Knocking out an iPhone review; Video online
Monday, July 02, 2007 • 08:08:22 PM EDT
Writing my iPhone review for the Sun-Times. This is going to be a slaughter, truly. They're giving me more room for it but even so, it looks as though I'm going to have to choose between either clearly explaining huge, important concepts, or clearly explaning fiddly technical details. Because I surely can't do both, not within my paltry alotment.
I keep urging the paper to just make it easy on us all and give me my own weekly pull-out section. "If the good, hardworking men and women of the Metroland region were to experience that much joy," they once explained, "then they'd quickly slide into decadence. We can't be a party to that."
This response came via email, so I can't really tell if they're serious or not.
Meanwhile, I had to exorcise my spirit from the house at 7 this morning, so I could go on TV again to review the iPhone. This is probably the last time I'll be called upon to bloviate on this particular theme, and a good thing, too. My appearances on TV are sporadic and I'm not really used to provoking reactions of "Oh, not this bastard again!" in anybody but that twitchy-eyed clerk at my post office.
It went fine, but (as with all of my TV appearances) it was a learning experience. My keeper — I don't know what to call "the anchor I'm having a conversation with on the air"; I'm not being interviewed, so I tend to think of it as being handed the great handgun of mass media with a trainer's hand nearby to yank the muzzle into the sky if I do anything silly with it — well, she was just as excited about the iPhone as anybody should be, with the side-effect that it was difficult to move things through the roadmap I'd imagined for the segment.
Mind you, her enthusiasm wasn't the problem. The problem (as I see it) is that I lacked the finesse to steer the conversation where I wanted it to go and I lacked the wit to fully exploit her enthusiasm. Instead, I threw away my game plan and just had a very nice and spirited chat with her on the air, scoring maybe only 4 of the 7 or so Message Points I hoped to slap into the back of the net before the end of timekeeping.
It was a fun time, all the same. I do have goals for all of my appearances, but none are more important than being part of something that's interesting and watchable in which I don't come across as some flavor of loon. So on that basis, I'm happy with how I spent the morning.
(Plus, remember the rule: all IhnatCorp employees who are forced to be out of bed and presentable at 8 AM are entitled to breakfast out. Had me a muffin and a big thing of cranberry juice while I noodled with the iPhone on the coffeeshop's WiFi network. And as luck would have it, a friend of mine was passing by and saw me in the window, so we had a nice long chat.)
Oh, and check out the hourlong call-in show I did (and blogged about) last week: . Like I said, I think it went really well. I had a ball, I loved having a full hour to really get into the subject, and I hope they invite me back sometime.
In other news, my right arm is a testament to the fact that geeks shouldn't go into The Big Room. You know, the one with that obnoxiously big light fixture hanging from the ceiling. The mosquito bites I picked up at last weekend's barbecue have finally blossomed into itchy welts, and I'm delighted to discover that it's only a day after I hung out at Franklin, MA's big Fourth of July parade all afternoon, and bits of skin are already starting to flake off.
But despite the wear-and-tear on my forearm, it was good to go out and be with the Hu-Mans:
(More parade pix when I get a chance to import and edit them.)
Oh, and puppies, too. Big-eyed puppies.
Tuesday, July 03, 2007 • 08:49:49 PM EDT
You'll be disgusted to know that I spent the entire day smashing adorable baby ducks with a big hammer. And then when there were no more ducks left, I went after the baby bunnies. Fortunately, my work was done before I had to hunt down the baby raccoons with the yogurt containers on their heads, but they were looking very nervous at around 3 PM.
Meaning: I filed my Sun-Times iPhone review. I was given extra space for it, because it's such an important product, but my first draft still weighed in at about 400 words over. Which is not a small number of words to be over, unless you're writing a Tom Clancy novel.
If you're writing a Tom Clancy novel, that wold mean you're Tom Clancy and thus your publisher can — and probably often does — kiss your ass. Alas, I'm stuck being Andy Ihnatko. This life has certain benefits, but going 25% over your word count is not one of them.
