If I’ve Told You Once, I’ve Told You 23 Times...

Captain Clark welcomes you aboard...

After a synchronicity-filled trip to Tangier, William S. Burroughs created what he dubbed the “23 Enigma.” In a nutshell, the theory goes that the number 23 appears more frequently in the world around us than can be explained by mere chance. In fact, this observation is the origin of the latter part of my nom de plume, Magus 23 (I’ll get into the former part at a later date).

Kerry Thornley embraced the Enigma, incorporating it into the Discordian Society “Bible” Principia Discordia, and it later became an integral part of The Illuminatus! Trilogy. Robert Anton Wilson expounded upon the Enigma in his book Cosmic Trigger: Final Secret of the Illuminati. Dozens of web pages have been devoted to enumerating the instances of the number 23 throughout history and popular culture.

What must always be kept in mind, of course, is the corollary to the Enigma’s assertion: Any other number works just as well as 23. The late Douglas Adams chose the number 42, for example. In other words, look for anything hard enough, and you’ll find it. I think anyone who’s been witness to the rampant witch-hunts in the political and social arenas of the past few decades can attest to the veracity of that notion — the Whitewater scandal, the McMartin Preschool case, the War On (Some) Drugs, and so on.

Complicating the issue is the popularity of the Enigma among screenwriters and directors, who often deliberately insert the number 23 into movies and television shows. It’s usually done subtly, though Robert Redford’s film Quiz Show actually has John Turturro deliver a ranting exposition specifically on occurrences of the (allegedly random) number 23.

My wife has a comparable theory, though she substitutes “Wisconsin” for “the number 23.” Once she pointed it out to me, I was amazed to observe the number of times Wisconsin came up in the world around me. Granted, it seemed that television writers in particular had latched onto Wisconsin as emblematic of middle America, full of earnest, none-too-citywise folks, whom they could stick in to contrast with the cynical New Yorker types (let the wacky hijinks ensue!). But even in the outside world, it seemed that we’d run into real Wisconsinites (Wisconsinians?) on a shockingly regular basis. And, of course, let’s not forget that wonderful Wisconsin export, The Onion (which ran one of my favorite articles of the past year in last week’s edition).

Keep your eyes open, and you’ll be astonished at how often you notice the 23s out there.

And the Wisconsins.

2 “classic” comments visible on the new comments page

“Classic” reader comments:


Kori · Fri, Jan 31st 2003, at 1:30PM

Okay, friend. You've finally tempted me with blog bait I simply can't resist, and I'm sure you know it! My home state....ah....

Yes, "Wisconsinite" is right, and yes, there are a whole lot of us here in D.C. Once one of us moves to a new place, we recruit others. Quickly. For example, I had one friend living in D.C. when I came out east to interview for jobs. By the time I got a job (3 months later), two more friends had moved out here, and I brought another. Since then, I have directly recruited four Wisconsin friends to the area ("come stay with me while you find a job and get settled" works beautifully). Those friends have subsequently brought two Wisconsinites out here, Once a mini-Wisconsin was established, we (as a group) convinced three others to join us, and our efforts continue.

Total number of Wisconsinites when I first came out here in 1995: 2 (including me)

Total number of Wisconsinites living here now due to direct (or indirect) recruiting efforts by me: 14+

Why this mass migration? IT'S COLD IN WISCONSIN! Wisconsin is full of really wonderful folk, but let's face it, the winters are long, gray and brutally cold.

In terms of media, I find that whenever a Canadian actor is in a sitcom or movie and the writers need to explain a) his "wholesome look," and/or b) his slightly northern accent, they work in (somehow) that he is from Wisconsin. I don't know why Milwaukee is apparently more acceptable than Toronto to American viewing audiences, but since most Americans couldn't place either city on a map, it really doesn't matter.

I heard a rumor, though, that you will be flying Midwest Express to Iowa. You may not be going to Wisconsin, but you will be flying on Wisconsin's premier airline, and I think after one trip you will understand why my home state is, well, so gosh darn noteworthy. What other state would boast an airline that has no first class/coach class distinction (including leg room and large leather seats---only two per side of the aisle---for even the common man), and fresh baked chocolate chip cookies in flight? And that's with recent budget cuts, man! Of course everyone's talking about Wisconsin with service like this!

So, there you go. My Wisconsinite response. I'll let you know when my D.C.-based Wisconsin circle grows to 23.

Hillary · Wed, Feb 5th 2003, at 3:04PM

Of course I will be astonished at the number of 23s I will find — because now I'm looking for it.

Ahh, the circle continues.

You will also be suprised at the number of times Utica, New York comes up on TV and in books.

The Simpsons, Stephen King, David Sedaris (author of Naked), Dr. Seuss, and number of (bad) sitcoms that ran last year. Shall I go on?

Did you notice in the movie Serendipity (John Cusak, love that guy) that when he's in the elevator (after having coffee with the girl), he randomly chooses the floor number 23? I immediately thought of you Bill.

Customer Disservice

Okay, I’ve got some good news and some bad news on the aforementioned Palm m505 issue.

First, the bad: They won’t replace the defective unit with an m515 — well, not without a $229 “upgrade fee”; thanks, but I’m not about to throw good money after bad (particularly not now that Sony’s Clié works with Mac OS X). Further, they’re now claiming that all of the metal-encased Palm units are susceptible to “SUDS,” so an m515 really wouldn’t solve the problem. This despite the fact that nobody, as far as I’ve been able to determine, has reported such a problem with the newer units. I’ve now got the number for Palm’s “Corporate Escalations” office, so we’ll see what can be done there, but I am not in the least optimistic.

On the plus side, at least the customer service rep was polite (as I’ve usually found on my numerous previous calls), if not particularly helpful. And it was rather amusing to learn that, had I been using a Wintel machine, I’d have had to go through a slew of troubleshooting options before they’d authorize a replacement unit; since I’m on a Mac running OS X, they acknowledged that there’s not a whole lot that can go wrong — authorization approved. I did also gather one little tidbit of information should this happen — excuse me, when this happens — again: Because SUDS is a “known issue,” Palm will do an “advance exchange” (i.e., I don’t send them my unit until I receive the replacement) free of charge, in perpetuity, despite the fact that my warranty is expired.

