Can I Get an iPhone?

You cannot possibly understand how much I’m dying inside, how desperately anxious I am for Steve Jobs’ keynote address at MacWorld tomorrow. I’ve always enjoyed the sense of anticipation for these, but this time it’s almost more than I can bear. Why? I don’t really know.

Part of it is that I can afford to — and expect to — purchase whatever gadgets he happens to announce. But mostly I think it’s because I’ve just become aware how handy it would be to have a truly Mac-oriented phone/information manager. And wouldn’t you know it? That’s what he’s expected to unveil. I have my fingers crossed that:

He will indeed announce such a device;
The device will actually do much, much more (approaching a mini-computer); and
The device won’t be exorbitantly expensive (relatively speaking).

Of course, I won’t actually be able to pay attention to Jobs’ speech. I have an appointment with a customer, and then have to make the company Costco trip. This just makes things all the more painful!

Artist’s concept (there’s almost no chance this image is genuine):

Movie Preview: The Golden Compass

There’s a film coming next winter — it’s set to open on December 7th — that’s sure to excite many of my friends as much (or more than) the next Harry Potter movie. Philip Pullman‘s His Dark Materials trilogy is finally being turned into a major studio production, and the stills from first film have been released. Here are ten of them.

These are from The Golden Compass (which is known as Northern Lights in the U.K.). The second part is The Subtle Knife and the third is The Amber Spyglass.

This must be near the beginning of the film: Lyra roaming Oxford.

Daniel Craig, the latest James Bond, is Lord Asriel.

Nicole Kidman should make an excellent Mrs. Coulter.

Sam Elliott is Lee Scoresby. “Sometimes there’s a man…”

Coulter meets Lyra. Run, Lyra, run!

Scoresby to the rescue.

Lyra with the titular golden compass.

No Iorek yet (I can’t wait) and no daemons. Digital effects take longer to produce, of course, so we probably won’t see examples of those until the summer at least. Still, I’m heartened by these stills. Kris and I are excited by what we see.

Back to the Future

Kris has been pestering me for two-and-a-half years to hook up the VCR. When we moved from Canby to Oak Grove, we bought a new television. For some reason, the VCR didn’t get reconnected. (That reason is probably related to Netflix.)

Although we watch a lot of films on DVD, we still have many, many videotapes. It doesn’t make any sense to replace most of these, and yet without the VCR hooked up, they’re worthless. I’ve been buying films on DVD when we want to watch them. This is dumb.

Finally, Kris had enough. Top on my list of New Years chores was “hook up the VCR”. I was dreading it. I’m not an A/V guy. (That’s Jeff.) I figured it would take me half an hour and much cursing to get things to work.

Imagine my surprise when the process actually took all of thirty seconds. I’d already done most of the work at some previous time. (Why hadn’t I finished it?) All I needed to do was plug things in and test a tape. It worked like a charm.

Kris spent her New Years Day watching videos: The Joy Luck Club, Elizabeth, Two Girls and a Sailor. (The latter is an old June Allyson flick featuring a song that Kris likes to bellow from time-to-time: “The Young Man With a Horn”.) I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before she digs out Anne of Green Gables. I’m glad to have done this, though — it makes her happy.

And meanwhile I can go downstairs to play Wii bowling. I’m regularly scoring 200+ now and have a rank of “pro”. (My high score is 257.) I can get about seven strikes per game, but I can’t string together any more than that. I’m actually very curious to bowl for real this Saturday. My normal score is ~155. Will my weeks of Wii bowling help my score or hinder it? Stay tuned. (And for some real fun, watch this video of a perfect game in Wii bowling.)

Bonus: Colbert vs. Pelosi in Wii boxing.

Okay. One more:

Meatball’s Big Adventure

It hasn’t taken Max long to become my favorite cat at home. He’s lovable: he’s soft, he’s cuddly, he’s playful, he’s quick to purr. He’s quick, intelligent, ornery, and non-aggressive. Simon and Nemo are warming to him, though they’re both worried he wants to play a little too much. Even Toto sometimes forgets to growl or hiss at him.

The only real trouble is that Max is lost outside. When he lived at Custom Box he was outside most of the time, but he spent that time with his brother (and their chicken friend). I’ve begun to let him outside here for supervised exploring, but he seems confused. “This isn’t the place I’m used to,” he seems to say, and he bolts to the bushes.

On Saturday morning, Max had an adventure.

“You should take Meatball outside,” Kris told me. I was laying in bed. “His brothers are outside, and he’s complaining about the injustice.”