Hence the need for lots and lots and LOTS of cutting. And the needless killing of adorable creatures that deserved a chance to live. Well, it's done and filed. I complain about deadlines but honestly, without them nothing would ever get done. To be honest, I'm not completely happy with the review and if I had another day with it I'd certainly have put that draft aside and started again.
Oh, not because it was bad. No, not at all. But it's like you're building the airplane of your dreams and the numbers tell you that it's 25% too heavy. So first you swap the motor for one that's less-powerful but still perfectly adequate, and you put in a smaller fuel tank. But it's still too heavy, so you go with a fixed set of landing gear instead of the retractable kind, you pull out the rear seats…at some stage, you're cutting chunks out of the airframe, Skilsawing the tips off the wings, and figuring out which sections of the body don't actually need to be covered by sheet metal.
At this stage, having yanked two of the blades off of your propellor, you step back look at what you have. It could be described as "airplane-like" but ideally, you want to build an actual airplane. So you figure that the best thing would probably be to use this valuable experience to start all over again, building a new thing around those parts that proved to be consistently valuable.
So that's where I wound up. It's a very fine review, with a nice lead and a "big picture" sort of view, while endeavoring to address some of the questions and concerns I've been consistently seeing online. But I bet if I started again, I could have figured out a way to keep the backseat and the bitchin' flame decals.
Now that I've been released on my own recognizance I'm off for a pleasant litle drive. Belkin sent over a stubby little headphone jack adapter, which means that for the first time since the iPhone arrived, I can use it in the car.
In the meantime, a commercial has just aired and it perfectly illustrates the problems of owning a creative furnace that can never be shut off.
The ad is for a local brand of ice cream. Generic Hardworking Wife encounters Generic Idiot Layabout Husband in the kitchen, where he's amassed a beachball-sized mass of ice cream, made from individual scoops of dozens of different flavors.
"I'm taking a tour of [brand of ice cream]," he says, pointing at various scoops and describing the flavors as individual stops on a journey. His tone of delivery is meant to be alluring, I suppose. But it isn't the sort of commercial where they can afford to hire a particularly good actor or writer, so it's unclear whether or not the husband character thinks the ice cream is sexy or merely tasty.
In any event, he's got a hell of a lot of ice cream there and you're motivated to wonder if this is a symptom of his OCD or something. He must be doing all of this for a reason, you know?
If you've been struggling with a combination of creative and technical problems since 7:30 AM, a brain that's suddenly starved for entertainment will start to fill in the gaps.
And so, I suddenly stopped hearing this as a list of ice cream flavors and started hearing a list of sex acts that he planned to perform upon his goodly wife later that evening.
"We'll swing through the Old Strawberry Plantation, before we visit Maine Blueberry," he said. "We wind up…at the Cape Cod Fudge Shoppe."
I predict that this will stop being funny after my next two viewings.
Picture Book
Wednesday, July 04, 2007 • 01:06:49 PM EDT
First batch of photos from Franklin's 1st of July 4th of July parade are up. A sample:
More later, when I find time to do more culling and editing. Up to the adam's apple in work right now. This sort of thing is a good break, y'know. When I desperately need to flee the scene of the crime, looking through pictures gives me a little vacation while keeping my butt in the chair.
Happy 4 of 7, everyone. To my British brothers and sisters: happy 7 of 4. Though I imagine that since you don't celebrate Independence Day, every day is 7 of 4 for you.
I sure hope JPEG is still a standard in 2022...
Thursday, July 05, 2007 • 09:31:17 PM EDT
Why do I have such a hard time believing that peer-to-peer sharing has become such a huge contributor to the problem of pirated material? Perhaps this screen capture explains it better than I could do in words:
(Oh, hush. None of these comics are available in trade paperback form and I already own them all as individual issues. The "First, Do No Harm" protocol is in strict observance. Besides, this is for proper, lofty journalistic purposes.)