Okay, that sounds good for me, but let me see if I can wrap my head around this one. They’d rather send out an unlimited supply of replacement units than fix the problem. And, presumably, once the m505s are out of stock altogether, they’ll end up sending out a newer model somewhere down the line anyway — unless this problem miraculously goes away.

Then again, with this kind of policy, I don’t see Palm being around that long...

Intellectual State of the Union

I had an interesting opportunity last night. I participate on occasion in market research focus groups for a local company; as is probably obvious, I’m not shy about sharing my opinions, and here they are paying me to do it. This time they assembled a group to view this year’s State of the Union address, and evaluate the speech in real time using numeric keypads.

As a rule, I’m not much for politicians’ speeches, and last night certainly didn’t alter my opinion. They tend to be glorified excuses to drum up emotional support when rational support is sorely lacking. I had planned to do a thorough recap of the speech along with my evaluation, but I suppose it doesn’t really matter. There were a couple of things I was happy to hear, like stemming the tide of AIDS in Africa and developing hydrogen-powered vehicles (though I don’t for a heartbeat believe this administration truly supports either initiative), but for the most part, I hovered around the “disapprove” range of the keypad. The transparent beating of the drums of war was a little much for me to swallow, and I was left with the overwhelming belief that if Bush wants me to take him seriously, he’d damn well better learn to pronounce the word “nuclear.”

But that last thought led to another. J.R. “Bob” Dobbs once said that we tend to make two egregious errors in thinking about politicians: one, that they’re stupid, and two, that they mean well. But how does that reconcile with the observation that Dubya is so obviously an idiot? Hell, he flaunts his idiocy.

I can only come to one reasonable conclusion: Bush wants to come across as stupid. Oh, maybe not Anna Nicole Smith stupid, but most assuredly no smarter than the S.P. he is so desperately trying to court. Anti-intellectual bias among the S.P. is nothing new; it was widely cited as one of the leading causes of Al Gore’s political downfall. But Bush appears to have elevated it to an art form, leaving those of us with IQs actually above room temperature cringing in disgust. Unfortunately, there are far greater numbers on the lower end of that scale.

Wooing the uneducated (who — big surprise — tend to be poor as well) is not a new strategy. The Republican party seized on this idea in the post-Reagan era, when they realized that people were becoming less and less sympathetic to the filthy rich (the party’s only true constituency). I doubt it was decided at a formal, right-wing-conspiracy sit-down meeting, but somehow the strategy evolved to try and identify themselves with something the poor and disaffected could all get behind: Religion. Suddenly, the Republican party — expanding on some of Reagan’s groundwork — was God’s party. Republican numbers in the rural South went through the roof, and the Democratic party’s still trying to play catch-up.

Not that the Dems have been afraid to similarly exploit the poor, but by no means in such massive quantities. I think the best (or should I say worst) they’ve done is pushing for state lotteries. The lottery is often called a “tax on stupidity,” but I think, more accurately, it’s a tax on ignorance. S.P. can come from any walk of life, but a high school education will pretty much tell you that playing the lottery ain’t such a good idea. Of course, the poor tend to have significantly lower education levels, so it’s no surprise where most of the lottery revenue comes from.

It’s all enough to make me wonder how much longer I’ll be able to keep up with the charade of voting. I can’t help thinking of the Elder Party’s “Cthulhu for President” campaign slogan: “Why Settle for the Lesser Evil?” Hey, you can’t say he isn’t honest about his intentions.

What? Already?

Wow, just when you think technical problems can’t get any worse, the technology surprises you. One month ago, my Palm m505 synchronizing functionality died — the infamous “Sudden USB Death Syndrome” flaw in the m505 line (which is why they were discontinued after six months). For the second time. I called Palm tech support — long distance, naturally — and, since it was (barely) still under warranty, they sent out a replacement unit.

That one died two weeks later. Two weeks. I figured that had to be some kind of record. I was now past my one-year warranty time, but I get a 90-day extension for the new unit. So back it goes, and I receive Palm number four.

Guess what? A week and a half. That’s as long as it lasted.

And now I’m pissed (I don’t know why it’s taken me this long). I don’t care how polite Palm’s tech support is. They’ve got a fundamentally flawed product, and would rather spend outrageous amounts of money repeatedly shipping me back the exact same flawed product than the unit where they actually fixed the problem.

It’s time for me to get on the phone again. And if they finally wise up and send me a m515, then I might — might — forgive them.

If not, Palm can go to hell.

Cult Coverage

As pretty much a First Amendment absolutist, I’m the last person to suggest the suppression of news, but when so-called legitimate news sources begin spouting a story straight out of the tabloids, I have to at least wonder about my commitment.

Why on Earth is the Raelian cult being given so much press? I’m all in favor of the proliferation of nontraditional religions — I do hold an (honorary) Doctorate from the Universal Life Church, after all — but it’s not the group itself that appears to merit all the fuss. It’s the claim, completely unsubstantiated, that they (or perhaps more accurately, the Rael-controlled Clonaid company) have cloned the first two human children, with three more on the way.

Were any legitimate scientific enterprise to make such a claim, they would at the least be expected to offer some sort of evidence to back up the assertion. Anything. The Raelians have not done so. All we have to go on is their word.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised — in large part, making objectively unverifiable claims is the province of religion. Regardless, the story should never have seen the light of day — what is the likelihood that a fringe group has somehow been able to bypass all of the technical obstacles to cloning a human being (not to mention the legal ones) where more established scientific outfits have not?

This story is getting press coverage for one reason, and one reason only: Religion.

On one hand you have a religious organization whose tenets seem patently ridiculous, and yet has inspired many seemingly intelligent followers. The most zealous of (mainstream) religious adherents tend to be the most vocal in their condemnations of anything that even remotely threatens their belief system (witness the Catholic League’s crusade against the Kevin Smith film Dogma, to pick a contemporary example). Those who are actually secure in their beliefs have no such need — I’ve happily debated religious and philosophical issues with several such folks.

