes. What if you saw ten thousand boxes of Juji Fruit being cranked out, all day, every day?

And then there's your host, Marc Summers. What is it about Marc Summers that I find so fascinating? Why am I tempted to take out an option on his autobiography, Everything in Its Place, as my first project as a screenwriter? My memories of Double Dare and Marc's own battles with obsessive-compulsive disorder probably have something to do with it. More likely, though, it's a general fascination with the idea of the professional emcee. Groomed, polished, always ready with a quip...but who are these game show hosts? Who is Regis Philbin, or Alex Trebek, or Marc Summers, really? There's something terrifying about the effortless way in which Marc Summers switches smoothly back into game show mode, after all these years, in the redundantly titled Triva Unwrapped, a new Unwrapped spinoff in which Summers poses trivia questions to a trio of contestants, in front of a nonexistent studio audience. There's the canned applause, the banter and handshakes with the contestants, the fabulous kitchen set prizes. But it's just Summers and three considerably less animated contestants in an empty studio, and you can hear the crickets chirping in the background.

Did I really get cable television just so that I could watch The Next Joe Millionaire? I hope not. But so far, the evidence isn't encouraging.

(Paul the Butler to the new Joe Millionaire: "The first thing that I want to talk to you about is our relationship." Where's Haiwen when you need him?)

Incidentally, I'm blogging from home for the first time since June, 'cause I just got cable and broadband installed in my new apartment. Oddly enough, my quality of life does not seem to have improved.

Well, that's not entirely true. I've finally been able to access the iTunes music store, and it's pretty great. Things started off with a small disappointment (the iTunes store hasn't heard of The Beta Band) but I've since test-downloaded a copy of the Avenue Q soundtrack, and the whole thing worked like a charm.

Still, after flipping through eighty cable channels, I'm reminded of why I've found it so easy to live without TV for so long. At this point, I can't see myself watching much more than 24, The Simpsons, Queer Eye, and the Food Network. I could be wrong, of course. If nothing else, it's nice to have Unwrapped again.

Why didn't anybody tell me about this reality series?

Two weeks after their initial encounter at Wollman Rink, [reality TV producer] Mr. Burnett called Mr. Trump and pitched "The Apprentice,'' a reality TV show set in the business world. Sixteen contestants would live together in a video-monitored space in an undisclosed location (Mr. Burnett is notoriously guarded about his productions; he forbids people to reveal any details until the shows air). But instead of manipulating each other in the Amazon, they would backstab each other in New York.

Every week the show's host would assign various business tasks: contestants might be told to run a hot dog stand, say, or to open a store in a crime-filled neighborhood. Someone would be fired during each show; at the end, the winner would get a six-figure salary and a one-year position as a president or co-president of a division of the Trump Organization, of which Mr. Trump is president and chairman. The host of the show would be the original Joe Millionaire, Mr. Trump himself.

"This is Donald Trump giving back," Mr. Burnett said. "What makes the world a safe place right now? I think it's American dollars, which come from taxes, which come because of Donald Trump. All these buildings. How many carpenters, steelworkers, construction guys, cleaners, bellboys and maids are working through the Trump entrepreneurial vision? And what Donald Trump is doing and what 'The Apprentice' is about is to show Americans that you have to be an entrepreneur."

MR. Trump said that when he was considering whether to do the show, he was swayed by the educational factor, and by the idea that it would be as brutal and real as any business transaction. Applicants came out in droves: 215,000 people in 13 cities auditioned for 16 slots. The show began shooting in September and is scheduled to air on NBC in early January. Isaac Mizrahi, Regis Philbin, George Steinbrenner, and the Fab Five - the men from "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" - have all made cameo appearances.

Not that I'd last five minutes on a show like that, but it would have been fun to apply. Haiwen probably would have done better, though.

Christ, I don't know. Ask me again in January.

Well, all right. As of this morning, I think that Return of the King is the movie to beat. Doesn't matter that nobody's seen it yet. Beyond that, I'd say that Mystic River and Cold Mountain are the only other sure nominees. Seabiscuit came out too early in the year (see Road to Perdition). Contrary to what you might expect, the Academy isn't a big fan of star-driven epic vehicles, so I'd cross out Master and Commander and The Last Samurai, unless one or both actually turn out to be good. The Human Stain? Maybe. Dark horse: Elephant, which could do the whole Pianist thing and become the art house movie that Hollywood can't ignore.

Otherwise, while it's been a decent year for movies, it hasn't been very good for the sort of film that Hollywood loves to award. The other day, I actually made up a provisional list of the best movies I've seen so far this year; if you're curious, it goes something like Kill Bill Vol. 1, Spellbound, Capturing the Friedmans, Finding Nemo, American Splendor, Lost in Translation, School of Rock, Dark Blue, 28 Days Later, and Phone Booth. (You'll notice that the list seems a bit padded near the end. That's what happens when you make a list like this in October; any longer, and it probably wouldn't have been long before Gigli made an appearance.)

Of those films, can you imagine even one of them getting a Best Picture nomination? Maybe, just maybe, Lost in Translation could pull it off...but I doubt it. Otherwise, all of the above are disqualified for one reason or another: the Academy doesn't like animated films, comedies, documentaries, or movies that didn't make money, which wipes out Nemo, School of Rock, Spellbound, Friedmans, and Dark Blue right there. American Splendor was too offbeat, and nobody saw it. 28 Days Later and Phone Booth are ridiculous on principle. As for Kill Bill, yeah, maybe the Academy would nominate the first half of a two-part film...but not this one.