Declare? I Declare My Genius!
Friday, July 06, 2007 • 10:56:03 PM EDT
I'm confident that my readership includes a healthy demographic of people who like to go to nerdly conventions dressed in costumes. Comic-Con in San Diego is just a few weeks away but surely there's enough time for someone to put this together in time for Dragon*Con.
The idea came to me about five minutes ago and it is yet another one of Andy Ihnatko's Gifts To The World. This is quite possibly the most brilliant SF costume of all time. Let's play this like Super Password or something and see how far along I get before you figure out where I'm going, here.
To assemble Quite Possibly The Most Brilliant SF Costume Of All Time you will need to acquire the following items:
One pair of black Beatle boots.
One charcoal-grey pinstripe suit, double-breasted.
One black velvet opera cape, lined in red or pink satin.
One black clergy shirt.
One clerical collar (Catholic).
One pair yellow-tinted aviator sunglasses.
One Greedo mask (you know, the alien in "Star Wars" that DEFINITELY did not have a chance to get a shot off before Han Solo blasted him to smithereens).
One black parson's hat, with strategically-cut holes to accommodate antenna stalks in Greedo mask.
Did you figure out where I'm going with this?
…
It's FATHER GREEDO SARDUCCI!!!
It is Quite Possibly The Most Brilliant SF Costume Of All Time. If not for the fact that I have no plans to attend any cons and that I have a John Belushi physique instead of the Don Novello kind, I would be wearing this myself.
Go, my readers. Make and wear this costume. The men will weep with envy and the women will place salvers laden with plums and dates before you. Many of the latter will probably be wearing Slave Leia costumes, so, you know...definitely some added incentive, there.
TV or not TV....?
Monday, July 09, 2007 • 02:54:48 PM EDT
I have been listening to Smooth Jazz for the past 15 minutes, which is usually just a different way of saying "I'm on hold, waiting for some people to show up for a conference call."
Today seems to be a day of waiting for phone calls. I got an email yesterday that led almost immediately to a phone call which resulted in an invitation to be on The Early Show on CBS on Tuesday morning. As in, live to the entire nation on network TV, at 7:45. But I know how these things work. On local TV, they get in touch with you and by the end of the first phone call, you know where the visitor parking is at the studio and how early they want you to show up.
But on network shows, it's more like being a mistress. "My wife said something about shopping for throw pillows on Sunday," they say. "So there might be a 40-minute window available. Could you possibly be at the Ramada Inn off of Exit 17 at 2:20 PM?" And you check your calendar and say sure, but you really shouldn't get your hopes up. Either it's going to happen, in which you'll get another phone call anywhere from ten minutes from now or ten minutes before you would need to leave the house to make it in time, or Something Comes Up, in which case you won't hear anything at all.
So in 15 hours' time, I will either be in my Respectable Geek costume talking to millions of people all over the country, or I'll be in my underpants replying to my first email of the day. If the former, I will get to go out for breakfast. If the latter, I will get to sleep an extra two hours.
"We're sorry, your conference is ending now," says the speakerphone. "Please hang up." Oh, dear. When even a major consumer electronics company with a new line of notebooks to tell me about can't be bothered, that'a not a good sign for the other phone call, is it?
My life is SO much simpler when I do nothing...
Wednesday, July 11, 2007 • 11:23:32 PM EDT
Oh, dear Lord. At 5:14 PM today I made my week much more complicated than it had been at 5:13.
Technically, it didn't actually get more complicated until 5:36. Twenty-two minutes earlier I'd sent off an email that went along the lines of "Hey, you know what would be cool to do sometime?" In my mind, the initial value of the variable "sometime" was set to "I dunno; late next week at the soonest, I suppose. I mean, assuming that they think this is even a good idea." But 22 minutes later, as I was tying my shoes and getting ready to go out for dinner, my iPhone blurbled. The screen displayed the area code belonging to the person I'd emailed but surely I wouldn't hear back so soon, would I? And not by phone, of all things?