On the other, you have a real hot-button issue with religious implications: Cloning. Were we to allow cloning, would we be “playing God”? While there are a few objective ethical issues here that haven’t been dealt with before (the alarming failure rate of cloning attempts, for example), most can be obviated by adopting the simple axiom that cloned people should be treated as any others — just as so-called “test tube babies” were a generation before. Other, thornier issues can be foreseen (should partial clones be created to develop tissue replacements for an existing person, for example), but at its base, we are dealing with a religious issue: Does a clone (or any other artificially generated person) have a soul? It’s a similar debate to those that have cropped up around any number of other issues: contraception, abortion, artificial insemination. Anything that deviates from the norm — particularly as regards reproduction — is automatically a “red flag” to many.

The current administration has announced that they will work toward a ban on human cloning, an announcement made to coincide with Wednesday’s “pro-life” vs. “pro-choice” protests in the nation’s capital; while I think an outright ban is excessive, I do understand that the issue is a complex one, with multiple, objectively justifiable viewpoints.

Put it all together, and a story that in and of itself doesn’t warrant a third-page mention in the Weekly World News gets AP coverage. Yes, we’re making a mountain out of much less than a molehill. The cult has no more credibility in its claims than I would were I to assert that my children were clones. But because of the inherently religious nature of the cloning debate, the idea that members of some other religion might have actually done it — no matter how infinitesimal the possibility — has set people on edge.

The real story isn’t the birth of “baby Eve,” but the visceral reaction mainstream America is having to the possibility. If anything, it shows the fundamental absence of religious tolerance in our society, in spite of protestations to the contrary. If my commitment to the second clause of the First Amendment seems to be faltering, my dedication to the first remains steadfast.

Camera Con

On Monday, Virginia’s House of Delegates killed House Bill 1696 (technically, they sent it back to the Militia, Police and Public Safety committee, a de facto termination), which would have allowed smaller jurisdictions to install and use red-light cameras. The bill laid out specific guidelines for the cameras’ use, the most significant of which was that the cameras could not be used primarily for revenue generation.

Alas, generating revenue is the only purpose for red-light cameras.

Every legitimate study (i.e., studies not conducted by the camera manufacturers or their proxies) has shown that the increase in the incidence of red-light running is directly related not to some presumed society-wide decline in ethical behavior, but to the near-universal shortening of yellow-light times across the past 30 years. There will always be (and always have been) scofflaws who run red lights regardless, and in an ideal world, these cameras would catch them. But in reality, most people are forced to run red lights because yellow light durations are insufficient to allow adequate stopping time.

Safe yellow light times are calculated based on a number of factors, most significantly the speed and volume of traffic. In almost all cases, the necessary times determined by sound engineering practices are undermined by both legislators and, of late, the engineers themselves, as represented by the Institute of Transportation Engineers (which has decided to stop recommending safety-oriented solutions in favor of enforcement-based ones). First, the times are frequently set at the absolute minimum legally allowable stopping time — regardless of the peculiarities of the intersection in question (a change in policy from decades past). Second, cameras are posted not at the most accident-prone intersections, but at the highest-volume ones — in other words, where they can get the most tickets. Third, times are no longer set by the actual, observable traffic speed, but by the posted speed limit. This is head-in-the-sand decision making (just like abstinence-only sex education): Sure, in theory, traffic is all traveling below the speed limit. But only a complete idiot would argue that this is the state of the real world.

The other thing the camera proponents fail to mention is the corresponding increase in the number of rear-ending accidents caused by red-light cameras. Normally safe drivers — justifiably fearful of getting a near-incontestable ticket — are slamming on the brakes to ensure they’re able to stop before entering the intersection, with obvious and predictable results. All you hear about is the decrease in red-light running accidents (with some egregiously shady statistical manipulation), deliberately avoiding any mention of the true safety cost.

At a time when D.C. Mayor Tony Williams and Police Chief Charles Ramsey are arguing for the installation of red-light cameras in the District — claiming all the time that it’s not about revenue — one has only to look at Bladensburg, Maryland, to see the truth. The moment the red-light cameras stopped catching enough red-light runners (March of 2002), the city�s five cameras were removed. But wait a minute, wasn’t that why the cameras were supposed to be there? If that were the case, they would have remained — it wasn’t like the danger of red-light running there had been eliminated; it had just been deterred by the cameras’ presence. But the truth is that they were failing to generate the revenue that had been projected, so out they came.

The Virginia House’s argument in killing the bill was that the cameras were an Orwellian invasion of privacy. That argument, though perhaps an easy sell, given the unprecedented amount of government intrusion into our private lives, doesn’t quite hold water. As a general rule, if the state has reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, it does have the right to use limited means to investigate that activity, ostensibly including the use of cameras (although arguments that the burden of proof must be shifted to the government, not the accused, are as valid as ever). But even were the argument true, the ethical course of action would have to be to dismantle all existing cameras, not just to prevent the installation of new ones. The House’s actions were correct, if not their reasoning, but as long as people keep having the wool pulled over their eyes, the threat remains — particularly given Virginia’s staggering budget deficit.

The solution is obvious to all except those with a vested financial interest in the cameras: Increase the yellow-light times to the engineer-determined safe values, not the politician-driven ones. You virtually eliminate the red-light violations without increasing rear-ending accidents. If the government really cared about safety, they’d do this immediately.

But hey, what are a few rear-ending deaths here and there? We could sure use the money.

Spam, Glurge, and Other Potholes on the Information Superhighway

I don’t think I’m going out on much of a limb here by saying I hate spam. Not the canned-meat variety (though thankfully, I haven’t had to taste it since college), but the sort that clogs my e-mail inbox to the point where I can’t find the real messages until they’ve been languishing in there for days.

It probably doesn’t help that my work e-mail address has remained unchanged for several years; it’s had plenty of time to be picked up by every spam list out there. Thankfully, my company’s IT department recently implemented a filtering program that, at last check, had caught more than 1,500 of my messages in the past month alone. It’s at the point where I don’t even check it anymore — not that I trust the system to be perfect (since a number of spam messages get through, I have to assume the occasional legitimate message gets caught), but it’s no longer worth my time to sort through even the subject lines. I’m willing to accept the loss.

Spam tends to come from two quarters. The first is the commercial mass-mailers. There’s not too much you can do about them, other than to try your best to filter it out. They’ll never stop, no matter what legal obstacles are thrown in their way (not that I think we should abandon legal avenues — at the least, it may result in some marginal recovery of damages). As the soulless scum on the bottom of the world’s boot, they have no concept of ethical, moral, or legal behavior. There are few people I would have no moral qualms about shooting on sight, but spammers fall most assuredly into that category.