I pulled on my pajamas and called Max to the door. He bolted outside, exhilarated by the cold air on his fur. He ran up to Simon and bumped noses. Then, as Simon sniffed the discarded Christmas tree, Max ventured into the trees and bushes at the south edge of the property. I stood back, watching him. He sniffed everything. Eventually he made his way to the street and began to cross it.

“No no, Meatball. Guess again,” I said. I picked him up and carried him back to the lawn. He returned to the shrubs.

He was intrigued by the neighbors’ yard, but annoyed at the chain-link fence that separates the spaces. No matter. He used his cat-like reflexes to leap onto the fence and then drop to the other side.

“You meatball,” I said. He wandered from tree to rock to bush to camper, sniffing everything. Then I heard the dogs barking.

The neighbor dogs are friendly enough, but they’re dogs. If they see a strange cat, their dog-minds turn to sport. They mean no harm. They’re just dogs. “Max,” I called softly. “Max. Come here. Come here, Meatball.” He ignored me, as cats are wont to do.

I went to get Kris. “I need your help,” I said. “Meatball’s in the neighbors’ yard.” She grabbed their Christmas basket and we walked next door. The dogs — Jasmine and Larry and Charlie — came to greet us. We looked around, but we couldn’t see any sign of Max.

We spent a few minutes visiting with Tammy. We gave her the gift basket. She gave us some rum cake. Then we mentioned that we had a new cat, a new cat that was currently someplace in her yard. She laughed and called the dogs inside. We went out to find our boy.

I checked under the camper. Kris checked in the arborvitae hedge. “Max,” I called, “Maxie!” Kris called for him, too: “Meatball. Come here, Meatball!” He was nowhere to be found.

“I wonder where he could be,” I said. “Maybe he went back over.”

Just then Kris spotted him. “There he is,” she said, pointing into the neighbors’ magnolia. “What a meatball.” He was as high as he could get — 20-25 feet off the ground — out on a limb.

“I’m too old for this,” I said, when I realized what I had to do. Magnolias aren’t great climbing trees, not even grand old magnolias like this one. But I did my best. I climbed about halfway to Max, and then tried to coax him to me. He understood my intention, but, quite frankly, didn’t find “down” as easy as he had found “up”. It probably took him ten minutes to scrabble down five feet to where I could reach him.

I steeled my mind (as one must do in these situations). “Pain doesn’t matter,” I told myself. “Whatever he does, no matter how much he scratches, it’s most important to get ahold of him.” I grabbed him and pulled. He squirmed and clawed, but I managed to pull him to my chest and soothe him. Then I realized there was no way for me to descend, especially while holding a cat. “Here,” I said, and I dropped Max onto a large branch below me. From there, Kris was able to grab him.

I ran back to our yard while Kris carried Meatball to the fence. She dropped him into the underbrush, and he ran for the mudroom door. “At least he knows where home is,” I said.

Max spent the rest of the day inside, cuddling with Mom and Dad.

The Year I Became a Professional Blogger

It’s been an unusual year for me. Instead of just dreaming, I’ve taken action. I’ve pursued something I love — writing — and I’ve made money at it. This is the year I became a professional blogger.

On the 4th of March, I took the first steps to “monetizing” my web sites. Since then, I have earned $9000 from blogging. In December alone, I earned $2327. These numbers probably shock some of you. They shock me. I had no idea that it was possible to make money from something I loved so much, and yet it’s not only possible to earn money from this, it’s likely that I could make this my full-time job.

I know that foldedspace suffered for several months, but I hope you all understand why I opted to pursue other priorities. I’ve made an effort to return to my old posting habits recently. I’m not back to my old pace yet, but I probably won’t ever return to that until I make the leap to full-time blogger. (Well, I already work full-time hours at this, but most of those are at night and on weekends. Here it is, New Years Eve, and I’ve already written three entries for the coming week.)