At the moment, it's more fun to speculate about offbeat acting nominations. Could we really see three actors nominated for essentially comic performances, which the Academy hates? Probably not, but given the roster so far this year, it'd be hard to leave off Bill Murray, Jack Black, and (drumroll, please)...Johnny Depp, even if Paul Giamatti goes unrecognized. Actresses? Uma Thurman will be hard to ignore. Nicole Kidman's gotta get nominated for something. And, what the hell, Cate Blanchett for Veronica Guerin. Just remember, I'm the guy who predicted last year that My Big Fat Greek Wedding was a shoo-in for a Best Picture nomination...so you never know. At least, I never do.

So Alec, what's the oscar buzz?

In order to further help my recovery from thursday I've made a top 5 list of the most heartbreaking sports moments in my lifetime as a sports fan:

1) November 8th 1995, the Cleveland Browns move to Baltimore. There's just no beating this one.

2) January 17th 1988, the Cleveland Browns lose the AFC Championship game the second of three consecutive years to the Denver Broncos this time on Earnest Byner's fumble on the three yard line. The Browns still have never played in a Super Bowl. Why is this up at the top of this list above all the other heartbreaking game endings below? Well, I was 7, and as Rob Gordon put it: "If you really wanted to mess me up, you'd have got to me earlier."

3) October 16th 2003. I really just don't want to talk about it. Sport's guy has a great column though. The highlight: "If the Red Sox were a girl, you would probably just break up with them. You would call them on the phone, explain to them calmly that you can't take it anymore, let them down as gently as possible, then move on with your life. But sports aren't like that. You're stuck with your teams from childhood. It's like being trapped in a bad marriage. You can't get out."

4) June 2nd, 2002, the Kings lose to the Lakers in Game 7. This was the first year I managed to get really into basketball. I watched most games in the playoffs, and my main goal was rooting against the Lakers (the Yankees of basketball). I really really thought we had them in this game. So close...

5) Oct. 26, 1997. Before I went to college and became a Red Sox fan I had grown up an Indians fan (my dad's from ohio). This was game 7 of the world series. We had a lead in the 9th and blew the save and lost in 11. To boot it wasn't even to a real team, the Marlins were sold at auction the next year, and thus the great Indians team of the 90s lost their best chance at a world series win.

Interesting article in defense of scalpers.

Appropriately enough, today's daily poll on imdb.com asks: "Best use of voice-over narration in a feature film?" If documentaries weren't disqualified, I'd vote for Evans. As it is, I hate to be predictable, but I gotta go with Chungking Express.

Did I see a good movie last night? You bet. The film? The Kid Stays in the Picture, by and about legendary producer Robert Evans. Why am I talking like this? Because the narration by Evans, full of polished anecdotes and self-satisfied rhetorical questions, is hard to get out of your head. I've already gone ahead and ordered the audiobook version to get the full Evans experience. For a taste, check out this brilliant parody, with Evans playing himself in an episode of The Simpsons:

(Afraid of dying in his sleep, Homer stays awake to watch Charlie Rose interview movie producer Robert Evans.)
Homer: Can't sleep -- gonna die. Can't sleep -- gonna die.
Rose (on TV): We're back with legendary producer Robert Evans. Now, before you did The Godfather, there was Love Story. Tell us about that.
Evans: Ah, Love Story -- the little picture that could. Was Paramount chomping at the bit to make it? Heh, heh, you'd better believe they weren't. But once that tear-jerker hit John Q. Popcorn, it was boffo-boo-boo box office all the way. (Chuckles.)
Rose: And the critics loved it, too. I remember Vincent Canby said, (turns to the camera) "I'm going to kill you, Homer. You are so dead."
Homer: (screams)
Rose: Now Chinatown was a classic, but you had problems with the sequel, The Two Jakes?
Evans: Oh, boy. Disappointed? I had the blues like Chasen's had chili. I said to myself, "Evans, you forgot Hollywood Rule #1: (turns to the camera) Kill Homer Simpson."
Homer: (screams and ducks under a blanket)
(Marge and the kids walk down the stairs)
Marge: You should see a doctor, Homey. A head doctor.
Homer: I'm not crazy. It's the TV that's crazy! (yells at the TV set) Aren't you, TV?
Evans: The crisis? Charlie Bludorn's birthday. The solution? A snappy banner. Out comes the phone, in flies Bobby Towne, and six drafts later, I had myself a party.
Homer: You see? Gibberish, all gibberish!

As I read the coverage of the first Chinese manned spaceflight, for some reason this paragraph stood out:

After the landing, helicopters and trucks rushed to retrieve [astronaut] Yang. Reports had said he would be armed with knives and possibly a gun to protect himself against animals and other threats in the Inner Mongolian grasslands where the ship was to touch down.

So, are there bears in Inner Mongolia?

A new top 100 books list

Me too. This is the funniest News in Brief I've seen in a long time:

MacArthur Genius Grant Goes Right Up
Recipient's Nose
ALBANY, NY—According to friends, the $500,000, five-year, no-strings-attached MacArthur Fellowship awarded to Jim Yong Kim earlier this month went right up the 43-year-old scientist's nose. "Kim's efforts to eradicate drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis in Russian prisons and Peruvian ghettos amazed everyone—as did his appetite for top-grade cocaine," Marisa Amir said Monday. "As soon as that first check arrived, Kim was on the phone with his dealer, and two hours later, he was in a hot tub full of strippers." His first installment of money gone, the scientist then returned to the task of developing a whole-cell cholera toxin recombinant B subunit vaccine.

I love the onion.

From Chicago Sun-Times critic Phil Rosenthal's article on the new season of Joe Millionaire:

If we are to believe Fox's promos -- a dangerous proposition unto itself -- the gimmick of this season's "Joe Millionaire" will be to have an American cowboy lie to a bunch of foreigners. About oil money.

Like we haven't seen that before.

Interestingly enough, with regards to Haiwen's comment below, Tarantino is a big fan of the Japanese movie versions of Lone Wolf and Cub, as this article indicates. Given his obsessiveness in other ways, I have no doubt that he's read the books, too.