Welp, I did and I did, and apparently $sometime=='this_saturday'.
It's not locked down yet but tomorrow I hope to have an Announcement Of Interest.
If it happens, you will understand why I am v.aware at this moment that Saturday is not a large number of days away.
The CBS Saturday Morning Show!
Thursday, July 12, 2007 • 03:22:33 PM EDT
Well, it's a nice bit of synchronicity. My Provisional Fiancee-In-Blogging Emma Kennedy is going to be on the Richard and Judy Show tomorrow morning, and is rightly excited about it: as I understand it, the UK-US conversion rate is 1 Richard & Judy Show = .77 of a Regis & Kelly + .53 of an Oprah. And on Saturday morning, I'll be on the CBS Early Show.
As engagements go we're still quite a ways away from registering for a cheese press and set of fish knives at Williams-Sonoma but clearly, progress is being made. If you continue to plot this relationship curve at its current trajectory you'll see that it's extremely likely that we'll have shared an awkward ten minutes over coffee by 2017 or 2021 at the latest.
But back to me. Yes, live network morning television…and I won't even have to make up a poster reading "HAPPY 89th, NANA!!! CHRISTIE DOUG TUFFY (WOOF WOOF!)" and stand behind a barricade for three hours. It's a proper segment and everything. When the Tuesday morning thing didn't happen it was a bit of a bummer, but I knew from the get-go that I was being lined up only as a possibility. Even if it had actually happened, the true Big Win was suddenly having the ear of a producer who was interested in some ideas.
So instead of appearing via satellite from Boston and having an on-air debate with someone about the iPhone, they're flying me in to New York and it's just me and one of the hosts. On the plus side: an upgrade! And a weekend in New York on the network's dime. On the minus side: I've a much greater shot at looking like a major snickerdoodle in front of a fairly large percentage of the general public. I'm not nervous, mind you, but I report without embarrassment that last night I went out and bought a new shirt. The difference between local and network television is that if you intend to wear a vintage silver bolo tie, you button the collar button, apparently.
I don't pretend that it makes sense to anybody but me.
On the double-plus side, my Mom gets to call back everyone she called on Monday and tell them that no, really, honest, he'll be on the tee-vee for sure this time. She's as proud as can be (good ol' Mom). Let's just hope that this feeling endures through the actual broadcast. I won't know for sure how well I did until the next time I visit. If I note that my folks have pried the family name off of the mailbox, I'll probably just keep on driving.
Phone rings in mid-paragraph. Ah! Good, good: T-Mobile will be sending me three working phones. Without them, I would have had to get a whole bunch of "library" phones up and running tonight. What an odd, odd life I lead. If I need a half-dozen handsets on 18 hours' notice, I make a few phone calls and I can get 'em.
Of course, it helps a lot if your voice mail includes the phrase "I'm eager to give your company's products free network TV exposure." Let's not dismiss that out-of-hand.
In case I don't update before the weekend, it looks like I'll be on at 7:20 AM. Good vibes are appreciated…!
Walking the Dog
Wednesday, July 25, 2007 • 05:44:30 PM EDT
Walk him.
I'm sure that someone else has come up with this idea, but it's just occurred to me that this would be the best and most profound solution to The Barry Bonds Problem. If I were a major-league pitcher throwing against Barry Bonds, and I knew that there was a chance that he might homer off of me and make me an accomplice in this filthy business, I'd walk him. I'd be tempted to aim it right at his butt, but that wouldn't be sporting. No, I'd just signal the catcher and throw four lobs in the general direction of the on-deck circle.
I'd probably discuss it with the pitching coach first. He'd probably pull the manager into the discussion. Sure, they'd probably frown and blink for a few seconds when they heard the idea but then they'd feel a glow that they haven't felt since they looked at the schedule and learned who the Giants would be playing when Bonds needed just one more dinger.