The second is the forwarded message from well-meaning folks who are just too ignorant to know better. Not that they’re stupid, by any means — just innocent in the ways of the ’net-connected world. Everything from jokes, to urban legends, to virus warnings, to feel-good too-sappy-for-even-Hallmark chain letters, it just keeps coming. I’ve developed a reputation in my office as a sort of debunker of these e-mails, and over time, my coworkers have (for the most part) learned to pass things my way before accepting them as gospel. Usually, a quick check of the Urban Legends Reference Pages, Internet Scambusters™, or the Department of Energy’s own Hoaxbusters page will reveal the truth, at least about the stories and warnings (the jokes and sappy messages are a little harder to combat). Even easier is just understanding the simple rule that anything that says, “Forward this to everyone in your address book,” is a hoax. Anything.

I’ve chosen to go a step further by adopting the Boulder Pledge, originally crafted by Roger Ebert at the Conference on World Affairs at the University of Colorado (and first printed in the now-defunct Yahoo! Internet Life); I reprint it below. It’s just one small step, but by adhering to its principles absolutely — no exceptions whatsoever — I believe I’m doing at least something to stem the rising tide of “junk” e-mail, commercial or otherwise.

“Under no circumstances will I ever purchase anything offered to me as the result of an unsolicited email message. Nor will I forward chain letters, petitions, mass mailings, or virus warnings to large numbers of others. This is my contribution to the survival of the online community.”

Learn it. Live it.

Bring On the Bad Guys

What’s probably the most egregious example of television as mindless drivel (well, besides Fear Factor, obviously) is premiering its second season tomorrow night: American Idol. And alas, despite my repeated condemnations, I’ll probably be sitting glued to the television (at least I’ll be reclining on a nice new oversized couch, enjoying a dram of Laphroaig).

I didn’t watch a minute of the first season (I add that time qualifier since Pam did watch a couple of the later performances, though I left the room before the completion of a single song). I think it’s symptomatic of everything that’s wrong with pop music; we take the manufactured artificiality of the industry and, rather than sweeping it under the rug, revel in it (a trend that started with the overproduced boy-band craze of the late eighties and has gotten more blatant ever since). In fact, the only reason I know anything about Idol is that I produced an end-of-year party video that was a satire (i.e., “rip-off”) of the show, and had to sit through gobs of footage from the original.

I don’t give a rat’s ass about the contestants. Nothing against them personally, but it’s hard for me to develop a lot of empathy for a bunch of perfect little twenty-somethings. (Side note to my largely twenty-something coworkers: I don’t mean you; you’re all very nice, but you’re not perfect, the primary criterion here). No, there’s only one reason I’ll be tuning in: The delightfully malevolent Simon Cowell.

I don’t know what it is that makes me cheer for the bad guys, but I’m certainly not alone; Fox clearly understands this — their advertising wisely focuses on Simon, not the parade of Idol wannabes. Half the reason the original Survivor was so compelling was that we wanted to see what the Machiavellian Richard Hatch was going to do next; rather than booing his eventual victory, we cheered him. The climax of the original Star Wars trilogy wasn’t Luke Skywalker defeating his ebon nemesis, but Darth Vader annihilating the one man who still held power over him (turning Vader into a whiny teenager completely undermined the very qualities that made him appealing).

Great storytellers have long recognized that our villains are equally as compelling as our heroes. Some you hate, but can’t help but admire for their unadulterated maliciousness: Professor Moriarty, Goldfinger, the Terminator, Die Hard’s Hans Gruber, Unbreakable’s Mister Glass. Some blur the line between hero and villain: Charles Foster Kane, Michael Corleone, Vincent Vega, Clint Eastwood’s “Man With No Name.” Others you come right out and cheer for: Hannibal Lecter, Keyser Söze, the Gopher from Caddyshack. Hell, who saves everyone at the end of Spielberg’s Jurassic Park? The T-Rex.

I guess it’s just fun to imagine that we could all set aside our ethical barriers and walk around unencumbered by morality. Evil may not be a great place to live, but it’s sure fun to visit once in a while.

71 Candles Put Out a Lot of Illumination...

Tomorrow marks the 71st birthday of one of my favorite authors, Robert Anton Wilson. A bit of a cult hero in the online and counterculture communities, Wilson is best known (to the general public) as the co-author of The Illuminatus! Trilogy, which I am fond of quoting in bits and pieces. If ever there were a novel (and I really hesitate to label it as such, as it makes use of so much more than simple fiction) that epitomized the “sex, drugs, and rock & roll” philosophy of the ’60s, this is it. People either love it or hate it — there’s surprisingly little middle ground (Wilson joked that most reviewers claimed to have gotten to page 50 before being too offended to continue; he looked at page 50 but couldn’t find anything particularly significant about that page). I fall squarely into the former camp.

In addition to making regular speaking appearances (many of which have been released in audio or video format), he has written any number of books (both fiction and nonfiction — though again, the labels are misleading) based on or inspired by his best-known work. But no true sequel to the original had been produced until Wilson began work once again with original co-author Robert Shea on Bride of Illuminatus!, of which I’ve been able to read a few advance excerpts. If what I read was any indication, the book was able to capture much of the same wit, originality, and off-the-wall weirdness that made the original such a hit; I eagerly awaited its publication.

Unfortunately, Shea passed away in 1994, before the book was completed, and publication was halted. It’s likely that Wilson could complete the work himself — I believe most of it had been finished — but, to date, he hasn’t been inspired to do so. Also in the wings is book four of Wilson’s Historical Illuminatus Chronicles (long out of print, but being reissued this year), a series of historical fiction novels with a particularly off-kilter view of eighteenth-century world events (Masks of the Illuminati, a personal favorite, is sometimes grouped with this series, though it’s not directly connected to the others). Wilson has released the occasional nonfiction book (including his latest, the subversive TSOG: The Thing That Ate the Constitution), and is the subject of the new independent documentary film Maybe Logic, but hasn’t released any new fiction since his 1992 screenplay Reality Is What You Can Get Away With.