Here's an article on the discovery that emotional pain and physical pain actually affect the same areas of the brain. This article, or a similar one, led to the following classic exchange this weekend:

Haiwen: Did you know that when your feelings are hurt, you actually feel physical pain?
Alec (after a pause): Yes.

While browsing recently in the music section of the Lincoln Center Barnes & Noble, I discovered a short shelf of books called Thirty Three and a Third, a new series of paperbacks about classic pop albums like Piper at the Gates of Dawn and Dusty in Memphis. Most of the books are straightforward works of criticism and appreciation, but one, Joe Pernice's Meat is Murder, stands out: it's actually a work of fiction inspired by the Smiths album of the same name. Which strikes me as an incredibly nifty idea. I think it'd be fascinating to see a series of novels inspired by famous pop albums, and it's too bad that the Thirty Three and a Third series doesn't include more of them.

Noah pointed out a while back that a musical based on the songs of Bruce Springsteen would be a great idea, because the story is already there. Similarly, with some albums, it isn't hard to imagine what the novelization would look like. Meat is Murder could only be about a depressed teenager in the eighties, and is. OK Computer, which is scheduled to have a Thirty Three and a Third book of its own out soon, would have to be huge, paranoid, and Pynchonesque. (And who else could write it but Pynchon, or maybe Neal Stephenson?) Not to preempt Noah or anything, but I'd love to read a book called Automatic For the People. And a few months ago I was giving serious thought to writing a screenplay called The Bends, which oddly enough was going to be autobiographical.

My firstborn son is going to be brought up to be a knuckleball pitcher.

Incidentally after the 9th inning I think for a pitcher facing the yankees and only needing one out with no one on you've gotta be pretty happy to have soriano coming up. I mean sure he's an MVP candidate and all, but did you see that at bat? Pitch six inches outside for a swinging strike, repeat, miss high, repeat. Strike out, with no pitches even being close to strikes.

Yes, Val Kilmer's comments were not the most well-received comments ever. His defense wasn't much better than, say, John Rocker's; I find it highly unlikely that the reporter would just make up stuff out of his mouth.

That said, he is apologizing and trying to make amends, and that means, according to a co-worker, that a lot of charities in New Mexico are going to wind up grateful for that article. I tend to agree.

After receiving a couple of startling credit card bills, I've decided to swear off online auction shopping for good. In its place, I've started to waste time at work by browsing through the personals of eligible 18-24 year-old women on Match.com. My first thought: this is way more fun than eBay.

Val Kilmer denies calling New Mexico a state of drunken murderers, and Bill Richardson is there. (Why am I posting this?)

Today is October 13, 2003. Believe it or not, there was actually a time in my life when my first thought after seeing that date on a calendar would be: "Hey, it's Agent Mulder's birthday."

Oooh, Eddie Lee started a weblog. It currently looks rather like ours... Red Sox, math, REM, and TMQ. Anyway all you Ross readers probably wanna give it a surf.

In case you need anything else to psych you up for today's game, here's the classic Sports Guy article "Is Roger Clemens Really the Anti-Christ."

Two thoughts on Kill Bill, Vol. 1:

1. Miramax's decision to release the film in two parts probably makes sense commercially, but from an artistic standpoint, it misses the point completely. Not only would Kill Bill play better at three hours, it would arguably play better at eight hours. I'd happily watch it until my senses gave out completely. Watching it in two halves is like checking out after the first two hours of Magnolia: there's plenty of stuff to love, but the film needs time to expand inside your brain. Like Magnolia, there are entire reels in Kill Bill that are of questionable quality, but that's understandable when a director goes wild and shoots all the scenes he's ever dreamed of filming. A movie like this needs to be a three-hour monster, because it takes at least an hour for it to wipe the audience's mind clean of habitual standards of taste and restraint. Kill Bill and Magnolia are the cinematic equivalent of amusement parks, and who wants to spend just a couple of hours in an amusement park?

2. That said, we've been left with half a loaf. And it's obviously impossible to attempt a review of half of a movie, so there's going to be a big fat asterisk in my list of the year's best movies. But I'll be seeing it again. It's the sort of movie that demands to be seen from the first row, or at least from close enough that the screen fills your field of vision. You want to jump inside of it, or maybe inject it into your body a la William Gibson. It's absorbing on the level of a video game rather than that of a movie, but it's also a reminder of how absorbing video games can be. I do kinda miss the presence of believable human moments, the sort of moments that you could find in Jackie Brown and parts of Pulp Fiction, but you know something? This has been a pretty good year for believable human moments in movies, but not much of a year for purely cinematic bliss. As much as I loved American Splendor, Lost in Translation, School of Rock, Spellbound, and Capturing the Friedmans, I badly needed to see a movie about movies. (I hadn't seen a good one since City of God.) Kill Bill is that movie, and it comes just in time.

Not at face value indeed...

Note the last one is SOLD OUT at $400 each for the cheapest tickets...

From espn.com: Win or lose, last career start or not, all we know for sure is that [Clemens] and Pedro will pitch Saturday and you'll have a better chance finding a headline that reads "Big Dig Finally Completed'' than an offer for a ticket at face value.

Back to Alec's question "Who is the most beloved actor in America?" I just watched the trailer for Big Fish and had a very happy "oh, Ewan McGregor's in this movie" reaction of the sort you're describing...

I kinda miss seasons.

An enormous billboard featuring a forty-foot image of the new twenty dollar bill has been posted across from the Times Square subway, right where I emerge on my way to work every morning. The subliminal effects of this message remain to be seen. Who knows? I might become materialistic and obsessed with money.