Coaches and managers like to spread joy — go ahead and ask around; they're legendary for it — and soon, they'd post a notice right in the bullpen. Official club policy: no way, no how, not ever would the name and the dignity of this honorable ballclub (yes, even if it's the Phillies) be associated with the guy who drugged and lied his way past one of the greatest hitters who ever lived.
It would make every sportscast on every cable, network and local station. Twelve pitches thrown by three different pitchers to Bonds, each one so far outside that the catcher had to take two or three steps away from the plate to get at them. There could be absolutely no question about what had just happened. If walking Bonds happens to advance a runner to scoring position during a close game, well, that would just up the sincerity of the gesture, wouldn't it?
Other teams would hear about it and see the basic rightness of this policy. Nobody's cheating, nobody's lying, everything's on the up and up. It's just that nobody — nobody — wants to become a party to this business.
Days stretch to weeks, and then all the way to the end of the season. The Barry Bonds Intentional Walk streak would remain unbroken. At some point, it achieves so much momentum that it becomes a fact of Baseball.
And sometime during the 2008 season, it becomes so routine that it becomes just a part of the game, like the National Anthem or the Seventh-Inning Stretch. In fact, it becomes a tradition for all of the fans to turn around in their seats facing away from the field until Bonds takes his four outside pitches. Let every single Barry Bonds at-bat become a unanimous display of our contempt for him personally and his brand of baseball.
There should probably a special song played during his at-bat. I'm stuck; I'm leaning towards "Shot Full Of Love" by Juice Newton. It has a certain on-the-nose air about it but I wonder if there isn't a better tune out there.
Let him retire with the all-time Most-Walked Batter crown. Leave the home-run title exactly where it is.
Consternation
Saturday, July 28, 2007 • 09:37:31 PM EDT
Occasionally you have one of those weeks in which you feel like you're forced to stay inside all day practicing for a violin recital while just outside your window, all of the other neighborhood kids are playing and having a great time. I'm screeching my way through an adagio that I have no chance whatsoever of ever mastering and just as an "E" string snaps and whips across the bridge of my nose, I hear a loud metallic crunch. I look through the window again and note that the kids are now swarming a delivery truck that's overturned and spilled its cargo of Snickers, Mounds and Twix bars all across the street.
Life is not bad, you understand. But at this moment I'm aware that it could be even better. Many of you are now thinking "Ah. this is because the San Diego Comic-Con is this week, and Ihnatko remains resolutely at-station." Well-deduced.
San Diego stands, unwashed head and schlumpy shoulders, above all other comix/TV/Movies/*.nerd cons; at 150,000 attendees, it's one of the largest annual conventions of any kind in the United States. It's so huge that really, it's more like four or five separate cons that happen to go on in the same place at the same time. "Focus on the one con experience you want to have," experts urge. If you're hoping to get the news on what Marvel and DC will be doing next year and see a sneak-preview of Kevin Smith's next project and get to meet some of the castmembers from your favorite shows and collect some original art and try to network your way into a job in any of those aforementioned industries, there's just no way. Unless you have some sort of special mojo that stops time.
"Yeah, like the stopwatch that Bart and Milhouse find in 'Treehouse of Horror XIV'," Simpsons Geek nods.
"No, he's talking about the remote control Adam Sandler had in 'Click,'" says Movie Nerd.
"Lame. Obviously he meant like Hiro from 'Heroes,'" sniffs TV Freak.
"Wrong, and wronger," Comic Book Geek says. "It's Batgirl villainess The Velvet Tiger. But then, she was a classic villain…not one of these 'teevee' pseudo-baddies of which you speak."
"Hey! Bill Murray in 'Groundhog Day'!" a passer-by chimes in.
He just wants to be part of the group, but he's met with icy silence.
"Firstly, who the hell are you, anyway." says Comic Book Geek, at last. "Secondly, don't even answer, because I can't possibly be made to care. Thirdly, the movie clearly established that Phil Connors does not have the power to stop time. He's merely forced to re-live the same day over and over again; time flows normally all around him."