In past years, I’ve written capsule summaries of what has come before (2002, 2003). My life was full of statistics: books I’d read, movies I’d seen, and music I’d heard. I still generated plenty of stats to track my progress this year — could I do anything else? — but my focus shifted in a big way. Still, here are some comparitive numbers:

	2002	2003	2006
Books read	56	43	~40
Mariners games	4	0	0
Expensive toy	iBook	Gamecube	Wii
Photography expense	<$100	>$1000	$0!
Weight Dec. 31st	198	199	195
Weblog entries	203	329	214*
Weblog comments	232	2401	1754*

* These numbers are for foldedspace only. The numbers for all my active weblogs (some of which are more active than others):

Animal Intelligence: 30 posts, 23 comments
Get Rich Slowly: 670 posts, 4279 comments
Four Color Comics: 166 posts, 85 comments
Foldedspace: 214 posts, 1754 comments
Total: 1080 posts, 6141 comments

This has been a wonderful year. I feel fulfilled for the first time in ages. My Depression has receded to a background buzz. I attribute this to my newfound purpose in life, and to the assistance of Lauren Muney, my wellness coach. Lauren helped me to confront my self-destructive behavior, and to see that I could make smart choices. The change has been remarkable.

2006 hasn’t been without regrets, however. Kris and I spent less time with friends than in past years, and I feel the lack of companionship keenly. I’ll work to change this in 2007. Also, I feel like the house and yard are beginning ot show ragged edges. I want to spend a little more time maintaining the place. (I always feel this way in winter, though.)

Thanks to all of you who have stuck with foldedspace through the years. I know it’s probably been hard — the content here varies widely depending on my current obsession and my mood. Believe me, though, that it’s readers this worth the effort.

Happy new year and best wishes for 2007.

Rating the Bond Films: The Connery Era

After watching — and loving — Casino Royale, I’ve started a bit of James Bond kick. I’ve never read the novels before, so I’ve been picking them up in order. I’m also going to watch the entire film series in order via Netflix. I have fond memories of many Bond films, but I’m afraid that they don’t always live up to these remembrances upon re-watching.

The Bond films conventiently divide into three seven-film clusters. I plan to review each group in turn. Here are my evaluations of the Sean Connery-era Bond flicks.

Dr. No (1962) – Sean Connery [7.2 on IMDb] – B- from me
A passable entry, though a little schizophrenic. It’s nice to see the early incarnation of Bond. The trappings of the late-fifties and early-sixties seem as if they’re from another world. Some of the stuff at the beginning of the film is just absurd. I like Dr. No as a villain, though, and like his strange lair. This film is much more low-key and less gadget-oriented than the series becomes later.

From Russia With Love (1963) – Sean Connery [7.4] – A
Excellent. This is a wonderful spy film, and one of the best Bonds. It steers clear of most of the Bond conventions. There are few witticisms. There’s no secret lair. There’s real cloak-and-dagger stuff here instead of crazy superspy mumbo-jumbo. I watched this three weeks ago, and already want to watch it again (if only to get the bad taste of Goldfinger and You Only Live Twice out of my head). This film works well on its own, without any other knowledge of the Bond universe.

Goldfinger (1964) – Sean Connery [7.8] – C-
Vastly overrated. This is the first Bond film to fit the mold we’ve come to know as typical. The first half shows glimmers of promise, but the last half is obscenely stupid. Why has Goldfinger built an elaborate scale model of Fort Knox in his house? Simply for a short demonstration of his plan? How did the good guys get set in place outside Fort Knox without being subjected to the nerve gas? Who knows? This is the first of the films with a prolonged climactic battle scene between the forces of good and the forces of evil. These scenes, which become a staple of the series, suck. Plain and simple: they suck.

Thunderball (1965) – Sean Connery [6.9] – C+
This is a mixed bag. It has some great elements — strong female characters, a good villain with whom Bond has close contact in social situations while struggling to defeat behind the scenes, a prolonged underwater battle scene — but it has some clunkers too — hilariously bad background visuals during the climactic boat battle, a prolonged underwater battle scene (yes, it’s both good and bad), and a plot that doesn’t always make sense. The soundtrack is excellent.

You Only Live Twice (1967) – Sean Connery [6.9] – D
This film is pretty bad, especially in its last half. Like From Russia With Love, it opens with a fake Bond death. The first act features some interesting cinematography and intriguing ideas, but it quickly descends into absurdity. Things just don’t make sense. They occur for no other reason than to spur the plot along. Characters possess knowledge that they couldn’t possibly have. The final battle scene in the caldera of a volcano is overlong and dumb. The screenplay is by Roald Dahl, but that doesn’t matter. This film is not very good.

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) – George Lazenby [6.9] – B
What an interesting trip. This is unlike any other Bond film I’ve ever seen. Bond doesn’t operate on any official secret service business (thus making the title a misnomer). He falls in love and gets married. The first half of the film unfolds at desultory pace, more like a romantic drama than an action-adventure movie. But things pick up at the end with a couple of exhilarating set pieces. The soundtrack is fantastic, almost psychedelic at times. Diana Rigg is the best Bond girl yet — smart and beautiful. Unfortunately Lazenby is a lousy Bond and, at times, a lousy actor. The film has other weaknesses, too, but they don’t detract too much.