If anyone out there is getting tired of their current playlist, check out Rings Around the World by Super Furry Animals. It's utterly strange and utterly familiar at the same time: maybe I listened to it in high school in an alternate universe. Think Pet Sounds with a dash of Radiohead and The Style Council. The song "Presidential Suite" is almost frighteningly good. They have a newer album, too, that I haven't bought yet...but I will.

Quick multiple-choice question: Why is it important for airport security to check carry-on luggage for bombs?

A. The bomb's batteries could leak and damage other passenger bags.
B. The wires in the bomb could cause a short to the aircraft wires.
C. Bombs can cause loss of lives, property and aircraft.
D. The ticking timer could worry other passengers.

For more challenging questions like this, check out today's Times article on the written test given to airport trainees.

(P.S. The answer is "C.")

Well, it's the time of year again when this turns into a baseball blog. Tonight's morsel:

Before that swing [in the 9th inning Tuesday], Sosa owned more career homers (539) than any player in history who had never hit a postseason homer. Now Ted Williams (521) reclaims his lead in that category. But it's no coincidence that the next four names on the list (Ernie Banks, Dave Kingman, Andre Dawson and Billy Williams) are all ex-Cubs.

Since the Red Sox won game 1 an hour or two ago we've gotten 3 google hits for "yankees suck."

Saturday is Pedro vs. He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named at Fenway. I wish I could be there...

I forgot the most important thing... Here's my new genealogy. Most of the lines go back to Chebyshev or Gauss.

Film critic David Thomson's 1995 article on Schwarzenegger, referenced here before, seems more prophetic each time I read it. There's a paragraph where Thomson notes that Schwarzenegger has had to deal with a lot of abuse and mockery, but has responded by sequestering it in "some dumping ground of the soul" and grinning even more broadly, becoming even more self-deprecating, even becoming a Kennedy by marriage. "And wonder if, for all the bomhomie," Thomson notes, "there isn't yet a seed of revenge -- a seed as revolutionary as those Jack got for his cow..."

Not the most elegant simile, perhaps, but the insight isn't a bad one.

Silver lining: Proposition 54 was soundly beaten.

In better news, I have an advisor! That means I'm halfway to having an advisor and a girlfriend. (I even have a lunch date on saturday, so who knows...)

So my new advisor Prof. Reshetikhin is more than a little spacy. And due to a comment he made once I'd started joking that he might already think i was his student, just cause he can't keep track of this sort of thing. So today I went to talk to him about this reading course we're doing, and after we talked about what I was reading I asked him if he'd be interested in having me as a student... He gave me a funny look and then said he had somehow already thought that I was. So that made things simple.

Anyway, here's his homepage and his list of publications on mathscinet (subscription required) and some other publications without subscription here.

I'll likely be studying the reprsentation theory of some sort of hopf algebras . If Reshetikhin gets his way it'll likely be some sort of quantized universal enveloping algebra of some infinite dimensional lie algebra. If I get my way it'll likely be some sort of finite quantum group.

Anyway enough nerdiness, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

What a rotten day: the Cubs waste a two-out-bottom-of-the-9th game-tying homerun by Sammy Sosa, and Arnold Schwarzenegger is my new governor.

This just appeared on my credit card bill:

October 2, 2003 23.34
EVERYTHING HOME 626-4621921 CA
133029 BAGEL ACCESSORIES

Now, I'm pretty sure I ordered something from "Everything Home," but as I recall it was a replacement head for my electric shaver, which as far as I can tell has nothing to do with bagels. I'll let you know what shows up.

This weekend I also saw In This World, famously praised by the critic for the Daily Telegraph as "the best British film of my lifetime." I wouldn't go nearly that far, but it's still worth seeing. This begs the question, of course, of what is the best British film of my lifetime? And the embarrassing thing is, I can't think of a single one that I'd go to bat for. Very strange. This isn't to say that I'm indifferent to British cinema: as I've said before, my favorite directors these days are probably Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, with Hitchcock somewhere close behind, and I still think that the arguably British The Third Man is the most perfect film ever made. But I'm hard-pressed to think of a single British film from the past twenty years that has really made it into my personal canon. (I can't bring myself to name something like The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, although that comes about as close as anything else.) I'll have to think about this a bit more, obviously.

This weekend I passed on the chance to go to my first real wedding ceremony. (I didn't have a date, didn't think I'd know anyone there, and figured that everyone else would be in their thirties anyway.) However, I did get a vicarious sense of the different ways that men and women perceive these things. My officemate and my manager, both female, just spent half an hour discussing the ceremony, the food, the guests, the setting, the dress, the cake, the dancing, and various gossip, in sometimes excruciating detail. Compare this to the following exchange between me and another male colleague, here reprinted in its entirety: "How was the wedding?" "It was good. It rained."

So, yes, it's nice to see that Barry from High Fidelity is finally making a meaningful contribution to society, and yes, it's clear that Jack Black is the most appealing physical comedian in the movies right now, and yes, he could even play Haiwen…but is School of Rock really the best live-action family film ever? Yes. At least, the best since Mary Poppins. It's so graceful and assured and funny, and it avoids so many opportunities to be sentimental or formulaic or condescending, that by its very example it suggests that most other directors of "family" movies just don't care. The fact that you can easily imagine School of Rock as a spinoff of High Fidelity only sweetens the entire package. This is a great movie.

It's odd when you run accross a new study whose results are genuinely surprising. Well here's one that slate comments on claiming that parents prefer having boys to girls enough that they're more likely to stay married if they have sons than daughters. Every once and a while you get a little shock that reminds you how backwards the world still is in some ways. I'd really like to see ampersand's take on this one...

You all know how obsessed I am with what music gets associated to what weird things... I realized this morning that I'm well on the way to Weezer always reminding me of driving lauren's car back to her house in the mornign after parties with her and alex where everyone else is too drunk to drive. It's an oddly specific thing to have music associated with.