This is Movie Nerd's territory and he takes umbrage that he wasn't allowed the honor of being the first to heap emotional abuse upon a total stranger.
"Wait…we don't know that he couldn't stop time," he says. "You don't even know what you're talking about."
"Oh, please. Was everybody else frozen in time around him? Answer: no; Command: shut up."
"But it could have been him all along. They never bothered to explain it. He could have been jumping backwards in time every night during his sleep. It could be his mutant power or something…even he doesn't even know he's a mutant. It explains everything. In the movie he achieves a sort of emotional maturity, and that added self-awareness was what he needed to control his mutant powers."
"Get real," says Simpsons Geek. "Harold Ramis gave Phil a full medical screening and he didn't discover anything unusual about him. And I'm sure I have to remind you that in 'Ghostbusters,' Ramis held doctorates in multiple disciplines."
Movie Nerd shakes his head sadly, chuckling.
"How sad," he says. "You're just terrified that I'm right. I've blown your mind because you, Mister Self-Imagined Geek Of All Geeks, never even considered the possibility. And now that it's in your head, you can't get rid of it!"
What follows is a massive five-way fistfight during which the participants individually pause every ninety seconds to take another hit off their inhalers, post about the progress of their fight on their MySpace pages, and make sure that they haven't lost their place in line for an autographed Frank Cho sketchbook.
I imagine that this sort of thing happens all the time at Comicon. But I do envy those folks at the show all the same. I've only attended the San Diego Comic-Con once: way back in 1999, when there were "only" 65,000 attendees.
I'd had a truly miserable year up 'til that point and it was largely because I'd been doing nothing but travel, travel, travel. It seemed as though every week I was taking off for yet another conference or another meeting or another event. After five months of this sort of thing, numbly cycling the exact same six-day ration of socks and underwear through the washing machine, I found myself filled with the sort of fatigue, self-loathing and desperation that causes weaker men to move to the Pacific Northwest and open a natural-foods market.
But I'm made of tough, immigrant stock. My solution was to take a little hair of the dog. I would attend another huge gathering of tens of thousands of strangers wearing name badges. Only this time, I'd be there with a completely empty To-Do list and nothing in my appointment book. I'd have no deadlines to meet or stories to file. I wouldn't have to do any speaking, and I wouldn't have to run from briefing to meeting to briefing.
It was a spur-of-the-moment decision, And while SooM is a fine reason to try the Spring Rain-scented shampoo instead of the usual Garden Walk, when it influences you to attend a huge popular convention in a town with a limited number of hotel beds, it just causes problems. I mean, it's all well and good to be free and adventurous, but then the moment passes and you realize that you now need to book a hotel room on just two week's notice, in a city in which the last available room was traded for a seventy pieces of gold and a gentle kiss on the forehead three months ago.
I had an ace in the hole, though. A member of my extended family works for Mr. Marriott himself (no joke) and she had always insisted that she'd be pleased to work some of her special mojo on behalf of an actual family member for a change, instead of for a vague friend of an acquaintence. She was as good as her word: she got me a lovely balcony room in the (sold-out) Marriott right across from the convention center…and at EconoLodge rates, too.
Plus, this was also way back when bootblacks plied their trade on every street corner, homes were heated with whale oil, and the airlines would actually let you use your frequent-flier miles to fly to the place you wanted to go on the dates you wanted to travel. So the rails were well-greased for an affordable and fun little vacation.
San Diego proved to be the perfect antidote. It makes about as much sense as homeopathic medicine, but six days at the largest comic convention in the country was indeed exactly what I needed. Like nearly every other week of 1999, I was in a convention hall in a far-off city, shouldering my way through throngs of humanity…but I was there without assignment, agenda, or responsibilities. I wandered across the landscape like a ghost, observing the chaos and stress without being a part of it, and I relished every moment.