Diamonds Are Forever (1971) – Sean Connery [6.7] – C
This film has its moments — Bond scaling the sheer surface of a building, his exceptional taste in wine, Blofeld’s cat confronting its double (Kris says this was the only good moment) — but it’s undone by sheer stupidity — Bambi and Thumper, Bond built into a pipeline, Bond jumping into a lunar probe, bad actresses, and yet another stupid mass-fight ending. I’ve probably scene Diamonds more often than any other Bond film.

For those keeping score, I’d order the films thusly: From Russia With Love, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Dr. No, Thunderball, Diamonds are Forever, Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice.

Having now viewed the Sean Connery canon (he made one more appearance in a Thunderball remake, but that’s not part of the official series), I feel comfortable saying that he is a good Bond, but he’s often undone by lousy stories. Daniel Craig in the recent Casino Royale, though, is a better bond, and truer to Ian Fleming’s original imagination of the character. (Casino Royale is also better than any Connery film except for From Russia With Love.)

Story Problem

You own a box factory situated in the middle of the country.

Your delivery driver is returning from a trip. As every driver has done several times a day for twenty-one years, he idles up to the edge of the parking lot, angles across the entire road, and begins to back in.

Meanwhile, a woman in a Ford Focus comes flying around the corner (which is 500 feet down the road) and accelerates toward the the truck. The woman shows no signs of stopping. At the very last possible moment, she slams on her brakes. The tires smoke and squeal as the Ford Focus comes to rest three or four feet from the rear of the truck. After the truck has backed into the drive, the woman in the Ford Focus speeds away.

You happen to witness the whole incident because you were watching for the truck’s return. You go out to measure the skidmarks. They’re 45 feet, five inches long. (That’s 13.84 meters to those so inclined.)

Question one. How fast was the Ford Focus traveling at the time the driver slammed on her brakes? (I own a Ford Focus, too. My owners manual indicates the car’s mass is 3640lbs, or 1651kg.)

Question two. If an accident had occurred, who would be at fault? (This is in Oregon.) The truck driver followed all legally prescribed procedures except honking his horn — not that the woman could have heard it.

Question three. Why do people insist on driving so darn fast?

Dreamgirls

Somewhere along the way, Kris and I developed the tradition of seeing a movie (or, sometimes, more than one) on Christmas Day. I think this stems mostly from the fact that all of our Christmas celebrations are finished before the day itself, so that we’re left with a lot of time on our hands. Plus it’s kind of fun to venture forth for a mundane task on a day that the rest of the world shuts down.

Except that in the past decade, more and more people have developed the same habit.

The first Christmas film we can recall seeing is Schindler’s List in 1993. (Kind of a downer, I’m sure you’ll agree.) Because this is the season for Oscar-caliber pictures, those are the sort that we usually see. The worst Christmas film we ever saw was Gangs of New York. We were joined by the Mirons that day, and the other three in our group hated the film. I thought it was okay, but certainly no Oscar-worthy.

Yesterday Tiffany joined us to see Dreamgirls, a movie that has already received its fair share of Oscar buzz. Dreamgirls, a musical, is a fictionalized account of the rise of Diana Ross and The Supremes. It stars Jamie Foxx, Beyoncé Knowles, and Eddie Murphy, and features the debut of Jennifer Hudson, a young woman with a magnificent set of lungs.

Dreamgirls gets a lot of things right. It is one of the best-directed films I’ve ever seen. Or maybe it’s just well-edited. It zooms along at an exhilarating pace, never feeling rushed, but never lingering over any scene for too long. (Kris felt that some of the numbers are ill-conceived — she cited “Family” as too stagey and over-the-top, for example.) The acting is good. The script, though trite, is adequate. This is a well-made film.

Its greatest weakness is a lack of catchy songs. Like most modern stage musicals (Dreamgirls made its Broadway debut 25 years ago, on 20 December 1981), the songs are too “busy”, with little melodic hook. Still, there are some knock-outs. The film’s centerpiece is Jennifer Hudson’s “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going”, which she belts out of the park. (Many reviewers are writing that Dreamgirls is worth seeing for this number alone. They’re not wrong.)

Dreamgirls is a fine piece of entertainment — well-made and brisk. Like many films, it lacks a certain something that might have made it great, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it in the running for Best Picture. (And there’s little doubt that “I Am Telling You” will win for Best Song.)