Wilson has recently suspended his speaking engagements due to ill health, and his unusually frail appearance of late (particularly since the death of his wife Arlen in 1999) leads me to the realization that he’s not going to be around forever. Wilson has long been an avid supporter of so-called “life extension” programs and technologies — “I will live forever or die trying,” as he wrote in The Illuminati Papers — but it appears that this time that effort may not be enough.

Naturally, I send my sincerest wishes for a speedy (and full) recovery. But I can’t help but feel a little guilty in my reasoning. Am I really wishing him good health for his own sake? Or am I just greedily hoping he’ll recover so he can finish those books I’ve been waiting for these past several years? In either case, I take some consolation in the belief that, whatever my motivation, the end result is the same.

Happy birthday, Bob, and thanks for helping me see the fnords.

The Hatfields and McCoys Were Amateurs...

Well, it seems I’ve entered into a good, old-fashioned feud. After Dan’s latest rant against Scotch, I’m determined to pick up a bottle of Laphroaig to offer a reasoned rebuttal. Or really just to spite him. In the meantime, I’ll get back to musing on the nominal topic of this weblog: Film — or, to remain accurate, movies.

If the mainstream film world is reluctant to accept video as a viable, artistic distribution medium, at least Sundance is opening doors to digital moviemakers. The 2003 Sundance Film Festival, opening today, includes an online festival (which actually opened December 16), showcasing a collection of short digital features (though they do make use of the misnomer “digital film”).

This is a fantastic opportunity not only to showcase the work of artists who would not otherwise have such high-profile distribution, but also to make (some of) the work of the Sundance Institute available to those of us who can’t afford tickets to Park City, let alone the festival itself. There are separate categories for animation (fifteen entries, including Odd Todd’s Laid Off), short subject (six entries), “new forms” (six entries, pieces that add interactivity to the mix), and the (noncompetitive) gallery (four offerings). There’s also a fifth category, “Short Film Showcase,” (six entries) which is a selection of short films from the festival proper (i.e., pieces not originally intended for online distribution). You can even offer your ratings of the entries in the animation and short subject categories for a special “audience award” (given the quality of most online rating systems, I’m glad they’re keeping the official judging off-line).

Unfortunately, the online festival is heavily dependent upon the inferior Windows Media Player (they claim you’ll need version 9, though it appears that version 8 works) as opposed to QuickTime, but you can’t have everything (you’ll also need Flash, and though they don’t mention it, at least one of the new forms pieces uses RealOne Player). I encourage everyone to take a look, and give your (at least moral) support to the burgeoning avenue of online indie distribution. I know I will: Someday I’ll have something up there.

And I’ll be sitting back, enjoying a fine Scotch while watching.

3 “classic” comments visible on the new comments page

“Classic” reader comments:


William R. Coughlan · Thu, Jan 16th 2003, at 10:55AM

Obviously, since I mentioned it in the main post, I'm a fan of Odd Todd's Laid Off (actually, all three of his larger pieces are available at the festival), but another early standout (for me) is Bumble Beeing. I haven't had a chance to see more than a few of the entries, though, so I'll hold off on a dedicated commentary until a bit later.

William R. Coughlan · Thu, Jan 16th 2003, at 1:22PM

One thing I neglected to mention is that the winning screenwriter and director for the new Project Greenlight will be announced at Sundance on Saturday.

Dan-o · Fri, Jan 17th 2003, at 12:43AM

Hope you're enjoying the soggy ashes, Big Brother. Enjoying the picture-show commentary, though.

I’ve Become “The Man”

I just realized that I’m entering the ranks of management.

For the longest time, I’ve railed against the idea of becoming a manager. For one thing, it’s hard to maintain the rather entertaining us-versus-them banter when you’re one of “them.” But more significantly, it seems that once you enter management, you cease to produce. It’d be one thing to be something along the lines of an “art director,” where you’re still making significant creative contributions, but it seems that of all my creative friends who’ve taken the leap upward have given up the ability to create work of their own. And for artists, that’s a pretty significant sacrifice.

For some of those friends, it’s worked out pretty well; they’ve developed new skills and bid farewell to their old lives (and the pay is usually better). For others, it’s often been a death sentence, at least from a career fulfillment standpoint. Across the past several years, I’ve been largely removed from the hierarchical structure of my department, by virtue of the unique nature of my work; even so, I’ve always been careful to avoid being labeled a “manager.”

But things have changed around here of late. The traditional hierarchical structure is gone — everybody (almost 40 of us) answers immediately to the director of the department. “Managers” fulfill specific roles to help facilitate the operations of the department, be it scheduling, staff management, technology, process improvement, what have you. I’ve been moved from a cubicle to an office — less due to my own position than to secure all of the equipment I work with. And I’m working with a series of “interns,” designers who for a stretch work exclusively on video projects. Two reasons for that last: One, I’ve got more work than I can do myself, and two, I want to build up a cadré of folks who can serve as backups in the future.

It’s taken a while to get used to having someone I can effectively tell what to do. I know that doing a lot of the “grunt work” is necessary for teaching purposes, but it’s tough to tell someone to do work that, to a large degree, I just don’t want to do myself. I think it’s a little easier not having the intern directly responsible to me, though — I’ve historically been more comfortable (and confident) directing projects rather than people (though I’m getting better at the latter through experience).

My boss and I have been working to figure out a new title for my position. Theoretically, Video Producer would work just fine, but we’re concerned about the “video = amateur” stigma in the corporate world (and beyond, but we’re limiting our focus here). We briefly toyed with Cinéaste, but figured it was a little too esoteric (we did print it on my director’s chair, though), finally settling on just Producer for now. As of April first, however (the start of the new fiscal year), she wants to try to fit “Manager” in there somewhere, as a more accurate reflection of the impact of my role. And as I look at it objectively, that’s what I’m doing: I may not be officially supervising others, but I am effectively doing so, at least in a lot of respects.

I think it’s going to take a little more getting used to.

Distilled Memories

Those of you who read Dan’s little blatherings might understand why I — as an avid Scotch man — might be a little upset. I can’t claim to be nearly the tippler he is (not in some years, anyway), but I see no cause for denigrating the fine whiskey of the Scottish highlands and islands.