(Also, I shared an elevator with Stan Lee and had a 24-floor conversation with him. Which was pretty damned awesome.)
The show's attendance has grown by about 90,000 people since my one expedition but the key piece of trivia is that I now have a lot more friends who work in the nerdmedia industries. So whereas eight years ago I was surprised and pleased to bump into people I knew
And double-pleased and triple-surprised to bump into readers who recognized me or my name badge. Though whenever that happened, inevitably someone would notice the fuss being made over me and pointedly ask "Are you someone famous, or a total nobody who's wasting my valuable time by standing placidly while I ask you this question?" I cited my writing credit on an issue of "Ren & Stimpy Comics & Stories" (and rightly so, might I add) but it was never the answer that the person was hoping for. …today, I could fly out there with the highly-positive goal of actually hanging out with pals. Instead of fulfilling a desire to be all alone in a group of 60,000 people, which seems sort of, I dunno…Travis Bickle-ey.
Ach, barring a way to make the trip revenue-neutral, I probably won't be returning anytime soon. It'd cost at least $1500 and that's awfully close to "a week in Kauai or London" money. I speak from experience when I say that one of the few things that are more peaceful and stress-reducing than spending five days in an enclosed area with 150,000 people is spending an entire week strolling along a red-sand beach on a tropical island.
Besides, Good Lord. 150,000 is not a small number of people.
I've been hearing from my Con-going friends all week long, either directly or via their blogs and Twitterfeeds. Attendance is way beyond even the most ridiculous pre-show estimates; for the first time in the history of the Con, they've had to stop selling tickets. True, the situation at the San Diego Convention Center isn't anywhere near as bad as the situation at the New Orleans Superdome in the hours after Hurricane Katrina but still, it sounds like it's bad enough that attendees are keeping their courage up by telling each other "You know, as unpleasant as this is, it isn't anywhere near as bad as things were at the Superdome in the hours after Hurricane Katrina."
On Tuesday, I felt like the kid stuck inside with the violin. Now I kind of feel like one of the crewcutted and skinny-tied engineers in Mission Control during the Apollo missions. You sure wish you could be out there swinging a golf club on the surface of the Moon, but you're close enough to the action to understand that it involves spending ten days peeing in a tube and pooping into a bag. Er, in a closet-sized space where two other guys will be doing those exact same things. And all of the windows are bolted shut.
Plus, there's a distressingly nonzero chance that when NASA retrieves you from the Atlantic and takes you back to Houston after re-entry, they'll have to do it in several trips over a three-week period.
You know what I mean? All of a sudden, experiencing the whole event via a computer screen from thousands of miles away while sipping a refreshing beverage and sitting in a comfortable chair doesn't seem quite so bad.
"Show meeee...PURPLE KRYPTONITE!"
Sunday, July 29, 2007 • 01:42:40 PM EDT
First off, I want to reaffirm my love for the Internet. I publish what I consider to be a whimsical interlude that pokes fun at nerdly obsession with useless pop-culture trivia, and less than a half an hour later, I get the first email of many that offers more examples of Thingamabobs From Film, TV, and Comics That Can Freeze Time.
If we were playing a G4 Network edition of "Family Feud," the number-one response would be "The Girl, The Gold Watch, and Everything." If we were playing a G4 edition of "Wheel Of Fortune" and Vanna was standing next to "••• GIR•, ••• GO•D WA•C•, AND •V•RY••ING" I'd definitely know the answer, but the truth is that it's one of those titles that got written to NVRAM without ever having an actual story attached to it. I did have to Google for it.
But clearly, I'm in the minority. One of my pals called from Comicon last night and I laughed about getting so many emails so quickly. "Oh, the TV movie with Robert Hayes and Pam Dawber" he immediately said, when I told him the title. Welp, the original novel is now on its way to me from Amazon. I'm taking a little road trip at the end of the week and this might be a good way to pass the time on the long drive from Vermont to Maine.