The good part of being a designated driver: I now have a way to do grocery shopping for this week.

The trailer for lost in translation at apple describes it's genre as: "Drama, Light Comedy."

Hey, even Schwarzenegger uses index funds! (Not very consistently, though, as a glance at the rest of his investment portfolio reveals.)

I just realized that I am now older than either of my parents were when they were married.

By the way, the CD I just opened using the method below is Iron & Wine's The Sea & The Rhythm, purchased at the suggestion of Sharon Harvey. It's sort of wonderful.

I feel obliged to share the most useful tip I've gotten so far from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy: To open that annoying seal on the top of a new CD, just scrape the CD case at an angle against the edge of a desk, and the seal will peel right off. I've tried this a bunch of times, and it works!

This morning a production crew in front of my building was filming a scene from New York Minute, an upcoming direct-to-video epic starring the Olsen twins. I was quite eager for my first glimpse of Olsenhood, but, unfortunately, when they yelled "Action" all I saw was a heavily pancaked stunt double riding a bicycle. On the whole, everyone on set seemed pretty stressed and tired. I was reminded of William Goldman's observation that your first day on a film set will be the most exciting day of your life, and the most boring day of your life will be all of the days that follow.

The plot synopsis for New York Minute is actually quite intriguing. Here's what imdb.com says about it:

Over a 24 hour period, 17-year-old sisters Jane and Roxy Ryan, adversaries who begrudgingly journey together from their Long Island home to New York, where overachiever Jane is due to deliver a speech to qualify for a prestigious college scholarship abroad. Meanwhile, laid-back punk rock rebel Roxy hopes to get backstage at an underground music video shoot for punk pop band Simple Plan so that she can slip her demo tape to the group. However, Roxy and Jane's plans go awry when a mix-up involving Jane's day planner lands them in the middle of a shady black-market transaction. Pursued by an overzealous truant officer (Eugene Levy) and accused of kidnapping a dog belonging to a senator, the Ryan's must find a way to work together to thwart the forces threatening to jeopardize Jane's college dreams and ship Roxy off to a convent school.

Why isn't my life more like this?

As regular readers of this page will recall, I've been bitching for months now about the playing of 'God Bless America' during the seventh inning stretch. Well, here's another argument against it.

Go Twins!

Tommorow my union is going on strike... It's kind of odd.

he UAW Local 2865 Bargaining Team has called for a 1 day unfair labor
practice strike at all UC campuses on Friday, October 3, to protest the
University of California's continuing pattern of unfair labor practices in
our contract negotiations.

Striking means we don't perform any of our assigned work duties including
teaching, consulting with students about class work, and emailing or
posting assignments. It also means not making up "struck work" later in the term.

UAW Local 2865 members should report to the main picket site at Telegraph
and Bancroft from 7:30 am to 5 pm. We are encouraging people to go on
campus and demand the services that aren't there because of the strike over UC's
unfair labor practices.

Finally, if your department communicates anything to you concerning this
strike, it is vital that you forward it to the Union office. For more information, contact the Union office.

I can't really see myself picketing, but not grading tommorow in support of the strike doesn't seem like such a bad idea...

I really just want to see haiwen's comment on grad students pretending to be "workers."

Of course most people playing low stakes are bad at poker. That's why you should play with them!

And I still haven't gotten into the psychologically analyzing thing so much yet, I'm mostly just learning how to play the cards and the odds. I figure that's the first step. Like in diplomacy, first you need to know the rules, then you can start thinnking about how to convince people to do what you want.

Noah, I happen to work down the hall from the author of the soon-to-be-bestselling memoir Poker Face: A Girlhood Among Gamblers, which was released to significant acclaim by Random House this past August. I asked Katy (whose siblings are world-class poker players and whose father is this famous punster and verbivore) how she can tell whether someone is a good poker player. "High stakes or low stakes?" she asked. Low stakes, I replied, remembering that Noah had been playing to get his $6 back. "Well, everyone at low stakes games usually sucks," she said.

I pressed her for something more useful, and finally she gave me this tip: A good poker player will often wait until everyone else has made a bet to look at his cards, because his time is usually better spent looking at the other player's faces. Beyond that, there aren't any good rules. Someone who talks a lot and tries to get into your head may be an excellent poker player and skilled at manipulation, or he may just be trying to pick you up.

Here's Robert Novak's original column on Joseph Wilson's wife and his response, if you're curious.

Oooh, it's a movie about Tatyana Ali's freshman dorm. Oddly enough it doesn't look very familiar...

Poker didn't go so well tonite... First I completely misread the first hand and lost at least a dollar on that. I also didn't realize till two-thirds of the way through the night that the friend visiting from socal was actually good at poker. At some point he checked on a three of a kind which was obviously the high hand, and so I bet high thinking no one had a good hand and ended up losing another 75 cents or so on that. At any rate I very quickly ran through my initial $3, then my bought in $2, then another bought in $1... But then things started going ok, and I won my way back to $5. Which still put me down a dollar.

I can't complain since playing with this crowd has put me about about $8 over three nights. But still today was very disapointing. I need to know how to analyze quickly whether someone is good at poker or not.

Good news for basketball fans in Minnesota and just about everyone else. I like seeing people stay put, and I want to see how the team they've put together works out.

So I'm taking this reading course and a regular course with prof. Reshetikhin (I'm late for the regular course right now) who is a representation theorist in the dept. who I'm thinking of working with with whom I'm thinking of working. (If you ever start dating someone who likes correcting "whoms" for "whos" stop. You'll hear her voice in your head every time you use the wrong one for the rest of your life. (on the other hand, roomates who make fun of your spelling of ridiculous are ok.)) He's this big nice russian guy who's about as unorganized as anyone I've ever met. This makes tuesday afternoons endlessly amusing because he tells everyone to meet him then, so several people show up and he's inevitably busy with something he forgot about.