Here’s a schizophrenic trailer for the film:

And here’s a clip from the show’s second-best number, “Listen”, which Knowles nails:

Finally, here’s an amateur production of the show’s centerpiece confrontation, including “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” (which begins at about the 3:45 mark):

Meanwhile, at home we’ve been watching some of our traditional Christmas films. We haven’t seen It’s a Wonderful Life yet this year, but we’ve seen two of our other favorites: Meet Me in St. Louis and Love Actually (the latter of which we’ve seen twice now).

Return to Leisure

Ah, at last my life has begun to slow to that pastoral pace I crave. The last two weeks have been crazy non-stop from dawn ’til dusk. Finally, things have calmed. I’ve got a couple chores here at the box factory this morning, but mostly I can resume my life of leisure. I have grand plans for it!

For one, I’m going to try to remodel Get Rich Slowly.

For another, I’m going to rejuvenate our desktop computer at home. After three years of hard use, even Macs get bogged down with cruft, and that’s certainly happened here. In particular, Mail seems to have flipped a switch to berserk mode lately, and refuses to communicate with my spamfilter. Thus, there are hundreds of spam messages in our inbox. I need to fix this.

I also want to set that machine up with an RSS reader so that Kris can become acquainted with the magic of efficient blog-reading. To that end, I’ve gone through this morning and nabbed the RSS feeds from all my friends and family. (All except for Nicole and Ruth, that is. These two aren’t publishing feeds. Come on, ladies! Pull it together!)

I also intend to spend some of this leisure time — gasp — writing. It’s my turn to produce something for the Woodstock Writers Guild. Inspired by the story Mark shared yesterday, I’m going to dig up one of my old favorites. (It has some similarities to Mark’s story.) I’ll revise, revise, revise, and then share the fruits of my labors in a couple weeks. (I may also try to write some new material, too.)

Most of all, I’m looking forward to a slow, quiet weekend with Kris. We have nothing planned. I have a bunch of blog entries pre-written. It’ll be a fine time to laze around the house, go see a couple movies, and generally enjoy each other’s company, something we haven’t had time to do for the past few weeks.

And, of course, we’ll continue to help Max acclimate to his new home. Kris has dubbed him “Meatball”. “We’ve never had a cat with a silly name before,” she told me. His official name is still Max, but Kris simply calls him Meatball. (And he is a meatball.) Simon and Nemo are beginning to contemplate friendly terms with Max, but they’re still a little stand-offish. Toto’s policy is simply to hiss at everyone.

Ho Ho Ho!

I’ve been a busy little beaver at Custom Box lately. Or maybe I should say a busy little elf.

During the holidays, I get to put on my Santa hat (literally) and drive my sleigh from customer-to-customer delivering goodies. Time is tight this year. Jeff is leaving for vacation tomorrow. Nick’s taking Thursday off, too. That means today is the last day I can be out slipping down chimneys. I’ve had to rush the deliveries this year, but I think I’m going to get them all done.

So far I haven’t had any mishaps: no slugs of whiskey with clients, no smoking my pipe in the car before going into an office. In fact, I’ve had some downright pleasant conversations with clients. They’re uniformly pleased with us, which is good to hear.

Shockingly, doing actual work at work means I have little time to write. So, my evenings have been filled with weblog stuff. (I’m taking next week off from Get Rich Slowly, so I’m scrambling to prepare content now.) It’s all rather hectic.

I’ve made time to watch a couple movies with Kris, though. Over the weekend, we watched the fifth James Bond film (I’m watching them all in order), You Only Live Twice. It was terrible. This far into the series, my order of preference is: From Russia With Love (which is vastly superior to the others), Dr. No, Thunderall, Goldfinger, and You Only Live Twice. Look for a huge recap entry in a couple months, when I’ve finished watching them all.

On Monday, we watched an early Jodie Foster film: The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane. Even at the age of fourteen, Foster was a great actress. But this is one strange film. (It features President Bartlett as a pedophile.) Last night we watched the much-lauded Little Miss Sunshine. I’d heard a lot about this film. It’s received almost unanimous praise. Yet Kris and I were both left feeling underwhelmed. The jokes had no depth. (The joke about the Proust scholar is simply that he’s a Proust scholar? Come on. Get a little deeper than that.) The film had no depth. It’s not a bad movie — I just don’t get the universal praise.

Oops. Customer with an emergency in Salem. Time to leave.