Scotch has always been the unofficial Coughlan family drink (at least in the hibernal months), but I must admit it took me some time to develop a real taste for it. Even then, I had never thought my palate refined enough to appreciate the glory of a single-malt variety, as (at the time) I most frequently mixed it with soda (one of the first magic coin tricks I learned was called “Scotch and Soda,” but I digress). Imagine my surprise when, upon finally partaking of the purer stuff (at the Kennedy Center Hors d’Oevrerie), its superiority was immediately palpable. I still drink blends more often than not (my pocketbook not allowing otherwise); of those I’m partial to Justerini & Brooks (being both a preferred family blend and the answer to a Trivial Pursuit question that won me a game a while back).

Still, when time and finances permit, I’ll latch onto a nice, mid-range single malt. It’s often said that Glenlivet is the ideal Scotch (though I believe Glenmorangie is the more popular single malt in Scotland proper), but my personal favorite is Talisker, which hails from the only distillery on the Isle of Skye. It’s got a distinctive, smoky peat flavor that I find singularly appealing (though some of my compotators disagree). It’s usually stocked at most finer drinking establishments, though far scarcer on liquor store shelves. I also enjoy Oban, which is also part of UDV’s “Classic Malts” family (along with Cragganmore, Dalwhinnie, Glenkinchie, and Lagavulin). At present I’m enjoying a nice Glenfiddich I received as a gift, which I disembogue from a remarkable crystal decanter (also a gift).

One of my favorite Scotch stories took place in a little tavern in Annapolis, where a group of my compatriots was sampling the single malts. One friend, whom I’ll call David (that being his name), took a fancy to the bottle placed highest on the shelf, Macallen 25, and immediately ordered a glass. An unexpected thirty-five dollars later — for just the one drink — he decided not to run a tab.

Whoops! Hadn’t Planned on That...

It’s hilarious watching the Bush brain trust scramble around now that their well-laid plans have gone awry. Or at least it would be if it weren’t so damned scary.

As was recently made public, the administration (through not-quite-usual decision-making channels) made it a policy to take out Saddam Hussein immediately after the September 11 attacks. No connection between the attacks and the Iraqi dictator had been established, but the attacks were, in effect, to be used as a pretext for such action. Unfortunately, no direct connection could be credibly established between the two. So that excuse fell by the wayside. The next plan was to continue building Saddam up as a supervillain, playing up the threats of “weapons of mass destruction” to the point where ordinary Americans would fully support a new war in Iraq. So far, so good — the S.P. seemed to be buying it hook, line, and sinker (the rest of the free world was apparently not quite so gullible, but hey, one problem at a time).

And then, uh oh! North Korea turns out to be much more of a threat than anyone anticipated. Iraq might be developing nuclear arms? North Korea is. Iraq is making it difficult for the U.N. arms inspectors? North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is refusing all overtures at negotiation. Saddam is posturing, almost daring the U.S. to attack? North Korea threatens World War III. Whaddaya know? We’ve actually got a real supervillain to contend with. (Gee, do you think Bush calling them part of the “axis of evil” might have pissed them off just a little bit?)

But, of course, we’ve already committed to Saddam as our big supervillain. We’ve spent the last year building him up as the biggest threat to world stability. We don’t have time to try to convince the S.P. that North Korea’s the new bad guy, that Kim Jong Il’s the real threat. Never mind Lex Luthor — we’re taking on Mr. Mxyzptlk here.

All the administration can do is scramble around and try to negotiate, in a dramatic reversal of Bush’s prior absolutist stance against the “axis.” In reality, of course, this is a good thing — nobody really wants a war with the potential for nuclear confrontation. It just comes across as slightly ridiculous, even more so in light of the newest attempts to blame the Clinton administration for this crisis — given Bush’s spiteful cessation of any communication established in the 1994 “Agreed Framework” negotiations. Of course, Colin Powell (who frequently seems like the only one with a brain in the entire outfit) had publicly praised the agreement, but whoops, we need a scapegoat now, so we’re running back to the old standby.

Idiocy Knows No (Political) Bounds

I hereby renounce my earlier resolution to stay away from political discussion. There’s just too much going on for me to keep my big fat mouth shut.

Sometimes the noblest of intentions can go horribly wrong. Syndicated columnist Arianna Huffington has long crusaded against the evils of gas-guzzling SUVs, with specific jabs at both the Detroit auto industry and the Bush administration’s policies. Okay, fair enough — I can see her point. Detroit is way behind on the development of hybrid gas-electric vehicles, and the current administration is by no means a friend of the environment.

(I have to put in a disclaimer here: I drive an SUV. Not one of the giant behemoths crowding our streets, but a so-called “mini-SUV,” a Honda CR-V. A couple of reasons for this. One, with two small kids, I needed something big enough to carry the whole family on our frequent driving trips to visit family; two, I could no longer see around all of the minivans and SUVs enough to drive safely on my daily commute into Washington. It’d be nice if people would all decide to stop driving them, and I wouldn’t have to join them, but I’m not willing to risk my own safety for that little crusade.)

Ms. Huffington also shares my disdain for the ONDCP’s drugs-supporting-terrorism ad campaign. Unfortunately, in a shockingly feeble-minded attempt to fight back against such stupidity, she decided to sink to their level, making the exact same claims, only substituting “SUVs” for “drugs” in the equation. She launched The Detroit Project, a group dedicated to running the same kinds of ads the Bush administration is running. Just as insipid, just as filled with specious logic. That the ads are intended as “parody” is made clear in Huffington’s own statements, but is less so in the ads themselves; the satirical intent would be easier to swallow were there not such a glaring agenda item in the forefront.

Her argument is that there is a more direct link between oil purchases and terrorism funding than between drug purchases and such monies. Maybe so, but by that logic, any use of foreign oil is supporting terrorism (an argument ONDCP is all too happy to make). Should we not target commercial drivers, who use far more gasoline than SUV drivers? One of the ads even makes the implicit statement that the gas mileage is irrelevant — SUVs are just plain evil. By producing and running (or attempting to run, as many stations won’t air them) these ads — and, as does ONDCP, flagrantly exploiting Americans’ genuine hurt at the terrorist attacks — Huffington is, in a way, successful in her stated intentions.

She is showing us the true evil.