Yesterday the best moments were when my friend peter showed up to talk to him and discovered me in his office but no prof; when he told peter he'd need to reschedule cause he forgot about a seminar so "could we meet at 3:10 at tea, because there will be bagels" (bagels here are only on thursday, they've always been only on thursday, everyone else knows this); and when another prof. came by at the end to make sure that he actually went to the seminar he'd forgotten about.

It's charming in a mathematician sort of way and makes my tuesday afternoons always fun.

Many of you may be amused to discover that I'm playing Risk tonight.

Ed--Turns out I'm playing poker instead. One of my goals this semester was to become a decent poker player, and I think I've succeeded. When I play with bad players I make money and with decent players I don't lose money, which isn't bad.

The Return of the King trailer is up. What is it, 2.5 months?

One of the things I really miss about Harvard (well and Ross too) was not having to worry about what people's reaction will be when they ask you where you went to school. I was especially reminded of this the other day when I was talking to this girl at a party and she said she went to princeton and my internal reaction was "phew, now I don't have to worry about her thinking I'm obnoxious"

So that got me thinking, which schools do I feel like I don't have to worry about alums making a big deal over Harvard... Its hard to start listing without actually coming accross as obnoxious, but its an interesting thing to think about... Which schools prompt that "whew I'm safe" reaction?

P.S. Somehow the point of this was missed, which is a) that I hate the way all conversations end when people ask me questions and I have to say "harvard" and "math" and b) its really fun to make lists of things that have little in common. For example with this one if someone went to school anywhere in boston then it won't kill the conversation cause you can start chatting boston stuff. If they went to princeton you can start playing the "who do you know" game, which though dumb is at least better than the "oh now I don't want to talk to this person anymore cause he went to Harvard and so is obviously not worth talking to."

I'm thinking of removing this post as its resulted in the closest thing to a flame war this site has seen and half the point of the post was that I was sick of people I don't know not liking me for no reason but where I went to school, and the comments only reinforce this point, so I shouldn't have posted anything. What do you guys think? Should I take it down?

I finally saw Lost in Translation. It's funny how I'm drawn to movies about lonely people in a big city at night: Chungking Express. 25th Hour. Even Eyes Wide Shut, in a way. Of all the movies I've seen, these are the handful that take root in my imagination and grow. It's probably too early to tell, but Lost in Translation could be another one.

Here's a Times article on Netflix. It confirms my belief, stated many times on this blog, that Netflix is a great little company, despite attempts by Wal Mart and others to steal its thunder. However, this article is heartbreaking, too. Back in October, I bought one hundred shares of Netflix at the company's IPO. The shock was then trading at around $7.00. I cashed out my investment a few weeks later when the stock jumped to $9.00, clearing a tidy profit of $200 or so. I was pretty pleased by this, but ever since then, I've avoided checking the price of Netflix stock, because seeing the price of an investment you used to own is a little like running into an old romantic prospect on the street: you're just asking for trouble if you say hello, because she'll always turn out to be engaged to that tall guy from your Ec 10 section. Well, case in point: Netflix stock is now trading at over $34.00 a share. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I'm not cut out for trading. This is why I'm sticking to index funds.

This just in from the Making Noah Proud department: they've announced the times for the Division Series this week, and it looks like I'm going to have to skip class on Tuesday to watch Game 1. Fricking west coast time.

We had our housewarming party last night, and the consensus is that it was quite a success. A large number people showed up, and there was drinking, hot-tubbing, pool-shooting, and even some dancing. I dropped a cup of wine on my pants, but other than that I don't think I did anything more embarrassing than confessing that I know all the words to "Cherish" by Madonna. And of course, in keeping with tradition, we were paid a visit by the police, who yelled at us to keep it down, then drove off.

Here's an interesting Times article on product placement for the new twenty dollar bill, which the government is hoping to feature on shows like CSI and The West Wing to increase public awareness of the change.

One contribution: "Is it because / is it because I've lost my lunch?" -- Elvis Presley, "Dark Moon"

Oh, and of course there's Queen's "Get Down, Make Lunch."

If you ever update that page, to correct your "??" entries:

"Do you believe in life after lunch?": Cher
"Silly lunch songs": Paul McCartney

This reminds me, of course, of Thom Yorke singing "Salad...Salad..." in "No Surprises."

Coming up with "lunch songs" takes far too much of my free time these days... Here's a page of some of the best ones we've run accross...

Google tip of the day: If you're going to buy something from an online retailer, try typing the name of the store + "coupon" into Google and see what comes up. Nine times out of ten, you'll find a coupon code for a 10% or 15% discount or something even nicer. I've tried this for bn.com, Target.com and Gap.com, and almost always get results. It makes me feel frugal, even when I'm being bourgeois.

So I saw the twentieth anniversary re-release of Scarface last night with Haiwen in Times Square, and I seem to be headed out to see it again with my brother tonight. That's no accident. If there's a better, more exhilarating, more visceral movie in theaters right now, I haven't heard about it. See Scarface on the big screen, as it was meant to be viewed, hopefully with the Dolby cranked high enough for the Giorgio Moroder score to rattle your fillings, and see Al Pacino say "Look at dem pelicangs fly!" and introduce a horde of mob killers to his "little friend." I'm sure it's playing somewhere nearby. See it.

I wish the Minnesotan party was here...I need to find somewhere to watch the playoffs next week! Googling "Minnesota club of Berkeley" turns up nothing. I may have a lead through a random person met a month ago, but she doesn't have cable. The woes we go through for our Twins.