(This is exceptionally good timing; I'm going it alone and I won't have anyone to talk to for those three hours.)
I've also received a three-email landslide of responses to my "Phil Connors is a time-shifting mutant" theory about "Groundhog Day." I proudly report that the Brilliant-to-Bollocks feedback ratio stands at 2:1. So let's just consider the matter closed.
Speaking of time-shifting mutants: yesterday afternoon I was at least 40% certain that I'd spotted one in the parking lot of my local supermarket. I was backing out of a parking space and keeping a scrupulous eye on my rearview mirror for pedestrians. A blonde, beehived sixtyish lady in khaki shorts and a pink sleeveless top was strolling behind me, so I kept my foot firmly on the brake. Then I was distracted by movement in front of the car: well, I'll be damned…there she was. I must have caught a double-reflection or something.
I started to release the pressure on the brake but stomped it back down again before the car even started moving…no, she was definitely in my rearview.
Time and time again I've thanked my lucky stars that I seem to have cultivated some phenomenally safe driving skills. What tripped the brake motion wasn't anything as fully-rendered as "I think there might be a pedestrian behind me" but "I seem to be slightly confused about what I'm seeing and stopping is always safer than moving." I swear: this woman seemed to be moving twenty feet in the blink of an eye.
Yup, by an incredible coincidence, two women of the same age wearing identical clothes and hairdos happened to be passing in front of and behind my car at the exact same time.
No, they weren't twin sisters, nor were they both waitresses at the same restaurant wearing some sort of uniform. It was such a gobsmacker that I actually got out of the car and pretended to check my trunk just to get a closer look at them. They didn't seem to be related to each other, either.
And I know what you're about to say: one of these ladies was from a parallel universe. Well, I looked carefully but neither one of them had an Evil Doppelganger goatee, so bang goes that theory.
Clearly, it was yet another example of God messing with our heads. Just when you start to think that the Atheists have got it spot-on, He pulls crap like this. And He's still just vague enough about it that He can still hide behind His whole "Mankind is my greatest creation, for man alone has the capacity for Faith" jazz.
(What a jerk. I mean, mad props to God; He did a hell of a job coming up with Evolution and the First Law of Thermodynamics and all that. Just think about all the labor that saves Him on a daily basis. My hat's off, no kidding. But you can't deny that God is a completely different person when He drinks.)
I will close by stating that I would totally watch a special Geek edition of "Family Feud." You do it all at Comic-Con. You spend Wednesday through Friday conducting polls among the attendees, then you tape a whole season's worth of weekly games on Saturday and Sunday with contestants drawn from the polling pool.
"We polled 1000 congoers: Name a weapon that could injure Superman but not The Incredible Hulk."
(deebeedeebeedeebeedeeee!)
"A Mother Box !"
"Show meeee…Mother Box!"
(bzzzzzzzz!)
(deebeedeebeedeebeedeeee!)
"Mjolnir, Thor's mystic uru hammer!"
"Hammer of Thor, enchanted by the All-Father himself…showww meeeee Mjolnir!"
(dinnng!)
"Number one response! Omega Men, you have control of the board: do you choose to pass or play?"
And here's what would make the game doubly-interesting: the head games. Asked to name a movie in which cannibalism plays a major role, your first response would probably be "Soylent Green." But Geek Pride has two important components: knowing more than anybody else, and demonstrating that you know more than anybody else. You wouldn't be caught dead naming the most obvious one.
So as a contestant, with the clock ticking down, you'd be trying to figure out what your fellow geeks would say in that sort of situation. Then you'd realize that your own geek cred is on the line because (damn) you're answering the question, too.
"Motel Hell," you would start to say. Then you'd take it back and name the Yugoslavian movie that was remade into "Hostel."
Of course, as the show's producer I'd make sure that the poll covered a wide range of subjects.
"Name a brand of soap or deodorant."
"Febreze!"
(dinnng!)
"Number-ONE!"
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