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William R. Coughlan · Fri, Jan 10th 2003, at 12:58PM

I hereby inaugurate yet another feature of Prometheus Unleashed: Reader commentary. Let me know what you think!

Director’s Sales Manager’s Cut

The other night I watched the “Special Extended DVD Edition” of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, and I must say that it’s one of the more memorable “alternate versions” I’ve seen in a long time. Director Peter Jackson has been very deliberate in stating that this is not a “Director’s Cut” of the film, but just a different version. I personally believe that it is superior to the theatrical release, but it is, perhaps, less “mainstream-compatible,” clocking in at three and a half hours.

We’re seeing the words Director’s Cut thrown around an awful lot of late. Theoretically, it means that the studio forced cuts on the director for the theatrical version, the implication being that those cuts impaired the artistic vision of the director — resulting in an inferior film — and only now are you being given the chance to see the real movie. I have two problems with this.

First, in a lot of cases, “studio-mandated” cuts significantly improve a film. As a content creator myself, I know full well the overwhelming attachment to every little piece of footage shot. I recently produced a video presentation for a firmwide meeting, and we had a hard-and-fast limit of 10 minutes (which I interpreted to mean we could get away with 12, but no more). Sure enough, my absolute-minimum cut came in at 18 minutes; there was no way I could cut anything more. But I did. And the final piece ended up being infinitely better for it. Not only was the fat cut, but anything even approaching fat was out of there as well. Studio heads may be suits, but they’re suits who (at least theoretically) know audiences.

Second, what’s billed as a Director’s Cut is often nothing of the sort — it’s just a way of repackaging the film with cut footage spliced back into the picture. In most cases, it’s not the director initiating this, it’s the very studio that’s vilified for making the cuts in the first place. The Lethal Weapon films were rereleased (on video) as Director’s Cuts, but the extent of director Richard Donner’s involvement is questionable. Most notably (and see my upcoming critique in the next Inkblots), Blade Runner was released theatrically as a Director’s Cut, but while it included some of the features of director Ridley Scott’s version, it was actually derived from a studio restoration project — the actual already-in-progress Director’s Cut was pulled from Scott in favor of this version (rumors persist about Scott’s cut seeing the light of day in a future DVD release).

Yes, some films’ final cuts are pulled from directors by studio executives. And frequently, those studio cuts are detrimental to the artistic content of the film. Eyes Wide Shut was substantially edited after Stanley Kubrick’s death to achieve an R rating in the United States (the full version of the film was released in Europe). Francis Ford Coppola didn’t have time to finish The Godfather Part III before its theatrical release; he did continue afterward to reedit it for the video release. But such forcible reediting is not universally the case — witness how George Lucas can’t stop tinkering with his films (including American Graffiti, which had a minor digital makeover), with debatable degrees of “improvement.”

Still, it’s kind of nice when a director presents a different version of a film as just that — different. Not necessarily better or worse, but different. Jackson did it with Fellowship, James Cameron did it with Aliens, The Abyss and Terminator 2: Judgment Day. It doesn’t have to be called a Director’s Cut to be worth seeing, as evidenced by the success of all of those films on DVD. I’d rather the studios tell the truth about what it is and get actual director involvement than call it what it’s not and lose that participation.

American Emperor

A rather curious synchronicity occurs today. The anniversary of the birth of one American icon, and that of the death of another.

The former has certainly received plenty of attention — releasing a number-one single a quarter-century after your death will do that — but the latter is quite a bit more obscure.

Today marks the 123rd anniversary of the demise of Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico (betcha never knew we had an actual, honest-to-goodness monarch).

Joshua Norton was a real estate investor who lost his fortune — and his mind — in the mid-nineteenth century. On September 17, 1859, he declared himself Emperor. Now, in most cases, the story — were it ever told at all — would have ended right there. What makes this tale live on, though, is that the city of San Francisco chose to recognize him as Emperor. He made a series of proclamations across the remainder of his life (including, most notably, that what would become the Golden Gate Bridge be built) and turned into a local celebrity; he even had his own currency.

After his death, between 10,000 and 30,000 people showed up for his funeral. His name has posthumously been attached to everything from motels to rockabilly bands to software packages to record labels. Not bad for a crackpot.

Le Roi Est Mort.

Steve Jobs’s “Keynote” Keynote

Well, another Macworld, another Keynote speech by Steve Jobs. And as much of an Apple enthusiast as I am, I'm having a tough time finding anything to crow about this time around (with one notable exception).

Good news on the conversion of the Mac user base to OS X. It really is a much more intuitive, easy-to-use interface experience, but it does take some getting used to. But with Jaguar, they've got most of the bumps ironed out — not to mention that most apps are now running under X. And with that educator discount for Jaguar (free, that is), maybe my folks will be able to upgrade (Mom’s a teacher).

The updates to the newly-dubbed “iLife” suite — iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, and iDVD — are interesting, but nothing all that exciting for professionals (although at least they’re not charging for any except iDVD, which they do already).

Final Cut Express might be nice as a backup editing package for an assistant, but I understand that it doesn’t have the offline editing capability I need for working on a laptop. Keynote looks to be a promising jab at Microsoft’s PowerPoint — and I certainly welcome that — but it’s a little early to start predicting anything except that Microsoft ain’t gonna be too happy. We’ll have to see how Safari does, but again, I don’t (yet) see it as a threat to Explorer (nice plug for your other company’s Finding Nemo, Steve). I’d use it over Microsoft’s offering for the pop-up-blocking feature alone (which it shares with my browser of choice, Mozilla), but it is still Beta software; it doesn’t display this page properly, for example.

There was notably no mention of last week’s problematic update to iCal (my entire calendar got corrupted, and I had to restore from a Palm backup card), which was replaced three days later with yet another version. And iSync’s still a little clunky with the Palm.

All in all, the whole presentation was a little lackluster. By no means enough to sink Apple, but nothing that’s going to send the stock price soaring, either.

The one saving grace is the new new 17-inch PowerBook. Wow, is that nice. 1440x900 screen. GeForce 4 Go graphics processor. Airport Extreme. FireWire 800. Integrated Bluetooth. SuperDrive. Fiber-optic backlit keyboard with ambient light sensor. I’m drooling just thinking about it. The only downside to this is that I can’t afford one.