I was looking in the newspaper at events for the weekend, and they were advertising a Minnesotan party for graduates of the University of Minnesota. I briefly considered going and masquerading as an alum after my favorable experience pretending to be a prefrosh. However, in this case, you'd sorta need to do a lot of homework -- for instance, where's the university located in the first place? What's their mascot? Is is the Golden Weasel or something? What are some of the dorms/streets on campus? I decided not to do it, though, when they said there was a $15 fee. If I'm gonna do all that homework, I don't see why I should be paying them.

I can guarantee without a doubt that 8 Seconds did NOT go straight to video in rural New Mexico. It was the only movie playing for weeks. (Not that I was actually in rural New Mexico when this happened, but my sources are reliable.) If you could make the sappiest, most tear-jerking country song into a movie, it would be 8 Seconds. I like taking "Cowboy Up" as a rallying cry -- it's a lot better than "Out for Blood" or some other cries that I've seen teams take before.

The wire services are saying that George Plimpton died today. It's a shame; I always wanted to hang out with George, if only because he was the best guest voice that The Simpsons ever had. ("Well, now off to do whatever it is that I do...")

I don't know if anybody else saw this, but Noah Feldman had an op-ed in the Times on Wednesday.

Ebert agrees with me about Walken, in his surprisingly positive review of The Rundown: "[The Rock's] mission takes him to a town named El Dorado, run by the evil Hatcher (Christopher Walken, whose first appearance, as usual, cheers up the audience)."

Quote of the day, apropos of nothing in particular:

"We fell in love. Well, I fell in love. She just stood there."

(Woody Allen, Bananas)

Errr... Nat... Have you heard about the BoSox adopting "Cowboy Up" as their rallying cry this year? Here's one article on it:

"Notwithstanding the fact that "8 Seconds" rode straight to video, more or less, "cowboy up" has managed to buck the odds and hit linguistic pay dirt, having been branded onto everything from clothing lines and bumper stickers to bull-riding documentaries and coffee-table tomes about the Wild West."

Today's pop culture question: Who is the most beloved actor in America?

My nominee: Christopher Walken. Having recently seen Gigli and sat through trailers for Envy and this weekend's The Rundown, I can attest that there's no other actor whose unexpected appearance onscreen sends such a frission of pleasure through a New York audience. We're just happy to see the guy in a movie. Not sure when this happened, but I'm guessing that his scene with Dennis Hopper in True Romance may have been the turning point.

Other possibilities: Johnny Depp and Jack Nicholson. Depp, of course, is famous these days for finding plum roles in Hollywood action spectaculars and making movies watchable just by being in them. Nicholson has been around forever, but I was reminded of why he's such a star by the trailer for Something's Gotta Give. Not the most promising movie, I'll admit: it's an older female-skewing romantic comedy co-starring Diane Keaton, for chrissake, but when Nicholson came onscreen, an audience that had been sitting with mild boredom through a series of uninspiring previews suddenly got happy. That's what makes someone a movie star; it's like enduring a dull party only to have your best friend walk through the door.

As for the whole Stephen King controversy, this is just another reason that I've grown increasingly disillusioned with Harold Bloom. Yes, he's an invaluable guide to Shakespeare, but his recent literary criticism has consisted mostly of sweeping praise or condemnation (usually praise) without particular insight. Note that he doesn't mention the title of a single book by King in that article, or even quote a line that might illustrate King's inadequacy on a "sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph, book-by-book basis." That's quite a ringing dismissal, but it isn't criticism if you don't bother to back it up. And assuming that you can make a point about Stephen King by criticizing J.K. Rowling reveals a rather uncomfortable indifference towards distinctions in pop culture. That's like me saying that Steven Spielberg can't be a good director because Attack of the Clones was a lousy movie.

I read most of King's books when I was twelve or thirteen years old, and haven't picked one up in a while. But he's a real writer who tells good stories without cynicism and cares deeply about craft and character. Lumping him together with Danielle Steele is a cheap shot. (Of course, I haven't read any Danielle Steele either, so maybe saying this is also a cheap shot.) True, King has written some bad books, but he's also written a handful of big, ambitious novels (The Stand, The Talisman, Pet Sematary, and especially It) that are considerable imaginative achievements. It especially stands out in my mind as one of the most richly characterized and imagined novels I've read in any genre, and I'd probably take The Talisman over Tolkien.

That said, I don't really know whether King deserves to win that award or not. These days, I only read books about money.

I heard there was a new contraversy involving literary snobbery and Stephen King getting some award, and I was surprised that Alec hadn't posted on it yet since it seems the sort of thing he tends to have interesting opinions on. Anyway here's a link to an article.

One of the reasons I really like Cary Tennis, aside from his combination of harsh pragmatism and hopeless romanticism, is that, although much of his advice is run of the mill and uncertain, every once and while you get something that you know comes from a deap old wound and he doens't hide it... Like today:

I wish I knew everything because then I would know what is in your wife's mind. I would know whether she is extremely unusual. I would know how much she is drinking and whether she intends to continue. I would know whether she just needed a dance partner to get out of the marriage or whether this new love came on her unbidden like a storm. I'd know what to tell you for sure.

As it is, I'm just a guy you wrote a letter to, and I can only tell you what's happened to me. What has happened to me is that once a woman has left she has never come back. Never. Maybe I have only known decisive women, or maybe that's how most women are. My belief, based on my experience, is that women don't come back.

Every now and then a hurricane will turn on its heel and go back where it came from and the meteorologists will clap their hands over their mouths and stare in blank astonishment. Every now and then a woman will come home. But if you were my friend and I cared about you, I'd tell you not to count on it. I'd tell you to move on.

Go Twins!

The Twins in the playoffs brings back fond memories of 1 am trips to Trumptington Street last October...this year I should be able to watch them at a more reasonable hour. Yankees suck!

Apparently my home town doesn't even merit a mention in this article on traveling on either side of it.