Yet.

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William R. Coughlan · Fri, Jan 10th 2003, at 2:25PM

Well, whaddaya know? Turns out it wasn't Safari that was having a problem with this page, it was the code. Should be fixed now.

Yet Another Reason To Hate Wal-Mart

Time to rail against dishonest advertising again — though thankfully no politics this time around. The behemoth that is Wal-Mart is trying to promote its consumer electronics department, and is running an ad featuring two Wal-Mart Youth register jockeys proclaiming Wal-Mart as the best place to go for DVDs.

Please. Wal-Mart is the worst thing ever to happen to DVDs (not to mention books, music, and a whole lot else).

With most new technologies, there are the early adopters, and those who choose to wait until it becomes more widely accepted (nothing wrong with either position, mind you). In the case of DVDs, as with Laserdiscs before them, it was the film aficionados who jumped on early.

DVDs were a boon for movie lovers — here was a medium which not only presented films in the highest quality possible (in the pre-HD era), but also pulled back the curtain and gave us a glimpse behind the scenes, with extras like director commentaries, production illustrations, and making-of documentaries. Not every disc had all of these features (particularly the early ones), but most important, they all had one thing in common: They presented the movie in the original theatrical aspect ratio. Most of them, anticipating the advent of widescreen televisions, even encoded the picture anamorphically, allowing even greater image resolution on those newer sets (while sacrificing nothing on the older models).

Everything was hunky-dory for us early adopters. But then DVD started to catch on more widely. Great, right? Well, that’s what I thought. And then the mass retailers — Wal-Mart most prominent among them — started carrying more and more titles on DVD as opposed to VHS. Unfortunately, Wal-Mart’s clientele tends toward the less... sophisticated. The “S.P.,” as I like to call them (after the appellation in Al Franken’s fantastic book Why Not Me?). And, of course, these folks couldn’t understand why their movies had black bars at the top and bottom. No matter how many times it was explained to them that they were necessary to preserve the original rectangular movie image on their squarish televisions (as opposed to chopping off up to half of the image, the usual alternative on VHS transfers), they couldn’t figure it out. Something had to be wrong with the disc.

My initial reaction is, “Well, you’re just too stupid for DVD,” but hey, to each his own. On a few titles (especially the ones the S.P. were most likely to want), the studios also offered a “pan and scan” version, now often called “full frame” (I suppose “pan and scan,” while more accurate, was considered both too negative and too technical). That does require remastering the disc, but it apparently keeps the S.P. happy (until they buy new televisions three years down the road, and we have to explain why now they’ve got bars on the sides of the screen all the time).

Normally, I’d figure it wasn’t my problem; Cletus can sit at home and watch his “full frame” movie and I’ll just sit back and mock him quietly. But then Wal-Mart decided to throw its weight around, saying they won’t carry any discs that aren’t in “full frame” format. This puts the studios — who can’t afford to lose Wal-Mart’s retail space — in the position of having to decide whether it’s worth the time (i.e., money) to do two separate versions. On some big sellers (say, Spider-Man, or The Lord of the Rings), they'll go ahead and do it. Even Lucasfilm decided to release Episode II in both formats (although they at least had the balls to point out on their website — too subtly for the S.P., of course — how only an idiot would want the full frame version). But for most discs, it’s coming down to one or the other.

And in more and more cases, the S.P. are succeeding in bringing things down to the lowest common denominator. So-called “family” movies are already becoming more prevalent in “full frame.” Basically, that means they’ll be obsolete in just a few years — as soon as widescreen televisions become the standard (which is a lot sooner than the decade-off HD switchover). I don’t know about you, but even if I weren’t obsessive about preserving the director’s (and cinematographer’s) artistic composition, I’d still be pretty damn pissed about this planned obsolescence.

Wal-Mart’s gonna do what they’re gonna do. Their whole business model is built on the S.P. But man, I’d pay real money if they’d shut the hell up.

How’s This for an Obscure Holiday Celebration?

A little-known holiday falls upon January 5 in the common calendar — I made reference to it a couple of weeks back. This Sunday is, of course, Mungday. The meaning and origins not being readily apparent, I will attempt to offer some explanation. This is not a day to celebrate the mung bean, nor is it a day upon which to remember the hacker tradition of “munging” (though that certainly merits a chuckle). No, Mungday is a day to honor the ancient Chinese sage and Discordian apostle Hung Mung, Patron of the Season of Chaos, inventor of the Sacred Chao, the key to Illumination.

If you haven’t read the Principia Discordia, this won’t make a whole lot of sense to you. Although come to think of it, reading the Principia won’t help much either.

Fnord.

In With The New...

New Year’s Eve is a little different when you’ve got kids. For the first couple of years, Pam and I would drop our daughter off with my folks and head out with the younger set. I think one year we even brought her along to Dan’s decidedly non-baby-proof Baltimore rowhouse for his annual shindig. But with two of them now, it’s becoming a little more complicated. Not that my parents don’t offer to watch the kids plenty — we are singularly blessed in that regard — but it just seems like we’ve moved into a different stage in our lives. A friend of mine was arranging a $70-a-head hotel ballroom party. A few years ago, I’d have thought, “Great!” But now all I can keep thinking about is how we’d have to get up to pick up the girls in the morning, and deal with parking (the suburbs not being Metro-accessible), and hotel room costs... and would we really have $140 worth of fun?

Last year we really didn’t do anything, and that may have been overdoing (or rather underdoing) it. So this year we decided to invite a few couples — and their kids — over to our house for the evening. The kids could play, the adults could socialize, and while not a raucous time, it’d at least be something more rewarding than sitting in front of the television watching Dick Clark dessicate. (Our holiday season luck continued, and we had a few cancellations, but not enough to scuttle our plans.) All in all, it went well; much more sedate than a real party, but certainly entertaining. Our oldest even managed to stay up to see the big ball drop — which she found a little anticlimactic for the latest she’d ever been up.

Part of me misses the old days, but I’m glad we’ve been able to adapt.

Apologies to Bill Amend’s Foxtrot, but my New Year’s Resolution is also most assuredly 1920x1200. Not likely to happen, but it’s all about the aspiration, right?

Happy New Year, everybody.