By the way, it looks like I'll be auditing a class on Bankruptcy and Reorganization at the NYU Stern School of Business this fall. Jesus, my life is a tangled web. (Two guesses as to where the professor of that class works.)

I watched the Emmys last night. Now I know how the Oscars feel to someone who doesn't care about movies.

I know that we usually avoid posting teen magazine-type quizzes on this blog, but I just can't resist:

1. You spend your evenings:

A. On the phone with your girlfriends, chatting exclusively about your latest flame.
B. Hanging out with your family.
C. With friends, always with friends, looking for the guys.
D. Calling your crush and hanging up.

2. How far would you go to spot your crush?

A. Be sure to take the long route to class, checking out his locker.
B. Drive the long way home from school, past his house or football practice.
C. Buy tickets to a concert you know he's gonna be at.
D. Not much, maybe just sit at his table at lunch.

3. How many times have you looked at wedding magazines in the last year?

A. Less than 3.
B. 3-10.
C. 11-15.
D. More than 15.

4. Have you practiced writing your name with his before?

A. Yes.
B. No.

5. Have you prayed for him?

A. Yes, on my own.
B. Yes, at a small group.
C. No.

Answers:

1. A=5, B=0, C=2, D=4.
2. A=2, B=5, C=3, D=0.
3. A=1, B=2, C=3, D=4.
4. A=5, B=0.
5. A=3, B=5, C=0.

If you scored between 17 and 24, you are totally crushed out!
Chill out, girl. God's gonna provide a man when the time is right. No need to become a stalker. Check your priorities.

If you scored between 10 and 16, you are boy-crazy! Okay, you're a little boy-crazy, but not abnormal. Still, you might want to get in the Scripture and refocus on God.
Remember all your fulfillment is in Him.

If you scored between 0 and 9, you are level headed!
Right on. You're not carried away about guys. Sounds like you've got your priorities in order!

Anyway, this is a quiz from Revolve, a new edition of the New Testament rather astonishingly disguised as a beauty magazine, the better to market it to teen girls. (Thanks to my dad for the link.) I think I might have to buy a copy (for Drew Hu, of course), or at least browse through it discreetly at Barnes and Noble. The cover sort of sucks you in: What are those beauty secrets that you've never heard before? ("You need a good, balanced foundation for the rest of your makeup," quotes this article. "Kinda like how Jesus is the strong foundation in our lives.") How can a you tell if you're dating a godly guy? Best of all, who are these "guys" speaking out on tons of important issues? (Is one of them Ashton?)

As the ABC article above points out, this sort of bait and switch isn't a new thing. (I remember having a terrific-looking fire and brimstone comic book when I was younger called Exorcists that was Christian propaganda disguised as a Tales From the Crypt-type shocker, with dialogue like: "Did you know that the Hindu pantheon has over 600 million gods, all of them Satanic?")

But you know what I really think about all this. Anyone who isn't reading the New Testament in ancient Greek is just slacking off.

Go see lost in translation.

My sister's current away message: "i definitely got hit in the head too many times today."

In other news, I finally gave up on my boxes mailed from England ten weeks ago ever reaching me, and called to try to get some kind of compensation. They said they'd mail me some claim forms. Today I received these forms in the mail, addressed to:

David Freeman
1295 Kamcus Drive
Bickley, CA 54708
USA

My respect for the US Postal service has increased significantly.

(The error arose, I believe, because the shipping service I used is based in Glasgow, and I had a horrible time communicating with the person who answered the phone as I don't speak Glaswegian.)

This week was kind of a crap week. I slept through my morning classes twice (on Monday a brief power failure killed my alarm, and on Thursday I set the alarm for 7 pm), which made me kind of grumpy. Then I did relatively shoddy jobs on my math homework because I had to spend too much time doing work for my musicianship class. The class is one of those rites of passage for music majors, kind of like an intro language class -- you have to do work for every class and keep up, and a lot of it is partner work. I wanted to take just a theory class, but the people in the music department said I need musicianship too, which makes sense, considering my written skills are miles ahead of my practical skills. So I was attempting to take two music courses and three math courses, but this is proving to be an untenable scenario. So the musicianship class has to go, which is quite sad, since I actually want to have those practical skills. However, the math department and NSF would much prefer I gained some mathematical knowledge this semester. Anyway, other things that happened this week included Tuesday Night Dinner at our place -- I made a roast pepper & mushroom risotto and Noah made a big salad with lots of vegetables & stuff, and about 20 people showed up, which was quite impressive. Also impressive was the number of girls that showed up, seeing as this was a math gathering; at one point I counted half of the guests as female. In fact, there were so many women there that two of them had the same name, which led to a bit of confusion. Thursday night involved much sushi and much beer, which has led to a quiet Friday in which I talk on the phone and piddle about on the internet. Our housewarming party is next weekend. All regular readers of this blog are invited. E-mail for details.

But I ramble. Bedtime now.

In our neck of the woods, this is the big story of the week. This reporter hung around with Richardson during the presidential debate (I saw the guy at the time but didn't realize he was a reporter) and he showed a side that not everyone gets to see. He also bleeps out words like "screw," which makes Richardson look like his vocabulary is more foul than it really is.

I'm now officially Doing My Part to Save the World by riding a bike to work. I had an SUV honk at me yesterday, which I suppose constitutes some sort of rite of passage. I greatly prefer the 360 degree view from a bike -- you actually feel like you're present on the street you're on, rather than looking at it from a moving carriage.

The ironic thing is I started biking to work the same week I finally got my parking permit. I've been on the waiting list for a permit for six months, but now with my bike I literally get to park a couple of yards from the entrance in a protected parking garage. I am quite pleased with the arrangement and I'm considering leasing my permit (under the table of course) to the unfortunate souls who are still on the waiting list.